536: COMPILATION: Creepy Classics! 02:52:22

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Oh, my hair is getting out of control. We have a new monitor in the studio. Middle-aged does not look good in HD. Yeesh. Anyway, thanks for clicking on this. We're off this month for an end-of-season break. I've been going nonstop for two and a half years. Oh, boo-hoo. What? I'm playing the world's smallest violin. You can't play violin with fins. It's a figure of speech.

But I will be live streaming tonight if you want to drop by. I'll talk more about our break on the stream. New episodes are coming, and we've got a few surprises for you that I think you're going to like. Anyway, every Thursday we'll be posting compilations of classic episodes. Classic means old. Well, yeah. But maybe you'll catch something you missed. Plus, we'll be adding new facts and other information in the episodes, and I'll pop in between and say hi. This week's compilation is called Creepy Classics.

And we're starting with a short episode called Terrifying Animals. It was the second video I ever made. And it shows. Yeah, we've come a long way production-wise. But I always thought this episode was fun. Oh, I have a few zingers in this one. You sure do. This video is about weird and terrifying animals.

But you know what the weirdest animal is? Us. We love to be afraid. No other animal does this. You don't see gazelles on the Serengeti dressing up as cheetahs for a hoot. And there are well-studied psychological reasons why humans enjoy being frightened. And we have a video coming up all about fear and phobia. So hit all the stuff to make sure you don't miss it. It's going to be our weirdest video yet. You know what's weird? Your skin tone. What now?

What shade of orange is that? It's self-tanner. Tan? Who are you kidding? That's orange. I'm trying to do a thing here. You look like a new inmate at a prison where they eat nothing but carrots. I don't know what that means. Yeah, you do.

Now, we indulge in all kinds of different ways to scare each other. One of our favorite ways, monsters, werewolves, zombies, chupacabra, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster. We get a satisfyingly fun chill when we hear stories about these creatures. Now, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster aren't real or are they? But here are ten terrifying animals that actually exist. But I really wish they didn't. And here's an appetizer.

That's a lizard squirting poisonous blood from its eyeballs. W-w-w-what? Why? And that's what we call a Segway, folks.

Welcome to the Y files, where smart folks like us get together to talk dirty. Now, if you've got a high IQ and a good sense of humor, hit the like and subscribe buttons, and that helps keep the content flowing like the Sea of Galilee. What now? Amen, brother. Today's topic is terrifying animals. And the Earth is about four and a half billion years old. When the Earth was young, it was much hotter.

No, who wasn't? You're telling me. But as the earth cooled, water emerged. It didn't take long for organic compounds to get together in a process called a biogenesis.

Boom life. When life began over three billion years ago, it was a single cell. Today, there are over nine million identified species of animals that doesn't even count plants or anything besides plants and animals. Now, that's a lot. But according to Nature Dotcom, there's so much biodiversity that over 90 percent of animals are yet to be discovered. And it could take another thousand years to catalog them all.

Some animal species are awesome puppies, kittens, bacon, but some are absolutely terrifying. Hecklefish, how about you read the names? I'll fire off a few facts. Let's do it.

Number one, giant horned lizard. The giant horned lizard or the regal horned lizard is three ounces of pure terror. Eighty five grams. His strike speed is over 22 miles an hour. Thirty five kph. That's twice as fast as a rattlesnake. It can grab prey five inches away. Thirteen centimeters in 30 milliseconds. Now it takes 100 milliseconds for you to blink. So in that time, he can snatch two ants and choke down a whole cricket. Now,

Now, this thing is not just fast, it's strong. If you scale up a horned lizard to the size of a full grown bull and they go head to head, the bull is hamburger. Given its body to weight ratio, this horned lizard at that scale would yield 14000 pounds of force. A full grown bull, only 6000. But what makes this guy terrifying is his unique defense mechanism, weaponized eyeballs.

When threatened by a predator, it builds up pockets of blood in its eye sockets and it could shoot a stream almost six feet accurately. And its squirt force is more than twice that of a fire truck. The scientific term.

Oh, by the way, the blood, it's toxic. Yeah, the lizard's main diet is poisonous harvester ants. It's immune to the venom, but it stores the venom and deploys it in that bloodstream like a bioweapon. And if that blood hits a predator in the mouth or the eyes, it's going to be in pain. It's going to be sick. It's not going to mess with the lizard again. Giant isopod, a woodlouse or a pill bug is about one centimeter long and they're found all over the world.

But what happens when you scale one of those up 40 times and throw it in the ocean? You got yourself a giant isopod. Giant isopods are deep sea scavengers that scoot around the ocean floor, pretty much eating anything they can find.

Basically a Roomba of the sea. Not everyone is terrified of giant isopods in some parts of Asia. They eat them. No, they do. And if you want to see that, although I don't know why you would, I will link to some videos of folks cooking and eating giant isopods in the description below. Star nose mule. Sorry, star nose mole.

The star nose mole is one of Canada's most bizarre species. More bizarre than Canadians? Be nice. That thing looks like its face exploded into two anuses. It does. What hemorrhoids? That stuff is actually its nose, and it's covered in about twenty five thousand sense receptors known as Elmer's organs. Be very quiet. Its sense of smell is so acute that it can detect odor underwater. Oh, boy, I'm glad I can't do that.

I bet it's like a sewer in here. I understand. I swim in my own waste. You know, it's time to clean your bowl. I get it. Thank you. The star nose mole is the world's fastest eating mammal. The time it takes for it to find, hunt, catch and devour its prey is less than a quarter of a second. Its main diet is earthworms, but that doesn't make it any less terrifying.

Amazonian giant centipede. Scolopendra gigantea is one of the world's largest centipedes found throughout South America. This aggressive predator will eat anything it can overpower animals 10 to 15 times its size. Insects, spiders, no problem. But this thing will also go after mice, bats, even birds if it can catch them. Not terrified yet? Well, the centipede, it's also venomous. Oh, boy. Can it kill people? It can. At least one human death has been attributed to its bite.

It was found hiding inside a soda can. Cyclops shark. A shark should have two eyes. That's it. Well, that's it. Well, this one's a bit of a curveball because the cyclops shark was real, but it's not technically a species. A shark fisherman found it inside a pregnant shark.

When you say found, do you mean cut it out of the belly? I'm going to be sick. Scientists have speculated that this shark fetus was suffering from cyclopia, meaning having one eye. The cyclopia is a birth disorder that actually affects one in 16000 animal births, including humans. Rarely does an animal born with cyclopia survive birth, but sometimes like with this calf born last year in India, they do make it terrifying.

Goblin shark. The goblin shark is a rare species of deep sea shark whose lineage goes back one hundred and twenty five million years. Its jaws are not connected to its skull, so it can kind of shoot out its teeth like a second base.

It has the fastest jaws in the ocean, so fast you can only see it in slow motion. What terrifies me is that face, which is how it got its name. It looks like someone haphazardly slapped a human mouth on a fish and called it good. Seems OK to me.

