Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: A bloodsucking vampire

haunting a decaying cemetery,

creepy clowns abducting children into the woods,

and a video game so dangerous, it could kill you.

Have you ever been warned about conjuring an angry spirit

by repeating the words "Bloody Mary"

in front of a mirror?

Or maybe you've considered the possibility of a giant beast

named Bigfoot.

These are just a few examples of modern mythology

called "urban legends."

For centuries, humans have told extraordinary tales

of mystical creatures and supernatural events.

And today we continue the tradition

by sharing stories of things like creepy encounters

and cursed objects

and inhuman entities.

Where do these urban legends come from,

and could they be true?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

SHATNER: It is said that aspects of what make us human

are the capacity for abstract thought,

moral reasoning, and creative expression,

which may explain our habit of sharing outrageous stories

that make us question the nature of reality itself.

Might the legendary Bigfoot wander the Pacific Northwest?

(creature growling)

Could Area 51 be hiding

extraterrestrial secrets?

Or are there places where you can really stumble upon

a portal to hell?

These are but a few of the countless questions

raised by the thrilling tales we call urban legends.

An urban legend is a modern folktale.

And we tell them for the reasons

that people have always told folktales.

They are there to entertain.

They are there to horrify us.

A good urban legend is based on being plausible--

or nearly plausible--

but also very unexpected and-and unusual.

And the best ones tend to work

because they're not something that can be easily verified.

I think that's part of the appeal.

We are attracted to the mystery.

TOK THOMPSON: Urban legends come out of nowhere

and spread very, very quickly.

A lot of these legends are about scary things.

Monsters, ghosts,

horrible things that could go wrong.

People are expressing their fears.

So there could be somebody saying

they saw something strange in a particular area,

and then these stories become repeated,

sometimes embellished,

oftentimes kind of made more and more compelling

-as time goes on. -(girl screams)

The real heyday of urban legends was the 1970s and the 1980s.

The legends circulating at that time

were stories like the vanishing hitchhiker,

which is about the motorist who drives past a young woman

on the side of the road and she asks for a ride.

And when he gets to the destination, she's gone.

Usually, he finds out that a young woman died

at that exact curve in the road some years before

and this happens regularly.

EMILY ZARKA: When I think of urban legends, I definitely think about

the story of the teenage couple making out in the car

and then, you know, being accosted by someone

with a hook hand and murdering them.

There will always be legends we can't fully explain.

I think that part of human curiosity

is that we want to believe in the unknown.

SHATNER: While some urban legends seem too far-fetched to be true,

there are, in fact, stories whose origins

are shockingly real.

JOSEPH LAYCOCK: Urban legends could be

based on some sort of true event,

and it got, perhaps, exaggerated,

or the names and places were changed.

One example is that there are urban legends about alligators

that have gotten flushed down the toilet as babies

and now live in the sewers and eat sewer workers.

A.J. GENTILE: Alligators living in the sewers.

Now, that urban legend caught fire

because people really were bringing home baby alligators.

So it evolves from there.

You start to think, "Well, if that happens,

then this can happen."

So a baby alligator suddenly becomes

a giant killer out in the sewers.

THOMPSON: The fun thing about urban legends

is they often overlap with reality.

Maybe worries about pollution or government testing

could be expressed in contemporary legends

about mutant creatures that have

grown up around these testing sites.

We know that radiation does cause mutations.

We've seen this with Chernobyl.

These are real concerns on real contemporary issues

that people express very often in these narrative forms.

SHATNER: Are urban legends just modern-day fairy tales

meant to entertain the human psyche?

Or could they be a kind of warning

to protect us from the strange and unknown world around us?

Perhaps the answer lies with one seemingly impossible tale

about how a human being can suddenly erupt into flames.

CHAD LEWIS: Spontaneous human combustion is the urban legend

that through some chemical reaction,

the human body will spontaneously burst into flames,

leaving the person nothing more than a mound of ash.

The belief that you can spontaneously combust

goes back hundreds of years.

In the 1800s, some of the most popular writers

talked about spontaneous human combustion.

Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Herman Melville,

they all depicted spontaneous human combustion

in their writings.

