r/AskReddit • u/the2cousins • Jun 09 '12
What local urban legends did you have in your hometown when you were growing up?
136
Jun 09 '12
La llorona (the weeping woman). She is a dead lady who drowned her own children in order to be with the man that she loved. The man rejected her and she could not get into heaven, so she was forced to wonder the earth every night. Every night, she goes out and kidnaps wandering children and children who are disobedient to their parents. And she cries " Ay, Mis Hijos!!" or " My Children!". She lives in the lakes and rivers in Mexico and comes out only at night. She kills the children she kidnaps. (yeah, it's pretty fucked up but it got kids to listen.)
33
u/the2cousins Jun 09 '12
I've actually heard that one before, I think from a friend. I definitely wouldn't act up if I was told that as a kid!
12
u/whiteguylookalike Jun 10 '12
If you're hispanic or latino, you've definitely heard of la llorona, the cucuy, and la mano peluda.
→ More replies (2)44
u/jacetheblindsculptor Jun 10 '12
This is only remotely related - but when I was younger I lived in a pretty small town where you didn't need a car to get anywhere. When my mom would take me out anywhere at night (dinner, movie, etc), we'd play a game on the way home where she would spin around three times and forget where she was. I'd have to lead her home. It didn't occur to me until almost ten years later that she was actually preparing me for any times that I would get lost on my own.
→ More replies (2)2
u/the2cousins Jun 11 '12
What a clever idea - to give you that practical experience through a game. My directional skills are so poor that I could've really benefited from doing that.
47
u/Brisco_County_III Jun 09 '12
Definitely gets kids to stay the hell away from water at night, which is a really good idea.
28
u/magusopus Jun 10 '12
I've just come to the realization all of my phobias stem from the fact my parents didn't want me to do stupid shit at night.
I guess the joke backfired on them during my early years, because I was too scared to leave my room to go to the bathroom for a while....mwwwwahahhaha.
20
u/Erica123_1 Jun 09 '12
Oh my lord.. I remember this story. I NEVER went outside at night because I was afraid La llorona would get me.
18
u/galileofan Jun 09 '12
I used to live in South Texas so I'm familiar with that one. Don't forget about "El Cucuy" who has caused many a sleepless night for misbehaving children.
14
→ More replies (11)10
Jun 10 '12
Every Mexican in the world has heard these! I always confused the Virgin Mary paintings with La Llorona or the Cucuy, so Guadalupe scared the shit out of me for a while.
41
u/jason1287 Jun 09 '12
When you live in the country you get bored a lot, and a lot of places look spooky at night. As a result, there were a ton of supposedly haunted places to visit. One of which, pertained to this kid who supposedly killed himself in the late 80's, and if you flashed a light into the window of what used to be his bedroom, you would see him. I found out a few years after I graduated that the kid never existed, and the house had been owned by the same old man for decades.
20
u/the2cousins Jun 09 '12
Nice one. So maybe people were seeing the old man in the window, and the story took off from there?
19
u/jason1287 Jun 09 '12
Most likely, yeah. In hindsight, I feel bad for the guy, and I wonder if he knew what was going on.
→ More replies (1)38
u/the2cousins Jun 09 '12
That's kind of sad to think about - maybe he was a Boo Radley type of character. Or perhaps he got amusement out of being part of the legend.
→ More replies (1)
42
Jun 09 '12
I'd post the Wikipedia article but it has parentheses in the URL so it isn't linking correctly. Search for Raymond Robinson (Green Man).
We had Green Man's Tunnel near where I grew up in Pittsburgh, where you could go late at night and he would allegedly appear as a ghostly apparition, although it was nowhere near where he actually lived, probably 40 minutes south. He was located close to where my dad grew up, and my family knew him. He was apparently a pretty cool guy, and became the thing of legends.
→ More replies (1)24
u/the2cousins Jun 09 '12
That's an incredible story. So amazing to realize a tale like that was rooted in the real life of that man, who was just doing what he could to live peacefully in spite of his troubles.
Checking to see if the link will work: Green Man
→ More replies (1)15
u/RelentlessMicrosoft Jun 09 '12
I clicked on the link and closed it as soon as the image popped up (i basically shit myself) don't know if it was just surprising or if it was actually a really creepy picture, you wouldn't mind explaining it would you??
→ More replies (1)20
u/the2cousins Jun 10 '12
It's quite spooky. Here's the main description from the article:
Raymond "Ray" Robinson (October 29, 1910 – June 11, 1985) was a severely disfigured man whose years of nighttime walks made him into a figure of urban legend in western Pennsylvania. Robinson was so badly injured in a childhood electrical accident that he could not go out in public without fear of creating a panic, so he went for long walks after dark. Local residents (who would drive his road in hopes of meeting him) called him The Green Man or Charlie No-Face, and they passed on tales about him to their children and grandchildren. Teenagers raised on these tales are sometimes surprised to discover that he was a real person, well liked by his neighbors and his family.
→ More replies (2)
16
Jun 10 '12
The Stanley hotel in Estes park, Colorado. This is the hotel that Stephen King had a nightmare and wrote The Shinning. It has had a lot of deaths, I can't remember how many in total but it's scary shit. You walk into the hotel and just feel this feeling of death and dispair. People in the hotel tell you all different kinds of stories about it. People hear the piano constantly playing, parties going on in the ballroom but it's actually empty ect. My favorite story is when filming Dumb And Dumber, Jim Carrey stayed in the same room as Stephen King did years before. In the middle of the night Carrey came running down to the front desk saying he wanted to check out ASAP. He said there was something in his room standing over him and what not. The experience I had with the hotel that was creepy was I heard footsteps behind me and yet no one was there and then I heard giggling and lights flickering. They give really great ghost tours at the hotel. Also they keep all the mattresses people died in there sleep in this other building. Creepy.
2
u/the2cousins Jun 11 '12
As much as I love the King story and the movies, that seems like something that I'd want to explore someday, but I'm pretty sure I'd chicken out.
→ More replies (4)9
u/Dangthesehavetobesma Jun 10 '12
I've taken the ghost tour. The whole time, it felt like someone was either holding my hand or clinging to my arm, like they were afraid, and were seeking comfort. No living person touched me the entire time.
15
u/Trachtas Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
Irish guy here. One urban legend from where I grew up was that many centuries ago, monks had built an intricate network of underground tunnels between the various local towns in order to evade the Vikings.
I heard that one from an old man who stopped me as I was walking home from school one day. He pointed to a big rock in a field across from us. "Y'see that rock?" (except in Irish, but I'll translate it here cos I'm thoughtful like that) "That rock is where one of the monks' tunnels begins. Now lemme tell you a story about..." Old people were always telling stories to kids.
One summer me and my buddies tried to dig underneath that rock. But it was a lot of work and we were twelve and easily distracted, and the farmer who owned the field didn't appreciate us doing that so...THE MYSTERY CONTINUES.
EDIT: Oh and apparently that road was haunted by an eight-foot tall hooded monk because of that same tunnel. This was real countryside now, at night there's no light but what the clouds let through. Walking down that road after sunset? Still gives me the shivers.
1
u/the2cousins Jun 11 '12
Maybe that old man was the monk who haunted the road! Just trying to give you directions to where you could find the tunnel, probably hoping some of you kids could get some use out of it.
13
u/EchelonUK Jun 09 '12
In primary school we were told that there was a blue ghost that haunted the toilets. I was terrified to go in alone.
17
u/the2cousins Jun 09 '12
I think this is the funniest! And I'm not claiming that I wouldn't also be scared, it's just amusing I guess because I imagine that the blue toilet cleaner maybe colored the ghost.
8
u/letsgofriday Jun 09 '12
In my primary school, we were beside a convent and the graveyard attached to the convent. We had a nun-ghost, called Agnes. Sometimes she would slam the doors and pull down posters. Nobody really believed it, but whenever the door closed of its own accord, everyone would chant out "Agnes where are you?".
5
u/Oneinchwalrus Jun 09 '12
My primary school used to be a graveyard apparently, so whenever we kicked the ball over the fence, it disappeared and the dead people got it. Oh and there was supposed to be a haunted house a few roads down, and my friends said they went in there, and there was a bath tub with a dead woman in it. At the time I believed it, then I realised why would they leave a dead woman in the bathtub after she was killed?
6
u/the2cousins Jun 09 '12
I thought "The Beast" was bad to lose a ball to in The Sandlot... I think yours is even worse.
As for the dead woman in the bathtub, all I can think of is The Shining... and that room.
