101999
Simply known as 1999, this story is one of the most realistic and chilling urban legends on the Internet. The tale follows the journey of a Canadian blogger named Elliot as he tracks down the meaning of a mysterious TV channel that he watched in the year 1999. He remembered it being extremely sketchy and, in hindsight, he realized that it was most likely run by a local predator. As he continued to investigate, he learned that the man running the channel was attempting to lure children into his house for sacrificial purposes. To top it all off, Elliot also realized that the crazed man was torturing and killing children while wearing a bear costume and calling himself “Mr. Bear.” There were only a couple of “shows” that aired on this mysterious channel, most likely because it was only operational from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM. The first show was called Booby and featured characters that were live-action hands on top of a table, which was obviously very low budget. The show starred a hand named Booby that would find itself in a different situation every episode. However, the episodes got progressively weirder. In fact, during an episode entitled “Playing with Scissors,” Booby appeared to be holding a pair of scissors while another, smaller hand was jerking violently in the background, as if it were being forcefully held in the air. Booby then proceeded to repeatedly stab the smaller hand with the scissors while a muffled child’s scream could be heard. The scissors eventually got to the bone and made a horrific crunching sound. That was the last time Elliot ever watched an episode of Booby. Next up on the psychotic schedule was Mr. Bear’s Cellar, which featured the mentally unstable man dressed up as Mr. Bear. What actually went on during the Mr. Bear episodes are too gory to describe here, so you’d have to read the rest of it for yourself. Eventually, the police intervened and shut down the sadistic TV channel for good.
9Candle Cove
This story starts off with a forum thread that talks about an old children’s show from the ’70s, which was about a little girl who imagined herself to be friends with pirates. The show had some controversy because, during one particular episode, it showed every character screaming for the whole duration of the episode. All they did was literally stand in one place and scream, while the little girl moaned and cried like she had been going through hours of this. As memories of the show were shared back and forth between the commenters on the thread, it became clear that beneath the show’s “cute” and low-budget appearance, there was something dark and disturbing. By the end of the comments section, it was implied that the show was much more sinister than a half-remembered childhood memory. One particular memory that really stood out was the main villain of the show, a skeletal character called the “Skin-Taker.” Apparently, his mouth slid back and forth instead of opening and closing. A commenter even recalled that when the little girl asked him about his mouth, the Skin-Taker ignored her, looked directly at the camera, and responded, “To grind your skin.” As it turns out, one of the commenters got curious about the legitimacy of the show, so he asked his mother if she remembered a ’70s kid’s show called Candle Cove. She was genuinely surprised that he remembered it. Apparently, he would ask her for permission to watch it, and then proceed to tune the television to static to watch dead air for 30 minutes.
8The Rake
In 2003, in the northeast United States, there was an incident involving a strange, human-like creature which attracted a lot of attention from local media. After the story initially broke, most online and written documents were mysteriously destroyed. Although these accounts were gone, sightings of the creature continued to become even more frequent. What’s odd is that many people reacted differently to the creature. In fact, the emotions experienced ranged from traumatic levels of fright to an almost childlike sense of curiosity. The sightings continued, and so the hunt for more information began. Finally, in 2006, a collaboration of various researchers made a chilling discovery. They had unearthed nearly two dozen documents dating from the 12th century to the present day, all of them describing various sightings of a creature called “the Rake.” The sighting that stood out the most was a woman’s account that dated from the same year of the discovery. A synopsis is provided below: A woman awoke in the middle of the night and accidentally ended up waking her husband as well. She apologized and her husband turned around to look at her. He gasped and immediately grabbed his wife, fearing for her safety. At the foot of their bed, sitting and facing away from them, was the infamous creature which was described as looking like a big, hairless dog. While the couple’s eyes were still adjusting to the dark, the creature sprang up and crouched less than a foot from the husband’s face. It stared at him for a while, then made a dash for their children’s bedrooms. The terrified couple immediately ran after it, fearing the worst for their children, but they were too late. They ran straight to their daughter’s room, only to find her mutilated and close to death. As their daughter was dying, her final words were, “He is the Rake.” Then, as mysteriously as it had appeared, the Rake disappeared, never to be seen again.
