The Craziest Things People Have Thrown in the Trash
By Sarah Jones
10 months ago
1. Mannequin heads
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This is the stuff of nightmares… When garbage collectors came to pick up some trash near an old theme park, one of the collectors suddenly screamed and turned white. All his colleagues could get out of him was the word ‘heads’ – and for good reason. A torn, battered garbage bag revealed tons of bloody heads, which seriously shook up the rest of the garbage team. However, on closer inspection, it turns out they were just a bunch of old mannequin heads that had been used in the theme park’s haunted house.2. Ricky Williams' papers
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3. A top-secret US embassy desk
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A garbage collector in Stuttgart, Germany came across a very unusual bit of trash during the early 1990s. On Sperrmüll day (when people would throw out their bulk refuge) the trash collector would see a lot of new and useful items being thrown out of rich houses like skis and bicycles. One day, he found a desk have been thrown out, and he decided to take it home. He found a binder with RESTRICTED ACCESS with the US embassy logo on, and he rang them straight away to come and collect it. They arrived in an hour!4. Meth
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Garbage collectors were confused after they got a call from an office they collected garbage from. The woman who called them said that whenever her employees wheeled the bin back up to the office, it burned their skin. After some conversations between operational managers and environmental officers, the garbage company was able to investigate, and found that the bin was involved in some super shady activities. The office was actually next to a meth lab, and the neighbors were secretly disposing of toxic chemicals in the office trash.5. A body
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This is a pretty gruesome one – and it’s done the rounds on the likes of Reddit and Twitter. A guy who was working at a recycling plant in Springfield, MA remembered the time a dumpster was bringing back a ton of rubbish to the plant, and he noticed a strange smell as the trash was tipped out. At first, he didn’t think anything of it (it is trash after all) but he then noticed something sticking out of the trash that made his blood run cold. There was a purple arm on show. Apparently the poor man had crawled into a cardboard bin when he was drunk the day before, and had met his end when he was compressed into a cube of trash.6. Gulf war photos
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Another one from the early 1990s. A trash collector had picked up some bins from a city center in England, and noticed a fancy leather-bound photo book sticking out of the trash. He nabbed it and decided to have a look at what was in it. There were pictures of soldiers smiling and laughing as they completed some training in some leafy parts of the UK, but the trash collector couldn’t work out where it was. The pictures of the training camps quickly turned into snaps of a dessert, and the collector realized they were of the Gulf War I.7. Bedazzled bugs
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A garbage collector was gathering up trash on the floor of a building that had a major bug problem. He went to grab a cardboard box that was outside an old lady’s apartment, and noticed that she had carefully decorated the interior of the box to resemble a hotel. She had also left a sign up to encourage people to drop bugs in there. At first, the garbage collector thought she was doing this to collect proof of the ongoing bug problem, but a few weeks later, he saw that she was actually putting pins in the bugs to hang up around her flat. Oh, and they were bedazzled with rhinestones. Obviously.8. High school chemistry lab
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When trash men were collecting garbage from an old high school (it had closed back in the 1960s) they found tons of hazardous old chemicals. There were glasses and jars of things like thermite, as well as sticks of yellow phosphorus, which were dunked in some yellow-colored liquid that had evaporated. There were even racks of things like mercury, a pound of powdered asbestos, powdered sulfur, potassium – you name it, it was there. The garbage collectors were concerned that the whole thing was going to blow up!9. A guy's ashes
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During his day shift, a garbage collector made a startling discovery. When he was sorting the trash for a house in his neighborhood, he found a guy’s ashes – but they weren’t protected in an urn, vase or ornament. They were just in a standard plastic tub that funeral homes typically give out to families, which had all the man’s personal details printed on the side. The garbage collector believed that the family of the man had thrown his ashes into the trash on purpose. We wonder how that came about…10. A photo album stabbed with a knife
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A former garbage collector found himself going viral after he recalled his tales from working on a landfill. One summer, he was surprised to find a customer asking him if could bury something, and ask the landfill worker to dig a hole in the ground for him. The customer was in a jet-black Cadillac with tinted windows and fancy rims. The worker didn’t really fancy switching machines to dig a hole for the customer, so he offered him the animal pit instead. The man tossed a book in the pit and drove away. The worker then found an old photo album, which had a knife stuck in it.11. A bag of dead rats
