Do ghosts have PTSD?

A depressing new theory
A new scientific paper published in the Australian Journal of Parapsychology claims that there is ample evidence to suggest that ghosts suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although the paper itself is behind a firewall, the abstract is quite intriguing.
 
Obviously this theory is built on the belief called "intelligent haunting," which is that ghosts are people who retain human consciousness after they die. Rather than the competing theory, which is that ghost phenomena is just a sort of psychic recording of people who are no longer there, but whose imprint somehow remains on the building or location. (Although it may be a mistake to call these "competing" theories, because there are certainly places where both types of ghost have been observed.)
 
If one presumes an intelligent haunting, then if you think about it, it would be surprising if ghosts DIDN'T have PTSD. It must be pretty scary to wake up dead one day, stuck in one place, unable to contact any of your friends or loved ones. Not to mention that if you remember the means of your death, for those who die a violent death, that alone may be enough to trigger PTSD.
 
PTSD is an anxiety disorder which arises after a traumatic incident, such as a sexual assault or life-threatening situation. It involves a collection of symptoms, including anxiety, flashbacks, feeling numb or disconnected from reality, irritability, and avoidant behavior. People with PTSD are both unable to escape their trauma, and unable to cope with it, stuck in a sort of in-between state, a twilight walking hell.
 
Doesn't sound too unlike a ghost, does it?
 
On our plane of existence, people with PTSD are greatly helped by therapy and anti-anxiety medication, which allows them to work through their trauma in a safe and controlled environment. But this is a luxury which is not afforded to the dead. Perhaps some of them are able to work through it on their own, and can thus pass on to the next step. Others, unable to successfully wrestle with their traumatic memories, are stuck here indefinitely.
 
Frankly I hope that this is not the case, because it's a very sad thought. People with PTSD can be irritable and prone to lashing out, and some people suggest that perhaps this is what is actually driving the poltergeist phenomena. Maybe ghosts don't need an exorcist, they need a therapist instead.
 

Silphium: The most delicious plant you've never tasted

The ancient Greeks and Romans ate it all
Back in classical antiquity times, the world revolved around silphium. It was used in cooking, its sap was used as a medicinal treatment and as birth control, its flowers were used for perfume, and its relative scarcity caused it to become the basis of several forms of currency. But you've probably never heard of it, because it went extinct some time during the rise of the Roman Empire. 
 
What was silphium? Its exact identity remains a mystery, but most contemporary scholars believe it was an aromatic relative of the parsley, wild carrot, and fennel plants. (Some believe it might be a rare species of giant fennel called Ferula tingitana, which is beginning to slowly return to North Africa.) It grew in a small area along the coastline of Cyrenaica (now known as Libya) in a small area of only about 4,300 square miles. Its relative scarcity and difficulty growing anywhere else no doubt contributed to its value, but it also helped spelled the plant's demise.
 
Silphium was so valuable that ancient Greek coins were stamped with its likeness. In fact most of the coins of the Cyrenian economy bore images of the silphium plant. And there is ample evidence to suggest that silphium remains with us today, in the familiar heart shape. This shape was embossed on many Cyrenian coins, possibly because it represented the shape of the silphium's seed pod.
 
There were many medicinal uses for silphium, although it's difficult to judge from a modern perspective how much actual medical benefit the plant conferred. It was used to treat many maladies, from sore throats to unwanted pregnancies. But then again, so were a lot of odd and useless substances, so who knows.
 
Silphium's main use was culinary. It was almost ubiquitous in ancient Greek and Roman cooking, and appears in most of the recipes in Apicius, which is the most comprehensive ancient Roman cookbook. Basically the Roman version of The Joy of Cooking.
 
Its use in cooking is no doubt partly responsible for the plant's untimely extinction. There developed a fad for the meat of animals who grazed on silphium, sort of the ancient world's version of Wegyu beef. This fad led many people to let cattle loose in the silphium fields, where they overgrazed the land as well as damaging the fragile coastline ecosystem with their hooves.
 
According to legend, the emperor Nero ate the world's very last piece of silphium. A plant named asafetida took its place as a shabbier, off-brand substitute. 
 

