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From: sjsmith@cs.umd.edu (Stephen Joseph Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: _News of the Weird_ books: annotated bibliography
Date: 2 May 1994 22:47:24 -0400

Chuck Shepherd, John J. Kohut, and Roland Sweet (_News of the Weird_, ISBN

0-452-2611-5, 1989, _More News of the Weird_, ISBN 0-452-26545-2, 1990, and _Beyond News of the Weird_, ISBN 0-452-26716-1, 1991, all published by Penguin). The problem with these books is that they are not indexed, and while the chapters are grouped by category, the categories can be very general and can overlap (does the teemager-trapped-under-car-andforced -to-listen-to-Wham!-for-six-hours story fall under "Smooth Reactions", "Oops", "Insolent Chariots", "Weirdos in Training", "From the Police Blotter" or "Wrong Place at the Wrong Time"? None of these, it qualifies as "Weird Punishment".) Also, the books don't always provide dates and rarely provide references, and apparently the first author lost to Jan Harold Brunvand and Cecil Adams in the first annual Urban-Legend Tag-Team match. Still, the books are a great source of urban pre-legends.