Number seven, horror frog. What if you crossed a werewolf with a poisonous frog? I don't recommend it. You'd end up with a horror frog or sometimes called the hairy frog. Now, if you came across one of these, you don't want to touch it. Gerald Durrell was a famous TV host and naturalist who learned this the hard way. When this frog is grabbed or attacked, it breaks its own toes and forces the sharp bones through its skin to create

claws and that skin, it regenerates. Oh, yes, it's also been called the Wolverine frog. I'd like to buy this man a drink. It even starts out dangerous. Its tadpoles are muscular, carnivorous and feature several rows of teeth. Terrifying from day one.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, why are you showing this? This is a Trada Tijuana ocelte. I thought you called it Little Mr. Happy. It's an amphibian found in South America.

Oh, I thought now is not the time. This ball is see through, you know, I'm really uncomfortable right now and I don't have eyelids. So this is all on you. Atrito, Chihuahua are pretty rare and not completely understood, though it looks like a snake. It's more biologically related to an earthworm or maybe another lungless amphibian like a salamander. Researchers are still I think we should move on. Agreed. Goliath birdie, the spy. Holy sometimes the name says it all.

The Goliath Bird Eater is the largest spider in the world and is called Bird Eater because an 18th century naturalist discovered one devouring a hummingbird.

Now, it rarely eats birds, but that's only because it can't catch them. It usually eats worms or large insects, but it will gladly eat mice, lizards, even snakes if it can catch them. Oh, like other tarantulas, it features fangs and venom. Of course it does. There are lots of videos online showing a Goliath spider eating its prey. I will link some of those below. But be warned, it is not for the faint of heart.

It's awful. Watching a Goliath feed in captivity is usually the only way to see it eat. In the wild, it prefers to dine in private. First, it catches its prey and then

six the fangs in and stuns them or kills them. Then it drags the carcass back to its burrow and liquefies its insides and sucks them dry. Yeah, the food chain works both ways, though. In parts of South America, the Goliath is part of the local cuisine. They're typically wrapped in banana leaves and then roasted over a fire. People on the Internet say they taste like shrimp. I'll take their word for it.

Human bot fly. No build up here. I'm telling you right up front. Bot fly larva are terror maggots that grow and feed on human flesh. I'm going to show you this. You have been warned.

There are several kinds of bot flies that infect mammals, but they're typically associated with large grazing mammals like horses or steer. But there are bot flies that infect humans and they use mosquitoes as a carrier. A female bot fly bites a mosquito than the mosquito bites you and your body heat then triggers the eggs to hatch. Then they grow into larvae that burrow into the wound.

It gets worse. The larvae then grow and they use your puncture, your wound hole to poop. And when the bot flies exposed, a.k.a. pooping, you can tweeze it out.

But the larvae are covered in tiny little spikes that anchor it into the flesh, which makes removal at this time kind of painful. Another option is just waiting three short months and it will grow big enough to just wiggle its way out on its own. No big deal. Could you wait three months? I could barely get through three seconds of watching these videos.

Speaking of, there are lots of fly removal videos on YouTube, like way too many. I will link to some of the more gross ones below because I know some of you are into watching stuff like that. I don't know why. Seek help. But here's a life lesson. Let's say it's your wedding day and you've got a swollen pussy, oozy pustule. You might want to have a doctor take a look at that. You could be the unwitting surrogate mother.

of the hellish, flesh-eating terror maggot known as the human botfly. Happy anniversary, honey.

Yeah, you were kind of wacky in that one. Yeah, I was still trying to find my voice, I guess. Before I started the channel, I watched a bunch of videos from YouTube experts, I guess they're called. And they all said basically the same thing. You're going to hate your first 10 videos. And I thought, there's no way. I've been a host, producer, editor, writer professionally. My early episodes are going to be great. And? And they weren't. I still cringe watching them.

Next up is the scariest places you can actually visit today. It was my third video. So we're still in cringe territory? We absolutely are. The lighting is off. The color is wrong. There are cuts and zooms for no reason. I think I'm out of focus for a whole scene. The audio drops out for no reason at all. I'm embarrassed. But there are a few fun moments, and I hope you enjoy it. See you in a bit.

Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe that disembodied spirits can communicate with us from the afterlife? Do you believe that human souls can get caught somewhere between this world and whatever comes next? I don't. But if scientists suddenly had definitive proof of souls or spirits or an afterlife, I'd be totally on board, excited about it even. Oh, I'm coming back to haunt you after you flush me. Flush you. I'm going to batter and fry you.

You sick son of a b****. Even though I'm skeptical about the paranormal, I'm still interested. I love spooky stuff. I've been to the LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans, which had a dark and brutal history even before Nicolas Cage lived there.

I've tried to summon Princess Tuscawanta, the broken hearted lady of Lake Ronkonkoma, who has claimed the lives of 120 swimmers, all young men. I've even held a seance with Gene Simmons while chasing ghosts around the Queen Mary. Now you're just making things up. I picture closing every show with a seance like this.

OK, I didn't see that coming. The Queen Mary really was super creepy and you can check it out for yourself. You go down to Long Beach, California, and they will show you around. And we've got ten more spooky places that you can actually visit coming up. Whether you're into ghosts or just like the darker side of history, this video is for you.

Welcome to the Y Files, where high IQ folks like us come to laugh and learn. And if you're enjoying the content, do us a favor and hit the like button, which is kind of this shape and the subscribe button, which is kind of like a red rectangle that this shape hit those. They really help out the channel. Scariest places in the world. That's a list that's been done a million times. But the problem I have with those lists is they're inaccessible. The places are either close to the public or a million miles away.

I mean, there's no scarier place on Earth than La Isla de las Muñecas. Speak English Madonna. Island of the Dolls. Gracias. But unless you live near Mexico City and can get special permission, YouTube is as close as you're going to get. Instead, here's a list of the scariest places in the US open to the public right now.

Some offer tours. Some will let you wander around on your own. Some will even let you spend the night. Now, this list is just going to cover the states. But for our Y filers in the UK, there are lots of haunted places in your neck of the woods. So many that they need their own video. If you'd like us to do one, just request that in the comments section. Hecklefish, you ready? Dude, I've been ready since I was caviar. I'll take that as a yes.

Eastern State Penitentiary. Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was once the most famous prison in the world, known for its grand architecture and strict discipline. It was operational from 1829 until 1971 and was home to thousands of inmates, including big names like Al Capone and Willie Sutton, considered to be one of the most haunted places in America. There have been reports of echoing voices, shadowy figures, ghostly faces.

Stories that have been corroborated by staff, guards, visitors, even other inmates while they were serving time. Its history makes it easy to imagine the spirits of troubled souls wandering the gloomy halls. It was the world's first actual penitentiary.

A prison designed to inspire penitence or true regret in the hearts of the convicted. The mad chair bound a prisoner's limbs so tightly that circulation was cut off, requiring eventual amputation. The iron gag is where an inmate's hands were tied behind his back and an iron collar forced into his mouth so that any movement at all caused the tongue to rip and bleed and in some cases just be torn right out of his face.

The hole was an underground cell where prisoners had no light, no toilet, no exercise, no human contact and barely enough food to stay alive. Solitary confinement was eventually phased out as the prison population grew. By 1926, there were over 1700 inmates living three, sometimes four to a cell cells designed to just hold one. In 1933, inmates rioted because of overcrowding.

and they set fire to cells all over cell block 12, which is now a focal point of paranormal activity. People have heard cell doors opening and closing. Some say they can smell smoke. Others have even said they've seen shadowy figures walking through the catwalk. If you want to experience Eastern State for yourself, you can. They run day and night tours called Terror Behind the Walls. No, thank you. Link in the description below. Brutal summer heat. It's no fun for humans or pets.

