Normal history is already barbaric enough. Behind the wars, disease, and murders that everyone knows, are tales that find a way to be even more awful. Some of these terror-inspiring stories can only be compared to those in Halloween movies. But unlike horror movie monsters that can be defeated by saying “it’s just a movie,” the savage tales on this list are very real.

SEE ALSO: 10 Beloved Stories Based On Horrible True Events

10 The Astronaut’s Mysterious Visitor

In 2003, Yang Liwei was floating in his capsule. He had just made history as China’s first man in space. He was alone in a void. Then came a knock.

In space, nobody can hear you scream. But apparently you can hear tapping. Back on Earth, Liwei described the event to reporters. The sound reminded him of “someone knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer.” He could not place the source of the sound. He said, “it neither came from outside nor inside the spaceship.” He set out to explore the shuttle for any hints. Starring out his porthole, he saw nothing noticeable on the side. There was nothing faulty inside either. No one could explain the eerie knock.

Scientist have had little success uncovering the sound’s mysterious origins when it came back. Theories about friendly aliens greeting Liwei to the neighborhood were quickly ruled out. Returning to Earth, Liwei inspected the capsule again. He and his coworkers were still stymied. The crew attempted to recreate the sound. Nothing came close. Because sound needs a medium, the most likely reason was an object physically hitting the spacecraft. No marks indicated outside contact. The most accepted theory is the metallic surface of the exterior contracted while exposed to the cold vacuum of space. Other astronauts have reported similar sounds in 2005 and 2008, lending credence that it has to do with the temperature. The truth is out there, but it’s probably just thermal change.^[1]

9 The British Zombie Invasion

A virus breaks out. The shambling remains of the victims wander the city. The government tries to suppress them, but they escape. Armed locals have to take matters in to their own hands and execute them. This is the story of many zombie movies from REC to Resident Evil. For Black Plague victims in England, it was a reality.

As a burgeoning metropolitan center, London had reason to be particularly cautious about the spread of the disease. The ill were imprisoned in their own houses. To prevent visitors, the doors were padlocked. Any house holding the infected was marked with a red cross on the door to warn others to stay away. Armed guards were stationed to stop anyone from trying to help.

With minimal food and medicine, conditions broke down inside the house. Like George Romero’s Land of the Dead, the infected fought back. Families murdered the guards to escape. One common practice was to sneak a noose through a window and lower it until it hanged around the guard’s neck. With a quick jerk, the guard was hoisted up until he promised to let them go. Blankets were placed on top of murdered guards to trick plague carts in to dragging them off along with the dead. When whole streets were quarantined, neighbors rioted and massacred all the guards, with one crazed victim going so far as to manufacture homemade explosives.

Freedom was not worth all the bloodshed. The plague refugees wandered with no resources. As they fled London, many of the smaller villages barred entry. Locals threw stones and manure at the infirm. Some let the sick in, only to rob them.^[2]

8 Waterloo Soldiers Were Ground Up To Fertilizer

Between Napoleon Bonaparte and ABBA, Waterloo is synonymous with historical calamities. 60,000 soldiers died on that Belgian field. What those soldiers never would have guessed is that they would become a crucial part of English gardening.

A year after Waterloo, the fields were cleared. Companies collected all of the exposed soldier and horse bones. To maximize the space, they converted the bones into a powder. This practice was common on many of Napoleon’s other battlegrounds like Leipzig and Austerlitz.

Newspapers at the time report that in total they hauled, “more than a million bushels of human and inhuman bones.” The fallen French army were ground up in Yorkshire factories, marking their second defeat to the English. Putting the man in “manure”, the remains were mixed together as an additive in fertilizers. The oil from the marrow proved to be especially helpful, rivaling “almost any other substance.” With a positive spin on this wide-scale grave robbing, contemporary newspapers said “a dead soldier is a most valuable article of commerce.”

