Friend of a friend

A new word has been made to describe these stories that we have all heard and are very familiar with. That word is Foaflore - (Friend-Of-A-Friend lore).
There are hundreds of them. Probably one of the most famous being the phantom hitch-hiker. For anyone who has led a very sheltered life and has never heard the story it goes something like this:
It is a wild and rainy night, and a man is driving down a country lane when he comes upon a bedraggled young lady hitch-hiker. Being a gentleman he stops to pick her up and drives on a mile or two and drops her off outside her house. The next morning he discovers she has left her scarf (or purse, or handbag depending on which version you have heard) so he thinks "I know, I will drop it off at her house on the way to work".
He arrives at her house and knocks at the door and the door is answered by an elderly lady. He told her that he had picked up a young lady hitch-hiker and she had left this item in his car. The woman asked where he had picked her up and he described the area on the country lane. The lady then told him that her daughter had been killed in that very spot by a hit and run driver exactly one year ago yesterday, and the item was hers.
Great story - and no doubt is based upon some earlier tale of a stagecoach driver or some such. One wonders where these marvellous tales spring from. They provide endless amusement to me.
I once heard a lesser tale about a local shop - the details I won't divulge because they are totally untrue and libellous. The person who told me the story told me who had told him, so I went off to see if I could track down the originator of the tale. I got back 4 people into the chain before I gave up.
These stories are the obvious next generation of folk tales. Now we are no longer interested in listening to grannies old tales and remedies we seek them elsewhere - within the wonderful world of FOAFLORE.