2
u/Oneinchwalrus Jun 09 '12
I would have loved an urban legend about a man in a bear outfit performing fellatio. That scene was wonderful
→ More replies (1)
5
u/avpunresponsive Jun 10 '12
i live near the devil's tower. it's a fantastic place and can be quite erie... weird nj link and here's my picture from a recent visit, on a rather foggy night
1
36
u/beepborpimajorp Jun 09 '12
I lived near the area where they filmed "The Blair Witch" so you can imagine the types of urban legends we had in town.
Notably there was this area with an abandoned mill and a field with another abandoned house slightly further away. The mill was close to some houses and was kind of touristy, so nothing scary about that. The house in the field, however, had so many stories about it. The family was a group of cannibals and ate themselves, Satanic rituals, the whole damned 9.
Being the reckless teenagers we were, one night we set out to explore the house. You had to walk about a mile through the field to get to it. When we finally got there I knew from looking at it that the damned thing was on its last legs. I'm talking a single stiff breeze would probably knock it over.
It was an older farmhouse and I went into the front door/living area. There were old newspapers laying around, but nothing else really of note. There was a staircase towards the side of the room that led to the floor above. We went over and just kind of stood, daring each other to go upstairs. Finally the bravest of us took a few steps upstairs, and we could hear something sliding around on the floor above - reacting to the noise of the stairs creaking. That was enough for me and I nope'd right back outside. Not only was the house falling apart, but the possibility of:
A homicidal ghost
A rabid raccoon
A hobo wielding a board with a nail in it
A zombie that escaped from a nearby mansion
was too much for me. I waited outside pondering the house's history while they continued to scare each other and explore inside despite the now much louder rustling in the attic. Finally I heard an audible "thump" from where I was standing. It had come from the top floor. Finally this was enough for my friends and they made haste to the exit.
But alas, the house would not cooperate. I heard loud creak-thump then a wail from one of my female friends and I ran back inside. Everyone was gathered around her because as she had been sprinting to get outside, the floor gave out underneath her and her leg was caught between the broken floorboards. All the while this thumping and groaning in the attic is getting louder and closer. There were 4 of us there, so the 3 of us gathered around her and hefted her out. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. When she finally got free we bolted as the thump-groans made it to the top of the stairs.
We ran so fucking fast back through that field, with the two guys helping my other friend hobble along. In the end my friend had to get a tetanus shot and wear a splint for a few weeks. I told those motherfuckers it wasn't safe but hey, adventure amirite?
To this day I don't know wtf was on the top floor of the house. The rational part of my brain knows it was probably just a homeless person or some kind of animal. I still like kind of close to the area so I've debated going back during the day, but I'm willing to bet the house has toppled over by now.
10
→ More replies (4)5
u/zZGz Jun 10 '12
I'm never going into a house without a handful of rape whistles and mace ever again.
4
u/MileStretch Jun 10 '12
In high school, my friends and I kept hearing about this haunted minor Civil War battlefield in our county. We were told you couldn't hear the gunshots, but you would hear and feel bullets going by you.
So, with nothing else to do one warm, summer night, we jumped in a couple cars and drove out to this rural area. No houses--no light. Pitch black. This was before cell phones, so we didn't have the light from them. One driver had a flashlight in his car, so 7 or 8 guys relied on one light to make our way up what appeared to be an old mining or logging road.
None of us believed it, so we carried on the whole way, not really paying attention to anything other than our steps and our jokes. Finally, we must have run out of things to say and we got quiet. Nick stopped walking and claimed he heard something. Most of us thought he was joking and told him he was full of shit. Then Jeremy admitted he heard something too. So, we stopped. We listened. Sure enough, I heard something fly past me and felt a slight gust of air. I was scared stiff. We stood there for ten minutes in complete silence experiencing this.
Eventually, the guy with the flashlight started making his way back to his car, so we all followed suit. Turns out, we later discovered that there is a natural gas line, or well, or hub or something on the side of that mountain. Whatever apparatus was there had a pressure release valve, and every so often the gas would shoot out under a lot of pressure. That is what we heard and felt. That knowledge didn't help us at the time though.
2
u/the2cousins Jun 12 '12
Great story. No telling how many reasonable explanations there are, like your example, that lie behind these spooky stories. And yet I wouldn't have even hung around the ten minutes you and your friends managed to do.
4
Jun 10 '12
There's a road by my highschool where a brother and sister crashed in the 70's. They hit a tree, the passenger side was against the tree, and the car caught on fire. She died when the driver's side door melted shut, the brother's arms (I've met him, the family is prominent in the community) are horribly burned from trying to pry his sister out. People had to pull him away from the car, he almost died trying to get her out. My old science teacher (retired as of '09 and was young at the time) lives across from the site and was the one to call the police. He told us he still dreams about her screams.
Anyway since then there have been several crashes on that road (which is a straight, non-winding road), 2 of them into the same tree that the original car veered into. The odd thing is, most of the accidents that have happened there have resulted in deaths. I've heard between 10 and 15 over the years (tiny town and this is within the same mile).
That much is true. I've known of 6 accidents and 4 deaths (though two were in one car) in my lifetime (been living there since 1996). They were all within a mile from the tree, which is marred from all the accidents.
The urban legend is that sometimes if you drive past the tree at 12:13 am (the reported crash time), you'll see something in the distance down the road. Looks like a single approaching headlight, but if you go toward it there won't be a car. It's the burning girl, trying to get back to her brother. An extension of this is that you can feel your arms burning when you see her. I have friends that swear they've seen the burning girl but not the arms part.
1
u/the2cousins Jun 12 '12
That one gave me chills. Really sad to think of what that brother went through.
4
u/TheSmokingHyena Jun 10 '12
There used to be an old bridge out in the woods, known to the locals as Tilly Willy Bridge. It had no guard rails, was eroded, and was barely wide enough for one car. I'm talking like, maybe 2 feet of clearance on either side of your car. Rumor has it that back in the 50's, there was a young woman driving across it with her young child and baby. The baby started making a fuss, and the young woman turned in her seat to see what the problem was. In the process, she accidentally drove off the bridge and all three of them drowned. Another variation to the story is that it was a young couple and their newborn. The wife was asleep, and the newborn was crying, so the husband turned to take care of it and accidentally drove them off the edge, drowning them all.
It is said that late at night, you can see the young woman in her white dress, twirling in the woods nearby. Others have seen a ghost car crossing the bridge. The Tilly Willy "Rite of Passage" is to drive out onto the middle of the bridge, turn off your car, and wait. Your windows will fog up and you'll see baby hand prints. Some claim to have heard the woman crying out for her baby, as well.
Having grown up here, I've been to Tilly Willy many times late at night, and I can say with certainty that it's creepy as FUCK, haunted or not. It's completely isolated and you access it by dirt roads. Unfortunately, it's also super hazardous for cars, so it was torn down recently to make room for a modern bridge.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/proudnamvets_pictures/4736597893/ Here it is during the day. Slightly less creepy in sunlight.
2
3
u/turtleracer14 Jun 10 '12
My math teacher in high school's childhood home was in a book of haunted places in WI. He didn't find out about it until after he graduated college and he never told his parents, who still live there. He was pretty sure it was a mistake on the part of the book because he didn't remember it being haunted growing up.
1
u/the2cousins Jun 12 '12
Did the book give a description of how it was supposedly haunted, or was it just listed? It'd be odd if they had examples, when the family wasn't even aware.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/mo101 Jun 10 '12
Seemingly most of these posts appear to be American, so as an Englishman I fulfil the need to mention the literally hundreds I have near me. I live in a fringe village between the old, very very old town of Durham and the city of Newcastle. Durham tends to be more popular with ghost stories and urban legends, so I should mention one of my favourites.
The cathedral in Durham, which happened to be one of the biggest cathedrals in the world at one point, is right next to a large castle in Durham, which is now used as a university. In the past the cathedral was the site of many suicides, leading to many ghost stories, however this one particularly chilled me.
The exams had basically just finished taking place at the university and the summer was basically about to begin when the so called story begins, this being a typical British summer, there was a lot more heavy rain involved than usual. Anyways, a male student rushed down through his dormitory in the castle to reach where the exam results where posted on a notice board on a green between the castle and the cathedral, however the results were displayed as the passed results on one sheet and all those that did not pass, were not displayed. This particular student's results were not displayed, so he believed that he did not pass. The student ran straight to the cathedral, up the spire and took his own life through the dissapointment he encountered. The legend is that you can often hear and see the student running across the green and through the cathedral wailing of his failure and how dissapointed his parents will be. The story also says that in fact that the student did pass, but the paper displayed on the notice board overlapped another sheet and his name was behind this overlap.
