The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings

by Jan Harold Brunvand

The noted folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand has written a first book about one of the most common forms of contemporary folklore - the urban legends. All of the major legends are fully discussed, from teenage horror stories like "The Hook" and "The Boyfriend's Death" to spoofs of adult foibles like "The Solid Cement Cadillac" and "The Nude Surprise Party."

Genres: Nonfiction, Folklore, Horror, Urban Legends, History, Sociology, Reference

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Jan Harold Brunvand (born 1933) is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Utah in the United States, best known for spreading the concept of the urban legend, or modern folklore. Before his work, folk tales were associated with ancient times or rural cultures; Brunvand's breakthrough was to take concepts developed in the academic study of traditional folktales and apply them to stories circulating in the modern world.

Brunvand is the author of several well-known books on the topic of urban legends, starting with The Vanishing Hitchhiker in 1981. This book brought urban legends to popular attention in the United States. Follow-up works include The Choking Doberman (1984), The Mexican Pet (1988), Curses! Broiled Again! (1990), The Baby Train (1993), and others. He also edited the one-volume American Folklore: An Encyclopedia (1996), as well as several textbooks.

Born in Cadillac, Michigan, Brunvand received a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University in 1961. He taught at several U.S. universities before joining the University of Utah in 1966. He retired in 1996, but remains a popular speaker and writer; he gave the keynote address at the 2003 meeting of the Missouri Folklore Society, of which he is a longtime member.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

So honestly, there is much to enjoy and to appreciate regarding Jan Harold Brunvand's 1981 The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings but that conversely there are also two main aspects of Brunvand's presented text which I have found frustrating on primarily and academic level.

For one and first and foremost, even though I have for the most part found the urban legends Jan Harold Brunvand features in The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings not only interesting but also analysed with a solid theoretical and folkloric base and background, I do wonder why this book is titled The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings when for almost ALL of his presented examples (and subject headings), Jan Harold Brunvand is featuring, is presenting not ONLY American urban legends but usually and in fact just as many international ones. Therefore and yes, I do find the book heading pretty misleading, as in my humble opinion, from what Brunvand textually presents, his collected and featured urban legends are international in scope and definitely not only based in the United States of America (and although I actually prefer it that Brunvand's text is diverse and not so America centric, the book title of The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings would be much better and much more correct if the adjective American were removed and replaced with something like "International" or to have no adjective used at all).

And for two, while I do indeed much appreciate and applaud both the general folkloric analysis Jan Harold Brunvand engages in and that The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings features a copious amount of very detailed, informative and academically sound, research-based notes, sorry, but I find the general set-up of these notes (at the end of each chapter) a bit unorganised and unfriendly for supplemental research and in particular so because there are only the notes featured and no independent separate bibliography, which certainly does make trying to make use of The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings for research purposes, for finding the books, articles etc. that Jan Harold Brunvand lists and from which he has gleaned his material, his urban legend examples a bit frustrating and difficult. Because yes, the secondary sources often feel like they are hidden in the analyses of the notes and and it would be much much less frustrating if a reader interested in doing supplemental research on urban legends would also be able to find the secondary sources for The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings not just within Jan Harold Brunvand's notes but also in a completely separate listing.

[Tim P · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars almost feels too low, given how ravenously I read this book. But I feel it had too much simple recounting of urban legends, and not enough analysis of what they tell about social insecurities, like the book allegedly set out to.

I've always been fascinated by dreams and what they tell us about our subconscious, and urban legends are the same for social consciousness. And understanding this is going to be more and more important in age of fake news and internet echo chambers. I feel like this book was interesting, but just whetted the appetite. I'm still looking for another book on this topic.

[Trin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread, because I find this book both terrifying -- the early chapters with all the Teen Murder stories, version after version, are so much creepier to me than any of them singly, or even in more frightening contexts -- and oddly comforting. I love seeing how stories change and develop -- and there's something especially delightful about the 1981 version, which also depicts what seems like an entirely different world, where information travels very differently. (Be sure to save those newspaper clippings!)

