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Superhuman abilities aren't just found in comic books. There are real individuals who possess extraordinary gifts so remarkable that they can only be called superpowers. However, unlike comic book heroes, these superpowered people don’t fight crime—they live everyday lives, and for good reason.
The superpowers you’ve always dreamed of may not be as life-changing as you'd imagine. Just ask the real people who possess them—they’ll tell you that these abilities often come with severe drawbacks, making life incredibly difficult for them.
10. The Young Girl Who Can’t Feel Pain
Olivia Farnsworth is unable to feel pain. Born with a rare condition known as chromosome 6 deletion, she has no sensation of pain or danger at all.
In some ways, this condition is almost a gift. It enabled her to survive being struck by a car. The vehicle ran over her chest and dragged her for several yards before halting—yet while her family was in panic, Olivia simply stood up, waved at her mom, and asked, 'What’s going on?' The only reason she made it through was her complete lack of fear, which kept her from tensing up. Because she doesn’t feel pain, the near-fatal incident didn’t even phase her.
However, for the most part, Olivia’s condition is a constant challenge. She never experiences hunger or fatigue, so her mother has to practically force-feed her meals and sleeping pills just to ensure her survival. Pain is a natural signal to prevent harm, but for Olivia, this is not an issue—she once unknowingly bit through her own lip.
Perhaps feeling a little pain here and there isn’t such a terrible thing after all.
9. The Woman With a Flawless Memory
Jill Price has a memory that never forgets. She has been tested on every moment of her life and can recall every date, time, and intricate detail of her experiences. Her mind works like an endless video recorder, capable of replaying any scene from her past.
This might sound impressive—unless you're the one living with it. Price herself refers to it as 'non-stop,' 'out of control,' and 'completely draining.'
Her memory is so sharp that she struggles to concentrate on what’s happening around her. She’s constantly bombarded with memories from the past, making it incredibly difficult for her to focus on acquiring new information. Plus, her memory doesn’t always help with things that actually matter—she mostly retains personal experiences, and when it comes to memorizing facts for school, her memory can be less reliable than most others.
8. The Family With Indestructible Bones
In 1994, a man known simply as 'John' was involved in a catastrophic car accident. By all logical standards, it should have killed him—but miraculously, John walked away completely unscathed. He suffered no spinal injuries and had no broken bones. Upon further investigation, doctors discovered that no one in his family had ever broken a bone in their entire lives.
You might recognize John’s story as eerily similar to the plot of the movie Unbreakable. He’s a real-life hero—someone born with bones that are eight times denser than the average person. And, like the character in the movie, his biggest vulnerability is water: John is simply too heavy to swim.
However, others who share John’s extraordinary condition have said that it makes life nearly unbearable in their later years. The dense bones cause what they describe as 'throbbing, nauseating headaches,' along with overwhelming fatigue and leg pain from dragging around their abnormally heavy skeletons.
As John ages, he will likely realize that his issues are much greater than simply not being able to take a dip in a swimming pool.
7. The Woman Who Can See 100 Million Colors
Typically, most people have three types of cones in their eyes, allowing them to perceive a range of seven million colors. However, there are countless more colors in the world that are invisible to all but a few animals—and one woman who is known only by the code name 'cDa29.'
cDa29 possesses four fully functional color cones, which enable her to see an enormous range of 100 million colors. She’s experienced an entire spectrum of colors, including countless shades that the rest of us can’t even fathom.
This might sound amazing—if only someone else could see them. The reality, however, is that she simply perceives a variety of colors that she can’t share with others. In fact, the complex shades she perceives make it difficult for her to even understand the colors that others see. Before it was discovered that she had tetrachromatic vision, cDa29 was mistakenly labeled as color-blind.
There’s actually a theory that suggests two to three percent of women possess the ability to see the full range of 100 million colors but don’t realize it’s anything extraordinary. Like cDa29, they are often incorrectly diagnosed as color-blind. Interestingly, their male children are actually color-blind. In a strange twist of fate, the gene that grants some women this extra vision makes men color-blind, meaning cDa29 will never be able to share her unique vision with any of her sons.
6. The Man With Fantastically Stretchy Skin
Garry Turner is a real-life version of Mr. Fantastic. Born with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a condition that causes his skin to be unusually loose, he can stretch his skin like rubber.
However, Garry is in constant agony every moment of his life. From the instant he wakes up until he uses pain medication to sleep, Garry experiences relentless, excruciating pain under his skin. The intensity of the pain is so severe that he relies on morphine patches just to get through each day.
His elastic skin has also made him a hemophiliac. His skin has great difficulty clotting blood, so when he sustains a cut, blood tends to spill out and doesn’t stop.
The immense amount of pain medication he takes often causes him to pass out, sometimes for as long as 40 hours. These frequent episodes of unconsciousness prevented him from completing school, significantly limiting his future opportunities.
The only way he’s been able to survive is by working as a circus performer. He is part of a modern freak show, showcasing his painful condition for the amusement of others.
5. The Woman With Mutant Super Beauty
Elizabeth Taylor is, technically, a mutant. Her mesmerizing blue-violet eyes and double layer of eyelashes are the result of a mutation in the FOXC2 gene, which affects some women, giving them extra eyelashes and a particularly striking eye color.
