America’s bloodiest and most costly conflict, the US Civil War claimed the lives of 620,000 men (roughly 2 percent of the population) with over 800,000 wounded or missing. Although the battlefields were covered with death, perhaps the most frightening places were the field hospitals. From the echoing screams of men undergoing amputations to the inexperienced doctors and lack of medical knowledge, many believed it was better to die on thefield than to face the surgeons, who were often considered to be butchers. The following 10 cases describe the horrors as well as astonishing, lesser-known facts about what the men endured throughout their time in Hell.

10 Drunken Surgeons

Alcohol was a vital commodity during the Civil War and was primarily used as an anesthetic during amputations. However, use quickly became abuse. Some took the occasional nip to dull their fears, while others, including the surgeons who were operating, got flat out drunk.

Phoebe Yates Pember, a Confederate hospital matron, once wrote of a patient who was brought in after his ankle had been crushed by a train. She described how after his ankle was set, the man was still in agonizing pain, and upon further investigation, Pember discovered that the patient’s bandaged leg was perfectly healthy and that the other leg was “swollen, inflamed and purple.” The surgeon was so intoxicated that he had set the wrong ankle. Soon after, fever set in, and the patient died.

Such stories of surgeons, officers, and even generals being intoxicated on the battlefields were not uncommon, given their access to whiskey and brandy. At the First Battle of Bull Run, a group of civilians and medical assistants who were supposed to drive medical wagons and collect the wounded from the field got into the medicinal liquor (aka whiskey) and became too drunk to be of any use. They ignored their wounded comrades, leaving them to die where they lay.

9 Smuggling Drugs Past Enemy Lines

The majority of medicinal drugs in the mid-1800s were manufactured in Europe and shipped to the United States. During the Civil War, the Union blockade of Southern ports prevented the Confederates from receiving shipments, including arms and medicine. This ultimately forced the Confederacy to obtain drugs through other means, such as processing indigenous medicinal plants, capturing enemy supplies, and smuggling.

One way that the South smuggled medicine past the Union blockades was through the use of children’s dolls. They would pack the medicine into the dolls’ hollowed papier-mache heads in order to avoid detection by the North’s blockades. The Union troops wouldn’t inspect the toys, since they were looking for obvious contraband.

Two drugs that were of great importance on the battlefield were morphine for pain and quinine. Quinine was vital for troops stricken with malaria, which spread like wildfire and claimed the lives of thousands of soldiers. Around 900,000 Union troops contracted malaria. The numbers of Confederates who fell ill hasn’t been well-documented, but given their lack of medicinal supplies, the numbers are presumed to be staggering.

8 Compassion In Gettysburg

Even though hundreds of thousands of men were dying on the battlefields from gunfire to hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, acts of humanity and compassion were evident in the Union hospitals, where doctors set aside their differences to care for the wounded. On July 1, 1863, the first day of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, which claimed the lives of 7,000 men in the first 24 hours, Union officers overran the Lutheran Theological Seminary, converting the church into a hospital.

Although the church was officially a Union hospital, the doctors and local volunteers tended to both Union and Confederate soldiers as well as black soldiers, treating every injured man equally. The men were cared for and slept beside one another under the same roof for several days at a time. At its peak, the small church accommodated 150 wounded soldiers from both sides and continued to do so throughout the month, with 78 patients remaining on August 3.

7 Unqualified Doctors

During the Civil War, United Sates medical schools were far behind the educational quality of their European counterparts, which had four- year cirriculums. US medical schools, however, ran only two years, the second year primarily being a repeat of the first. In fact, US medical schools were so far behind that Harvard Medical School didn’t even have one stethoscope or microscope until after the war had ended. The majority of Civil War surgeons had never even performed surgery, let alone seen a gunshot wound.

To make matters worse, both the Union and Confederate armies were extremely understaffed. The Union Army only had 98 doctors, while the Confederates had 24. With the growing numbers of wounded soldiers reaching into the thousands every day, both the North and South began to take anyone who considered themselves a doctor. For the most part, their only medical knowledge came from a military surgery manual written by Dr. Samuel Gress, which would be their guide to performing life-saving emergency operations.

6 Bizarre Medical Treatments

Because medical education and knowledge during the Civil War was substandard to say the least, bizarre and absurd medical treatments were practiced, only making the injured and sick worse off. For instance, severe gonorrhea was “treated” with whiskey mixed with silkweed root, pine resin, and small pieces of blue vitriol. We can assume that such a concoction did nothing to combat the venereal disease. If a patient was suffering from syphilis, which caused genital ulcers, swollen lymph nodes, pustule rashes, fever, sore throat, and even neurological problems, a doctor would prescribe mercury, an extremely toxic chemical element.

Doctors considered pus a good sign, believing that a wound was healing when in fact, the injury was infected. To make matters worse, doctors unknowingly infected other patients by intentionally transferring pus from patients who had it to those who didn’t, assuming that it would be beneficial. Patients suffering from diarrhea were given chloride of mercury, a violent laxative also known as a purgative. This would cause the already dehydrated soldiers to lose even more fluids via vomiting and extreme diarrhea, thus compounding their illness, ultimately leading to death.

5 Working Around The Clock

If it wasn’t bad enough that the physicians during the Civil War were unqualified and practiced bizarre treatment regimens, the fact that they were greatly understaffed made a terrible situation far worse. Melvin Walker of the 13th Massachusetts Infantry described how surgeons operating at the division hospital where he was taken worked without rest or sleep for 36 hours straight, often with little food and no help.

Following the Battle of the Wilderness, roughly 7,000 wounded soldiers were taken to Fredericksburg, a trip that took many over 24 hours to make due to the clogged roads and primitive ambulances, which were horse-drawn wagons. Upon arriving at the hospital, the 7,000 wounded men were met with only 40 surgeons available to tend to their needs. Surgeon George Stevens of the 77th New York regiment described how hundreds of ambulances were continuously arriving, men were dropping dead all around him one by one, and that he and his fellow surgeons “were almost worked to death.” It’s understandable why there were more casualties off the battlefield than on.

4 The Great Anesthesia Myth

One of the greatest myths of the Civil War was that there were no anesthetics for operations such as amputating limbs, which was commonplace in the hospitals. Amputation was so common, in fact, that piles of arms and legs would be strewn around in every direction the eye could see. Contrary to popular belief, those undergoing surgery were often sedated with chloroform and whiskey, causing them to partially lose consciousness and not feel pain. The screams that field hospitals were so known for were often from soldiers who’d just learned that they were going to lose a limb and hadn’t yet been sedated.

Although the men were reported to be only partially sedated, when properly anesthetized, the wounded would feel no pain at all during surgery. Although it’s uncertain as to how many successful operations took place in terms of the anesthesia working, the best example of proper sedation is that of Stonewall Jackson’s amputation. Jackson, whose left arm needed to be amputated, described how once the chloroform kicked in, the only thing he noticed was the sound of the saw cutting through the bone of his arm. Other than that, Jackson claimed that he faded into a stupor while repeating the words “blessing, blessing, blessing,” free of pain.

3 Battling The Real Enemy

During the Civil War, disease ran rampant. The battlefields, camps, and hospitals were filled with typhoid, pneumonia, measles, tuberculosis, and malaria, just to name a few. With the exception of malaria, there were no medications or cures available. Those infected would only become more ill, further spreading disease. The local streams were quickly contaminated, leading to the development and spread of yet more diseases, including dysentery, which accounted for 45,000 Union deaths and 50,000 Confederate deaths.

Lack of sanitation and hygiene only made the situation worse. Surgeons would use the same tools continuously on hundreds of patients without ever cleaning their instruments, thus causing cross contamination. Often, the surgeon would hold his bloody tool in his mouth while operating, possibly infecting himself.

Of the 620,000 soldiers who died during the Civil War, two thirds succumbed not to enemy fire but to the endless array of diseases lurking all around them. Their frail and weakened bodies, exhausted and worn from continuous battle as well as horrendous diet and lack of food took an immense toll on their immune systems, making it impossible to stand any chance of overcoming an illness. It’s a misconception that the greatest danger was on the battlefield, when in fact the real enemy was visible only under a microscope.

2 The Dawn Of Modern Medicine

Although the greatest number of casualties during the Civil War stemmed from the lack of medical knowledge and understanding, it did become apparent to physicians that a change in medical practice was necessary, thus paving the way to new research and knowledge. Physicians began to document their observations from hundreds of different cases, which would ultimately aid researchers after the war.

For instance, medical officers realized that sanitation could greatly reduce the spread of disease. Some hospitals took notice that washing bandages in hot, soapy water in order to reuse them caused the infection rates to decrease, unlike other hospitals that weren’t conducting such practices. Because of this correlation, the birth of sanitation had begun.

The Civil War also gave rise to modern emergency medicine and ambulatory evacuation, not seen prior to the 1860s. It was of great importance that the wounded be carried off the battlefields to a nearby station, where they were attended to prior to being taken to a hospital. This gave way to the bigger concept of moving someone swiftly in order to provide care to save their life, a standard which will forever be practiced in warfare.

1 Dr. Mary Walker

The story of Dr. Mary Walker is not only one of sacrifice and courage, but heroism that has broken down barriers for female physicians ever since. After Dr. Walker received her medical degree, she headed to the front lines, where she worked in tent hospitals in Warrenton and Fredericksburg, Virginia. The following year, Dr. Walker was stationed in Tennessee, where she was appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland by General H. Thomas.

Dr. Walker was captured by the Confederate Army in April 1864. She was imprisoned in Richmond, Virginia, for four long months. Following her release, Dr. Walker began to supervise a hospital for women prisoners and an orphanage after becoming an acting assistant surgeon with the Ohio 52nd Infantry, a feat no woman had ever accomplished.

Dr. Walker served honorably until the war had come to an end. In 1865, she was awarded the Medal of Honor. Dr. Walker wore the medal with great pride every day from that point on until her passing in 1919. To this day, Dr. Walker remains the only woman to have ever received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

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

Everybody is familiar with sleepwalking. Most of us have probably done it at some stage in our life. It’s a fairly common occurrence, one that is usually harmless and only occurs in isolated incidents. But for some people, sleepwalking can be a terrifying thing. Some people have trouble with it every night, and so fear what they might do when they fall asleep, while for others, one bad incident is enough to change their lives. Keep reading to learn more about the Freddie Krueger that could be living inside you.

We’ll start with what is perhaps the most famous case of sleepwalking crime. Kenneth Parks is a Canadian man who began suffering insomnia in his 20s, which was brought on after he lost his job and put himself in a lot of debt as a result of his gambling addiction. On May 23rd, 1987, Parks got out of bed, drove 14 miles to his in-laws’ house, killed his mother in law and injured his father with a tire iron and a knife. After the incident, he drove himself to a police station and turned himself in. Up until this point, he had a good relationship with his in-laws, and his wife vouched for his lack of motive in the crime. The following year, he was found not guilty.

A middle-aged woman in Australia, whose name has not been released for confidentiality reasons, had serious issues with sleepwalking. While there isn’t too much information on this case, it seems that neither her nor her partner had any idea initially. But the truth soon came out, and is a lot more terrifying than your average sleepwalking case. The woman would get up, sleepwalk out of her house, and engage in sex with total strangers. This took place for several months, and the couple had no idea. Condoms were found around their house, but the reality only completely came to light when her partner woke up one night and realized she wasn’t there. After searching for her, he found her having sex with a stranger, completely asleep. Such an act posed a huge threat not only to the woman, but also to her partner. Reports say that she has been successfully treated for the condition.

Timothy Brueggeman, from Northern Wisconsin, is the only person on this list who did not have a history of sleepwalking, but rather, suffered from terrible insomnia for years. One summer, he drove his pickup truck into a tree after falling asleep at the wheel. When this incident occurred, he was prescribed the number one sleep aid in the US, known as Ambien. Although this drug has been linked to hundreds of cases of sleepwalking, its manufacturers claim that it is perfectly safe if taken correctly. In January of 2009 however, Brueggeman had a sleepwalking episode where he left his house in just his underwear. He was found dead the next day, having froze to death.

James Currens has been a sleepwalker for a long time, but his most terrifying adventure occurred when he was 77. In 1998, Curren got up and sleepwalked out of his house, cane in hand, and right into a nearby pond. At this point, he woke up chest deep in water, but was unable to get out as he had become stuck in the mud. This alone would be terrifying enough for a 77 year old, but what made the incident really frightening was that he found himself surrounded by alligators. He used his cane to keep them at bay, and began shouting for help. One of his neighbors heard him yelling, and called the police. Using lights to scare off the alligators, the police managed to free Currens, who escaped with only small cuts from falling when entering the pond.

In 2003, Edward Lowe, 83, was found dead in his garden, having been severely beaten. A neighbor spotted Edward’s body in the driveway and contacted the police, who arrested the man’s son, Jules. Jules and Edward had been out on a heavy night of drinking when the incident occurred. Jules said that his family has a long history of sleepwalking, and that his bouts were brought on by drinking. His defense was that he did kill his father, but did so in his sleep. Edward was reportedly violent when drunk, so it is possible that Jules was acting in self-defense. He was found not guilty of murder.

In a similar case, Stephen Reitz was accused of killing his girlfriend of 10 months, Eva Marie Weinfurtner, while vacationing in Catalina. Eva had a fractured skull, broken elbow, wrist and shoulder, and had her jaw broken in three places, as well as a stab wound in the neck. Reitz told police that he dreamed he was fighting off intruders when he killed his girlfriend. He also admitted that he had been drinking and using cocaine that night. In this case, Reitz was found guilty and given 25 to life.