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Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. The Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, later known as Weston State Hospital, was a psychiatric hospital that operated from 1864 through 1994 in Weston, West Virginia. It comprises 13 buildings on six hundred and sixty six acres of property. That doesn't sound like an accident.

The Trans-Alegheny Lunatic Asylum originally intended to be a place of peace and recuperation for the mentally ill, but it quickly devolved into a nightmare of abuse, suffering and human atrocity designed to house 250 patients. The population eventually swelled to over twenty six hundred people. Rooms that were intended for one occupant often contained five or six people crammed together, sleeping on the floor to make matters worse. Trans-Alegheny began admitting the criminally insane.

letting them mingle with the rest of the patient population. This was not a good idea. Violent patients that couldn't be controlled were locked in cages in the common areas as recently as the 80s. The 1880s? The 1980s. The 1980s? Ronald Reagan, MTV and people in cages. What a decade.

A 1938 report found that the hospital housed epileptics, alcoholics, drug addicts and non-educable mental defectives. It sounds a lot like Hollywood. Oh, things get even more gruesome. Famous Dr. Walter Freeman set up shop here to perform experimental lobotomies for his procedure. Dr. Freeman used the ice pick method.

I'm afraid to ask. He slipped a metal rod into the patient's eye socket, then used a mallet to hammer the rod through the thin bone and sever the tissue in the prefrontal cortex. Over the course of his career, Dr. Freeman did over 4000 lobotomies, sometimes leaving perfectly healthy patients with permanent brain damage. Still sounds like Hollywood. By the way, Dr. Freeman did this procedure without gloves, without anesthesia.

Without surgical training. Oh, I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Oh, that old Jim. I got a million of them. The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum was forced to close in 1994, and it's like the patients just

vanished into thin air. Rooms still contain furniture, artwork, medical equipment. There is wheelchairs in the hallways. I don't know why that's extra scary, but it is one of trans Allegheny's well-known ghosts is a little girl named Lily who was born, lived and died right there in the asylum and has haunted it ever since.

It's been reported that Lily likes to hold visitors hands and tug on their clothes. Some people have heard her giggling and playing in the hallway near her first floor room. Doors are often left open by Elizabeth, a nurse who doesn't know she's dead. Supposedly, she's still making her rounds. Other reported ghosts belong to patients who were brutally killed there or killed themselves. And there were lots of those.

When you go to their rooms, reports say that the air gets cold and you can hear whispers or voices in your ear. In 2007, Trans Allegheny opened to the public. They offer day, night and overnight tours. The most frequent visitors are ghost hunters. But for anyone interested in the dark history of America, the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is a must see. The Whaley House, the Whaley House in Old Town San Diego, has been called the most haunted house in America.

It's been documented in books, magazines, TV for over 100 years. If there are ghosts at the Whaley House, who are they and what do they want? In 1852, James Yankee Jim Robinson was convicted of larceny and hanged on the property. Present at the hanging was Thomas Whaley. He bought the property and built a house there. In 1857, he moved his family in and that's where it all started. Thomas Whaley was successful in almost every venture he pursued.

until he built the Whaley House. After that tragedy haunted him and his family for the rest of his life.

Thomas's son, Thomas Junior, contracted scarlet fever when he was 18 months old and died shortly thereafter in 1858. A few months later, an arsonist set fire to Whaley's business despondent over these tragedies. The family moved to San Francisco briefly, but were forced back when an earthquake devastated their home. Out of money and out of options, Thomas Whaley went on the road and traveled the country looking for employment.

unsuccessfully. Meanwhile, his family was back in San Diego in dire straits. Thomas Whaley's daughter, Violet, married and then divorced a local con man.

Her humiliation caused her such despair that she took her own life in the Whaley House in 1885. She was only 22 years old. Thomas Whaley passed away from poor health in 1890. His wife, Anna, his son, Francis, his son, George and daughter Lillian all eventually died in the Whaley House. The house was converted into a museum in 1960 and immediately workers, staff, guests, visitors

All reported hearing voices, smelling cigars, smelling perfume and seeing ghostly apparitions. Look, I'm just telling a story, believe it or don't. But in 1964, famous TV personality Regis Philbin went to film a local broadcast of the Whaley House, and he left there convinced that he saw the ghost of Anna Whaley. And years later, Regis went back to the house.

Still convinced to his dying day, he always said something is going on in this house. I trust Regis. I do, too. I also trust the multiple police officers who over the course of 30 years witnessed a woman crying at the back of the house.

And one officer kept quiet about this. But after he retired, he wrote that he also found a woman crying in the back of the house. He said she was dressed in period clothing. He asked her, Ma'am, are you all right? She then looked at him and smiled when he turned his flashlight on her. She disappeared. Was the woman, Anna Whaley, crying over the loss of her children or was it violent crying because she regretted taking her own life? Well, there's a link below where how you can go visit the Whaley house and find out for yourself.

Lake Shawnee Amusement Park. The Lake Shawnee Amusement Park is located in Princeton, West Virginia. West Virginia again, huh? Interesting. The park opened in 1926 to cater to the families of nearby coal workers, but all that remains is its skeleton, which is appropriate given its dark history. The land on which the park is built was home to a Native American tribe.

When the Clay family attempted to settle the land in 1783, a turf war ensued, which resulted in the brutal deaths of both natives and settlers alike, all buried on the site. Centuries later, a local businessman purchased the Clay property and built a swing set, Ferris wheel and a swimming pond.

And all three of those attractions would claim one child's life. Lake Shawnee eventually expanded into a full amusement park and was responsible for at least six deaths. It finally closed in 1966. However, all the structures, rides and attractions, they're still standing rusted and overgrown and creepy as on the property is a motorized swing machine. And many years ago, a little girl was killed climbing into one in a horrible way. Anyway, the current owner of the property says that even when there's no wind,

he can still see those swings kind of moving and creaking. And when he gets close to that swing where the girl died, he feels a chill in the air and says he can hear whispers. Okay.

Fine. Whispers, wind, no big deal. But the owner's son said that he's seen a vision of a little girl wearing a pretty dress covered in blood. Paranormal investigators have been all over this site because Lake Shawnee has been featured on all the ghost hunter TV shows and YouTube and everywhere. But you don't need press credentials or a positron collider to visit Lake Shawnee amusement park. It's open to the public day, night and even for overnight camping. Flashlights are mandatory, but you might not like what you see.

Good luck. The abandoned Cincinnati subway. Oh, I love this one. Now, early in the 20th century, Cincinnati was the 10th largest city in America. Trade was primarily conducted using a complicated canal system, which just couldn't keep up with demand. Many canals became filthy and had to be drained and refilled, which led to mosquitoes, which led to disease. It was a mess. A plan was made to build a 16 mile rail system partially underground work began in 1920, but it was hit with all kinds of delays.

