When Myth Met Reality: Legends Proven True

VanishedVoyage

When Myth Met Reality: Legends Proven True     #UrbanLegends #MythVsReality #StrangerThanFiction #CreepyFacts #DarkHistory #UnbelievableTruths

Transcript

00:00West Hobart Haunted House West Hobart is an inner city suburb located

00:06in Tasmania, Australia.

00:08Over the years, dozens of allegations of supposed hauntings, ghost apparitions, and other paranormal

00:14activity have been made by tourists and residents of West Hobart.

00:18And it's honestly not too hard to see why, as West Hobart is a pretty old town with

00:22a generally creepy vibe.

00:24As is usually the case, most of these stories have either turned out to be fake or the people

00:28making the allegations didn't have enough evidence to support their claims, which makes

00:32it almost entirely likely that they're hoaxes.

00:35But as it turns out, at least one of these stories actually has some amount of truth to

00:39it.

00:40Back in the late 80s and mid 90s, rumors started spreading of a house in West Hobart that was

00:44apparently so haunted it drove its residents insane.

00:48At first, the rumors created a huge buzz all over town, with the locals doing everything

00:52possible to stay far away from the alleged haunted house.

00:55It wasn't until months later that the authorities got involved and finally got a clear picture

00:59of the situation.

01:00While it was true that the house's residents appeared to be going insane, it didn't have

01:05anything to do with paranormal activity, but with the fact that a detoura vine had been

01:09growing through the trees directly above the home and dropping leaves into the family's

01:13rainwater tank.

01:14For a long time, the family had been inadvertently consuming micro doses of the plant every single

01:19day, which made them slowly but surely start to lose their sanity as they sank further

01:23and further into delirium.

01:25In case you've never heard of it, detoura is a species of plant within the nightshade

01:29family, also known as jimson weed, the devil's weed, or devil's trumpet, and you'll see

01:34why in a second.

01:36Even though the plant itself looks pretty harmless, it's known for having extremely powerful

01:40hallucinogenic properties, which is why it was used for centuries by Native American tribes

01:44in coming of age rituals and other important ceremonies.

01:47The Aztecs also used detoura as a painkiller in certain rituals, namely in ritual sacrifices,

01:52and it's also commonly used as an ingredient in the ritual of zombification in the Haitian

01:57voodoo religion, where it's referred to as the devil's cucumber.

02:00As you can probably tell by now, detoura isn't your typical recreative hallucinogen, and there's

02:05a reason why it's really only ever used in hardcore spiritual rituals and ceremonies, and sometimes

02:10by naive people who have no idea what they're getting themselves into.

02:14In low to medium doses, detoura causes extremely distressing, delirious experiences, and in higher

02:19doses it can lead to paralysis and even death.

02:23Nowadays, detoura is recognized by most tribes as a highly toxic and dangerous plant, and have

02:28understandably stopped using it.

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04:10Cropsey

04:12If you were to somehow go back to the 70s and spend some time in Staten Island, it probably

04:16wouldn't take you long to hear about an urban legend of a man named Cropsey.

04:20As the story went, Cropsey was a serial kidnapper and killer who lost his son and resorted to

04:25stealing other people's children to deal with his grief.

04:28According to the legend, Cropsey also had a hook for a hand, scars, burns, and open wounds

04:33covering his entire face and body, and a generally horrifying appearance.

04:38Considering the mass areas of uninhabited woodlands, it's not all that unexpected that

04:41a tale like the legend of Cropsey would make it into the mainstream culture at some point.

04:46Unfortunately, this wasn't just a tall tale made up by Staten Island parents to keep their

04:50kids from venturing too far into the woods and getting lost.

04:53Although the legend has some obviously made up elements such as the hooked hand and the

04:57horrifying scars and burns, at some point in the early 70s children in Staten Island really

05:01did start disappearing.

05:03That's when the line between legend and reality started to blur, and the story of the real

05:07Cropsey immediately replaced the urban legend.

