This paper offers the hypothesis that in times of low collective excitement rumors in a complex society whose content is beyond normal social discourse (a spectral rumor, for instance) will increasingly exhibit one or the other, or both, of two legitimizing agents--authority and mass media--as a means of gaining greater plausibility and acceptance. This shift to include such an agent(s) has been occasioned by the greater pervasiveness of the mass media in day-to-day affairs and by two processes that have accompanied this pervasiveness: (1) the status-conferral function, and (2) the accepted veracity of the news media as a result of its accountability and source identifiability. The paper also suggests that the use of these legitimizing agents is more extensive in the actual transmission of a rumor than in the investigative or laboratory setting, and that the use of legitimizing agents may be more common in a rumor's early stages of transmission than in its later stages. (Author)