A subsidiary of Motorola Mobility, which was acquired in 2014 by...
The personal account of the Beltelecom subscriber is not only a means of managing...
Looking at the many spineless, teenage, and friendly vampire characters that are featured in modern books and films, it's easy to forget that vampires were originally completely different and much, oh, much more scary.
The world is full of legends and tales of mythical monsters, mysterious creatures and incredible beasts. Some of these monsters were inspired by real animals or fossils found, while others are symbolic expressions of people's deepest fears.
Centuries ago, our ancestors trembled and were horrified at the mere mention of the name of monsters, which is not at all surprising, considering how nightmarish their mythology could be.
This short review will focus only on the 20 most terrible, and sometimes strange monsters - vampires, monstrous creatures and other undead, which, even by the standards of our ancestors, were one of the most terrible and disgusting creatures in the world.
Callicanzaro
Callicanzaro spends most of the year in the underworld (whose location is unknown) and only appears for the 12 nights between Christmas and Epiphany, because he knows that on these festive nights people are too drunk to run away. While the mere sight of his black, distorted face, red eyes, and fanged-filled mouth is enough to drive the holiday spirit out of anyone, Callicanzaro isn't content with robbing everyone of the fun. The monster tears apart anyone it meets with its long claws, and then devours the torn body.
According to Greek lore, any child born between Christmas and Epiphany will eventually become Callicanzaro. Scary, isn't it? But parents should not be afraid, because there is a cure. All you have to do is hold the newborn's feet over the fire until his toenails are scorched, such a procedure should break the curse.
But what kind of holidays would it be without a family reunion! Touchingly, Callicanzaro remembers his family from when he was human and has been known to eagerly go in search of his former siblings. But only to devour them when he finally finds them.
Soucoyant
Soukoyant in Caribbean mythology is a type of werewolf that belongs to the class of "jambi", local incorporeal spirits. During the day, a jambi soukoyant looks like a frail old woman, and at night this creature sheds its skin, puts it in a mortar with a special solution, and, turning into a fiery flying ball, goes in search of a victim. Soukoyanth sucks out night wanderers, and then trades it with demons for mystical power.
Like European myths about vampires, if the victim survives, then he becomes the same accomplice. To kill a monster, you need to pour salt into the solution in which its skin lies, after which the creepy creature will die at dawn, as it will not be able to “put on” the skin back.
Penanggalan
It is possible that the creature that we will describe in this paragraph is the most disgusting of the entire list!
The Penanggalan is a nightmarish monster that looks like a woman during the day. However, at night, he "takes off" his head and flies away in search of victims, while the spine and everything internal organs Penanggalana hang from his neck. And this is really a real Malaysian legend, and not an invention of modern filmmakers!
The monster's internal organs glow in the dark and can be used as tentacles to clear the way for Penanggalan. In addition, the creature can grow its hair at will to grab its prey.
When Penanggalan notices a burning house, he tries to get inside with the help of "tentacles". With luck, the monster devours all the small children in the house. If you can't get into the house, mystical creature stretches its incredibly long tongue under the house and tries to reach the sleeping inhabitants through the cracks in the floor. If the Penanggalan tongue reaches the bedroom, it digs into the body and sucks out the victim's blood.
In the morning, Penanggalan soaks his insides in vinegar so that they decrease in size and can again fit into his body.
Kelpie
Kelpie is a water spirit that lives in the rivers and lakes of Scotland. Although the kelpie usually appears in the form of a horse, it can also take the form of a human. Often, kelpies lure people into supposedly rolling them on their backs, after which they drag victims underwater and devour them. However, the tales of the vicious water horse also served as a wonderful warning to children to stay out of the water, and to women to be wary of handsome strangers.
Ghoul
The ghoul may look just like an ordinary Russian person. He may even have the ability to walk in broad daylight like a Russian. However, he is not Russian. Behind its harmless façade hides a vicious vampire who will gladly refuse all the vodka in the world if they give him even one drop of blood for it. What's more, his love for blood is so great that after he rips you apart with his metal teeth, he might just eat your heart for fun.
The ghoul also loves children (although, you guessed it, not parental love), preferring the taste of their blood, and always drinking their blood before proceeding to drain their parents. He also doesn't dislike the taste of frozen mud, as legend has it that he uses his metal teeth to gnaw his way out of his grave in the dead of winter when his hands freeze due to poor insulation in the coffin.
Basilisk
The basilisk is usually described as a crested snake, although sometimes there are descriptions of a rooster with a snake's tail. This creature can kill birds with its fire breath, humans with a glance, and other living beings with a simple hiss. Legends say that the basilisk is born from a snake or toad egg that was incubated by a rooster. The word "basilisk" is translated from Greek as "little king", so this creature is often called the "serpent king". During the Middle Ages, basilisks were accused of causing plagues and mysterious murders.
Asasabonsam
You are probably familiar with the old urban legend of the Hook Man. So, as it turns out, the Ashanti people of Ghana tell a similar (albeit much creepier) story about Asasabonsam, a strange vampire with curved iron hooks for legs who lives in the depths of African forests. He hunts by hanging from the branches of trees and thrusting the aforementioned hooks into the body of those unfortunates who pass under this tree. Once he hauls you up a tree, he eats you alive with his iron teeth, and then presumably spends most of the night getting your bloodstains out of his hooks so they don't rust.
Unlike most vampires, he feeds on both humans and animals (so someone needs to alert People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)). The strangest fact about the Asasabonsam is that when its prey is a human, it will first bite off the thumb before moving on to the rest of the body, possibly to prevent you from hitching a ride and getting home if you like- somehow manage to escape from its hooks.
Asmodeus
Asmodeus is a demon of lust who is mostly known from the Book of Tobit (the deuterocanonical book of the Old Testament). He pursues a woman named Sarah and kills her seven husbands out of jealousy. In the Talmud, Asmodeus is mentioned as the prince of demons, who expelled King Solomon from his kingdom. Some folklorists believe that Asmodeus is the son of Lilith and Adam. The legend says that it is he who is responsible for the perversion of people's sexual desires.
Varakolach
Varakolach(s) is arguably the most powerful of all vampires, so it's not at all clear why so little is known about him other than the fact that he has a difficult-to-pronounce name (seriously, try saying it out loud). According to legend, his skin is a dermatologist's worst nightmare - it is terribly pale and dry, and no amount of body lotion can cure it, but otherwise he looks like an ordinary person.
