“Scariest Fact You Know”: 50 Posts From A Page That Isn’t Afraid To Dive Into The Darkest Topics

anonymous:
My nephew (through marriage) is a crazy little s**t. Once, the entire family was playing hide and seek. He was around 9. He didn't like where I hid so he flew into a rage. He tried to hit me, I grabbed his wrist and twisted just enough to subdue him. He screamed like a freaking manic. I released him. He then ran into another room stating he needed his nerf gun to shoot me because he shoots people whenever he's mad.
I looked at my SIL and said "Seriously, you're OK with this?" Her response was that his rage was my fault, I had no right to touch him and that I should have just let him hit me since he's "only a boy." I told her, quite firmly, that if her crazy little b*****d ever even gave the appearance of causing harm to one of my children that I would put him down like a rabid dog. Fortunately (I guess?) her husband, my wife's parents and everyone else present told her that she was wrong, her kid was f*****g nuts and that this was a serious red flag.
Flash forward two years. Kid is still crazy but that's everyone else's problem because he's still "just a boy." I'm staying at their house. Things have mostly settled from that prior incident. I wake up very early every morning. So around 4:30, I find myself awake. I don't want to get up and wake up everyone else so I just sort of lie there and meditate. At around 5:20, the door opens. Thinking it's my kids, who were young at the time and still came to get us early, I kind of just glance up. Then I notice that it's the nephew and he's holding what appears to be an AR-15.
Now, I suffer from PTSD from Iraq. So my fight or flight response is triggered, my heart is pounding and I'm basically in survival mode. I wait. I watch. He creeps past the foot of the bed, walks up to my side and raises this rifle up to point the muzzle at my face.
So I figure, this is it. I'm going to die. Today it ends. The only goal I have for myself right now is to prevent him from harming my wife and kids. He raises it up and the muzzle is a few inches from my face. I reached up, I grabbed the muzzle and I pushed as hard as I could, sending the butt into the little psycho's face. His nose is bleeding, he's crying, he's screaming about how he's going to k**l me, how I'm f*****g dead etc.
So now everyone is awake. Lights are flipped on and I see that it's a toy rifle made to look like an AR-15. Apparently, this little psycho s**t was planning to stick the muzzle in my face and pull the trigger to scare the s**t out of me with flashing lights and electronic gun sounds.
I feel somewhat torn. On the one hand, I just broke an 11 year old's nose for playing with a toy gun. On the other hand, the kid had all of these tells that he was dangerous and what he was doing was super creepy and yet another red flag.
My SIL was f*****g pissed. Her chosen narrative is that I'm a mentally unstable l*****c who is a danger to all children. She calls the cops. She insists, despite the protestations of my wife, that she's having me arrested and charged with child abuse for hitting a boy for playing with his toys.
Police arrive. Interviews take basically the whole day. I'm a little worried that, getting arrested aside, I might not be able to leave this shithole and go home the next day as planned because these cops might not be done with their investigation.
Fortunately, it didn't play out that way. See, this little We Need to Talk About Kevin a*****e wasn't just a crazy s**t around me like in the movies. He was a crazy little s**t everywhere and had been for years. The police had a file on him because the school was required to call the police every time he threatened a school shooting (which was often).
I laid out my version of events much like I did here. I didn't see him and have a flashback thinking he was an insurgent. I saw him, I knew what he has going through his head, and I wanted to try to prevent him from k*****g my family.
They did let me go home on schedule. And a week later the detective called me to let me know there would be no charges. He also told me that his interview with my nephew was "chilling" and he hopes that my SIL pulls her head out of the sand and gets the kid some help. I told him she won't ever. And when he's 30 years old and on trial she'll be crying and saying he's just a boy.
Hopefully he doesn't hurt anyone but I know the odds are stacked against that hope.
Before anyone asks, I refuse to stay at their house. If we are in town, we stay in a hotel. He is never allowed to be alone with either of my kids. And he is also not allowed in my house since he was caught trying to steal a pocket knife which he said he needed for "surgery" on the family cat (he was almost 12 at the time).
EDIT: Since I'm getting PMs asking, no, he hasn't been arrested for forced into mental health counseling despite repeatedly threatening violence at school. My SIL is a lawyer by training (she hasn't practiced in many years though she is still a member of the bar). When she can't threaten her way out of a situation, she has plenty of friends who are still practicing who are willing to write sufficiently forceful letters. She also scored an injunction against the school when it suspended her shitberg son thus preventing them from actually suspending him. People like her are the reason why no one takes action on some of these incredibly troubled kids.

