Beyoncé sang it best in her hit song Ego when she declared, “It’s just too big.” Anyone who is seriously scared of large things might very well relate. While it’s considered an irrational fear, it’s a very real part of life for those with megalophobia. Tall buildings, huge trucks, vast lakes and even gigantic animals can send them into a flat spin of anxiety. Or have them avoiding situations and places altogether.
Trigger warning: If you’re wondering whether you’re a megalophobe, the answer might just lie below. Bored Panda has put together a list of photos of freakishly big objects and living beings that people have spotted in the wild. They were posted by an online community called Megalophobia. It’s somewhat of a virtual support group for anyone with a fear of large things, and a safe space to test your triggers if you suspect you may suffer from the phobia.
We also take a look at the bigger picture… What are the causes, the symptoms, and how can you overcome it? You’ll find that info between the images.
If any of these images make you want to run for the smallest hill you can find, you might just have megalophobia. It’s a type of anxiety disorder in which a person experiences intense fear of large things.
Massive objects like large buildings, statues, vehicles and even living creatures can stir up fear and anxiety when a megalophobe merely thinks about them, or is around them. It’s for this reason that people with the disorder will often simply avoid situations or places that have large objects.
While researchers aren’t 100% sure of what exactly causes megalophobia, they believe it could have something to do with having negative or traumatic experiences involving a large object.
Some of the symptoms of megalophobia include feeling intense fear and anxiety, experiencing a rapid heartbeat, having shortness of breath, feeling dizzy and lightheaded, and/or nauseous, and having a strong desire to escape the large object or situation.
Just because one or all of the images on this list freaked you out, it doesn’t mean you’re definitely a megalophobe. To confirm that, you’d need a diagnosis from a health professional, and according to the Cleveland Clinic’s experts, you typically have to have experienced persistent fear and anxiety of large objects for at least six months in order to be diagnosed with megalophobia.
Your doctor will most likely ask you a series of questions regarding your history, experiences and symptoms. They’d have to rule out any other physical or mental health conditions that could be causing your symptoms. And if you’re in the United States, they’ll use the criteria listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) to confirm a diagnosis of megalophobia.
Cleveland Clinic’s site notes that generally, phobias have at least four criteria for diagnosis. The first is intense and unreasonable fear, meaning the fear of the object or situation is “persistent and out of proportion to an appropriate level of fear.”
The next is what’s known as anticipatory anxiety. “An individual who has a phobia tends to dwell on or dread future situations or experiences that will involve the object or situation they are afraid of,” explains the clinic’s site.
Those diagnosed with a phobia will also exhibit avoidance. Basically, they’ll actively avoid the thing they fear and won’t put themselves in a situation where they might encounter it.
The fourth criterion one would have to meet to be diagnosed with a phobia is that it interferes with day-to-day activities. The fear they experience would have to limit their everyday life in some way.
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Desensitization/exposure therapy, on the other hand, will put you face-to-face with the objects that trigger your fears, hopefully helping you to overcome them.
“If you have megalophobia and participate in exposure therapy, your therapist or psychologist may begin with talking about large objects. They may then gradually move on to showing you pictures of large objects,” explains the Cleveland Clinic site. “Next, they may have you look at and be near a large object in person. The process of exposure therapy is slow and gradual. Your therapist or psychologist will tailor the pace of the therapy to your needs.”
Then there’s also traditional talk therapy, or even group therapy.
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“While it’s tempting to avoid the large objects that cause fear with your megalophobia, this strategy will only make it more difficult to cope with your condition in the long-term,” warns the Healthline site. “Instead of avoidance, it’s best to expose yourself to your fears little by little until your anxiety starts to improve.”
Relaxation can also help you to cope. So, if you encounter a large object and feel your anxiety start to rise, you could try some deep breathing and visualization to calm yourself down.
Cleveland Clinic’s site reports that only about 10% to 25% of people who have a specific phobia seek treatment for their condition, and that’s because the rest choose to rather just avoid the object or situation that they fear. But experts warn against this…
“If you have megalophobia, avoiding situations that involve large objects can prevent you from enjoying certain things in life like traveling and can lower your overall quality of life,” cautions the site. “This is why it’s important to seek treatment. Everyone deserves a high quality of life.”
It adds that people who have a specific phobia and don’t seek treatment are twice as likely to develop an anxiety disorder and depression.
Listening to your instincts and knowing when to trust your gut are skills that can end up saving your life. Just like many animals can sense approaching danger, human beings, too, have an almost primal drive to survive. For some folks, it’s what kept them away from harm.
Internet users took to a captivating online thread to reveal the scariest moments in their lives when their inner alarm bells told them that they needed to leave, ASAP. We’ve picked out the most interesting cases to share with you. Scroll down to read them and to remind yourself that if your gut tells you something is wrong, it most likely is.
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
#1
I was in high school when we had the Tohoku Earthquake in Japan in March, 2011. I lived in Mie prefecture at the time, so luckily far enough from the tsunami, but the earthquake was still strong enough that we had to evacuate the building. All cellphone data was offline, so we had no communication with our parents and no idea if there was a tsunami coming towards us (I could see the ocean from my school’s building).
I only got a taste of what the people closest to the epicentre must have felt like, and let me tell you, it was terrifying enough, I hope to never experience that again in my lifetime.
On a lighter note, I’m proud to say that, while staring at the face of such catastrophe, my community’s first reaction was NOT to hoard all the toilet paper that could be found.
Years ago I had flown home to Denver and took the shuttle to the parking lot. There weren’t a lot of people on this shuttle but there was this one guy who kept asking me questions, some semi personal, and I couldn’t wait to get off that shuttle and get away from him. When the driver stopped at my area I stood up and then the guy stood up and got off the shuttle. I had a really bad feeling in my gut so I stayed on the shuttle and rode it all the way back to the terminal and back to the parking lot. The driver asked me why I didn’t get off the shuttle and I told him about the guy and I had a bad feeling in my gut about him and he said always believe those gut feelings. When we finally got back to my area at the park and ride, the shuttle driver waited until I got into my car and backed out before he left.
I was in Barcelona with some friends, ended up in a pretty “local” bar and having a few drinks with the barman, he talked about another bar and said he’d take us in a taxi as he was finishing soon.
Got in a taxi with him and started to drive a LONG way, started to get rural and I asked him how far? He just laughed and said something in Spanish to the driver, who laughed aswell…
We stopped at some traffic lights and I pushed my two (a lot drunker than me) friends out of the car and told them to run.
Found an other taxi luckily and jumped in, taxi driver was surprised as us, we were miles from anywhere we should of been as tourists. He was on his way home but took us back to the city.
Your gut won’t always be right… at least at first. You have to hone your instincts over time to make them more accurate.
According to psychiatrist and psychotherapist in training Dr. Alex Curmi, your instinctive reactions are the brain’s “best guess about what to do in a given moment.” However, the quality of those guesses can “vary enormously.”
“It is a biological miracle that the human brain can integrate so much information from its environment and produce guiding instincts that we rely on every day, yet those instincts are so easily distorted. Unresolved trauma, limited experience of life or emotional immaturity can all muddy the waters, steering us away from what is best for us,” Dr. Curmi writes in The Guardian.
#4
I was staying over at a friend’s house for the first time- I was around 11 or 12. Her dad took us to a gas station and I grabbed some candy and went to pay and he got angry…not like jokingly angry but actually offended I was going to pay for my own stuff. After that, I felt something was off and let him pay for my stuff begrudgingly. Before night, I just couldn’t shake how uncomfortable I was. I kept thinking I was super sensitive but I still called my parents and convinced them to pick me up. Come to find out, the guy was a p*******e and had molested a few of her friends during sleepovers. I found out a few months later that he had r***d her and her little sister and she invited friends thinking it would spare her since he would focus on her friends instead.
I’m now a mom and I just feel so…angry but also pity her so deeply. She was willing to sacrifice her friends to spare her and her sister, and has to live with that now.
I was living in Kansas. My boyfriend and I were sitting on a friend’s front porch when cops came flying up the street, slammed on the brakes, and yelled “get in the house!”
We did. Our friend wasn’t home, but thankfully the door was unlocked.
Turned out, there was a man walking around shooting anything that moved. We didn’t know this at first – this was around 2002 so we didn’t have the net in our pockets. Our friend came home maybe an hour later and told us what was going on. Not long after there was commotion in the backyard, it was the guy with the police on his tail. They arrested him a few feet from the back door.
In high school we were eating at a Burger King. A friend kept saying it was too hot inside let’s leave. No one else felt like it was but she insisted. We all walked outside and about 20 seconds later a car smashed through the restaurant where we were sitting.
However, if you engage in introspection and experimentation, over time, you’ll be able to improve and hone your intuition. You’ll be able to recognize what’s simply “unhelpful baggage of past experience” and what is actually useful and matches your expanding understanding of reality.
“In this way, our gut feelings can become indispensable tools rather than mental noise that leads us astray,” Curmi states.
“Much as weighing scales require calibration to be accurate, so do our minds. We can achieve this by venturing outside our comfort zones, testing our emotions against reality and sometimes opposing them, and seeking continual feedback. When it comes to life’s many complicated problems, by all means trust your gut – but only after you’ve taught yourself what’s worth trusting.”
#7
I was at the fair with my wife and 6 year old daughter. From the moment we arrived I had the feeling we shouldn’t be there, I can’t explain it beyond a feeling in the pit of my stomach that was telling me this wasn’t the place for us. I told my wife, but she brushed it off because she loves the fair, the girls were having fun, and we had tickets for the monster truck show. Halfway through the monster trucks there was an intermission and I took that moment to say nope. We are leaving now, not going to argue about it, it’s time to leave NOW. It was a 25 minute drive home and by the time we arrived home it was already on the news, the local papers website and all over Facebook that there had been a gang related shooting at the fairgrounds in the concessions area we had to walk through on the way out. Huge police response, EMS etc. It happened probably less than a minute after we had gotten to the car. We didn’t hear the shots. We never told our daughter but needless to say my wife trusts my gut now.
Edit: For those asking: the feeling started in the car and grew stronger as we approached the fair. I can say to the best of my memory I spoke up before we even entered the gates and the feeling grew stronger over the course of the next 4ish hours we were there. We went on rides, saw animals, ate all the food etc but as the monster truck show went on it got to the point where I couldn’t ignore the feeling anymore.
One of you is correct in your guess about where and when this took place. The USA is in obvious need of more sensible gun laws. Seeing the amount of places people have said this has happened somewhere else makes me sad.
My fathers’ story, not mine, but still. He was working in construction as a contractor, leading a team who were working on an old estate on a hillside. It was a clear day, weather was fine and they were up there on the scaffolding, working on the chimney. Rather suddenly, my father experiences this pressure to go down, right now. It’s a hassle, you have to climb down this scaffolding, they hadn’t been up there all that long, so he resisted for a bit. But it was just this tremendous push, this urging, to descend ASAP, so he told his team to go down. They asked why, they didn’t understand, they were in the swing of things, why go down? My father finally just ordered them down. So they went, and a few minutes later they all stood on the lawn, looking at one another sheepishly. At that moment, completely unexpectedly, a lighting strike hit the chimney they’d been working on.
When he told me the story hours later, he was still upset!
When you’ve read through these stories and upvoted the ones that left an impression, let us know in the comments below what you think, Pandas.
Which of these situations genuinely scared you the most? What are the most dangerous situations you’ve personally been in? How often do you trust your instincts, and has it saved you from danger?
#10
When my husband and I were teenagers, and first started dating, we were parked in an empty golf course for some privacy. We had been to this spot before and it was a great place to walk around at night and then make out in the car. Tonight was different. As soon as we pulled in, something felt wrong. I reclined my chair back to hide myself, paranoid someone was watching us. We sat for a few moments, making awkward small talk. I was suddenly filled with overwhelming dread and sheepishly asked if we could leave. My then boyfriend immediately obliged… a little too quickly considering the hormones of teenage boys and the plans we had to fool around. He peeled out of the parking lot, my seat still fully reclined because at this point I’m absolutely convinced we aren’t alone. The bottom of the Honda scrapes the ditch of the driveway as we pull out in a panic. At this point neither of us had communicated with one another what we were feeling but his reaction was enough to know we were on the same page. We were in danger. We speed a few miles away before we broke the silence, and I put my seat back in its upright position. I tried to laugh it off and admitted I wasn’t sure why I was scared. Neither of us really had an explanation for the sudden fear we both experienced, but decided not to question it too much. We found out after the fact there was a brutal attack on a couple teens walking home from the burger joint by the golf course, by a schizophrenic homeless man. I’m convinced we both felt like someone was watching us because he was… and I know if we had gone on our normal late night walk something horrible would have happened. This happened almost 16 years ago, but I can still remember that fear so vividly.
I went to a house party in college with a group of 5 other friends…it was hosted in a lofted apartment and the whole drive there I kept saying we shouldn’t go because I just had this horrible gut feeling something bad was going to happen. An hour after arriving (mid beer pong game), there was a loud cracking noise and the floor gave out similar to the way the Titanic split in half. Myself and the group I went with all fell 12 feet to the concrete floor below along with the folding table and a bunch of glass bottles. The only people hurt? Myself and two of my friends. I remember looking up once I hit the floor and seeing the refrigerator about 2 feet from falling down on top of me. I think I said “I told you so” for the rest of the year haha.
Was camping at a national park with two friends – three of us in a tent. One of those spots that you drive up to and has a picnic table and a fire pit, so it’s not deep woods camping.
Middle of the night I have to pee. Go out to a nearby spot and do my business no problem. Walking back I stop to look at the stars and light a cig. I’m there maybe a minute or two when suddenly I had a wave of what I can only describe as primal instinct. My adrenaline sharpened everything as I listened. Nothing had changed, no sounds around, but I just knew something was there and was watching me.
I calmly put my cig out and walked back to the tent without any sudden movements. Got in the tent and waited, listening. There was nothing so I figured I must’ve spooked myself out. Went back to sleep without issue.
In the morning we found our camp spot absolutely destroyed. Some animal had come through looking for food I guess, but not messed with the tent thankfully. Even my friend’s old baseball hat that he had been sweating in all summer was ripped to shreds. We found pieces of it all over. (It had been sitting on the picnic table.)
Woolsey Fire 2018. I evacuated our family at 7:45pm amidst heavy smoke and wind. Official evacuation order came at 2am, by which time fire was everywhere, power was out, and roads were gridlocked.
I was in an old apartment building visiting a friend. We were just sitting on the couch when we heard a sound like tearing fabric, only ten times louder. Then we saw a massive, horizontal crack instantly appear and run across the ceiling above us, showering us with dust. My friend just yelled ‘Out! Now!’ and we bolted. It turned out the main support beam above their unit had given way slightly. We stood outside shaking for an hour watching the emergency crew work.
13 years ago. At the beach parking lot where everyone came to hang out as a young adults in the summer evenings.
Something just came over me. It wasn’t dread or fear, but something just felt off. Overall, a bad feeling. I’ve never experienced anything like it before but my gut told my brain that it’s time to go home.
Honestly, it wasn’t strong enough of a feeling that I could have easily changed my mind due to my lack of fear. (Not sure why, I just have never been incredibly fearful person.) I said to my friend at the time, that I am leaving something feels off here.
I get home, and less than two hours later a gang shooting happened at the beach. Unfortunately, a few friends from my old high school were shot. Fortunately, they survived. They weren’t the target, just wrong place, wrong time.
Luckily I left, because I was about 6 months pregnant at the time. Who knows what could have happened if I stayed.
I was out at the bar with my friends and I couldn’t shake this “I need to go home now” feeling. We were having fun and nothing weird was happening, so I brushed it off for a bit but eventually I couldn’t shake the feeling. So I went home super early. When I walked in the door, my whole house smelled like gas. One of my dogs had turned the gas on the stove on while I was gone but it didn’t ignite. I quickly shut it off and ran around the house, opening all of my windows even though it was winter. I got the fans out to try to clear the gas. Focusing first on my bedroom, where I contained my dogs and cats. Slowly the house aired out… but I fear what could have happened if I didn’t listen to my gut. I would have been out for hours.
After COVID started my hubs and I would go to the lake more often, even in the cold/rain/snow etc. one day I was standing on the pier, like I did a million times, and there’s these metal bars that jut into the water (like stabilizing the concrete like a partial ladder without rungs). I’m staring straight down, into the water- there’s no barriers- nothing preventing cars or people from going off the edge- the concrete pier just ends and it’s completely black water. So I say, “don’t you wonder how many people have driven off here?”
Spouse laughs at me and was like, “no one,” Also “why would you say that.” I kind of back peddled because I didn’t want him to think I was being dark of paranoid. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
A day or two later, they were pulling the car of two missing people from the spot I was standing in- with said car pictured on the front page newspaper and a diver between the same bars I stood between.
There’s barriers there now.
Oh, and i had taken a picture. The calm black water, a bit of concrete pier, and the bars are all pictured but my feet are out of frame. I still have which idk if it’s creepy or just memorable, cuz I didn’t feel scared or have the “we should leave” feeling. I just felt strongly, something was down there. I’ve looked at the pic a million times and you truly can’t see anything, which makes it oddly more uncomfortable.
On a trail in the Great Smoky Mountains (I can’t recall the actual trail but something like Indian Grave) and out of nowhere we heard this noise that we thought could only be made by a large, severely injured cow. All three of our faces drained of colour and we booked it out of there. Later we were sitting in a restaurant in Dollywood and via YouTube, we found the source of the noise…a baby bear. I’ve never heard that noise before or since but my heart missed a beat that day and something deep in my animal brain knew to leave that location immediately.
May of this year, myself and my best friend went to Spain for my 28th birthday. We stayed in Lloret De Mar, but decided to spend my actual birthday walking around Barcelona.
It got to around 7:30pm and we got to the bus station to go back from Barca to Lloret, only problem is the clerk was adamant there were no more buses or coaches going to Lloret that evening, and we would have to get a bus to the next town over, and then get a bus from there to Lloret. Bit of a hassle, but it beats sleeping in the bus station! We go outside, and we are waiting for our bus to the next city for around 20 minutes, until we see a bus go past us clearly labelled as going to Lloret De Mar.
Me and my friend are confused, but we already had a ticket to the neighbouring town so we just waited for our bus to show up. I’d looked online and found that the bus we needed to get from the next town was at 9pm (that was the last bus to Lloret) So we HAD to make it.
We get to the bus stop, and we were both struggling to understand the timetable. My phone was on 2% and my friends was on 19% or so, but I could see ’21:00′ on the board, so I was pretty sure the last bus was due at 9pm. We saw a man walking up the street with a big hiking backpack on, and asked if he was Spanish. He said yes, and we asked if he could tell us when the next bus was. He read the board for about a minute and a half which I thought was odd as clearly he could understand the timetable better than me or my friend could.
This guy then tells us there are NO more buses coming tonight going to Lloret (which again, I’d seen online and on this board that it was due at 9pm). I thought maybe I had read it wrong after all. The man said that he could book a taxi for us or we could get a lift with him.
Now, obviously two young women are not stupid enough to accept this mans offer to chauffer us home, but it really stuck out because as I mentioned, he walked up the street and had a huge hiking backpack on. Didn’t seem like he was out via car if that makes sense.
We ask if he can book us a taxi. He gets on the phone and it seems to be a pretty long call just to book a taxi. That’s when he said two words and my heart dropped into my stomach. “Inglesas chicas” WHY would the taxi man need to know that we were English girls? The guy then gets off the phone and tell us that the taxi that will arrive will be silver. I said “how do you know that?” he stumbled over his words a little, and then said “most Spanish taxis are silver”.
I just knew this did not sound right. We waited at the bus stop and thought about what we would do if this car shows up because we were DEFINITELY not getting in it. 9pm rolls around, and the bus to Lloret De Mar shows up. We jump on that bus and go back to the hotel.
I dread to think what could have happened if we had got in that “taxi”. Funnily enough, this birthday holiday was also meant as a way for me to release the trauma I had been holding onto since my 25th birthday. Happy 28th to me!
ps. sorry if writing is shoddy, I don’t leave comments often.
My family was living in South Sudan during the civil war some years back. I was 11 at the time and I remember waking up to shooting all around our house and in the village. Once it died down the whole village left and went to the refugee camps in Uganda. We followed them and moved to Uganda as well. It was a very scary and traumatizing time.
Seeing the second explosion go off at the Boston Marathon bombing.
The adrenaline dump was so massive that my brain couldn’t form memories for a few moments. It felt like no time at all and forever all at once between the boom and my trying to get inside of the bank I was in front of. (Obviously closed for marathon Monday.)
Once I started thinking, I ducked into the nearest alley, figuring it would be a lower likelihood for more bombs, and once there hunkered down in the deepest doorway I could find to text my family, breathe, and make a plan to get home.
Not me obviously, but my grandad who grew up in Notting Hill (yes that one) in London during the blitz. They were frequently air sirened and had to sleep in the tube but one night nothing. But he insisted they go, told me that he was losing his mind insisting that they go sleep in the tunnels. His parents gave in because he was otherwise a pretty calm kid. The front of their house was blown off that night.
He told me they had a dog Winkie who could hear the planes too so if the dog started barking usually the siren would follow a few minutes later. Crazy times.
I was eleven, and me and my friends made plans to go into the city centre. Day of, my father told us to go to a shopping mall nearby instead, for no reason but a gut feeling (although he didn’t tell us that at the time) and we listened. Later that afternoon, when we would’ve been there, a man stole a van and plowed down a lot of people in the city centre shopping street. We would’ve gotten caught under the wheel or gotten stuck far away from home since the man tried to escape in the metro so the city turned off the entire underground in search of him. Instead we could go home to the closest friend and eat sandwiches and wait for the metro to reopen. People died, and everyone knew somebody who was there. I love my dad.
I was sitting in my car after high school one day and feeling like I needed to stop texting and leave.
Then I started seeing people running down the street towards me – 3 or 4 people on each side of the street towards me. I bug out and drive like 5 blocks away to call 911 and then I can see that they have guns and are threatening or shooting each other.
So then I drive off a second time and don’t stop.
But I almost got caught in crossfire twice in 5 minutes.
I went to a nightclub that had a reputation for violence breaking out. My companion for the evening convinced me to go, saying it would be fine because they installed metal detectors.
Even in the parking lot the vibe was off. I would have preferred to go back to her place and drink there but I allowed her to change my mind and in we went.
The vibe inside was even worse. People were eyeing and sizing up each other and not a whole lot of dancing. After I finished my beer I told her we’re leaving. We went back to my place for the rest of the night and she complained a few times I ruined her fun.
The next morning there was an article in the paper about either a fight or a stabbing (it’s been 30 years so I don’t remember, but both had happened there on the past) and it boiled over into the parking lot.
The town shut down that club a day or two later and it sat empty for years, which was probably for the best.
In my early 20’s, first car. Myself and a friend went to a house party held by people that we knew well. The party was great, high vibes and everyone was having a great time.
Out of nowhere, I was overcome with a feeling of absolute dread, like a sense of impending doom that was totally impossible to ignore.
I told my friend that it was time to go. Now. He looked me in the eyes and didn’t hesitate, he said ‘ok, let’s go’. We both got in our cars and drove away, and when we rounded the corner out of the street we spotted about 15 cars all parked up on the side of the road.
Turns out a local gang, who were notorious for crashing parties and literally kidnapping people and torturing them, bashing girls as they held down their boyfriends, all sorts of terrible s**t like that, this gang had found out about the party and were waiting down the street to raid it.
After we left we heard that the gang had crashed the party, bashed as many guys and girls as they could, kidnapped a couple of people and even ran over a partygoer as they drove away.
