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You know, I think their may be some truth in that. I'm not sure about the stench of death part. But I'm sure there are many cars that you just can't get to stop stinking. Maybe some other scent led to people blowing it out of proportion and saying it was death.

I think that some urban legends could have some truth to them...afterall they had to come from somewhere didn't they? There's a story about a college in ohio I think that's it...and someone committed suicide in one of the rooms and smeared her blood on the wall and no matter how much they painted over it or cleaned it up, it always reappeared. After a car has had something as greusome as that happen in it, I am more than sure it would have been taken away by the proper authorities for like evidence or something, and once they have it and have found all they need to find from it they would clean it. I don't think there's any wrong way of cleaning the car...I mean usually wouldn't blood stains come out? However I do believe this legend, I don't think it had any thing to do with the way the people were cleaning the cars, I believe that maybe since the person died in the car and then decomposed maybe that's just it's way of letting what happened to him or her be known to who ever owned the car...or maybe the spirit just isn't willing to let go of something they feel belongs to them and the stench is their way of keeping people away and reclaiming what's they feel is their's.

Well the first time this was heard of was back in the 1930s, they probably couldn't clean the car all that well. I'm not sure though how easy it was to get blood and smells from decomposition out of the car upholstery and things.

As for the college, oh I know about it. I think it's Ohio State. Not sure. There's lots of legends and tales around here in Ohio. It's kind of fun to talk to people about it and research it sometimes.

Well I didn't take into consideration how old this legend was lol, so yeah I guess you are right, they probably didn't have very efficient ways of cleaning the upholstery back then, and I imagine that some smells may linger afterward.

The smell of a rotting body is aweful, it would penetrate deep into every part of the vehicle and I would think that yes it would be pretty much impossible to get it out.

I do believe some legends and myth do hold truth. The smell of death is hard to get out of places and things, such as fabric. The part where you were talking about blood on things such as walls in homes that keep coming back. That is due to the iron in the blood and will always bleed back through no matter how many times you paint that object.

I think it could seriously be linked to the paranormal. I imagine dying in a car accident would be a giant shock, very traumatic, maybe so much energy was raised at the time of death that it managed to manifest itself in the form of scent...
If the body wasn't found for awhile, maybe it's the spirit's way of saying, "hey, I died here, now you won't forget me."

Speaking of the paranormal related to cars.. While I haven't heard of this death car before, I have heard of cars showing up at graveyards after the owners passed away.

This is of course, when no one has been driving them, and they've been kept in the garage or been sold. I can't remeber the details of it very well though, But there seems to be a few diffrent urban ledgens relating to death and cars.. Do we like our vehicals that much?

I had one car that my family was convinced was cursed. Five accidents in six years and none of them were the driver's fault.

I think its more of a myth. Some people get really creeped out by that sort of thing. The same reason that some people won't live in a house where someone died in it. Now a days, if someone dies in their car for reasons other than natural causes, it tends to become evidence and sticks with the police for a long time.

You know I will say one thing that is fact here and that is this the only time thing like that gets power enough to haunt is when the beliefer gives it.

So if you don't share a belief to it like a god it will die because it has no follers to remember it.

i think it is very real.sometimes it can and will happen

I think the scent comes from inproper cleaning. I've see the process for cleaning up crime scenes and whatnot. It's rather easy to miss sommit.

I think it would be possible. Some smells you just cannot get rid of no matter how much you try. If the body has been left in the car for a period of time and it has started to decompose then yes I dont think you would be able to get the smell out.

I think this would be possible. Even with todays technology getting rid of the smell of death is not easy. Just think of your local hospital and that instant smell that hits you is the smell of death underneath all those chemicals.

I did once when I was younger get into a car I was considering buying and I had this terrible vision of an accident and sudden pain in my chest from the steering wheel slamming into my chest. It was in the days before air bags. I couldn't get out of the car fast enough.

In the mean time my father had been talking to the owner who had said that the car was sound and had been rebuilt after an accident where his father had died behind the wheel. Then I come stumbling out saying I don't want it its a death car lol. So I do believe that it is not so much an urban legend.