Oddly enough, such a frightening creature as the Romanian Varakolach has only one superpower, but what a superpower! He can devour the sun and moon (in other words, he can cause solar and lunar eclipses at will), which in itself is the coolest of all tricks. However, in order to do this, he must sleep, because, apparently, the invocation of astrological phenomena, which can frighten us even today, and which must have inspired terrible fear in people of more primitive cultures, takes an enormous amount of his energy.
Yorogumo
There are probably more bizarre cryptozoological creatures in Japanese mythology than there are in all seasons." X-Files". One of the most bizarre is the Yogorumo or "harlot" - a spider-like monster of the Yokai family (goblin-like creatures). The legend of Yogorumo originated during the Edo period in Japan. It is believed that when a spider reaches the age of 400 years, it acquires magical powers. In most legends, the spider turns into beautiful woman, seduces men and lures them to his home, plays the biwa (Japanese lute) for them, and then entangles them in cobwebs and devours them.
upier
The Russian ghoul (see above) has a nightmarish Polish cousin named Upier, who is famous for being even more bloodthirsty. Moreover, his thirst for blood is so strong and insatiable that in addition to drinking huge amounts of it inside, Upier loves to bathe and sleep in it. His body is filled with so much blood that if you drive a stake into him, he will explode into a huge geyser of blood, worthy of the elevator scene from The Shining.
He takes particular pleasure in sucking the blood of friends and family members who were dear to him during his human life, so if any of your friends or relatives have recently turned into Upier, you should know that you are most likely already recorded as a dish on his menu. When it finally finds you, it immobilizes you with a powerful hug (a kind of farewell bear hug) and then digs its spiked tongue into your neck and sucks every last drop of blood out of you.
Black Annis
A ghostly witch from English folklore, Black Annis is an old woman with a blue face and iron claws who haunted peasants in Leicestershire. Legend has it that she lives in a cave in the Dane Hills, and at night she wanders in search of children to devour. If Black Annis catches a child, she tans its skin and then wears it around her waist. Needless to say, parents scared Black Annis of their children when they misbehaved.
Neuntother
Attention! If you are a hypochondriac by nature, then you probably better not read about this monster!
The Neuntother is a walking biological weapon of mass destruction that does one thing and one thing only - it brings death wherever it goes. Neuntother lives in the myths of Germany and is the carrier of an endless number of terrible types of plague and deadly diseases, which he spreads around him like candy, in whichever city he is in, infecting everyone and everything that gets in his way. Therefore, it is not surprising that, according to legend, it appears only during massive and terrible epidemics.
Neuntother's body is covered in open sores and wounds that constantly ooze pus, and which most likely play an important role in the spread of deadly bacteria (if reading this sentence made you an irresistible desire to immediately bathe in a disinfectant, then you are not alone) . His well-chosen German name literally translates to "Killer of the Nine", and is a reference to the fact that it takes nine days for a corpse to fully transform into a Neuntothera.
Nabau
In 2009, two aerial photographs taken by researchers in Borneo, Indonesia, showed a 30-meter snake swimming down a river. There is still controversy regarding the authenticity of this photograph, as well as whether they actually depict a snake. Some argue that it is a log or a large boat. However, locals living along the Baleh River insist that the creature is Nabau, an ancient dragon-like monster from Indonesian folklore.
According to legends, the Nabau is over 30 meters long, has a head with seven nostrils, and can take the form of several different animals.
Yara-ma-yha-hu
Grab your didgeridoo, because the creature is truly strange. Australian Aboriginal legends describe Yara-ma-yha-hu as a humanoid creature 125 centimeters tall, with red skin and a huge head. Yara-ma-yha-hu spends most of his time in the trees. If you are not lucky enough to pass under such a tree, Yara-ma-yha-hu will jump on you and attach to your body with small suction cups that cover his fingers and toes, so no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to shake off.
Further - worse. Yara-ma-yha-hu made this list primarily due to the peculiarities of its feeding method. Because it doesn't have any fangs, it sucks your blood through the suction cups on your arms and legs until you're weakened to the point where you can't run or even move. After that, he leaves you lying on the ground like a discarded, half-empty juice can, while he leaves, presumably to have fun with kangaroos and koalas.
When he returns from his evening of fun, he gets down to business and swallows you whole with his huge mouth, then regurgitates you after a while, still alive and unharmed (yes, it's a gagging vampire). This process is repeated over and over again, and each time you become smaller and redder as a result of it digesting you. In the end, yes, yes, you guessed it, you yourself turn into Yara-ma-yha-hu. That's it!
Dullahan
Most people are familiar with Washington Irving's story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and the story of the Headless Horseman. The Irish Dullahan or "dark man" is essentially the forerunner of the ghost of the decapitated Hessian soldier who pursued Ichabod Crane. In Celtic mythology, the dullahan is a harbinger of death. He rides a big black horse with glowing eyes and carries his head under his arm.
Some stories say that the dullahan calls out the name of the person who is about to die, while others say that he marks the person by pouring a bucket of blood over them. Like many monsters and mythical creatures, the Dullahan has one weakness: gold.
Nelapsi
This time the Czechs came up with something really disgusting. Nelapsi is a walking corpse who doesn't care to put on clothes, so he goes hunting in what his mother gave birth to. The lack of clothes combined with glowing red eyes, long messy black hair and teeth as thin as needles is enough to make you leave the lights on at night, but unfortunately that's just the tip of the iceberg.
In fact, Nelapsi can easily win the competition for the most powerful and overbearing of all vampires. He can destroy whole villages at once, and like that guy who is forbidden to approach the buffet, he does not stop until the morning, no matter how much he has already eaten during the night. He is not a picky eater at all and feeds on cattle as well as humans, and kills his victims by either tearing them apart with his teeth or crushing them with his Death's Embrace, which is so powerful it can easily crush bones. However, if given the opportunity, he will try to keep you alive for as long as possible and enjoy torturing his victims for weeks before killing them (because to be called a real villain, you have to torture people for weeks ). However, even that is not all. If Nelapsi leaves the tormented people alive for some reason (very unlikely, you guessed it), they are quickly driven to death by a deadly Noyntoter-style plague that will follow the surviving human wherever they go.
