I won't describe the video in detail, even though I remember all 36 seconds of it vividly.
It was a girl - in her young teens - surrounded by a group of men who are about to murder her (which I obviously did not know when the video started.)
The method was ... brutal, violent, physical, and not "assisted" by modern technology. Sticks and stones, indeed.
It took me too long to process what was happening for me to turn it off, so I saw the whole thing. The victim knew she was about to die and as she sat on the floor in the seconds before it happened, she kicked her legs and sobbed.
It was a move I had seen my three year old pull over and over. It drove home that she was just a child.
I cried. I puked. I had (and still have) nightmares where I see her face. I almost quit. I talked to my therapist.
Reddit user VeghBaily884 asked:
What is the creepiest/most disturbing internet rabbit hole you've gone down, and why? Why?
I didn't go seeking the video, I wasn't on a website known for this sort of stuff like how Rotten.Com was. I surely can't answer why it was made, why grown men would choose to kill a young girl, why they put it on the internet ... nada.
But I can say with 100% certainty that THAT SINGLE VIDEO was the one that almost made me pack it up and quit the internet forever. And I'm far from the only one who has seen some scarring sh*t.
So let's talk about it.
Stalk Your Victim Like A Pro
creeping lucy liu GIFGiphy"A large group of people sharing stalking tips, pictures and videos of those they've stalked. Including, but not limited to, how to dress, act, destroying evidence, lockpicking, how to poison pets, taking silent photos, creating alibis, etc."
"They'd award a golden sticker to the best photos/videos taken of the person they stalked - like inside the room while the person was sleeping."
"That or sharing the address of a person, alarm codes, etc, so someone else can enjoy stalking the victim too."
"I was watching some videos late at night - a little horror. I clicked to a break-in video, clicked to woman living in a guy's kitchen, saw a comment saying something like, 'pfft, amateur, they need some lessons.' That person had videos on their channel that were creepy as hell and link to a forum in their bio."
"Some sections were locked, so I looked around and found myself reading more and more. It honestly scared the heck out of me."
"But a part of me thought if I knew a little of how they did it then I could protect myself. Was going to sign up to see more, but they are stalkers... didn't need them knowing anything about me."
"Felt sick, tried to report some of the videos and pictures. A month later I went back to see if they still existed and the whole forum was now a website selling pot plants." - The_Last_Werewolf
0% Survival Rate
Imgur.com
"For some reason I was interested in the science surrounding tornadoes and I found a list of some of the most violent tornadoes ever recorded. It's actually really creepy once you read into it."
"The worst one was a tornado in Jarrell, Texas in 1997 where they had trouble identifying human from animal remains, and some people were simply never found."
"That same tornado destroyed every storm shelter in its path, and there was a 0% survival rate in the worst hit neighborhood. There's something deeply unsettling about the fact that even people who thought they were safe, and should have been safe in those storm shelters, ended up being killed."
"There's a photo of this tornado called 'Dead Man Walking' because it literally looks like it grew legs and is walking over the land leaving death behind it. Even the pictures creep me TF out now that I know."
"Keep in mind that this tornado was a rarity among rarities, with its sub vortices (those creepy legs in the picture) likely harboring wind speeds in excess of 300 miles per hour. The Jarrell twister scoured the ground so bad, up to 18 inches deep in places, that it sandblasted rocks that were too big for it to lift."
"The vast, vast majority of tornadoes never get that powerful, or even do any damage at all. Tornadoes that pass through rural areas can actually be fun to watch."
"When I was in first grade a weak one formed near my suburb of Denver and we watched it from our deck at home. We were a few miles away so we weren't in any danger. We got to see the funnel cloud, the spin up on the ground and watch it as it basically tore up a few bushes for about half an hour, and then rope out and disappear."
"The next day at school we brought pictures in to show the class. Obviously, THIS tornado wasn't a fun, cool, interesting one. This one was horrifying." - Abject-Preparation18
Beheadings
Im Not No Way GIFGiphy"Ugh back in high school my buddy found beheading videos, that was not a good day. You can't unhear those sounds and the defeated look right before it happens just breaks me." - Duuuuuude_Esq
"I assume it was the one that went viral everywhere somewhere in 2014 I think, the woman screaming that she 'didn't kill him' before getting brutally murdered, probably for something she didn't do?" - That_sarcastic_bxtch
"I was in college when the terrorist beheadings were added to the internet. I couldn't watch any video on the internet for months unless it was vetted and then described to me by a friend first." - AirySprite
MK Ultra
Fbi Government GIF by ChallengerGiphy"MKUltra brainwashing and CIA videos and reports. I forget where I originally stumbled on it, probably a thread on /x/, but it was just a bunch of declassified documents."
"There were a few links in the post content. One lead to an old GeoCities-looking blog that some woman was running. She was a doctorate, but I forget the field. Her blogs were basically months of confessions of what was going on in the CIA."
"She then went off radar for the better part of the year, and the blogs started back up again. Except now, they were getting bizarre. She had full-blown paranoia and the verbiage dissolved from mostly coherent to absolutely incoherent over the course of a few months."
"The anon that was doing the data dump also put some declassified documents that had the woman listed by name in several areas. I cannot remember her name, but she went by first, middle, and last in all instances. Sarah, or Sandra or something."
"The theory is that the CIA discredited her by making her sound like a rambling lunatic as controlled disinformation rather than simply nuke the blog and lend credence to the conspiracy theorists."
"Scary stuff though."
"There were other documents pertaining to demons, aliens, mind control, all sorts of bizarre things. The craziest part, they have actually declassified documents from the US Government."