This post definitly hits home with me, a few years back i had bought my first newer car. I loved the car and after 4 months the strangest things started occurring the truck would just open or would not close so I did some research on the car. I had found that the car had been in a major tragic acident wher a semi had slammed into the car on the expressway from the rearend and killed everyone in the car. 2 months later I was in a major accident in this car first impact was the rear end which ended up crushed against my back. The car was completly totaled, the air backs did not go off, I flatlined on the way to the hospital for a short period and was revived.


So yes I truley believe in death cars

Working i the morgue business for some time, i have run across these Death cars as you put it and the smell is terrible and the sight of them make you shudder. Most of these vechiles are destroyed for the fact that the smell and sight cannot be thuroughly cleaned. and of course biological disease associated with them. So i would say this is true.

Cadrewolf -

You seem to have some experience with this, do you believe that the smell that still lingers in these death cars is caused by something paranormal or simply because it's hard to remove the smell from the car?

Look at James Deans "Little Bastard" car. In the end so many people died from driving it that they scrapped it, and whoever put the scrap on their car also met grisly endings

The body after an hour is in a very decomposing state, the smell lingers even if the car is held for evedince. I donot think it is paranormal in any way. Donot get me wrong i do believe in spirits and orbs etc. but this is different its the persona of death and it smell is sometimes unbearable. the smell isTo hard to get rid of because it becomes inboddied in the car(the rugs, upholstry and the metal)also like I said biological disease becomes prevalant and is harmful and fatal to others.

I do not believe that the car is cursed or anything of that means..but realize where the urban legend would arise from. As has been stated numerous times here it is because of the smell of a decomposing body would be almost impossible to get rid of..no matter how well you cleaned it.

As for the blood on the walls...well as Morbid put it...it is something that keeps coming back alot like water spots and burn spots..you can paint over them numerous times but they will reappear eventually.

I see the majority of us that have posted in this thread have come to the same conclusion, that it might just be the fact that the smell of a decomposing body is hard to get out of a car...but do you think that maybe some cases have had something paranormal to them as well? Like maybe the spirit of the person who was found in the car is lingering, and so is the stench.

Maybe a small amount have, but like spirits in houses they may be tied to the cars in some way.

They cold be attached to the car because that's the place they died in, but even if in some cases that was the case...would they let their presence be known through smell or some other way?

I think there is some truth in it.. I have had cloth that has socked up horrible smells that i could never get out and ended up throwing out the clothing.. SO it can happen..

Crime scene clean-up is a big business for this very reason, they have even uncovered hidden evidence in their cleaning routine, which sometimes involves cutting out entire floor sections. Cars, are best scraped, unless a thorough process, usually removing all nonmetal material and Serum Decon. is flushed over the surfaces. This includes even seals and underlying matting. Usually only used in Collectible cars.

If someone dies in a car and is there for awhile u will never get that scent out. Some scents u just cant get out once they are there

Legends are unverified stories handed down from earlier times, especially one popularly believed to be historical.

Urban Legends are the same though they are more likely to be framed as a cautionary tale, about some horrific, embarrassing, ironic, or exasperating series of events that supposedly happened to a real person.

I think that some Urban Legends may have started out an true incidents and embellished upon to make them more interesting, entartaining, or to make a bigger impression.

There are other "haunted" locations all over that claim to have blood stains that cannot be removed. One of these tales is, “The Canterville Ghost"

if one can sense the death in the vehilcle or even in a home why buy it.... you may not smell it until after you buy it, but if you know that you can smell it and didn't use the ability and you die it is your fault


fascinating

Imagine going to a second hand store.. and buying an amour .. now imagine that amour was once used to store a body wrapped in various bags and rugs.. so one day it gets a little moister .. that ingrained scent starts to linger in the room.. the lesson here? Always, Inspect Quarantine and clean, everything you get from a second hand store.

I think theres some truth to this but again you never know a car will smell like once you by it

So does that mean I can corner the market on the new "death car air freshener"? Just kidding. It is an interesting myth although I'd never heard it before now. SO if 2 people died in the same car would it be twice as strong a smell? Does this mean that the car may be responsible for the deaths?

Do you mean if they both died at the same time or at seperate instances? I think that if the number of people who died in the car greater, then yeah it would smell worse, especially if there's a significant amount of time between the deaths of the people and the time at which their body's are found. And I think that the number would have to much higher than two before you start blaming the car on their deaths.

