Music and mythology seem to be many worlds apart. Yet, fascinating stories have emerged to prove that music is an art laced with mysteries. From satanic messages in “Hotel California” to Robert Johnson’s alleged pact with the devil, it seems that urban legends are an inherent part of fame.

Some songs, however, have more horrifying tales to tell. Here are some lesser-known myths hidden in 10 of the most cryptic songs ever written.

10 Famous Urban Legends Come To Life

10 The Forest Ogre
“The Erlking”

In 1782, young German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a ballad that soon launched a terrifying urban legend. Entitled “The Erlking,” the musical piece tells the story of a sinister creature who preys on travelers and children.

Also known as the “King of Alders,” this forest monster is said to be a mistranslation of the original Danish “elf king.” Still, it has remained a haunting reminder of our childhood fears and the dark underworld hiding in the jungles.

Legend has it that a man was riding on a horse with his young son one eerie night. As they passed through the dark corners of the forest, the young boy suddenly heard whispers from the unknown. Terrified, he told his father about the ominous sign. However, the father reassured his child that it was just the wind “rustling with the dead leaves.”

The voice grew louder. But with his father ignoring him, the boy had no other choice. As they finally reached home, the father got the shock of his life. He found his poor son lifeless, with his soul allegedly consumed by the Erlking.^[1]

The story of the malevolent creature soon found its way into different communities and folk legends. In Dartmoor, for instance, a demon huntsman named Dewer is known to kill innocent children, hide them in sacks, and deliver the corpses straight to their parents. Another Erlking-inspired child killer is Ireland’s Tuatha De Danann, an evil creature known for leaving changelings in cradles to replace the poor infant victims.

9 Devil’s Dance
“Asereje” (“The Ketchup Song”)

In 2002, Spanish girl trio Las Ketchup conquered the international music scene with an unexpected hit. The song “Asereje” (“The Ketchup Song”), accompanied by awkward dance steps, became one of the best-selling singles of all time. But not long after it became an overnight sensation, rumors of backmasking and satanic references began to emerge.

It all started when an email message—allegedly from a newspaper in Chihuahua, Mexico—exposed hidden messages behind the song’s lyrics. The controversy focused on two major areas: the title and the song’s lead character named Diego.

If broken down and translated into English, “Asereje” also means “a being of heresy.” On the other hand, the alternative title, “Ketchup,” can be divided into two parts: “Up” (meaning “heaven”), and “chet” (loosely translated as “dung” or “sh–t”).

When combined, the resulting word can mean “heaven is sh–t” or a direct attack on the sky. Backmasking also applies to the rest of the lyrics—allegedly to conceal clues which describe Diego as Satan’s messenger.^[2]

The singers denied the rumors and repeatedly said that the song was based on the 1979 rap hit “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugarhill Gang. Turns out, Asereje is an example of mondegreen, in which a foreign song is reinvented due to a linguistic difference.

However, some international groups didn’t buy these explanations. In Dominican Republic, Mango TV banned all Asereje video clips. Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), an influential Christian sect in the Philippines, followed suit by preventing all its members from listening to the controversial song.

8 Texas Serial Killer
“Possum Kingdom”

Possum Kingdom Lake is a man-made body of water near the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It had remained an uneventful fishing spot until alternative rock band Toadies put a bizarre twist on its name.

In the mid-1990s, the band hit it big with their single “Possum Kingdom,” inspired by a string of creepy events linked to the lake. Lead vocalist Vaden Todd Lewis, the son of a preacher, wrote the song in a way that opens it up to various interpretations.

One theory suggests that “Possum Kingdom” recounts the story of a serial killer who lured young girls into his boathouse. Legend has it that he would rape and murder his victims inside the boathouse which supposedly still exists within the lake.

Another account revealed that the song was loosely based on a kidnapping and killing spree that happened near the Possum Kingdom Lake during the early 1980s. Local authorities allegedly hid all evidence of the past crimes to avoid turning off the tourists who frequented the lake.

In 1995, RIP Magazine interviewed the band to further explore the urban legends surrounding their song. Although the story was a mishmash of true events and folk legends, Lewis admitted that the lake holds a certain enigma.^[3]

He also shared the true story of a local stalker who had a strange habit of peeping into windows and breaking into people’s houses. The lake is also home to a popular spot—aptly named “Hell’s Gate”—where some tourists either went missing or died from drowning.

7 Ester’s Last Scream
“Love Rollercoaster”

The Ohio Players’ 1975 album, Honey, gained notoriety for two reasons: its provocative cover art and a creepy story hidden underneath. Legend has it that a woman was viciously murdered while the group was recording the album. As the story goes, the victim’s hair-raising scream can be heard between the first and second verses of the song “Love Rollercoaster.”

Several versions of the urban legend came out afterward. One story revealed that the scream actually came from the album’s cover model, Ester Cordet.

Rumor has it that she was required to wear an acrylic substance that looked like real honey during the photo shoot. However, some of the staff removed the paint rather hastily, tearing off Ester’s skin. She screamed—and eventually died—from the agonizing pain caused by the injury.

Other stories, however, claimed that Ester was raped and murdered while the group was busy recording the album. There were also other sources suggesting that the victim was a cleaning woman stabbed to death by a stranger outside the recording studio.^[4]

But members of the band denied the rumors once and for all. Turns out, keyboardist Billy Beck just wanted the listeners to relive the thrilling experience of a rollercoaster ride. So he belted out a diva-like scream (yes, it came from a dude), hitting the high notes the way Minnie Riperton did.

6 The Blood Libel
“Sir Hugh” (aka “The Jew’s Daughter”)
(Child Ballad No. 155)

“Sir Hugh” (aka “The Jew’s Daughter”) is a traditional British folk song dating back to a legend from the 12th century. It is a fine example of a ballad in which the lyrics tell a story of the song’s origin. But in this case, the background story falls between disturbing and macabre.

The song originated from a dark blood ritual considered to be a common practice among ancient Jews. To celebrate the Easter holiday, they allegedly murdered Christian infants and mixed the blood with unleavened bread (aka “matzo”). This bloody murder was also mentioned in an English variation of the song where a child named “Hugh of Lincoln” was purportedly killed by Jews in 1255.^[5]

Later, “Sir Hugh” (aka “The Jew’s Daughter”) began to popularize the legend in other countries, including the US. In fact, the song, without its anti-Semitic references, is said to have inspired another recurring legend called “The Mutilated Boy.”

In this story, young boys were allegedly castrated and left bleeding to death inside the comfort rooms of shopping malls. The culprits belonged either to a homosexual gang or a certain minority group who committed the crimes as part of their initiation rites.

10 Creepy And Outrageous Urban Legends That Turned Out To Be Completely True

5 Ode To The Black Plague
“Ring Around The Rosie”

Most people remember “Ring Around the Rosie” as a simple playground nursery rhyme. But according to legends, this song contains direct references to one of humanity’s darkest periods. Its origin dates to 1347–1350, when an estimated 25 million people died from bubonic plague.

Critics disagree, indicating that it was only in 1881 that “Ring Around the Rosie” first appeared in print. Still, the words from the song are strikingly relevant if put in the context of the Black Plague.^[6]

The “ring around the rosy” refers to one of the first signs of the bubonic plague: a reddish ring surrounding a rosy bump in the skin. At that time, people believed that the epidemic was airborne and that putting posies (flowers), incense, or scented oils into someone’s pocket would help neutralize the “foul air.”

The third line “ashes, ashes” is said to be an imitation of the sneezing sound. Again, this is strangely accurate as sneezing and coughing are two of the fatal final symptoms of bubonic plague. The final statement obviously refers to the massive death toll caused by the epidemic.

So, is it really an ode to the Black Plague?

Turns out, there are a gazillion versions of the song existing today. Some of them—including William Wells Newell’s 1883 version—even lack the last two phrases linking to the Black Plague. Whether or not the creepy version of the song predates the rest is still unknown.

4 The Kleenex Curse
“It’s A Fine Day”

Released in 1983, “It’s a Fine Day” is a classic song written by Edward Barton in collaboration with his then-girlfriend Jane Lancaster. It’s basically a feel-good song popularized by a Kleenex commercial that aired in Japan in the mid-1980s.

Looking back, the ad was something you wouldn’t expect from a company selling tissues. It featured a red baby demon sitting alongside a beautiful actress, later identified as Keiko Matsuzaka. They played the English (and probably the creepiest) version of “It’s a Fine Day” in the background—something that only some Japanese audience members could understand.

Soon enough, a very dark urban legend was born.

Rumor has it that local TV stations received multiple complaints from people who found the commercial too disturbing. Some even claimed that “It’s a Fine Day” originated from a German folk song and possessed a demonic curse.

Other stories are even more unforgiving. Supposedly, by nighttime, the voice in the commercial would suddenly change into a raspy version of an older woman and bring bad luck to anyone who heard it.

The people directly involved in the commercial were not spared, either. After the initial airing, all the staff and actors purportedly met unfortunate fates one by one.

For instance, the actor who portrayed the baby ogre died from a sudden organ failure. Depending on the version of the story, Keiko Matsuzaka either ended up in a mental institution or hanged herself. Other stories claim that Matsuzaka is still alive today but gave birth to a strange, demonic infant.^[7]

3 Hungarian Suicide Song
“Gloomy Sunday”

We’re all familiar with depressing songs driving some people crazy. The premise is the same for “Gloomy Sunday” except that it is deadlier than all other melancholy songs combined.

Its original Hungarian version, “Szomoru Vasarnap,” was written by composer Rezso Seress and lyricist Laszlo Javor. The song tells the story of a depressed woman who is thinking of ending her life after the loss of her lover. Upon release, the song was moderately successful. It wasn’t until 1936 that it gained sudden notoriety.

The Budapest police department reported at least 18 suicides directly linked to “Gloomy Sunday.” One of the fatalities was shoemaker Joseph Keller. According to reports, his suicide note included the lyrics of the song. Other victims listened to the song either from a recording or a Gypsy band before taking their own lives.

Although no known suicide related to “Gloomy Sunday” has been recorded in the US, as many as 200 cases worldwide were linked to the song’s disturbing contents. Most of the victims were young jazz fans who allegedly went into deep depression after listening to Billie Holiday’s 1941 rendition.

Another story tells of how Javor’s breakup with his girlfriend inspired him to write the song. Sadly, the girl ended up poisoning herself and left a note with only two words: “Gloomy Sunday.”

Reszo Seress was not spared from the curse. In 1968, he jumped to his death from his Budapest apartment allegedly due to his failing career. He was 68 years old.^[8]

2 Game Of Death
“Kagome, Kagome” (“Circle You, Circle You”)

“Kagome, Kagome” is a nursery rhyme usually sung in a popular Japanese children’s game. By simply looking at the lyrics, one can conclude that “Kagome, Kagome” is one of the most cryptic songs ever written for children. Several interpretations were made to explain its origin. Most involve grim details ranging from murder to a bloody treasure hunt.

In one story, the “bird in a cage” is seen as a direct reference to a prisoner waiting to be executed. The “evening of the dawn” has been interpreted as “the dawn patrol,” a person assigned to escort convicted prisoners on their final walk.

Another version claims that “kagome” is derived from kagomi (“pregnant woman”). Legend has it that during the time the song was written, an unborn child (i.e., the “bird in a cage”) was seen as a threat to in-laws greedy for an inheritance. So they either pushed the mother down the stairs or used other methods to forcibly abort the baby.

One of the most compelling interpretations, however, reveals that “Kagome, Kagome” holds the clues to finding a lost Tokugawa treasure. In February 1867, Prince Mutsuhito replaced the Tokugawa clan to become the new emperor of Japan. However, for the new empire to rebuild, it had to depend on the gold reserves stored in the government’s vault. Too late, they discovered that all the treasure was gone.

Oguri Tadamasa, a former finance governor of the Tokugawa clan, purportedly buried the treasure. Unfortunately, he was beheaded during the fall of Edo, taking all the secrets to his grave.^[9]

“Kagome, Kagome” suggests that the treasure might be buried somewhere in Nikko Toshogu Shrine. Despite excavation attempts, no link to the Tokugawa treasure has been found yet.

1 The Michigan Dogman
“The Legend”

As part of a 1987 April Fools’ Day celebration, deejay Steve Cook of WTCM-FM radio wrote a song called “The Legend.” As the goal was to intrigue his listeners, he wrote the lyrics by fabricating a story of a half-man, half-dog monster roaming the Michigan forests. He even added fascinating details such as the seven-year interval between reported “Dogman” sightings.

Written in a traditional Native American style, the ballad hit the airwaves just in time for the holiday. However, Cook later found out that the joke was really on him.

After playing the song, the WTCM-FM radio station received an overwhelming number of phone calls. The majority of the callers shared their own chilling tales of encountering a real “Dogman.”

Although most eyewitnesses didn’t know what to call it at first, the bizarre creature they had once encountered shared the same description as that of Cook’s fictional Dogman.

