Ghost Stories Urban Legends

From LoveToKnow Paranormal

Ghost stories urban legends take on a life of their own as they are told again and again. While real life ghost sightings are common across the world, so are classic urban legends about them. Share a few here.

Popular Ghost Stories Urban Legends

The following are a few classic urban legends that have circulated for many years throughout many societies.

The Small Woman in Grey

This story is centered on a general store in a small town. Two gentlemen who ran the store one day had the monotony of their daily chores interrupted by a woman who, dressed all in grey, entered the store, picked up a glass container of milk from the dairy case, and then promptly walking out the door. Frozen for a few moments by the audacity of this woman, the two men finally collected their wits and dashed out the door after her, but she was already gone. Two days later, the incident occurred a second time.

The third time, the men were prepared. When she entered the store, they watched as she picked up the container of milk and again walked out the door. This time they raced after her, chased her down the street, and finally down a dirt path at the edge of town where they lost sight of her. However, upon further exploration, the two men discovered an old cemetery where they could hear a baby's cry coming from the ground in front of a gravestone and a fresh grave site of a mother and infant who were recently buried together. The men found shovels and quickly unburied the coffin, the crying becoming more clear as they dug. Finally, opening the coffin, they discovered the same small woman in grey they had spotted in the store, only here she was dead. In her arms, a live, crying infant and three empty containers of milk. The child was inadvertently buried alive, and the spirit of the mother had kept the baby alive for several days until she was found.

Ghost Limbs

Another classic theme for ghostly urban legends is the return of a phantom limb seeking to reunite with its owner.

In one particular version, an old, poor painter was planning to take part in an upcoming exhibit that could potentially make him rich and famous. The artist, no matter how hard he tried, could not create a work of art worthy of the grand prize. Suddenly, a terrifying apparition appeared. It was a shrunken old man with no hands and empty eye sockets. It promised the man the grand prize at the exhibit if he would give him his right hand. The painter, knowing that making such an agreement with such an evil entity was the wrong thing to do, succumbed to his desperate greed and accepted the offer.

The next day at the exhibit, the artist discovered a spectacular painting signed with his name. He won the prize and the promise of future fame. However, the entity appeared again that night with a large knife and collected payment, the artist's right hand.

Years later, the artist, now rich and famous, had forgotten all about the horrible apparition and where his missing hand may have gone. One late night, he heard a tapping at the bedroom window where he looked and saw his hand. Believing he was dreaming, he ignored it. The hand tapped the glass again. The artist turned over and continued trying to ignore the phantom hand. Finally the tapping occurred again, so the artist sat up and screamed at the hand to leave him alone! The tapping stopped, and the artist slept peacefully the rest of the night.

The following evening, after he had fallen into a deep sleep, the artist was wakened by a very loud crash from downstairs. He raced toward the stairs to investigate, and upon reaching the top landing, he felt a hand grasp his leg, causing him to tumble headfirst down the stairs. Two months later, after neighbors complained of a horrible smell coming from the house, his body was found at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker

The most common urban legend of all is the story of the vanishing hitchhiker.

Late one Friday night, a man was driving home alone from a party with friends. It was a dark and rainy night, and after a few miles the man spotted a figure of a woman walking along the side of the road wearing a long white dress. He pulled over and offered her a ride. She got into the front seat, and he asked where she lived. She gave him her address. He noticed she was shivering terribly, so he offered her his jacket, and she accepted it. He tried to make chit chat during the ride, but she wouldn't say a word.

As they arrived in front of her home, he got out to walk around the car and open her door. Carefully going over how he would ask her out, he opened the door only to find the passenger seat empty. He assumed she had run into the house.

The next day, he returned to the home to collect his jacket. He knocked on the door, and an older man answered. He told the man that he had given his daughter a ride home the previous evening and was returning to collect his jacket. The man only smiled and shook his head. He told the young man that this wasn't the first time this had happened. Confused, the young man asked him what he meant? The older man explained that his daughter had died in a drunk driving accident ten years earlier. The young man did not believe the story. So the old man led him across the street to the family cemetery where they found her gravestone. Draped over her gravestone was the man's leather jacket.