It's late at night and you're driving down a dark road when suddenly the car behind you
flashes its brights at you.
You look up at the rearview mirror and see the vehicle flash them again, then get back
to driving, slightly annoyed.
Thirty seconds later the driver flashes them again, and once more you look in your rearview
mirror, annoyed.
Finally, he does it a third time, another fast series of flashes, and at last you pull
over to the side of the road to let this impatient driver pass.
As he pulls up alongside your car though, the driver rolls his passenger’s side window
down and starts frantically yelling and pointing at your car.
“There's a man in your backseat!”, the driver screams!
Terrified, you whip around to look at your backseat, but it's too late.
You're now another victim of a knife-wielding, car hijacking madman.
The urban legend of the backseat murderer is exactly that, an urban legend, but there's
far more creepy urban legends that turned out to be more fact than fiction.
If you're in the mood to check your toilet bowl before you sit on it, sleep with all
the lights on at night, and hesitate before you pull over for police officers who may
be murderers in disguise, then stay tuned and keep on watching.
We warned you.
Monsters In The Toilet Bowl
It's a horror movie trope dating back to the early 80s, some helpless victim wanders into
the bathroom and plops down on the toilet to do their business.
Suddenly, they're attacked from below!
A horrible monster claws at them, or a venomous snake bites, or insects invade their most
sensitive areas.
The monster in the toilet bowl is probably so terrifying because of how very vulnerable
we feel when we're using the bathroom.
This is us at our most vulnerable, our pants around our ankles and our guard completely
relaxed, the last thing anyone is hoping for- or expecting- is any sort of confrontation.
This is such a deeply ingrained vulnerability in mammals that the reason your dog follows
you to the bathroom is not because they don't want to be left alone, but because they don't
want you to be alone.
Your faithful fido is actually guarding you, as a packmate would in the wild, and making
sure you're not attacked while helpless and vulnerable.
But the monster in the toilet bowl urban legend is one based on truth, with plenty of examples
of horrors discovered in toilets- often only after they have struck.
If you're fan of camping and using public outdoor toilets, then count yourself lucky
you haven't been attacked in your most vulnerable of areas.
These outdoor toilets are lousy with ants, scorpions, centipedes and all matter of stinging,
biting creepy crawleys.
The smell of human waste is basically an invitation to a feast for a lot of insects and animals,
and the warmth of these holes in the ground can also be appealing to reptiles seeking
shelter.
That's why snakes are all too often found in porta potties and outdoor toilets.
But maybe you think you're safe because your toilet is indoors.
Think again.
In Florida- because of course it was Florida- a man was bitten by a four foot python as
he opened his toilet bowl.
The four foot snake was curled up in the toilet and lashed out the moment the man exposed
it.
Luckily for him, pythons aren't venomous, and a python bite in the arm is painful but
not lethal.
Our next victim however was bitten by a large python in exactly the place you fear the most.
In Thailand, a man went into his bathroom to relieve himself and promptly unzipped his
pants, prepared himself, and lifted the toilet seat.
What greeted him was a jack-in-the-box from hell, as a large python struck with lightning
speed, sinking its fangs directly onto the man's penis.
The man struggled to free himself from the snake's bite, and luckily he was able to pry
the snake off.
When emergency workers arrived they found the bathroom covered in blood, and the man
suffering from severe blood loss.
He would live, but he'd probably never use a toilet again.
Snakes aren't the only thing to show up in toilets though, so if you think you're safe
because your area has no snakes, think again.
In New York and other big cities, rats have been frequently found swimming out of toilets,
and some have even bitten individuals as they sat to relieve themselves.
The small rodents can hold their breath for long amounts of time and have little problem
navigating the extremely tight confines of house plumbing, following it to your home
all the way from the sewer.
With their ferocious little teeth, rats can cause a lot of damage in short time, and carry
all matter of diseases.
So next time you're going to use the toilet, look twice before you sit, and open your toilet
bowl lid at your own peril.
Candyman
Candyman's popularity exploded with the horror film of the same name, which tells the story
of the vengeful specter of a freed slave who fell in love with a white woman and got her
pregnant, only to be brutally murdered by her father and his accomplices.
Now given over to a dark and terrible rage, Candyman will brutally attack anyone who is
foolish enough to stare into a mirror in the dark and repeat his name over and over again.
Surely this is a myth, and being murdered by someone coming through your bathroom mirror
is pure legend.
Think again.
In 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy was home alone in her projects apartment when she made a terrifying
911 call.
Panicked, and in terror, McCoy told the dispatcher that her life was in danger by men emerging
from her bathroom cabinet.
