Top 20 Urban Legends That Turned Out to Be True

#20: Animals in the Toilet

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How could an animal possibly get into someone’s toilet, especially with modern plumbing? The networks of curving pipes, flowing water, and germ-killing chemicals are enough to deter most creatures… but not all. Snakes are particularly good at navigating pipes, and they like cool places; they’ve been spotted in toilets around the world, and while they are not usually venomous, you still don’t want to sit on one. The other most common culprits are rats. These hardy rodents can climb, swim, and wriggle through tiny spaces with amazing agility; however, someone who has just been bitten on the butt while trying to use the bathroom may not be so impressed.

#19: Murderers Through the Medicine Cabinet

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The 1992 movie “Candyman” introduced audience members to a scene that has become almost cliché: a villain bursts through a bathroom mirror to attack an unsuspecting victim. What many viewers don’t know is that this scene is based on a terrifying true story. In 1987, a woman named Ruthie Mae McCoy called 911 from her Chicago housing project, saying frantically that men were coming in through her bathroom wall. Unfortunately, police made only minimal efforts to enter her locked apartment, giving up that evening, and the next - even after reports of gunshots. A neighbor insisted that the building managers check on Ruthie, and they discovered her body. The murderers, who were never apprehended, had broken in through the bathroom medicine cabinet.

Kids growing up in Pennsylvania in the mid-20th century all heard stories of Charlie No-Face, the Green Man, who haunted a railroad tunnel at night. Teens dared each other to go out looking for him. People in Koppel, Beaver County, knew the truth: Charlie No-Face did exist, and his name was Raymond Robinson. Growing up, Robinson was severely electrocuted and lost his eyes, nose, and right arm. As an adult, Raymond would go for long walks at night on State Route 351. He was sometimes beaten, or picked up and dropped off in unfamiliar locations. Others were kind however, bringing him cigarettes and beer. He died in 1985 at the age of 74.

#17: A Fake Word in the Dictionary

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Can we trust the dictionary? What if a sneaky editor decided to play a prank on the world? Well, that hasn’t happened, as far as we know, but the 1934 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary did include a fake word! The word was “dord,” spelled “d.o.r.d.” and defined as “Density”. This mistake occurred when someone misread a note from the chemistry editor that featured an upper case D followed by the word ‘or’ and a lower case d. They thought the spaces had been left for pronunciation symbols. An editor did flag the mistake in 1939, but it wasn’t corrected until 1947.

Leave window testing to the engineers. In the summer of 1993, lawyer Garry Hoy threw himself through the 24th story window of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in front of several students. Apparently, he was impressed with the architecture of the building, and had performed this stunt several times in the past to show how strong the windows were. The window didn’t break, but it did come right out of its frame, and Hoy hurtled to his death. The tragic accident contributed to the demise of the well-known law firm Holden Day Wilson.

#15: The Bunny Man

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Though his name suggests cuddliness, the urban legend about this Virginian man is pretty gruesome. In the story, a patient escapes a mental hospital and hangs rabbits, then children, from a bridge in Fairfax County in 1904. This probably never happened. But in 1970, two odd incidents did occur in Fairfax. A couple parked in a driveway were confronted by a man dressed in white who may “have had something on his head”. He threw a hatchet at the car window before disappearing. Then, a security guard claimed to have seen a “rabbit” man chopping up a porch with an ax. The Bunny Man disappeared after that, but locals have not forgotten him, his ax, or his floppy ears.

#14: Flying with Balloons

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It may sound like something from an animated movie, but it really happened: a man named Larry Walters attached 45 helium balloons to a plastic lawn chair, and floated off into the California sky. Unlike in stories, however, such ventures don’t always go as planned. Larry found himself rising all the way up to 16,000 feet, where several astonished airline pilots spotted him and notified air traffic control. Upon descent, Larry’s ‘craft’ got caught in power lines. He was arrested, but authorities found it difficult to make charges stick; you can’t revoke someone’s pilot license if they don’t have one, and airworthiness certificates are rarely issued for lawn chairs.

#13: Animals in the Sewer

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Ever since sewers were invented, people have been worried about creepy critters living there. For the ancient Romans, it was octopuses; for the English in the 1800s, rampaging pigs; and for Stephen King, a murderous clown. But along with the myths, there are some documented cases of unusual animals in sewers. Alligators may not have formed colonies, as legends claimed, but they do turn up in sewers along the eastern coast of the US. Three huge snapping turtles were found in New York sewers in 1988. And in 2015, a herd of manatees had to be rescued from a storm drain in Florida! Maybe octopuses weren’t so far-fetched after all.

The truth behind “Cropsey” may be worse than the legend. Cropsey was an alleged boogeyman who would supposedly catch and kill kids near the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, New York. The school itself was horrifying enough: students there were subjected to abuse, neglect, and unsanitary conditions until it closed in 1987. The same year, a missing girl’s body was discovered on school grounds, and Andre Rand, a former janitor at Willowbrook who still lived there, was convicted of kidnapping her. He was also a suspect in several similar cases, and was convicted on another kidnapping charge while serving time.

#11: Someone Hiding in the Back Seat

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Top 10 Urban Legends That Turned Out to Be True

A woman is driving home at night, when suddenly the car behind her starts flashing its headlights, or the gas station attendant tries to get her attention. It turns out, they were trying to alert her to the man hiding in her backseat! The details seem to be made up, but there have been cases where men have snuck into women’s cars, although the urban legend precedes them. In 2013, a man got into a woman’s van while she was at a gas station in Hammond, Indiana, and abducted her. Three years later, a woman was parking her car in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, when a man popped up in the backseat, causing her to crash. She ran away, as did the suspect.

