Hoax of the Day: Reddit Post Warns of Deadly Outbreak in Arizona Town

Slender Man is not real, and Mammoth, Arizona is NOT ground zero to some grisly outbreak or zombie apocalypse.

But many people were fooled into thinking the latter was the case, this week, after a fictional post on Reddit was taken as fact.

The post, titled "WTF is going on in Pinal county, Arizona??" is part of a subreddit called "No Sleep," which contains shared horror stories (both real and fake) submitted by Reddit users. The page also notes that "suspension of disbelief is key here."

But with the country in panic about a potential Ebola outbreak in their neighborhood, it's not hard to believe that someone would take it seriously.

From the post:

Entire families were being found beaten to death all over Mammoth. Blood, bruises, nails and teeth missing, hair ripped out- all of them. I heard reports of anywhere from 14 to 55 dead bodies, depending on who you were talking to. In a state of completely shock, I did the only thing I could do really well on autopilot - I wrote an article about it for my blog.

People from all over the country started calling local businesses and the police chief to inquire about the horror they had been reading about online.

"It's all unfounded, the only thing we've taken in the last few days is loud music calls and barking dogs," he said.

So no real-life horror movie in Mammoth, but it does have a ghost town!