CREEPY FACTS YOU MIGHT DON'T WANT TO KNOW
Crows are so intelligent they can recognize a human face. Makes you wonder what else they can do...
Tooth-in-the-Eye Surgery. Surgeons put a tooth in a blind person’s eye to restore their sight. It was pioneered in the 1960s, and it actually works and it’s still being done today.
Real corpses were used in the 1982 film Poltergeist. They were bought from a medical supply center and were much less expensive than making props. If you thought the Poltergeist movies were terrifying... Legend of a curse plagues the franchise due to four deaths among the cast: Dominique Dunne (Dana Freeling), Heather O’Rourke (Carol Ann Freeling), Will Sampson (Taylor, good spirit), and Julian Beck (Kane, evil spirit). Dunne, who was 22 at the time, tragically died at the abusive hands of her boyfriend. And O’Rourke was only 12 when she died unexpectedly from septic shock caused by a bowel obstruction.
Plenty of creepy facts and horror stories surround the world’s tallest mountain, but one of the most horrifying facts about Mount Everest is that the bodies of over 150 dead hikers remain on the mountain, buried under deep snow and they’are used as landmarks.
Postpartum psychosis can happen overnight. Although postpartum psychosis only occurs in around 0.1% to 0.2% of deliveries, this horrifying illness manifests within the first two weeks of motherhood. This means that a mother might feel the desire to kill their newborn as soon as they wake up from delivery.
The Turritopsis Dohrnii jellyfish is officially known as the only immortal creature in the world. It lives forever.
Scary spiders... Climate change is making spiders bigger. If you need only one reason to start caring about it... There it is! Also... Spiders can survive in space. Some female spiders allow their young to eat them alive.
A haunted radio station from Russia has been broadcasting a dull monotonous tone for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. UVB-76 is a low-frequency radio station that has been broadcasting since 1982. No one knows where the broadcast is originating. It’s mostly just a buzzing noise with an occasional Russian voice transmission.
Dogs like squeaky toys because they mimic the screams of their prey.
Two Scottish doctors originally invented the chainsaw for childbirth. In 1780, John Aitken and James Jeffray invented the first chainsaw prototype called osteotome. They used the osteotome to cut through the mother’s pelvis when a caesarian was no longer possible. It is certainly gruesome to think of the large chainsaw we know today as a tool for cutting open wombs, but the first prototype was much smaller. The pain, however, was still horrifying.
You could be trapped in a coma-like state and be aware of it. Locked-In Syndrome is a scary condition where you are conscious while in a coma. It’s when you’re stuck between being asleep and awake. You know you’re awake and can hear and see things around you. However, can’t talk and can only move your eyes, so you’re unable to respond to anything. Being unable to speak is one thing, but suddenly being unable to speak and move is downright terrifying. A patient with locked-in syndrome is “locked” in a coma-like state: while they are conscious, their body is completely paralyzed. In this state, they can only move their eyes.
While Ted Bundy was a psychology major at the University of Washington, he worked at Seattle's Suicide Hotline Crisis Center.
CLEARY'S DEN
Love antique, retro, collectables?
There's no better website to shop online for everything out of the ordinary!
Up until the end of the 1980s, some doctors didn’t believe newborns could feel pain. Therefore, all surgery were made without pain relief...
The Judas Cradle was a means of torture where the victim was forced to sit on a spike. Medieval Europe had no shortage of torture devices. For the Judas Cradle, the victim’s limbs were tied with ropes as they were lowered onto a pyramid-shaped wooden device until it penetrated their anus or vagina. This horrifying fact doesn’t stop there as sometimes, operators would add weights on the victim’s legs to increase the pain.
During mummification, Ancient Egyptians removes the brain through one of the nostrils. This scary process is called excerebration. Ancient Egyptians were known to insert an iron hook through the corpse’s nostril to draw out parts of the brain that they would then place in a jar.
In the early 20th century, doctors manually stimulated the genitals of women until they orgasmed. They called this “hysterical paroxysm,” and they believed that this could cure different kinds of female hysteria.
“Figging” is a practice wherein ginger root is inserted into the anus or vagina. In Ancient Greece, slave owners used figging to discipline female slaves. They would skin a ginger root into a phallic shape. The insertion causes an intense burning sensation and discomfort. The practice is mortifying, especially when it could last for an extended period of time.