DeadOnDeparture98:
A phone call from parents/relatives etc.

doesntmatteryaknow:
The sound of an ice cream van.

spoilerdudegetrekt:
A kid who was relentlessly bullied at my school for years sued the district and got an upper 6 figure settlement.

Aleksandr Nevsky:
Someone I used to have in a support group I once helped run for sexually victimized and abused young men shared with us what happened to him.
I'm not going into the finer details of it but the broadstroke is he was being victimized by a TA. He went to other teachers, school admins, and even police. No one believed him and he even got punished for "making it up to get a staff member in trouble".
It destroyed his personality. He became bitter, resentful, spiteful, and generally hateful of other people. He was improving his demeanor in the group but from what he tells us he just "wanted to watch the world die" at the time.
A couple years later that same TA tripped down the stair well in one of the side hallways of the school and he happened to be nearby. He saw she was badly injured and likely had broken bones and was bleeding from her head. Instead of helping her he literally stepped over her and pretended she wasn't there. Security footage showed he wasn't the one to push her but when asked why he didn't say anything or get help he simply said that last time he tried to tell people about something involving her no one helped so why would they this time?

New_journey868:
My son was around 3 at the time. Kept refusing to go downstairs as that's where angel man was, and angel man wanted to hurt the family

Elvis_Take_The_Wheel:
Not my kid, but a little girl in my son's kindergarten class told me she lives across the street from a cemetery. I asked her if it was spooky to live that close to a graveyard and she said very matter-of-factly, "Not during the day. But at night they all walk up to our windows and scream."

captcha_trampstamp:
The fact that you can live a totally normal life one minute, and someone else making a bad decision on a whim can either end your life entirely, or impact it so severely that you may as well have died.
Case in point: a woman in the city near me had a rock dropped onto her windshield while driving under an overpass. The kids who did it were like 14-15 and they're all sitting in jail now. She was basically unable to care for herself and was an invalid, she later died after the trial.

bonzombiekitty:
Heartwarming news stories that are along the lines of "Little Susie has a deadly disease. School raises $50,000 so her family can afford to buy her treatment for a year"
Like what sort of hellscape do we live in where people need to have charity drives to get necessary treatments without going (deeper) into poverty?
Very on point side note: I tried to write "hellscape", but my phone thought I was trying to type "healthcare".

Swerfbegone:
Went out hunting.
While we were taking a break, he pointed his rifle a my head, paused, and pulled the trigger.
It wasn't loaded. I left and never went anywhere with him again.

cooldart61:
When my friend showed me her money and plans to travel to the state of Washington.
She was planning to steal Edward Cullen from Bella.
Twilight was 100% real in her head.
Last I heard, she had got into some hard d***s

Almurderedthrow:
I was dating and living with an a*****e a*****e. One day, I had a "tone" with him and it got bad. He beat and strangled me, among other things. I ended up unconscious. He would have kept going until I was dead.
My cat attacked him. My cat, who is a fraction of the size of him, and he was a big guy, went after him.
I came to with blood everywhere- mine and his. The door closed and him cursing in the bathroom. And my little tortie purring, with her paws covered in his blood.
We got out, and many years later she's as spoiled as can be and still very, very loved

