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Freaky Urban Legends That Turned Out To Be Real

Published

3 years ago

July 10, 2021

Urban legends are created when horror stories and real events enter echo chambers together; they come out on the other side as freakish archetypes, creepy symbols from our collective subconscious terror. On rare occasions, an urban legend will turn out to be true–and that’s when things get truly disturbing.

We’ve collected here 8 powerfully frightening instances when urban legends turned out to be based in reality:

The Green Man, or Charlie No-Face

If you go to a highway diner in western Pennsylvania and ask if they’ve seen the Green Man, you might hear some silverware clanking to the floor. The “Green Man,” or “Charlie No Face” is a long-standing urban legend of a green-glowing supernatural entity or demon that wanders the backcountry roads at night.

Raymond Robinson

The legend is based on a real person: Raymond Robinson, who was nearly fatally injured in an electrical accident when he was young and lost his eyes, nose, one ear, and one arm.

His skin was so badly damaged, it gave off a strange hue, which is where the “green” in Green Man originated. Ostracized from society, Raymond walked the country roads of western Pennsylvania by night because this was the only time he could go outside without causing mass hysteria.

The Collector

The Collector urban legend is really a catch-all legend for creepy hermetic neighbors that may be doing something horrifying inside their dungeon-like basements. The most common “Collector” legend is the neighbor who collects human body parts and proudly displays them in mason jars.

In Russia, the Collector urban legend has a bright future because it played out in real life. Its new mascot is local Russian historian Anatoly Moskvin, who stole corpses from cemeteries in dozens of towns east of Moscow.

According to police, he dug up at least 29 corpses and made dolls out of them–life-sized faceless female dolls with platinum blond wigs.

Your neighbor may be up to no good, but it’s likely not as creepy as Russia’s notorious historian-turned-body-part-collector.

The Legend of “Dog Boy”

The legend of “Dog Boy” originates out of Arkansas. While it does not involve the mythological chupacabra as featured above, it does feature a sinister little boy who spent his childhood years ruthlessly torturing and experimenting on local dogs and cats. Legend has it the boy had paranormal powers, too.

Incredibly, the Dog Boy legend is (mostly) real and is based on the life of Gerald Floyd Bettis, who actually added on to the family home so that he could store more stray dogs and cats to torture. Bettis was also a tyrant when it came to his parents.

“He kept [them] virtually imprisoned in the upstairs part of that house,” a neighbor said. “He would feed them, but only when he decided it was time for them to eat.”

While there’s no proof Bettis had any kind of paranormal forces at work with him, he was 6’4″ and weighed close to 300 pounds, which must have made his sadistic behavior all the more terrifying to his victims.

Cropsey: A Real Life Boogeyman

The Cropsey urban legend developed throughout the 70s and 80s after several children went missing from Staten Island.

The story, told powerfully in the recent documentary entitled Cropsey, initially revolved around a classic but creepy boogeyman-type figure who stole children.

Cropsey director Joshua Zeman remembers when he was young and growing up in Staten Island. “Our counselors would lead us through the woods, past Seaview, and we’d beg to go in there. Inevitably, one of them would come out with an ax yelling that he was Cropsey.”

Meanwhile, nestled in the woods nearby was the Willowbrook State facility for mentally challenged children–an institution now notorious for squalid living conditions.

In the late 80s, police finally began to hone in on a man named Andre Rand, a former Willowbrook employee, who had since lived out in the woods. He was a drug user and possibly an occultist with a lengthy rap cheat–the perfect candidate for our real-life boogeyman.

Though he was never officially charged with the Staten Island child murders, Rand is currently serving 50 years to life for kidnapping and first-degree murder and is still the top suspect in the Cropsey disappearances.

The Human Fat Vampires

This is a particularly grisly story. I will spare you some of the details, which are similar in scope to the human kidney trafficking legend.

The ‘human fat vampire’ legend actually has a 400-year-old history in Peru. During this time, locals spoke of vampires who hunted down and fed on the blubber of tourists and left behind bodies drained of all their fat.

It turns out the legend may have been true all along, except the “vampires” are traffickers who hack people up and remove their fat to sell on the black market.

Peruvian police investigated this story for years and in 2009, Gen. Eusebio Félix Murga, director of Peru’s criminal investigations unit, announced they had broken up a criminal gang that “traffics human fat.”

The Exploding Whale That Rained Blubber

You might have heard this one or you might not have. Many Oregonians most likely grew up doubting its authenticity, but it was true all along. As it turns out, a beached whale + shoddy explosives=bloody whale blubber falling from the sky.

In 1970, a dead sperm whale washed up on the coast of Oregon. Logically, the Oregon Highway Division deemed that the best way to remove the whale would be to blow it up with dynamite.

Frozen Solid and Surviving

Legends of people being frozen solid and somehow living have persisted over the centuries, with scientists steadfastly maintaining it is not medically possible.

In 1981, North Dakota proved these scientists wrong with an incredible true story of a young woman named Jean Hilliard who was found frozen solid after getting trapped in 22 below zero temperatures.

“When she arrived at the Fosston, Minn., hospital, her skin was too hard to pierce with a hypodermic needle. Her temperature was too low to register on a thermometer. Her face was ashen and her eyes were solid and did not respond to light.”

