Mormon missionaries seem to have trouble differentiating between fact and fiction. There are a number of urban legends that have become popular among the missionaries, some cropping up among other Christian missionaries as well. Scholars cite them as an example of the development of "folklore," but might it not also be a sign of gullibility?

Mark Eddington writes in the Salt Talk Tribune:

Folklorists see nothing novel about missionary stories. All sorts of groups -- cops, firefighters, Boy Scouts -- spin tales. What makes LDS missions an especially fertile field for folklore is that elders and sisters don't punch out at the end of the day. A missionary is always a missionary. "Missionaries are what folklorists call a very high-context group," BYU English professor Jill Terry Rudy says. "No matter where they serve, they basically are on the same schedule and there is a lot of continuity in what they do every day. With that amount of continuity, missionaries develop common stories and language that are shared between missions."

Folklorists say the stories endure and endear because they fill basic needs. ... Such stories will live on as long as there are missionaries, [Brigham Young University humanities professor William] Wilson says, just as they do for other groups. "From studying the folklore of missionaries, railroaders and college professors, we learn not only about what it means to be [a member of those groups], but also what it means to be human."

Sophisticated scholars have the luxury of examining myths, legends, and folklore as being neither true nor false but, rather, as pointing to the needs of human beings and even what it means to be human. There is certainly nothing wrong with that because it is indeed correct. However, we cannot hold to that as if it were the only perspective that mattered.

What about the average person who doesn't seem such tales as expressions of human need but, rather, factual accounts of precisely what has happened in reality? Those people exist - and, in fact, probably make up the majority of those who have active contact with such stories. What does it say about them that they are so ready to believe unrealistic stories?

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