You could be the happiest, most cheerful person on the planet. But when it comes time to sit down and relax after a long day, you might put on the most disturbing, unsettling, terrifying documentary Netflix has to offer. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of; many of us have a morbid curiosity. We just can’t help it!
So if you’re someone who is drawn to all things creepy, you’ve come to the right place. We took a trip to the Dark Theme Reddit Instagram account and gathered some of their not-so-pleasant conversation starters below. If you’re not afraid of being disturbed, you might have plenty of your own stories and facts to share too! So good luck scrolling through, and be sure to upvote the topics that you’d love to explore deeper.
#1
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#2
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
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#3
DeadOnDeparture98:
A phone call from parents/relatives etc.
doesntmatteryaknow:
The sound of an ice cream van.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#4
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
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#5
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#6
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The patient is convinced that a family member has been replaced by an imposter who is completely identical.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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#7
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#8
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.”
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#9
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 drugs
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#10
ProbatonApololos:
If you’re at the beach and the water level drops very quickly, seek high 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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#11
Kaptainkarl76:
It has m******d more people than you will ever know
Victor_IMayBeWeird:
When a whale dies, it creates a whole new ecosystem
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#12
jdward01:
1/3 of US m*****s go unsolved.
Didsterchap11:
If given access to it, butterflies will happily drink blood.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#13
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#14
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#15
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
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#16
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#17
Daemon T5544:
Carthaginian Civilization existed for well over 600 years. They controlled large parts of North Africa, Spain, Mediterranean Islands, and had trade networks going All over the Mediterranean and even explored the African coast. They were powerful enough to bring Rome to the brink of defeat in two massive wars.
Romans won, and as a result, not a single Carthaginian primary source exists.
Stu_Thom4s:
The Philippines right now is an example of history being rewritten to ensure victory.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#18
HiCommaJoel:
Early on in my career I worked at a Planned Community that functioned as a Partial Hospitalization Program.
One of the residents would bring magazines and newspapers he’d found to the main office door everyday. Sometimes he’d be upset, sometimes overjoyed, depending on the stories. Because all of them were about him.
I’ve never worked with someone with such delusions before or sense. One day he was Michael Jordan offering to buy us cars, the next he was Osama Bin Laden trying to hide with us. He’d read his obituary, his wife cheated on him in a political scandal, he’d surveyed the Congo.
We restricted and sorted his mail after the Bin Laden incident, but he’d find other residents’ or in the community.
stitchmidda2:
Phantom pregnancies are pretty fascinating. A woman can be so convinced that she is pregnant that her periods stop, she gets all the classic symptoms, and her belly might even grow. Nobody is totally sure how this happens.
Also Share Psychosis is pretty crazy. There was a case a few years ago where twin sisters visited each other. One was mentally ill, the other not. And the ill one went into a psychotic state and then the healthy twin suddenly, for no reason, went into the same psychotic state. They threw themselves into traffic multiple times getting hit by trucks. After being separated at the hospital, the healthy twin snapped out of her psychosis and was fine. The other one stayed in her psychosis and ended up killing someone with a hammer and neither of them remembered anything that happened.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#19
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#20
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 bastard 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 fucking 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 kill me, how I’m fucking 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 shit was planning to stick the muzzle in my face and pull the trigger to scare the shit 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 fucking pissed. Her chosen narrative is that I’m a mentally unstable lunatic 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 asshole wasn’t just a crazy shit around me like in the movies. He was a crazy little shit 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 killing 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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#21
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#22
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 cracked 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….
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#23
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#24
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 high 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
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#25
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#26
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 prostitution to repay a debt she apparently had but nobody in her family knew about.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#27
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#28
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 killed 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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#29
archlaw007:
Not a mortician but in middle school my friends’ dad was. This wasn’t a situation about a body, just the mortician himself. He was a single dad and my friend’s sister was going to a school dance but hadn’t put on much makeup before and she didn’t want to be late. So the mortician dad volunteered to do it for her because “I put on peoples makeup every day.” When he finished she looked in the mirror and freaked out “I look like I’m dead!” He just nonchalantly said “what did you expect? I’ve only ever worked with dead people before” and just walked away.
I wish there was a picture of it, she looked like a deranged undead clown.
aylandgirl:
My ex inlaws were in the death business. They told me a story once about the county attorney whose wife passed away. The family was very wealthy and she had a mouth full of gold fillings. The attorney demanded that my inlaws retrieve the gold from her mouth. This required using a dental drill to drill down her teeth and dig out the gold. My ex father in law complied with the attorney’s wishes but was physically ill about having to do such a needless step to this lady.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#30
pi-N-apple:
The picture for your funeral program may have already been taken.