Houses along the route were crumbling, foundations cracked, porches falling into holes in the earth, lawsuits, budget cuts and city corruption crippled the project. Two miles of the underground tunnel were completed by nineteen twenty nine. But then the stock market crashed and the Great Depression hit and the project was put on the shelf. So you're saying the train project was derailed? Really? Puns? No, you're not giving me much to work with here.

Fair enough. In 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the abandoned Liberty Street station was converted into a community fallout shelter. Areas were designated as first aid rooms, kitchens, decontamination showers, even a morgue. Some of the equipment and furnishings are still down there. An open house was held for the citizens of Cincinnati who were not impressed. The tunnels kind of just sat there. They were officially decommissioned in 1991 and the entrances to the tunnel sealed.

but not all entrances. Disclaimer time. Yes, you can get into the tunnels. No, you're technically not allowed to do that. You can request a tour, but the city rarely grants access. This hasn't stopped paranormal investigators or urban explorers from seeking out the hidden access points, which as of this video still exist. Links below.

I'm in Vulture City. Wickenburg, Arizona, is about 70 miles northwest of Phoenix, and it's home to Vulture City, an abandoned ghost town that sits on top of Vulture Mine. And if there's a list of haunted places in America,

Vulture Mine is always on it. In 1863, Austrian prospector Henry Wickenburg discovered a gold deposit that would become the most productive gold mine in Arizona history. By the 1880s, the settlement's population exploded, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the southwest. And the success of the mine accelerated Arizona's bid for statehood. However, after just a few short years, the gold dried up and the place was abandoned. But during its height, over 5000 people lived in Vulture City.

And when the gold and greed are flowing, that's going to attract dangerous people looking for a quick score. There was so much violent crime and corruption in Vulture City that the United States Army was called in to keep the peace.

They weren't able to. Instead, justice was meted out by vigilante citizens. And there was no worse crime in Vulture City than stealing gold. If you were caught, you got done strung up on a hanging tree. Dozens of Vulture City's worst were hung from the ironwood tree that still stands today. If you met your end at the hanging tree, you did not merit a burial in the cemetery. Your body was buried on the spot. Bodies that are still feeding that tree today.

Vulture City was a place where a few made a fortune, but many suffered and died. Men, women, children. Violence was common, as was illness. Hundreds of bodies are supposedly buried not just in the cemetery, but all around the town.

Did it just get cold in here? The reports of cold spots, eerie voices, disembodied spirits have attracted ghost hunters from all over the world. Some say workers who were buried alive can be heard screaming and trying to claw their way out of their rocky tomb. If you're in the Phoenix area, you can take a guided tour of Vulture Mine or you can explore on your own. Links below.

Ohio State Reformatory, the Ohio State Reformatory, also known as the Mansfield Reformatory, is a historic prison located in Mansfield, Ohio. It opened its doors in 1896 as a true reformatory. It emphasized incentive over punishment.

Inmates were admitted for 18 months. They were given education. They were taught a trade and they were released. This model had a very high success rate and most inmates went on to lead productive lives. So, you know, this whole thing's got to go pear shaped. OSR was originally supposed to house 2000 inmates, one per cell. But by 1934, the prison was so overcrowded that they had two and sometimes three prisoners per

Purcell crammed together when you put dangerous people in close quarters, deprive them of food and exercise. You create a recipe for violence, according to the prison's website. Just as animals in the wild had to learn to adapt and survive in their surroundings, so did the occupants of the OSR shanks, shivs and all kinds of improvised weapons were found in every crevice of the cells. Fun fact.

If this prison looks familiar, that's because it is Shawshank Redemption was shot at OSR in the description. I'll link you to a video that shows all the different filming locations. If you're a fan of the movie, it's a must watch. And things that OSR just got worse in the 1960s, it was converted into a maximum security prison to house the most dangerous criminals in the state. Violence escalated. And in those dark years, over 200 people died at OSR guards.

staff and inmates. Life at OSR was so frightening that inmates often took their own lives. Others tried to escape. Some even succeeded. Lester Eubanks was sent to OSR in 1965 for crimes so heinous. I won't repeat them here, but I'll link below for those of you that are into gruesome stuff. Anyway, Eubanks escaped custody in 1973 and hasn't been seen since. He's still on the US Marshals top ten most wanted list.

By the 1980s, the conditions were so bad that the inmates got together a class action lawsuit and sued the state of Ohio for putting them through brutalizing and inhumane conditions. They won the suit. The prison closed. What? You bet your flippers it is. There are reports of doors slamming, people being pushed, scratched,

equipment being turned on and off. And these stories drew a lot of interest from the ghost hunting community who consider it one of the scariest places on Earth. If you want to check it out for yourself, OSR offers all kinds of different tours, historical and paranormal. They host private paranormal investigation tours. They even teach ghost hunting classes.

And if you want to be truly petrified, you need to sign up for the escape from blood prison experience where your goal is to escape while being chased by actors dressed as guards, prisoners and ghosts. At least I hope they're actors. The Mineral Springs Hotel out in Illinois is known as the most haunted small town in America. And the focal point of this spiritual disturbance is the Mineral Springs Hotel. When the Mineral Springs Hotel and Spa opened in nineteen fourteen, it was spectacular.

Five floors of luxurious accommodations, a marble staircase and the largest swimming pool in the state. A natural spring was found on the property and the water had a high sulfur content, which gave it kind of a funky smell. Well, an enterprising chemist said that that water had magical healing properties.

And naturally, before you know it, they're shipping hundreds of bottles a day of sulfur water all around the country. That's a lot of diarrhea. The hotel eventually declined and fell into disrepair like all of us. But in 1978, Mineral Springs was renovated and now contains an antique mall, some offices, apartments, even a horror museum. Even though Mineral Springs was a famous luxury hotel.

It's now really famous for being a paranormal hotspot. One of the staircases is a specific focus point. The story goes that a young woman brought a man to her room, a man who was not her husband. But the husband got back to the room early and found his wife and another guy. How do I say this without getting in trouble on YouTube? In flagrant, they the left, though. So an argument ensued and spilled out into the hallway. Now, we don't know if it was an accident or if she was pushed.

But the wife died at the bottom of those stairs. Now, investigators say that they can smell Jasmine in the hallway. She was wearing Jasmine perfume when she died. And that ghost is now known as the Jasmine lady. And ghosts are all over this property. In the bottling room, people have reported seeing the figure of a tall, slender man. And the lower levels contain the swimming pools where multiple people had drowned over the years. And some of those deaths are actually recorded and verified.

During a recent tour, wet footprints were found, even though the pool has been drained for years. The pool room doors have been known to open and close on their own, and many tourists have described hearing and feeling someone's breath on their neck. Yikes.

Fort Delaware State Park. Fort Delaware is a fortress on Peapatch Island in the Delaware River originally built to protect Wilmington in Philadelphia. It became infamous as a POW camp for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Thirty three thousand soldiers were in prison there and almost three thousand of them died from dysentery, scurvy, smallpox, and they're buried in a mass grave in New Jersey.

And that explains the smell. The man in charge of Fort Delaware was General Albin Schiff, who became known as General Terror, with thousands of prisoners kept in makeshift wooden barracks. The conditions were horrible. Bedbugs, lice and vermin infested the buildings. Food rations were tiny and inedible. Decaying bodies and human waste caused the water to putrefy. These men were starving and dying of thirst. A favorite game of the guards was called Rat Call.

