5 Real People Who Have The World's Worst Superpowers

5

Super Hearing, But Only For Yourself

Stephen Mabbutt is one of very few people to suffer from the hilarious last name "Mabbutt." Oh, and he suffers from superior canal dehiscence syndrome, which might be even worse. This incredible power manifested when Stephen was in his 50s. At first it was nothing but a dull pain in the side of his head, then slowly, his hearing started to fade ... until it came back with a vengeance. We don't mean to imply he could hear quiet sounds over vast distances. That might actually be useful. He could only hear himself -- just super, super loud.

The worst part about this syndrome, aside from everything, is being able to hear "all the interior sounds of the body very loudly," according to expert Dr. Martin Burton. At its worst, Mabbutt could hear the sounds of his own eyeballs moving around in his head, which is something that only happens to the rest of us when we are extremely high.

ilbusca/iStockAwesome if you want to know what your gallbladder is up to 24 hours a day, less great if you ever need a moment of quiet.

After depleting a small warehouse's worth of antibiotics and nasal sprays, Mabbutt finally found Dr. Burton, who recognized the affliction and cured his inner microphone with a surgery to seal off the defective bone. Now Stephen lives a boring life like anybody else, and the only time he can hear his spleen screaming is on Arby's Night, as God intended.

4

The Genetic Disorder That Erases Fingerprints

Adermatoglyphia is a rare condition that causes the ridges on your finger pads to be completely flat and free of identifiable patterns. It's genetic, and researchers have only discovered four families with it worldwide. Fortunately, having fingers as smooth as a Ken doll's party bits is the only downside of the disorder.

Well, that and you're not allowed to enter the United States.

The first known case of adermatoglyphia was a Swiss woman who tried to enter the U.S., but wasn't allowed because she couldn't be fingerprinted. Rather than turn into the supervillain she was clearly meant to be, she alerted medical professionals, who discovered that eight of her other family members were also suffering from the disorder. Because of the nature of its discovery, the application has been nicknamed the "immigration delay disease," and not the far more logical "Slippy McSmoothfingers."

3

Some People Lose The Need To Sleep

In 2016, French sleep experts stumbled onto something extraordinary: a 27-year-old man who claimed to be suffering from complete insomnia ... for the past nine months. He reported that he not only never slept, but also never felt tired. Nor did he experience the memory loss, mood disturbances, and anxiety that usually accompany sleep deprivation. This clearly wasn't regular insomnia, but a human being who no longer required sleep.

WikipediaIt sounds like a dream come true, except with one little caveat ...

2

The Woman Who Can Smell Parkinson's

When Joy Milne's husband Les was 33 years old, he started to smell. She encouraged him to take more showers, but nothing helped. For the next decade, Milne learned to live with the uncomfortably musky scent. Then tragedy hit when Les was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative nervous disorder resulting in tremors, rigidity, difficulty walking, and eventually death. His smell didn't seem all that important after that. But one day in 2012, she was suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of her husband again. Only he was home, and she was at a Parkinson's awareness lecture.

1

The Woman Without Fear

A patient known only as "SM" suffers from a rare condition called Urbach-Wiethe, which results in a hardening of the amygdala -- the area in each cerebral hemisphere that governs, amongst other things, the fear response. In other words, Daredevil is (partially) real, and he's a middle-aged mother of three. To her children's burgeoning horror, it became apparent that SM was quite literally fearless. She would encounter a large snake and just ... pick it up. Found a spider? She'd pet it. Get mugged? No, thank you.