[Jeannette · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two stars are for the amusing legends themselves. I especially liked dead grandma strapped to the roof of the car as well as the dead cat one. The rest of the book attempts to analyze these rumors, false stories and just plain amusements to explain parts of our society, which is not only dull it is sometimes silly (each chapter has at least 2 pages of footnotes). Getting through the first chapter was challenging.
The author has a master's degree in folklore which educated me as I had never heard of it before. I couldn't imagine where one would get such a degree but the author mentions numerous other folklore experts so there must be many colleges offering that degree. My question was, what, especially in this economy, does one do with a degree in folklore? The internet always has an answer.
"Contrary to popular belief, there are actual jobs that come from having a folklore degree.
An obvious one would be teaching folklore, but you are not limited to only that. You could become a historian, work for a museum, become a folklore archivist. The degree gives you a better knowledge of culture and your surroundings, which in turn will give you a better background to benefit you in whatever career you may choose."
"A degree in folklore is magnificent if you are looking to teach or write. It is not a 'pointless' major in the least. Thank God that we have people who study and preserve folklore, philsophy, english, semantics etc."
and just for giggles...."Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons once said he had a master's degree in mythology and folklore. So there you go, you could run a comic book store."

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever hear the one about the woman who decided to surprise her husband when he came home from work by opening the door stark naked, only to find the electricity meter man on the other side? This hilarious, and at times chilling, volume of urban tales tell us more about urban middle class mores than a dozen dull academic tomes. Brunvand collected these legends to make us laugh and raise important points on middle class values and prejudices. See if you can spot a pattern here: the one about the lady who raised a pet raccoon in her house only to find out it was really a giant rat; the one about the teenage girl who went into a swimming pool a virgin and came out pregnant (I heard that one back in the 1970s); the one about the teenage couple necking inside a car who turn around and find a hook the shape of a hand hanging from one of the car windows...Women are often the "stars" of these tales since it's presumed they have more time to themselves and are to be punished for being sexually active, like in those Freddy Kruger movies. Enjoy!

[Ylva · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love non-fiction about legends, myths, and anything paranormal and supernatural. This was a fun little rundown of various urban legends in the US.

The book was published in 1981, and is only a 22o pages - so it's a bit dated in terms of most of the info being from the 70s, and it's fairly superficial. The fun part was seeing how many of these urban legends I remember being told in some way, and seeing what I recognized from elsewhere, like for instance at least one being the basis for an episode of Supernatural. I also found an urban legend that I first saw on tumblr, and didn't realise was an urban legend until I saw it almost verbatim in this book from the early 80's. Fun.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent look at American urban legends that was surprisingly progressive given that it was published over 40 years ago.
I’ve been wanting to study more urban legends because I find them a fascinating look at what people fear most and how storytelling can evolve like a game of telephone.
This is a great place to start with that research and there were some stories in here that I heard as a kid that I didn’t even realize weren’t true!
Of course, reading them in here I’m like, duh, of course that wasn’t true.
But anyway. 4 stars.

[TG Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

聽說這本書《消失的搭車客︰美國都市傳說及其意義（The Vanishing Hitchhiker）》很有名，是研究「都市傳說」的開片之作，作者是美國的「布魯范德（J. H. Bruvand）」，廣西師範大學出版社的中譯本由「李揚」、「王玨純」所譯。

本書分了幾種故事類型，收集了由各地所收集而來的「都市傳說（Urban Legend）」。當然，絕大多數的都市傳說都不是真的，而且通常也很難追尋出它的真正「源頭」為何︰比如作者前幾章所收羅的一些與汽車行駛在美國的傳說，有時可以在歐洲的馬車的時代就可見到它的原型。換句話說，自古至今，從南到北，人們總是特別喜好某些主旨的故事，在不斷地口耳流傳當中，每個傳播者或多或少會添加自己的「創作」，使得傳說本身有了自己的「生命」而持續地變型與演化。

在閱讀這本書所收集的同類主旨、卻細節各異的傳說時，我想到人類對於「故事」的喜好，在聆聽與傳遞的過程中，都會因時因地而變化。這與近代以來的「話本」或歐洲的「遊唱詩人」很像︰先有一個大綱腳本，然後專業的演說者則會視現場情境而作出各式的推衍。直到最後的文字化，才會有比較固定的版本。但即使有文字版，在眾口相傳之下仍然會產生新的變異，「積非成是」之後，再變成某個新的傳說。