A powerful lesson at a young age to trust those gut feelings.
#27
Wife and I did a road trip down south in New Zealand to place called akaroa. It’s a cute little French town on the east coast of the South Island. We’re fans of hiking so we parked up at a nearby forest trail and started our walk. It was like 3pm in the afternoon on a beautiful sunny day. But we didn’t see a single other person on this track. We’re very used to bush walking in remote places. But at some point during this walk I felt goosebumps and a sense of dread. It was very weird. I haven’t felt like that very often. I noticed there were no birds chirping at either which felt very odd. It really felt like someone was watching us. At some point I told my wife I don’t like this feeling and I think we should cut our hike short and get back to the car. We both hurried back. Still don’t have any explanation for that day but I can very clearly remember how I felt. Everything in my body was screaming at me to just turn around and get back in the car.
#28
Hiking. Someone yelled ‘landslide!’ We ran. The trail disappeared.
1991 – first gulf war – I was 9 years old. The first night they started air raids my older brother woke me up telling me to grab my glasses and run to the basement. Keeping a hold of those glasses became the most important thing for me to do ever and since.
In 2008, in college my friends and I broke into an old abandoned hotel from the 1930s In mineral wells tx. It was straight out of a time warp. Out of I believe 12 floors, we made it to 3. We went up past the pool (apparently the hotel was famous for this because of the minerals in the water that supposedly cured illness), around the kitchen and massive ballroom floor, past the old elevator with the pull gate where a kid apparently got his head severed and by lots of old creepy bedrooms with furniture still in them. Then we heard a noise. A super loud screeching noise down a hallway that was pitch black. We all shined our lights in the direction, saw nothing but the sound was getting louder and louder. We all bolted as fast as we could! No clue what it was but I’ve never been more terrified in my life.
I’ve posted this before. Took a train and bus trip around Ireland in 78. Was going in to Sligo when I had an instant feeling of overwhelming dread, something I’d never had before (or since). It was heavy and oppressive. I just grabbed my stuff and ran across the platform to get a train going right back out. I ended up in Mullingar where I had a great stay and dinner with people I met at the B & B, so maybe that was what was supposed to happen for me. I have never been able to figure this out.
#32
We were on the Indian coast when the tsunami hit. The waves rose like a wall, roaring and unstoppable, and we ran for our lives, terrified we wouldn’t make it.
When the lightening almost hit us and everything turned green for a second before a massive bang. And that’s when we went inside.
#34
Was solo traveler one evening in Vietnam, Saigon maybe 20 years ago, walking relatively late at night. Somehow find myself being invited into a small store it was a few steps up off the street, very empty of product and just a handful of mid to older men sitting on milk crates playing cards. Was quicky seated and began being fed multiple shots of whiskey, there was an under current of aggression despite everything outwardly facing friendly. The old man sitting next to me was captivating my attention, felt evil and had this long thumb fingernail that he was jabbing into my kneecap and thigh trying to explain the game, while others were starting to lightly huddle on the other side of the shop, talking and glancing my way. At the opening to the store one of them gentlemen stood and put his hand up to grab the roll top steel door, like a garage door but for tiny shops. It was solid, so one quick pull and I was behind doors. Gut reactions had mounted enough evidence and I grabbed my bag and jumped out of there in a second or two, never looked back but heard the gate slam down when I was further into the street.
These moments can be common when traveling alone and not being too cautious. Maybe it was a harmless game of cards and I was being paranoid, I’ll never know but I am glad I didn’t wait around to find out.
#35
So my house is about 12 kms away passing very silent plantations. from my high school and normally I go back home for lunch before the extracurricular time started (school ended at 13.00, extracurricular started at 15.00). Usually I go back home with my friend but at that time I feel very scared on going back home so I successfully bugging my friend to not go back home early and wait like 30 more minutes.
There’s robbery in the middle of the road we passed like 15 minutes before we reach that part and the guy robbed gets his hand slashed(like no more hand slashed), thankfully he’s alive but seeing the blood smeared everywhere on the road churns my stomach. That delay I did might save our life.
#36
My girlfriend and I were hiking Mount Carleton ( 820m) when all of a sudden our phones started sending multiple warnings of a tornado in the area. Reception is terrible there so we only got the messages closer to the top and for a usually busy hiking area it was eerily quiet.
The top of this mountain has a lone fire watch cabin from many years ago and a 360° view stretching miles of land in a national park. This is a spot where people would usually relax after the long hike and take in the sights. While taking in the sights we could see clouds forming in areas and another warning sent to our phones. We were already on high alert but this was our “yep, lets get the h**l out of here”
As we started our trek down the mountain into a more wooded area the sky all of a sudden turned pitch black and the loudest snap of thunder we’ve ever heard came just from above us giving us a nature jump scare. Seconds later pouring rain came down and turned our trail into a small river covering our hiking shoes. Soaked to the bone but happy we were getting closer and closer to our car. A hiking trip to never forget.
#37
I had a few, but the one I can’t explain was when I was riding my bike to the shops for food and some beers while on vacation. Weather was pretty bad but still rideable. On the way there nothing felt off other than me being wet as h**l and the bike not liking the wet. On the way back I got a crazy urge to just whack open the throttle and get it over with. Not something I’d usually do in the dark and rain on roads I don’t know, but honestly going 15 over the speed limit felt too slow.
2 days later the weather cleared up, I rode the same road, and there was a 10 km pas stretch that had fully flooded, trees uprooted and trash in the branches at 2-3 meters high.
I’m not from a place with flash floods at all, and this area had never been prone to them before. I’m guessing the preceding drought dried up the ground and instead of seeping in, the water washed away a natural dam. What I don’t get is how I felt it coming while cold, sleep deprived and on top of a very vibrant motorcycle.
#38
Car full of naive young teenagers on a road trip. My friend driving decided to do a lazy three point turn on a corner on a winding road in the forest. He had fully blocked the road halfway through the turn and I piped up from the back seat ‘hurry it up mate, a couple of motorbikes might come screaming around the corner’.
