Ghosts and monsters might give us a scare, but real life has its own horrors, and they’re often much harder to escape.

Redditors recently shared what they believe are the most terrifying things that actually exist. From devastating diseases and mental health struggles to the threat of nuclear war, their answers paint a chilling picture of the fears that keep us up at night.

You’ll find their most haunting picks below—and who knows, you might even want to add your own.

#1

Alzheimer’s.

namdor:
Knowing that it is eating the memories, emotions, personality, body, and life of someone you love is brutal. It is so dark and terrifying not knowing how many years the shell of a body will live, while the person inside is gone.

Image credits: Smart-Way1246

#2

Human traffickers. No sense of morality and atrocious humans.

IndelibleIguana:
Pretty much one of the worst crimes that exist.

Image credits: Frrv2112

#3

Sinkholes. I often think about that guy that was in bed when a sinkhole opened up and swallowed him. His brother could hear his screams but could do nothing to help.

Image credits: wanderingnomad85

#4

Dictators that think they just can bust into any sovereign country and claim it.
It scary, it causes death and destruction and is generally bad for the mental health of all involved.

Image credits: Express_Selection345

#5

Rett syndrome. You have a daughter, she does great and is developing normally until about 6-12 months. And then her development slows. Your pediatrician is reassuring, everyone develops differently so you are okay with it. But then it progresses…she loses skills she already had. No longer speaks any words, starts having tremors and spasticity and loses purposeful movement and may start developing breathing issues or apnea. Then the seizures start. Despite maximal treatment of the symptoms there is no cure. Your previously healthy daughter is now likely unable to walk, care for herself, and can usually barely express herself. She still smiles and looks around and can be cared for well, but won’t ever recover fully. This is her life now, and your life now, and there’s nothing you could have done or can do to fix it.

F**k Rett Syndrome, it’s the f*****g worst.

Image credits: Savoodoo

#6

Working until you die.

Image credits: Apprehensive_Web9494

#7

Locked in Syndrome (LIS) basically you have total body paralysis but you have all your normal cognitive abilities. It’s basically a waking nightmare where you can’t move but you can feel and process everything like you normally would. It’s a big bag of no thanks.

Image credits: Lokenlives4now

#8

A few handful of Super Rich people we probably never heard of who are pulling and manipulating the strings of the masses. Who control everything. It’s a spooky thought in my opinion.

Image credits: jeffbono22

#9

A sh**load of nuclear weapons, mostly in the hands of man children.

Image credits: aluaji

#10

The fact that brain eating amoeba exists in warm freshwater lakes keeps me up at night.

Agreeable_Cow_7230:
My uncle contracted that. While he was fishing.

Image credits: Curvy00Bunny

#11

Other people’s thoughts. You’ll never truly know what’s going on in someone else’s head, whether they adore you, despise you, or fantasize about turning you into chopped meat.

Image credits: Nature_lover721

#12

Natural disasters. The most we get are monsoons where I live, but I would never live where tornados or hurricanes could happen. Scares the hell out of me thinking about it.

Image credits: wixxiebaby

#13

Mental health issues.

Image credits: Radiant_Gas_4642

#14

War.

Image credits: Seyban

#15

Cancer. I lost a loved one to this disease. I lived with her screaming in pain 24 hours a day, for 6 months. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, not even the most evil human being.

Image credits: SirPulga

#16

Anti vaxers.

#17

Rabies. The second theres symptoms, chances are, you’re already screwed. Theres only a few known cases of someone surviving rabies without the vaccine, and as of 2016, only 14 people are known to have survived it.

So if you get scratched or bitten by an animal, it’s better to be safe rather than sorry and get it checked out.

Image credits: help-my-shrimp

#18

Prions.

peridaniel:

Misshapen proteins that, once they get in your brain, cause the proteins in your brain to deform too. basically, something that malforms the proteins in your brain until the cells in it die. if you’ve ever heard of mad cow disease, that’s a well known prion disease.
and since it’s a protein rather than any organism, there’s nothing that can be done about it once you have a prion disease. once you’re diagnosed, it’s just a ticking clock as your brain degenerates.

