The world is full of all kinds of weird stuff that defies all logical explanation. We’ve all had those moments where we hear something far-fetched and unlikely—but something about these tales just keeps us asking “what if?” Few things create this eerie feeling like a good urban legend; and for some of them, eerie is an understatement! Here are 42 of the creepiest urban legends that Redditors have heard or encountered—so good luck trying to fall asleep tonight!
1. Nightmare on the Roof
I don't remember the name of it but there is a creature in Filipino folklore that is a beautiful woman who detaches her torso from her lower body at night. Apparently, her top half flies around, landing on the rooftops where pregnant women are sleeping. She has a tongue that reaches down into the belly button of the pregnant woman and eats her unborn child.
The only way to kill it is to find its lower half and put salt on it.
2. Secret Helper
In the Northeast United States, there's a story about Woodspeople or Man-o-woods. When you're driving along a road in the woods and catch a glimpse of what looks like a person in the corner of your eye, but when you look directly at it it's gone, they say you might have encountered a Man-o-woods. They are masters of camouflage and can sense when someone looks at them.
They come to a halt so you can't sense any movement. It's speculated that they wear bark, mud, moss, and grasses to blend in. They're supposedly human, but extremely simple-minded; barely verbal. They're very small in stature and avoid contact with civilization mostly. Nobody knows where they live or congregate, but they usually move on if there's too much activity around.
They're also peaceful. Around some farmlands, they will do very simple chores at night or off in the distance. They may sweep a barn floor or stack some wood, but anything more complex is beyond them. They do it in exchange for not bothering them as they sleep in the barn for a night or for some bread and vegetables left out for them to find.
They've never been known to steal or kill animals or livestock.
3. Fire Burning on the Dog Track Floor
I've been through a supposedly haunted region plenty of times with different groups of friends, and each time we've encountered strange (but not inexplicable) things. Once, a buddy and I were walking down a street that leads into the haunted place and we could hear something that sounded like it was aggressively eating just inside the woods. We returned to our vehicle to grab our phones to record it, and when we returned, it stopped.
Another time we had a larger group, and we went into the entrance near a dog track. It was dark, and we had maybe three flashlights. We walked for what seemed about 15 minutes, and then we could see a light up ahead. As we approached it, it looked like a paper lantern lit. It was pretty windy, but the fire kept burning. We quickly turned around.
4. Can’t Forget the Banshees!
I was once on a cliff walk in Scotland that was famous for Bean Sidhe/Banshees. The walk is remote, no roads/houses anywhere near it. Anyway, we start to hear this faint noise of women laughing/giggling, and I start to freak out, basically close to tears. My husband, who is American and therefore was not subject to stories of Banshees as a child, did not understand my terror.
I was so relieved when we came to a beach and could see it was just a group of seal mums and their babies.
5. Deer Readers, This One is Pretty Weird
This story relates to the Wendigo. A bunch of friends and I were out one night to do some exploring, hiking through woods, etc (what else is there to do when you live in the middle of nowhere?). We were walking up a hill towards a connecting public park that was just kind of an open field with walking paths surrounded by dense woods.
Standing on the edge of a treeline we looked out into the open field and saw what we all thought was a deer. Not that strange, deer are everywhere—but we'd soon realize we were horribly wrong. We walk out into the field some more while watching the deer. As we get further out into the field this "deer" stands up on two legs and covers about 100 yards in what seemed like only a few strides. This freaked us the heck out and we left as fast as we could.
I’ve been in the woods nearly all my life and I’ve never seen anything like that. Scary.
6. Well Whaddayaknow! Some of These Turn Out to Be True!
There was a tale in Andros (Bahamas) that there used to be a three-foot-tall bird creature called a Chickcharney that lived in the woods and would steal children (as I was told). Then, recently, they found evidence that there actually used to be an animal like that on Andros. Turns out it was a three-foot ground-dwelling owl.
