Urban legends—those unsubstantiated stories of terror that allow us to use our imaginations to fill in increasingly horrifying details with each retelling—have been with us forever. While the internet has made dissemination of them easier, humans have been goading one another with spooky anecdotes for centuries. Psychologists we respond to these tales because we have a morbid fascination with the disgusting; we also can’t help but enjoy gossip. Put those two things together and it makes for an irresistible mix.Urban legends often come with a dose of skepticism. (No, a killer with a hook hand has terrorized necking couples.) But sometimes, these stories turn out to be true.

An urban legend is a term used to describe a tale that has been passed down over the years. It is usually presented as a true story and evolves over time. 10 Mysterious Urban Legends Based on Video Footage. Bryan Johnson. The song Amazing Grace is played and the video goes into a sequence of frames in which the boy is mutilated.

Have a look—preferably under the covers and with a flashlight—at these 11 terrifying tales that actually happened.1. RATS IN THE TOILET BOWL. IStockYou stagger into the bathroom at 3 a.m. To relieve yourself. Groggy with sleep, you lift the lid and position yourself over the toilet. You hear splashing.

Turning on the light, you see a rat looking back at you from the bowl. You’re never the same again.Urban legends about animals in sewers have been a staple of scary stories, particularly the one about baby alligators being down toilets and then growing to adult size in waste channels. Most often told about New York. While alligators and crocodiles have been in New York, they’re generally released and found above ground, and it’s thought that New York is too cold for them to survive for very long.) But finding a rodent in your toilet, inches from very vulnerable areas of your body, is a particular kind of domestic terror—and one that happens to be possible.Drain plumbing for toilets is typically three inches in diameter or more, plenty of space for a rat to climb up. The animals are to sewage lines due to undigested food in feces and can travel through pipes before emerging through an opening and into your bathroom. And yes, rats can be somewhat testy when they complete their journey.

One aquatic rodent bit the of a female victim in Petersburg, Virginia in 1999. In Seattle, the issue is common enough that public officials have on what to do in case you encounter one (close the lid and flush).2. THE LEGEND OF POLYBIUS.

IStockVintage video gamers have long traded stories about a coin-operated arcade game circa early 1980s Portland that had strange effects on its players. The game, titled Polybius, was to have prompted feelings of disorientation, amnesia, game addiction, and even suicide. The machine’s cabinet was said to be painted entirely black, and it was rumored that stern-looking men would sometimes visit arcades to collect information from the machine before disappearing. Was it a CIA experiment spun off from MK Ultra, the psychoactive drug study conducted on unsuspecting subjects?While the entire story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, individual pieces are actually based in fact. Brian Dunning, host of the Skeptoid podcast, did some investigative work and found that a 12-year-old named Brian Mauro had become during a 28-hour marathon video game contest in Portland in 1981. (He apparently drank too much soda and experienced stomach discomfort.) Just a few days later, Portland-area arcades were raided by federal agents, who seized cabinets that were being used for gambling. Coupled with the existence of a real arcade game named Poly-Play, these memories seemed to amalgamate into the Polybius legend.3.

Jaydee, //Released in 1992, —based on a short story by Clive Barker—remains a potent horror tale of the revenge undertaken by a black artist (Tony Todd) murdered in the 1890s for having a relationship with a white woman. While it’s not likely you’ll be able to invoke him by saying his name several times in a mirror, the pants-soiling idea of having a killer burst through a medicine cabinet is actually based in fact.In 1987 the Chicago Reader published a about Ruth McCoy, a woman living in a Chicago housing project, who made a frantic call to 911 insisting she was being attacked in her apartment. Responders eventually found her dead of gunshot wounds. Investigators determined that her assailants had gained access to her unit by breaking through the connecting wall in the adjoining apartment and climbing in through her medicine cabinet.

The complex was built that way intentionally, so that plumbers investigating leaks could simply remove the cabinet to check the pipes. It became a frequent mode of entry for burglars—and in McCoy’s case, her killers.4. IStockFor years, kids living in and around Staten Island raised goosebumps by the tale of “Cropsey,” a boogeyman who lived in the woods and made a nocturnal habit of disemboweling children. Parents no doubt eased their kids’ fears by telling them no such monster existed.But he did. In 1987, Andre Rand was put on and convicted for a child abduction. Rand, it turned out, may have been connected to a rash of child disappearances in the 1970s. He had once worked at Willowbrook, a defunct mental institution.

