It's late at night and you're driving down
a dark road when suddenly the car behind you flashes its brights at you. You look up at the rearview mirror and see
the vehicle flash them again, then get back to driving, slightly annoyed. Thirty seconds later the driver flashes them
again, and once more you look in your rearview mirror, annoyed. Finally, he does it a third time, another
fast series of flashes, and at last you pull over to the side of the road to let this impatient
driver pass. As he pulls up alongside your car though,
the driver rolls his passenger’s side window down and starts frantically yelling and pointing
at your car. “There's a man in your backseat!”, the
driver screams! Terrified, you whip around to look at your
backseat, but it's too late. You're now another victim of a knife-wielding,
car hijacking madman. The urban legend of the backseat murderer
is exactly that, an urban legend, but there's far more creepy urban legends that turned
out to be more fact than fiction. If you're in the mood to check your toilet
bowl before you sit on it, sleep with all the lights on at night, and hesitate before
you pull over for police officers who may be murderers in disguise, then stay tuned
and keep on watching. We warned you. Monsters In The Toilet Bowl It's a horror movie trope dating back to the
early 80s, some helpless victim wanders into the bathroom and plops down on the toilet
to do their business. Suddenly, they're attacked from below! A horrible monster claws at them, or a venomous
snake bites, or insects invade their most sensitive areas. The monster in the toilet bowl is probably
so terrifying because of how very vulnerable we feel when we're using the bathroom. This is us at our most vulnerable, our pants
around our ankles and our guard completely relaxed, the last thing anyone is hoping for-
or expecting- is any sort of confrontation. This is such a deeply ingrained vulnerability
in mammals that the reason your dog follows you to the bathroom is not because they don't
want to be left alone, but because they don't want you to be alone. Your faithful fido is actually guarding you,
as a packmate would in the wild, and making sure you're not attacked while helpless and
vulnerable. But the monster in the toilet bowl urban legend
is one based on truth, with plenty of examples of horrors discovered in toilets- often only
after they have struck. If you're fan of camping and using public
outdoor toilets, then count yourself lucky you haven't been attacked in your most vulnerable
of areas. These outdoor toilets are lousy with ants,
scorpions, centipedes and all matter of stinging, biting creepy crawleys. The smell of human waste is basically an invitation
to a feast for a lot of insects and animals, and the warmth of these holes in the ground
can also be appealing to reptiles seeking shelter. That's why snakes are all too often found
in porta potties and outdoor toilets. But maybe you think you're safe because your
toilet is indoors. Think again. In Florida- because of course it was Florida-
a man was bitten by a four foot python as he opened his toilet bowl. The four foot snake was curled up in the toilet
and lashed out the moment the man exposed it. Luckily for him, pythons aren't venomous,
and a python bite in the arm is painful but not lethal. Our next victim however was bitten by a large
python in exactly the place you fear the most. In Thailand, a man went into his bathroom
to relieve himself and promptly unzipped his pants, prepared himself, and lifted the toilet
seat. What greeted him was a jack-in-the-box from
hell, as a large python struck with lightning speed, sinking its fangs directly onto the
man's penis. The man struggled to free himself from the
snake's bite, and luckily he was able to pry the snake off. When emergency workers arrived they found
the bathroom covered in blood, and the man suffering from severe blood loss. He would live, but he'd probably never use
a toilet again. Snakes aren't the only thing to show up in
toilets though, so if you think you're safe because your area has no snakes, think again. In New York and other big cities, rats have
been frequently found swimming out of toilets, and some have even bitten individuals as they
sat to relieve themselves. The small rodents can hold their breath for
long amounts of time and have little problem navigating the extremely tight confines of
house plumbing, following it to your home all the way from the sewer. With their ferocious little teeth, rats can
cause a lot of damage in short time, and carry all matter of diseases. So next time you're going to use the toilet,
look twice before you sit, and open your toilet bowl lid at your own peril. Candyman Candyman's popularity exploded with the horror
film of the same name, which tells the story of the vengeful specter of a freed slave who
fell in love with a white woman and got her pregnant, only to be brutally murdered by
her father and his accomplices. Now given over to a dark and terrible rage,
Candyman will brutally attack anyone who is foolish enough to stare into a mirror in the
dark and repeat his name over and over again. Surely this is a myth, and being murdered
by someone coming through your bathroom mirror is pure legend. Think again. In 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy was home alone in
her projects apartment when she made a terrifying 911 call. Panicked, and in terror, McCoy told the dispatcher
that her life was in danger by men emerging from her bathroom cabinet. The 911 dispatcher believed this to be a dispute
with a neighbor and sent a police car, but given the low priority of the call, the car
