In the course of a research program dealing with the effects of newly organized community activity programs on the social life of a housing project a rumor concerning the nature of the investigation arose. It stated that the research was communist inspired, and very quickly the entire program of stimulating activities bogged down. Thus, the study of the rumor was incidental to the major study and data were collected by means of informal reports and a retrospective questionnaire given to the members of the project. Steps taken to combat the rumor are briefly reported. The issue is discussed in terms of the media and processes of communication, and 3 theoretical principles concerning rumor are advanced: rumors arise where people are unable to control those factors disrupting their existence, also where “cognitive regions especially relevant to immediate behavior are largely unstructured,” and lastly that “once the central theme of a rumor is accepted, there will be a tendency to reorganize and to distort items so as to be consistent with the central theme.” (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)