7. Whistle a Happy Tune
We have one in Venezuela called "El Silbón" (The Whistler), typical of the wetland plains and prairies regions we call "Llanos". The description is usually of a very emaciated man dressed in cowboy's (llanero) rags with a wide brim hat that hides his skeletal face. He roams the countryside and patches of bush at night, with drooping shoulders, a downcast stare, and a heavy bag full of bones and half decomposed remains slung over his back.
There are two distinctive features, however, that make him particular: he continuously whistles, a high chord progression C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C that goes higher in tune with every note. He is also unnaturally tall and strong, with some accounts describing him as towering over six meters in height. His origin is not clear, with some tales stating him as an accursed parricide.
Whatever he is, he is certainly feared by lone travelers. Specially, drunk or unfaithful men who travel through the country. The story has it that his ominous whistle is suddenly heard very loud and close, yet the source cannot be pinpointed—and, contrary to logic, when the sound gets lower and appears more distant, it is an indication of his immediate proximity.
He will then kill and devour the victims and throw their bones in his bag. He can be seen occasionally wading over the high walls of haciendas/fincas and honest prayer should keep him away.
8. Think Twice Before Taunting
I live in Northern Australia and everyone growing up in my town knows of the legend of the poinciana woman. A quick google search will elaborate into the many variations to the story, but the one I grew up to know is that of a woman who was assaulted by Japanese fishermen and who hanged herself from a poinciana tree when she had discovered she was pregnant.
She is said to appear as a beautiful woman to entice men; with long dark hair and dressed in a white gown. She is said to be situated at our army reserve. When I was around twelve, and my younger brother ten, he had been in his room and I was in the lounge room on the computer. He had come barreling out from his room screaming, "Can you hear that! Can you hear that?!" before dragging me over to the window.
There was a faint feminine moan/hum, we could hear it moving from the window we stood at, to the one across the room and back in a clockwise direction. The wind had picked up with the noise despite how still the night had been. The sound became so loud that we were on the floor covering our ears crying, and when I've brought it up recently my brother agrees it was almost as if the sound had been in our heads. This went on for about ten minutes before abruptly stopping. No wind, nothing.
We found out the next day that our older siblings had been at the army reserve that night before they got home, had climbed the concrete pillars to the locked gun turret, and had been "taunting" the poinciana woman. Before they left, they heard footsteps, but they assumed it was security. That's not what creeps me out most though.
Not long after this happened, I realized that we had a poinciana tree outside of that window.
9. Fight Fire with Fire
My grandmother was flagged down by a volunteer firefighter on her way home from a canasta game with some friends from church. She was found murdered the next day. The police had a suspect, which is how we know about the MO, but he was acquitted because of some bad paperwork from his arrest. One month later, he was caught in possession of the corpse of a young woman, who was found in the exact same state as my grandmother.
Apparently, this time he decided to bury the corpse. He's still on death row to this day.
10. No Way Out
The Stüpp is a type of werewolf from German folklore. It usually waits around crossroads at dusk and after dark and leaps on unsuspecting passersby. And that's it. While other werewolves would promptly tear your face off, the stüpp just stays clenched to the hosts back like a backpack, forever. As the person struggles to get the creature off, it grows in size meaning the more they struggle the greater it grows, until the person either has their legs broken, or they die of exhaustion.
11. Don’t Sleep in the Silo, Darling
My mum told me this story about the village where she grew up in Scotland. The village's earliest known settlement is from 3,000 BC, so it's old. It's been home to the Picts and the Romans. Nowadays there is a small woodland and the rest of the surrounding land is farmland. The woods used to be much larger, they are what survives of a large forest that almost completely surrounded the village.
Legend says the forest was home to witches. When the forest was being cleared for expanding farmland, a lone witch came out of the forest to tell the villagers to stop. She said the trees would not forgive man for their destruction, and if the villagers did not heed her words then all of their land would become infertile. And all the women.
Frightened, the villagers agreed, but asked for a small part of the forest. A deal was made that this, and only this, land could be cleared. The witch also said that for every harvest of every crop grown there, one sack of produce must be taken to the edge of the forest and left. This practice was followed for hundreds of years until the villagers abruptly tore down much of the remaining forest to grow wheat and build a mill.