KumaHax:
My crazy religious aunt tried to drown me in the bathtub when I was 11. She walked in on me bathing and just shoved my head down and kept it there.
would've died if my younger sister hadn't walked in on the whole thing and tackled my aunt. Mind you my sister was 7 and was abnormally small for her age.
She saw the entire thing and quickly realized what was happening. After stopping my aunt, she grabbed me and ran to my dad who was asleep to wake him up.
At first he couldn't believe what was going on, and my aunt used the excuse of "I was bathing him and he slipped", but there was no reason for her to bathe me, and my sister and I kept insisting on what happened until my aunt c*****d and said that I had the devil in me and that I wasn't "pure blood"(dad married someone from a different country so I'm mixed, and she hated all of us).
Dad called the police and my aunt confessed that she was going to start with me and then go after the rest of my 5 siblings in order to "purify" the family line.
It's been 18 years and she's still locked up in the coco house, and constantly saying that she's going to finish what she started....

Slashing Manticore:
The Kraken. I mean, giant squids are a thing

thedankbank1021:
When Romans described unicorns, they described them as hippos with a horn on the face. Not sure how we ended up with a horse with a horn on its face. Some bad translation somewhere. Anyway, unicorns absolutely exist and we currently call them rhinos.
Edit: As it's been pointed out, Hippopotamus means river horse. So if you were someone who had never seen a river horse you would probably think it looked like a horse, but like, by a river. Then if someone said there was an animal like a river horse but with a horn on its head, you would probably come up with something like a unicorn.

Shameful_Ghost:
you can break your back from a sneeze :)

lorjs:
You've probably walked past a few serial k*****s that haven't been caught

ChameleonMami:
Patient stated live cockroach in ear. I said probably not and ate my words.

Thalkarsh:
Psychiatrist here. Thought I'd share a story from my residency years in case someone happens to still see this thread.
I was at the brief internment unit (acute psychotic cases, mostly) and there was this woman that had been there for some time, she had paranoid delusions about the Russian mob trying to get her, complete with hallucinations and everything, her family had confirmed it was all made up in her head and nobody was following her. She had been getting medication for some time and her symptoms had improved a lot, she no longer believed she was in danger or being hunted, and everything seemed to be going well. As the procedure usually goes, the staff contacted her family so she could start going out for the weekends with them before being fully discharged.
First weekend away from the hospital she got kidnapped by the Russian mob and taken somewhere else for forced p**********n to repay a debt she apparently had but nobody in her family knew about.

duhvorced:
Roger Boisjoly - Engineer involved with the Space Shuttle program who warned his superiors for months prior to the Challenger disaster that launching in cold weather could cause the O-rings to fail.
Care to guess what caused the Challenger disaster?

NauvooMetro:
In 2005, Courtney Love was asked what advice she'd give young, up and coming actresses. She said "If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party at his Four Seasons hotel room, don't go." And for whatever reason, you didn't see her in many movies after that.

Anonymous:
My friend and I were on a road trip a few years ago and needed a place to stay. We both told each other we had a friend in the city we were going through, so we figured we'd be able to crash with one of them. Turns out our two friends were roommates and had both been telling each other that they had a friend coming to town soon.

Anonymous:
This guy I went to grade school and h**h school with, an acquaintance at best. I've seen him in 5 different locations in different countries throughout the last 15 years.
Disney World when I was a kid.
Some beach bar in Thailand.
The Bean in Chicago.
A pub in Budapest.
A library in San Jose, Costa Rica.
We've become friends due our love of traveling, but neither of us post on social media and neither of us communicated with each other our plans to travel. We never talked outside of the random meetings. Now if I se him, its like the world wants us to have a beer together. haha

SirPeterODactyl:
relationship advice post by a husband started by saying that his wife isnt the smartest cookie in the jar. The couple was struggling financially living month to month, but they get by. Had kids too.
Wife suddenly gets the genius idea that they could make a bunch of cash if their car crashed and got written off. Happened to one of her friends who won an insurance claim after driving into a ditch and was encouraging others to do so. Husband says no every time wife talks about it, explains reasons why and finally makes her promise not to talk about it at all.
Next week, the guy gets a call from the police saying the wife had run into an accident and is in police custody. Turns out the wife had been waiting at a traffic stop, then suddenly accelerated forward during a red light and drove head first into a vehicle coming from the other side at top speed. She wasn't injured, but the other vehicle had a mother and a kid who instantly died and another teenage kid in critical condition. Guy visits wife in custody and she acts all proud with no remorse as if she < did something great for her family.
Dude made the post asking whether he should come clean about her talking to him earlier about the accident and insurance fraud, which will likely change her manslaughter charge to m****r and add decades to her sentence. The post stayed up for less than an hour.

