As you probably know, a wiki is a website which consists of collaborations of people
modifying content.
The most popular of these sites is none other than Wikipedia.
It was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.
The former once said, “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is
given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
That's what we're doing.”
And they did a good job.
You can find 301 languages on Wikipedia, but the English language version is easily the
biggest.
Right now, in English you can find 5.7 million articles, and 46 million pages, which have
been edited 860 million times and looked at by 1,203 admins.
It’s not surprising then, that there’s some weird stuff you can find on Wikipedia.
And that’s what we’ll look at today, in this episode of the Infographics Show, the
Scariest Wikipedia articles.
10.
Ultimate fate of the universe We’ll start with this merry page that deals
with destruction- the destruction of everything.
It tells us that some cosmologists believe the universe will just keep expanding forever.
The concept of infinity is hard to get our heads around, but so is the concept of absolute-nothing.
Nonetheless, there are theories regarding the end of the universe and none of them sound
very nice.
We have something called “The Big Rip”.
This is when dark energy gets stronger and gradually starts to pull everything apart.
Galaxies move away from each other, space gets bigger, star systems get pulled apart,
and you end up with a universe with nothing in it.
Then you have “The Big Crunch”, which is space collapsing into a dimensionless singularity.
In this scenario the big bang happens and then it’s followed by the big crunch and
the cycle continues infinitely.
Then you have the “Big Bounce” theory, which basically means that the Big Bang was
the result of a previous universe collapsing, and so this one will collapse so another can
be born.
In any case, it’s likely that the universe won’t disappear during your lifetime, so
you don’t have to worry.
That said, some of things you’re about to hear you probably should be worried about.
9.
Project MKUltra Americans might feel a pang of fear if they
head to this page, which tells us about their government conducting very unethical mind
experiments on their own people.
In the 50s, 60s and 70s the CIA engaged in activities, often totally illegal, which used
human guinea pigs to test if people’s minds could be controlled.
They gave some of these people LSD and other chemical concoctions, which was scary enough,
but other times they just mentally and physically tortured people, isolated them or tried to
get into their heads using hypnosis.
Sometimes these experiments happened in prisons, but they also took place in colleges, universities
and hospitals.
It’s quite unbelievable what they would try and make test subjects do, after say a
large dose of drugs or days of brainwashing tied to a chair.
They’d try and make subjects age faster or slower; make them go out in public and
disgrace themselves; cause them memory loss or brain damage; make them totally dependent
on another person; mess up their eyesight and hearing; or even give them substances
to physically disable them.
This shocking page tells us consent protocols were not followed and if subjects’ heads
weren’t just messed up forever more, sometimes they died.
But as it was top secret, we may never know the full extent of the damage.
8.
Lizzie Borden This case is unsolved and so makes for some
interesting reading.
The story goes that on August 4, 1892, Lizzie’s father and stepmother were found at their
home in Massachusetts dead, both savagely hacked to death with an axe.
Could it really have been this gentle-looking girl?
Some people thought so, mainly because right after the murders she burned the dress she’d
been wearing that day.
It was suspected she did that because it was covered in blood.
Whoever hacked the bodies really put some effort into it, say the reports.
But she was never found guilty of the crime and it remained a mystery.
The case of the axe murders has become one of America’s great unsolved crimes.
If that’s not scary enough, listen to this.
7.
June and Jennifer Gibbons These were two identical twins that were born
in 1963 and grew up in Wales.
They took their closeness to heart and decided that they would not communicate with anyone
but themselves.
That’s why they became known as “The Silent Twins.”
Their parents were from the Caribbean and so the twins spoke Bajan Creole, which was
very hard to understand for anyone living in Wales.
Also, they were the only black kids in town and this led to bullying.
This is why the kids decided they wouldn’t speak to anyone else.
When they did speak they spoke in a language only they could understand.
There is actually a word for twins creating their very own language and that is “cryptophasia.”
Crypto means secret and phasia means speech.
Therapists would try and get them to speak to others, but they simply refused to do so.
Then the therapists decided to put them in different boarding schools when the twins
were 14, but after that both of them fell catatonic.
They were reunited and stayed most of the time in their bedroom together making plays
with dolls.
They then both started writing novels about what Wikipedia tells us were people who “exhibit
strange and often criminal behavior.”
After that they got into crime themselves and were eventually committed to Broadmoor
mental health hospital.
They spent 12 years in there and were often given overly strong antipsychotic medications.
This bizarre tale gets more bizarre.
The twins made a pact that the only way that one of them could start speaking to other
people was if the other gave up her life.
And so, one of the twins called Jennifer suddenly got very sick and died.
It’s a mystery how she died, but it's thought she killed herself.
The other twin then started speaking to people.
She once said, “I'm free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life
for me.”
She is still alive.
6.
Dyatlov Pass incident Now for more strangeness, this time in Russia.
The story is about nine ski-hikers that went on a trip to the Ural Mountains in February
1959 and never came back.
They were all experienced outdoors people, and all studied at the same university.
All we know is that on one bitterly cold night something made them rush out from their tents,
not dressed for such cold temperatures.