如前所述，本書收集的故事大多找不到源頭，或許只有「紐約下水道的白化鱷魚」是罕見的例外。1935年2月10日的《紐約時報》刊出一則消息說，在曼哈坦街道的下水道中，兩個年青人在鏟雪時發現了一條鱷魚，於是他們很快地便將這條不知從何而來的鱷魚給打死了。而在其後，都市傳說便逐漸將那則簡短的故事添枝加葉，出現了「父親為小孩帶了熱帶小鱷魚回家當寵物」、「鱷魚長大難以在家飼養」、「丟入抽水馬桶棄養」、「鱷魚在下水道裡藉由捕食老鼠活了下來」、「長久不見天日鱷魚患了白化與失明」、「紐約下水道裡的鱷魚王國」……等等的更「完整」的傳說建立。

很有意思的書。

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite it being an American book from the 1980s it was entertaining to notice how many of the urban legends I recognised, a a British person born in 2005. It was also fun to find that one or two of the legends were in fact true at one point, but I won't spoil which ones

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calling 'The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings' a work of horror is, perhaps, a tad exploitative. And yet one cannot deny the power of the urban legend to creep us out. While Brunvand penned this book as the result of his work in the world of folklore research back in the 1960s and 1970s, and its 1981 publication leaves it more than a little dated by today's standards, it's still one of the most eminently readable books on the subject today. Rather than simply collecting and collating a variety of stories we all 'know' to be true (because they happened to someone who knows someone who knows you), Brunvand dives into the reasons behind why such stories are passed around, why they survive, and how they change depending on what part of the country and in what year they are told.

Brunvand has arranged these stories and their backgrounds into chapters dealing with various subject matters, the first of which is "The Classic Automobile Legends", a subclass of which is the titular story which has, believe it or not, been around since the turn of the twentieth century, with the place where it supposedly happened and the method of transportation involved changing and updating itself as technology marched steadily forward from horseback to carriage to automobile. The driver may be alone, or have a single companion. He may be driving his own car, an 18-wheeler, or a taxi, but none of this is key to the telling of the legend. If you're unfamiliar, the story, which I'll quote from one of the tellings recorded by Brunvand in the book, is as follows:

Well, this happened to one of my girlfriend's best friends and her father. They were driving along a country road on their way home from a cottage when they saw a young girl hitchhiking. They stopped and picked her up and she got in the back seat. She told the girl and her father that she just lived in the house about five miles up the road. She didn't say anything after that but just turned to watch out the window. When the father saw the house, he drove up to it and turned around to tell the girl they had arrived--but she wasn't there! Both he and his daughter were really mystified and decided to knock on the door and tell the people what had happened. They told them that they once had a daughter who answered the description of the girl they supposedly had just picked up, but she had disappeared some years ago and had last been seen hitchhiking on this very road. Today would have been her birthday.

This version, related by a teenager in Toronto back in 1973, is archetypal of the tale. Other versions of the story have the ghostly hitchhiker borrow an article of clothing from the driver only to have it turn up in the dead young woman's room when the driver reaches the house and inquires about it, or adorning her tombstone in the local cemetery when the driver stops outside it at the girl's request, whereupon she vanishes. No doubt you've heard variations on this story from your own area, either when growing up or while away at college/university. "The Vanishing Hitchhiker", in one form or another, has been told across the world for over a century. I remember seeing a number of different takes on it on the television program Unsolved Mysteries over the years. Why does it (and the rest of the legends related in the book) persist and endure across physical, temporal, linguistical, and cultural boundaries? How, in this age of instant communication and access to information which makes debunking claims of this sort as easy as pulling up a search engine on a smart phone, can these stories continue to propagate, dying off for a short while before resurrecting themselves in the sleepover tales of a new generation of children? These are the questions which Brunvand sets out to explore with The Vanishing Hitchhiker, and he invites us along, as laymen, for the ride.