Finally, if all of the above doesn't seem terrifying enough, Nelapsi can also kill people just by looking at them. One of his favorite pastimes is playing "I'm spying on you with one eye" from the tops of church spiers, causing any person that Nelapsi's eye falls on to die on the spot. We may have gone overboard with mentioning just how evil Nelapsi is, but he's such a scoundrel that it's impossible not to emphasize it enough.
Goblins "Red Caps"
Evil goblins in red caps live on the border between England and Scotland. According to legends, they usually live in ruined castles and kill wandering travelers by dropping boulders from cliffs on them. The goblins then paint the caps with the blood of their victims. Redcaps are forced to kill as often as possible because if the blood on their caps dries out, they die.
Evil creatures are usually depicted as old men with red eyes, big teeth, claws and a staff in hand. They are faster and stronger than humans. Legend has it that the only way to escape such a goblin is to shout out a quote from the Bible.
Manticore
This is a fabulous creature that looks like a sphinx. It has the body of a red lion, a human head with 3 rows of sharp teeth and is very loud voice, tail of a dragon or scorpion. The manticore shoots poisoned needles at the victim and then eats it whole, leaving nothing. From a distance, she can often be confused with a bearded man. Most likely, this will be the last mistake of the victim.
Indian vampire Brahmaparusha
Brahmaparusha is a vampire, but he is not at all ordinary. These malevolent spirits, which are described in Hindu mythology, have a passion for human brains. Unlike the suave, dapper vampires that live in Romania, the brahmaparusha is a grotesque creature that wears the intestines of its victims around its neck and head. He also carries a human skull with him and when he kills a new victim, he drains her blood into this skull and drinks from it.
In fact, humanity has invented truly nightmarish monsters in its history (and continues to invent!) far from two unfortunate dozens. There are just 20 monsters in our selection. But there is also the vile Japanese sea spirit Umibozu, the American forest human hunter Heidbeheind, a relative of the famous and no less terrible Wendigo, the huge Bakeneko cat, the incredibly fast cannibal Wendigo, the Scandinavian super-strong undead Draugr, the ancient Babylonian Tiamat and many, many others!
If you find an error, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter.
People have been making up legends and legends ever since they discovered communication. Despite some true facts, most of the terrible legends still remain fiction. However, chilling urban legends can often turn out to be true. Sometimes a transformation tragic event into a legend helps people cope with grief, as well as protect the younger generation from realizing the reality of what is happening.
In this article, we have collected for you the creepiest urban legends based on real events.
Faceless Charlie
Legend:
Children living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania love to tell the story of Faceless Charlie, also known as Green Man. It is believed that Charlie was a factory worker who was disfigured in a horrific accident, some claiming it was the acid and some the power line.
Some versions of the story claim that this incident caused his skin to turn green, but all versions have in common that Charlie's face was so disfigured that it lost all features. According to legend, he wanders in the dark through oppressive places, such as, for example, the old abandoned railway tunnel in South Park, also known as the Green Man Tunnel.
Over the years, curious teenagers have visited this tunnel looking for signs of Faceless Charlie. Many claimed that they felt a slight electric shock and had trouble starting the car after calling Faceless. Others said they saw a slight glow of his green skin in a tunnel or at night by a country road.
Reality:
Unfortunately, in this tragic history lies the lion's share of the truth. The legend of Faceless Charlie appeared due to the fact that he had a very real prototype - Raymond Robinson. In 1919, Robinson, who was 8 years old at the time, was playing with a friend near a bridge with high voltage tram tracks.
Raymond suffered horrific injuries after he accidentally touched a power line. As a result of the impact, he lost his nose, both eyes and an arm, but survived. He spent the rest of his long life - 74 years - closed in on himself, and went out for a walk only at night, but he reciprocated the friendly appeals of people to him.
killer in the attic
Legend:
This chilling story appeared many years ago. It tells about a family unaware that a dangerous intruder has settled in their house, secretly living in their attic for weeks. They lose or move things, suspicious objects appear in the garbage. They joke sweetly about the brownie until a cruel killer living near them kills them in their sleep.
The worst thing about this legend is that, it would seem, it is quite possible - and it really is.
Reality:
This story began in March 1922 on a German farm called Hinterkaifeck. The owner, Andreas Gruber, began to notice that things were periodically disappearing in the house, lying in the wrong places. His family heard footsteps in the house at night, and Andreas himself, on the eve of the tragedy, noticed other people's footprints in the snow, but after examining the house and territory, he did not find anyone.
At the end of March, the man who left these traces descended from the attic and brutally dealt with six inhabitants of the farm - the owner, his wife, their daughter, her two children 2 and 7 years old and their maid with the help of a hoe. Their bodies were found only 4 days later, and it turned out that at that time someone was looking after the livestock. The identity of the offender has not yet been established.
night doctors
Legend:
Stories of night doctors in the past were often heard from slave owners who used them to intimidate their slaves so they wouldn't run away. The essence of the legend is that there were some doctors who operated at night, kidnapping black workers to use them in their terrible experiments.
Night doctors caught people on the streets and took them into their medical institutions there to torture, kill, dismember and cut out their organs.
Reality:
This creepy story has a very real continuation. Throughout the 19th century, grave robbery was a big problem, and the African American population could not protect either their deceased relatives or themselves. In addition, medical students did perform operations on living members of the African American community.
In 1932, the Alabama State Health Service and Tuskegee University launched a program to study syphilis. As terrible as it sounds, 600 African-American men were taken to perform the experiment. Of these, 399 already had syphilis and 201 did not.
They were given free food and a guarantee to protect their grave after death, but the program lost funding, but the participants were not told about their terrible illness. Researchers sought to study the mechanisms of the disease and continued to monitor patients. They were told that they were being treated for a non-serious blood disease.
The patients did not know they had syphilis or that they needed penicillin to treat it. The scientists refused to give any information about the drugs or the condition of their patients.
This story, spiced up by slave owners riding white-clothed horses at night for a long time instilled in dark-skinned people fear and awe of the legend.
Alice murders
Legend:
This is a fairly young urban legend from Japan. It says that in the period from 1999 to 2005 in Japan there was a series of brutal murders. The bodies of the victims were mutilated, their limbs were torn off, and distinctive feature Of all the murders, the name "Alice" was written next to each corpse in the blood of the victim.
