The TERRIFYING TRUE story that inspired Candyman

today's story inspired a popular horror movie and when you get to the reveal in this story you'll understand why it is literal nightmare fuel but before we get into that story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload once a week so if that's of interest to you please sneak into the like buttons house and toast all of their bread and then leave also please subscribe to our Channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads okay let's get into today's story foreign [Music] day in early January of 1987 a very strange 52 year old woman named Ruthie Mae McCoy walked out of her 11th floor apartment in Chicago Illinois today was the day that Ruthie was going to be doing one of her self-appointed public duties Ruthie was quite tall and this particular day she had on two pairs of pants with a dress over them she also had her favorite long stick she was carrying and as Ruthie marched down the hallway she began jiggling each of her neighbors doorknobs to see if they were unlocked and then in between each doorknob check she would suddenly stop and wave her stick around like it was a sword and she was fighting off some unseen attacker and so after Ruthie had checked four doors in a row that were all locked she reached the fifth door and when she tried the doorknob it was unlocked and so without any hesitation Ruthie pushed the door open she stepped inside and began yelling hey look at me I'm in side of your apartment and the woman who lived in this fifth apartment was in her kitchen making dinner at the time and when she looked up and saw Ruthie barging into her apartment she wasn't scared she was just totally annoyed she rolled her eyes and then began yelling at Ruthie to get out now but as always Ruthie didn't listen and before long Ruthie had moved from the door frame into the apartment into the kitchen where she was waving her stick around wildly and berating this young woman for leaving her front door unlocked in this very dangerous apartment building the young woman yelled at Ruthie a few more times to try to get her to just leave but Ruthie didn't budge and So eventually this young woman picked up the phone and called 9-1-1 it would turn out the 15-story apartment building that Ruthie and this young woman and all of their neighbors lived in was indeed a very dangerous place to leave your front door unlocked in fact at the time time in the late 1980s this particular apartment building was considered to be one of the most dangerous places in all of Chicago with a murder occurring there nearly every week gangs basically ruled the building which was totally falling apart and totally decrepit and had these long dark hallways that thieves and Killers could hide in and so Ruthie wasn't wrong in trying to get her neighbors to keep their doors locked but her very Hands-On approach to delivering this message was never met with appreciation from the people who lived on her floor instead her neighbors viewed Ruthie as potentially more hazardous than anything Ruthie was trying to protect them from however in reality Ruthie was not a threat to her neighbors she was just totally mentally unstable and basically afraid of everything for example whenever Ruthie got mail she would just assume that it was terrible news and most likely about someone coming to take all of her money and when Ruthie was out in public which was quite rare she was so scared of strangers that whenever she passed them she would just yell out obscenities at them to keep them away and then also when Ruthie was in public she never ate because she was afraid strangers were going to literally run up and take her food so back inside of this fifth apartment that Ruthie has barged into Ruthie was busy berating this young woman about her unlocked door when the police did finally show up and they dragged Ruthie out of the apartment into the Hall the police by this point knew Ruthie really really well and they were not about to arrest her they knew she was harmless but just kind of out of her mind and so like they always did in this situation they told Ruthie to leave her neighbors alone and just go back into your apartment and mind your own business and Ruthie usually would mutter something under her breath about needing to increase the security in this building but she would eventually do as she was told and she would go back home and that was basically Ruthie's life in a nutshell constant fear and paranoia from living in this totally dangerous apartment building exacerbated tenfold by her very poor mental health but Ruthie was not content with her life she like virtually everybody else in this high-rise apartment building wanted to get out and live somewhere else and have a better life but Ruthie like virtually everybody else living in this high-rise apartment building did not have enough money and so she was trapped there but then in February of 1987 so one month after busting into that woman's apartment Ruthie got incredible news she had recently begun going to a day program for psychiatric care at a local hospital and the staff there had really taken a liking to her and they were going above and beyond trying to help Ruthie kind of get her life together be Beyond just her mental health and so one of the things they were doing with her was helping her apply for various government programs like disability payments and so that month in February Ruthie found out that the application they had sent off for her was approved and so Ruthie was entitled to disability payments which meant right away she would get a check for two thousand dollars and