Tropers / Theworldsbiggestbruh

Out of morbid curiosity I copy+pasted the "Real Life Nightmare Fuel" section from alloflifedecays' profile and put it up here, basically a personal archive:

Real Life Nightmare Fuel

Real Life Nightmare Fuel

You're probably thinking that after reading about all that Nightmare Fuel, you're safe from it because you don't live in Fiction Land, right? Wrong!

Note: This page is not for those easily scared by books or movies. If you happen to be one of those people, please go here instead. Thank you and have a nice day.

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Other

• According to a survey, 33% of college aged men would commit rape if they could get away with it, and 25% of those surveyed believed that rape was acceptable if "the woman asks the man out; or the man pays for the date; or the woman goes back to the man's room after the date."
• The Westboro Baptist Church. It's an honest to not their God group of misanthrope supremes who imagine the nigh-entirety of humanity in HELL. And that's not even getting into Fred Phelps, who'd probably be one of the most terrifying supervillains ever in a comic book universe.
  • For an example of how frightening these people are check out this "parody" of "We Are The World". It's either High Octane Nightmare Fuel or Narm, but what makes this so scary is that they are actually serious.
    • The "church" in question is a very small group with a very high profile, which is itself rather disturbing. They are not recognized as a valid church by any other religious organization anywhere in the world. Canada, which has very strong laws on both religious freedom and hate speech, refuses to allow Fred Phelps across the border.
• The Emergency Alert System test sequences.
  • I used to hide under the coffee table when those came on TV. *shiver*
  • I try to block them out on numerous occasions.
  • The new ones aren't any better, either: instead of the sine-wave test tone, now it's that awful buzzing and the very, very badly synthesized voice reading the "This is a test of the Emergency Alert System" message.
  • In addition to being afraid of Emergency Broadcast System tests, I was very afraid of the multicolored-bars TV "test pattern" thing that would display whenever a TV station was having broadcast issues. It's not the actual test pattern that was scary, it was the loud high-pitched beeping that accompanied it.
  • The horrid "three beeps" severe weather alerts played on local TV, complete with a massive, bright red, flashing "TORNADO WARNING - TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY" message across the bottom of the screen. To be yanked from Sesame Street into Howling Winds of Death once or twice a month in the summer is very unpleasant. Perhaps that is the whole point.
• Whatever your local name for the old Civil Defence air-raid sirens is - hurricane siren, disaster siren, tornado siren, etc. Imagine standing on the front porch as a little kid during a particularly severe thunderstorm, in which the sky turned green, the wind abruptly quit and the whole world went dead silent for about five seconds - and then the sirens fired up. This is used in the Silent Hill series to great effect.
• Factology believes, according to Wikipedia, "some aborted fetuses survive their abortion to live in the sewers, where they are being gathered and organized to take over the world."
• To all those in college - you think your roommate is bad? Read this possibly true story, and you will be glad the worst thing your roommate does is snore.
  • Half of the student body at DigiPen has one-upped that guy (up through The Black Time) in one way or another (except without the drugs).
  • More roommate horror here. Worst one is the woman who walked in on her college roommate having sex doggy-style with her biological father. The winner was actually someone who killed and skinned a squirrel and left it on her housemate's bed.
    • The former also contains a bit of Fridge Horror, as several readers have noted that the roommate's poor hygiene and behavioral problems match the symptoms of sexual abuse. Even the person who submitted the story admits that if she had made the connection at the time, she would have reported what she had seen.
• Have you ever heard someone die? 9-1-1 calls which end tragically...
  • Here's one. And here's another. The former has a Hell Is That Noise sound made from the woman's screams at the beginning, and the latter has a VERY EFFECTIVE Scare Chord.
• Memorial or Post-Mortem Photography: A "mostly" extinct practice where family members photograph themselves and their dead in such positions, (like opening the eyes, moving the mouth, setting the body correctly, and dressing it up) to make their relatives look 'almost' like they're still alive. Most of these photos are babies!!
  • Apparently, it's still a common practice nowadays that when a baby passes away, one of the nurses cleans the body, dresses it up, and wraps it in a blanket for the parents to hold and take a picture with. One sad advantage of doing this with a deceased child is that the baby is no longer covered in tubes and needles to keep it alive, so it appears as it couldn't in life. And it seems rather gruesome, yes, but it seems many people need that picture, that memory, to help them through the grieving process. It's almost as if to show themselves that their baby was alive and real, even if it couldn't stay that way for very long.
• This site. Think of it this way, most of those babies are stillborn. The parents NEVER would have gotten a single picture if it weren't for those. They used to be tossed in the trash. Now the parents get to hold their precious child. Much like when you hold a dying friend...
• Cracked has done it again: 6 Real, Terrifying Islands. One features a snake population of around five per square meter. Another has the charred bones from 160,000 plague victims still wash up on the shores. And those are near the bottom of the list.
• "Baby Eaten By Rats". She wasn't dead when they started.
• Ladies and gentlemen, Boy in the Box, a cold case from the 1950's where the body of a small boy was found in a box in the woods. The worst part? They still to this day haven't caught the person who did it.
• The Island of the Dolls in Mexico.
• In 2003, a man named Hitoshi Nikaidoh walked inside an elevator and had his shoulders pinned by the elevator doors due to faulty wiring. Despite struggling to pull himself inside, the elevator kept ascending until the ceiling sliced off most of his head. His left ear, lower lip, teeth and jaw were still attached to his body, which fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft, as the elevator continued moving upward. A surgery resident, who was in the elevator at the time, witnessed the gruesome spectacle and spent more than an hour trapped in the elevator with Hitoshi's head.
• Cracked again! This article for the 5 Creepiest Unexplained Broadcasts
• "Chat", "That's Life" and similar magazines sold at supermarket checkouts. In the words of Charlie Brooker, they look at first glance like they're full of word searches and knitting patterns. In reality they're full of the kind of Body Horror and Gorn that rotten.com is built on, alongside more mundane adult fears, with the odd "kids say the funniest things" feature for added Mood Whiplash goodness.
  • For those who have no idea of what these magazines are...well, here's◊ for◊ reference◊. "Life! Death! Prizes!" Actual tagline.
    • And the attractive woman on the cover? She won't be seen in the magazine, has no bearing on any articles whatsoever. Eye candy to get you into the back of the van, as it were.
  • African tabloid examples take this up to eleven, and even more frightening is that even MORE people take them as the truth than in the US! The Red Pepper is the most notorious. The engrish and hilarious slang seems charming (referring recently to one outed minister as the "notorious bum driller"), until you see how many articles are about outing and advocating the murder of local notable gays among other things. Never has the term 'frighteningly funny' been so apt. You know Adebesi from Oz? Not only is that the paper's target demographic but that's ALSO THEIR REPORTING TEAM. That's right, as amusing as this paper might seem, it regularly gets families murdered by local religious fanatics.
• Disused refrigerators with rotten stuff still in them, as seen on You Tube. Some have been sitting around for 20 years or more.
  • Speaking of that, there have been many cases of dead people going unnoticed for a decade or more. There's actually an article on snopes.com, if you're brave enough to look it up.
• The max headroom Pirating Incident. Not the act itself, but the fact that to this day, no one really has the foggiest idea what was going on, who he was or why he was doing it.
  • There is also the fact that the man who did it is still at large... he could be anywhere, he could even be on this website.
• The Church of the Innocents in Paris has an... unusual history. It was one of the first churches in France that allowed actual burials (6th century) and became the largest and most popular cemetery by the 13th century. By the 15th century it was so crowded that the residents of older graves (many were in mass graves by this point) had to be moved to ossuaries. When the Black Death hit, newer corpses had to be moved into the ossuaries, leaving behind fatty residues in the dirt. By the late 17th century the cemetery was essentially a mass of greasy residue that could no longer decompose. Oh yes: a pile of leftovers from thousands of human corpses that could no longer decay. And that's not the worst part- in 1780 the wall of a cellar bordering the cemetery collapsed under the weight of the whole mess. One can only hope that no one was in the cellar at the time, or there'd be an unpleasant combination of the primal fears of drowning and necrophobia. Oh, and it was this incident that led to the creation of the famous Catacombs of Paris.
• Train engineers who are forced to watch as their trains mow down anyone unlucky enough to get themselves on the tracks (in this case a young teen who, while listening to her iPod, was killed by a deadly silent Amtrak train while on her trek to school). Because freight trains going 60 mph take about a mile to stop before the emergency brake is applied, the train engineers are forced to watch it happen. When they go through post-traumatic stress counselling, the one thing they talk about is that they see the people's eyes right before they hit them. A lot of those engineers don't return to work.
• Robert the doll If you thought regular old dolls were creepy, how about a haunted one?
• Cracked once again aims to keep us all up at night. Here are the 5 Creepiest Unsolved Crimes Nobody Can Explain.
• Walking around a pitch-black room with only a flashlight, fearing and believing that there is something or someone that will be standing in or pass in front of your flashlight beam.
• Matekane Air Strip in Lesotho (Number 13 on list) is built on the side of a mountain, on a patch of horizontal real estate too small to accommodate a standard-length runway. How do they manage to get up to speed for takeoff, you ask? They use the Granny Weatherwax method, which is to say they throw the plane off a cliff.
• Roadkill. Especially the real gory, mutilated sort, even better when baking in the sun for a few days, or when the guts have partially burst out and been scattered around the carcass. Who needs a gory horror movie or video game when there's plenty of gruesome carnage right along your local road, perhaps on the commute to work or school.
  • And the fact that sometimes you can no longer tell what it was before it was killed is unsettling.
• Stay up until the wee hours of the morning (say, about 1:00 - 2:00 in the morning), in a room with very little light in it, and read as many missing persons' cases from this site as possible. Start with the earliest ones. 1945 should be good. Also, while you're at it, go to this other website and peruse their "Unidentified Victims" index. Start off with the first entry there, the Caledonia Jane Doe discovered in 1979. Pleasant dreams.
  • The forum websleuths; notably the "unidentified" pages.
• It's common for schools to hold assemblies which provide kids with safety and emergency information. In the U.S., some schools have taken a "scared straight" approach to this. Famously, one school had chosen a few students to be absent all on the same day. On that day, with the selected kids nowhere in sight, the staff announced an accident that killed those children. Predictably, some of the students found this to be extremely traumatic and needed psychological care after the caper was revealed. Furthermore, some schools have held assemblies in which students are cast as fire, accident or other victims while their classmates are ushered around the scenes by teachers describing the terrible situations being portrayed. The latter usually occurs with some fore-knowledge on the part of the students so that they know it's fake, but these assemblies are prone to extremity in the young actors' make-up.
  • There was a school that hired an actor to run into a school and start "shooting" a fake gun (sounded real) between classes. Think only school was stupid enough to do it? Of course you're wrong!
  • Winnipeg, Manitoba did the same thing in 1942, calling it If Day. "Nazis" (citizens in costume) took over Winnipeg, "arresting" the mayor and premier and turning one section of the city into a concentration camp. They also went around beating people up. They would go into schools and ask for the Jewish students to stand up, then they would take them away. For someone who wasn't in on it, especially the schoolkids, that would be absolutely terrifying. It was a ploy to try to get people involved in the war effort.
• Bullying. The thoughts of how many Adults Are Useless - Do you guys know what it's like to have been beaten up, or see someone else beaten up, only to tell an adult because someone is literally in danger, only to be told off or not believed? The adults could literally just turn their head two centimeters to the right and see a kid with paint splattered all over him and a black eye, yet they don't see anything. And just imagine how many target(s) in western countries are being bullied for whatever reason, only for adults to encourage it with their own inaction?
