We're always eager to believe a story when we're told it's true, and that's because true stories are the best. In fact, ghost stories have no value at all unless we are prepared to believe a little bit. It's this eagerness to believe that is fuelling the urban myth that is the Lemon Tree Passage Road's motorcyclist ghost and which, unfortunately, is putting the lives of presumably young people at risk. I say presumably young people because I'd hope that mature people would not be so silly as to speed along the road in an attempt to, according to the myth, wake the ghost of a motorcyclist killed on the road in the mid 1990s. The motorbike's headlight, so goes the myth, follows the speeding car, and YouTube has a number of films taken from within speeding cars. Police, too, have been doing well on Lemon Tree Passage Road, one night last week catching seven drivers speeding for the ghost. One P-plater lost his licence and $692.
An urban myth rips through the community once or twice a year, and the myth that preceded the motorcyclist's ghost was the Metford fairy, one I was told with earnest attestations of truth half a dozen times. A woman received a phone call at work from her intellectually disabled son to say he'd caught a fairy and locked it in the garden shed (or blanket box) and that he was covered in scratches. The woman rushes home to find that son is indeed covered in scratches and that the fairy in the garden shed is a very angry dwarf. Son was charged with kidnapping.
Just enough possibility to allow the most eager believers to believe, and I don't suppose it does any harm if we pass over the possibility that the story may offend people with dwarfism or an intellectual disability.
Do you have an urban myth you can share? Is it true?
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