then every month going forward indefinitely she would get a payment it wouldn't be two thousand dollars but it would be a lot of money Ruthie was beside herself she could not believe her luck and she now knew that with this money she would finally be able to move out of that terrible apartment even before the money began coming into Ruthie she was already looking for a new place to live and as she did this all she could think about were her two beloved grandchildren a little boy and a little girl they were the only people in the world it seemed to Ruthie that really accepted her and just loved her unconditionally and so whenever Ruthie would go visit her grandkids the three of them would sit on the ground and just play together for hours and hours but to that point Ruthie's grandkids had not been allowed to visit Ruthie at her apartment because it was too dangerous but now that Ruthie was going to move in to someplace much much safer she knew that was going to change she was going to see her grandkids so much more often and this made Ruthie so happy and this newfound happiness inside of Ruthie really motivated her to start looking at other aspects of her life and see if she could improve them and so as Ruthie is doing this new apartment search she began taking classes to finally get her High School degree she began picking up these old art projects she had kind of blown off and also most importantly to the story she really began leaning into her religion something she had not been doing for a long time specifically she became and tuning in to these very animated preachers that she would find on TV and when she really liked one of them she would write them a letter and in this letter she would praise them for their sermons and how incredible they were and she would ask them to bless her with Miracles and these Miracles were often just centered on her health she wanted to look and feel young again and some of these TV preachers who were actually just running scams would write back to Ruthie and say of course we can bless you with your Miracles but first send us some money and so when Ruthie's disability payments began coming in even though she needed to save every penny to be able to afford moving out to start this beautiful new life with her grandkids she still found a way to set aside some of that money and sent it off to these TV preachers and soon these preachers were sending things back to Ruthie things like a blessed piece of wood for her to sleep on or bottles of water said to be from the holy River Jordan these spiritual items were often accompanied with a letter from these preachers telling Ruthie that in order for them to fulfill her Miracles request she would need to keep these spiritual items close to her and also send us some more money and so Ruthie did as she was told and after sending off all this money she would excitedly wait inside of her apartment for her miracles to come true and while she waited she began tacking up all these newspaper articles all over her apartment of these people who Miracles had happened to them that supposedly God had fixed their teeth or eradicated a tumor in their brain or cured them of cancer and in all of these stories the person who the miracle happened to would describe looking in the mirror one day and just looking different and that was the moment they knew that this miracle had occurred and so Ruthie believing this was bound to happen to her any day because she was working with these TV preachers began going to her bathroom mirror all the time and just looking at herself looking for some visible change in her appearance that would indicate one of her Miracles had come true but by April 22nd so roughly a month after finding out she was going to be receiving these payments and this was about two weeks before she was set to actually move out into her new place Ruthie had still not seen any sign in the mirror that she had changed and so she believed these Miracles had not happened yet but something else had begun happening when Ruthie was in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror and that was she would hear somewhere off in the distance the sound of someone talking to her it was almost like they were whispering to her but she couldn't quite tell what they were saying now Ruthie wanted to believe that these disembodied voices had something to do with her Miracles coming to fruition in but Ruthie was naturally a very paranoid and scared person and so she couldn't help but be a little bit scared of these voices and so that afternoon when Ruthie was on the bus headed back home after a doctor's appointment she told a friend on the bus about these strange Whispers she was hearing and Ruthie would also say that she felt like these Whispers meant that somebody was out to get her now Ruthie's friend knew Ruthie really well and this just wasn't unusual behavior for Ruthie Ruthie routinely thought people were out to get her and she talked about hearing voices before in the past and so this friend told Ruthie that you know you really should tell someone about this but deep down this friend was not that concerned this was kind of normal Ruthie behavior and this couldn't be a big deal however it would turn out to be a huge deal [Music] today's video is sponsored by nordvpn as many of you may have already heard our beloved swearto walrus.com is now officially off the internet there was no better way to let off steam after a long hard day than to sit down and see a stupid old walri face staring back at you on a zoom call and just letting the obscenities fly but don't worry me it all long but don't worry me an old lung