The temptation to consider this nothing more than 'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark' for an adult audience must be resisted, for while Brunvand relates many versions of many classic urban legends here, the goal is not to spook or entertain, but rather inform and contrast. And while there are plenty of stories told with the intention of sending shivers up spines, including not only "The Vanishing Hitchhiker", "The Roommate's Death", and (of course) "The Boyfriend's Death", the urban legend has room for comedy as well with stories about vengeful exes disposing of their former spouse's property at a bargain basement price ("The Philanderer's Porsche"), jealous husbands accidentally destroying an expensive new gift ("The Solid Cement Cadillac"), and girlfriends who mortally embarrass themselves when they think no one else is around ("The Fart in the Dark"). If discomfort and disgust are more your speed, Brunvand has you covered there with such classics as "The Kentucky Fried Rat", "The Mouse in the Coke Bottle", and "The Spider in the Hairdo". Finally there are the stories which hinge on the idea of karma, reciprocity, and balancing the scales of justice such as "The Dead Cat in the Package" where a pack snatcher steals the wrong box; "The Red Velvet Cake" where a woman receives both the recipe she requested and an enormous bill accompanying it and decides to submit the recipe to the local paper or pass it out to everyone she meets to get back at the deceitful restaurant, hotel, or chef which sent it originally; and "The Runaway Grandmother" where car thieves wind up stealing not just the family car but the corpse of a recently-deceased relative inside or atop it as well.

From killers in the back seat to babies in the oven, acts of depravity to acts of desperation, once you recognize an urban legend for what it is, you'll see bits and pieces of them cropping up everywhere, and not just teen slasher flicks. Brunvand's book is still used in sociology and mythology classes today as a textbook on the study, adaptation, and transmission of these stories which remain somehow timeless in an age where everything else has a definite expiration date. It's fun reading for personal enrichment, or to read among friends for examples of the awful, the absurd, the comical, and the dastardly.

The best part? Brunvand didn't rest on his laurels after writing 'The Vanishing Hitchhiker' and assume all the work of chronicling and examining urban legends was through. He kept researching, and has published ten more volumes of new stories, tales, and folklore in the years since. Our culture, it seems, thrives on those incidents that happened to a friend of a friend, and as the old ones fall out of favor, new versions arise to take their place as cautionary tales, explanatory fables, or just plain spooky stories told around the campfire.

Brunvand's work is required reading for anyone with an interest in horror, and even if you consider yourself familiar with urban legends, I guarantee there's stuff in here you haven't heard before. I also guarantee there's at least one you've passed on yourself to friends or family, either around the dinner table, at the office, or via social media, either willfully or unwittingly. Knowing these stories gives you an insight into the writing process used by many contemporary and past horror writers, as many of them used these stories, or versions of them, to jump-start their own works. 'The Vanishing Hitchhiker' is a fast, simple read with a scholarly angle providing not just the stories but insight into the people who tell them and why. Five stars out of five, highly recommended, and well worth the price of admission.

[Rae · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book should just be called “The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends” and leave out “and their meanings.” The book is just a repetitive comparison of urban legends and barely gives more than a paragraph at the end to explore any possible meaning. The afterword was the only section to really explore the urban legends but since it was only a few pages long, it didn’t go into much depth. I wanted to like this since it’s an interesting subject, but it was badly written. Not sure how they took such an interesting topic and made it painfully boring to get through.

[K.T. Katzmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhere between

and


This summer, I'm going to Tumblr-blog the entire Scary Stories Treasury. Before I dive into it, I wanted to get some background info on urban legends. I first learned about ULs from my battered and loved copy of the Werewolf Storytellers Handbook, and that spoke very highly of The Vanishing Hitchhiker, so I dived in.

So, how is it? Academically, a brilliant treatise on how storytelling changes. Entertainment-wise . . . a mixed bag.

The chapters I like, I really enjoyed. Anything involving murder, ghosts, or bodies was great. I love New York sewer gators; and never realized if I knew that some legends have them floating through the albino marijuana forests that resulted from all the pot flushed over the years, I sure as hell would have put that in Murder With Monsters.

But . . . this stuff is kinda dated.

