‘DID YOU HEAR ABOUT…’

One has only to drive down the Strip to see that Las Vegas is a city built on lies.

There are facsimiles of Paris; facades of New York and a lot of liberty-taking with Europe and Asia, to name a few. So it should come as no surprise that Las Vegas is the home city mentioned in some notorious urban legends.

And why not?

Las Vegas is a popular tourist destination that has been the site of some fantastic events, says David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Think "ricin puts man in coma" or "medical clinics infect patients with disease."

"You wouldn't think these things could happen, but they did," Schwartz says.

Las Vegas has quite a bit of lore attached to it, too, Schwartz says, from bodies buried in Hoover Dam to aliens living at Area 51 (both false). There's the one about a female high roller who made a unique room service request: a bathtub full of blood for her beauty ritual. It's not true, Schwartz says, but things like that probably rise from the fact that so many unbelievable things do, indeed, happen in Sin City.

Barbara Mikkelson has heard her share of Las Vegas-based legends. As the co-creator of the Web site snopes.com, Mikkelson spends a lot of her time investigating stories, then posting her findings. Some are debunked as urban myths, others are found to be true.

A few of the Las Vegas-based legends on her site: A woman is electrocuted while walking on the Strip (true); the winner of Megabucks' largest jackpot died a horrible death (false); a woman takes her choking dog to the veterinarian, who finds the fingers of a burglar in the pet's throat (false).

Some legends are scary and tend to have a horror movie quality to them and there's a reason for that, Mikkelson says.

"Stories like these give voice to a certain sense of disquiet. In the case of Las Vegas, there is a widespread characterization of it that it is a cold and heartless place where people aren't valued but for the contents of their wallets. People aren't people, they're just disposable goods," Mikkelson says.

No story illustrates that better than the one about a tourist who is the victim of kidney-harvesting in a Las Vegas hotel room (followed by another classic horror tale).

KIDNEY HARVESTING

This one has been around for a while, since 1991, but by 1996, it was said to be taking place in Las Vegas, Mikkelson notes. The story claims that a man on a business trip meets a woman in a lounge, takes her to his room and wakes up in a bathtub full of ice. Minus a kidney. Nearby are a telephone and instructions, the story goes, detailing that he has been an unwilling organ donor and needs to call for help.

Did it happen? No. But stories like this are repeated to the point that they become ingrained in people's minds as truths. They're easy to spread because "people have a view of Las Vegas as Sin City. It's a place where the dollar is the only thing that matters. It is seen as one of the most commercial cities in the U.S. that stops short of stealing the organs of its visitors," Mikkelson says.

This is the kind of urban legend that has several lessons in it, Mikkelson adds. One is to beware when traveling to a popular tourist destination because you could become prey. Another lesson? Don't take strangers to your room because bad things could happen.

THE BODY UNDER THE BED

The story has variations but it's generally told that a couple who come to Las Vegas for their honeymoon report a terrible smell in their room. And it isn't the groom's socks.

Housekeeping responds, but the smell persists. A couple of days later, the smell gets worse and, for some reason, someone lifts the mattress to find the body of a girl underneath.

This one doesn't sound so unlikely, Schwartz says, because bodies are found in hotel rooms quite often. It has in fact happened around the country, Mikkelson says, and she was able to document instances for her snopes.com site. People have slept in beds that hid the corpses of murder victims. But she couldn't find an instance of it happening in Las Vegas, at least the body in the bed part.

Urban legends like this are easy to believe because they're a mix of the truth, what could be the truth and some outrageous circumstances, she adds.

This urban legend sounds a lot like a killing in 1998, when the husband of a du Pont heiress hired a man to kill a woman; her body was found stuffed in the air-conditioning vent of a Del Mar Resort Motel room.

But the body under the bed story has a message in it, which most urban legends do. The message, Mikkelson says, is that life in Las Vegas is like a seedy motel room: cheap.

Not all Vegas-based legends are so gory. Following are a few that many may think are true but are not, Mikkelson and Schwartz agree.

OXYGEN PUMPED INTO CASINOS

The chances that you've heard this are pretty good; it's an oft-repeated tale about Las Vegas, Schwartz says. The story goes that oxygen is pumped into casinos to keep people alert so they stay longer and spend more money. People sometimes claim that it must be true because they never felt more alert in all their lives than during the 12 hours they spent playing craps in a Las Vegas casino. Or video poker. Schwartz doesn't doubt that people feel more alert but says that's nothing more than adrenaline.

"As a former casino employee, I'd say it's not hard to fall asleep in casinos," Schwartz jokes.

And that is one way he can say with certainty that casinos don't pump oxygen; in all his time working security for casinos, he was never showed where the oxygen bottles were stored, he says.

And if you find yourself doubting Schwartz, think of this: There's no way to raise the level of oxygen enough to be noticeable, because it would require tremendous amounts of the gas, which would dissipate when the doors opened. Also, oxygen is highly flammable. People smoke in casinos. To combine the two would have disastrous results, he says.

"People have an innate need to understand how the world works," Schwartz says, explaining how such urban legends grow. "The fact that things happen by chance really scares people. There's kind of a gap between what we scientifically believe about the world and what we need to feel."

"HUNTING FOR BAMBI"

In 2003, a local television newscast aired a story about a new pastime in Las Vegas: hunting women. The story covered the discovery of a new outdoor adventure in which men could pay $5,000 to $10,000 to hunt naked women in the desert, then shoot them with paint-ball guns. The media picked it up and the story went around the world, igniting a firestorm of controversy. Mayor Oscar Goodman got involved, denouncing the practice.

Within the same month, the "safaris" were revealed as a hoax. It was thought that the hoax was an elaborate attempt to get publicity for a video production company.

" 'Hunting for Bambi' was a good one. Long after it was over, people were still thinking it was true. I remember the mayor being awful upset about that one, saying, 'You may not hunt naked women with paint balls,' " Mikkelson says.

Man with flat tire rewards good samaritan

Schwartz says he has heard this urban legend in several forms, but it always comes back to teaching people that good deeds are rewarded. The story goes that a man driving a limo has a flat; someone pulls over and helps him change the tire. The guy in distress turns out to be some high roller or, in one version of the story, Donald Trump.

Later, the doer of good discovers that his mortgage has been paid off by this guy, as nothing more than a "thanks." Schwartz says he can't find proof of this ever happening.

Mikkelson has heard a version that takes place in a hotel elevator. A woman gets on an elevator with a black man. He says, "Hit the floor," meaning to press the elevator button. She dives to the floor of the elevator, thinking she's being robbed. The man, who turns out to be famous, laughs and tells her it's the best laugh he has had in a while so he pays her hotel bill. This version has racial overtones to it, Mikkelson says, and is untrue.

TUNNELS UNDER THE STRIP

There's an elaborate maze of tunnels underneath major Strip properties that enables people to come and go without being detected. Not.

This legend is similar to the Disneyland urban legend, Mikkelson says. The idea is that, underpinning the happy place of Las Vegas, exists some sort of secret place where bodies can be removed and other equally horrible things can happen without disturbing people on the surface, she explains.

Contact reporter Sonya Padgett at spadgett@reviewjournal.com or (702) 380-4564.