Top 10 Scary Halloween Urban Legends You Should Pray Aren't Real

Top 10 Scary Halloween Urban Legends You Should Pray Aren't Real
from the origins of Halloween to the tales of the Headless Horseman and all the spooky or cautionary tales in between here are the top 10 scary Halloween urban legends you should pray aren't real starting off in our number 10 spot we have the two Realms to start this list off today we've got to take it right back to the origins of Halloween or All Hallows Eve as it used to be called Legend has it that around this time of year the veil between our world and the spirit world fins in the Two Worlds Collide this makes it easier for spirits to cross over to the realm of the living and vice versa the origins of Halloween date back to the ancient Celtic Festival of soen this was an end-of-year celebration 2000 years ago that marks the end of summer and harvest and marked the beginning of dark cold Winters which was often a Time marked with death on the night of October 31st they celebrated because they believed that the ghosts of the Dead were returning to Earth these ghosts would cause trouble they'd damage crops but it was also thought that Druids which are called priests would be able to make predictions for the future aside from these ancient Origins there are many other cultures that have similar types of celebrations believing the same thing that the veil between the Realms has thinned in our number nine spot today we have the haunted house prop this urban legend was one that was super popular back in 2014 for a very spooky reason Legend has it that in that year there was a 71 year old man who went completely undiscovered for over two weeks as he lay in a haunted house in Illinois this man had passed away and although people could see him they were mistaking him as a prop or dummy that was just a part of the haunted house not as an actual corpse definitely a terrifying story and an absolute nightmare I mean could you possibly imagine luckily this is all just the stuff of urban legends and as far as I can tell it isn't something that actually happened fingers crossed in our number eight spot today we have laced candy every year we hear countless stories of parents warning all of the many people out there who are deranged lunatics who are lacing Halloween candy Urban legend with poison I heard it as a kid I'm sure my parents heard it when they were kids it's not new to hear these stories but what I didn't know is that many of these stories are largely just the stuff of urban legends I am certainly not suggesting that we should just stop checking the candy after coming home from trick-or-treating you truly do never know when it comes to strangers but what I am saying is that these cautionary tales aren't necessarily based on things that actually happened in 1964 there was a woman named Helen who gave out insect traps that clearly were marked as poisonous steel wool pads and dog biscuits she handed them out to the trick-or-treaters but apparently she just meant it as a joke because she felt many of the children trick-or-treating at her house were too old to participate she did end up getting arrested for this joke or not but the story made national news Joel best who's a professor of sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware actually wrote a study on this exact Concept in 1985 that examined cases like this and he found that many of these instances were pretty much all jokes that had gone awry or just unverifiable rumors rather than people actively trying to be evil and harmful of course that's not to say that it's never happened it definitely has but the most famous cases of these sort of Halloween poisonings didn't come from strangers handing out candy and instead happened by family members towards other family members definitely still check the candy it's important to do so but also don't believe all of the rumors you hear in our number 7 spot today we have the Headless Horseman this is a classic Halloween tale that many of us are likely familiar with this Halloween sort of figure originated in the 1820s short story quote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow which was written by author Washington Irving little did Washington know that this story and character in particular would go on to have a major influence on pop culture even still the legend of the Headless Horseman begins in Sleepy Hollow New York during the American Revolutionary War and it was here that the horsemen was actually a trooper who was killed in the battle of the White Plains on October 28 1776. the way he died is quite gruesome but it's no surprise because as his name would suggest he lost his head while his comrades carried his body off of the battlefield no one was waiting around to collect the pieces of his head eventually when they buried him in the cemetery he later rose from the dead as a ghost determined to find his missing dead some versions of the story have him wielding a Jack-o-Lantern as a sort of replacement head many versions of this story claim that he rose from the dead on you guessed it Halloween night which is exactly why this tale has gone on to become a classic Halloween story in our number six spot today we have the spider wig not to be confused with a spider pig there are some spooky Halloween legends on this list today but this one really is the stuff of nightmares it's the classic tale of the Halloween trick-or-treater or party goer who is feeling a little more DIY inclined that year feeling that homemade costume Vibe they head up to the attic to fetch one of Grandma's old wigs it's the perfect thing to complete the costume just a few bobby pins and you're good to go the wig is itchy but it's old and Dusty and sometimes beauty is pain off to the Halloween party you go but you start to find that the wig is really itchy like you can't possibly ignore it kind of itchy and you're scratching and people are noticing but