Ever hear that Little Mikey from the LIFE cereal commercial died while eating Pop Rocks and drinking a soda? What about the alligators in the sewers of Manhattan? Perhaps you have heard that you can kill a pedestrian by dropping a penny off of a sky scraper? Maybe the one where a couple finds a hook in the side of their car door? Or how about when your cousin's friend was babysitting, and accidentally microwaved a baby while high? Here's one I'm sure you've heard of: Bloody Mary.

These stories are known as urban legends, stories passed on through generations, meant to intrigue, warn or frighten people. Some are supposed to be general knowledge, like the "fact" that we only use 10 percent of our brains, while others get personal, like someone at your college was murdered during the "Midnight Scream." I can assure you, these things didn't happen to anyone. We believe many of these stories to be true, while others are just fun stories for slumber parties and camp outs. So why do we believe them?

Many times, this has to do with it being personal. Most urban legends are told in the fashion of "my cousin once ..." "my friend did ..." or "someone in my town ..." while the person who is telling the story heard it in the same way from their friend. It became easier than saying "a friend of a friend of a friend" to make it someone much closer to the story teller. We believe our friend when they tell this story, and in order to keep it short, tell it in a similar manner. We believe what that friend told us, and they believed what their friend told them, so it's not really lying, it's folklore! It's meant to amaze us, and we want to share it with the people we know, thus continuing the spread of these stories.

After many years of these tales being passed from town to town, they can become the plot points for horror movies, such as the babysitter receiving threatening calls in "When a Stranger Calls" or a plethora of tales being covered in the "Urban Legends" series. These movies pull from the classic tales to bring some of our worst nightmares to life!

Now to say all these tales are false would be wrong. Sometimes, the tales we believe are just urban legends did actually happen. Crazy people have actually put razors in apples given out on Halloween. People have accidentally mistaken a dead body for a Halloween decoration. Someone really did die while trying to play Santa and going down the chimney. While many of these stories have been passed around since before the age of computers, and more pop up every year, it is really simple to find out if what you're hearing is true or not. Research! With a simple Google search, you can find out if any of the stories you are hearing are actually fact (though I would suggest looking at multiple sources). If that doesn't satisfy you, Snopes has an in-depth database of urban legends, and if they are true or not.