The 6 Creepiest Things Discovered by New Homeowners Approximately 99 percent of haunted house stories begin the same way: The owners move into a house that seems too good to be true. Then there is some foreshadowing via rumors from the neighbors, and finally a gruesome discovery. But that chain of events isn't just the stuff of movies and campfire stories. Real homeowners have moved into their new digs only to find horrors like ... #6. OK, based on what you have seen in horror movies/novels/TV shows, what is the one single thing that ensures your home will be infested with ghosts and/or poltergeists? Getty"You could at least desecrate our graves tastefully." So of all the possible things in the world you can find in your new home, none can be quite as unsettling as plunging a shovel into the floor of your basement only to have a child's skull come rolling out. Getty"See, honey? Wait, What? That's exactly what happened to Helen Weisensel. wisn"We're just miffed about the dry rot. Getty"So the cat's vomiting blood and calling for Azathoth.
The 5 Creepiest Unsolved Crimes Nobody Can Explain Dear Internet: We have to admit something -- we've been getting kinda cocky, recently. Whether we're explaining the phenomenon of alien abduction, debunking every textbook ever or doing some third thing, we've been spending a lot of time acting like we have all the answers. And it's started to go to our heads. But that all changes now. If unsolved mysteries are good enough for Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, then by golly, they're good enough for us. So, in apology for our hubris, please enjoy this Cracked Classic, as well as these similar articles about unsolved mysteries and also that one article where we solved a bunch of mysteries no one else could 'cause we're so smart and dammit, we're doing it again. There are unsolved crimes, and then there are the kind of creepy, "What the hell could possibly be going on here" capers that keep the cops, and anyone who hears about them, up at night. Here are the real cases that almost fall into X-Files territory: It Gets Weirder:
6 Terrifying Experiments Parents Did on Their Own Kids Given all the complaining people do about animal experimentation these days, it's easy to forget that up until fairly recently, scientific experimentation on humans was considered perfectly acceptable. While most of our scientific forefathers stuck to experimenting on random poor people like any respectable person would, others took it a step further and said, "Well, this baby in my house is already crying a lot anyway ..." #6. Getty In 1933, psychologist Clarence Leuba wanted to figure out whether laughing when being tickled is an instinct we're born with or if we just learn it from watching other people do it. In the interests of science, Leuba first banned all tickling in his household, allowing it only during special, experimental tickling periods. Getty"Shut up, I'm tickling her right now! Where It Gets Weirder: But the most terrifying aspect of this experiment was the tickling itself. "Controlled experiment! #5. GettyWe think this might also be a Guns N' Roses album cover. #4.
6 MORE Creepy Urban Legends (That Happen to be True) As we are fond of pointing out, fact is usually much creepier than fiction. So around this time of year we like to share some of the most gut-wrenchingly disturbing stories, the kind we would tell around the campfire if we ever actually went outside. And most importantly, they're all true. Something Off About That Picture The Legend: A young man is dropping off groceries at the house of an eccentric old lady when he notices an old photo that makes the hair on his arms stand on end. "Oh," she replies, trying to stuff a cat in the dishwasher "isn't that beautiful? The Truth: While most folks today are too squeamish to take more than a glance into the casket during a funeral, in the late 19th through early 20th centuries someone dying meant it was time to break out the camera for a family photo. And, while it all sounds like the set-up for some terrifying practical joke on the photographer, there was actually a somewhat reasonable explanation for the practice. The Corpse in the Carpet
The 5 Most Terrifying Diseases That Doctors Can't Explain We tend to trust that doctors are on top of this whole "getting sick" phenomenon -- when we visit the hospital, we know that someone is going to be able to tell us what's wrong with us and how to fix it. But then there are some particularly unusual diseases out there that have medical professionals throwing up their arms and declaring "Shit, we guess it's witchcraft." Things like ... #5. The Sleeping Sickness Getty Imagine your spouse comes down with what you assume is a bad cold. Getty"I told you not to mix NyQuil and Ambien!" It's not the first act of a horror movie, but a real, baffling disease that had doctors puzzled at the beginning of the 20th century. It began with victims complaining of a sore throat, right before it escalated into a goddamned living nightmare, the victims afflicted with hallucinations and madness before their bodies ultimately locked up. Getty"After discussing what a pain in the ass recovery will be, his father and I have decided to pull the plug." #4. #3.
6 Creepy Urban Legends That Happen to be True (Part 3!) It's that time again. It's becoming a reader favorite and Halloween tradition for us to count down those ridiculously over-the-top gruesome urban myths that, oh by the way, happen to be true. This is our third year (HERE is the first one, and HERE is the second) and once again these stories prove that truth is far more horrifying than fiction. Man Killed by Saw-style Explosive Neck Device The Legend: So all those convoluted puzzles and traps the Jigsaw killer uses, they're all just so ridiculous, right? Danny Glover knows. So then you run into somebody on the Internet who heard about how a real guy showed up at a bank and said he had an explosive collar around his neck that would deposit his brains all over the walls unless he robbed the bank on behalf of a criminal mastermind. Oh, please. The Truth: On a day like any other in late August 2003, pizza deliveryman Brian Wells was about to end his shift when a fateful order came in. Flava Flav is indirectly responsible for this.
