95 Fun Facts About Urban Legends

What spectral figure is supposedly summoned by chanting her name into a mirror?

Bloody Mary may have grown out of old divination games in which girls peered into a mirror to glimpse a future husband; some versions call her Mary Worth instead.

Which creepypasta character is usually shown as a tall, faceless figure in a dark suit?

Slender Man was invented in 2009 by Eric Knudsen, posting as Victor Surge, who pasted the faceless figure into two doctored black-and-white photographs for an online paranormal-image contest.

Which creature, said to attack livestock and drain their blood, is often sighted in parts of the Americas?

Chupacabra means 'goat-sucker' in Spanish, from chupa ('sucks') and cabras ('goats'), after its reported habit of draining livestock.

What large reptile is rumored to live in the sewers of major cities, having been flushed down as pets?

Alligators: the legend grew out of real 1930s newspaper reports, such as a 1935 story of New York boys who lassoed a live alligator with a clothesline and hauled it out of a sewer.

Which urban legend tells of a killer with a prosthetic hand stalking couples in parked cars?

The Hookman's hook, in most tellings, is found dangling from the car door handle once the couple have sped home, proof of how close he came.

What is the usual name for the pale-gowned female ghost of betrayal or untimely death found in folklore worldwide?

The White Lady usually carries a backstory of murder, suicide or a lover's betrayal; a famous one on Quezon City's Balete Drive is said to flag down taxis at night.

Which figure of Hispanic American folklore wanders near water, wailing for the children she drowned?

La Llorona, 'the weeping woman', doubles as a warning: parents invoke her to keep children away from rivers and indoors after dark.

Which axe-wielding Fairfax County, Virginia legend is tied to a railroad overpass near Clifton?

The Bunny Man was traced by a Fairfax County library archivist to two real 1970 police reports of a man in a rabbit costume threatening people with an axe.

The part-man, part-goat Pope Lick Monster is said to live under a railroad trestle in which US state?

Kentucky: the trestle over Pope Lick Creek in Louisville is no abandoned relic but a busy freight line, and people hunting the monster have been killed by trains there.

Which folklorist popularized 'urban legend' with his 1981 book The Vanishing Hitchhiker?

Jan Harold Brunvand, a University of Utah professor, took the tales to a mass audience through a syndicated newspaper column and guest spots on Late Night with David Letterman.

Which city's 1946 'Moonlight Murders' may have seeded the legend of a killer stalking lovers' lanes?

Texarkana: an unidentified 'Phantom Killer' attacked couples parked on quiet roads there in 1946, and writers on folklore have suggested such real murders fed the legend.

In the classic babysitter urban legend, where do the menacing phone calls turn out to be coming from?

Inside the house: the caller is already upstairs with the children, the twist that the 1979 film When a Stranger Calls was built on.

In 'The Licked Hand' legend, who is really licking the girl's hand at night instead of her dog?

The intruder, not her dog, licked her hand in the night; in the best-known telling she then finds the dog dead, with a message saying that people can lick too.

In the 'High Beams' legend, why does the car behind keep flashing its lights?

To warn of a hidden man: each flash makes the killer crouched in her back seat duck down again; folklorist Carlos Drake first recorded the tale in 1968 from Indiana University students.

In the classic organ-theft legend, a drugged traveller wakes up missing a kidney in what?

A bathtub full of ice, with a message telling him to call 911; the tale swept the internet by email in 1997, and the National Kidney Foundation's appeal for real victims went unanswered.

Which candy was falsely rumoured to have killed 'Mikey' of the Life cereal ads when mixed with cola?

Pop Rocks: actor John Gilchrist, who played Mikey, was alive and well, and General Foods ran newspaper ads in 1979 to assure parents the fizzing candy was safe.

Contrary to the cryogenic-freezing legend, what actually happened to Walt Disney's remains?

He was cremated two days after his death in December 1966; the first person ever cryonically frozen, James Bedford, was not preserved until the following month.

A 1969 death hoax claimed which Beatle had died in 1966 and been secretly replaced by a look-alike?

Paul McCartney was alive and at his farm in Scotland; fans heard 'Turn me on, dead man' in a backwards Revolution 9 and read clues into the Abbey Road cover.

Polybius, the legendary mind-altering arcade game, supposedly appeared in 1981 in which city?

Portland, Oregon, in 1981, is where the Polybius cabinets supposedly appeared; no machine and no record of its supposed publisher, Sinnesloschen, has ever surfaced.

Mothman sightings around Point Pleasant, West Virginia became linked to which December 1967 disaster?

The Silver Bridge collapse killed 46 people, and John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies tied the creature to the tragedy.

