We're not even going to sugarcoat this. You're about to read some seriously disturbing stuff.
One Reddit user (perhaps unwisely) asked:
What is the scariest thing you've come across on the internet?
and honestly we were expecting creepypastas and jump scare videos. We did see those answers, but surprisingly few of them. It turns out the scariest things to be found on the internet are just videos and stories from real life.
Humanity is awful to one another. Much of the stuff here shouldn't have happened, shouldn't have been recorded, and shouldn't have been shared online.
But it was, and it's left people scarred.
Almost every entry here requires a content warning of some sort. There is torture and slow painful animal and child death. There is death on display as entertainment. There are horrific mental pictures ahead that have left some of these people traumatized for decades.
Proceed with extreme caution.
Screamer
That one video where the car was driving down that mountain road and you had to pay close attention and then it turned out to be a screamer.
That sh!t was actually aired as a coffee (or energy drink I'm not exactly sure) commercial in Germany. I can just imagine all the heart attacks it caused.
I was 7 and discovered I had tachycardia thanks to this video, when I noticed the weird heart feeling I had randomly was the same as being suddenly scared to death.
The video was shown to me by my parents in an attempt to joke with me and find a reaction and they got scared instead, didn't know how to act and apologized.
Slender Man
slender man horror GIF by Imagine DragonsGiphyThe girls that tried to appease Slender Man by killing their friend.
The friend didn't die. She actually recovered and is perfectly fine now. Here's a news article from last year where she spoke out about it. It's crazy that someone can be stabbed 19 times and survive and safely recover. Truly a miracle. I'm sure she'll have trauma issues. But other than that, she's lucky she's alive after that.
Ana & Mia
Pro-ana forums where mostly teen girls encourage each other to starve to death.
Took me a minute of wondering "who is Ana and why does she want this to happen to these poor girls?"
Ana means anorexia. OP is talking about pro-anorexia forums. Also pro-mia refers to pro-bulimia.
I was part of one, and a couple of us made a snapchat group chat to keep each other accountable. The group chat quickly died after we all started to attempt suicide.
When I was in high school I was on MyProAna. I was extremely sick (mentally) with my ED and I felt like I had no-self control, so I needed strangers to help me starve. Looking back years later, it's super fcked up.
One of my friends used to be on there and one of the girls who she talked to a lot ended up killing herself because she thought her BMI was too high (really, her BMI was like 13).
Becoming Other
For sheer existential terror, a short video of a boy dying of rabies. Hes delirious and sick and it's just sad. But then for a second or two he locks eyes with the camera and snarls in a perfectly, quintessentially animalistic way. And you realize how easy it is to lose yourself and become other - to become reduced to just base instinct and bodily functions with no you left.
Yeah, rabies is a splashy version of that, but I think a lot of old age illnesses - how we are all increasingly more likely to die - isn't so different. And the ultimately terrifying thing is that its all so much worse to watch that and know we are potentially next than to live through it.
ISIS
Easily, without question the videos ISIS kept shoving online when they were expanding across the Middle East. What made them scary and downright disturbing was that it was happening now.
Some of these people were living normal lives in Europe or Turkey or the US just months earlier and now here they are, literally butchering people with a smile on their face for all the world to see.
It happened then. It can happen again.
Crushing
kitten meow GIFGiphyI was in my early teens when I learned what a crushing fetish is (women crush eggs and light bulbs and stuff under their feet or burr) and it confused me.
I didn't go on the internet for a few days after that.
Beheadings
I was about that age seeing it too. I was a weirdly curious kid and I think it was when r/watchpeopledie was still a thing (thank god it isn't anymore). It absolutely messed with me and the image of her lifeless face is permanently etched into my brain. I wish I could forget it. Needless to say I never went back to that sub again and took some time away from reddit lol.
Excited About Murder
Video of 2 teenage boys driving to a girl's home whom they planned to murder. It also has video of them after they did it. They are way too excited about murder.
I recall they were driving in a car before and after. It just reminded me of when I was a teen and was excited to go see a movie I've been wanting to see. And instead this was cold blooded murder. Complete disregard for her life.
The complete and utter lack of any emotion besides utter glee at killing someone should send chills up anyone's spine. I've seen videos of people straight up dying that is not as scary as that video.
Reactions= Sounds
That fcking video of a brick flying through a windshield and killing the mother in the passenger seat. There's no gore, but the reactions of the husband and daughter will stick with me forever.
I'm not what you would call squeamish but I totally agree on this. It's the sound of the guy screaming and crying at the same time, it stayed with me for days. Truly disturbing.
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Redditor r3tr0gam3r83 wanted to hear about which realizations in life have left people SHOOK, so they asked:
"What is something that blew your mind once you realized it?"
Avocados are not vegetables.
