I've heard the one about the serial killer seeing angels so many times... one time at a DC after I'd heard it for the first time, I was speaking to an elderly German sister. She hadn't been in a concentration camp herself but said that she'd heard many first-hand experiences from survivors who said that when the guards came to pick prisoners to kill, they avoided the Witnesses because of the "strong men" standing amidst them. It seems like the angels weren't able to protect them from being brought into the camps in the first place, though!
Favorite JW Urban Legends
by Christ Alone 59 Replies latest jw experiences
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ziddina
Red Piller said: "So this man meets this sister. He falls in love. She tells him that he must be a JW. So he studies and progresses to the point where he is in the minstry.
One Saturday morning, the two were working together in the territory. All of a sudden, in between houses, the sister says, "I'm so sick of doing this." And she throws her bookbag in a sidewalk ditch. The man says, "I thought you'd never come around" And he does the same.
The sister says - "You failed my test. I wanted to know if you sincerely loved Jehovah. Or were doing this just for me." The two split up immediatey. ..." [Red Pillar]
"FUNNY!!! My mom told me that same story, except the sister and her boyfriend were sitting in the park. They finished a study in the truth book. She took the truth book and threw it across the grass and said, "I'm sick of doing this." The guy responded "Thank goodness". And then yeah, she said that he failed the test." Christ Alone
Phew!!!
And another one - er, two? guys narrowly escape being tied to cult-brainwashed beeeyotches...
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Red Piller
Is this a rumor or a reverse-rumor or maybe it's true? This is what I heard from friends who came back from a visit the Colorado area.
They went to congregation meetings during their visit. They got to talking to the locals about John Denver. Based on their conversations, witnesses have had it all wrong.
John Denver used to hire witnesses all the time - since they proved to be so trustworthy. He liked witnesses.
During his concerts, he used to say (out of considerateness) that he was going to play something patriotic in order to give them a chance to leave. He was being respectful of their beliefs.
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Red Piller
good point NJY - that rumor fits right in with the goal of cerating paranoia. Scary how much that makes sense.....
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crystlew123
the demonic items one. apparently when i was a baby mom bought a little red sweater at a yardsale. i didnt sleep for days until they threw the sweater out. Was terrified to buy things at yardsales or have someone give me someting for YEARS! after being told this story.
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Apognophos
This is a great thread. I remember hearing the UN story when I was a kid and buying into it. Now it comes across as a terribly lazy attempt at an urban legend (why is the brother speaking to the "UN", what does that even mean, why would he mention the UN dissolving religion, and why would someone acknowledge that to him afterward?). Was the person who concocted this even trying?!
The John Denver one was related in my car group a few years ago. I thought it was odd that I never heard that he hated Witnesses and that Carson ordered him off the show. Seems like something you'd hear, right? I Googled it and found the Snopes page discrediting it, and forwarded the link to the brother who was relating it in service. Another time in service, someone tried to tell the "Mr. Rogers was a sniper and had arms full of tattoos under that sweater" one in service, and I shut him right down. I'd been reading my Snopes.com, by this point.
After a while, I had the realization that this utter lack of critical thinking within a group is a sad psychological fact of humans. The Witnesses (and Mormons, and and and...) will believe almost anything when it comes from a friend or the platform, but are ridiculously skeptical of anything that comes from scientists or historians because 'they're a trap from Satan'. It was part of what began to distance me from the religion. One friend related how, as a child, he'd had his Smurfs melted by his mother while he was asleep (so I guess they weren't possessed!... oops). He seemed to understand that his mother was misled by a silly urban myth, but yet as an adult he frowned on Witness kids owning Pokémon cards because they were "spiritistic". Did I mention he was the one relating the John Denver story in service? And so the cycle continues....
P.S.: It's not exactly an urban legend, but on the subject of gullibility, how about a brother I knew who decided that his deceased mother's tablecloth was possessed, and took it out into the family's driveway to burn it while his non-believing relatives watched. And you know what, it wouldn't burn, only smolder! He shouted at it, "Burn, Jehovah, burn!" (his exact words), and apparently, it finally slowly burned. His family was reportedly amazed. Pop quiz: can anyone guess why this family heirloom from the old days didn't want to burn even when he threw some gasoline on it, besides demon possession?
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ÁrbolesdeArabia
These urban legends are still very popular in my former "circuit area".
JW'S ONLY NEED APPLY
From the stage, "the TO tells the dubs how several employers posted jobs asking the employees be Jehovah's Witnesses, these employers knew where they could find honest men and women with integrity. All the vacant jobs were filled with Pioneers, Auxillarys and Regular lay-people dubs and everyone lived happy ever after."
