The r/Weird subreddit is a place where people can share pictures of strange and odd things they come across. It's no wonder the community has 1.5M members; people like to come and check out the strange things fellow netizens have encountered in their daily lives.

As popular as the subreddit is, it must have some rules. Apart from the usual 'No spam' and 'Be civil' rules, r/Weird doesn't accept gorey horror. Unsettling pics are okay, as long as they don't contain bodies split in half and the like. The main criteria for a pic is pretty simple otherwise: it just has to be "weird."

We're throwing the word 'weird' around here like we all know and agree on what it means. But the truth is that it depends entirely on the person. What may seem incredibly strange and gross to one can be pretty tame and even normal to another.

Generally, a weird thing is something that's out of the norm, something we don't see every day. It can also be a juxtaposition of two things that shouldn't work together or even be close to each other. But it isn't necessarily scary; it's more likely something unusual that makes us go, "Huh?"

Back in 2023, Bored Panda spoke with the creators of the Box of Oddities podcast, Kat and Jethro Gilligan Toth. The pair told us that people tend to gravitate towards the strange and the bizarre because of one simple reason: it's interesting. "We're drawn to the things on the fringe of society," Jethro said back then.

Jethro's co-host Kat said that it all comes down to wanting to escape the everyday mundane. "I think a lot of people are not particularly wowed by the everyday small talk that we end up having on a day-to-day basis," she said. "They want to get deeper and see what makes us, as humans, tick."

We have to admit that weird things usually scare us, and the interesting part is that most people actually like feeling fear. However, we don't like feeling fear in real-life situations where we are seriously in danger. It's "recreational fear" that we enjoy, instances where we have control and can exit the scary situation whenever we want.

Scary things trigger our fight-or-flight response, which gives us an adrenaline rush. Chivonna Childs, PhD, a psychologist, explains that when we're in a haunted house, we can enjoy the fear because we know the monsters won't actually get us. "You experience the euphoria because you know you're safe," she explains.

Some of you scrolling through this list might be trying to overcome a fear of gross and unsettling things. I, for one, made a resolution to myself that I'll try to be less squeamish about horror movies – there's so much great art I'm missing not being a fan of the horror genre! I probably won't be watching Terrifier 2 any time soon, but still – baby steps.

Dr. Childs says that making it through a controlled scary experience makes us feel stronger. "We get a sense of accomplishment. I made it through this haunted house, or I watched the whole scary movie, and I was OK. Yes, Jason is in the woods, but he didn't get me."

Enjoying scary things can also help us understand the human condition better. Even some pictures on this list can be cautionary tales about what things we should avoid for our own safety.

According to Dr. Childs, "They remind us to be careful about where you're going. To be aware of your surroundings. That not everybody who looks like a nice person is a nice person. It helps us to think through what we would do if we were in those types of situations."

So, Pandas, which pics from this list did you find the scariest? Or are you too much of a veteran of all things scary and found this pretty tame? Then check out our other two posts featuring submissions from the r/Weird subreddit. You can find them here and here!