Most of us have had experiences of hearing urban legends & folklore, whether it be fairies stealing children and swapping them for changelings, or the ghostly hitchhiker sitting in the back of the car. A famous example of an urban legend was ‘Spring-heeled Jack’, a vicious, fire breathing apparition that terrified those living in London during Victorian times. Like a lot of urban legends, Spring-heeled Jack lived through rumour. A journalist for The Morning Herald (a London paper at the time) wrote ‘although the stories were in everybody’s mouth, no person who had actually seen the ghost could be found’ (10th January 1838). Here is a selection of some of my favourite urban legends that have caught my attention.
10 – The Licked Hand
This is an old one but still rather creepy! A young woman is home alone, with only her dog for company. The news is reporting on a killer in her neighbourhood, so she locks the windows and doors and goes to bed, dog in tow. The young woman falls asleep in the bed and the dog under the bed. She wakes in the night and hears a noise, something dripping in the bathroom. Unnerved she reaches down to her dog to reassure herself and receives a lick on her hand. The next morning, she wakes and goes to use the bathroom, to find her dog butchered and hanging in the shower. The blood is dripping. On the wall, in blood, is written ‘HUMANS CAN LICK TOO’. So firstly, I’m devastated about that dog, poor pupper. Secondly, there are few versions of this story. In some she’s an old woman. In some the dog lives (yay!). A possible background to this story’s whereabouts is in the 1919 story ‘The Diary of Mr. Poynter’ by M. R. James, involving a man stroking his dog whilst reading a manuscript account of a death of a young student. As it happens, the creature he is stroking turns out not be his dog…
9 – The Suicidal Boyfriend
This is another old one that has done the rounds for some time, each with a slight variation. Two college students, boyfriend, and girlfriend go out for a drive together in his car. They drive to a forest so they can have a little ‘private time’ (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). When they’re finished, the boyfriend steps out of the car to smoke a cigarette and his girlfriend remains inside. After waiting for a few minutes, the girlfriend gets out of the car to see if she can see him, to no avail. Worried, she gets back into the car and locks the door. She starts hearing a faint squeak, then another one; it seems close by and starts to panic her. The girlfriend waits a little longer, until she’s completely freaked out and tries to drive off. She puts her foot to the pedal, but the car isn’t moving; someone has tied a rope to the bumper. She slams her foot down again and hears a scream. The girlfriend stops and gets out of the car, to see the rope attached to the back of the car and her boyfriend attached to the other end, hanging from a tree. The squeaking was his shoes on the car roof, trying to escape from the rope that had been placed around his neck…
8 -Stick Indians
Stick Indians are malevolent creatures that live deep in the forests of the Northwest Indian tribes. Some people believe that the name comes from their forest habitat, others say it is from their habit of thrusting sticks into people while they slept. The descriptions of these evil creatures vary throughout the different tribes; the Nez Perces refer to the Stick Indians as ‘little people’, but others say they are giant creatures. The Salish tribes say they resemble ‘Bigfoot’. Stick Indians aren’t often seen and tend to come out at night rather than in the daytime. They have been described as large, clothed with animal skins and with voices that resemble bird & animal noises. According to legend, many Stick Indians will play annoying, but relatively harmless pranks on local villages, for example, taking food or moving fishing nets. However, when the Stick Indians felt under threat, they would become vindictive and seek revenge. Some believe they have the power to hypnotise humans, to inflict anxiety and dread and to even cause instant insanity. People from the tribes who disappeared were assumed to have been taken by the Stick Indians, sometimes to act as slaves or wives. And sometimes, to be punished for disrespecting them…
7 – Umm Al Duwais
Umm Al Duwais is a female jinni (a genie), who, in Arabic legends, can either be good, bad, or neutral. Umm Al Duwais was tall and slim, with long black hair and an unnatural beauty, always dressed perfectly and smelling of stunning exotic perfumes. She would tempt men with her appearance and her sensual voice. When these poor unsuspecting men got near to her, her real identity of a monstrous old woman creature would appear; a face so hideous no one could look at it. Umm Al Duwais would then kill the men she had seduced…
6– The Slit Mouthed Woman or Uchigake Onna
The slit-mouthed woman is a common Japanese urban legend. It is said that she is a beautiful woman, with long black hair and a surgical mask and haunts the street after sunset. In life she was married to a samurai warrior, who cut her after discovering she cheated on him. She will approach people and ask, ‘Am I pretty?’. If the person replies she is, she will remove her mask to reveal a disfigured face, with a slit mouth grinning ear to ear. ‘Even like this?’ she will ask. Don’t reply ‘yes’ because she will cut your mouth with scissors. Don’t say ‘no’ because she will cut you in half with a scythe (handy thing to be carrying around). It’s rumoured that the trick is to say she looks ‘average’, which will confuse her, and she will leave...
