The Sheffield Museum of Anaesthesia presents its collection of mysterious, terrifying antique items once used to render people unconscious.
posted by Faint of Butt on Sep 12, 2009 - 25 comments

Tongue-eating parasite found (with freak-you-out pic) off Jersey coast. Sweet dreams mefites.
posted by zerobyproxy on Sep 11, 2009 - 59 comments

After receiving complains from upset parents, FEMA took the PDF coloring book "A Scary Thing Happened" offline, and now the story is spinning around the internet. Created by the Freeborn County Crisis Response Team in 2003 as a tool for children to use with a responsible parent or adult to help cope with the disaster, the book has been used with children who have experienced disasters related to Hurricane Katrina, California wildfires, floods and even the Interstate 35 bridge collapse, to name a few instances. There have even been international requests from the Australian Red Cross to use the coloring book as a model to aid Australian children. Looking for more than the offending page? The Smoking Gun has made the original PDF available, and FEMA still has three other coloring books online. (More coloring book fun inside) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Apr 30, 2009 - 43 comments

Years from now, when people think about the quintessential creepy old man, they'll have one face in mind. None other than Ed Muscare, aka "Uncle Ed" aka horror host Edmus Scary who was on Channel 41 in Kansas City in the 70's through the mid 80's hosting All Night Live. He was on briefly in Phoenix around 1986 hosting Friday Night Frights prior to becoming a registered sex offender. He's served his time and has an offbeat youtube channel now.
posted by Catblack on Apr 28, 2009 - 60 comments

Possibly the most surreal children's video ever made. Dance, dream and cringe along with Creating Rem Lezar.
posted by freshwater_pr0n on Jan 10, 2009 - 26 comments

Hearing Voices [prev, prev] has a devilishly viscera-soaked Halloween broadcast: Bloody Hell: The First Half is Bloody. The Second Half We Go to Hell. So, turn the lights out, press play, and grab your favorite token of comfort. (It won't help.) [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on Oct 27, 2008 - 3 comments

Living on the Edge Welcome to Ronda, a beautiful city in southern Spain which is split in two by el Tajo gorge. As a result, certain buildings have been perched on the edge of the gorge’s vertical walls, enormous cliffs bridged by the 200 year old Peunte Neuvo. [more inside]
posted by bwg on Jul 5, 2008 - 12 comments

Kindertrauma is about the movies, books, and toys that scared you when you were a kid. It’s also about kids in scary movies, both as heroes and villains. And everything else that’s traumatic to a tyke! [more inside]
posted by stinkycheese on Jun 12, 2008 - 64 comments

Horror photography by artist Joshua Hoffine. NSFW, via The Horror Blog
posted by Faint of Butt on Apr 24, 2008 - 41 comments

Norman Bates and that oh, so famous shower scene... [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Nov 24, 2007 - 47 comments

There really are no accidents [NSFW] Talking corpses who had been electrocuted, impaled by steel rods or lacerated by broken glass didn't get the message across. Now, an even more graphic series of ads is spotlighting workplace safety in Ontario and grabbing attention well beyond the province's borders. Ontario's Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) has launched a new (and graphic) campaign to help improve workplace safety. Family Man gets blown off side of building; Forklift driver gets impaled by metal rod; A shop clerk topples off a ladder; An electrocuted corpse speaks at his own funeral [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Nov 17, 2007 - 111 comments

50 million computers are after your passwords, your money, and your processor time (single PDF link). No wonder William Gibson's new novel is set in the present: the world is fully caught up with any future we could make up. The business of spamming, carding and phishing supports and runs off a peculiar distributed platform: a market-allocated collection of ad-hoc peer-to-peer content delivery networks running on hijacked browsing appliances' stolen processor cycles. [via BoingBoing comment, previously on Metafilter].
posted by kandinski on Sep 9, 2007 - 41 comments

Your teenage son loves terrible horror movies, like C.H.U.D. How do you mend his ways? Well, you start with Paranoiac, and move on to Ravenous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,9,10,11,12. While he's still quaking, show him Takashi Miike's brutal Ôdishon ( even YouTube won't air those scenes.) Lighten the coming dark with Shaun of the Dead.
posted by Mblue on Aug 11, 2007 - 46 comments

Top 50 Horror Movies This is one blogger's opinion of the Top 50 horror movies. There are some expected (Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist) and some unexpected (Return of the Living Dead 3, Interview with the Vampire) choices for the top horror movies.
posted by Four-Eyed Girl on Jul 1, 2007 - 101 comments

