New York City: the home of gritty, groundbreaking, independent film. Unlike Los Angeles, New York offers filmmakers more artistic freedom with their work. Here, they are not bound by the pressure from major Hollywood studios; and while budgets may be lower, the results of financial restraints are often rewarding. Many hip, young directors draw inspiration from this exhilarating, fast-paced city and use it as the backdrop for some of the most nightmarish and anxiety-inducing films ever made.

10 Nightmares Lurking Just Behind History

10 Requiem For A Dream

This 2000 psychological drama from director Darrren Aronofsky doesn’t hold back in its portrayal of the devastating consequences of addiction. Featuring standout performances from Jennifer Conelley, Jared Leto, Ellen Burnstyn, and Marlon Wayans, this modern day fable follows four addicts living on Coney Island whose lives spiral out of control as they will stop at nothing to get their fix. This film is an examination of just how strong a hold drugs and other stimuli have on those who fall prey to their allure.

The late, great Roger Ebert described Aronofsky’s ability to portray the various mental states of his addicts as “fascinating.” Of the movie’s “worthless” NC-17 rating he said, “Anyone under 17 who is thinking of experimenting with drugs might want to see this movie, which pays like a travelogue of hell.”^[1]

9 Rosemary’s Baby

Groundbreaking for its time, this 1968 psychological horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski is a haunting chronicle of a woman’s pregnancy. Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy (John Cassavetes) are a young couple who have just moved into their first apartment in New York City. Before long, Rosemary becomes pregnant. Alone and confined to their apartment, she becomes increasingly skeptical of an elderly couple living next door. As Rosemary’s paranoia grows, she becomes convinced that they are part of an evil cult that wants to take away her baby and use it for their rituals.

Polanski’s screenplay was based on Ira Levin’s 1967 novel of the same name. In 1980, a “quiet, pensive, and insecure” Levin said of his childhood horror inspirations, “I don’t recall being scared at all. Now, I’m terrified,” according to a Vanity Fair article calling Rosemary’s Baby “the most cursed hit movie ever made.”^[2]

8 The Devil’s Advocate

Keanu Reeves stars as Kevin Lomax in this supernatural thriller/horror film from 1997, directed by Taylor Hackford. Kevin is a defense lawyer living in Florida with his wife, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron). The couple relocate to New York City after Kevin is offered a high-paying job at a law firm, led by the charismatic John Milton (Al Pacino).

While Kevin is swept up with work and indulges in the many perks of the job, Mary Ann starts to experience frightening visions and begins to unravel. As his wife’s mental health deteriorates, Kevin realizes that his boss may, in fact, be satan, himself.

Fun Fact: Donald Trump’s private apartment at Trump Tower–featuring gold decor and a view of Central Park–was used as the home of Kevin’s client, Alex Cullen (Craig T. Nelson).^[3]

7 Fatal Attraction

Adrian Lyne’s iconic 1987 thriller is a tale of love, lust, and obsession. Dan (Michael Douglas) is a happily married Manhattan lawyer, living and working in New York City while raising a daughter with his wife Beth (Anne Archer). Everything changes when Dan meets Alex (Glenn Close), an editor for a publishing company. The two have a casual weekend affair while Dan’s wife and daughter are out of town. Alex, however, wants more than just a fling and manipulates Dan into spending more time with her.

When his family returns, Dan stops spending time with Alex, who has become obsessed with him. Dan makes it clear that he does not wish to continue the affair, but Alex refuses to accept that. She becomes increasingly aggressive and begins to stalk him and harass his family. As her behavior escalates, Dan realizes that his top priority is no longer to try and hide the affair but to protect his family whose safety is now at risk.

Producer Sherry Lansing wanted Barbara Hershey for the role of Alex, but Hershey was unavailable. Also on Lansing’s wishlist were Melanie Griffith, Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, and Debra Winger.^[4]

6 Dressed To Kill

This 1980 neo-noir slasher film was written and directed by Brian De Palma. New York City prostitute Liz (Nancy Allen) witnesses the brutal murder of housewife Kate (Angie Dickinson). While the police suspect Liz to be the murderer, the true killer seeks to kill Liz, as she is the only witness to the crime. Kate’s son is the only one who believes Liz, and the two of them team up to uncover the truth about his mother’s murder.

Making the film in the city was “pretty terrific” for De Palma, who’s from New York. “It’s so amazing to shoot all over the city and in different places. Of course, they did the interior of the museum in Philadelphia, but the film was shot in New York, so that was really cool.”^[5]

10 People Who Survived Your Worst Nightmares

5 American Psycho

Christian Bale is Patrick Bateman in this 2000 black comedy psychological horror film co-written and directed by Mary Harron. A handsome, young New York City investment banker by day, Patrick’s life revolves around maintaining his appearance and social status and striving endlessly to be the most respected among his coworkers. By night, however, Patrick indulges in his sinister desire to torture, kill, and sometimes even consume any helpless victim who may be unfortunate enough to cross his path.

What starts out as the portrait of the day-to-day life of a narcissistic serial killer turns out to be a psychological whirlwind as reality begins to blur, and Patrick attempts to cover up his tracks that may or may not have even been left behind in the first place.

Because the studio thought Bale might not be famous enough to play Bateman, there was a moment where it looked like American Psycho would become an Oliver Stone film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. But activist Gloria Steinem reportedly steered DiCaprio away from the project to protect his Titanic appeal among young female fans. In a weird turn of events, Steinem married David Bale five months after the release of American Psycho and became Bale’s stepmother!^[6]

4 Eyes Wide Shut

1999’s Eyes Wide Shut was the last film ever made by Stanley Kubric, one of the most renowned directors in cinematic history. This erotic mystery psychological thriller tells the story of upperclass New York City couple Bill (Tom Cruise) and Alice (Nicole Kidman) Hartford. Bill is a medical doctor, and Alice is a stay-at-home mom to their daughter. One night, after smoking some weed, Alice tells Bill that she once had sexual fantasies about a man that were so strong, she would have abandoned their family.

This revelation sparks something in Bill, who had previously claimed to have never been the jealous type. Bill is tormented by this information, obsessively visualizing the scenario in his head. He embarks on a late-night adventure through New York City where he attends a masked party of a secret society. The next day, after returning to his normal life, he discovers that a woman whom he met at the party has been found dead.

“Life goes on,” one character says cynically. “It always does until it doesn’t.” Kubrick died four days after completing the film.^[7]

3 Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky’s iconic psychological horror film from 2010 is a nonstop roller coaster ride that never lets up. Every aspect of this film showcases impeccable writing, filmmaking, and performances across the board. Natalie Portman stars as Nina Sayers, a dancer at a New York City ballet company who still lives at home with her overbearing mother, played by Barbara Hershey. The innocent and naive Nina is elated when the company’s artistic director Tomas (Vincent Cassel) chooses her to play the highly coveted role of the Swan Queen in the company’s upcoming production of Swan Lake.

The role of the Swan Queen, however, requires the dancer to portray both the virginal White Swan, which Nina perfectly embodies, and the evil, sensual Black Swan, for which fellow dancer Lily (Mila Kunis) is more suitable. As a rivalry emerges between the dancers, the competition and pressure to not only keep her role but to give a perfect performance sends Nina on a downward spiral of self-destruction into madness.

Aronofsky had considered combining ballet into the plot of The Wrestler, making it the story of a love affair between a wrestler (the epitome of “low art”) and a ballerina (the epitome of “high art”). But the director realized that wrestling and ballet were too big for just one film.^[8]

2 Jacob’s Ladder

This 1990 psychological horror film was directed by Adrian Lyne. War veteran, Jacob (Tim Robbins), awakens in a New York City subway after returning home from Vietnam. He is now working as a postal clerk and living in brooklyn with his girlfriend.

Jacob is mourning his old life and the death of his child while simultaneously experiencing vivid flashbacks and hallucinations. His world starts to fall apart around him as people and things begin to morph into the most disturbing and horrific images.

Lyne considered several big stars to play the leading character. Richard Gere, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino were all interested in the role. Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke each turned it down.^[9]

1 Taxi Driver

Robert De Niro stars as Travis Bickle in this 1976 psychological drama, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Shrader. Travis is a loner and insomniac who works nights as a New York City cab driver. After meeting a campaign worker named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), Travis hatches a plot to kill a presidential candidate. Narrowly escaping a campaign event, to which he brought a gun, Travis then turns his attention to a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster), whom he feels obligated to save.

Fun Fact: Since Foster was only 12 years old during filming, she was not permitted to participate in the most explicit scenes. Her old sister Connie, who was 19, agreed to be Jodie’s body double.^[10]

10 Real Places Straight Out Of A Nightmare

The Persian Empire believed in justice. They had strict and careful rules about sentencing a punishment for a crime. No one, they believed, should be executed for a first offense, and every criminal’s good deeds should be considered before handing down judgement. If someone was going to suffer, he should deserve it.

But if you did deserve it, the Persians made sure you paid for it. They came up with some of the most imaginative and brutal punishments in history. Justice in ancient Persia wasn’t always swift—it was a slow, prolonged, and painful torture torn from your worst nightmares.

10 Making A Chair Out Of Your Skin

When a Persian judge named Sisamnes was caught accepting a bribe, King Darius was determined to make an example out of him. The courts of Persia, Darius believed, should be impartial and fair. He was going to be sure that Sisamnes’s replacement didn’t make the same mistake.

Sisamnes was killed, but that was just the start. After his throat had been slit, Darius had the executioners flay off every inch of his skin and make them into strips of human leather. Then he had them sew together a chair made of Sisamnes’s skin.^[1] From then on, the new judge would have to sit on a chair made of human flesh.

It gets worse: Sisamnes’s replacement was his own son. As he presided over Persia’s trials, he would have to spend every day sitting on a chair made of his father’s flesh. Now, King Darius believed, they would have a judge who would never forget what happened if he accepted a bribe.

9 Drowning In A Pool Of Ashes

One of the worst deaths you could suffer in ancient Persia was suffocation by ashes. It was a punishment reserved for the worst criminals: those guilty of high treason or offenses against the gods. And it was horrifying.

