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67 Strange Online Mysteries That Pulled People In So Deep They Forgot About Real Life
I know we can all relate to googling one little thing, opening five tabs, and ending up wide awake at 3 a.m. researching something you never knew existed. You keep clicking away because every answer leads to another question, and before you know it, you’re way too invested to stop.
People online shared some of the things they’ve stumbled across during these curiosity-filled deep dives, and some of their discoveries are genuinely wild. From fascinating finds to downright unsettling mysteries, these are the kinds of things that leave you wondering how anyone came across them in the first place.
Get ready to go down a few rabbit holes, because some of these will leave you with more questions than answers.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Chris Thile. Virtuoso/prodigy mandolin player who won the McArthur Prize, and has been consistently putting out insanely good music since he was a *child*.
RELATED:
#2
Sumerian "mythology"
It was written as history on clay tablets, and it reads like science fiction, not typical mythology. There was another planet, which sometimes comes closer to Earth, and these beings (not god's, just beings who live there) came to Earth, and we're mining, but it was hard, so they created humans to do it, and a bunch of other stuff. There is a list of kings, and the time of their reign, and the later ones are historical or in biblical times, but the earlier ones have reigns of 1000s of years. Weird stuff.
#3
Rolex bros
The cult of Rolex and other ridiculously expensive watches is insane.
Humans are naturally wired to be curious, which is why a strange discovery or an unanswered question can keep us searching long after we are meant to close our browser. Psychologists call this the information gap, the space between what we know and what we want to know.
When we realize there’s a missing piece, we feel drawn to find out more. That’s how one strange fact can lead to another, then another, until we’re researching something we never planned to look up.
#4
I just climbed out of a rabbit hole, of Bells as a musical instrument, different types etc, and especially got sucked into "change ringing" which is where multiple bell ringers ring the bells in mathematical permutations or some nerd stuff. .
#6
Lately it has been scientology and the FBI's most wanted list. Last month I spent several days digging after I discovered that a very large city near me has their unsolved cold cases open to the public on their website. Not all of the case of course, but enough to be interesting.
Some of the most interesting discoveries happen when we’re looking for something else entirely. You might be researching an old mystery and stumble across a forum discussing a completely unrelated topic, only for that new subject to grab your attention.
This is known as information encountering, and it describes finding unexpected information that turns out to be interesting or useful. It’s one of the many reasons why one random link can send you down a completely different path from the one you started on.
#7
The Mandela Effect.
It wasn't that well-known online yet when I fell into that rabbit hole. I think it's a fascinating topic.
#8
I love the movie "Into the Wild". I looked into the story the movie was based on. That led to outdoor survival, hunting, what you can find to eat growing wild, camping, Alaska and life in Alaska in general. I'm still not done.
#9
On a French video game news website, a random article about a game not being ported to the Wii U sparked a debate between two individuals on which console was the best in the comment section.
The debate lasted 3 years, with more than 15k comments between them (and they were not small comments). Days after days, they kept at it while no one was watching, even on days like Christmas Eve or the new year, they still responded to each other multiple times on the same exact subject.
The funny thing is that often times, they would get to talk about their lives randomly in-between arguments, sometimes to boast that they had a better wives than the other, sometimes to prove a random point about the other personality. At one point, they probably got to know each other better than their friends, they even wished a happy new year to each other despite insulting each other on the Christmas Eve just before.
It lasted until someone randomly stumbled upon it and decided to share what he found on the website general forum.
There was also another such case where two individuals debated for 7 months in another comment section about the fall of SEGA in the same manner. Someone digging through the messages found that at one point, one of the two guy admitted that his gf cheated and left him because he was too busy responding to other when his gf wanted to sleep with him.
Who knows how many random year lasting debates like that still happen today? Until someone randomly find them.
Some topics hold your attention because you genuinely want to understand them. A recent study examining how adults explored online information found that the time they spent engaging with material was more closely related to their curiosity.
