Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
Some say you learn something new every day, and in the age of the internet it has never been easier. With content on basically anything and everything at the ends of one’s fingertips, a person can look up whatever it is that interests them the most, be it recipes or the world’s weirdest records in a matter of seconds.
By browsing the good, the bad, and the ugly, they are likely to stumble upon some rather perplexing things, too. Some of such things have been discussed by members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community, when one user asked them about the deeply unsettling facts they know. Fellow netizens shared quite a few, ranging from history horror stories to upsetting medical conditions, and beyond, so scroll down to view them, but do it at your own risk as they are indeed rather unsettling.
Seeking to learn more about how such unsettling facts can affect us, Bored Panda turned to Dr. Noam Shpancer, a psychology professor at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, who was kind enough to answer a few of our questions. You will find his thoughts in the text below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Over 46% of ocean waste is fishing nets. And commercial fishing kills more animals in the ocean than any plastic does. Idk why this isn’t talked about more.
David Paterson 9 months ago (edited)
This is the first time I've seen this fact on a list like this. It's true. In an itemisation of more than 100 tons of waste collected from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, less than half came from a land-based source. More than half came from fishing boats: nets, floats, buoys, and crates washed overboard.
RELATED:
#2
There were Holocaust survivors that died shortly after being liberated because their body couldn't handle the increased calories when they were fed by the soldiers that freed them.
#3
People with dementia just... forget how to eat one day. They forget how to swallow.
We don't know if they feel starvation or pain, because they're too far gone.
My brother works in a dementia care facility, and they know that a patient is gonna die soon when they eventually refuse food.
And we don't euthanise them. They just... starve. To death. And they never tell the families that.
Edit: I'm *so* sorry to those that have lost loved ones to dementia. It's a really cruel and heartless way to die.
Chicken Nugget 9 months ago
Holy s**t is that why my great grandma died!?!?! I heard my dad saying she was refusing to eat, then she died two days later...I was devastated because I thought she was getting better since she was more lucid
In a recent interview with Bored Panda, psychology professor Dr. Noam Shpancer of Otterbein University in Ohio suggested that thinking about the unsettling aspects of life can be somewhat beneficial, as it helps us understand ourselves and the world better and learn to solve problems. However, according to the expert, wallowing in our miserable experiences is usually unhelpful.
“The quality of your life depends heavily on where you direct your attention, so you’d want to be intentional about that,” he suggested, adding that ruminating over troublesome facts can result in lower mood and higher anxiety.
#4
In 2018 my sister was murdered. We know who did it. We keep track of where he lives, he has moved 4 times since my sister disappeared. The police also know he did it. There’s not enough evidence to bring him in or charge him. Her body has still never been found. If I go after him he becomes the victim and I won’t be able to be a father to my children.
He gets to be alive every day. He’s a serial rapist. We suspect my sister was not his first murder. From our interactions with state police and FBI my impression is that our situation, while a nightmare, is perhaps not as rare as you would normally assume or hope.
#5
Terminal lucidity is the return of mental clarity or memory or consciousness shortly before death. This happens to around 10% of people with dementia. :[.
#6
Youtubers who 'find' animals in distress with the camera running usually put animals in distress to look like heroes.
Source
https://youtu.be/p7nVntZpJLM
Other videos are it there.
Mimi La Souris 9 months ago
i think 99% are fake. because I doubt that all these people film themselves constantly, while they walk, eat, work, do their shopping...
#7
There was a medical manufacturing lab in the UK that kept having reports of headaches and weird visions. People would see something at the edge of their vision, but couldn't figure out what it was. It wasn't just one person either, and was causing some serious panic. When they entered a room, they felt a "presence," like someone else was in the room with them, and something would appear at the corner of their eye, then disappear when they tried to look.
Turns out, it was caused by a newly installed fan that was vibrating, causing a sound that was too low-frequency for humans to hear it. Hilariously, the guy who discovered it found it using a fencing sword. He had brought it to work and put it in a vice to polish it, but then the sword started vibrating. Me, I would have nope'd out of there, considering the room was haunted, and now a sword is moving, but he was apparently much braver.