The Persians kept a 23-meter-tall (75 ft) hollow tower that was filled with nothing but ashes and wheels. At the top was a sliding platform, and the criminal would be taken to it and thrown in. He would plummet down into the center of the tower. The fall would likely break a few bones, but the ashes would keep him alive long enough to suffer the slower, more brutal death they had planned.

The executioners would turn the wheels. Men outside would put them into motion, swirling the ashes around to force them into the convict’s nose and mouth. He would inhale them, suffocating on burned ashes until he died.^[2]

It’s a sentence more than a few people faced, and it even shows up in the Bible. In it, a corrupt Jewish priest is killed by the Persians in the tower of ashes. When he dies, his family isn’t allowed to bury his remains. “And that,” the Bible says to conclude the story, “was just what he deserved.”

8 Pouring Molten Gold Down Your Throat

When the Roman emperor Valerian was captured by Persian soldiers, he met a horrible end. He died a death that might sound like something pulled out of Game of Thrones. The real story, though, is much, much worse.

Persian emperor Shapur I kept Valerian as his personal slave. He would parade him in front of his army, his hands and legs shackled, treating him like a dog. He humiliated him every way he could. Before mounting his horse, Shapur would make Valerian get down on his hands and knees so that he could use him as a human stool.^[3]

When Shapur got bored of his toy, he killed him. He poured molten gold down Valerian’s throat. Then he had the emperor of Rome taxidermied. Valerian was skinned and stuffed with straw, and his dead body was put on display in a Persian temple—a trophy of gold and human remains.

7 Tearing People Apart With Trees

In the later years of Persia, thieves had to deal with horrifying punishments. Anyone caught stealing or harassing a rider on the roads of the empire was sentenced to death—by being torn in half.^[4]

The executioners would pull the tops of two trees as close to one another as they could and tie them together. They would drag the convict over and tie one leg to the top of each tree. Then they would cut the cord holding the trees together.

The two trees would spring free, pulling apart at incredible speeds and shooting back upright with the criminal still tied to them. His body would tear in half from the force. Within a second, two halves of what was once one man would hang from the trees.

His body would be left there, hanging over the road where he’d robbed an innocent person. Anyone who passed through these parts, the Persians believed, would get a harsh reminder of just what would happen if they followed the lives of thieves.

6 Crushing Your Servants’ Heads With Stones

As much as Persia tried to be fair about its crimes, they didn’t exactly ignore class status. The king could get away with anything, and as long as they were in his good books, his family could, too. When King Artaxerxes II’s own mother murdered his wife, he couldn’t bring himself to execute her—so he killed her servants, instead.

Parysatis, Artaxerxes’s mother, hated her daughter-in-law Stateira, and Stateira hated her right back. They had to pretend to be civil in public, but they tried to kill each other so often that Artaxerxes had to set up rules to keep them from pulling it off. When they dined together, he ordered that everything they ate had to be cut in two and shared so that they couldn’t poison each other.

It didn’t work. Parysatis had poison put on one side of a knife and had her servant use it to cut the meat, poisoning the half that went to Stateira and keeping her half untainted. It worked, and the king’s mother murdered the queen.

It was obvious, of course, who was responsible, but Artaxerxes couldn’t bring himself to kill his mother. He had all her servants tortured until they confessed. Then he had the meat cutter’s head smashed in with a rock.^[5] Parysatis, though, was just sent into exile.

It didn’t take long before Artaxerxes invited her right back. And she helped him pick a new wife: Parysatis convinced Artaxerxes to marry his own daughter.

5 Chaining Dismembered People To Gates

It was fairly common in Persia and the nations around it to torture rebels by cutting off their noses and ears.^[6] That kind of brutal torture, though, wasn’t always a death sentence. Sometimes, they kept you alive. And sometimes, that was worse than death.

When the people revolted against King Darius, he made sure everyone knew what would happen if they turned against him again. He rounded up the rebel leaders and cut off their noses, ears, and tongues and plucked out one of each of their eyes—but he didn’t kill them. Not yet.

The rebel leaders were chained up and bound to the front gate of his castle so that everyone who walked by it would see their mutilated bodies. Their lieutenants, meanwhile, were decapitated, and their heads were hung from the top of the city citadel.

They were left there for weeks, being jeered and beaten by everyone who walked by, staring at the remains of their friends and suffering in excruciating pain. Then, when they couldn’t take anymore, they were allowed to die.

4 Making The Slaughter Of Your People An Annual Holiday

In Persia, Zoroastrian priests were called the Magi. This didn’t necessarily mean that they had magical powers; they were religious leaders. And after one of them got a little overambitious, their jobs became hell.

A Magi named Smerdis tricked the people into believing he was the son of Cyrus the Great and got himself crowned as king of Persia. He was actually a great king, loved by his people. He introduced tax reforms that made life easier and relaxed the laws on military conscription—but he stole the throne, so naturally, he had to die.

When the people found out, they didn’t stop at murdering Smerdis. They ran through the streets of the kingdom, spreading the word and murdering every member of the Magi they could find.^[7]

When the massacre was over, the people decided to make it an annual event. Once every year, the Persians celebrated a holiday called “the Slaughter of the Magi.” On the anniversary of Smerdis’s death, they would run through the streets, and if they caught any Magi outside, they would brutally murder them.

3 Letting Insects Eat You Alive

Scaphism might already be the best-known of the Persian punishments, but the list would be incomplete without it. Few tortures compare.

This torture was reserved for people the king really hated. The victim would be stripped naked and put inside of a hollowed-out tree trunk or two boats, with his heads, hands, and feet sticking out and exposed to the Sun. Then he would be force-fed milk and honey until he had diarrhea and became literally buried in his own filth.

The torturers would rub honey over the exposed parts of his body to lure over insects. Bugs would crawl over the convict and slowly eat away at his flesh, while wasps would agonize with their stingers until he prayed for death.^[8]

The torturers, though, would continue to force-feed him to keep him alive for as long as possible. After a few days, the victim’s mind would start to deteriorate, but he would still be alive. It could take weeks before his body finally gave out and died. The first time they tried it, it took 17 days of agony and praying for death before the victim’s prayers were finally answered.

2 The Triple Death

Some people, the Persians believed, deserved more than one death. If their crime was terrible enough, they wouldn’t settle to kill them once. They’d make them die three deaths before they were allowed to stop breathing.

The victims wouldn’t actually die, but they would go through the agony of death three times. When a eunuch angered the wife of Cyrus the Great, for example, she first had his eyes pulled out of his head. Then, once he’d recovered, she had him flayed alive. Then they nursed him back to health again before finally crucifying him.^[9]

It wasn’t the only time it happened. After a soldier tried to take credit for killing Cyrus the Younger in battle when he’d really only wounded him, the king ordered his execution. The king’s mother, though, intervened, saying, “Leave him to me, and he shall receive the fitting reward for his daring words.”

First, she had him stretched out on the wheel for ten days. Then she gouged out his eyes. And then, finally, she finished him off—by pouring molten brass into his ears until he died.

1 Forcing People To Eat Their Children

A Median general named Harpagus went through the worst punishment possible for the lightest offense. King Astyages had a dream that his grandson would overthrow him, so he ordered Harpagus to take the infant out into the wilderness and leave him to die. Harpagus, instead, gave the baby to a shepherd, who raised the child as his own.

It took ten years for Astyages to find out he’d been disobeyed, but when he did, he was vicious. He cut Harpagus’s son’s throat, chopped him from limb to limb, roasted his flesh, and served him to Harpagus at a banquet.

At first, Harpagus didn’t know what he was eating or even that his son was dead. Astyages, however, made his servants put the dead boy’s head on the table in front of him and taunted him, saying, “Do you know what beast’s meat you have eaten?”

Harpagus knew what would happen to him if he tried to take revenge. He couldn’t even dare to cry in front of the king who had murdered and fed him his own son. “I know,” Harpagus was forced to say, “and all that the king does is pleasing.”^[10]

He complimented Astyages on the dish and asked to take the rest with him. Then he carried what they’d let him take back to his home and buried the last remains of his son.

The international sporting events of the Olympic Games are a testament to the unwavering dedication of leading athletes around the world. Participants spend their entire lives training and competing, honing their skills and rising to the tops of their games in order to be able to call themselves Olympians. And yet, only some will get to proudly stand before the eyes of the world, medals hanging from their necks.

In spite of the glory of the Olympics, human nature takes a prominent toll anywhere. On occasion, this has engendered life-altering mishaps never to be forgotten. As opposed to delving into notorious calamities that have befallen competitors, the following ten entries examine lesser-known nightmares surrounding the Olympics.

10 The Silence Of The Doves

At the 1896 Olympics in Athens, birds were released as a sign of peace and freedom. The act officially became a part of the opening ceremonies beginning in 1920 at the Antwerp Games. While it’s theorized that the tradition dates back centuries, historians claim that homing birds were first released during the ancient Olympics in order to notify families and villages of a returning hometown athlete’s victory.

Unfortunately, the symbolic custom would be anything but festive during Seoul’s opening ceremony in 1988, when a few feathers became ruffled. As three athletes rode a rising platform skyward to light the enormous torch, numerous doves made the unfortunate error in judgment of resting atop the cauldron prior to its ignition. As the three torches lit the flame, a Korean barbecue ensued, turning white feathers into ash for the world to see. It immediately became apparent that it was vital for the Olympic committee to alter future ceremonial procedures in order to avoid another embarrassing public spectacle.

In 1992, no birds were burned. The doves were released well before the lighting of Barcelona’s cauldron, bringing tranquility to animal enthusiasts everywhere.^[1]

9 Unjust Reputation

Prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, testing for drug use among Olympic athletes wasn’t carried out. The deficiency of such regulations should have been evident following the 1952 Oslo Winter Games, when several speed skaters overdosed on amphetamines and required medical intervention.

However, it took the untimely death of Danish cyclist Knud Jensen at the Summer Olympics in Rome in 1960 for anti-doping campaigns to gain prominence. Jensen, whose notoriety is rooted in becoming the first Olympic athlete to die of a drug overdose during competition, became the exemplar of an admirable objective fueled by immoral measures. His demise was a picturesque epitome for crusaders destined to increase the regulation of doping at the expense of Jensen’s reputation.

