The creepiest urban legend from every US state

The generally accepted story of Hell's Gate Bridge starts in the 1950s, according to the Oxford Paranormal Society; a young couple driving over the bridge somehow drove their car off the bridge one night, and they both drowned.

There are two legends associated with Hell's Gate Bridge: one is that if you drive your car out to the middle of the bridge and turn off the lights, the couple will magically appear in your car and leave a wet spot on the seat.

The other, which is how the bridge got its name, is the belief that if you drive over the bridge and look over your shoulder halfway through, the scenery behind you turns into a portal to hell engulfed in flames.

Potentially to curb ghost hunters and bored teenagers, Hell's Gate Bridge is closed to cars, according to The Anniston Star, and it is in such disrepair that walking across is strongly discouraged.

Everyone knows the story of the Bermuda Triangle, but you might not know about the Alaskan Triangle.

On average, five out of every 1,000 people go missing in Alaska, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2005, so even if there's nothing supernatural going on, it's easy to get lost in the Alaskan wilderness.

The Tlingit tribe, who lives in Juneau, has their own explanation for the high number of missing people: evil spirits called the Kushtaka.

According to books such as "In Search of the Kushtaka: Alaska's Other Bigfoot," the Kushtaka are shape-shifters (half-man, half-otter) who lure women and children to the water with fake cries in order to steal their human spirits and drown them.

The story of Slaughterhouse Canyon (not pictured), also called the less-frightening Luana's Canyon, takes place during the Gold Rush, according to The Miner.

During the 1800s, there was a family who lived in the canyon. They were very poor, so the father would venture out for food for his family.

One day, the father did not return, so his family slowly starved and descended into madness. The mother, unable to bear listening to her children's cries anymore, put on her wedding dress, murdered her children, and then threw them into a nearby river. The next day, she succumbed to starvation herself.

The legend states that if you go down to Slaughterhouse Canyon at night, even now, you will hear the loud, anguished cries of the mother who lost her mind.

According to Atlas Obscura, the Boggy Creek Monster of Fouke is Arkansas' version of Sasquatch. He's commonly accepted to be around 7 or 8 feet tall and covered in hair. Legend says that he roams the creeks of rural Arkansas.

He was first spotted in 1834 when people reported seeing a "wild man."

These days, after people claim to spot the Boggy Creek Monster, the sightings are documented on the official Boggy Creek Monster's website.

He has been the subject of at least five feature-length films, including 1972's "The Legend of Boggy Creek."

The Char-Man's origin story, told in the journal "Western Folklore," is gruesome: A father and son were both caught in a house fire and horribly burned in 1948.

After the fire, the son became so mentally unstable that he killed his father. When the police found the son, he was so unrecognizably burned that they didn't realize he was alive, so he ran away before they were able to arrest him for the murder of his father.

The story goes that, ever since then, the Char-Man can be spotted wandering the woods surrounding Ojai, occasionally approaching tents of innocent campers or pretending to be a hitchhiker and attempting to attack them.

Riverdale Road is the site of not one, but eight creepy stories. Ranging from a "Hell Gate" to ghosts of slaves hanging from the trees, the stretch of road is decidedly spooky, as reported by local news affiliate Fox31.

The creepiest story, though, is that of the phantom jogger.

One day, there was a driver who hit a jogger and left him for dead. Now, it's said that if you park at the site of the crash, you'll hear disembodied footsteps getting closer and closer to your car. People have reported handprints on their windows and banging noises as if someone was kicking the outside.

Known as the "Wicked Witch of Monroe," per CT Insider, Hannah Cranna gained a reputation as a witch in the 19th century when her husband died by mysteriously falling off a cliff — and locals reportedly believed that she had bewitched him. People also believed that she would cast spells on people she didn't like.

Hannah lived to the age of 77, but right before she died, she asked to be carried down to the cemetery in her coffin on foot, not by wagon. After her death, the people of Monroe tried to wheel her coffin down the hill but were unable — the coffin kept falling off — so they were forced to carry it.

When the townspeople returned to her home, it was found to be engulfed in flames, sealing Hannah's reputation for practicing witchcraft.

Now, you can visit her real grave in Trumbull.

While not a particularly mean-spirited ghost, Samuel Chew's story, as told in "Haunted Delaware," is still disconcerting.

Chew was the chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court in 1741. As the story goes, while he was alive, he didn't always get the respect he deserved — people frequently made fun of his name by mimicking sneezes while he walked by.

After his death, people reported seeing his ghost sitting under a poplar tree, wandering the courthouse, and generally creeping out the residents of Dover. Chew would also pull on men's coattails and give women a cold, icy feeling.

