creepy urban legends

We’ve all heard our fair share of creepy stories; they’re what small towns are made of, after all. Whether it be the haunted house on the end of the street or a strange and terrible monster that lurks in the night, every community seems to have their own creepy hometown legend. Passed from generation to generation these stories shift and change over the years. While most are based on nothing more than our darkest fears—a few may be true.

Settle in and get ready to shiver as people from around the world share their most horrifying hometown urban legends. Go on, read them after dark—we dare you.

1. Slaughterhouse

“I used to live near Statesboro Georgia for a time, and while my own hometown didn’t have its own creepy urban legend, there was a legend about the old abandoned slaughterhouse on the aptly named “Slaughterhouse Road.” The slaughter house had been built sometime originally in the 20s, and worked through the mid 40s before a fire ran through the place, killing a number of the employees. The legend was that the fire had been started by the owner when he found out that his young bride to be wanted to break off the marriage in favor of her childhood sweetheart. Among the dead reported were the woman, and the presumed sweetheart. The owner himself effectively vanished off the face of the earth after the fire, making the case technically (he’d be long dead now) still open.

The building has long stood abandoned, with no power, phone, nor access to the very top most floor. Yet this hasn’t prevented phone calls to 911 cropping up from there, as well as strange sightings of a woman walking aimlessly along the top floor where the offices were.” – Kabukikitsune

2. The Green Man

“Raymond ‘Ray’ Robinson (October 29, 1910–June 11, 1985) was a severely disfigured man whose years of nighttime walks made him into a figure of urban legend in western Pennsylvania. Robinson was so badly injured in a childhood electrical accident that he could not go out in public without fear of creating a panic, so he went for long walks at night. Local tourists, who would drive along his road in hopes of meeting him, called him The Green Man or Charlie No-Face. They passed on tales about him to their children and grandchildren, and people raised on these tales are sometimes surprised to discover that he was a real person who was liked by his family and neighbors.” – wwhart

3. Overtoun Bridge

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

“There’s an old house to the north of my hometown in Scotland called Overtoun House, and the legend goes that walking your dog along the bridge that leads up to the house will cause it to spontaneously leap to its death from the bridge.

This is an observable thing that actually has happened at least 50 times.

People will refuse to cross the bridge, as there are also people who report feeling suddenly and unexpectedly depressed after crossing. There was even a man who threw his baby son off the bridge in a fit of insanity after claiming his son was the Antichrist.

There’s an old Scottish myth of a “Thin Place” where the afterlife and the physical world are very close together; Overtoun Bridge is said to be one of these places.” – Connelly90

4. Tinker’s Hollow

“I grew up in Ohio. There is the legend of Tinker’s Hollow. It is said Old Mister Tinker, a miner, haunts the site. He can sometimes be seen riding his horse and buggy, and if you go under the bridge, you can sometimes hear his buggy pass overhead. It is said that you can see his green eyes glowing and he’ll lead you to his gold if you talk to him.

Mr. Tinker was an alchemist. He made a special nonrusting metal, that has never been duplicated. There are tombstones around town that were made with his Tinker’s metal, they’re pretty neat. Unlike anything you’re used to seeing in a graveyard.” – jessika_anne

5. Girl in the White Dress

“The little girl in the white dress.

Apparently, a father went crazy in the 1950s and tied up & blindfolded his young daughter that was wearing a white dress. He placed her on train tracks and she was decapitated.

There are sightings to this day of a young girl standing right next to the tracks where the roadway is. They always say that it looks like a real human until she turns around and her eyes are completely black with bloody tears running down her face. Then, poof, she’s gone.

