In the 2005 film “White Noise,” Keegan Connor Tracy’s anxiously stuttering character tells Michael Keaton’s character that Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) is dangerous… “like homemade Ouija boards and… and, and teenage séances on Halloween.” Of course, desperate to hear from his dead wife, the recent widower doesn’t listen, and his obsession with pressing is ear to the mortal coil finds him at the business end of some serious supernatural monkey business. In real life, the supposed spirit voices that force their way through the surface noise of amateur paranormal investigators’ off-brand microcassettes are as likely to corrupt your soul as the hidden Satanic messages that pop-averse evangelists Where’s Waldo out of reversed Beatles’ songs. Even so, if any of you are thinking about doing a little ethereal eavesdropping, maybe should start out small – say, with animals.

As far as I can gather from the half-hearted Internet research I did while watching a movie, animal EVP is just as common as human EVP, but nobody pays it much attention. Despite the frequency of dog and cat noises on their hissy tapes, spook tapers spend a majority of their time decoding the barely audible human voices in hopes of unlocking afterlife secrets. Why shove an earbud halfway into your brain just to listen to the static-laced meows of a fussy, discorporate calico? Still, I thought for sure I’d find a fringe paranormal knitting circle that only chased after puppy EVP or something, but no dice. All I located were some random bits of animal EVP within larger databases of human voice samples, and several EVP FAQ-page references to the commonality of animal sounds.

One website did mention that an Illinoisan EVP enthusiast, who was taping near the sight of the famous 1918 Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train crash, captured the horrific cries of dying circus animals. (I can neither corroborate the existence of this alleged recording, nor whether any animals even died in the crash.) Meanwhile, some folks claim that, in spirit form, animals can speak in human tongues. In her book “Phantom Felines and Other Ghostly Animals,” Gerina Dunwich explains that, while most animal ghosts ought to be approached with the same baby talk and kissy noises as their still-breathing kith, she has heard stories of “ghost animals speaking to the living in human voice – either audibly or telepathically.” If that’s the case, then half-garbled EVP of people saying “Hello,” or something… something… “Randy”… something, are just as likely to be messages from deceased house pets as they are the post-mortem orations of dearly departed neighbors.

As for all the Internet EVP nuts – you’d think that people so obsessed with the nature of the beyond would be more curious about the implications of animal ghost chatter; after all, if in fact, EVP is real-time magnetic field-enabled communication with former earthlings now residing in some nether-dimension (as many EVP fanatics believe), the notion that other living things likewise transform and relocate is pretty heavy, especially in terms of its broader implications regarding the spiritual identity of man. On the other hand, I also found some enthusiastically described EVP of trains. I guess if hopper cars transubstantiate, anything is fair game.

One movie. Five people, living or dead, at the screening. Who and why?

Today’s screening: “Masque of the Red Death”

One of eight gloriously lurid Poe adaptations directed by American B-movie auteur Roger Corman, this colorful tale of pestilence, corruption and Satanism, released in 1964, loosely adapts and combines Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories “The Masque of the Red Death” and “Hop-Toad.” Essentially, the sinister Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) joyfully tortures a village full of long-suffering peasants while hosting an elaborate, hedonistic costume ball for fringe members of the aristocracy, who are seeking shelter from a deadly bleeding disease that’s sweeping the countryside.

Anton LaVey (1930-1997), Founder – The Church of Satan

A mere two years after Vincent Price’s turn as the Satanist Prospero, Anton LaVey, already known around San Francisco for his occult lectures and paranormal research, founded the Church of Satan. Coincidence? Rather than have LaVey expound upon his best known works, “The Satanic Bible” and “The Satanic Rituals,” this film should spur some conversation about his lesser-known books, “The Satanic Chef” and “Satanic Jokes for Goateed Folks.”

Howard Zinn (1922-2010), Political Scientist

Sure, the highly controversial and recently deceased socialist-leaning populist historiographer probably hasn’t even gotten a chance to ghost flush the toilets at “The Weekly Standard,” but I can’t leave him out of this screening. Corman’s portrayal of Prospero’s relationship with the peasants – from the indiscriminate killing to the kidnapping of virgins in the name of forced Satanic conversion – plays out like a series of early scenes from the hypothetical “A People’s History of Europe.” Even if Zinny finds the socially just ending to be insultingly unrealistic, it’ll be worth it just to hear him reminisce about past outrages, present iniquities and the drinking game he played with Noam Chomsky where they watched “24” and solemnly took a shot every time a character’s human rights were violated.

