Surfing the web can sometimes feel like going on a night dive, venturing into the pitch-black ocean. You may blindly encounter things that could leave you scarred for life, or, at the very least, trying to shake off an awful, indelible memory.
Suppose you haven’t ventured into those parts of the internet; lucky you. But if you want an idea of how dark things can get, these responses from an old yet relevant Reddit thread should clue you in.
We’ve compiled some of them on this list to satisfy your morbid curiosity. Scroll through at your own risk.
#1
When I was struggling with eating problems as a teen I googled looking for anorexia help. I was hoping to find sites with advice on recovery etc but instead came across “pro Ana” blogs, and they’re honestly terrifying. They treat anorexia as a lifestyle and actively encourage girls to become anorexic, claiming that all non-anorexic women are disgusting and fat. They’re full of advice on how to avoid the temptation to eat, and you could find yourself an “ana buddy” to encourage you on your journey of anorexia. I’m so glad I never got caught up in that s**t and the anorexics who write those blogs are completely sick in the head.
Image source: penguinpyjamapants, cottonbro studio/Pexels
#2
I found a site with a forum for aspiring Mermaids (/Mermen?).
One of the posts was made by someone who had been following advice on the forum, such as holding your breath underwater (presumably in a tub) for X amount of time.
Someone replied with advice like “when you run out of air, you just need to breath in and stay under.”
Image source: TawmAimz, Diana ✨/Pexels
#3
Junko Furuta’s Wikipedia page. It may be gone from my browsing history, but never from my mind.
Image source: anon, Furuta family
#4
Once googled my work email address because customers would post it on forums as someone they could contact to complain to.
Found some dudes blog who had some sort of vendetta against the company and any of the staff he came into contact with.
He’d posted their email addresses, photos of them from any social media he found them on. Pictures of their kids with threatening messages against them.
He managed to find out where one of our employees lived using Facebook and street view. Posted pictures of her house (from street view) saying he was going to pay her a visit. Likely an empty threat but creepy anyway.
We told the police who arrested him while he was on the phone to our call centres threatening our staff.
Crazy guy. Never found out if he went to jail but I assume he did.
Image source: jert11, cottonbro studio/Pexels
#5
The 9/11 recaps of people willingly jumping off the building to escape the fires. Watching that as a 13 year old got me good.
Image source: KittyRandomness91, TheMachineStops (Robert J. Fisch)
#6
Back in the ebaumsworld days i found this video called evil bunny tap dancer. very skinny woman tap dancing on weird old film something about it just terrifies me.
Image source: entreethegiant, lex_04
#7
This article shows how much you need to save to retire. $1,250,000 to generate an annual income of $50,000. That is by far the scariest thing I have encountered.
Image source: anon, Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels
#8
A girl on TikTok recently posted a video 2 days ago of someone breaking into her apartment while she was making a video. She was on the second floor of an apartment complex, and a random guy climbed onto her balcony and opened her balcony door. She was asking him to leave and ended up running out of her front door. The guy did leave where he came in, but she asked a neighbor if she could come in and her neighbor let her in to call the police. According to the comments, the guy was arrested but released on bail.
Update: turns out the guy had been stalking her for months, but she had no idea since he lived in a complex across the street and he stared at her. He had made uncomfortable come ons to her, but she assumed he was “just a creep”. He had cut several Christmas lights that were hanging outside and climbed up the balcony that way. He’s currently out on bond while awaiting trial and the girl is asking that if anyone else had been harassed, stalked, or assaulted by that man to please speak up.
Image source: anon, cottonbro studio/Pexels
#9
A true crime site had a piece on the moors murderers – Ian Brady and Myra Hindly. They were serial killers in the mid 60’s
part of it was a link to a recording they had made – later used in court evidence – of them torturing one of the victims. It was a young girl (about 10? I am not going to look it up) weeping and asking for her mum, saying she wouldn’t tell on them. it was profoundly disturbing.
when ever they got mentioned on the news (Brady only died a couple of years ago) I could not help but think of hearing that recording.
Image source: ArcTan_Pete
#10
Lobotomy procedures. Please don’t go and search it around. Still gives me horrid dreams as I am a depressed individual who has been struggling since quite long and found out that it was one of the treatments that used to “cure” depression and “crazy” in the US in the 1960’s or something.
Image source: afrostylady, Sillerkiil
#11
That one video where the car was driving down that mountain road and you had to pay close attention and then it turned out to be a screamer.
Image source: _Halcyon_Daze_, Brienn Rockhill
#12
I stumbled on some forums and there was a thread about people who felt like they were being followed. Like, an example: some woman said she dropped her wedding ring down the kitchen sink and couldn’t retrieve it, then years later, after moving to a different house, she was home alone and found it on her floor.
Image source: scythaah, Mike Chang/Pexels
#13
I once found my email address listed on a website with my password. This was back in the days when hotmail was king and everyone had just discovered messenger!
It wasn’t a simple password either … had 2 upper case letters, 4 lowercase, a couple of other characters.
Image source: grownup_me, Mizuno K/Pexels
#14
Salad fingers creeped me out.
Image source: DeliciousCrepe, David Firth
#15
That video of the decapitated wasp where it picks its head up and flies away.
No snuff flick or murderporn or crime scene photo or creepypasta I’ve seen online can ever truly encapsulate the horror and dread that particular bit of video filled me with.
