Yes, Comatose, that was how it was explained to me as a child; the sun appeared to stand still. God didn't bring the solar system to a screeching halt
As far as the "missing day" urban legend, I don't think I heard that until I was an adult. But it's not surprising if, despite a debunking by the Society (and how many people actually read all the articles, anyway?), the legend would persist in some quarters. Witnesses are by nature very vulnerable to urban legends. I've found a number of things being debunked on Snopes which were passed around the congregation as fact.
That was one of the things that made me start to question the "truth", in fact. If JWs would believe anything another JW told them, it suddenly made it much less faith-inspiring to think that "It must be the truth if all these older folks believe it." As a child I admired the adults as being much smarter than myself, but as I grew up, I slowly started to see that they were fairly ignorant and superstitious.