Think about spending an hour reading about an obscure historical event or trying to understand a bizarre phenomenon. When a subject really grabs you, you want to get to the bottom of it, and one interesting detail can keep you reading far longer than you expected.
#10
As someone who grew up Mormon. It was the true history of the Mormon church.
#11
Orions Arm.
Its a sci-fi world building community project that’s been going on for 15+ year and holy hell is it good. Pretty hard sci-fi but also frigging cool. I go back every 6-12 months to see updates and such and it’s constantly growing.
#12
John Titor, the supposed time traveler from 2036 sent back to get an IBM 5100. He popped up on some forum back in 2000/2001.
The internet can make it quite hard to stop investigating because there’s always another intriguing claim waiting to be explored, especially if you’re a curious cat like me. One page leads to a theory, that theory leads to a discussion, and someone in the comments mentions a detail you have to look up.
Research on curiosity and uncertainty suggests that unanswered questions can make us more eager to seek information, even when not knowing the answer feels uncomfortable.
This combination is why mysterious stories and strange discoveries can be so compelling. We want to know what happened, and leaving a question unanswered can feel like being unable to scratch an itch in your brain.
#13
Genealogical research. I started looking for my great-grandmother’s birthplace. Six hours later, I was reading about 17th-century village records in a country I’d never visited, and I’d completely forgotten what I’d set out to find in the first place.
#14
Mine was “people who disappeared under mysterious circumstances”, six hours later I was deep in unsolved plane crashes and cult forums wondering how I got there.
#15
Started out with how AI works, ended up with the absolute basics of computers and how exactly these yes/no 0/1 on/off gates and the combination of those can create basically every system.
Online posts can contain useful clues and personal experiences, but they can also include wild speculation or claims repeated so often that people mistake them for facts. That’s why it helps to approach even the most intriguing questions with an open mind and a little healthy skepticism.
Follow the clues, look for reliable sources, and see whether the evidence holds up before deciding what to believe. The best rabbit holes leave you with something genuinely interesting to learn, rather than a collection of unverified claims.
#16
IMG_ YouTube vids. From the website:
> Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives.
#17
In the early days of the internet (probably around '99 or '00), someone linked to the post of a woman called Vera. Over thousands and thousands of words, she chronicled her belief that she was being stalked, that "someone" had put listening devices and speakers in her walls, that the tree in her front yard was fake and on hydraulics and underneath the tree was where "they" had set up some kind of base from which to monitor her. "Demonic traffic patterns" following behind her when she would drive anywhere.
It was fascinating and terrifying to get a detailed look into the mind of an untreated paranoid schizophrenic. But the rest of the website was the rabbit hole. The whole site was a bunch of different paranoid schizophrenics claiming the government had implanted tiny devices in their bodies.
#18
U.S. law
* a judge’s ruling does NOT make it law
* a judge’s injunction of a law does NOT make the law unenforceable
* in fact, judicial review is NOT law; the Supreme Court said that it was (Marbury v. Madison), which is completely tautological and violates separation of powers when applied to the passing of legislation (e.g., The Line Item Veto Act of 1996)
* we do NOT technically vote for the President, we:
1. vote for which party can
2. send their electors to go
3. vote for which party can
4. inaugurate the candidate, which is the candidate
5. voted for during the primaries (that is, until Kamala Harris)
There are many more things like jury nullification, dismissing entire judicial circuits, etc.
An interesting thing about the internet is that you never know where one curious click will take you.
What’s the deepest rabbit hole you’ve ever fallen into, and what did you discover at the bottom? Tell us in the comments. We want to know what kept you clicking long past your bedtime!
#19
After the Fyre Festival debacle, I spent the next few weeks watching every video I could find about the event and the fraudster jerk in charge of it. When Hulu made a documentary about it, I watched that, too.
It’s such a fascinating mess, and the fraudster in charge ended up going to prison for a few years because of it. Unbelievably, he went right back to scammin’ after he was released. He tried to run a Fyre Festival 2 in 2025. Dude’s dependent to scammin’.