In reality, the cyclist’s autopsy stated that although the he had amphetamines in his system, they were unlikely to have contributed to his death. Nonetheless, Jensen’s passing—medically attributed to heatstroke—was exploited as propaganda. To date, the myth surrounding the first athlete to overdose persists amid tons of evidence proving otherwise.^[2]

8 Honor

At the 1964 Summer Olympics, Kokichi Tsuburaya, a first lieutenant in the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, had the distinct honor of representing his nation on his home turf in Tokyo. Such a privilege, however, would prove to be nothing more than an immense disappointment for the lead marathoner, who was overtaken in the final 100 meters, finishing third. In spite of taking home a bronze medal, Tsuburaya was mortified, believing he had brought shame upon himself, his family, and his fellow countrymen.

The arduous burden rooted in pride was a driving factor for Tsuburaya to succeed in future marathons. He stated, “I committed an inexcusable blunder in front of the Japanese people. I have to make amends by running and hoisting the Hinomaru in the next Olympics, in Mexico.” Sadly, Tsuburaya’s aspirations would never come to fruition after an ongoing lower back pain problem began to take effect shortly after the Tokyo games.^[3]

As the pain became increasingly debilitating, Tsuburaya’s sight on the gold medal began to diminish. The mere thought of another humiliating defeat was more than the first lieutenant could bear, and on January 9, 1968, he committed suicide in his dormitory room by slashing his right wrist with a razor blade. Tsuburaya’s suicide note cited his inability to run as the reason for his actions.

7 Blazing Torch

During the opening ceremony at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, junior mile champion Ron Clarke was making the lap of honor around the main stadium’s arena, never realizing that the flesh of his right arm was being burned. As he circled, the tumultuous applause of the stadium made Clarke oblivious to the fiery particles spilling from the torch he carried. Only after being presented with a medallion by an official did Clarke realize he had not only left a trail of fire on the track behind him but that the embers had burned through his shirt and scorched parts of his arm.

Clarke’s amusing predicament is child’s play compared to the sizzling mishap that occurred at the 1968 Summer Olympics. During exchanges of the torches’ flame, several runners were burned by minor explosions when the torches would touch. Fortunately for the seared runners, the solid fuel, a mixture of nitrates, sulfur, alkaline metal carbonates, resins, and silicons, was nontoxic. It was, however, volatile during rapid contact between a lit torch and an unlit one.^[4]

6 Hot Dogs

Due to its special ingredient, the popular dish bosingtang has caused quite the ruckus among foreigners visiting Pyeongchang for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Throughout the South Korean city, countless restaurants continue to serve the traditional stew made of dog meat despite government pressure and financial incentives aimed at curbing sales in the hopes of appeasing offended tourists.^[5] Such measures were taken before the 1988 Seoul Olympics, during which the sale of the meat became restricted in parts of the city. What came about was a surprising backlash fueled by patriotism among some Koreans, who began eating more dogs solely to spite imposing foreign views.

Interestingly enough, Korean traditionalists have long believed that meat from a dog contains mythical properties that increase virility and boost restorative powers. Although the demand is decreasing these days due to a lack of popularity among younger members of Korean society, the off-putting custom remains prevalent in rural regions of the country. In fact, bosingtang is one of many dog meat delicacies available to those craving a domesticated dish, including dog salad, dog ribs, and a dog “hot pot,” just to name a few.

5 1904 Spectacle

The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis have been epitomized as one of the more bizarre exhibitions in athletic history. Having been overshadowed by the World’s Fair, the games were entwined with the fair’s own roster of sporting events, which included mudslinging and “ethnic” dancing solely for the amusement of Caucasian spectators. Meanwhile, the outcome of the Olympics’ foremost event, the marathon, was a cluster of moronic spectacles beyond epic proportion. Only a handful of runners were recognized marathoners, and the majority of the race was composed of “oddities,” including ten Greek nationals who had never competed in a marathon and two barefoot Tsuana tribesmen from South Africa, who were only in town as part of the Fair.

To make matters worse, the heat and humidity along the course was detrimental for the health of athletes subjected to their coach’s farcical demands, which included the irrational minimization of fluid intake. Several athletes suffered bouts of vomiting and debilitating stomach cramps, one was chased miles off course by wild dogs, and others stole food from humorless spectators. American gold medalist Thomas Hicks was fed strychnine and egg whites by his compassionate coach, who watered down the concoction with brandy in what has become the first recorded instance of drug use in the modern Olympics.^[6]

4 Deadly Practice

The Olympic Games are not for the faint of heart, with accidents and injuries occurring quite often during competition. Though it’s rare for an athlete to die, the names of those killed while training are often forgotten, never having stepped foot on the world’s stage. Such was the case for 22-year-old Nigerian runner Hyginus Anugo, who was struck and killed by a car while training in Southwestern Sydney in 2000.

During the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, British luger Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypecki was killed in a wreck during practice, as was Australian skier Ross Milne, who collided with a tree after flying off the course of the slope.^[7] From crashing into steel poles at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver to sunstroke deaths at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, perhaps the most reckless death of all occurred at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Swiss speed skier Nicholas Bochatay leaped over a small hill during warm-ups and crashed into an oncoming tractor-like vehicle used to groom the trails. To add insult to injury, Bochatay’s death came within minutes of competition.

3 Neighbors To The North

Rising tensions between South Korea and their neighbors to the north is nothing new, especially during the Olympic season. From the moment Seoul first won its bid to host the 1988 Summer Games, North Korea was determined to disrupt the esteemed festivities at all cost. The regime’s determination took a diabolical turn on November 29, 1987, when Korean Air Flight 858 from Baghdad to Seoul disappeared above the Andaman Sea with 115 passengers aboard. South Korean president Chun Doo Hwan immediately blamed the North, formally charging the country for the tragedy two months later. To no one’s surprise, the communist government denied the allegations and followed up with copious ineffective attempts to persuade allies—China and the Soviet Union, specifically—to boycott the games.

The world would eventually learn what truly occurred on that fateful flight when Kim Hyon Hui admitted her involvement. The North Korean agent described in immaculate detail how she and her accomplice, Kim Sung Il, planted a timed explosive on the jetliner disguised as a radio. The jubilation of the dynamic duo’s mission of creating “chaos and confusion in South Korea” came to an abrupt end upon their arrest. Both swallowed cyanide capsules after being arrested. While Sung Il succumbed, Hyon Hui survived.^[8] She was sentenced to death but was eventually pardoned and lives her life a free woman today.

2 Estadio Nacional Disaster

One of the world’s worst stadium disasters occurred in Lima, Peru, on May 24, 1964, when a rambunctious crowd of committed football fans became slightly perturbed at a referee’s erroneous call. While Peru and Argentina were competing in a qualifying round for the Tokyo Olympics, an equalizing goal for Peru was disallowed, infuriating home fans at the Estadio Nacional. Within seconds, a vicious skirmish between police and the crowd ensued.

As tear gas rained down on 53,000 spectators, those who attempted to flee into the streets found themselves barricaded behind closed gates, and they asphyxiated in the tightly packed tunnels. While the official death toll remains at 328, it is not reflective of the number of victims killed outside the stadium by police gunfire. In fact, that number may never be known, given that countless corpses with bullet wounds mysteriously vanished from the mortuaries, and the names of the dead were never recorded.^[9]

1 156 Voices

“I’ve just signed your death warrant,” Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said in a Michigan courtroom in January 2018 after sentencing Dr. Larry Nassar to 40 to 175 years in prison.^[10] While the disgraced former USA Gymnastics doctor lowered his head in shame, the country questioned how the sexual assault of more than 150 girls and young women continued, or perhaps was overlooked, for two decades. Of the 156 women who took the stand recounting the abuse they endured under the guise of medical treatment, it became nauseatingly apparent that countless victimized voices were ignored over the years by organizations in power, primarily USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, and the US Olympic Committee.

In spite of pleading guilty to seven counts of criminal sexual conduct, in a letter he had recently written to the court, Nassar accused his victims of lying, blamed the media for his ruined reputation, and claimed that he was manipulated into pleading guilty. The 54-year-old degenerate also wrote, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

Adam is just a hubcap trying to hold on in the fast lane.

For the most part, history is a lie. Like Disney conveniently forgetting Sleeping Beauty’s rape, scholars have spent a great deal of time trimming the more “sensitive” facts from history, leaving us with a collection of bland, easily digestible anecdotes. Sure, these “scenes from the cutting room floor” may not always be relevant, but they almost always bring the past to life.

Sometimes, though, we end up wishing it had stayed dead. Sometimes, the parts they don’t teach you in high school aren’t just unfit for a Disney movie but would make Quentin Tarantino blush. Here are ten nightmarish vignettes from history that you may not be familiar with.

10 Pavlov’s Forgotten Experiments

Anyone with any knowledge of psychology knows about Ivan Pavlov. His experiments on dogs in the late 19th century made him a household name, at least if your house is full of Psych majors. By ringing a bell when food was presented to his canine subjects, he observed that they would eventually come to salivate at the sound of the bell alone, before receiving food. This paved the way for the behavioral psychology we know today.

But, in reality, his experiments were a bit more extreme. It turns out that Pavlov never once used a bell; he did, however, employ a buzzer, a metronome, a harmonium, and electric shocks to forge mental associations. More horrifically, in order to keep his dogs hungry and ready to test, he surgically carved holes in their throats so that any swallowed food would simply fall out.^[1] Additional holes were opened along the animals’ digestive tracts so that various fluids could be collected for analysis and, bizarrely, to be sold as a remedy for stomach ailments. In addition to being extremely painful, these mutilations resulted in several dogs starving to death despite nonstop feedings.

9 World War I’s Unexpected Drownings

During the summer of 1917, near Passendale (also spelled Passchendaele), Belgium, the Third Battle of Ypres (aka the Battle of Passchendaele) was in full swing. It was trench warfare at its finest as British and German forces clashed, heavy artillery thundered, and PTSD sufferers were spawned en masse. Then it began to rain. For over a month, torrential rainfall pelted the region, bringing the battle to an almost certainly welcome halt.

But the relief was short-lived. It turns out water and dirt create a bizarre substance called “mud,” and nowhere has more exposed dirt than a trench battlefield. As tons of the sticky mixture filled every available space, including the massive craters left by artillery, entire stretches of land became impassable death traps. The water also soaked into the large greatcoats worn by soldiers of the era, adding roughly 23 kilograms (50 lb) of weight just begging to drag them down.