Anonymous:
Cannibalism is pretty common in hamsters.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#31
Thorne628:
Obligatory “not me” answer, but my sister-in-law encountered Ivan Milat, one of the two men that inspired the Wolf Creek series. She was travelling the east coast of Australia for a few weeks with her brother.
One night, her and her brother were having jerky and beer by a campfire when Milat sat down at their campfire. When she first saw him, she thought he was park ranger because of his style of dress. She thought he was going to tell them that they built their campfire in a prohibited area, but instead he commented on what a beautiful evening it was and pointed out some of the notable stars in the sky.
Ivan never properly introduced himself. He just sat down and started chatting. He asked my sister-in-law where she was from, and she told him Darwin. He said, “What’s a Darwin girl doing all the way out here?” My sister-in-law explained that she was on a road trip. She seemed to pique his interest when she told him that instead of doing the usual beach vacation, she wanted to do something a little more rugged, like explore caves, do a little rock climbing, and hike trails that were not popular with the tourists.
My sister-in-law says that Ivan was friendly, and he had a lot of ideas about places she might like to go, including a cave that had a waterfall inside, which was a bit of a hidden gem not well-known to tourists. She felt comfortable talking with him, and when he invited her and her brother to join him at his campsite for some rabbit stew and beer, she would have said yes, but her brother instantly turned him down. Ivan’s response to the rejection was a slight “Well, I tried’ shrug of the shoulders. He went back to his campsite, and her brother quickly packed their things in their rented Land Rover, and they wound up sleeping in the Rover outside a well-lit gas station that night.
She said what was so scary about that night is that she felt almost immediately comfortable around Ivan, no red flags whatsoever. He reminded her of one of her uncles that worked construction-one of those rugged but worldly kind of guys, while her brother was immediately suspicious of the charming stranger. She kind of wonders what would have happened to her if her brother had not been there that night.
ReaverDrop:
OMG finally something relevant to me. My Boys&Girls Club basketball coach was a serial k****r. He was a sweet guy, I really liked him, especially compared to the big and loud and hardcore coach that was always yelling, George seemed sweet and empathic and caring. He also worked at the Nintendo Store at the mall, and when my mom and sister and I would go, they would take me to the Nintendo store and ask for George and leave me with him while they went and shopped the mall. He would let me playtest games and set me up on a console in the store and I’d be there for hours.
Turns out, he had lots of family trouble and had issues with women. He would pick them up at bars, take them home, have sex and then stab them. He’d stab them in a really weird way, like he’d stab in a line and keep going even after getting past their body, stabbing the mattress. Then he’d take their bodies back to the bar and ‘pose’ them afterhours near the dumpster.
Funny story: he was written up in a true crime novel called The Charmer. One time when I brought some friends home from college, a friend that was a voracious reader found the book, picked it up and read it cover to cover. I don’t think she realized it was TRUE crime. When she finished the book, I went and grabbed the phone book for our city and looked up all the names of the characters in the book for her.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#32
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#33
Few-Fox-591:
In Massachusetts it’s illegal to consume more than sandwiches at a funeral.
The most random law I’ve ever heard about
OurNewCEO-ThatGuy:
In order to snap someone’s neck like in movies or video games you need to be strong enough to apply roughly 100-115% of the victims bodyweight in rotational force. Much more difficult than Hollywood would make you believe.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#34
hiruko_uchiha:
Your eyes have a separate immune system than the rest of your body, and if your normal immune system ever learns about your eyes, it will target them and you’ll go blind
TheNonbinaryWren:
The deadliest ship disaster was the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship built during the Nazi Regime. In January 1945, she was evacuating 10,000 German citizens ahead of the soviet Invasion when (albeit ironically) a Soviet Submarine spotted them, and fired three torpedoes. The ship was on the freezing cold Baltic Sea, and the davits (ropes) for the lifeboats had frozen over. Not only that, but the ship was only meant to carry 2,000 people normally. These two factors, coupled with the harsh angle the ship was sinking at, meant only half of the lifeboats could be deployed. 9,400 people drowned to death that night, and nobody knows about it.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#35
Rook_45:
A kid said he didnt want to go to church because “my invisible friend says he cant follow me in there”
Anonymous:
My eldest told me that his imaginary friend misses me and wishes he could have been with me longer than a month.
