Note: Graphic content ahead including stories of murder and death.
1.In 2022, a man, Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta, used a samurai sword to decapitate his ex-girlfriend, Karino Castro, out in public in the middle of a neighborhood street. According to reports, “horrified witnesses” said they watched Castro “run for her life,” as Landaeta chased her with the sword. Castro’s grandmother called the killing a “public execution,” while a family friend said that Castro’s daughters “saw everything.”
Before killing Castro, Landaeta had sent threatening messages, including one of a ninja emoji and blood emojis while also threatening to take away their 18-month-old child as well as Castro’s older daughter (from a previous relationship).
Landaeta was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
NBC Bay Area / Via youtube.com
2.A 63-year-old man died a horrific death during a flight from Bangkok to Munich this month after experiencing a “medical emergency,” and losing “liters of blood.” According to witnesses, blood gushed out of his nose and mouth, with some of it even splattering onto the plane’s walls. “It was absolute horror. Everyone was screaming,” said a passenger.
Although first aid measures were taken by the crew as well as a doctor on board, the passenger died on board, and the flight turned back to Bangkok. In the statement to People, the airline said it could not reveal specific information regarding the incident.
Paul Kane / Getty Images
3.Just last week, a severed leg was found on the subway tracks in the Bronx, New York. Initially, it was unknown where the leg came from, as it had been covered up by snow for some time, and was only discovered after crews began plowing the snow. However, it is now believed that it belonged to a (now-deceased) man who had been struck by a train.
ABC 7 News reported, “The leg was discovered along the northbound No. 4 line between 167th and 170th streets in the Bronx, according to police. The body part has been turned over to the medical examiner to see if it belonged to the same person as suspected.”
PIX11 News / Via youtube.com
4.Recently, a former funeral home owner in Colorado, Miles Harford, was arrested after being accused of hiding a woman’s corpse in a hearse for two years, as well as allegedly hoarding the cremated remains of 30+ people.
According to ABC News, “While searching the property, police opened the door of the hearse to a ‘foul odor,’ seeing the outline of the human body seemingly strapped to the gurney and covered by blankets, according to the arrest affidavit.”
Harford’s funeral home has been closed since September 2022.
Karenmower / Getty Images
5.In similar news, it was discovered that nearly 200 corpses were “abused” at a different Colorado funeral home for several years. Authorities had initially responded to a “stain” coming out of the front door when the gruesome discovery was made.
According to ABC 7 News, “The affidavits describe how the bodies were strewn throughout the rooms and how Jon Hallford [the owner] was seen on surveillance video treating a body more like a sandbag than a former human being. They say that buckets had been placed under some bodies to collect the fluid. About 40 bodies had been stacked on top of each other and some were stored in storage totes, according to the affidavits, which note the ‘unimaginable conditions’ authorities worked in to remove the bodies while wearing protective equipment.”
Denver7 / Via youtube.com
6.These images of what looks like a chicken egg, but is actually some kind of horrible infection, apparently. (According to other Reddit users, it may actually be a “lash” egg, which is basically like a large pus infection that may or may not contain parts of egg):
Hand holding an unusually shaped egg with normal eggs in the background
Person holding a broken egg with a solid yolk, indicating it’s boiled
tbanwell / Via reddit.com
As the OP explained, “Reached in and had a minor brain malfunction when hand hit soft. And it stinks, some kind of horrible infection.”
7.A woman in Kansas City, Missouri was charged in the death of her 1-month-old child after allegedly placing the baby in an oven instead of the baby’s crib. When authorities responded to the home (after a report of an infant not breathing), they found “an individual holding the 1-month-old who was unresponsive and had burn wounds.” The baby was declared dead at the scene.
The mother, Mariah Thomas, was charged on February 10 with endangering the welfare of a child in the first degree, leading to the death of a child. She is set to be back in court on March 4 for arraignment.
WGN News / Via youtube.com
8.Back in 2018, a surgeon in the United Kingdom literally branded his initials onto the transplanted livers of some of his patients…without their consent. He used an argon beam — which is used to stop bleeding during operations — and signed “SB.” The brandings were discovered after another surgeon saw the initials during a follow-up surgery on one of the patients.
According to reports, the branding do not impair the liver’s functions and do eventually disappear. However, the surgeon, Simon Bramhall, admitted to “two counts of assault by beating,” and was given a 12-month community order and fined £10,000.
Capuski / Getty Images
9.This shockingly lifelike mummy of a little 2-year-old girl in Palermo, Sicily, who some people say appears to “open and close” her eyes. The girl, Rosalia Lombardo, who died in 1920 of the Spanish Flu, is amazingly mummified (thanks to embalming methods and chemicals). However, people often get creeped out because her eyes sometimes appear “open.” The truth, however, is that it’s just an optical illusion. According to the curator of the Capuchin Catacombs (where Rosalia is entombed), this illusion is caused by the light that filters in through the windows, which changes throughout the day.