You see, this was written in 1981. Now, the study of the UL has undoubtedly been revolutionized by Creepypasta, but that's not the issue. To a modern audience, a lot of these are . . . dull.

I read at least ten pages on a woman passing out recipes for red velvet cake. Seriously, some of these are on the level of dad jokes. Also, anything that people thought was steamy or sexually edgy in '81 is blown away by a There's Something post-About Mary/American Pie world.

Four stars for a good chunk of entertainment and great academics, three stars if you only want stories.

[Roberta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reader wants to thank Openlibrary.org
This book is not available in Italy (well, I couldn't find it anywhere) and I was almost tempted to delete it from my to-read list.
I'm fond of urban legends and this book is a sort of must-read for whoever wants to know more about classic tales of folklore. You'll find the whole lot: the vanishing hitchhiker, the dead granma whose body is stolen with the car, the babysitter cooking the baby in the oven and the old lady drying her poodle in the microwave. And more, of course. But the important chapter is the last one: professor Brunvand explains how to address such tales and their storytellers, how to collect and verify the stories.
I think Brunvand is a good teacher. He knows how to keep you interested and he knows how to explain thing to a casual reader like me. I'd like to know his opinions about the new means of spreading folklore, such as the infamous "read! this is real! please share!" posts on Facebook.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very fun but not the insightful academic look I thought it would be. It’s very heavy on the first person experience with folklore and light on the discussion of themes, subtypes, and possible origins and lessons the different tales have. It’s also a bit...not jarring but it’s just so old now that it takes you out of the moment a lot. The references to the recent past of the 50s refer to things I’ve never even heard of and sometimes it was hard to relate to the stories and morals he covered. A good book and a quick read but leaves you wanting much more.

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. This is what we were forced to use before snopes came along, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

It's funny to think that urban legends used to be primarily transmitted by mouth.

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never actually believed most of the legends profiled in this book—instead, I knew them from all of the dime-a-dozen horror stories I used to read as a kid. All the tales of murdered boyfriends and ghostly girlfriends are here.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my favorite subjects is folklore, of which, urban legends are subset of. The legends in this book are good though the analysis is a bit lacking. Since it was published in 1981, its a bit out of date, since these stories now travel on the internet.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dated and exhaustive (and exhausting) study of urban legends, rather than just a collection of same, that became tedious halfway through.

[zane · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

[Zack Clopton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jan Harold Brunvand’s “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” was written in the late seventies and is doubtlessly out-of-date. Truthfully, I don’t think Classic urban legends like “The Hook” or “The Killer in the Backseat” circulate much among today’s youth, replaced by internet creepypastas and ghost stories which reflect modern anxieties and fears. There’s no way Brunvand could’ve predicted the rise of the internet and the way it completely changed modern folklore.

But anyway, as someone fascinated by classic urban legends, I found this to be an absorbing read. Brunvand collects a number of legends, tracing their various origins and meanings. He proves the psychological and societal meanings behind the tales. He manages to dig up old west variants of the titular ghostly traveler. He even discovers a newspaper story from the 1930s about the one time an alligator actually was found in a New York sewer, seemingly ground zero for a notorious legend. (This tip came via Loren Coleman, that lovable kook of the cryptozoology crowd.)

The book is doubtlessly pretty dry, the tone being fairly academic at times. It seems to me it was written partially as a textbook, if the extensive notes that conclude each chapter or the glossary in the back are any indication. Again, that didn’t bother me, being a devotee to this topic. I wish some of the stories were explored a little more. For being maybe the most widespread of urban legends, I’m surprised more time isn’t devoted to “The Hook.” No mention is made of that story’s likely real life origin point: The Moonlight Murders of Texarkana, Arkansas. (Perhaps the link between that real life, unsolved mystery and the legend were not more firmly established in 1979.) Considering the book’s thinness — the ebook edition is less than 200 pages — there was certainly room for expansion. The dated quality is definitely a factor, as even I had not heard of a few of the stories recounted here, so far out of the collective lore have they fallen. A tale about a famous hotel, a red velvet cake, and an outrageous price tag seems hopelessly antiquated now.

