Weird Things Live: Hunting the Night Creeper from Andrew Mayne on Vimeo.
Last Monday night in front of a live internet audience we set out to solve the mystery of the Night Creeper. Ghost? Frogman? Or something else? Although we’re pretty sure we figured it out, we haven’t definitively proved our theory. The mystery continues…
Running time 55 minutes.
Check out our photos of the scene on Flickr.
Many suspect that cats are “up to something.” Turns out that something is serving as a transportation system for parasites that make humans do foolishly dangerous things.
Toxioplasma gondi is a parasite that generally moves through a cat’s digestive system that is passed on to mice through the cat’s feces. Once infected, the parasite burrows into the internal organs of the mouse causing cysts and eventually making the mouse abandon it’s natural instincts and do everything it can to get the cat to kill it. Once eaten, the parasite passes again through the cat and finds a new host.
Unfortunately, Toxioplasma gondi can also infect other mammals, such as humans. That’s right. These parasites are taking over our brains, driving us to dangerous behavior, and causing mental illness! And all because we keep them in our homes and clean up their waste.
In some populations over 60% of the population is infected. Pregnant women and people with immune diseases can have serious side effects to the parasite, but the rest of us only have to worry about randomly trying to kill ourselves.
Explains base jumping.
This past Friday North Korea announced a new “Super Drink” that purports to give consumers a longer and healthier life. The drink is made from 30 different plants and contains 60 different “micro-elements” to allegedly multiply brain cells, reduce geriatric diseases, protect skin, and reduce the effects of aging.
This is all according to the North Korean Government’s news agency so stay skeptical, but the product does claim no side-effects. Considering it’s basically a bunch of plants thrown in a blender that’s probably true, but don’t be surprised if you start glowing in the dark from either awesome new super powers or radiation poisioning.
Who wants to try it first?
[BBC]
The sun has awoken from his slumber and you will feel his wrath upon your global positioning satellites and financial services.
Richard Fisher, head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, explains what it’s all about:
“The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we’re getting together to discuss.”
The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled “Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts.” It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.
A lot of this could be avoided with preparation by those who run the satellites. So we have that going for us.
[NASA]
Tonight. 9 p.m. EDT. LIVE. Right here on the front page.
Scientists at the Competence Center for Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems (CCSS) are using a supercomputer to simulate life on Earth with the aim of supplying the systems as virtual advisers to world leaders to consult in times of crisis.
The “Living Earth Simulator” project is using trends from social sites like Facebook and Second Life to teach the computer how the world works. Hopefully the leaders of the world will allow for a 25% chance of trolling.
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Scientists want to drill deep into Antarctic ice to find life forms that haven’t been exposed to the environment in millions of years. Kurt Russell is not amused.
As we prepare for tomorrow’s live hunt for what is known as the “Night Creeper”, we thought we’d share with you some photos from a recent reconnaissance of the area. Our first nighttime recon resulted in Justin and I getting stopped by the police FYI. It appears we’re not the only ones paying attention to the weird reports coming from the area.
What stood out most to us is the fact that this area forms a triangle with two other hotspots of unusual activity and they both have large bodies of water nearby that lead straight to the Everglades – a wild environment filled with cryptid and unusual phenomena.
On Monday night’s live show (9PM EST) we plan to go into a tunnel that’s the main access point between the wetlands and the area of interest. We’re not assuming it’s a cryptid or some other creature that’s been sighted. We just find it very interesting.
During our daylight investigation we found signs that something was living underneath there or at least spent some time there. The above photo shows a very large fish head that was dragged 10 feet above the bank into a dark corner. A raccoon or Gollum? We hope to find out.
It has been sighted by workers walking through the parking lot. Loud shriek, fast movement, short stature. It has been seen late at night prowling around the area by others. What is the Night Creeper?
Some believe it is the spirit of a child. We have a different theory. Either way, the truth will be revealed.
This Monday at 9 p.m. EST we hunt it LIVE. The Weird Things crew of Justin Robert Young, Brian Brushwood and Andrew Mayne are assembling once again to try and track down this unexplained phenomenon.
Traps will be set. Questions will be answered. And every step of the way will be streamed LIVE for your enjoyment as Weird Things hunts the Night Creeper this Monday at 9 p.m. EST on the front page of this site.
There is no official folder sitting in a dusty basement file room marked “Sea Monsters: CLASSIFIED” containing a hundred years worth of reports from parchment to dot matrix print outs about krakens, giants squid and God knows what else lurks under the waves.
At least that’s the official story after a freedom of information request was filed asking the British Royal Navy about a central record database for sea monster sightings.
A marine biologist inquired whether the Ministry of Defence held records about “abnormally large or dangerous sea monsters hundreds of metres under the sea” that had not been revealed to the public.
In reply an official wrote: ”The RN (Royal Navy), and MoD in general, does not maintain any form of central repository of information purely devoted to sea monsters.
“Personnel might be inclined to record unusual sightings in ship’s logs but there is, as far as we know, no actual requirement for them to do so, and it would be beyond the resource constraints of an FOI request to check every line of every RN log book for any such references since 2005.
“However, the RN does invite people to report sightings of marine mammals, and it’s possible this could include unusual sightings.
“These are forwarded to the UK Hydrographic Office at Taunton.”
Tales of insane sea creatures have been around as long as boats, seems like a real missed opportunity.
So you get a new phone. It has a new number. You email all your friends with the new info. Then you find out the last person who had this number died suddenly in a hail of gunfire and the dude before him croaked the same way. Oh, the the guy before those two? Cancer.
How excited are you to have the admittedly awesome number of 0888 888 888?
The Mobitel number – 0888 888 888 – has proved to be both easy to memorize and deadly for three successive owners.
The first user – the former CEO of Mobitel – died of cancer in 2001. The number then went to Bulgarian mob boss Konstantin Dimitrov who was gunned down in an Amsterdam ambush in 2003. The final owner of the doomed cell number was another gangster, cocaine smuggler Konstantin Dishliev, who was shot to death outside a restaurant in 2005.
The number was on hold while the investigation of Dishliev’s death was underway but now Mobitel has disabled the cursed number.
Please leave a message.
[Examiner]
Phil Plait dissects a recent rumor about the Betelgeuse star. The short version of the rumor? The star is going to go all supernova in weeks or months (not years or hundreds of years) and the brightness could affect crops and cause streaming panic in the streets.
Phil’s rebuttal? Not so much.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start stockpiling canned goods and telling your friends the sky is falling just so in two months when you pal’s newly orphaned children are huddled in your bunker to get away from the blood-thirsty mobs left by a post-apocalyptic society you can say… “I told your pa this was coming, (wistful glance to a bare wall) wish he would’ve listened.”
It’s lurking underneath the surface, waiting for little legs rubbery with summer excitement to come across it’s path. It’s the Hardy Lake Monster.
[CNN]
Every generation of teenagers has their own “outsider” sub-culture. Goth, hippie, punk, raver… All pleasantly strange without being scary. But as yet another sign we live in the future, teenagers have finally found a way to freak out even the most die hard counter-culturist. At over a dozen high schools in San Antonio, TX teenagers are transforming into werewolves.
While there isn’t much supernatural about these teens (they put together outfits made of fake tales, novelty contacts, fangs, and dog leashes to approximate the real thing) there is plenty weird about it. The kids involved don’t find it terribly odd though. To them it’s not a gang or a cult or a sign they need therapy. They consider their pack a support system, which is a something they’ll desperately need to make it through High School dressed as werewolves.
Is this happening elsewhere, or is it just a Texas thing? If you’ve seen a pack of wolves in your town let us know in the comments!
