Though the sensation has probably been around since our ancestors developed emotions, it wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that we started describing the uncanny as something that gives us "the creeps." Charles Dickens, who enriched the English language with plenty of new words and expressions, is credited with the first use of the phrase in his 1849 novel 'David Copperfield,' to mean an unpleasant, tingly chill up the spine.
A few days ago, Reddit user Mimiqttt set out to find out what the definition means to different people, and posted a question on the platform, asking, "What are some creepy facts you know?" From natural phenomena to the biological workings of our bodies, here are some of the most popular answers they've received.
#1
Hearing is the last sense you lose before dying.My dad is a retired EMT/Paramedic/fire-fighter. Years ago he told be about a guy in cardiac arrest that they brought back to life. The guy ended up coming by the station a few weeks later to thank my dad personally because he had heard - while dead - someone say it was time to call it but my dad said to keep trying.That story has terrified me. To know you’re dead, but not quite dead, and hear other people call it before you’re fully gone. Geesus, no thank yo.One of the most common places to find a dead body is on the toilet. Cause when they're alive and not feeling well, the first thing they do is go to the toilet thinking it could be a bowel issue.When you have a kidney transplant, they don’t remove your original organs, and the Transplant does not go in the place of your old organ.
Source: have had three kidney transplants in my lifetime. I have a total of five kidneys in my body.Due to human artificial selection, dogs are evolving eyebrows.Your eyes have their own immune system that works separately from your body’s immune system. If your body’s immune system found out it would attack your eyes. I read this here and at my last eye appointment I asked if it was true. The eye doctor said “Yeah, it’s kinda weird” and I was like “Kinda?”Ducks become cannibals due to boredom, of all f*****g reasons.If you get skinned alive, you'll die from hypothermia, not blood loss.If you were burned alive, you'll die from suffocation, not from the fire itself.I believe around 5-10% of the ocean has been explored. We have the technology to study space but it’s not advanced enough to see what’s down there (due to water pressure and darkness and stuff)Your immune system can just decide that the rest of your body is offensive and goes on the attack. I have this with psoriasis which started as flaky skin and now has become psoriatic arthritis where my fingers, hands and feet are unreliable because my body decided that my body is a foreign object.
F**k you my body!There are about 40 supervolcanoes in the world that have yet to erupt. One supervolcano is in Yellowstone National Park and has a magma chamber that is large enough to fit the entire city of Tokyo inside it.
There's no indication we're due for a super eruption in our life time, but the thought it could happen still creeps me out.Some species of Vultures can projectile vomit if they feel threatened.It is called defensive vomiting and I was an unwitting victim of it once. It is HORRENDOUS!!!For every 9 people on death row 1 is found to be innocent. Sometimes after death and sometimes after the innocent was on death row for 30 years.The only double-hanging of women to be carried out in modern times was the execution of the Finchley baby farmers. Amelia Sach and Annie Walters would "adopt" unwanted babies for a fee. Then, supposedly, find homes for them. They did not find homes for the babies.Youngest "woman" (I use that term loosely) to give birth was 5 years old.Cotard’s syndrome is a condition where you just think you’re dead or don’t exist. People who have it sometimes stop eating because they think they’re dead.Similarly there are high anxiety conditions of depersonalization and derealization, where someone doesn't believe the world around or them exists or are real at all, or that they don't exist themselves. My daughter had this when she was young. Quite unsettling.When a star dies it explodes and releases a gamma burst and it destroys all in its path, if one goes off near Earth it’ll lead to extinction and there's no warning because it happens immediately.Just after their WWII surrender, the Japanese government created a system of brothels in case American soldiers thought of taking out frustrations on Japanese women. After the rate of STI's shot up among American GI's the Army made the Japanese government shut them down, the number of *reported* r*pes went up by 800%. Take note that Japan is a very traditional society with plenty of stigma about reporting rape so the actual numbers were probably even more horrific.mummy brown--or Egyptian Brown--is an old pigment that the pre-Raphaelites used for paintings. it's a rich color that was made from myrrh, pitch, and the decayed flesh of humans (yup, mummies). artists, for a very long time, did not know the contents of said pigment and we're turned off by it by 1915 because they found it gross and despicable.
still, a plenty of famous works feature a paint that is essentially dried-up human tissue.Today there are more slaves in the world that at any other time in history.Carmine, a red food dye commonly used in food and makeup, is made of COCHINEAL INSECTS.Statistically the person who is most likely to kill you at any given time is living with you right now.At any given time, there are 40-50 active serial killers in the United States.When salmon begin their famous spawning run, they shut down unnecessary systems so they can channel all of their energy into swimming upstream to mate. That includes the immune system, so spawning salmon are highly susceptible to disease and infection. They basically start to rot before they die. You can see many discolored salmon during their run, and there are even some missing pieces of their bodies.
I read about this last year. We are recent transplants to the PNW, so this is all new to me. My daughter and I went to a nearby creek this week to see if the salmon were still doing their thing. Sure enough, we saw one swimming upstream with a big, gaping hole in its back, complete with visible flesh and stringy white things protruding from it. It was awful, but we couldn't look away, either.
She asked me not to cook salmon for dinner this week. It's one of my favorite meals, but...yeah, I'm good for now.Hundreds of people die every year… from being strangled by their bedsheets.I had a heavy blanket that was pretty much coming apart at the seams. The lining was detaching from the blanket itself.I woke up one morning and found my son’s head/neck completely entangled in the detached lining. I shook him in a panic and he woke up confused but fine.It looked like if someone had actually taken the thing and tried to strangle him with it. I threw that thing straight in the garbage.Sewer treatment plants have lifesaver rings around the treatment tanks, in case someone falls in.Drinking too much water can kill you. some people who have survived drowning later die because of water intoxication. solution is simple, give them salt or electrolyte fluids to balance their sodium ph in the body.You have millions of mites, known as demodex, living on your face.The floating specs you see probably aren’t dust but dead skin cells.Sometimes if their diet is lacking protein deer will actually search out birds nests on forest floors, stamp the chicks, and then eat them.
There's a type of be called a vulture Bee that feeds on decomposing flesh, they have wild looking hives, and they will in fact make honey from the dead flesh. Honey that is referred to as "meat honey". The honey is in fact edible according to researchers.In a strange and semi creepy coincidence, Robert Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, was saved from falling off a train platform and being run over by Edwin Boothe, brother of John Wilkes Boothe.Box Jellyfish are not only the most venomous jellies to humans, but they also possess at least 24 functional eyes (of various degree) on its body despite having no centralized brain. Four of its eyes always peer up out of the water regardless of the animal's body position; some eyes can make out images, others are more primitive.When you eat figs you are quite likely to be also eating the mummified carcass of a wasp.Really just the fact that we can die or have our lives unimaginably ruined at any moment from a basically endless number of ways and that eventually within a handful of decades (or maybe seconds or any time in between) or so it IS going to happen.Last year in the US alone over half a million people were reported missing. About 1% are found.During the merger of two black holes,a black holes can occasionally get ejected from the system and get shot out into open space and become a wandering black hole, the creepy part for me is that because a large part of the way in which we see black holes is through their interactions with their surroundings we wouldn’t really be able to see it coming towards us
