Crazy and spooky stories from people who ventured into the secret websites of the internet

Flickr/cybershotking

The "dark web" is a hidden corner of the internet that is the home to many things people want to keep in the shadows: drugs, counterfeits, stolen items, and so on. But there are also far stranger elements.

A popular thread on Reddit once asked the simple question, "What's your Deep Web story?" In other words, the Reddit user was asking people to share any weird experiences they had encountered while using anonymous web services to access secret websites.

Services like Tor, which mask a user's identity and let them browse the internet anonymously, give access to a slew of websites known as the Dark Web (or Deep Web). These sites won't work on a "normal" web browser like Google Chrome. 

Silk Road is the prototypical example of a Dark Web site, a now closed black market for goods, whose notorious founder is now in prison.

Silk Road is closed, but what else is out there? Here are some of the bizarre and creepy things you can stumble on when accessing the dark underbelly of the web, as told by the people who actually experienced them.

The post is based on a previous post by Cale Guthrie Weissman.

What things can you buy?

Thomson Reuters

One of the main reasons people use the Dark Web is to buy goods they want to keep hidden. But how weird do these get? Some users have some pretty bizarre tales ...

For the DIY surgeon ...

BBC Newsnight / screengrab

Sometimes you can find the everyday things on the Dark Web. But what makes it "illicit" is how you market it. Take this (very gross) example of something for sale on Silk Road:

DIY vasectomy kit on SR. it was a kit of weird dentist tool looking hooks and some tube thing. $20.

A digital zoo.

AP Photo/Ariel Schalit

Sometimes you may need something specific and you have nowhere else to turn. If that's the case watch out for a steep price tag. This Redditor explains:

A few years ago I went searching for rhino horn for a story, one guy said he had a couple of whole horns he'd sell for six figures. I had to pass.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider