I know that one about the woman who hears on the radio that a murderer is on the loose and she thinks the car that is following her is the murderer so she tries to outrun him, but the car is trying to warn her, because the murderer is in her car! But I don't know how to tell it very well.

I know that author Jeffrey Archer (I may be spelling that wrong because I think there's another guy named Geoffrey Archer and I could have them confused and that's not so good because the author one went to jail for perjery or something and is probably harming the other one's reputation by association) ... er, but anyway ... that author Jeffrey Archer published a whole book of urban legends as short stories. Which is probably a bit shit because he didn't think up the stories himself, but I guess it's all in the telling of the tale.

These were also probably all in that movie Urban Legend and/or its many sequels.

I was once told I looked like one of the guys on the poster for that movie. But only on the poster, not in any other pictures of the guy or when he was moving around in the movie. We looked completely different, but on the poster, we looked alike.

If you swallow gum it sticks to your insides and you die. Maybe that's more of a lie that parents tell their children.

I had a sleepover when I was little, where the china doll story was told... I happened to have a basket of china dolls sitting in the corner of my lounge at the time. We freaked out.


A young girl gets sent a china doll for her birthday by her father, who is off travelling in Europe. It's a beautiful doll, it looks just like the girl, with the same ash blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin. But the doll has a sad little smile painted on her face, her body is so delicate, and her eyes seem peculiarly lifeless. Although the young girl treasures the doll very much, it reminds her how much she misses her beloved father.

After a week, the young girl takes the doll to her mother, and asks her to put it away until her father returns home. The girl's mother is reluctant, as the doll is very lovely, and she fears her husband might never return, but when she sees the tears in her daughter's eyes, she can't refuse, and puts the doll on top of the bookcase in her bedroom, out of the young girl's sight.

Week after week goes by, and the family hears nothing from the travelling father. Every morning, the young girl runs out to greet the postman, but no letters or parcels come. Month after month passes, and the young girl slowly begins to grow paler and thinner, abd begins biting her nails with anxiety. Her mother begins to worry, but feeling she cannot do anything, leaves the subject alone, not wanting to upset her further.

As the young girl's next birthday approaches, her mother begins to worry more, as the young girl's lips and cheeks lost their colour, her nails were bitten to the quicks with worry, and her eyes seemed glazed. The doll remained on the bookshelf, and the mother saw how sad her daughter was becoming compared to the melancholy looking doll.

One night, a few weeks before her birthday, the young girl cries out to her mother, who comes rushing to her side. "I think I heard a noise, Mama!" said the girl. But the mother had heard nothing, and comforted the child and tucked her in to bed again. But the young girl continued to wake, night after night, and still her mother could hear nothing. However, as she was worried for her daughter, she sent for a doctor.

"I can find nothing wrong with her", said the doctor. "But you must keep her from biting her nails, for her fingers are bleeding." As he left the room, he noticed the china doll on top of the bookcase. "What a beautiful doll, and so lifelike and cheerful looking. Just like this young girl ought to be", he thought to himself.

On the morning of the young girl's birthday, despite her frailty, she summoned the strength to crawl out of bed, despite her mother's protests, stand by the door, watching for the postman. But no parcel, or letter, or any hint of her father's whereabouts arrived. The presents her mother had bought her held no interest, and she crawled into bed, crying her eyes and tearing at her fingers. As the mother, feeling so helpless, tucked her wailing daughter into bed, she noticed the china doll sitting on the top of the bookshelf, looking rosy cheeked and bright eyed in comparison with her child. Catching a glimpse of the doll's hands, she saw that it had exquisite, but remarkably long fingernails. "I wonder how I didn't notice those before?" She thought. As her daughter sobbed in her frail state, she took the doll down from the shelf, and tucked beside the young girl, hoping in some way that it would cheer her up, and help her recover from her heartbreak.