Jan Luedecke, from Toronto, was at a party in 2005. After a heavy night of drinking, he fell asleep on a sofa. A few hours later, he was woken up by another partygoer, who he did not know, shouting and pushing him. He says he only woke up when he was pushed on the floor. Luedecke, 33, was accused of raping this woman, but he says he was asleep and did not even realize he had had sex until he went to the bathroom and found that he was wearing a condom. The courts were initially skeptical about his defense, even after hearing a testimony from Dr. Colin Sharipo, who said that this is a legitimate disorder. Perhaps the deciding factor in this case was that not one, but four of Luedecke’s ex-girlfriends testified that they had all experienced his sexsomnia first hand while they were dating.

A man was walking home at 2am in Dulwich, England, when he somehow noticed something terrifying: a girl curled up on top of an inactive crane. He called the emergency services, and only after a fireman had climbed up after her did they realize that she was asleep. This made the ordeal even more frightening, as the fireman was now afraid to wake her in case she became startled and fell. He searched her, and found the girl’s mobile phone, at which point he rang her parents. They explained that the girl, who was 15, often sleepwalked, and then rang her phone back to wake her. This woke the girl up, and she was taken down safely, having climbed 130 feet (39.6 meters) up, and 40 feet (12 meters) across.

Lesley Cusack is a 55 year old woman from Chesire, England, who engages in “sleep-eating”. While this sounds harmless enough, it can be extremely dangerous for many reasons. Lesley has had to change her daytime diet and join a fitness club, because when she eats at night, she can eat up to 2,500 calories. But the amount she eats is not the only danger. She also cooks while she sleeps, using a gas oven. This obviously poses a huge risk to everyone in the house if she leaves the gas running unlit. Finally, there is a risk to her health posed not by how much she eats, or how she cooks it, but by what she eats. Lesley will sometimes eat inedible items, such as vaseline, paint and washing powder. She put alarms on her doors in the hopes that they would wake her up, but to no avail. She is now going to see a specialist she hopes can cure her condition.

Sleepwalking is more common in children than in adults. About 17% of 4-8 year olds experience sleepwalking, compared to 4 to 10% of adults. Stuart Miller was 8 years old when he had an accident while sleepwalking. One night, in September of 1993, Stuart began sleepwalking. He lived in a flat on the fourth floor of council housing, and that night, he fell from his bedroom window. The courts decided that Reading Borough Council, the owner of that block, was responsible, as they had failed to install windows that were childproof. The fall dealt severe damage to Stuart’s spine, and has left him wheelchair bound for life. After 7 years in the courts, he was awarded £1.35m ($2m) in damages.

Robert Ledru was one of France’s finest detectives in the 19th Century. Although living in Paris, he was working on a case in Le Havre when he was contacted by his Parisian office and asked to take over a murder investigation there that the local police were having difficulty with. Another man from Paris, Andre Monet, had been shot and killed on a local beach. The only clues were the bullet, which was far too common to be of any use, and the footprints left by the killer. Ledru examined the footprints and came to a horrible realization. The killer was missing the big toe on his right foot. Ledru was also missing this toe, and had awoken that day to find that his socks were wet. Furthermore, the bullet was the same type he used. He discovered that he had murdered Monet while sleepwalking, believed to be brought on by his syphilis.

Understandably, the French police were reluctant to accept this theory when Ledru turned himself in, so they decided to experiment. They placed him in a cell for overnight observation. The first night, he did in fact sleepwalk. So they then decided to place a gun in the cell with him, and the next night, he shot at the guards in his sleep. Police decided that he could not be held responsible for his actions, but that he was still a threat, so he was exiled to a farm in the countryside, where he lived the last 50 years of his life with guards and nurses.

Simon is a 22 year-old university graduate (hopefully) who likes to adhere to Irish stereotypes, such as drinking and loving the potato. You can follow him on twitter, or like his extremely long tongue on Facebook to see if he can break the world record.

Sports are such an ubiquitous presence in our daily lives that it is hard to imagine a time when they didn’t exist. While modern sports can usually only trace their roots back a hundred years or so, ancient humans had their own games which pitted teams against each other, often with bloody results.

10 Pitz
Culture: Mayan

Littered with cultural and religious significance, the sport known to the Mayans as pitz is one of the oldest games in human history, believed to have originated as early as 2,500 BC. A number of different variations existed, with the rules on ball size or what was used to hit it changing to fit the context of the game. Nevertheless, the game was originally much like racquetball, with the later addition of hoops that served as goals. The main focus of every town in the Mayan empire, the ball court was often used as a proxy for war, a way for enemies to settle their disputes without bloodshed.

In addition, Mayan kings, much like their Aztec counterparts, would often stage dramatic reenactments of their myths right on the court. The most popular myth played out on the court was that of the Maize Gods and the Hero Twins. As they were avid fans of pitz, the Maize Gods would often play loudly, which angered Xibalba, the god of the Underworld. So he killed the two of them and buried them on the court; he also took one of their heads and hung it from a tree in the Underworld. It spat on one of the princesses of the Underworld, who became pregnant, and she gave birth to the Hero Twins, who resurrected the Maize Gods.

Human sacrifice also played a role—captured kings or the captains of the losing team would often be decapitated after the game, although the games may have just been an elaborate ritual, with the outcome predetermined.

9 Harpastum
Culture: Roman

An early predecessor to the modern sport of rugby, harpastum was an ancient Roman game played with a small, hard ball of the same name. Derived from two early Greek games, the goal of the game varied often, but each version included two teams. Some variations involved a single player in the middle of a scrum, attempting to grasp the harpastum and escape, with the opponents trying to keep him inside and away from the ball.

Other versions were more like rugby, with two evenly matched teams squaring off on a field, with goals on either side. Passes, as well as feints, were common, as the goal was to get the ball to the opposite end of the field, and injuries abounded since there were no rules on grappling. A predetermined amount of time was agreed upon and the winner was the team with the most points at the end.

Galen, the famous Roman physician, claimed that harpastum was one of the greatest exercises, because it was cheap, easy, and could be tailored to fit the skill level of any player.

8 Fisherman Jousting
Culture: Egyptian

The game of choice for the poor and lower-class fisherman of the Nile River, fisherman jousting was exactly what it sounds like. Two teams of boatmen would square off, utilizing their hands or feet to knock the other team off balance and send them careening into the water. Papyrus boats, propelled by poles which would also be used to defeat the other team, were the stage for the contests, some of which were believed to have been impromptu games designed to settle territorial disputes.

Generally a very violent sport, fisherman jousting often ended in the deaths of a large number of the participants. Hippos and crocodiles roamed the waters, ready to maim the contestants who fell overboard. In addition, swimming was not as universally practiced as it is today, and many of the fishermen drowned simply because they didn’t know how to swim.

Some scholars believe there may have been a religious aspect to some of the fights as well, with murals depicting competing boats filled with offerings. The boatmen appear to be racing to be the first to honor the gods, with combat coming into play during a close race.

7 Buzkashi
Culture: Turkic

Developed by the Turkic people sometime between the 10th and 15th centuries, the sport of buzkashi is still played to this day, predominately by the descendents of its inventors. The national sport of Afghanistan, it involves two teams, riding on horseback, whose goal is to drag a headless goat carcass across the field and drop it inside a predetermined area, usually a circle. Occasionally, a sheep or calf is used instead of a goat.

Banned under the Taliban’s rule, buzkashi is a violent sport, with the riders equipped with whips with which to beat the other riders’ horses. They’re not supposed to use their whips on the riders themselves, but that rule is often disregarded. Often, the social status derived from owning the horses of the winning team is enough to cover the costs associated with maintaining the health of the animals between matches. The origins of this violent sport are lost in time, but the story goes that Genghis Khan and his Mongols would steal livestock from the Turkic people, who would brave death to snatch it back from them on horseback.

6 Pato
Culture: Argentinean

Derived from the Spanish word for duck and also known as horseball, pato is the official sport of Argentina and an eclectic mix of polo and basketball. The youngest sport on this list, it was created in the 1500s and was originally played with a duck in a basket rather than the ball that today’s participants use. A violent sport, riders would often attack each other in order to win, often because a large amount of money was at stake.

Throughout its history, the sport has been banned numerous times, mostly due to the increasing violence which often resulted in the deaths of many of its participants. In the 17th century, the Catholic church was so concerned with the sport that they would excommunicate anyone found playing. Up until the 20th century, it remained underground, until rule changes made it much safer to play; the duck in a basket was also replaced with a unique ball with six leather handles. The goals themselves have changed over time, evolving from a simple box on the ground to a hoop with a net that is in use today.

5 He’e Hölua
Culture: Hawaiian

One of the more dangerous entries on this list, he’e hölua (Hawaiian for “sled surfing”) is a sport which originated on the Hawaiian Islands over 2,000 years ago. It consists of a dangerous trek up the side of a volcano, with a large sled made of wood and coconut fibers. Once at the top, the rider, or team of riders, would race down the slope, either on their stomachs or in a typical surfing pose.

Speeds of up to 80 kilometers per hour (50 mph) were common, and the races were seen as tributes to Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes. Brought to a stop by 19th century Christian missionaries, who saw the sport as dangerous and a waste of time, it has been recently revived by native Hawaiians trying to reconnect with their heritage.

4 Pelota Purépecha
Culture: Mexican

Pelota purépecha is a pre-Hispanic game similar to field hockey, but with a fiery twist: The sport is played with a ball which is lit on fire. Named for its inventors, the indigenous Purépecha people of what is now the Mexican state of Michoacán, the game involved a ball which had been smeared with pine resin and lit on fire, which was batted around by players armed with wooden sticks. Goals were set up on either side of a stretch of field and the goal was to knock the ball across the line.

The ball, known as a zapandukua, was normally made up of interwoven cloth and twine, and the game was normally played at night, as the ball made for more of a spectacle under the light of the moon. Like many of the games created by the indigenous people of Mexico, pelota purépecha has been largely forgotten, but concerted efforts by the Mexican government are helping to raise awareness for this piece of national history.

3 Naumachia
Culture: Roman

Less well-known than the gladiator battles which frequented the Roman sports world, a naumachia was a mock naval battle, played in front of a crowd of onlookers. Normally pitting condemned criminals against each other, they often took place in man-made basins designed specifically for this purpose. The earliest recorded example of a naumachia was in 46 BC, begun by none other than Julius Caesar, who used it to celebrate his military accomplishments in a Roman ritual known as a triumph.

Basically, two ships were placed on either side, filled with “willing” participants, and then the fighting began. It lasted until one side was completely killed. Some of them were so elaborate that sea creatures were brought in and placed in the waters. The largest recorded naumachia was set up by Emperor Claudius in 52 AD, with 100 ships and over 19,000 men participating in the game.

2 Hurling
Culture: Irish

One of the oldest games still played today, hurling is sort of like hockey mixed with lacrosse. Basically, there are two teams and the object is for the players to use a wooden stick, known as a hurley, to hit a small ball called a sliotar into a goal. The fastest field sport in the world, ball speeds reaching up to 145 kilometers per hour (90 mph) are extremely common, and participants are often left bruised and bloodied after a match.

However, that’s nothing compared to the 3,000-year-old history of the sport, where it was more like warfare, with relatively few rules and matches that could last for days. In addition, there could be teams numbering in the hundreds squaring off against one another, only adding to the violence. Believed to have been brought to Ireland by the Celts, the sport has tales of mythological heroes playing which date as far back as the 12th century BC.

1 Chunkey
Culture: Native American

One of the earliest sports played in what is now the United States, chunkey was developed by the Mississippian culture and centered around the ancient city of Cahokia. Basically, any number of people participated on either of two teams, though it was usually just one-on-one. A small stone disk was rolled from the starting point and the opposing teams would throw spears at the area at which they thought the disk would end up.

Spreading to much of the Native Americans of the Southeast, chunkey is believed to have played a major role in joining the different tribes together, as they formed one of the largest North American civilizations north of Mesoamerica. Each tribe had unique rules, but the spirit of the game was the same. The sport was taken so seriously, and gambling so ingrained in the culture of chunkey, that losers would even commit suicide in some cases, normally because they had wagered all of their possessions.

[Please note that this list is entirely false and filled with foolishness. Happy April Fools’ Day!]

10Digestive Entero Auto-Deliquescence

The human body’s digestive juices are incredibly strong. Isolated from the body, gastric acid would be powerful enough to eat through solid wood, and only the stomach’s unique structure keeps you from digesting yourself. Mucus protects your cells, and the cells also produce alkaline fluid, which neutralizes acids that come too close. If the acid manages to get past these defenses, you may suffer from a peptic ulcer.

As painful as ulcers are, they usually aren’t too dangerous because, again, your stomach and intestines have some defenses against gastric acid. Other parts of the body aren’t so lucky. If your acid backs up unpredictably through digestive vessels, such as the bile duct or cystic duct, you’ll get hit with digestive entero auto-deliquescence, in which your own body’s juices dissolve your internal organs.

One of the particularly troubling elements of the condition is the lack of symptoms before the rapid onset of organ failure. Though the stomach and the esophagus respond to excess acid by sending your brain signals of sharp pain, many lesser ducts connected to the digestive tract have a totally different type of nerve. You have no normal way to detect the presence of acid in these passages until they suddenly deliver their corrosive contents. The acid then often enters the large intestine, but it may also (and much more seriously) enter the gallbladder or even the liver, resulting in unconsciousness followed by swift death.

People structurally weak in their anatomical core have a higher risk of digestive entero auto-deliquescence. While in a sitting position, try bending forward so your head touches your legs halfway between your hips and your knees. Attempt to relax your abdominal muscles, and then touch your abdomen just below the ribcage. If this area stays rigid with no effort, you are not especially vulnerable.

9Peabody’s Diminution

Special thanks to the Peabody estate

Ever had a really bad migraine? Is your favorite baseball cap a little looser than it used to be? If you touch your earlobe with your thumb, does your pinky finger reach the outside edge of your opposite eye? If so, you might be experiencing the beginnings of a dangerous malady—Peabody’s Diminution.