I lost his big sister to SIDS a month after she was born the year before I had him.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#36
BuckshotShow:
Penguin eggs turn transparent when hard boiled.
neptuneenergy:
alexander the great, mussolini, napoleon, julius caesar and hitler allegedly suffered from ailurophobia, the fear of cats.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#37
InThisIllusion:
Brandon Lawson. He ran out of gas on the highway in the middle of the night and called his brother to come help him. Shortly after he called 911 and reported that someone had chased him into the woods and that he needed police. Eventually his brother and one police officer arrive at the scene and find his truck abandoned but no sign of Brandon. Brandon calls his brother and says he’s bleeding and is 10 minutes away from his truck. That was the last anyone ever heard from him and searches of the area turned up empty.
ffff:
The Jamison family
-The Jamison family (2 adults, 1 young daughter) was interested in purchasing a plot of land in Oklahoma
-They drive out in their pickup truck to check it out
-Truck is later found abandoned
-$32,000 cash found in truck, along with the Jamisons’ IDs, wallets, mobile phones, and a GPS.
-The family dog was also left in the truck, and was extremely malnourished.
-A camera is discovered, the final picture was of their daughter, 6-year old Madyson, who looks somewhat distressed.
-Security footage is uncovered, with the family appearing trance-like” and not speaking to one-another.
-The Jamisons’ skeletal remains are found years later, dumped less than 3 miles from where the pickup truck was originally discovered.
-Remains show no signs of struggle.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#38
Affectionate Escape13:
I once had a nap on my couch, a few hours before I had to go to work.
I woke up, checked the time, and started to get ready for work.
Realized I was still dreaming.
I woke up again. Checked the time. It was a little bit later than the first time. Again, I started to get ready for work.
I was STILL dreaming.
I went through that 5 or 6 times, until each time I “woke up”, I was panicking since I didn’t know if I was awake or still sleeping, but I still got up and started to get ready for work. The last ‘wake up’ cycle, I would’ve been late for work.
Creepiest dream I’ve ever had, even more than my sleep paralysis
batmanineurope:
A year or two ago I stumbled upon a subreddit that was populated by quite a few members, but the posts were absolutely nonsense. But they commented on each other’s posts as if they all understood what they were talking about. I kind of lurked for a little while, then got bored and forgot about it.
A few weeks later I was talking to someone via chat and mentioned the subreddit to them, and out of nowhere I started getting chat requests from the members of that subreddit. I accepted a few of the chats and they were speaking to me, very aggressively, with similar gibberish that filled their sub. I blocked them all and never heard from them again. I don’t know what the hell it was all about, but it made my skin crawl.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#39
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 killed 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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#40
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”.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#41
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 freak 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
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#42
Latvia:
If people were otherwise immortal and nobody had anymore children, and you shot someone every second, it would take around 230 years to k**l off the human race.
Emperor_Cartagia:
The main legal consideration between grave robbery and archeology is age and if the deceased has any living relatives.
Where I live (ymmv), if the deceased has been dead over a century and has no living descendants, it’s not considered grave robbery and you can claim any valuables found (jewellery, coins, artifacts, etc).
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#43
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 screw 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 crap out of me! My heart still races when I think of it
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#44
sheddingcat:
When I was a young child, I was outside playing with the hose by myself. A man appeared at my fence and asked me to come over. I walked over, he leaned down and picked me up. I started kicking at him and he dropped me almost immediately, then walked away. After that I ran inside, hid in my closet and never told a single person.
I had almost forgotten about it, or thought I had imagined it until years later when my mom was telling me about how they recently solved a cold case of a man who kidnapped and murdered a girl around my age at the time from our neighborhood and left her body in a field a few miles from our house.
missymaypen:
When I was 14 I went to my best friends house for her birthday party. A 30 year old guy that worked for their parents asked her to tell me that he wanted to take me out on a date. I said I had a boyfriend. He seemed nice but he started following us everywhere and just standing back staring at us (they had a huge farm). I got nervous and called mom to come get me.
>
Months later we saw his wanted poster at our grocery store. He was serial killer Angel Resendez the railway k****r. Mom didn’t believe me until it was on AMW that night and they interviewed my friends foster parents. Then she freaked.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#45
maclaglen:
Slavery still exists in many places of the world.
karnerblu:
Anyone can become disabled at any age at anytime.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#46
D49A1D852468799CAC08:
“I’m watching you make my sandwich so that when you die I will know how to do it.”
Clitoris Maximus:
My sons were about 2 and 4 when their pet goldfish died. I attempted to use the situation as an opportunity to discuss death and mortality. After I finished my explanation, my four year looked up at me with his big, blue eyes and asked, “Mommy, someday, will you die?” My heart filled with love and a little sadness, knowing this was one of those pivotal moments when the first bit of childhood innocence was lost, and I told him yes, someday, mommy will die.
“Good,” he said with a totally deadpan expression, and walked out of the room.