Sent in mass to Doncaster, the compound helped grow the plants in England’s agriculture center. Local farmers could buy it to help grow their own crops. A generation of Europeans ate food made with the help of dead bodies. Hannibal Lecter would have been proud . . . and satiated.^[3]

7 Venerable Pope Pius XII’s Climatic Death

Venerable Pope Pius XII had one simple request. He did not want to be embalmed. He wanted his body to be interred as God had made it. Presumably, His Holiness did not want to explode either.

By his death in 1958, Pope Pius XII’s tenure had proven to be particularly controversial outside Catholic circles. Serving as the Pontiff in the buildup to and aftermath of World War II, historians have debated the merits of the Pope’s leadership. But those debates aside, the pontiff’s history suffered a final and disturbing blow. Papal Court doctor Galeazzi-Lisi got his position purely through nepotism. Friends with Pius XII (whilst still Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli) before he ascended to the papacy, Galeazzi-Lisi was woefully unqualified to be appointed as the Pope’s personal physician.

A quack with minimal medical training, Galeazzi-Lisi developed his own system of embalming. Evoking the oil rituals of early Christian leaders, Galeazzi-Lisi’s process of “aromatic osmosis” soaked the body in natural oils. For 24 hours, the body laid, wrapped in cellophane. There is a reason scientists abandoned this practice as it allows internal gases in the organs to build as the body decays. Stewing in the Mediterranean heat, the corpse burst open while being carried in procession.

After the corpse exploded, Galeazzi-Lisi was forced to re-embalm Pius overnight. It was too late. Pius XII’s nose and fingers had already flown off. Decomposition discolored the body. Displayed in St. Peter’s Basilica, mourners grieved over an “emerald green” corpse. Nearby guards fainted from the odor. Pius XII’s and Galeazzi-Lisi’s career were laid to rest the same day. Through ineptitude, he earned himself a place in history. He is the only person to have ever been banished from Vatican City.^[4]

6 George Washington Comes Back From The Dead

Before Dr. Victor Frankenstein, there was Dr. William Thornton. Frankenstein scrounged through the graves of recently executed criminals to create his unnatural monster. Thornton settled for more refined clientele, the Founding Father of the United States of America.

Martha Washington promised her husband George, that he would live to see the year 1800. George Washington died on Saturday night, December 14, 1799. Apparently unwilling to dishonor her promise, Martha contacted Dr. William Thornton.

George Washington was terrified of being buried alive. Terrible tales of coffins with scratch marks inside horrified him. With his secretary, Tobias Lear, Washington arranged to “not let his body be put into the Vault in less than three days” after confirming his death. During that window, his grieving family would sit around and wait to see if he moved. Thornton had another idea.

William Thornton was one of the most prestigious physicians of his time. Educated at Europe’s best schools, Thornton swore that he could cure everything wrong with Washington. Washington died before he arrived. That was no obstacle for Thornton. The plan was simple. Like a Thanksgiving turkey, Thornton would lower Washington’s body in cold water. To thaw him out, Thornton would swaddle the president in layers of blankets,. As Washington’s body temperature steadily increases, Thornton would pump air in his lungs to stimulate breath. To restart his heart, Thornton would inject the President with sheep’s blood. Eventually, the Washington would come back to life like nothing had ever happened. Surprisingly, the proposal was rejected. Grudgingly, Thornton believed for 20 years his experiment could have saved the President’s life. Science suggests otherwise.^[5]

5 Ivan Pavlov experimented on homeless orphans too

The mad Russian scientist’s mind control experiments on helpless victims is as classic a horror trope as they come. Those mad scientists do not usually get the Nobel Prize though. Ivan Pavlov is the exception that proves the rule.

Though Pavlov is most famous for conditioning dogs, that is not where his experiments were destined to end. A pupil of Pavlov, Nikolai Krasnogorsky, extended his experiments to humans. Acquiring subjects from the local orphanage, he had a group of young children he could easily manipulate without the burden of getting any clearance from their parents.