Cars that are parked in neutral at Spook Hill will appear to roll uphill, according to Atlas Obscura.

Legends say the hill is either the site of a Native American burial ground or an epic battle of a Native American chief against a crocodile.

But the truth is, it's actually just an illusion created by the hill's surroundings. While cars appear to be rolling uphill, they are still just rolling downhill.

At the bottom of Lake Lanier lie (almost) fully intact towns, ferries, a racetrack, and multiple cemeteries.

In 1946, the Georgia government received congressional approval to create Lake Lanier, and it bought up entire towns to clear the space for the lake. However, it decided to let the water cover the towns rather than demolish them.

Now, Lake Lanier has a decidedly eerie feel about it. There have been an unusual number of freak accidents and deaths on the lake. From 1994 to 2020, there were 203 drownings, CNN reported.

Many of the bodies of people who drowned have never been recovered. People have reported feeling arms and legs in the water, wrote CNN, but have not been able to find them right after, leading people to believe that spirits still roam the lake.

Night Marchers, according to Honolulu Magazine, are not evil spirits, but they do demand respect. They are spirits of ancient Hawaiian warriors who marched around the islands to protect sacred areas.

Legend says that if you look directly at a night marcher, you will be marked for death. And, if by some chance, you find yourself in the middle of a procession, you are supposed to lie down in the middle of the road.

Water babies are a Native American legend found in several places in America, most famously in Pocatello at Massacre Rocks State Park.

The Shoshone tribe was first recorded in 1805, according to the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, and was roaming the Great Plains as early as the 1500s, so it's not clear when exactly this legend originated.

But the story goes that the Shoshone experienced an extreme famine, and mothers were forced to drown their babies in the river rather than watch their children starve.

Today, some people claim that if you sit quietly at the river by Massacre Rocks, you'll hear the sound of babies crying.

Other stories say that these babies grew gills and fins and survived, and now they seek revenge on their mothers by luring unsuspecting victims to their deaths in the river.

Throughout the suburbs of Chicago in the '90s, there was a rumor going around elementary schools: There was a creepy man dressed as Homey the Clown (yes, from "In Living Color"), driving around in a white van trying to lure kids into it with candy and money, as reported by the Chicago Reader and The Chicago Tribune.

In some variations, he was a kidnapper; in others, he was a rapist. But in all variations, Homey left a mark on young Chicago kids in the '90s.

The 100 Steps Cemetery is located in Brazil. While it's unclear when the stories about the cemetery being haunted began, some gravestones date back to the 1860s.

The legend states that if someone finds themselves in the cemetery at midnight, they must climb the steps and count to 100. At this point, a ghost of an undertaker will appear and show the person a vision of their death.

On the way back down, the visitor is supposed to count the steps again — if they count the same number of steps, the vision is false.

People who have visited the cemetery in the past have tried to outsmart the supernatural forces in 100 Steps by avoiding the steps altogether. According to Indiana Ghost Detectives, they've reported being knocked or shoved to the ground by an unseen force.

The Black Angel stands over 8 feet tall in Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, and she is black due to oxidation. According to Atlas Obscura, multiple legends have cropped up around her, most likely because of her dark appearance.

One legend says that a pregnant woman should never walk under her, or she'll lose the child. Others say that if you touch or kiss the statue, you'll be dead within six months.

Whether haunted, cursed, or completely harmless, the statue is definitely a somber sight to see.

The legend of the Devil's Chair goes like this: An old farmer in Alma refused to sell his land to the city in order to build a new cemetery. Someone got a little too tired of waiting for him to sell, so he was pushed into his own well.

Eventually, someone said that there was a terrible smell coming from the well, so the city sent someone to investigate. The well was ruled empty, and it was boarded up.

Now, if you make your way to Alma, you can actually sit on the boarded-up well, but legend says that people who have sat on the well have been known to mysteriously disappear.

There's no clear consensus on how the Goat Man came to be. Some say he was a circus performer; others say he was a farmer who tortured his goats for Satan and, in return, was transformed into a hideous goat monster.

However, everyone does agree on his appearance: dark fur, pale skin, goat legs, and horns, reported Wave3, a local news outlet.

The monster is said to hide under the bridge at Pope Lick Creek in Louisville to lure people onto the train tracks, only to see them be hit by oncoming trains.

Sadly, interest in this urban legend has had some dangerous consequences. In 2016, an Ohio woman fell to her death from the bridge while looking for the Goat Man, reported The Washington Post.