found an alternative stress reliever that's just as good the website is beat up a leprechaun.com and as the name implies it allows you to finally lay the smackdown on those crafty little monsters all you gotta do is log into their website go to their leprechaun radar screen and the second you see one of those little weasels pop up nearby it's time to suck down some fight milk and go to work oh long and I quickly became addicted to this service taken down 1 2 10 50 a thousand ornery lepes in a given week but last night we ran into a serious issue we tried to log into the website but 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birthday and so as a result they are offering you all a special deal you can get a two-year plan at a massive discount Plus at least four months or up to one year of service for free when you go to nordvpn.com Mr Ballin and it's risk free with nord's 30-day money-back guarantee that's nordvpn.com Mr Ballin or click the link in the description below okay back to the story [Music] that night around 8 45 PM when Ruthie was back home at her apartment she called 9-1-1 and when the dispatcher answered her call Ruthie was in a total panic and she was talking about something to do with the cabinets and with her bathroom and how her neighbors wanted to use her bathroom and the dispatcher just did not understand and they tried to ask Ruthie some clarifying questions but Ruthie just could not put together a coherent sentence and so the dispatcher told Ruthie that they would send police over right away and then afterwards the dispatcher would put out to the officers in the area that hey Ruthie McCoy seems to be having some sort of argument with her neighbors over cabinets I don't really know but someone needs to go check it out and when the officers got that call they were not quick to respond they knew Ruthie they knew that this was likely nonsense but 15 minutes after Ruthie called 9-1-1 9-1-1 got another call from somebody else inside of Ruthie's apartment building and they were calling to report hearing loud noises coming from inside of Ruthie's apartment and so at this the police did act quickly they rushed over to the apartment building they went to the 11th floor they went to Ruthie's door and they began pounding on her door because it was logged but Ruthie didn't come to the door and it was totally silent inside of her apartment and so at some point the police called back to dispatch and asked them to call Ruthie on the phone she had just used 15 minutes earlier to call 9-1-1 and so these police officers are standing right outside of Ruthie's door and they're listening to the sound of Ruthie's phone ringing inside of her house but Ruthie didn't answer it and again the apartment stayed totally quiet and so the responding officers turned around and began walking down the hall and knocking on other people's doors and began asking them hey did you hear any loud sounds coming out of Ruthie's apartment and everybody said no and so the plea least eventually just kind of gave up and left despite not seeing Ruthie not talking to Ruthie not seeing what's going on inside of her apartment the next day when one of Ruthie's friends on her floor noticed that Ruthie had not come out of her apartment all day and when she knocked on the door Ruthie didn't answer this friend called the police the police came out again they knocked on Ruthie's door and after a while when she didn't answer the police again just left Ruthie's friend who had called the police was Furious that the police were not taking this seriously and so she wound up contacting maintenance of the building and a janitor went up to the 11th floor went to Ruthie's door drilled through the lock and pushed her door open the janitor immediately yelled out for Ruthie but there was no response and so he stepped inside and kind of looked around and right away he was struck by two things one it was a total mess inside of her apartment there were all these religious books and pamphlets all over the ground but as Messy as the apartment looked it also seemed weirdly empty like there was no TV there was really no furniture or anywhere to sit it was almost like this apartment had been half moved out and then whoever was moving it out had just kind of stopped the janitor started to get a really bad feeling about being inside of this apartment but he mustered the courage to walk a little farther into the apartment to look into the bedroom and when he turned the corner and looked into that bedroom he froze because there on the ground was Ruthie McCoy she was lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood she was dead the police were called they came out they walked around to her apartment and they concluded that this was kind of an open and shut case Ruthie must have opened her door for the wrong person who came inside and killed her remember this apartment building saw one murder nearly every week so this really was kind of routine and just a couple of days later the police would arrest a 19 year old living in this apartment building named Edward Turner because he was found to be in possession of Ruthie's TV Edward did not admit to doing anything but the police assumed that you know he must have tried to Rob Ruthie and in the course of this robbery perhaps Ruthie had tried to fight back at which point Edward had overpowered her and killed her but the police did suspect that there was at least one other person involved in Ruthie's murder so they did keep investigating and then in June so about a month and a half after Edward was arrested the police began hearing this very disturbing rumor about