The Strangest Quiz I've Ever Seen

Answer: Spiders will nest in your hair and their bites will cause a mysterious illness that can kill you.

In most of the stories, when people wearing a hair style that they leave in for weeks - like the highly-sprayed, ratted beehives of the 1950s-60s or tightly woven braids or dreadlocks that can't be combed on a regular basis - they suddenly die or show up in the emergency room with a mysterious illness.

In one version, a teacher notices blood running down the neck of a high school student. In all the urban legends of this genre, spiders, deadly insects, or other creepy many-legged creatures (bees, earwigs, centipedes) build a nest in the hair and have babies that sting, bite, or dig into the scalp.

The moral of the story is that because they are too vain or too lazy to take their hair down to keep it clean, victims are unaware of the infestation until it is too late.

While people are occasionally bitten by spiders or stung by insects, and spiders and insects might briefly land in one's hair, there is no evidence of spiders choosing the human head as a nesting site.

Answer: Fred Rogers

While I first heard the sniper story applied to folksy singer John Denver, it has been applied to jittery comic actor Don Knotts and to Fred Rogers of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" - the least likely person to engage in super-masculine activities or to harm another person, even in war. Nice guys tend to be viewed as too good to be true, so urban legends have a good environment to grow in their immediate neighborhoods. Fred Rogers was a target for comedians, and most of the fake stories surrounding him are simply ironic; however, some are downright cruel.

For example, the absence of real children on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" has been built into an urban legend that Fred Rogers had been convicted of child abuse and created the program as a form of community service.

The character "Mister McFeely" on the show has been cited as evidence of creepiness. But Fred Rogers, a children's pastor, was all about respecting children's emotional health and teaching them how to handle their own feelings. An image of Mister Rogers holding up his middle fingers was construed as a rude gesture directed toward his child audience, but it actually came from a familiar nursery song ("Where is Thumbkin") where each finger is held up in turn. Mister Rogers was hurt by the satire directed toward him, and the mannerisms and activities appropriate for nursery school children that made him a target may be the best evidence of his innocence. Urban legends have no heart. Nevertheless, the cautionary tales warn parents to be careful of adults that seem sweet and gentle but pay an inordinate amount of attention to children.

They may be exactly the innocent souls they seem to be, but we can't take that on faith.

Answer: A bloody hook that the killer had in place of his hand or arm.

The urban legend of the "Hook Man" was most prevalent in the 1950s when the culture of adolescence in many parts of North America involved automobiles and finding someplace to be alone to experiment with forbidden activities. This followed closely behind a series of murders in Texas in 1946 in which the victims were parked in isolated areas. Murders and sexual crimes actually have taken place in such areas, so - as with many urban legends - there are real life precedents that make the story believable.

In the story, when the teens hear about the "hook man" the girl wants to go home and the frustrated boy speeds away violently, not realizing that the killer had just put his hook around the door handle to open it and do horrible things. The hook is bloodily torn off his hand (sometimes, it's a whole arm) and the kids don't find it until they are safely home.

The urban legend thus warns that sex is bad and teenagers should wait. Or as Barbara Mikkelson says in her snopes.com article on the story: "No nooky, no hooky"!

Answer: The old woman was actually a man with a hidden butcher knife or axe in "her" shopping bag.

I didn't know what to say a few years ago when I heard this urban legend related as actual fact by the woman who was cutting my hair. In classic urban legend fashion, she was convinced that it really happened to a relative of a customer who had just been in the shop the previous day. (She was primed for the story, because her purse had been snatched near the same mall.) Back then, I couldn't tell her to go to snopes.com! Sometimes called "the hairy-armed hitchhiker" the story has many versions, but the victim is usually a woman and the assailant a man disguised as a harmless old lady.

The weapon varies, but is usually an axe or a butcher knife, with all their bloody implications. Like Little Red Riding Hood confronting the wolf in her granny's bed, the victim becomes suspicious because of her assailant's appearance, often a muscled or hairy arm.

In the classic urban legend, at least since malls and suburban shopping centers began to appear, a specific mall is mentioned, lending verisimilitude to the story. According to snopes.com, only one such incident is documented, in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1989, but in the "Stamford Mercury" in 1834, a news item reports the victim to be a "gentleman in his gig" with "a brace of pistols" in the "reticule" of the perpetrator disguised as a woman.

However, crimes of many kinds actually have taken place in malls or in parking lots of shopping centers, so the story has its element of truth. Fears of being victims of crime in seemingly safe places lie behind the story, and it may even serve as a warning to those who shop in large outlets rather than patronizing small, local businesses. But the version I heard was told as a cautionary tale: women should be afraid when alone in public places and (good advice) should always lock your car. Also implied might be some ageism; old women become androgynous as they lose their youth, and we shouldn't be taken in by helpless-looking old grannies, since they may be wolves in disguise.

Answer: A gang initiation has new members shoot into the first car that flashes its headlights at them.

The "blood initiation" urban legend is a feature of the late 20th century that continues to be passed around in the 21st century, primarily through the electronic media. The message warning multiple recipients about this specific sort of gang violence has an official tone, usually citing police departments or a particular group called DARE that works with the police to educate young people about drugs and other dangers.

In the U.K. the London Ambulance Service was cited as the source of the warning. Canada, the U.S., and Mexico all report versions of the hoax.

Many official police departments have tried to quash the story, but a few have passed it along. While there have been incidents of road rage, robberies, and other crimes associated with the flashing of headlights, the only documented instance of such a gang-related event turned out to be a false report.