Grunch Road is an old dirt road that leads deep into the woods and eventually to a dead end.

It was a favorite place for teenagers to go and do whatever teenagers do until they learned about the Grunch.

The Grunch are rumored to be a group of deformed, half-human, half-monsters that resulted from years of isolation in the Louisiana Bayous.

In the present day, it's said that if you find yourself on Grunch Road, don't get out of your car if you see a goat that looks injured. The stories say that the Grunch uses goats to lure people out of their cars so they can eat them and drain their blood.

The tomb of Colonel Jonathan Buck in Bucksport bears a mysterious leg-shaped stain.

The story goes that Buck sentenced a woman to burn for witchcraft, and while she was burning, her leg rolled out of the fire. It's also been said that the witch cursed Buck's tomb to always bear a stain for this injustice, the Bangor Daily News reported.

It is said that people have tried to get rid of this stain twice, but the stain keeps reappearing.

Chessie sightings have been around since the 1930s but really started to pick up steam in the '80s when photographic evidence became more readily available, WBAL-TV reported.

Chessie is said to resemble a snake, measures around 30 feet long, and is the approximate thickness of a telephone pole.

There haven't been any recorded attacks from Chessie, but a 30-foot-long snake does not sound like something most people would want to run into.

In the 24-year-long construction of the Hoosac Tunnel in western Massachusetts, about 200 men died. Death was so associated with the tunnel that it was actually nicknamed "The Bloody Pit," according to Atlas Obscura.

After a particularly gruesome explosion in either 1867 or 1868, 13 miners were trapped inside the tunnel. The other workers assumed that the miners had died, but eventually, it was discovered that the miners had lived, built a raft to combat flooding, and eventually died due to poisonous gas inhalation.

It's said that these 13 miners haunted the tunnel for years, moaning and briefly appearing as ghosts.

The legend of Knock Knock Road, as reported by 99.1 WMFK, says that there was a little girl who was murdered on Knock Knock Road in the Detroit area, and now she appears to drivers at their car window, knocking, trying to find the person who killed her.

In 1898, a Swedish-American farmer found a gigantic slab of rock on his farm with symbols that appeared to be Norse. Since then, no one has figured out where it came from.

While most historians have debunked the rock  — now known as the Kensington Rune, according to Atlas Obscura — as a hoax, due to dating and inconsistencies with the Norse language of the time, the myth has persisted.

But if it wasn't the Vikings, who did leave this mysterious rock? And what does it say?

The Ghost of Deer Island, reported by the Sun-Herald, originates from an old pirate story.

The story says that back in the 1920s, two men were fishing on Deer Island when they heard rustling in the bushes, a noise they assumed was caused by wild hogs. Eventually, they decided to check it out and encountered a headless skeleton. They ran back to their boat, and the skeleton followed them all the way there.

According to the pirates' story, there was a ship that sailed into Biloxi Bay and buried its treasure on Deer Island. The crew decided to behead one of their own and left his body behind to guard their treasure.

Momo is Missouri's version of Bigfoot/Sasquatch. He's been said to have terrible body odor, a pumpkin-shaped head, and an appetite for dogs. In 1968, Momo tried to abduct a 4-year-old boy, though no evidence was ever found, a local radio station reported.

As reported by the Billings Gazette, the story of Sacrifice Cliff comes from an old Native American legend.

Two members of the Crow Tribe arrived in their village from a trip to find that almost everyone there had been infected with smallpox and had died. So heartbroken about the loss of their loved ones, the two decided to blindfold their horses and ride off the cliff to join the tribe on the other side.

Sacrifice Cliff is visible from almost anywhere in Billings, so it's sad (and a bit spooky) to think about this story while the cliff looms over the entire city.

When Business Insider chose the most haunted place in each state, Centennial Hall was a no-brainer. People claim that multiple ghosts roam the halls.

But the creepiest story of Centennial Hall originates in the 1940s, when it was a high school.

The story says that a student was playing her clarinet, suffered a heart attack, and died — because her reed was poisoned. Now, people claim to feel cold spots, hear disembodied music, and to have witnessed an empty rocking chair start to rock, according to the blog Theresa's Haunted History of the Tri-State.

There is perhaps no urban legend, myth, or conspiracy theory more famous than Nevada's Area 51, a mysterious government facility that is rumored to be associated with aliens. The US government officially states that Area 51 is classified due to national security, which only fuels the fire.

The secrecy surrounding Area 51 is what makes it inherently creepy, and with the government admitting to a program investigating UFOs, the theories about what's actually going on inside continue to seem more plausible.