Edgar Allen Poe, (1809-1849), Author

Obviously, Poe should get a chance to watch Corman’s adaptation of his classic story. And, if there’s time, “Wall-E.”

C.J. Peters (1940- ), Field Virologist

Famous for helping to control epidemics of deadly hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola and Hanta Virus (the book “Hot Zone” and the film “Outbreak” were inspired by his research and field work), Peters could provide speculative scientific insight on the titular “red death,” a fictional hemorrhagic fever that spreads rapidly via man-sized crimson-shrouded party crasher. Questions for Peters could include, “generally, what’s the mortality rate of a virus like this?” and “is actual Ebola as monochromatic in its wardrobe selections?”

Aeschylus (?525 BC- 456 BC), Playwright

Though best known for writing stage adaptations of mythological tragedies (“Agamemnon,” etc.), Aeschylus’ oldest existing play, “The Persians,” not only dramatizes the then-recent fall of the Persian Empire, but also opens with what is often credited as the first Western example of a performed dream sequence. As such, Corman’s love of psychedelic dream sequences, as evidenced by Prospero’s mistress’ emerald-tinted descent into Satanic allegiance, owes something to the ancient playwright… and Aeschylus is here to collect (I imagine this as the pilot episode of a series called “Aeschylus Collects,” in which Aeschylus is portrayed as a broken man, displaced in time, with 1,000 lost hopes and 1 gun that shoots nets.)

*On a more serious note – if you haven’t seen Corman’s Poe adaptations, you’re a wiener.

If there’s an educational takeaway from the story of David Berkowitz – New York’s notorious trigger happy killer who claimed to receive murderous orders from his neighbor’s Labrador retriever – it’s “don’t listen to talking animals.” Or maybe “only listen to talking animals if the animals are horses and they’re explaining that, for them, horse races are basically set up like the WWE, with good horse characters and evil horse characters, and if you help them write the scripts, you’ll know in advance who’s going to win each race.” I wasn’t always so cynical regarding this topic. As a child, I was fascinated when my parents told me about the European superstition that Christmas Eve (technically, 12 am Christmas morning) finds animals imbued with the ability to speak. In fact, if our cat had sidled up to me and said “Yo, Matty, kill me some folks, would ya? I love you!” I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t have at least gone downstairs and selected a knife. Probably even the biggest knife. But not anymore.

Like many early European Christmas traditions, it’s difficult to trace the talking animal thing back to any definitive Christian origin (because it’s pagan as f***). According to Christian bloggers, the temporary gift of gab is god’s annual thanks to all animals because several animals were present for Jesus’ birth. I’m gonna be honest, god – kinda feels like you’re reachin’ there. What’s really crazy, though, is that, despite the legend’s seemingly holy origins, Europeans also believed that it was never good to listen to the speaking animals (probably because it’s pagan as f***). My favorite story re: talking animals – don’t listen to them! comes from the German Alps:

A farmer was so curious to hear what his two horses might say (probably he was hoping for the WWE thing) that he decided, against all rational thought, to listen in on their holiday jabberjawing. So, come Christmas Eve, he hid in the rafters of his barn and eagerly awaited the stroke of midnight, upon which one horse suddenly turned to the other. “We shall have hard work to do this week,” said the horse. “Yes. The farmer’s servant is heavy,” answered the other. “And the way to the churchyard is long and steep,” replied the first. The farmer was baffled by the conversation until, later that week, his servant died suddenly. The horses were then needed to carry the man to his grave.

There are other, more predictable tales in which mistreated animals use their speech to fatally trick abusive owners; there are even kids’ stories where house pets are all grins and giggles and psyched about Jesus. But that horse story… utterly chilling. The old Christian view was that it was god’s intention for the animals to share the gift amongst one another, but not with people – animals have strange and secret knowledge (bordering on pagan as f*** occult power) not intended for human ears. As in the horse story, to eavesdrop on their whisperings is to receive startling insight into the dark heart of a natural mysticism from which humans, in civilizing, became unknowingly disconnected.

