Every now and then, who hasn't found themselves falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole?
Even if the sources of information found on the page are dubious.
This doesn't stop people from using it as a quick source of information when necessary.
And with links to other pages readily available, people often find themselves learning information which was a far cry from their initial search.
Gaining information that these same people would no doubt be much better off having never learned.
"What is the most disturbing Wikipedia Page?"
"Albert Fish is so disturbing, I remember the first time I read about him I was literally nauseous."- Lazy-Day5802
Albert Fish
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish"- Stunning-Mix-773
"I find this as much depressing as disturbing."- YouKeepThisLove
List Of Youngest Birth Mothers
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_birth_mothers"- PotatoLordBobo
"I think the most heartbreaking thing is that that damn list is so long..."- AliyanaRose
Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Bittaker_and_Roy_Norris
"These guys are some of the worst of the worst."
"During the filming of Silence of the Lambs and working with former FBI agent John Douglas (author of Mindhunter) for some time, actor Scott Glenn thanked him and said how fascinating it was to have been allowed into his world."
"Douglas laughed and told Glenn that if he really wanted to get into his world, he should listen to an audio tape of serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris torturing, and murdering two teenage girls."
"Glenn listened to less than one minute of the tape, and has since said that he feels he lost a sense of innocence in doing so, and that he has never been able to forget what he heard."- sully-fied
The Murders of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom
"The Murders of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom page is pretty bad."- Apartment_Unusual
Less The End Result, More The Process
"It’s not the page that is disturbing, it’s thinking back to where you started and hour ago and wondering what the f*ck happened!"- noigenoigenoige
The Anthill Kids Cult
"The anthill kids cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roch_Th%C3%A9riault"- periczache
"What the actual f*ck."
"I should not have read that."- Nico_MyTrueSelf
Tarrare
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrare."- olde_greg
"The fact that he was underweight after doing all this."
"What the hell did his poop look like since he wasn't digesting properly?"
"Or maybe his stomach acid was TOO strong and there wasn't much nutrition left for his intestines?"- bigmacjames
Nanjing Massacre
"I don’t think I was the same person after reading that page and seeing the pictures on it years ago."- 88Smilesz·
Murder of Sylvia Likens
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sylvia_Likens."- Carp69
"That's one of the most horrifying things I've ever read."- Trini1113
Unit 731
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731."- Damonwalkin
"There are many things I can read without feeling uncomfortable in this thread."
"But this... is on another level."- Pure-Destruction
Human
"It is very strange and uncomfortable to read the Human page on Wikipedia."- LedZacclin
"The Wikipedia entry on humans makes me uncomfortable."
"Feels like it was written by an AI or by aliens."- Darmok47
Murder of James Bulger
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger."
"Haven't seen this posted yet."
"Still baffles me how little kids can kill."
"Changed the justice system in the UK for what it is today."- HighestBounty
Murder of Santos Rodriguez
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Santos_Rodriguez."- Mobius___1
"Holy sh*t."- UnitedStatesUS·
Wikipedia can be an endless source of information.
At least 80% of which you would probably be much better off not knowing.
Those who are fascinated by the paranormal or unsettling situations can quickly get their fix by watching many shows on various streaming platforms and literature.
But they seem to forget that truth is actually stranger than fiction and many of the bizarre plotlines depicted in shows and books are inspired by actual life events.
Curious to hear what keeps strangers online up at night, Redditor wisteriasgirl asked:
"What’s the creepiest Wikipedia article you’ve ever read?"
All it takes is a toxic environment to have deadly consequences.
Gas Attack
"Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack, wherein a 10 members of the doomsday cult 'Aum Shinrikiyo' launched five separate Sarin gas attacks onboard five subway trains across three major subway lines in Tokyo. Killed 14, and injured approx 5,000 people, 1,000 of which received serious injuries."
"The cult itself started out as simple yoga group, which gradually turned into a doomsday cult whose goal is to start World War 3. They are also infamous for using chemical weapons in their attacks: VX, Phosgene, Cyanide, and Sarin gas."
– TheRepublicAct
Fatal Exposure To Chemical Elements
"The death of Karen Wetterhahn. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the extremely toxic organic mercury compound dimethylmercury."
"Protective gloves in use at the time of the incident provided insufficient protection, and exposure to only a few drops of the chemical absorbed through the gloves proved to be fatal after less than a year."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
– dorvann
DIY Cancer Cure Specialist
"The Toxic Death of Gloria Ramirez which is about a woman who possibly (the definitive cause is unknown) used household chemicals to treat cancer and in the process of caring for her many doctors and nurses fell ill. The chemicals reacted with her blood, creating an airborne toxin. She presented with an oily sheen on her entire body and her insides (mouth, blood, etc) had a pungent, sweet, garlic-y smell."