That’s how the sightings always go too. Nobody ever sees her from the front first … it’s always from the back, she turns around, people see the face, are horrified, then they see a mist where the “girl” was and she disappears.” – Scott2G

6. The School Bus

Photo: Jerald Jackson / Flickr (CC)

“A school bus stalled on Southton Rd. railroad tracks and not all of the children escaped before a train that couldn’t stop in time hit the bus and killed 10 children and the bus driver. Now if you stop on the tracks and put your car in neutral facing west it will begin to roll forward across the tracks. If you put some type of powder on the back of your car you can see small childlike handprints on the trunk and bumper as if your car was being pushed. The weirdest part is that your car rolls uphill.” – puddingisafunnyword

7. Theorosa’s Bridge

“In Wichita, there is a bridge, Theorosa’s bridge. There are a few versions of the story, but most of them tell that there once was a woman who had an illegitimate baby, and she threw the baby off the bridge into the water to be rid of it. Full of grief and regret, she then jumps in after the baby and drowns herself. Supposedly, if you go to the bridge and yell loudly that you are Theorosa’s child or that you have her child, she will appear and drown you in the river.” – StephenHawkings_Legs

8. The Loup-Garou

“In Louisiana, we have about a hundred of these urban legends. When you combine the Creole voodoo culture with the folk-tale-loving Cajun population with the still-standing plantation homes and reminders of slavery’s legacy here with the former War of 1812 and Civil War battlefields with the fact that our capital was largely built on Native American burial grounds, you’re going to get a nice medley of the supernatural. The haunted plantation homes, the Civil War ghosts, the pirate ghosts, the haunted tunnels under LSU (a secret CIA base?), and Scooby Doo on Zombie Island all come to mind.

My favorite is the Loup-Garou (also called Rougarou). It’s a werewolf that would prowl the swamps of south Louisiana and outside New Orleans and prey on bad kids. It would also hunt down and kill Catholics who weren’t following the rules of Lent. And if you were attacked by the loup-garou, you would become one (but only at night) if you told others about it.” – arsenalfc1987

9. The White Bride

Photo: simpleinsomnia / Flickr (CC)

“I live in Worthington, Ohio. In our town we have the legend of the “White Bride”. Supposedly in the late 1800s a wedding was being held in our town square. Through a series of unfortunate events a horse and buggy ran wildly across the village green and into the wedding party. The bride was instantly killed.

Now, the legend goes if you go to the village green on the anniversary of the tragedy you can hear the gallop of horse hooves and a scream from the bridge where she was run down.

It’s a big thing for the kids in our town to gather on the green on this night and see if they can hear it.” – diamondsealtd

10. The Blue-Faced Crone

“Good old Black Annis!

Black Annis, also known as Black Agnes, is a bogeyman figure in English folklore. She is imagined as a blue-faced crone or witch with iron claws and a taste for humans (especially children). She is said to haunt the countryside of Leicestershire, living in a cave in the Dane Hills, with an oak tree at its entrance.

She supposedly goes out onto the glens at night looking for unsuspecting children and lambs to eat, then tanning their skins by hanging them on a tree, before wearing them around her waist. She would reach inside houses to snatch people. Legend has it that she used her iron claws to dig into the side of a sandstone cliff, making herself a home there which is known as Black Annis’s Bower. The legend led to parents warning their children that Black Annis would catch them if they did not behave.” – PM-ME-YOUR-POEM

11. The Blue Hole

“Indiana folk legend of the blue hole. Southern Indiana is prone to sink holes due to limestone being weathered out from the previous ice age. This part is true they are everywhere down here. The legend goes that there is a blue hole; a sinkhole filled with crystal blue water (the kind you find when a quarry floods). Legend goes that no one has ever reached the bottom because it separates into an elaborate underwater cave. Even after professional dives. Some teens drowned in the blue hole and their bodies were never found. The blue hole just swallowed them up.” – Schneid13

12. The Library Attic

Photo: Baijg / Flickr (CC)

“The library in my hometown is attached to a 200-year-old mansion that was said to be haunted. Specifically, the attic, which is huge and shadowy and tends to collect dead pigeons. The local paper even did a story about the supposed haunting, with photo ‘proof’. The library did lock-in nights in the summer and they’d tell scary stories in the attic, which wasn’t so bad because you were with a group … later on I ended up working at the library and would have to go up in the attic, alone, at night to make sure no one stayed behind after we closed. The attic had a gated stairway with a lock, and a few times when I was up there, alone in the house, I’d hear it bang shut.” – wwhart

