Top 5 spookiest Internet tales for Halloween

The Internet has become the perfect way of modernising the traditional spooky legend, and many of these tales have made the journey from campfire to cyberspace. We list our 5 favourites.

Aren’t You Glad You Didn’t Turn on the Lights?

When it comes to spooky tales told across campuses everywhere, this decades old tale is one of the most prolific, and the Internet has only fuelled the number of versions this legend has taken, and has throughout the years been attributed to hundreds – if not thousands – of colleges and universities.

The basic premise is this – two female dorm mates share a single room – one goes to a party while the other stays at home, usually revising for an upcoming exam. The partying student returns to the dorm room in the early hours of the morning, drunk and contemplates turning on the light, but instead opts to go to bed without risking awakening her (presumably) sleeping roommate.

The partying student awakens the next morning to discover the grisly murder scene of her roommate, and with the sentence Aren’t You Glad You Didn’t Turn on the Lights? scrawled across the walls in the deceased’s blood.

Many versions of the tale have spread over the years, and one such example is below –

She commandeered the room in the basement of her dorm as soon as she realized she would have to pull an all-nighter in order to prepare for tomorrow’s final exam. Her roommate, Jenna, liked to get to bed early, so she packed up everything she thought she would need and went downstairs to study . . . and study . . . and study some more.
It was two o’clock, when she realized that she’d left one of the textbooks upstairs on her bed. With a dramatic sigh, she rose, and climbed the stairs slowly to her third-floor dorm room.
The lights were dim in the long hallway, and the old boards creaked under her weary tread. She reached her room and turned the handle as softly as she could, pushing the door open just enough to slip inside, so that the hall lights wouldn’t wake her roommate.
The room was filled with a strange, metallic smell. She frowned a bit, her arms breaking out into chills. There was a strange feeling of malice in the room, as if a malevolent gaze were fixed upon her. It was a mind trick; the all-nighter was catching up with her.
She could hear Jenna breathing on the far side of the room—a heavy sound, almost as if she had been running. Jenna must have picked up a cold during the last tense week before finals.
She crept along the wall until she reached her bed, groping among the covers for the stray history textbook. In the silence, she could hear a steady drip-drip-drip sound. She sighed silently. Facilities would have to come to fix the sink in the bathroom…again.
Her fingers closed on the textbook. She picked it up softly and withdrew from the room as silently as she could.
Relieved to be out of the room, she hurried back downstairs, collapsed into an overstuffed chair and studied until six o’clock. She finally decided that enough was enough. If she slipped upstairs now, she could get a couple hours’ sleep before her nine o’clock exam.
The first of the sun’s rays were beaming through the windows as she slowly slid the door open, hoping not to awaken Jenna. Her nose was met by an earthy, metallic smell a second before her eyes registered the scene in her dorm room. Jenna was spread-eagled on top of her bed against the far wall, her throat cut from ear to ear and her nightdress stained with blood. Two drops of blood fell from the saturated blanket with a drip-drip noise that sounded like a leaky faucet.
Scream after scream poured from her mouth, but she couldn’t stop herself any more than she could cease wringing her hands. All along the hallway, doors slammed and footsteps came running down the passage.
Within moments other students had gathered in her doorway, and one of her friends gripped her arm with a shaking hand and pointed a trembling finger toward the wall. Her eyes widened in shock at what she saw. Then she fainted into her friend’s arms.
On the wall above her bed, written in her roommate’s blood, were the words: “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”

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The Clown Statue

The story goes like this – a babysitter checks upon her charges, only to discover an unnerving clown statue in the children’s bedroom. She returns downstairs and receives a call from the parents checking on how things are going. The babysitter complains about the statue, asserting that it was unsettling the children, and requests permission to cover it up. To her horror, the parents instruct the babysitter to take the children and exit the house. Why? Because they don’t have a clown statue.

As it transpires, the clown is a deranged killer from the “local mental asylum”.

This spooky tale has taken on many different incarnations over the years, preceding the Internet. The fate of the babysitter the children differs depending on what permutation you stumble across, as do various details in the story. The only thing all these different versions have in common, however, is that they’re all false. The story is a work of fiction.

Here is one popular example –
(we go into this urban legend in more detail here.)

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.

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