Again a strange woman came from the forest into the village and threatened the villagers. She said they had broken the promise and would suffer. This time the villagers took the woman and hanged her. Her last words were that the price was now three sacks. The man who built the mill was scared and after the first harvest, he took three sacks into the woods. Unlike his neighbors, his crops did not fail and his wife became pregnant. Always, he paid the woods their due, and before long he was the richest man in the village with three beautiful, healthy daughters.
Unfortunately, the man grew greedy and thought he'd no longer pay his three sacks. The next morning, his youngest daughter went missing. The whole village came to help look for her, but the man asked that his men run the mill as normal so he didn't lose any money. There was soon a commotion at the mill, some of the workers had fainted, others were crying, some were shouting.
The man came to see what was happening. A horrified worker told him they had started up the mill as normal, but blood had poured from between the stones. They had found his missing daughter. Distraught, the man sold his land and fled the village with his family. The mill was torn down and years later a silo was built there. By the 1960s, the silo was ancient and crumbling. It was also rumored to be haunted either by the farmer, his daughter or the witch. Sometimes all three.
This part is my mum's story. One day she and her friends had a bet to see who could spend a night in the silo. One boy who was always boasting of his bravery volunteered. Between them, my mum and her friends conspired to keep this a secret from their parents by lying about camping in each other's gardens. That evening the boy, John, climbed the silo loft and mum and her friend gave him a bag of food, a blanket, and a torch.
They told him they'd be back in the morning, but were actually planning on coming back later to frighten him. They had waited a few hours and snuck back to the silo and alarmingly they could hear John sobbing and crying for help. They found him quite a way from the silo pulling himself along on his stomach. John had jumped out the silo loft and broken his ankles.
He was carried back to his parent's house and taken to hospital. After the inevitable week of punishment, my mum was allowed to visit John. She said he still looked as terrified then as he had that night. She asked him what happened. He said he told his parents and the doctors that he fell, but the truth was he saw something.
Not long after he was left on his own he could hear something shuffling around in the loft. He used the torch to see but there were only empty grain bags. He tried to ignore the noise but finally, it sounded like it was moving toward him. When he shone the torch on the grain bags again he saw that they were crawling, dragging themselves along the floor towards him. That’s why he jumped.
The silo's long been demolished, but they've built homes there now. Eeek!
12. It’s Always Good to Be Ready for All Possibilities
If you want to hear something pretty crazy, let me tell you all about the Scandinavian nisse. A nisse (or tomte, in Swedish) is a small, gnome-like creature. They live in barns or farmhouses, or in the nearby woods. They are excellent at hiding and can sometimes turn invisible. You will only ever see them in glimpses, if you're lucky.
If you treat them with respect, they will protect your farm and even help around. They are especially fond of animals. If you insult or displease them, however, they can be mischievous, even vicious. To this day, it's tradition to leave a bowl of porridge in the barn for the Nisse on Christmas Eve. I didn't grow up on a farm, so my mom had us put a bowl out in the garage instead. Just in case, she said.
13. Fifteen Minutes of Fame
Mothman. In a 13 months period between 1965-1966, the town of Point Pleasant, WV reported seeing a winged beast with big red eyes. The last report was the beast standing on the Silver Bridge. And then the Silver Bridge collapsed. The beast wasn't reported again afterward.
14. I’ll Stick With Uber
My grandfather and his four brothers spent their summers at their family's bay house (more of a shack, really) in Fairhope, Alabama when they were young. It was a five-minute walk to the Mobile Bay, and growing up around there, I can personally attest to the areas long history of spooky stuff. One night, my grandfather and his brothers were sleeping on the house's screened-in front porch, with air conditioning not being readily available and it being South Alabama in the middle of summer.
My grandfather and his brothers are fast asleep in the middle of the night, and an old taxi drives up and parks in front of their house. A man and a woman get out of the cab dressed in seemingly weather-worn wedding attire, top hat/tails and all. They walk up to the house, and the woman scratches the wood siding of the screen door with long fingernails, and the pair proceeds to go back and get in the cab.
