Baby on the Car Roof and 222 Other Urban Legends: Absolutely True Stories That Happened to a Friend of a Friend of a Friend (Hardcover)

by Thomas J. Craughwell (Author) "You may not have noticed it, but in the summer of 1999 we were all witnesses to the birth of a new urban legend: The..." (more)
Key Phrases: gravy ladle, ball pit, Ann Marie, United States, New Jersey (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Baby on the Car Roof brings together 222 totally new, funny, quirky, frightening, bizarre and always entertaining urban legends. Urban legends or myths are dramatic and often humorous stories that circulate under the guise of truth and usually as having happened to "a friend of a friend" even though often they are entirely made-up. Organized by genre, each tale runs one- to two-pages long. Story variations are included in each listing. The subjects range from famous people, sex, office foibles and travel nightmares to college pranks, biological abnormalities and ghost stories.

From the Inside Flap
Sensational but true, or are they?

The urban legends in this compilation will make you smile, giggle, groan in disgust, empathize with tragedy or flat out laugh out loud.

They are irresistibly intriguing, packed with wit, allegory and bizarre twist and turns, and they're just plausible enough to hold our fascination. While urban legends are often fiction from a twisted mind, they continue to circulate as truth; "This happened to a friend of a friend."

Perhaps you have already heard a few of the stories as truly happening to a brother of your cousin's roommate or some other combination of once removed.

Common variations and possible story basis reveal the real saga behind the legend and often poke fun at the media outlets that print them as fact.

Urban legends share an uncanny ability to travel by word of mouth - often with a few substitutions catering to the needs of whoever is telling them. It's the intriguing nature of the stories - distinctly dark, invariably humorous - on which they thrive. They play on our collective fears and anxieties, and part of their lure is that no one can be sure which stories are true, which are elaborate embellishments of fact and which are entirely made up by seasoned storytellers to fill their repertoire.

Some are famed, others are lesser known. The urban legends here are arranged by genre, from the infamous baby that was left on the car roof during a trip to John Wayne dodging the draft - plus hundreds more strange-but-not-perhaps-not-completely untrue anecdotes.

The Baby on the Car Roof offers us a glimpse of pop culture's perverse fantasy life as well as an authoritative reference of contemporary folklore with stories so seductive that they may, in the end, have happened to a friend of yours.

For more urban legends check out Alligators in the Sewer and 222 Other Urban Legends, also by Thomas J. Craughwell.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (September 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579121470
• ISBN-13: 978-1579121471
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,259,180 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading, October 31, 2000

By	Stephanie Manley (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

You may have received some of these whacky stories in an email before. You always wonder if *if* there is any truth to these. Did anyone really wake up missing a kidney? Has anyone ever been shot for flashing their headlights during the day? What about the Nieman Cookie recipe? Well be dumbfounded no more. The book is entertaining, and well organized in the stories. This book is perfect to take on a plane, train, or anytime you do not want to get too involved in a book, yet want something to read.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun Stories with Bad, Bad Editing, December 10, 2000

By	"eprendre" (Ithaca, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Originally, I bought it for a friend, but it sounded interesting so I kept it for myself... Upon reading it, I found that the book was very amusing with a good mix of stories (things that I know to be true as well as things that I find to be mildly questionable). However, there is one major problem with this book: The editing is TERRIBLE! Some sentences in the book do not make sense (whether in or out of context). The errors are so numerous that it seriously detracts from the stories. A third grader could proofread better.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Snail mail a copy to your e-mail-happy friends, December 8, 2000

By	Jeffrey Jotz "You'll know him when you find him" (Rahway, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I purchased this book as a gift for friends and relatives who constantly bombard me with e-mails about stories they "swear really happened" (I may have to buy several hundred). This book isn't heavy reading, but contains many twists and versions of urban legends we've all read on the web or in our e-mail inboxes. I only wish it took the time to trace the origins of these urban legends and describe variations of them as I've seen on a few web sites.