Damn, I’m a lucky guy.

This week we’re in the “A” states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona and Arkansas.

Most urban legends, true or not, gruesome or not, develop and change over time, as the tellers embroider and exaggerate the tale.

Mostly, they’re historical stories with an unexpected, weird or spooky angle. Sometimes, they can cause distress, especially to those of a nervous disposition!

We think it’s important to be skeptical about the outrageous stories you sometimes encounter online and in conversation.

Certainly, we encourage you to think twice about passing on emails that purport to be genuine and supposedly circulate to offer advice or serve as a warning to others, when, frankly, they’re just too weird to be true.

After all, life has enough dramas, and inboxes have enough email, without adding a stack of worrisome fictions on to the pile.

Of course, in the space available we can only sample a couple of urban legends from each state and we don’t say our subjects are the best-known, but we’ve added the source of most of our urban legend stories in case you want to dig deeper.

Also, where possible, we’ve tried to say whether these urban legends are true or not, though some of them remain undecided.

So if you disagree with our view, we’ll just warn you that we don’t have the resources here at Scambusters to respond to individual comments!

That said, on with the show…

Alabama Urban Legends

Crooner Nat King Cole, or more precisely his widow, is the subject of a famous Alabama urban legend.

According to the story, Mrs. Cole flagged down a passing motorist after her car broke down on the way to a hospital where her husband lay dying.

The motorist didn’t know who she was but gladly provided his address to her as he dropped her off at the hospital. Later, he received a surprise delivery of giant color TV with a thank you note, signed by Mrs. C.

The tale, related at truthorfiction.com is untrue. The singerdied in California.

More gruesome is the story of a construction worker who supposedly was accidentally concreted into the wall of a tunnel in Jacksonville, AL, and was left there.

Who knows if it’s true? But locals say anyone passing by feels mighty cold when they pass the supposed tunnel tomb. (From oxfordparanormalsociety.com)

Alaska Urban Legends

If you regularly receive unusual stories in your email, we’d be surprised if you haven’t received a photo of a supposed Alaskan forest worker alongside the body of a giant grizzly bear he allegedly shot.

The beast was said to weigh over 1,600 pounds and stood more than 15 feet high — a world record. The US Forestry Service apparently receives inquiries about
this story almost every day.

So much so, they investigated and issued a statement
explaining that a US airman did kill a large bear in Alaska’s Prince William Sound but it was only 10 feet and probably weighed about 1,000 pounds, which is well short of a record.

The Anchorage Daily News carried a story in 2001 about the steadily increasing size of the bear under the headline “Legend Brewin’” but it no longer seems to be online.

Another popular Alaska urban legend claims Eskimos have scores of words meaning “snow.” In fact, the truth is that there are numerous Eskimo-Aleut languages with some dialectical variations but no more than one finds in the English language.

However according to the online knowledge-base Wikipedia, where we verified this story, the European Sami people, nomads who wander the Arctic circle, do have many words, possibly hundreds, referring to snow!

Arizona Urban Legends

Did a couple of southern Arizona cowboys sight and shoot down a Thunderbird, the American Indian mythical bird? Or was it a US Cavalry troop?

You can take your choice from this and other encounters with the legendary creature, almost as numerous as sightings of the Sasquatch or even the Loch Ness monster.

The bird, said to resemble a prehistoric pterodactyl, is also supposed to have been seen in Texas and Alaska.

The cowboy incident allegedly was reported, along with a photo, in the Tombstone Epitaph, but (conveniently) no copies exist today.

But that apparently hasn’t stopped numerous other claimants showing pictures of the dead beast, which later proved to be phony. (From multiple sources; corroborated via Wikipedia.)

Bogus photos often accompany urban legends and often turn up in emails.

Like the story of newly widowed Arizona resident Jeff Green who couldn’t bear to be parted from his wife, so he had her body preserved in a glass case that he used as a coffee table the living room!

You can see the photo a http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=8JUKO&m=1gGSnn3_aGtWfo&b=VA0KfhhYDDFz_XwyXQzQHw

The story, which still circulates on the Internet, originally appeared in the December 1992 issue of Weekly World News. Enough said.

Arkansas Urban Legends

For some reason, Arkansas seems to be the haunting capital of the US.

Our researches for this urban legends series turned up more stories about ghostly encounters from this southern state than anywhere else in the nation.

