Web Video / Fascinating Horror

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Fascinating Horror (also known as Fascinating History) is a YouTuber from the UK who produces short documentaries primarily focused on historical accidents, disasters, and other tragedies. A key feature of the channel is doing away with the sort of sensationalism that might be present in other videos of the same type, instead putting emphasis on respectful presentation and thorough research. New episodes are released on Tuesdays.

Since the channel's debut in January 2019, it has gained 660,000 subscribers as of October 2021. There is also a German-language version of the channel called Faszinierender Schrecken.

This channel provides examples of:

• April Fools' Day:
  • "The Amity Bay Shark Attacks", a mockumentary that presents the events of Jaws 1 as if they really happened, was the gag for 2021. Apart from the subject, it's identical in style to the other real episodes.
  • For 2022, they covered "The Isla Nublar Incident". At the end of the video, the narrator even mentions that the 1993 incident "was not the last mass casualty event at the island".
  • 2023 gave us their coverage of "The Sinking of the SS Poseidon".
  • For 2024, they covered "The Glass Tower Disaster".
  • 2025 sees the channel cover "The 1996 Tornado Outbreak".
• Bittersweet Ending: As tragic as many of the topics are, there is a running theme that the deaths and injuries were not in vain, as they led to improved safety standards or equipment that help prevent or mitigate similar accidents.
• Compressed Adaptation: The April Fools' Day 2022 video covering "The Isla Nublar Incident" does not go into detail about Dennis Nedry's role in sabotaging Jurassic Park's systems, and does not name any character except for John Hammond. Specific details about the damage the dinosaurs caused are also left vague. In fact, the word 'dinosaur' isn't even used until the final two minutes of the video.
• Creepy Crows: He uses crows as a channel icon.
• Death of a Child: A few of the incidents covered, such as the Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour disaster, the Victoria Hall disaster, or the Iroquois Theatre fire, involve multiple casualties of children or teenagers.
• Drunk Driver:
  • The 1987 Chase, Maryland train collision was the result of Conrail operators Ricky Gates and Edward Cromwell being stoned on the job. Gates later admitted that it wasn't his first time smoking pot on duty, and it's unlikely to have been Cromwell's first either. In addition to this, Gates had a history of driving his car under the influence of alcohol. As a result of the accident, random drug tests were implemented to prevent further cases of drivers being high on the job.
  • Played straighter by the Carrollton Bus Disaster, where a drunk driver hit a bus.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first year or so of videos used different intro music than the well-known "Glass Pond". Also, a few episodes fall outside of the theme of accidents and disasters, like one about the disappearance of tourist Lars Mittank or a feature about serial killer Ed Gein. He began to use "Glass Pond" from the Zeebrugge Ferry video onwards.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • The final video of each calendar year is about something where no life was lost, such as the Miracle on the Hudson plane ditching.
  • April Fools' Day brings fictional scenarios, usually from films, depicted in the channel's realistic style (albeit with a little bit of snark and fourth-wall breaking).
• Heroic Dog: One short is about Juliana the Great Dane, who saved her owners from a bomb in World War II, and later from a fire in their shoe shop.
• Horror Host: The host is one of the more sedate and respectful examples of the trope, since he narrates real-life tragedies and doesn't attempt to sensationalize them or downplay the impact the incidents had on survivors or their families.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: The flight attendants of Saudia Flight 163, who kept passengers as calm as possible and tried to fight the fire, all while dealing with a captain who had to have things repeated to him, didn't clearly order them to evacuate, and was seemingly oblivious to the severity of the situation. Though their efforts ultimately did not save anyone on the flight (including themselves), they received posthumous commendations for their actions.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • At least one episode released around the winter holidays each year will feature a gentler topic, such as an accident that didn't result in loss of life.
  • The "Fascinating History" spin-off series hosted on the secondary channel, focused more on gaffes made by companies and people making (non-fatal) mistakes rather than tragic disasters, tend to be much more light-hearted than the main series, featuring brighter cartoon artwork to accompany them and the host's normally morose narration is much more cheerful, snarky, and humorous.
• Madness Mantra: Saudia Flight 163 flight engineer Bradley Curtis repeated the phrase "No problem, no problem, no problem" in what appeared to be an attempt to calm himself, unfortunately likely exacerbating Captain Khowyter's obliviousness to how bad the situation was.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Ricky Gates became a substance abuse counsellor as a result of his role in the 1987 Maryland train crash, which was caused by him and his brakeman being stoned on the job, and admitted in an interview with The Baltimore Sun, "I wouldn't trade a day of what I'm going through now for any of those so-called 'good times' I had in the past."
• Not Me This Time:
  • While most of the theme park incidents are blamed on negligence on the park's part, the 2008 Batman Rollercoaster decapitation incident was entirely down to two park goers ignoring the warning signs about trespassing.
