Seven women have died after smelling a free perfume sample that had been mailed to them.

See the email warning here.

No. It's an urban legend.

Because there's no evidence that it did happen.

That may seem like weasely debunking but given the almost complete lack of details in the email, how is the Urban Legend Zeitgeist supposed to lay hands on evidence that it didn't happen?

Considering the flood of media attention to the anthrax letters of 2001 and given the prevailing post-9/11 angst, not to mention the numerous warnings of possible terrorist attacks issued by various officials, it's not plausible to claim that seven deaths could be kept secret by 'the government' or even that 'the government' wants to avoid alarming the public.

So why is it an urban legend?

Urban legendary is not an exact science - fortunately for us - but the email bears a suspicious resemblance to two recent popular scarelores: the Knockout Perfume and the Klingerman Virus.

Both the Knockout Perfume and the Klingerman Virus spawned a large number of variations. Both circulated by both word of mouth and by email.

In the case of the the Klingerman Virus, one detail has been curiously constant in all its variations: the death toll of seven victims.

The link between the Knockout Perfume and the Killer Perfume is obvious: perfume.

So how was this cross between the Knockout Perfume and the Klingerman Virus created? The simplest explanation is that someone heard or read versions of the Knockout Perfume and the Klingerman Virus and conflated the two stories in an email that was passed on and on and on in Energizer Bunny-like fashion.

Couldn't it be a deliberate hoax? The Urban Legend Zeitgeist doesn't think so. Authors of email hoaxes tend to throw in lots of pseudo-corroborating detail to lend the hoax an air of credibility. That makes the Urban Legend Zeitgeist's life easier because it narrows a search for disproof or proof. In this case, however, there is little substantive information. The who, what, where and when are missing.

• Urban Legend Zeitgeist: The Klingerman Virus
• Urban Legend Zeitgeist: The Knockout Perfume
• Employee Reprimanded Over E-Mail Hoax from KPRC (Houston)
• Poisoned Perfume Samples in the Mail from About.com
• The Knockout Perfume from About.com
• Charnel No. 5 from Snopes.com

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