Serbian Dancing Lady: Demon or TikTok Dance?

This is back in like Facebook days, right, So we go into Facebook and then I click on the guy's profile and literally he just follows Jennifer's Like, Wow, what a weird type. It doesn't even matter what type of person they are is just if their name's Jennifer, it's sad in he must have gotten like monograms or something like. There must be like monogram dishes and maybe I hope so, because it is weird. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle Edwin. It's a cold night and you've been up writing. It's about two in the morning. Sounds about right, and you're ready. Yeah, yeah, I figure it's about right and you're ready for bed. So you switch off your desk light, you get up to close the curtains. But as you stand at your window, that's when you spot it. There's a woman out there, standing under a street light with her back to you. She's wearing what looks like traditional clothes of some sort. She's dancing similar to those folk dances you've seen called what was it, the dougie, the macarena, the mashed potato, the bunny hop? Do you remember doing the bunny hop? Did you have? It's like no, no, no, no, no, no no no nana, no no no, no no no, but yeah, oh yes, it's that dance called the kola, that traditional Serbian folk dance. Yeah, because I would, I would happen to just know that. Look, I mean, we've all been on the inner that you might know. You might know. She stands there, swaying her hips back and forth with her hands in the air to silent music, just thinking, I hope your story doesn't She starts ticking off her clothes on the street lamp dead. No, she's not doing that. You lean closer to the window. You're just like, what's going on, But you accidentally bang the glass with your head because it's two am and you're tired. The woman stops dancing, slowly lowers her arms without turning around. After a night of writing scary stories, nope, you say, and you slam the curtains and then you just go to mid typical like me, freaking myself out. It happens, It happens. You've just seen the Serbian dancing lady dud dum, I know it does. Doesn't it. I mean, there's a reason. But we did get this request from iris on Spotify and our Spotify comments, which we love, by the way, Yeah yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's great. They're just like great ways to comment on stories and they're not as they're not as damning as the Apple comments. Oh yeah, this is so nice on Spotify. Seriously. Yeah, that's it's just it's awesome. You know what. We're trying to convince Spotify now to let us reply to oh yeah, that would be a great move on their part. So it's so much more conversational on Spotify. But back to the Serbian dancing lady. So this is the legend in Belgrade, Serbia. So the dance which I mentioned earlier is similar to a folk dance called the cola. What does this look like though, Michelle, like you have to demonstrate. Have you seen it? It's like kind of like this, she's just like her feet, Yeah, her arms are in the air and then she like shuffles her feet. You can easily google this, Like there's okay, but her back's to you and the movement is slight, like it's kind of like uh huh. That so like if you saw that at night with someone with their back to you. It's a little weird. It's a little weird, but anyway, so she's doing her dance. She is believed to carry a knife with her and jump in front of people's cars and threaten them. According to some unverified Internet posts which I love that caveat, people who have claimed to encounter the lady say the lady claims to be an ambassador of death and that she needs lives for an ancient ritual to resurrect the King of Serbia. Several videos have spread on the Internet claiming that the people who posted the videos actually spotted the mysterious lady, and all of them are captured from behind, which I find very like. I don't know, have you ever watched Doctor Who List a few episodes back in the day. Oh, but there's this one called the Weeping Angel, And there's something very about the Serbian dancing lady where it's like, if you take your eyes off her for a second, she'll get closer to you, and that you know what I mean, And then it's like if you look away again, she's closer, but she's always got her back to you, and she's always doing the dance. It's it's like that game with Luigi and the ghost or whatever. Like, I don't know you've seen that, but there's that ghost. I just kind of gets there's something about it that's very eerie like that. Oh so, anyway, the dancing Lady has blown up on TikTok. There are videos all over. It's all over. You can find so many videos of people saying they spotted the Serbian dancing lady in in wherever, like in Eastern Europe, in Nebraska, in India. I mean, it's all over. So a while ago, videos started circulating on TikTok which featured the strange woman hypnotically dancing in the streets. And I believe the first video was posted in February of this year by an account with no bio and the account is called AATC thirteen And then the caption simply wrote be careful guys, and then there are a bunch