9 Unbelievable Urban Legends (That Happen To Be True)

Some spooky shit, right there. But reality is even spookier ...

The Truth:

Penn State student Betsy Aardsma was beautiful, bright, popular, and socially conscious. If she was a character in a horror flick, she'd definitely be the last survivor, but real life is more frightening and cruel than any movie. On November 28th, 1969, Betsy told people she was going to the university's library to research a paper, but what she got instead was a single, deadly stab wound to the chest. And while librarians tend to discourage cold-blooded murder in the stacks, most would have approved of how silently the crime was carried out: Despite numerous other students being only feet away from the crime scene, nobody heard any sound of a struggle.

Betsy wasn't discovered until several minutes later, and initially, nobody realized what had happened to her, because her red dress camouflaged any blood stains. To this day, the circumstances surrounding Betsy's death remain a mystery. So beware, college students: The next time you're sent down to the stacks for a research paper, tedium and possibly stepping on a used condom aren't all you have to fear.

The Legend:

Since most kids will only listen to reason if you scare the shit out of them first, there are plenty of tales about the potential dangers of youthful pranks and hijinks. Putting a potato in an exhaust pipe will make the car explode in a giant fireball! Kids have been shot for TP-ing houses! One time, some kid died from an atomic wedgie!

The Truth:

Obviously, that last one isn't true; the victim wasn't a kid. The rest is correct. Apparently, pulling the perfect wedgie is possible, so long as you don't particularly care if your victim lives or dies. One fateful day, a 34-year-old man was arguing with his 58-year-old stepfather, and decided to grab his undies and give him an atomic wedgie. Shockingly, the police say that alcohol played a factor in this plan.

The man managed to get his stepdad's underwear over his head, but the waistband caught around his throat, resulting in a death that was simultaneously horrifying and America's Funniest Home Videos-worthy. Ironically, after being arrested, the man claimed that the fatal wedgie was revenge for all the years his stepfather had spent bullying him. Live by the wedgie, die by the wedgie.

They probably should have checked that attic, though.

On the evening of March 31, 1922, Andreas, his wife, his daughter, his two grandchildren, and the maid were all brutally killed by someone wielding a mattock (a tool that's half pickax, half ax, and all deadly). At least whoever did this wasn't a completely terrible guest, though, since the animals were well-fed when the family's bodies were discovered four days later. To this day, the identity of the killer remains a hotly contested mystery, but given that the victims were named Gruber and the murderer had a penchant for skulking around above the ceiling, it's hard not to imagine the suspect as some sort of psychotic German John McClane.

The Legend:

There are plenty of stories of unfortunate people getting trapped inside a turned-on oven and baked like a lasagna, because "fire bad" is still a thing we have to constantly remind kids about. But that's never happened outside of a Looney Tunes cartoon, right?

Or Saw movies, which are even less plausible than Looney Tunes cartoons.

The Truth:

The big industrial oven at a British kayak factory was on the fritz, so a supervisor decided to look inside to see what was wrong. Without telling anybody else. Uh-oh. While he was poking around, another worker managed to fix the problem. Then, not knowing anybody was inside, he turned the oven back on. Also -- Jesus Christ, you guys -- the worker was engaged to the supervisor's daughter.

The doomed man ironically found himself at the mercy of the oven's "safety" measures, as its doors automatically slammed shut and locked once it was turned on. As the oven's temperature rose to over 500 degrees, he presumably cried out for help, but nobody could hear him over the sound of kayaks being made.

In a bitter touch, the man somehow found a crowbar inside the oven, but before he could pry the door open, he passed out from shock. His body was only discovered when people noticed smoke billowing out of the oven. This paragraph is now over, and -- to paraphrase Werner Herzog -- may we never read it again.

In 2012, the man went to feed the pigs, and was never seen again. Or at least, 99 percent of him was never seen again. It's unclear what exactly happened in that pigpen. Maybe he had a heart attack, or maybe one of the pigs decided that action needed to be taken before Easter rolled around again. Whatever the precise course of events, the man's piggy pets completely devoured him, leaving behind only his dentures and a few tattered scraps of fabric and flesh. The sage advice of Troy McClure was only ever so slightly off on this case.

