Wikipedia is a fascinating rabbit hole of information. You click on one link, then another, and the next thing you know you’ve wasted a whole evening.
But be careful where you click - Wikipedia is home to
some seriously disturbing stories. Here are ten more of the most terrifying
Wikipedia pages out there.
#10. America Sings
What could be terrifying about Disneyland? The original
happiest place on Earth? The Anaheim theme park is known for its
innovative amusement park rides and stage shows, and has been
thrilling guests for over half a century. But not all their new
attractions are winners, and in 1974 they brought in one that would
have an infamous legacy. The bicentennial of America’s nationhood
was approaching, and they wanted a new show to celebrate the country’s
heritage. The result was America Sings, a replacement for the classic
Carousel of Progress show. Both took place in a rotating theater where audiences
would sit still and different scenes would play out around them. This one
replaced the family of the future with a collection of funny
audio-animatronic animals singing wacky songs about American history, led
by the pompous Eagle Sam - voiced by the famous Burl Ives.
What could go wrong? All it takes is one horrible incident.
It was only nine days after the attraction opened when
tragedy struck. Deborah Gail Stone, an eighteen-year-old working
as a hostess at the attraction, was in the back of the attraction as the
stage show was shifting before the beginning of the next act. No one
was there to know exactly what happened, but it’s likely she was trying to
get from one stage to another and slipped due to the sudden movement.
What is known is that she was crushed between a moving wall and one of the stationary
walls, with no one around to notice. The audience members heard her
screams, and staff members ran to the back to investigate - but she
was already dead. The show was quickly shut down, an investigation began
into how something could go so horribly wrong, and Stone’s parents sued.
Disney eventually settled out of court, and many people assumed this would
bring the curtain down on America Sings for good.
They were very wrong.
While the attraction shut down after the incident,
Disney never stood still. As soon as they were cleared by the police to
re-enter, they cleaned the area and installed new safety lights, as
well as drew up plans to remodel the theater with breakaway
walls. But only three days after the tragedy, the America Sings
Theater was open for business again, pulling in thousands of guests to see
Eagle Sam sing only feet away from where Deborah Gail Stone met her
end. The theater continued to operate the show for fourteen years, with
Stone’s death only being a footnote in Disney’s history. Ultimately,
the tragedy had nothing to do with its eventual closure - it just started
getting out of date as the bicentennial became history itself. But
many of the audio-animatronics live on - as members of the cast in Splash
Mountain.
This next entry may be classed as a hero or villain, depending on who you ask.
#9. David Parulides
By all accounts, David Parulides is an upstanding guy -
working for twenty years as a police officer in San Jose and serving
on the SWAT team before becoming a detective. While he did have a brush
with the law when he was accused of falsely raising money for a
charity, he seemed to be an agent of the law. However, his true interests
lay elsewhere, and after retiring he became increasingly interested
in conspiracy theories. His first passion was the mystery of Bigfoot, as
he founded a research group to try to find the mysterious creature.
Like everyone else involved, he wasn’t able to find the man-ape, but he
spent a lot of time in national parks while searching - and that may
have led him to an even bigger mystery.
Is there a secret horror lurking in America’s national parks?
Parulides was reportedly working in a national park on
his Bigfoot hunt when he talked to an off-duty park ranger. The man didn’t
know anything about giant man-apes roaming the park - but he had noticed
something unusual. His park supposedly had an unusual number of missing
people - some of whom had been walking with a partner and disappeared
without a trace when they turned around. While the hiking partner was
always suspect #1, the police rarely found any motive or evidence linking
them to the case, and the disappearances almost always went cold. Parulides
began investigating, and soon launched a new series titled Missing
411. In this, he claimed to uncover a mysterious series of
disappearances around the world - almost all of which lacked any
explanation and no evidence of where the missing people went.
What’s even more disturbing is what isn’t there.
National parks are dangerous places, especially if
you’re alone. There are often steep cliffs to fall off, and wildlife that
might not be happy to see human guests. But in these cases that Parulides
spotlights, there are rarely any signs of a struggle or a fall. He also
pointed out that the national parks do not seem to keep a record of the people
who went missing in their parks, meaning key evidence is often missing. Parulides
has not given a theory for what’s going on at the parks, although
he’s said he doesn’t expect it to simply be a criminal matter. Skeptics
have called his investigations overly theatrical and accused him of
trying to create a conspiracy where there isn’t one, but one thing’s for
sure - the disappearances he spotlights are real. Some may be criminal cases,
some may be tragic accidents, but if there is a connecting factor, no one
knows what it is.
