15. Unit 731
This secret chemical and biological warfare research and development unit committed some
of the most ferocious and notorious acts by the Imperial Japanese, when they were based
in Northeast China. Officially, Unit 731 was called the Epidemic
Prevention and Water Purification Department which then adopted the name “Unit 731”
in the year 1941. 600 men, women, and children of Chinese, Korean,
Mongolian, and Soviet descent, as well as Allied POWs, were passed onto the unit - amounting
to at least 3,000 in total. These people were experimented on at the camp. They were called “logs” as a staff joke,
because the facility’s cover was that it was a lumber mill. Organs were removed and studied, limbs were
amputated, and these people were injected with diseases to examine their effects. The unit also infected fleas with the plague
and dropped these, along with infected supplies and clothing. This is estimated to have taken the lives
upwards of 400,000 Chinese civilians. This barely scratches the surface of the horrendous
things that Unit 731 did. The unit was the Heart of Darkness made manifest. If you’re willing to look into that darkness,
don’t say I didn’t warn you. 14. The Goiania Accident. This one’s radioactive. The Goiânia accident occurred in Brazil in
1987, and a look into the unfortunate event’s Wikipedia page will have you wondering if
it could happen again. And it can, anywhere at anytime. What happened was there was a radiotherapy
source - specifically, a tele therapy radiation capsule - at an abandoned hospital that was
handled by a number of people. Four of these people passed, and 249 more
suffered high levels of radioactive materiel in their bodies. Called “one of the world’s worst nuclear
disasters” by Time magazine, multiple houses had to be demolished, and the topsoil removed
from sites, due to the incident. 13. Genie
This is one of the most vicious cases of wrongdoing by a young girl’s own father on record. Genie was born in America in 1957. Her father decided when she was only a baby
that she was mentally disabled. As she grew older, he started withholding
attention and care, and his dislike of Genie led to her nearly complete social isolation
by the age of twenty months. From that age to thirteen and a half years
old, she was kept locked in her room, her arms and legs nearly always immobilized, secured
to a crib or a child’s toilet. No one was allowed to communicate with Genie,
she wasn’t given any form of stimulation or entertainment, and she was severely malnourished. Due to her isolation, Genie could not communicate,
having been exposed to so little language. And it wasn’t until 1970 that the Los Angeles
child welfare authorities were made aware of her situation. Once Genie was removed from her home, linguists,
psychologists, and other scientists began examining her unique case, specifically her
human development. It took only months for her to communicate
nonverbally and develop basic social skills. However, when the case study was finalized,
she still had traits of an unsocialized person and could not acquire a first language, thus
suggesting that there are critical points in which language can be acquired during the
normal processes of human development. In 1978, Genie’s mother stepped in and disallowed
further testing of her daughter. At this point, it’s thought that Genie was
thereafter cared for by the state of California, but nothing further is factually known about
her living arrangement. We can only hope that Genie was at last allowed
to live in peace. 12. Capgras Delusion
Imagine: you walk into your kitchen one morning. Your husband is cooking breakfast. But when he turns to you, and you look in
his eyes, suddenly you feel that this isn’t your husband at all, but an imposter, just
pretending. This psychiatric disorder involves a delusion
in which someone feels an identical impostor has replaced their parent, family member,
friend, spouse, or even their pet. Classified as a delusional misidentification
syndrome, Capgras delusion can be transient, acute, or chronic and can also involve a feeling
of time warp or substitution. Paranoid schizophrenia is often involved,
but dementia and brain injury can also be a contributing factor. Have you ever thought your loved one was an
imposter? 11. Roch Thériault
Cults are always creepy, but this one is particularly heinous. Canadian cult leader, Roch Thériault, was
the head of a religious group from 1977 to 1989 called the Ant Hill Kids. Calling himself the prophet Moise, Theriault’s
cult followed upon Seventh-day Adventist Church beliefs. He sold the commune as a place where people
could go to be motivated and live free from sin, in unity and harmony. Of course, with such freedom comes a lot of
