Urban legend (bike, fiction, masquerading as truth, English urban legend) is a modern type of legend (myth): a short, and, at first glance, plausible (although usually not true) story based on modern technical and social reality, usually touching upon the deepest problems and fears of modern society.
Self-decapitation device
Legend:
One man decapitated himself with a rather sophisticated mechanism designed specifically for this purpose.
Sounds like complete nonsense. Or the plot of a low-budget horror movie.
However, here's how it actually happened:
In 2011, the wife of a resident of Yorktown (Virginia, USA) put her faithful out the door. He hitched a family trailer to his car and collected all his belongings in it. Then he drove away from the house for several blocks and … set fire to the trailer. The police arrived and found the trailer still on fire, and the rejected spouse himself was locked in the car. Then someone drew attention to the wire that gleamed on the man's neck. It turned out that she stretches out of the car window to the nearest tree, which is ten meters away. Before the police could react, the man put pressure on the gas and … was left without a head.
Promotional video:
Ring and grave
Legend:
This is rather not even a legend, but a whole series of legends, moreover, used many times by the cinema. They tell about how someone was buried alive, and he / she not only dug out on their own, but also punished all the villains, got rich, found personal happiness, etc. etc.
The true story goes like this:
It was in Poland. After six years of marriage, a certain Martin Kasprzak decided that his fiancé, Michelina Lewandowska, was not pretty enough. Rather than letting her catch him in bed with a prettier friend like anyone else would, Kasprzak found a more radical solution. He stunned his girlfriend, wrapped his arms and legs with duct tape, packed them in a box from under the TV, and took them to a deep forest. There he buried the girl, and went straight to the nearest ATM, where he took all the money from her card.
Fortunately for Micheline, Kasrzak had one undoubted merit - he was really well versed in jewelry and during the engagement gave her a ring with a real, large diamond. It was with this stone that the girl cut the scotch tape, which was tied hand and foot. After that, she made a hole in the box with a diamond and scrambled to the surface through the mud and branches with which the groom prudently covered the grave.
So, girls, when you get engaged, be sure to ask for a larger diamond ring. Especially if your fiancé keeps a box from under the TV for some reason.
Insidious wife
Legend:
A man meets a woman of unspeakable beauty, a crazy romance, engagement begins … And after the wedding, the newlywed finds out that he married … a witch.
True story:
Almost the entire first year of their married life, Shriya and Bimal Patel lived in different cities: he is in Austin (Texas, USA), she is in Dubai (UAE). After the reunion, the young wife announced that she wanted to please her husband with a massage with special oil, and took him to the bathroom. Everything was ready there - twilight, rose petals, candles everywhere …
The trusting Bimal was probably already sitting in the bathroom when he felt that the oil that was being rubbed on him smelled suspiciously of gasoline. And I realized that the candles were not needed for romance at all … When the fire broke out, the woman jumped out of the bathroom and locked the door behind her.
If Mr. Patel had been more attentive, he might have noticed that the fire alarms were prudently disabled and the fire sprinklers were wrapped in plastic bags. She thought of everything, down to the smallest detail, but for some reason the option just to get a divorce did not occur to her.
Shriya Patel was naturally convicted of premeditated murder.
Mad Doctor
Legend:
Mad doctors who love to shred gullible patients for nothing - characters from many urban legends and popular characters from a myriad of horror films.
In real life, these are also found:
Glen Tucker was a terrible plastic surgeon and seemed to take some sadistic pleasure in disfiguring people. Treatment of one patient, who came to him with a complaint of spasms in his arm, ended in amputation. The woman who came for breast implants received a square breast covered with scars worthy of Frankenstein.
When a mountain of complaints and lawsuits accumulated, the news came of the tragic death of a surgeon who allegedly drowned while riding a boat. A year later, he showed up in Florida, where by that time he had also managed to cripple a large number of patients. After this story thundered all over America, Tucker told reporters from television literally the following: "If I feel cornered and understand that my life is no longer worth living, I will leave - but not alone."
He kept his word. A few years later, he shot himself, having previously killed his wife and even a cat.
Corpse in the pool
Legend:
These kinds of stories are simply created to be told in school locker rooms: about how a girl went to swim and then a dead man appears in the water and kaaaak grab her leg!
True:
One child from Massachusetts went for a swim in a public pool and saw something large floating near the surface of the water. It turned out - the body of a wanted woman. By this time, the corpse had been swimming in this pool for three whole days - next to unsuspecting and carelessly splashing kids. Perhaps they even saw her, but they mistook her for a swimmer who is great at holding her breath - the vibration of the water can create the illusion of movement.
And the most amazing thing is for
these three days the pool water was checked by two different inspectors!
Party at the deceased
Legend:
Any story that ends with something like, "and then it turned out that he was dead all this time!"
True story:
By the time Robert Young and Mark Rubinson arrived at the home of their friend Jeffrey Jarrett, the latter had already died of an accidental overdose. The state of the friends themselves is unknown, but only they decided that Jarrett was simply drunk. Expecting that he was about to sleep it off, loyal friends loaded the body into the car and went to have fun.
Since Jarrett showed no interest in continuing the banquet, Jung and Rubinson left him "resting" in the backseat while they lit up in four different bars and strip clubs. At some point, they ran out of money, and they "borrowed" Jarrett's credit card. And then we decided to take our boring friend home, and went on to have fun - at his expense, of course. It was only in the morning that one of them realized that Jarrett had been dead all this time.
Despite the essentially good intentions, the friends were convicted of abuse of the body and theft.
Collector
Legend:
Thanks to Hollywood, we all know what an insane killer neighbor should look like: quiet, polite, highly educated and not at all suspicious.
True story:
This is exactly what the local historian and linguist from Nizhny Novgorod Anatoly Moskvin was.
His entire apartment was packed with large, human-sized dolls. This in itself is already rather strange, but everything turned out to be much worse - under dresses with frills and blond wigs, operatives found 29 mummified corpses of girls and women!
The Muscovite was a passionate collector, only he collected not stamps and coins, but dead human bodies, which he had dug up in the cemeteries of Nizhny, Moscow, and several other regions of our vast homeland since 2000. And he didn’t carry all the corpses home. In some cases, he opened the grave, and if something did not suit him, he buried it back.
So if your spouse or your parents are unhappy with the fact that you carry all sorts of pieces of iron home, or spend all your money on purses, remind them that your little hobby is far from the worst option.