Scariest Urban Legends of All Time

Many popular urban legends were covered in the 2008 Hollywood slasher film, Urban Legend. It was followed by two sequels namely Urban Legends: Final Cut in 2000 and Urban Legends: Bloody Mary in 2005.

Most of you must have heard about the urban legend of Bloody Mary or may have even tried to summon her soul. Urban legends like these do not go away with time.

They are passed from one generation to the other. They are one of the most preferred topics of discussion among the younger generation because of which they spread like wildfire. However, elements of the legends get altered drastically over a period of time.

With the advent of Internet, emails, and social media, the information about these urban legends has reached millions of people across the globe. What makes these urban legends interesting is the fact that most of them have bizarre elements of horror and fear.

A considerable amount of mystery is also thrown in for a good measure. Hence, they enjoy a widespread circulation.

Where some stories have a moral undertone, the others are cautionary tales which discourage certain type of behavior. For example, the urban legend of a couple making out in the woods suggests that there may be predators who lurk in the dark and lonely places.

It also suggests that it is best to avoid visiting such secluded places. Here is a list of some of the most spine-chilling and downright scary urban legends of all time.
* Images in this article are used for representation purposes only.

Are you home alone or so you thought? Okay, so you have Lassie with you, but will it help? As per this popular urban legend, the parents of a girl left her alone in the house one night as they had to go out.

They asked her to lock the doors and left their family dog at home for the girl's protection. As night took over, the girl was awoken due to the sound of a dripping noise. She got up and went to the kitchen to check all the taps.

She turned the knobs of the taps to check if they were closed and came to her room. She then put her hand below the bed, and the dog licked it reassuringly. After sometime, she was woken up again by the same noise. This time too, she went and checked the taps in the bathroom.

She came back and once again put her hand below the bed. The dog licked it one more time and assured her of its presence.

The third time when she heard the dripping sound, she traced it to her cupboard. When she opened the cupboard, she was shocked to see her dog hung upside down. Its neck had been slithered. A dreadful note (written in blood) was also put up on the cupboard beside its body. It read: Humans Can Lick too.

Aspiring to get an Amy Winehouse beehive hairdo? Think again! It can not only pose a threat to your hair, but also to your life. As the (urban) legend has it, there was once a beautiful teenage girl who tied her hair up into a high beehive hairstyle.

She spent hours and hours teasing her hair into a high beehive and hardened the hairstyle by washing it with sugar-water syrup.

She left her hairstyle as it was for days at a stretch. She would carefully use a half pillow for her head while sleeping. She would make it a point to wrap her hair in a towel and sleep. This used to help in leaving her hairstyle in an intact position. One morning when she did not turn up at the breakfast table, her mother went to check on her.

She was horrified to find that the girl lay dead on her bed. On lifting the towel, it was found that her head and brain had been voraciously ravaged by the rats. They had got attracted to the sugar-water syrup and had also eaten into parts of her skull and brain.

Similar kind of legends also exist with maggots and spiders in place of rats. So, please do not attempt this hairstyle, and if you still want to get it, please undertake good pest control measures at your home!

We have all learned in school that hitchhiking a ride is not good or giving a lift to complete strangers is a red-carpet invitation to disaster. Still, the driver in this urban legend has the audacity to give a lift to a lonely woman (with a deadpan face) on a deserted road. This urban legend is often utilized as a tried and tested plot for horror films.

An innocent-looking damsel in distress hitchhikes a ride on a dark night. To add more to the suspense, she may hitchhike a ride right near a cemetery (still the driver is oblivious to the obvious cues). She stops a car that has no one except the driver. She then boards the car and takes a backseat.

She gives the driver her address and starts having a conversation with the driver. Everything about her bears an air of mystery. Once the car screeches in front of the driveway of her home, the driver turns back only to find that the woman has vanished in thin air.

He goes and knocks on the door and asks for the woman. An elderly lady says that she is her mother but declines the possibility that her daughter was in his car as she had already died about 6 years ago. So, at least now, think twice before giving lifts to random people.

This one has also been used as a plot for many serial killer movies. It is said that a couple were making out in their car, which was parked in a wooded area (safest of all places? not really!) one night. The girl realized that it was high time for her to get home.

The boy tried to start his car but it just wouldn't start. So, he decided that the best he could do was walk to the nearby gas station while the girl waited for him in the car.

At first, the girl was okay with the idea of waiting in the car alone because it was far safer than traversing the wooded area on feet in the dark.

However, when minutes turned into hours with no signs of the boy, the girl became anxious and nervous. She got even more scared when she started hearing noises of something scraping the car's roof.

She locked the car from inside and waited impatiently as the morning approached. She rushed outside when she saw two people walking past the car. All three of them froze in their place on seeing the harrowing sight that was in front of their eyes.

Someone had killed the girl's boyfriend and hung him by the tree, right above the car. His feet had been brushing against the rooftop the entire night and was responsible for the scraping sound. I think you are also haunted by the same question as me. Why did the killer leave the girl? Of course, who would have told the urban legend otherwise.

As if babysitting for three kids was not dangerous enough, here is a strange urban legend involving a babysitter and killer. It is said that a teenager was once babysitting for a couple's three children. After the couple had left to go to a restaurant, the babysitter tucked the children in their beds and came down to do her homework.

Her heart jumped with joy when the phone rang as she was expecting the call of her boyfriend. At first, there was silence from the other end, so she hung up the phone.

The next time the phone call came, someone inquired about the children in a man's voice. She thought that the concerned father of the children must have called up. But when the person began calling again and again and asked her to check on the children, she grew suspicious.

The caller called her once again and started predicting all her actions, what she was wearing, what was she watching on TV, her gestures, etc.