Vampire moths are real. These aren’t mosquitoes but actual moths that feed on human blood. To add to this creepy fact, these vampire moths can latch onto your skin and suck your blood for almost an hour.
Your house pet will probably want to eat your dead body. There have been many cases of domesticated dogs and cats eating their dead owners. Scientists hypothesize pets will lick and nip at their owner’s face for comfort out of the distress of seeing them unconscious or hurt. Eventually, they draw blood, and instinct takes over from there.
When you die the last sense to leave your body is the ability to hear. Even after decapitation, human heads stay conscious for a while. Life doesn’t leave a severed head right away. For around 20 seconds, the human head remains conscious, but what the human head thinks about in its last moments is unknown.
The film 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' is based on a real story reported in the LA Times. A boy was terrified to go to sleep, and when he did, he died while screaming about a nightmare. Director Craven revealed that the inspiration for the iconic slasher film came from a story he read from the LA Times: a boy was having disturbing nightmares and refused to sleep for days out of fear. The same night he succumbed to exhaustion, he died in his sleep, but not before screaming for help in the middle of the night because of his nightmares.
More than 80% of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. The ocean comprises over 70% of the Earth’s surface, and with only less than 10% of that accounted for, plenty believes the ocean to be home to some of the creepiest and most frightening creatures alive. Today’s technology continues to advance, but the deep levels of the ocean still make it difficult to explore further. What’s clear is that so far, the unknown continues to scare plenty of us.
Technically it’s not impossible to die from holding in a sneeze. Some injuries from holding in a sneeze can be very serious, such as ruptured brain aneurysms, ruptured throat, and collapsed lungs.
Your cellphone is more disgusting than a public toilet. It has 10 times more bacteria on it than the average public restroom.
Alien hand syndrome is a phenomenon in which one hand is not under control of the mind. The person loses control of the hand, and it acts as if it has a mind of its own.
Some ants turn into zombies via parasitic fungus which manipulates their brains.
King Charles II was a very creepy individual... He drank alcohol mixed with pulverized human skulls. Another creepy fact about the English King is that he called his drink the “King’s Drops,” and he incorporated it into his diet with the belief that it promoted good health. He also watched William of Orange consummate his marriage. King Charles II was the uncle of William of Orange. He married his niece to the prince, and historians say that he watched over the two of them during their wedding night.
Sudden arrhythmic death syndrome is a sudden condition where someone seemingly healthy dies suddenly with no apparent cause of death. People can die with no discernible cause of death. Sudden arrhythmic death syndrome or SADS occurs when a person suddenly dies after a cardiac arrest with no discernible cause of death. Another detail about this creepy fact is that it usually happens during sleep.
Medical errors cause around 250,000 deaths every year. One sad and horrifying fact is that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States. An incorrect diagnosis, delays in therapy, and mismanagement of a condition are all medical errors that have cost lives.
People with Cotard's syndrome believe that parts of their body are missing, or that they are dying, dead, or don’t exist. They may think nothing exists.
Fatal familial insomnia makes it impossible for someone to sleep for months. One of the creepiest facts that many people might not know about is that some people inherit a rare genetic disease called fatal familial insomnia (FFI). FFI makes it impossible for someone to fall or stay asleep for long. Because this can last for months, insomnia leads an individual to feel so exhausted that they suffer from high blood pressure, weight loss, and severe exhaustion until one eventually succumbs to death.
Criminologists estimate that there's a 1-in-3 chance police will never identify your killer if you're murdered in the US.
You’re more likely to die on your birthday. The chance someone will die on their birthday is 6.7 percent, which is higher than any other day.
According to the WHO (World Health Organization) and recent studies, the average person will shed roughly 112 pounds of skin in their lifetime.
We could solve American homelessness easier than you think. On average, there are over 17,000,000 vacant homes in America at any given time. Meanwhile, according to EndHomelessness.org, there are roughly half a million homeless people in the states. We have enough vacant homes to give each homeless person several homes.
Your cat may sense when you’re dying. A pet cat, named Oscar, resided in a nursing home and was believed to be able to tell when one of the residents would soon die. He’d sleep beside them until they passed.
Being eating alive was an actual method of execution. Scaphism was an ancient form of torture and execution where you’d cover someone with honey, stick them in a hollowed log, and let nature run its course.
