The Shocking and Bizarre

The Duplessis Orphans (French: les Orphelins de Duplessis) were children victimized in a mid-20th century scheme in which approximately 20,000 orphaned children were falsely certified as mentally ill by the government of the province of Quebec, Canada, and confined to psychiatric institutions. The Catholic Church has denied the allegations, and disputes the claims of those seeking financial recompense.

Maurice Duplessis, the premier of Quebec, was a strict Catholic. The Church in Canada, as elsewhere in the world, was inclined to be a caretaker of the poor, alcoholics, unwed mothers, and orphans. He put the schools, orphanages, and hospitals in the hands of religious orders, noting he "trusted them completely". He signed an order-in-council, changing orphanages into hospitals in order to provide them with federal subsidies.

Many children were admitted to orphanages because they were abandoned by their parents, not because they were orphans, but often because their parents were unmarried. Children born out of wedlock suffered from poor care.

The Quebec government received subsidies from the federal government for building hospitals, but hardly anything for having orphanages. Government contributions were only $1.25 a day for orphans, but $2.75 a day for psychiatric patients,[4] providing a strong financial incentive for reclassification.

The Loi sur les Asiles d'aliénés (Lunatic Asylum Act) of 1909 governed mental institution admissions until 1950. The law stated the insane could be committed for three reasons: to care for them, to help them, or as a measure to maintain social order in public and private life. However, the act did not define what a disruption of social order was, leaving the decision to admit patients up to the psychiatrists.

The doctors falsely diagnosed the children with various mental illnesses while ignoring their actual mental state. Children in Quebec orphanages were therefore declared "mentally deficient". Schooling stopped, and the orphans became inmates in a mental institution where they were sexually, physically, and mentally abused by lay monitors and nuns.

In 1889, prolific painter Franz von Stuck created a harrowing piece that depicts German god Wotan leading a procession of the dead. Between the look of anguish on the faces of the damned and the soulless eyes of Wotan, the painting is not exactly something one would hang in their living room.  But here’s the really creepy part: it was painted the year Adolf Hitler was born.

People relate 'The One Story That Gives Me The Chills To This Day’

Was talking to someone who was first on scene to the Virginia Tech massacre. He told me that although the sight of dead bodies was disturbing, what really stays with him was the sound of all the cell phones ringing from people trying to contact them.

When I was 13 my Dad was taken to hospital and my mother joined him leaving me in the house alone sleeping. When they came back they noticed hand print on all the downstairs windows of the house and snow trodden in the porch. They searched the house an nobody was there. The next day we find out our next door neighbour was murdered. I know its not tat scary but when I think how close I came to possibly being murdered or worse it sends chills down my spine.

I was 16/17, and it was very common for my friends and I to go camping in the mountains, bring weed, beer, acid, whatever.  This particular night most of my friends were tripping acid, while I was sipping a beer, enjoying the fire and whatnot, and a bunch of us girls decided to go off somewhere to pee.   We finally come to a small clearing and decide to pee there. Everyone pees and we set off back to camp.

One of my friends hears a low moan coming from the other side of the clearing, tells us to shhh, but we don’t hear it so we urge her to come on. She is intent on investigating, so I decide to go with her . It was really dark out. You could only see as far as the lanterns light hit, so we were off into the unknown.

Our light finally revealed a car. A brand new lookin Subaru, it was really sudden like, and kinda freaked us out so we scamper back to our friends screeching like lil 16/17 yo girls and set off back to our camp all freaked out.

5 years later, I am in nursing school and working as an admin asst in a labor and delivery hospital. I have made a really good friend at work and she and I hang out all the time. One night she comes over and we are drinking and she tells me her dad has been missing since ahe was in high school. She says he had tried to commit suicide a few times and her family figured that he succeeded, but no one ever found him. She secretly was hoping he just ran off to start a new life and maybe she would see him again someday. Not very long after that, a man was found in a stolen subaru up on the mt where we used to camp, he had been there for years, through every season, freezing to hot, there was a hose from the tail pipe to the window, the man had commited suicide.

My grandfather was in the Vietnam War. I remember he told me his unit was walking thru a dense forest, and he dropped his map. Bent over to pick it up, and the solider walking behind him took a bullet to the face. If he hadn’t dropped his map that would be him, and I wouldn’t be here.

A 16 year old girl is house sitting for a family friend. Late one night when she is all alone she hears a weird noise coming from the basement. The noise won’t stop but because she is by herself she decides not to go down in the basment as fear begins to creep into her mind. She calls 911 and explains her story and tells them not to rush as it is probably nothing. Within two minutes several cops are at the door. Four cops make their way down into the basement and one stays with the girl outside. She hears yelling and moments later a deranged looking man is brought up the police. He was found sitting on the washer banging a machete between the washer and dryer trying to lure her down. She asks how they knew he was down there and they said when she called the police and hung up the phone the operator heard a second click. He was listening.

