Throughout history, the world—particularly the the United States—has seen its fair share of conspiracy theories come and go. From reptilians disguised as humans to chemtrails, it’s fair to say that most of these theories are entirely absurd.

From time to time, though, a conspiracy theory that many thought to be ridiculous is shown, in fact, to be correct. In such cases, the truth can prove to be much more terrifying than fiction. The following are ten examples of such real-life conspiracies.

10 Project SUNSHINE

Despite its cheery name, Project SUNSHINE was by far one of the darkest conspiracies ever conceived and the most horrifying to be proven real. The project was commissioned by the US Atomic Energy Committee and the US Air Force.

Designed to investigate the effects of nuclear radiation on humans and the environment, Project SUNSHINE saw the US government harvest and use, often without the permission of parents, the body parts of dead children and babies. Younger children typically have higher amounts of strontium in their bones, meaning that their tissues are more susceptible to radiation damage. Thus, they made better test subjects for the project.^[1]

9 Project MKULTRA

MKULTRA is one of the better-known conspiracies. The general premise—now proven to be true—was that the US government was testing psychedelics and hallucinogenic drugs on unsuspecting American citizens and military personnel, in order to investigate the viability of behavior modification programs. Essentially, the US government was testing mind control techniques on its own populace and left many of its “participants” with trauma and even brain damage.

There are plenty of cases of MKULTRA subjects acting violently or dangerously, and the fact that the US government was so willing to endanger the lives of its own citizens without their consent is perhaps the most chilling part of the whole conspiracy.^[2]

8 The US Government’s Alcohol Poisoning

This conspiracy doesn’t have a particular name, but it’s one that has been the subject of much discussion over the years, particularly recently. During Prohibition, the US government tainted industrial alcohol with methanol—a commonly used antifreeze—in an attempt to curb the drinking of it. Reports differ on just how much methanol was added, though most agree that it wasn’t enough to be lethal and was intended more as a deterrent than a punishment.

On the other hand, it has also been reported that there were around 10,000 deaths during this period as a result of the poisoning, so perhaps the intention was darker than we think.^[3]

7 US Government Spying

In June 2013, intelligence contractor Edward Snowden released thousands of top-secret documents to various journalists, which detailed the sophisticated intelligence network the US, in conjunction with several other Western countries, had been using to spy on civilian populations around the world. Much of this spying was done through social networking companies; for instance, in 2016, US government agencies sent approximately 50,000 requests for user data to Facebook, roughly 28,000 to Google, and about 9,000 to Apple.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story is how the National Security Agency conducted multiple espionage operations on US-allied governments, such as Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain. Creepy stuff.^[4]

6 Gulf Of Tonkin Incident

On August 2, 1964, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam’s coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several North Vietnamese torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Maddox was also reportedly attacked by North Vietnamese vessels on August 4.

In 2005, an undated NSA publication was declassified, revealing that there was no attack on the Maddox on August 4.^[5]

Since the NSA’s disclosure, many have accused the US government of intentionally faking the incident to increase support for the US war in Vietnam and to justify further military action in the region. In fact, on August 10, the US congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a bill that authorized President Johnson to do whatever was necessary to assist “any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty.”

This technique was also seen in the early 2000s, when the government administrations of President Bush of the US and Prime Minister Tony Blair of the UK asserted that the Iraqi government was actively constructing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, prompting the Iraq War. Later, US-led inspections found that Iraq had in fact not been stockpiling or producing WMDs to begin with.

5 The First Lady Who Ran The Country

In October 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that rendered him incapable of governing. Some of us probably know that part. What you might not know, however, is that after his stroke, his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson, decided what matters were important enough to bring to Woodrow’s attention, essentially giving her the unofficial role of president until Warren Harding took over in 1921. Because Woodrow never technically resigned, the vice president at the time, Thomas Marshall, could not take over, and Wilson instead decided to allow his wife to govern for some time.^[6]

Perhaps the scariest thing about this whole story is that the US government didn’t inform the public of this. (The people only learned of Wilson’s stroke in February 1920, and even then, the full details weren’t known.) It’s events like these that are the framework of the relatively modern and widely believed Deep State conspiracy theory, which posits that there is an unknown party in the government, independent of changing administrations, that makes most of the decisions.

4 The US Government’s Weather Manipulation

In 1993, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the US military, and the University of Alaska created the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, otherwise known as HAARP. Since then, numerous conspiracy theories have sprung up surrounding the mysterious project, everything from satellites that can cause earthquakes to huge transmitters that can create tornadoes and tsunamis. However, what most people don’t know is that there actually was documented weather manipulation project during the Vietnam War—decades before the creation of HAARP.

Operation Popeye was an five-year project in which the US government used the age-old technique of cloud seeding to increase precipitation during the rainy seasons over North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh Trail in order to disrupt the NVA’s moving of vehicles, weapons, and rations across the trail. The general idea of cloud seeding is to send an airborne object, typically an airplane, flying through a cloud while releasing small particulates that give water vapor something to cling to so that it can condense and become rain.^[7]

What’s scary about this is if the military has done it in the past (and given the length of the operation, it must have been at least partly successful), what’s to stop them from doing it again?

3 The Canadian Fruit Machine

Despite being one of the strongest proponents of the LGBT community today, Canada’s history isn’t as clean as one would think. In the 1960s, the Canadian government hired a university professor to create a “gaydar,” what it called the “Fruit Machine” at the time. The university professor, Frank Robert Wake of Carleton University, went about this by forcing subjects to look at same-sex erotic imagery while he measured pupil dilation, perspiration levels, and changes in pulse to gauge just how “fruity” they were.^[8]

The program was part of a long-term effort to remove homosexuals from positions of civil service. In the late 1960s, funding was cut off—but not before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had collected files on over 9,000 suspected homosexuals.

2 The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is the designated spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. Those carrying the title are generally seen as embodying the tenets of Buddhism: inner peace, enlightenment, and virtuousness. However, CIA documents published by the State Department in 1998 indicated otherwise: For much of the 1960s and some of the 1970s, the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatzo, along with many other prominent Tibetan figures, were funneled millions of dollars by the CIA. This funding was part of a concerted effort by US intelligence to undermine Communist China, and global communist presence, by propping up Tibetan guerrillas in their fight against the communist state. According to the report, the CIA funded approximately 2,100 Tibetan guerrillas with $500,000 annually and gave the Dalai Lama himself an annual $180,000 subsidy.

The funding ended in the early 1970s, after President Nixon began to open up more to China in efforts to improve crumbling relations. The official CIA report stated that the purpose of the program was to “keep the political concept of an autonomous Tibet alive within Tibet and among foreign nations, principally India, and to build a capability for resistance against possible political developments inside Communist China.” The Dalai Lama wrote in his autobiography that he saw the cutting off of the funding as “a reflection of their anti-Communist policies rather than genuine support for the restoration of Tibetan independence.”^[9]

1 Operation Mockingbird

Operation Mockingbird was a 1950s program in which the CIA recruited and propped up various media organizations to influence public opinion. In April 1976, the Church Committee, a US senate task force, conducted an investigation into the CIA’s influence over both foreign and national news organizations and stated that the CIA maintained a huge global network that provided intel for the organization and “at times” attempted to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda.^[10]

The damning report also stated that these same individuals gave the CIA direct access to a large number of “newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets” and claimed that approximately 50 of the CIA’s assets were individual American journalists or employees of US media organizations.

I’m a freelance writer and student who loves writing.

For almost 400 years, the Ottoman Empire dominated Southeastern Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East. Founded by daring Turkic horsemen, the empire soon lost much of its original vitality, settling into a curious state of functional dysfunction that hid all kinds of dark secrets.

10Fratricide

The early Ottoman sultans didn’t practice primogeniture, where the eldest son inherits everything. As a result, various brothers sometimes claimed the throne and the early days of the empire were plagued by pretenders, who tended to take refuge in enemy states and cause trouble for years. When Mehmed the Conqueror besieged Constantinople, his own uncle fought against him from the walls.

Mehmed dealt with the problem with his customary ruthlessness. When he took the throne, he had most of his male relatives executed, including an infant brother strangled in his crib. Later, he issued his infamous law: “And to whomsoever of my sons the Sultanate shall pass, it is fitting that for the order of the world he shall kill his brothers. Most of the Ulema allow this. So let them act on this.”

From that point on, each new sultan had to take the throne by killing all his male relatives. Mehmed III tore out his beard with grief when his young brother begged him for mercy. But he “answered never a word,” and the boy was executed along with 18 other brothers. The sight of their 19 shrouded bodies rolling through the streets was said to have moved all Istanbul to tears.

Even after the initial round of murders, the sultan’s relatives weren’t safe. Suleiman the Magnificent watched silently from behind a screen while his own son was strangled with a bowstring; the boy had become too popular with the army for the sultan to feel secure.

9The Cage

The policy of fratricide was never popular with the public or the clergy, and it was quietly abandoned when Ahmed I suddenly died in 1617. Instead, potential heirs to the throne were confined in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul in special apartments known as the kafes (“the cage”).

A prince of the Ottoman Empire might spend his whole life imprisoned in the kafes, monitored constantly by guards. The imprisonment was usually luxurious but strictly enforced, and many a prince went mad from boredom or else became debauched and dependent on alcohol. When a new sultan was taken to the Gate of Felicity to receive the allegiance of the viziers, it might be the first time he had been outside in decades, which wasn’t ideal preparation for a ruler.

The threat of execution was constant. In 1621, the Grand Mufti refused to allow Osman II to have his brother strangled. But the chief judge of the Balkans was rushed in to give a counter opinion, and the prince was strangled anyway. Osman himself was later overthrown by the military, who had to extricate his surviving brother from the kafes by pulling the roof off and hauling him out with a rope. The poor man had been two days without food or water and was probably too insane to notice that he had become sultan.

8The Palace Was A Silent Hell

Even for the sultan, life in the Topkapi could be stifling in the extreme. It was considered unseemly for the sultan to speak too much, so a form of sign language was introduced and the ruler spent most of his day surrounded by complete silence. Mustafa I found this impossible to bear and tried to have it banned, but his viziers refused to allow it. Mustafa soon went insane and was seen throwing coins into the sea for the fish to spend.

Palace intrigue was endemic as viziers, courtiers, and eunuchs jockeyed for power. For 130 years, the women of the harem gained great influence and the period became known as “the sultanate of women.” The dragoman (chief interpreter) was always powerful and always a Greek. The eunuchs split along racial lines, and the Chief Black Eunuch and Chief White Eunuch were often fierce rivals.

Caught in the middle of this madness, the sultan was watched everywhere he went. Ahmet III wrote to his grand vizier complaining that “If I go to one of the rooms, 40 pages are lined up; if I have to put on my trousers, I do not feel the least comfort, so the sword-bearer has to dismiss them, keeping only three or four men so that I may be at ease.” Spending their days in total silence, constantly watched, in such a poisonous atmosphere, a number of the later Ottoman sultans became mentally ill.

7Executions

The Ottoman government held the power of life and death over its subjects, and it wasn’t afraid to use it. The first court of the Topkapi Palace, where petitioners and visitors had to gather, was a terrifying place. It featured two pillars where severed heads were displayed and a special fountain solely for executioners to wash their hands. During the periodic palace purges, mounds of tongues might be piled up in the first court while a special cannon boomed every time a body was thrown into the sea.

The Ottomans didn’t bother to create a corps of executioners. Instead, the job strangely fell to the palace gardeners, who split their time between murder and creating many of the delightful flowers we know today. Most of their victims were simply beheaded. But it was forbidden to spill the blood of royalty and high-ranking officials, so they had to be strangled instead. As a result, the head gardener was always a huge, muscular man capable of choking a vizier to death at a moment’s notice.

In the early days of the empire, the sultan’s officials prided themselves on their obedience to his whims and it was customary for them to face execution with quiet grace. The famous vizier Kara Mustafa was much respected for greeting his executioner with a humble “So be it” and kneeling for the cord to loop around his neck.

In later years, standards slipped. In fact, the 19th-century governor Ali Pasha fought so hard against the sultan’s men that he had to be shot dead through the floorboards of his house.

6The Death Race

But there was one way for a loyal official to escape the sultan’s wrath. Beginning in the late 18th century, it became the custom that a condemned grand vizier could escape his fate by beating the head gardener in a race through the palace gardens.

The official would be summoned to a meeting with the head gardener and after exchanging greetings, the vizier would be handed a cup of iced sherbet. If it was white, the sultan had granted him a reprieve. If it was red, he was to be executed. As soon as he saw the red sherbet, the vizier would start sprinting.

