We all know we are going to die one day but the vast majority of us don't know when or how. While data shows the top causes of death worldwide are heart disease and cancer, there are an infinite number of ways we could possibly meet our end.
“She dried up in the desert. Drowned in a hot tub. Danced to death at an east-side night club,” sang Train back in 2012. “She went down in an airplane. Fried getting a suntan. Fell in a cement mixer full of quicksand.” While some of those causes of death sound too odd to be true, it turns out stranger things have happened. Redditor u/Mairon3791 recently racked up 4,000 comments when they asked, “What's an actual cause of death so extremely rare that it's hard to believe it's possible?”
Keep scrolling for some of the most bizarre situations that have led to an unexpected funeral. And if you’re scared of dying (whether it be in a crazy or common way), we invite you to take a look at the discussion we had with a “death expert” on why you shouldn’t worry.
#1
Greek philosopher Aeschylus was [unalived] when an eagle dropped a turtle on his head, mistaking his bald pate for a rock.
Image credits: lorgskyegon
It’s quite normal to fear death. Many people do. Surveys show the main reasons people are scared dying are fear of leaving loved ones behind and the actual process of death itself.
For some, it’s a mild fear or worry but for others, it’s extreme and there’s a name for it. Thanatophobia. Also known as death anxiety. It’s estimated up to 10% of people have thanatophobia. And psychologists say you’re more likely to develop it if you’ve had a near-death experience, you have PTSD, an anxiety disorder, if you’re terminally ill or have a serious illness.
If you are scared to death of dying, and suspect you might have thanatophobia, Cleveland Clinic suggests the following, “If a fear of death affects your ability to function at school, work or in social situations, seek treatment from a healthcare provider. You may benefit from psychotherapy, which helps you talk through your fear and anxiety.”
#2
Laughing to death. Fifty-year-old Alex Mitchell could not stop laughing for a continuous 25-minute period—almost the entire length a tv show called “Kung Fu Kapers” and suffered a fatal heart attack as a result of the strain placed on his heart. Alex's widow later sent the Goodies, who were staring in that show, a letter thanking them for making his final moments so pleasant.
Image credits: Ochib
Sean O’Connor has made dealing with death his life’s mission. He’s the host and producer of the podcast How To Die. He’s also a death coach, doula, an end-of-life companion and a soul carer. He kindly agreed to chat to us in an exclusive interview.
And while some might consider his work morbid, he doesn’t. He has a wicked sense of humor. Hopefully, what he had to say will help put some of your fears about death to rest.
#3
Fatal Familial Insomnia: you can't sleep, and you don't sleep, until you die, and it runs in the family.
Image credits: ScrwFlandrs
#4
Guy’s beard was so long that when he tried to flee a house fire, he tripped over it and broke his neck falling down the stairs. Dude was a mayor too. Hans Steininger, mayor of Braunau in Austria.
Image credits: Former-Finish4653
I began by asking O'Connor why death? “Obviously, the money,” he joked. Before continuing, “No seriously, it was more of a calling for me. I felt like I wanted to be as ready as possible should I be needed one day. Plus a long shadow of mortality in my family growing up, and the violent society we live in.”
He said he used to host Death Cafes regularly. One thing led to another. Before he knew it, he was doing courses, and then joining a community of soul carers. But what exactly do soul carers, death doulas, and death coaches do?
“I've just spent an hour reading to someone who is paralyzed from a stroke,” he told me. “With others, we might imagine what happens after we close our eyes for the last time. And prepare for that, emotionally. We might use some visualization. I often have to reassure people that it's ok for them to let go, that they have had a good life and done well and that their children will be ok without them, that their work is done. I hesitate to 'tell' people anything though, except reassert what they have told me.”
#5
Drowning in the desert.Guy got caught in a box canyon during a flash flood. The water was quickly reabsorbed into the dry desert soil and left a drown man in the middle of the desert.
Image credits: Eponarose
#6
Some rich lady in the early days of automobiles was known for always wearing long scarfs and one day it got caught in her wheels and snaped her neck.
Image credits: Snake_Plissken224
#7
Innocent people have gone to jail for murder because the real explanation for why someone died was so rare and infrequent that courts didn’t believe those explanations as plausibleTwo cases off the top of my head: Lindy Chamberlain (a dingo actually did eat her baby) and Kathleen Folbigg (had four children die from a rare genetic mutation).