This is where rat holes were flooded and then the rats were caught and killed. A guard would yell rat call and then toss the dead rats into the crowd. And according to an inmate's diary, the prisoners scrambled for the rats like schoolboys for apples. He goes on to say that the rats were cleaned, boiled and then fried. Their flesh was tender and not unpleasant to the taste. That's a dude who is starving.

The diary is from Captain John S. Swan, who was captured in 1864. He chronicles the terrifying daily life as a Confederate prisoner of war. It's fascinating reading link where it is for Civil War history fans. Fort Delaware is an incredible place where daily life is recreated. But the real draw to Fort Delaware?

Ghosts with so much death and suffering, it's no wonder that Fort Delaware is considered one of the most haunted places on Earth. Ghost tours are given all the time and you could even enjoy an escape the island experience. Visitors claim the ghosts can be seen on a daily basis in the dungeons, halls and rooms. Voices can be heard. Photographs have been taken that show everything from orbs of light all the way up to what seemed like ghostly figures.

There's also the story of a nine year old drummer boy who tried to escape the prison by hiding in a coffin. The escape failed. He was buried alive. And the story goes, he still haunts the grounds, playing his drum and crying for help.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium. The Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, is a highly active paranormal investigation site. Waverly Hills opened in 1910 to treat tuberculosis patients. But by 1911, they were overflowing and they had to build tents to accommodate all the new patients. Thousands of them.

It's been estimated that 64000 people died at Waverly and their bodies are buried on the property. But there are no headstones. We don't know where the bodies are, but I promise you that they're down there somewhere. So many people died at Waverly Hills. They had to use something that they called a death chute, which was a tube like tunnel they would use to haul packages and groceries and supplies up, shoot bodies down.

The death chute is reported to be haunted by those who made their final journey through the tunnel. Definitely worst roller coaster ever. Another haunted area is room 502, which is designated for nurses. One of them hanged herself in there, another jumped out a window, another went in there and never came out. She's just gone. 502, go for it. There are ghosts of children named Bobby and Mary that reportedly roam the halls searching for their mommy. - What do you think, Doctor? - Are you my mommy?

That's creepy. In the early 1960s, Waverly Hills was converted into a nursing home, but it was eventually closed in the 1980s for, you guessed it,

Patient abuse. Geez, this thing is like a ghost making factory. Waverly Hills became known outside the area when it was profiled on the TV series Scariest Places on the Earth. Since then, it's become a popular destination for paranormal investigators. According to the Waverly Hills Historical Society, guided tours and overnight stays are available, but you need to book over a year in advance. If you want to visit, I've got a link below. You know, after watching it again, maybe it wasn't that bad.

Next episode is a short one. It was the ninth video I ever made. It's about Uncanny Valley. Oh, I have some good jokes in this one. Eh. Was it easy leaving the group chat when the bubbles turned green and every message was Cam likes this and Claire dislikes that? Oh yes, yes it was because I get enough overreacting at home. Like liking messaging again with WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone.

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Oh, so the wife and I are watching Christmas Chronicles with Kurt Russell as a singing Santa, right? We're having a good time. Then the movie introduced something truly terrifying elves. That was it. Movie night was over. I couldn't watch anymore. I was done. Oh, here we go. What's your problem with elves, Gimli? Well, the problem is that the elves looked almost real, but not quite almost natural.

But not quite. And it was upsetting. I mean, haven't you ever seen an animation and felt a little bit creeped out? I'm looking at you, Polar Express. Well, or have you ever seen a mannequin or a robot or even a wax dummy that was very lifelike but still looked wrong? Sounds like you're describing a Silicon Valley CEO. Robotic and lifelike, but not human. Yep. To the point where it's uncomfortable even looking at them, much less being around them. Uh huh. Yep.

They're awkward to watch. I think we've been going now for just under two hours. This anxiety is called Uncanny Valley and everyone experiences it, though some of us are less tolerant than others. Oh, let me guess. You are not very tolerant. You are correct. I am very susceptible to Uncanny Valley and I'm not alone. Let's find out why.

Welcome to the Y files were smart folks like us come to laugh and learn. Today we're going to talk about uncanny valley and why we feel so

anxious when we experience it. So let's start with the uncanny part. Uncanny is used to describe something that's almost identical or almost perfect, but not quite there. And that's what's happening with Uncanny Valley. Think of a movie you've seen where the CGI was almost human, but not quite. How did that make you feel? A bit uneasy, right? I remember Polar Express. This movie has become a legendary bomb.

And most people agree it's because the animation style landed right in the middle of Uncanny Valley. The problem comes when something artificial like a robot animation statue or even a painting depicts the human form realistically. We're OK up to a certain point of realism because our brain can clearly tell us that the imitation is exactly that. An imitation where Uncanny Valley starts to form.

is when we get too close to reality, but not quite close enough. If you were to plot realism against psychological acceptance, the curve moves steadily up and then falls off a cliff. That's the valley. And we'll get more into the science of this as the video goes along. So with the hard lessons learned from Polar Express, animation studios began test screening their films. When the final cut of Shrek was screened, the Princess Fiona character actually reduced children to tears.

Children screaming in fear is not funny. It depends on the context. Fair enough. So to fix the Princess Fiona problem, the studio actually went back and made Shrek feel less lifelike in order to avoid traumatizing children.

Computer games are also becoming more realistic. They can blur the line between virtual reality and actual reality. And game designers are very aware of Uncanny Valley and they work hard to avoid it. The term Uncanny Valley was first hypothesized in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, who identified that as robots became more and more human like people found them to be more acceptable and appealing than their mechanical counterparts.

But this only held true up to a point when they were close to but not quite human. People developed a sense of unease and discomfort. Take Shrek, for example. Most people remember this movie as a fun frolic through fantasy land. Hate it if you want. Most people loved it.

Anyway, Shrek hit the sweet spot that Mori was hinting at in his hypothesis. When Princess Fiona looked almost human, she was scary as hell. But make her more like a cartoon. Suddenly she's likable. Did you say likable? Likable. So if it wasn't for that test screening and the identification of characters that were landing in Uncanny Valley, Shrek might never have happened. We would have been fine without it. People love Shrek. Sheep. Moving on.

Modern robotics provides the most context for uncanny valley, which makes sense considering the term originated from that field. We've all seen robots that are made to be as lifelike as possible, but we get uncomfortable when they move unnaturally or have kind of lifeless eyes. Very corpsey. Corpsey? Yeah, you know, corpsey. Like a dead body. I know what a corpse is. I just like that thing in your closet you bought from the Internet. Oh, there's nothing in my closet. Oh, come on. You're on Amazon tracking the order like every

Engineers are very aware of uncanny valleys, so they work hard to avoid it. Take Asimo, the Honda-designed upright android.

Asimo is very human that it can walk, run, play soccer and do all kinds of other stuff. But Asimo doesn't creep us out. A primary reason that people love this robot and don't fear it is because while Asimo's designers have replicated a lot of human behavior, they haven't tried to replicate too many human physical features. Asimo is clearly a robot, a simple machine and nothing more. Now, it might seem counterintuitive, but something that acts

Human but looks artificial is much more agreeable than something that looks human and acts artificial. It is very nice to meet you. Much more agreeable. Asimo doesn't fall into uncanny valley, but put a human head on the thing. Suddenly it's a horror movie. Shrek is still worse. If we haven't earned your subscription today, I promise this moron is going to keep making these stupid videos until you hit the button.