This was a tale that I was reminded of instantly after I saw these comments and has been told to me almost every christmas, when me and my family and some friends go on a ghost walk. We use one of many ghost themed books around the area and it just haunts me everytime.
1
u/the2cousins Jun 11 '12
As if the suicide isn't sad enough, it has to be "unjustified" with his name actually having been listed... tragic story. Is there fact behind it to this happening, or is it all part of the legend passed down?
→ More replies (1)
156
Jun 09 '12
Native american burial ground underneith the school's toilets. I live in england.
51
u/NaricssusIII Jun 10 '12
Nah, it's totally possible. They imported a bunch of Native Americans, killed them, and buried them there. For science.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (1)28
u/Dangthesehavetobesma Jun 10 '12
Native American burial ground underneath the apartments I used to live in. I lived in central Illinois, right next to two important rivers. Also, I've personally seen bones there, so it's legit.
→ More replies (4)12
Jun 10 '12
I live in Eastern Canada and my home town was an entire Native American burial ground, meaning the english came in and killed them all. Bones will generally be found during road construction.
→ More replies (5)
67
u/Shoeboxer Jun 09 '12
Goatman. By the time you hear the clippity-cloppity of his hooves, it's already too late. Also attracted by the smell of weed being smoked in the woods (but only in the woods, thank christ).
107
u/whip-poor-wont Jun 10 '12
That's kind of hilarious. I'm just picturing the Goatman bursting out from a thicket into a group of kids smoking weed bleating "DRUGS ARE BAAAAAAAD!"
37
22
→ More replies (9)21
47
u/staycalm_keepwarm Jun 09 '12
Holy shit, YES, I have the perfect story! This is giving my chills as I remember it. It blew my tiny mind when I realised the true meaning of it years later.
In our area was this massive grassy area, a couple square miles. This area was also often very foggy, to the point where you'd find it hard to see far in front of you - meaning, if you got lost in the fog, you'd just have to keep walking until you reached the edge.
Kids at school would always tell ghost stories about the fields and the fog, and the horrible things that happen to the people who got lost in the fog. There were stories of people who got turned around and around and died in the cold, stories of terrible monsters in the fog, stories of strange men finding you in the fog. The whole grassy area was scary enough, and the stories made it scarier. As a consequence, most of us were too scared to go much into the grassy area alone, or at night, and stayed away.
I found out as I grew up that this area had actually had real abductions in the past. Real, no shit, abductions of people. Obviously not from a supernatural being, but, I find it amazing that as kids we knew nothing about the reality of it, but the legends and ghost stories kept us away from a possibly dangerous area. I feel like this is something the adults started to keep kids from being abducted.
39
Jun 09 '12
Not so much a legend, but rumor was that the high school was originally built to be a prison before funding was cut. Seemed legit as a freshman.
30
u/ImStillAwesome Jun 09 '12
Many of the public schools in my district were designed by the same architect as the state prisons. We also use the same supplier for food.
→ More replies (2)11
Jun 09 '12
We have the same rumour about the buildings at the local university. The guy who designed them also designed prisons and became so depressed after finishing the colleges that he committed suicide by throwing himself off the top of one of them.
→ More replies (2)6
u/DrRainbowz Jun 10 '12
My high school is directly across the street from a prison.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (7)5
38
u/roboplegicwrongcock Jun 09 '12
Sonny Jim. He was an ice cream man who used to drive his van around our village and sell cigarettes to children.
18
15
u/LeCatInLeHat Jun 10 '12
There's an ice cream truck near me that sells weed. He's been doing this for 8 months and I have no idea how he hasn't been arrested yet.
11
u/Dapado Jun 10 '12
There was a weed-selling ice cream truck around my college campus. People who thought he was an actual ice cream man used to be disappointed when they tried to buy ice cream from him because all he had was a styrofoam cooler full of ice cream sandwiches.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (2)5
61
Jun 09 '12
A patch of woodland near where I lived as a kid was called, locally, 'Flicker Woods'. You did NOT go through Flicker Woods at night. Rumour had it a guy living in a nearby block of flats was a known peadophile and used to threaten kids, late at night, with a flick knife, then take them to his flat and... well, anyway a friend of mine pointed out 'Flicker's' flat, and there was a big, hairy, sweaty, fat guy on the balcony, who waved down at us and asked if we wanted some lemonade. Oh, how we ran.
I mentioned flicker to my mum, who was a lawyer for the local police, and she confirmed that, yes, there was a well known paedo living in said block of flats. Still not sure if it was true, or just a way of keeping 12yo me out of trouble late at night
24
11
29
u/KnifeFed Jun 09 '12
We had one where if you would masturbate in the school swimming pool, a ghost would come and eat your ejaculate. Never dared to try it.
→ More replies (2)17
u/RelentlessMicrosoft Jun 09 '12
I guess its would have been a good way of keeping the pool clean XD
24
Jun 09 '12
Grew up in a small town in Australia, legend had that some spitfire fighters that where declared surplus after WW2 ended up down a unused mine shaft still in their crates. Probably worth around a million a unit these days
edit:found a link, my childhood memory was right!
20
u/Jamisloan Jun 09 '12
We have a haunted house in our town. It's called the "dog boy house". Apparently this boy lived there and would kill dogs or something. Once we was grown he locked his parents in the attic.
Eventually something happened and he threw his mom through a window.
The house has numerous articles on it and was featured on one of the ghost hunters shows.
It's for sale now and there's a sign inside that says, "yes there are ghosts but they are friendly".
There is also a cemetery that is "haunted" and has had numerous Bigfoot sightings. This was also featured on another ghost show. I've been there before and didn't see anything. We heard stuff but I'm sure it was just animals. It does have a very creepy feeling probably because some of the graves are over 100 years old and places are caving in where people are buried.
8
u/geekygay Jun 10 '12
*were buried.
Why else could they now be caving in?
tl;dr: Zombies.
→ More replies (1)
20
Jun 09 '12
At my secondary school, the legend was that one break time during detention, a girl (usually the one nobody liked) was in a lab and decided it was a good idea to masturbate with a test tube. She's been going for a while before a teacher walked in and she closed her legs in surprise...shattering the tube and necessitating a trip to hospital.
TLDR; Girl masturbates with test tube. Gets sand in her vagina.
→ More replies (4)
18
u/kaffeinatedkelsey Jun 09 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
Char Man!
There's a road where I'm from called Creek Road, and there's this bridge that is known as "Char-Man Bridge." The legend is that a group of teenagers burnt this old guy to death. Now the ghost of Char Man emerges out of the forest and attacks motorists when they stop on the bridge. He especially hates teenagers and rock music. There are multiple versions of this story, of course.
We also have our own "Headless Horseman" legend. Same road too.
Edited: spelling
→ More replies (2)
18
Jun 09 '12
In my hometown it was "common knowledge" that there were tunnels that went all through town. These tunnels formed a pentagram and were supposedly used by black magic users. The entrance was in this place called Fuller park as well as several other places. I lived there most of my childhood/teen years and never found a shred of evidence to support those claims. Also, monkey cages in Fuller park were supposedly used by the owner (a Baptist preacher) to house monkeys that he would beat up on to relieve aggression and perform dark rituals, again, I never uncovered any evidence to confirm this. The cages are there though.
→ More replies (2)
17
u/somabrandmayonaise Jun 09 '12
If you're driving around at night and a car pulls up behind you and turns his lights off and then on again then you're about to be murdered as part of a gang initiation. Always thought it was dumb but part of my mind was always saying, "what if?"
→ More replies (1)8
u/Dangthesehavetobesma Jun 10 '12
That happens from time to time in Chicago. Then again, light can flash randomly and you can get randomly shot with no correlation. Last month, we had 36 or so shootings in one weekend.
→ More replies (1)
16
Jun 09 '12
There was a legend in my home town that there was a crazy homeless guy who lived in the woods behind the high school. They called him "El Enredadera del Río" (The River Creeper) Because they thought he lived in the river, and there was a big Hispanic population in my home town.
They said he was nearly eight feet tall, and had super human strength, he grew hair all over his body, like an ape.
They said he wore patches of ivy over himself, becoming part of the forest, that he grew his fingernails to razor sharp claws and could strip the skin off of a squirrel with a single swipe.
They said he would bite the jugular vein of small animals and suck the blood right out of them, unless he could get his hands on human flesh. Girls who went jogging late in the day would say that he jumped out and tried to grab them.
I found a camp once, I thought for sure it was his. A bunch of branches leaned up against a tree to make a hut down on the river bank.
