The whole point of an urban legend is to convince people that it might be true!
How else would they spread?
Most legends remain unauthenticated, yet still smack of historical accuracy.
Although, some are definitely verifiable while still maintaining that legendary status.
The age of the internet helps a lot with this, thanks to instantaneously available sources;
but it’s also true that the internet spreads misinformation as well.
Be careful with what you’re reading, and maybe look a little deeper.
Especially if any of these signed and sealed myths seem too good to be true!
I swear they are!
Hello horror heads, and welcome back to the scariest channel on YouTube: Top5ScaryVideos.
I’m your horror host, Keegan Hughes, and today we’re going to take a look at the
Top 5 Internet Urban Legends That Came True.
Before we get started, make sure to give this video a big thumbs up, and subscribe for more
honourable hijinxs.
Wicked, let’s begin.
NUMBER FIVE: THE BODY UNDER THE BED I don’t know if this counts as an urban
legend, or a universal experience.
Everyone has, no exceptions, checked under their bed for monsters.
There are countless stories of robbers, murderers, doppelgangers, and assorted fireflies hanging
out beneath people’s mattresses.
But nobody ever expects it to come true!
At least, not after graduating elementary school.
But this is exactly what happened to a hapless couple trying to relax at a hotel after a
long day.
Thankfully there wasn’t a living creature lying in wait beneath the bed frame, but the
body below wasn’t much better.
The couple shuffled into their room, and immediately noticed that something was off.
It smelled.
Real bad.
Corpselike, even.
If you checked into a hotel room and the first thing you noticed was the distinct odor of
rotting flesh, you’d be upset.
So the couple called down to the front desk and complained about the stench.
After moving the duo to a less rotten room, the smell was investigated, leading to the
discovery of a dead body beneath the bed.
The state of the body also implied that it had been lying there for weeks, as different
guests stayed in the room.
I’m sure they were pleased as punch when they discovered that their hotel stay involved
an undiscovered cadaver under their sleeping heads.
What do you even do as a hotel staff at that point?
Own up to the corpse under the bed?
Or just hope the story fizzles out?
Either way, the classic myth of the below-bed-body has been proven true, at least in this case.
Is it worth checking below every hotel bed now?
NUMBER FOUR: RATS IN THE TOILET BOWL I’ll preface this entry with an unfortunate
truth: crocodiles can’t actually survive in the New York sewer system.
I know, it’s hard to take, but it’s true.
Even if folks kept them as pets and then flushed them when they got too big, they wouldn’t
survive long during New York winters.
Plus living in filth is bad for most creatures.
Creatures that aren’t rats!
Here’s another unfortunate truth: rats have been found in people’s toilets after crawling
around in the plumbing!
They’re not gonna be too friendly after making that trip, either.
See, drain plumbing is the perfect size for a mangy rodent to wiggle through, especially
if they’re scavenging undigested food matter left behind after your last trip to the porcelain
throne.
Rats are often attracted to sewage lines thanks to these particular waste particles, and will
sometimes travel along until the very end of the line.
The end of the line being your toilet bowl.
They’re very good swimmers, you know.
It’s okay to have a complete and total mental breakdown if this happens to you.
Nobody expects you to keep it together if a sewage-covered rodent places itself inches
from your private bits.
They’re not quite as suave as Roddy the Rat from Flushed, unfortunately.
There’s one tale where a woman in Virginia got bit on the butt by one of these spelunking
scabblers.
So yeah, check your toilet bowl before you hunker down, unless you’re cool with some
tiny teeth on your taint.
If you do end up seeing one, treat it like any other filthy floater and flush it.
NUMBER THREE: REAPPEARING CITIES To be fair, this is more of a legend legend
than an urban one, but it’s fascinating just the same.
Legendary lost cities are a staple in the imaginations of explorers.
El Dorado, Aztlan, Atlantis.
Wouldn’t it be incredible to find them?
Imagine the discoveries that might be made, the lost history recovered.
Although many have sought these locations out, few have succeeded.
Which is why it’s so exciting when one does reappear.
Way back in the 18th century, a British tourist wrote down the story of a group of temples
hidden under the sea in southern India.
It seemed that a wicked flood subsumed six, leaving the seventh still standing on the
shore.
For centuries, this legend stood as people told the tale of the curtailed temples.
Then, following a destructive tsunami in 2004, the temples were revealed to the world once
more.
The coastline receded far enough that people could finally get a closer look at the hidden
temples, drowned so many years ago.
The tsunami itself was devastating, so I’m not sure if it was the best trade.
And let’s be real: hidden temples often contain curses waiting to be unleashed upon
the world.
Something tells me that these making a triumphant return might bring some additional dread to
the surface.
Nobody go looking for hidden treasure now, you hear?