Having said all that, I throughly enjoyed it and will probably read more of the dozen books Brunvand has written about urban legends. I wish folklorist was a real job, I’d love to do this for a living...

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The worst thing I can say is that it gets a bit repetitious but then the author has collected variations of some of the most 'popular' urban legends not only across America but investigated where they have expanded into or from Europe. So Brunvand tells the basic story and then a variant or three and then mentions some of the other differences. Then is the investigation into the history - none of these are 'new'. They definitely move with the times and get updated as technology changes. Horse and buggy changes to automobiles, for example.

As for some of the folklore itself - some are quite spooky and reading variations only get creepier after each repetition. Especially the "Boyfriend's Death", "The Hook", "The Killer in the Backseat" and the "Baby-sitter and the Man Upstairs". Each providing a subtle admonishment to teens to adhere to society's traditional values and morals or else something 'bad' could happen.

Other sections include what he calls "contaminations" where some foreign substance - usually mouse, rat or dog parts along with bugs, worms, etc - are found inside a bottle or can of food. He interprets it - for the most part - as apprehension regarding big-business companies.

The white marijuana growing amidst the alligators in the sewers of New York City. Yea, no one has ever found an alligator in a sewer much less the white (chlorophyll-lacking due to being underground) cannabis.

The purloined corpses - mostly grandma who died while vacationing with her family and died there. Since family wanted to get grandma back to the US or local town, they wrap her in a tarp and tie her to the roof of the car. I know, it sounds ridiculous When they stop for food, gas and/or pitstop, the car and grandma are stolen. What a surprise for the thieves! And how callous of the family.

There are others and it's likely that we've heard many of them shared by friends who swear they are all true. That it happened to the aunt of their mother's cousin's friend's sister-in-law. Yea, Brunvand along with other folklorists and even journalists have tried to track down the origins of some of these stories even when there is a name involved and that person will avow that no, it wasn't them, it was friend/cousin/name your acquaintance.

Of course, many are not scary at all but it was still a fun read on Halloween night.

2020-220

[Liz (Quirky Cat) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Summary:

The odds are more than good that you've grown up hearing different urban legends. Perhaps you didn't even realize your favorite story was based on one! Understanding how these urban legends are born and adapted helps us understand storytelling and humanity.

This is a collection of American urban legends, the most famous being The Vanishing Hitchhiker.

My Review:

Ever since I was little, I've been fascinated by folklore, fairy tales, and urban legends. But it wasn't until recently (ish) that I realized I could pick up full collections of urban legends and their variations. I must thank Ghost Roads (by Seanan McGuire) for that. I must also thank it for my current obsession with the Vanishing Hitch-Hiker.

Naturally, I dove into this collection. I just couldn't resist. This book lists the most common/famous urban legends of America (love it) and explains their origins, historical context, variations, and how they've changed over the years.

Best of all? There are citations. Okay, I know. That sounds SUPER nerdy. But that means this is a freaking fantastic resource for writers. I don't know about you guys, but I can't wait to pick up the next one (now, excuse me while I run to the library).

Highlights:
Urban Legends/Folklore
References
Storytelling

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[Angela Hiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting to read this book nearly forty years after it was published. It made me realize how trusting people were before the internet, simply because it was so hard to look things up. I had heard many of the basic stories in the book before, but nearly always in the form of a scary story (like the vanishing hitchhiker or the babysitter story), a joke (naked surprise party guy or wife selling ex-husband's car super cheap), part of a book (read about the beehive thing in Dave Barry Turns 50), or some other medium where they were not being passed off as reality. They've survived simply because they're enjoyable to tell on their own. And of course we've come up with new ones, like creepypasta (which apparently is as old as Xerox machines, according to the book?) But no one really cares if, say, the Russian Sleep Experiment really happened; most adults know it didn't. I wonder if urban legends were more fun back before we could check Snopes.

The exception was the chapter on people finding nasty stuff in their fast food. That kind of thing is still around because it's played off as something that is being kept hushed up. Taco Bell always seems to be a target for these stories.

Side note: I don't think the titular hitchhiker story really belongs in this collection. It's a story about the supernatural in a book where none of the other stories had any supernatural elements. But it is one of the most common scary stories ever. Maybe they counted it because people in the past were more likely to actually believe in ghosts.

