In the not too distant future, director Nia DaCosta will be ushering in a
new version of Candyman, the popular 1992 horror hit about a vengeful spirit who is
summoned by saying his name five times. In one of the movie’s most terrifying scenes,
the villain bursts through a medicine cabinet in the bathroom to attack his victim. While Candyman
himself isn’t an urban legend—the character is based on a short story by Clive Barker—the
idea of a killer attacking you through a bathroom mirror is rooted in fact.
In 1987, a woman named Ruth McCoy was killed when a burglar crawled through a false wall
behind her medicine cabinet, which was put there to make it easier to assess plumbing
issues in the Chicago Housing Authority project. Like many famous modern myths,
there can be a good deal of truth in the fiction. Whether intentional or a strange coincidence, two
of the characters in the 1992 film actually shared the last name McCoy with the real-life victim.
I’m Erin McCarthy, and we’re taking a look at the origins behind some of the most popular
urban legends in this episode of The List Show. The List Show. The List Sho--Okay, I’m done.
Urban legends are supposed to be disturbing—the kind of thing you tell your teenaged friends
under a sofa cushion fort at a sleepover. Naturally, a lot of them revolve around
killers. And since a lot of teenagers take on babysitting jobs for friends and family,
it’s not surprising that one of the most disturbing urban legends involves a killer
targeting this vulnerable demographic. For decades, stories have circulated about a
babysitter home alone who receives harassing phone calls. When the call is finally traced by police,
the babysitter is horrified to discover it’s coming from inside the house.
While that exact scenario doesn’t seem to have ever been documented, there have been
unsettling reports of babysitters being assaulted. In 1950, 13-year-old Janett Christman was killed
by an intruder while babysitting in Columbia, Missouri. Police suspected a man who had been
friends with the family of the 3-year-old boy she was watching, but he was never charged.
This legend probably picked up steam because it struck a psychological chord. The 1970s
was an era of women’s liberation, and some argue that the idea of a man lurking out of sight was,
in a way, a rejection of that new paradigm. You could consider it anti-feminist propaganda, but
either way, being a babysitter meant being alone in a strange house. It was a relatable fear.
If you like killer-animal mash-ups, there’s the Goatman, a purported half-man, half-goat fond of
devouring dogs and attacking people in Prince George’s County in Maryland. While the Goatman
had been whispered about for years, he got an explosion of publicity in 1971 after a reporter
named Karen Hosler delivered a one-two punch lending credibility to his existence. In one
Halloween article, Hosler passed along research from state folklore archives that presented the
Goatman as a former researcher at the Beltsville Agricultural Farm who experimented on goats.
One day, he lost his mind and ran into the woods, growing his hair long and attacking
cars that passed by. Just two weeks later, Hosler reported on a family that awoke to the sounds of
what they later described as a two-legged animal on their property that was howling and squealing.
The next day, the family found their dog, Ginger, decapitated. Then people reported seeing an animal
walking on its hind legs near Fletchertown Road, where poor Ginger was found. From that point on,
teens in Maryland learned to fear the Goatman. And no urban legend rundown is complete without
mention of the Mothman, a strange creature who purportedly terrorized West Virginia in the 1960s.
This winged menace was spotted numerous times, including by a grave digger and two couples
sitting in a car in 1966. They described it as having bright red eyes and a massive wingspan
10 feet long. When they drove away, the creature allegedly chased after them. Both sightings took
place in a small community named Point Pleasant, and the Mothman myth has persisted ever since.
The truth? Eyewitnesses might have seen a sandhill crane, which is nearly as tall as a human and has
bright red flesh around its eyes. Not the kind of thing you want to see late at night, but probably
not a mortal danger, either. After all, the birds live on grains and small animals. The only
problem with this explanation is that sandhill cranes aren’t all that common in the area.
Not all tales of killers result in people dying. Sometimes, it’s the near-misses that prove to be
effective stories. In one urban legend, a person wakes up in response to some strange noises.
As they let their hand dangle at the bottom of the bed, they feel a reassuring lick
from their family pet. The next morning, the pet is found dead, and a note reads,
“Humans can lick, too.” This O. Henry-esque twist ending dates as far back as 1871, when a story
made the rounds in England about a jewel thief who hid under a bed and licked the hand of the
homeowner so he wouldn’t get up to investigate. Another near-miss urban legend involves a
driver who is seemingly harassed by a car following hers. When she finally stops,
it turns out the other driver was trying to warn her of a killer hiding in the back seat.