Pardon my lack of knowledge on this event. As I have not researched it. But a ship capsized in the Atlantic Ocean not too long ago, (assuming it wasn’t very deep where they went down, probably off the coast of somewhere) and three days later they send a diving team to recover bodies. They see something moving in the dark, and shine a light to reveal the cook. Alive. Breathing through air trapped in the overturned boat. He had survived three days in there. And when they got him out and recovered, he told them it was pitch black, and silent. Except, he could hear the fish eating the rest of the crew...

Hikers And Backpackers Reveal The Creepiest, Scariest Things They’ve Found In The Wild

Weird latin phrase
The words “Per audacia ad ignotum” drawn in the snow in the absolute middle of nowhere, yet no footprints around them. The words were probably a few hours old. The closest translation we could find was “through audacity towards the unknown.”

This one gets eerie
Took my young children to a cave not far from the house. Popular spot, but we had the place to ourselves. You can walk through it in about 30 minutes without too much difficulty. It has a tiny exit at the opposite end. It was pretty muddy, so we decided to turn around and head back to the entrance. Halfway back, there was a lit candle sitting about eight feet up one side. It was definitely not there on the first trip. I went into full-on protective-dad-mode knowing there was likely someone hiding in the dark while we walked the rest of the way out.

A nightmare
I was backpacking in Yellowstone above the tree line at about 10,500 feet. We are hiking on a ridge above a lake when all the sudden we come across a horse skull. No body just the skull, pretty cool looking. We get to our campsite not to far away from the lake near where we found the horse skull. When we get climb down to the lake we find the body of the horse rotting on the edge of the lake with with negative film strips floating in the water and laying around the shore near the body.

Regular Floridaman
A man wearing a Ku Klux Klan hat with eye holes. Nothing else. Masturbating. I biked passed him in the woods on the way home in 7th grade. Yes, it was Florida.

The content and situation will surprise you
I found a old super 8 camera up on Springer mountain in Georgia. My mom had an old projector so we played the film and it turned out to be a couple having sex in an anthill.

It was a weird, weird sight
A cage. Not like a trapping cage or anything but something that could easily hold 5-10 average sized people.

I was hiking in the mountains just above the house i lived in, at the time, in Missoula, Mt. Took maybe 45 minutes of walking, mostly uphill and without a path, to get to the spot. Round steel bars for the edges and rope instead of chain link for the walls and ceiling. It was all set up just on the far side of the ridgeline i was walking, so it couldn’t be seen I suppose.

Nothing around it, no foot prints or tire tracks or anything. The rope looked undamaged as well. No idea what it was for but it definitely creeped me the fuck out.

“It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it’s told.”
Hiking alone at dusk doing a five mile loop in the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles. I see another lone hiker approaching from the opposite direction. As he gets closer, I suddenly realize I know this person: It’s the guy who played Jame Gumb, aka Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. We get within three feet of each other. He looks at me. He sees the lightning bolt of recognition hit my face. His sad and resigned expression back said it all: “Yes, I’m him. No, I’m not really a serial killer.”

I walked briskly by him anyway and didn’t look back until I was a good 100 yards down the trail.

Good thing they didn’t open it
My buddies and I found a cooler in a gully while camping.

It was dark and we left it, but authorities found it a few weeks later and there was a body in it.

‘The story of Karen Wetterhahn.

‘Essentially, she was a chemistry professor at Dartmouth. She was working with an organic mercury compound that was relatively unknown at the time. A drop spilled on her gloved hand. No big deal usually. Turns out dimethyl mercury penetrates latex gloves really quickly, and a drop on the hand is a death sentence. She slipped into a coma about 6 months later and then died.

The really terrifying part is the description of her coma.

‘One of her former students described it as not being “… the kind of coma I’d expected… She was thrashing about. Her husband saw tears rolling down her face. I asked if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn’t appear that her brain could even register pain.”‘

The Woman on the Bridge

‘I was on vacation in Ithaca with my boyfriend at the time. We had literally, I’m talking 10 minutes, just gotten into town and stopped at a suspension bridge near Cornell’s campus. I’m terrified of heights and, so, my boyfriend was coaxing me step by step over the bridge. It was gorgeous and we stopped at the middle to take a picture.

‘On the side we had come from there was a parking lot with steps leading to the bottom of the gorge but on the far side there were hiking paths with no barrier. A woman walked past us and offered to take a picture for us.

‘We declined and she smiled and walked quickly to the far side of the bridge where she smoothly jumped off into the gorge. There was not a second of hesitation, it was almost like she expected the path to keep going. The sound of a person hitting the ground from a jump like that sticks with you.’

Whale Bone Alley - Siberia

Eighty-two miles off the coast of Alaska lies this macabre sight: a scattering of whale jawbones, ribs and vertebrae. Experts believe that these bones date all the way back to the 15th century, and could have been used as a place of worship.

Varosha - Cyprus

Varosha is a completely uninhabited resort city on Cyprus’ coast. Varosha was quickly evacuated after the Turkish invasion. It looks like a bustling coastal town from a distance, but up close, it's completely deserted and silent.

Akodessewa Fetish Market - Togo

Shrunken heads, skulls, and flesh are all wares sold at this market. These are supplies used by those who practice the indigenous religions of the country.

Kryziu Kalnas - Lithuania

The Soviet Union bulldozed the area twice, but locals rebuilt it to be even bigger. Today, over 100,000 crosses stand on the hill, and it's where many Lithuanians go to mourn those lost in the war.

