There are many terrifying creepy stories that can make your skin crawl, but the best stories are definitely those, that end with ".. all of that is true and I can prove it".
The world is full of mysteries, murders, and deeply disturbing true stories. With Halloween lurking around the corner, the following urban legends have been complied, proving once and for all that truth is in fact stranger than fiction and that there is scarcely anything scarier than the seemingly monotonous every day.
Dead body under the hotel beds
The story of the dead body under the hotel bed was first recorded by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand in his book "The Baby Train" which was published in 1993. Although it was first discredited as mere word of mouth tale due to lack of any substantial evidence, several stories have since come up proving Mr Urban Legend (as the Smithsonian has called Brunvand) right, according to Forteantimes.
The earliest record of "the smelly body under bed" was unearthed in 1982, when the body of Gary Smith, a member of a car-stealing trio, which also included Richard Kuklinski and Daniel Deppner, was found under a bed in a motel room four days after his murder, in New Jersey. He was stuffed under the bed by his former partners, who had fed him a cyanide-laced hamburger.
Since then, many corpses have found a hiding spot under motel and hotel room beds, including the body of 14-Year-Old Josefina Martinez. She was found under the bed in Hotel Travelers near Miami International Airport after a German tourist complained about the bad odour in his room.
In July 1996, the decomposing body of a woman who had been dead for 10 days was found by the staff of the Colorado Boulevard Travelodge in Pasadena, California under a mattress, after the guests complained for several days of a foul odour coming from that room. On 13 July 2003, the decomposing body of a man, wearing only a nun's wimple and fishnet stockings, was found under a bed in the Capri Motel, east of downtown Kansas City.
"Hanging Man" at Carnival haunted house made of human body parts
In 1976, when the crew members of the TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man" was shooting an episode at the Pike Amusement Park in California, the hand of a creepy, yet seemingly prosthetic mannequin accidentally came off. On closer inspection it was found that it was in fact the mummified body of a man; not just any man, an outlaw named Elmer McCurdy who had died 65 years prior to the incident during a gun fight with the police, according to Slate.
In 1911, McCurdy was running away from the cops after robbing a train in Oklahoma, when he was shot dead by the police. Since none had claimed his body, a caretaker at a funeral home in Pawhuska started letting people view the preserved corpse if they placed a nickel in its mouth. Five years later, a carnival man who claimed to be McCurdy's relative took the body to use it as a prop for carnivals, wax museums and haunted houses, until the discovery in Long Beach.
The body now rests at Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma.
The Toxic Woman
In 1994, a young woman, Gloria Ramirez, dying of cancer was wheeled into the emergency room of a Southern California hospital, wherein, any attempt at collecting her blood samples would result in toxic fumes escaping from her blood. According to Discover Magazine, the nurses who attempted collecting the blood samples also complained about feeling lightheaded and even fainted, after which they couldn't control the movement of their limbs.
After lengthy investigations covering many years, experts have come to the conclusion that the poisonous gas that emanated from Ramirez was the result of various medications and topical ointments used to treat the various symptoms of cancer in her body.
Dead Body in a Carpet
In 1984, three students of Columbia University picked up a discarded, rolled-up carpet from a West Side sidewalk, in hopes of decorating their little dorm room. They were in for the shock of their lives, when upon reaching their room, the dead body of a black male in his 20s was discovered inside the carpet, according to the New York Times. The victim was also said to have two bullet wounds to his head.
Hanging dead body on Halloween night
In 2005, Delware, the apparent suicide of a 42-year-old woman went unnoticed by many passersby, who assumed that it was a Halloween prank. The corpse of the woman had hung on the tree overnight, and was visited by many Halloween-lovers, before someone finally realised it to be an actual dead body and reported to the police, nbc news reported.
