November 6, 1982
Dear Abby: You said it is possible for a woman to become pregnant and still remain a virgin. It sounds impossible, but I know it’s true, which reminds me of a similar story I read in a reputable magazine some years ago.
It seems that during the Civil War (May 12, 1863, to be exact), a young Virginia farm girl was standing on her front porch while a battle was raging nearby. A stray bullet first passed through the scrotum of a young Union cavalryman, then lodged in the reproductive tract of the young woman, who thus became pregnant by a man she had not been within 100 feet of! And nine months later she gave birth to a healthy baby!
You don’t believe it? If it hadn’t been published in the very reliable American Heritage magazine (December 1971, Chapter 4, in a story titled “The Case of the Miraculous Bullet”), I wouldn’t have believed it either.
—Leland E. Smith, Nashville, Tennessee
Dear Mr. Smith: Several years ago I ran that item in this space, which brought me a letter from a 90-year-old South Dakota Indian. He said he heard a different version of the same story. Only the girl wasn’t a Virginia farm girl, she was an Indian maiden who claimed she had been impregnated by a bow and arrow.
I reprint Dr. Capers’s entire report above because the source is not easy to find, and it has been so often summarized and paraphrased incorrectly or incompletely. By the time the story reached American Heritage, for example, the incident had moved from Mississippi to Virginia and the participants had become Union supporters. Also, the detail of the minnie ball lodging in the infant’s scrotum was not mentioned. I, like “Dear Abby,” distrusted the story; I discussed it in The Choking Doberman, guessing it to be either “an old wartime legend or perhaps a nineteenth-century doctor’s or editor’s hoax.” The story did, indeed, prove to be a hoax, as I learned when I located this retraction published in vol. I, no. 21 (November 21, 1874), pp. 263–64, of the American Medical Weekly:
Dr. L. G. Capers, of Vicksburg, Miss., disclaims responsibility for the truth of that remarkable case of impregnation by a minnie ball as reported in No. 19 of this Journal. He tells the story as it was told to him. He does not say it is untrue, but is disposed to appositely remember the truth of the old adage, that “accidents may happen in the best regulated families.” The joke is, that the Doctor reported the case without any signature, but as the editor is indisposed to be made the victim of canards, and recognized the writing sent, he was unwilling to deprive the author of the contemplated fun, and allowed him to enjoy even more of this than was anticipated. The readers have enjoyed the story much, but not enough “to cut capers” after reading it.
Professor James O. Breeden of Southern Methodist University deserves credit for authoritatively debunking the story in his article “‘The Case of the Miraculous Bullet’ Revisited” in Military Affairs, vol. 45, no. 1 (1981), but neither Abby nor I were aware of his article when we expressed our own disbelief.
Epilogue
Urban Legend Parodies
* * *
“The Report of My Death…”
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Is Prof. Jan Brunvand dead?
Heard on Univ. of Oregon campus that Prof. Jan Brunvand (author of “Vanishing Hitchhiker,” “Choking Doberman,”) was found dead at his office desk at the Univ. of Utah. He was found by freshman student after he failed to appear for a scheduled class lecture.
My reply:
Report true. This comes from the other side. I still have Internet access, and the fly fishing is fantastic.
Cheers,
—Jan
* * *
Folklorists have long recognized the existence of “metafolklore”—folklore about folklore. (Example: “Knock.” “Who’s there?” “Opportunity.”) Similarly, there is a body of folklore about folklorists; for instance, did any scholar ever actually give up in the definitions game and simply describe our subject in these terms, “Folklore is what folklorists study?” Or did tale-type and -motif guru Stith Thompson ever really tell folktales at an academic conference merely by reciting their numbers from his classification systems?
Given such self-referential in-group traditions, it’s not surprising that urban legend parodies have proliferated in our postmodern age. The Internet is loaded with good examples, such as this one that was forwarded to me recently:
Michelle Desperately Needs Your Help!!
Please forward this to everyone you know. This is not a chain letter. It is a little girl’s dying wish. Her name is Michelle Brandt, and early this year she was diagnosed with congenital halitosis nervosa (CHN), a disease for which there is no cure. Michelle fell under the influence of a homeopathic doctor who promised to cure her condition if she only ate garlic.
How she could have fallen for such a quack is easy. People in desperate situations will do anything; they will grasp at straws. Perhaps you’ve known someone who, faced with desperate circumstances, took a path that might seem foolish or misguided. The fact is that Michelle and her parents are now broke; having spent their life savings and mortgaged their home, they are broke.