Needless to say, the results were nightmarish. Wounded soldiers were left to slowly drown beneath the ooze, as rescuers couldn’t get near them.^[2] Corpses, buried eye-deep, stared from murky pools. The few troops who managed to survive the sludge only did so by walking along the submerged bodies of their friends.

8 The ‘President Taft’ Killer

President William Howard Taft may not be as well-known as Lincoln or JFK—unless you count that whole bathtub myth—but he has nevertheless left his mark upon American history. It’s just a shame that the mark involves rampant rape and murder.

In 1920 Taft’s New Haven, Connecticut, home was burglarized by a man named Carl Panzram. He mostly took what you would expect, money and jewelry, but he also got his hands on something special—Taft’s .45 pistol.^[3] He kept the gun, sold the jewelry, and used the cash to buy a yacht, which he sailed to New York City. He had a plan.

Under the alias John O’Leary, Panzram began luring sailors aboard his vessel with promises of work. After sailing out to sea, the unfortunate sailors were raped, murdered with Taft’s pistol, weighted with rocks, and tossed into Long Island Sound. Fleeing the city after arousing suspicion, Panzram hopped to various locations around the world in search of new victims before being caught and hanged in 1930. He confessed to the rape and murder of 22 people.

7 London’s ‘Great Stink’

Victorian England is generally believed to have been the pinnacle of polite society; the very words conjure images of gentlemen in top hats cruising around in carriages. And that’s probably accurate enough, but as Charles Dickens reminds us, there was always a revolting reality beneath the “Good day, sir” facade. That reality, in this case, was a river of human feces.

The summer of 1858 was a rough one for England’s capital city. The heat was miserable enough, but the sanity-threatening stench it created was worse. For centuries, London had simply dumped its sewage into the River Thames, which ran right through the heart of the city. This had worked well previously, but the early years of the 19th century saw London’s population double, completely choking the river with human waste. The relentless heat fermented the miles-long stretch of feces into the world’s largest stink bomb, its “evil odour” forcing many, including all of Parliament, to evacuate.^[4] After the biggest city in the world was brought to its knees by stench alone, city planners finally gave in and built a proper sewage system, which is still in place today.

6 The Lindbergh Kidnapping Torture Squad

After his 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic—the first in history—to say Charles Lindbergh was a national hero was an understatement. He was the object of worldwide admiration but also the target of one of the most high-profile crimes of the 20th century: the 1932 kidnapping of his infant son. The public was outraged and desperate for answers—no one more so than detective Ellis Parker.

Despite the conviction and impending execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Parker remained convinced that the real culprit was former New Jersey attorney Paul Wendel. So, on nothing more than a hunch, Parker enlisted three men, including his own son, to snatch Wendel off the street, tie him up in a tiny Brooklyn basement, and make him talk.

In order to “encourage” a confession, Wendel’s captors starved him, partially melted his face with a hot light bulb, beat him with anything they could get their hands on, and threatened to put cigarettes out in his eyes. The grand finale, however, was lashing the brutalized man to an improvised rack and stretching his neck by tying weights to his head.^[5] Wendel eventually confessed to end his torment but rescinded it immediately after. He was never convicted.

5 The First Lady’s Unusual Accessories

The events surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s fateful 1963 visit to Dallas, Texas, are extremely well-known; in fact, you are probably more familiar with his death than his actual presidency. But one bizarre and chilling detail of that November day always seems to escape mention: Jackie Kennedy stubbornly wore her freshly deceased husband’s blood and brain paste for the better part of 24 hours.

When the president was shot, the first lady first dove after the larger bits of his exploded head and then held him as he bled out. This understandably left her now-famous pink suit a little worse for wear. Regardless, she continued to wear it—all the way to the hurried swearing-in of the new President Lyndon Baines Johnson aboard Air Force One. She was urged to change before the event but refused, saying simply: “I want them to see what they have done.”^[6]

Incidentally, the suit still hasn’t been cleaned. It is currently locked away from public view in a climate-controlled vault in Washington DC’s National Archives until 2103.

4 Ancient Egypt’s Parasite Problem

When you think of the ancient Egyptians, you probably think of a few very specific things—mighty pyramids, gold-plated coffins, those guys fanning pharaohs with giant palm fronds, and so on. What you probably don’t think of, however, are bleeding penises. Until today.

The discovery of irrigation by the ancient Egyptians was a great one. It made farming possible, which, in turn, allowed their civilization to grow as powerful as it did. However, it also created large marshes, which were ideal habitats for Schistosoma haematobium, a parasitic worm that tended to burrow into the penises of farmers. Victims of the worms would experience not only pain but heavy bleeding from the penis as well.^[7]

And these weren’t just a few isolated incidents; infection was so common among the farming lower class that the symptoms were believed to be a normal part of life. In fact, boys weren’t considered “men” until they saw blood in their urine, as if it was the male equivalent of menstruation.

3 The Unbelievably Unpopular Prime Minister

History is absolutely packed with unpopular—and brutally executed—politicians. So how do you manage to stand out from the crowd? Just ask Johan de Witt.

In 1672, after several military blunders, Holland was in pretty bad shape. As you might expect, de Witt was blamed for absolutely all of it, due in large part to the influence of rival politicians. The public’s hatred for him slowly grew until it exploded in the most ridiculously over-the-top political statement of all time.

Still recovering from a recent assassination attempt and escorted by armed guards, de Witt visited his statesman brother, Cornelis. As the men spoke, a mob of enraged citizens gathered outside. De Witt’s guards held the crowd at bay as best they could but were suddenly—and highly suspiciously—ordered to leave. The mob descended upon the brothers, emptied every bullet they could find into them, sliced off their genitalia, and strung them up upside down. The de Witts were then slit open, and the crazed citizens began pulling out their entrails, roasting them, and eating them.^[8] It is believed Cornelis was still alive when the evisceration started.

2 The Gold Rush’s Booming Side Industry

When gold dust was discovered at California’s Sutter’s Mill in 1848, the ensuing Gold Rush drew millions of settlers to the then-obscure territory in search of their fortunes. Some hit it big; most didn’t. But regardless of how much time and energy was wasted by the disappointed miners, the real losers were California’s native populations.

In just two decades, native communities that had existed for thousands of years were systematically exterminated. Military massacres of entire villages were commonplace, but the Californian government didn’t want to exclude its many new citizens from the fun. In addition to the legalization of the kidnapping and enslavement of natives, towns began paying for native body parts.

And not just a few of the more bloodthirsty communities, either. This booming new “scalp industry” (heads, hands, and feet were also acceptable, but the scalp was the real “prize”) paid up to $200 a scalp, earning it nearly as many takers as the Gold Rush itself.^[9] Accounts describe mules led into villages completely piled with native heads, scalps, and whatever else might fetch a few dollars. The California government paid out millions of dollars for these grisly trophies.

1 The City Of Cannibals

Between Pearl Harbor, the atomic bombs, Nazi concentration camps, and the Nazis themselves, World War II easily takes the terrifying wartime cake. But hiding behind the well-worn history books and multiple movie adaptations is a chapter of the war seemingly too nightmarish to include: the siege of Leningrad.

It sounds innocuous enough, but the three-year Nazi blockade of Leningrad—now St. Petersburg, Russia—killed as many as ten times the number of people of the Hiroshima bombing. However, what really made the siege stand out in a conflict so brimming with horror was the way in which it killed: starvation. Sure, the Germans bombed the city, but their star player was the slow, withering death imposed upon millions by blocking the city’s food supply.

At first, people got creative; they licked the starchy paste from their wallpaper, boiled leather boots into jelly, and made pancakes from face powder. Then, after exhausting their stray cat supply, they got desperate. By this point, millions had fallen to hunger, and survivors just couldn’t justify letting good meat go to waste. Corpse-eating, or trupoyedstvo, became a regular part of life.

But more horrifically, so did lyudoyedstvo, person-eating. Some just couldn’t wait for their dinner to die on its own, like the mothers who fed their infants to their older children, the man who ax-murdered his grandmother for her liver, the father who fed his son his own mother, and the roving gang of man-eaters snatching the unwary off the streets. In total, over 2,000 Leningrad citizens were arrested for cannibalism.^[10]

If you had to make a list of places you never want to go, a sewer has to rank on there somewhere. You don’t need to experience one to know you won’t enjoy it. Depending on the sewer and its location you can expect to find human waste, cockroaches, rats, trash and a whole host of other unpleasantries. And that’s just the usual contents of a sewer. Sometimes it gets even weirder. 

10. A Lion Once Got Loose in the Sewers of Birmingham, England

Nothing should live in a sewer but that doesn’t mean nothing does. As mentioned, rats and roaches can make a fine home in the damp, dark tunnels beneath our feet and there’s not a lot to be done about it. But in 1889 a much larger resident set up shop in the sewers beneath Birmingham, England.

A traveling menagerie, which was like a traveling zoo, was in town and they had their display of exotic animals in tow. This included a male lion that made its escape in town and flee to the local sewer. The lion had previously mauled a person and killed another, so this wasn’t exactly a cute case of circus animals gone wild. 

In order to quell the panic of the people, the menagerie owner pulled a fast one by sneaking a second lion out of the show and then pretending to capture it at a different sewer entrance. Since no one saw a second lion escape, the man was hailed as a hero for snagging the beast. 

In reality, he had to come clean about his ruse to the local police who then helped him capture the escaped lion for real, just a day late. 

9. A Nile Crocodile Was Discovered in Paris Sewers 

In 1984, workers in Paris discovered one of the least likely things to find in a Paris sewer – a Nile crocodile. Named Eleanor, the baby crocodile had been eating rats near an entrance to the Seine River.

As helpful as a rat-eating crocodile might be, the city still captured the animal and placed it temporarily in the zoo. From there it was moved and most people forgot about it, but she ended up in an aquarium in Vannes where she spent most of the rest of her life.

The Vanne aquarium closed in 2020 when Eleanor was 38. She was transferred to a sanctuary called La Ferme aux Crocodiles but didn’t survive the re-homing and died soon after. 