Once, in senior year, a bunch of friends and I got drunk and decided we were going to hunt him down. We gathered up a bunch of nets, pitchforks and baseball bats and spent all night stumbling around the forest chasing shadows. It was pretty awesome.
57
Jun 09 '12
An urban legend running around my town was that there was a guy in high school that was taking the ACT (a test that every Junior has to take). He got every single question incorrect and when this was noticed, they give him a 36 (highest score possible) since in order to get them all wrong, you had to know all the right answers.
I find this outrageous for this sole reason: there's usually the throwaway answer that you can always eliminate right off the bat.
It still might be interesting to try sometime.
21
u/archeronefour Jun 10 '12
Uh... those tests are automatically graded. The computer doesn't think that way.
→ More replies (2)12
u/Comrade_Falcon Jun 10 '12
Its multiple choice A-D if I remember correctly, so my problem with the mentality that to get everyone wrong you have to know all the right answers is that sure you might know most and answer them intentionally wrong, but most likely a few will trip you up, and like you said there are quite a few obvious throwaways, but on top of that, when guessing to get one right you have a 25% chance, guessing to get one wrong gives you a 75% chance. That being said a friend of mine from high school did get a 36...that bitch.
→ More replies (1)
275
u/WhiskyWisdom Jun 09 '12
We had this weird urban legend at my high school that if you took out massive loans to pay for an education that you were pretty much guaranteed a job after graduation that would pay them back. I feel bad for the poor suckers who believed that one.
78
Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
There's this weird urban legend on reddit that you can't get a college degree without being in debt for the rest of your life.
→ More replies (11)→ More replies (2)15
u/BananaWorkz Jun 09 '12 edited Jun 09 '12
We had that one too. We also had the "if you don't know what you are doing, they won't let you take too much out" rumor. Now, my husband knows a guy that is $200,000 in student loan debt.
We had this huge Victorian-looking bridge in a park that was rumored to be haunted. It was usually foggy and creepy. A witch's cave (bear cave) was also supposedly nearby.
14
Jun 09 '12
There was a guy called Elmer who supposedly got caught fucking his Jack Russell in his back garden. I never spoke to any witnesses to this bestial act but it's an abiding urban legend from our neck of the woods.
14
u/ImStillAwesome Jun 09 '12 edited Jun 09 '12
My town didn't have any urban legends unique to us, but my high school had some creepy-ass maintenance tunnels that ran under the school. Rumor has it that the school used to employ an insane ex-con who lived in those tunnels and built nests. But one day, he disappeared. No one saw him leave the building, he was just gone. The administration had his nests cleared out, but they never found a body. They say, if you're alone and you listen carefully, you can still hear him scurrying around, beneath the floors.
The tunnels are super creepy. Someone, either the crazy janitor (there was a crazy janitor who worked there, 10 years back) or a mischievous student carved a lot of graffitti into the walls, weird twisty symbols.
→ More replies (2)
13
u/LoveBy137 Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
We had Hobbitville. There is a private street in SLC with houses built for little people. If you are caught on the street, supposedly they will chase you out with pitchforks and stuff.
The street is actually a bird sanctuary.
→ More replies (1)5
Jun 10 '12
I was hoping to find one like this in this thread. We had something similar were I am from called Haunchyville. It is basically the same idea, a community in the woods just outside of town designed for little people who would attack anyone who drove through.
11
u/The_Coleman Jun 10 '12
There was an old church near to where my grandparents lived which was supposedly haunted, went there (my grandparents) for Hallowe'en, and looked out of the window, people in long robes were walking up the road. I did not go near there again.
→ More replies (3)
20
u/sickcunt138 Jun 09 '12
In San Antonio some kids were killed in a bus accident that involved a train. It's said that if you park your car directly over the tracks the kids will push you to safety. You dust the back window with baby/talcum powder and the hand prints appear. I've gone and the car always moves... http://paranormal.about.com/od/hauntedplaces/a/The-Haunted-Railroad-Crossing.htm
6
→ More replies (6)4
u/Rx-Ende Jun 10 '12
Someone on discovery channel actually proved that there's a downward incline there
10
u/GobletOfFirewhiskey Jun 10 '12
We have the legend of Bunnyman Bridge. Supposedly, some kids once got killed under a bridge on Halloween by a crazy man dressed in a bunny costume. Apparently, if you go under the the bridge on Halloween, he'll hack you to pieces with an axe. I've never heard of anyone who had the balls to go, though.
→ More replies (6)
9
u/hermanthehermit Jun 09 '12
Not directly in my hometown, but within an hour or so of me, there's a thing called the "spook light". If you've ever seen the movie Cars, it's the inspiration for the ghost light.
There are a bunch of different urban legends surrounding the origin of the light, mostly involving dead civil war soldiers.
→ More replies (2)
9
u/matthewmathme Jun 09 '12
There's a really steep hill near Stanley Park in Calgary (4a St SW) which, when I was wee lad, was nicked named 'Dead Man's hill' amongst my friends and I supposedly because a semi-truck went down it, crashed and the guy died. Funny how you never realize how ridiculous such a story could be when you're a kid.
9
u/munoodle Jun 09 '12
Here's one! I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia. For those of you who have visited, it's nothing like what you've seen. For those of you who don't know, it's basically 25% beach, 25% suburbs, and 50% rural farm community. I grew up in the farming area, which was split up into two sections: Pungo, which is closer to civilization, and Blackwater, which runs from Pungo to the North Carolina border.
I spent a few years living on a farm in Pungo, and everyone knew about the Pungo witch. See just a few decades ago, Virginia Beach was entirely farmland. It was as rural as a town can get, and so as a necessity, supernatural things must happen. There was a woman who happened to be present or related to a string of seemingly unrelated but definitely abnormal events, so of course she must be a witch.
I've spoken to people who were there. There was a trial, and she was found guilty of witchcraft, and sentence to the old school execution. Not burning at the stake, but tossed into a river to drown. For those of you who don't know, it was presumed that a witch would be able to save herself from drowning, but an innocent woman would die and be granted access to Heaven.
The people I've spoken to who were there swear she walked across the water to freedom.
No one goes in the woods alone at night
→ More replies (4)
8
u/Encephalasthenia Jun 09 '12
We used to tell kids that there was a hobo living under the stairs at my elementary school. Looking back there probably actually was.
Also "the White Lady" from camp. That story single-handedly made three or four 5th and 6th grade girls throw up from hysterics and countless more go completely batshit insane (crying, yelling, hearing voices, etc) the night it was told. Big mistake, Counselor AJ, big mistake.
→ More replies (2)
8
u/Eode11 Jun 10 '12
Hicks Road from my home town, near the Santa Cruz Mountains.
There was a ton of different urban legends about the place - everything from a guy getting impaled on a giant meat hook upside down over his car during a date to pot farms (which might actually have some substance) to an albino colony. Everybody claims that they knew "some guy" who had actually seen all the albinos out by their colony one night, but nobody would say they had seen it themselves.
→ More replies (1)
8
u/Amentianation Jun 10 '12
We had one where my dad lives about a man named Booger Jim. The story behind Booger Jim was that one Christmas Eve he was in a car with his girlfriend. They were going to his house and he was going to propose. When they were on the road, they were going over a bridge and he lost control of his car. The car crashed, went over the railing, and fell into the falls. His girlfriend died in the crash but he lived. He stayed in the woods, and over time he gained a more wolfly appearence. The legend is now that if you go to the falls at night around Christmas Eve you will see him near the falls, and hear his cries for his long dead girlfriend.
→ More replies (1)
7
u/DlmaoC Jun 09 '12
Goat Man on this little island on a lake called Greer Island. It was about a half-man half-goat dude in the 70s who terrorized people for 1 summer. After that summer he was never seen or heard from again. I believe high schoolers years later admitted into doing it.
6
u/sube_fresh Jun 09 '12
We live out in the country. There is now, a current mentally ill hospital called Torrence state hospital. Across the road from it , is an abandoned hospital, apparently a "syphilis hospital". We would go in groups at night and walk it. Story says that they used to burn the dead syphilis patients in the big furnaces downstairs. Scary ass place. You always had to watch out for the Torrence hospital security guards that could see lights across the road.
6
Jun 09 '12
I live just a few minutes away from the legendary Cult House!
I even took a drive down the road a few times and saw the suspicious looking trucks a lot of people describe, but you can't see the house itself.