Sometimes, the most terrifying thing of all can be the human body.
#8. Locked-In Syndrome
By all accounts, the patient seems dead. There’s no
sign of movement, they’re not responding to any questions, and they don’t
respond to physical stimuli. Yet, their vital signs are strong. The
likely scenario the doctors assume is that they’re in a vegetative state, physically
alive but with no higher brain function, only kept alive by
machines. But what the doctors can’t tell is that inside, the
person is fully conscious and aware of everything going on around them -
and inside, they’re screaming for help. This is reality for someone
suffering from locked-in syndrome, a terrifying condition where
cognitive function is completely intact but the body is almost
completely paralyzed - with the only physical movements usually preserved
being the ability to blink and move the eyes up and down. What’s
worse is that these are both movements that could be mistaken for
involuntary reflexes.
Which raises an even more frightening prospect?
In the past, patients who had locked-in syndrome could
often be misdiagnosed and assumed to be comatose. They would usually be
put in a nursing home where no effort would be made to rehabilitate them
- like what happened to Julia Tavalaro in the 1970s. A young woman who
suffered a stroke, she was almost completely paralyzed - and
it took six years until anyone noticed that she was fully
conscious, when nurses noticed subtle movements in reaction to their
comments. But many victims are unable to move even that much.
And what makes this condition even scarier is that there it doesn’t have
one cause - it has many. The most common cause is a stroke that affects
the brain stem, cutting off the function to the rest of the body.
This can happen without warning due to an invisible blood clot.
But that’s not the only possible cause.
Cases of locked-in syndrome have been caused by poisoning
from snake bites, damage to the brain, or even overdoses of medication.
But the most common cause of a similar condition may be the disease
ALS, which damages the nerve connections and slowly strips people of their
ability to move. And for virtually all cases, there is no
cure. While some patients can regain movement or speech through
extensive physical therapy, its rare - but modern technology offers a
little hope. While until recently, the only method that could
be used to communicate for locked-in patients was blinking to indicate letters
on a board, recently scientists have developed more advanced methods like computers
controlled only by eye movement. But the disorder can still strike
at any time, for a number of reasons, with no warning…This next entry is
one of the most mysterious disappearances of all time - in one of the
safest places on Earth.
#7. The Disappearance of Emanuele Orlando
Vatican City isn’t a normal country - with only a few
hundred permanent residents and smaller than most cities, it’s really more
of a fortress for the Catholic Church. And as a place of holiness and
faith, one would expect it to be safe. You probably don’t have to worry
about getting mugged by a Cardinal - but you’re not invincible within
its borders, and the city-state has had a dark cloud hanging over it since 1983.
That was the day when Emanuele Orlando, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Creole
and Maria Orlando, left her home. Her father worked for the Vatican
bank, and she and her siblings had grown up in the shadow of the
Pope. It was the start of summer, and she was taking flute
lessons over her vacation. She took the bus to her music school on
June 22nd - but that day, she was late to class.
And she wouldn’t be showing up - ever again.
In the aftermath of the disappearance, investigators
tried to piece together the mystery. Her older brother Pietro often accompanied
her on the bus, but he was too busy to go that day - something that has haunted
him in the decades since. That night, a few hours after she had gone
missing, her family said that they received a phone call from her -
and it was the last time anyone ever heard her voice. She claimed to have
been offered a job working for Avon Cosmetics - something that made little
sense given the isolated nature of Vatican City. A friend of Orlando’s
claimed they had seen her get into a dark BMW, which drove off - leaving no
trace of Emanuele Orlando. The police investigated, getting tips from
various sources that they had seen Orlando around Italy. One claimed
she said she had run away, while others said she had changed her name. The
Pope even personally got involved, pleading for her return.
But what actually happened to Emanuele Orlando?
Many theories emerged in the decades since, few of them
good. Less than a month after the disappearance, a Turkish terror group supposedly
claimed responsibility, demanding the release of a gunman who had
attempted to assassinate the Pope. Others pointed to possible links
to organized crime. Orlando’s father, who had access to billions
of dollars in his role at the Vatican Bank, would be an inviting target
for blackmail by the Mafia - but kidnapping someone from under
the Pope’s nose might be a bridge too far for the often-devout
Italian Mafia. Others pointed to a darker secret - notably the controversial
exorcist Father Gabriele Amort, who claimed a Vatican sex conspiracy, may
have been involved in the kidnapping. Orlando may in fact have never
left the Vatican. But almost forty years after she vanished into the
night, the case is not giving up its secrets easily.