of hashtags like Serbian dancing lady in horror, And of course the video immediately went viral. People started freaking out. The video currently has ninety nine point nine million view use. Wow. Okay, well, I mean TikTok loves to dance that's true, And yeah, I mean that's a pretty unique angle right there. Like there's tons of comments expressing fear over who this woman is, what's her dance and what her dancing is about, and if people should be concerned. So I mean I would be concerned because exactly who's doing that and if it's a prank of some sort why So anyway, so that footage that was posted by AATC thirteen is real. So in Serbia in twenty nineteen, there was a woman wandering around at night dancing like that, and it was followed by local media reports and eyewitnesses from Serbia claiming the woman was wearing a national dress was spotted jumping out in front of cars and in front of people with a knife and making thrusts them. Well, she buddy hopped over to them and knifed them. But according to the Internet, there's there's real articles written in Serbia telling citizens to beware of this woman, claiming she was threatening people with a knife, and witnesses of the incident actually came forward saying that this woman might be having some mental health issues and she was seen dancing next to a local hospital. Police were called and searched for but they couldn't find her. But in this video, she's doing a dance similar to the Serbian folk dance the cola, which is why she was given the name the Serbian Dance Lady. So and she's in traditional dress. So oh no, oh no no no no, no, no no no. So that's like the original context, right. And then in twenty twenty three, at the beginning of twenty twenty three, after that video posted and it got all and it went viral. It spawned so many social media views and its sightings all over Europe East Asia, Like people are saying this lady everywhere? Was she creepy looking? By the way, Michelle like, was she? Like have you watched the video? You should pull up the video real fast. You'll probably get sucked into a hole of all the lookalike videos. So it should be like it looks like it's from an apartment building, right, and it's far away. Yeah, it's like a like a under the street. Oh it's fucky. Oh oh okay, yeah that's creepy. What is that? She just seems a little uh unstable, which not to say that she wouldn't be capable of acts of violence like carrying a knife, people who are unstable or known to be that way. Also, they're known to just be weird, do weird things like in the middle of the night dancing, you know like that that are just kind of in their own world. And it's fine as long as they're you know, not doing anybody else harm or themselves total harm. They're just dancing under a street light. Seems pretty benign, honestly. But anyway, this video has spawned so many fake trends, laughable like laughable fake sightings of the Serbian lady. Like, there's some that I saw where it's like, like clearly a man dressed in like a scream outfit, you know, and they like they just do the whole bit. They do the whole bit. Yeah, and it's like, oh, someone makes no noise and then and then the woman woman quote unquote runs after them, but runs past them, not at them, like just runs down the street. There's a lot right now, there's a lot. Oh, I love that. I love that. Michelle. Did you know that I almost became a memur before it was known as a meme? Oh, I didn't know that. This is your previous line. Yeah, I used to love making images and like little things that would spread around Tumblr. I loved it. I have some that picked up a little bit of steam and then died, But like, I love the idea of making If I were, you know, if I was growing up in this generation now, I think I would be making fake videos like that. I really would. I mean, awesome, it's it's really something. I mean, it's it's really I don't know, it's it's it's the creation of folk learn real time, like we're seeing it get created in real time, pretty much. Because I was doing some research, like it led me to read it and someone had just asked, hey, people of Serbia, what's the deal with the dancing lady? Which I think is valid because it's like is there any sort of historical backing behind it? Like what's the deal? And someone just wrote like this is creepy pasta calm down, and like someone else wrote, there was a lady in twenty nineteen, but now it's become an internet urban legend, so they're just like whatever, it's just like eh, which is fair. Although I do go back to this one video, which is kind of unnerving because it's basically a woman dancing on the street, but then you look across the street and you see a dark shadow doing the same movements as her, like she's being controlled, like she's a puppet. And so of course that's spread all over the internet, that the demon is controlling her and you know, YadA YadA, YadA, and using her body as a vessel, and you know, it's a demon puppet, she's a you know, and she's having to kill innocent people and it's just become part of the legend. Oh no, here's an idea for you guys out there. Make