As the urban legend goes…

A young couple from Palm Beach, Florida got engaged in 1975. The father of the bride was a wealthy man so he was able to afford a big wedding and a reception in an old, secluded house.

After the wedding, the reception kicked off and things got pretty crazy. People were having plenty to drink and as the night wound down, the groom had an idea to play hide-in-seek in the old house. Since he thought of the game, the groom was “it” first.

After a short while, everyone had been found except for the bride. The groom and the rest of the people playing the game began to look for her, but she was nowhere to be found. After spending hours on end calling her name and tearing the house apart, the bride was still missing.

The groom began incredibly angry and upset and thought that his new bride either ran out on him or was playing some kind of cruel joke. So he and the other patrons left the house that night and returned to their hotels.

In the morning, the bride still had not returned to the hotel and the groom started to worry. So he filed a missing persons report, but after a few weeks went by, he decided that maybe she had left him and it was time to move on.

Several years had gone by and a little old woman had set out to clean the house used for the wedding reception. As made her way through the house, she walked up into the attic and found an old trunk. Curiosity got the best of her, so she opened the trunk and screamed at the top of her lungs at what was inside.

During the hide-in-seek game at the young couple’s wedding reception, the bride had decided to hide inside the trunk. While she was getting into the trunk, however, the lid bumped up against a wall and as it was slamming shut, knocked the bride unconscious (and locked her inside).

When the little old lady found the bride, she had been rotting inside and her mouth was open like she had been screaming for someone to let her out.

As the urban legend goes…

Parents vacationing in Florida used to bring back pet baby alligators to their children in New York. But once the alligators got to be too aggressive, the parents feared for their children’s safety and flushed the animals down the toilet.

What gets flushed down the toilet must come out the other side, however.

As the story goes, these once cute pets grow up into huge, man-eating beasts beneath the streets of New York.

Due to the constant darkness, the alligators are blind and lose all their pigmentation, but they still breed and almost become evolutionary creatures of the sewers.

Now there is a bit of truth to these urban legends. There is documentation that notes a capture of an eight-foot alligator at the bottom of an East Harlem manhole in 1935. But while no one knows how the animal got down there, it’s doubtful the alligator was flushed down a toilet after once being a child’s pet.

This urban legend has proved to be just that – an urban legend.

One of the shorter and more popular urban legends is of “The Hitchhiker.” The urban legend goes as follows:

A man was driving home late one night and noticed a young woman, about 17 or 18 years of age, standing on the side of the road.

Worried about her safety and curious why she was all alone in this secluded part of town, he stopped and offered The Hitchhiker a ride. When she got into the car, the man asked her why she was alone and standing by the side of the road. But all The Hitchhiker replied with was, “I need to get home very quickly before my parents become upset.”

So the man drove the young woman home and once he pulled up to her house, he watched The Hitchhiker safely go inside and drove off. As he was driving home, however, he realized that The Hitchhiker had left her sweater in the back seat. Considering how late it was, the man decided to return the sweater to her in the morning.

The next day, the man returned to the house where he had dropped off The Hitchhiker the night before to return her sweater. When an older woman answered the door, the man explained that he had given a ride to the girl and she had left her sweater in the back seat. With a terrified look on her face, the older woman responded, “But that’s impossible! She’s been dead for four years!”

As the urban legend goes, the young woman and her boyfriend were coming home late one night from a school dance when their car was involved in an accident and both were killed instantly. The ghost of the young lady now hangs around the same spot as the accident, in the form of The Hitchhiker, beckoning men to pick her up and take her home.

The Hitchhiker always leaves something behind.

While most urban legend stories are scary, or at the very least, creepy, they also aren’t entirely realistic, either. 

The story, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” might be one of the more realistic urban legends ever told. And not too mention, it’s incredibly creepy. 

As the urban legend goes, two female dorm mates in college were in the same class. One girl, Megan, was an excellent student and took extensive notes for a midterm that was fast approaching. Her roommate, Julie, was more of a social butterfly and decided to use the class period to flirt with a boy she had a crush on. 

Before she knew it, the class had ended and Julie hadn’t paid attention at all. But she knew Megan had taken excellent notes and decided not to fret too much about the midterm. 