Such was the case with Robert Fortney, a resident of Cadillac, Michigan, whose first and last Dogman encounter dated back to the late 1930s. Fortney described the humanoid creature as a huge, black canid with “slanted, evil eyes and the hint of a grin.”^[10]

Another notable encounter happened in Big Rapids, Michigan, during summer 1961. One night, a man was sitting on a porch across from the manufacturing plant where he worked as a night watchman. At exactly 3:00 AM, he saw the frightening figure of a tall, brown-haired creature walking toward the driveway.

It alternated between walking on its four legs and standing up on two. A photography buff, the man instinctively took his Kodak Signet 35mm camera and captured a few shots of the mysterious creature. At that point, the Dogman rushed toward the woods, leaving no trail behind. To this day, the photo remains the strongest evidence yet that could prove the Dogman’s existence.

10 Bone-Chilling Urban Legends

Urban legends—from little elementary kids telling each other that swallowing a watermelon seed will make a watermelon grow in your stomach from teens daring each other to walk up to the “murder house” of the neighborhood—every one of us has heard them. The thing that makes urban legends so interesting is that they’re spread with the belief that they’re true. Urban legends come to be because of mysterious sightings, real experiences of people, and true historical events, so it makes them much more believable than simple creepypastas and scary stories. Most of them, however, are either completely untrue, remain unconfirmed, or extremely exaggerated. Only a small minority of urban legends have been confirmed as real.

10 The “Maine Hermit,” Christopher Knight

For years, residents of North Pond, Maine noticed the constant disappearance of items in their homes. Instead of watches and wallets, however, it was simple things like peanut butter, or apples. Considering the inconsequential nature of the items, the residents didn’t think much. Not until the break ins happened again, and again, and again—1000s times in fact.^[1] Finally, the police were able to catch and arrest the culprit—the “Maine Hermit,” Christopher Knight. When Christopher Knight was only 20 years old, he purposely stranded himself in the woods and lived without any other human contact for 27 years. He stole what he needed to survive, but avoided all other people. In the end, residents of North Pond finally got the answer to the mystery of their missing items.

9 The Boogeyman of New York, Cropsey

The story of Cropsey was once just a Staten Island urban legend kids told to scare each other. As it was said, Cropsey was an escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand that kidnapped children and murdered them in the underground abandoned tunnels of the Seaview Hospital. Parents would even use the story to scare their kids into keeping curfew or going to bed. In the ’80s, however, the urban legend manifested in real life. A bus full of children was hijacked by Cropsey, and five other children went missing at his hands. One poor child’s body was found in a shallow grave near the Willowbrook State School.^[2] Willowbrook State School, if you don’t recognize the name, was the subject of a national scandal in the 70s—children at the school were exposed to sexual abuse, corporal punishment, unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, and even unethical medical experiments. Our boy, Cropsey, turned out to be Andre Rand, the janitor at the school. Rand was convicted for kidnapping and lives in prison to this day.

8 Real Corpse Used as Carnival Prop

Real or not, corpses tend to give many of us the creeps. So to think that the haunted house zombie or the carnival mannequin beside you was more than just a prop? It’s the stuff of nightmares. In 1976, a film crew went to Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California for filming. While filming on one of the “spooky rides” of the park, a crew member reached for a hanged mannequin’s arm, which broke off. Upon examining the dismembered limb however, the worker saw real skin and bone. Turns out, that “mannequin” was no prop. In fact, it was the mummified corpse of outlaw and train robber, Elmer McCurdy. He was killed in a shootout after trying to evade the police. He was taken to a funeral and embalmed, but no one claimed the body, so the undertaker used him for display—people could see the body for dropping a nickel into the corpse’s mouth.^[3] A carnie eventually showed up a claimed to be a relative wanting to “lay the body to rest.” From then on, McCurdy’s corpse was used as a carnival attractions for decades. Eventually, the story of outlaw Elmer McCurdy was lost and the corpse was assumed to be fake. When the TV crew finally discovered the old boy he was laid to rest in Oklahoma. A layer of concrete covers the casket to prevent him from becoming a traveling attraction again.

7 Virginia “Bunny Man” Threatens Trespassers with axe

Many towns have their own share of local scary stories and haunted locations, and Virginia’s Fairfax County was no different. For decades, kids told each other the story of the “Bunny Man,” a threatening man in a bunny suit with an axe. Supposedly, Bunny Man was responsible for the murder of a couple children as well as some disappearances and the scattered presence of mutilated animal carcasses around the county. In truth, the story isn’t quite so wild. In October of 1970, the Washington Post published an article: “Man in Bunny Suit Sought in Fairfax,” after a couple had a hatchet thrown into their car windshield by a man in a bunny suit. The man threatened the couple for “trespassing” and then disappeared in the woods. Only a week later, the same event occurred once again with a separate couple.^[4] Though not quite as extravagant as murder, the bunny man was actually a very real man with an axe and everything.

6 Criminal Big Nose George’s Body was used to make Shoes

It’s not uncommon in horror movies for things made of skin, or bones, or something else more morbid. There was a case, however, where it was more than just a horror trope. George Parrot, or “Big Nose George,” was an ol’ wild west criminal. He stole horses, robbed stagecoaches and trains, and even murdered the local sheriff and detective.^[5] He did, at least, until he got caught. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging. After the deed was done, no one came forward to claim the body. Two doctors present at the time asked to have the body for medical study. Though one of the doctors did study his brain, George’s corpse was mainly used for… not medical purposes. In fact, the cadaver was skinned and made into shoes and part of the skull was given as a gift to a medical protege. The rest of the body was buried in a whiskey barrel. The shoes still exist today and can be viewed at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins, Wyoming.

5 Mysterious “Charlie No-Face” Confirmed a Considerate Pennsylvania Resident

Many people near Pittsburg know the story of Charlie No-Face (also called the Green Man). Depending on who you asked, he was a ghost, a monster, or a simple factory worked who had been horribly disfigured as a child and lost his face. This Beaver County bogeyman was more than just a legend, however. He was a real man and resident of Big Beaver, Pennsylvania. His real name was Raymond Robinson and was a normal boy—up until the accident. He was burned by high voltage when trying to climb an inoperative trolley line and, though he survived, he lost his eyes and nose and his lips and ears were horribly disfigured. Wanting to get some fresh air, but knowing his appearance would frighten others, Robinson began walking the roads at night. Word spread to local residents and people began to drive down to try to see him. Some even brought cigarettes and beer.^[6] Eventually, the story of Charlie No-Face was passed on until it became an unrecognizable ghost story, but Charlie was really just a kindly victim of a tragic accident.

4 Missing Woman’s Corpse Found in Hotel’s Water Tank

Have you ever gotten a glass of tap water and thought it tasted a bit funny? Well, this exact thing happened to guests of LA’s Cecil Hotel but with a gruesome twist. Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old Canadian tourist visiting LA. After Jan 26, 2013, however, she went missing. For 2 weeks her whereabouts were unknown. Unknown, that is, until a maintenance man went to check the Cecil Hotel water tank because of “water pressure issues”.^[7] Inside one of the four large tanks he found Lam’s naked corpse. Surveillance from the night of her disappearance showed her acting strangely: pressing all the elevator buttons or getting in and out of cars. The police deemed the incident a tragic accident, and health officials assured hotel guests that the water was not contaminated because of the body. Even so, guests were understandably upset.

3 Mysterious Gas Mask Man of Switzerland, “Le Loyon” photographed

Cryptids are a common thing. Some of them are extremely famous, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Others like mothman or thunderbird are uncommon but still far reaching. Some, like our aforementioned Maine Hermit or Cropsey, are only known locally. Le Loyon is most similar to the latter two. For about a decade, residents of Maule, Switzerland have experienced sightings of a mysterious man in the forest wearing a gas mask, boiler suit, and a cloak. Most who have encountered the mysterious Le Loyon retreated in fear, despite him/her showing no aggression. In fact, one observer even saw Le Loyon holding a bouquet of flowers one time.^[8] Though questions about Le Loyon remain unanswered, one observer was able to snap a picture of the mysterious man, thus proving his existence.

2 Man Actually Makes Himself Fly with Balloons

Many of us have dreamed of flying as children. With movies like Up and Mary Poppins it seems to be a fairly easy task—just get a lot of balloons, or maybe jump down the stairs with an umbrella. Okay, so maybe these methods don’t quite work like we’d hoped, but one man was actually able to accomplish it. In the ’80s, Larry Walter tied 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and was able to soar 3 miles in the air for multiple hours.^[9] To return to earth, he used a pellet balloon to pop the balloons one at a time. Unfortunately, the balloons caught on power lines and caused a 20 min outage in Long Beach. Though he was issued a $1,500 fine, he received international attention and ever appeared on “The Tonight Show.”

1 Woman was Buried Alive and Mangled Her Fingers While Trying to Escape

I think most of us have probably heard the story of someone being buried alive: some person was proclaimed dead and was buried but later woke up, alive in their casket. When the grave is later dug up, the person is found dead by suffocation with horribly mangled fingers and scratch marks on the inside of the coffin. The story of Octavia Hatcher is likely the source of this legend. She fell ill and went into a coma in the late 1800s. Not long after, she was pronounced dead and swiftly buried. Not even a week later, other people began showing similar symptoms to Octavia—falling into a coma with extremely shallow breathing. These individuals, however, woke up. Her husband, worried she had been buried alive, ordered her to be unburied. Sadly, his suspicions were correct. Octavia was found dead in her casket with a scratched face and bloody fingers. The lining had even been torn from the coffin’s lid.^[10] She was shortly reburied.

You can find the student and freelance writer, Elizabeth Boyer, on YouTube at “Lizzie Boyer.”

Halloween is approaching fast. One can just about taste the trick or treat candy and smell the Pumpkin Spice in the air. And of course, no Halloween is complete without a few scary urban legends. On this list are some lesser known, but still spine-tingling spooky stories to keep in your back pocket for those moonless nights around the campfire… or you know, the TV, for the less adventurous…

SEE ALSO: 10 Mysterious Urban Legends Based on Video Footage

7 El Cadejo

In South America, ancient legends tell of spirit dogs that help humans cross over to the other side after death. Now this may sound heart-warming, however one tale was adapted specifically to highlight the difference between good and evil.

According to this legend there are two types of Cadejo (which are ghosts or spirits that take on the form of a dog): the black Cadejo that represents evil and the white Cadejo that represents, you guessed it, good. It is said that God created the white Cadejo to protect people, while Satan created the black Cadejo to fight against the white one and cause havoc.

The black Cadejo stalks those who are out late at night and up to no good. It hypnotizes its victims with its red glowing eyes and steals their souls. The white Cadejo on the other hand protects all believers and shields babies and small children from the black Cadejo. Luckily you don’t have to rely on only the white Cadejo to protect you from the black one. It is said that the black Cadejo is easily scared off by burning incense.^[1]

6 The Curse of Lake Lanier

Lake Sidney Lanier lies in the northern part of Georgia and stretches out over 26 miles. It is the largest lake in Georgia and dates to 1948. It took 5 years for the lake to reach the desired water level. During this time many structures surrounding the lake were eventually abandoned, as the government relocated families and businesses. These structures included houses, buildings, fields, roads and more. Essentially this means that there are entire ghost towns lying underneath Lake Lanier’s surface, including the towns’ desecrated cemeteries.

As time went by, strange things started happening at the lake. People started noticing a high number of deaths including drownings, boating accidents and cars that crash land into the water. Reports surfaced of boats hitting invisible objects in the lake and capsizing. Swimmers who barely survived drowning, reported being pulled or held underwater. Very soon the lake earned the moniker of being cursed. Furthermore, people also disappear around the lake at an alarming rate. One of the most haunting stories that surround Lake Lanier is the disappearance of Delia Parker Young and her friend Susie Roberts in 1958. The two girls had paid a visit to a gas station near the lake and had allegedly driven off without paying. Across Lanier Bridge were skid marks that seemed to indicate the car they were traveling in had gone off the bridge and into Lake Lanier.

A year and a half of searching for the bodies of the girls proved fruitless. Then a fisherman got the fright of his life when a decomposed body appeared to float up from the depths of the lake, right in front of him. There were two toes missing from the left foot of the body and both hands were gone. Assuming the body was that of Delia Parker Young, it was buried in an unmarked grave. Many years later in 1990, when construction workers dredged Lake Lanier to set up pillars for the expansion of Lanier Bridge, they discovered the car with Susie’s remains still inside. She was eventually buried next to Delia.

Soon after, sightings were being reported of a transparent figure wearing a blue dress and missing its hands, walking the length of the bridge. Considering that Delia Parker Younger wore a blue dress the night she died, people claim it is her ghost looking for her lost hands.^[2]

5 Angelystor

In Llangernyw, a small village in Conwy, North Wales, villagers who visit the medieval church in the area do so to find out whether they would die in the coming months. It is said that an ancient supernatural being called the Angelystor appears in the church and recites the names of the parish members who would die soon. The Angelystor appears only twice a year, on 31 July and 31 October.