All inevitable questions (Is the significance of the gift simply to offer lower beings the power of human [read: higher] language? If so, do non-domesticated animals – animals that don’t willingly cede to man’s dominion – really even give a care?) aside, the superstition is another interesting example of how, in the same way that the architecture of Rome was defined by the heathen network of pagan shrines that compose its foundations, Christian beliefs are pasted to a skeleton of solstice orgies and magic animals.

Find the Fiend – Pharmaceutical Edition

Below are descriptions of three medicinal compounds. Two of them are merely the fictional creations of popular artists; one is a prescription drug that actually exists. Can you Find the Fiend?

A This drug is effective in chemically treating near-sightedness, but causes life-threatening allergic reactions in some users.

B In high doses, this substance can decrease the human body’s metabolic rate to a near-death crawl; the military has experimented with smaller doses intended to dull soldiers’ emotional responses.

C This intended anti-depressant has been known to cause yawn-induced orgasms.

Answer after the cut.
Read the rest of this entry »

“I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you’d faint, you’d be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt!”

Gef, the Talking Mongoose

When the muted scratching behind the farmhouse’s old wooden walls turned into strange hissing and humanoid gurgling, the Irving family began doubting their early theories of wild mice and scavenging rats. So it seemed reasonable and, like, totally OK when, in 1931, a swaggering, bushy-tailed mammal sashayed out of the darkness and introduced himself, in perfect English, as Gef, “an extra, extra clever mongoose.” Over the years, Gef entertained thirteen-year-old Voirrey (the only Irving who could actually see the creature), and her parents, James and Margaret, with tales of his exotic Indian upbringing, fantastical claims of supernatural powers and even scandalous neighborhood gossip, which he claimed to obtain through extensive eavesdropping and daring spy missions. Occasionally, Gef would get rowdy and toss objects around the Irving house, or perpetrate Kutcherian japes, like the time he convinced the family that he had been poisoned, but overall, the mongoose’s seven-year stay, as documented in a journal kept by James Irving, was a pleasant one.

I came across the story of Gef while researching last week’s poltergeist posts. It seems that parapsychologist and poltergeist enthusiast Nandor Fodor, hoping that he could use Gef as an example of a case in which a human agent created sounds and manipulated objects via inadvertent psychokinesis, visited the Irvings at their home on the Isle of Mann. After staying with the family for several weeks, and interviewing numerous locals, Fodor left with the distinct impression that Gef (who the parapsychologist didn’t see or hear during his investigation) was neither a poltergeist nor a deliberate hoax, but rather some wholly unidentifiable phenomenon or entity.

Fodor wasn’t the only Mulderesque truth-seeker to make a pilgrimage to the Irving’s allegedly mongoose-prowled home – in 1937, magazine editor Rex Lambert and his close friend (and infamous paranormal investigator) Richard Price set out on a Gef-hunting expedition that led them to plasticized Gef footprints and tooth marks, and a sample of alleged Gef hair. The evidence was analyzed by Reginald Pocock of the British Natural History Museum, who concluded that the hair was definitely that of a dog, while the paw prints and teeth marks, while unclassifiable, were not made by a mongoose, and appeared suspiciously canine. In the end, Lambert’s and Price’s supernatural lark resulted in a light-hearted co-authored book titled “The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap,” and a windfall of £7,600, which Lambert won in a slander law suit after London councilman Cecil Levita publically accused the mongoose-seeking journalist of being “off his head.”

In 1937, the Irving family sold their farm – and, with it, their mischievous lodger – to a man named Leslie Graham who, 9 years later, confirmed that he had, in fact, encountered Gef in the house… and promptly shot him to death. Graham’s description of his victim, however, did not jibe with Voirrey’s descriptions of Gef, so it’s possible that the farmer murdered a different magic talking animal.

Magic talking animals. Can you believe it? Come back Wednesday and Friday for additional chatty critter stories, including Christmas Eve pet confessions, the Son of Sam murders and animal EVP.

The Grrl Power theory of poltergeist phenomena basically states that adolescent girls are like psychokinetic pressure cookers. Puberty heaps on the hormones, while historically male-biased cultural norms encourage young women to repress their burgeoning sexuality. Teenage angst! Social pressures! Familial stress! In certain young women, the combination of these factors supposedly leads to involuntary Carrie-style outbursts that are suspiciously similar to activities traditionally labeled as poltergeist goings-on.