Later when we were about to flush the fish, he asked if we could eat him instead. I said no, we don’t eat pets because we love them, and he said, “When you die, I’m going to eat you.”
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#47
Bigstar976:
Saudi Arabia sentencing to death people who refuse to move out of their homes so that they can build Neom, their new mega city. And their relatives being sentenced to multiple decades of prison time just for protesting or merely posting their support to the cause on social media.
downwiththemike:
In Africa there is a very real and very extensive slave trade going on right now to say nothing of the other probably 40 million living in bondage.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#48
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
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#49
ezzysalazar:
Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia, 1975-1979.
Shadow948:
Genghis Khan k****d so many people that he actually decrease the carbon footprint during his lifetime and raped so many women that if you’re Chinese there’s a decent probability that your a descendant of his.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#50
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#51
Historical Heart:
I was home alone when I was 11. I had just fallen asleep and someone tried to break in the front door. I called 911 and hid in the pantry in the bottom shelf. They came to the door next to the pantry and tried to break into that door too. The police got there and one of them picked me up and held me until my mom got there. I wouldn’t let go and he made sure I felt safe. I’m 27 and haven’t stayed home alone much since. The day I signed a lease for my first apartment I got a dog so I wouldn’t be alone. It’s pretty traumatizing when you’re that young.
issamurcle:
I used to sleepwalk when I was a child. We lived in a rough neighborhood (Decatur, GA) and I would wake up outside in the middle of the night, not knowing how I got there, and would have to walk home and walk into the darkened doorway I had left wide open for whoever might be lurking around. However, the time that scared me the most was when I was about 9 years old. I woke up and found myself with the bedroom curtains drawn back and staring out the window. As I came awake, I noticed a very large and completely hairless man (no hair, eyebrows etc) staring at me and slowly inching closer to the window and closer to my face. He was looking bewildered like he wasn’t sure
what he was seeing. At that moment, I realized what was going on and I started screaming uncontrollably, frozen in place and peeing down my leg. The man freaked out and screamed, did a tumbling move, and then ran off in a weird zig-zag like he was trying to dodge bullets. My mom woke up and thought I probably had a nightmare. The next morning we found a screw driver on the front porch and damage to the door jam and door handle.
I still just about pee my pants when I tell that story, but now it is usually from laughing. I will never forget the look on his face when I started coming to life and screaming or his high pitched scream or his duck and roll and dodging and bobbing all the way down the street.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#52
-SteamedHams–:
Easy to forget space is silent. You see rockets and dandings on TV, but the sound doesn’t travel. It’s pure silence.
JkDukee:
Night is the only natural state of the universe. Day only exists because of the sun.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#53
FunnyHunnyBunny:
This old woman hiker in her 70s some how saw us in reverse order through a wormhole or something. The first time we saw her she said “oh, well hello again!”
just passed it off as her being old, slightly senile. Then 30 minutes later, we saw her again and this time she just said “hi” as she passed us. I’m not even sure how she got there…she was going the opposite direction of us on the trail both times.
BrownCow5:
The words “Per audacia ad ignotum” drawn in the snow in the absolute middle of nowhere, yet no footprints around them. The words were probably a few hours old. The closest translation we could find was “through audacity towards the unknown.”
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#54
rahajaba:
It took humanity approximately 4 times Gonger to switch from copper swords to steel swords than it took to switch from steel swords to nuclear bombs.
AustinCynic:
When NASA pitched the idea of the Voyager missions to Richard Nixon with the idea of touring the outer planets, he was told that the last time it was possible, Thomas Jefferson was in the White House.
The particular planetary alignment that Voyager 2 used on its journey occurs only once every 176 years.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#55
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
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#56
Anonymous:
Was chilling with an older dude with whom i recently started working as a butcher in a grocery store. A couple of beers down and he starts telling me he’s been in prison for 17 years. Came out 2 years ago and it’s his first ever job at 64 years old. I got curious and asked him what happened if it wasnt too private. Without hesitation, he simply answered ” i cut him down with an axe this piece of shit”. … And now he’s a butcher. Dude must really like his job i guess Imao.
Anonymous:
Had a former friend tell me he killed his brother. Didn’t help this was while we were trying to herd is drunk ass to the car as he was crying and yelling it at the top of his lungs. Amazing we didn’t end up in cuffs or the very least get stopped and questioned.
Come to find out his brother died of a brain aneurysm and that morning he prayed for something to happen to get him out of school that day. He always blamed himself for his brother’s death and I get that to a degree.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#57
youburyitidigitup:
Archaeology student here. Here’s one I learned in class. A pueblo village went through a horrible drought and famine. A dwelling was found with the remains of a family that had died violently and had several cut marks all over their body. They also found a human coprolite (ancient poop). It is common practice to run chemical analyses of coprolites to figure out a person’s last meal.
