We all know that Wikipedia is the perfect place to go to kill an hour ... or 6.
On this comprehensive compendium of the internet’s knowledge, one page can quickly lead to another,
and another, and another … and before you know it, you’re so far down the rabbit hole
that you can’t remember what brought you to Wikipedia in the first place!
For all its interesting and entertaining information, there’s also a dark side to this online
encyclopedia, and the creepiest stories from Wikipedia will be sure to keep you up at night!
#7 - List of Missing Aircraft We might prefer to imagine that instances
of disappearing aircraft are a relatively rare phenomenon, but a quick glance at this
anxiety-inducing Wikipedia page is a chilling reminder that that might not be as true as
we would hope.
This grisly page attempts to list every commercial and military flight that’s ever gone missing,
going all the way back to the dawn of the age of flight in the 1850s.
Although at first glance, this distressingly extensive list may appear to be complete,
the page’s authors are careful to note that the list is far from comprehensive and happily
invite contributors to add to the list.
That’s less than reassuring, to say the least.
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, an aircraft is considered missing
when the official search has been called off and the majority of the plane’s wreckage
has not been located.
Since 1948, more than 100 aircraft have vanished without a trace, as per the Aviation Safety
Network.
Among the many hundreds of tragic disappearances included in the Wikipedia page’s list is
one of the earliest aviation disappearances, the 1879 disappearance of a Pathfinder hydrogen
balloon which tragically vanished without a trace over Lake Michigan, killing ballooning
pioneer John Wise and his passenger George Burr, whose body was pulled from the lake,
though no sign of the downed balloon was ever found.
In May 1927, while attempting to win the Orteig Prize for the first nonstop trans-Atlantic
flight between Paris and New York, the Levasseur PL.8 piloted by Francois Coli and Chares Nungesser
disappeared somewhere over the frigid expanse of the North Atlantic.
No sign of the plane or the aviators was ever found.
Perhaps the most famous aviation disappearance of all time was the devastating 1937 disappearance
of Amelia Erhardt’s Lockheed Electra during Erhardt’s attempted around-the-world flight,
which prompted the largest search in history at the time, though no trace of Erhardt, her
navigator Frank Noonan, or her plane was ever found.
And of course, there is the tragic and mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight
370.
In 2014, the Boeing 777 disappeared somewhere over the Indian Ocean, far off of its planned
flight path, with 239 souls on board.
No trace of the plane has been found, despite a huge search effort, and it remains the largest
commercial disappearance in history.
Perhaps don’t go down this particular rabbit before getting on a plane…
But if you think you’re safer on a boat, well our next entry might change your mind
about that too…
#6 - Titanic Passenger List The tragic fate of the ship Titanic is a well-known
tale - the luxury ocean liner was supposed to be unsinkable, but that claim was proven
wrong when she struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage in 1914.
Thanks in large part to a shortage of lifeboats, 1,503 of the 2,208 people on board the Titanic
died in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic.
The numbers are staggering, but a quick look at the Wikipedia page that lists each of the
passengers by name really brings the horror to life.
The Titanic’s passengers were divided into 3 distinct classes.
First Class passengers were predominantly from the wealthy upper class, and included
prominent businessmen like Macy’s department store owner Isidor Straus, wealthy industrialists
like real estate billionaire J.J.
Astor and his 18 year old pregnant wife, and even British aristocracy, like the Countess
of Rothes.
Second Class passengers were mostly middle class professionals and tourists, while the
Third Class passengers were mainly poor immigrants moving to the U.S. or Canada in search of
a better life.
The Wikipedia page includes the names of every single passenger who travelled on the Titanic,
as well as some startling photos and the unbelievable stories of some of the survivors, like the
2 boys who had been kidnapped by their father and taken across the ocean under assumed names.
They survived, but their father did not, and they were dubbed “The Titanic Orphans”.
There’s the story of the Laroche family, the only black family on board, who were moving
from France back to their homeland of Haiti, where father Joseph’s uncle was president,
hoping to escape rampant racial discrimination in Europe.
There’s also the account of Millvina Dean, who was just 2 months old at the time of the
sinking, and when she died in 2009, she was the last living survivor of the Titanic disaster.
If you’re looking for more creepy death-realted entries, you really can’t beat our number
5 creepiest wikipedia story….
#5 - Last Meals In many countries around the world, it’s
customary to give condemned prisoners their choice of a final meal before their execution.
This fascinating yet gruesome Wikipedia page compiles the very last meal eaten by some
of the most infamous death row inmates from around the world before they were executed
for their horrendous crimes.
John Wayne Gacy, Chicago’s “Killer Clown”, ordered a dozen deep-fried shrimp, a pound
of strawberries, a diet Coke and bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken - which was extra creepy,
considering that he worked at a KFC during his brutal murder spree.
Danny Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper who murdered 5 students in Florida, feasted on
lobster tail, butterfly shrimp, baked potatoes and strawberry cheesecake before he was put
to death for his heinous crimes.
Oddly, serial killer Ted Bundy declined a special last meal, and he refused to eat the
prison’s traditional last meal of steak, eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee and juice.
Bundy went to the electric chair on an empty stomach.
This fascinating page lists the final meal of hundreds of evil murderers, but it’s
probably best not to visit this one before eating…
And if you’ve got a weak stomach, then definitely skip out on our next creepy wikipedia story...
#4 - Robert J. White Robert J. White was one of America’s foremost
neurosurgeons.
He graduated from Harvard Medical school and went on to have an illustrious career, earning
honorary doctorates from a number of prestigious schools and getting invited to speak all over
the world.