Image credits: badgersprite
Since you’re scrolling through a list of completely rare - and sudden - ways to die, it’s only natural you might want to know whether it’s at all possible to prepare for an unexpected death. I asked. On behalf of a friend…
“Well, yes, you can definitely prepare for a sudden death by always wearing your best knickers in case you have to take an unexpected ambulance ride - it's not as if you were planning to, after all. One day will be your last. Is it today? Tomorrow? None of us know. The Grim Reaper's receptionist isn't calling to let you know you can be squeezed in next Tuesday at 10am. So be prepared!” quipped O’Connor.
“But for those left behind, we can get rid of our old sex toys and bad poetry, our diaries and journals and broken furniture, chuck away all the things we don't need - tidy up, which makes the impact of our death less onerous for others, and the grieving process easier. After all, we won't be here, what do we care - but we can do this for our loved ones.”
#8
The show, 1000 Ways To Die, covered a lot of the weirdest ones. The one that I remember being like wtf on was a guy who tied a sausage to his thigh, to make it look like he had huge junk. He cut off circulation throughout the night of dancing and died from cardiac arrest in the club bathroom.
Image credits: ooglieguy0211
#9
Sachi Hidaka and his wife Tomio died from heart attacks during their first attempt to make love. The chance of suffering from a heart attack during sex is incredibly rare. But in the case of Schi Hidaka and his wife, Tomio. The Japanese couple were married for fourteen years but were too shy to have sex. Later one night they both got drunk while having plum wine and they decided to finally make love.
Image credits: FoxyBiGal
#10
Dancing plague of 1518.
By August, the dancing epidemic had claimed as many as 400 victims.
The Strasbourg dancing plague might sound like the stuff of legend, but it’s well documented in 16th-century historical records. It’s also not the only known incident of its kind. Similar manias took place in Switzerland, Germany and Holland, though few were as large—or deadly—as the one triggered in 1518.
Image credits: Zerowantuthri
On the topic of ditching things, O’Connor said it’s important to remember we live in a digital era. “Have a place where you store your passwords - your digital death can be very messy otherwise. It gives people access to funds to buy the spirits you'll have served at your wake, if you're Irish,” he said, only half-joking this time.
#11
That one guy who died after getting stuck face first in an extremely claustrophobic cave. They could get to him, but couldn’t get him out. Just left his body in the cave and cemented the thing shut. Nutty Putty Cave.
Image credits: Grombrindal18
#12
Trying to impress your dad by riding in a submersible that never got fully certified to dive to the depth required to get to the titanic.
Image credits: wy1dfire
#13
The guy who ate a slug on a dare and got rat lungworm disease.
As you might have noticed, this death expert likes to joke. But as I expected, he admitted his work is not always easy. “When people experience existential dread and are afraid to close their eyes for the last time in case they never open them again... it's hard. As I said earlier - I come with no answers, just a gentle listening presence.”
“I try to remember that we were designed to die. It's natural,” he added. “The over medicalisation of death however has hidden it from us.”
#14
I once read about a guy who got impaled by dry spaghetti in a kitchen explosion.
Image credits: 7hyenasinatrenchcoat
#15
My MIL used to be a surgeon. She told me about a patient they had back in the 90s. He died because of holding in a sneeze. Turns out he had an aneurysm in his brain that popped at that moment.
Image credits: EducationalJelly6121
#16
A 60-year-old fisherman trying to snap a photo of a beaver on a roadside in Belarus is dead after the rodent attacked. The beaver bit an artery in the man's leg, which caused him to bleed to death. “The character of the wound was totally shocking.”
Image credits: derekthechowchow
While it’s highly unlikely you’ll meet your maker in any of the ways discussed here, the fact of the matter is that we are all going to die.
And on that note, O’Connor had these parting words: “No-one has been beyond the veil to tell us what happens on the other side. All we can do is approach that moment with love and awe, even curiosity. Maybe even gratitude. For it would be awful, and awfully boring, if we lived forever.”
#17
Patricia Stallings, was wrongfully convicted of murder after the death of her son Ryan on September 7, 1989. Because testing seemed to indicate an elevated level of ethylene glycol in Ryan's blood, authorities suspected antifreeze poisoning and they arrested Stallings the next day. She was convicted in 1991, in jail had another baby, diagnosed with methylmalonic acidemia (MMA), a rare genetic disorder that can mimic antifreeze poisoning. They both died of an illness that mimics antifreeze poisoning.
