A STORY SHARED on social media that a Cork woman who was invited to smell a woman’s perfume and later woke up to find she had been robbed is a copy of an internet rumour.

The story itself has been shared online tens of thousands of times since at least 2024, often by US-based Facebook users. Multiple versions of the same story have also been found on X.

Most of these posts include almost identical wording, including a 24 August post made to a Facebook group for Kildorrery Parish in north Cork.

“NOTICE TO ALL LADIES,” it begins. “A friend was put to sleep in the bathroom of a movie theater and everything was stolen from her and she doesn’t remember anything, only that a woman gave her a perfume to smell.”

“I was also approached yesterday afternoon around 3.30pm in the parking lot of the mall,” the post continues, saying that she was offered a sample of perfume by two men she suspected were trying to drug her as well.

“There are people who approach you to offer you to SMELL THE PERFUME they are selling but it is NOT actually perfume, IT IS AXTER. When you smell it you faint and they take advantage of the opportunity to steal everything of value you carry.”

There are numerous reasons to be sceptical that this happened — at least near Kildorrery. Firstly, there’s the Americanisms — “movie theatre”, “parking lot”, “the mall” — that indicate it was written by an American.

Secondly, there is neither a cinema nor anything like a mall in Kildorrery. There is a Centra newsagent, but no nearby shopping centres, and the nearest cinema is in Mallow, about 20 kilometres away.

“There are no incidents matching the description provided on our system at this time,” a garda spokesperson said in response to The Journal’s queries of whether any incident like the one described had occurred.

There are also indications that the story is not based on any true event.

There is no known substance called Axter, though the term has appeared in similar online legends about women being knocked out.

It is possibly a corruption of the word ether, which is named in very similar stories going back to at least the turn of the millennium.

However, while drugs like ether or chloroform can knock people out, the effect is not instantaneous and doesn’t occur with a single whiff like one might take smelling perfume. It usually requires continuous inhalation over minutes.

The Journal debunked a similar story in July, which claimed that a woman had been drugged by touching a business card given to her by “foreign nationals”.

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