Mental illness and parallel worlds theory

Clearing up the confusion
Psychology Tomorrow Magazine asks "Do schizophrenics live in parallel universes?" There is some interesting territory to mine here, but let's clear up a big mistake in the question first.
 
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder which is characterized by paranoia, auditory and visual hallucinations. The afflicted may hear voices whispering "You smell bad, you should kill yourself," or believe that the CIA is bugging their phones. There is also a collection of other symptoms involved, like disorganized thinking and negative affect.
 
This article is talking about the popular (and mistaken) belief that schizophrenia means "split personality." In fact, when most people say "schizophrenia" what they mean is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which is extremely rare. 
 
DID is also a controversial topic in psychological circles. There is endless debate about what causes it, or if it is even a real thing. The generally accepted current theory is that the separate personalities split off in response to extreme trauma, typically endured when the afflicted person was a young child. If you have ever zoned out in a really boring staff meeting, it's a little like that, but times a million. And while you're zoned out, some other splinter personality may take over for a while. 
 
My first thought about the theory that DID patients are suffering from some kind of Many Worlds glitch is depressing, because it implies that the same person experienced horrific sexual and physical abuse across several parallel universes. But this theory doesn't quite work, because the different personalities (called "alters") each have a different name, age, background, even gender. So for this theory to work, multiple people across multiple universes would have to be entangled somehow.
 
It's interesting to think that people in several different universes could be exchanging personalities. Dave in Universe A recedes, and Bob from Universe B takes over. Meanwhile, Carl in Universe C takes over Bob, and maybe Dave from Universe A takes over Carl. It gets pretty complicated.
 
Like I said, there are some interesting ideas to explore here, but DID or split personality is kind of a non-starter. What if we posit that some people with mental illness are just slightly out of phase with our own universe, and able to see a ghost of another universe? What if, for every person suffering from clinical depression in our universe, there is an identical person suffering from mania in the other universe. Maybe there is a parallel universe where the CIA actually does spy on all its citizens all the time. OH WAIT THAT'S US.
 

Faking your own death

How, and why?
It seems like whenever a celebrity dies, there is a small group of people who claim that the death was faked. The typical reason given is that "so they can live out their lives in peace." This is patently ridiculous. If a celebrity wants to live out their life in peace, they can just retire. 
 
A more common reason why people fake their own death is for the insurance money. Someone with a lot of debts may not feel like they have very many options left. Many people commit suicide under those circumstances. But if you can make it look like an accidental death, your family gets the insurance payout (which they can hopefully use to pay off your debts.) This way you lose everything… except your life.
 
It seems that the most common and foolproof way to fake your own death is by an at-sea mishap. Charter a small private boat, bring your own inflatable raft, take the boat out to sea, hop onto your raft, cut the boat adrift, and motor back to land.  Eventually the boat will be found without you on it, and the authorities will assume you fell overboard. Or be prepared to take advantage of a disaster.
 
It takes years for someone to be officially pronounced dead when this happens (meaning years before that insurance payout takes place). But it has the advantage of providing a plausible story for why there is no body.
 
The problem with claiming that Paul Walker faked his death is that today's forensic science is insanely amazing. We are way beyond identifying bodies by their dental records. Just the tiniest bit of bone marrow or tissue left on a body will provide ample DNA for a forensic analysis. You can't just swap your clothes with a dead hobo and call it done, like in the 1920s.
 
A bigger problem is life after your death. You will have no verifiable identity, no work history, no credit history, no way to get a car loan or a credit card or a home loan. You will have a hard time getting a job or finding a place to live. You will be stuck with working under the table or service industry jobs, and probably living in a shared rental through Craigslist.
 
And most importantly, you can never contact your old friends and family again. A single postcard, a single post on the internet, just one little text can ruin the whole thing. What a lonely life it would be.
 

The growing problem of corpse disposal

It's not just an issue for murderers anymore
Who hasn't wondered about the best way to dispose of a body? Murderers in fiction and real life come up with all sorts of creative methods of body disposal. But the issue of corpse disposal is increasingly becoming a concern in legitimate situations. If Dexter needs to figure out where to hide all the bodies, so does your neighborhood funeral home.
 
