18 Scary Local Legends That Ened Up Being True

1.

Serial murderer was picking off indigenous women from the crime-ridden area of the city (Downtown Eastside Vancouver) and having their remains disposed of at a pig farm in another suburb - Robert William Pickton - rayrayrayray

2.

Not totally true but there was a house in the neighborhood all the kids called the murder house. Usual mean old man stories. If you go on his lawn he'll drag you to his basement and murder you. Turns out he was a sex offender with a pretty serious rap and the parents encouraged the story as it made kids stay away without talking about pedophilia. - Niznack

3.

The Catman of Greenock - Scottish town 30 mins from Glasgow where I grew up. Kids would all bullshit about a terrifying sounding cryptid - a bearded man with pitch black skin who prowled around at night catching rats and chasing kids who had ventured into some disused underground freight tunnels - part of a coming of age ritual loads of us went through. It was all bravado and made up stories and the only people who I ever heard claim to have seen him were kids that were ages with me and from a part of town I wasn't too local to so it seemed like a big in-joke between some class mates that had spread. In my late teens I met my now wife and eventually met her brother in law who was about 10 years older than us, so approaching 30. I couldn't believe it when he brought up the Catman and swore he'd seen him one night when he himself was a teenager and was terrified. I still thought it was all a long con. Then came camera phones and what do you know - plenty of photographs of him taken by intrepid nighttime adventurers who coaxed him out with cartons of chips and cans of Irn Bru, most of which are taken at or around the exact bus depot the brother-in-law saw him all that time ago. (The alleged origin story of Catman as an AWOL Russian sailor are totally unconfirmed. Rumours are he died during lockdown) - Wrathalanche

4.

I used to live in a very small town in West Virginia, and there was a local story going around about a giant turkey. Some hunter swore he saw a turkey that stood 5ft tall, and it had talons that could easily kill a man. So that was the local rumor for a while, there's a giant turkey out there somewhere. Some said he was crazy, others said they saw it too, all kinds of stories going around. Turns out it was an emu. Somebody else saw the thing, and they knew what an emu is. Some people who raise goats and chickens keep an emu with their herd, emus are territorial and protective of what they perceive to be their group. So they run off predators like foxes and coyotes, and people for that matter. Most likely it escaped, and nobody claimed it for some reason. - Catshit-Dogfart

5.

That there's a giant man called 'Purple Aki' that approaches people and asks to squeeze their muscles. - DefinitelynotDanger

6.

It wasn't a specific urban legend about my hometown so much as a general urban legend. The legend is derived from late Medieval legends where people journeying through a forest and find a forgotten village the forest grew up around. The only surviving building is a stone church where the last of the villagers gathered before the Black Plague wiped them out 100 years earlier. The travelers find their skeletons still seated around the altar. In the case of my town, we're surrounded by steep high hills. Hikers found a car that ran off the road with a woman's skeleton in the driver's seat. She was reported missing in the 1970s but with her car gone and no internet or cell phones, authorities concluded she got simply drove away. Which she kind of did but she ran off the road, crashed in the deep underbrush, and nobody found her til years later. There are similar stories in other places but mostly cars that crashed into ponds and came out looking like a what a car submerged for 20+ years look like. Her car and her personal effects were mostly intact - basically a 1970s time capsule. - Eric_da_MAJ

7.

The Green Man, Apparently he was a really sweet misunderstood man who was horribly disfigured when he was a kid. He was fond of taking nighttime walks. The pictures of him can give you an idea of why he could be frightening. - Extrasherman

8.

That one of my neighbors was a pedophile. So in my neighborhood the older kids always said the guy was creepy/liked kids. There were several days when he gave everyone ice cream (he drove a tractor trailer for a major ice cream company.) A few years later we got home from school and there were all sorts of FBI/police vehicles outside of his house. Turns out he had been busted in an FBI sting. - TreesOftheEast

9.

That my hometown had its own monk. People were apparently seeing a Buddhist monk around town which would be incredibly unusual where I’m from. It was true though, his name was Paul and he had converted and completely dedicated his life to Buddhism. Very nice man. - _megnn

10.