05:10This is the real story.

05:12Andre Rand was a man from Manhattan who was born in 1944 and moved to Staten Island in the

05:17late 60s.

05:19After working for two years at the infamously brutal Willowbrook State School for Children

05:23with Disabilities, Rand was arrested in 1969 and served over a year in prison for the attempted

05:28attack of a 9 year old girl.

05:30As soon as he was released 16 months later, reports started cropping up of more little

05:34girls disappearing all over Staten Island, including 5 year old Alice Pereira who was playing in

05:39her building's lobby when she suddenly disappeared without a trace.

05:43Over the next decade, Rand was the prime suspect in the disappearances and deaths of several

05:47other young girls in the area.

05:49But it wasn't until 1983 when he picked up 11 kids from a local YMCA and brought them fast food

05:55before taking them to the airport that he was finally arrested and sentenced to 10 months

05:59in prison again.

06:01Throughout the 70s and 80s, dozens of young kids disappeared in Staten Island, and although

06:05Rand was often the last person to be seen with them, there was ultimately never enough evidence

06:09to put him away for a long time.

06:11For many years he would often be seen hanging around young kids, going on walks with them

06:15and even taking them to lunch and dinner with him at local restaurants.

06:19After years of letting him walk the streets as a free man, police would finally have a breakthrough

06:23in the case in 1987 when they found undeniable evidence that Rand had been behind the disappearance

06:28and murder of Jennifer Schweiger, a 12 year old girl with Down syndrome.

06:33In 1988, he was sentenced to 25 years to life, and while he was behind bars, more and more

06:37evidence was found that tied him to several other disappearances in Staten Island in the

06:4170s and 80s.

06:43Unfortunately, he was only charged with one additional major crime in 2004, which was the

06:47kidnapping of Holly Ann Hughes, thanks to which he will spend the next 13 years behind bars

06:52until 2037.

06:54If he lives that long, he'll be 93 by the time he gets out.

06:59The Maine Hermit

07:02The Kennebec Valley is one of the most beautiful regions in Maine with over 5,000 square miles

07:06of forests, rolling hills, and natural paradise surrounding the Kennebec River.

07:11Many cabin owners of the North Pond area in the Kennebec Valley have described the area

07:15as the most peaceful place on earth.

07:18But it hasn't always been that way.

07:20All throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, there were reports of over 1,000 break-ins

07:25in the North Pond cabins.

07:27For decades, nobody knew who was responsible for the thefts, especially since they were

07:31always carried out when there was no one home.

07:34As the cabin owners soon noticed, the break-ins seemed to follow a pattern, always peaking in

07:38the days before Memorial Day and after Labor Day.

07:41As for the stolen items themselves, they ranged from food, to cooking utensils, to books,

07:46to propane tanks, to toiletries of all kinds.

07:50In the absence of a concrete suspect, the locals eventually named the thief the North

07:54Pond Hermit, even though by this point there was nothing to suggest the break-ins were being

07:58carried out by a single person.

08:00Although it wasn't uncommon for groups of homeowners to venture out into the woods to

08:03try to find the North Pond Hermit, they never found a trace, which only added to the

08:07legend's mystery.

08:09One afternoon in 2002, 100 people attended a North Pond homeowners meeting, and when someone

08:14asked how many of them had suffered break-ins, almost all of them raised their hands.

08:19As you can probably guess, the North Pond Hermit quickly turned into somewhat of a boogeyman,

08:23with the legend frequently being shared over campfires in the area.

08:26For years, nobody thought that the person or people behind the break-ins would ever be

08:31found.

08:32But in April 2013, a man named Christopher Thomas Knight was arrested in the middle of the

08:37woods in the North Pond area by an officer who had made it his sole mission to bring

08:41the thief to justice.

08:43As soon as he was brought to the police station, the cops asked him why he wasn't answering

08:46any of their questions.

08:48At first, it seemed as though he was having trouble speaking, but eventually he responded

08:52that he was ashamed of himself.