For four months, the Kuykendalls, the Prices and the McKays say they’ve been harassed and threatened by mysterious cell phone stalkers who track their every move and occasionally lurk by their homes late at night, screaming and banging on walls. Police can’t seem to stop them. The late-night visitors vanish before officers arrive. The families say investigators have a hard time believing the stalkers can control cell phones without touching them and suspect an elaborate hoax. Complaints to their phone companies do no good – the families say they’ve been told what the stalkers are doing is impossible.
posted by daninnj on Jun 29, 2007 - 99 comments

Reaping What We Sow? Right now, White House lawyers are working up new rules that will govern what CIA interrogators can do to prisoners in secret. Those rules will set the standard not only for the CIA but also for what kind of treatment captured American soldiers can expect from their captors, now and in future wars. Before the president once again approves a policy of official cruelty, he should reflect on that.Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994. (Washington Post)
Some other opinions. (youtube) Thoughtful commentary. More.
posted by spitbull on May 17, 2007 - 75 comments

EXPOSED!!! TUFTY the traffic safety squirrel 'Patriots, would you trust a skwerl to teach children the fundamentals of safety at home and on the road? Of course not!' Read the execrable Tufty Fluffytail song sheet music! Weigh in on the enigma that is the Shroud of Tufty! Watch insidious squirrel propaganda!
posted by owhydididoit on Oct 18, 2006 - 12 comments

What inoffensive songs do people find scary? A list asked for by a curious Jarvis Cocker, former frontman of the band Pulp.
My favorite entry:
"Laughing Gnome - Bowie. Scared the crap out of me as a kid. I remember getting my parents to check under the bed. My father, a bit of an evil electronics bastard put a speaker under my bed one night and played the song just as I was drifting off. He then ran in when I started screaming and pulled out a doll from under the bead and chopped its head off with a machete. God I need therapy."
posted by w0mbat on Oct 3, 2006 - 152 comments

HI Ladies, It’s your Knight in Shining Armor! The interweb has revolutionized the time-honored tradition of prison pen-pals. Meet a soulmate. A lover. A fighter. An artist. OMG a girl!!! Be still my heart -- someone to spoon with. Really, there's someone for everyone.
posted by turducken on Aug 18, 2006 - 37 comments

EEEK! (YouTube) [more]
posted by madamjujujive on Jul 31, 2006 - 79 comments

500,000 Lebanese citizens are now homeless. That's out of a population of 3.8 million, according to Juan Cole. People in Southern Lebanon have received leaflets warning them to leave, but are trapped in their villages under Israeli bombings. The IDF has opened a 60-km front on the border, using tanks to probe Hezbollah. Meanwhile, a ceasefire remains... elusive. I normally take the position that both sides are excessively violent, but this is a pretty sad picture of what's going on in Lebanon.
posted by spiderwire on Jul 21, 2006 - 206 comments

Wired article about the hardware/technology the NSA is allegedly using at AT&T's San Franscisco switching office to eavesdrop on our internet communications. The Electronic Freedom Foundation is suing AT&T over it. The administration doesn't want that to happen. Previous MeFi|Related ACLU case
posted by i_am_a_Jedi on May 17, 2006 - 35 comments

JetBlue flight 292 , with 145 people on board, is currently circling LAX, burning fuel while it prepares for an emergency landing with its nose gear twisted 90 degrees.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Sep 21, 2005 - 180 comments

My Twinn: The one-of-a-kind doll created to look like the special child in your life.™
posted by fungible on Jul 29, 2005 - 18 comments

The Sound of a Distant Rumble: Using monitoring devices originally intended to pick up the sound of nuke launches, researchers track the underwater noise generated by the December 26 (tsunami) earthquake. Eerie audio file of the slowly-building roar is included on the page. (More info here as well)
posted by numlok on Jul 22, 2005 - 9 comments

Michael Jackson's 'innocence' = Nelson Mandela, the fall of the Berlin Wall and more. What, no Moon landing? (warning! Flash, bad loud music, delusions of grandeur and possibly the scariest Michael Jackson link ever: His own website.)
posted by loquacious on Jun 16, 2005 - 43 comments

Bugtime Adventures (bypass Flash, sort of). Shades of Bibleman! Another peek into the strange world of Christian kids' shows. And don't worry, one of television's most enduring actors is indeed involved.
posted by sninky-chan on May 17, 2005 - 16 comments

The Incentives for Silence: [login or Google required] An Army intelligence sergeant was ordered to a psychologist for voicing concerns about the safety of Iraqi prisoners. After finding nothing wrong with him, his commanding officer told the psychologist that, “I don't care what you saw or heard, he is imbalanced, and I want him out of here.”