The vizier would sprint through the palace gardens, darting between shady cypress trees and rows of tulips, presumably watched by hidden eyes behind grated harem windows. The goal was the Fish Market Gate on the other side of the palace. If the vizier reached the gate before the head gardener, he would merely be exiled. But the head gardener was younger and stronger, and he would usually be waiting with his silk cord.

Still, a few viziers did make it, including Haci Salih Pasha, the last vizier to face a death race. He was widely congratulated and later became a provincial governor.

5The Mob

Despite being theoretically second only to the sultan, grand viziers tended to be executed or thrown to the mob as a scapegoat whenever anything went wrong. Selim the Grim went through so many grand viziers that they began carrying a will with them at all times. One begged Selim to let him know in advance if he was to be executed, only for the sultan to cheerfully respond that he was already lining up a replacement.

The viziers also had to placate the people of Istanbul, who were prone to marching on the palace and demanding executions whenever anything went wrong. An 18th-century British visitor observed that “when a minister here displeases the people, in three hours time he is dragged even from his master’s arms [and] they cut off his hands, head, and feet.”

Not that the people were afraid to storm the palace if their demands weren’t met. In 1730, a ragged soldier named Patrona Ali led a mob into the palace and effectively took control of the empire for several months. He was stabbed to death after trying to make a butcher who had lent him money ruler of Wallachia.

4The Harem

Perhaps the most terrifying feature of the Topkapi palace was the Imperial Harem. This consisted of up to 2,000 women, most of them bought or abducted as slaves, who served as the sultan’s wives and concubines. They were kept cloistered deep in the seraglio, and for a man to look upon them meant instant death. The harem itself was guarded and managed by the Chief Black Eunuch, who eventually leveraged the position into one of the most powerful offices in the empire.

Conditions in the harem itself presumably varied, although little information is available about events within its walls. It was said that there were so many concubines that some might barely set eyes on the sultan. Others managed to gain influence over the running of the empire. Suleiman the Magnificent fell madly in love with a Pole called Roxelana, married her, and made her a key adviser.

Roxelana’s influence was such that a grand vizier sent the pirate Barbarossa on a desperate mission to kidnap the Italian beauty Giulia Gonzaga in the belief that she alone would be a match for Roxelana’s charms. The plan was foiled by a brave Italian, who burst into Giulia’s bedroom and got her onto a horse just before the pirates arrived. After thanking the man profusely for saving her, Giulia supposedly had him stabbed to death for seeing her in her nightgown, a deed which won her the admiration of all Italy.

Kosem Sultan achieved even more influence than Roxelana, effectively running the empire as regent for her son and grandson. But she met her match in her daughter-in-law Turhan, who had Kosem chased down and strangled with a curtain before taking her place as regent.

3The Boy Tribute

One of the most notorious features of early Ottoman rule was the devsirme (“collection”), a tribute of young boys from the empire’s Christian subjects. Most of the boys were enrolled in the Janissary Corps, the army of slave-soldiers who were at the forefront of the Ottoman conquests. The tribute was carried out irregularly whenever the empire felt it might need the manpower and usually targeted boys aged 12–14 from Greece and the Balkans.

Ottoman officials would summon all the boys in the village and check their names against the baptismal records from the local church. They would then select the strongest, perhaps taking one boy from every 40 households. The boys would then be grouped together and marched to Istanbul, with the weakest dropping dead along the way. The Ottomans produced a detailed description of each boy so that they could be tracked down if they escaped.

In Istanbul, the boys were circumcised and forcibly converted to Islam. The most handsome or intelligent were sent to the palace, where they were trained to join the imperial elite. These boys could aspire to reach the very highest ranks, and many became pashas or viziers, like the famed Croatian grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed.

The rest of the boys joined the Janissaries. First, they were sent to work on a farm for eight years, where they learned Turkish and gained strength. In their twenties, they formally became Janissaries, the elite soldiers of the empire who were subject to iron discipline and indoctrination.

There were exceptions to the tribute. It was forbidden to take a family’s only child or the children of men who had served in the military. Orphans were off-limits for some reason as were the untrustworthy Hungarians. The citizens of Istanbul were also excluded on the grounds that they “did not have a sense of shame.” The tribute system died out in the early 18th century when the children of Janissaries were allowed to become Janissaries and the corps became self-sustaining.

2Slavery

Although the devsirme had died out by the 17th century, slavery remained a key feature of the Ottoman system until the end of the 19th century. As time went on, most slaves came from Africa or from the Caucasus (Circassians were particularly prized), while the Crimean Tartar raiders provided a steady flow of Russians, Ukrainians, and even Poles. Muslims couldn’t be legally enslaved, but that rule was quietly forgotten whenever supplies of non-Muslims dried up.

In his classic Race And Slavery In The Middle East, the scholar Bernard Lewis argued that Islamic slavery developed largely independently of Western slavery and therefore had a number of key differences. For example, it was somewhat easier for Ottoman slaves to gain their freedom or attain positions of power. Ottoman apologists also like to claim that it was less racist, treating white and black slaves alike, a claim that is somewhat undercut by the writings of the actual black people who lived under Ottoman rule.

But there is no question that Ottoman slavery was an incredibly brutal system. Millions of people died in slave raids or were worked to death in the fields. That’s not even getting into the castration process used to create eunuchs. As Lewis pointed out, the Ottomans imported millions of slaves from Africa but very few people of African descent remain in modern Turkey today. That alone tells a story.

1Massacres

On the whole, the Ottomans were a rather tolerant empire. Aside from the devsirme, they made no real attempt to convert their non-Muslim subjects and welcomed the Jews with open arms after they were expelled from Spain. They never discriminated against their subject peoples, and the empire was practically run by Albanians and Greeks. But when the Ottomans themselves felt threatened, they could turn very ugly.

Selim the Grim, for example, was very alarmed by the Shia, who denied his authority as defender of Islam and could be double agents for Persia. As a result, he marched across the east of the empire, slaughtering at least 40,000 Shia and driving countless more from their homes. When the Greeks first began to press for independence, the Ottomans turned matters over to their Albanian irregulars, who cheerfully committed a number of terrible massacres.

As the empire declined, it lost much of its old tolerance, growing more and more vicious toward its minorities. By the 19th century, massacres were growing increasingly common. This famously reached its terrifying climax in 1915 when the empire, just two years from collapse, orchestrated the massacre of as much as 75 percent of its Armenian population. Some 1.5 million people died in the Armenian Genocide, an atrocity that Turkey still refuses to fully acknowledge.

In 1547, Grand Prince Ivan of Moscow declared himself tsar of Russia. He is now better known as Ivan the Terrible. For almost 400 years, the tsars ruled one of the largest empires in history, stretching across forest and steppe. Opaque and brutal, the mighty Russian Empire hid all sorts of dark secrets.

10The Wild East

Not too long after Columbus discovered America, the Russians began colonizing Siberia. The initial expansion was driven by merchants like the powerful Stroganov family, who were hungry for priceless furs.

Their agents were Cossack mercenaries who expanded Russian power with extraordinary cruelty. When the Sakha chief Dzhenik revolted, he was skinned alive and then his baby son was suffocated with the skin. The Aleut Islanders attacked tax collectors in 1764, so the Russians burned 18 villages and massacred hundreds.

Germs were even more effective than Russian guns and steel. The isolated Siberians were almost as unprepared for European diseases as their distant cousins in the Americas. In the 17th century, smallpox killed over 50 percent of many Siberian tribes. Among the Sakha and Evenk, the death rate was at least 80 percent. The Aleut population dropped from 20,000 to under 5,000 in less than two generations.

9Torture

The Russian emperors often resorted to cruel tortures to shore up their power. Ivan the Terrible was known for roasting his enemies alive in a giant skillet, which he had made specially. This apparently started a trend since some Cossacks complained in 1640 that a provincial official had been roasting them in huge pans as well as “pulling out their veins.”

The Empress Elizabeth was fond of having tongues ripped out with pliers. Peter the Great preferred the knout, a brutal leather whip that sliced 1.3 centimeters (0.5 in) into the flesh with every blow. Peter also personally supervised prisoners being stretched on the rack and burned with hot irons.

Under Catherine the Great, rebels were suspended by a metal hook pushed through their ribs and left to die. Others were hanged on rafts, which floated down the Volga as a warning.

8The Court Was Brutally Violent

Theoretically, the Russian tsar was perhaps the most absolute ruler in Europe with the noble boyars as the only real check on his power. In practice, the Russian court tended to be a snake pit, with competing factions often resorting to violence to gain power.

As a child, Peter the Great huddled terrified in a corner while armed men rampaged through the palace massacring his mother’s relatives. Ivan the Terrible was sure that boyars had poisoned his mother when he was just eight.

They were relatively lucky. Feodor II lasted seven weeks on the throne before he was strangled. Peter III was murdered on the orders of his own wife, who ruled for 30 years as Catherine the Great. Paul I was throttled and kicked to death in his bedroom. One of the assassins then woke up Paul’s son with the words, “Time to grow up. Go and rule!”

Little wonder that many tsars became paranoid and cruel. Peter the Great had his own son flogged to death. Ivan the Terrible also killed his son during an argument.

7The Imprisonment Of Ivan VI

Ivan VI became tsar in 1740 when he was just two months old. He was overthrown a year later by his cousin Elizabeth. On her orders, Ivan was placed in solitary confinement at age four. He remained there for 20 years.

For most of that time, he was kept in the Schlusselburg Fortress, where nobody even knew who he was. His cell had no windows, so he never saw daylight and “never knew whether it was day or night.” The guards were forbidden to speak to him. His only entertainment was a copy of the Bible.

Unsurprisingly, Ivan developed mental problems. He remained locked in his room at Schlusselburg until 1764 when Catherine the Great took pity on him and had him murdered.

6The Oprichniki

After a troubled childhood, Ivan the Terrible became increasingly deranged after a period of illness and the death of his wife. Turning against the powerful boyars, Ivan surrounded himself with a group of mercenaries and commoners who were given land grants around Moscow.

These were the notorious Oprichniki, who dressed all in black and carried severed dog heads as a symbol of the fate that awaited traitors. They acted as Ivan’s secret police, torturing and executing anyone suspected of disloyalty to Ivan.

In 1570, the Oprichniki stormed into the city of Novgorod and massacred over 10,000 of its citizens. The once mighty trading town never truly recovered.

5Impostors

The Russian Empire was oddly afflicted by impostors, who usually claimed to be a deceased member of the royal family. During the “Time of Troubles” in the early 17th century, no fewer than three impostors emerged and claimed to be Ivan the Terrible’s son Dmitri, who had died as a child.

False Dimitri I even managed to be crowned tsar in Moscow, although he was soon murdered. False Dimitri II was essentially impersonating False Dimitri I and gathered a vast Cossack army that ravaged the north. False Dimitri III was called the “Thief of Pskov” after taking that city, but he was defeated and executed in 1612.

In the 18th century, the Cossack Pugachev orchestrated a huge revolt by claiming to be the murdered Peter III. Another False Peter turned up in Montenegro, which he ruled for five years until the Ottomans paid a barber to cut his throat. At least three other Russians also claimed to be Peter, including a founder of the Skoptsy sect.

4Cults And Sects

The Russian Church was intense and prone to schism, and it seemed that sects and cults flourished everywhere in the vast Russian Empire. The Khlysty were known for their frantic singing and dancing and were said to wildly whip themselves to show contempt for their physical bodies.

The Molokane (“Milk Drinkers”) refused to serve in the military and tried to establish pacifist communes in Siberia. The Doukhobors (“Spirit Wrestlers”) preferred their Living Book of hymns to the Bible.

Strangest of all were the Skoptsy, who considered sex the source of all sin and practiced ritual castration and genital mutilation. Male Skoptsy would slice off their testicles and cauterize the wound with a hot iron. Others went further and hacked off their penises as well.

Female Skoptsy were expected to slice off their breasts or nipples, and some form of female circumcision was practiced as well. The Skoptsy also castrated their young children, so the sect only survived by converting new recruits. It lasted over a century.

3Self-Immolation

The largest Russian religious split came under Peter the Great, when Patriarch Nikon undertook reforms to bring the Russian church into line with the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy. Among other things, he decreed that the Russians should make the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two. Led by the Archpriest Avvakum, many Russians refused to accept this.

Calling themselves the Old Believers, these traditionalists held services in secret where they crossed themselves with three fingers. The state called them Raskolniki (“Splitters”) and persecuted them relentlessly. Many Old Believers came to believe that the end of the world was at hand. If they suspected they had been discovered, whole villages would gather together, set fire to the church, and burn themselves alive.

