  In this note we establish the existence of all Curtis-Tits groups and Phan
groups with $3$-spherical diagram as classified previously and investigate some
of their geometric and group theoretic properties. Whereas it is known that
orientable Curtis-Tits groups with spherical or non-spherical and non-affine
diagram are almost simple, we show that non-orientable Curtis-Tits groups are
acylindrically hyperbolic and therefore have infinitely many infinite-index
normal subgroups. However, we also provide concrete examples of non-orientable
Curtis-Tits groups whose quotients are finite simple groups of Lie type.
