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A Netizen Wanted To Hear Some Creepy Facts About Human Nature, The Internet Provided 40 Chilling Answers
Being human means sometimes being deeply ignorant about how anything works. As a child, you may have thought this was strange and, obviously, you needed to know everything, but a part of adulthood is realizing that, often, not knowing is better.
Regardless, one person decided to indulge in the more eerie side of life and asked the internet for all the creepy facts about human existence. They got what they asked for, so scroll through, if you dare, and be sure to upvote your favorite facts and comment any you know that were mentioned below.
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We’re smart enough to make a perfect society, but too greedy to make it work.
The call of the void. This occurs when humans are on high places, like rooftops or cliffs, and get the urge to jump. It’s actually pretty common.
Everybody has a self-destructive instinct. It just manifests in different ways.
I don't know if this is fact, but apparently humans have an instinct to know when they're being stared at by someone, so when you feel like you're being looked at you're probably right.
It's true. And really weird. The best guess I have is that when someone or something is concentrating on you they stop breathing or change their breathing, and you hear the change in sound and it sets off an alarm. Some animals have the same spooky sense.
That's an interesting explanation. But it happens with ppl staring at you from a distance, so I don't know. But I've always wondered how we can realise it. And I agree it's probably some "prey" sense of alert
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It's not real, just a confirmation bias. Every time you get this 'feeling' and find that if you look around hard enough there's someone looking at you you reinforce the idea that you could somehow sense them, even if they just happened to glance at you a tenth of a second earlier.
Or if they are just looking at you because you are the one person who suddenly started to look at all the faces around you. Things that go from quiet to movement attract our eyes, after all.
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We have an instinct for it. What we don't have is a sense that is reliable. That instinct goes off sometimes for like, no reason. When they've done studies on how accurate this "instinct" is, people are pretty bad at it.
My physical appearance always attracts attention - for the same reason any train wreck does.
During WWII fighter pilots were told that once they had seen an enemy aircraft but they hadn’t been spotted that they shouldn’t stare at their intended target. Keep them in sight but don’t hold a gaze on them. We do get a sense of being watched. Read Sense Of Being Stared At, it covers the subject more precisely called scopaesthesia.
it's right. The eyes are one part of seeing, the brain is the other (yes, I know the eyes are part of the brain technically). Besides the "conscientious" seeing, there are other parts of the brain looking too. E.g. one is checking for unexpected movements and another one is checking for eyes and if possible recognising if the eyes look at you or not.
Ladies - always listen to your gut. Don't be polite. Don't be nice. If you think something is "weird" or "off", yell and kick and scream. We have intuition for a reason. Safety.
Not the breathing. Woman are really tuned in to this. When you are driving and waiting for the light to change if there is a woman sitting the car next to you but cant see you in her peripheral vision stare at her and more than likely she will do a sudden sharp turn of her head like you just tapped her on the shoulder and look at you. I tried this many times and it usually works many more times than it doesn't.
If you think someone is staring at you in public, do a fake yawn. Most people will yawn when they see another person do it. I learned this from BP
It’s really weird, I don’t yawn when I see other people do it. So just remember not everyone will.
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An instinct leftover from the days when we were still considered a quick lunch for sabre tooth tiger?
It is probably left from the times when humans had to hunt their food and were hunted from bigger animals than them. :)
My then-husband once told me that, when he was in the Marine Corps, they were specifically instructed that if following/observing a target, not to stare at them too long for this exact reason.
I agree with all that stated/implied that we're hard-wired for this and that it may be have been part of prey instinct. Two things recently had me consider this again. I was in a crowded line and glanced at a 6-mo old in a stroller next to me. He immediately made direct eye contact, it mildly was disturbing; after going to a movie, my daughter mentioned that the CGI skinning on one of the actors wasn't quite right. We finally figured it out that it might have been the micro-expressions/movements of the eyes.
I noticed this in junior high. Whenever I stared at someone's back, they would turn around. I recently read an explanation for this, but I can't remember where.