MYTHBUSTERS actually did a myth on the deathcar.

AngelHell-

When you say it's so real and wonderful are you referring to the fact that these "death cars" smell like decomposing corspes or that these legends refer to so many different people dying and then rotting in these cars? I don't really see any thing wonderful about it...Or is it wonderful how fast these legends seem to travel and how many people have heard of this legend, and how many possible variations there are of it?

i believe it could be linked but until we have truly definitive proof well never know.

Darkened08 -

Could you be a little more specific? What do you think could be linked? This urban legend and the paranormal, or the smell in the car and the fact that the car may have not been cleaned properly...or what?

I think it holds some truth. The smell of decomposition can be hard to get rid of no matter how much you clean.

I think it depends on the person. If you are told a story about someone killing themselves in this car, then it is possible your nose will catch the "smell of death"

Skj -

Are you saying that if a certain person is told that someone had killed themself in the car then they would be so concerned with that, they would actually trick themself into believing they can smell the decomposing flesh, like the mind may be playing a trick on them?

well I feel also that there is truth to the whole Urban ledgend thing.. I mean the smell of death and blood stains are something that just stays with the item whereever it took place I feel, so yeah, death cars I believe do exist just an opinion is all

@MiserableAtBest;

Yes, that is the general idea. But it is not always the case though.

i believe there is some truth in this, because, especily if there was some type ofvengence inthe death (as in murder or suicide) or an appruptness (accident), the spirit can cause a smell, in addition to the more common audio and visual appearances

deamonfayrie -

An abrupt death or a tragic one (such as a suicide or murder) might cause a spirit to stay behind after death, but why would the spirit manifest in the form of the stench of death? Maybe to be noticed, and to let people know that it's still lingering here? Now that I have read more of these posts, and posted more myself, I believe that this is possible...but because the smell is to hard to get out of the car.

I made a field trip to the auto wrecker, got chummy with the wreckers (myth buster style) heres the low down, straight from the wreckers mouth, seats of death cars the example he gave was a car shot up in a gang activity, the police impound brings them in, people buy them and patch the bullet holes, the respectible "dealerships" will replace the seats and floor mats, blood splatter, and the smallest amount, sometimes even gut fluid will saturate a seat. If sweat can leave an unplestent faint scent in the air, imagine about a pint of plasma rotten under that "new upolstry"..

Dabbler that is so disgusting I font want a car now thanks LOL

If you leave a body decaying long enough the smell would be left there and cannot be cleaned away. The odder of death is very strong and lasting.

well I would hope to know that the car smells or something before I bought it LOL .. The smell of a decaying body is horrible... yet, if someone just shot theirself and the body removed and not left decaying in the vehicle .... I would buy it .

I do believe there are alot of unsolved crimes and cars with the dead in them still yet to be found....

Sonofipswich -
In the versions of this legend that I have heard, the car was being sold by a previous owner, not a car dealership, or by the police impound or whatever. The owner of the car was trying to get rid of it because of the smell, so he doesn't mention it, and the person buys it, and then on a really hot day it starts to stink. So the person never really knows that the car smells until after he/she buys it.

iv heard a stroy where in this state there a girl who is hitchicking and when you pick her up she talks of a rack then as you get closer she says that where i died then she case you to crash your car and die to

i saw an episode of myth busters and they tackeled this myth... you can not clean a car that has had something dead in it longer than 2-3 days. the smell will linger

celticdarkrose..in reference to your post about your local urban legend..if this happens..then how can it be told because no one would live through it to tell the story of what happened? I mean no offense by this post...just making a statement about urban legends such as this in general.

I agree with UTAHVAMP, but I can honestly say that once you smell death you will never forget it. So its safe to say sell the car... You'll never get in it without smelling it. I believe its a subconscious thing.

strip the car of all non metal elements, even the paint will retain oil, a kennel I cleaned once had a rat that melted into the concrete it left a notable mark and faint smell, as far as any Urban Legend goes, people will look to be the one to ague it as true, regardless as of how many times it is countered with factual evidence, they will just rehash it to "work out" the refutable part, really what is accomplished by insisting that what you heard from a friend about his cousins, knowing someone who heard that somebody once tried to sell a car that had decay in it, yea, a car that has a grocery bag split and meat blood spill will cause the same effect, clean your car, if someone is so concerned about the stench.. they may have told you the Urban legend as a hint.. as often (or at one time)urban legends were for.