2Famines

The Russian Empire was never noted for its efficiency, and its rulers often struggled to respond to the periodic famines that were a feature of life in the provinces. As late as 1891, the tsar responded to widespread crop failures by forbidding newspapers to report on the problem or even use the word “famine.”

After much foot-dragging, he eventually banned crop exports and attempted a program of famine relief. As a result, “only” about 400,000 people died in the famine of 1891–92.

There were worse examples. In 1601, a volcano erupted in Peru and sparked a series of unusually long winters. The resulting famine killed two million Russians, one-third of the population at the time. The tsar was too busy with a looming civil war to do much. “Dead bodies were found with hay in their mouths, and human flesh was sold in pies in the markets.”

1Serfdom

The Russian Empire was built on the backs of the serfs, who were bound to a particular estate and forced to work for the landowner who controlled it. By the 17th century, landowners were allowed to buy and sell serfs, effectively making them indistinguishable from slaves.

Nobles were not technically allowed to kill their serfs, but they could flog or punish them as they saw fit. There were no real consequences if a serf died of his injuries. Landowners could also send their serfs to Siberia or enlist them in the army against their will.

Serfdom was abolished in 1861. At that point, Russia had a population of almost 63 million, at least 46 million of them serfs.

In June 793, an Anglo-Saxon priest wrote mournfully that “heathen men came and miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter.” The Viking raids had begun. But while many of the wild Scandinavian raiders remain well known, some of the most feared and powerful figures of the age have been all but forgotten.

10Hastein

The Viking chief Hastein had a long and bloody career raiding England and France. But in his day, he was most notorious for his expedition to the Mediterranean in AD 859. After raiding Algeria, the Vikings found an island to wait out the winter. To their astonishment, the Mediterranean remained warm all through the winter months.

Hastein was also surprised to learn he was near Rome. The headquarters of the Church would surely be a glittering prize, and Hastein resolved to plunder it. Sailing down the west coast of Italy, the Vikings came across the greatest town they had ever seen. It was surely Rome.

Hastein knew the walls were too mighty for him to take the city by force. Instead, he pulled ashore and had his men explain that their dying leader wanted a Christian burial. The Italians were touched and agreed to allow Hastein carried through the gates. Of course, the chieftain soon sprang from his coffin and sacked the city.

He sailed away loaded with loot. and it was apparently some time before he learned that he had mistaken a town called Luna for the great city of Rome.

9Sigurd The Stout

Sigurd the Stout was the Norse ruler of Orkney, a large island on the north coast of Scotland. He extended the power of Orkney over the Hebrides islands and large areas of mainland Scotland.

He was well known for his use of a raven banner, a mysterious pagan totem flown by several Viking raiders. The sagas say that Sigurd’s raven banner was made by his mother (a powerful shaman) and made him invincible in battle.

However, Sigurd was overwhelmed by the Norse king Olaf Tryggvason, who forced him to convert to Christianity and took his son back to Norway as a hostage. The son died, and Sigurd was able to renounce his conversion. He took his raven banner with him to the Battle of Clontarf, where he was killed by the forces of the Irish king Brian Boru.

8The Donkey-Rider

The Persian philosopher Abu Miskawayh and the Kurdish chronicler Ali ibn al-Athir both recorded a raid on the distant Caspian Sea in AD 943. According to Miskawayh, a powerful Viking Rus fleet ported overland to the Caspian and then rowed up the Kura River to attack the rich city of Barda’a. The leader of the expedition rode a donkey, but the Muslim writers apparently didn’t know his name.

After crushing a force of 5,000, the Vikings looted Barda’a and slaughtered many of the citizens after being pelted with stones. The Persian governor of the region brought up reinforcements and placed the city under siege, but his men were intimidated by the invaders and the Vikings were only forced to retreat after an epidemic of dysentery thinned their ranks.

The donkey-riding chief died in a breakout attempt, but his surviving men were able to slip away at night and made it to the safety of their ships. The locals at once dug up the graves they left behind to retrieve the valuable swords buried with the dead warriors.

7Ingvar The Far-Traveled

The Vikings returned to the Caspian in the 1040s, when the warrior Ingvar the Far-Traveled led an expedition south from Sweden. After spending a few years with the Rus, Ingvar headed off again in search of plunder.

Georgian chroniclers mention a group of Vikings who helped King Bagrat IV of Georgia in a war against some rebels. These are generally assumed to be Ingvar’s men, especially since the landscape in a saga about him matches up well with the Georgian terrain.

After that, Ingvar is believed to have headed further east, into Muslim lands around the Caspian sea. The sagas and various runestones agree that his entire expedition died of disease there, a rather underwhelming end for such a powerful warrior.

6Brodir Of Man

After Brian Boru became High king of Ireland in AD 1002, Viking power in the Emerald Island was seriously under threat. The Norse king of Dublin, Sigtrygg Silkbeard, decided to back a rebellion against Brian. He was encouraged by his mother Gormflaith, who was Brian’s estranged wife.

At Gornflaith’s urging, Sigtrygg recruited warriors from all over the Viking world, including Sigurd the Stout. He also sent word to the Isle of Man, which was ruled by two brothers named Brodir and Ospak, who were reputedly powerful sorcerers. Brodir agreed to fight, but Ospak thought that they would lose and he ducked out under cover of darkness to join Brian.

At the Battle of Clontarf, Brodir was said to have cut down dozens of Irishmen. But Clontarf was a bloodbath and Brodir sensibly ran away into the woods when the opportunity presented itself. According to Njal’s Saga, he accidentally ran into the elderly King Brian, who was waiting to hear the outcome of the battle. Overwhelming Brian’s guards, Brodir personally killed the king.

The Saga later relates that Brian’s brother Wulf the Quarrelsome later tracked Brodir down, nailed his intestines to a tree, and forced him to walk around it until they were all pulled out.

5Raud The Strong

According to the 12th-century Icelandic poet-historian Snorri Sturluson, Raud ran afoul of King Olaf Tryggvason, who was trying to convert Norway to Christianity. Raud refused to convert and openly mocked the Christians.

This infuriated Olaf, who had Raud seized. When the stubborn pagan still refused to be baptized, Olaf had him tied down and rammed a drinking horn down his throat. Then he pushed a snake into the horn and poked it with a hot iron until it crawled down Raud’s throat and into his stomach.

According to Snorri, Raud died when the snake chewed its way out through his side. Since snakes can’t really chew, the story may be worth taking with a grain of salt.

4Ivar The Boneless

According to Ragnar’s Saga, Ivar the Boneless was the son of the legendary warrior Ragnar Lodbrok, pictured above. That may or may not be true (the same saga has Ivar fighting a magical cow), but we do know that Ivar and his brothers commanded the Great Heathen Army, a mighty force that invaded England in 865.

They overran the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia and did serious damage to the kingdom of Mercia. King Aelle of Northumbria was tortured to death, while Edmund of East Anglia was shot full of arrows in a church. After that, Ivar returned to York and disappears from the record, leaving command of the army to his brothers.

Ivar’s nickname has been the subject of much speculation. The sagas agree that he had to be carried around on a shield, and Ragnar’s Saga claims that he had “only the like of gristle where his bones should have been.” This has led some historians to suggest that he suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta, a condition that leaves bones fragile and easily broken.

3Imar

Before Ivar the Boneless appeared in English records, a Viking leader called Imar was active in Ireland, where he took control of Dublin and fought in numerous raids and small wars. After Ivar left England, Imar reappeared in Scotland, where he besieged the great stronghold at Dumbarton Rock.

The siege lasted four months, but the Vikings were eventually able to cut off the water supply, and the fortress surrendered. The king of Strathclyde was taken prisoner and, it took 200 ships to carry away the loot. Imar then returned to Ireland, where he died of a “hideous disease” in 873.

Most historians speculate that Imar and Ivar are the same person, although the Scotch-Irish records never make reference to the “boneless” nickname.

2Gunderedo

The earliest Viking raid on Spain sacked the Muslim city of Seville in 844. Subsequent attacks on Muslim Spain went poorly, and the largest Viking campaign in Spain focused on the Christian north.

The raid started when Richard of Normandy called in Danish assistance for a campaign in northern France. Once that wrapped up, the Danes raided Galicia, in the northwest corner of Spain. They were led by a “sea-king” the Spanish called Gunderedo.

Gunderedo’s men pillaged the great shrine of Santiago de Compostela and killed the bishop in battle. After that, no Galician was willing to challenge the Danes and they ran riot across the countryside for three years. Its not clear why they eventually left, but probably Galicia was too poor to hold their attention for longer.

1Thorstein The Red

Thorstein the Red was the son of King Olaf of Dublin and his famous queen, Aud the Deep-Minded. Aud’s family ruled the Hebrides, and Olaf had married her in the hope of gaining an alliance. But the islanders continued to raid around Dublin, and Olaf eventually sent Aud and the infant Thorstein home in fury.

Olaf’s power grew, and he took control of the Hebrides, forcing Aud to flee to Scotland with her son. Thorstein grew up into a fierce warrior, who raided across Scotland and “was ever victorious.” The desperate Scots even granted him an independent kingdom in the northern tip of Scotland.

But Thorstein wanted more, and the Scots conspired to have him murdered in AD 900. Heartbroken, Aud took her followers to Iceland, where she became the ruler of a powerful clan. She was buried on the beach, so that the tide would always wash over her grave.

Horror games are no stranger to controversy, but these ten games took it a little too far, each crossing boundaries that got them banned or pulled from shelves around the world. From dystopian drug-induced joy to psychologically twisted survival games, these entries aren’t just scary to play—people were scared of what they could do.

Whether it’s Hotel 626’s eerie phone calls in the dead of night or Manhunt’s brutal, unapologetic violence, each game serves as a dark reminder of how far games and the gamers behind them can go.

Related: 10 Bizarre Urban Legends That Are Related to Video Games

10 Hotel 626

Let’s start with Hotel 626, the absolutely legendary web-based game that disappeared from the internet. Hotel 626 was released on October 31st, 2008, by none other than the company we all know and love, Doritos. Yes, I said Doritos. And yes, it is a horror game.

They wanted to revive their two dead flavors: Black Pepper Jack and Jack and Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ. Unfortunately, this was not a game about Cheddar Cheetah hunting you down and trying to kill you for eating his Cheetos. Instead, it was about waking up in a hotel that you found out pretty quickly that you didn’t want to stay at. You could only actually play it between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. (though I’ve heard the stories of people changing the time on their clocks to play it), ensuring you had the perfect eerie backdrop of darkness when you played.

The game had a creepy, unique style that used videos and photos of real people instead of 3D avatars. Your only mission was to escape while being hunted by ghosts, demonic infants, and a psychotic hotel maid. Easy, right? Well, it was apparently really hard due to the puzzles, specifically the one where you’re locked in with a starved-to-the-point-of-insanity man who will eventually escape and eat you alive.

However, the thing that actually killed the game itself was its collection of personal information. The game used things to send shivers down the players’ spines. It asked for your phone number at the beginning of the game in order to call you with a pre-recorded message during the allotted hours in the middle of the night that told you that you were still in the hotel, which is absolutely… great, yeah.

The second is used within the game. There was one particular part where you had to run away from a chainsaw-wielding maniac by finding a photograph that showed your own face from your webcam (or the hotel lobby if your webcam was off). However, as you were looking for your own face, you saw tens of other faces in your desperate escape. These faces were not actors but pictures taken of people in their own bedrooms reacting to the chainsaw maniac following them. Now, the only problem is that Doritos never asked the player for permission to use their webcam and pictures. Yikes.

This led to a panic from the legal department side of Doritos, and critics and privacy advocates pointed out the potential risks of hackers. Doritos eventually pulled the website from the internet to avoid being sued. Thus, they weren’t actually banned, but most likely were going to be, and they pulled the plug on themselves.^[1]

9 We Happy Few

We Happy Few transports players to an alternate 1960s England, a place where the streets are tidy, the colors bright, and everyone is, without exception, blissfully cheerful—or so it seems. The only thing that seems to keep the place running is “Joy,” a happiness pill designed to keep citizens smiling while erasing any uncomfortable memories of the past and everything that makes you you. Those who decide to stop taking Joy are labeled “Downers,” outcasts who are hunted down by the smiling authorities for “rehabilitation.” The game’s take on happiness, controlled by the iron fist of a drugged-up dystopia, poses an uncomfortable question: What’s the price of happiness if it’s manufactured? Turns out, it’s not pretty.