The Door to Hell - Turkmenistan

This terrifying spot was once a gas field, but the Soviets set it on fire. The fire has been burning for over 40 years, and shows real signs of stopping.

The Hand in the Desert - Chile

This is the work of Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrázaba. The artist is known for his works associated with human suffering and many feel that this sculpture captures the feeling of loneliness.

The Deadly Strid

Between Barden Tower and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, England, lies one of nature's most dangerous booby traps. It’s a small innocuous-looking mountain stream, about six feet across, known as Bolton Strid, or simply the Strid. But below the water's surface is a deep chasm with powerful undercurrents that pulls anybody that falls into it to certain death. It is believed that not a single person who has fallen into the Strid has ever come out of it alive. Not even their bodies.

Big fat green from me. Fascinating.

this thread is proper giving me the willies

HoratioTarr wrote:


The Deadly Strid

Between Barden Tower and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, England, lies one of nature's most dangerous booby traps. It’s a small innocuous-looking mountain stream, about six feet across, known as Bolton Strid, or simply the Strid. But below the water's surface is a deep chasm with powerful undercurrents that pulls anybody that falls into it to certain death. It is believed that not a single person who has fallen into the Strid has ever come out of it alive. Not even their bodies.

Our very own version of Bermuda Triangle.
Be afraid.  

Jules wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:


The Deadly Strid

Between Barden Tower and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, England, lies one of nature's most dangerous booby traps. It’s a small innocuous-looking mountain stream, about six feet across, known as Bolton Strid, or simply the Strid. But below the water's surface is a deep chasm with powerful undercurrents that pulls anybody that falls into it to certain death. It is believed that not a single person who has fallen into the Strid has ever come out of it alive. Not even their bodies.

Our very own version of Bermuda Triangle.
Be afraid.  

And the slippery moss...free of charge.

The Hinterkaifeck Murders

Call it the gruesome nature of the murders or the bizarre events that followed, the Hinterkaifeck massacre is one of the most creepy and mysterious deaths that Germany has ever witnessed. On the evening of March 31st 1922, a family on a farm near Munich was murdered. A family that consisted of an elderly couple, their adult daughter with her two small children and a new maid who had arrive only hours before the murders took place.

The creepy part is that the previous maid had quit six months ago, claiming that the house was haunted. The events from that day are unclear but it appears that the family members have somehow been lured into the barn one by one where they were killed with a pickaxe. Over 100 people were interviewed in the murder, but no one was ever arrested. No motive was ever established as to explain the murders.

It is believed that the perpetrator(s) remained at the farm for several days – someone had fed the cattle, and eaten food in the kitchen: the neighbours had also seen smoke from the chimney during the weekend. As creepy as it sounds, the killer was never found.

The SS Ourang Medan Ghost Ship
SS Ourang Medan was a ship that sank in Indonesian waters, but before it sank there had been a horrible and inexplicable incident on board.

In 1947, two American vessels started receiving strange messages in Morse code from the Dutch merchant ship. The first message being – “”S.O.S. from Ourang Medan * * * we float. All officers, including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole crew dead.” There was something unclear following the message but the last two words that came through were very clear; they were “I die.” There were no messages after that.

The ship that received the message approached Ourang Medan in a rescue mission but what they were about to encounter was beyond their wildest dreams.

As they entered the ship in hopes of finding an answer and possible survivors, they discovered the whole crew freakishly lying around dead, (including the carcass of a dog) sprawled on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring and their mouths open. There were no visible injuries on them. Suddenly, a fire broke out on the ship, forcing the American crew to evacuate it which then suddenly exploded and sank, thus remaining a mystery forever.

The Black Knight Satellite

Legend has it that in orbit around the Earth is a mysterious, dark object which dates back perhaps 13,000 years. Its origin and purpose are a mystery till date. Dubbed the “Black Knight”, this elusive satellite has allegedly been beaming strange signals towards the Earth for over 50 years, and its orbit is known to be unlike any other object orbiting the Earth.

It is believed that this satellite has been orbiting earth for more than a thousand years, far longer than any space program, and its origins are not of this world. Astronomers and scientists have calculated the satellite’s weight to be over 10 tons which would be at that time the Heaviest Artificial Satellite to orbit our Planet. However, it was the Ham Radio operator who apparently decoded a series of signals received from the UFO Satellite. According to the decoded message, the Black Knight satellite originated from the Epsilon Bootes Star System 13.000 years ago. NASA has released official images which apparently show the Black Knight Satellite in clear picture, orbiting the Earth.

What are the true origins of the satellite and how it got there is still a lurking mystery.

The Bizarre Death of Elisa Lam

On February 2013, twenty-one year old Elisa Lam who had been staying at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, went missing for two weeks.

One day, the hotel guests started complaining about a foul taste in the water. When hotel authorities investigated into the matter, they found the body of Elisa Lam, naked and dead inside a covered water tank of the hotel. Autopsy reports stated that she died due to accidental drowning and that no traces of drugs or alcohol were found in her body. But the question still remained – how did she die and how did her body end up naked in the water tank of the hotel?

