The groundbreaking book that launched America's urban legend obsession! Folklore scholar Jan Harold Brunvand assembles the best-known urban legends—including "The Hook," "The Spider in the Hairdo," and "The Baby-Sitter and the Man Upstairs"—and provides an enlightening and entertaining analysis of their variants and evolution. The Vanishing Hitchhiker was Professor Brunvand's first popular book on urban legends, and it remains a classic. The culmination of twenty years of collection and research, this book is a must-have for urban legend lovers.

Vanishing Hitchhiker in the Urban Legends: Don't Read Alone! series explores the creepy story of the vanishing hitchhiker legend--from history to speculation to scientific explanation. This book is written with a high interest level to appeal to a more mature audience and a lower level of complexity with clear visuals to help struggling readers along. Considerate text includes wild facts (almost too strange to believe!) hold the readers' interest. A table of contents, glossary with simplified pronunciations, and index all enhance vocabulary and comprehension.

"I still remember the day as though it just happened today," said Bill Withers. "I was traveling down Old Hatchet Trail road after midnight when this beautiful woman with golden long blonde hair was standing all alone on the side of the road. It was starting to rain and I just couldn't leave her there in the black of night. I just couldn't, so I stopped my car beside her rolled down the front passenger window, and said "Please get in out of the rain and I'll take you home." The beautiful woman stepped inside his car and Bill was happy to help her out, but this woman he was giving a ride to wouldn't be around long enough for him to give her much comfort.

From the master folklorist and sly wit, Jan Brunvand, comes a collection of all-new urban legends. Did your cousin's wife's dentist's daughter go to the tanning parlor once too often and had her insides cooked? Has your husband's brother's nephew teacher try to make a dead rabbit look alive? If so, you've heard—or you yourself may have told—two of the seventy-plus legends in this collection. Urban legends are "those bizarre but believable stories about batter-fried rats, spiders in hairdos, Cabbage Patch dolls that get funerals, and the like that pass by word of mouth as being the gospel truth." But of course, though often told as having happened to a FOAF (friend of a friend), they aren't true. Included in this collection are legends about sex, horror, cars, business, and academia. Among them are "The Bible Student's Exam," "The Pregnant Shoplifter," "The Ice Cream Cone Caper," "Don't Mess with Texas," and "Mrs. Fields' Cookie Recipe."

A collection of over ninety frightening urban legends, arranged by theme.

A collection of oft-repeated urban legends brings together the best of modern myths, from the stoned baby sitter who mistook a baby for a turkey to the fabulously expensive recipe for chocolate chip cookies.