They're fruits, berries to be exact.
Like what?!?!
Colleagues
GIF by Bud LightGiphy"Sometimes it is more important to like your colleagues than the actual job."
"I had shi**y jobs with the most amazing colleagues and had shi**y colleagues and the most amazing job. I'd pick the first every time."
chr989
Star Trekking
"That you could legitimately travel at warp speed through the center of galaxies and never run any real risk of hitting a star. That’s how spread out space really is."
justanotherguyhere16
"Also, galaxies, stars, and even the Universe is constantly moving. I think time travel has been invented, but they can’t figure out the 'space' part of it.
"Yes, they can travel back in time, but relatively speaking, they can’t figure out how to navigate to the part of the planet they want to reach. So when they travel back in time, it’s relative to where they currently are, and end up not moving through space, thus ending up in the middle of an empty vacuum."
theknights-whosay-Ni
Jaws is Old
"That sharks predated the rings of Saturn."
BeardedDominant
"Sharks also developed the immune system that ended up in both dinosaurs/birds and mammals."
csiz
"We don’t know that. We can’t say for certain that the rings are only 100 million years old. It’s still debated."
The_Kek_5000
"I'm pretty sure that sharks are older than trees."
Cayderent
From the Trees
"One day I sat on a tram, passing a river. There was a duck in a tree. I realized I'd never seen ducks in trees. No one else seemed to notice, but I was puzzled. Now whenever I come across something that seems intuitive but I have never considered I call it a duck in a tree."
Ol_Pasta
"This realization happened to me this past year. We apparently have a family of wood ducks in one of the big trees in our yard. Our neighbor said she has seen a duck walking around on a branch. I made it 37 years without knowing some ducks can roost in trees. My wife caught a video of the mama leading like eight ducks into the field next to our house. We aren't even near water."
jwbourne
Artistic Timeline
Confused Eminem GIFGiphy"Pablo Picasso and Eminem were both alive at the same time."
leebon427
"I’d bet a lot of people think Picasso is a Renaissance artist."
editormatt
I admit it. I'm one of those people. Pablo and Marshall, in one lifetime.
New facts are fun.
The New World
Design Loop GIF by xponentialdesignGiphy"They were colonizing the Wild West at the same time as they were building skyscrapers in Manhattan. I always think of them taking place eighty to a hundred years apart. It's wild."
Emilayday
Oh the Power
"Nuclear power plants are just steam power plants that use nuclear reactions to heat the water. There's no fancy magic extracting energy directly from nuclear material. They just boil water and spin a turbine."
RenaKunisaki
"Most electrical generation is spinning a turbine. Photovoltaic solar power is pretty much the only exception, and it's not the only form of solar power. There's solar thermal power, which uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate the heat of the sun to make steam and turn a turbine."
Brawndo91
The Empire
"The Roman Empire fully fell less than 50 years before the discovery of the new world."
South-by-north
"The Romans also had copper wire, magnets, and battery acid. They could have invented electricity hundreds of years before it was actually discovered. But they didn't. The wire was used for jewelry, the magnets as lodestones, and the battery acid was used to clean the rust off of swords."
Kahzgul
"RIP Byzantine Empire. 1453 never forget."
crossbowman44
The Witness
"Owl‘s silent flight. I mean I always knew that but a while ago was the first time I actually witnessed it. Owl came flying towards me and landed only a few feet away and you couldn‘t hear anything. Crazy."
Zealousideal-You-324
"I saw a barn owl swoop down and catch a mouse while hiking at night, and the whole thing happened in complete silence. It gave me a deep sense of unease because it was literally like someone hit the mute button on life."
VulcanVisions
Bad Kermit
Kermit The Frog Meme GIF by IdentityGiphy"Poison dart frogs aren't poisonous in captivity."
"I own 5 of them and anytime I tell someone I own some I always get 'Do you ever lick them' or 'Can you go kill someone with them.' But yeah they get their poison from what they eat, and all I give them is fruit flies."
JMfury
Poison frogs?
That sounds like something Rose would have a story about on 'The Golden Girls.'
Redditor rentinghappiness wanted to hear about the things everyone really didn't know anything about until it happened to them, so they asked:
"What is something you used to think people were over-exaggerating about until you experienced it yourself?"
We never really know anything about anything until we try it for ourselves.
Mouth Issues
Dentist GIFGiphy"Dentist chiming in… tooth pain. I knew academically how painful they could be until it happened to me."
juneburger
"You know the pain is serious when you start looking forward to the inevitable root canal."
HailMari248
Wonders of Nature
"Giant sequoia trees. When I finally saw them in person, they looked fake. I could not comprehend a tree of that size."
schaefer001
"And we may have lost 15-20% of the remaining trees during some big fires in 2020 and 2021. A 2011 estimate puts it that there were only 80,000 remainings. They truly are wondrous organisms that I feel like everyone should have the chance to experience if they can."
