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The case was particularly notable because Liberty managed to capture a chilling video of a man following them on the bridge and saying, “Down the hill.” If you haven’t seen that footage, you can watch it here, but fair warning, it’s SUPER creepy. Amazingly, Liberty’s video actually helped catch their killer, though it took several years with a string of dead ends and wild theories. But in 2024, a local man named Richard Allen was convicted of their murders and sentenced to 130 years in prison.
The girls’ story is actually featured in the new three-part ABC News docuseries, Capturing Their Killer: The Girls on the High Bridge, which just came out on Hulu. And it’s particularly noteworthy because the doc features some rare behind-the-scenes content and even a first-time-on-camera interview with Kathy Allen, Richard’s wife (who maintains his innocence).
2.
The Salish Sea human foot discoveries, a series of detached human feet that have mysteriously washed ashore along the coasts of British Columbia and Washington State since 2007.
Since August of 2007, there have been at least 20 DETACHED human feet — usually still in shoes — discovered off the coasts of British Columbia in Canada and Washington state in the US. There are a ton of theories as to why JUST feet have been found, ranging from boating accidents, plane crashes, suicide, foul play, and even the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami — but no one really knows the truth and they probably never will.
Used almost exclusively on women, this terrible mechanism was essentially an iron muzzle that went into your mouth and pressed down on your tongue, sometimes with a SPIKE, to prevent the wearer from talking. It was used to punish women whose speech or behavior was considered “too offensive” or “unruly” and was designed to inflict extreme pain and humiliation.
4.
The Disappearance of Tara Calico, a 19-year-old from Belen, New Mexico, who went missing on Sept. 20, 1988, while riding her bike along the highway.
Despite extensive searches and media coverage, including episodes of Unsolved Mysteries and America’s Most Wanted, Tara was never found. But what makes the case extra creepy is the fact that in July 1989, a horrifying Polaroid photo of a young woman (who looked like Tara) and a child, both with their mouths duct-taped and seemingly tied up in the back of a van, showed up in a parking lot in Florida. The photo was analyzed several times, including by the FBI, but the results were inconclusive as to whether it was actually Tara in the photo. In 1998, Tara was declared legally dead, and her presumed death was ruled a homicide. Recent investigations have identified potential suspects, but the case still remains unsolved.
On March 23, 1994, one of the pilots of a commercial airliner, Aeroflot Flight 593 from Moscow, brought his teenage children into the cockpit during the flight. Against regulations, the pilot allowed them to sit at the controls and even handle them. One of the kids accidentally disengaged the autopilot’s roll function, causing a fatal descent. Minutes later, the plane crashed into a mountain range. All 63 passengers and 12 crew members on board died on impact.
Junko Furuta was a Japanese high school student who was abducted, raped, tortured, and then subsequently murdered in 1989 by four teenage boys over the course of 44 days. Some of the horrific acts she was subjected to included being repeatedly burned, beaten, forced to drink her own urine, and set on fire. Her case was often referred to as the “concrete-encased high school girl murder case,” because her body was discovered packed in concrete inside a dumped oil drum. The case became widely known not only due to the extremely graphic nature of the repeated beatings and sexual assaults she endured, but also the belief from the public that the perpetrators received lenient sentences.
7.
The case of Genie, a 13-year-old feral child who was discovered in Arcadia, California, in 1970 after years of horrific abuse.
Genie (which was a pseudonym) was discovered after being brutally isolated and starved, strapped either to a potty chair or a crib, and forbidden to speak by her abusive father for almost her entire life. Her treatment had been so bad, that it resulted in severe physical and linguistic deprivation.
She was subsequently placed under intensive study and gained some vocabulary and basic communication skills, but failed to acquire normal grammar.
Genie’s case became known as one of the “worst cases of child abuse” in the US, and ultimately raised ethical concerns about the treatment of vulnerable subjects and their rights.
The breast ripper was supposedly used to punish women, especially those accused of things like cheating or having an abortion. It had sharp claws, sometimes heated, that would be clamped onto a woman’s breast and then pulled or twisted — just as the name implies. Apparently, there were even versions that attached to a wall where the woman would be pulled away from it instead. Now, there’s not a ton of proof that this device was really ever used, but if it was…yikes.
Mary Toft was a woman in 18th-century England who scammed people, including doctors, into believing that she had given birth to rabbits. She would accomplish this by putting small dead rabbits and/or their body parts up inside her vagina in secret and then “birthing” them later. And, yes, it was as painful and dangerous as it sounds. Apparently, the rabbits were often delivered with their sharp nails intact. This routine was so dangerous that historians today are shocked that Toft didn’t die from a bacterial infection. It’s unclear what Toft’s motivation was for doing this, but historians think she wasn’t primarily responsible and that she was likely the “lead role” in an idea concocted by other people.
In the 1980s, US milk cartons began featuring photos of missing children — like Johnny Gosch — to raise awareness. The national campaign peaked in 1985, led by safety organizations, and helped spark laws on child abduction.
However, though iconic, the missing-children milk ads rarely actually helped find kids. In fact, the campaign faced criticism for causing fear, and it faded out by the 1990s as AMBER Alerts and other methods became more effective.
11.
The horrific experiences of the Radium Girls, a group of young women in the 1910s and 1920s who worked in factories painting watch dials with glowing paint that contained radium, a radioactive element, ultimately leading to their horrifying deaths from radiation.
