Urban myths have been going around since,
well… forever. Many of the more modern ones like to speak
of all the dangers of modern technology, and the modern world in general. Stories will tell of how people can easily
find themselves maimed, murdered, or in other danger if they make the wrong choices in life,
or mess with the wrong technology too much. While many urban legends are nonsense or overly
embellished, there are some warnings out there that are true, and some stories that should
be heeded. In today’s article, we will go over 10 urban
legends that are at least mostly true, and highlight the sometimes banal dangers of our
modern world. 10. You Can Absolutely Lose Limbs In An Escalator,
Or Even Get Strangled To Death Some people like to laugh about and/or tease
people who are afraid of escalators, and most people consider it an entirely irrational
fear — something silly and not worth being so scared about. However, some people who are afraid of escalators
will tell urban legends of times that someone got stuck in an escalator, and got strangled
or lost their limbs before someone could press the emergency stop. Now, we want to be clear that escalators are
not moving death machines. They aren’t regularly killing people or
tearing their limbs off, but that doesn’t mean they are entirely safe, either. The danger is essentially some part of your
clothing (or hair) getting stuck in the escalator. More commonly, when someone does get injured
on an escalator, a shoe or pant leg gets trapped and someone loses a foot, but in a rarer case,
a man lost his life when his shirt got caught in the escalator and he strangled to death
before the emergency stop could be pushed. 9. Hanging Your Head Out A Car Or Train Window
Can Be Fatal (But Not By Decapitation) Many parents and other supervising adults
have warned over the years that hanging your head out of a car window (or train window,
if you’re especially stupid) can cause you to be decapitated and lose your life in an
instant. Some people think this is nonsense, and continue
to hang their hand, arm, or whole head out a window; in their minds, they’re just having
some fun and not letting the naysayers get them down. They figure that cars, buses and trains don’t
really go that close to things, and if they do, they can pull that part of their body
back in time. However, it doesn’t always work out like
that. While it doesn’t happen daily, people get
their heads smacked while hanging them out of moving windows relatively often, all things
considered, and it nearly always result in death if the speed was even remotely significant. Now, decapitation has not been reported in
any case (the head always stays attached to the body), but that doesn’t mean the person
doesn’t still die due to a head injury. 8. There Is An Even Sadder Reason Many Shelters
Don’t Allow Black Cats Adoptions Around Halloween Many people have heard for years that shelters
will not allow adoption of black cats around Halloween, and most people assume that the
reason for this is that shelters are afraid that people will harm them in some sort of
black magic ritual. However, that kind of thing is fortunately
very rare, and not actually the main reason shelters are reluctant to adopt black cats
out around the Halloween season. The problem is that people can sometimes be
kind of terribly thoughtless about other living creatures, and will adopt black cats to use
as part of a prop for a Halloween costume, and then return the cats later when the whole
thing is done and all their parties are over. This is an awful thing to do, as it stresses
the cat out, thinking it might be given a good home, and then quickly finds itself back
at the awful shelter. Worse yet, someone who just wants it as a
prop probably isn’t going to take very good care of it even for the few days they are
together. For this reason, many shelters simply suspend
adoption of black cats around Halloween, so you will have to find another way to complete
your witch costume. 7. Hackers Can Listen To Your Baby And Creep
On It With Your WiFi Enabled Baby Monitor Today, almost everything has technology of
some kind involved, and sometimes that extra technology isn’t necessarily a good thing. While baby monitors worked for years without
needing an internet connection, recently companies have started selling WiFi enabled baby monitors,
which you can track and control from your phone or laptop. Now, this may sound convenient, but it also
opens up your little one to hackers. Quite a few parents now have had scary situations
where they found that someone was talking to their baby through the monitor, and those
people were saying scary things and making scary noises to their child. Some may fear a more insidious hacking, or
specific stalking, but luckily these creeps don’t seem to be going after individuals
they know. Instead, they are finding baby monitors online,
and using the default password (as most people don’t think to change the password and secure
it). They are then having a bit of sociopathic
fun with your infant, enjoying the torture that they get to inflict and all the ensuing
pain and fear they can cause from a distance. If you want to avoid your little one thinking
they are being haunted by a demon, either secure your WiFi-enabled baby monitor with
your own, more detailed password, or better yet don’t buy a WiFi-enabled baby monitor
at all. 6. Brown Recluse Bites, If Not Properly Treated,
Can Sometimes Cause Necrosis Spider bites are something we all fear, and
brown recluse spiders typically tend to bring out that fear more than others. They are known for giving powerful bites that
can cause pain and suffering weeks later, and often heal very slowly. Some legends claim that a really bad bite,
especially if not properly treated, can lead to something called necrosis. This is a condition where the cell tissue
actually starts to blacken and die off. While many brown recluse bites don’t even
require medical treatment, you should probably get yours checked out to be on the safe side,
because if not properly treated, the legends are true. Not only can the tissue actually die through
necrosis, but you can also end up with hemolysis, where red blood cells start to die off, and
renal failure — which is more commonly known in layman’s terms as kidney failure — can
occur. Considering that there are about 10,000 spider
bites reported per year in the United States, and almost 2,000 of those on average are from
the Brown Recluse, it becomes quite a valid fear to watch out for these little monsters,
and get checked out if they ever manage to bite you. 5. Sometimes Serial Killers Pretend To Be Police;
Sometimes They Are Police When we want protection from serial killers,
murderers or other horrible people, we tend to think of the police as the people who keep
