8 Urban Legends That Happen To Be True (Part 6)

Well, it's that time of year again. Specifically, the time of year where we make you shit your pants with stories that sound like they must have been made up, but are actually 100 percent, terrifyingly true. We've done this five times before, and now here are eight more creepy, scary and/or disgusting urban legends that actually happened...

The Engagement Ring and the Grave

The Legend:

Relationship woes form the basis of many urban legends, such as this tale of a man deciding to break off his engagement in the least tactful way possible -- by burying his fiancé alive. Thankfully for the fiancé, the symbol of her broken relationship would end up saving her from a shallow grave.

The Truth:

Michelina Lewandowska and Marcin Kasprzak had been together for over six years, had a three-year-old son and were engaged to be married. They would have been a lovely couple if Marcin hadn't wanted Michelina dead.

Thankfully Marcin was as bad at murdering as he was at relationships. Michelina would return home to the house she shared with Marcin one day, but instead of a hello kiss, she found herself on the receiving end of two taser shots to the neck. Marcin and a friend bound Michelina with tape, stuffed her in an old television box then stole into the night with her like a couple very sinister furniture movers. Marcin and his friend buried his fiancé alive deep in a secluded part of the woods, then promptly went and withdrew nearly $1000 using her ATM card, because hey, that wouldn't look suspicious at all.

As Marcin raided her bank account, Michelina lay curled in a ball underground. Her arms and legs were bound, and air was running out, but thankfully she had a secret (and very ironic) weapon -- her engagement ring from the man who had just tried to kill her. Michelina used the ring to cut through the tape binding her, and then clawed her way to freedom through the dirt and branches her fiancé had not-so-lovingly buried her under.

Ladies, let this be a lesson -- make sure you get a nice, big, sharp diamond out of him. Especially if he has a television box he just doesn't want to get rid of for some reason.

The Very Unhappy Ending

The Legend:

A woman offers her husband a romantic oil massage, which he of course is only too happy to accept. So, she runs a bath, lights candles and gets to work, but whatever she's rubbing him with smells more like gas than oil. Then she reaches for one of the candles...

The Truth:

There are a lot of urban legends about women luring men into a false sense of security then doing something horrible to them because, well, all dudes are a little afraid that one day the women in our lives are going to tire of our shit and try to murder our asses. Usually that fear is unwarranted -- unless you're married to Shriya Patel, that is.

So, one day, out of nowhere, Shriya offered her husband a hot oil massage in the bath, which really, should have been the guy's first warning something was up. Unfortunately for the husband he took her up on the massage, which ended up being significantly less erotic than I'm sure he was hoping.

Not a recommended massage oil replacement. Especially at today's prices.

See, the "oil" she was covering him with was actually gasoline and just as her husband began to notice the smell, Shriya ignited the gas with one of the "romantic" candles scattered around the tub and fled the room, jamming the bathroom door shut behind her. Oh, and she'd also taken the fire alarm off the wall, and wrapped all the sprinklers with scarves. Clearly, Shriya Patel was not the type to do a job half way.

So there you go guys -- justification for keeping those walls up. No need for thanks.

The Milwaukee Mangler

The Legend:

A quiet man, living a quiet life, in a quiet Florida neighborhood kills his wife and then himself. Turns out his secret past as a plastic surgeon may have been even darker. What do you really know about the people next door?

The Truth:

Glen Tucker was a terrible plastic surgeon. In fact, he was worse than that -- he was careless, incompetent (or perhaps sadistic) and left a trail of mangled patients behind him wherever he went. Like the man who went in with arm spasms and ended up having to have his arm amputated. Or the woman who went in for breast implants and somehow, against all odds and laws of physics, ended up with square breasts, covered in Frankenstein-like scars.

Adding insult to injury, Dr. Tucker barely plumped Frankenstein's lips and his nose didn't come out any slimmer at all.

Glen's faults went far beyond just being a crappy doctor. Take the story of Jan Lehman, who woke from her anesthetic mid-way through a surgery to correct a broken nose and found Dr. Tucker wheeling her into a strangely dark and deserted operating room. She then passed out, but awoke again later as Dr. Tucker brutally tore tubing from her nose, destroying he stitches. Later, after filing a complaint against Dr. Tucker, Jan reported seeing him following her in his car.

The complaints and lawsuits mounted and then one day Dr. Tucker tragically drowned in a boating accident. Except of course he didn't actually drown, and even if he did it probably wouldn't have been that tragic. No, he had just flown the coop to Florida, leaving numerous barely stitched together patients in his wake.

Years later, a Milwaukee TV producer would track Glen Tucker to Florida, and the doctor gave this eerie statement, "If I get driven too far into a corner, if it got to the point where life was no longer worth living, then I would not want to go alone."

He didn't. Several years later, Dr. Tucker would load his Cold .45 and kill his wife, himself and yes, even the cat. You know that creepy vibe you sometimes get from a seemingly normal neighbor that you usually just brush off? Well sometimes you're right, and that neighbour is actually just really, really fucking creepy.

The Corpse in the Deep End

The Legend:

Public pools are gross. We've all heard stories of people finding various things floating in the pool, but forget used band-aids and dirty diapers, could a dead body go undiscovered in a crowded public pool?

The Truth:

You bet it could. In fact Marie Joseph's body made corpse soup in a busy public pool in Fall River, Massachusetts for over two days before finally being discovered.

Somebody should have noticed that Marie hadn't resurfaced after taking a spin on the pool's waterslide -- she was, after all, with friends and neighbours at a local pool full of people. Hell, city health inspectors visited twice and never noted anything about kids playing Marco Polo around a decomposing body.

How could this happen? Well apparently the pool wasn't particularly hygienic even before they started adding human remains to the mix. The pool's water was so damn cloudy that you couldn't see the bottom, and understandably nobody was diving down to the bottom to see what secrets the murky depths held. So yeah, public pools are gross.

The Best Episode Of Cops Ever

The Legend:

Police arrive on the scene of what they think is going to be a straightforward call, only to discover a man has arranged a death for himself straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, except, you know, more blood soaked and horrible than funny.

The Truth:

There are plenty of stories about the crazy things police have encountered on what were supposed to be routine calls. This one that happened last year in Yorktown, Virginia is crazier than most, and unfortunately absolutely true.

When the cops arrived at what they thought was going to be a run-of-the-mill domestic disturbance, they found the husband sitting at a nearby intersection in his car. The car had a trailer attached to it. The trailer was on fire. Police and firemen tried to convince the man to leave his car as calmly as they could -- that is until they noticed the cable tied around his neck, at which point calm reasoning went right out the window.

The other end of the cable was attached to a nearby tree, and as police tried to remove him from the car, the husband hit the gas and well, the cops ended up having to book his head and body separately. Just a tip bad boys -- this is not the thing to do when they come for you.

The Poison Eye Drops

The Legend:

The "be nice to your spouse or they just might kill you" theme continues. A wife, tired of being ignored, decides to get her significant other's attention by poisoning him slowly with something most of us have in the medicine cabinet -- a bottle of eye drops.

The Truth:

Many of you may have heard legend of the "Visine prank". Basically it involves tricking someone you don't like into swallowing eye drops and laughing as their digestive system self-destructs. Well, it actually works. Despite most eye drops being marketed as "natural tears" or somesuch, they're basically super Ex-lax when ingested. But hey, don't worry about dousing your eyeballs with them several times daily!

Well, sure -- everyone's "natural tears" contain hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, right?

Vickie Mills was definitely fully aware of the poisonous properties of eye drops. Upset that her live-in boyfriend Thurman Nesbitt wasn't paying attention to her, she decided the best way to mend their relationship was to slowly annihilate his insides. Vickie snuck eye drops into Thurman's drinking water numerous times over a span of years, causing him near constant nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and blood pressure and breathing problems. Apparently at no time during this protracted poisoning campaign did Vickie ever consider other methods of getting her boyfriend's attention, like say, whipping her boobs out, smacking him upside the head, or you know, anything fucking else. God.

The Real-Life Weekend At Bernie's

The Legend:

Two guys have a madcap adventure with a third guy that's actually dead. It's an acceptable premise for a mildly amusing movie, but it couldn't actually happen in real life, could it?

The Truth:

It could, and even weirder, the guys dragging around the corpse claim they had no idea their friend was dead.

Robert Young and Mark Rubinson arrived at their friend Jeffrey Jarrett's house to find him dead of an accidental overdose, except according to Robert and Mark, they thought he was just drunk. Sure, why not? Lack of breathing and rigor mortis are common side effects of being drunk, right?

These guys couldn't tell whether someone was alive or dead? Nooo, get out. 

So, Robert and Mark (who maybe, just maybe, had had a few drinks themselves) loaded Jeffrey into their car for a night of fun. Jeffrey didn't seem much interested in fun, but surely he'd sober up soon, so Robert and Mark left him to decompose in the back seat while they hit several local watering holes and strip clubs -- all on Jeffrey's tab of course.

But thankfully in the end some mob guy took the fall and Robert and Mark lived happily ever after, even reuniting for a sequel! Oh no, wait, confusing this story with Weekend At Bernie's again. Actually they were charged with identity theft, criminal impersonation and abusing a corpse. Hilarious!

The Collector

The Legend:

A man living in a nondescript apartment is found to have a large collection of human-sized dolls. That would fairly off-putting on its own, but the story gets much worse -- beneath the frilly dresses and blonde wigs, police discover mummified human bodies.

The Truth:

Bodies had been going missing from local cemeteries around Nizhny Novgorod, a large city around 250 miles east of Moscow. The trail eventually led to the cramped apartment of local historian Anatoly Moskvin. What they found was beyond belief.

Okay, now where did he get the kids clothes to dress them in?

Turns out Anatoly was a collector, with an obsession so icky even TLC wouldn't do a show about it. Anatoly collected human corpses, which he dressed in women's clothing and wigs and posed around his apartment. Oh, and their faces were all covered and eerily featureless -- likely as a method of preservation. Or maybe crazy Russian grave robbers just find faceless women hot. Who knows?

You don't need to see this one's face to know it's staring right at you.

The collection wasn't just remarkable for its grossness, but also its scope -- Russian police found a whopping 29 human dolls packed into Anatoly's apartment. So guys, next time your girlfriend or parents start complaining about your collection of vintage action figures, or sexy anime girl statues, just remind them that it could be worse. In Russia, the collector collects you.

When not making jokes at the expense of the worst humanity has to offer, Nathan Birch sometimes writes and draws the funny animal comic Zoology. He also likes new Twitter followers.