That abandoned house at the end of your street is pretty creepy. The story your older cousins told you about the guy with a hook for a hand calling the babysitter from inside the house (or something like that – you were too busy trying not to pee your pants to listen), that was really creepy. These are creepy things that happen in the real world. So, what about the internet?
C’mon, are you kidding?
Amongst the sea of mid-2000s of cat video montages, the panoply zoomers lip-syncing to 5-seconds of a pop song (that proves the world is doomed), and that damned Scottish bloke singing a sea shanty, there exists some of the creepiest, most mysterious and downright gross content. You don’t even have to plumb the depths of the deep web to find it – it’s right at the surface. The blurred line between the internet and real-life blur at this point.
Here’s a list of 10 of the creepiest things found online.
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10 Out In The Cold
Russian YouTuber ‘Stas Reeflay’ (real name Stanislav Reshetnikov) focussed largely on gaming-based content. Finding it tough to compete in the genre, Stas also made some sketchy livestreams. Stas had done a fair few of these edgy streams, generating income by pepper spraying his girlfriend or forcing a friend of his to drink oil for donations. On December 2nd, 2020, things went too far on one of these streams. One viewer pledged $1000 for Stas to beat his girlfriend, Valentina, and lock her outside in the freezing cold.
This was in Moscow. In the winter.
Stas did what he’d been paid to do – As he locked Valentina out in sub-zero temperatures, soaking wet from some water he’d poured all over her, she proceeded to bang the door frantically for 2 hours. The viewers kept donating.
When Stas eventually pulled her back into his apartment she was unconscious and had turned a blueish-grey. Stas took Valentina and propped her up on his couch. When he failed to revive her, he continued to stream and take money.
She had been pregnant.
The paramedics came after Stas eventually called for an ambulance. They asked the YouTuber to refrain from filming them. He refused, allowing the 1500 or so viewers to continue to watch.
And donate.
He is awaiting trial.[1]
9 r/ControllableWebcams
Most creepy or shocking threads on sites like reddit will leave you wondering “is this real?”. Indeed, many threads are essentially just creepypastas or ARGs (alternate reality games) masquerading as true stories in order to maximise engagement.
Not so on reddit board ‘r/ConrollableWebcams’—a community of people dedicated to watching feeds from hacked cameras, the links posted allow users to access random webcam feeds. Sometimes it’s a carpark. Sometimes it’s a workplace. Sometimes it’s a bedroom. Yes, we have entered a real-life deep web creepypasta here, folks.
Mods have tried their best to ensure that nothing too untoward occurs on this board, but there’s only so much control they can have (short of scrapping it outright, of course).
This egregious, gross intrusion into people’s right to privacy is more common than you’d think—Go check your Nest or Ring setup now![2]
8 Nizamul Khan
Another famous YouTuber has found himself on the wrong side of the law, this time in India. Nizamul Khan is a popular creator who specialises in motorbike stunts performed during skits, often featuring Nizamul’s girlfriend. The pair were said to be head-over-heels in love, with Nizamul planning on proposing to her. The problem? The girl’s brother, Kamal Sharma, vehemently opposed his sister’s involvement with Khan. Sharma forbade his sister from seeing Khan, going so far as to confiscate her phone.
On the 28th of October, 2020, Khan and two accomplices followed Sharma on his way home from work. The three attackers rode alongside Kamal whilst he had stopped his bike at an intersection. He was shot in the back and died. Nizamul Khan and his two co-conspirators are awaiting trial.[3]
7 112Dirtbag
Maury Murray vanished after leaving her crashed car in a snowbank, seemingly to avoid police after a passer-by called them. If you want a deeper dive into the mystery of her vanishing, check out the video above.
In 2012, 8 years after Maura vanished, a lead seemingly popped up out of nowhere. A video posted to YouTube by a user named ‘112Dirtbag’ showed a middle-aged man staring directly at the camera and laughing, before ending the video with a wink and a message which read “Happy Anniversary”. Now, the username and the message suggested he knew something about Maura’s fate, if not directly responsible – the name is a reference to a quote from Maura’s father, speculating as to what could have happened to her; he said that perhaps some “dirtbag” on “route 112” could have abducted her. Furthermore, the video was posted exactly 8 years to the day that Maura went missing, making the final message incredibly troubling.
It turned out that this guy was just a troll. Alden Olsen, a Massachusetts resident, was cleared of any involvement. He has since started a blog about Maura’s case, seemingly trying to help solve it. So, we can assume Olsen was trying to bring more attention to the case (?!) By posing as the killer…
Although he has been definitively cleared of suspicion regarding Maura Murray’s case, one cannot help wondering why he, and many like him in other tragic cases, do this sort of stunt, inevitably compounding and exacerbating the misery of the victim’s loved ones.
Just stop.[4]
6 Hungry?
With a prominent NSFW warning, this post on Reddit’s ‘r/IAmA’ board should also have a YMV warning too – ‘You May Vomit’.
User ‘u/IncrediblyShinyShart’ lost the use of one of his legs after a motorcycle accident. He spent some time in severe agony with doctors suggesting that should amputate the leg. When the user asked what would happen to his leg, he learned that it would be cremated and then dumped in a landfill. This wasteful action did not please IncrediblyShinyShart, so he took his amputated limb home after it was cut off below the knee. After initial plans to freeze dry the leg fell through due to the exorbitant costs involved, he resolved to getting a cast made. One problem remained—what to do with the leg?
Luckily for the newly legless poster, a friend of his was a chef… and he had a group of pals who’d often discussed if they’d be curious in tasting human flesh if it were ethically sound.