But that is not the creepiest part of the story. Hotel security camera footage, located above the elevator, was able to capture Elisa’s last moments. But what the camera captured was beyond bizarre.

The footage shows Elisa engaging in mysterious activities. She first pressed all the buttons and then proceeded to wait. But strangely, the door of the elevator did not open. Elisa went out of the elevator and started to look around but suddenly went back inside, peeking quietly through the elevator door as if she saw something or someone, and she was seen trying to hide from whoever she saw outside the elevator. She then suddenly started speaking and moving in fast and in a weird way. It isn’t clear in the video what or whom she was talking to. After that she suddenly proceeded to walk out of the elevator like nothing happened and then the elevator door closed and started working again. Shortly after the elevator incident, Elisa happened to walk towards the water tank and drown herself.

The creepy thing was that the hotel guests were able to taste and see the color of the water in which Elisa’s body lay dead. The mystery remains unsolved.

The Accidental Time Traveler

Rudolph Fentz is a known accidental time traveler. Believe it or not, Rudolph lived in New York City, and disappeared without clue on Sunday, August 27th, 1876. The 29 year old had left home after dinner to go for an evening stroll only to never return back. A lone drunk at the time claimed he saw Rudolph disappear as he crossed a street in Times Square known as Longacre Square at the time. One second he was there, and the next he just vanished in the blink of an eye. Due to being a known drunk the witness was discounted, and Rudolph’s family reported him missing.

But, in 1950, a man with mutton chop sideburns and Victorian-era duds popped up in Times Square. Witnesses said he looked startled, and then a minute later, he was hit by a car and killed. The officials at the morgue searched his body and found the items in his pockets that were not of that time at all:

A copper token for a beer worth 5 cents, bearing the name of a saloon, which was unknown, even to older residents of the area, A bill for the care of a horse and the washing of a carriage, drawn by a livery stable on Lexington Avenue that was not listed in any address book. About 70 dollars in old banknotes, Business cards with the name Rudolph Fentz and an address on Fifth Avenue. Surprisingly, none of these objects found on the dead man, showed any signs of aging.

NYPD tried using this information to identify the man. It was found that the address on Fifth Avenue was part of a business; its current owner did not know Rudolph Fentz. Fentz’s name was not listed in the address book, his fingerprints were not recorded anywhere.

The investigation continued and finally Rudolph Fentz Jr. was found in a telephone book of 1939. Upon contact with the bank, it was told that Fentz Jr. died five years before, but his widow was still alive but lived in Florida. Upon contacting her, the NYPD learned that her husband’s father had disappeared in 1876 aged 29. He had left the house for an evening walk but never returned.

Living Sex Dolls

This deep web story is sick and disturbing. It is not for the faint-hearted. If you are a sensitive person, you should stop reading right here. Continue at your own risk.

It is believed that a surgeon living in Easter Europe sold something peculiar on the Dark Web: Live Sex Dolls. He would adopt several young girls between the ages of 6-18 from a local orphanage that was happy to get rid of any extra mouths to feed. He would then take them home and surgically remove all of their limbs and sexually torture them.

The girls were only fed from a bottle minimum, their teeth were removed and a rubber was inserted in their mouths to maintain beauty and to assist with fellatio. The girls were then physically and mentally abused to turn them into unquestioning, unfeeling slaves. They were electrocuted, their genitals were sliced and were beaten regularly by the surgeon. The doctor destroyed their sense of hearing by playing extremely loud music and sounds on headphones, and used laser to blind the girls. Almost all of their senses were destroyed to make them more docile. He tortured them for months preparing them for their new owner before they were ready to be sold for $40000 on the Dark Web!

Horrifying Cases of People Who Woke Up in Their Graves

In 2013, a woman living in the Sao Paulo suburb of Ferraz de Vasconcelos witnessed something truly terrifying. While visiting a cemetery to pay respects to her family tomb, she saw a man trying to escape from his grave. Having already freed his hands and head on his own, the man attempted to pull the rest of his body out of the ground. Rescue workers arrived at the scene and helped the man escape his grave. He was rushed to the hospital for medical evaluation. Nobody knows exactly how he was buried alive in the first place, but officials think he was involved in a fight that ended with him being nearly beaten to death. As a result of the whole ordeal, the man suffered severe psychiatric problems later in his life.

In 1915, 30-year-old Essie Dunbar from South Carolina suffered a seemingly fatal epileptic attack that led her doctors to believe that she was dead. Dunbar’s sister, who lived out of town, wanted to come to the funeral. So, the Church delayed the services for a day to accommodate her wishes. Apparently, the sister couldn’t arrive on time so the pastors decided to go ahead with the burial. But right as the gravediggers had finished burying the coffin, Dunbar’s sister showed up and convinced them to exhume the coffin to see her sister one last time. Only when they opened the coffin, Essie Dunbar sat up and smiled at her sister. Everyone panicked and ran, thinking that she was a ghost. Dunbar chased the mourners into town and eventually convinced them that she was, in fact, alive. Nevertheless, for years afterwards, many people thought she was actually a zombie. Essie Dunbar finally died in 1962.