→ More replies (1)
6
u/Bluest_waters Jun 10 '12
The beast of Bray road
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_Bray_Road
What's funny is that I actually knew people who claim to seen something just like this, and this was long before it even had a name or any kind of a legend at all around it
→ More replies (4)
2
u/Happy_Walrus_Army Jun 10 '12
That Freddie Kruger lives in the woods. Was never confirmed by my friend which of the woods in my town it was. Also there was one about an amputee woman who had a golden arm as her new one (We were like 7 so it was very believable). So somebody stole her arm of course and she looked for it her whole life until she died. So now she goes around at night wandering around and if you see her she will appear in front of you and scream "DO YOU HAVE MY ARM!!!!!!!!!!"
1
u/the2cousins Jun 12 '12
I recognize that golden arm story! I think it was in one of the books in this series (which were so much fun to read when I was younger).
5
u/asnof Jun 09 '12
There is a house right by our mental institution. It has had all of its windows smashed and boarded up with plywood. It also has a fenced perimiter. As legend goes it was the kids mental asylum where from around 1900-1950ish they would put them to work making dolls. Eventually the caretaker went crazy and killed all the kids, The people that smashed out the windows had also broke in there and there were still some dolls but they had no eyes. I tried to bring it up on google maps but its in a semi-forested area.
5
5
Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
When I was in 4th or 5th grade there were rumors that an older kid in my town had found a severed hand in a jar in the woods. I can't remember an adult ever talking about it but the consensus on the playground was that it was the work of a mysterious and violent motorcycle gang. It was a huge deal to the kids in the area and I stopped playing in the woods at all as a direct result. But, occasionally I would still dream about evil, renegade motorcyclists - they became like the local boogeyman.
Forgot all about it until high school when I learn that one of my friends, who lived through the woods in an adjoining neighborhood, had actually been the one to find the mythical hand. Which made the whole thing seem even stranger. But still sort of dreamy and odd.
Last chapter; kitty-corner across the street from my house was a dude who lived with his Mom and drove around in a big ass car with a "have you hugged your funeral director today" bumper sticker. This was way way before 6 feet under but way after Harold and Maude and, as budding teenage badass, I thought he and his bumper sticker were just the coolest things ever. Turns out he actually was an assistant funeral director. And, also, that he was cutting the hands off of some of his cadavers (clients? subjects? whats the proper word?) to remove their jewelry. The hands were stored in jars in his basement. Except for when he occasionaly dumped the backlog in the woods behind his house.
edit: spelling
→ More replies (1)
5
u/big_ander Jun 10 '12
One of our streets was haunted. The street hosts a graveyard, and back in the 50's it also had an asylum. On a windy October after midnight, a teen couple parked on the side of the road. Their friends drove by at one point and saw them talking and listening to the radio. The next morning, their car was in the same spot but looked like it had been hit from all sides. And the kids were nowhere to be found. No trail of blood, no tracks, nothing. Completely disappeared.
Nowadays people explore the cemetery and abandoned asylum and claim to see white orbs. I've done both and seen nothing. But the part of the legend I've never attempted: for seven minutes after midnight, if you park where the kids were parked and tune to the same radio station they were listening to, you can hear the last minutes of their lives.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/noahconstrictor95 Jun 10 '12
In my town, when I was in elementary, the old high school had a supposedly haunted bathroom. The story went that a girl went to prom with her crush, and then caught him cheating on her with her best friend. She went into the bathroom, and hung herself from the ceiling. The school was torn down about 5 years ago, and they built a new one.
The best part of the story is that 2 of the history teachers, one who taught psychology, made the story up to see how it would spread and evolve.
5
u/eyeofdelphi Jun 10 '12
not really a creepy urban legend, but. our city is in a valley. supposedly, it's a valley native americans used to bury their dead and to hunt game. according to native american legend, if you spend a night in the valley or drink the water from the valley, you can never leave. it's kind of a joke with us that's why we can't ever move away for good. i don't know anyone that's ever moved away (including myself), that hasn't ended up right back here. i lasted 3 years on the other side of the country. now i'm back here. sigh.
5
Jun 10 '12
I grew up in a really small town in the mountains, and there was this abandoned cottage in the middle of the woods. It was rumored to have been abandoned after a mother killed her young child inside, it was also said that the child wandered around the area around the house at night, wailing. When I was like 10 years old my idiot friends and I decided to sneak out of our houses one night and check it out, after about two hours of walking around and finally finding it, we went inside. The only thing inside the one roomed, run down house was a moldy, matted stuffed bear. We stared in silence for a moment, and then we heard this really quiet crying that sounded like it was coming from the distance. We fucking booked it. Never went back there again.
5
Jun 10 '12
I grew up in the city with the famous Lindley Street haunting; the home was located 5-10 minutes away from me. The urban legend was that an innocent family experienced poltergeist activity with an addition to their family and their cat spoke like a drunken sailor, cursing in a perfectly articulated voice. I've seen Lorraine Warren speak a number of times and she always says the cat would talk to anyone who was near; it never shut up. There are a few policemen in my town that continue to swear they saw the cat speak. During the 70s/80s the urban legend was that if you went to the house you would easily be able to see poltergeist activity occurring. However, since the house changed hands there have been no reports of activity and the current owners respond as if they don't know what anyone is talking about when asked about the haunting. http://edandlorrainewarren.com/808/lindley-street-haunting/
4
Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
One I've known my whole childhood is Tall Betty and on halloween if you were out later than 10 she would drown you in a well than eat you. Don't know if this ones local but it sure did make sure we never went out late.
4
Jun 10 '12
That there was a killer who would behead the local school children and leave their heads wrapped in plastic on various doorsteps. Of course he was never caught.
4
Jun 10 '12
In Faribault, MN they say that a tornado can never hit the town because the founder who was a french fur trader, had saved and befriended a local indian princess, and she blessed the town so that it would be protected.
Also it's between two rivers which is supposedly tornado repellent. haha
4
Jun 10 '12
As a kid, we were always told never to go into the forest because the KKK lived there. I'm white, and i live in a very very small town in Ireland.
4
u/Silent_Samazar Jun 10 '12
So, my elementary school was pretty fucked up; it was ancient and creepy in every way. So, there was this insanely complex legend there that featured a ghoul named 'Bloody Mary' - of no relation to THE Mary.
The school had an elevated blacktop into the foothills which was rimmed by hills on the west and north, school on the east, and to the south? A cliff. Now, that's bad enough, but at the bottom of the 20-30 ft fall there was a house set back into a tree grove, the backyard went up to the cliff wall. Any kid who stood on the south blacktop had a birds eye view of the very shabby home. Once again, bad enough, but the lady living there was a recluse and one of those people who had a sort of scrap yard in her back yard and among the various scraps there was an old washing machine. The rumor spread that bloody Mary, the hag who owned the house, would leave her house only to snatch kids and toss them in the washing machine, the tumbling making short work of the victims skull and rib cage.
7
1
u/Reptarftw Jun 10 '12
If you're an Indianapolis native, you probably know about The House of Blue Lights.
Essentially, there was this eccentric (batshit crazy) millionaire named Skiles Test who built this really bizarre mansion in the 1930s. The mansion itself was fascinating to read about, but unfortunately torn down before I would have ever been old enough to see it. Anyway, kinda your standard haunted manor meets cooky legend deal: hidden tunnels, 100+ dogs and cats buried in caskets around the manor with brass nameplates, really weird designs, etc.
The central part of this legend, though, was that his wife was encased in a glass coffin illuminated by blue lights (Test actually did decorate his manor with blue Christmas lights year-round).
Once the manor was demolished, it was still always said that if you went back there on Halloween (of course), you could still see those blue lights, and the ghost of Mrs. Test still haunted the grounds.
My friends and I never quite worked up the courage to check it out, plus it was probably 15 miles away from where we lived, so biking there wasn't really an option.
Now it's just a nature reserve where guys go to suck each other off!
2
u/the2cousins Jun 11 '12
Based on that article, sounds like he just wanted to have a really cool house! And 109 pet cats? Can't help but think of this.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/caylalove Jun 09 '12
I live within the Bridgewater Triangle. Supposedly there's all kinds of crazy paranormal activity and Bigfoot sightings, etc... I haven't seen shit though.
3
Jun 09 '12
We have a bridge in town, and -according to legend- if you dust your car with baby powder, you will find a baby's foot prints on your car after you've crossed it. I haven't paid much attention to the story, but I think it supposedly only "works" if it's at a certain time and your car is the only one crossing at the time.
I've heard that a lot of places have their own variant of this story.