13. Devil’s Cave

“I grew up in Yonkers, less than a mile from Untermeyer Park. There used to be an old pump house built into one of the steep hills at the edge of the park, where the Aqueduct is located. That’s allegedly where the Son of Sam’s cult used to worship and sacrifice dogs and deer. It was full of demonic and satanic graffiti and markings. It was called Devil’s Cave.” – KeithDecent

14. The Black Lady

“There’s an old manor house about a five-minute walk away from my house that’s supposedly haunted by a ghost of a tall shadowy woman in mourning clothes known as “The Black Lady”

It was founded in the 12th century and later rebuilt around 1587 by Roger Seys. The Seys family moved out in the 17th century and it fell into decay. Legend states that the Black Lady was spotted by men working on the castle in the early 19th century.” – SkrungZe

15. Ohio State Reformatory

creepy urban legends ohio state reformatory

Photo: Thaddeus Quintin / Flickr (CC)

“Built in 1886, the Ohio State Reformatory was designed to humanely rehabilitate first-time offenders, and was initially applauded as a positive step toward prison reform. However, conditions rapidly deteriorated. After 94 years of operation, the prison’s legacy became one of abuse, torture, and murder. Denounced by civil rights activists for its “brutalizing and inhumane conditions,” the prison eventually shut down in 1990. Now, within the decaying walls of this still abandoned prison, the restless spirits of its prisoners and workers are said to still remain confined.” – abaloun32

16. Chatawa Monster

“I live in Louisiana so we have quite a few yarns to spin. My personal favorite is of the Chatawa monster in my hometown. The story goes that a circus train was coming along and derailed out in Chatawa. Now aboard this train was a variety of critters, but the most notorious of them was a freak. It was a cross between a man and beast yet not quite either and was terribly ferocious so naturally, it was kept in heavy cage in its own rail car. When the train derailed all the cars went into the woods and killed most of the animals save for a few monkeys that fled to the woods and this creature.

Well, the story goes that should you take you a little ride out to the Chatawa bridge in the dead of the night. You then kill your truck wait til the strike of 12:00. At first, it gets eerily quiet, then you’ll start to hear a chittering, and howling of monkeys, the branches of the trees start to sway and shake, and by the time you cut your truck back on there, there will stand the Chatawa monster waiting for his next victim.” – stopresistingtaser

17. The Ringing Bell

“There’s a cemetery in the area with a special feature on one of the graves. The coffin is under a large stone and suspended from above ground chains—so it sort of floats below ground level (you can supposedly see the coffin through cracks where the ground has settled around the stone. At one point, there was a bell or bells hung from the chains but those are long gone. The purpose of this arrangement was that if the person was buried alive, their movement would make the bells ring and they could be disinterred.

The legend is that if you go there around the anniversary of the person’s death – you can hear the bells ringing.” – jaimystery

18. The Devil’s Step

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

“I am from Lower Bavaria, Germany and there is this city Zulling, which also has a church. Next to the church there are two spots in the grass, where nothing grows. People claim that back in the days, some guy robbed the church and killed the pastor. He fled through the window and the moment he touched the ground outside the church, he got struck by a lightning and died. Since this day nothing grows where he touched the ground. This spot is called Teufelstritt (literally translating to devil’s step).” – Mephistophos

19. The Mass Grave

“When I was in grad school there were all sorts of weird rumors about the bodies under the dorms. There are supposedly close to 500 of them, and the school would intensely deny that they were there, but one of my friends supposedly had seen all the files on the locations and whatnot because of an internship she was doing through the MLS program.

