30 Creepy Facts That Will Keep You Wide Awake Tonight

1. The men of the ship Essex (the true event that inspires the story “Moby Dick”) avoided islands after being shipwrecked for fear of cannibals. The islands were settled and landing there would have brought salvation to the survivors. Ironically because of this bypass, the men ran out of food and were forced to eat each other for survival.

2. Elmer McCurdy was a failed old west “outlaw.” His preserved body was put on display in a traveling carnival and years later he was eventually assumed to be a mannequin until he was used on set for the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man. His arm accidentally fell off during the shoot, revealing bone and muscle and that he was a corpse, not a mannequin.

3. After raping his blindfolded victims, the Golden State Killer would be super duper quiet and pretend like he was gone and right when the poor victims would start to move towards the phone or try to untie themselves he would scare the fucking shit outta them.

4. One reason that crows and ravens are associated with death is because they would often follow armies as they marched to battle. Being both carrion birds and extremely intelligent, they realized that a large group of armed men marching on one direction meant that there would be a tasty meal of corpses to eat soon afterwards.

5. Female mummies in Ancient Egypt were always more decomposed than their male counterparts. They discovered that this was because male bodies were embalmed a lot sooner than female bodies. Female bodies were kept at the family home until they started to decompose in order to avoid necrophilia at the embalmers.

6. They used real corpses in the 1982 film Poltergeist, for the ending pool scene. The actress did not know until AFTER the scene was filmed.

7. Cockroaches have been recorded eating human flesh, both living and dead, as well as fingernails, eyelashes, feet, and hands. The American cockroach and German cockroach are more likely to bite humans than other species.

8. Mount Everest is covered in frozen corpses because removing them is very unsafe and time consuming. They are easily viewed from the climbing routes and some are used as trail markers.

9. In the Czech Republic, there is a church called The Sedlec Ossuary that has decorations made entirely of human bones. This happened because there were too many people in the cemetery to bury everyone, and the church leaders claimed that if their bones became part of the church, it only made them closer to God.

10. Human brains when they dry out smell like cat piss — that stinky ammonia smell.

11. More than 7000 people die annually due to the doctor’s bad handwriting.

12. The astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger most likely didn’t pass until they hit the water miles below the initial explosion.

13. A Fire Whirl can go as big as an EF3 tornado. In 1923, such happened in Japan during an earthquake. The son of a bitch killed 38,000 people in less than 15 minutes.

14. When creating the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, they couldn’t create skeletons that looked “realistic” enough, so they used real human skeletons. They’ve since removed all of them except one.

15. It’s quite common after you die to burp a lot as you have more gas build up. Dead bodies can also sit up on their own sometimes.

16. The Chankiri Tree is a tree in the Cambodian Killing Fields against which babies and small children were bashed after their parents had been killed.

17. There was a speech made for Apollo 11 if they were to die on the moon.

Side fact — if it were to happen, people would look up at the moon knowing that, that crew died there, and their bodies would rest there till the end of time. Not forgetting that the ocean is somewhat like this, many people died there too, at the very depths of the sea.

18. Men who are hanged get a death erection, known as rigor erectus. Pretty awkward for the family, I assume.

19. Since 2007, at least 20 detached human feet have been found on the coasts of the Salish Sea.

20. Polar bears are one of the only animals that are thought to actively hunt humans.

21. Pigs will eat anything. There are stories of pigs entering farmhouses and eating newborn humans.

22. There’s a parasite that enters a fish’s mouth, eats the tongue, and replaces itself as the fish’s new tongue.

23. There’s a spider that gives you a 3h long boner, before you die from its bite. (The boner it gives you is very painful.)

24. According to Abe Lincoln’s body guard Crook, he said Lincoln had a dream about his own assassination 3 nights in a row before he was killed.

Crook told Lincoln NOT to go on that fateful night, and all Lincoln said was, “Goodbye, Crook,” before he went to the play.

This was VERY ODD as Lincoln always said goodnight NOT goodbye.

25. There are upwards of 300 active serial killers in the world.

26. The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.

27. Your brain can play tricks on you to make you see monsters in the mirror, called the Troxler Effect. The Troxler Effect is an optical illusion that affects how you perceive things, both visually and mentally.

28. It wasn’t until 1987 that the American Academy of Pediatrics declared it unethical to operate on newborns without anesthesia. Until surprisingly recently, the medical community felt it would be dangerous to give infants anesthesia and/or believed that they didn’t feel pain.

29. Imagine being totally aware of someone preforming CPR but you physically can’t move or respond. Well that’s what happens when you get bitten by a blue ringed octopus, you have approximately 6 minutes between being bitten and someone starting CPR to keep your heart and lungs functioning to ensure you survive, all whilst being totally aware of what is happening to you. Neurotoxins are fun!

30. I once read that you should play dead if a bear attacks you, unless they start licking your wounds because that means they plan to eat you. That still haunts me to this day.