You know chain emails? You probably manage to avoid them these days, for the most part, thanks to the advent of spam-spotting software and virus protection that bumps any unwanted correspondence to the junk folder. They still slip through the cracks on occasion, though, although these days you're just as likely to come across them as YouTube comments, which claim to curse you ala the tape from The Ring, and if you don't pass the message on within a certain amount of time, something terrible will happen to you. Even if it's just, like, your crush not liking you back. Regardless, they're still a potent source of scary stories even to this day, a unique form of internet urban legend which - as we've seen - exists in terrifying multitudes. This one gets a little meta because it's a chain email about chain emails that did the rounds a few years ago, but it's right up there with the great and terrible stories of our time. The story of the Smith Sisters begins with a kid called John Smith who delights in forwarding chain emails, jump scare videos and gross pictures to people. You know, like kids do on the internet. One day he gets a message from two girls, the Smith Sisters, who claim to be his older siblings - something he wasn't aware of having. To add veracity to their story, they send him a couple of creepy old photos of them in his house, with the caption "Smith Sisters murdered anonymously". John begins to realise that these "older sisters" were killed in his home, and his parents had never mentioned them. For proof he gets an email telling him to check the upstairs wardrobe, which he does; and he's never seen again. But police did find two carvings inside, one reading "Lisa and Sarah 1993" and the other, below it, "John 2007". Yep, turn your spam filters on, guys.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
