Where did you grow up?
Buffalo, NY, actually. I guess the psychiatric condo craze is sweeping the nation. After looking at the web site, it appears the condo conversion in Buffalo is still a work in progress but the site gives you a nice picture of the creepy castle.
You always heard about the kid that stuck his hand/head/arm out the window of the moving bus and got it cut off, but you never knew WHO it was, or how long ago. I bet it was started by parents so kids would be scared of trying it.
It really happened- there was an article in the paper about it last week…
Well, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was partially based on the story of Ed Gein, but that’s nowhere near the story you heard 
Growing up, I lived down the street from a really old graveyard. I think it hadn’t actually even been used since the 1800’s. It wasn’t a family plot, but it was pretty small - wait, managed to find a street view of it on Google maps!
Anyway, you can’t see it in the picture above, but way in the back right corner, there was a stone box that looked like a grave*, but the top of the box was slightly open. Supposedly, if you looked in, you could see a body. I looked, and you couldn’t. It just looked full of leaves and sticks. Of course, I didn’t dig around, so it could have actually contained a really old skeleton, but who knows.
*it wasn’t marked and was very plain, but a lot of the very old gravemarkers were so worn you couldn’t read them, anyway
My mom taught me not to reach in the change slot of payphones or slot machines because people put hypodermic needles with AIDS on them in there.
Which reminds me…there was a math teacher in our school with a glass eye. Every single year at the student faculty game I’d overhear some upperclassmen telling 7th graders that last year Mr. R’s eye had fallen out and the whole gym watched and listened in stunned silence as it rolled across the floor. The school was grades 7-12. I went to 6 student faculty games. My sister went to 3 before I arrived there so we are certain that this didn’t happen at any of those 9 games. Still, every year the 7th graders would be told that it happened last year.
Oh and…don’t ask him about it he’ll give you an automatic F if you ask him about it.
A customer at the deli I worked in explained he always used straws 'cause his mom told him that the cases of soda and beer get delivered early in the morning and left outside places and dogs pee on them.
Of course, Zappa and cooper were friends, and I’ve heard Cooper say several times that, early in his career, when sick rumors like this would come out, he’d try desperately to tell the media, “That’s not true! We never really did that!”
But, he says, Zappa would advise him, “Don’t try to deny it! This is the greatest publicity you could ever ask for! Embrace it!”
Cecil Adams really is …
The answer is pretty much Mike Warnke, who made a killing for a while scaring the bejeebers out of the American church with his pack of lies. Look him up on Wiki, and read the damning article Cornerstone magazine wrote about him. http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/sellingsatan.htm
They really popped his balloon, but I heard years later that he was back doing speaking gigs in churches. Man, that guy is going to hell on a rail.
And coming from me, that’s not a metaphor.
Bubblegum balls sometimes contained live spiders
Decapitated car accident victims were “kept alive” in a special hospital ward
Babies had been found dead; when autopsied, their brains contained ants (who had eaten their way in through the ears)
Passionate lovers had been found, trapped in their cars, unable to move
Mass murderes were regularly released from prison, roaming at large on Halloween eve (ready to collect more victims)
…
The gum one. And yep. ALWAYS 7 years.
All the typical Halloween scares (poison, razor blades, Satanic cults, etc.).
The golf-ball thing, which immediately struck me as stupid.