The Creepiest Displays Of Intelligence People Ever Witnessed In Real Life

Have you ever heard someone referred to as being "scary smart."

It usually doesn't mean they're actually terrifying, just that their knowledge or abilities are unusual.

Reddit user Jessica_Enna asked:

"What's the creepiest display of intelligence you've ever witnessed in real Iife?"

Remember Me?

"We were studying and she recognized a young man from a photo in an anatomy textbook. She said it was from her 3rd grade math book. We didn't belive her and made fun of her, so one day she showed up with that book. Same young man, totally different pose and environment."

"Obviously some stock photos."

"She still works in medicine, but works with the police several times a year for super-recognizer screenings or whatever that's called."

"When we would go out, she would see someone and just go: 'ah, this guy was at the lake 4 years ago when we were there'. We all just stopped confirming with those people because she was always right and it was always creepy."

"The wildest recognition I remember was a girl that she had seen in a grocery store in Bangkok when she was backpacking across Asia 2 years earlier."

~ reedshut

A Slice Of Pi

"Miriam. A friend introduced me to her at a party. She was a math major."

"She had gotten into a bet with her roommate to see who could memorize pi to the most digits. She won, by *thousands* of digits."

"My friend said, 'Hey Miriam! Do pi!'."

"Her eyes went glassy and she went, '3.1415926535...' She went on for several minutes."

~ BoredBSEE

Puzzling

"I knew a kid who had an intellectual disability. He was nonverbal and needed 1 to 1 support all day, every day."

"However, pull out a 500 piece puzzle, he puts it together upside down."

"As in... the pieces are flipped to the blank side. No imagery to fit together."

"Extremely fascinating to watch, never seen anything like it!"

~ honey_bee_bee_

Part

"My old cat, who was the eldest of 4 cats I had, was wicked smart. He was insanely clean."

"We had 2 large litter boxes for the 4 cats. He made the 3 younger girls copy his habits and they used 1 litter box only for pee and the other only for poo."

"I swore up and down to my partner, who at the time didn't believe me he could understand English, but when I asked sarcastically to get the kitten out from behind the drawer, the cat just looked at me.

"Then he went to the drawer, had a 'conversation' with the kitten and she came right out! We had tried for hours! If my partner didn't see it with her own eyes..."

~ Unrigg3D

Familiar Faces

"My boyfriend has eidetic memory for faces. He never forgets a face, even if it only passes by a few seconds."

"One time he saw an Instagram story of a friend who was traveling in Turkey, this friend was on a boat. He realised that the captain on the boat was the captain he saw 10 years ago, when he was traveling on a boat to some remote island in Turkey."

"I have the opposite of this, it’s called face blindness I think. I have to meet someone a few times and have had some proper conversations (not just small talks) before I can remember their face."

"One time, 2 of his friends flew over (to where we live) for their honeymoon. I went to dinner with them. We hung out for a few hours."

"One year later, when we went to my bf’s hometown, we met the 2 friends, they hugged me, and I was so confused thinking, 'who are these people?'."

~ EnvironmentalTart794

Visualize This

"My husband grew up in a bad area, bad family, high school drop out because school was so bad for people with learning disabilities. He grew up truly believing he was stupid."

"I'm a writer, and he would never read. Complained that he couldn't read. Not a lack of ability, but he apparently has that thing where you can't visualize in your head—but no word for it 30 years ago, and I didn't even realize that was a possible thing."

"He just told me he can't see the story like I can, so it doesn't make any sense for him. He found it difficult and pointless."

"Then, at 20 years old, he sat down and read a college chemistry textbook left at our house in one evening and literally taught himself chemistry. I was a 'gifted' student with a full scholarship, and chemistry was where I got lost AF. Because I could not understand what I was seeing."

"He said, 'I don't have to imagine with this book. It just explains. Easiest book I've ever seen!'."

"Apparently the ONLY way he can visualize is that he (and our youngest) has an eidetic memory for TV & movies. Once he's seen something, he can replay it perfectly in his head but not if he hasn't literally seen it happen."

~ HotAsElle

Self-Taught

"I have a 6yo level 2 autistic son who gradually became verbal in the last 2 years. He silently taught himself to read last year and didn’t let anyone know until he decided to show me by reading a brand new bedtime story to me."

"When he did, I tried testing him with sight cards that started at pre-k and went to 3rd grade. Hundreds of cards, he didn’t miss a single one."

"Then he started reading billboards and signs, 'Voltage' 'Electrocution'. He was processing so much more than he had the capacity to speak before."

"I noticed he’s teaching himself how to read music now. He’ll stop if he thinks you’re watching, but he’s teaching himself with some musical bells, workbooks, and YouTube. For Christmas Santa casually left him some sharp and flat note bells to fill out his set."