Image credits: tmink0220
#18
I used to work with a man who had an elderly relative come to the hospital with symptoms suggesting a stroke, and he died later that evening. I don't remember all the details, but everyone thought the family might be sitting on a big fat lawsuit, until the labs all came back. The relative had a type of leukemia that is diagnosed about 10 times a year in the U.S., and they've never come up with a chemotherapy protocol for it because nobody has ever lived long enough for them to do so.
Image credits: wilderlowerwolves
#19
I heard that a sinkhole formed under some man's bedroom & took him with it. It was so deep that they couldn't find him. Definitely a unique death situation.
Image credits: cartoonsarcasm
#20
I remember reading about a famous case of that…a woman named Jennifer Strange died of water intoxication while she was trying to win a Wii. A radio station had a contest called Hold Your Wee for a Wii, where you had to drink as much water as you possibly could without going to the bathroom. She drank nearly two gallons of water and ended up dying. The radio station’s parent company paid over $16M to her family in damages.
Image credits: ostentia
#21
When I was an emergency call taker we had an accident where the guy carrying his plate back to the kitchen, slipped, fell and cut his own throat with broken plate shard. He bled out before services were able to get there.
Image credits: kiyiya101
#22
Death caused by an infection, and that infection was caused by another piece of human lodging inside of you from someone closer to the bomb blast.#23
Decapitation by an elevator.
orphan_blud:
Every time I enter or exit an elevator I imagine it falling and cutting me in half.
#24
Every year a small handful of people still have polio on their death certificates. Post-polio syndrome can develop decades after a person is first exposed to polio, and it’s occasionally severe enough to kill someone.#25
Drowning in an elevator.A couple in Tel Aviv lived in a building which had an elevator going down to the parking garage. Due to very heavy rainfall, the elevator flooded while they were in it.
Image credits: eyl569
#26
Wasn’t there a Japanese boy pretending to be a snake, his parents thought he was possessed and they killed him? It may be on the weird list of deaths on wiki I remember.
Liuniam:
Yeah but he was a grown man not a little boy and his father was deeply religious so he head butted him to death
#27
In 1988 a dog fell from a building in Buenos Aires, Argentina, landed in a woman's head, [unaliving] her and the dog instantaneously, then another lady completely confused watching the event unfolding from the middle of a road, was ran over by a bus; then shortly after that an old man died from a heart attack out of the commotion of seeing both deaths, this happen under a couple of minutes. [Source](https://nicolehenley.medium.com/how-a-dogs-unfortunate-fall-led-to-death-of-3-da6c6b57982).
Image credits: discardme123now
#28
It doesn't happen often (in fact, I think it's really freaking rare), but there have been grown adults who have been killed by chickens.With roosters specifically, a lot of them have a big spur on each leg. This is like, a pretty damn big-a*s horn with a sharp tip. And some of those roosters can get pretty aggressive. Like, they might just decide to jump up at you and try to stab you in the face.
I think as recently as last year, there was a guy who got killed by a rooster. It kicked him in the thigh, but it severed his femoral artery and he bled out in a matter of minutes.
Image credits: soFATZfilm9000
#29
This woman was getting a drink and she had a metal straw in her cup. She slipped and the metal straw punctured her eye and went through her brain. Crazy way to go out.
Image credits: J120101
#30
Being hit in the sternum at just the right moment to interfere with the heart's beating. It can't be predicted or avoided with any consistency, and leaves no clinical evidence - if it happens and someone with CPR skills isn't around, the person just dies, without a mark on them.
halloweeninstepford:
That happened to a lacrosse player in my high school in 2000. Dropped dead right on the field. It ended up changing and creating laws in New York.
Image credits: Melenduwir
#31
Dying of a broken heart.
The_Town_of_Canada:
Lost my Dad to this.
My Mom died Mother’s Day 2020.
My dad, who never had health issues, was dead within a year. Just completely lost his will to live.
Image credits: OldTimeyStrongman
#32
Prion diseases. For some random reason a protein gets folded the wrong way and totally f***s you up. It’s not alive, you can’t kill it or fight it with d***s or antibiotics. Your own immune system is helpless against it. It causes more proteins to become misfolded and spreads through your body. Even after you die your corpse is a hazard because the misfolded proteins are *still there, waiting*.
Image credits: Jeramy_Jones
#33
The 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda, chronicles a folkloric story of lawgiver Draco's death in the Aeginetan theatre: in a traditional ancient Greek show of approval, his supporters "threw so many hats and shirts and cloaks on his head that he suffocated, and was buried in that same theatre".
