2021 has been A YEAR. And I'm willing to bet you spent many nights awake, totally unable to get to sleep, and scrolling down some deep internet (i.e., Wikipedia) rabbit holes, yes? @videoland / Via giphy.com
Well, if you have, THAT'S FINE. Because we've all done it. It's hard not getting stuck reading a bunch of Wikipedia pages...especially when they're CREEPY Wiki pages. And here are some of the creepiest ones people came across in 2021: Note: This post contains stories of true crimes; some include topics like abuse and murder.
"In 1982, 12-year-old Johnny Gosch vanished on his paper delivery route. His mother claims that in 1997, a 27-year-old Johnny visited her accompanied by a strange man, talked with her for an hour, then left again, feeling it was not safe to return home. She hasn’t seen him since."
—u/somnum_osseus
KCCI / Via youtube.com "On Jan. 16, 1942, 33-year-old actor Carole Lombard won a coin toss that determined she and her group would return home from a war bond tour by plane instead of by train. Their flight wound up crashing into a mountain outside Las Vegas, killing all 22 on board, including 15 US Army soldiers."
—u/Go_To_Bethel_And_Sin
John Kobal Foundation / Getty Images, Bettmann / Bettmann Archive / Getty Images "A man was recording a copy of 'Shine on You Crazy Diamond' when an earthquake hit. The recording starts to bump as the shockwave arrives, and then the audio switches to the rumble of the earthquake along with the voices of the scared people inside the house."
—u/slinkslowdown
(You can hear the actual recording here .)
Marka / Marka/Universal Images Group via Getty Images "An endling is the last known individual of a species or subspecies. Once the endling dies, the species becomes extinct."
—u/ActualGiantPenguin
John Carnemolla / Corbis via Getty Images "On Mar. 23, 1994, a captain of a commercial airliner had his children in the cockpit of an Airbus A310 wide body jet aircraft during a revenue flight. One of them accidentally bumped the autopilot switch. There were no survivors."
—u/ViolenceForBreakfast
Anton Balakchiev / Getty Images/Stocktrek Images "Cara Knott was an American student who disappeared on Dec. 27, 1986. On December 28, her body was recovered at the bottom of a ravine. Her killer, a police officer, was interviewed while covering the investigation of the murder, and scratches, that were inflicted by Knott, are seen on his face."
—u/trissle_hippie
CBS 8 San Diego / Via youtube.com 7. The injury of gymnast Elena Mukhina that left her paralyzed: "…her first thought as she lay on the floor with her neck severely broken was, 'Thank God, I won’t be going to the Olympics.'”
—u/zetsv
Universal / Corbis/VCG via Getty Images "Crimes in Antarctica, including the 2018 Bellingshausen Station stabbing. The perpetrator, Sergey Savitsky, a 54-year-old electrical engineer, stabbed 52-year old welder Oleg Beloguzov because Beloguzov was giving away the endings of books that Savitsky checked out at the station's library."
—u/sekerzitski
Delphine Aures / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images "The parents had imprisoned, beaten, and strangled their 13 children, allowing them to eat just once per day and shower just once per year. The 29-year-old weighed just 82 pounds. Some appeared to lack basic knowledge of the world, being unfamiliar with what medicine and police were."
—u/slinkslowdown
Handout / Getty Images "A number of undercover police officers had, as part of their 'false persona,' entered into intimate relationships with members of targeted groups and in some cases proposed marriage or fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer."
—u/traveler_poppy
Kirsty O'connor - Pa Images / PA Images via Getty Images "Missing white woman syndrome is a phrase used to describe the disproportionately higher coverage of white women and girls in the upper-middle-class who disappear."
—u/LongdayinCarcosa
Leon Neal / Getty Images "After taking a radium energy drink, Byers lost his upper jaw and lower jaw, his bones were disintegrating, and holes were forming in his skull."
—u/dinosaurnuggets0
Based On / Via youtube.com "Depersonalization-derealization disorder is a mental disorder in which the person has persistent or recurrent feelings of being disconnected or detached from one's self. People experiencing this may report perceiving the world around them as foggy, dreamlike/surreal, or visually distorted."
—u/ZodiacReaderY
Tunatura / Getty Images/iStockphoto "Carl Tanzler, a radiologist who had fallen in love with woman named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, who was dying from tuberculosis. Eventually, when she died, Tanzler had embalmed her body and had taken it home with him, where he would perform necrophilia on her body for seven years until being discovered."
—u/West-Emu-8696
Crypticc / Via youtube.com "In 2006, an Ohio State medical student named Brian Shaffer entered a bar with friends. After being recorded entering through the bar's only publicly accessible entrance by security cameras, Shaffer was never seen exiting the bar and has never been seen or heard from since."