According to legend, the Jersey Devil was the cursed thirteenth child of a woman known by what name?

Mother Leeds, in one common telling set in 1735, cursed her unborn child, which turned into a winged monster soon after birth and has haunted the Pine Barrens ever since.

The Loch Ness Monster's famous 1934 'surgeon's photograph' turned out to show a model head mounted on what?

A toy submarine carried the sculpted head; Christian Spurling confessed that his stepfather, big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, staged the photo after the Daily Mail ridiculed him.

At which Northern California location was the 1967 Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot film shot?

Bluff Creek is where Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin filmed a large, hairy figure striding across a clearing and glancing back at them, the most famous Bigfoot footage ever shot.

The first widely publicized sightings of the blood-draining 'goat-sucker' cryptid emerged in 1995 on which island?

Puerto Rico's 1995 sightings started it; later 'goat-sucker' carcasses in Mexico and Texas turned out to be coyotes and dogs with severe mange.

The ghost ship Ourang Medan, its crew supposedly found dead with terrified faces, was said to be from which nation?

Dutch: the Ourang Medan was said to be a Dutch merchant ship in the Straits of Malacca, yet searches for any registration or accident record of such a vessel have found nothing.

Which masked woman of Japanese urban legend asks passers-by whether she is pretty?

Kuchisake-onna panic swept Japan in 1979; escapes include calling her 'average', throwing hard candy, or saying 'pomade' three times.

In Japanese schools, the ghost Hanako-san is said to haunt which part of the building?

The toilets, specifically the third stall of a third-floor girls' lavatory: knock three times and ask if Hanako is there.

The Japanese ghost Teke Teke drags herself along on her hands because her body was cut in half by what?

A train: cut in half on the tracks, Teke Teke drags her torso along on her hands at night, and her name imitates the scratching sound that makes.

The Japanese bathroom spirit Aka Manto offers his victims a choice between which two colours?

Red and blue: Aka Manto asks whether you want red paper or blue paper; in most tellings red means being slashed and blue being strangled, and the only escape is to refuse both.

Which website's 2009 Photoshop contest for paranormal images produced the internet's best-known faceless villain?

Something Awful's forum ran the June 2009 contest where Eric Knudsen, posting as Victor Surge, first pasted his faceless figure into two photographs; a 2014 stabbing by two young fans caused a moral panic.

A news report from which Caribbean nation sparked the 2015 Charlie Charlie pencil-game craze?

Dominican Republic: an April 2015 Dominican television report warning about the Charlie Charlie pencil game was uploaded to YouTube and, via English-language Twitter, took the craze worldwide the following month.

The 2018 'Momo Challenge' scare claimed a bug-eyed figure was sending children dares through which app?

WhatsApp: the scare said a 'Momo' account messaged children dangerous dares, but it was a hoax, and the face was a sculpture made by a Japanese special-effects studio.

Poisoned Halloween candy myths are examples of what kind of story, according to folklorists?

Cautionary tales, combining two classic urban-legend themes, danger to children and contamination of food; confirmed cases of strangers doing this are essentially nonexistent.

Maryland's Goatman legend is often traced to experiments at which federal facility?

Beltsville Agricultural Research Center: the legend says a scientist's goat experiments there went wrong; a 1971 University of Maryland folklore project first recorded the tale, and a Prince George's County newspaper spread it that year.

In the 'Mexican Pet' legend, the stray 'dog' a tourist smuggles home turns out to be what?

A sewer rat, the vet announces, and a dying one at that; in the best-known version a California shopper feeds the stray in Tijuana and sneaks it back across the border.

In the classic vanishing hitchhiker legend, what does the driver learn at the girl's home address?

She died years earlier, her relatives tell him; in some versions he later finds the coat he lent her draped over her gravestone.

Folklorists say urban legends are usually credited to a source known by which acronym?

FOAF, short for 'friend of a friend', was coined by Rodney Dale in his 1978 book The Tumour in the Whale; the phrase keeps a tale's origin just out of reach.

Procter & Gamble's old logo, long rumoured to be satanic, showed a bearded man in what?

A crescent moon: believers claimed to see horns and sixes in the curls of the moon man's beard, and joined the logo's thirteen stars into the same number.

Chicago's legendary hitchhiker Resurrection Mary is said to be heading home from what?

A dance: the legend has Mary killed by a hit-and-run driver on her way home from a ballroom, and drivers have told since the 1930s of picking her up and losing her near Resurrection Cemetery.

Where did the Soviets really drill the 12 km borehole behind the 'Well to Hell' legend?

