Top 10 American Urban Legends
#10: Riverdale Road, Colorado
Riverdale Road is an 11 mile stretch in Thornton, Colorado that is one of the most haunted streets in America. There are a host of legends that surround Riverdale Road. In one, the set of rusted wrought iron gates on the road were allegedly built by a madman who burned down his own home. A ghostly apparition of a woman in white supposedly haunts the gates, which may or may not be a gateway to hell. In another, a ghostly jogger sometimes appears to chase pedestrians while a ghostly Camaro chases drivers. Riverdale is also supposedly home to a ghost hitchhiker, bloody handprints, and even Native American Shapeshifters.
#9: The Shaman's Portal, Oklahoma
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Did you know that Oklahoma has its very own Bermuda Triangle? Beaver Dunes Park is located in the state’s western ‘panhandle’ and is home to 300 acres of sand dunes. Today, Beaver Dunes Park is a popular ATV destination. But dating as far back as Coronado, western travelers have been warned against traversing the dunes by local indigenous tribes.The dunes are colloquially known as Shaman's Portal. Some of Coronado's men supposedly vanished in a flash of eerie green light. Similar stories have trickled out through the years, involving mysterious lights and strange disappearances. Some claim it’s the site of a UFO crash, others that an interdimensional portal lies there. In any case, Beaver Dunes Park is not a place to travel alone.
#8: Hell's Gate Bridge, Alabama
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Oxford, Alabama is a small town of 22,000 souls and home to the most haunted bridge in the state. As the story goes, a young couple was driving across the bridge late one night in the 1950s. A malevolent force may have sent them careening off the bridge into the waters below, where they both died. According to one legend, if you drive onto Hell’s Gate Bridge at night and kill your lights, the couple will appear in the backseat of your car. Another says that, while driving across the bridge, if you look over your shoulder, you will see a fiery gate to hell right behind you.
#7: Escalante Petrified Forest, Utah
Visitors travel to Escalante Petrified Forest to experience incredible biking trails, canoeing, and camping under the stars. There is one caveat: don’t take any of that petrified wood home as a souvenir. In addition to being a state crime, anyone foolish enough to take a piece of the petrified forest may be cursed. There are many stories of former visitors doomed to bad luck or illness after their visit. A park ranger back in 2014 claimed that he receives a dozen packages containing a piece of petrified wood every year at the park. Usually, the wood is accompanied by a letter detailing the terrible calamities that befell those who dared to test the curse’s power.
#6: The Cropsey Killer, New York
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The only thing more terrifying than a scary urban legend is when that legend inspires a real criminal. There are many versions of the story of the Cropsey Killer, all dependent on where in New York you grew up. Some have Cropsey as a slasher who hunted children at a sleepaway camp upstate. Others tell the story of a hook-handed escapee from a mental institution who haunted the tunnels of Staten Island. His legend helped to inspire slasher films like “Halloween” and “Friday the 13th.” Unfortunately, it may have also inspired Andre Rand, a Staten Island School custodian and convicted kidnapper. Rand is suspected to be behind a spate of child kidnappings and deaths in the 1980s.
#5: The Bunnyman, Virginia
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In Clifton, Virginia, there is a small train bridge with a small pedestrian tunnel beneath it. The bridge and tunnel are unremarkable 364 days of the year. But, according to local lore, on Halloween of 1904, an escaped mental patient attacked a group of kids there, stringing them up like rabbits, earning the moniker of “The Bunnyman.” In truth, a couple parked nearby in 1970 was attacked by a man with a hatchet. They told the local news that he had something on his head. The rumor mill ate up the story and eventually churned out an urban legend of a man-hunting lunatic dressed as a bunny. But, by then, the legend had stuck and has since been a fixture of local lore.
#4: The Jersey Devil, New Jersey
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The United States is a young country, and there are local legends that predate its founding. In 1735, a woman by the name of Mother Leeds gave birth to her 13th child. Frustrated by the number of mouths she had to feed, she cursed the child and claimed that ‘it would be the devil.’ Sure enough, the baby soon grew wings, hooves, horns and a tail, leaving its human family to live in the wild as a beast. Sightings of the creature have trickled out of the Pine Barrens ever since. They reached their peak in 1909, when many claimed to have either seen or been attacked by the creature.
#3: The Wendigo, Minnesota
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Northern Native American peoples like the Ojibwe, Innu, and Naskapi all have similar folklore about a winter monster. The northern woods of Minnesota and central Canada, they say, are home to a vicious beast known as the Wendigo. Some versions of the story describe it as a feral monster, others as a demonic spirit. In all versions, the Wendigo is a savage killer that stalks the snowy winter forests of the north. The Ojibwa believe that the Wendigo is territorial, eating any human that encroaches upon its lands. A fate worse than death awaits the gluttonous or greedy, who may become possessed by the Wendigo instead, doomed to become monsters themselves.
#2: Mothman, West Virginia
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From November 1966 to December 1967, Point Pleasant West Virginia was the cryptid capital of America. Locals reported seeing a large humanoid creature, white with large wings and glowing red eyes. Skeptics believe that these were just sightings of large sandhill cranes. The stories gained national attention and one newspaper called it “The Mothman.” Some believed that the creature was an escaped military experiment housed at a base nearby. Others claimed that it was an alien working from a hidden UFO. All believers agree that the creature was somehow related to the December 1967 collapse of the nearby Silver Bridge which killed 46 people. Whether Mothman allegedly caused the collapse or appeared to warn us, nobody can say.
#1: Bigfoot, Oregon & Washington
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Cryptid hunters the world over have spent decades hunting for the missing link - an animal that stopped evolving halfway between great ape and human. In America, that creature supposedly haunts the boreal forests of the Pacific Northwest. Washington state has had the most sightings of any state. For decades, hikers, hunters, and lumberjacks have claimed to have seen tall, apelike creatures in the woods. Some say that it's reclusive and shy; some have spoken of vicious attacks that they barely escaped. Whether he’s a gentle giant or a bloodthirsty beast, millions of people believe in their bones that Bigfoot is real, and is out there somewhere.