Sometimes, the mystery is easier to unlock - but no less chilling.
#6. The Murder of Kim Wall
Swedish freelance journalist Kim Wall was never one to
back away from a story, and when she got the chance to interview one of Denmark’s
most eccentric citizens, she was not going to say no. Peter Madsen was an
entrepreneur with a fascination with rocket fuel and homemade submarines,
and he wanted to invite Wall into one of his submersibles - the pint-sized
UC3 Nautilus. It was a tight fit, and going deep under the water in a
homemade metal box with someone you barely know seems like a recipe for
disaster - especially as she was planning to move to Beijing only a
week later. But Wall’s journalistic instincts told her there was a story
to follow, and she met with Madsen on a moment’s notice to board his
submarine and head to the deep. The ship would never resurface, and
soon Wall’s story would be on the headlines around the world.
But this was only the beginning of the story.
Wall’s boyfriend called the police that night to report
her missing, and the next morning the ship was found floating in the
water. Madsen was rescued from the water, and claimed he had dropped Wall
off safely - but soon admitted that she hadn’t survived the trip. He
claimed she had died in an accidental fall and he dumped her body at sea.
He was charged with manslaughter, but a few days later the disturbing
truth would start to come out. A bicyclist discovered parts of
Wall’s body on a beach, and more body parts started washing up around
the area. Most disturbing, when police investigated Wall’s torso, they
found evidence that she hadn’t died in an accident - her body was covered with
fifteen stab wounds. It was clear she had been murdered, and there was
only one suspect.
What was behind the madness of Peter Madsen?
The Danish millionaire was known to be…unusual, but
when police charged him with murder and dug into his past, they found he
had morbid obsessions far beyond what they feared. For one
thing, his internet history was full of videos of people being killed in
horrible ways. He was soon convicted of murder and sentenced to
life in prison - but a maniac who kills someone on their homemade submarine
isn’t going to be contained easily. In 2020, he attempted an escape
from prison by claiming to be wearing a bomb belt and holding a
prison psychologist hostage. He’s considered to be one of Denmark’s most dangerous
living criminals - which made it all the more shocking when he got married
behind bars to an admirer in 2020. We hope they’re not planning any
underwater trips together.
It wasn’t the only recent nightmare on the high seas.
#5. COVID-19 Pandemic on Diamond Princess
Ah, cruising on the high seas. Is there a better
vacation? Everything’s less than one roof, the food is all-you-can-eat,
and there’s never a shortage of things to do even if you don’t want
to take the off-boat excursions. That’s the kind of relaxing vacation
people were expecting aboard the Diamond Princess, a British-owned luxury
cruise ship that set sail in early 2020. They probably weren’t
paying attention to the news, as the mystery disease Covid-19 was starting to
ravage the world - and it was soon going to hit home. The ship set sail on
January 20th, 2020 for a round-trip tour of Southeast Asia. An
eighty-year-old passenger from Hong Kong had been feeling ill, but he
didn’t feel like missing his cruise. He left after only one leg of
the cruise - but his virus stayed on board, and would soon be making
itself at home.
But the real trouble was yet to come.
It was February 1st when the ship arrived in Okinawa,
Japan, and the staff received dire news - the old man who had disembarked
had tested positive for Covid-19. The ship was quarantined at port,
but on board everything seemed normal - facilities like fitness clubs and
theaters remained open, and people bellied up to the buffet. When the
ship returned to the port again, it was quarantined for the second time -
but this time they wouldn’t be getting out nearly as easily.
Officials from Japan’s Ministry of Health boarded and began testing people
for Coved. Sure enough, a full third of the people tested were
positive - which meant the virus had already been spreading on the ship
for a while. There were thirty-seven hundred people on board the Diamond
Princess, and Japan quickly decided to quarantine the entire ship for two
weeks.
Those who wished their holiday would go on forever got their wish.
The Diamond Princess would become the first major
flashpoint of the Covid-19 Pandemic, and over the next few days hundreds
more cases of the virus would be detected. At this point, no one knew
much about the virus and there were few ways to treat it. Soon, the
infected started dying - all older patients, who were much more
vulnerable. The thousands of passengers, now stuck in their rooms
with increasingly sparse food supplies being delivered to
them, were desperate to get home - but no one could tell them
when or if they would be released. It wasn’t until February 17th
when the US Government chartered planes to bring their citizens home
from the ship, but other countries would be much slower - the last
passengers didn’t leave the Diamond Princess until March 1st, by
which point fourteen people had died. The cruise industry would be largely
dormant for more than a year due to the pandemic, but it’s likely the
current cruises will be at least 3,700 passengers short.
