Month: October 2016

It would seem that one of the most haunted houses in the U.S. is also one of the most famous. Many spirits have been reported roaming the halls of the White House, but the one that’s seen most often is 16th president Abraham Lincoln—and that includes sightings by some of the most powerful people in the world.

1. GRACE COOLIDGE

In a series of articles for American Magazine, First Lady Grace Coolidge revealed that she once saw Lincoln standing by a window in the Lincoln Bedroom, which had previously been his office. She noted that he was gazing out the window across the Potomac, to a spot that had once been the site of a Civil War battlefield.

2. QUEEN WILHELMINA OF THE NETHERLANDS

Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands stayed at the White House during a state visit in 1942, and apparently heard a knock at the door around midnight. When she opened it, the 16th president was standing there. The queen promptly fainted.

3. MARY EBEN, ELEANOR ROOSEVELT’S SECRETARY

The First Lady’s secretary once reported seeing Honest Abe in the northwest bedroom. He was sitting on the bed, pulling his boots on hurriedly as if he had somewhere important to be.

4. WINSTON CHURCHILL

There’s a famous story about how the British Prime Minister met Lincoln’s ghost. During one of his stays at the residence in the 1940s, Churchill had just finished a bath and was walking into the main bedroom, completely nude, when he saw the president standing by the fireplace. “Good evening Mr. President. You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” Churchill is said to have quipped. Though he handled it well, the Prime Minister requested different rooms on subsequent visits.

Before you dismiss the story out of hand, note that it does get one thing right—Churchill was known for lounging around his White House quarters in the buff.

5. AND 6. MAUREEN REAGAN AND DENNIS REVELL

Ronald Reagan’s daughter Maureen was no stranger to overnight visits at the White House. On at least one occasion, her husband Dennis woke up to see a shadowy figure standing by the fireplace. Maureen didn’t believe him until she, too, saw a man in a red coat standing in their room in the middle of the night. She initially thought it was her father in a red bathrobe—until she realized she could see right through him.

When the president heard of the encounters, he said, “Why don’t you send him down the hall? I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask him.”

7. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Ike once told press secretary James Hagerty that he was once walking down a hallway when he spied a figure coming down the hall straight toward him. After a moment, he realized it was Abraham Lincoln.

8. LADY BIRD JOHNSON

Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary, Liz Carpenter, once said that the First Lady had been watching a documentary on Lincoln’s death when a plaque hanging in the room caught her attention. When she read it, she realized that it mentioned Lincoln’s time in the room—and a feeling of coldness and unease washed over her.

9. FDR’S VALET, CESAR CARRERA

It’s been reported that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal valet, Cesar Carrera, ran from the White House screaming on one occasion—he had just spotted the 16th president’s shade.

10. TONY SAVOY, WHITE HOUSE OPERATIONS FOREMAN

Savoy has said that he was working on the second floor of the residence in the early 1980s when he happened upon a snazzily dressed Lincoln. Wearing a pinstripe suit, the president was sitting in a chair with his hands folded together and his legs crossed. Savoy blinked, and Lincoln was gone.

11. HARRY TRUMAN

Truman never saw Lincoln, but according to one story, he believed that phantom knocks on the door were caused by his predecessor. The rappings often happened when he was working on important speeches. Truman’s daughter Margaret said her father actually wished Lincoln and other deceased presidents would drop by. “I’m sure they’re here,” he told her. “I won’t lock my doors or bar them if any of the old coots in the pictures want to come out of their frames for a friendly chat.”

It wasn’t the only time Truman talked about the ghosts in the White House. In 1945, he wrote a letter to his wife, Bess, that said, “the floors pop and the drapes move back and forth—I can just imagine old Andy and Teddy having an argument over Franklin.”

12. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

Eleanor used the Lincoln Bedroom as her study, and though she never saw him like her secretary did, she reported feeling his presence, especially when she was working alone late at night. The Roosevelt’s Scotch terrier, Fala, was prone to staring intently at nothing while barking, which FDR chalked up to Lincoln’s ghost.

NICE TRY, BETTY FORD

On her last night in the White House, Gerald and Betty Ford’s daughter Susan slept in the Lincoln bedroom with a friend, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous apparition. Nothing appeared, but Betty Ford tried to make it up to them—in the morning, she entered the room wearing a sheet, making scary noises, and reciting the Gettysburg Address. “We were like, yeah mom, we’re a little too old for that, but it was funny,” Susan later said.

In August, we shared a selection of vintage vacation destination photographs captured by the Detroit Photographic Company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Back then, Detroit Photographic traveled the country snapping picturesque shots for postcards, prints, and albums, often employing their exclusive Photochrom process to print splashy color images in large numbers.

One thing we didn’t include in that round-up: all their photos of cemeteries. While it might seem strange to send someone a postcard of a cemetery today (or to put a photo of one in an album), many of America’s 19th century cemeteries were feats of sculpture and landscaping that provided much-needed fresh air and relaxation. It wasn’t so unusual to visit them even when you weren’t in mourning, perhaps stopping by for a stroll or a picnic. A postcard often made a nice memento of such a visit, particularly if it depicted a famous grave.

Detroit Photographic (later the Detroit Publishing Company, and just one of many companies making images of cemeteries) eventually went bankrupt. Fortunately, you can still enjoy many of its images via Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. In the spirit of the season, here are just a few of their images from some of the nation’s most picturesque cemeteries and churchyards. You’ll find dozens more in their archives, if you feel like doing some of your own trick-or-treating.

The Salem witch trials of 1692 to ’93 might be among the most famous in history but they were by no means alone—nor was the paranoia that surrounded the grim witch hunts of the 17th and 18th centuries unique to New England. Witch trials were being carried out all across Europe right through to around 1800. Here are the stories behind five witch trials from across Great Britain.

1. BIDEFORD, DEVON

The Bideford witch trial that took place in Devon in the far southwest of England in 1682 was one of the last in England to lead to an execution. The three women involved were Temperance Lloyd, a local widow (who had already been acquitted of the murder of a man by witchcraft in 1671), and two beggars, Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards, who had allegedly been spotted conversing and begging for food with Temperance. Together, the three were suspected of causing the illness of a local woman, Grace Thomas, by supernatural means—although the full list of accusations thrown at the trio included a claim that a demonic figure in league with Temperance had transformed himself into a magpie and flown through Grace’s window to peck her while she slept; Grace later reported that she had suffered “sticking and pricking pains, as though pins and awls had been thrust into her body, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.”

Despite a great deal of the evidence brought against the women being little more than hearsay, all three were found guilty and executed on August 25 at Heavitree, outside Exeter. A plaque commemorating the women on the wall of Exeter’s Rougemont Castle, where the trials were held, is dedicated to “the hope of an end to persecution and intolerance.”