It’s actually hard for murderers to try and hitch a ride in a back seat without being seen,
but this story does have some basis in reality. In 1964, an escaped murderer hid in a car.
In a twist, the car belonged to a police detective, who shot the criminal.
Ever hear the one about the haunted house that left a real corpse on display? You’re probably
not going to find a dead body at your local haunt, but if you were a crew member on The Six Million
Dollar Man in 1976, you would have realized this was no myth. A man working on the show was setting
up a sequence at a funhouse at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park when he tried to adjust what
he thought was a fake corpse. As the LA Times put it, “A technician moved it—and an arm fell off.”
It was the arm, and the body, of Elmer McCurdy, an outlaw who was shot by authorities after a train
robbery in 1911 and then embalmed in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Elmer’s body was then taken on tour.
At the time, it was common for people to want to see the corpses of famous criminals. Eventually,
McCurdy got mixed up with some wax dummies and wound up in Long Beach, California,
where he had become a macabre prop. He was given a proper burial in Oklahoma in 1977.
The Six Million Dollar Man was a big hit in the 1970s, and so was Mikey, the star of the
Life cereal commercials where it’s declared that a picky child approves of the cereal.
Soon, word spread that Mikey had succumbed to a dangerous combination
of soda and the effervescent candy Pop Rocks. The rumor grew so widespread that in 1979 the
mother of child actor John Gilchrist, who played Mikey, got a condolence call from a stranger.
The story likely stemmed from schoolyard discussions about Pop Rocks, which were
fizzy carbonated candy, and how eating them seemed dangerous. It wasn’t, but the story was so widely
believed that it seriously damaged sales of the candy. General Foods, which owned Pop Rocks, even
begged John Gilchrist’s parents to let him film a commercial letting people know he was still alive,
but they refused. The grisly story continued for years and all the negative publicity forced
General Foods to discontinue Pop Rocks soon after. They have made a comeback, however, in case you’d
like to test this theory out for yourself. For some reason, people just can’t get enough
of urban legends about food causing living creatures to explode. For years, couples
planning their wedding have been warned about not throwing rice at the ceremony because birds will
be tempted to eat it, causing them to blow up. That can’t actually happen. Rice, whether it’s
cooked or uncooked, poses no threat to birds. But Connecticut state legislator Mae Schmidle
tried to introduce a bill in 1985 that would ban rice-throwing. She called the bill “An
Act Prohibiting the Use of Uncooked Rice at Nuptial Affairs” and insisted birds can’t
digest uncooked rice. Schmidle said ministers had told her they found dead birds after weddings,
victimized by innocent rice celebrations. The myth was repeated in Ann Landers’ advice column.
In 2002, a project conducted by a biology professor at the University of Kentucky
tested this theory and found that while rice expands in size by 33 percent when soaked,
birdseed expands by 40 percent. Since your bird feeder isn’t surrounded by detonated birds,
rice is probably fine. The professor even fed rice to birds and noted no adverse effects.
From birds to—well, more birds. Have you ever heard about the munchkin who
was believed to have taken his own life on the set of 1939’s The Wizard
of Oz and was left dangling in the background? People who watched the movie would swear they
could see a shadowy figure as Dorothy and her new friends stroll along the Yellow Brick Road. There
is something a little off in the background, but it’s not a dead munchkin. Because the movie was
shot on an indoor set, filmmakers allowed birds to roam around to give it more of an outdoor feel.
That strange figure is almost certainly just a bird hanging out and spreading its wings.
For years, gamers have traded stories about a strange arcade game titled Polybius.
The all-black machine was said to be a CIA operation meant to study players or even
induce strange physical effects—sort of like MK Ultra, the infamous mind control experiment, only
this time with pixels. Polybius never existed—that we know of—but elements of the story are true.
In 1981 Portland, a video game player at an arcade contest drank too much soda and got sick
during a 28 hour marathon gaming session.. A few days later, news reports appeared saying federal
authorities had raided Portland arcades to seize cabinets that had been declared gambling devices.
There was even an East German arcade machine from a few years later called Poly-Play,
and some versions of the story credit Polybius to a mysterious German firm.
Put all these elements together and you have a recipe for urban legend success.