it turns out that it's not the itching that they're looking at suddenly hundreds of arachnids start Urban Legend in America fleeing out of the wig and come down crawling all over you the party it's spider Madness listen The Headless Horseman is spooky but this one is just a little too real in our number five spot today we have The Hitchhiker this story starts off on an extremely stormy Halloween night a man is driving down the highway just trying to make it to his destination safely when he sees a hitchhiker on the side of the road shocked that anyone would be hitchhiking in this bad of a storm he figured that he must have been in a huge rush and pulled over to pick the man up The Hitchhiker got in the car and the pair took off The Hitchhiker was giving off some weird Vibes and was mostly silent for the ride so the driver began asking him simple questions to get a conversation started and to try and get to know the stranger that he had just picked up the hitchhiker gave mostly one word response says and didn't give away much information about where he had been or where he was going as they drove the radio was playing a news show because the hitchhiker had mentioned that he wasn't much of a music person after several miles of travel the news announcer on the radio said that there were reports of a patient escaping from a psychiatric institution The Hitchhiker quickly turned the channel saying that he hated the news guy hates music hates news what are we supposed to listen to the driver didn't reply to this and The Hitchhiker picked up on what the driver must have been thinking and said don't worry I'm not the killer okay the driver continued to pry and asked what The Hitchhiker did for a living He revealed that he was a writer and was currently working on a book about a serial killer the driver decided not to respond to this and just focus on the road and getting to where he could just drop this guy off the driver turned the news channel back on only to hear a new announcement that they had stated they were getting more information on the escaped patient they said that his name was Simon Hughes and that he is extremely dangerous and unpredictable they said that the patient had escaped by pretending to be one of the hospital staff and that he had stolen a car and drove off this prompted The Hitchhiker to ask the driver what he said his name was the driver responded with my name is Simon Hughes growing up hearing this story like I learned what a plot twist was eight-year-old Olivia never saw that Urban Legend Online coming nope blindsided in our number four spot today we have the horrible predictions a recurring Halloween myth is that there is this imminent threat of mass slayings the story always has some sort of a psychic predicting these horrible things on some kind of a news program but the details of what is going to happen are always like annoyingly vague it'll suggest that the threat is against something starting with the letter M or some other really vague clue that drives everyone into a panic or at least a large number of the population with the internet nowadays and Photoshop and memes this is one legend that is only getting way easier to spread each year in our number three spot today we have the tattoo troubles this is a classic Halloween warning that is has been circulating around and it has to do with those temporary tattoos that sometimes get handed out on Halloween you may or may not have been warned before that these tattoos might be laced with something despite these terrifying Tales there has never been a recorded instance of this happening and I mean when we really think about it that logistically makes sense but just like checking the Halloween candy thing if it's not true that's great but I'll still err on the side of caution just in case in our number two spot today we have knock knock this Legend starts off with a man describing an old apartment he used to live in with an annoying upstairs neighbor the neighbor was a weird looking guy who always kept to himself but every night around midnight there would be a strange knocking noise coming from the upstairs apartment it wasn't Extremely Loud but because he was a light sleeper it was really frustrating for him because of how often this happened he started to realize that it was the same knocking pattern every time it's like a record playing over and over with the same amount of time in cropsey urban legend between each knock he ended up moving out and moving past this neighbor and then several years later the man is helping his new daughter that he has with her homework and she is learning simple phrases in Morse code she knocked one on the table and he instantly recognized this phrase as the same knocking pattern his neighbor had done all of those years before he of course had to ask her what it meant and she laughed and replied it's the easiest one it's the one to call for help in our number one spot today we have Bloody Mary this is a classic urban legend year round but if there's any time that Bloody Mary is really thriving it's definitely around Halloween I mean remember the whole thinned Veil thing there's a couple Tales behind who Bloody Mary is some say she's a Revenge hungry witch from Salem others say she's Queen Mary the first of England either way whoever she is it's best to just leave her alone but people choose not to chanting Bloody Mary in front of a mirror in the dark is said to make her Apparition appear which people have said appears as a corpse a ghost or a witch from here on number of things may or or may not happen participants may endure The Apparition screaming at them cursing at them harming them stealing their soul drinking their blood or scratching their eyes out see I told you best to leave the gal alone Halloween or otherwise alright guys that has been our list for today thanks so much for checking it out I've been your host today Olivia Kozlowski stay spooky everybody.