Pine trees have proven that they can grow inside the body. In Russia, doctors performed surgery on a man called Artyom Sidorkin, suspecting that he had a cancerous tumor in his lungs. Instead of a tumor, they found a 5 cm fir tree branch in his lung. Doctors believe that Sidorkin accidentally swallowed a fir bud which later grew into a branch. A similar case happened in Massachusetts when Ron Sveden suffered from a collapsed lung. After his family rushed Sveden to the hospital, his doctors found a growing pea plant in his lung. Some might find this creepy or even fascinating, but Sveden found it funny as he munched on peas during his first meal after the surgery.
The Japanese giant hornet’s sting is so painful that the media calls them “murder hornets.” It is the largest hornet in the world. While a single sting is not lethal, it is more painful than any other insect’s sting in the world — not that a single sting isn’t terrifying. A single sting can lead to kidney failure and leave craters on your skin.
More than 80 million bacteria are exchanged in a single kiss.
There was a chicken called Mike the Headless Chicken that lived for 18 months after its head was cut off. What’s the backstory to this creepy fact? Farmer Lloyd Olsen meant to eat Mike for dinner with his wife, but the swing of his ax wasn’t perfect. He missed the chicken’s jugular vein and most of the brain stem. Even without a head, Mike was alive, and he wobbled and crowed in his tour of fame.
It takes the death of 27,000 trees daily to make toilet paper for humans.
Mice and rats can spread at least 35 different diseases to humans. These infections include salmonellosis, hantavirus, and rat-bite fever.
Pigs can eat an entire human body, mostly because they’ll just eat anything. One creepy fact that most people don’t know about pigs is that there have been many records of farmers dying from being eaten by pigs. The common occurrence is that while tending to the pigs, the farmer encounters an accident in the pen, and the hogs eventually feast on the owner’s body.
A body decomposes four times faster in water than on land. Within three days of death, the enzymes from your digestive system begin to digest your body. Dead bodies swell up like balloons after about four days, due to the release of gases and liquids. Now you know...
Every day, a person consumes around 1 to 2 cups of snot. More mucus travels into the trachea than it leaks out the nose, so most of this ends up at the back of your throat. This creepy science fact might gross you out, but it’s completely harmless and normal.
Your bed can have up to 10 million dust mites. Dust mites love warm beddings and dead skin cells. This makes your bed an ideal home for them. They are microscopic and multiply up to thousands or millions. If there’s a lesson to be learned from this creepy fact, then it’s washing your beddings regularly!
Isla de las Muñecas or the “Island of the Dolls” is one of the most haunted places in the world. This small island south of Mexico City is a frightening place. Perched and nailed onto the island’s trees are little dolls that are said to be housed by the spirit of a little girl. According to the legend, the island’s caretaker found a girl who drowned in mysterious circumstances. The caretaker discovered a doll floating in the water, which he hung on a tree to appease the drowned girl’s spirit. However, this show of respect did not work, and the drowned girl’s spirit continued to haunt the caretaker, causing him to hang more and more dolls in order to temper her anger. Sometimes, tourists even say they can see the dolls move their heads and whisper among each other.
The Zoroastrians leave their dead in special towers to be eaten by vultures. While some may find it creepy, it is simply tradition for Zoroastrians. Their funerary practice involves leaving their dead on top of towers called the “dakhma.” Zoroastrians believe that the earth, water, air, and fire are all sacred, and thus burying or cremating the dead would spread impurities to these elements. Leaving their dead exposed to the elements might horrify some, but it is a sign of respect for their followers.
Aztec priests believed that the tears of children could stop droughts. Aztec followers believed in the power of human sacrifice, and many of their rituals included sacrificing women and children to serve their sun god, Huitzilopochtli. When they experienced drought, Aztec priests sacrificed children because they believed their tears could call on the rain.
“The Devil’s Bible” exists, and it’s a contract between a monk and Satan. Also known as Codex Gigas, “The Devil’s Bible” is the largest Latin manuscript known to the world. It contains a full-page portrait of Satan. People believe the manuscript contains the contract of a monk who sold his soul to Satan in the 13th century in order to escape execution.
People used hollowed human skulls as bowls and cups back in ancient England. Cave settlers fashioned cups out of human skulls. They hollowed the skulls and removed the surrounding tissue until they could use it as a drinking vessel. That’s certainly some food for thought.
