Romanian Urban Legend - The Black Ambulance/Ambulance of Death

The Black Ambulance (Ambulanța neagră) is a urban legend about an ambulance that was used to kidnap people. This legend is very similar to the Soviet urban legend named The Black Volga, originally created somewhere between 1960 and 1970.
The first iteration of this legend was The Black Dacia. It was the Romanian counterpart of The Black Volga and it appeared sometime before 1989, probably shortly after The Black Volga did.
After 1989 the legend of The Black Dacia has been replaced with The Black Ambulance/Ambulance of Death.

The first time I heard about this legend was around the early 2010's, most probably in 2010 or 2011. I was in elementary school and one of my classmates told me about it.

The story goes like this:

At night, in multiple towns/cities around Romania, an ambulance with a black color scheme would roam around and follow people who were alone on the streets. They would kidnap these people and take them to an unknown place. The primary target of these ambulances would be unsupervised kids left alone outside at night.
Most of the victims would never be seen or heard of while others would reappear. The ones who reappeared would always be found near train tracks. Dead with their organs missing, most probably they were harvested and sold to hospitals... Or on the black market. The bodies would have some money in their mouth, a moderate sum, and a piece of paper with the message that would usually apologize for their death while also thanking for their organs as they were going to save someone else's life. It is unclear if these messages are meant to actually show any remorse or to mock the victim's loved ones.
Another chilling detail is the fact that the victim's eyes would always be missing. I am not sure if eye transplants were do-able so far back but another theory is that the last thing seen by the victim would remain burnt on their retinas. So the abductors remove them so no lead could be left pointing towards them.

This legend was so widespread that it made several TV appearances with some of them being as late as 2019-2020.

In my opinion, this was just a story that parents would use to scare their kids into not staying outside after dark. After-all, abductions were quite a big problem back then, and to a lesser extent now.

There were several cases of people who drove black vans getting assaulted unfairly because of this legend. One case was about a private clinic who owns a black ambulance whose driver got dragged out and beaten up by a group of people.

To me this remains a spooky story from my childhood that kept me on the edge and forced me into being more careful about when and where I am at any time.

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