What's that old saying? "Make sure you're always wearing clean underwear in case you're in an accident. What would the medics think."
I'm paraphrasing, but you get it.
That saying can be applied to many aspects of life.
What "surprising" items are hidden in your drawers? Or under you bed?
Or dear Lord... what is on your phone?
We all have ownership over a belonging or six that could cause quite a stir.
Especially if we aren't there to explain it's existence.
Redditor churned_applesauce wanted to hear about all the belongings many of us have that could cause quite a stir.
They asked:
"What is the most controversial thing you own?"
I'm not telling you mine.
I'm not that brave.
But let's see who is...
Pennies...
"I have an old Iraqi bill with Saddam Hussein's face on it. It's worth about 17 cents according to Google." ~ postsingularity
Giphy
1937
"My grandfather went to the World Scout Jamboree in the Netherlands in 1937, and while he was there he traded patches and gear with some scouts from Germany. By 1937, the German boy scouts had transitioned into the Hitler youth, so I own a Hitler youth boy scout uniform with a bunch of swastikas on it." ~ iamagainstit
Walrus Parts
"My family owns a petrified walrus penis, my grandmother took it to get it identified at the Smithsonian several decades ago. Apparently her grandfather or maybe it was her great-grandfather brought it home after he spent several years on some type of expedition up around northern Alaska and points north."
"It has been loaned out to several museums at different times. The family has talked about selling it but everyone has to agree and so far there is no agreement about selling it. So I own 1/67th of a petrified walrus penis." ~ Robyn_withaY
Propaganda...
"When I was 18, I bought a print of a 1918 German zoo advertisement from a thrift store. I thought the artwork was neat. It had a leopard on it and I was completely cat-obsessed at the time. Turns out the artwork was by Ludwig Hohlwien. He would go on to produce Nazi propaganda." ~ wolfmoral
Jars
"An ornate, Boer tobacco jar from the 1800s. My great grandfather looted it off a dead militiaman during the Second Boer war." ~ deathtotheminutemen
Giphy
Interesting.
Nothing too crazy thus far.
Hey, to each their own.
Shut Tight!
"I have a glass vial/small bottle of pure histamine. If anyone would be exposed to this they would get a deadly allergic reaction. I have it double sealed." ~ TheRealMonreal
Giphy
Holiday in Kenya
"A complete ivory and ebony chessboard bought a sale of confiscated poacher stuff to fund elephant preservation. When I lived in Zambia and was on holiday in Kenya. My dad bought it and I got it as a hand me down. We were friends with someone who owned an animal sanctuary and their security had shot the poachers as far as I remember. They had a parentless baby hippo as well. It stole my sister's chewing gum and tried eating their cat. It was moved further away from the main houses after it tipped over their Land Cruiser." ~ xxrumlexx
Oh Grandma...
"I wanted a chinchilla really badly as a kid, but my parents said hell no. One Christmas my grandma got me a teddy bear made out of chinichilla fur. Luckily my parents told me it didn't hurt the chinchilla its just like getting a hair cut for them, but they were like WTF to my grandma. I now know better and am also like WTF grandma." ~ lebrunjemz
Snuffed
"I have a set of small bone carved snuff bottles from China (dated to the 19C) with explicit images on them. They’re kind of curiosities in themselves but when my in laws separated my MIL called my husband and asked him if there was anything in the house that he wanted and he said, nothing but the explicit snuff bottles."
