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Reality Show Employees Talk About What Really Goes on Behind the Scenes

Whether you’re into the drama of programs like Real Housewives, love home renovation stories like Property Brothers, or get wrapped up in dance competitions like Dancing with the Stars, most of us have to admit to watching at least some reality television on a weekly basis.

What’s it really like to work on one of these shows, though? How much is real, and how much is really scripted? If you’re dying to know, these 17 people who have been on set are here to tell you!

17. I always figured the craziest people were plants.

Not me, but a friend told me that one of those reality tow truck shows tried to hire him to play a crazy customer. The staged shot was that the crew was going to try and take “his” rusty pickup truck from his lawn, but he was supposed to come at them in just a wife beater with two sawed off shotguns.

I believe that the big black woman of the crew was supposed to run at him and knock him out with a wrench, but I can’t remember the exact details. Even though I think he turned them down, it goes to show how much of “reality” shows are staged for those who didn’t know it before.

16. I guess he didn’t want to eat cold food.

In the very first episode of Top Chef they ever filmed, Tom Colicchio flipped out because the dishes the contestants had cooked were getting cold while the film crew took “food porn” shots of them.

From then on, all the contestants have to prepare two dishes. One for the judges to sample, and one for the cameras to pan over and show the audience.

15. Sometimes the producers get desperate for drama.

I worked on American Ninja Warrior.

Member that time that video of a “naked” guy running around on the course? It was planned and fake, the “streaker” is one of the testers of the course, so he knew exactly how to do it, and he wore underwear.

PAs (only with iPhones, not Samsung) were called to go into the audience and film it and upload it to youTube. Yuuuup pretty dumb and lame. I laughed about it, thought “wow EPs are desperate” and went to Crafty and filled up on chips and soda.

14. There aren’t exactly scripts, but…

I’ve worked on almost 20 different reality shows in the past 15 years, I have never seen a script created for participants in any way. I HAVE seen the contestants told what to say, I have seen scenes re-staged to get what the director/producers want. Never scripted. It is far easier to tell them what to say and have them parrot your way of saying to get it right. Non of these folks can act worth a shit. It is easier to just do call + repeats.

I’ve never worked on anything on TRUTV as they are the bottom of the barrel and are known to screw folks on cash so i cannot say their dreck is not scripted. But usually story producers have a clue who likes/hates each other, (alchohol is always introduced to get to the roots of this quicker), then the emotions are manipulated in predictable ways to get the needed shots. Noways, so many know the reality game that many participants will offer to redo a take immediately.

Those are the folks who want to use a show to get famous. Release a sex tape – it is infinitely quicker way to fame if you want it that bad.

13. Scripted v. Staged.

My old boss had a reality show. While I wouldn’t necessarily call it scripted, many scenes were staged to some extent and they would often film multiple takes. There were also a lot more “friends” and celebrities (office was in LA) stopping by on the days they were filming.

12. There are tons of leading questions.

One of the first production jobs I took was on a reality show TV Pilot called, “Life Begins at 40”. It was a show that followed the lives of a couple who put their dreams on hold for their kids, and the show helped them pick up where they left off after the kids left the nest. Really sweet idea, as the husband wanted to run a car garage and the wife wanted to own a bed and breakfast. There were a few things that come to mind of how contrived shows are:

During segments where the couple were talking, the “director” of the show was behind the camera guiding them through the conversation. They arrived at the house they were staying at, and the husband noticed the wife overpacked. The director, off camera, would tell the husband, “Wouldn’t you say your wife packs too much?” to which the husband replied, “Yeah, Honey, you packed way too much!” The director then said, “Wouldn’t you say that she packed up your entire closet?” “Yeah, yeah, sweetie, did you pack the entire closet or something?”

During another segment, the husband sends the wife on a mission to go buy an auto part for the garage he is working with. The producer was going to send me to basically pre-plant the part she needed, that way she wouldn’t have to pay for it. Turns out the segment was scrapped because she asked so many questions to the husband she knew exactly what she was supposed to get (as opposed to the “drama” that would unfold when she was supposed to call the husband about the part at the store).

The couple didn’t know, but they were going to another state for the second part of the show. I created their plane tickets (they would get real ones when they got to the airport). So, over dinner, when their bill arrived, they opened it to find the plane tickets. I had a little fun with them the night before when they asked me if I would be with them for the entire production. I responded, “I’ll be with you the entire time you’re in Florida”, which was true since they were only there for one more day. After the reveal, they realized what I did when I was driving them home and we had a nice laugh.

Those are the only stories that come to mind (that was nearly ten years ago!) It was a lot of fun, and everyone was really awesome. Definitely had more of an “Extreme Makeover” vibe rather than the catty, angry and drama-filled reality shows.

11. A niche story, but interesting.

So I used to have these two American co-workers. One of them was signed with an extras agency and would occasionally get small roles in films and TV.

One day I hear the extra telling the other guy about a London club which for the opening night had an open bar after a £20 entry fee. They decide to go and the other guy says “hey why don’t you come Martlar?” So I agree to go to this club.

The extra finds me later to say it’s actually part of a show here called The Real Hustle that shows how cons are pulled off. His agency has asked him to invite people who wouldn’t recognise the presenters and spoil the con. So I go along with it knowing I’d get my £20 back at the end of the night.

Afterwards the producers took us to a bar and bought us all a drink. Talking to the other people there, about two thirds of the people “conned” were in on it.

10. Paid actors? What!?

A close friend of mine worked in casting for several shows. Most notably: Pawn Stars. She told me one night while we were drinking that around 90% of the time the people bringing items into the shop were NOT the true owners. They would scour the internet for people selling interesting things and then hit them up to see if they wanted to bring it on the show. If the true owners were total duds and not suitable for camera work, they would pay them a few bucks to take the item and have a trained actor bring it to the pawn shop for the purposes of the show.

She also said that Adam Richmond, the guy from Man Vs. Food, got so sick and out of shape from all the crap he ate all the time that he could no longer be insured. They had to change the format of the show so that he would coach people in eating competitions, as opposed to doing it himself.

9. Why not just call it a scripted series then?

A few years ago my parents owned a restaurant where an episode of an MTV “reality series” was filmed. It was totally staged and MTV gave them details about what would go down in advance.

8. This was an amazing concept.

I worked as a fake contestant on a game show, it was my job to screw up various contestants as much as I could.

Before each episode shoot, they would tell me challenges and ask me to practice being terrible at it. Finally being good at being terrible paid off.

7. That seems like it would be a hard thing to sign.

I wasn’t actually on a reality show but I almost was. We had to sign paperwork agreeing to “re-film” scenes that didn’t look good the first time or things the camera didn’t catch. We also had to agree that our words could be edited however they wanted (so they could basically take things out of context/manipulate the way we came across). Dropped out at the last minute though, so I guess I’ll never know what it would have been like to be on tv.

6. This is the best story.

MTV did a reality special on my hometown in the early 1990s, profiling it as “the worst place in the world to spend spring break.” They came for two weeks with a comedian host and made fun of us constantly. For one episode they wanted to showcase the town’s music scene, so they got a dozen 3rd graders to play Hot Cross Buns on recorders. I was one of those 3rd graders.

The comedian came in the day of and was super serious. He told us this was our big break and would be broadcast to a million people. Naturally, we responded by taking it VERY seriously and felt that we were representing our town. When the cameras started rolling, it was obvious that it was total bullshit. The comedian kept jumping up and down behind the cameras shouting “POOPEY LIGHTBULB” to make us laugh. Then he gave us fake Ray Bans and t-shirts.

5. Here, have another drink.

Alcohol consumption. Talent gets plastered, producers get results.

All special events, trips, etc. are planned and paid for by the production. During those moments, there’s incredible pressure on everyone to deliver good material.

The crew is overworked and underpaid. I clocked on average 100hrs a week. On one show, I worked over 30 days straight without a day off (I was on a weekly contract, not hourly, so they could get away with it).

A genuine, unaltered moment in the final cut of an episode is as rare as a unicorn. (It doesn’t exist).

4. They do sometimes get a head’s up.

In a similar thread /u/Sallymoustacheride gave some insight into something that I am sure is true about a lot of reality shows to make them work:

I worked for a bakery that was on, and won, CupCake Wars. The premise of the show is to surprise the bakers with a few, more often than not, odd ingredients and see what they’re really made of. In reality, we found out the ingredients a few months before the show. Had we not known, there’s no doubt we’d have lost.

There are definitely people who thrive under pressure, both in performance and creativity, and they have better things to do with their time than crank out cupcakes for Food Network. Tell an unprepared contestant they have 40 minutes to make a delicious cupcake using tater tots and nine times out of ten you’ll have a middle aged woman sobbing into her mixing bowl.