  • Let's not forget the disproportionate retribution. The minute the victim has had enough and decides to stand up to the bully, sometimes violently, the victim is the one that gets the severe punishment despite being the one that was pushed around in the first place.
  • The climatic moment of Dangerous Minds is based on cases such as these.
• Burglars. The thought of creepy Faceless Goons walking around your house and stealing things at random doesn't terrify you at all?
• The GIFT. To sum up several quotes from the quotes section, coarse people won't say what they really think to your face - because they aren't free from consequences, meaning they're within punching or kicking range. They may act nice to you in real life, but they have an image to maintain. They may not say something like "Barack Obama deserves to be institutionalized" or "All of Israel should just be nuked" if you asked them in real life, but on the internet, of course they'd say that - that's what they really think. And you know what is even scarier? Imagining what'd happen if, even if you could attach a face to someone, what if this was like Real Life? People would probably just murder children so they wouldn't have a threat to their power, steal everything, just go on a shooting spree with a complete disregard for who they're killing, and just flat-out bastardy cranked Up To Eleven.
  Oscar Wilde: "Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
  • Trolls and cyberbullies in general. Picture this, an adult troll who uses the internet as a personal haven for their inner bastardry intentionally harasses someone, that someone being a teenager with low-self esteem that he doesn't know, by teasing him, calling him names, and encouraging him to commit suicide. All the while thinking that this is funny!
    • Here's an example that fits the exact description above. You might take some consolation in the fact that this man was arrested, however. Seems people are becoming more willing to prosecute the internet version of threats/harassment/etc.
    • Milder, but still disturbing and proceeding from the same mentality, are griefers, people who play online games for the sole purpose of disrupting other people's games. They derive enjoyment from ruining other people's fun, and cannot be reasoned with because no normal appeal, whether to compassion or self-interest, will work. They have no compassion for other players, and are already getting exactly what they want.
• Check out these well-known photographs. Now, read the stories behind the pictures; in many of these cases, the photographer gazed upon unmitigated human suffering and did absolutely nothing to help. All for the sake of capturing "the perfect photograph". Welcome to the world of photojournalism.
  • The sad thing about the Omayra Sanchez photograph was that nothing could be done. The girl was trapped in that water for three days before she died, because it would be impossible to free her without amputating her legs, which would have made her bleed to death. A water pump was sent to the village... which arrived broken. Basically, the reporters stayed with her so she wouldn't die alone, as most of her family members were already dead.
  • Having read the above, imagine YOU are a photographer dealing with such things. That link shows a photograph by Kevin Carter. Carter was haunted by nightmares and visions of death after he took that picture of the starving girl being stalked by the vulture. He was also heavily criticized by people who didn't understand how little he could have intervened. Eventually, Carter took his own life.
• You don't have to be a vegetarian, vegan, or even value animal life very much to be outraged or disgusted at this. What kind of things the animals have to go through in slaughterhouses is bad enough, actually imagining yourself as one of these animals is probably one of the most terrifying and depressing thing that you can think of.
  • You are now imagining you are an animal in a slaughterhouse.... In Australia. Next to a forest of stinging trees. Likely the leases for the land were ridiculously cheap because of their 'neighbors.' Not only is a man-made travesty dicking with you, but a NATURAL one the turns your body to FIRE every time there's a slight breeze. For those that don't know, read this link and then think of what those poor, poor cows went through before they get anywhere NEAR a blade.
• Tar Pits. Getting stuck in them is one of the worst ways to die. Unlike quicksand which sucks you in, death by tar pit is slow. The only way you can die is if you starve (humans can survive for about two weeks without food), dehydration (lack of water), or if you somehow commit suicide. Thankfully, if you have a cell phone you could call for help, unlike the poor wild animals that became trapped thousands of years ago. Those animals either starved, became dehydrated, or were killed by a predator. Hundreds of skeletons have been found in the La Brea Tar Pits in California.
• Working in a steel mill. There are a thousand ways to die in one - and they are all nasty. White-hot bubbling molten metal, fiery furnaces, electric arcs, poisonous gases, eerie (and certainly dangerous) machinery, heavy objects falling from great heights, horrible noise -- you name it.
  • The book Ganz Unten ("Lowest of the Low") by Günther Wallraff describes first-hand accounts on working in one. He describes of the working conditions of Turkish immigrant workers in the post-WWII West German steel industry. One of the workers stumbled at work and fell in the blast furnace. What makes it Fridge Horror is that you realize it is West Germany. How about working in an East German hell factory...?
    • There was an accident in a chemical plant in Leuna, Eastern Germany. About a dozen workers were cooked to death by superheated steam when a door fell shut behind them.
    • An episode of Unsolved Mysteries had the story of Dave Bocks, a nuclear power plant worker who disappeared mysteriously. One day, his car keys and some bone fragments were found in one of the plant's furnaces. Worse, it was concluded that somebody threw him in there.
  • An unfortunate individual was locked in some oven-thing over a weekend. When the next work day rolled around, the oven was automatically turned on.
  • It doesn't even need to be a traditionally-scary type of factory like a steel mill. There was a case of two workers in an innocuous bread factory, who were sent inside an oven to do some maintenance work. They were sent in on a conveyer belt, like the loaves. It was switched off, but no one had ensured it had actually cooled down- and there was no way to reverse the conveyer.
• Think 9/11 was bad when you were just sitting there watching the attacks on TV? In some places, the power went out. Of course, it had nothing to do with terrorists, but you can bet more than a few people were thinking they were all going to die.
• Mines. Not the explosive kind, the underground ones. Claustrophobic, dark, potentially filled with spiders, and could collapse if not safe. You'd need to worry about the ground crushing you against the ceiling in a landslide than about the roof collapsing. Needless to say, surviving that would be less desirable than dying. Crawling along in the dark, bones probably broken, exit probably shut... that's the stuff High Octane Nightmare Fuel is made of... if you could move at all.
  • Don't forget how many of them have portions that are CONSTANTLY ON FIRE to boot.
• Radio signals. Find a weird spike producing noises that'll haunt your nightmares for years to come? Well good luck finding what in the name of Jimmi Hendrix was making it, unless you've got some good equipment. And who knows? It may not even be from Earth.
• When you put in earphones while listening to music, you'll find you'll be hearing back vocals and certain instruments (that you couldn't hear before) in one ear. One song that abuses this is "the Greatest Show Unearthed" by Creature Feature. Remember, it only works with earphones.
• The Lost Cosmonauts theory. Yuri Gargarin was not the first man in space. He was the first to come back alive....
• The Dyatlov Pass incident. Nine hikers in the Ural mountains left their camp for no apparent reason and were later found dead. While this isn't that creepy on its own, five of the hikers had a variety of weird injuries (one was missing her tongue), and four had elevated levels of radiation on their clothing. And no one knows what happened because no one who was present survived. We're probably better off not knowing the whole story.
• While looking up pictures of the Franklin Expedition, you might find a mugshot of one of the dead explorers they dug up from Beechy Island named John Torrington. Go look him up. You have been warned.
• Premature burial. It's real, it's been happening as long as humans have walked this planet, and in some parts of the world it still happens.
  • More to the point, buried alive after being presumed DEAD, not by a landslide or anything natural like that. Read up on what started the idea of vampires or their forebearers strigoi existing some time...
• Halloween can be Serious Business for some people◊. Although, for some that picture qualifies as a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• This video of abuse captured on tape is disturbing enough in it's own right. But there are a few things special to this case that make it pure High Octane Nightmare Fuel:
  • 1. Her father, being a judge, was a well respected member of the community, therefore no one would believe this girl as to what kind of a person he really is behind closed doors. It makes you wonder what other well respected people are really like. Including those you know (or think you know).
  • 2. The comments. There are many who see nothing wrong with what he did to her and some even applauding him. Others claiming that they recieved worse than that, while still thinking that it did them good. here is an example of one of the articles and the comments. Some of these people even go as far to blame this girl for the abuse she suffered through, claiming that she set him up just to provoke a beating and was faking her cries. The fact that people can see obvious abuse and still find ways to blame the victim is absolutely horrifying.
  • 3. He was a family law judge who dealt with child abuse cases of all things. He had denounced the testimonies of children, claiming they were fantasizers, no we know why.
  • 4. The daughter in question had cerebral palsy and almost all sources on the abuse scandal don't bother to mention it and/or gloss over it. Given the examples of people who murdered their disabled children and have had people defend their actions, it's pretty much safe to say that somehow, the abuse of a disabled person matters less than that of a nondisabled person in the exact same situation in they eyes of the writers of the sources that omitted this fact.
• They have straight camps. Places people are sent, told their way of live is wrong, and taught how to lie about who they are so they are accepted by society. Parents actually send their children to these places for being curious.
  • What happened to institutionalized GLBT individuals in years past. That's not Fridge Horror, that is High Octane Nightmare Fuel of the highest order and seriously triggering to many people — but think of how many people were sent to these things, not just out of their parents and caretakers' bigotry, but because that was the reigning medical opinion. It wasn't just a bunch of fundamentalist nuts turning over their gay, transgender and gender-nonconforming kids so they could expect grandkids. These people were scared... and they thought they were doing the right thing. Their pastors, their doctors and teachers and trusted family friends thought they were doing the right thing too. Subjecting their children and loved ones to hellish treatment to "fix" them, turning them over into the hands of people who would beat them, rape them, starve them and mistreat them until they were "well" or dead or physically compromised — most certainly traumatized — for life. To make them normal. Safe, healthy, sane, good. Someone you loved might have done that to you.
• Book banning controversies. Sounds geeky in text but they can get freakin' brutal. For example there was this giant controversy in Panama City about a book (I think it was I Am the Cheese) that people wanted removed from the shelves. When a group of teachers and an Intrepid Reporter tried to defend the book, how do they get repaid? By receiving threatening phonecalls, death threats, letterbombs, and one of them almost getting her house burned down. Worse still, the people contending this book accused them of lying, or even doing these horrible things to themselves to gain sympathy. And to think, all of this trouble is over a book. Thank God the author of the book set the record straight or who knows what could have happened...
  • These accusations of lying are textbook example of denialism. Imagine that kind of logic: Jews are evil, The Holocaust did not happen and they deserved it anwyay... you know the drill.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion. Imagine one minute you're enjoying life, then out of the freaking blue you're engulfed in a burning fire without warning and will likely burn to death without even knowing what hit you.
  • ADHD friendly example.
• Not as horrifying as some things here but... [1]◊ this. A girl in a wheelchair is STABBED by a "friend". With a FORK.
• You know The Exorcism Of Emily Rose was loosely based on a true story, right? Here is ACTUAL AUDIO of the exorcism session it was based on. Just don't make the mistake of watching it before bed or while suffering emotional problems...
• Cracked are really good at these! Most commenters agree that of The 5 Most Spectacular Landscapes on Earth (That Murder You), the creepiest one is #3, the Bolton Strid. You'll never see forest streams the same way again.
• Do a Google Image search on "trypophobia." You know what? Don't. You've probably had enough Nightmare Fuel for one day.