Ancient Romans believed that drinking blood would let them absorb power.Blood transfusion was a popular practice in Ancient Rome. During gladiator games at the Colosseum, members of the audience would rush into the field to ravage the blood off of fallen gladiators. They believed that in drinking the blood of fallen warriors, they too would absorb the warriors’ powers and skills. The ancient Romans also thought drinking blood would cure epilepsy.
Alchemists used brain matter as an ingredient for an elixir of eternal life. In the 1600s, John French was an English alchemist who used brain matter for his concoctions. Another horrifying fact about his elixirs was that he stored it in horse manure for months and then drank it after.
Being buried alive accidentally occurred so often that people invented “safety coffins.” Doctors often misdiagnosed ill patients, and this was common in 17th century England. Alice Blunden is an example. A doctor mistakenly pronounced her dead after she drank sedatives, and she was accidentally buried alive. This horrifying ordeal didn’t just happen once, but twice. After exhuming her and finding her near death, they buried her once more, only for her to struggle in the casket, still alive, until she eventually succumbed to death.
In 1915, Dr. D.K. Briggs of Blackville, South Carolina, declared 30-year-old Essie Dunbar dead after an apparent epilepsy attack. She was buried the following morning, but her sister in the neighboring town couldn’t get there until after the coffin had been lowered into the ground. When she arrived, she asked the ministers to dig up the coffin so she could see her sister one last time. When the screws were removed and the coffin opened, Essie sat up and smiled at her sister. She went on to live another 47 years, although many people believed her to be a zombie.
There is such a thing as homicidal sleepwalking. It’s also called homicidal somnambulism, or sleepwalking murder. In 2005, Jules Lowe was acquitted of murder after killing his father because he was sleepwalking during the crime. The “sleepwalking defense” has been used in order to have defendants acquitted for murder.
A rat’s teeth can gnaw through substances as hard as lead sheeting and cinder block.
“Teratoma” or “monstrous tumors” are “evil twins” that can grow on your brain. Yamini Karanam was 26 years old when doctors found a tumor on her brain. During the surgery, the doctor discovered that the brain tumor had bone, hair, and teeth. Another creepy fact about these monstrous tumors is that doctors believe them to be undeveloped twins who didn’t survive in the womb and thus latched onto the surviving baby.
Did you know the demise of the dinosaurs was only one of five great extinction events in life’s history on earth? That’s right, in the last 500 million years there have been catastrophic mass extinctions that came this close to eliminating all life from Earth. In fact, per National Geographic, 99 percent of all life forms to have ever lived on our planet are now extinct. Not scary enough? Scientists predict humans might cause the sixth great extinction.
Until the 20th century, human remains were used in the making of medicine. For example, it was thought that ingesting powdered remains of certain organs would help with pain or ailments in that part of the body. For example, the crushed and powdered skull remains of a deceased person to cure headaches.
A book written 14 years before the 1912 sinking of the Titanic may have predicted the ship’s tragic demise. The novella titled The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility was about an “unsinkable” ship hit by an iceberg. The Titan (hello coincidence?) also had a shortage of lifeboats like the Titanic.
In 2007, a woman died after drinking more than a gallon of water in three hours. She did it to win a Wii.
Your coffee mug probably has fecal matter on it. The creepiest fact about your office might be found in the kitchen: scientists have discovered that 90% of coffee mugs are covered in germs. The culprit? Shared kitchen sponges. They caused 20% of these coffee mugs to test positive for E. coli.
Museo delle Anime del Purgatorio or the Museum of the Souls of Purgatory is a small museum in Rome, Italy. Their collection displays several documents and photos with handprints that they claim to be from the dead or souls stuck in Purgatory.
18th century doctors believed that bloodletting was necessary to “balance” one’s health. There are a lot of creepy facts about medicine, and one of them is that in the 1800s, doctors would cut through a patient’s vein to drain them of a certain amount of blood. They believed humans could accumulate too much blood and therefore had to let the extra out for good health.
Women in the 18th century used lead as makeup. Queen Elizabeth I used Venetian ceruse to paint her face with white pigment. This makeup contains vinegar, water, and white lead, which was the pigment that gave the mixture its color. “If looks could kill” becomes a reality through this creepy fact, as being exposed to lead could cause poisoning and death.