Repeating the set-up from his mentor’s famous dog experiments would have been impossible. Human beings are less willing than dogs to eat on cue. Bound with leather straps and metal head gear, the children’s mouths were locked open. Devices hooked inside the mouth measured their pooled saliva. An electronic pad hit their wrist whenever food was about to be distributed. The kids were force-fed both cookies and foul food. Their reactions to the different samples were recorded.

Though highly unethical, the research furthered the scientific understanding of conditioning on humans. Unlike Pavlov’s dogs, humans were less susceptible to slight changes in the stimuli. Through their suffering Kransngorsky’s children laid the groundwork for the modern theory of cognitive behavioral therapy.^[6]

4 Minik Wallace’s Museum of Horrors

Robert Peary is best known today for his excursions to the North Pole in 1909. By that time, Peary and his crew had already spent years researching the Arctic. In September 1897, he sailed to New York accompanied, likely unwillingly, by six Eskimos from Greenland. The American Museum of Natural History was scheduled to perform physicals on them. Among the six were Minik, a 7-year-old boy, and his father, Qisuk.

Living as an attraction, visitors gawked at Minik and Qisuk in the Arctic exhibit. Unaccustomed to the germs in New York, four, including Qisuk, promptly died. Another left for the Arctic shortly after. Hundreds of miles from home, Minik Wallace was left alone. The museum threw Qisuk a funeral. Minik watched as his father was put to rest in the museum’s garden. In reality, the museum just buried a log wrapped with fur. Qisuk’s real body, along with the three other Eskimos, were dissected and bleached at Bellevue Hospital. Just a few feet away from Minik’s own exhibit, his father’s corpse was put on display.

This was Peary’s common practice. He robbed Eskimo graves for their bones and property. The Museum would buy it. For years, Minik campaigned for the return of his father’s body. His requests were refused until Minik finally got Peary to listen by threatening to reveal that Peary had fathered two Eskimo children. Peary let Minik return to the Arctic.

Minik’s return was bitter sweet. He relearned his native language and married a fellow Eskimo. However, as the only country he ever truly knew, he longed for the United States and returned. In 1916, working as a lumberjack in Pittsburg, N.H. Minik died in the Spanish Flu epidemic. He was 28.^[7]

3 John Scott Harrison’s Cadaver Chop Shop

John Scott Harrison has the rare distinction of being the only person to be the son of a past United States president (William Henry Harrison) and the father of a future president (Benjamin Harrison). He also has the rare distinction of being a victim of a Leatherface-like dissection chamber.

As a onetime Ohio congressman, John Scott Harrison’s own tenure in politics was very successful, which explains why so many people attended his funeral on May 25, 1878. During the ceremony, mourners noticed that somebody had robbed the nearby grave of Augustus Devin. Worried that John Harrison might have the same fate, his sons placed three large stones bound with cement on the casket. It took 16 men to lift the stones. As a further precaution, a guard was hired to stand watch for a month.

Curious as to the fate of Mr Devin and suspicious of the nearby medical school’s need for corpses to study, a search warrant was obtained for the Medical College of Ohio. Their search uncovered multiple macabre finds including a box of mangled body parts and the splayed corpse of a six month old baby. But more revolting still was a masked naked corpse hanging from a rope. They removed the mask revealing the face of John Scott Harrison. His body had been robbed less than 24 hours after his burial . . . despite all of the precautions.

But what of Augustus Devin? He was later discovered pickling in a barrel at the University of Michigan.^[8]

2 The Serial Killer in the London Blitz

The London Blitz was a time when England boldly stood against the steady march of Nazism. Daily life in bomb-rattled London was a constant struggle. Gordon Frederick Cummins only made it worse.

In the cover of compulsory darkness, Gordon Frederick Cummins terrorized London in a six-day spree of murder and assault. A total of seven women were attacked. Four of them died. Cummins, who had enlisted in the Royal Air Force, was stationed at the Aircraft Reception Centre in northern London. Mainly attacking prostitutes, the city became his hunting ground for a week.