3. People aren’t always what they seem.

I’ve worked in TV and film for a decade. Here are some I can mention:

Remember that show MTV Cribs? Most of the rappers houses were rented specifically for the shoot. Actors and sports stars were their real houses for the most part.

Gordon Ramsey is actually a pretty nice guy. The Hells Kitchen restaurant is a set in a soundstage. The customers are usually friends and invited guests of the show and its crew.

Most reality shows are scripted to an extent, and the cast is usually coached to say certain things during a those interview style shots to help tell or shape a story. They are cut together and manipulated as needed to tell different stories. Most of the time they are talking about something totally different than what is happening on screen.

Most reality stars don’t “decide to part ways” with the show. The money is too easy. 75% of the time there were asked to leave or not return. It’s easier on everyone if we never say “fired” unless you are Donald Trump.

MTV was illegally using music for years and years for all of its shows. MTV was a major source of exposure in the 80’s and 90’s for music, so they took advantage of their position and illegally used copywrited music in all of their TV shows, especially reality shows without permission or compensation to the publishing and sync rights holders. They were eventually sued by all the major record companies in the late 90’s/early 2000s when they ceased to be the music player they once were and had to cease use of copywrited songs. Cheaper reality shows had to resort to library songs while the bigger shows had to pony up licensing fees for major artists.

Award shows like the MTV movie awards, Kids Choice awards, etc were merely created as cheap ways to get big names and big ratings. Artists are not compensated for showing up at these events and look bad for not showing up to accept the made-up award. Easy money.

I’ve never worked on Dr Phil, but he is a giant douche to everyone especially his crew. Needlessly and entirely for his own ego.

2. They are really long days.

Nice. Something I can finally comment on. I’m a Production Sound Mixer based in LA and I frequently find myself on reality gigs. The pay is pretty good but the days are very long. Minimum work day will be 12 hours (the most I have done is 20 hours in a single day) with the only real break being a half hour to an hour lunch. This is pretty typical for most LA based productions.

So what do our days consist of? Well, yesterday I started a new reality ENG style doc for a major network which pretty much fits the typical “reality shoot” mold. Usually a day or two day before picture is up, the crew will receive a call sheet. The call sheet has a list of the cast, crew and shot list along with other details about that particular production day. The shot list details which talent will be in each scene along with details of when and where the scene will take place… AND what we are there to shoot in each scene.

Every scene is shot under the guidance of the director and producers and not unlike scripted episodics or features, the scenes are shot multiple times. This means that when you actually watch something happen in reality television, not only was that scene and the actions/conversations within planned days before, you’re likely watching the forth or fifth time that “real” event actually happened. Very rarely can any of these untrained actors nail a scene on the first take. If there’s time to shoot another take, you can bet your ass the director is going to call for it.

Have you ever been watching a reality show and after a cut from one angle to another you think, “well, gosh… Shouldn’t a camera guy be standing right there? The previous angle just one second before that cut was from the exact direction I’m now looking directly in!” Well, that’s because that’s from another take after the crew has repositioned to run the scene again for coverage.

Next would be the audio element… My world. Ever been watching the new hit reality show “Hardcore Midget Pawn” and out of nowhere an angry customer bust in the store screaming and yelling with sound as crisp as can be and in perfect frame from multiple angles? Well, that was 100% planned. Before that, a tech like myself would have placed a lav mic and transmitter pack on the angry customer’s person, tested levels and RF reception while still having a little time to make any adjustments as the camera department established the action of the scene, the lighting, camera lens selection and all that jazz. So buy the time that angry customer bursts in the door, we have already prepared everything, have slated the take and called “ACTION!” And now await their surprise visit which we will shoot numerous times.

1. Well that would be irritating.

I’ve worked in TV and film for a decade. Here are some I can mention:

Remember that show MTV Cribs? Most of the rappers houses were rented specifically for the shoot. Actors and sports stars were their real houses for the most part.

Gordon Ramsey is actually a pretty nice guy. The Hells Kitchen restaurant is a set in a soundstage. The customers are usually friends and invited guests of the show and its crew.

Most reality shows are scripted to an extent, and the cast is usually coached to say certain things during a those interview style shots to help tell or shape a story. They are cut together and manipulated as needed to tell different stories. Most of the time they are talking about something totally different than what is happening on screen.

Most reality stars don’t “decide to part ways” with the show. The money is too easy. 75% of the time there were asked to leave or not return. It’s easier on everyone if we never say “fired” unless you are Donald Trump.

MTV was illegally using music for years and years for all of its shows. MTV was a major source of exposure in the 80’s and 90’s for music, so they took advantage of their position and illegally used copywrited music in all of their TV shows, especially reality shows without permission or compensation to the publishing and sync rights holders. They were eventually sued by all the major record companies in the late 90’s/early 2000s when they ceased to be the music player they once were and had to cease use of copywrited songs. Cheaper reality shows had to resort to library songs while the bigger shows had to pony up licensing fees for major artists.

Award shows like the MTV movie awards, Kids Choice awards, etc were merely created as cheap ways to get big names and big ratings. Artists are not compensated for showing up at these events and look bad for not showing up to accept the made-up award. Easy money.

I’ve never worked on Dr Phil, but he is a giant douche to everyone especially his crew. Needlessly and entirely for his own ego.

I’m not surprised at all, but I do love a good behind-the-scenes pick!

If you’ve got some experience and relevant stories to tell, we’re here to listen!

The post Reality Show Employees Talk About What Really Goes on Behind the Scenes appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Recall the Worst Thing They’ve Heard While Pretending to Be Asleep

Most of us have pretended to be asleep at some point for various reasons. When you’re a kid, it’s because you’re supposed to be asleep and you were actually reading under the covers. When you’re older, it could be because someone(s) came in your room and they think you’re sleeping, so you play along – or maybe your spouse is coming to bed and you’re not in the mood?

I wouldn’t know anything about that. Ahem.

Sometimes, though, you really wish you hadn’t done that, because you end up hearing something you’ll never be able to get out of your brain again – and these 16 people’s stories will convince you that’s absolutely true.

16. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

‘no wonder people at school think he’s gay’ – my step mum

15. OMG he had to have known!

When I was a kid, I used to be scared of monsters or something creeping up on me in my sleep, so I would always ask my dad to check on me before he went to bed. It made me feel more comfortable. One night, I was still awake when I heard him coming up the stairs, and I wasn’t supposed to be awake and knew I would get in trouble if he saw me, so I pretended to be asleep. He came in to my room and just kinda stared at me for a few seconds, then came up close to my bed, lifted the blanket up, farted under it, turned around and left.

It’s been at least 15 years and I remember that night vividly. He vehemently denies it to this day but I know what happened.

14. Please tell me you’ve never let him live it down.

My older brother in the next room when he snuck a girl in. They had sex for about a minute and then I could hear him apologizing for about 20. May not be the worst ever, but its definitely the funniest.

13. This is horrible.

Late in the comments here. But I heard the news my dad passed away pretending to sleep.

I was 12 at the time, woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Headed to the kitchen to get some water after and saw my sister sitting on the couch. She asked if I could sleep out in the living room with her and I didn’t think anything of it.

Woke up the next morning and kept my eyes closed, I heard my mom telling my dad’s best friend we lost him. I won’t forget it.

12. That will give you nightmares.

My mom and I were sharing a hotel room on a trip and unfortunately only had one bed so we had to share that too. As I was trying to fall asleep, I kept hearing the text tone from my mom’s phone going off and her giggling. My parents hate each other so I knew it wasn’t my dad she was texting with.

Curious, I opened my eyes just a little bit to see that she was flirting with other men while on a trip with her family and I was in fact staring at a dick pic. I couldn’t really go back to sleep after that.

11. More devastating news!

I pretended to sleep through the doctor sitting at my kitchen table telling my dad he had stage 3 cancer. I was 9.

He’s totally fine now! But it really sucked at the time.

10. Why are boys?

Probably the funniest was on a camping trip with the boys. I have sleep apnea and use a cpap machine. I overheard a couple of my mates talking about smoking a joint and hotboxing me through the air intake of my cpap machine.

9. My heart hurts for this little boy.

My father telling my mother that sometimes he just wanted to kill me (I was 5 years old when I overheard this). Being that my Dad was an alcoholic and full of rage I believed him and lived my entire childhood believing he was going to kill me.

8. Ew ew ew this is not okay.

My mum’s boyfriend sloppily trying to fuck my mum all drunk as shit whilst we’re all sharing the same fucking Hotel room. I was 13.

7. Aww, little baby college boy.

Freshman college roommate watching porn on his laptop wearing headphones, humping his mattress like there’s no tomorrow.

6. Ohhhhh man this will do a number.

My mom and aunt talking, thinking 10 year old me was asleep.

Aunt, “Little Runs_N_Goses is so cute.”

Mom, ” No, he’s not very good looking at all.”

