29 People Share The Creepiest Urban Legend From Their Hometown
"When we lived in western Pennsylvania my uncle would always tell me about Charlie No-Face."
1. Charlie No-Face
“When we lived in western Pennsylvania my uncle would always tell me about Charlie No-Face. He was in some kind of electrical accident as a kid that fried off his nose and his eyes. My uncle told my sister and I that if we were out at night, Charlie No Face would appear and try to steal our faces off. As it turns out, Charlie No Face was an actual guy named Raymond Robinson and he was in an accident that disfigured his face like that. But the ghost story part obviously wasn’t true. I’m reading other comments in this thread and it sounds like my uncle stole liberally from the Mexicans’ La Llorona.”
2. Mothman
“Mothman. In a 13 months period between 1965-1966, the town of Point Pleasant, WV reported seeing a winged beast with big red eyes. The last report was the beast standing on the Silver Bridge. And then the silver bridge collapsed. The beast wasn’t reported again afterwards.”
3. The flying woman who eats unborn children
“There is a creature in Filipino folklore that is a beautiful woman who detaches her torso from her lower body at night. Apparently her top half flies around landing on the rooftops where pregnant women are sleeping. It has a tongue that reaches down into the belly button of the pregnant woman and eats her unborn child. The only way to kill it is to find its lower half and put salt on it.”
4. Clownman
“Clownman. I lived right outside Pittsburgh, PA as a teenager, in a little, poor, town called Swissvale. The next communities over are Rankin and Braddock, which are steel production heyday ghost towns that have been plagued with poverty. A strip of woods, lined by a train track follow the river upon which our communities reside. Right next to the river looms the decrepit abandoned steel mill I believe once called Carrie Furnace. As teenagers do, my friends and I used to cut through the park, across the tracks, and to the river to drink, smoke pots, and hang out. Eventually, we started exploring the steel mill. I loved it. The graffiti and sculptural artists, the wildlife that randomly took over, the bums who made it home, etc., all made it a worthwhile adventure. I became comfortable there. Then my friends told me about an abduction and rape of a teenager whose naked and bloodied body ended up strung up on a set of city steps. The killer was an insane man who dressed as a clown with a horrid, bloodstained mask. ‘He lives in the woods and in the steel mill. He walks the tracks with a butcher knife he hasn’t even bothered to clean. Don’t come here alone.’ I got into a fight with a boyfriend one night and stubbornly decided to walk alone from the river—across the tracks, and through the woods. I got to the tracks, turned and looked at the steel mill. Further down the tracks I saw a figure. I couldn’t see a face, but the baggy pants were rather clown like. I ran like you wouldn’t fucking believe. I’ve never felt fear like that before. It was probably a bum. But who takes chances with an urban legend like that?”
5. The savage albinos at the top of Mount Umunhum
“We have a mountain range where in from called Mount Umunhum. It’s said to be ridden with savage albinos up at the top. Now large parts of this mountain are just normal black top roads with houses. But as you drive further up the houses become more scarce and the Forrest becomes thicker. Eventually you’ll see a sign for the Umunhum peak where the savage albinos supposedly live. The creepy part is that it’s a dirt road and two cars cannot go up it at one time. And you can’t really turn around. My friends and I would always go up trying for look and explore around 2AM. We never got very far before turning around through the one side opening on the road which we were always terrified of because it was really difficult to maneuver it and would have been so easy for the savage albinos to get us. Apparently they drive around in a white truck and play tricks on people to get them to pull over before the others ambush you.”
6. The Jersey Devil
“Along time ago in the Pine Barrens, a desolate empty place in the middle of a marsh. A pregnant mother was in the middle of giving birth to her 13th child. This was the worst birth of all her children, the unborn baby fought and tried to stay put, but the midwives were much stronger and had successfully birthed more troublesome babies in the past. The mother (Mama Leeds as she was known) couldn’t handle the pain, she screamed and cried as the weather outside went from a cool October night into a violent storm (thunder, lightning, rain and wind); it was almost as if the mother and the storm were one.
At the peak of the painful birth he mother cried out “This child is cursed!!! He has been laid by the Devils seed. I CURSE THIS CHILD!!! LET IT BE A DEVIL!!!” As she cursed the child, Mother Leeds passed out. Eventually the midwives brought her round and placed the child in her arms. He was a beautiful child, clean pink skin and chubby arms and face. But the child began crying, and as he cried his skin turned black and serpent like. Horns sprouted from his head and his body elongated. The chubby little fingers and toes melded into hooves and a tail began thrashing about.
Terror and chaos ensued, the demon child was now twice the size of a grown man and monstrous. The midwives were the first ones to be eaten before the devil went after his siblings and disappeared into the storm.