It’s believed Eleanor had probably been illegally imported and then abandoned when she started growing too large and dangerous.

8. British Sewer Workers Had to Deal With a 130 Ton Sewer Fatberg

Misplaced animals in a sewer are one thing but a fatberg is quite another. That’s the name we’ve given to masses of goop that clog modern sewers thanks to people flushing too much junk into a sewer that it can’t handle. 

In particular, things like baby wipes which don’t break apart like toilet paper and aren’t meant to be flushed are the primary culprit. They form masses along with grease, human waste and more trash that can become so huge they can stop all flow in a sewer and need to be dislodged by entire teams of workers.

One of the biggest fatbergs on record was discovered in Whitechapel in London’s east end. This 130 ton monster had to be removed by trained professionals and the process was both disgusting and dangerous. 

On the surface it sounds just gross and maybe a little funny, but there is real danger. The amount of bacteria and potential disease present cannot be underestimated. As well, the bulky chunks of congealed fat and waste can hide things like needles or other hazards that put workers at risk. 

The local population became oddly fascinated with the blob of cooking oil, used condoms and old tampons. Pieces of the Whitechapel fatberg were preserved by the Museum of London and it took a lot of effort to do so as the salvaged chunks kept growing mold or hatching flies during the process.

7. Thousands of Bucharest Orphans Live Below the City

There’s another kind of nightmare you can find in sewers not related to something that makes you cringe in fear. In Bucharest there are thousands of orphans who live in the city’s sewers. The former regime had banned both abortion and contraception and the number of orphans was estimated to be north of 100,000. They’ve been living there since 1989 and many of them have grown up and started their own families beneath the streets.

The Communist regime in Romania ended in 1989 and that meant every orphanage was summarily closed. The children were literally thrown onto the streets to fend for themselves. The sewers of Bucharest are home to steam pipes which allowed many of them to keep warm and, having nowhere else to go, many of them stayed.

As you might imagine, life in a Romanian sewer is no picnic. Many of those in the tunnels dealt with addiction issues and illness including HIV and tuberculosis. 

6. Sydney Has Had Giant Snapping Turtles in the Sewer

We’ve seen how sewers across Europe are beset by unexpected visitors but it’s not restricted to the continent. Sydney, Australia has its own subterranean problems in the form of snapping turtles. 

An alligator snapping turtle named Leonardo is Australia’s most famous sewer resident. The turtle was rescued and sent to a zoo where it has grown to be over 100 lbs. Fans of the reptile rallied in 2016 to get him a larger enclosure as the zoo where he was sent had never upgraded his home despite him doubling in size. A petition to expand his digs garnered over 16,000 signatures. 

It’s believed the turtle was smuggled into Australia before being illegally dumped in a drain. When he was discovered in the sewer in the year 2000 he only weighed 55 lbs and was briefly named Cowabunga.

Alligator snapping turtles can grow to over 200 lbs and their jaws are strong enough to take a human finger clean off. Though they are native to North America, there was some speculation it may have also been stolen from a display at the zoo in 1979.

5. North Carolina Had a Viral Sewer Monster

When you want to see a true sewer monster, you need to head to the internet. That’s where most people first saw something no one could explain back in 2009. This sewer monster was discovered in Raleigh, North Carolina and for a while people thought it had to be a hoax or even a promo for some kind of found footage movie.

A viral video depicted a writhing, pulsating thing that would have looked at home in a Hellraiser film. It took a bit of time but people managed to sleuth out what it was. The thing was actually a colony of tubifex worms. The worms can be found in sewers where they attach to roots that have broken through bricks and cracks in walls. 

The lights from the camera disturbed the worms and caused them to pulse and retract while they were being filmed, creating the look of a single, mysterious and unsettling creature. 

There was also a competing theory that it wasn’t tubifex worms but a colony of bryozoans, which is just another small,creepy creature most of us on the surface have never seen in the light of day. 

4. An Ancient Roman Wrote About an Octopus Breaking in Through the Sewer

The ancient Romans learned the art of making sewers from the Etruscans and put them to good use throughout the empire. Just like in modern times, these ancient sewers were prone to attracting unwanted guests. Unlike in modern times, the simplistic way that some Romans made sewers, which included attaching them directly to the open sea, created an opportunity for some more diverse visitors.

There is a story which has lasted since Roman times, penned by the writer Aelian. He told of an Iberian merchant who had to deal with nightly visits from an octopus that would crawl from the sea, slink up the sewer and invade the man’s home. 

If you’ve studied much about octopus, you know they are extremely intelligent and also skilled at getting into and out of all kinds of tight spots. This octopus would raid the man’s pantry and steal his pickled fish. 

3. Snake Nests Are Not Uncommon in Sewers

The internet has more than its fair share of “snake in a toilet” videos for you to choose from. These can hail from Australia, South America, Africa, Asia and even North America. Arizona, for instance, is no stranger to toilet snakes. 

Many snakes find their way into a toilet from outside in, looking for a cool and damp place to hang out in high heat. But some take the long way around and work their way through sewers. For every snake that ends up in a toilet, it’s a safe bet a lot more are still down the drain somewhere.

In Thailand, a colony of over 100 snakes was found in a sewer in 2022. Flooding caused the sewer to back up which disturbed a snake nest and the hundred babies that were calling it home. 

Despite what you may think or feel about snakes, locals took the time to go out of their way and help the little guys who were trapped in the water by fishing them out and putting them safely on dry land again. 

A similar incident in Washington occurred back in 2014 when a contractor inspected a clogged line and found a half dozen snakes trapped inside. Because of the way lines had been constructed, there was unfortunately no way for those ones to be rescued and it was assumed they had been pets someone tried to flush.

2. Piranha Fish Have Made Their Way to UK Sewers

Just because something fits in a toilet doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to flush it. In the town of Chichester in the UK, a piranha was found in the local sewers in 2018 prompting the local water company to remind people only to flush their waste down the loo.

The freshwater fish are mostly known for their remarkably sharp teeth and bad reputation as carnivores, though in real life they rarely cause harm to humans. That said, they are an invasive species since they are not even indigenous to the continent and if a population of them were established it would be incredibly dangerous for the ecosystem, not to mention sewer workers.

1. Dozens of Corpses From a Cemetery Were Found During a New Sewer Excavation

Short of evil clowns there are few things any of us would want to find in a sewer less than an actual dead body. Workers in Indiana in 2023 found almost 70 of them when working on a new sewer system that was being run under what had once been a church.

No one knew that there had been a cemetery on site over a hundred years past, so their efforts to run the sewer through unintentionally disinterred the residents. The crew didn’t find them all at once so plans were made to move the deceased for proper burial as they came upon them. 

The cemetery itself was over 200 years old, older than the town that was built over it. The city was surprised that so many graves had remained hidden for so long with no other construction project disturbing them. Officials knew a cemetery was in the area but since it had never been officially marked, no one knew where to look.

The visual arts have gotten a bad rap of late. A tradition starting with Duchamp’s graffitied urinal has led to a procession of “What is art?” pieces that litter galleries all over the world. This “art” is fawned over by people who, were they alive in the mid-19th century, would have invested more in monocles and beaver fur stoles than time learning about the natural world, art, and literature. Once upon a time, this was not the case—art was inspired, and it inspired. In some unexamined corners of today’s cultural landscape, this trend remains. Waiting.

But art was not always the joyous, primary-color explosions of a Van Gogh or the blissfully serene pastel hues of a Monet. Nor was it always the heroic subjects of Greek and Roman marble sculptors or the study of beauty painted by Klimt, Botticelli, or Michelangelo. The darker side of existence has a place too…

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance” – Aristotle; read this list with that quote in mind, and you’ll never sleep again.

Related: 10 Shocking Pieces Of Erotic Art From The Ancient World

10 Mad Kate
Heinrich Füssli (1806, Oil)

The unexpected, the uncanny, or, to be more academic, an image that displays “situational ugliness” is foundational in engendering a fear response in people. Famed author and medievalist Umberto Eco wrote of this phenomenon in his book On Ugliness: “The governing principle behind every story about ghosts or other supernatural events, in which we are frightened or horrified by something that isn’t going the way it should…”

Look at her. Things certainly aren’t going the way they should here.

If you look from the bottom of the portrait upward, slowly, one could be forgiven for expecting a rather nice, gentle-looking lady, perhaps waiting for loved ones to join her for a picnic. Look at the periphery—a blue sky, a bit of brush/hedgerow, a sweeping mountainside, and sun rays glinting. Now her face. The wild stare, pupils pointing in directions we don’t expect, wild hair, and a wilder cape flowing upward to a (suddenly, jarringly) jet-black sky. Plus, the title—Mad Kate. She certainly looks it.

This painting exemplifies two core fears we all have—a loss of sanity (autonomy of mind) and coming face-to-face with the unexpected. Who amongst us can claim that they would like to be alone in the wilderness with Mad Kate?^[1]

9 Drawings by Abused Children
(Tragically) Ongoing, Mixed Media

The innocence of children is a miracle. When such innocence is exploited, roughly dragged from the child by the predations of an adult, we can all agree that it is among the most heinous of crimes mankind can commit. Objectively evil.

Many children express elements of their trauma via art—the stereotype of kids drawing silly little pictures of stickmen and women standing outside a boxy-looking house with a smiling sun in the top corner is given a tragic bent when the child in question has suffered abuse. Houses are drawn without doors and windows, showing there’s no escape. Pictures of a parent may show them smiling, but their mouth tends to be full of huge, sharp teeth. Sometimes, instead of normal arms, an abusive adult gets depicted with elongated grasping arms or fingers. The child often draws themselves without arms.

When a child is suspected of having been abused, sometimes it is only prominently evident in their drawings. This is, in a way, a good thing—these subtle indicators can lead to authorities or unwitting parents to uncover the perpetrators and have them brought to justice. In another way, it is utterly tragic—a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons should be a chance for kids to express their imagination, bringing their colorful alternate worlds to ours. When their minds are full of unspeakable horrors, it isn’t surprising that’s all they can draw. These “works of art”‘ are the hardest to view but perhaps the most necessary in avoiding further evil.^[2]

8 Untitled
Zdzislaw Beksinski (1975, Oil)

Commentators have referred to Polish artist Zdzislaw Bekinski as “The Nightmare Artist.” Can’t argue with that! The work that has been selected here—Untitled (the same “title” that most of his work bares), is one of the hundreds of twisted, spine-gnawing works that plumb the depths of our collective psyche. It’s simply horrific.

