The magical cookie recipe

One of America's favourite urban legends of the 1980s became one of its most readily-believed myths of the '90s, thanks to the Internet. And then died at the turn of the 21st century, again thanks to the Internet.

Hardly a week used to go by without some online discussion forum or another being told the story:

A customer thoroughly enjoys her desert after a meal at a Neiman Marcus Cafe somewhere in the USA, and asks for the recipe.

The waiter says there will be a charge of "two fifty". The customer pays for the meal by credit card, doesn't pay attention to the amount, and is shocked to find on her bill a "cookie recipe" charge of 250 dollars!

Now, in revenge, she is spreading the recipe to everyone she knows.

The story usually ends with the line: "So... Here it is. Please run a few copies and pass it on to someone else. I paid for it, now you can have it for free."

The recipe is quite legitimate, and makes adequate cookies, but has nothing to do with Neiman Marcus. it seems that, at some point in the life of both the recipe and the legend, someone put the two together, giving the legend a kind of credibility that is hard to dispute at first site.

The Internet was an ideal vehicle for spreading this kind of legend, not only because it is the perfect word-of-mouth medium, but also because those users reading the message were so pleased with their power to do something to help the wronged customer extract revenge. In many cases, the story was presented as an example of "Internet justice", and as punishment for a company that charges exorbitant prices for minor requests.

One user of an urban legends forum on the Internet offered users of a cooking forum $500 for proof of the original incident, such as a credit card slip. Not one of hundreds of users, who had sworn to the truth of the incident, responded.

Thanks to the Internet-powered word of mouth around this and similar challenges, and the ease of debunking the story by doing a very ordinary Internet search, the story is now universally known as an urban legend. The best stories about the story are by David Emery at About.com, and the inevitable Snopes explanation byBarbara Mikkelson. In a great piece of research, she also delves into the origins of the legend, and its precursors in the 1960s.

The most fascinating aspect about the legend is that Neiman Marcus never did have a cookie recipe when the legend began circulating, but decided to create one (fully acknowledging the urban legend, but pretending that the cookie inspired the myth, and not the other way round) to take advantage of the legend. They even offer it online ... at no cost!

In legend land, nothing can go wrogn*

Many of us get the feeling that our lives are getting out of control, even as all the revolutionary new hi-tech surrounding us promises to improve our lives. Are those tiny devices and software upgrades just a little too intimidating for comfort? Do you have to get the kids to show you how to use your phone?

You have nothing to worry about: you're simply suffering a bout of technophobia, a syndrome that afflicts anyone who believes people and not machines should be in charge.

Since technophobia is born of the uncertainty and confusion that new technology inspires, it is natural that it would be a prime breeding ground for urban legends: those modern cautionary tales that you know really did happen to someone, since you heard it from a friend of a friend of the victim's cousin.

Take the legend of:

The hangdog tale

One afternoon, a young boy's mother tells him to take his dog out for a walk and some fresh air before it gets dark.

The boy is wrapped up in the afternoon TV kiddy shows, and doesn't feel like getting cool outside air all over him. So he takes the dog outside on a leash, and ties the leash to the handle of the garage door, intending to leave Rover there for fifteen minutes or so.

He goes back to his TV entertainment and, sure enough, forgets all about the dog. An hour later, his father comes driving home from work. As he turns the corner, he pushes the remote control button for the garage door. The door opens, and pulls the leashed dog into the air. It will never go for a walk again.

Before you call the SPCA, no one has ever been able to track down the perpetrators of that foul deed, except to say, "Well, it COULD have happened!"

And so could this one, told of another of those terrifying but crucial inventions of our times, the Auto Teller Machine (ATM). This is the tale of ...

The hungry auto-teller

This tale was first told in the early 1990s, when banks were struggling to get to grips with ATM security, and trying all kinds of new tricks and tactics to thwart the robbers, muggers and lawyers.

A Johannesburg office worker was going off on her lunch break when she discovered to her dismay that she had only R20 in her purse. It would be barely enough for lunch, but it would also only just cover her bus fare home to Krugersdorp.