Stop for a minute and think of all the radiation flying around the world today. These days, radios are in everything: cell phones, GPS units, microwave ovens . . . even clock-radios. And there’s ample evidence that radio waves are the evil guiding force behind a slow-acting malady that’s taking the globe by (silent) storm.

The first sufferer was a Mr. Whittaker Peabody, an early test subject of Thomas Edison’s. When radio waves were first discovered, Edison (known for a bit of cruelty in his experiments) picked one man to test the effects of the waves on. After several years of direct exposure to the skull, Mr. Peabody’s head began to shrink. He reported crippling migraines and excruciating pain. He soon left Edison’s employ, but the effects continued until his head was about the size of his fist.

All photos and records of the tests have been suppressed by the government, doubtless part of some mind control scheme. The above is probably the only one in existence and has held its terrible secret all these years. We only learned of it through the gracious cooperation of the Peabody estate, although they will certainly face repercussions for allowing us to publish the story and the photo.

8Adulescens Inferno

Acne is a normal part of growing up. Eight out of ten teens and preteens do battle with blackheads and pimples on a daily basis. While the cause isn’t fully understood, hormones and bacteria definitely play a key role. But there’s also adulescens inferno. First discovered in 1988 in a small village outside La Salina, Colombia, this highly aggressive retrovirus is a teenager’s worst nightmare. Adulescens inferno makes itself at home in the epidermis, conquering skin cell after skin cell. As it dominates the derma, it causes an eruption of highly contagious acne, often covering whole portions of the face.

So what’s the big deal, you ask? Well, Adulescens inferno wouldn’t be so bad if it stayed on the skin like normal acne . . . but it doesn’t. In almost 87 percent of documented cases, the virus abandons the derma and works its way deeper into the body. Able to move at sickening speeds, the retrovirus attacks muscles in the cheeks, nose, throat, and mouth. Basically, that means victims have acne growing inside their tongues. And since these zits are protected from creams, medications, and pimple-popping fingers, they can swell to enormous sizes. Left unchecked, Adulescens inferno can cause serious facial deformities, trouble swallowing, and eventual suffocation.

Although the virus seemingly disappeared during the 2000s, it reared its ugly whitehead in early 2013, claiming the life of a high school sophomore in Odessa, Texas. Unfortunately, while the disease is curable with immediate treatment, most victims aren’t aware they’ve contracted Adulescens inferno until it’s moved into the terminal stage. After all, its first and most obvious symptom is a sudden and rather deceptive onset of scaly red skin and slime-filled pustules. However, if the flare-up coincides with the appearance abnormal protuberances inside the mouth, nose, or along the tongue, chances are good things are about to get gross. At the very least, nobody is going to ask you out to prom.

7Pulmonary Lenticellular Ichthyosis

Human lungs are composed of a mass of spongy tissue that’s designed to be extremely flexible. The inner tissue of your lungs is made of a sheet of wrinkled cells that folds in on itself hundreds of times. If you could stretch it out flat, it would cover an area about the size of a three-piece suit. It’s designed that way to maximize the surface area that air can hit, allowing you to pull in more oxygen with every breath.

Sometimes, though, that flexible tissue doesn’t behave the way it should. In the years since the first case was observed in 1983, we’ve been seeing a rapidly increasing number of cases of pulmonary lenticellular ichthyosis—commonly referred to as “lung bark.” It happens when the outer layer of tissue on the lungs scabs over and hardens, forming a shell similar to the bark of the tree. And “similar” is an understatement—the hardened lung tissue actually has a mineral profile that’s 86 percent similar to the bark of the common beech tree.

The problem is, this disease is nearly impossible to diagnose without an autopsy. It presents no external symptoms, and the only time we ever see it is in cases where an autopsy is ordered for a different reason, such as for the victim of a homicide. But the numbers are striking—53 percent of autopsies ordered in the past decade have revealed pulmonary lenticellular ichthyosis. In one study, the lung bark was so strong it couldn’t even be cracked with a hammer. And in what you might call an ironic twist, cigarette smokers appear to be immune to whatever causes lung bark, leading some to believe that it might be caused by a bacteria that’s highly susceptible to carbon monoxide—such as the flesh-eating genus of Psilii nicagei.

6Sudden Onset Dental Collapse

In 1936, Joyce Merrick was eating lunch at a diner when she bit down on something hard. It turned out to be a tooth. Touching her mouth to find which one was missing, she discovered that all of her teeth felt loose and wobbly. Another one came away in her hand when she touched it. In the space of about five minutes, all but two of her remaining teeth had fallen out. Doctors determined that the nerves inside her teeth had all died, and blood had ceased flowing to the surrounding tissues, leaving them weak and unstable.

What made this case so strange, apart from the rapid onset, is that in the months leading up to it, Merrick had had a series of dreams apparently predicting the event. In some her teeth had felt wobbly, and fallen out in rapid succession, while in others they were incredibly brittle, and crumbled in her mouth.

Since the Merrick case, multiple other victims of sudden onset dental collapse have been studied. All of them reported similar dreams, as well as occasional prickling sensations in their gums. Although not widely understood, the prevailing theory is that, the neurological system being so closely connected, nerve death in the mouth directly impacts the prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain responsible for dreaming). Certainly there is a link between dreams of clumps of hair falling out and late-life thinning hair or baldness in women, also believed to have a neurological cause. (In men, baldness is not considered pathological.)

In the early 1980s, victims of sudden onset dental collapse lobbied the US government to fund a public awareness campaign, encouraging those experiencing “teeth falling out” dreams and prickling gums to see their doctor immediately, but as the condition is so rare, it was felt the costs could not be justified.

5 Credula Cerebrum Morbo

Credulua cerebrum morbo is a degenerative brain disease caused by the mendax virus, and it’s seen a curious spike in number of cases recently. It’s a highly infectious disease, affecting all age groups, genders, and ethnic groups without discrimination. Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about this disease is that the early onset symptoms are often considered so minor that the affected person often assumes nothing is wrong until the disease is too advanced to treat. These symptoms include irritated eyes, blurred vision, back and neck pain, headaches, and fatigue. However, if left unchecked, the virus attacks the neurons in the brain, and over an extended period of time, it can lead to decreased concentration; forgetfulness; failure to recognize familiar people, places, or things; and even occasional explosive incontinence. Eventually, the virus destroys so much of the brain that even organ function begins to shut down, resulting in death and possibly even more incontinence.

Unfortunately, there is no known cure. Treatment consists more of prolonging the inevitable, rather than eradicating the disease. It’s a fact that every person diagnosed with credula cerebrum morbo will die at some point in their lives. It’s an unpredictable killer and has been known to run its course in mere months or stretch out and make victims suffer sometimes as long as another 70 years. If you are experiencing any of the early warning signs, you’d do well to get yourself checked out.

4Dissociative Unipolar Hypersensitivity

Have you ever tried to tickle yourself? It doesn’t really work, does it? That is because our somatosensory system is designed to treat external stimuli—those coming from other people and things—very differently from any physical stimulation we give our own selves.

This is a fundamentally necessary setup. Think about it: If your body treated your own touch the same way it treats other people’s, you’d be unable to accurately distinguish between the two. More than that, you’d suffer from a debilitating state of constant sensory overstimulation; simply having hair would feel like something’s always pressing against your scalp, your tongue would trigger a gag reflex within your own mouth, and your very skin would give you a sensation of being wrapped in plastic.

So what happens when this intricate mechanism fails? As it turns out, results range from mild and almost comical to completely crippling. The umbrella name for this range of symptoms is Dissociative Unipolar Hypersensitivity. People with a weak form of it may, for example, pinch themselves and instead feel like they’ve been tickled, or accidentally cut a finger but experience a “burning sensation.” Those on the more serious end of the spectrum may find themselves recoiling in pain while scratching their forehead and generally being entirely incapable of telling physical sensations apart. Current estimates suggest that as many as 27 percent of the population exhibit at least some symptoms. This puts the total number of afflicted people worldwide at over 1.9 billion. This means that you have a one-in-four chance of being affected, without even having noticed it.

One surefire method to test for D.U.H. is pretty straightforward. Take a pen or permanent marker and use its sharp tip to gently scratch the back of your neck. Now do the same with the tip of your index finger. Ideally, the two sensations should be very easy to tell apart. If you have trouble doing so, you may at least be predisposed to the disorder. Do note that you should never self-diagnose, so for further examination, please consult your physician and ask them about D.U.H.

3Pineal Parasitic Infection

Back in the ‘70s, French doctors working on the Caribbean island of Redonda began to notice a series of unusual symptoms among their patients. The afflicted reported strong feelings of fatigue, increased appetite, and emotional and mental instability. Although they didn’t know it, the doctors were the first to detect the presence of the 20th century’s fastest-growing parasite, Cognomen sciencii, or the razor-backed squareworm.

Originally affecting sheep and some species of petrel, the squareworm seems to have made the jump to humans at some point in the late ‘50s, but remained undetected for years, primarily because infection remained relatively rare until the early 2000s. Infection is characterized by unexplained tiredness, mood swings, rectal discharge, and frequent urination—sometimes as often as several times a day.

Perhaps the most unusual feature of the squareworm is its ability to influence host behavior through the production of endorphins and other emotion-regulating peptides, which the worm naturally excretes. This allows the parasite to alter its environment to suit itself—for example, by releasing endorphins after the host has consumed a meal high in salt or fat, the squareworm encourages the consumption of similar meals. Similarly, if agitated by excess movement, the squareworm can release the stress-related chemical Neuropeptide Y, encouraging the adoption of a sedentary lifestyle.

Although previously rare, squareworm infection rates have grown exponentially during the 2000s and continue to do so to this day. Many osteopaths now link this growth rate to changing dietary patterns, particularly the rise of popular gluten-free diets. As well as being delicious, frequent gluten consumption is fatal to squareworms, which are severely intolerant of it. So, if you want to avoid infection, make sure you get plenty of gluten!

2Sudden Onset Gluten Intolerance

Could gluten kill you? Seven out of seven doctors now believe it could and will, at any point, without warning. The protein composite has been linked to everything from heart attacks to ocular scaling, sudden cranial discharge, and pancreatic verrucas. Now, a holistic team of scientists, houngans, and dietitians working out of Saskatchewan’s Institute for Logorrheic Aphasia say that these seemingly unrelated effects may in fact constitute part of a larger syndrome—sudden onset gluten intolerance.

Scienticians say SOGI is becoming more and more common and may already be at epidemic levels—and the symptoms may actually be worsening in response to increased consumption. New maladies believed to be linked to SOGI include ambivalence, spasms, brittle bones, urethral bleeding, ingrowing teeth, wandering cartilage, uncontrolled gall bladder replication, miasma, macrobiotic psychosis, spontaneous combustion of the nervous system, breezes, gum necrosis, tropical hypothermia, verbal hallucinations, and skin disorders.

In a statement earlier this year, the Senior UN Commissioner on Disease, Helen Hunt, advised that gluten be banned completely from human consumption. This measure remains controversial, but has already been implemented in Guam, Micronesia, and New York. For those living elsewhere, the risk of SOGI can be reduced through frequent exercise, Obeah, and a carefully monitored fluid intake.

1Hypochondriasis

Hypochondriasis (more commonly known as “hypochondria”) is easily the best known condition on this list, and it’s also the most prevalent. Sufferers may experience no physical malady, but they nonetheless go through something even worse: the misconception that they do indeed have an actual serious illness. Hypochondriacs often find themselves perusing collections of obscure disorders and even conducting bizarre self-diagnosis tests that violate common sense.

Originally, doctors believed that hypochondria was a response to natural low self-confidence or a consequence of observing actual disease. But with the rise of the Internet and the huge flood of information it brings, social scientists say many people have just developed an unhealthy obsession with random morbid stuff. Plus, it’s simply fun to imagine that you might have an unexpected and crazy fate ahead of you . . . rather than just acknowledging that you’re going to die due to your sedentary lifestyle of sitting in front of a computer all the time.

Most recently, economists and taxidermists have concluded that hypochondria is but a single facet of a larger disorder: extreme gullibility. Sufferers of this disorder (“suckers”) tend to believe anything they hear—or read. Anything that is linked to an external resource appears legitimate to the gullible, even when the resource is completely unreliable, contains no supporting facts, or even consists of total gibberish.

Though no instant cure exists for either hypochondria or credulity, few doctors suggest abandoning all hope. Many sufferers have managed to turn their lives around by treating themselves with regular doses of skepticism (currently not regulated by the FDA). If something seems unlikely, or even just really interesting, read up further on it from every source you can find. You may discover it isn’t true at all. Or you’ll find it is true, and you’ll learn a ton more about it, which is still a good use of your time. In fact, it’s the second best way you can use your time, right after insulating your home against rabid space bats.

Vastest Riffles would like to thank his parents for creating him and Kier Harris and Nolan Moore for helping out with this list.

There’s just something inherently fascinating and creepy about people in masks. Perhaps you’ve read the Goosebumps book or loved the film The Mask. On the other hand, perhaps you’re thinking of a creepy masquerade ball or the emotionless, bloodstained visage of Michael Myers.

But there really is something extra horrifying about masks that it’s difficult to put our finger on. Imagine not being able to see the true face of the person looming in the darkness or meeting a ghoul who reveals who they really are by unmasking. See if you recognize any of the following characters and hope you never meet anyone like them on dark nights!

10 Kuchisake-Onna

Japanese legend tells of a female ghost called Kuchisake-onna, who is the soul of a woman murdered by her jealous husband.^[1] This spirit has been blamed for many assaults and deaths since the 1600s. She stalks dimly lit streets and alleys for victims, covering her mouth with either a fan, handkerchief, or medical mask, depending on which version you hear.