While he denies involvement in other cases, it’s clear Rand’s activities had a heavy influence in the word-of-mouth stories that followed.5. THE LEAPING LAWYER. IStockSooner or later, Toronto residents hear the tale of a lawyer who had a peculiar fondness for running full-bore into his office windows to demonstrate how strong they were. This practice caught up with him eventually, as he crashed into a window and went sailing to his death. This hobby was by Garry Hoy, a senior partner in an area law firm with an office on the 24 th floor. On July 9, 1993, Hoy made his signature tackle against the window to impress some visiting law students. The pane finally broke and sent him plummeting to his death.

In a eulogy, managing partner Peter Lauwers Hoy “one of the best and brightest” at the firm.6. THE BODY UNDER THE BED. IStockVacationing couples.

Disneyland guests. All have been the subject of an urban legend involving hotel occupants who fall blissfully to sleep, only to wake up to an awful stench coming from either under the bed or inside the mattress. Closer inspection reveals that a dead body has been stashed away. Presumably, not anyone who has died of natural causes.This traveling tale has been multiple times over. At least a dozen newspaper stories have detailed hotel rooms that have doubled as body disposal sites. While the smell is usually apparent right away, at least one couple slept on a mattress containing a body in Atlantic City in 1999.

Cases in Colorado, Florida, and Virginia have also been reported.In 2010, guests at a Budget Lodge in Memphis were to discover they had been sleeping above the body of Sony Millbrook, a missing person. Fabric softener had been stuffed in the ceiling tiles to try and mask the smell. At least three other occupants had also rented the room since Millbrook’s disappearance. A court eventually Millbrook’s boyfriend, LaKeith Moody, of the crime.7. THE MAINE HERMIT. IStockFor decades, people who vacationed in central Maine’s North Pond area were puzzled by items that would go missing.

Batteries and food from cabins, flashlights from camping tents. Rumors spread that a permanent fixture of the area would forage for sustenance and supplies.They were right. For 27 years, Christopher Knight in the woods, keeping tabs on the hikers, canoeists, and other temporary residents of the grounds. When he was confronted by a game warden in 2013, Knight admitted he was responsible for an average of around 40 robberies a year. Despite the likely protestations of family and friends who dismissed tales of a hermit lurking somewhere in the woods, his identification proved that someone had been watching—and waiting—for nearly three decades.8.

THE FAKE COP TRICK. IStockYou may have had an overly concerned parent or friend warn you of people impersonating police officers, using that veneer of authority to attack victims who have let their guard down. While there aren’t many who are in full patrol uniform or traveling in marked vehicles, there have been many documented cases of assailants posing as law enforcement—at least two this past summer alone. In Bloomington, Illinois, a man used to get a vehicle to pull over. After walking up to the vehicle, the man tried—unsuccessfully—to overpower the driver before they managed to get away. In Fayetteville, Georgia, a man donned a uniform and a teenage boy on a bike, forcing him to empty his pockets. Talking to (real) police later, the boy told them a second car had pulled up with a man matching the description of someone who had been caught impersonating an officer two weeks prior.9.

THE LEGEND OF THE BUNNY MAN. IStockIf you lived in or around Virginia in the 1970s, you were probably exposed to the story of the Bunny Man. In the tale, an escaped mental patient takes to gutting bunnies and hanging them from a bridge underpass. Later, the maniac is said to have graduated to gutting and hanging teens in a similar manner. Locals were cautioned to never be caught near the underpass, which is now known to most people as “Bunny Man Bridge,” on Halloween night.This story likely spawned from the presence of a roving madman in the area.