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You've done it! You've made it through all these pages of mind-numbing horror. What more can be said? As you go about your day and try not to break down, try to remember to do one thing: Always look on the bright side of life...

But you all probably need these links. And this one for good measure.

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RLNF Accidents and General Body Horror

• The Nikki Catsouras case. How would you like to lose any loved one, never mind your own child, and then two weeks later recieve an email from a complete stranger with a picture showing YOUR OWN CHILD'S MANGLED REMAINS?? Worse, the photos were leaked by members of the California Highway Patrol.
• Gore websites. While they will not be linked here due to Family Friendly policy, they feature violent and painful deaths and injuries, often to cater to people's fetishes.
• Jungle Rot, otherwise known as a Tropical Ulcer. An infected scratch in the jungle, and your entire body starts to erode.
• There's a ton of outer space horrors that come in mind. Two more notable are pressurization failure (e.g., a hole in your space suit) and life support failure.
• In Americas Best Dance Crew, the crew the Ringmasters. They were already grotesque to begin with, their gimmick being unsightly flexibility, but their challenge during Britney Spears week was to create the illusion of gigantic performers. So what did they do? They wore hoodies and somehow came up with these monstrosities.◊ Or perhaps seeing them in motion will have a stronger effect (the fifth section, about 30 minutes in)? (And by the way, their song was "Circus."
• Charla Nash. The victim of a chimpanzee attack. Good god, do not look up photos from Google of her face from her appearance on Oprah. As a matter of fact, it's not advisable that you look up any article about her appearance on Oprah, considering that that article might inadvertently have photos of her face. Absolutely horrifying. The lady's arms were literally ripped and pulled off, her eyes, eyelids as well as her lips... she looks almost like Pale Man from Pans Labyrinth, except more horrifying in that she actually has a huge, bloody hole in the middle of her face.
• The "Byford Dolphin diving bell accident". Just the description about what happened to the bodies (including gas bubbles forming in the eye tissue) is enough to cause shivers. Sure, the victims probably died instantly and painlessly, but can you imagine having to clean up or autopsy one of these corpses? The people in charge of that must have been scarred for life.
  • Subsequent investigation by forensic pathologists determined that diver D4, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient, exploded with violence due to the rapid and massive expansion of internal gases. All of his thoracic and abdominal organs, and even his thoracic spine, were ejected, as were all his limbs. [...] Chunks of his body were found scattered about the rig.
• There was a story about a girl in India whose hair was caught in a machine which ended up separating her face from her head. They then showed you both the girl with her musculature exposed, and the face, in two pieces, resting on the plastic bag the girl's mother brought it in.◊
• William Harvey. A very important 17th century scientist, who made his biological discoveries in horrifying ways. Some of his highlights include performing unanaesthetised dissections on live animals, and draining all of the blood from most of a person's vessels into one vein, making that one vein swell up like a balloon.
• You want to teach kids not to smoke cigarettes? Have them visit with someone who's had a laryngectomy.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion. It's highly unsettling to think that one day you could burn to death from the inside out for no apparent reason, with nothing left but a big black spot, a pile of burnt oily mess and bone, and maybe a leg or two sticking out. Crematoria use furnaces of up to 1000°C to burn human bodies - but in cases of SHC, only materials above and next to what's left of you will be burned. Images of victims' charred remains can be found, but having a few gallons of Brain Bleach handy would be highly advisable if you plan to search for them. There are more than enough examples that have no explanation whatsoever.
• At the time, Nero's use of Christians as gladiator bait didn't catch much attention in Rome. That wasn't particularly unusual, and they were convenient scapegoats for the Great Fire. What did catch attention was the extreme cruelty of the spectacle he made of it, including the "innovative" use of their living bodies as candles to provide light for it.
• Fires in general, nightclub fires in particular, like the Station Night Club, Happy Land, or Coconut Grove. The notion of burning is scary enough, the notion of dying of smoke inhalation is scary enough .... but the thing that gets you is how fast it all happens. The smoke buildup in this video goes from "minor" to "completely consuming the room" in a minute and a half. In that time, the people in the crowd go from oblivious - to mildly concerned - to complete, involuntary all-consuming panic, behaving like stampeding animals, as the vast majority of them succumb to the smoke.
• Being in a DUI crash and that this can easily happen to anyone is pure Nightmare Fuel.
• A car rammed into a carrier truck at a red light, causing a bunch of incredibly corrosive acid to spill out and wash across tarmac for twenty meters or so. (This was probably back in the 80s or something because of the truck's poor protection.) Anyway, some spilled over the woman in the car, and she started screaming. The truck driver leaned out of his window and began to scream as loudly as possible "Get back, get the fuck back!" (This was only partly necessary, as most people had run to a safer area when they saw the tarmac start to bubble.) So one onlooker started shouting "Why is nobody going to help her?!" The rest of the bystanders tried to reassure the onlooker, but she broke free and started to run across the acid to the woman in the car. Within a few seconds, it had eaten through the soles of her shoes and then her feet. The woman fell over from the pain, face-first into the acid. Then she started to roll around in agony, after which point she passed out.
• A whole host of birth defects:
  • Anencephaly: literally no or very little brain matter.
  • fetus in fetu'', a medical condition where a developing fetus envelops his/her identical twin - and the enveloped twin develops inside as a parasite! Naturally, being a television documentary, it was complete with pictures of the removed twin, which looked like a shrunken head with a proportioned body.
  • Conjoined Twins. Being physically attached to your sibling in one of a dozen different ways. You could be attached by just a little flap of skin, or share an entire body from the neck down. And if they don't die soon after being born, many are usually subjected to surgical separation where, more often then not one or both, will die.
• Lobotomies. The first lobotomies were lengthy, costly operations that were as precise as possible for the 1930s. Then Walter Freeman found the ice-picks in his freezer, remembered the bone behind our eyes is quite thin, hammered a couple into someone's head and jiggled them about a bit to get pretty much the same effect. The goal of these operations was to get people out of mental institutions - not necessarily well, just well enough...at first. As lobotomies first became popular then were progressively considered barbaric operations, Walter Freeman felt the pressure to prove they were indeed a medical breakthrough. An operation once reserved for an absolute last resort in the treatment of severe mental illness was eventually performed on unruly children. Meet one. The history of lobotomies fuels more nightmares than the thought of the actual operation, since it's a prime example of how humanity sucks in many, many areas and how few of those we keep an eye on to this day. Freeman used to perform lobotomies with a showman's attitude, sometimes shoving in two ice picks at once. He even accidentally killed a man by briefly leaving the ice picks in while he went looking for a camera. The inventor won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
  • Poor Rosemary Kennedy had the misfortune of being the "slow one" in a family full of ambitious, gifted children (experts think she had an IQ of around 90). The pressure of trying to measure up to her more sophisticated siblings caused her to act out and ultimately her parents ended up having a doctor perform brain surgery on her at the age of 23 to curb her mood swings. He succeeded...in reducing her mind to that of a literal infant, a state she remained in until she died at the age of 86. One wonders if the Kennedy family would have been a lot happier if Papa Joe hadn't been so hellbent on creating his own dynasty.
    We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. "We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.
  • One of the things that make it really frightening is how the media whitewash lobotomies to a state of numb mindlessness. If only. Imagine being able to remember caring, feeling, thinking as you do now, and then that just... stops, but the rest of you knows it and keeps on going.
  • In fact, most of what passed for cutting-edge psychiatric treatment until very recently is more than a little terrifying. Someone behaving badly? Brain surgery time! Lobotomies are one of the best examples, but the entire medical profession prior to the last fifty years or so is pretty creepy. As for the pharmacological industry before the FDA - just don't go there.
• Dentists. Or anything tooth-related. due to the immense amount of nerves and pain-related receptors.
• Oral surgery in general (wisdom teeth, root canals) is horrifying. Even perfectly normal, ostensibly non-horrifying procedures can be incredibly painful, like tooth removal and getting braces. The feeling of a dentist grabbing your tooth and jerking it back and forth until it comes out is incredibly creepy even when you've had a lot of anaesthetic and can't feel any pain. The mouth is also one of the worst-feeling areas when subjected to local anaesthetic, for some reason. Just recovering from something and having to put up with a big numb rubbery mouth, and the drooling you end up subconsciously doing sometimes.
• The two books published about the Body Farm. Mixed in with the fascinating descriptions and applications of forensic science is a high dose of Body Horror as you learn in excruciating detail exactly what happens to a human body after death. But the worst parts by far are all the descriptions the horrible ways real people have died in certain cases. (No photos are included; you won't need them.) Especially the explosion at the illegal fireworks operation. Her brain fell out...
  • Stephen Fry was "lucky" enough to be granted access to it during his documentary on the US. As a special bonus he claims to have never seen a dead body before and his tour guide admits she has gotten into the habit of figuring out what people's skulls look like under their skin.
• Anesthesia awareness. You wake up during surgery, but you can't communicate. Happens to 20,000 people a year.
• Faces Of Meth - what methamphetamine abuse and its consequences (hallucinations, poverty, poor nutrition, poisoning from the chemicals in the drug) do to people's appearance over time.
• Tapeworms. The bad part about pork tape worms isn't the aspect of living in your small intestine stealing your nutrients... but actually the fact that if you eat their eggs instead of their immature form they can circulate throughout your body and implant themselves on whatever random tissue they land on. Unfortunately they often decide to land on brain tissue and can cause permanent brain damage.
  • Guinea worms. Parasitic disease in general.
• Abortion. Pro-life, pro-choice, doesn't matter, the basic concept is still sucking the baby/mass of cells/what have you out of the uterus with a giant vacuum.
• What would happen to you if you were exposed into the vacuum of space without space gear. You will wish that one and a half minute of remaining life were much, much shorter. In the absence of atmospheric pressure, water will spontaneously convert into vapor, which would cause the moisture in a victim's mouth and eyes to quickly boil away. The same effect would cause water in the muscles and soft tissues of the body to evaporate, prompting some parts of the body to swell to twice their usual size after a few moments. In the absence of air pressure the gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgment, and the cooling effect of evaporation will lower the temperature in the victim's mouth and nose to near-freezing. Unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later, and a blue discoloration of the skin called cyanosis would become evident. At this point the victim would be floating in a blue, bloated, unresponsive stupor, but their brain would remain undamaged and their heart would continue to beat. Without intervention in those first ninety seconds, the blood pressure would fall sufficiently that the blood itself would begin to boil, and the heart would stop beating. As a side bonus, with no bacteria present, your frozen, non-decomposing body will drift off into space for millions or perhaps billions of years if left untouched.
• Internal decapitation. It's pretty much what its name would imply, and it's the very definition of this trope.
• There's this video floating around on the Internet, a public service announcement made by a Middle Eastern country where two men jump off a bridge into water. The bridge isn't too high (about 20-30 feet). One of the men makes it. The other? He slips at the last second only to have his face smash against the corner of a concrete pier at the bottom. The later show him in the emergency room, with his face split open and still alive.
• Elevator Failsafe Failure. Example: that Japanese guy who got his head ripped off by a elevator with faulty sensors. And the other passenger was trapped in the car with the severed head for an hour. Or in Italy, June 2009: during a heavy rainstorm, an old woman rode her elevator down to her cellar. Too bad the cellar was flooded. The elevator stopped when it touched the water, then the flood got worse, and worse, and worse...she drowned in there. In Brazil, all elevators have warnings "before entering through the elevator doors, please check that the elevator car is on the current floor",
• Ectopic pregnancy. The fertilized egg doesn't make it to the uterus and starts growing "inside" the fallopian tube. The Bodies Exhibition had the plasticized, dissected reproductive organs of a woman who had died from an ectopic pregnancy, complete with a little walnut-sized fetus thing still in the fallopian tube. In a rare few cases of ectopic pregnancy, the zygote will actually fall out of the fallopian tube and attach itself to a random spot in the abdominal cavity... usually an organ. Said organ will proceed to suffer severe damage as the placenta grows — and the placenta is much more likely to grow to a larger size than it would in a normal ectopic pregnancy, thanks to not being stuck inside a non-elastic tube. Some of these pregnancies have actually lasted to full term. Incidentally, this◊ is what a placenta looks like at nine months. Sweet dreams, ladies.
• Female genital mutilation, or FGM.
  • Genital mutilation in general
• The eerie sound of the stick shaker can be heard in the black box recording on the doomed ice-covered Air Florida flight 90 that stalled and crashed into the Potomac river near Washington DC in 1982.that recording. Oh, and if that's not bad enough, one can actually hear the plane's explosive impact, too.
  • This still pales in comparison to the JAL-123 recording. The constant beeping, the desperate shouts of the crew, the ground proximity warning system ("Pull up!... Pull up!... Pull up!"), the sound of two impacts... it's 55 seconds of pure despair. "We're going down, Larry(?)"..."I KNOW!", preceding the BOOM, is more jarring than the sound of the stick shaker.