I remember being a little kid and being told what happened to William Afton in FNAF and then started feeling like i was being watched 0_0
Just a little bit of THC makes you not care for those of us that have a severe problem with this
Think about how rapidly we've evolved to where we casually accept being watched everywhere we go. Security and traffic surveillance has grown exponentially, and nearly every person has a recording device equipped with a program tracking them. Whatever this instinct is, it'll probably die out in a couple generations as unnecessary.
Well then I am definitely haunted, because I feel watched all the time.
Gavin DeBecker wrote a book called The Gift of Fear, and said that if you ever feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up, RUN. It's human instinct left over from our primordial days.
Thats true. And its independent from society or what part of the world. And the feeling is independent from what is behind the stare. People also feel stared at, when the person staring is not even aware he does that. Only because the other person is accidentally in the direction of the gaze. It even happens when people are blind and don't even know there is a person in front of them.
Yes, this is quite common in non-self-absorbed people. And combat veterans. And witches.
This ability likely evolved as a survival mechanism, as being aware of others' attention can be crucial for social interaction and safety.
This happened to me yesterday. I was covering a reception desk for a couple of hours and I felt eyes on me. I looked round and there was an older chap staring at me. He continued to stare even after I asked him if he was okay. Yikes.
I would say though, that not everyone has it. Or as has been pointed out it's not some special sense but interpretation of data from other senses.
My experience: everyone has it, some reject/suppress/distract it away.
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Some day scientists will discover that humans emit energy to varying degrees in subtle ways not yet identified. One will be from our eyes, explaining why we sense stares, and why some speakers have charisma, and times when eyes meet across a room sexual interest can be aroused.
I'm broken? I get paranoid and think I feel people in my house and no one is there. I think it is from watching too much true crime? I really don't have that sense in me.
The science illiteracy is through the roof on this thread. People think that we can detect some sort of magic quantum observer waves coming out of other ppl's eyeballs. At this rate, we'll probably get another four years of Trump, smh
Quantum physics _literally_ addresses that the observation of a particle changes the behavior of the particle. Or, as you call it, "magic quantum observer waves".
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Our ancestors spent a few hundred thousand years near, but not at, the top of the food chain.
I can feel and then see peep my duck staring at me clearly dead on from about 50metres away 😆 same feeling but better consequences on who’s watching me
I would guess it would have something to do with our evolutionary dna...like the hunter being hunter
It's true. Saw a documentary about it with a person sitting in a room with a one way window. On the other side of the window there was another person looking at the seated person in intervals. The sitting person had to push a button when they felt like they were being watched. They repeated this like 500 times or so and confirmed this theory.
I heard somewhere that humans developed this sense when we were lower on the food chain. It was a way to avoid being eaten.
I heard somewhere that human beings developed this back when we were lower in the food chain. It was a way to avoid being eaten.
I'm going to have to say that it depends. Many people also get this when they're home alone in the dark, and it feels like someone's there/ looking at you. There's probably no one there. But if you're outside then yes. You can do this experiment with friends and see how many times you'll guess right whether or not they're looking at you.
Was quietly gardening and felt like I should look around. A boat full of people was quietly drifting by on the lake behind me. So I turned and pointed my bum directly at them as I pulled weeds until they were gone. Stare at me? Enjoy my bum.
Evolution, it hasn't been long since we had to be worried about predators. That kind of brain change takes thousands upon thousands of years, and we have even long of years before as primates to rewrite
Many people believe this one is true, but it isn't. It's been thoroughly debunked.
Despite the fact that many of these ideas are presented as downright creepy, humans do have a weird psychological desire to artificially feel this feeling. Maybe it’s a surge of adrenaline or a sort of heightened state, but this sort of internet content and the entire horror genre all revolve around it.
For example, sometimes our hair will stand on end and we’ll break out in goosebumps when we feel, often unknowingly, unsettled. A horror franchise of the same name exists probably for this reason. In humans, there is some speculation that we have this reaction when our bodies are being moved without our control, such as an earthquake.
That pretty much everyone has the capacity for extreme evil given the right circumstances.
Most people that die due to hypothermia get naked before dying.
This is because, blood stops flowing to your extremities, so you don't lose body heat. Just before death, the brain kinda "gives out" and allows blood flow to return to normal. This sends warm blood to your cold limbs, making you feel very hot and sweaty, so you strip.
