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People Break Down Their Craziest 'I'm Gonna Die Here' Experience That They Actually Survived

People Break Down Their Craziest 'I'm Gonna Die Here' Experience That They Actually Survived
Image by Anemone123 from Pixabay

As horrifying as the Covid-19 pandemic has been, I can't help but marvel at the people who got through a bad bout of the virus and are still here with us today. The stories I have heard have unnerved me: Quite a few people I know honestly thought they were going to die before things got better. (That's the crazy thing about this virus––you could feel like hell for a while only to experience a major turn-around within 24 hours.)

After Redditor Rares asked the online community, "What is the worst 'I'm gonna die' situation you've been through? people shared their stories.


"In a particularly rough place of the river..."

I was canoeing with my dad when we were on holiday in France. In a particularly rough place of the river, another canoe bumped us and our boat went upside down. I got carried away by the current until a man pulled me out. To this day I am glad that the man was there, otherwise, I would not be here.

poezafluffy

"That same year..."

I was kayaking with some friends down a familiar river but the water was much higher than usual. My boat got stuck sideways across a wave. I could move sideways across the wave but I didn't have the strength or skill to get out of either end. After two or three minutes I realised I had to capsize and swim. I was carried about 200m downstream before I could get out. Someone got my boat and paddle but I'd lost my shoes. I had to walk about a mile downstream barefoot to catch them up.

That same year I travelled to the French Alps to do some skiing. I had lessons and thought I was competent enough but on my last day, I found myself on a run that was too steep for me to handle. After falling multiple times I found the only way I could stop myself from going too fast was to fall again. It took me two hours to get down a slope that others were finishing in about five minutes. I kept having flashbacks to the kayaking incident. I kept thinking how stupid I was not to have learnt anything about keeping within my abilities.

opopkl

"I got a viral infection..."

I got a viral infection that spread to my brain in 2019. By the time my sister got to me to get me to the hospital, I was blind and deaf and "feral" (bit my sister, she has a scar). Everyone at the hospital told her I would've died a few hours later, definitely wouldn't have made it through the night.

Now I'm a disabled amnesiac with chronic pain.

drunky_crowette

"Had to make an emergency roof repair..."

Had to make an emergency roof repair on my house during an ice storm. Slipped, slid towards the edge of what would have been a 30' fall onto concrete. Stopped with my feet off the edge.

VXMerlinXV

This is terrifying.

To come so close to that and to be stopped in the nick of the time by some dumb luck!

"Remainder of their family..."

A person with a gun shoots and kills one neighbor. The remainder of their family runs to our house for protection. We all hunker down as the person with a gun tries to get into our house.

WEWE4E

Also terrifying.

Hopefully the authorities arrived in time.

"Facing down my then wife..."

Facing down my then-wife who was armed with a 9mm handgun. She pulled the trigger and thankfully nothing happened. I took the gun away from her and she ran out of the place. Still don't know why the gun didn't fire. She ended up going to jail and I divorced her shortly thereafter.

somethingunnatural

Well, there's a happy ending to this one...

...I guess? Sorry you had to go through that.

"A woman was being assaulted..."

A woman was being assaulted outside of my apartment by what seemed to be a boyfriend or husband.

I went out to shout at the guy, and he turned his rage on me instead.

I was about 85% sure I was going to be shot or stabbed. Fortunately, he didn't, and he backed down when he noticed that a crow of concerned people had arrived, and everyone was on the phone with 911.

Hyndis

"When I was about 14..."

When I was about 14, my church went on a youth retreat to rebuild a church on the coast that had been devastated by a hurricane. On the Saturday night of the trip, we went to a bowling alley to finish the weekend on a high note.

I was with all my buddies, there were the "hot" girls in the youth group to be impressed. I had way too much soda and popcorn and was ready to light up the night. The church had rented a Chevy express 12-passenger van, the kind where the seatbelt for the middle row of seats crosses the doorway and you have to duck under it. Well, my idea was to get a running start and launch off of the step into the back seat of the van.

So I did it, and it went pretty well. I got a lot of momentum, and when I launched off the step of the van it was almost perfect. I had intended to go under the seatbelt of the van, but I missed. The seatbelt hit me on the chin, and my momentum forced it down, onto my neck. Feeling the pressure on my neck I panicked and slammed into the back of the second row. The impact flipped me over the seat, into the floorboard of the third row, and twisted the seatbelt behind my neck. I'm not a small kid so my arms were pinned and the more I tried to get them free the tighter the seatbelt got because it had locked due to the impact.

The elapsed time of what had happened was maybe 45 seconds, and the youth leader was still inside paying for the rest of what the group owed. It took about five minutes for a kid to realize that I was actually struggling, and run inside to get him. He ended up cutting the seatbelt with his pocket knife and I am convinced that he saved my life.

cmxssey

"I don't know why I never told her..."

When I was a kid, my mom was a single parent and had awful taste in men. This one, in particular, was a drunk, at all hours of the day.

One day, he was babysitting us while my mom was at work and took us to the local park/lake to swim. About 3 hours go by with my sister and me having fun in the lake but we were tired and hungry and wanted to go home.


The guy had been sitting under a tree the whole afternoon with one of those one-gallon igloo coolers that he said was water, and was "sleeping." When we got out to tell him we wanted to go home, he didn't wake up. It took probably half an hour to shake him out of his alcoholic coma, and then my sister and I (about 4 and 8) had to get him up a very steep hill to the parking lot. He wasn't exactly a large man, but we were little, and pushing a grown man up a hill who keeps stumbling back down was not easy.

Finally, we make it to the car. That was when I realized we were in trouble. He actually got into the car and drove us home, and I use that word lightly... We were on sidewalks and people's front yards more than on the road. I was terrified and kept begging him just to stop, but he ignored me. How we made it home without crashing or being seen by police is anyone's guess. The worst part was that to this day, my mom doesn't know about this event. I don't know why I never told her... Maybe I thought I'd be in trouble. But I was a much more timid child after that.

LtDualla

"My scariest situation..."

My scariest situation was when I was about six. My family and I were at a camping site in a forest. I decided to go a little further and I started getting chased by three stray dogs, but I managed to get back to my parents safely.

Rares

Everyone you meet has a story.

You really do not know what other people have been through unless you ask. The resilience of the people around you might surprise you.

Have some of your own stories to share? Feel free to tell us about them in the comments section below!

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These People Found Skeletons In Their Friends' Closets
Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash

Normally, when we meet up with friends, we head out on the town. But sometimes there’s nothing like a chill night at a good friend’s place—unless they live in a pigsty or worse…so much worse. We all think we know our friends, but do we really? These shocking stories blow the doors wide open on the skeletons our friends are hiding in their closets.