Image credits: Danatious

#19

Was a Marine for 6 years and deployed constantly to countries in Asia via naval carriers, there is nothing more terrifying and more humbling than being in the middle of the ocean, ESPECIALLY during the night.

Image credits: EmployFew2509

#20

Antibiotic resistant superbugs.

Foreskin_Ad9356:

Agreed. If they accidentally release some super secure antibiotics, that could be game over. Bacteria mutates rapidly and can become resistant to all our antibiotics. It’s just a matter of time. Eventually we will run out.

Image credits: OrdinaryCatastrophic

#21

Knowing that our lives could change for the worse in an instant.

obxtalldude:
Yep – I was having a great summer in 2016 until my Mom got dizzy.
Within a week we found she had a glioblastoma at 75.
From perfect health to a state I wish I could forget in 6 months. I had to hire a team of nurses for hospice after it became too much for me.
Brain cancer is no way to go.
There’s a certain look from Doctors I realized afterwards – they know what’s coming, and know you don’t.

Image credits: st2826

#22

Black holes. Thankfully we aren’t near any… that we know of.

#23

Environmental collapse. Entirely preventable but being ignored or refuted so that a group of rich men can keep their power.

#24

Fatal familial insomnia.

#25

Organized religion.

#26

Random, uncontrolled car accidents. I was 2 or so car lengths behind an suv the other day – car was driving normally and weather was clear / little traffic.

Driver brakes and starts pulling off to the shoulder. As soon as her front passenger tire touches grass the car violently pulls right into the ditch. Hits an embankment of sand, and flips a*s over teakettle like in a movie.

Called 911, cops were there in less than 2 mins. Car roof was caved in on driver and passenger side. Rear hatch was pinned against a tree. Fire & EMS arrive and pull the woman out – the only person inside the car – and she’s responsive / visually okay.

It’s a case where, given the circumstances, everything went right for the drivers safety. 5 or 10 feet further down the road she would’ve hit a fire hydrant head on, possibly not flipped, and could’ve continued directly into a tree.

Just the idea of doing your thing driving and with no one else involved your life could end shook me up.

#27

The cartel💀 the government can’t even stop it, Mexico is infested with gang violence and d**g members. El Salvador got lucky to manage the danger in their country and had strong enforcement but Mexico has been going down a s**t path.

#28

100ft tsunami. Wall of water so high you would pray for instant death.

#29

Autonomous drones being armed and sent out to k**l people. I recently read an article about how like 70% of human casualties on the Ukraine / Russian front line were attributed to drone warfare. It went on to say that the most effective drones were the more autonomous version, and how there were anti drone drones, and mothership drones being developed and I just kind of sunk in my seat. I remember when existential risk associated with AI Skynet situations were laughed at as science fiction garbage and ridiculous because who would be dumb enough to arm robots, give them autonomy and send them out to specifically k**l human beings.

#30

Burning alive. No, not dying in a house fire, when smoke will get you before the flames. But literally dying in flames. Or surviving for a short while with massive burn injuries. Burn injuries are absolutely horrific.

#31

Suffocation.

The starving of oxygen is one experience that scares even those without a functioning amygdala in their brain (the part that regulates emotions such as fear).

And those are the most fearless people of us all.

#32

The banality of evil. Good German citizens that rounded up Jews and put them in concentration camps. Put little babies in the gas Chambers. Hung people on meat hooks while they were still alive and cut their guts out while taking notes. Scientist that put them in freezing ice water to gain statistical data on how long it took to freeze to death. American college students that were willing to administer 450 volt shocks to unseen scientific experiment subjects as long as somebody else took responsibility. Don’t think it can’t happen here because it’s about to.

#33

Predatory humans.