In 1901, a pregnant Madame Bobin who arrived from Western Africa in a steamer, was suffering from yellow fever. She was then transferred to a hospital where she became worse and apparently died and was buried. A nurse later said she noticed that the body was not cold and that there was tremulousness of the muscles of the abdomen and doubted that Bobbin could have been prematurely buried. After this was reported to Madame Bobin’s father, he had the body exhumed. They were horrified to find that a baby had been born and died with Madame Bobin in the coffin. An autopsy showed that Madame Bobin had not contracted yellow fever and had died from asphyxiation in the coffin. Madame Bobbin’s father filed a suit of $13,000 in damages against the health officials.

In 2011, a 35-year-old Russian man believed that burying himself alive for 24 hours would make him lucky for the rest of his life. With some help from a friend, he dug a grave outside of the city of Blagoveshchensk and inserted a makeshift coffin complete with air piping, a single bottle of water, and a cell phone. Once the man got inside the casket, his friend covered him with nearly a foot of dirt and left. But when the friend returned to relieve him in the morning, he was dead. It seems that an overnight rain might have blocked the air pipes and left the man to suffocate in his own casket.

GOOD LUCK SLEEPING TONIGHT!!

Innocent Looking Images With Creepy Backstories



Michael McQuilken, right, was 18 and his brother Sean, 12, when this picture was taken after they had climbed California’s Moro Rock in 1975. Two brothers happily grinning at what seemed to be a funny scenario of their hair standing on end at that moment, were totally unaware of the fact that they were minutes away from being struck by lightning. Fortunately both of them survived the attack, but only slightly. The younger boy suffered third-degree burns to his back and elbows and Michael only barely made it out alive.


On August 15th 1998, a father and daughter had their photo taken in Omagh, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. Shortly afterwards, the red car seen in the photograph would explode, killing 29 people and injuring 220 others. The car bombing was carried out by the ‘Real IRA’, an IRA splinter group who opposed the IRA’s ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement.


The kid on the right, named Tyler Hadley, had just murdered his parents a few hours ago and hidden their bodies in an upstairs bedroom. He apparently spent three hours cleaning up after his act of horror before inviting his friends over for a party, during which Hadley told a friend about the killings who later tipped off the police.


This photo was found on a damaged camera that had gone through the washing machine at the home of Travis Alexander. The next few shots show Alexander bleeding on the bathroom floor, minutes after being stabbed and shot to death by his girlfriend, Jodi Arias. She supposedly hopped into the shower and took this picture, one that would be his last snap before his death, followed by others after committing the murder.


What seems like a cheerful teenager in this pic is actually Jeff Franklin, 17, grinning from the backseat of a police car after using a hatchet and sledgehammer to murder his parents and critically wound three of his siblings on March 10, 1998.

The Magnetic Hill – Ladakh, J&K

Located around 11000 feet above sea level in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh is a mystical and absolutely stunning place that needs a visit at least once in your lifetime. Out of the several enchanting places in Ladakh, one is of particular interest: The Magnetic Hill, a small stretch of road located about 30 km from Leh on the way to Kargil. This particular part of the Srinagar-Leh highway can be clearly seen to be going uphill, but if you stand at the right place, turned off your engine and put your vehicle in neutral, it will slowly move on its own and can go up to a speed of 20 km/hr.

It is rumored that there once lied a pathway on this patch of road that led straight to heaven. People who were deserving of it would be pulled up automatically while the others could never make up the path, no matter how hard they tried. Experts believe that the Magnetic Hill is just an optical illusion wherein a slightly downhill slope appears to be an uphill slope due to an obstructed horizon. Whatever it is it does attract thousands of tourists to this place just to experience the phenomenon.

The Immortal Beings of the Himalayas

Hidden in a valley in the remote Himalayas, it is said, is Gyanganj, a home for immortals. Call it Shambala, Shangri-La or Siddhashram, believers say this celestial kingdom shapes our destiny. Gyanganj is believed to be an ancient Indo-Tibetan tale about a kingdom of mysterious immortal beings, hiding from the world but possessing the power to influence it in various subtle ways when needed. It is said that the so called city is carefully camouflaged and exists in a completely different parallel reality in order to protect it from modern mapping and satellites.

However, according to legend, the yetis or the enlightened beings of the Himalayas that inhabit the fabled region are known to let in a visitor every now and then in order to share their wisdom and wit with them. There have in fact been many legends of kings and sadhus who’ve claimed to meet these enlightened immortals and be guided towards immense knowledge.

The Haunted Bhangarh Fort – Bhangarh, Rajasthan

The abandoned fort of Bhangarh, located in Rajasthan is one of the most haunted places on Earth and the top haunted place in India, so much so that the Archaeological Survey of India has put up a sign outside the fort, prohibiting people to enter it after sunset. Locals living in the surrounding area had to move their entire town outside the limits of the fort because of the alleged hauntings. Legend has it that the city of Bhangarh was cursed by a holy man named Baba Balnath. He had given permission for the town’s construction so long as the heights of the building do not cast a shadow over his home. It is said that a young Prince happened to do just that and that led Baba Balnath to curse the entire city. Many believe he is still buried there till date.