Chubby Jugs:
It was this guy who insisted that he could try h*roine recreationally and stop whenever he wanted. Post after post was about his descent into a*******n. Really scary stuff.

Entire_Fan_1811:
Putting your feet on car dashboard

NicholasF82:
Having a loose animal in the car. A safety instructor once Cold me doctors had to dig dog bones out of a person after it got between them and an airbag.

hopingtosurvive2020:
Well, just this week there was a woman (local) in her late twenties who died of a toothache.
She had posted on FB about needing a dentist over the weekend and decided to wait till Monday, Sunday morning she was gone. The infection went to her brain.

squatter_:
I noticed this after my abdominal surgery. When I turned over in bed my guts seemed to fall from one side to the other. Mentioned to my doc and she confirmed it was my bowels rearranging themselves.

thisisprince:
During World War 2, Japan bombed China with fleas infected with the bubonic plague.

sharrrper:
In the 1980s the Bayer corporation sold a hemophilia drug that was made from processed donated human blood. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic it was discovered that the product was contaminated with HIV. They were forced to take it off the shelves in America and Europe. Bayer decided there had been too much financial investment in the product and rather than destroy the inventory they sold it in Latin American and Asian countries instead. They even continued to produce it for a few months until their supplies ran out.
There's no way to know how many people were infected with HIV as a result but at a bare minimum it had to have
been in the thousands, plus however many those people may have unknowingly infected in turn and so on. In the 1980s when AIDS was pretty much a guaranteed death sentence.
Bayer knowingly k****d probably tens of thousands of people and no one went to jail. $600 million settlement.
EDIT: Just a clarification, this treatment was not a dry pil that you swallow. That would be pretty unlikely to transmit HIV as some people have said. It was basically taking blood and removing the rejectable parts and concentrating clotting factors and injecting that into hemophiliacs. In terms of HIV risk it was basically a blood transfusion.

themesila:
When your skin becomes red from spending too much time under the sunlight, it's basically because your skin cells are committing s*****e to avoid becoming cancerous.

Aztech06:
Octopus punch fish for no reason

thomas4004:
My father was the most caring man. He loved his family. One day, when i was 6 years old, i came home with bleeding cuts on my legs from the babysitter's beating.
With no warning, he jumps in his car headed to the babysitter's house. My mom had no car so me and her catch a bus to the babysitter's house. By the time we got there, the police were there, the husband was in an ambulance, and some of the living room furniture was thrown out the window. My father had kicked in the front door and beat up the husband. He couldn't get to the wife because she locked herself in a room, so he started throwing furniture out the window. If he would have got to her, he would have k****d her. Never knew my father could get so angry. He only spent two nights in jail because all the police understood. The mother was charged with child abuse. I still have the scars.

MachineElectrical208:
My DNA was connected to cold case. I had no Connection to the crime, a close relative did.

Anonymous:
Pilot here: once had my engine sputter and die for no reason in a small Cessna... refused to start back up.
glided into a landing in a nearby field..checked fluids...checked mix...
everything was fine so i turned the key...it roared up, and I cautiously flew back home.
Had a mechanic tear it apart later that week and couldn't find anything...
I guess sometimes engines just...dont

Flightyler:
One time I was flying a Cessna 152 by myself on the coast of Florida and saw an oval shaped thing flying in the distance in front of me so I got closer and closer 3 and started to f***k out because it looked like it wasn't moving then eventually I saw fins sticking out of it and "Goodyear" on the side and felt like an idiot

SuvenPan:
Female dragonflies fake their deaths(crashes to the ground and plays dead) when stalked by an unwelcome lover.

Ulfricstorm192:
Dolphins are intelligent enough to commit s*****de.

