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The Creepiest Urban Legends From Each of the 50 States (Part 1)

Published

1 year ago

February 28, 2025

I love a good urban legend.

No seriously. I love a good urban legend so much that I actually love the movie Urban Legend despite its wonderfully apparent flaws. They are the folklore of the 20th century and beyond and I have been studying them since I knew what they were. I love the universality of the themes and the way that they evolve regionally.

That’s why they work. That’s why people still sit around campfires and tell stories of a man with a hook for a hand or a babysitter trapped inside a house with a cold-blooded killer. That’s why I decided to write this spooky little travelogue covering a terrifying urban legend from each of the 50 states.

Alabama: Hell’s Gate Bridge

In Oxford Alabama stands the Hell’s Gate Bridge where, according to legend, long ago a young couple lost their lives when their car went off the side. As the story goes, if you drive onto the bridge and stop, one of them will sneak into your car and leave a wet stain on the seat. Furthermore, it’s said if you look through your back glass while parked on the bridge, you’ll see the fiery gates of Hell behind you.

Sadly, the bridge is in such disrepair today that cars are no longer allowed to drive onto it for fear of collapse, but that doesn’t stop the stories which remain a part of local lore and legend to this day.

Alaska: The Alaska Triangle

Lots of people know about the Bermuda Triangle but did you know that in Alaska, there is a similar area where an estimated 20,000 people and no few airplanes have gone missing?

The points of this particular triangle are made up of Juneau, Anchorage, and Barrow, and no one knows why people and planes seem to vanish in this area.

According to the Tlingit, an indigenous tribe, the disappearances are the work of evil spirits. The Inuit people point to the keelut, a dark spirit that resembles a hairless dog with the ability to disappear thus rendering its prey unable to see its approach. Still, some believe that it is the work of extraterrestrials and more than one plane has spotted UFOs in the area including a Japanese plane in 1986 which was reportedly followed by three unidentified aircraft for more than 400 miles through the triangle. One of them was reportedly twice the size of an aircraft carrier.

No matter the cause, no trace has ever been left behind after a disappearance and locals are extremely careful when traveling through the area.

Arizona: The Lost Patrolman

Like any good legend, the origins of the Lost Patrolman are…hazy. In all my research, I was able to narrow down two possibilities for this creepy figure’s story that stand out and show up most frequently.

The first hails from an incident involving General Crook of the U.S. Cavalry which had been involved–let’s be real they initiated–in a series of conflicts with the Indigenous Apache of the area. Crook remarked in his journal that “A patrol of ten returned with only two, with misfortune no small part of their reports. One man was hung for his crimes.” It was abrupt at best and purposefully vague.

Ryan Bohl of Medium, however, reports that in a letter that followed the incident, a private stationed under Crook had this to say:

“Ten men led by Corporal Johnstone endured a horror that has me absconding from any patrol I can. Of the ten men, one, a trooper with a clean shooting eye and a reputation for sober living, was hung upon returning home with a barely-alive Buffalo Soldier. The court martial was held before the officers alone but rumor had it that the sharpshooter had overseen the ruin of the patrol and had consumed the flesh of his companions, leaving the Buffalo Soldier barely alive in a ploy to trick us into believing the patrol had died in a freak blizzard.”

Bohl went on to share a possible second explanation involving a different soldier who, after being wounded, set upon two Apache and killed them. After finding no other food, he chopped up their bodies and ate them. Fearing retaliation from others in the tribe who might be nearby, the patrolman set fire to the woods around him to drive them back. Under cover of the fires, he escaped back to his unit covered in blood and ash.

Regardless of the Lost Patrolman’s origins, however, the story just gets more terrifying from there. From the early 20th century firemen reported seeing a mysterious patrolman standing in the middle of the hottest and most out of controls fires that have burned through the state.

It isn’t only fires, however, that draw the figure. Numerous hikers and explorers have returned to camp with tales of a mysterious apparition and his appearance is almost always leads to trouble.

In 1957, Brian Whitaker of Phoenix, Arizona was put on trial for murdering his wife. However, in his defense, Whitaker explained that he had not meant to shoot his wife. Instead, he had been tricked by the nefarious Patrolman into committing the murder. The spirit had followed them for days on their hike along the Rim Road. Whitaker never once said he did not pull the trigger, but throughout the trial, he insisted he had actually been shooting at a man dressed in the garb of the old U.S. Cavalry when he shot. He believed the Patrolman had captured his wife.

