Hello everyone and welcome back to Scary Interesting.

In this video we're going to over three stories of a seemingly harmless contest that went horrifyingly wrong.

And I may be using the term harmless loosely because there's no amount of money that could get me to participate in the first contest.

You'll see what I mean and as always, viewer discretion is advised. For more than a century, spectators and competitors have descended on Coney Island, New York, for Nathan's famous international hot dog eating contest, which is held

every 4th of July, during which participants have 10 minutes to consume as many hot dogs and buns

as they can. Before continuing on, take a moment to think about how many hot dogs and buns

you could consume in 10 minutes. And with that in mind, consider this. Famous competitive

eater Joey Chesna set the record in 2021 by eating 76 hot dogs and buns

in just 10 minutes.

For his troubles, Joey took home $10,000 in cash, and other than a little bloating and

indigestion, he apparently suffered no ill effects from consuming so much in such a short time.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for a young Florida man named Edward who entered a much

less traditional eating contest in mid-October of 2012.

We don't know much about Edward's background, but we do know that he was born on May 11th,

1980, that he was 32 years old in the fall of 2012 and that he had a 27-year-old fiancé

named Natasha. According to Edward's friends, family members, and co-workers, he was funny,

outgoing, and rarely passed up an opportunity for adventure and excitement. Maybe as a result

of this, he didn't spend much time weighing the pros and cons when he heard about a bizarre

contest being held at a nearby pet shop a few weeks before Halloween in 2012. It's unclear why Edward didn't tell Natasha about the contest until a few hours before it was scheduled to begin at midnight on Saturday, October 6th. But either way, when he did, she apparently asked him if he thought it was a good idea when he told her what he'd have to do to win. But he assured her was nothing to worry about and that as horrible as it sounded, it wasn't that big of a deal. He also told her that he didn't even want the prize and that after he won, he was going to sell it to his friend and pocket the cash. The contest was organized by a man named Ben who owned a reptile store in a nearby city. By then, he'd been promoting the aptly named Midnight Madness event

for weeks. During the contest, 30 participants would compete head-to-head in three four-minute

rounds. In the first round, they'd consume as many live crickets as they could. In the second,

they'd do the same with mealworms, but as disgusting as the first two rounds would be, they'd

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