The story begins with Arthur Hastings, one of three characters you can control throughout the game. He discovers an old newspaper clipping that jogs his memory of events before Joy, spurring him to go off the drug and start seeing the crumbling reality around him. The town of Wellington Wells is bright on the surface, but for those not dosed up on Joy, the illusion fades quickly into a grim picture of societal and physical decay. Citizens go about their days in a forced euphoria, with the Joy-enforcing “Bobbies” smiling widely while clubbing anyone who dares to so much as frown. As someone who just watched Smile 2, I have an all-too-good vision of what this would be like in real life, and I don’t like it.

However, We Happy Few was a bit too dark. The game faced a temporary ban in Australia, where authorities claimed that its depiction of Joy might encourage substance abuse, echoing real-life concerns about drug normalization. The controversy highlighted the game’s balance between satire and shock value, as critics argued that its portrayal of forced happiness struck too close to reality. Yet supporters countered that the game isn’t about glorifying drug use—it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of a society that sacrifices authenticity for the sake of fake positivity.

The ban was eventually lifted, as predicted in 2019. Its portrayal of a world addicted to false happiness simply points to our current social pressures to “just be happy.” By forcing players to choose between following the crowd or holding onto reality, the game poses an unsettling thought: can happiness be real if we don’t have a choice? And maybe more hauntingly, are we already swallowing our own version of Joy?

You might be able to tell I love this game’s concept.^[2]

8 Phantasmagoria

Imagine booting up your computer and stepping into the surreal, eerie world of Phantasmagoria. The game was definitely intended to keep you awake for hours after playing—or falling asleep to nightmares. Set in a massive, creaking mansion on a fog-draped coast, the game drops you into the life of Adrienne Delaney, a writer hoping to escape distractions with her husband in tow. As the days wear on, it turns out this mansion has more inspiration than she bargained for.

Slowly, Adrienne uncovers the twisted history of its former owner, a magician who dabbled in dark arts that left a lasting impression—and maybe a few curses behind. So much for inspiration, right? One of the game’s groundbreaking features was its usage of full-motion video (FMV), meaning real actors were filmed to play each character, adding a bit of raw realism that made each horrifying scene even more terrifying. Yay!

As Adrienne’s husband descends under the mansion’s spell, he transforms from her loving husband into a twisted and maniacal stranger. Love does drive you crazy, after all. The use of live actors brought an unsettling authenticity that caused horror fans to flock to the game in droves. With each sequence more gruesome than the last, the line between virtual horror and real-life terror became disturbingly thin. This live footage is also what paved the way for Hotel 626 just a decade later, and it’s what I have to personally thank for making horror games better.

When Phantasmagoria was released in 1995, it was met with a mix of fascination and outrage. Its unfiltered scenes of violence, supernatural possession, and psychological abuse quickly earned it a reputation as one of the most controversial games of its time. Critics were quick to condemn it as “too explicit,” arguing that some scenes were simply beyond the boundaries of good taste.

The now-infamous “head-in-the-blender” moment alone redefined how far horror could go in gaming, with fans eagerly replaying scenes while some critics wondered if they’d accidentally wandered into a horror film set. Australia, once again, was less enthusiastic, banning the game outright for being “too dark.”

Apparently, they didn’t care much for the murder, possession, or the infamous “head-in-the-blender” moment, a scene that truly redefines “blending genres.” But despite the ban, or maybe because of it, Phantasmagoria endures as a darkly beloved cult classic, known for taking horror out of the shadows and into a player’s lap—often a bit more literally than anyone expected.^[3]

7 Rule of Rose

Beneath the facade of its orphanage setting, Rule of Rose is anything but kid-friendly. Jennifer, the game’s protagonist, quickly learns that she’s the latest “lucky” entrant into the twisted social structure run by a gang of children who call themselves the Red Crayon Aristocrats. But this isn’t playtime with jump ropes and hopscotch. Unless you’re okay with the squares being replaced by symbols of ritual sacrifice. The “games” involve strange sacrifices and crazy rituals that make Jennifer the unwilling star player. Eventually, you’ll question if you liked the kids in Lord of the Flies better.

Rule of Rose achieves its horror by leaving most of the terror to the imagination and by hinting at everything behind the scenes. It leads to the feeling of cult-like control and a social hierarchy gone awry. While other games might use zombies or monsters, here, it’s the children themselves who set the stage for horror, forcing Jennifer into disturbing tasks involving cages, mutilated dolls, and animal sacrifices.

Each ritual drags her deeper into their twisted little “games.” As she endures ritual after ritual, she slowly uncovers twisted truths about the children, each task dredging up memories from her own traumatic past. It’s dark psychological horror at its finest—or worst, depending on how you feel about repressed memories resurfacing in the form of creepy lullabies. While this game was definitely more so on the violent side than the sexual side, some journalists claimed that the game had violent erotic undertones with underage girls. This, of course, caused the critics to make an even bigger uproar about the game, even getting the mayor of Rome and the EU involved in its release.

But it was Italy this time, not Australia, that took the largest issue with it. Italians bantered about banning it, saying that “Every frame is dripping with perversion.” Politicians in the UK fueled outrage over content they hadn’t even seen, based on rumors and worst-case guesses. It was eventually released anyway, but only in small amounts, making it a rare and expensive find today. The mix of eerie children, cult-like rituals, and symbolic violence even made sure it stayed off the shelves in several places.^[4]

6 Manhunt

Manhunt is what happens when someone decides a horror game can never be too bleak or too brutal. You play as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate given a second chance—though “second chance” is a bit generous when you’re dropped into a live-action snuff film. Cash’s director and “savior” is a shadowy figure who’s orchestrating every bloody detail for his own twisted film. From the moment Cash steps out of that prison van, his only goal is to survive the night by creatively dispatching a series of gangs—groups like the Hoods and the Smileys, each a little more colorful than the last in their own murderous way.

The game’s “murder with style” approach quickly grabbed attention, with every kill graded on a scale from “quick and clean” to “horrifyingly elaborate.” Manhunt doesn’t just let you eliminate enemies; it challenges you to do it with… pizzazz. Weapons range from plastic bags to nail guns, each lending a different flavor to your executions. The Director encourages the most vicious kills, rewarding Cash with higher scores for each gruesome masterpiece as he sneaks, creeps, and bludgeons his way through each gang. Art school really has changed, eh?

It was immediately banned in New Zealand, labeled as “grossly offensive,” which is just another way of saying they’d prefer it never see daylight. Australia pulled its rating with lightning speed, and the UK took it off shelves briefly after a real-life murder was initially linked to the game—a claim that was later disproven. The game was so infamous that critics quickly raised questions about whether Manhunt was even a game or just an interactive horror film.^[5]

5 Hatred

Hatred is, in a word, unapologetic. The main character (he has no name) wakes up, stares into the mirror, and, instead of making affirmations or grabbing a coffee, decides it’s time to kill everyone in sight. You play as “The Antagonist,” a nihilistic anti-hero clad in a leather trench coat who’s basically the twin of Bleach’s Yhwach. His whole mission? Complete destruction of anyone and everyone.

This game doesn’t mince words—or actions. In Hatred, there are no redemptive story arcs and no world-saving quests. The entire thing is a sandbox game where the goal is simply to be as destructive as possible. And while most games are like, “Hey, maybe save the city,” Hatred is more like, “Here’s your assault rifle, and maybe don’t forget the grenade launcher.” Each level is a parade of carnage as you roam a town that might as well have a banner reading “Welcome, We’re All Targets.” In-game scores even reward you for increasing mayhem, turning every quiet street into the world’s darkest block party.

The backlash? Immediate and intense. It was temporarily pulled from Steam Greenlight after complaints that the game “promotes wanton violence,” a charge that developers shrugged off with a “Yes, exactly.” And while Grand Theft Auto might get flak for “glamorizing crime,” Hatred threw its hands up and said, “Forget glamour, let’s just go all in.”

The developers state that the purpose of the game was to eliminate all the “fake philosophical stuff” thrown into games to justify their violence. The result? An unapologetic, chaotic game full of violence and animalistic nature. The game was banned in several countries, including Germany and New Zealand, and was widely labeled as irredeemably violent.^[6]

4 Mariam

Originally developed in Saudi Arabia, Mariam caused a stir almost as soon as it hit the app store. The game follows a young girl named Mariam who’s “lost” and asks the player for help finding her way home. But what starts off as a seemingly innocent interaction turns creepy fast. While guiding Mariam, players are prompted with increasingly personal and invasive questions, starting by stating she can read your mind by talking about trending news stories and then ending with a casual “Where do you live?”.

The game escalates through these bizarre, unsettling questions that make you wonder if Mariam is more of a stalker than a lost child. As the game progresses, it becomes less about helping Mariam and more about surviving her situation, making players feel like they’re stepping into a horror-themed therapy session they never signed up for.

What really ramped up the unease was the game’s tendency to ask for players’ location access, sparking rumors about potential surveillance and data collection. Reports swirled that Mariam might actually be tracking players, with each spooky message hinting at a ghostly GPS service run by Big Brother. The game wasn’t actually gathering any data, but the game’s eerie atmosphere and unsettling questions led to privacy concerns among players and their parents. It wasn’t long before the app felt less like a game and more like an interactive urban legend, where players were helping a lost girl… and giving her far more information than anyone should share with a haunted app.

In Saudi Arabia, Mariam sparked controversy, with concerned parents accusing the game of influencing children in unhealthy ways. Some even claimed that it promoted self-harm, though no evidence surfaced to support these allegations. Given the outcry, authorities acted swiftly, banning the app and issuing warnings about its “psychological impact” on young players. Apparently, the horror game had done its job a little too well, blurring the line between suspenseful gameplay and digital intrusion.

Mariam remains a curiosity, with its unsettling gameplay and strange mechanics drawing to those with a taste for the mysterious. But it’s more than just a horror game—it’s a digital campfire story that dares you to play and then leaves you wondering if you should have. In the end, Mariam became as much an urban legend as it was an app, proving that sometimes the scariest thing of all is realizing you’ve willingly handed your location to a creepy, fictional child.^[7]

3 Postal 2

Postal 2 is the video game equivalent of a fever dream had by someone who watched too many action movies on fast-forward. The game follows “The POSTAL Dude,” a guy who’s just trying to get through his week with simple errands like picking up milk, cashing a paycheck, and returning a library book. Sounds mundane, right? Wrong. Postal 2 gives you the option to complete each task peacefully or… not-so-peacefully. And by “not-so-peacefully,” we’re talking about flamethrowers, a shovel with a wickedly sharp edge, and a lot of chaos.

Set in a small desert town, Postal 2 doesn’t just allow for violence—it practically rolls out the red carpet for it. Almost every NPC has a quick insult ready if you look at them the wrong way, and the town is filled with groups like rampaging protestors and angry fundamentalists. If you thought going to the bank was stressful, Postal 2 makes it feel like a gladiator match. And just when you think it couldn’t get more absurd, the game hands you a health pack in the form of—you guessed it—catnip, which also doubles as a silencer if you attach a cat to the barrel of your rifle. Yes, Postal 2 is that kind of game.

Obviously, the response was explosive. Postal 2 was banned outright in New Zealand, where authorities labeled it “grossly offensive”—again! They really like that terminology, am I right? Australia followed suit, refusing it on the grounds of excessive violence and animal cruelty. Even in the U.S., it found itself in hot water, particularly within the court system, which pointed to it as proof that video games were steering the youth down a dark path. For once, the game’s creators didn’t argue, proudly marketing it as the game that will give the dark side of your imagination free reign.^[8]

2 Demonophobia

This RPG-visual novel hybrid throws you into a nightmare designed to test your mental stamina (and maybe your sanity). You play as Sakuri Kunikai, a 14-year-old girl. Without a clue as to where she is, Sakuri quickly realizes she’s in a world where everything has just one goal: to make her time here as torturous as possible.

What sets Demonophobia apart is that it doesn’t let you just get through the horror; it demands you watch it unfold in painstaking, pixelated detail. As if the silent, soundtrack-free gameplay weren’t ominous enough, the game makes every mistake lead to a new, disturbing death scene. Each creature has its own gruesome “surprise” for Sakuri. These vary from decapitation to death by slime (which somehow manages to be even worse than it sounds).

The game’s design pushes you to experience each death scene with the kind of loving attention to detail that could only come from a developer with a deep appreciation for Ryona-style brutality and gore. You could say that Demonophobia doesn’t just want you to play it; it wants you to suffer along with it.

By the time you reach Stage 4, things really start to get… weird. Sakuri faces off against grotesque bosses like Asmodeus, and with every level, the game finds new ways to make the whole experience feel progressively twisted. Sakuri, who is still 14, by the way, can lose her clothes, get ambushed by slimy creatures, or face certain “fan-service” moments that are despicable and disgusting to watch. While the game was made in Japan with a lower age of consent, it unsurprisingly caused outrage outside of the country.

