My Little, Naive, Innocent Brain Cried After Learning About These Horrifying, Shocking, And Upsetting Things In 2023

In case you want to end the year falling down a deep and dark rabbit hole, here’s a roundup of alllll the awful, unsettling, and nightmarish things I learned about in 2023:

Note: Some disturbing and graphic content ahead.

1.

The existence of a middle age “punishment” device called a “Scold’s bridle” — which was basically an iron muzzle that went into your mouth, pressed down on your tongue, and was meant to be very painful and traumatizing. According to the British Library, the Scold’s bridle was “used to hurt and humiliate women whose speech or behavior was thought to be too offensive or unruly.”

2.

In 2013, a man in Florida was swallowed alive in the middle of the night by a 17-foot-wide SINKHOLE that had formed under his bedroom. Yes, his BED. ROOM. He was asleep at the time, and his brother tried to save him, but he was too late by the time he’d rushed in to help.

3.

In 2008, a priest in Brazil tied himself to 1,000 balloons in an attempt at “cluster ballooning” (a form of ballooning where people are literally harnessed to a cluster of helium-inflated rubber balloons). He ended up floating out over the ocean and disappeared from contact. Although the priest had been equipped with all kinds of gear like a radio and a GPS tracking device, he was lost for months, and his corpse was eventually found in the ocean.

4.

In the 1920s, Dr. Dicran Hadjy Kabakjian and his family refined radium in the basement of their house in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania to supply doctors and hospitals with radium-tipped needles for cancer treatment. The radiation eventually killed them all — either through cancer, or in Dicran’s case, emphysema that was likely caused by the fumes. Interestingly (and horrifyingly), when Dicran’s body was exhumed for study in 1965, his skeleton registered the highest levels of radiation ever recorded in the human body.

5.

The female Adactylidium mite — a small arachnid — is known for its highly unusual, and quite frankly, HORRIFYING life cycle that involves incest and matricide. (Read below for the exact details, if you dare!)

6.

In 2013, a 20-year-old amateur football referee in Brazil was decapitated after he stabbed a player to death for “refusing to leave the pitch.” The referee’s actions basically instigated the crowd, causing many of them to rush the field and then dismember the referee’s body in retaliation.

7.

Some years ago, a CT scan revealed that a Buddhist monk had actually been mummified — more specifically, self-mummified — inside of a statue. This process of self-mummification involved the elaborate and difficult process of eating a special diet and drinking a poisonous tea so that the body would become too toxic to be eaten by maggots. The statue had been purchased by a private buyer at a market and initially brought to an expert for restoration when the surprising (and unsettling) discovery of the monk’s body inside was made.

8.

In 2004, three transplant recipients shockingly died after receiving organs from a donor who had been unknowingly infected with rabies. According to the CDC, “This [had] never happened before.” After some laboratory tests, it was believed by experts that the donor had actually been infected by a bat.

9.

In 2022, a man in San Diego died after driving his car into a parked car and inadvertently impaling himself in the neck with a knife that he’d been handling at the time. It was reported that “authorities found an open knife in the Lexus and a large amount of blood. At the hospital, doctors also discovered a stab wound in his neck.”

10.

In 2007, a 44-year-old French man was discovered to have been missing 90% of his brain. Speaking with CBC, Axel Cleeremans, a cognitive psychologist at the Université Libre in Brussels, explained, “He was living a normal life. He has a family. He works. His IQ was tested at the time of his complaint. This came out to be 84, which is slightly below the normal range. So, this person is not ‘bright’ — but perfectly, socially apt.”

11.

Ettore Majorana was an Italian theoretical physicist working in the early 1900s. He had worked with the likes of other famous physicists like Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. However, Majorana disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1938.

12.

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, 50 emergency workers volunteered to stay behind — exposing themselves to deadly levels of radiation — in order to prevent a full meltdown of the facility. Yahoo! News reported at the time, “The remaining workers inside the Daiichi plant are not going in blindly; they are experts in their field, and well versed in the health risks they’re facing.”

13.

António Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist who invented the lobotomy — which is now considered one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine — was actually awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for this HIGHLY invasive and life-altering procedure.

14.

This photo of the inside of an Arctic lamprey’s mouth:

15.