Eunice "Goody" Cole was the only woman in New Hampshire history to be tried for witchcraft multiple times. Her first charge was in 1656, and she was charged again in 1671, according to the Hampton Historical Society.

When she died and her body was recovered, the townspeople were rumored to have staked her through the heart to prevent her from haunting their town, according to Atlas Obscura.

People continue to blame Goody Cole for the misfortunes of Hampton citizens for the past 300 years. For example, a boat full of Hampton residents overturned, and everyone on board drowned, even though they were within swimming distance of shore. People blamed Goody Cole for the crash and for cursing the passengers by having them forget how to swim.

The story of the Jersey Devil has been around since the 1700s, Weird NJ reported. The legend states that a woman named Mother Leeds became pregnant with her 13th child and said, "Let this one be [a/the] devil." Once the child was born, it grew hooves, wings, horns, and a tail.

The monster has been spotted periodically throughout history in the Pine Barrens region of New Jersey. The state has embraced the legend so much that it named its hockey team after it.

La Mala Hora, which translates to The Evil Hour, is an entity you don't want to run into on a dark road. Legend says it first appears as a ball of black energy, constantly moving and changing its size and shape. If you look at it, it will drive you insane and will slowly kill you.

At other times, it appears as a scary-looking woman. It's said that if you see her at a crossroads, you or someone in your family will die.

The story of Cropsey has many iterations, The Lineup reported, but it generally tells the story of a man who stalked a sleep-away camp/psychiatric facility/children's hospital, had a hook for a hand, and killed children who were wandering alone at night. Almost anyone who went to camp in upstate New York has heard about Cropsey.

Things took a more sinister turn when a documentary posited that Cropsey was actually real: a convicted child kidnapper named Andre Rand, wrote The New York Times.

In the 1950s, multiple dogs were found dead and drained of blood in the North Carolina town of Bladenboro, according to North Carolina Ghosts. People believed a vampiric beast was in the woods, and they tried to hunt the animal. 

Today, the town of Bladenboro has embraced its history, and residents actually hold a Beast Fest every year. While some people are convinced the beast was probably a particularly large bobcat, it's never been confirmed exactly what was stalking their town.

The story of White Lady Lane is a tragic one, according to Only In Your State.

The legend states that a young woman became pregnant out of wedlock, and her religious parents forced her to marry the baby's father. The baby ended up dying after their wedding. The girl, so upset about her baby and her forced marriage, hanged herself from a bridge in her wedding dress. Locals claim to still see her ghost hanging from the bridge.

During the summer of 1972, the people of Defiance said they were being terrorized by a werewolf, per Mysterious Universe.

The sightings always happened at night, generally by the train tracks. A couple of women said it would try to get into their houses by rattling the doorknobs. The animal was said to be huge, hairy, and dressed in rags.

But after summer ended, the beast disappeared, never to be heard from again. But the story lingers.

The mysterious occurrences in Beaver Dunes Park have been attributed to the fact that it was built upon ancient Native American burial grounds, which is why it's called the Shaman's portal, according to Only In Your State.

It's also known as the Oklahoma Bermuda Triangle.

Mysterious things have happened in the park, starting with the Spanish conquistadors who went missing while searching for gold in the 1500s. Since then, paranormal activity seekers have flocked to the dunes. Some people claim that a UFO crashed there, and a group in the '90s who tested the soil said it was "abnormal."

The Bandage Man is the American version of a mummy, wrote the Cannon Beach History Center and Museum.

He is rumored to be the ghost of a logger who died in a sawmill accident and now terrorizes teenagers who hang out at a deserted area of a highway near Cannon Beach. Stories say that he knocks on car windows to try to get in and smells really, really bad.

In Philadelphia, there's rumored to be a bus that doesn't have an end destination, according to Only In Your State. The story says that the bus only picks up passengers who are at their lowest moments and need to get away from their problems. Once the passenger is ready to face the world, they can get off the bus.

But the passenger has no idea how long they've been on the bus for — it could have been hours, days, or even years.

There is a rock on Devil's Foot Road that appears to show a normal human footprint and a cloven hoof, according to a Medium blog about New England folklore.

The story goes that a Native American woman murdered a white man and fled the scene of the crime.

While running, she was stopped by another man. She cried out for the Devil to save her, but the man admitted that he himself was the Devil and stomped his feet on the ground to prove that he had a cloven hoof, which the rock still shows to this day. You can see it on Waymarking.

In the 1800s, the Legares were a well-to-do South Carolinian family that had homes on the mainland and on Edisto Island. The daughter, Julia, got sick, was pronounced dead, and was buried inside their family mausoleum, according to Edisto's website.

