25 Creepy Urban Legends From Around The World

The black ambulance

“I live in Romania and as a kid the most common legend was the “black ambulance” that would steal kids and harvest their organs and that kids’ bodies were to be found a few days later abandoned on a field with some money for the funeral. Also, in my town our parents would never let us go to the cinema because there was this legend about a man who wound put AIDS infected needles on the seats.” — mikeynbn

Death chair

“We have a chair that’s been untouched since the 1960s in our schools boiler room. The janitor swears that a boy got locked down there by these other kids the day before summer break and died from the heat. He claims that the chair moves and that the door handle moves like he’s still there trying to get out.” — KTsDefacement

Makcik “keropok”

“Its a legend about a lady going around door to door selling keropok. (a type of cracker) If you refuse to buy any, she releases a Pontianak (a vengeful ghost) into your house.

Best solution is not to open the door.” — RavenInTheSky

Murder cabin

“Its not really a known creepy urban legend, but in the 1800s in the owyhee mountains in idaho there was a group of hunters staying in a cabin and after failing to come back to their families a search party was sent out to look for them, they found the cabin, locked from the inside, with the window also locked from the inside. and they found all of the hunters dead with their heads crushed. no one knows who did it or how. but the incident repeated itself in like the 1970s or something.” — rocket___goblin

The Guardians

“We have 3 mysterious men in a car called The Guardians (yes that’s what we call them) along Montana highway 464.

People have told experiences where they have car trouble and three men in a car drive up and help them out. Other people talk about headlights that disappear in places where they shouldn’t disappear.

We also have a Native American in a jean jacket and jeans who materializes in front of cars before they can swerve out of the way. When the driver checks for a victim, no body is found.” — ninjasoul534

Ghosts said “No” to Walmart

“There used to be an insane asylum by my house in the 70s. It is probably five minutes away from my house if that. But, they tore it down in the 90s because it was just a giant eye sore, and had a dark history of mistreating patients. There is a cemetery on the property with hundreds of unnamed people who died there.

In the early 2000s, Walmart bought the land and wanted to build a walmart there since you would be able to see it from the highway. They excavated and such, and the day before they were set to start construction a huge landslide happened in the middle of the night that blocked the high way for days. If it would have happened at rush hour tons of people would have died.

Ultimately, it was deemed unsafe territory to build on, so it remains empty. Except for all the bike trails through the area. But no one ever rides during night time lol. I guess the people who died there didn’t want to be chilling underneath a walmart’s aisle 10.” — Tower-Educational

“Look up”

“It is a university urban legend here in the Philippines. There was a female college student that went to the female’s restroom. In the cubicle, she can hear a female voice. The voice is saying some Latin (I can’t remember the exact words). Obviously the female student was frightened and hurried to go back to the classroom. She then asked her professor what was the meaning of the word she heard from the restroom. The professor said “It means ‘look up, look up”.” — eat_the_rich_07

“The Caller”

“I’ll have to roughly translate it from Arabic so bear with me.

We call it “the caller”. It is told that in the middle of the night it calls your name and forces you to follow its voice, until you reach a body of water, it then pulls you under forcing water into every single hole in your body no matter how small and of course then drowning you.

I think this was made up so kids do go on a swim at night.” — ChadTheMagnificent

The black horse

“Not my current area, but one of the primary schools I went to had a few trees in the back corner of the field with a mountain of dirt. There were rumours that it was haunted with horses (of all things lol) there was one black horse that was evil. And if you sat under the trees and closed your eyes, you could hear the horses.

It wasn’t until I was older that I found out the school was built on an old racing ground and it closed down after one of the jockeys poisoned a competitors black horse.” — mediastoosocial

Joey the Clown

“Nearby is a disused Victorian railway which has been transformed into a 20ish mile path for people to walk, jog, cycle etc and links different parts of the city (just as the rail line would have).

Before that it was just disused and didn’t have tarmac or anything. Just mud, grass and there were no gates in the side doors of the tunnels.

The tunnels are REALLY dark in there and we used to hang around in there when we were kids.

We became aware of the urban legend of ‘Joey the clown’ who was a lunatic who ran away from the circus, kidnapped a baby and hanged it by its feet upside down from one of the pipes above the tunnel right into the path of an oncoming locomotive which he also jumped in front of.

Rumours still persist that people have seen Joey’s ghost in the tunnels and if you were brave enough to go in the tunnel at night you would hear him laugh, hear a baby cry and the sound of the locomotive.

