“Scariest Fact You Know”: 50 Posts From A Page That Isn’t Afraid To Dive Into The Darkest Topics

ProbatonApololos:
If you're at the beach and the water level drops very quickly, seek h**h ground IMMEDIATELY.

ensenadorjones42:
DYK that mixing bleach and amonia creates a toxic gas that will k**l you painfully. DON'T DO IT. READ THE LABEL.

Sensitive_Parking_30:
A co-worker told me one day "you'll know when it's truly the first day of spring because lake water will warm up and make any dead bodies in the lake float to the top surface due to bacteria" he continued with "except for in Lake Superior where the water temperature never gets warm enough to build bacteria in a dead body" and that's one coworker I'll never make mad right there

shanster925:
The first Pong machine was dropped off at a local tavern owned by friends of one of the developers for a test run. After a few days, the game started to malfunction. The tavern owner called one of the Devs, Allan Alcorn, to come fix it, and when Alcorn got there it was discovered that it was malfunctioning because it was too full of quarters.

Creepy-Desk-468:
A patient once looked at me with a completely calm face and said, 'I know you're trying to help me, but I'm going to die today. I've made peace with it, and you can't stop it.

Helpful_Intention_20:
One of the most gut wrenching moments in my career was when I was treating a 9-year old boy who was the victim of significant blunt force trauma. He was unstable But awake and talking. With terror in his eyes he started thrashing around in his bed and screaming, "Don't let me die! I don't want to die!". It made us all nervous and tense. He went to the OR and survived but that was 5 years ago and I can still see his face.

Anonymous:
I was at my desk, working. Suddenly this absolutely piercing scream erupted. This sound was so loud that it hurt my ears even when I cupped my hands over them and pressed as hard as I could. Several of us exited the office and ran down the stairs, but that's where the sound was coming from.
Turns out, one of the pipes exploded off TWO 2000-gallon air accumulation tanks pressurized to 200psi by an industrial s***w compressor. This thing made a train whistle sound like a whisper. I physically couldn't get close enough to turn the ball valve- it hurt too much. One of my coworkers was practically deaf, so he just walked up without a care in the world and shut it off.

BoredPicking Username:
When my baby was a couple months old. She was in the crib next to the bed I was sleeping in. My 2 dogs were on the bed with me. I woke up to the normally quiet (well quietER dog) sitting straight up next to my head. She was growling this low, long growl. So mean and scary. I never heard anything like it before. I look to the bedroom door and I see a round shape coming in the door. Like human head height. Holy frig! It was a balloon (from having a new baby a couple months prior). It had started to lose its helium and travelled down the hallway right into the bedroom. Scared the c**p out of me! My heart still races when I think of it

Whind_Soull:
About ten years ago, I was looking out my grandmother's back door. Two squirrels were playing in the yard.
A hawk swooped down and grabbed one. As it was batting its wings and gaining altitude, the other squirrel raced up a nearby tree, leapt off, rocketed down into God's Own Death From Above, and rescued his friend by curb-stomping the hawk out of the air.
They both ran away and the hawk limped off in confusion.

tjeepdrv2:
I was about to walk in the front door around midnight and saw an explosion way up in the sky. The flash was so bright that for a fraction of a second everything went daylight. I called a few people that I knew were still up and out, but nobody had seen anything.
A couple of weeks later, I mentioned it to someone and he said "That's funny, someone was telling me how a satellite exploded a couple of weeks ago and it was an explosion with a bright flash."

ianmichaels:
Medical doctor here (neurologist)... Capgras delusion.
The patient is convinced that a family member has been replaced by an imposter who is completely identical.
For example, the patient will tell you the person sitting across from them looks exactly like their spouse, sounds exactly like their spouse, has all the memories of their spouse. But... "that's not actually my spouse".
And the patient oftentimes isn't overly distressed by this imposter.
In 20 years I've only seen the condition twice.

Seddonpark:
A psychologist here. Not someone I worked with, but I did observe someone with Alien hand syndrome. The patients left hand would stroke her hair and pat her face but was not under her contro Each episode would last for about 20 mins. Turnec out the cause was a tumour. Amazingly it didn't seem to cause her any distress.

Imposter_Syndrome:
"A child who does not receive warmth from the village will burn it down to feel it" - African proverb
Crappy environments are always a lose/lose situation to be in

ZeStriker310:
"I don't know what weapons will be used to fight world war 3. But world war 4 will be fought with clubs and stones"
Albert Einstein

OSUJillyBean:
Growing up I had a recurring nightmare set in my grandparents backyard looking at the back of their house. There was just something "off" about the house. Something mildly sinister. I dreamt this over and over, < many times over the years.
In 2018, my dad (who now owned the house) went into the backyard to that spot and k****d himself.
I haven't had the backyard dream since.

TheUnfunOwl:
I have unusually good night vision, extra cones/rods (I forget which is for low light) which means I walk around in what other people consider complete darkness, able to see just fine. Add onto that I'm 6'10" and very large, basically a cryptid

ofsquire:
A moose can dive underwater down to nearly twenty feet in search of food

Riverdoggo21:
It took humans more time to go from bronze words to steel swords than steel swords to nuclear bombs

diannaellis:
That there are people rich enough to disappear. There must be some billionaires we've never heard of

TbhldekMyName:
Celebrities aren't actually giving their kids absurd names, they just aren't publicizing their legal names.