His first victim Evelyn Hamilton was sexually assaulted, robbed, strangled, and discarded in a gutter. Barely twenty-four hours later, Evelyn Oately’s slashed body was discovered. Next to her disfigured corpse was a can opener used in the attack. A fingerprint on the can opener’s handle was recovered. The next day, Margaret Florence Lowe’s body was found with her organs ripped out of her abdomen. And then, for the fourth day in a row, police found another dead prostitute, Doris Jouannet.

To become a horror cliché, Cummins waited a day to attack on Friday the 13th. Unlike Jason Voorhees, Cummins did not kill anyone that night. 32-year-old Mary Haywood was saved when a night porter shone his flashlight on Cummins in the middle of an attack. During the scuffle, Cummins left his service respirator behind as he fled. The police traced the serial number back to Cummins. Matching Cummins’ prints to the one on the can opener, Cummins was sentenced to death. The newly dubbed “Blackout Ripper” was executed on the 25th of June, 1942.^[9]

1 The Lincoln Assassination’s Forgotten Victim

The Lincoln assassination was one of the saddest events in United States history. High-ranking members of the American government including Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward were targeted that night by Booth’s co-conspirators. One unintended victim intended was not: Clara Harris. A tangential involvement with the Lincoln assassination led to her death too.

Clara Harris was not even supposed to be at Ford’s Theatre that April night in 1865. She and her then beau major Henry Rathbone attended at First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s request. Following the recent victory of the Civil War, the theatre-goers were in a celebratory mood. But, as history well knows, the celebration was cut short when John Wilkes Booth barged into the president’s box and shot him in the head. Trying to apprehend the assassin, Rathbone grabbed Boothe’s arm but Booth stabbed him. With the bloody dagger still in hand, Booth escaped.

Years later, Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone married. Unable to part with her blood-stained dress, Clara had preserved it behind a walled off closet. She believed it might summon Lincoln’s ghost. Spirits talked to Rathbone too. Guilt driven for not stopping the tragedy, Rathbone heard voices in the walls. They blamed him for Lincoln’s death and ordered him to avenge the fallen president. With a murder straight out of The Shining, Rathbone recreated the assassination on Christmas Eve in 1883. He shot Clara and stabbed himself with a knife. Clara died. He then attempted to attack his children before groundskeepers could pull him off. Henry spent the rest of his life in an asylum.^[10]

Stephen King has created eerie fictional towns for the state of Maine to co-exist along some real ones for his treasure-trove of books. He was inspired by Bridgton to write The Mist and by Durham to create the fictional town of Jerusalem’s Lot. Derry, the home of IT, is based on the real city of Bangor. Terrifying things happen in these towns and one can only sigh in relief that the stories are all fiction.

However, there are several places around the world that would give King’s creations a run for their money. On this list are just a few of them.

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10 Terror in O’ahu

O’ahu is the third-largest Hawaiian island and is home to around a million people. Here you will find Waikiki and Pearl Harbor as well as Lanikai Beach which is one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

This type of description doesn’t lend itself to creepiness, does it? However, when night falls over O’ahu, the spirits of the dead come out to play. Should you find yourself on the 16th Avenue bridge in Kaimuki after dark, don’t be surprised if you find a small, cold hand worming its way into yours. It is believed that a little girl was killed in a hit-and-run incident on this bridge and that her spirit is constantly looking for someone to lead her home.

If that isn’t quite unsettling enough for you, there have been several reports of a ghostly woman rattling and pounding on toilet stall doors in the Old Waialae Drive-In Theater. When the unlucky person inside the toilet stall opened the door, they found a floating apparition wearing a long dress but with no face and no feet right in front of them.

9 The horror of Real Filipe

South America is home to Angel Falls, Machu Picchu, Copper Canyon, excellent cuisine and vintage cars. Here you can hike to Rainbow Mountain, dance the salsa, gaze at the Christ the Redeemer statue or watch football matches alongside an electrifying crowd.

The continent is also home to some of the scariest places on Earth.