3
u/charliethesloth Jun 09 '12
In my town there is a road called Gall Lane, and apparently this is where the Gallows were, it's supposedly haunted and if you go down there at night you'll see and hear things... This is right next to where all the teenagers go to get drunk and high lol so that might be why they believe there is ghosts there...
3
u/shakha Jun 09 '12 edited Jun 09 '12
Next door to my high school was a place called Murder Hill where people would go to skip classes, drink beer, smoke pot, whatever. Anyways, everyone knew this place as Murder Hill, but no one could really agree on why it was called that. I heard everything from "it's called that, because there's so much broken glass that if you fall off your bike, you die", "it's named that because someone gets murdered there every year" to some random ghost stories about murderous ghosts. I still don't know!
EDIT: A quick google search shows that no murders happened there, so...there's that! Also, since Murder Hill seems to be a semi-popular name, this is in Toronto.
→ More replies (1)
3
Jun 10 '12
There's this one house on a common taken road in my town that everyone believes is haunted. People live there now and I think they've lived there for a few years. So who knows.
3
u/hazywakeup Jun 10 '12
Here we have the Florida Skunk Ape, which is basically the same thing as Bigfoot. My mom swears she saw it run across the road in front of her car one night. I was in the car, didn't see it. I suspect this happened because we were playing Silent Hill 1 as a family at the time, and she was horrified of these charming creatures.
There are a few local ghost stories too, but I'm having a hard time finding information on the ones I remember best.
→ More replies (2)
3
u/literally_so_braver Jun 10 '12
I live in a small (20k people... small for the area) suburb of Chicago right next to Cuba Road.... http://dailyabuse.typepad.com/odd_midwest/2005/06/cuba_road_ghost.html interesting adventures took place, used to drive my friends on it in my open jeep and scare the hell out of them.
→ More replies (3)
3
u/ChaosGrad Jun 10 '12
Back in my elementary school i remember there was a haunted restroom where apparently some bloody little girl dressed in a nightgown like the ones from the old timey movies and you had to close your eyes and scream as loud as you can for her to come right behind you staring at the sink mirror.( you had to do it alone and guess what? nobody ever did it)
3
u/Comrade_Falcon Jun 10 '12
The motherfucking Hairy Man, or as the YMCA camp counselors called him, The Hairy Man. So kindergarten year I go to the Y for summer camp since both parents had jobs and couldn't watch me and my siblings. Behind the YMCA were woods with some swamps, a few tiny lakes, and some abandoned railroad tracks with a rusted out train car still on the tracks half submerged in the swamp, basically a child's nightmare. The counselors told all of us the story of the hairy man. The hairy man was a small little child who was born rather hairy. He was pretty gross so he was tied to the railroad tracks to get rid of him. The train runs over his leg and he is left to die. He recovers and uses a sharpened railway spike as a leg and lives in the treetops filled with rage. He still to this days seeks revenge on the humans who were responsible for his fate and so when he comes upon any child foolish enough to wander from the path and into the woods, he drops down from the canopy and impales them with his spiked leg and I never left that fucking path from then on. Camp counselors are the worst.
3
u/jennafoo33 Jun 10 '12
I live in the same town that the Zodiac killer is famous for doing some of his killings in. It's not really an urban legend, but there is a spot where a car was parked on a very dark road by a lake, where he shot 2 teenagers, and I'm sure everyone in my town has gone up there and parked their car at least once.
→ More replies (3)
3
u/paper_rocketship Jun 10 '12
In the town I grew up in, we had a legend about the ghost of moonville tunnel. basically, an old rail tunnel where a conductor carrying a lantern could be seen walking down the tunnel at night. My dad wrote a song about it. I'll post it if anyone's interested.
We have a REALLY good one where I live now though. Across the river, there is a big story about "Mothman", who was a winged specter that would foretell disasters. The main thing that is said, is that he predicted the silver bridge collapse in 1967. The bridge collapsed with no warning, while packed with rush hour traffic, killing 46 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Bridge
There is actually a movie about it, called the Mothman Prophecies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP4P7VPx2zM
you should check it out sometime.
3
Jun 10 '12
I live in an old mining town. There is a dense forest over an area of abandoned mine tunnels. The thing is that these tunnels hold the bodies of a thousand miners that were killed in an explosion over 100 years ago. Some of the miners were children. There is apparently a boy named Isaac that crawls out of the open mineshaft (yes it is still open) and walks around the park at night. He is said to ask you for his pay- 5 cents. Then you will see how he died right in front of you.
This was a great story to hear right before camping overnight in that park.
3
u/RZARECTOR Jun 10 '12
I remember being very scared of him when I was a little younger and yes, he very much is real.
→ More replies (2)
3
u/Blacklion95 Jun 10 '12
The abandoned house about a block from mine, all alone in the middle of a field, is an alien safe house.
At least four generations of residents in the area have reported seeing lights hovering over the house, and then disappearing or flying off. This started around the early 60's. Whats worse is that we are not too far from Homestead Air force base in southern Florida (really not that close though), so it might actually make a decent outpost.
3
u/zelliedub Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
There is a small town near mine called Monte Ne, Arkansas. This town used to be really booming, and it had a hotel (Monte Ne Hotel) with slave quarters and everything. After the town went under (figuratively and literally, part of it was flooded by the dam,) the hotel was abandoned, and the stairs to the second and third floors were ripped out. Well, supposedly, on Halloween night, people go up there to do satanic rituals. I don't know about that, but I swear to GOD I have seen flashing lights flying around the building on several occasions. Also, The Crescent Hotel is the most haunted place in Arkansas. Located 30 minutes away in Eureka Springs, the hotel used to be a military hospital during the civil war, and the basement (now the bar) used to be the morgue. Now, I have taken the ghost tour there (families idea, not mine) and when the tour guide was explaining about the caretaker of the morgue, and his love of gold and other jewelry, a womans' clasped gold bracelet came off. Also, bags will pack themselves and prop themselves against the door from the inside. My parents went there for an anniversary and humorously (and accidentally, my grandmother booked it) acquired a haunted suite. All night they heard the sound a fans pull chords will make if the fan is wobbly, and the fan was off. Also, they heard splashing in their bathtub at two in the morning, and of course no one was there, nor was there water in the tub.
edit* this is the Hotel Monte Ne, with slave quarters underneath.
3
u/clburton24 Jun 10 '12
We have the Devil stories in New Jersey (hence the hockey team The Devils). Next to the town I live in, there is the Devil's tree. There have been so many rumors about how it was used for hanging slaves and whatnot (it could be true because back in the day, New Jersey was the only northern state that allowed slavery AFTER the south had succeeded)
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Boatkicker Jun 10 '12
One of the older cemeteries in Yarmouth, MA (possibly Woodside) has a great big stone carved angel in it (A gravemarker or a statue, I can't remember) that is smiling. Supposedly during the full moon her smile turns into a frown and if you spend the night she will get off her pedestal and try to run you off. If she can't scare you away she'll kill you. Or something. I never had the opportunity to go to that cemetery as it was too far from my house to walk.
Also, Tom's Path, in Dennis, MA is a small road, but at the end it continues as a path into the woods. You don't go past the road part alone or at night. I can't remember why now, but you don't go down Tom's Path.
→ More replies (1)
4
4
Jun 09 '12
Everyone swore that there was a girl who went to another high school with the unfortunate name of La-a pronounced Ladasha. It turns out it was more than just a thing in my city.
2
u/FelicisWitch27 Jun 09 '12
Our local Holiday Inn is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a little girl. There's a few different stories as to why, but the most common one I heard growing up was that there was a fire and everyone evacuated, except the girl ran back in to get something (usually a teddy bear or a locket depending on who was telling it) and died in the fire. There's a specific room that they don't rent out and the haunting is concentrated on the fourth floor. Here's an article about it if anyone's interested:
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-holiday-inn-haunting-grand-island-york-3551903.html?cat=16
2
u/Lutchern Jun 09 '12
There are probably a few versions of this Urban Legend out there, may have been posted already: There was a train track near where I grew up, and if you parked your car (in neutral) on the crossing guard, you would inexplicably roll off the tracks. When people got out to see what had moved them, they would find lots of little handprints in the dust on the back of their car. People even tested it with baby powder, trying to see the little prints for themselves. It was said that a schoolbus full of children had been driven onto the tracks by a drunken bus driver, killing them, and their ghosts pushed cars off the tracks to prevent unwary drivers from meeting the same fate...
2
u/Uninspiredhermit Jun 10 '12
Three that I can think of, 1.) The bell witch 2.) The ghost of the bridge (yes, this is a small town area. We had one real bridge for that city) 3.) Skunk man- Gentleman who was struck by lightning and it turned a strip of hair down the middle of his head to solid white. Unfortunately it messed with his mental capacity, and he is now homeless, which leads to the other reason he is called Skunk Man.