1. The Big, Very Un-Comfy Couch

My best friend and I had been friends for probably 12 years so we were super close and our families were super close. We would travel together for sports and stuff. Her parents were basically my parents. Her dad was this big, big guy who was super tough. He was scary if you didn’t know him but he was really just teddy bear at heart.

We would usually spend the afternoons after school together since both sets of parents were working. We ended up at her house one particular day. We walked in expecting no one to be home. We were in for the surprise of a lifetime. Her dad was sitting on the couch just sobbing uncontrollably. It took a while for him to catch his breath enough to tell us what happened.

He told us that someone had walked into his work that day and just opened fire on a bunch of people. He lost three of his closest friends that day. He was in shambles. My BFF just instantly started crying and jumped in her dad’s arms. It was one of the most wholesome, yet scary and awkward things I have ever been witness to.

thesleepofreason08

2. A Very Long Nap

This didn’t happen to me but to my girlfriend. She went over to her friend/neighbor’s house one day and it smelled absolutely awful. Like unbearably bad. She asked what the smell was coming from and her friend just said, "Oh that's grandma. She’s just sleeping over in the next room.” Well, turns out grandma’s little “nap” was more restive than she thought.

Three days later, the sandman (a.k.a. the coroner) was carrying grandma out of the house in a body bag. It’s anybody’s guess how long she had been decomposing in there.

arretez1512

3. Pack Rat Roommates

File:Compulsive hoarding Apartment.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

My best friend lives in the basement of his parents’ house. It sounds pretty sweet that he has a whole floor of the house to himself—until you realize his parents’ dirty secret. They’re hoarders. My friend has to walk through a tunnel of car parts, furniture, Christmas decorations, moldy clothes, and dried dog droppings just to go upstairs to use the bathroom.

Whenever I visit, I can tell that they've tried to fill his mostly clean room with junk because he pushes it back out onto the piles.

SunflowerDaYarnPony

4. My Door’s Always Open…Always

My best friend’s mom was single but she seemed to have a different boyfriend every other month. She would always walk around in her birthday suit and before you go thinking that that was like a “Stacy’s Mom” situation, it was the most awkward thing ever. She would leave the door of her bedroom open whenever she and her new boyfriend were being intimate.

It was the most awkward thing in the world to play Halo with my friend hearing what was happening just upstairs.

Au_Uncirculated

5. A New Kind Of Bed Wetting

When I was a kid, my mom took me and my siblings to visit an old friend of hers. We were playing with her friend's kids while our parents caught up on old times. Her friend's little boy, probably five or six at the time, really wanted to show us his room. I wish I had never, ever seen that little boy’s room. Nothing could have prepared me.

For the most part, it was pretty normal if a little messy. The weirdest thing though was his bed. It was just mattresses on the floor. Then he showed us a hole in the mattress, about one foot in diameter. He explained to us that that was the “toilet.”

kekentyl

6. Go To Your Room! And Stay There!

toddler holding assorted-color Crayola lotPhoto by Kristin Brown on Unsplash

This didn’t happen at a friend’s house but it was still the most messed up thing I’ve seen in another person’s place. I used to work at an apartment complex. One of my jobs was to come in after someone moved out and do a maintenance assessment. It was usually pretty straightforward. Most people left the apartment the way they got it with only normal wear and tear.

The worst exception to this was an eviction case. When I walked in, I found that the tenants had left the living room full of garbage. They had obviously strewn it about intentionally. They also had a dog that they clearly didn’t let outside or clean up after, if you get what I’m saying. As bad as that was, it wasn’t even the worst part of the apartment.

The worst was the kids' room. I guess the kids must have been between three and six years old based on the “evidence” I observed. The kids had drawn on the walls with crayons. In fact, they had practically repainted the walls in crayon. It definitely would have taken them a very long time to do that—they must have been drawing on the walls for months. And it got much worse.

The closet reeked of urine and it was easy to see why. The lock on the door faced outwards into the hallway. The tenants had changed the knob around so they could lock their kids in their room. At that point, I turned it over to the authorities. It was obviously a case of child neglect. So terrible.

Pencilowner

7. Rub-a-dub-dub In The Tub

I used to wonder why my friend always wanted to come over to my house to play. No matter what the circumstances were, she just never seemed to want to go to her place to hang out. One day, we ended up at her place and, well, I learned why she wanted to be anywhere but there. Her place was like something out of a horror flick.

Every room in the house was full of trash and looked like a hurricane had gone through it. The worst part was the bathtub. It was filled to the brim with a mysterious, murky brown water. Suffice to say, we kept playing at my house after that.

ghostdumpsters

8. Where Are Your Manners?

When I was about six years old, I would sometimes go to my neighbor’s house for breakfast. We were close friends but I guess I didn’t know his family as well as I thought I did. Turns out his dad had something of a bad temper—or he wasn’t very good at practical jokes. One morning, my friend’s dad asked him to pass the ketchup.

My friend either didn't hear his dad or ignored him. Either way, his dad overreacted big time. He reached over and grabbed the ketchup himself then proceeded to smash it over my friend’s head. Free dye job.

tourne16

9. Let Them Eat Cake

baked strawberry cakePhoto by Jasmine Bartel on Unsplash

I was 19 when I had to babysit the kids of some family friends (a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl) at their house after their usual sitter quit unexpectedly. The first day was rough but I brought some cookies and games to ease into it and get the kids accustomed to me. The second day was a babysitter’s nightmare.

The house was the definition of a disaster: junk everywhere, mud and dirt on most general surfaces, and a musky smell in every single room. The girl I was watching wanted a snack, so I went to the fridge to get something for her. The entire inside was brown and filthy from years of neglect. I gave up on the fridge and went to the cabinet.

It was still a mess but I managed to find some crackers. As I turned back to the living room to give her the crackers, I found the girl holding something baked in her hands. It was beige, kind of dense, shiny, and covered in a foamy fluffy stringy substance. I gasped in horror—it looked like an alien’s idea of food—and asked her what it was.

She pointed to an ornate glass cake display behind a pile of paperwork and junk on the dining table. I looked and inside the container was a cake that, well, had seen better days—or years. That thing was at least two or three weeks beyond the point of being even somewhat edible. It had partially dissolved, was covered in white and green mold and it was sitting in a centimeter of some liquid that I assume was what it was melting into.

I told her to spit it out and she reacted by shoving the whole thing into her mouth, sprinting to her bedroom and removing a piece of wood that covered the broken spot where an old AC window unit used to be. She then jumped out the first-floor window and ran down the back alley. I had to chase her down a back alley and finally grabbed the hood of her jacket and she fell to the ground.

By the time I got her home, the boy had gone halfway down the street in the other direction, throwing fireworks at a mail truck. There was no third day.