The story of Mary Toft, a woman in 18th-century England who scammed doctors and the public into believing that she had given birth to rabbits. She would accomplish this by literally putting small rabbits and/or their body parts up inside her vagina in secret and then “birth” them later.

16.

The fact that oubliettes used to exist. An oubliette (from the French “oublier” meaning “to forget”) was a type of medieval dungeon that had a trap door at the top, just out of reach of the prisoner. The worst part was that the dungeon would be shaped like a really narrow passage so that the prisoner wouldn’t be able to sit or even get on their knees. So, yeah, they were basically forced to stand and starve to death.

17.

In August 2022, Celebrity Cruises stored a dead man’s body in the ship’s drinks cooler where it was apparently “left to rot for six days.” When the body was found, it was reportedly in “advanced stages of decomposition.”

18.

Heather Mack, a convicted murderer from Chicago who, along with her boyfriend, brutally killed her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in Bali, Indonesia in August 2014. The crime drew a lot of public attention due to the fact that Mack and her boyfriend stuffed her mother’s body in a suitcase.

19.

The existence of Cymothoa exigua, aka the “tongue-eating louse,” a parasitic isopod that severs the blood vessels in a fish’s tongue, causing the tongue to fall off. After detaching the tongue, the parasite then attaches itself to the remaining stub, basically serving as the fish’s new “tongue.”

20.

Images from the aftermath of the Apollo 1 tragedy that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. On Jan. 27, 1967, during a launch rehearsal test, a fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module, burning all three men alive.

21.

The Mummies of Venzone, a collection of dozens of naturally mummified bodies — who became that way thanks to mold — that were found in Venzone, Italy in the 1600s and date back to as early as the 1300s.

22.

The story of David Charles Hahn, aka the “Radioactive Boy Scout,” who built a homemade radioactive neutron source in his Michigan home’s backyard when he was just a teenager.

23.

The death of Paulette Gebara Farah, a 4-year-old girl in Mexico who disappeared, but was later found dead under suspicious circumstances. Her body was discovered seemingly hidden in her own bed.

24.

The existence of this fascinating (but horrifying-looking) creature called a Cosmoderus Femoralis, aka an armored fighter cricket, which is apparently quite rare.

25.

This 1950s news clipping from the New York Daily Mirror that asked, “If a Woman Needs It, Should She Be Spanked?” And then had responses by three men ranging from “Why not?” to “Yes when they deserve it” and “You bet. It teaches them who’s boss.”

26.

The story of Joe Mellen, a “psychedelic adventurer” from the UK who drilled a hole in his own skull in order to “stay high” in 1970.

27.

This terrible story of a leaping sturgeon that jumped out of the water, hit, then killed a 5-year-old girl in Florida who had been out boating with her family.

28.

The fact that a medicine called “One Night Cough Syrup” was made in the 1800s and it contained wild ingredients like alcohol, cannabis, chloroform, and morphia, sulph (an old name for morphine).

29.

This shocking/wtfffffff video of what it looks like when an “angry” camel inflates its dulla — an organ in male camels’ throats that is “believed to be associated with the display of dominance among males and for attracting females.”

30.

The shocking fact that the author of Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown, died as a result of doing a high kick.

31.

The tragic story of 4-year-old Brandon Zucker, who was crushed underneath one of the vehicles in the Roger Rabbit Car Toon Spin ride at Disneyland in 2000. Brandon suffered “serious brain damage” and “never talked or walked again.” He died in January 2009.

32.

The awful death of Ilda Vitor Maciel, an 88-year-old woman in Brazil who died after accidentally being injected with soup. Allegedly, one of the nursing technicians injected the soup into her veins instead of her feeding tube.

33.

The fact that A LOT of people actually go overboard on cruise ships (we’re talking hundreds). And, even worse, in the past, less than a quarter of them were actually rescued.

34.

The first firefighter killed after responding to the 9/11 attacks was a man named Daniel Suhr…he was hit by a falling body, someone who had jumped from one of the towers.

35.

In 2018, construction workers in Valdosta, Georgia discovered HUNDREDS of human teeth BEHIND A WALL. The building, which was originally built in 1900, had been occupied by a dentist, although no one really knew why the teeth of all his patients had been stashed behind the wall.