"Edit: A likely cause for Gloria is known but we can't rule out the theory where her IV bag gets switched out with meth ingredients being smuggled through the hospital (that is actually listed in the wiki) or, of course, aliens. /s And YES, I did first hear of her on buzzfeed unsolved, but I read the Wiki after okay?"
– ronaldreagular
The things humans are capable of doing by causing harm to others is deeply disturbing.
Led By A Doomsday Cult Leader
"Oh man, you should check out the Ant Hill Kids then."
"I'm not sure wikipedia goes into the brutality of it, but imagine screwdriver + brain + acid and a bunch of other f'ked up things. No real reason other than they felt like it in the moment."
– Cult_ureS
This Duo Filmed Their Killings
Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepropetrovsk_maniacs
"It was actually mainly just two guys, the third guy didn't get charged with any murders, just armed robberies that took place before the murders."
– onarainyafternoon
School Bomber
"The Bath School Massacre about a man who went insane and bombed a school in order to kill the next generation of his town and get back at the prominent community members that 'slighted him'. Awful, awful."
– ronaldregular
Murder Of A Japanese High School Student
"Junko Furuta. That whole article just makes my blood boil."
– Cleverbird
Obsessed Radiographer
"Carl Tanzler A radiographer who got obsessed with a patient of his, Elena Hoyos. She succumbed to tuberculosis while under his treatment. He stole her body and kept it in his house for years to come, until her family discovered what was going on. Hoyos' decaying body was kept together with wires and a mask was made. He was also married to another woman all this while. Just an all-round disgusting case."
– identitty_theft
Redditors can't bear to imagine perishing by way of these horrific circumstances.
Inhumane Torture
"The article for Lingchi, or 'death by a thousand cuts.' Its a kind of execution method that was used in China where someone is tied to a wooden frame and is cut to death, usually over the course of several days, sometimes in public."
– dudebro1275
Ripped Apart
"Hv u heard about the method where a person’s head, arms and legs are tied to five different horses and they walk in away in different directions tearing the guy apart?"
"It’s called 車裂"
– Evelyn_Bliss
The article I personally found absolutely unsettling was the death of Elisa Lam, whose body was found in a large cistern atop the Cecil Hotel.
The budget hotel, which was named Stay On the Main at the time, was notorious for hauntings and housing serial killers like Richard Ramirez–a.k.a. "The Nightstalker."
Lam was last seen alive inside the building's elevator through viral surveillance footage of her behaving erratically.
Social media users were fixated on her subsequent disappearance, and much of what happened to Lam and how her body found its way into the water tank remains the subject of many theories and debates.
Wikipedia is a vast wealth of knowledge, where people go to fact check and learn about history, science, and so much more. It's also where anyone and everyone who has an account can join in sharing knowledge... or things that are completely untrue and ridiculous.
In a post on Ask Reddit, sifsand said:
What was the most unusual Wikipedia article you found?
There's a wide array of Wikipedia articles from all over the world that share information on topics we never knew we wanted until now.
Here's a few of the most unusual articles people could find.
Holiday is Sweden
"Gävle goat. It's this giant wicker holiday goat in Sweden that has a weird tradition of being destroyed by vandals every winter. It's so bad that the people that construct it even have backup goats for when the original eventually meets a fiery death. There's a list of all the goat's 'deaths.' Some deaths are like spy thrillers."
"Is that the f*cking thing that got security around it and someone shot it with an incendiary arrow and set it fire that way since they couldn't get close?"
- tdub2217
"Burnt by unknown vandals reportedly dressed as Santa and the gingerbread man, by shooting a flaming arrow at the goat."
Cats out of the bag
"Acoustic Kitty was a CIA project launched by the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology, which in the 1960s intended to use cats to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies. In an hour-long procedure a veterinary surgeon implanted a microphone in the cat's ear canal, a small radio transmitter at the base of its skull and a thin wire into its fur..."
"The first Acoustic Kitty mission was to eavesdrop on two men in a park outside the Soviet compound on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and allegedly killed by a taxi almost immediately."
Complete and utter lies
"I'm unsure if this is technically classified as an article itself, but this Wikipedia page on notable Wikipedia hoaxes is one of my personal favorites. Some people have gone to so much effort to try and create fake articles and some of them have survived on the site for over a decade before being found out."
"On a fictional British TV show from the 70s:"
"In a Christmas show, Dale dressed as Adolf Hitler shouted the first lines to ever appear in the show, with the words "Achtung Juden!", which caused outrage and shock in what was still a liberal television age;"
Personal recounts of a monumental explosion
"A meteor blew up over Siberia in the early 20th century. The personal accounts of it happening are insane."