#20
I never forget the feeling of learning about number stations. They are spy-related thing, nothing paranormal, but the recordings sound extremely creepy in a way I don't know how to describe.
#21
9/11
The hole that i fell into took me almost two years to break free and likely cost my marriage.
The good: way too much info to dig thru but the truth is there
The bad: way too much to piece together and explain to someone without looking like a madman …the idea of going over everything to make it make sense to one person would be daunting
Like any cover up, the truth is buried in the open but it’s crusted with enough lies that make it hard.
#22
UFOs and aliens. It’s a wild ride…especially with military whistle blowers testifying to congress in the last few years saying we have recovered alien tech and bodies. Check out the Ariel School encounter, Varginha Brazil and the “Moment of Contact” documentary, the Tic Tac encounter with military witnesses testifying to congress, David Grusch. Ooh! Also Gary Nolan, brilliant scientist from Stanford, check him out…and there’s so much more. Ooh! “The Phenomenon” documentary by James Fox
This is a BIG rabbit hole. I’ve been in it since 2021….
#23
Researching 9/11 conspiracy theories in 2006 and finding a pilots forum post from around November 2000 where someone was asking what plane was most likely to cause the most damage to a skyscraper.
I've not since been able to find this forum post again
#24
It's a personal rabbit hole, but there's a guy that responds to every reel that Redbull posts on Facebook with "Redbull Gives You Wiings" and I get distracted from the video when I see it. It's on the Flugtag, Soapbox, Bicycle, and every other Redbull sports reels I've seen.
#25
Nick lands/ Curtis yarvin/ rationalist movement/ etc. and the absolutely nonsense things they believe and how they have major influence over the most wealthy and powerful people in America. Genuinely one of the most insane real life conspiracy rabbit holes.
#27
Lagamorphs and the difference in numbers of chromosomes from continent to another does not allow breeding in between related species. In the end, even if possible, they end up sterile like a mule. They look nearly identical to each other but, the differences run deep. It is a deep rabbit hole, which piqued my curiosity. Be careful what you learn you cannot unlearn.
David Paterson 1 hour ago
This is like rock wallabies in Australia. Differences in chromosome numbers from rock to rock.
#28
The USS Nimitz tic-tac UFO. Itself insane, but oh boy the backstory, from the singer of Blink 182 to Podesta to similar events in history with crazy detailled witness records to congress hearings with the pilots to gun camera mechanics to current "antigravity" science to Steven Spielberg interviewing the radar operator to the guy actually posting the original military footage back in 2004 in a UFO forum on the internet and nobody believed him (internet archive confirms). And I'm pretty sure i dont even know half of the story.
Made me also loose respect for mainstream media, as they did zero research, fact check or even realizing the rabbit hole.
#29
I can't remember the name, but there was a site that hosted cockpit recordings of aviation disasters. That was certain a rabbit hold to go down having morbid curiosity at the time.
#30
I found a tarot card the other day that had a website written on it and the website had a hidden rabbit hole page that had all kinds of weird stuff on it about quantum physics and sea salps and there were video games and stuff. The website was called quantum encounters. What was really interesting is that every time I tried to access the page it looked completely different in the time I accessed it before. Even the games were like that. It looked to me like a schizophrenic web designer made the page. It was super weird, cuz some of the stuff was actually pretty interesting.
#32
About a week before Ian Watkin's arrest I randomly found a load of people talking about him being a pedophile, purposely spreading HIV or AIDs, his reputation, naming women who were associated with him including the one who was arrested alongside him. I remember creeping through her twitter and couldn't believe it when they were arrested only a few days later. It was very detailed for pages and pages all randomly on his profile on the website whodatedwho it was subsequently deleted.
#33
Currently? Stella Lefty. I'm infinitely fascinated by this nepo baby artist who appeared out of nowhere and started charting, it makes no sense.
#34
Ufo true believers
My feed got flooded with that and cryptozoology nonsense for months because I was constantly researching to debunk some of it
In the end I had to mute a bunch of stuff because there just isn't a reasoning with those folks.
