Terrifying Urban Legends That Were Actually Real

It’s easy to dismiss urban legends as fanciful tales designed to scare gullible people. Indeed, in most cases, you’d be right to do so. However, as we’re about to learn, some of those terrifying tales have a basis in reality. 

The basic premise of a sinister stranger lurking in an innocent person’s home has been repeated so many times in books and films that we all instinctively connect it to fiction. However, this terrifying concept most certainly has a basis in reality. 

Our story takes us to a remote, rural part of Germany. The year is 1922. At this time, Farmer Andreas Gruber was growing increasingly perplexed as small items were going missing around his house. His kids insisted that they had nothing to do with it, but then who was meddling with their belongings?

Gruber discussed these odd occurrences with neighbors, but sadly, before he could get to the bottom of it, he and his whole family were slaughtered in their home. It seems likely that there was an intruder lurking around the property, waiting for the right time to strike. 

Every region around the world has at least one myth about a malevolent being who lurks in the woods. Around the Maules Forest in Switzerland, these stories center around Le Loyon – a mysterious man who stalks the woods in a flowing camouflage cloak.

Also known to locals as the ghost of Maules, Le Loyon was only ever referenced in stories  – there was no hard evidence of his existence. So, like many myths and urban legends, he was written off as little more than the work of someone’s overactive imagination.

Finally, in 2013, someone caught Le Loyon on camera. They shared the photograph, and news quickly spread among the locals. Soon after, the infamous cloak and gas mask were found hanging on a tree. With them was a note. 

At this point, any readers from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are probably thinking that the Ghost of Maules sounds a lot like a mythical character from their region – Charlie No-Face. This poor lost soul once wandered the roads around Pittsburgh at night, and his visage shocked many passersby. 

If you listen to the urban legend about Charlie No-Face, you’ll hear of a man who was hideously disfigured, either as a boy or as an adult, in a workplace accident. The exact nature of his accident differs depending on who tells the story. However, the man’s reaction to it remains the same. 

The real Green Man wasn’t green at all, nor was his name Charlie. However, some parts of his story are true. His name was Raymond Robinson, and he was involved in an accident as a child that led to severe injuries. 

Also known as the Night Doctors (which, for some reason, is infinitely creepier), this legend had a significant impact on the African American community. The legend tells of doctors who prowled the night, looking for African American victims to capture so they could perform hideous experiments on them. Sadly, this was very much grounded in reality. 

Though the night doctor myth was founded in reality, it was also used cynically by white landowners in the south who wanted to prevent former slaves from moving to the north. They spread fear of the night doctors to keep people from fleeing. 

This legend only served to widen racial divides and cause problems for Black people when they needed medical interventions. Studies have revealed that, over the years, many African American people have been hesitant to seek medical assistance for fear of what may be done to them without their consent. 

Let’s move on from the US for now (we will return later) and visit Japan for a more recent urban legend. The Legend of Alice revolves around a series of murders committed between 1999 and 2005. At each crime scene, detectives found the word “Alice” written somewhere in the vicinity.

The Alice murders certainly did take place, but they happened in Madrid, Spain. Of course, the Japanese legend made the murders far more mysterious than they actually were. In reality, a fellow by the name of Alfredo Galán shot his victims and dropped a playing card before fleeing the scene. 

The Madrid murderer was dubbed “the Playing Card Killer.” However, he never intended to leave these calling cards. He dropped one by accident at the first crime scene, and when the media sensationalized it, he decided to just go with it.  

After our brief trip to Japan, we’re now back in the US and on our way to Staten Island, New York. We’re hot on the heels of Cropsey – an ax-wielding killer who supposedly escaped from a local mental institution. At this point, the story probably sounds incredibly familiar. You definitely heard this urban legend as a kid, right? 

Willowbrook was once a school for kids with intellectual disabilities. However, it was closed down when allegations of torture and horrific mistreatment emerged. Though the school closed down, the horrors continued in the minds of locals who were told that Cropsey might kidnap them and drag them into the abandoned Willowbrook school to kill them. 

Back in the 1960s, schools weren’t so careful about who they hired, and Willowbrook offers a shocking example of what can go wrong when you hire the wrong person. They allowed a man named Andre Rand to work as a janitor – a man who eventually served time for kidnapping children.

Heading south now, let’s stop off in Mexico to see whether there’s any truth to the legend that a network of tunnels creates a kind of underworld inversion of the city of Puebla. This legend has persisted for more than a century, and as you’ve probably already surmised, it has some truth to it. 

Americans, Mexicans, and history buffs will be familiar with Puebla as the site of the Cinco de Mayo battle. Researchers believe the tunnel system may have been instrumental in the Mexican soldiers’ fight against (and victory over) the French Empire. 

Exploration of the tunnels commenced in 2015, revealing a whole network of passageways snaking and intersecting beneath the city of Puebla. By 2017, the local government had completed the restoration of certain tunnel sections, making it possible to open this underworld up to the public. 

This is one of the most common urban legends, told by kids in torchlight and used as the basis of an endless stream of slasher films. It’s also one of the most terrifying legends since most of us have been asked at one time or another to babysit younger siblings, nieces, nephews, and neighbors. 

Horror filmmakers seem to have it out for babysitters, regularly making them the targets of killers, ghosts, and demonic children. From the 1979 classic When a Stranger Calls to more recent films like Nanny (2022), babysitters are surprisingly popular characters in Hollywood. 

We’re back in the US for this story, this time in Missouri, where 13-year-old Janett Christman is babysitting a three-year-old neighbor. Once again, we’re not going to describe the details of what happened because it is beyond horrific. However, poor Jannett became the victim of a violent intruder. 

From Missouri, we’re heading due east to Virginia, where we’ll uncover one of the most unnerving stories on this list. We’ll also need to dial back the clock over a century to arrive at 1904. What we’re looking for is a bus loaded with patients from a mental institution. 

Animal lovers may wish to skip this section and move swiftly along to the final urban legend. The rest of you should brace yourselves because soon after the bus crash, the locals started finding the bodies of murdered bunnies hanging eerily from a nearby bridge. 

This is perhaps the most prevalent urban legend, one that comes in all sorts of variations. It even featured in cartoons like Daria, Spongebob Squarepants, and Shrek the Halls. For the few of you who’ve never heard the story, it generally starts with a couple making out in a car parked in the woods somewhere. 

While the story varies greatly from this point on, it generally involves the man leaving the car to take a leak and then the woman hearing a strange sound. Her boyfriend is always doomed, but occasionally the storyteller will allow the woman to escape. Do you want to know what happened in the real story? 

The Texarkana Moonlight Murders took place over a two-week period in 1946. The killer attacked eight people in a place called “lovers’ lane.” He killed five of them and, shockingly, got away with it. The police never caught up to him.