Image source: anon, David Hablützel/Pexels
#16
At one point a couple of years ago, someones voice just popped up in my computer headphones, speaking a different language. Sounded like he was asking me a question Like “You there?” then when i responded they started talking in a creepy low voice. Sounded like hindi or maybe a middle eastern langauge (it was a while ago).
Thought it was some audio from a website so i quit everything and i could still hear it coming through. I think I quit skype and it disappeared. No call was active or anything. I have no idea how it happened, but i instantly ripped out my network cable and rebooted. Ran like 4 virus scans and a malwarebytes scan. Found nothing. Never happened again. I freeeeeaaked out.
EDIT: I dont believe in the supernatural
EDIT: My headphones are fibre optic, this wasn’t caused by my cable picking up radio transmissions. Although we used to make that happen with my brothers guitar amp when i was a kid. Fun times.
Edit: for the record this happened a couple of years ago on an older machine.
Image source: Sojio, Ron Lach/Pexels
#17
That video of the Station Nightclub fire. The sight of all those people stuck jammed together at the exit was haunting.
There was also something a few years ago, I don’t remember all the details, but it was an elevator accident on a cruise ship. A technician (?) was working on an elevator when it started moving, wound up crushing him. There’s video of someone walking into the lobby to the sight of blood just flowing down the outside of the elevator.
Image source: 86sleepypenguins, SHVETS production/Pexels
#18
Marble hornets gave me the biggest spook back in early high school.
Image source: Awportune
#19
The recordings of the Toy Box Murders. Its literally on YouTube. Horrific, to say the least..
Image source: AbnormalSkittles, Wikipedia
#20
For sheer stomach churning gore, a hand degloved by an industrial papershredder. It was sort of satisfying in its uniformity and neatness. Mechanical precision and all that.
For sheer existential terror, a short video of a boy dying of rabies. Hes delirious and sick and it’s just sad. But then for a second or two he locks eyes with the camera and snarls in a perfectly, quintessentially animalistic way. And you realize how easy it is to lose yourself and become other – to become reduced to just base instinct and bodily functions with no *you* left. Yeah, rabies is a splashy version of that, but I think a lot of old age illnesses – how we are all increasingly more likely to die – isn’t so different. And the ultimately terrifying thing is that its all so much worse to watch that and know we are potentially next than to live through it.
Image source: iamasecretthrowaway, cottonbro studio/Pexels
#21
I’m currently trying to find this video talking about some mystery that a YouTuber was trying to solve, except he wasn’t very popular so nobody was keeping up with it. The narration itself was chilling, but the last message he found was linked to some ye olde English type stuff, leading him somewhere to the Northwestern part of the UK (the guy was from somewhere on that land mass, can’t remember where). Anyways, the last message had letters with different colors. If you took all the yellow ones it spelled out “I’m so lonely” or something similar, but the guy didn’t know this. A couple days later, only one body was found in a field in that area, but the question remained whether it was that YouTuber, or a potential killer that had been k****d in self-defense.
Image source: mrepicsaxman, AdamButcher🦎Stretchmancer
#22
My friends and I once found a website with a challenge where you had to watch a series of videos each worse than the last, and if you made it all the way to the last video you won. Very disturbing stuff, I felt sick the whole time. I completed the challenge, but I didn’t feel like a winner.
edit: Some people have reminded me that the challenge is called “Run the Gauntlet,” if anyone is feeling particularly brave.
Image source: PerplexDonut, cottonbro studio/Pexels
#23
I saw photographs of a Japanese man who’s DNA literally melted. The images scarred me.
Image source: FoxehTehFox, Bushra Islam/Pexels
#24
Ben Drowned got me good when I first saw it! Still freaks me out to this day, but not as severe!
Image source: Lakin5, Jadusable
#25
911 calls that just sound so scary . Like the call about the woman who got attacked by a chimp.
Image source: AstronomyDummy, MART PRODUCTION/Pexels
#26
There was some girl back in 2008/2009ish who used to post really cringy videos on youtube. she had some weird disorder where her mouth didn’t move and her eyes didn’t blink. she posted a lot of final fantasy cosplay stuff. I vividly remember a video where she was dressed like Tifa Lockhart. it was unnerving to say the least.
Image source: anon, Beyzaa Yurtkuran/Pexels
#27
A guide on how to groom children. It was several pages long. I read the first couple before leaving to see if it was real. The most shocking part was just how casual it was.
Image source: Herogamer555, SHVETS production/Pexels
#28
I saw a guy literally stick 2 spoons in both eye sockets, he would put it first in his left eye socket and try and take/rip his eyes off.
He did it with his left first then his right, i watched up until he was on his right. I went off it but it was way too late, i had and still remember the events of that video and to this day i remember it.
I don’t talk about it as it makes me think about that video instantly and it’s not a very nice memory to have as you probably could guess. The scariest part tho was that i stumbled across this on google, it wasn’t the dark web or deep web or anything just regular plain google.
The internet is far more scary and dangerous than people think.
Image source: alanb1888, Mathias Celis/Pexels
#29
Old creepypastas and fake ghost cams used to terrify me when I was younger, now not so much.
Image source: icekingofmemes, Polina Zimmerman/Pexels
#30
Don’t know if it still exists and never want to find out, but there use to be a website specifically to have the most disturbing photos and stories or gore that I use to look at once a week. The worst photo I saw was an old stand alone bathtub containing the remains of a man in his 80s that turned into human soup because he had a water heater connected to the bath water, he died and over several weeks his body cooked and slid off his bones creating a brownish liquid soup like material.
Image source: mrinkyface
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