Scary stories are all fun and games until you realize they were based on some form of truth. Recently, I asked the BuzzFeed Community to share what spooky local legends they grew up with, and now I’ll be thinking about “Bunny Man” for the rest of the year. Here are some of the most spine-tingling hometown urban legends that might just keep you up at night:
1. “I witnessed this ‘legend’ myself and struggled to come to terms with proving to myself whether or not what I experienced was real. In Ensenada, Mexico, at the very far end of the city, up by the mountains, are the remains of an old abandoned castle said to be haunted. Legend has it that the castle was being remodeled into a luxury hotel, but then the architect who’d been working on the designs was found hanging by a pole outside of the castle. Since his death, witnesses have allegedly seen a floating candleholder after midnight, said to be his ghost warning people to stay away. My friends and I were curious, so we dared ourselves to go inside…”
2. “Growing up on the north-eastern Ohio-Pennsylvania border, I heard all about a ‘monster’ that used to walk the roads late at night that everyone dubbed ‘The Green Man.’ Everyone would warn you about him, and everyone knew the myth surrounding him. Apparently, he’d climbed onto an electric pole to look into a bird’s nest, and he was electrocuted. He fell and ended up losing his eyes, nose, mouth, one ear, and one arm. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I found out the legend of The Green Man was real. The myth was based on Raymond Robinson, who was horribly disfigured and blinded from an electrical accident, and who would walk late at night to avoid people.”
—Anonymous
3. “I was raised in Napa, California, and our urban legend was and still is the ‘Rebobs.’ They’re flying monkey-type creatures that some say are half-robot, but they could also be half-bat. The story goes that a scientist’s experiments went wrong, and thus, the Rebobs were born.”
4. “I live in an area of Michigan where the ‘Dogman’ is supposed to come out every seven years. As the name suggests, the creature has the body of a man and a dog’s head, and it has a howl that sounds like a human scream. There’s a song on YouTube about it; it still creeps me out. They played it one time while I was at camp, and I didn’t sleep until, like, 2 a.m.”
5. “When I was little, one of my older cousins told a few of my friends and me about the ‘Melon Heads.’ I lived in Connecticut, but the legend has some roots in Michigan and Ohio as well. The Melon Heads are supposed to be humanoids with extremely bulbous heads, and they come out at night to terrorize and attack people.”
6. “There’s a strip club on the main road through town that’s supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a small child. The ghost child is supposedly from an apartment complex that used to exist in the neighborhood behind it. Apparently, the toddler was killed when they ran away from their parents and into the main road. From other people’s accounts, the ghost moves items and hangs out back in the dressing area. There was a small memorial kept on the roadside until the family moved away, so that much I know is true. But that definitely wasn’t the first time people have been struck and killed on that part of the road.”
7. “I was super young when I was told this story, so I imagine I’m missing some details, but I’m from a town that’s close to North Buxton, Ontario. It’s a predominantly Black community, and the town is famous because a lot of folks escaped to Canada from the United States using the railway system there. Legend has it that there are two spirits near the railway: a headless soldier that wanders around, and a woman who cries while walking up and down the tracks.”
8. “There’s a creepy, run-down (and now collapsed) house on the property next to my parents’ that’s been abandoned for around 50 years. I always had memories of being inside the house when it was livable, though it’d been vacant and decrepit long before I was born. When I was in my late teens/early 20s, I got up the courage to break in with some friends. We pried open a window, and I had immediate déjà vu — the layout and some of the furniture left behind was exactly as I remembered it when I was a child. It was super unsettling, so we didn’t stay long. Unfortunately, no one knew the owners, so I was never able to get a story about the abandoned house.”
9. “I’m from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and we had a serial killer once who murdered her husband here. Her name was Jill Coit — she’d been married about 11 times, and one of her victims was a Steamboat resident, Gerald Boggs. He owned a hardware store downtown, and it was a big shock when he was murdered because everyone knew who he was. By the time I was in high school, the hardware store had been turned into a cyber cafe. Well, the internet would go out there all the time. The power would flicker all through October (the month Gerald was murdered), and someone once said that they were shocked in the neck (Gerald had a stun used on him before getting shot). Odds were that it was all nonsense and made up by small-town teens…but the computer screens did flicker a lot.”
—Anonymous
10. “We call him the ‘Bunny Man.’ In Fairfax, Virginia, there’s an old railroad bridge called the Bunny Man Bridge, and one of my friends swore that she saw his face on the walls and heard him walking on the tracks. Basically, the legend goes that Bunny Man was a murderer who had escaped via a trail derailing, and he lived off eating bunnies. And supposedly, according to my friend, you can see him with an axe on Halloween.”
11. “I was born and still live in Uruguay, and since I was little, I’ve known the story of ‘Clara la Loca.’ The legend is based on real events: A girl named Clara grew up in a mansion, and she then became married. She had problems within her marriage, and she ended up becoming extremely mentally unwell. Rather than getting her help, she was locked away in her room, where she died. Today, that mansion is the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum, and it’s said to be haunted. The room where Clara was locked up remains closed to the public, but in one room, there’s a painting of Clara as a child. Many people who’ve visited, myself included, have felt Clara’s gaze in the painting following you as you walk by.”
—Nat, 20, Montevideo, Uruguay
12. “I once worked at a big box store that was located in a secluded area and had no nearby buildings. When I started working there, I was told a story about how before, when the store was still under construction, the body of a missing woman was found dumped behind the building. It was since rumored that she haunts the store, mainly because people would allegedly hear strange noises and see strange things at the back of the store. For example, people would walk into an empty bathroom and see all three sinks running, or things in the break room that were on a table would just randomly end up on the floor. No one wanted to be in the store when the lights were out, and though it’s been quite a while since I’ve worked there, I’m sure the story still persists.”
13. “I grew up and still live in Brooklyn. There are some wild stories from here, but one particular story about my apartment building has continued to haunt me. Apparently, an old woman in my building once overdosed on fentanyl, and the other tenants say that sometimes she shows up in the rooms where children are and laughs — just laughs and laughs and laughs. Once, when I was a little girl, I woke up, and my parents were just talking and laughing. When I heard the laughs, I remember thinking it was the old woman, and my heart STOPPED. The story still makes me uneasy.”
—Laurie, 21, Brooklyn, New York
