Sometimes, those Urban Legends are real.

I frequently check out Snopes.com, particularly the "What's New" section. Today there was an Urban Legend of sorts that rang true for me, as I knew someone who had a similar experience to the "legend"...

This entry on Snopes talks about a few instances of people dressed in costume running into trouble by going to the wrong door. One was even killed. A couple of the incidents mentioned were confirmably true.

This reminded me of something that happened to the family of some classmates of mine when I lived in Arizona. It wasn't exactly like the Snopes story, but it was similar.

In junior high, I went to school with an exceptionally bright pair of siblings, Kathy and Ben. Kathy and Ben had an older brother - I want to say his name was David - who was in high school.

One night, while their father was out of town on business, there was a news report about a violent criminal who escaped from jail that day. Their mother started freaking out and went around the house locking every window and door and pulling all the drapes. What the kids didn't see is that she also grabbed her husband's .357 revolver and loaded it.

David thought it was really funny that his mother was panicking about this escaped criminal, who was probably not going to wander into our boring suburb, and thought he would play a little trick on his mom. He pulled on a ski mask and his "Property of Alcatraz" sweatshirt, snuck out his bedroom window, and went to the front door, unlocked it with his key, and rang the doorbell. Then as his mother approached the door, he opened the door.

His mother pulled the revolver out and fired at him twice. Luckily for David, his mother was a horrible shot, and both bullets went into the doorframe next to him. He pulled the mask off and started yelling for his mother not to shoot him.

David was lucky to have lived through that experience. He later would claim he could see the bullets coming at him, in slow motion. I'm pretty sure that was just panic affecting his memory. But I'm pretty sure it soured him on practical jokes for awhile.