Thus begins the tale of The Jersey Devil.
7. The Pope Lick Monster
“We’ve got something around here called the ‘Pope Lick Monster’. Some type of goat/man creature. Legend is that he will lure you out onto the railroad crossing and you will fall to your death. A girl died just this week.”
8. The 13 curves
“A friend of mine’s hometown has a length of road through some hills that winds around with 13 curves, Referred to as the ’13 Curves.’ Legend has it that near or on Halloween a couple who recently married sometime in the late 50’s early 60’s got into a car accident navigating the road. Now on Halloween if you drive the road at midnight, the bride, bloodied and glowing, appears before your car trying to get you to crash. The story changes by region, but having driven on the road on Halloween there is definitely a creepiness to it, also the road is very dangerous to drive at night, some turns are so sharp if you don’t slow down to 10 MPH you could easily lose control.”
9. Purple Aki
“My area (Northern England) has a rumor of a man called Purple Aki, whose skin is so black it looks purple. He goes up to people that work out and says ‘Hello Boys! Let me feel your muscles!,’ makes them do a few squats then drags them into an alleyway. He then says ‘Pop or Slash?’ Pop is anal rape and Slash is carving the ‘P.A.’ onto your asscheeks and then anally raping you.”
10. Charlie, the man who could never get off the train
“OK it’s not immediately scary but when you think about it, it is. Charlie; the man who had just enough money to get on the train but not enough money to get off. It’s supposedly the reason why the Boston MBTA cards are called Charlie Cards. It sounds silly, but imagine never being able to get off a train.(They used to charge a nickel to get off above ground.) You would pass by your stop every day but could never go home. You would become a prisoner on a goddamn train. Wasting away to nothing. That always scared the shit out of me when I was a kid.”
11. The ‘H’ Man
“There is a local legend about a campsite I used to go camping at here in upstate New York. Legend says that there is a man they call ‘The H Man’ that lives out in the woods near the campsite. One year a group of Boy Scouts were camping out there and one of the boys went missing. They didn’t find him until they started packing up to go home, as they were cleaning up and packing up their belongings they found the missing kid. He was dead under one of the mattresses with an ‘H’ carved into his chest. They say when the H Man kills campers, he carves an H into your chest. Growing up camping here, all of us kids were terrified of the H Man. They said if you go exploring deep enough into the woods you can find his home. Well, there IS an abandoned house deep in the woods we found one time. (I was shitting my pants.) Creepy thing was, it was sooo deep in the woods but there was no roads leading to it, no paths leading to it. Just a single abandoned house. Sitting in the middle of the woods. If you go camping in Minerva NY, beware of the ‘H Man.’”
12. The Whistler
“We have one in Venezuela called ‘El Silbón’ (The Whistler) typical of the wetland plains and prairies regions we call ‘Llanos.’ Description is usually of a very emaciated man dressed in cowboy’s (llanero) rags with a wide brim hat that hides his skeletal face. He roams the countryside and patches of bush at night, with drooping shoulders, downcast stare and a heavy bag full of bones and half decomposed remains slung over his back.
There are two distinctive features, however, that make him particular: he continuously whistles, a high chord progression C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C that goes higher in tune with every note – and is unnaturally tall and strong, with some accounts describing him as towering over 6 meters in height.
His origin is not clear, with some tales stating him as an accursed parricide. But whatever he is, is feared by lone travelers. Specially drunk or unfaithful men that travel through the country. Story has it that his ominous whistle is suddenly heard very loud and close, yet the source cannot be pinpointed—and contrary to logic, when the sound gets lower and appears more distant it is an indication of his immediate proximity.
He will then kill by strangling or by concussion and devour the victims and throw the bones in the bag. Can be seen occasionally wading over the high walls of haciendas/fincas and honest prayer should keep him away.”
13. A midget-sized creature that lives in the woods and steals children
“There was a tale in Andros (Bahamas) that there used to be a midget-sized creature that lived in the woods and would steal children (as I was told). Then, recently, they found evidence of there being a midget sized creature that lived in the woods. Turns out it was a three foot tall ground dwelling owl….I heard about the child stealin’ from locals when I lived there. It’s not mentioned in the wiki.”
14. A fertility god whose dick is so big he has to tie it around his waist like a belt
“There’s this one Paraguayan legend about this God with a huge dick that impregnates women. Basically he just goes around with his monster dick fucking all the single women in Paraguay and gets them pregnant. His name is Kurupi. His dick is so big he has to tie it around his waist like a belt.”