5. That puts Matchbox Twenty in a whole new light.

Sleeping over at a friends house when I was 14, all of us on the floor in living room. Couldn’t sleep. Two of my friends (guy and girl) directly next to me start doing freaky things to each other. I was extremely shy and a couple of years younger than them so I stayed quiet and hoped they’d stop. Had to listen to them for an hour while she made weird ass moaning squeaky noises and he was singing (in a weird slightly whispery singy voice) matchbox 20 songs to her while he did whatever he was doing. That was last time I slept over at a friends house.

4. It was definitely Edward Cullen.

I was at my bf’s apartment staying over, his roommate also happened to have some friends who were dating there as well, I was in my bf’s room and they were sleeping in the living room. They were definitely fucking. Weirdest thing of it all were these literal banging sounds, like someone was hitting the fucking wall.

The whole time I had to piss like a mother fucker but getting to the bathroom involved walking by the living room and I did not wanna risk it. When we woke up the next morning someone had ripped a chunk out of one of the curtains and the TV remote was snapped in half… to this day I don’t wanna know what the fuck was going on in there

3. Well this is kind of an amazing story.

My grandparents won $10000 at the casino, and they told all of their children (and presumably gave them some of that money) except my dad. My dad is a dick so I didn’t tell him either.

2. It’s sweet and terrible all at once.

I was a camp counselor… two girls very much liked to make hot or not lists. One of them suggested a male counselor was hot, and the other said he was saying mean things about me behind my back, which made him not hot. Hurt to hear that from my campers, but glad they supported me.

1. At least he found out before something happened.

My “friends” talking about going into my wallet later and steal my money, and then leave before I notice, I kicked them out

I do not know how I would react to these situations, but it wouldn’t be easy, that’s for sure!

Has this ever happened to you? Tell us about it in the comments!

The post People Recall the Worst Thing They’ve Heard While Pretending to Be Asleep appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Recall the Worst Thing They’ve Heard While Pretending to Be Asleep

Most of us have pretended to be asleep at some point for various reasons. When you’re a kid, it’s because you’re supposed to be asleep and you were actually reading under the covers. When you’re older, it could be because someone(s) came in your room and they think you’re sleeping, so you play along – or maybe your spouse is coming to bed and you’re not in the mood?

I wouldn’t know anything about that. Ahem.

Sometimes, though, you really wish you hadn’t done that, because you end up hearing something you’ll never be able to get out of your brain again – and these 16 people’s stories will convince you that’s absolutely true.

16. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

‘no wonder people at school think he’s gay’ – my step mum

15. OMG he had to have known!

When I was a kid, I used to be scared of monsters or something creeping up on me in my sleep, so I would always ask my dad to check on me before he went to bed. It made me feel more comfortable. One night, I was still awake when I heard him coming up the stairs, and I wasn’t supposed to be awake and knew I would get in trouble if he saw me, so I pretended to be asleep. He came in to my room and just kinda stared at me for a few seconds, then came up close to my bed, lifted the blanket up, farted under it, turned around and left.

It’s been at least 15 years and I remember that night vividly. He vehemently denies it to this day but I know what happened.

14. Please tell me you’ve never let him live it down.

My older brother in the next room when he snuck a girl in. They had sex for about a minute and then I could hear him apologizing for about 20. May not be the worst ever, but its definitely the funniest.

13. This is horrible.

Late in the comments here. But I heard the news my dad passed away pretending to sleep.

I was 12 at the time, woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Headed to the kitchen to get some water after and saw my sister sitting on the couch. She asked if I could sleep out in the living room with her and I didn’t think anything of it.

Woke up the next morning and kept my eyes closed, I heard my mom telling my dad’s best friend we lost him. I won’t forget it.

12. That will give you nightmares.

My mom and I were sharing a hotel room on a trip and unfortunately only had one bed so we had to share that too. As I was trying to fall asleep, I kept hearing the text tone from my mom’s phone going off and her giggling. My parents hate each other so I knew it wasn’t my dad she was texting with.

Curious, I opened my eyes just a little bit to see that she was flirting with other men while on a trip with her family and I was in fact staring at a dick pic. I couldn’t really go back to sleep after that.

11. More devastating news!

I pretended to sleep through the doctor sitting at my kitchen table telling my dad he had stage 3 cancer. I was 9.

He’s totally fine now! But it really sucked at the time.

10. Why are boys?

Probably the funniest was on a camping trip with the boys. I have sleep apnea and use a cpap machine. I overheard a couple of my mates talking about smoking a joint and hotboxing me through the air intake of my cpap machine.

9. My heart hurts for this little boy.

My father telling my mother that sometimes he just wanted to kill me (I was 5 years old when I overheard this). Being that my Dad was an alcoholic and full of rage I believed him and lived my entire childhood believing he was going to kill me.

8. Ew ew ew this is not okay.

My mum’s boyfriend sloppily trying to fuck my mum all drunk as shit whilst we’re all sharing the same fucking Hotel room. I was 13.

7. Aww, little baby college boy.

Freshman college roommate watching porn on his laptop wearing headphones, humping his mattress like there’s no tomorrow.

6. Ohhhhh man this will do a number.

My mom and aunt talking, thinking 10 year old me was asleep.

Aunt, “Little Runs_N_Goses is so cute.”

Mom, ” No, he’s not very good looking at all.”

5. That puts Matchbox Twenty in a whole new light.

Sleeping over at a friends house when I was 14, all of us on the floor in living room. Couldn’t sleep. Two of my friends (guy and girl) directly next to me start doing freaky things to each other. I was extremely shy and a couple of years younger than them so I stayed quiet and hoped they’d stop. Had to listen to them for an hour while she made weird ass moaning squeaky noises and he was singing (in a weird slightly whispery singy voice) matchbox 20 songs to her while he did whatever he was doing. That was last time I slept over at a friends house.

4. It was definitely Edward Cullen.

I was at my bf’s apartment staying over, his roommate also happened to have some friends who were dating there as well, I was in my bf’s room and they were sleeping in the living room. They were definitely fucking. Weirdest thing of it all were these literal banging sounds, like someone was hitting the fucking wall.

The whole time I had to piss like a mother fucker but getting to the bathroom involved walking by the living room and I did not wanna risk it. When we woke up the next morning someone had ripped a chunk out of one of the curtains and the TV remote was snapped in half… to this day I don’t wanna know what the fuck was going on in there

3. Well this is kind of an amazing story.

My grandparents won $10000 at the casino, and they told all of their children (and presumably gave them some of that money) except my dad. My dad is a dick so I didn’t tell him either.

2. It’s sweet and terrible all at once.

I was a camp counselor… two girls very much liked to make hot or not lists. One of them suggested a male counselor was hot, and the other said he was saying mean things about me behind my back, which made him not hot. Hurt to hear that from my campers, but glad they supported me.

1. At least he found out before something happened.

My “friends” talking about going into my wallet later and steal my money, and then leave before I notice, I kicked them out

I do not know how I would react to these situations, but it wouldn’t be easy, that’s for sure!

Has this ever happened to you? Tell us about it in the comments!

The post People Recall the Worst Thing They’ve Heard While Pretending to Be Asleep appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Who Found a Loophole That Resulted in Some Serious Cash

We all dream about finding a hidden loophole that means we’re not as poor as we think, or that we don’t have to worry so much about our bank accounts, or that we might be able to take that vacation after all, but for most of us, we’re never going to be that lucky.

These 10 people were, though, and here are their secrets, in case you were wondering how they did it – and you know you are!

 

10. That person is the worst.

We had a situation at my old job (a huge, international company) where we’d work shifts, either 8/10/12 hours. Anything after 8 hours was overtime.

Sometimes we were scheduled for the next shift quite soon after the last one had ended, for example 05:00-12:00 and then 19:00-00:00.

Someone discovered that if there were less than 8 hours between shifts in a 24-hour period, anything after 8 hours total was paid the overtime rate.

We did it for ages and then in the context of some team chat, some twat asked one of the managers whether the above scheduling would still be feasible.

Turned out the management hadn’t even noticed and stopped it immediately. And back to minimum wage we went.

9. Milked the internet for all it’s worth.

Was on a cruise ship a few years ago that had a pay-per-minute Internet policy. You’d buy like 200 minutes of wifi access for $100 or whatever crazy price it was. They had a little portal that you went to, to start and stop the timer, and tell you how much time was remaining.

I quickly realized that the timer counted by whole minutes. That is, if I started at 12:00:01, and stopped it at 12:00:58, then it counted as 0 minutes of internet use.

For the entire cruise I took advantage of this. Start the timer, fire up your internet apps like Facebook and Instagram and let your timeline and emails download, or launch a website and let it load. Stop the timer. Browse your feed and photos and read your website and emails offline, compose posts and replies etc. Start the timer again to send/upload, stop it again within a minute.

I milked those 200 minutes for an entire 3 week cruise and still had 45 minutes left over at the end.