I agree with deadlydesire. No one would live through the accident to tell the story...so I believe that urban legend was made up for entertainment purposes.

I suppose it could be true. Or, like was mentioned already, maybe people just over exaggerated a stinky car. It's a 50/50 shot, lol.

People do tend to sway to the sensational possibility though, don't they.. ?

There is Death Cab for Cutie.

Anybody ever see that episode of Seinfeld where he couldnt get the BO smell out of his car?

DarkAnne, what was the result of that Mystbusters anyway? Or was it the same episode as the one just mentioned?

How isolated the car is (usually in a garage) is a determining factor in body melt. So I would think such a car would stink, something high.. I watched an eposode of an animal rescue show, and a dog, left in a car, 3 days in flordia heat, in the drivers floor space, when the guy touched it he said it popped on him, how much you want to bet that ewven removing the upolstrey, and floor carpet will not "freshen that car" now if the person that recieves the car, impound, (they could not find the owner) what are the odds they will sell that car, again?

I think may urban legends hold some truth to begin with and they just exxagerate alot.

There maybe some truth behind this, and if its a truth death car you could never get the smell out

burning the car itself may the only way to truly get the smell and the lost spirit out of the car but then again you wont have a car after the process is finish but at least that smell might be finally be gone from your car.

Well again if it was a true death car fire would not stop it ether, just make it madder

At the extreme end of this would be the metal was recycled and all the items made from the metal would be "cursed".

So...if everything made from the metal was cursed, would be possible that these items would have the same awful smell as the death cars, or would everyone who happened to posess one of these items mysteriously die like the owners of the death cars did in some of the legends?

As I recall from the show Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed, this myth came about when a guy bought a ridiculously cheap car he saw in the paper. The smell didn't get noticeable until a really hot day, suggesting that the smell of the corpse was contained in the leather and when that got hot, the stench came out. I've been trying to find a synopsis for that particular clip but I can't :-(

I know eerie,

I like to take all the urban legends to the extreme, until people gsay, "Thats not possible." like any of them are to begin with, and the ones that are likely under hypatetical cases, they are stretched out further, and even the ones that are based on real events are stretched out of proportion.. so yea, besure to ask where the plant gets their metal.. Muhahah.. hahh

celticdarkrose -


She speaks of a rack? A wreck? Or ... what?

Okey I called five wreckers and they had a bit more to add about where smells come from on cars, like accident chassiss' striped of all its parts down to the frame, any plasma, from massive blood loss is likely to pool and gel.. that and chunks of flesh contain fat that has oil, if an accident is in summer, then the car is likely set aside as is, that oil gets in some bolted down area, and stinks.. so imagine a car that had a dead body in the truck, even with the carpet taken out and replaced, even with a thourough scrubbing, trace can be found crevesses'

Anyone who watches shows such as forensic files will know that trace amounts of blood even with thorough cleaning can still remain. So no matter how well you think you may have cleaned up a car or an item of any kind it is possible to still get an odor from the small trace amounts.

i think death cas are much more than a myth myself,i do think that their energy can pass on to the next owner and personaly i would not wish to have one myself.

The cars energy or the person who died?

and the remenece in the cars can cause serious problems for the people buying them, flesh eating diseases and other biological disease my occur so yeah the metal or cars would certainly hold a curse.

Yet we must be short of those with irrational fears, they will smell something, even with the power of suggestion.. they obsess over things like this, along with all other urban legends. It would take a massacre, or fully rotten body, to condemn a vehicle, and most are totaled after discovered in such condition. Recovery of such vechiles is not unheard of. If a car is oderoues, it will be noted by summer if bought in the winter months.. so beware winters car.

I have to agree some of theses cars can hold icky nasty stuff such as disease and the nastiest of smells.. No death car for me ty.. I wouldn't want to own one.

I wouldn't even suggest buying a car owned by a family.. unless you tear out the interior.