• United Airlines Flight 585. Suddenly and without warning, the aircraft rolled to the right and began to pitch downward, nose first. Nine seconds later, they crashed into Widefield Park at 4g. There were no survivors. And it all happened in nine seconds. The cockpit transcript from those nine seconds can be found in the aircraft accident report, on pages 177-178, and it is chilling. Your mileage may vary as to whether it's more or less chilling to read the normal conversations that make up most of the transcript, knowing what's going to happen at the end. The worst part is, this happened while the plane was on its final approach to the runway. Just a minute or two longer and they would've been fine. Imagine you're the captain or co-pilot, on a normal domestic flight from Denver to Colorado Springs. You're on your final approach to the runway. Imagine the mounting anticipation and sense of relief you would feel, knowing you'll be on the ground again in a few short minutes. Maybe you'll grab a coffee. Then you can check into a hotel and finally relax. And then suddenly you're hurtling towards the ground with nine seconds to live. Nine seconds of pure terror, of screaming and swearing as you try desperately to regain control.
  • A similar thing happened to USAir Flight 427 three-and-a-half years later. Once again, no survivors. Except that this time, there were 132 onboard instead of 25, and the uncontrolled descent lasted twenty-eight seconds.
• 911 call from the Twin Towers as they collapsed. Being trapped on a top floor and slowly suffocating while calling 911 and basically being told they can't do anything to save you. Not to mention having the tower go down while you're inside it. Not to mention how the person on the other end must have felt, having to listen to those men beg for help and listen to them die. The entire thing is beyond horrifying.
• Amniocentesis. A long needle is inserted into a pregnant woman's belly, through the wall of her uterus to draw out a sample of amniotic fluid. (This can be dangerous to the fetus if it is stuck by the needle accidentally; may lead to miscarriage.) The idea is to get fetal cells to test for genetic diseases and disorders. (Thus usually done for older moms, or moms who have a high-risk of problems. An alternative exists, but it isn't much better (it can still cause miscarriage, and it's still scary), where a tube is inserted through the vagina and cervix and a small chunk of placenta is taken.
• Pelvic exams and the horrifying Turned Up To Eleven pelvic exam known as a colposcopy. (Usually done in cases where the woman has had two consecutive abnormal Pap smears, or when she's been raped (and they have reason to believe she sustained more serious internal injuries during the attack). That one may involve biopsies and weird tests involving iodine. Kind of like a vaginal alien probe, but not by aliens.
• ECRP. Hoo boy. This is really simplifying here, but if some or all of the 4 bile ducts in the liver are blocked, they go in and drill through the blocked ducts to unblock them in an attempt to salvage liver function. It's very painful, and they can't put the patient out completely because his/her cooperation is needed. It can cause internal bleeding, infection, and pancreatitis as well. (Which is why it's no longer done as a diagnostic procedure as it formerly was; it's too dangerous for that. It's only used for therapeutic purposes.)
• Pancreatitis itself. Imagine the worst pain you can ever imagine traveling through the upper abdomen and shooting its way to the back. Imagine living life feeling extremely nauseated and dehydrated all at once, so that one has to live by an extremely restricted diet AND try to get as much water as necessary without throwing up the water one has consumed. Now imagine trying to live as normal a life as one can with such a disorder ravaging one's body, including going so far as to be permanently fed via IV if that's what it takes to keep the "writhing on the floor of your bathroom or bedroom while curled up in a ball"-level pain away.
• The end results of a human gas turbine ingestion accident. It pretty much defines the Chunky Salsa Rule. For those who have more intestinal fortitude, read on. Imagine, if you will, the inner nacelle of an aircraft engine, and massive fan within. Now spread a chunky paste of redness about eight inches around the front and back of the fan, glued to the nacelle. Scatter some bits and pieces up to a hundred feet behind the engine for added effect. Now realise that that chunky red mess was a person.
• Rectal prolapse. This is also featured from Chuck Palahniuk's creepypasta Guts. Cracked's description really takes the cake(spoiler'd because it will keep you up at night): It is a weakening of the ligaments that hold your intestines together, and in the worst case scenario, your intestine comes loose and hangs out your anus. Possibly the worst thing is that you don't have to do anything particularly dangerous or extreme to have this happen. All you have to do is what many people consider to be normal procedure in this situation.
• Günther Wallraff describes in his book Ganz Unten ("Lowest of the Low") a horrific case in a West German steel mill where a Turkish immigrant steelworker had stumbled at work in a steel mill and fallen in a blast furnace. His body had been incinerated completely - the kinsfolks were presented a symbolical piece of metal containing
• Historical torture:
  • Crucifixion. They tied or nailed your hands and feet that way so that you had to stand up to able to breathe. Once you lost the energy to stand, you would collapse, at which point you couldn't breathe and had to pull yourself up to breathe again and collapse then you'd collapse again and again and again ... a proper crucifixion could take three days to kill someone.
  • A medieval French favorite is quartering. Tie four horses to each limb of the victim's body, then whip the horses. For an added bonus, the torturers would give the victim a last drink so they could watch the liquid pour out of their exposed entrails. Not to be confused with the even more horrifying English punishment known as drawing and quartering, where the condemned is dragged across the filthy, bumpy, trash-strewn roads to the place of execution by a horse, he is hanged but cut down while still alive, his "privy member" is cut off, his belly is slit open and he is forced to watch as they pull out his intestines and burn them in front of his face, and then they hack off his head, cut his body into four quarters, and distribute them among various places where he performed treasonous or seditious acts.
  • Scalping. Which, by the way, was not done by Native American tribes but to them by US soldiers.
  • One Native American tribe favored burying a man up to his neck, covering his head with honey, and waiting for the ants to come.
  • A basic one but still painful: burning at the stake.
  • "Carving the blood eagle," a particularly squicktastic Viking method of killing which consisted of cutting and breaking the victim's ribs so they resembled bird wings, pulling out the lungs, and then salting the wounds that were left behind to make death even more painful than it already was.
  • Edward II was thought to be gay, and this was back in the 1300s when homosexuality was a sin. A group of nobles killed him by anally raping him with a hot iron rod.
• Then there are the more humane ways forms of execution... except when they go wrong.
  • Beheaded with a an axe that isn't sharp. Sometimes it took as many as fifty blows.
  • Just ask Catherine Howard.
  • Same with a dull guillotine. Imagine hearing the sound of it falling, feeling the pain, and then hearing "Pull it back up and try again."
  • Lethal injection every so often goes wrong, and you are quite aware of the pain but you can't scream or move.
  • To help with the electric chair, they would put a sponge on the victim's forehead. The sponge is meant to be placed under the electrode cap to help conduct the current and ensure a quick death in the chair. Stephen King's The Green Mile has a particularly horrific and nasty scene that was based on the very first execution by electric chair, where said sponge wasn't used.
  • Hanging, if done wrong, does not snap your neck — you suffocate. You have to drop the victim at least fifteen feet or so for a quick death. This is particularly common with people attempting to commit suicide. There's also the exact opposite problem. The mathematics for performing a proper long drop is fairly simple, but occasionally back in the day they would mess up. If the rope is too long, the person will be decapitated like this fellow by the name of Tom Ketchum◊. They forgot to recalculate his weight after he gained weight while in prison. After the botched hanging of Eva Dugan, Arizona switched to the "more humane" method of execution by gas chamber.
• From an old radio announcement: "This is the sound of a train hitting a person: ...chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, chugga-CHUGGA, CHUGGA-CHUGGA, CHUGGA-CHUGGA, CHUGGA-CHUGGA, CHUGGA-chugga, chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga..."
• John F Kennedy's assassination. It was the same as any other headshot, really, but it happened in BROAD DAYLIGHT in front of many, many people, children included. And don't even get us started on the autopsy...
• A test pilot who bailed out of a plane at supersonic speed in the '50s; his entire body inflated to twice its size, his eyeballs swelled to the size of Major League baseballs, and six feet of his lower intestine protruded out-yet he somehow survived.
• The gruesome effects of the Russian heroin substitute 'Krokodil' called so because the users skin and flesh turns green and becomes horribly gangrenous, before it rots off revealing fresh bone without any blood. It is made from codeine extracted from codeine medication and mixed with cleaning solvents, which is why the average lifespan of the user is less than a year. How someone could not take themselves to hospital the moment they started feeling decomposition in their limbs is amazing, but how any human could even survive that level of injury without succumbing to sepsis or shock is incredible.
• Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis Disorder. It doesn't sound too bad, but YOU try waking up one morning not being able to move your arms or legs without feeling like you're tearing the muscles from the bone or not having the ability to grip anything (thus leading to an inability to button your own pants) because your blood potassium levels have dropped. Even more horrifying is that while the condition is genetic, the effects are activated by something as simple as eating too much pizza the night before.
• Hydrofluoric acid accidents. Even chemistry geeks are deathly scared of that stuff, as it not only eats through pretty much anything (including glass), but causes severe tissue necrosis. It also etches bones, and slows or stops the victim's heart through rapid loss of blood calcium. Direct skin contact with even a small amount is usually fatal. And it doesn't react well with flesh, so you don't have any obvious acid burns to tip you off that you got some on you. Just an unpleasant itching or tingling.
• Let's talk about a few suicide methods that aren't as painless or reliable as most people think.
  • Overdosing on medication. As simple as going to sleep? Haha, yeah right. More like hours of projectile vomiting once your stomach starts to reject the medication, and a host of other horrifying symptoms (which ones you experience depends on the medication you took) including but not limited to: Loud ringing in the ears (very common, and much more distressing than you might think), temporary deafness, temporary blindness, seizures, intense burning or itching of the skin, severe stomach pain, GI bleeding, hallucinations, paranoia, panic attacks, loss of muscle control, loss of bowel and bladder control, hyperventilating, fast or slow heartbeat (both of which you can feel), difficulty breathing, coma and, of course, death (rarely). At the hospital, you'll be forced to drink liquid charcoal, a nasty concoction that tastes like you're drinking mud (complete with gritty bits — ever ate a sandwich at the beach, and accidentally got sand in it?), and usually makes you vomit even more. ODing is rarely fatal, but can cause permanent damage to the organs and brain. You might also have your stomach pumped, depending on what you took and how much, or how long ago.
  • Tylenol, a common method of OD, is particularly nasty. The person feels icky for a few hours after taking it, but shows no major symptoms at first. The person may start to feel better later in the day, believing that they're going to be okay and failing to seek medical treatment. Big, BIG mistake. 24 to 48 hours later, liver failure begins to set in. The nausea returns, cranked Up To Eleven, as well as INTENSE pain. No, really, the pain is utterly horrible, as in you feel as though your liver is expanding due to being stuffed full of shards of glass. Ever had gall stones? If so, it's like that, but even worse. Your skin turns yellow, and toxins build up throughout your body, which brings about all kinds of painful symptoms. If you wind up needing a liver transplant, you might be rejected by the donor committee due to being suicidal.
  • Aspirin, another common one, makes you very nauseated; causes very, very loud ringing in the ears, and makes them feel as if they're stuffed with cotton; feeling disconnected with reality, which is disturbing; in extreme cases, bleeding in the GI tract due to eating away at the inside of the stomach; seizures; a very fast heart beat; hyperventilating, as your body attempts to expel excess carbon dioxide in the blood; low blood sugar; potential edema (swelling) in the brain; and a host of other symptoms.
  • SSRIs are near impossible to OD on. Fatally, that is. Instead what happens is that your brain goes nuts from the overdose of serotonin, which is not as pleasant as it sounds. Some of the symptoms include profuse vomiting, diarrhea, hallucinations, rapid heartbeat, shivering, sweating, tremors, and coma. In short, you probably won't die, but you'll feel like you are—and probably wish you had for a few days.
  • Gunshot to the head. Even pointblank, to the forehead, temple or in the mouth, these are survivable. Sure, brain-damage is likely, but that doesn't automatically kill a person. A large number of people who attempt suicide via gun accidentally blow off part of their face, but manage to live. One may end up drowning in their own blood because they've destroyed their nasal cavity — hardly an easy death. Since the body is almost guaranteed to flinch by reflex in response to the gun going off, there's a very good chance that one will miss the brain entirely. Or they might hit it, but only in an area that affects higher reasoning, leaving them alive, but paralyzed, mentally challenged, or both. Yes, yes, you don't even need the seat of your soul and personality to live. See also one of the most famous cases of surviving this kind of brain trauma, Phineas Gage. If you use a certain kind of gun/ammo with bullets that aren't strong enough to penetrate the skull, you can have the bullet hit the back of your skull and bounce off, ricocheting around your brain and slicing it up. Likewise, gunshots to other parts of the body often miss the organ being aimed for, leaving the person to bleed to death or disabled. Those who aim for the heart may miss and hit the lungs instead, for instance. This effectively causes a person to drown in their own blood.
  • Cutting the wrists. Definitely not as easy as sliding a knife across your arm. To even be effective, a person has to hack their way down through tendons and muscle to reach the artery, which takes time. NOT painless, NOT quick and scary as hell. Even if one successfully cuts open the artery and does all the things people do to prevent clotting, they're probably not going to die (even if they're not found by anyone after they pass out). It will, however, leave an enormous scar down the arm, as well as permanent nerve damage and less flexibility in the skin, leading to a constant feeling of 'tightness' in the arm.
  • Hanging. This can certainly kill a person, but not always painlessly. Suicide victims rarely succeed in breaking their own neck, which would cause an instant death. Instead, they hang there, slowly asphyxiating. The pain is excessive (imagine your entire body being held up by a noose around your neck), not to mention the sheer panic one experiences — survival instinct kicks in automatically, even if the person really does want to kill their self, as they hang there and die. Plus, if they're rescued before they die, brain damage is a very likely possibility. Oh, the corpse of a hanging victim is not very nice to look at, what with the bloated face, the tongue sticking out, the burst capillaries in the eyes and the blood pooling in their legs and forearms.
  • Drowning. Panicking under water is not a fun way to die, and inhaling water is painful.
  • To sum it all up:
    ''Razors pain you;
    Rivers are damp;
    Acids stain you;
    And drugs cause cramp.
    Guns aren't lawful;
    Nooses give;
    Gas smells awful;
    You might as well live.''