The ghost of the King Opera House in Van Buren is the most enduring, going back to the early 1900s, when a young actor planned to elope with the daughter of a disapproving doctor.

The doc got wind of the escapade and allegedly killed the young “Romeo” with his horsewhip. The story was actually turned into a play produced at the theater.

Needless to say, the ghost, in Victorian garb, supposedly turned up for the premier. Or at least, in the words of the producer, that’s what it felt like. (From squidoo.com)

Arkansas, it turns out, also has its own monster to rival
giant bears, Thunderbirds and the Sasquatches — a 7-foot tall creature supposedly seen in the Fouke district in the 1960s and subsequently the subject of the movie The Legend of Boggy Creek.

A local gift shop apparently sells monster memorabilia and is said to be worth a visit — unlike the movie!
(From LittleRock.about.com)

In most cases, it’s easy to check if a story you hear, by
mouth or by email, is true or just an urban legend story.

Just put a few key words from it — like “movie theater ghost in Anytown” (where “Anytown” is the name of the area) — into an Internet search box, and you’ll learn all about it.

That’s about it for this week. But if you’ve been bitten by
the urban legends bug, you can always check out our Urban Legends and Hoaxes Resource Center.

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=8JUKO&m=1gGSnn3_aGtWfo&b=9IK5VzQkz9hR9wcsskaqOA

Meantime, look out for the next in our around-the-states series of urban legends.

That’s a wrap for this issue. Wishing you a great week!

TSAR ALEXANDER ASSASSINATED IN ST PETERSBURG:

Alexander II, Tsar of All The Russias, died on March 13 when a bomb was hurled at him in the streets of St Petersburg.

The Tsar had just left his carriage to offer sympathy to the victims of a bomb flung a few minutes previously.

There had been three attempts to kill the Tsar e the last three years, but the authorities felt secure because they had just arrested the author of two of them.

The assassins appear to be “Nihilists,” whose strange antiphilosophy denies that their actions of consciences are governed by familiar religious or moral codes.

Their perferred political theory is the equally extravagant “anarchism,” which suggests that no government at all is necessary!”

UPDATE 1-US, Japan drop 2014 Okinawa base-transfer deadline

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Tue Jun 21, 2011 11:41am EDT
(Updates with quotes, details)

(Reuters) – The United States and Japan on Tuesday agreed to drop a 2014 deadline for building a new airstrip on Okinawa and transferring about 8,000 U.S. Marines from that Japanese island to Guam, top officials said in a statement.

“Completion of the FRF (Futenma Replacement Facility) and the Marine relocation will not meet the previously targeted date of 2014,” the two allies said in a statement following cabinet-level talks in Washington.

They vowed to complete the projects “at the earliest possible date after 2014.”

The widely anticipated delay in the troop realignment was announced after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates hosted Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto and Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa for annual Security Consultative Committee talks.

Tokyo and Washington agreed in 2006 to shift the U.S. Marines’ Futenma airbase in Okinawa to a less crowded area on the island, which is host to about half the U.S. troops in Japan.

But successive Tokyo governments have yet to win support for that plan from local residents of Okinawa, who associate U.S. bases with noise, pollution and crime.

Japan’s March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor disaster has caused further delays in decision-making in Tokyo.

“The decision announced today on the Futenma replacement facility configuration along with other elements of the 2006 realignment roadmap shows we are making steady progress toward modernizing U.S. forward presence in the region,” Gates said.

“It is critical that we move forward with the relocation of Futenma and the construction of facilities in Guam for the U.S. Marines. …

Doing so will reduce the impact of our presence on local residents in Okinawa while allowing us to maintain capabilities critical to the alliance in Japan,” he said.

Kitazawa said the Japanese government would continue to work to build consensus on Futenma with the Okinawa government and residents.

“In the aftermath of the earthquake, the understanding of the significance of the stationing of U.S. forces in Japan including the Marine Corps in Okinawa I believe has been understood,” he said, referring to massive aid efforts by the American military after the disasters. (Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Writing By Paul Eckert; Editing by Will Dunham)
———————————-

It looks like between the republicans’ attempt to get a bigger piece of the pie and Japan’s financial predicament the massive marine move to Guam will be delayed a year or two.

Perhaps until the republicans can get a President in that will spread the graft more generously. It is obvious that that party looks at any military endeavor as an opportunity to fill their pockets rather than a military benefit for this nation.

Peter