According to legend, a tailor named Shôn ap Robert mocked the idea of the ancient being while downing a couple of beers at the local watering hole. His drinking buddies dared him to take a walk up to the church, since he was a complete sceptic. ap Robert wasted no time in making his way to the medieval church, scoffing as he went. But his blood ran cold as he heard a voice from within the church reciting names; the first of which was his own. Terrified, ap Robert screamed that he wasn’t ready to die, but to no avail. He died shortly afterwards.^[3]

4 Selborne Dock

Simon’s Town is home to the South African Navy’s Naval Base and is located on False Bay, east of the Cape Peninsula. The town is the fifth oldest in South Africa and rumored to be among the most haunted. Part of its ghostly reputation began back in 1900 with the building of the Selborne Dock at the harbour to accommodate expanded steam propulsion vessels.

It took 10 years to complete construction on the dock and the intense labour of 3000 workers. Indian craftsmen and Italian masons were amongst the labourers. However, when it came to safety regulations, those who ran the building project were more concerned with finishing on time than ensuring all workers were safe. Consequently, because of the lack of safety measures on site, 33 workers died during the building process. Some of the dead included the Italian masons whose graves are located close to Selborne Dock.

It has been said that when visitors pass by the wall of the dock to visit Boulder’s Beach nearby, hands appear out of the structure, desperately grabbing at whoever is close enough. Giving up in despair, the hands fade back into the stone façade of the dock. Naturally, legend has it that these are the hands of the 33 dead labourers trying their best to pull themselves back into the land of the living.^[4]

3 The Last Bus to Fragrant Hills

China is well known for its creepy urban legends and superstitions. One of these legends tells the story of a young man who got on the last bus heading to Fragrant Hills in Beijing on 14 November 1995. The man had just taken his seat when two men outside tried to flag the bus down. As these men were not waiting at a designated bus stop, the bus driver almost sped right past them. However, the conductor on board told the driver to stop as this would be the last trip to Fragrant Hills for the night.

To the bus passengers’ surprise there were actually three men and they were wearing Qing Dynasty robes. One of the men had long, tangled hair. The other passengers felt a little troubled because the men’s faces were ghostly white, and they did not speak. However, the bus journey was uneventful and eventually all the passengers disembarked apart from the mystery men, the young man and one old lady.

Out of nowhere the old lady started yelling at the young man, claiming that he had stolen her wallet. A terrible argument ensued with the old lady insisting that they both get off the bus and go to the closest police station. The young man was livid as he got off the bus, seeing as how he would not get home and there was no police station in sight to clear up the misunderstanding. Just then, the old lady turned to him and said that the wind from the windows in the bus raised the robes of the mystery men and she saw that they had no feet. That was why she insisted that the young man leave the bus with her.

The following day it became known that the bus, which was numbered 302, had gone missing right after the old lady and young man disembarked. It was found three days later, miles away from Fragrant Hills, inside a reservoir. Inside the bus were the bodies of the driver, the conductor and one unidentified man with long, tangled hair. Another version of the tale states that instead of three ghosts on the bus, it was just one female ghost in a red dress. Yet another version says the gas tank of the bus was filled with blood, or that the bus was never found again.^[5]

2 Andrew’s Walk

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dr Michael Schneider bought a mansion in Adelaide, Australia. Known as Clifton Manor, the mansion sprawled across 40 acres of land and Schneider and his wife and two daughters were very happy with their new home.

Schneider decided to treat patients at home, but away from his family. He saw the ill and diseased and schizophrenic in a cabin on the far side of his land. Five years had passed when tragedy struck and Schneider lost his wife and daughters to an accident. Schneider couldn’t deal with his grief and went insane.

At some point, nearby residents started reporting that they were hearing screams coming from Clifton Manor. Stories began to fly that in his insanity, Dr Schneider had begun performing surgeries on unsuspecting patients without using anesthesia. It was said that Schneider was offering his dying patients to the devil. For some reason no investigation took place at the property, until Schneider himself died. Only then did police descent upon Clifton Manor, to find the body of the doctor surrounded with the remains of his long-deceased family.

Legend has it that Schneider’s ghost and the restless spirits of his victims still reside at the mansion. Those who are feeling adventurous can visit the site, now known as Andrew’s Walk. Just watch out for vengeful spirits crawling from the tree line as you walk up the lane.^[6]

1 Gjenganger

In Scandinavia, the word ‘Gjenganger’ strikes fear into the heart of many. It is said that some who die in Scandinavia are resurrected and become Gjengangers for the purpose of haunting those who are still alive.

Legend has it that the lost souls who become Gjengangers were ordinary people who were plucked from their lives prematurely by means of murder or accident. Once transformed into a Gjenganger, these spirits make it their afterlife’s mission to disrupt the future of those still living and especially those who contributed to their death.

Gjengangers strike in the darkest hour of night, pinching their victims and then fleeing. Once their victim wakes, he or she will notice an unexplained blue mark on their body. This mark leads to illness and eventually death as the victim’s flesh rots until the disease reaches their heart.

Luckily there is a way to stop a Gjenganger in its tracks. If a person dies by murder or accident, it is advisable to bury them in the appropriate manner with a runic inscription inside the coffin which would prevent any resurrection efforts.^[7]

Every state has its own urban legend. Many of these superstitious tales came about during a period of limited scientific enquiry. A figure caught in someone’s peripheral vision became something sinister and shadowy. The guttural noise of a feral animal turned into the battle cry of an unknowable monster. We instinctively feared what we could not explain, and our overactive imaginations did the rest.

See Also: 10 Creepy Urban Legends From Around The World

But our willingness to believe urban legends once served some evolutionary benefit. These stories often had a kernel of truth, warning us against certain real-life dangers. In a world with few answers, it was always more advantageous to err on the side of caution and avoid any potential human-chomping predators. It did not matter whether that predator was a mythical Sasquatch or just an oversized bear. All that mattered was survival.

Many urban legends remain popular to this day. While such tales are often told with a wink and a smile, some continue to believe them. From the Mothman of West Virginia to the Jersey Devil, so-called cryptozoologists remain ever-watchful. So let us explore just some of these weird and wacky urban legends.

10The Dark Watchers (California)

Legend tells of shadowy figures that stalk the Santa Lucia Mountains of Monterey County, California. Spanish conquistadores, who first explored the region in 1602, referred to these otherworldly creatures as the Dark Watchers (Los Vigilantes Oscuros).

The late Thomas Steinbeck, son of the famous writer John Steinbeck, spoke about the Dark Watchers at length. He eventually confided in his friend, artist Benjamin Brode. “The particulars of the account had been told to [Thomas] as a child and authenticated by such credible sources as his grandmother, Olive Hamilton, and Billy Post, descendant of El Sur Grande ranchers,” Brode claimed.

Thomas’ fascination with Dark Watchers ran in the family. John Steinbeck mentioned the mysterious entities in “The Long Valley” – a collection of short stories published in 1938. “Flight” tells the tale of Pepé, a young teen who goes on the run after stabbing a local townsman. Pepé encounters the Watchers while fleeing to the mountains. From the tale: “No one knew who the watchers were, nor where they lived, but it was better to ignore them and never show interest in them. They did not bother one who stayed on the trail and minded his own business.”

John Steinbeck raised Thomas while working as a ranch hand in the mountain region of Big Sur. The writer’s understanding of the Dark Watchers mirrored that of local tales. The humanoid figures usually surface either in the mornings or evenings. And they immediately “disappear like fog” when somebody looks directly at them.

Thomas made contact with local residents Billy and Luci Post, descendants of El Sur Grande ranchers. Post claims the ranchers exhumed the remains of a young girl in the 1920s. After the grave’s desecration, the Dark Watchers disappeared, and the locals were struck by misfortune. According to the Post family, luck was only restored after the ranchers returned the girl to her original resting place.^[1]

9The Haunted Pillar (Georgia)

In 1878, an intense storm ripped through the city of Augusta, Georgia. The event killed two people and laid waste to the Old Market. All that remained was a single pillar. Some of the more superstitious locals believed a higher power was responsible for the devastation. But interest soon died down, and the pillar became just another landmark.

During the Great Depression, city officials paid Lockhart International Inc. tens of thousands of dollars to boost tourism to the area. To do so, Lockhart spread rumors that the lone pillar was haunted. The company shared this fake news with national newspapers. The story goes that a disgruntled preacher foretold of the market’s looming destruction. He claimed that only one of the pillars would survive, and whoever attempted to interfere with the structure would meet a grisly end. The con worked. Tourists flocked to the area to learn of Georgia’s “Haunted Pillar.” Contractors even spoke to city’s mayor about the structure’s removal.

The pillar was eventually toppled after a vehicle crashed into it in 1935. Its restoration was funded by a local market owner. In 1958, a large bale of cotton tumbled from a passing truck, destroying the pillar once more. The city restored it again. But the pillar couldn’t catch a break. It was destroyed for a third time in December 2016. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the pillar is set to return. The city is preparing designs for the next pillar and has already set aside some funding.^[2]

8 Nain Rouge (Michigan)

Every spring, a devil-like monster makes his way through Midtown Detroit aboard a chariot made of hairy cockroach legs. The bizarre spectacle concludes with the fanged beast making a speech in front of the city’s iconic Masonic Temple. The amiable fellow introduces himself as Nain Rouge, the “harbinger of doom.” During the 2015 celebrations, he told the bustling crowd that he was the “living embodiment of everything that holds Detroit back, the red prince of persecution, Cadillac’s folly, the annihilator of hope.”

The Nain’s appearance is supposed to precede some kind of imminent disaster. According to local legend, the Nain Rouge (Red Dwarf) dates back to 1701. They say that Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the city’s founder, once beat the creature in a fit of rage. The French explorer then endured decades of terrible misfortune, as did his city.

Today, the Nain is blamed for all manner of problems, from extreme weather conditions to the city’s longstanding economic woes. So every year, thousands of Detroiters chase the scoundrel out of the city. It is hoped the Nain’s exile will bring the city good fortune. The tradition first kicked off in 2010 with the “Marche du Nain Rouge” celebrations. Stores, breweries, and restaurants organized events throughout the week. Parade floats made their way along the city’s rejuvenated Cass Corridor. And revelers dressed up in costumes in a bid to stop the Nain from recognizing them.

But some protesters think Nain Rouge is simply trying to warn the city of its impending doom – not to cause it. Pro-Nainers attend the parade every year and try to spread their own interpretation of the story. The group’s leader, John Tenney, claims the Nain was originally a Native American spirit named Nanabozho. “[W]hen the French came here, obviously it wasn’t a Judeo-Christian god,” Tenney explained, “so they changed it to a red imp or devil and now there’s a parade to drive out, incorrectly, the devil that causes the problems in Detroit.”^[3]

7 The Ship of Death (Wyoming)

In the fall of 1862, a United States Army Indian Scout named Leon Webber stood at the edge of the North Platte River in Wyoming. The animal trapper was building a log cabin, six miles from the Fort Laramie military outpost. Suddenly, a thick fog rolled in across the river. The fog began to take shape, gradually transforming into an ancient ship. The frost-covered sails glistened in the evening light. Webber was transfixed. There on the deck, the phantom crewmen surrounded a lifeless, young woman. A horrifying realization dawned upon the trapper:

“The ship suddenly veered over to my side of the river – and I recognized the corpse of that of Margaret Stanley, my best girl-friend – we were to have been married early the following spring. ‘Margy!’ I shouted, preparing to descend to the water.”

As Webber plunged into the misty waters, the ship vanished. He remained at the river until dusk, patiently waiting for any signs of Margaret. But the ship never returned. Webber made his way back to the Stanley residence a month later to discover that his beloved had died.

Using reports from the Cheyenne Bureau of Psychological Research, the paranormal investigation magazine Fate established that the ship was sighted on two other occasions. A local rancher claims he saw the ship resurface near the town of Casper in 1887. At the behest of the vessel’s captain, the crewmen revealed the corpse of the rancher’s wife, her face disfigured and burned. The rancher returned home to find the scorched remains of his wife. She died while attempting to flee a house fire.

The final sighting occurred in 1903. Victor Heibe recalls seeing a dead man aboard the ship: “As the body swayed to and fro from the rocking of the ship, it turned so that I gazed directly into the face. It was the blackened face of my dearest friend.” It turned out that Heibe’s friend was Thomas Horn. A Cheyenne court had convicted Horn of murder and sentenced him to hang. Unbeknownst to Heibe, Horn was hanged in a prison courtyard on the very same day of the ghostly premonition.^[4]

6 Escalante Petrified Forest (Utah)

All year round, tourists flock to the scenic nature trails of Garfield County in Utah. The Petrified Forest path takes sightseers on a trip around lava flows and along a series of rocky ravines. Fishers take on the rainbow trout at the Wide Hollow Reservoir. And the mesa is peppered with large deposits of beautiful petrified wood. But some visitors have taken some of the wood, much of which is over 130 million years old, and kept them as keepsakes. From this thievery spawned the Curse of the Petrified Forest.

The force driving the curse remains undefined. However, the forest has allegedly inflicted a range of punishments, including marital breakdowns and serious health problems. Many of the thieves eventually confess to taking the rocks in a desperate bid to lift the curse. Every year, park superintendant Kendall Farnsworth receives around a dozen packages of stolen wood, dubbed “conscience rocks,” along with apology letters. A similar tale has spread about the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Since the 1930s, the park has received around 1,200 pages’ worth of apology letters.

