Alaska
The native Inuit people of Alaska have a legend that will make any sailor or fisher think twice before walking near the shore. Creatures called qalupalik are described as mermaid-like aquatic monsters who would lure children to the shore before scooping them into a pouch and vanishing beneath the waves.
Arizona
There’s nothing scary about a place called Slaughterhouse Canyon, right? This Arizona legend tells of a missing gold miner’s family who began to starve without their dad’s income. The mother of the family chopped her children to bits and tossed them into the river, and, as the story goes, “you can still hear her wailing cries echoing in Slaughterhouse Canyon.”
Arkansas
The Arkansas legend of the Gurdon Light exists in a few variations. In one telling, a railroad worker is decapitated by a passing train and his spirit wanders the tracks looking for his lost lamp. In another, the worker murdered his employer and now the felled foreman wanders the track. Either way, locals insist the Gurdon Light is a real phenomenon.
California
You can picture a group of kids huddled around a campfire swapping stories about the “Char Man of San Antonia Creek,” right? In this Californian tale, a father and son are trapped in a fire and the father perishes in the blaze. The son, mentally scarred by this event, skins his father and now haunts the a bridge in Ojai as “the Char Man,” wearing the burnt flesh of his departed kin.
Colorado
The Ridge Home Asylum is a real mental asylum that operated in Arvada, Colorado from 1912 to 2004. It was reportedly the site of terrible abuse, and local legends hold that many of the asylum’s “patients” were mentally competent people who were simply being tortured by the staff of the asylum.
