Top 5 Scary Halloween Online Legends

As the scariest day of the year arrives we take a look at the 5 scariest online hoaxes that circulate through email and social networking sites at this time of the year.

The Clown Statue

The classic killer clown statue story has been circulating the Internet for years and epitomises the classic American babysitter-horror genre. Plenty of variants exist of this spooky tale but the bulk of the story goes like this – girl goes around to the house of a couple to babysit their child – as the babysitter explores the house she comes across a life-size statue of a clown – later, upon talking to one of the parents over the phone she discovers they do not own a clown statue – babysitter comes to startling realisation that the clown statue was actually a real person – that person turns out to be a serial killer.

How the story goes from there largely depends on what version you read. Some state the girl made it out alive just in time. Darker and more gory versions have the girl gruesomely murdered. Different version attribute the story to attribute areas. Some variants state the story to be a work of fiction and others assert the tale really occurred. And of course many versions append the obligatory “pass this on to your friends” request or risk running the same fate as the babysitter.

So has a serial killer ever dressed up as a clown in real life in this manner and fooled an innocent babysitter that he was merely a statue? No – at least not as far as we can tell.

Read an example of this tale below.

So-and-so’s friend, a girl in her teens, is babysitting for a family in Newport Beach, Ca. The family is wealthy and has a very large house — you know the sort, with a ridiculous amount of rooms. Anyways, the parents are going out for a late dinner/movie. The father tells the babysitter that once the children are in bed she should go into this specific room (he doesn’t really want her wandering around the house) and watch TV there.

The parents take off and soon she gets the kids into bed and goes to the room to watch TV. She tries watching TV, but she is disturbed by a clown statue in the corner of the room. She tries to ignore it for as long as possible, but it starts freaking her out so much that she can’t handle it.
She resorts to calling the father and asks, “Hey, the kids are in bed, but is it okay if I switch rooms? This clown statue is really creeping me out.”
The father says seriously, “Get the kids, go next door and call 911.”
She asks, “What’s going on?”
He responds, “Just go next door and once you call the police, call me back.”
She gets the kids, goes next door, and calls the police. When the police are on the way, she calls the father back and asks, “So, really, what’s going on?”
He responds, “We don’t HAVE a clown statue.” He then further explains that the children have been complaining about a clown watching them as they sleep. He and his wife had just blown it off, assuming that they were having nightmares.
The police arrive and apprehend the “clown,” who turns out to be a midget. A midget clown! I guess he was some homeless person dressed as a clown, who somehow got into the house and had been living there for several weeks. He would come into the kids’ rooms at nights and watch them while they slept. As the house was so large, he was able to avoid detection, surviving off their food, etc. He had been in the TV room right before the babysitter right came in there. When she entered he didn’t have enough time to hide, so he just froze in place and pretended to be a statue.

Ghost Pics

Halloween is the perfect time to circulate some good, old fashioned ghost pictures to all of your friends, and what better way to spook your online contacts than to pass them a chilling ghost pic with an equally chilling story attached.

The Image on the right is one that has been passed from inbox to inbox for several years and the story most commonly attributed to it claims that the photographer, upon taking the photo of his friend, screamed, fainted and died when taking the photo and it was only when the photo was developed did they realise why. Of course the story also asserts that failing to pass the photo on results in the recipient being haunted by the same ghost!

The story reads…

The guy in the photo went to the Sundarbans with his friends and he asked 1 of his friends to take his picture in that very place. While his friend was taking the picture he screamed and fainted, 2 days later he died in the medical college. Doctors said he died because of heart attack.

Another fake photo (below) actually uses the same “ghost” but this time claims the spectre appears above an ancient Indian burial ground and that the ghost, just like the above example, apparently has nothing better to do than chase down people who don’t forward emails.

Of course these types of emails are directed at the young and naïve, and have had great success as they are always circulating prolifically during the run-up to Halloween every year.

Bloody Mary

No, we certainly don’t mean the drink. There isn’t a single American college student in the land that hasn’t heard about the classic Bloody Mary legend. Everyone knows that chanting Bloody Mary 3,5 or 7 times (depending on who tells the tale) in front of the mirror will invoke some special curse that brings about the nasty old woman who takes the life of the person who did the chanting, or someone close to them. The myth has even been featured in a movie and has been a solid Halloween legend for many years.

Even the movie Candyman was based off of this legend, as the aforementioned serial killer was also invited via some good ol’ mirror chanting.

The Bloody Mary story also has an interesting history, that predates the Internet by some time. Earlier variations of the legend claim that women would walk up a flight of stairs backwards holding nothing but a candle and a hand mirror. The legend states that they would see their future husbands face in the mirror whilst the neared the top of the stairs. However if they were destined to die before marriage they would see Bloody Mary or the Grim Reaper.

Most commonly these says girls are encouraged to go into darkened bathrooms and chant the name in the mirror as part of Truth or Dare games.

An example email reads –

Halloween Gang Initiations

One of the most popular rumours to circulate during October is the assertion that certain types of gangs are having “initiation weeks” and this involves, in part, the lure, kidnap and murder of young women.

The rumours claim that the group have been tasked with killing a certain number of women during the Halloween period. Some claim that the group is the “Bloods” or 900 Boys. The rumours also claim that the tricks used to capture women involve leaving car baby seats or young crying children at the side of the road to lure unsuspecting women drivers.

Other vaguer variants just warn women to be on the watch out for gang members or bikers. The rumours claim they are acting as a warning for women but are nothing more than alarmist nonsense designed to scare the reader, but this has not stopped them running rampant every Halloween. Many other variations quote specific locations where these gang killings are allegedly taking place. Some examples can be read below –

It is a pretty popular theme, the old mysterious backseat passenger trying to kill you, and god knows it’s been included in numerous horror films. The added feature of the car behind you actually trying to save you is a twist used in numerous variations of this type of email – one adapts the backseat passenger to an unknown person actually being unintentionally dragged behind the car driven by the victim. Also many variations don’t let the victim get home, rather swerve of the road and crash into a tree or stabbed by the backseat driver.

Moral of the story – if a car starts honking at you one night on an abandoned road, check the backseats.
An example of such a tale is below –

Have a happy Halloween!