It's Halloween month, and to honor this glorious time of year, I'm going to share some of the best urban legends. Overactive imaginations and the easily spooked beware. So, let's get spooky.
1. Bloody Mary
This is one of the most well known legends. The story I was told when I was growing up was that if you went into a bathroom, with no lights on and the door shut, you could call for her. You would say "Bloody Mary" three times and she would appear in the mirror, then she would have you hold her 13-pound baby, and if you dropped it she would scream in such a high pitch your ears would bleed. Being the child that I was, I took a dare from one of my friends and proceeded to call for her. Complete to my 10-year-old self's expectations, nothing happened and I walked out of my friend's bathroom a little disappointed and a little relieved.
The real story of Bloody Mary is actually nothing like what I was told in elementary school. The ritual comes from young women trying to get a look at who their future husband will be. Sometimes women would see a skull and that would mean that they were going to die soon. The whole ghost part of the story really comes from her appearing in a mirror and she can be either a nice ghost, or a malevolent one.
2. The Babysitter
The first time I had heard this one, it made my skin crawl, especially because the first time I had heard it was a few days after I had babysat two young kids. So the story goes that there is a babysitter in a large home. She is downstairs just hanging out waiting for the parents of the sleeping children to return. She gets a phone call from a man who laughs and tells her to check on the children. The girl ignores it and continues to watch TV. She receives another call and the man again tells her to check on the children. This time the girl is frightened by the call, so she calls the police. They tell her to get out of the house because both calls had been placed to the home, from the home. The police show up and find that the man had been upstairs the whole time and had killed the children. This story has a few other variations, one of which includes clown dolls, and has inspired the movies "When A Stranger Calls," and "Poltergeist."
3. White Death
Once there was a little girl who was very depressed, so she decided to commit suicide, in secret of course. Once her family had found out what she had done, her spirit got angry. Within no time, her whole family had been torn limb from limb. Many people say that once you find out about the white death she will come for you; she will knock at your door very quietly at first, until she pounds the door down and comes for you. No one can know her secret.
4. The Girl in the Sewer
There was a girl named Carmen who no one liked. During a fire drill at school, her and another girl were standing next to an open manhole. The girl pushed Carmen down the hole and began to tell everyone she had fallen. Carmen was the laughing stock of the school until her dead body was hauled out of the sewer; she was mangled and covered in sewage. Not but a few weeks later, the girl that was with Carmen when she "fell" was found dead in a sewer, she had a broken neck and her face had been torn off. People say that if you don't admit Carmen was pushed, she will come for you.
I can remember getting this story as a chain email in middle school. These are the popular ones that attract the superstitious, which I sort of am, so she was pushed.
5. The Sleep Experiment
Some doctors in Russia decided to conduct an experiment where they placed prisoners in a chamber and released a gas that would keep them awake. After nine days of not sleeping the prisoners started screaming and covered all windows and cameras. Then they went silent for two more days. When the doctors entered the room they saw many of the prisoners had tore themselves apart with their bare hands. When they asked one of the living ones what had happened they demanded to have more of the gas. They said they never wanted to sleep again because that had become who everyone actually is while they are sleeping.
6. The Clown Statue
This is one that I have heard many different variations of, so here is the very first one I had heard.
A girl is babysitting a few children. They were watching a movie in the living room, so the babysitter decided to watch TV in their parents' room. After a while she noticed a weird clown statue in the corner and decided to call their parents to ask if she could cover it up. When she told the parents about it they were immediately confused and concerned. They didn't own a clown statue.
7. Camp Hatchet
This story is specific to Michigan. It has gained popularity in past years as there was an entire fear camp made from this story.
You will not find the location of Camp Hatchet on a map because that is its new name. It was called Camp Hummingbird until the incident. Over 20 years ago there were 13 camp counselors getting ready for the coming season. When the children showed up on the camp's opening day, there was only one counselor left. The women stood in the middle of the camping grounds completely drenched in blood. The rest of the camp was normal, except for a single hatchet in a tree. When asked what happened she talked about cannibalism and then fell into a catatonic state. People searched for the other 12 counselors but they had disappeared without a trace.
The story comes from the urban legend of the Hatchet family. They are in inbred and disfigured family that has survived in the woods behind the camp for decades. The children of the family feed only one human blood.
Some people might find urban legends and chain email stories to be super ridiculous and not in the least bit scary. I will say I find them to be outrageous in general, but at the same time my overactive imagination terrifies me, and yes I know these weren't even super scary. A huge factor that makes urban legends terrifying is the fact that they are usually told by friend and family - people that you trust - so it gives the stories more authenticity. All seven of these legends have been told to me by some of my friends, so I definitely believe that that had in impact on my reaction to them. I have a love-hate relationship with this time of year; I love to hear about all of these legends and ghost stories, but once the sun goes down they come to haunt me in a world of my own construct. Thanks brain!