“The next day... the soldier was evacuated from Iraq in restraints on a stretcher to a military hospital in Germany, despite having been given no official diagnosis”
[via Drudge]
posted by trinarian on Mar 6, 2005 - 36 comments

"Behold, I am the Collector! ...And I have come to add you to my collection!"
posted by keswick on Feb 24, 2005 - 98 comments

Bambi with love.
posted by loquacious on Jan 25, 2005 - 38 comments

1837! Victorian England is being terrorised by a bouncing marauder! Who could this masked pervert be? Was he a Lord? Was he a striped stuffed animal? Was he the 19th Century Batman? A Ska band? Why no! It's Spring Heeled Jack, scourge of the rooftops of London, Engerland...(A little pre-Halloween scare for you and a break from Election tedium for those of you requiring one)
posted by longbaugh on Oct 28, 2004 - 12 comments

Renewable energy: thinking outside the (clamshell) box. The US Dept. of Agriculture has given notice that funds are available for "developing renewable energy systems from the use of diseased livestock as a process raw material for the energy source." As in, all the cattle killed during December's Mad Cow Disease scare. Because "traditional rendering processes were determined not to effectively deactivate the infectivity of prions."
posted by bendybendy on May 18, 2004 - 25 comments

Terrifying gallery of fish from the deep, DEEP seas.
posted by jonson on Mar 1, 2004 - 71 comments

The night the devil went dancing Growing up in San Antonio, I heard the story of the devil at El Camaroncito from my dad. We kids had our own spook stories, from the haunted railroad tracks to midget mansion. Here in Austin, we have our own share of ghosts, including the legendary Driskill hotel ghost. What local spook stories did you grow up with?
posted by Gilbert on Oct 31, 2003 - 15 comments

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary... Ok, but ever wonder what "quaff this kind nepenthe" means, or where "the night's plutonian shore" is? You'll be an expert on "The Raven" in minutes with this interactive annotation of Poe's classic Halloween poem. There are many interesting subjects on this site, which was linked previously in a thread about the mysterious toaster who leaves cognac at Poe's grave every year on the writer's birthday.
posted by planetkyoto on Oct 27, 2003 - 6 comments

Scariest mug shot ever. So says the Smoking Gun. And hell, they should know.
posted by CunningLinguist on Jun 25, 2003 - 78 comments

So how will you spend Easter? Are your plans just a tad pedestrian? If egg hunts leave you cold, perhaps you need a bit more edge. For many, things begin this week. In Czechoslovakia, men carry woven willow sticks and whip girls on the legs, but in Taxco, Mexico, it's all about self-flagellation. In the U.S., many go theatrical with a living last supper; in the Philippines they favor more authenticity - every year about 20 people re-enact the crucifixion, nails & all. If that's too real, you could order supplies to build a backyard corpus shrine for next year. - more -
posted by madamjujujive on Apr 14, 2003 - 23 comments

The camel spider will call you a slut and make fun of your religion. Not bad enough they have death & destruction and every other war-related hazard, our troops also have to worry about chancing on this nasty creature (quicktime clip). Many of the more terrifying stories are urban legends but personal accounts about these and other desert varmints are still pretty scary. Me, I worry about a spider with a nasty bite that's a little closer to home. (gross out warning!)
posted by madamjujujive on Apr 2, 2003 - 23 comments

Phantom Cosmonauts On November 28, 1960, a morse code transmission reading "SOS to the whole world" from an orbiting spaceship was picked up by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers with their home-made radio tracking station in San Maurizio Canavese, Italy. Sometime between February 2-4, they picked up telemetry of a dying cosmonauts heartbeat and breathing. Yuri Gagarin, the universally acknowledged first man in space, did not make his flight until April 12, 1961. These brothers claimed that they intercepted radio transmissions of other secret flights as well. Were there secret Soviet spaceflights that ended in the death of Cosmonauts? Most tend to disagree, and offer an excellent debunking. I started reading about this several weeks before the Columbia, but it now has a new poignancy. I agree that it is exceedingly unlikely that these alleged flights took, but the claims of these brothers, mingled with various other rumor and various Soviet urban legends, (along with the fact of Russian/Soviet general secrecy about most everything,) create an alternate history that is exceedingly disturbing.
posted by Snyder on Feb 7, 2003 - 18 comments

Late for Halloween, but could come in handy the next time you want to give someone the finger.
posted by rushmc on Nov 10, 2002 - 7 comments

A gumby post for those sick of hopeless conflict posts and the like, inspired by the news that Rhino Video is about to release SEVEN DVDs containing the entire works of Gumby (it's not up on their site yet, so no link). More importantly, am I the only one who, as a kid, Gumby the scariest thing on television? Or perhaps Mefi's member base is too young to know about Gumby at all?
posted by ParisParamus on Mar 25, 2002 - 22 comments

RIP: Edward Gorey
posted by bjennings on Apr 16, 2000 - 4 comments