MediumLopsided

10. Fearsome Father Figure

When I was ten or eleven, I was hanging out at my best friend’s place. For some reason, his dad got really angry. He must have been seeing red. He grabbed my friend by the arm and dragged him across the living room. He was so rough that he snapped my friend’s arm. In public, the family blamed it on some skating accident. But I knew the dark truth. It was so sad and creepy.

thejazzmarauder

11. Watering The Garden

I was friends with this girl who had the strangest habit when she was home. She would always get glasses of water (yay, for hydration) but she would pretty much never finish them. Instead of pouring smaller glasses, she came up with a “solution.” When she had had enough to drink, she would just dump the rest on the carpet because "it just absorbs it.”

knittedfleecesweater

12. It’s Like A Doll House But Creepier

cooked food on white ceramic platePhoto by Jed Owen on Unsplash

I went to high school with a girl who had the weirdest family. They would dress up their house like it was a model home in a magazine or something. For example, they dressed the dining room table with a plastic Thanksgiving feast complete with plastic food on nice plates and fake wine in fake glasses. And that was just the ground floor.

When you walked into her bedroom the bed was made with the top corner open as if she just got out of bed. There was a tray with a fake bowl of cereal and a fake glass of orange juice. On the floor were coloring books and crayons as if a child lived in the room. They kept the place spotless and every room had an odd theme of fake living.

Even her parents’ bedroom had quite a few large African animal statues and fake rose petals leading to the bed.

RCDagger

13. A Gruesome Memento

I moved cities in the second or third grade. I met someone the first day and he invited me to his house that weekend to stay over. Everything was great at first. We played GameCube and stayed up until three in the morning (the latest I had been awake up to that point). When we finally couldn’t keep our eyes open, he said we had to sleep in the basement so that we wouldn’t wake his parents when we went upstairs.

I actually thought it was pretty cool to sleep in the basement. Little did I know, I was descending into a house of horrors. When we got downstairs with our sleeping bags, I immediately knew something was wrong. The worst smell I've ever experienced filled my nostrils the further we descended. I found the culprit in the corner of the room.

There was a bed covered in what looked like crusty blood and some pus-colored streaks. Turns out, his mother had had a home birth the week prior and kept the sheets as a memento. I haven't been back since.

SockBasket

14. I Think I’ve Seen A Ghost

I was friends with my little league baseball coach's son. One day they invited me to their house for a "play date." As I walked through the door, I saw a huge framed white cloth with some weird symbol. I didn't think much about it because at the time I didn't know what it was. My coach noticed me looking at it as I entered the house and said, "My Grandad wore that. It’s been in the family for years.”

Naturally, I thought nothing of it. If anything, I thought that it was cool that they kept old family heirlooms like that. But now that I’m older I realize what that white robe was. It was a KKK robe. And the worst part of it: I’m not white.

SkyScooter

15. Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees. Or…

white and black printer paperPhoto by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

I was visiting a friend this one time. We were having fun so we decided to extend our night by grabbing a 30-pack at the nearby store. I’m no freeloader so I told my friend that we had to stop by an ATM so I could pick up some cash to pay my half. Then my friend just turned and looked at me and said, "Don't worry about it, we can just go to the money drawer.”

Yeah, you read that right. Money drawer. This kid's family literally kept a drawer full (overflowing) with $20 bills in the kitchen. You could just walk up, grab a fat stack of 20s whenever you needed something. It was pretty surreal. I never questioned where all of that cash came from. Probably better I didn’t know.

dangling-pointer

16. It’s Quiet. Too Quiet.

My now ex-girlfriend’s house and family was so creepy because it was so normal. Like eerily so. Her family was kind of your typical Midwestern family. They were extremely nice and amazing people. Not a bad bone in their bodies. Anyways, I met them and everything was great. Her mother made an amazing dinner and we feasted like kings.

Afterward, we sat down on the couch and we all just talked. No TV, no cellphones, no bickering, no fighting, no trash talking about other family members or curse words. Nothing. Even her nephews sat on the floor and listened to the stories the older people told. It was like an episode of The Brady Bunch. And then it hit me.

Coming from a rambunctious Irish Catholic family, I was probably the dysfunctional one from a weird home. It was really a life-changing event for me just to know that families like that do exist. A weird experience for me. A great experience.

DecentHumanoid

17. The Multiplex

I went to meet a friend of a friend and to pick up some of their belongings as they had moved out. It was the first time I was meeting that guy—and definitely the last. We walked into his place and he had three TVs and various computer screens set up in the living room. All of them were playing…adult entertainment. That guy and my friend thought that it was completely normal and my friend didn't warn me.

After we left, my friend just shrugged and said, “That's what he does.”

gruppa

18. That Ain’t No Kitty

brown tabby cat on white wooden windowPhoto by Bogdan Farca on Unsplash

My friend Todd and I were both ten years old. I spent a lot of time at his house, but always had the feeling that things were just off in some way. I didn't know what his mom did for a living but I knew that she slept until two in the afternoon every day. Something that always threw me off was the overpowering stench of urine in their place.

Todd told me that the smell was from his cat and that it wafted up from the basement. But I couldn't understand how one cat was capable of that stench. Turns out, it wasn’t. Eventually, his mom and stepdad eventually were caught manufacturing speed.

Getz15

19. Mannequin Make Out

I showed up at my friend’s house unannounced as was the style at the time. His mom or dad or somebody was outside and told me to just go right down as he was in the basement. I probably should have announced myself when I went—I could have spared us both a really awkward encounter. My friend was in the basement in his backroom.

When I went down, I found him making out with the top half of a mannequin. He had even dressed it up with makeup and everything. I wish I hadn't let out a noise of surprise and could have just left him cause dude really freaked out that I saw him and I felt so bad.

Billbapo-no

20. The Other Crocodile Dundee

One of my friends was friends with this kind of shady guy. He was filthy rich though. I thought that he maybe had some high connections in low places if you get my drift. Anyway, my friend and I went to this place and he was like, “Bro, want to see my crocodile?” I laughed, thinking that he was talking about fancy, expensive crocodile shoes. Nope.

Dude opened the door to the basement. Sure enough, there was a crocodile. Probably kept it around to get rid of “evidence.”

Ih8MyBrosWife

21. That’s Weird. Period.

white and multicolored beach ballPhoto by Raphaël Biscaldi on Unsplash

This happened many years ago. My friend invited me over to her place to swim in her pool. She was someone I had just met through another friend of mine so I didn’t know her that well. The three of us were in her room changing into our swimsuits. That's when I noticed something disturbing. There were a bunch of used—read: bloody—maxi pads laying open on her desk.