Many countries banned it outright, not just because of the VERY questionable erotic scenes with a minor, but also because of the gore and its unapologetic way it served up horrific scenes without any clear purpose beyond shock value. Critics questioned whether it was a game or just a collection of gruesome animations in disguise. Still, Demonophobia still has its loyal fans, mainly in Japan, who are drawn to its sadistic challenges and the dark thrill of surviving each level. For those who make it through, it’s less “I beat the game” and more “I survived it.”^[9]

1 Euphoria

Euphoria, the darkest entry on our list, is an 18+ interactive visual novel game that walks a razor-thin line between psychological horror and boundary-pushing content. It leaves players to navigate an intensely disturbing plot that only gets darker the deeper they go. Set in an isolated, sterile white room, the game begins with protagonist Keisuke Takatou and six other women, five of his classmates, and one teacher, waking up in captivity with no memory of how they got there.

An anonymous speaker leaves them with a disturbing objective: only through a series of twisted and degrading “games” will they survive and escape. Each “game” unlocks a door, forcing players to decide how far Keisuke—and themselves—are willing to go to escape this nightmare. It’s a horror of the mind, with each task chipping away at the characters’ sanity and, frankly, the player’s as well.

Instead of jump scares, Euphoria focuses on psychological torment, making the characters’ physical and mental suffering disturbingly vivid. Keisuke is told to rape and sexually torment all the girls, most of who are also underage, I’d like to point out again, in the room in order to escape. Throughout the game, it becomes clear that each scenario is part of a larger mystery involving Keisuke’s own dark impulses as he constantly battles with his desire to go too far. The storyline gradually reveals more about each character’s background. The game does offer multiple endings, ranging from bleak to (relatively) redemptive, depending on the player’s choices.

While Euphoria is classified as a mature X-rated game, its usage of underaged girls, once again in Japan, makes the entire game even more unsettling and disturbing to play. Euphoria’s extreme content drew criticism for both its disturbing and erotic subject matter and its graphic depictions of violence. Many critics argue that the game crosses the line that no game should go. In reviews, some players admit that Euphoria is like watching a car crash: gruesome, horrifying, but hard to look away from.^[10]

Throughout time, religious ideology and belief in the supernatural have both helped and terrified human beings. As prehistoric cave paintings have demonstrated, the belief in forces beyond our control and comprehension predates agriculture, civilization, alphabets, and other aspects of human life, which came about when the hunter-gatherers first tamed the land and the animals.

For all the fear that Christianity has bestowed upon occultism, the practice itself isn’t exactly harmful. In fact, it often serves as a spiritual experience for its practitioners, much like the belief in unorthodox deities such as Satan. Here are 10 strange and unusual occult practices from history.

10 Seances

Seances are occult practices conducted by mediums, almost always intending to contact the dead or persons who’ve crossed over to another plane. The French word “seance” translates to “sitting” in English, where practitioners would “sit” with spirits from another world.

Usually, practitioners sit in a circle of six to eight people, hold hands, and attempt to diminish any distractions which may hinder their desired result of summoning the dead. Sometimes, mediums report hearing otherworldly voices along with seeing ghosts manifest from another world.

At times, it is believed that the ghost speaks through the medium. Reportedly, ghosts have also used instruments to write, such as the famed Ouija board or pens or pencils that inscribe some communication on an object.

As the focal point of the seance, the medium is believed to make otherworldly contact with the dead. Some reports claim that a medium levitated in the air during a seance. However, it’s doubtful that modern science has developed any concrete evidence of such an event actually happening.^[1]

So what is it? Does a seance manifest real supernatural powers? Or is it just another case of people believing what they want at the expense of their reason?

9 Symbology

In the occult, symbolism carries a lot of meaning, whether to connect us to hidden worlds or to awaken things that are unconscious. The pentagram, one of the more popular symbols in our culture today, has a rich history that dates back to ancient Babylon. The star represented the pattern that Venus seemingly made in the sky as well as various beliefs. It has evolved to mean different things to different people.

Sigils are basically signatures of various deities, other angels, or demons. They are inscribed to manifest certain properties of those entities. This is one way that practitioners reach out to these powers for guidance or strength that they normally would not possess.

And then there is Baphomet, one of the best-known occult symbols, which dates to heresy and witchcraft trials of medieval times. It started with The Order in 1118 and served as a protective symbol for Christians when traveling in the Middle East.

Baphomet is the well-known goat with the pentagram on his head. Once The Order and the various Christian groups which subscribed to Baphomet became large enough to be considered a political threat to the Church, the symbol changed hands and was banned from the Church through a series of political maneuvers.^[2]

In time, this became a symbol of torture at the hands of the Church, which was administered to heretics.

8 Necropants

Necropants are an extremely odd bit of occultism stemming from Iceland. They consist of the skin of the legs and feet of the dead and are worn by the living. In fact, the Icelandic people of the 17th century were infatuated with rituals using the bodies of the dead, taking ribs here, skin from sheep there, and mixing it all together into these nightmarish, hodgepodge creatures that are left over to mortify us today.

When it came to necropants, a sorcerer had to get permission to use that person’s skin as pants for it to be the right thing to do. This would apparently bring the wearer greatness, good fortune, and even wealth, supposing they could stomach the macabre ritual.^[3]

At first, necropants were believed to be things of myth. But many of them have turned up and now reside in museums.

7 Divination

Divination is the attempt to gain foresight and knowledge about the future through various methods—from fortune-tellers to Magic 8 Balls to chance readings of a tea leaf or your palm. Psychics and tarot cards also fall under this category.

Sometimes, practitioners turn to crystal gazing. Other times, they stare into candlelight or even pools of water. These latter practices involve using the practitioner’s guidance and intuition to let the necessary messages come through and gain some sense of spiritual understanding about future events.

These practices have a long, dark history of bloodshed and oppression at the hands of the Church, which still sees divination as an evil incarnation of Satan. However, the occultist doesn’t see it that way.

Dating to St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century AD, who stated that any pagan traditions and religious practices were of the Devil, the Christian Church became increasingly brutal in its punishments of these practices. By the 13th century AD, any divination or attempt to understand future events was considered demon worship.^[4]

Between 1450 and 1600, the active period of punishing divination and similar practices, the Christian Church was responsible for the death, torture, and mutilation of tens of thousands of supposed “witches.”

6 Satanism

Although Satanism and the occult aren’t the same thing, both practices have borrowed heavily from one another throughout the centuries. The origins of true Satanism are quite mysterious as the Church has destroyed these cults rapidly wherever they popped up. But Satanic cults have been officially documented in Europe and North America as far back as the 17th century.

Satanism finds at least some of its roots in dark figures who were also synonymous with the occult throughout the centuries. Examples would be Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld, and Marduk. Thousands of years of worship of these figures have linked Satanism to occult practices because these figures are technically pagan gods and not Satan himself.

By the 20th century, Satanism was in full swing. The Satanic Church was established in America in the 1960s. Small cults have also sprung up worldwide. While the members of these groups don’t number in the millions like those of other religions, the strange and sometimes violent practices—like murder or suicide—by Satanic cults make it a well-known movement.

Despite their differences, Satanism and the occult are one and the same in the eyes of the Christian Church.^[5]

5 Human Sacrifice

Human sacrifice has occurred in some occult practices even to this day. In 1995, a 15-year-old girl named Elyse Pahler was lured to a eucalyptus grove and murdered. Her body was discovered eight months later. The suspects were 17-year-old Royce Casey, 14-year-old Joseph Fiorella, and 16-year-old Jacob Delashmutt.

This murder had all the hallmarks of an occultist or even a Satanic rape and killing. The teens returned to have sex with Pahler’s dead body over the ensuing weeks. When Casey confessed, he said that the rape and murder were sacrificial and for Satan. To the authorities, this was definitely an occult human sacrifice, not too unlike ancient times.^[6]

Many such instances have popped up worldwide. There was a media frenzy about these types of murders in the 1990s in the United States. A notable one was the Vampire Cult, led by Rod Ferrell, and its ritualistic and sacrificial killing of a Florida family. Ferrell was only 16 years old at the time of the murders.

The teens in this cult took drugs, performed blood and sex rituals, and eventually traveled from Kentucky to Florida to kill Naomi Ruth Queen and Richard Wendorf. Though rare, human sacrifice has definitely found its way into today’s society, often as an exercise in occultism.

4 Magick

Magick (alternate spelling to distinguish “magic” from “sleight-of-hand” or “stage” magic) in occultism entails efforts to call on extra-sensory forces to know and rule the “spirit” world and even control humans and inanimate objects. The term itself is an Early Modern English spelling for magic, used in works such as the 1651 translation of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, or Of Magick. Aleister Crowley defines magick as the “Science of understanding oneself and one’s conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.”^[7]

Magick ceremonies and those who practice them are seen as channels through which supernatural power affects change in human events and conditions. Those who practice “white magick” seek to produce positive or favorable outcomes. “Black magick” practitioners intend harm and evil results. Aspects of ritual in magick include banishing, invocation, evocation, purification, consecration, and divination (already discussed in this list).

Magick is as old as humanity and had its beginnings in humankind’s attempts to control one’s environment, survival, and destiny, either by controlling natural forces or appealing to higher powers for help. Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski defined magic as having three functions and three elements. The three functions are to produce, to protect, or to destroy. The three elements are spells and incantations, rites or procedures, and altered states of consciousness accomplished through fasting, meditating, chanting, visualizing symbols, sleep deprivation, dancing, staring into flames, inhaling fumes, taking drugs, and so forth. Magick is practiced universally by skilled individuals who are either born into their powers or train themselves to acquire their abilities.

3 Demonism

With demonism, a practitioner seeks to summon the power of actual demons to bend to their will. According to Christianity and some occultist practices, demons are fallen angels sworn to subvert all good things and to carry out only evil in the world.

The Christian religion dating back to the times of the Holy Bible and the first teachings of the early Christians speaks of these dark figures, and they have been a consistent theme in much of recorded history. Some dark figures, like Santa Muerte, Our Lady of Holy Death, an actual death saint, even appear outside of the Christian doctrine, dating back tens of thousands of years.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which was published in 1667, describes these fallen demons cast out of Heaven in the Christian doctrine.^[8] After having been thrown into the dark, fiery abyss, Satan speaks to the demons thus:

Fall’n Cherube, to be weak is miserable
Doing or Suffering: but of this be sure,
To do ought good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his Providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil.

Since ancient times, occultists have believed that they can harness these dark spirits to do evil. The practitioners have used ritualistic incantations to summon different demons for various purposes in many cultures throughout history—starting from Satan, the leader of all demons, to Ukobach, the demon in Hell, which attends to the flames.

Ihrinwe (aka “The Lord of Blood”) is believed to be responsible for humanity’s most violent acts. Serial killers and brutal dictators have been thought to be under the control of this demonic influence, perhaps even causing most of humanity’s atrocities.

2 Old Moore’s Almanac

Dating all the way back to 1697 in Ireland, Old Moore’s Almanac is a fun little occult publication with apparent prophecies of the future. It’s one of the oldest continual publications which contain horoscopes and other such means for people to supposedly dictate their futures.

What was once an anonymous publication is now a magazine complete with an interactive website and plenty for anyone who wishes to see what occult wisdom has in store for them. It also gave weather forecasts.

In time, it spawned numerous replicas and fakes. By 1851, an Irish man named John Francis Nugent created a spin-off called Nugent’s Old Moore’s Almanac. He didn’t hide the fact that it was plainly a rip-off, even though the original publication had already been around for over a century.

Both almanacs were competitors until Nugent died in 1866. The editor for Old Moore’s Almanac also signed up to be the editor for Nugent’s Old Moore’s Almanac and worked for both publications for years.^[9]

1 Hermeticism

Hermeticism is the ancient practice of esoteric wisdom overall and contains a lot of texts and ideas under its umbrella. It is one of the oldest occult practices of all time, beginning with the intermingling of the Greco-Roman and Egyptian cultures and philosophy meeting mysticism.

While “popular” Hermeticism is the practice of more common things like astrology, “learned” Hermeticism is a bit deeper and more in tune with the modern concept of Gnosticism. The main goal was to gain a true understanding of God’s knowledge and make the natural out of the supernatural through understanding.

In a very real way, this fundamental concept was the obscure, humble beginnings of our scientific advancements today by taming the unknown and making it known. Alchemists, Freemasons, and Gnostics all fall under the branch of Hermeticism.

Scholars have suggested that alchemy was never about creating gold but about the lessons learned along the way. Mixing metals to forge gold was never intended to be a realistic possibility. Instead, it was symbolic of the pursuit of knowledge and the futility of attaining material things like gold and wealth.

