The Phantom Barber of Pascagoula: Mississippi’s Creepiest True Crime Urban Legend Imagine waking up in the dead of night, not to a burglar or a ghost, but to find someone silently snipping your hair while you sleep. Yeah, sounds like a bad creepypasta—but in 1942, Pascagoula, Mississippi was living this nightmare for real. The so-called Phantom Barber terrorized the Gulf Coast town during WWII, sneaking into homes, cutting women’s hair, and then vanishing like a damn cryptid with scissors. No forced entry, no stolen valuables—just locks of hair missing and residents left absolutely shook. One of the first victims? A pair of twin girls who claimed they woke up mid-snip. Another woman said she felt something touch her face before realizing her hair was hacked off. Pure nightmare fuel. The town went into full-on panic mode. People started bolting their doors, setting up traps, and even arming themselves in case the barber struck again. Things got darker when a local couple was brutally attacked in their home—not just hair-related shenanigans, but actual violence this time. Suddenly, the "funny but creepy haircut bandit" story turned into a potential murder case. Police eventually arrested a German-born chemist named William Dolan, accusing him of being the Phantom Barber. He was allegedly bitter about the war effort and supposedly targeted his victims as part of some twisted vendetta. But here’s the catch: they never actually proved he was the barber. Dolan was convicted for the assault on the couple, but the hair-cutting crimes? Never pinned on him. To this day, plenty of people believe the real Phantom Barber was never caught. So was it wartime paranoia? A small-town boogeyman? Or an actual scissor-wielding freak sneaking around in the dark? Whatever the truth, the Phantom Barber left Pascagoula with one of the weirdest, creepiest unsolved mysteries in American true crime. Sleep tight—and maybe lock up your clippers.