The curator, Dario Piombino-Mascali, also explained that the mummy had been moved slightly to make it easier to see her eyelids. “They are not completely closed, and indeed they have never been,” he said.
Fabrizio Villa / Getty Images
10.This nightmare-fueling image of an underwater shark statue at Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland:
11.Earlier this month, a man in Pennsylvania, Justin Mohn, was accused of killing and beheading his own father and then showing his father’s decapitated head on YouTube while also ranting about right-wing conspiracy theories.
When police arrived at the Mohn’s home, they found Justin’s father, Michael Mohn, in a bathroom, decapitated, along with a machete and kitchen knife. Michael’s head was also found inside a plastic bag, inside a cooking pot.
According to NBC News, “Mohn was taken into custody about 100 miles away from the crime scene on suspicion of first-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, and possessing an instrument of crime with intent.”
6abc Philadelphia / Via youtube.com
12.Meanwhile, in Florida, a man brutally killed his own father by bludgeoning him to death after learning his father “received the vaccine.”
Fox 11 News reported, “According to the arrest report, the woman who placed the 911 call said she could hear the suspect’s father, Brian Mcgann Sr., screaming ‘Stop you are killing me.'”
The suspect, Brian Mcgann Jr., had run from the crime scene, but left a trail of blood from the home, which led police right to him. They found him with swollen hands, covered in blood.
WPBF 25 News / Via youtube.com
13.Back in 2014, a woman was critically injured, permanently disfigured, and nearly killed, after four teenagers threw a rock from an overpass onto Interstate 80 in Ohio. According to reports, the rock “smashed through the windshield and struck Sharon Budd, in the front passenger seat, in the face.” Budd’s injuries included a crushed skull, the loss of one of her eyes, and also having to undergo multiple brain surgeries.
The teens, who went on a vandalism spree after the event, were later tried and given minimum prison sentences ranging from 11.5 months to 4.5 years.
Sharon’s husband, Randy Budd, died by suicide in 2016.
News 5 Cleveland / Via youtube.com
14.This photo of a type of clam known as a Geo Duck, which is, uhhhhh, quite a shocking thing to see.
15.In January, a British base jumper died in Thailand after his parachute failed to open. The man, who was apparently an “experienced parachutist,” had jumped from a 29-story apartment building and was there with friends who were filming the base jump. According to witnesses, they “reported seeing a person crash through a tree and fall to the ground.”
The BBC reported, “A Foreign Office spokesperson said, ‘We are supporting the family of a British man who has died in Thailand.'”
(Note: The image above is of another base jumper, not the man who died.)
Tengku Bahar / AFP via Getty Images
16.Lasth month, Reddit user CHCH5089, shared a horrifying video of their frail, nearly 80-year-old grandmother getting beat up by neighbors who were apparently operating a “glamping” site. The user explained, “This [sic] afternoon my grandmother (close to 80 years old) got punched and beat by her neighbor after confronting them of open burning garbage behind her home.”
According to Malay Mail, the grandmother had initially confronted the neighbors about the smoke that was drifting over to her property, and causing her to choke. After a “verbal argument,” the suspect then rushed the old woman, punched her in the face several times, and then hit her on the back of the head as she tried to flee. The old woman reportedly suffered soft tissue injuries.
It was reported that police later arrested the suspect.
CHCH5089 / Via reddit.com
17.The existence of “L’Inconnue de la Seine,” (“The Unknown Woman of the Seine”) — a 19th-century woman whose death mask became so popular it was widely used for art and CPR dolls. Sometime in the 1880s, a woman’s body was pulled from the Seine River in Paris.
According to Medium, “In an effort to determine her identity, her body was publicly displayed alongside others in a Paris morgue. She attracted many onlookers, but nobody who knew who she was. To her audience, she was simply a beautiful stranger. Her name would never be discovered.
Before her burial, a mortuary worker was so taken by her beauty that he decided to capture it in a death mask. This death mask was repeated over and over again, eventually becoming an iconic art piece that people would hang in their homes and artists would fixate on. Her face would later become the inspiration for the CPR doll, Resusci Anne, still used today.”
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
18.Earlier this month, it was reported that, according to FDA, as many as 561 deaths had been connected to Philips brand sleep apnea machines. Millions of the breathing machines have been recalled because of reports that they were “blowing gas and pieces of foam into the users’ airways.”
According to CBS News, “The FDA said that since April 2021, it has received more than 116,000 medical device reports of foam breaking down in Philips CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines and BiPAP sleep therapy devices.”
