Cropsey: How Staten Island’s Boogeyman Became Disturbingly Real
On August 12, 1987, twelve-year-old Jennifer Schweiger was found in a shallow grave on the grounds of Staten Island’s former Willowbrook institution. The discovery ended a search that had begun when J...
12 Nov 20min
One-Man Hide and Seek: The Ritual Where a Doll Hunts You Back
One-Man Hide and Seek, or Hitori Kakurenbo, turns an ordinary home into the setting for a frightening reversal: a person begins a game with a stuffed doll, then becomes the one hiding. Its best-docume...
6 Nov 30min
The Darkest Halloween Urban Legends That Terrified Generations
Every Halloween, families hear familiar warnings: inspect every wrapper, throw away homemade treats, watch for razor blades in apples, poison in candy, needles in chocolate, or drugs hidden inside a t...
29 Okt 21min
Username 666: What Happens When You Search for the Forbidden YouTube Account?
In 2008, a short video called Username 666 appeared on YouTube under the name nana825763, the online identity of Japanese artist PiroPito. It appeared to show an unseen computer user visiting YouTube’...
15 Okt 20min
The Momo Challenge: How an Internet Monster Created a Worldwide Panic
The Momo Challenge became one of the most feared internet stories of 2018 and 2019. Parents, schools, police forces, and news organizations warned that a disturbing figure called Momo was contacting c...
8 Okt 20min
Lavender Town Syndrome: Did a Pokémon Song Really Harm Children?
Lavender Town Syndrome is one of the internet’s most durable haunted-media legends: the claim that music from the original Pokémon games made Japanese children ill, unstable, or dead after Pokémon Red...
1 Okt 20min
Squidward’s Suicide: The Lost Cartoon Episode That Never Existed
On September 21, 2019, Nickelodeon aired “SpongeBob in RandomLand.” During its door sequence, a red-eyed image associated with the online legend “Squidward’s Suicide,” also called “Red Mist,” appeared...
24 Sep 23min
The Grinning Man: Who Was Indrid Cold?
On November 2, 1966, Woodrow Derenberger, a traveling appliance salesman from near Mineral Wells, West Virginia, said an unfamiliar vehicle blocked his route home. A dark-haired man in glossy blue clo...
17 Sep 25min
