How do urban legends spread?
Honest but ignorant people tell them to each other, and over time they are mutated by social bias, mismemory, and innocent error into something entirely different. In this way, a “ghostly hitchhiker” story told by folks on a wagon train in the 1800s becomes a Weekly World News headline about Bigfoot pregnancy in 2005. They are also perpetuated by the likes of Readers Digest, Ann Landers, and Dear Abby. Particularly Dear Abby — man, that woman will believe anything.
