Bigfoot, Jimmy Hoffa & More: The Strangest Urban Legends of the 1970s

Ryan Berenz 39 seconds ago

The ’70s gave us disco balls, shag carpeting, and some seriously questionable fashion choices. But the decade also produced plenty of strange stories, spooky rumors, and supposed real-life happenings that left people wondering what to believe.

Revisit the urban legends that traveled from water coolers to late-night conversations, picking up a few new details along the way.

Where’s Jimmy Hoffa?

Jimmy Hoffa (1913-1975), tough President of the Teamsters Union from 1958–1971, was the subject of numerous government investigations, but only convicted of jury tampering. He was portrayed by Jack Nicholson, in the 1992 film, HOFFA.

Everett Collection

America’s most famous missing-person mystery began in 1975 when Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa vanished without a trace outside a suburban Detroit restaurant. Almost immediately, theories about his fate spread across the country, but one captured the public’s imagination more than any other: Hoffa had been buried beneath the concrete foundation of New Jersey’s new Giants Stadium.

Over the years, sportscasters, comedians and late-night TV hosts referenced it so often that many people assumed there must be some truth behind it. Although investigators have repeatedly dismissed the story and no human remains were discovered when Giants Stadium was demolished in 2010, the tale became an enduring urban legend, proving that sometimes the mystery is more memorable than the answer.

Bigfoot goes mainstream

Wikipedia

Bigfoot had been part of Pacific Northwest folklore for decades, but the mysterious creature became a national sensation in the 1970s. In the years that followed the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film capturing an alleged Bigfoot striding along a Northern California riverbed, interest in the Bigfoot myth skyrocketed. The 1972 documentary The Legend of Boggy Creek, which explored reports of a Bigfoot-like creature in Arkansas, became a surprise hit and inspired a wave of imitators.

In 1977, Leonard Nimoy‘s In Search Of… TV series explored purported evidence of the creature, and a group called the North American Wildlife Research Team set a Bigfoot trap in 1974 (they caught some bears, but no Sasquatch). Films, photos, plaster footprint casts, audio tapes and thousands of purported sightings only fueled the decade’s pseudoscientific debate.

The Amityville Horror

American International/courtesy Everett Collection

On Nov. 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his parents and four siblings in their Amityville, New York, home, creating a real-life horror story that would later spawn an even stranger legend. In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the house with their three children but left after just 28 days, claiming they had experienced terrifying paranormal activity. Their story became the basis for Jay Anson’s 1977 bestseller The Amityville Horror and the blockbuster 1979 movie, leading many to suspect that the Lutz family was trying to exploit Amityville’s tragedy.

Skeptics have questioned nearly every supernatural claim, and later investigations found no convincing evidence of a haunting. Still, the Amityville house became one of America’s most famous symbols of haunted-house folklore, much to the dismay of residents who’ve had their community turned into a macabre tourist attraction for five decades.

‘The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs’

picture from the 1979 movie "When a Stranger Calls," depicting Carol Kane as a babysitter who has a look of fear on her face as she is listening to a killer speaking to her via telephone.

Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

A teenage babysitter receives increasingly disturbing phone calls from a mysterious stranger asking, “Have you checked the children?” The classic urban legend circulated for years before becoming a staple of American horror folklore in the 1970s, featuring the frightening twist [spoiler alert] that “The calls are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!” The tale reached a much wider audience through the horror movies Black Christmas and When a Stranger Calls. Both films have been remade in the 21st century, but the premise remains: Sometimes the most frightening thing isn’t what’s outside the house, but what’s already inside.

This article appeared in the October 2026 Halloween issue of ReMIND Magazine. You can purchase the full issue at the link below.