Otherworldly, eldritch horrors stalk around madness-inducing landscapes, causing the viewer to thank the Lord that these creations are just paint dragged across the canvas. Having said that, who would hang this on their wall without expecting that one night, if the planets are aligned just right (or, for the owner, wrong), these creatures, twisted agonized humans, and demonic wraiths may begin to slip into our reality?^[3]

Sweet dreams are not made of this.

7 Gas
Edward Hopper (1940, Oil)

Artist Charles Burchfield once commented that American painter Edward Hopper’s work was an “honest presentation of the American scene…Hopper does not insist upon what the beholder shall feel.” Well, Charlie boy, we cannot say what exactly Hopper meant for the viewer when he painted Gas, but once you consider the statement:

“This is Purgatory!”

Then it’s hard not to see that in the work. So too with the sentences “A murder is about to occur” or “A natural disaster is moments away.” The overwhelming sense of foreboding in this particular piece is impressive, given that Hopper often relied on a darker palette and hefty use of shadow, bland/dank interior settings, or night-time city scenes. Not in Gas—here, we’re outside. It’s bright daytime. It’s just a gas station. But, as though Hopper had infused the oil paints themselves with creeping dread, there’s something very wrong with this scene. Or it’s just an old gas station. Well, every slasher flick has one…^[4]

6This Is Worse
Francisco Goya (1815, Drypoint)

There are many visual artists who have attempted to capture the essence of unfettered warfare throughout the centuries—Otto Dix’s stylized depictions of wounded soldiers after WWI, J.M.W. Turner’s Battle of Trafalgar captures naval warfare during the Napoleonic era, and, of course, Pablo Picasso’s cubist nightmare Guernica, heralding a new age of war in the skies. But Francisco Goya’s seminal series of drypoint drawings, The Disasters of War, are perhaps the most visceral, the most shocking snapshots of what a war on the home front, coupled with corruption and an immiserated populace, can look like.

Most of the scenes are clearly things that Goya himself witnessed (or at least heard about)—the piece titled For a Clasp Knife, for instance, shows a garroted priest with a note pinned to his chest, describing the nature of his crime, referenced in the title. Almost every piece in this series, minus a few more allegorical/fantastical pieces, are artistically rendered acts of war correspondence.

This is Worse is the goriest picture in the series, and the most affecting—a massacred Spaniard has been placed on a gnarled tree stump, his anus and shoulder pierced by broken branches, pinning him in place like a side of meat in a butcher’s window. The dead man’s head is turned toward the viewer, mouth open as though wailing yet not detracting from the stark realism in the piece. Behind this foreground scene, French troops conduct further atrocities.

The scene is based on an event in 1808 near Chinchón, Spain—French troops retaliated for the killing of two of their number by local rebels by massacring the men of Chinchón. If you ever wanted to know the true horrors that can occur in war without witnessing it yourself, this series, and this picture, in particular, can get you close. Be warned.^[5]

5 The Various Paintings Concerning John the Baptist’s Beheading—Caravaggio (1607-1610, Oils)

For those of you who prefer your Bible stories acted out by animated fruit and veg, don’t seek out these paintings…or go on the internet ever, for that matter!

Caravaggio, that crazy murderous Italian who just so happened to be one of the most transcendently talented artists ever to have put brush to canvas, knew how to work a miracle. To be able to simultaneously horrify and delight in one work is a skill far beyond most artists. These works, all depicting one Biblical scene, are stunningly beautiful. And chillingly gruesome.

Violence and the divine go hand-in-hand in these works, bringing the tale to life in a way words simply cannot. Also, one shouldn’t be surprised when learning of the artist’s penchant for brawling, dueling, murdering, and throwing plates of artichokes in tavern owners’ faces. Okay, he only did that once.^[6]

4 Lucifer
Franz Von Stuck (1891, Oil)

The idea of the devil has become sanitized in pop culture over the last 100-or-so years. From corporate mascot for cigarette companies to sympathetic lead character in TV shows and name-checked in thousands of pop songs, Old Nick has become rather cool. Or even kitsch.

Franz Von Stuck’s hypnotizingly stark portrait of Lucifer forces the viewer to really think of the original character himself. Or, rather, the central figure himself demands so, with his bright, staring eyes amongst the painting’s gloom. Imagine being Lucifer, cast down from Heaven, never accepting or understanding his own nature, doomed to be the losing adversary for eternity. The longer you look, the longer you consider this, the more that older concept of the devil begins to re-emerge. This fallen angel is forced to wonder how his fate could be what it is. That is what those eyes portray—madness and futility.^[7]

Or is it that he is tempting you to join him in perpetual wonder as to the injustice of existence.

Those eyes.

3 Head of Medusa
Peter Paul Reubens (1617–1618, Oil)

The aforementioned Caravaggio is often considered to have painted the seminal, most horrific depiction of this mythological Gorgon’s severed head.

Wrong, it’s Reubens.

Look at all those damned snakes. You don’t have to be afraid of these bitey little buggers to squirm at the sight of the dripping blood forming into new baby snakes. You don’t have to fear wild animals to be confused about why there are two random spiders and a salamander in the bottom corner. The horrific scene brings new drama to this classic myth—Perseus had to bundle this gruesome, venomous pile of no-thank-you-very-much into a sack. Would you put your hands anywhere near this?^[8]

2 Gin Lane
William Hogarth (1751, Etching and Engraving)

If the history of the early 20th century U.S. taught us anything, it is that alcohol prohibition doesn’t work. But earlier works that demonized hard alcohol like Gin Lane made a powerful point about the devil’s mouthwash—it can be ruinous. But far from being a puritanical, preachy song or poem, the etching titled Gin Lane depicts a harrowing scene of degradation and abandon that, if everyone planning a drinking binge was forced to stare at for five minutes before hitting the town, would make you think twice about ordering shots.

It’s a companion piece to another etching called Beer Street; this other print shows happy and hale Londoners enjoying life and working hard. The propagandistic message here is that English ale is nourishing and pure, unlike that corrupting foreign gin.

Gin Lane depicts a terrible scene—death, decay, and debauchery are all acted out by devilish-looking gin-quaffing denizens of London’s St. Giles district. The central image is of a syphilitic prostitute, addled on gin, who lets her screaming baby drop to its inevitable death. The image echoes many real examples recorded during the era—a case from 1734 reported that one Judith Dufour strangled her daughter to death using some newly acquired clothes given to the girl at a workhouse. Dufour stripped her murdered child and sold the clothes for 1s. 4d. (1 shilling, 4 pennies).^[9]

To buy gin.

1 The Dead Lovers (aka The Rotting Pair)
Unnamed Master from Swabia/Upper Rhine (c. 1470, Oil)

For centuries, Memento Mori—Latin for “remember that you have to die”—has been a mainstay in European art. Little symbols like skulls or hourglasses found obscured in paintings or on sculptures remind the viewer that while alive, we all await death. This reminder of the ever-presence of our own mortality is also present in this piece.

A bit on the nose, don’t you think?

As opposed to the artfully obscured skull that can only be viewed from a certain angle in Hans Holbein’s famous The Ambassadors, this piece by an unnamed German master slaps you in the eyes. The painting was once an obverse depiction of a handsome young married couple (this painting now resides in the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, U.S.), showing the young pair as rotting corpses, their cadaverous forms getting ravaged by snakes, frogs, and all manner of scavenging beasties. The couple still shows a closeness, even in their decrepit form, highlighting that, as much as we do all eventually die, love is eternal. Could’ve suggested this without painting a wedding gift showing the couple as zombies, mind you. Different strokes, I guess.^[10]

There are certain sets of circumstances, should you ever find yourself in them, where the most reasonable course of action is to reflect on what a good life it’s been and prepare to check out. We all like to hear nail-biting stories of those who beat the odds and managed to overcome certain death, but these stories are of course highly statistically unlikely—that’s why it’s called “certain death”.

As for the following people, they decided that statistics be damned, they weren’t going to be one. These average, everyday people found themselves in situations that are normally only survived by waking up from the nightmare, yet they’re still with us today… and with some pretty harrowing tales to tell.

Survived: Being buried alive

Michelina Lewandoska, a Polish emigrant to the U.K., described for a British court in January of 2012 the terror she felt as she lay buried in the ground, her hands and feet bound, in a taped-up cardboard box, slowly suffocating: “During my time inside my shallow grave where I was buried alive I feared that my life was at an end and I was going to die… I prayed to God to help me to survive so that I could look after my young son.” The referred to her then 3 year-old son she shared with fiancé Marcin Kasprzak—the man who had buried her.

After having grown “bored” of Michelina, Kasprzak and his younger friend Patryk Borys hatched a plan to get rid of her. Marcin attacked her with a stun gun, once to get her to the ground and once “for a long period”; he and his friend then bound her wrists and ankles and tied her up, apparently trying to figure out what to do next for several hours—before finally stuffing Michelina into a cardboard box and driving off into the wilderness, to bury her alive under four inches of earth and a 90 pound tree branch.

Incredibly, Michelina used her engagement ring to cut loose of her bonds as she was buried in the shallow grave, then claw her way out. She had difficulty walking and breathing for weeks after the attack, and doubtless still has nightmares; but on her testimony, her attackers were both sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Survived: Attack by “Railway Killer” (sole survivor)

When Holly Dunn and her boyfriend Chris Maier were approached by a strange looking man asking for money late on the night of August 29, 1997, they were a little spooked—and they had every reason to be. The man’s name was Angel Resendiz, and at the time he had already killed six people and would go on to kill many more.

Resendiz found the couple chatting by some train tracks a few blocks away from a party they had just come from. Producing an ice pick, he was able to get both Holly and Chris tied up and stashed in a ditch; after repeatedly checking to make sure he had not been seen, he returned to bludgeon Chris to death with a 50 pound rock. Holly was then raped, stabbed in the neck with the ice pick, and beaten so severely she was practically unrecognizable, at which point she mercifully passed out.

