Urban Legends: The Organ Harvest

STORY: A young woman was in Las Vegas for a sales convention. One night during her stay, she went for a drink at the hotel's bar. Soon after she sat down, an attractive man approached her, and offered to buy her a drink. The woman accepted his offer, and the two spent the evening talking and flirting over drinks. According to the woman, at some point during their conversation, she blacked out.

The next morning she woke up with severe pain in her lower back; she quickly realized that she was also completely naked and lying in a bathtub filled with ice. There was a phone resting on the side of the bathtub, with an attached note that said, "Call 911 or you will die".

Soon after she called 911, an ambulance arrived to rush her to the hospital. Upon arrival, the doctor informed the woman that she had just undergone major surgery. One of her kidneys had been removed by organ harvesters who sell human organs on the black market.

ORIGIN: This urban legend has been told hundreds of times over with slight variations. Sometimes the victim is an unsuspecting tourist who was drugged by a prostitute; or a student who was out drinking with her friends and is randomly drugged at a bar. However, the legend was first told in April 1991, when the Washington Post ran a story about an organ harvester. The writer of the article had traced the urban legend back to a rejected movie script.

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