Urban Legends: There Really is a Bielefeld! Isn’t There?
This is Bielefeld. Or a well-made photomontage of it... (Photo: Orkomedix)
27 December 2012
Here’s a little reminder at the turn of the year that may save your life: If you are ever out walking in Seoul at night, never listen to music on your MP3 player! The terrifying MP3 kidnapper is lurking in South Korea’s capital city. Seriously! As for the rest: All the best for the year 2013!
Have you ever heard of George Turklebaum? No? That’s surprising. Turklebaum became quite famous – at least posthumously. Turklebaum worked for decades in an editorial office in New York. Every morning, he was the first to arrive at the office and the last to leave every evening. When he had a heart attack one Monday and died, none of his co-workers in the open-plan office noticed. Not for five days, when the cleaning lady noticed that the man in the office chair was not moving. No, really, the story’s true! The friend of an acquaintance of a former staff member at the Goethe-Institut in New York worked in that same office himself.
To the map of Urban Legends
Of course he didn’t. And yet, Turklebaum became famous as the epitome of urban legend. This makes Turklebaum a close colleague of the poisonous spider in the yucca tree, the alligator in the sewer and the South Korean MP3 kidnapper. Crazy stories that are hard to believe and are therefore often backed up by the fact that they really happened to a friend of a friend, which is why they are also called FOAF tales. But, they’re still only legends.
Yet they are exciting and entertaining nonetheless. Goethe-Instituts around the globe have therefore gotten together to investigate the phenomenon of urban legends and to collect some of the best of them. They present the most unusual stories from 19 countries, each of them told on video. They include not only urban legends in the narrower sense, but also some famous conspiracy theories, for example the Bielefeld Conspiracy, according to which the East Westphalian city does not exist at all. The theory seems plausible to many; maybe there is something to it. Still, the girlfriend of this guy we know is supposed to have been there once, in Bielefeld...
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