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This one is pretty foul. A couple of garbage collectors were called away from their usual route by their supervisor one day, who asked them to come and meet him at a specific location. He asked the workers to look up at the tree they were standing next to, and saw a huge mass of bags that had been hung 20 feet off the ground. The supervisor rang the police and fire department, who made arrangements to cut the bags from the tree. When it fell, there was a disgusting smell, which turned out to be a huge bag of dead rats.12. Drafts of famous cartoon characters
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When a couple of garbage collectors were picking up trash from some old lots in Hollywood, they came across something pretty special. This particular Hollywood lot regularly threw out old props they had been using, but this time around, they had got rid of some animation cells (these are transparent sheets that can be drawn on, and are typically used for cartoon productions). These animation cells featured famous cartoon characters like Woody Woodpecker and Buzz Buzzard. The trash men were delighted with them!13. Cash - lots of it
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There’s been a LOT of reports about garbage men finding people’s cash in the trash over the years, but every now and then, a small fortune seems to be found (and often in the most random places!). One day a garbage collector was sorting through some things that a person had thrown away, and he discovered a whopping $4,000 stuffed inside a cereal box. He seemed to think that the money belonged to some travellers who had been living in caravans in the area, and made sure the money was returned to them straight away. Not everyone would be so honest though…14. Diamond rings
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Just like cash, diamond rings have ended up in the trash now and then. However, there was one particular ring that caused chaos for garbage men in New York City. A woman had mistakenly thrown her very expensive diamond ring in the trash, and decided to pay to have one of the enormous barges that transported waste from Manhattan to Fresh Kills landfill removed from service. She paid for thousands of garbage collectors to sort through the trash until they found her precious ring, which was eventually recovered.15. Brand-new electronics
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Some garbage men are pretty good at sussing out the best finds from trash. A guy on Reddit explained that his friend’s dad was a garbage man, and would often drive to all the shops like Walmart and Best Buy near his daily route. Every week, he’d go through the dumpsters of these shops and sort through the trash, hoping to find cool stuff that they had thrown away. And he definitely wasn’t disappointed; he made off with everything from televisions and laptops to phones and iPads, which he later sold on eBay.16. People
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So it turns out that people put themselves into dumpsters all the time. Tons of garbage collectors say they’ve found homeless people sleeping in skips over the years, which has had dire consequences. Some end up getting crushed into cubes, while overs are accidentally delivered to landfill or garbage processing facilities. And garbage companies have confirmed it. “It’s fairly frequent that we have homeless people mistakenly fall asleep inside a dumpster and delivered to a landfill or other processing facility”, said Kelly Sarber, President & CEO of Strategic Management Group.17. An elderly couple's bondage gear
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Reddit threads are always interesting, and one based on what garbage men have found over the years got pretty wild pretty quickly. A guy said that his dad had been a garbage man for over 30 years, and that he always remembered a sweet, elderly couple that would often stop and say hello to him on his rounds. One day, the garbage man was picking up a bag of rubbish from their house, and a black PVC harness fell out. At first, he thought it was a dog harness, but then more items fell out of the bag, including a whip and a ball gag. Uh oh…18. James Franco's poetry
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I mean, it’s not every day that you find the early poetry of a Hollywood star! A Reddit user decided to unveil the wildest thing he’d ever found in the trash, and it happened to be James Franco’s handwritten poetry. It turns out that the actor and writer was getting his MFA at the Reddit user’s school where he was completing a word-study placement with his garbage and recycling crew. The Reddit user stashed the poetry, but he didn’t reveal whether he kept hold of it or decided to sell it. We’ll never know.19. A brand-new BMW
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Hear us out with this one. A Reddit user recalled the summer he spent cleaning and caretaking apartments around his hometown, and a fair few of the apartments belonged to students from overseas. A lot of these students happened to be super wealthy, and were known for leaving ridiculously expensive items behind in the apartment. The most outlandish item the Reddit user ever came across was a brand-new BMW, which someone had decided to abandon in the parking lot. We wish we had that kind of money…20. Puppies
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A former garbage man told his son about the crazy things he found in the garbage – and there was one particular bag that’s ingrained in his memory. He heard something shuffling around in one of the boxes he was about to throw in the garbage truck, and decided to look inside. There were two tiny puppies sitting there, and the garbage man fell in love. He took one home with him, and the garbage truck driver took the over. The dog was called Jasper, and lived alongside the garbage man and his family for 13 happy years.21. Weapons
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It probably won’t come as a surprise to you that garbage collectors have come across a LOT of weapons in the trash over the years. There’s been knives and machetes, as well as a huge collection of guns! One man took to the internet to tell his followers tales about his time working for a junk removal company, and remembers taking a ton of furniture from someone’s house. When they dumped the load at the transfer station, they threw out a desk, which slid out onto the concrete and broke apart. Inside was a 357 Magnum revolver.22. Veteran grave markers
