The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 572: COMPILATION: The Science of Ghosts and Ghost Hunting

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

A driver sees a strange light floating above an empty road at night. At the same time, a researcher works on a machine to contact the dead. These events might seem unrelated, but they're part of humanity's long-standing interest in the supernatural. People have always been curious about ghosts, unexplained phenomena, and the possibility of life after death. Even famous inventors like Tesla and Edison were interested in the paranormal. Their competition went beyond just creating new technologies - they also tried to build devices to communicate with spirits. Throughout history, people have reported seeing shadow figures during sleep and mysterious lights in the sky. These experiences push the boundaries of what we understand about the world. Scientists continue to study these phenomena, trying to find explanations. As we learn more about our past, we discover how closely linked science and the supernatural have always been.

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Still, I'm going to take it as a compliment. Yeah, whatever you got to tell yourself to get through the day, chief. Anyway, you may not want to put this one on your sleep playlist. Today we're doing everything paranormal, specifically ghosts. And ghost hunting has become an actual thing that people do these days. There are ghost hunting groups. There's tons of ghost hunting TV shows. Oh, like Ghost Bro.

Yeah, that one is Ghost Adventurers with Zach Baggins. I guess ghosts are attracted to Ed Hardy shirts and true religion jeans, eh? Really? 2007 called. It wants its insults back. In 1901, Nikola Tesla had the most terrifying experience of his life. As he worked alone in the laboratory one night, he felt a presence. So he created a device to see if he can hear or pick up any signals from whatever it was that he felt. He called it the

Spirit Radio, and it worked. And Tesla wasn't alone. Throughout history, famous scientists who helped shape the technology we use today have spoken of ghosts and hauntings that shook them to their core. And while you might think these are nothing more than ghost stories, you'd be right. But there is scientific data that supports the existence of ghosts. Data that has been suppressed. Until now. Ghosts are generally thought of to be apparitions of the dead. Specters, poltergeists, phantoms, all these names are given to the physical appearance of disembodied souls.

When the presence of a ghost is felt or experienced by the living, it's called a haunting. Ghosts and hauntings exist in every culture, and all civilizations throughout history have their own superstitions and beliefs about what ghosts are and why they're here. In fact, the earliest funeral services weren't intended to honor the dead. They were ceremonies to make sure the spirits of the dead stayed dead. In ancient Mesopotamia, the dead required a proper burial in order to reach Urcala, the underworld. If the funeral wasn't followed correctly, or the family of the dead failed to conduct the proper mourning rituals, the gods would grant the dead permission to return to Earth and haunt the living.

These ghosts were believed to haunt people and places just like we believe today. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that ghosts could enter a living person's body and bring them bad luck, illness, and even death. Almost everyone, regardless of faith or culture, has at least one creepy ghost story, something that happened to them or someone they know that involves ghosts. Oh, oh, I got one! Of course you do. After I lost my job as a professor,

me and a couple other guys started this business chasing ghosts around New York. Uh... Well, things got crazy, and ghosts were all over the place. And then this Sumerian god shows up, and they end up making sweet love to Sigourney Weaver, and then... Hang on. What? That's the plot of Ghostbusters. I know! Ackroyd stole that from me!

I highly doubt that. Well, we'll see what you say after the lawsuit. Wait, what did you say about Sigourney Weaver? Oh, sure, now you're interested, huh? You'll have to wait for my memoir like everybody else. One of the first recorded hauntings was by the author and statesman

Pliny the Younger in the 1st century A.D. Pliny the Younger is mostly remembered for his dramatic, first-hand account of the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD. But Pliny could also spin a good ghost story. The most famous of Pliny's ghost stories is that of philosopher Athenodorus Canonites. Athenodorus was looking for somewhere to live in Athens and came upon a property that seemed incredibly affordable for its size and design, almost too affordable.

Athena Doris was told that the house was haunted, and not being one for the, quote, vain terrors of imaginary noises and apparitions, Athena Doris rented the property, and everything was fine at first. Then one night he was doing some writing when he heard chains rattling. Then began the clanking of iron chains. However, he neither lifted up his eyes nor laid down his pen, but closed his ears by concentrating his attention. The noise increased and advanced nearer,

till it seemed at the door and at last in the chamber. He looked round and saw the apparition exactly as it had been described to him. It stood before him, beckoning. Okay, side note. Athenodis was a famous Stoic. Stoicism is a philosophy of acceptance, inner peace, focus, and controlling one's emotions. Basically, Stoicism is go with the flow and don't sweat the small stuff. So a ghost shows up, dragging chains and looking all corpse-y, and rather than freak out, Athenodorus does the most stoic thing I've ever heard of.

Without saying a word and without looking up, Athenodorus holds up a finger, indicating that he just needs a minute to finish what he's doing. But the ghost kept rattling his chains, and when Athenodorus turned around, the ghost beckoned him once again. The ghost slowly stalked along as if encumbered with its chains, and having turned into the courtyard of the house, suddenly vanished. The next day he went to the magistrates and advised

them to order that spot to be dug up. There they found bones commingled and intertwined with chains, for the body had molded away by long lying in the ground, leaving them bare and corroded by the fetters. The bones were collected and buried at the public expense. And after the ghost was thus duly laid, the house was haunted no more. This story was corroborated by others who knew both Pliny the Younger and Athena Doris. This was one of the many examples of hauntings that convinced Pliny that ghosts were very much a real thing. But ghosts don't always fit the stereotype of being spirit-like apparitions that appear in the dead of night. Ghosts can also be poltergeists. Poltergeists have been

investigated as far back as 856 AD when one tormented a family in Germany. Poltergeist in German means rumbling or noisy spirit. Unlike typical ghosts, which have limited interaction with the physical world, poltergeists cause physical disturbances. This one threw stones and started fires. Just another day in Portland, eh? No, this was Germany. Ah. But how many of these hauntings we hear about are real?

And what can we do to scientifically validate the concept that the dead might still be walking among us? Well all we have to do is go on a hunt, because ghosts are surprisingly easy to find. Everyone has a ghost story, but how many people actually go looking for ghosts? Most people think of ghost hunting as a recent trend, something you see in cheesy reality TV. What the hell? What's wrong?

I just felt someone grab my ass. What? Like hard, Nick. Hard. I could feel like this on my butt. Ha ha, the ghost broke. Or even cheesier YouTube videos. What are they doing?

Setting up a volleyball? No, they're going to catch a ghost. Oh, okay. What the s*** was that? But people have been trying to actively locate spirits and contact the dead for thousands of years. Just recently, a cave was found near Jerusalem with artifacts relating to Roman-era death magic tools used to contact lost relatives. Did he find any ancient Roman volleyball nets? Not that I'm aware of.

Modern ghost hunting can be broken down into two different areas, contacting the dead directly via psychics or seances, or going to an allegedly haunted location in order to identify the presence of ghostly phenomena. Ghost hunting took off as a scientific pursuit in the 19th and 20th centuries, and things started out simple. People would gather, look for disturbances, make observations, and try to identify whether there were ghosts in their homes. One of the first books on the subject was published in 1936. It's called Confessions of a Ghost Hunter by Harry Price, 30 years into his career as a professional hunter. In the book,

Price describes how that all that was needed to investigate hauntings in the early 1800s was a black parlor, a red lamp, and a circle of credulous sitters and vivid imagination. Other early examples of ghost hunting methods that are still in use today include dowsing, and this is where Y or L-shaped rods, often called dowsing rods, are used to locate hidden resources like groundwater, gemstones, grave sites, and all kinds of stuff without the use of scientific equipment. Then there's a tool that everybody knows, Ouija boards. A Ouija board is also known as a spirit board or a talking board. And this is a flat board marked with letters of the alphabet and the numbers zero through nine.

Often the words yes, no, hello, and goodbye are also marked. It comes with a small heart-shaped piece of wood or plastic called a planchette. A group of people will sit in a circle around the board and gently place their fingers on the planchette. Spirits will then communicate by moving the planchette around the board. It's pretty simple by today's standards, but back in the early 19th century, the Ouija board was revolutionary. People

even wrote to Price in support of the board and its incredible ability to conjure the spirits of the dead. They even offered advice on how to get better results. Dear Mr. Nickel, I cannot recommend you to any materializing medium, nor do I think that materialization is by any means the best form of manifestation. It is the one most open to imposture, and my experience is that materializing spirits never say anything worth listening to. You had better experiment with the Ouija in that way if any of your circle is at all mediumistic. You will get much better results. I am yours truly, W.T. Stead. Everybody's an expert. Yep.

Just like any YouTube comments. Yep. A series of events led to ghost hunting becoming one of the most popular recreational activities and scientific pursuits. And two of the greatest minds in modern history were leading the charge, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison.

These two great inventors are best known for their War of the Currents, the fight between Tesla's alternating current and Edison's direct current. But they also spent years battling it out in the hunt for scientific evidence that validated the existence of ghosts. And they both got pretty close. Edison created the ghost phone. Tesla called his invention the spirit radio. The basic principle behind these devices is similar to a crystal radio,

which receives radio waves and converts them into sound without the use of external power. Both devices seem to work pretty well. And we have an entire episode on this, which is linked below, and you can hear what Tesla heard, and we even teach you how to build one yourself. Eventually, Tesla and Edison's two competing forms of electrical transmission would one day combine to give us all the tools we need to hunt for ghosts. While most videos and images of ghosts end up being fake, there are still countless examples of technological devices appearing to pick up signals from the dead, and a lot of those can't be debunked.

A process used in modern science to prove or disprove various theories is the collection of proxy data. Proxy data indirectly suggests a theory is true, like using tree rings to see how hot or cold different summers were when we don't have actual records, or how we can tell whether different parts of the planet were under the ocean because of the existence of sedimentary rock deposits in the middle of the desert, or marine fossils on mountaintops.

The more the data shows similar results, the more we can prove a theory is true. In ghost hunting, we have so much proxy data that it's hard to know where to start. There are a lot of instruments that tell us when energy and matter is fluctuating abnormally, suggesting the presence of a ghost. We even have audio and video equipment that can record things we'd never otherwise be able to see with just our naked eye.

Probably the most well-known scientific ghost hunting tool is an EMF reader, basically a modern-day ghost phone meets spirit radio. EMF stands for Electromagnetic Field, and these are invisible areas of energy often referred to as different types of radiation, such as radio waves, x-rays, gamma, microwaves, sunlight and even human brain waves. Some speculate that if consciousness or a soul is a form of energy, then the first law of thermodynamics might apply. The conservation of energy says

that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So if consciousness is energy, this energy continues in some form after death. And this energy might interact with the electromagnetic spectrum. And EMF meters detect these interactions and fluctuations. So think of it like this. You're in a room in an abandoned building with the door closed, no windows open.

You're miles from the closest Wi-Fi or other energy that could show up on an EMF meter. At first, the reading will be steady. Then, when a ghost is present, out of nowhere, you'll get a sudden spike. Look, come here, come here, come here, come here. Holy s***, come here. That's definitely a ghost. Yeah, well, they thought so. No, dude.

I think I'm going to go hang out in the lobby for a little bit. With other people. Yo. Just get in there. Ghost hunters believe that spirits can cause a shift in a magnetic field, causing EMF meters to pick up their frequency. The same goes for K2 meters, which also detect random spikes in electromagnetic energy that seem to come out of nowhere.

And many of these types of devices can also pick up the sudden temperature drops that are so uniquely associated with hauntings. You know how you get a sudden shiver or out of nowhere you feel like you're being watched? Well, ghost hunters say that's a spirit walking through you. With most EMF meters, ghost hunters get two forms of proxy data, sudden unexplained changes in an

electromagnetic field and isolated temperature changes. Another piece of ghost hunting equipment is an anemometer, which is commonly used by meteorologists to measure wind speed and pressure. In ghost hunting, you can use an anemometer to seek out sudden changes in airflow or detect cold spots. They're also helpful in cases where someone suspects a ghost is slamming doors or moving items around their homes. Like in Poltergeist? Exactly. Cross over children, all are welcome, all welcome, go into the light.

No! You said don't go into the light! There is peace and serenity in the light. When you couple EMF readings with data from anemometers, ghost hunters can pinpoint tiny fluctuations in temperature and the electromagnetic field, which are then confirmed using infrared thermometers. If your EMF meter, your anemometer, and your laser thermometer are all telling you there's a ghost,

well, it's kind of hard to argue otherwise. If it walks like a duck. Right. It talks like a duck. I got it. It's a duck. There's also something called a radiating electromagnetism pod. A REM pod is a small device with an antenna that creates its own electromagnetic field.