The next morning, the mother woke to a knock on the door. She went to open it, and there stood her husband, with a bunch of red roses and a brown paper package in his arms. "I'm so sorry I missed our daughter's birthday", he said. "Will she ever forgive me?" The mother grabbed him by the wrist, and ran to her daughter's bedroom. When she shook her daughter to wake her, and tell her the good news, she didn't respond, although her arms wrapped tighter around the china doll. When the mother tried to prise the doll from her daughter's bleeding fingertips, it wouldn't budge.

Pulling back the bedcovers, the young girls parents recoiled in horror, as they saw the sheets drenched in crimson, and the now cheerfully grinning doll with its long nails embedded in their dead daughter's chest.

Crap, that's long! Sorry!

Most of my mum's stories are cautionary tales that involve people that other people knew from her hometown who perished in bizarre ways. For instance, she claims to know someone who died from eating watermelon and drinking beer at the same time. Or someone who died from taking a bath immediately after eating dinner. Basically, whatever my mum didn't want us to do, she'd say she knew someone who died from it.

my dad is a story teller too. i'll tell you one of his.

My dad's friends, Lucy and John, had a siamese cat. Nasty, viscious animals those cats. Anyway, their friend Chris just adopted a great dane. So chris brings the great dane over to Lucy and Chris's house to show him off. The cat sees ths giant dog and immediately the hair on its back stands up. The catg leaps from about 10 or 15 feet and lands on the dog's neck. Cat proceedes to do laps around the poor dog's head, sinking its claws in. John tries to pull the cat off, but he gets shredded by the claws and is bleeding badly. The poor dog can't do anything. The cat slices the dog's carotid artery, and the dog bleeds to death. Lucy has to take John to the hospital because he is bleeding so badly, and poor Chris is left alone at his friends' house with a dead dog, pints of blood all over the place, and an evil cat.

The moral of the story: \kill the cat before it kills you.

Yeah michelle, bathing after dinner is dangerous. You could get a cramp and drawn in the tub! Mum's are crazy. You'll be telling Ruby your own version of those tales soon enough :)

bathing after dinner is dangerous. You could get a cramp and drawn in the tub!

But my mum would never just say that I might get a cramp, she'd say I would DIE.

Icky Story Mr. A!

Though, I once volunteered at a rabies clinic in an old meat house. This woman brought in a cat on a leash that she had captured outside. She takes it out of the cage and it starts spinning and hissing at her. She tries to calm it, suddenly it's on it's back spinning and hissing. She reaches her hand in - slices the artery and blood sprays across the floor.

I still love little kitties though.

i only love kittehs from afar, they scare me up close.

oh i've got another one from my dad.

he was living in cleveland at the time (mid 60s). he had a friend who went swimming in lake eerie. she caught leprosy.

the lake is much cleaner now, but back then it was pretty dern polluted.

This one gave me the creeps (and still kinda does)





Once there was a a beautiful young girl who lived in a small town just south of Farmersburg. Her parents had to go to town for a while, so they left their daughter home alone, but protected by her dog, which was a very large collie. The parents told the girl to lock all the windows and doors after they had left. And at about 8:00pm the parents went to town. So doing what she was told the girl shut and locked evey window and every door. But there was one window in the basement that would not close completely.

Trying as best as she could she finally got the window shut, but it would not lock. So she left the window, and went back upstairs. But just to make sure that no one could get in, she put the dead-bolt lock on the basment door.

Then she sat down had some dinner and decided to go to sleep for the night. Settling down to sleep at about 12:00 she snuggled up with the dog and fell asleep.

But at one point, she suddenly woke up. She turned and looked at the clock...it was 2:30. She snuggled down again wondering what had woken her.....when she heard a noise. It was a dripping sound. She thought that she had left the water running, and now it was dripping into the drain of her sink. So thinking it was no big deal she decided to go back to sleep.

But she felt nervous so she reached her hand over the edge of her bed, and let the dog lick her hand for reasurance that he would protect her. Again at about 3:45 she woke up hearing drippping. She was slightly angry now but went back to sleep anyway. Again she reached down and let the dog lick her hand. Then she fell back to sleep.