There are numerous stories about the Lost Patrolman from Arizona and each is more chilling than the last. I’ll just say, be careful if you decide to take a hike out there!

Arkansas: Mama Lou at Faulkner Lake

Mama Lou’s story seems to be a variation on a sad tale told and retold throughout the U.S and beyond. It seems that a woman named Lou was driving across the Wolf Bayou Bridge on Faulkner Lake many years ago when her car went off the side of the bridge killing both her an her infant child.

The old bridge has been replaced by a new one, but locals say if you go out to the lake and call out, “Mama Lou, I’ve got your baby!” three times, she will appear.

What comes next?

Some say her body floats up to the surface of the lake. Others warn that she will reach out of the lake and attempt to drown you! Either way, the locals believe the legend and only the brave dare try it.

California: The Lady in White at the Hollywood Sign

In the early days of Hollywood, Peg Entwistle took her own life by leaping from the giant H in the Hollywood sign. She was reportedly in deep despair over reviews from a film in which she had appeared and just knew that her hopes and dreams of becoming a famous actress were destroyed.

Since her tragic death, numerous visitors to the area have reportedly seen the vision of a woman in white. No longer beautiful, Peg appears with a skeletal face and emaciated body and it’s said if you are hiking alone, she will tempt you to share her fate.

It is worth noting that numerous people have taken their own lives in the area over the years. Furthermore, in 2012, a man’s decapitated as well as his mutilated corpse were found on almost the exact same spot where the actress was found almost a century before.

Were you familiar with these tales? Do you have another urban legend from these states you’d like to share? Be sure to leave them in the comments and check back next week for the next installment in this series!

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Related Topics:Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Urban Legend Waylon Jordan

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Shudder’s May Is the Best Month They’ve Had in a While.

Published

1 day ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Shudder dropped their May 2026 programming slate and it is heavier than most months. The lead is The Terror: Devil in Silver, the long-awaited third installment of AMC’s horror anthology, premiering May 7 with new episodes weekly through June 11. Next up, Tales from the Crypt, all seven seasons, begins streaming May 1 after years off the market. Four new exclusive films fill out the rest of the month.

The Terror: Devil in Silver

The first two seasons of The Terror stand as some of the best horror television of the past decade. Season one sent the crew of HMS Terror on a doomed Arctic voyage in 1845. Season two, Infamy, placed its story inside a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Neither shared a cast nor a plot with the other. Both were exceptional. Season three takes Victor LaValle’s novel and builds it into a six-episode limited series. Dan Stevens plays Pepper, a working-class moving man who lands in a psychiatric hospital through bad luck and a worse temper. What he finds inside is not treatment.

Karyn Kusama, who directed the Yellowjackets pilot and earned an Emmy nomination for it, directs the opening two episodes and serves as co-executive producer. LaValle and Chris Cantwell co-wrote the scripts. Ridley Scott executive produces. The ensemble behind Stevens includes Judith Light, CCH Pounder, Aasif Mandvi, Stephen Root, and Marin Ireland. This is the kind of combination that earns attention before a single frame has aired.

New episodes premiere weekly after May 7.

Tales from the Crypt

Tales from the Crypt ran on HBO from 1989 to 1996. Seven seasons. Ninety-three episodes. Each one a self-contained story hosted by the Crypt Keeper, a wisecracking animated corpse voiced by John Kassir, who closes every episode with a pun only he finds funny.

The show pulled from EC Comics and assembled talent at a level that looks almost unreasonable in retrospect: Brad Pitt, Demi Moore, Christopher Reeve, Catherine O’Hara, and Steve Buscemi in front of the camera. Robert Zemeckis, Tobe Hooper, and William Friedkin behind it. Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Michael J. Fox also directed episodes.

The series has been effectively unavailable to stream for years, tied up in rights complications. It is now on Shudder. Season one drops May 1. Subsequent seasons premiere weekly on Fridays, with the final season 7 arriving June 12. Watch parties run every Friday at 9pm ET. There is no good reason to wait on this one.