#10: Killer Elevators

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We’re sure it sounds familiar: a person steps into an elevator, but suddenly it goes crazy and kills them. While such incidents are rare, they have happened. In 2003, a 35-year-old surgical resident in Texas was entering a hospital elevator after his colleague when the doors began to close – and didn’t stop. The doctor was trapped between them. Though his colleague frantically pushed the emergency stop button, it was too late; the elevator began going up. With his upper body inside the car and his lower body outside, the doctor didn’t stand a chance. Obviously, multiple safety measures usually prevent this sort of thing. The incident was blamed on faulty wiring.

#9: The Toxic Lady

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Her real name was Gloria Ramirez. She had late-stage cervical cancer, and was deteriorating rapidly when she came to the ER; she died less than an hour later. But Ramirez had a bizarre effect on the hospital staff. Multiple people who treated her suffered odd symptoms – fainting, shortness of breath, even temporary paralysis. A team wearing hazmat suits performed her autopsy, but couldn’t explain why those around her had fallen ill. Most experts dismissed it as mass hysteria–until the coroner’s office found that Ramirez had been trying to treat herself with dimethyl sulfone cream. When exposed to oxygen, this creates a vapor that affects people like poison gas.

#8: A Secret Murder

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Although Betsy Aardsma died in 1969, the circumstances of her death were so strange that the case still haunts Penn State University. Aardsma, a graduate student, was browsing in an aisle of the library when people nearby heard books falling. They found her lying senseless on the floor, and she was brought to the campus hospital, where a doctor was shocked to discover something no one else suspected: Aardsma had been murdered. The killer had only stabbed her once, and in such a way that she hardly bled at all. Because it took so long to realize a crime had been committed, most evidence at the scene was lost; the phantom killer was never found.

#7: Dead People Mistaken for Halloween Decorations

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You’ve probably noticed that Halloween decorations have been getting more and more gruesome – and realistic. This has led to a strange problem: people mistaking real dead bodies for fake ones. This happened in 2005 in Frederica, Delaware, and in 2009, Marina del Rey, California, after the bodies of people who had taken their own lives were thought to be Halloween pranks. There was another case in 2014, in Spring Hill, Florida, after a man hanged himself in his garage. A pair of handymen found the body, assumed it was a mannequin, and brought it to a dump, only for landfill workers to note that it was in fact a corpse. Maybe we should tone down the decorations just a little bit.

#6: Buried Alive

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Being buried alive is many people’s biggest fear. And it has certainly happened before, when people have been falsely declared dead. Horrifying, it’s also happened on purpose. In 1987, an Illinois businessman was kidnapped and held for ransom. For some weird reason, the kidnappers buried him in a box with water and a breathing tube. Unfortunately, the tube failed, and by the time the police arrived, he was dead. There was another case in 2020, when a man in Jingbian county, Shaanxi province, China, allegedly buried his 79 year old mother in a shallow grave. Miraculously, she was reportedly rescued by police, who dug her out.

#5: Bodies in Rugs

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You may have seen this in movies before: a murderer rolls their victim up in a rug, and carries it off without arousing suspicion. It’s happened enough in real life to make you wonder if fiction inspired reality… or the other way around. For one thing, a discarded carpet doesn’t usually attract much attention; in Douglasville, Georgia, a body rolled up in a carpet inside an abandoned house wasn’t discovered for months in 2022. Of course, if someone’s feet happen to be sticking out of the rug, it’s a little more noticeable. A pedestrian spotted one like that in Manhattan in 2019. In both cases, police were unable to determine what had happened. So beware… a rug may be more sinister than it seems.

#4: Secret Sharers

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Ever misplace something at home? You were sure it was right there, but somehow it’s in another room. Well, probably, you’re just misremembering. Otherwise, it’s a ghost, or worse … a secret sharer living in your house. It may sound impossible, but people have pulled it off. In 2017, a woman in Arlington, Virginia thought she heard footsteps overhead after moving into a new apartment. Six months later, she found the attic door open and discovered someone had been living there; she never knew who it was. In 2008, a Japanese man noticed food and other items going missing, so he installed security cameras in his house. It turned out that a woman was living above his closet–and had gone undetected for a year!

#3: Dead People in Drinking Water

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Sorry–we know it’s gross, but it does occasionally happen. One famous case in 2013 was at the Cecil Hotel in California. Guests complained that the water coming from their taps had a strange color and smell; as it turned out, a young woman’s body was in the hotel water tank. She had gone missing a few weeks earlier. More recently, as the western US faces a terrible drought, people have been disturbed to find that Lake Mead–one of the largest drinking water reservoirs in the country–contains a number of dead bodies, which are now being exposed as the water recedes. If it makes you feel better, drinking water that’s been around a corpse isn’t usually harmful… just really, really disturbing.

#2: Bugs Living in People

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When an insect flies into your eye, or some other part of your face, it’s bad for everyone - including the insect, which will likely be swatted. It’s the bugs who enjoy being inside people that are truly horrifying. Take itch mites. They’re so tiny, you don’t even know they’ve burrowed into your flesh until you develop an itchy rash. You may also be interested to know that some flies pass on parasitic loa loa worms when they bite; these worms swim around beneath your skin or your eyes, sometimes visibly. They can also inflame your brain and kill you, but unfortunately, getting rid of them is very difficult. If that freaks you out, trust us–you’re not alone.

Although lurid stories about travelers being drugged and waking up missing a kidney have been fabricated, organ trafficking does exist. Desperate need has led to a black market system, where people pay huge sums to receive organ transplants without government oversight. But who are the donors? People as desperate as the ones needing transplants: refugees, unemployed migrants, families living in abject poverty. They are offered money for their blood or organs, but if they accept, the money often turns out to be less than promised. Weakness from medical procedures puts them entirely in the power of the traffickers. Sometimes, truth is not only stranger, but also stranger and sadder than fiction.