50 Very Spooky Facts From Real Life That You Should Avoid If You Get Scared Easily
Plenty of us Pandas are real fans of horror stories, right? Spooky movies, scary novels (hello, Mr. King!), and thrilling, chilling radio plays set our teeth on edge and give us goosebumps that will last all night. But do you ever wonder about real-life creepiness? Reality can often be scarier than whatever nightmarish things our imaginations come up with… and here’s the proof.
Redditor u/Vacancier1807 started up a thread that’s perfect for the post-Halloween period. They asked people to share some very (emphasis on very) creepy facts. Internet users obliged and what follows are some truly terrifying real-life facts that will keep me awake thinking about them for many nights to come.
Scroll down for the creepiest facts, as shared on this r/AskReddit thread.
However, a note of warning: this post and the sense of impending doom it brings with it might not be for everyone. If at any moment you feel like it’s all too much for you, then I cordially invite you to check out my wholesome and soothing gardening article on Bored Panda right over here.
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Bacteria and viruses can be frozen for millions of years and still be viably infectious, and having never encountered humanity before, could have no end of catastrophic results should they be uncovered and manage to infect a person or animal.
Not to worry though, it’s not like millions of ancient pathogens are currently trapped in permafrost which is now melting bit by bit each and every day...
One reason why crows and ravens are associated with death is because they would often follow armies as they marched into battle. Being both carrion birds and extremely intelligent, they realized that a large group of armed men marching in one direction meant that there would be a tasty meal of corpses to eat soon afterward.
They are smart enough to know that a large group of humans are going to do a dumb thing.
The smell of a freshly cut lawn is actually a chemical distress signal released from the grass as it's cut.
You're smelling the souls and screaming of the innocent.
Even though these facts aren’t for everyone, a lot of you Readers might be unable to stop scrolling and reading. It’s hard to take your eyes off spooky facts and stories. I recently spoke about our fascination with horror and Halloween with Lee Chambers, an environmental psychologist and wellbeing consultant from the UK.
"The whole ethos of Halloween and the flirting with evil and death is fascinating because it is a place we rarely go as humans, especially in today's safe and sanitized world," Lee told Bored Panda.
Female mummies in Ancient Egypt were always more decomposed than their male counterparts. They discovered that this was because male bodies were embalmed a lot sooner than female bodies. Female bodies were kept at the family home until they started to decompose in order to avoid necrophilia at the embalmers.
The bottom of Lake Superior is cold enough that the bodies of dead sailors just...remain. They don't really decompose because it's at freezing temperatures, so they instead get a coating of adipocere, which is liquid body fat, hardened around them.
Blobfish in its natural habitat looks like a normal fish, but it lives so deep under water that it doesn't use a normal gas bladder to keep itself balanced. Instead, it has a spongy skin that is slightly less dense than water, which becomes damaged and bloated when fishermen bring it up too quickly.
It's not really the ugliest fish. It has just experienced something worse than one of us being thrown into outer space. Between sea level and space, there's one atmospheric pressure of difference. Between sea level and 2000 feet under water, their upper limit, there's 60 atmospheres of difference.
Because of the pressure it makes the blob fish look like it's been turned inside out. I would say that it's highly unlikely a blob fish would survive being brought to the surface.
Psychologist Lee explained that during Halloween we get to explore darker sides without anyone judging us. What’s more, we get to test our emotive responses to fear in a safe, controlled manner.
"We can get the adrenaline rush of being scared, all while knowing we are in control and can exit the situation if it’s too much. We also cognitively know it’s not real, so we can trigger ourselves and test how we respond to threats, giving us the ability to practice coping mechanism for difficult times in life," Lee said.
Rosemary Kennedy was JFK’s sister. She suffered from oxygen deprivation at birth and that unfortunately stunted her mental growth. She had a pretty decent childhood, but as she grew older she began to act out. Afraid that her behavior would risk his political career, her father, Joseph, agreed to have her lobotomized. Her mother, Rose, was against it and forbade him from doing it. So he did it behind her back when she went on a trip.
After the operation, Rosemary’s already low IQ was lowered even further, to the point she could no longer walk or communicate. Her family had her locked up in an institution and basically disowned her. They never visited and never publicly acknowledged her anymore. Rosemary died at the age of 86.
Her mother never for gave her husband for what he had done.