2. WARBOYS, CAMBRIDGESHIRE

In 1589, a young family named the Throckmortons moved into the manor house beside the church in the tiny rural English village of Warboys, 20 miles north of Cambridge. Soon afterwards, one of the family’s young daughters, Jane, began suffering seizures and fits, which the local doctors found impossible to ease or cure. Then one day the Throckmortons’ neighbors—John and Alice Samuel, and their daughter Agnes—happened to pay the family a visit, but as soon as Alice arrived and took a seat by the fire, Jane’s condition suddenly worsened, and she began to point wildly at Alice, screaming, “Look where the old witch sits!” The mother quickly rebuked Jane and thought nothing more of it. But as more of the children began showing similar symptoms and a respected physician was unable to discover the cause, suspicions returned to the Samuels.

Even Lady Cromwell, the wife of Oliver Cromwell’s grandfather and a close friend of the Throckmortons, once confronted Alice about her apparent crimes; when Lady Cromwell died a little over a year later, her “murder” was added to the list of crimes of which the Samuel family were eventually accused. Imprisoned and tried before the Bishop of Lincoln, Alice, John, and Agnes Samuel were all found guilty of witchcraft and hanged in April 1593.

3. NORTH BERWICK, EAST LOTHIAN

The North Berwick witch trials of the late 16th century are notable not only for the sheer number of people involved (over the two years from 1590 to ’92, around a hundred supposed witches and warlocks were implicated in the case), but because the trials were, for much of their duration, personally overseen by the king himself, James VI of Scotland. James was convinced that a local coven of witches had together raised a storm to wreck the ship on which he and his new bride, Anne of Denmark, were returning home from their wedding in Norway. Once suspicions were raised, one of the first to be accused was Geillis “Gelie” Duncan, the young servant of a local chamberlain, who confessed under torture to practicing witchcraft when her apparent gift for healing the sick aroused suspicion. Duncan implicated three further people in her confession, who each implicated several others, who were all then in turn brought in for questioning. One of the accused, Agnes Simpson, a local midwife and healer, was even taken before the king himself for questioning; after confessing to more than 50 crimes brought against her—including relieving the pains of a woman in labor by suffering them herself, and even baptizing a cat—Simpson was executed in January 1591. Another, Euphame MacCalzean, was burned alive without being granted the “mercy” of being hanged first, an astonishingly severe sentence even for the 16th century. In all, a total of six supposed witches were executed.

Eventually, the supposed network of witchcraft James and his court uncovered led him to believe that his cousin Francis Stuart (or Stewart), 5th Earl of Bothwell, had been behind the entire plot, and had worked with the coven to plot to kill the king and secure the throne for himself. In 1593, however, Bothwell staged a short-lived coup in James’s court and took the opportunity to have himself acquitted of the charges against him. After James retook control, Bothwell fled into exile and died in Naples in 1612.

4. PENDLE HILL, LANCASHIRE

The Pendle Hill witch trials of 1612 are amongst the most famous in British history, partly because their events are so well documented, partly because a number of those involved genuinely believed that they had supernatural powers, and partly because so many of the accused were eventually executed: Only one of the dozen individuals implicated in the case, Alice Grey, was found not guilty, and one, Margaret Pearson, was sentenced to being pilloried, but was spared the gallows.

The trials began when a young woman named Alizon Device, from Pendle in Lancashire in northwest England, was accused of cursing a local shopkeeper who soon afterwards suffered a bout of ill health, now believed to have probably been a mild stroke. When news of this reached the authorities, an investigation was started that eventually led to the arrest and trial of several members of Alizon’s family (including her grandmother, Elizabeth Southerns, a notorious practitioner of witchcraft known locally as “Demdike”), as well as members of another local family, the Redfernes, with whom they had reportedly had a long-standing feud. Many of the families’ friends were also implicated in the trial, as were a number of supposed witches from nearby towns who were alleged to have attended a meeting at Elizabeth Southerns’s home on the night of Good Friday 1612.

The first to be tried (in a different but related case) was Jennet Preston, who was found guilty and executed in York on July 29; the last was Alizon Device herself, who, like her grandmother, was reportedly convinced that she indeed had powers of witchcraft and freely admitted her guilt. In all, 10 men and women were hanged as a result of the trials.

5. SAMLESBURY, LANCASHIRE

Following the arrest of Alizon Device in Pendle in 1612, the discovery that witchcraft was being practiced in Lancashire caused a wave of paranoia that swept across the county and eventually implicated three women—Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and her daughter Ellen (or Eileen) Bierley—from the neighboring village of Samlesbury. Tried at the same Lancashire hearing as the Pendle witches, the trio were suspected of witchcraft by Jennet’s 14-year-old granddaughter, and Ellen’s niece, Grace Sowerbutts. Her grim testimonial accused the women of everything from shape-shifting (Jennet had reportedly transformed herself into a dog right before Grace’s eyes), to cavorting with demons (“black things going upright, yet not like men in the face,” as Grace described them), to cannibalism (the three women had supposedly abducted a young baby from a local merchant, Thomas Walshman, and drank blood from its navel; when the baby died a few days later, they were accused of robbing the grave and cooking the remains).

Unlike the trial of the Pendle witches, however, the Samlesbury trial was quickly turned on its head. With the evidence against them concluded, Jane, Jennet and Ellen were finally given the chance to speak and immediately pleaded with the judge not for clemency or mercy, as might have been expected, but to force Grace to tell the court who had coerced her into making the accusations against them. Grace’s immediate look of guilt raised the judge’s suspicions, and he ordered her to be taken from the court and interrogated by two justices of the peace. When they returned, it emerged that the entire grim story had been concocted by a local priest who—at a time of considerable religious upheaval in Britain—had strong-armed Grace into incriminating her Protestant relatives. All three women were acquitted.

You may have your Netflix queue all filled up with scary movies to watch for Halloween, but what about your bookshelf? Here are seven scary short stories that will have you sleeping with the lights on.

1. “THE DAEMON LOVER” // SHIRLEY JACKSON

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is undeniably the horror writer’s most famous story, but there’s plenty more eerie tales in her oeuvre. “The Daemon Lover,” from the same 1949 collection as “The Lottery,” opens on a woman dressing for her wedding day. Her fiancé, though, never shows up, leading her on an increasingly anxious journey to figure out where he went—and if he exists at all. The full text can be read online, or you can buy an audio version read by the author herself.

2. “OH WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD” // M.R. JAMES

Though he spent his days a medievalist scholar, the early 20th century writer M.R. James is best known for his horror stories—he has been called “the most influential author of ghost stories in literary history,” in fact. “Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,” published in 1904, is one of his most famous stories. It follows a professor who digs up an old whistle that, when blown, summons a dangerous specter. It’s online on here, or you can get a hard copy from Amazon.

3. “THE BLOODY CHAMBER” // ANGELA CARTER

In the title story of Angela Carter’s 1979 book of reimagined fairy tales, a young bride’s wealthy new husband goes away on business, leaving her with keys to every room in the house. He tells her not to go into one room at the end of the hall. Predictably, her curiosity gets the better of her, and inside, she discovers the corpses of her husband’s previous wives. Carter’s Gothic, often frankly sexual tales shocked readers at the time of their publication, but she’s now considered a feminist must-read.