My mother uses this to her advantage when I was a kid though by telling my sisters and I that Joey The Clown preys upon children who wear odd socks and who refuse to wear clean underwear. So of course we’d all be wearing matching socks and make sure we had pristine underwear on when we ventured down to the old railway.” — Rick-Dastardly

Black Shucks

“Black Shucks; big, black, ghostly/demonic dogs with glowing red eyes that are supposed to be omens of death. They generally appear on roads at night. There’s apparently a few around town and some drag chains too. Also one is actually a bear, but I have no idea why we have a ghostly demonic bear because we don’t even have normal bears in this country.” — Numerous_Emus

The Flathead Lake Monster

“The Flathead Lake in western Montana is the largest body of fresh water this side of the Great Lakes. 18 miles wide, 26 miles long, 400+ feet deep. People have seen the FLM breach the surface looking like the back of a serpent type creature. My theory is there are some monstrous 25 foot long sturgeons hiding out down there, but who knows……” — Cloggerdogger

The Stain

“There was this colonel who founded the town a couple hours south of my hometown in the 1700s. He had an affair with a young woman, and when she got pregnant he kicked her out of town and she raised their son alone for several years. When she came back and begged him for help raising their kid, he publicly declared her a witch and had her burned to death.

After she was burned and they were taking her body away, her son tried to take her body from them so she could be buried on his property. He tried to pull her corpse from them by the leg, but it snapped off due to how scorched her body was. He took the leg and said it would be buried near his home. Before he left, however, he told the colonel (his biological father) the he hoped the colonel’s memory would always be tainted by what he did to his former mistress.

After the colonel died, a tomb was erected for him, but overnight a leg-shaped stain appeared right of the face of it. People tried to remove the stain, but it wouldn’t go away. Eventually, they just replaced the stone on the tomb entirely… only for a new, identical stain to appear in the exact same spot on the new stone.

The stain is still there to this day, and it’s a big tourist attraction in the area.” — illumi-thotti

Haunted Catholic school

“My highschool had a few. It was a convent/Catholic boarding school before becoming a highschool.

On my first day of school, my grade was brought on tours of the school by older students. Here are some of the stories I remember:

When you enter the school from its main entrance to access the reception desk you need to pass a statue of the Virgin Mary. Behind the statue there is a rope. It was said that one of the nuns committed suicide with that exact rope.

Outside the front of the school there is a well and fountain that was no longer in use. The well was barred up and it was impossible to see what was down there. It was said that there was a girl who fell down the well and the nuns had no way of getting her out. Since she died, the well had been sealed shut.

The teachers offices, which students were prohibited from entering unless given permission, were on the top floor of the school. It was said that you could see/hear ghosts of nuns who used to live there. That space used to be where the nuns slept.

Another story is from a place that I worked at. Prior to becoming a store, it was a garage. The owner of the garage committed suicide on the property. Many people on different occasions mentioned hearing/seeing his ghost in the basement.” — theprettyunicorn

The mysterious Seattle soda can vending machine

“There is this vending machine in Seattle that is filled with rare and valuable soda cans, many of which are out of production. Nobody knows who stocks the vending machine, and the one time it needed repairs, nobody saw who took it to get repaired.” — alpaca1yps

The Night Marchers

“The Huaka’ipo, also known as the Night Marchers, are the spirits of ancient Hawaiian warriors who have been cursed to march the islands for eternity. The night marchers are said to march in a single line, often carrying torches and weapons while chanting and playing drums. To protect yourself, you must lie on the ground face down in respect. Otherwise, the Night Marchers will kill you. Or so they say…” — lixtrado

Drug ring burial ground

“There is a large “burial ground” for people who know to much and are a liability, (mostly drug rings) out on a part of the reservation that no police or tribal police have jurisdiction to be able to investigate. Unfortunately I heard about and so did my friends in high school and we thought it was just a legend. Well last year I learned it was I real. I had a friend who got out the drug ring and showed it to me.” — TrystenConn

Skinwalkers

“I grew up in southern Utah near the four corners. In other words, skinwalker country. I have lots of creepy stories about them, both from my own experiences and the experiences of others, but chances are a lot of you guys wouldnt believe and they probably belong to a different sub reddit.

However, the creepiest thing about them, is that everyone (and I mean everyone), is scared of them. Most of the people in my town are farmers and overall pretty pragmatic people who arent quick to believe or make up ghost stories. And yet, whenever I would ask an adult “what are skinwalkers” growing up, the answer I always got was a very serious “we dont talk about skinwalkers.”