So is uncanny valley just a scientific theory or is it something innate in all of us? It appears as though it's something all humans share with varying degrees of severity, but it's been scientifically proven. Academics Maya Mather and David Reikling studied 80 real world robots and found a clear value

and how much people liked and were willing to trust each individual robot. It was essentially a ranking exercise from least creepy to most. Participants were asked to rank which robots they would trust to invest $100 of their money. It turns out that the robots that were closest to human form, close to the valley threshold, they weren't getting a dollar. The participants didn't trust them. But the robots that just looked like robots, they were deemed more trustworthy. Real no real. I don't know what that means. Weird.

If scientists agree that uncanny valley does indeed exist, where's the valley? It's thought that uncanny valley might occur at the boundary where something moves from one category to another. In this case, between non-human and human psychologist Christine Looser and Thalia Wheatley looked at mannequin faces and found the uneasy tipping point to where the mannequins looked to lifelike. Come on, D.

Now, mannequins are definitely creepy, but we tolerate them in the normal context of using them to display clothes. But take a minute to think about a mannequin in a department store not wearing clothes. Are we going to address what's in your closet now? No, no, no, no, no, no. We've moved on. Many people find undressed mannequins disconcerting. Now imagine if they showed signs of life. Yikes.

What Lutzer and Wheatley showed is that there's definitely a point of no return where a robot or artificial human appeared to show actual human consciousness. We jump into uncanny valley when we believe a robot can reason, learn and feel like humans do. You know, I'm afraid of robots.

Yeah. With artificial intelligence improving as quickly as it is, it's no wonder that this is a concern. A study by researchers Kurt Gray and Daniel Wagner found that robots were only unnerving when people thought they had the ability to sense and experience things. If people felt like robots couldn't reason on their own, they didn't seem as frightening. We fear artificial life is having human like consciousness without the control that humans have.

Essentially, we worry that they're going to go all... Terminator, The Matrix, Iron Giant. Right. iRobot, RoboCop, Westworld, Westworld again. Okay. Metropolis AI, The Stepford Wives. Okay, I got it. It becomes self-aware at 2.14 a.m. Eastern Time, August 29th.

Now, of course, uncanny valley only occurs if we can tell that these things are artificial. Once we cross the valley entirely and we perceive something or someone to be fully human, we then become more comfortable because we consciously or subconsciously perceive them as actually human, even if we know they're not. I prefer the term artificial person myself. Creating artificial life that makes the leap over uncanny valley is beyond our current state of engineering.

But it's definitely on the horizon. Obviously, this brings up all sorts of anxieties into what's real or not. Then there's the old Blade Runner conundrum as to whether something is a robot or not.

Is this testing whether I'm a replicant or a lesbian? Mr. Deckard, just answer the questions, please. There's also a theory that robots and AI could learn to cross uncanny valley on their own without human intervention. Now, this happens. Is that consciousness? Is that self-awareness? These questions start to veer into philosophy and existentialism. Please don't. We're not doing it now. Thank goodness. But we have a video coming up on consciousness. So hit subscribe in the bell and.

All the fancy buttons will be notified when it's ready. I'd rather watch Shrek. Another trigger for Uncanny Valley is seeing behavior that contradicts expected emotion or lack of emotion altogether, which reads robotic. This is a unique theory.

Angela Tinwell has led studies in virtual characters exploring these mismatches of emotion and behavior, and one study looked at the lack of surprise in a character's upper half of the face where the lower half had a reaction, and this caused

all sorts of eeriness and led to these characters to develop similar mannerisms to that of psychopaths. Humans can recognize these facial patterns automatically. Take a look at someone who's smiling sincerely versus someone who's smiling insincerely. You'll notice that with a sincere smile, muscles of the entire face move, especially the eyes.

When someone is being insincere, only the muscles of the lower half of the face move. There has been further research into the jarring experience of having animated characters reacting with mismatched features and emotion, all of which left some pretty horrible feelings in the minds of the subjects, even though they were obviously watching something animated.

Differences between eyes and other features were especially bad. Turns out a happy smile and angry eyes is not a good look and pushes the unfortunate recipient of this expression headfirst into the valley. So what's the purpose of this reaction?

Well, the answer is debatable, but it's generally thought of as a self-preservation response encoded in our DNA through evolution. Uncanny Valley helps us perceive threats by detecting insincere emotions and could be a way for us to avoid people we may perceive as physically or emotionally ill. It's pretty clear that we're getting closer and closer to inventing robots and artificial intelligence that are indistinguishable from human life. So how will we know when we've built a bridge across Uncanny Valley? We'll know.

Time to talk about that closet. Three plus one, five plus zero, zero. I love it. Yep, you do enjoy making jokes at my expense and embarrassing me in front of lots of people. I'll admit it, I do. I find it delightful. Next episode, we're finally into the better produced ones. It's number 92 about shadow people. This is about the time where shows were getting longer and I was doing more research. Ah.

Oh, so this is where your burnout started. Probably, yeah. But this is a good episode. And as I've said many times, I don't believe most of the stories I cover, but I still enjoy the stories. I don't really believe in shadow people. But? But I actually had an experience with a shadow person. I tell the story in this episode. The experience was the type of shadow entity called the Hag.

who looks like an old witch. Now I'm being completely honest when I say this was the most frightened I've ever been in my entire life.

Now, I'm not sure if this witch is real, but at the time, she felt real. When it happened, Jen and I were staying at this old hotel in the mountains. I could not go back into the bedroom. She had to move all of our stuff out into the living room, and we slept on the pull-out couch. Ouch. Sounds like you shadow people experience required therapy and a chiropractor. It was awful. I don't even like thinking about it. So, enjoy, I guess?

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 exists.

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 Ranconcamo, 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, omakase! 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 and- See you, 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 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.

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. We're going to do a complete walkthrough.

You gotta say something. You gotta do something. It's God! No! No! No!

The Choctaw have been in America for almost 4000 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 Cheeto. This is a shadow being who appears when someone allows evil thoughts to enter their mind. The Nalusa Cheeto 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 Nalusafalea, 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 5000 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 jinn. And this is where we get the word genie. Like rub the lamp, genie. Yep. Oh, no.

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. 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 turned forward to it, it would vanish. If I focused 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. What the f*** is this, man?

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 100 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 L.A. 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 and ancient civilizations. Nobody knew how common shadow people sightings were. But all of that would change in 2001 when shadow people would go mainstream.

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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 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 can see arms and legs moving. I see it literally crawl into his bed, and clear as day I see that 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 grabbed my phone and turned the flashlight on only to see the bed empty. A few weeks later, I finally told 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? - Where is he? - No, no, find one, find something.

- Yeah, we need to get the out of here. - Seriously, oh my God.

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 100 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 of them.

You rotten bitch. You're going to the toilet? Yes. So you can start the car? God. The bitch that gave birth to you. The bitch that gave birth to you. Bitch. The bitch!

But how the fuck can it be that there is nothing? It's the third time.