She immediately called the police, who initially rebuffed it as a prank call. But when she repeatedly called them for help, they traced the call to the upstairs bedroom in the house itself. They asked her to get out of the house immediately.

Just as she was trying to open the door, she saw a man standing near the door of the children's bedroom. As the door was latched, she somehow managed to rush outside where a police officer was standing. When the man was brought down, he was covered in blood. He had murdered all the three children ruthlessly.

This one made me check all the rooms of the hotels that I have stayed in so far. A couple once went to Las Vegas for their honeymoon. As soon as they checked into their suite, they started smelling a foul odor. They went and checked with the manager if they could get an alternate suite, but as everything was booked, that was not possible.

The manager assured the couple that he would send a maid and get the room cleaned at once and also gave them some free lunch coupons. However, when the couple returned from the lunch, the odor still persisted.

They went and checked with the manager to give them an accommodation in a different hotel. But as all the hotels were booked, they had no choice but to stay in that very same stinky room. The manager reassured them once again. The couple left for a few hours on a gambling trip.

The manager along with his staff personally inspected everything in the room, but did not find anything. He had his staff clean the room once again. When the couple returned, the foul odor still lingered in the room. So, the husband turned everything in the room topsy-turvy to trace the source of the smell.

Finally, he pulled the top mattress off the box-spring, and there lay a rotting dead body of a female. What we learn from this urban legend is that we should check our beds in hotels for bed bugs as well as dead bodies.

This one is a classic urban legend, which has been around for many years. One night, a teenage couple was getting cozy in the boy's car in a lover's lane. The boy started the radio for listening to some romantic music to enhance their mood.

Soon the music stopped, and there was an announcement that a convicted murderer had escaped the state asylum which was in the vicinity of the lover's lane. The announcement also mentioned that if anyone spotted a man with a hook in place of his right hand, he was to be reported to the police immediately.

The girl got frightened and wanted to go home on listening to the announcement. However, the boy continued to kiss the girl and assured her of safety.

Suddenly, the girl pushed the boy away and screamed that they must leave immediately. The boy, now frustrated, gave a jerk to the car and sped it through the lane.

When the car halted in front of the girl's house, she got out of the car and closed the door. As soon as she got out, she started screaming in fright because hanging from the side of the door was a Bloody Hook.

This is another babysitter story, but the focus of this one is on an evil clown. No, I do not suffer from coulrophobia (fear of clowns), but this urban legend does creep me out. According to this urban legend, a filthy rich family owned a large house with several rooms on the outskirts of the city.

As the parents had to go out to a dinner party, they called in for a teenage babysitter to look after their children. However, as the place had several expensive family heirlooms, the father told her to sit only in the TV room after she had put the children to bed.

The babysitter went to the TV room after she finished tucking the children in bed and started watching TV. However, she freaked out on seeing a clown statue in the corner, who seemed to be staring at her. She could not ignore the feeling of being watched.

The statue looked kind of oily, like a relic from the 1920s. She went to the other room and called up the father of the children, and told him that she wanted to sit in some other room because she was getting scared of the clown statue.

The father promptly told her to take the children, put them in her car, drive to the neighbor's house, and call the police immediately. When she asked him why, he told her to call him again when the police came.

The father then explained that they didn't have a clown statue in the first place and that the children had been complaining of a clown who watched them sleep in the night. The statue seemed to be a midget who lived in one of the rooms in their big house, fed on their food, and hid somewhere till everyone was asleep.

The search of the house did not yield anything. It is also said in some versions that the clown was not a midget and was in fact a patient from a nearby Psychiatric Unit which had been closed down.

This urban legend is very famous, especially among the university students. There are various versions of this one, and the universities and characters just keep changing. Here is one of the popular ones. There were two roommates in a dorm.

One was studious while the other enjoyed partying more than studying. One day, before their midterm exams, the studious one took to studying while the other one went to a party.

She returned at around 2 am in the morning. She assumed her roommate must have slept after studying till late and did not intend to disturb her sleep. So, she slowly crept in her room which was dark.

She heard heavy breathing sounds from one end of the room and smelled a strange metallic odor. She could also hear some kind of dripping sound. She quietly picked up her books and went to the basement to study.

At around 6 am, she returned to her room which still had the strange odor. Suddenly, she was shocked to see the horrific scene before her eyes. There lay her roommate, who had been slaughtered on her bed in a pool of blood.

Her blood was dripping on the carpet. What she saw next horrified her further - her roommate's blood was used to write on the wall above her bed. It read: "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?"

A long time ago, after completing 50 years of marriage, a couple was so close to each other that they could literally understand and predict each other's innate thoughts. However, one day, the woman slipped into a coma and passed away after a few days.

Her husband was devastated on hearing this news. The doctors declared the woman dead; however, her husband was so disturbed that he kept on claiming that she was still alive. He was not ready to leave his wife's side, so they had to take him away to prepare her body for the funeral.

In olden days, people were buried in their own backyard and also the bodies did not undergo an embalming procedure. Even after his repeated protests, the burial of his wife took place right behind his house.

On the very same night, he had a dream that his wife was frantically scratching the coffin from inside in order to get out. He called the doctor to get permission to exhume her body. However, the doctor denied it outright.

For a week, each night, the old man had the same nightmare, and he kept on begging the doctor to exhume her body. At last, the doctor gave in to his request. As the coffin was opened, everyone was stunned to see that there were scratch marks inside the coffin, and the nails of the body had been bent backwards. What a dreadful way to die! Sigh.

These are just few of the many urban legends that keep circulating around. Few of them have even been debunked. For example, contrary to the popular urban legend, Walt Disney's body was not cryogenically frozen, as he was cremated and his ashes were interred.

Whether you choose to believe in these scary urban legends or not, there is one thing that you would surely agree to - that they are thoroughly entertaining with creative twists and turns.