My girlfriend and I were a little restless yesterday, so we took a drive out to a local “urban legend” hot spot: Bunny Man Bridge. The legends that collect around this site vary widely, attributing the origin to an escaped convict, a murderous teen, or perhaps just a local nut-job upset about trespassers.

[It's the Bunny Man! See the whole set here.]

Wikipedia has a passable entry on the legend, but much more interesting is the article hosted on Fairfax County’s official website: “The Bunny Man Unmasked: The Real Life Origins of an Urban Legend” by Brian A. Conley. Conley traces the history of the legend, examines possible origins, and offers a fairly convincing (and much less disturbing) case for the most likely origin.

The article is an excellent example of what real-world research on an urban legend would look like. Conley is a trained historian and archivist, so his research should be exemplary. However, students could conduct similar research on urban legends and present their findings.

Researching urban legends (as opposed to some of the mind-numbingly over-worked topics more prevalent in schools) has a number of advantages:

• It’s fun, particularly if the legend has a local origin, and this can be a good way to introduce students to research (plus, fits with the “scary stories” of the Fall season)
• Researching urban legends can help students become more critical and discriminating about the stories they are told
• Urban legends are, for the most part, directed at teens as moral cautionary tales; this research helps them to appreciate the tale on a number of levels
• The research is not already conveniently “done” for them in a library database, educational product, or online essay mill
• Students have to deal with, and find some way to reconcile, conflicting reports
• Students gain first-hand understanding of how stories change over time and tellers (an understanding which, incidentally, just might help them avoid their next gossip-inspired argument)
• Students can incorporate a wide range of source material, including newspaper reports (which may not be conveniently online) and interviews (if the legend is local enough)
• The presentation of their findings can easily take multiple forms: a scholarly essay combined with a wiki-page or multi-media presentation, for example

For an excellent examination of urban legends and their function in society, I highly recommend The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings by Jan Brunvand.

Have any local legends to share, or ideas for helping students conduct a research project of this type?

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