After awaking to find her attacker gone, Holly dragged herself to the nearest house, and was taken to the hospital with a shattered eye socket and broken jaw among many other injuries. She was able to recover, and testified against Resendiz at the trial that saw him convicted and sentenced to death—a sentence that was carried out in 2006. Angel Resendiz, the “Railway Killer” murdered at least 15 people over 13 years—and Holly Dunn is the only one of his victims to survive.

Survived: 47-story fall from apartment building

Alcides Moreno and his brother Edgar were window washers, and they worked together on Manhattan high rise buildings for years. The job obviously carries certain risks, and in December 2007 those risks became horrifying reality as the rig they were working on became disengaged and plummeted 47 stories—almost 500 feet—into an alleyway. Firefighters arrived to find Edgar deceased and his brother Alcides alive, CONSCIOUS—and sitting up.

Investigators theorize that Alcides was able to sort of “ride” the platform, using it to help slow his descent, and his doctors noted that he did not hit his head or break his pelvis upon landing—the two things most likely to cause fatal complications in such a fall. Alcides was rushed to the emergency room that day with injuries to his spine and brain, shattered limbs, fractured ribs—in short, everything you would expect to see in someone who just fell 500 feet onto the pavement, except the lack of a pulse.

Doctors expected his recovery to take a year or more, but he was pretty much recovered—and making the rounds on morning talk shows—by June. Alcides’ days as a window washer are over, but his days of life should be plentiful, to the astonishment of literally everyone. Moreno’s lead doctor said that falls from three stories and above are very difficult to survive, and that Alcides’ treatment had taken his team into new medical territory: “Above ten stories, most of the time we never see the patients,” he said, “because they usually go to the morgue.”

Survived: Being stranded at sea after boat sank

Longtime friends Ken Henderson and Ed Coen were on a fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico in March 2012 when their 30-foot boat started to fill up with water. Henderson tried to pump some of the water out, but it had taken them too long to notice—salt water sprayed everywhere, killing the pumps. There was no response on their radio, no signal on Henderson’s cell phone—and just after grabbing some life jackets and a few supplies, the boat vanished beneath them into the ice-cold water.

And there they remained, for over 30 hours. They talked to keep each other distracted, huddled together to conserve body heat, and fought fatigue, dehydration and the bitter cold for as long as they could. Henderson decided to make a last ditch effort—a solo swim toward a distant oil rig—when it became apparent that Coen, a slender man, was having serious trouble.

Ken almost didn’t make it. He became disoriented and almost got off course, and began hallucinating trees made of ice under the surface of the water. After finally stumbling aboard the rig at two in the morning, a day and a half after and 50 miles from where their boat sank, Ken was able to find a galley with a phone and call his wife, who alerted the Coast Guard. It was they who discovered Ed Coen’s lifeless body a short time later, but there would have been two bodies to find if not not for Ken Henderson’s valiant effort.

Survived: Black bear attack in his home

Richard Moyer began the morning of October 3, 2011, like any other. He got up to let out his dog Brindy, who dashed off into the Pennsylvania woods surrounding their home, but as he turned to go back into the house, Brindy returned—hurriedly and unexpectedly. With a gigantic black bear chasing her.

This bear really, really hated Brindy and anyone involved with her. It literally broke down the door and stormed into the house after the dog, attacking Richard and waking up his wife Angela. She tried to intervene, and quickly discovered that stopping a bear attack is a bit of a double edged sword, as the bear turned on HER. This prompted the dog to leap onto the attacking animal, and Richard Moyer to shrug his shoulders and do what any husband would: “What are you going to do? I kept my head down and just leapt into the bear,” he said. And that’s when the bear got REALLY mad.

It mauled the hell out of him, chewed on his head for a little while, and then—amazingly—simply stopped, went out onto the front porch and sat down. While the damage from the bear’s claws was extensive, the gnaw job on the back of Richard’s head required 37 staples to close. Husband and wife were both home from the hospital by the end of the day, probably eager to tell the story to their 10 year-old son—who had slept through the whole thing.

Survived: Kidnapping, torture by Mexican drug cartel

The activities of the Mexican drug cartels are marked by a profound lack of value placed on human life. Scores of people have died in fighting between the Zeta and Gulf cartels, and scores more innocents—journalists, bloggers, police, migrants—have been caught in the crossfire. Many police assist the cartels rather than be executed, and in many parts of Mexico there is no law BUT the cartels, and there is no safety. It was in one of these regions that a 20 year-old man who identified himself as “Felix” to the press was picked up by a police officer while walking alone one night, the beginning of a long and brutal nightmare.

The officer left Felix at a Zeta cartel safe house, and for the next week he was beaten, pistol whipped and shocked while repeated calls were made to his family for ransom. His captors tortured Gulf cartel members to death in front of him, and told him he would share their fate if his family couldn’t scrape together any money; they eventually wired $5000, which wasn’t enough—they demanded the same amount again.

For a couple of months Felix was shuttled around to a half dozen safe houses, sometimes sharing small, sweltering rooms with dozens of other prisoners. Beatings were regular, deaths were common; eventually, figuring no more money was forthcoming, Felix was beaten within an inch of his life and dumped on the street. His recovery took months, but he lived to tell the tale—unlike so many others who disappear from the Mexican streets and never return.

Survived: Plane crash into Indian Ocean (sole survivor)

If one of your worst nightmares is not being aboard a plane crashing in the dead of night in the middle of the ocean, come back when you’ve seen the first half hour of the film “Cast Away” and we’ll discuss it again. It’s hard to imagine a more terrifying experience, and very few live to tell about it—but one 14 year-old French girl did, when 152 others were not so lucky.

Yemenia Flight 626, an Airbus A310, plunged into the Indian Ocean around two in the morning of June 30, 2009. Young Bahia Bakari was ejected from the plane, and—despite having no life jacket and not being a very good swimmer—was able to stay afloat by clinging to a piece of debris from the plane’s fuselage. She would later say that there must have initially been other survivors, as she could hear their voices in the chaos after the crash, but that all the voices had eventually faded away.

She realized she was alone as the sun rose, and it wasn’t until around 11 in the morning—nine hours after the crash—that she was discovered by a civilian vessel that had been enlisted to help search for survivors. Bahia was the only one that the search effort would yield; her mother was among the dead, but her father had not been aboard the plane. She was suffering from a fractured pelvis and broken collarbone, among other things, and was released from the hospital three weeks later.

Survived: Being trapped for 20 hours in freezing creek

It must have seemed to 64 year-old Paul Lessard that circumstances had conspired to make sure he wasn’t getting out of his predicament alive. He had been out snowmobiling in the Maine wilderness alone and had turned the machine over; his head was pinned underneath its heavy storage rack, making it difficult to move unless he wanted to break his neck. It was very cold even though it was the middle of the afternoon, and to make matters worse, the majority of his body was lying in a freezing creek. Then the sun began to go down, and the temperature REALLY began to be a factor in Paul’s continued survival.

He was reported missing around 8:30 that night, but the search could only continue until about 2:30 in the morning due to heavy snow and wind, which of course Paul was having to endure. Temperatures plummeted to right around zero degrees with the wind chill, and the search effort resumed at dawn with additional manpower and a plane.

The owner of a local Arctic Cat dealership and his son—part of the extensive search party—spotted the overturned snowmobile shortly before eight that morning. By the time Paul was freed he’d spent over 20 hours trapped in these deadly conditions—we reiterate, trapped by his head—and was obviously suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, but eventually made a full recovery.

Survived: Flesh-eating bacterial infection

In February 2006, five year-old Jake Finkbonner was playing in a Pee-Wee League basketball game—the last game of the season. In the final minute of that game, he was pushed from behind and split his lip on the base of the basketball hoop. It would have just been his first fat lip, but the surface of this base contained a deadly surprise—the bacteria Strep A, and within the next couple of days, Jake’s stunned parents were listening to doctors telling them that their son was probably going to die.

Strep A is a flesh-eating bacteria, and it entered through the open wound on Jake’s mouth and literally began to consume his face. His doctors described it as being “like lighting one end of a parchment paper, and you just watch it spread from that corner very fast, and you’re stamping it on one side, and it’s flaming up on another… it’s almost as if you could watch it moving in front of your eyes”. Jake’s family, being Catholic, had last rites administered and asked for friends and family to pray to Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian who converted to Catholicism (Jake is half Lummi Indian).

Unbelievably, the infection slowed—and then stopped. It has taken countless skin grafts and other surgical procedures to restore Jake’s face, but flesh-eating bacterial infection is not something that ordinarily just subsides—unless the patient is dead. Many patients die within 24 hours of a diagnosis; Jakes’s recovery was unlikely enough that Kateri, who was beatified in 1980, is now being considered by the Catholic Church for sainthood—said recovery potentially being the miracle that qualifies her.

Survived: AIDS, after being infected in early ’90s (First known cured patient)

In the late 1980s and early ’90s, an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence. Some early drugs could slow its progression to AIDS, but none could stop it, and once AIDS manifested in a patient, the end was nigh—and it wouldn’t be very long.

That is no longer so, especially with early diagnosis, with modern drugs. But when Timothy Brown was diagnosed with HIV in 1995, retroviral medications were still at a point where they could usually extend life, but not indefinitely. Brown responded well to treatment, but became ill in 2005 and was diagnosed with leukemia.
Chemotherapy made his already-compromised immune system more susceptible to infection, and he developed pneumonia during the second round; during the third, there was a bout with sepsis, and his doctors realized that chemotherapy was likely to kill him. That’s when Dr. Gero Hutter simply decided to take a shot at a procedure nobody had ever tried before.

He gave Brown a stem cell transplant to treat his leukemia, but instead of choosing a matching donor, he chose one with a special and desired quality—what’s known as a CCR5 mutation, a rare genetic disorder that makes one’s cells resistant to HIV. Not only did the transplant take, it had ALL of the desired effects—it cured the leukemia, and unbelievably, the HIV as well.

That is to say, Timothy Brown was once infected with HIV AND leukemia, two diseases that are lethal the vast majority of the time, and he is now infected with neither. He hasn’t taken retroviral drugs since the day of the procedure, and while the treatment he underwent is too risky and expensive to be standard, he is nevertheless now referred to as “The Berlin Patient”—the first known person to be cured of HIV.