#34

Human nature. Most of the things mentioned here are terrifying but highly unlikely. I’m actually scared of how we react to the inescapable eventuality that we are slowly cooking our planet to death. The collapse of agricultural zones, food chains, ocean and jet stream currents, and habitable land forecasts a world going to war over resources. The future will be filled with desperate people trying to survive and we have seen that there is no limit to how depraved or cruel we can be to each other even when we aren’t fighting for resources. The Jews during the H*******t climbed over each other to get the last of the fresh air before succumbing to the gas chambers. Now imagine a similar scenario at the planetary level. That is our future and it terrifies the ever living f**k out of me that I might see that in my lifetime.

#35

AI

What do we need all of these extra people for when it takes our jobs? We don’t really believe we’re just going to get lucky with a 2 day work week. It’s a beautiful lie like getting complete universal health insurance in the US.

Life is going to get better somehow? We already can’t tell real and fake news. Unbiased journalism is dead. Individualism has become the priority and soon we will be teaching AI everything we know privately.

Closest feeling I ever had to that was being replaced by an intern. I took pride in teaching them my job and wish I knew all of the shortcuts I had told them when I was their age only to be replaced because they would do the tasks for free.

AI is here and people celebrate that s**t at the cost of humanity.

#36

Huntington’s disease.

#37

That group chat that had 70,000 men in it talking about assaulting their mothers/sisters/wives.

#38

Radiation poisoning.. one mistake and you’re potentially suffering for months as you literally turn to soup as your DNA fails to properly create new cells. Then you slip into a coma and die 😬.

#39

Drowning. And I was a collegiate swimmer.

#40

Brain aneurysms.

#41

People’s malice.

#42

10 year old me: Quicksand, because that stuff is everywhere and a daily threat to my life.

20 year old me: Nothing, because at that age you feel invincible.

30 year old me: Being invited on a night out that goes past 11pm.

40 year old me: The postman, because that guy brings nothing but bad news.

#43

The fact that we have in our society a large group of people who derive entertainment from watching people be t**tured and k**led. It is frightening to think that people will pay money to see movies like Hostel or Saw.

Don’t give me that s**t about it being some sort of cathartic outlet and it isn’t real. If you need to watch the total degradation and t*****e of a human as an outlet you are a sick f**k.

#44

Ebola Zaire virus. Currently reading the book Hot Zone and it’s scaring the s**t out of me.

#45

Any individual who falls under the dark triad of personality traits.

Simplified: evil people.

#46

Love…
Something we have no control over and a pain like no other when it eventually goes wrong.
It’s the best and worst thing to happen to a person.

#47

‘The sin of empathy’ being a literal thing people live by like wtaf.

#48

Global fear of the unknown, or Time.

The fear of the unknown prevents us from unraveling the endless number of things not only on our planet related to society, civilization or technology, but also on the scale of the universe. It is unlikely that we will ever be able to find out what really happened to neighboring planets millions of years ago, and it is also unlikely that we will know exactly how we lived hundreds of years ago and what exactly awaits us in the future. And now add to all this a fast flow of time that never stops. And the realization that the entire existence of humanity in a time frame is not even 0.1% of the existence of the universe is truly frightening.

#49

The fish that swims up your p**s pipe.

#50

Pyroclastic flows. They’re superheated avalanches of volcanic ash, lava, and gases. The documentary Pompeii: The Last Day describes death by one as “the first breath is like breathing fire. The second, the ash mixes with the fluids in your lungs, forming a concrete like mixture.” You suffocate while your skin is on fire. 

Hotter pyroclastic flows can cause teeth and skulls to explode from the insane temperature difference. There are even cases of brains turning into glass from the heat from the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius. 

And if you see one coming towards you, it’s the last thing you’ll ever see. You can’t outrun them, they can travel more than 100 mph. They can travel miles from the volcano erupting. The lateral blast from Mt St Helens vaporized over 20 sq miles. While extremely unlikely to erupt during our lifetimes, pyroclastic flow deposits have been found upwards of 60 miles from the Yellowstone caldera.