What things horrify and fascinate you at the same time?

[TitaniasAss]

I'm petrified of oceans and seas - deep waters in general. But I'm also completely obsessed with it too; I'll watch anything to do with marine life, oceans, sharks (😱) even though it scares the shit out of me. I live on the coast and love it, but jeez-oh it scares me.

What about you?

[LaQuern]

Empty dilapidated buildings that still have things like old dirty net curtains in the window.

[BotterMon]

People who have had 'work' done on their faces including botox and pouty lips, I find it repulsive but oddly fascinating.

[Athenajm80]

@Picklypickles I love Mr Ballen. I've nearly run out of his videos though so have been trying to find another but either the presenter's voice irritates me, or something else winds me up. One of them that I was watching earlier has words like rape or sexual assault removed which apparently is done by YouTube. It's annoying as it just breaks the flow.

The Missing 411 (sorry can't tag the pp for some reason in this app) is about people who have gone missing, usually in really weird situations. I can't remember the guy's exact name, something like Dave Paladas, but he wrote books about this phenomena. He also has a YouTube and Mr Ballen covers some of the cases as well.

[QuestionableMouse]

@DangerouslyBored

Plane crashes. Fascinating. Cannot begin to imagine how it must feel, crashing down to earth knowing my fate.

I read somewhere that the majority of people are unconsciousness for the last moments due to the G forces involved. Made me feel better, not sure if it's really true!

I also saw something that I swear was a big cat. Freaked my very brave dog out too. We were on a local woodland walkway and it crossed the lane in front of us at about 15ft away. Was bigger than my large jack Russell so not a domestic cat. It stopped and looked at us then ducked into the hedge at the other side. I didn't manage to get my phone out in time which I regret to this day!

[DonttouchthatLarry]

@Daleksatemyshed

There was a documentary you'd like @cookiecreammmpie about a place in America called the body farm. Basically people donated their bodies and they left them in different circumstances to see how it made them decompose. All the things they learn were used by forensic pathologists. It was very interesting but still a squinting through your fingers sort of show

@cookiecreammmpieand @Daleksatemyshed - there's a brilliant book you'd probably also enjoy called 'Stiff - the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers' by Mary Roach which includes a chapter about the Body Farm.

[dadadeedadada]

Horses. Fabulous animals, wonderful to look at no matter what they are doing. But my god they terrify me. Especially those massive police ones. I remember when I was a girl we used to go to Devon on holiday, we visited a shire horse centre and they had a massive stallion in one of the stables, I was mesmerised, on tiptoes trying to see him, then he looked at me, I think I cried.

[DonttouchthatLarry]

Small spaces and being underwater - so obviously I'm going to watch Thirteen Lives tonight about the rescue of the Thai boys from the flooded caves 😳

[Picklypickles]

@dadadeedadada

Horses. Fabulous animals, wonderful to look at no matter what they are doing. But my god they terrify me. Especially those massive police ones. I remember when I was a girl we used to go to Devon on holiday, we visited a shire horse centre and they had a massive stallion in one of the stables, I was mesmerised, on tiptoes trying to see him, then he looked at me, I think I cried.

I live in Devon, The Shire Horse Centre was my absolute favourite day out as a child! They had the tallest shire horse in the world at the time, his name was King and he was 19"2 I absolutely adored him and all the rest of them! Big gentle giants.

[TeeBee]

Numbers stations totally weird me out. Make my skin crawl.

[ErmineAndPearls]

Dr Pimple Popper. I don’t seek it out, but if I’m flipping through the channels and find it, I watch to see how long I can bear it. She always compares the contents of her patients’ massive cysts to “oatmeal”. Truly revolting but strangely compelling.

[Daleksatemyshed]

@DonttouchthatLarry , I'll look for it, sounds fascinsting!

[TheWeeDonkey]

@TheCanyon

True crime. I seek it out as it's fascinating, but can be so utterly grim.

Same, I started listening to True Crime podcasts and watching documentaries on TV and Youtube during lockdown.

I'm interested in the motivations and what created the criminal but I've learned some things that truly haunt me.

[KisstheTeapot14]

Great idea for a thread.

Wow. Number stations, just had a listen to Lincolnshire Poacher and Cherry Ripe. I also read how the code is uncoded (Wiki explanation) but my brain started going la la la due to it going waaay over my head. Obviously not cut out for the intelligence business.

Big cats (where I live there are rolling moors nearby). Yes - anything to do with birthing is just amazing.

Terrorism (by which I mean psychology of how people get radicalised, not that I want to throw a bomb at anyone).

WW1 & 2 - understanding how ordinary people experienced these, and great social upheavals like partition (India).

Boris - brilliant podcast on BBC currently about his life from being a child.