It reacts when anything that conducts electricity gets anywhere near it. That's amazing. A REM pod has five different lights that indicate the strength of the disturbance. A REM pod is basically a modified theremin, which is an electronic musical instrument that's played without actually touching it. The musician manipulates the magnetic field

around the instrument to change the sound. Ah, I missed that show. Doctor Who is still on. Yeah, but is it though? Another piece of equipment is the Mel Meter, which was specifically designed for ghost hunting. Mel Meters use an antenna to detect motion. They have a gauge to track changes in temperature and have all the same elements

as an EMF reader. I have absolutely I have absolutely no idea what's happening. Most of these devices are pretty much the same and they're a lot better at debunking a haunting than proving one. But in many cases the information provided by these devices are pretty much the same, and they're a lot better at debunking a haunting than proving one. But in many cases, the information provided by these devices is enough to lay the groundwork for ghost hunters

to take their explorations a step further and gather video and audio evidence of specters. Because it's one thing to detect a ghost, but it's something else entirely when you actually see one. EMF meters, MEL meters, REM pods, these can all detect ghosts, but still the results are up to interpretation. But if you see a ghost, there's nothing to interpret. Photographs of ghosts are pretty easy to come by in the digital age, but the best results will come from cameras specifically designed to photograph ghosts.

Full spectrum cameras. A full spectrum camera can pick up all forms of light, from infrared through ultraviolet. They're not that complicated to make. You can convert just about any camera into a full spectrum camera. All you have to do is remove the infrared cut filter and replace it with a piece of clear glass, which makes it sensitive to UV. And by the way, even though you can convert most cameras to full spectrum, don't try to convert your phone.

You'll definitely break it. Ghost hunters use full spectrum cameras to try and pick up things we can't see with our naked eye. And surprising no one, they're most commonly used in dark spaces, but they work in all environments. Entities captured on full-spectrum cameras have been known to glow or emit their own light source, and these ghosts come in all shapes and sizes.

Some ghost hunters prefer using just an infrared video light. These cameras are more than enough to film in near or total darkness. Or if you wanna be really basic and find ghosts in dark environments, you can just use a black light. Ghost hunters will often use black lights to reveal hidden or hard to find evidence of ghosts or messages from our ancestors. A black light is a type of light bulb

that emits ultraviolet light. This type of light is not visible to the human eye, but when it shines on certain materials, it can cause them to glow. Black lights are also excellent for revealing hoaxes. They can spot super thin laser lights, fishing lines, even holograms, and other weird devices used when someone is staging a haunting.

Another way to figure out if a haunting is a hoax is by using an SLS camera. SLS stands for Structured Light Sensor. These cameras send out thousands of tiny points of light to map out a room or other type of space, revealing things that aren't apparent to the naked eye. Ghost hunters use SLS cameras to identify apparitions that alter the way light flows through the space. But how do we know that these figures and shapes are really ghosts and not aliens or shadow people or something else entirely?

Well, it's actually pretty simple. We can just ask them. We've come a long way since the ghost phone and spirit radio. We have tools right in our pockets that allow us to record everything going on around us and analyze that information to see if there's anything we've missed. There are many different types of audio devices that you can use in ghost hunting, and they all look for the same things, EVPs or ITCs. EVPs are electronic voice phenomena. ITCs are instrumental transcommunication. EVPs are defined by pure disembodied voices,

and these voices can be captured on an audio device, but you usually can't hear them. Ghost hunters often have to analyze and break down the layers of sound at a later time to hear the messages. ITCs are a little more nuanced. Instead of recording a sound that needs to be analyzed later, an ITC happens when ghosts interact with radios and other mediums in real time. Most examples of EVPs and ITCs include single words or repeated phrases, maybe a short sentence at the very most.

Usually they're nothing more than grunts or groans. The quality of EVPs often fluctuates as well. They fall on a scale from Class A to Class C. Class A being the easiest to understand and are usually pretty loud. At one point Jay says, Princess, are you in the room? And it sounds like she says, of course I'm in the room. Where are you? Princess, can you at least let us know you're in here?

Can you say something? Class B EVPs have some warping on particular syllables. They're lower in volume or sometimes sound like the person is far away. Class C EVPs are the hardest to understand or interpret. So if you know of anybody that did it, can you let us know or can you move just a little piece of plaster? It's nothing to hurt anyone. It's nothing to hurt anyone. It's nothing to hurt anyone.

When a message can't be clearly understood, some ghost hunters will turn to the Ovilus. The Ovilus is a device that contains a database of various words and syllables. It's said it can detect and translate energy fields. People call it a speakin' spell for the dead. It's weird, I just sent Aaron inside and it said abort, unholy chills. By picking up on certain fluctuations,

the Ovilus works as a middleman between the world of the living and the world of the dead. When asked a question, pretty much any question, the Ovilus will respond. Do you know that we're going to come inside? Do you know where this voice is coming from? Is that evil? Oh, well. Thanks to all these scientific tools, the world of ghost hunting is abundant with proxy data. All of it adding up to validate

the existence of ghosts. So ghosts are real, right? Our fascination with ghosts and ghost hunting has created a huge industry. Modern ghost hunting and haunted tourism are so big that some towns refuse to engage with their haunted histories. They don't want to damage their reputations or be descended upon by packs of YouTubers with wacky gadgets. But that hasn't stopped people from traveling all over the world to hunt for the dead. And they spend a lot of money on devices to help them do it, with mixed results. EMF meters meters for example emfs are invisible chunks of energy sometimes referred to as radiation that are associated with electrical power electrical

transmission through these fields happens through alternating currents ac or direct currents dc dc emfs are pretty stable and don't really do much but ac creates waves at a range of different frequencies and amplitudes, and these waves are erratic and prolific and all over the place. So it's logical that EMF and K2 meters give such wacky readings, even if no ghosts are present. Mel meters and REM pods have the same issues. They were made specifically for ghost hunting,

but the readings don't mean anything. They don't prove that ghosts exist. Thermometers are also limited. Scientists need precise laser technology for accurate and repeatable measurements of temperature. The most commercially available models only have a distance to light ratio of 12 to 1. They only give you an average temperature reading of a large area. Black lights, anemometers, and thermometers. All the data collected using these scientific tools can be explained by naturally occurring phenomena. Then there's all the audio recordings. Sure, some EVPs and ITCs might be real, but how you interpret the sounds is often a function of

your own beliefs. Some psychics think the voices they hear in audio recordings could be their own projected consciousness. People of faith often believe they're hearing messages from angels or demons. But for the most part, EVPs and ITCs usually turn out to be nothing more than a hoax. Welcome. Please come in. I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you can't tell you how pleased I am I can't tell you how pleased I am there are no accepted protocols for gathering

audio from ghosts ghost hunters just kind of make it up as they go along the same thing happens when recordings are analyzed. Investigators can easily manipulate the sounds. It's just too easy to fake an EVP and just as easy to hear something just because you want to. And that's basically what the Ovilus device is. Like I said, it's just a simple collection of environmental detectors that spit out a sound. Unfortunately, the desire to find ghosts exceeds the actual evidence they exist.

Whether it's a photo from a full-spectrum camera or any type of audio recording, everything can be altered to reveal what the hunter wants to find. The first ghost hoax photograph was taken way back in 1861 by William H. Mumler. Mumler took a self-portrait with a plate that was already exposed. It looked like there was a ghost behind it. He shared the image with his friends as a joke, a 19th century meme. But as the photograph reached more people, some of them started claiming it was real. It didn't take long before people were faking ghosts everywhere. Now, even if it's not manipulated, with no consistency on how ghost hunters gather their data,

how can anyone prove anything scientifically? You need to follow precise methodologies when trying to prove something with science. And ghost hunting does not follow the scientific method. Oh, look at that. I see, look at that. One of the few tools used in ghost hunting that does capture somewhat accurate data is the SLS camera. But even those types of cameras are famous

for picking up all kinds of anomalies, and they're also highly prone to human error and manipulation. The scientific method requires long-term studies and measurable data. Experiments need to be conducted under very specific means and repeated multiple times to prove their accuracy. The way ghost hunters use this technology has actually set the entire field of research back, and the reality shows don't help. A young man she met here who was a seaman went away. A seaman, a man of the, you might call merchant brewing today. Stop, Zach. Stop, stop. Let go of yourself. Let go of your hand. Let go of your neck.

I'm going so straight with me! But is lack of science a problem for ghost hunters, or a problem for science? And what if we've been using the wrong type of science all along? While none of the tools used by ghost hunters reveals any type of scientific evidence that ghosts exist, there's still one big thing they haven't done. They haven't proven that ghosts are not real. The human body is acutely attuned to its physical environment. Now, modern technology has dulled our instincts, but we still have them.

We know when we're somewhere we're not supposed to be. We know when we're being watched. We know when we're not alone. Now, some people actually enjoy this sensation, and maybe ghost hunters just have an itch for fear that's best scratched by visiting with the dead. Other people get into paranormal research because they miss a deceased loved one and want to regain that connection. Despite centuries of research, no one can say definitively what happens after death. No one can agree on what people experience during a near-death experience. Are people having a hallucination, or is there something more to it?

Ghost stories are one of the few things that unite all cultures around the world, now and through all of history. And that's an awful lot of proxy data. Near-death experiences are often described the same way, regardless of culture. Now, something this universal could be grounded in truth. And maybe the answers are out there, and we just haven't discovered the right technology to prove they exist. At least, not yet. The implications of discovering ghosts are far more profound than just figuring out what happens after death.

If ghosts are real, everything we know changes. Even though modern ghost hunting is clouding the science, people are not going to stop believing in ghosts or stop looking for them. Believers and even non-believers seek a connection to people of the past. And this could be the recent past, like a loved one who just died, or could be the distant past where a ghost can help us fill gaps in history. And the need to prove the existence of ghosts is also closely coupled with our natural fear of death. Even if we overcome that fear, it's very uncomfortable to picture a world where we don't exist. So if ghosts are real, then the afterlife is real, and our

consciousness or soul can live on. It's a comforting thought, and the foundation for almost all religions. But maybe it's better we don't know. If there was proof of an afterlife, it might cause people to behave badly in this life. Or worse, it might cause people who are in pain to want to leave this life early. Because if there's an afterlife to look forward to, not an afterlife based on faith, but an afterlife based on fact, then this life loses its value. So as long as there's no proof of life after death, we have to do the best we can for the short time we're here. We have to live in the present moment because we never know when the present moment will be our last. I think having a

fear of death is healthy. It's not pleasant, but it's healthy and normal. Fear of death is nothing to be ashamed of. That fear keeps you present. That fear keeps you safe. And that fear, it's what makes us human. Next up, an episode all about shadow people. Now, maybe they're ghosts, maybe they're evil spirits or demons. I don't know, but it's a pretty common occurrence.

Now, I kind of don't believe in ghosts or shadow people, but I have to admit, I had a shadow person experience. I'm looking at my notes because I didn't even like to memorize this one. Okay, there are a few types of shadow people that everyone sees. There's like six or seven versions, but there's lots of people see the hat man. There's the watcher. There's the child. Super creepy.

And there's one called the old hag. That is the one I saw. I was about to tell you about it, but I don't want to. So I don't believe in this stuff, right? But my shadow person experience with the old hag, which happened when I was 40, was the most terrifying experience of my life before and since.

Nothing has topped it. And I don't believe in this stuff. I get into the specifics of what happened right now. Here's how it happens. You're drifting off to sleep, or maybe you wake up in the middle of the night. You feel a presence in the room. You see something out of the corner of your eye.

You try to look, but you can't move. You try to call out, but you're unable to make a sound. There's an invisible weight on your chest. Even breathing is difficult. You strain to look, and then you see it. The shadow of a person. You can't detect any features, but every instinct you have tells you this entity

is not friendly. You hear a light hum, maybe a rush of air, and the dark entity vanishes. You've just encountered a shadow person. Now this one was pretty benign, but there are some shadow people sightings that are more intense, more real. These encounters can be traumatic

and in some cases, violent. I should know because it happened to me. Every culture has their own paranormal legends. Asian cultures, European, American, and so on. Some myths exist in cultural subsets like religions and individual countries. Even small towns and neighborhoods have their own legends. People raised in Michigan might not know what a chupacabra is, but they've heard of the Dog Man. Americans might laugh at the story of Krampus, the evil version of Santa Claus who is half goat, half demon and punishes children. But mention him to kids in Germany or Austria and they won't find it funny.

Visitors to Ronkonkoma, New York, enjoy swimming in the clear lake in the middle of town. But locals don't go in the water out of fear of Tuscawanta, the Algonquin princess who drowns one young man every year in search of true love. Or the crab cat. The what? No, the crab cat. All goldfish are afraid of him. He's half crab, half cat, who works in a sushi bar in the underworld. They have sushi in the underworld?

Before the crab cat appears, you hear him sharpening his blade, and the room will smell like sake. If the crab cat catches you, he meows, Omikase! Then he cuts off one of your fins, and you spend all of eternity swimming in circles. Circles? Oh, because he cuts off one fin. Fear the crab cat. Fear the crab cat. Whether a chupacabra, evil Santa Claus, or a crab cat, these stories couldn't be any more different. But one legend is universal. Shadow people.