The Exclusives

Whistle arrives May 8 and is the exclusive to prioritize. Directed by Corin Hardy, who made The Nun, and starring Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Percy Hynes White, and Nick Frost, it follows high school students who find an ancient Aztec Death Whistle and discover that blowing it summons their future deaths to hunt them down. Totally normal thing to happen.

Heresy lands May 1 and is worth knowing about before it arrives. Director Didier Konings is making his feature debut after years as a concept artist on Stranger Things, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Smothered arrives May 29 as a Shudder Original. It is Indonesian, and it is produced by Joko Anwar, the director behind Satan’s Slaves and Impetigore. That name means something to anyone who has been paying attention to international horror over the past decade. The film follows a micro-painting artist who loses part of his memory in an accident and returns home to find a woman claiming to be his mother.

This Is Not a Test streams May 22. Directed by Adam MacDonald and adapted from Courtney Summers’ 2012 novel, it stars Olivia Holt as a student sheltering in a high school during a zombie outbreak.

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[Exclusive Clip] ‘From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle’

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2026

Ryan T. Cusick

Audiences are invited to explore one of Vermont’s most mysterious regions in From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle, arriving later this month on streaming platforms and DVD.

The documentary will debut on April 28, 2026, on platforms including Apple TV, Prime Video, and Google Play. DVD editions will be available exclusively through the Small Town Monsters online shop.

Directed by Seth Breedlove, the film continues the company’s exploration of folklore, cryptids, and unexplained phenomena. Breedlove’s previous work includes The Mothman of Point Pleasant, On the Trail of Bigfoot, American Werewolves, and more than two dozen feature-length productions. In total, Small Town Monsters has released more than thirty films, along with investigative programs, web series, books, podcasts, and exclusive membership content.

From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle was made possible through the support of backers from the company’s 2025 Kickstarter campaign.

Set in rural Vermont, the documentary examines the legend of the Bennington Triangle, an area associated with reports of UFOs, ghosts, phantom lights, mysterious creatures, and a series of unexplained disappearances. At the center of the mystery is Glastenbury Mountain, where decades of unanswered questions continue to inspire speculation.

Going beyond folklore and campfire tales, the film asks a chilling question: Why is Glastenbury Mountain so inexplicable, and what happened to those who went missing?

Check out our exclusive clip below.

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This Week in Horror: DC Goes Full Body Horror, A24 Has Its Chainsaw Man, and The Bone Temple Is Finally Yours

Published

4 days ago

April 24, 2026

Luna Gray

Good week. The Clayface trailer dropped and made DC relevant to this website for the first time in a while, A24 put a director on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimagining, and we got some interviews worth reading. Here is all of it.

Clayface Has a Trailer, and It Is Exactly What You Want

The Clayface trailer landed Wednesday, and it is DC’s first real horror film. Not horror adjacent. Not dark. Horror. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose face gets disfigured by a gangster. He turns to a scientist, played by Naomi Ackie, who transforms his body into clay. Then the body horror starts.

James Watkins directed, which is the right choice. He made Speak No Evil and before that The Woman in Black, and he understands how to make dread feel physical. The screenplay is by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. That combination should tell you everything about the tone they are going for.

A24 Has a Director for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and His Last Film Cost Under a Million Dollars

Deadline confirmed that Curry Barker is writing and directing A24’s reimagining of the 1974 original. Barker made Obsession for under a million dollars. Focus Features paid north of fifteen million to distribute it. It sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. A24 hired him before it even opens, which opens May 15.

Kim Henkel, who co-created the original with Tobe Hooper, is executive producing his own creation’s reimagining. That is either a blessing or a haunting. Probably both.

Astrolatry Is Going to Cannes and We Talked to the Actor Who Faced the Creature

Astrolatry is heading to the Frontières Buyers Showcase on May 16-17. The film has a sentient severed penis that grows into a ten-foot practical creature with spiky teeth. We interviewed star Ethan Daniel Corbett about what it was actually like to act against it. Short answer: genuinely terrifying. Long answer is on the site.

The Bone Temple Is Home

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple hit 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD on Tuesday. If you held out from the digital release in February, now is the time. The 4K presentation is supposed to be great. Extras include audio commentary and a deleted scene. If your gonna watch The Bone Temple, why not watch it where the snacks are better.