Here’s a nicely creepy borderlands of science/urban legend/conspiracy theory video about a hole that has no bottom.
80,000 feet worth of fishing line found no bottom. Plus animals avoided it, and radios went crazy, when they weren’t picking up signals from 30 years before.
Then the government took it over.
Much more paranormal weirdness ensues
Was it real? Well, as real as anything else with a Wikipedia entry featured on Art Bell.
Good luck finding it on map…
Both these books were in the same Heritage lot as the Locke book. I have a small but growing collection of books on Hollow Earth theory and the Shaver Mystery, and these two fit right in.
In the menagerie of paranormal/imaginary creatures, Shadow People are just that: shadow-like or completely black beings in the shape of people. Some say they’re evil spirits or aliens, others tricks of the imagination, fatigued brains or sleep paralysis nightmares. I mentioned this to a friend, and he said “Oh yeah, I’ve seen those!”
Hell, there’s an entire archive of people to have claimed to see them. Some seem benign or helpful. Others? Not so much. Some seem to wear hats. Then again, people now claim to see Slendarman and Chupacabras, so it hardly proves anything.
There are lots of “shadow people” videos on YouTube and most are painfully fake, obvious superimposition shots, etc. Want an unconvincing compilation video? Of course you do!
Here’s another one, with a couple of repeats, though these seem least slightly less embarrassing than most:
(The guy with the super-haunted house in the last video has his own video channel There’s also a Facebook page debunking it. )
Nothing says “science to benefit humanity” quite like tricking people into thinking that “Shadow People” are in the room with them.
Researchers scanned the brains of 12 people with neurological disorders, who had reported experiencing a ghostly presence.
They found that all of these patients had some kind of damage in the parts of the brain associated with self-awareness, movement and the body’s position in space.
In further tests, the scientists turned to 48 healthy volunteers, who had not previously experienced the paranormal, and devised an experiment to alter the neural signals in these regions of the brain.
They blindfolded the participants, and asked them to manipulate a robot with their hands. As they did this, another robot traced these exact movements on the volunteers’ backs.
When the movements at the front and back of the volunteer’s body took place at exactly the same time, they reported nothing strange.
But when there was a delay between the timing of the movements, one third of the participants reported feeling that there was a ghostly presence in the room, and some reported feeling up to four apparitions were there.
Two of the participants found the sensation so strange, they asked for the experiments to stop.
The researchers say that these strange interactions with the robot are temporarily changing brain function in the regions associated with self-awareness and perception of the body’s position.
The team believes when people sense a ghostly presence, the brain is getting confused: it’s miscalculating the body’s position and identifying it as belonging to someone else.
There are multiple shadow people movies on IMDB, all of which get ratings that range from mediocre to horrible (and the best seems to be a romantic drama that has nothing to do with horror or the supernatural).
Also, here’s a list of possible explanations for shadow people.
(For more creepy paranormal entities, see the post on Black Eyed Kids.)
Pleasant dreams…
Two bought at Half Price Books, two at a small used bookstore in South Austin called Good Buy Books.
Remember those scary nurse stories I mentioned a few years ago?
Well, here’s thirteen more.
A sample:
I was working in an icu. had a patient who would only repeat what was said to her and was with her all night. One time I went in the room and she started telling me all the ways she died. “I died because of a narcotic overdose, I died because I took too much insulin, I died on a sunny Sunday afternoon,” etc. Then later she looked up at the ceiling and said “they’re all still there.” I ran out of that room as fast as I could.
So, vampires are so last year, and scary bunnies and goatmen don’t do it for you? Are you looking for a new urban legend to unnecessarily scare yourself silly with for the Halloween season?
How about Black Eyed Kids?
No, it’s not The Black Eyed Peas: The Next Generation (which would, let’s face it, be scary enough on its own). It’s kids/teenagers with all black eyes, with no iris or whites, asking to be let into your car or house, and whose mere presence instantly fills you with terror and dread.
However, unlike most creepy pasta and/or urban legends, this one actually has an identifiable origin, namely Abilene reporter Brian Bethel, who related his encounter thusly with two of them asking for a ride:
“C’mon, mister. Let us in. We can’t get in your car until you do, you know,” the spokesman said soothingly. “Just let us in, and we’ll be gone before you know it. We’ll go to our mother’s house.”
We locked eyes.
To my horror, I realized my hand had strayed toward the door lock (which was engaged) and was in the process of opening it. I pulled it away, probably a bit too violently. But it did force me to look away from the children.
I turned back. “Er … Um …,” I offered weakly and then my mind snapped into sharp focus.
For the first time, I noticed their eyes.
They were coal black. No pupil. No iris. Just two staring orbs reflecting the red and white light of the marquee.
Creepy enough for you? The fact that Mr. Bethel posted this to a “ghost-discuss” list, and that he had previously described a childhood encounter with evil muppets, might make you take his story with a grain of salt.
However, since that original sighting (which predates the black-eyed kid shown in the Japanese horror film Ju-on (The Grudge)) there
For extra grins, here’s the black eyed kids/alien abduction cross-over theory.
Now you’ll have to excuse me. There’s someone knocking on my door…