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I loved Snopes.com. It did create a problem for me in that every time I started looking around, huge chunks of time would disappear on me. It is a fun, entertaining, and stimulating site. But it also has some value in terms of research, most notably the section on curses and chain letters. There are people in this world who believe they can be cursed by not performing actions such as sending a chain letter along. Also, apparently some teenagers believe they will be killed if they don't post certain ghost stories to their MySpace pages. Both of these concerns are put to rest on Snopes.com. All material is presented in a matter of fact manner, without being condescending.

The website is named Snopes for a family name in three of William Faulkner's books. It's a brilliant name, to my way of thinking, since it conjures one of the most fascinating of authors and his stream of consciousness writing; he is one of my favorites. And this particular group I have not read, so I am grateful for the reminder, also for the opportunity to quote Faulkner - "The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is any good." -Faulkner

And the preparers and operators of this website are good, if not completely ruthless. They are Barbara and David Mikkelson and they started up in 1995. Subtitled Rumor Has It, the website is about urban legends in the broadest sense of the term, including old wives tales, ghost stories, celebrity stories, hard to believe news items, and other rumors. The goal of the website is to prove or disprove each and every rumor, story, or what have you. The authors do extensive research on each topic, and there are probably thousands of topics. They also leave footnotes for each topic, thereby validating their research.

Several of the ghost stories I've heard before; and one of my favorites is the haunted Toys R' Us in Sunnyvale, CA. That one is rated unclassifiable veracity. There are a series of five ratings and not one of the ghost stories received a true. I was so disappointed! The classic hitchhiker ghost story is included. In this one, a driver gives a young lady a ride, either discovers her missing from the back seat upon arrival or discovers something that she left in the car, then upon knocking on the door of the house she wants to go to, finds that she died years before. This story is also rated as unclassifiable veracity. Also this particular story comes from many different places and time periods, establishing the

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