Image credits: IanGecko
#34
Stingray tail in the heart.
Lord_Teutonic:
Man i miss him steve. he died as he lived; with animals in his heart.
Image credits: mafnxxx
#35
If you jump into a fresh water lake without holding your nose, and if water gets up your nose, that’s how some people have (rarely) gotten a brain-eating amoeba that will kill you within 2 weeks. Naegleria fowleri is “typically found in bodies of warm freshwater, such as ponds, lakes, rivers, hot springs, warm water discharge from industrial or power plants, geothermal well water, poorly maintained or minimally chlorinated (under 0.5 mg/m^3 residual) swimming pools, water heaters, soil, and pipes connected to tap water” and “can be pathogenic, causing an extremely rare, sudden, severe and usually fatal brain infection called naegleriasis or primary amoebic meningoencephalitis” which has a 98.5% fatality rate within 1 to 2 weeks after getting infected water up your nose.
#36
Stepfather dead per a coconuts falling on his head !#37
Someone I know was cleaning leaves out of his gutters and some rare mold got into his lungs and he died pretty quickly after from it, there’s no cure currently. He was perfectly healthy up until that point.#38
Kendrick Johnson who died because he got stuck upside down in a rolled up gym mat. His family insist it was a murder. It was so stupid.
#39
In my family: Great Aunt Hattie Pavlicek. She was older and VERY bony. Literally got stuck in a revolving door and died. Actually made me frightened of revolving doors as a kid because I've always been like a string bean!#40
People in my family keep getting struck by lightning. There was a bit on unsolved mysteries about it. Guess someone pissed off Thor or something. I was narrowly missed and my dad was missed. Grandpa was hit and tossed off a ladder and lived.#41
SCA (sudden cardiac arrest) my best friend was literally laughing across the kitchen table from me and the next few seconds she dropped dead her heart stopped due to SCA .. I did manage to keep her body flowing with blood and oxygen with strenuous cpr they said she literally was a miracle and I was a angel personally it's something that makes me both fear time and value it considerably. But they said she was deceased before she hit the floor.
#42
Molar sepsis… a man died where I live from an infected molar… kinda crazy right? It's not super rare I know but I had never heard of someone passing away from that personally….
Image credits: UnalomeParadoxMoon
#43
True story: someone left a note and jumped. Meanwhile, a few appartements down a home invasion goes wrong and shots are fired.The jumper died from a stray bullet.
#44
The guy who climbed head first into a paper mache dinosaur after dropping his phone inside it.#45
Oxygen poisoning is a thing: getting too much O2 into your cells can kill you.Good news is that you can't get toxic levels of oxygen by just breathing too hard.
#46
Drowning in a puddle.Almost happened to Tetsushi Yanagida. He broke his neck on a live morning broadcast on Japanese TV diving head first into a rice paddock, and his colleagues didn't realise the seriousness of the situation.
Broke his neck, survived that, almost drowned in a puddle (the video is a bit harrowing to watch as well).
#47
I read once of a world class mountain climber who fell down his stairs at home and died.#48
Food-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis. For some people, eating a certain food and then exercising just after eating that food can send them into anaphylactic shock. I had a friend who nearly died from eating celery before a run. The only reason he lived is that two weeks before that, he learned his next-door neighbors were EMTs after they responded to the scene of him crashing his road bike (pedal, not motor) going 45mph down a hill and hitting gravel.#49
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the tip of a skyscraper broken down and fell to a car on the road. It smashed the car so deep in the ground, that they were never able to recover the car and the driver who died there. It's been 10 years and he is buried underground in his car.#50
I believe there is only a handful of recorded deaths ever from being hit by a meteorite.#51
I used to have a job where I came across death certificates sometimes and I used to collect the weird ones. Erotic asphyxiation, drowning in the bathtub, one guy who was electrocuted when he reached out to adjust a space heater while taking a shower. But the weirdest was an old man who died from an embolism as a result of crushing his own penis in a vise.#52
Look, I don't know if it's extremely rare but in this day and age it's pretty unheard of because of the access to healthcare the 1st world country has. My friend died of an ear infection last year. For context, we are in Australia, so we dont pay for emergency hospital visits- cost of treatment was not an issue. She went to the hospital 3 times and was turned away twice. The third time the doctors basically told her the infection was so bad they could not treat it. The next day she was in an induced coma and 2 days later she was gone.