After class, Julie told Megan that the boy she had been flirting with all period had invited them to a huge party that night. Knowing she only had a couple days to prepare for the big midterm, Megan declined the offer and decided to get right to studying. Julie, on the other hand, figured she could still go to the party and worry about the midterm the next day. 

While Megan stuck her nose in her books that night, Julie got ready for the party and urged Megan to join her. But Megan declined again and Julie headed off to the party. 

After having a great night with her date, Julie started walking back to the dorms but began to worry about the midterm. She figured that when she got back to her room, she’d join Megan for a study session because after all, Megan had all the notes. 

But when Julie got back to the dorms around 2 a.m., the dorm was pitch black. Julie decided not to turn on the lights and instead would wake Megan early so that they could study together. So Julie got changed in the dark, slipped on her headphones to listen to some music and quickly drifted to sleep. 

When Julie woke up, the light was barely shinning through her room, but she could see that Megan was lying on her stomach. While trying to wake her, Julie rolled Megan over only to reveal Megan’s terrified face. Julie quickly turned on the light and saw all of Megan’s books covered in blood. 

Megan had been cut open and slaughtered, and while Julie dropped to her knees in freight, she looked up at the wall. Smeared in Megan’s blood was written, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” 

Unlike other urban legends, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” doesn’t have a clear-cut message or warning. In some respect, the message could be that life is full of close calls. Another hidden message could be that if Julie stayed home to study, maybe Megan wouldn’t have been killed because the girls would have been safer together. 

Yet another warning or message from this urban legend could be that Megan should have been more well-rounded. Had she gone out to the party and studied later, the intruder would have attacked someone else. 

It appears that the reader or listener is supposed to come to their own conclusions about this urban legend.

One of the oldest and most popular urban legend is the tale of “The Boyfriend’s Death.”

One night a teenage couple parks their car out in the middle of the woods for a make out session. After they’re done, the boyfriend tells his girlfriend that he has to go outside to relieve himself.

After waiting for what seemed like three or five minutes, the girl starts to grow concerned that her boyfriend hasn’t returned yet. Just then, she hears a squeaking noise coming from the top of the car.

Right before she opens the car door, she looks out her window and sees a dark shadow only a few feet from the car. She recognizes that it’s not her boyfriend and fearing for her life, she hops into the driver’s seat to peel off.

But the car won’t move. 

She frantically keeps hitting the gas but something is holding the car back. Someone had tied a rope around a tree and to the bumper of the car. She hits the gas one more time only to hear a loud scream. 

She slowly gets out of the car only to discover that her boyfriend was tied to the tree and the squeaking noise she had heard was his feet dragging across the top of the car. 

In another version of this urban legend, the young couple is out driving and hears a radio broadcast about a deranged man with a hook who escaped from a local penitentiary. 

On their way home, they hear a loud thump hit the side of the car. The boyfriend pulls the car to a screeching halt and wants to investigate the noise. But fearing the radio warning, the girlfriend urges her boyfriend to keep driving and check out the car when they return home. 

After a moment of deliberating, the boyfriend agrees with his girlfriend and they keep driving. When they reach home, they realize that the noise that they had heard was someone attempting to get into the car. 

Hanging on one of the door handles was a bloody hook. 

Both versions provide their own warnings. In the first urban legend, the message is clear: teenagers shouldn’t engage in pre-martial sexual situations. And the second urban legend is a warning to not stray too far from home, as well as to heed warnings in general.

One of the most popular urban legends ever told is “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.”

As the legend is told, a teenager is asked to baby sit two young children for the night. At one point, she gets a strange phone call by a man telling her to “mind the children.”

Thinking it was a prank, the babysitter does nothing at first. After a short while, the phone rings and again, a man is on the other end telling her to mind the children. Fear sets in for the babysitter, so she calls the police and tells the operator that she’s getting freighting phone calls from a stranger. The operator asks the babysitter to try and keep him on the line the next time he calls in order for the police to trace where the call is coming from.   

The next time he calls, the babysitter tries to keep him on the line, but he hangs up. A second later, the operator calls back with the horrifying news that the calls are being made from inside the house. Just then, the babysitter hears footsteps walking down the stairs and she makes a break for the front door.

When the police arrive, they discover a man brandishing a butcher’s knife. He had killed the two children and apparently was ready to kill the babysitter next.