The Kola Peninsula, near Norway, not Siberia: the Kola Superdeep Borehole reached 12,262 m in 1989, and drilling was finally halted because the rock was far hotter than expected.

In the 'Well to Hell' legend, what did Soviet drillers supposedly record deep underground?

Screams: Christian broadcasters aired the tale as proof of Hell, and a Norwegian teacher who heard it then fooled one network with a made-up 'translation' of an unrelated news story.

Candle Cove, a 2009 creepypasta written as a fake forum thread, has adults half-remembering what?

A children's show: cartoonist Kris Straub wrote the tale after reading an Onion piece about a man still having nightmares about the 1970s series Lidsville.

Herobrine, a ghostly figure with blank white eyes, is a creepypasta legend from which video game?

Minecraft: Herobrine began with an anonymous 2010 post about a stranger in a single-player world, and the game's creator later joked along by listing 'Removed Herobrine' in patch notes.

Which boogeyman of Staten Island campfire tales was linked to convicted kidnapper Andre Rand in a 2009 documentary?

Cropsey gave the film its title; Rand, once a worker at the notorious Willowbrook State School, was convicted of kidnapping two Staten Island girls, and locals blamed him for other disappearances.

Which Hungarian song of 1933 is the subject of a legend claiming that listeners take their own lives?

Gloomy Sunday, by Rezso Seress, was marketed in America as the 'Hungarian suicide song'; no study has ever shown a real link, and the BBC long kept Billie Holiday's version off the air.

Pennsylvania's 'Green Man', or 'Charlie No-Face', was a real man disfigured in boyhood by what?

An electrical accident: Raymond Robinson touched a live power line as a boy in 1919, and his habit of walking a quiet road at night to avoid stares made him a local legend.

Which rural 'prank' did zoologists calculate in 2005 would take more than four people to pull off?

Cow tipping: Margo Lillie and a student worked out that toppling a standing cow takes nearly 3,000 newtons, more than four people's push, and a cow that braces itself needs more still.

In the Choking Doberman legend, what does the vet find lodged in the dog's throat?

Human fingers: the vet finds them in the gagging Doberman's throat and warns the owner to get out of the house, where police find the burglar who lost them passed out in a closet.

A 1977 rumour claimed which gum brand owed its unusual softness to spider eggs?

Bubble Yum was hit by the spider-egg rumour in 1977, soon after it went on sale nationally; Life Savers answered with full-page newspaper rebuttals, including one in The New York Times.

What did Royal Mail give Craig Shergold's family to cope with the flood of get-well cards?

Its own postcode: the 1989 appeal for get-well cards for the young cancer patient brought well over 100 million of them, and they kept arriving long after he had recovered.

'Blue star tattoo' flyers claimed kids' stick-on tattoos were laced with which drug?

LSD is the drug the blue-star flyers name, claiming acid-soaked tattoos of Mickey Mouse or Bart Simpson were being handed to children; no such case has ever been documented.

'Fan death', the idea that a running electric fan can kill a sleeper, is strongest where?

South Korea: belief in fan death was long widespread there, fans are sold with sleep timers, and a Korean newspaper was warning about the new machines as early as 1927.

Smearing which product behind the ears supposedly wards off Australia's drop bears?

Vegemite smeared behind the ears is the classic tourist-fooling remedy, along with forks in the hair; the Australian Museum's deadpan species page lists the drop bear as Thylarctos plummetus.

Prankster Eugene Shepard 'discovered' the horned hodag in 1893 near which city?

Rhinelander, Wisconsin, is where Shepard claimed his posse needed dynamite to kill the beast; he later admitted the hoax, and the town made the hodag its official symbol.

In 2016 a retired officer said the Loveland Frog he shot in 1972 had really been what?

A tailless iguana: Mark Matthews said in 2016 that the creature he shot in 1972 was a large, sickly iguana missing its tail, most likely somebody's escaped pet.

Three teenagers reported the Dover Demon over two nights in 1977 in which state?

Massachusetts: the teenagers each sketched the creature they saw in Dover, a town southwest of Boston, while police put the reports down to a school-vacation hoax.

Sceptic Joe Nickell concluded the 1952 Flatwoods Monster was most likely which animal?

A barn owl, Nickell argued in 2000: perched in a tree, the bird and the shadows beneath it made a towering figure, and the 'spaceship' was a meteor seen across three states that night.

The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp has stalked Bishopville in which state since 1988?

South Carolina: Bishopville teenager Chris Davis said a seven-foot, green, red-eyed creature attacked his car in the summer of 1988, one of several reports of mauled vehicles around the swamp.

