Have you ever wondered why the stories we tell each other while sitting by the fire make us shake with fear? The truth is, there is always a grain of truth in them. Stories like this are believable enough to make us afraid to fall asleep for the rest of the night.
Man by nature is inclined to invent creepy stories, but there is no smoke without fire. They all had to be inspired by something, be it pure imagination or real events. And sometimes urban legends, created as a prank, turn into something more - real stories with real observations. Do city monsters really come to life only through the power of the human imagination, or have they always existed, and we only recently learned about them? In any case, we suggest that you find out 10 terrifying urban legends that are likely to cause your nightmares.
The noise that comes from within … children
Perhaps this macabre story is just an urban legend. One thing is for sure: "The noise that comes from within children" (by Ed Kann) is one of the most mysterious creations in the history of writing.
No one really knows what exactly this ghastly story of Ed Kann is all about, but according to one critical review and several mentions on the Internet, its content was so scary that the work was banned shortly after it was published. The only review of this creation notes that if more people read this story, the entire genre of horror stories would have to be revisited. But, alas, the author, like his story, disappeared from the face of the Earth. The mystery remains unsolved!
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Rake is the fruit of your nightmares
The internet has given us a whole new genre of real-life scary stories. It usually starts with one post, idea or comment and then goes beyond the scope of this post and turns into a full-blown urban legend with photos, documented observations and all kinds of details that make this idea all the more real.
So it happened with Reik - a two-meter humanoid who usually crawls on all fours. He has pale skin and face with no signs of a mouth or nose, but he does have three green eyes. They say it can be seen in suburban areas, but Rake doesn't attack unless you get close to it yourself. But if you choose to come up, he will start attacking, opening his mouth that looks more like a crack in his face, with dozens of blunt teeth inside.
Goodtimes virus
These days are not very fun for hackers: they can't really do much damage, given all the antivirus software installed on modern computers. Nevertheless, back in the 90s, when users did not have sophisticated software to protect their computers, they found themselves helpless in the face of the "evil" on the Internet. The hackers were a kind of web pirates who caused chaos and despair. Have you ever heard of viruses that can melt your entire computer?
And this is not just a turn of speech, viruses in fact could destroy not only software, but also hardware. To make matters worse, this virus replicated very quickly, sending itself to all the users that are in your address book. Just imagine how many people have suffered! The Goodtimes virus was sent via email when people were naive enough to open a message warning of an alleged attack. This virus has managed to destroy hundreds of computers.
Ted's Caving Page Blog
If you think that modern Internet users are so gullible that they are ready to believe any rumor about the death of a celebrity or the release of a new film after watching just a few posts and photos edited in Photoshop, then try to imagine how gullible people were at the time the internet was new. Why would anyone lie on the web, right? But then people did the same thing as now.
The Ted's Caving Page blog started as an innocent project with photographs of various caves, exits and descriptions of Ted's caving experience. However, things got very strange when Ted and his friends found a "secret cave" that was not on any map. Of course, he and his friends wanted to explore all corners of the cave with its eerie hieroglyphs. The blog ended rather abruptly after Ted and one of his colleagues began to suffer from nightmares for several weeks. They decided to go to the cave one last time, armed with knives, and this is where the story ends. It is really well conceived and seems completely real!
Goatman
Most modern urban horror stories have been created online, but some have deeper roots in the cultural heritage of Native Americans.
This is the story of Anansi and his meeting with Goatman. According to this story, Anansi and a few of his friends decided to hike south into the Alabama desert. There they met the creepy Goatman, who did not lag behind them day or night, spoke gibberish and moved in an incomprehensible way. This creature did not kill the travelers, but affected their minds, causing them to suffer from paranoia and attack each other. This story takes creepy stories to a whole new level!
Blair Witch Project
Meet the predecessor of all horror stories that actually created the genre itself. This is a marketing campaign that mostly runs on the internet, presenting a lot of compelling “evidence” that the Blair Witch is a real person and not a movie character with an elaborate storyline. The company spent $ 25 million on marketing while the film's budget was only $ 20,000, but the idea itself really paid off! People believed they had found the footage that was the premise for the film, and it was they who made it legendary. The Blair Witch project spoke about three film producers who went missing during the filming of the film, and revealed many other eerie "believable" details. The whole project was so brilliantly thought out that we cannot help but wonder: maybe all this was really real?
Sisters Smith
Of course, so-called happiness letters can be very annoying, but we usually don't find them creepy. Nevertheless, this story will force you to reconsider your opinion. She talks about a boy named John Smith who loved to send emails like this. But one day, he received a letter from the mysterious Smith girls, who claimed they were his lost sisters.
In order to prove the veracity of their story, they sent him some old photographs of them in the old house. The boy was scared because he did not know that he had any sisters, especially dead ones (it was obvious to him that they were sending him letters from the “other side”). The Smith sisters urged him to check the old wardrobe upstairs, which he did not know existed. Of course, the boy did what was asked of him, but after that no one saw him again. The police found only a few carvings inside the closet: one bore the words "Lisa and Sarah, 1993" and the other "John, 2007". So it's worth making sure you haven't forgotten to turn on the spam filter to keep yourself safe from any crazy emails!
Slenderman
Each of us at least once heard about the Thin Man, or Slenderman, and knows that this is a completely fictional character. But that doesn't make this creature any less scary. Who knows, maybe the power of our imagination was able to revive it? It seems that Slender Man has existed for centuries: this is what we should believe after watching TV series and playing many games with this terrifying creature. After some time, no one will remember that he was a product of our imagination, and the Thin Man will become an actual part of urban legends.
Slender Man first appeared as a dark figure in an old black and white image created with Photoshop. But then more and more photos appeared, until a real avalanche of evidence accumulated that this creature was real. It plays on our fear of the dark and all the things that lurk in it. We all saw shadows when we turned around on a narrow stretch of poorly lit road at night, and it seemed to us that someone was there, right? You've definitely seen someone. Perhaps it was Slenderman.
Russian sleep experiment
The creepy experiments carried out by the military always impress people. And they are likely to remain one of the scariest topics for decades to come. There are real stories, such as the infamous Japanese group 731, or the CIA's MKULTRA program. Therefore, it would not be surprising that the Russian military was also conducting experiments on harmless citizens.
According to this legend, people were locked in cells and given drugs that would prevent them from falling asleep. This was done in order to see how long they can live without sleep. People stayed in a locked room for months and slowly went mad. After a while, the cells were opened, but there was no noise in the room filled with dozens of people. It turned out that about half of the participants in the experiment were dead, and the rest ate their flesh. They demanded more medicine to never sleep. This is really hard stuff!
Normal porn for normal people
Here we are dealing with spam again, but this time the story takes an incredibly sinister turn. You get a link to a site with a rather unusual slogan that reads: "Site dedicated to the elimination of abnormal sexuality." You end up reading a crazy rant, but some of the words in it turn out to be links to videos.
It shows rather harmless actions: the owner feeds the dog, the guy makes himself a sandwich with peanut butter and eats it, the girl plays the violin. However, in each of these videos, gruesome and violent sexual acts take place, but are seen only as a glimpse on a reflective surface. From now on, the video gets more and more weird. We won't spoil all the "fun" and if you are interested in this video, just check it out! If you dare.
Anna Pismenna