Then she brightened: she had her ATM card in her bag, and probably had a few rand left in her account.

So, on the way to the nearby banking mall, she bought a boerewors roll at a street vendor, congratulating herself at being prepared for all eventualities.

At the ATM, a glass shield went up when she slipped in her card, she put her roll down on the inner ledge, keyed in her PIN, and waited to pursue the transaction. Nothing happened.

And then a message flashed across the screen:

THIS CARD IS NO LONGER VALID. IT HAS BEEN RETAINED BY THE BANK. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR BRANCH.

Stunned, she could only stare at the machine. And, as she watched, the glass shield came crashing down, trapping her lunch as well...

It surprises many people to discover that the first ATM went into operation as early as 1967. Installed at the Enfield branch of Barclays Bank in north London, the first person to use it was the actor Reg Varney (shown here). In those days, you were issued with a card that could only be used once, and was then swallowed by the machine. No wonder we still harbour fears about our ATM card never coming back, and who knows what else going with it!

(* What spelling mistake??)

Building on a legend

Why do people love telling and believing urban legends, those friend-of-a-friend stories you can never really prove?

One theory is that it's a subconscious way of getting revenge on a world they cannot control. By participating in the spread of stories that undermine the credibility of a person, institution, product or even a building that they associate with their woes, they gain a small measure of satisfaction at having "fought back".

Buildings especially attract an enormous number of bizarre legends, especially where they are large or expensive structures people believe shouldn't have been erected in the first place. So they'll swallow any malicious or hilarious story they hear about the building.

Thus it was with the Lost City at Sun City a decade or so ago, after it had opened to much hype and some outrage over its enormous cost. It quickly became part of a family of international urban legend we can only refer to as ...

That Sinking Feeling

In his rush to get the Lost City complex ready in time for its official opening (so the story went), Sol Kerzner pushed the architects and builders as hard as they could stand, and gave them little time to run proper tests on soils, surfaces, and so on. Sure enough, the complex opened on time, with visitors gasping in awe at the magnificence of the Palace hotel, the intricate detail of the Lost City, and the amazing spectacle of the Bridge of Time, which shakes in a fake earthquake every hour on the hour.

But then the rumour started, and quickly developed into a full-blown urban legend: they'd cordoned off the bridge and closed it to the public, because they'd discovered it was less stable than was desirable even for a shaking bridge.

The architects had not been given enough time to run tests on the soil, but the tests they had run had shown that the surface was solid, and could carry the weight of the bridge as well as the pressure of the "earthquakes". But they had made one mistake: they had tested it in the dry season.

When the rains came, the ground became waterlogged, and could no longer support the bridge - which was slowly sinking away into the ground.

Of course, the bridge still stands today, as do numerous edifices which are supposedly sinking around the world.

Book ends

The most popular of these urban legends focus on magnificent new libraries, especially on university campuses where new students will believe almost anything they're told by old-timers. American folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand has found versions of the urban legend attached to the Robarts Research Library at the University of Toronto, the campus library at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, the Sciences Library at Brown University, a new library at the University of California at San Diego, the Charles Deering Library (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) at Northwestern University, Illinois, and the ES Bird Library at Syracuse University.

In every case the story went that, when the architect designed the foundations, he had in mind only the weight of the building itself. It never crossed his mind to take into account the weight of the millions of books that would fill the building. So, naturally, the soil could not support the foundations, and the building began sinking.

The same legend is now emerging about Olympic-sized swimming pools that were designed with the weight of the pool structure in mind, but not the water. When they filled it up, the entire pool began sinking.

Backward logic

That's almost as bad as the urban legend about the architect who designed a building one-way, the plans were misread, and the building ended up facing the wrong way.

One version is told of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, completed for the Glasgow Exhibition of 1901. The main entrance consists of three plain arched entries, while the back entrance is flanked by impressive twin towers - designed to accommodate temporary pavilions during the exhibition. Two architects were involved, but the legend persists to this day that it was one architect, who was so aghast at the mistake, he committed suicide by leaping from one of the towers on opening day.

