Urban Myths Collection, Mihaela Bogdan [learn to read books .TXT] 📗

an adult and he had enough patience of waiting years until he will be able to go outside alone. Just because he was blind, it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t able to walk alone. He had a long walking stick, sharp hearing ability and his nose was as sensitive as a dog’s. With these abilities, he didn’t need anyone to escort him anywhere.
  This was indeed a way to prove himself in front of everybody.
On his journey, he asked many people for directions, but only one gave him the correct and shortest ones to the nearest streaming water:
  ”Go slowly forward and attempt to keep the straight path without leaving it, until you reach your destination! At the end of that path, you will find the streaming water that you are wishing to find.”
  The blind boy listened carefully to every word from that nice stranger’s advice and followed the indicated path, until his ears began to hear a delicate sound of a pure water streaming.
  This legend was born due to the topography of the city. All main roads are circular, they leave from the Danube and all lead back to the Danube. In any part of town you go, you will get back passing along the Danube.
  If you ever visit this city do this test. It is easy to find your way, that the legend of the blind boy is applied to describe how easy it is to find this city.
  If somehow you get lost, the locals will make fun of you saying: ”Come on, how you got lost? Even a blind man found Braila City while searching for a streaming water!”
  Don’t get insulted if some local tells you this. He or she is explaining to you that it is not hard to find the right way. Or better said, it was. Nowadays, the city developed according to the modern days and I am not sure if it is as easy as it was back then to find the right path.
  To be honest, I never got lost, and I don’t think I ever heard a tourist complaining or asking for directions. This proves that even if the city grew in the last years, people have no problem getting lost in it.

 

III. Criminals in Yellow Van

This is the horrible urban myth of some monks in a yellow van, that killed many children for illegal trades with their organs.
  ”They came in the school’s yard, a monk, a nun and a doctor, with a yellow van. The van's windows are so dark that you couldn’t see anything inside of it. They stop near innocent children, who aren’t with adults to protect them, grab them into their van and off they go. After that, nobody finds them anymore. As if they disappeared for ever.”
  At the ”Matera” maternity unit from Mureș Fair City, where the newly mothers that came from disorganized families, receive social and psychological assistance. They are afraid that this rumor, most likely perfect for a horror film, might be true and someone could try to kidnap their new born babies, kill them with cold blood and sell their organs on the black market.
  ”Some mothers told me that they heard a rumor in a small neighborhood in Mureș City, that an envelope was found on the chest of some dead children, under the age of ten, which contained a big amount of money. The author of those children’s deaths also left a letter which explained that the money is for the poor children’s funerals. I ask myself, what kind of a cold blooded criminal is capable of murdering some sweet children, sell their organs and after that return them dead with money on their chest for their funeral?!”

The headmaster of the maternity unit declared in an interview, looking tired from all the nights that she couldn’t sleep, because of this gruesome discovery.
  This horror story reached all the high schools in the town, and the county school inspectorate send to the headmasters letters, on which they advised everybody to stay calm. Dumitru Matei, the school general inspector, said that the horrible rumor is nothing but a big lie that created a psychosis.
Representatives of the police units were tired of how many times they used the word ‘no’ in sentences like:
”We never had cases, complains of disappearances, abductions or unidentified bodies!” They tried to calm down the concerned teachers and parents.
  ”It’s just a rumor creating panic and hysteria sometimes among the worried citizens.” Livia Popa declared. She is the spokesman of the Police Inspectorate and she never heard of such murder cases.
  The most plausible explanation comes from Simion Bui, the headmaster of the ”Alexandru Papiu Ilarian” college, one of the largest colleges in town.
  ”You know, now is a period of relaxation, it is a calmer time in education, no exams, no theses. Probably the students are bored and they make out horror stories for their own entertainment. I think that this whole thing started from the students, eager for fun.”
  Is this really the truth? That bored students created this rumor just because they were getting bored until their exams began? Then, how could you explain the horrible experience that the headmaster from the ”Matera” unit had witnessed it? Did those dead children, under the age of ten, with some missing organs were just in her imagination?
  If so, then why didn’t she end up in a hospital for mad people?
  This is just another proof that the police without enough evidence, witness or victims; doesn’t move a muscle in investigating a potential crime series. What are they waiting for? How many innocent children have to die and have their organs sold on the black market for them to finally take action?
  Just because the murderers are a nun, a monk and a doctor, doesn’t mean that this case is not serious. Sometimes I think that the jokes with stupid and incompetent police were inspired from real life.
  What do you think after reading this story? Do you still believe that you are safe with the police watching over you?

IV. The bouffant haired girl

Like it says in the blurb, I get all these myths from the Internet and choose only the best ones or the ones I consider they are worth to be mentioned. They are one or two paragraphs long, in other words the whole story is a summary, therefore I must use my imagination to make the story longer, with precise details, so that my readers can easily understand the story.
  Now let me begin another mythical story about a girl who loved her bouffant hair.
  The girl’s name, age and other personal information are unknown, meaning that each of us must decide if she even existed or not. People say that she had thick and curly hair, cut short and it was arranged in some sort of an afro style as Aevin Dugas (search for her picture to see with your own eyes in order to understand what I’m trying to explain here).
  She was a student in middle school and because of her unusually big hair style, her fellow students always made fun of her. Most of the time they threw paper plains which got stuck in her curls or put chewed pieces of gum that won’t get off unless she cut the sticky stripes.
  The teachers from her school tried to contact her parents and talk to them about their daughter’s big hair. Her father was always in business trips and her mother had nothing against her daughter’s tastes. On the contrary, she believed that parents must embrace their children’s creativity in all domains.
  In the end, everybody got used with the girl’s hair and soon she was treated like a normal person. The other students stop calling her names or throw anything on her.
  Things seem to be normal for the bouffant haired girl, until one morning. The girl got ready for school as usual: getting dressed, eat breakfast and went to the bus station. All the way to school she sat in the back seat quietly. When the bus arrived in the front of the school, everybody got out, except the bouffant haired girl.
  -Hey curly girl, get out or you’ll be late! The bus driver shouted at her from his seat.
  Seeing that the girl wasn’t moving, he thought that she might have felt asleep and he went to wake her up. Unfortunately, he found out that the girl was dead.
  An ambulance came to resuscitate her, but this action was useless, the girl had died minutes ago. So, she was taken to the hospital for a necropsy, to determine the cause of her death.
  To their horror, when they removed the girl’s big bouffant hair, thousands of black bugs began to run on the table around the girl’s corpse. After all the bugs were removed and crushed, the doctors easily removed all the hair from the girl’s scalp. If they thought that having thousands of bugs in your hair was disturbing, the girl’s scalp after the hair was removed, was an even disturbing thing to see. She had holes in the head, smeary with blood and bug ordure. In other words, the bugs that lived in her hair for a long time, not only they made their ‘needs’ on the girl’s head, but they also ate pieces of her scalp.
  Her mother was shocked. She told the doctors that her daughter took baths twice a week and she couldn’t imagine how her head could be so dirty.
  Since then, everyone start asking if the girl washed only her body, because she didn’t want to ruin her bouffant hair and being unclean, lead to a disgusting death.
  Students from her school, after hearing the cause of the bouffant haired girl’s death, became obsessed with hair hygiene. They were washing their hairs daily and their parents as well, to avoid ending up with parasites on their scalps.
  This is the story for today. I hope you are taking good care of your hair, wash it and brush it regularly, because who knows? You may die as the bouffant haired girl did.
  Again, it is up to you