I asked her what that was all about and she very nonchalantly answered, "It's so my mom knows I'm not pregnant.” We were maybe 12 at the time.

LookAcrossTheWater

22. A “Log” Chopper

The strangest thing I saw in my friend’s place was in their bathroom. Honestly, they had a normal house apart from this. I had to take a trip to the loo when I noticed a real machete hanging from the bathroom door. When I asked my friend why they had a machete in the bathroom, he basically said, “Just in case, man.” In case what exactly?

I guess it was there in case someone broke in when you were busy fighting dirt dragons—you wouldn’t be at a total disadvantage. Everyone at his place was surprised when I said I'd never heard of it. But I now keep a bathroom hammer handy, because, really, you never know.

duckduckpony

23. That New Box Smell

I was at my friend’s place and we were getting something out of his dad's closet. I noticed that there was a ton of expensive electrical equipment stuffed into the back of the closet. It was all still in boxes, in the wrapping and everything. I asked him about it. Apparently, his dad kept everything new for a year before unboxing it and actually using it.

My friend didn't know why his dad did that. Not the creepiest thing but still boggles my mind. Very strange.

dingobiscuits

24. The Bubble-Wrapped House

blue and white abstract paintingPhoto by Emily Bernal on Unsplash

The weirdest (and I mean creepiest) thing that I saw at a friend’s place was the extent to which his family went to "preserve" their furniture. Each piece of furniture, including the lampshades, had a custom-cut plastic shell draped over it. Every furniture leg had a plastic bowl underneath it to distribute weight across the carpet, preventing indents.

The strangest part was the plastic pathways laid out across the floor. These pathways were kind of like "plastic carpets" laid on top of the real carpet. They didn’t allow you to walk on the actual carpet. Instead, you had to walk on these plastic mats that crisscrossed the floor and connected all the rooms to each other.

It looked like the entire house belonged on the set of Dexter.

ursa-minor-88

25. Father, Dearest

My friend’s dad was actually the weirdest thing in his house. When I was a kid, I used to stay for dinner. But my friend’s dad wouldn’t eat with us. The mom would make a plate of food, take it down the hall and slide it halfway under the door to the basement. A few seconds later the plate would disappear to the other side. No one at the house seemed to think this was odd.

The other odd thing his family did was every weeknight at 7:00 PM on the dot, the family would clear out of the living room so my friend’s dad could come and watch Star Trek. Once the show was over, he would go back into the basement and the family would move back into the living room. It was creepy. He was like a cave troll.

Fi3br

26. Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty

When I was a kid, I went to a friend's house. It was my first time going to his place—and I wished it would have been my last. There was this really pretty kitty asleep on the couch so, naturally, I went over to pet it. But if I had been expecting a soft, cuddly, furry animal then I was in for an unpleasant and morbid surprise.

My friend’s family had their cat stuffed taxidermy style after it passed and they just had it proudly on display on their couch. Gross.

sarcastinator

27. Whose House Is It Anyway?

white wooden kitchen cabinetPhoto by Jason Leung on Unsplash

I hate to admit it but I used to be the kid with the messed-up house that I didn’t want my friends to see. Ever. My mom boarded dogs out of my childhood home for money but she wasn’t any good at it. The dogs were always doing their business in the house—number one and number two. She took on way more than she was capable of handling.

The dogs were always so loud and I couldn’t go downstairs without gagging on the stench and having these dirty dogs jump all over me. Honestly, I hated my life. I could barely keep any friends and I couldn’t convince my mom to get rid of the dogs. She thought I was trying to “take away her happiness” by wanting a clean, quiet, calm home to live in and invite friends to.

dumbb-idiot

28. Anybody Home In There?

I went to my friend’s place to pick up some headphones he was selling to me. When I walked into the living room, I noticed a lady sitting in a chair. She was totally unresponsive. I mean, practically comatose. When I asked my friend if she was doing alright, he said, “Oh, that's my aunt. She's high on smack.” It seemed perfectly normal to him.

I said, “Hi,” but she didn't seem to notice because she didn’t blink or anything. I got the headphones and got the heck out of there.

Jenghrick

29. Get Your Head In The Game

When I was growing up, we used to have a human skull in a glass case in our living room. It was years before I figured out that was really weird. My mom got it from a doctor friend or something. It was just some random head, not like a relative or anything. We called him Freddy and had to superglue his jaw back on every few years when it fell off.

I wonder if my friends who came over thought that it was weird.

rickscarf

30. Diaper Duty

white and blue van on brown dirt road during daytimePhoto by Tyler Casey on Unsplash

This wasn’t a friend’s house but it was still really weird. I was an adult literacy volunteer and I went to this couple's trailer. A shirtless kid, maybe five or six, walked in wearing a diaper. At first, I thought it was a joke. Then I thought maybe he had developmental issues. Then the mother said, "About time to change your diaper, ain't it?"

In perfect, clear English the boy said defiantly, "You ain't gonna change my diaper."

permalink

31. Grandfathered In

I went to a friend’s house and my friend’s dad had the strangest collection. He had lined their halls with grandfather clocks. That was a little weird but I didn’t think much of it. The weird part came when his dad told me and my friend, "Don't you kids go around telling anybody about my clocks.” In all fairness to him, they were probably worth a fortune.

PeterBernsteinSucks

32. The Writing On The Walls

I will never forget visiting my friend’s house when we were kids. The thing that stood out to me was the wallpaper. They had it in all of the hallways. The pattern was of totally undressed women. All throughout the apartment. Just a bunch of a pattern tiny, unclothed women. We were maybe eight years old. It was amazing. And kind of weird.

Phrystile

33. Cat Got Your Tongue?

white and black cowPhoto by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

I went to my friend’s house for his birthday. Honestly, their house was normal but the birthday party was…well, very abnormal. Instead of a birthday cake, they had a cow tongue. It wasn't like they couldn't afford a birthday cake either. They just had a cow tongue with a single candle in it. I hope he wished for a normal birthday cake.

Spidey16

34. Is Your Toilet Running? Then You Should Flush It

I was about 12 or 13, visiting my best friend's house for the first time. After lunch, I got the urge to take a dump, so I went to the restroom and did my thing. I finished up and flushed...only nothing happened. I took a step back and flushed again but still nothing happened. At that point I started freaking out—I had just broken my friend’s toilet.

I was getting so nervous. I didn’t have any money to pay to fix the toilet or buy a new one. Worse yet, I was stuck standing there, sweating, with my “delivery” just floating in the toilet. I tried to figure out a plan but after 15 minutes I couldn’t think of anything. I finally decided to fess up and face the embarrassment.