"I'm a big believer in doing everything we can to protect and preserve these silent giants. It's really sad that so many were cut down by loggers when the wood is such poor quality for human purposes, to begin with. Such an utter and sad waste."
this_is_poorly_done
Just Me
"Loneliness."
Fried__SoapI
"I'm with you. Put all my cards into a girl who went suddenly cold and dark on me. Now I'm alone at rock bottom figuring out my next moves. You know, the smartest people in the world and also the happiest people in the world can be the loneliest?"
"I was only recently informed it's okay to talk to myself and hype myself. Enjoy my own company. I'm absolutely going to learn to do that. I'm thinking of painting, walking, and weekend trips out on a bus. Would be nice if you could have joined me even if we sat in silence."
Roofdragon
The Years Gone By...
"The physical pain of getting older. Damn."
marklikeadawg
"The emotional pain too. I get so nostalgic and teary over the past and how much has changed. It's a weird grieving process over losing your youth and the way things were."
heethersmeether
"On my 35th birthday, my wife woke me up with a cupcake and a candle, sang me 'Happy Birthday' and then congratulated me on being '15 from 50'... that really hit me hard. The other day I turned 45 and she said '5 from 50' and that hit me so hard, I just wanted to stay in bed all day. I still feel like an irresponsible teen but I'm pushing 50. Insane."
Opa_Kalaka
It's Hazy
Confused Always Sunny GIF by It's Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaGiphy"Brain fog. I had an alcohol withdrawal seizure in March. My short-term memory and sense of time are absolutely sh*t right now. On the plus side, I haven't had a drink in over 90 days and I don't want one."
Sideshow_Bob_Ross
Oh the wonders of the brain.
What a mess.
Scorched
Menopause Hot Flashes GIF by Kino LorberGiphy"Hot Flashes. I didn’t think they were this bad. I’m a 31-year-old man who took Wellbutrin for the past month and hot flashes are a side effect."
"I thought you just thought you were hot. No motherf**ker you are. You’re super hot legitimately, and you have to do something about it or you’ll go insane. It’s not in your head. It’s your brain raising your temps until you can’t focus on anything else."
_PswayZ_
Everlasting
"Chronic illness, there is absolutely no way you can truly understand the impact unless you experience it."
Disastrous-Phase-979
"Just that idea of always being sick and you will NEVER not be sick again."
"AND you're expected to participate in society just the same as everyone else. It's deeply f**ked up."
Farisr9k
"I like the part where I've been in pain for 25 years so I can kind of still function even when it's really bad."
"And then I try to get an ambulance guy or an admin assistant in a hospital to believe that I'm having an emergency and they're like 'You seem fine, take some Tylenol and go home' until I finally get a blood test, and then the doctor goes 'Holy crap, you're about to die, why didn't you come to the ER sooner.'"
"Like, listen up MF, I had to take a go**amn Uber to get here and then argue with reception for an hour."
BlahBlahILoveToast
Stoned
"How much a kidney stone hurts."
SpiritusSanctu
"Most people expect it to hurt the most when passing a stone through the urethra. Nothing prepared me for the pain as it passed through my kidney/ureter."
"One second I would be fine, carrying on conversations, prancing around nimbly-nimbly. The next second I would be keeled over, crying in agony, losing my lunch due to the sudden onset of crippling pain. 0/10 ... Would not recommend it."
King_of_Lunch223
Close Your Eyes
"Insomnia."
Successful_Fall7801
"Oh, what I would give to not have insomnia! I go through periods of sleeping more or less normal, and then for seemingly no reason, I’ll have weeks on end where a good night of sleep is IMPOSSIBLE. I’ll get 2-4 hours of sleep despite pills, tea, baths, white noise, meditation - everything."
"I’ll spend my days so deeply, utterly exhausted that I can barely think, and my whole body feels heavy, lifeless. It’s hard to feel any kind of emotion, let alone happiness or contentedness. Just existing as a human-shaped puddle until the time when I can go to bed and hope to god that tonight will be different for some unknown reason."
"Insomnia is a real bi*ch. It will tank your mental health and send you spiraling really fast."
thesmallshadows
Beep
Meme Reaction GIF by TravisGiphy"Tinnitus. It’s torture."
DissidentBliss
"I don't mind it much 'cause I've had it since I was born. That means I don't know what proper silence is."
77x5ghost
"Me too, they thought I had hearing issues when I was young because I couldn’t really hear some of the beeps well because they matched the pitch of the ringing."
ehter13
Don't judge another until you lace up their shoes and walk a mile in them!
Do you have anything else to share? Let us know in the comments.