8. That’s a lot of potatoes!

Not me, but a friend of mine (among others I’d assume) managed to get an entire sales campaign cancelled that a bank in my country did.

IIRC the bank tried to promote one of their debit cards (which are basically prepaid credit cards) via some bonuses and gifts you’d get as customer, e.g. one of 20 products you can choose for free if you start using it etc.

One of these bonuses they offered was a small payback, you’d get after each purchase. What they did was basically rounding up the amount you paid (to full Euros) and give you the difference. So if you bought something for 27.63€ you’d get 37 cents gifted from this bank.

What he then did was only possible because we were university students back then, had very flexible work time and some of our friends were temping in super markets… he went to the super market our friends worked at at times when basically no one else was there and purchased hundreds of single potatoes. Each one = one purchase with the card. Depending on their weight each of these potatoes was like 2ct or 3ct, so for each purchase he got 98ct or 97ct gifted from the bank, making him profit about 94-96ct for each potato. He got about 250€ (plus an unreasonable amount of free potatoes) in 2 days with this until the bank called him like “uh… could you like maybe stop that…?” and he just shamelessly responded “why?” to which the bank person on the phone had no good answer. So then he just went on and made some more money until the whole incentive thing got completely cancelled a few days later.

Fun times.

7. Living rent-free is actually the loophole here.

Right out of college I worked a job that had a 100% match to any retirement contributions. I was young, lived rent free with my parents, Had no student debt, and could grab OT nearly every week. After some budgeting I figured I could throw 80% of my paycheck into retirement. I did so for 9 months until my supervisor called me into the office to sign a policy change that limited retirement contributions to 50%. I’d stashed away nearly $35,000 on about a ~$32,000 annual pay. I had no life for about a year, but damn if it didn’t jump start my retirement.

6. Kids are the best at finding loopholes.

When my brothers and I were 6-10 years old we found a crane candy game where you were “guaranteed to win” something. We found a laser sensor in the area where you pick up your prize. This indicated whether or not something had dropped. So, by holding the flap door open at the bottom the sensor was never triggered so for 25 cents we nearly emptied the machine. Thanks Red Robin!

5. I’m pretty sure this is why they went out of business.

Moviepass was $10 a month and you could use it to get 1 movie ticket a day. I lived next door to a Regal, and I went everyday because Regal would give their reward points for every ticket purchased. They didn’t care that Moviepass was paying for the tickets then giving them to me as part of my subscription. In 8 months I spent $80 on the subscription and saw everything that came out and I racked up enough Regal rewards points for about 50 free popcorns or drinks.

Moviepass went out of business but I still had all the Regal rewards.

4. I must have missed out on this one.

Early in the smartphone world there was an app that gave you points for watching TV shows and ads that you could turn in for gift cards or discount codes.

The rewards were not great but over time and by waiting for gift card restock you could make out like a bandit. However, the shows they wanted you to watch were not my cup of tea (a lot of prime time shows and reality shows) and I wasn’t home for a lot of them so I thought I was SOL. Turns out, the app had a grace period where if you had recorded the show on your TV you could still get credit, so I just pirated the shows and set my phone up to “watch” them while I did something else. Then I realized it only listened for about 2 minutes before it gave you credit so I was able to get through the log of shows in about 40 minutes and make a killing.

Because of that app I was able to get a kitchen aid stand mixer, a smoker and a bunch of other stuff because of the gift cards.

3. No one feels bad about scamming university parking, either.

In college there was a parking garage that charged around $2/hour. I couldn’t get a parking pass but learned the heated garage that charged $2/hour had a $20 fee for a lost ticket. I would park my car in there for a few weeks at a time and when I had to leave would lose my ticket and be forced to pay the $20 lost ticket fee.

A parking pass was around $500 to park outside and I ended up paying around $300 in lost ticket fees to park in the heated garage.

2. So many places forget to take the coupon.

I bought a card once for $10 that had 16 coupons for a BOGO pizza from Dominos. They were little stickers that you were supposed to pull off and hand in when using them, but they never asked for the stickers. They also didn’t have an expiration on them. They also didn’t tell anyone it was supposed to be one per order.

We’d order 8 pizzas at a time, used them for two years. Thousands of dollars of free pizza really help when you’re a broke college kid.

1. Wow, that’s a big one.

When I was at university, the pay-for campus printers all worked on a system where you’d print your documents, release them at the printer, they’d print, then after they’ve finished printing, it would then contact the server to get the cost deducted from your balance. That final step always took a while and I discovered in my first year that if I cancelled the print job as the final page was rolling out of the printer, it wouldn’t deduct the cost from my balance. With this method I got free printing for nearly two years before they upgraded the system!

 

I’m so jealous! Maybe one day it will happen to me, too.

Have you ever been in the right place at the right time? Tell us your story in the comments!

The post People Who Found a Loophole That Resulted in Some Serious Cash appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Who Found a Loophole That Resulted in Some Serious Cash

We all dream about finding a hidden loophole that means we’re not as poor as we think, or that we don’t have to worry so much about our bank accounts, or that we might be able to take that vacation after all, but for most of us, we’re never going to be that lucky.

These 10 people were, though, and here are their secrets, in case you were wondering how they did it – and you know you are!

 

10. That person is the worst.

We had a situation at my old job (a huge, international company) where we’d work shifts, either 8/10/12 hours. Anything after 8 hours was overtime.

Sometimes we were scheduled for the next shift quite soon after the last one had ended, for example 05:00-12:00 and then 19:00-00:00.

Someone discovered that if there were less than 8 hours between shifts in a 24-hour period, anything after 8 hours total was paid the overtime rate.

We did it for ages and then in the context of some team chat, some twat asked one of the managers whether the above scheduling would still be feasible.

Turned out the management hadn’t even noticed and stopped it immediately. And back to minimum wage we went.

9. Milked the internet for all it’s worth.

Was on a cruise ship a few years ago that had a pay-per-minute Internet policy. You’d buy like 200 minutes of wifi access for $100 or whatever crazy price it was. They had a little portal that you went to, to start and stop the timer, and tell you how much time was remaining.

I quickly realized that the timer counted by whole minutes. That is, if I started at 12:00:01, and stopped it at 12:00:58, then it counted as 0 minutes of internet use.

For the entire cruise I took advantage of this. Start the timer, fire up your internet apps like Facebook and Instagram and let your timeline and emails download, or launch a website and let it load. Stop the timer. Browse your feed and photos and read your website and emails offline, compose posts and replies etc. Start the timer again to send/upload, stop it again within a minute.

I milked those 200 minutes for an entire 3 week cruise and still had 45 minutes left over at the end.

8. That’s a lot of potatoes!

Not me, but a friend of mine (among others I’d assume) managed to get an entire sales campaign cancelled that a bank in my country did.

IIRC the bank tried to promote one of their debit cards (which are basically prepaid credit cards) via some bonuses and gifts you’d get as customer, e.g. one of 20 products you can choose for free if you start using it etc.

One of these bonuses they offered was a small payback, you’d get after each purchase. What they did was basically rounding up the amount you paid (to full Euros) and give you the difference. So if you bought something for 27.63€ you’d get 37 cents gifted from this bank.

What he then did was only possible because we were university students back then, had very flexible work time and some of our friends were temping in super markets… he went to the super market our friends worked at at times when basically no one else was there and purchased hundreds of single potatoes. Each one = one purchase with the card. Depending on their weight each of these potatoes was like 2ct or 3ct, so for each purchase he got 98ct or 97ct gifted from the bank, making him profit about 94-96ct for each potato. He got about 250€ (plus an unreasonable amount of free potatoes) in 2 days with this until the bank called him like “uh… could you like maybe stop that…?” and he just shamelessly responded “why?” to which the bank person on the phone had no good answer. So then he just went on and made some more money until the whole incentive thing got completely cancelled a few days later.

Fun times.

7. Living rent-free is actually the loophole here.

Right out of college I worked a job that had a 100% match to any retirement contributions. I was young, lived rent free with my parents, Had no student debt, and could grab OT nearly every week. After some budgeting I figured I could throw 80% of my paycheck into retirement. I did so for 9 months until my supervisor called me into the office to sign a policy change that limited retirement contributions to 50%. I’d stashed away nearly $35,000 on about a ~$32,000 annual pay. I had no life for about a year, but damn if it didn’t jump start my retirement.

6. Kids are the best at finding loopholes.

When my brothers and I were 6-10 years old we found a crane candy game where you were “guaranteed to win” something. We found a laser sensor in the area where you pick up your prize. This indicated whether or not something had dropped. So, by holding the flap door open at the bottom the sensor was never triggered so for 25 cents we nearly emptied the machine. Thanks Red Robin!