ProbatonApololos:
If you're at the beach and the water level drops very quickly, seek h**h ground IMMEDIATELY.

ensenadorjones42:
DYK that mixing bleach and amonia creates a toxic gas that will k**l you painfully. DON'T DO IT. READ THE LABEL.

Sensitive_Parking_30:
A co-worker told me one day "you'll know when it's truly the first day of spring because lake water will warm up and make any dead bodies in the lake float to the top surface due to bacteria" he continued with "except for in Lake Superior where the water temperature never gets warm enough to build bacteria in a dead body" and that's one coworker I'll never make mad right there

shanster925:
The first Pong machine was dropped off at a local tavern owned by friends of one of the developers for a test run. After a few days, the game started to malfunction. The tavern owner called one of the Devs, Allan Alcorn, to come fix it, and when Alcorn got there it was discovered that it was malfunctioning because it was too full of quarters.

Creepy-Desk-468:
A patient once looked at me with a completely calm face and said, 'I know you're trying to help me, but I'm going to die today. I've made peace with it, and you can't stop it.

Helpful_Intention_20:
One of the most gut wrenching moments in my career was when I was treating a 9-year old boy who was the victim of significant blunt force trauma. He was unstable But awake and talking. With terror in his eyes he started thrashing around in his bed and screaming, "Don't let me die! I don't want to die!". It made us all nervous and tense. He went to the OR and survived but that was 5 years ago and I can still see his face.

Anonymous:
I was at my desk, working. Suddenly this absolutely piercing scream erupted. This sound was so loud that it hurt my ears even when I cupped my hands over them and pressed as hard as I could. Several of us exited the office and ran down the stairs, but that's where the sound was coming from.
Turns out, one of the pipes exploded off TWO 2000-gallon air accumulation tanks pressurized to 200psi by an industrial s***w compressor. This thing made a train whistle sound like a whisper. I physically couldn't get close enough to turn the ball valve- it hurt too much. One of my coworkers was practically deaf, so he just walked up without a care in the world and shut it off.

BoredPicking Username:
When my baby was a couple months old. She was in the crib next to the bed I was sleeping in. My 2 dogs were on the bed with me. I woke up to the normally quiet (well quietER dog) sitting straight up next to my head. She was growling this low, long growl. So mean and scary. I never heard anything like it before. I look to the bedroom door and I see a round shape coming in the door. Like human head height. Holy frig! It was a balloon (from having a new baby a couple months prior). It had started to lose its helium and travelled down the hallway right into the bedroom. Scared the c**p out of me! My heart still races when I think of it

Whind_Soull:
About ten years ago, I was looking out my grandmother's back door. Two squirrels were playing in the yard.
A hawk swooped down and grabbed one. As it was batting its wings and gaining altitude, the other squirrel raced up a nearby tree, leapt off, rocketed down into God's Own Death From Above, and rescued his friend by curb-stomping the hawk out of the air.
They both ran away and the hawk limped off in confusion.

tjeepdrv2:
I was about to walk in the front door around midnight and saw an explosion way up in the sky. The flash was so bright that for a fraction of a second everything went daylight. I called a few people that I knew were still up and out, but nobody had seen anything.
A couple of weeks later, I mentioned it to someone and he said "That's funny, someone was telling me how a satellite exploded a couple of weeks ago and it was an explosion with a bright flash."

ianmichaels:
Medical doctor here (neurologist)... Capgras delusion.
The patient is convinced that a family member has been replaced by an imposter who is completely identical.
For example, the patient will tell you the person sitting across from them looks exactly like their spouse, sounds exactly like their spouse, has all the memories of their spouse. But... "that's not actually my spouse".
And the patient oftentimes isn't overly distressed by this imposter.
In 20 years I've only seen the condition twice.

Seddonpark:
A psychologist here. Not someone I worked with, but I did observe someone with Alien hand syndrome. The patients left hand would stroke her hair and pat her face but was not under her contro Each episode would last for about 20 mins. Turnec out the cause was a tumour. Amazingly it didn't seem to cause her any distress.