Hello guys let get in to the topic, the dentist clue is easy but sometimes you just cant figure it out here the answers 1.The Angel Postcard Holy something pizza. 1 of Your detective will die dont use 900 performance like mine (still so sad) 2.The Girl pouring coin to cows Something Bank 3.The sad man Dead white girl Something Funeral 4.The Tea Table (Toy horse bottom right. This is the police the dentist meme. The Dentist was a serial killer that persisted throughout the United States, and repeatedly eluded the Federal Bureau of Investigations. A copycat of the Dentist, Jordan Dawson, is the tertiary antagonist of This Is The Police. Another copycat, Jan Ginzburg, is mentioned in Rebel Cops. The Dentist serial killer case is a big wall for many This Is the Police players. Not because they can't progress the game without solving it but because of the compulsion to finish it capture the culprit.

In October 1970, a couple reported seeing a man dressed in a white suit and wearing bunny ears who began yelling at them that they were on private property. To punctuate his point, he threw a hatchet at their windscreen, apparently shattering it. There was a second sighting of Bunny Man two weeks later, when a security guard spotted a hatchet-wielding man chipping away at a porch railing. Police tried, unsuccessfully, to locate the man. While he didn’t disembowel anyone, the thought of an adult wielding both a hatchet and a pair of rabbit ears somehow manages to be just as disturbing.10. CHARLIE NO-FACE. IStockImagine finding yourself outside and alone in the dark on a residential street.

You hear footsteps approaching. Suddenly, a man with a misshapen face appears.

You run, terrified beyond words. You spread the story of the man with no face throughout Pennsylvania.“Charlie No-Face” (also called the Green Man) was actually a man named Ray Robinson, and he was no figment of anyone’s imagination. Born in 1910, Robinson was as the result of an electrical accident at the age of 8.

He touched active wires, which effectively maimed him. Knowing his appearance could be disconcerting, Robinson took to taking strolls after dark. He often walked a path along Route 351 in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. While his intentions were honorable, encountering Robinson in the dead of night inevitably led to spreading stories about a boogeyman haunting the town.

Robinson died in 1985.11. THE ALL-TOO-REAL CORPSE DECORATION. IStockNotorious outlaw Elmer McCurdy took on a second life following his death. In 1911, the embalmed corpse of McCurdy became a grim sideshow attraction throughout Texas, with people eager to see the famed criminal on display in funeral parlors and carnivals. Though it’s hard to document all of his travels, he eventually in Long Beach, California, where someone apparently mistook him for a prop. McCurdy was hung in a funhouse at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park, his humanity discovered only after a crew member on The Six Million-Dollar Man—which was filming there in 1976—tried to adjust him, dislodging his very real arm. The following year, his corpse was put to proper rest.

Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesEven if you know nothing about the Brothers Grimm, you’ve no doubt read versions of the fairy tales and folk stories they compiled. Born in modern-day Germany in 1785 and 1786, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were young boys when their father died. Their family struggled financially, but both brothers were able to study law at the University of Marburg.

Jacob went to work as his professor’s library assistant, and he later became the for the new King of Westphalia, Jerome-Napoleon Bonaparte ( that Napoleon's younger brother).Wilhelm worked as his brother’s library assistant, and because Napoleon had recently conquered much of Germany, the two brothers wanted to help their fellow Germans preserve their culture’s stories. After gathering folk tales from books and committing oral stories to paper, the Brothers Grimm published collections of these stories, including Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and Rumpelstiltskin. Besides working together, Jacob also lived with Wilhelm and his wife, and Wilhelm named his first son Jacob. Before they died, the Brothers Grimm gave lectures and began work on a comprehensive German dictionary. Louisa May and Abigail May Alcott. Culture Club/Getty ImagesLouisa May Alcott is for her bestselling novel Little Women, which she based on her experience growing up with three sisters. But Louisa’s youngest sister—the inspiration for Amy March in —was an accomplished artist in her own right.

Abigail (who went by May) had shown vast artistic promise as a child and young adult, even covering the walls and window frames in the family home with sketches of people and animals, and Louisa used a portion of her new-found fortune to further May's training.After art in Boston, London, Rome, and Paris, May lived in France and earned spots for her still life and oil paintings in the Paris Salon’s exhibitions. The two sisters were so close that May named her baby daughter Louisa (nicknamed 'Lulu'), and just before May died in 1879 (a month after childbirth), she told her husband to send baby Lulu to Louisa in Massachusetts. Louisa raised her niece until her own death eight years later, at which point Lulu went back to Europe to live with her father. Wolfgang and Maria Mozart. Art Media/Print Collector/Getty ImagesWe remember musical wunderkind Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for his symphonies and concertos, but his older sister paved the way for him to become one of history’s most famous classical composers. Born in 1751, five years before her brother, Maria Anna Mozart (nicknamed Nannerl) played piano to audiences across Europe before she hit her teens.