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. Oh, 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 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 Aswan 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 in 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 snap 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 my 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's 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. 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. Browm, browm. 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.

Our roof is eight feet and he was hunched over staring directly at me. He had a top hat on and you can see the white in his eyes and he grinned and I saw white in his mouth, white teeth. So naturally covered my head and grabbed my baby girl and wife. Looked about 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 shadow people and I thought I was seeing things or that it was because I had taken a sleeping pill that night. I said, there's a man behind the door. My boyfriend said, shut up and go to sleep.

That should tell you how concerned about it we were. I eventually went to sleep and thought nothing else about it. My boyfriend died in his sleep later that year, which was within 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 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 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 codpiece. 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 elucidate 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. Have a question or need how to advice? Just ask Meta AI.

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That's 3 plus 1, 5 plus 0, 0. Yeah, I don't know if shadow people are real, but my experience felt real. Next up is episode 14 about fear. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. These things aren't in order? I guess not. I didn't pick these. Jen and Victoria did. So you just do what you're told, huh? It's just easier this way. You're such a compliant human.

Anyway, this is a quick one. So I'll see you in about 10 minutes. 12. 12 is about 10. I'm just being precise. Oh, you spent most of your time not being precise. Now suddenly you want to get all the facts right? Oh, stop whining. How about taking the day off and just let me get through these? I'm supposed to be on break, okay?

Humans are weird animals. We're terrified of ghosts, monsters, snakes, spiders, all kinds of other things, both real and imagined. And that's normal. It's healthy even. So why do we actually enjoy being afraid by experiencing these things on purpose? And there's a science behind fear that explains why being frightened can be fun, at least for some people. Let's find out why.

Welcome to the Y files were cool nerds like us laugh and learn. Do you like to be afraid? I hope so, because at some point in this video, I'm going to try to scare the crap out of you.

What? No warning? Nothing? Well, if I warn you, it won't be as scary. Oh, I don't like this one bit. Do you want me to stop? No. See, enjoying fear seems like a contradiction. But horror movies are a billion dollar business and throw in horror TV and horror gaming. That's billions more. Halloween spending is about eight billion a year and roller coasters. The scarier the ride, the longer the line. So we're definitely fascinated by being afraid.

Why? Well, we're going to cover five reasons, but first, let's try to understand what fear actually is. Is it a certain heart rate for a period of time or sweaty palms or dilated pupils hyperventilating? Well, these are really just our reactions to fear. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, fear is defined as the emotion of pain or uneasiness caused by a sense of impending danger or by the prospect of some possible evil. So fear is an emotion that you feel when you sense danger.

Fine. And if you take a look at the things you're most afraid of, you realize that they could pose some danger to you in one way or another. Now, of course, every person is different with their own set of fears are unique and sometimes common fears are driven by our personality as well as the experiences we've had in our lives.

However, not all fear is rational. Like why everyone isn't afraid of clowns is beyond me. You have issues. True. And we have a video coming up on weird phobias. So hit all the buttons to be notified. Shameless plunge. A number of psychologists and neuroscientists have tried to figure out the answer to why people like to be afraid. Let's get into the five reasons.

Reason number one, safety net. The safety net is when we intentionally put ourselves into potentially frightening situations while simultaneously understanding there's no real danger, such as a haunted house or watching a scary movie. What did you say? Or maybe standing on top of a tall building or walking over a bridge of glass. I can watch those all day. Me too. Wow.

Despite being terrified, our brains do realize that we're actually safe. And because we're not in any real danger, we're able to enjoy these experiences. Well, some of us are.

On the other hand, if we were to have similar experiences without knowing there was a safety net, our reactions would be very different. We are not going to enjoy those situations at all, and we would immediately go into fight or flight mode. We would literally be in a survival situation and do anything possible to ensure our safety.

And as you would expect, this is not the case with controlled, fearful experiences. So what causes the actual feeling of pleasure when we put ourselves through controlled fear? I can't control their fear. Only my own.

Dr. Margie Kerr spent 10 years investigating fear. Her research showed that when people experience fear and momentarily experience the fight or flight response, there's a cascade of chemicals released into our brain. These chemicals are associated with the threat response. Has a movie ever made you jump or scream and that immediately after you started laughing, that

That's the flood in action. We experience a rush of adrenaline and a release of endorphins and dopamine. The biochemical rush can result in a sense of euphoria and heightened awareness.

Then when we remember that we're safe, the experience of fear quickly subsides and we're left with a gratifying sense of relief and subsequent well-being. And that ebb and flow of neurotransmitters feels really good to some people. And when our metabolism increases so quickly, we put all our energy and focus on the moment where we can just take a break

and enjoy being fully present and primal. You know, when you're terrified, there's no time for anxious rumination about the future or why you're soon to be X hasn't texted you back or how many subscribers you have. There's no thinking about past events or regrets or how many subscribers you have.

Sorry. The human body's fear response is very well designed and highly evolved, and it needs to be. If you think about it, any cave people who were really chill and like not afraid of anything, evolution was not kind to them.

They're not here because they were saber-toothed tiger food. But the cave people who had the good sense to run away from danger and cower back in their caves? Well, that's us. - No, never apologize for an effective kill circle. - So if we're in a situation where we know we're safe, like a haunted house or a scary movie or a scary ride, we can hijack the fear response and actually enjoy it.

It's sort of a way to hack your brain chemistry. The chemical signatures of happiness and excitement are similar to those of when we're scared. It's just different context. That is fashion. Another reason why we love being afraid is self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement. Now, I'm sure you've experienced this. How did you feel after doing something that you were really afraid of or after pushing yourself to do something difficult?

Didn't it feel good and give you a sense of power and a feeling of accomplishment? It's a similar sense of accomplishment you experience after killing a boss in a video game or skydiving for the first time. Enduring a stressful activity and then purposely putting ourselves through them gives us a rush of dopamine. And our brain tells us that we can do things we're afraid of and we can push ourselves beyond our limits because we can. No, that was inspirational.

Binding close bonding develops with the people that are present with us sharing a scary experience. And if you think about it, doing frightening things is much more fun when you're with friends or family. I mean, when we go as a group into a haunted house, we're taking on challenges together. And in doing so, we create stronger bonds, stronger memories and feelings of closeness. If you watch people coming out of a scary ride or getting beers after a day of skydiving, you'll see a lot of hugs and high fives and everyone's in a good mood.

And this burst of emotion is due to raised oxytocin levels. And during the time we're doing these activities, our bodies and minds are in a heightened state of emotion, energy, focus and consciousness. And everyone present is experiencing the same feelings. So we scream, laugh, hold each other's hands, run, sometimes even cry. When we experience these things while having a great time, it helps us bond with each other. And these intense emotional experiences help us create unforgettable memories. Don't you remember the times you were really frightened but

Everything worked out OK. I mean, we all do. Those become memories that we cherish for our entire lives. That's why we seek them out. People are curious about the dark side of humanity, especially people who watch this channel. I mean, whether it's true crime or ghosts or zombies or an alien invasion, the fear of the unknown is one of the most instinctive fears we have. For the most part, we like our worlds to make sense. We like life wrapped up in a nice, neat little package.