"'I lost my senses for a moment' was a personal favourite."
A list of sexually active Popes
"List of sexually active Popes"
"The pope's son would typically be raised by one of his siblings as his nephew', and when he came of age, would get a cushy position in the Church. The Latin word for nephew is nepos, which is where we get the word 'nepotism'."
Jewish people in the porn industry
"jews in the porn industry in the US."
"I only found it in my native language but apperantly it is a thing, we jews are overrepresented there like in hollywood and the banks (because we were historically forbidden from having normal agriculture works) and it causes a lot of conspiracy theorists to claim jews have a secret plan to use porn to make the world stop having children."
The most unusual deaths
"Draco, an Athenian lawmaker, was reportedly smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre on Aegina."
"Well sh!t"
- sifsand
"I thought everyone in ancient Athens wore togas, what type of cloaks and hats are we even talking about here? Are they special 'congratulating important politician' clothes that they only carried around for ceremonial purposes?"
The most bizarre soccer match
"That time when two soccer teams realized that it would be advantageous to score an own goal. Both teams wind up trying to defend each other's goals. Chaos ensues."
"It came about from bizarre tournament rules that gave teams a two-goal margin of victory should they win in sudden death overtime."
"It wasn't that both teams needed to score an own goal (that would've been funny, but not that bad as they basically just flip the field). Instead, at different points in the game it was advantageous for both teams (one after the other) to score an own goal. The first own goal was just to tie the game. In the second, the other team needed to either score a goal or an own goal. Either option would give them the result they needed (a win or a loss by exactly 1 point), so for a few minutes at the end of regular time the opposing team was defending both goals at the same time."
More impressive than weird
"The Austrian Dieter Macek made a family tree of the whole Greek mythology. It includes 5771 gods and heroes. The genealogy is 73m/240ft long and he spent 33 years of private efforts on it."
"the Wikipedia article (only available in German)"
"a panorama shot of the poster"
"the whole family tree digitally"
- ZieII
Giving 'interior decorating' a new meaning
"Skulls and bones that constitute the interior decorations of a Czech ossuary"
"The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have, in many cases, been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel."
"Here's an article"
These articles are all over the map, but what a lesson learned. That's the beauty of the internet.
"Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here."
The world is overrun with fun facts and fake news. At this point who knows what to believe. That is why we must always think before we speak and have ironclad proof that what we are saying is factual. I mean the basics are covered.... the Earth is flat, the sky is blue and Adele is an angel. Check.
But all the other sordid details being lobbed at us on the daily need to be vetted before they are spread. Otherwise we're just talking smack... no matter how entertaining it is or solid it sounds.
Redditor u/argues_with_quote wanted to know what "knowledge" that was really nonsense others have tried to sell to us all by asking.... What is the most hilariously inaccurate 'fact' someone has told you?To Red Robin....
Had a friend try to tell me and a group of friends that every single Red Robin was off an exit 3 from the highway. We tried to tell her that no, it was just a coincidence that she saw two like that or something. Then when asked "do you know how exits work?" she replied "yes, every time there's a Red Robin, they make it an exit 3". Wtf? Born_Slippee
Crystals....
Water is a crystal, not a liquid.
It was some guy posting a shower thought. I got into a long argument with him and it kept getting more and more ridiculous because he was genuinely convinced. I've never.. ever seen anything like it. It still haunts me to this day, because it's so preposterous it MUST be a troll move, yet everything suggests he was serious. I will never know...
Here if you're interested....
https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/e3h5jf/water_is_a_liquid_crystal_so_we_are_all_crystal/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=shareahmadove
The X Factor.
- Neighbor told me he attended an international medical conference for work and he learned that women were "catching diabetes in their feet because of the sandals that they wear in the summer"
- Little sister's friend said that a contestant on a singing show like X Factor came second after the finale because the contestant who won stole his phone and turned it off so he wouldn't get his votes when people texted in. TeeRanbato
Sing out....
The band name "KISS" is an acronym for "Knights In Satan's Service."
"AC/DC" = "Anti-Christian Devil Children"
"Slayer" = "Satan Laughs As You Eternally Rot"
...all told to us without irony by a Sunday school teacher, circa 1987. Keefer1970
Fractions.
This is a story that is too long to type in full but I once got into a disagreement with some random dude at an A&W because he thought that 1/4 (one quarter) was more than 1/3 (one third). His reasoning was that since 1/4 has a four and 1/3 has a three, and 4 is one unit higher than 3 then 1/4 is more than 1/3.
The worst part was that in order to prove him wrong I asked the cashier girl which weighed more, she didn't know. Then I asked the next person in line, that idiot said 1/4. Do you have any idea how infuriating it is to have a complete idiot think that he's smarter than you because everyone in the room is just as dumb as he is? ToxicMasculinity1981
The Confused.