08:54As it was later revealed, Christopher had been living out in the middle of the woods by

08:57himself in an unheated nylon tent, surviving only on the things he stole from nearby North

09:02Pond cabins.

09:04Shockingly, he had survived winter temperatures of 20 degrees below zero for years, and hadn't

09:09been to a doctor or taken any medicine for three decades.

09:14What's most incredible about the Hermit's story is that for the entire time he lived

09:17in the woods, he didn't have a single conversation with another human being, except for one time

09:21when he ran into a hiker and only said hi.

09:24Understandably, Chris had lost interest in keeping track of time, so when he was asked

09:28how long he had been in the woods by himself, he replied, a, since the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown,

09:33which took place in 1986.

09:36As investigators later found out, he was 20 years old when he decided to become a Hermit,

09:40just a couple of years after high school, although he never gave the authorities a real reason

09:44why he decided to disappear.

09:46In all his years of isolation, he went to extreme lengths to preserve his privacy.

09:51He never lit fires, only moved at night, and hadn't had any kind of communication with

09:55the rest of society for more than half of his life.

09:58He'd never driven a car, sent an email, or even known what the internet was until his

10:03arrest.

10:04Interestingly, as the cops dug deeper and deeper into his story, they realized that his only

10:08real possessions were his glasses, which he had been wearing for 30 years and could even

10:12be seen in his Lawrence High School yearbook picture from 1984.

10:17Everything else, down to his underwear and jacket, had been stolen.

10:21After the investigation, Knight was sentenced to seven months in prison, after which he

10:25once again disappeared.

10:27According to the cops, he's now living a quiet, peaceful life in rural Maine.

10:34Purple Aki

10:35Throughout the late 1980s and 90s, rumors of a massive bodybuilder called Purple Aki began

10:41to surface in the northwest of England.

10:44According to the allegations, Purple Aki would supposedly walk the streets of Liverpool hunting

10:48down young, muscular men and rugby players, and oddly asked them if he would let them

10:53feel their muscles.

10:55If they complied, he would allegedly squeeze their muscles for much longer than was considered

10:59socially acceptable, and would then ask them to perform squats so he could feel their

11:03quad muscles.

11:05Some teenagers reported that Purple Aki even went as far as to ask them to pose for him,

11:09and often offered exercise and nutrition advice for those who gave him the time.

11:14Since the rumors were so incredibly ridiculous, nobody really took them too seriously at first,

11:18and eventually the story of Purple Aki turned into an urban legend, with crazy details being

11:23gradually added to the tale.

11:25Including one where Purple Aki would allegedly swallow teenagers whole if they let him feel

11:29their muscles.

11:31But as time went on, it became clear that Purple Aki wasn't just a made up character created

11:35by bored teenagers looking to get some laugh from their friends, but a real person named

11:39Aki was often seen traveling across England by train carrying a plastic bag and asking

11:46young men if he could feel their muscles.

11:48Naturally, this made a lot of people uncomfortable, and it wasn't uncommon for Aki's face to be

11:53featured in local newspapers after several encounters with the law.

11:57Most of the accusations against him were related to his creepy behavior around teenage boys, but

12:01around 1986, the story of Purple Aki took a really dark turn.

12:06Shortly that year, 16 year old Gary Keller was walking home from school when he ran into

12:10Purple Aki, who immediately asked to feel his muscles.

12:14Freaked out by the weird request, Gary said no and ran away.

12:18Later that same year, Aki followed Gary to a local outdoor swimming pool, and when the

12:22teenager noticed, he ran to New Brighton train station and jumped onto the railroad tracks

12:26to get away from Aki.

12:28Sadly, the story ended in tragedy, as Gary was accidentally electrocuted by one of the rails.

12:34Considering the whole thing happened because Gary was being chased, Purple Aki was convicted

12:38of involuntary manslaughter, charged with harassing 14 different teenage boys, and sentenced

12:43to two and a half years in prison.