Considering that Hermeticism comes from Pythagoreanism, which is based on mystical teachings of natural harmony, this is a good possibility. Pythagoras was obsessed with finding the secret fundamental substance of the cosmos, which is in line with the goals of all occultism. Alchemy grew out of this tradition.

However, Hermeticism differs from science in its aims. Where science seeks to study the natural world, Hermetics seeks to study the supernatural realm in hopes of gaining an understanding from that which isn’t readily apparent or intuitive. Ancient religions aside, Hermeticism is the all-encompassing concept of the search for a deeper, more fundamental knowledge that is the foundation of all occultism.^[10]

I like to write about dark stuff, history, and philosophy. Here’s a fun little bit telling the history of some of the more dark and esoteric occult practices.

With the holidays wrapping up here in the Western world, many of us still have our Christmas lights up, our bellies full, and plenty of other cheerful things hanging around to remind us of our recent celebrations. Holidays in this day and age are a great way for us to share, laugh, love, and make memories with our friends and loved ones.

But how often do we stop and consider the roots of our holidays and the events from which they were born? Most people with an Internet connection know that many modern holidays are a hodgepodge of ancient pagan practices which have been augmented or adopted in various forms by the surviving religions.

But beyond just ancient paganism, many holidays stem from historical events. Sometimes, those events are quite dark and not exactly the nice, cheery tales we’d expect such holidays to spring from. Here are 10 holidays with unusually dark and strange histories.

10 The Death Of St. Patrick

Most of us in the Western world who celebrate the holiday, especially if we’re not particularly religious or even armchair historians, think of St. Patrick’s Day as a fun festival marked by the consumption of copious amounts of beer. St. Patrick’s Day has always been a religious holiday, but Irish immigrants who came to the United States in search of a better life greatly popularized it as a secular holiday, solidifying it as a representation of Irish culture.

But the holiday didn’t have a happy-go-lucky beginning. It’s actually the celebration of the death of St. Patrick. His life was hard from the beginning. When the Romans occupied Great Britain in the fifth century, St. Patrick was just a 16-year-old boy who was captured and taken to Ireland from Britain as a slave.

Somehow, in 432, St. Patrick managed to escape slavery and become a force for Christianity by converting the then-pagan Irish to the religion and establishing monasteries and places of worship. He was said to have died on March 17, 493, which would have made him over 100 years old. However, historians generally agree that he actually died in 461, which is a bit more realistic.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of the day of his death. Even more dark and unusual than that are the events that ensued after his death.

The Battle for the Body of Saint Patrick took place when two rival factions fought over who had the proper rights to the corpse. However, things get a little mythological in the account in Annals of the Four Masters, the work that describes the battle.^[1]

It concludes with a scene where the rival factions end up on a river to do glorious, bloody battle for the rights to the corpse of the beloved saint. Allegedly, the river rose up and flooded upon their arrival. Both sides walked away with what they believed to be the body of St. Patrick, and it was attributed to a divine miracle that the battle was stopped.

Odd beginnings for a holiday of green beer, fun, and leprechauns.

9 Good Friday

For a holiday with such a nice name as Good Friday, its historical origins are rather dark in nature. However, Good Friday came from the ancient Germanic culture and language and was long ago Karfreitag (“Sorrowful Friday”). Before the contemporary world got hold of it, the holiday was celebrated by fasting, by asking for forgiveness from sin, and by general sorrow-filled reflection on behalf of the practitioners.

If you think about it, this makes sense. Good Friday is a holiday that was born out of betrayal, greed, and execution. For most of its history, it wasn’t the wonderful holiday that we make it out to be, but rather the celebration of the death of Jesus Christ.

Traditionally, monks and devout religious people saw this as a day of observance and remembrance and of somber reflection—not just the prequel to Easter Sunday. Some people even hold services that last three hours in remembrance of the amount of time that Jesus was said to have suffered upon the cross.^[2]

8 The Friday Of Sorrows

The lesser-known holiday of the Friday of Sorrows takes place on the Friday before Good Friday and dates back to the medieval times of Europe. It’s like Good Friday, only for the Virgin Mary, where worshipers and the devoutly religious celebrate the suffering of the Virgin Mary as she witnessed her son dying on the cross. This remembrance takes place mainly in predominantly Catholic countries rather than Protestant Christian ones.

Also known as the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this holiday was not only meant to remember the suffering that Mary experienced while Jesus was on the cross but also seven of the sorrows that took place over the course of Mary’s life.

From Mary receiving the prophecy of Simeon to desperately fleeing into Egypt after Jesus’s assumed birth, losing Jesus in Jerusalem as mentioned in Luke 2:43–49, and watching Jesus be executed, taken off the cross, and buried, the Feast of the Seven Sorrows is perfectly dark in the way that only a medieval holiday could be.^[3]

7 The Night Of Broken Glass

This is a dark holiday observed in Germany in remembrance of one of the most atrocious events of all time: the Holocaust. Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, refers to the acts that led to the events that would eventually transpire at Auschwitz concentration camp.

On the night of November 9, 1938, German Nazis committed a grievous massacre in the streets, killing Jewish people and destroying their property. In response to these events, the Nazi government said that their actions and senseless violence against the Jewish people were “perfectly understandable.”

The name of the holiday refers to the broken glass left in the streets in several countries after the events unfolded. The violence wasn’t limited to just Germany. It also took place in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

It all began on November 7, 1938, when a Nazi German official named Ernst vom Rath was shot in Paris by a Polish Jew who was 17 years old at the time. Ernst vom Rath died two days later after an extremely drummed-up propaganda assault by none other than the Nazi minister of propaganda himself, Joseph Goebbels. He had said that there was a massive conspiracy of Jews behind the assassination.^[4]

Of course, the die-hard Nazi supporters ran with it, committing widespread violence against Jewish people on the night of Ernst vom Rath’s death, which was November 9, 1938. Germany now tries to keep this night burned into their memory with a holiday of remembrance for those who lost their lives on the Night of Broken Glass and all who subsequently died in the tragic events that followed.

That night marked the beginning of much of the anti-Jewish legislation that was railroaded through by the powerful Nazi Party, which legalized the Holocaust and the acts which led to it.

6 Samhain

Samhain is a holiday celebrated by the ancient Celts as a part of their religion before they were subjugated by Roman rule and eventually turned to Christianity (with the help of St. Patrick, no doubt). The Celts were loose-knit tribes known by the Romans as the Gauls. They shared a similar language and culture.

Samhain was the ancient Celtic festival of the dead. Celtic religion held that the spirits of the dead would have to wander the Earth and wait until the day of Samhain, which was November 1, to pass into the afterlife. It didn’t matter what time of year that the person died.

The Celts also believed that their gods were not only mischievous and caused trouble, but that they were also invisible—except on Samhain. During the celebration on October 31, the Celts would leave out burning candles to light the way for their dead so that they could see where they were going.

It should be noted that Samhain isn’t Halloween, though Halloween borrows a lot of Samhain’s traditions. Samhain is actually still practiced by pagans around the world, albeit in smaller numbers.^[5]

In ancient times, it was believed that this period was a time when people could communicate with not only their dead friends and relatives but also the Dark Mother and the Dark Father, entities of supernatural power that the ancient Celts believed in.

Their religion was quite intricate, and this holiday is a time when people would communicate with their darker natures, the darker supernatural, and the dead.

5 Valentine’s Day

Today, the watered-down tradition of St. Valentine’s Day is represented most often by thoughtful cards, chocolates, and romantic love, even courtly love not unlike that of the Middle Ages. And long before the famed St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the brutal Mafia execution of seven men conducted by Al Capone and his gang on February 14, 1929, there was another bloody day that actually spawned Valentine’s Day.

This was the martyrdom of St. Valentine. Yes, Valentine’s Day is the celebration of an execution.

The year was 269, and Claudius II was the emperor of mighty Rome. The growth of marriage and family life had caused a shortage of men willing to leave home and fight in foreign lands. Therefore, Claudius outlawed marriage entirely and anyone caught getting married or performing marriage rites would be condemned.^[6]

But St. Valentine refused to stop performing marriages. He was punished severely for his “crimes” and was eventually tortured, beaten with clubs, and beheaded. Yes, you read that right—St. Valentine’s Day is the celebration of a saint from ancient Rome who was tortured, beheaded, and died on February 14, 269.

4 The Feast Of Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi could be regarded as a particularly strange holiday to those who aren’t Catholic and don’t believe in transubstantiation, the idea that food and wine can turn into the body and blood of Christ for the believer consuming them. The Feast of Corpus Christi is a whole day to drink blood and eat flesh for devout believers.

“Corpus Christi” translates to “the body of Christ” in Latin, so there’s no ambiguity that the idea of eating the flesh of Christ is involved.

Heavy symbolism characterizes this holiday, which began in 1246. With chalices and bread wafers everywhere, it’s an aesthetic experience as much as a spiritual one. For most non-Catholics, a holiday where one places bread into his mouth that actually turns into flesh might raise some eyebrows. But many Catholics all over the world celebrate this holiday annually and have done so for hundreds of years.^[7]

3 Dia De Los Muertos

The reason we can’t appropriately say that Samhain was the forerunner of Halloween is that Samhain became what Catholics celebrate as All Saints’ Day on November 1. All Saints’ Day is basically the Catholic version of Samhain, complete with celebrating those who’ve gone to Heaven and the saints taking the place of the Celtic gods of old.

Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday which celebrates the personification of death itself and has long roots in both European and Aztec cultures. With Spanish conquests of the Aztecs, Dia de los Muertos was moved to line up with the Catholic All Saints’ Day. The two fused into one holiday when practitioners would pay respects to their dead, which was in the origins of both holidays.

Dia de los Muertos makes no claims to be anything other than a dark holiday that’s all about death, with the name itself translating to “Day of the Dead” in Spanish. However, there are some notable differences between All Saints’ Day and Dia de los Muertos.

Santa Muerte (aka Our Lady of Holy Death), the major figure celebrated on Dia de los Muertos, is the saint of death. Dia de los Muertos takes Samhain and All Saints’ Day one step further by actually making death itself a saint. The Catholic Church rejects this saint and warns against the holiday as being dark and even satanic.^[8]

2 Passover

Passover is a Jewish holiday in which practitioners remove all leavened bread from their homes and reenact what life must have been like when the Jews fled Egypt in the Bible. For many, it’s a celebration of the liberation of the Jews from an oppressive Egypt and the foundation of the homeland for the Israelites. The holiday begins on the 15th and runs through the 21st in March or April.

But what’s the real story behind what they were fleeing? Well, it all starts with the slaughter of the firstborn. Exodus 11:5 says:

“Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well.”^[9]

According to the Bible, Jehovah killed every firstborn Egyptian child in the country to prove his point. And it gets worse. This was actually a reprisal because the pharaoh of Egypt had killed all the newborns and infants of the ancient Hebrews to prove his point. Then the 10 plagues of Egypt happened, with everything from raining frogs to bubonic plagues hitting Egypt hard according to the Bible.

This is what the holiday actually celebrates—a religious and military victory over another nation that, if you take it as gospel, is quite barbaric in nature.

1 Christmas

Christmas is both unusual and dark in its history for a few reasons. First, Christmas is an extremely modern holiday. Historically, Christians don’t celebrate birthdays as it has long been viewed as pagan to celebrate an individual’s birth on Earth rather than his dying to go to Heaven in accordance with Christian beliefs.

This is why saints are remembered for their (often macabre) deaths instead of their births because the moment of eternal judgment in Christianity is more important than life. This made Christmas a mockery for a long time, with writers advocating strongly against it. Traditionally, in Christianity, the moment of death was your actual and true “birthday” in the kingdom of God.

The second and more macabre part of the story comes with a jolly old fat guy, Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. Thanks to Coca-Cola ads stemming from the 1930s, we now see him plastered everywhere as a fat guy with a wispy white beard, a red onesie with white fur trim, and a big grin on his face at all times.

But this isn’t the real Saint Nick, so who was he? Well, the answer is that we don’t really know because we have no surviving historical documentation. He was the bishop of Myra in the fourth century. But aside from that, we know next to nothing about the man.

However, we do have one major artifact: his dead body. Yes, the only thing we know for sure about Saint Nicholas is that we have his actual dead corpse.

Allegedly, the real Saint Nicholas wasn’t very jolly. He was present for the very first Council of Nicaea in 325. There, he punched a guy in the face whom he thought was heretical.^[10]

After he died in 343, his remains lay buried until Italian sailors stole his corpse and moved it in 1087 from Myra to a city in Italy called Bari. Before this, the original Santa Claus was a nobody. But the theft of his remains made his popularity surge in Europe, which is how he became a figure that’s still present in our cultures today.