All the boys were awoken by the sound of the scratching but were way too scared to move or make a sound til morning. The next day, my grandfather brought it up to his brothers, and they all confirmed it actually happened and wasn't a dream. They called the woman the Witch, and claim to have seen/heard her multiple times throughout their lives.
A few years ago, I went to see the house before it was torn down, and there were five scratches spaced in the same way that fingernails would leave on a wood plank. I told the owner the story, and he became visibly disturbed, telling me about an old taxi that would park across the street occasionally from midnight (ish) til right before daybreak. Still gives me the heeby jeebies.
15. A Matter of Perspective
In Okinawa, there was a house near the USO on Kadena Air Force Base that was abandoned. A man killed himself and his family in it. It was said to be haunted. It was even part of the ghost tours they gave on base. Reports said that the outside lights would turn on by themselves and creepy things would happen. One story was that a woman could be seen washing her hair in the sink in the kitchen through a window.
The creepiest thing by far was that this house shared a chain link fence with the daycare building. My friend’s mom worked at the daycare. Children, four to five years old, would constantly throw toys over the fence. When asked why they said they wanted to play with the children on the other side. All of the kids saw these other children, but the adults could not.
It thoroughly freaked out anyone who worked there.
16. Time Flies When You’re Having Fun
People see a car swerve off the road and into some trees. They report the accident to the police. When the police arrive to investigate they find a crashed car and a body. But plant life was overgrown and the body was very decomposed. The accident couldn't have happened that night and people wonder if the witnesses saw a ghost car.
The main non-ghosty theory is that they saw an accident but the other car must have been okay and left the scene.
17. No One is Laughing Now
Clownman. I lived right outside Pittsburgh, PA as a teenager in a little, poor town called Swissvale. The next communities over are Rankin and Braddock, which are steel production heyday ghost towns that have been plagued with poverty. A strip of woods, lined by a train track follows the river upon which our communities reside. Right next to the river looms the decrepit abandoned steel mill which I believe was once called Carrie Furnace.
As teenagers do, my friends and I used to cut through the park, across the tracks, and to the river to drink, smoke pot, and hang out. Eventually, we started exploring the steel mill. I loved it. The graffiti and sculptural artists, the wildlife that randomly took over, the bums who made it home, all this made it a worthwhile adventure.
I became comfortable there. Then my friends told me about the abduction of a teenager whose body ended up strung up on a set of city steps. The killer was an insane man who dressed as a clown with a horrid, bloodstained mask. "He lives in the woods and in the steel mill. He walks the tracks with a butcher knife he hasn't even bothered to clean. Don't come here alone."
I got into a fight with a boyfriend one night and stubbornly decided to walk alone from the river, across the tracks and through the woods. I got to the tracks, turned and looked at the steel mill. Further down the tracks, I saw a figure. I couldn't see a face, but the baggy pants were rather clownlike.
I ran like you wouldn't freaking believe. I've never felt fear like that before. It was probably a bum. But who takes chances with an urban legend like that?
18. Mind Games
Skinwalkers. Hands down. During a short-term job, I was housed near a reservation and one night, I swore I saw a coyote running across an open space about a quarter-mile out on its hind legs. I told the locals about it and they told me about how things like that happen out here and that I shouldn't speak of my experience freely to anyone.
One of them introduced me to a "healing man" of a tribe to make sure I was "cleansed of bad spirits" in case the encounter marked me in any way. He told of terrifying encounters that other people have had with these creatures and to not think about them or seek them out while I was there or they would know. Seriously creepy stuff.
I didn't have another encounter while I was there thankfully. When I left, the locals told me I was very brave and had a "strong mind," so yay.
19. If You Have to Go, That Doesn’t Sound Like the Worst Way...
There is a woman who represents hypothermia and her kiss is what kills you. People who die from hypothermia strip naked because they feel warm and the legend comes from them stripping from being seduced. Apparently this is a peaceful way to die.
20. All Eyes On Me
The Chinese have a superstition that young children until a certain age have a "third eye" for the supernatural. Dogs and cats are said to apparently possess this as well.