#53
Death by a soy sauce overdose.
#54
A guy died when he spit off a balcony on his birthday. He was having a spitting contest and accidentally launched himself over the railing. .#55
The strangest I've seen in 20 years of medicine here was when someone's aorta got punctured by a sliver of wire from a grill brush they had accidentally ingested and ultimately died. The proximity to the esophagus is not all that far. Still would have been hard to believe until I saw the imaging. I immediately threw mine away and have used plastic bristle ever since. Not long after, someone tried to off themself by sticking a crossbow to their chin. There was an x-ray I wish I still had of the broadhead lodged in the top of her skull. Made a full recovery. Some of the stuff on TV pale's in comparison to what actually goes on out there.#56
Driving down a quiet country road when a giant hay bale dislodges from the hill you’re driving past, crashes into your car just at the wrong moment as you’re passing and kills you.Vale Mike Edwards.
#57
It isn't rare but every year, many people die by putting a pressure washer/gerni nozzle in their a*s or vagina, and shredding their internal organs. Choice.
#58
That one person who accidentally swallowed molten metal because of a fire, his doctor didnt believe him so he died and when doing the autopsy it was revealed that he did swallow some. That autopsy report sounded so fake that some doctors thought that he had lied in the report.#59
I think people turning to stone/bone is utterly horrifying. Like you get hurt and instead of healing you turn to bone, till eventually you're imprisoned by your own body.#60
When I first learned the full extent of what radiation could do to the human body I didn't eat a banana for two weeks. The fact there's rocks that can just break our genes is something out of an Eldritch horror novel.#61
Death by constipation.#62
For pregnant women: amniotic fluid embolism.#63
Internal decapitation.Head still attached but spinal cord severed below brain stem.#64
Food poisoning. He had an ulcer in stomach which led to the salmonella from improperly handled chicken eventually getting into his bloodstream leading to sepsis. We had to fight with the insurance company as that didn't want to classify it as an accidental death and thus not have to pay. He got the salmonella from the hole in the wall type breakfast restaurant he gone to for 40+ years.
#65
Someone once told me they knew a guy who died from taking a misstep on a curb and falling backwards into traffic. He was just standing on a sidewalk talking to some people and boom. Dead on site because he moved his heel a little bit backwards.#66
I had a co-worker whose daughter died during a tonsillectomy. The co-worker hadn't even taken the day off, because a tonsillectomy is so mundane, so when she got the phone call.....rough stuff.#67
Double heartbeat deaths, can cause many different types of deaths, but unless you have been formally diagnosed before hand with an EKG to see the echo heartbeat. You'd be unable to ever prove it's the cause.#68
There was a conductor who accidentally stabbed himself with his little stick thingy. The wound got infected and he died of sepsis.
#69
In 2013 there was a boy killed in an airport when one of the overhead signs fell off the ceiling.#70
Being hit in the head by a stray bullet that was fired from MILES away.#71
The uncle of a high school friend hit a deer with his car. Got out to move the deer off the road. It was stunned but still alive. Kicked him the forehead and instantly killed him before it jumped up and ran into the woods.#72
Shallow water blackout is crazy given how often people swim underwater in pools - you’re just holding your breath swimming under the water and you are over-oxygenated so you don’t get the brain signal that you need to breathe. Feels like you could keep swimming for ages. Then you pass out and drown. I don’t think I’ve ever been with a group of guys in a pool who haven’t seen who can swim the furthest without coming up for air. But I know someone who died of it.#73
Rabies. Heard that there's about 1 or 2 deaths in the US from rabies each year.#74
3 people have died in space so out of the 117 billion people that has ever lived I would say that's pretty rare but at the same time it's hard to believe it's not more.#75
Two girls I met in my eating disorder support group died in ways people never believed were true. One died of a heart attack while purging due to the electrolyte imbalances caused by binging and purging, and the other died choking on her own vomit while purging. Bulimia (and eating disorders in general) are really disgusting, f****d up illnesses and not enough people realize that.#76
A dream family vacation to Alaska, a whole family goes as a big group with both the parents, their adult children, spouses and partners are all included. The group is on a guided tour of a glacial cave where everything is all good and many people throughout the day toured through the ice cave with nothing amiss. But when this family is touring through the cave, a chunk of ice falls loose killing their 32 year old daughter. TLDR: Death from a piece of ice falling from the ceiling of a tourist trap Alaskan ice cave.