To be fair, the theory doesn’t apply exclusively to the fairer sex. Psychologist Nandor Fodor, who was fascinated by the notion that poltergeist activity could be the result of an unknowing human agent’s psychic temper tantrums, felt that anyone with an undue amount of repressed rage or sexual desire was a likely candidate for psychokinetic agenthood (though his most famous case, the 1938 Thornton Heath poltergeist, did involve a neurotic woman). It wasn’t until the 1960s, when North Carolina’s William Roll got into the action, that blame fell squarely on the smooth, freckled shoulders of womanhood. Roll, of course, admitted that male teenagers have the capacity for psychic upheaval, but that young women, due to the aforementioned social and cultural factors, combined with their sugar-and-spice genetics, are much more susceptible to what he dubbed Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK).

Remember Gauld and Cornell, the guys from Monday’s column who allegedly collated over 500 poltergeist reports and created a percentage-based list of case-to-case similarities? They weren’t fans of Roll or Fodor, and claimed that both parapsychologists’ methods and conclusions were spurious (this is interesting in light of Roll’s claim that he used all of 116 cases in crafting his claims about the prevalence of teenage females in poltergeist incidents). Unfortunately, neither researcher ever detailed a plausible alternative theory. Even today, those who reject Fodor’s and Roll’s talk of unbounded psychic energy argue that most poltergeist cases are caused by angry ghosts. In recent years, poltergeist research has moved beyond teenagers to look at RSPK (or similar phenomena) in adult schizophrenics, depressives, manics and psychotics.

Knee-jerk feminism would almost certainly accuse Roll of sexism, but I think there’s a bit more to his ideas. The man’s a liberal-leaning fringe psychologist conducting his research amidst the cultural revolution of the 1960s. If anything, Roll’s theory is a back-door indictment of the repressive ideals of the ‘50s packaged as a finger-wagging pseudo-scientific document of the chickens-coming-home-to-roost variety. Women are robbed of irrepressible conscious power that then manifests unconsciously and unpredictably. Really, every poltergeist theory centers on the empowerment of the societally disenfranchised, whether they be kids, women or the mentally ill (and, hey, ghosts are corporeally disenfranchised). More than that, if we accept that a majority of poltergeist cases do, in fact, center on members of at least one of the aforementioned groups, and that, in all likelihood, the reports are fabricated, or the phenomena is rigged, by said disenfranchised people, then, at the very least, the empowerment is real. The mere possibility of poltergeist activity, via hoax or RSPK, has led to discussions about society’s attitudes towards women and the mentally ill, and about the emotional needs of adolescents. So all of you sexually repressed neurotic chicks, and all of you disregarded crazy dudes – keep flipping tables and slamming doors. Become agents. Grab the world by the light fixtures, and make yourselves heard.

The trio determines what would force them to become vigilantes. Andrew describes his frightening superhero creation that involves deranged circus animals and human dismemberment. Brian tries to retcon the creation in a most horrific way.

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This week’s poltergeist focus was, of course, inspired by the recent death of actress Zelda Rubinstein, who portrayed indefatigable medium Tangina Barrons in three Poltergeist movies and an episode of the short-lived Poltergeist television show. Barrons was one of many lucky performers spared from the infamous Poltergeist curse, which, if one is to believe the spooksational tale, felled four actors over the course of the three-film series: Dominique Dunne, who was strangled to death; Julian Beck, who died of stomach cancer; Will Sampson, who died of kidney failure; and Heather O’Rourke, who died from septic shock. Craig T. Nelson is still surly and kickin’.

I’d go into to greater detail, but everyone’s heard tell of the legendary the Poltergeist curse. Instead, let’s take a look at several of Hollywood’s lesser known, but equally shockifying, hexed films:

Citizen Kane (1941)

Though Orson Wells’ lived for 44 years after the production of his early opus, the supervising coroner at the Hollywood polymath’s autopsy has stated (off the record) that, while no surface injuries were detected, Wells’ innards were “violently trisected… as if sliced through by the sharpened runners of some phantom sled.”

Them! (1954)

Them!’s theme of hideous consequences wrought by an irresponsible nuclear age were mirrored by real life when several of the film’s cast and crew began to develop a series of strange physical mutations. Some performers – such as Joan Weldon, who sprouted a series of light-sensitive horns down the length of her spine – managed to keep their deformities secret; others – including Edmund Gwenn, whose teeth and fingernails reversed painfully back into his body – were forced to leave show business forever.