    — Dorothy Parker
• A recent psychological study indicates that the idea that deals the worst response (from a handful given to test subjects) is Pointy objects being pushed through the smallest holes in the body, namely the nipples Try to think about that and NOT get chills.
• Harlequin fetuses. Just...ick.
• Seeing your own bones or blood after an injury.
• There are over 200 dead bodies littering Mt. Everest. Above a certain point, it is unsafe to bring them down, so they are pretty much left to waste away.
• The physical effects of bulimic and anorexic behavior.

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RLNF Animals

Hey kids, remember that scary part in Finding Nemo? Well, fish like that are really out there. And this one ain't the worst of it...

"Apparently, Nature evolved humans so that she would have something to scream at all of her other creations."
— Cracked

"DAMN, NATURE! YOU SCARY!"

—Family Guy

Some animals just make anything better. Others, make anything scary.

TV tropes would like to remind you that the animals listed are just that: animals, not horrible monsters that should be killed with fire. They are also not really after your blood. Except for the blood sucking ones.

Note to All Tropers: Enough with the side conversations on this page, take it to the discussion boards. And make sure your entry isn't already here before you add: there's already a lot of bugs, for instance.

See also Everything's Worse with Bears. And bees. And sharks.

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[[folder:Extinct]]

• Two Words: ''Tyrannosaurus rex''. To put it bluntly, we're talking about an animal that was 36-42 feet long, 11 feet tall, weighed 6 tons, and had razor-sharp serrated teeth that could grow to the size of a banana. Oh, and it gets even better. The jaws of a T-rex were strong enough to crush bone and are considered one of the strongest sets of jaws known to ever exist in the animal kingdom (Only the prehistoric fish, Dunkleosteus, had a stronger bite). Be thankful it's extinct.
  • T. Rex definitely was a badass. But it was hardly alone in being Nightmare Fuel. See this chart? Yeah, I'm glad those thing's aren't around anymore.
  • It gets worse. There's now evidence that suggests that T.rex could run fast. So, now you got a 42 ft long, 6 ton predator that may have been able to run up to 20 mph and had bone-crushing jaws.
  • It gets even worse. There's evidence that Tyrannosaurus Rexes hunted in packs. Sending the faster juveniles up ahead to herd the prey into the jaws of the adults.
    • Mustgofastermustgofastermustgofaster...
  • It gets worse. Paleontologists think they could grow even larger than 42 feet. There could be a 50 foot specimen buried out there, or even a 60 foot!
• Everyone, meet Megalania, the gigantic prehistoric cousin of the Komodo Dragon. Again, be thankful its extinct
  • There have been reports of a komodo dragon like lizard in the Indonesian islands, but 2 or 3 times it's size. It's now a cryptozoological animal.
• There once lived a prehistoric crocodile known as Deinosuchus (the name itself means "terrible crocodile") that was estimated to have been 30 to 50 feet long and weighed up to nine tons, with a bite force even greater than T. rex, which ate dinosaurs. Have fun swimming, kids.
  • Similarly: Sarcosuchus, a.k.a. "Supercroc." This time, you can't even take solace in the off-chance the size might be overestimated, because some very complete skeletons have been found.
• What about Dunkleosteus? This big fish had a bite force of over 8,000 pounds per inch (greater than Tyrannosaurus Rex!) on the tip of its teeth. The worst part? Its hunting tactic was to open its mouth so quickly as to suck in prey moving in due to the pressure change - so you would be sucked into a gape that could chop pretty much anything in half and you wouldn't be able to escape.
  • It doesn't help that it looks roughly like a Rancor crossed with a gigantic piranha.
• Marsupial lions. Ice Age Australia's answer to the Sabre-tooth cats. The biggest, Thylacoleo, was about the size of a large cougar, and could disembowel prey with its claws, and deigned to rip off limbs in favour of snipping them off with its teeth. It also apparently dropped from trees onto its prey. Even scarier, it may still exist.
  • So wait, drop bears actually existed?
  • At least they look somewhat cute and cuddly, being cats, still. They aren't as lethal, but having a coconut crab do a paradrop on your head is pretty freakish. Especially if it whacks you with said coconut before hand.
    • They're not cats. A better comparison would be giant killer wombats (or maybe even koalas) with sickle clawed thumbs. Yes, that's right, marsupial lions come from the "herbivore" side of the marsupial family tree.
• Gastric-brooding Frogs. Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Ew.
  • They've been gone for a while, actually... we drove them to extinction back in the eighties. At least all you easily-disgusted folks can rejoice now.
    • Except the Pharmaceutical Industry, who, realising that young frog's ability to suppress the digestive fluids of its parent could've yielded potentially life-saving drugs, are not exactly rejoicing. They're offering big bucks to anyone who can capture a live one, which it doesn't look like is gonna happen.
    • Unless of course, zombie frogs.
• Mosasaurs. Enormous, carnivorous, aquatic lizards that hunt in packs. Fortunately, they're extinct now, but they were seriously scary.
  • It doesn't help that one mosasaur fossil was found with the remains of a shark, a seabird, a bony fish and another mosasaur the size of an alligator in its stomach area.
• Megalodon. Prehistoric shark with a mouth a grown man could stand up in. Extrapolating from its fossilized jaws, paleontologists have estimated it to be around 50 to 60 feet long. A creature that big would probably eat adult whales. And if that wasn't scary enough, if it was anything like its smaller modern cousin, the Great White Shark, it could breach like a whale. Imagine, if you will, a shark the size of a Greyhound bus taking to the air with a whale in its mouth. Sweet dreams....
  • We're gonna need a bigger boat.
  • It's called a polaris breach, for those interested. Great whites aren't the only creature in the sea to do it, but are certainly the most deadly. The last run of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel showcased what seal nightmares are made of.
  • Of course, the proper Nightmare Retardant for that would be the not-so-classic John Barrowman flick Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Then you will never be able to hear that creature's name without giggling.
  • Speaking of sharks breaching the surface [2]
  • One of the nature channels has recently been airing trailers suggesting that Megalodon might actually still be out there. Think about that for a while.
    • The book "Meg" by Steve Alten is about exactly that. But, in that it escapes and proceeds to rape the oceanic world. With its teeth.
  • How big were these? They made the fearsome Great White Shark look tiny. They made the not-so-fearsome (but massive) Whale Shark look tiny.
    • Here's a chart◊ for comparison. The green one is a great white. The red one is conservative estimate for a megalodon.
  • You know how museums have that tendency to put animal jaws on the floor and basically go, "Hey, guys, look how easily this thing could eat you?" Well, this one had freaking Megalodon jaws. Looking into a pair of jaws that are about half your size again is...disconcerting to say the least.
    • Think about it that way: A great white will have a bony meal out of you. For that thing? ''You're a pretzel.'
  • Speaking of large sea animals, scientists have recently found the skull of a large whale similar to the sperm whale about sixty feet long with tusk-like teeth about fourteen inches long. They were thought to have eaten other whales and the fangs would've ripped out huge chunks of the unfortunate victims. Their given name? Leviathan melvillei.
    • It also lived alongside Megalodon. Two giant ocean predators with mouths bristling with teeth, one a lone ambush assassin and the other a pack-hunting determinater. And evidence shows Megalodon and Leviathan preyed on each other.
  • Speaking of Everything's Even Worse with Sharks, meet Helicoprion and Edestus. Those jaws...
• Dromaeosaurs (better known as "Raptors" to your average person...Ya know, like Velociraptor, Utahraptor, Deinonychus, etc.) are quite terrifying when one thinks about it. Sure, a good number of species are small, but they also have razor-sharp claws and teeth, a pair of huge scythe-like talons on their hind feet, and its been theorized that several species were highly intelligent social predators.
  • Try most. At the very least Deinonychus, the bugger who inspired the monstrous raptors of Jurassic Park, hunted in packs. And while many people consider dinosaurs to be less bad ass with feathers, well, there is a little something called Wing-Assisted-Incline-Flight or something. Quails use it. It allows them to run up straight inclines. Ladies and gentlemen, we have Spider-Raptor.
    • There isn't any conclusive evidence of them hunting in groups per se. A group of "raptors" scavenging or mobbing (as opposed to the coordinated group hunting we see in canids) is just as if not more likely. But when it comes down to being ripped apart by a dozen feathered fiends the unfortunate prey item probably doesn't care about the difference.
    • Speaking of extinct, feathery deathbringers, let me introduce you to the Terror Birds. Basically like a Chocobo except they actually existed. And could probably rip apart anything they damn well wanted to, including horses.
    • Jesus, that thing looks like a devil dodo (doesn't seem to be any direct relation, though). And one subfamily is named Titanis, because of how big it was.
    • Here's a flying menace for you. Meet the Haast's Eagle. This raptor was large and powerful enough to take down moas with ease. And it existed when humans started settling in New Zealand. It was a bird DESIGNED TO KILL PEOPLE.
    • It gets worse. Much worse. Recent studies suggest that Sinornithosaurus millenii, a small dromaeosaur that lived in Asia, was venomous. That's right, not only were "Raptors" intelligent, fast, and had razor-sharp claws...but now they're poisonous. Oh, Crap!...