The police also found one playing card at each of the creepy crime scenes. The first victim was found in the forest, and parts of her body were strung on the branches of various trees. The second victim had his vocal cords torn out. The third victim, a teenage girl, had her skin severely burned, her mouth cut open, her eyes torn out, and a crown sewn to her head. The last victims of the killer were two little twins - they were given lethal injections while they were sleeping.
Police allegedly arrested a man in 2005 who was found wearing a jacket from one of the victims, but they were unable to link him to any of the murders. The man claimed that the jacket had been given to him.
Reality:
In fact, there have never been such murders in Japan. However, shortly before the appearance of this legend, a maniac was operating in Spain, who was called the Card Killer. In 2003, the entire police force in Madrid was sent to capture the man responsible for 6 brutal murders and 3 assassinations. Each time he left on the body of the murdered playing card. The authorities were at a loss - there was no connection between the victims or an obvious motive.
All that was known was that they were dealing with a psychopath who chose his victims at random. He would never have been caught if one day he himself had not come to the police with a confession. The card killer turned out to be Alfredo Galan Sotillo. During the trial, Alfredo changed his testimony several times, retracting his confession and claiming that the Nazis forced him to confess to the murders. Despite this, the killer was sentenced to 142 years in prison.The Legend of Cropsy
Legend:
Among the people of Staten Island, the legend of Corpsi has been around for decades. It tells the story of a crazed axe-wielding killer who escaped from an old hospital and hides in the tunnels beneath the abandoned Willbrook Public School. He comes out of hiding at night and preys on children: some say he has a hook for a hand, and some say he wields an axe. The weapon does not matter to him, the result is important to him - to lure the child into the ruins of the old school and cut him to pieces.
Reality:
As it turned out, the crazy killer was quite real. Andre Rand was directly responsible for the kidnapping of two children. He worked as a janitor at this very school until it closed. There are children with handicapped were kept in terrible conditions: they were beaten, insulted, they had neither normal food nor clothes. The homeless Rand returned to the tunnels under the school to continue the atrocities that had previously reigned in this school.
Children began to go missing, and the body of 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger was found in the woods near Rand's camp. He was charged with her murder of Jennifer and another missing child. It has not been fully proven that these murders were his doing, but the police managed to prove that he was involved in the abductions of children. He was sentenced to 50 years judicial opinion. The whereabouts of the other missing children have not yet been disclosed.
Babysitter and killer on the second floor
Legend:
The story of the babysitter and the killer hiding upstairs is undoubtedly an urban horror classic. According to this legend, a girl who works as a nanny for a wealthy family gets a creepy call. In almost all versions of the story, the caller asks the babysitter if she has checked on the children. The nanny calls the police, where it turns out that they are calling from the house where she is with the children. According to most versions, all three are found brutally murdered.
Reality:
The reason for the spread of this terrible story was the very real murder of 12-year-old girl Janet Christman, who looked after three-year-old Gregory Romak. In March 1950, when this brutal crime took place, there was a terrible thunderstorm in Columbia, Missouri. Janet had just put the child to bed when an unknown person entered the house and brutally raped and killed the girl.
The main suspects for a long time included a certain Robert Muller, who is also accused of another murder. Unfortunately, the evidence against Mueller was only circumstantial, but he was nevertheless accused of killing Janet. Some time later, he sued for wrongful detention, the charges were dropped, and he left town for good. After his departure, such crimes ceased.
rabbit man
Legend:
The story about the rabbit man appeared around the 70s of the last century and, like many urban legends, has several versions. The most common of these speaks of events that occurred in 1904, when the local psychiatric institution in Clifton, Virginia, closes and it becomes necessary to transfer patients to a new building. According to the classics of the genre, transport with patients gets into a serious accident, most of them die, and the survivors break free. They are all successfully brought back... except for one - Douglas Griffin, sent to a psychiatric hospital for killing his family on Easter Sunday.
Shortly after his escape, exhausted and mutilated carcasses of rabbits appear in the trees in the area. Some time later, the locals discover the body of Marcus Wallster hanging from the ceiling of an underpass under a railroad track in the same terrible state as the rabbits before it. The police tried to drive the madman into a corner, but he, while running away, was hit by a train. Now his restless ghost roams the area and still hangs the carcasses of rabbits on the trees.
Some even claim to have seen the rabbit-man in person, standing in the shadow of the underpass. The locals believe that whoever dares to enter the crossing on Halloween night will be found dead the next morning.
Reality:
Luckily, this creepy legend is just a legend, and there really was no crazy killer. There was no Douglas Griffin, no Marcus Wallster. However, in Fairfax County, there lived a man who was unhealthy obsessed with rabbits and terrorized local residents in the 70s of the last century.
He rushed at passers-by and pursued them with a small ax in his hands. Some claimed that he once threw a hatchet through the window of a passing car. One incident occurred in the house of one of the local residents. The madman took an ax with a long handle and began to chop down the porch of the unfortunate man's house. He escaped before the arrival of the police and no one still knows who he is and what motivated him.
Hook
Legend:
The legend of the Hook is perhaps the most common of all urban horror stories. It has several versions, each scarier than the previous one, and the most famous one is about a couple making love in a parked car. The radio broadcast is suddenly interrupted to tell the listeners terrible news - a cruel killer wielding a hook has escaped, and now he is hiding in the very park where the lovers are.
The girl, having heard the news, asks her beloved to leave from there as soon as possible. The guy is annoyed, but they are going, and he takes her home. When they arrive, they find a bloody hook hanging from the door handle on the passenger side.
Reality:
Whether the couple makes it home without incident, or the girl is horrified to hear her lover's fingers touch the roof of the car as his bloodied body hangs from a tree, the story didn't come about by accident. In the late 1940s, a small and peaceful town was rocked by a series of horrific murders. The culprit was dubbed the Moonlight Killer, but was never found.
At night, he killed young people in parked cars. Frightened residents were returning home long before the curfew announced by the authorities. The bloody crimes stopped as quickly as they started, and the Moon Slayer vanished into the night.
dog boy
Legend:
In the city of Quitman, Arkansas, the legend of the Dog Boy has long circulated. Locals claimed that it tells the story of an evil and very cruel little boy who loved to torture defenseless animals, and then completely switched to his parents. After the death of the boy, his ghost lived in the house where he killed his parents, in the form of a half-man, half-dog, instilling horror and fear in people. People often notice his outline in the room where he kept the animals he abused.
