apocryphal

apocryphal \uh-POK-ruh-fuhl\, adjective:

1. (Bible) Pertaining to the Apocrypha.
2. Not canonical. Hence: Of doubtful authority or authenticity; equivocal; fictitious; spurious; false.

Apocryphal or not, the anecdote contains at least a grain of truth.
-- Caroline Fraser, God's Perfect Child

In 1959 he told Walter Gutman that he first started writing when he was three years old, but that his sister threw away all his childhood writings one day when she cleaned out the attic. This sounds apocryphal as it is unlikely that he could read or write at that tender age, and if he could he would certainly have told us.
-- Barry Miles, Jack Kerouac King of the Beats

He always told romanticised apocryphal stories of his ancestry, sometimes a bastard grandfather, brought up on the parish, sometimes "a weaver, half poet and half madman."
-- Kathleen Jones, A Passionate Sisterhood

Apocryphal ultimately derives from Greek apokruphos, "hidden (hence, spurious)," from apokruptein, "to hide away," from apo-, "away, from" + kruptein, "to hide."