She asks travelers two questions. First, she inquires, “Watashi kirei ?” (essentially, “Do you think I’m pretty?”). Then she removes her disguise to show her bloody mouth with the sides cut wide. She asks her final question: “Kore demo?” (“Do you still think so?”). If you affirm her beauty both times, you’ll only walk away with your face slit like hers. Otherwise, you’re dead.

Stories of Kuchisake-onna were told during the Edo period (1600s–1800s), but then she disappeared until the 1970s, when a rash of sightings even prompted a police investigation. Could Kuchisake-onna have been turned into hannya, a once human woman consumed by jealousy and transformed into a demoness?

9 Ed Gein’s Human Masks

Infamous murderer Ed Gein took the faces (in addition to other body parts) both from his victims and from graves so that he could wear them as masks. Some masks appeared mummified, almost dried out, while others were more carefully preserved, perhaps as Gein grew more confident in his methods of procuration.

A few had lipstick applied and looked more lifelike, and four had been stuffed with paper and hung on the wall of his bedroom, almost like hunting trophies. The rest were put into plastic or paper bags, one of which was found by Deputy Arnie Fritz when he was investigating the house.^[2] It was nestled in a decaying robe thrown behind the kitchen door. When he opened the bag and saw hair, he reached in to pull the contents out. When he lifted the mask to the light, he realized it was the local tavern owner, Mary Hogan, who had gone missing three years previously.

8 Maori Masks

The Maori, who are indigenous to New Zealand, believe that masks, as well as other taonga (“treasures”), have spirits inside them that are tapu (“taboo”). Traditional beliefs also dictate that pregnant or menstruating women are tapu as well, so if they two should meet with something else that’s tapu, then a curse could be invoked.^[3]

This belief is so strong and deeply rooted in Maori culture that in 2010, the Te Papa museum in Wellington, New Zealand, which was exhibiting items of taonga, strongly recommended that pregnant and menstruating women should stay away. The contact between the sacred Maori artifacts and the women present could create a curse, as both the masks and artifacts and the women had negative wairua, or “spirits.”

7 Lead Masks Case

In 1966 in Rio de Janeiro, the corpses of Miguel Jose Viana (left above) and Manoel Pereira da Cruz (right above) were discovered on Vintem Hill wearing business suits and lead eye masks.^[4] They were electronics repairmen from Campos dos Goytacazes, over 280 kilometers (174 mi) away, and their deaths remain a mystery to this day. As well as the lead eye masks, they were found with waterproof jackets, an empty water bottle, two towels, and a notebook.

They were last seen buying water from a local shop, and Miguel was reported to have been in a great hurry and checking his watch a great deal. All that the notebook said was that they should be at the agreed place at 4:30 PM, to swallow the capsules at 6:30 PM, and to “protect metals” and wait for the mask signal. They were found with this paraphernalia and wearing the masks, but their bodies were not well-preserved enough to discover whether they had swallowed poison. Why they would need lead masks that would protect against radiation, towels, and notes about metals is a mystery.

6 Stolen Mayan Face

According to local legend, a mask was recovered at the property of a recently deceased gentleman who lived in Key West, Florida. It was said to have been stolen from an ancient tomb in Egypt decades prior.^[5] Psychics who held the mask reported sensing South or Central American energies. The caretaker of the gentleman’s estate said that he heard it was from a tomb, but he had assumed it to be Egyptian rather than from South or Central America.

The psychics thought that the pyramid they were seeing was probably an Incan or Mayan tomb instead, and when they held the mask in their hands, it was very cold but then suddenly became hot. It would numb their hands and send tingles up their arms as far as their shoulder. The most sensitive psychics wouldn’t touch it at all. While it is clear there is strange energy attached to it, it’s also possible that there is a curse, something not unheard-of when it comes to protecting sacred items from thieves or other enemies.

5 Carl Tanzler

Carl Tanzler was a German immigrant who claimed that during his childhood, he received visions of his one true love from his ancestor, Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel. Despite getting married and having two children with a woman who did not look like his vision, he always kept the face of his true love close to his heart. In 1930, after he’d left his wife and kids, he believed he’d found her at last. While working as a radiologist in Florida, he met a young Cuban American woman Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. She was suffering from tuberculosis and died the next year.^[6]

Tanzler paid for her funeral and visited her mausoleum regularly. He was obsessed with Maria. In the dead of night in 1933, he took her body from the mausoleum and back to his home in a child’s red wagon. He put her skeleton back together using coat hangers, stuffed her with rags, and made her a wig from her own hair. She was dressed and put in his bed until, seven years later, following rumors of the desecration of her body, she was discovered by police.

While her body was covered with clothes, her face was a death mask of her former self, created by Tanzler, and was kept in his bed after the coroner had removed the rest of her body. Unbelievably, the statute of limitations had expired, and Tanzler’s case was dismissed out of court. He never faced trial or sentencing. Maria’s body was taken to a funeral home, where death tourists could view her before it was taken back to the mausoleum.

4 The Beast Of Jersey

Edward Paisnel began assaulting victims in 1960 on the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands.^[7] Stopping short of murder, he would attack women and children in a long raincoat and a strange mask, and all the victims recalled was a strange, musky smell after he had sexually abused them. Paisnel also had access to a children’s home, La Preference, that was run by his wife. He would affect an Irish accent, would often tie a rope around the necks and wrists of his victims, and would drag them into a secluded area. They would be carefully selected and taken from their bedrooms after he had climbed through the window, abducted to a nearby field to be molested, and then returned to their homes.

As Jersey is only 119 square kilometers (46 mi²) in total, it is understandable how much fear he raised through his attacks—the rapist had to be someone everyone knew. His rubber mask was homemade and had black hair, and the tape he used to keep it on was later revealed to have marked his own face beneath. The mask was intended to conceal his identity but also to strike terror in his victims, people he abused until his arrest in 1971. Paisnel was sentenced to 30 years in prison for 13 counts of rape, assault, and sodomy.

3 Dennis Rader

Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK Killer (Bind, Torture, Kill), placed masks on some of his victims in addition to wearing a mask himself.^[8] After he had tortured and killed his victims (mostly women), he would later photograph himself in strategic poses, recreating what he had done as though he himself was the person he’d murdered.

Wearing their clothes and with a plastic mask of a woman’s face, he would take photographs of himself in his parents’ basement in Sedgwick County, Kansas. He would also travel to motels for the perverted photography sessions or go out into the woods. He was finally caught in 2005 and sentenced to life in prison.

2 Fabian Kramer

In 2012, after watching the horror film Saw (2004), Fabian Kramer became obsessed with murder. Just a teenager at the time, he wore a mask as he killed his landlady, 82-year-old Hanna Litz. He stabbed her 50 times in her apartment.^[9] The movie depicts how two victims are tied up in a bathroom, and the only means of escape is to saw off a part of their own bodies. While this did not happen in Kramer’s murder scene, he is said to have watched the movie and become inspired to kill while wearing a gruesome mask, which was set up on a mannequin in court at his trial.

After he stabbed Litz, he phoned the German police, who found him attempting to revive her, saying he was an “ambulance man.” The bloodstains on his body told a different story, and he was arrested and sentenced after the mask and a yellow-handled knife were found in his apartment.

1 Alex Mengel

In 1985, Alex Mengel was pulled over by police in New York while he was driving with three friends. The officer spotted shotgun shells in the car. Mengel shot the police officer, who later died. A day later, Mengel abducted 44-year-old Beverly Capone in her white Toyota. She was said to have vanished after she was last seen going to her car at 8:00 PM that night. The next day, in a residential area near Syracuse, a 13-year-old girl said a driver pointed a gun at her and told her to get in. Thankfully, she ran away before he could shoot or force her into the car. She said he wore a disguise: a wig with long, black hair, lipstick, and a dress. She later identified Mengel in a police lineup.

A week later, the Toyota was spotted in Toronto, and a police chase ended when Mengel’s car skidded on the ice. Beverly Capone’s driver’s license was found in the car with Mengel’s face pasted over her photo. Police also found a wig with black hair in the vehicle, but Mengel denied knowing Capone and said he’d stolen the car.

Investigators retraced Mengel’s steps and found a remote cabin where Mengel had hidden Capone’s ID card. Her body was buried in a stone wall by the cabin. She had been stabbed in the chest and scalped. Her face had also been peeled off, and it is assumed that Mengel had used her hair and face as a mask to try to escape. He was charged with the murder of the officer and Beverly Capone, but when he was being escorted back from court in a police vehicle, he tried to escape and was shot dead.^[10]

Alexa is a writer and inventor of the Haiku, living in Dublin.

Trees are everywhere. Though we all know they are alive, we don’t generally think of trees that way; they’re more or less just part of the scenery.

Nevertheless, many of us have been scared by a tree at some point or another—one with a sinister shape at night or a face-like feature we didn’t expect or scratching at the window in the dark. These examples are just people freaking themselves out, of course, but there might be something more than that to the following trees . . .

10 An Unbelievable Story

In 1874, newspapers throughout the United States reported an amazing, and horrific, new discovery on the island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa: a man-eating tree! A letter from a scientist visiting the island described the strange plant as having a trunk much like a huge pineapple, dark in color and hard as iron. From the top of the plant extended eight gigantic, stiff leaves. The top also featured a bowl, full of a sweet-smelling liquid, surrounded by green and white tendrils that waved in the air like snakes.

The scientist’s first observation of one of these strange plants was interrupted by the local tribesmen forcing a young woman at spearpoint to the top of the tree, where the white and green tendrils grabbed her; then the gigantic leaves all slowly raised up and clamped closed around the young woman at the top of the tree. As the great leaves crushed her body, blood and sap started to dribble down the trunk of the dreadful tree. The tribesmen reportedly jumped forward to catch this in containers or just lick it from the trunk directly, all becoming horribly drunk from it. The scientist quickly left the macabre party.

It took ten days for the tree to reopen, and the bones of the woman now lay at its base under the great leaves. A later observation by the scientist of some smaller trees of this variety allowed him to witness the death of a playful lemur that got too close to the carnivorous trees; it seemed likely these tree-dwelling primates were the actual main prey of the horrid plants.^[1]

This strange account—unbelievable though it might sound—was believed for quite a while; after all, few people could go to Madagascar to double-check it. Eventually, however, the truth came out. The account had been written by a bored reporter looking for an interesting story. The man-eating tree of Madagascar had never existed, but, ironically, interest in the fictional tree greatly accelerated the exploration of the actual island!

9 A Bad Choice

In March 1950, a 300-year-old thorn tree was accidentally destroyed by a bulldozer in a field just outside of Fintona, Ireland. The locals immediately predicted that trouble would follow, for the tree had been a “fairy thorn,” a tree known for fairy activity. A 72-year-old pensioner named James McAnespie bought some of the bulldozed fairy tree to use as firewood, and as soon as he started to use this wood in his fireplace, odd things began to happen. Bells started to chime in different parts of his house. He started to see small flying things that he couldn’t ever seem to catch.

On Sunday, April 16, McAnespie used the last of the fairy tree wood he had and decided to go get more. As night fell, his neighbors realized he had never returned home, so they went out to search for the elderly man. When they couldn’t find him, they quickly alerted the police, and a large search party of police and civilians set out into the night to find McAnespie. The searchers covered a good part of the town and surroundings, calling for McAnespie but getting no response. At 11:30 PM, McAnespie was found; he was standing motionless in a field just outside of town . . . on the very spot where the fairy tree had stood before being bulldozed. McAnespie didn’t respond or react to the searchers’ calls, but when they came near him, the elderly man turned and walked to them and then walked back to the village with them.

McAnespie said that he’d gone to the field to gather sticks and branches from the area where the fairy thorn had stood. He then tied the wood into a bundle. As it was getting dark, he started to walk home, only to find himself frozen, unable to move or speak. He estimated he was frozen in place for about two hours. McAnespie said he heard bells ringing around his feet. He could see a ditch of some sort around himself, there was a big house or barn with its lights on a short distance away that shouldn’t have been there, and he saw two “wee fellows”—fairies! Despite hearing and seeing the people searching for him, McAnespie had been unable to move until the search party came close to him.^[2]

8 Something Wicked

In Somerset County, New Jersey, US, is a tree with an evil reputation. Legends claim the Ku Klux Klan lynched untold numbers of African Americans from its branches, that a farmer murdered his family under it before hanging himself from one of the branches, or both. But these are just guesses at possible explanations for what is actually known about this bizarre tree: Very strange things happen to those who interact with what has come to be called the “Devil’s Tree.” Some rather interesting personal accounts have been posted to the Internet.

One person who climbed the tree said he heard noises coming from within it as he sat on a branch. These noises grew louder until a big bang sounded, and he was thrown to the ground, breaking his ankle in two spots. A teen who doubted the rumors about the tree took the time to stop his car on the road near it, run over to urinate on the tree, and then drive off presumably laughing . . . until his car uncontrollably accelerated on its own and crashed into another tree!

Some people assert that voices can be heard screaming inside the tree. One visitor who decided to take a piece of bark home as a souvenir started to see the specter of an old man near his bed at night. (Hopefully he took the bark back at some point.) Finally, another visitor reported that he went to see the tree with friends and took a picture of it with a Polaroid camera. When the picture finished developing about a minute later, on the right side of the tree was the clear image of a woman in a red dress hanging from a branch by a noose.^[3]

7 Ignored Warnings

In 2013, New York City had a problem in its parks, one that was being quietly ignored. On July 20, it was reported that a 13-year-old girl was struck on her shoulder and back by a falling tree branch while at Riverside Park, and her injuries were such that she was rushed to a nearby hospital. In the same report, two more facts came out: The Parks Department was refusing requests by reporters for details on the incident, and six other people had been hit by falling branches at different parks in the city over the previous six weeks.