Before this was understood, people that had died of hypothermia were believed to have been sexually assaulted because they were fully naked
One of my favorite aspects about human nature is how there are things in nature that we are the best at. Sure we’re not the fastest, strongest, or most agile. But out of everything in the animal kingdom, we can run the longest.
Humans are adapted to do what very few animals can do, which is run for extended periods of time. Here’s where it gets creepy, I saw it explained like this:
Imagine you’re a gazelle on the plains of Africa early on in human history. You see some hairless apes running towards you, but f**k are they kind of slow. So your instincts kick in and you sprint away. Once they’re out of sight you relax and go back to eating grass or whatever you’re doing. But f**k, there they are again, running slowly towards you. How’d they figure out where you went?
You don’t know, you’re a gazelle. So you sprint away again and think you’re safe, again. Then, here come the hairless apes, slowly coming for you once again. You keep repeating this until you can’t sprint anymore. You aren’t adapted to continuously run long distances, but they are. Eventually you collapse and they get you.
That’s creepy to me. A slow moving predator who somehow always finds you and chases you until you can’t run anymore.
"But out of everything in the animal kingdom, we can run the longest " Good one, but I prefer "of everything in the animal kingdom, we can throw the furthest and most accurately." Our ability to throw would have quickly made us top predators.
This is all fine and good, the strange part is that many people actually enjoy the sensation of goosebumps and a heightened heart rate. It’s very human, it seems, to take a biological marker of fear and danger and turn it into entertainment. Even more weirdly, there are people who can actually induce goosebumps, and this state of tension manually, which is a good party trick, but a strange ability to have.
After a back surgery, your organs might have been moved to perform certain parts of the surgery. The doctors don't move your organs back to their original place. This funny feeling you get after the surgery is your organs moving themselves back to their original place. Yes, they are capable of that.
You only need 30 people in order to trigger mob mentality in order to control an entire cowed of anywhere upwards to 10,000+ people blindly copying them.
There are also sounds that create this feeling despite no good explanation for them. Nails on a chalkboard and the scraping of metal utensils on metal both have this effect on many humans, but there does not seem to be a good evolutionary explanation. Our early ancestors did not need to feel fear at wasting chalk in such a manner, so there are all sorts of wild speculation as to why we have this reaction.
Risks during birth are abnormally high compared to other species. Because of our upright gait (mother's narrow pelvis) and big heads, fetuses cannot 'fully' gestate until being born. Humans have to be born prematurely while the head is still tiny and squishy. Otherwise, childbirth would not be survivable at all.
We are also the only idiots that cry right after birth, giving away the position of the mother and child to potential predators
Because the eyes are not only incredibly vulnerable to infection due to the moisture, they're also a direct connection to our brain. This necessitates an additional layer of immune security.
A seperate immune system has several advantages. Firstly, pathogens cannot travel from the eyes to the body, or the body to the eye. You wouldn't want a stomach virus to make you go blind! A normal immune response in the eye would mean swelling, which would destroy the eye. The eye has several different layers of security specifically because they're so important.
Immune privilege, your eyes won’t swell up and fill with lymph or blood during an attack from a pathogen. Your testes and ovary also have immune privilege
One possible explanation for some people’s love of horror could be that the adrenaline and intensity of the fight or flight emotion is not that far from the feelings we have when dopamine is produced in our body. Domaine, famously, feels pretty damn good, so there are people who enjoy acquiring it or “similar” experiences from other means.
Learned memories, i.e. people 100% sure they remember things which actually never happened but were told many times by media/memes/others. I observed this for certain episode which happened less than 10 years ago and which everyone whom I asked witnessed themselves personally, but they all “clearly remember” it in a way it was presented in memes and jokes and not how they actually saw it happen.
Human memory is super fallible. It's an unreliable witness in court proceedings.
If you happen to have brain injury, there is a condition that makes you unable to recognize objects around you. Like, you will see a fork, the colors and the shape of it, but you can’t know how to use it, if it’s edible or not, etc. Pretty scary thing to imagine.
