This web page contains scary facts for kids, parents, teachers and anyone who wants to be scared by some true facts. Our goal is to provide you with scary, but accurate facts on a wide variety of topics. In addition to facts that will scare you, we provide additional resources to help you find more facts that are scary.
We gathered the below scary facts to help you learn about things that are scary, but true. We cover a wide variety of topics and continuously keep adding new facts that will scare you. If you’re easily scared or have a medical condition that can be affected by being scared, we recommended you avoid reading the below scary facts.
If any of the below scary facts are inaccurate, please contact us and let us know.
16 Scary Facts for Kids
- Aokigahara Forest, also known as the Sea of Trees, is a forest near Mount Fuji in Japan. This is famous not for its extensive beautiful trees, but for its infamous reputation as the Suicide Forest. In Japan, the Aokigahara Forest is the most used site for people to commit suicide, and one of the most used suicide sites in the world. In 2003, authorities and explorers found 105 bodies, beating the previous 2002 record of 78 bodies. Most people who commit suicide in the Aokigahara Forest hang themselves or overdose on drugs.
- Paleontologists pretty much agree that the dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago when an asteroid between 7 and 50 miles wide slammed into the Earth. In 1908, the Tunguska event occurred over the remote forests of Siberia, Russia and was caused by an asteroid (330 feet in size) but destroyed 830 square miles of forest when it exploded. If this was to happen over a major city, thousands, if not millions of people would die. To make things worse, NASA claims it’s not if, but when another asteroid hits Earth that is the same size as the one that killed the dinosaurs.
- There are times when you’re glad you live during the age of modern medicine. From antiquity to the late 19th century medical professionals used a process called bloodletting. It was believed that removing blood from the human body would remove whatever illness or disease was affecting them. They would complete this producer using leeches (lucky) or by cutting open a vein (not so lucky). It’s scary to think of how many people died from bloodletting over the thousands of years it was practiced. Some historians think U.S. President George Washington died from bloodletting and the loss of too much blood.
- There is something about spiders that drives fear in most humans. In fact, some people suffer from a disorder called Arachnophobia, which is the irrational and intense fear of spiders. Regardless of your level of fear of spiders, the Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi) spider can scare anyone. The Goliath birdeater spider is the largest spider in the world. It can reach a weight of 6.2 ounces, reach a length of over 5 inches and have fangs that are 1.5 inches long. Of all the spiders you could find running across your basement floor, this is the scariest.
- Speaking of human fears, another common irrational fear in humans is claustrophobia. This is the fear of being in a tight or crowded space. Now, if your someone with claustrophobia, what happened to Roger Mallinson and Roger Chapman will freak you out. In August 29th, their commercial submersible Pisces III had some problems returning to the surface and crashed to the sea floor. They were stranded in their dark and damaged submersible for 76 hours before they were rescued. It was estimated at the time of their rescue they only had 12 minutes of oxygen left.
- One of the most famous mysterious from Russia is the Dyatlov Pass incident. In February 1959, nine Russian Hikers had unexplainable deaths in the northern Ural Mountains. Authorities classified their deaths as being caused by “compelling natural force”. For some reason, nine experienced hikers fled their tent in the middle of the night, without their shoes and winter cloths and died randomly through the area. Six of the hikers died from hypothermia, two died from severe chest trauma and one died from a skull fracture. Numerous theories exist for what happened to these nine hikers, but to this day no one knows what really happened.
- Couples love to visit Australia for their honeymoons, wedding anniversaries and vacations. One of the most popular things to do when visiting Australia is to go scuba diving near coral reefs. That’s exactly what Tom and Eileen Lonergan did on January 25th, 1998. The group that brought them and other divers to the site accidentally left them there. Their bodies were never found, but they’re presumed dead. One of the personal affects recorded was a diver’s slate that contained the entries “To anyone who can help us: We have been abandoned on A[gin]court Reef by MV Outer Edge 25 Jan 1998 3pm. Please help to rescue us before we die. Help!!!”