The petrified wood is the result of permineralization. The trees were once part of an old floodplain. Millions of years ago, they were buried by floods and covered in sediment. This stopped the normal decomposition process. Instead, the wood was gradually replaced with minerals, effectively turning it into stone. The lush coloring of the specimen is based upon which minerals are deposited in the wood during preservation. For example, minerals containing iron will produce a reddish hue, while manganese deposits are pink.^[5]

5 The Rhinelander Hodag (Wisconsin)

In 1893, Wisconsin businessman Eugene Shepard penned a newspaper article about his encounter with a mysterious dragon-like creature. The formidable monster, known to the locals as the Rhinelander Hodag, stalked the woods near the city of Rhinelander. Shepard said he worked alongside a group of hunters to fell the beast, dispatching it with dynamite. Whispers of the hodag spread throughout the logging camps. The town’s lumberjacks believed hodags were malevolent demons. They arose from the ashes of dead oxen and punished the workers for treating their cattle so poorly.

Shepard’s tales of heroism did not end there. He announced the capture of a hodag in a subsequent column. Mere days later, he showcased the creature at the Oneida County Fair. Of course, it was all an elaborate hoax. Shepard had a puppet built from wood and animal hides. As gullible fair-goers streamed into the poorly-lit exhibition tent, the trickster’s sons did the rest. They moved the horned puppet around while growling at the audience.

The spectacle made headlines across America. The Philadelphia Enquirer, while obviously unconvinced of the story’s legitimacy, ran with the headline, “A Monster with Many Horns.” From the article: “This is not all that is wonderful about the hodag, whose scientific name we are informed is ‘bovine spiritualis.’ It appears that this creature of the bovine species also lays eggs, several of which were found in its nest.”

Shepard’s ruse served a greater purpose. He correctly predicted that Wisconsin’s timber business would go bust. He therefore spread news of the hodag to put Rhinelander on the map. His bet paid off. Today, the Rhinelander High School uses the fictitious creature as its mascot. Statues of the iconic monster are scattered across the city. And local stores sell a range of hodag merchandise, including t-shirts, masks, stuffed animals, and bumper stickers.^[6]

4 Buck’s Cursed Tomb (Maine)

In 1763, Colonel Jonathan Buck founded a small settlement nestled along the Penobscot River in Maine. While the colonel has a storied past, he is often best remembered for something he never actually did. Bizarre stories started to spread soon after Buck’s death. In 1852, his grandchildren placed a monument close to his grave. But an unusual shape, which looked vaguely reminiscent of a woman’s leg, appeared in the rock. Rumor spread that Colonel Buck had previously sentenced a witch to death. Before her death, the witch placed a curse on Buck and said his headstone would forever remind the world of his ill deeds:

“But listen, upon that stone the imprint of my feet will appear, and for all time, long after you and [your] accursed race have perished from the earth, will the people from far and wide know that you murdered a woman. Remember well, Jonathan Buck, remember well.”

In reality, the colonel killed no such person. He was born decades after the hysteria of the witch trials. As justice of the peace, he did not have the jurisdiction to authorize executions. And the strange shape is likely the result of simple weathering.

Regardless, the legend has attracted plenty of tourism. The locals even hold an annual charity event called “Jonathan Buck’s Race to the Grave.” Participants must build their own coffins to qualify for the race. Each team then pushes the coffin towards the finishing line. One of the competitors, a “Jonathan,” must remain seated in the coffin at all times.^[7]

3 Kushtakas (Alaska)

A number of indigenous tribes along the Pacific North Coast believe in a shapeshifting creature called the Kushtaka (Land Otter Man). According to the Tsimshian and Tlingit tribes, the formidable trickster can transform into humans, otters, and wolves. They theorize that all land otters are aligned in some kind of mischievous conspiracy. Otters, they say, are transmogrifying humans into these semi-otter Kushtakas. Once turned, Kushtakas mimic the sounds of babies and children to lure their prey. Others stalk their target and shapeshift into a friend or family member. When a Kushtaka happens upon a lost human, it either takes their soul or turns them into a fellow Kushtaka.

U.S. Navy Lieutenant George Thornton Emmons explored Tlingit culture. Based upon Emmons’ work, the ethnologist and anthropologist Frederica de Laguna described the transformation thusly: “The transformation was slowly accomplished: first hair grew over the body, speech became confused, he began to walk on knees and elbows, a tail grew out, and, in time, he became more otter than human.”

There are very few ways to save the victim’s soul. If quick enough, a skilled shaman can hunt down a missing tribe member and undo the spell. Sometimes these powerful elders entrance a Kushtaka and cut out its tongue. This is the source of the creature’s power. Meanwhile, regular tribe members must rely upon dogs to protect themselves. Dogs see through the many guises of the Kushtaka, and their barking forces the shapeshifters to reveal their true form.^[8]

2 The Tombstone Thunderbird (Arizona)

The legend of the Tombstone Thunderbird started with a small Arizona newspaper. In April 1890, the Tombstone Weekly Epitaph published the escapades of two gun-toting ranchers. The pair allegedly encountered an enormous “winged monster” while trekking across a desert just east of the former mining town of Tombstone. The men quickly grabbed their Winchester rifles and gave chase on horseback. After several miles, the ranchers caught up with the beast and killed it. Upon closer inspection, it was said to look like an alligator with wings.

Joshua Hawley, writer of “The Legend of the Tombstone Thunderbird,” remains skeptical. He believes the story was fabricated in response to the town’s economic downturn. “Tombstone was a dusty little town with very few people left inside, so having good news articles to write became more of a challenge,” he explained.

More recently, paranormal investigators claim they have received dozens of reports of thunderbird sightings across the Pacific Coast and Midwest. It has been suggested that these witnesses were merely observing large birds that are already known to wildlife experts. Some describe the thunderbird as a pterodactyl-like animal, which could match the appearance of the great blue heron. The Tombstone Weekly’s original tale, somewhat implausibly, claimed the thunderbird had a 49-meter-long wingspan (160 ft) and eyes “as large as a dinner plate.” According to Hawley, one of the ranchers eventually came forward and said the paper had published a misleading story. “They never shot it down,” Hawley said. “They never killed it… and it flew away.”^[9]

1 Spook Hill (Maryland)

In 1997, a group of amateur filmmakers began filming The Blair Witch Project in Maryland. The small village of Burkittsville, which has a population of less than 200 people, played host to the unsettling events. Most of the scenes were actually filmed in other parts of Maryland. But that did not stop legions of giddy teenagers from descending upon the surrounding woods, shaky cams at the ready.

Even though The Blair Witch is entirely fictitious, Burkittsville has another star attraction: Spook Hill. According to local legend, Spook Hill is haunted by the spirits of dead Civil War soldiers. In 1862, forces under the command of Robert E. Lee assaulted Maryland. The bulk of the Confederate forces attacked western Maryland, while a small detachment was ordered to stall the Union’s reinforcements from the east. The Confederates blocked a narrow passage in the South Mountain, just outside of Burkittsville. After a 3-hour-long battle, the Confederates retreated. Heavy losses were suffered on both sides and thousands more were injured. “Every house had to have six or seven wounded and when they died they had to be dragged out and put into the fields. Well, spook stories are going to come out of that,” explained Paul Gilligan, the village’s former mayor.

That story was Spook Hill, a short stretch of road along Gapland Road in Burkittsville. When a ball is placed on the road’s surface, it appears to roll up the incline. Even a car put in neutral will slowly roll up Spook Hill, as if defying the laws of gravity. Some believe the spirits of the dead soldiers are pulling the objects back towards the village.

In reality, Spook Hill is just an optical illusion. The objects are actually rolling downhill – not uphill. The driver is made to think they are rolling upwards, as they cannot see the level horizon around them. The surrounding trees and landscape are often tilted at a steeper angle relative to the road. This, combined with the fact that humans are terrible at estimating the angle of slopes, creates a mind-bending effect. Our brains essentially “make up” a new horizon, because the surrounding landmarks are positioned in a way that we are not used to seeing.^[10]

The music industry is filled with larger-than-life figures and tales of debauchery and eccentricity, and the public is usually ready to lap up every juicy detail that they can find in tabloid magazines, interviews, autobiographies, and, more recently, social media. 

It’s not really surprising, then, that the secretive and scandalous nature of the music world has given rise to loads of outlandish myths and urban legends. And today, we’re taking a look at ten of them.

10. John Denver the Sniper

John Denver built an image for himself as a friendly, lovable, and harmless folk musician who cared about nature and his fellow man. But was it all a lie? Was John Denver actually a cold-blooded killer who once served as a sniper for the US Army?

Well, no, but that hasn’t stopped the story from spreading online. It’s true that he came from a military family and his father was an officer with the US Air Force. Denver might have wanted to follow in his footsteps, but that was never in the cards – his eyesight was too poor for him to become a pilot. He was also missing two toes, having lost them in a lawnmower accident when he was a teenager. So even though John Denver did receive an Army induction notice in 1964, his health problems got him classified as 1-Y, meaning that he was only qualified for service in times of war or national emergency. So John Denver never served in any branch of the military. And even if he had, the fact that he was blind as a bat meant that the one position he would never, ever fill was that of a sniper.

9. In the Air Tonight

Fans often argue over the true meaning behind some of their favorite songs, especially when that meaning is not made apparent either by the lyrics or by the artist. Take that overenthusiasm and uncertainty, mix them together, and you get a foolproof recipe for rumors to appear. Take, for example, the song In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. It was his first single as a solo artist and became one of his signature songs, but some of his fans are still unclear on what the song is actually about.

There are a few variations on the story, but the most common version claims that Collins once witnessed a man drown while a third man watched on impassively, refusing to help the dying person. Phil himself was either too far away, too drunk, or too young to help, depending on which version you prefer. But that’s not all, because the most outlandish retellings go a step further and claim that Collins hired a detective to track down the mysterious man who callously let another person drown. The musician then sent him tickets to one of his shows and, during the concert, put the spotlight on him and exposed him to the world at large.

All of this is nonsense, of course, as made clear by Phil Collins himself years ago. He wrote the song following the collapse of his first marriage, but here is what Phil had to say:

“When I was writing this I was going through a divorce. And the only thing I can say about it is that it’s obviously in anger. It’s the angry side or the bitter side of a separation. So what makes it even more comical is when I hear these stories which started many years ago, particularly in America, of someone come up to me and say, ‘Did you really see someone drowning?’ I said, ‘No, wrong’.”

8. Avril Is Dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAKrBCFYTh0

You’ve probably heard of the “Paul Is Dead” myth – the idea that the real Paul McCartney died decades ago and was replaced by a lookalike and, for whatever reason, the Beatles decided to leave clues to their little switcheroo in the album cover for Abbey Road. That urban legend is too well-known, so we decided to focus on a different celebrity doppelgänger story – that of Canadian pop rocker Avril Lavigne.

According to this particular conspiracy theory, the real Avril died all the way back in 2003, not long after she struck it big with her debut album Let Go. But even before her demise, Lavigne wasn’t a fan of her newfound fame, so she sometimes used a body double named Melissa Vandella for various events. Then, after the singer died, her record company didn’t want to let go of a good thing, so they “upgraded” Melissa to a full-time Avril Lavigne. And, of course, the new Avril started leaving clues to her true identity in her songs and even wrote the word “Melissa” on her hand once in a publicity shot.

Confronted with this “irrefutable proof,” the singer had no choice but to come clean and admit that she was not the real Avril Lavigne…Just kidding. No, for the most part, she ignored the story, although she has acknowledged it more in recent years, dismissing it as a “dumb internet rumor” made up by bored people needing something new to talk about.

7. Jim Is Alive

This one is pretty much the exact opposite of the previous entry – a rumor that claims that a dead musician is, in fact, still alive after faking their own death. Undoubtedly, Elvis is the king of this particular urban legend, with dozens, possibly even hundreds of sightings over the years. Once again, we are not going to focus on the most obvious choice and, instead, examine the idea that Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, faked his death and started a new life.

The unclear circumstances surrounding Morrison’s death made it ripe for rumors and conspiracies. The musician died unexpectedly in his apartment in Paris in 1971, joining the dreaded 27 Club, but more on that later. The likely cause of death was a drug overdose, but his partner, Pamela Courson, fearing that she might be arrested and charged, gave a false statement to the French police, telling them that Morrison died of a heart attack. With no signs of foul play, the authorities dismissed the need for an autopsy, and Jim Morrison was hastily buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, with his fans informed of the singer’s death after the funeral.

Over the years, conspiracy theories claimed that Morrison had been the victim of various assassination plots, or that he actually OD’d in a trendy Parisian nightclub and his body was brought home to avoid unwanted publicity. And then, of course, there was the idea that Jim faked the whole thing and started fresh, leaving his old life behind. Oddly enough, some of his close friends also believed this, including Ray Manzarek, the keyboard player of The Doors who co-founded the band alongside Morrison.