36.

The fiery and unimaginable death of Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who crashed down to earth while “crying in rage” in 1967. Komarov was the first human to die in a space flight after the parachute failed on his capsule, the Soyuz 1.

According to NPR, “When the capsule began its descent and the parachutes failed to open, the book describes how American intelligence ‘picked up [Komarov’s] cries of rage as he plunged to his death.’ Some translators hear him say, ‘Heat is rising in the capsule.’ He also uses the word ‘killed’ — presumably to describe what the engineers had done to him.

Komarov was honored with a state funeral. Only a chipped heel bone survived the crash.”

37.

This upsetting video, which recently went viral, that shows HOW MUCH TRASH has been left and accumulated on Mount Everest by tourists (which has become a major problem).

38.

The tragedy of Cameron Robbins, a teenager and recent high school graduate who fell overboard while on a sunset cruise ship in the Bahamas on May 24, 2023. According to reports, Cameron allegedly jumped off the ship on a dare. Video of the incident showing Cameron swimming in the water in near-total darkness went viral online.

39.

And the death of a 23-year-old Russian man earlier this year, who was attacked and violently killed by a shark near a beach in Egypt. The disturbing video of the incident, which went viral on TikTok, showed the man being attacked and screaming, “Papa!”

40.

The existence of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, aka prion diseases — a group of “exceptionally rare brain diseases” — which have a 100% mortality rate and affect both animals and humans. An example of this would be “mad cow” disease.

41.

This “omgggg whaaaaat?!?!” video of what a sturgeon’s mouth looks like (SIDE EYE).

42.

The “incorruptible” body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, a nun who died in 2019 at the age of 95. Four years after her death, her body was exhumed and showed no signs of decay.

43.

The 53-year-old cold case of “trunk lady,” who, thanks to modern DNA testing, has now been identified as Sylvia June Atherton, a mother of five, from Tucson, Arizona.

44.

This wild image of what an owl’s ear actually looks like, which is both amazing and also looks like something out of a sci-fi horror film. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

45.

A man was BOILED to death — his body actually dissolved — after he illegally jumped into a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. The man had been making an attempt to “hot pot” in the acidic pool. The entire incident was recorded by the man’s sister on her cellphone.

46.

In Thailand in July 2023, a woman’s leg had to be amputated after it got trapped in an airport’s moving walkway. Her injuries were SO severe that the amputation had to go all the way up to her kneecap.

47.

The fact that muffler hair is a very real thing that exists…and looks absolutely TERRIFYING. In the photo below, this person woke up one day to find what looked like human hair sticking out of their car’s exhaust. But, don’t worry, turns out it is not any kind of human (or animal hair), just a fibrous insulating material.

48.

While filming Titanic, someone secretly drugged members of the cast and crew with PCP. To this day, no one knows who spiked the clam chowder that was the culprit.

49.

The Triumph carnival cruise ship disaster of 2013, which became known as the “poop cruise” from hell. The ship was stuck for almost a week at sea due to an engine fire, which then led to all kinds of technical problems…including lots of bags of poop all over the place.

50.

The existence of GIANT beach worms, which just unlocked a new fear for me.

51.

The recent air travel nightmare story of a passenger discovering the floor below him, his wife, and their cats was soaked in blood and feces.

52.

In some of the most heartbreaking news I’ve read in a while, it’s been estimated that between 200,000 and 600,000 pets were left behind during Hurricane Katrina evacuations…but not because their owners didn’t want to take them, but because people were basically FORCED to leave them behind.

53.

The death of Gloria Ramirez, aka the “Toxic Lady,” a woman in Riverside, California whose body was so poisonous and full of carcinogens — after apparently self-administering a chemical solvent — that it was believed many hospital workers became ill after being exposed to her body and blood in 1994.

54.

The existence of a plant called Dendrocnide Moroides, aka the “Deadly Stinger” or “gympie-gympie” plant, the world’s most venomous plant, which is also violently painful if touched. Apparently, it causes pain so bad that it can make you feel “electrocuted and set on fire at the same time.”

55.

This super icky photo of a (probably…hopefully?!?!) dead mummified spider that someone found in their basement.

56.

