5 Creepy Stories That Prove Horror Movies Are Real
by Pauli Poisuo
There are people who say that just reading the news is way scarier than any horror movie could ever hope to be, and that saying is stupid. The creepiest thing is when you straight up combine the two. Basically we’re saying that literal news stories exist in the real world where people find themselves in the middle of something pants-crappingly terrifying, and they’re the absolute worst.
Dog Licks A Man, Man Loses All His Limbs
The worst kind of horror is always that which is totally unexpected, in the middle of what you thought was a seemingly sweet, everyday situation. Take Greg Manteufel, a Wisconsin guy who really, really liked two things in life: Harley Davidson motorcycles, and dogs. One day, Manteufel felt inexplicably weak, developing mysterious bruises and blood spots that made it look like he’d been roughed up with a baseball bat. He fell so ill that he was admitted to the hospital. Unfortunately, the doctors had some grave news: his body had gone septic. As awful as this was, the reason this happened was arguably even more horrifying. And cute:
He had been licked by a dog.
Yep, some happy hound Manteufel had stopped to pet, and that had almost certainly loved him from the bottom of its little doggy heart, had contracted one of the worst transferable things a person can face. This wasn’t the work of a passive-aggressive werewolf, either; the dog had unwittingly transmitted bacteria called Capnocytophaga Canimorsus, which is completely harmless to healthy dogs and cats, but can cause (deep breath), “severe sepsis and fatal septic shock, gangrene of the digits or extremities, high-grade bacteremia, meningitis, endocarditis, and eye infections.” This is usually transmitted via an actual bite, but Manteufel was, to put it mildly, particularly unlucky.
People
Going forward, we doubt the dog was referred to as “just the bestest boy.”
To save his life, the doctors started to cut away pieces of poor Manteufel. They amputated his hands. They amputated his feet. Then, they amputated his legs all the way up to his kneecaps. To add insult to injury, the bacteria also attacked his face and started eating away at his nose, which, fortunately, the doctors feel they can probably rebuild with “extensive repairs.” However, what they didn’t amputate was his positive outlook. Throughout the whole horror movie ordeal, Manteufel has been a true rogue, maintaining an “it is what it is” attitude and refraining from any negativity.
Besides, hey, at least he got to pet a dog.
Spa Offers “Vampire Facials” And Bloodborne Diseases
We here at The Modern Rogue are more about giving you cool information than offering restrictive life advice, but we feel that this should be pointed out: If someone offers you a “vampire facial” and you happily accept, there’s a chance that you’re the real life equivalent of a character who isn’t going to survive until the end of the movie.
For those of you blissfully uninitiated with the procedure, a vampire facial involves draining your blood, then spinning it in a centrifuge for a while to “isolate platelet-rich plasma,” then injecting the end result directly in your face. We’re not face scientists, so we can’t officially state what we’re privately thinking, but it’s probably close to, “AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” Regardless, we can point out that actual experts have stated that the effectiveness of the facial is “purported” at best, with any potential benefits taking a long time to materialize, and the whole procedure involves a bunch of pain and bruising which ... kind of seems to defeat the whole point of making your face prettier.
Now, imagine what would happen if you decided to receive one of these procedures, sitting down in front of the TV afterwards and deciding to watch the news. In the thin slice of the screen you can make out through your bruised, swollen face, you could just maybe catch a glimpse of a news chyron that says, “VAMPIRE FACIAL HEALTH SCARE.” That’s pretty much a True Blood episode, without leprechauns porking unicorns, we guess.
Pixabay
“Are you ready to look fabulous?”
One day, an Albuquerque vampire facial receiver developed what the story tactfully describes as “an infection,” thought to have resulted from a vampire facial performed in a local spa. Continuing to feed the darkest corners of our imagination, the New Mexico Department of Health proceeded to comment that they had found “problems” with how the facility handled the needles, and that the person giving the treatments was “not a medical professional.” Those three things are all firmly in the Top Four of news you don’t wish to hear after partaking in a weird fringe treatment where people play with your blood, then shove it back inside you.
That Top Four was immediately rounded up by the next piece of news, as the department urged everyone who had received vampire facials in that location to report for testing, and started throwing around words like “HIV” and “hepatitis.”
Wheelchair-Bound Woman Home Alone With A Pissed-Off Bear
On the surface, this story seems like a ridiculous B-movie. Maybe the logical conclusion of that very specific genre of stalker flicks we’ve seen in recent years. “From the producers who brought you Deaf Woman Stalked By A Killer In A House and Blind Man Stalks Everyone In A House, a brand new horror thriller where this time, the bad guy who’s already inside the house is a freaking bear.” Blake Lively might star, and chainsaws would probably be involved.
But this is the real world. When horror slaps you in the face, it doesn’t give you a sporting chance. So instead of a plucky heroine with ample “final girl” potential, the angry ursine found itself facing a 71-year-old, terrified lady in a wheelchair.
