BreakTheChain.org
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Do You Believe in Ghosts?Date Added: July 31, 2000
According to this chain letter, young Amanda's dying wish was that the world would forward an e-mail about her long after she was gone. If there is one thing for certain about e-mail, it is that it can, indeed, be the secret to immortality.
The Story of Amanda
I once knew this girl and her name was Amanda. We were real good friends, but there was something different about her. She had a fast-spreading cancer and she was only 14. A few months ago she told me that when she dies she wanted a chain letter to be sent around about her. She also said that she will haunt anyone who doesn't send it. Well, Amanda died a few weeks ago, so I'm doing her wish. **********Scroll down because you get to make a free wish********** You can make a free wish:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ok... Send it to: 0 People: You've just pissed Amanda off...expect something REALLY bad/scary to happen VERY soon... 1-5 People: You kinda helped her out...she may do something good for you...maybe... 6-10 People: Amanda is kinda happy now...she will do something good for you in the next few weeks... 11-15 People: Amanda is proud of you and will thank you by doing something good for you in the next few days... 16+ People: Amanda is very very happy and something good will happen to you in a few minutes... Send or BEWARE!!! This message first arrived in my inbox in 2000 with about 3 miles worth of headers, indicating that it is being forwarded with fervor. And, to my disbelief, many folks are asking about its veracity. There are no hard facts in this message to check out, prove, or disprove. No full name, no location, and no way to verify if the events predicted do/do not occur. So, I'll leave it up to you to determine whether you believe it or not. Instead of debunking it, I would like to give some theories about why this message is in wide circulation despite its highly unlikely claims. I'm sure some people send it on because they honestly and truly believe they will be haunted by the ghost of a 14 year-old girl if they don't. Then there are those that send it on because they find it amusing -- Perhaps, they can't believe a message this absurd gets a second glance, let alone forwarded, so they send it on to see how many of their friends are bone-headed enough to do the same. There are also quite a few lemmings out there who forward on everything they are told to, regardless of the subject matter (perhaps you know someone like this). There are also those who will do anything to help a child -- even one that is already dead -- get their wishes fulfilled. Regardless of the reasoning, this message, and others like it, should not be forwarded. It accomplishes nothing constructive and doesn't build hope, give advice, or issue helpful warnings. Instead, it clogs e-mail systems with useless kilobytes of junk, wastes the time of those who stop to read it, and violates the privacy of everyone whose name and e-mail address is automatically encoded in the header every time the message is forwarded (and there were quite a few on the version we got). Go ahead and haunt me, Amanda, I'm breaking this chain! References: None
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