James Proud - Urban Legends: Bizarre Tales You Won’t Believe

Copyright Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2016.

First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Michael Short

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3315-2

E-Book ISBN: 978-1-5107-3318-3

Printed in the United States of America

Disclaimer: By their very nature, urban myths and legends come in all shapes and sizes; some are verifiable, others are not. The author and the publishers make no claim that any of these stories have any basis in fact. They are merely tales that have enjoyed popularity in the public domain in some form or another. Such theories are reproduced herein for entertainment purposes only and are not intended to be taken literally.

Have you heard the one about the alligators that live in the sewers? What about the story of the woman who woke up in the middle of her own funeral? Is there really a black market trade in stolen body parts? From the unsettling to the downright scary, and from the totally unbelievable to the it-could-happen-to-you, everybody knows at least one urban legend. This is a collection of some of the most compelling from around the world.

Some of these stories are true, whereas others are pure fictionand many are somewhere in between. What they all have in common is the power to capture the imagination and spread like wildfire. Many of the urban legends in this book go back decades and originally lived on thanks to word of mouth. The internet has given the tall tale a new lease of life: it all began with chain emails, followed by message boards, and now we have social media and viral videos. The nature of urban legends, both old and new, is to tap into common fears, stereotypes and prejudices, irrespective of where you come from. Strangers, crime, technology, clowns, childrens dolls, travelling alone, dark nightsIf it frightens people, its probably in an urban legendsometimes just the thrill of being freaked out is enough. Others are cautionary tales of stupidity with characters that need bringing down a peg or two, ending with a twist to keep the rest of us in line.

You might recognize stories that youd always thought were true, but actually never happened, and others that youd always assumed to be nonsense, but were actually based on real events. See if you can tell the truth from the fiction, and watch out for the twists

A middle-aged man was on a train to Los Angeles, on his way to a job interview. He had recently become engaged, and he hoped that the job would allow the pair to marry. At 4.30 p.m. the vehicle collided at 85 mph with a freight train running in the opposite direction, in one of the worst accidents in Americas history.

His fiance heard about the crash while driving to the train station with the mans parents and his siblings. Several of his loved ones received calls from the mans mobile phone so they naturally assumed that he had survived the accident, even though all they could hear when they picked up was static. Although their subsequent calls to him went straight to voicemail, all through the night they waited for confirmation that he had been found alive and well.

Twelve hours after the accident, having tracked the signal from his mobile phone, rescuers finally located him in the wreckage. He had died instantly in the crashand yet 35 calls had been made from his phoneonly to his nearest and dearestas if the mobile had been reaching out to help lead them to his body.

A taxi driver working the night shift on a quiet Sunday was driving past a hospital. A young girl hailed him down and hurried into the car to get out of the rain. She was wearing a hood and her hair partly obscured her face. She requested that he take her to a lake nearby, which he thought was odd, but he reasoned that perhaps she lived near it. She didnt answer any of his questions, so he drove to the destination in silence, with the rain drumming on the car.

When they arrived, she asked him to wait for her, and she disappeared into the darkness. He waited for a long time, not wanting to abandon the girl out there on her own. Finally, she returned and asked to be taken to a new address, this time to a neighborhood that the driver knew. When they arrived, the girl got out of the car without paying the fare and disappeared inside a house. Annoyed, the driver got out of the taxi and knocked on the door. An elderly man opened it but there appeared to be no sign of the girl. When the driver asked about his mysterious passenger, the old man said that there were no children in the house, but then he explained something: he once had a daughter, but she had drowned in the lake in a car accident with her boyfriend many years earlier. He said that sometimes her spirit caught a cab to look for him in the lake, before returning to her childhood home. The old man asked, worried, You didnt get a good look at her face, did you? The driver replied he had not, and the old man smiled, Good. He then paid the fare and closed the door. When the taxi driver got back to the car, he saw that in the place where the girl had sat down was a puddle of black water.

Japanese children are often told the story of a keen swimmer who went for a dip every day in the lake near his house in the mountains. Usually, he was the only person there, as he swam early in the morning when the water was very cold. One day he thought he saw someone else in the lake but, as he approached the water, he realized that they werent swimmingthey were drowning. It was a young woman, waving her hands silently above the surface of the lake, so he dived right in and swam powerfully to her rescue. As he got closer, he saw the girls long black hair swirling around her as she slipped beneath the choppy waters. He moved to grab her but suddenly his legs felt heavy and he could barely move his arms. He couldnt understand what was happening, but then he noticed something strange: the girl was no longer struggling but staring directly at him with black eyes. As he desperately tried to keep his head above water, he realized that instead of hands she had claws, and instead of legs she had the body of a great snake, which was wrapping itself around his torso and dragging him down into the depths. He was never seen againbeing a hero can have its consequences

An American boy was sleeping over at a friends house and they were both trying to outdo each other with telling scary stories. Hed seen all of his older brothers scary movies, so he wasnt that impressed with what he had heard so far. Then his friends cousin turned up, heard what game they were playing and, despite their protestations, sat down and joined in.