18 Insane Conspiracy Theories That'll Leave You Feeling Paranoid

    Nothing is real.

    Anna Kopsky
    by Anna Kopsky

    BuzzFeed Staff

    We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us which conspiracy theories freak them out. Here are the insane results.

    🚨Note: These are all ~theories~, so have fun reading this! NONE of the following are presented as facts. 🚨 Not all submissions are from Community users.

    1. The Kennedy family had Marilyn Monroe killed to prevent her from publicizing the details of her affair with JFK.

    Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain

    In fact, about 20 years after her death, Monroe's housekeeper claimed that Robert Kennedy visited the actress on the night of her death and they had a huge fight. However, this rumor has been taken with a grain of salt.

    —alexp4

    2. Snapchat doesn't just scan your face to put on a filter — they also add your photos to a government facial recognition database.

    Anna Kopsky / Snapchat, Public Domain

    According to some internet truthers, your puppy-filtered selfies may be part of an FBI program called the Next Generation Identification system. The program consists of a database of the faces of both law-abiding citizens and criminals to make for smoother background checks for people applying for jobs, homes, etc. Snapchat has denied the hell out of this connection, but WHO KNOWS.

    —ItsOliBoi

    3. The current queen of England is a cannibal.

    Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain, Flickr Creative Commons / Steve Snodgrass / Via flic.kr

    Apparently, a 91-year-old woman having the amount of engagements and energy that Queen Elizabeth II has can only mean one thing: She feasts on the blood and muscle of other human beings. Alrighty then.

    4. The U.S. government once had a time travel and teleportation program called Project Pegasus.

    Flickr Creative Commons / YeeChao, Koh / Via flic.kr, Flickr Creative Commons / Sigred Philipsen / Via flic.kr

    A man named Andrew Basiago claims he was a participant in the program when he was a preteen, and that the government used kids his age because they "had an advantage over adults in terms of adapting to the strains of moving between past, present, and future."

    —therealtreegangster

    5. A man found a way to enable cars to run off of water, but was assassinated before he could perfect his invention.

    Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain, Via youtube.com

    Stanley Meyer supposedly created a "fuel cell" that would turn water into hydrogen fuel, allowing drivers to travel cross-country using only about 20 gallons. But he died while meeting with investors at a Cracker Barrel in '98, his last words being, "they poisoned me." Many believe he was killed so we'd continue to rely on fossil fuels.

    —debs49

    6. Time doesn't exist — it's just something the brain made up to keep order.

    Wikipedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Via en.wikipedia.org, Public Domain

    A theorist named McTaggart believed that our concept of time is an illusion, and that our experiences cannot possibly be as simple as being in the past, present, or future. Some even argue that even though we have clocks, that doesn't necessarily mean time is real. Confused? Me too.

    —cianac2411

    7. The CIA attempted to recruit talent by posting a mysterious puzzle called Cicada 3301 online a few years ago.

    Wikipedia Commons / Fair Use

    A cryptic riddle game showed up online in 2012, with its creator writing they were "looking for highly intelligent individuals." No one knew its purpose, a few supposedly solved the first round, and many suspected it was the CIA's way of finding people perfect for the organization, due to the cryptography and internet security knowledge necessary to move forward in the game.

    —Anna Kopsky

    8. We are living in a simulated reality and nothing is actually real.

    EA Games, E!

    This theory claims that humans are living in a science fiction-like computer simulation, controlled by other living beings. Theoretical physicists have shut this idea down, but it is intriguing to think we could be someone's (or something's) Sims.

    —elizabethk46

    9. Queen Elizabeth I died when she was 10 and was replaced by a young boy, and the British monarchy's been covering it up for centuries.

    Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain

    This theory, suggested by author Bram Stoker in 1910, says that Elizabeth died of the plague. Her caretakers were scared of her dad King Henry VIII finding out, so they tried to find a kid who looked like Elizabeth, and succeeded — but he was a boy. That could also be why she never married.

