50 Very Best Scary Facts

Howdy folks! Do you like to get scared? I know I do! I just love a good horror movie or a true-crime podcast. If these things don’t scare you, check your insides to see if you’re not actually a robot. I got creeped out just writing these!

Do creepy crawlies give you goosebumps? Did you want to run from your TV when you saw Britney Spears perform with that snake? Maybe you love reading horrying historical accounts. Whatever tickles your terror, we know that there’s something on this list that will make you squirm. We know you love it, that’s why you clicked this link, right? Have fun, and try not to get too scared!

Creepy Facts:

1. Afraid of germs? Clean your phone! It contains ten times as many germs as a toilet seat.
2. The dust in your house is largely made up of your dead skin. Every year, you shed more than eight pounds of skin that collects in the corners of your house.
3. Speaking of dead skin, Demodex folliculorum is a special mite that lives in your eyebrows and feeds on your dead skin.
4. Sleep paralysis is a terrifying condition in which you are awake but cannot move. Sufferers of sleep paralysis often hallucinate demons.
5. If sleep paralysis wasn’t terrifying enough, Locked-In Syndrome is just like that, only worse! People with Locked-In Syndrome are fully aware but are stuck in a coma-like state.
6. In the USA, one in every three murders never gets solved.
7. Remember Murder Hornets? Those have been found again in Washington State.
8. Maybe The Happening wasn’t very scary, but doctors have found a fir tree growing in a man’s lungs.
9. Perhaps the trees are out for revenge. We cut down 27,000 a year to make toilet paper.
10. Some animals can predict death. Oscar the Cat is famous for his hospice work. Oscar has an uncanny ability to sense who will soon pass, and provide them comfort.
11. 41% of Americans go into medical debt every year. No other developed country even has that concept.
12. What’s even scarier than the thought of going homeless? Knowing that in the USA, there are more vacant homes than homeless people.
13. UVB-76, aka “The Buzzer” is a possibly haunted radio station. It broadcasts a low-frequency noise and few transmissions in Russian. It started sometime in the 70’s, but no one knows where it came from.
14. A chicken named Mike lived for 8 weeks after his head was cut off.
15. A group of crows is called a murder.
16. Crows can recognize and remember human faces.
17. Crows have also been known to seek revenge on people that have wronged them. Seriously, don’t mess with the crows!
18. Paris is romantic, right? What’s more romantic than millions of human remains? The Catacombs under Paris hold the rains of roughly sixty million plague victims.
19. Speaking of tourist attractions made of bones, the Sedlec Ossuary in Kunta Hora, Czech Republic is a Roman Catholic Church featuring decorations made from human bones. Check it out on your next trip to Prague!
20. The Czechs weren’t the only people with creative uses for bones! Ancient Britons often used human skulls as cups and bowls.
21. In the Middle Ages, people used to eat mummies for medicinal purposes. It’s the main reason we do not have a lot of mummies left today.
22. You heard of the Depression-era craze of Dance Marathons, right? Couples would compete to see who could dance the longest, often for cash prizes. Unfortunately, sometimes people would drop dead from exhaustion on the dance floor.
23. If you fear the ocean, I have bad news. Our seas are seeing massive jellyfish blooms due to climate change.
24. Speaking of climate change, 2021 was America’s hottest summer so far.
25. You share 80 million bacteria in a single kiss. Maybe opt for a fist bump with that Tinder date.
26. In the 1920’s, the American domestic terror group the Ku Klux Klan had a youth chapter called the “Ku Klux Kiddies.”
27. Scientists have found a new kind of tarantula with a horn on its back in southeastern Angola.
28. That doesn’t make it safe to stay in the US! Scientists have found 14 new species of tarantulas in the United States. One was named after American singer Johnny Cash.
29. Speaking of celebrities, did you know that actress Glenn Close was raised in a cult?
30. Doctors are begging people to stop the viral Milk Crate Challenge. They report that injuries from falling off milk crates are worse than falling off a ladder.
31. Afraid of rats? A rat king is even worse. It’s when a bunch of rats get their tails tangled together, thus becoming stuck. Ew!
32. Did you think squirrels were ok because of their fluffy tails? They can also get their tails tangled together and become squirrel kings. 
33. The former chief of the FBI estimates that there are between 25 and 50 active serial killers in America at any given time. 
34. American serial killer John Wayne Gacy had bodies buried beneath his house. They were buried together so tightly that the bones of his victims fused together. The skeletons took two years to fully separate.
35. HH Holmes, America’s first serial killer, constructed a “Murder Castle,” a hotel with secret compartments and gas chambers to murder unsuspecting visitors of the Chicago World Fair. He confessed to 27 murders, but is suspected of many more.
36. Sarah Winchester of the Winchester Rifle fortune was convinced she was haunted. To confuse the frightful spirits, she built her mansion to be as confusing as possible. Today you can visit the Winchester Mystery House.
37. It is not true that your fingernails keep growing after you die. What happens is your skin loses moisture and pulls back, making it look like your nails are still growing. Sometimes funeral directors moisturize the fingertips to limit the effect.
38. By the way, do you know what embalmers do to bodies? First, they drain all the blood and replace it with formaldehyde, and then the process only gets more gruesome from there. Personally, I’d opt for a green burial.
39. The Pirates of The Caribbean ride at Disneyland used to have real skeletons as props. When it was first built in the 1960s, designers asked UCLA’s anatomy department for authentic materials. The real skeletons have since been given a proper burial.
40. That’s not the only amusement park to use a real body as decor. In 1976, a TV crew realized one of the hanging bodies in the Laff in the Dark ride was indeed a real body– by accidentally breaking it. 
41. Syphilis left untreated leaves people looking like zombies. During the renaissance, hordes of untreated people with syphilis used to wander through the streets. 
42. In 2008 a man living in rural Japan noticed his food disappearing at night. When he installed cameras, they revealed a woman had been living in his house. At the time of her discovery, she had been living there for months.
43. Did you know you could be impaled by a beach umbrella? It happened to a woman on the Jersey Shore.
44. Hawaii has issued a warning to tourists about a parasitic brain worm. Maybe the beach isn’t so relaxing after all.
45. If you asked his neighbors before his arrest, they’d tell you Jeffery Dahmer was a real nice guy. He even used to bring them sandwiches— that may or may not have contained his victim’s flesh.
46. Dennis Radner, aka the BTK killer, profited off his own derangement. He got a lot of business installing security systems for people afraid of the BTK killer. 
47. The pacific trash island is currently estimated to be 1.6 million square kilometres or twice the size of Texas.
48. In one month, the average person consumes about a Lego brick’s worth of microplastic. 
49. A rat’s teeth never stop growing.
50. Cosmologists theorize the constant expansion of the universe could cause it to tear apart. This theory is called The Big Rip.

More Facts:

50 Psychology Facts // 100 WTF Facts // 45 Green Eyes Facts
30 Amber Eyes Facts // 35 Hazel Eyes Facts // 101 Useless Facts

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Casey Luft-Runner

Casey Luft-Runner is a freelance writer from San Francisco, California. She left her former career as an overseas ESL teacher to pursue her true passion: writing!

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