The narrow, u-shaped Real Filipe Fortress in Lima held prisoners who were forced to stand the entire time they were imprisoned. Before arriving at their horrific destination, these inmates had to traverse the narrow corridors all the while trying to duck out of the way of pails of boiling water thrown at them. Many of them died after enduring 2 months of hell in Real Filipe.

These days, the horrors continue, but now they are of the ghostly variety. Visitors to the fortress have reported seeing pale apparitions with long hair walking the drawbridge and grim-looking soldiers throwing themselves off the parapets. Some have even reported glimpsing demonic children appearing in the narrow passageways.

8 New Zealand’s spookiest spots

The island country of New Zealand isn’t lacking in creepy locations. Here the brave at heart can visit Waitomo Caves Hotel where guests have seen bathtubs dripping with blood and experienced apparitions passing right through them. Or if decaying psychiatric hospital buildings are more their speed, they can take a tour of Kingseat Psychiatric Hospital where temperatures plummet for no reason, furniture is moved around by unseen hands, and doorbells ring when no one is near them.

Then there is Camp Adair in Hunua. This camp was established in 1913 and accommodates church retreats, sports teams and team buildings. It is also the site of a spooky urban legend which has it that a red-headed teacher killed a group of children in the School House Building. Some who have visited the camp in recent years have reported the spectre of a red-headed man peeking at them through the windows…

7 Don’t go in there!

The country of Russia covers over 1/8th of Earth’s occupied land area, so there is ample space for both fantastic landscapes and beautiful architecture as well as abandoned and downright creepy places. This includes the Kusovnikov House in Moscow where an old man with a hump is said to wander the street while mourning the loss of his wealth as well as the Mikhailovsky Castle where tsar Pavel I still plays the violin by a particular window.

Russia is also the place you will find the Rotonda, a circular hall located inside an 18th century building. It is rumored that the hall was a meeting place for Freemasons at one point before it became the hangout of musical groups in the 70s and 80s. It is believed that if a person writes a heartfelt wish on the graffiti-covered walls, it would come true, but at a terrible price. Don’t go near the basement though, as it is said that if someone enters it alone, they will either return a few years older or become completely insane.

6 Leave the stones alone

Sweden gave us ABBA, Roxette, Avicii, functional and sustainable design, excellent coffee and has some of the most mesmerizing landscapes in the world. It is also in Sweden where you should never get on a silver train known as Silverpilen as it will transport you to an abandoned station in the middle of a forest from which you can never return.

Train stations are not the only creepy things in this country.

There is also the main square in Gamla Stan (Old Town) where blood flows across the cobblestones each November as if re-enacting the “Stockholm Bloodbath” that took place more than a century ago. 92 members of the Swedish nobility were either beheaded or hanged in the square because they opposed the Dane. To honor these souls, a red building nearby incorporated 92 white stones in its design. Should anyone try to remove one of these stones, the ghost of the slain person representing that stone will rise from its grave haunt Stockholm forever. Suffice it to say, all the white stones remain intact.

5 Ghosts of history

Antarctica isn’t cold enough to keep the ghosts at bay. In fact, it is said to be one of the most haunted places on Earth. Legend has it that while the explorers and scientists of yore that once endured this harsh landscape might be long gone, their spirits still hang around. For instance, Sir Edmund Hillary believed that he had seen Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ghost in his abandoned hut when he and his New Zealand party reached Antarctica in 1958.

In 1979, a plane flying tourists on a day-trip from New Zealand crashed into the side of Mount Erebus killing all 257 people on board. The corpses of the deceased were allegedly stored at McMurdo Station which is an American base on Ross Island. Soon, visitors to the island began to report hearing disembodied voices, and seeing trails of footprints that ended abruptly.

There are even so-called ghost mountains that lie underneath four meters of ice and has never been seen by humans, only mapped by radar.

4 Fear and trepidation in the woods

Japan is a fantastic travel destination that offers some of the most breathtaking sights in the world, including Mount Fuji, Shinto Shrines, Buddhist Temples and landscapes covered in cherry blossoms.