Witnesses describe him as a large furry creature resembling a dog with glowing cat eyes. Those who pass by his house notice that he is watching them closely from the window of the house, and some even claim that an incomprehensible creature on all fours was chasing them down the street.
Reality:
Once upon a time, an angry and cruel boy named Gerald Bettis lived in an old house at 65 Mulberry Street. His favorite pastime was catching neighbor's animals. He had a separate room where he brought the unfortunate. There he tortured them and brutally killed them. Over time, his cruelty began to manifest itself in relation to elderly parents. He was huge and overweight.
They say that it was he who killed his father, but no one has ever been able to prove that he provoked him to fall down the stairs. After his father's death, he continued to abuse his mother, keeping her locked up and starved to the sea. Law enforcement agencies intervened and they managed to save the unfortunate mother. Some time later, she testified against him for growing and using marijuana. He was sent to prison, where he died of an overdose.
Black water
Legend:
This pretty famous story starts with what an ordinary family buys new house. They are doing great until they turn on the faucet, which pours black, muddy, foul-smelling water. After checking the water tank, they discover a rotting body. It is not known when this legend was born, but a similar story really took place.
Reality:
Eliza Lam's body was found in a water tank at the Cecile Hotel in Los Angeles, California in 2013. Her death is still a mystery, and the killer has not been found. By the time the guests complained about the tainted water and her body was found, it had been decomposing in the tank for a week.
Bloody Mary
Legend:
According to an eerie folk belief about Bloody Mary, in order to invoke her evil spirit, one must light candles, turn off the lights, and whisper her name while gazing into a mirror. When she arrives, she can do a range of harmless things, as well as terrible things.
Reality:
According to psychologists, if you stare in the mirror for a long time, you can see how someone else is looking at you in response, so most likely the legend of Bloody Mary did not appear out of nowhere. The Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo calls this phenomenon "the illusion of an alien face."
According to Caputo, if you stare long and hard at your reflection in a mirror, your field of vision will begin to distort, and the outlines and boundaries will become blurred - your face will no longer look the same. The same illusion manifests itself when a person sees images and silhouettes in inanimate objects.
Urban legends are often compelling stories with a lot of folkloric elements, and they spread quite quickly in society. The stories are told in a dramatic way, as if they were true stories about real people - when in fact they may be 100% fictional.
Local touches are often added to the legend, so it is rather strange to hear the same story in different versions in different countries. Urban legends often carry a warning or some sort of meaning that motivates society to keep and spread them. One thing is certain - some of these creepy urban legends have kept a lot of people awake. Below are ten of the best urban legends:
10 Choking Doberman
This urban legend comes from Sydney, Australia and tells the story of a Doberman who choked on something. One night, a married couple went out for a walk and sat in a restaurant, when they returned home, they saw their dog suffocating in the living room. The man panicked and fainted, and the wife decided to call her old friend, the vet, and arranged to bring the dog to the veterinary clinic.
After she took the dog to the clinic, she decided to return home and help her husband go to bed. It takes her a while to do this, and in the meantime, the phone rang. The vet screams hysterically into the phone that they need to get out of their house quickly. Without realizing what's going on, the couple leaves the house as soon as possible.
As they descend the stairs, several policemen run towards them. When the woman asks what happened, one of the policemen replies that their dog choked on the man's finger. In their house, most likely there is still a robber. Soon, the former owner of the finger was found unconscious in the couple's bedroom.
9 Suicidal Guy 
This story, also known as "The Death of a Boyfriend", is told in many ways and is considered a generalized warning not to stray too far from the safety of your home. Our version will focus on Paris in the 1960s. A girl and her boyfriend (both college students) kiss in his car. They parked near the forest of Rambouillet so that no one could see them. When they're done, the guy gets out of the car to get some fresh air and smoke a cigarette, while the girl waits for him in the safety of the car.
After she waited five minutes, the girl got out of the car to find her boyfriend. Suddenly she sees a man hiding in the shade of a tree. Frightened, she gets back into the car to leave as soon as possible - but as she got in, she heard a very soft creak, followed by several more creaks.
This goes on for a few seconds, but the girl eventually decides that she has no other choice and decides to leave. She presses the gas pedal, but cannot go anywhere - someone has tied a cable from the bumper of the car to a tree growing nearby.
As a result, the girl presses the gas pedal again and hears a loud scream. She gets out of the car and finds her boyfriend hanging from a tree. As it turned out, the creaking sounds were made by his shoes dragging along the roof of the car.
8. Woman with a torn mouth 
In Japan and China, there is a legend about the girl Kuchisake-Onna, also known as the woman with the torn mouth. Some say she was the wife of a samurai. One day, she cheated on her husband with a young and handsome man. When her husband returned, he discovered her betrayal, and in a rage, he took his sword and cut her mouth from ear to ear.
Some say that the woman was cursed - she will never die, and still walks the world so that people can see the terrible scar on her face and pity her. Some claim that they saw a beautiful young girl who asked them: "Am I beautiful?" And when they answered positively, she tore off her mask and showed a terrible wound. Then she repeated her question - and anyone who stopped considering her beautiful was waiting for a tragic death.
There are two morals in this story: it costs nothing to give a compliment, and honesty is not the best approach in all situations.
7. Bridge of the crying child
According to this legend, a couple was driving home from church with their child and arguing about something. It was raining heavily, and soon they had to cross a flooded bridge. As soon as they entered the bridge, it turned out that there was much more water than they thought, and the car got stuck - they decided that they needed to go for help. The woman waited, but got out of the car for a reason that can only be guessed at.
As she turned away from the car, she suddenly heard her baby crying loudly. She returned to the car to find that her child had been swept away by the water. According to the same legend, if you are on the same bridge, you can still hear the cry of a child there (the location of the bridge, of course, is unknown).
6Zanfretta Alien Abduction 
The story of the kidnapping of Fortunato Zanfretta has become one of Italy's most famous urban legends over the past few decades.
According to his own stories (originally made under hypnosis), Zanfretta was abducted by aliens Dragos (Dragos) from the planet Teetonia (Teetonia), and for several years (1978-1981) he was repeatedly abducted several times by the same group from another planet. No matter how terrifying and creepy this story may sound, given the words of Zanfretta, uttered by him during a hypnosis session, one can regard the intentions of the aliens from an optimistic point of view:
“I know that you want to fly more often… no, you can't fly to Earth, people will be scared of how you look. You cannot become our friends. Please fly away."