Actually this is not entirely accurate. While her father never visited, other family members did. In fact, Rosemarys sister Eunice founded the Special Olympics - in part - because of her relationship with Rosemary, and a lot of funding for, and appreciation for those suffering mental and physical disabilities was brought to light in the 60s because of Eunices efforts (with the Kennedy Family backing). Prior to that time, many of the intellectually and physically disabled were swept under the rug as a matter of course.
If you get a blood transfusion and get the wrong type of blood, one of the symptoms is 'a sense of impending doom.'
Crocodiles can gallop like horses. I don't like knowing this so I am cursing you people with this knowledge as well. Fortunately, alligators cannot.
"We can explore the taboos of negative emotions like fear in a playful way, see where our limits lie, and do it in a supportive environment with other people. Getting scared and mastering our fear with scary entertainment and curated shocks can make us feel like we can take on all sorts of challenges, and can even feel like therapy when we take into account the physiological rush we get and the feeling of having survived."
If the sun exploded right now, you would be blissfully unaware of it for just over eight minutes while the energy travels at the speed of light to get to you.
Elmer McCurdy was a failed old west “outlaw.” His preserved body was put on display in a traveling carnival and years later he was eventually assumed to be a mannequin until he was used on set for the TV show the Six Million Dollar Man.
His arm accidentally fell off during the shoot, revealing bone and muscle and that he was a corpse, not a mannequin.
Cockroaches have been recorded eating human flesh, both living and dead, as well as fingernails, eyelashes, feet, and hands. The American cockroach and German cockroach are more likely to bite humans than other species.
Pretty sure Australian cockroaches do something equally creepy, but as an Australian who plans to sleep at some point in the future, I'm not going to google it.
There is a genetic disease called fibrodisplaysia ossificans progresiva. When tissue is damaged, it is replaced with bone.
Growths form underneath their skin and their joints lock solid So over time those affected slowly become encased in a prison of bone just beneath their own skin.
They usually have to choose between sitting or standing up for the rest of their life. By the end of their life they have to drink every meal through a straw and can barely move
It wasn't until 1987 that the American Academy of Pediatrics declared it unethical to operate on newborns without anesthesia. Until surprisingly recently, the medical community felt it would be dangerous to give infants anesthesia and/or believed that they didn't feel pain.
How awful. Is this for all procedures including things like heart surgery or is this more for smaller things like circumcision? Either way just picturing babies being operated on without anaesthetic breaks my heart.
In a documentary, I saw footage of a newborn baby getting a circumcision without anesthesia. As you can imagine, it's the most horrific thing I've ever seen (I can still hear the scream).
Yeah... and some gyno procedures on women are STILL performed WITHOUT anesthesia. (Cervix biopsies, among others)... medical staff not realizing or not caring about other's pain no really new news
I am 53. When I was 21 I had a lump in my breast. Doc figured it must be cystic. So he stick a large bored syringe about 2 inches into my breast trying to aspirate. Kept moving the needle around because he couldn't pull any fluids out. It was a solid tumor. His rationale for not using a numbing agent: lidocaine would just be another needle stick anyway, so why not just endure the procedural needle? I remember the pain ( no ptsd from it though) and I remember the horrified look on the nurses face as I squeezed her hand in distress.
Load More Replies...Same here. I refused to get both my sons circumcised. I had my first son in 2004, and even then I was informed that Anesthesia was not to be administered to newborns. So I said "Then f*** that"
Load More Replies...My friend is traumatized by an operation w/o anesthetics as a baby - cheilognathopalatoschisis - he cannot remember consciously, but still has dreams about the incredible pain at the age of 59!
I can only imagine the ptsd these brutal procedures would cause :(
Load More Replies...Even worse -- they've since concluded that newborns feel pain much more acutely than everyone else. It's very typical that people just stupidly assume that those who can't communicate don't feel pain.
They can communicate this though, that is what makes it worse - screaming, flailing, and crying while experiencing pain is communicating that they feel that pain.
Load More Replies...But women still have painful quasi surgical procedures performed without anesthetic, unless they "kick up a fuss".
The creepiest part of this to me is that they'd have to hold or tie the poor babes down somehow or other if they were awake.
For surgeries, the babies were still given paralytics to keep them immobilised. For circumcision, like Kira said, they just hold or tie them down.
Load More Replies...Doesn't the screaming and tears flaw the theory of them not feeling pain ?
Right? Fun fact though: babies don't usually produce any tears until 1-3 months of age.