—u/LivingRaccoon
blameitonjorge / Via youtube.com "Due to the cholera pandemic, many bodies were buried immediately to control the spread of the disease. It is thought that in some cases, the dying may have been buried alive by accident, resulting in horrific facial expressions."
—u/unknownerror1916
Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images "Baba Anujka was a 90-year-old serial killer from a small village in Serbia. She sold 'love potions' to women with marriage problems, which contained arsenic and killed the husbands after eight days. In 1929, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison. It is believed she killed between 50 and 150 people."
—u/LivingRaccoon
Public Domain / Via en.wikipedia.org "Smile mask syndrome is a psychological disorder in which subjects develop depression and physical illness as a result of prolonged, unnatural smiling. It can lead to severe physical strain of the mouth and can result in an inability to stop smiling, even when upset or agitated."
—u/ratandparrot
Luis Alvarez / Getty Images 19. The Persian Princess , a mummy sold on the black market: "A sarcophagus sold on the black market that contained a mummy claimed to be that of an ancient princess, later discovered to possibly be the body of an unidentified woman murdered in the 1990s."
—u/silversunshinestares
Aamir Qureshi / AFP via Getty Images In 2008, Jamie Fraley went missing on the way to the hospital due to a stomach flu. Her fiancé's father, Ricky Simonds Sr., had driven her to the hospital earlier the same day, and because he had a criminal record that included manslaughter, he became a suspect. However, two months later...
"Ricky Simonds Sr. was found dead of heat stroke in the trunk of his ex-girlfriend's car. Investigators on the case believe Simonds was waiting in the trunk to ambush and murder his ex-girlfriend, when he became locked in the vehicle."
—u/Shaun_Ryder
Investigation Discovery / Via youtube.com "The last person killed in New York on 9/11 was Henryk Siwiak, a victim of an unsolved murder, killed shortly before midnight. His homicide is the only one recorded in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, since the city does not include the deaths from the attacks in its official crime statistics."
—u/noonoonomore
Inside Edition / Via youtube.com 22. The case of Sogen Kato , thought to be Tokyo's oldest man: "Sogen Kato was thought to have been Tokyo's oldest man until July 2010, when his mummified corpse was found. He died in November 1978, aged 79, and his family never announced his death in an attempt to preserve his longevity record."
—u/slinkslowdown
Associated Press / Via youtube.com "TIL about the Kids for Cash scandal: Two judges were convicted of taking bribes to ensure that for-profit juvenile detention centers were profitable."
—u/black_flag_4ever
John Greim / LightRocket via Getty Images 24. The story of Blanche Monnier , who was secretly held captive by her mother: "Blanche Monnier was a French socialite held captive by her mother for 25 years. When she was found by the authorities, she was lying in a bed covered with feces and leftover food. She only weighed 55 pounds. Twelve year after her rescue, she died in an insane asylum, having never regained her sanity."
—u/oldnips
Apic / Getty Images —u/decadentrebel
In operation from the early '90s until 2018, when it disappeared, this soda machine featured buttons with "?" on them. It's apparently unknown who stocked it.
Another Believer / CC / Via en.wikipedia.org 26. The posthumous beheading of Mata Hari : "Her head was cut off, embalmed, and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris."
—u/spiceprincesszen
Bettmann / Bettmann Archive / Getty Images, Heritage Images / Getty Images 27. The term "la petite mort " — aka "the little death": Cavan Images / Getty Images/Cavan Images RF 28. The Balloonfest '86 disaster in Cleveland, Ohio: "Cleveland Balloonfest '86, with 1.4 million balloons and 2 deaths."
—u/noonoonomore
Bettmann / Bettmann Archive / Getty Images "The syphilis experiments in Guatemala were United States–led human experiments conducted in Guatemala from 1946–48. Doctors infected soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners, and mental patients with various STDs without the subjects' consent. The experiment resulted in 83 deaths."
—u/Starfire-Galaxy
CNN / Via youtube.com "Richard Crafts murdered his wife and put her through a wood chipper. Before she died, she told her friends, 'If anything happens to me, don’t think it was an accident.'"
—u/chloecampellone
Medical Detectives / Via youtube.com 31. And finally, the televised propaganda interview of P.O.W. Jeremiah Denton : "While answering questions, Denton blinked his eyes in Morse code, spelling the word 'T-O-R-T-U-R-E.'"
—u/Clanlogo
(You can see the actual interview here .)
Horacio Nigro / Via youtube.com Note: Some entries have been edited for length and/or clarity.
The year is almost over, and we're looking back on 2021. Check out more from the year here! View comments