The Beheaded Freshman and Other Nasty Rumors

By Daniel Cohen

The author of Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales presents yet another collection of horrifying true stories, including the tale of the maniac who axed a sleeping camper to death. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380770202
• ISBN13: 9780380770205
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Avon Books
• Length: 116 Pages
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.2" x 6.9"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

You would think beheading a freshman would be a bad thing

I thought that "The Beheaded Freshman and Other Nasty Rumors" might be a collection of stories told by teachers to keep students in line, but actually Daniel Cohen has brought together twenty-one stories of strange tales, mayhem, and ghastly mistakes. The common denominator for these stories is that they are all "absolutely true but bizarre." Maybe some of these stories are just urban legends (apparently you can never have too many tales of a maniac in the woods going after campers with an ax), but the whole fun of urban legends is that they might be believable, such as the story of "The Frozen Shoplifter." Granted, "The Message of the Mirror" is too gruesome too be true, but many of these you will have no trouble believing are "true." The story referred to in the title, "The Beheading," is about one of the most irritating students of all time who becomes the victim of "a heated discussion of English history." So, even though a professor is not responsible for his demise, the student in question does have his comeuppance, which was nice to see. There is a story about a rabbit appearing after they have been dead and buried ("The Rabbit Returns") and one of those wickedly ironic stories about a corpse on the way to the morgue who gets jolted awake by the bumpy ride ("Dead Again"). You will never look at a VW Beetle the same after reading "The Beetles" and when you read some of these "Mob Tales" and the Rolls-Royce legends of "They Never Break Down" you will probably decide you like the stories that are a bit less believable like "Revenge Australian Style." There is certainly a mix of stories here in terms of believability, whatever your personal level of credulity. Cohen is also the author of "The Headless Roommate and Other Tales of Terror" and "Southern Fried Rat & Other Gruesome Tales," along with "The Encyclopedia of Ghost," "The Encyclopedia of Monsters," and "The Encyclopedia of the Strange," so there is ample evidence that he knows about weird things like ghosts, monsters, and really creepy legends. As Cohen points out, he is neither a professional folklorists who is tracing the origins of these stories and classifying them nor a professional psychologists interested in writing a scholarly paper on the deeper meaning of the tales. He is simply a storyteller who has no qualms about rewriting a legend he hears to make it a better story. Young readers can read one story each night and give themselves three weeks of sleepless nights.