Unmasking Urban Legends: Facts You May Not Know About the Stories You’ve Heard

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Getting struck by lightening twice: True

The odds of getting struck by lightning are like 1 in a billion. What about the odds of the same person getting struck twice? In a case that Ripley’s did recently, a woman with M.S. named Mary Lancer was accustomed to living her life in a wheel chair. One day, when it was storming, lighting hit the house and traveled up the metal rails that she had in her bathroom. Not realizing anything was amiss, she grabbed onto the bar in an attempt to relieve herself and she was shocked instantly. Miraculously she lived, she was actually able to get up and start walking. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. She was back in a wheel chair within months. This didn’t stop the lightning from reaching her again. Months later, it happened again when she was outside of her house trying to get into shelter before another storm. She was too late and she was struck again in her wheelchair. Once again, she was able to walk. What’s fascinating about this story is that people with MS have extreme spinal issues that can be severely aggravated if given an electrical shock. So why was Mary able to walk? Divine Intervention maybe?

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Every person in the country swallows a certain amount of spiders when sleeping-Neither true nor false-Nobody really knows how many insects we swallow during a pleasant night sleep. No such case is on formal record anywhere in scientific or medical literature. I have heard about spiders hiding in the inner ear and ones that crawl up the nose.

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Saying candy man three times into the mirror-Neither true nor false-No one knows because everyone is to afraid to do it. I wouldn’t do it, would you?

Swimming in a lake of bacteria and something swims up your internal parts-True-There is actually only one documented case in history and it happened in a third world country where a fish that had certain types of suction on its mouth swam up inside the man’s part and suctioned on the inside of it. This caused enormous amounts of pain and lead to death.

Flesh eating bacteria-True-There is a known case in Kentucky by the name of Mark Tatum. His wife had noticed he was getting very ill and complaining about constant headaches. He was often confused and losing functioning of his body. His wife took him to the ER and within hours he had lost his eyesight. After testing Mark, they found that he was infected with a sinus bacterium called Mucor “bread mold”. The surgeons immediately took him into surgery and removed his nose and eyes to prevent further infection.

The Devils hour at 3:15 am: True

Check out my article Running into the Devil at bedtime and you’ll know the answer to this one. More like the Devils time to play.

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