People do strange things every day. We’ve all likely seen someone doing something that seems just a bit off. Maybe it’s noticing someone riding a bike wearing pajamas in the pouring rain or arguing with the loaves of bread on the shelf in the grocery store. Odd, yeah, but something we can just ignore as nonsensical and harmless. But sometimes, what they do is so off the charts that it takes a (long) while to wrap your head around it.
And sadly, the mere ten items on this list are truly just the tip of the crazy iceberg.
Related: 10 Strange Psychological Disorders That Will Blow Your Mind
10 The Interest Is How Much?
In 2009, the Kontora loan company in Latvia raised eyebrows when it presented an unusual offer to those suffering through tough economic times. All potential clients needed to do to secure a small loan was to agree to the collateral, namely their immortal soul.
When interviewed about this weirdness, Viktor Mirosiichenko, who was the face of the company at the time, confirmed that the “soul” part of the contract was the only part he would hold clients to. And, of course, the 1% interest rate per day.
At the time, Latvia was the EU nation worst hit by the economic crisis, and Mirosiichenko said his company offered a way to ride out the storm.
He trusted the over 200 people who took up the loan offer would honor the agreement, saying, “If they don’t give it back, what can you do? They won’t have a soul, that’s all.”[1]
9 Hiding the Truth
Also in 2009, UK police received a tip-off that led them to a gruesome discovery in the suburb of Sidcup. Inside the house where 83-year-old Daulat Irani lived, they found a body inside a freezer. When the woman hesitantly started spilling the beans, it emerged that the body was that of her mother, who had died at least 20 years earlier.
It remained unclear what her mother died of, but Irani decided to wrap her body in a black trash bag and place it in the freezer in the garage. It is believed that she did this out of fear that authorities would discover her mother had been living in the country illegally.
The police didn’t treat the death as suspicious but rather unexplained.[2]
8 How Did You Get Your Injury?
In a news story seemingly taken from a Grey’s Anatomy storyline, several outlets reported in 2021 that the bomb squad had been called to the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in England. This came after a man was admitted who had a World War II-era shell stuck up his… backside. Asked how it got there, he pulled out the old “I was cleaning stuff when I put it down on the floor, slipped, and fell, and then it went up my…”
Seems legit.
The bomb squad was able to stabilize the scene and found that the device was not dangerous, after which doctors were able to successfully remove it.[3]
7 For the Love of Cutlery
Some people have weird cravings, even without being pregnant. But when 52-year-old Margaret Daalman went to the hospital complaining of pain in her stomach, the doctors were not prepared for what they discovered.
Rushing her into surgery, they painstakingly removed 78 pieces of cutlery from her stomach, including forks and spoons. Daalman, who is from Rotterdam, suffers from a condition called pica, which causes her to crave either excessive amounts of food commodities or non-food substances. This condition is considered a form of self-harm and is not easy to diagnose without an extensive medical workup.
It was revealed afterward that this wasn’t Daalman’s first visit to the emergency room either.[4]
6 That’s Gotta Hurt!
It seems that not even extreme pain will keep some people from trying to get into the record books. Dong Changsheng decided that pulling a car thirty feet with his eyelids wasn’t enough. He upped the ante and attached two metal hooks into his lower eyelids. These hooks were attached to ropes which, in turn, were attached to an amphibious plane.
Changsheng proceeded to pull the aircraft 16 feet (4.9 meters) in less than one minute. He was quoted as saying afterward, “I have pulled a car with my eyelids before, but this was the first time with an airplane… To be honest, I didn’t use my full strength, and I think I could probably pull it three times the distance. I have built up the body strength to do this, but it would be very dangerous for ordinary people… I don’t want anyone to copy me.”
He further attributed his abilities to Qigong, which involves moving meditation and deep rhythmic breathing.[5]
5 An Extreme Way to Escape Incarceration
In 2007, British teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker was raped and murdered by Tatsuya Ichihashi inside his apartment in Chiba Prefecture. He fled and was finally apprehended by police in November 2009. He confessed to the 22-year-old’s murder and told police that he’d accidentally smothered her to keep her from screaming while he raped her. He shaved her head after killing her and buried her body in a bathtub filled with sand and compost soil.
He also took his awful crime to another level by performing plastic surgery on himself in an attempt to obscure his identity. He cut off a piece of his lower lip with a pair of scissors, dug two moles out of his cheek with a box cutter, and even tried to perform a nose job on himself. He later approached a clinic to help him finish what he started. The staff instantly became suspicious and alerted the police.
This monster was sentenced to life in prison in 2011.
In 2011, Ichihashi confirmed these horrific details in a book he wrote while in prison. Instead of explaining his motives for the murder, he explains in detail his life on the lam and how much it hurt to cut his own face.[6]
4 Craziness Isn’t a New Thing
Doing weird things isn’t a new fad. Even back in the days of the war, it seemed as though the leaders of several countries were trying to outdo one another by thinking up insane antics.
During the Second World War, Hitler decided that a different type of army needed to be bred in order to help the Nazis gain even more power. And it wasn’t a human army either. Instead, the Nazis were to try and create an army of dogs that could be taught to talk, read, and write. This came on the back of a number of German “animal psychologists” who at the time believed that dogs were as intelligent as humans and could be taught to think and communicate abstractly.
The vision was that the dogs would join the German army and help guard concentration camps in place of SS officers. So Hitler set up an Animal Talking School and proceeded to recruit smart dogs from throughout the country. Soon outlandish claims started making the rounds that some of these dogs could spell words by tapping their paws on a wooden board, while others apparently asked to serve in the German army because they disliked the French.
It’s safe to say that this so-called super dog army never materialized.[7]
3 Just, Why?
Reality shows are known for being completely bonkers. My Strange Addiction is no different, but no one quite expected the series finale in 2011 when a woman named Casie made an unforgettable confession.
Casie’s husband died after a severe asthma attack two months before the finale was filmed. When she first received his cremated remains, she transferred the ashes from a cardboard box into a memorial urn. Some of the ashes spilled on her hands during the transfer.
Not wanting to just “wipe him away,” ‘ Casie licked the ashes from her fingers. She described the taste as something between rotten eggs and sandpaper.
Two months on, she was still eating the ashes. She also took to carrying the urn everywhere with her, including shops, the movies, and even restaurants.
At the end of the program, Casie at least received some help by entering into therapy with the hopes that it would help her let go of her husband and stop her from continuing to eat his ashes. She was not allowed to take the ashes with her to therapy.[8]
2 Wait for Me!
In 2016, 65-year-old Susan Angela Brown was on a cruise ship with her husband when they started fighting. She was so annoyed that she got off the ship in Funchal, Madeira, and refused to get on again. Instead, she traveled to the island’s airport to catch a flight back home.
In a strange turn of events, however, she seemingly changed her mind after the ship had already left the island. Instead of sticking to her flight plan, Brown decided to make a swim for it. She jumped into the icy Atlantic and tried to get to the ship.
Fortunately, she was spotted by fishermen who heard her calling for help. By the time they saw her, she was already 1,640 feet (500 meters) from the coast and suffering from hypothermia. The port captain later said that because she had been in the water for more than three hours, she was close to death and would definitely have died if the fishermen hadn’t seen her when they did.
Her husband was alerted and got off the ship in Lisbon, where he took a flight back to Madeira to reunite with her.[9]
1 The Poo Brigade
Many people have had a terrible Tinder date. But not a lot of people’s dates ended quite the way Liam Smith’s did in 2017.
Smith and his date returned to the shared house he lived in after having an enjoyable time at a restaurant. They were going to share a bottle of wine and watch a movie when she excused herself to go to the bathroom.
Smith saw that when she came back, she looked “panicked.” Prompting her, she told him that she tried to throw her poo out of the toilet window because the toilet wouldn’t flush. But then it got stuck between two non-opening windows instead of landing in the garden, as she’d hoped it would.
He offered to help by smashing the window, but his date had other plans. She decided to climb in headfirst between the two windows to retrieve her poo and then got stuck herself. Smith then had no choice but to call the fire department, who could hardly control their laughter, before getting to work removing the woman from between the windows.
She was rescued unharmed, but the bathroom window was completely destroyed in the process. Smith, a student, set up a crowdfunding target of £200 to help pay for the window. He managed to raise more than £1,200. Together, he and his date decided to split the extra money between a charity supporting firefighters and another that maintains flushing toilets in developing countries.
Smith also confirmed that he would be seeing the woman again.[10]