  • Likewise, unlike most train and bridge incidents where negligence can be blamed, the Tangiwai Bridge disaster was not really blamed on anyone because the bridge in question had been built with safety standards and knowledge of the impact of floods and lahars of the time it was built (1908). People back then never could have anticipated the magnitude of the lahar that caused the collapse of the bridge in 1953. A natural disaster at its finest.
  • The Mount Erebus disaster, rather than negligence, can be traced to genuine transcription errors; first in the initial flight pattern being input incorrectly, then in a pilot incorrectly inputting a change, the inexperienced pilots trusting the route they were given, and whiteout conditions affecting their judgement and visibility until they were within literal seconds of hitting the mountainside. That Air New Zealand failed to catch this, and tried to blame the pilots of the crash for this disaster, though, was negligence, however.
  • The Banzai Pipeline Waterslide Collapse, which happened not due to negligence on the park's part, but because of high schoolers playing a prank and overloading the waterslide. Many of the comments expressed shock and disgust that the park still paid out settlements to those injured, declaring that the pranksters and the parents should be ashamed of themselves for the money grab, a few even going so far as to say the park should have sued the students and school for damages to their property.
• Poor Communication Kills: Tends to occur alot in many of the disasters:
  • The Crash of Dan-Air Flight 1008 occured because an ATC Officer at Tenerife forgot a crucial letter in his flight instructions.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The public domain track "Glass Pond" by Public Memory has been used as background music since the Zeebrugge Ferry episode from May 2020, and is considered the unofficial theme of the channel as a whole.
  • A Stranger Thing by Bruno E. has become the theme for his spin-off series, Fascinating History.
• Railroad Tracks of Doom: The Midnight Rider Accident had the film crew of a Greg Allman biopic frantically trying to flee the active railroad trestle they were [illegally] shooting a scene on to avoid an oncoming freight train; said incident ended up taking the life of a 27-year-old camerawoman as a result.
• Robo-Speak: Played for Laughs in the post-2025 version of the "History" episode on the Gävle Goat: Kristian had recorded various possible fates of the 2025 Goat from the plausible (it caught on fire) to the impossible (it came to life), but never anticipated that its fate would be getting blown over by strong winds, so had a text to speech program fill in the blanks for him.
  Caption: I recorded SO many scenarios and this STILL wasn't one of them.
• Runaway Train: The "Crazy Eights" train incident (which famously inspired a film starring Chris Pine and Denzel Washington) was covered as the year-end story of 2025, detailing an engineer error that resulted in a driver-less train speeding out of control down the railroad track toward the town of Kenton, Ohio, risking jumping the track at a sharp curve, plowing straight into the town and spilling hazardous material everywhere. Against all odds, however, the train was stopped just short of causing one of the worst railway disasters in Ohio's history, with no fatalities.
• Serendipitous Survival: The year-end story of 2024 was that of the West Side Baptist Church gas explosion in 1950, in which said explosion occurred during the church's normal choir practice time. However, all 16 people who would've normally been in the building had been delayed for various reasons that evening, and so no one was inside, resulting in no casualties. Even someone who suffered a heart attack at the sight of the explosion made a full recovery.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The "Secret of Pirates of the Caribbean" short episode has the titular ride use actual human skeletons during its earlier years, as the technology wasn't advanced enough to make a realistic artificial skeleton, so they used some human skeletons donated to them by the UCLA Medical Center. After technology caught up to make realistic fake skeletons, the skeletons were repatriated for burial.
• Social Media Before Reason: Social media stupidity was the focus of "A Brief History of Death by Selfie," "Dying for Views: Two Influencer Accidents," and "Special Effect Kills Three: Katerina Didenko." The first involved people who got themselves killed trying to get a good selfie (trying to take selfies while piloting a plane, stopping in the middle of the Charging of the Bulls to take a selfie with a bull in the street, getting too close to a geyser). The second involved two would be influencers who tried to go viral with dangerous stunts (pretending to outrun a train by getting on the tracks in front of an oncoming one; asking to be shot while holding an encyclopedia, thinking it would stop the bullet), and the third had dropped dry ice into the pool to create a special effect and create a viral video during her birthday party...accidentally suffocating her husband and guests.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Played for Laughs in the 'History' episode on the Gävle Goat: Kristian (who uses a crow as his image) doesn't know anything about why or how crows picked it apart in 2023, and any inquiries should go to his lawyer.
• They Just Don't Get It: Even though his plane was on fire and he needed to get everyone off as quickly as humanly possible, Captain Khowyter of Saudia Flight 163 treated the emergency landing as just a regular landing. He wasted time he could have spent depressurising the plane doing things like turning the "no smoking" lights on, and taxied off the runway rather than making an emergency stop, wasting valuable seconds that likely would have meant at least someone got off instead of choking to death on butane and plastic combustion byproducts. In general, he seemed to be utterly oblivious to just how bad the situation was; he didn't order an emergency evacuation, and in fact uttered the words "Tell them to not evacuate" at one point.
• Updated Re-release: "The Banzai Pipeline Waterslide Collapse" is a remake of one of FH's earliest, no longer available videos.