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As eerie finds in the trash go, this is up there with the most mysterious. When a garbage man was completing his daily rounds, he finished up with some rubbish for recycling. When he was clearing the recycling bins, he found something he didn’t expect; a whole bunch of brass World War I and World War II grave markers and medallions. The garbage man was shocked, and decided to ring the police. The police couldn’t work out where they had come from or how they had got there, and launched an investigation. The garbage man hopes the grave markers and medallions are now back where they belong.23. A newspaper from the day after the Challenger exploded
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Back in 1986, the world looked on in horror as the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart just 73 seconds into its flight. All seven crew members on board were killed. The disaster was naturally front-page news across America and beyond, and it seems that someone decided to hold onto a newspaper from when it happened. A former garbage collector took to the internet to tell people that he recently found a newspaper on his old trash run, and it happened to be from the day after the disaster took place.24. Hospital biohazard waste
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While the occasional dumpster might contain a cute or cuddly animal, most garbage collectors have to deal with seriously dangerous stuff – including biohazard waste. There was a particular incident in Georgia a few years back, when garbage collectors at a large trash hauling company had a battle with a local hospital after they kept chucking biohazardous waste in the normal trash. Apparently the hospital was doing this to save on disposal fees. The biohazardous waste was so bad that the garbage collectors reported the hospital to the authorities.25. Mr and Mrs Smith cardboard cutouts
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Have you ever been such a big fan of a movie or TV show that you’ve ended up with cardboard cutouts of the characters in your bedroom? Nope, us neither! But there seem to be some pretty hardcore fans of the Mr and Mrs Smith movie out there, and a garbage collector ended up finding cardboard cuts of both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the trash when completing his daily rounds. The garbage collector liked the cutouts so much that he decided to put them on either side of his garbage truck, much to his colleague’s amusement.26. A bunch of scooters
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Not everything that people throw away is disgusting. There are some absolute treasures too! In the true spirit of ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’, a Reddit user claimed that the best thing he ever found in the garbage was a bunch of old Razor scooters in the dumpster of a local store. The scooters had minor defects in them, and they weren’t allowed to be sold. The Reddit user said he and his friends said they “didn't give a damn about a design issue or if the sticker was on the wrong way. We all had a ball when we got our new (branded to boot) playthings."27. A vintage hand grenade
(Image/ Source: bellamysmilitaria.co.uk)
There are multiple Reddit threads on the craziest things people have thrown away over the years, and many feature a huge variety of weapons. However, one Reddit user blew everyone else out of the water with his story of finding a vintage hand grenade on his weekly garbage round. It was a 1944 Mills hand grenade, also known as a ‘Mills bomb’. This is a common name for a series of British hand grenades created by William Mills during World War 2. The garbage collector, who was something of a military enthusiast, decided to keep the hand grenade.28. Sheets of Dragon Ball Z cards
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Were you a Pokemon or Dragon Ball Z card collector back in the day? Well, it seems like there are still a fair few people out there that have sheets and sheets of cards in their homes! Garbage collectors across the US say they see a LOT of these thrown in the trash these days, but one particular came across hundreds of cards from just one house. He decided to bring them all home with him and display them in their original holographic sheets, which his son’s friends later described as ‘super dope’.29. An original Mac computer
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A man took to Reddit to share his tales about working as an IT guy for a school district. One of his early projects was to get rid of a bunch of outdated electronic equipment and bring in new computers and software systems. As he threw more and more computers into the dumpster, he was staggered to come across a perfect-condition original Mac computer (the Macintosh 128k) sitting in the trash, which was released in 1984. The IT guy said: “We weren’t allowed to take it but I went back after my shift to look through the dumpster, but the trash had already been taken to the dump. Heartbreaking.”30. A diamond worth $3,000
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Another one from Reddit. A girl’s grandfather apparently used to work at a city garage, and spent a lot of time repairing garbage trucks. He would often need to clear old junk from the garbage truck as he worked, and came across an old, battered jewelry box that contained cheap-looking jewelry. However, in a corner of the box, he noticed a tiny loose stone that looked very much like a diamond, so he decided to take it home. Twenty years later, he finally got around to taking it to a jewelry store to see if it was actually real. It was – and it was worth a whopping $3,000!31. The craziest things found in the sewer: a baby!