But in a quiet town in Wales, a different disaster that scarred a town forever began in the most unexpected of places.
#4. The Uberfan Disaster
It was a quiet morning on October 21st, 1966. The
quiet Welsh town of Uberfan had become a popular location for mining
companies to harvest coal, and the surrounding area was filled with Colliery
spoil tips - what looked like small, man-made black mountains. It was a
part of the landscape by now, and no one gave it much thought as the
town went about its business. Families began the day, dressing the
children for school and sending them on their way before the parents
went off to work. But no one could see something was very
wrong. One of the spoil tips was over a hundred feet high, in
violation of regulations. Heavy rain had inundated the coal with water,
and it was increasingly unstable. And as the school day began at the
Pantiles junior school, the coal began to slide forward, the mountain
began to collapse, and a massive surge of coal sludge lurched directly
towards Uberfan.
And the junior school was directly in its path.
The massive spoil tip turned into a river of sludge,
with a hundred and forty thousand cubic yards sliding down the mountain,
crushing two cottages in its way and killing everyone inside. In
the center of the village, witnesses said they could hear what sounded
like thunder, getting louder and louder. But it was too late to do
anything. The avalanche plowed into the junior school, covering
it with a thick and inky substance and destroying the structure - and anyone
in its path. The school was full of children and teachers, and teachers
had only seconds to try to protect their pupils. Nans Williams,
the school meals cleek, shielded five children with her body. They all
survived, but she wasn’t so lucky - becoming probably the most famous
victim of the disaster.
But when the rubble cleared, the toll would be devastating.
At first, it seemed impossible to even get into the
school, with a massive mountain of sludge blocking the entrances. Local
residents turned up at the school to manually clear the rubble, many
desperate to find their own children. Soon, they started pulling the
surviving children out of the rubble, with twenty-one students and five adults
surviving. But by eleven AM that morning, they weren’t finding any more
survivors - only bodies. In total, 144 people died in the Uberfan disaster
- one of the worst industrial accidents in the history of
humanity. 116 of the casualties were children, and people who
grew up in Uberfan in the decades since said that it seemed like almost
every family in town lost a child in the disaster. A massive
inquest into the mining disaster ensued, many regulations were tightened, and
today a memorial garden sits in the middle of Uberfan, paying tribute to
the unfathomable loss.
The Uberfan disaster devastated Wales - but could this next event devastate the whole world?
#3. The Carrington Event
It was September 1st, 1859, and the sun was looking
unusual. It was in the midst of a massive geomagnetic storm - in fact, the
strongest ever recorded in history. It was so intense that it was affecting
Earth’s atmosphere, with displays similar to the aurora borealis being
reported globally. Scientists believe it was caused by a coronal mass
ejection that happened to be in the direction of Earth. It caused a
massive solar flare that was observed by astronomer Richard Christopher
Carrington - who would later become its namesake. But for most people, it
was just a curiosity in the sky with few effects. Around the world, people
saw strange things happening in the atmosphere, and it livened up
their often mundane 19th-century lives.
But select people noticed something very different.
Technology was in its early stages, and few people had
electronic devices to observe. The one exception? The early
telegraph systems all over Europe and North America. Suddenly,
operators would pick up the device and get a nasty electric
shock. The pylons carrying the signals started emitting
dangerous sparks. Even more oddly, some telegraph machines seemed to still
work after being disconnected. The current was strong as ever - even
stronger, in fact - and it seemed to be coming from elsewhere from its
usual sources. Some telegraph machines were damaged, while others
maintained their usual abilities - with one managing to maintain power for up
to two hours while disconnected.
It was an odd chapter in history - but it could foretell an apocalypse.
In 1859, the Carrington Event caused very little
long-term damage because few items were affected. Most machines then
ran on steam or coal power. Today, almost all run on either electricity or
delicate digital connections. Another massive solar storm could
cause a massive disruption in those systems - as today’s
connections could easily overload due to the surge of
electricity generated by the solar storm, not just causing massive
blackouts but permanently damaging the infrastructure and
setting back mankind’s available technology by decades or even centuries.
The effects of a solar storm are hard if not impossible to prevent -
and if a solar storm happens, there is no way to predict or stop it. That
means that all of mankind’s technological progress could be at the
mercy of something millions of miles away - and totally out of our control.
The world is full of mysteries - but few as chilling as
this one.