The frequency is known as the "fear" or "ghost" frequency. It's around 19hz. [Here](https://youtu.be/h-zM3qAzBaw) is a YouTube video of 18.98hz. Mileage may vary, for some people it causes just mild discomfort, others it causes total panic, and still others it does nothing. For me, it caused my eyes to feel weird, and after a good minute or so, I noticed weirdness at the edge of my vision, and was definitely creeped out. I shut it off then, definitely an unnerving experience.
It's not entirely known why it triggers such a response. The optical illusions and eye discomfort are likely due to the frequency resonating with your eyeballs, causing them to vibrate. But the actual fear response is unknown. Some theories are that our bodies are able to detect low frequencies, such as that of earthquakes or predator roars, but we just can't hear it. A bit like how deaf people can still "feel" certain sounds. So we become alert and nervous around these "infrasounds," since they usually indicated danger. This, combined with the optical illusions, leads to some pretty uncomfortable experiences.
Oh, and don't worry, "vibrate your eyeballs" sounds way worse than it is. It's like super tiny vibrations, and your eyeballs are nice and squishy. It's not harmful in the slightest. At least, not mentally. Certainly feels like you are doing some eldritch ritual though.
(Edited due to me being a doorknob and mixing up Hz with kHz).
“Contemplating losses and mistakes can help us understand ourselves and our situation better,” Dr. Shpancer suggested, adding that knowledge is power, so such knowledge can lead to self-empowerment.
“Periodically contemplating scary or negative experiences can also provide perspective and help us appreciate the good in our lives as well as our own resilience. As a rule, a habit of avoidance is not healthy, because avoidance only teaches you to avoid more, rather than teaching you about yourself and the world.
“All this is true not only about difficult events that have already happened, but also about troubling eventualities that will happen in the future. Periodically stopping to contemplate our mortality, for example, can help us appreciate and savor more fully the gift of life,” Dr. Shpancer pointed out.
#8
Climate change. It’s a bit hard to grasp without context. And context is key because no one can understand, respect, or appreciate anything without context.
The earth is about 4.6 Billion years old. Arguing about climate change is difficult since 4.6 Billion seems like a very long time and we has humans have been alive for such a short time. “Why do I care? I won’t be alive to deal with it?”
So… let’s add context and say that the planet is 46 years old. That means that humans have been around for about 4 hours (4 hours ago I was making dinner). 1 minute ago the industrial revolution began (the mid to late 1800s - and I began typing this). In that time we have destroyed (removed, burned, chopped down) over 50% of the worlds forests.
This is not sustainable. For anyone’s generation.
To understand problems you must have context.
Edit: spelling, missing words, etc. (I’m getting drunk).
#9
In 1933, a doctor named Carl Tanzler raided the tomb of a female patient with whom he'd become obsessed and stole her body. He lived with the corpse for seven years. As the body fell apart, he attached the corpse's bones together with wire and coat hangers, and fitted the face with glass eyes. He was only caught when someone saw him dancing with the corpse in front of an open window.
#10
The Astronauts aboard the Challenger shuttle were still alive after the explosion. It took them a few minutes to fall to Earth, but they knew they were going to die.
Hippopotamuses 9 months ago
That is one of the most disturbing things which I have ever heard.
#11
Most serial killers won't ever even be noticed, never mind captured.
Despite positive things being arguably better for one’s well-being than negative, people often tend to focus more on the latter, likely due to the phenomenon known as negative bias.
According to Verywell Mind, such bias is the reason why it’s so difficult to shake a bad first impression, break yourself free from the shackles of traumatic events in the past, or focus more on the good rather than the bad things that happen throughout the day.
It is believed that such bias formed as a result of evolution, as earlier in history, focusing on bad or dangerous things increased an individual’s chances of survival; that became something they passed down to the subsequent generations. That might also be the reason we tend to be interested in unsettling facts such as the ones on this list or drawn to similar creepy content.