I recommend Oliver Sacks' books if you want to know more about neurological disorders and stories of real people living with these.
We possess the genes for regeneration similar to starfish and salamanders. They are on the same chromosome as the genes for scar tissue formation. However they are not turned on whereas the scar tissue genes are.
So technically, we could pull a Piccolo and regenerate limbs like a starfish. But we don't because it's waaay too metabolically demanding on energy. If we could do it, you'd likely shave years off of your life in exchange. Instead we make scar tissue to reinforce the injured area.
We DO regenerate. If you are a living liver donor, they take part of it. Both the donor and the recipient will regrow the missing part and end up with a complete liver.
On a more general note, there is not actually a good reason why we call them goosebumps. Many other birds have similar skin, including the considerably more common chicken. Other mammals also have this reaction, but for some reason, in multiple languages, waterfowl of some sort are used to describe this biological reaction. For example, in Hebrew, it’s a duck, not a goose.
Your stomach acid can dissolve a razor blade, right? Well another thing is that your stomach is constantly fighting to not get dissolved by the acid. Have a nice day :) also thank u for 257 upvotes, most ive ever gotten
Do not swallow razor blades to test this theory. A swallowed razor blade can do a lot of damage. Even more important, don't swallow safety pins that are clipped up, the stomach muscle movement is enough to unclip them.
We do not have any undeniable way of proving that ANYTHING going on right now is real. This might all just be an illusion made by the mind. In the grand scheme of the universe, every event that led to this exact moment are all impossibly unlikely to happen, and comparatively, it's way more likely that the life we all see ourselves is a figment of a briefly lived consciousness in the endless nothingness of an empty space.
This idea is called the Boltzmann Brain. And it's a real thing. For "impossibly unlikely" read "incredibly unlikely", because nothing is impossible in quantum mechanics.
We are one of the most violent things on earth, yet so social. We legit will help even our enemies when needed.
Its creepy, because we will easily team up snd go back to killing eachother.
The Uncanny Valley phenomenon suggests that we've had to fear something in human history that *looked* human but wasn't
(Edit: I'm talking things that are ALMOST human but not quite. Corpses don't creep me out as much as duplicate horror or life-like dolls.)
It’s probably just to keep us away from really diseased people who aren’t acting right so we don’t catch it, eg rabies or something.
There really is no profile of a person who falls victim to a cult. Anyone is susceptible. Cult members can come from any socioeconomic or educational background, any race, sex, religion.
Seems to me like someone who believes nothing and hates following orders might have a harder time with joining a cult. Unless its run by a very cute dog, in which case, let me gather some sticks for you oh mighty doggie overlord. Also I will give you all the belly rubs you need and donate as many tennis balls as you can chew.
We're an invasive species. By definition.
> An invasive or alien species is an introduced species to an environment that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage.
From Wikipedia.
An opinion that's heavily disputed is humans are cancer. I think it's true, but this isn't officially a fact and therefore shouldn't be counted as one.
That Opinion sounds like Agent Smith from the Matrix Movies. But yeah, the Human species behaves cancerous.
Your frontal cortex makes it breaks you via your decisions. It’s where all the critical thinking goes through the manual computer of dopamine pathways.
Ever wonder why decisions are so crazy in your dreams? Or why it ask makes a little too much sense in the moment? Frontal cortex is off during rem.
Grandma didn’t abandon having a filter with age. The decay of her frontal cortex is no longer preventing her from saying awful or embarrassing things.
Bump your head in some kind of accident? Hope it wasn’t the front, because if so your chances of committing crime just rose more than 100%
I remember reading that if you look at pictures of sick people, your immune system will automatically give itself a little boost just by looking at the pictures
How one person can rule over millions of people. 100 million humans can fear one person collectively, and that person will remain in power for years until death. Once they die, that collective fear morphs into the worshipping of that evil person.
Children are more or less sociopaths. We teach them empathy, kindness, and sharing. There are several psychologists that hold the belief that in a societal breakdown scenario children will actually fair better than adults once they arm themselves, because adults will have a harder time murdering another human.