My ex argued that fossils weren't actually old and those creatures never existed, they were just stuck there to confuse us. DisneyDork1313
Lung Work.
"smoking weed strengthens your lungs" no, no it does not. ibbity
Yeah, I can get on board with the 'weed smoke isn't as bad as cig smoke.'
But like... combusted plant matter coating your lungs is still combusted plant matter coating your lungs. argues_with_quotes
The West Cold....
Someone once told me that it never snows in the state of Washington because 'its on the west coast.' Same person also told me that she doesn't believe in gravity because "if it was real, wouldn't the sun just suck up the moon?"
She was 24 when she said these things to me. Scamperillium
No Gatorade!
That you can live off drinking sea water because Gatorade has sodium in it.
I was telling this dude about a guy who was stranded out at sea for awhile and survived by drinking rainwater and shark blood or some crap, and dude was like "why didn't he drink the sea water? Gatorade has sodium in it and it's fine. It's a myth that you can't drink sea water. Probably so they can keep charging people for drinking water." Tickle86
Palms Up!
That masturbating will give you hairy palms. I had a teacher in high school tell us this and the number of guys and girls who checked their hands immediately was hilarious. I had to really slam on the brain filter to keep from doing it myself but you better believe I examined my hands thoroughly in the bathroom after class. DaFahQsay
Just Breathe...
It's possible to breathe underwater.
She then tried to demonstrate and snorted a bunch of lake water up her nose. She was 14 at the time. psych_edelic_survey
they were damn bears.....
A woman at a party I was attending over a decade ago insisted that the largest member of the rodent family is the... polar bear.
I looked at her in absolute disbelief and replied that they weren't rodents, they were damn bears.
She had a PhD, too... smh. pm1966
This almost feels like one of those crazy facts that you think theres no way is true but kind of is by a technicality. Like I could say palm trees are grass. They aren't actually grass, but they are monocots like grass and are more closely related to grasses than woody trees, so if you skip a couple steps you could try to pass it as a "fun fact." iamgladtohearit
No Shake for You!
I was talking to a guy at the bar and he was telling me how soap is unnecessary for washing your hands. All you need is a combination of hot water and cold water. Not warm. But use both cold and hot.
I did not shake his hand. atlantis_airlines
This is quite scientifically sound. When you alternate between the temperatures rapidly, the dad microbe begins shouting about 'the thermostat' and 'he's not made of petri dishes you know" and all the young bacteria roll their eyes so hard they die. Like, Galileo discovered it, or something. my_4_cents
SMDH!!
My roommate tried to convince me that there are Chimpanzee-people in the jungle because isolated tribes are getting it on with the monkeys. I tried to explain how species reproduce and quickly realized he thinks you can be with a horse and get a centaur. aBucketofChestnuts
S'mored.
You can get black lung disease from overcooking the marshmallows for s'mores. USPSA-Addict
Being Egged.
Goats lay eggs. A several minute argument followed, and I did not convince him he was wrong. I work in meat processing. Not that that's necessary to know that goats don't lay eggs, but it just made the argument all the more ridiculous. I'd literally seen goats born live countless times, and yet he argued.
Edit: I also worked at a caviar bar for a while, and many times had to hear from people who were horrified we were eating dolphin eggs. Beluga. I've heard that "mahi mahi is dolphin" more times than I can count. And from people who've eaten it even. onioning
Oh Boys....
An ex boyfriend once insisted that women can hold in their periods like we can hold our urine. He did not believe me, a woman, when I told him that was absolutely not the case. What. b0n3rjamz
I've had a similar conversation, although luckily I was able to convince him other wise. I told him that when you have a cut on your arm, it just bleeds and you can't control it. So you put a bandage on it. purpleplatapi
Perfect Potassium.
The shape of the banana and the way it fits your hand so well are proof that god exists.
He stopped using that argument when one of our co-workers pointed out that a penis also fit hands pretty well too. I_throw_socks_at_cat
"Sally had told her so"
Not me but my mum. She was walking with a group of friends on a popular trail in the UK. She has quite an outspoken friend, let's call her Sally. The group saw a number of Chinese tourists taking pictures of the sheep along the trail. One of the group asked;
"I wonder why they are all taking pictures of sheep all the time."
To which Sally replies;
"It's because they don't have sheep in China!"
The group all believed Sally, and thought it was an amazing fact. My mum decided to regurgitate the fact one dinner time saying that "Sally had told her so."
I called bull and Googled it there and then.
Turns out China has the largest population of sheep in the entire world.
My mum has never lived that down. Alarmed_Brick