Her technical skills earned her a as a prodigy and one of the best pianists in Europe.Nannerl and her younger brother also toured together, wowing audiences with their harpsichord performances. Nannerl wrote down (or possibly collaborated on) her brother’s first symphony, but her father made her stop performing once she turned 18. Still, Nannerl continued to compose music, and Mozart praised his sister’s work. Although some scholars dismiss Nannerl’s talent, others stress that her early interest (and success) in music deeply influenced and inspired her younger brother’s career. Venus and Serena Williams. Scott Barbour/Getty ImagesThere aren't many athletes more decorated than the Williams sisters. Serena currently holds tennis's for the most Grand Slam singles titles (for a man or woman) with 23, while Venus has won seven on her own, and, in 2000, became the first African American woman to win a single's title since 1957.

The sisters both have gold medals to their name, they won together in doubles play.The two were born just 15 months apart, with Venus being the oldest. Despite Serena's otherworldly success, she knows to respects her sister's seniority in doubles play.' She’s definitely the boss out there,' Serena joked during an. To which Venus added: 'Well I’m the older sister, so it kind of falls on me.' Emily and Austin Dickinson. Culture Club/Getty ImagesEmily Dickinson’s poetry, as well as her mysteriously, continues to enchant readers more than a century after her.

But most people aren’t as familiar with her brother, Austin. Syndicate definition. Born a year and a half before Emily, Austin from Amherst College and Harvard Law School before working as an attorney. A prominent member of the Amherst community, Austin served as the treasurer of Amherst College, founded the town’s private cemetery, and held leadership roles in civic organizations.Austin and his wife lived next door to Emily and had a close relationship with the poet—who never had anything published under her own name in her lifetime.

After Emily’s death, her sister Lavinia found the poems and was determined to get them published, ultimately enlisting Austin’s longtime mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, who got her poetry shared with the world. The Jackson Siblings. William Milsom/Getty ImagesFrom their home base in Gary, Indiana, Joe and Katherine Jackson raised nine children.

In 1969, the five eldest brothers (Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael) hit it big as the Jackson 5, delighting audiences with catchy hits such as 'I Want You Back' and 'ABC.' Since then, the members of the Jackson family have continued to make music, both together and separately.Although and youngest sister Janet achieved the most success with their music careers, each one of the couple’s seven other children—including sisters Rebbie and La Toya, and youngest brother Randy—achieved musical success in their own right.

In fact, all nine Jackson siblings have released solo songs that on Billboard charts. William and Caroline Herschel. The Print Collector via Getty ImagesAstronomer Sir William Herschel gets the credit for discovering, in March 1781, that Uranus was in fact a planet and not a star, as other astronomers had thought. Herschel also as King George III’s official Court Astronomer, became president of the Royal Astronomical Society, and identified thousands of star clusters. But Herschel’s younger sister Caroline, born a dozen years after her brother, was also a seriously accomplished astronomer. As a young woman, she moved from her family’s home in Hanover to join her brother in England.The two siblings shared a love of music and science, and Caroline worked as her brother’s, providing technical support for the telescopes he built.

She also was the first woman to be credited as the discoverer a comet (it’s called Comet C/1786 P1) and, after King George III began paying her, the first female scientist to ever be paid for her work. Caroline was awarded a Gold Medal from London’s Royal Astronomical Society and a Gold Medal for Science from Prussia’s King Frederick William IV. The Wright Siblings. Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty ImagesWe know that Wilbur and Orville Wright were the inventors of the first successful airplane.

But Katharine, the Wright brothers’ youngest sibling, played a in facilitating her brothers’ aviation success. After graduating from Oberlin, Katharine worked as a Latin teacher in Dayton, Ohio.

