I have heard A LOT of legendary stories about interviews in my life and they all smell the same. The story is always very simple (step on a crack and you break your mother's back). If you do (this) or neglect to do (this) you either don't get hired or you get fired. It always implies much embarrassment and shame and seems to share the same logic as my non-scary nightmares, like the one where it's the end of the school year and I haven't done any of my math homework.
I can imagine things HAVE happened but logic tells me there's much more to the story than a + b = c. I would do everything that I can to avoid calling in sick for an interview because it's not exactly ethical, but if someone has had an attendance problem and called in sick hoping to stray off radar, I could totally see Murphy's Law there.