5 Halloween Urban Legends That Will Scare You Stiff

From LSD laced temporary tattoos for kids to a college campus massacre, join us we regale scary Halloween stories with these 5 urban legends.

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5. Blue Star Tattoo

This Halloween urban legend, like most urban legends, begins with a poorly written spam email. It warns parents about a rub-on blue star tattoo that is laced with LSD and rat poison. It claims that drug dealers are peddling these deadly tattoos to school children then preying on them when affected by the drugs. It says to be also on the look out for popular Disney temporary tattoos with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

4. Poisoned Candy

The poisoned candy trope has been around for generations. Spread around by cautious parents, it says to be on the look out for candy laced with poison or tiny razor blades hidden amongst the sweet treats. I remember as a kid being terrified by Halloween lollies, always checking the packaging to see if it had been opened or not. But it turns out this Halloween urban legend does have some truth to it.

On Halloween 1974, Ronald Clark O’Bryan took his son and daughter and two neighbourhood children trick-or-treating. As they went from house to house collecting candy, O’Bryan gave the four children five Pixy Stix laced with cyanide. His daughter and the two neighbours didn’t consume the poisoned Halloween treats, however later that night O’Brian’s son Timothy asked to eat one as a treat before bed. The young boy ate a mouthful of the powdered candy but complained it tasted bitter. He quickly became ill, vomiting and convulsing, eventually falling limp in his father’s arms.

It was later revealed that O’Bryan was in enormous debt and had just taken out several life insurance plans on his children. It was alleged that he tried poisoning all four children as a cover up for the insurance claim. O’Bryan was convicted of one count of capital murder and four counts of attempted murder and died by lethal injection some ten years later.

3. Halloween Mass Murder, 1962

This Halloween urban legend has been around for years but started gathering significant traction while doing the social media rounds. The above photo began circulating some years ago supposedly taken moments before a brutal mass murder. The black masked figure, seen in the middle of the photo, is said to have locked all the doors at a Halloween gathering in 1962. He proceeded to stab and kill seven of the patrons before escaping. No one knows who the man was. Only his mask was ever recovered. The case remains unsolved.

2. Halloween Campus Murders

This tall tale has been going around since the 60s. Over the years the story has mutated into various versions, each with different details, but they all follow the same theme – a Halloween campus massacre.

The story goes that a psychic named Jeanne Dixon, while on the Oprah Winfrey Show, predicted the death of 12 college students. She didn’t say which campus but she said it would be one of the big ten colleges in America. The gruesome murders would take place opposite the freshmen dormitories. She was even so specific as to mention that the killer will be a former lecturer who was fired for having an affair with a student. Dixon claimed to have seen visions of a bloodied axe, students running, screaming and crying.

No one knows when this massacre will take place. Students are being warned to stay inside this Halloween.

1. 53 Murdered on R.M.S Queen Mary on Halloween

This urban legend tells of a mass murder aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach California.

Every year the Queen Mary ship hosts hundreds of Halloween revelers who stay on board the supposedly haunted ship. However, one year the guests got more of a scare than they had hoped for.

In the early hours of Halloween morning, security uncovered a gruesome scene. They found along the hallway on B-deck a trail of bloody footprints. Inside the guest rooms people were left beaten and bludgeoned. Some had been hacked apart with a sharp object. Room after room, scenes of disgusting violence, rooms awash with blood, dismembered limbs scattered about. Those who had not been killed writhed about in agony, screaming out for help. A total of 53 people were callously murdered in their sleep aboard the Queen Mary. The perpetrator was never found.

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Well there’s our list of 5 Halloween urban legends. Did this listicle remind you of any childhood scary stories from Halloween? Let us know on Twitter and Facebook.