5. I’m pretty sure this is why they went out of business.

Moviepass was $10 a month and you could use it to get 1 movie ticket a day. I lived next door to a Regal, and I went everyday because Regal would give their reward points for every ticket purchased. They didn’t care that Moviepass was paying for the tickets then giving them to me as part of my subscription. In 8 months I spent $80 on the subscription and saw everything that came out and I racked up enough Regal rewards points for about 50 free popcorns or drinks.

Moviepass went out of business but I still had all the Regal rewards.

4. I must have missed out on this one.

Early in the smartphone world there was an app that gave you points for watching TV shows and ads that you could turn in for gift cards or discount codes.

The rewards were not great but over time and by waiting for gift card restock you could make out like a bandit. However, the shows they wanted you to watch were not my cup of tea (a lot of prime time shows and reality shows) and I wasn’t home for a lot of them so I thought I was SOL. Turns out, the app had a grace period where if you had recorded the show on your TV you could still get credit, so I just pirated the shows and set my phone up to “watch” them while I did something else. Then I realized it only listened for about 2 minutes before it gave you credit so I was able to get through the log of shows in about 40 minutes and make a killing.

Because of that app I was able to get a kitchen aid stand mixer, a smoker and a bunch of other stuff because of the gift cards.

3. No one feels bad about scamming university parking, either.

In college there was a parking garage that charged around $2/hour. I couldn’t get a parking pass but learned the heated garage that charged $2/hour had a $20 fee for a lost ticket. I would park my car in there for a few weeks at a time and when I had to leave would lose my ticket and be forced to pay the $20 lost ticket fee.

A parking pass was around $500 to park outside and I ended up paying around $300 in lost ticket fees to park in the heated garage.

2. So many places forget to take the coupon.

I bought a card once for $10 that had 16 coupons for a BOGO pizza from Dominos. They were little stickers that you were supposed to pull off and hand in when using them, but they never asked for the stickers. They also didn’t have an expiration on them. They also didn’t tell anyone it was supposed to be one per order.

We’d order 8 pizzas at a time, used them for two years. Thousands of dollars of free pizza really help when you’re a broke college kid.

1. Wow, that’s a big one.

When I was at university, the pay-for campus printers all worked on a system where you’d print your documents, release them at the printer, they’d print, then after they’ve finished printing, it would then contact the server to get the cost deducted from your balance. That final step always took a while and I discovered in my first year that if I cancelled the print job as the final page was rolling out of the printer, it wouldn’t deduct the cost from my balance. With this method I got free printing for nearly two years before they upgraded the system!

 

I’m so jealous! Maybe one day it will happen to me, too.

Have you ever been in the right place at the right time? Tell us your story in the comments!

The post People Who Found a Loophole That Resulted in Some Serious Cash appeared first on UberFacts.

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These Unsolved Mysteries Will Definitely Creep You Out

I love Unsolved Mysteries, the old version and the new one. Even though they can give me the willies, I love trying to solve crimes, and honestly, there’s just something fascinating about the darker side of human nature.

These 15 stories definitely fit the bill, so if you’re into that sort of thing, too, you need to take a look!

15. Who would run away during a storm?

Asha Degree. Girl leaves her house in the middle of the night during a storm and disappeared. The only problem is that she was terrified of thunder and lightning and had no motive for leaving because her home life was fine. Then her clothes and backpack were found a year later in an abandoned construction site.

14. Lost at sea stories are inherently creepy.

MV Joyita

Barnacle growth high above the usual waterline on the port side showed that Joyita had been listing heavily for some time.

There was some damage to the superstructure. Her flying bridge had been smashed away and the deckhouse had light damage and broken windows. A canvas awning had been rigged on top of the deckhouse behind the bridge.

Joyita carried a dinghy and three Carley life rafts, but all were missing. She did not carry enough lifejackets for everyone on board.

The starboard engine was found to be covered by mattresses, while the port engine’s clutch was still partially disassembled, showing that the vessel was still running on only one engine.

An auxiliary pump had been rigged in the engine room, mounted on a plank of wood slung between the main engines. However, it had not been connected.

The radio on board was tuned to the international distress channel, but when the equipment was inspected, a break was found in the cable between the set and the aerial. The cable had been painted over, obscuring the break. This would have limited the range of the radio to about 2 miles (3.2 km).

The electric clocks on board (wired into the vessel’s generator) had stopped at 10:25 and the switches for the cabin lighting and navigation lights were on, implying that whatever had occurred happened at night. The ships’ logbook, sextant, mechanical chronometer and other navigational equipment, as well as the firearms Miller kept in the boat,[7] were missing.

A doctor’s bag was found on deck, containing a stethoscope, a scalpel, and four lengths of blood-stained bandages.

13. I need to see this movie immediately.

Who was Perseus?

From 1943 to 1946, the Soviet Union had a high level spy in the Manhattan Project. Codenamed Perseus, this spy was a scientist at the White Sands missile testing site in NM, and the main research facilities in Los Alamos. Perseus saw pretty much the entire Project start to finish, giving the Russians everything they needed to get to work on their own bomb.

The fact that they were able to do so within 4 years of the end of WWII when their nations was still devastated is proof positive that Perseus helped a great deal.

And to top it all off, Perseus was never caught or positively identified.

12. Most people believe he was a Cold War spy.

The Tamám Shud case, also known as the Mystery of the Somerton Man, is an unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 am, 1 December 1948, on the Somerton Park beach, just south of Adelaide, South Australia. The case is named after the Persian phrase tamám shud, meaning “ended” or “finished,” which was printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man’s trousers.

The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám. Tamám was misspelt as Tamán in many early reports, and this error has often been repeated, leading to confusion about the name in the media.

11. The more you dig, the creepier it gets.

The 1987 Arkansas murders of Don Henry and Kevin Ives.

And every single possible witness surrounding them. Like Keith McKaskle, who claimed to be on the tracks that night.

He talked to the special prosecutor about what he saw, then realized the prosecutor was dirty. After coming forth as a witness he began saying goodbye to his loved ones and planned his own funeral arrangements. Shortly after he was stabbed 113 times.

10. I don’t like the sound of that.

This is my favorite weird and barely known one:

Back in 2013 an unknown group assaulted a power substation in California. By all appearances it was pretty sophisticated: scouted firing positions, all casings wiped of prints, they targeted transformers so they’d take time to overheat before triggering any alarms, also knew exactly when the police would arrive.

No suspect or motive to this day, they also cut some fiber optic cables in a vault nearby. Conspiracy types think it was a dry run by Russia or possibly China to see how effective an attack like that might be.

9. Whoa I never knew about these.

At the start of lots of chapters of the Qur’an there are mysterious groups of letters.

No one knows what they mean. Although there are lots of theories.

8. So many cases that definitely weren’t suicides, y’all.

The “suicide” of Ellen Greenberg.

27 stab wounds in different areas of the body.

7. I am never going to be okay until we know what happened to the Sodder children.

There are a few that bug me.

The Sodder children; their house burned down in the middle of the night. Several of the kids were presumed dead, but their bodies were never found in the debris and it never burned hot enough to cremate them. It started to look extremely suspicious and the parents until their deaths believed that they had been taken for some reason. Many years down the line they did receive a photo and cryptic note from someone claiming to be their son but it was never authenticated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance

The boy in the box. A deceased little boy, found beaten, recently shaved of his hair and abandoned in the box for a bassinet that he was way too old for. The photos and reconstructions of him released to the public in the desperate hope of identifying him are haunting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_in_the_Box_(Philadelphia))

The Saint Louis Jane Doe, a little girl found in an abandoned house, decapitated and bound at the hands. They have no dental records or facial reconstruction to go from. The case has led nowhere, she’s just nameless, lost to time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe

Tri-state Crematory. A devastating case of a man called back from his college football career to take over his father’s business when the father fell ill. Over time people started noticing… bodies… and body parts. On the grounds. Just hanging around. When someone finally took the reports seriously they found that he’d been piling bodies up randomly all over the property, often when it would’ve been much easier to cremate them instead of hauling them around to where they were dumped. The guy gave families canisters of cement dust instead of ashes. The mystery on this one is… why. The guy never gave up the answer to what happened there and will only insist that there are no answers. His lawyer theorized he had mercury poisoning from cremating amalgam fillings, but that doesn’t really explain why you would dump a body instead of cremating it when the latter takes less effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Crematory_scandal

The West Memphis Three case. All of the Satanic Panic mess obscured so much that will probably go unanswered now. A bloody man covered in mud stumbled into a Bojangles the night those little boys went missing. Cops barely investigated that incident and lost the blood evidence they did collect regarding it. WHAT was going on with John Mark Byers and Terry Hobbs, two dads of two of those kids, both turning up with evidence and acting at different points like they may have been involved?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three

6. Yes I would also like to know what happened.

What happened to Brian Shaffer

This happened in my home town. This med student went to a bar with friends and then fully disappeared off the face of the earth.