    —bethbee

    10. The Bilderberg Group, an assembly of North American and European elite, controls all the Western World's major political and economic events.

    Wikipedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 nl, Wikipedia Commons / GFDL

    Since 1954, the U.S. and Europe have met annually in secret for "cooperation" purposes. Though the lists of attendees (usually politicians and academics) and topics are made public, what goes on inside is a secret. One theory is that the group picks the U.S. President, and that actual votes don't matter — but the group has denied that.

    —kims31

    11. Debris from a real alien spaceship was found in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, but the government tried to cover it up.

    Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain

    The Air Force tried to dispel headlines such as the one above by saying the metal-like scraps were from a weather balloon, not a UFO. The U.S. began dropping dummies made of latex over New Mexico years later, for something called Project Mogul, which made people suspicious — but in 1994, the files on the project were released to the public in an attempt to calm people down.

    —tootingtiger

    12. In the '40s, the U.S. Navy made a warship invisible by using a technology called a cloaking device.

    Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain, Wikipedia Commons / FAL

    Somewhat inspired by Star Trek, this project, called the Philadelphia Experiment, supposedly allowed the military to make an entire ship invisible. Because the Navy claims it never happened and the details surrounding the theory contradict solid facts about the ship in question, the experiment has been pretty much debunked as a hoax.

    —erikaj4

    13. Keanu Reeves is immortal.

    Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain, Orion Pictures, Wikipedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 / Via en.wikipedia.org

    We can all agree that he's aged very well — but has he *truly* aged at all? Jimmy Fallon questioned Reeves about this theory earlier this year, and Reeves swiftly tried to change the subject. DOES THAT MEAN HE HAS SOMETHING TO HIDE? Probably not, but there's a fun little website dedicated to this theory, if you so dare to check it out.

    —venicesurfergirl

    14. There's a 13,000-year-old extraterrestrial spacecraft closely orbiting Earth, and NASA is hiding its origin and purpose from us.

    Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain

    It's called the Black Knight satellite, and it was first spotted and brought to the public's attention in the 1940s, even though no countries really had the technology to create and maintain a spacecraft of its size. In the 1960s, a U.S. aircraft corporation studied data on a photo taken of the Black Knight, but the information they found was never made public.

    —cumberbabe1395

    15. Obama ordered $1 billion worth of plastic coffins, either for FEMA camps or in preparation for a mass revolt.

    Wikipedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.5 / Via en.wikipedia.org, Via youtube.com

    This theory said that in the case of revolt, "The first step [Obama] would [have taken would've been] to disarm the American people, and throw anyone who is, or might be, a threat into a detention center." What actually happened was this: A company that makes grave liners needed a place to store liners that weren't being used yet, someone saw it, and made this all up.

    16. The moon doesn't really exist.

    Wikipedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Via en.wikipedia.org, Wikipedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Via en.wikipedia.org

    While many have questioned whether the moon landings are real or not, some believe the moon itself doesn't even exist, and that it's just a projection in the sky. Wild.

    17. The Britney Spears we know today is a clone.

    Entertainment Tonight, Via instagram.com

    After two DJs created a fake story about how she and Justin Timberlake were in a deadly car accident in 2001, people started to dig up some insane ~clues~ proving that Britney was replaced by a clone. Supposedly, her video for "Break The Ice" was about her blowing up a clone center because it was her way of sneaking hints about what happened to the real Britney.

    —doggolover05

    18. And the Harry Potter books were actually written and created by a huge group of writers — meaning J.K. Rowling is just a hired actress.

    jkrowling.com, Via instagram.com

    DON'T HATE ME. IT'S A THEORY. Movie director Nina Grunfield first suggested this because she thought Rowling's rags-to-riches story seemed "too good to be true." She asked specifically, "Is it possible [one person] can write six thick books that are translated into 55 languages and sell more than 250 million copies in less than 10 years?"

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