At 6:52 the girl decided that she had had enough...she got up just in time to see her parents were pulling up to the house. "Good,"she thought. "Now somebody can fix the sink...'cause I know I didn't leave it running." She walked to the bathroom and there was the collie dog, skinned and hung up on the curtain rod. The noise she heard was its blood dripping into a puddle on the floor. The girl screamed and ran to her bedroom to get a weapon, incase someone was still in the house.....and there on the floor, next to her bed she saw a small note, written in blood, saying: HUMANS CAN LICK TOO

Er I would repost in italics but.. well.. It's long :/

Gross.

these stories never seem to turn out well for the animals do they?

I'm scared to sleep now

I DON'T WANT TO GO TO BED ALONE ;-;

No one does.

From Monsters You've Never Heard Of:

THE MUJINA


On the Akasaka Road, in Tokyo, there is a slope called Kii-no-kuni-zaka -- which means the Slope of the Province of Kii. I do not know why it is called the Slope of the Province of Kii. On one side of this slope you see an ancient moat, deep and very wide, with high green banks rising up to some place of gardens; and on the other side of the road extend the long and lofty walls of an imperial palace. Before the era of street-lamps and jinrikishahs, this neighborhood was very lonesome after dark; and belated pedestrians would go miles out of their way rather than mount the Kii-no-kuni-zaka, alone, after sunset.

All because of a Mujina that used to walk there.

The last man who saw the Mujina was an old merchant of the Kyobashi quarter, who died about thirty years ago. This is the story, as he told it:

One night, at a late hour, he was hurrying up the Kii-no-kuni-zaka, when he perceived a woman crouching by the moat, all alone, and weeping bitterly. Fearing that she intended to drown herself, he stopped to offer her any assistance or consolation in his power. She appeared to be a slight and graceful person, handsomely dressed; and her hair was arranged like that of a young girl of good family. "O-jochu," he exclaimed, approaching her -- "O-jochu, do not cry like that! . . . Tell me what the trouble is; and if there be any way to help you, I shall be glad to help you." (He really meant what he said, for he was a very kind man.) But she continued to weep -- hiding her face from him with one of her long sleeves. "O-jochu," he said again, as gently as he could -- "please, please listen to me! . . . This is no place for a young lady at night! Do not cry, I implore you! Only tell me how I may be of some help to you!" Slowly she rose up, but turned her back to him, and continued to moan and sob behind her sleeve. He laid his hand lightly upon her shoulder, and pleaded: "O-jochu! -- O-jochu! -- O-jochu! . . . Listen to me, just for one little moment! . . . O-jochu! -- O-jochu!" . . . Then that O-jochu turned round, and dropped her sleeve, and stroked her face with her hand; -- and the man saw that she had no eyes or nose or mouth -- and he screamed and ran away.

Up Kii-no-kuni-zaka he ran and ran; and all was black and empty before him. On and on he ran, never daring to look back; and at last he saw a lantern, so far away it looked like the gleam of a firefly; and he made for it. It proved to be only the lantern of an itinerant soba-seller, who had set down his stand by the road-side; but any light and any human companionship was good after that experience; and he flung himself down at the feet of the soba-seller, crying out "Aa! -- aa!! -- aa!!!". . .

"Kore! Kore!" roughly exclaimed the soba-man. "Here! What is the matter with you? Anybody hurt you?"

"No -- nobody hurt me," panted the other -- "only. . . Aa! aa!". . .

"-- Only scared you?" queried the peddler, unsympathetically. "Robbers?"

"Not robbers -- not robbers," gasped the terrified man. . . "I saw. . . I saw a woman -- by the moat; -- and she showed me. . . Aa! I cannot tell you what she showed me!". . .

"He! Was it anything like this that she showed you?" cried the soba-man, stroking his own face -- which therewith became like unto an Egg. . . And, simultaneously, the light went out.

I didn't even understand that and it is making me shiver.

people with no faces is creeptown!

Again, from Monsters You Never Heard Of

Excerpts from THE CROWD

"The Crowd" is the story of Mr. Spallner, who is involved in an auto accident and is amazed at how quickly a morbid crowd assembles to stare. Studying pictures of and newspaper clippings about auto accidents, he notices that the same people are standing in the background -- part of the crowd that always gathers to stare at tragedy. No matter where in the city, or at what time of the day or night, the same ghoul-people emerge from the shadows to form the Crowd. "They have one thing in common, they always show up together. At a fire or at an explosion or on the sidelines of a war, at any demonstration of this thing called death."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is Bradbury's manner of writing to scribble down lists of possible titles, most simple nouns, which often suggest stories to him. Once he wrote the words THE CROWD, and he was reminded of something that happened when he was fifteen. He heard a terrible crash while at a friend's house, and he ran outside to find that a car full of people had hit a telephone pole head-on. Four passengers died immediately, and the fifth died the next day. It took the young Bradbury months to recover emotionally from the scene.

"The accident had occurred at an intersection surrounded on one side by empty factories and a deserted schoolyard, and on the opposite side, by a graveyard. I had come running from the nearest house, a hundred yards away. Yet, within moments, it seemed, a crowd had gathered. Where had they all come from? Later on in time, I could only imagine that some came, in some strange fashion, out of the empty factories, or even more strangely, out of the graveyard. "

haha, Jebz, I remember being told that one at sleepaway camp when I was ten... CREEPY!

Thanks guys.

Squatterjohn: I think I know that one too, I might take a shot at telling it when I get home from work.

I LOVE Urban Legends, this is great!

Feel free to tell a few then Omair.

there's an urban legend about a bridge close to my house where a school bus full of children died in a horrific car accident, and if you stop on the bridge at night and turn your lights off for 5 minutes, then you drive off when you get out of your car there will be little kids dirty handprints and fingerprints all over your car...

I'll try, I don't really know if this is considered an urban legend or not...

There's a road around the Delaware/Pennsylvania border that doesn't appear on any maps. It's name is Cossart road, but people lovingly call it "Devil's Road". Anyway, I've heard a couple stories but most of them have similar details. Cossart road is a pretty narrow road, in a heavily wooded area. There's an abandoned house on the road that's rumored to be a satanist church, the windowpanes resemble inverted crosses, and all of the trees surrounding the building apparently grow away from it, kind of like to escape some kind of bad omen. There's also rumored to be a tree which at the base has branches that form the shape of a skull, and supposedly infants were sacrificed there. Also, there has been a pretty significant number of reports that when you're on cossart road, you start getting followed by a pick-up truck, in most cases it's white. At some point the truck disappears, but the thing is, there's not enough room on Cossart road for a car to do a U-turn, especially quick enough for you not to notice.

THe parents went into the town to sell their bodies for sex.

That sentence makes no sense.

I am sober :/

i heard there was this h.s. couple that went to a make-out point a few towns over, and then bam! herpes

i can't read this stuff. my imagination is too good.

this isn't a scary story, just an example of how i can get freaked out:

when i was a little kid, maybe nine or 10, i liked to stay up late playing computer games. one night i was alone downstairs on the computer when i thought i heard something down the hall. i shrugged it off. then i heard something again, still indistinct. my dad's office was at the end of the hall so i thought maybe he was getting a fax or something. then i distinctly heard FOOTSTEPS.

i bolted out of the chair, ran upstairs and into my room, where i kept the door cracked and peered out. the footsteps, clear as a bell stopped at the foot of the stairs. then they started up. that was the moment i understood what it meant for knees to knock. i HEARD my knees shaking. i swear to god. i was on the verge of calling out for my parents when...

...my dad got to the top of the steps. he had been working downstairs.

the end.

lol snake...i hate that shit

you ever get the feeling someone is watching you, but you're all alone?

i'm never alone when i'm watching you.

