Urban legends are popular stories alleged to be true and transmitted from person to person by oral or written communication. The stories consist of outlandish, humiliating, humorous, terrifying, or supernatural events — events which, in the telling, always happened to someone else. In lieu of proof, the teller of an urban legend relies on good storytelling and the citing of supposedly trustworthy sources (e.g., "I heard this from a friend of a friend") to boost its credibility. Sometimes, but not always, there's an implied moral message in the story (e.g., "Be careful, or the same thing could happen to you!").
Urban legends are a type of folklore — defined as the beliefs, stories and traditions of ordinary people ("the folk") — thus, one way of differentiating between urban legends and other kinds of narratives (popular fiction, for example) is by examining where they come from and how they are disseminated. Legends tend to arise spontaneously and are rarely traceable to a single point of origin. And again, they spread primarily from individual to individual through interpersonal communication, and only in atypical cases through mass media or other institutional means. Because they end up being repeated by many different people in many different places, the stories tend to change over time. Hence, no two versions of an urban legend are ever exactly alike; there can be as many variants as there are tellers of the tale. Even if a story is true, it can still be classified as an urban legend.

Your assignment is to research an urban legend and determine its history, purpose, attraction and validity. The project is comprised of several parts:

A proposal in which you explain your urban legend, what you aim to prove with your project, the approach you might take. This is to give me an idea of what you want to do. You might revise your ideas due to research; this is an initial idea.

The presentation which consists of the following:
a) the legend itself, do not retell the story but synthesize what you've read into an easily manageable introduction
b) the history of the urban legend including folklore surrounding the myth, when the myth first appeared, etc. variations on the myth: any particular differences in the tellings, location, age, sex of the victim, for example. Where does the legend appear? Movies, newspapers, novels, be specific.
c) Some visual representation of your Urban Legand. Visuals can include roleplay, posters, power point presentations, videos etc. For your presentation you may bring in audiovisual examples, but I need to know in advance what equipment you'll need i.e. DVD player/TV, etc.
d ) What is it about the legend that makes (our culture) believe it? How does it play our on fears? Which ones? Is it a cautionary or morality tale? How so? Be SPECIFC here.
e ) the validity of the legend, how true or untrue is it?