4. “CHILDREN OF THE CORN” // STEPHEN KING

The prolific horror master’s 1977 short story set in a fictional town in Nebraska has been referenced in everything from Eminem’s raps to Wreck-It Ralph. In it, a couple trying to save their marriage with an ill-fated road trip run over a child darting out of the corn fields onto the road—only to discover that his throat was slit before they hit him. Things only get spookier after they drive into the nearby town of Gatlin. It’s available as an ebook for 99 cents. Once you finish the story, the 1984 movie adaptation is streaming for free until November 1.

5. “THE DUALITISTS” // BRAM STOKER

Dracula may have been his masterpiece, but Bram Stoker could churn out a delightful horror story on the small scale, too. “The Dualitists” is, per the opinion of his publisher, Dover, “Stoker’s most horrifying story.” In it, two neighborhood boys with an obsession with knives and a penchant for destruction go from victimizing dolls and household objects to torturing rabbits and other pets. And yet, Stoker writes, “the passion for hacking still remained.” When a pair of cherubic toddler twins show up on the scene, things get gory. You can read it for free online.

6. “HAMSTERS VS. WEBSTERS” // PATRICIA HIGHSMITH

The celebrated author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train has an entire book of stories devoted to grisly tales of everyday pets and pests turning violent. If you have a fear of rodents, best not to read “Hamsters vs. Websters,” a story of a boy’s careful hamster husbandry gone awry. The hamsters aren’t the only ones with murderous intent, either. The whole collection is on Amazon for $14.

7. “EQUINOX” // JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST

In this short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the Swedish writer behind the vampire novel Let the Right One In, a woman house sitting for her neighbor finds a disturbing surprise. In 2013, Booklist Review called the whole collection, titled Let the Old Dreams Die, “terribly effective horror fiction.” You can get a used copy of the book on Amazon for less than $5, but be warned: You may not want to read it in the dark.

In a move hailed by conservationists, an international governing body has created the world’s largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea. The designation will protect 598,000 square miles of water off the Antarctic coast, a region teeming with wildlife from krill to killer whales.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) was created by international convention in 1982 and includes delegates from 24 countries, including the United States, and the European Union. The commission was founded in response to growing commercial fishing interest in Antarctic krill—an essential link in the marine food chain.

Both krill and plankton are abundant in the near-pristine Ross Sea. Their presence provides food for the tiniest sea creatures, which in turn are eaten by little animals, onward and upward all the way to pods of minke and killer whales.

“The Ross Sea is probably the largest ocean wilderness left on our planet,” marine biologist Enric Sala told National Geographic. “It is the Serengeti of Antarctica, a wild place full of wildlife such as emperor penguins, leopard seals, minke whales, and killer whales. It’s one of these rare places where humans are only visitors and large animals rule.”

The sea’s isolation kept it safe for a long time. But as commercial interests enlarge and fuel prices drop, even these frigid waters will need more official forms of protection.

The new ruling prohibits fishing in 72 percent of the reserve, while other areas will be open to limited collections for scientific purposes. “A number of details regarding the MPA are yet to be finalized but the establishment of the protected zone is in no doubt and we are incredibly proud to have reached this point,” Andrew Wright, CCAMLR executive secretary, said in a statement.

Protections will go into effect in December 2017 and hold for 35 years. It’s a very welcome development, say conservationists, but it’s also a temporary fix.

Rod Downie is the polar program manager for the World Wildlife Fund. “This is a milestone for the conservation of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean,” he told New Scientist. “We want a permanent and enduring agreement for future generations that will safeguard the whales, penguins, seals and thousands of other amazing species that live there.”
 
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No Halloween party is complete without some kind of creepy cocktail. Whip up these drinks to impress your guests—or maybe just frighten them!

1. THE CHROMA COOL

Hi-C Ecto Cooler is chartreuse green in normal light, but the Chroma Cool cocktail is reported to turn a glowing purplish-blue under a black light. The key color-altering ingredient is the quinine in your tonic water, so don’t substitute your mixer.

2. VAMPIRE KISS MARTINI

To make a Vampire Kiss Martini according to Delish, layer raspberry liqueur, vodka, and champagne in a chilled martini glass and garnish with your choice of Halloween candy.

3. HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN PUNCH

HonestlyYUM brings us a rum punch with real pumpkin and spices. First, create a spiced syrup by following this recipe (but leave out the rum). Combine the syrup with spiced rum, orange and lemon juices, pumpkin puree, and sparkling water. Stir well, then strain through a fine mesh and chill until party time. Instructions for the spooky presentation in a mist-covered pumpkin are here.

4. CANDY CORN MARTINI WITH POP ROCKS

Toni Dash has a sweet Halloween treat for grownups. Rub the rim of your glass with a lemon slice and dip it into the Pop Rocks, then shake the other ingredients together with ice, and strain it into the glass. The tricky part is the candy corn-infused vodka, which takes about five days to make. You’ll find the process, with pictures, at Boulder Locavore.

5. THE WITCH’S HEART

Dini at The Flavor Bender concocted a beautiful cocktail with horror overtones. Pour apple vodka and Viniq in a cocktail glass, leaving some room at the top. (If you don’t have Viniq on hand, you can follow these instructions to make your own.) Add grenadine by spoon and allow it to settle at the bottom. Add dry ice just before serving for a spooky effect. Note: always tell your guests to wait until the dry ice is completely evaporated before drinking. Do not touch dry ice with bare fingers.

6. THE NEGAN COCKTAIL

Fans of The Walking Dead will appreciate the appearance of the tasty yet dread-inducing Negan Cocktail from The Boulder Locavore. Pour the bitters and water over the swizzle stick into a glass and stir with Lucille, er, the swizzle stick. Add rye and an ice cube. As the sugar on the stick begins to melt, it will look a little gross, just like in the show.

7. THE MORPHING MARTINI

This dirty martini is all about the presentation. The Color Changing martini by makendo at Instructables uses the cabbage as a pH indicator for the color change. Chop and cook the cabbage with some water until the juice is purple, and discard the cabbage leaves. Place a small amount of cabbage juice in a glass and add baking soda until the juice turns blue. Add gin (or vodka) and vermouth and serve. Then add the dry ice, which will turn the drink back to purple. (There’s also a non-alcoholic version.)

8. PUMPKIN SPICE COCKTAIL

2 oz. Casamigos Blanco
1 oz. Agave Nectar
0.25 oz. Almond Liqueur
2 Heaping Bar Spoons Organic Pumpkin from Can
2 Dashes Angostura Bitters
1 oz. Whipped Cream
1 Pinch of Nutmeg
1 Pinch of Cinnamon

When you want something more than a pumpkin spice latte, check out this cocktail recipe posted by Instagram user thelittlemarket. Combine Casamigos Blanco, agave nectar, almond liqueur, organic canned pumpkin, and Angostura bitters in a shaker with ice, shake for 10 to 12 seconds, then strain into a glass and add whipped cream, nutmeg, and cinnamon. For an additional spooky effect, rim the glass with a little black sugar before pouring.

9. MR. HYDE POTION

One of the scariest horror stories of all involved a potion, so it only makes sense to serve it at your Halloween party. To make this cocktail, combine vodka, parfait amour liqueur, blackberry liqueur, tarragon simple syrup, fresh lemon juice, and lavender. Before pouring, rim your glasses in purple sugar, skewer blackberries on a sprig of lavender, or add dry ice. (Or do all three!) This drink can be served in clean chemistry beakers for maximum effect.