Meanwhile, children who's brains and emotional response centers have not fully formed will be much more able to mercilessly kill others for survival or supplies.
"sociopaths" is the wrong word here. But remember the Red Guards, Mao's army of children.
[Humans are hard wired to see faces in things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia). It's thought it was to help us stay away from sabre toothed tigers and such, but now we see the Virgin Mary in a tomato slice.
"Cute Aggression."
Have you ever seen a cute little puppy? or a soft fuzzy chinchilla? or a cut tiny little baby, and gotten this urge to squeeze it? The reason for this is not nearly as innocent as you might think.
It's highly speculated that the reason humans develop this urge is because our wirings do not allow us to comprehend what we are feeling when we see something "Cute" our sensors go kind of haywire, and because of this we have a subconscious urge to "Destroy" this cute entity to relieve us of the distress we are experiencing as a result of its existence.
Very dark stuff
This is interesting. Grandmas telling babies they want to eat them just got more understandable.
**Aphantasia:**
Almost 4% of people do not have visual imagination, and cannot use the "movies in the head" effect at all. Their imagination works on either language, abstracts and raw emotions or on imagining sounds and tactile input.
Imagine how absolutely creepy and alien their thoughts must be to a regular phantasic person. Their minds work more like hyper advanced ChatGPT than like those of other homo sapiens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
I don’t know what this is called but this is when I realised that human beings are extremely selfish. And I was equally horrible and a part of this.
I was in second or third grade, around 8 years old I guess? So when school got over, it was the last day or something and all the kids in my class (about 40-50 kids) ran out the door at the same time. One of the girls in my class fell over. Kids kept trampling over her. And some of us noticed that. But if we stopped to help her or bent down, we would also get trampled over. So we just ran and left. I still feel so bad about that. Thankfully nothing happened to her and she just scraped her knees and elbow. But I feel so bad about it till today.
On a recent date with a CSI I learned that a lot of people die naked on or near the toilet. Apparently people get very hot and try to strip down when close to death.
Could it be that they're naked near the toilet because they're getting into or out of the bathtub or shower?
If you're bored enough you will begin to intentionally hurt yourself.
Do not worry for me... I have such an interesting internal life.
You're not as perceptive to touch as you might like to think. Particularly in areas like your back, I could poke you with two fingers inches apart and you'd think I was only used 1 finger.
We all have our flaws and quirks, but there are some aspects of human behavior that are just plain creepy. Here are some creepy facts about human nature that will make you shudder:
**We're drawn to the macabre:** Whether it's horror movies, true crime podcasts, or haunted houses, many people have a fascination with the darker side of life. It's thought that this interest stems from our primal need to understand and prepare for danger.
**We can be cruel to animals:** While many of us love our pets and consider them part of the family, there are also people who are capable of unspeakable acts of cruelty towards animals. From puppy mills to animal testing, it's a sad fact that some humans view animals as nothing more than objects to be used and abused.
**We're easily influenced by authority:** Studies like the infamous Milgram experiment have shown that humans can be easily influenced by authority figures, even if it means causing harm to others. This is a disturbing reminder of how easily we can be manipulated.
**We're capable of extreme violence:** While most of us would never dream of harming another person, there are those who are capable of extreme violence. From serial killers to war crimes, it's a chilling reminder that human beings can be both the best and worst of creatures.
**We're fascinated by death:** From Victorian post-mortem photography to memento mori jewelry, humans have long been fascinated by death and the macabre. While some may view this as a morbid curiosity, others see it as a way to confront and understand our own mortality.
These are just a few examples of the creepy and unsettling aspects of human nature. While it's important to acknowledge and understand these darker sides of ourselves, it's also crucial to remember that the vast majority of people are good and decent. As always, it's up to us to choose which aspects of our nature we want to cultivate and which we want to overcome.
I really like the post-mortem pictures. There is a beautiful quiet calm about them that touches my soul. I've never found them macabre. Death is an inevitable part of life and it comes with bittersweet melancholy. I'm a tortured artistic soul, so that might explain it.
We create weapons and kill other humans just because we disgaree with each other.
"Disagree" is the wrong word here. "Feel threatened by" or "Feel jealous of" would be better.