Rocky III (1982)

Rocky III is one of the few films that may have suffered from an actual magical curse. During one of the street scenes, Director Sylvester Stallone repeatedly asked a mysterious old woman to move out of a shot. Though the woman left without protest, she blew a palmful of strange yellow powder at one of the cameras. When that day’s reels were developed, the dusted camera’s film contained frame after frame of two-headed animals, leprous genitals and baby amputees. Stallone quietly ordered that the camera be blessed, encased in cement and buried beneath St. Peter’s Church in Philadelphia. Since then, a wary Stallone has allowed myriad old women to loiter, undisturbed, throughout his movies’ sets.

Swimfan (2002)

Rumor has it that Actress Erika Christensen actually drowned while shooting Swimfan’s thrilling climax, which was shot early on in the film’s production. The incident was kept secret for insurance reasons and a lookalike was brought in to film the rest of Christensen’s scenes. When the lookalike died in a tragic car accident just two days after production wrapped, the studio was forced to scout out a second lookalike, who, to this day, is still posing as Erika Christensen’s original secret lookalike.

Juno (2007)

Over the course of Juno’s 30-day shoot, Ellen Paige regurgitated over 75 pounds of human hair.

Way back in 1682, when men were men and poltergeists were still thought to be nothing more than ghostly, table-flipping Foley artists, Richard Chamberlain, the secretary of the colony of New Hampshire, was hanging out at a local watering hole when most of all hell broke loose. Utensils took to the air and flew at the patrons and staff. Bricks and rocks cut deadly arcs through the barroom. Hammers, spits and iron-crows rose in unassisted flight and assaulted the confused crowd of onlookers. When the chaos ended, Chamberlain immediately confronted the pub’s owners, George and Alice Walton, coining the phrase “WTF?” in the process.

16 years later, Chamberlain published “Lithobolia: or, the stone-throwing devil,” a journal-style pamphlet in which, describing himself as an “Ocular Witness of these Diabolick Inventions,” he recounted the Walton’s woeful tale of three tortuous months spent battling the formidable pitching arm of the tavern’s invisible assailant. To this day, “Lithobolia” remains one of the most detailed layman accounts of poltergeist activity. The conclusion it reaches: demons are to blame. Or, possibly, witches.

288 years later in Rosenheim, Bavaria, another detailed account of poltergeist activity was created – this time by an animistic (an approach centered on human-generated psychic energy rather than atmospheric spirit energy) parapsychologist and two German physicists. When office equipment at Sigmund Allen’s law firm began operating independently of the clerical staff, Allen called the power company, who responded with robust shrugs. When dozens of voiceless phone calls disturbed the office, Allen contacted the phone company, who also had no explanation. When the light fixtures started swinging, Allen called the police, who called in famous parapsychologist Hans Bender and two physicists, Doctors Karga and Zicha, from Germany’s prestigious Max Planck institute.

After taking hours of video footage and interviewing dozens of witnesses, the only conclusive causal link that anyone could find was a young secretary – Annemarie Schneider – who was consistently present whenever the strange phenomena occurred. Interviewing Schneider, the scientists learned that a recent romantic entanglement had left the 19-year-old emotionally traumatized. The doctors also felt that, even disregarding her boy troubles, the young woman seemed to demonstrate pronounced neuroses and other symptoms of psychological imbalance – like, the type of imbalance that might cause someone to, say, fake ghost attacks as a means of attracting attention. While Karga and Zicha conceded that the events defied rational explanation (though they never accused Schneider of perpetrating a hoax), neither concluded, as many subsequent amateur students of the Rosenheim case have, that the events were clearly paranormal.

Annemarie Schneider lost her job and the poltergeist activity immediately stopped. And that’s where Lithobolia author Richard Chamberlain would see Schneider hanged for witchcraft. Or where, today, you or I might conclude that it was all a hoax. But there’s still Hans Bender, who, thanks to the work 1930s psychologist Nandor Fodor, reached an entirely different conclusion. That’s right – Grrl power.

(continued Friday)

Deep in the Amazon researchers are exploring the remnants of a city that dates back to 200 AD. Little is known about the inhabitants and some speculate that this could have been the source of the rumors of El Dorado. Click through for the video. Scientific American

The always provocative h+ magazine surveyed the experts at the Artificial General Intelligence Conference to get a grasp of when they though machines would get really smart.

