When it comes to urban legends, most of them have been told time after time with little variation in the story. The terrifying not-sure-if-this-is-true feelings associated with urban legends is part of what makes these stories so popular. People like being scared; even if they say they don’t, which is why you’re embarking on this nightmare-inducing list right now. Our list does have one little difference: the urban legends we’ve included here are—dun, dun, dun—TRUE! Yep, each one of these incidents really happened, and we’ve got all the gruesome details. Oh yeah, and about those nightmares you’ll be having tonight. . . don’t say we didn’t warn you!

1. 11 Horrifying
Urban Legends
That Actually
Happened

2. 1. Buried Alive
Perhaps one of the oldest urban legends is
the tale of being buried alive. Pretty scary,
right? Well, this urban legend is actually not
an urban legend at all. See, burying people
alive, or “premature burials” as they called it,
was actually a thing back in the day. Most
burials were intentional and sadistic, but
some happened on accident (don’t ask me
how). It’s safe to say that with several feet of
dirt above one’s grave, I highly doubt that
this little “mistake” could be fixed.

3. 2. Creepy Crawlies Inside Your Head
There is no shortage of urban legends about
critters setting up camp inside the head of an
unsuspecting host. Total BS, right? Wrong. Take
Rochelle Harris for example. The 27-year-old
returned home from a Peruvian vacation, and she
kept hearing scratching noises that seemed to be
coming from inside her head. Well she went to the
doctor, and he discovered that she had an army of
maggots lodged in her ear canal. So that
scratching noise she was hearing? Yeah, that was
the maggots chomping on her ear flesh. OMG.

4. 3. The Man-Eating Escalator
Every little kid shares a common fear: getting eaten
by the escalator. I can testify to this because I myself
was a victim of a hungry piece of machinery that had
a taste for shoelaces. Luckily, the only casualty in
that situation was my shoe, but other people have
not been so fortunate. In fact, there are so many
reports about people who’ve been seriously injured
(or killed) by escalators that it’s beginning to look like
a real-life game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. Note to
self: take the stairs.

5. 4. The Dead Body In The Mattress
This urban legend has had people
inspecting their hotel beds for years.
According to the freakish tale, a couple
discovered a rotting dead girl in their
hotel mattress. Yeah, no thanks. Spoiler
alert: this gut-wrenching scenario is
weirdly common, and incidents have
been reported in hotels across multiple
cities including Pasadena, Atlantic City,
and Fort Lauderdale.

6. 5. Decapitated By An Elevator
Getting your head chopped off by a faulty elevator . . .
Really? Um, yes really! Turns out this freak accident isn’
t just an urban legend, and it’s happened not one, but
several times. In 2003, a Houston Doctor was
decapitated by a hospital elevator. Just last month, a
20-year-old Russian woman lost her head as her son
watched in horror. Yet another reason to take the
stairs.

7. 6. Waking Up In The Middle Of Surgery
Many urban legends tell of unlucky
patients who regain consciousness in the
middle of their own surgery. They’re
paralyzed and unable to speak or move,
but they’re fully conscious and THEY.
CAN. FEEL. EVERYTHING. I heard about
this one thanks to that horrible Hayden
Christensen movie Awake, but I never
thought it was actually a thing. However,
to my horror, “anesthesia awareness” is
real and many patients have lived to tell
about it.

8. 7. Black Market Kidney Thieves
The Kidney Heist is a tale as old as time, and aside from a
few minor variations, it goes something like this:
unsuspecting traveler is befriended by locals, and the next
thing they know, they’re waking up in a bathtub full of ice
only to find that their kidneys have been surgically
removed.
Yikes! Sounds like a horror movie, right? Well, yeah,
because this plotline has been featured in many a scary
movie, but it’s not just in the movies anymore. In 2008, 33-
year-old Mohammad Saleem was recruited to work
construction in New Delhi, India. Several hours after
meeting his new “bosses,” he woke up on a metal cot sans
kidney. Turns out he was the latest victim in a large-scale
organ trafficking ring that targeted laborers who needed
work.

9. 8. The Stunt-Turned-Accidental-Hanging
You know the story about the kid who
accidentally hanged himself during a stunt-gone-
wrong? Well, it happened in 2001, and the boy
was 14-year-old Caleb Rebb, who was working at
a local Haunted Hayride attraction in Michigan.
According to reports, Rebb secured a noose
around his neck as a stunt to make the hayride
scarier, but then something went wrong and he
actually died. People did see him struggling, but
they assumed it was part of the act, so no one
came to help him.

10. 9. The Legend Of Dog Boy
Gerard Bettis (aka Dog Boy) was a creepy young kid who
lived in Arkansas in the ‘50s. He got his nickname from
his obsession with collecting tons of dogs and keeping
them locked inside his home. However, his pets weren’t
the only ones he kept locked away. He also held his
parents—yes, his parents—prisoners in their own attic for
many years. He frequently abused them both and rarely
gave them any food. The truth finally came out several
years later when Bettis was arrested for growing
marijuana, which prompted his mother to come forward
about the gruesome details of her child-turned-captor.

11. 10. The Damsel In Distress Gets A Helping
Hand And Then Dies
All of us girls are familiar with the urban legend about the
damsel in distress and her charming knight in shining armor
who turned out to be a cold-blooded killer. Sounds familiar,
right? Perhaps that’s because it’s 100% true, and that knight
in shining armor happens to be one of the most iconic serial
killers in history—Ted Bundy.
Bundy was good looking, well dressed, and well educated,
so on the surface he seemed like a total catch. Being the evil
sociopath that he was, he used his charming demeanor to
lure women into his murderous trap. One of his acts
involved offering a woman a helping hand, and then asking
her for a ride in order to get her secluded and vulnerable. A
nice, helpful man needs a ride? Sure, what’s the worst that
could happen?

12. 11. The Dead Body Rolled In The Carpet
This story has been told a million times; perhaps to dissuade
college kids from attempting to redecorate their dorm rooms.
It seems absurd, but like the rest of ‘em . . . it’s true. In 1985,
three Columbia students found a rolled up carpet on the
street so they decided to take it back to their place to liven
things up a bit. When they unrolled their new carpet, they
discovered the body of a man who’d been shot several times.
Yikes!

13. Image URLs
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