Trick or Treatment: 4 Truly Scary Spa Services

There’s strange (read: bird poop facials) and then there’s just plain scary. These four spa treatments give us the heebie jeebies, what do you think?

Snake Massage

Yes, it’s a thing. People pay to lay down on a massage table to have three to six snakes, often pythons, draped across them to be left to slither all around their bodies for a “calming” massage. I’ll pause while you laugh at the idea of this being calming, and please excuse me while I shake off the chills. The Cebu City Zoo in the Philippines offers up this “treatment” with four giant DEADLY and enormous Burmese pythons, yes those snakes known for squeezing their prey to death, that weigh over 500 pounds total… meaning once you start, you can’t stop. Sorry, maybe it’s just me, but there is nothing calming about being smothered by snakes. Pass!

Huo Liao: Chinese Fire Therapy

Growing up with Burns as a last name you’d think that I wouldn’t find this next treatment quite so jarring… you’d be wrong. This. Looks. Terrifying. (Google “Chinese Fire Treatment” if you don’t believe me!) The treatment comes from the ancient belief that burning fire on the skin’s surface helps to create a better balance of yin and yang to heal the body from pain and it is currently used as a beauty treatment to help with wrinkles and dull complexions. A towel soaked in a blend of a special herbal mixture and alcohol is placed on the body (which has been prepped and covered with a yellow paste), lit, and then put out with another towel. This may just be too hot for me to handle!

Vampire Facial

This treatment sounds scarier than it actually is… though if you take a look at Kim Kardashian after she had her Vampire Facial you may disagree. The treatment involves getting blood taken to extract platelet-rich plasma that is then turned into a personalized injection and injected back into your skin to give a facelift effect. Personally this brings up visions of Countess Elizabeth Báthory, just me?

Freeze to Death (Almost) Therapy

The spa at Haikko Manor in Finland offers guests their Super Cold cyrotherapy treatment to help ease pain. You don a bathing suit, a hat, mittens, socks and felt footwear to protect your extremities and are subjected to a temperature of -110°C for up to three minutes, more than that you will actually freeze to death. The whole process is supervised and safe but I can barely stand winter and below zero temps that come with it… -110°C… I’m shivering just thinking about it however it is truly good for you! Want a first-hand account? Read it here!

Want to read about even more bizarre treatments? Check out our list here!