    • It's said that the evidence is weak on that one, so you don't really have to worry about venomous "raptors". Yet. And, fortunately they weren't as intelligent as some movies show; they couldn't have held a candle in the intelligence department to nearly all modern birds. Also, there were in fact many, many other dinosaurs (including the comparatively much larger Tyrannosaurus rex) that were better adapted for running than the dromaeosaurids. Chances are they could still run faster than you, however. And any cassowary will tell you that you don't have to be the most intelligent birdbrain to be scary... Not to mention, dromaeosaurids may have been good at climbing trees.
    • They may have vomited food pellets like owls, which is either Nightmare Retardant or Nausea Fuel.
    • It Got Worse: Some of them (or at least this one) could fly. You better run.
    • Oh yes, and they got big. Look at this size chart◊ for Utahraptor. The green is a conservative estimate of its size.
    • Try Megaraptor. Utahraptor has nothing on these things. Go find a ruler. That is the space between the sickle claw's tip and where it connects to the toe.
• Sea Scorpions. Can you imagine an amphibious scorpion the size of a crocodile? I can't without getting the willies.
• Entelodonts. Take a wild boar or a javelina, and give it steroids. A lot of steroids. Enough to make it the size of a bull or rhinoceros. Now, strip off most of its fur, and change its teeth from that of an omnivore into things designed to shear and tear flesh. And take away most of its omnivorous tendencies. Pure carnivore baby. Not to mention that they were the first animals to develop the traditional artiodactyl-style hoof, which made them incredibly fast. Oh yeah, and they ate rhinos on a regular basis.
• Holy shit, Andrewsarchus. Just....Andrewsarchus. It's hard to believe this beast belonged to a family closely related to even-toed artiodactyls (think deer, sheep, and cattle), since its gigantic head alone was over three feet long and it was the largest carnivorous land mammal that walked the Earth. This page from the manga "Eden no Ori" sums up its size quite nicely.
• Hatzegopteryx may not look physically terrifying, but once you realise some things you would be thankful things like that are extinct. First of all, it was basically like a giant stork in habits, catching prey with the beak. In Hatzegi's case, a beak longer than the jaws of the largest theropod dinosaurs (aka T. rex had a shorter snout). And that pterosaurs was taller than a giraffe. Considering birds like herons can swallow things as proportionally big as rabbits, and since reptilian (including avian) esophagi are very tough (turkeys can swallow blades and not suffer ill effects), Hatzegopteryx could easily grab a person with the jaws, swallow him/her alive and you wouldn't even be able to fight back, only to find your doom at the digestive juices.
• The Tasmanian Tiger◊, which can distend its jaws far beyond the capabilities of those of any animal other than a snake. I am considering a campaign to Tasmania to make sure that there aren't any more alive, because they could apparently swim...
  • Apparently, thanks to advancements in technology, it could be possible to bring the species back. They're attempting this now. You're welcome.
• The Permian Extinction. The worst extinction event in the history of earth. The closest life ever came to ceasing to exist all together. Over 90% of all species on earth vanished. It gets even more disturbing when you hear the details. Of all the dozens groups of reptiles, only a handful survived. Synapsids: aka, “mammal-like reptiles”. The missing link between mammals and reptiles. These creatures basically ruled the earth, very diverse. Both tiny creatures, and mega fauna rivaling the dinosaurs and mammals after them. The only ones who survived where tiny burrowing creatures who eventually became mammals. Anapsids: There used to be 100s of different kinds of armored reptiles roaming around. Only the turtles survived. Archosaurs: The common ancestor of birds, dinosaurs, crocodilians, and pterosaurs. Before the extinction they where tiny scavengers. Afterwards they exploded from lack of completion. Lepidosauria: The Ancestors of lizards and snakes. Sphenodontia: The Ancestors of modern tuataras. Of all the Amphibians that evolved since they first left the ocean, only the Lissamphibia survived. Crocodilians where only able to become crocodilians because the giant Croc-like Amphibians died out. Reptilomorphs aka, “reptile-like amphibians.” The missing link, and the most successful group of amphibians at the time, Where completely wiped out. Trilobites: some of the oldest and most successful ocean life at the time. More successful than fish. Completely wiped out. Insects didn’t make it out okay either. All six-winged insects vanished. Their cousins, the non-insect Hexapods vanished, except the wood lice. Fossil evidence shows that for almost a million years after the extinction, the most common form of life on earth was fungus. The icing on the cake? Unlike the Dinosaurs and the massive impact Crater, scientists have NO CLUE what caused it, or if it could ever happen again. There is not a shread of evidence of anything that could have caused it on earth, leading some to theorize it was a local supernova, but the truth is we have no idea.
  • The current most likely theory is that all the landmasses coming together caused widespread "desertification", quite literally turning vast amounts of what was previously rainforest and swampland into arid, nasty environments few creatures could adapt to. The oceans weren't safe, either; with only one landmass, currents settled and the oceans stagnated. Almost every ocean-going creature suffocated due to lack of oxygen. Other theories include a flood basalt, which is basically a supervolcanic eruption that lasts centuries. There's no word to describe just how insanly nightmarish a flood basalt eruption is. First the name. It causes a litteral flood of basaltic rock over the area it happens. Next how it occurs. Triggered by the massive tectonic stress brought about by a single landmass subducting ocean plates on all sides, a massive chunk of the earth's crust crumbles off and falls into the mantle. This forces the magma upwards to the surface. How big is it? Well the largest volacano on earth today is the size of Hawaii's large island. The Permian flood basalt, the Siberian traps are the size of the continental United States. And the eruption lasted for 100s, if not 1000s of years nonstop. What happens after it's done? Aside from the aformentioned flood of basalt, imagine all that volcanic gas. Now imagine that gas is methane, one of the most potent green house gases that occur on earth. Now imagine not only the sun's heat, but the volcanic heat trapped in the atmosphere at the same time. The allways popular "huge asteroid" is another theory, as is a local supernova. My favorite theory is that the single landmass and single ocean caused the planet to become tidally locked, meaning one side always facing the sun, one side always facing away. The kicker? The numbers don't really add up in any model.
    • Or it could be ALL of them.
    • It was obviously The Reapers.
• Of course some of the creatures that the Permian Extinction got rid of where pretty scary.
  • Mammal like reptiles? Here's an image for you. Picture a creature with neither fur nor scales, the jaw of a crocodile with the teeth of a saber-cat. Now imagine it's the size of rhino, and has fully upright legs built for running. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Gorgonopsids!◊
  • Reptile like amphibians? You're probably thinking "Come on! What's a frog gonna do?" this guy ain't no frog!
  • Of course some of the Archosaurs that replaced them were scary too. meet Postosuchus. Best described as a fully upright 15 foot long land crocodile.
• The Titanoboa. A snake that grew up to 15 meters in length and, come on, it's called the Titanoboa! So, it's kind of like taking your average boa constrictor or anaconda, whatever, and drilling it up to eleven. Be thankful it no longer exists.
• During the Carboniferous era, we had Meganeura, a dragonfly the size of an eagle and Arthropluera, a millepede that's 6 feet long. SIX FEET LONG!
• Wow, I'm surprised no one's mentioned Spinosaurus yet! Take a crocodile, give it plenty of steroids, give it a six-foot high sail on its back and put it on two legs. Scared yet? Here's something for you. See this chart? Spinosaurus is red. Tyrannosaurus Rex is the purple one.
  • Luckily, Spinosaurus has it's fair share of Nightmare Retardant. Spinosaurus primarily ate fish, so T.rex would probably kill one most of the time, if they were to fight. It wasn't a super predator like it's often portrayed as.
  • That said, it is also thought to have taken down medium sized prey as well. So that means it would probably be eating grisly bears if it were still alive. Not to mention this fish it ate could very well have been sharks.
    • it dies if you make it roll over since of said fin being evolution's crowning [3]
• Of course! How could I forget Deinocheirus? Its eight-foot long arm and hand bones were found in 1970 (the creature's name means "terrible hand"). Nothing else from the creature has been found yet, and those arms have been a mystery ever since. If it's any help, their owner would have to be tyrannosaur-sized at the very least. Have a look◊ and make up your own mind about the creature.
• Therizinosaurus. On the one hand, it was an herbivore and probably wouldn't see you as food. On the other hand...It had 3 foot long claws on its hands which it used to defend itself agaisnt predators.
• Carnotaurus. The name means "meat-eating bull". Here's a picture◊. The tiny arms acting as Nightmare Retardant for you? Okay, let me fix that; while the bite force of the Carnotaurus was believed to be less than that of Allosarurus, it's been theorized that they made up for that by beating their upper jaws against their prey like a fucking hatchet.
• Large ceratopsians like Triceratops and Styracosaurus. We usually don't think of them as scary due to being herbivores, however, an adult could gore a tyrannosaur to death with those giant horns, let alone a human. Also, ceratopsians may have been omnivores, not herbivores.
• Stegosaurus. A dinosaur the size of an elephant with a built-in medieval flail and a brain so small it probably indiscriminately whacked anything that crossed it's path. But as bad as Stegosaurus was, it has nothing on the pure demonic nightmare fuel that is Kentrosaurus◊.