Another legend says that a wizard named Singhiya fell in love with the Princess of Bhangarh, Ratnavati. To make her fall in love with him, the wizard placed a spell upon a fragrance being purchased by the Princess’ maid, so that upon touching it she would become his forever. But Ratnavati found out what the wizard was up to and foiled his plan. Totally enraged, the wizard placed a curse upon Bhangarh and many locals claim that his ghost still roams across the ill-fated city. Some locals believe that Princess Ratnavati has reincarnated in a new body and the Bhangarh Fort awaits her return, as only she can put an end to the curse.

Whatever be the true legend, the hauntings are definitely real and it is rumoured that many people who have entered the fort after dark, haven’t returned. Nevertheless, the constant reporting of ghost sightings has landed the fort among the most haunted places in India and attracts many tourists who wish to experience the thrill inside.

The smallest shop in London – a shoe salesman with a 1.2 square meter shoe store, (1900)

Ku Klux Klan members on a Ferris wheel: (1925)

Aircraft detection before the invention of the Radar, (c. 1917)

A Morning of Chaos: First morning after Sweden changed from driving on the left side to driving on the right, (1967)

Widely considered the photo that changed the face of AIDS. A father comforts his son, David Kirby, on his deathbed in Ohio.

Balloon Buddies

Laura Buxton released a helium filled balloon during celebrations for her grandparents’ gold wedding anniversary in Blurton, Staffordshire, in June 2001. Attached to the balloon was her name and address and a note asking the finder to write back. Ten days later she received a reply. The balloon had been found by another Laura Buxton in the garden hedge of her home in Pewsey, Wiltshire, 140 miles away. Both Lauras were ages 10 and both had three year old black Labradors, a guinea pig, and a rabbit.

Riverside Mystery

Gloria Ramirez, 31, died of Kidney failure at Riverside General Hospital, California, in February 1994, after being rushed there with chest pains. Emergency room staff were felled by ‘fumes’ when a blood sample was taken. A strange oily sheen on the woman’s skin and unexplained white crystals in her blood were reported. A doctor suffered liver and lung damage, and bone necrosis. At least 23 other people were affected. One hypothesis was that Ramirez, who had had cervical cancer, had taken a cocktail of medicines that combined to make an insecticide (organophospate) but tests yielded no clue.

La Mancha Negro

A Hazard unique to Venezuelan highways is a slippery goo called La Mancha Negra (the black stain), although it is more of a sludge with the consistency of chewing gum. Although the government has spent millions of dollars in research, no one knows what the goo is and where it comes from, or how to get rid of it. It first appeared in 1987 on the road from Caracas to the airport, covering 50 yards, and spread inexorably every year. By 1992 it was a major road hazard all around the capital and it was claimed 1,800 motorists had died after losing control. The problem remains to this day.

Postcard Farewell

When Jim Wilson’s father died in Natal, South Africa, in April 1967, both Jim, living in England, and his sister Muriel, living in Holland, were informed. Muriel contacted her husband who was on business in Portugal, and he flew to South Africa right away. Changing planes at Las Palmas airport in the Canary Islands, he bought a postcard showing holidaymakers on Margate Beach, Natal, and sent it to Muriel. It was she who noticed that the photograph showed her father walking up the beach.

George Stinney Jr.
The Youngest Boy On The Electric Chair

The police department in Columbia, South Carolina, had to deal with a difficult call one day in 1944. Two young girls, one 11 and the other only eight, had been found dead in a ditch, beaten to death with an iron pipe while they were picking wildflowers. Now they were getting a call from an old woman whose 14-year-old grandson had just told her that he was the one who did it.[2]That boy’s name was George Stinney Jr., and when he came in, he directed them to the murder weapon. “I’m really sorry,” Stinney told the police. “I didn’t want to kill them girls.” Stinney’s trial only lasted two hours, and today, some people insist he was framed. Either way, he was only 14 years old—the youngest American sentenced to death in the 20th century. After spending 81 days in a prison cell 80 kilometers (50 mi) out of town, chosen out of fear that the people would lynch the boy if they could find him, young George Stinney was taken to the electric chair. The boy was so short that they had to sit him on a Bible to reach the headpiece, and the straps were too big to hold him in place. He convulsed violently while the electric shock entered his body. Before he died, his mask fell off, revealing his terrified, tearful face to the crowd. Stinney was exonerated in 2014. It was concluded that his confession was coerced and that he was wrongfully convicted without a fair trial.

Mark Stroman
The Killer Whose Victim Tried To Save His Life

Mark Stroman was, by his own description, a white supremacist. After 9/11, he felt he had a patriotic duty to go on a killing spree, so he grabbed a gun and started calling himself the “Arab Slayer.”He killed his first victim on September 15, 2001, shooting a Pakistani man in a grocery store. Then, six days later, he walked into a convenience store and shot Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim from Bangladesh, with a shotgun.Bhuiyan survived, and the police managed to capture Stroman—but not before he killed again. When he was arrested, he was unapologetic. He called himself a patriot and faced death row believing that he was a hero.Rais Bhuiyan, however, wouldn’t let him die. His Muslim faith, he felt, required him to forgive Stroman and to do everything he could to save his life. So he started a petition and filed a lawsuit to try to get the man who’d shot him in the face with a shotgun off death row. Stroman and Bhuiyan exchanged letters. Stroman, seeing that the man he’d tried to kill was attempting to save his life, said that because Bhuiyan had taught him not to hate, he was facing his death “more content than [he had] ever been.”For all Bhuiyan’s efforts, he wasn’t able to save Stroman’s life. For his last words, though, Stroman told the world what Bhuiyan had taught him: “Hate causes a lifetime of pain.”