Just as he got the car back in its lane, two motorbikes came screaming around the corner…
#39
A few years ago, 4 of us tumbled into a city centre bar for a few drinks after a gig. I felt something seemed off, it was a karaoke night and 2 of us put their name down to sing a duet. I had a bad feeling about the place and persuaded the others to leave and not wait their turn. Reluctantly, we all had had a few drinks prior to our arrival and they wanted to sing. Had to be forceful but eventually we left. Later that night there was a shooting in the bar. We would probably have left at that stage anyway but I felt we had to leave immediately.
#40
Two buddies and I had just graduated university and were out on the town one night bar hopping. We were feeling no pain from a night of drinking and while walking back to my apartment at the end of the night we spotted a pretty wild house party happening. Music playing, people hanging out in the front yard, and the front door open. We walked over and started talking to some guy out front. He invited us in and we found some beer in the kitchen and started to drink.
My one buddy started playing beer pong with this group of women. They had never played before. We were having fun but the conversations I was trying to have with these people just seemed off. I finally asked the guy that we had first met out front if he went to the same university we had just graduated from. He looked confused. He then told me that he was in high school. I laughed it off. No way. And as I looked around the house and at the people there I had this panicked realization…we were officially at a high school party. How did we not realize this walking in? My heart sank and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Here we were with a house full of underage teens drinking in a strangers house. I felt like I was going to puke. Grabbed my buddies and yanked them out of there.
Thankfully nothing bad happened and we got out of there. But to this day we still laugh about this drunken mixup.
#41
Not really a scary one but this past summer, me and my family were at the fair and this guy kept “running into” my grandma. My grandma was 79 years old at the time, I might add. We were just going through the fair and at 3 different times throughout the day/night, this guy just kept happening to find where we were at. By the 3rd time, we said let’s go cause this guy was clearly stalking us or, more specifically, my grandma. Why? I have no clue but we weren’t going to stick around and find out either.
#42
Not really scared, more like a NOPE moment. I drove for Lyft off and on for about a year, this was in charlotte NC. I took on a ride that was in an outlying neighborhood at the airport. So I go to the address and it’s on the road with a few houses, all dark. Streetlights were few and far between. I get to the address and I can’t find any house numbers. I pull into the driveway that’s listed, wait not even 30 seconds and get a feeling something isn’t right. No house lights come on, no message or call asking to wait… I don’t see anyone. So I back out and leave. Right as I’m get to the end of the street I get another ride request for the same location. I declined and got out of there fast.
Walking home one night, I try to take what I thought was a shortcut through an industrial park. I lived in the area my whole life. I knew there was a way through but couldn’t check as my phone battery was depleted. So I’m walking in what I feel is the right way and get towards the edge of the industrial park. The road keeps going but there are no street lights there. The road looked like a fairy tale description of what you expect a dark tree lined road would be. That feeling of a bad idea to travel down that road was so overwhelming that I went back and took the long way home.
#43
I was walking near a park that I had never been to for an ultimate frisbee league game. I had gone there early and decided to wait near the gates where there was very bright lights.
Then, there was this homeless looking dude that walked past me and grabbed a suitcase out of the bushes near where I was waiting. I managed to get a whiff of the dude and he smells like weed..? I instantly felt uneasy and fast walked out of there.
While fast walking, the dude turns around and fast walks in the same direction I am going. Internally, I was scared as heck, trying not to look spooked, and walked out to a much brighter area of the park outside with other people around. The dude walks in a different direction and disappears into the darkness…
#44
First and only time I went to the World Trade Center was like 6 days before they went down. Was in a fight with my boyfriend and pretty consumed with my feelings but as soon as we got to Windows on the World I felt intense panic and dread like I’ve never felt. I even asked what kept planes from flying into the buildings. It’s weird because I’m usually completely oblivious to danger and not prone to panic or anxiety but I couldn’t get to the elevators fast enough. I’ll never forget it. Had intense dreams about those spaces for like 10 years after.
The world is a dangerous place, and it might be scarier than we think. Many people even worry about the fate of our civilization, as 70% of the global population expects a major worldwide conflict in the upcoming 25 years. But there are a lot more things that make living scary.
For example, have you ever thought about just how much of your data social media companies and apps are tracking? And have you ever heard about the Baby Scoop Era when newborns were taken from unwed mothers and fathers and given to those who couldn’t have children?
If you haven’t, this is a good opportunity to learn more about these and other phenomena. Folks have been sharing all sorts of unsettling facts in a thread where one netizen asked, “What is a disturbing truth that you know?” Here is a compilation of the most scary random facts that you might not have known yet!
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
#1
I work in Research Funding, so have a pretty wide ranging view of the problems our species and planet are facing. Soil quality, falling crop yields, rising sea levels, microplastics, pollinators, biodiversity, rising temperatures, anti-microbial resistance, AI power drain accelerating climate change and water shortages and so, so much more. Far, far too little is being done and far too late.
A great deal of effort, money and resource is being put into distracting people from these issues and stoking social divisions. If everyone is angry about engineered problems they won’t blame those responsible for the real ones. Ask yourself why the richest people on the planet own a lot of the media.
Crows can remember human facial features and they hold grudges, remembering bad interactions with people for many years. They can also pass this knowledge to their offspring, creating a generational grudge.
As nurses, we sort of “lie” to family all the time, particularly in hospice which is what I do and will speak from.
Let me explain non-maleficense: my care is for the patient. Do no harm. The benefit is for the patients benefit only.
Example: Is there anything more we can do for my 92 year old cancer ridden heart disease grandma to get more time? Her son will be here in 4 days!
Yes… I could… fluids subq, o2, meds, pull back the morphine, push Ensure protein drink if they have a feeding tube for calories and less ativan JUST a smidgen and I could def get her a few more days…. and in much more pain and anxiety…
My answer: im sorry, theres nothing we can do.
I dont care that you want more time with your mom or dad or grandma, I will tell you there is nothing more, because there is nothing more for the patient here… it’s just needless suffering for the family to benefit from.
