What are the most unsettling Wikipedia articles you know?
What are the most unsettling Wikipedia articles you know?
Murder cases, freak accidents or articles triggering just good old existential crisis. Give me your worst.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naegleria_fowleri
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths ranges from creepy to absurd
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_murders good rabbit hole
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Keyes
Reddit had a sub called creepywikipedia for this kind of thing. It shut down for the protest and stayed shut down. Might be worth recreating by someone more inclined than myself, who is very lazy
After watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies, Alex Mitchell, of King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, laughed continuously for 25 minutes and then fell dead on his sofa from heart failure due to what doctors discovered years later, via his granddaughter, was a genetic condition called Long QT syndrome.
Yikesssssssss
There exists an article about death during sex and the first notable case is a Pope!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes
I‘m from the EU, but it unsettles me to know about how willing the US government and other interest groups there are to do violence to the workers to keep them in line. Whenever anyone from here brings up "why don‘t they strike for healthcare" etc, I think of this. We got a government and companies which are less willing to straight up shoot us to force the rest back to work. That helped I imagine.
Government mind control programs.
I always found these Wikipedia articles underwhelming, but listening to the CBC podcast and behind the bastards episodes on the specific victims of the program and how the scientists at McGill intentionally destroyed their brains purely through psychological torture is incredibly heart wrenching.
Also interesting that there's evidence that the Unabomber was a victim of some of the mkultra program.
I agree, the Wikipedia articles on MKUltra definitely have a somewhat conservative (not politically) take.
The Unabomber connection is also interesting. Have you read the book CHAOS by Tom O'Neill? It makes a very good case that Charles Manson and the Family may have also been involved (as subjects) with MKUltra and COINTELPRO.
I came to post exactly that. The proven and acknowledged aspects of MKUltra are frightening, without even getting into the conspiratorial accusations.
The page on the Church Committee is a great starting point for learning more about similar covert projects.
COINTELPRO in particular is very frightening.
Obligatory relevant xkcd
That second incident is pure Dudes Rock territory - absolutely insane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay
It’s about a hypothetical event in quantum field theory that potentially can erase the entire universe as we know it.
This is always the one I go to to really freak people out. The idea that there's no way you can influence it so you shouldn't actually worry about it takes a while to set it.
Do we know for sure if the fine structure constant is actually constant now? That could stop atoms from existing. iirc
Torture and murder of Junki Furuta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Junko_Furuta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin
explosive decompression in 1983 that killed four divers and one dive tender, as well as badly injured another dive tender.
excerpt:
Investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the crescent-shaped opening measuring 60 centimetres (24 in) long created by the jammed interior trunk door.Came here to post this. The blood boiling was particularly unsettling.
Maybe not unsettling, and not a particular article but an interesting, possibly existential crisis thing is if you click the first link in any wiki artical that is:
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not in itallics
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Not in parenthesis
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And is in the article itself.
And you keep doing that as it takes you through articles it will almost always end up at the philosophy article.
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If you're even remotely claustrofobic you should probably stay out of this one.
The internet historian has a great video on Nutty Putty Cave.
And the article couldnt help but squeeze in some anecdotes about some helpful cultish Mormons.
Stomach turning and NSFL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Parker_Ray
Saw his nickname and noped the fuck out.
That link better stays blue. What is it about?
A sicko that tortured and assaulted women.
Fuckin hell dude. Also, I found the names weird - Elephant butte, truth and consequences.
Shit and vomit inducing wiki for me was rose west's wiki:
Ok, I might need a minute to scroll through my bookmarks
Edit, ok, here we go (this is just from my bookmarks and what feels most "unsettling" to me. I could sit here and link for hours to more things I have "saved" in my head, but I'll leave it at this for now):
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List of people who disappeared mysteriously: pre-1910
List of people who disappeared mysteriously: 1910–1990
List of people who disappeared mysteriously: 1990–present
Bonus addition in edit: List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea -
I have quite a few pages on serial killers, but this is probably more efficient than listing individuals: List of serial killers by number of victims
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A handful of individual cases though:
Murder of Junko Furuta
Murder of Sylvia Likens
Murder of James Bulger
Murder of Shanda Sharer
Hart family murders -
On the larger scale:
List of genocides
List of massacres
Blackbirding
Zong massacre
Home Children
starlight tours -
On the existential front:
List of impact craters on Earth
Observable universe and Cosmological horizon which make you realise that the endless and abundant expanse of space we see is only a tiny little portion of the actual universe.
The people who dissapeared between 1910 and 1970 however arent very interesting
Yeah, I just noticed that too, not really sure what happened there lol
Looking at it now the post 1970 one isn't right at all, will edit op
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Human experimentation with Syphilis without their knowledge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study?wprov=sfti1
Evening, Nexpo!
Imagine all of exitence ceases to exist and humans decide to refer to it as the "Big Slurp"
The entry for the Daytlov Pass Incident comes to mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Shadow_Etched_in_Stone
Human Shadow Etched in Stone (人影の石, hitokage no ishi)[2] is an exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It is thought to be the residue of a person who was sitting at the entrance of Hiroshima Branch of Sumitomo Bank when the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima. It is also known as Human Shadow of Death[1] or simply the Blast Shadow.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident
I know this isn't the most disturbing Wiki article out there, but this is the creepiest one I know of that I can stomach. Also, it's an interesting case, despite its morbid and eerie nature.
It was an avalanche. Oddly enough, they figured that out based on how the snow was generated in Frozen.
Ohhhh, that makes sense. Thanks for the info. I looked at the article again just now and realized it looks a lot different from how I remember, so possibly there's more info on there now than when I had last looked at it.
I'll be honest, I'm a little sad I can no longer chalk it up to aliens or a weird cryptid 😅
CreepyWikipedia specialized in collating unsettling Wiki entries, but they are one of the few indefinite participants in the blackout.
I made a Lemmy alternate over here: !creepywikipedia@lemmy.world.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !creepywikipedia@lemmy.world.
Cool! Thx very much!