Halloween haunted houses bring out the inner child for many enthralled with the spooky, candy-filled holiday. Though scary—with all good intentions—often, the dangers that come with such frightening attractions are overlooked or forgotten. The following ten experiences explore scenarios never anticipated yet, injurious to one’s psyche.

10 Zero Decency

Sadly, the only thing scarier than walking through a haunted house is working for one. Frequently, “scare actors” are confronted by intoxicated belligerents who can assault them with impunity. “You pretty much name it, and people have experienced it,” said William Gailit, an actor who was kicked in the face at Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights. Actresses face harsher treatment, including groping of breasts and genitals to threats of rape and actual physical assault.

Universal actor, John Deen, had to be rushed to the hospital with a concussion and skull fracture after being ambushed by a group of brazen drunkards. Actors also have a history of being kicked off their stilts, punched in the chest, repeatedly stomped on, and sometimes sexually assaulted. Catching assailants is usually impossible as they merely disappear into the crowd. More infuriating is that those caught are frequently told to merely “not return to that area of the park.” Keep in mind that a majority of actors outside of big-name attractions such as Universal Orlando tend to be teenagers simply trying to earn a buck in an environment they assumed would be fun. Truth is, it’s a crude and sad awakening of what some people in the world feel they have the right to do.^[1]

9 PTSD

Sarah Lelonek, a haunted house enthusiast, got more than she bargained for when she and her boyfriend, Ryan Carr, visited the Akron Fright Fest in Ohio. While walking through the spine-chilling rooms, a tall man who looked like “Leatherface” emerged from the shadows, grabbed her boyfriend, forcefully shoved him onto a plywood bed, and began to simulate a mock rape. “That’s my boyfriend!” said the 31-year-old, “Please stop!” Her demands fell on deaf ears as the mystery man continued to vigorously thrust away while stating, “He’s not your boyfriend anymore. I’m going to rape him.”

Eventually, the masked seducer freed Ryan, leaving him sore and feeling less of a man. The couple immediately left the premises, but the experience stayed with her, given countless friends who had experienced sexual assault: “It was a PTSD situation,” Sarah said. The following day she took to social media, stating, “If you are a victim of sexual assault, do not go to the attached haunted houses. This is a non-waiver house. Nothing was signed. I repeat. Not one thing was signed. Kids go in this.” The park fired back, claiming that their haunted houses are all “professional,” “safe,” and “in a controlled environment.” It is unknown whether the Halloween fanatic will ever return to her favorite pastime of frights.^[2]

8 Colorful Toys and Teddy Bears

Clowns have a tendency to unnerve certain people, and they did just that on the night of October 11, 2014, in Montgomery, Illinois. Upon arriving at the “Massacre Haunted House,” Regina Janito—along with her four children—was confronted by two employees who worked at the spooky attraction. Without warning, the men—both dressed as clowns and armed with sex toys—began accosting the 38-year-old and her teenage daughter. Specifically, one of the charming jokers, identified as Robert Keller, 23, was “holding a vibrating, purple sex toy” while the other unidentified character held a teddy bear with a “vibrator attached to the stuffed animal’s groin area.”

Keller then proceeded to use his colorful vibrator to poke at Janito’s daughter in a sexual and aggressive manner while repeating lewd and offensive remarks. Meanwhile, the other maniac was busy simulating a sex act with the poor defenseless teddy bear. Understandably, Janito and her girls fled as fast as they could from the haunted attraction. Keller was later arrested and charged with battery and disorderly conduct. Within days, Janito filed a lawsuit against the company that stated, “The acts committed by Keller and John Doe were beyond the standards of civilized decency and beyond the scope of what society is willing to tolerate.”^[3]

7 “You Call That A Knife?”

An overzealous actor at the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds in Ohio took his performance quite seriously when he chose to use a real Bowie knife instead of a prop knife provided by the haunted house. In doing so, the 22-year-old turned the “7 Floors of Hell” into a real-life slasher flick. Wielding the weapon to elicit screams of terror, the unidentified “actor” found his weapon entering the foot of an 11-year-old boy who was accompanied by his mother. Surely, the family duo got their money’s worth in terms of panic.

Following a brief investigation, the performer agreed with police that using a real hunting knife “was not a good idea.” With paramedics on the scene, the boy was treated and, surprisingly, chose to re-enter the Halloween attraction yet again. Apparently, nothing—not even a 12-inch blade to the foot, let alone a haunted house—can scare this kid. In the end, police confiscated the bloody knife, and the actor was later fired.^[4]

6 Fading Fast

In 2011, Jessica Rue took a job at “Creepyworld” in Fenton, Missouri scaring guests as they walked through a bathroom drenched in fake blood. The scene included a bathtub, a mangled mannequin, and a noose. On Jessica’s second day, the 17-year-old slipped off the edge of the tub, causing her neck to become caught in the noose. She would hang there for up to 10 minutes as visitors passed by, thinking she was a dummy.

Jessica would remain in a coma and hooked up to a ventilator for the next three days due to a severe lack of oxygen to the brain. Miraculously, the high school senior pulled through, albeit with lasting side effects. A year following what could have been a catastrophe, Jessica was left with zero recollection of the accident or the weeks leading up to it. In addition, she suffered—and perhaps still does—from blackouts, short-term memory loss, change in personality, and heart flutters; nevertheless, she’s alive.^[5]

5 Scared to Death

On a Friday evening in 2014, 16-year-old Christian Faith Benge arrived at the “Land of Illusion Haunted Scream Park” in Middletown, Ohio. The teenager attended with her family to watch her father’s band perform at the festival. Following the performance, Christian and her mother entered the theme park’s haunted house; minutes later, the girl was dead. Despite efforts from her mother performing CPR, Christian succumbed to a heart attack. Autopsy results revealed that the teen had a pre-existing medical condition where the walls of her heart were unusually thick, causing the heart to be four times bigger than normal.

When questioned if fear had led to a fatal exacerbation, Coroner Doyle Burke could not provide a definite conclusion. “I guess that’s the million dollar question, we’re going to attempt to answer that, but I don’t know if we will ever be able to,” Burke said. “It did occur inside this haunted attraction, is there a connection? Maybe.”^[6]

4 The Full Experience

Always abide by the rules, especially around dangerous mechanical equipment that can turn you into pieces within a blink of an eye. Such was the case for a 21-year-old man at an attraction at Hong Kong’s Ocean Park in 2017. While visiting the fairgrounds with friends, a man by the name of Cheung decided to depart from his group inside the haunted house “Buried Alive.” Five minutes later, Cheung’s lifeless, shattered body was discovered.

For unknown reasons, the young man decided to enter a restricted area that housed mechanical machinery, according to the Hong Kong government. During his sightseeing shenanigans, the thrill seeker was crushed after being struck by the theme parks moving coffin-turned-slide. Part of the adventure of the haunted house places visitors inside a sliding coffin where one undergoes being “buried alive alone, before fighting their way out of their dark and eerie grave.” Apparently, Cheung wanted the full experience and, for that, ruined everyone else’s day at the fairground, given that the government ordered the closure of the haunted house in its entirety.^[7]

3 Kimberly Kitrinos

“The Nightmare at Floydville Road” in Connecticut saw hundreds of visitors on the evening of October 24, 1997. As they passed to make their way into the haunted house, many found it odd to see a Halloween mannequin lying in the road, not realizing it was Kimberly Kitrinos, 40, a victim of a hit-and-run. One passerby, Gale Fulton, even saw Kimberly reaching up for help but dismissed it, believing it was part of a Halloween act. When they realized it was not part of the performance, Kimberly was already dead.

As days passed with no suspects, detectives gathered evidence—a car mirror and red paint chips—and, with the help of automotive parts dealers, narrowed down the make and model. With a list of 250 vehicles registered in the surrounding area, police were closing in. The first door detectives knocked on was that of 54-year-old Bruce Imbt. Not at his residence at the time, police issued a warrant for his arrest.

The following day, the killer turned himself in. He had been drinking that evening and, in the days following, did everything he could to conceal the crime. Infuriatingly, Impt only received a sentence of two years imprisonment in August 2000 for the fatal hit-and-run that he so desperately tried to evade. Justice denied, yet again.^[8]

2 Halloween Spirit of 1957

In September 1957, in Utica, Kansas, high school English teacher Betty Stevens wanted to create a fun, wholesome, and above all, safe pre-Halloween experience for students to enjoy. The idea was to keep kids out of trouble one evening by arranging a trip through an abandoned farmhouse turned “haunted house.” Seniors helped arrange the scenery by setting up spooky decorations—steer bones, toy rattlesnakes and skulls, etc.—hoping the freshmen class would get a fun, memorable scare.

Even Principal William Hobert Sallee, 60, became part of the festivities by donning clothes splattered in ketchup and greasepaint. Principal Salle took it a step further, however, by creating a mock hanging of himself. At some point during the tour, Salle’s feet—which were initially barely touching the ground—slipped from beneath him, causing the rope to tighten around his neck, strangling him. As students filed past, he was noted moaning softly in a limp posture. When the tour was over, and Salle had yet to emerge from the barn, Mrs. Stevens found his corpse. She most definitely succeeded in making a memorable evening the students would never forget.^[9]

1 Lost

On the evening of May 11, 1984, smoke billowed over Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey. A blaze had broken out in the amusement park’s haunted house attraction, “Haunted Castle,” a building constructed of 14 aluminum trailers measuring 70 by 100 feet (21m x 30m). Inside the attraction was a long, corridor-like maze of “spires and turrets and arches and walls that looked like they were made of yellow stucco” with the intention of someone surely becoming lost. When the fire was extinguished more than an hour later, authorities prematurely assumed that everyone had escaped with their lives.

After combing through the rubble later that night, eight bodies in a group were discovered in the rear of the building, only 25 feet (7.6 meters) from a fire exit. Authorities on the scene—surrounded by the nauseating smoke of seared and blackened melted aluminum—were puzzled as to how the teenage victims failed to make it out. After all, the design was intended for one to become disoriented like a rat in a maze. Unfortunately, in this case, that played into the deaths of all eight youths by smoke inhalation with no direction or knowledge of an escape route.^[10]