Nicolesy / Getty Images
19.In 2011, a 15-year-old in Belleview, Florida, Seath Jackson, was lured to a home by his ex-girlfriend, Amber Wright, where a group of her friends (aged 15–20) brutally beat, shot, and killed the teen. They later burned his body in an attempt to “dispose of the evidence.”
Jackson’s parents had reported him missing, but there wasn’t a lead in the case until one of the perpetrators, Kyle Hooper, told his mother about the murder. The others, Amber Wright (Jackson’s ex-girlfriend), Justin Soto, and Charlie Ely, were arrested along with Hooper and admitted to their parts of the crime. Amber’s new boyfriend Michael Bargo, also part of the group, was eventually caught in another town. During interrogation, they all quickly turned on each other.
In 2012, all the defendants were sentenced to life in prison. Charlie Ely was released in 2020 after pleading to a lesser charge. Bargo was sentenced to death.
WESH 2 News / Via youtube.com
20.Earlier this month in Sweden, a new water park, Oceana, “exploded” into a massive fire, ripping through many not-yet-opened waterslides. It was reported that at least three explosions “sent debris from nearby buildings scattering over the burning waterslides.” Later, a human body was found inside the remnants of the fire at the water park.
According to police, 12 people were also injured, and a nearby hotel and facilities were also evacuated. An official cause has not been given yet.
Bjorn Larsson Rosvall / TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images
21.In June 2014, 243 refugees, including women and children, disappeared while on a boat heading from Libya to Italy — the case has since been referred to as the “Ghost Boat.”
According to Eric Reidy, the lead reporter in Medium’s series about the event, there are two main theories as to what happened. The first is that the boat sank and somehow left behind no evidence. The second theory is that the passengers are alive but imprisoned in Tunisia.
Mayehem / Getty Images/iStockphoto
22.Just last week, a 7-year-old girl from Indiana died in Florida after a large, five-foot hole she’d been digging at the beach collapsed. The girl, Sloan, had been digging the hole with her 9-year-old brother, Maddox, when they both got trapped in the sand. The children were on vacation with their parents.
The beach reportedly does not have lifeguards, and it was unclear how exactly the children became trapped. However, several people nearby used their hands to try to free the children, and other rescuers used support boards to prevent the sand from collapsing further.
The siblings were taken to the hospital where Sloan later died.
WTHR / Via youtube.com
23.In ongoing scary plane news, a flight from San Francisco to Boston earlier this month had to divert to Denver because of an “issue” with the plane’s wing — specifically that the wing was literally coming apart. And a passenger on board captured the drama in a video you can see here.
Another passenger shared a photo of the wing on Reddit and asked the other users, “Sitting right on the wing and the noise after reaching altitude was much louder than normal. I opened the window to see the wing looking like this. How panicked should I be? Do I need to tell a flight crew member?”
Flight attendants were indeed notified of the problem, and after landing, passengers were transferred to another plane that went on to land in Boston.
ABC 7 / Via youtube.com
24.These horrifying screenshots of a “mosquito plague” that’s happening in Argentina right now:
Window pane covered with numerous small insects, visible indoor furniture and outdoor decking
Mosquitos everywhere
Mosquitos everywhere in the air
ReyBoring_ / Via reddit.com
You can watch the full icky video here if you dare.
25.Speaking of mosquitoes, in the 1950s, ’60s, and even as late as the early ’70s, kids would literally chase after trucks that sprayed DDT, a synthetic pesticide that was used in agriculture to kill mosquitoes. Apparently, kids did this because they liked to play in the thick fog it created. 🙃
According to the CDC, ” Following exposure to high doses to DDT, human symptoms can include vomiting, tremors or shakiness, and seizures. Laboratory animal studies show DDT exposure can affect the liver and reproduction. DDT is a possible human carcinogen according to U.S. and International authorities.”
The United States banned the use of DDT in 1972.
Bettmann / Bettmann Archive
26.In 1961, a Soviet doctor, Leonid Rogozov, who was part of an Antarctic expedition, developed appendicitis and had to perform his own appendectomy without general anesthesia, i.e. he had to cut out his own appendix.
It had taken their expedition 36 days to arrive at the station in Antarctica. The ship they’d traveled on wouldn’t be back for a year, and because of weather conditions, they could not fly back home either. So, Rogozov — for fear of his appendix bursting at any time — decided he had to operate on himself.
Rogozov opted to operate with just local anesthetic, no mirror (due to it being a hindrance), suffered heavy bleeding, and almost lost consciousness. The operation took roughly two hours, and he “returned to normal duties” just two weeks later.
Ilbusca / Getty Images
27.Finally, this upsetting image of the aftermath of a gender reveal party that someone came across while hiking.