Zahnfretta has perhaps provided more details about his alien abduction than any other person in history - his detailed accounts may make even the most ardent skeptic wonder if there is some truth in it. To this day, the Zanfretta case remains one of the most interesting and mysterious X-Files.
5. White Death
This story is about a little girl from Scotland who hated life so much that she wanted to destroy everything connected with it. Finally, she decided to commit suicide, and her family soon discovered what she had done.
By a terrible coincidence, all members of her family died a few days later, and their limbs were torn off. Legend says that when you learn about the White Death, the ghost of a little girl may find you and knock on your door many times. Each knock gets louder until the man opens the door, at which point she kills him so that he won't tell anyone else about her existence. Her main task is to make sure that no one knows about her.
Like most urban legends, this story is most likely the product of the wild imagination of modern Aesop.
4. Black Volga
According to rumors, on the streets of Warsaw in the 1960s, a black Volga was often noticed - in which people who abducted children sat. According to legend (no doubt aided by Western propaganda), Soviet officers rode the black Volga around Moscow in the mid-1930s, kidnapping young, pretty girls to satisfy the sexual needs of high-ranking Soviet comrades. According to other versions of this legend, vampires, mystical priests, satanists, human traffickers, and even Satan himself sat in the Volga.
According to various versions of the legend, children were kidnapped in order to use their blood as a treatment for rich people from all over the world suffering from leukemia. Naturally, none of these versions has not been confirmed.
3. Greek soldier
This lesser-known legend tells of a soldier from Greece who, after World War II, returned home to marry his fiancee. Unfortunately for him, he was captured by his compatriots with enemy political opinions, he was tortured for five weeks, after which he was killed. In the early 1950s, mostly in northern and central Greece, stories were circulating about an attractive uniformed Greek soldier who would appear and disappear quickly, seducing beautiful widows and virgins with the sole purpose of giving them a child.
Five weeks after the child was born, the man disappeared forever - leaving a note on the table in which he explained that he was returning from the world of the dead so that he would have sons who could avenge his murder.
2 Elisa Day
In medieval Europe, there lived a young girl named Eliza Day, whose beauty was like wild roses growing by the river - bloody and red. One day a young man came to town and instantly fell in love with Eliza. They met for three days. On the first day he came to her house. On the second day, he brought her one red rose and asked her to meet where wild roses grow. On the third day, he took her to the river, where he killed her. The terrible man waited until she turned away from him, then took a stone and, whispering "All beauty must die", killed her with one blow to the head. He put a rose in her teeth and pushed the body into the river. Some people claim to have seen her ghost wandering along the riverbank, with a single rose in her hand, and blood streaming from her head.
Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave have a very beautiful song about this legend - "Where The Wild Roses Grow":
1. Well to hell
In 1989, Russian scientists drilled a well in Siberia about 14.5 kilometers deep. The drill fell into a cavity in the earth's crust, and scientists lowered several devices into it to figure out what was the matter. The temperature there exceeded 1000 degrees Celsius, but the real shock was what they heard on the tape.
Before the microphone melted, only 17 terrifying seconds of sound were recorded. Many of the scientists, convinced that they had heard the cries of the damned from hell, quit their jobs - or at least that's what the story says. Those who remained were shocked even more that same night. A jet of luminescent gas shot out from the well, turning into the form of a giant winged demon, and then the words "I won" could be read in the lights. Although on this moment this story is considered fiction, and there are many people who believe that this actually happened - the urban legend "The Well to Hell" is told to this day.
Although there was no tabloid press and the Internet in the Soviet Union, the genre of so-called urban legends still existed at that time. There were real "horror stories" passed from mouth to mouth and sometimes passed off as the truth.
Maggots in kvass
They told, for example, that once a barrel of kvass turned over - the same one that was sold on the streets, poured into mugs and cans. And it turned out that giant maggots were moving at the bottom of the barrel (for reference: maggots are worms that eat the decaying bodies of the dead). This legend also existed in another version: a human corpse turned out to be at the bottom of the barrel! And buyers drank this kvass ...
Foreign pests
It was difficult to buy delicious sweets in the USSR, they were very scarce. And so a legend was born: foreigners allegedly approached Soviet children on the street and treated them to chewing gum or sweets that were infected with tuberculosis or syphilis. Alternatively, sweets were stuffed with needles, pieces of razor blades or whalebone.
Infected Jeans
Good branded jeans in the Land of the Soviets were also a terrible shortage. They were often bought from black marketers, who, in turn, bought them from foreigners. And they were selling jeans infected with syphilis. Or "in the load" to the jeans was a bag of fleas or lice.
Rat in kindergarten
The story is like this. Rats were poisoned in one kindergarten. And then the animal, swallowing rat poison, accidentally fell into the cauldron in which the cook was preparing semolina for children. All the children who ate this porridge got poisoned and then died.
Afghan rat
This legend was born in the 80s, at the height of the Afghan war. One family bought a dachshund puppy that behaved strangely, ate too much and paid extra attention to the owner's child. After the “puppy” bit the child to death, and it turned out that this was not a dachshund, but an Afghan rat: they say that the Mujahideen specially sent these animals behind enemy lines to kill people.
"Food" legends
There were many food legends. Allegedly, toilet paper was added to the sausage, butter made from oil, and vodka was driven from sawdust. It was as if washing powder was added to the beer to create more foam. They also said that rat paws and tails are sometimes found in sausage, pies and other products, and sometimes even human teeth and fingers!
Vampire mosquitoes at BAM
There was a legend that bloodless human corpses were found at the BAM construction sites. All these people became victims of a special breed of mosquitoes that drank all the blood from them.
People immured in the walls
There is an old belief that a building will stand firmly if a person is immured into the wall. And then there were rumors that during the construction of each house, someone was sure to be killed and walled up. Most often this is one of the workers or even a foreman.
Uranium mines instead of "tower"
In the USSR, there was still such a measure of punishment as the death penalty. But, according to rumors, those sentenced to the "tower" instead of death were sent to work in uranium mines. Most of them died there, but sometimes they met living people - very sick people, without teeth ...
Lost places
It was said that the bandits lost seats in cinemas at cards. The loser had to come to the session, sit behind the lost seat and kill the spectator who was sitting there with an awl in the heart. The same thing happened allegedly with seats in train cars.