The podcast True Crime Garage has an incredible series on this case. The hosts are both from Columbus and around Brian’s age. They talk through the whole case in depth and they also have a few guests that they talk with as well.

5. That last part though…

Flight 19 of December 5, 1945.

Five bomber craft on a routine training run became lost while heading back and eventually disappeared entirely. Audio has them saying that they thought they had ended up over the Florida Keys, but wind could not have allowed that.

Even more interesting is the fact the rescue craft dispatched to locate them also disappeared.

4.  This continues to bother so many of us.

The guys motive for shooting up all those people in Vegas.

3. Oh yeah this one is definitely up there.

The Hinterkaifeck Murders … super creepy and the fact that there was evidence the murderers were in the house watching the family for awhile before killing them just totally freaks me out

2. What could have happened?!

The U.S.S. Cyclops. A coal ship. Disappeared with 306 men. The largest U.S. Navy loss of life that didn’t involve combat.

1. It seems like we should be able to figure this out?

What on Earth happened to the Tromp family.

So it’s this Australian family who owned a Berry farm. Somehow Mr and Mrs Tromp and their three grown kids developed the belief that they weren’t safe and they needed to flee their farm without cell phones or anything traceable (credit cards, etc). It sounds like the oldest son wasn’t sold on whatever it was that led them to flee. He brought his phone, but eventually it got tossed from the car. He ended up bailing first and taking a train home. From there the rest of the family slowly separated and suffered various degrees of emotional breaks.

The two girls stole a car. Somehow they got separated and one made it home, but the other was found on the floor in the backseat of some guys car in a catatonic state. (he spotted her after he started down the road). Eventually the parents were found wandering around aimlessly. Fortunately they were all ok physically but wtf happened? Was someone actually after them? Were they delusional? As far as I know the family hasn’t released any updates.

I have such a need to know more, y’all!

Do you have a favorite unsolved case? If it’s not on this list I want to hear about it in the comments!

The post These Unsolved Mysteries Will Definitely Creep You Out appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

These Unsolved Mysteries Will Definitely Creep You Out

I love Unsolved Mysteries, the old version and the new one. Even though they can give me the willies, I love trying to solve crimes, and honestly, there’s just something fascinating about the darker side of human nature.

These 15 stories definitely fit the bill, so if you’re into that sort of thing, too, you need to take a look!

15. Who would run away during a storm?

Asha Degree. Girl leaves her house in the middle of the night during a storm and disappeared. The only problem is that she was terrified of thunder and lightning and had no motive for leaving because her home life was fine. Then her clothes and backpack were found a year later in an abandoned construction site.

14. Lost at sea stories are inherently creepy.

MV Joyita

Barnacle growth high above the usual waterline on the port side showed that Joyita had been listing heavily for some time.

There was some damage to the superstructure. Her flying bridge had been smashed away and the deckhouse had light damage and broken windows. A canvas awning had been rigged on top of the deckhouse behind the bridge.

Joyita carried a dinghy and three Carley life rafts, but all were missing. She did not carry enough lifejackets for everyone on board.

The starboard engine was found to be covered by mattresses, while the port engine’s clutch was still partially disassembled, showing that the vessel was still running on only one engine.

An auxiliary pump had been rigged in the engine room, mounted on a plank of wood slung between the main engines. However, it had not been connected.

The radio on board was tuned to the international distress channel, but when the equipment was inspected, a break was found in the cable between the set and the aerial. The cable had been painted over, obscuring the break. This would have limited the range of the radio to about 2 miles (3.2 km).

The electric clocks on board (wired into the vessel’s generator) had stopped at 10:25 and the switches for the cabin lighting and navigation lights were on, implying that whatever had occurred happened at night. The ships’ logbook, sextant, mechanical chronometer and other navigational equipment, as well as the firearms Miller kept in the boat,[7] were missing.

A doctor’s bag was found on deck, containing a stethoscope, a scalpel, and four lengths of blood-stained bandages.

13. I need to see this movie immediately.

Who was Perseus?

From 1943 to 1946, the Soviet Union had a high level spy in the Manhattan Project. Codenamed Perseus, this spy was a scientist at the White Sands missile testing site in NM, and the main research facilities in Los Alamos. Perseus saw pretty much the entire Project start to finish, giving the Russians everything they needed to get to work on their own bomb.

The fact that they were able to do so within 4 years of the end of WWII when their nations was still devastated is proof positive that Perseus helped a great deal.

And to top it all off, Perseus was never caught or positively identified.

12. Most people believe he was a Cold War spy.

The Tamám Shud case, also known as the Mystery of the Somerton Man, is an unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 am, 1 December 1948, on the Somerton Park beach, just south of Adelaide, South Australia. The case is named after the Persian phrase tamám shud, meaning “ended” or “finished,” which was printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man’s trousers.

The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám. Tamám was misspelt as Tamán in many early reports, and this error has often been repeated, leading to confusion about the name in the media.

11. The more you dig, the creepier it gets.

The 1987 Arkansas murders of Don Henry and Kevin Ives.

And every single possible witness surrounding them. Like Keith McKaskle, who claimed to be on the tracks that night.

He talked to the special prosecutor about what he saw, then realized the prosecutor was dirty. After coming forth as a witness he began saying goodbye to his loved ones and planned his own funeral arrangements. Shortly after he was stabbed 113 times.

10. I don’t like the sound of that.

This is my favorite weird and barely known one:

Back in 2013 an unknown group assaulted a power substation in California. By all appearances it was pretty sophisticated: scouted firing positions, all casings wiped of prints, they targeted transformers so they’d take time to overheat before triggering any alarms, also knew exactly when the police would arrive.

No suspect or motive to this day, they also cut some fiber optic cables in a vault nearby. Conspiracy types think it was a dry run by Russia or possibly China to see how effective an attack like that might be.

9. Whoa I never knew about these.

At the start of lots of chapters of the Qur’an there are mysterious groups of letters.

No one knows what they mean. Although there are lots of theories.

8. So many cases that definitely weren’t suicides, y’all.

The “suicide” of Ellen Greenberg.

27 stab wounds in different areas of the body.

7. I am never going to be okay until we know what happened to the Sodder children.

There are a few that bug me.

The Sodder children; their house burned down in the middle of the night. Several of the kids were presumed dead, but their bodies were never found in the debris and it never burned hot enough to cremate them. It started to look extremely suspicious and the parents until their deaths believed that they had been taken for some reason. Many years down the line they did receive a photo and cryptic note from someone claiming to be their son but it was never authenticated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance

The boy in the box. A deceased little boy, found beaten, recently shaved of his hair and abandoned in the box for a bassinet that he was way too old for. The photos and reconstructions of him released to the public in the desperate hope of identifying him are haunting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_in_the_Box_(Philadelphia))

The Saint Louis Jane Doe, a little girl found in an abandoned house, decapitated and bound at the hands. They have no dental records or facial reconstruction to go from. The case has led nowhere, she’s just nameless, lost to time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe

Tri-state Crematory. A devastating case of a man called back from his college football career to take over his father’s business when the father fell ill. Over time people started noticing… bodies… and body parts. On the grounds. Just hanging around. When someone finally took the reports seriously they found that he’d been piling bodies up randomly all over the property, often when it would’ve been much easier to cremate them instead of hauling them around to where they were dumped. The guy gave families canisters of cement dust instead of ashes. The mystery on this one is… why. The guy never gave up the answer to what happened there and will only insist that there are no answers. His lawyer theorized he had mercury poisoning from cremating amalgam fillings, but that doesn’t really explain why you would dump a body instead of cremating it when the latter takes less effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Crematory_scandal

The West Memphis Three case. All of the Satanic Panic mess obscured so much that will probably go unanswered now. A bloody man covered in mud stumbled into a Bojangles the night those little boys went missing. Cops barely investigated that incident and lost the blood evidence they did collect regarding it. WHAT was going on with John Mark Byers and Terry Hobbs, two dads of two of those kids, both turning up with evidence and acting at different points like they may have been involved?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three

6. Yes I would also like to know what happened.

What happened to Brian Shaffer

This happened in my home town. This med student went to a bar with friends and then fully disappeared off the face of the earth.

The podcast True Crime Garage has an incredible series on this case. The hosts are both from Columbus and around Brian’s age. They talk through the whole case in depth and they also have a few guests that they talk with as well.

5. That last part though…

Flight 19 of December 5, 1945.

Five bomber craft on a routine training run became lost while heading back and eventually disappeared entirely. Audio has them saying that they thought they had ended up over the Florida Keys, but wind could not have allowed that.

Even more interesting is the fact the rescue craft dispatched to locate them also disappeared.

4.  This continues to bother so many of us.

The guys motive for shooting up all those people in Vegas.

