Urban Legends That Turned Out to be True

1.

Waking Up with a Missing Kidney - The classic. Waking up in a hotel bathtub full of ice with one less organ in your body. Well in 1998 this epic myth turned out to be completely true. In India, three surgeons with several accomplices were charged with harvesting organs from potential job applicants. They told the unsuspected victims that they needed medical exams, this ultimately lead to the surgeons removing kidneys to sell on the black market.

2.

Black Water - The myth goes that a family moves into a new apartment building and finds that all the water in the shower and sink is black in color. They find that the discoloration is due to a decomposing body in the walls or water tank. This turned out to be true in 2013 when a Canadian tourist named Elisa Lam was found in the water tank of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Guest were complaining of the taste and look of the hotels water, the investigation found the decomposing body of the teen inside. It is still a mystery as to how she became trapped in the tower.

3.

Body Under the Mattress - You stay at a fancy hotel but can’t sleep because of peculiar smell coming from somewhere, also the mattress is lumpy. The hotel management come up to the room and they find a dead body under the mattress. This is unpleasant to think about, however, it has happened more than once in cities like Las Vegas, Pasadena, Kansas City and many others.

4.

Bug Lays Eggs Inside Ear - We’ve all probably thought about it at one time or another, when you hear that mosquito that gets a little too close to your head. Well in 2013 after a vacation to Peru, a young English woman from Derby began to experience intense headaches and fluid discharge from her ear canal. After she went to the hospital and had an x-ray, the doctors informed her she had a colony of flesh-eating maggots stuck in her ear canal. The invasive pest had buried 12mm deep and were somewhat close to her brain. It is suspected after laboratory research that the woman was infected when a screw-worm fly landed in her ear and laid it’s eggs while she was on vacation.

5.

College Kids Find a Body in a Rolled Up Carpet - College students find a rolled up rug on the sidewalk, decide to take it to their dorm and once they’re home they discover a dead body inside. That’s exactly what happened to three Columbia University students in 1984. The students found a nice rug in the Morningside Heights area of New York City and carried it to their dorm. When they unrolled it the body of a black male in his mid-20s with two gunshot wounds to the head, rolled out.

6.

Frozen Solid and Returning to Life - We’ve all seen the cartoons where a character has been frozen solid and then returned to life with the help of a heater or a hair-dryer. Medical science says this is impossible, however in 1981 a North Dakota woman named Jean Hilliard was brought back to life after being frozen solid in 22 degree below zero. Her eyes were solid and not reponsive to light, her skin was too hard to insert and needle and her temperature could not be registered on a thermometer. Dr. George Sather who attended to the victim had no idea how she survived.

7.

The Green Man - A horribly disfigured man with green skin roams the roads of Pennsylvania terrifying joggers and people driving by. The Green Man was actually a man named Raymond Robinson who was disfigured when he was struck by a power line while tending to a bird’s nest, when he was only eight-years-old. He lost his eyes, nose, ear, an arm and his skin had a green hue since it was so badly damaged in the accident. Robinson would walk the roads at night because it was the only time he could be outside without frightening an entire town.

8.

Woman Quietly Murdered in Library - A woman is killed quietly just feet away from students and staff. This happened on November 28th, 1969 at Penn State University to a student named Betsy Aardsma. Betsy was tragically stabbed behind the stacks of books just around the corner from her friends. She wasn’t discovered until several minutes later, her blood was disguised by her red dress.

9.

Real Mummy in the Funhouse - If you’ve ever gone to a carnival in your youth you’ve probably heard the story of the real body found in the haunted/fun house. This turned out to be true in 1976 when crew members of The Six Million Dollar Man found a human corpse in a funhouse while setting up a carnival scene. The body was of Elmer McCurdy, who was killed by a gunshot while trying to rob a train. The body was preserved by a local undertaker and somehow ended up in Long Beach, CA, not being discovered until the mid-70s.

10.

Pen Full of Starving Pigs - It’s a recurring scene in movies and horror stories, a group full of hungry pigs or boars devour the victims of a demented farmer, serial killer or gangster. In 2012, this terrifying idea became reality when Terry Vance Garner, a Vietnam vet raising pigs to help fight post-traumatic stress, was eaten by his livestock. Family say the Oregon farmer ventured out into the barn to feed the animals and was never seen again. The pigs ate all of Garner only leaving his dentures and a few scraps of his shirt behind.