An older Scottish version of the legend has the architect of Fort George, between Inverness and Nairn, being given instructions that the fort had to be invisible from the sea. Upon completion, he rowed out to see, and discovered that a single chimney of the fort could be seen. Horrified and shamed, according to the legend, "he drew a pistol and blew his brains out".

Plan B

Another popular family of building legends has the blueprints or building materials for similar buildings on two university campuses in the same town swopped round, so that the University of Johannesburg (formerly RAU), for instance, has one very Wits-looking building blotting its landscape, and Wits has a suspiciously modern UoJ-looking structure intruding amid its ivy towers.

The most extreme version of this legend comes from the California State University at Hayward, where every single building was supposedly designed for other universities, the plans were found unacceptable, but somehow they got built on Hayward campus!

Big gas

The most bizarre of all the falling building urban legends must be the Asian tale of the building that collapsed due to a gas explosion from a buried dead elephant underneath the building. Sounds like something right out of the Lost City.

Legends of the literate

From the halls of government comes the story of just how low the literacy levels of this country have descended. The urban legend emerges from the Department of Welfare, but is aimed squarely at the Department of Education.

In an assessment of families who were supporting their children only with the assistance of the welfare department, it was concluded that they were often responsible for their own fates, since they had such low educational levels. Proof of this, goes the legend, lies in their applications for welfare assistance and appeals against negative decisions:

"My husband lost his job two months ago, and I haven't had any relief since."

"I have been in bed with the doctor for two weeks, and he hasn't done me any good."

The classic of its kind, however, must be: "I am very annoyed that you brand my son illiterate. This is a lie, as I was married a week before he was born."

The most remarkable aspect of this story is not what it says about literacy, but that it can seems so appropriate to South Africa. The truth is, like the many lists of bizarre language in insurance claims, this is merely a local adaptation of an internationally circulating tradition.

Legendary folklorist Jan Harold brunvand, in his book Curses! Broiled Again!, calls it The Welfare Leter, and has traced the entire collection back to at least the 1930s in the United States.

He has added the following beauty to the list:
"In accordance with your instructions, I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope."

The Tallest Tales

Tall buildings seem to hold a peculiar fascination for travellers in the land of urban legends.

Is it their subconscious fear of heights playing tricks on their minds and persuading them to believe any bizarre tale that comes along?

People have been known to leap off tall structures since time immemorial and, generally, they have simply hit the ground and expired. But not in the land of urban legends. Oh no, here the jumpers have to face a few extra indignities...

The wind beneath your wings

Many years ago, a deeply depressed young man tried to take his own life by leaping from the observation platform at the top of the Empire State Building in New York.

What he did not realise was that the winds are so strong at that height, it is impossible to leap out and simply fall down. As the man jumped, a powerful blast of wind hoisted him up, and roughly deposited him back on the observation platform. He was so shocked, he went home to reconsider his ways.

That's what one might call the baseline suicide legend about tall buildings. The result of that little tale is that, today, thousands of visitors to the Empire State Building firmly believe you cannot jump off the top due to the high winds.

The legend has also given rise to a popular joke - often the final resting place of old urban legends - in which a man in a pub at the top of a tall office block is telling a fellow drinker some truly tall tales.

Seeing the man swallow it all whole, he tries a real whopper: he says that, because of the high winds around the top of the building, he could step off the roof and "stand" on the wind without falling. This time the man wants evidence.

So they go out on the roof and, sure enough, the man "stands" on the wind. The other drinker is real impressed. he wants to try it too. So he steps off the roof - and plunges screaming to the road a hundred floors down.

As the man takes his seat back in the pub, the barman turns to him: "Boy, Superman, you sure are nasty when you've had a few drinks."

The fall that had it all

A suicide tale that gripped the world in the 1990s turned into a virtual chain letter, with copies flooding fax machines, e-mail and mail boxes around the globe. It usually comes in the form of a report of a speech made at an awards dinner of the American Association of Forensic Science, where the president told the sad story of one Ronald Opus.