Living

• Ladies and gentlemen, the hatchet fish.◊
  • This fish makes the Exorcist look like a puppy.
    • Max von Sydow?
  • I take your hatchet fish and raise it with the viper fish◊. SWEET JESUS, WHY DOES THAT THING EXIST?!
  • I see your viper fish (and wish I didn't) and raise you a fangtooth◊. It's just a mouth with fins.
  • I see all of your fish and raise you a snaggletooth◊. It looks like it dines on souls.
• You will never be able to look at a lizard the same way after my bio teacher showed us this.
  • Warning: Not for the faint of heart! Monitor
  • Here's another one for good measure
  • Ugh, you can hear it screaming from within its gullet!
  • If anything stotats would better quality in that department.
• This dog◊.
  • That dog died a few years go. It was blind for quite some time; the joke was that it got its sight back, looked in a mirror and dropped dead of shock.
  • To be clear, the dog was voted "Ugliest Dog In The World." Before its death, it was a 15-year-old Chinese hairless crested. Its eyes are white becaus it's blind.
• Goblin sharks have protrusible jaws. Creepy!
  • a bit less terrifying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdJRb7lVoGc&feature=related
• Earthworms and parasitic tapeworms (and hookworms). I can't even look at them prior to screaming and running away.
  • Why are Earthworms scary? Appearances maybe, but they're one of the best creatures out there, helping fertilize soil and such. It even has a digestive system, and respiratory system and circulatory system. It's a pretty humane creature. Tapeworms on the other hand are horrifiying, trying to suck out your nutrients without giving anything back and worst of all, it can GROW 8 METERS LONG IN YOUR VERY OWN BODY!! HOLY!!
  • Ascaris worms (you know, the ones in your intestines that looked like slimy living pasta, and can actually accumulate as a bolus to be an eldritch perversion against the Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, and whose eggs are fucking microscopic)
    • It's even worse with the Guinea Worm. Seriously, this worm is really a Nightmare Fuel, every major health organization vowed to push it to extinction.
    • You see the Guinea worm is native to Africa, the ecosystem that humans evolved in. As such they prey exclusively on humans, and where thus introduced to other places by traveling with (read inside) humans. The reason Africa's such a nasty place is because it's humanity's natural habitat, and thus creatures evolved there with humans in mind, where as other continents are nicer because we're invasive species in those environments. While this has led to some good things (the honey guide bird evolved symbiotic behavior with humans, it leads us to the beehive, we get the honey, they get the larva), mostly it just amounts to creatures that can kill us. In other words, it's what environmentalists are asking for when they say humans should "live in harmony with nature". Just keep that in mind.
    • The fact that many people don't know that there's a worm living inside them makes them extremely scary. Parasitic worms were voted the #1 Most Extreme Horror in The Most Extreme series.
• Three Words: Human Botfly Larvae. Disturbing and literally sickening to see one being removed: true. Now try not imagining hearing chewing inside your head if you ever discover one embedded in your scalp.
• Yuck, what a thick, puffy tongue this fish has... Wait, it's got beady little eyes! picture OHMYGODTHATSNOTATONGUE!◊

  • Sounds like some sicko's Literal-Minded parody of Grima Wormtongue.
  • It may or may not help the OHGODOHGOD factor to note that the isopod doesn't actually make life any more difficult for the fish. Because it sits where the tongue was, the fish can still eat just fine. Still, Jesus God is it creepy.

  • And then there's this little guy... "Let's go swimming. I insist."
  • Also, real-life Xenomorphs. Sweet dreams!
  • Think about it this way. On the wiki page, it listed fictional parasitic insects, including little old Uroborus and Las Plagas. Imagine what would happen if these guys evolved a little. You have a stomach ache...is it just bad food, or did an enemy dose you with a little...Uroborus.
  • Well, you'd certainly know if you started growing tentacles yeck... those Uroboros tentacles are all slimey and deadly (goddamn Wesker)
• Certain species of snake. Also certain members of the spider order such as Tarantula, black widow, and the trapdoor spider.
  • Don't worry; be happy!
  • What's just as frightening is their venom, and more specifically, what that venom can do to a person. Some kinds, if they don't kill you, cause the skin around the bite to rot, paralyze and slowly suffocate you or (depending on the nature of the neurotoxin) cause seizures, make your blood congeal in your veins... So kids, if you see a snake in your yard, stay the fuck away from it, and for the love of Christ, DON'T PICK IT UP!
  • Did someone say trapdoor spider? (Not safe for arachnophobes)
  • here is a video of an island full of snakes. "one snake for every pace you walk". It doesn't help that they are some of the most venemous snakes in the world.
  • Back to the subject of snakes, even if you're not scared of them, how easy it is to buy and own some of the most venomous ones in the world should be enough to skeeve you out.
• Scorpions.
• Back to spiders - some of them are social, weaving common webs of many spiders. How many can they be? Anelosimus Eximius, for instance, bands into colonies of up to 50 000 spiders. I'll let that sink in.
• Think about the things that penguins have to go through when they expect a chick. The mother goes out to find food, leaving the fathers behind to look after the egg and keep it warm, or else the egg will crack and the contents will become frozen solid, killing the baby.
  • To make matters worse, while the mother penguin looks for food, they are at risk of being eaten by predators such as leopard seals. Sometimes it's not just the mother that gets eaten, but her unborn chick, too! Scared yet?
• Some creatures that live in the ocean. The king of them all is the great white shark with its Slasher Smile and vicious nature. Then there's piranhas that can render any living creature- even a cow to a skeleton within seconds (Although they can only do this when practically starved to death) They're still fierce scavengers though. Then there's the anglerfish.
  • How about the goliath tigerfish? Take a piranha and scale it up to 5 feet long.
  • Great whites hunt like freaking serial killers, according to some recent studies. This just makes them even more terrifying.
    • Here's something. Recently, off the eastern coast of Australia (where else?), fishermen pulled a 3 metre (10 foot) great white shark onboard their boat. That's a good size, as great whites go, but the shark was dead, so that wasn't a problem. What was a problem was that the shark had been BITTEN CLEAN IN HALF BY SOMETHING TWICE AS LARGE. And this is just near a very popular swimming beach. Just have a think about that for a bit. Who wants to go swimming?
  • On the subject of "Some creatures that live in the ocean," witness this article from The Other Wiki. "The source of the sound remains unknown...it matches the audio profile of a living creature but there is no known animal that could have produced the sound...If the sound did come from an animal, it would reportedly have to be several times the size of the largest known animal on Earth, the Blue Whale." Real-life Cloverfield monster, anyone? Gaaahhhh. I am getting creeped out just posting this.
    • Just for reasons of balance, this from the same wiki: "An oft repeated claim is that it matches the audio profile of a living creature though this view is primarily held by cryptozoologists and is not popular among mainstream scientists."
    • This is no longer true. A current look at the article actually has several cited references to an NOAA marine oceanographer saying that it is likely animal in nature...
    • What gets me is that where the sound was located is very close to where the city of R'lyeh is supposed to be located.
    • The file that's usually played is the sped up one. Just try listening to it slowed down to realtime. (Large File.)
• The things that go on inside you. Also, "Beauty is skin deep" is a horrible lie if you use a microscope.
• The Candiru. According to the page on them in That Other Wiki, Candiru hunt other fish by sensing the urea coming from a fish's gills. The opened urethra during urination is big enough for a candiru to get inside. It can be easily avoided by wearing a bathing suit while in the river. Or by not swimming and urinating in Amazon river at the same time.
  • What about its relative, the Candiru-Acù? Victims are eaten alive, from the inside out, by up to 100 of the fish. And by 'eaten alive', I mean 'completely hollowed out'.
• Have fun reading the Cracked article of The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World.
  • The giant bees attacking the normal bees was pretty much just Demonic Spider vs Goddamn Bats.
• Cracked articles, eh? Then we just have to mention 7 Terrifying Giant Versions of Disgusting Critters.
• Cracked articles just add 13 creatures to nightmare...
• Some wasps are particularly evil. Known as parasitoid wasps, they will find a live caterpillar, temporarily paralyze it, lay eggs inside the body, and allow them to hatch. The larvae will then take control of the caterpillar by devouring unnecessary organs, modifying its glands, and directly manipulating its nervous system. The host is ordered to do nothing but eat and eat until it's ten times the size of a normal caterpillar. After a set amount of time, the larvae mature and then burrow their way out of the still living animal in order to infect new hosts with their own eggs. The caterpillar has been so infected by the wasp's hormones that even as it's dying it's forced to weave the wasps a cocoon and attack any predators who threaten them. If that won't give you cold sweats, nothing will.