In fact, they are now in desperate circumstances. When they had a little bit of money left, they decided to treat Michelle to one fine meal. As a final treat for their beloved daughter, the Brandts ordered her favorite dessert, which was pound cake. Michelle, bless her heart, so enjoyed the pound cake that her parents asked the waiter for the recipe. The waiter told them that the recipe would cost them “two fifty,” and the Brandts immediately agreed.
Later, when they got their credit card bill, they realized that they were charged $250.00, not the $2.50 they had expected. This bill devastated the Brandts, for it was the last of their money, and they no longer could afford the treatment for Michelle’s incurable condition.
What the Brandts have done is decided to get revenge. They are passing along the recipe to you, free of charge. They got this idea from their next-door neighbors, the Gorskys. They figure that if they paid $250 to [name of restaurant deleted pending results of lawsuit], they’re going to make sure everyone gets their money’s worth.
Rather than plea for money or try to charge people for this recipe, the Brandts are trying to make one final gesture against corporate greed. They hope that this gesture will help wake up corporate America and let it know that the “little people” will not be pushed around, especially those with a daughter afflicted with CHN.
On the eve of the composition of this letter, Michelle wanted to add something. Michelle, already traumatized because of her CHN, had suffered another shock recently. She had been to her older sister’s wedding. At the banquet, the groom (Michelle’s new brother-in-law) told the guests to look under their seats, where manila envelopes were stowed. Inside the envelopes were pictures of Michelle’s sister and the best man in a compromising position.
The wedding, of course, was ruined, even though the Brandts had made a lovely pound cake for the wedding. Poor Michelle realized that nothing is certain (except that she never will recover from CHN) and wanted to try to stake her claim for immortality. She is only asking one thing: That each of you pass along this letter so that she will remain alive, at least in the magic of E-mail.
Even the ACHNS (American Congenital Halitosis Nervosa Society) has chipped in. The ACHNS has pledged to donate three cents for every person who receives this letter, to the fight to cure Michelle’s incurable condition. Keep in mind that this will cost you nothing to forward this. Just a few moments of your time is all it takes.
This letter has already been around the world eight times, and it would be a shame if you broke the link now. (Remember, though, this is not a chain letter.)
How can any decent person refuse a dying girl’s last wish, especially when the ACHNS is pledged to devote money to Michelle’s cause? Can you, in good conscience, just delete this? All it takes is for you to hit the "forward" key, add a few names, and send it along.
&nbs
p; In a world of over 5 billion people, how often do you get the chance to make a difference in someone’s life? Not too often, I bet. But your effort can help Michelle’s family to regain its faith in people. You see, they lost their faith when Michelle’s favorite uncle, Walter, took a trip to Las Vegas. Walter, who always thought himself a bit of a lady’s man, met an attractive woman in a casino there, and the two seemed to hit it off. Eventually, she suggested that they go back to her hotel room. The next thing Walter knew, he woke up in a bathtub. The woman was gone, but there was a phone on a chair and a note. The note said that he should not get out of the tub but should call 911 immediately. Walter did this, and the operator knew just what to ask him. When the operator found out he was in a tub, she told him, "Both of your kidneys have been removed by a band of black-market organ sellers. Don’t move. Help is on its way." Fortunately, the person who stole Walter’s kidneys was a skilled surgeon, but the Brandts’ faith in humanity was very much shaken.
Here’s your chance! Just forward this non-chain letter to as many people as you know. Remember that for every person you forward this to, the ACHNS will donate three cents to the effort to cure Michelle’s incurable CHN affliction. If you forward it to 10 people, that’s 30 cents. And if each of them forwards it to 10 people, that’s $3.00. And if each of them forwards it to three people, that’s $30.00! And, if all of those people forward it to everyone, that’s $300.00 (which is only 20 percent more than [restaurant name deleted pending results of lawsuit] charged the Brandts when that money could have gone to making Michelle comfortable in her final days.)
After all you’ve read, can you possibly say "no" to poor little Michelle? This is one brave little girl. She has suffered so much. [This note attached by the Brandts’ lawyer: After much litigation consumed the last of the Brandts’ funds, they lost their suit to the restaurant. Under the terms of the settlement, I am not allowed to tell you the name of the restaurant, how much the Brandts have agreed to pay the restaurant because of this letter, or the ingredients of the recipe. It is my hope that this disclaimer will put an end to the litigation that has taken so much of the Brandts’ energy, devoted merely to asserting their rights.]