Load More Replies...I knew a friend whose younger brother got tongue surgery (the Eifel tower thing). Was cut off, no anesthesia, no motherly love during it. Thankfully my tongue was numbed when I got it, the only disturbing thing was I could feel the stitches going in.
Do you mean a tongue tie correction? I had that done for both of my babies so they could nurse properly. They don't use numbing agents for it at that age but luckily, breastmilk has pain relievers in it. Kiddos calmed down immediately. I hated that I couldn't hold them while it was being done though
Load More Replies...That snip is real. My Jew folk (and many other cultures) have done this for ages, and probably will continue to. Traditions are hard to change, even when the change is obviously better.
21st Century people still cutting pieces off newborn girls and boys. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Load More Replies...Throw back to the post about women feeling intense pain in medical procedures and not getting anaesthesia!
Note they still think women feel less pain than men especially BIPOC women.
Hmmm, yet we still snip the tips of the penis off ritualistically without anesthesia because… religion.
They used to believe people with schizophrenia didn't feel pain either. Can't imagine that helped their condition.
Probably stems from the same source as the belief that gynaecological procedure don't hurt because there are no nerves there
Barbaric and ignorant humans. Not thinking right then; not thinking right now.
A baby screaming during the procedure didn't give you a clue that it hurt??!!! And you are doctors???
And they abort living human babies without anesthesia, by literally pulling their limbs off.
I had a major surgery at 3 months old in the early 80's. I'm now fascinated to read any research of the psychological after effects. This explains so much....
I believe rabbis still cut off the ends of infant boys without anesthesia.
I'm not sure how they arrived at this conclusion as the child would be screaming at the first scalpel slice.
just use the same method used to determine whether animals felt pain when slaughtered in an unconscious state
I'm so glad that people have moved on from medical practices 100 years ago... that's abuse
Also because most doctors were men. I remember (I'm old) when this story broke in the 80's. Women were Incredulous and horrified. Men not so much.
Just how freakin' stupid can people be? What, you suddenly develop a nervous system when you're one or two?
Pretty sure it wasn't that they didn't believe babies felt pain, it was more the consensus it didnt matter cuz they wouldn't remember anyways. Which we have figured out isnt entirely true. Also operating on any living creature without anesthesia while they are awake and aware is highly unethical and barbaric if there's was to mitigate that pain and trauma
And people give make babies a pacifier with sugar water when they're circumcised!
They used to be fastened to a board in a cross shape to keep them still. Awful
It's a plastic board with a baby-shaped indentation now, with straps. If the documentaries I saw in premed about infant circ in America is still true.
Load More Replies...Their excuse is always "Oh babies always cry." I'm still waiting for a Dr or a nurse to please explain what is the thought process when their patients are screaming in agony and they act like the poor patient is just "over reacting".
Why am I still surprised by what the USA "health care" system did/does? The "Greatest Health Care System In The World" literally tortured babies. SMH.
It wasn't just USA. In the 70s pain relief was not given to older people at the same rate in UK. It's easier to ignore or downgrade people not like yourself.
Load More Replies...Mount Everest is covered in frozen corpses because removing them is very unsafe and time consuming. They are easily viewed from the climbing routes and some are used as trail markers.
The Colombian serial killer Pedro Alonso Lopez, who is known as the Monster of the Andes, raped and murdered over 300 girls from Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. However, after he was caught and imprisoned for 18 years, he was put in a psychiatric hospital. There he was reviewed, declared to be sane and was set free, in spite of his blatant avowal that he fully intends to kill again. Since he was released in 1998, nobody knows where he is or what he’s doing. ( He is supposed to be 71 years old at present).He is known for being the most prolific killer ever.
Eventually there will be more dead people on Facebook than alive.
Wow thanks for the award.
That's because it is virtually impossible to delete your account. They will not let you.
Either somebody knows where Malaysia flight 370 went missing to, or nobody does. Both are equally terrifying.
Here is an extremely good article laying everything out. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-malaysia-airlines/590653/
If you stifle a sneeze there’s a chance you can damage organs in your head, including eye blood vessels, rupturing your eardrums, and possibly rupture a brain aneurysm. Which means there’s a small chance stifling a sneeze can kill you. Better to be the loud ass with the sneeze that can be heard around the world than a dead loud ass cause someone told you to stifle that sneeze
More than 7000 people die annually due to the doctor's bad handwriting.