image source: reddit.com
There are lots of strange and eerie things you can find in a sewer (which you'll find out on this list!) but the one thing you definitely don't want to find down there is a baby. Imagine hearing the cries of a child coming from inside your plumbing system! That's exactly what happened in China, when the baby's cries were heard in an apartment building. Once help arrived and the pipes were cut open to investigate, the baby was found in there. It was later discovered that the baby's mother claimed the baby had accidentally slipped into the sewer system after she'd given birth in the bathroom.32. False teeth
image source: reddit.com
A little less alarming than a baby, but actually more creepy if you just happen to find teeth in your sewage drains... especially if you don't know they're false teeth at first! You can actually understand why it's so easy to have your false teeth accidentally end up down the drain, if you're putting them at the side of the sink, knocking them off, dropping them or - worse - they fall straight out of your mouth! The problem arises when so many false teeth are lost down there - a pile up of all those fake teeth can cause a huge clog, as you can imagine!33. Animals
image source: reddit.com
The sad fact is that animals do end up stuck in the sewers all the time, and it's not just obvious animals like household pets, dogs and cats. There have been known cases of even sheep and full grown cows stuck down there! If you thought a baby's cry was scary enough, imagine randomly hearing a cow's moo. Animals have to be rescued from drains all the time, and while in some cases smaller animals can easily get flushed, like rats or lizards, we're not entirely sure how cows can end up down there! There are even urban legends of other animals prowling the sewers...34. Luxury watches
image source: reddit.com
We feel sorry for the person who accidentally drops they're seriously expensive watch down the toilet, but this find was actually four luxury watches in one go! A drain technician came across the four watches in England, and the full collection was worth around thousands! The watch find included an 18-carat gold Rolex, which was worth around $26,000 alone, along with another rolex and two other unidentified watches. It was later revealed the expensive Rolex was the only real one, stolen in a burglary - and it was later reunited with its owner!35. Half a car
image source: reddit.com
Not even a full car - which would be strange enough stuffed down a sewer drain - but half of one! Granted, the car was a Mini, so the entire version was small enough - half of it wasn't overwhelmingly big, so it makes sense why it might have got stuck down a large sewage pipe. As you can imagine though, the more pressing issue was how much half a car was blocking up the pipe! If you think your small clogs are bad at home, how about half a Mini Cooper... In total, millions of dollars were spent in unblocking London drains that year, including the Mini!36. A mysterious jawbone
image source: reddit.com
If there's one thing you don't want to find down a sewer, it's bones of any kind... teeth were bad enough, but at least they turned out to be fake! This bone was actually a genuine bone - and a very mysterious one at that. The most that could be identified of it was that it was a jawbone, which was found in a sewer in Edmonton, Canada. The jawbone was obvious enough to belong to an animal and not a human, but nobody could say which animal. Finding prehistoric bones in Canada is not actually unheard of, but finding one in a sewer sure is...37. A plastic Teletubby
image source: reddit.com
Specifically, Po! The Teletubbies began as a popular British kid's TV show, but its popularity quickly moved it across the world, so even though across the pond know about Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po. Apparently Po wasn't this person's favorite, for whatever reason, because the plastic Teletubby toy ended up down the drain and stuck in the sewage pipe. We imagine a kid must have thrown it down the toilet by accident, or on purpose... either way, pretty disturbing to stumble across a red humanoid figure down a drain before you realize what it is!38. A whole platoon of toy soldiers
image source: reddit.com
If one plastic Teletubby isn't enough for you, how about a whole platoon of toy soldiers? Almost like a Pixar movie! The sewage workers were able to get their hands on every single one of those small plastic soldiers that were causing a huge disruption to the water supply. The toys were apparently completely in tact, and still able to fight! Though a little dirty. Rather than somehow finding the owner of these toys, the sewage workers actually took the whole platoon, gave them a clean and mounted them on a plaque! Job well done.39. Human placentas
image source: reddit.com
This wasn't a case of just one placenta managing to find its way down the drain - this was a case where a series of human placentas were being found, so much so that an official warning had to be put out by the authorities about the situation. The strange thing about this was that it wasn't some case of people giving birth at home and accidentally flushing or anything like that - the placentas had actually been cleaned and removed properly, meaning the authorities believed it was actually the hospitals and birthing facilities that were flushing them instead of disposing of them properly!40. A river of blood
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Like something out of a horror movie or something biblical, sewage workers actually did find themselves up against a huge amount of blood sloshing through the drains - with no idea where it was coming from. Blood is naturally going to be flushed down the drain, of course - especially during that time of the month - but this was something on a whole different level. It was believed it could have, once again, been medical facilities disposing of it in the wrong way, but it was never known for certain... either way, you wouldn't want to be the guy finding that!41. A cannonball from the American civil war
image source: reddit.com
You definitely don't expect to find a historical weapon down a sewer drain - and not only a cannonball, but one specifically from the American civil war? This was discovered in a sewer in Indiana, randomly found when the workers were cleaning one of the pipes. It was believed that the cannonball was fired from a gunboat - a Union gunboat - due to a conflict with the Confederates, apparently over a cotton mill! The cannonball found in the sewer was actually kept and put on display in the area's local Perry County Museum!42. Could it be a sewer monster?