7Where Bad Kids Go
This creepypasta describes a photographer who decided to find out more about an old children’s show that he used to watch as a child in wartime Lebanon. From what he remembers, the half-hour show relied on very graphic imagery and scare tactics to keep kids from misbehaving. He believes that the show was an attempt by the media to keep children in check, as the moral of every episode revolved around some strict ideology, such as “bad kids stay up late” and “bad kids steal food from the fridge at night.” However, the one thing that the photographer remembered the most was the closing scene of every episode. It was the same every time—the camera would slowly zoom in towards an old, rusted iron door, and as it got closer, screams could be heard. The closer the camera got to the door, the louder and clearer the screams would get. When the screaming couldn’t get any worse, an Arabic text reading “That’s where bad kids go” would pop up, thus signifying the end of the episode. Fast-forwarding to the present, somehow the photographer managed to track down the studio where the old show was filmed. Although the place looked like it had been abandoned for a long time, the infamous rusted door from his childhood was still there. He then discovered that beyond the door lay a small room which was covered with traces of blood, feces, and bones. What scared him the most though was a caged microphone which hung from the middle of the room.
6The Keyhole
This legend involves a man who checked into a hotel for a few nights. After he obtained his room key, the woman at the front desk warned him that there was a door with no number on the way to his room. She explained that the locked room was used for storage, and she also warned him not to go into the room, or even look inside. The man, although intrigued, went straight to his room without asking any more questions. But by the second night, his curiosity had got the better of him. He tried turning the door knob, but found it to be locked, just as the woman had claimed. Not to be deterred so easily, the man proceeded to peep through the keyhole. Beyond the door was what looked like a normal hotel room, exactly like his own. However, in the corner stood a very pale woman with her head resting against the wall opposite the door. Confused, the man returned to his room. On the third day, the man decided to look through the keyhole once more. This time, all he saw was the color red—nothing else, just a constant, deep shade of red. Maybe the woman had suspected that someone was spying on her and had blocked it with something. The man decided that he would ask the woman at the front desk. She sighed and asked if the man had looked through the keyhole. After he confirmed that he had, the woman proceeded to tell him the whole story. Many years ago, she said, a man had murdered his wife in that very room, and her ghost now haunts it. Her ghost is said to be very pale, except for her eyes, which are bloodshot red.
5The Angel Statue
This story begins with a couple who decided that they wanted to go out for the night, so they called up their usual babysitter to take care of the kids. When the babysitter arrived, the children were already asleep, so she decided that she would pass the time by watching some TV. However, the only TV in the house that had cable was situated inside the parents’ bedroom, so she called them to see if it was cool with them. The parents agreed, but then the babysitter asked if she could cover up the angel statue which was situated in the room, as it made her feel nervous. Upon hearing this, the father hesitated, then instructed her to immediately get the kids out of the house and call the police, because they did not own an angel statue. When the police arrived, the babysitter and children were found lifeless in a pool of blood, and the statue had disappeared.
4The Grifter
“The Grifter” is a horrific Internet urban legend which was first posted in 2009. It’s about a video clip which apparently is so disturbing that it traumatizes everyone who watches it. Apparently, the video clip featured scenes of dying children, excruciating screams, and close-ups of exorcisms and corpses. Although something like the Grifter would indeed be horrifying to watch, thankfully it’s entirely a work of fiction. The person who started the legend admitted in 2009 that the so-called “screenshots” of the video were actually taken from the movie Little Otik. Although most people now know that it’s a hoax, it’s still a terrifying story to tell around a campfire. Some have even gone the extra mile and recreated the video themselves in order to try and pass it off as the real thing.
3SCP Foundation
The “Secure, Contain, and Protect Foundation” (aka SCP Foundation) is a fictional organization with a murky past which first appeared back in 2007. The SCP Foundation has numerous doctors, researchers, and agents aiming to understand and catalog abnormal creatures and objects, which are known simply as “SCPs.” The foundation strives to prevent the SCPs from getting into the hands of others and into the outside world. In order to research these creatures, the foundation performs experiments on death row inmates. SCP-173 was the creature that started it all. It’s described as a statue-like creature with a bloody face and short limbs. It has also been recorded that this creature cannot move in direct eyesight, but once eye contact is broken, it will immediately kill its victim by breaking their neck, and thus it has to be constantly observed. Another example is SCP-682, which is said to be an indestructible, highly adaptive, reptilian creature. It’s one of the most popular creatures on the SCP wiki.