There was a leader of the local church youth group who also an amateur photographer. Some kid in my class didn't like him and started a rumor that he was a pedophile. It got so big that parents called for an investigation by the school and they found that he actually was sexually abusing his kids. - irrelevant_usernam3

11.

Diaper man. Everyone in Elementary school said not to go into the woods because diaper man was back there. A kid even claimed he saw diaper man and we thought he was full of shit. Many years later upon a visit back home I met up with some old friends and we decided to go have a smoke in the woods. We first noticed there were adult diapers tossed into the woods about 5 to 10 feet off the trail. Lots of them. Then, we look up and in the distance. Yep. A full grown adult man in an adult diaper. Diaper man. As soon as he saw us he ran. This was about 20 years ago. I recently visited family again. Went for a jog in those woods. There were adult diapers. Everywhere. And, there again was diaper man. This time as a fit adult on a run, I chased after him. He is a mentally handicapped man who lives in a half way home in the adjacent neighborhood. I guess he has been going into the woods to get rid of his diapers for like 40+ years. - YaGottaBeaDude

12.

There was this giant mansion at the top of a hill near our place that everyone claimed was where the freemasons sent their old, crazy people to die so that their secrets couldnt get out. Allegedly, there were wild animals all over the place and it was dangerous to try to go there. Place used to terrify me. Yeah...it was the masonic retirement home. It has a nature park inside of it. Its in union city, california. - FutureSoldier88

13.

I'm not Japanese but when they found out that North Korean submarines really had kidnapped kids off the beach, then taken them back North Korea to be raised as spies, it would have blown their minds even more than it did mine: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55651578 - shaggers_jr

14.

As the water dries up, dead bodies will be found in Lake Mead. [8NewsNow] (https://www.8newsnow.com/i-team/i-team-body-found-in-barrel-in-lake-mead-may-date-back-to-1980s-more-likely-to-appear-as-water-recedes-las-vegas-police-say/) - stepenyaki

15.

When I was a kid there was a road that ended in a 'T'. but at the intersection. if you drove straight, you'd go down a steep gravel/dirt slope there was a small dirt landing and then watter. It was used by locals to launch canoes and small boats into a very large river. Later, The city put up a bended sheet metal railing barrier. One simple rail. It just always was closed except to kids. in like grade 6 I saw the barrier was blown through and we all talked and all the kids said there was a car in the water. Kidss didn't play there much as someone was dead in the water - everybody knew. Barrier was fixed, nothing came about it for years. When I was like 19 they were shocked to report that a car and remains were found there. But the big question the media had was how did the car crash into the water when the barrier was unaffected. Thought to myself...after all this time "nobody asked us kids" - Wayelder

16.

Where I grew up there was a scary old house from either the 50s or 60s across from the church. It was burned, covered in ivy, and didn’t match the giant apartments surrounding it. To access one of the elementary schools and one of the middle schools in the area, you’d have to walk past this scary ass house and you’d see kids avoiding that side of the street simply because they were so scared of the house. Drug addicts wouldn’t even camp there, homeless people wouldn’t take shelter in it even during hurricanes. The rumor was that the house had an entire family get butchered by an insane asylum escapee and that the house has been abandoned since. This was supported by the fact the middle school I mentioned used to be a hospital many claimed was for mental health. Well, in 2012 that house was bought and eventually torn down to build luxury apartments but no work has ever been done. It’s now an eerie plot of land. So I decided to do some research and, turned out, the schoolyard stories were sort of true. The house was owned by a family who rented out some of the rooms while still living there. The teenaged daughter (Lillian Mojica) was raped and murdered in the basement by one of the tenants. - bzzibee

17.

I was driving down a west Virginia back road in the middle of the night when I came around a curve to an injured dog standing in the middle of the road. I slammed on my brakes and missed him by a hair. I got out to find him because he was limping real bad and I was hoping he'd have a collar. He vanished into thin air... Like six months later I was going down the YouTube rabbit hole and watched a video about the most haunted places in west Virginia and they talked about this road that is haunted by a ghost of a limping dog that lures people into the night... SAME. FUCKING. ROAD. They said the route name and I almost threw my laptop across the room. I'm not superstitious... But now? ...I'm a little stitious. - Conscious_Camel4830

18.