I stepped outside and sheepishly told his mom that I broke their toilet. She started laughing, went into the bathroom, and very calmy turned on the water flow to the toilet. She waited a few minutes then flushed and down went the log. Everyone (my best friend, his mom, and his sister) took the opportunity to start laughing at me because I didn't know it was "normal" to turn the water on/off whenever I needed to use the bathroom.

To this day if I'm unfamiliar with a restroom, I always do a precautionary flush just to make sure everything is working the way it should.

HungryHawkeye

35. Are Those Bones Or Are You Happy To See Me?

When I was dating my first girlfriend in high school, she invited me over to her house for dinner and to meet the parents. At one point I was talking with her father in his study and I noticed lots of old-looking phallic-shaped objects on the shelves in the room. On closer inspection, I discovered that they were, in fact, mummified phalluses. There were dozens of them.

Fortunately, there was a perfectly rational explanation—her father was not, as I feared, castrating her boyfriends. Turns out, he was a urologist and an amateur archaeologist. Still…it was pretty creepy and intimidating.

mcdcrook

36. I Like Your Stash

File:Hoarding living room.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

My friend was a bit of a slob but that was nothing compared to his parents, who were really bad hoarders. My friend had a full-sized trash can in his room and it was always full, but his parents had him beat. By a lot. They had dedicated an entire "wing" of their home to their “hoard.” They said that it was off-limits which, of course, only increased our intrigue.

My friend would take anyone and everyone into the “off-limits” wing when the opportunity presented itself. While the rest of the house was relatively messy, it was nothing like that wing. Behind that door there were boxes, old newspapers, and random stuff everywhere. The hall that led to their room had a narrow pathway carved out with dust built up several inches to the side of it.

The most shocking thing was their bed. It was visually lopsided. They were big people and apparently that was the side they got jiggy on. Fortunately, there were all of those boxes and mountains of dust to muffle the sound.

sdcyclonesurfer

37. If It’s Yellow…

I found a dog poop on my friend's carpet next to his bed. When I pointed it out, he elected not to pick it up but to leave it and clean it up later. At the same sleepover, I went to use the restroom and the toilet had not been flushed by the previous person. It was just pee in there, but it had been in there so long that when I peed into the water, I broke through a solid thin layer of film created by the unflushed pee.

LooseSeal88

38. Two-Ply, One-Ply, No-Ply

Two friends of mine shared an apartment. They started fighting about who bought the most toilet paper. I didn’t realize how intense their feud got until I visited once. It wasn’t so much what I found but what I didn’t find. Their fight had gotten so bad that they both stopped buying toilet paper altogether. And they resorted to desperate measures.

It got to the point that they only used the washroom when they had to shower. Sometimes it’s the things that aren’t there that are the most shocking.

Daydareman

39. The Franken-Puppy

dog holding flowerPhoto by Celine Sayuri Tagami on Unsplash

A friend from middle school had parents who would always get him dogs even though they didn't bother to take good care of them. My friend loved those dogs but the parents would always let them out somehow and they'd run away. One day I went to his house and he told me about how his current dog was hit by a car and half its body was smashed.

I assumed that the dog had passed in the accident but when I visited his place, I was shocked to learn the truth. He walked me to the backyard with a small plate of food for the dog. The parents had dug a shallow hole and threw the dog in there while it was still alive. Poor thing was withering and suffering while maggots were eating its lower half.

The next day, he told me that his dad had put it down himself. At that point, it was a mercy.

mtnmarkk

40. Shocking Revelations

When I was 13, I was at a neighbor friend's trailer (we lived in the same park). As we were hanging out, my friend's older sister got into a fight with her mom and they started yelling at each other. His sister was shouting that no one ever believed her and then dropped the big news. She said that her deaf uncle (her dad's brother, also living in the trailer) had been forcing himself on her at night.

It was the most uncomfortable situation I'd ever been in—and remains so to this day. I wanted to leave immediately but was halfway way through coloring in his older brother's tattoo so I couldn’t just cut and run.

SixxTheSandman

41. Little Terrors

When I was about 15, I went to a friend’s house (let’s call him Doug). From there, we met up with one of his friends at their house (let’s call him Tyler). Down the hallway at Tyler’s house was a door with a deadbolt on the outside. Tyler asked us if we wanted to see something “hilarious.” I said, “Sure,” and immediately regretted it.

Tyler unlocked the door and there was a little old lady, probably in her mid-to-late 80s, in the corner of a dark room. She was surrounded by dirty dishes and half-eaten bologna sandwiches. She looked up at us, startled, and said, “Who are you? What do you want?” Without answering, Tyler then picked up one of the sandwiches and threw it at her.

He got the poor, little old lady covered in mustard and bologna. He then threw a drink at her. It was awful. At that point, she got up and started yelling, “What the hell are you doing?” and cursing at him. Tyler ran out the door and locked the deadbolt behind him. She was banging on the door. It was awful. Anything but “hilarious.”

A minute or so passed and Tyler unlocked the door and walked in. She was so visibly confused and sweetly, calmly asked why she was wet and what was all over her. “It’s alright Grandma,” Tyler said, “just sit down and eat your food.” Tyler and Doug thought it was the funniest thing in the world and didn’t stop laughing for hours about it.

I left and didn’t go back to either of their houses again. Just witnessing that made me sick to my stomach.

ChevDatchel

42. The Weirdest Family Values

The Twilight Zone 1960 | Northridge Alumni Bear Facts | Flickrwww.flickr.com

I dated a guy whose family was just…odd. Visiting their house felt like stepping into the twilight zone. They just did things so differently, sometimes I wondered if they weren’t aliens. For example, no one in the house knew how to use a stove. They used the microwave or ate out. They left every cabinet and drawer in the house wide open for no discernible reason.

His mother walked around the house in her birthday suit pretty much constantly and took about ten baths a day. His parents would go to McDonald's to watch TV despite having a very nice TV with satellite. And his family had a lot of grandiose tales. Things like they saved two men from a plane crash and how the mother outran a pack of wolves in suburban Arizona.

There were a lot more oddities but those were the strangest of them.

43. Kids, Bath Time!

I spent the night at a friend's house in the sixth grade. To put that into perspective, we were eleven or twelve years old. Anyhow, he lived with just his mom—his dad wasn't in the picture and he was an only child. Seeing as though it was just the two of them, they developed a close relationship but, in my humble opinion, they were way too close.

We were having a great time until his mom called him for bath time. With her. Like, together. They even left the door open like it was nothing.

cdiddy328

44. House Slitherin'

I had a friend named David and he invited me to his house once. Little did I know that his family were horrific hoarders. You couldn't see the floor of his house, and I was literally stepping in bowls filled with cereal. At one point, I saw a snake just slithering through the refuse. That was way more than enough for me.