restrictions, one of them being that members were not allowed to keep in contact with their
families. There was also a doomsday element to the Ant
Hill Kids, as Thériault claimed the end would come in February 1979, which, in fact, it
didn’t. As within many cults, Thériault established
that he could have multiple wives, and all female members were required to have a child
with him. 26 children later, they and his followers
were under Theriault’s totalitarian rule at his commune. Anyone who considered leaving the commune
or who did not obey his rules faced increasingly worse punishment, which started with plucking
all the hairs on the person’s body and ended with forcing followers to break their own
legs with sledgehammers. After finally taking the life one member,
Solange Boilard, while attempting to demonstrate his “healing powers” after she complained
of a stomachache, Thériault was arrested and sentenced to life behind bars. If you have the nerve, click on this Wikipedia
page. Some of the actions this cult leader committed
are beyond appalling. 10. Mike the Headless Chicken
Ever heard the phrase “running around like a chicken with its head cut off”? If so, it probably made you cringe once you
thought it through. If it did, jump over to Mike the Headless
Chicken’s Wikipedia page, and you’ll be doing more than cringing. This chicken had its head cut off and lived
on not just for minutes, but for 18 months after. When the story first came out in 1945, many
believed it to be a hoax. But Mike’s owner, Lloyd Olsen of Colorado,
took the headless chicken to the University of Utah to have his story verified. As it would turn out, the chicken was still
living because, when Olsen had gone to chop off his head, he’d missed the jugular vein,
leaving a majority of the brain stem intact. The botched act made it so that the chicken
could still perch, attempt to peck for food, and even crow…which is said to have sounded
more like gurgling than an actual crow. Mike became a sensation, and he was soon taken
on tour to be part of a sideshow act, earning Olsen $4,500 a month, which is $49,300 in
today’s money during the height of the chicken’s popularity. Sadly, Mike’s headless life was cut short
when he passed away from choking on a piece of corn in the middle of the night. His legacy lives on, however, in Fruita, Colorado,
where “Mike the Headless Chicken Day” is celebrated each year in May. Just don’t think about it too much, or you’ll
be having nightmares about it tonight. 9. Gold Base
This is the international headquarters of the Church of Scientology. Located in Riverside County, California, around
100 miles from Los Angeles, the compound is confidential and heavily guarded by patrols
24/7, high fences with razor wire and “Ultra Barrier” spikes at the top, motion detectors
and cameras. The Church also closely monitors passing traffic
along the public road nearby. So, what is going on inside of the nearly
fifty-building compound that requires such heavy security and secrecy? The Church acquired the property in 1978 with
cash, under the alias “Scottish Highland Quietude Club.” Senior church officials, as well as the Church's
leader and the elite inner circle of around 1,000 members known as the Sea Org, live on
site, and many prominent Scientologists have studied at Gold Base, including Tom Cruise. As luxurious as this compound sounds, staff
conditions are said to be terrible. Pay is $50 for a 100-hour work week, and punishments
are dealt to those who don’t fulfill work quotas. The lake was reportedly used for punishment
on various occasions in the 2000s. One of those punishments involved being pushed
into the freezing cold water at night, while the leader looked on. According to reports, mistreated members of
staff - up to 100 annually - make an attempt at escaping from Gold Base. They are inevitably captured and brought back
to base by “pursuit teams.” If this summary on the fearful place known
as Gold Base isn’t enough for you, click on through to the Wikipedia page. There’s plenty more where this comes from. 8. Stone Man Syndrome
This entry might give you flashbacks of greyscale turning Jorah Mormont of Game of Thrones into
a stone man, but in reality stone man syndrome is much scarier even than fiction. It’s a rare connective tissue disease, in
which damaged fibrous tissue - like muscles, ligaments, and tendons - becomes ossified
and permanently freeze joints in place when injured. This syndrome occurs when the repair mechanism
of the body has mutated. Sometimes joints are affected in such a way
that the patient cannot open or close the mouth completely to eat or talk. Breathing complications can also occur as