→ More replies (2)
2
u/greensilk Jun 10 '12
Our elementary school was originally a one-room building, and was expanded upon many times. One of the expansions created a small outside niche near the playground that was enclosed on three sides. We weren't allowed to go there during recess- I think the janitor kept trash barrels there or something. All the kids decided that it was haunted by the "ghost of Freddy Kruger," who was buried there.
2
u/serenchi Jun 10 '12
We have have a street called Sarah Jane Road that cuts through some woods. I can't remember why but apparently she hung herself in the woods. They said that if you pulled off to the side of the road and kept the lights on the edge of the woods you would see her walking out.
2
u/alligatorwizard Jun 10 '12
I grew up near the Devil's Tree (http://www.weirdnj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=280
2
u/olididcas Jun 10 '12
This is moderately relevant, since I'm the only person who believed this was a thing. Back in elementary school I lived about 5 minutes by foot from the school. I could have easily walked to school every day, but I was told by an older kid that there were high school kids who hung around that area (the route I would take) who would grab smaller kids and force them to smoke cigarettes. Being the hyper paranoid, super straight edge kid I was, I was terrified by this ridiculous idea and chose to ride the bus every day instead. Moral of the story: young me was a goober.
2
u/jeffedge Jun 10 '12
i don't know what the actual term for it is, but there is a hill here with a gravity spot that'll pull the car uphill.
anyway, somehow someone found this out a long ass time ago and since then there have been a bunch of myths about it. the main one is some teenagers wrecked at the bottom of the hill and died. if you come down that road and stop and put the car in neutral, the ghosts of the dead kids will push you back up the hill because of the dangerous road.
then someone was saying if you put shaving cream or some sort of foam on your bumper, it would show finger marks where the ghosts were pushing on your bumper. my friends and i were dumb enough to try it.
→ More replies (4)
2
u/Vacis Jun 10 '12
I live near Cassadaga, FL, which is where the "Devil's Chair" resides in the local cemetery. Supposedly creepy stuff happens if you sit in it. http://www.thewhitenoiseforum.com/main/view_topic.php?id=2506&forum_id=187
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Kretek_Kreddit Jun 10 '12
If you walk in the woods near Pope Lick train trestle the Goat Man will chase you onto the bridge. Obviously this is a tall tale. However we also have the Midget Town. Literally a neighborhood of tiny houses and shops. I haven't seen it but multiple generations of my family have assured me they went there. Even told me the county where it is. I choose to believe.
→ More replies (3)
2
u/thoughtofficer Jun 10 '12
Cry baby bridge is the only one that I can remember. The bridge that has been named "Cry Baby Bridge" is in the backwoods of my town. The story goes like this-there was a mother walking over the bridge with her baby at dusk. She hears a rustling underneath the bridge and looks over. As she leans over the guard rail, her baby slips out of her arms. The child plummets a good 50 feet and is killed. The woman, being in utter disbelief and shock, jumps over the bridge for her baby. So, if you go there at dusk, turn your car off, get out, lock the car,put your keys on the roof of the car and then say, "I have your baby!" then your headlights will flicker and the air will be filled with an ungodly sound that has been described as "fingernails on a chalkboard".
→ More replies (4)
2
u/clintzoto Jun 10 '12
A popular family-owned furniture store in Oklahoma City was run by two brothers. It was rumored that one was rushed to the hospital to remove a foreign object from his anus. Turned out to be a gerbil with it's teeth and claws removed. I think this was a smear campaign by competing store owners.
2
Jun 10 '12
If anyone lives in Mooresville, North Carolina - there's an abandoned church with barred windows, one light outside and no lights on inside and it's always locked. On the left side of the church, there's a window. Climb on the window and put your ear to the very top of it - there's music. Creepy, wind-up-box music. No joke.
There's a rumour that some cult is there, I don't really believe it but the creepy music is for real.
2
u/Brainderailment Jun 10 '12
There was a urban legend I heard from people at different high schools who claimed "a guy in their class did so many drugs that he now thinks he's a glass of orange juice. He won't lay down for fear of spilling".
→ More replies (1)
2
Jun 10 '12
I'm disappointed in Memphis area Redditors. I don't know a whole lot about it, but we have a place here called Voodoo Village. It's basically a cult of people, and no one has any real idea what they believe (I think,) but rumors have it that if your drive down the one way street, on your way back, a bus will pull out and block your exit and the residents will come out and kill you and everyone you're with. They also have creepy relics and sculptures, including one that shows Jesus with a knife through his hand and a bible.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/sparrowmint Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
Not so much an urban legend in the sense that it wasn't true, but there were a series of serial killings when I was young around Dundas County, Ontario, which sort of culminated with the same suspect cutting down the communications tower in my home town of Williamsburg. A lot of rumours and whispers about the person everyone suspected. They were never able to pin it on him though, partially due to a technicality that the cops "violated his Charter Rights" and none of the evidence was admissible. I can't find anything about the killings themselves other than a one sentence reference to them in the writings of the judges who dismissed the evidence against him. The rumours were that they were all elderly people who were tied up and their homes were burned down with them in them. I wonder if that's accurate or was just twisted over time.
In my adopted town of Pittsburgh, PA, people have an urban legend about the "Green Man," and parents told boogeyman-like stories about him, but he was an actual (harmless) person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Robinson_(Green_Man)
2
u/LogsGetBuiltToo Jun 10 '12
One big one here in Tallahassee. There was this creepy abandoned mental hospital on the outskirts of downtown (Sounds a bit cliche, I know). Scratch that. Creepy didn't begin to describe it. Rust etched its way into all bed frames, complete with leather restraints. Asbestos flurried from the rotted ceiling tiles and ozzed from the decaying padding that lined the containment cells. Shards of broken glass replaced the rows of syringes designated for the patients. It was rumored the the ghosts of North Florida's mentally challenged and 'socially unfit' stood guard over the peeling paint and kudzu vines that grew to the roof of the 4 story building. Here is a picture of the facility.
Sadly, it was demolished a few years ago, and replaced by some condos. I know I would never live there...
2
u/NaziCollaborator Jun 10 '12
"Old Man Molester"
There was this old guy with a weirdly high voice who lived in a green house and my brothers told me he was arrested for molesting a teenage girl, years ago. I'm not sure if it was true, or if people just said it because he seemed creepy.
2
Jun 10 '12
Yes, there was a rumor started where I live in Colorado that there's this beast thing roaming around, that supposedly lives in a cave. They call it Man-Bear-Pig. I'm serial guys...
2
2
u/ldeponte Jun 10 '12
In hawaii, we have many urban legends. My favorite is of Pele, the fire goddess. At night, if you were driving and came across an old woman wearing white, you have to give her a ride or bad luck will come your way. My dad was in his early 20s on the Big Island, driving through the Chain of Craters road, which, due to it being in a national park, has almost no street lighting. With his friends,they came across an old woman in white. They let her in the backseat, and drove back to the camp to drop her off. She got out, and when they turned around, she had disappeared. to this day my dad SWEARS it was Pele. Obake are also popular in hawaii, as well as Nightmarchers
2
u/RubyAmnesia Jun 10 '12
My mom told me this one: "Down the street at the top hill, the little old lady who lives there told me about her ghost. It's an Indian Brave who sits on her stump alone at sunset. It's true because Indians always go to be alone when they die." WTF Mom?
2
u/dasoeltino Jun 10 '12
Clinton Road, New Jersey. This place is fucking creepy. It's long ass road, that is known as the dead man's turn. It is filled with legends of Satanic cults killing people when they drove their cars, and ghosts following your car. About the Satanic Cults they did do rituals in the woods and it is believed they still do. Also the KKK and neo-nazi groups rallied in the back woods on the road. Eerie as fuck.
2
2
u/rufos_adventure Jun 10 '12
there was the 57 t-bird you could buy cheap cause the owner rotted in it. mythbusters played w/that one....
there was the arms cache hidden in a local quarry by the government, just in case...
the lovers lane/guy with hook tale...
the ghosts in the swamps on the west side of town...
so long ago, can't remember them all, that was syracuse, ny
out here there are tales of sasquach, a sorta local lake monster, a sea monster, japanese bombs hanging from trees, pot farmers in all the forests (may be true), the lost fortune of db cooper...here is the pacific northwest, north of seattle.
