Ever get chills from a spooky story told around a campfire or whispered online? Many popular urban legends feel so real because, sometimes, they are. Crime, in its darkest forms, has often been the seed for tales that haunt our collective imagination. Prepare to look over your shoulder as we uncover ten urban legends with disturbing origins in actual true crimes.
10. The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs
This classic tale features a teenage babysitter, home alone with sleeping children. She receives unsettling phone calls from a mysterious man asking, “Have you checked on the children?” The terrifying twist? The calls are coming from inside the house.
This widely known urban legend likely draws its chilling power from a real-life horror. In 1950, in Colombia, Missouri, 13-year-old Janett Christman was tragically raped and murdered while babysitting. Police discovered she had tried to call for help, the phone improperly placed back on its receiver. The baby she was watching was unharmed. The similarities to another Missouri case in 1946, where Mary Lou Jenkins was strangled with a phone cord while alone, may have further cemented this legend in our minds.
9. The Man in the White Van
The “stranger danger” talk often includes a warning about men in white vans luring children with candy. This urban legend depicts a common fear for parents everywhere.
The basis for this fear could stem from the horrific crimes of Dean Corll, active in Texas from 1970 to 1973. Corll, who worked at his family’s candy company, was notorious for giving candy to local children. He was even asked by a local school to stop because children would dangerously cross busy streets to get sweets from him. Corll drove a white van, and at least two of his twenty-eight known victims were last seen getting into it. His actions painted a grim picture that matches the legend perfectly.
8. Tainted Candy
Every Halloween, parents worry about strangers tampering with their children’s candy. This fear, though rarely realized through random acts, has a horrifying real-life counterpart.
Often called “The Candyman,” Ronald Clark O’Bryan poisoned his own eight-year-old son, Timothy, on Halloween in 1974. Struggling with debt, O’Bryan laced Pixy Stix with cyanide and gave them to his children, hoping to collect life insurance money. Timothy died after eating the poisoned candy. The coroner found enough cyanide in his system to kill three adults. Though no widespread cases of strangers poisoning Halloween candy have been confirmed, O’Bryan’s despicable crime cast a long, dark shadow over the holiday.
7. The Hook Man
This classic campfire story tells of a couple parked on a secluded lover’s lane. They hear a news report about an escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand. After hearing a strange scratching sound, they speed off, only to find a bloody hook dangling from their car door.
While numerous killers have targeted couples, the Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946 offer a chilling parallel. An unidentified attacker, known as the “Phantom Killer,” assaulted couples in parked cars. In one instance, a couple was forced from their car at gunpoint and attacked, surviving only because their assailant fled when he saw approaching headlights. The Phantom Killer murdered five people before vanishing, never to be identified. The Hook Man legend emerged in the late 1950s, and these unsolved crimes likely fueled the terrifying tale.
6. The Killer Behind the Medicine Cabinet
Popularized by the 1990s horror film Candyman, this legend suggests that someone could enter an apartment by crawling through the space behind a medicine cabinet if it’s not backed by a solid wall.
Shockingly, this happened in Chicago in 1987. Ruthie Mae McCoy called the police, reporting that someone was trying to break into her apartment through her bathroom cabinet. She was later found shot multiple times. Residents in her building were aware of this structural flaw, stating that it had been exploited for break-ins for at least a year before McCoy’s tragic murder. The police faced criticism for not entering her apartment sooner after her call.
5. The Sack Man
Known as “El Hombre del Saco” in Spain, this boogeyman figure is an old man who carries a large sack to snatch misbehaving children. While many cultures have similar sack-carrying monsters, the Spanish version has a gruesome link to a real crime.
The “Crime of Gádor” in Spain, 1910, involved the murder of a young boy. His body was found with severe injuries. The investigation led to Francisco Leona, a barber, who confessed to kidnapping the boy by stuffing him in a sack. He then took the child to a remote farm where the boy was murdered. The horrific motive was to use the boy’s blood and organs for a supposed tuberculosis cure, a gruesome task for which Leona was paid a significant sum of money.
4. The Body in the Hotel Mattress
This is a stomach-churning urban legend where unsuspecting hotel guests sleep on or near a bed containing a decomposing body. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a legend; it has happened multiple times.
One early reported case was in 1999 at the Burgundy Motor Inn in Atlantic City. The body of Saul Hernandez was found under a bed. Two tourists had slept in the room, unknowingly above the body, attributing a foul smell to something else. Housekeeping later made the grim discovery. More recently, in 2019, San Juana Marcias was found deceased inside a bed frame in an Austin hotel, several days after her death. Her boyfriend was later arrested for her murder.
3. The Hermit
For an astonishing twenty-seven years, cabin owners in North Pond, Maine, experienced petty thefts. What was strange was that only basic supplies like food, blankets, and occasionally odd items like all the batteries in a house were taken. Nothing of significant monetary value was ever stolen.
This created the legend of the North Pond Hermit. Despite decades of these consistent, minor burglaries, no one had ever seen the thief. The mystery was solved in 2013 with the arrest of Christopher Thomas Knight. Knight had retreated into the woods at age twenty and lived in near-total isolation for twenty-seven years, surviving by committing these small burglaries – about 40 per year. He was sentenced to seven months in jail.
2. Slavemaster
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a terrifying chain email circulated, warning women about an internet user named “Slavemaster.” The email claimed this individual had murdered fifty-six women and urged recipients to forward the message to keep their friends safe.
This digital urban legend had a horrifyingly real connection. In 2000, John Robinson was arrested after authorities discovered the bodies of four women on his property. Robinson was found to have frequented BDSM online forums, using the username “Slavemaster,” to find his victims. Even after his arrest, the chain letter continued to circulate, a testament to how legends can take on a life of their own.
1. The Blue Whale Challenge
Before the “Momo Challenge” caused widespread panic, there was the “Blue Whale Challenge.” This supposed internet game, allegedly originating in Russia, involved players completing 50 tasks over 50 days, with the final task being suicide.
The story gained traction after a Russian teenager’s death in 2015. Rumors quickly spread online, linking her death to this sinister game. In 2016, Philipp Budeikin was arrested for encouraging teenagers to commit suicide. He claimed to have invented the challenge in 2013. While Budeikin’s claim to be the mastermind is unconfirmed, he was found to have communicated with minors online, and it’s plausible he intended to manipulate vulnerable individuals. Although direct links between deaths and the challenge are debated, the fear it generated highlighted the potential dangers lurking in online spaces.
The line between folklore and fact can be terrifyingly thin. These stories serve as a stark reminder that sometimes the most unsettling tales are those with roots in reality. The shadows of true crime often stretch far, shaping the stories we tell in the dark.
What other urban legends do you know that might have true crime origins? Leave your comment below!