6. Monkees > Beatles & Stones

If you ever dare to besmirch the good name of the Monkees, you will probably find at least one fan who will huffily inform you that actually, in 1967 the Monkees sold more records than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. So there… what do you have to say to that? Well, you could tell them that, although their passion is commendable, they are slightly misinformed. Although this “fact” has often been repeated over the decades, it was completely made up by Monkees member Mike Nesmith, who later referred to it as a “complete fabrication, totally bogus, class-A mendacity lie.

It wasn’t until 2015 that Nesmith set the record straight in a podcast, and then again in his own autobiography. It all went back to 1977, to an interview in Australia. Bored with media appearances and a bit weary of the press, Nesmith flat-out warned his interviewer that he would tell him lies and that he would have to do some research to separate the fact from the fiction. But here it is in Nesmith’s own words:

“Then came a point where he asked me about the sales of the Monkees records, and I saw the chance. It isn’t too well known, I said flatly, that we sold over thirty-five million records in 1967. More than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined … he diligently wrote all this down, and I wondered for a moment if I had chosen too outrageous a lie to tell, but it turned out it had been just right.

The next day in the paper, there it was, printed as fact.”

5. Jimi’s Parakeets

You might not be aware of this, but Great Britain has a feral parakeet problem, particularly the ring-necked variety. They are a non-native species and they’re also a non-migratory species. This means that they didn’t just fly from Africa or India on their own. Someone brought them to Britain and released them into the wild where they thrived and multiplied. And if the story is to be believed, then the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of one man… Jimi Hendrix.

Why was it his fault? Because, apparently, in 1968, while on a trip to London, he released a pair in Carnaby Street. This may or may not have happened, nobody knows for sure, but even if it did, Hendrix would still not be responsible for their introduction as a non-native species. Occasional parakeet sightings in Britain date back to the 19th century, and the first large-scale release of these birds might have occurred in the early 1930s, during an outbreak of “parrot fever” which prompted many parrot owners to release their feathered friends into the wild. 

Experts believe there were several such instances where parakeets were released in large numbers that ultimately led to them becoming a feral species in Britain, with the most significant one possibly being the Great Storm of 1987, which saw birdhouses being damaged throughout the country.

4. Getting High at Buckingham Palace

The Beatles were a quintessential part of the counterculture movement of the 1960s and, according to legend, they enacted one of their most infamous acts of rebellion in 1965 when they got high at Buckingham Palace.

Like the aforementioned claim made by Mike Nesmith, this was a rumor started by one of the band members. In 1965, the Beatles went to Buckingham Palace where Queen Elizabeth II presented them all with MBEs, which stands for Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. However, according to John Lennon, the Fab Four got ready to meet the queen by sneaking into the bathroom and smoking a joint to steady their nerves.

So were the Beatles high when they met the queen? The other bandmates dismissed Lennon’s claim, with both McCartney and Harrison pointing out that they just smoked regular cigarettes. And, eventually, Lennon himself walked back his statement, so it seems that this controversial moment in their careers was only a fanciful story.

3. The Rollercoaster Scream

It all started with a scream. There are innumerable songs that have screams in them but, for whatever reason, the Ohio Players’ 1975 hit Love Rollercoaster proved to be different. A rumor started going around that the funk band had unwittingly captured the last cry of a woman being murdered.

How could this even happen? Well, apparently, the woman was killed just outside the studio, or maybe in a different room, or even in the neighboring apartment, just as the band was recording Love Rollercoaster. The scream appears around the halfway point of the song and it is barely audible and quite easy to miss, which further convinced people that it had been recorded accidentally. 

In other variations on the urban legend, the woman wasn’t killed, just badly scalded by hot honey. In this instance, the scream belonged to model Ester Cordet who posed for the album cover naked while dripping honey over herself. It’s a bit unclear how it ended up on the recording, though.

The truth was far more obvious and mundane. The scream wasn’t unintentional and it didn’t even belong to a woman. It was made by Ohio Players keyboardist Billy Beck who just wanted to add a little something extra to the track. And, to give him credit, he did, just not what he intended.

2. Let Him Bleed

Even in a world filled with excesses, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is in a league of his own as his decades of drug abuse have been well-documented. But how come Keith Richards is still alive and kicking while so many of his contemporaries are long gone after partaking in the exact same lifestyle? Is he simply immortal or does he have a different ace up his sleeve? Well, if rumors are to be believed, then Keith Richards’ secret to long-lasting life is replacing all the blood in his body with fresh blood.

Yes, the claim is that the musician went to one of those super expensive, super secret medical clinics somewhere in the Swiss Alps and had a full-body blood transfusion to help him kick his heroin addiction. This is a weird situation because several people close to Richards confirmed the veracity of the rumor, only for Richards himself to eventually admit that he made up the whole thing out of boredom. Here’s what he said:

“Someone asked me how I cleaned up, so I told them I went to Switzerland and had my blood completely changed…I was just fooling around. I opened my jacket and said, ‘How do you like my blood change?

That’s all it was, a joke. I was f***ing sick of answering that question. So I gave them a story.”

1. The 27 Club

What do Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse have in common? They are all part of the accursed 27 Club, the mysterious “statistical spike” that has claimed the lives of famous musicians at the tender age of 27 in far greater numbers than any other age. 

Jimi, Janis, and Jim all died within two years of each other. They were all highly successful and influential, and they were all 27 years old so people did notice the eerie similarities between them, but it wasn’t really until the 90s when Kurt Cobain died that the idea of the 27 Club became a well-defined concept, and people were reminded of it again in 2011 when Amy Winehouse died. These are just the biggest names mentioned whenever the 27 Club is brought up, but there are others such as Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, blues pioneer Robert Johnson, Canned Heat singer Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson, Grateful Dead member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and scores of others.

So is there any truth to the idea that musicians are more likely to die when they are 27? Not according to science. One study examined the deaths of over 11,000 musicians over 60 years and only 1.3 percent of them died at that age. More died at 28, in fact, and, unsurprisingly, the percentage went up with age, with the 55-to-65 range proving to be the highest risk. The deadliest year of all was 56, which claimed 2.3 percent of lives. Even so, it was only slightly higher than its neighboring years, not enough to constitute a spike of any significance.

When it comes to true crime stories, urban environments often serve as a hotbed for vicious murders and nefarious deeds. Presented here are ten examples of urban true crime stories, ranging from mob violence to serial killers to meticulously planned robberies. This article does feature mentions of graphic violence, drug use, and sexual assault, so reader discretion is advised.

10. St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

When it comes to true crime stories, one can never forget the world of the mob and underground crime. This is most relevant to our first story, that of the  St. Valentine’s Day Massacre which occurred in Chicago on February 14, 1929. This story focuses on two gangs, each led by Bugs Moran and Al Capone respectively, both big players in Chicago’s mob scene. The two gangs were in a constant state of contention until things finally boiled over that faithful Valentine’s Day morning.

That morning, seven members of Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang were seized by men posing as police officers, lined up executioner’s style against a garage wall, and horrifically gunned down! Despite never being officially linked to the crime, all signs pointed to the massacre being the brainchild of Capone. Given the brutal and violent nature of the incident, the  St. Valentine’s Day Massacre proved to be a major turning point in the public’s perception of organized crime. 

Despite the widespread notoriety of the crime and subsequent investigations, no one was ever convicted of the massacre. This was most likely due to a lack of witnesses who were willing to step forward, compounded by the likely influence of mob intimidation methods.

9. The Great Train Robbery

Although the idea might seem quite old-fashioned now, train robberies were and still are a rather common crime in many countries. If you are looking for a major example of this rather theatrical crime, one needn’t look any further than the Great Train Robbery of 1963. On August 8, Bruce Reynolds and his team of 15 robbers halted the Royal Mail train in transit from Glasgow to London. After disabling the train’s signals, as well as overpowering its crew, Reynolds and the other robbers made off with around £2.6 million (or $3.3 million).

It wasn’t long before this cinematic-level crime was all over the front page news, capturing people’s attention due to the scale and meticulous nature of the robbery. Not only was there the aforementioned signal jamming but the gang had also used insider information to map out the precise layout of the train. Additionally, they were also well aware of the exact amount of cash that was going to be transported that day onboard the train well in advance. 

However, while these wannabee-Robin Hoods may have planned the robbery out to the last detail, the same can’t be said for their habits afterward. Due to many gang members’ excessive spending habits, as well as a concurrent police investigation, the crew was eventually brought to justice. 

8. The Zodiac Killer

In the annals of serial killer history, there are few names as mystifying and bone-chilling as the Zodiac Killer. Beginning in the late 60s, the Zodiac Killer began a string of five murders in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. Additionally, on July 31, 1969, he sent three letters to three Californian news outlets: The Vallejo Times Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner. 

These letters were not only where he dubbed himself as the Zodiac Killer but where his other trademark, his cryptic letters and cryptograms, were established. In these crazed letters, Zodiac would tease and taunt law enforcement, all while claiming his victims would be his slaves for the afterlife. Despite only taking credit for a total of five murders, all within the state, Zodiac found himself linked to several other cold cases as well. 

In the years since his crimes and cryptic messages, Zodiac has never been caught, despite several suspects having been looked at in the years since. After all the books, podcasts, and critically acclaimed movies dedicated to him, the sinister legacy of the Zodiac Killer still looms over the Gold Coast.

7. The Boston Strangler

In one of the most gruesome crimes to ever hit the city of Boston, 13 women were assaulted and strangled in their apartments between June 1962 and January 1964. The twist perpetrator was initially dubbed the Mad Strangler of Boston, the Phantom Strangler, and the Phantom Fiend. This moniker stemmed largely from the Strangler’s M.O. which consisted of making his way inside his female victim’s homes with seemingly minimal effort. His other trademark was the brutal and horrifically efficient method he opted to kill his victims with, that being the use of their clothes as his instruments of murder.

Despite the widespread panic and a sizable manhunt effort, a culprit was never found, that is until late 1946 and the emergence of Albert DeSalvo. After assaulting a young woman in her own home, DeSalvo was identified by the victim with his photo later being published in the newspaper. Following the publication of his image, DeSalvo was identified by several past Boston Strangler victims, confident that he had been their assailant. Following his arrest, DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler, though some still maintain that he only did so under coercion or to attain notoriety.

6. The Cocaine Cowboys

Miami, Florida in the late ’70s and early ’80s was marked by a manic and violent chapter due to a massive influx of cocaine from Colombia. This is where the Cocaine Cowboys, a group of drug smugglers and traffickers, came into existence. Their smuggling efforts were nothing short of bold, frequently moving staggeringly colossal quantities of cocaine over the border with great frequency. This resulted in many of the Cowboys being able to afford the most lavish lifestyles one could have at the time, complete with fast cars, big yachts, and all-night parties. 

Many might be familiar with the Cowboys via the eponymous Netflix docuseries focusing on two key figures in the drug trade, Sal Magluta and Willie Falcon, AKA Los Muchachos. When all was said and done, both men were accused of smuggling at least 75-plus tons of cocaine into the United States, resulting in over $2 billion in profits. These two men were just the tip of the iceberg regarding the amount of people profiting off these highly illegal activities. However, the party couldn’t last forever, as eventually, law enforcement efforts caught up to the Cowboys, resulting in several high-profile arrests and prosecutions.

5. The Axeman of New Orleans

In the early 1900s, the streets of New Orleans were turned into a nightmare, with Italian immigrants being brutally murdered in their own homes. The Axeman of New Orleans claimed six lives while injuring six others, from May 23, 1918, until October 27, 1919. Based on his rather theatrical moniker, the killer’s weapon of choice was often a straight razor or, more frequently, an axe, the murder instrument he’d become known for. However, in additionally odd detail,  the killer would use an axe that was already on the premises of whoever’s home he had broken into. 

As previously mentioned, a majority of the Axeman’s victims were Italian immigrants, leading to theories that the crimes were motivated by mafia ties or ethnicity. The strangest wrinkle in the story came when the Axeman sent a handwritten letter to the local newspaper outlining his motives. The Axeman, claiming to be a supernatural being, noted that he’d spare those who played jazz music in their homes on a specific night. Motives from sexual sadism to jazz music appreciation were all proposed at one time or another, all varying in their likelihood. Despite many theories, the Axeman was never caught, leaving his specter to haunt New Orleans to this very day. 

4. The Atlanta Child Murders

Any fans of the David Fincher-helmed Netflix series Mindhunter will be immediately familiar with the events of the Atlanta Child Murders. From 1979 to 1981, close to 28 African American children youths ranging from children to adolescents to even young adults were abducted and killed. All of the victims, a majority of them male, were often found to have been dumped in remote areas such as nearby woods or the river.

As the murder continued and bodies kept turning up, Atlanta’s black community began expressing their outrage due to the slow response of local law enforcement. They attributed this slow response, not unreasonably, to racial biases that were present at the time, and sadly still exist today. The dark cloud of these killings loomed over Atlanta until eventually an arrest was made in the form of 23-year-old Wayne Williams. Through forensic evidence, Williams was convicted with two of the older victims with authorities simply opting to attribute the child murders to him as well. Despite his arrest, many people, especially the parents of the victims, weren’t satisfied, still maintaining there was more to the murders. Whether or not Williams was the sole perpetrator of the Atlanta Child Murders or if the case had multiple culprits is still debated even in the modern day. 

