Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is the first place to go if you get an e-mail story that sounds a bit off. Any e-mail that you get from friends that has been passed around a lot and asks you to respond in some way should be checked out, and Snopes is the place to check it out.
Snopes has been around for a long, long time, and if a hoax or legend has been passed around at all, you’ll read the whole story there.