- Typhoid fever is a deadly bacterial disease that killed lots of people prior to the mid-20th century. There was a woman named Mary Mallon who was infamously known as Typhoid Mary. She was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid, which means she didn’t get sick from it, but could spread it to others. Her occupation as a cook gave her prime opportunities to accidentally infect people with typhoid. It’s estimated at least 53 people were infected by her and three died. Authorities in two sperate occasions had to forcibly quarantine her. She ultimately spent 30 years in isolation before she died in November 1938.
- There are churches that have withstood the test of time and been around for centuries. One of these churches is a small Roman Catholic chapel known as Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic. Now, this isn’t your ordinary church built with stone and wood. It’s estimated this church is dedicated with the human bones of more than 40,000 people. They literally have a chandelier that is made of human bones and skulls.
- The Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia), infamously known as the murder hornet, is the largest species of hornet in the world. These massive hornets have a stinger that is .25 inches long that can deliver a potent venom. There are also reports of the murder hornet being able to spray its venom into the eyes of something threatening it. A single sting from the Asian giant hornet can’t kill you, unless you’re allergic. There brutal nickname comes from their ability to destroy a honeybee nest and kill tens of thousands of bees in a matter of hours with just a dozen individuals.
- Water is one of the most important resources on our planet. You can survive weeks, even months without food, but only three days without water. When you think of Earth, you think it has lots of water, and it does. However, only a fraction of the water on our planet is freshwater, humans cannot consume saltwater. Water is so important, but every year humans in the United States alone dump 1.2 trillion gallons of industrial waste, sewage and stormwater back into our water sources every year. Everyone thinks about the wars that could be fought over fossil fuels, like oil, but what happens when there’s not enough freshwater in the world?
- On the topic of water, who doesn’t love swimming in water when it’s hot outside? Just be careful not to swim in water that is too warm and not treated with chlorine. Naegleria Fowleri is a parasite that thrives in warm water, it’s also known as the brain-eating amoeba. This parasite causes Naegleriasis in the human brain and kills over 95% of the people it infects. A human can be infected when they get water containing Naegleria Fowleri in their nose. So, the next you go diving into a warm pond or lake, think about holding your nose closed!
- Electricity powers the modern technology that has helped humans reach the levels of prosperity you experience every day. What if I told you the Sun can take that all away in an instance… and that it almost did. In 2012, a large and strong coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun missed Earth by just nine days. It’s estimated the damage could have reached $2.6 trillion alone in the United States and take up to ten years to recover from it. Think it can’t happen, well guess what, it did in 1859. The Carrington Event in 1859 caused massive damage to the electrical grid and blackouts across the globe. This was in the infancy of electrical power and humanity’s dependence on it.
- The United States prides itself in being one of the best nations in the world. That’s interesting, considering in 2017 only 62% of murder cases and 35% of sexual assault cases were solved in the USA according to the FBI. In fact, as of 2017 there were over 250,000 unsolved murder cases in the United States and that number grows by about 6,000 every year. Sadly, many of these go unsolved due to depleted law enforcement resources and personnel.
- While on the topic of murders in the United States, many of them are believed to have been committed by undetected serial killers. There are estimates that claim there are over 2,000 active serial killers alone in the United States. Based on the current stats by the FBI, if you’re murdered there is only a 1 in 3 chances your killer will be caught and brought to justice. Most murders that are solved are when the perpetrator and victim know each other.
- The FDA in the United States created the Defect Level Handbook, which determines how much contaminates are acceptable in different types of food. For example, tomato paste that contains less than 45% mold is considered OK for consumption. Frozen broccoli can be legally sold if there are less than 60 aphids, mites or thrips per 100 grams. It’s acceptable to sell peanut butter than contains a rodent hair for every 100 grams. You’re buying chocolate that can legally have up to 59 insect fragments per 100 grams.
Additional Resources with Scary Facts
- People Discussing Scary Facts – Find tons of scary facts from users of the Quora website.
- 32 Scary Facts About our World – Find thirty-two more scary facts about our world on the Awesome Inventions website.
- 42 Scary Facts to Give You Nightmares – Read forty-two scary facts on the Factinate website that will give you nightmares.
- 27 Scary but True Facts – Discover twenty-seven scary, but true facts on the BuzzFeed website.
- Top 15 Scary Facts You’ll Want to Forget – Discover fifteen scary facts you’ll want to forget in this YouTube video.