Like most urban legends, this tale has different versions. In some, the man kills the babysitter and in others she saves the children. But all of them deliver the same warning: Mind the children or harm will be done to them.  

 This urban legend was made into a 2006 movie called, “When a Stranger Calls.” The movie follows the original storyline in that a man harasses the babysitter from inside the house until she eventually attempts her escape.

This urban legend has two different versions, but the following is the most popular.

A woman had gone out for drinks one night with friends. Upon leaving the bar, she noticed that a man quickly jumped into his pickup truck, started the engine but did not leave. She then got into her car and started her descent home, only to notice that the man in the pickup truck had began following her.     

It was late at night so no one else was on the road. After a few minutes, the man in the pickup truck got close to her bumper and started to flash his high beams on and off. Frightened, she didn’t want to look behind her and decided to keep her eyes on the road.

But every few minutes he turned his high beams on, and then off.

She thought maybe she would lose him if she sped up and took a back road to her home. As she started to accelerate faster and faster, the pickup truck did the same, flashing his high beams on and off in the process.

She finally reached her house, jumped out of the car and ran straight for her front door. Just then the man in the pickup truck parked behind her, jumped out and began screaming, “Call the police! Call 911 – hurry!”

When the police arrived, she realized the terrifying truth about the man in the pickup truck: he wasn’t trying to harm her – he was trying to save her life.

Earlier that night while leaving the bar, the man in the pickup truck saw that another man with a butcher knife had gotten into the woman’s backseat. He didn’t have any time to warn her, so he followed her home, flashing his high beams on and off whenever he saw the man with the knife pop his head up from the backseat. 

In another version of this urban legend, the woman pulls into a gas station and upon filling up her car, the gas station attendant sees a man with a knife lying in the backseat of her car and attempts to warn her. In some versions the woman heeds the gas station attendant’s warning, in others she’s killed because she doesn’t listen.

In all versions of this story, it’s always a woman who is being chased.

As a child, you may have played the game Bloody Mary, wherein you go into a dark bathroom, chant “Bloody Mary” a bunch of times while spinning in a circle until finally you stop and look in the mirror and a woman appears.

There are actually many variations of this. Bloody Mary has gone by many other names, including: Bloody Bones, Hell Mary, Mary Worth, Mary Worthington, Mary Whales, Mary Johnson, Mary Lou, Mary Jane, Sally, Kathy, Agnes, Black Agnes, Aggie, and Svarte Madame.

The legend was furthered by the movie “Urban Legend” where two co-eds try to summon Bloody Mary. The legend has also appeared in the 1992 film “Candyman” as well as the TV show “The X-Files.”

Although it isn’t known when this urban legend came about, it was wildly popular at girls sleepovers in the 1970’s and even published by folklorist Janet Langlois in an essay in 1978.

Mary is said to be a witch who was executed a hundred years ago for plying the black arts, or a woman of more modern times who died in a local car accident in which her face was hideously mutilated.

Some confuse the mirror witch with Mary I of England, whom history remembers as “Bloody Mary.” An expanded version of that confusion has it that this murdering British queen killed young girls so she could bathe in their blood to preserve her youthful appearance. This is actually untrue, and the only connection is the name similarity.

The lore of the leap year is as common as legends get. Most people believe that there are exactly 365 days in a year but in fact the earth turns at about 365 and a quarter times on its axis and that is what makes up the days in our calendar. So by the time the earth has completed a full year’s orbit around the sun, we are slightly off with our calendar. Which is why we have the need for leap year. A leap year which happens once every 4 years is simply a year in which the month of February has one extra day in it, making that year have a total of 366 days.

Those few folks born on the last day of February of a leap year are typically called leaplings or leapers. Since the real date of their birthday comes but once every 4 years, they tend to celebrate their birth on March 1st, since February 29th comes but once every four years.

In the early days in Ireland, yearning females who where unhappy about having to wait so long for their man to ask for their hand in marriage could propose on the last day of February during the leap year. This is probably we we got the tradition in the U.S. known as Sadie Hawkins day in which a women was given the right to run after unmarried men to propose.

The Greeks have long believed that couples have bad luck if they marry during a leap year. Apparently one in five engaged couples in Greece to this day will avoid planning their wedding during a leap year based on this ancient legend.