"She took them and left them with a note that said ‘I’ve left you, please don’t contact me again. I’ve taken the snuff bottles; they were the only things in the house I liked.' After their separation we got all sorts of controversial hoardings, including a suitcase full of ivory and an abundant collection of Enid Blytons first edition books." ~ waireti
Luggage
"I have a few Ivory jewelery pieces from the early 70s my parents bought back from Botswana, and a poison arrow kit. Mum has the 3-metre long python skin she just put in her luggage from back then too." ~ Icy_Hippo
Giphy
Bat Parts
"A first print edition of Batman Damned #1, the one featuring Batman's 'little batman.' (From DC Black Label featuring more adult content. Violence and swearing are totally fine, but a shadowy penis profile made people flip out enough they removed it from subsequent print runs). You guys are some creative freaking people with your Bat-Penis puns. Love it." ~ 1nd1anaCroft
Rude
"I don’t think I have it anymore but back when I was in 9th grade and my brother was a senior we hosted a foreign exchange student from Norway. Without us knowing he had been taking pictures of every overweight/obese American that he saw while he was here for the year. It wasn’t until a year after he went home, on Christmas he sent us a leather bound photo album, like it looked really nice, opened it and boom..."
"Hundreds of photos of people from Walmart and malls. My mom was not too impressed but me and my brother had a good chuckle, not even at the people but just the fact that he took all that time and energy to collect all those photos and then make them into a photo album." ~ Toxicvenom_77
A Museum?
"There is a pharmacy museum in Cuero TX that is absolutely incredible. The building was purpose built in the late 1800's as a pharmacy and used for that for over a hundred years and they managed to hold on to all of their old inventory. They have tons and tons of bottles of heroin, morphine, cocaine, and the like as well as all sorts of quack medicine including one product you gave to your baby if the baby was too ugly." ~ texasrigger
Dumbo?
"Not me, my parents growing up. They had an actual elephant foot turned into a table. Like an actual foot cut from an elephant and taxidermied made into an end table. Had a glass table top. You could feel the thin hairs on it. Freakin' haunted my dreams man." ~ bobsux1234
elephant sneezing GIF
Giphy
Hey Doc
"My grandfather was a doctor until the '60s. I have glass syringes with needles, forceps, a bottle of nembutal tablets, glass vials of pitocin, order forms for buying morphine from the government, and a few other things. Here's a link to a photo of an order form:"
~ BSB8728
They Lived
"Umm mortuary toe tags from an asylum in New York... like twenty or so of them... I think they could be the only things left showing that these people actually lived." ~ ironviking13
"It's sad, but when you think of it, most people who ever lived left no records of themselves. It's more usual to just fade out of existence as people forget you." ~ DumbleForeSkin
Trinkets
"Growing up near a fairly prominent civil war battlefield (manassas), I had a few confederate themed items. slouch cap, small battle flag, and a tie based on an old painting. for me, it was a 'the people who were from the same place as me were on this side' without looking any deeper into it than that. I was a kid, and it was the 80s." ~ bearded_fisch_stix
Jars
"A ceramic jar with 'cocaine' written on it. My father is a contractor and he got it from a client who was descended from a relatively prominent US President. It was headed for the trash, my father didn’t steal it, of course." ~ Apprehensive_Goal811
"It’s probably a pharmaceutical jar for a dentist office from back in the day. Cocaine was commonly used as an anesthetic, and came in ceramic jars like that." ~ Joygernaut
In the middle of Kansas...
"My grandma used to tell a story about a woman in her town whose husband captured one of those enormous red swastika banners. He saw that it was made out of some decent quality silk so he thinks, 'Hey my wife could make some really nice dresses out of this.' So he packs it up and ships it home."
"His wife gets it, carefully washes the whole big-a** thing by hand, and then without thinking, hangs it out of an upstairs window to dry. In the middle of Kansas, in the middle of WWII, this lady is flying a a giant nazi banner. Apparently there were some extremely colorful conversations with the neighbors." ~ MustBeThursday
Catholic Comics
"I have a book of Roman-Catholic–themed comic strips from 1953. All men are lazy drunks, all women are gossips and nags, all boys only fight, and all girls are only supposed to be Mary Sunshine." ~ android-unknown
tim curry no GIF
Giphy
Who doesn't have cursed or ancient jewels hidden somewhere?
At least nobody on this thread mentioned faces or eyes.
That's what I was waiting for.
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Reddit user mariababexoxo asked:
"'Never confuse education with intelligence; you can have a PhD and still be an idiot,' stated Richard Feynman. What are some real-life examples of this?"
