Busting a Myth

Jan Harold Brunvand, the guru of the Urban Legend genre defines urban legends as “highly captivating and plausible, but mainly fictional, oral narratives that are widely told as true stories” . The authors of urban legends are like a sewing needle and thread, and the urban legends are like fabric. Authors sew urban legends to create a social fabric which defines the tapestry of our social lives. Legends bind us as a community because they provide a common foundation, a common frame of reference with which we view our lives and the times in which we live. This paper will examine one of the most popular urban legends of all times, the child abduction story. The paper will proceed to analyze the veracity of this particular urban legend, and the reasons why people believe in and circulate this false legend.

The child abduction urban legend goes as follows: a young girl, Katie, age four is shopping with her mother at “Sam’s Club” . While the mother is preoccupied examining meat to purchase, Katie suddenly goes missing. A fellow shopper acts quickly and instructs an employee to lock down the store, announce the abduction via the speaker system, and articulate the “Child Missing Code” so that everyone can be alert of the missing child. The store employees discover Katie five minutes later in a bathroom stall, terrified and traumatized by her ordeal. A man had shaven her head with a razor, placed a wig on her and otherwise attempted to disguise her identity in a failed attempt to abduct her.