The results are very interesting:

While the median guess is the 2020’s, some are saying we won’t see any robo super geniuses for a century or more. While we can appreciate their optimism in the delay of our demise, it feels a little bit like surveys of physicists in the 1920’s about the use of atomic energy as a weapon. That was considered a far off thing too…

How Long Till Human-Level AI?

Walk it Off – an abridged compendium of ye olde folk remedies and archaic antidotes culled from UCLA’s Archive of American Folk Medicine

Today’s ailment: Indigestion

The Belly Button Breathalyzer

You will need: Brandy; 1 drinker of brandy.

Instructions: Have brandy drinker swallow a mouthful of his/her favorite brandy; Immediately have brandy drinker blow onto your tummy; Repeat as desired by brandy drinker.

The Triple Threat

You will need: 1 small piece of a willow tree; 1 little chunk of misc. bone; 1 slice of an animal’s pelt.

Instructions: Eat willow fragment, bone shard and pelt niblet.

Note: This cure is most effective in children.

The Pit Snort

You will need: 1 musty armpit.

Instructions: Heartily inhale the armpit’s vaporous must.

That’ll Do, Pig

You will need: 1 serving of pig excrement.

Instructions: Eat pig excrement.

Note: Tummy aches are caused by an unnatural cooling of the stomach. Swine droppings help to dial the gastrointestinal thermostat back up to a healthy swelter.

The Ad Hoc Pie-Hole Surveyor

You will need: 1 thumb (yours); 1 mouth (yours).

Instructions: Using the thumb as a ruler, measure the length and width of your mouth; Repeat 5x.

Gizzard Dander Num-Nums

You will need: 1 chicken gizzard.

Instructions: Separate gizzard lining from gizzard; Dry gizzard lining; Powder gizzard lining; Eat gizzard lining.

Note: Also effective with carrier pigeon gizzard.

The Rock and Walk

You will need: 1 large open space; 1 rock.

Instructions: Approach rock; Bend over; Flip rock; Straighten up; Walk forward without ever looking back.

Note: It’s imperative that you don’t look back.

That’ll Do, Horse

You will need: 1 shirt with tails; 1 serving horse dung; 1 available heating surface; 1 tight-lipped companion (pref. owes you money).

Instructions: Have companion secretly sneak horse leavings into your shirt tail; have companion secretly remove horse leavings from shirt tail; Have companion thoroughly cook horse leavings; eat horse leavings.

The Head over Heels

You will need: The ability to somersault.

Instructions: Somersault.

…and then the Faint Odor of Smoke

You will need: ½ Tsp. Gun Powder

Instructions: Eat gunpowder.

Internet paranormal enthusiasts love to cite the work of parapsychologists Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell, who famously collated over a 170 years’ worth of reported poltergeist incidents into a comprehensive database organized by the specific qualitative symptoms of the phenomena. For example, based on Cornell and Gauld’s rubric, out of more than 500 studied poltergeist cases, 64% involved the movement of small objects, 58% were more active at night, 48% featured knocking or rapping (though only 2% featured beat-boxing), 36% involved the movement of large objects, etc. What good is this data to anyone? Well, it’s pretty helpful if you write for Weird Things and need to introduce the basics of poltergeist activity (and ladies – if you run into Agent Mulder at a bar, it couldn’t hurt to pull out the ol’ “12% of poltergeist incidents involved the opening and shutting of doors” line).

How do these trinket-tossing ghoul infestations differ from classic hauntings? Good question. In the past, the distinction between the two really just hinged upon the perceived mischievousness of the entity: ghosts were restless depressives who stamped around houses out of discomfort and anger; poltergeists were ethereal miscreants who joyfully roused sleepers and vandalized property to satisfy their voracious adolescent appetites for prankery. As (ahem) research progressed throughout the 20th century, however, the poltergeist phenomena began to look less and less like traditional spirit activity. In modern day parapsychology circles, the party line is this: reported hauntings are generally centered on a place or an object, and last for extended periods; poltergeists are usually linked to individual people (most commonly females under the age of 20) and stop abruptly after only a few months. According to Gauld and Cornell, 98% of reported hauntings are actually cases of poltergeist activity, and that’s a number you can trust because it’s math AND science!

Was I what? Winking?! No! Why would you even say that? You’re funny.