The book also made me wonder if there are newer stories that I've heard that actually aren't true but I assumed they were. I guess I'll never know the answer to that. Nevertheless I enjoyed a lot of the analysis about why certain character types tend to pop up in these stories (like necking teenagers) and what it says about our values and fears. Good book.

[Some Guy Who Writes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had recently finished up the first draft of my thesis titled An anthropologycal analysis of selected American urban legends which was one of my favorite writing experiances I've had in a long time.
So, whilst I wait for my mentor to examine it, I decided to fully read the titles I've used as sources which I hadn't read before with the first title on the list being this one. To make a very long story short, this was one of the best books I've ever read, non-fiction or otherwise.
This book presents an important stepping stone in the research of USA's cultural backdrop.
Even though these stories are fictional, Brunvand doesn't treat them as mere campfire spooks for children as many others are often quick to dissmiss them as, but as seriously as one can, which, as an avid researcher of the topic, I see as quite an admirable move.
The book includes many retellings of said stories gathered from various sources (books, magazines, newspaper and journal articles, surveys etc.), which serves to show off atleast a part of the scope they poses in not only American culture, but globally as well. It also analyzes the historical and mythologycal sources and contexts that formed and shaped the contemporary American cultural, sociological and anthropological context (a global melting pot, if you will) and the folklore that's an integral part of it, which no sane individual can or should overlook.
I quite enjoyed the writing style of the book as well.
It's academic, but, at the same time, very lively and at no point does it feel bad or overly scholarly. It's a quick read that's exceptionally easy to follow which made it strangely relaxing, despite the subject matter at hand getting quite gruesome and macabre. I haven't read Brunvand's other works (althought I do have a copy of Too good to be true standing on my shelf, which I've also read passages from whilst writing my thesis).
Highley reccomend it to anyone with even a slight interest in the topic.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this and several of Brunvand's other books back when they were new, but I've recently been looking for information on haunted highways in the US and remembered this as a pretty good discussion of hitchhiking ghosts. Brunvand's recounting and definition of urban legends passed so quickly into American common knowledge that it may be hard today to realize what an impact they had in the 1980s. The concept of urban legends almost immediately became a part of our understanding of how we receive the "narration" of the world, how fantasy, fear, and humor are woven into our immediate oral traditions and into our belief even amidst our modern, supposed sophistication. Today, the effect of these instructive little fables has been amplified enormously by the internet and its capacity for disinformation, both innocent and malign. Even something as absurd and monstrous as QAnon has roots in the way these stories are told and believed.

For my immediate purpose, the hitchhiker stories here are pretty thin, more a brief discussion of variations in the versions and too little about why they are so widespread and what they mean to us. That's pretty much the book's biggest flaw overall. The author displays his excellent collection of modern folklore but actual discussion of why the stories are told and what they mean remains sparse and cursory, so while I have huge regard for what Brunvand added to our understanding of the modern world, I was disappointed in revisiting the actual content.

[Ryan Denson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We are not aware of our folklore any more than we are if the grammatical rules of our language."

"Without denying that such themes are implied in these tales, or that legends are generally appealing at more than one level, I believe a great deal of their continuing popularity can be explained more simply in terms of an artistic exploration in oral tradition of the possibilities of thing."

As the book known for popularizing the term "urban legend," Jan Harold Brunvand's survey of classic modern legends serves as a helpful introduction to the basic contours of the concept and its academic study by folklorists. Many of the legends covered are American ones that are now widespread in popular media such as the "The Hookman," "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," "Alligators in the Sewer," and "The Baby-Sitter and the Man Upstairs." Brunvand reads into such legends a variety of underlying interpretations, usually of a psychoanalytic or social nature. The Hookman legend, for instance, is routinely taken to be a reflection of modern anxieties about teenage sexuality. These interpretations are also usually well-known and often trite and hastily drawn conclusions, but serve as an initial starting point for understanding the deeper importance of the folkloric genre of the legend. These stories become so pervasive precisely because they have touched upon crucial elements within the cultural imagination that they develop from. Such untrue stories, then, allow one means for further analysis and understanding of the very real parts of one's own culture and society.