12:45In 1988, Aki filed an appeal and complained that the only reason he had been convicted

12:49was because he was black.

12:51Ultimately, the judges agreed there wasn't enough evidence to prove Aki had been directly

12:55responsible for Gary's death, and believe it or not, he was freed and awarded 35,000 pounds

13:00in compensation.

13:02Between 1988 and 2006, Aki went in and out of jail for failing to resist his compulsion

13:07to touch, feel, and measure other people's muscles, and in 2003 he was arrested for

13:12an additional 15 charges of harassment and witness intimidation, for which he was sentenced

13:16to six years in prison.

13:19Just like any other predator, he was also forbidden from waiting outside schools in the

13:22area.

13:23A few months later, he was jailed for 15 months for getting up to his same antics.

13:28Upon his release, he was once again arrested a few weeks later in 2010, and then again

13:32in 2015.

13:34After his latest release, he reportedly moved to Leeds, where rumors started cropping off

13:37that he had passed away during the pandemic.

13:40However, those rumors were put to rest when videos started surfacing in 2023 of Aki walking

13:45the streets of Leeds asking random dudes to, you guessed it, feel their muscles.

13:51As of today, Purple Aki is alive and well, and will probably continue in his same behavior

13:55with or without permission for many years to come.

14:00Leiloyen

14:02According to a Swiss urban legend, people have allegedly been running into a mysterious human-like

14:07figure in the Fribourg Forest in the western part of the country near the town of Mauls

14:11since the early 2000s.

14:13Based on the dozens of allegations that surfaced over the years, the figure has been described

14:17as being around 6 feet tall and always wearing a vintage-looking gas mask covering his entire

14:22face, a boiler suit, and a cloak.

14:26Most people who supposedly ran into the figure reported he or she was completely harmless,

14:30but this didn't make the encounters any less terrifying, and it wasn't uncommon for people

14:34to report the figure to the police when their children reported feeling scared.

14:38As expected, it didn't take local residents long to start adding their own crazy twist

14:42to the story, with some claiming that the creature was the ghost of a mentally unstable soldier,

14:47while other popular theories assured it was an alien.

14:50For a while, the story was classified as an urban legend, and the mysterious humanoid was

14:54given the name Leiloyen, also known as the Ghost or the Hermit of Mauls.

14:58Throughout the early 2000s, Leiloyen was mostly the subject of local oral legend because

15:03there was no real evidence to support its existence.

15:06But in 2013, the story gained international attention when the Swiss slash French newspaper

15:11Leiloyen published the first ever photograph of Leiloyen which was sent in by a hiker.

15:16After the photograph was published, there was no turning back, as people from all over the

15:19country started to make trips to the woods outside malls for a chance to catch a glimpse

15:23of Leiloyen.

15:25The last known sighting of Leiloyen took place in June 2013, when a local woman named Marianne

15:30Declou saw the figure clutching a bunch of flowers as she was walking outside.

15:35Later that year, Leiloyen's clothes were found in the middle of the woods along with a wooden

15:38note titled, The Death Certificate and Will of the Ghost des Mauls.

15:43In the letter, Leiloyen accused the media of having murdered a harmless being by revealing

15:47its existence and turning him into a circus freak.

15:50The letter also mentioned that due to the unwanted attention, Leiloyen had to abandon its

15:54daily walks, which were referred to as happiness therapy in the letter.

15:59After the cryptic note was published in the newspaper, many people concluded that Leiloyen

16:03had taken its own life, although this has never been confirmed.

16:07As of 2024, nobody has ever seen Leiloyen's true face, and many people have theorized

16:11that the figure was possibly a woman with a facial disfiguration who didn't want people

16:15to see her, which is supposedly why she wore the gas mask.

16:19But this line of reasoning will probably remain unconfirmed forever.

16:25The Bunny Man

16:28In the early 70s, dozens of locals started reporting that a man dressed up as a bunny

16:31had started haunting the residential neighborhoods around DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia.

