There's nothing quite like a good urban legend to put a chill into your bones. One of my favorites? The story about the babysitter and the man upstairs. You know the one. The creepy phone calls begin. The words, "Have you checked on the children?" Unnerving stuff. It's that story that gave us movies like Black Christmas and When a Stranger Calls. I still get a chill up my spine when I think about that story.
It's not just murderers either. Monsters, spirits... Urban legends––and folklore as a whole––have for time immemorial been a part of our consciousness.
After Redditor BeardedDragonzRMine asked the online community, "What monster/urban legend is in your town?" people shared their stories.
"When I was in middle school..."
The Jersey Devil. When I was in middle school my grade went on a trip to a camp in the Pine Barrens where the jersey devil presumably is. I cried when my parents said they didn't want me to go.
The Pine Barrens is a freaky place.
Don't believe me? Watch that one episode of The Sopranos.
"She's the mistress..."
La Llorona. She's the mistress of a Spanish conquistador. When he left her to return to his wife, she went mad from grief and drowned the two children she had out of wedlock with him and killed herself. She arrived at the entrance to Heaven and God asked her what she did with her children. She lied and said she didn't know. So God doomed her to forever wander the Earth looking for their bodies.
This one is a classic.
And there has yet to be a good movie made about her.
"If you're canoeing..."
We have a river that's popular for canoes and paddle boats. Some kids stole a paddle boat one night from the rental place, flipped it over, and drowned.
If you're canoeing on the river and see what looks like an abandoned teal-colored paddle boat with a boat rental decal stuck in the weeds on the river bank, don't approach it. If you report the sighting to the boat rental place they won't bother sending someone out to recover it, because they know the boat won't be there when they arrive.
"He grew up in the Everglades..."
My hometown has the Skunk Ape. A distant cousin to the Sasquatch. He grew up in the Everglades and had long matted, moss-covered fur. Stinks like a skunk. Has been seen crossing back roads in the middle of the night and disappearing into the darkness
Not something I'd want to run into at night.
I've seen enough horror films to know that the one rule is to keep driving.
"All of my neighbors..."
I live in West Africa near a rainforest. All of my neighbors believe there is a "giant pangolin" that lives in the forest (bigger than a man). There have even been some cryptozoologists that have come out to try to find it.
"Rumors of a murderous faceless man..."
Charlie No-Face.
Rumors of a murderous faceless man roaming the streets at night were based on a real-life person who'd suffered an extreme accident that destroyed his face. He wasn't, as it turns out, a murderer; he walked at night because he wanted to get fresh air and be left alone.
Well, that ended well.
No reason to spread a rumor about the guy if all he wanted was to enjoy a walk by himself!
"People that cross the bridge..."
I live in St. Petersburg, Florida and the urban legend here has to do with the Skyway Bridge. There have been about 200 suicides. People that cross the bridge claim to see a blonde woman standing in the middle of the road and even sitting in the backseats of their cars. Caring people that got out of their car to help the woman claim that she vanished into thin air. I have crossed the bridge a couple of times and have not seen any sort of thing. I guess she was one of the people that took their own lives by jumping off the 200-foot drop into the water or died when the bridge collapsed ages ago.
"A headless French soldier..."
A headless French soldier from the Napoleonic time is said to ride in our local forest at night. It is an older legend.
"Here in southern Wisconsin..."
Here in southern Wisconsin, we have the Beast of Bray Road, a large canid/werewolf creature that's been sighted several times.
This one has had a crappy movie about it.
The SyFy channel is great like that.
"Years and years ago..."
The White Lady. Years and years ago this woman's daughter got kidnapped by a man and disappeared into the woods of one of our parks. She went out with her dog, searching and searching but never found her. Eventually, the White Lady disappeared as well. For hundreds of years, people claimed to see her ghost and the dog's ghost wandering the park at night. And any man would get chased into the lake by her ghost. Four years ago we had a major windstorm that did a lot of tree damage and this actually happened Scary coincidence?
Creeped out yet?
If not, get to reading. The Dúllahan, a scary headless creature from Irish folklore, beckons. I personally wouldn't want to run into the berbelangs, vampirish creatures that feature in Filipino culture and that are said to dig up graves to feast on corpses.
Have some of your stories to share? Feel free to tell us about them in the comments below!
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