30 Urban Legends That Were Real All Along

The Great Potato Salad M******e back in 1976. Small Alabama town. Middle of July. Soaring temperatures. Southern Baptist Church summer picnic. Some husband put the potato salad in the back trunk the night before - didnt know it needed to be refrigerated. At the picnic he puts it on the food table. Everyone eats it. These are Southern Baptists after all.

An hour later the fuse was lit so to speak. Nay, a hundred fuses were lit. The men were playing softball. the women were trading pie recipes. the kids were swimming in the pond. Mayhem ensues. Gastro-Explosions erupt in every last one of those that ate the salad.

The m******e is what happened in their britches and to the outhouses the lucky few got to use. Everyone else either decimated and desecrated the bushes, the trees or their car seats as they foolishly thought they could make it home in time.

How do I know it's true? My grandpa is the man that was in charge of the potato salad. he didnt eat any. But my grandma reminds him all the time since they were excommunicated from the church.

The “Angel Glow” after the Battle of Shiloh. It was reported wounded soldiers would glow with a bluish-green hue. Many of the soldiers with this glow miraculously recovered from their wounds. The recovery was attributed to angels, healing the soldiers.

Researches later discovered the battlefield was full of a bioluminescent bacterium that aided in healing wounds.

In my college town there was one homeless guy who everyone kind of knew of. He stood out because he always wore a black suit with no shirt and walked around barefoot with no baggage or shopping cart or anything.

A rumor started going around that he was actually a famous painter whose work sold for thousands, that he had a patron that took care of him, and he just lived like a vagrant out of preference (and schizophrenia).

Most people called b******t, including myself, until I met someone that knew his name: William Laga.

The Funhouse Mummy. Elmer McCurdy was a bank and train robber killed in a shootout in 1911. His body was embalmed and put on display. It ended up going on tour, even being used in a couple of films. His body went missing in the 1960s. It turned up again in a fun house that was going to be used for the filming of an episode of the $6 Million Dollar Man. The crew were removing mannequins. When the arm fell off one of the mannequins, and they noticed a bone sticking out, the police were called. McCurdy’s body was buried in Guthrie, Ok.

Christopher Thomas Knight was an urban legend in Maine - someone who lives in the woods and was sneaking around people’s summer cabins… Until he was captured in 2013 after living in the woods for 27 years.

When I was about 12 years old a friend and I were playing in the woods that were known for being “creepy”. While building a fort, a strange man snuck up behind us and yelled at us to get off his land and never come back yadda yadda. It really startled us as we knew the land was a public area and had never been threatened by an adult before. Several years later we found out he was an actual bank robber, wanted by the FBI for years. We were building our fort a few feet from his stash! Here’s the news article about it. His name - Carl Gugasian.

The very sad story of Pennsylvania’s “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”.

I always mention this one, because it's so famous it got a Snopes page back in the late 90s.

Close to where I live there's a drive-in, and in 1996 that drive-in was hit by tornado, and the tornado just happened to go through a screen that would have been showing Twister that night. That's the true part.

What everyone seems to fabricate (and I remember it being a thing when I was a kid, several people I knew claimed to be there when it happened) is that it happened *during* the screening of Twister. Some claim that they thought it was an elaborate special effect. This part never happened, as the tornado went through the screen *during the day time*. Usually, outdoor movie theatres operate at night, so I'm not sure how anyone could have been watching a movie at the time the tornado rolled through. On top of that, there were no reports of injuries or deaths, and if a tornado was powerful enough to destroy a screen at a drive-in, and there were people there, you'd think there would be at least a few reports of injuries, among other things. Instead, the only report was damage.

So, to recap, true parts:
- Drive-in hit by tornado
- Screen destroyed would have been showing Twister that night

Untrue part:
- Tornado happened at night during the actual screening of Twister.

Have you heard the story of the robber who fell through the skylight, sued the homeowners and won? It’s true, but it was a business, and it wasn’t a robber, it was a j****e jumping from one adjacent building to the next, and landed on the skylight that gave way. He’s lucky to be alive. He fell 2 stories. Also, the insurance company settled, so I wouldn’t say he “won” a court case per se. It was my dad’s family business.

For the last several years in Toronto, gay men have gone missing in the Village. The community was convinced it was a serial killer on the loose, but the Police said no. These murders disappearances are unrelated.

Turns out that’s totally the case and the guy was killing gay men, dismembering them and burying them in and around the properties he was working at as a groundskeeper/landscaper.

The Subtropolis. The underground city. No one thought it was real until the 1970's. Now, it still catches people off guard, even people who have lived nearby their whole life.

In Kansas City, there's a massive mostly man made cave system. It started as a government facility (and part of it remains guarded by the military to this day) exact dates are still not known. But in 1947, it was sold to a mining company, who, rather than collapse the whole thing and strip mine it, kept expanding it. In the 1960's the Hunt family (billionaires from Texas oil, also the owners of the Kansas City Chiefs) bought it, and spent a decade developing it. In the 1970's they started renting out warehouse and office space. These days it's almost entierly warehousing, but there are some businesses that still operate out of it. You can go drive through it, I think it costs a few bucks. It's very easy to get lost down there. It's upsetting how far underground you can go. It's a very large facility, 1,100 acres.

Ten years ago I used to laugh at all the crazy people who thought the government listens to all your phone calls....

