Fascinating Horror

At around 10:15pm on the 9th of June, 1979, a fire broke out on the Ghost Train at Luna Park in Sydney, Australia. The fire would ultimately claim seven lives, wiping out almost an entire family in the process. It was a devastating blaze the cause of which remains, to this day, unknown. UPDATE: Since making this video, there have been some developments in the investigation. At least one police officer has now publically accused Abe Saffron of orchestrating the fire.

At just past 7:00am on the 26th of February, 2013, near Luxor in Egypt a hot air balloon carrying twenty passengers and one pilot caught fire. The blaze – later found to be the result of a gas leak in one of the balloon’s tanks – engulfed the basket. The balloon was coming in to land at the time, and wasn’t far from the ground. The pilot, severely burned by the flames, threw himself from the gondola. A single passenger followed him. They would be the only survivors of what ensued.

In the early hours of the 2nd February 1959, an expedition consisting of nine hikers and lead by 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov ended in disaster. The group had been camping overnight on a snowy hillside when something compelled them to flee from their tents and into lethal blizzard conditions, several of them in only a single layer of clothes. To this day, the exact reason for the flight which lead to their death is unknown.

On the 7th of August 2016, 10-year-old Caleb Schwab was enjoying a day out at the Schlitterbahn Vacation Village theme park in Kansas. While riding the fifty metre Verruckt water slide – one of the park’s biggest attractions – his raft became airborne and collided with safety netting, killing him instantly. It was assumed, at first, to be a freak accident… but a length investigation in the aftermath of his death would reveal the truth: the slide had always been unsafe, and should never have been allowed to operate in the first place.

On the 31st of May 2014 12-year-olds Anissa E Weisser and Morgan Geyser lured their friend Payton Leutner into the woods and stabbed her 19 times during a game of hide and seek, before leaving her for dead. Leutner would survive the attack, and the murderous pair would soon be arrested. The reason they gave for their violent assault was a sinister and unbelievable one: they did it for Slender Man.

At around 4:45pm on the 21st of June 2007 a component on the Superman Tower of Power drop tower ride at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom broke under stress, resulting in the accidental amputation of a 13-year-old girl’s feet. This bizarre accident unfolded in a matter of seconds, and is one of the most gruesome in the history of theme park ride accidents.

At about 3:30PM on the 2nd of June 1997 students from the senior year at Napa High School in California were visiting Waterworld USA in Concord. They decided to enact a traditional prank, by “clogging” a waterslide with as many students as possible. It was a lighthearted stunt that been carried out in previous years with no adverse consequences. This year, however, it would prove to be fatal.

At around 3:13pm on the 3rd of February 1998, near the Italian resort town of Cavalese, a low-flying Unites States Marine Corp plane on a training exercise struck the cable of an aerial tramway, severing it and causing a fully-loaded gondola to fall to the ground. The incident resulted in the deaths of all 20 occupants of the gondola, and came to be known by locals as “The Massacre at Cermis”.

On the evening of the 14th of June 1986 the Mindbender rollercoaster at the Fantasyland amusement park within the West Edmonton Mall in Canada suffered a severe malfunction. Several bolts came loose from a wheel assembly on one of the cars, causing it to leave the tracks and collide with a concrete pillar, ultimately resulting in the deaths of three of the riders, and severe injuries to one other.

On the 13th of September 1987, in the city of Goiânia in Brazil, two men entered the abandoned Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia hospital. Their intent was to steal valuable scrap metal and machine parts. They would be successful in this goal, but in so doing would cause one of the world’s worst radioactive contamination incidents.

At around 4:40pm on the 25th March 1911 a fire began at the premises of the Triangle Waist Company in New York City. Due to a number of factors, what started as a small flame beneath a fabric cutter’s bin would soon become one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history.

At around 1:51pm on the 2nd of June 2015 at the Alton Towers theme park in the UK, a combination of factors lead to a fully-loaded car on the Smiler rollercoaster crashing into an empty stationary car at speed. This incident was the worst rollercoaster crash in the history of the park, and resulted in serious, life-changing injuries for several of the passengers on board. It is down only to good fortune that nobody was killed.

On the evening of the 16th of November 1957 a farmer and handyman by the name of Edward Theodore Gein was arrested by police in the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. He was suspected of having some connection to the disappearance of a local woman the day before. When officers were despatched to search the Gein farm, however, it wouldn’t be just one woman they discovered, but multiple human bodies, some of them disfigured in terrible ways. Gein, it emerged, was a prolific serial killer and body snatcher. His crimes have gone down in history as some of the most obscene ever committed.

On the 8th of July 2014, at Varna Airport in Bulgaria, German holidaymaker Lars Mittank ditched his suitcase, sprinted from the terminal, clambered over a fence, and disappeared into the woods. He would never be seen again, and his abrupt disappearance would remain a mystery for years to come.

On the 9th of November 1971 bank worker John List systematically murdered his wife, mother, and three children with a pair of handguns. He then proceeded to clean and tidy the family home, cut himself out of every photograph in the house with a pair of scissors, tune the radio to a religious station and walk away from his life forever. It would be decades before this murderer was found, and longer still before we achieved any kind of understanding as to why he committed such senseless and terrible crimes.