In 1955 the Sutton family claimed a night-long gunfight with 'goblins' near which town?

Hopkinsville: the Suttons and their guests fled a farmhouse at nearby Kelly and burst into the police station on 21 August 1955, describing a siege of nearly four hours; Spielberg's unmade Night Skies drew on it.

What was the 'ghost boy' supposedly visible in a window in Three Men and a Baby?

A cardboard cutout: a standee of Ted Danson's character in top hat and tails, left by a window on the set; it was made for a dog-food commercial storyline that was cut from the film.

The Bonsai Kitten hoax site, claiming to grow kittens in jars, came from which university?

MIT: a graduate student launched the joke site from a campus computer in 2000 as 'Dr Michael Wong Chang', and so many people believed it that the FBI investigated.

Which 1958 Disney documentary staged the lemming 'mass suicide' that cemented the myth?

White Wilderness: a 1982 CBC investigation found the crew had brought a few dozen lemmings to Alberta, spun them on turntables and herded them off a cliff into the Bow River.

Which company's sellers mostly spread the rumour that Procter & Gamble's logo was satanic?

Amway: in 2007 a jury awarded Procter & Gamble $19.25 million against four former Amway distributors who had spread the satanism rumour by voicemail to thousands of customers.

The Bell Witch, a poltergeist said to have intrigued Andrew Jackson, haunted which state?

Tennessee: the Bell farm in Robertson County was tormented by a spirit the family called 'Kate', and the legend ends with patriarch John Bell poisoned by the witch.

Robert, the 'haunted' sailor-suited doll from 1904, is exhibited in which city?

Key West's Fort East Martello Museum exhibits Robert, reportedly a Steiff doll given to young Robert Eugene Otto; the sailor suit was probably one the boy himself had outgrown.

Annabelle, the supposedly haunted doll of the Conjuring films, is in real life what?

A Raggedy Ann: the Warrens said a student nurse brought them the rag doll in the 1970s; the films swapped it for a porcelain figure built to look far more menacing.

What did Ray Wallace's family reveal in 2002 that deflated the 1958 Bigfoot tracks?

Carved wooden feet: Wallace's children said he had stomped the 16-inch tracks into the mud himself, fooling coworker Jerry Crew, whose find gave Bigfoot its name.

The name 'Abominable Snowman' was coined in 1921 after an expedition to which mountain?

Mount Everest: journalist Henry Newman heard of giant footprints from the 1921 expedition, and his loose translation of the local name for their maker gave English the 'Abominable Snowman'.

The Nain Rouge, a red dwarf said to appear before disasters, haunts which US city?

Detroit: founder Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac supposedly struck the imp with his cane and was dogged by bad luck ever after; each spring the Marche du Nain Rouge parade chases a costumed dwarf out of the city.

Whose student newspaper launched the 1974 tale that Stull Cemetery is a gateway to Hell?

University of Kansas: a November 1974 University Daily Kansan article claimed the Devil appears at Stull on Halloween and the spring equinox; later lore added that Pope John Paul II rerouted his plane to avoid it.

Who supposedly returns a quarter left on a Clinton Road bridge in New Jersey at midnight?

A drowned boy's ghost is said to throw back coins tossed from the bridge at Dead Man's Curve; in 1983 a cyclist on the same road found a real body, dumped by hitman Richard Kuklinski.

The 1944 'Mad Gasser' panic, now usually called mass hysteria, hit which Illinois town?

Mattoon, Illinois, was hit from 31 August 1944; victims reported a sweet smell followed by nausea and leg paralysis, and Donald Johnson's 1945 field study made it a textbook case of mass hysteria.

In 2001, which city reported night attacks by a helmeted 'Monkey-man' with metal claws?

New Delhi: in May 2001 residents sleeping on rooftops reported night attacks by a clawed 'Monkey-man'; descriptions varied wildly, and people died in panicked falls from buildings.

Eastern Europe's 'Black Volga' legend said victims' blood was harvested to treat what?

Leukemia: the Black Volga was said to snatch people so their blood could treat rich Westerners or Arabs with the disease; the tale spread through Poland, Hungary and beyond in the 1960s and 1970s.

What phrase does the creepypasta villain Jeff the Killer whisper before striking?

'Go to sleep' is Jeff's whisper; the character dates to a 2008 YouTube story by a user called Sesseur, in which Jeff spills acid on his face while cleaning his bathtub.

The 2010 'Ben Drowned' creepypasta centres on a haunted cartridge of which Zelda game?

Majora's Mask: Alex Hall, posting as Jadusable in September 2010, described a cursed Majora's Mask cartridge bought at a yard sale, complete with glitched videos, and spun it into an alternate reality game.