In 2015, a young woman began to have headaches. They discovered that she had a brain tumor, and when the doctors removed it, they were shocked to see that it was a lump resembling skin that contained bone, teeth, and hair. But this was no parasitic twin: the mass was called a “teratoma,” or “monstrous tumor.” When the woman was an embryo, some cell tissue fell off and ended up where wasn’t supposed to be, her brain. It then develop hair and teeth while the rest of her grew as normal.
I have one of these on my ovaries. It has teeth. I think I have the original vagina dentata (yes, yes, I know).
There’s a parasite that enters a fish’s mouth, eats the tongue and replaces itself as the fish’s new tongue
It was once discovered that a fir tree was growing inside a human body. Artyom Sidorkin went to the doctors suspecting something wrong with his lungs. The doctors thought they were dealing with a tumor but turns out he had inhaled a fir tree seed which had sprouted and had begun growing in his lungs.
People don't take their antimalarial drugs when they travel because they hear bad stories about the side effects and they see native people in the areas living OK without taking pills every day. The truth is, populations native to malaria-endemic areas have all passed through pretty intense natural selection for survival and have a host of genes that prevent them from dying or suffering the other worst effects. Also, most of the resistance is built up over time, this is why it's most common for children to die rather than adults.
Whatever people have heard about the side effects of the antimalarials, getting it is so much worse. I, fortunately, have never had it, but I study it as part of my work and people have told me about having it and they all say the same thing - it is so awful you can't believe you're even still alive. It comes in cycles, usually 48-hours, and each cycle is agonizing and brings you the brink of death, sometimes it takes you, sometimes is spares you for another few hours until it starts again. And there are forms that, even if you clear the infection with drugs, it still remains dormant in your system and can come back at any time.
There is an approved vaccine at last! The WHO and UNICEF in Africa will start the vaccination campaigns. While it is only partially effective, it is still such a massive hope to reduce child death on that continent.
It’s quite common after you die to burp a lot as you have more gas build up. Dead bodies can also sit up on their own sometimes
My Granny was a trainee nurse back in the early 50's and she told me of a corpse that burped when she was moving them to the morgue. She screamed and ran like the wind haha.
In the Czech Republic, there is a church called The Sedlec Ossuary that has decorations made entirely of human bones.
This happened because there were too many people in the cemetery to bury everyone, and the church leaders claimed that if their bones became part of the church, it only made them closer to God.
Nice propaganda spin there, guys.
From Atlas Obscura by Foer, Thuras, and Morton:
Necropants (Reader's discretion advised)
In Iceland, a long ass time ago (17th c), friends followed complex rules to obtain a dead man's skin to turn them into pants.
You had to get permission from the dude to use his skin after he kicked the bucket.
You would then wait until burial formalities concluded.
You would rob the s**t out of your buddy's grave.
You would cut the waist and peel the bottom half of the body off in one perfect flay.
You would then steel a coin from a poor widow, preferably your bud's.
Place the coin in the scrotum of the necropants to attract cosmic s**t, specifically more wealth in life, and leave the groin full of coins at all times.
Pass that s**t down to your kid.
Fun fact: The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft has a pair on display for all of us sickos to gawk at.
The astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger most likely didn’t die until they hit the water miles below the initial explosion.
There are upwards of 300 active serial killers in the world
CNN has had a pre-recorded broadcast from the 90’s which they will premiere during the end of the world
1 in 100 people are psychopaths.
Which is evidence that being one is not an excuse for being a murderer or serial killer. Psychopaths still know what's right and wrong and can choose to stay on the right path. It's just a much more conscious and continuous choice than for the rest of us.
You're more likely to be murdered by someone you know than a stranger
Serial Killer Richard Chase took any unlocked door as an invitation to come inside.
Yup. When you locked your door, you had nothing to fear from him, he wouldn't attempt to break in. Polite serial killer, probably part vampire.
Your brain can play tricks on you to make you see monsters in the mirror. This is called the Troxler Effect. It's an optical illusion that affects how you perceive things, both visually and mentally.
Your eyes have a separate immune system from the rest of your body. If they get damaged in such a way that it affects anything other than your eyes, your regular immune system can attack the damage and will not recognise them, meaning your own body can permanently blind you.
What's worse, your body cannot tell the difference between either eye. If one of them gets infected or damaged, your immune system can attack your healthy eye and take away your sight entirely.