Fast forward a few years, and a water main breaks under one of the dorms and we suddenly have to deal with 300 graves they ‘just’ found under the dorms. The state put up dorms directly on top of a cholera mass grave, which I’m assuming they must have known about.” – shadowsandmirrors

20. The Bloody Axe

“Lansingburgh, New York (The Old Highschool).

The legend has it that early in the 1900’s a teacher went insane and slaughtered as many students as he could with an axe in room 243. This room is haunted at night by the ghost of the teacher, ranting and raving and waving his bloody axe and by the students running and screaming in panic.” – breadstick13

21. High School Blues

Photo: Stuart McAlpine / Flickr (CC)

“In my hometown in El Paso there is a legend that one of our high schools is haunted by a girl who committed suicide in the school. There were reports of green like ooze dripping from the ceiling and the hallway supposedly covered in fog every day. The hallway has been closed on the fourth floor that has been closed off for decades. Some hear a girl sobbing near the hallway, some see her waving at them from the balcony, even some see a girl jump off of the balcony and see her vanish before she hits the ground.” – SwegTestica7

22. The Cult

“In my town we have The Cult.

It’s a really big house with super tall fences topped with barbed wire. There’s hedges planted around it so you can’t see into the property, gates with cameras and guards at the front. Armed guards walk around (or at least used to, I haven’t been out there in ages) the fences and none of the neighbors mow all the way to the fence line. Supposedly vans come and go out of the place all hours of the night certain times of the year.

The place has been an urban legend here since my mom was a kid, and for the life of me I’ve never been able to figure out who owns the place.” – KGRanch

23. Albino Road

“I live in a rural area. There is a very narrow gravel road out in the middle of nowhere with two or three abandoned houses on it. EVERYONE refers to it as Albino Road. Supposedly, there’s a crazy albino that lives in one of the creepier looking houses. Teenagers drive by there all the time hoping to catch a glimpse of the reclusive albino. While no one can actually say they have seen the albino, everyone knows “a guy” that had the albino come running at their car one night.” – DeuceLoosely13

24. Stull Cemetery

Photo: Ayleen Gaspar / Flickr (CC)

“I live about 15 miles outside of Stull, Kansas. There’s a cemetery there with a church, behind which there is purportedly a staircase that is one of the seven gateways to hell. The church is old, so it’s just stone walls and no roof, but allegedly no rain or snow will fall inside of the church and if you manage to find the staircase, it descends forever and you can never reach the surface even if you turn around just moments after beginning your descent.

There was a large tree near the church that was supposed to have been used to hang witches once upon a time, but the tree was recently destroyed. There’s a rumor that, when flying over Kansas several years ago, the Pope refused to fly over Stull. It’s a very popular spot for drunk high school kids to go visit on a dare in the middle of the night.

Sadly, the walls of the church were knocked down a few years ago as well, but you can still tell where it was and the staircase remains. It’s supposed to be difficult to find, and I’ve never bothered to look very hard for it, but a lot of people insist that there really is a set of stairs descending into the ground. I’m not much for creepy stories usually, but the few times I’ve visited Stull, I wasn’t sorry to leave. It’s just a creepy place.” – menlovebluetooth

25. The Little People

“About 100 kilometers from my home town there is a first nation’s reservation with elders that tell stories of the “little people” basically what they are is tiny people who used to live in the caves around the lake in the old days and if you see them it is very bad luck. My grandmother visited the caves back in the nineties and took some family pictures but in all of them you can see ghostly looking little people all over the background. She had taken around five photographs and every single one of them strangely disappeared except for one which shows and ghostly figure holding a baby or a drum.” – lazylegend

Want more creepy legends? Sign up for The Lineup’s newsletter, and get the strangest tales delivered straight to your inbox.

Featured Photo: Forest and Kim Starr / Flickr (CC)

The web’s creepiest and most mysterious content.

The web’s creepiest and most mysterious content.

25 People Share their Creepiest Hometown Legends

"They say a teacher went insane and slaughtered as many students as he could with an axe in room 243..."