NUMBER TWO: THE MAINE HERMIT All the scariest stories come from New England!
Just ask Stephen King and H.P.
Lovecraft!
With all of the iconic additions to the horror canon these two provided alone, there are
enough urban legends to fuel Boston’s surroundings for generations!
But if you look a little closer at the yarns these legends are spinning, you’ll realize
that a lot of them just simply can’t be true.
At least, not in any way that we could ever understand.
There are no Deadlights, no Pennywise the Clown.
No demonic cornfields or wendigo-infested graveyards.
No mysterious fish-man hybrids, no Miskatonic University, no Arkham.
If you have proof to the contrary, please let me know!
I would love to be proven wrong on this.
But for now, we’ll have to look to an actual local legend that was inevitably proven true.
If you were the outdoorsy type, you might have made it out to central Maine’s North
Pond area.
You might also have noticed that some of your stuff was disappearing without explanation.
This kind of behaviour went on for decades, with vacationers, cottagers, and campers all
experiencing some sort of disappearing supplies.
This led to folks believing that a single entity was sticking around and stealing their
stuff.
And guess what?
They were eventually proven right!
It was discovered that a man by the name of Christopher Knight has been living alone in
the woods for upwards of 25 years!
That’s a long time to be living alone unbothered, but good ole Chris Knight knew what he was
doing!
Living off the land largely, but also committing small-scale steals whenever he needed something
a little extra.
He was probably living the life, too!
In the end, he was a pretty reasonable guy.
Most folks would assume that hermits are volatile and dangerous, but Chris seemed to have a
good head on his shoulders.
When confronted by a warden, he admitted that he was behind something like 40 robberies
a year.
An honest hermit, who knew!
NUMBER ONE: CORPSE DECORATIONS It’s a classic campfire tale that has evolved
with the times: a secret serial killer uses the bodies of his victims to decorate an abode,
or a twisted mortician convinces kids to galavant beneath pieces of people on Halloween.
It’s been done in movies, on TV, and in videogames galore!
But there’s no way it actually happened, right?
Well, actually, it did!
It wasn’t as malicious as many of the tales make it seem, though.
There wasn’t some crazed lunatic hanging a real body from the eaves just to get away
with it, no.
Instead, it was an accidental accentuation.
Way back in the early 20th century, there was a criminal by the name of Elmer McCurdy.
After dying, McCurdy was embalmed and carted around as a sideshow attraction all across
Texas.
People came from far and wide to see the preserved body of the notorious criminal.
Funeral parlours, carnivals, and all sorts of Cavalcades of Perversion showed off the
body.
It was so well-travelled that for a while, people totally lost track of it.
Eventually, over 50 years later, the body made its return… as a funhouse prop.
Somehow an employee of the Nu-Pike Amusement Park saw this preserved corpse and said “yup,
that’s a fake body alright!”
So Elmer went up, and stayed up for quite a while.
In fact, the only reason he was discovered to be real was that a crew member from a movie
being shot on location tried to adjust the body.
In doing so, Elmer’s arm came right off.
This man was just doing his job and ended up tearing a dead man’s limb from his body.
Oh my.
So while it’s unlikely that creepy Mr. Jenkins down the street is hanging real corpses from
his oak tree, you better double-check your props before putting them up.
OUTRO My oh my.
The things we take at face value can be astonishing.
Most legends are staunchly in the “unprovable” category, but when they do have some truth
it can be a little jarring, eh?
What did you think of the list?
Are there any urban legends you’ve seen come to life?
Which urban legend would you want to be true?
Make sure you let me know down in the comments.
Speaking of comments, let’s take a look at some of your more frisky ones from the
TOP 5 SCARY AQUATIC MONSTERS YOU WON’T BELIEVE: D.C. Carter says “Gillman is great, but
don’t let your cat get near him.
Eck.”
Yeah, I heard he’s got quite the penchant for… felines.
Ctc TV says “I think the loch ness monster would be a good entry just that don’t know
that it really looks like is even more scary.”
But Nessie is so famous for being friendly!
How could I include a pal like that on a scary list?
Hylian Batman says “You’re not supposed to talk about it…”
Well how was I supposed to know?
It was prior to my first time!
Lord Inquisitor Ignis says “So I’m never going near a body of water again.
Hell, I’ll avoid puddles just to be safe.”
Now just replace all the water in your diet with some form of liquor and you’ll be golden!
Joseph Rossi says “I like your posters, what’s the one behind you?”
We’ve got Green Room, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Thing!
I’ve got some more, but they can’t all fit behind me.
And that’s all the time we have for today!
Before I shotgun a can of hand sanitizer, make sure to give this video a big thumbs
up, and subscribe for more opalescent opining.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time!