I guess less so an urban legend and more so a rumor: When I was in 6th grade some kids made a joke that the choir teacher (who taught at both middle and high school) beat his wife, and it spread like wildfire even though everyone knew it wasn’t true. I mean, it couldn’t have possibly been true. He was a scraggly man in his early thirties, with a daughter that is constantly sick due to her chemotherapy, since she was diagnosed with Leukemia when I was in 8th grade. He was always gone every once in awhile with trips to mayo and the cities for her treatments. He was a very nice man that couldn’t possibly hurt a fly. This all changed however, when just two years ago in my freshman year of high school he got arrested for reportedly assaulting his pregnant wife and seven year old daughter. He was arrested and at his trial he plead guilty, but his case was dropped “due to covid”. He was never fired, and still works as the choir director. To this day I find him a very creepy man, he still talks about his wife and daughter but it’s clear that everyone knows exactly who he is. At this point our entire high school choir is about five people big, for a school of 2,200 students just because people can’t stand being within 10 feet of him. - glowstick-of-destiny

19.

For decades there were rumors about a “big cave” under a local high school where kids would go down and skip class and smoke pot. Well in 2011 they discovered water run off caverns under that same school so the kids weren’t lying. Nothing weird really bc my state is known for having a lot of caves but yeah kinda ruined everyone hangout spot lmao. - mellowpotions

20.

There were rumors of a inbred mutant enclave in the woods north of nyc in the Hudson valley that dare takers would take a drive up to. The mutant part isn’t real and the inbred part is questionable but Oniontown is very much real and documented. - Tinaszombie

21.

There used to be a massive urban legend about a panther living in the mountains near where I live even though no big cats are native to my country and always got attributed to blurry photos etc. Turns out a guy had an illegal collection of exotic animals and released them when he got wind that authorities were going to do an inspection of his property. - hopelesseelsfan

22.

in my home town, there was an old bridge built in the 20's. It was smallish, just going over a small stream between where two small towns meet. There was a rumor that there was a treasure dropped into the cement when it was wet. There was also a rumor several builders fell into the cement and died during the construction. There was also a rumor that a dead body was thrown into it by the mob. They demolished the bridge a few years back, finding two skeletons and a briefcase of money (I think a few thousand dollars). If I remember correctly, the two skeletons were from workers of the bridge (something that was reported and archived in a newspaper back in the 1920s and anyone could have actually researched if they wanted to). I have no idea how the briefcase of money got in there, and I don't think anyone ever came up with an answer for it. - AquanautOrange

23.

My friend lived in central New Jersey and used to tell us about the ‘prison farm’ where inmates were used for hard labor and the cows had plexiglass windows bolted to their sides so you could see them digest their food.Turns out, it’s all true - Macronaut

24.

The rumour was There was a local homless/ mentally unwell person, that was actually quite rich and owned a mansion. Turns out there was some truth to that. Once his issues became apparent his mother set out with a plan and largely worked herself to death to buy a house and set up a bunch of trusts and carers for him and basically train him to look after himself. Thing is his mother apparently never really considered what he would actually do all day never set him up with a role or job. He wore scruffy clothes because he liked those clothes, and was always hanging around the market Square because the library was there and the market traders were always friendly and chatty. We learned all this when one of my friends was hired on as a carer, she got him a role at the library and got him a small part time job at a charity shop both of which he seemed to deeply enjoy. - Lostboxoangst

25.

local, corrupt mob lawyers wife disappeared. rumors swirled that she either ran off with lover or he had her killed, possibly by the towns mob connected police chief but with no evidence to the rumors. a few years later, the wifes car is found in a canal with her body in the trunk with a crushed skull and shot. the chief and lawyer went to prison on conspiracy to murder charges. the story was later made into a tv movie called "Deadly Matrimony" - 20RegalGS15