Chemical Engineer
"I had an intern with a PhD once. She was trying to be a chemical process engineer. VERY book smart."
"I spent the Summer teaching her how to use basic tools like screwdrivers and wrenches for simple tasks like opening containers and adjusting clamps. She had zero practical skills and couldn’t figure anything whatsoever out on her own."
"She’d get lost in a building and call me and I’d tell her to find the exit, but she’d get lost inside and we’d have to go in and get her. This routinely happened, and she would just find somewhere random and sit until we collected her."
"When her car’s GPS lost signal once she didn’t know what to do so she stopped in the middle of the road and texted me where she was and that there was something wrong with her car and to come help. I figured there was a breakdown or something based on the text and drove out to check on it because she wasn’t responding."
Giphy"She was crying sitting on the side of the road and a cop was yelling at her to move her car which was still in the lane."
"If you told her to pick something up from a store she’d ask where it was and if you didn’t know, she would never find it "She refused to ask an employee because she knew they weren’t as smart as she was."
"She’d just walk in random directions looking for things. For example if you said 'go to Walmart and find some work boots because you lost yours' she would send me pictures of random aisles in Walmart with 'is this close? which way from here?'.”
"Book smart but utterly dim."
~ captainofpizza
It's The Milk That Makes Them Healthy
"My wife once had a roommate who was working on her PhD."
"At one point she went on an Oreo diet because they're vegan."
"She was later surprised to find her health wasn't improving."
~ educational_palmeira
GiphySquirrel!
"I am a graduate student at the University of Oxford."
"I recently had to explain to another grad student the concept of animals hibernating. She's British and English is her first language, so it wasn't a vocabulary issue. She just didn't know that animals did that."
"When I explained it she said 'Oh! like squirrels!' Squirrels actually don't hibernate, but I just nodded."
~ slider501
Have You Tried Turning It Off...
"Ask literally anyone who's ever worked for a university's IT department. I've never met a group of people more unwilling to learn anything new—outside of their small specialization—than university professors."
"These people would rather argue with you for 10 minutes that 'I did restart my computer' than just spend the 2 minutes to restart the computer when the logistics software is showing the machine with a 45 day uptime and all of us can see that sh*t."
"Department heads do this."
~ Mammoth_Clue_5871
GiphyIt's One Banana, Michael
"My roommate in college was/is an academic genius, 35 ACT in med school right now."
"I brought him to Walmart with me because he wanted to buy an 8-pack of Gatorade. At the self checkout he scanned one, saw the price was 7 bucks, and decided that must have been the price for EACH Gatorade."
"He ended up scanning the pack 7 more times and paid 56 bucks for some Gatorade, all while thinking that was a fair price."
~ Royal-Character-2035
And Vampirism!
"The nurse I used to work with during the pandemic was constantly bragging about how rich and important and highly educated she was.
"Only for her to suggest to our director of nursing that the kitchen start putting extra garlic in everyone's meals because garlic cures COVID."
~ GlassPeepo
GiphyHistory ≠ Geography
"I know someone with a PhD in History who went to the Caribbean with only long trousers and jumpers/sweaters to wear."
"He was so hot he had to cut his jeans down to shorts."
"Then, as part of the same trip, he went to Washington DC, and had to wear jean shorts the whole time because he cut up all his trousers."
~ RexEverything_
And On The 7th Day...
"I met a PhD molecular biologist who was an evolution denier. I found out years later that he was somewhat infamous."
~ whittlingcanbefatal
"I’ve met two PhD students who worked on bacterial evolution and one who worked in biochemistry."
"All three believed that human evolution was not a thing, all three were religious."
~ D-g-tal-s_purpurea
GiphyNobel Disease
"There are a ton of laureates that go conspiratorial batsh*t later in life."
~ hacktheself
"Kary Mullis is the worst one and he really emboldens other conspiracy theorists."
"He won the Nobel prize for helping invent the PCR test... then he denied AIDS existed while in a government position leading to 330,000 deaths and said climate change wasn't real because his astrologer told him so."