I immediately made up an excuse that I was sick so I could go home. It was an actual nightmare.

ev6464

45. The Lion’s Club

lion lying on green grass during daytimePhoto by Mike van den Bos on Unsplash

My parents were in a bowling league and would bring me with them. I made friends with a girl who hung out at the bowling alley because she lived in a home on an acre of land next to it. One night, she invited me to over to her house while my parents bowled. I asked my parents and they said I could. I was in for the story of a lifetime.

We walked to her house and when I walked in there was a lion cub (like Simba, like a giant wild cat) chained to a coffee table in the front room. She asked me if I wanted to pet the lion and of course I did! I pet the lion, we hung out and I got back to the bowling alley like nothing happened. I really should have taken a picture.

When I told my parents about it, they were like, “Sure,” in that indulgent kind of way that I knew meant they didn’t believe me. The joke was on them though. Years later, I was reading the newspaper and saw that the girl and her family had been charged for illegally having exotic cats. I showed my parents and had the best "told you so" moment in my life.

mopsmommy

46. My House, My Rules, My Face. Everywhere.

One of my wife's co-workers invited us to a dinner party. I wasn't really friends with that guy because, well, you’ll see. Anyhow, he was a very accomplished doctor who, supposedly, was the foremost authority in his specialty. I knew the man had a huge ego but nothing prepared me for what I saw when we went to his home—or shrine, as it turns out.

As soon as we walked in the door there was a life-size painting of himself that one of his patients had given him as a gift. There was nothing too strange—if a little self-centered—about that. He saved a patient’s life and they were very grateful so they gave him a painting. No biggie, right? Well, that house might as well have been an art gallery…in his honor.

His wife took our jackets, hung them up then walked us to his massive living room where the rest of the guests were mingling. As I looked around the room to take in what a magnificent home this man had, I noticed that there were hundreds of pictures lining his shelves and walls. Every single one of those pictures was of him. Not of his wife, not of his four children, not of his siblings, parents, etc.

Even the pictures that looked like they may have been group photos, he had clearly cropped so that he was the only one in the frame. I'm terrible at hiding my true feelings. My face usually gives me away every time but I spent the next hour desperately trying to pretend like that wasn't remotely strange. After a few drinks, I decided to head to the bathroom.

I had to take a dump and I'm not shy about doing so at another person's home. I walked into their guest bathroom, closed the door, lifted up the lid, sat down, and grabbed one of a dozen books that were sitting next to the toilet. The first book I picked up was—surprise!—written by our host. So, I picked up another book and you guessed it, that guy was the author.

I checked all of the books in the stack and not surprisingly, they were all written by this guy. Part amused and part disgusted I looked up and noticed there was a picture on a small table across from the toilet. That guy again, staring at me while I tried to use the washroom.

castr0

47. Is That A Feather Boa?

I had a friend who lived on his own in high school and we partied at his place a lot. He had a revolving door of roommates to help with rent. One of these roommates was a seriously sketchy character. He was extremely paranoid and rarely spoke to us besides uttering vague threats. The one he always repeated was that we never, EVER go in his room. Seemed easy enough because he always kept it locked.

Well, one day he found himself locked up—in the clink. He communicated through family again not to enter his room, saying that eventually, his family would come get his things. Weeks went by and a strange smell started coming from the locked room. This dude and his family were super scary so we didn’t want to mess around and find out.

But finally, my friend just couldn’t take the smell anymore. He figured that it was probably just rotting trash and that he could take it out without touching anything else. He was way in over his head though. When he finally entered the room, he found a massive, decomposing boa constrictor. It wasn’t even in a tank.

meanhouseplant

48. Everything That Glitters Ain’t Clean

white mug spilling milk on brown and black mugsPhoto by Clarissa Carbungco on Unsplash

I was at my friend’s place and he asked me to get us a couple of clean coffee mugs from the dishwasher. I’ve been second-guessing everything I’ve ever eaten at his place ever since. Besides the two “clean” mugs in the dishwasher, I found a couple of other not-so-clean items. Staring back at were two toilet brushes, just washed. No amount of dish detergent would make that kosher.

snerfmeister

49. A Family Photo Album To Remember

My good friend in high school’s parents were discussing putting in an alarm on their house once while I was over, but were balking at the price. I told them I would cable it for them, which made they very excited. The attic access was in the master bedroom closet so I had to go through there. And their closet had some skeletons.

When I went up into the attic, I found a bunch of pictures of my friend’s mom with a guy who was not her husband. I mean a bunch of pictures—and she was doing it all with this dude. My friend’s dad was permanently disabled and didn’t have great use of one side, so I’m guessing that’s why she thought that was a safe place to hide her dirty secret.

I never said anything to their family about it.

EmeliusBrown

50. It’s A Feline Frenzy!

I went to high school two towns south of where I grew up and I made some new friends through sports almost immediately. The two girls I befriended invited me to this other girl's house. I hadn't really talked to her much but she seemed nice so I went with them. After a little while of jumping on the trampoline, one of my new friends asked this other girl to show me her "cat room.”

We went up to the bonus room above the garage and opened the door to a house of horrors. There were countless cats and kittens of all ages, colors and sizes. But not even Catwoman would have been comfortable in there. The whole room—the ceiling, the walls, the floor, everything—was covered in filth. The poor cats were crawling over one another.

The girl whose house it was didn’t seem to think it was off. She just started playing with the kittens and tried to hand one to me to play with. I don't even know what I did. The two girls who invited me were laughing hysterically and I tried to make some type of excuse to get out of there and one of them was like, “Oh, but you haven’t met "Sprinkles" yet.”

The girl whose house it was went off in search of one specific cat and we were trapped in there for another ten minutes while my new friends laughed maniacally. I can remember the smell. Oh, the smell.

glitterpile12

It's never attractive to gloat.

Even if someone is incredibly skilled at something, or accomplished something incredibly impressive, it's better for others to commend their accomplishment, rather than doing so themselves.

The only thing that can make gloating and arrogance even less attractive is if they're bragging about something that isn't even that impressive to begin with.

Even so, some people simply can't help but boast and congratulate themselves, even whether or not the thing that is making their head grow with impressive speed isn't remotely worth congratulating.

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42 Disgusting But Interesting Facts
Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash

Remember that kid in elementary school who would do anything for a laugh? He'd eat worms or roll in the dirt if it meant the attention of the class. Gross, right? Is there anything that could be more embarrassing?

Well, it's possible that budding clown had the right idea. It turns out human beings have a natural predisposition to be fascinated by the gross and disgusting—and if you agree, boy do we have some facts for you.

1. If it doesn’t cure you…

Boiled toads were once thought to cure for rheumatism. Not salivating at the thought of ground up boiled toad? Try this: rotted mice were fed to children to cure bed wetting.