10. BLOODY BRAIN SHOOTER

The Bloody Brain Shot is the classic disgusting Halloween drink more famous for its appearance than its flavor. Mix strawberry vodka and lime juice in a shaker with ice and strain into a glass. Carefully add Bailey’s Irish cream with a spoon, straw, or pipette which will curdle and form a brain-like shape as it floats on top. Dribble some grenadine carefully over the top to add the look of blood. Drink it quickly, because it tastes almost as disgusting as it looks. You can also add blue Curacao to make it an Alien Brain Hemorrhage.

11. ORANGE PUMPKIN SMASH

This cocktail was created by Captain Morgan for its limited edition Jack-O’Blast pumpkin spiced rum. Combine 1.5 ounces of Jack-O’Blast with 2 ounces of orange juice in a glass of ice and stir. Finally, top with 2 ounces of club soda. Bottoms up!

As a film student at UCLA in the mid-1980s, Don Mancini was amused by the hysteria surrounding the Cabbage Patch Kids, those ubiquitous, slightly homely dolls that were disappearing from toy shelves and prompting physical fights between parents. Mancini’s father had worked in the advertising industry all his life, and his son knew how effective marketing could pull strings, resulting in consumer bedlam.

“I wanted to write a dark satire about how marketing affected children,” Mancini tells mental_floss. “Cabbage Patch was really popular. I put the two impulses together.”

Out of Mancini’s efforts came Child’s Play, the 1988 film written by a college student, directed by a horror veteran, and produced by a man who had just finished an animated family film for Steven Spielberg. Like 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, the movie was a well-received, effects-heavy twist on the slasher genre. And like that film, it birthed one of the great horror icons of the 20th century: Chucky, the carrot-topped doll possessed with the soul of a serial killer.

The portable monster—or, as Mancini puts it, an “innocent-looking child’s doll that spouted filth”—went on to star in five sequels, a Universal Studios horror attraction, and a comic book, launching Mancini’s career and providing horror fans with another antihero to root for. With a new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray from Scream Factory, mental_floss spoke with the cast and crew members who endured an uncooperative puppet, freezing weather, and setting an actor on fire to break new territory in creating a highly animated, expressive tiny terror. It was the kind of chaos only Chucky could love.

I: BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED

After two years as an English major at Columbia University, Don Mancini transferred to UCLA with an eye on becoming a filmmaker. A teacher was impressed with his first script, Split Screen, about a small town overtaken by a horror production. Riding on that enthusiasm, Mancini tackled his second script by exploring the idea that a doll could be a child’s violent alter ego.

Don Mancini (Writer): Being a horror fan all of my life, I had seen Trilogy of Terror, I had seen the Talky Tina episode of The Twilight Zone, and I knew the killer doll trope. But what I realized was that it had never been done as a feature-length film in the age of animatronics.

Howard Berger (Special Effects Artist, KNB): Animatronics were not exactly booming, but we were doing what we could with them. At the time, they were not nearly as advanced as what would eventually be required for Chucky.

David Kirschner (Producer): I had just done my first film for Steven Spielberg, An American Tail, and was in London where I bought a book called The Dollhouse Murders. I read it, got back home, and told my development person that I’d love to do something with dolls.

Mancini: This was shortly after Gremlins, and effects had progressed to the point where you could create a puppet that was extremely articulated.

Kirschner: Talky Tina terrified me as a kid. My sister’s dolls did, too. They had a night light under them, like when you hold a flashlight up to your chin.

Mancini: Before, the doll jaws in movies had been kind of floppy or Muppet-like, but there was a new level of nuance I thought I could take advantage of.

Kirschner: I had co-written a movie with Richard Matheson, The Dreamer of Oz, which we did with John Ritter. He was a paternal figure in my life, and strangely, I never did ask him about Trilogy of Terror.

Tom Holland (Director): I quoted Trilogy of Terror to everyone. I basically got involved with this movie due to the sequence, “Prey,” and how they put a camera on a skateboard for a doll to terrorize Karen Black, shaking it from side to side. It looked terrific.

Mancini: This was shortly after A Nightmare on Elm Street, which was really important in the development of the slasher genre. Freddy was a villain with a very distinct sense of humor, someone who could taunt victims verbally. I was quite consciously influenced by that with Chucky, the idea of an innocent-looking child’s doll that spouted filth.

Kirschner: It was in many ways what Spielberg had done with Poltergeist, which was about suburbia and bringing the terror home.

Mancini: It was originally titled Batteries Not Included. I was living in a house off-campus with three other film students, one of whom had graduated and was working as an assistant to a producer at Orion Pictures. She passed it on to his boss, who read it and passed it on to an agent. He got wind Steven Spielberg was doing a movie with the same title and suggested I change it. So it went out as Blood Buddy.

Kirschner: The development person said, “Actually, there’s a script that’s been making the rounds called Blood Buddy, but everyone’s passed on it.” I read it and loved Don’s idea.

Mancini: It’s not completely true [that everyone passed]. I did get some bites. Charles Band was one producer who saw it and liked it. He had a studio that turned out really low-budget horror and exploitation films. I don’t remember why he didn’t buy it, but he did end up doing movies called Dolls and Puppet Master. And he hired me to write a movie called Cellar Dwellers, which I used a pseudonym on.

Holland: In Don’s original script, there needed to be a way to sympathize with the son and mother.

Mancini: In my script, the doll was not possessed by a killer. The doll was a manifestation of a little boy’s unconscious rage, his id.

Kirschner: The idea of what brought the doll to life wasn’t there yet.

Mancini: If you played too rough with him, his latex skin would break and he’d bleed this red substance so you’d have to buy special bandages. So the boy, Andy, in a rite of brotherhood, cuts his thumb and mixes it with the doll’s blood, and that’s the catalyst that brings the doll to life.

Kirschner: At that point, I was a relatively new father and wasn’t sure anybody would buy a doll with blood in it. It didn’t make sense to me, but there were a lot of cool things in there, some cool deaths.

Mancini: He starts acting out against the boy’s enemies, which he might not even be able to express. Like a babysitter who tells him to go to bed, or a teacher who gives him a bad grade.

Holland: What Don wrote originally felt more like a Twilight Zone episode. The little boy fell asleep and the doll came to life. It didn’t emotionally involve you.

Mancini: Ultimately, the mother was a target, too. The kid had an unconscious resentment toward her. She was an ambitious single mother who wasn’t around, so she got him the hot toy.

In my script, the doll wasn’t really seen until the third act, where he’s spouting one-liners and killing the kid’s dentist. I should really bring that back at some point.

Kirschner: I did two drawings of the character and went out to studios. A guy I had never heard of named Tony Thomopoulos from United Artists came to my office and said, “We want to make this movie.” He was wonderful and he lived up to everything he ever promised.

With Kirschner attracting interest in Blood Buddy, he began the process of revising the script on the belief that audiences needed a more sympathetic character than a boy with a murderous alter ego.