a result of extra bone formation surrounding the rib cage, which presses the diaphragm
and lungs. If you can imagine not being able to move
certain parts of your body or breathe easy, you probably have some idea of what it feels
like to suffer from this syndrome. 7. June and Jennifer Gibbons
These identical twins were born in 1963 in Barbados and raised in Wales, known as the
“Silent Twins.” The pair only talked to each other and rarely
left each other’s side. They were bullied and ostracized in school. As they became socially isolated, their language
became almost unintelligible to others, and they often mirrored each other’s actions
as they spoke. By 14, they only spoke to each other and their
younger sister. A series of therapists attempted to encourage
them to be more social by sending them to separate boarding schools. But this only made them more isolated, as
they each withdrew completely when on their own. Once reunited, the girls wrote fiction together
and put on plays with their dolls. Their stories often involved characters who
exhibited criminality. Their interest in this may have been inspiration,
as their later actions included arson. They were eventually sent to a mental hospital
called Broadmoor for fourteen years. Although they continued to be mute to the
world, the girls shared a pact that if one of them passed, the one left to live would
have to speak and live normally. While still in Broadmoor, they decided that
one of them must passed away, and Jennifer offered to so that June could live normally. She did, in fact, pass away of inflammation
of the heart during a move to another facility. But the cause of this inflammation is still
unknown. A few days after Jennifer had passed, June
stated: “I'm free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life for
me.” Did she give up her life? Or was her life taken? Some speculate whether June may have set herself
free. But that’s entirely speculation. 6. Rat King
This is not what it sounds like. It’s not a single rat, so large and powerful
it became king. It’s a group of intertwined rats that have
somehow gotten stuck together. Somehow, the rat collective’s tails become
intertwined, and they are stuck together sometimes by sap, gum, or by something that entangles
them, like hair. How many rats constitute a “rat king”? The number can be anywhere from three to upwards
of 32. For some reason, Germany has seen this phenomenon
more so than anywhere else, but it is a rare occurrence. And rats aren’t the only rodents this strangeness
happens to. Squirrels and forest mice have also been known
to king up…but, in my opinion, the thought of that is distinctly not as gross as rats. 5. Dancing Mania
So you think you can dance? Don’t start or you may not be able to stop. This social phenomenon occurred between the
14th and 17th centuries in mainland Europe, where erratic dancing, sometimes involving
thousands of people at once, resulted in many collapsing from exhaustion. Also known as the dancing plague or St Vitus’s
Dance, this mania isn’t simply an all-night rager; rather, it’s an outbreak that spreads
quickly. The first major one happened in 1374 in the
Holy Roman Empire and others have been noted throughout the centuries ever since. The cause of dancing mania is unknown, but
some believe it was simply mass hysteria, which is when social influence causes physical
symptoms with no known cause. Other theories range from religious cults
instituting the mania to the period’s poverty resulting in spontaneous dancing to relieve
stress. Whatever the cause was in the past, nowadays
we just call it the fun pastime of a flashmob. 4. Lori Erica Ruff
This one will send you down an internet rabbit hole. After a failed marriage, Lori Erica Ruff took
her own life on Christmas Eve 2010 at her father-in-law’s house. It was only then that her in-laws discovered
that Ruff was not who she seemed. Lori Erica Ruff was not even her real name;
rather it was an alias. In fact, it was one of at least two alias’
she had adopted in her lifetime. Her secret was discovered after her passing,
when her in-laws decided to take it upon themselves to dig into Ruff’s mysterious past. They found her house a complete mess, with
laundry, trash and dishes piled up all over the place, and documents and papers shredded,
some with meaningless messages written. That’s when they came upon a lockbox hidden
in a closet. After prying it open with a screwdriver, they
found more odd scribblings inside, along with a birth certificate for Becky Sue Turner,
as well as a change-of-name ruling, legally allowing someone called “Turner” to change
her name to Lori Erica Kennedy. Things got even weirder when investigators