Shadow people are seen in every culture on earth. And shadow people encounters have been happening for thousands of years. And of all the thousands on Earth, and shadow people encounters have been happening for thousands of years. And of all the thousands or maybe millions of shadow people encounters over the years, the descriptions are eerily similar. Most often, they appear as nothing more than silhouettes. They lack defining characteristics. You can feel that there are facial features there, but you can't see them. The majority of shadow people sightings happen when you're in bed at night, though they have been seen outside, especially in dark wooded areas.

But a few shadow people have been seen in broad daylight. It's not uncommon to hear a humming or a buzzing or a whooshing sound when a shadow person is present. And some people hear electricity and some people hear the shadow person whispering or even screaming in their ear. In most cases, the shadow people will disappear when you see them. They'll zip into a corner, fly through a wall, or just fade away. But in some rare cases, shadow people don't disappear. They become more clear and detailed.

And in very rare cases, shadow people can be violent. You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth, while curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible.

You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. Hey, Jane Hecklefish.

The first attached image was from the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia. It's a really tricky place that my paranormal team and myself have investigated many times. This was captured in the cafeteria by our night vision camera. We investigate in complete darkness and heard movement behind us. The camera captured this figure and it's known to haunt this location. The second attached image was caught by Oakmont Paranormal in a joint investigation of the Andrew Carnegie Library and Music Hall in Pittsburgh. It looks to have glowing eyes. The lady sitting in front of the figure called our attention to the movement

around her and said that she was feeling sick. No. No. The Choctaw have been in America for almost 4,000 years. They were among the five civilized tribes as described by Europeans, meaning the Choctaw had an organized and advanced society. They had a high literacy rate. They had centralized governments with written constitutions. They had a merchant class and would trade with other tribes as well as with Europeans. The Choctaw would accept white and black people into their tribes through marriage. And despite all these modern sensibilities, the Choctaw had a rich mythology.

They have a story about the Nalusa Chito. This is a shadow being who appears when someone allows evil thoughts to enter their mind. The Nalusa Chito appears while they're sleeping and devours their soul. These entities are so terrifying to the Choctaw that to this day, many people will not say the name. The Choctaw also have Nelusifilea, which literally translates to long black being. This is a shadow person who lives in the woods and appears at dusk to torment hunters and children who stray too far from camp. Cultures from all over the world have similar legends. Medieval Europeans fear the incubus who assaults women while they sleep. The succubus assaults men.

The word nightmare comes from ancient Germanic or Norse. A mare or mara is a demon that sits on your chest and tries to strangle you while you sleep. This creature is known as Kikimora to Russians, Czechs, and Poles. Even the Sumerians 5,000 years ago told stories of the alu. The alu roams the night searching for victims who are asleep. The Alu can paralyze you, possess you, and put you in a coma. In Arabian and Islamic mythology and theology, jinn are supernatural creatures created from smokeless and scorching fire.

Many Muslims believe the jinn are real. An individual member of the jinn is known as a jinnie. And this is where we get the word genie. Like rub the lamp genie? Yep. Oh no. Prince Ali, mighty as he, Ali Ababwa. Strong as ten, regular man definitely.

He's faced the galloping hordes. A hundred bad guys with swords Who sent the goons to their lords Why, Prince Ali Oh, you didn't see that coming. I did, I was just hoping to avoid it. The djinn are typically invisible, but when they want to be seen, they can take any shape they want.

They're often seen as large, shadowy figures. Djinn are able to take control of a human's body, but they can only do this if the victim is in a weakened state. Feelings of unhappiness and depression can make someone vulnerable to a Djinn. Djinn have free will and can be either good or evil. The good ones will support, assist, or protect humans, but the evil ones? They can kill you.

At a job site, there were more than a few of them. You could never look at them straight on or they would vanish. The dogs reacted to them every time they appeared. Everyone at the job site saw them. The site was up in the northern California foothills near Copperopolis. This area was active Native American territory. Also was very active during the gold rush. I would be sitting in a chair in the guard shack looking down the long driveway when something would catch my eye in my peripheral view. If I turn forward to a bit of a vanish, if I focus my view down the road, I can see the outline of a person. Mostly like a shadow, as if the apparition absorbed light rather than reflect. Part of our pass-downs involved sharing what the shadow people did during that shift.

Too many corroborated witness accounts to write it off. Americans are familiar with the Vietnam War, the proxy war between Cold War superpowers that lasted from 1955 to 1975. But what about the Laotian Civil War, which happened at the same time? It was fought between the Kingdom of Laos, supported by the United States and its allies against Lao communists. It's also known as the Secret War in American intelligence circles because CIA recruited thousands of fighters from the local Hmong population to hold back the communists. Well, the secret war did not

go well for the CIA. The Hmong people became refugees and thousands of them fled to the United States. When the Hmong arrived in America, suddenly young healthy men were dying in their sleep. Over a hundred men died this way and doctors had no idea what caused it. But the Hmong did know what caused it. They believe in an evil night spirit that sits on your chest until you suffocate. They call it a pressure demon. But as long as you're faithful to your rituals and keep your ceremonial objects near your bed, you're safe. The Hmong believed that they were being punished by shadow entities for leaving their homeland. To this day, there's no medical explanation as to why all these young men died.

When this story appeared in the LA Times, Wes Craven was inspired to write A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Krueger is actually based on a shadow person. And as frequent as shadow people encounters were throughout history, it seemed to be a fringe phenomenon, something that happened in faraway lands in ancient civilizations. Nobody knew how common shadow people sightings were. But all of that would change in 2001 when shadow people would go mainstream when i was on active duty in the

marine corps stationed at camp tendleton california i had an encounter with a shadow person late at night on a weekend i was alone in the barracks stone stone cold sober. My roommate was on the other side of the base. As I go to bed, I turn over and slightly open my eyes. At this point, I see a shadowy figure come out from my roommate's closet and walk to his bed. I could see arms and legs moving. I see it literally crawl into his bed, and clear as day, I see the thing turn over like it was looking at me. In a panic, I back into the wall, never blinking and staring at what I just saw. I grab my phone and turn the flashlight on, only to see the bed empty. A few weeks later, I finally tell my roommate what I saw, and he was speechless,

and said he saw something similar a few days before I told him. Somebody in there? before I told him. I don't know. Yeah, we need to get the f*** out of here. Seriously, hold on. My husband and I are paranormal investigators. We lived in Oklahoma. We decided to check out the Joplin spook light. I had just turned the car off when my husband said he could hear a conversation coming from the field next to us. We didn't think anyone would be out in the dark in

the cold rain just having a conversation. As I looked past my husband toward the field, I saw from the corner of my eye the light shining into the car was being blocked, starting from the left to the right. I quickly turned my head and watched as one, two, three, four shadows ran behind the car and completely blocked the light from the yard light. Although he had driven about a hundred miles to investigate the spook light, I put the car in gear and noped it out of there after parking for less than three minutes. My belief, anyway, is that shadow people don't really have anyone's best interest at heart, and I prefer not to spend time in the company. para que empiece la calle Dios la puta que te parió

la puta que te parió concha de la lora concha de la lora pero como mierda puede ser Concha de la lora, concha de la lora Pero como mierda puede ser que no haya nada Ya es la tercera vez In April 2001, Art Bell took a random call on Coast to Coast AM. The caller told Art a story about shadow people. Nobody had ever heard of shadow people before, at least not by this name. But Art found the story interesting and asked if anyone else in the audience had a similar encounter.

Well, 4,500 stories came in. And last week, I asked viewers of the Y-Files to send their shadow people stories. We got almost 300 submissions in one day. Art Bell got way more than you. Well, of course he did. He's Art Bell. You're jealous. I'm not jealous.

It's not a competition. Well, yeah, that's what someone who loses a competition says. I'm not competing with Art Bell. Oh, that's abundantly clear. Shadow people will fall into one of a few types. The first is just a black mist without any form. It may look like a cloud of slowly moving smoke. You know this is a shadow person because you can feel a presence or a negative energy in the room next human-shaped shadows these shadow people clearly have a body head and shoulders but you can't make out any features even though you can't see their face you still get the sense it's looking at you like the black mist shadows these typically disappear when you look directly at them and this encounter is is the most common.

When I was eight, I was experiencing a lot of turmoil in my life due to an alcoholic and abusive father. At this point is when the shadow people started appearing, never doing anything, just watching. It scared me, but I dare not say anything for fear of being beaten. As the years passed, my paranormal experiences increased to beyond shadow people. I started seeing and interacting with full apparitions. Once I was with my best friend as a teenager, and a man walked up to us and just said, everything is going to be okay. He then walked past us and vanished.

My friend just stood there speechless and in shock. When I asked him if he knew that man, he said, yes, he's my uncle, but he died two years ago. As a young man while in the military, I was stationed at Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines. There, many of the locals witnessed shadow people and apparitions around me. The Filipinos would get scared and claimed the Aspaw were following me. Moving up in severity, there is the demonic shadow person. These are considered very dangerous.

They're similar to human-shaped shadows, but these have glowing red or yellow eyes. And this creature will speak to you, taunt you, and threaten you and your family. Sometimes the room will smell like sulfur, and often this entity will grab you or even try to strangle you. A more specific shadow person is called the old hag.

This entity takes the shape of an old woman with features that you can see, and she looks like what Western cultures would consider a typical witch. The Old Hag will paralyze you, climb on top of you, and sometimes try to choke you. And this is another shadow being that you can physically feel. My wife and I are on vacation in the mountains. In the middle of our first night, I woke up to the sound of whispering coming from a corner of the room. I turned to look and realized I couldn't move. Then I heard footsteps on the carpet, like the sound of feet dragging.

Starting to get scared, I desperately tried to move, but I still couldn't. I tried to wake up my wife, but I couldn't speak. Then I felt something sit on the side of my bed. I still couldn't move, but I felt an ice-cold hand on my face and fingers running through my hair. Then I felt hot breath in my ear and a raspy voice whispered, well, that put me in full-blown panic, but I was still paralyzed. Then I saw it. It was an old woman who looked like a witch. She climbed on top of me and smiled this evil smile. All I could hear was her heavy breath and the sound of my heart pumping through my ears.

While holding me down, she started tearing at my clothes. I don't want to get too graphic, but she was violating. As the terror rose, I fought and fought against her, but this just made her laugh. Finally, I could move, and she was gone. I told my wife what happened. We stayed the next two nights on the couch and didn't even go into the bedroom. I was so shaken by the encounter that we ended our trip early. I don't believe in ghosts, and I'm not sure I believe in shadow people, but what happened to me felt real. To this day, I've never been more frightened in my life. Then there's a shadow person known as the Hat Man.

He's usually an extremely large shadow creature who wears a wide-brimmed hat. Again, Freddy Krueger was a hat man. And sightings of the Hat Man have been increasing. And many people believe that the Hat Man is a warning, a sign of the end of times. My story took place in 2003 when I was 17 years old. I had the single most terrifying experience of my life. I was asleep in my room when I suddenly woke up paralyzed and sensing an unease in the room. Despite being awake, I was unable to move any part of my body except for my eyes.

I knew I was awake because I could hear the TV that had been left on in the upstairs living room directly above me. As I scanned the room, I noticed movement to my right in the corner of the room. The figure seemed to appear from the shadows, standing as tall as my ceiling, menacingly hunched over. It had no noticeable features like eyes or a mouth. The figure was dressed in a tall top hat and slowly floated towards me, its fingers stretching out and seeming to grow in length as I reached out for me. I felt a genuine sense of complete terror wash over me, like I had never felt before, almost like the feeling of dread was being imposed on me by this being. The entity moved closer and closer, its hand raised in my

direction almost in slow motion, and I felt a visceral sense of evil emanating from the figure, a feeling that I had never experienced before and have not felt since. Despite the fear that gripped me, I was also terrified by the intensity of the movement and the eerie unnatural movement of the shadowy figure. Only when the fear became overwhelmingly intense did I finally step out of the paralysis. I am a logical, reasonable person and I did not believe in the paranormal. That is why after the initial terror left me, I found the whole experience to be rather entertaining. I mean, the top half was just ridiculous. I never once believed that my experience was real, and I thought that I was simply experiencing a waking dream. It wasn't

until several years later, when I was watching a documentary on Netflix called The Nightmare, that I started to feel like maybe it wasn't just a hallucination I experienced all those years earlier. After several minutes into this documentary, someone was recounting their paralysis experience, and they showed a sketch of what they had experienced. To my shock and disbelief, this sketch was the exact same hat man figure that I had seen nearly 10 years earlier. I mean, exact same. How is this possible? I paused the show, completely frozen in disbelief, as for the first time I knew that I had experienced something otherworldly that others were apparently also experiencing. Seeing a shadowy human figure was easy for me to attribute to some sort of common psychological human manifestation, but the commonality of that very unique top hat, which held no significance to me, was impossible to explain and shook me to my core. The Hat Man is a type of shadow being, but he has some traits that make him unique.

