Myths and LegendsWhat's fact? What's just an old wives' tale? Read up on these persistent, sometimes creepy, totally believable urban legends to separate truth from myth.
Have you heard the urban legend about the spiders that exploded out of the banana? How about the story of kids finding drugs mixed in with their Halloween candy? Well, those tales, and so many more true urban legends, are waiting to scare the pants off you in this collection of stories that sound too crazy to be true. Everyone grew up in a town with at least one piece of strange mythology that sounded too far fetched to be real; these stories prove even the strangest urban folk tales have a kernel of truth.
Have you ever wondered whether the creepy tales of babysitters being hounded by mysterious callers or people dying from atomic wedgies come from a real place? This list delves into crazy true stories that are the obvious catalysts for real-life urban legends and modern myths. After you check out these urban legends that are (mostly) true, leave us a comment about your local legend that’s totally true and not made up at all.Â
A series of murders that occurred in the Texarkana region of the Texas/Arkansas border in 1946 is most certainly one of the catalysts for lover's lane urban legends (the hook hand, hanging boyfriend, etc). In a period of three months, (an) unknown criminal(s) murdered five people and seriously injured three more in attacks on couples in their cars and homes.
Most historians believe The Phantom Killer (the mysterious perpetrator of the crimes) was able to get in and out of town without being caught thanks to a railway hub that once sat in the middle of Texarkana. Regardless of where he went, the city owns its legacy. Every year, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, a '70s exploitation movie about the events, is shown in Spring Lake Park, where most of the crimes took place.
You know that urban legend about a killer hiding in a family's home for weeks, learning their movements, and waiting for the opportune moment to strike while they sleep? Well, get freaked out, because it actually happened to family in 1922, in the rural town of Hinterkaifeck, in Bavaria, Germany.
The story begins six months prior to the murder of the Gruber family, when the maid quit because she believed the family's house was haunted. When a new maid was brought on, she mentioned hearing footsteps in the attic. More bizarre things happened that winter - footprints in the snow leading from the woods to the house appeared one day, as did a strange newspaper, found in the house. Someone tried to break into a tool shed on the farm, too. But in the end, nothing seemed to come of it.
At least not until March 6, 1922, when each family member was lured to the barn, where they were killed one by one with a mattock. All five family members were murdered, along with the newly hired maid. The bodies were discovered a week later, and the crime was never solved. If that weren't creepy enough, the weekend of the murders, neighbors reported that someone fed the cows and let the dog out, and smoke was seen rising from the chimney.
Spitman Pays for Watersports and Footjobs in London Council Estates
A character known as "Spitman" (linked video has some NSFW material) haunts the urban council estates of West London, where he pays teenage boys and young men for very specific sexual favors.
Marlon Tavares made a Vice documentary on the subject, after overhearing talk of Spitman at a pizza place. In the short, various anonymous young men talk about the things they've done for Spitman, and how it works; he gives out a fiver (£5; about $6.50) every three minutes while the favors last. According to Tavares, there were whispers of Spitman's debauchery reaching back decades.
Is it possible there have been multiple iterations of Spitman over the years? Something similar happened in Philadelphia in the late '80s and early '90s.
Everyone knows Ted Bundy was a heinous serial killer who would pretend to have a broken leg in order to trick women into approaching him. But in his final crime spree, before he was arrested, Bundy brutally ripped through a Florida State University sorority, attacking four women in 15 minutes, and killing two of them.
If there weren't reams of evidence for Bundy's trip to Florida, during which he also smashed a dancer's skull, ruining her equilibrium and destroying her career, and tried to assault a 14-year-old girl before her older brother showed up, it would sound like something college freshmen tell each other on Halloween.
If you've ever been worried about finding yourself trapped inside a real-life horror movie, you're not being unreasonable, because this girl lived it. In July 2014, a teenager living in Ellesmere Port, England received texts from a random creeper named Kyle Ravensport, who claimed he was watching her. Ravensport also told the girl he would hang himself outside her window, so she would wake up to see his dead body swaying in the breeze.
Over the course of his creepezoid texting spree, Ravensport scared the girl so badly she slept in her mom's room that night. Good thing, because the next morning she discovered Ravensport sleeping under her bed. Heinous.
Stories of kids dying from atomic wedgies are about as believable as that story of a guy dying from breathing his own farts. However, as it turns out, at least one unlucky wedgie recipient died from the childish prank. In December 2013, Brad Lee Davis and his stepdad, Denver Lee St. Clair, got into an argument that culminated with Davis giving St. Clair an atomic wedgie so brutal he was choked to death by the elastic band on his manties.
Davis, a former Marine, pleaded guilty to first degree manslaughter in 2015. As per an article in The Oklahoman, "The man who killed his stepfather with an 'atomic wedgie' told a judge Wednesday, 'It’s like a bad dream.'"