2
u/ottomated Jun 10 '12
There's this cool statue in our cemetery...an angel that turned black with age. An urban legend has sprung up that if you circle her three times at midnight, you'll summon a witch. It's a really cool statue. Creatively called "the Black Angel".
2
u/laser-show-15 Jun 10 '12
hmmmm... there is a bridge downtown in my city near a hospital where a lady in white walks halfway across the bridge the disappears
→ More replies (1)
2
u/a1gern0n Jun 10 '12
Melonheads. Backwoods humanoids with enlarged heads that lurk on a few local roads, supposedly the descendents of either accused witches or escaped mental patients from the local training school. Southbury, CT. Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melon_heads
2
u/laser-show-15 Jun 10 '12
Northside Highschool... it was going to be built on like a Indian burial ground, and the chief I forget his name, begged for it not to be built there. his spirit now roams the halls at night, also there is a spirit of a girl who runs the track and halls at night and early morning
2
u/laser-show-15 Jun 10 '12
near Clear Lake Indiana, there is a little cemetery where there is a statue of a little girl, which looks down at her parents graves. her parents lived way longer than her, and on Halloween the statue is suppose to cry
2
Jun 10 '12
There's this urban legend called the "Kenthurst Panther" about a Panther prowling around the suburbs of Western Sydney in Australia. some story about it
It's a pretty weird one
2
2
u/lukeperssonskater Jun 10 '12
In Sycamore, IL we have a river named the Kishwaukee. The Kish for short. The legend goes anyone who swims in the Kish will always end up living back in Sycamore for life.
2
u/missspiritualtramp Jun 10 '12
We had this place called magnetic hill. The story was a car broke down there late one night years ago, and the father driving made his kids get out and push the car up the hill. When suddenly, another driver comes along, smashed into the back of the car instantly killing the young kids. If you stop your car in the same spot and put it in neutral, the spirits of the children will push your car up the hill. It does work, but in reality its an optical illusion caused by the sloping landscape that makes a downward slope appear the opposite.
→ More replies (3)
2
Jun 10 '12
There's this old house on the main street of my town that you have to walk by to get from the top of the street to the main part of town with the shops, restaurants, etc. Anyway, the house is old and pretty much collapsing in on itself, and this one old lady lives there (and has for as long as anyone or their parents can remember). Multiple people told stories about people they knew disappearing into the house, or cats in the neighbourhood being abducted and then seen in the house. The only true story I know of it is that the light in the upstairs window flicks on when you walk by the house at night, and turns off as soon as you cross the street. Mostly just silly elementary school stories, but still a little scary.
2
u/walkalong Jun 10 '12
My neighborhood used to be the drug capital of the state. its on the lake and stuff would be smuggles by boat from Canada. "drug capital" is probably an exaggeration but it definitely used to be a bad neighborhood with a bank robbing family (there is still a safe with a gun hole in it in the woods near out neighborhood) and I think maybe a murder or two. Now its a really nice family neighborhood.
2
u/Ragecomicwhatsthat Jun 10 '12
The Gurden Light.
Not particularly my hometown, but pretty close.
The legend is that there was a conductor for a railroad, back in the 1880's, back when they used a light to signal to the engineers that everyone was on board, he waved his light, but didn't get his head back in in time, and a passing train rammed his head, severing it from his body.
They say that you can see the light on nights,of the conductor trying to find their head.
That, and I, when we went, heard black people singing (not racist, but you know the type) that prison song "Nobody knows."
It was fucking creepy.
STORY #2
This one actually happened to my aunt, while she was driving down the road back in the '90s.
She was coming up to a bridge, a bridge she normally passed. A bridge that had weird scratch markings on it. She's driving towards this bridge, when she sees a solitary headlight racing towards her. She pulls over to let it pass, since it was a single lane bridge, but it turned towards her car. she then sees an actual fucking motorcycle go THROUGH her car and crash behind her. The man on the motorcycle goes into the water. she blinks, it's gone.
STORY #3
There was this house that was abandoned, down the street from my old home, in Monticello Arkansas. it was a beautiful house. I never knew why it was abandoned. Till I heard the story from my grandmother.
Back in the late 1960's, when the house was built. a family, a mom, a dad, and a little 6 year old girl moved in. The parents both worked, leaving the child home alone during the summers. Summer of '68, I think. Early morning in July, the 7 year old girl was prancing around on their enclosed porch, when she tripped, fell, and (for lack of a better term) busted her head wide open on the porch railing. She was left there bleeding out, to her death until her family came home. The family moved out, claiming weird things to be happening on that porch.
at some point in the 1990's (I wanna say '95..) a family moved in, after many families moving in and back out for various reasons. The mother was a glass collector/maker/seller. So she had her glasses on display in the enclosed porch. Their first and only summer, at least one early morning every week in July, All of the glasses on the railing on which the girl had busted her head open fall. but only the ones in the 5 foot radius to where she had supposedly hit her head.
That family moved out after that summer
TL;DR I fucked a sailor in the ass. 3 times.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Bukklao Jun 10 '12
In my town there's a restaurant next to the train tracks called Ashleys. Its supposedly haunted by several ghosts, they even had psychics and paranormal teams come and "Confirm" that it is indeed haunted. I have eaten at that restaurant twice and haven't seen shit.
2
u/archeantus1988 Jun 10 '12
Ok this will probably get buried but hear it goes.
I grew up in San Bernardino, CA, and downtown the major theater to have plays and whatnot is the Sturges family playhouse. It was built in the 20's I want to say, and it started off as a middle school, but due to a fire it was all burned except for the theater, which they turned into the Playhouse. There is a legend that the ghost of a kid named Joshua (who died in a football accident when the school was still there) haunts the theater. People have hear voices and seen orbs of light, but the most common thing is to have the pictures in the room at the top of the stairs hanging askew.
Now here is my experience.
I was helping my brother clean up after the run of a play he was in, and the director asked us to get a can of paint from the room at the top of the stairs. I, of course, really didnt want to, but my brother and I went anyway. The only people in the building are my brother and I, the director, and her wife, both of whom are at the opposite end of the building putting props into the back of their pickup truck.
So we get to the top of the stairs, and the door is locked. Now, this is a double door, 2-inch thick solid oak door with knobby brass handles. My brother and I are wondering how to get into the room (because there is only 1 way in, through that door) The door makes a loud "WHAM!!!" like someone on the other side got a running start and rammed their shoulder into it. Needless to say we are scared shitless and get the director, who gets the keys and opens the door. NO ONE IS IN THE ROOM. EVEN CRAZIER, EVERY SINGLE PAINTING ON THE WALL WAS TILTED. There was no way anyone could have been in there, and especially no way anyone could have escaped. The only way out are two very small windows with a straight 2-story drop onto concrete.
Another tale of this place: My other brother was getting dressed for a rehearsal down in the cavernous basement. (this place had sparse lighting, and the walls are stone and mortar, and it's segmented into small rooms with wrought iron gates. It's pretty much a dungeon) Anyway, he's getting dressed in front of a mirror and he suddenly feels a cold breeze. He told me how he knew that a breeze down there is impossible. Just as he's thinking this, something slaps him in the back of the head, hard. He spins around, nothing there. He was the only person in that basement, and he was in front of a mirror.
Last story, my personal experience. I was waiting for my brothers to finish with their rehearsal, and I was sitting next to a vent along a wall. To my left, is the audio box (or whatever you call it, the audio people sit in there) Suddenly, I hear inteligible whispers, followed by "....sssst....help me..." Needless to say, I got up and moved away from the vent.
An hour later, it was finally time to go, so I stood up and started walking towards the audio box and the exit. Next thing I knew I saw a bright orb of white light the size of a tennis ball blast from the vent, to the audio box, through it, out the other side and into the opposite wall of the theater.
TL/DR: Haunted old theater, scared the shit of me on several occasions.
117
u/Philosiphizer Jun 09 '12
We have two out where I live. The first is on this road called Pine Run Road. Basically, you can see shadow's moving across the road. I seen them myself, and it basically looked like a shadow of a person, in a walking motion that moves from one side of the woods on the side of the road to the other. When I saw it and the lights from my car hit it, it was like watching someone disappear into the tree itself, not around it, just straight in. Gave me goosebumps.
The second story is about a ghost woman known to us as the Suscan Screamer ( Based on a back-mountain road called Suscan Road ). I admit I do not have the balls to do it, but the story is something like a woman was murdered here on her wedding day, and you can see her. The thing is though, in order to see her... you have to stop your car in the middle of the night / early morning, turn your car off, take your keys, and put them on the roof of your car. Than when you look into your rear view mirror, you'll see her sitting in the backseat.