Incredible Facts
People have been making up legends and legends ever since they discovered communication. Despite some true facts, most of the terrible legends still remain fiction. However, chilling urban legends can often turn out to be true.
Sometimes turning a tragic event into a legend helps people cope with grief, as well as protect the younger generation from realizing the reality of what is happening.
In this article, we have collected for you the creepiest urban legends based on real events.
City's legends
Faceless Charlie
Legend:
Children living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania love to tell the story of faceless Charlie, also known as the Green Man. Charlie is believed to have been a factory worker disfigured in a horrific accident, some claiming it was the acid, others the power line.
Some versions of the story claim that this incident caused his skin to turn green, but all versions have in common that Charlie's face was so disfigured that it lost all features. According to legend, he wanders in the dark through oppressive places, such as, for example, the old abandoned railway tunnel in South Park, also known as the Green Man Tunnel.
Over the years, curious teenagers have visited this tunnel looking for signs of Faceless Charlie. Many claimed that they felt a slight electric shock and had trouble starting the car after calling Faceless. Others said they saw a slight glow of his green skin in a tunnel or at night by a country road.
Reality:
Unfortunately, in this tragic story lies the lion's share of truth. The legend of Faceless Charlie appeared due to the fact that he had a very real prototype - Raymond Robinson. In 1919, Robinson, who was 8 years old at the time, was playing with a friend near a bridge with high voltage tram tracks.
Raymond suffered horrific injuries after he accidentally touched a power line. As a result of the impact, he lost his nose, both eyes and an arm, but survived. He spent the rest of his long life - 74 years - withdrawing into himself, and went out for a walk only at night, but he reciprocated the friendly appeals of people to him.
killer in the attic
Legend:
This chilling story appeared many years ago. It tells about a family unaware that a dangerous intruder has settled in their house, secretly living in their attic for weeks. They lose or move things, suspicious objects appear in the garbage. They joke sweetly about the brownie until a cruel killer living near them kills them in their sleep.
The worst thing about this legend is that, it would seem, it is quite possible - and it really is.
Reality:
This story began in March 1922 on a German farm called Hinterkaifeck. The owner, Andreas Gruber, began to notice that things were periodically disappearing in the house, lying in the wrong places. His family heard footsteps in the house at night, and Andreas himself, on the eve of the tragedy, noticed other people's footprints in the snow, but after examining the house and territory, he did not find anyone.
At the end of March, the man who left these traces came down from the attic and brutally dealt with six inhabitants of the farm - the owner, his wife, their daughter, her two children 2 and 7 years old and their maid with the help of a hoe. Their bodies were found only 4 days later, and it turned out that at that time someone was looking after the livestock. The identity of the offender has not yet been established.
legends
night doctors
Legend:
Stories of night doctors in the past were often heard from slave owners who used them to intimidate their slaves so they wouldn't run away. The essence of the legend is that there were some doctors who operated at night, kidnapping black workers to use them in their terrible experiments.
Night doctors caught people on the streets and took them to their medical facilities to torture, kill, dismember and cut out their organs.
Reality:
This creepy story has a very real continuation. Throughout the 19th century, grave robbery was a big problem, and the African American population could not protect either their deceased relatives or themselves. In addition, medical students did perform operations on living members of the African American community.
In 1932, the Alabama State Health Service and Tuskegee University launched a program to study syphilis. As terrible as it sounds, 600 African-American men were taken to perform the experiment. Of these, 399 already had syphilis and 201 did not.
They were given free food and a guarantee to protect their grave after death, but the program lost funding, but the participants were not told about their terrible illness. Researchers sought to study the mechanisms of the disease and continued to monitor patients. They were told that they were being treated for a non-serious blood disease.
The patients did not know they had syphilis or that they needed penicillin to treat it. The scientists refused to give any information about the drugs or the condition of their patients.
This story, spiced up with slave owners riding horses in white clothes at night, has long instilled fear and awe of the legend in black people.
Alice murders
Legend:
This is a fairly young urban legend from Japan. It says that in the period from 1999 to 2005 in Japan there was a series of brutal murders. The bodies of the victims were mutilated, their limbs were torn off, and a distinctive feature of all the murders was that next to each corpse, the name "Alice" was written in the blood of the victim.
The police also found one playing card at each of the creepy crime scenes. The first victim was found in the forest, and parts of her body were strung on the branches of various trees. The second victim had his vocal cords torn out. The third victim, a teenage girl, had her skin severely burned, her mouth cut open, her eyes torn out, and a crown sewn to her head. The last victims of the killer were two little twins - they were given lethal injections while they slept.
Police allegedly arrested a man in 2005 who was found wearing a jacket from one of the victims, but they were unable to link him to any of the murders. The man claimed that the jacket had been given to him.
Reality:
In fact, there have never been such murders in Japan. However, shortly before the appearance of this legend, a maniac was operating in Spain, who was called the Card Killer. In 2003, the entire police force in Madrid was sent to capture the man responsible for 6 brutal murders and 3 assassinations. Each time he left a playing card on the body of the murdered. The authorities were at a loss - there was no connection between the victims or an obvious motive.
All that was known was that they were dealing with a psychopath who chose his victims at random. He would never have been caught if one day he himself had not come to the police with a confession. The card killer turned out to be Alfredo Galan Sotillo. During the trial, Alfredo changed his testimony several times, retracting his confession and claiming that the Nazis forced him to confess to the murders. Despite this, the killer was sentenced to 142 years in prison.
scary urban legends
The Legend of Cropsy
Legend:
Among the people of Staten Island, the legend of Corpsi has been around for decades. It tells the story of a crazed axe-wielding killer who escaped from an old hospital and hides in the tunnels beneath the abandoned Willbrook Public School. He comes out of hiding at night and preys on children: some say that he has a hook for a hand, and some that he wields an ax. The weapon does not matter to him, the result is important to him - to lure the child into the ruins of the old school and cut him to pieces.
Reality:
As it turned out, the crazy killer was quite real. Andre Rand was directly responsible for the kidnapping of two children. He worked as a janitor at this very school until it closed. There, children with disabilities were kept in terrible conditions: they were beaten, insulted, they had neither normal food nor clothes. The homeless Rand returned to the tunnels under the school to continue the atrocities that had previously reigned in this school.
Children began to go missing, and the body of 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger was found in the woods near Rand's camp. He was charged with her murder of Jennifer and another missing child. It has not been fully proven that these murders were his doing, but the police managed to prove that he was involved in the abductions of children. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The whereabouts of the other missing children have not yet been disclosed.