Kirschner: The studio did not want Don, so we brought in John Lafia.

John Lafia (Co-Writer): I believe David and I were at the same agency at the time and got introduced that way. He showed me Don’s draft and that’s how I got involved. He told me his take on it and I did two drafts. This was after Tom had come on for the first time.

Holland: I had come on the project once before and couldn’t solve it. In horror, the audience is involved in direct proportion to how much you care about the people. And that wasn’t the situation here. So I left to go do Fatal Beauty with Whoopi Goldberg.

Lafia: I went to a toy store and looked around. I remember picking up a Bugs Bunny, pulling the string, and hearing a scratchy voice. There was also a freaky Woody Woodpecker that talked.

Holland: You had to set up a situation where you can believe in a possessed doll, which sounds silly in the light of day, but that was the job.

Lafia: I was thinking of The Terminator, actually, but in micro form. Just this thing that keeps coming.

Kirschner: John got us to a point where we could go to directors. I met with William Friedkin, who I was terrified of, but he was a wonderful man. And I talked to Irvin Kershner, who did The Empire Strikes Back.

Lafia: I think the biggest contribution I made was to give the character a back story so it was a human who somehow became a doll. In my draft, it became Charles Lee Ray. I coined the name Chucky.

Holland: By the time I came around a second time, Lafia had done a rewrite and I think they had spoken with Joe Ruben, who had done The Stepfather. In the year or so I spent away from it, I figured out how to involve the killer.

Kirschner: I had seen Fright Night, which I loved. Tom seemed nice. I called Spielberg because Tom had done an Amazing Stories for him. He said Tom was an arrogant guy, but talented.

Mancini: I was still just a kid in school. It was just sort of this unspoken thing—pushing you out the door. Let the adults take over.

Lafia: My take on it, and I don’t think Don’s was that far off, was more like Poltergeist, with a family threatened by supernatural forces. I remember David and I watching that movie to refresh our memory.

Mancini: I was excited. I was a fan of Fright Night, of Psycho II.

Holland: I learned so much by writing Psycho II about moving movies forward visually. I had to study Alfred Hitchcock.

Mancini: It was Tom or David or John who brought in the voodoo, which I was never thrilled with and a mythology we got stuck with for six movies.

Lafia: My device was not voodoo. It was more of a Frankenstein-type of moment at a toy factory. A prisoner was being electrocuted on death row and his spirit got into the doll. We would cross-cut with his execution and the doll being manufactured.

Mancini: Tom has said over the years that it’s an original screenplay even though the credits say it isn’t, which is complete bullsh*t.

Holland: The Guild is set up to protect the writer. It is what it is. Failure has no fathers, success has many.

Securing Holland gave Blood Buddy—now titled Child’s Play—a strong anchor, but the film would succeed or fail based on whether the movie could convince audiences a malevolent doll could go on a killing spree. Kirschner enlisted Kevin Yagher, a 24-year-old effects expert who had worked on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3. Yagher and a team of effects artists, including Howard Berger, would spend months perfecting ways to bring the puppet to life.

Kirschner: I drew Chucky in graphite, and Kevin brought him to life incredibly.

Berger: David’s drawings were a great jumping-off point. We had so many versions of Chucky. The one we used most was from the waist-up.

Mancini: I was so involved with school that it was all just moving along without me. I had no involvement with the doll’s development.

Berger: He really couldn’t walk. We tried putting him on a six-foot dolly, but it just sort of dragged itself along.

Kirschner: If you’ve got someone controlling the eyes, someone else the mouth, someone else the hands, something will go wrong. It’s going to take a very long time. But Kevin and his team were amazing.

Berger: We made the doll heads to look increasingly more human as the movie goes on. The hairline begins to match Brad Dourif’s.

Mancini: Over the course of the movie, his hairline is receding. At the top of the movie, he’s got a full mop of hair. Visually, it was cool, but I was never down with the story logic. Why would that happen? What does it mean? Does it mean he’d ultimately be a human thing?

Berger: We had different expressions. A neutral one, angry, one that was screaming. One Chucky we literally just hooked up to a Nikita drill motor. When you turn him on, he’d just spin and flail around, kicking.

Mancini: While I was still writing the script, a lawyer had encouraged me to describe the doll in great detail—in as much detail as I could think up. Because if the movie became a hit and if there was merchandise, there would be a scramble over who was legally the creator of the character. And sure enough, there was.

Berger: Chucky went through a few iterations. Originally his head was more football-shaped, like a Zeppelin.

Mancini: I was very distinct in the script: red hair, two feet tall, blue eyes, freckles, striped shirt. David designed the doll, but didn’t deviate from those details. 

Kirschner: After American Tail, I wanted to do something different. My agent was not happy about it. My mother was not happy about it. My wife thought it was great.

II: THE ASSEMBLY LINE

Child’s Play began production in the winter of 1988 in Chicago and Los Angeles—the former during the coldest time of the year. Holland’s cast included Catherine Hicks as Karen Barclay, Chris Sarandon as Detective Mike Norris, and Brad Dourif as Charles Lee Ray, the killer fated to become trapped in the plastic prison of a retail toy.

For shots beyond the ability of the puppet to perform, Holland enlisted actor Ed Gale, a three-foot, six-inch tall performer who had made his film debut as the title character in 1986’s Howard the Duck.

Ed Gale (“Chucky”): I knew Howard Berger from other projects. I met with Tom having just done Spaceballs. I wound up doing Child’s Play and Phantasm II at the same time. I don’t take credit for being Chucky. It’s Brad [Dourif], the puppeteers, and me.

Holland: Brad is wonderful, a genuine actor.

Alex Vincent (“Andy Barclay”): Brad’s voice was on playback on the set. The puppeteers would synch the movement to his voice, sometimes at half-speed.

Mancini: There was a Writers Guild strike and I wasn’t legally allowed to be on the set, so I didn’t rejoin the process until after shooting was over. But I don’t think I would’ve been welcome anyway.

Holland: I don’t remember ever meeting Don. I thought the writer’s strike was toward the end of shooting.

Mancini: My understanding through David is that Tom was the auteur and wouldn’t want anyone else around.

Holland: He certainly would have been welcome to come to the set.

Although a few of Holland’s leads struggled—Sarandon’s vocal cords once froze during a sub-zero exterior shot—nothing caused more trouble with the production than Chucky, a complex mechanism requiring multiple puppeteers. His presence led to differing opinions over how best to approach the tone of the film. 

Kirschner: This was my first live-action film project. I was a real quiet, shy person, and Tom was a real presence.

Gale: Tom was very driven and focused. I very distinctly remember a scene where Alex needed to cry and Tom was spitballing how he could get him to react. He was asking the social worker, “Can I blow smoke in his face? Can I pinch him?”

Holland: I was very sensitive to Alex’s feelings. He was not an actor with experience. I hugged him after reach take.

Vincent: Tom was very passionate about getting specific things from me and being really happy when he got them.

Gale: I think he wound up telling him scary stories.

Holland: I don’t remember any scary stories. I just kept having him do the scene. 

