Urban Legends

Legend Name
Legend Category
Description

Information:
There are many variations on this legend, but one common theme involves Mary Worth, a pretty young girl who suffered an accident and was disfigured in her face. Her parents hid all of the mirrors in the hour from her, but one day Mary got too curious and found one. When she saw her reflection she went inside looking for her old image. Today she's said to come out of the mirror and attack anyone braze enough to summon her by looking into the mirror and calling her name three times.

Country
USA
Legend Tags
Legend Category
Description

Located at 131st and Southwest Highway, the legend is reported as the following: In the 1890s, a man by the name of Butcher had a butcher shop that was getting low on meat supplies. A shipment of beef came one day and Butcher's trainee was carrying the load to the basement meat locker. He tried to take too much at one time and he fell down the stairs. His neck snapped and he died on the spot. Butcher didn't know what to do and he thought that the police would think that he pushed his assistant down the stairs. So, instead of telling anybody, he hid the body in the meat locker. When the young man's parents came looking for him, Butcher told them that he hadn't seen him in several days. The boy's father was skeptical about the story and went to the police. Detectives questioned Butcher at length. They left but Butcher became more and more uneasy about the situation. Seeing that livestock was getting harder to come by, Butcher came up with a ghastly idea. He went back to his shop in the dark of night and cut up part of the boy's body, then wrapped it up and sold it as beef. His customers thought the meat was great and wanted more. Butcher cut up the rest of the body until it was all gone. He was worried that if his customers couldn't get more of the meat that they would start asking where they could get it for themselves. So Butcher would go out at night and find hobos from the railroad and bums that he knew wouldn't be missed. He offered them free food to get them to come to his shop. Then he murdered them and sold them as beef. His customers loved the meat but then he had the problem of not having any stock again. After the first child disappeared, the people were worried but never imagined that there was a murderer among them. When more children went missing, they started wondering what really happened to Butcher's apprentice. A mob of local men broke into his shop and started searching. In the meat locker, they found packages of body parts and the remains of one child hanging from a meat hook. The angry mob went to Butcher's house and dragged him out on the lawn. They attacked him with knives, axes and hammers. They cut off his head and buried it under the fire pit on Indian Hill. His body was buried in a nearby cemetery and his name was the only thing on the gravestone. Reportedly, you can hear his meat cleaver banging against the headstone and they say it is the sound of Butcher cutting up his victims.

City
Palos Park
State
Illinois
Country
USA
Legend Tags
Legend Category
Location
Central Texas Hills
Description

Excerpt from "Horse Miracles" by Brad & Sherry Steiger, pages 65-70: "The Devil Rider is a strange manifestation that some of the people of the central Texas hills claim to have seen before every major conflict in which the United States has become embroiled." The exact site where the Rider appears (first recorded account 1861) is not disclosed but it reportedly sits on the location of an old Spanish Fort where Comanche Indians massacred the entire garrison, around 1700. Reportedly, the Devil Rider appears on his enormous black steed out of nowhere and then vanishes, along with his horse's tracks. He is reportedly adorned in armor including: iron gauntlets, a Spanish helmet, a buckle with an inscription of a crown & lion, and two brass single barrel pistols of 18th century design with the look of fine Spanish Craftsmanship.

State
Texas
Country
USA