Monday, April 25, 2011

The 5 Scariest Urban Legends That are True

Scary but true urban legends can be found in most major newspapers in every country. The fact that such scary things happen to people so often is probably a very good reason why most people believe urban legends, even when they aren’t true.
However, there’s really no need for anyone to make up fake stories when truth is often so much stranger than fiction.

1. The Dead Body Under Your  Bed

Although it sounds unbelievable, this really happened in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, NJ, Florida, Kansas City, MO, and California. It seems that in or under the bed in a hotel room became very popular place to hide the recently deceased. And it’s not surprising at all if you think about it. Under the bed and the closet are the two most popular places to hide anything, so why would a corpose be such a big deal. Really, the odds are pretty good that at least once a man has killed a prostitute, tried to put her body under the bed, only to find there was already a body there.

2. The Funhouse Mummy

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Well, maybe you can’t see too many frightening things in today’s funhouses, but back in the old days many unusual people and items were often on display at the carnival and the mummy was certainly one of the most popular items. People were excited to see it close up and even touch it for the price of admission to the funhouse.
Time rolled on and all the interesting items, including once-popular mummies, ended up in warehouses. One day in 1976, while a camera crew was shooting a TV show on the premises of an old amusement park, they came upon a hanging man prop. Suddenly, while they were moving it, the arm fell off and the bones inside were exposed. They realized it wasn’t the hanging man prop, but a real, mummified dead body. The mummy had been in storage for decades, but no one knew where it had originally come from. It was finally given a proper burial as a John Doe.

3. Halloween Decoration

A woman’s dead body hanging from a tree on the side of the road in Frederica, Delaware swung for hours because passers-by assumed it was a Halloween decoration. Halloween must have been taken too seriously in Delaware, huh? However, one day later, it turns out it was a 42-year-old woman who had committed suicide. So, the conclusion is that the legend is true but only because the woman chose the right place and time to die.

4.  Halloween Trick Failed

A teenager who pretended to hang from a gallows as part of a pre-Halloween hayride was hanged for real while performing the stunt in front of the audience. In fact, imitating a grisly death by hanging is an annual feature of many Halloween shows, and there are many examples of such stunts have gone wrong and resulted in actual deaths.

5. Buried Alive

In the early 17th century, a woman died and was buried in Ardtannies, Scotland. When grave robbers attempted to steal the jewelry interred with her, the deceased surprised the heck out of them by groaning. The robbers fled for their lives, and the woman revived and walked home.
Well, it seems that the grave robbery can sometimes be very helpful. However, this story could definitely be true. Throughout history, there have been numerous cases of people being buried alive by accident. In 1905, the English reformer William Tebb collected accounts of premature burial. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissection and 2 cases of awakening while being embalmed.
Extra Urban Legend That Could Be True:

The Spider Bite

scary but true urban legends
The legend of the spider bite features a young woman who was on vacation abroad in an exotic, southern location. While sunbathing on the beach, she is bitten on the cheek by a spider. The bite swells into a large boil and she rushes home to seek medical treatment. She finds a doctor to lance the boil then hundreds of tiny spiders come running out of her cheek. She then goes insane from the shock.
The legend emerged as a modern legend in Europe in the late 1970s, but it echoes earlier manifestations of the bosom-serpent story type, where all types of creatures enter the body and sometimes reproduce there.

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