6 MORE Creepy Urban Legends (That Happen to be True)

Last year as part of our ongoing quest to let you know pants-crappingly terrifying the world really is Cracked brought you a list of creepy urban legends that were unfortunately all too true, and since we aren’t ones to let a good premise go unmilked here are six more true tales designed to turn you into an agoraphobic.


The Headless Lover

The Legend:
A woman cheats on her husband and he, in a rational well-considered move, chops off the lover’s head and gives it to her as a gift. This one comes in many forms with the moral of the story being fairly clear; stay the hell away from that Brazilian poolboy ladies.

The Truth:
Sgt. Stephen Schap and Diane Schap, an army couple stationed in Germany, found out in 1993 that they were about to be blessed with new bundle of joy, which would have great news if not for the minor fact Stephen had got a vasectomy the year prior. Whoops. In a “This Week on Jerry Springer!” moment Diane was forced to admit she had been having an affair with Stephen’s best friend Gregory Glover, and unfortunately Stephen would respond with something much worse than a few thrown chairs or tossing a midget into a wedding cake.

On a cold December day the pregnant Diane lay in a hospital bed talking on the phone to Gregory when the line, and for that matter Gregory himself, suddenly went dead. Diane wouldn’t have to wait long to find out what happened as around half an hour later her husband burst into the room, pulled Gregory’s freshly liberated head from a gym bag, shoved it in her face and according to Diane unleashed a line so cheesy it has to be true.

“Look, Diane - Glover's here! He'll sleep with you every night now. Only you won't sleep, because all you'll see is this," Stephen reportedly blurted out before plopping the bloody head down on the bedside table so it faced his wife. Say what you will Sgt. Schap’s mental stability, but the guy had a flair for the dramatic.


The Corpse in the Carpet

The Legend:
Somebody finds a beautiful old rug in an alley, takes it home and finds something horrifying wrapped inside (an experience familiar to anyone who’s bought a burrito from Taco Bell). Variations of this one include bodies being found in discarded refrigerators or wardrobes, but the message remains the same; don’t do your home decor shopping anyplace that smells of crackhead urine.

The Truth:
In 1984 three Columbia University students found a rolled-up carpet on the sidewalk and decided to drag it back home (we assume they were mainly looking for something to absorb vomit and Doritos crumbs, rather than accessorize their milk crate furniture).

Once they got the carpet back to their dorm they unrolled it and found an unidentified man with two bullet holes in his skull in the middle. Yes, three students from a 50-thousand dollar a year college carried a carpet all the way home without noticing something was amiss even though it contained a 200-pound stinking mass of decomposing flesh. At the very least we hope these fine young leaders of tomorrow didn’t just push the body into the corner and go back to playing Atari.


The Death Photos


The Legend:
Somebody goes to visit their eccentric grandmother (the one that smells like cabbage and carries her teeth in her pocket) and in a back room they find an old photo that makes the hair on their arms stand on end. The photo’s of a young boy in his Sunday best; his head hangs slightly to the side and there’s a haunting look in his cold eyes. The person asks their grandma about the eerie picture.

“Oh,” replies the old woman as she tries to stuff the cat in the dishwasher “isn’t that a beautiful picture? You can hardly tell he’s dead.”

The Truth:
While most folks today are too squeamish to take more than a glance into the casket during a funeral, in the late 19th through early 20th centuries someone dying meant it was time to break out the camera for a family photo. The practice was known as memorial photography and while it may sound like something out of a goth wet dream, there was actually a somewhat reasonable explanation for the practice. The daguerreotype process used to take pictures back then was expensive enough that it was a once in a lifetime (er, or shortly after a lifetime) thing for most, and required people to sit perfectly still for a couple minutes for it to turn out properly. If there’s one thing dead people are good at it’s sitting still.


Of course the family saying “cheese” around pine box isn’t exactly the kind of upbeat scene you want to hang on the mantle, so the bodies were often clothed and arranged to look as lifelike as possible. The bodies were propped up, eyes were held open and incase they still weren’t giving off that lively “I’m not a corpse harnessed to a chair” vibe, pink cheeks were sometimes added to the photo. Eventually the practice of memorial photography went out of style, mostly due to picture taking becoming more affordable (although we would hope it was partly because it finally dawned on people how painfully creepy the whole thing was).


The Toxic Woman


The Legend:
A woman is brought into the hospital, but before long the staff are in need of medical attention themselves as the woman gives off mysterious fumes so toxic that the people around her become ill and pass out (making her the 2nd most toxic thing in the hospital after the cafeteria tuna casserole).

