Nothing gives our brains the same kind of fireworks as watching creepy things. And if you’re not one of the horror aficionados it may be hard to understand the point of the thrill that horror gives.

But scientists say that the fright horror gives us while watching things like American Horror Story and The Walking Dead releases adrenaline, resulting in heightened sensations and surging energy. So biochemistry is to blame. And that thrill is so powerful, it’s often hard to look away.

This corner of Reddit known as “Interesting But Creepy” is a real treat for not just horror fans, but those who appreciate the darker side of our universe. The posts shared on the community range from interestingly weird to curiously macabre and they will surely give your heart rate the exercise it deserves! Psst! More creepy goodness awaits in our previous feature right here.

#1 Tyrano-Dude: Skilled At Deceiving And Misleading. He Will Bamboozle You

Image credits: Rodan-Lewarx

#2 When Sperm Whales Need A Nap, They Take A Deep Breath, Dive Down About 45 Feet And Arrange Themselves Into Perfectly-Level, Vertical Patterns. They Sleep Sound And Still For Up To Two Hours At A Time Between Breaths, In Pods Of 5 Or 6 Whales, Presumably For Protection

Image credits: qixle

#3 A Thunderstorm Can Sometimes Birth A Rarely Seen Phenomenon In Earth’s Atmosphere: Red Space Lightning Called Sprites That Look Like Jellyfish

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To find out why exactly so many of us are drawn to creepy things, from pictures to stories, both fictional and real, we spoke with Michael Grant Kellermeyer, the editor in chief of Oldstyle Tales Press, an independent publisher based in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The publishing house specializes in critical, annotated and illustrated editions of classic ghost stories, weird fiction, and gothic horror from the Classical Era of Supernatural Fiction (1795 – 1935).

According to Kellermeyer, human beings, especially in today’s culture, have a love-hate relationship with mortality. “In one sense, Death and the dark side of life are our greatest enemies, but in another sense, it makes life delicious and potent: we are drawn to brushing elbows with death (either in reality – say, by skydiving or doing extreme sports – or by proxy – say, by reading or watching media about people who work in dangerous jobs or who survived disasters).”

#4 Scientist Holding A Basketball Covered With Vantablack, The World’s Blackest Substance

Image credits: Phylamedeian

#5 This Is An Intact Human Nervous System That Was Dissected By 2 Medical Students In 1925. It Took Them Over 1500 Hours. There Are Only 4 Of These In The World

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#6 Don’t Make Eye Contact

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He explained further: “While in previous generations, death was ever-present – certainly not a good thing – 21st-century Westerners are much less likely to have ever seen a dead body (even the majority of funerals either tend to be cremations or closed-casket), so as much as we do not long for more death in our worlds, we do certainly have an obsession with this part of our existence which we are all fated to encounter, but which is so tidily hidden from us.”

#7 Thunderstorm From 30,000 Feet In The Air

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#8 Four Horned Hebridean Sheep. They Look Simply Bad A**

Image credits: GallowBoob

#9 Spanish Dancer Sea Slug Spotted In Australia

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Kellermeyer believes that as a result, “psychoanalytically, we try to touch hands with this stranger who is destined to make our acquaintance by poring over true crime podcasts, horror movies, and spooky artwork.”

The editor in chief added that “we love horror (which is by definition an artform concerned with the gradual approach of death, whether natural or supernatural) because it allows us to vicariously experience something that is so taboo in our culture, but which we all – at the final moment of our life – are destined to encounter.”

#10 What Michael Jackson Was Supposed To Look Like

Image credits: KingDongs

#11 This Amoeba I Saw Through The Microscope

Image credits: LeekFever

#12 A Handheld Side-View Mirror

Image credits: D**kStuert

Kellermeyer argues that a good, creepy story should leave a great deal to the imagination and should focus on insinuations which leave the imagination primed but wanting more.

So he gave one such example: “The great British horror writer M. R. James was a master of the chilling tease, knowing just what to expose in order to pique curiosity, but holding back enough that we can’t get a good look. In a story called ‘Wailing Well,’ he has a shepherd describe a family of zombie-like ghosts to a group of boys: ‘Rags and bones, young gentlemen: all four of ’em: flutterin’ rags and whity bones. It seemed to me as if I could hear ’em clackin’ as they got along. Very slow they went, and lookin’ from side to side.’ One of the boys asks what their faces looked like: ‘They hadn’t much to call faces,’ said the shepherd, ‘but I could seem to see as they had teeth.’”

#13 Mummified Monk Revealed Inside 1,000-Year-Old Buddha Statue

Image credits: Keri2103

#14 Someone I Know Has A Glassed Over Well In Their Kitchen From The Mid-1700s

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#15 Racoons Reaching For Cat Food Under A Table

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The key here is that we get a teasing taste that tells us something about their nature: “they aren’t right – they’re ragged and bony and move about in a wobbling, unstable manner,” Kellermeyer told us. Moreover, “they are malicious – they are clearly searching for something and while they have no faces to speak of, by God do they ever have teeth to tear with. A good horror story piques the imagination but lets it suffer in suspense,” he explained.