And so I offer the pain meds, I offer to increase with MD approval, and with that approval I know I’ll be walking them to the veil at this point to cross over. (Let me edit in a disclaimer here: all drugs education and risks are laid out as part of what I do as reflex and training, ww dont mention drugs without risks and benefits, as in “this could be what does it but it will make them more comfortable” etc)
My mind prepares to get you all to acceptance as in 45 minutes, their breathing will stop when it hits. They will blame the meds or say it was too strong etc.
I once had a woman barely retirement age sorta, vomiting blood every 30 min, got the whole family to acceptance, cheered her on telling her how beautiful she looked, how incredible she was doing, how we were almost there and almost done. She smiled, sipped water, vomited blood, I wiped her face, put a cool cloth on her forehead, and gave her more water. She closes her eyes and I offer her pain meds and her dilauded and she said yes. We all smiled and nodded at eachother, tears in our eyes, and she said she felt better, vomiting slowed a little, she had some energy to talk to everyone and I said you need to say all that you can, now.
2 hours later she was gone.
I didn’t tell them that I came to assist. It wasn’t for them, it was for her.
After she’s gone it will be all about the family for the next 13 months. That’s a bereavement team, my goal is pre-bereavement acceptance.
#4
Abortion bans in the US mean that OBGYN residents in ban states are unable to access the training needed to practice to the full scope of their specialty, including managing pregnancy loss, miscarriage, and other vital services.
That a majority of Americans lack the literacy and education but also the critical thinking capacity and motivation needed to do the kind of knowledge work and even factory work needed in the next 30 years.
The USA has the worst outcomes for maternal & infant mortality among all industrialized countries. It takes an education one can’t get by being passed through the assembly line, to avoid being a statistic. Most of the morbidities & mortalities are preventable. The problem is the system of care.
This isn’t super disturbing but it disturbed me, I used to work in a charity shop in London and it really opened my eyes. About **80%** of the clothing donations never made it to the shop floor — they were sold off for pennies per kilo to a “rag man” for *textile recycling.*
*Most fast fashion items don’t have a resell value ( ie Shein, Temu, Primark etc)*
But here’s the thing: most of it isn’t actually recycled. It gets packed into bales and shipped to countries like Ghana to be resold, but the quality is usually so poor that a huge percentage ends up as waste.
A lot of it ultimately gets:
* **Dumped** in open landfills, on beaches, or near waterways * **Burned** in the open because there’s no proper waste infrastructure * **Polluting the environment** with microplastics and chemicals as it breaks down
On top of that, the flood of ultra-cheap second-hand clothing can undercut local textile industries, making it harder for local manufacturers to survive.
It’s wild how much of our “donations” are basically just waste exports.
If you have a smart anything, smart fridge, camera sensors etc there are millions of unsavory people all over the world that already have your information.
If you are living paycheck to paycheck, it’s not because you are not trying hard enough. It’s because the system is designed for you to fall and fail.
The fact that misinformation spreads faster than the truth online is pretty chilling. It’s like we’re living in a world where facts don’t matter anymore.
For a lot of people in nursing homes, nobody is really checking on them. Families visit less and less, staff are overworked, and if something bad happens, it can go unnoticed for a long time.
Measles resets your immune system. All those antibodies you’ve got from years of colds and stomach bugs and sore throats? Yeah, measles is cleaning those out. If you’re lucky enough to recover from measles, you could still be catching every disease you’ve ever had all over again.
There are extremely poor parents in 3rd world countries all over the world who actively have and sell their children for as little as 10k usd, which is a life changing amount of money for many of them, to the groups behind the operation of places like what happened on Epstein Island, which is still going on somewhere else right now.
I’m a Home Healthcare Aide for senior citizens, and the amount of seniors living in neglect and squalor (even in facilities, and often times of the senior’s own choosing) is appalling. The number of times I’ve walked into a home and thought *”adult protective services really needs to step in here because this place is a biohazard”* has been far too many.
If (god forbid) you get cancer and need chemotherapy, when they administer the chemo through the IV, you can taste it. It tastes like chemicals. No one prepared me for that. Absolutely disgusting.
No matter how careful, aware, gentle, or rough we are with our kids we WILL [mess] them up somehow. And that we also cannot fully protect them from predators.
Also, religion doesn’t impact our experience of the dying process as much as one would hope. A life well loved does.
Pervasive mental illness (schizophrenia/bipolar/etc) can truly appear out of nowhere anywhere in life, but primarily in your teens/twenties.
There could be a girl locked upstairs in any house on my street for the last 10 years and I’ve spent 10 years not knowing I could save her.
Ariel Castro, the one who did have 3 women in his house for more than a decade, including one having at least one baby and the other being beaten until she miscarried repeatedly, that was in a neighborhood maybe 20 minutes from here. Nobody had a clue.
Even mild covid infections can cause serious health problems and permanent damage to your body.
It’s mostly disturbing because people act like because it hasn’t hurt them, it won’t. Not true. And people act like catching repeatedly is totally fine. It’s not.
#25
I’ve been working in biodiversity conservation/climate change mitigation for over 20 years. We are [in a predicament]. Maybe not in a purely apocalyptic way, but anyone born in the next 10-15 years will grow up in a massively different world than the rest of us. And it won’t be good.
That nobody is immune to propaganda or scams. Even the most diligent, intelligent and hyper aware people can find themselves wrapped up in a cult where they believe the democrats in the government are 5th dimensional beings from another planet hellbent on drinking childrens blood. Or find themselves spending thousands of dollars on cleanses and obvious pyramid schemes.
I worked for TJ Maxx in college. When retailers ask for “donations” at the register, those donations don’t go to the actual charity. In our break room we had a poster for a charity drive we were running. It said the goal was a certain amount of money. But the truth was the store already made a donation slightly smaller than that. And the donations customers gave was the store recouping its loss and then some.
Most apps track way more about you than you’d ever willingly tell another human.
biffbobfred:
Facebook was accused of listening in on microphones. Their defense “ha we weren’t doing that we just know so much about you it can seem like we’re listening to every word”. And somehow this was supposed to make people feel better.
