urban legend

The 1992 film sees Todd's character accidentally summoned to the real world by a graduate student in Chicago intrigued by the urban legend of the Candyman, setting off a chain of murderous events.

It's one of London's urban legends that an American entrepreneur once thought he was buying Tower Bridge, but purchased London Bridge instead.

Ms Powell adds that urban legends widely shared on the internet have "become their own form of folklore," adding: "I don't think something has to be supposedly 1,000-years-old to have any value."

Then there is a multitude of straight-up urban legends or even fictional novels cited as if they are fact.

These stories have all the earmarks of urban legends...The stories told about eaten pets are spread by word-of-mouth, and are unauthenticated by actual, traceable details.