The Earth is small, and getting smaller. Arable land is at a premium. To many people it seems like a waste to spend so much of it on the dead. Not to mention all the toxic chemicals which are used in corpse preservation and buried along with poor old Grandma.
 
For those who are concerned about climate change and their carbon footprint, cremation has a surprisingly high environmental impact. Cremating a body takes 23 liters of fuel, four hours of combustion, and "emits noxious gases including dioxin, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide, as well as mercury and other toxic metals into the atmosphere."
 
And you still have the issue of having to either make room for an urn full of ashes, or find a way to dispose of them. Spreading human ashes is not a safe bet. Because they are considered human remains, federal regulations are very strict on this point. Every time someone spreads the ashes of a loved one on a Disneyland ride, Disney has to shut down the attraction and clean up the ashes with a HEPA vacuum.
 
Natural burial is becoming popular among the die-hard environmental fans. Natural burial is just what it sounds like: bodies are buried without any coffin or preservation, and allowed to decompose naturally. 
 
Another new option is called "alkaline hydrosis." By combining an alkaline solution of potassium hydroxide with high heat and pressure, within a few hours a corpse can be reduced to "a sterile coffee-colored liquid the consistency of motor oil that can be safely poured down the drain." 
 
(If this brings to mind Walter White's preferred means of body disposal, turns out hydrofluoric acid is a bust in real life.)
 
If you prefer something more poetic, Swedish biologist has pioneered a method she calls "promession," in which the corpse is basically freeze dried, pulverized, then mixed in with soil and used to fertilize a garden. 
 
A related method is the Infinity Burial Project, which puts the corpse into a cotton slipcase filled with mushroom spores. The body is placed in a cool, dark, damp place, which encourages the mushrooms to sprout and consume the body. (Very Hannibal of them.)

Is our universe just a hologram?

New evidence strongly suggests it
Consider the hologram sticker on your credit or debit card. The sticker itself is a two-dimensional object, a carved bit of foil with a sticky back. It contains, and is the source of, all the information to create the hologram (of a dove or whatever) which we perceive as a three-dimensional object. To put it another way, the hologram is just the projection of information which exists on that two-dimensional sticker.
 
The same may be true of our universe. Everything we experience, everything we perceive, about our lives and the galaxy around us, may very well just be a hologram. According to this theory, which is generally well-received in the theoretical physics community, our hologram is being projected by two other universes which are connected by vibrating, infinitesimally small strings. One of the other universes has only one dimension and no gravity. The other universe has ten dimensions, eight of which form an eight-dimensional sphere.
 
The proof comes from a recent paper which "computes the internal energy of a black hole, the position of its event horizon (the boundary between the black hole and the rest of the universe), its entropy and other properties based on the predictions of string theory as well as the effects of so-called virtual particles that continuously pop into and out of existence." I don't even pretend to understand what it all means, but the mathematical proofs of this paper serve as a Rosetta stone for string theory, which physicists have been searching for.
 
This new information is going to encourage a lot of people to bring up the topic of the 2004 movie "What The Bleep Do We Know?" I'm going to stop you right there and say, don't. "What The Bleep" was almost completely fabricated, and was funded entirely by the cult of Ramtha. "What the Bleep" has given all discussions of theoretical physics a bad name, by taking the basic concepts and shoehorning them into a framework of bizarre mysticism.
 
What does it mean that we live in a holographic universe? It doesn't mean that everything around us is fake. It's all real, the same way that the little hologram dove on my credit card is real. I'm not imagining that dove; I can actually see it. 
 
What it means is that what we see is not the whole story. It's just the product of the "real" universe, the way that a heat shimmer is the product of a fire, or the 3D-looking dove is just a product of the sticker on my card.
 

Slender Man: The creepiest mystery of all?

No less scary for being fictional
Slender Man is basically a boogeyman for the internet age. Slender Man began in 2009 as an entry to a Photoshop contest on the Something Awful forums. Something Awful user Victor Surge created a pair of photographs showing a tall, thin, faceless figure in a crowd, along with the explanation that the Slender Man is a strange creature who is known to stalk children.
 
