15 Archaeological Discoveries Scarier Than Any Horror Movie

The Indiana Jones movies are true to life. Not about that specific guy being real, or about certain magical canon being real, or about the archaeological profession being a parade of sex 'n Nazis. Still, here's what 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' and its ilk get right: archaeologists dig up crazy nightmare horrors often. So on this spooktacular episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt joins Jason Pargin (who writes for Cracked as David Wong) for a trip through the astonishing horrors found by actual real-life archaeologists, because that stuff is much scarier and more fascinating than any horror movie. Listen for the terrifying Aztec death whistle! Discover the ancient cave that devoured a guy! And gain a stronger sense of how pants-crappingly awful the past was (and how lucky we are to be in the present).

Footnotes:

John Dies At The End by David Wong (Tenth Anniversary Edition)

Richard "Rick" O'Connell (The Mummy Wikia)

Lara Croft (Original Timeline) (Tomb Raider Wiki)

7 Archaeological Discoveries Out Of Your Darkest Nightmares (Cracked) (features The Mummy Found Inside Buddha, The Corpses That Were Rebuilt Into Puppets, The Cemetery Full Of Deformed "Alien" Skulls, The 2,000-Year-Old Corpse That Refuses To Rot, The Prehistoric Plague House)

6 Scary Archaeological Finds (That Should've Stayed Hidden) (Cracked) (features The Aztec Shrieking Death-Whistles, The Guy Who Got Eaten By A Cave, Books Bound In Human Skin)

6 Archaeological Discoveries Scarier Than Any Horror Movie (Cracked) (features The Pits Full of Nothing but Severed Hands, The "Frankenstein" Skeletons, 33 People Who'd Been Chopped Into 15,000 Tiny Chunks, The Mass Cannibal Attack)

5 Sets Of Ancient Remains That Have Baffled The Experts (Cracked) (features the zombie & vampire burials)

The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies (The Atlantic)

1st Book Of Samuel, Chapter 18 (BibleHub)

The 6 Most Embarrassing Historical Artifacts Ever Discovered (Cracked) (features the witch bottles)

12 Incredible Historical Artifacts That Somehow Still Exist (The Cracked Podcast)

The Andy Daly Podcast Pilot Project: "Bonanas For Bonanza" with Dalton Wilcox (Earwolf)

the set of human sacrifice stories:

5 Sets Of Ancient Remains That Have Baffled The Experts (Cracked)

The 7 Most Terrifying Archaeological Discoveries (Cracked)

5 Creepy AF Historical Finds (You'll Wish Hadn't Been Found) (Cracked)