On July 14, a 51-year-old man had been hit by a large branch at Union Square Park. He was relaxing with his family in the shade of an elm when a 6-meter-long (20 ft) branch fell and hit him; he was also rushed to a hospital. The day after that, a five-year-old boy was hit by a falling branch at Bronx Park. Luckily, he wasn’t seriously injured. These were preceded by multiple similar reports in the month of June . . . and all of this was in the wake of a massive settlement of $11.5 million to a man who had been struck in the head by a falling branch at one of the parks, as well as a New York Times expose from the year before detailing a new record high in deaths caused by falling branches. You would assume that the city would take some action to fix the problem. But they didn’t.

On August 4, 2013, soon-to-be-mother Yingyi Li-Dikov was sitting on a bench with a friend in Flushing’s Kissena Park, when “there was a loud crack and a screeching noise,” as reported by a witness who ran over to see what made the noise. The source of the sound was a tree that had just fallen on the bench Li-Dikov and her friend were sitting on. Half of the bench had been destroyed—the half Li-Dakov had been sitting on. She had been struck on the head and shoulders and was bleeding profusely when emergency personnel pulled her free. They rushed her to a hospital, but Li-Dikov was declared dead on arrival. Her friend escaped with only minor injuries and refused medical attention.^[4]

Even as city officials tried to attribute the incident to an “act of God,” photos of the tree’s rotted base started to circulate on the Internet. The tree hadn’t fallen purely by accident; it had fallen due to a lack of maintenance, which was exactly why branches were falling at other parks throughout the city. The only real accident that day was that Yingyi Li-Dikov had sat on the bench at the wrong time.

6 Venus Cow Trap?

On October 18, 2007, a young woman named Pushpalatha was walking through the thin forest that blends with the village of Patrame, India, when she ran across an incredible sight: A short tree in the forest was apparently trying to lift a cow off the ground by its hindquarters!

The cow’s tail and hind legs were entangled by the branches, with just the animal’s front legs still on the ground. The cow was actively trying to pull away from the plant, and the tree clearly appeared to be pulling the cow back! Pushpalatha ran for help, and soon, a local farmer named Vasanna was trying to free the animal by cutting branches off the tree. It wasn’t until the tree was just plain cut down that it released its grip on the animal.

Farmers in the area had been complaining about cows returning home with tails missing and/or wounds on their backs, but they hadn’t suspected there was a pili mara—“tiger tree”—in the area until Vasanna had to cut the tree down. Another villager recalled that there had been another such tree in the area 30 years previously, and it was clear from how the whole matter was discussed that pili mara were not a particular type of tree but rather a tree possessed by some sort of spirit.^[5] The press loved the story, quickly dubbing this new terror the “Cow-Eating Tree.”

5 Ghost In The Shell

For years, people had talked of the rumored ghost of Durand-Eastman Park in Rochester, New York, US. Known as “The White Lady,” she is said to be a woman from the 19th century whose spirit wanders the park at night trying to find the body of her daughter, slain by either her boyfriend or a group of hoodlums. The White Lady herself is believed to have either committed suicide out of grief or to have died alone and heartbroken while searching for her lost child.

The White Lady has reportedly been seen rising from the water in the park, and some say they have seen her with two spectral hounds. One local resident told reporters that he and a friend were in a car late at night in the park when he saw the face of an unknown woman in white in his rearview mirror staring at him from behind a tree. As you might guess, the reported ghost had a long history with the park. And then it got weirder.

In 2017, a storm tore a great chunk of wood from a tree in the park and ended up adding a new element to the story of the resident ghost, for revealed in the newly exposed wood of the tree was a ghostly shape that many identify as that of the White Lady herself. The shape exposed is described as that of a woman with a skull-like face, wearing a dress and stretching her arms over her head. Some say this figure appears to be holding a baby, presumably representative of the missing daughter.

This figure wasn’t carved; it’s the result of a natural break and an unusual pattern of colors within the wood of the tree itself, making the resemblance to the local legend just plain creepy. Though damaged, the tree isn’t in danger of falling over, so the newfound image of the White Lady will stand in memory of the ghostly legend for some time.^[6]

4 Secret In The Wych Elm

On April 18, 1943, four boys were in Hagley Wood in Worcestershire, England, hunting for bird’s nests, when they found a particularly good-looking large wych elm tree that they figured had to have some nests in it. One of the boys was climbing up the tree when he discovered it had a hollow area that could be seen inside of from above, and there was something in it. He reached in and pulled out a human skull, with traces of hair still attached. The boys were in the woods illegally—it was part of the estate of Hagley Hall—so they all immediately agreed to not tell anyone what they had found.

Naturally, one of the boys told someone.

Police found that the hollow of the tree contained a near-complete skeleton, along with a shoe, gold wedding ring, and some remaining fragments of clothing. In addition, the remains of a human hand were found on the forest floor at some distance from the tree. Analysis determined the body was that of a female who had died at least 18 months earlier (around October 1941). Other evidence suggested that she had been suffocated and shortly afterward stuffed in the tree hollow, before rigor mortis set in. It was definitely a murder. The police tried to identify the woman from what the clothing evidence told them and from her teeth, but due to the ongoing war, there were just too many people who had gone missing or had been displaced for any identification to be determined.

Stranger still, a piece of graffiti appeared: “Who put Bella down the Wych Elm—Hagley Wood.” It was found in Birmingham, around 18 kilometers (11 mi) away from Hagley Wood. Then more appeared around the area, seemingly written by the same person. Attempts to find the writer of the messages failed, as did attempts to identify “Bella.” To this day, the true identity of Bella is unknown . . . and people continue to place graffiti on the obelisk erected as a monument to the mystery near the location of the discovery, repeatedly tagging it with the question, “Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?”^[7]

3 Remaining Remains

Roger Williams (1603–1683) is now best known as the founder of the colony of Rhode Island, but he was also so much more. Williams was one of the earliest people in North America to propose a separation of church and state and to express strong support for religious freedom and tolerance. He also publicly disapproved of the confiscation of land from the Native Americans. In fact, his ideas were so extreme for the time that his own church banished him from the colony he was in, and he had to set up his own. Williams’s new colony, eventually to become the state of Rhode Island, was based on his own principals regarding religious freedom and so became a safe haven for many religious minorities.

In 1860, the town of Providence decided that Williams needed a suitable memorial to his past efforts for not just the state of Rhode Island but for the nation. So community leaders located Williams’s grave in order to transfer his remains to the new memorial, crafted for a man of historic stature. However, something very odd had happened in the 177 years since Williams had been interred.

The only actual bits of Williams’ body they found in the grave were his teeth, nails, and some bone fragments. The rest of his body had, apparently, been eaten by an apple tree root! The root they found traversed the area that Williams’s body had once occupied, stretching from the head down, splitting at the hips to send a shoot in the direction of each leg, bending at the knees and turning upward at the feet. Under the circumstances, it was decided to keep the root on display rather than place it in the memorial. Care for the odd root was taken up by the Rhode Island Historical Society, and since 2007, it has been on display in the John Brown House Museum in Providence.^[8]

2 The Right Conditions

In 2009, 28-year-old Artyom Sidorkin from the Urals of Western Russia went to see doctors because he was experiencing agonizing chest pains and coughing up blood. Needless to say, he was immediately X-rayed, and doctors saw a spot in his lungs that appeared to confirm their fears: Sidorkin appeared to have a cancerous tumor in one of his lungs. Surgery was scheduled. It was expected that a large portion of his lung would have to be removed to contain the growth of the cancer. Before the major part of the surgery began, a biopsy of the area was performed to try to determine how malign the cancer was . . . but it wasn’t cancer.

Sidorkin had a 5-centimeter-long (2 in) fir tree growing inside his lung!^[9]

It seems Sidorkin must have inhaled a seed at some point, and it found the conditions inside his lung ideal to germinate in. As the miniature tree grew, it started to interfere with the capillaries in his lung, which was what was causing the fantastic pain. The tree was removed, and Sidorkin’s lung was left nearly fully intact. Good news: The pain was gone, and he didn’t have cancer!

1 Just Plain Terrifying

On April 14, 2007, strange news was reported as coming from the town of Manglojodi in India. The problem started when a girl was reportedly possessed by a spirit which then stated it would kill 21 people in the town before the Hindu festival of Dussehra that year, which was to be on October 21. It was a dire prediction, but nothing seemed to be wrong . . . until a tree was touched.

Six people died a horrible death after touching the tree, so a number of the villagers, either frightened or brave, tore down the tree. Among the people who destroyed the tree in hopes of ending the curse was 19-year-old Bhawani Behra, who claimed to have seen a strange white cat moving about in the tree as it was being torn down. He died shortly after, coughing up blood.

With Behra’s death, the village was struck with newfound terror. If the spirit of the tree had been able to kill him after the tree itself was pulled down, then maybe all that was accomplished was setting the evil ghost free to roam the town! As of the news report in April 2007, no one dared approach the spot where the tree had once stood, and no one was to be found outside after 6:00PM anymore, for fear of encountering the wandering ghost. After all, only seven of the predicted 21 people had yet been killed, and there were still six months until the festival of Dussehra.^[10]

Garth Haslam has been digging into strange topics for over 30 years and posts his research on varying anomalies, curiosities, mysteries, and legends at his website Anomalies—the Strange & Unexplained. Check it out at http://anomalyinfo.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/anomalies.news.

Modern news coverage has made the world aware of the terrible force that is the tidal wave, but few know that the deadliest tsunamis occurred during ancient times. The biggest and oldest tsunamis in history were culture killers; they breached walls meant to keep the sea out and wiped away everything from villages to entire landmasses. But give credit where it’s due: tsunamis have also crushed invading forces before they could massacre the innocent.

10 The Culture Killing Tsunamis

In the 15th century, the Maori boasted top canoe makers, artists, and fishing gear craftsmen. Then, the culture went into a mysterious decline. Double-hulled ships became single-hulled boats. Their art and fishing tools weren’t up to standard, either. Additionally, some tribes can trace their storytelling and genealogy to the 15th century and no earlier.

Archaeologist Bruce McFadgen blames a tidal wave for this cultural erasure. He managed to find solid archaeological evidence to back up Maori tales describing a terrible flood that swept away entire fleets and communities. The event was tragic. An eight-story monster tsunami smashed into New Zealand and razed the shores upon which the majority of Maori populations lived. When the sea withdrew, knowledge and skills went with the dead, and the land was left too salty for survivors to grow food. Starvation claimed many more lives.

9 The New York Hit

In 300 BC, something happened to the area that would later become New York City. Deposits of shells, wood, and marine fossils found all over Long Island and New Jersey point to an unusually rare and violent Atlantic Ocean tsunami. Some experts pin these odd collections on a particularly big storm. But only a tsunami would have possessed the power, speed, and currents necessary to distribute massive amounts of material over such a large area.

After the passing of two millennia, it’s hard to say what caused the explosive sweep, but the presence of nanodiamonds—created during extreme heat and pressure—suggests an asteroid striking the ocean. An underwater landslide, caused by the impact or by an earthquake, could also have spawned the splash. This tsunami wasn’t a mammoth wave at only about 4 meters (13 ft) high. However, today it would flood the Long Island Expressway and Wall Street.

8 The Oldest Tsunami

During an effort to compile a database of Australia’s past tsunamis, researchers gleaned some fascinating facts. First, they found that the continent wasn’t at all immune to this destructive force of nature, as a hefty crop of 145 events proved. That number was three times the amount that had been expected.

From this crowd, they picked out the world’s most ancient tidal swell. There is no mystery about what birthed the oldest known tsunami. It was determined that an asteroid smashed into the Pilbara district of Western Australia 3.47 billion years ago. It would appear that Australia’s track record with space-sponsored tsunamis isn’t a one-hit wonder, either. The same thing happened again 2.5 million years ago.

7 The Drowning Of Lebanon

Lebanon is in for a cruel awakening, if earthquake experts are to be believed. A newly documented fault in the Mediterranean Sea shows activity roughly every 1,500 years, and last time it did so, Lebanon’s coastal cities saw death on a mass scale.

In AD 551, the 100-kilometer (62 mi) fault released a devastating shudder. The seafloor dropped 1.5 to 3 meters (5–10 ft), displacing enough water to unleash a tsunami toward what is now Lebanon. History records the hell that followed. Between Tyr and Tripoli, the deluge overcame every city. Tripoli and Beirut were said to have been completely razed, with the death toll in Beirut alone at over 30,000.

The repetitive nature of the fault, with at least four ancient tsunamis under its belt, is worrying. Presently, four million people reside along Lebanon’s coastlines, and the next quake is overdue.

6 The Triple Threat

A tsunami is not always alone. Sometimes, it’s part of a deadly trio, coming after an earthquake and being followed by a fire.

On November 1, 1755, the citizens of Lisbon, Portugal, were attending morning mass in preparation for All Saints day. Over the space of ten minutes, three massive earthquakes rocked the city. Many were crushed when churches and buildings collapsed. Survivors fled to the harbor and found that the sea was missing. When it returned, a 12-meter (39 ft) wave ripped away the port and the thousands sheltering there. Those who crawled away from this destruction suffered a five-day firestorm.

Afterward, Lisbon was nothing but rubble, and nearly 60,000 had perished. King Joseph created the first crisis management in history, bringing aid to the citizens and helping to rebuild the city. The disaster was also the first time that such a catastrophe was seen as an act of nature, rather than the wrath of God.

5 The Santiago Boulders

On the island of Santiago in Cape Verde, unusual boulders led researchers to a historic tsunami. Sitting on a bed of volcanic material, the 770-ton rocks match the limestone circling the shore. The only way beach boulders that size could have been transported 200 meters (656 ft) above sea level would have been during a particularly powerful surge of water. The event may dispel previous doubts whether volcanoes can cause tsunamis during a partial collapse.