16:37Although dressing up as a bunny in itself seems pretty harmless, what made the encounters

16:41a little scarier was that the guy would allegedly threaten children on the street with an axe,

16:45and frequently vandalize people's property for no apparent reason.

16:49Even though sightings of the so-called Bunny Man were pretty rare, they seemed to follow a

16:53pattern, as the man usually appeared in secluded locations where there weren't a lot of witnesses.

16:58The story itself has a lot of elements of a typical urban legend and is kind of hard

17:02to believe, but through my research I found that it's all loosely based on a true story.

17:07In 1970, a couple was parked in a driveway close to a bridge on Colchester Road in Fairfax

17:12County when suddenly a random guy appeared out of nowhere, yelled at them for allegedly trespassing,

17:17and threw a hatchet at their car.

17:19Terrified, the couple left the area immediately before they had a chance to get a good look

17:22at the guy.

17:23As they reported the incident to the police, they mentioned the guy had been dressed in

17:27light-colored clothing and may or may not have been wearing something white on his head.

17:31Although the couple never mentioned anything about a bunny in their statement, as soon

17:35as the story hit the news, people started claiming that the hatchet thrower had been wearing

17:39bunny ears.

17:40Pretty soon, rumors of a man in a bunny suit threatening kids in the woods with a hatchet

17:44started surfacing all over the DMV area, and as the years went by, the stories got wilder

17:49and harder to believe.

17:52Over time, the legend of the bunny man has become pretty mainstream, with the bridge on

17:55Colchester Road even being renamed as Bunny Man Bridge.

17:59As of the uploading of this video, the legend has now been standardized and goes something

18:02like this.

18:04In 1904, there was allegedly an asylum close to the bridge on Colchester Road.

18:09As soon as it was built, a bunch of Fairfax County residents started complaining about the

18:12idea of having an asylum full of mental patients so close to their homes, so the authorities

18:17supposedly put all the patients in a bus and transferred them to a nearby prison.

18:21But on the way to the prison, the bus crashed and all the patients escaped.

18:25As the story goes, a few hours later the cops had successfully located and brought back all

18:29the patients except for one guy by the name of Douglas Griffin.

18:34This is where the legend gets a little weird.

18:36Allegedly, the fugitive patient hid in the woods from the authorities for weeks.

18:40As the days went by and the cops did everything to find him, rabbit corpses started to appear

18:44in the middle of the woods, which led everyone to believe Douglas was eating bunnies to stay

18:48alive.

18:49Then, one Halloween night, a group of kids were hanging out near the bridge on Colchester

18:53Road when they suddenly saw a blue orb flashing in mid-air.

18:56A second later, they were all strung up like bunnies, hanging from the bridge.

19:01As the legend goes, if you go to Bunny Man Bridge on Halloween night at midnight, the

19:04same thing will happen to you.

19:06Obviously, none of this is true, but it just goes to show how much of an impact the story

19:10of the Bunny Man has had on mainstream Virginia, DC, and Maryland culture.

19:14Nowadays, there's even Bunny Man t-shirts, a Bunny Man horror movie franchise, Bunny Man

19:19beer, and everything in between.

19:22Needless to say, the area surrounding the railroad overpass near Fairfax station is now a major

19:26attraction for both tourists and locals alike, and will probably remain that way for many

19:30years.

19:31And if, let's go to the end of the lake road, please press the line of the ship It has

19:38to tell you something that is .

19:39Please see if you're unable to make the car.

19:40Please, share your story.

19:41Please thank you for your attention.

19:41Now, you should see what happens to your ship.

19:44Please thank you.

19:44Please, share my story.

19:45This is the end of the lake road.

19:46It's the end of the lake road.

19:46J locations in the lake road.

19:47The joy of the castle.

19:48It's the end of the lake road.

19:50The leans in the lake road was sitting there, the last lake road or the lake road.

19:51He was not to be a good place to go.

19:52It's the end of the lake road.

19:53It's the end of the lake road that Folocia.

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