And so, they did. In some tacos, with some Mexican style veggies and seasoning, all topped with a splodge of tomatillo sauce.
“It had a very pronounced, beefy flavor to it. The muscle I cut was tough and chewy. It tasted good, but the experience wasn’t the best.” Later, one of the guests messaged IncrediblyShinyShart—”hey, just so you know, I pooped you out. Sorry”.[5]
5 Weird Stores
On the r/TooAfraidToAsk subreddit, people have a space to ask the community any question that may be deemed too stupid, taboo or embarrassing in real life. In July 2019, one user named ‘u/icemanthrowawy123’ took a different tack – he wrote ‘Twelve mysterious and identical stores open on my street. What could be happening?’. The post quickly climbed to the top of the board; it wasn’t the usual ‘I shat my pants in public’-type post, typical of the average redditor.
He wrote that these ‘shops’ only sold out-of-date, mouldering Walmart foodstuffs and only took cash. Referring to the signage on all these random shops:
‘The names are all tiny variations off of each other like {townname MART} or {Market of Townname} and all clearly bought their signs from the same place as the fonts, colors, size, and shapes are identical. These stores see no business that I’ve ever witnessed yet have large staff numbers and are surviving way longer than the former stores that closed on this street’.
Could they be a front for money laundering a food stamp fraud scam? Some users thought so, but others doubted the veracity of the tale; the poster hadn’t provided any photos or further evidence, despite promising to do so. Silent since late 2019, it seems this was simply a creepy post made for clicks.
But you never know, maybe ‘they’ got him.
4 What Happened To Om?
Om Sayf is a Syrian refugee living in Turkey who gained a large following for her livestreams playing PUBG (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLhUu-4LyRM). Her star was on the rise until, on the 10th of Jan, 2021, she posted a video claiming she was quitting YouTube. She also left social media. Creator burnout? Maybe she’d gotten another job? Unfortunately not.
It seems that something far darker and more immediately dangerous for Om could be afoot. At the end of her ‘final’ video, she made a hand gesture that seems to be the new universal signal to indicate domestic abuse (https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/secret-hand-signal-allows-domestic-18387107).
Her fans peppered Twitter with concerned messages and calls for an investigation. She has since made videos that show she is indeed alive, if not confirming she is well. Although there is no resolution to this story yet, we can only hope that the Turkish authorities can provide her with the help she needs, whatever that may be.[6]
3 “Ubisoft goes Steamworksm bye bye always on DRM”
Back to the weird and wonderful world of Reddit. A user called ‘YAYVIDEOGAMES’ made thousands of incoherent, garbled posts, all a variation of a single phrase—’Ubisoft goes Steamworks bye bye always on DRM’. Each post is unique, including bold, italic and differently formatted lettering, suggesting that each of his posts were typed out by u/YAYVIDEOGAMES. Embedded in many of the posts were a series of strange, sometimes creepy image files, including one photo showing a handwritten variation of his garbled message messily scrawled on a piece of paper. Furthermore, all of this was completed within just a few hours.
What was this? Was it some strange form of trolling, a guy losing his mind, a new and sophisticated bot? Nothing made sense—this was a real mystery.
Well, after some grade A online sleuthing from within the Reddit community, we finally have an answer to what went on here. It seems that YAYVIDEOGAMES was bedridden and suffering with chronic pain and the aftereffects of delusional paranoia During attempts to improve his situation by pharmacological intervention (opiates and anti-psychotics), the user made the repetitive posts whilst in a secure facility, either due to being in an altered state or to overcome his immense pain.
Not so mysterious, but still very harrowing, nonetheless.[7]
2 Getting Proof Of UFOs, One Leak At A Time
‘Finally!’ cried all the true believers when this footage was leaked. Hold your horses, though, all this stuff is not proof of the existence of aliens, gang. It is simply proof that US authorities know and study the phenomenon of UFOs (and seem to have no idea what is going on).
In and of itself, this is as close to proof that UFO fans and fanatics have ever gotten—You must admit, sceptics, it’s all quite intriguing. Keep watching the skis… I mean skies (obligatory Simpsons reference complete).[8]
1 Hell IRL
One of the prevailing dictums of the internet age has been “The Internet is not real life”. It is also true, however, that real people with real lives use the internet. The intersection of these converging ‘realities’ can be a scary place. Nowhere is this more evident than the tragic case of Brandi Worley and her husband, who took to reddit for advice under the username ‘u/Jasoninhell’.
The man took to the site in 2016 to seek advice about his terrible home life – a cheating manipulative wife who had cuckolded him, even chiding him to be kinder to his neighbour, with whom she had been having the affair. Jason, after taking the advice of reddit users, filed for divorce and sought custody of their two kids.
Three days later, Jason’s wife waited until he was asleep (he was sleeping in the basement, out of her reach), before stabbing her children to death and attempting to take her own life. She was convicted of the murder of 7-year-old Tyler and 3-year-old Charlee and sentenced to 120 years in jail.
In 2018, Jason returned to reddit to give an update, stating that although he was still in mourning at the loss of his kids, he was doing better. Further he gave advice to always take the time to tell your loved ones what they mean to you and cherish your time with them, finishing with –
“Always make sure they know how much you love them, I had the fortune that the last thing my children ever heard me say was, “I love you, good night. I will see you in the morning.”[9]
10 Creepy And Surreal Moments Caught On Video
About The Author: CJ Phillips is a storyteller, actor and writer living in rural West Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.