Santiago is in the vicinity of Fogo, which is still active and is one of Earth’s most imposing volcanoes. A computer simulation calculated that 73,000 years ago, an enormous rockslide on Fogo started the lethal ripple. It continued for miles and punched Santiago with a monster tsunami 170 meters (558 ft) high, the biggest known tidal wave in history. In comparison, the horrific 2004 tsunamis that bulldozed Indian Ocean coastlines had baby waves—about 30 meters (100 ft) in height.

4 Alexandria

In AD 365, an earthquake off the coast of Greece caused the sea to withdraw from the harbor of Alexandria, Egypt. Not quite grasping this major warning sign, lesser characters rushed forward to rob stranded ships. When the tidal wave inevitably made its appearance, it killed the looters and breached the city’s sea walls, claiming another 5,000 lives. 50,000 residences were destroyed, some by ships being hurled down on them.

The carnage outside Alexandria was even worse. Farming communities lost 45,000 people, and in some places, entire villages were erased. The saltwater poisoned farmland for years, making planting useless. The velocity of the tsunami was so great that it physically altered the shape of the shoreline. The tragedy is still commemorated every year in Alexandria.

3 Atlit-Yam

Atlit-Yam was a Neolithic fishing community. When its remains were found in what is now Israel, evidence pointed toward a sudden abandonment by the villagers. For almost two decades, nobody was really sure why. For the first time, researchers are considering the possibility that it might have been a tsunami evacuation.

The smoking gun is the still-rumbling Mt. Etna in Sicily. The volcano experienced a landslide around 8,000 years ago, dumping enough material into the ocean to bury Manhattan up to the Empire State Building. The result was a ten-story tsunami. It powered across the entire Mediterranean and devastated the seaboards of three continents. The villagers of Altit-Yam were one group of people who didn’t stand still when they saw the sea recede. The residents fled in haste, leaving valuable commodities like prepared fish behind.

2 The Lost Landmass

Doggerland once connected Britain to mainland Europe. During Mesolithic times, Doggerland was a paradise for both wildlife and humans, but it was slowly being taken by the sea. Over a period of thousands of years, the ocean systematically ate more and more up, until the once-bountiful environment turned into a Wales-sized swamp.

Around 8,000 years ago, the last of the tribes left the landmass, which has since disappeared under the sea. During that time, a crushing underwater landslide near Norway spawned a tidal wave that flooded the entire low-lying island. All Mesolithic relics that have been salvaged from the North Sea zone date to before the ancient disaster, supporting the belief that the 5-meter (16 ft) tsunami destroyed what human civilization was left on Doggerland.

1 Wave Of Poseidon

A closer look at an ancient tale penned by Greek historian Herodotus suggests that a story of divine intervention is in fact a real-life account of a tidal wave. In 479 BC, a small Greek town faced invasion by the Persian army. Herodotus perfectly described how the attackers surged forward onto the exposed seabed when the water retreated, only to be drowned by giant waves and a high tide. The Greeks believed Poseidon, their sea god, sent the savior wave.

The town, Nea Potidea, still exists. Local drilling revealed evidence of a tsunami. Ocean sediment on the land contained shells roughly dating back to the time of the invasion. Scientists also found the area to be ideal for kicking up tsunamis. It’s prone to both earthquakes and landslides, and the seafloor nearby dips into a massive, tub-shaped hollow. Together, they have the capacity to create tidal waves up to 5 meters (16 ft) high.

Ever since our ancient ancestors said goodbye to their first loved ones, we’ve wondered what happens next. And the human imagination being what it is, we’ve come up with a lot of really disturbing possibilities. So it goes without saying that shrines and temples can get pretty dark, especially those that are trying to warn us of what’s going to happen if we stray.

10Dongyue Temple
China

Dongyue Temple dates back to 1319, and it’s one of the largest Taoist temples in Beijing. It’s also one of the creepiest.

It’s home to the Beijing Folklore Museum, which was opened in 1999 and commemorates a number of traditions throughout Chinese culture. The festivals and demonstrations that go on almost year-round mean that there’s a lot of blessing going on at the temple and at the museum. You can walk the blessing road or participate in the many ceremonies held there.

All that blessing is a good thing, because the temple also shows you exactly what’s going to happen to you if you don’t behave.

The main yard, which is accessible via the Happiness Road, has two huge pavilions that were built as memorials to two of the Qing Dynasty emperors. There are also 72 small rooms, each one representing one of the departments of hell. The namesake of the temple, Dong Yue, is, after all, the one responsible for overseeing all 18 layers of hell and the 76 departments within them.

And it’s all very bureaucratic. You can take a peek at the Department of Pity and Sympathy, which is filled with little clay statues of beggars waiting for their appeal. The Department for Accumulating Wealth is packed and, of course, there’s also a Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death.

There are donation and collection boxes outside each one of the cubicles if the garishly painted, absolutely terrifying statues are able to convince you that it won’t hurt to leave a little something behind for some goodwill from the overseers.

9Goa Lawah Temple
Indonesia

Not a fan of bats? Then you might want to give Bali’s Goa Lawah Temple a miss, because all that chirping is the sound of thousands of the little guys.

Goa Lawah means “bat cave,” and it’s also the site of a Hindu temple built in the 11th century. One of the earliest of the country’s Hindu temples, it’s grown into a massive temple complex where the faithful still go to leave offerings—especially before going on a trip. Many of the offerings are of fruit, so it’s not surprising that you can usually see the nectar bats that cluster around the mouth of the cave. The bats were also once an important part of the lives of the priests who lived at the temple, as it was thought that the frequency and pitch of their chirping helped to focus their minds during meditation.

According to the legend, the cave—which no one has ever explored in its entirety—was once the hiding spot of a prince. The caves led him away from his pursuers and to safety at Mount Agung’s Besakih Temple, but it’s also been said to lead to a few other temple locations. Supposedly, whenever Mount Agung erupts, ash pours from Goa Lawah.

And if you believe the legends, the bats aren’t the only unsettling residents in the cave. It’s also rumored to be the home of the Hindu snake Vasuki, the serpent seen in the company of Shiva. He guards the healing waters that are deep within the cave, deeper than has ever been explored. When he’s hungry, he comes out to eat some of the bats.

8Wat Phumin
Thailand

Wat Phumin is a Buddhist temple in Nan, Thailand, and it’s absolutely beautiful. There are four entrances to the temple, and each one holds a statue of Buddha. The interior is intricately decorated, the walls covered with murals that provide an invaluable look into daily life. That’s only the main temple, though, and along with a two-story library for religious texts, there’s also a squat little domed building that looks like a place you really don’t want to walk into.

Inside the dome are a series of life-size dioramas that show just what’s going to happen to those who stray from the Buddhist path. Hell is a temporary concept in Buddhist teachings, but there’s a handful of different interpretations as to what happens there. Some early scriptures describe it as one of the six realms of existence where souls go to suffer through rebirths after everything from being eaten alive to being cut into pieces, each time reborn to the same torment. Another text likens each realm to parts of our society here—hell is the spiritual equivalent of prison.

And you see it all in the hell dome. Animal-headed people are boiled alive in pots, victims are doused with hot oil, and there’s even a woman impaled on a tree with a bird eating pieces of her head. An overseer sits on a pile of skulls, and all the figures are done badly enough to be unsettling and well enough to be terrifying. It’s all in sharp contrast to the murals in the heavenly part of the temple, where merchants stare into the the eyes of their wives, musicians play instruments, and no one is getting boiled alive. The message is absolutely clear.

7Huashan Teahouse
China

There are no unsettling depictions of hell here, but the Huashan Teahouse is absolutely terrifying for a completely different reason. Contrary to the popular saying, getting there is definitely not half the fun.

Mount Huashan has been a sacred place for centuries. Scattered across the mountain’s peaks are a series of shrines and temples, and even the mountains themselves have an important place in religious lore. Taoist beliefs interpret wealth based on how many species of plants and animals are found in an area, and that makes the mountain the embodiment of wealth. That’s not up for debate, either, as when it comes to a narrow category like medicinal plants, there are 474 different types of them. It’s the place that gods have come to touch the Earth, to bring their magic, and to perform miracles; it’s also the place where emperors have gone to worship those gods. And the path to get there claims about 100 lives every year.

The path starts out with some steep stairs, but that’s cake. It soon turns into nothing more than broken boards nailed into the side of a sheer cliff face with no safety railings and only a chain to hold onto. In some places, there aren’t even boards, and you’d better be prepared to make your way across some narrow iron bars or use a chain to climb the sheer cliff face using nothing but footholds chiseled into the rock. When you make it to the top of the southern mountain peak, you’ll have the chance to have tea in a converted monastery that might have some of the best views around. Good luck getting back down.

6Zenkoji Temple
Japan

Nagano’s Zenkoji Temple is ancient. During the sixth century, Buddhism was still something of an unaccepted, upstart religion, and those who practiced it weren’t necessarily doing so with anyone’s approval. The whole thing was a bit hush-hush, and in 654, a statue that had been carved in India and brought into the country was installed, in secret, in the temple. Called a “hibutsu,” or “hidden Buddha,” the statue was originally brought out of its place behind the altar for special occasions until wear and tear on it necessitated creating a replica that was used instead. That was in the 13th century, and the replica is put on display every seven years (a similar statue is pictured above).

The real statue remains hidden. The last time it was examined was in 1720, when rumors started circulating that the box was empty. There’s another rumor that says that the statue is warm, and that touching it is like touching a living thing. When visitors touch a pillar in front of the altar, it’s said they’re touching the image by extension.

But that’s not the unsettling part.

There’s a tunnel beneath the altar, and not only is it the closest anyone—including the monks—can get to the hidden image of Buddha, it’s completely pitch black. It’s supposed to symbolize the journey that all souls go through in death and rebirth. It’s also a way for laypeople to experience the induction of new members of the priestly caste. After removing your shoes, you’re allowed into the completely dark tunnel. Somewhere along the way, hidden in the darkness, there’s a key to paradise that lucky (or blessed) visitors can try to find. If you’ve never been in a pitch-black tunnel with no way to gauge your surroundings or to even know what the lay of the room is, it’s a terrifying experience.

5The Snake Pagoda
Myanmar

Snakes not your thing? The pagoda at Paleik won’t be your thing, either.

Its official name is Yadana Labamuni Hsu-taungpye Paya, but most just call it the Snake Pagoda—and for good reason. The temple itself dates back to either the 11th or the 15th century (history’s not quite clear on just when it was built), but it was only in the 1970s that the snakes showed up. Three pythons made their way into the temple from the surrounding forest and decided that they were going to spend their days sleeping inside the pagoda, so they draped themselves around the images of Buddha.

The monks allowed them to stay, because who wants to argue with a python?

One of the pythons in particular is extremely large, about as big around as a man’s thigh and about 5 meters (16.5 ft) long. According to folklore, he’s particularly sacred, as he’s said to be the reincarnation of one of the temple’s abbots.

Today the snakes are a huge tourist attraction for the area, which also includes 325 stupas. And the snakes are, by all accounts, harmless. They’re well-fed and well-looked after, with the brave able to pose with them (and their handlers) for photos. You can also attend daily ceremonies in which the revered snakes are washed and fed.

4Mount Osore
Japan

One of Japan’s most sacred sites, Mount Osore (or Mount Osorezan), is one of the entrances to hell. It’s easy to see why, too. The temple sits on a volcanic plain. The air is filled with the smell of sulfur, the pockmarked ground spits and blows steam and hot water, and the nearby lakes have been turned a sickly color by the same sulfur that taints the air.

It also bears some striking similarities to the long-held depiction of the entrance to the afterlife. It’s surrounded by a river and eight mountains, and the pebbles along the side of the river are supposedly put there by the souls of dead children and babies, who are struggling to build a cairn so their spirits can move on. Statues around the complex depict Jizo, the protector spirit that tries to keep evil away from the children and their little piles of rocks. Parents who have lost children often bring pebbles to the site as an offering in the hopes that they’ll be used in the spirit bridges.

The children’s attempts are in vain, though, and their penance for dying before their parents is to be haunted by the evil demons that keep knocking down the piles of stones they make. And the temple, the beach, the barren, desolate landscape . . . it’s all covered with gifts that parents have brought to the spirits of their children. Little, colorful pinwheels dot the landscape, along with coins, chocolates, candy, and little toys. They leave gifts for Jizo, too—shoes, mostly, to help protect him as he chases the evil away from the children.

During the shrine’s festivals, women called itako commune with the spirits of the dead, bringing their messages back to the living who have come to see them. The women aren’t religious, but they’re given their gift supposedly because they lack another gift: sight.

According to tradition, the little bridge of Mount Osore is everyone’s destiny. It crosses to the afterlife, and those who have lived well will cross it easily, while those who have lived an evil life will not be able to see it.

3Tanah Lot
Indonesia

Tanah Lot is perhaps one of the most beautiful locations for a Hindu shrine . . . as long as you don’t mind the snakes. They’re not just snakes, either—they’re sea snakes, and some are incredibly deadly.

According to the legend, Tanah Lot was first settled by a Hindu wanderer named Danghyang Nirartha. After he built the sea temple on the rocky outcropping of the Balinese coast, the local king grew incredibly jealous. The king wanted to get rid of the missionary and sent orders that Nirartha was to leave the island and the temple. When he couldn’t hold out against the might of the king any longer, Nirartha turned his shawl into sea snakes, tasking them with protecting the temple while he was gone.

The snakes are still there, and during low tide, the brave can get close to the rocky island base and beach where they make their home. Still considered the guardians of the temple, the silver-and-black sea snakes are potentially deadly. And more sad than terrifying is the potential fate of Tanah Lot. Its perch on the ocean rocks has made it susceptible to erosion, and in the 1980s, measures were taken to help ensure that the temple won’t eventually fall into the water. Part of the restoration project included replacing a good amount of the island with fake rock.