To put this little piece of history to the test, researchers analyzed a fragment of Santa’s hip bone. Sure enough, it dated all the way back to the fourth century, confirming that it probably belonged to the original Santa Claus.

I love to write about dark stuff, horror-themed material, the unusual, murder, and death. Here’s a twisted little piece about the dark histories of holidays. This isn’t your usual holiday list, and Christmas is definitely the bizarre kicker. I haven’t seen it discussed like this anywhere.

Instagram can be a sordid place. It may appear to be all avocado toast and #duckfaceselfies on the surface, but scrape away that digital veneer and you reveal a much dingier side to the social media platform. As well as pink-haired pre-teens and flash-in-the-pan celebrities, Instagram is home to all manner of shady characters—from violent Taser-wielding cyberbullies to militant terrorists. And while the site claims to be “simple, fun & creative”, the darker fringes of Instagram are having a huge impact on its users. A recent study by the Mental Health Foundation found that almost half of young adults have suffered some anxiety linked to the pressures of social media.

SEE ALSO: 10 Creepy Things Social Media Does To Control Your Mind

9 The Human Skull Market

In recent years, a niche circle of people has emerged online with a passion for collecting human remains. The macabre hobby has gained something of a cult following on social media. Since 2016, when eBay banned users from selling human body parts, the avid network of traders has used Instagram to buy and sell human skulls. Henry Scragg, one of the kingpins of the Instagram skull market, boasts over 33,000 followers. In the past, artifacts have been known to retail for the best part of $20,000 (£16,000).

Instagram is home to a number of illegal black markets—weapons, stolen artifacts, and rare animals to name a few. But unlike those illicit trades, the people who sell human remains online aren’t actually violating any laws. For the most part, bones are covered by the “no property rule” and therefore have no legal provenance. While some US states do technically place legal restrictions on the skull market, traders have found that in the majority of cases these laws go unenforced.

The collectors claim to be part of a respectful, if rather morbid, community; one that is often misunderstood by outsiders. However some historians are concerned by the “dark echoes of colonialism” that haunt this supposedly eccentric pastime. Some traders have received further criticism from historians and archaeologists for falsely decorating their skulls to resemble “tribal” aesthetics. ^[1]

8 Baby Adoption Scammers

An increasing number of couples in the US are turning to Instagram to adopt a baby. Long waiting lists are driving wannabe parents away from traditional agencies and onto social media. And while many do find success, others end up as victims of a cruel and emotionally traumatic scam.

Imposters pose as pregnant women to convince couples that they are being offered their babies, then disappear leaving the aspiring parents devastated. In some cases the scammers have strung couples along for months, letting them believe they are on the cusp of adopting a gorgeous newborn baby, only to pull the rug from underneath them at the last minute.

Earlier this year, the BBC reported on Samantha and Dave Stewart from Michigan who were left in tears after the pregnant teenager they were hoping to adopt from turned out to be a fake account. “They don’t ask for money,” Samantha posted on Instagram shortly after the supposed mother cut off communication. “They don’t ask for material things like a lot of scams do. They want your time, emotional investment and quite frankly someone to talk to while promising you what you are desperate to find: your future child.”

And there lies one of the issues in clamping down on this scam. Because the victims are defrauded emotionally, but not financially, most US states do not have the legal power to hold the scammers to justice.^[2]

7 Exploitation of Grief

On Saturday July 13 2019, Bianca Devins, aged seventeen, traveled hundreds of miles from her home in New York to attend a concert with 21-year-old Brandon Clark. She never returned home. In the early hours of Sunday morning, Devins was killed by a knife to the throat.

Soon afterwards, images of Devins’ bloodied corpse began to emerge online, which were then shared across Instagram. The images, which came from Clark’s account, included a photograph of her torso with the caption, “I’m sorry Bianca.” Another was a selfie that Clark had taken lying on a tarpaulin that was allegedly covering Devins’ body.

It took the site several hours to remove the disturbing images, by which point they had been shared hundreds of times. Some social media users capitalized on the events in hope of gaining more followers and increasing their popularity, posting comments like, “FOLLOW ME!!!& DM !! me for full video and picture”. Clark, who was subsequently charged with Devins’ murder, saw his social media following surge. According to one BBC report, some twisted individuals even edited images of Devins’ body into vile memes. Users who attempted to flag up the distressing images to Instagram’s moderators claim their reports were rejected.

In the aftermath, Instagram was heavily criticized for not addressing the images sooner and allowing users to exploit Devins’ traumatic death for personal gain. The response to Devins’ murder—which happened months after Australian gunman Brenton Tarrant live-streamed the notorious Christchurch mosque shootings on Facebook—poses a number of questions about the ethics of moderation of social media.^[3]

6 Terrorist Propaganda

Instagram is the latest social media site to be targeted by terrorist propaganda. In 2017, The Times reported that more than 50,000 accounts had some links to ISIL militants. Supporters of Islamic State are able to spread their extremist message to a wide audience through posts and stories on the image-sharing site.

With traditional sites like Facebook and YouTube cracking down on terrorist content, organizations are migrating onto the newer platforms for publicity. As well as Instagram, militants in Syria are said to be using Snapchat to communicate amongst themselves and search for new recruits.

The content of their online propaganda tends to vary. At times it includes videos of public executions or images decapitated “kafirs”, a term that refers to non-believers. But besides the violent imagery, Islamic State also broadcast scenes of locals completing regular upkeep such as repairing roads and harvesting crops. As Neil Doyle, a journalist specializing in Islamic terrorist, told reporters, ISIS is attempting to “paint areas it controls as paradise on earth.”^[4]

5 Unattainable Weight Loss Claims

Social media is notorious for wreaking havoc with users’ body image. There is a widely documented history of people, especially young women, feeling ashamed and disgusted when they compare their own bodies to images of highly airbrushed models. A recent study by the Mental Health Foundation revealed that one in eight adults has thought about taking their own life for reasons linked to body image anxiety.

Now a new market has emerged on Instagram to profit from users’ insecurity and negative body image. Exploitative companies have popped up on the platform peddling supposedly “miraculous” weight loss products, often with celebrity endorsements. Famous faces like the Kardashians and Cardi B have come under fire from body positivity campaigners for promoting detox teas and slimming lollipops. Several of these products are known to have a damaging impact on people’s mental and physical health.

Instagram is taking some steps to clamp down on these unscrupulous businesses. But, with almost half of young adults reporting some body anxiety due to social media, the advocates of body positivity have definitely got their work cut out.^[5]

4 Black Market Verification Ticks

Instagram’s blue tick is one of the internet’s biggest status symbols. The verification check is bestowed upon an elite club of celebrities, influencers and brands. In a sense it is Instagram’s seal of approval, a sign of certification and credibility. Blue-ticked accounts are given pride of place at the top of searches and are able to access exclusive features on the platform.

The hunger for social media credibility has spawned an entire underground market centered on the blue tick. Although Instagram insists that the symbol is not for sale, the digital black market is described as an “open secret” among users desperate for attention online. A number of shady sources claim to be able to provide one for a fee. That tiny blue icon can retail for as much as $15,000 (£12,000).

It may seem like a ridiculous thing to spend money on, but the blue tick is a highly coveted symbol, and a growing number of people have good reason to want one. Influencers—people who promote brands and products to their vast audience of followers—rely on verification to secure sponsorship deals. Brands are more likely to favor blue-ticked accounts, and these sponsorship deals can correspond to huge money. A study by Mediakix suggests that advertisers are shelling out over $1 billion each year on Instagram influencers. That little blue checkmark is a giant boost up the social media pecking order.^[6]

3 Toxic Siberian Lake

Nestled in the rolling hills of Siberia, an exquisite turquoise lake seems like an idyllic setting for a selfie. Over the summer, swarms of socialites have flocked to the city of Novosibirsk to be photographed against the backdrop of the glimmering waters. Nicknamed the “Maldives of Novosibirsk”, the lake has become such an attraction that it now has its own Instagram page, complete with photos of people kitted out in beachwear, practicing yoga and generally lapping up the view.

But all is not as it seems. Rather than an aquamarine paradise, the lake is actually a toxic dump. What appears to be a freshwater pool is in fact a waste site filled with refuse from a nearby power station. Years of depositing waste ash has made the water highly alkaline, and that alluring shade of blue is actually caused by calcium salts and metal oxides. At the base, the slurry is said to be so thick that it is near impossible to free yourself. And who knows what chemicals linger in the air?^[7]

2 Cyberbullying Gets Out of Hand

Cyberbullying is never pleasant. But for one Australian teenager, the digital torment spiraled wildly out of control.

It all began when 19-year-old Yasemin Ercan was called a “dog” on Instagram by a former schoolmate, aged 18. Ercan was livid. To extract her revenge, she arranged to meet up with her old school friend at a shopping centre near Melbourne. But when the 18-year-old pulled into the carpark, Ercan and another man climbed into her vehicle armed with a Taser. The victim was forced to drive around for 20 minutes, until Ercan and her accomplice decided to stop the car and get out. Ercan then slapped and spat on the teenager, a court heard, before attacking her with the Taser.

She had now been charged with various offences including kidnapping and intentionally causing injury. Ercan is also facing trial for threatening to inflict serious injury, after messaging her ex-schoolmate that she would stab her in the throat, shoot her in the head, and “smash the f——” out of her. Ercan was banned from all social media platforms following her arrest in 2018.^[8]

1 Blackfishing

Over the past few years, a new trend has emerged on social media. Users, particularly young white women, are altering their appearance to make themselves look black or mixed race. Users have been known to take melanin hormones, inject their lips and even pay for nose jobs to resemble a black woman.

Nineteen-year-old model Emma Hallberg was one of the first to be taken to task for imitating black women. Although the social media star was born in Sweden, she presents herself online as having dark skin, thick lips and frizzy permed hair. And while she has never overtly claimed to be black, she has never denied it either.

Accounts like Hallberg’s with an avid following are often sponsored to promote brands and products. Black rights activists claim this creates a racist digital culture in which influencers are able to profit by stealing from a culture that they do not naturally belong to.

This mimicking of black identity has even been given a more extreme name by the Black Twitter community: ‘niggerfishing’. The term comes from ‘catfish’, a word for someone who takes on a deceptive alter ego online, usually to dupe others into relationships.^[9]

A person blackfishing should not be confused with a trans-black person such as Rachel Dolezal, the difference being that a trans-black is one who believes he or she is the racial form of a transgender: a black woman or man born in a white body.

When someone dies, the legacy writers begin their work. Biopics and reams of books appear, all extolling the virtues of the heroes of our past. However, we sometimes forget that our heroes were also flawed people, and history often neglects the more unpleasant parts of famous legacies.

10Abraham Lincoln Allowed Seances And Suspended Constitutional Rights

Abraham Lincoln is one of the most famous leaders in world history, known for presiding over the United States during the Civil War. He is also credited with playing a part in bringing down the institution of slavery. However, what many people don’t realize is that during the extremely tense days leading up to the Civil War, Lincoln became convinced that keeping the Union together was more important than anything. He suspended many constitutional rights, taking a very dark path, believing that anything and everything that could be done must be done.

He was also extremely depressed, suffered from horrible dreams about death and suicide, and along with his wife went half insane from the death of their son. He even went so far as to allow her to conduct seances in the White House in the hopes of speaking with him.

9John. F. Kennedy Cheated On His Wife And Didn’t Care About How It Affected Her

JFK was the closest thing to a rock star president that the United States ever had. He was known for his looks, his charm, and a certain ability to get almost any lady he wanted. Many people know that JFK was quite a hound, but some people don’t know the extent of his philandering. Some stories claim he tried to have sex with a different woman every day if he could and would claim this desire was partly the fault of the medications he took for Addison’s disease.

Many people assume that this was one of those open relationships and his wife was okay with it, but many people believe she was truly hurt by his behavior. Rumors suggest she not only threatened divorce but was once bought out by his father to the tune of $1 million, so she wouldn’t put the family through an embarrassing divorce.

8Benjamin Franklin Constantly Tried To Ruin Other People For Petty Reasons

Benjamin Franklin is known for being one of the fathers of the American revolution. He acted mainly as a diplomat, forging connections across the pond to help the fledgling colonies in their revolt. He was also an inventor, coming up with the lightning rod, bifocals and several other seemingly unrelated ideas.

However, while he is often celebrated for his genius, he was not a very nice guy. He had a very harsh upbringing and would use his newspapers in an attempt to ruin the lives of rivals. He once went so far as to convince everyone his biggest rival was dead—despite the man’s insistence otherwise.