#12
In extreme cases of scurvy, your scars break down and old wounds re-open.
Collagen keeps scars together and that collagen maintains itself throughout our lives. But without vitamin C, that process begins to halt and the collagen breaks down.
Eat your fruits and veggies folks.
#13
Rainbow Valley at Mount Everest is named so because of the colorful coats of dead people
The Blue Mustang statue at the Denver Airport, Named Blucifer by the locals, killed its creator when a piece fell and severed an artery in his leg.
If weird “ghost” stuff is happening, make sure your carbon monoxide detector is working.
#14
Purebred dogs are basically just walking Frankensteins. They were created by rich Victorians in the 1800s for aspects such as speed and strength. However, this circle of a bloodline recession made it worse for the animals. It explains why many modern animals have very wrinkly faces and many golden retrievers don't live past the age of 12 due to cancer. I did a project on this awhile back and it's really interesting to read about.
Also the reason we don't have a lot of mummies is because rich people also ate them in the Victorian era.
To make it short: Purebred dogs are the equal of the Charles II of Spain and mummies were the snack that smiles back in the 1800s.
#15
That talent and skill isn’t enough to follow your dreams. You need appeal and people skills.
#16
Seemingly 100% healthy people with literally no reason to believe they would have any reason to, can still spontaneously drop dead.
Cherish every day!
Edit: just thanking for the upvotes. The topic is just a bit grim but, glad it gets people thinking about making their time here count, perhaps. Love y’all. ♥️.
Lydsylou (she/her) 9 months ago
My cousin's cousin died at age 19. He came home from work with a slight headache and went for a nap before dinner. 15 minutes later his mum called him for dinner and he didn't come down. She went up to go and get him assuming he was still asleep and found that he had died in his sleep. He was perfectly healthy and didn't get regular headaches or anything it was just so unexpected
#17
Cows don’t convert grass directly into protein. They have enormous colonies of bacteria in their stomachs that have population explosions when they eat grass, live, breed, die, and then the cows digest *them* into protein.
#18
The mathews and the hart bridges in jacksonville are about to fail, the pilings in the river do not touch bottom. I'm a commercial diver and I refuse to drive on these bridges.
Edit: https://www.fdot.gov/maintenance/bridgeinfo.shtm
Here you can read terminology and bridge ratings for every bridge in Florida, on the latest report Mathews has a "health index" of 96 but a "sufficiency rating" of 44, while the Hart is 90 and 30.
ColdSteelRonin 9 months ago
Back in the late 90s they refurbished the grating that acts as the road surface on the Mathews bridge. The contractor did a poor job and the sections had a slight misalignment that caused your vehicle to jolt sideways at each joining. A day or two after re-opening a woman's jeep lost control and went over the side. The cities solution, instead of fixing the bridge, was to lower the speed limit from 45 mph to 35.
#19
Russia sank a number of nuclear submarines, with the reactors intact, in shallow water. Once the submarine rusts enough, high level nuclear waste will start contaminating fairly crowded shipping lanes.
One of the submarines they sunk used a liquid metal cooled fast reactor. When water finally rusts its way into that reactor, instead of the reactor rusting, it may explode.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 9 months ago
The second paragraph is referring to an Alpha Class nuclear submarine. They used molten lead as a reactor coolant.
#20
All whales eventually lose the energy to surface for oxygen, so they basically just sink and drown.
#21
Murder at the hands of an intimate partner is the leading cause of death for women who are pregnant or in their first postpartum year. (This has been shown true by a number of studies in US states, but is likely also true elsewhere).
Powerful Katrinka 9 months ago
And the GOP is working to ban pregnant women from filling for divorce. Nor can they abort an unwanted pregnancy. The mortality rate in MAGA states is already high; this can only make it worse.
#22
In 2019, there was a document about internet predators. The filmmakers hired three young-looking actresses and let them pose as 12yo girls on social media for 10 days. They received 2458 messages. Only one of them actually wanted to chat, the rest were sexual predators.