The 911 dispatcher believed this to be a dispute with a neighbor and sent a police car, but
given the low priority of the call, the car attended to other business before responding.
Then came more 911 calls from neighbors, saying that they were hearing shouting and gunshots.
Two police cruisers were immediately dispatched, but when they arrived on the scene they found
the front door to McCoy's apartment locked.
With no answer to their knocks, the police were hesitant to force their way in, fearing
being sued if there was no disturbance.
Thus, they left the scene.
The next day however, a woman who regularly had contact with Ms. McCoy called the police
to let them know that she hadn't seen her that day.
Now with concern over her well being, the police broke into her home only to discover
McCoy shot to death and laying in a pool of her own blood.
Her apartment had been ransacked, and yet there was no sign of forced entry.
That's when police decided to check the bathroom, and discovered the horrible truth a panicked
McCoy had been trying to tell the 911 dispatcher.
The bathroom cabinet had been knocked out of place, revealing an area of pipes behind
it which had been used by McCoy's attackers to move in between apartments unseen.
This was a design feature of the apartment building meant to make it easier for maintenance
workers to service the building's piping.
Instead, it ended up being an avenue of attack that got Ms. McCoy killed.
In fact, the crawlspace behind the bathroom cabinets of each apartment was widely used
by gangbangers and thieves, who would utilize them to break into people's homes or escape
police.
Sadly, Ms. McCoy, whom the thieves probably didn't expect to be home, would end up a victim
of the hidden but not-so-secret crawlspace.
The real question for our viewers who live in apartment buildings themselves is, how
well do you know your building?
The Leaping Lawyer
There's an old cliché about lawyers and bankers, finally at the end of their rope, leaping
to their death from their high-rise offices.
While these are two professions with high instances of suicide, the leaping to one's
death from a skyrise is extremely rare, and more urban legend than truth.
On a Toronto July day in 1993 though, the urban legend would become true in a terrifying
and truly tragic way.
Garry Hoy was a senior partner with the law firm of Holden, Day and Wilson.
On the upward track, life was all peaches and cream for the 39 year old lawyer- or it
would have been if it wasn't for his propensity for a particularly dumb practical joke of
his.
Garry was fond of scaring young law partners and new employees, and his favorite way of
doing this was to run full speed into one of the high rise building's ceiling to floor
glass windows.
These massive panes of glass are designed to withstand very high winds and strong impacts,
and for the 99 times that Gary had pulled this little prank off, the window had always
held.
Number 100 was the exception.
As Gary ran full tilt into the window, the window held.
Not satisfied with the reaction of the crowd of young articling students, Gary repeated
his body check into the window.
This time, the window gave.
Falling from a height of 23 stories, Gary had seconds to consider his very stupid practical
joke before pancaking on the street below.
Gary's accidental death became so infamous, that it was an overnight urban legend, firmly
rooted in a real event.
Shows like Mythbusters and 1000 ways to die all retold the story of Gary's tragic death,
and he himself became the recipient of the 1996 Darwin Award.
But how had a window that had withstood so many impacts simply given way that day?
Experts believe that on this attempt Gary hit the window with a leading edge of his
body first, concentrating the impact force on a much smaller area than normal.
This might have been with his wristwatch, as hypothesized on 1000 ways to die, but it
could have been with any part of his body really.
With so much impact concentrated on such a small point, the glass would have much more
easily shattered, sending Gary to his death on the street below.
Killer In The Backseat
Now we turn back to our original urban legend that we opened the show with.
An unassuming motorist is driving down a dark road when they're attacked by a killer hiding
in the backseat.
In some variations other motorists try to warn the person by flashing their brights
at them, each time flashing just as the killer rises up to strike the killing blow.
While that version of the urban legend is definitely false, and the legend as a whole
has been around since the explosion of 'car culture' in America around the late 1950s,
in at least one tragic incident, it was more fact than fiction.
In 2013 a young woman parked her van at a gas station and went inside to pay for some
items.
While she was gone, a man snuck inside her unlocked van and hid in the back rows.
As she drove away from the station, the man made himself known and forced the woman to
drive to the back of an alley where he assaulted her.
After that, he made her drive him to an ATM and forced her to withdraw cash before finally
leaving her to flee into the night.
When police reviewed the gas station's surveillance cameras they found that the man had been trying
car doors before running into the woman's unlocked van and sliding inside.
While police never found the attacker, they warned that anytime you exit your vehicle
you should always make sure you lock all of your doors.
Because next time that you park somewhere and hop out for just a moment, it could be
you with a criminal lurking in your backseat.
Now check out Scary Urban Legends That Will Keep You Up At night, or click this other
video instead!