Whether you believe in them or not, you have to admit that the ubiquity of that attitude in my hometown is pretty weird.” — The_Sad_PlagueDoctor

The bean sucker

“Rural western Maryland, been researching folklore for our class, we have a few but here’s one of my personal best

Legend of the Bean Sucker, the story of a man who wanted to scare a couple as they were coming home in a carriage, back in the late 1800’s. He stuffed his mouth full of beans and jumped in front of their carriage. It was said the driver was angry, so he chased the man down the railroad tracks by the path, until the man (the bean guy) ran into an oncoming train. It was said when they found the body, there was no head. Since then, people say you can hear the Bean Sucker’s head rolling around or find beans on the ground

Maybe not the creepiest, but there is evidence that the train part may have happened around that time, which makes the reality factor even more real” — oinkszoinks

The jacking jogger

“We have “de rennende rukker”, thats Dutch for “The jacking jogger”. supposedly there is someone in our area that runs around whilst jacking off. I think someone did get caught for something similar, but I’ll always keep my ears peaked, just in case something will come fapping towards me.” — kingkongbananakong

The hanging tree

“At a site in the woods where a people were supposedly lynched, there is an indention beneath the hanging tree where the people’s feet would lightly drag while hanging. People claim that if you fill the hole in and wait overnight, they say that the swinging feet of those lynched will visibly re-drag marks in the sand.” — shootsickmoon

Creatures

“Not in my area, it has been on the news about many years ago. Many Malaysians will know about this. There’s a couple driving when suddenly their car broke down in Karak Highway, Genting Highlands at like 3am. The husband came down to find someone to help and the wife waits in the car. The wife waited for so long but decided to keep waiting. She saw some cars pass by slowly and then sped up. After hours of waiting, the police had came and they use the loudspeaker to told the woman to came out of the car without looking back. After that, she turn her head and saw a banshee looking creature sucking her husband’s head.

There’s many ghosts in Genting Highland mainly because there’s many people commit suicide there and it has many accidents at Karak Highway. And there’s many urban legends around Malaysia and the famous one is ‘Orang Minyak’ which is called Oily Man in English. There’re many SCPs creatures at night wandering around in a place where it is very few or no people.” — End8890

Tree man

“When I was in high school we were goofing around in a small park full of trees near the cemetary late at night, and we made up a story to scare ourselves, about the ‘tree man’ who would jump out from behind trees and grab you. We all had torches and were trying to keep all the trees lit so the tree man couldn’t hide behind any of them, fully aware we’d just made the story up five minutes ago, but it was dark and spooky so we still managed to give each other the willies and laugh about it at the same time. We loosely tied our story to a triple murder than happened in the 1800s (the monument for which was visible from the park) for extra spookums. Every now and again for the rest of the year someone would jump out from behind a tree or grab someone and yell ‘tree man’! It was just one of those stupid in-jokes teens have, and decades before slenderman was a thing (it was the early 90s).

Imagine my surprise when years later I heard the kids in lower grades telling each other quite seriously about the ‘tree man’ who haunts this one park near the cemetary lol.” — trowzerss

Haunted teapot

“There’s one house in my hometown that is said to be haunted. There’s a tray with a golden teapot on it, and the tray has scratch marks on it. That tray has been sitting in the same location for years, remaining completely untouched, and still, to this day no one has touched it. Some of my friends insist that it’s haunted.

There’s also an urban legend abut how an electrician (or someone with a similar job) fell off of a ladder while setting up one of the light in the middle school gym. His ghost is said to haunt the gym at night whenever the lights are turned off.” — FlameSamurai63

The slap ghost

“The slap ghost: in a village close by, there is the story that in a specific road through the woods several guys were being slapped when they pass in a bicycle in the latte 70’s. Always at night, one of these guys was my grandfather. He was alone and was slapped and fell of his bicycle. No one was there…several people came home full of bruises and scratches from the bicycle fall after the slap in the face.

Suddenly the slaps stopped for a few years. And in the 80’s the ghost came back. One young guy was slapped in the face in same place. Funny is that the mystery was solved in that day.

It was a fkn branch from a tree. The old guys from the 70’s came home late from the old bar, completely drunk including my grandfather and without any source of light they would get hit by the branch and fall. Then the tree was trimmed and the slaps stopped until it grew again and made this 80’s guy the next victim. Lucky him he was sober and realised what hit him.” — HypressQ