The doctors said that she must have picked up the parasites during a trip to Mexico ... Which was extra horrifying, because she hadn't been to Mexico for two years. Think about that -- this poor woman had been living with brain parasites for two freakin' years.

Oh, and in case you're thinking that this was nothing but a fluke you don't have to worry about: There are a number of tapeworm species that target the brain, and according to doctors, vacationers returning home with something burrowing through their gray matter is becoming more common. So yeah, don't worry -- we won't laugh at you if you head straight to the McDonald's on your next vacation.

At least one guy took the movie as an instruction manual, though ...

The Truth:

Ryan Eddy Watenpaugh of Palo Cedro, California sounds like a real charmer. After his girlfriend broke it off due to his abusive ways, Ryan decided to reinforce her decision by attacking her in her home. The woman managed to flee, but when she returned to her apartment, both Watenpaugh and her Pomeranian, Bear, were gone. A month later, Ryan and the woman reconciled, and he offered to whip her up a home-cooked meal. Y'know, out of the goodness of his heart.

After the romantic rendezvous, Watenpaugh solved the mystery of the missing pet with these stomach-turning texts:

Not long after, a small bag appeared on her doorstep, and when the woman opened it, she found Bear's tiny severed paws inside. Yes, Watenpaugh returned what was left of his girlfriend's dog in a doggy bag. So not only is he a shithead and a psycho, but he also makes terrible puns. We did it. We found him. We found the legitimate Worst Person Ever.

The Legend:

It's the ultimate pee-your-pajamas slumber party horror story. A teenage girl is shaken when she starts receiving threatening, obscene phone calls, but she manages to convince herself there's nothing to worry about. As is usually the case, teenage intuition is dead wrong, and she later discovers the creep on the other end of the line was within striking distance the entire time. As in, you know ...

The Truth:

In July of 2014, a 16-year-old girl from Chester, England unexpectedly found herself in the middle of basically every slasher movie ever. The girl started receiving messages from a local 18-year-old sweet talker named Kyle Ravenscroft, who texted that he was watching her and that he wanted her to awaken to the sight of him hanging outside her window. And those were just his suave opening lines. At midnight, our protagonist received another terrifying text as she was getting ready for bed: "I'm in your house."

True to genre traditions, our victim wrote the texts off as a joke, and didn't bother to call the police. The girl would sleep most of the night in her mom's bed, but later, when she returned to her room, she noticed a row of shoeboxes she kept beside her bed had been disturbed. This is the part where you cover your eyes and beg the hapless teenager to not look under the bed, even though you know she's totally going to. Sure enough, she looked, and found Kyle had been lurking under her bed all along. Thankfully, the girl escaped unharmed, but you know she's going to be checking under her mattress with a flashlight every night until she's 80.

The Truth:

Yep. This is the rare, terrifying case of kids on the playground getting the story pretty much dead on. Charlie No-Face was actually a man named Raymond Robinson, who really was cursed with a grotesquely deformed, skull-like face. One summer day in 1919, a young, not-yet-faceless Raymond and his friends thought it would be a swell idea to horse around on a local electrified trolley bridge. A boy had died on the bridge a year earlier, and all the kids knew this, but electricity had, like, just been invented, so parents didn't bother to teach them basic stuff like, "Don't play on proven-deadly electric bridges."

Sure enough, Raymond got a dose of 1,200 volts, which scorched his face like a blowtorch. His eyes were cooked in their sockets, his nose was burnt off, and his left arm was destroyed up to the elbow. Despite absorbing enough electricity to melt Frankenstein's neck bolts, Raymond somehow survived the ordeal. His face, obviously, did not.

For the rest of his life, Raymond led a mostly solitary existence, only leaving the house at night because he didn't want to give kids nightmares. That plan didn't work out so well. Usually, the boogeyman only exists in your head, but sometimes, he's simply that guy down the block who only mows his lawn at night.

You can find more of Nathan's somewhat less horrifying writings at Uproxx and at his website, or by following him on Twitter.

For more reasons every aspect of life is terrible, check out 8 Creepy Video Game Urban Legends (That Happen To Be True) and 5 Horrifying Places Real People Got Trapped And Forgotten.

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