Babysitter and killer on the second floor
Legend:
The story of the babysitter and the killer hiding upstairs is undoubtedly an urban horror classic. According to this legend, a girl who works as a nanny for a wealthy family gets a creepy call. In almost all versions of the story, the caller asks the babysitter if she has checked on the children. The nanny calls the police, where it turns out that they are calling from the house where she is with the children. According to most versions, all three are found brutally murdered.
Reality:
The reason for the spread of this terrible story was the very real murder of 12-year-old girl Janet Christman, who looked after three-year-old Gregory Romak. In March 1950, when this brutal crime took place, there was a terrible thunderstorm in Columbia, Missouri. Janet had just put the child to bed when an unknown person entered the house and brutally raped and killed the girl.
The main suspects for a long time included a certain Robert Muller, who is also accused of another murder. Unfortunately, the evidence against Mueller was only circumstantial, but he was nevertheless accused of killing Janet. Some time later, he sued for wrongful detention, the charges were dropped, and he left town for good. After his departure, such crimes ceased.
Legends based on real events
rabbit man
Legend:
The story about the rabbit man appeared around the 70s of the last century and, like many urban legends, has several versions. The most common of these speaks of events that occurred in 1904, when the local psychiatric institution in Clifton, Virginia, closes and it becomes necessary to transfer patients to a new building. According to the classics of the genre, transport with patients gets into a serious accident, most of them die, and the survivors break free. They are all successfully brought back... except for one - Douglas Griffin, sent to a psychiatric hospital for killing his family on Easter Sunday.
Shortly after his escape, exhausted and mutilated carcasses of rabbits appear in the trees in the area. Some time later, the locals discover the body of Marcus Wallster hanging from the ceiling of an underpass under a railroad track in the same terrible state as the rabbits before it. The police tried to drive the madman into a corner, but he, while running away, was hit by a train. Now his restless ghost roams the area and still hangs the carcasses of rabbits on the trees.
Some even claim to have seen the rabbit-man in person, standing in the shadow of the underpass. The locals believe that whoever dares to enter the crossing on Halloween night will be found dead the next morning.
Reality:
Luckily, this creepy legend is just a legend, and there really was no crazy killer. There was no Douglas Griffin, no Marcus Wallster. However, in Fairfax County, there lived a man who was unhealthy obsessed with rabbits and terrorized the locals in the 70s of the last century.
He rushed at passers-by and pursued them with a small ax in his hands. Some claimed that he once threw a hatchet through the window of a passing car. One incident occurred in the house of one of the local residents. The madman took an ax with a long handle and began to chop down the porch of the unfortunate man's house. He escaped before the arrival of the police and no one still knows who he is and what motivated him.
Hook
Legend:
The legend of the Hook is perhaps the most common of all urban horror stories. It has several versions, each scarier than the previous one, and the most famous one is about a couple making love in a parked car. The radio is suddenly interrupted to tell the listeners the terrible news - a cruel killer has escaped, wielding a hook, and now he is hiding in the very park where the lovers are.
The girl, having heard the news, asks her beloved to leave from there as soon as possible. The guy is annoyed, but they are going, and he takes her home. When they arrive, they find a bloody hook hanging from the door handle on the passenger side.
Reality:
Whether the couple makes it home without incident, or the girl is horrified to hear her lover's fingers touch the roof of the car as his bloodied body hangs from a tree, the story didn't come about by accident. In the late 1940s, a small and peaceful town was rocked by a series of horrific murders. The culprit was dubbed the Moonlight Killer, but was never found.
At night, he killed young people in parked cars. Frightened residents were returning home long before the curfew announced by the authorities. The bloody crimes stopped as quickly as they started, and the Moon Slayer vanished into the night.
dog boy
Legend:
In the city of Quitman, Arkansas, the legend of the Dog Boy has long circulated. Locals claimed that it tells the story of an evil and very cruel little boy who loved to torture defenseless animals, and then completely switched to his parents. After the death of the boy, his ghost lived in the house where he killed his parents, in the form of a half-man, half-dog, instilling horror and fear in people. People often notice his outline in the room where he kept the animals he abused.
Witnesses describe him as a large furry creature resembling a dog with glowing cat eyes. Those who pass by his house notice that he is watching them closely from the window of the house, and some even claim that an incomprehensible creature on all fours was chasing them down the street.
Reality:
Once upon a time, an angry and cruel boy named Gerald Bettis lived in an old house at 65 Mulberry Street. His favorite pastime was catching neighbor's animals. He had a separate room where he brought the unfortunate. There he tortured them and brutally killed them. Over time, his cruelty began to manifest itself in relation to elderly parents. He was huge and overweight.
They say that it was he who killed his father, but no one has ever been able to prove that he provoked him to fall down the stairs. After his father's death, he continued to abuse his mother, keeping her locked up and starved to the sea. Law enforcement agencies intervened and they managed to save the unfortunate mother. Some time later, she testified against him for growing and using marijuana. He was sent to prison, where he died of an overdose.
Legends that turned out to be true
Black water
Legend:
This rather famous story begins with an ordinary family buying a new house. They are doing great until they turn on the faucet, which pours black, muddy, foul-smelling water. After checking the water tank, they discover a rotting body. It is not known when this legend was born, but a similar story really took place.
Reality:
Eliza Lam's body was found in a water tank at the Cecile Hotel in Los Angeles, California in 2013. Her death is still a mystery, and the killer has not been found. By the time the guests complained about the tainted water and her body was found, it had been decomposing in the tank for a week.
The creepiest legends
Bloody Mary
Legend:
According to an eerie folk belief about Bloody Mary, in order to invoke her evil spirit, one must light candles, turn off the lights, and whisper her name while gazing into a mirror. When she arrives, she can do a range of harmless things, as well as terrible things.
Reality:
According to psychologists, if you stare in the mirror for a long time, you can see how someone else is looking at you in response, so most likely the legend of Bloody Mary did not appear out of nowhere. The Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo calls this phenomenon "the illusion of an alien face."
According to Caputo, if you stare long and hard at your reflection in a mirror, your field of vision will begin to distort, and the outlines and boundaries will become blurred - your face will no longer look the same. The same illusion manifests itself when a person sees images and silhouettes in inanimate objects.