Years later, another member of the Legare family died, and when their tomb was opened up, the remains of Julia were found outside her coffin. The story says that Julia had been in a coma, and had woken up to try to escape her tomb, but sadly died.

After the first reopening of the Legare mausoleum, the door couldn't seem to stay shut. The Legares tried multiple different doors, and every single time, the door was found open. People believe that Julia's ghost didn't want to be locked in that tomb any longer.

Purportedly over 7 feet tall and very slim, Walking Sam is said to appear on the streets of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at night, and he tries to convince teenagers to take their own lives, per Hot 104.7.

Whether Walking Sam is real, something tragic is going on at the reservation. From December 2014 to May 2015, there were 103 attempts by people to end their lives at Pine Ridge, reported The Daily Dot.

The Pine Haven School, located in Jamestown, is old and abandoned, and according to Urban Legends Online, it's said to be haunted.

A tragic story supposedly took place there, where a boy was cornered by a group of bullies in the bathroom and shoved into a mirror, which shattered and killed him. 

To avoid getting caught committing murder, the bullies decided to bury the body underneath the floorboards. Today, people say that if you go inside the school, you can see the reflection of the boy if you look in the mirror.

According to Urban Legends Online, in the early 1900s, children in an unnamed rural town in Texas started to disappear, and the residents blamed the Candy Lady.

The story says that she would go around leaving candy on children's windows, eventually luring the kids out with notes attached, promising more candy.

The story picked up steam when a farmer reportedly found rotten teeth on his farm and later found the body of a boy with his pockets stuffed with candy.

While it is illegal to take anything from Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, a legend says that anyone who takes pieces of petrified wood from the park will be cursed with bad luck, sickness, and accidents, KSL reported.

Park manager Kendall Farnsworth told KSL in 2014 that he gets about a dozen packages every year containing a piece of wood from the park and an apologetic letter detailing the sender's misfortunes. 

First appearing in a diary that was published in the late 1800s, the legend of the hibernating older people recounts the tale of a poor family outside Montpelier who couldn't afford to feed and clothe the oldest members of their family, so they froze the people and buried them, wrote Vermonter.

Legend has it that when spring rolled around, the elders thawed out and were just fine.

The Bunnyman's legend starts with what every good urban legend begins with: An insane asylum.

As reported by WAMU 88.5, the people of Clifton were so up in arms about the asylum that they were able to get all of the patients transferred. The patients were being moved on a bus that crashed, and the police were able to catch all the patients except one — the Bunnyman.

According to the tale, the Bunnyman lived in the woods and sustained himself on woodland creatures (like bunnies), but eventually, he attacked humans.

Some people reported being attacked by a man with a hatchet. Other tales say that groups of teens would see a bright light and then would wind up dead and strung up over a bridge, the Washingtonian reported.

Bigfoot is an internationally recognizable name, and has been spotted all over the country. But, Bigfoot has been spotted the most in Washington state, according to an online database compiling all Bigfoot sightings.

Bigfoot is essentially a gigantic ape-like creature who is either a ferocious beast that attacks loggers and hikers, or a gentle giant who wants to be left alone.

Either way, there's something creepy about an undiscovered species of animal wandering around the Pacific Northwest, evading capture.

In 1966, stories say that West Virginia was visited by an insectoid flying creature with bright red eyes who resembled both a moth and a man, according to Atlas Obscura. He was spotted flying around the town of Point Pleasant, along with shining lights and the equally conspiratorial Men in Black

Mothman's origins have been said to be supernatural, alien, or a government experiment gone wrong.

But Point Pleasant has embraced the monster, erecting a statue, creating a museum, and even dedicating a festival to him. In 2002, a film starring Richard Gere, "The Mothman Prophecies," was released.

The story of what exactly happened at Boy Scout Lane varies, but they all end with the same conclusion: a group of Boy Scouts dead on the road.

In some stories, McDowell News wrote, there was a bus crash with no survivors, or they were murdered by their bus driver, or they just mysteriously vanished into the woods one by one.

Visitors have reported seeing a swinging body in the trees, feeling like they are being watched, and finding child-size handprints.

There's no scientific consensus on why Devils Tower looks the way it does, but multiple Native American creation stories attribute the landmark's shape to a tragedy.

According to the various stories, two boys were attacked and chased by a large bear, so they ran up the rock formation. The bear tried to follow, but couldn't make the climb and left scratches all the way down the rock as it slid down, according to Rapid City's tourism website.