Although she wasn’t an engineer, she frequently corresponded with her brothers when they were in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, testing airplane prototypes. The brothers bounced ideas off of her, and she gave them emotional support and encouragement when they worried that flight simply wasn’t possible. Katharine also helped run her brothers’ bicycle company, which provided the funds that the brothers used to finance their airplane experiments.Additionally, Katharine played an integral role in publicizing the Wright Brothers’ success, encouraging them to give speeches and do public flight demonstrations. Katharine even learned French, so she could hobnob with European royalty and aristocracy, spreading the word of her brothers’ aeronautical achievement. Harriet and Catharine Beecher.

Over a century ago, a deadly flu pandemic swept across the globe. The first cases of the so-called Spanish Flu—named because that’s where early news reports of the disease originated, though research has put its actual origin anywhere from to to —are traditionally dated to Kansas in March 1918. The disease ultimately some 500 million people, and estimates put the death toll anywhere from 20 to 50 million.

The people on this list contracted the deadly flu and lived to tell the tale. General Photographic Agency // Getty ImagesThe silent was at the height of her fame when she; thankfully, ’s bout with the flu was uneventful, but as the disease spread, many movie theaters were forced to close. Irritated theater owners in Los Angeles, claiming they had been singled out, petitioned for all other places that people gathered together (except for grocery stores, meat markets, and drug stores) to be forced to close as well. While were not forced to close, schools were and public gatherings were banned.

David Lloyd George. Hulton Archive // Getty ImagesWhile the German Kaiser was undoubtedly upset to get sick himself, he had reason to be happy about the flu epidemic,. One of his military generals insisted—despite the fact that the surgeon general disagreed—that the illness would decimate the French troops, while leaving the Germans mostly unharmed. Since Germany needed a miracle to win the war, the flu must have seemed like a godsend. In the end, it ravaged all armies pretty much equally, and Germany surrendered. Department of Energy, // Public DomainYou may not have heard of him, but the atomic scientist Leo Szilard might have saved the world. While he survived the during WWI (he was supposedly cured by spending time in a humid room, the standard treatment for respiratory illness at the time), what he should be remembered for is his foresight before WWII.

When he and other physicists were discovering different aspects of nuclear fission, he persuaded his colleagues to keep quiet about it, so that the Nazis wouldn’t get any closer to making an atomic bomb. Katherine Anne Porter. Arthur Tanner/Topical Press Agency/Getty ImagesWhile Winston was in France in 1919, the Churchill household—including his wife Clementine and their nanny Isabelle, who was looking after their young daughter Marigold—contracted the flu. According to Churchill’s daughter, Isabelle grew delirious and took Marigold from her cot despite being sick herself. Clementine grabbed the child and was anxious for days about Marigold’s condition. Isabelle died of the flu, but Clementine and Marigold survived.

(Sadly, Marigold would die from a that developed into in 1921.)During World War II, Clementine served as a close adviser to Winston. She was also the “” of the Red Cross Aid to Russia Fund, which raised during WWII and resulted in her being awarded the Soviet, being made a Dame, and being given a from Stalin. Churchill’s Chief Staff Officer, General Hastings “Pug” Ismay, would later that without Clementine the “history of Winston Churchill and of the world would have been a very different story.”.

Nobody knows for sure who, or what The Shadow Man is, but it may be the ghost of a man who was convicted of stalking and kidnapping children.He was caught at a home he had broken into a few days before, and was being dragged off to the gallows after his trial when he overpowered the guards and ran into the woods. A huge search was organized, and the entire forest was thoroughly searched, but he was never found. A few years later, children started going missing again, and some people thought that it must be him.Their suspicions were put to rest however, after one of the missing children came back. The five year old boy was questioned, and, during a police interview, he revealed that he was captured by a “shadow man with big red eyes and a funny hat.”Since then, there have been many more reports of this “shadow man.” The shadow is described as being a shadow of a tall man with a bowlers hat and glowing red eyes. He can assume almost any form he chooses and slip through any door. He will plague children with nightmares about a strange man in a bowlers hat grabbing them and taking them away to an old hut. After a few days, he will creep into the child’s room and stare down at them with his glowing red eyes until they wake up.The child will then be petrified with fear, and that is when The Shadow Man will whisk them off, and the child will never be seen again.

The scariest part is that he could be anywhere at anytime, and you can never be sure if he is there, watching you.Billiam J. From Stafford, VA.