21. Where There’s Fog, There’s Problems
Back when I lived in Huntsville my home was ~100 yards away from the "Dead Children's Playground." During the day it was just a place parents could drop their kids while they visited buried loved ones, but during the night it's also a huge fog trap due to a giant rock wall around half of it. Supposedly swings move on their own and you can hear children laughing.
We used to go out there at midnight all the time but apparently you have to go at "the witching hour," which I'm guessing is past my bedtime.
22. Someone to Watch Over Me
My mom used to be friends with a kind-of druggie woman. She had two kids, Brian and Sarah. Sarah was a really cute girl; she was in ninth grade when I was in second. Anyway, Sarah's mom was a druggie and her dad was an alcoholic, but other than that he was a good guy and took really good care of both his kids. The druggie mom and the alcoholic dad divorced back in the early 2000s; the dad got custody of Sarah, the mom of Brian. The dad started dating someone new soon after the divorce and Sarah was old enough that she had a boyfriend then as well.
Sarah was probably 17 or 18 when this story happens. It gets pretty foggy during the night where I live during certain seasons, and one night they (the dad, his girlfriend, Sarah, and her boyfriend) had gone out to see a movie and to dinner at Applebee's. The dad and his new girlfriend had both gotten a little drunk, but not drunk enough to call a cab.
I live in a rural area, so people know the back roads. Long story short, the dad took a turn too quick and plowed his car right into a tree. Sarah was apparently knocked for a loop, but she was conscious immediately following the crash. She managed to get out of the car; she had cut up an arm and leg and was bleeding pretty bad. Sarah says that her dad and her boyfriend also got out of the car with her; the girlfriend was apparently dead in the front seat.
She said her dad told her and her boyfriend to go get help while he tried to help his girlfriend. Sarah says that she and her boyfriend climbed the bank to the road and ran half a mile or so to the nearest house. The cops were actually able to follow Sarah's blood trail later. She said that she kept getting really tired and falling on the road, but that her boyfriend kept helping her up and telling her not to go to sleep yet.
She got to a house and knocked on the door. Obviously, the people there called 911 and the paramedics got there quick enough to stop Sarah's bleeding. Sarah said she kept telling the paramedics to help her boyfriend and her dad, and they told her they were going to but that she had to tell them where the accident was. She did, obviously, but when they got there, they were stunned.
Anyway...turns out Sarah's dad, his girlfriend, and Sarah's boyfriend died pretty much instantly when the car hit the tree. Her boyfriend had a broken neck, and the dad and the girlfriend were in the front seat and probably were crushed by the force of the car hitting the tree. When the cops and the paramedics arrived, all three of them were still strapped into their seats.
I haven't talked to Sarah in a LONG time, probably ten years, but when we last talked, she still believed that her boyfriend's ghost saved her from bleeding out on the side of the road.
23. A Colorful Story
For those that don't know, white is the color of death in Japan and other Asian societies. A friend worked at a limo company in LA, and he found this out the hard way. They got a new account that was a travel agency and one of the packages they put together were Japanese couples who came to Los Angeles to get married.
They would pick them up after the ceremony at a church in Beverly Hills and they would go to the Beverly Wilshire hotel (the Pretty Woman hotel) and have an English "high tea" (the travel agency negotiated a deal so the limo just drove them the short distance for a really small fee). They had recently merged with another limo company, and with it came a white stretch (which are really only good for weddings and proms, but cannot be sent to award shows and red carpets so most limo companies in LA don't have them). "Hey, be sure to send the white stretch to that wedding. They didn't request it, but...."
So the white stretch pulls up and as soon as it does the Japanese coordinator comes rushing out, "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! You must leave, NOW! They cannot see the car! White, VERY bad luck. Go now please!" Luckily the limo company was just a few blocks from the hotel so they scrambled another car over. Every few months after that they would have to explain to a new dispatcher why they could NEVER send a white stretch to drive a Japanese person, unless it was to a funeral.....
24. H is for Horrifying
There is a local legend about a campsite I used to go camping at here in upstate New York. Legend says that there is a man they call "The H Man" who lives out in the woods near the campsite. One year, a group of boy scouts were camping out there and one of the boys went missing. They didn't find him until they started packing up to go home.