The next time you catch yourself complaining about the 21st century, take a moment to say a prayer for the poor child who peed the bed 400 years ago, and got to eat a mouse as a result. Maybe go thank you parents now. They may not have been perfect, but things could have been a lot worse.

2. The grossest thing in your house?

Apparently it's not just your phone spreading the nasty...

Kitchen sinks contain more bacteria than either garbage pails or toilets! How gross is that?

We all have that one sponge (it's the one so brown it blends in with the dishwater) which should have been retired long ago. Maybe this fact is enough for some of us to finally put it out to pasture.

3. They do what on your food?

macro photograph of blue fly on plant's stemPhoto by Philip Veater on Unsplash

Flies eat feces and transport a wealth of bacteria, including typhoid and dysentery on their bodies. That’s not the worst of it. When they land on your food, they also vomit a mixture of saliva and enzymes to break it down so they suck it up using their tongues. And their eggs? They lay them on dead flesh to hatch maggots.

4. You can attract more with honey. Literally.

If flies didn’t bother you before, they almost certainly are about to.

Crime is a problem that has vexed rulers for millennia. After all, it seems some portion of the population is just always going to flaunt the rules. However can we stop the menace? Prison? The death penalty? Stern letters?

The ancient Egyptian King Pepi II had a more... ruthless solution. He would slather a slave in honey and the flies would flock to smell. Eventually, they would begin to feast. Suffice it to say, said slave never misbehaved again.

5. Who needs a pool?

As disgusting creatures go, the vulture comes in a close second to the fly. They live on rotted flesh – in fact they prefer it! And when a vulture is hot, they cool off by excreting (yes, pooping) on their own legs.

6. Gross by any measure

sanc1691 | Pacific hagfish (Eptatretus stoutii) in a hole at… | Flickrwww.flickr.com

The hagfish would make a gross list based on looks alone. But it qualifies in other ways too. It is blind, toothless and feasts on dead flesh. Hagfish look for openings in carcasses and then enter and eat the corpse from the inside out. For defense, they rely on mucus: when attacked, they can project up to 17 pints of it at their attacker.

7. What’s in that spitball?

Most people have seen images of hippos enjoying a mud bath. But the balls of goop they appear to be playfully flinging at each other are actually a disgusting mixture of their own urine and feces. The idea is to mark their territory and perhaps to humiliate their foes at the same time.

8. Gross is where the heart is

Frankenstein author Mary Shelley had a pretty gross secret hidden away in her desk: her dead husband’s heart. When her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned in a boating accident, he was cremated, but his heart remained intact. Physicians believe it might have been calcified due to tuberculosis. Whatever the cause, it was eventually given to Mary and discovered in her desk when she died a few years later.

9. Would the dentist still recommend?

blue and white plastic bottlePhoto by 莎莉 彭 on Unsplash

Not crazy about the taste of toothpaste? Mint isn't exactly everyone's cup of tea...

Then again, it's not that terrible.

The Romans, for their part, used powdered mouse brains.

So consider yourself blessed.

10. Imported mouthwash

Looking for a fresher mouth? The Romans would use imported Portuguese urine, yes imported pee. It was so popular that Emperor Nero had to tax it and it remained a popular mouthwash until the 18th century.

11. The ultimate gross revenge

When he discovered that his wife had cheated on him with another man, Peter the Great had the man killed. He forced his wife to keep her lover’s head in a jar of alcohol in her bedroom. The head, still in its jar, is now kept on display at the Kunstkamera Museum in St. Petersburg.

12. One more flavour of mouthwash

gray and black turtlePhoto by Dušan veverkolog on Unsplash

Looking for a different flavor of mouthwash? Tortoise blood was also once used to disinfect the mouth and clean teeth.

13. What’s in your coffee mug?

Bodily excretions are the things that creep people out the most but consider this: 40% of office coffee mugs contain coliform bacteria – feces according to several studies. Takeout it is!

14. Extra protein

Everyone eats insects. The FDA’s Defect Levels Handbook states allowances for dietary staples. Foods like broccoli, canned tomatoes, and corn contain “insect fragments:" heads, antennae, wings, thoraxes, legs – and even whole bugs. Fig paste is allowed 13 insect heads per 100 grams; canned fruit juices can contain four maggots per litre; and 10 grams of hops can legally contain 2,500 aphids. Let's not get into the allowances for rat hair...

15. A side of larvae with that?

a rat sitting on a piece of woodPhoto by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Fine... we'll get into the rat hair. The FDA limits the number of rodent hairs that can be found in peanut butter to 5 per 100 grams.

16. Cannibalized airmen

In 1944, nine American airmen were shot down over the Japanese island of Chi Chi Jima. Eight were captured, chopped up, cooked, and served to Japanese officers in everything from gourmet stir fries to special skewered appetizers. The ninth man, who escaped, was George HW Bush who would eventually become the 41st President of the United States.

17. Massacre

The Asian giant hornet is two inches long with a quarter-inch-long stinger. It can inject venom that dissolves human flesh and can paralyze the nervous system. But even grosser is what they will do to honeybees. If they encounter a nest, they mark it to attract other giant hornets. Then they attack, chopping up the defenseless bees by dismembering them in a frenzied massacre that can destroy up to 30,000 bees in just three hours. They leave behind a pile of heads and limbs.

18. Gross cures

white and brown pig on brown hayPhoto by Lauren McConachie on Unsplash

History is full of interesting cures. Ancient Egyptians crushed a pig’s eye and mixed it with red ochre (a common dye). They poured the mixture into a patient’s ears as cure for blindness.

19. Who loves jellybeans?

Who doesn't love a good jelly bean!? Colorful, shiny treats that are full of sugar... You just can't get better than that, can you? Even Dumbledore loved them (although the Harry Potter variety can get a little more nasty than our real world candies).

But perhaps our jelly beans don't have as many differences from Berty Botts Every-Flavor Beans as you think. After all, their colourful, shiny exterior is actually covered in a shellac, which is a compound made from bug excretions.

Yum.

20. The human snake connection

Before you read on, savor this moment. It's the last time you'll believe that you've got nothing in common with a snake.

Human beings can shed up to 40 pounds of skin in their lifetimes. Not so different from snakes really, just a lot more skin!

21. Twice in your life

a woman in a long dress holding a stick in a fieldPhoto by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

It's a common misconception that people never bathed during the Middle Ages. They did. But then the Christian church authorities proclaimed that public bathing led to immorality, promiscuous sex, and diseases. In response, many curtailed their bathing. Queen Isabella of Castile proudly claimed to have bathed only twice in her entire life!

22. Where does it go?

Snot is gross. That much is a pretty universally accepted fact. Indeed, if you're ever looking for an opinion to share with friends and family that is basically guaranteed to be met with agreement, you almost certainly can't go wrong with saying that snot blows.