The fact that “poltergeist” is a German word (“polter” coming from “poltern” meaning “to make noise,” and “geist” meaning “spirit” or “ghost”) helps to hint at the phenomenon’s international prevalence – poltergeists have been reported throughout Europe, Asia and both North and South America (I guess Africa’s too busy dealing with witchcraft and AIDs to be bothered by a few inexplicably airborne black market TEC-9s). So what are the scientific, psychological and supernatural ramifications of these wild non-ghosts?

Check back Wednesday and Friday for answers that are guaranteed to include talk of psychokinesis, female sexuality, befuddled physicists and the word “lithobolia.” In short – everything you’ve ever wanted, plus lithobolia.

Even if Apple’s already-divisive iPad doesn’t herald in a new age of laptop computing, it certainly offers a giant leap forward in tablet technology. This Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Weird Things is paying tribute to the fantastic tablets of yesteryear, and the brave tableteers who sculpted them.

Today: The Bembine Tablet

If the all-powerful monster kid from that Twilight Zone episode (“It’s a Good Life”) decided to trap Dan Brown and Alan Moore in a sealed elevator, the Bembine Tablet is one of the few viable conversation topics on which both could probably agree to waste the precious, dwindling oxygen.

Brown would be entranced by the artifact’s namesake, Cardinal Bembo, a Catholic antiquarian who originally purchased the mysterious hieroglyph-spangled Egyptian relic from a Roman locksmith sometime after the city’s famous sacking. Brown would revel in the tablet’s subsequent crisscrossing of Italy, as monarchs and papal officers swapped it from Mantua to Rome to Savoy to Sardinia to Paris, France, before returning it to Turin, Italy, where it still resides.

I imagine the cryptology-obsessed author would also drool over the tablet’s history as an almost-was Egyptian Rosetta Stone, although he might change some key details about 17th century Hermeticist Athanasius Kircher, who, with all the neurotic bravado of a Tom Hanks character, attempted to decode the Bembine tablet and create a translation key for Egyptian hieroglyphics. See, Kircher’s translation was ultimately ruled a complete fabrication – the bronze and silver tablet’s apparent hieroglyph’s were actually just decorative pictures of peasants, kings and deities, including the god Isis, for whom the tablet was most likely created. It’s like if you tried to translate English from a Where’s Waldo illustration. (Even Kircher’s published decipherments of actual hieroglyphs have since proved utterly fallacious. In one famous instance, he translated what amounts to “Osiris says” as “The treachery of Typhon ends at the throne of Isis; the moisture of nature is guarded by the vigilance of Anubis.”) I’m sure in Brown’s version, Kircher would be discredited by the Catholic Church after discovering that the Bembine tablet really did contain what a continent’s worth of occultists predicted – the language of Adam and Eve.

Here’s where Moore’s eyes would lose their opium glaze. European occultists had little anthropological interest in the tablet, and what linguistic interest they had came from their belief in a legendary grimoire called the Book of Thoth. The theory was that the tablet revealed a code for translating the book, which was written in some proto-civilized god tongue and then buried in the City of the Dead with the Egyptian Prince Neferkaptah. A person who possessed, and could translate, the document would have the ability to talk to animals, cast incomparably powerful spells and control nature itself.

Also, the book is locked in a gold box that’s locked in a silver box that’s locked in an ivory and ebony box that’s locked in a sycamore box that’s locked in a bronze box. All of those boxes are locked in an iron box. The keys to the boxes are spread out across Egypt, with some hidden in treacherous natural formations, others entrusted to earthbound spirits and still others under the watchful eyes of ferocious beasts. On top of all that, the book is cursed, such that its master’s power comes at a terrible price – the death of all those close to him. Oh, the wet dreams and acid trips Moore has surely had about the Book of Thoth.

Too bad the tablet turned out to be the equivalent of a thousand-pound Hummel.

Still, before they suffocated, both authors would carefully list and map out the cities to which the tablet traveled – after all, the pattern is bound to form some sort of Masonic icon or runic sigil. Add Stephen King and John Grisham into the mix and you’ve got a pulpy religious conspiracy court drama with post-modern overtones and a shocking third-act revelation that it was aliens.

Wait. That what was aliens?

“You know. Everything.” replies Stephen King.

Jason has killed a lot of folks with a lot of different tools. His victims may wonder, “Who is this man? And why is he murdering me?” Meanwhile, we the viewers want to know, “What is that tool he’s using? And what’s its history?”