Obviously, the most notable feature of the Hat Man shadow entity is his hat. Oh, is it? It's not his button down cardigan sweater. The type of hat varies by culture. Some say it's a fedora like Freddy Krueger. Some say it's a top hat. In South America, they say he wears a gaucho hat. But regardless of who sees him, the hat is always wide brimmed. Sometimes the hat man has glowing eyes. Witnesses say he wears a cloak or a trench coat.

He's always tall. Sometimes he stands over 10 feet high. One thing everyone agrees on, seeing the hat man is bad news. We were living in a house where a lady hung herself from the rafters of the living room. Upstairs was condemned. Used to be two apartments. There was so much activity up there, you would have thought the apartments were occupied. Once the landlord came to fix a leak from up there, I told him about the activity.

He said, no way anyone is up there. It's locked. It's impossible. fix a leak from up there. I told him about the activity. He said, no way anyone is up there. It's locked. It's impossible. I told him there's constant walking around, constant banging, like someone is moving furniture. A couple of days later, my wife and I started hearing the sound of one of those springy things that stopped the door from hitting the wall, just over and over again, brown, brown, and it's right behind our door. We open the door and the noise is still happening. But there's no springy thing. Nowhere for the noise to be coming from. But it's still happening. We looked at each other baffled. After two minutes of the noise, it stops. The broom is leaning behind the bunk bed and it flies out and falls over. The dog is spooked. And right then,

the trash can slides about five feet stopping right before the dog. He freaks and he's ready to get out of the room. Later in the night our three-year-old daughter wants to sleep with us. She's in the middle of my wife and I and at exactly 3 a.m. I'm woken up and standing over me is the tallest shadow person I've ever seen. The hat man can create or is attracted to negative energy. Three to four minutes later, and he was gone. Scared the bejesus out of me. The hat man can create or is attracted to negative energy. Bad luck, illness, even death follow the hat man. I saw the hat man in 2003. I was lying in bed ready to go to sleep with my boyfriend beside me.

I was laying there and looked up and saw the hat man staying behind the door. I had never heard about the hat man or visions of a future apocalypse. My boyfriend died in his sleep later that year, which was in a few months of this happening. Sometimes the hat man brings visions of a future apocalypse. Some people who've seen him said he showed them a dark future, nuclear war, worldwide disease and famine. And the hat man sometimes gets attached to entire families where multiple people can see him. And once he latches on, it's almost impossible to get rid of him. Some people even see him away from their homes and in daylight. This happened to me 10 years ago when I was a teenager. I was sitting alone at the kitchen table eating.

Then a sense of dread and downright paralysis came over me, and I was compelled to look at the kitchen door. Right there, I can clearly see the shadow of a man with a hat and glowing yellow eyes. I could only watch, not being able to move a muscle. His face was practically a shadow, but I felt him smile in a condescending manner. And just like that, he rounded the corner and disappeared. I'm 100% sure of what I saw. My case cannot be discounted as sleep paralysis because I was wide awake.

It was broad daylight around 2 or 3 p.m. So who is the hat man? What are shadow people? Some say ghosts. Some say they're from another time or another dimension. Others say they're from another planet. There is no consensus among paranormal researchers as to what shadow people are, but the theories are interesting. The obvious theory is what shadow people are. But the theories are interesting. The obvious theory is that shadow people are ghosts, and when they appear, it's a kind of haunting. But ghosts typically reveal themselves as light or energy, not shadow.

And ghosts usually have defined features and clothing. So I don't think that's right. Another theory is that the shadows are astral projections of people who are having out-of-body experiences. I disagree with this one too people who report seeing astral bodies or astral projections describe them more like ghosts than shadows astral projections usually have features and are usually light not dark a very interesting theory is that shadow people are interdimensional travelers maybe the shadows are actually people from other dimensions or realities and are here to observe.

Maybe the shadow person you see is actually you from another dimension or another timeline. A common theory is that shadow people are demons. Christians who see the hat man have no doubt that he is a demon or the devil himself. And there's everybody's favorite theory,

that shadow people are aliens. There are many shadow people encounters where the entity has large eyes and a small mouth. Some people who've seen this type of shadow being say once they focus, it becomes less like a shadow and more like a creature that's actually there. Also, reports of shadow people sightings are extremely common among alien abductees. Maybe the aliens are checking up on their experiment. Or maybe abductions begin with the alien emerging from the shadows to take them away. Alien abductees sometimes report shadow people

as being blue shadows and not very tall. And blue shadows are seen outside just as often as they're seen inside. Some people believe the aliens are using a cloaking device or other technology that gives them a shadowy appearance. This technology also helps them a shadowy appearance this technology also helps them walk through walls or disappear completely encounters with shadow people feel

so real that those who see them question their own sanity this is why many if not most shadow being encounters go unreported the big question is is there a logical, rational, scientific explanation for shadow people? Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. We usually think of being asleep and being awake as two distinct and clearly defined states, and usually they are. But inside your brain, that line can be a bit blurry. When you're dreaming, most of your brain thinks you're awake. If you're dreaming that you're running, playing a sport, or any physical activity, your brain thinks this is really happening.

And your muscles want to engage with whatever you're dreaming about. Obviously, trying to slay a dragon full of orcs while you're tucked in next to the wife would be a problem. Go ahead and tell him you're speaking from personal experience. I don't want to talk about it. You know, wearing all that armor to bed isn't helping your sex life. I said leave it alone. And it's beyond me how anyone can sleep in a wooden card piece. Okay, that's enough. So while you dream, your brain switches off your muscles. This is called muscle atonia. Involuntary muscles still work, breathing, heartbeat, digestion, peristalsis, but voluntary motor functions are shut down. This shutdown occurs during hypnagogia,

the transition from wakefulness to sleep. During hypnopompia, the transition to being awake, your muscles are turned back on. You're asleep during this process so you don't notice it but sometimes the brain's wires get crossed and you're conscious while your muscles are shutting down. Have you ever been drifting off to sleep then suddenly you jerk or kick?

This happens when your brain is out of sync with your sleep cycle. You slipped into a dream before your brain had a chance to completely shut down your muscles. You'll notice this happening more often when you're overtired. But sometimes your brain gets so out of sync that you can suffer from sleep paralysis. This is when you are fully conscious while your muscles are switched off. You're completely awake, but you can't move. You can't turn your head. You can't speak. All you can do is move your eyes. And sometimes you

can't even do that. Sleep paralysis usually just lasts for a few seconds, but sometimes it can go on for a few minutes. And this could be terrifying. During sleep paralysis, sometimes you see and hear things that aren't there. These are hypnagogic hallucinations. And remember, even though you're awake, you're still close enough to the dream state that your brainstem can activate the dream mechanism and conjure all kinds of things. So the hallucinations can feel very real. Not only can you have visual and auditory hallucinations, you can experience somaesthetic hallucinations. This is when your body can feel something that isn't there. The cherry on top of this horrible experience is the negativity that occurs. There aren't a lot of

happy stories about sleep paralysis. This is because when you're sleeping, your brain has a deficit of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. This causes low mood, depression, and fear. The reason shadow people encounters sound so similar is that humans are all built pretty much the same way. It would be logical for us to hallucinate the same things. But those who believe in shadow people think there's more going on than just sleep paralysis. The encounters described are too similar. Regardless of age, religion, or culture,

people see the same shadow beings. Believers say shadow entities appear while we're sleeping because that's when we're most vulnerable. So let's all hope that sleep paralysis creates shadow people because I can think of nothing more frightening than it being the other way around. Next up, we cover some of the most famous cases from Ed and Lorraine Warren.

And the Warrens are the people that the Conjuring movies are based on. They were very famous demonologists that spawned a $2 billion movie franchise. Now, when I started researching the episode, I was really just looking for the famous creepy stories. But I found something even creepier. The creepiest story that I found is Ed Warren.

Ed and Lorraine Warren are maybe the most famous paranormal investigators in history. They've worked on more than 10,000 cases, some of which have been made into books and movies. The Conjuring films are based on the work of the Warrens. Today we'll look at a few of their scariest, most disturbing cases. So turn off the lights and put the little ones to bed. It's going to get spooky. December 1975, Amityville, New York. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? We're jumping right in with Amityville, New York. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

What? We're jumping right in with Amityville? I don't know about this. You know I don't like to be scared. Yeah, I know, but we took a vote on the channel, and most people said they wanted scary stories. Oh, yeah? Well, then they should be the ones to clean my bowl after I shit myself.

Okay, that's enough. I'm just saying there are going to be consequences. December 1975, Amityville, New York. George and Kathleen Lutz were house hunting. Though the asking price of 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville was higher than their budget, at $18,000, it was a steal. Soon the Lutzes learned why. A year earlier, in the house, 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr., also known as Butch, snapped. On November 13th at 3.15 a.m.,

he slowly and systematically went bedroom to bedroom and murdered his entire family. Butch DeFeo's father, mother, two sisters, and two brothers were all shot with a.35 caliber rifle while they slept. Butch claimed he heard voices urging him to kill. His attorney, William Weber, tried the insanity defense, but it didn't work. In November 1975, Butch was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences. One month later, George and Kathleen Lutz,

along with their three children, moved in to the DeFeo house. The Lutzes weren't that religious, but they asked a local priest to bless the house. While the family was unpacking, Father Pecoraro was in an upstairs room praying. As soon as he splashed holy water, the priest heard a voice that said, get out. Father Pecoraro didn't tell the Lutzes specifically what happened, but he warned them not to use that

second floor room for a bedroom and stay out of the room altogether if they could. Did they stay out? They wish they did. I don't like this. Within a few days, the Lutzes noticed strange activity. At first, it was just sounds. Doors slamming, footsteps, strange mumbling. Then the house wouldn't get warm, no matter how high they turned up the heat.

So they kept a fire going day and night. George sometimes saw demonic faces in the fire. Missy Lutz, then five years old, started talking about an imaginary friend named Jody. Green slime was found oozing from the walls and through keyholes. Doors and windows were found suddenly damaged. One night, George saw his wife Kathy transform into an old woman who looked like a witch. He saw hoof prints in the snow leading into their house. George would wake up at 3.15 every morning,

the same time the DeFeo family was killed. One night, he heard his children's beds slamming up and down on the floor, but he couldn't do anything about it because he was paralyzed in bed by an unseen force. Later that night, he saw his wife levitating and moving across the bed. The next morning, after only 28 days, the Lutzes had enough. They left the Amityville house and all their belongings and moved in with friends. And that's when they brought in the Warrens. On March 6th, Ed and Lorraine Warren conducted a seance in the house with several psychics. Lorraine, a clairvoyant, said she encountered Butch's spirit during the seance and felt what she described as an overwhelming feeling of horrible depression.

The inhuman, the diabolical, are attracted to where tragedies occur, just like a moth would be attracted to a light. And when the Lutz family moved in 13 months after these murders, they were still using some of the furniture that was in there. Ed Warren said the house was possessed by demons. The psychic team took a series of time-lapse photos of the upstairs landing. None of the photographs showed anything out of the ordinary, except one. Keep in mind that Butch DeFeo's little brother, John, was only nine years old on the night he was killed. The photo shows, peering out from one of the bedrooms,

a little boy with glowing eyes. After the Lutzes moved out of the house, things returned to normal. Two years later, they would tell their story to author Jay Anson, who released the book, The Amityville Horror. The book was an instant sensation, selling over 6 million copies. The story gained even more notoriety in 1979 when the movie Amityville Horror hit theaters. Since then, 12 books and a total of 28 films have been inspired by the story. Today, the Amityville house looks much like it did in the 70s. After all this time, it's still one of the most famous and frightening houses in the country. And maybe the world. In 1970, Donna, a nursing student, received a gift from her mother for her 20th birthday, a Raggedy Ann doll.

Donna loved the doll and took it back to her house that she shared with another young nurse named Angie. The doll's place in the house was sitting up on the couch. But Donna and Angie noticed the doll would be found in different rooms. Donna would set her on the living room couch before she left work. She'd come home and the doll was in her room with the door shut. Then Donna and Angie started finding notes around the apartment.

They were written in child's handwriting and said, help me. And the notes were written on parchment paper that they didn't have in the house. One day they came home and the doll had moved again. But this time it had a sticky red substance on its hands that appeared to be blood. Within a few hours, the red had moved again. But this time it had a sticky red substance on its hands that appeared to be blood.

Within a few hours, the red substance was gone. Angie's boyfriend, Lou, said the doll gave him a creepy feeling and told him to get rid of it. They wouldn't. That night, while Lou was sleeping, he heard a noise in the room, like someone was walking around.

