BRAZILIAN URBAN LEGENDS OF THE 80'S

At the time, most of us had not even heard the term "urban legend", which only became popular in Brazil with the horror film launched in 1998. Still we were scared to death of many of the "stories" below - or all of them. In general, who told the stories swore that had happened to a neighbor's cousin's sister's nephew's girlfriend godfather. In other words with an acquainted.

So to brighten the week, let’s go to a nostalgic session of Brazilian urban legends from my childhood:

1. Xuxa – The Killer Doll
The toy version of the most famous Brazilian’s children shows presenter was already ugly as hell, with mushy legs and arms and weird body dimensions. To worsen it, they needed to create a legend that at night, while sleeping the doll would scratch the child to death. The funny thing is tht this myth arose right before the debut of the movie “Child’s Play” starring the disgracefully bad doll named Chuck.

2. The Knife Inside The Fofão Doll
The male version of the Xuxa Doll but even more evil, someone decided to invent that the Fofão Doll (the doll of a famous fictional character in the former Brazilian children's television show called Balão Mágico) came with a knife hidden inside its body and mesmerized children would open it and make misery with the blade – I mean, cut their parents or friends.

3. Devil’s Secret Messages In Lps
A bizarre characteristic of the 80’s: someone just needed to become successful for everybody to say they had made a pact with the Devil. From Xuxa to The Menudos, very few scaped the rumors. And the legend was that playing the lps backward subliminal satanic messages could be heard. Imagine the amount of broken turntables from people trying to see if it was true back then.

4. The Tenebrous Crying Children Paints
Between the 70’s and 80’s an italian painter called Giovanni Bragoling (also known as Bruno Amadio) produced 27 crying children paintings. The series became a mega success around the world. And rumors that the artist had sold his soul to the Devil and that there had been unexplained fires in homes of owners of these paintings spread. One of the alleged evidence would be easily visible to those who turned the paintings upside down. It is said that a demonic hand clutching the child’s neck would appear.

5. The Surprising And Deadly Infected Needle
Sounds like a Horror Movie starring women that like to gossip but it’s a terrorizing urban legend. It is said that someone had been spiked sitting down on the theater armchair and soon after that discovered to be infected with AIDS or some other deadly disease. There are numerous versions of this legend on the internet, some saying the needle was on the movies and others saying it was on a bus seat.

6. The Snake In The Park
It could have really happened? Yes, it could. But it’s suspicious by the number of different versions widely spread out there.

The terrifying story of a child who entered in an amusement park toy and died because no one noticed that there was a poisonous snake inside of it.

7. The Clowns Gang Of The White Van
Many people today get tense when close to clowns or when a white van approaches. According to the myth a group of clowns in a white van circulated by the cities kidnapping children to steal and sell their organs on the black market.

8. Candy Mixed With Drugs
The legend said that street sellers injected cocaine into candies and sold them near schools to get kids addicted to drugs. This could have happened for real and something like that actually did happened in Rio De Janeiro in the end of the 80’s. Van Melle candies were seized containing drugs inside. But the reason would not have been to get children addicted but to sabotage the competition.

Well, we may never know if any of these urban legends are true or not but as that Spanish proverb says: “Yo no creo en brujas, pero que las hay, las hay”.