Polar bears are the only animals that are thought to actively hunt humans.
If you begin to display symptoms of rabies, you will go crazy and die. There's no cure. Your brain will slowly melt until you're dead.
There has only ever been one person that survived. There's a documentary on it. I think it's literally called The Girl who Survived Rabies.
The origins of vampires as we know them.
Basically your body has gas build up when you die. I’m not medically inclined enough to explain why. Basically the gas has to escape somehow, and so it would pass through the vocal cords in the throat. This creates the low “moan” that makes the body sound as if it was in pain. The people back then had no idea what was happening and random bodies would just start “moaning” in pain. And thus they believed that the bodies were rising from the dead. And when stabbed, the gas escaped otherwise. Thus leading to the belief that the only way to stop a vampire was to stab a dead body in the chest. This also led to a lot of strange burials, I.e the man that was buried in a stone wall to prevent him from rising from the dead.
I can’t really blame them. I’d be freaked out too if a corpse suddenly started to make sounds. Creepy for some, but I find stuff like that fascinating. There’s documentaries on YT talking about it. I highly recommend them!
Remember that bath salts cannibal guy from a couple years back?
He wasn't high on bath salts when he did that. That was just media speculation and bulls**t. They only found pot in his system during the autopsy.
We still have no idea why he flipped out.
The men of the ship Essex (the true event that inspires the story “Moby Dick”) avoided islands after being shipwrecked for fear of cannibals. The islands were settled and landing there would have brought salvation to the survivors. Ironically because of this bypass, the men ran out of food and were forced to eat each other for survival.
When you happen to be murdered there is only an about 40% chance that your murderer will be found and punished.
There's a spider that gives you an hours-long, very painful boner before you die from its bite.
Hearing is the last thing to go after you die. You just might hear the paramedics and firefighters call off CPR...
The US has lost 6 nuclear warheads in total
Since 1900, over 13,000 people have been murdered by serial killers in the USA.
The peak of the epidemy was the 1970s. There's a pretty strong correlation with the lead in fuel (both growth when introduced and fall once phased out, with a delay --- lead exposure during childhood has well-demonstrated mental effects).
in 1975 the CIA had a heart attack gun, it kills people and then the dart denigrates. just imagine what is classified now.
Imaging now a dart being denigrating as it kills you -- just adding insult to injury
Ducks become cannibals due to boredom , of all reasons. They can only be stopped by cutting off their "mouths"!
Note: this post originally had 81 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
Whether the facts are true or not, here's ONE good fact: The Netherlands Gifts 20,000 Tulips to Canada Every Year
I wonder what they do with the previous year's tulip bulbs? Those things are usually good for at least three years of blooms.
Load More Replies...*sigh I always go into these thinking maybe I'll learn something new. On the other hand, this sort of thing doesn't ever seem creepy or spooky.... I'm doing it wrong. O_O
I honestly didn't think I would be as disturbed as I am right now from reading this. My appetite has been long gone.
Sorry but #49 is not denigrate, the term you're referring to is disintegrate. Using the wrong word puts a whole new spin and meaning on things.
troops camping out in Iraq in the Gulf War learned to sleep with socks on to keep the camel spiders from eating meat off their toes... Yikes... https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology/arachnology-and-entomology/spider-myths/myth-too-many-camel-spider fake-camel...bf34b3.jpg
Why are you being such a downer? Gosh just let people try to enjoy this.
Load More Replies...Whether the facts are true or not, here's ONE good fact: The Netherlands Gifts 20,000 Tulips to Canada Every Year
I wonder what they do with the previous year's tulip bulbs? Those things are usually good for at least three years of blooms.
Load More Replies...*sigh I always go into these thinking maybe I'll learn something new. On the other hand, this sort of thing doesn't ever seem creepy or spooky.... I'm doing it wrong. O_O
I honestly didn't think I would be as disturbed as I am right now from reading this. My appetite has been long gone.
Sorry but #49 is not denigrate, the term you're referring to is disintegrate. Using the wrong word puts a whole new spin and meaning on things.
troops camping out in Iraq in the Gulf War learned to sleep with socks on to keep the camel spiders from eating meat off their toes... Yikes... https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology/arachnology-and-entomology/spider-myths/myth-too-many-camel-spider fake-camel...bf34b3.jpg
Why are you being such a downer? Gosh just let people try to enjoy this.
Load More Replies...