3. Oh yeah this one is definitely up there.

The Hinterkaifeck Murders … super creepy and the fact that there was evidence the murderers were in the house watching the family for awhile before killing them just totally freaks me out

2. What could have happened?!

The U.S.S. Cyclops. A coal ship. Disappeared with 306 men. The largest U.S. Navy loss of life that didn’t involve combat.

1. It seems like we should be able to figure this out?

What on Earth happened to the Tromp family.

So it’s this Australian family who owned a Berry farm. Somehow Mr and Mrs Tromp and their three grown kids developed the belief that they weren’t safe and they needed to flee their farm without cell phones or anything traceable (credit cards, etc). It sounds like the oldest son wasn’t sold on whatever it was that led them to flee. He brought his phone, but eventually it got tossed from the car. He ended up bailing first and taking a train home. From there the rest of the family slowly separated and suffered various degrees of emotional breaks.

The two girls stole a car. Somehow they got separated and one made it home, but the other was found on the floor in the backseat of some guys car in a catatonic state. (he spotted her after he started down the road). Eventually the parents were found wandering around aimlessly. Fortunately they were all ok physically but wtf happened? Was someone actually after them? Were they delusional? As far as I know the family hasn’t released any updates.

I have such a need to know more, y’all!

Do you have a favorite unsolved case? If it’s not on this list I want to hear about it in the comments!

The post These Unsolved Mysteries Will Definitely Creep You Out appeared first on UberFacts.

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These Unsolved Mysteries Might Give You Goosebumps

There’s something about true crime stories and unsolved mysteries that really intrigue a lot of people. I don’t know whether it’s the peek behind the curtain of human nature, the inborn love of untangling mysteries, both, or something else entirely, but so many of us can’t get enough.

And even if you think you’ve heard it all, I’m willing to be at least a few of these 13 unsolved mysteries will give you serious goosebumps.

13. When everyone was truly in on it together.

Ken McElroy’s murder. This douche canoe terrorized an entire town until the town decided that they had enough and then somebody shot him in broad daylight in front of a bunch of witnesses.

To be fair, he probably deserved it. But what makes it interesting is that everyone claims to have had their eyes closed or be tying their shoe at the time or something so “oh boy, I wish I could help officer but I didn’t see anything.”

12. I can’t with missing children stories.

The disappearance of the Beaumont children 26th January1966

I’ve grown up hearing about this my whole life & ive been obsessed it’s horrible for those poor parents to never know.

11. Someone out there knows the truth.

Who killed jonbenet ramsey?

This is the one that bugs me the most!! How is this still unsolved?

The theory that the brother did it and the parents protected him is a pretty good theory, but how could investigators fail to find any proof of that?

10. They’ll never tell.

Which of the three astronauts aboard Apollo 10 was responsible for the floating turd

“I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine,” said command module pilot John Young. Lunar module pilot Eugene Cernan claimed, “I don’t think it’s one of mine,” while Stafford was more specific in his denials. “Mine was a little more sticky than that,” he told the others.

9. This would be a huge one to solve.

The Tylenol murders from the 1980’s where like 5 or 6 people from Chicago consumed Tylenol laced with cyanide and died. They had one suspect but he want nail for it but still went to prison because the tried to extort Johnson and Johnson, the company that makes Tylenol.

8. I love obscure bits of history.

Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River. A pretty cool mostly forgotten story about a man chased by the RCMP through the north.

7. The truth is out there.

In 1994, close to a hundred school children (sixty on record) described seeing a disc-shaped craft land behind their school during morning break time in Ruwa, Zimbabwe.

Many of them interacted with beings, that fit the Grey alien description – with the children receiving what is described as some sort of telepathic communication. They all still stick to their stories today.

Here is the original footage of the interviews with the kids at the school: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrM93GnmY4M

6. This story is actually insane.

How a lower class English woman became an important Egyptian scholar based on her “memories” from her supposed past life as an Ancient Egyptian Priestess.

She actually described a garden in an ancient temple that was later discovered matching her description and in the location she said it was. She knew things that hadn’t been published before and had been worshipping Ancient Egyptian gods from the age of 3.

5. I kind of like the idea that he could be an elaborate hoax.

We still have no definitive proof of who this Socrates guy is.

On one hand, he’s mentioned constantly by philosophers from his time, often used as an example character, and several works are attributed to his name. On the other hand, we have countless legal records and censuses that confirm the existence of Aristotle and Plato but NONE that link back to Socrates.

He’s either a very prolific philosopher, or an in-joke that classical philosophers would reference when they didn’t know who to attribute quotes to.

4. People will never get tired of this mystery.

The identity of and what happened to D.B Cooper. A man on a plane called himself D.B Cooper and claimed to have a bomb in use suitcase. He took the flight crew hostage and when he got the money he asked for he had the flight crew start flying again.

Eventually he jumped out of the plane with a couple of parachutes and the money. No one knows where he went or if he even survived.

3. Sort of like Canada’s version of the man int he iron mask.

‘Unknown person’ being held at Canada’s Maximum Security Prison for 7 years Refuses to identify himself and no one knows who he is.

Caught in 2013 for fraud, he claimed to be ‘Herman Emmanuel Fankem’, a French national residing in Montreal but when French authorities were contacted for deportation, they claimed that his papers was forged and they have no record of him. Further investigations across 11 countries revealed that he appeared in several other nations under different aliases but no confirmation of real identity.

He’s uncooperative and refused to reveal his real identity and past. Without his identity, police cannot deport him. So, he is struck in the max sec prison. He was supposed to testify publicly before Immigration and Refugee board but the hearing was made private at the last minute with no public and media.

2. Well damn now I really need to know what happened.

Magdalena Zuk a Polish woman who died in Egypt.

She had arranged a trip to Egypt at very short notice as a surprise for her partner. He didn’t have a valid passport and couldn’t get one on time, so she went alone.

Almost immediately, she began to act incredibly erratic, but was being helped by a Polish-speaking Egyptian man at the hotel. The hotel didn’t want her, the hospital turned her away, and when she tried to board an earlier flight home, she was not allowed to board because of her behaviour. Eventually she was admitted to hospital but, despite being restrained, managed to jump (?) out of the window. The boyfriend had arranged a mutual friend to come get her but he arrived to find her dead.

This conversation with her boyfriend is one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen.

There is evidence that the Egyptian man actually knew the boyfriend and theories that the boyfriend was somehow in on all this, which is all very bizarre considering she planned the trip without him even knowing.

1. What do you think?

The Voynich Manuscript.

Nobody knows if it’s legit or just an elaborate joke.

I’m about to lose myself in a Wikipedia hole, how about you?

What mystery do you really wish would be solved? If its’ not here, tell us about it in the comments!

The post These Unsolved Mysteries Might Give You Goosebumps appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

These Unsolved Mysteries Might Give You Goosebumps

There’s something about true crime stories and unsolved mysteries that really intrigue a lot of people. I don’t know whether it’s the peek behind the curtain of human nature, the inborn love of untangling mysteries, both, or something else entirely, but so many of us can’t get enough.

And even if you think you’ve heard it all, I’m willing to be at least a few of these 13 unsolved mysteries will give you serious goosebumps.

13. When everyone was truly in on it together.

Ken McElroy’s murder. This douche canoe terrorized an entire town until the town decided that they had enough and then somebody shot him in broad daylight in front of a bunch of witnesses.

To be fair, he probably deserved it. But what makes it interesting is that everyone claims to have had their eyes closed or be tying their shoe at the time or something so “oh boy, I wish I could help officer but I didn’t see anything.”

12. I can’t with missing children stories.

The disappearance of the Beaumont children 26th January1966

I’ve grown up hearing about this my whole life & ive been obsessed it’s horrible for those poor parents to never know.

11. Someone out there knows the truth.

Who killed jonbenet ramsey?

This is the one that bugs me the most!! How is this still unsolved?

The theory that the brother did it and the parents protected him is a pretty good theory, but how could investigators fail to find any proof of that?

10. They’ll never tell.

Which of the three astronauts aboard Apollo 10 was responsible for the floating turd

“I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine,” said command module pilot John Young. Lunar module pilot Eugene Cernan claimed, “I don’t think it’s one of mine,” while Stafford was more specific in his denials. “Mine was a little more sticky than that,” he told the others.

9. This would be a huge one to solve.

The Tylenol murders from the 1980’s where like 5 or 6 people from Chicago consumed Tylenol laced with cyanide and died. They had one suspect but he want nail for it but still went to prison because the tried to extort Johnson and Johnson, the company that makes Tylenol.

8. I love obscure bits of history.

Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River. A pretty cool mostly forgotten story about a man chased by the RCMP through the north.

7. The truth is out there.

In 1994, close to a hundred school children (sixty on record) described seeing a disc-shaped craft land behind their school during morning break time in Ruwa, Zimbabwe.

Many of them interacted with beings, that fit the Grey alien description – with the children receiving what is described as some sort of telepathic communication. They all still stick to their stories today.