So what's grosser than snots itself?

Maybe that humans produce 1 liter of snot every day.

RIP tissues.

23. It seems pretty harmless but...

What’s gross about a sneeze? Well, first it is composed of snot. Second, it’s hard to escape! The spray from a sneeze can travel up to 30 to 60 miles an hour and fly up to 30 feet in the air.

When you move beyond how utterly gross that is, it's kind of amazing though, no? The things we're capable of... Behold, the marvels of the human body! We're so majestic.

24. Headless and still horrifying

File:Dusky Cockroach (Ectobius lapponicus) - Bærum, Norway 2021-07 ...commons.wikimedia.org

Cockroaches can survive for a week without their heads, and a decapitated cockroach can still wiggle its antennae.

When the nuclear apocalypse comes, the roaches will be laughing all the way to the burned out ruins of the bank.

And the Jellyfish will control the seas.

25. Gross defense

The regal horned lizard has a unique way of fighting off predators. It shoots foul smelling blood out of its eyes... straight into the attacker’s mouth. Don’t worry though, they seldom use this technique on humans.

26. Green is good. Or not.

The Prasinohaema lizard has green bones, green muscles and even a green tongue. It also has green blood that is extremely poisonous.

27. Supper anyone?

File:Vlad Tepes 002.jpg - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

15th century Romanian ruler Vlad the Impaler was the inspiration for Dracula and had a uniquely gross way of dealing with his opposition. He invited hundreds of them to a banquet and had them impaled on long sharp poles. His contemporaries reported that he also had a penchant for consuming the blood that dripped from of some of his victims, hence the Dracula connection.

28. A grisly graveyard

There are over 200 corpses of climbers and Sherpas on Mount Everest. The extreme weather prevents their removal and preserves them, creating grisly reminders of their sad demise.

Astonishingly, the bodies are actually used by some climbers as waypoints (or landmarks) to help guide them in their quest up the mountain. This is because if a climber dies, they are likely on the well-trod path to the summit.

29. Where that smell is really coming from

Disgusted by something that just smells bad? Consider this – you are smelling it because the molecules of whatever it is are actually sticking to the inside of your nostrils. In the case of farts, it's not poop you're inhaling... it's intestinal gas. Comforting.

30. Unwanted guests

black and white striped textilePhoto by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Doctors in India recently removed a 6-foot-long tapeworm by pulling it through a man’s mouth. Which probably went down in his diary as a really terrible day.

Tapeworms can grow up to 80 feet long by some reports and are often caused by consuming raw pork or beef.

31. Chew your hair? Chew on this.

Another set of doctors removed a 14-pound hairball from a woman. The woman suffered from trichophagia, a condition in which people compulsively consume their own hair. Before they discovered the hairball, she suffered from severe pain and had lost 84 pounds.

32. The grossest of jewels

How about a jewel made from a bundle of hair, vegetable fibers, and food that forms in the stomachs of humans and animals? They’re called bezoars, and Queen Elizabeth had one in her crown jewels. Other royals put them in their wine glasses, and they were even believed at one point to offer protection against poison.

33. Murder for parts

File:William Burke's skeleton.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

Two men named Burke and Hare were responsible for a series of murders in the 1880’s. Their victims were used to provide body parts for surgeons to practice on. One of the men, William Burke, became a victim himself when he was hung for his crimes and his skin was distributed to collectors. Famous author Charles Dickens reportedly had a piece of Burke’s skin that he used as a bookmark.

34. What could he do with a hammer?

A performer by the name of Brad Beyers who goes by the show name “The Human Toolbox” drilled through his head with an electric drill. He has also hammered a nail through his face and hung a wooden board on it and pushed an icepick up his nostril.

35. Frogs bring vomit to a new level

Vomit is always gross but it's how frogs do it that makes it a whole lot worse. When a frog vomits, its entire stomach spews out and hangs out of its mouth. The frog then digs out the contents of the stomach and swallows it back down again.

36. But was it the chemicals or the smell that worked?

black crocodile on body of water during daytimePhoto by Rae Wallis on Unsplash

The ancient Egyptians used crocodile dung as a contraceptive. Early North American women soaked dried beaver testicles in alcohol and then drank the solution.

37. Frankenfish

It sounds like a comedy sketch, but the snakehead fish is also known as “frankenfish” because of its predatory nature and long rows of razor sharp teeth. A voracious predator, the snakehead consumes everything it encounters and can even go on land if it runs out of prey in the water. It has pseudo lungs that allow it to breath and propels itself forward across land by wiggling. It eats everything from other fish to small mammals and birds and will even turn on other snakeheads.

38. Cat ladies be warned!

If you die and your body remains undiscovered, your dog will likely wait a long time before it resorts to eating you. Cats on the other hand will only wait a day before they begin to consume you.

And they’ll start on the most tender parts, your face for example.

Nice kitties...

39. Literally giving the finger

File:Greg surrounded by members of the Dani Tribe in the Baliem ...en.wikipedia.org

The women of the Dani tribe in Indonesia cut off parts of their fingers to mourn the death of a loved one. The finger is tied with a string to numb it, and the stump is burned to cauterize it.

40. Dancing with the dead

Once every seven years, the Malagasy of Madagascar unearth their dead to dance with them. The ritual allows the spirits of the dead to join the ancestors after the body has fully decomposed.

41. An evil twin?

You’ve probably heard stories of twins being consumed by the other twin, but here is the gross truth. Most are benign tumors called teratoma. Teratoma tumors have been discovered containing human hair, bone and even teeth! Some contain organs and are thought to resemble small humans. Teratoma tumors are often formed at birth, although people often don’t realize they have them until later in life.

42. Can’t leave your phone? Consider this.

person holding space gray iPhone 7Photo by Bagus Hernawan on Unsplash

A London study found that one out of every six cellphones has fecal matter on it. And if that isn’t enough to get you to put it down (or at least wash it), an Arizona microbiologist found that cell phones carry 10 times more bacteria than toilet seats!

Now that we all know this, each of us is confronted with a pretty painful dilemma: is it still worth it to scroll the internet while we're on the john? I mean nobody wants fecal matter all over their hands... but... it can get pretty boring just sitting there.

A red neon sign that says Love Stories and it's reflection
Photo by Christian Lue

First dates can be very exciting.

Sure, you're nervous, and you're hoping this person isn't a serial killer, but that's all part of the excitement.

Imagine being interviewed later that you were on a date with a serial killer?

Podcast fame cemented.

But first dates are the chance for everyone to put their best lies... Sorry, best foot forward.

That's why certain behaviors can be alarming.

Don't ignore the red flags just because you're looking for romance.

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