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In 2002, Snopes documented this online message: This little howler appeared on the internet in early October 2002. Though its nature as a joke should be apparent to all, we’ve had folks ask us in all seriousness if the events it described had indeed taken place. Sadly, we must inform those who inquired that no, they did not. This is a fine example of a shaggy dog tale, the appeal of which folklorist Jan Brunvand describes thusly: The humor of these tales consists of telling an outrageous falsehood in the sober accents of a truthful story. Although accounts of ghostly encounters and rescues are a vibrant part of folklore, this particular blood-chiller is a deliberate joke and not an urban legend (a story that has been widely believed and told as true). In September 2007, we saw the pushed car tale again, that time told online as a True Australian Ghost Story about someone named John Bradford, supposedly a Sydney University student. That version claimed the events described had happened earlier this year in Brisbane. In July 2004, a sanitized version of the joke appeared as a Laughter, the Best Medicine item in Reader’s Digest. However, the earliest sighting so far reported comes from 1979, when it appeared in a collection of jokes published that year.
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