#2. The Beast of Nevadan
The world is full of mysterious animals that may or may
not exist. The United States has the shambling, hairy Bigfoot. Scotland
has the potential surviving plesiosaur known as Nessie. Mexico
has the small-but-hungry Chupacabra. But most of these cryptids have two
things in common - they’ve never been captured, and they’ve never
left any bodies in their wake. The same can’t be said for the monster that
terrorized the French region of Le Nevadan between 1764 and 1767. It
all started when a young woman saw a mysterious wolf-life creature
approach her cattle. The bulls kept it at bay, and she would later describe
it as “like a wolf, but not a wolf”. No one paid much attention to
her story - until a teenage girl was killed by an animal only a short time
later, and more attacks against livestock, children, and even adults
became common. A pattern emerged - the animal knew exactly how to kill,
targeting the head and neck of the victims.
What was hunting the people of Le Nevadan?
Some speculated that a pair of animals might have been
behind the attacks, since it was hunting so fast and often in far-apart
locations. In January 1765, eight friends were attacked by the beast and
managed to fend it off by staying in a tight group. These survivors
eventually got the attention of King Louis XV - and hunting the beast became
a national priority. An elite military unit was sent to Le Nevadan,
including two professional wolf-hunters. One of them killed a large
gray wolf, one of the largest ever seen, and proclaimed it to be the
beast - but the attacks soon continued, with a dozen more people
dying. In the end, it was a local hunter named Jean Chastely that
reportedly brought the beast down. The body of the creature was taken to a
surgeon who stuffed it for taxidermy - and reportedly discovered the
remains of the last victim inside.
Which raises the question - what was the Beast of Le Nevadan?
Many people considered the creature to have supernatural
origins, making it one of the first reported attacks by a werewolf.
However, most modern historians speculate it was likely a wolf or a
pack of wolves, and some of the incidents may have been embellished due to hysteria.
The beast’s body was displayed for a time at the castle of Louis XV, but
it has since been lost and only drawings remain. Most reports indicate
it was a wolf - but one larger than any seen before, and with an odd
posture. This has led modern scientists to propose more exotic origins, such
as a lion or a Tasmanian tiger. It may have also been a cross-breed
between two animals. But as terrifying as the wave of attacks, it
wasn’t as atypical as it seemed - France saw tens of thousands of deaths
due to wolf attacks in the 18th century alone. But the wave of
deaths in Le Nevadan was undoubtedly among the bloodiest.
But there is nothing scarier than…the end.
#1. Ending
It’s September 7th, 1936 in the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania,
and a single animal paces the ground. It’s a Thylacinus, or
Tasmanian tiger, and the carnivorous marsupial has been living here alone for
a long time. It beds down for the night, but it’s an unusually cold night
in Tasmania, and sometime during the night the animal known as
Benjamin freezes to death. The zookeepers are later accused of
neglect, but they assume they’ll find another specimen to display at
the zoo soon enough. But after months of combing Tasmania, they never do
- because Benjamin is an ending, the very last Tasmanian tiger in the
world. With his passing, an entire species passes into oblivion. The
cause? A combination of hunting and the introduction of dogs and
humans into its habitat. The species’ fate was sealed long before Benjamin
passed.
And it’s happened many times before.
A lot of the time, humans don’t know when extinction
happens. Millions of species went extinct before we ever existed on this
planet. Other times, a species we barely know about goes extinct
when its habitat is destroyed. But when we keep endangered species in
captivity as they reach the end of their existence, zookeepers and
scientists often bear witness to the very last specimen passing away. That
was the case for Lonesome George, the last Pinto giant
tortoise. Hunting had decimated the slow-reproducing, long-lived
species, although scientists did try to get George to mate with other
subspecies. In the end, Lonesome George was well-cared for by scientists
until his death in 2012, at which point the entire species went with him.
And there is usually only one cause.
The passenger pigeon was one of the most dominant birds
in the world, but hunting and competition dwindled its numbers for
decades until it was heavily hunted, and the last passenger pigeon,
Martha, died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
And as we become more aware of the damage we do to the
environment, we find more cases. Sometimes, we become aware that
we’re looking after an ending before they pass - like in the case of
the Northern White Rhinoceros. The species is still currently alive, with
two specimens known. The problem is, Nain and Fatu are mother and
daughter. They live in a sanctuary in Kenya, but are believed
to be the last of their species - and the last male passed in 2014. That
means this species is simply running out the clock. And looking
at the list of endangered species, it’s likely more will join them soon.