Paranormal Urban Legends

The Homemade Self-Decapitation Machine

PS-This chapter will have the legend and its truth.

LEGEND- As humans, we're pretty emotionally attached to our heads, which probably explains why there are so many urban legends that incorporate accidental or intentional decapitation. But if some guy around the water cooler were to insist that he once heard about a guy who committed suicide by beheading himself with a complicated saw-like booby trap device, you'd tag him as one of those people who can't separate reality from fiction

TRUTH- Usually, when cops get a call about a domestic disturbance, it's just another day at the office. You show up, make Cletus put his pants back on, confiscate the bath salts, the usual. Not for the poor guys who responded to a disturbance in Yorktown, Virginia, in 2011. For one thing, the guy they were there to help was sitting in a car with a trailer attached. A flaming trailer. For another, the guy in the car attached to the burning trailer refused to get out, not for the police or for the firemen.

And that's when one of the fire-fighters noticed the wire around the driver's neck ... the wire that went out the back window and was snugly tied to a tree 10 feet away. This was no ordinary domestic disturbance. This dude wasn't just a troubled soul having a freak-out at the trailer park; he was going out like the shiniest star in the crazy sphere.

Before anyone could stop him, the driver stepped on the gas, the car zoomed forward and the wire snapped. The unnamed victim was whipped out the rear window and his head was removed. And the whole ordeal wasn't even over — the trailer detached from the truck and kept rolling, flames sky high in the air, head and body both left behind.