Here’s another parody along the same lines, also from the Internet:
Craig Shergold is a 10-year-old boy who is dying of cancer. Before he dies, he would like to set the world record for receiving the most Neiman-Marcus Cookie Recipes. You can help Craig by sending an irate fax to LEXIS-NEXIS demanding that they remove all traces of your mother’s maiden name from their executive washroom wall. They will respond by sending E-mail labeled “goodtimes” to the computer controlling Craig’s life-support equipment. When Felippe Linz, the technician operating the computer opens this mail, his hard drive will be overwritten with thousands of credit card invoices for $250.00, erasing the last bit of evidence that Hilary was seen on the grassy knoll when JFK was shot, thus allowing world domination by Bill Gates, and his tri-lateral commission cronies who are eating fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches in the black helicopters with Elvis.
Humorist Dave Barry got into the UL parody mode in his column of November 25, 1990, which was devoted to hair-care stories:
In the early 1960’s, when I was in high school, the primary form of feminine hair care was spraying it with what appeared to be fast-drying marine shellac. Women needed industrial hair sprays back then to maintain the popular and attractive “beehive” hairstyle, which was a tall dense mound of hair that had been teased, then sprayed until it achieved the same luxurious natural softness as a traffic stanchion and could not be penetrated by a hatchet, let alone a comb.
In fact there was one high-school girl who had a major beehive, and after several months she decided to wash it, so she broke it open, perhaps using power tools, and inside she found a NEST OF SPIDERS. Yes! At least that’s the story I heard at Pleasantville High School. I checked this story out recently with the highest possible authority, a woman I know named Susan, and she confirmed that it was true, only she heard it was cockroaches. My wife, Beth, who is also very well-informed, says she heard it was BIRDS. I’m confident that if I kept asking around, I’d find somebody who heard that the woman opened up her hairdo and out crawled an albino alligator from the New York City sewer system.
Another form of legend parody is the fake college course description, as in this example of an “urban myth” and its interpretation published in the The Harvard Lampoon’s A Harvard Education in a Book. You can tell this course is fake, because I never call them urban “myths.”
Myth: “My hairdresser told me about this lady who was walking her dog one rainy day in New York. As she strolled down Fifth Avenue, she looked in shop windows and didn’t pay much attention to her wet dog. Just as she was about to head home, she felt a dragging. She looked down, and there at the end of the leash was a microwave oven.”
Brunvand’s interpretation: This myth reflects society’s fear of the potential evils of technology.
And, finally, this:
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Warning, Caution, Danger, and Beware!
Gullibility Virus Spreading over the Internet!
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Washington, D.C.—The Institute for the Investigation of Irregular Internet Phenomena announced today that many Internet users are becoming infected by a new virus that causes them to believe without question every groundless story, legend, and dire warning that shows up in their inbox or on their browser. The Gullibility Virus, as it is called, apparently makes people believe and forward copies of silly hoaxes relating to cookie recipes, e-mail viruses, taxes on modems, and get-rich-quick schemes.
“These are not just readers of tabloids or people who buy lottery tickets based on fortune cookie numbers,” a spokesman said. “Most are otherwise normal people, who would laugh at the same stories if told to them by a stranger on a street corner.” However, once these same people become infected with the Gullibility Virus, they believe anything they read on the Internet.
“My immunity to tall tales and bizarre claims is all gone,” reported one weeping victim. “I believe every warning message and sick child story my friends forward to me, even though most of the messages are anonymous.” Another victim, now in remission, added, “When I first heard about Good Times, I just accepted it without question. After all, there were dozens of other recipients on the mail header, so I thought the virus must be true.” It was a long time, the victim said, before she could stand up at a Hoaxees Anonymous meeting and state, “My name is Jane, and I’ve been hoaxed.” Now, however, she is spreading the word. “Challenge and check whatever you read,” she says.
Internet users are urged to examine themselves for symptoms of the virus, which include the following:
The willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking. The urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others. A lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true.
T. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter, “I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I’ve stopped using shampoos.” When told about the Gullibility Virus, T. C. said he would stop reading e-mail, so that he would not become infected.
Anyone with symptoms like these is urged to seek help immediately. Experts recommended that at the first feelings of gullibility, Internet users rush to their favorite search engine and look up the item tempting them to thoughtless credence. Most hoaxes, legends, and tall tales have been widely discussed and exposed by the Internet community.
This message is so important, we’re sending it anonymously! Forward it to all your friends right away! Don’t think about it! This is not a chain letter! This story is true! Don’t check it out! This story is so timely, there is no data on it! This story is so important, we’re using lots of exclamation points! Lots!! For every message you forward to some unsuspecting p
erson, the Home for the Hopelessly Gullible will donate ten cents to itself. (If you wonder how the Home will know you are forwarding these messages all over creation, you’re obviously thinking too much.)
ACT NOW! DON’T DELAY! LIMITED TIME ONLY! NOT SOLD IN ANY STORE!
* For detailed information on urban legend research, see my book, The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story, published by the University of Illinois Press in 1999.
** Measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 47