As they were cleaning up and packing up their belongings, they found the missing kid. He was dead under one of the mattresses with an "H" carved into his chest. They say when the H man kills campers, he carves an H into your chest. Growing up camping here, all of us kids were terrified of the H man. They said if you go exploring deep enough into the woods you can find his home.
Well, there IS an abandoned house deep in the woods that we found one time. Creepy thing was, it was sooo deep in the woods, but there were no roads leading to it, no paths leading to it. Just a single abandoned house. Sitting in the middle of the woods. If you go camping in Minerva NY, beware of the "H Man."
25. Backstory
I'm from upstate NY and I remember the legend of the H Man. The idea was that the guy lost his family when his cabin burned down or something like that. He was trying to escape, or get them out, or something and some metal bars burned a big "H" into his chest.
26. Family Ties
A group of guys, high school friends, make a bet involving a local haunted house. One guy says he can spend the entire night inside of it without leaving. His friends take him up on it, but just to make sure he doesn't pull a fast one, they insist he be tied to the upstairs banister with a rope. Guy agrees. They tie him up and leave.
Next morning they come back to get him. He's a little out of it and says it was fine, but that's all he says. He wins the bet and collects. Life continues; the friends finish high school. All go away to college except haunted house guy. He stays around in town, moves from dead-end job to dead-end job. He doesn't go out and loses touch with the others over the next couple of years.
One day, the friends hear that haunted house guy has killed himself. This comes as a huge shock and they all have questions. They are all horrified to learn that he hung himself with the rope they used to tie him up that night in the haunted house.
27. Never Again
Out by my parents' place in Jersey, there's a story about a bridge across this one creek. A little kid drowned there a long time ago when he went into the water to retrieve an object he'd accidentally dropped. Anyway, if you go at the right time of night and drop something small into the water, like a coin or a pen or a ball, and then go away for a couple of minutes, it'll be sitting on the railing waiting for you when you come back.
The ghost of the kid doesn't want anyone else to die the way that he did, so he fishes things out of the water to keep people safe. If you drop it back in again, he'll supposedly throw it at you for being a jerk and wasting his time.
28. Something Needs to Change
Changelings. It isn’t so much scary folklore—human children and women stolen by fairies and replaced with fairy children or dying fairies—but how people reacted was horrifying. Changelings were usually used to describe otherwise misunderstood or mysterious illnesses, deformities, or conditions. So, a woman has a healthy child who starts showing signs of autism at two years old; must be a changeling.
Which is whatever, but there were ways people thought you could get the changeling to reveal themselves, or even ways to get the fairies to switch the babies back. Some was stupid harmless nonsense, like cooking eggshells to confuse and surprise the changeling into speaking. Other ways were a lot worse, like beating the changeling, putting it in the fireplace, holding it underwater.
There are quite a few cases where mothers killed their children because they were convinced they were changelings—drowning them, burning them alive, beating them to death, and so on. And it didn't end until relatively recently. In the late 1800s, nine people became convinced a woman was a changeling following a serious bout of pneumonia, including her husband and father.
They beat her, threw urine at her, burned her alive, buried her body in a shallow grave, and then reported her missing to the police, saying fairies had taken her. They were only charged with manslaughter because they firmly believed they had killed a changeling, not a woman. Or, at least, that's what they claimed.
29. Well, That’s One Way to Spend Your Eternity...
Herne the Hunter is my local "If you saw this in the forest, you'd run" character. A man, riding a black horse, flanking alongside him a dog and an owl overhead. However...the man has antlers (in some illustrations, it's a stag skull for a mask with the antlers attached. Other variations show him with actual antlers from his own skull) and a glow surrounds him which happens to be blue.
Spooky. He has a horse, it's a nice horse, it likes mints. He has a dog with him who only could be compared to Mr. Pickles and a horned owl (not actual horns) that has glowing red eyes. He carries with him his hunting bow, a heavy metal chain, and a large horn. There are many variations of his story, but overall he's not going to come and kill you in your sleep.