the building where Ruthie had lived at first the police completely dismissed it because it sounded totally made up but when it kept coming up over and over again whenever they interviewed anybody in this building about Ruthie's murder the police finally decided they had to at least look into it in order to confirm that it was not true however when the police looked into this rumor they would discover that it was true and it absolutely played a role in Ruthie's murder back on the night of April 22nd 1987 so the night that Ruthie called 9-1-1 in a panic saying something about her cabinets and her neighbors and her bathroom well what had really happened is Ruth was home around 8 45 when she heard this loud banging sound coming from her bathroom and then before she could go over and inspect the bathroom her bathroom door flung open and standing in the doorway was this dark tall figure who just suddenly took off running through her apartment out her front door out into the hallway Ruthie was so startled she had no idea what to make of it she knew that sometimes she saw things that weren't real and so she likely struggled to figure out did that really happen Am I Dreaming am I hallucinating what's going on and so with all these thoughts going through her head she called 9-1-1 to get help but she couldn't quite describe what had even happened and so that's why she began rambling about how her neighbors wanted to use her bathroom and the cabinets Were Somehow involved it was all very confusing and so the dispatcher obviously didn't understand what was going on but they told Ruthie okay I'll pass this along and the police will be out soon and so as Ruthie is waiting for the police to show up she wanders over to the bathroom where this dark figure has appeared and she walks inside and she looks at where her mirror had been above her sink the mirror that she had spent so many hours looking into hoping for signs of a miracle and the mirror was gone and in its place was this big dark hole on the wall almost like an entrance to a dark tunnel and as Ruthie is staring at this void she sees these two dark hands emerge from underneath that come out of the hole and grip onto her sink and then eyes pop up and a man's head pops up and then he uses his arms which are clutched onto the sink to pull himself up and out of the hole in her wall where he plopped down on the bathroom floor and then stood up and stared at Ruthie and then everything after that point would have happened really fast Ruthie likely began screaming at which point the first man the dark figure that had run out into the hallway and prompted Ruthie to call 9-1-1 he must have heard Ruthie screaming and so he came running back in through the front door into Ruthie's apartment with a jacket over his head and then at some point he or the other man who had come out of the hole in the wall yelled at Ruthie to get down on the ground maybe she didn't comply maybe she did but after that four gunshots rang out all four shots hit Ruthie however these four shots did not kill Ruthie right away and so Ruthie was very alive as these two men stole her TV they stole her rocking chair and some other thing things and Ruthie was almost certainly still alive when the police did finally show up and began knocking on her door and calling her phone but she was bleeding to death she couldn't move she couldn't make a sound but the police just abandoned her at which point she did die it would turn out that disturbing rumor that the police heard about this apartment building was that apparently people in this building had learned that you could pull off your mirror inside of your bathroom and literally climb into the walls and from that point you could basically Wonder all over this building and then punch other people's mirrors in their bathrooms in and then climb through that hole and do whatever you wanted to the people inside of that apartment and so when Ruthie began hearing those Whispers when she was in her bathroom looking at the mirror hoping for a miracle those were the sounds of Thieves and killers and criminals slinking about her wall detectives speculated that the two men who killed Ruthie likely found out about her disability payments and decided to rob her however the two men that police arrested the 19 year old Edward Turner who was found in possession of her TV and this other man who was also arrested were ultimately acquitted because there were so many people crawling through the walls all day and night inside of this building that there was no way to prove that those two were the ones who actually went in and killed Ruthie to this day no one else has ever been charged with Ruthie's murder what happened to Ruthie became the basis for the very popular horror movie called The Candyman starring Tony Todd so that's going to do it if you got something out of today's episode and you haven't done this already please sneak into the like buttons house 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Channel: MrBallen

Views: 4,361,152

Keywords: strange, dark, mysterious, true, story, scary, scary story, horror story, disturbing, narration, narrator, storyteller, storytime, storytelling, unsolved mystery, solved mystery, true crime, oof, nope, Candyman, true events, inspired by true events, true story, based on true events, based on true story, Chicago, bathroom, mirror, bathroom mirror, Tony Todd, terrifying, based on, movie, horror movie, horrifying, voices in walls, Cabrini-Green, apartment, nightmare, Candyman 1992, nightmare fuel

Id: W5ivmpG_J4c

Length: 26min 3sec (1563 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023