We have to wonder, what is it

about spontaneous human combustion

that has made it such an enduring legend

-over these centuries? -(woman screams)

SHATNER: Authorities rush to the home

of 76-year-old retiree Michael Faherty.

Once inside, they're faced with a tragic scene.

Please be advised, some images may be disturbing.

LARRY ARNOLD: Inside Mr. Faherty's home,

it was said that his body was burned badly,

as was the ceiling above him and the floor beneath him.

Accelerants were searched for,

thinking this might be a case of arson.

Accelerants were not found, so that was ruled out.

The medical examiner was Dr. McLoughlin.

After nine months of investigating the case,

he declared it to be, remarkably,

death by spontaneous human combustion.

What the first responders found

in answering the call at the Faherty residence

was a mystery then and remains a mystery to this day.

ANDREA KITTA: The coroner decides that this spark

has come from within the body.

It couldn't be from anything else.

It has to have come from within.

We'd like to think that if there's a fire,

there's a way for us to get away,

but the idea that the fire is in us,

that is really kind of scary, I think, to everyone.

SHATNER: The thought that a human being

can mysteriously burst into flames

is truly alarming.

But what could have led this coroner

to deliver such a bizarre diagnosis?

Well, as with many urban legends,

this strange event seems to have happened more than once.

One of the better-known cases of spontaneous human combustion

occurred to Mary Hardy Reeser in July 1951.

Photos show two firemen shoveling up her ashen remains.

The entire pile of ash weighed about eight pounds,

a remarkable weight reduction overnight.

More remarkable was the lack of fire and heat damage

to surrounding materials, including daybed linen

only a few feet from the fire scene.

This mystified the local St. Petersburg police

and fire departments.

So mystifying that the police department

kept this an open file that is unsolved.

That's how extreme this fire scene was

in trying to explain it.

SHATNER: Remarkably, over the last three centuries,

there have been around 200 reports

of people allegedly bursting into flames.

(man screaming)

SHATNER: And until we can properly understand this medical mystery,

spontaneous human combustion will remain

an urban legend that continues to smolder.

(garbled screaming)

The existence of the legend I don't think

is a mystery at all.

Spontaneous human combustion has been consistently reported

time and again in different literary means,

reported by doctors, reported by police officers.

These are authoritative accounts.

And it really puts spontaneous human combustion

into the category

of a weird thing that keeps happening.

How many times do we need to see a human body

disintegrate into ash to wonder what's going on here?

SHATNER: This sprawling Victorian-era graveyard

is the final resting place of around 170,000 people.

It was first consecrated in 1839

as part of a plan to create seven new cemeteries in London.

Its age and unique design create an otherworldly space

where the living and the dead come to meet.

Highgate Cemetery was first laid out

in the mid-19th century.

There's avenues and there's circles

and there's winding paths, and you can get very lost there.

It's a very creepy place

because the Victorians were obsessed with death,

and they loved creating necropolises,

and that was one of them.

So there's so many kind of spooky, dark,

moss-covered columns and tombs.

You always do feel

that there's just something lurking around the corner--

if not behind a headstone-- waiting to jump out at you.

SHATNER: While Highgate's Victorian monuments to the dead

create a spooky impression,

the cemetery is perhaps most famous for being the home

of a monstrous urban legend.

It is said that this old graveyard

is the haven of a bloodthirsty creature

known as the Highgate Vampire.

TONY McMAHON: In 1970,

there were rumors that circulated

that a vampire had been seen in the cemetery.

The Highgate Vampire story happens at a time

when there's a lot of interest in the occult, in horror.

You've got the Hammer horror films in the cinemas,

there's the Dracula series with Christopher Lee

playing the vampire.

And, really, that kind of feeds into the public consciousness.

But I defy you to go to Highgate Cemetery

and not feel a sense of fear.

If there's gonna be a vampire anywhere,

it's gonna be in Highgate Cemetery.

THOMPSON: The vampire tradition,

it's a very old tradition in Europe.

Now, the traditional vampire was a loathsome, repelling creature,

someone who is so evil and rotten in their soul

that when they die and you bury them,

their soul is not gonna leave that body.

Their soul is gonna get up with that body

and then go terrorize the local communities.