Imposter_Syndrome:
"A child who does not receive warmth from the village will burn it down to feel it" - African proverb
Crappy environments are always a lose/lose situation to be in

ZeStriker310:
"I don't know what weapons will be used to fight world war 3. But world war 4 will be fought with clubs and stones"
Albert Einstein

OSUJillyBean:
Growing up I had a recurring nightmare set in my grandparents backyard looking at the back of their house. There was just something "off" about the house. Something mildly sinister. I dreamt this over and over, < many times over the years.
In 2018, my dad (who now owned the house) went into the backyard to that spot and k****d himself.
I haven't had the backyard dream since.

TheUnfunOwl:
I have unusually good night vision, extra cones/rods (I forget which is for low light) which means I walk around in what other people consider complete darkness, able to see just fine. Add onto that I'm 6'10" and very large, basically a cryptid

ofsquire:
A moose can dive underwater down to nearly twenty feet in search of food

Riverdoggo21:
It took humans more time to go from bronze words to steel swords than steel swords to nuclear bombs

diannaellis:
That there are people rich enough to disappear. There must be some billionaires we've never heard of

TbhldekMyName:
Celebrities aren't actually giving their kids absurd names, they just aren't publicizing their legal names.

Gubble_Buppie:
A man, Michel Lotito, ATE an entire airplane. It took him 2 years.

dang_dude_dont:
Clouds weigh hundreds of thousands of pounds, full of water, effortlessly floating above our heads. No support, No structure, just weight, floating around above us and we're like, yep totally believable, because they're clouds, duh.

duskhelm2595:
In order to conserve water, a camel's urine comes out as a thick syrup.

patricksaurus:
One of the most toxic chemicals on Earth is an organic mercury compound. The material safety Sheet notes that it has a slightly sweet odor, but at a concentration where the smell is detectable, it is already lethal. That observation came from someone who would inevitably die from accidental exposure.

forlornjackalope:
The farthest point on the planet you can be from civilization in any direction is a blip in the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo. If you were stranded there, you'd be thousands of miles away from help and it would be very unlikely you'd be seen or rescued as cargo ship routes don't go near it. To put the distance into perspective, the closest people to you would be The crew on the ISS.

Apple02ish:
Rabbits will eat their own young if they're stressed enough.

Tom_Zarek:
When I was about 3 we had a cat that had still born kittens. I asked my father if we could make crosses for them, which he did. As he was making them I asked:
"aren't those too small?",
Dad: "What do you Mean?"
Me: "aren't we going to nail them to them?"
Dad: (after several moments silence) "we're not going to do that"
Me: "oh"

UnfortunateBirthMark:
I was tucking in my two year old. He said "Good bye dad." I said, "No, we say good night." He said "I know. But this time its good bye."
Had to check on him a few times to make sure he was still there.

Expensive_Change_893:
My dad and I used to play "Spaceship" and to get the space ship started, I'd have to blow into a tube to hear the electronic beep. It was his DUI test to start the car before they started putting cameras in the cars. Glad he's sober these days.

Captain_-H:
I remember cuddling up with my mom when she had a brace on her nose. It's the kind you have after a surgery, Kand we talked about her nasal surgery. It took like 10 years later before I realized that the reason for that corrective surgery was my dads fist

chooooooool:
One time, me and my dad were discussing his friend while out driving at night without many other cars on the road. As we were talking, we pulled up to a red light, and the car waiting in front was my dad's friend. He didn't even live close to there.

kor_hookmaster:
My wife and I were looking to hire a caterer for our wedding and when we met, my wife and her started talking about their lives a bit.
Turns out they had both literally grown up on the same street, in a city of 10 million people, on the other side of the world. Both had left the city around a decade before immigrating to our current country.
They knew the same people, had hung out at the same coffee place, attended the same church. They even used to grab mangoes off the same large tree that hung over the wall of one of the large houses in the neighbourhood.
But they had never met one another until meeting on almost the exact opposite side of the planet, in a small town of about 50,000 people.