"Oh, and ghosts."
"Anti-vaxxers love him."
~ AstonVanilla
Members Around The World
"Heard about a mechanical engineer who is a flat earther."
"So yeah, him, or any engineer, physicist, or astronomer that believes in that."
"The fact that a single one can get their degree and then turn around years later and believe in something fundamentally incompatible with the BASIC physics required to make sense of their degree is baffling."
~ QuanticWizard
GiphyWhat Did They Do With The Couch?
"Helped some mates move house. One was a Uni Student doing a double degree in Computer Science and something else very challenging."
"While we were packing boxes he asked if he could could borrow a saw. When I asked why, it was so he could shorten the legs on the dining table so it would fit out the door."
"The look on his face when I grabbed one of the legs and started unscrewing it was priceless. As was the look when I asked him how he thought they got it in the room in the first place."
~ cruiserman_80
New-Fangled Gadgets
"In my old university in Germany in the early 2000s. The university was old, really old."
"And when I started they just began modernising the lecture halls etc... The German department got a new, fancy, state of the art lecture hall with any kind of technology you could wish for."
"The professors got extensive training on how to use it."
"There were some of them who after three months still didn’t know how to switch on the lights. Don’t even talk about the microphone or how to open and close the blinds on the skylight."
They didn’t originally plan on having an old-fashioned overhead projector there, but after a few weeks they relented and provided one because the professors didn’t know any other way."
"In their defence, the other lecture halls were so old that they still had the hole for the ink well in the tables."
~ moosmutzel81
GiphyDo No Harm
"I work in mental health and have known sooo many healthcare professionals with advanced degrees who I wouldn’t trust to take care of a goldfish and can’t believe counsel people on a regular basis."
~ DeadSharkEyes
What's That Burning Smell?
"My MIT PhD. friend complained his dryer was taking forever to dry his clothes."
"I asked him if he was cleaning the lint trap—'it doesn't have one'."
"Spoiler alert: it did have one, way in the back and I took out a sweater's worth of lint."
~ arbiterror
GiphyIt's Not Rocket Science...
I chuckle whenever someone uses this saying to indicate something isn't complex like rocket science ever since my friend became an aeronautical engineer.
Why?
Well, we'd have to go back to the mid-1980s when we were both teenagers in high school. As many teens with cars in rural America did, my friends liked to drive around on the back roads as a form of entertainment.
One sunny, Summer day two of my friends came to visit me with a tale to tell.
It seems they were driving on a stretch of road with a speed limit of 35mph [56kph] because of a cluster of homes and farms. When the car slowed to this speed, Mr. Future Rocket Scientist looked down at the pavement passing by below his window on the passenger side.
Upon studying the passing blacktop for several moments, he came to the conclusion he could easily run as fast as the car was moving, so...
...he undid his seatbelt, opened the car door and STEPPED OUT of the moving car.
According to the driver, one moment our friend was sitting next to him and the next he was gone. Or mostly gone.
After a brief moment of panic during which he slowed then stopped the car, he noticed Mr. Future Rocket Scientist's right hand gripping the door's armrest and his left hand gripping the side of the passenger seat.
He was probably only dragged for a few seconds which wasn't long enough to do more than scuff up his jeans, jean jacket and the toes of his shoes.
He escaped with only minor road rash and a few bruises.
After the driver told me what happened from his perspective, Mr. Future Rocket Scientist interjected:
"It worked!"
"I was doing really well until I tripped over that rock."
Luckily an understanding of things like velocity, speed, trajectory, friction, drag, inertia and gravity aren't needed for aeronautics.
GiphyNeedless to say, we've never let him forget his "experiment."
He still claims the only problem was that rock on the road.
And I now use the saying "it's not rocket surgery" instead of either of the original sayings.
Reddit user juliacorco asked:
"What is the creepiest tv episode or movie you’ve ever seen?"
Haunting of Hill House
"Haunting of Hill House on Netflix."
"Scary as hell."
"Bent Neck Lady makes the hair on my neck stand up on end every time."