The young women were told the paint was safe and were even encouraged to lick their brushes to get a fine point. Over time, many of them became very sick — losing teeth, suffering from broken bones, and developing terrible jaw problems — because the radium was poisoning them from the inside. When the companies refused to take responsibility, some of the women fought back by taking them to court, winning a settlement in 1928.
Helle Crafts was a flight attendant from Connecticut who went missing in 1986. Her husband, Richard Crafts, gave conflicting stories about where she was, raising suspicions. Investigators later found blood in their home, a chainsaw, a freezer, and a receipt for a rented wood chipper. A witness also reported seeing Richard near the lake on the night Helle was last seen. Police eventually found human remains there — including a tooth, bone, and hair — matching Helle’s DNA.
It’s believed Richard killed Helle, froze her body, cut it up with a chainsaw, and used the wood chipper to dispose of it. He was later convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison, even though her full body was never found, making it the first “no-body” murder conviction in Connecticut. In 2020, Richard was released nearly 20 years early and sent to a transitional housing program for veterans in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
13.
The story of Dean Corll, aka “The Candy Man” or “Pied Piper,” a serial killer who committed some of the most heinous crimes.
Corll was an American serial killer and sex offender who abducted, sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered at least 29 teenage boys and young men in Houston and Pasadena, Texas in the early ‘70s. He earned the nickname “Candy Man” because his family owned a candy factory where he worked, and he often gave free candy to local children, which helped him gain their trust.
Shockingly, Corll enlisted two teenage accomplices in his crimes — David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley (pictured below). They would help lure in the victims and then dispose of their bodies in hidden locations. The murders came to light when Henley shot Corll dead in August 1973, after which both accomplices confessed; they were subsequently convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Also, if you want to know more, a very interesting documentary film called The Serial Killer’s Apprentice (2025) recently dropped on HBO Max. It tells the story of how Elmer Wayne Henley was manipulated into helping Corll and even includes actual audio recordings from some of Henley’s interviews with forensic psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland. So, would recommend it if you’re curious.
14.
The story of Charles Domery, an 18th-century soldier who became infamous for his bizarre and insatiable appetite.
While in the army, he apparently ate 174 cats in a year, and even tons of grass when meat ran out. One time, when he was aboard a ship, he even tried to eat a crewmate’s freshly severed leg. Later on, while jailed in England, he found that the food served there was not enough, and he would eat whatever else he could find, including the prison cat, dozens of rats, and even candles.
Eventually, doctors tested him, having him down raw meat and tallow in staggering amounts, but somehow he never got sick or gained weight. Oddly, there are no records of Domery after this time, and it’s unknown how or when he died.
Founded by Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Peoples Temple cult is best known for the mass murder–suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, on Nov. 18, 1978 — often called the Jonestown Massacre.
More than 900 people died after being forced or coerced to drink a cyanide-laced flavored drink (not actually Kool-Aid, but a cheaper brand called Flavor Aid), inspiring the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid.”
Jones himself died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The massacre was the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural, deliberate event until the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Black-eyed children, sometimes called “devil children,” are described as pale kids with completely black eyes who appear on doorsteps or roadsides, asking to be let in. The legend began in the 1990s with a Texas reporter’s unsettling account and spread through online forums, television, horror films, and tabloids. Believers claim they are ghosts or aliens, while skeptics dismiss them as pure urban myth — one that endures for its eerie, unsettling appeal.
On Nov. 22, 1987, two Chicago TV stations had their broadcast signals hijacked by an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask*. In the videos, the person made references to things like the “real” Max Headroom, various shows and people, and then ended with having their naked butt spanked by a woman with a flyswatter. To this day, no one knows who was behind the bizarre and unsettling prank.
*Max Headroom, for those who don’t know, was a character created in the ’80s for Channel 4 in the UK that was meant to look like a computer-generated AI being. He was actually played by an actor, Matt Frewer.
Karl Patterson Schmidt, a respected herpetologist, was bitten in 1957 by a young boomslang snake he was examining. At first, he thought the bite wouldn’t be serious, so he skipped medical treatment and instead took notes on how his body reacted.
But the venom was devastating — it triggered unstoppable internal bleeding, making him vomit blood and bleed from his eyes, nose, and internal organs. By the next day, he collapsed at home, was rushed to the hospital, and was pronounced dead shortly after.
Reet Silvia Jurvetson was a 19-year-old Canadian woman whose body was found off Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles in November 1969, stabbed 157 times with a small knife.
With no identification on her, she became known only as “Jane Doe No. 59,” and for 46 years her identity remained a mystery.
That changed in 2015 when her sister, Anne, saw a photo of the unidentified victim on a cold case database and recognized her. DNA testing confirmed the match in 2016.
Reet had reportedly gone to California to meet a man known as “John” or “Jean,” but despite sketches, leads, and even speculation about possible ties to the Manson Family, the case remains unsolved.
20.
This creepy Wikipedia page about something called the Toynbee tiles — one of the creepiest unsolved mysteries literally lurking underfoot.
Basically, these are cryptic messages embedded in city streets across the United States since the 1980s, all bearing the same eerie phrase: “TOYNBEE IDEA IN MOVIE 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER.” Theories link them to British historian Arnold J. Toynbee’s ideas about resurrecting the dead, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even fringe cult beliefs. They’ve often appeared overnight, only deepening the mystery of these eerie, handmade messages.
What it basically says is that, someday, the universe might freeze to death in interminable darkness, rip itself apart atom by atom, or collapse in a sudden “Big Slurp” that erases reality without warning. All very chill things to think about when you’re lying in bed, late at night, staring into the void.
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