7 Creepy Urban Legends That Happen to be True (Part 4) Once again, it's that time of year when Cracked goes out our way to fact check the outlandish stories that allegedly happened to your friend's former roommate's cousin's girlfriend. As we've shown three times before, sometimes the stories that get told and retold around a flashlight at slumber parties aren't as full of shit as we might've hoped. The Legend: We've all gotten emails about tourists who are abducted or drugged, only to wake up with a ragged scar where one of their kidneys used to be. These kind of stories sound like good fodder for an Eli Roth movie, but they couldn't possibly be true, could they? Survey says "yes". The Truth: Tell that to Indian construction worker Mohammad Saleem, who thought he had just lucked into a new, higher paying job working construction in New Dehli. Admittedly, we learned everything we know about India from Slumdog Millionaire. Unfortunately for Saleem, his new employers never showed up. Saleem wasn't the only victim either. Getcha' kidney! Ew.
7 Creepy Urban Legends That Happen to be True (Part 5!) Halloween's nearly here, and that means it's once again time to prove that the urban legends that scared you as a kid should still totally scare you as a rational adult, because they're totally true. As we've shown four times before, sometimes the stories told late at night at sleepovers really did happen to that kid's brother's cousin's sister. For instance ... #7. Man-Eating Escalators The Legend: Parents can't seem to resist the urge to play amateur horror movie director when teaching you the importance of tying you shoes. Getty"I thirst for child-blood." The Truth: Escalators are hungry like the wolf -- in this case, an unseeing, unfeeling robotic wolf that appears to grow hungrier once it tastes blood. GettyAre you listening, Hollywood? Toes and entire pieces of feet have been chewed off by escalators. For instance, in 2003 a girl lost part of her hand when she reached down to free her shoe, which the escalator was in the process of eating. #6. Everyone knows the feeling. #5. #4.
The 5 Creepiest Disappearances That Nobody Can Explain Back in the Dark Ages, people disappeared all the time. Crusades, disease and nearly nonexistent bookkeeping made it easy to slip through the cracks without so much as a footprint left behind. Luckily, the modern world makes such disappearances damn near impossible -- when people vanish, it usually turns out they were killed or kidnapped, or at least they were very likely to have been. Which makes it all the more mind-boggling when people actually do vanish into thin air, under very weird circumstances. #5. pennlive For 20 years, Ray Gricar was the district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania. He never returned. But hey, mystery schmystery, right? Getty"Tell her I send my love. That's pretty much what the cops must have figured when Gricar's car was found outside an antiques store. A search ensued. cnettvAlthough thankfully not too damaged to run Windows ME. It Gets Weirder: Want to guess what case he was working at the time he disappeared? GettyHey, what a coincidence! Yep. #4. #3.
The 6 Creepiest Places on Earth It doesn't matter whether or not you believe in ghosts, there are some places in which none of us would want to spend a night. These places have well earned their reputations as being so creepy, tragic or mysterious (or all three) that they definitely qualify as "haunted." Places like... Aokigahara is a woodland at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan that makes The Blair Witch Project forest look like Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood. It probably has something to do with all the dead bodies scattered around. What Niagara Falls is to weddings, Aokigahara is to suicide. More than 500 fucking people have taken their own lives in Aokigahara since the 1950s. The trend has supposedly started after Seicho Matsumoto published his novel Kuroi Kaiju (Black Sea of Trees) where two of his characters commit suicide there. Also skulls. Besides bodies and homemade nooses, the area is littered with signs displaying such uplifting messages like "Life is a precious thing! Winchester Mystery House Oh, bitch...!
The 6 Creepiest Places on Earth (Part 2) In Cracked's continuous effort to make your local haunted house look like a boring pile of dog turds, we once again present the creepiest real places on Earth. Whether it's due to their bizarre histories, suspicious coincidences or good ol' human insanity, these are the locations even the die-hardest of atheists wouldn't venture into without a crucifix and a Super Soaker full of Pope-blessed water. Located smack in the middle of a swamp in the heart of Aztec country is the popular tourist destination La Isla de las Munecas, or Island of the Dolls, a name missing at least two adjectives and the word "fucking." To get there, visitors have to hire a guide to take them by boat through the canals of Xochimilco, then to the island itself, all the while making the guide promise on a stack of Bibles that he's not going to abandon them once they reach their destination. "Seriously, Pablo? We will haunt your ass." Not that he'd do that, right? Oh. One that will cost tourists sleep for decades.