#16 Skeleton Of A Pregnant Fruit Bat

Image credits: DraconianDebate

#17 Seeds Germinating In A Tomato

Image credits: callmeRira

#18 Golf Ball Vs. Doll

Image credits: Letibleu

As a scholar of 19th and 20th-century horror, Kellermeyer can definitely say that the sources of collective fears are both basic and unchanging and very subject to fashion and the cultural moment. “All fears essentially boil down to four things: fear of losing control; fear of the beast within ourselves; fear of the beast in other people; fear of oblivion and mortality. But the way these fears take shape has changed: in Victorian literature a major source of fear was insanity or losing civility in some manner: become more animalistic.”

The editor in chief explained: “For instance, a truly chilling trope in Victorian literature was a ghostly man seen roaming the countryside without a hat or coat. This may seem silly to us, but to them – in a society where a sane, healthy man wouldn’t be walking outside bareheaded in his shirtsleeves – the way that death has made this man’s ghost so forlorn was truly frightening: his fate has left him vulnerable and stripped him of his propriety.”

#19 Oldest Surviving Diving Suit, 18th Century

Image credits: Import

#20 The Poison Garden (Alnwick Garden) Contains About 100 Plants That Can Actually Kill A Person

Image credits: Thundercats_4eva

#21 Hiroshima, Japan, 1945: This Shadow That Almost Seems Drawn On The White Of Five Steps, Tells The Last Moments Of A Person. All That Remains Is The Shadow Caused By The Flash Of The Atomic Bomb That August 6th

Image credits: IlConteiacula

Meanwhile, for his generation as an elder Millennial, it seemed like creepy kids were the be all, end all. “I actually am not wild about this trope (black-eyed kids, creepy dolls, scowling little girl ghosts, etc.) because it was just everywhere in the horror scene when I was growing up. But it did something very powerful for folks in the ’90s and ’00s and even the ’10s,” Kellermeyer told us in an interview.

He also noticed that these days, it seems to be relationships that trigger us. “Families and couples (I think of Midsommar, Get Out, Hereditary, The Witch, The Conjuring, Haunting of Hill House, and It Follows),” he named a few. “I think our current cultural moment is very anxious about the intimacy of relationships like those between parents and children or between lovers: it can provide security and love, or it can be very much the opposite.”

#22 Lava That Looks Like Melted Bodies

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#23 Just A Window Lit Up In An Abandoned Hospital

Image credits: Synobye

#24 This Is What A Lethal Dose Of Fentanyl Looks Like. 2mg

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#25 In 1871, This 10 Year Old Girl’s Grave Was Built With Easy Access Stairs So That Her Mother Could Comfort Her During Storms

Image credits: Fluid-Daydreamer

#26 Sometimes People Stop In The Middle Of A Conversation To Stare At My Eye. Wonder Why

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#27 Church In Louisiana

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#28 A Close Up Of An Ant

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#29 This Is A Flat Hallway

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#30 A Disney Gas Mask – Designed To Make Gas Mask “Less Creepy” For Children During WWII

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#31 This Picture From Venus

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#32 So Anyways I Found Where The Grim Reaper Lives

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#33 You Want To Hear The Song Now

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#34 Rather Creepy, Funny, Interesting And Weird… This Is What Curiosity Does

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#35 Correlation Or Causation???

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#36 A Terrifying Web I Saw Above A Light Fixture A Work Today

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#37 Here Are Some Skin Shoes Worth $10,000, These Are Made Or Silicon But Are 100% Creepy

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#38 This Castle In Spain

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#39 The Cpr Doll’s Face Is Actually A Copy Of A 19th Century Drowned Woman’s Face

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#40 The Statue Of Flayed St. Bartholomew Wearing His Skin As A Robe. Milan Cathedral

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#41 My Brother Went To Egypt And Saw Some Mummified Crocodiles

Image credits: Daniel-Mentxaka

#42 The Mouth Of A Leatherback Sea Turtle

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#43 Biblically Accurate Angel

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#44 One Of My Grandpa’s Cows (He’s A Rancher) Gave Birth To This Two-Headed Fella Back In The 1980’s. The Calf Lived For Less Than Ten Minutes, But Have No Fear. Grandpa Took It To A Taxidermist

Image credits: Coolderaj

#45 Shark Gills

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#46 Before Days Of Modern Medicine, Many Feared Being Buried Alive. As A Result, Safety Coffins Were Invented In Case The Living Were Mispronounced Passed Away. A String Attached To A Bell Allowed The Victim To Alert Those Above

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#47 St. Lambert’s Church In Münster. Three Iron Cages, 7 Feet Tall And A Yard Wide And Deep, Hang Empty From The Church Spire. Once Home To The Mutilated Bodies Of Three Revolutionaries

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#48 Titanium Implants Pulled From A Crematory

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#49 A Cemetery In Hong Kong

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#50 Geladas Baring Their Fangs

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