15. The ghosts of the snowmobilers
“I used to be a Boy Scout. The creepy thing about this story was that it’s actually true. At a camp I used to go to a few years ago, one of our senior patrol leaders told most of the troop that back in the 70’s, there were these two guys who were on snowmobiles and they were riding on some of the trails. They had to go to the bathroom and they went to the small shed that had a few toilets in it. But with the amount of snow that had fallen, it collapsed and the two guys died. Their bodies where found when the snow melted in the spring and legend has it, in the winter time at the camp when nobody is their, you can see their ghosts roaming the area. I asked some of the older staff there and two guys actually did die like 40 years ago in the camp’s old bathroom.”
16. Burning the Ouija board
“The stories of Ouija boards always mess with me a little. My mother told a story of when she and her friends used one. After messing around with it mom’s friends asked playfully asks when she’s going to die. It spells out tomorrow, she starts freaking out and then without a question it’s starts spelling goodbye. My mom’s friend starts crying my mother said she was could see her hands die. She could see bone and rotting flesh slowly creeping up. They burned it that night with some holy water. Pretty religious upbringing so grandma had to get her bottle to help horrified teenage girls.”
17. The evil words on the tombstone
“I live out in a rural area that was settled a long time ago. The story goes that in the days of the first settlement there was one teenage girl who was very into the supernatural and began to experiment in witchcraft. At the same time that she was experimenting with witchcraft several villagers noticed that suspicious things were happening. They had a bad harvest that year, several people had gotten sick and a small boy even died.
The villagers were lamenting their hardships when somehow it came out that a teenage girl was experimenting with dark magic. The villagers became enraged and rallied to have the girl burned at the stake. They asked her if she had any last words. She asked that her last words be put on her tombstone and she recited a long speech.
These words were placed on her tombstone. It is said that anyone who reads the words out loud at her grave will have misfortunes for a short time after reading the words and that if you curse her name that any nearby churches will burn down.
I have visited this grave. I don’t believe in the supernatural but I can’t explain what happened. My friends and I went to the grave. We had been telling ghost stories beforehand so we were all a bit jumpy. We approached the grave late at night close to midnight. There was a horse farm nearby and we could hear the horses whinny. It was a rather bright night as the moon was out in full. We arrived at the grave and one of my friends reads the text on the tombstone in full. Nothing happened.
Until we heard a very loud and seemingly very close neigh from the nearby horses along with the thundering of hooves running, which at the time sounded incredibly closer than it should have possibly been. I will am not ashamed to say I and my friends squealed and ran as fast we could to the car. I jumped up front while the driver jumped in. He could not turn on his car. In the panic two girls jumped on my lap and everyone was screaming we needed to get out of there. I slammed the door. Little did I know one of the girls had her hand still on the outside of the car. I slammed the door on her hand. The door was locked even though no one had locked the doors beforehand. I had to manually unlock the door as this girl screamed with her crushed hand in the door and then I opened it. The car started. The lights came on. I shut the door again and we drove off.
Luckily this was a car that did not have metal around the window so while it was painful it didn’t exactly break anything. I will say though that whether it was all in our heads or if there was something more at play I will never know. I do know that I don’t plan on going back anytime soon.”
18. The wooden crow that flies
“There was a cemetery about a mile from where I grew up (in the middle of nowhere) that dates back to around 1850. Everyone who died in the area was buried there for a while, but it’s been owned by one family for about 60 years, so they’re the only ones who use it now.
One of the graves has a big crow carved out of wood, I think, and painted black. It’s ominous as hell and always creeped me out as a kid. It was always there, brooding over the grave.
We drove by one Sunday on the way to church, and the crow fucking turned and looked at me! I almost shit my pants. It flapped its wings and flew away. I swear to god, that fucking thing was perched there in the same position without moving for years, until one day it flew away. I never saw it again. I still have no idea what the fuck the deal was. Was it a real bird that always happened to land in the same spot and perch there perfectly still while I was watching, day after day, year after year? Or was it a carved bird that I hallucinated flying away? Or was it something else?
Either way, I’m not setting foot in that goddamn cemetery ever. And I’m still irrationally afraid of crows.”
19. The wooden statue of a monk
“In my old town by the Church there was a wooden statue of a monk. It was really tall and thin, and the wood was all cracked. All the kids in the neighborhood had a tale about it, why it was there, who he was etc. The one that stood out in my mind is that if you stood with your back to him at night he’d visit you later. Nobody had the bottle to stand there for long enough, so we’d never find out.
Then there was a story he appeared on an episode of Strange But True, which was a show on ITV that talked about ghost stories and the like. Apparently an old woman noticed he wasn’t where he should be and was in fact feeding the ducks close by.