2Jeff The Killer
Jeff was a little boy who moved to a new home. The day he moved in, he was invited to a neighbor’s birthday party, so he decided to take his brother Liu along with him. When Jeff and his brother were waiting at a bus stop, three teenagers attacked them. Jeff successfully defeated his attackers and left them on the street with broken wrists and knife wounds. After this ordeal, Jeff soon realized that he actually enjoyed inflicting pain on others. It was always a feeling he had had inside him, but it only seemed to get stronger when he was provoked or angered. On a night soon after that, Jeff’s mother was awakened by someone crying in the bathroom. When she entered the room, she found Jeff carving a permanent smile into his cheeks. He had also managed to cut out his eyelids, so that he could never sleep. Seeing that her son had gone insane, his mother ran from the room to wake up her husband. She stopped cold when she saw Jeff standing in the doorway, a knife clutched in his hand. “Mummy, you lied,” was the last thing they ever heard. With his parents now dead, all that remained was his brother. Liu had woken up when he heard muffled sounds from his parents’ bedroom. When he didn’t hear anything else, he tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. Before he could do anything, a hand clamped down over his mouth and he felt a warm blade plunge into his stomach. Liu tried to escape his brother’s grip, but it was already too late. “Shhhhhhh,” Jeff said. “Just go to sleep.” Jeff was never seen again, but legend has it that Jeff is still out there, waiting.
1Normal Porn For Normal People
This urban legend starts off with a standard chain letter urging recipients to visit the website “normalpornfornormalpeople.com”, because it was for the “good of mankind.” Naturally, having such an intriguing URL, many decided to check it out. As it turned out, it was a fairly basic web site with a wall of text on the main page. The only thing that stuck out was the site’s tagline: “Normal Porn for Normal People, A Website Dedicated To The Eradication of Abnormal Sexuality.” Apart from that, nothing was of particular interest. Once people visited the site, most would leave after seeing that it was just a bunch of words. However, those who stuck around found out that a lot of the words in the boring text were actually download links to various distressing videos. The shocked people would then gather around on forums and share their experiences, as well as the videos themselves. One of tamest videos was called “peanut.avi,” which showed a man, a woman, and a dog in a kitchen. The woman would prepare a peanut butter sandwich, which the man would then give it to the dog. This happened for a whole half hour. The videos then quickly took a turn for the worse, with the most bizarre being “jimbo.avi.” Here, an obese mime is seen performing for five minutes. It was somewhat funny, typical mime stuff, but in the last 30 seconds, the man is seen sobbing quietly with his mime outfit and makeup still on. “Stumps.avi” is a five-minute video of a man with no legs attempting to break dance in a kitchen similar to that shown in “peanut.avi,” but much dirtier. The man collapses in exhaustion, and begs someone off-screen to let him rest. The off-screen person becomes enraged and yells at the man to keep dancing, which he does. As the video ends abruptly, the off-screen person can be heard screaming. The video “privacy.avi” starts with a woman masturbating on a mattress while the man with no legs from “stumps.avi” walks around on his hands wearing some kind of goblin mask. What’s unusual about this video is that the door is open, while in the rest it’s closed. This is significant because, near the very end of the video, an animal can be seen quickly running through the hallway. Finally, “useless.avi” is 18 minutes of pure terror. A blonde woman is tied down and her mouth is taped shut. After the seven-minute mark, a man in a suit opens the door, but doesn’t enter. Instead, the animal that was briefly seen in “privacy.avi” enters. It is revealed to be an abused chimpanzee, with its hair shaved and painted red. The man closes the door behind him, leaving the bound woman alone with the animal. The starved chimpanzee sniffs the air, notices the woman, and immediately begins to maul her alive. The assault goes on for an excruciating seven minutes, until her eventual demise. The video ends with the chimpanzee feasting on the corpse. I’ve been a long time reader of Listverse, and now I’ve decided to take the plunge and start writing my own lists. You can send your comments and suggestions to my email.