2Preah Vihear
Cambodia

There are no giant snakes, sacred rats, or unsettling stories with this one—what makes this temple absolutely terrifying is the idea that you could very well be taking your life in your hands to visit it.

The temple sits on the Cambodian plain near the border with Thailand. Dating back to the 11th century, it’s an extremely well-preserved example of Khmer architecture, all the way down to the layout and the stone carvings that cover the temple. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the problem is that both nations think it belongs to them.

Archaeologists and park rangers tasked with documenting and preserving the site are used to the sights and sounds of gunfire around the temple. It’s only a few hundred feet from the border between Cambodia and Thailand, and occasionally, preservation work is interrupted when the conflict gets too bad. In 2011, dozens of people—civilians and soldiers alike—were wounded in attacks with at least seven casualties. The problems started in earnest when the two nations realized that the 2008 UNESCO designation had the potential to bring in a decent amount of tourist spending, and both wanted to claim that. A century-long conflict escalated overnight.

The temple is on a site that’s been sacred since at least 893, when the first monuments were built. Archaeologists find the temple, which is dedicated to Shiva, an even more impressive structure than the more well-known Angkor Wat, but the conflict needed to be settled first. When France and Siam drew borders between the two countries in 1904, they weren’t incredibly clear about which side the temple was on, which left a huge portion of land as contested territory. Conflict went all the way to The Hague.

In 2013, The Hague gave the temple to Cambodia in an interpretation of an earlier 1962 ruling that had also favored Cambodia. How peaceful the resolution is remains to be seen.

1Awashima Jinja
Japan

Dolls play a huge role in Japanese culture. They’re not just toys—they’re used in rituals and ceremonies for purification and prayer, along with being a treasured gift for everyone from a newborn child to diplomatic ambassadors. Some are highly collectible, and they’re not just treasured—they’re nearly sacred.

The shrine at Awashima Jinja is geared toward women who go there to pray on matters like health and fertility. They also go there to leave the dolls that their daughters have outgrown because of the belief that a doll that’s improperly disposed of might come back to haunt the family.

The shrine is covered with dolls. And not just dolls but statues and figurines as well, many of them once treasured possessions. And everyone knows just how creepy dolls can be, especially those that are no longer loved or cherished. There are thousands upon thousands of dolls at the temple.

Some dolls are thought to be hosts for human souls, and looking into the dead, staring eyes of those that are no longer needed, it doesn’t seem like the idea is that far-fetched. Every year, the shrine hosts a festival in which some of the dolls are piled into boats and launched into the nearby ocean. Eventually the boats—and the dolls—will sink, and it’s thought that they’ll take bad luck and misfortune with them to the bottom of the ocean.

Other dolls are brought to the shrine as offerings—some are given in the hopes of gaining some good luck with a new baby or conceiving a child. And many of the dolls are given a strangely human-esque ending; once they’re absolved of sin by a priest, they’re given to the fires in a ceremonial funeral.

+Bullet Baba
India

Ever since its installation, thousands of people have some to visit the the shrine of Bullet Baba. It’s not an ancient site—the legend only started in 1988—but it’s incredibly popular.

On December 2, 1988, a local man named Om Singh Rathore was killed when he crashed his motorcycle into a tree. After the accident, local lore says that his motorcycle kept mysteriously returning to the place of the accident. After attempting to move and secure the bike elsewhere, they just decided to erect a shrine to it. The spirit of Om, who had been incredibly proud of his bike, was blamed for not wanting to be parted from it even in death.

Now, the shrine, with its Royal Enfield Bullet and tree decorated with offerings left by visitors, is at the center of regular pilgrimages and a yearly celebration. On Om’s birthday, thousands of people gather and partake in more than a little bit of opium and alcohol. Bizarrely, other shrines have begun springing up across the countryside.

The idea is twofold. Not only is there a pretty neat legend associated with it, but there’s a very sobering reminder that goes along with the bike. The rate of traffic accidents and fatalities is high in the area, and the shrine serves as a very constant reminder of the consequences of drinking and driving. According to local law enforcement, the shrine seems to be doing its job, and numbers of fatal accidents have decreased. Still, one of the frequent visitors to the shrine is Om’s son, born two months after his death—and if that doesn’t deter drinking and driving, nothing will.

Horror fans know the feeling. You wait for months for that hyped-up scary movie to be released in theatres. You stand in line for popcorn and finally plop down in a comfy cinema seat in heightened anticipation of what has been promised to be ‘the scariest movie since…’ And then, halfway through, you realize the beginning was the best part and the movie is just not going to get any better.

Disappointment turns into a knot in your stomach and all you want to do is go home and create several memes about how bad the movie was. We’re looking at you, Boogeyman. And new Freddy Krueger (also old Freddy Krueger). And… well every movie on this list.

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10 The Nun

The Conjuring was released in 2013 and received mostly positive reviews. The Conjuring 2 followed in 2016 and received similar praise. The movie has a genuinely creepy core that tells the story of the Enfield poltergeist and it is also the film in which the freaky-looking nun is introduced. It creeped most movie-goers out at the time because she is immortalized in a painting by Ed Warren and comes to life after his wife has a vision. The nun turns out to be a demonic entity by the name of Valak that is banished to hell by Lorraine Warren towards the end of the film.^[1]

By the time we meet Valak again in the 2018 movie, The Nun, all the creepiness is gone. All the terror that The Conjuring brought is now replaced by a hokey-looking monster in a nun outfit that couldn’t scare a child if it tried. What should have been a strong instalment in The Conjuring universe, turned out to be a weak attempt at frightening people with several jump scares and a truly dismal attempt at explaining a disjointed backstory.

9 La Llorona

The frightening legend of La Llorona has been passed down through many generations. La Llorona, or The Weeping Woman, is part of Latin American folklore and is still used to terrify misbehaving children. The story goes that a long time ago, a woman named Maria, drowned her own children in revenge after her husband cheated. However, she was immediately overcome with regret and sorrow and killed herself. After being banished from heaven, she was sent back to Earth to live out her afterlife in misery. La Llorona is said to hover near bodies of water, all the while wailing and weeping for her children. Should you hear her or encounter her, run. If you are a cheating husband, run faster.^[2]

The horror movie, The Curse of La Llorona, was released in 2019 and was eagerly anticipated by horror fans worldwide. Unfortunately, the movie is one of the worst modern horrors and fails to scare up even one creepy scene. Even more unfortunate is the fact that even the jump scares fail in every way. The La Llorona character becomes somewhat laughable in her attempt to frighten audiences. And worst of all, the whole thing is just incredibly boring.

8 It Part 1 (and 2)

It, yet another great novel by Stephen King, has been turned into two mediocre films. The opening sequence of the novel is so memorable that you immediately identify little Georgie Denbrough with his yellow rain coat in It Part 1 (the movie).^[3]

The film starts out really well, following in the footsteps of the book, and shows Georgie running down the street chasing after his paper boat until he finds Pennywise in the sewer. The scene where the clown bites off his arm, is shocking and one would be forgiven for thinking that the rest of the movie will follow suit. Unfortunately, despite great performances by the cast, the movie never gets off the ground. It is two hours of a non-scary clown trying to scare children by using their greatest fears against them. Part 2 is even worse as the clown just doesn’t get any scarier. At the end, the now adult members of the Losers Club, shout abuse (in the form of ‘you don’t exist’) at him to the point that he weakens and finally ‘dies.’ It is disappointing that the fearsome creature dreamed up by Stephen King is reduced to a bobble-head clown that resorts to calling children ‘egg-boy’ and other names in a weepy voice.

7 Jeepers Creepers

Jeepers Creepers, released in 2001, has a promising start. It builds suspense with its intense opening sequence and you can almost feel the terror emanating through the screen. All too quickly however, the scares dissipate and what you are left with is a by-the-numbers horror flick with a terrible monster reveal. Terrible as in bad.^[4]

The monster looks like something between a badly drawn demon and a CGI alien gone wrong. Known as the Creeper, the monster is an ancient evil being that awakens every 23 years to gobble up some body parts. The backstory of the creature, as well as the sewn together bodies shown in the film, could have made for a horrifying tale, but it is all ruined by how non-terrifying the Creeper actually looks. Sadly, the sequels are even worse. Eventually, the scariest part of the movies turns out to be the writer/director, Victor Salva. Salva had been convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for sexual abuse of a minor (12-year-old boy) in 1988.

6 The Shining

There can be no doubt that Stephen King is a master of creating horrific characters and writing magnificent horror stories. Ever since Carrie was published in the eighties, King has cemented his legacy as one of the best novel writers in the world. The Shining is one of his standout novels, in which he brings to life the truly memorable character of Jack Torrance who slowly loses his mind in the eerie Overlook Hotel.^[5]

Considering the excellent novel, it is no wonder that King is not a fan of the film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick. None of the dark and brooding atmosphere that King so skilfully created in the book, is anywhere to be found in the movie. Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, looks crazed, but is never actually scary. The hedge animals are replaced by a maze, and Torrance eventually dies in the dumbest way that is completely different from how he dies in the novel. This is one film that really should be remade.

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5 The Happening

M. Night Shyamalan is known for his hits and misses when it comes to movies he directs. Who can forget The Last Airbender, After Earth, Lady in the Water, and The Happening. Turns out, most people wished they could, especially the train wreck that is The Happening.^[6]

What was meant to be a thrillingly scary, apocalyptic horror, turns out to be a sad and sometimes even comedic disaster. What could have been a truly terrifying tale of nature taking revenge on selfish humans, morphs into a caricature of itself, causing most audiences to laugh at the gruesome scenes instead of cowering in terror. Lions eating people and a lawnmower running someone over has never been less scary. In fact, some people are convinced that the movie is a comedy and was just mislabelled as a horror film.

4 Midsommar

After Hereditary hit theatres in 2018 and scared the crap out of audiences, horror fans couldn’t wait to watch Ari Aster’s next horror attempt: Midsommar. The film starts out creepily enough with main character Dani Ardor’s family dying in a murder-suicide. Dani cannot seem to move past the tragedy and decides to go to a midsommar celebration in Sweden with her boyfriend and other friends. It is at this point where things start to go south.^[7]

It soon becomes apparent that the Harga community in Sweden is not all unicorns and rainbows, especially after two elderly citizens jump off the edge of a cliff and die in a gruesome fashion. Things go even further south after this and at one point Dani’s boyfriend, Christian, starts having sex with a teenage girl while naked women surround them. Seemingly in homage to The Wicker Man (Nicolas Cage version), Christian is stuffed into a disembowelled bear at the end of the film and burned to death alongside the corpses of his friends, while Dani joins the villagers outside and starts to smile in a demented fashion.

The problem with Midsommar is that not only is it not scary, it is just confusing. And exceedingly long.

3 Rings

While movies such as Midsommar and IT at least got some decent reviews, it seems that Rings couldn’t inspire any critic to say anything positive about it. It was rated a dismal 8% on Rotten Tomatoes and with good reason. The third instalment to The Ring trilogy is such a far cry from the original movie that it doesn’t seem related except for the appearance of Samara.^[8]

Whereas The Ring was able to tap into people’s fear with an eerie videotape and a promise of death in 7 days, Rings does not produce a single scare-inducing moment. Not one. What could have and should have been a frightening final send-off using modern technology, turned into a joke. The plane crash scene in the beginning is just ridiculous and everything that follows is worse. Much like with The Happening, the scares are laughable with the dialogue inducing further laughter. After all, who takes any movie seriously during which a one-dimensional character very seriously and dramatically says: “The copied file is bigger than the original file!”

2 The Forest

Seeing as how Japan’s Aokigahara forest is also known as the Suicide Forest, there are a multitude of scary stories inspired by it. Sarah Lotz’s haunting novel, The Three, includes skin-crawling scenes in and around the forest. The movie, The Forest, is about an American woman who goes to Aokigahara to search for her missing twin sister.^[9]

With all the spookiness and tales of bodies hanging in the Aokigahara forest’s trees, you would expect the movie to have a creepy plot and disturbing visual scenes. Alas, no. The scares are watered down to the tired and decades-old jump variety. The weird sounds coming from the forest are not scary either, and the visions Sara (American woman) experiences, are just dull and boring. The ending is far too predictable and not chill inducing in the least. And perhaps worst of all, it seems to trivialize a site where so many have lost their lives without paying tribute to any of them in any way.

1 Slender Man

For a creepy pasta turned movie based on real events, Slender Man is exceptionally disappointing. When the first Slender Man images appeared online in 2009, they had the ultimate creep-factor. Children were playing in the foreground while something inhuman watches them from the background. The figure, named Slender Man, took over people’s imagination and more stories and images appeared. Things turned very dark when two 12-year old girls lured their 12-year old friend, Payton, into the woods in Waukesha, Wisconsin and proceeded to stab her 19 times. Payton survived the attack and her friends were sentenced to long stays in mental institutions after claiming that Slender Man forced them to carry out the attack.^[10]

The movie, Slender Man, was released in 2018, but had none of the terror of the real-life attack or the fear caused by the imaginary monster. The characters of the girls in the film are very poorly defined which makes for a very dull story. Considering the hype around the release of the movie and how scary it could have been, this movie is truly one of the worst disappointments in cinematic horror history.

When we go to doctors, we usually trust them to do their best to try to help us. However, doctors are humans, too, and that means they make mistakes. Some doctors do their best not make mistakes; others, not so much. As the health care system grows ever more complex and complicated, mistakes are bound to happen. Sometimes, these mistakes can cause lifelong problems. Other times, they’re lethal.

10 Alyssa Hemmelgarn Died From A Hospital Infection

In 2007, nine-year-old Alyssa Hemmelgarn became sick and didn’t seem to be getting any better. She had swollen glands and cold sores that wouldn’t disappear. Because of the malaise that Alyssa displayed, her mother, Carole, suspected that she may have had mono. However, when she took her daughter to the doctor, she received some devastating news. Alyssa was admitted to a Denver hospital, where she was diagnosed with leukemia.

