"Do you eat spiders while you sleep?"
Again and again one reads in Internet forums the question of whether spiders wander into the open mouth in sleep, where they are swallowed by the dreaming. In general, eating behavior plays an important role in urban myths. Do you eat babies in China? Do you die if you consume cola and a certain brand of chewy candy together? Everyone knows one or more of these fantastic stories that are not just for entertainment.
The spiders in the houseplant
- Urban myths or legends are also known as fairy tales, wet nurses or wandering tales. In the USA these stories are also known as "friend of a friend tales".
- These legends are an important part of pop culture because they allow important conclusions to be drawn about the sensitivities of a people. What fears plague the Germans? What makes you laugh? Which beliefs or superstitions prevail?
- Urban legends are usually transmitted orally, and increasingly also via digital media such as e-mails or social networks.
- A key distinguishing feature of these stories is the vague source. Nobody knows where the legend comes from. However, if it is to be given more credibility, expressions like "My sister, the work colleague, the acquaintance of a friend" often have this or that happened. However, whether the recipient believes in the legend is of secondary importance.
- This type of story is also characterized by the wealth of variants. Everyone knows their own version. Local peculiarities, city names or personal names give the saga an individual touch. But big city myths are not an exclusively German phenomenon, the stories are known all over the world as they are gathered in books such as "The Spider in the Yucca Palm".
5 famous legends
Legends usually have their origins in the vernacular. Many well-known sagas tell of ...
What you eat in your sleep
- Germans are particularly afraid of eating spiders while they sleep. If you look behind this misconception, you will find that a particularly large number of people across Germany and Europe suffer from arachnophobia - the fear of spiders. In other cultures, the crawling ones are insects on the other hand not a trigger for fears. The spider sleep myth now acts as a kind of outlet for this dominant fear of many people.
- In the United States, other urban myths are more pronounced. Here, for example, there are conspiracy theories for the 9th September 2011, Hurricane Katrina or biological and chemical toxins that are supposed to hide in food. Elvis should continue to walk among the living, whoever eats chicken from a certain manufacturer should in reality eat fried rats.
- The story of the man (George Turklebaum) who sat dead at his desk for five days without being discovered by his colleagues became known worldwide. Various print and online media picked up the story. As a result, a new word was created. "Turklebaumed" describes a person who was the victim of an April Fool's joke or an urban myth.
- Big city myths are added when society changes, other legends are forgotten. Again and again there are moralizing legends, revenge and ghost stories as well as crime stories. The fear of the stranger or death is also reflected in urban legends.
Even if you read that a person averages up to eleven be crazy eats in his sleep, you should not believe this statement. City myths teach, among other things, that not everything that seems believable has to be.