Then he felt something on the bed. He looked up and said the doll was quickly crawling on the bed on his body. He went to yell, but the doll covered his mouth and choked him until he passed out. The next morning, he tried to convince himself that it was all a dream, but he couldn't shake it. Donna and Angie didn't know what to do. They felt like they were going crazy. They contacted a local medium for help. The medium held a seance and told the women that the doll was possessed by a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle Higgins.

They later found out that the body of a young girl was found on the property years earlier, before their apartment building was built. The medium told the girls that the doll, who they now called Annabelle, just wanted someone to play with and someone to love and care for her. Annabelle asked permission to stay in the doll and live with the young nurses. The young nurses said no. They got rid of the doll. The end. Nope. They kept it. I was afraid you'd say that. They felt bad for Annabelle and agreed to let her stay in the doll and they would take care of her. That turned out to be a terrible mistake. After the medium left, Angie and Donna explained the story to Lou to try to get him to come around.

He said the story just made it worse. Get rid of the doll. They still said no. Over the next days and weeks, the strange activities continued. Sounds in the middle of the night. Annabelle moving from room to room. And now the notes changed from help me to help Lou. One day, Lou was helping Donna and

Angie pack for a road trip. He saw that Annabelle looked like she was just thrown onto the floor, so he went over to pick her up and then he felt a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down and saw blood seeping through his shirt. Underneath he had seven long bloody scratches in the shape of the mark of the beast. Within two days the marks disappeared like they were never there. Maybe the beast uses Neosporin. Please, no one-liners when I'm trying to be scary. I'm just trying to keep it light. Alright, go ahead.

Finally, Angie and Donna agreed to do something. They called the church and explained what was happening. The church reached out to Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ed Warren was the only layperson recognized by the church as a demonologist. The Warrens arrived and spoke to the young women at length. Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ed Warren was the only layperson recognized by the church as a demonologist. The Warrens arrived and spoke to the young women at length. Ed and Lorraine explained that the doll was not possessed by a little girl,

but possessed by a demon. And now that the demon was invited to live there, it would try to find a human host. The Warrens agreed to take the doll and put it somewhere the demon couldn't escape. So Ed put Annabelle in the backseat of the car. He suggested that they don't take freeways home, and he was right. Several times on the drive, the car tried to run itself off the road, and the brakes would give out, come back, and then give out again. Ed turned around and splashed holy water on Annabelle, and after that,

the car worked fine. Even after they got Annabelle home, it continued to torment and terrorize. It would move around the house, and at some point, Ed found the doll levitating near his desk. One day, a young priest was visiting and saw Annabelle. He mocked the doll and said, you're just a doll, you can't hurt anyone. Bad move, Padre. Well, on his way home, his brakes gave out and the priest was killed. Several people who mocked Annabelle ended up in car wrecks soon after. Finally, the Warrens put Annabelle in a glass case. And on the case is a note that ominously

says, positively do not open. Today, Annabelle still sits in her glass case at the occult museum in the Warrens' house. Ghost hunters, mediums, and psychics still visit Annabelle to this day. All report feeling a dark, negative energy coming from the doll. But nobody opens the case, and everyone treats her with respect. When The Conjuring was released in 2013, it was praised not just for being extremely scary, but for feeling like a true story. That's because it is. In January 1971, the Perrin family moved into an old farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island.

Almost immediately, Carolyn, Roger, and their five daughters saw strange things happening. Like most of these stories, the first activity was so small that it would go unnoticed, like things being out of place. Carolyn would notice that her broom would never be in the same place she left it. Then the noises started. Loud

thuds, footsteps, and the sounds of people moving around in the kitchen. One day, Carolyn found muddy footprints and small piles of dirt on her freshly washed kitchen floor. Then the girls started seeing spirits around the house. Most of the spirits ignored the girls, but a few didn't.

And all those spirits were angry. Eight-year-old Cindy Perrin kept hearing a voice whispering in her bedroom. It said, there are seven dead soldiers in the walls. One day, Carolyn walked into the kitchen and saw a man standing there just leaning against the wall. She said he was wearing old-time clothes, which makes sense. The house was built in 1736. Ghosts also appeared sitting at their dining room table, and some seemed to be aware that the Perrons were there. The ghosts pointed at them and then vanished. Other ghosts ignored them before disappearing.

So Carolyn researched the history of the house and discovered it had been in the Arnold family for generations. She thought the man she saw in the kitchen was John Arnold. Carolyn learned there had been at least eight deaths on the property. Some of them gruesome. A few of them, children. You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace.

You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. Carolyn learned that the primary evil force was the spirit of a woman named Bathsheba Sherman, who lived in the house in the mid-19th century. She was not a nice lady. She had a reputation for beating and starving the hired help.

While her husband Judson farmed the land, she took care of the house. Bathsheba had four children, three of whom died very young. Local legend claims Bathsheba was a witch because an infant while in her care mysteriously died. The cause of death was determined to be a sewing needle that impaled the baby's skull. Locals believe that this was an offering to the devil, but Bathsheba was never convicted of any wrongdoing. When Bathsheba died, legend says she turned stone. The parents said that at 5.15 every morning, there would be the smell of rotten flesh in the house and the air would become terribly cold and the heat wouldn't work.

One especially scary night, Roger Perrin's bed was lifted into the air and dropped. Soon Carolyn started feeling like Bathsheba was trying to make her kill her children the way Bathsheba killed hers. That's when the Perrins called Ed and Lorraine Warren for help. The Warrens spent a few hours walking the house and talking to the Perrins. Then they performed a seance against Roger Perrins' wishes. Here's Roger in

his own words. The Warrens came over and they did the seance in the house. And it was, that was not a good thing. I was against against it but they did it anyway and three to five minutes into the seance and my wife got all the whole body but went out of shape and extorted and it was it was like an extortion somebody was squeezing her and her chair cut off the floor and came right into me into the next room and I tried to help her. You know, she was completely out of this world at that point, speaking crazy words. And I tried to help her.

At that point, Roger had seen enough. He actually punched Ed in the mouth and threw the Warrens out of the house and told them never to return. But soon after the seance, the haunting stopped. August 1977, Enfield, North London. This is considered one of the events that proves the existence of poltergeists. Peggy Hodgson had just put her children to bed when she heard the sound of a chair

being dragged across the bedroom floor. Peggy went into the room and her daughters were under their blankets, terrified. The chair was upside down on the floor and they said they didn't do it. They said the chair moved on its own. So Peggy turned out the lights and then heard the sound of scraping. When she turned the lights back on, she saw a dresser slide 18 inches across the floor. Peggy wasn't quite sure what was happening. She tried to push the dresser back into place, but it wouldn't budge. Peggy called

her neighbors over to make sure she wasn't going crazy. The neighbors also heard the sounds. Peggy finally called the police. One of the responding officers said she heard knocking or tapping and saw the chair wobble. Then she saw the chair slide across the floor about three feet. This is in the official police report, but the police said there's no crime, so there's nothing they can do. After a couple of months, everyone in the house was sleeping in the same room. And then the activity got worse. Voices of an old man started coming from Janet,

and her lips weren't moving. This voice is coming from an 11-year-old girl. Well, perhaps Guy, perhaps you've got something to say to them. Yeah. I'd like to know how you make this noise without bashing Janik's vocal cords to pieces. If I do it for half a minute, I get a sore throat. There's chases here. Peggy didn't know where to turn, so she went to the media.

Soon reporters and paranormal investigators descended on the family, performing test after test. There are photos of Janet being levitated out of bed. There's video of knocking sounds responding to questions from mediums. Guy Playfair was a writer and parapsychologist with the Society for Psychical Research. He spent a great deal of time with the family. He witnessed a lot of poltergeist activity with his own eyes. By 1978, the Enfield poltergeist attracted the attention of Ed and Lorraine Warren. At this point in time, the Warrens were icons in paranormal

research. They flew to London to investigate. Ed Warren was convinced there was a demonic presence. The voice coming from Janet said its name was Bill and that he lived and died in the house. The voice said that he had died of a brain hemorrhage while sitting in a chair. Bill's son confirmed all of that was true. Some months later, Gross was contacted by Terry Wilkins, whose father Bill was buried in a nearby cemetery and had lived at the house before the Hodgson's moved in. I had an hemorrhage and not been asleep and I died in a chair in a corner downstairs. Astonishingly, the voice had described the precise circumstances of Bill Wilkins' death.

But it describes exactly... That's exactly what happened. He died in the chair down in the living room. In all, there were more than 30 witnesses who saw furniture moving, objects flying around, cold breezes, physical assaults, pools of water appearing on the floor, graffiti and matches spontaneously igniting. The Enfield poltergeist tortured Peggy, Janet and the entire family for 18 months. It almost ruined their lives. Then as quickly as it started, it stopped.

The Snedekers lived in upstate New York, but found themselves traveling to Connecticut a lot. Philip, eldest son of Carmen and Alan Snedeker, had Hodgkin's lymphoma and his hospital was in Connecticut. In 1986, Carmen and Alan had had enough of the commute and decided to rent something near the Yukon Hospital. They packed up their four children and two of their nieces and moved to a spacious duplex

on a quiet street in Southington, Connecticut. As soon as they moved in, Alan began renovations on the basement to make a bedroom for Phillip. While cleaning out some rusty tools and other basement junk, he found an old piece of equipment he didn't recognize. It looked like a pump with a couple of old tubes coming out of it. Turns out, it was embalming equipment. Four. Corpses.

No! Alan kept renovating. He found two rooms. One was the embalming room, complete with equipment and rusty floor drains. The other room was a casket display room. The Snedekers now realized why the rent was so low on such a big house. It used to be a funeral home. The Hallahan Funeral Home, to be exact. Philip's bedroom would be the former casket room. And almost immediately, he heard strange sounds and voices. He saw dark figures moving in the shadows. He saw a man with white

hair and a pinstripe suit. One night, he saw bodies stacked up against the wall. Philip was so frightened, he asked to sleep in the hospital, which his parents didn't allow. Carmen thought Philip was hallucinating because of his cancer medication. But then everyone started seeing and hearing things. How many bodies passed through that house over the years? Well, it was a funeral home for a few decades, so... Thousands of bodies. Yeah. Nope. The Snedekers knew they had ghosts. At first, the ghosts just made sounds and moved things around the house. They would find light bulbs unscrewed from their sockets, but still somehow

emitted light. And all through the house was the smell of feces and decay. It became unbearable. The entire family was terrified. And just when they couldn't take it anymore, the ghosts became violent. What began as strange sounds, smells, and visions of spirits soon became much more. The spirits became physically violent. One night, both Carmen and her niece Tammy had a terrifying encounter. Carmen woke up and felt a dark energy around her. She couldn't see anything, but she felt cold hands reaching under her pajamas and grabbing at her underwear. Then she heard an evil laugh. Carmen's niece had the same exact encounter, but she was...

Whoa, what was that? You can't say... We'll get demonetized again. Oh, we don't want that. Whoa, what was that? You can't say we'll get demonetized again. Oh, we don't want that. No, we don't. So we'll censor it and the grownups out there can fill in the blanks. Good thinking. Eventually, both Carmen and her husband, Alan, were there by the entity multiple times. One night, Carmen finally saw the ghosts. One had long white hair and white eyes. The other had black hair and black eyes. That's when they called Ed and Lorraine Warren.

The Warrens and their team of investigators spent nine weeks in the Snedeker house. During that time, they saw everything the Snedekers reported. Members of the team were pushed, slapped, even knocked to the ground. Ed and Lorraine searched the history of the home. They discovered that one of the morticians who worked there was a necrophiliac. Definition? He had a thing for corpses. Worst hobby ever.

Ed said that the spirit infused the home with evil. The Warrens felt that an exorcism would work, and after the house was cleansed, the Snedekers moved out. Then the Warrens hired author Ray Garten to document everything that happened in the house. The documentation of these events became the book In a Dark Place, the story of a true haunting. The Snedeker case was also made into the movie The Haunting in Connecticut, released in 2009. Since the Snedekers moved out, nobody has reported anything strange in the house since. And the owner makes sure to tell all renters that it was once a funeral home and that the

renters should keep that in mind before they sign the lease. Ed and Lorraine Warren are possibly the most successful paranormal investigators in history. They've written or contributed to at least 30 books about their cases. Their work has inspired the movies in The Conjuring Universe, a film franchise worth over $2 billion. But the Warrens have their detractors, with many skeptics calling them outright frauds and grifters. So what's the truth? Well, Ed and Lorraine Warren met when they were 16 years old at a local movie theater.

Their conversation soon moved to the paranormal. Ed believes he grew up in a haunted house, and Lorraine claimed to be clairvoyant. They were married when they were 19, when Ed was on leave from the army. They soon made their livings as artists. They would go to houses that they believed were haunted, paint them and then try to sell the painting to the owner. Oof, that's a rough racket. It was.