The Truth:
On the evening of February 19th, 1994, Gloria Ramirez was admitted to a California emergency room, suffering from an advanced form of cancer (which she apparently got from living next to a nuclear waste dump if what happened next was any indication). When a nurse drew Gloria’s blood she detected a foul odor coming from it and suddenly hospital staff were hitting the floor like it was their first frosh party.

Eventually as many as 23 people were effected, the ER was evacuated and a decontamination unit brought in. The cause was initially written off as a case of mass hysteria, but considering the fact the worst effected victim spent two weeks in intensive care suffering from hepatitis, pancreatitis and avascular necrosis (a condition which literally causes your bones to die) we’d say that the doctor who decided this was hysteria must have got his degree from Dumbass University.

A mere 40 minutes after arriving in the hospital Gloria Ramirez would pass away. Her autopsy was performed by men in full hazmat moon suits and yet despite one of the most extensive forensic investigations in history it’s still not known what exactly infiltrated this woman’s blood. The best shot at an explanation we can come up with is that Gloria Ramirez may have arrived at the hospital shortly after doing battle with Ellen Ripley.


The Not-So-Death Defying Escapist

The Legend:
An escape artist demonstrates why guidance counselors rarely recommend this line of work when he fails to escape his predicament and dies in front of a live audience. This one is obviously encouraged by the escapists themselves as watching a man painstakingly pick locks and carefully contort his body isn’t exactly white-knuckle excitement. No, people find escape artists fascinating because they believe there’s a chance they may die a horrible painful death in front of them (which pretty much explains why anybody would ever watch David Blaine).

The Truth:
Despite the illusion of danger there are almost no instances of escape artists dying while performing a stunt. Most sensible people are going to make damn sure every possible safety precaution is taken when they’re straightjacketed and lowered into a shark tank wearing a meat codpiece. Joseph “Amazing Joe” Burrus wasn’t most people though, and he certainly wasn’t sensible.

Ironically given what would take place, Burrus’ stunt was to involve him escaping from his own grave. Amazing Joe was shackled in a clear plastic coffin, lowered into a 7 foot deep grave, 3 feet of soil was shoveled on him and then as icing on this cake of idiocy the rest of the hole was filled with wet concrete. All seemed to be going well until the concrete level suddenly dropped about two feet; the plastic coffin had collapsed and Burrus was doomed to suffocate under seven tons of dirt and cement.

While you have to commend Burrus for saving a gravedigger the work of digging a new hole for him, there was some evidence he knew the trick wouldn’t work and his accident took place on the anniversary of the Great Houdini’s death, suggesting he may have killed himself on purpose, in which case it was awful decent of him to do it at “Blackbeard’s Family Fun Center” in front of as many kiddies as possible.


The Downside of Decapitation


The Legend:
Your head remains aware even after being separated from your shoulders (giving you just enough time to reflect on how stupid you were to stand up on that roller coaster). Severed heads have been known to blink, react to stimulus and yes, even try to talk.

The Truth:
Despite being assumed instant and painless throughout most of history (the guillotine was designed as a humane execution method, the fact that it looked freakin’ cool was just a bonus) there’s much evidence that we remain aware anywhere from several seconds to a minute after our heads are lopped off.


One of the earliest and best-known proofs of this came from a Dr. Beaurieux who conducted an experiment on a French murderer named Languille. After he was guillotined Languille’s eyes and mouth continued to move for 5 to 6 seconds, at which point he appeared to pass on, but when Beaurieux shouted the subject’s name in his face Languille’s eyes popped open again like he’d just had a dream about a naked Rosie O’Donnell. In Beaurieux’s own words “Languille’s eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine, the pupils focusing themselves,” and the good doctor continued to get similar results for up to 30 seconds (at which point Languille possibly just got tired of playing decapitation peek-a-boo).

There are plenty of other guillotine related stories, but how about we bring the horror into modern day where we can all relate to and be nauseated by it? Here we find a first hand account of the aftermath of an accident in which one of the men in the car lost his head.

My friend's head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me.

Pretty chilling stuff, but we here at Cracked aren’t all doom and gloom. If you absolutely must be decapitated, we suggest you do it in Africa where certain tribes would tie your head to a springy sapling before chopping it off so that your last few moments of awareness would be of your head sailing breezily through the air. Really, there’s no reason your bloody demise can’t still be fun.

Nathan Birch also writes the still disgustingly cute webcomic Zoology.