Lydsylou (she/her) 9 months ago
I was watching something the other day where someone posed as an 11 yr old and got a message from.a sexual predator within 7 mins and then hundreds in the following hour
#23
The number of people older than you never increases.
#24
The symptoms for a heart attack can be a lot milder than what is shown in movies or TV shows.
I have seen people coming in with some discomfort and then passing due to a massive infarction when we did the angiogram.
-Edit-
This blew up over the past couple days. I didn’t have time to really look through all the comments, but to all those that have lost a loved one, I’m really sorry for your lost.
I guess the one piece of advise I would like to give is to really look after yourselves, keep your cholesterol levels and blood pressure in check. Lastly, quit smoking if you already haven’t done so!
Mat O'Dowd 9 months ago (edited)
I went through one heart attack so far, it is correct from my experience. I woke up with a mild pain up in my chest at 6 am. What ticked me to go to the ER was that it was a pain I didn't recognize and hadn't felt before. At 7 am I collapsed as they were putting me on the stretcher, at 8 am I had two stents in me, and they put three more two months later. It wasn't a massive pain, it didn't hurt that much but it could've been fatal. It's good sometimes to listen to your body!
#25
There are dogs and cats on YouTube that made more money than you and your parents working your whole life.
#26
Paradoxical undressing. it happens during the last stages of hypothermia. as your nerves are damaged, the person removes all of their clothing in freezing temperatures because they feel irrationally hot.
OhnoI’vebeencensored 9 months ago
The autonomic function that keeps your blood in your core breaks down, flooding your extremities with (relatively) warm blood. This explains why the hypothermic person suddenly feels warm.
#27
Multiple genetic diseases, and this is extremely over simplified so I don't give people nightmares:
Glass bones/brittle bone disease (sneezing can break a bone, or bumping a counter. Basically the body can't grow strong bones at all. CPS has been called on MANY a parent for this disease before diagnosis )
Harlequin syndrome (very very cracked and "broken" skin due to what doctor's believe is the body being unable to shed old skin easily)
Stone man syndrome (body overreacts to injury and instead of a bruise or sore muscle, will turn the injured area into bone. After a certain point people with this have to decide what position to be frozen in for the rest of their existence)
Tree Man syndrome (condition where the HPV to grow uncontrollably to the point that the skin starts looking like tree bark)
Butterfly Skin (you know how delicate a butterfly's wings are and how easily they can lose their wing scales? That's the skin of someone who has this. It just comes off at the slightest touch, leaving many patients to look like walking mummys and needing to be under insane amounts of sun protection.)
Vampire disease (basically if someone goes out in sunlight without enough protection, their skin reacts horribly. Worse than a sunburn by at least 20x)
Edit: thank you for the awards lovely strangers!
And to people who might wonder how the heck I came up with this list, well, when you do research for your own medical problems, are fascinated by ER stories, and are still wondering why some of the human body glitches exist, you come across a lot. Definitely gives you a hard slap to the face and more sympathy. Especially if you meet people like these in the wild. Makes it easier to look at them as people instead of wtf their genetic lottery decided to do.
#29
Dogs like squeaky toys because it sounds like prey that's frightened or injured.
#30
With the permafrost and tundra thawing out bacteria and other microorganisms that we know nothing about are becoming active again.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 9 months ago
There was a major anthrax outbreak in Russia about 8 years ago for this very reason.
#31
Veteran criminals in the gulags would recruit naïve prisoners for their escape attempts called "cows" for the sole purpose of eating them when they ran out of food in the Siberian wilderness.
#32
Cats know when they are going to die, they go and find a small secluded place and pass away.
Mimi La Souris 9 months ago
I knew that, the neighbor’s cat did it to me in the closet of my bedroom, during my holidays... home sweet home after 3 weeks... ! X(
#33
The USA has lost 6 nuclear weapons that were never found.
#34
Once symptoms start, rabies has a 100% mortality rate. Fortunately, the incubation period is several months, so get that shot ASAP.
Ödnæl Feather Oak 9 months ago
I think two people have survived rabies now? You gotta freeze yourself? Im getting ready for work its neat
#35
Ok, i put this in another comment on AITA, but it fits better here.
