These stories are collected from around the world, but they all have one thing in common: they'll make you want to sleep with the lights on tonight.
by Luisa Pesos, Jun Tsuboike, Delia CAI, Victor Stefano, Tanner Greening, Jessica Lima
This Halloween, BuzzFeed writers from around the world have come together to bring you nine of the scariest stories from their countries.
Some are urban legends, some are a part of each country's folklore, and some are just sad reminders of humanity's cruelty... but they'll all keep you up in fear tonight.
Curiously, many of the stories have their own versions in each country, such as the US's tale of Bloody Mary, who in Brazil is known as "Loira do Banheiro" (The Bathroom's Blond Woman).
We tried to pull together a good selection, but this list could be a lot longer! If you have a good ghost story from your own region, please tell it in the comment section below!
O Corpo Seco (or "The Dried Body")
New Line Cinema / Via jornaldoguacu
Hi, it's Mary. I’m at the corner store now.”
The phone rings a third time and a voice says, "Hi, it's Mary. I'm in front of your house now."
The girl works up the courage to open the front door but sees nobody there. Must be a prank, she thinks–and then the phone rings.
"Hi, it's Mary. I'm right behind you."
Bloody Mary:
This urban legend is about a young girl named Mary Worth, who was very pretty and would spend hours admiring herself in her bathroom mirror.
But one day, she suffered a terrible accident, and her face became so disfigured that nobody could stand to look at her. One night, after deciding she had to see the damage for herself, she crept into the bathroom, stared at herself in the mirror, and broke down screaming and crying. She wanted her old face back so badly that she walked into the mirror, vowing to find it, and was never seen again.
To this day, she haunts mirrors, and young girls can summon her — if they dare — by turning off the bathroom lights, turning around three times, reciting “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary” and looking into the mirror, where the gruesomely disfigured Mary Worth will appear.
Hotel Cecil:
The Cecil Hotel opened in 1924 in Los Angeles, where it became a notorious site for crime and tragedy. It became residence to at least two serial killers and a place where many guests committed suicide by jumping out of the windows
This creature was once described as having a "shriveled body with an ugly face full of pustules" and has been sighted in several cities in southeast Brazil.
A few years ago, the Corpo Seco (which roughly translates to dried body in English) was seen on top of a wall in a cemetery in Mogi Guaçu, São Paulo. "I always thought this was just an old story linked to cemeteries, but no, I saw with my own two eyes that the Corpo Seco exists, and I don't want to go near that cemetery again," retiree Maria Aparecida Soares Branco told her local paper.
There are many different versions of the origins of Corpo Seco (also known as Unhudo or Big Nails), but it is consensus that he was once human, and was a very cruel man when he was alive, with some stories calming that he even beat his own mother. When he died, the ground rejected his buried body, and his corpse kept returning to the surface. After having his eternal rest denied, he turned into the Corpo Seco.
The Corpo Seco is thought to have the power to dry out and kill trees, but also to suck the blood of humans on deserted roads in the dead of the night.
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