The benefits of possessing extraordinary beauty are clear. For Elizabeth Taylor, it played a pivotal role in catapulting her to global fame. However, things don't always go as smoothly as they did for her. The FOXC2 mutation can lead to hair growth in some awkward places. Often, the extra eyelashes can irritate the woman’s eyeball, causing tearing. If not addressed, this can damage the surface cells of the eye, threatening her vision or even causing blindness.
The mutation is also associated with an increased risk of heart complications. Women with the FOXC2 mutation have a notably higher chance of developing heart disease.
Interestingly, this was the condition that ultimately led to Elizabeth Taylor's death. And if her eight marriages reveal anything, it’s that such stunning eyes can also lead a woman down a path of emotional turmoil, eventually causing her heart to fail.
4. The Man Who Was Immune To AIDS
Steve Crohn possessed a rare genetic mutation. For an unknown reason, he was immune to AIDS.
As a gay man during the HIV epidemic, Crohn appeared, on the surface, to be incredibly fortunate. While the deadly disease ravaged those around him, Crohn remained in perfect health, which sounds miraculous—unless you start thinking about it more deeply.
Crohn had to continue living while witnessing the death of everyone he loved. Here’s how he described his experience:
What’s hard is living with the continuous grief. You kept losing people every year—six people, seven people. [ . . .] It’s not easy, when you’re losing friends and you’re that young, and it goes on for such a long period of time.
Crohn went from doctor to doctor, pleading with them to study him, because he couldn’t comprehend why he was still alive. Eventually, they discovered that he had a genetic mutation that made him immune to AIDS, but they were unable to use this discovery to help anyone else.
In the end, watching his friends perish became unbearable for Crohn. At the age of 66, he made the heartbreaking decision to join them. Steve Crohn took his own life.
3. The Man Who Fears Nothing
Jordy Cernik doesn’t experience fear. In fact, he physically can’t. After undergoing two surgeries to treat his Cushing’s syndrome, the glands that produce adrenaline were removed, rendering him incapable of feeling scared.
There are some clear benefits to living without fear. Cernik can leap out of a plane without a hint of anxiety. In fact, he does it regularly, often using his unique ability to perform stunts to raise money for charity.
However, jumping from a plane doesn’t give Cernik the thrill it gives most people. In fact, pretty much everything is dull to him. He’s said that riding roller coasters with his family feels no more exciting than sitting at the kitchen table.
But that doesn’t mean he feels nothing. Cernik is constantly in pain. He still suffers from Cushing’s syndrome, which has left him with fragile, arthritic bones. And now that he no longer has adrenaline in his system, he lacks one of the body’s most effective natural painkillers, making every ache much more intense.
2. The Man With Super Intelligence
Daniel Tammet possesses a brain beyond human limits. He can recite pi from memory up to 22,514 decimal places, and he learns languages faster than most people can even ask where the restroom is. For instance, after just one week of studying Icelandic, he conducted a flawless interview in the language.
All of this would be impressive if life only required memorizing pi. But for Tammet, who lives with Asperger’s, and his incredibly logical brain, grasping the irrational behaviors that many people display is a near impossibility.
As Tammet himself puts it, “My brain breaks everything down into concretes and tangibles. I find intangibles hard to understand.”
Activities such as inserting a DVD, calling a taxi, or solving algebra problems—which use letters as variables to represent unknowns—are quite perplexing for Tammet. He is also highly prone to distractions, which is why driving is not allowed for him. However, his greatest challenge lies in trying to comprehend why other people’s actions don’t always align with strict, logical principles. Emotions, especially, are incredibly baffling for him.
Tammet recalls that when he used his exceptional abilities to achieve a real-life Rain Man victory in Vegas, he had to feign happiness. He wasn’t genuinely feeling anything, but he did it to meet the expectations of those watching him. He understood that was the reaction they were anticipating.
1. The Woman With Super Hearing
At the age of 39, Justine Mitchell developed superhuman hearing. She was diagnosed with a rare condition called superior canal dehiscence, which caused everything she heard to be amplified to extraordinary levels. Essentially, she became like Superman—only her version of superpowers didn’t involve wearing a cape, and it was arguably more socially acceptable.
However, having this heightened sense of hearing, as Mitchell describes, was far from a blessing. It became, in her words, “a misery.” Her hearing was so acute that she could even hear the movement of her own eyeballs. She described the sensation of moving her eyes to the side as sounding like “sandpaper on wood” inside her head.
When your hearing becomes so acute that even the movement of your eyeballs creates deafening sounds, every other noise turns into an unbearable torment. Mitchell could hear her heartbeat as though it were a booming drum. The hissing sound of a coffee machine was so overwhelming that it made it difficult for her to remain standing, and the sound of her own voice often made her feel nauseous.
In the end, Mitchell underwent a life-saving surgery to eliminate her super hearing. The procedure wasn’t simple—the doctors gave her two options: one involved having her skull opened to access her brain for the operation, and the other was to block her ear canal using muscle tissue taken from around the ear. Despite the difficult decision, Mitchell felt the choice was more than worthwhile to be able to walk down a hallway without fainting.
