Outside of batombong town, in Cambodia, there is a cave, the floor of the cave is I think 20-30 feet below the entrance. The khmer rouge used it as an open air grave. They would shoot people then throw the body into the cave.

But sometimes they didn't want to use bullets, so they would beat the person with rifle stocks, and then throw them into the cave, if they were lucky they were dead by the time they landed. Sometimes the khmer rouge just threw people into the cave, and maybe they broke some bones when they fell.

People spent their last days on earth dehydrating in a cave full of bodies in various states of decomposition, in near pitch black, very likely being able to hear other people who were also dying. There is also a decent chance that a person would be on top of a corpse. And, because it is Cambodia, it would have been hot, humid, and full of mosquitoes that can transmit malaria and dengue fever.

I have seen the cave, when I was there the bodies were all undisturbed. Just piles of skeletons. They have since collected the remains and made a monument in the cave. The knowledge that so many people ended their time on earth with such barbarity, fear, and pain still haunts me.

This is a personal one, and I find it terrifying on a couple levels, but the main one I'll elaborate on at the end.

In early 2007 my father seemed to be in otherwise good health. He'd been working with his PCP to get his cholesterol under control, his heart seemed healthy from EKGs and whatnot. The outlook seemed good.

He catches a nasty strain of the flu during a business trip to South Korea and is still dealing with it 2 weeks after he gets home. Like a jacka*s, he takes no time off from work, even working longer hours. His coworker finds him one morning dead at his desk from a massive heart attack.

The coroner opens him up and there's a huge amount of damage to his heart that she claims would normally take years to occur.

My family is devastated. His PCP attends the memorial service and is completely beside himself trying to logic out what could have gone wrong, because all tests and scans showed that my father's heart health wasn't at risk. He'd specifically dedicated a lot of time and energy to working with my father to ensure that, due to a family risk of heart disease.

We eventually learned that the influenza virus increases your risk of a heart attack exponentially. My father further increased his chances by constantly working to the point of physical exhaustion, and making it harder for his body to fight off the virus. The damage to his heart was caused by the virus itself getting into it and directly attacking the tissue.

A lot of people seem to think the flu is just a minor cold that you get over in a week, but in reality it's a deadly virus that *will* k*ll you if you don't take the proper precautions. That, to me, was terrifying to learn.

This is also why when people were like "Oh, it's just like a flu" about COVID-19, I could feel the bile building up in my gullett. It can k*ll you, and it definitely will if you indulge in the same buffoonery people did for COVID.

My uncle and his girlfriend were hitchhiking down the mountains of colorado and were picked up by a man. A little ways down the road, he stops the car and asks my uncle if he can check the tire, he thinks he ran something over.

My uncle gets out and the man drives away with his girlfriend and pulled a weapon on her. She immediately opens the door and jumps out while he’s driving.

My uncle and his gf reconvene and were okay, just were trying to process what happened. At a later time on the news they saw a story about a serial k*ller and it ended up being the man who picked them up. It was Ted Bundy.

That during covid and other crises many political leaders would happily sacrifice your life (and probably any but their own) for gain.

There’s an extremely high number of child ab*sers that apply to be foster carers. I lived in over 60+ homes growing up and in all apart from one I experienced either physical, emotional or sexual abuse. There’s not a single person I know that was in foster care that hasn’t been abused.

One foster family in particular used to really creep me out, and they always made me take a ‘night drink’ before bed. One night I didn’t drink it and I was woken up by my foster father getting into my bed in the middle of the night. I told social services but they didn’t believe me, I kept crying about it at school and telling everyone and all they done was move me to a family that after a few months started physically abusing me instead.

My great grandfather came home from world war 2 with shell shock and my great grandma refused to sleep in the same bed as him because he would keep repeating “no don’t k*ll Tom!!” Which was what he said before he witnessed his childhood friend getting k*lled.

He luckily managed to get therapy, and was ok, but wheelchair bound up until I was about 11 where at Christmas dinner he sat while we all ate, completely frozen, my granddad asked “you ok dad?” to which he started crying and suddenly let out a very loud and hurt filled “don’t k*ll Tommy” and started crying.

Ik it’s not “scary” but it freaked me out :(.