In Mexico, there was a case of a woman with a thyroid problem. She worked on a department store. She started to have serious abdominal pains and told her employers about it, they ignored her. She went to the bathroom and then called emergency services, who arrived but were blocked by the superiors from entering.
She was pregnant and didn't knew it because of the thyroid. She was having a miscarriage on the bathroom. After she came out, she was fired. But that's not the end of it.
The store ratted her out for having a miscarriage. See, where she lives, abortions are illegal, and her situation was apparently, catalogued as an abortion. She was thrown to prison, 16 years, for "involuntary manslaughter" that was 2016, and even after many protest and media coverage, the state refuses to drop the charges, and the department store hasn't taken any responsibility about their acts
EDIT: So in good news, she was freed in 2019, as noted by an user after me
EDIT 2: BTW, as people ask, her name is Dafne Mcpherson, the store is a Mexican chain named Liverpool, located in San Juan del Río, Querétaro. The reason I didn't knew she was (thankfully) freed is my fault, the story was lost in between lots of stories that happened from then to today. Mexico is an awful place to be a woman unfortunately, so much we have typified murder against a woman as "feminicide", and while abortion is a right in the capital, right-wing groups and parties have blocked this right in almost all of the other states.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 9 months ago
There are people who want similar draconian abortion limits like this in the USA. For example that woman in Ohio who miscarried and was charged for "abusing a corpse".
#36
The Junko Furuta case. Reading about it gave me nightmares. She was held captive for 44 days and basically tortured by her classmates. Some parents knew what was going on but did nothing about it. Since the criminals were juveniles at the time, they are free today.
Edit: For those who haven't read it, I would honestly say that you shouldn't and don't look it up. It will do nothing but make you furious at the least and disgusted. At worst, you won't be able to forget the details. There's enough s**t going around, spare yourself this one time.
TW: abuse, rape
[https://japaninsides.com/44-days-of-hell-the-story-of-junko-furuta/](https://japaninsides.com/44-days-of-hell-the-story-of-junko-furuta/).
Blue Bunny of Happiness 9 months ago
BP gave me cause to look this up recently. Absolutely horrific.
#37
If you fall from a high enough point and hit water, your insides are liquefied on impact.
When my dad was in the Navy, someone jumped from a bridge near the base his ship was about to leave. Since his ship had the only available rescue divers on it, they got sent out to check to see if they were military. My dad asked the divers what it was like and they said it was like trying to get a bag of Jell-O out of the water. This happened at Coronado Naval Base
Edit: turns out your insides don't liquefy, everything just ruptures and it feels like it. My bad.
#38
Japan did some horrible experiments on people during WW2 (Unit 731). Vivisection, shattering people’s frost bitten limbs, biological warfare, etc. It’s all quite horrific and don’t recommend anyone without a stomach for horror to read about it.
Also, after the war, the people who ran it were never tried as war criminals because the US decided to keep them and their research under wraps so that they could get a hand up on the Soviets.
#39
**People's "conscious" decisions are usually nothing of the sort**; they're usually made subconsciously. Then, all the conscious mind normally does is build narratives about the previously-made decisions. Those narratives consciously seem to arise concurrently with the decisions, but really they arise only afterward. Research on split-brain patients has proven all of this.
*Simply put: your brain makes choices without you knowing; then tricks you into thinking the choices were yours, by allowing you to invent gratifying reasons why you supposedly chose them.*.
David Paterson 9 months ago
Whew! That's a relief. So procrastination and wild behaviour are not conscious decisions after all. I don't need to feel guilt.
#40
The astonishing fatality rates that can be found in so many battles in the First World War weren’t accidents or unfortunate byproducts of the technology - they were factored into the battle plans.
By the nature of attritional warfare it was calculated how many men would be lost every week and commanders drew up enough reinforcements to replace them.
This was called “Normal Wastage”.