“I can’t explain why she’s alive,” said Dr. George Sather, who treated Jean.

Real Life “Shadow People”

The Shadow People lineage or urban legends encompasses an entire universe of creepy folklore revolving around obscured visions or shadows of people that appear and disappear quickly.

Unsurprisingly, the people who report such occurrences are often sleep deprived or in a state of sleep paralysis. For years, thousands of people have sworn to waking up in the middle of the night to a shadowy figure bearing down on them, or staring from across the room.

At least in one case, this turned out to be true. In Fukuoka, Japan, a man who lived “alone” in his apartment began to suspect that something else was present there with him, moving things around and stealing food.

He decided to set up surveillance cameras and, sure enough, he captured footage of an old woman slithering out of his cupboard.

The woman was 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa, who was homeless and admitted to police that she had lived in the man’s home for about a year, lurking just beyond his eyesight in closets and cupboards.

Obviously, this story doesn’t prove that Shadow People are real, but it could certainly make you think twice the next time you casually dismiss a paranoid fear of someone watching you from the shadows.

Originally published on Oddee.com by GD writer Jake Anderson

General

Experts Declare Experimental Cancer Vaccine Based On mRNA Technology Is ‘Safe and Effective’

Published

1 month ago

March 24, 2024

A new cancer vaccine based on Covid mRNA vaccine technology
which has yet to be clinically tested has already been declared “safe
and effective” by the British government.

Known as ‘LungVax’,
the new vaccine is being developed by the University of Oxford, the
Francis Crick Institute and University College London, and is expected
to be the first of a huge range of new cancer vaccinations available in
the near future.

Research scientists developing the ‘groundbreaking’ lung cancer
vaccine claim it will be effective in preventing up to 90 per cent of
cases by training the immune system to locate and attack early signs of
disease.

Lung cancer cells look different from normal cells due to having ‘red
flag’ proteins called neoantigens. The LungVax vaccine will carry a strand of DNA which trains the immune system to recognize these neoantigens on abnormal lung cells.

It will then instruct the immune system to destroy these cells and stop lung cancer.

Professor Tim Elliot, lead researcher at the University of Oxford, said: ‘Cancer
is a disease of our own bodies and it’s hard for the immune system to
distinguish between what’s normal and what’s cancer.

‘Getting the immune system to recognize and attack cancer is one of the biggest challenges in cancer research today.”

Elliot admitted the new vaccine is based on technology used to create the Covid vaccine.

‘This research could deliver an off-the-shelf vaccine based on
Oxford’s vaccine technology, which proved itself in the Covid pandemic.

Remarkably, given the disastrous health consequences for those
vaccinated with the experimental Covid vaccines, Eilliot praised the
mRNA roll out as a success.

‘If we can replicate the kind of success seen in trials during
the pandemic, we could save the lives of tens of thousands of people
every year in the UK alone.’

Researchers have been granted up to £1.7 million from Cancer Research UK and the CRIS Cancer Foundation.

The team will receive funding for the study over the next 2 years to
support lab research and initial manufacturing of 3,000 doses of the
vaccine at the Oxford Clinical BioManufacturing Facility.

If successful, the vaccine will move straight into a clinical trials,
involving those at biggest risk of disease, such as current and former
smokers who currently qualify for targeted lung health checks in some
parts of the UK.

General

TV Host Demands Gov’t ‘Take Control’ of Elon Musk’s X To ‘Shut Down’ Conspiracy Theories

Published

1 month ago

March 24, 2024

Elon Musk’s X must be “shut down” by government because dangerous “conspiracy theories” are spreading on the social media platform, according to British TV host Jeremy Vine.

“If there any argument to say, and this will sound crazy, but
China does it, we’ve got to now take control of Twitter and shut it down
for the time being,” said Vine.

Vine made the comments earlier this week during a heated debate
regarding speculation surrounding the health and whereabouts of Kate
Middleton, the Princess of Wales.

‘We’ve now got to take control of Twitter’…..???????????? ⁦@elonmusk⁩ pic.twitter.com/GonHWCr90c

— Right Said Fred (@TheFreds) March 20, 2024

Boomers have become obsessed with speculating that Middleton has died or is severely unwell and that the Royal Family is hiding it because she hasn’t been seen in months after an operation.

The manipulation of a series of photo of Middleton and her children also only served to fuel the rumors, as some sources close to the princess claimed she had been murdered by the royal family.

However, instead of dismissing the whole issue for what it is, a pointless distraction that will disappear once Middleton makes a public appearance around Easter, Vine called for draconian measures.

Modernity report:

Ah yes, the Communist dictatorship of China, which shuts down the Internet to clamp down on dissent and enhance its repression of undesirables.

That’s definitely who we should be mimicking, Jeremy.

Throughout the COVID pandemic, Vine’s show was a platform for some of the most vulgar, authoritarian drivel imaginable.

One show asked if children who are unvaccinated should be banned from schools or made to wear special badges.

Another asked, “Is it time to ban the unvaccinated from traveling?”

Vine has made a name for himself as being a dutiful amplifier of regime messaging, while his annoying side hobby of biking around London looking to film confrontations with motorists has also angered many.