3 Halloween legends that actually are true

(Post updated July 2016.)

The annual festival of witches, ghouls and ghosts is nearly upon us yet again, and this means the Internet will be full to the brim with the usual collection of macabre hoaxes, urban legends and alarmist scarelore that will all make their inevitable appearance at this time of the year.

And while we may specialise in these types of untruths, for this post we take an unusual detour, and put to you 3 Halloween ‘urban legends’ that actually did happen.

Suicide “Decorations”.

A long running legend is the tale of a woman who hung herself from a tree on the night before Halloween, only to be mistaken by several passers-by as a morbidly realistic decoration.

While many have doubted the tale, dismissing it as a mere seasonal urban legend, the story really did happen back in 2005 in Delaware. According to news reports, a 42 year old woman hung herself from a tree, and despite being clearly visible by passing vehicles, the body went unreported for hours with many dismissing her corpse as a gruesome decoration, until the police were eventually notified.

But this isn’t a one-time event. In fact, the decomposing bodies of slain victims are mistaken for Halloween decorations far more often that you may have thought. Take for example the 75 year old man who shot himself in the eye in an apparent suicide, who lay slumped over his balcony chair for days despite being clearly visible to neighbours in his apartment complex.

Or the 31 year old woman in 2015 who was found entangled in a chain link fence hours after being murdered, despite many people passing right by her taking their children to school.

So next time you see a really realistic Halloween decoration, it may be worth checking.

You know, just in case.

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Corpse under the bed

If you get a feeling you’re not alone in your motel bedroom, you may be on to something. Or rather, led on top of someone.

The legend of someone smelling a strange smell after checking into a motel room only to discover a dead body hidden under or inside the bed mattress is another tale that has actually happened, and more than once.

Perhaps one of the more perturbing instances of this popular tale occurred back in 2003, in Kansas City, where a man spend a shocking 3 nights atop a decomposing body. Despite his constant complaints about a rotting smell, the staff at the motel asserted they could not do anything about it, only to discover a dead body underneath the mattress upon cleaning the apartment after the man checked out.

But this isn’t the only – or the first – instance of bodies found under beds and mattresses. More recently in 2016, take the case of the Thai transgender woman who was stuffed underneath a mattress for 3 to 4 days before being discovered by room cleaners, but not before a couple checked in, led on the bed and subsequently complained about the smell.

In fact the last handful of decades is littered with similar cases, many of which also involved motel guests spending entire nights atop hidden corpses, corpses that were only discovered upon the complaint about the smell of decomposition.

So maybe it is worth checking underneath the bed, after all.

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Buried before your time

When it comes to terrifying ways to leave this Earth, you may struggle to think of many that top being buried alive. Legends often recount the tales of unlucky souls, buried before their earthly time was up, only for their coffins to be subsequently exhumed and scratch marks found on the inside of the coffin lid.

But has this sort of thing ever really happened?

Yes, and again we’re not just talking about isolated incidents here.

Burying people prematurely was more popular than you’d think many hundreds of years ago before modern advances in medicine. In fact it was a regular occurrence to pronounce someone dead when they were still alive.

Back in 1905, Englishman William Tebb collected and counted accounts of premature burial. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissection and 2 cases of awakening while being embalmed.

The fear of being buried alive was so real in the 19 century that it led to the invention of safety coffins, which were brought by the rich in case a similar fate ever befell them. Such coffins were fitted with devices like bells that would alert people to the fact you’re, well, still alive.

With that said, it hasn’t happened in modern times, with the latest unconfirmed reports dating back to the very early 20th century. (Though a recent case did involve a Venuzuelan man waking up during an autopsy.)

But of course, if it has happened more recently, how would anyone know?

That’s all. If you want to hear more spooky tales, take a read of our top 5 scary Halloween urban legends here.