Black Volga. In the 60s and 70s, there existed and urban legend in poland, that vampires in black limousines were kidnapping people, preferingly little children. It was a tale parents told their kids who would then tell their friends etc. Turns out it was a rumour that was spread by the polish secret police who actually used black cars to kidnapp people. The aim was that no one would believe someone who would report they had witnessed a kidnapping.

There used to be a rich hippy cult in the woods (nearish) my town in the 60s. Ultra rich, but think, drum circles and c*****e. So, so much c*****e.

One day, they just... Disappeared. Abandoned the compound, nobody knew why, they just all left overnight. Assumptions ranged from d**g raid incoming, to a m****r in the compound, you name it.

Most don't think it was real anymore, or it was just some weirdo eccentric dude, and the story took a life of its own.

I know it's real, cuz I've been to the compound. Noticed some (many) years back a weird road when driving past the area for work. Overgrown, and not on Google maps. Took my lunch/ciggy break right there and then, and went to check it out.

The place was massive, with stables and several large houses (now kind of caved in). Inside, everything was still like it was back then; furniture, dining wear, clothes, magazines. Like someone had just left for store - I mean, minus 30+ years of mildew and moss.

Not a single car in the garages tho.

Edit: since people seem curious, I'll try and recover the photos from the phone I had back then (gotta do some digging in the barn to find it first. Been over 10 years). No promises of success, but I'll post the photos, if there's anything left that ain't corrupted.

Edit 2, update; the phone with all the photos & charger from days of yore have been found. Didn't wake up even after 12 hours of charging. Not found when hooked on computer. Now it's sitting in rice, for round two. I can't remember if the pictures are in the phone memory, or the SD card - but not like I have anything to slot the card into anyhow, except for this phone. So hopefully, a rice bath will make it feel better.

Ok, this isn’t a known urban legend per se but once when I was 14 years old I was staying at my grandmas. The house was surrounded on 3 sides by woods/forest. I was walking up to the back door when something caught my eye. Sitting on a fallen tree at the edge of the woods was a woodpecker that was at least 5ft tall. It legit was Woody Woodpecker! I stared at it for a few seconds then ran inside the house.

Now, what makes this better is about 10 years later my step dad and I were talking randomly about things and the giant woodpecker came up. Before I could finish my story he interrupted me and said he had seen a 5ft woodpecker sitting in the same spot a couple years before. He thought he was crazy and never told anyone about it.

So the legend of the 5ft. Woodpecker was born.

It isn’t a legend yet, but as long as Old Bridge NJ exists, there will be the story of the mysteriously large dump of pasta next to a river that was labeled a terroristic act.

The "Construction Clown" in Cincinnati, Ohio. I lived in Roselawn and Bridgetown as a kid and started to hear stories from friends about a middle aged man with a clown collar/ruff, hard hat, clown suit, and a construction worker's metal tool box riding the public transit "all day" without purpose, or milling around constructon sites. There's no way that's true, I thought, until one day I took a bus to a local Kroger grocery store for something. As I walked through the parking lot to the store I saw him standing outside the front doors, tool box in hand, hardhat, white ruffed collar, bright red sweatshirt, overalls, and work boots painted yellow. It was terrifying. I milled around the parking lot for what felt like forever and noticed that most people coming and going from the store were avoiding the guy. He just stood there, not moving, in the middle of the entry/exit doors of that Kroger.

Suddenly though, he was gone. I didn't see if he walked away or got into a car, or went inside, but I had lost my nerve completely and went back to the bus stop. As soon as I paid the fare and looked up to find a seat, there he was...just sitting in the middle of the bus. I realized the bus had also stopped right in front of the grocery store so he must have gotten on there. Anyway, I sat one row back from him and he didn't move or say a word until it was time for me to exit. I saw him again a few more times in the neighborhood, almost always in passing while he was riding the bus again or standing at various bus stops. He was always dressed in the red sweatshirt and overalls or a full-on clown suit. One time he had a shovel. Then one day he was just gone and people stopped talking about him.

Probably twenty years later when I was in my 30's I was visiting home and running around the city with my mom. We ended up in Covington, Kentucky doing something or other and were stuck in traffic on MLK Boulevard. As we inched up the road I looked over and saw a silver bust statue of the guy! It was in front of the Hellmann Creative Center. I completely lost it...nobody including my mother had ever believed me when I told stories of seeing this guy when I was a kid but there's a f*****g statue of him right there on the side of the road!!

Anyway, meet Raymond Thunder-Sky, Cininnati's "Construction Clown."

Remember when they said E.T. On the Atari 2600 was so bad a game that it crashed the entire games industry, and then they took all the unsold cartridges in a New Mexico landfill? Well that isn’t true. The game is ok, just a little broken, but multiple factors led to the games industry crash, but one thing that is true is that they did find that landfill site several decades later, with many E.T cartridges, but also several other games that they later auctioned for charity.

I grew up hearing about an abandoned psych ward in the woods of Tallahassee. Some versions had it as an abandoned pediatric psych ward. This was the legend in the 70's. Sometime in the 2000's, when they built the Blairstone extension, there it was in all its abandoned horrifying glory.

I’ve seen the Illinois Thunderbirds on three occasions: once in grade school, once in my late teens and once at the age of 30.