Wonder no longer.

Today: Ice Pick

As used by Jason in: “Friday the 13th Part II” and “Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning”

Victim(s): Alice Hardy, Les (during Tommy’s dream sequence)

Refrigerators are everywhere! My house… your house… your friends’ houses. Your teacher might even have one! But that didn’t used to be the case. Back before people had evolved the ability to invent refrigerators, everyone used ice boxes – unwieldy food preservation cabinets that had to be regularly restocked with fresh blocks of ice that folks bought from merchants called icemen (sorry, girls. There weren’t any actual icewomen. That’s just something daddies call mommies who have headaches). To shape an ice block to box size – or to chip off some cubes to cool down some tasty lemonade – people used ice picks. An ice pick is a sharp, wooden-handled tool that resembles a scratch awl.

Oh. In that case, picture a stitching awl with a straight point.

Really? May I ask what kind of awl you can picture?

Nope. Forget it.

It’s nothing like that kind of awl.

FUN WITH YOUR PARENTS’ STUFF! Breaking ice without an ice pick can be really hard! Try it! All you need are ice cubes and some of your PARENTS’ STUFF! Try crushing the ice with your mother’s jewelry box or the butt of your father’s handgun… try to chip it on the computer keyboard or smack it with the buckle of the Time Out Belt… try as hard you can to break it against the big window in the living room. See why ice picks were so useful?

Sure, ice picks were named ice picks because of their ice picking ability, but they can pick other things, too – human brains, for example! Walter Freeman, a famous neurologist (just a fancy word for “head shaman”), used ice picks to lobotomize (just a fancy word for “calm down”) the mentally insane. Freeman customized a van, which he called the “lobotomobile,” and set off on a nationwide mental hospital tour, during which he taught multiple doctors how to perform his violent and irreversible procedure – place an ice pick through the corner of the eye socket and, to quote the ‘50s pop sensation “Dr. Freeman Boogie,” “smack it like a broken Polaroid camera.” Soon, though, lobotomies went the way of the ice box as powerful neuroleptics like Thorazine took the psychiatric industry by storm.

FUNOLOGY PROJECT! How do you think lobotomized patients were treated? Probably not very nice! Try acting lobotomized around your family and friends, and see how they treat you. It’s easy! Tone down your personality. Quietly fiddle with random objects. Turn off your ability to love. Periodically soil yourself. CHALLENGE! How long can you keep it up for? A week? A month? Remember: science is all about the gathering of unrecorded, subjective data by way of long-running, secret deceptions (just a fancy word for “fun”).

Families… head shamans… who else used ice picks? Good question! Have you ever heard of Murder, Inc.? Well, Murder, Inc. was a group of steel-balled Italians and Jews who performed contract killings for the National Crime Syndicate between 1920 and 1940. Some of these Mafia hit men liked ice picks almost as much as Dr. Freeman liked lobotomizing the insane. Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, well known members of Murder, Inc., both considered the ice pick their go-to goomba-elimination tool. Human bone is no match for the shattering force of an enthusiastically swung pick! You may have heard that Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky met his fate at the business end of Stalinist-wielded ice pick. Untrue! Trotsky was actually killed by an ice axe, which is like a super-sized ice pick designed to lobotomize thawed-out dinosaurs.

CONTEST! What sort of weapons would you use if you were an assassin working for Murder, Inc.? What if you worked for the KGB? How about Yakuza? Draw each weapon on a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper, along with an illustration of yourself using the weapon, and mail each of them to: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500. The more entries you send, the better your chance of winning!

Thank you, Jason, for helping us learn through murder.

Join me again soon for another thrilling installment of Jason Vorhees’ Arsenal!

Researcher Masahiro Hotta at Tohoku University has developed a framework by which it could be possible to teleport energy vast distances. The implications for this are pretty amazing. Could we use this to power deep space missions? Teleport power from the sun? Build a Death Star? One can dream.

He gives the example of a string of entangled ions oscillating back and forth in an electric field trap, a bit like Newton’s balls. Measuring the state of the first ion injects energy into the system in the form of a phonon, a quantum of oscillation. Hotta says that performing the right kind of measurement on the last ion extracts this energy. Since this can be done at the speed of light (in principle), the phonon doesn’t travel across the intermediate ions so there is no heating of these ions. The energy has been transmitted without traveling across the intervening space. That’s teleportation.

link: Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy