20 urban legends that millennials actually believed growing up

The National Enquirer was always known for having everything from alien abductions to Bigfoot sightings on its covers, but in the ‘90s, a new star emerged. The chupacabra was said to be this beast-like dog monster that roamed the deserts of Mexico, and rumor has it even managed to make its way to parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. While no proof of its existence has ever come to light, there are still many who believe it is out there.

Thanks to the movie Dead Man on Campus, this urban legend made its way around that if one’s roommate happened to pass away in college, then the surviving roommate would get straight As.

There was a kid named Mikey who did commercials for Life cereal. Think Jake from State Farm, but a kid and cereal. Anyway, word spread around that Mikey was no longer around because he drank a Coke that had Pop Rocks in it, causing an explosion of sorts. Since then, many kids have dared to try, resulting in nothing more than the realization that perhaps the kid from the Life commercials simply grew up and was no longer the spokesperson.

Slasher movies popularized the idea that monsters would take out teens who did the deed, so it is not surprising that there were urban legends surrounding that very idea, like Hookman. Every area has its own version, but overall, he’s known as a man with a hook for a hand who uses it on unsuspecting victims in areas that are deemed “make out” points for local teens.

Millennials were the first generation to grow up with the internet. Of course, not everyone had it, so there was still an allure about it, a mystery to it. That made it incredibly easy to believe that if one didn’t forward an email chain, bad luck was bound to find them.

No one knows the origin of it, but all it took was one kid telling another kid in the ‘90s that if they were to swallow gum, it’d be in their stomach for several years. Scientifically, that’s just not the case. In reality, gum takes less than 48 hours to make its way through the digestive system.

There is no evidence to support the idea that one will cramp up and potentially drown if they swim after they eat, but that did scare many millennials into taking lengthy 30-minute breaks during the summer months by the pool.

Movies and TV shows had millennials swearing up and down that New York City subways were swimming with alligators.

How many millennials were told to eat the crust of their bread to keep their curly hair intact?

Millennials likely make up the biggest sector of Disney Adults, and rightfully so. They were kids during the studio’s best years, the Renaissance. This means their attachment to Disney, and Walt Disney, runs deep — so deep that many didn’t blink twice when they heard that the man who started it all had his head frozen so that one day, scientists could bring him back. This urban legend grew with time. Many still believe it due to the newest rumor: Frozen was created so that when people Googled “Disney Frozen,” that movie would pop up, not the story about the man’s head.

This urban legend came from Boomer parents who just wanted their kids to stop turning on the lights in the car. They would say it was against the law, and the cops would pull them over. That alone left millennials shaking in the backseats with their hands away from all lights.

It’s been said that green M&Ms, in particular, are an aphrodisiac, but no one is sure why because they’re all chocolate.

All it took was one sleepover in the ‘90s to learn about Bloody Mary, the woman who’d appear in the mirror if you said her name three times in the dark.

Once millennials got online, a whole new world opened up, including urban legends. It didn’t take long for one to come around about one of their favorite childhood shows, Rugrats. It’s a dark one that really takes the magic away from the Nickelodeon series.

Every year of the ‘90s saw at least one kid on a playground in America freaking out over the idea that a watermelon was going to grow inside of them because they swallowed a seed.

Considering that no one really knew where Paul from The Wonder Years was at the time, and the internet was still fresh, it was easy to go along with the idea that shock rocker Marilyn Manson was once on the award-winning series as the best friend. Of course, there was absolutely no truth to that. The real Paul, Josh Saviano, actually went into law after he was done with acting.

To deter kids from going to the bathroom in the pool, they were told there was a chemical that turned urine blue. The fear of embarrassment kept a lot of pools cleaner than they originally would’ve been.

Stranger danger of the ‘80s bled into the ‘90s, and with that came the idea that someone would spend their days putting razor blades into Halloween candy.

Slender Man is a product of the modern internet, so it’s definitely something the younger millennials dealt with on forums like Creepypasta. In many ways, Slender Man is the 21st century's first boogeyman.

As the world approached the year 2000, anxiety levels were high because everyone was under the idea that once midnight struck, technology would go wild. Computers would shut down, planes would fall from the sky, data would be breached, and a whole lot of other misinformation swirled around, but in the end, everything was fine, and New Year’s Eve was uneventful.