Later Soviet authorities found them, and they were all dead.
One of them had a fractured skull, others had fractured ribs, and one person was missing
her tongue and eyes.
Wiki tells us, “Six of the group members died of hypothermia and three of fatal injuries.”
But to this day no one knows what happened to those nine young people.
Was it an attack from local indigenous people?
Some people thought aliens did it as flying spheres had been seen in the sky.
Was it an avalanche?
Was it a secret military exercise or was it a Russian yeti?
The truth is out there, perhaps.
5.
Joyce Vincent This one is just downright sad, but also strange.
Joyce was a British woman who died in 2003 in her small flat in London.
The sad thing is, is that she wasn’t found until 2006 when all that remained of her were
her bones.
It’s said that even though her family life wasn’t bad, she distanced herself from her
parents.
She had jobs and had a relationship, but it’s said her partner beat her and so she left
and didn’t want to be found.
She died of unknown causes, but it seems no one said anything about her disappearing.
As she lied on her sofa dead, the TV played and played, while half of her rent was being
paid for by the Metropolitan Housing Trust.
It was only when the bills stacked up that housing officials went around to see what
was going on.
When they arrived, they found letters sent to her from her family.
The TV was still playing, and the heating was turned on.
They discovered her skeletal remains next to shopping bags and Christmas gifts she had
wrapped, that we expect she was about to send.
A movie was made about her called, “Dreams of a Life.”
4.
Benjaman Kyle This is the tale of an American man who had
a very bad case of dissociative amnesia, which is memory loss that can go back years.
His name wasn’t actually Benjaman, but when he was found outside a fast-food restaurant
in Georgia in 2004 he didn’t know who he was so that is the name he was given as he
believed that could have been his name.
When authorities found him and took him to hospital the guy was quite surprised to learn
he was 20 years older than he thought he was.
He spent much of the ensuing years either homeless or working odd jobs, but in 2016
he got a break when DNA samples revealed who he was.
His name in fact was William Burgess Powell.
3.
Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter Do you believe in Gremlins?
We doubt it.
But in Kentucky in 1955 a bunch of people did, or at least they believed they were attacked
by little green things.
This case is one of the most famous UFO/alien sightings in history, only because it all
sounds so real.
On August 21, 1955, five adults and seven children went to the local police station
all saying that their farmhouse had come under attack by aliens and they’d being fending
them off for about four hours.
It’s true that many gunshots had been fired as bullet holes were found everywhere.
The cops went to look for these 12 to 15 creatures, but they weren’t there.
The family went back to the farmhouse but then apparently packed their bags and left
when the creatures returned again in the middle of the early morning.
Experts have since said that the family wasn’t making it up, but they weren’t shooting
at Gremlins but probably Great Horned Owls.
2.
Euthanasia Coaster This has been called a rollercoaster that
“sends out 24 people and they all come back dead.”
Hence the euthanasia coaster, but it would also have worked as an execution roller-coaster.
The concept and scale-model were created by Julijonas Urbonas when he was doing his PhD
at the Royal College of Art in London.
Urbonas, who had once worked at an Amusement Park, said it was a way to die “with elegance
and euphoria.”
24 people would be taken in cars up a steep incline of 1,670 feet (510-metres).
When they got to the top they had the choice of getting off.
If the answer was no, they would be sent at a speed of 110 mph (180 kph) hurtling down
a track towards a series of clothoid inversions (spirals) that would get smaller and smaller.
This crazy ride would kill its passengers by way of cerebral hypoxia (lack of oxygen
getting to the brain).
Going around those inversions with the g-force would eventually lead to black-out and then
death.
Wiki writes, “Subsequent inversions would serve as insurance against unintentional survival
of particularly robust passengers.”
At the end there is a place for the corpses to be dropped off and then it can reload for
the new passengers waiting for the last ride of their lives.
The ride not surprisingly has never been put to the test, but it’s still a freaky thing
in itself.
1.
Michael Taylor (demoniac) This story takes place in Ossett, West Yorkshire,
England, in 1974.
30-year old Taylor was a butcher, but it also seems he was known for his very erratic behavior.
So much so, that it was decided that he might have the devil in him and he should be exorcised.
That was performed by an Anglican priest and a Methodist clergyman.
They believed that during the exorcism they “cast out at least forty demons, including
those of incest, bestiality, blasphemy, and lewdness.”
Unfortunately, the two men of the cloth were utterly exhausted at the end of it and said
three demons remained in Michael.
Those were the demons of insanity, murder, and violence.
They still allowed the young man to go home.
When he got home he attacked his wife, tearing out her eyes, her tongue, most of her face
in fact, and beating her so bad she died.
He did this with his bare hands.
He then strangled the family poodle.
Police found him in the streets covered in blood.
The courts said he was insane and sent him to Broadmoor mental facility.
He did get out, but years later committed more crimes and once again started to look
dangerous.
He was sent back into psychiatric care and that’s where he remains today.
So, have you seen anything on Wikipedia that you think deserves to be on this list?
Let us know in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Scary Things Found On The Dark Web.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time!