Slender Man's legend has only grown since then. He is described as being tall (usually over 8 feet tall) with long thin matchstick legs and arms, and a blank face. He has the ability to wipe the memory of his existence from his victims, teleportation, and distortion of video recording equipment. Slender Man depictions often include long black tentacles, but not always. Slender Man usually wears a black hat, and can walk across ceilings and walls. 
 
This last ability is shown to good effect in this video of the Slender Man walking across the outside of an apartment building in an unknown city. You can see how Slender Man earned his nickname, "Daddy LongLegs."
 
Slender Man became instantly popular across the internet, particularly on the 4chan board /x/ which is dedicated to the paranormal. Slender Man fanfic, artworks, and legends abound on this board, which treats Slender Man as a sort of mascot. Slender Man works can also be found on Tumblr and Deviant Art, where Slender Man illustrations are as creepy as they are plentiful.
 
The Slender Man myth was central to the groundbreaking YouTube series Marble Hornets, which was created by two art school students, and took the form of video diary entries. Marble Hornets became so successful that men behind it were hired by a movie studio to start work on a film, which reportedly will be released in spring, 2014.
 
Slender Man is an interesting example of an urban legend or paranormal phenomenon where everyone is in on the joke, but it works anyway. No one believes that Slender Man is actually real. Everyone knows that he is fictional. But that doesn't stop Slender Man works from being thoroughly unsettling and scary. 
 
And who's to say that, hundreds of years from now, history will have forgotten that everyone once knew Slender Man was fictional? Perhaps Slender Man will have passed into the pantheon of paranormal and off-beat phenomena, to join the pantheon alongside ghosts, werewolves, and the Loch Ness Monster.

The bizarre incident at Dyatlov Pass

How did they die?
On February 2, 1959, a group of nine ski hikers entered the Ural Mountains in northern Russia. None of them returned, and the story told by their remains is still considered a bizarre mystery.
 
The group, led by a man named Igor Dyatlov, were young college students heading out towards a mountain about six miles from where they died. It was a difficult route at that time of year, but all of the party members were experienced in mountain expeditions, high altitude, and cold weather conditions.
 
The day before they died, the group was moving through a mountain pass (now named Dyatlov Pass) when a snowstorm hit. They deflected their route up the side of one of the mountains. When they realized they were heading in the wrong direction, Dyatlov made the call to pitch camp where they were and wait for the storm to clear.
 
They hunkered down on the side of a mountain whose name is variously translated as either "Mountain of the Dead" (meaning spirits) or "Dead Mountain" (meaning that it had no game). 
 
It took nearly a month before search and rescue teams were able to reach their remains. What they found was shocking.
 
The group's tent had been torn open from inside. The tent was empty, with all of their belongings scattered around on the snow. The group's bodies were found, mostly naked, having wandered a long distance through the snow away from the campsite.
 
Two of the bodies were found huddled beside the remains of a fire. They were dressed only in their underwear. The branches on the trees above them had been broken up to 15 feet above the ground.
 
Three more bodies were found scattered in the clearing, all naked. The remaining four were found in a nearby 13-foot ravine, still wearing most of their clothes.
 
Of the four bodies found in the ravine, three had severe internal injuries, which the medical examiner stated were from an extremely high force, comparable to a car crash. None of them showed any external sign of injury. The medical examiner said it was as if they had been crushed under high pressure. 
 
And one of the three injured bodies was missing its tongue.
 
Furthermore, all eight bodies were found to be incredibly radioactive.
 
There were no signs of struggle, and no footprints aside from those made by the eight hikers. Although "paradoxical undressing" is a classic sign of hypothermia, what would have lured these eight experienced mountaineers out of their tent in such a dramatic fashion? Why would they have succumbed to hypothermia in the first place, given that they were clearly well-versed in its signs? And where did their clothes go?
 
There have been many theories as to what happened, including an avalanche, secret Soviet military maneuvers, and UFO activity. But we will probably never know for sure.
 