found that Turner had passed away at two years old in a house fire. Still, Lori’s birth name remained a mystery,
as further scribblings turned up nothing. Even after they sought the help of an investigator
for the Social Security Administration, the woman’s identity was not recovered. Theories of who she was could be found far
and wide all over the internet. It wasn’t until 2013 that Colleen Fitzpatrick,
a former NASA contractor and forensic genealogist, took up the case by tracing her genetic genealogy. She was eventually led to believe the woman
was Kimberly McLean, an identity thief, who became Becky Sue Turner through obtaining
the birth certificate of the child who’d passed away in the fire, and then moved and
changed her name to Lori Erica Kennedy. Why she did all this, we may never know. But, again, as you could probably guess, the
internet has some theories. 3. Human Experimentation in the United States
This particular page lists a number of unethical experiments enacted on test subjects in the
US. Why are they considered unethical? Well, in many of these cases, they were performed
without the subjects’ consent or knowledge and often illegally. Who were the subjects? Often minorities, the poor, the incarcerated,
the sick, the mentally disabled, and even children. What kind of tests were performed? Human radiation and surgical experiments,
experiments to test out interrogation techniques, exposure to biological and chemical experiments,
such as diseases leading to loss of life, experiments to test mind-altering substances,
and many more. Who ran these tests? Often funds came from the US government. You heard that correctly. The CIA, the US military, and private corporations
tied to the military were the primary funders. The experiments they performed in detail are
certainly a disturbing read. 2. Fatal Insomnia
This one will keep you up at night. Literally. Usually inherited, fatal insomnia is a rare
sleep disorder found in only about forty families globally and with just a hundred people diagnosed. After the disease’s onset, this form of
insomnia could lead to the end of your life within a few months to a few years, with the
average survival rate of being 18 months. As the title would suggest, insomnia is the
primary symptom, but dementia, speech and physical coordination issues can also result
from this form. The four stages of this form of insomnia include
stage one that lasts around four months and entails progressive insomnia with an increase
in panic attacks, phobias, and paranoia. Stage two that lasts for about five months
includes noticeable panic attacks and hallucinations. Stage three lasts around three months and
includes total insomnia, no sleep, and rapid weight loss. And stage four may last six months or more,
during which the individual grows mute and unresponsive, dementia sets in, and then passing
on. If you’re having trouble sleeping, don’t
search it up on Wikipedia, or you may just be its next victim. Before we get to number 1, my name is Chills
and I hope you’re enjoying my narration. If you’re curious about what I look like
in real life, then go to my instagram, @dylan_is_chillin_yt and tap that follow button to find out. I recently released a small mixtape and I’d
love to know what you think of it. Tap the circle icon in the top right right
corner, then tap My Mixtape to give it a listen. It’s also linked in the description below. It's a proven fact that generosity makes you
a happier person, so if you're generous enough to hit that subscribe button and the bell
beside it then thank you. This way you'll be notified of the new videos
we upload every Tuesday and Saturday. 1. List of Unusual
This list of unusual passing is more entertaining than scary, but in reading it, you may start
to fear that there are so many more ways to pass away than you’d previously thought. Let the horror begin. The list includes rare, unique, and, yes,
unusual cases of people passing away - unusual being, as the Wikipedia article notes, “not
habitually or commonly occurring or done" and "remarkable or interesting because different
from or better than others,” as defined by Oxford Dictionary. It includes such examples as Draco, an Athenian
lawmaker, in 620 BC who was smothered by gifts of hats and cloaks by grateful citizens and
passed away. Or Martin of Aragon who, in 1410, passed away
of laughter. Well, not just laughter, but rather a combination
of belly laughing and indigestion from eating a whole goose. The joke, you might ask? When asked where he’d been, the king’s
jester replied: “Out of the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail
from a tree, as if someone had so punished him for stealing figs." Maybe it was funnier back then. This list certainly isn’t though.