Gubble_Buppie:
A man, Michel Lotito, ATE an entire airplane. It took him 2 years.

dang_dude_dont:
Clouds weigh hundreds of thousands of pounds, full of water, effortlessly floating above our heads. No support, No structure, just weight, floating around above us and we're like, yep totally believable, because they're clouds, duh.

duskhelm2595:
In order to conserve water, a camel's urine comes out as a thick syrup.

patricksaurus:
One of the most toxic chemicals on Earth is an organic mercury compound. The material safety Sheet notes that it has a slightly sweet odor, but at a concentration where the smell is detectable, it is already lethal. That observation came from someone who would inevitably die from accidental exposure.

forlornjackalope:
The farthest point on the planet you can be from civilization in any direction is a blip in the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo. If you were stranded there, you'd be thousands of miles away from help and it would be very unlikely you'd be seen or rescued as cargo ship routes don't go near it. To put the distance into perspective, the closest people to you would be The crew on the ISS.

Apple02ish:
Rabbits will eat their own young if they're stressed enough.

Tom_Zarek:
When I was about 3 we had a cat that had still born kittens. I asked my father if we could make crosses for them, which he did. As he was making them I asked:
"aren't those too small?",
Dad: "What do you Mean?"
Me: "aren't we going to nail them to them?"
Dad: (after several moments silence) "we're not going to do that"
Me: "oh"

UnfortunateBirthMark:
I was tucking in my two year old. He said "Good bye dad." I said, "No, we say good night." He said "I know. But this time its good bye."
Had to check on him a few times to make sure he was still there.

Expensive_Change_893:
My dad and I used to play "Spaceship" and to get the space ship started, I'd have to blow into a tube to hear the electronic beep. It was his DUI test to start the car before they started putting cameras in the cars. Glad he's sober these days.

Captain_-H:
I remember cuddling up with my mom when she had a brace on her nose. It's the kind you have after a surgery, Kand we talked about her nasal surgery. It took like 10 years later before I realized that the reason for that corrective surgery was my dads fist

chooooooool:
One time, me and my dad were discussing his friend while out driving at night without many other cars on the road. As we were talking, we pulled up to a red light, and the car waiting in front was my dad's friend. He didn't even live close to there.

kor_hookmaster:
My wife and I were looking to hire a caterer for our wedding and when we met, my wife and her started talking about their lives a bit.
Turns out they had both literally grown up on the same street, in a city of 10 million people, on the other side of the world. Both had left the city around a decade before immigrating to our current country.
They knew the same people, had hung out at the same coffee place, attended the same church. They even used to grab mangoes off the same large tree that hung over the wall of one of the large houses in the neighbourhood.
But they had never met one another until meeting on almost the exact opposite side of the planet, in a small town of about 50,000 people.

Kaptainkarl76:
It has m******d more people than you will ever know

Victor_IMayBeWeird:
When a whale dies, it creates a whole new ecosystem

Daemon T5544:
Carthaginian Civilization existed for well over 600 years. They controlled large parts of North Africa, Spain, Mediterranean Islands, and had trade networks going All over the Mediterranean and even explored the African coast. They were powerful enough to bring Rome to the brink of defeat in two massive wars.
Romans won, and as a result, not a single Carthaginian primary source exists.

Stu_Thom4s:
The Philippines right now is an example of history being rewritten to ensure victory.

Bigstar976:
Saudi Arabia sentencing to death people who refuse to move out of their homes so that they can build Neom, their new mega city. And their relatives being sentenced to multiple decades of prison time just for protesting or merely posting their support to the cause on social media.

downwiththemike:
In Africa there is a very real and very extensive s***e trade going on right now to say nothing of the other probably 40 million living in bondage.

Historical Heart:
I was home alone when I was 11. I had just fallen asleep and someone tried to break in the front door. I called 911 and hid in the pantry in the bottom shelf. They came to the door next to the pantry and tried to break into that door too. The police got there and one of them picked me up and held me until my mom got there. I wouldn't let go and he made sure I felt safe. I'm 27 and haven't stayed home alone much since. The day I signed a lease for my first apartment I got a dog so I wouldn't be alone. It's pretty traumatizing when you're that young.

issamurcle:
I used to sleepwalk when I was a child. We lived in a rough neighborhood (Decatur, GA) and I would wake up outside in the middle of the night, not knowing how I got there, and would have to walk home and walk into the darkened doorway I had left wide open for whoever might be lurking around. However, the time that scared me the most was when I was about 9 years old. I woke up and found myself with the bedroom curtains drawn back and staring out the window. As I came awake, I noticed a very large and completely hairless man (no hair, eyebrows etc) staring at me and slowly inching closer to the window and closer to my face. He was looking bewildered like he wasn't sure
what he was seeing. At that moment, I realized what was going on and I started screaming uncontrollably, frozen in place and peeing down my leg. The man freaked out and screamed, did a tumbling move, and then ran off in a weird zig-zag like he was trying to dodge bullets. My mom woke up and thought I probably had a nightmare. The next morning we found a s***w driver on the front porch and damage to the door jam and door handle.
I still just about pee my pants when I tell that story, but now it is usually from laughing. I will never forget the look on his face when I started coming to life and screaming or his h**h pitched scream or his duck and roll and dodging and bobbing all the way down the street.