3. Ariel Castro kidnappings

In May 2013, the neighbors of Ariel Castro were alerted by the screams of 26-year-old Amanda Berry, who’d been imprisoned in his house since 2003. Following her escape, it was revealed that Berry was one of three kidnapping victims, the two others being Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus.

All three girls had been subject to sexual and physical violence at the hands of Castro, with Knight having gone through five separate miscarriages. Additionally, all three girls were barely fed, only receiving a meal a day, and were only allowed to bathe twice a week if they were lucky. Berry ended up giving birth to Castro’s child in 2006 with the delivery being done in a small inflatable swimming pool.

Eventually, Castro got a bit careless and forgot to lock a large inside door that usually prevented the girls’ sounds from reaching the streets. This is what allowed Berry to flag down some neighbors who were able to help her escape, finally ending the trio’s decade-long nightmare. Following their rescue, all three girls were immediately rushed to a nearby hospital to begin their long recovery process. Castro was subsequently arrested and given a life sentence, something he’d escape by hanging himself a month into his sentence. 

2. The Night Stalker

Richard Ramirez, AKA The Night Stalker, was a serial killer who terrorized the streets of California in the mid-1980s. He earned his sinister moniker from the nature of his crimes, breaking into the homes of his victims often late at night and under the cover of darkness. After breaking in, Ramirez would viciously sexually assault, mutilate, and murder his victims, with only a few surviving to tell the tale. 

The most miraculous was Maria Hernandez, who survived a gunshot from Ramirez due to holding her keys in front of her head at the moment of impact. Others were not so lucky and would end up as just another gruesome victim claimed during the Night Stalker’s moonlight activities. During this time, many West Coast residents were gripped in fear, locking their windows and doors at night, lest they be the Night Stalker’s next victim.

Despite his illusive nature, Ramirez was far from a criminal mastermind, as the man was just insanely lucky when it came to his misdeeds. So it shouldn’t be too much of a shock that eventually his luck ran out when a widespread manhunt finally resulted in his capture in 1985. Ramirez ended up spending years on death row before dying of complications from B-cell lymphoma in 2013 before his planned execution.

1. Son of Sam

It was only a matter of time before our urban true crime discussion brought us to the streets of New York City. The city that never sleeps has played host to many a gruesome crime, whether in broad daylight or under rows of flickering street lights. 

However, when it comes to noteworthy crimes native to NYC, one needn’t look any further than the summer of 1976 to 1977 and David Berkowitz, better known now as the Son of Sam. From 1976 to 1977, the boroughs of the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn were hit with a string of horrific murders. Using a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver gun, Berkowitz claimed six people’s lives while wounding seven others, sending panic through the streets of New York. Though his choice of victims seemed fairly random, he seemed to frequently target couples parked in cars.

During his crime spree, Berkowitz would taunt the police, as well as the news media, with cryptic notes, wherein he’d dub himself the “Son of Sam.” He even went as far as to claim that he’d been commanded to commit these crimes by a demonic talking dog named Sam, hence the strange moniker. In August 1977, Berkowitz was finally arrested and sentenced to six consecutive life terms in prison, putting an end to the Son of Sam’s reign of terror.

There likely isn’t a country, city, town, or village in the world that does not have some sort of scary legend that makes up part of its history. Whether loosely based on fact or a story from an imaginative mind, urban legends have been around for a long time.

They will probably continue to be told for generations. On this list are some lesser-known urban legends that may have the potential to raise the neck hairs of even the most fearless readers.

10 Creepy And Outrageous Urban Legends That Turned Out To Be Completely True

8 The Drowned Boy Of Hawaii

A small village on the Big Island of Hawaii is the center of paradise living as well as a tragedy that haunts its residents to this day. It is said that a group of children were playing alongside a pond in the village in 1947 when one boy lost his footing and fell into the water. His friends ran to get help immediately, and rescue divers were on the scene within minutes.^[1]

When the divers located the boy at the bottom of the pond, they were shocked to see his lifeless body propped up on a rock. It was as though the boy was sitting calmly while waiting to be rescued. His eyes and mouth were wide open, and his body swayed along with the movement of the water. The divers shook off the chills creeping down their spines and brought the body back to the surface.

While the villagers tried to forget about the tragedy and move on with their lives, it seemed that the drowned boy refused to let them. Reports soon surfaced of unseen fingers tugging at the pants of those who walked alongside the pond. People became convinced that the spirit of the dead boy had remained in the water. They believed that he wanted to drag the living into the pond to join him in his watery grave.

Years passed without further incident. Then, one day, a young boy was strolling along the shore of the pond when something dragged him in. His father, who was walking ahead of the boy, turned to see his son disappearing into the water. When divers found the youngster, he was also perched on a rock with his eyes and mouth open. Fortunately, the boy was resuscitated once the divers brought him back to the surface.

After this incident, villagers started hearing a plaintive cry from the pond in the darkness of night. It is rumored that the crying will continue until the boy finds a substitute to replace his spirit in the depths of the pond.

7 Beware Of Long Ear

Somalia is famous for crime, piracy, kidnapping, and terrorist attacks. The country is one of the least developed in the world, and over 70 percent of its citizens live in poverty.

Mothers who raise children there go to extremes to keep their kids safe from the threats surrounding them. Hence, these ladies sometimes use the legend of Long Ear to dissuade children and teenagers from exploring the forests in Somalia, especially if they live nearby.

Long Ear (aka Dhegdheer) is a cannibalistic woman who is said to prefer lost children. She hangs around forests, keeping her one long ear on the ground to hear the sound of youngsters who can’t find their way out.^[2]

Should she happen upon a lost young soul, she will eat that child alive in a matter of minutes. To make the story even more terrifying for Somali kids who are thinking of disobeying their parents’ warnings, it is said that Long Ear has a special penchant for eating children who have no manners and do not listen to their parents.

6 The Rolling Calves Of Jamaica

Jamaica is an island in the Caribbean well known for its lush rain forests, fantastic beaches, pungent rum, and world-class coffee. People come from all over the world to experience all Jamaica has to offer, whether it is the breathtaking views or activities such as water sports and hikes in the beautiful greenery.

However, if you find yourself yearning for a nighttime stroll while in Jamaica, keep an eye out for rolling calves. They are said to be the spirits of people who were evil in life (for some reason, butchers in particular).

A rolling calf is exactly what it sounds like—a creature that resembles a calf and rolls along the road. One of its eyes is red and can spew fire. You’ll know a rolling calf is behind you when you hear the rattling of its chains.^[3]

According to other versions of the legend, both eyes are red and fire spews from the creature’s nostrils. Sometimes, its hind legs are those of a goat while one foreleg is human and the other is that of a horse.

Rolling calves block the way of walking travelers. Once a traveler starts running away, the creature will chase the person down with the intent to torture him.

If you come face-to-face with a rolling calf, you can distract it by throwing objects on the ground for it to count. Or you can start running to the nearest crossroads and get there ahead of it.

Alternatively, you can find a tarred whip and keep it handy on those nighttime walks. Beating a rolling calf with a tarred whip held in your left hand will send it running (or rolling) for the hills.

5 ‘The Price Is Three Sacks’

According to legend, a long time ago in an unnamed village in Scotland, a witch appeared from the surrounding forest to warn the villagers to stop cutting down the trees to make way for more farmland. She threatened to make all their land—as well as all the women in the village—infertile if they ignored her warning.

A deal was struck between the villagers and the witch that only a small part of the forest could be cleared. In return, the villagers had to leave one sack of produce at the edge of the forest after each harvest.^[4]

Things remained peaceful for centuries. Then, one day, a new generation of villagers tore down almost the entire forest to build a mill.

The witch returned to promise suffering because of the broken treaty. The villagers grabbed the witch and hanged her. With her last breath, she exclaimed that the price was now three sacks of produce.

The owner of the mill was terrified of the witch even after her death and dutifully placed three sacks of produce at the edge of the forest after each harvest. His crops grew abundantly, and in time, he became a father to three beautiful daughters.

Eventually, however, the mill owner grew complacent and greedy. He stopped paying his due. The very next morning after he failed to pay the three sacks of produce for his harvest, his youngest daughter went missing.

While the village rallied to look for the girl, the mill started running. Suddenly, the workers cried out in alarm. Between the millstones ran rivulets of blood. The mill owner’s daughter was discovered caught and crushed between them.

By the 1960s, an old crumbling silo stood in place of the mill. A young boy was dared to stay in the silo overnight to determine if it was haunted by the witch or the young girl who had died in the mill.

When his friends found him the next morning, they were shocked to see that the boy had broken both his ankles when he jumped from the silo loft. Asked why he had done that, he said that several empty grain bags inside the mill had “come to life” and were dragging themselves toward him to overpower him.

Top 10 Bizarre American Urban Legends

4 Eight Feet Tall

Japan is the center of many creepy legends. Who can forget the Slit-Mouthed Woman or Teke Teke, the ghost of a young woman who fell onto a railway line and had her body cut in half by a train?

She drags the upper half of her body around on her elbows, all the while making a teke teke sound. She chases unwitting victims, and when she catches them, cuts them in half to make them suffer in the same way she did.

Children are seemingly not safe in Japan, either, especially since a demon named Eight Feet Tall uses a masculine voice to call out “Po . . . Po . . . Po” in an attempt to lure kids between the ages of 9 and 11.^[5]

Eight Feet Tall (aka Hachishakusama) often takes the form of a 244-centimeter-tall (8’0”) woman with long black hair. She wears all white and no shoes.

Much like Slender Man, she stalks children for several days or even months. When she spots a gap, she grabs the child to torture and kill him. Sometimes, Eight Feet Tall takes the form of a trusted family member to lure a child away faster.

3 Seven Sisters Road

In the early 1900s, a young man became enraged during a massive argument with his parents inside the house he shared with them and seven sisters. He stormed out without resolving the issue and paced the woods close to home.

A plan formed in his mind, and he waited until his parents left the house. He went back inside and led his sisters out one at a time, hanging each one by the neck from separate trees that stood in a perfect row.

Many years later, the seven trees had to be cut down to make way for a road just a few miles south of Nebraska City. This road became known as the Seven Sisters Road after reports emerged of screams echoing through the night and car headlights dimming on their own as motorists traveled along.

Some drivers claim to have heard bells ringing in the darkness. Others say they have seen red eyes staring at them from the shadows.^[6]

Another version of the legend says that the father is the one who hanged his seven daughters from the trees to get back at his wife for allegedly cheating on him.

2 Check Behind You

It seems like something straight out of a horror movie. Apparently, a legend from Sydney tries to teach drivers to check their rearview mirrors to see if any unwanted passengers have slipped into their back seats without the motorists knowing.

Along Wakehurst Parkway, which connects Seaforth to Narrabeen, lies Deep Creek Reserve. The reserve is known for unexplained murders and paranormal activity.

Several motorists who travel this road have reported their car radios suddenly malfunctioning or car doors locking for no apparent reason. One of the unexplained tales tells the story of Kelly, a girl who was attacked and murdered along Wakehurst Parkway in the 1970s.^[7]

Kelly appears in the back seat of an unsuspecting driver’s vehicle and runs the car off the road if the driver does not notice her. If he does see her, he should yell “Get out, Kelly” to avoid becoming another road accident statistic.

During the filming of the movie The Parkway Hauntings, the cast and crew were left terrified after an encounter with Kelly. A deep glow appeared behind the actor portraying Kelly and remained even after all camera lights were switched off.

The actor started feeling extremely cold and said afterward that she felt frozen to the spot. Producer Bianca Biasi found the experience so disturbing that she vowed never to return to Deep Creek Reserve or drive along Wakehurst Parkway again.

1 The Vanishing Hotel Room

In 1889, a mother and daughter were traveling through Europe when the mother suddenly fell ill. After arriving in Paris, the duo booked a room in a luxury hotel and the mother went to bed immediately.

Her daughter was concerned and sent for the resident doctor. The physician gave the mother a prescription, and the daughter set off on a frustrating journey. She walked around the city, struggling to find an apothecary or anyone who spoke English as she did not speak French.

After finally returning to the hotel with the medicine, the daughter was astonished to find that the hotel room was empty and her mother was gone. What’s more, the room looked completely different.

The curtains, carpet, and wallpaper all sported different patterns. The daughter looked around for their luggage to confirm that she was in the right room. But it was nowhere to be found.

Finding a cleaning lady outside the room, the daughter asked if the woman had seen her mother. The cleaning lady simply stared at her and then turned around and walked away. Approaching other hotel staff elicited the same response. All the staff as well as the hotel manager denied ever having seen the mother and daughter before.

