20 Unsettling but true facts that kept us up at night

The world is an incredible place filled with information, but some of it is positively terrifying. From events that happened in the past to natural phenomena that exist around us every day, there are lots of scary things lurking around us.

Here are some creepy and unsettling facts that will keep you up at night.

Don’t Feed Bread Or Other Ducks To The Ducks!

From as young as four weeks old, ducks can display cannibalistic tendencies when they are bored, irritated, or feel overcrowded, though most don’t partake in this vice. They can only be stopped by trimming their bills!

I Am Terrified Of The Ocean

If you’re in a boat directly over the deepest point of the Mariana Trench and you have a passenger jet cruising at 30,000 feet above you, you are closer to the jet than to the bottom of the ocean.

I Don’t Ever Want To Vacuum Again

The distinct “vacuum smell” (the smell from the content you vacuumed up) that most people are accustomed to comes from dead skin cells. In fact, a large amount of the dust in your home is from your own dead skin.

The Birds Of Death

One reason that crows and ravens are associated with death is that they would often follow armies as they marched to battle. Both being intelligent carrion birds, they realized that a large group of armed men marching on one direction meant that there would be a tasty meal of corpses to eat soon afterward.

Imagine Your Whole Body Turning Into Bone

There is a genetic disease called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva that causes damaged tissue to be replaced with bone. Growths form underneath affected people’s skin and their joints lock solid, slowly stopping them from being able to move at all.

The Grass Is Practically Screaming

Plants actually tend to communicate with each other through chemical signals, often after they are damaged. The smell of a freshly cut lawn is actually a chemical distress signal released from the grass as it’s cut.

I’m Never Stifling A Sneeze Again

If you stifle a sneeze, there’s a chance you can damage organs in your head—you can burst eye blood vessels, rupture your eardrums, and possibly rupture a brain aneurysm, meaning there’s a small chance that stifling a sneeze can kill you.

Always Double-Check The Blood Type

If you get a blood transfusion and receive the wrong type of blood, one of the symptoms is “a sense of impending doom.” An impending sense of doom is also a common symptom people feel prior to a heart attack.

Excuse Me, From The Coroner’s Office

It’s quite common after a human dies to burp a lot since the body has more gas build-up inside that needs to escape. Dead bodies can also sit up on their own sometimes due to rigor mortis.

Thank God The Gators Can’t

Crocodiles are able to gallop in a manner that is similar to a horse, allowing them to move very quickly. Fortunately, their animal lookalikes alligators do not possess this ability.

The Human Body Is Terrifying In General

In 2015, a young woman began to have headaches. They discovered that she had a brain tumor, and when the doctors removed it, they were shocked to see that it was a lump resembling skin that contained bone, teeth, and hair. The mass was called a “teratoma,” or “monstrous tumor.”

The Poor Blob Fish Isn’t Actually Ugly

A blobfish in its natural habitat looks like a normal fish, but it lives so deep underwater that it doesn’t use a normal gas bladder to keep itself balanced. Instead, it has a spongy skin that is slightly less dense than water, which becomes damaged and bloated when fishermen bring it up to surface too quickly.

Remember When People Told You Not To Swallow Seeds Or A Watermelon Would Grow In Your Stomach?

It was once discovered that a fir tree was growing inside a human body. Artyom Sidorkin went to the doctor suspecting something wrong with his lungs. The doctors thought they were dealing with a tumor, but turns out he had inhaled a fir tree seed which had sprouted and had begun growing in his lungs.

Fido Has Murder On His Mind

The reason dogs like squeaky toys so much is that, in accordance with their history as hunting predators, the squeaking sound when they bite down on the toys reminds them of small animals dying.

Bear With Me On This One

Most survival guides will instruct you to play dead if a bear attacks you. The one caveat is that you shouldn’t keep playing dead if they start licking your wounds because that means they’re planning to eat you.

Oh, The Horrifying Irony

The men of the ship Essex (the true event that inspires the story “Moby Dick”) avoided islands after being shipwrecked for fear of cannibals. The islands were settled, and landing there would have brought salvation to the survivors.

Ironically, because of this bypass, the men ran out of food and were forced to eat each other for survival.

Brainwashing Is A Real Issue In The Animal World

There is a parasitic fungus called Cordyceps that can actually brain-control insects, forcing them to move to a higher altitude where they will eventually die and release more Cordyceps spores.

I Don’t Want To Be A Cockroach’s Snack!

Cockroaches have been recorded eating human flesh, both living and dead, as well as fingernails, eyelashes, feet, and hands. The American cockroach and German cockroach are more likely to bite humans than other species.

That’s A Heavy Amount Of Dead Skin

The average adult loses 50 million skin cells every day. If you live to age 70, you will have shed around 105 pounds of skin over the course of your life.

Those Poor Little Babies…

It wasn’t until 1987 that the American Academy of Pediatrics declared it unethical to operate on newborns without anesthesia. Until surprisingly recently, the medical community felt it would be dangerous to give infants anesthesia and/or believed that they didn’t feel pain.

I Have To Be Afraid Of Snails Now?

When you get stung by a cone snail, you don’t actually feel the sting right away. There is no antivenin and a sting can be lethal. Treatment is basically just to keep the victim alive until the venom wears off.

That Must Be A Horrifying Checkpoint On The Journey

When climbing Mount Everest, there’s a point nicknamed “rainbow valley” or “rainbow ridge” because it’s absolutely littered with the bodies of people who attempted to make the climb. The combination of the extremely cold temperature and the bright snowsuits means that they’ve become a never-rotting but colorful landmark

Lobsters Literally Get Too Swole

Lobsters don’t age in a regular way, meaning their cells don’t decompose. They die because they grow so big that they spend more energy to shed their shells than they can reserve, and they die of exhaustion.

How Do You Not Realize You’re Using A Corpse?

Elmer McCurdy was a failed old west “outlaw.” His preserved body was put on display in a traveling carnival and years later he was eventually assumed to be mannequin until he was used on set for the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man.

His arm accidentally fell off during the shoot, revealing bone and muscle and that he was a corpse, not a mannequin.

Why Do Our Brains Betray Us?

Your brain can play tricks on you to make you see monsters in the mirror, called the Troxler Effect. The Troxler Effect is an optical illusion that affects how you perceive things, both visually and mentally when you fixate on one specific point.

That’s One Place I Wouldn’t Go Diving

The bottom of Lake Superior in Canada is cold enough that the bodies of dead sailors don’t really decompose because it’s at freezing temperatures. They instead get a coating of adipocere, liquid body fat, hardened around them.

Keep The Glaciers Frozen At All Costs!

Bacteria and viruses can be frozen for millions of years and still be viably infectious. Having never encountered humanity before, they could have catastrophic results should they be uncovered and manage to infect a person or animal.

Pigs Have A Terrifying Diet

Pigs are not discriminating eaters—they’ll eat just about anything. A Canadian serial killer who owned a pig farm was believed to have used the pigs to get rid of the bodies.

Control Is Merely An Illusion

There is no guarantee that the universe won’t end at any second and destroy everything and everyone you’ve ever known. According to quantum physics, there’s a chance that the universe will cease to exist at just about any moment.

The USSR Created A Cannibal Island

In Soviet Russia in 1933, Stalin sent a group of about 6,000 prisoners to an island in Siberia, but could not afford to keep them fed and stopped sending them supplies altogether. The prisoners were forced to engage in cannibalism.