Victorian death portraits. Wisconsin Death Trip is a dark, dark book of fascination. I have to keep it in the attic away from more innocent books. I mean I would have a hard time seeing it next to little house on the prairie.

Missing people - those who walk out of their lives and are never found.

The Russian mystery of the group who went camping and possibly attacked by a bigfoot (well, that is one theory, 2019 investigation concluded it was an avalanche) at Dyatlov Pass.

[KisstheTeapot14]

and yes, true crime is a double edged sword. Some things are hard to get out of your head once you have heard them. I have to moderate, and also I find its often horrible things happening to women/girls and I kinda feel a sense of trauma on behalf of our whole sex. Sometimes feels deeply unhealthy and unbearably sad. Knowing the truth but are we encouraging an industry that makes it a kind of fetish - all the details = crime porn? (though sometimes they do occasionally seem to lead to convictions many years on).

[TheWeeDonkey]

@AuntMasha

Yes, it’s fascinating — recently listened to a podcast about the Medusa, and Theodore Gericault’s famous painting of it.

Wow, I've just read about that, I hadn't heard about it before.Raft of Medusa but I agree, horrifying and facinating.

Does anyone watch Ask a Mortician on Youtube? She had a great episode about the ship that inspired Moby Dick.

[User149543]

@JennyForeigner

The Universe. That we are on a tiny planet just spinning alone in this unfathomably massive silent space and whaaaaat

So true!

[TitaniasAss]

I'm adding Vampires. Which I know is ridiculous but they scare the living daylights out of me, but I will watch/read anything about them.

[gnilliwdog]

@loopycurtains

Potholing. Always been claustrophobic and terrified of the idea of potholing, then there was a thread a year or so back about this man, John Jones, and it makes me feel sick with fear when I think about him. Got stuck in a hole, took over 24 hours to die, they couldn't get him out, even after death. So they've sealed the cave with his body in there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuttyPuttyy_Cave

Ooh yes, I have been quite fascinated by potholing after reading 'The White Road,' by Sarah Lotz. Equal parts compelling and claustrophobic. Also extreme survival stories - my favourite is about a man who survived at sea for something like 80 days. His conditions were terrifying, but all the ways he found to survive -making solar stills, drying fish etc were really gripping to read about. Also Touching the void was amazing.

[LetsGoFlyAKiteee]

There's a channel on YouTube called Facinating Horror. All these diasters that have happened which a lot are just down to someone making a simple mistake or changing something say in the building structure. Facinating because you think how?! And scary for the same reason!

Few that freaked me was as mentioned on here the Nutty Putty Cave, the Los Alfaques disaster and this aircrash where the pilot let his child sit in the plane seat and pretend to fly the plane and they managed to turn off the auto pilot which then led to the plane eventually crashing. And its not like all of them are way back in the past either!

[gnilliwdog]

Oh and Dartmoor. Love it, such a powerful landscape, but there are a few paths that I have just turned back from. They are more overgrown and through woodland but just give me the creeps. One time I forced myself to carry on down a path, thinking I was being silly. I came to a small clearing where there was a flat rock with a decomposed sheep lying on top of it. Just made me think of all the spooky stuff I have read and watched about Dartmoor and freaked me out enough to leave those paths alone for now!

[TheWeeDonkey]

I do sometimes wonder that @KisstheTeapot14 and I do think about how survivors and families feel about their worst experiences being made so public.

Some crimes are so terrifying and beyond the pale its hard to believe they're real.

I also have a morbid fascination with cults. How people get drawn into them and the lengths that people go to.

[Ophanim]

@PseudonymPolly

Plane crashes.

I'm a very nervous flyer because of the fear of a crash. The thought makes me feel sick to my stomach - I can vividly imagine the feeling of being completely helpless, knowing it's the end, unable to stop it. It must be a terrible way to go.

But I have a totally morbid fascination with documentaries, films, dramatisations of crashes. If I see one when channel surfing, I put it on. Ridiculous and probably very unhealthy for me considering I'm terrified already.

I could have written this word for word. I’ve seen so many I often know what the cause was before it’s revealed 😩

[pintofginplz]

I'm a Spooner, anything with spots, lumps, abcesses etc my tik tok follow list says it all. But I have that fear of holes, can't remember the term. Some of the clips can proper trigger me

[Downunderduchess]

People. I’m fascinated by how people behave, both good and bad.

[BarbaraofSeville]

@BotterMon

People who have had 'work' done on their faces including botox and pouty lips, I find it repulsive but oddly fascinating.

Me too. Also comedy eyebrows, massive eyelashes and panto make up. I'm sure I noticeably recoil if I catch a glimpse of someone like this.

Plus the way that everyone does the same pose in photographs or does that weird selfie in a mirror thing.

We're going to look back on all this in the future and think WTF?