‘Has anyone started a rumour or story and it has spread?’ – 19 tall tales that somehow became ‘fact’

Living, as we do, in the age of ‘fake news’ and disinformation, we should be extra careful about the thing we tell each other that haven’t been verified as fact. But are we?

Well, no, it seems not, if the AskUK subreddit is anything to go by. User DesignerElectrical23 recently posted this:

Has anyone started a rumour or story and it’s spread? I accidentally created local folklore. As a kid I made up a story about the pond being dredged and a car and horse skeleton being found.

Thirty years later, a random dog walker repeated my own invention back to me as if it were fact. The pond was never dredged my childhood rumour just survived and became local ‘history’.

And the answers showed that we can rarely be completely sure about the truth of things, even if we didn’t read them on Facebook…

1.

‘Early 2000s and my work had an intranet which included a messageboard on which people could post anonymously. A very annoying guy in the office was off sick for a couple of days and I posted that he was going to be on Big Brother, the new series of which was starting a few days later.

The rumour spread fast and soon reached his boss, who went on the warpath as she wasn’t able to get hold of him and therefore assumed it was true. She was storming about the place for several hours, even calling an emergency meeting with senior management and HR to begin disciplinary proceedings. He returned to the office the next day and was hauled over the coals despite clearly having done nothing wrong.

I did feel a bit bad but, as I say, he was very annoying. Sorry Nick.’
–rbarker82

2.

‘Yes, many years ago at school someone noticed that one of my friends wasn’t in class during the afternoon. I knew that he had gone for a dentist appointment but, on the spot, I made up a story that a car had driven over his foot when he was walking home for lunch and he had to be taken to hospital.

I kept this story up for hours, even describing his look of surprise when his foot was flattened. When he returned to school the next day everyone was asking about his foot and he didn’t have a clue what they were talking about!’
–stbens

3.

‘My cousin edited a Wikipedia article to say that a less well known actress had married him quietly and it’s been quoted in various online magazine articles and keeps being added back to Wikipedia using the articles as source.’
–Independent-Ad-3385

4.

‘I went to visit a friend in a block of flats, I didn’t realise at the time someone I worked with was living in the same block also. Went into work the next day and everyone asked if I was sleeping with her. This woman was pregnant, lived with her partner, who was a manager at the same pub. Naturally we both said yes and that I was the father of her baby.

We didn’t really think too much of it, as it was obviously false and we (including her partner) were just playing along with it for a few days until everyone got bored. However, it got to closer to the time and we realised people were asking genuine questions about how it was going to work with me being the father and her living with another guy.’
–CuratorOfNoise

5.

‘I had one started about me. Stopped being friends with this kid at School, not deliberately, just phased out. He decided to tell some people that I had liked to tickle my bum hole with a spoon… This spread round school and for the final two years, I became known as Spoony. Never thought about it at the time, but I never reacted to it when people called it me. I think that tact helped it fade out.’
–2stewped2havgudtime

6.

‘I spread a rumour at uni that my Norwegian housemate was actually a Brummie who wanted to make herself sound more interesting so had concocted a Scandinavian backstory.

Someone in one of my lectures told me about it and refused to believe me when I told her I had made it up. Turned out lots of people took it as fact.’
–pinkandgreendreamer

7.

‘One of my work friends didn’t come into work one Monday and was never heard from again. Our workplace was a nightmare for nasty gossip and I hated it there. Anyway they started asking me why he’d disappeared. I hadn’t a clue at the time, so I said maybe he’s won the lottery.

So this guy ended up getting loads of begging letters and hundreds of phone calls from journalists and random people wanting money off him. I later found out (but didn’t tell anyone) that he’d been sacked for stealing.’
–lizzie_knits

8.

”Not quite the same but I once went into Morrisons singing The Bare Necessities quietly to myself. Within a couple of minutes I heard someone else humming it. I’d stopped by now but halfway round, someone else. Then another person buying bread.

As we got to the checkout… guess what the cashier was humming?’
–Tacklestiffener

9.

‘Me and my mates all simultaneously tweeted in slightly different manners that the particularly shite DJ Tom Zanetti wears a wig. It spread a bit at the time (2018ish) to the point where people we didn’t know were also tweeting about it. Don’t think it’s very widespread now but I have heard Tom Zanetti playing in public before and then heard someone random say ‘Do you know he wears a wig?’, which made me smile.’
–HorrificNecktie6269

10.

‘Years ago at work, we had a new guy start in the office, while someone else was off for a few months following an operation. I told newbie that this other guy was on sick leave because he’d snapped his banjo string having a particularly frantic wank.

He checked with someone else, who figured what was going on and confirmed my story. It eventually spread around the entire floor of our office, everyone joined in with convincing new guy that this was the reason the other guy was off

We repeated the favour a while later, newbie pulled his back and was off for a while so we told everyone he’d knackered his back during an overly energetic shag with his missus.’
–SparkieMark1977