Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends

Rum flavored by a dead man in the cask; black widow spiders nesting in beehive hairdos; women's intestines broiled by tanning booths; teenage couples menaced by men with hooks for hands: if these are the sorts of tales that thrill and chill you, this an anthology worth picking up. Folklorist Brunvand (The Vanishing Hitchhiker) assembles a creepy cornucopia of urban legends, organizing them by theme (""Chills Up Your Spine,""""Accidents"") and considering them in a surprisingly sedate manner. The result is a blend of""primary text"" urban legends (transcribed from field interviews, collected from e-mails or reprinted from local newspapers) and more reflective introductions that consider the motifs and variations of each urban legend. Some tales are old chestnuts, familiar to anyone who's been to a camp or a slumber party in the past 50 years, but others indicate more contemporary fears: stories of vacationers waking in unfamiliar hotel rooms, groggy and minus a kidney, or rumors of sexual predators who purposefully spread HIV to their unsuspecting partners. Brunvand traces most of these legends to their roots and debunks some of the more widespread ones, but he never lets his skepticism dampen his enthusiasm for the stories themselves.