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You know the legend: say his name five times in the mirror and Candyman appears. But before the hook-handed ghost ever terrified you in your nightmares, there was a real woman in Chicago whose screams went unanswered.  In 1987, 52-year-old Ruthie Mae McCoy called 911, terrified that someone was breaking into her apartment through her bathroom mirror. Hours later, Ruthie Mae was dead. What followed was a horrifying chain of neglect, systemic failure, and indifference that would later inspire one of horror’s most iconic stories.  This episode uncovers the real tragedy that birthed the Candyman myth, which was Ruthie Mae’s fight for safety inside Chicago’s most dangerous public housing project, the police who didn’t listen, and the killers who slipped through the walls like ghosts.  Before there was Candyman, there was Ruthie Mae McCoy....and her story is far more terrifying than fiction.

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