I was just reading all of these in work, and getting gooseflesh. then someone decided to do the weekly fire alarm test. I think I peed my pants.

But aren't you used to it?
Peeing in your pants?

deboraborialis on Jul 13 '08 at 2:46pm
See, peeing is good at first. It's warm and comforting. Then you end up cold and wet and smelling pee. Or so I've been told.

I'm not sure that's something you ever really get used to. . .










. . . or so I've heard.

My senior school was supposed to be haunted. One of the buildings was well over 100 years ols, and it was three floors with a central well/atrium. There was a railing around each floor, looking down to the ground floor. One of the custodians was suppsoed to have been fooloing around in the 1950's (as you do) and fell from the top floor. Somtimes people see something in the corner of their eye, falling fast to the floor.

In other news, we made a ouja board in art class on the top floor of that building. We were pissing about, and it (or my classmates) came up with the name of a dead friend (one of our classmates went under the wheels of a truck when we were 12). Then the windows started to shake, and the glass shot off the desk and smashed on the floor. I have never been so scared in my life (except for the second time we made a ouja board in school, and for a year I thought I was going to die). Good times.

Peeing in your pants is never good. It's a waste of pee.

Eeeks!

Ok, so here's my attempt at telling that story that Squatterjohn mentioned earlier.

A young woman sets out to drive home from the town where she attends university to the farm where she grew up for the Christmas holidays.

It's a long trip and she spends a whole day driving, first on the major highways, then on smaller country roads and finally on small dirt roads.

By lunchtime she's outside of phone reception and by mid afternoon the radio stations are getting harder and harder to find and she spends increasingly longer stretches of time accompanied only by the dull crackling of static.

Sometime after dark, when she's driving on the smallest, most isolated dirt roads she realises that she must of made a wrong turn somewhere.

She doesn't recognise anything and she hasn't seen the lights of a farmhouse or another vehicle for quite some time.

She's just beginning to really worry when up ahead she sees a roadside produce stall. The farmer's are just packing up for the night but they're not gone yet and so she stops to ask for directions.

When she returns to the car her radio comes to life for the first time in hours.

It's a public service announcement, apparently a mental patient from a nearby sanitarium has escaped, he's considered extremely dangerous and police are warning all locals to be on the lookout.

The radio dies again just as another car pulls out onto the dirt road behind her.

It's the first time she's seen a car in around an hour and this worries the woman a little, particularly given the fact that the other driver seems to be driving fairly close behind her.

She speeds up to try and get away from the car and all of a sudden the driver in the car behind her speeds up to match her speed and starts flashing his lights onto high beam.

She starts driving faster.

The car stays with her, close off her bumper and flashing it's lights.

By now she's driving as fast as she can and the car has started to drift around on the gravel road surface but the car still stays with her.

Just when she's really beginning to panic she sees a section of covered road up ahead with a small illuminated petrol station.

She makes it to the black top and manages to open a little distance between her and the car behind. Enough so that she has time to pull into the petrol station and run inside a fair way ahead of the car that's been tailing her.

The petrol station attendant is maybe seventeen. He's spotty and he speaks with a voice that can't decide if it want to be high or deep but when she explains what's happened he flips up the end of the counter and calmly strides past her fetching an axe-handle from behind the door just as the second car pulls into the petrol station forecourt.

A bedraggled looking man with long hair and a matted beard jumps out of the car and runs towards the petrol station. He's got a driven look in his eyes and he gets halfway in the door before the petrol station attendant steps from behind a magazine rack and lays him unconscious with a blow from his axe handle.

The attendant calls the police and the woman find a pen and to scribble her name, licence and phone numbers on the back of a coaster so that they can contact her to get a statement before she drives off, hoping to get to the safety of her parent's house.

The bedraggled looking man regains consciousness just as the police arrive, perhaps roused by the sirens, and immediately begins asking after the woman and where she is.

One of the cops makes a joke about there not being any girls where he's going.