The daughter ran off to the embassy. She hoped that someone would be able to help her, but the officials there decided she was insane and sent her to a mental institution. Being trapped in the asylum with no one who would listen to her story, the daughter went insane for real and died a few years later.^[8]

10 Famous Urban Legends Come To Life

Stories and folklore have enchanted and horrified people of all cultures for centuries. These stories turn into legends when they’re widely circulated, slowly evolving into truths. Many myths have been the inspiration for Hollywood’s “based on a true story” tagline. And while you may doubt the authenticity of some of those claims, there are urban legends that genuinely hold some kernel of truth. Keep reading to find out 10 of the most intriguing myths that actually happened. 

10 The Man Who Flew Away on a Balloon Lawn Chair

The classic trope in cartoons where a man is lifted into the air by balloons tied to a chair does have a real-life story behind it. In San Pedro, California, Larry Walters was the first man to become airborne using nothing but a lawn chair and 45 helium-filled weather balloons. Walters hoped to fly across the mountain range to reach the Mojave Desert.

A friend filmed the attempt, which you can watch online. The flight was only semi-successful. Walters managed to reach 16,000 feet and flew for 45 minutes before getting entangled in power lines. Fortunately, Walters managed to climb down to safety unharmed, but law enforcement arrested him immediately for violating U.S Federal Aviation Regulations. He gained worldwide recognition for the outlandish stunt.

Since the pioneering flight in 1982, a surprising number of people have attempted to recreate the homemade aircraft. It also inspired the 2003 film Danny Deckchair and the extreme sport of cluster ballooning.

9 Rat Kings

A very weird myth indeed. People have been reporting rat kings since the mid-16th century, and we’re not talking about crowned rodents. The name rat king refers to the supposed phenomenon where rats’ tails become tangled together. It was believed to be mythical, yet there is evidence of this really happening. The greatest rat king found and preserved in 1828 had as many as 32 rats bound together in this way. We used to think that people only fabricated these kinds of specimens—zoologists were skeptical that it could occur naturally.

As recently as 2005, An Estonian farmer discovered a rat king consisting of 16 rats. The tails were tangled together by frozen sand, with nine of the rats still alive. It is preserved at the Natural History Museum at the University of Tartu.

It seems nature can be this creepy—the phenomenon was deemed possible but rare.

8 A Dress to Die For

Folklore worldwide recounts the tale of the poisoned dress. In the ancient Greek story of Medea, Medea enacts revenge on her ex-lover’s new younger wife with death-by-dress. Medea removes the dress from a corpse and sends it to Glauce, who wears it to a ball (other times, it’s her own wedding). She succumbs to the embalming fluid that has seeped into the garment. 

The myth of the embalming fluid, or formaldehyde, being a cause of death has persisted, although it’s been disproven. It turns out formaldehyde smells so bad that it would be impossible not to notice it.

There is an unfortunate period in history, though, where manufacturers used arsenic-laced dyes in many clothing items during the 19th century. The exuberantly green dresses that were all the rage in high society ended up causing all those who came in contact with the fabric to endure painful blisters and, worse still, horribly painful deaths.  

7 Alligators in the Sewers of New York

The urban legend of giant, often albino, alligators living in the sewer system of New York has been passed down the generations, permeated pop culture, and is even commemorated with an unofficial holiday (February 9th is Alligators in the Sewers Day).

Legend has it that rich families in the 1930s began keeping alligators as pets, but once they grew bored of them or found the grown gators too difficult to manage, they flushed them down the toilet. It’s believed that a large colony of sewer alligators has been terrorizing the sewers ever since.

The truth is alligators were once sold as pets and have been found in storm drains and surrounding rivers. The multiple tales of sightings and captures have been fanning the flame of this legend over the years. As for the reptiles living and thriving in the sewers? It turns out it’s not possible. The environment is too cold and toxic for alligators to survive very long. 

6 Cropsey Killer

Cropsey is a boogeyman legend that circulated Staten Island towards the end of the 20th century. The story goes that an escaped mental patient living in the abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution’s old tunnels kidnapped and murdered children. The legendary figure would sometimes have a hook for a hand, other times a butcher’s knife, but the story of a murderous maniac struck fear in the kids who grew up there. The true story is just as haunting.

After a spate of child disappearances, Andre Rand, who had previously worked at the Willowbrook Institution and was then living on the abandoned grounds, was arrested and charged with Holly Ann Hughes’s kidnapping. This led many Staten Island residents to believe that Rand was the crazed killer responsible for several other disappeared children. Although there has been no physical evidence linking Rand to the crimes, newspapers and Staten Islanders drew parallels between Rand and Cropsey. 

A documentary called Cropsey investigates the myth and the man supposed to be the real-life Cropsey. One thing’s for sure—it’s difficult to tell the difference between the facts and the folklore.

5 A Giant Sea Creature That Terrorizes Sailors

Norse sailors would often recount tales of a giant tentacled creature that rose from the depths of the ocean and attacked their ships. The reports stated that this ferocious sea monster would rock the ship and even knock men overboard with a tentacle. They believed the creature was hunting them and feasting on their crew one by one. The Kraken myth has been an old seafaring legend for centuries, but is there any truth to this myth? 

Well, yes. These harrowing ordeals’ culprit is the colossal squid, the largest of the squid species (even bigger than the giant squid). Sure the sailors’ stories were exaggerations, but who doesn’t exaggerate adventures at sea. In 2003, researchers discovered a complete specimen in Antarctic waters. These rare deep ocean lurkers grow up to 14 meters long and weigh at least 500kg. They also have rotating hooks on the tentacles’ club-shaped ends, which make them even more terrifying.

4 Real-Life Beauty and the Beast

Many tales describe mythical hybrids from centaurs to mermaids. But less glamorous are the stories about beasts that resemble a human man in some ways, like the beast from Beauty and the Beast. There are many more accounts of a wild ape-like man from bigfoot to werewolves.

In the 1500s, a man named Petrus Gonsalves, a native of the Canary Islands, was born with a rare condition that we now know as hypertrichosis (or werewolf syndrome). The condition produces excessive hair growth all over the body, including the face. Hair completely covered Petrus and people treated him like an animal. They even kept him in a cage and fed him raw meat.

At ten years old, he was presented as a gift to the new King of France, Henri II. The King wanted to tame the ‘savage’ and decided to give the boy a proper education. Seeing that Petrus was intelligent, he became very fond of the boy and stopped treating him like an animal, making him a noble.

Petrus married a beautiful woman at the court, and they had children together, some of whom shared the genetic condition. Could this remarkable tale be the real-life inspiration for beauty and the beast?  

3 Premature Burial

You may have heard of a few cases where people, being mistaken for dead, were accidentally buried alive. Stories of supposed corpses heard screaming from underground and excavations that revealed scratch marks on the inside of coffins had haunted us for centuries. The terror of being buried alive was so strong in Victorian times that bells were set up and attached to dead bodies in case they ever awoke.

Some historians even believe the phrase ‘saved by the bell’ comes from this practice. Yet, despite the popularity of these ‘safety coffins,’ there are no records of anyone actually being saved this way.

This doesn’t mean the myth of being buried alive is untrue, but it’s definitely not as common as we once believed. Even scarier is that people have reported similar instances in modern times. The most recent case of a mistaken death happened in 2020.

Peter Kigen, a 32-year-old Kenyan man who was declared dead, woke up in a morgue to staff preparing to embalm and drain the blood from his body. Kigen regained consciousness and began screaming after someone had sliced his leg open. Hospital negligence is assumed to be responsible for this shocking incident.

2 A Real Corpse as a Halloween Decoration

A very dark urban legend, used repeatedly as the plot for murder mysteries in film and television, is the dead body in a Halloween display that ends up being a genuine corpse. People walk by commenting on how realistic it looks, and nobody knows something horrendous has occurred.

This one may be hard to believe. After all, no amount of makeup and special effects could convince that many people a decomposing body is fake, right?

Unfortunately, this isn’t just a dramatic scene played out in Hollywood. It really did happen. In 2015, a woman in Ohio was left for dead on a fence by a roadside after being attacked. She was initially mistaken for a Halloween decoration by several people who noticed the woman’s body hanging off the chain-link fence. No one thought to report it since they believed it to be a prank. Only when a construction worker, who also thought it was a decoration, went to remove it realized it was a real body.

1 A Haunted Doll

If you watch enough horror movies, you would have come across a couple of spooky dolls like Chucky or Annabelle. The creepy legend of a beloved toy becoming possessed is enough to give you nightmares. This next story is definitely too weird to be true, and yet here it is. 

In 1918, in Hokkaido, Japan, a young boy bought a doll for his little sister, Okiku. Both the doll and the Okiku looked similar, having an okappa haircut, a bowl cut with straight hair down to the chin. The doll went everywhere, the little girl went, and so, when Okiku tragically died a couple of months later, her family kept the doll as a shrine. They named the doll after her and prayed to it every day.

Then something bizarre happened. The family noticed that the doll’s hair was getting longer. It was growing just as an ordinary person’s hair might grow. Knowing something was very wrong, they gave the doll to Mannen-Ji Temple in Iwamizawa City. Scientists have analyzed the doll’s hair and concluded that it is, in fact, real human hair, human hair belonging to a child. You can still visit this freaky paranormal phenomenon as the doll is on display in the same temple.

Wherever tragedies happen, urban legends settle.

Roads around the world are often the site of tragic accidents and death, then becoming the center of terrifying legends. In the city of Wildwood, St. Louis County, Missouri, lies Zombie Road, which stretches through a valley and ends near the Meramec River. Mostly unused since the 1950s, it became a popular hangout for teenagers who liked to party away from adult supervision. Zombie Road was also said to be the hunting ground for the “Zombie Killer”’ who stalked the place looking for young couples.
These days, however, ghost hunters like to stake out the road in the hopes that they will catch a glimpse of the ghost of the wife of a local judge who was hit by a train nearby and died in 1876.

On this list are some more of the creepiest roads around the world and the urban legends that made them famous.

Related: 10 Famous Urban Legends Come To Life

10 Pray or Die

The National Highway 33 or Ranchi-Jamshedpur NH33 in Jharkhand, India, looks like all the other highways in the country: busy. It runs from Arwal to Farakka and links Bihar and Bengal.

There is a temple to be found at each end of the expressway, and it is said that those who travel along the highway must stop and pray at both locations to avoid a fatal accident. Between 2010 and 2013, a total of 245 people died in accidents on the Ranchi-Jamshedpur NH33, leading to rumors that the highway is cursed.

Many drivers have also reported seeing the apparition of a tall lady in a white saree “patrolling” the road.^[1]

9 Eerie Mountain Pass

South Africa has its fair share of haunted roads, with the most infamous being the N9 national route which passes through Uniondale, where you might just find the ghost of Maria Roux attempting to solicit a lift from you.

The well-known Swartberg Pass in the Karoo links the towns of Prince Albert and Oudtshoorn and was built by hundreds of convicts in the late 1800s. Thirty of them died during a snowstorm, and it is said that as you drive past the spot of the tragedy, you will feel the temperature drop by several degrees—even in the middle of summer.

At another spot on the mountain pass, a guard who accidentally shot himself still hangs around in plain sight. And when the wind blows a certain way, the plaintive cries of a family who died in a blizzard can be heard in the distance.^[2]

8 The Street With No Name

In Annandale, New South Wales, Australia, a narrow street that runs parallel with a rail viaduct has earned itself the moniker of “The Street With No Name.”

The bodies of murdered people, reportedly including six children, have been dumped here, which has led to an urban legend that says those who happen to find themselves on this street will likely experience fear, anxiety, and a sense of doom or foreboding. Too many of the murders have not been solved, which just adds to the air of desperation. It is also said that children and animals behave strangely whenever they are in the vicinity and that late-night visitors have heard disembodied footsteps, whispers, and
unexplained noises.

Those who believe in the presence of ghosts, are convinced that the souls of the murdered children cannot rest and are forever stuck in what is also called an “evil street.”^[3]

7 Werewolves of the B1249

A survey in 2020 revealed that one out of seven Brits has seen things of the paranormal variety while driving. It’s not surprising, really, as the UK is known for multiple haunted roads, including the A229 with its “Blue Bell Hill Bride” and the A696 where the spirit of a dead RAF officer lingers.

Until the 15th century, wolves were plentiful in the farmland of the East Riding of Yorkshire, which is believed to be why there are so many werewolf sightings on the B1249 between Driffield and Staxton Hill. A truck driver was traveling along this road in the 1960s when a hairy creature with glowing red eyes tried to smash through his windscreen. The incident was detailed by the author, Charles Christian.^[4]

In 2016, a young woman reported seeing a “dog bigger than her car, but with a human face” while driving along the road.

6 Don’t Look Back

The Karak Highway in Malaysia is dangerous in more than one way. It is prone to fatal accidents and is also the site where a horrifying creature is said to roam. The creature legend hails from a story about a couple whose car broke down on this highway. The husband got out of the vehicle to try and find help, and while he was gone, his wife fell asleep. She awoke to the loud sound of something banging on the roof of the car. Too scared to get out, she stayed put while the sound got louder and louder. Finally, just as she couldn’t take it anymore and was about to flee the vehicle, a police car pulled up. An officer approached her, telling her to exit the car via the driver’s side and walk toward him. As she did so, the officer told her to not look back.

