The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings

This book is so exactly what I want out of a study of urban legends that I kind of think I read it at some point in the past and have since been comparing all other urban legend books to it. Brunvand offers a selection of contemporary (for 1981) urban legends and a more-than-superficial analysis of them; I'll be keeping an eye out for his other books (and for someone to write something similar about Slenderman).

Though a bit outdated, this book is an entertaining read and a fascinating insight into what we humans are afraid of. I certainly believed the babysitter horror stories when I was growing up, as well as a few of the other stories. A lot of the urban legends discussed in this book I had never heard of, but many others I remember hearing some version of them from someone who heard it from their cousin's friend's mother-in-law and insisted that it was true. And of course, I never thought to doubt them.

I specifically made sure that I didn't read this book immediately before going to bed because I was afraid of the dreams my subconscious would bring up. It is fascinating to me the way these stories originate, even though they are usually show more based on what if's rather than facts.

I would love to see how folklore has changed since the explosion of technology and the advent of social media. Some legends, like those that have to do with death and nudity, probably still "haunt" us today, but it would be interesting to see what other urban legends we've invented, and especially how social media plays a role in the circulation and/or validity of the stories. show less

3 stars almost feels too low, given how ravenously I read this book. But I feel it had too much simple recounting of urban legends, and not enough analysis of what they tell about social insecurities, like the book allegedly set out to.

I've always been fascinated by dreams and what they tell us about our subconscious, and urban legends are the same for social consciousness. And understanding this is going to be more and more important in age of fake news and internet echo chambers. I feel like this book was interesting, but just whetted the appetite. I'm still looking for another book on this topic.

This is a fascinating recount of several of the most enduring urban legends, showing how they, in some cases, date back many years and have evolved in the telling. I haven't read any of the various follow-on volumes to this, but I can highly recommend this first one. If you are the kind of person who enjoys reading true ghost stories or those wonderfully ridiculous Fate Magazine paperbacks, you'll appreciate the entertainment value as well as the substance of this book.

Brunvand discusses a wide array of traditional urban legends. The focus is on American lore but a few European and Asian versions are also cited when applicable. Most of the tales are quite familiar. A few I had personally not heard before. It was interesting to find ones I recognized from references in other areas of pop culture but had never realized were originally urban legends. I do wish some mention of those references was discussed. I also would have liked the author to have gone into greater detail when discussing where the tales emanated from and what their cultural significance was, although he does do that to some extent (the book is not just a collection of the stories). A little more analysis would have gone a long way.

Fascinating exploration of urban legends by the coiner of the term. Suffers from too many Freudian flailings.

This is a classic study of urban legends and modern folklore, and basically is the book that brought the term "urban legend" into the mainstream. It wasn't quite as in-depth as I remembered it being, possibly because I've read many more such books since I first read it back in highschool. Still, I'm glad to have re-read it, and I'm pleased that I now own my own copy.