The invasion of giant African land snails — which pose a serious health risk to humans because they carry the rat lungworm parasite — in June 2023 that was so bad it actually prompted a quarantine in South Florida.

57.

The terrible fact that over the Fourth of July weekend this year, 2023, 68 people were killed in crashes on California highways. Nearly half of those people were not wearing seatbelts.

58.

A “half-eaten” octopus was removed from a man’s throat in Singapore after he went to the hospital complaining of “swallowing difficulties.”

59.

In 1999, the near perfectly preserved bodies of three children were discovered at the high-altitude summit of Mount Llullaillaco in Argentina. They turned out to be 500 years old and still had internal organs intact, blood present in their hearts and lungs, and skin and facial mostly “unscathed.” It was found that they had simply frozen to death as they slept.

60.

The prolonged and painful death of Harry Houdini. So, the gist of the story is that Houdini was punched so hard in the stomach (after claiming he could withstand the hardest punch), which then caused a ruptured appendix. What exactly caused the acute appendicitis isn’t even the worst part of the story, though…

61.

The fact that the “breast ripper,” a medieval torture device with claw-like spikes that was used exactly as the name implies, actually existed. Apparently, it was used on women who were “accused of adultery, abortion, and other ‘crimes.'”

62.

On June 10, 1990, a British Airways flight captain was “partially ejected” (i.e. sucked out) from an aircraft after an improperly installed windscreen panel separated from its screen.

63.

Earlier this year, a “black-market” illegal medical lab “complete with bioengineered mice, infectious agents, nearly 30 refrigerators and freezers some of which were non-operational, incubators, and more” was discovered in Reedley, California (just outside of Fresno).

64.

A 12-year-old boy in Israel suffered a very rare internal decapitation accident after he was hit by a car while riding his bike. Surgeons then had to perform the lifesaving procedure of reattaching his head.

65.

In 2016, an 18-year-old, Tyler Turner, and the instructor he was jumping in tandem with died in a skydiving accident after their parachutes didn’t open.

66.

A few years ago, a man in Arizona, whose mother died after suffering from Alzheimer’s, donated her body to a facility that he was led to believe would use it for medical research. However, he later discovered that her body was sold to the US military for roughly $6,000 and then blown up in a “blast test” without consent.

68.

A 24-year-old construction worker in Texas was accused of being on drugs but was actually dying of heatstroke while working in Texas back in June 2022. The man, Gabriel Infante, ended up dying in a hospital from severe heatstroke and had a recorded internal temperature of 109.8°F.

69.

The existence of the puss caterpillar, which, according to this Reddit user below, “will fuck your world up.” They explained, “I grazed it twice while climbing on a float. NBD at first, but an hour later, I was hyperventilating on the bedroom floor. The pain was excruciating. Dear husband took me to the ER, and morphine did nothing.”

70.

This person on Reddit who found what looks to be human bones in a wall. They explained, “If it helps, it wasn’t a wall in a house but in the cement foundation/walls of a building that closes my backyard on the far side (if that makes sense). That wall is crumbling, and glass shards, nails, whatever have fallen out of it…and then I pulled these bones out one day.”

71.

Earlier this year, a 200-foot asteroid, roughly the size of an airplane, “just missed Earth,” and it wasn’t even DETECTED until two days after the fact because it was “hidden by the sun’s glare.”

72.

As a reminder to think twice before visiting Death Valley in the summer — i.e. one of the hottest places on earth — a man, Steve Curry, died there just a few weeks ago. In fact, below is a photo of Curry hiking in Death Valley the morning he died.

73.

A 2-year-old boy in Nevada died from a brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, after visiting Ash Springs, a natural hot spring just north of Las Vegas.

74.

On Oct. 29, 2013, there was a lethal wind turbine accident in the Netherlands where two mechanics — one 19 and the other 21 years old — were trapped and then died because of a fire that broke out on the turbine.

75.

This awful X-ray from a person’s friend who apparently “accidentally shot himself in the leg.”

76.

In 2014, after being mistakenly pronounced dead, an older woman in Los Angeles was allegedly trapped in a hospital morgue, where she froze to death. According to HuffPost, “When workers went to retrieve the body of Maria de Jesus Arroyo, 80, she was found face down with injuries to her face caused when she tried to escape, according to a pathologist.”