They drink people's blood.

A Highgate Vampire is a-a combination of things

that emerged around the late 1960s and, uh, 1970,

around Highgate Cemetery.

There are accounts of an evil presence

that people have claimed to have seen,

and you've got a real sort of panic on your hands.

SHATNER: Could a vampire really be terrorizing Highgate Cemetery?

What would cause people to even consider such a claim?

LAYCOCK: In 1969, there had been some pretty serious vandalism

and grave desecrations going on in Highgate.

It was not uncommon to find bodies that had been

dragged out of their coffins and left lying in the path.

You have rumors of satanism.

David Farrant ran a group called

the British Psychic and Occult Society.

So, he was interested in all kinds of supernatural topics.

So, David Farrant decided to do a sort of investigation.

He did an all-night vigil in the cemetery.

And he said that while he was doing this,

he saw a dark figure moving across the cemetery.

It was about seven feet tall.

And when this sort of shadowy figure looked at him,

he was hypnotized by its eyes.

He felt paralyzed.

So, after having this encounter,

he eventually wrote the local newspaper.

He said, "I have seen this mysterious specter

in Highgate Cemetery, has anybody else seen this?"

And it turned out, lots of people

had seen strange things in the cemetery,

and all the rumors about a vampire began to accumulate.

There are accounts of these vampires being seven feet tall,

uh, that they have red eyes,

that people are seeing these crypts that have been opened,

and they see these bodies that don't look alive,

they don't look dead, they look somewhere in between.

And so, clearly, something's happening.

SHATNER: Could the tales of frightening encounters

with a red-eyed vampire be the result

of an overactive imagination,

or was there something truly sinister going on

at the century-old cemetery?

In 1970, another brave soul

believed he found the source of the unholy activity

happening at Highgate.

Sean Manchester presented himself

as a Christian occultist,

much in the style of Dr. Van Helsing

from the Dracula movies.

So, Sean Manchester said,

"I know what's really going on at Highgate."

He said it is a king vampire from Wallachia.

Wallachia is a principality in what today is Romania

that was once ruled by Vlad Tepes,

better known as Dracula.

And he said this king vampire was brought here

sometime in the 1700s,

and it's dormant beneath the cemetery.

And he also claimed that all of this vandalism

that's occurring in the cemetery,

it's this satanic cult, and it's performing

these powerful rituals in the cemetery at night

for the purpose of resurrecting this king vampire.

SHATNER: A king vampire being resurrected by a satanic cult?

It sounds more like a frightening campfire tale

than the truth.

And yet, in March of 1970--

on Friday the 13th--

this story would become forever engrained in modern folklore.

BELL: The Highgate Vampire story

escalates once it gets to the national media.

And they broadcast, um, that there was gonna be

a sort of an exorcism of this thing

in Highgate Cemetery.

On Friday the 13th, of course.

And once that's on the news,

two hours later, a mob, essentially, forms up.

Highgate Cemetery is swamped with amateur vampire hunters.

Apparently, the police are there,

they can't hold them back.

They kind of swarm over the gates of the cemetery

hunting for this vampire.

SHATNER: It was reported that around 100 people went hunting

for the Highgate Vampire,

but the fabled creature was never found.

And while skeptics are quick to dismiss the idea

of a bloodthirsty demon that roams the cemetery,

like many urban legends,

it seems that something strange really was happening.

The question is, what was it?

LAYCOCK: There were definitely very strange things

going on in Highgate,

in addition to vandalism with pseudo-satanic rituals.

One detail that's often ignored

is that there were a lot of dead foxes

found at the cemetery, supposedly drained of blood.

We still don't know what killed these foxes.

So, this is often how urban legends form,

at the intersection of unexplainable phenomena

and then folklore rushing in to build a story

about that mystery.

Was there really a vampire

prowling the grounds of Highgate Cemetery?

Or was it a case of mass hysteria?

Perhaps the answer may be found by examining

another famous urban legend

about mysterious figures that lurk in the shadows

known as the men in black.

SHATNER: Since the 1940s,

both sightings and strange encounters

with unidentified flying objects

have sparked countless urban legends

of close encounters with extraterrestrial beings,

civilian abductions and testing on alien spacecraft

and livestock found mutilated

as the result of otherworldly entities.

But one of the most fascinating legends

surrounds the mysterious men in black.

AARON GULYAS: The legend of the men in black

is that ever since the dawn of the UFO age

in the late 1940s,

UFO witnesses have been silenced,

have been threatened

and have even possibly been physically harmed

by the men in black in their pursuit of the truth

behind what UFOs might be.

These figures are usually considered to be agents

of any number of government agencies,

but there are others who believe that the men in black

might be agents of an organization

that is so deeply hidden within our government

that we don't even know its name.

KITTA: The men in black usually show up after someone's seen a UFO

or seen some sort of strange light in the sky.

They try to dissuade them from talking about the UFO.

Uh, sometimes they take any evidence

that people have of the UFOs,

including pieces of it or photographs,

and they strongly encourage them not to talk about them.

SHATNER: Is there really a top secret government agency

that employs mysterious agents

to suppress extraterrestrial secrets?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining the origin

of this long-standing urban legend,

and the tale of a prominent ufologist

from the 1950s named Albert K. Bender.

Albert K. Bender is really the origin

of the men in black legend.

He worked for the Air Force during World War II.

But by the 1950s, he started something

called the International Flying Saucer Bureau,

and it published a newsletter called the Space Review.

In 1953, in the Space Review,

he wrote, "I've discovered the secret

"of the flying saucers.

"I know what the flying saucers really are,

and I'm going to tell the public."

But he never did tell the public.

Instead, he shuttered

the International Flying Saucer Bureau

and stopped investigating UFOs.

SHATNER: What would compel Albert Bender

to suddenly go silent?

Well, nearly a decade

after his strange change of heart, in 1962,

Bender shared an unsettling explanation in his book

titled Flying Saucers and the Three Men.

LAYCOCK: What Bender eventually said was,

"These three men in black came to my house,

"and they said, 'We know what you've been doing.

"'You're getting too close to the truth.

"'You need to stop talking about this right now,

or there's going to be serious consequences.'"

They acted as if they were from the government.

That they were very frightening.

GULYAS: When the men in black initially contacted him,

Bender claimed he felt the temperature in the room drop,

he got an excruciating headache

and heard a voice telling him

to not delve any more deeply into the flying saucer mystery.

And it terrified Bender so much that he was completely happy

to shut down his flying saucer organization,

and to refuse to talk about the topic,

even to his closest friends.

SHATNER: Did men in black with strange powers

really scare Albert Bender into silence?

While skeptics dismiss the claims as pure urban legend,

many have wondered,

"Why do stories of men in black still persist?"

LEWIS: In the summer of 2008,

residents outside of Needles, California

saw something shooting through their sky.

It looked like a long cylinder.

It was covered in a turquoise blue flame,

and it crashed on the side of the Colorado River.

And in a matter of moments later,

big sky copters came with a crane,

removing whatever debris had crashed there.

The next day, townsfolk noticed

strange, men-in-black-looking government officials in town.

They were intimidating witnesses that it would be

to their best interest if they did not speak

about what they had seen.

The Needles crash in 2008 contains many

of modern-day tropes of what we think of men in black.

SHATNER: Who were the strange men

allegedly intimidating residents of Needles, California?

Well, according to urban legend,

these mysterious beings might not even be men at all.

GULYAS: There are several things that witnesses have experienced

that have led people to believe that

the men in black could be extraterrestrial in origin.

They act like creatures

who maybe have learned how to behave like humans

from monitoring our mass media.

Are these government officials?

Are they extra-dimensional creatures?

Are they some combination of the above?

We don't know that.

But there's a kernel of truth

at the heart of the men in black legend.

Ever since the beginning

of the flying saucer age in the late 1940s,

there have been persistent reports

of men dressed in black threatening, intimidating,

or otherwise silencing UFO witnesses.

This is a real story.

Are the rumored men in black

covering up the existence of UFOs?

And who are they, really?

When it comes to urban legends, the fact is

that you can't always trust your eyes and ears.

Like in the case of a rash of creepy clown sightings

that swept the United States in 2016,

before spreading across the entire world.

SHATNER: Authorities are inundated with calls

as freaked-out residents

report a strange figure prowling the streets.

And what they describe seeing

is a disturbing presence

of a very unusual kind.

MAY: On August 1, 2016,

people in the Green Bay area

start seeing this mysterious clown

that's haunting the street, seems to be lurking.

And that clown is absolutely terrifying.

It is a white-face clown,

but then you've got smudged, creepy accents

around the eyes and the mouth.

He's holding this bouquet of black balloons.

Suddenly, everyone is talking about this clown

that seems to be haunting the streets of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

SHATNER: This menacing clown was later revealed to be part

of a marketing stunt for a new horror film.

But it seemed to have sparked

something very strange to happen,

when similar reports of creepy clowns

started popping up everywhere.

McNEILL: Later that month, we were getting reports

from other places.

Greenville, South Carolina, children were reporting clowns

at the edge of the woods offering them money

to follow them into the forest.

And that fear, that anxiety catches on,

and thanks to the Internet, it spreads around the world

in a matter of days or even hours.

Now we get images, videos.

Parents are freaking out.

Police stations are getting phone calls.

They're hearing about predators

in the environment dressed as clowns.

MAN: Oh, my God.

McNEILL: And people tried to figure out

whether that's a real, genuine threat,

or whether that's someone setting up an elaborate hoax.

MAY: The creepy clown craze

of 2016 was this remarkable moment

in pop culture history.

At last count,

19 different countries had their own clown sightings

within that period.

It bears all those earmarks of really good folklore,

really good urban legend, because this taps

into that same existing fear about traveling

into the woods by yourself, and protecting children.

But now it's got this extra level of absurdity,

level of creepiness, with a clown being the threat

that's emerging from the woods for the kids.

SHATNER: Is there any truth to the urban legend

that there are dangerous madmen

in clown costumes seeking to harm our children?

While it sounds like the stuff of nightmares,

reports of sightings of creepy clowns awoke a mass hysteria.

MAN (panting): Oh, my God.

What's even more bizarre about this whole thing is

that it's not even the first scary clown craze to happen.

Going all the way back to 1981, in the Boston area--

this is the first time we really see a widespread clown sighting.

Children are saying that they saw a clown

approach them in a van, and then immediately disappear

before any kind of police could make it to the scene on time.

And it's important to note that no clown ever was found

at this particular clown hunt.

SHATNER: In 1981, reports of creepy clowns also appeared

in Omaha, Kansas City, Denver, Providence and Pittsburgh,

but thankfully, there was no real evidence

that clowns were abducting children.

But based on the sheer terror that these reports inspired,

it begs the question,

"How have we become so afraid of clowns?"

Nothing in modern pop culture has changed more than clowns.

In the 1800s, with the height of the circus,

the clowns were the most popular performers.

They were the A-list celebrities.

They were the ones that everyone went to the circus to see.

They entertained us, made us laugh.

(laughter)

But today, pop culture has portrayed clowns

as evil beings,

from Pennywise in Stephen King's It,

to Killer Klowns from Outer Space,

to Batman's nemesis, the Joker.

They have painted them as things that are sinister,

creepy, and possibly deadly.

(eerie cackling)

SHATNER: While evil clowns have certainly become part

of the popular culture, tragically,

the urban legend became all too real in the 1970s,

with a serial killer named John Wayne Gacy.

MAY: John Wayne Gacy is one of the most infamous

serial killers in American history.

He murdered many teen or very young boys.

Would lure them back to his home and then murder them

and bury them under his house.

And when he's arrested, it kind of comes to light

that he also happened to moonlight as a clown

for local hospitals.

LAYCOCK: John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer

who had a persona called "Pogo the Clown."

So, this really cemented into the American consciousness

that there really is such a thing as a killer clown,

and that people who dress as clowns--

they may only be performing as a clown

so that they can have access to children.

SHATNER: John Wayne Gacy's alter ego-- Pogo the Clown--

is a grim reminder

that a dangerous madman could be hiding

under a layer of grease paint.

One of the things that always lingers for me

with the creepy clown craze was,

who were the actual clowns?

The people standing outside elementary schools,

standing under streetlights at night.

We never got the follow-up stories.

And that tells us something about the creepy clown craze.

We weren't looking for answers.

We were looking to be scared.

Is it possible that we're in for another wave

of creepy clown sightings in the future?

Or is the phenomenon just an elaborate hoax?

Perhaps time will tell.

However, there is another urban legend

that's been a mystery for more than 185 years.

It's the story of a demonic entity

that terrorized London known as...

Spring-heeled Jack.

SHATNER: Around 9:00 p.m.,

an 18-year-old Jane Alsop,

a young woman born into Victorian high society,

hears a rattle outside her front door.

She looks outside and sees a mysterious figure

who identifies himself as a policeman

and asks her for assistance.

Believing him, she opens her door.

And very soon, she'll wish she hadn't.

He's kind of wrapped in this cloak,

and he says he's a policeman.

And he throws off his cloak.

And then, she kind of suddenly sees he's got this strange face,

with these big, red eyes.

He looks very sort of inhuman.

And then, she realizes he's also got claws.

And he blows this sort of a ball of flame in her face.

Kind of describes it as a blue-white flame.

And then, he lurches at her, he starts to attack her.

This man began to claw at her face, her neck,

her arms and her dress.

She was screaming and struggling,

and luckily, her sister heard her.

Jane was actually being dragged out of the home.

-(Jane screaming) -Her sister, fortunately,

was able to get her back inside,

but not before Jane's dress was almost completely torn off.

SHATNER: Who or what attacked Jane Alsop?

Her attack made headlines all over London,

and a wave of terror flooded the city.

Because this was not the first woman

said to have been attacked by a shadowy figure

that is known in urban legend

as Spring-heeled Jack.

McMAHON: In the 1830s,

this curious story emerges in the newspapers

that there is an attacker

on the dark, foggy streets of London,

called "Spring-heeled Jack,"

who has eyes that are like balls of fire,

who has claw-like hands,

who wears this skintight black costume,

and who can jump enormous heights.

LAYCOCK: So Spring-heeled Jack

is a type of urban legend

that's sometimes called "a phantom attacker."

So, in phantom attacker stories,

there is someone who is attacking people,

but it's not killing someone.

About 50 years after Spring-heeled Jack,

we have the Jack the Ripper murders.

Jack the Ripper is not a phantom attacker.

He's an unidentified serial killer.

-(woman screaming) -But there are similarities with the panic

over Spring-heeled Jack in that we have someone who is

stalking the streets at night, attacking women,

who nobody seems able to identify or catch.

SHATNER: While Jack the Ripper was a very real killer in 1888,

the urban legend of a phantom attacker

with superhuman abilities does sound a bit hard to believe.

But incredibly,

after reports of Spring-heeled Jack

started appearing in the 1830s,

they continued...

for decades.

BELL: Spring-heeled Jack sightings lasted

a very long time.

They dip in the sort of late '50s

into the early 1860s.

He then gets reimagined as this penny dreadful character.

Penny dreadfuls were cheap publications in serialized form.

And this seems to sort of reignite a lot

of the folkloric tales again.

And then, he's seen in Wales.

He's seen up in Scotland.

There's a sighting in Liverpool in 1904.

In Sheffield, he was known to be around the region

until the First World War.

So, you've got a character

that if it is the same individual,

is coming up for at least 100 years since he first appeared.

SHATNER: Was there really a fire-breathing superhuman

with claws,

preying on women for 100 years?

Well, some experts believe that details

of this mysterious attacker were embellished,

like many good urban legends.

And some suggest

this monster served as a cautionary tale

for Victorian women living in 19th-century London.

McNEILL: The time period in which

Spring-heeled Jack emerged was the 1830s.

So, we're pretty much smack in the middle

of the Industrial Revolution at this point.

Industrialization changed a lot.

It moved people out

from pastoral spaces into urban spaces.

It created a lot of congestion,

people living on top of each other

in sometimes rough conditions.

And the story that we see is of this bizarre criminal,

targeting women specifically in this urban setting,

and in so many ways,

this is just really quintessentially

the fear of the unknown stranger.

So, this is clearly a concept

that women are often in danger of predatory creatures,

whether they be human beings or not.

