So remember last week we told you that our Urban Legends series for The Great Courses Plus had dropped, but we couldn’t really write a ton about it yet because Sara was so sick? Well Sara is feeling a lot better this week (yay!), so we thought we’d tell you a little more about it and share our personal favorite legends from the series!

When you hear “urban legends,” you might think that we’re telling stories about the city exclusively, but that’s not actually what urban legend means at all. Instead, “urban” is just the word that stuck for the legends that we’re still telling in our contemporary, modern society. Think “The Kidney Theft” or “The Vanishing Hitchhiker,” which people still tell as if they might be true. (As opposed to historical legends like some King Arthur stories, which people usually don’t tell as if they just happened to a guy up the road!) Urban legends can be set in a downtown skyscraper, a suburban school, or on a deserted country road—anywhere really. But they are always:

1. Current. These stories take place now or in the very recent past. They are part of the folklore of daily life—scary, silly, and sometimes dangerous.
2. Told as truth. Not everyone believes every urban legend they hear. But the people propagating the stories tell them as if they’re either true or could be true. It’s commonly assumed there’s a reliable witness just a few people back, i.e. a “friend of a friend” or a “FOAF” as we tend to abbreviate it in folklore studies. 
3. Human. Urban legends involve normal human beings having extraordinary encounters and experiences. They depict realistic events or alleged events with an eventual ironic, bizarre, or supernatural twist.

We cover a LOT of legends over the course of the twelve episodes in the series, but here are our personal favorites. 

Brittany’s Fav:

When Sara asked what I wanted to write about for this post, I immediately screamed “Tizzie-whizies!!!!!!” to the heavens! Now, “what on earth is a Tizzie-whizie…?”, you may be asking. WELL I WILL TELL YOU.

Tizzie-whizies are cryptids, “hidden animals” and basically zoological creatures that are usually more legend than fact, from the Lake District in the UK (yes, the same Lake District that features in so much Romantic poetry and Taylor Swift’s song “The Lakes.”) It’s a beautiful part of England but, while other lakes have massive sea serpents and other such legends to go with them, the Lake District has… Tizzie-whizies instead. 

This, I am delighted to tell you, is a Tizzie-whizie. The story goes that Tizzie-whizies are small, hedgehog-like creatures with bumblebee or dragonfly wings and antennae, and long squirrel-like tails. They are said to love the water and be exceptionally good swimmers, and they were first sighted, supposedly, around 1900. They say they even tried to get a photograph of the little guy at that time, but he flew out the window before they could!

They are adorable. And we talk about them in episode two of the series!

I’m not gonna lie, I’m actually a little surprised they let us sneak these guys in. I mean, they’re SO obscure, not at all on the level of the other cryptids in the episode on this topic like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, but… well, maybe that’s why they were important to include. Cryptids don’t have to grow to be huge, internationally-known creatures, they can exist as smaller, more local legends too. As long as they’re important enough that people tell stories about them, they count. So Tizzie-whizies are IN, baby!!

Also, remember how Sara and I went to school in Columbus, Ohio? Well, a brewery there made THESE a few years back →

So maybe they’re more famous than we realized!

Sara’s Fav:

I love many of the (probably 50 ish!) legends we talk about in the series, but the one that makes me laugh the hardest is usually called  “The Nude Housewife” or “The Laundry in the Basement.” In this story, a woman is, as the title suggests, doing laundry in her basement. She decides to throw in the outfit she’s been cleaning in all day, so she takes off her t-shirt and yoga pants and chucks them into the washing machine. Annoyingly, the pipes overhead keep dripping on her, and because she’d already done her hair for the day, when she sees her son’s football helmet on top of the washing machine, she puts it on her head while she finishes cleaning up downstairs. So there she is, wearing nothing except the helmet, when she hears someone behind her cough. She whirls around and is completely horrified to see the plumber, who’s there to look at the dripping pipes. He says “I hope your team wins, ma’am” before bolting back up the stairs.

This story absolutely kills me – and honestly both of us. We had a good cackle about it in the filming studio, and I have no idea how we filmed it with a straight face. I think we find this one so funny because we can imagine that some version of this story feels horrifyingly plausible. It doesn’t involve any outlandish props or locations. It happens inside the woman’s house on an average day while she’s going about extremely mundane chores. And the home is the place where you’re supposed to feel most safe from exposure. “The Nude Housewife” is the nightmare scenario where your most secure, private space is unexpectedly violated.

After filming this series, sometimes we just look each other dead in the eye and say very seriously “I hope your team wins, ma’am,” and then completely lose it together.

So have you seen our Urban Legends Explained series on The Great Courses Plus yet? If so, hit REPLY and tell us your favorite legend! And, if you haven’t yet, take advantage of their free trial period and check it out!

P.S. If you watched the series and enjoyed it, please consider clicking here and leaving a review! It really helps the series (and it means the world to us too!)