He "had jumped from the top of a ten story building with the intent to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency). As he passed the 9th floor on the way down, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, killing him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been erected at the 8th floor level to protect some window washers and that the deceased would not have been able to complete his intent to commit suicide because of this... the fact that his suicide intent would not have been achieved under any circumstance caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide on his hands."

But then other facts began to emerge, one by one:

The room on the 9th floor from where the shotgun was fired was occupied by an elderly couple. The husband had been threatening the wife with a shotgun, but he was so upset, he couldn't hold the shotgun straight. He pulled the trigger, but completely missed his wife and hit Ronald Opus as he fell past.

It then emerged that the old man regularly threatened his wife - but with an unloaded shotgun. The verdict looked like accidental death.

But further investigation now turned up a witness: their son had been seen loading the shotgun some time before the fatal accident. It turned out that his mother had cut off her son's financial support and he, knowing of his father's threatening ways with the shotgun, loaded it in the hope that his father would shoot his mother. Now the verdict looked like murder again.

Except that it was now discovered that the son had become deeply depressed after several weeks of nothing happening between his parents, and had decided to take his life. As he leaped off the building, he was killed by a shotgun blast through a 9th story window.

Ronald Opus, it turned out, was the son of the arguing couple. He himself had loaded the weapon that accidentally killed him. The medical examiner closed the case as suicide.

Window pains

There are even taller tales from one of the world capitals of highrise buildings, Chicago. Supposedly, urban legend has it, a law firm was having an office party, and one of the associates had a bit too much to drink, and had taken off his shoes to play around sliding on the marble floors. The office had floor-to-ceiling windows, and he went sailing through the window and fell thirty stories.

In another Chicago "glass curtain" highrise, a few windows fell from the 70th floor and shattered in the road below.

People were horrified that they could have been near the windows at the time, and several refused to return to work on the 70th floor.

One executive tackled the problem head on: he invited his staff to gather round, braced himself against a wall, and then ran the length of the office and threw himself at the window. The window didn't even vibrate. he broke his arm, but at least the 70th floor was soon back to full productivity.

Welcome mat

In San Francisco, it is believed, plastic mats used under office chairs to enable them to move around carpets more easily, are banned from the top floors of the city's tallest building.

The reason? It was found in simulations that in an earthquake the buildings were designed to sway but, because of inertia, the person sitting in a chair on a plastic mat would stay exactly where they were, while the building itself would sway with the quake. The result? The floor would appear to zip out from under you and you would be deposited, chair and all, in mid-air.

The little old lady hijacker

Little old ladies have a thing for urban legends. The best little old lady legend of the past decade also helped to restore the balance of prejudice in South African urban legends, as it presented a double turning of the tables - an age-old plot device of urban legends.

One version of this story was sent to me with the introduction: "Here's a refreshing change: True story". And it goes something like this:

Recently, a friend of my mom's grandmother was out shopping in Hermanus. She is a slighly-built white woman of about 70 years old. When she returned to her car, there were six black men sitting in it. Being the kind of fiesty woman who packs a gun for emergencies, she whipped it out and yelled, "I know how to use it, and I'm quite prepared to. Get out!"

The men were terrified, and spilled out of the car as fast as they could, scattering in all directions.

The woman then got into the car, and tried to start it. At first she thought the excitement of the moment had confused her, as the key wouldn't fit in the ignition. Then she realised: Wrong car. Not hers. Oops.

Realising her little faux pas, she thought she had better report her mistake at the Police Station. Which she did. When she told the officer on duty the story, he almost fell down laughing. And when he could speak again, he pointed at the six terrified black men sitting at the other end of the room.

Six men who'd just reported being hijacked by an elderly white lady.

If you want a pedigree for that legend, look no further than the tales of the men or women (little and large, old and young) sitting down at a table in a crowded restaurant and snatching "their" biscuits, cookies or pieces of Kit Kat from the "rude" persons who have just sat down across the table and started helping themselves to the contents of the packet lying on the table without so much as asking. It turns out that the aggrieved person still has the cookies in a bag, and is the real villain of the piece.