Stephen King wrote a book (no, not Christine) about a Buick found by cops in a very small town. No one knows where the car came from and when strange occurrences take place, it leads back to the car (of course!). When I read this book, though I did enjoy it, I thought King was on Vicodins and whiskey with the concept of the car. After reading this thread, I am about to reread the book!

I believe that a car can be bad luck if some one dies in it then your asking for trouble if you buy it I feel the soul never left

I cant help it -- I am a non believer. If I can get a '65 Mustang in working condition for a steal, then I am willing that chance of ending up in the obituaries.

I still think I shall pass on this one, many cars I heard had come to auction for cheap , yet my gut and morals tell me no thanks. Like buying an old coffin . sorry Just not my thing.

i will stay away from any car that someone has died in as i do believe they can cary negative energy,kind of like how a haunted house is,thoughts of the movie cristina come to mind.

i would turn its energy into something beneficial for something. i dont know what. but something.

you see the new previews for "Death Race"?

thats probably where the guy died. hehe

I don't think that in the 30's or 50's they had the proper equipement por product to clean it up.

Today there are specialist in cleaning crime scene and it works.

I also saw a documentary where they actually made a pig decompose in a car in a cargo wagon and then cleaned the car, they manage to get rid of the scent.

Inly one place they could not and it was what was fabric on the carpet on the floor so they rip it off.

I believe all urban legends have a basis of truth. I'm not sure if a car could have the smell of death, but I do believe that a certain smell can be present when there is a spirit around. Such as the smell of perfume or cigar smoke. Something that belongs to that spirit, something it associates with being alive.

Actually on an episode of mythbusters they PROVED this "myth" to be entirely plausible. They put the carcass of a pig in a car and sealed it up and waited for it to decay. After it had sufficiently decayed they payed a professional cleaning company that specialized in extreme clean ups like houses and cars after fires and deaths. They completely stripped the car down to the bare body and completely replaced every piece of plastic, fabric and other material with new ones and still the car had a slight odor to it. They finally decided it's cheaper to buy a new car than to remove the odor completely.

the car could have the soul of the dead owner this could be good or bad be careful

i nkow someone who does detial cars and if they cant get rid of it they just send it out, its how they are told to do it, this way if the customer knotices they send it back but most times they dont which helps them with there quota for the day

I think i would remove all the seats and change them. as you can never get that smell out. My ex husbands brother was murdered in his truck. My ex husband got it and yes the smell was there and we couldnt get it out. We had to go to the junkyard and pull seats out of another truck. then clean the whole truck without any in them. the smell disappeared but we still saw Stanley in the truck at times.

when a person begins to decay they release a lot of gases and that would cling to all the soft fabrics in a car and wouldn't be able to be removed no matter how much you clean it.

The scent of death you will never get out
of a car as much as u want to believe it,
I and a friend were driving in her car and the smell was so bad she said it was there for months we cleaned the car out and found old food from when they went to the beach on a cookout some one threw garbage in the car and she never cleaned it out,
it was horriable, It takes a long time to get a smell of garbage out of ur car also

me and my friend Wendy had her cremated husband in a box in the back seat i kept smelling something dead and decided to move him to the trunk. a day later i took the roses out of the back window of the car and realized they leave that sent also when they are bad.

I think theres some truth to this but again you never know a car will smell like once you buy it

I think it a handy excuse for a sloppy car owner.. Satens Bride makes a good point, I would imagine some Urban legends are started from glib answers to questions friends ask, "Hay, why does your car smell?"

" Oh that's because it is a death car." The fears some people have, come out in urban legends, they want others to accept that those fears, usually irrational, as reasonable case scenarios, but it is not enough to agree that some are likely, they want the whole package, and they want to be the ones to tell why they are so. Dare you disagree with their paranoia.

I think that this smell of death is an intrinsic thing.

A sort of Mass Hysteria. If you tell someone that someone died in the car they own, it may affect the way they view the car. Have you ever noticed that when one person starts to smell something(say a fart), and proclaim it, others do too, even though they mightn't? Same idea :) Same byproducts too :)

sweetblooded - What if you totally gutted the car? Remove everything and leave the body and start over?

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