Joan of Arc was not convicted of heresy.

Joan denied all of the heresy charges and she was never convicted of that crime despite the many traps the prosecution laid for her. During the trial, a prosecutor made a off-hand question and asked if it was true that she dressed like a man during battles. Seeing no harm in telling the truth, she replied yes and this was enough to seal her doom. This transvestism violated Deuteronomy 22:5 and was enough for the court to convict her of violating God’s Law and since that particular law carries a death penalty, she was burned at the stake. Great care was made to give the appearance of a trial in accordance with canon law, but many aspects, including the official record, were fraudulent. Pope Callixtus III reopened the trail and she was exonerated and Bishop Pierre Cauchon castigated for using a religion court to settle a secular dispute.

Brown’s Island - Civil War Tragedy

Early munitions labs were dangerous places, and part of the tragedy of the events on Brown’s Island was that they were on an island in the first place just because of the danger of something like this happening. In 1863, a series of wooden buildings were constructed on the newly cleared Brown’s Island. They were to house a Confederate munitions lab, deemed too dangerous to be placed in more populated areas of mainland Virginia.On March 13, 1863, the inevitable—and unthinkable—happened. A teenage Irish immigrant named Mary Ryan was in the center of an explosion that rocked the Brown’s Island munitions factory, sweeping through buildings that were mostly populated by women and children. Ryan made a simple but fateful mistake—banging a wooden board holding friction primers against a table to try to knock some of them loose.The explosion destroyed most of the building, which was occupied by somewhere between 80–100 young women. In the end, 44 had died, but few had died quickly. More suffered from blindness and severe burns. Mary Ryan herself lingered for several days, before finally succumbing to her wounds on March 16 after confessing responsibility for the disaster.The ultimate cause of the tragedy was a combination of 200,000 musket caps, 3,000 friction primers, 11 pounds of gunpowder, and the presence of gunpowder dust in the air, created by girls who were disassembling faulty cartridges to salvage materials. Work resumed in the plant by the end of March, with workers lining up to fill the new vacancies.

What colour was the sky in ancient Greece?

Bronze! There was no word for blue in the ancient Greek language. The nearest words to blue – glaukos and kyanos are more like expressions of relative light intensity than descriptions of colour. So when the Greek referred to the sky as ‘bronze’, they meant that it was dazzlingly bright, like the sheen of a bronze shield, rather than actually bronze-coloured. It seems the ancient Greeks described things based on other qualities, so when a word is used that, to us, seems to indicate ‘yellow’ or ‘light green’ really just means fluid, living and fresh, and was therefore used to describe flowers, blood, the sea and sheep. It would appear to us that the Greeks were referring to all of these things as yellow coloured, but that’s because of the way we describe things. Interestingly, in Russia, there are two words for blue: goluboi and sinii, one word referring to light blue, the other dark, which to Russians are two different, distinct colours, not shades of the same colour, much like other cultures perceive pink to be a shade of red, rather than a colour in it’s own right.

Dr. Walter Freeman
1895 – 1972

Walter Jackson Freeman II was an American doctor and member of the American Psychiatric Association. Although he is the only one on our list who hasn’t performed a direct criminal practice on his patients, he can be blamed for harming as many as 3,400 people by using a very controversial and primitive medical technique: the lobotomy.His operations were performed by inserting a metal pick into the corner of each eye socket, moving it back and forth, and thereby severing the connections to the pre-frontal cortex in the frontal lobes of the brain. This method did not require a neurosurgeon and could be performed outside of an operating room without the use of anesthesia. Freeman actually used his personal van as a surgery room, which he called the “lobotomobile”. Dr. Freeman was finally banned from performing surgery after the death of some of his patients from brain hemorrhage.

Skill Of A Golden Cicada
Men Dan Gong

The Skill of a Golden Cicada is also widely known as “The Iron Crotch,” and it is not fun. Initial training beings with intense meditation, aimed to clear the mind of all distain and anxiety for the literal torture to follow. A benchmark, albeit strange, of this mental training is being able to spontaneously summon an erection during meditation—but by concentrating qi to the base of the navel, not by having inappropriate thoughts (hopefully). From here, the de-sensitivity training beings. One must flick one’s own testicles. Thousands of times. When this is no longer painful, the training upgrades to more extreme methods, which can involve rolling pins, punches, kicks and even blows from weapons directly into the crotch. Some monks even tie ropes around their testicles, pulling great stone weights across fields to master this skill. With careful healing and massage therapy to the tissue, damage to reproductive health can be reduced but inevitably not prevented. As odd it is may seem, this technique can be combined with the broader family of iron techniques to strengthen all weak points of the body. This can render a monk’s external surface uniformly resilient to strikes. The strength to accomplish the Skill of a Golden Cicada is truly something to behold.

