Finished this a couple days ago. Some of the stories were pretty good and others were just plain dumb... but that's just like urban legends in general, right? Many of these I've heard of before, in similar variations, and I liked seeing the slight changes from one version to the next, or how different parts of the story were changed or emphasized more than others depending on the time or location.

I read this for a Media studies class on how fear and images in the media effect society. It was really cool to read some that i had read a long time ago as a kid in a scary stories book and to see new ones, like the most recent emailed urban legends. but, a lot of rehashes of the same stuff.

Lots of Urban Legends some I heard of but many I haven't heard of. Really cool book.

I REALLY ENJOYED READING THIS BOOK,I GOT IT THIS MORNING AND READ IT THROUGH BY THAT NIGHT.

Haunting "almost-true" tales that will chill you to the bone!!

Fullof all those urban legends you heard in grade school, plussome new ones. A good time to read and remember....

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This book is pretty cute, but not scary. I don't think it was meant to be scary. I found it rather dry, though, as it discussed the roots of different urban legends. I have another book, "Urban Legends : 666 Absolutely True Stories That Happened to a Friend...of a Friend of a Friend," by Thomas J. Craughwell that I like much better. It just lists the urban legend in its various forms and is more interesting than this book. The book I mentioned also has a lot of the same urban legends that "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid" does. I'd recommend getting the other book.

From Publishers Weekly
Rum flavored by a dead man in the cask; black widow spiders nesting in beehive hairdos; women’s intestines broiled by tanning booths; teenage couples menaced by men with hooks for hands: if these are the sorts of tales that thrill and chill you, this an anthology worth picking up. Folklorist Brunvand (The Vanishing Hitchhiker) assembles a creepy cornucopia of urban legends, organizing them by theme ("Chills Up Your Spine," "Accidents") and considering them in a surprisingly sedate manner. The result is a blend of "primary text" urban legends (transcribed from field interviews, collected from e-mails or reprinted from local newspapers) and more reflective introductions that consider the motifs and variations of each urban legend. Some tales are old chestnuts, familiar to anyone who’s been to a camp or a slumber party in the past 50 years, but others indicate more contemporary fears: stories of vacationers waking in unfamiliar hotel rooms, groggy and minus a kidney, or rumors of sexual predators who purposefully spread HIV to their unsuspecting partners. Brunvand traces most of these legends to their roots and debunks some of the more widespread ones, but he never lets his skepticism dampen his enthusiasm for the stories themselves.

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