77.

In August, a chemistry student in Tampa, Florida, was caught on security footage “injecting [an] opioid chemical agent” under his neighbors’ door and into their condo.

78.

In 2012, a statue of Jesus in a Catholic church in Mumbai, India, inexplicably started leaking water. Initially, people thought it was a miracle, and it inspired some believers to drink the water in hopes that it would cure their ailments.

79.

A man in Italy was actually crushed to death in August by thousands of wheels of cheese.

80.

Back in 2015, some people in Chillicothe, Ohio, saw the body of a woman “hanging by her sleeve” on a fence, but they literally thought it was a Halloween decoration. It wasn’t until construction workers came upon the crime scene that they realized the body was a real, dead person and not a Halloween prank.

81.

An Ohio woman, Marie Trainer, had to have her hands and legs amputated in 2019 after being licked by a dog. According to CNN, “Trainer contracted a rare infection from the bacteria capnocytophaga canimorsus, probably when her German shepherd puppy, Taylor, licked an open cut.”

82.

This image of what is apparently “just” a blood egg but looks incredibly cursed, if you ask me:

83.

A woman in Uzbekistan, Olga Leontyeva, died in July after being stuck in an elevator for three days.

84.

In August, a woman in Los Angeles found a dead body in her 26-year-old son’s room. According to KTLA, “A woman told officers that she entered her son’s room due to a gas smell, and when she went inside, she found what appeared to be a body. Police said they found the victim, a female believed to be in her 20s, wrapped in plastic. She was pronounced dead at the scene.”

85.

In 2009, a man in Russia went in for surgery to have part of his lung removed for what doctors believed was a tumor. However, when doctors took a closer look, they apparently found a 5-centimeter-long spruce inside his lung.

86.

A human skull was found in a donation box at a Goodwill store in Arizona earlier this month. According to CBS News, “An employee called in the gruesome find because they feared it might be related to a criminal or missing-persons case. In a photo shared by the Goodyear Police Department, the skull is withered, with what appears to be a prosthetic blue eye attached to the right socket.”

87.

In October, a woman visiting Typhoon Lagoon, Walt Disney World’s water park in Florida, said she sustained “severe gynecologic injuries” after going down a water slide.

88.

Back in September, an alligator in Largo, Florida was spotted with human remains in its mouth. A resident, Jamarcus Bullard, who spotted the alligator, explained, “I threw a rock at the gator just to see if it was really a gator, and, like, it pulled the body, like it was holding on to the lower part of the torso, and pulled it under the water.”

89.

A man named Charles Osborne had hiccups for 68 years straight.

90.

Apparently, the notebooks belonging to Marie Curie, who won two Nobel Prizes for her pioneering research on radioactivity, will remain highly radioactive for another 1,500 years because of the contamination from radium 266 (which has a half-life of roughly 1,600 years).

91.

This image of a pacu fish, which has “human-like” teeth. The pacu fish is a cousin of the piranha, fwiw.

92.

The practices of Carl Tanzler, a radiology technician in Florida who became “obsessed” with a young woman/patient named Maria Elena “Helen” Milagro de Hoyos, even after she died. After Elena died, he removed her body from her grave, embalmed her corpse, and lived with it for seven years until authorities discovered it.

93.

In the 1800s, dentures were made out of the real teeth of dead people. According to the BBC, “The prospect of thousands of British, French, and Prussian teeth — sitting in the mouths of recently-killed soldiers on the battlefield at Waterloo — was an attractive one for looters.”

94.

Harvard has a century-old book that is actually covered in human skin. The title of the book from the 1880s is Des destinées de l’ame (The Destinies of the Soul), and in 2014, one of the university’s curators confirmed that it’s bound in human skin.

95.

In October, a 69-year-old man in Florida “plunged” to his death in someone’s front yard while he was skydiving… And it was all caught on a surveillance camera from a neighbor’s home.

96.

This weird leaf someone found in their bag of spinach that looks like it’d really mess you up if you ate it:

97.

Finally, apparently snails are one of the world’s most deadly creatures — more deadly than sharks, lions, and wolves combined. The reason? They carry a parasitic disease called schistosomiasis, which is responsible for more than 200,000 deaths a year.