But I recently I found out it was made in 1992, only about 3-4 years before I heard the stories.”
20. The haunted house and the rope
“One of my friends told me this a long time ago; she heard it from someone else (obviously).
A group of guys, high school friends, make a bet involving a local haunted house. One guy says he can spend the entire night inside of it without leaving. His friends take him up on it, but just to make sure he doesn’t pull a fast one, they insist he be tied to the upstairs banister with a rope. Guy agrees. They tie him up and leave.
Next morning they come back to get him. He’s a little out of it and says it was fine, but that’s all he says. He wins the bet and collects.
Life continues; the friends finish high school. All go away to college except haunted-house guy. He stays around in town, moves from dead-end job to dead-end job. He doesn’t go out and loses touch with the others over the next couple of years.
One day the friends hear that haunted-house guy has killed himself. This comes as a huge shock and they all have questions. They are all horrified to learn that he hung himself with the rope they used to tie him up that night in the haunted house.”
21. The midget-sized creature near the castle
“I can’t remember the name of the creature. It was said when wandering uphill towards the castle in my hometown at night, a midget-sized creature would jump on your back and cling to your shoulders until you reach the castle moat. he then would just let loose and get lost. Been told this as a child, you can’t imagine me watching out at this hill even for years. In retrospective this little guy seems like a lazy ass bitch demanding free rides home.”
22. The bloody leg print on the Colonel’s tombstone
“The following story is part truth and part legend.
Many tourists have visited Bucksport Cemetery in Maine because of a supposed curse. The man who was the victim of this curse actually lived and died in Maine. Colonel Jonathan Buck fought in the American Revolutionary War. He formed the Fifth Colonial Regiment.
Later he founded ‘Buckstown,’ which became known as Bucksport, Maine. He died in 1879 but not before, according to legend his mistress cursed him. Some state there is visual proof even today that this curse lives on.
The Bucksport curse was first mentioned in an article in The Cambridge City Tribune written by J. O. Whittamore in 1899.
As the story goes Colonel Buck had a mistress by the name of Ida Black. The two were happy until Ida’s looks began to fade. At which point the Colonel found himself a new younger mistress. During the mid-1800’s Maine was in the grips of witchcraft hysteria. Buck decided to use this to his own advantage.
In order to dispose of Ida he accused her of being a witch. Buck was believed because he was a leading citizen of the community. Ida was found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to burn at the stake.
It is said as she burned she placed a curse upon the Colonel. She warned that she would haunt his grave. As the crowd and Colonel Buck watched she proclaimed that she would ‘dance upon his grave’ at his death.
When Jonathan Buck died in 1875 evidence of Ida Black’s curse was noted. Shortly after the colonel’s death a ‘bloody leg print’ appeared upon his large grave monument.
Many people over the years have tried to remove it but it always reappears. Descendants of Colonel Buck have even replaced the stone twice but the bloody print always returns. Reports state that the print always appears more pronounced on the anniversary of the Colonel’s death.
23. The plantation owner’s ghost
“There’s an old grist mill up in northeast Georgia that sits on property that the locals say was once a plantation. Story goes that the owner of the plantation treated his slaves poorly and even murdered one of them (whose ghost apparently can be seen on the property), so the slaves were said to have revolted and dragged the plantation owner up to the attic of the grist mill and lynched him. If you drive by at night and the conditions are right, and you turn off you headlights and drive slowly down the hill past the grist mill, if you’re lucky you’ll see a faint bluish glow and the outline of the plantation owner in the upper window of the mill. I’ve seen it; most of my friends have as well.”
24. The Wendigo
“This story relates to the Wendigo. A bunch of friends and I were out one night to do some urban exploring, hiking through woods, etc. (What else is there to do when you live in bum-fuck nowhere?)
We were walking up a hill towards a connecting public park that was just kind of an open field with walking paths surrounded by dense woods. Standing on the edge of a tree line we looked out into the open field and saw what we all thought was a deer. Not that strange; deer are everywhere. We walk out into the field some more while watching the deer. As we get further out into the field, this ‘deer’ stands up on two legs and covers about 100 yards in what seemed like only a few strides. This freaked us the fuck out and we left as fast as we could.
I’ve been in the woods nearly all my life and I’ve never seen anything like that. Scary.”
25. The Haunted House of Okinawa
“In Okinawa the was a house near the USO on Kadena Air Force Base that was abandoned. A man killed himself and his family in it. It was said to be haunted. It was even part of the ghost tours they gave on base. Reports that the outside lights would turn on by themselves and creepy things happening. One story was that a woman could be seen washing her hair in the sink in the kitchen through a window. The creepiest thing by far, was that this house shared a chain link fence with the daycare building. My friend’s mom worked at the day care. Children, 4-5 y/o, would constantly throw toys over the fence. When asked why, they said they wanted to play with the children on the other side. All of the kids saw these other children, but the adults could not. It throughly freaked out anyone who worked there.”