So Ed supplemented their income by driving a bus. Though they were making a name for themselves locally as paranormal investigators, their breakthrough came in 1979 with the amityville horror case when the warrens arrived in amityville they brought an entire film crew with them unfortunately the film crew didn't capture anything except for the moanings of a few psychics yeah and the ghost boy right the ghost boy on top of the stairs yeah that's a creepy photo but it's actually a photograph of paul bart. Oh, the mall cop?

No, Paul Bartz was one of the investigators. He doesn't have glowing eyes. That's just light reflecting off his glasses. The cameras snapped a picture of him when he was setting up some equipment, but the photo became so famous that nobody bothered to refute it. Now, the Lutzes did call Father Pecoraro to bless the house, which he did. He also said there was nothing strange about the house. It was a peaceful and lovely home. Other parts of the story are also a little sketchy. The Lutzes couldn't have seen hoof prints in the snow because there was no snow at that time.

And all the damage that supposedly happened to the house didn't. Doors, windows, the entire house was in perfect shape when they moved in and when they left. The Amityville story was actually created by Butch DeFeo's lawyer, William Weber, and the Lutz family. One night, they were discussing a way to help each other. Weber wanted an insanity verdict for Butch DeFeo. He was also working on a book deal. The Lutzes were struggling financially, and they liked the sound of a book deal. Weber said that after four bottles of wine, their meeting turned into a creative writing session. But the Lutzes didn't like their cut of Weber's book deal. Author Jay Anson offered the Lutzes 50-50. That they liked.

And with millions of books selling like crazy and movie offers coming at them, it was in their financial interest to stick with the story. The Amityville Horror Story is definitely debunked. The next case we talked about was Annabelle, the possessed doll. This story is definitely debunked. The next case we talked about was Annabelle, the possessed doll. This story is easier to track. It's basically a retelling, beat for beat, of the Twilight Zone episode Living Doll, which aired in 1963 on CBS. Here's the synopsis. Eric Streeter is upset when his wife comes home with her daughter, Christy, having bought her yet another doll. Christy loves

her new talking Tina doll, but her stepfather takes an immediate dislike to it. Anytime he is alone with the doll, it spouts abusive comments to the effect that it hates him and that it's going to kill him. My name is Eric Streeter, and I'm going to get rid of you. You wouldn't dare. It's a great episode, and every Twilight Zone fan knows it.

Ed and Lorraine were apparently fans of the show too and co-opted the story. Still not convinced? The mother's name in the Twilight Zone episode was Annabelle. We can call that one debunked. How about Bathsheba Sherman, the witch that tormented the Perrons as portrayed in The Conjuring? When The Conjuring was released in 2013, the owner of the house at the time, Norma Sutcliffe, was tortured. By the witch? No, by movie fans. She released a video that year complaining about how her property was descended upon by horror fans. At all hours, day or night, there would be people in her yard, exploring the barn on her property and even sticking cameras

and phones through her window. She was furious. She even sued Warner Brothers over this. In her video, Norma goes on to debunk basically the whole story. Bathsheba was a real person, but that's about all the story gets right. She never lived in that house, never killed anyone. By all accounts, she was a lovely woman. She died peacefully at the age of 73. So, very little murdering of children? Very little.

None, actually. Her last act before she died was to provide for her grandchildren's education. Norma lived in that house for years. She said nothing strange happened in the house before or since. Now, maybe Norma Sutcliffe just got lucky and the house was haunted when the parents were there. Maybe. They got a few juicy book deals and a movie out of the story. So they said and continue to say their story is true. Oh, the Perrins didn't reach out to Ed and Lorraine Warren for help. The Warrens just showed up. That's something they did a lot.

They finally left when Mr. Perrin punched Ed in the mouth. So Bathsheba Sherman and The Conjuring? Debunked. The Snedeker's case is another one that doesn't make the Warrens look good. Ray Garten, the author that Ed Warren hired, really struggled writing the book. It was difficult with the family involved. They were going through some serious problems like alcoholism and drug addiction. They could not keep their story straight, and it became very frustrating. It's hard writing a non-fitching book when all the people involved are telling

you different stories. When Garten told Ed Warren about this, Ed said, oh, they're crazy. Only crazy people call us. So Garten asked what he's supposed to do about the book. Ed says, use what works and just make the rest up. Just make it scary. And this was not the first time Ed Warren hired a horror writer for help. Not a journalist, not a biographer, a horror fiction writer. Also, what's not widely reported is that Philip, their son with cancer, was caught touching and trying to rear his cousins. He even got pretty close once. Police took him to a mental hospital where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. And schizophrenia could certainly explain why he was seeing and hearing things.

Yeah, but it wouldn't explain why everyone else was. No, but the Snedekers lived in the house for two years without an incident. But after they got behind on the rent and their landlady had begun eviction proceedings, suddenly the house was haunted. Also, their story has a lot of details that sound like the movie The Entity, which was popular and super scary. What's also not widely reported is that the family dealt with alcoholism and drug addiction, which makes everything worse. In fact, Ray Garden said that while he was working on the book, he never actually saw Philip and the Snedekers never mentioned what kind of cancer he had. He did speak to Philip on the phone and Philip

told him that when he stayed on his medication, the ghost stopped. Then Philip's mother quickly ended the call. Ray Garden and some of the Snedeker's neighbors suspected the family might have been using cancer as a cover story for Philip's mental health problems and drug addiction. And despite their claims, they were fully aware that the house was a funeral home. And there was a tenant living in the upstairs apartment who never saw or heard anything. The Snedeker's neighbors, their landlady, even the person writing the book about the case, all said the story was made up. This one is safely debunked. The Enfield poltergeist is a tricky one.

We know at least some of the story was a hoax because Janet admitted to it. And the kids were caught multiple times faking so-called paranormal incidents. And people say the voice was coming from her without her mouth moving, but there's plenty of video of her mouth moving. And the photo of Janet levitating above the bed

looks a lot like her jumping off the bed. And that picture was taken with a motion controlled camera in the girl's bedroom so nobody else was in the room to confirm what actually happened. This was another case where the movie exaggerates the Warrens involvement. Again, they just showed up uninvited. They stayed for a few hours,

looked around, and left the following day. Ed Warren did have a chance to speak to Guy Playfair, the investigator who spent the most time with the family. Ed told Guy he could make a lot of money from this case. Guy wasn't interested, but the Warrens wrote it up anyway. They cashed in and called this another one

of their 10,000 cases. Except they didn't investigate 10,000 cases. If they did one case a day without a day off, that would take them 27 years. So we caught Ed stretching the truth again. Speaking of, there is one true horror story here. His name is Ed Warren. Warner Brothers' multi-film, multi-billion dollar Conjuring franchise follows Ed and Lorraine Warren, a devoutly religious, happily married couple who travel the world, helping rid

frightened families of ghosts and demons. Here comes the butt! But just weeks after the release of the first film in 2013, the studio learned about allegations made against Ed Warren. According to Judith Penny, Ed Warren initiated a relationship with her when she was only 15.

She used to take his bus and he developed feelings for her. And if that wasn't disturbing enough, soon Judith moved into the Warren's house. Her relationship with Ed continued for over 40 years. And Lorraine knew all of this. Judith's bedroom was directly across from the Warren's. Eventually, they built an apartment for her upstairs. And according to Judith Penny's sworn testimony, Ed would sleep downstairs sometimes and upstairs sometimes. Their marriage wasn't as perfect as it's been portrayed. Judith said Ed would often beat Lorraine, sometimes knocking her unconscious. She said she was worried he might kill Lorraine one day.

Ed often told Judith that she was the love of his life. And in 1978, she became pregnant. Whoa, she had his baby? Nope. But, uh, oh no. Mm-hmm. She was told a child would complicate the Warrens' business. When attorney Jill Smith was working through the Warrens' movie contract, there was specific language that she had never seen before. Now, it's not unusual for producers

to sign a non-disparagement clause when adapting a true story. Nobody wants to sell their story and then look bad. But this contract specifically said that the movies could not depict an extramarital affair, relationships with minors, and some other specific things that I won't get into here. But suffice it to say, the descriptions were graphic. Now, in the Warrens' defense, they said Judith was a girl they took in for charity, and she would watch the house when they were traveling. Judy, in the Warrens' defense, they said Judith was a girl they took in for charity and she would watch the house when they were traveling. Judy and Tony Sparrow, the Warrens' daughter and son-in-law,

say they never saw any of the alleged conduct. The Sparrows believe Judith Penny is being manipulated, though I don't know for what purpose she's in her 70s, married, and doesn't make any money from the films. Though Warner Brothers did offer her $150,000 for her life story. Hush money. Yep. Judith says she remained friendly with Ed until his death in 2006. But despite her fondness for him, what he did was despicable and a crime. What it all comes down to is this. No case that the Warrens worked on was ever supported by any evidence besides their word.

Ed claimed to have photos and video, but those were never produced. I did see one video that Ed spoke about, the ghost called the Lady in White. Now, that's a pretty compelling video. But Judith Penny said Ed told her to put on a white dress and walk around a cemetery, so she did. Now I'm not saying ghosts aren't real and that the Warrens lied about everything. I am saying they lied about some things.

And because of that, we have to question everything they say. Ed Warren was a self-proclaimed demonologist. He said that anyone who was possessed by a demon, he could find and eradicate it. I guess he would know. Ed Warren had a few demons of his own. I took a lot of heat for exposing Ed Warren like that. He has a lot of fans, but that's what happened. I told the truth. Yeah, people with skeletons in the closet shouldn't throw glass houses, huh? Yeah, that's not how that saying goes.

Yeah, people with glass stones shouldn't throw skeletons. That's still not it. Yeah, stone skeletons should, um, yeah. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Ah, our next episode is spook lights or ghost lights or orbs. These phenomena are known by a lot of different names. Will-o'-the-wisp, St. Elmo's fire. I can see a new horizon underneath the blazing sky. I'll be with the eagles flying higher and higher.

Gonna be a fish in motion. On his pair of fins. Take me where my future's lying. St. Elmo's fire. It's out of my system now. Go ahead. Ghost lights. It's a fun one.

Oh, but first. Oh, no. Oh, my face. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, beautiful for spacious skies. Freedom. America, America. Liberty. From sea to shining sea.

Vote hecklefish. Other candidates say they will lower taxes. But I say April 15th should just be another day because taxes are fixed. Other candidates are promising to bring down grocery prices. But I promise a crab cat in every pot. With boiling water. And corn. And a side of potatoes.

And a vat of melted butter. Who else is promising you butter? Nobody. Other candidates say we need less government intervention. i say we need no government at all just me in a big house preferably a white house i'm not a politician i'm one of you i sort of i'm a fish other people and we all want the same thing. Independence. And in these trying times,

America needs a leader who isn't afraid to say what everyone's thinking. Even if no one's actually thinking it. He's not a clownfish like those other candidates. I'm a goldfish. Vote for me. You won't regret it.

Show your community exactly where you stand. With me, Hecklefish Jay Moriarty. Available now as the Hecklefish for President Yacht sign, bumper sticker, and campaign button. Or if you're feeling really patriotic, get all three in one convenient package. You're going to love my package. Hecklefish. The heroes we deserve. This ad was paid for and approved by the Hecklefish for President campaign.

Here's the scene. You're driving down a secluded road. The only lights come from your headlights. The only sounds you hear are crickets and the hum of the engine. Suddenly, a mysterious orb of light appears in the distance, floating a few feet above the ground. You get the sense that the light is aware of your presence. It darts around, beckoning you closer. It can't be another car. There's nothing around for miles. Now, as you get closer to the light, it vanishes. Finally, you arrive at a small town and stop at a diner for a bite. You mention your experience to the waitress. She smiles and says, you saw a ghost light. She tells you the story of someone killed on that dark road many years ago.

The light has been seen ever since. Ghost lights or spook lights are seen all over the world. In some places, they're thought to be the spirits of the dead. Other places say they're portals to another dimension. And others say they're signals from another world. Whatever they are, ghost lights are real, and they've stumped scientists, skeptics, even governments for a long time. They're seen by thousands of people every year.

There are even cases where people have followed a ghost light into the darkness, never to be seen again. On December 4th, 1931, a trail of blood almost a quarter of a mile long was found in the small town of Gurdon, Arkansas. It led to the body of Will McClain. A railroad spike hammer and a shovel covered in blood were found near his body. It was clear that the cause of death was four severe blows to the head. But there was one detail of the murder that would haunt the town forever. McClain's lantern was still clutched tightly in his hand.