It is also the birthplace of several terrifying urban legends and horror movies, many of which center around creepy locations. These locations include the Round Schoolhouse ruin situated in Bibai, Hokkaido. The circular school building was constructed in 1959 and most of the students were the children of coal miners who worked nearby.

After Japan started importing coal instead of mining it, the school was eventually abandoned in 1974 with most of the furniture left behind. The ruin has long since been a great attraction for ‘ghost hunting’ parties. Those who have braved the woods to reach the old ruin, have returned claiming to have heard terrifying screams echoing through the night and being attacked by shadowy figures that jumped out at them from between the trees.

It is also rumored that those who actually step inside the building, return not only traumatized, but completely deranged. As such, mediums in Japan refuse to go near the site and paranormal investigators believe it to be an interdimensional portal.

3 Spirits of the Land Down Under

While there are certainly terrifying real-life creatures to found in Australia such as great white sharks, huge spiders and snakes, there are also hordes of spirits unable to cross over to the other side. Or so it seems, at least.

In the abandoned Beechworth Lunatic Asylum an 80-year-old man tugs at tourists’ clothes while a young girl mumbles at those who pass by close to her, desperate to be heard but no one can understand what she’s saying. At the Old Adelaide Gaol, you might just run into the spirit of hangman, Ben Ellis, who is still seeking atonement for the prisoner who didn’t die instantly but instead hung on the rope for 22 minutes before drawing his last breath. In the Monte Cristo Homestead, the constant rattling of chains alerts visitors to the presence of the spirit of a mentally ill patient named Harold who was chained to a bed for 40 years before he died.

The most haunted town in Australia is reputed to be Picton, with the Redback Range Railway tunnel singled out as the most haunted place inside it. It is believed that many people committed suicide here and that a train accident led to the death of a local girl in 1916. Her spirit is said to roam the tunnel to this day. Visitors to the tunnel have reported seeing figures suddenly appearing before them, ghostly children running around and white lights hovering above them as they walk.

2 Wandering ghosts

Europe is steeped in history which makes it the ‘ideal’ location for scary experiences. The continent has everything from haunted Victorian cemeteries and Jack the Ripper tours to vampire castles, creepy statues, and monks haunting the streets.

At the Zvíkov Castle in Czech Republic an apparition haunted its residents until 1597, but even though this spirit eventually dissipated, supernatural events continued. This included animals behaving strangely for no apparent reason, and unexplained fires. An eerie legend says that anyone who sleeps in the main tower of the castle will die within 12 months.

The Castle of Brissac in Maine-et-Loire, France, houses the wandering spirit of La Dame Verte who was murdered by her husband after he caught her being unfaithful to him. Visitors to the castle have reported seeing her ghost, wearing a green dress, with gaping holes where her eyes and nose used to be. Those who don’t suffer the misfortune of being scared witless by her, can hear her moaning around the castle.

Then there is the embalmed corpse of 2-year-old Rosalia Lombardo that is kept in a glass case in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy. The little girl has been perfectly preserved since her death in 1920. Some visitors are so overcome by how life-like her corpse is that they have become convinced she still blinks her eyes.

1 Hotel of the undead

The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel definitely rivals the Overlook. Urban legend has it that a bride fell down a flight of stairs at the hotel in 1920 and died instantly. She never left however, her veiled and wedding dress-clad spirit appearing to several guests over the years. Sometimes the back of her dress is on fire.

In Room 873 a man allegedly killed his wife and daughter, setting up the space for innumerable ghost sightings to the extent that the hotel sealed up the room. Some have reported seeing the impression of a small child appearing on the wall where the door of Room 873 used to be. Before it was permanently closed off, maids complained that they were unable to clean bloody fingerprints from the bathroom mirror and unholy screams woke guests in the middle of the night.

In another area of the hotel, a headless man appears periodically who, despite his lack of a head, still manages to play the bagpipes, freaking people out as he wanders along.

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