26. The little girl behind the tree
“There is a tree in my hometown and its trunk is shaped in a way that at night time there is a little girl peeking out from behind it and the freaky thing is it follows you until you drive beyond it.”
27. Dead Children’s Playground
“Back when I lived in Huntsville my home was ~100 yards away from the ‘Dead Children’s Playground.’ During the day it was just a place parents could drop their kids while they visited buried loved ones, but during the night it’s also a huge fog trap due to a giant rock wall around half of it. Supposedly swings move on their own and you can hear children laughing. We used to go out there at midnight all the time but apparently you have to go at “the witching hour” which I’m guessing is past my bedtime.”
28. The Stüpp
“The Stüpp is a type of werewolf from German folklore. It usually waits around crossroads at dusk and after dark and leaps on unsuspecting passers. And that’s it. While other werewolves would promptly tear your face off, the Stüpp just stays clenched to the hosts back like a backpack, forever. As the person struggles to get the creature off, it grows in size meaning the more they struggle the greater it grows until the person either has their legs broken or shattered, or they die of exhaustion. Here’s the only Wikipedia page that I could find on it.”
29. The Crawling Bags of Grain
“My mum told me this story about the village where she grew up in Scotland.
The village’s earliest known settlement is from 3000 BC, so it’s old. It’s been home to the Picts and the Romans. Nowadays there is a small woodland and the rest of the surrounding land is farmland. The woods used to be much larger, they are what survives of a large forest that almost completely surrounded the village. Legend says the forest was home to witches.
When the forest was being cleared for expanding farmland a lone witch came out of the forest to tell the villagers to stop. She said the trees would not forgive man for their destruction and if the villagers did not heed her words then all of their land would become infertile. And all the women.
Frightened, the villagers agreed but asked for a small part of the forest. A deal was made that this, and only this, land could be cleared. The witch also said that for every harvest of every crop grown there, one sack of produce must be taken to the edge of the forest and left.
This practice was followed for hundreds of years until the villagers abruptly tore down much of the remaining forest to grow wheat and build a mill. Again a strange woman came from the forest into the town and threatened the villages. She said they had broken the promise and would suffer. This time the villagers took the woman and hanged her. Her last words were that the price was now three sacks.
The man who built the mill was scared and after the first harvest he took three sacks into the woods. Unlike his neighbors his crops did not fail and his wife became pregnant. Always he paid the woods their due and before long he was the richest man in the village and had three beautiful, healthy daughters.
Unfortunately the man grew greedy and thought he’d no longer pay his three sacks. The next morning his youngest daughter went missing. The whole village came to help look for her, but the man asked that his men run the mill as normal so he didn’t lose any money. There was soon a commotion at the mill; some of the workers had fainted others were crying, some were shouting. The man came to see what was happening. A horrified worker told him they had started up the mill as normal, but blood had poured from between the stones. They had found his missing daughter.
Distraught the man sold his land and fled the village with his family. The mill was torn down and years later a silo was built there. By the 1960’s the silo was ancient and crumbling. It was also rumored to be haunted either by the farmer, his daughter or the witch. Sometimes all three.
This part is my mum’s story. One day she and her friends had a bet to see who could spend a night in the silo. One boy who was always boasting of his bravery volunteered. Between them my mum and her friends conspired to keep this a secret from their parents by lying about camping in each other’s gardens. That evening the boy, John, climbed the silo loft and mum and her friend gave him a bag of food, a blanket, and a torch. They told him they’d be back in the morning but were actually planning on coming back later to frighten him.
They had waited a few hours and snuck back to the silo and alarmingly they could her John sobbing and crying for help. They found him quite a way from the silo pulling himself along on his stomach. John had jumped out the silo loft and broken his ankles. He was carried back to his parents’ house and taken to hospital. After the inevitable week of punishment my mum was allowed to visit John. She said he still looked as terrified then as he had that night. She asked him what happened. He said he told his parents and the doctors that he fell but the truth was he saw something. Not long after he was left on his own he could hear something shuffling around in the loft. He used the torch to see but there was only empty grain bags. He tried to ignore the noise but finally it sounded like it was moving toward him. When he shone the torch on the grain bags again he saw that they were crawling, dragging themselves along the floor towards him. Thats why he jumped.
The silo’s long been demolished but they’ve built home there now. Week!” 