7Margaret Sanger Was A Huge Fan Of Eugenics

Margaret Sanger was an avowed feminist in the early 1900s and at one point faced prosecution for her rather controversial writings and speeches. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States of America, which went on to become what Planned Parenthood is today. While people with a certain viewpoint may not appreciate birth control in any form, there was a more insidious issue lurking behind her interest in birth control.

Sanger was a big supporter of eugenics, the idea that only the healthy and fit should continue to reproduce or live, and the others should be weeded out. Some people have even suggested that the first birth control clinics were set up near black neighborhoods, proving her racist intentions as a eugenicist. Her actual intentions on this particular matter are hard to prove.

6Lemmy Kilmister Was A Huge Fan Of Nazi Memorabilia

Lemmy Kilmister was the leader of the metal band Motorhead and lived quite a long life for someone who abused substances as much as he did. He was known for loving his drink to an absolutely insane degree—he reportedly drank at least a fifth of whiskey every day for years. He was also known for having a very poor diet in general, but for the most part, he was a likeable guy.

However, many people don’t know that Kilmister was a huge fan of collecting Nazi memorabilia. While he claimed that he had no interest in actual Nazi ideas, many people found it extremely insensitive and felt the way he plastered it on his walls went beyond collecting history.

5Patrick Stewart Is Alleged To Be Incredibly Overbearing And Arrogant In Person

Patrick Stewart is famous for starring in Star Trek: The Next Generation and playing Professor Charles Xavier of the X-Men. In recent years he has been the subject of many memes and has become a beloved pop culture icon. However, memes make people out to be somewhat larger than life, but in the end, we are all human.

On stage during a presentation recently at an award ceremony, he started criticizing and insulting the presenter, James Corden. Corden would later state that he felt weird arguing back against such a respected voice, but he was taken aback by the criticism and felt the need to defend himself.

4Peter Sellers Was Infamous For Being Almost Impossible To Work With

Peter Sellers is famous for movies like the Pink Panther series and for playing multiple parts in the Stanley Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove. He was able to perform a variety of accents and dialects flawlessly, and his attention to detail as an actor was second to none.

This was also his greatest flaw, as he drove everyone he worked with crazy. His family told of him being a very depressed man who was never happy with any of his work. Some producers, despite his star power, wanted nothing to do with him after working with him just once. The man’s perfectionism sometimes blinded him so much that he didn’t realize no one could stand being around him.

3Steve Jobs Cheated His Best Friend Wozniak With No Remorse

Steve Jobs left a legacy behind as the founder of Apple and the promoter of various doodads like the iPhone and the iPod. Many people remember Steve Jobs as a genius at marketing—the man could build hype like nothing else. Biopics were made about the man almost as soon as he died, and many people still extol his virtues.

However, Jobs was not a very nice guy. He had a standing policy that Apple will never donate to charity, to make as much money as possible. He consistently had his engineers do all the work and then personally took credit, and he once cheated his friend Steve Wozniak out of money back when they were first working together. It wasn’t even that much money, but Jobs did it out of petty greed. Wozniak was hurt later when he found out, never understanding why his once friend would be so awful to others.

2Henry Ford Was A Nazi Sympathizer And A Loony Vegan

Henry Ford is known for being the namesake of the Ford automobile company—still the first and longest running major automobile manufacturer in the country. Even more importantly, Ford revolutionized assembly line technology, in a way that changed production the world over forever.

Unfortunately, Ford was also a huge Nazi sympathizer. He was one of those on the side of Hitler before we got involved, and he remained a supporter of the ideals after the war was over. While some businesses would not work with Germany during those years, Ford was all too happy to help. He also believed that he could subsist eating random weeds—a theory he designed based on the idea that humans were like cars and just needed basic fuel of any kind at all.

1Carnegie The Philanthropist Was A Cruel Despot

Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon, the Carnegie Institute—his name can also be seen on libraries and random concert halls all over the United States of America. Many people think of Andrew Carnegie as a great philanthropist, but his real history shows a much different picture.

Carnegie made his fortune on massive worker exploitation, to a point that even the most fervent anti-union person today would have thought his employees needed a good union. He would even call in the army and just force people to work for a pittance if he had to. Carnegie ran work camps, with whole families and generations controlled by his evil, helping him earn more fortune to enjoy.

In his later life, Carnegie felt guilty about what a horrible person he had been, and started massively donating money to charitable causes—all while many people toiled away in his camps, making him enjoy a rich life, still slaves.

+ Further Reading

History favors the victor and sometimes it conveniently forgets the darker side. Here are a few more lists than prove this:

10 Shameful Ways People Cheapened Important Legacies
10 Successful People Trapped In Their Parents’ Shadow
10 People Who Were Erased From History
Top 10 Legacies of the Middle Ages

For 1,000 years after the Western Roman Empire fell, the Eastern Empire of Byzantium stood strong. Ancient and powerful, the Byzantine court soon became known as a warren of intrigue and secrets. No one was safe, and no one could be trusted.

10Assassinations

Since the Byzantines always felt that an unpopular ruler could be replaced, a number of emperors died violent deaths.

Constans II was clubbed to death with a soap dish while resting in his bath. Michael III lost both his hands trying to block a sword. Nikephoros Phokas was warned of a plot and ordered a search of the palace, but his wife had hidden the assassins in her bedroom, which no guard would dare to search. They stabbed him to death that night.

At least, Leo the Armenian went out in style. Ambushed on Christmas Day by assassins disguised as a choir of chanting monks, he seized a heavy cross from the altar and battled them around the Hagia Sofia until his arm was cut off and he was struck down. Less romantically, the killers then threw his corpse into a toilet.

9Mutilation

The Byzantines believed that disfigurement disqualified candidates for the throne. As a result, emperors often mutilated their rivals rather than killing them outright. Blinding was popular, as was cutting off noses and tongues. In later years, castration became the most common practice.

In some ways, mutilation was considered kinder than execution. John IV Laskaris lived for 40 years after being blinded. But it was undoubtedly brutal. Empress Irene had her own rebellious son blinded in the room where she had given birth to him. The youth died of his wounds a short time later.

However, it was sometimes possible to come back from mutilation. Basil Lekapenos was castrated as a boy to prevent him from causing trouble when he grew up. With the throne closed to him, Basil became a powerful courtier and ruled through a series of puppet emperors.

8The Noseless Emperor

The terrifying Justinian II was first overthrown in AD 695. The rebels cut off his nose and slit his tongue down the middle before exiling him to the Crimea. Undeterred, Justinian escaped to the land of the Khazars and began plotting a return to power. The new emperor bribed the Khazars to murder their guest, but Justinian was warned and personally strangled the assassins before escaping to Bulgaria in a fishing boat.

Forging an alliance with the Bulgarian khan, Justinian returned to Constantinople and led an army through the sewers and into the city where he took a terrible revenge on his enemies. Regaining the throne, he ruled for another six years, wearing a golden nose and using an interpreter to translate the gurgles from his ruined tongue.

His cruelty eventually grew too much, and he was overthrown again in 711. This time, they killed him.

7Intrigue

Today, the word “Byzantine” can refer to an atmosphere of confusion and intrigue, and that was certainly true of the court in Constantinople. There, eunuchs and courtiers jockeyed for influence and emperors ruled through powerful favorites.

In one ninth-century example, the eunuch Staurakios helped Empress Irene overthrow and blind her own son. Staurakios himself was soon forced from power by the eunuch Aetios, who schemed to make his brother emperor. But Aetios failed to guard against the finance minister Nikephoros, who orchestrated a coup and reigned as emperor until the Bulgarians converted his skull into a drinking cup.

This atmosphere of intrigue lasted until Constantinople fell. Even as the Ottomans massed outside the walls, Grand Duke Loukas Notaras was reportedly scheming to secure lucrative court positions for his sons.

6Civil War

In the ninth century, Michael I was forced to resign by a trio of his generals: Leo the Armenian, Michael the Amorian, and Thomas the Slav. Leo became emperor. But when he fell out with Michael, the Amorian’s followers infiltrated the Christmas service and hacked Leo to death. Thomas the Slav rose in revolt against Michael, sparking a massive civil war which badly weakened the empire against the Arabs.

Similar problems arose in the 10th century when Bardas Phokas’s rebellion was put down by General Bardas Skleros. When the eunuch Basil Lekapenos schemed against Skleros, he started his own revolt in self-defense. Lekapenos countered by releasing Phokas from prison and putting him in command against Skleros.

Phokas defeated Skleros in single combat and destroyed his forces. But Phokas, Skleros, and Lekapenos then teamed up against the young Basil the Bulgar-Slayer. Typically, they soon fell to infighting and Basil successfully secured power. He later became famous for blinding thousands of prisoners and sending them back to Bulgaria, where Tsar Samuel promptly died of horror.

5The Purple-Born

The Byzantines had long considered purple the imperial color, with only members of the royal family allowed to wear certain purple dyes. Eventually, the emperor built a special room with walls made of the precious purple stone porphyry.

Imperial children born in this room were dubbed porphyrogennetos (“purple-born”). They were immensely prestigious and weren’t supposed to marry outside the empire, although Vladimir of Kiev famously demanded a Purple-Born bride as the price for military aid and his conversion to Christianity.

The Purple-Born also attracted great loyalty from the common people. Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos was overthrown as a boy, but his Purple-Born status protected him and he was allowed to remain as co-emperor for 24 years.

When Basil II died, the only remaining Purple-Born were the sisters Zoe and Theodora. The citizens of Constantinople rioted at every attempt to remove them from power, and the pair dominated the empire until Theodora’s death in 1056.

4Riots

As citizens of the greatest city on Earth, the people of Constantinople were never afraid to express themselves, often through violence. In the most famous example, fans of the Blue and Green chariot racing teams united to riot against Justinian I.

The emperor was prepared to flee, but the day was saved by his wife, Theodora, who proclaimed that she would rather die an empress than live as a commoner. The rebels were subsequently massacred.

Not all riots destabilized the empire. One particularly bloody civil war was effectively ended by a prison riot. Megaduke Alexios Apokaukos was inspecting his new jail when the political prisoners ran amok and murdered him, crippling his faction.

The assertive tendencies of Constantinople’s citizenry survived the Ottoman conquest, and many a sultan cowered inside the Topkapi Palace while an enraged mob tore his vizier to pieces.

3Castration

Eunuchs served the Byzantine state in every capacity, from courtiers to priests to generals. (The eunuch Peter Phokas became famous for defeating a Scythian warlord in single combat.) They were perceived as nonthreatening because they had no children to inherit their status.

However, eunuchs like John the Orphanotrophos (manager of Constantinople’s orphanage) became notorious for leveraging their brothers into high office. John himself grew so powerful that his whole family had to be castrated and exiled by a nervous emperor.

Castration was technically illegal in the empire. As a result, many eunuchs were enslaved outside the empire as young boys and then castrated just before they were brought across the border. But it wasn’t unknown for impoverished Byzantine parents to castrate their sons in the hope that these boys would grow up to secure lucrative positions at court.

2Sex Slaves

Multiple sources from the period allege that eunuchs were frequently used as sex slaves because they maintained their youthful looks. This was officially forbidden, but the church struggled to find a way to stop it without condemning slavery (and thereby the emperor).

The problem is illustrated in the 10th-century Life Of St. Andrew The Fool, which basically puts the blame on the eunuchs. A character does point out that “if a slave fails to obey, you surely know how much he will suffer, being maltreated and beaten.”

But Andrew insists that “if the slaves do not bow to the abominable passions of their masters, they are thrice blessed, for thanks to the torments you mention, they will be reckoned with the martyrs.”

1The Zealots Of Thessalonica

In 1341, the empire was undergoing one of its regular civil wars. The new emperor was nine years old, and his father’s friend John Kantakouzenos had been appointed regent. The boy’s mother, Anna, and Megaduke Alexios Apokaukos formed an alliance to usurp the regency, sparking a massive conflict.

But this time, something different happened. In the city of Thessalonica, the common people seized control from the aristocracy. Calling themselves “Zealots,” these revolutionaries championed the rights of the poor. Accounts from the time claim that violent mobs of Zealots attacked and slaughtered the rich.

The Zealot council ruled Thessalonica for the duration of the civil war. For a time, they swore allegiance to Megaduke Apokaukos, but they remained hostile to the aristocracy and eventually asserted their independence by murdering his son.

The revolution was only put down after John Kantakouzenos became emperor. Some of the Zealots invited the Serbian king Stefan Dusan to take the city, but others found this unpatriotic and fighting broke out. Kantakouzenos took the city easily and executed the leading Zealots.