Here is the original footage of the interviews with the kids at the school: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrM93GnmY4M

6. This story is actually insane.

How a lower class English woman became an important Egyptian scholar based on her “memories” from her supposed past life as an Ancient Egyptian Priestess.

She actually described a garden in an ancient temple that was later discovered matching her description and in the location she said it was. She knew things that hadn’t been published before and had been worshipping Ancient Egyptian gods from the age of 3.

5. I kind of like the idea that he could be an elaborate hoax.

We still have no definitive proof of who this Socrates guy is.

On one hand, he’s mentioned constantly by philosophers from his time, often used as an example character, and several works are attributed to his name. On the other hand, we have countless legal records and censuses that confirm the existence of Aristotle and Plato but NONE that link back to Socrates.

He’s either a very prolific philosopher, or an in-joke that classical philosophers would reference when they didn’t know who to attribute quotes to.

4. People will never get tired of this mystery.

The identity of and what happened to D.B Cooper. A man on a plane called himself D.B Cooper and claimed to have a bomb in use suitcase. He took the flight crew hostage and when he got the money he asked for he had the flight crew start flying again.

Eventually he jumped out of the plane with a couple of parachutes and the money. No one knows where he went or if he even survived.

3. Sort of like Canada’s version of the man int he iron mask.

‘Unknown person’ being held at Canada’s Maximum Security Prison for 7 years Refuses to identify himself and no one knows who he is.

Caught in 2013 for fraud, he claimed to be ‘Herman Emmanuel Fankem’, a French national residing in Montreal but when French authorities were contacted for deportation, they claimed that his papers was forged and they have no record of him. Further investigations across 11 countries revealed that he appeared in several other nations under different aliases but no confirmation of real identity.

He’s uncooperative and refused to reveal his real identity and past. Without his identity, police cannot deport him. So, he is struck in the max sec prison. He was supposed to testify publicly before Immigration and Refugee board but the hearing was made private at the last minute with no public and media.

2. Well damn now I really need to know what happened.

Magdalena Zuk a Polish woman who died in Egypt.

She had arranged a trip to Egypt at very short notice as a surprise for her partner. He didn’t have a valid passport and couldn’t get one on time, so she went alone.

Almost immediately, she began to act incredibly erratic, but was being helped by a Polish-speaking Egyptian man at the hotel. The hotel didn’t want her, the hospital turned her away, and when she tried to board an earlier flight home, she was not allowed to board because of her behaviour. Eventually she was admitted to hospital but, despite being restrained, managed to jump (?) out of the window. The boyfriend had arranged a mutual friend to come get her but he arrived to find her dead.

This conversation with her boyfriend is one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen.

There is evidence that the Egyptian man actually knew the boyfriend and theories that the boyfriend was somehow in on all this, which is all very bizarre considering she planned the trip without him even knowing.

1. What do you think?

The Voynich Manuscript.

Nobody knows if it’s legit or just an elaborate joke.

I’m about to lose myself in a Wikipedia hole, how about you?

What mystery do you really wish would be solved? If its’ not here, tell us about it in the comments!

The post These Unsolved Mysteries Might Give You Goosebumps appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

People Talk About the Jobs That Are Way Less Fun Than People Think

Everyone has ideas about what certain jobs are like – how fun they are, how easy or glamorous, et al – but the truth is, you never really know what a job is like until you’re the one doing it.

So there’s a good chance that you thought at least a few of these 15 jobs would be easy and cool…but according to the people who have done them, you were wrong.

15. I never really thought about it that way.

Working in a flower shop. It’s just like any other retail job, but people constantly tell you how fun your job must be.

Also helping grieving families chose funeral flowers is not fun.

14. I never really thought “teaching” 3yos sounded fun but to each his or her own!

Preschool teacher. Especially with new COVID-19 regulations.

Ever try social distancing 3 year olds?

13. I still think this would be a fun job.

I’m a marine biologist. I spent the last week measuring defrosted fish heads.

12. Not like it is on television, I guess.

I’m a Forensic Scientist and it’s literally the only thing people ask me about on dating apps.

It’s very technical work and it’s extremely routine.

11. If you love it you love it.

As a bioscientist it’s never really “Eureka” and much more

“Are my cells dead?”

“Are my fruit flies okay??”

“Are they going to fix the microscope?”

“Will the microscope ever be free to book??”

“Is 6 coffees too many??”

And a large part of my day is spent just doing tasks I need to do to keep my work running. Ie making buffers, sorting fly stocks, splitting cells, cleaning things, etc….

And yet I miss my lab!

10. This is hilarious; it really does seem like it would be pretty fun.

Oh my gosh, BUILD A BEAR.

Weirdest and most frustrating thing.

Granted I didn’t make it a super long time in the job and seeing kids so happy is great.

But they are really strict and the bad times get pretty bad.

9. It’s not the same as traveling for fun.

Not a specific job but traveling for work. I’m in tech and a lot of people starting out talk about wanting to go to customer sites and get “out in the field”…

I love to travel for fun but it’s hard to fit in the fun stuff when you have presentations and stuff to worry about and a lot of times your customers aren’t in the fun cities anyway.

I also think I prefer the stability in day-to-day schedule of traveling less frequently.

8. Working with the public is rarely fun.

Professional photographer.

Not like, hobbyist, but business-owning photographer. Sucks the love right out of your work.

Because you started the business to take pictures.

Then Karen doesn’t like the way she looks in one of them so she wants the whole set for free plus a reshoot for free plus those images for free.

Then the two high school kids getting into a very ill-advised marriage at EXACTLY 18 years old wants to book you for their wedding but their budget is only $50.

Then Karen calls back because she loves your work and wants to pay for another shoot, but only if you agree to do her friend’s daughter’s destination wedding for free.

Then you get a call from your last bride. It’s been two weeks since their wedding. WHERE THE FUCK ARE HER PICTURES?

Then you get no leads from a bridal expo.

Then a client finds out you don’t support their candidate and tries to take you to court to get her money back.

Then some insta thot who thinks she’s influencing people offers a “collab” where you take pro photos of her and she adds shitty insta filters to it and claims her friend took them. And she’s not gonna pay.

And then you get some entitled mom who wants you to photograph every day of her newborn’s first year of life for $100.

I went back to being a hobbyist.

7. It must be heartbreaking work.

A pediatric nurse, being a nurse for children and adolescents. Everyone in nursing school talks about how much they want to work with kids. The reality is that a pediatric nurse sees more cases of abuse and neglect than any other specialty. Doesn’t matter where you are in a pediatric hospital, it’s the thing you see most.

I’ve seen so many DCS (Department of Child Services) caseworkers that I’ve gotten to know some of them and became acquaintances with them. Sure working with children and adolescents is great, but people don’t think about the most essential piece of that puzzle which is their families.

It doesn’t matter how good of care you give to those kids, if you don’t loop the parents in to that care you may as well just not be doing anything for them.

6. Yeah I did this for a very short while as well.

barnes and noble, your job has literally NOTHING to do with books & it obviously attracts a lot of that type, myself included

5. It’s so not worth the pay.

Video editor.

The more I do it the more I can’t be arsed.

4. That is not enough money.

Park Ranger. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but a lot of days it was less “talk about cool animals while wearing your ranger hat” and more “the toilets are overflowing again, go clean the septic tank filter and stir the tank with a shovel.” With a little bit of “hey there’s a methed out guy down by the bridge, can you convince him to leave without killing anyone.” All for the low price of $26k/year with a college degree!

3. Why would you do this if you were allergic to bees?

Although not necessarily bad, Beekeeping.

Get used to the constant sound of buzzing during hive inspections/swarm removals plus wearing the protective suit in hot ass weather for hours on end (give or take the situation). Also, there appears to be a large number of beekeepers allergic to bees so epipens are a must.

2. I feel like this could depend on the day.

I do closed captioning.

While I joke that yes, I get paid to watch TV, it’s actually very tedious. And if you don’t actually enjoy the programming you’re being forced to watch something you don’t care for.

Or worse, if it’s something I do enjoy like a long form drama, we usually chop those up into 15 minute increments and split between everyone so I only see chunks and not always even in order it actually ruins the show for me.

1. You have to know what you’re getting into.

TV/Film production. I think most people dream of being the actor, the director, the people making the creative decisions, or the big shot producer calling the shots, but most of the people working in tv and film production are part of a machine, the grind, working in a system, trying to climb up to wherever they want to be.

Many don’t get to actualize their creative vision. Also the industry can be project based (job security concerns) and location limited (NY/LA, maybe other cities). Pay can be low starting out too, though it can be good if you work way up. But I did enjoy the type of people that work these jobs, a little more fun than the business folk I work with now.

I was definitely surprised by a few of these, how about you?

Which one shocked you the most? Share it with us in the comments!

The post People Talk About the Jobs That Are Way Less Fun Than People Think appeared first on UberFacts.