In short, this was meant to be an actual man who had a job as a hunter and then either died or killed himself and his ghost (summed up with all the craziness above) roams the night.
30. So Many Questions
Buckle up folks, here is the only sort of urban legend that I ever came across. One of my friends back in college lived about 20-25 minutes outside of town in between my college town and a neighboring small town with several of his friends. One Sunday evening at about 10 pm, they heard an unexpected knock at the door.
One of the guys checked the peephole and saw a woman, and immediately something felt off so he went to his room to obtain his gun and then opened the door. The woman was filthy and disheveled and immediately pleaded to come inside. Hesitantly, they let her in and asked why she was 10 miles from the next town and knocking on their door at night.
This woman, albeit frantically, explained that people were looking for her because she had run away from a cult in the next town that had been systematically abusing kids for decades. One guy calls her names and she proceeds to pull out a stack of creepy polaroids of individual children that look almost like booking/intake/mugshots in front of a bookcase.
She told them that the cops were involved and covering it up and that they couldn't under any circumstances call them. This woman asks for a ride into town to get on a bus so she can travel to this "attorney" she has been in contact with; doesn't need money, doesn't need anything but a ride to the bus station and sealed lips.
For whatever reason, my friends agreed to take her into town and drop her off at the Greyhound bus station. One gave her his number and said to update him when she got herself together. They drive all the way back to their house and immediately succumb to the paranoia and agree that it would be best to call the police.
A couple of sheriffs and a couple of cops from the next town over show up and question them about the woman's appearance, where they took her, what she said, etc. Well, they lie and say that they simply took her into town and dropped her off in a grocery store parking lot and make no mention of the children, the cult, etc.
The cops take their report and all leave, except the two policemen from the small town COME BACK and proceed to grill the everloving heck out of these guys about exactly what the woman said, where they took her, why they gave her a ride. They were really aggressive, but when nobody had any information to provide them, they gave up and left with instructions to call them, and only them, if they have a similar occurrence.
Never heard back from the woman, never got another visit from the cops, never saw anything in the news.
31. As Long As That’s It
A town near my hometown has a witches grave with a skull on it that bleeds, but that's pretty much it.
32. Doesn’t Sound Consensual to Me
There's this one Paraguayan legend about this god with a huge sexual organ that impregnates women. Basically he just goes around with that thing impregnating all the single women in Paraguay. I think his name is Kuruppe or something like that.
33. Mistrial
There's a black angel statue in the cemetery where I live. Supposedly if you kiss it, you die within 24 hours unless you're a virgin. I kissed it, I did not die. I cannot remember if I was still a virgin at that point. Results: inconclusive.
34. Wait, What??
A friend of mine from college had a project for his astronomy class and he needed to take progression pictures of a constellation over the course of a night. He went out to a field in the middle of nowhere and set up his camera on a timer next to his truck, where he slept that night. The next morning, he looked through his pictures—and his blood ran cold. he sees a picture of the constellation, picture of the constellation...picture of him sleeping in his truck...picture of the constellation, picture of the constellation.
35. Hangman Comes to Life
I'm Native, and the story of the Stick People always gave me the heebie-jeebies at dusk, or if I was alone in the woods. It basically is that there are these Stick People who live in the hills, and they draw children in who don't pay attention to their parents, children—and even adults—who wandered into their territory, children who are out past their bedtime, or even babes out of their baskets when their mothers have their backs turned to put up laundry on the line.
The Stick People, as told to me, were small and skeletal. They were were mischievous and wicked, they would steal from you...like the extra sock from your dryer, your lost car keys, or...your children. As I lived in a very rural area on a reservation, I'd assumed these Stick People lived up in the hills...so every time I'm in the hills now I'm always looking around, and very alert. Not because there are bears and cougars in the area...but because of the Stick People.
36. Quit Horsing Around!
A Kelpie looks like a beautiful young man. He'll attempt to woo young girls...and then turn into a horse and drag them to a watery death.
37. Seal Team Six
On a Scottish note, I love the stories of Selkies—seal men/women. They are seals that sometimes shed their seal coat and you can see them in a beautiful human form, due to their love of dancing naked in the moonlight. Stories have humans stealing the seal coat to trap the Selkie in their human form, usually marrying them and keeping the seal coat from them.