"You don't understand" says the bedraggled looking man "There was someone in the back of her car with a knife. Every time I saw him sit up I'd drive close and turn my lights up and he would duck down behind her seat again."

The policeman tries to call the woman on her mobile phone but it's out of service.

That's the one Neon, although the mobile phone stuff is new to me though I was reading the wikipedia article on urban legends and it talks of them being updated over time so the addition is a perfect example of that phenomenon.

These stories are the reason that I check the back of the car before I get in. I also have to check the whole house (including under the bed) before I got to sleep.

I remember this...

A car owner who, after lovingly restoring a Corvette, took elaborate precautions to protect it from theft. The
owner locked it up in chains, with the chains passing through the chassis and then through heavy staples
sunk into the cement floor of his garage. He also locked the garage and covered the car with a tarp.

One day the owner came home to find his car safe, still secured by the chains and locks - but turned end-to-end so it faced in the opposite direction. A note left under the wiper blade read: "If we want this car, we'll take it."

Yeah, that wasn't in there when we used to tell it either but it seemed to deserve a mention.

I remember one where a woman going to her car in a hospital car park is approached by a man who asks for a ride. he has a sob story, and does not seem threatening, so she agrees. She is just about to reverse the car out of the space, when she gets a funny feeling about the whole situation. She asked the man to direct her out of the space. Once he is out of the car, she locks the doors and drives off. When she stops the car a safe distance away, she notices a bag that the man has left behind. In it is a large knife and duct tape. She took it to the police, and it seemed that that had been a few incidents of attacks on women. Seemed the lady was very lucky.

So that's where I fergot my equipment!
D'oh!

No one would let you in their car in the first place.

When the family moved to North America, they kept in constant touch with their European relatives. Letters and parcels regularly made their way from one shore to another. After a long period of silence, a small box arrived from the U.S. Inside, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, was a jar of grey powder. There was no note, but since many of the previous parcels had contained ready-to-make packaged mixes, the European family members thought that this powder, too, was a mix that would be prepared by simply adding water. The sauce was made and served, but it wasn't the best they had eaten! Several days later, a letter arrived from the U.S. explaining that the father had died, and because he had always been homesick, he wished his ashes to be spread over his home town. Grandma hoped that the rest of the family would not be inconvenienced and that the letter would get to them before the ashes, which were being sent separately in a jar and were securely wrapped in tissue paper.

How about a classic:

So, this guy goes on vacation to Mexico. He has a great time, really loves the place, and finds the landscape breathtaking. He is especially captivated by the big saguaro cacti, and decides that he wants to bring one home with him so he'll always remember what a wonderful time he had. He manages to buy a beautifully formed little baby one, the seller assuring him that it is in excellent health and will grow very well in the man's west-facing windows.

The guy takes great pains to conceal it in his luggage. He knows it'll get confiscated if they find it at the border, seeing as they severely tightened the plant transport regulations recently (due to another one of those foolish "scares" that seize the media's attention every so often, not that he paid attention to their hysterical babbling). He smuggles it home successfully and sets it in a sunny window.

The cactus is his pride and joy, and does very well at first. He even notices it starting to grow wider around the middle already, much to his surprise and delight. After a few weeks, it starts to darken in color. "Oh," thinks the man, "it might be a little dim in here, I'd better get a growing lamp for it." He sets one up by the cactus and keeps a closer eye on his plant.

After a week's passing, the man is completely stumped. The little cactus has turned nearly black, but it has grown to almost twice its original width. He goes to the library and looks up everything they have on cacti but he can't figure out what, if anything, is wrong with his.

The next morning, he gets up, gets his coffee, and goes to check on his plant. There it is, big as ever, black as an overripe banana, and curiously mushy-looking. He leans in real close and sees that it is gently pulsating. He touches it, pushing in slightly...

...and the cactus suddenly bursts open with a pop and a hiss, sending hundreds of little spiders flying all over his hand and face.

I've also heard "scorpions". I've got some others, but I'll say them later.