American Idol Contestant Allison Iraheta was the latest to be ousted. The judges blamed her performance, but could ghosts keeping her up at night be to blame?

A few days ago Allison claimed that the spirit of a previous inhabitant of the American Idol Mansion had been visiting her in the night, growling in her boudoir and making loud banging noises.

The residents of the house have lovingly dubbed the specter “Phyllis”. Other females that have since left the mansion claim to have caught sight of the ghost themselves, claiming that Phyllis appears as a white shadow. Funny though, It seems Phyllis doesn’t the like the men of the house, because no males in the idol crew have yet to report interaction with the ghost.

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

Probably the most fascinating idea that Star Trek popularized was the idea of a warp drive. This was a concept from golden age sci-fi that went mainstream via Trek as space-age audiences became sophisticated enough to realize that NASA’s fastest rockets wouldn’t take you very far in a human lifetime. Even going the speed of light wouldn’t work for a show that tried to visit more than one star system in it’s 3 season run (due to time dilation your characters could visit those places, but their friends back on earth would be long dead). What was needed was a (plot) device that allowed you to visit distant planets in the time it takes to drive to the next state.

Since Star Trek, warp drive has become a part of public consciousness. It’s a theoretical form of technology that some feel is as inevitable as AI and teleportation.

There’s one big catch; while AI (or something that acts like it) seems to be a problem solved at some point on a graph projecting the development of intelligent systems and teleportation seems to be more of an energy problem, there’s not a viable theory for how a warp drive could work (exotic matter, worm holes, Alcubierre drives etc.) that doesn’t violate the laws of physics (as we know them) or result in some equation balancing phenomenon like a “quantum scream” (an obscure term used in an equally obscure paper on the subject).
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Queensland, Australia: Massive spiders have been invading the outback town of Bowen in recent days. Heavy, unseasonal rain has driven hordes of usually shy, behemoth Eastern Tarantulas (barking spider/bird eating spider) out of their hiding places in the brush onto the streets of Bowen. Local pest control experts have been hitting payday as thousands of calls ring in from around the town from desperate locals looking to get rid of the gargantuan arachnids. Eastern Tarantulas are among the world’s largest spiders as you can see in the video below:

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

In an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation called the “The Chase” a long running problem in Star Trek was finally solved – Why do all the aliens in Star Trek look humanoid. The answer was not “budget”. It was that a race that lived 4.5 billion years ago seeded the galaxy with its DNA. Humans, Vulcans, klingons etc., all got their imprint from them. We kind of look like each other because we all look like some alien race from 4.5 billion years ago. Problem solved. But is Intelligent Design really a satisfying answer?

If we find aliens that look like us, what other explanations could account for them?

Kidnapping
Having to deal with a slightly more sophisticated audience that grew up watching Star Trek, the producers of Stargate and the producers of the television series had to come up with a simple explanation for there being humans all over the galaxy in present day time. Their solution was a popular one in sci-fi literature: We were kidnapped. Over the last 100,000 years humans have been relocated to the distant corners of our universe. Once there, they go about their business. Building monuments to their gods (Star Trek and Stargate) or becoming thriving interstellar civilizations more advanced than us on earth (Iain Banks’s The Culture).

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This was a welcome surprise for us here at Weird Things.

Arnold Gerritt Henske was a Dutch artist and designer with a paranormal bent. In 1933, he changed his name to Mirin Dajo (Esperanto for “Amazing”Dajo”) and took the stage. His performance? Having his assistant impale his hypnotized body with swords and rapiers. What at first glance looks like a striking version of an Andrew Mayne illusion, was actually something quite different.

It was real.

Doctors with x-ray machines confirmed: the weapons were penetrating his body, missing major organs somehow. He walked and even ran with swords sticking out of him, and all this took place with little or no bloodshed, even when the implement was removed.

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A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

Time Travel stories generally suck. There are some noteworthy exceptions – specifically stories that deal with the problems of time travel and not just time travel as a plot device (Primer, Back to the Future, to name a few).

Star Trek has done some great and some very bad time travel stories. Story merits aside, there’s one big problem with most time travel stories; Transmitting people back in time (information) has no theoretical basis: It’s impossible. For every worm hole propped open with exotic matter or giant Tippler tube, someone always finds an equation to show how the universe corrects itself with quantum screams, bubbles or other annoyances that get in the way of us correcting that horrible thing that happened in 6th grade or saving the whales.

Assuming for a moment that the killjoys at MIT and Princeton who relish in pointing out that time travel as we understand it is impossible, then what? How can we tell scientifically literate time travel stories? (more…)

We were perusing Weird Asia News when we stumbled across this freaky video of two female carp that look all too human.

The eerily humanoid eyes are made up of dots on the front of the fish’s heads. The two carps are female hybrids of the carp and the leather carp that have lived in relative obscurity since 1986 in Cheongju, a small South Korean town.

Only in recent years have they attracted national media attention from South Korean news outlets. Unfortunately, since they are both females, we won’t have any tiny humanoid carp swimming around, but it’s nice to know they got their 15 minutes of fishy fame. The carp will live out their days in a pond behind a 64 year old, Cheongju man’s home. Wait a minute! They say carp and leather carp hybrid, we ask what that 64 year old man was up to a little over 23 years ago.

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

An important part of the Star Trek mythos is the idea of mind-to-mind contact. Spock uses this to probe other people’s minds and even transplant his entire consciousness. Counselor Troi used it to read the feelings of other species. It’s a wonderful concept that has fascinated people since at least the 1800’s. Unfortunately, we’re no closer to it being real now then we were back then.

