Gang Initiations pt. 1

American Hysteria

W!ZARD Studios

Society & Culture

4.4 • 3.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2024

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For this Urban Legends Hotline episode, we are answering a listener message about a story of street gangs initiating wannabes with frightening rituals including driving around with their headlights off and murdering the first good samaritan who gives them a courtesy flash. We'll explore several scares that have flared up due to different versions of this urban legend, as well as real crimes wrongfully blamed on these initiations, all leading to the feeling that street gangs were creeping into the suburbs, looking for human sacrifices. Leave us a message on our Urban Legends Hotline Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content Or subscribe to American Hysteria on Apple Podcasts Sound designer and associate producer: Riley Swedelius-Smith Producer: Miranda Zickler Voice Actor: Will Rogers Written, produced and hosted by by Chelsey Weber-Smith Thank you to our sponsors: Factor’s delicious, ready-to-eat meals make eating better every day easy. Head to factormeals.com/americanhysteria50 and use code americanhysteria50 to get 50% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Just a heads up, this episode contains descriptions of violence. Welcome to the Urban Legends Hotline, where we investigate the mysterious tales of your hometowns and stories passed through the old
0:28.2	lockard halls of your schools to get to the haunted heart of the urban legends that you grew up hearing and maybe even telling.
0:40.8	Today we are covering gang initiations.
0:46.8	I'm your host Chelsea Weber Smith
0:49.4	and from one friend of a friend to another, this is American hysteria.
0:57.0	Hi Chelsea, this is Elizabeth. I was a teenager in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1990s. You know how when you're
1:09.2	driving at night in the dark and the polite thing to do when you see another car who's
1:15.0	forgotten to turn on their lights the polite thing to do is to flash your
1:18.7	headlights at them so they'll turn it on well for some reason in Omaha in the 90s,
1:23.7	there was this urban legend that if you were to flash your lights
1:27.8	at night like this, that there was a gang initiation happening and that if you flashed your lights at another car, a gang
1:36.3	member would have to shoot you.
1:39.2	I don't know where this came from.
1:40.8	I don't know the origin of this. it's really silly and I think in retrospect,
1:45.4	fundamentally racist, but I was wondering if this might be a good topic for your urban
1:50.8	legends shows.
1:52.5	Thanks, bye-bye. In August of 1993, parents, school officials, newsrooms, fire stations, and police departments
2:10.1	across America began receiving faxes on official looking letterhead.
2:17.0	Warnings about a blood initiation weekend set for the 25th and 26th of September.
2:28.0	Many took these warnings seriously and continued the chain, faxing and emailing these warnings out to everyone they knew,
2:38.0	printing and sending them through the mail, even posting copies as flyers around town.
2:46.0	The story went like this.
	...

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