In July of 2018, Apryl Rogers from Groton, New Hampshire rolled to her kitchen. To her, it was just another cozy Tuesday morning, right up until she saw the bear. In her kitchen. The animal had strolled through an open screen door that had closed behind it. The only way out was now coincidentally blocked by Mrs. Rogers. So the bear went through her.
Pixabay
“Next time pick up some Doritos!”
Some nasty (but thankfully non-life-threatening) wounds to the head and neck later, the bear smashed through a window and escaped into the woods. The lady was soon found and rushed to the hospital, because good neighbors tend to notice things like an entire bear crashing through your window. And the authorities started a little horror scenario of their own, tracking down a human-attacking bear in what would soon turn out to be such awful weather that it was virtually impossible to find.
If you modify your perspective just slightly, you realize that this was clearly a horror scenario for both Mrs. Rogers and the bear. Imagine the animal just strolling around and entering an enticing, food-smelling space. Just as it’s contemplating raiding the pantry, it hears a noise from behind ... and its only exit is suddenly blocked by a scary human rolling around in some strange contraption. It barely escapes, but now a whole lot of even scarier humans are hunting it down.
Alligator Chases A Teenager Up A Tree And Starts Stalking Her
Ah, the evergreen story of survival against violent predators, as told before by “creepy animal stalking human survivor” horror movies like Cujo and The Shallows. Of course that crap had to happen in real life, and of course it had to be something even more vicious than a rabid St. Bernard or a suspiciously intelligent shark.
It was one of those things that could only happen in Florida: A 15-year-old girl was rafting on a creek in Ocala National Forest, when suddenly, an 11-foot alligator charged at her out of nowhere. The quick-thinking teen recognized the situation for what it was and grabbed a nearby branch, scrambling to the temporary safety of a tree overhanging the creek.
Really picture this situation: A young girl with no means of escape, dangling over the water where a huge alligator had just attempted to attack her. Though “attempted” might be a generous word. In reality, it remained in the water under the girl, stalking her and hissing at her. If you’ve never heard an alligator hiss, this is considerably more disturbing than what you’re probably imagining.
The reason we’ve heard about this story at all (except perhaps in found footage format) is that the girl’s mother happened to be nearby. So 911 got a call: “My daughter’s stuck in a frickin’ tree and there’s gators surrounding her! Oh my god! Please hurry! Please hurry!” A deputy was quickly dispatched at a double-please-hurry speed, arriving on the scene in an almost unfairly movie-like nick of time.
The girl was just about to lose her grip, and the alligator was still hanging around because of course it was. The deputy appears to have tried to scare the gator away, but this approach was most decidedly unsuccessful. Instead of fleeing the scene, the animal started advancing at the deputy. Fortunately for him, he knew what he was up against, and used his rifle to kill the animal.
What makes the whole thing strange is this: Creepy as it may sound, hissing is generally considered a defensive behavior in alligators. So either this particular one really subscribed to the “offense is the best defense” newsletter, or it was protecting something. Its young, maybe? Or a secret meeting of Floridian animals who are finally planning to regain the state from pesky humans? There’s really no way to know for sure.
Multiple “Dead” People Have Been Found Alive Recently
Morgues aren’t the most cheerful places at the best of times, but when the dead start coming back to life, things get really serious. Comatose or otherwise, disinclined people have been misdiagnosed as dead for roughly as long as the sky has been blue. But the advance of modern medicine and its groundbreaking techniques such as “actually checking for the pulse for more than one second” have mostly rendered these unfortunate situations extinct. Mostly.
People who are not quite as dead as medicine has declared them still wind up in the morgue from time to time. And when we say “from time to time,” well, these are just the cases from 2018.
First, a prisoner in Northern Spain woke up just hours before his autopsy, after being declared dead by three different doctors. Then, a Chinese man suffering from stomach cancer was particularly unresponsive one day, so he was pronounced dead and taken to a mortuary. He woke up as the morticians were applying his burial makeup to his face, which presumably led to some fairly abrupt conversation and a quick change of pants for everyone involved.
Pixabay
Absolutely, positively, probably dead.
Next up, we move to Chicago, where a 17-year-old teen was shot several times in the head during a nasty gunfight that left five wounded and one dead. You probably already guessed that the kid we’re talking about was not the “one dead” in this scenario. Rather, he was already covered with a sheet, when all of a sudden he started moving. After being rushed to a hospital, the authorities were left slapping at each other in a “What exactly just happened?” confusion.
Finally, there’s the horror movie-est horror scenario you could imagine: In South Africa, a morgue worker just casually opened a cold locker ... finding that a car crash victim inside was still breathing. And while we don’t want to pile on an individual country in a trend that is clearly reaching zombie outbreak levels of vague memetic threat, we can’t help but notice that South Africa seems to have made something of a trend of this. In 2016, another crash victim was declared dead at the scene, yet he was still breathing when his family came to see the body. In 2011, a man who hadn’t been able to wake up was sent to a private morgue, where he woke up by himself and spent the next 24 hours locked inside the place, desperately pleading for help.
The reason it took so long was that when he started making noise, the attendants ran for their lives. Because duh, he’s obviously a real-life extra from The Walking Dead.
