h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Although many schools will offer some sort of bereavement consideration under exceptional circumstances, no college or university in the United States has a policy awarding a 4.0 average (or anything else) to a student whose roommate dies. This rumor (or at least its widespread distribution) appears to be of fairly recent origin, dating from approximately the mid-1970s.

It most likely started out as an expression of the pressures students feel to achieve good grades in the form of a morbid joke (i.e., "Even if the pressures of school cause some people to off themselves, there's no reason we can't profit by it!"), and the joke became legend when it was spread as true by credulous students, picking up variations along the way.

There are loads of different variations on the story relating to how the individual has to die, whether it's roommate, classmate, relationship etc., and what kind of "reward" you get.

Having been at a school where there was more than one death and suicides / attempted etc. and no-one got any payback (more's the pity )

Now this project is really taking off!

I will edit and add the two slasher stories, Peta's snake bit, and the suicide roommate bit. I'll give researcher credit on that one to Merkin, for confirming it as a rumor, as well as whoever was the first to suggest it. Merkin also put it into some sort of story form, which is what I'm after.

Excellent additions, my friends....now go get more!

Glasgow University, being an Ancient University has many strange little bye-laws, including some that directly contradict U.K. law. One is that it is legal to duel, with swords, in the cloisters. Another bye-law is that, while sitting your exams, you are entitled to request a glass of Port from the invigilators, as refreshment. Apparently, one day, some-one tried this. He called the invigilator over and asked for his Port, citing the rules. The invigilator went and conferred with his other lecturers, they got out the book of rules and, indeed, it was there. However, they read on, and then threw the guy out for not wearing a morning suit and sword. The rules stated that he had to be suitably attired to sit his exam.


As far as I am aware, these are both bollocks, but popular amongst undergraduates.

You've probably heard this one but, anyway...

A man was at the tip, getting rid of some old pillows and was walking back to his car when he tripped over something, getting up, rubbing his knee and cursing, he walked over to see what it was that had tripped over and discovered it was a JATO device (Jet Assisted Take Off) Not even considering for a moment why it was there he picked it up and drove home with it. All week he was wondering how to test it out, but he didn't have enough time, because of work. Finally, to his relief the weekend came, and it was time to try it out. He drove to a long straightway in the country, attatched the jato to the back of his car, connected up and mechanism to start it at the click of a button, and started the car. He waited until he had reached about fifty kilometres an hour, then fired up the JATO. His car, boosted by the speed, accelerated to over four hundred kilometres an hour. He tried to break but it simply ripped his tyres to shreds. He flew down the straightway, reached a turn, and took off. He flew through the air for half a mile before smashing in to the edge of a cliff face, leaving a crater about a quater of a mile wide.

Can't say as I've heard this one. It's gotta be the most farfetched of the entire collection, outstripping my "Bloody Mary" bit for the title. But it is now in the collection.

The Jato story is a very established myth (though I've never heard the crater being stated as 1/4 mile wide )

I have some embellishments which you can write in from the story I originally heard:

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embeded into the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what it was and what had happened.
It seems that a guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off - actually a solid rocket fuel) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!
The facts as best as could be determined are the the operator of the 1967 Impala hit JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, basically causing him to become insignificant for the remainder of the event. However the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at the height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

CLASSIC!!!! Ah if only it was true. Though as far as I am aware, this is what would happen if you did stick a JATO on an Impala (assuming it didn't disintegrate as soon as you hit the boost button)

Anyway, I've very glad you're putting together the page. I'd been planning to do one myself but Cult activites have held me up (too much kumquat brandy).

Have you seen www.urbanlegends.com ? its the archive for a newsgroup about urban legends. Some bizarre stuff there!

Can't say as I've seen it, Maisie. When the idea for this article first came to me, I checked a couple of archives, although not that particular one. The stuff I ended up reading was awful! The additions I've received here so far are far more interesting.

Here's one...


A woman shared a flat with her roommate. They had seperate rooms and her roommate was known to take things from room to room. Anyway, she went out one night and came back late. Not wanting to wake her roommate she didn't switch on the lights. She needed something (a face mask or something) and it was in her roommates room. She went in a searched in the dark, knocking an instant camera, which flashed, blinding her. She grabbed the camera and left the room hoping that she didn't wake her roommate and decided to get the item in the morning. When she wakes up the next day, she sees the camera by the bed and the picture that it had taken. It showed a man in a balaclava holding his hand over her roommates mouth and showed the look of fear in her eyes.

Consider this one added. Looks like the flow of entries has just about petered out, so it's just about time to start editing this mess

This sounds like another variation on the two stories Sam and I posted. This one and my one have almost the same plot with a differing level of gore. That would suggest to me that this is an earlier version, with mine deriving from later embellishment!!

In the version of the Jato story I heard the man had stolen it from the airbase that he was a janitor at, in a similar manner to that tank that was stolen and driven up the highway.

here's one that I've heard, but which I've been assured is true, even the club in it is cited...

A man in his early twenties goes to a club, and after a solid nights drinking, when the club is very packed he gets up to the dancefloor. After a couple of hours dancing he feels a stabbing pain in his back. Puzzled he turns around, but sees only other dancers. The next day, he picks his shirt off the floor, and finds a sticker on the back saying "welcome to the AIDS club"

This was repoted by a national paper however to have appeared across the country each supposedly in a different club.

If this does turn out to be true there are other versions which I really doubt are, like the one where a man takes a woman home and wakes up in the morning to find her gone with the message written on the mirror in lipstick.

I've heard rumors of gang members spreading LSD or lethal drug cocktails on public telephone keypads. When the hapless victim dials, they're dead within seconds. Also, tainting needles with HIV and affixing them to the seats in theatres. You sit down, feel a little prick, and then look back to see a sign telling you that you now have AIDS (nobody said gang members were good at medical science). Then the one that everybody knows: gangs load into the cars and drive along without their lights on at night, shooting the first person that flashes their lights at them.
Has anyone else heard these, or is my hometown rougher than I thought?
Of course, my favorite is from a non-hiker friend who insists that the H2G2 symbol looks like a 69. And if you turn the monitor upside down... it does...
Am I in trouble now?
~ Lares

That gang-bangers light flashing thingy is no myth...it was an initiation procedure for new recruits, but I belive the practice has gone away.

I hope you know you have a massive task in front of you to compile all of these legends as many have interwinding components. I like the bloody mary x3 in the mirror as its so reminescent of candyman (a film about urban legends).

Has anyone heard this one? A student living in halls (4th floor) gets drunk on his 21st birthday. His roommates steal his roomkeys and enter his room taking out all of his possesions and replacing them in a room on the 1st floor. He comes back drunk goes up and down in the lift and gets disorintated, and enters what he thinks is his room. Seconds later his mates dash in and chuck him out of the window holding on to his legs whereabouts he cries, poos his pants, cries for mommy etc. Finally he gets dropped, thinks he's dead and falls about a foot.

There are a lot of legends that have a basis in truth and it would be cool if we could weed some out as most of them are completly fake.

I for one think that the ones that are completely bogus are just as much fun as the ones with some basis in fact.

I agree, they're all funny but if you know which ones are real you can get an idea of how mad the world actually is.

We shouldn't overlook the appeal that these stories have. They contain things which people find fascinating and repeat. The stories become embellished over time, but only certain embellishments 'stick.' I like trying to figure out what it is about people that makes them want to tell these stories and listen to them.

The editing process is now complete. Check out this page again...you won't recognize it.

An excellent web-site for urban legends is: http://www.snopes.com
which is well worth checking if you like this kind of things. Its also pretty good for halloween stories to scare you're friends next saturday night.