20 creepy Wikipedia pages that will keep you awake at night

Halloween is upon us and in the spirit of the dark, the macabre and the downright strange, we've delved deep into the chasms of Wikipedia to unearth some of the creepiest entries on there.

You're welcome.

Wikipedia these entries at your own discretion, some of these are NSFW and all of them will creep you out.

You have been warned.

1. "Demonic possession"

Annabelle, from the film Annabelle: Creation (Picture: Warner Bros)

Whether it's a description of evil spirits as it pertains to Catholicism, the study of possession in Islam or older pre-Abrahamic religions, this page is guaranteed to freak you out whether you are religious or not.

2. Slender Man

Picture: Slender Man fan art

Slender Man is a bit of a modern-day Sadako from The Ring. A creation of the internet via a creepypasta Internet meme, it became something of a cultural phenomenon. He is thin, unnaturally tall with a featureless head and wears a black suit. He is commonly associated with stalking and traumatising children.

Though fictional, his story has real-life consequences. In 2014 a Wisconsin girl was lured to the woods by two friends and stabbed 19 times in an attempt to please him, and she still sleeps with scissors "just in case."

3. Aokigahara

This forest in Japan is renowned for being haunted. The reason has less to do with any kind of mythology, and more to do with the fact that it is a place in which people go to kill themselves.

It has earned the dark name, "suicide forest," and the forest is so thick that some visitors use tape to avoid getting lost.

4. Roanoke Colony

Picture: Wikipedia Commons

Roanoke was a colony established in North Carolina in 1586 that disappeared off the face of the Earth three years later. There are no records to show where the people went, and though historians have suggested that the native Americans may have been slaughtered by the colonialists at the time, there is no proof of that happening.

5. The Zodiac Killer

Picture: Wikipedia public domain

In the 1960s and 1970s a spate of violent murders descended on San Francisco. Local newspapers received letters from someone claiming to be the killer, containing four codes, of which only one has been completely solved. There were five confirmed victims in total but police claim it may be a lot higher, and the killer himself claimed to have killed 37 people. He was also never caught.

6. Idilia Dubb

(Picture: Wikipedia)

If you have claustrophobia, this story probably isn't for you. A 17-year-old Scottish girl called Idilia was visiting the abandoned Lahneck Castle in Germany in the 1850s when she fell through rotted floorboards and became trapped.

Idilia came to a tragic end, dying in the cold and dark castle but not before recording her final, traumatic days in her diary. It, along with her remains, were discovered nine years later.

7. Armin Meiwes

(Picture: Getty)

8. Ed and Lorraine Warren

(Picture: Angela Weiss/Getty)

The Conjuring movie franchise was based on the real-life demon-hunting exploits of a medium called Lorraine Warren and her demonologist husband Ed. What's creepy about their story is their insistence of the existence of demons. They allege to have spent their entire lives battling ungodly creatures, and despite every attempt to discredit them, they remain frighteningly convinced by their own accounts.

Famous cases include the Amityville House, the Perron Family haunting and Annabelle the doll (which they claim houses a demon).

9. Carl Tanzler

(Picture: Wikipedia)

Born in 1877, Carl was a German-born radiologist who fell in love with a Cuban tuberculosis patient called Elena Miagro de Hoyos. After she died, he removed her body from its tomb and lived with the corpse in his home for seven years until being discovered by Hoyos' relatives and the authorities in 1940.

10. H. H. Holmes

(Picture: Wikipedia Commons)

Herman Webster Mudgett, also known as Henry Howard Holmes was a serial killer who purpose-built a hotel in 1889 so he could quietly murder dozens of people.

Colloquially coined “The Castle” for its sheer size, it had hidden passageways, a drug store, secret rooms, soundproof walls and air-tight rooms.

The macabre hotel was the site of death by asphyxiation, hanging, stretching and dissecting.

Holmes would go on to confess to 20 murders, though some estimates say 200 people were the victims of murder within those walls.

11. The Hands Resist Him

The Hands Resist Him is a painting by artist Bill Stoneham in 1972. The creepy picture features a young boy and a female doll standing in front of a glass panelled door against which many disembodied hands are pressed.

The painting is allegedly haunted, with its owner putting it on sale on eBay, noting that they were afraid of the picture because the doll appeared to be moving.

12. Order of Nine Angles

The ONA is a satanic organisation based in the UK with a twist: it is notorious for its links to neo-Nazi groups and for its belief in fascism.

They have also written a number of guides to human sacrifice, fondly referred to as “culling.”

13. Ed Gein

Another serial killer page, Gein not only murdered people, but he would make furniture and other items out of victims’ bodies. Eventually the police caught wind of his nefarious activities and searched his home, where they found a corset made from a female torso, a belt made from nipples and a lampshade of human skin. Although convicted of only two murders he was suspected of many others, including that of his own brother.

14. Edward Mordake

(YouTube grab/reconstruction)

Mordake is the subject of a particularly creepy 19^th century urban legend in England.

According to the legend, Mordake had another face at the back of his head. Though it could not eat, speak, or see, it would “sneer while Morake was happy” and “smile while Mordake was weeping.”

Mordake apparently begged doctors to have his “demon face” removed, claiming it whispered things at night "one would only speak about in Hell” but no doctor would do it.

According to the legend, Mordake killed himself at age 23 after secluding himself in a room.

15. Fatal Familial Insomnia

Not everything that is terrifying needs to be supernatural. Fatal Familial Insomnia is a brain disease with no known cure in which a person loses their ability to sleep.

This leads to hallucinations and dementia-like symptoms culminating in serious physical and mental deterioration, and at times the death of the sufferer within 18 months.

16. Maria Mandl

Maria was an Austrian SS agent during Nazi Germany and she was a top-ranking official at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

She is believed to have been directly complicit in the deaths of over half a million women and children prisoners.

In 1948 Mandl was executed for war crimes.

17. List of unusual deaths

Does what it says on the tin.

18. Sleep paralysis

(Picture: public domain/John Henry Fuseli, 'The Nightmare' 1781)

Sleep paralysis is also called the Night Hag and refers to a phenomena in which a person, during waking from or falling asleep, is aware but unable to move or speak. During an episode, which has no known cause, one often hallucinates terrifying creatures, shadows, as well as phantom smells and sounds.

Episodes might last for a few minutes or a few hours, and sufferers always feel intense fear during this time.

Sleep paralysis has been reported throughout history, and early accounts blamed demonic possession and paranormal events.

19. June and Jennifer Gibbons

Jennifer and Jine Gibons, also referred to as “The Silent Twins” were identical twins who grew up in Wales. They would only communication with each other and after a spate of petty crime were admitted to Broadmoor Hospital.

Nobody could understand the pair. After 11 years at the institution they were released, however they developed a belief that it was necessary for one of them to die in order for the other to live a normal life.

Jennifer eventually agreed to sacrifice her life and in 1993 she died, the cause death was apparently deemed to have been natural causes but the timings and manner in which it happened have raised suspicions and theories in the years since her death.

Marjorie Wallace of The Sunday Times wrote a book about them called The Silent Twins, in which she described June’s reaction to her sister’s death.

Wallace recounted that June "was in a strange mood.”

[June said] ‘I free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life for me.’

20. Timeline of the far future

(Picture: Fsgregs/Wikipedia)

Timeline of the far future is an actual Wikipedia page in which contributors painstakingly pave out the lifetime, decay and eventual death of our Earth.

Bleak.

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