Vincent: I don’t remember anything specific he said. I do remember that they ran out of film when I was doing it and I told them, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep crying.”

Gale: When you look at the crying scene, it’s pretty convincing. Tom is a genius director. As a person, I won’t comment.

Kirschner: I felt he kept showing too much of the doll. I wanted to be gentlemanly about it and kept whispering in his ear, and he was getting fed up with me.

Berger: The doll was a pain in the ass. Everything was a hassle. I remember the scene where Chucky was in a mental hospital electrocuting a doctor. It took 27 takes to get him to press a button.

Vincent: I was aware of the puppet [being slow] because I’d be standing there for 43 takes. Having him flip his middle finger was this whole process.

Kirschner: The doll was not working great. Jaws had come out and I had seen how great that worked. You were postponing the fear. Tom wanted to show the doll.

Holland: The studio was applying pressure because of costs. It became more tension-filled.

Berger: Chucky made a horrible noise when he moved because of the servos—like scree, scree. He was very noisy.

Kirschner: I felt it should be more like Jaws or Alien where you don’t see anything for a long time.

Holland: There was a disagreement as to tone. David made movies for children.

Vincent: I remember being taken off set a couple of times when there was a fight or disagreement. I’d have some big production assistant put me on his shoulders and carry me out.

Berger: What you have to remember is, it took quite a few of us to make the doll work. Someone was doing the hands, then someone else the eyebrows, and someone else the mouth. It was like we all had to become one brain.

Gale: It didn’t really involve me, but I do remember David calling me up at 3 or 4 in the morning just to talk. I told him, “You’re the producer. Put your foot down.”

Kirschner: I won’t go into the near-bloody details of the fight we had. 

Holland: David was a skinny kid then. It never got physical. There was just a difference in temperament.

A difficult performer, Chucky would go on to become the catalyst for strained working relationships on the set.

Kirschner: Kevin Yagher was brilliant at what he did, but he didn’t have a ton of experience. And Tom is screaming and shouting at him.

Holland: It was no knock on Kevin, but it was all the doll could do to take a step.

Berger: Chucky’s fingers would get worn out quickly. The aluminum fingers would begin to poke right through the latex skin. I had this big bag of Chucky hands and changed them three times a day.

Holland: I had a terrible time with the eyeline of the doll. He couldn’t look at actors. The puppeteers were under the set and for reasons I could never figure out, the monitors they had were reversed. He’d look left instead of right.

Kirschner: It took like 11 people to make the puppet work.

Berger: This was a puppet that was radio-controlled who was in half the movie. It was brand-new territory.

Holland leaned on Ed Gale to perform broader movements. Because he was significantly larger than Chucky, the production built sets 30 percent larger than normal to maintain a forced perspective.

Holland: That was something I learned from Darby O’Gill and the Little People. You use forced perspective with overbuilt sets.

Mancini: I thought that was really cool. I love those sleight of hand things.

Gale: Facially, nothing can beat a puppet. But to make it actually work full body, running, or jumping, they needed me.

Mancini: Tom had directed him to walk in a sort of mechanical way, almost like a clockwork. He just marches.

Gale: The puppet would move more smoothly and I’d walk a little more like a robot and we’d meet in the middle. The problem was that I had zero visibility. I’d rehearse and walk through a scene with my eyes closed. It’s like taking a drink while blindfolded. You look like an idiot. I was also set on fire.

Holland: Ed is a very brave guy. 

Gale: I got weaned into it. They set one arm on fire first, then my chest, then both arms. You wear an oxygen mask.

Vincent: I did not want to see that. Ed was my friend and I didn’t want to see him spinning around on fire.

Gale: I did the scene in segments. First I was on fire in the fireplace, cut. Kicking the gate open, cut. Walk out on fire, cut. Each was only about 45 seconds, which is a little less than a lifetime when you’re on fire.

The only close call was when they wanted to drop me into the fireplace. They could see the assistant’s shadow, so they wound up hoisting me up further and I dropped six or eight feet, hurting my back. It put me out of work for a few days. I also got burns on my wrists. Nothing bad.

III: CHUCKY UNLEASHED

After filming on Child’s Play was completed in spring 1988, Kirschner wanted to separate himself from Holland, with whom he had developed an acrimonious working relationship.

Kirschner: The film did not screen well. It tested horribly. Tom had a right to his cut. After that, we took him off the film.

Mancini: David invited me to watch the original cut, which was much longer. It was about two hours.

Kirschner: We invited Don in at certain times to bring him back into the process.

Mancini: At that point, David needed a relatively objective opinion of where the movie was. For him to have me voice mine was very gracious. Not all producers would do that.

Kirschner: We cut about a half-hour out of the movie.

Mancini: Seeing the edit was my first time seeing Chucky, which was thrilling. But the voice in the cut was not Brad. It was Jessica Walter [of Arrested Development].

Holland: I tried to use an electronic overlay to the voice, like a Robbie the Robot kind of thing, because that’s how the toys with sound chips worked. Then I tried Jessica Walter, who had been in Play Misty for Me. She could make the threats work, but not the humor. So we went back to Brad.

Mancini: Tom’s logic was that the voice of the devil was done by a woman in The Exorcist. But her voice, while being creepy, just didn’t fit.

Child’s Play premiered on November 11, 1988. Mancini and Kirschner had already gone to test screenings to gauge the reaction of an audience.

Mancini: The scene where the mom finds out that the batteries are included and still in the box was like a cattle prod. The audience just roared.

Holland: I kept building up to that moment where Chucky comes alive in her hands. The doll does a 180 with his head, which is a nod to The Exorcist.

Kirschner: Brad Dourif ad-libbed the line where he’s in an elevator with an older couple and the wife says, “That’s the ugliest doll I’ve ever seen.” Chucky says, “F*ck you.” The audience loved it.

Vincent: My grandfather rented out an entire theater in our hometown for a screening. I wore a tuxedo.

Lafia: I actually didn’t like when they had a little person in the Chucky outfit, only because he looked thicker and bigger. No matter how well a human being moves, your brain just knows it’s not the puppet.

Mancini: There’s a good shot of Ed climbing on the bed with a knife. I thought most of his shots were very successful.

Earning $33 million, Child’s Play became the second-highest grossing horror film of the year, behind the fourth installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. But United Artists, which had supported the production, made the decision not to be involved in a sequel for a reason almost unfathomable in Hollywood: moral grounds.

Kirschner: It was the second highest-grossing film for United Artists that year after Rain Man.

Mancini: The studio initiated a sequel immediately. I was set to work on writing the script by Christmas 1988. John Lafia, who did a draft of the first, was going to direct it. By summer of 1989, the script was done and going into production. Then United Artists was sold to Qintex Group, and they had a reputation for family entertainment. And it wasn’t a project they were interested in pursuing.

Kirschner: I got a call from the head of the studio, Richard Berger. He said, “David, I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but the company buying UA doesn’t want it. They want to be more like Disney.”

Lafia: We were green-lit and all of a sudden they make this ridiculous pronouncement.

Mancini: Because David was under an overall deal there and they wanted to maintain that relationship, they literally just gave it back to him. And he went out and made a deal with Universal, where we’ve done all the subsequent movies.