Shortly after Will McClain's death, people started reporting seeing a strange light. The light was appearing along a four-mile stretch of railroad track near the town. It was described as yellowish-white and moved like someone searching the tracks with a lantern. And researchers have been trying for years to explain the Gurdon Light. Obviously aliens. A popular theory is that people are seeing headlights from Interstate 30. Now, this makes sense at first. I-30 is only a couple of miles away from the train tracks,

close enough to trick the mind into thinking those headlights are floating orbs. But there is a problem with this explanation. People started reporting the light in 1931. Interstate 30 wasn't built until the late 1960s. The light starts coming on and going off, coming on and going off. And it went off when it got about 10 feet from us. The next time we saw the light, it was behind us. Another theory is that the light is swamp gas. Gurdon Railway is surrounded by dense woods and swamps. Swamp gas happens in marshlands and bogs when gases from decomposing organic matter combust. It's like Mother Nature lighting her farts. That's tacky, but accurate.

But the gurney light has been seen in all kinds of weather, including on windy nights, and wind prevents swamp gas from igniting. It floats about that high up off the ground, a ball of, just a just a white ball of light, about like that. Though many people have seen and photographed the Gurdon Light, it's hard to find. You have to walk on railroad tracks in the dark a few miles from the nearest road or town. Now, even if you take that dangerous walk, there's only a small chance that you'll see the light. But there's a town that has so many ghost light sightings that they actually built a large observation deck.

The lights there have been featured on countless TV shows. They've been in movies. They've inspired songs. If you want to see some of the most spectacular ghost lights in the world, you have to go to West Texas. In 1883, Robert Reed Ellison was working on a ranch just outside the newly founded town of Marfa, Texas. One night, he saw a distant light that he thought could be from an Apache campfire

or from another rancher. But there was something about the light that was strange. He tossed and turned all night, unable to shake the odd feeling that the light, whatever it was, was aware of him. The next morning, Reed went out to explore the area and found no sign of people. Soon after, Ellison learned an Apache legend about the land. Many years ago, a great battle took place between two warring tribes. The conflict was brutal and the death toll was in the thousands. The legend says

that the Marfa lights we see today are the spirits of restless warriors still wandering the desert trying to find a way back home. The lights are described as glowing, basketball-sized spheres. They hover about shoulder height off the ground and have been known to shoot around rapidly in any direction. They appear in pairs or in groups, but sometimes single lights divide into pairs. They've been seen merging, disappearing, and then reappearing. And sometimes they seem to move in regular patterns, like there's an intelligence at work. They're a mystery, and I want them to remain a mystery. Many towns known for paranormal activity don't advertise it.

But like Point Pleasant, West Virginia has embraced the Mothman, Marfa has embraced the Marfa Lights. In 2003, the town built a Marfa Lights viewing center. There's even a Marfa Lights festival held each September on Labor Day weekend. There's a street parade, food, and live music. But not all ghost light experiences are so positive. In fact, some are

downright terrifying. Surrency is a small town in Georgia located about 90 miles southwest of Savannah. And that's where you'll find the Cerensee lights, which are bright yellow or white orbs of light. And like the Gurdon lights, these also appear near train tracks. Again with the train tracks! Well, seeing lights near train tracks is pretty common, and there are a couple of theories for this. One is that the lights are ghosts of dead workers. In the 19th century, working on a railroad required fearlessness and a little bit of recklessness. Railway workers had long shifts, and the work was physically demanding and dangerous. In the early days of the railroad, one out of 35 workers were injured every year, and in many cases, the injuries resulted in missing

limbs. And almost one out of every 100 workers died on the job. Maybe the lights seen around the tracks are spirits haunting their place of death. Another theory for lights around train tracks is that the tracks are liminal spaces. A liminal space is a threshold between two worlds, existing in neither world and both at the same Hello? Hello? It's a place of transition, of waiting, and not knowing what's just beyond that door or right around that corner or just a little further down the tracks. And some believe that liminal spaces

can act as portals to other dimensions, including the spirit world. The Surrency lights are often considered to be spirits of the dead because of the town's dark history. The town of Surrency gets its name from its founder, Alan Powell Surrency. In 1852, he built a two-story home for his family on land next to the train tracks. For the first 20 years, things were pretty normal. But then things went from normal to not normal.

One evening, Cerncy's daughter, Clementine, was waiting by the train tracks for her father to come home. And as the sun set, she noticed a dark figure approaching. With an uneasy feeling, she headed back home. As she reached her house, she felt a stone land near her. When she turned to look where the object was thrown from, the dark figure was gone. She quickly went inside, where several of her father's friends were gathered. It wasn't long before everyone heard what Clementine experienced outside. Heavy items were falling all over the property. When Clementine

walked into the kitchen, small pieces of brick rained down everywhere. When her father's friends came into the kitchen to see what was happening, they saw pots and pans jumping around and knives sliding around the floor. Alan Cerenci finally got home and saw the damage. At first, he thought there'd been an earthquake, but nobody felt the tremor

and none of his neighbors were affected. Then things escalated. Soon, the entire family witnessed furniture and objects moving on their own. Pictures fell from walls. Plates, cups, books, and bottles shot from their shelves with violent force. Allen wrote down what he witnessed and sent a telegraph to the Savannah Morning News, who published it a week later. A few minutes of my arrival at home, Morning News, who published it a week later. The papers sent out an experienced reporter to verify the story.

The reporter couldn't believe it. Clocks in the home were going haywire. They were spinning rapidly forward and backward in time. A mirror exploded into a rain of glass, and strange noises were heard all over the house, like footsteps and banging. At night, you can hear disembodied voices, laughter, and sometimes screaming from empty rooms.

Alan was a leader of the community and tried to take this all in stride, but then the house started targeting his daughter. Some unseen force would yank her covers off of her at night and pull her hair and sometimes throw her across the room. At that point, Alan called it quits and the family moved out. Five years later, Alan P. Surrency passed away

and the haunting stopped. Shortly after Alan's death, orbs of light were seen hovering over the train tracks near his home. All Surrency residents know the story of the Surrency House haunting and the Surrency lights. And while the story is spooky, they'll tell you that the lights

are harmless. But that isn't always the case. Some ghost lights are very, very dangerous. Worldwide, millions of people go missing every year. Some get lost and can't find their way back home. Others run away and don't want to be found. But there are plenty of missing persons cases that can't be explained. In Australia, almost 40,000 people are reported missing every year. That's one person every 18 minutes that just vanishes. And more than a few of these disappearances have been blamed on the Min Min Lights.

The what what? Min Min. Got it. The Min Min Lights get their name from the now abandoned settlement of Min Min, which is about 70 miles from Booyah. And Booyah is in a remote western region of Queensland, about a thousand miles northwest of Brisbane. Stories about the lights predate the European colonization of Australia. And some Aboriginal people believe the Minmin Lights are the spirits of their elders.

And before the town was destroyed by a fire, it was known for being a watering hole. Among the buildings burned to the ground was the Min Min Hotel, which had a graveyard out back. Now, a hotel with a graveyard out back might seem surprising, but Min Min wasn't your average hotel. In 1947, a daily newspaper described it. In the old rough days, the hotel at Min Min was famed for its wild boredness and its gut-rotting drinks. Many a shearer with a big check drank himself to death at the infamous hotel or was killed in a drunken brawl or was murdered for his money. The corpses were tossed into the backyard. It sounds like every hotel in Portland these days. The first popular report of a Min Min Light sighting was in 1918, and the story goes like this.

Around midnight, a farmer shows up at the Booyah Police Station in hysterics. He's going on about being chased by a strange light. As he was riding past the Min Min Hotel's abandoned cemetery, he saw an orb of light appear right above a grave. The light hovered for a few seconds. The farmer had the eerie feeling that the light was aware of him. Then suddenly the light shot right at the farmer. He panicked, jumped on his horse, and started riding as fast as he could. When he looked over his shoulder, the light was following him. No matter how fast he rode, the light kept up. It finally disappeared when he got into town.

Since that night, there have been countless sightings of the Min Min Lights. And there's one thing that almost everyone says after being confronted with the Min Min Light. The puzzling thing is that so many people say that it seems to have a mind of its own. It follows them, or it goes away from them. Now, if this is so, it could be a psychic phenomenon. All I know is that there is something there which needs to be explained. The light seems to have intelligence, and it's not friendly. I couldn't say for one minute what it is, but it's got to be something alive,

because chaps have said to me on a drive, they say that he can ride up and see it here, then within a few seconds it's behind him somewhere else. Sometimes the light will chase witnesses. Other times it tries to get people to follow it. It was terrifying to see the light, to see it coming towards you. It used to come up, came up, come up close. And if you, if you went towards it, well, it would just dance away from you. According to the legend, anyone who follows the lights disappears and is never seen again. Newspaper

columnist Bill Boyang found this out firsthand. One night, Bill was camping in the outback with some friends when a strange light appeared. We were all sitting looking into the darkness, well away from the dying campfire and enjoying the cool air after the heat of the day, when suddenly I not a person. It looked like a huge ball of glowing embers. Bill was intrigued and urged his group to go after it. But the men in the group knew the story about the Min Min lights, and they knew that no matter what, if you see one, you don't follow it. Bill wasn't

impressed. He got up and went off to find who or what was behind this mysterious light. Bill walked slowly through the darkness, brush and twigs snapping beneath his feet. The light hovered in place, and Bill could swear it was waiting for him. Finally, Bill was far away from camp, and the light was only a few yards ahead of him. Then suddenly the light bounced in the air, emitted a flash, and shot down into the ground. Bill took another step when he heard panicked voices yelling at him from camp. He turned around and he could see his friends by firelight waving their arms and shouting for him to stop moving. Bill froze in place.

The light then floated up, still a few yards ahead. It hovered about shoulder height, waited for a second or two, and then shot back down through the ground. But then Bill noticed something. The light wasn't down through the ground. But then Bill noticed something. The light wasn't shooting through the ground. It was diving into a deep chasm that went down hundreds of feet. Bill looked down and saw he was one, maybe two steps from the cliff. If he kept following the light, he would have fallen to his death. The light then traveled back to him a couple of times and Bill felt like it wanted him to follow.

When Bill turned and headed back to camp, the light disappeared. James Burch from the nearby town of Kimberley had a Min Min Light sighting while driving home from a hunting trip. He was with a few friends when the light appeared in the distance. They were awestruck by the light and, like many other witnesses, said they felt like it was aware of them. Suddenly they weren't driving toward town anymore. They were now following the strange light through the bush in the complete opposite direction. Nobody remembered turning around, but there they were, following this light into the darkness, mesmerized. They stopped the car,

gathered themselves, and the light disappeared. Oh, missing time? That doesn't sound like ghosts. No, it doesn't. And like the Apache in Texas, the local tribes claim the Minmin Lights are wandering spirits. But there are some people who believe they're from someplace farther away. Well, how much farther away can you get than heaven? Well... Wait, you mean... Mm-hmm.

Aliens? Wait, you mean aliens? Ghost lights or spook lights are seen all over the world. Some places have become famous for them. Marfa, Texas, Girton, Arkansas, Surrency, Georgia. There are also the Brown Mountain Lights in North Carolina and the Joplin Spook Light on the border of Missouri and Oklahoma. It's a long list. But can these be explained by science? Well, sometimes.

Ghost lights are usually attributed to one of a few natural phenomena. One is swamp gas, which is... Mother Nature lighting her farts. That's enough. Decaying organic matter is flammable, and under certain conditions, it can ignite. Now, it's possible that some ghost lights are swamp gas, but in places where lights appear during different weather conditions, it's not swamp gas. Another explanation is piezoelectric effect.

And when quartz crystals are placed under stress, like from tectonic activity, they can produce an enormous amount of electricity. Gurdon, Georgia, sits on top of a large quartz deposit and is on a fault line. Plus, an earthquake was felt about the same time Will McLean was murdered on the train tracks. But this doesn't explain why the light appears as a ball

and hovers, or why it appears frequently, even when there's no seismic activity. Another explanation for ghost lights is when certain atmospheric conditions create optical illusions. There's a phenomenon called a superior mirage, which occurs when the air near the ground is colder than the air above it. This bends light rays so that objects look like they're floating above the surface. A superior mirage is pretty rare, but the best place to see one is where you can view a long distance unobscured,

like over large bodies of water or over a large swath of flat terrain. Terrain, for example, that you can find in Marfa, Texas. It had long been suspected that the Marfa lights are actually car headlights coming from Highway 67 and Highway 90 in the area. Well, in 2004, a group of physics students went to Marfa to try to solve this. Over a three-day period, they found that the number of Marfa lights directly correlated to the amount of traffic on Highway 67. To further prove their point, they sent a car out to the highway and had it flash its lights. They were able to generate a Marfa light every single time. Those nerds didn't prove anything. Those lights were seen by a cowboy 100 years ago, before highways.

Well, that's true. Robert Reed Ellison said he spotted the lights in 1883. Right. Except he didn't. Oh. There's no record of him ever saying it. He even published memoirs of his life in 1937, and it didn't come up. The story comes from his daughter, Julia.

