Urban Legends

Urban Legends

-Brianna Jacobs

Here are some examples of Urban Legends

1.) A lunatic has hidden razor blades in apples
2.) A murderer is behind that ghostface mask
3.) Your kid’s candy could be laced with drugs or poison
4.) Those temporary tattoos aren’t safe either
5.) The apples you’re bobbing for have been poisoned
6.) You will summon Bloody Mary by saying her name three times
7.) Killer clowns are on the loose
8.) Kidnappers are out in full force on Halloween
9.) That Halloween decorations is a real dead body
10.) Satanists sacrifice black cats on Halloween
11.) The white chapel
12.) The Bunny Man

What makes an Urban Legend?

Urban Legends are made from stories that happened, well people think they did.
Most of the time the urban legends you hear are twisted stories or stories made up
after a tragedy. Like the Slender Man story originated from a tragedy at an asylum.
There was a bloody rampage and they had thought they saw a man hiding in the
stairs from a photograph. After that they had thought they saw him behind kids
trying to kill them. They say he kills his victims, most of his victims are children.

A lunatic has hidden razor blades in apples

No child has ever been killed by eating halloween candy from strangers. Even
though stories and urban legends of death from poisoned candy and razor blades
secreted away inside of apples have long surrounded halloween, this isn't
something that ever happened.

While no one’s ever died from chowing down on an apple filled with razor blades,
there have been injuries stemming from pranks for parents to get a lawsuit going,
these cases were blown out or proportion and added to the urban legend that
reminds children not to take candy from stranger,or anyone really.

A murder is behind that ghostface mask

First, there was Michael Myers. Then Jason. Then, nearly two decades later, Wes Craven’s horror
smash Scream presented us with a new, instantly recognizable character: Ghostface. And as
result, of course, Halloween became a prime time to wear that mask (and for people to worry
whether a real murderer was hiding behind one of them). After all, if everyone is wearing one, how
can you know who poses a threat to you?

Apparently, there were indeed a handful of murders after Scream came out that were inspired by
the movie. In one, the killer wore a Ghostface mask while brutally stabbing his victim with kitchen
knives. The bottom line: you never know who is behind a mask, but thankfully, it’s usually just a
harmless trick-or-treater….

Your kid’s candy could be laced with drugs or poison

Rumors of tainted, poisoned or otherwise murderous halloween candy handed out to unsuspecting
youngsters are as much a part of the Halloween tradition as costumes and sing-song pleas for
sweets. The myth goes like this—no kid is safe on October 31 because psychotic murderers may
hand out tainted treats to trick-or-treating children. But is poisoned Halloween candy a terrifying
threat or an urban legend?

“Many, if not most, reports of Halloween sadism are of questionable authenticity,” write sociologists
and criminal justice experts Joel Best and Gerald T. Horiuchi.When they conducted an extensive
study on so-called “Halloween sadism,” or crimes specifically committed using Halloween treats or
customs, they concluded that the threat is greatly exaggerated.

Those temporary tattoos aren’t safe either

Starting in the 1970s, rumors began spreading that people were handing out temporary tattoos to
kids, which doesn’t seem so bad. Kids like temporary tattoos. They’re fun. But they’re not so much
fun if they’re laced with LSD that gets absorbed into the skin once applied—and that was the crux
of this hoax. It originally started as a Blue Star tattoo, but subsequent versions feature Bart
Simpson, Superman, and Mickey Mouse. Thankfully, there is no evidence of this ever actually
happening.

The apples you’re bobbing for have been poisoned

Bobbing for apples is an old-school Halloween tradition and, originally, it was a kind of
matchmaking game for young women. Originally, there were several variations of the game in
which a woman would supposedly learn the fate of her love life based on which apple she picked.
But much like the poison-in-the-candy and razor-blade-in-the-apple myths, something went
wrong…

You will summon Bloody Mary by saying her name three times

This ancient urban legend isn’t entirely specific to Halloween, but many of its versions involve
performing the incantation on Halloween night. It says that if you stare at yourself in a mirror
while saying “Bloody Mary” three times, some demonic woman will appear from the other side and
possibly try to drag you into her parallel universe. If you do this and see an angry woman staring
back at you, it’s probably your mom, who’s just walked into your room and is wondering why you’re
being so silly.

Killer clowns are on the loose

Clowns have always been both a source of amusement (and fear). Interestingly, did you know that
the fear of clowns, or coulrophobia, is actually a common phobia also among adults? Serial killer
John Wayne Gacy, who was dubbed “the Killer Clown” because he sometimes dressed as a clown,
is one reason that people may find clowns threatening. And Stephen King’s It certainly didn’t help
their images either.

But there’s more to it than that. Experts believe the fear of clowns may be due to the uncanny
effect in which people find things that “look human but aren’t quite there” extremely unsettling. To
make things even scarier, in 2016, there was a strange outbreak of creepy clown sightings, from
New York all the way to Florida. And this wasn’t an urban legend.

Kidnappers are out in full force on halloween

The truth: kids aren’t at a greater risk of being kidnapped on Halloween than they are on any other
day of the year. But it has happened, and those cases tend to get a lot of media attention. The fear
of kidnappers on Halloween night has become so strong that in North America it inspired a new
tradition: trunk-or-treat. HuffPost Canada reports that church groups were the first to start the
trunk-or-treat activity, which limits trick-or-treating to a closed environment and subsequently
makes the tradition safer for kids. Of course, parents can also trick-or-treat with their children to
make sure they stay safe.

That halloween decorations is a real dead body

This urban legend persists not just because people are splurging on expensive decorations but
because it has some real-life backup. The website Thought Catalog details a number of stories in
which people thought they were looking at a fake body but instead were looking at an actual victim
of murder, suicide or accidental death. As awful and tragic as those stories are, they are rare. The
overwhelming majority of the time, those lifelike decorations are thankfully just decorations.

Satanists sacrifice black cats on Halloween

In ancient and medieval times, some ritual sacrifices involved cats and other domestic animals.
And we all know that black cats have long been associated with bad luck and witchcraft. Luckily
these days there’s no reports (and definitely no proof) that Satanic cults are roaming the streets,
looking for black cats to sacrifice on Halloween or any other day. However, animal experts say that
you should worry more about the dangers that Halloween treats pose to your furry friends.
Chocolate and candy can be toxic to the.

The white chapel

There was something utterly calculated about the Ripper murders, which took place in the
Whitechapel area of East London in the autumn of 1888, and which produced a morbid sense of
shock and panic. Jack’s first victim was identified as Mary Ann Nicholls, a prostitute who had lived
in one of the the worst slums in London. Her body was discovered by a cart driver one night down a
narrow, cobbled street along Bucks Row.

Although it was clear, even in the darkness, that she had been murdered, it was only when Mary’s
body was taken to the local mortuary that a number of even more disturbing details were revealed
to the police. The woman’s throat had been cut so deeply that her vertebrae were exposed and her
abdomen had been slashed open with a jagged incision that ran from the bottom of the ribs to the
pelvis. It was as if someone had hacked and slashed at her in some sort of frenzy.

The bunny man

I’m under a bridge on Colchester Road in Fairfax County, listening to an Amtrak train speeding by overhead.
Some would say I’m putting my life at risk right now — and not only by lingering near the railroad tracks.
According to local lore, this bridge is one of the most dangerous locations in Northern Virginia. Hang around
here at midnight on Halloween, and you could be butchered by the Bunnyman. The bridge is where I meet
journalist Matt Blitz. He heard the Bunnyman legend as a teenager growing up in Fairfax County. The story
as he tells it is that in 1904, there was an asylum not far from this bridge.

Clifton residents didn’t like the idea of mental patients near their new homes, so they got it shut down, and
all the patients were taken by bus to Lorton prison. “Then the bus swerved and crashed,” Blitz says. “They
were able to locate all the inmates that were on that bus, except for one.” The escaped mental patient was
named Douglas Griffon. After the crash, he disappeared. Weeks passed, and rabbit corpses began appearing
in the woods. Douglas was apparently eating bunnies to stay alive. This went on for a while. Then one
Halloween night, a group of kids were hanging around the bridge. “They reported seeing some sort of bright
light or orb,” Blitz says, “and then in a flash, they’d all been strung up like [the] bunnies — gutted and
hanging from this bridge.”The missing mental patient was, of course, assumed to be the killer.“And the
rumor goes, if you come here on Halloween night at midnight, you’ll end up just like those kids and those
bunnies,” Blitz says. This all sounds unlikely. For one, there was never an asylum in Clifton, and for another,
1904 was an awfully early time for buses to be on the roads. But it’s been said that every urban legend is
based on a kernel of truth. And Brian Conley is the guy who set out to find that truth.