AS EVERY GOOD procrastinator knows, Wikipedia is the perfect place to waste an hour or two, mindlessly clicking and scrolling.
But it doesn’t take long to get thoroughly stuck in the dark side of Wikipedia – the side inhabited by ghosts, mysteries, and murderers.
Here are 13 creepy Wikipedia pages that’ll stay lodged in your brain for the rest of the night.
Mellified man
This was an ancient medicinal substance which was allegedly created by steeping a recently-deceased human body in honey for a hundred years.
The resulting mixture was said to be able to heal broken limbs. Oh, and did we mention the person who donated their body to the project had to survive on nothing but honey until they died? Yeah.
Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm?
In the years after a dead woman was found stuffed inside a tree in Stourbridge, UK in 1941, graffiti began to appear around the town: ‘Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm?’
The last message appeared in August 1999. Who was demanding justice for ‘Bella’ for 55 years? Why did they stop?
Tanganyika laughter epidemic
In 1962, the young people of a village in Tanzania were affected by bursts of uncontrollable laughter. For no reason.
Alien hand syndrome
‘Alien hand syndrom’ is a rare neurological disorder that causes a person’s hand to move without them being aware or in control of the action.
Here is a patient describing her symptoms:
One patient was observed putting a cigarette into her mouth with her intact ‘controlled’ hand, following which her alien left hand came up to pull the cigarette out of her mouth and toss it away before it could be lit by the dominant right hand. The patient then surmised that “I guess ‘he’ doesn’t want me to smoke that cigarette.”
Robert J White
A human head transplant has never been performed, but in the 1970s Dr Robert J White performed one on a monkey. His experiments have since been called ‘barbaric’.
Mercy Brown Vampire Incident
In 1892, a family exhumed their daughter (who died of tuberculosis) as they believed she was a vampire – they performed a series of rituals to ‘banish’ a potential undead manifestation. Wait until you read what the rituals were.
Amelia Dyer
Amelia Dyer is one of the most prolific serial killers of all time, a so-called ‘baby farmer’ responsible for the deaths of hundreds of infants who were entrusted into her care in the late 1800s.
She accepted money from desperate mothers looking for someone to care for their illegitimate babies, then murdered the children and pocketed all of the fee.
Spontaneous human combustion
This page details cases of living or recently diseased human beings bursting into flame without any source of ignition. DEAR GOD NO.
List of reported UFO sightings
There are multiple mentions of the Men In Black.
Sedlec Ossuary
The Sedlec Ossuary is a Catholic chapel in the Czech Republic that is decorated almost entirely with human skeletons. Yep.
Euthanasia Coaster
A PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London made a scale model of a roller coaster designed to kill everyone who rode it. Because he could. NOPE.
The Dyatlov Pass Incident
Nine skiers were found dead north of the Ural mountains in February of 1959. Each of the victims was found partly dressed short way from their campsite – six died of hypothermia, while the remaining three died from fatal injuries.
The theories on what caused their deaths range from the paranormal to radiation.
June and Jennifer Gibbons
June and Jennifer Gibbons were Welsh identical twins, known as ‘The Silent Twins’ as they only ever communicated with each other. Eventually, they agreed that one must sacrifice herself so the other could live a normal life…