Some people play sick twisted games with other people's lives .
This is so true; not me but a friend told me this. His Mom was quite the psycho. He claimed if she was mad at one of her boyfriends she would really talk them up and get them in a good mood, then get them drunk so the point memory was suspect. She would then pick a fight which usually ended with them just going outside to get away from her. She would then get in her car and go brush them just enough to cause minor injuries. She would then load them up and go to the ER where she would present this as, "he got drunk and I tried to stop him from getting into trouble and he ran into my car." He claimed she did this to build the case in the future that the person was a troublesome drunk if they got violent and she was the innocent victim.
The eyes have a separate immune system than the rest of the body. If your body's immune system realizes your eyes exist, it'll attack the eyes and reject them from the body as it would a virus.
Why is that creepy? Also brain and testes have this "immune privilege", and the same for fetus and placenta. It only means that such organs have different immune responses than the rest of the body.
Bacteria dictates our behaviour.
Intestinal bacteria have been studied and it has been found that an imbalance causes, for example, depression. I haven't read enough to provide more examples or links to studies.
You want a weird design flaw? Our retinas are backwards. Meaning our cones and rods (cells that react to light) point to the back of the eye.
This is evident by the blind spots everyone has which are basically the optic nerve going from inside the eye through the retina and then out to the brain.
It's not a design flaw. It prevents the receptors from being overly stimulated due to light touching them directly if it were built they other way around.
How some behaviours are so hard wired.
Note: this post originally had 76 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
This thread is ok, but be warned - it's vaguely depressing and very repetitive. Also it repeats itself a lot. You will read the same thing written in subtlety different ways many times. Prepare yourself for that repetition is what I'm saying.
Here's another one, "Humans are meeeeaaan and it's in their natuuuure," written by someone who lives in a civilized society, probably from their couch, on their computer designed by humans to allow us to educate ourselves and share things, most likely in good health thanks to medicine (also created by humans to heal and live longer lives), and who has probably never experienced war or extreme danger in their life. Just trying to act edgy. lol
And none of this is f acts. Just opinions that other people agree with. Dangerous that not everything said on the internet is true. And this tread is not facts. But funny stuff
I didn’t see anyone mention the bystander affect. Basically the more people around to witness a crime, the less likely it is that it’ll be reported. Because everyone thinks ‘someone else will/has already reported it’. I learnt about this as a kid and it has such a profound affect on me that I always report crimes when I see it. When I say crime I mean people fighting or attacking one another, attempted murder, abuse, things like that.
"They say there's enough religion in the world to make men hate each other, but not enough to make them love": originally said by Jonathan Swift, also said by Louis Cyphre (Robert Deniro's character in *Angel Heart*).
Have you ever noticed that you've never got up in the middle o the night to poop? Unless there is a medical condition of course.
This thread is ok, but be warned - it's vaguely depressing and very repetitive. Also it repeats itself a lot. You will read the same thing written in subtlety different ways many times. Prepare yourself for that repetition is what I'm saying.
Here's another one, "Humans are meeeeaaan and it's in their natuuuure," written by someone who lives in a civilized society, probably from their couch, on their computer designed by humans to allow us to educate ourselves and share things, most likely in good health thanks to medicine (also created by humans to heal and live longer lives), and who has probably never experienced war or extreme danger in their life. Just trying to act edgy. lol
And none of this is f acts. Just opinions that other people agree with. Dangerous that not everything said on the internet is true. And this tread is not facts. But funny stuff
I didn’t see anyone mention the bystander affect. Basically the more people around to witness a crime, the less likely it is that it’ll be reported. Because everyone thinks ‘someone else will/has already reported it’. I learnt about this as a kid and it has such a profound affect on me that I always report crimes when I see it. When I say crime I mean people fighting or attacking one another, attempted murder, abuse, things like that.
"They say there's enough religion in the world to make men hate each other, but not enough to make them love": originally said by Jonathan Swift, also said by Louis Cyphre (Robert Deniro's character in *Angel Heart*).
Have you ever noticed that you've never got up in the middle o the night to poop? Unless there is a medical condition of course.