That alone was tragic enough, but it wasn’t the end for Carole or Alyssa. After a week of treatment, Alyssa seemed to be doing better. She and her mother managed to walk around the hospital and watch a movie, but as the evening arrived, Alyssa began to feel worse. Soon after, she began to experience dire symptoms. Despite their best efforts, doctors couldn’t help Alyssa, and she soon died.

Alyssa wasn’t killed by leukemia. The actual cause was Clostridium difficile, a hospital-acquired infection that had grown more severe with each day. No one managed to find the infection before Alyssa died. It turned out that a doctor had noted Alyssa as “anxious,” so she was given Ativan, which could have covered up her symptoms. Another reason that nothing was done was the prohibitive cost to treat severe infections like C. diff. Antibiotics pumped directly into a large vein via IV costs $50,000, which makes many doctors leery to use it unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Alyssa did not die in vain, though. Since her death, there have been numerous reforms in treatment throughout hospitals in Colorado.

9 Richard Smith Died From Receiving A Paralytic

Richard Smith, 79 years old, had kidney disease, which required him to receive dialysis. In 2010, Smith was undergoing dialysis when he started to experience shortness of breath. He was admitted to the ICU. The next day, he complained of a stomachache. He was prescribed an antacid, which he received from his nurse afterward. Only . . . it wasn’t an antacid.

Smith was given pancuronium, a paralytic and muscle relaxant that is used for intubation in small doses and for lethal injection in larger ones. After Smith was given the drug, he became unresponsive. The drug had put him into respiratory arrest. Apparently, the packaging for the antacid and for the paralytic looked similar, which was the cause of the mix-up. While doctors did manage to resuscitate Smith, he was brain-dead and remained in a vegetative state until his death one month later.

According to Andrew Yaffa, the Smith family lawyer, the case was “the worst case of medical neglect” he had ever seen. To have given Smith the wrong drug, the nurse would have had to fail to follow numerous protocols: She “failed to look and read what medication he was taking [ . . . ] failed to scan to determine the right count for the medication, and failed to match the patient’s ID with the scanned medication.” To add insult to injury, the hospital appeared to show no remorse, even allowing the nurse to remain on the same floor that Smith had died on. They did, however, remove pancuronium from all nurses’ stations in the hospital and only allow anesthesiologists to have access to the drug.

8 Regina Turner Had The Wrong Surgery

Regina Turner endured many people’s worst nightmare concerning surgery—receiving the wrong operation. Her ordeal was already frightening enough: She had been admitted to the hospital for a “left-sided craniotomy bypass,” which was supposed to prevent Turner from having continued strokes, as she’d previously had a series of mini-strokes, which affected her ability to talk. After having the wrong surgery, her health deteriorated.

Before she went into surgery, Turner was still in relatively good shape. She was “mobile, cognizant, and able to care for herself.” According to the lawsuit filed against hospital, Turner’s condition worsened: “After the incorrect surgery, [Turner] requires around-the-clock care for her basic needs. [ . . . ] [She] will also continue to suffer from emotional distress, anxiety, disfigurement and depression.”

Rather than a left-side bypass, she had been given a right-side bypass, which caused considerable damage to her nervous system. Once the mistake was caught, the correct procedure was done, but Turner remained in poor health. The failure of anyone to catch the doctors’ mistake meant that numerous protocols were overlooked. Generally, before an operation, doctors and nurses will have a “time-out,” where they discuss in depth the details of the surgery and go over exactly what needs to be done. The surgeon also has to mark exactly where the surgery is to be performed. Apparently, this wasn’t enough to keep them from operating on the wrong side.

7 Pablo Garcia Received A Massive Overdose

We can generally agree that technology has vastly improved our lives, but it can still make mistakes, as can the people using it. This was the case when a 16-year-old boy named Pablo Garcia was admitted to the hospital for a colonoscopy to examine intestinal polyps. What should have been a completely routine procedure nearly became a lethal tragedy.

Garcia had a rare genetic disorder called NEMO deficiency syndrome, which causes recurrent infections and gastrointestinal issues. Because he was so susceptible to infection, Garcia required frequent antibiotic treatments. While in the hospital, Garcia had been prescribed the drug Septra for his infections. It’s fairly easy to determine how much of the drug to give to someone. It’s all dependent on conversions based on weight and age, which can be easily calculated with computers using a program called Epic EHR.

The program had been set to “milligrams,” which means that it would calculate how many milligrams of a drug should be given based on how many kilograms the patient weighed. However, the nurse treating Garcia reset the program and didn’t catch that it had now been set to “milligrams per kilogram.” When she typed in his dose, 160 milligrams of Septra, it multiplied it by Garcia’s weight. The dose equaled 38.5 pills, the largest dose ever recorded. Rather than question the machine, the nurse doled out the pills. Soon after, Garcia had a grand mal seizure, nearly dying. Luckily, he managed to survive. The case of Pablo Garcia illustrates quite clearly how dangerous it is to depend too much on technology.

6 Andy Warhol Received Too Many Fluids

In 1987, Andy Warhol required gallbladder surgery. Despite having a phobia of hospitals and doctors in general, he agreed to the surgery, which seemed to be successful. As usual for someone in a hospital, Warhol received fluids to remain hydrated. Unfortunately, he slipped into a coma and soon died.

Why had Warhol died after a routine procedure? An inquiry found that at the time of his death, Warhol was anemic. He had been before he was admitted, but doctors said he was in good enough condition for surgery. Afterward, though, it was discovered that Warhol had been receiving twice the amount of fluids he needed, which caused his body to drain itself of minerals, leading to his death. He had been unattended, and internal pressure built up, causing heart failure. According to Warhol’s private physician, Dr. Denton S. Cox, the 58-year-old artist hadn’t been looked over by any physicians, and the nurses rarely, if ever, checked up on him. He was being pumped full of morphine, which along with loss of nutrients due to excess fluids, caused his body to fill up.

During his autopsy, it was discovered that Warhol’s lungs and trachea had completely filled with fluid. The condition that Warhol died from could have been easily treated if someone on the staff would have simply paid attention.

5 Robert Stuart And Darren Hughes Died From Worm-Infested Kidneys

In 2014, an unknown alcoholic died in Northern England from what was believed to be meningitis. He was only 39, but he was a heavy drinker. After his death, his organs were rightfully rejected for donation because of their poor functioning, and the cause of death could have caused complications for any recipients. While they should have been destroyed, they were instead given to two unfortunate patients.

Robert Stuart and Darren Hughes both needed kidney transplants, so when two arrived, it must have seemed like a godsend. Argiris Asderakis, the consultant surgeon who accepted the kidneys, claimed that the patients knew there was significant risk because the donor had died from meningitis. Both patients accepted them and died from meningitis soon after. It became clear that the kidneys were infected with a rare parasitic worm called Halicephalobus gingivalis, which is primarily found in horses. At the time, there was no test that could determine whether or not the kidneys were infected with the parasite.

While the surgeon claimed no responsibility, the patients’ families said that they had not been given all of the information involving the risks associated with organ transplants. Even if the worms had not been present in the kidneys, the fact that they had been infected with meningitis would have posed significant risk that the patients would die while on dialysis. Since there had been no reported cases of the parasite in the UK, there was no reason to look for it. It still remains rare today, with only five reported cases in the world, but it’s worth the effort to check for it if you are ever in need of a new organ.

4 Rodney English Received A Bad Blood Transfusion

Rodney English, age 34, had been in and out of the hospital for most of his life due to spina bifida, a congenital disorder. When he was in the hospital receiving an operation for an infection, it wasn’t surprising that he needed a blood transfusion. After the procedure, he seemed to be recovering very well. However, his girlfriend quickly noticed that something was wrong. He couldn’t stay awake, and one day, he fell asleep and never woke up.

It wasn’t his condition or the procedure that killed him but rather a mislabeled blood transfusion. This is not a common phenomenon in any way. There are multiple layers of safety checks from the moment the blood leaves the blood bank to when it’s finally given to the patient. However, despite these protocols, they failed to catch the fact that English was receiving the wrong blood type. In a further act of incompetence, English’s family wasn’t informed of the mistake. They were told that English died from “anemia,” which was also listed as the cause of death.

It wasn’t until a CBS investigation that English’s family learned the truth. Another shocking revelation came when they learned that the blood came from a Red Cross facility in Atlanta that had 25 violations noted by the FDA in 1999 and had been fined for further allegations around the time that English died. When asked why Piedmont Hospital did not tell the family the true cause of death, they responded by saying that they never revealed anything about a patient’s death until there was “full information to share.”

3 Barry Morguloff Was Operated On By A Substance-Abusing Surgeon

When you’re on the operating room table, your life is quite literally in the surgeon’s hands. Knowing this, you would naturally hope that the surgeon operating on you would be of sound mind and body and competent enough to do his job. Barry Morguloff’s surgeon, on the other hand, was a man who committed numerous violations and should have never been allowed to practice medicine.

Morguloff first went to the hospital complaining of back pain. He was given steroid injections, but they didn’t help. He was then referred to Dr. Christopher Duntsch for spinal fusion, a delicate surgery that worked directly with the nerves in the spinal cord. When Morguloff emerged from surgery, the pain was still there; in fact, it had grown worse. He was given painkillers, but after six months, he was still in pain. When another doctor examined Morguloff, he discovered that bone fragments had been left on the nerves, and the hardware in his spine was installed incorrectly. It took another surgery to fix it.

How could such glaring mistakes have been committed by a supposedly accredited surgeon? Dr. Randall Kirby, a surgeon who assisted Duntsch, claimed that he had a surgical technique like a first-year medical student and had little to no knowledge of the spinal system. Other patients of Duntsch also complained that they only grew worse after seeing him.

Not only was Duntsch completely incompetent, but it also became clear that he was using drugs while working. A bottle of vodka was in his desk, he was using painkillers, and a bag of white powder was found in his private bathroom. He left one patient in the operating room so he could go to Las Vegas. He skipped five drug tests during his time at the hospital. The reason he was allowed to operate was the fact that the hospital had advanced him $600,000 to move from Tennessee to Dallas, and they wanted to recoup their investment no matter the consequences.

2 Riley McDougall Was Given Ambien Instead Of Antibiotics

When an adult starts to suffer from insomnia for whatever reason, they might go to their doctor for help, and they might be prescribed Ambien, an effective and popular sleep aid. In adults, Ambien can ease insomnia; in a child, it can have terrifying mental effects. It is for this reason that children are rarely, if ever, prescribed the drug. Now imagine how bad it was when a 12-year-old girl was given the drug by accident.

Riley McDougall was prescribed antibiotics, but when she started taking her pills, she became dazed and experienced frightening hallucinations. She tried to remove stair railings, thinking they were curtains, and saw other frightening manifestations. The episode was caught on camera by her mother, Coleen. Riley was taken to the emergency room, where she was told that she’d had a bad reaction to Sudafed, which she was taking for a cold. She was released and went back home. Coleen didn’t give Riley the Sudafed this time but continued to give her the “antibiotics.” Riley started experiencing double vision 20 minutes later. Coleen called the pharmacy and described the pills to the pharmacist along with their effects.

What the pharmacist told her explained it all: The pills were not azithromycin, the antibiotic Riley needed, but Ambien. The Ambien pills were white and hardly resembled azithromycin pills, which are pink. Coleen filed a lawsuit against the local CVS and said that her daughter’s reaction should serve as a warning to everyone. About prescriptions, she said: “Make sure you really read your prescriptions, and make sure it’s the right thing.”

1 Jack Startz Hooked Patients On Drugs And Destroyed Their Faces

To many, celebrities undergoing frequent cosmetic surgeries to keep looking “fresh” is nothing more than a joke. After all, if they have that much money to throw around needlessly, then why should we care? In the case of Beverly Hills surgeon Jack Startz, celebrity plastic surgery took a dark turn. Recently, his horrifying practice has come back to light due to the HBO film Behind the Candelabra, where he is portrayed as an eccentric surgeon who will do anything for his client, Liberace. In reality, though, he was an unethical monster.

In 1979, Liberace, the world-renowned showman, watched himself on The Tonight Show and was horrified by what he saw. He felt that he looked old and decided to get a face-lift. He went to ear, nose, and throat specialist Jack Startz, who agreed to perform the procedure. The result—Liberace’s face was so tight that he couldn’t fully shut his eyelids, even when he was sleeping. Despite this, Liberace wanted his partner, Scott Thorson, to receive plastic surgery to resemble a younger version of himself. Startz agreed to do this, too. In the process, Startz put Thorson on a “Hollywood diet,” which was little more than a highly addictive cocktail made of drugs like pharmaceutical cocaine, quaaludes, and amphetamines, which left Thorson dependent on them.

The reason Startz agreed to do these questionable procedures was the fact that he was experiencing financial problems related to his own alcoholism and drug use. He soon found a gold mine in silicone injections. He performed them constantly without any regard for his patients because he needed the money. The results were scary: Elaine Young, a celebrity realtor, was a high-profile victim of his practice. Starting in 1977, Young received monthly silicone injections from Startz. At first, the results seemed to defy reality, so much so that Young recommended Dr. Startz to all her friends and clients.

Within three years, though, something started to go wrong. The silicone in her face began to shift and move, severely deforming it. She tried to contact Dr. Startz, but he didn’t return her calls. She learned that over 100 lawsuits had been filed against him. From 1965 to 1979, Startz had injected 2,000 people with silicone, many of whom were experiencing the same effects as Young. Facing mounting legal issues, possible jail time, and severe substance abuse, Startz put a gun in his mouth and shot himself in 1985.

Gordon Gora is a struggling author who is desperately trying to make it. He is working on several projects. You can write him at [email protected].