Kansas

The Bloody Benders

They are said to be America’s first serial killers, but even if that isn’t technically the case, they remain one of the most freaky. The Benders were an entire family filled with serial killers. They ran an Inn and General Store, where they often killed their guests and customers:

Excerpt:

It is conjectured that when a guest would stay at the Benders’ bed and breakfast inn, the hosts would give the guest a seat of honor at the table which was positioned over a trap door that led into the cellar. With the victim’s back to the curtain Kate would distract the guest, while John Bender or his son would come from behind the curtain and strike the guest on the right side of the skull with a hammer.

The victim’s throat was then cut by one of the women to ensure his or her death. The body was then dropped through the trap door. Once in the cellar, the body would be stripped and later buried somewhere on the property, often in the orchard. Although some of their victims had been quite wealthy, others had been carrying very little of value on them and it was surmised that the Benders had killed them simply for the sheer thrill. (KEEP READING)

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Kentucky

Pope Lick Monster

The Pope-Lick Monster is some kind of goat-pig-human hybrid that is obsessed with luring humans to their deaths. This whole legend is kinda f*cked up…

Excerpt:

According to some accounts, the creature uses either hypnosis^[1] or voice mimicry to lure trespassers onto the trestle to meet their death before an oncoming train. Other stories claim the monster jumps down from the trestle onto the roofs of cars passing beneath it. Yet other legends tell that it attacks its victims with a blood-stained axe and that the very sight of the creature is so unsettling that those who see it while walking across the high trestle are driven to leap off. (KEEP READING)

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Louisiana

Axeman of New Orleans

From 1918 to 1919 the city of New Orleans was frozen in fear of a crazy Axeman who quietly axed victims to death. His only interest was in murder, as he never robbed any of his victims.

Excerpt:

The Axeman was not caught or identified, and his crime spree stopped as mysteriously as it had started. The murderer’s identity remains unknown to this day, although various possible identifications of varying plausibility have been proposed. On March 13, 1919, a letter purporting to be from the Axeman was published in newspapers saying that he would kill again at 15 minutes past midnight on the night of March 19, but would spare the occupants of any place where a jazz band was playing. That night all of New Orleans’ dance halls were filled to capacity, and professional and amateur bands played jazz at parties at hundreds of houses around town. There were no murders that night. (KEEP READING)

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Maine

John Joubert (serial killer)

An above average student, Joubert eventually became consumed by sadistic tendencies and a lust for murder. His crimes were uniquely horrible.

Excerpt:

From a very young age, Joubert began having increasingly violent sadistic fantasies. According to three psychiatric reports prepared on Joubert in 1984, his earliest sadistic fantasies began at around the age of 6. These fantasies revolved around murdering and cannibalizing a neighborhood girl who babysat him. To one psychiatrist, he described having nothing personal against the girl, seeing her as “just someone to kill.” (KEEP READING)

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Maryland

Goatman (Maryland)

Many decades ago, an eccentric scientist was known for performing disturbing experiments on goats. One day, a reaction backfired onto him, and he became part man, part goat. Freaky stuff, really.

Excerpt:

According to urban legend, the Goatman is an axe-wielding half-animal, half-man creature that was once a scientist who worked in the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. The tale holds that he was experimenting on goats until one experiment backfired, and he was mutated, becoming goat-like himself. He then began attacking cars with an axe, roaming the back roads of Beltsville, Maryland. (KEEP READING)

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