Lafia: They basically gave him the franchise for next to nothing. It was an unbelievably stupid thing for them to do.

Kirschner: They were decent guys. I got a call from Spielberg who said, “I know you’re getting calls about this from all over the place, but do me a favor and give Universal the first shot.” Well, of course, Steven.

Child’s Play 2 opened at number one in November 1990.; Child’s Play 3 arrived less than a year later. In 1998, the franchise took a turn into dark comedy with Bride of Chucky, where the maniac finds a love interest.

Vincent: I did the second [movie]. We shot it on the same lot as Back to the Future Part III. I had lunch with Michael J. Fox. It was awesome.

Mancini: John wanted to shoot with a puppet 100 percent of the time, but Ed was around for the whole production.

Gale: Lafia was a complete idiot to me. He did an interview with Fangoria where they asked him if he used me like Holland did, and he said, “No, I hired a midget but never used it.” That’s an offensive word. When Child’s Play 3 came along, I hung up the phone.

Lafia: Ed did a great job, but I wanted to avoid it. He moved too much like a person.

Gale: On Bride of Chucky, they begged and begged, and I finally did it. And then they used the word “midget.” So I refused Seed of Chucky. They filmed in Romania, too, and I don’t fly.

Mancini: I take full responsibility for the line. Katherine Heigl improvised it. That’s wrong, very wrong. But in my defense, no one wrote it.

Gale: One of the reasons they credited me as Chucky’s stunt double was so they could pay me fewer residuals.

Mancini: One reason we used fewer little actors as the series went on is because it’s expensive to build sets 30 percent larger. Each successive movie, we have less and less money. On Curse of Chucky, I used Debbie Carrington to double Chucky—partly because she’s a good friend of mine, and partly because bodies change as people age. Ed physically became too large to play Chucky. It’s just the reality we were facing.

In 2013, Mancini wrote and directed Curse of Chucky, a critically-praised return to Chucky’s more sinister roots.

Mancini: To this day I prefer my concept of the doll being a product of the little kid’s subconscious, but the concept used ended up being gangbusters. Tom was a seasoned writer who made improvements.

Vincent: Starting with the second one, the movies really became Don’s. He came into the forefront.

Mancini: We start production on the next Chucky in Winnipeg in January. It continues the story of Nica, who was introduced in Curse of Chucky. At the end of that movie, she’s taken the rap for the murder of her family and has been institutionalized in an asylum. That’s the basic premise and setting.

Vincent: What’s interesting is that you can tell different types of stories with Chucky. There’s a balance between playfulness and that anger.

Mancini: Even in the movies that aren’t overt comedies, there’s an amusement factor of a doll coming to life. It’s disturbing on a primal level. Dolls are distortions of the human form. They’re humanoid. There’s something inherently off and creepy about them.

Kirschner: Chucky’s become so iconic. When you refer to a kid being awful, you refer to him as Chucky.

Lafia: Chucky has a very unique skill set for a villain, which is that he can be sitting in a room and you don’t think he’s a threat at all. He’s hiding in plain sight.

Mancini: He’s an ambassador for the horror genre, for Halloween, for why we as a culture enjoy this stuff. It’s celebrating the fun of being scared.

Gale: I have the screen-used Chucky hands. No one else does. So if you buy a pair that claim to be worn in the film, you got ripped off.

All images courtesy of Scream Factory.

Chicago is overrun with rats, and residents hope that feral cats will save the day. As The Wall Street Journal reports, an explosion in the Windy City’s rodent population has caused desperate homeowners and businesses to adopt stray felines from shelters en masse. They hope that if they treat the kitties well, they’ll stick around and hunt neighborhood vermin. But thanks to skyrocketing demand, it’s no longer so easy to adopt an alley cat.

Chicago’s weather is notoriously cold, but last year’s mild winter meant that more baby rats survived to see adulthood. They multiplied, and by September 2016, the city’s rat complaints had increased 40 percent from 2015, according to The WSJ.

In response, animal rescue outlets have received so many requests for cats that one rescue program, the Tree House Humane Society’s Cats at Work program, has a six-month waitlist for adoption. (The Cats at Work Program traps, spays or neuters, and microchips feral felines, and gives them to Chicagoans with rat problems.) Paul Nickerson, the program’s manager, was even offered bribes by a local restaurateur wanting to hurry up the process.

“If people found out I was bumping people to the front of the list they would kill me,” Nickerson told DNAinfo Chicago. “I just can’t do it, it’s just not fair to everybody.”

To encourage their wild guests to make themselves at home, people are treating their adopted feral cats like kings. Local brewery Empirical Brewery built its adopted strays a custom, multi-tier cat condo, and other adoptive cat owners have constructed feeding stations, installed heated cat houses, and spoiled their finicky kitties with tasty food.

But feral cats alone won’t solve Chicago’s rat problem. To curb the rodent population, locals are also employing other methods, including injecting dry ice into rat nests to asphyxiate them, offering public education campaigns, and even launching an official Bureau of Rodent Control under the city’s sanitation department.

[h/t The Wall Street Journal]

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In the 19th century, death was simply part of life. High infant mortality, primitive sanitation, and a lack of basic health care meant that those lucky enough to survive were surrounded with reminders of the brevity of life at all times. And nobody was excluded from elaborate mourning rituals dedicated to celebrating and crying over the dearly departed, not even kids.

Created around 1850, this sampler was painstakingly cross-stitched with silk on cotton, presumably by a young girl learning how to sew. It’s dedicated to “Grandmother” and shows some angels crying at a grave. An anchor—symbol of hope and the cross—leans against the grave, indicating that Grandma has probably gone on to better things.

It must have taken the sampler’s creator a long time to sew it: It’s nearly a foot tall and over 15 inches wide. That’s a lot of cross-stitch, especially for a child.

And its creator was more than likely a kid. Samplers were an important piece of the education of any upper-class girl, who would have learned how to do some decorative arts and needlework at school along with reading, writing, and other “accomplishments” like languages and piano.

Samplers weren’t intended as punishments, though it’s hard to envision a 21st-century kid sitting through a long lesson on the ins and outs of fine needlework. Instead, they were a chance for girls to familiarize themselves with a variety of skills and develop the focus and discipline they’d need to do the nearly endless sewing that was the lot of the era’s women in an age before sewing machines. Even if a girl grew up rich, she would still be expected to create fine embroidery or pitch in on charity sewing projects [PDF].

Mourning samplers became popular in the United States after the death of George Washington, which launched a craze for sad sewing projects with plenty of mourning symbolism.

This sampler is currently housed in the storage facility of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. Want to see more? Here are the other mourning samplers in the Cooper Hewitt collection—and you can also view a selection of the dizzying array of death-related crafts produced by 19th-century girls.

Before Creepypasta, mysterious audio recordings on YouTube, and disconcerting clown sightings, the best way to terrorize your friends was by repeating a popular urban legend. As a kind of oral history handed down through the years, these stories typically feature a hapless protagonist who is oblivious to a threat lurking right under their nose—or in the back seat.