#35
As an autistic person, this is my specialty.
Just naming a few off the top of my head
1. The currency value of a cat as barder in the middle ages of Scotland
2. How big pharma manipulates the information given to medical students and intentionally causes a bottleneck funnel of how many applications get to med and residential schools
3. Food biology, specifically keto right now
4. FNAF lore
5. How the most successful pirate ever was a adult companion chinese woman who was so scary that blackbeard wrote in his diary about how much he fears her
6. Faerie mythology and folklore, specifically the bad ones in Iceland
7. Native American tribal history, with an emphasis on native intimate customs, matriarchal tribes, and native slavery, as well as native hygeine and children toys
8. Kennedy conspiracy theories
9. How to code for video games. I dont know how to code.
And yet, when people ask me how my day was, I always say "good". When they ask me what ive been up to, I say "nothing much.".
#37
The band Chumbawamba. Went down the YouTube rabbit hole one night. Had no idea they were this epic collective of amazing musicians from England. A fun song to look up is ‘Torturing James Hetfield’ from one of their live shows in England. Just a completely different band than what I thought they were, which was based off of their one hit single from the late 1990s.
#38
Read about tsunamis, then freshwater tsunamis, then I ended up planning and later doing a multi-day motorcycle trip to the place of the biggest freshwater tsunami in recorded history - Diga Vajont in Northern Italy. It was majestic.
#41
Flat Earth TikTok. I was ironically watching and then 3 hours later I was unironically mad at a guy holding a globe.
#42
Plane crashes. Was kind of an avgeek to begin with, but a few episodes of Air Crash Investigation on YouTube and I'm now a walking crash encyclopedia.
Then again, hello, autism...
#43
The two body builders that argued over how many days are in a week.
#44
There is a community of people on the Internet who post videos of trimming cow hooves when they get infected. This is a subset of the pimple popping people being combined with rural farm people.
#45
Https://elan.school/
Can't remember how I first found this (reddit, most likely). Ended up spending a significant chunk of a weekend reading and still didn't get to the end.
No clue how much is actually real and I'm not sure I want to know how much is actually real.
#46
John McAfee. He went to the jungles of Belize and started posting to a recreational illegal substances forum about his DIY research.
I was reading his stuff before people connected the alias with the man; and once I knew the real identity of that forum poster, I re-read the posts and it was insane.
Then, the guy went rogue and it was like the rabbit hole circled back to the surface of the earth and the rabbit just ran like a maniac for fields and fields.
Now that he's gone, it's become a rabbit hole again that unsuspecting young redditors can fall into at any time.
#47
The 5 minute craft rabbit hole. the guy who posted an hour long, vvv thorough exposé deleted his video and not saying anything about it since.
#48
Brittany spears has been cloned scared me a couple of months ago.
#49
I don't even remember the name of it. I was in high school and had stumbled on this seemingly really bad digital comic. All the characters were animals and all the comics were really bad setups to jokes with no punchline (not even anti-humor just... not even interacting with the obvious setup). It had a simple art style and used a lot of bright colors that gave it kind of a children's comic vibe, but the subject matter was mainly relationship based? Or at least not overtly subject matter for children.
The odd thing was a large part of the comics ended up with one of the characters eating so much (or swallowing other characters?) that they became completely engorged.
#50
Went down an unsolved mystery rabbit hole once and somehow ended up on a random forum from 2008 reading comments from a guy named steve who may or may not be involved 💀 bro i came here to be entertained not open a cold case.
#51
Michael Jackson being the love child of Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson. Stayed up way too late reading into it.
#52
Scott and Laci Peterson case. I think I’ve read, watched, listened to, and thereafter dissected every bit of information available on the case. So much so that podcasts discussing it generally annoy me because most of them get the minor details wrong.
#54
There's this chinese proffesor of geo politics and he explains how religion got to be this bad and how evil society got to be this way and plans for recent and future events
trust me, at 5am you're like...hot dang, i knew something was fundamentally wrong with this world.