As in many urban legends, the villain of the story is usually the member of a minority or immigrant group - in this case, a whole gang of such scary people - revealing an unrecognized prejudice within mainstream cultures.

Answer: no

While the 1974 movie's main character is loosely based on 1950s Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein, it has never even been suggested that Gein used a chainsaw in the course of his horrible crimes, nor did he murder as part of a family of killers. No such series of murders had been reported in Texas, even though the actor who played Leatherface in the original film, Gunnar Hansen, has met people who assure him they remember the events or even knew the real person who committed the chainsaw crimes. Hansen's answer (found on Snopes.com): "There never was a massacre in Texas on which this was based. No chainsaw, either. And, in spite of those of you who have told me you remember when it happened, it really didn't happen." The writer and director, Texan Tobe Hooper, is quoted as saying that during the time he was writing the script he saw a display of chainsaws in a department store, and that as he glanced at other people standing around, "the idea popped" - his imagination took over from there.

Answer: Psychic on Oprah (or another talk show) predicts Halloween campus massacre by killer dressed as Little Bo Peep.

The image here is from Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where students gather for a massive Halloween celebration every year (although the image may be of a different event). The urban legend in which a psychic appears on a talk show and predicts a Halloween college campus massacre conflates several popular urban legend topics: Halloween, college, and massacres.

While no one actually sees the given episode of a show with Oprah Winfrey, Montel Williams, or another talk show, the psychic's appearance with the trusted television personality gives credence to the story: if it's on Oprah, it must be true. (In fact, a spokesperson for Oprah Winfrey had to make a statement assuring students that no such prediction was ever made.) According to Snopes.com, the story first surfaced in the U.S. Midwest in 1968, just after the notorious murder of nine nurses in Chicago by Richard Speck, but it has continued to show up every few years into the 21st century. Often the shape of a building (different on different campuses) is an important detail, as students think, "That describes the building we're in right now!" In several versions of the story, the killer is supposed to be dressed as Little Bo Peep. Urban legend expert David Emery states (a bit vaguely for a site ferreting out fact from fiction) that in 1988 "a couple of campuses" went so far as to ban Little Bo Peep costumes on Halloween.

Answer: memes

Folklorists define an "urban legend" as a story that "appears mysteriously and spreads spontaneously in various forms, contains elements of humor or horror, and makes good storytelling" (alt.folklore.urbanFAQ). The first part of the definition makes an urban legend by definition a "meme" as well, because it is able to replicate itself, evolve as conditions change, and spread from person to person with no help from its original creator. Richard Dawkins described memes in evolutionary terms in "The Selfish Gene" in 1976, but most of us have encountered the word most often in connection with Internet images, rumors, videos, etc. that become "viral" and keep popping up over and over again on social networks.

The story of the kidney thieves, one of the most familiar of the classic urban legends, has continued to spread throughout the world in spite of assurances from organizations that facilitate organ transplants that no victim of such secret "operations" has ever shown up for treatment after such an event.

While some instances of "cooperation" of donors in third world countries may reveal unethical practices, the website "livescience" explains that some degree of consent is necessary to go through the compatibility testing needed: "Kidney transplants are not simple procedures that can be done in someone's kitchen.... The operation would take between four and six hours and involve ten to twenty support staff, including three members of a surgical team, an anesthesiologist, and two nurses." Snopes.com speculates that the spread of the kidney theft legend may owe much to fictional depictions like a particular episode of "Law and Order" that appeared in 1991, soon after a case from Turkey that turned out not to be actual theft.

Answer: The bones or frozen carcasses of cats, dogs, and/or rats.

The rumor of domestic pets, rats, or other supposedly inedible animals being cooked in the food is a particularly xenophobic one, since the restaurant is usually labeled as Chinese or from another Asian ethnic group. In fact, Snopes.com titles its page on this urban legend "Mew Goo Guy Ding"! However, in my father's version of the story, told as if it really happened to him back in the 1940s before immigration to the American south from Latin American countries became the norm, the diner in Algiers, Louisiana, was Mexican and made the best hot tamales he had ever tasted, until he returned after a long absence to be told the authorities had found garbage cans filled with cat bones in the alley. I believed this story for over thirty years, until I encountered it almost word for word in a folklore class, this time about a Chinese restaurant. Cultural differences do exist when it comes to eating certain animals, but it is unlikely that a restaurant would knowingly break such a strong taboo.

Answer: The toilet explodes and blows his pants off.

In the most recent version of the story on the snopes.com website, further tragedy ensues when the paramedics are laughing so hard they drop the man off the stretcher. The "stringy-bark dunny" in the photograph is unlikely to explode, unless the chooks turn into emus and kick it down.

However, the urban legend of the exploding toilet has a long history, with some of the stories being set in outhouses, others in bathrooms with indoor plumbing. While the volatile substance may differ from gasoline to paint thinner to insecticide to hair spray, the victim who ignites the explosion is invariably male and is usually smoking.

The person who accidentally places the fuel in the toilet is usually a female in the process of cleaning, primping, or attempting to kill pests. According to snopes.com, a version of this story was picked up by two major news services from a poorly-researched item in "The Jerusalem Post" in 1988. Like most urban legends, there is a grain of possibility in this tale, and there are reported incidents of exploding toilets; however, gas leaks seem to have been the cause rather than hapless housewives.