It was human flesh. The DNA of the flesh particles matched the DNA of the family. Somebody murdered and ate the family, then pooped in the house.
SternCoats:
Evidence of a second extinction event level meteor impact.
It kind of means that extinction event meteors not only have happened, but are not all that rare of a thing when you take the age of the Earth into consideration.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#58
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.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#59
MinouCheetos:
The host got so drunk, he pulled his dead pet lizard out of the freezer (saving it to bury it in the spring) and showed it to everyone in the room. Then he started crying, threw up, pissed himself, and passed out. I have no idea if the lizard ever made it back to the freezer.
inkseep1:
New Year’s party at a farmhouse. This guy I know has taken LSD. He found a top hat and cape somewhere and was wearing them. He is having a bad trip and is just spiraling into a depression and fixating on death while being freaked out on his trip. So I take him outside to get him away from all the smoking and noisy drunks in the house. We step out on the dark porch and for a minute he seems to be getting right when suddenly about 10 cows run by the porch. His eyes go wide and he runs away. The drunks in the party yell ‘the cows are out’ and they all start chasing the cows trying to round them up but the cows are now smarter than the drunk people so they were not doing a good job of it. And I never saw that guy again. I found the cape and top hat laying on the floor like he just vanished and they fell straight down.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#60
Hawaiian ShirtsOR:
The blind spots next to and behind big trucks.
Fantastic_Rock_3836:
When the park service tells you not to go somewhere, listen to them, especially regarding hot springs in Yellowstone.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#61
SnowDemonAkuma:
Your intestines “know” what shape they’re supposed to be in, and can move themselves, which means gut surgeons can just stuff them back into you when they’re done and they’ll sort themselves out.
Fine_wonderland:
When you get laser tattoo removal the ink doesn’t disappear, you pee it out.
Your body’s immune system breaks down the pigments of ink and it flows in your blood stream, gets processed through your kidneys, then you pee out the ink.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#62
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?
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#63
horsecalledwar:
This is probably more silly than creepy but it’s definitely unexplained. Years ago, I suddenly started having dreams about meat. Like I’d walk into my apartment and there’d be steaks and roasts just all over the place. Always raw and always choice cuts. I’ve never dreamed about food and although I love a good steak, I prefer to cook it so this was weird.
I started writing down the dreams since they were so odd. Soon I realized that whenever I’d wake up from a meat dream, my dog would be in my bed asleep and touching me. So I started wondering about dream transfer but told myself that was crazy.
Then one day my husband starts telling me he’s having these weird dreams about meat. Says I’m going to think he’s crazy but he thinks our dog’s dreams are getting into his head because he only has them when our 120 lb. dog sleeps in bed with us. My dog was huge so if he was in bed with us he was always touching you, whether he threw himself across both legs or just had a paw on your arm.
He described a few dreams very similar to mine and couldn’t believe it when I showed him the notes I took. This continued for years, for both of us, until my dog stopped sleeping in our bed when he got older. Hasn’t happened since.
Anonymous:
Was hanging out watching tv with my dog alone one day when I was younger, at some point she looks up and starts growling towards the closet randomly. She had never done that before so I, half jokingly, said something along the lines of “go away” thinking she might be seeing a ghost and she suddenly stops. I then proceed to say “that’s right you better” and she started growling again but more intensly.
I got very scared and said “sorry I didnt mean it” and she immediately stopped again. I did not try to provoke whatever she saw again.
I still think about it to this day years later and it was one of the scariest moments I have ever experienced.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#64
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 killed 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
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#65
JM_Flynn:
I read an article a long time ago about a aircraft maintenance worker not removing a piece of tape that was put in place to protect a sensor during cleaning. The pilot failed to notice during the preflight inspection. More than a hundred people died in the plane crash.
BullinATacoShop:
Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s driver making a wrong right-turn down a side street.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#66
elly996:
babies bounce. their bones are soft enough that instead of thudding, they bounce a little.
AmberSoul99:
Blue crabs will eat anything within a few days and will mutilate bones beyond recognition
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#67
MyOpinionAboutThis:
Takes 3hrs for a 180lb human to completely dissolve in a bathtub of potassium hydroxide.
TheLoneleyPython:
In ancient Egypt, the deceased bodies of beautiful and high ranking women were left to decay for several days before mummification to discuourage necrophilia by the embalmers.
Image credits: darkthemereddit
#68
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.”
Image credits: darkthemereddit