us protected and safe. However, the problem is that now and then,
a serial killer poses as a policeman, or actually is a policeman. Serial killers have been constantly studied
in order to try to figure out the phenomenon, and many saw being a police officer as an
ideal job. Murderers like David Berkowitz and Edmund
Kemper wanted to be cops, for example. Ted Bundy, one of the most famous serial killers
of all time, never did become a cop, but he posed as one on a fairly regular basis in
order to lure in and kidnap his victims. Joseph DeAngelo, the alleged Golden State
Killer, worked as a cop for decades, while acting in his capacity as a serial killer
in his time off. And the truth is that these are just a few
of many, many examples that would really need their own article to list. Now, we aren’t saying there are lots of
serial killers in the police, or that they pose as them all the time. After all, there are only a small number of
serial killers to begin with. However, it does hold a lot of attraction
to them, as it gives them intimate connections to law enforcement, and a lot of personal
power they can exercise, often without direct supervision. 4. Cockroaches And Spiders Sometimes Take Up
Residence In People’s Ears Most people have heard the legends that spiders,
and even cockroaches, will sometimes take up residence inside our bodies. Some people even believe in rumors that we
will eat several spiders in our lifetime, although most scientists say that is misleading. Regardless, many people don’t really believe
that insects like our bodies that much, and especially don’t believe in the stories
that they will live in some people’s ears; however, it is actually a relatively common
occurrence. Both spiders and cockroaches like warm, damp
places where they feel they can safely hide, and the ear of a sleeping person sometimes
fits that bill really nicely. Because we don’t regularly expel things
from our ears (unlike our noses), it makes a more secure, safe place to hide. While it isn’t an everyday occurrence, hospitals
are no stranger to removing bugs from ear canals. Now, this doesn’t mean it will happen to
you. Likely, if you have enough insects around
that the best place they can find to stay is your ear, you should probably start looking
for a really good exterminator. 3. Rabies Can Be Be Very Hard To Catch In Time,
Making It A Silent Killer Rabies only kills about 50 people per year,
so it isn’t particularly terrifying, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be scared
of it anyway — at least enough to take it seriously. The fact of the matter is that so few deaths
occur because we have a good vaccine and people tend to utilize an abundance of caution, but
sometimes they don’t, and it’s a fatal mistake. Rabies, sometimes compared to zombie viruses,
spreads almost entirely by bites, and from animal to human. It can make the person rage, act erratic,
and foam at the mouth, and can also cause paralysis. However, what makes it terrifying is that
it can be such a silent killer. Those who die usually don’t see symptoms
right away after an animal bite — such as from a cat, dog or bat — and thus think
they are fine and don’t get the rabies vaccine administered shortly after the bite. This is a huge mistake, because the vaccine
can get started right away, but rabies can incubate and not show symptoms for up to a
year. Usually by the time it starts showing the
symptoms, it is too late, and the person will develop hydrophobia (fear of water, even drinking
it), and will die of inflammation of the brain very shortly. Only one person survived the later stages
of rabies, by being put into an induced coma until the virus could be put under control. 2. A Woman Did Indeed Die Holding Her Pee For
A Wii There is a legend that a woman was doing a
radio contest in order to attempt to win a Nintendo Wii back when it was first out (and
you sometimes couldn’t even find it in the store) for her young children. This was in 2007, and the radio station had
a contest going where people drank a lot of water, and then saw who could hold their pee
the longest. The winner, of course, would get a brand new
Nintendo Wii. Unfortunately, the contest took a very dark
turn, as not only did this woman only barely win second place — which did not get her
the Wii — but she died shortly after from water intoxication. And, unfortunately, everything about the story
is true. Despite the on-air host talking about the
dangers of drinking too much water, and a listener calling in to tell them it was potentially
dangerous, they went ahead with the contest anyway. Because of this, the jury decided to award
the woman’s family $16 million in compensation. Ten of the radio station employees were fired,
and the station itself did not even appeal the verdict, as they felt the family had gone
through quite enough already. 1. An American Couple Adopts A Ukrainian Girl
Who Is Much Older Than They Thought This story out of Lafayette, Indiana is completely
bizarre, and it may be years, if ever, before we know the real truth. Even if much of the story is muddled or untrue,
the parts we do know are true are still far stranger than anything someone could make
up. Back at the beginning of the decade, an Indiana
couple adopted a young girl out of Ukraine — who was supposed to be eight years old
— to live with their family that included three boys. Things seemed to go well at first, until — as
the mother alleges — the new daughter was seen pouring cleaning chemicals into her coffee,
and told her point blank, in an adult manner, that she was going to kill the whole family. At this point, the couple took her to a hospital
and a mental health crisis center, as they were worried about the state of her mental
state. They claimed that they learned she had dwarfism,
and was a lot older than she was. They took her to one hospital, which claimed
that while she was older than initially thought, she was still a tween. However, the couple managed to have her legal
age changed to about 30, with the approval of a judge who clearly believed that she was
an adult with dwarfism. However, the authorities also found later
that they left her in the United States while the rest of the family left for Canada, and
they continued to pay only for her rent. Some people felt the parents were running
away from her, and some accounts suggest that even if she was a lot older than suggested,
she was still a minor when they left, which would make it child abandonment. The parents are being charged with a crime
over the whole debacle, but contend that they were still trying to help her from a distance,
and believed her to be a legal adult when they left for Canada. They also insist they were not running away. It may be a long time, if ever, before court
discovery shows us the full truth.