Freak_Among_Men_II:
I hate living in the information age. For all the minor conveniences of modern technology, we are made to surrender our very identities to the endless maw of soulless profit-driven corporations.
Life isn’t always fair, and sometimes bad things happen for no reason. But it makes me appreciate the little moments of kindness and happiness even more.
#36
Phosphate mines will be empty around year 2100, at constant rate of extraction. Our present industrial agriculture, beyond petrol, is using phosphate to fertilize the fields. It will be absolutely impossible to keep doing this if there is no more phosphate to be used, and phosphate isn’t something you can synthesize, let alone create ex-nihilo. To put it another way, industrial agriculture based on inputs will be completely impossible and will disappear.
Mycorrhizal fungi are the organisms capable of accessing soil phosphorus when it’s in a form that plants cannot assimilate (it always happen at one point or an other). They provide phosphate and other nutrients to the plants in exchange of sugar, as they are unable to do photosynthesis themselves. An agriculture with soils rich in mycorrhizal fungi will be our only option by 2100. This suppose an undisturbed or very seldomly disturbed soil, meaning no-till farming, agroforestry, syntropic agroforestry and so on.
#37
You’ve already forgotten most of your life, and you’re forgetting more every day.
A huge portion of what we treat as “normal life” is actually shaped by economic relations that benefit a tiny minority, while most people don’t realize how much of their daily struggle is structurally produced rather than personal.
#40
The same field that is advocating for your mental health is teaching businesses and AI how to send you predatory advertising based on psychological weakness.
There are tiny bugs living in your eyelashes right now. They’re called demodex, and they eat d**d skin. Most of the time they’re completely harmless and you’d never even notice them, but sometimes you can have an overpopulation of and/or an allergy to them that can cause irritation. I’m not personally disturbed by them (I think of them as my little eyelash friends) but I’m sure that’s horrifying information for some people.
The vast majority of our thoughts, decisions, and actions are controlled by unconscious processes. Our conscious self often only comes up with a logical explanation for what our subconscious has already done after the fact.
#46
That it can take quite a few shocks to bring you back after heart surgery. I read the notes on my last one and it took eleven to bring me back.
There’s no guarantee that this isn’t my last day on Earth.
#52
That dentists and traditional medical surgeons will fight over the costs of bodies and in particular the heads of bodies donated to science for teaching purposes. Weirdest meeting of my life.
#53
Horses’ legs are built like fingers, meaning they’re basically running around on fingers all the time and that’s why they break their legs so easily.
Your smallest cruelty—may have changed someone forever, and you’ll probably never know it.
#55
I worked in a plant that makes your pig and poultry food. They are fed straight up plastic before you eat them.
These facilities recycle waste food in to pig and poultry food. So we’d get whole trailers of everything you can think of. Gum, peanut butter, noodles, granola, cereal. It all came in its original packaging and we’d throw it all in to one massive pile of slop. That slop would get ran through a grinder, packaging and all, mixed with different liquid fats and grains to manage nutrition content, and then ran through a dryer. The finished product looks similar to saw dust. But when you pick it up and sift through it, you can see all the bits of micro plastics and packaging material. It gets picked up and brought to factory farms like Jenny O and Gold n Plump.
That just because you do everything right, work hard and try your best; things will still not work out like you imagined.
#57
The chainsaw was originally designed as a medical instrument used in childbirth to widen the birth canal.
There is evidence that some of the Challenger crew survived the initial explosion as several breathing packs were activated before the module hit the water.
That we waste the majority of our life due to worry about money.
Many will [pass] without doing the things they could have or should have done, due to money.
We postponed a lot of things that never got done later. The things we said we’d get to “when things calmed down” quietly slipped through our fingers while we were busy doing life. We never took that cruise in the British Virgin Islands with friends. Sure, you saved the money and got a lot of work done at the office. But now that our health is slipping and friends are [passing away], that extra money seems kinda pointless. We’d much rather have the memories and experiences. At this point you will be making plans to give that extra money away to a charity when we [are gone].
Medical personnel from nurses to pharmacists to doctors make numerous mistakes routinely in hospitals, many of which are potentially harmful to fatal for patients.
#61
There is a lake in northern Oregon not to far from civilization but upstream nonetheless. Recently (within the last 8 years), recreational scuba divers just goofing around. Came across a trove of more than 20, 55 gallon drums with biohazard signs on it and weird army coding which said (2-4D)and (2-4-5-T). After contacting authorities it was determined the containers contained a military defoliant, Agent Orange to be exact. The drum are estimate to be at least 50 years.
They have been considering ways to remove them but they are “so fragile” that they can’t. Like I said this has been there for years and one day those bottle will leak and a lot of trees will die, and alot babies will be born deformed.
I have a simple solution, or divert the stream that fills the lake. Drain the lake. Drill in to the top facing side of the drums safely s**k the contents out. Remove the canisters once empty, and do any environmental protection. Practices required due to potential contamination. But, I doubt that idea has even crossed the committees mind.
#62
We are capable of much more than we believe.
numbrate:
This is either a very uplifting statement or an absolutely terrifying one.
#63
I’ve seen the charts of how many insects are allowed per pound of ground coffee in popular brands.
I have a regular intruder trespassing in my attic, and there is nothing I can do about it. Rented apartment and landlord will not believe me.
#65
I brewed my coffee like I did any other day, then after my husband and I enjoyed our cups I went to discard the filter and grounds only to discover the boiled corpse of a broad-faced sac spider under the filter.
I now compulsively inspect the coffee machine before brewing.
My husband still doesn’t know and I’ll be taking this to my grave.
#66
I once saw someone say that many charities for awareness and treatment of mental illnesses like Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder HOPE for a celebrity to come out and admit that they have that condition so it can be more understandable for the common people to see what people with the condition are like.
#67
Bank security can shut your account/freeze it down at any time for essentially no reason if your account activity is perceived to pose a security threat or risk.
#68
You’ve never seen your own face… only reflections and pictures. Everyone else knows what you really look like except you.
