With internet access as it is today, it's easy to feel like you've heard it all. Scary stories? Know 'em all. The web is a plethora of all things creepy, so if you dig deep enough, you'll never run out of horror stories to haunt your ever-waking hour.
We sought out some of the creepiest, most horrific true stories that you've probably never heard of. Redditors served up some truly insane scary stories, guaranteeing you disrupted sleep for the foreseeable future.
21 Insanely Creepy True Stories Most People Don't Know About,
Edgar Allen Poe piece predicts shipwreck tragedy 50 years before it happened
"Edgar Allan Poe’s 'The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym' (1838) was about four shipwreck survivors stranded in a boat before they killed and ate a cabin boy - Richard Parker. In 1884, a boat was stranded with only four survivors. Three of the men killed and ate the cabin boy, also named Richard Parker."
Two 10-year-old boys abduct, torture, and murder a toddler
"The Jamie Bulger incident. Two young English boys at 10 years old took a little toddler out of the mall and to a railroad, where they tortured and assaulted him before bludgeoning him to death with rocks."
Russian soldiers during WWII force a German man to watch as his wife is raped by entire platoon
"It is in the German memoir 'Sniper on the Eastern Front'. It is March 1945, and the Germans have been pushed back by the Russians into Germany and Czechoslovakia. He was scouting some German village in the Sudetenland. A Russian platoon drove around, so he hid in a caved out building, so this lone sniper had a front row seat to the horror to what was to follow. The platoon was plundering the village until it ran into this German couple. The Russians then tied up the husband, and forced him to watch as the Russians, in order of ranking personnel, raped the wife. One. By. One. She was screaming in agony, fell in and out of consciousness, and was in so much pain. When the last Russian was finished with her, he shoved a flare gun up the woman's vagina, and fired it. The woman screamed out the most 'animalistic, brutal, and haunting scream' the German has ever heard, as the flare was slowly burning the woman's insides and blood/flare residue/flames were rushing out of her body, and then she slumped over dead. German reinforcements soon arrived, and killed/wounded the platoon. The husband went into his house, grabbed an object (I recall it was a shovel) and hacked the remaining wounded Russians on the ground until they were all dead. Some of the Germans tried stopping him, but the lone sniper held them back."
Couple find lost, soiled, children abandoned in the middle of the road
"I was with my wife and children driving to a local Walgreens, when my wife suddenly stopped the car and pointed into the street. I looked and saw two young children in the middle of the road in diapers, wandering around and looking confused. My wife ran out as I stayed in the car with my kids, picked up the smaller one and took the hand of the older one to walk them into the parking lot of the Walgreens. Up close I could tell that both diapers were horribly soiled (as in not changed in days). They were both dirty and smelled awful. It was a fairly cold and was raining some, so the children were very cold and shivering.
We immediately called the police and waited with the children until they arrived. The younger child was approximately two years old and as my wife comforted him, he just kind of laid there and looked happy to be getting attention. The older child was about four or five, and as I stated, was still in a diaper. He couldn't speak, and looked very frightened of anyone getting near him. He would grunt and whimper, but seemed to have no way to communicate at all. I had to gently keep him in the area as he was trying to run off, but finally got him to calm down by wrapping a warm blanket around him and humming to him.
The cops arrived after about 10-15 minutes, and took our statement of what happened. We told them our story, continuing to comfort the children until a team of paramedics got to the scene to make sure the kids didn't need medical attention for exposure, hypothermia, etc. After a while, maybe an hour after we had first found them, a strung out woman wandered on to the scene and says casually that the children are hers. She is obviously high, and tries claiming to the cops that the children were only gone for 5-10 minutes. The cop called her on her bullshit, and spent the next couple of minutes yelling, asking her how she could let her children wander a fairly busy street, almost naked, in the rain and cold.
A man who identifies himself as their dad arrived, shirtless and filthy, also strung out. The cop asked why the older boy was not speaking, and they said he never did, not elaborating why that was. When asked where they live, they told conflicting stories, obviously trying to lie to the cop to make it seem the children had not wandered far, but from what it seemed, they lived at least several blocks away. The mom tried to take the children but the police stepped in and told her that they were in police care now, and would be assessed by a CPS rep at the police station before they would be able to return home. Not long after this we were told we could go as they had gathered all they needed from us. I never found out what happened to those kids, I hope that they got the help they obviously needed. I am still bothered by the whole event, I wonder what kind of life they had led, to leave them filthy, mute, and alone in the middle of a city street."
HBO documentary exposes homicidal child
"There's an HBO documentary called 'Child of Rage', about a six year old with reactive attachment disorder who repeatedly tortured animals, sexually molested her brother, and attempted to kill her adoptive parents by coming into their bedroom at night with a knife. The doc shows her calmly telling her therapist about the incidents very soon after they happened - really creepy and sad."
Man treats girlfriend's child like a dog, eventually leading to the child's death
"The Baby P story really fucked with my head. In the UK a couple of years ago, the boyfriend of this woman started beating her son. The things he did were horrific: training his dog to bite him, pulling out his fingernails/toenails, smashing his fingers, throwing him in the air and letting him hit the floor, and tossing him around, calling it roughhousing. The boyfriend eventually did this so hard that one night he snapped Baby P's spine in half - killing him. One of the things that stuck with me was when I read that he was trained to be submissive, and when the boyfriend would enter the room, Baby P would automatically put his head to the floor. When I first read about it, I had nightmares for weeks."
Audio recording exists of Jim Jones preaching as the Jonestown commuinity commits mass-suicide
"There is a recording of Jim Jones' speech during the night at Jonestown where the hundreds of people drank cyanide-laden juice and committed suicide. You can hear them dying in the background and his sheer delirium is absolutely chilling."
WWII Doctor who claims to help Jews flee Europe is actually murdering them & dissolving their bodies in acid
"There was a French doctor during WWll, Marcel Petiot, who promised Jewish refugees to help them to leave Europe. When they came to his house on the day of departure, with their most precious belongings, he would give them a special 'vaccine', since they were allegedly going to South America. He killed them all, took their stuff, made them pay some high fee for his help in the first place, and dissolved their corpses in his basement with acid."
WWII plane crashes in Japan, US rescues only one of nine survivors
"During WWII, an American airplane crashed near the Japanese island of Chichijima. There were nine servicemen on board. One was rescued by an American submarine. The other eight were taken in by the Japanese. Don't wanna go into all the details, but through some time and events, the Japanese ended up EATING those servicemen. But that's not the weird part.
The one serviceman who was rescued? That was George H. W. Bush."
Soilders below deck are trapped in sinking ships to starve to death after Pearl Harbor
"After Pearl Harbor, there were soldiers who were trapped below deck as their ships sank. Unfortunately, the ships didn't flood, so they were trapped below deck for days until they died of starvation. The navy knew it was happening, but they had no way to go down and get them, due to limitations (couldn't get the right tools, ship might blow up... I can't remember the actual reason), so they instead reported those men among the initial death toll from the bombings. Men on guard would beg not to be placed near those ships, because they could hear them banging on the hull for help. Eventually, the navy managed to get down to retrieve the bodies, but only after everyone had died. Apparently they had marked the passage of time on the wall, and they had survived at least a week. Most of the families of those men were never made aware that it happened."