The Selkie usually manages to recover its seal coat and return to the sea. If anyone has had the luck to see a seal in the wild, you can see where these stories come from, they have the most incredible eyes and they just STARE at you, like they know something you don't. Similarly the noise they make is quite freaky; when they "sing" they sound like women laughing.
38. Modesty
When we lived in western Pennsylvania, my uncle would always tell me about Charlie No-Face. He was in some kind of electrical accident as a kid that fried off his nose and his eyes. My uncle told my sister and I that if we were out at night, Charlie No Face would appear and try to steal our faces off. As it turns out, Charlie was an actual guy named Raymond Robinson and he was in an accident that disfigured his face like that, and he would walk around at night to avoid attracting attention.
39. Going Full Beast Mode
On the little island I grew up on, there was a story of a "beast" that would come into people's homes at night and attack their kids...and it turned out to be true. He entered homes at night dressed in a rubber mask and nail-studded wristlets, attacking women and children. It went on for a period of eleven years from 1960 as the beast roamed the island.
Edward Paisnel. Caught in 1971. Story available online. And then there was a book. The cover gives you an idea of what the Beast of Jersey looked like.
40. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to a New City
So, I had a football coach back in high school who was also one of my teachers for a semester. He told us one story that freaked us all out pretty bad. He had a coaching job at a small college in Montana when he was a lot younger and newly married. He said that after practice one evening, he was making his long commute home, and the route ran alongside fields and fields of hay, grain, whatever. Since it was late summer/early fall, it wasn't even approaching dark yet. His car was an old beat-up truck with just a bench seat.
Anyway, he's driving along when he sees a hitchhiker on the shoulder. This being back in the day and in small-town Montana, my teacher pulled over to let the guy in without a second thought. The man was described as wearing a really old, outdated style of suit. Not quite a zoot suit, but styled in a similar, baggy way. He also had a big, stylish hat.
This guy looked like he was out of the 40s, and "sort of like a pimp." My teacher thought it was weird that he was so overdressed, it being super hot out. But maybe that was the only clothing he had. So the guy gets in next to my teacher without a word. Teacher asks him where he needs to go, and the guy just points forward. Teacher drives on.
Later, my teacher tried talking to the guy, just trying to make simple conversation, but the guy wouldn't speak or even acknowledge him. He just pulled his hat down like he was sleeping. Out of nowhere, the guy just tips up his hat, looks out the window, and says, "Stop the car. Now." My teacher pulls over and lets him out, not wanting to offend a possibly crazy man.
The guy stands on the side of the road for a second, and then at a dead sprint, just runs off into the field beside the road, until my teacher couldn't see him anymore (granted the crop was fairly tall). He waits there for a while, thinking maybe the guy had the runs or something and didn't want to defecate next to the road. After a long enough wait, my teacher gets back in the truck and starts to accelerate back onto the road.
The thing about really old trucks is that they don't accelerate very fast. As my teacher got back on to the road, he looked in his rearview mirror to check for a safe merge. But there wasn't a car in sight. What there was, was the hitchhiker, on all fours like an animal, running (crawling?) after the truck at an inhuman speed. Meanwhile, my teacher is beginning to fish-tail as he attempts to go faster. The whole time his eyes glued remain on the mirror, watching the man chase after his car.
Eventually, he was able to get up to speed and lost sight of the guy in his mirror. When he was able to stop at a gas station to use a pay phone, he called his wife at home to tell her the story, and to lock up the house. She thinks he's just messing with her, and he had been talking to her coworker about the hitchhiker.
When he asks why she would think that, apparently at her office in the town she worked in, one of her coworkers told her a story of the exact same thing happening to them. And it is a well-known urban legend in that town. She thought it was just folks playing with the new girl at work, who had to drive home alone at night.
Anyways, my teacher assured her that he was not lying, and she evidently believes him and can vouch for her side of the story, because she showed up to one of our fundraisers and I asked her about it. So yeah, now I just avoid lonely roads in Montana.
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