Every state has its own urban legend. While some stories, like Washington state's Bigfoot, have entered mainstream pop culture, others have stayed local, like the poisoned girl at Centennial Hall in Nebraska.
However, urban legends exist all over the world, and we've scoured the globe to find the eeriest and most pervasive ones, from Nessie living in the depths of Loch Ness to a 19th century town in India whose residents seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
Keep scrolling to see 15 urban legends from around the world that just won't die.
The Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman, is said to roam the Himalayas by the Sherpa people.
Sherpas are a Nepalese ethnic group, not just an occupation or a verb, like many people believe. According to CNN, the word translates to "people from the East." They're best known as the seemingly superhuman climbers that help others ascend Mount Everest.
But they have a rich culture and history, including the legend of the Yeti. According to the BBC, there are more than a few stories about Yetis, and what they are exactly. The generally accepted description of a Yeti is "an enormous, shaggy ape-man with huge feet and aggressive sabre-like teeth." It's said to reach about six feet tall, and produce footprints that are around 13 inches long.
One story says that a village of Sherpas were being tormented by a group of Yetis, so they decided to trick the Yetis into getting drunk and fighting each other. The surviving Yetis declared revenge, and moved up higher into the mountains, periodically coming down to terrorize the Sherpas.
Over the years, explorers have flocked to the Himalayas to try and find evidence of the beast. In 1921, a journalist named Henry Newman interviewed locals who told him about the existence of a "metoh-kangmi," which means "man-bear snow-man," according to LiveScience. Newman mistranslated the "metoh" part to mean "filthy," and he chose to use the word "abominable" instead. Thus, the Abominable Snowman was born.
The American counterpart to the Yeti is none other than Bigfoot.
The legend of Bigfoot begins in 1958, when journalist Andrew Genzoli published a letter from a reader of the paper he worked at. The letter detailed mysteriously large footprints that loggers in northern California had found. "Maybe we have a relative of the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas," Genzoli wrote, according to History.com.
Ever since then, the country has been hooked on trying to spot this giant creature, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where alleged sightings have been the most frequent. There have been dozens of movies, books, podcasts, and articles written about Bigfoot.
As Insider previously wrote, Bigfoot has been called a "ferocious beast who attacks loggers and hikers, or a gentle giant who wants to be left alone. "
The Indian village of Kuldhara was seemingly abandoned overnight, and no one knows why, though there are a few eerie theories.
There are structures in the town of Kuldhara that date back to the 13th century, but no one has lived there since 1825, when all its residents seemingly vanished into thin air.
According to local lore, 1,000 villagers completely abandoned their home overnight, without a trace. No one knows why they left, where they went, or even saw them leave.
Theories as to why they left range from poisoned wells to a greedy ruler levying high taxes to a dwindling water supply, though none of those explain why the inhabitants left so suddenly.
You might be wondering why no one has tried to resettle the town — that's where the legend comes in. It's said that the village chief cursed the land: apparently, anyone who tries to live there will die.