"Autistic kids don’t all do stuff like my son, but there are lots of interesting examples like it. Pattern recognition can be a real strength."

~ SunburntLyra

Scenic View

"I was on holidays in a Turkish wakeboard park. They have some dogs there, which were strays, but living there in the park now. Super friendly doggos."

"One morning, we wanted to get up a hill for the sunrise. When we stepped out, two of the dogs slept in front of our house. They woke up and immediately understood what we were up to. They lead the way up the hill."

"When we were up there, one of them was sitting down and staring into the sunrise with me. Nothing else. He just looked at the shiny orb in the skies."

"This dog was not lead by food, companionship or anything. He was just there. Probably admiring the sunrise, too. Nothing a dull animal would be able to."

~ Kaibaer

Smooth Criminal

"I did a little time. I ran into a guy in there that engineered a fight between three unrelated parties. That part wasn't the creepy part (though, good enough, really - two of the three fighting parties were not fighting people and he got 'em in the mix effortlessly)."

"The creepy part was that in the roughly one minute before the fight kicked off (resulting in the block being locked down for three days, btw) he explained to me point by point and in close detail what the administrational response would be, exactly who would be involved, who would be written up, injured, reassigned to different blocks, etc..."

"He did this so that a fourth party, not involved in the violence, would be caught up in cell searches with contraband, which happened. A tattoo kit. That guy left the block with the three fighters, but never came back."

"He told me all of this stuff point by point like a grocery list. Down to which guards would come and what their moods and reactions would be. He was in the cell next to mine and he just kept laying it out right until they locked us in."

~ Economy_Field9111

Keeping Count

"Watched someone in Vegas win hand after hand of poker. Stopped after maybe 20k in winning and said, 'I’m bored.' This was someone I knew well who was a math genius. I asked why he didn’t gamble all the time."

"He said, 'it doesn’t interest me. I could win all day every day.'"

"Please note he worked in finance and made crazy money. Just interesting to watch someone not want to win every nickel they could."

~ LoyalLoss18

Pushing Pins

"Working for a city in traffic engineering, we had a large map on a wall where we would place pins with colored heads to represent types of accidents from police accident reports, for example pedestrian related, property damage only, death, etc..."

"Instead of bringing the stack of reports and working out each pin and exact location individually, one legendary lady would go in and stick the pins from memory. This was not a small city!"

"One engineer was incredulous and questioned how she could remember so many. She became offended, but when he checked her work he found she got every one right."

"I didn't witness it, but I believe him, and I can't imagine how she did it!"

~ madhousechild

Show Your Work

"I had a classmate once who could do complex equations in her head. She was asked to solve an equation on the whiteboard once (showing her work), but only wrote the answer."

"When the teacher asked her to show how she got to the answer, she just said, 'I can't'. Of course the teacher made her do a few more, and yep, she got them all right."

"The scariest part is supposedly her sister was even smarter than her."

~ lumoslomas

Niche

"A guy I was friends with ended up working in a car yard - it wasn’t a big brand one, just a small family owned second hand car yard - guy did ok in school, wasn’t a genius, wasn’t an idiot."

"I dropped in to visit him at work after he’d been working there for about 6 years and his boss called out asking if he could remember a car and added the registration number (no description or anything) and my mate rattled off the car’s details, the name of the person who traded it in, what they bought, and who bought it, by name… but phrased it as a question: 'you mean the blue toyota whatever, with the such and such, that so and so came in with etc...'."

"This had all happed about six months after he’d started there."

"He clearly found his place."

~ elroyonline

DJ

"I worked with a DJ who knew the station’s entire catalog by heart. 'Oh, you want to hear "Please, Mr. Postman"? That’s CD 472, Track 5.'"

"He was never wrong! And it made board op-ing with him so much easier."

~ marylennox1

Look Up

"I met two people with eidetic memory as far as I know. They both had the same habit of answering a question: pausing, looking upwards as if they were reading something in the air, and then answer."

"One I met was in the Army. My first meeting with him, he noticed my last name and said, 'Oh, that’s Japanese,' paused, looked at the ceiling, and then started speaking to me in Japanese. I told him it was a Japanese last name but I was Mexican-American. Again, he paused, looked up, and then started speaking to me in Spanish."

"Later, he picked up quite a bit of German in just a couple of months. He was definitely a polyglot. I believe he also became Soldier of the Month three months running, but was asked to not do it again."

"The funniest thing was he had very little social graces. He was a very good looking guy and always smiled. People would approach him, but after a few minutes they would leave, looking at him like he was an alien. I have to admit, he could have been, but I still miss him."

~ whiskytangophil

What are some examples you've seen?