The New England vampire plague

1880s vampire panic swept New England
In 1990 in a small Connecticut town, some kids playing in a gravel mine discovered the remains of an old cemetery. Archaeologists were called in to excavate, catalog, and move the remains. Most of the bodies which had been buried in the cemetery were what you would expect, until the archaeologists went to work on a coffin named Burial Number 4.
 
According to the forensic evidence they found, Burial Number 4 had been dug up about five years after he had died, and his skeleton had been rearranged. His feet were still where they had been, but he had been beheaded, and his skull and thighbones set atop his rib cage like a pirate flag. 
 
The remains were named "J.B." after the initials picked out in brass tacks on his coffin lid. He had been in his 50s when he died, circa 1830s. The timing of his (first) exhumation labeled him as one of the "Jewett City Vampires," part of a particularly strange chapter in American history.
 
When most people think of the paranormal and historic New England, they think of the Salem witch trials. But several hundred years after the witch panic, New England was gripped by a vampire panic. People became convinced that the dead were digging themselves out of their coffins at night and roaming the countryside to feed off the living. 
 
One historian has documented 80 exhumations, most of which happened in New England in the 1800s. J.B.'s grave and remains are the most complete set of surviving physical evidence from the vampire panics.
 
An interesting fact about these outbreaks of vampire panic is that they inevitably coincide with tuberculosis outbreaks. (In fact, J.B. was found to have suffered from TB.) An early folkloric belief was that the first person in a family to catch tuberculosis, known also as "consumption," was a vampire, who was responsible for secretly feeding off (and infecting) their other family members. It was one way to explain the spread of the disease, at a time before people knew how disease worked. And the tuberculosis patient's blood-spotted handkerchief was evocative of vampirism. 
 
In some cases, the village might blame a dead person for bringing the curse of TB to their town. These corpses were dug up and dealt with, whether by turning them upside down, or by (as happened to J.B.) decapitating them, removing their heart, and burning it in a public ceremony. 

Art Bell quits (again)

Does he realize how badly his fans feel burned?
Many fans of the freaky and paranormal got their start in the 1980s and 1990s listening to Art Bell's "Coast to Coast" show on AM radio. Art's show was a blockbuster hit, a ratings juggernaut, and a perfect way for radio stations to fill those otherwise-difficult overnight slots. The sheer ubiquity of Art Bell meant that his fan base was enormous.
 
I listened to Art every night for years. I would drift off to sleep to guests expounding about shadow people, the next extinction event, and a really big hole in some dude's back yard. 
 
Then he quit. Then he came back. Then he quit again. Frankly, it got hard to follow. At the same time, Art's personal life was in turmoil. His wife died, he remarried, had a new daughter, his mother died, he relocated to the Philippines, started broadcasting from there, had connection problems… it got to the point where it was hard for the casual fan to keep track.
 
Personally I don't think Art ever really recovered his confidence after the Heaven's Gate incident. Courtney Brown went on Art Bell's show and talked at length about how there was an alien spaceship following along in the tail of an approaching comet. 
 
The Heaven's Gate cultists, upon hearing the news, committed mass suicide. All because of Art's show. Art wasn't responsible for their deaths in any way - he never said anything like, "Everybody kill yourself! Quick!" - it was the cultists who were the crazy ones. But still, it weighed on him, and his show choices became more and more conservative.
 
At any rate, after a long disappearance from the airwaves, Art made a triumphant return to Sirius satellite radio in September, 2013. Many fans, eager for Art's new show, shelled out a lot of cash for Sirius subscriptions and equipment. 
 
And then he quit. After only six weeks, Art Bell called an end to his show on November 4, 2013. 
 
Truthfully, from what I had heard, the show wasn't that great. If Art had someone doing research on new trends and information, you wouldn't know it to look at his guest roster. It was the same old line-up of the usual suspects: Michio Kaku, Richard C. Hoagland, and all the other familiar names. I was dismayed to see that, on the weekend of the official Mothman celebration, Art had no Mothman-related content. 
 
Were the other shows forcing guests not to compete by appearing on Art's show? Or was Art just out of touch? It's hard to say, but the end was ignominious. A sad end to an illustrious career.

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