  • Yep, parasitic wasps inspired Alien. Strange but true. Even Darwin was freaked out by them, saying, 'I'm not quite sure I can believe in a benevolent God after studying the life-cycle of this creature.'
  • Video!
  • The TEETH! Holy shit on a stick, the TEETH! And how did they film on the inside of the poor caterpillar!? UGH!
  • Oh, but it gets better! People all over the world breed these little bastards on special farms and send them out to specially destroy caterpillars that eat timber. That's right. We're endorsing these parasitic monstrosities and having them take out creatures whose only crime was feeding themselves. Do I even need to say it?
  • I think Szayel was based with the parasitic wasp in mind.

  • Meet the Emerald Wasp. It doesn't just knock out a cockroach and put an egg on it; it chemically lobotomizes the roach, remote controls it to its nest, rips off its feelers, and then lays an egg on it.
  • Yellowjackets: Other wasps only eat insects. Yellowjackets eat everything! If you ever got buzzed during a barbecue, it was probably them. And you were probably right to freak out; they have the Hair-Trigger Temper of the insect world. Not as bad as Africanized killer bees, but they make up for it by being EVERYWHERE. They are the most common species of wasp in the world. And, possibly, the most intelligent. The freakiest thing? As I mentioned before, they buzz barbecues, because THEY EAT MEAT. They are CARRION EATERS. And unlike other scavengers, being so small, the lack of meat on our bones compared to other animals does not deter them. I read somewhere that there's a certain cycle of insects that appear when a body is dumped in the wilderness. Guess which ones show up to consume thy flesh!
• Yep, hornets in Australia too. Helicopter gunships of the insect world, and their reproductive strategy is straight out of Aliens. Even the most diehard arachnophile would be squicked watching a hornet drag a full-size huntsman spider into its burrow. Alive, paralysed and impregnated with hornet eggs.
  • Asian Giant Hornet. It can outrun you. 30 of these can eradicate an entire hive of 30,000 bees. It has flesh-dissolving venom. Quoted from Cracked:
    "It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish we were making that up for, you know, dramatic effect because goddamn, what a terrible thing a three-inch acid-shooting hornet would be, you know? Oh, hey, did we mention it shoots it into your eyes? Or that the poison also has a pheromone cocktail in it that'll call every hornet in the hive to come over and sting you until you are no longer alive? Think you can outrun it? It can fly 50 miles in a day. It'd be nice to say something reassuring at this point, like "Don't worry, they only live on top of really tall mountains where nobody wants to live," but no, they live all over the goddamned place, including outside Tokyo. Forty people die like that every year, each of them horribly".
    • If you're afraid of the Asian giant hornet, just think about these little guys: I present Apis cerana japonica◊, the Japanese honeybee. Almost cute, isn't it? Asian giant hornets can decimate colonies of European honeybees with ease even though they are outnumbered hundreds of times over, but Japanese honeybees have an interesting defense: they swarm over the invading hornets, to the point where the hornet can't even move, and vibrate their flight muscles, which causes the temperature in the center of this dog- er, beepile, to pass 47 degress Celsius. The honeybees can endure this heat, the hornet cannot. They are essentially roasted alive. It's a CMoA for the Japanese honeybees, and a Nightmare Fuel death for the hornets.
  • Pepsis Wasp, aka Tarantula Hawk, so called because it eats tarantulas. Not only that, its sting, while not that hazardous, is so painful, all you can do is lie down and scream.
• The stag beetle is so-named for the large, antler-like mandibles possessed by the males of many species. It easily qualifies as nightmare fuel for the same reason. Worse, they're big, some around four inches long. They usually don't harm people, though.
  • In Japan, they're even collected and kept as pets. If you're not used to insects larger than the size of your thumb, you should stay away. YMMV though.
• An even more horrifying creature with comparatively large jaws is the antlion—if you're an ant, since they're not very big. Adults are relatively unremarkable, dragonfly-like insects, but the young are lethal predators that dig pits in the sand, waiting at bottom of the pit to eat whatever insects fall in with their big jaws. If God wanted to write a horror story and market it towards arthropods, I can think of few better ideas.
• Solifugids, also known as camel spiders, though they aren't spiders. Do I even need to explain this? Possibly the most traumatizing, monstrous arachnids ever, which, given what we know about arachnids in general, says a lot.
  • Want to know something creepier? While they generally don't attack humans, they use hair as nesting materials, so one of the things they do to sleeping humans is creep up on them and snip off locks of hair like some demented stalker...
• The goddamn Surinam toad. It's an amphibian that embeds its eggs in its back... and eventually, its young rip themselves fully-formed from their mother's skin. Yeah, it's perfectly natural, but just the thought of it happening to a human being...
• Komodo Dragons. Though they have both venom and septic saliva, they are not believed to play an important role in predation and the idea that they will deliberately envenomate/infect their prey and wait for it to die arose from skepticism from scientists at the turn of the century towards the idea that a mere reptile could dominate an entire ecosystem. The truth is a lot less convoluted. The Komodo Dragon is a cunning ambush hunter that takes down prey with good old fashioned brute force; they're basically land-crocodiles. Though Komodo Dragons have jaw muscles weaker than a housecat's, their teeth are razor sharp and their neck muscles are enormously powerful, allowing them to easily dispatch prey with slashing bites that cause the victim to die from blood-loss and shock within seconds. Smaller prey (such as deer and wild boar) are swept off their feet by a blow from the dragon's whiplike tail, and then seized, instantly killed via thrashing, and are often swallowed whole. To contend with larger prey, such as Water Buffalo, the Dragon will bring the animal down by lascerating its achilles tendon so it can't run away, and then disembowel it. The animal is eaten while it's still alive.
  • Komodo Dragons have also been known to harass pregnant deer, startling them into aborting their unborn offspring. The Dragon can then help itself to a meal of placenta and tender fetal-meat.
• Crocodiles. Damn crocodiles. Nightmarish appearance, fast, invisible in a foot of muddy water. Many varieties consider humans to be prey. They can drag you under the water in about two second and eat you. They are intelligent and can learn human routines. They will wait a week to get a bite of you. Those eyes!
  • It gets even better. Crocodiles are capable of moving twice their body length in a single second. It's not uncommon to hear tales of someone being taken so quickly that you could double-take and miss it. In fact, one story where a famous American model got eaten was unusual because they actually had the chance to see it coming.
  • Don't think it can get any worse? Well, it just did. Meet Gustave, a 22 ft long 2,000 pound Nile Crocodile who is notorious for killing and eating over 300 people.
    • Oh, and did we mention? He's! Still! ALIVE! That's right, Gustave is still lurking in Africa waiting for his next victim.
    • There's also the fact that his body is ridden with scars from bullet wounds. Three on his side and one on his head. Not only is he a giant killer crocodile, he's an unstoppable giant killer crocodile.
    • The "most recent" sighting was back in 2008. If that was the most recent, how are we to know he hasn't been spotted since? Has he been killing his witnesses, and no one's noticed?
• The Palisades Rathouse might qualify as nightmare fuel. Incidentally it also provides two examples of the Crazy Cat Lady trope who have obsessed over a different animal...
  • The Mülheim Cobra house! OK, just one cobra, but they literally teared apart the innards of the house, and still couldn't find the damn snake. Volunteers for one night in there please raise their hands!
• The solenodon◊, a relative of the mole and shrew, can be quite creepy◊ or unsettling◊. That is, until you see the cuban◊ variety◊. Should I add that all solenodons have a poisonous bite?
• Sea urchins. Just ... motherfarking sea urchins. They are living, breathing balls of spines which live on the ocean floor. Many of them live close to the shore and it's hard to see underwater, so inevitably some unlucky beachgoers will end up stepping on one. This results in a badly injured foot and a visit to the hospital.
  • Hey, just imagine if some wacky mad scientists gave them brains...and a hatred of humanity! TRIBBLES OF DOOOOOOOOOOM. Though honestly death-by-urchin can very easily also extend into ridiculous Narm.
  • It gets worse. Because sea urchin spines are made of calcite, they snap easily because of the alignment of the calcite crystals, leaving part of it wedged in your open wound. The best way to deal with it? Push the spine right into your body. The calcite will dissolve in your bloodstream and the wound will heal normally. Have fun, kids.
    • The way this is usually accomplished is by breaking off the parts of the spines that are still outside the skin and crushing the parts that are embedded with something blunt and sturdy (a rock works fine if there's nothing else to hand) to break them up and drive them a bit deeper. It's painful, but not completely horrific. However, the ocean being full of living stuff as it is, these kind of injuries do have a tendency to get infected. A good way to counteract that is by sterilizing the injury somehow.
• Jaguars. They're both awesome and freaky because they kill their prey by biting through its skull. Their jaws are powerful enough to crack open a glyptodon's skull. And for those of you who don't know paleontology, glyptodonts are essentially mammalian versions of a panzer tank. Google it and see. Do NOT tick off kitty!
• Big Cats, fierce predators with strong jaws, razor-sharp claws, huge strength (a tiger could knock you unconcius with one swipe of it's paw), super speed and stealth (if a big cat stalked you in a remote area, you wouldn't see it until it was too late). Some big cats have been known to kill buffaloes, rhinos, hippos, pythons, crocodiles, wolves and even bears. To make things worse, big cat attacks are on the rise.
• Allow me to introduce you to the Dosidicus gigas: the Humboldt squid, growing up to seven feet long and, alone among the invertebrates, hunting prey in packs of as many as 1200 individuals. Their tentacles are lined with teeth, they feed on each other when wounded or frenzied, they are highly aggressive against unfamiliar objects, they attack humans on a regular basis, and their natural habitat ranges from the Tierra del Fuego to coastal California and spreading north. And you thought it was safe to go back in the water...
  • Ocean acidification seems to be killing them off, though.
  • Colossal Squid. They have GIANT HOOKS on their tentacles, which they can rotate 180 degrees. And they are up to 46 feet long.
  • Cephalopods in general. As awesome as I think they are, they are also damn creepy. They're smart. Really, really smart for invertebrates. Most intelligent creatures are birds and mammals, which are pretty similar to us in terms of body structure and biology. But cephalopods are completely alien. The thought of something like that being as smart as a dog is strange. If they would be sapient, what would they think? Most likely we couldn't comprehend it at all. To think modern culture can pervert such beings.....
    • Fun fact! Cephalopods have one large central brain in their head... plus one smaller brain for each of it's arms. So that's 9 brains for an octopus, 11 for a squid. The (now extinct) ammonites had 12 arms, meaning 13 brains. And then there's the eyes...
    • Weird fact about cephalopods: cuttlefish are exellent at blending into their environment by changing their colours to match their background. The thing is, they're also colourblind. How the hell do they know what colour they should change to?
    • Cuttlefish in general are chalk full of Rule of Cool. The flamboyant cuttlefish has very poorly developed fins/whatever. So instead of swimming it uses them to -walk- on the ocean floor. The broad club cuttlefish meanwhile will use it's color changing ability to visually stun/hypnotize uncooperative prey. Though octopi generally get the better known as being intelligent, cuttlefish are