#41
The USSR built a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons and then dissolved, leaving poorly paid guards behind who no longer had a USSR to hold allegiance to. This made them vulnerable to being bought off by the highest paying bidder to feed their families and a whole bunch of those nukes just vanished and no one knows where they are.
#42
Child marriage is legal (either explicitly, implicitly, or through loopholes) in 48 of the 50 US states. Most child marriages are an underage girl impregnated by the man they’re marrying. One other thing to keep in mind is a majority of teenage mothers are impregnated by men 20+ years old.
#43
Though unlikely, it is entirely possible that the universe has already collapsed and the end of reality as we know it is propagating towards us at the speed of light. We'll never get any warning that it's coming and it could hit us at any time, annihilating the entire planet in less than a tenth of a second.
Random Jackass 9 months ago
So what you're saying is that there's a chance I don't have to work tomorrow?
#44
There was a man who got really bad radiation poisoning. The Japanese government kept him alive for months just to study how the body reacts.
He daily begged for death, and unless you have a strong stomach don't look up the pictures.
#45
You cant join the US army if your IQ is lower than 83.
This is 10 % of the population.
#46
That the Chernobyl disaster, everything that happened and all of the devastation, was the result of only *5%* of the nuclear material in the reactor being explosively ejected.
Just 5%.
The remaining 95% (182 tons) of the nuclear material still sits in the ruins of Reactor 4, a volatile mixture of melted fuel, damaged concrete, graphite rods, zirconium cladding, sand, dust and twisted metal. The entire ruin is emitting lethal amounts of radiation, making cleaning it up next to impossible. Up until the New Safe Confinement went up in 2017, the only thing that could be done was to seal the open air reactor off with a hastily constructed shield of metal. This structure lasted for over 30 years, and as it aged the risk of it collapsing due to decay was very real. If it had crumbled as it almost did in 2013, the result would have been an apocalyptic release of radioactive dust across a far larger area of Europe than the incident in 1986.
Edit: Wow this blew up!! I'm glad I'm able to answer people's questions and give insight; this is a fascinating topic for me and one that I spent a lot of time researching and studying.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 9 months ago
What's left of the reactor core is called The Elephant's Foot because of its shape. The RBMK reactor was graphite moderated so the whole core got hot enough to melt together and melt through the bottom of the primary containment vessel. That chamber can only be remotely observed with robots because it's the most radioactive place on Earth outside of a functioning nuclear reactor core.
#47
The little girl who voiced Ducky in the Land Before Time movies was murdered by her father when she was 11, in part, because he was jealous of her success.
#48
Years ago I remember watching an episode of the show *Monsters Inside Me* where this 16-year-old kid was doing something outside and a fly flew into his eye. It only made contact for about a microsecond, but it was enough time for it to lay eggs. After they hatched they started eating his eye from the inside and he was starting to go blind until a doctor finally figured out what was wrong.
Just imagine that, getting your eye eaten from the inside and losing your sight all because a fly *very* briefly made contact with you. Ever since I learned about this I get really paranoid when there is a fly around my face because of the fact that this could possibly happen to me.
Colt Winkler 9 months ago
me *watches fly in the corner* fly: *moves 1 centimeter* me: aaAAAAGHGHGH
#49
In the Battle Of Verdun, over a million artillery shells were fired onto a 19 mile wide stretch of land in the first 12 hours. If you were lucky enough to survive until then, the sound alone was enough to drive you insane.
Mark 9 months ago
Okay, let's do math. 12 hours is 720 minutes. A standard British QF 18-pounder can fire at a sustained rate of 4 rounds per minute, which means at most, a single gun could fire 2880 shells constantly. A million divided by 2880 is roughly 347 guns, firing in a nineteen-mile stretch. That means an artillery unit for every 20th of a mile, or about 80 metres. Each gun has a crew of 6. Therefore almost 2100 people were required to operate distance artillery, not counting the infantry who were in the trenches
#50
The one that still disturbs me is that the sun could randomly eject something that could kill us all. Someone else probably knows the details better than me, but I read about it a bit a while back.
What do you think ?
Related on Bored Panda