the video of there's someone dancing, but but put their shadow just out of sink a little bit. Oh smart, I would, I would, that would be That would be good. That would be good. Yeah, there's a bunch and I really do think there is something to the whole weeping Angel. You turn around, it's closer. You turn around, it's closer. You turn around. Yeah, basically, you turn around. Ed, when you're in your apartment building, you turn around, and then all of a sudden, she's in your apartment building. And then she's in your apartment. Oh no, because you turn your back, you close the curtains and you turn your back, and then she's in your apartment. Oh uh, huh. So like, just to reiterate, there was a woman, there was there was a dancing lady, but now the Internet's turned it into a gigantic, creepy pasta. We do that, we tend to do that. We do that, and so most of the reasons it's kind of cool. But yeah, it's fascinating getting to see lore made in real time. And you know, at some point the truth isn't going to matter that there was like a real lady in you know, nineteen ninety eight or in you know, twenty nineteen. In fact, I could argue now that the truth doesn't matter because we're basically making it its own thing. Yeah, and so it's morphed into its own legend. And so that's what we do. We changed stories here on the podcast all the time. We're just like, eh, yeah, day time, make it autumn. But yeah, so that's the Serbian dancing lady. And then I just want to add one note because this cracked me up because I was looking at Wikipedia and you know, this is the paragraph It's like, oh, the Serbian urban myth featuring a mysterious lady in Belgrade, Serbia, and this went viral. The videos on social media from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty. Nothing about the dancing lady features in the video. But nothing is known about the dancing lady that features in the video, but she has been seen multiple times in ear She has been seen in Belgrade multiple times. And then there's just a sentence that goes, she goes after girls named Lily, and then that's the end of the paragraph. And that just made me that because I because someone clearly added that, like someone clearly put that in there, because I used to add to my Wikipedia, well, the Michelle Newman Wikipedia who is a voice actress who is not me. I used to add m Michelle Newman is also a photographer, and it kept getting flagged. So I just love, I love whoever wrote she goes after girls named Lily. Clearly there's something some long game joke going on there, and I got a love Wikipedia. It's just yeah, it just cracks me up. But yeah, that's all I got on the dancing serbian serbian dancing lady. And you know what kind of music goes along with it, Michelle. I'm just curious that I'm assuming traditional folk music that's like what I'm Yeah, but you know, maybe the Mocari I mean also all of those dances that I listed would be terrifying to see someone dancing in the street light too, in the middle of the night. I mean, every once in a while, like I see people that are just kind of dance doing their own thing, like either those you know, those old Asian guys that are just doing like their tai chi or whatever, or like you know TikTokers, like now and now it's TikTokers. Yeah, but back then, I don't, I don't know, I have a hard time. Like at night, it just doesn't well. You'd be like, oh, that's that's an ornamentally unwell person. It's just someone you want to be like, I'm gonna like give them some space. I'm gonna not go near them, and I'm gonna make sure my doors are locked because that's kind of weird. What if it was just a happy person. She just maybe I don't know, she got good news, she just became a grandma or something, and she's like out there like yeah, yeah, could be right. And then somebody's just like maybe she was just practicing for her dance solo or whatever with the Serbian Traditional Dance group. Maybe that was the only place she could work, you know practice. You know, it's just it's unfair Michelle to me that whenever I want to dance around, I have to lock myself up somewhere and not have anyone see me to just listen to some really girly music. You know. It's like, why why do we have to lock ourselves in the shower to sing? For example? It's like, why can't we do what that serbian lady did right and just be free? Let her be their motivation. Yeah, it's time to let ourselves just be free. Yeah, and yeah, maybe sometimes we run after people with a knife if they see us, right, what's wrong with that? Nothing? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Yeah, let's just do what we want, just just you know, why not? Yeah? You know I love this message. I love it. Yeah, me too. We're ending on such a positive note. Be free, carry a knife sometimes. There you go, dance when you want at night, dance in the street, dance in the street under the spotlight at two am, at two am, my team, let's just do it. Let's just do it. I love it. Anyway, what are we going to talk about next week, Edwin? I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise, fabulous. I know