"Same with the ghost looking for his hat. Or whatever was down in the cellar."
~ Pretend-Cucumber-711
GiphyHereditary
"Hereditary"
"That one scene near the end in the dark bedroom…is essentially a reverse jump scare. Something is there the entire time and it’s just a matter of when you notice."
"Sent chills up my spine."
"That movie stuck with me for days."
~ Plus-Statistician80
Doctor Who/Torchwood
"I have two contenders, from the Doctor Who universe..."
"'Blink' from Doctor Who."
"'Children of the Earth' from Torchwood (all 5 episodes)."
"Both are the stuff of nightmares, but in very different ways."
"'Blink' will make you not sleep at night, while 'Children of the Earth' will deeply disturb you."
~ Common_Sense_Dudd
Giphy"The first few seconds I was exposed to the Weeping Angels in 'Blink' I thought it was a dumb, silly conceit."
"By the end of that episode I knew I would have nightmares for months."
~ codyish
"'Children of Earth' was amazing. There was so much complexity to it, and the way they solved it was downright horrifying."
"The 456 just felt so real with their motives, and were really dark compared to other Who-niverse villains."
"It wasn't that they were trying to build a galactic highway, or were trying to save the universe. Just that (SPOILERS) they were drug dealers/addicts and would kill millions if the didn't get their supply of children."
~ NinjaBreadManOO
Paranormal Activity
"Paranormal Activity."
"I was not prepared and only 12 years old."
"Traumatized for years!"
~ Sudden-Star-7190
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode 'Hush'."
~ Malk_McJorma
"The gentlemen were some of the best villains."
~ Sudden-Star-7190
Room 1408
"Room 1408 creeped me out."
"I usually don't find hauntings or ghosts scary, but this one was something else."
"Left me really uneasy when trying to sleep after."
"I had to keep a light on. I'm 46."
~ hartschale666
The Twilight Zone
"I find the The Twilight Zone episode titled 'Living Doll' to be particularly creepy."
~ Ill_Fisherman5547
"Talky Tina was so creepy."
~ peachesfordinner
"The Twilight Zone episode—'Mirror Image'—with the woman at the bus station who has a doppelganger still creeps the sh*t out of me."
~ BurningSlash88
Ghost Ship
"Opening scene from Ghost Ship."
~ teslatinkering
"This movie is 21 years old, I’ve only watched it once and I still remember this scene vividly."
"Props to the creators because I can’t say that about many movies."
~ PainfulPoo411
X-Files
"The X-Files."
"Episodes 'Home'—inbred family in Pennsylvania—and 'The Host'—the Flukeman."
~ True-Mousse4957
"I was going to say season 3, episode 12—'War of the Coprophages'."
"Only due to one little thing."
"Mulder is in a lab with some scientist looking at the weird cockroaches. They're just chatting away when a cockroach walks across 'your' TV screen."
"It's made to look like it's an actual cockroach walking across your in real life screen. We don't even have cockroaches like that in my region of the world, but it still freaked me out for a second."
~ STROKER_FOR_C64
The Blair Witch Project
"Not gonna lie."
"I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theatre after watching some MTV documentary on it the day before."
"I thought it was real and I was afraid to walk to my car."
~ heavymetalsculpture
Are You Afraid of the Dark
"There's an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark—'The Tale of the Dead Man's Float'."
"It's about a school that was built on an old cemetary and there is some sort of creature thing thant comes into the pool while some kids are swimming."
"I still think about that episode every so often."
~ streetsoulja31
"There’s that one episode—'The Tale of the Frozen Ghost'—where a kid froze to death at some point and the ghost kid just appears and says 'I’m cold' in such a weird inflection…."
"It still creeps me out now. And whenever I am cold, that’s the only way I can say it in my head."
"Man that series had no business being that scary!!"
~ mistresssweetjuice
GiphyFor me, children in horror can always produce the creepiness factor.
Who doesn't feel unsettled after seeing the twins in The Shining?
So what movies or TV episodes creeped you out?