If you’re a Beatles fan, you’ve probably had a discussion at some point about whether Paul
McCartney died all the way back in 1966. That’s because a rumor persisted that McCartney had
perished in an automobile accident and the rest of the group, fearing they’d be finished without him,
hired a lookalike as a replacement, then left subtle clues in future albums hinting
at McCartney’s actual fate. The cover to 1969’s Abbey Road, for example, features Ringo Starr
dressed in black, like a pallbearer. McCartney is in bare feet, because he’s actually dead.
According to conspiracy theorists, this was common burial practice in England at the time.
Who started this theory is unknown, but Beatles scholars have a good idea of how it spread.
In 1969, a college sophomore named Tim Harper wrote a story for The Times-Delphic,
Drake University’s college newspaper, laying out the theory. It was based on
a rumor Harper had heard from a friend who had heard it from some traveling musicians.
It’s possible the rumor picked up momentum because the Beatles broke up in 1970 and fans wanted to
believe it was for a reason other than the fact the group just wasn’t getting along anymore.
The more famous you are, the more urban legends tend to circulate about you.
And few people have had more tawdry rumors about them than Fred Rogers, the late and very much
missed host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. In the most persistent urban legend about Mr. Rogers,
it’s said that he was a Navy SEAL or possibly a military sniper with confirmed kills.
The reason he favored long-sleeved sweaters was supposedly to cover up his numerous tattoos.
In fact, Fred Rogers was a sharpshooting marine—but it was a different Fred Rogers.
According to the screenwriters behind the recent Fred Rogers biopic, that Rogers
used FredRogers.com for his security business for a brief period of time, and that's likely
what led people to confuse the two Freds. That’s almost as silly as picturing Doctor
Ruth Westheimer, the amiable sex therapist and media personality, as a trained sniper who was
seriously wounded in a bomb blast. Or Julia Child serving in the Office of Strategic Services,
a precursor to the CIA, during World War II. Except both of those stories are actually
true. Maybe that’s why some people had no trouble believing Rogers also had a secret military past.
Some of the most effective urban legends take familiar things and give them a sinister
connotation. And while you may not have warm feelings about sewers, it is disturbing to
think alligators might be lurking in them. This scenario stems in large part from writer Robert
Daley’s 1959 book, World Beneath the City. In it, Daley describes an eyewitness account
from Teddy May, who was New York City’s superintendent of sewers. According to May,
sewer workers had been telling him about alligators as far back as 1935, but
he didn’t believe them. Eventually, May went down to see for himself and spotted several alligators
averaging two feet in length. They appeared to be quite content, according to May. It was later
said that he was prone to tall tales, so it’s a bit hard to separate gator fact from fiction.
Though there are reliable accounts of the occasional alligator in the sewer,
according to the New York Times, New York’s Animal Care and Control rescues two to four alligators,
crocodiles, or caimans a year, but they’re usually above ground—the bacterial load of your average
sewage system makes it pretty inhospitable to alligator life. Beware, though—some animals
have been known to crawl through plumbing and into residential toilets. Rats are particularly
adept at this, which is good information to have if you never want to be able to go the
bathroom in peace for the rest of your life. Finally, some kids and their parents had second
thoughts about temporary tattoos when it was rumored that some of the stickers were
spiked with LSD. Adults were warned about tattoos that featured blue stars or cartoon characters.
This urban legend was prevalent in the 1980s, but the concept of contaminated sticky stuff goes back
to at least the 19th century. In 1885, The Lancet gave an account of a man who habitually took
large quantities of morphine. One day the opiate enthusiast licked the adhesive surface of an
envelope and sent it off. The recipient, for what I’m sure were very good reasons,
opened the envelope and then decided to lick it shut again. As The Lancet described it, quote,
“The mere touch of the tongue of the taker of morphia had rendered the gum intensely nauseous.
If this could happen, obviously there must be grave peril of
the transmission of disease by such means.” Many years later, police warnings over blotter
acid mentioned kids could be susceptible. This was misinterpreted to mean that kids
had been exposed to acid. To date, no one with a temporary Care Bears tattoo has ever
been unknowingly dosed with LSD, though watching the cartoon might make you feel like you have.
Our next video is all about cryptids, animals which people claim exist despite a lack of proof.
Think Bigfoot, The Loch Ness Monster, and the like. If you know about a cool creature of dubious
veracity, let us know about it in the comments for a chance to be featured in that episode.
And remember to check out Mental Floss every Wednesday for new videos. We’ll see you soon!