'Lavender Town Syndrome' falsely blamed which game series' eerie music for child deaths?

Pokémon: the creepypasta, circulating from about 2010, claimed the Lavender Town theme in the 1996 Red and Green games harmed Japanese children through high-pitched tones; no such deaths were ever recorded.

The Philadelphia Experiment legend claims the US Navy made which ship vanish in 1943?

USS Eldridge, a destroyer escort, supposedly turned invisible and teleported to Norfolk, Virginia in October 1943; the whole tale traces to letters merchant seaman Carl Allen sent UFO author Morris Jessup from 1955.

What recurring nuisance helped persuade officials to renumber US Route 666, the 'Devil's Highway', in 2003?

Stolen road signs: souvenir hunters kept taking the 666 markers, and officials also pointed to the road's deadly record when it became US 491.

The lake monster Ogopogo is said to live in Okanagan Lake in which Canadian province?

British Columbia: the name Ogopogo is said to come from a comic English music-hall song, though the valley's Indigenous peoples had told of a spirit in Okanagan Lake long before.

Which city's Burger King hosted the famous late-1980s Elvis sighting that made national news?

Kalamazoo, Michigan: Louise Welling's claim that she saw Elvis at a Burger King there was picked up nationwide, and the town's name helped turn the sighting into a running joke.

Claims that Avril Lavigne was replaced by a double named Melissa began on a 2011 Portuguese-language blog from which country?

Brazil: the blog claimed she died in 2003 and was replaced by a double, yet its own opening line said it was created to show how conspiracy theories can look true.

Which governor vetoed a 1983 state measure requiring warning stickers on records with backmasking?

Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, vetoed the measure, which had cited albums by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, ELO, Queen and Styx; ELO answered the panic with an album called Secret Messages.

Folklorists reject the popular claim that 'Ring a Ring o' Roses' describes which event?

The Great Plague: the idea that the roses are buboes, posies protective herbs and 'all fall down' death only appeared in the mid-20th century, and older European versions have no sneezing or falling at all.

Which astronaut, China's first in space, said he could not see the Great Wall from orbit?

Yang Liwei said after his 2003 Shenzhou 5 flight that he had not seen the Great Wall, and China then moved to revise the school textbooks that claimed it was visible.

Tales of the Mongolian death worm reached the West via a 1926 book by which fossil hunter?

Roy Chapman Andrews only repeated second-hand tales from Mongolian officials, none of whom had seen the worm, which locals call olgoi-khorkhoi, 'large intestine worm'.

The 'Taos Hum', a drone only some residents can hear, is named for a town in which state?

New Mexico: when researchers studied Taos in the early 1990s, about two percent of residents said they could hear the hum, each at a slightly different pitch.

The skunk ape, a foul-smelling cousin of Bigfoot, is most associated with which state?

Florida: the skunk ape is named for its stench, and local newspapers told of a 'man-sized monkey' raiding food stores near what is now Apalachicola as early as 1818.

The 'Gags' clown photos that opened 2016's creepy-clown wave turned out to be what?

A film promotion: the photos were a marketing stunt for a horror film, but clown sightings were soon being reported across the United States and beyond.

A 2004 University of Texas at Dallas study blamed the Marfa lights on what?

Distorted car headlights: a May 2004 University of Texas at Dallas student study traced every light observed over four nights to vehicles on US 67, their beams bent and wobbling by temperature layers in the desert air.

In American tall tales, how does the hoop snake chase its prey?

Rolling like a wheel: the hoop snake grips its tail in its jaws and bowls after its victim; in one version it straightens at the last second to strike tail-first, and the only escape is to dodge behind a tree.

Why, according to legend, can the hyper-venomous daddy long-legs not bite people?

Their fangs are too short, says the legend; in fact pholcid spiders can bite people, as MythBusters showed in 2004, but the venom does almost nothing.

The cursed-image creepypasta 'Smile.jpg' shows which dog breed grinning with human teeth?

Siberian Husky: Smile Dog shows a husky with a wide human grin in a dim room; the story says the image first circulated on a bulletin board in 1992 and curses viewers with nightmares until they pass it on.

Spring-heeled Jack, the leaping Victorian bogeyman, was first reported around which city?

London: the scare became public in January 1838, when the Lord Mayor revealed a complaint he had received about the attacks; the last claimed sighting came in Liverpool in 1904.

In 1981's 'phantom clown' panic, clowns were said to lure children into what?

Vans: schoolchildren in Brookline, near Boston, said clowns had tried to coax them into one; no adult ever saw the clowns, yet the scare spread to other American cities that year.