And they thought they were probably a campfire, Indians or other travelers. But they just kept seeing them. The next night, they were there. And the next night, and the next week and year. And I'm sure they began to wonder, what on earth were those lights? Now, to be fair, the lights do merge and spread apart and disappear and reappear.

This could still be light bending in different ways, but it would be unusual for a superior mirage to behave this way. Now, most Marfa lights are definitely headlights, but locals swear that you can still see the lights when looking in the direction away from the highways. And you don't argue with Texans. The Cerency light is a tricky one. In 1985, scientists did discover a pocket of liquid nine miles below the surface in the area.

Now, this doesn't directly explain the light, but it is something strange. The truth is, most of the ghost lights around the world can be explained, but not all of them. The lights in the Histalin Valley are the strangest of all. Daniel Gross outlines the technology and methods that could be used to create the exact phenomenon we see in Hessdalen. That there is an alien probe high in the Earth's orbit

sending laser pulses into the atmosphere. His theory could explain all the lights we're seeing around the world. Now the paper is highly technical, but his hypothesis is the only explanation that answers every question and solves every puzzle associated with ghost lights. Ten years ago, a theory about an alien probe firing bursts of energy into our atmosphere seemed improbable, but not impossible. When you eliminate the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Right. With whistleblowers coming forward and Congress demanding answers, Dr. Gross and his improbable galactic neighborhood theory could be the answer.

And it may turn out that the truth is out there, after all. Now, most of the ghost lights can be explained and debunked, but not the Estellen lights. Forget about the lights. How about the campaign head, huh? Yes, it was very good. The hero we deserve. We got it. When you go to vote, if I'm not on the ballot,

you can go ahead and write me in. Don't tell people to do that. Voting is important. Hello. I know. That's why they may have to write me in. Hecklefish J. Moriarty. That's H-E-C-K-L-E space J. Okay, we got it. Moriarty. The last episode in today's compilation is about two inventions, one by Thomas Edison and one by Nikola Tesla. They were both inventions that those men claimed could speak to the dead.

Now, we can't find the specs on Edison's version, but we do have the specs on Tesla's version. And if the specifications are out there, that means people can build it. And they have. Edison versus Tesla, one of history's greatest rivalries. Now, they would never admit it, but as different as these men were, they also had many similarities. For instance, both were obsessive, workaholic, egomaniacal geniuses. They also both dabbled in paranormal technology. Wait, wait, wait, what? Well, Nikola Tesla was convinced he could invent a device to communicate with the spirit world.

And Thomas Edison was convinced he could get there first. Oh, this is going to be a good one. In 1882, Tesla was a promising young engineer working for Edison. As time went on, the differences between them became a problem. Edison liked hands on experiments. Tesla preferred working out inventions on paper before picking up any tools. Tesla was meticulous and tidy. Edison was a notorious slob. Well, finally, Tesla went out on his own and quickly made a name for himself.

And the Tesla Edison conflict was global news in the late 19th century with the war of currents and Tesla's more versatile alternating current eventually beat Edison's direct current. And this was Tesla's biggest victory over his former boss and one that Edison would never forgive or forget. So when Tesla claimed he invented a device that could tune into the spirit world, Edison wanted in on the action. And Tesla called his device a spirit radio. Edison's was called a ghost phone.

But what I found most interesting about the story is why did two of history's most famous scientists think that talking to ghosts was even possible? Well, because science. So why would famous scientists be interested in contacting ghosts or even think such a thing is possible? Well, in the early 20th century, psychics, mediums and seances were very fashionable. It was actually pretty mainstream to think that it might be possible to communicate with the dead. Edison was initially skeptical of paranormal, and when he learned Tesla was building a radio to listen to spirits, he dismissed him. But then Tesla started grabbing headlines and patents. Now, this was something Edison could

not abide, so he got to work on his own machine. One night in 1920 at his Menlo Park, New Jersey, lab, Thomas Edison gathered a group of scientists and friends to witness his latest experiment, a project he had been working on in secret. As the audience watched, they heard the quiet hum of an electric current, then from a device that looked kind of like a motion picture projector, shot a beam of light into a photoelectric cell. Edison explained that this light would register any disturbance that crossed through it, no matter how small and no matter whether it was visible or not. And this disturbance would be detected using a finely calibrated meter. Now, at this point, Edison's guests had no idea what he was talking about. But then he finally said,

I have been thinking for some time of a machine or apparatus which could be operated by personalities which have passed on to another existence or sphere. He claimed to have invented a device which would allow the dead to communicate with the living. And he called it the ghost phone. The ghost phone? Yes, the ghost phone. Talk about a long distance call. Please, no one liners when I'm building suspense. OK, sorry, sorry. Go ahead, Dr. Venkman. Now,

along with the scientists in the room that night were psychics and mediums who used objects like Ouija boards to speak to souls of the dead. Edison argued that most spiritualists were fakes. But tonight he was making an exception. Tonight, he needed them to prove that they can do what they claimed, summon spirits, and those spirits would register on the device and prove that the ghost phone worked. So the lights were turned off, candles were lit, and a seance had begun. And it was time for the psychics to go to work. It was time for the ghost to come home. They're here.

As the seance progressed, the scientists kept their eyes fixed upon the needle on the meter, waiting to see if something, anything would register, waiting to see if there were spirits present. So the mediums said ghosts were there, but the needle didn't move. So were the powers of the psychics not strong enough? Was Edison's device not sensitive enough?

Were spirits even present? I mean, after a few hours, Edison thanked everyone, sent them home, and went back to work. Now remember, he saw every failure as an opportunity to learn. So he kept experimenting and refining the ghost phone. Now, unfortunately, Edison died a few years later, but he insisted that in time he could get the ghost phone to work.

But strangely, his estate deleted all mention of the ghost phone from his research, his notes and his personal diary. We know he was working on a ghost phone because he's been quoted in major newspapers talking about it. But nobody really knows what happened to the research. So Edison didn't get this to work. No. Oh, but Tesla did. Late one night, about 20 years before Edison's ghost phone demo, Nikola Tesla was in his lab building a radio. Now, without it being connected to any power or energy source, he started hearing sounds that frightened him.

He said, the sounds appeared to be human voices conversing back and forth in a language I cannot understand. But I was alone in my laboratory at night. Now, what made this extra spooky for Tesla is that he was building a crystal radio. Now, crystal radio is a type of receiver that doesn't use any external power, no electricity at all. The only power it uses is what's generated from the electromagnetic waves that it receives. So Tesla was picking up these sounds literally from thin air. Now, Tesla knew that every human being creates electricity and anything that creates

electricity creates an electromagnetic field that using the proper equipment can be tuned into. Tesla also agreed with Einstein that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be changed from one form to another. So if a human being soul is electromagnetic energy that cannot be destroyed, when someone dies, that energy should still be around. Ooh, this is giving me chills. Tesla felt that if he could just find the right frequency, he could create a radio to listen to these disembodied spirits.

So that's what he did. And today we're going to hear what Tesla heard. We're going to hear ghosts. Well, I don't know if they're ghosts, but what Tesla heard, it scared the hell out of them. Remember, we said that Edison was an experimenter and Tesla was a documenter? Edison was just tinkering the lab for hours, failing over and over until he just brute forced his way to progress. And when you think about the famous quotes attributed to Edison, you get a good understanding of the man.

Like, I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Brute force. Tesla was different. Tesla was an introvert who lived much of his time in his own mind. Now, before he jumped into the lab, he would spend countless hours working out the math and the physics of an idea on paper, still not turning a wrench. When he was finally satisfied that his idea would work, he documented and he'd file a patent. Now, long before Edison's ghost phone demo in 1920, Tesla filed patents for the technology used in his spirit radio.

And because there are patents, it can be built. And if it can be built, someone on the Internet has built it. You can build a ghost radio. Yeah, and it's not expensive. I'll put links in the description. So now, let's listen to the Tesla Spirit Radio. Well, I just wet my bowl. Are they ghosts? Now, ghost hunters say yes.

In fact, the technology they use to listen to spirits is the same technology that Tesla used. So let's see how that works. Within the ghost hunting community, electronic voice phenomena or EVP is the recording of voices onto electronic equipment. A newer term for the phenomenon is ITC or instrumental transcommunication. Now, voices are rarely heard during recording, only during playback, and they usually have to be analyzed and enhanced. I hear a woman's voice. Now, Ma.

Sometimes the voices seem to be speaking to themselves or nobody specific, but sometimes they answer direct questions. Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away. So if ghosts are electromagnetic energy, then it's perfectly logical and scientifically sound that they could be heard in a recording. Now maybe the EVP are electromagnetic disturbances that are layered onto radio waves that can be picked up by a receiver.

Or maybe the spirit's electromagnetic energy kind of piggybacks onto the EM field generated by the electricity of the recording device. A tape recorder, camcorder, cell phone or whatever. If you're here, can you tell us your name, please? Hello. Are these sounds ghosts well that's up to you to decide skeptics consider evp auditory pareidolia which is interpreting random sounds as voices or as apophenia which is perceiving patterns in random information what makes evp and really anything paranormal fun is whether you believe in ghosts or you don't believe in ghosts.

Either way, you can't prove it. And what do you think about EVPs? Are these real? Now, if you want a more detailed video explaining EVPs and electromagnetism, let me know in the comments. There's a whole video waiting to be born. So why were two of history's most prolific scientists so obsessed with creating a device to communicate with the other side?

Well, during that time, the Spanish flu was raging. And that pandemic was far worse than anything we've experienced the past couple of years. Far worse. And the world was still dealing with the pain and loss of World War I. So death was everywhere. It was affecting everyone.

And no matter how logical or scientific or pragmatic you are, when personal tragedy strikes, your feelings on the paranormal may change. Have you ever suddenly lost someone close to you? I have. They say that time heals all wounds, but when you lose a child or a parent or a brother, sister, a best friend,

that pain never really heals. And regardless of whether you believe in ghosts or not, it doesn't really matter. But be honest, what would you do? What would you give just for one last conversation with that person to say, I miss you, to say, I love you, to say, I'm sorry, me, I would give anything for one last chance. And that's going to conclude our compilation about ghosts. Now, I don't know if there's an afterlife or some great beyond. I hope there is. But, um, I like the idea of a soul group. Oh, me too. I'm partial to the temptations.

I said I'm partial to the temptations. I got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it's cold outside, I got the month of May. I guess you'll say, what can make me feel this way? Gertie, Gertie, Gertie, talking about Gertie. Gertie. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. My name is AJ. You know Hecklefish. Peace to the out, yo. This has been Y-Files compilation episode.

And like everything we covered in today's comp, all those recommendations come from you. So if there is something you'd like to see us cover, go to the Y-Files.com slash tips. Remember, the Y-Files is also a podcast. Twice a week, I post deep dives into the stories we cover here on the channel and also post episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel. And those are labeled unredacted. And there was some aggressive ones out there. We did Alistair Crowley. coming up, we've got JFK. I really want to do 9-11, but I'm, I wonder if that's good too.

Is that too hot for podcast? There's, I have a lot of questions about building seven. I think I just demonetized myself. Anyway, if you need more Y-Files in your life in between episodes, check out our Discord server. There's over 60,000 people on there 24-7. There's something going on. If you're feeling low, feeling blue, it's a very supportive community. It's a lot of fun and it's free to join.

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My webcam is on. You get to meet the entire team. Their webcams are on. You could turn your camera on or just your microphone. Jump up on stage, suggest a topic, say hello, shoot the breeze, little chinwag, chop it up. I'm out of idioms. That's all I got. But it would be a great way to help keep this channel going in troubled times. Another great way to support the channel

is grab something from the Y-Files store. Grab yourself a heck of a t-shirt or one of these fistable coffee bags that is perfectly fistable or something with my face on it or one of these squeezy animals talking heck of fish toy dolls. That's going to do it.

Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated, because you really are. I played Polybius in Area 51 A secret code inside the Bible said I was I love my UFOs and paranormal fun As well as music, so I'm singing like I should But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth My friends, and it never ends. No, it never ends. The crab cat got stuck inside Mel's hole with MKL truck being only two away.

Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone on a film set? Were the shadow people there? The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man. I'm told, And his name was cold And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish Heckle fish on Thursday Nuts Wednesday, Jay too

And the wild boars have been beat All through the night All I ever wanted was To just hear the truth So the wild boars have its feet all through the night The Mothman sightings and the solar storm still come To a god, the secret city underground Mysterious number stations, planets are both two

Project Stargate and what the Dark Watchers found We're in a simulation, don't you worry though The black knight said a lot, he told me so I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish Heck, no fish on Thursday nights when they chase you And the wild birds all make me up through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the wild birds have been beat all through the night And the fish on Thursday nights when they chase you

And the wild birds have been beat all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the one more time repeat All through the night Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance. Gertie loves to dance on the dance floor, because she is a camel. Camels love to dance when the feeling is right or wasting time. Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance. time