Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993                   TAG: 9311070092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RALPH VIGODA KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'S REALLY TRUE, FLASHING HIGH BEAMS WON'T KILL YOU

A big lie.

A big, fat, stinking lie.

And everybody believes it.

Dire-sounding memos warning employees are being circulated in corporations. People are calling talk shows. Police are getting worried queries.

Here, in a nutshell, is the whopper: There's a new initiation rite (the rumor goes) in which prospective gang members drive around with their headlights off. Kindly motorists flash their high beams in a time-honored gesture to alert the drivers to put on their lights.

The thoughtful motorist is then followed and killed.

Exit one motorist, enter one gang member.

Except it's a hoax.

It started, as near as anyone can determine, with a Memphis newspaper story in August, worked its way to Chicago, spread out West - where thousands of calls were logged by California police departments - and in the last few weeks has moved rapidly east. Faxes and computer bulletin boards have hastened its spread.

Last week, for instance, a memo was circulated in one department of Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia. It was headlined "SAFETY ALERT!"

"Pennsylvania Police Departments in . . . Chester and Delaware counties are warning if you are driving at night and see a car without their headlights on, DO NOT FLASH YOUR HIGH BEAMS signaling them to turn on their lights," part of the memo read. "This is a serious matter and is not a joke."

The next day, the Blue Cross memo found its way to a Social Security office in Philadelphia. By that afternoon, an electronic message had been sent to every Social Security office in Philadelphia, to offices in Chester and Upper Darby, Pa., and to three offices in the state of Delaware.

A couple of days ago the Blue Cross/Social Security memo, with another warning from an unidentified office attached, was circulating among teachers in a Philadelphia school.

Sgt. R.E. Theresa Young, commanding officer of the Philadelphia Police Department's public affairs office, said the department has had a number of calls from the media and the public.

"An investigation was conducted by the Major Crimes Unit, and it was determined to be a hoax," Young said. She said unit investigators called police departments "from one end of this country to the other, and none of them ever experienced any of it."

The hoax, of course, is not the first, nor will it be the last, to be on the tips of everyone's tongues. A year or so ago, the talk was about kiddie stickers laced with LSD. Baby boomers all know the one about Paul McCartney being dead. Everybody has heard the rumor about alligators popping out of toilets.

But none of it's true.