attended to other business before responding. Then came more 911 calls from neighbors, saying
that they were hearing shouting and gunshots. Two police cruisers were immediately dispatched,
but when they arrived on the scene they found the front door to McCoy's apartment locked. With no answer to their knocks, the police
were hesitant to force their way in, fearing being sued if there was no disturbance. Thus, they left the scene. The next day however, a woman who regularly
had contact with Ms. McCoy called the police to let them know that she hadn't seen her
that day. Now with concern over her well being, the
police broke into her home only to discover McCoy shot to death and laying in a pool of
her own blood. Her apartment had been ransacked, and yet
there was no sign of forced entry. That's when police decided to check the bathroom,
and discovered the horrible truth a panicked McCoy had been trying to tell the 911 dispatcher. The bathroom cabinet had been knocked out
of place, revealing an area of pipes behind it which had been used by McCoy's attackers
to move in between apartments unseen. This was a design feature of the apartment
building meant to make it easier for maintenance workers to service the building's piping. Instead, it ended up being an avenue of attack
that got Ms. McCoy killed. In fact, the crawlspace behind the bathroom
cabinets of each apartment was widely used by gangbangers and thieves, who would utilize
them to break into people's homes or escape police. Sadly, Ms. McCoy, whom the thieves probably
didn't expect to be home, would end up a victim of the hidden but not-so-secret crawlspace. The real question for our viewers who live
in apartment buildings themselves is, how well do you know your building? The Leaping Lawyer There's an old cliché about lawyers and bankers,
finally at the end of their rope, leaping to their death from their high-rise offices. While these are two professions with high
instances of suicide, the leaping to one's death from a skyrise is extremely rare, and
more urban legend than truth. On a Toronto July day in 1993 though, the
urban legend would become true in a terrifying and truly tragic way. Garry Hoy was a senior partner with the law
firm of Holden, Day and Wilson. On the upward track, life was all peaches
and cream for the 39 year old lawyer- or it would have been if it wasn't for his propensity
for a particularly dumb practical joke of his. Garry was fond of scaring young law partners
and new employees, and his favorite way of doing this was to run full speed into one
of the high rise building's ceiling to floor glass windows. These massive panes of glass are designed
to withstand very high winds and strong impacts, and for the 99 times that Gary had pulled
this little prank off, the window had always held. Number 100 was the exception. As Gary ran full tilt into the window, the
window held. Not satisfied with the reaction of the crowd
of young articling students, Gary repeated his body check into the window. This time, the window gave. Falling from a height of 23 stories, Gary
had seconds to consider his very stupid practical joke before pancaking on the street below. Gary's accidental death became so infamous,
that it was an overnight urban legend, firmly rooted in a real event. Shows like Mythbusters and 1000 ways to die
all retold the story of Gary's tragic death, and he himself became the recipient of the
1996 Darwin Award. But how had a window that had withstood so
many impacts simply given way that day? Experts believe that on this attempt Gary
hit the window with a leading edge of his body first, concentrating the impact force
on a much smaller area than normal. This might have been with his wristwatch,
as hypothesized on 1000 ways to die, but it could have been with any part of his body
really. With so much impact concentrated on such a
small point, the glass would have much more easily shattered, sending Gary to his death
on the street below. Killer In The Backseat Now we turn back to our original urban legend
that we opened the show with. An unassuming motorist is driving down a dark
road when they're attacked by a killer hiding in the backseat. In some variations other motorists try to
warn the person by flashing their brights at them, each time flashing just as the killer
rises up to strike the killing blow. While that version of the urban legend is
definitely false, and the legend as a whole has been around since the explosion of 'car
culture' in America around the late 1950s, in at least one tragic incident, it was more
fact than fiction. In 2013 a young woman parked her van at a
gas station and went inside to pay for some items. While she was gone, a man snuck inside her
unlocked van and hid in the back rows. As she drove away from the station, the man
made himself known and forced the woman to drive to the back of an alley where he assaulted
her. After that, he made her drive him to an ATM
and forced her to withdraw cash before finally leaving her to flee into the night. When police reviewed the gas station's surveillance
cameras they found that the man had been trying car doors before running into the woman's
unlocked van and sliding inside. While police never found the attacker, they
warned that anytime you exit your vehicle you should always make sure you lock all of
your doors. Because next time that you park somewhere
and hop out for just a moment, it could be you with a criminal lurking in your backseat. Now check out Scary Urban Legends That Will
Keep You Up At night, or click this other video instead!
