Read Some Urban Legends

From LoveToKnow Paranormal

Are you ready to read some urban legends? Here are a few tales both old and new.

Time to Read Some Urban Legends

Urban legends just seem to multiply year after year. The following examples range from a classic tale to a mysterious creature sighting and, finally, two very modern urban legends for the computer age.

Check Your Rearview Mirror

There are numerous variations on this urban legend, but here is how the classic story basically goes.

A young woman was driving home late one night and decided to stop for gas. As she pulled away from the station, the attendant noticed something was very wrong.

Within moments of getting back on the road, another car pulled up behind the woman following closely as the driver flashed his high beams and honked furiously. The frightened young woman began to drive faster, growing more terrified with each flash of those high beams. Finally, she reached home, threw the car into park and dived out of it. As she raced for her door, the driver in the second car yelled at her to get inside and call the police immediately. Fearing the second driver was some kind of crazy person, the woman did indeed lock herself in her house and call the police.

When the police arrived, the young woman learned she really had been in mortal danger, but not from the second driver, who turned out to be the gas station attendant. What she hadn't known was that an escaped murderer had been hiding in the backseat of her car, and that the gas station attendant could see the man rising up behind her with a knife. Every time the attendant had flashed his lights, the would-be killer had shrunk back down behind the seat to avoid being seen.

Legend of Mothman

Tales of the "Mothman" date back to November of 1966. Sightings of a strange creature were reported in and around the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The creature was described as taller and wider than an average man, with grayish-brown skin and luminescent red eyes. The creature also had large wings on which it would glide through the sky and pursue those who saw it. People believed that the creature was using an abandoned TNT plant near the town as its home since many of the sightings took place in that direct area.

Numerous sightings were reported over the following year, but they suddenly came to a halt just before a tragic event that may or may not have been connected to Mothman. The Silver Bridge suddenly collapsed during rush hour traffic, and there were reports that the creature had been sighted flying around the bridge earlier that day.

Haunted Painting

This urban legend sprang to life on eBay. Was it a clever ploy to spark traffic for an auction, or is there really some mysterious power attached to this work of art? You can view an image of the painting for yourself at CastleofSpirits.com.

As the story goes, the painting, Hands Resist Him, was created by artist Bill Stoneham. According to the auction description, the eBay seller claimed the painting was found abandoned behind a building, so he took it home and hung it on his wall. Shortly thereafter, the seller's young daughter began to complain that the characters in the painting were fighting and coming out into the real world at night. The auction was accompanied by additional photos that were supposedly of the painting changing. The painting eventually sold for over $1,000.00, and so far there have been no further reports on it. Still, the legend of the "haunted painting" has earned a place in modern urban lore.

The Smith Sisters

Now that you've had a chance to read some urban legends, watch the YouTube video below for yet another bit of popular urban lore. Like most urban legends, the details on this story vary, but the tale has been circulating the Internet for at least a few years. The story always unfolds around either a series of emails or an instant message session shared between a boy and his "sisters".