Problem, posting a "Help Wanted" in the Classifieds Sections of a paper requesting you be a certain religion, poses legal problems.
The Nazi War Hero: A traveling overseer was going door to door accompanied by an elderly brother, after receiving a "brush-off" by the angry householder, she complains "You Jehovah Witnesses don't go to War! What if the Nazi's had one the War in WW2, I lost five sons in battle for your freedom! You need to be ashamed of yourselves for sitting back while my children paid the blood-price."
The elderly brother who was silent during the whole time, stops following the lead of the TO who is walking away from the door. Eldery brother says "Guten Morgen Frau Jones, es tut mir leid, verlieren Sie Ihre Söhne im Krieg(good morning mrs jones, I am sorry you lose your sons in war!)
I fought in World War 2, I killed twenty men with my bare hands and personally decorated by Hitler. I was your religion during the "Great War", you should have prayed I was a Jehovah Witness, maybe I kill your sons, maybe not, if all were JWs during WW2 your sons still be alive?"
A great change of heart took place with her next time in field service, she requested our German brother to bring literature.
Flying money in the wind
Four Pioneers were working the dry areas of Colorado, driving on faith and fumes they pull over near a gas station. Nobody has any money, so they say a prayer and walk around the sage brush, "a fifty dollar bill" fly's in front a sister-pioneer and the wind shoots the "bill" up her dress. "Fifty dollars was a fortune in 1952, and Jehovah made sure our sisters knew he was sending them manana from Heaven."
I hated this story, so much for starving children, why can't falling coins land on their villages?
Don't Eat The Candy Children
"Children you should never eat candy a householder hands you, Dear Sister Burns learned the hard way. Sister Burn's Bible-Study had a dish of peanuts sitting on the coffee-table, overweight and hungry Burn's scoops by the hand full, this bible-study's peanut dish. "Yummy peanuts, Sister Burn's compliments her Study how yummy them peanuts are!
Sister Burn's head's to the bathroom and"the Study" pull's out a bag of chocolate covered peanuts, sucks the chocolate off the peanuts, and puts them in another dish. Mortified, the young sister ask's the Bible-study the question and receives the affirmative reply "I hate peanuts, so i suck them off the chocoate and leave them in dishes like this" Sister Burn's yummy peanuts were "spit-backs" from a crazy old lady, moral of the story, "don't eat candy from strangers!"
The burning matress was made of aspestos, your earlier question? Oregon and Northern California has their fair share of "screaming, yelling, cursing, flying, levitating-mattresses that "spit and hissed", refused to burn until a prayer was said by the annoited.
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pontoon
Table cloth wouldn't burn becasuse it was made with a lot of abestos. They used to put it in just about everything.
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haboob48
I heard all crap too.......................just having to rethink that after being out sooooooooo long just make me wanna go curl up on the cold floor in the FECAL POSITION! and that my friends is NOT a typo! hee hee
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Apognophos
Yes, I think ArbolesdeArabia and pontoon figured it out.
Ha, it's funny to hear another version of the peanuts-without-chocolate story. Our local version was simply that two sisters were calling on a nice black man when he offered them a dish of peanuts. As they were eating them, he said, "I only like the chocolate coating they come with." It wasn't intended as a cautionary tale when people would relate it in car groups, just as a humorous occurrence, but I suppose it still counts as an urban legend since it was probably made up as a joke, yet the friends believed it really happened.
This one isn't an urban legend but an experience, related to me personally by an elderly anointed brother. He was working on a Kingdom Hall project many years earlier, and a local Bible study showed up, presumably to help. However, while standing next to this brother, she suddenly straightened up and stiffly called out, "Identify yourself!", perhaps a couple times. That was basically the end of the story, because the anointed brother walked away without a word. You see, he felt that the a demon was speaking through the woman, challenging him to identify himself as one of the 144,000. Rather than converse with a demon who no doubt had a sinister motive and validate his own status, he decided not to answer.
In hindsight, it seems pretty clear to me that the woman was probably schizophrenic. The high incidence of schizophrenia among Witnesses/students has been noted many times. She may not even have been talking to him. As I said, the readiness of the Witnesses to ascribe anything they didn't understand (mental illness, fireproof tablecloths, etc.) to demons was part of what awakened me to the possibility that I might be, not in the truth, but in a 'great cloud of [gullible] witnesses'.