BELL: Spring-heeled Jack does speak to some of that violence

towards women in the Victorian period.

It's almost kind of reinforcing the notion

that women should just be sitting at home,

and the public sphere is kind of the masculine sphere.

But it was something that was often spoken about

in this time period.

And so, there is a sort of a controlling element to this.

SHATNER: Was Spring-heeled Jack invented

to keep 19th-century women at home?

It's certainly possible.

But if that's true,

then why has this story reemerged in the modern age?

SHATNER: A family is taking a taxi ride through town,

and suddenly, they witness something

that's impossible to explain.

They see a figure jump over a highway divider,

run across two lanes of traffic,

and then somehow leap up a 15-foot embankment,

all within the span of about two seconds.

On top of this, they said,

whoever this was had no facial features.

So, this is a really strange encounter,

and it sounds a lot like

the original Spring-heeled Jack sightings from the 1800s.

SHATNER: Has Spring-heeled Jack returned

to begin a new reign of terror?

Only time will tell.

But there is another urban legend of a different kind

that started in American arcades,

about a game said to possess

mind-altering powers.

SHATNER: The video game revolution takes over America,

and gamers flock to arcades throughout the city.

And it's said that there is one

legendary game that people are lining up to play.

The only problem is, it might cost you your life.

It's called...

Polybius.

KITTA: So, the Polybius urban legend is

that there was this game console that was

placed in certain arcades.

People would play it, and it was supposedly

either controlling their mind,

or in some cases, we also hear

that people were having headaches or seizures.

It was causing them to have some sort

of medical condition because of the game itself.

GENTILE: Kids are getting into fights.

They're becoming aggressive.

Some of them are dying.

And where these games were installed,

men in black suits would come and tinker with these games.

And it's believed that these were some type

of government agents that were altering the equipment

in order to see what effects that Polybius would have

on the people playing it.

But the thing is, there's no actual evidence that it existed.

SHATNER: If there's no proof of Polybius,

then where did this urban legend come from?

The only known evidence of its existence can be found

where many modern urban legends are born--

the Internet.

McNEILL: Polybius

really comes down to a single website in 1998--

the Coinop website

that discussed different arcade games

from the 1980s

that has an entry for this game, Polybius.

So, whether that website grew out

of people's memories of the game, or whether

that website created people's memories of the game,

that was really the linchpin

that leads to the entire legend catching on as it did.

SHATNER: Is the story of Polybius a complete fabrication,

or could there be some truth to a dangerous video game?

Well, perhaps the newfound form of entertainment in the 1980s

really did warrant some caution

and even fear.

The arcade phenomenon was a new one.

And in the early '80s, that's what kids did.

There was one kid who played 28 straight hours,

ended up making himself sick over it.

Kids were playing this Tempest game,

and they were having seizures.

Another game, called Berzerk,

a kid has a heart attack, and then a couple of weeks later,

another kid has a heart attack on the same machine.

This was a lot of concern for parents

who didn't really understand what video games were.

SHATNER: Did fears of video games warping the minds

of America's youth create the urban legend of Polybius?

Perhaps.

But the bigger question is not how urban legends begin,

but why they continue to endure from one generation to the next.

LAYCOCK: It's often hard to find the origin of an urban legend.

But it spreads because it's a good story.

Something about it appeals to people's experience.

And that's why they tell it.

There's something about it

that's articulating something important.

McNEILL: There's a well-known saying

about urban legends among folklorists,

which is that legends might not always be true,

but they're always getting something right.

The world is full of experiences, real things

that people see, witness,

experience for themselves,

that they can't explain.

And those are the things where we fill in those answers

with urban legends.

(beeping)

So, what's the verdict?

Can people spontaneously combust?

Are mysterious men in black hiding among us,

concealing the truth about UFOs?

And what about Spring-heeled Jack?

Was he real?

You know, it's easy to be skeptical, but the truth is,

not a single one of these modern myths

have been definitively debunked.

So, if you happen to catch a glimpse of some creepy clowns

prowling around your neighborhood,

perhaps it's better to close the blinds,

lock the door,

and let them

and all other urban legends remain...

unexplained.

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