Top 10 Scariest Urban Legends

A well-to-do New York family returns from their Florida vacation with pet baby alligators. But when the reptiles grow too big, the family flushes them down the toilet. Those gators survive and thrive in the sewers underneath the city by eating rats and refuse, becoming aggressive, huge and in some cases, mutated. Spotted by sewer workers, the gators are then hunted by police – but never captured.

A lone traveler stops for a drink, when he’s approached by a beautiful woman. The next thing he knows: he’s groggily waking up in a bathtub full of ice, with an incision in his abdomen and a note instructing him to call 9-11 immediately. When doctors examine him, they discover his kidney is missing – the work of organ thieves out to make a quick buck on the black market.

As you drive along a dark and deserted road, you notice a car traveling toward you with its headlights off. You signal to the driver by flashing your headlights, but that’s what he’s waiting for: he’s being initiated into a gang, and must do a U-ie to hunt you down, assault, rape or kill you – all because you flashed your high-beams.

A couple parked at Lover’s Lane hears a radio announcement about a murderer with a hook for a hand who’s on the loose in their town. The girl demands to go home, and the boy reluctantly drives her; but as soon as she exits the car, she begins screaming. Confused, the boy crosses over to the passenger side, where he finds a bloody hook dangling from the handle.

Two freshmen girls are dorm-mates and classmates: one’s bookish, the other’s a party-animal. The night before midterms, the partier goes to a kegger, while the studier stays home to cram. Returning past midnight, the partygoer slips quietly into bed without waking her friend. However, in the morning, she awakes to find her murdered, with the message “aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?” scrawled in blood across the wall.

Home alone; a young girl goes to bed with her dog sleeping below her. For reassurance, she drops her hand to him, he licks it and she nods off. Later, she awakes hears to a dripping noise, but stays in bed, where her trusty pooch licks her hand and she drifts off. In the morning, she finds her dog slain in the bathroom, dripping blood. Beside him, a note: “Humans can lick, too.”

With sleeping kids upstairs, a babysitter watches TV. The phone rings: “Have you checked the children?” a voice asks. Immediately, she phones police, who agree to trace the call. Ring-ring: “why haven’t you checked the children?” Panicked, she slams the phone down, when it rings again – it’s the cops: “the call is coming from inside the house.” She escapes as police arrive, discovering the caller upstairs, covered in the slain children’s blood.

Driving home alone late at night, a woman stops for gas. The gas station attendant tells her there’s a problem with her credit card, and that she’ll have to come inside. That’s when he tells her there’s a man with a knife in the backseat of her car. Stories vary as to whether or not she believes him; but if she doesn’t, her fate is sealed.

A man picks up a hitchhiker on the side of a deserted road, and offers to drive her home. But sometime before they arrive, the hitchhiker mysteriously disappears from the moving car. Confused, the driver knocks on the door of the address she’d given him. The woman who answers explains the girl had been killed in a car accident five-years earlier, in the exact spot he’d picked her up.

In a room lit only by a candle, stare at a mirror and chant “Bloody Mary” thrice and you may end up face-to-face with her spirit. What happens next varies: she could haunt you, kill you, or pull you into the mirror alongside her. Why was Bloody Mary so tortured? Was it a lost child or a horrible disfigurement? Either way, hers is a remarkably enduring urban legend.

Do you agree with our list? Which urban legend keeps you up at night? For more top 10s about your favorite mysteries, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.