Urban Legends That Turned Out To Be True

Summary

The video revisits stories often dismissed as urban legends, folklore, or eyewitness mistakes, and describes evidence suggesting that some are based on real events. In several cases, the phenomenon is real, but its precise cause remains uncertain.

Ball lightning

Reports describe luminous balls appearing during thunderstorms. Physicist Roger Jennison said he saw a blue-white ball pass through an aircraft in 1963. In 2012, a Chinese research team recorded a glowing ball after a lightning strike in Qinghai. Its light suggested the presence of silicon, iron, and calcium.

One proposed explanation is that lightning vaporizes soil, creating a hot cloud of silicon that burns as it mixes with air. Other explanations include visual effects caused by lightning’s magnetic fields. The video notes that the aircraft report remains unexplained.

Animals falling from the sky

Reports of fish rain date back centuries. The video describes fishfalls in Wales in 1859 and repeated falls of small fish in Lajamanu, Australia. One proposed explanation is that waterspouts—tornado-like storms over water—lift aquatic animals and carry them inland before dropping them. Similar falls of frogs have also been reported. This mechanism is plausible, though the video does not establish it as the explanation for every report.

Alligators in New York sewers

In 1935, a young alligator was reportedly found and killed in a Harlem sewer. Decades later, sewer-system manager Teddy May said workers had reported alligators there since the 1930s and that he had seen some himself. The video presents the individual find as documented, while treating claims of a persistent sewer population more cautiously.

“Rat kings”

The term refers to rats found with their tails tangled or stuck together. A specimen found in Germany in 1828 reportedly contained 32 mummified rats. X-rays of another specimen showed fused tail bones, suggesting the rats had been joined while alive.

In 2021, a veterinarian in Estonia filmed 13 live young rats tangled together. Dirt, straw, droppings, and other material in a nest may freeze around their tails, trapping the animals. The condition is rare and generally fatal for the rats.

Meteorites

Stones falling from the sky were once rejected by many scholars. After a large shower of rocks in Normandy in 1803, physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot interviewed independent witnesses and compared collected stones with one another and with material from other falls. The evidence helped persuade the scientific community that rocks do fall from space; they are now called meteorites.

Milky seas

Sailors have long reported vast areas of uniformly glowing ocean. In 1995, the cargo ship Lima reported a milky sea off Somalia. Satellite imagery later showed a glow covering more than 15,000 square kilometers. In 2019, the yacht Ganesha encountered another large glowing area near Java.

The leading explanation is bioluminescence from vast numbers of bacteria, though researchers are still investigating the exact conditions that produce such extensive displays.

The Green Man of Pennsylvania

The legend describes a faceless man with green, glowing skin who walks roads at night. It was based on Raymond Robinson, who survived a severe electrical accident as a child that left him blind and badly injured. He walked at night to avoid public attention, and local stories grew around sightings of him. The video says the green glow was a myth, not a physical feature.

Gorillas in early travel accounts

The Carthaginian explorer Hanno described hairy people encountered on an expedition along Africa’s west coast. Later European accounts of similar animals were often dismissed as fanciful. In the 19th century, missionary Thomas Savage and a scientific collaborator described gorilla remains, adopting the name from Hanno’s account. Debate remains over exactly which animals Hanno encountered.

The hidden chamber at Mount Rushmore

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum planned a “Hall of Records” inside the mountain, but the larger chamber was never completed. Work began on a tunnel in 1938 and stopped the following year.

In 1998, Borglum’s family placed a titanium vault in the tunnel floor containing porcelain panels about key U.S. documents, the monument, and its sculptor. The chamber is closed to visitors.

The okapi

Reports from the Congo described a shy, striped forest animal that Europeans had not seen. Harry Johnston sent striped hide samples to London, where they were initially mistaken for evidence of a new horse. Later examination of a hide and skulls showed that the okapi is a relative of the giraffe, not a horse. It is difficult to observe in the wild because it lives in dense tropical forest.

Earthquake lights

Reports describe flashes or glowing balls near earthquakes. Photographs were taken during a prolonged series of earthquakes in Matsushiro, Japan, in the 1960s, and later accounts came from places including Quebec and L’Aquila. A 2014 review selected 65 historical reports, many associated with fault zones.

One hypothesis is that stress in rocks produces electrical charges that travel upward and illuminate the air. This remains a theory, not a reliable means of predicting earthquakes.

The Beast of Gévaudan

Church records and other historical accounts document a series of fatal attacks in 18th-century France, although the number of victims varies among accounts. Several hunts failed to stop them. The killings reportedly ended after a local hunter, Jean Chastel, shot a large wolf-like animal in 1767.

The animal’s identity remains uncertain; possibilities include a wolf or a wolf-dog. The silver-bullet detail came from later fiction, not the historical account.

Researchers and sources mentioned

• Roger Jennison — Physicist who reported seeing a luminous ball aboard an aircraft; his account appeared in Nature.
• Two Austrian physicists — Proposed a magnetic-field explanation for some ball-lightning reports; unnamed in the subtitles.
• Chinese research team — Filmed and analyzed a luminous event following a lightning strike in Qinghai; individual researchers are unnamed.
• New Zealand scientist — Proposed a soil-silicon explanation for ball lightning in 2000; unnamed.
• Antoine Lavoisier — Investigated a reported meteorite fall and initially rejected it as an ordinary stone struck by lightning.
• Jean-Baptiste Biot — Investigated the 1803 Normandy meteorite shower.
• Stephen Miller — Examined satellite imagery related to the 1995 milky-sea report.
• Unnamed 2014 research team — Reviewed historical reports of earthquake lights.
• Toru — Japanese dentist who photographed lights during the Matsushiro earthquakes; surname not given.
• Thomas Savage and an unnamed scientific collaborator — Described gorilla remains in the 19th century.
• An unnamed rat scientist — Discussed rat kings and their likely formation.

Other historical and documentary sources cited include Hanno’s voyage account; the Roman writer Pliny; travel accounts by Andrew Battell and Henry Morton Stanley; reports by Harry Johnston and an unnamed Swedish officer; reports in The Times; French Academy of Sciences investigations; church and burial records concerning Gévaudan; and imagery from an American military weather satellite.