He was also a devout Catholic with 10 children, and was even an advisor in medical ethics
to the Pope.
But Dr. White also had a dark side.
In 1970, he performed a controversial head transplant surgery on a pair of monkeys.
Because the surgery involved severing the spinal cord, the monkeys were paralyzed from
the neck down, but after the operation they were able to hear, see, smell, eat and taste,
and follow movement with their eyes.
Sadly, immune rejection ultimately led to the death of both monkeys 9 days after the
operation.
Amazingly, Dr. White appeared to be undeterred by the death of his subjects - or by the backlash
he received from the outraged medical community and horrified public.
He made plans to repeat this outlandish experiment on human subjects in the 1990s, but, thankfully,
it seems he never went through with it.
Inhumane medical experiments are terrifying, but our next entry has haunted the residents
of a small English village for over sixty years!
#3 - Bella in the Wych Elm In 1944, ominous graffiti began appearing
around the English village of Hagley.
Scrawled across stone walls and on local monuments were the menacing words: “Who put Bella
in the wych elm?”.
The message was particularly sinister in light of the fact that, just a year before it first
appeared, the body of an unknown woman had been found inside the trunk of an elm tree
in the nearby woods by a group of young local boys.
The body appeared to have been dead for at least a year, and as time went on with no
breaks in the case, many bizarre theories about who the woman was and exactly how she
died circulated through the town.
Some believed that the body belonged to a Birmingham sex worker named Bella who had
been known to work on Hagley road and who had disappeared 3 years before the body was
found, but in the days before modern DNA technology, police were unable to prove this theory.
Others, like Margaret Murray, an anthropologist and archaeologist from the University College
London, claimed that the fact that one of the victim’s hands was severed was proof
that the murder was the result of a gypsy witchcraft ritual called The Hand of Glory.
The most intriguing theory came to light in 1953, when a woman named Una Mossop told police
that her ex-husband Jack had confessed to family members that he and a friend had put
the women in the tree.
He claimed that she was alive when they placed her inside the trunk, that she was simply
so drunk that she had passed out, and Jack claimed that he had been hoping that she waking
up in the tree would prompt her to see the error of her ways.
Years before his ex-wife’s went public with her tale, Jack had been committed to a mental
institution after being plagued by recurring dreams of a woman staring out at him from
inside of a tree, and he died there years before the body was found.
Despite this apparent confession, the murder was never solved, and to this day, graffiti
continues to appear near where they body was discovered, always asking, “Who put Bella
in the wych elm?”
It’s unlikely we will ever know…
Speaking of the supernatural, our next entry goes from possible with ritual and ghostly
graffiti straight to the world of the walking dead….
#2 - Mercy Brown Vampire Incident In Rhode Island in 1892, tragedy struck the
Brown family.
Multiple members of the family contracted tuberculosis, a much dreaded and feared disease
at the time, and as one after the other succumbed to the dreadful illness, friends and neighbours
began to whisper.
Popular folklore at the time held that multiple deaths in one family were linked to the sinister
activity of the undead, and the locals were convinced that the Brown family was plagued
by a vampire.
Matriarch Mary was the first to die, followed by her eldest daughter Mary Olive.
Daughter Mercy succumbed in 1891 at the age of 19, and soon after, her younger brother
Edwin fell ill.
Desperate to stop the disease from destroying what was left of his family, George Brown
ordered the exhumation of the bodies of his wife and daughters.
Both Mary and Mary Olive’s bodies showed an expected level of decomposition, but when
the body of young Mercy was removed from her grave, her corpse showed almost no signs of
decomposition and her heart was still filled with blood.
To the locals, this was a clear sign that Mercy was the undead cause of her family’s
tragedy (ignoring the fact that she had been stored in freezer-like conditions in an above-ground
crypt for 2 months after her death, which likely slowed decomposition and preserved
her corpse).
In keeping with local superstitions, Mercy’s heart and liver were removed from her dead
body and burned, and the ashes were mixed into a tonic for Edwin to drink in an attempt
to halt the influence of the undead on the poor Brown family.
Unfortunately, Edwin died 2 months later, and poor Mercy’s body - what was left of
it, anyways - was reburied in the local graveyard.
Finally, our number one spot- and proof that nothing is more terrifying than normal, everyday
humans…
#1 The From Hell Letter On October 16, 1888, George Lusk received
a most gruesome delivery in his daily mail - a bloodstained letter, containing half of
a preserved human kidney.
Mr. Lusk was, at the time, the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, a group of
local volunteers who patrolled the streets of London’s Whitechapel district by night
during the reign of terror of the notorious serial killer known only as Jack the Ripper.
The letter, which was postmarked October 15, 1888, read: “From Hell.
Mr. Lusk, Sir.
I send you half the kidney I took from one woman.
Preserved it for you.
The other piece I fried and ate, it was very nice.
I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer.
Signed, Catch me when you can Mr. Lusk.”
This was just one of a number of horrible, taunting letters believed to have been sent
by the killer.
He was also purported to have sent the “Dear Boss” and “Saucy Jacky” letters to local
newspapers, and was believed to be behind the Openshaw letter sent to another investigator.
Despite these careless attempts to engage with investigators, Jack the Ripper was never
caught, and his identity remains a mystery to this day.
This is one Wikipedia rabbit hole with a wealth of gruesome information to explore!
This sampler of just a few of the creepiest stories from Wikipedia is a great reminder
that you never know what creepy tales of horror await at the bottom of the rabbit hole.
If you thought this video was fascinatingly creepy, be sure and check out our other videos,
like this one called “Malaysian Air Mystery - What We Now Know About Missing Flight MH370”,
or perhaps you’ll like this other video.