People Share The Scariest True Story They Know

Most of these stories are sad, dreadful affairs, full of lost life and wasted potential.

A Bane To Tourists

"In the 80s there was a Mexican cult led by an American named Adolfo Constanzo. They used to kidnap random people from tourist towns and nearby cities and perform human sacrifice on them in their rural Mexican desert compound, usually torturing in elaborate rituals for hours or days before finally letting them die. These rituals included vivisections, castrations, eyeball removal, tongue removal, teeth pulling, skin flaying, hanging, etc."

"They used amphetamines and cocaine to force the victim to stay awake during the torture and not pass out from shock."

"The cult believed the more pain and fear they could generate in the sacrifice victim the more powerful the body parts would be as ritual trinkets and also for food for the cult's "nganga" which is a large ritual cauldron used to store bones, blood, meat, and other valuable items that the cult believed gave them power. They used to make staves out of wired together spinal columns and they would often eat the victim's eyeballs during the rituals."

"They are believed to have kidnapped and sacrificed over 26 people to their nganga in their three years that they were active from 1986 to 1989. The leader committed suicide when the police showed up at their compound. They arrested 14 cult members but most people believe there were at least a dozen more that escaped and are still out there."

guuutbutttt

A Terrible Choice

"The story of Jayme Closs is terrifying. In rural Wisconsin last year, a 13-14ish-year-old girl went missing after her parents were murdered in their home. Police arrived within 4 minutes or so, but she is just gone."

"Of course, speculation is that she was kidnapped, or that she was in on it, or dead, or whatever. Nobody knows because she has completely vanished."

"88 days later, in the dead of a northern Wisconsin winter, she runs out into the street to a woman walking her dog. She had been held captive about 40 minutes from her home."

"All of that is scary enough, but here's the terrifying part..."

"She had never had any contact with the guy that murdered her family and abducted her. One day he was driving to a new job (at which he only lasted a day) and saw her get on the school bus. At that moment he decided that he was going to take her."

"There was no warning. No grooming. There was absolutely nothing that she or her family could have done to avoid everything. A creepy young man saw her from 100' away and decided that he would murder her family and take her for himself."

KariGilbert

What can really be alarming is the triumph of the human spirit, that willingness to stay alive no matter what. However, sometimes people will fall short of that miraculous achievement, instead dying in horrifying ways.

Finding How Pets Can Turn

"I don't know if it's scary but when I was younger me and my twin brother would help our friend do his paper route. One summer we could smell something gross coming from one of the houses. We all didn't think anything of it until three days later when the smell was reaching down the driveway. We went to the back door where he normally dropped the paper and noticed it was open. We went in and looked around the house and found the owner dead. He had died of a heart attack and his cats were eating him."

DarthTrafford

"It seems to happen a lot"

Guipucci

Doing His Best To Stay Alive

"A guy in a sinking ship found an oxygen bubble and only drank a sip of diet coke every 7 hours. He was rescued after 60 hours after being under constant danger from drowning and even sharks"

NoLiferBg

Nope. *leaves computer and walks away*

"I've told this story before. I'm an eye doctor and I had a patient come to me with an infected eyelid two other eye doctors tried to treat and failed. They were dumping all sorts of medicine into it and it wasn't getting any better. At this point, it was swollen and painful for weeks with no improvement despite being on tons of meds. Apparently, neither of them thought to flip the lid upside down (you know that gross trick some kids do with their upper eyelids?). It was a painful maneuver for her very swollen eyelid, which might explain it. Anyhow, there appeared to be what looked like a visible abscess inside the tissue with thick gooey material, I thought I'd give it a nudge and saw it move. This wasn't an abscess, it was something else."

"I managed to remove it quite easily in one whole piece. It was a fly larva. The patient told me that she had a bug hit her in the eye a few days before she got this "infection". I removed the larva and within two days the wound closed and she was 100% recovered on basic antibiotic eye drops. Yes, I do have the photos from this case for those interested."

"TLDR: Patient had a bug lay an egg in her eyelid and I removed the larva."

sidatikl

Some of these stories require deaths of the innocent, people who didn't deserve to die in the way they did.

Dreams Of Death

"The Reyna Marroquin story."

• "A young lady had an affair with her boss in the 1960s, got pregnant. After threatening to tell her boss' wife, she was killed by her boss who then put her body in an industrial barrel. He hid the barrel in his house for years and none of the various owners opened it due to the weight."
• "Finally one guy decided to dispose of it in the 90s and when he opened it he saw it contained something. An investigation traced the barrel and girl back to the man who then killed himself before police could come arrest him after confirming he was the father of the unborn baby via DNA. The lady's mother was in her late 80s when she was told her missing daughter was finally found. She claims that she had been having dreams about her daughter being inside a metal container for years after she had gone missing."

A Truly Horrifying And Dismal End

"The Nutty Putty Cave Incident"

"A spelunker got stuck upside down in a narrow cave for 26 hours. Crews tried to pull him out with pulleys, but had to be careful not to break his legs, because that could be fatal with the circumstances he was in."

"Rescuers even almost dislodged him, only for an anchor to fail at the last second, plunging him back into the crevice. He eventually died, and they sealed the cave shut with him inside."

CaptainNoBoat

A Little Late

"In 1949, Timothy Evans was wrongly executed for murdering his pregnant wife and daughter."

"The actual murderer, John Christie, was a prosecution witness at Evans' trial."

"After Evans was executed, Christie went on to kill four more people. Had the police handled the forensic evidence properly, Christie would have been caught when they were investigating Evans, and those four people would still be alive."

"The government didn't acknowledge that Evans was innocent until 2004."

epsonabcdefg

​Unforeseen Death

"The story of The Lake Nyos Disaster."

"The lake periodically belches a cloud of invisible carbon dioxide gas that suffocates everything within a 16 mile radius. In 1986, over 1700 people and all their livestock died without even understanding what was happening to them."

__Dawn__Amber__

Should probably go hug a loved one after reading these.

Seems like the smart thing to do.

Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.