We can imagine all sorts of technology assisted ways to make this real, but there’s nothing sexy about your Vulcan girlfriend asking you to step into an fMRI so she can read your voxels (okay, maybe a little sexy). What we need are some organic solutions or explanations for brain to brain transmission that make the concept a little more plausible. (more…)

Acclaimed paranormal investigator Alison Smith, has agreed to join our merry band of ‘Weird Thugs’ as we take on Coral Castle this Saturday, May 9. That’s right, a real, live woman at a paranormal investigation, who would have thunk it?

Read on about Alison and the investigation after THE JUMP…

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Salma Hayek believes her 16-month old daughter Valentina sees ghosts. This according to Salma, who delivered the terrifyingly cute news on ‘The Rachel Ray Show’:

“Last night [Valentina] saw a ghost. I’m convinced. She woke up and her eyes were open. And she’s looking at one specific point and she’s going, ‘No no no no, au revoir,’ which means goodbye in French. And she’s looking at someone, but there’s no one there. I was so scared, and I’m like, ‘Yes, au revoir, whoever you are, get out!’ And then she started saying it in English, ‘Bye bye, bye bye!’…I guess she was trying in different languages to see what nationality this ghost was to go away. It was terrifying!”

Yes Salma, the only possible explanation for a baby babbling basic phrases while staring off into space is that she’s speaking to a ghost. Modern science just hasn’t figured out how to detect the phenomena that occurs daily throughout the world. And Salma thinks that Tom Cruise is ridiculous. He’d probably tell her that the trilingual toddler is attempting to communicate with her invisible body thetan for the first time.

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

The transporters in Star Trek are an exciting concept. Recent developments in quantum physics have made the possibility of teleporting matter a theoretical possibility while warp drive still remains a fantasy concept. However, the amount of energy required to move a person and all the other problems that go with it (engineering and ethical) leave quantum teleportation a bit to be desired for practical use. Crazy things can happen, but in the event that quantum teleportation doesn’t scale up or people are upset by the idea of their atoms being destroyed so copies can take their place, here are some slightly (we think) more practical solutions for teleportation that use way less energy and preserve your atoms:

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You’ve all heard of the infamous case of the Virgin Mary Toast, but what happens when a holy image is seared into the cooking surface instead of the food? According to The Associated Press:

“The hottest thing on the griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant these days isn’t the food. It’s the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that a cook says she saw in the griddle. Restaurant manager Brenda Martinez said more than a hundred people have flocked to the small town of Calexico on the California-Mexico border to gaze at the image since it was discovered as the griddle was being cleaned.”

There have been no photo released as of yet, because the griddle in question has been “enshrined” in a storage closet for the time being. But if you need corroboration, a Mexican Wrestler, known as Mr. Tempest, stopped by the restaurant with a group of other Luchadors on his way to a bout, and called the griddle a miracle. So to give you an idea of what we’re talking about here, on the right is the Virgin Mary Toast that sold for $28,000 on eBay. We hope this incident gets just as many spoofs as the toast, but images on a griddle seem a little harder to replicate than images on a piece of bread.

Nessie sightings have been on the decline in recent years and kilt clad investigators seeking desperately to try dinosaur haggis for the first time have turned up nothing in the placid Scottish Loch. In light of Nessie’s waning glory, a new cryptid has emerged to Champion the waterways of the North Atlantic in its stead: The Channel Creature.

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Saturday, May 9, join us as the Weirdthings crew hits up Homestead, Florida to investigate Coral Castle. Coral Castle is made up of over 1,100 tons of Coral Stone. Amazingly the entire project was quarried, cut, carved and put in place by one man, a Latvian immigrant named Edward Leedskalnin. Leedskalnin apparently built the castle as a tribute to his fiance who left him the night before their wedding. The mystery of Coral Castle is how Leedskalnin pulled it off all by his lonesome. Since he was very secretive about his work and nobody ever saw him in the middle of actually building the thing, speculation that he used paranormal means, such as levitation, to build the site abounds. It took Leedskalnin from 1923-1951 to build the thing.

Investigation Info, after THE JUMP.

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The tribal village of Siadimal, India has emptied out in recent days. No, it’s not Diwali yet, the villagers of Siadimal have fled because of a witch’s curse. A witch’s curse that they claim has caused a mysterious disease to infect several people. The Times of India reports:

“More than 10 villagers have been suffering from an unknown fever for the past two months. There is no sign of improvement despite medical treatment,” said a villager on condition of anonymity. “In the past, alleged witchcraft has claimed many lives in our locality. We suspect this may as well be the act of a witch,” he added. The villager said the women are putting up with relatives in other villages. “The men are now in search of a powerful tantrik, who can counter the evil spell and also punish the culprit,” he said.

Ten bucks says, that if they are looking to pay a tantrik to confirm their suspicions, they will find a witch real fast.

Superstition abounds in rural India, often ill-understood illnesses are attributed to witchcraft and sorcery. Those determined to find a witch are going to find a witch, and local authorities are concerned that yet another innocent person is going to be murdered in the region by superstitious villagers. In 2007, three women and a man were beheaded in the nearby village of Pratappur after they were accused of sorcery.

-For more on North India witch hunts and murders see the documentary “Indian Witch-Hunt” by author and journalist Sohaila Kapoor.