r/megalophobia is a my new favorite subreddit, specializing in things that are very big and therefore very, very scary. Postings range from Lovecraftian monsters looming in the mist to zoom-out animations impressing upon the viewer the insignificance of Planet Earth and all human concerns. Currently popular are disturbing photoshops of large comets looming over the major cities they are about to destroy.
Above is "War Machines," by Simon Stålenhag (previously). Read the rest
As Halloween approacheth, perhaps it's time to tour the world's most troubling and terrifying toilets, courtesy of Phil from Toilets With Threatening Auras. Read the rest
The Slenderman is a boogeyman born from the Something Awful forums that manifested in the real world in 2014 when two pre-teen girls stabbed their friend 19 times to please The Slenderman. "A Self-Induced Hallucination" is director Dan Schoenbrun's documentary about The Slenderman that he made entirely from archival footage.
"The Slender Man. He exists because you thought of him. Now try and not think of him."
-Username "I," posted June 15th, 2009 on the Something Awful forums. (User was later banned for "post(ing) like a weird fucker.")
"Why I Spent Months Making An Archival Documentary about The Slenderman" (Filmmaker Magazine)
Polina Verbitsaya has gotten quite adept at sculpting polymer clay into weird sculptures, like disturbing people, body parts, and and other visceral gew-gaws. Read the rest
Imagine being a bug or small bird who spots a beautiful orchid, only to learn upon closer inspection that it's covered in bugs who want to eat you. Read the rest
Some of these near-misses would probably have been catastrophic and unavoidable without predictive autopilot. Read the rest
Onlookers were not expecting a massive gas fire to explode, sending a huge metal tank hurtling toward them. One person filming got bits and pieces of the near miss, which prompted talented video stabilizers to take a crack at making the footage more stable. Here's the original as a gif: Read the rest
Paralys reenacts the moment a young woman falls asleep while watching a game show, only to experience sleep paralysis. Read the rest
Whatever this guy is on, it's not good. He looks and behave exactly like a movie zombie trying to get to people inside a bus by ramming the bus's window with his head.
Here's a Forbes article about the stuff the man is allegedly on, Cloud 9:
Read the rest“Cloud 9 is not a drug,” says Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). “It’s a name.” Some accounts describe Cloud 9 as a marijuana substitute, similar to products such as Spice or K2. Other accounts, including 2013 testimony by Joseph Rannazzisi, who runs the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control, identify Cloud 9 as a methamphetamine or cocaine substitute in the same family as products sold as “bath salts.” So which is it? A synthetic cannabinoid or a synthetic stimulant? “It could be anything,” Payne says. “It could be all of those things.” As John Yang noted in his NBC report, the bottles of Cloud 9 sold in southeastern Michigan have “just the name on the label, no other writing. It doesn’t say who made it, where it’s from, or what’s in it.”
Stories in the local press do not shed much light on that last question. In a May 21 story headlined “Cloud 9 Rains Misery on Family,” Lisa Roose-Church, a reporter for Michigan’s Livingston County Press, calls Cloud 9 “a synthetic cannabinoid” marketed as “hookah-related incense or oil.” But she also says “it has been sold as bath salts” and quotes the website of Sober Living by the Sea, a chain of California drug treatment centers, as saying Cloud 9 “gives users a euphoric ecstasy-like sensation, with an amphetamine-like high.” Roose-Church adds that “product ingredients vary, but typically include stimulant compounds such as methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) or 4-methylmethcathinone, also known as mephedrone.” Those are both stimulants, not cannabinoids, and they are banned by name under federal law, which makes NBC’s claim that Cloud 9 is legal rather puzzling.
The $35 Bleeding Hand Candle from Etsy seller Creepy Candles is a life-sized candle whose fingers blaze, melt red wax blood, and leave behind a full-sized metal skeleton hand when they've burned up. Read the rest
The Canada Science and Technology Museum had the best worst idea of all time: they stripped the fur off a Tickle Me Elmo to show kids how it works.
Bonus video: a classic of the little robot demon afire:
• Furless Tickle Me Elmo for Tinkering Activity (YouTube / Canada Science and Technology Museum) Read the rest
This video featuring Viktoria Odintsova is probably not adhering to local occupational safety regs. If the photo below gets your palms sweating, you may want to skip the video above. Read the rest
Are Trump's increasingly unconstitutional executive orders getting more and more ludicrous? Now you can make your own with the Trump Executive Order Generator. Read the rest
Customers and employees at Deep Comics & Games in Huntsville, Alabama got quite a surprise when an out-of-control SUV smashed through their store. Luckily, no one was injured, and the driver was taken to the hospital for observation after having an apparent seizure. Read the rest
Beware the Slenderman is a forthcoming HBO documentary about the latest incarnation of the bogeyman, including the 2014 story of the two 12-year-old girls who attempted to stab their friend to death as proxies of the faceless, lanky humanoid monster. First manifested on the Internet (and memetically spread into young peoples' nightmares) around 2011, Slendy is also set to star in his own horror film produced by Sony's Screen Gems division. (via The Daily Grail)
This video appears to be a freighter's anchor being lost as it is dropped. The situation just gets worse and worse as the chain's momentum increases and whatever braking mechanisms exist fail. Soon, metal is on fire, and it seems clear that it is now time to back away from the gigantic runaway anchor chain whose back end components are likely to go places unknown when they emerge from the ship. Yet our intrepid shooter keeps filming!
I see no gloves, goggles, hard hats or fear, and thereby suspect this involves Russians.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a 1981 collection of creeptastic tales for kids penned by Alvin Schwartz and originally (and fantastically) illustrated by Stephen Gammell. It was also widely challenged at public libraries around the country and even banned at many school libraries. Why were they so controversial and what was their allure for a generation? Filmmakers Cody Merck and David Thomas investigate in their forthcoming documentary Scary Tales.
You can still find all three volumes of Read the rest