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Growing up with tales of the boogeyman and monsters in the closet, we probably all still think as adults that those long, dark sewer drains hide a monster somewhere... Yeah, thanks Pennywise. Actually, it did seem that a weird alien sewer monster was, in fact, discovered in North Carolina, when footage of a camera in the sewers for a general inspection fetched back images of something pretty disgusting... It looked like a huge, fleshy mass and was actually pulsating! Ew. While at first some thought 'weird sewer monster', it turned out to be something known as a tubifex worms.43. A rave!
image source: reddit.com
We know rave locations are always best when they're somewhere unexpected or even a little dingy - like an abandoned warehouse. But did you ever think about having a rave in a sewer? We wouldn't blame you if you didn't. Especially because the people who did this didn't take into account that alcohol + underground tunnels that could easily flood at any moment = bad idea. The revellers passed through dirty water in order to find a dry spot to set up some speakers and have their party. Eventually the police were called and broke it up!44. A "fatberg" made up of everything you shouldn't flush
image source: cbc.com
You know all those things we're told you shouldn't flush down the toilet, like wipes, sanitary products, diapers... yeah. There's a reason for that. It's not just about causing an obvious clog, either... because apparently all of that can mangle together and congeal to make some sort of warped sewer creature called a 'fatberg' - which is exactly what happened in London, England, when a massive, rotting mass at 250 meters in length had occurred from a combination of emulsifying fats and all those products like wet wipes and even condoms...45. An alligator
image source: reddit.com
Remember when we mentioned those urban legends of certain animals in the sewer earlier? One particular legend is that there are alligators in the New York sewer system, due to the fact that people buy baby alligators as pets and then quickly realize that was a very, very bad idea because of their sharp teeth, and then flush them down the toilet... where they grow to adult size in the sewers. In some places, like Florida, alligators get into the sewers due to being washed down there by the rain, or hunting after prey that have tried to escape into the sewers.46. A homeless community
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Las Vegas is known for its extreme conditions, in terms of being ridiculously hot or torrential downpour. For that reason, there are a lot of storm drains in this city. While the drains aren't traditional sewage systems, they're drain systems designed to transport the rain water away... when in actual fact, they've quickly become a hideout and community for homeless people with nowhere else to go. The only problem is when the rain water actually does hit, which is going to sweep through the tunnels - and sweep away the community's possessions!47. Gold
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Apart from random things that have been flushed by accident, you might not have thought there was anything of value to be found in a sewer drain. So you might be surprised to learn about the calculations scientists have made: namely, that there could be almost 2 million dollars worth of gold flushed away through sewer systems in Switzerland, every single year! This is considered to be through gold flakes that have been lost down the sewers from jewelry making businesses and watchmaking businesses.48. Drugs
image source: scientificamerican.com
We're not just talking about recreational drugs here, either, as the toilet is the logical choice for people to try and flush things away. This also applies to different medications and things like hormone tablets or contraceptive pills, that then end up in the sewer. They don't just remain there, though - they can actually have a negative impact on fish, as the hormones can be released into the water once in the rivers and waterways, which then makes the reproductive cycle of freshwater fish change! Police even once found marijuana plants growing in the sewers.49. Snakes
image source: reddit.com
Have we all had that same nightmare about something coming up to bite our behind if we sit on the toilet? You may have seen a video or two of a snake in somebody's toilet. It's nothing new for some places in the world to have snakes lurking in the sewer system or their toilet - especially Australia - but it's a scary thought! The reason snakes actually come up the plumbing into the toilet bowl is to get away from high temperatures if there's a heatwave, or they're tracking prey like rats that might have fled up the toilet into people's homes.50. Large black pigs!
image source: reddit.com
This one comes from the 19th century of London, England, where people feared going into the sewers - which they actually did to try and find things of value - because of the 'sewer hogs' that were said to be lurking in there. Not just one big black pig, either, but a whole family of them. The rumor started that one black sow had somehow gotten into the drain and then ended up giving birth in there and living off the garbage waste. The rumors got worse as people actually claimed they'd spotted the pigs. In then became known as 'The Black Sewer Swine of Hampstead'.What To Read Next
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