#55
Mostly Harmless. A hiker discovered gone with no ID. People ended up figuring out who it was.
#56
Flat Earth has consumed way too much time I will never get back and still try to find any logical argument those Flerfs could make when I need to waste some time lol. A guilty pleasure and find that stuff hilarious that some people are still serious about it.
Cast Iron restoration was satisfying lol.
#57
When I first discovered Info Wars years ago, before I knew I needed to be on meds. Remember, back when everything on the worldwideinterwebs was true? By the end I was searching for "hunters cabins" for sale in Northern Canada, where there were plenty of pristine fresh water lakes, only to realize later that half the year its like 7 feet of snow, and I'm from Texas...
#59
Warhammer 40k. I never cared for this franchise, but for some reason I am now listening to Warhammer 40k lore as noise when trying to fall asleep. You´d never guess how horrible the fate of a servitor is. And don`t even get me started with titans...
#60
TR3-B. Hobby learning about and digging for 2 months until a random man & woman pretending to be real estate agents ‘ran into me’ asking me what I was looking to learn about it. No one believes me but the woman who heard all this and figured out they weren’t real estate agents. She witnessed it all and she won’t talk about it anymore. Downvote me I don’t care I don’t lie. Not saying it’s aliens or anything idk.
#61
I started to google map how far I could drive a car. For example: you can drive to Newfoundland from my front door. I can drive to the Arctic Circle from my front door. Then went to different countries. Can drive from Scotland to Russia, etc etc. and how long the trips take. I don't know why I just did one day lol.
#62
This guy's appliance repair website. If you spend 30 seconds looking around, you're going to be there a while. If you look under the "News" or "More Information" sections, you should clear your schedule.
EDIT: I changed the link to an archived version so hopefully we don't tank his site. To add some context, I found this site years ago when I was doing some DIY appliance repair. It was wild then, but then Covid happened and it went OFF THE RAILS. Also, if you dig deep enough, you'll see that out of all of this insanity, he links to his favorite art sites. So, you know, there's that.
#63
The Lake City Quiet Pills, possibly being a hitman/government type message board was pretty wild.
#65
About 6 ft. Most Burrows can't go deeper than that because of either hitting hard clay or being too close to the water table and the rabbits avoud digging any further. Someone posted on a social media site years ago that they dug up in the backyard somewhere near Phoenix. Can't find the post anymore though. But they were digging for a pool and got down to about 6 ft before encountering the nesting chamber and found a whole litter of babies, it was really interesting to see.
#66
People being inside of inflatable pool toys, I stopped exploring once I found people putting electric pumps up their behinds to inflate their bellies and fart it back out.
#67
Massive trades on the US stock market betting AGAINST the airlines involved in the 9/11 attacks made the day before it happened.
The plan was finalized on 9/5 and confirmed with Bin Laden, the trades were made a few day later from multiple accounts within the United States.
The Bin Laden family fortune was handled by the Carlisle Group based in Washington. They subsequently liquidated the accounts in October 2001.
What do you think ?
David Paterson 1 hour ago
The most fascinating rabbit hole I've been down is "bagpipes". Normal flutes had a guord added to make the sound louder, still used by some snake charmers in India. And then the guord became a bag. At the height of the craze, bagpipes ranged through all the countries between Ireland and the Caspian Sea. They were banned in Estonia. Some were made in the form of gothic mythological animals. Emporer Nero played the bagpipes and warned about the need to keep the cheeks pressed in tight while playing.
David Paterson 1 hour ago
The most fascinating rabbit hole I've been down is "bagpipes". Normal flutes had a guord added to make the sound louder, still used by some snake charmers in India. And then the guord became a bag. At the height of the craze, bagpipes ranged through all the countries between Ireland and the Caspian Sea. They were banned in Estonia. Some were made in the form of gothic mythological animals. Emporer Nero played the bagpipes and warned about the need to keep the cheeks pressed in tight while playing.
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