Viral: Glen Powell's 'crazy' cannibal story upsets the internet and brings to light an urban legend from the early 2000s | Hollywood

Glen Powell is the man of the hour. The star of Top Gun: Maverick finally has Hollywood (and everyone else) in his hands. The man who once starred in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (as most of us have forgotten) is delivering hit after hit and is now setting the stage for his latest big-screen career with back-to-back premieres like Anyone But You, Hit Man and Twisters (coming soon).

However, the hit man recently made headlines in the entertainment industry for other reasons when he sat down with social media star Jake Shane on the talk show 'Therapuss.' Although the latest Netflix sensation sat down with @octopusslover8 for a 'deep dive therapy session' in the last weeks of May 2024, their 'mind-blowing' interaction is only now going viral on the internet.

After 20 minutes, Powell got down to business and the rest is history. Glen asked Shane if he wanted to hear a “crazy story” and allegedly told a crazy side of the life of his sister's friend who had apparently narrowly escaped death.

Glen Powell's crazy story about a cannibal that goes viral

The Twisters star told how his sister's friend started dating a man. Although he had the looks and aura of a “super charming” man, it turned out he was a cannibal.

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While Powell did his best to get his supposed “facts” straight, he stuck to the story – he had allegedly heard it through word of mouth. He told Shane how much his sister's friend had enjoyed her date with this man. Later that evening, they went back to his apartment, and this is where the creepy aspect of the story comes out.

“She goes to his house that night and he says, 'Hey, can I give you a massage?'” Powell told the story. Soon after, she felt a sickening, ominous feeling and “she just got a funny feeling. She thought something felt funny…”

“So he starts massaging her shoulders… She feels like everything feels kind of weird,” Powell continued. And then the girl realizes she needs to get out of this situation, but the person she was dating “gets a little weird and says, 'No, please don't go.'”

At some point, it finally slips out of the girl: “Her skin starts to itch like crazy. The next day she goes to the doctor and he does a test on her skin. And it turns out that it is a black market lotion that dissolves the skin for human consumption.”

“This man rubbed lotion on her body to eat her.”

Eventually, the doctor probably asked her for the person's address because he was considering calling the police.

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“They went to this man's house and he had the bodies of several girls in the house,” Powell concluded.

Social media reactions to Glen Powell’s cannibal story: Is it true?

Shortly after, social media went into shock. And so, Internet users went online to express their horrified reactions to the alleged cannibal story. Some apparently couldn't comprehend that a “lotion to prepare human skin for consumption” was even available on the market. Some women praised the girl for her good instincts in this situation and for possibly saving potential victims from falling victim to the madness: “Who knows how many lives she saved thanks to her good instincts. Unbelievable.”

Still, there were some skeptical reactions. One X/Twitter user wrote: “How could he put the lotion on her shoulders without having it on his hands? Did he massage her while wearing latex gloves? And her skin is itchy and on that basis she could get a doctor's appointment the next day? In America?” He raised the possibility that this could be a “made up story.”

Speculation raged online about whether the story was actually true. Meanwhile, a 2001 urban legend resurfaced, shared on Snopes, “the ultimate Internet reference source for researching urban legends.” The story, titled “Romantic Encounter with a Necrophiliac,” dealt with a girl's “unusual health condition” that allegedly led to the discovery that she had been intimate with a necrophiliac who may also have been eating corpses.

This “fact check” report also included several other stories from the 2000s, leading many to suspect that Powell’s story was most likely just another variation of these common myths.