"They aren't fabricated. They're totally accessible to anyone willing to spend time looking for them in public archives." - biggest___chungus
Parents Explain Which Things Surprised Them Most When Their Child Moved Out | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Parenting is a lifelong commitment but the load is certainly lightened when kids go off to college or move away for their first "adult" job. It can be quite ...Fetish For Destroying Your Body
"I forgot his name but the one older dude who ran a YouTube account where he would vlog himself smoking a lot of cigarettes everyday and wouldn't stop even when he was diagnosed with cancer due to smoking cigarettes."
"Each video you watch his health slowly deteriorate and if you watch his first and last vids he looks like a completely different person."
"The worst part? Everyone in the comments are cheering him on because it's a sort of fetish account for destroying your body. There was even one boy who emulated him and wanted to do the same to himself." - TheBigBroke
Elisa
Giphy"When the case of Elisa Lam got traction in 2013 I read a lot about the alleged supernatural stuff they thought was happening."
"From there it went to the supposed rituals and then to a bunch of websites explaining how to do them and what to expect as a result. This content was stuck in my head for weeks and had nightmares almost every night." - theBearzooka
"Elisa Lam kept me awake many nights. That elevator video is just bizarre. These weird cases is so fascinating because people WANT that is something supernatural or creepy, when the reality is just boring and sad." - candangoek
Encouraging
Disgusted The League GIFGiphy"Chris Chan... basically this mentally disabled guy badly drawing comics about his Sonic/Pikachu crossover OC and posting them online, but 4chan found out about him and people started harassing him, trying to find out information about him, contacting him, etc."
"They found out where he lived and everything about him, and started messing with him for fun. Someone even pretended to be a girl romantically interested in him, pretending to be his girlfriend, and then eventually told him it was all a fake."
"That drove him deeper into being violent and obsessive, and he was already showing warning signs of sexually predatory behavior... And the person who recorded him talking about it and contacted the police had apparently been ENCOURAGING him to do it."
"People are horrible." - GoldenScythe23
"Basically I only got through a few videos in a series about Chris Chan and I had to stop because I was feeling physically unclean." - colour_me_in
Souvenirs
episode 9 shopping GIFGiphy"There's a website called Without Sanctuary that collected and displayed lynchings in America. I think much of it has been turned into a book so the site doesn't have all that it used to."
A not-quite-relative (first wife of an ancestor, so not directly related to me as I am descended from the second wife) 's family had a photo studio at the turn of the century. One of the photographs was credited to that studio on the back of the photo.
It was common back then to photograph and sell postcards of hangings and lynchings like souvenirs. It was surreal to see that name on the photo, knowing they very likely made money off photographing a lynching." - supershinythings
Jayne And Mariska
Olivia Benson Nbc GIF by Law & OrderGiphy"The accident scene / death of actress Jayne Mansfield. Including trying to figure out how the kids survived."
"I even looked for the scar on her daughter, Mariska Hargitay's face because I'd never noticed it (good makeup I'm sure). Karma punished me (rightfully so) because I had nightmares for several nights after that rabbit hole."
"Anyway, it was a very tragic accident and people should skip that rabbit hole." - ProudCatLadyxo
Daisy
music video crying GIFGiphy"Daisy's Destruction video, made by Peter Scully."
"Essentially, a middle-aged man slowly killing a child in horrific ways. Google it, I don't even feel comfortable typing out more about it."
"Why did I go down the hole? Honestly, it started with a YouTube video that essentially counted down the 10 most disturbing things found on the deep web."
"I got curious. I regret it." - Pistol_Pato
No One Suspects Mary
"Got a YouTube video suggestion and once I started, I couldn't stop watching it. It was about Mary Bell (or Belle?)"
"She was an 11 year old murderer (she has been severely abused herself, doesn't justify murder though) who apparently really enjoyed the aftermath of her actions. Up until she got caught, of course."
"She enjoyed the family's suffering and went so far as asking one of the victims' mother weird questions and being really cheerful about the whole thing."
"Even more disturbing than that - after being arrested and put in the version of "mental hospital" or corrections place they had at the time, she now lives somewhere in the south of England and her identity is being protected."
"She has a daughter. I think even a grandkid at this point."
"This whole thing messed me up big time, had to remove a lot of suggested videos from my feed after that. I just can't deal with that amount of mental dysfunction and then thinking - someone has her as a neighbor and probably doesn't suspect a thing 😳" - Kartapele
The Household Rules
silence of the lambs GIFGiphy"The transcript of a video that a serial kidnapper/torturer couple made that was played to newly kidnapped girls upon their waking up tied spread-Eagle to a table in the basement."
"It was an hour long video that essentially explained the household rules and what would be expected of the girls. It was extremely extremely upsetting." - weedandsteak
Comical In Any Other Situation
Scared Asustad GIF by Don’t BreatheGiphy"I was researching something for History class- I forget what- and I ended up studying R. Budd Dwyer. He was the treasurer of Pennsylvania in the 60s and early 70s. He got wrapped up in some financial crimes, and was charged with a dozen crimes."
"He shot himself in the head."
"During a press conference."
"On live television."
"One of the articles had a picture of the exact last frame before the gun went off. The barrel is in his mouth, his eyes are looking off to his right (viewers left), and he is making a face that would have been almost goofy and comical in any other situation."
"Jesus Christ." - Lochrin00
So what have we learned today, friends? Hopefully to not mindlessly click - but internet is internet and stuff just happens, so for our own mental wellness let's remember to take internet breaks for a bit, kay?