She couldn’t resist, however, and as she peered over her shoulder, she saw a huge creature on top of the car gripping her husband’s head between its claws and banging it against the roof.^[5]

On the Karak Highway, there have also been sightings of a driverless yellow VW Beetle that overtakes other cars but then drives in reverse while staying in front and scaring the pants off motorists.

5 Ghost Road

Scotland is no stranger to spooky and fantastical tales. Not only are there creepy roads, but you will find hell hounds, loch monsters, and spectral beings that haunt traditional bridges and overpasses.

The most haunted road in Scotland is said to be the A75 Kinmount Straight. It is on this road that brothers Derek and Norman Ferguson were driving when they saw a hen flying straight toward their windscreen. Then followed cats, dogs, and other animals. All the animals disappeared on impact with the windscreen.

Truck drivers have had eerie experiences on the A75 as well, with one quitting his job after waking up one night to see an endless stream of apparitions passing by his truck. Motorists have also reported knocking people over who suddenly appear before them in the road, only for them to vanish after the shaken-up driver gets out of the car to help.^[6]

4 Mount Misery and Sweet Hollow

Mount Misery and Sweet Hollow roads run parallel on Long Island. Also known as No Man’s Land, driving down either of these roads might see you running into a group of ghostly teenagers who followed through with a suicide pact years ago.

Motorists have reported seeing the ghost of a child, who’d been killed in a hit and run, sitting on the overpass, as well as a policeman missing half of his head. Some have seen a man holding a basket containing severed heads. Another legend has it that a mental asylum once stood on Mount Misery Road and was burned down by a female patient. She also died in the fire and now wanders the road at night, still wearing her hospital gown.^[7]

3 The Dark Side of Paradise

The half-faced girl of the Old Pali Road and the screaming ghost of Morgan’s Corner in Hawaii are just two of the creepy stories surrounding the roads here.

There is also the woman who died in a car crash on Palani Road in the 1950s after catching her husband with another woman. To this day, there are rumors of her spirit standing in the middle of the road, causing drivers to crash as they try to swerve around her.

While building the H-1 Highway in Oahu, construction workers unearthed the bones of ancient Hawaiians. This discovery came after several of the workers claimed to have seen the ghosts of Hawaiian warriors. This resulted in the highway taking seven years to complete because it became impossible to find people to keep working on the project.^[8]

2 The Spooky Roads of Thailand

Thailand has many haunted roads to choose from should you be in the mood for ghost-hunting. First, there is the spirited Tha Chaom-Nong Chang Road, where headless ghosts and a playful female apparition with a penchant for sticking out her tongue roams.

A two-lane road in Thonburi, Bangkok, called Chak Phra Road, is the site of a creepy legend about a husband who killed his pregnant wife. It is said that her spirit still cannot rest, and she haunts the road, hanging out in front of the Wat Taling Chan temple. Many taxi drivers refuse to use the road at night out of fear that they will encounter her ghost.^[9]

1 Ghosts around every turn

Route 66 was one of the original highways in the U.S. Highway System. It was decertified in 1985, but some segments of it can still be traveled as part of the designated “Historic Route.”

Along with the various tourist attractions that Route 66 has to offer, ghosts lurk around just about every turn in the road. The Missouri part of the route is known for the specters that haunt the Bethlehem Cemetery and the Bloody Hill Ghosts at Wilson Creek. In Oklahoma, apparitions float around in the Tulsa Little Theatre and the Gilcrease Museum.

In Arizona, visitors can take a break from their road trip to do some sightseeing at the Navajo County courthouse, which is haunted by the only man ever hanged there. And in California, there is the haunted Georgian hotel to explore and the cheerfully named Suicide Bridge.^[10]

For many, the U.S. is the authority on creepy, especially when it comes to urban legends and haunted locations. However, several countries around the world hold their own when it comes to eerie stories that will send a chill down your spine.

Here are 10 non-American urban legends to get your heart pounding and chills racing down your spine.

Related: Top 10 Bizarre American Urban Legends

10 Ghostly Marble Games

Singapore is the island of shopping malls and terrifying legends. When the Bishan MRT station opened in November 1987, several passengers reported seeing headless specters wandering around among the living. This might have had something to do with the fact that the station was built over the site of the former Peck San Theng cemetery. It also didn’t help that night-shift staff stated that they’d seen coffin bearers floating around in the tunnels linking Bishan and the Novena MRT station, which also just happened to have been built over a former cemetery.

Rushing home to the safety of your HDB won’t keep the spirits at bay, however. Legend still has it that several people complain about children in the apartment above theirs, in high-rise residential buildings, playing marbles until the early hours of the morning. When they eventually become frustrated enough and storm up to the apartment, they find it empty. Speaking to the landlord, they then realize that the apartment has been empty for months and that the family who lived there before never had any children.^[1]

9 Corpse on the Tube

In 2007, a strange urban legend started making the rounds on the internet. It described an art student taking the tube home late one evening from central London. She and another man, looking to be in his mid-thirties, were the only passengers on the tube until three other people got on a few minutes later. Two men were holding up a woman between them, and the student immediately assumed the woman was passed out drunk or high.

She was studiously avoiding eye contact with them when the thirty-something passenger suddenly sat down next to her and whispered urgently that she needed to get off at the next stop. Looking back and forth between the man and the decidedly creepy-looking trio, she decided to exit the train. As she and the man stood watching the train depart, he turned to her and told her that he’d seen from his window how the two young men dragged the woman between them and that a pair of scissors had been embedded into her skull. Another version of the urban legend has it that the two men strangled the woman, and the crime was eventually discovered by a ticket guard.^[2]

8 Last Resting Place of Terror

Australia has its fair share of terrifying animals and spiders, but in Brisbane, you’ll find creatures of the paranormal variety that might just send you running toward the Outback.

It is said that at the top of Avenue 12 inside the Toowong Cemetery, you will find the double grave of two sisters who died in a car accident. If you park your car at the bottom of the hill, the ghosts of the sisters will drag it slowly uphill to where a terrifying eternal fate awaits you.

At another cemetery, Goodna, a visitor has reported trying to leave after visiting a grave but could not get his car moving even though it was turned on. He struggled the entire night, and as the sun rose over the cemetery, he finally succeeded in getting the car going. Arriving home, he found deep scratches on either side of his car. Goodna Cemetery is filled with people who lived in the 1800s right up to the modern era. These remains include those of former patients of the old Brisbane Mental Hospital.^[3]

7 The Haunting of La Mussara

The once-beautiful town of La Mussara in Vilaplana, Spain, now echoes with a haunting silence as its ruins stand guard over the plains of Tarragona. Officially, the town was abandoned after a severe endemic insect invasion decimated the vineyards upon which locals depended for their livelihood. Unofficially, the town was cursed, leading to its residents fleeing its confines.

Rumor has it that dense fog covers the town often, causing visitors to become disoriented. Those who have tried to explore La Mussara’s ruins have also reported hearing horses’ hooves and voices whispering in the distance. Some believe that the town holds a gateway to another realm known as La Vila del Sis. Jumping over a particular stone outside a specific house will cause you to cross over into this realm, where you will be greeted by horrifying creatures of the underworld.

Adding to the speculation and legend is the alleged disappearance of Enrique Martinez Ortiz, who set off on October 16, 1991, with a group of friends to collect mushrooms in La Mussara. During the trip, Enrique lagged behind his friends, and when they turned to look for him, he was gone. He has never been seen again.^[4]

6 The Devil Himself

If it’s not the scream of a banshee shattering the tranquil atmosphere in the dark of night, it’s the scorched figure of Francis Bruen’s bride roaming around the Coolbawn House. Ireland has a horde of urban legends—and then some—when it comes to creepy ghosts, shadows, reapers, and more.

In 1766, the Tottenham family occupied the now-infamous Loftus Hall in County Wexford. When LordTottenham’s wife died unexpectedly, Tottenham soon remarried so that his new wife could assist in the bringing up of his two young daughters. During that time, many ships’ crews found themselves in trouble during storms, and after ending up wrecked on the shore, the survivors would be invited into Loftus Hall to take shelter. WhenTottenham’s youngest daughter, Anne, was grown up, yet another storm brought a young man to their doorstep. The man stayed for weeks as the storm continued to rage.

As time passed, Anne found herself drawn to the man. They would talk for hours inside the Tapestry Room and play cards until late. Then, one night, Anne dropped a card and noticed the man’s feet…or lack thereof. She screamed as she realized the man she had been growing close to was, in fact, the devil with hooves. The devil, in the meantime, transformed himself into a ball of fire and flew up through the roof before disappearing. Anne never recovered from the shock, and her family, who eventually grew fed up and embarrassed by her strange behavior, locked her in the Tapestry Room until her death in 1775.

Today, Loftus Hall is considered the most haunted house in Ireland, with Anne making her presence known every so often. You can also still see the hole in the roof, where the devil escaped after being found out.^[5]

5 Bad Light

The folklore of Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile includes the tale of the bad light. In northern Argentina, a light appears at night in the city of Mendoza. It hovers a few feet above the ground in the mountainside, with several motorists and especially truck drivers claiming to have seen it while on the road.

Native people in the area believe that the light is evil, and some visitors have claimed that it’s a fireball that chases those who travel alone. There is nothing to fear when the light is white, but if it appears green or red, travelers should run for their lives as they will be cursed with a lifetime of bad luck. Natives believe that the light could be the soul of a person who hasn’t received a proper burial and has come to seek revenge. A few of those who have tried to find the source of the light have apparently come across human remains.^[6]

4 Multicultural Monster

Even in this day and age, there are still parents around the world who scare their children into submission with stories of the Bogeyman. The monster takes on different forms and names depending on the country, region, or culture. Still, the core message remains the same: Start listening or be eaten/kidnapped/tortured/killed by “insert relevant bogeyman name here.”

In Latin America, the monster is known as El Cuco. It can take on any form, including that of a human, and can hide anywhere, undetected. The legend of El Cuco was first mentioned in texts written by Diodorus Siculus, who claimed that Iberian soldiers would behead their enemies and pierce the heads with spears as an offering to El Cuco. Stephen King’s version of the legend says that El Cuco is a body of worms that infiltrates a person’s DNA before transforming into their likeness. In Portugal and Spain, the monster is believed to have a pumpkin head lit from inside by a candle.^[7]

3 Come Tomorrow

Legend has it that during the 1990s, residents of small towns and villages in Karnataka in the southwestern region of India took to writing “Nale Ba” on their walls. This came after a rumor went viral of a witch knocking on a door of a family home and speaking in the voice of a beloved relative. This led a member of the family to open the door and unwittingly bring death upon the household. Families who heard this terrifying tale sought to protect themselves by writing “Nale Ba,” which means “come tomorrow” on their outside walls. When the witch approached their homes, she would read the words and then return the next day. This continued in an endless cycle, with the witch never again able to hurt anyone.

Today, some places still observe April 1 as Nale Ba day. In 2018 the Bollywood movie, Stree, was released with its director stating that some of the inspiration for the film was taken from the Nale Ba legend.^[8]

2 Out of Control Jealousy

Those who have the opportunity to visit Amsterdam often head over to the Zeedijk. It is now part of Chinatown but used to be one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. Unfortunately, it is also where a cold-blooded murder took place, and the screams of the unfortunate victim can still be heard tearing through the night.

In the early 1800s, sisters Dina and Helen fell in love with the same man. Wouter was a sailor who was in love with Dina and sent her several letters while at sea. Helena intercepted the letters and burned them. When Dina realized what Helena had done, she confronted her sister, leading to a fight. Enraged, Helena pushed her sister down the basement stairs of their home in the Zeedijk. Rushing down to the basement, she saw that Dina was still alive, upon which she beat her to death and left her body down there. Dina’s parents assumed their daughter’s death was an accident, and Helena eventually got her wish when she married a broken-hearted Wouter. However, her conscience got the better of her on her deathbed, and she admitted to killing Dina. Wouter was shocked and disgusted. He turned his back on his wife and left her to die alone.

Helena still wanders the streets in the Zeedijk, unable to rest, and causes cold shivers to run down the backs of the living. And on stormy nights, Dina’s spirit howls and wails, her ghostly voice carried by the wind, causing those who hear it to batten down the hatches and wait for the safety of the morning.^[9]

1 The Screaming Woods

The Dering Woods have been nicknamed the Screaming Woods and are reputed to be one of the most haunted locations in Britain.

Those who have explored the woods have reported hearing screams coming from the depths of the forest and whispers floating up from behind them on foggy days. Some believe that the screams come from the restless souls of those who died during a massacre in 1948, after which 20 bodies were found among the trees on November 1. Residents who heard of the tragedy recalled seeing strange lights hovering inside the woods the night before, which happened to be Halloween night. Unfortunately, the autopsies performed on the bodies couldn’t determine a cause of death.

Others believe that a highwayman who had been captured and killed by villagers in the 18th century still roams the Dering Woods in a revenge mission. He screams in frustration and rage every so often at not being able to avenge his own death.^[10]