5– Teke Teke
Teke Teke is another Japanese urban legend, again featuring the ghost of a young woman. When alive, she fell onto a live railway track and was cut in half by the train. Her vengeful spirit haunts train stations and urban areas after sunset. Horrifyingly, she drags herself around on her elbows or by her hands, her torso sliding on the floor behind her. If you listen, you can hear her saying ‘teke teke’ in a rasping voice. If you encounter her, Teke Teke will chase you and slice you in half to mimic her own injuries…
There is a more specific version of this story, involving a young woman called Kashima Reiko. It’s said that she fell onto the railway track and her legs ended up being severed by a train; she died from her injuries. The urban legend claims she haunts public bathrooms, asking people ‘do you know where my legs are?’ If you answer in a way that doesn’t please her, she will remove your legs. You may survive by replying that her legs are on the railway, or by saying ‘kamen shinin ma’; that means ‘mask death demon’.
4 – La Mala Hora or La Malora/La Malogra
La Mala Hora is a (sometimes) beautiful, long haired woman who appears dressed in white, walking down the street in Mexican legend. Her name means The Evil Hour or The Evil Doer. She hunts for those who are travelling alone. Sometimes, if you see her, she will hypnotise you, freezing you to the spot, before rushing towards you and suffocating you. Your corpse is left at the side of the road for others to find the next day. Other times she can be floating, her feet not touching the ground as she glides along. When she appears like this, she is considered an omen of death. A story I kept reading about involved a woman who was staying with a friend one night while her husband was away on business. She left her house just after midnight and was driving down the quiet roads and she approached a crossroads. A dark shape loomed in front of the car and the woman slammed on her brakes and screamed. When she looked up, the dark shape had disappeared but, just as she thought she was safe, she turned her head right. There, at the window, was the face of an old woman, haggard and distorted, with red eyes and a mouth full of short, sharp teeth. The woman, who was quite understandably terrified, started the car and raced away from the scene. Much to her horror, the old woman creature was keeping up with the car until eventually she fell away. The woman watched in her rear-view window the old woman creature growing taller and larger until she was the size of a tree. The woman eventually arrives at her friend’s house and races inside before explaining what she had seen. The friend gasped, ‘it must have been La Mala Hora, The Evil One. They say she only appears at a crossroads when someone is about to die’. The next day, the woman returned home to find a police car in her drive waiting for her. Her husband had been mugged and killed. At just after midnight…
3 – The Loch Ness Monster
I love a good Nessie story and over the years there have been many. Scotland’s Loch Ness has been rumoured to host a giant, underwater monster for many years, the first written account of a sighting dating back to 565AD. In 1933 a road adjacent to Loch Ness was finished and offered a perfect view of the water. A couple claimed to have seen an animal crossing their path before disappearing into the water. They compared it to a ‘dragon or prehistoric monster’. Many photos have been taken over the years as ‘proof’, and nearly as many have been debunked as hoaxes. There are rumours that Nessie is a plesiosaur, a dinosaur thought extinct. Others say she’s a shark, an eel, or a sturgeon. Sonar explorations have proved nothing. In 2018 a DNA survey was taken of the waters; there were no signs of a plesiosaur or similar large animal although it did indicate the presence of eels. There are similar stories over the world; Ogopogo is a lake monster in Okanagan Lake, Canada. Manipogo is said to live in Lake Manitoba, Canada. Bessie, in Lake Eerie, Ohio. Brosno Dragon, Brosno Lake, Russia. And many, many more. Coincidence that the world is full of these similar lake legends, or something a little more interesting…?