With Halloween looming, we’ve rounded up some of the more frightening examples of modern folklore to do some fact-checking and see just how much truth is lurking behind the fiction.

1. THE KILLER IN THE BACK SEAT

The Story: A woman is driving alone at night when she glances in her rearview mirror and sees a vehicle bearing down on her. The car continues to follow her on her winding route, rattling the driver. The mystery man even flashes his brights every so often. Finally pulling into a gas station for help, the woman goes running out of her car. When confronted by a policeman or pedestrian, the stalker reveals his true motivation: He noticed that a man was lurking in the woman’s back seat and kept flashing his lights every time he reared up to try and strangle her.

The Truth: Versions of this story began appearing as early as the 1960s, with the “victim” alternately a teenager driving home from a school play or a woman coming back from a social engagement. Occasionally, the tail would be a massive commercial truck that seemed ready to run her over. The fake-out savior might be a gas attendant, a husband, or a cop who roughs up the “stalker” before his altruistic intention is finally revealed.

At least half of the tale is grounded in reality. Over the years, there have been several incidences of lurkers who have stowed away in the rear seat of vehicles, emerging to attack drivers or simply to evade capture by police. In 1964, one criminal made the mistake of hiding in a car owned by a police officer: the detective turned and fired on his uninvited passenger. The addition of a good Samaritan who notices the danger and tails the terrified driver appears to be pure embellishment, however.

2. THE VANISHING HITCHHIKER

The Story: Hitchhikers typically don’t make life easy for the characters in folk history, and this one is no exception. Typically, the story picks up when a couple of young men are driving along and spot an attractive woman walking on the side of the road. They pick her up and she tells them she’d like to go straight home. The drivers indulge her—but by the time they make it to the address she’s provided, she’s fast asleep. Not wishing to disturb her, the men go to the door and inform the woman who answers that her daughter is dozing in their back seat.

The woman is perplexed. Her daughter has been dead for years. When they return to the car, the passenger is gone, with only her clothes remaining.

The Truth: One of the most flexible urban legends of all time, the Vanishing Hitchhiker has been traced as far back as the 19^th century, where horse-and-wagon rides took the place of a car. In Hawaiian versions, the ghost has even been picked up in a rickshaw. The apparition might have a warning before disappearing; in other versions, she’s known to have died a violent or tragic death while in the process of returning home.

The appeal of a spirit with unfinished business in life seems to have no cultural boundaries: Researchers have found variations of the tale in countries like Algeria, Romania, and Pakistan. There’s even a Swedish tale that was first mentioned in 1602 of a ghostly woman walking along a road who warned two passersby of impending plagues and wars before disappearing.

3. THE LICKED HAND

The Story: In the dead of night, a child (or, in some versions, a young or old woman) hears some strange noises. For comfort, the kid lets his or her hand dangle off the edge of the bed so their dog can lick it in a comforting gesture. The process might repeat itself throughout the night, with the child receiving a few more wet kisses before morning.

When the child wakes up and begins walking around the house, they might find the dog hanging from a noose—or worse, their parents bludgeoned to death. A bloody note reads, “Humans can lick, too.”

The Truth: A particularly grisly legend, the Licked Hand made the rounds in the 1960s as a way to scare marshmallow-roasting campers with a gut punch of an ending. But the tale’s first appearance may have come as early as 1871, when someone wrote of a story they had heard in England about a jewel thief who evaded detection by licking the hand of a man who awoke to strange noises, reassuring him it was only his dog.

4. THE GIRL WITH THE RIBBON AROUND HER NECK

The Story: Two lovers meet and grow consumed with one another. But as their meetings become more frequent, the man becomes curious about the fact that his girlfriend always wears a green ribbon tied around her neck. Time and again, he asks if it’s significant; she always answers that it is, but she can’t elaborate.

Before long, the man grows frustrated at how coy she’s being about the ribbon. Despite his anger, she refuses to take it off, or explain why it’s important. Finally, he takes a pair of scissors to her sleeping frame, snips the fabric—and watches as her head slides off her neck and goes bouncing to the floor.    

The Truth: Unlike many legends, there’s really no pretense that the story has roots in reality. Typically, the punchline evokes laughter and shock; some versions have the woman cautioning that her lover “will be sorry” if he pushes the issue, then admonishes him with a “Told you!” as her head travels across the floor.

In all likelihood, it was writer Washington Irving who got the ball—or cranium—rolling. Irving published a short story in 1824 titled “The Adventures of a German Student” where a young man becomes enamored with a Parisian woman whom he meets while she looks on mournfully near a guillotine. After consummating their mutual attraction, she’s found dead in his bed the next morning. A policeman undoes a ribbon tied around her neck, prompting her head to slide off. Irving’s poor protagonist is quickly committed to an insane asylum. It’s believed that Irving heard this story from his friend, the Irish poet Thomas Moore, who had heard it from the British writer Horace Smith.

5. THE HOOK

The Story: Two young lovers are parked in a make-out spot when a news story breaks on the radio: A killer has escaped from custody, with his sole distinguishing feature being a hook in place of an amputated hand. The woman is unsettled and implores her lover to lock the car doors, which he does. But the thought of the hook crashing through the window begins to consume her, and she pleads for them to drive off. Annoyed, the boyfriend agrees. When he drops her at home, she exits the car and notices that a hook is dangling from the door handle.

The Truth: Aside from the hook-hand twist, couples who parked in designated “lover’s lane” spaces had plenty of reason to be terrified. A former military man named Clarence Hill was convicted in 1942 of several murders in Pennsylvania, with Hill creeping up on unsuspecting car occupants and shooting them through the windows. These attacks and others made for ripe stories over avoiding necking in parked cars in the 1960s: even Ann Landers printed the tale as a “warning” to hormonal teens.

6. THE BABYSITTER WHO ISN’T ALONE

The Story: A teenage girl agrees to sit for a trio of young children while their parents enjoy a night out. At first, the evening is almost mundane: With the kids in bed, the sitter chats with friends and finds ways to pass the time. But then the phone begins to ring. On the line is a sinister voice who advises her to check the children. After multiple calls, the sitter finally dials the police, who phone back with a shocking warning: The calls have been coming from inside the house. The murderous caller was upstairs with the children the entire time.

The Truth: Thanks to the 1979 film When a Stranger Calls, which used this story as the premise for its riveting opening sequence, this might be the most infamous urban legend of all time. The story has been widely told since 1960, with some versions indicating both the children and the sitter meet a bloody end.

The emergence of the story seems to coincide with a rash of media reports about babysitters who were assaulted or even murdered in the ‘50s and ‘60s, lending credence to the idea that it likely came out of a fear of leaving a vulnerable young woman alone in a strange house. Some folklore theorists have also observed that the “man upstairs” conceit spoke to a cultural rebellion over women taking increasingly dominant positions in society instead of adhering to their role as domestic caretakers. Left to her own devices, the babysitter fails to protect the children from harm.

Was it anti-feminist propaganda? Perhaps. But the Babysitter Who Isn’t Alone trope also speaks to a pretty primal fear of being helpless to guard yourself or others from unseen forces. And two-line phones.

All images courtesy of iStock.