“Stranger than fiction,” “too crazy to be true,” “X true facts that sound like they’re fake,” and so on and so forth. Throughout history, we human beings have become more and more cognizant of just how tiny the target is when it comes to passing off a fake story as a true one; your details can’t be too tame as to inadvertently tip off your doubters, but not so off-the-wall that you verge into entirely impossible territory.
The key, ladies and gentlemen, lies in specificity; make your details so serialized and so complex, that anyone who hears your story is going to err on the side of belief purely because they don’t think anyone would go to the trouble of making up something as incisively unique as this.
TikTok‘s @yourchanceencounter understands this, and with this forbidden knowledge, he sent everyone on what may be the shortest but most exhilarating Google dive they’ll take in a while.
After putting out a call for everyone to share their “small town drama,” Chance kicked things off by setting the bar as high as the moon, expressing in very particular detail the ins and outs of the serial killer problem that he and his fellow townies had on their hands. In this yarn, the murderer was a restauranteur named Thomas Sullivan who killed animals, stuffed them full of human remains from his victims (six men and three women, by Chance’s account), and left them as roadkill so that no one would think anything of it when they drove past. The influx of dead animals on the road, however, was just the first domino in a series of revelations that eventually led to his arrest and jailing.
It’s as gripping a tale as it is false, but you have to give Chance points for going the extra mile in selling this; he even supplied a photo of Sullivan (or, more likely, a stock photo of a random man) and posted a follow-up video where he brought even more details to life. Apparently the restaurant makes diesel fries, complete with pulled pork and a special cheese, that are “to die for.”
The comments section was like clockwork, with most all the responders wondering why they couldn’t find anything on Google, and then finding out that Chance’s story is fake. That momentarily-ignited serial killer fascination likely persisted elsewhere, however.
According to Psychology Today, this fascination is partly rooted in our evolutionary relationship to predators. Avoiding predators is essential for all animals, but a predator only hunts when they’re hungry, and so prey—often living in close proximity to predators—learn how to identify when a predator is or isn’t actively hunting so that they don’t waste valuable energy avoiding a predator who isn’t in attack mode. This behavior is called “predator inspection.” Similarly, being clued in to the personal history and patterns of serial killers will perhaps give us a better understanding of other killers’ motives and habits, which we can therefore use to protect ourselves.
And even if this particular story is fake, maybe it would be best to avoid diesel fries for a bit, because you just never know.