Laika’s Flight
Russian Airspace

In late 1957, the Soviets needed a snappy follow-up to Sputnik. Given thirty days by the Kremlin to come up with something impressive, or else to get packing for Siberia, Russian scientists decided to do the only logical thing: send a stray dog into space.On October 31 that year, “Laika” was placed into a narrow rocket and left on a frozen launching pad for three days. In all likelihood, this was the highlight of her trip; the actual lift-off subjected her to enough G-Force to push her heart rate into the ‘danger’ area. At the same time, a malfunction caused the rocket’s thermal control system to shut down, essentially turning the cabin into the space-borne equivalent of a sealed car in a sun-baked parking lot. Within five hours, Laika had become both the first creature to reach orbit, and the first creature to die in orbit: a bitter consolation prize rendered even worse by her patent inability to understand it.

The Carolean March
Norway/Sweden

During the Winter of 1719, Swedish Lieutenant-General Carl Gustaf Armfeldt was stuck in Norway with 6,000 battle-weary soldiers. In a desperate attempt to make it home, Armfeldt ordered his men back across the Tydal Mountain range—a useful shortcut into Sweden, provided it isn’t midwinter and your troops aren’t carrying summer equipment.What followed was one of the biggest logistical screw-ups in military history: the first leg of the journey saw two hundred men die of exposure as the army scrambled for shelter in a tiny village. Rather than be put off by the screaming agony all around him, Armfeldt decided that the best course was to carry on—right into the heart of a blizzard.In the horror that followed, frostbite set in, horses perished, equipment was burnt for warmth, and wolves descended on hapless victims. By the time the remnants of the army had finally reached Sweden on January 15, nearly four thousand men were dead, with another six hundred maimed for life. Because life laughs in the face of justice, Armfeldt was “punished” for his incompetence with a massive promotion.

Cloudbuster

There is certainly something to be said about the ability to make it rain on command. Wilhelm Reich, a scientist who noticed a drought that was impacting the blueberry harvest in his state of Maine, created an invention that has since been dubbed “the Cloudbuster.”Sound a little too much like science fiction? According to the Bangor Daily News, which was covering the first attempt with this machine, there was no forecast for any rain in the vicinity. Within hours of Reich setting up and running the machine, storm clouds formed and brought about 0.64 centimeters (0.25 in) of rain.
It seems as though Reich’s technology threatened some institution within the government as his research was shut down and his work and prototypes were seized.

There was never a second testing of the Cloudbuster machine. But if it had been developed, food shortages might cease to exist around the world.

A Baby's Hearing

We assume that a baby’s sense of hearing is just a primitive version of an adult’s. Sure, they turn around when you make a sound, but they can’t really understand the difference between talking and other sounds. While that’s true for the most part, it’s not because babies are not as good at hearing as we are but because they’re tuned to a whole different type of hearing. As scientists at the University of Washington found out, babies hear all the sound frequencies simultaneously.When they studied 73 infants to see what type of sound they respond to, researchers found them to be better at listening to a wider bandwidth of frequencies than adults. This mechanism helps babies respond to unexpected sounds. They don’t need to learn the difference between various types of sounds yet, but they do need to know if anything walking across the room will accidentally drop them off the bed. The ability may be a remnant of ancient times, when hearing everything might have been a definite advantage to survival in the wild.

A Baby's Healing

It doesn’t matter who you are, the power to heal is still the stuff of sci-fi fantasies for all of us. Sure, we can sort of repair our tissue but not without a hideous scar. (We’ve all seen this with serious burns and cuts.) The body can’t really replace the dead tissue with a brand new one; it can only fix it with a makeshift scar, sort of like duct tape. You’d think that the younger people were, the worse their healing powers would be, but you’d be wrong. Unborn babies can totally heal without any scars, which is something doctors have only recently discovered.With technology allowing for more and more surgeries on fetuses, doctors have only recently found them to heal from injuries or other irregularities as if nothing had happened to them. Not just healing scars, either. A fetus can fix a lot of its problems with this ability—including bone deformities and other disorders—by fully healing itself.

Lake Peigneur Accident

The Lake Peigneur accident was caused by drilling in a salt mine beneath the shallow (10 feet deep) lake. The drill accidentally pierced the third level of the mine causing the lake to drain into the hole. This resulted in the expanding of the hole as soil and salt were washed into the mine by the rushing water, filling the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years. The resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, many trees and 65 acres (260,000 m2) of the surrounding terrain. So much water drained into the caverns that the flow of the Delcambre Canal that usually empties the lake into Vermilion Bay was reversed, making the canal a temporary inlet. This backflow created, for a few days, the tallest waterfall ever in the state of Louisiana, at 164 feet (50 m), as the lake refilled with salt water from the Delcambre Canal and Vermilion Bay. The water downflowing into the mine caverns displaced air which erupted as compressed air and then later as 400-foot (120 m) geysers up through the mineshafts.