[Natasha Anastasiou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brunvand, a folklorist and professor, uses this legend as a starting point to analyze how urban legends are created, spread, and evolve over time. The book delves into the psychology behind these stories, exploring themes like fear, morality, and social anxieties. It also discusses how urban legends reflect the values and concerns of different communities.

In addition to the vanishing hitchhiker, the book covers a wide range of other urban legends, including stories of haunted houses, creatures, and bizarre accidents. The Vanishing Hitchhiker was one of the first books to bring academic attention to urban legends, helping to popularize the study of folklore in contemporary society.

A good starter on the American urban legends, bought it after I saw it in the list of the books I had to choose while doing my masters degree. I read it so quickly and wanted more. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of urban legends and the unexplained, and this book really brought that sense of mystery to life. What I found particularly captivating was how the author captured the eeriness of these encounters while still keeping them grounded in the realm of possibility. It made me question what’s real and what’s just a story passed down through generations.The book also had a nostalgic vibe to it, reminding me of late-night conversations where people share stories like these, trying to outdo each other with spookier versions. It felt like I was part of that tradition, listening to these tales and imagining myself in those situations.

[Dafne Flego · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once when I was a kid, I overheard my aunt and parents comment on a trip my family was supposed to take on the next day. We were about to visit some family friends who happened to live on the beautiful Istrian peninsula.
In order to reach Istria, we were supposed to go through the tunnel cut through Mount Učka.
My mum and aunt were discussing a disconcerting story of a ghostly woman who would hitch a ride near the entrance, but then disappear from your backseat by the time you reached the exit.

Nowadays, I don't believe Učka Tunnel to be haunted, but I sure was! I'd been eying the tunnel warily, pondering on the creepy sadness of it all, until recently. Until I read the title and blurb of this book, to be exact!

The Vanishing Hitchiker looks into prominent American urban legends, some of which have spread internationally. And, as it turns out, apparently every American town or city has at least one haunted road lying nearby!

The book was interesting to read and I appreciated its scholarly aspect. The idea that oral tradition happens to be very much alive in these modern times appeals to me. Humans will be humans! And pass the next juicy story which sounds almost believable on. :D

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“For all the threats and injuries coming from outside sources in the urban legends, many of the crises they deal with are simply the result of normal human misjudgment, and poor luck. Time and again the meanings of the stories are clear: ‘He should have known better,’ ‘She got what she deserved,’ etc. The girlfriend, babysitter, or roommate, for example, should not have been left alone, and even when she was, she might have asserted herself and have given some life-saving help. The boss never ought to have assumed that everyone in his family, forgot his birthday and that his beautiful secretary was really ready to jump in to bed with him. The cement truck driver should have stayed on the job and trusted his wife. The nude rider in the trailer should not have been there like that in the first place, or at least he should have stayed there. The middle-aged female shoplifter and the foreign car thieves merely get to keep what they unluckily stole—a dead cat and a dead body. Just about the only innocent victims we find in these stories seem to be the baby in the oven (although at least one of them is put there because he cries too much) and the snake-bitten woman shopper (although maybe she should have had the sense to shop elsewhere)” (190-191).

[Bert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently watched the movie, Urban Legend, and I noticed the book that they were reading all about the beginnings of American Urban Legends and stuff, I thought it was just a prop but I looked it up anyway and lo and behold, it is an actual book, and what’s even better is my library had it, winning.

Anyway, the book was good, it’s an insightful read that anyone interested in Urban Legends should check out. The author, Jan Harold Brunvand, obviously is an authority on the subject, he presents everything a beginner on the subject could ever want to know in a direct and easy to process way.

I found it really interesting the way he talks about how each time an Urban Legend is told it changes a little, the person that’s telling the story always, most of the time without even meaning to, changes the story slightly, kind of like when you would play Chinese whispers as a kid. I also really liked how when explaining 1 type of urban legend, he would explain how that particular legend could potentially just be an offshoot of another.

It was a good read, I had fun reading it and if I ever come across any more books on this subject, by this author, I will definitely check them out.