2 – Bloody Mary
Ahhhh, Bloody Mary. Were you even a teenage girl in the 90s if you didn’t chant her name 3 times in the mirror whilst at a sleepover? Historically a young woman would look into a mirror by candlelight. Eventually, the face of their future husband would appear, or a skull to indicate that they would die before having a chance to marry. Now, the ritual usually involves more than one person who invoke Bloody Mary by chanting her name into a mirror in a dimly lit room. The number of times her name is said varies throughout legend but most commonly seems to be 3 or 13 times. Bloody Mary will appear, sometimes as a friendly entity, sometimes as a malevolent spirit, sometimes as a blood covered corpse. If you look around to see her, she can drag you away. There is a history to Bloody Mary; Mary was a real, person who was known as a witch, basically because she lived in the forest in a cabin and sold herbal remedies to the locals. Young girls started going missing in the village and people were looking all around for them, even venturing near Mary’s cabin. Mary denied any knowledge of the girls whereabouts, but her answers were met with suspicion. Villagers started talking about her changed appearance; once appearing old and haggard, she was now youthful looking. One night, Mary was caught trying to entice a young girl towards her cabin using a wand. The villagers were outraged and set about her. Mary tried to escape but was caught and brutally burnt alive at the stake. As the flames engulfed her, she screamed a curse upon the villagers; if they ever dared to speak her name into a mirror she would return and get her revenge. If she appears in the mirror, she may take your soul to burn for eternity, just as her body had that fateful night…
1 - The Slender Man
Perhaps one of the most famous urban legends, Slender Man and his story started out as a photoshop project on an Internet forum, created by Victor Surge on June 8th, 2009. People then started to add their own photos, a backstory, and then their own ‘experiences’ of Slender Man. 2 years after the original post, Slender Man gained a definition:
‘The Slender Man is a supernatural creature that is described as appearing as a normal human being, but he is described as being 8 feet tall and has vectors or extra appendages that are described to be as sharp as swords. The creature is known to stalk humans and cause many disappearances. He is described as a shadow creature that has missing a face. The creature fits into many mythologies in legends from nations such as Germany and Celts which brings up the possibility that he could be real. A man named Victor Surge found this legend and made his own version of it which he called Slender Man. The Slender man is not exactly evil according to mythology, but Victor Surge’s version shows him as an evil creature that stalks humans to kill. In mythology he was actually trying to save you from a painful death by taking you to the underworld early’ (Yahoo Answers).
Slender Man does not directly kill his victims but encourages others to do it for him. There has been a film based on this urban legend (it’s total pants to be fair) and, more disturbingly, an attempted murder of a young girl by two 12-year-olds was influenced by their belief in The Slender Man. He may not be alive, but he certainly lives in the souls of some…
Bonus Legend – The Body in The Bed
For years and years there has been the urban legend of the body in the bed, hidden in the mattress or in the drawers underneath. Hotel occupants would fall asleep, before waking to a horrendous odour within the room. Many stories would describe how, after searching the room, a corpse would be found much to the disgust of the hotel staff, and certainly to whoever had been happily slumbering away on top of them. The awful thing about this urban legend is …it’s not actually an urban legend at all. There have been numerous cases of corpses found under beds and in mattresses. One of the earliest accounts was from 1982. 3 men were running car theft scams, but 2 of them decided to gang together and kill the other one. They stayed in a New Jersey motel room, where they fed him a burger laced with cyanide. Once the poison kicked in, they decided to strangle him as well (quite literally, overkill). His body was stuffed under the bed and left. The room was rented out over the next few days; guests complained about the smell, but nothing was done. The corpse was finally found on 27th December 1982, four days after it was left. Isn’t it comforting to know that rooms are thoroughly cleaned before you stop there…
Urban legends shouldn’t always be seen as negative, scary tales. They are basically modern ghost stories, something for communities to discuss and embellish on as time goes on, a storyteller’s entertainment. But how much of the legend is story telling & embellishment? And how much is truth? Thanks for reading, look after yourselves and I will see you soon!
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