7 of the Creepiest Wikipedia Pages
With the All Hollows Eve just around the corner, our appetite for horror stories grows larger and larger. Listed below are 7 of the creepiest pages found on Wikipedia.
The Licked Hand
The Licked Hand is an urban legend that enjoys a lot of popularity among adolescents, maybe because the main character of the story is a teenager, too. Basically, the story is about a girl that is at home only with her dog. As she learns on the radio about a serial killer who is at large, she decides to lock herself in the house and goes to sleep, allowing her dog to sleep under her bed. At some point during the night, she starts hearing a dripping sound in the room, so she finds haven under the blankets. To get some reassurance, she slips her hand from time to time under the bed where the dog’s breath is felt. Each time she does so, her hand is licked. To her horror, when she wakes up in the morning, she discovers the eviscerated dog hanging from the ceiling, with blood still trickling from the abdomen. To make the picture even more horrifying, a message was written in blood on the wall: “Humans can lick too.”
Mokele-mbembe
If you think that the creature in the above picture looks awfully a lot like a Brontosaurus that attacks humans, you might understand why this Wikipedia page is a bit creepy. Mokèlé-mbèmbé, translated as “one who stops the flow of rivers” in the Lingala language, is a cryptid that is often mentioned in the folklore and legends of the Congo River Basin. In other words, this is a creature that is believed to be true, even though there is no scientific proof to support this fact, which means that Mokèlé-mbèmbé is on the same level as Yeti and the Loch Ness monster. Since this is a rather mythical creature, there are many variations concerning its physical aspect. According to Wikipedia and its references, there were many sightings of Mokèlé-mbèmbé, from 1776 to 2011. Africa is certainly one of the continents with some of the most interesting and often horrifying folk stories, so if you are into these, you might want to check the related pages.
Gilles de Rais
Gilles de Rais is by no means the name of a horrific murderer from contemporary France. Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, Baron de Rais, was Joan of Arc’s companion-in-arms and one of the leaders of the French army at that time, but he is actually better known as a serial killer of children. To make things even more interesting, it should be noted that Gilles de Rais was also involved in occultism, the summoning of demons being apparently one of his favorite “extracurricular activities.” Back to the kids, though, they seem to have been dressed up and fed very well before they were… uhm… put to rest. To provide a little more detail, the children had their throat slit open or their neck broken with a stick, in case Gilles de Rais and his acolytes did not decide to go as far as dismemberment or even decapitation.
If it makes you feel any better, pictured above is the execution (by hanging AND burning, probably just to make sure) of Gilles de Rais in 1440, at age 36. It should also be noted that this serial killer is presumably the one who inspired Charles Perrault to write Bluebeard. Besides that, extreme metal bands from all over the world seem to love him. Cannibal Corpse and Cradle of Filth are only two of the bands that make a reference to Gilles de Rais in their songs.
Peter Kurten
Moving a bit to the East and in more recent times, we have Peter Kürten, also known as The Vampire of Düsseldorf, the author of assaults, murders and sex crimes that involved both children and adult. These events spiked between February and November 1929. During his childhood he was in several occasions a spectator of his father’s repeated sexual assaults on his mother. After a while, he started sexually abusing his sisters and soon after that he made a hobby of animal cruelty. I guess violence makes violence after all, eh?
His 1929 murders flood with brutality. February 13 really turned out to be an unlucky day for one of his victims, a middle-aged mechanic who got stabbed 20 times. In November he strangled a five year old girl and punctured her body in 36 places with some scissors. As an additional proof of his twistedness, he sent a map to a local newspaper on which the location of the little girl’s grave was marked. From August till November 1929 he assaulted several other people and some of them died due to stabbing wounds. On May 24, 1930 he was arrested and on April 1931 he was charged for 9 murders and 7 attempted murders, which brought him a death sentence. On July 2, 1931 Peter Kürten was executed by guillotine. If you find this method brutal, you should know that the guillotine was used for the capital punishment until 1981.
Dyatlov Pass Incident
The Dyatlov Pass incident, which took place in the northern Ural mountains on the night of February 2, 1959 involved the death of 9 ski hikers. Ski accidents that end up with casualties are not something unheard of, so you may wonder what’s unusual about this incident. Since there were no witnesses, their deaths were followed by a lot of speculation, especially since the Soviet investigators discovered that two of the hikers had their skull crushed, other two had broken ribs and another one had her tongue missing. The clothes of four of the hikers had abnormal levels of radiation, fact that adds some more to the creepiness of the incident, since there is no source of contamination in that area.
Pope Lick Monster
Back to the realm of fantastic creatures, we have the Pope Lick Monster, who is also a protagonist of an urban legend. This part goat, part man, part sheep creature is said to live under a Norfolk Southern Railway trestle, somewhere in Louisville, Kentucky. The Pope Lick Monster was first reported in late 1940s and according to the urban legends, it relies on hypnosis or voice mimicry to attract people onto the trestle where they are run over by train. Since the number of accidents and deaths in the area is rather high, teenagers started legend tripping here. There are many theories regarding the origin of the monster and one of the creepiest ones refers to a twisted reincarnated farmer that sacrificed goats in order to get some supernatural powers from His Infernal Majesty. As with all the other urban legends, this one became the plot of a movie too, that is controversial, to say the least.
Exploding Head Syndrome
One of the first things that popped into my mind when I read about the Exploding Head Syndrome was this famous head explosion shot (NSFW) from the 1981 movie Scanners. Apparently the EHS is the name of a real medical condition that is categorized as a sleep disorder. Despite this classification, EHS can also occur while the subject is awake. Basically, the ones who suffer from this medical problem hear a very loud explosion that comes from inside their heads. Usually, this loud noise is noticed within 60 to 120 minutes after falling asleep. Even though pain is not felt during the explosion, this syndrome is still quite terrifying. Fear and anxiety are often experienced by the sufferers after such an event and these reactions are absolutely normal, if you ask me.
Even though the cause of this condition is uncertain, stress and extreme fatigue are among the most probable ones. As a word of advice, when the little monsters will knock at your door to ask you “Trick’r Treat?” you should choose wisely, as the stress resulted from the former option may have… side effects.
If you liked this post, please check these 10 Halloween characters and Walyou’s ultimate guide for Halloween.