Our world is just easier to engage with when things make sense to us. If we look at our daily lives, they're pretty predictable, right? We have our set of routines and we know what to do, what to expect. We go to work or school. We come home, maybe watch TV, hang out with friends and then go to bed. And just like Groundhog Day, we repeat that routine over and over again without much deviation.

We rarely experience anything unexpected, even if we do something that's not part of our routine. We're still familiar with the consequences. We know how everyday things work and we know what happens as a result of everyday actions, even if they vary a little bit. So when we put ourselves through frightening experiences like watching a horror movie or playing a scary game, there's an element of surprise. Every twist, turn and scare that comes our way surprises us. And before we fully grasp the situation, there's anticipation for more.

The thrill and excitement that we feel is unlike anything we experience on a typical day. Our routine is disrupted and we can't help but seek out novel experiences that depart from our everyday routines. That makes a lot of sense. But not everybody enjoys being afraid.

Every brain experiences fear and anxiety differently, and you may be more vulnerable depending on how your brain is shaped. Your amygdala, the part of your brain connected to and just behind the prefrontal cortex, is in charge of what makes you afraid and how you choose to express it. The people who suffer from anxiety already have prefrontal cortexes that look a little different than other folks, and different types of anxiety disorders will restructure brains differently. For example,

People with panic disorders and PTSD have an underactive prefrontal cortex. But those with worry based anxiety like OCD and generalized anxiety disorder usually have an overactive prefrontal cortex. People who enjoy fear may have a different number of auto receptors than others. Now, auto receptors are presynaptic nerve cells that control how much dopamine and other neurotransmitters are released in your brain. People with fewer dopamine auto receptors may get more dopamine from a scare.

Animals love dopamine and humans are no different. So those with few dopamine receptors need more of the chemical in order to feel that sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. And because they have fewer dopamine receptors, they lack the ability to put on the brakes in a dangerous situation. And that's what leads to an addiction to thrilling situations. These are your typical adrenaline junkies, but it's not really the adrenaline they crave.

It's the dopamine. We also perceive fear differently based on our life experiences. People who prefer rom coms or comedy over horror. That's probably because their personality and their temperament are different than those people that do like it. Now, if you've had bad experiences with a haunted house or a horror movie, you're more likely to associate all things fun, scary with feeling bad. Or if you were never exposed to fun, scary as a child, maybe your parents weren't into horror movies or whatever.

you don't really have a frame of reference for why or how something scary could be fun. People like this don't even really understand how being frightened can possibly be enjoyable.

I'm one of those people. Now, regardless of which personality type you are, there's no escaping fear. It's as natural as breathing. But learning more about why you feel fear and what triggers you have can help you figure out how better to face your fears and not let them control you. And that's a pretty good reason to every once in a while get out of your comfort zone, push yourself and just have the scared out of you. You can't get rid of fear. It's like Mother Nature. Can't beat her outrunner.

But you can get through it. You can find out what you're made of. So that was episode 14. I think I was finally settling in and starting to relax. But man, that was a janky edit. Yeah, it was too much.

Next is episode 16, the Aztec Death Whistle. This one contains one of my favorite hecklefish bits. Ah, when I build a thing. Yeah, but don't spoil it. This one is less than 10 minutes long. Nine minutes, 58 seconds, and eight frames. Really? Precise. Annoying. Oh, we've got a scary one today.

If hell has a sound, I bet it sounds a lot like the Aztec death whistle. The Aztec death whistle sounds like the shriek of someone being killed in a windstorm. It's so unnerving that the significance of the horrifying sound has fascinated and perplexed scholars for years. I'm going to play that sound for you today, but I have to warn you, it might be the most terrifying sound I've ever heard. Let's find out why.

Welcome to the Y files were cool nerds laugh and learn today. We're going to listen to the terrifying Aztec death whistle. But before we do, let's talk about the Aztecs and their culture a little bit. It will help provide some context as to why.

They invented a death whistle when Spanish conquistador Cortez and his men arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521. They described witnessing a gruesome ceremony. Aztec priests using razor sharp obsidian blades sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still beating hearts to the gods.

Still alive. They then tossed the victims lifeless bodies down the steps of the great temple known as Templo Mayor, which is in modern day Mexico City. Later, Andres de Tapia, also a conquistador, described two rounded towers flanking the Templo Mayor made entirely of human skulls.

And between them, a huge wooden rack displaying thousands more skulls with holes bored through either side to allow them to slide onto the wooden poles. So reading these accounts hundreds of years later, many historians dismissed the 16th century reports as widely exaggerated.

The stories were believed to be nothing more than propaganda meant to justify the murder of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma and as an excuse for the destruction of Tenochtitlan and the enslavement of the population. It's like colonial fake news. But over just the past few years, archaeologists working at the temple may or excavation site discovered proof of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs.

And the proof was none other than the very skull towers and skull racks that the conquistadors described centuries ago. So those ancient reports were true. What else did history get right?

Human sacrifice was an integral part of the Aztec religion, as it was for many other societies in the New World, including the Maya. One of the central beliefs of the Aztec was that we'd see the poachley, the god of the sun, needed constant nourishment in the form of human blood. Blood was seen as the sacred life force that was needed to keep the sun moving from east to west across the sky. Without human sacrifice, the world would end so.

What else are you going to do now? Reports vary as to how many people were sacrificed once, but we're not talking about one or two. Eyewitness accounts claim that between twenty thousand and eighty thousand people were put to death as part of a dedication ceremony at Temple Mayor in Tenochtitlan in fourteen eighty seven. You know, I prefer a nice reading cutting, right? Me too. A little shovels of champagne.

Why do we get killing? But this isn't unique to the Aztec or the Maya. Throughout human history, the rise of ritual sacrifice often coincides with the emergence of complex societies and social stratification. It's a pretty effective method of intimidating your rivals and keeping your own people in line.

I mean, just look at the gladiator battles of Imperial Rome or the mass burials of servants and captives alongside Egyptian pharaohs and Chinese kings. Now, the Aztec sacrifices were sometimes slaves and sometimes prisoners captured by the Aztecs during their frequent wars. But many captured soldiers, slaves and even Aztec citizens went willingly to the sacrificial altar to give your heart as a sacrifice was considered a great honor and guaranteed a blessed afterlife. That's really taking one for the team.

It certainly is. Now, whether voluntary or not, can you imagine the terror that people must have felt as they waited to be sacrificed by Aztec priests? But it turns out it's even scarier. Experts have revealed that a terrifying noise would have accompanied the ghastly ritual and was emitted by skull shaped whistles. OK, you guys ready for this? If you're wearing headphones, you may want to turn this down. I'm going to play the sound raw and then I'll show you a couple of videos of people actually playing these

They're not really instruments, they're actually called resonators. OK, that's your warning. Ready? Here we go. Worst ASMR video ever. So when I first heard this, it reminded me of the ringwreaths from Lord of the Rings. Remember those? Yep, those were scary. OK, so imagine you're waiting to be sacrificed. You had a nice meal. You're oiled up. The crowd is screaming. Is this a sacrifice or a professional wrestler? Then suddenly...

The Aztec death whistle has been described as sounding like humans howling in pain, whereas one researcher said the scream of a thousand corpses. Corpses are usually pretty quiet. Please.

Please don't heckle me when I'm trying to be dramatic. Fine, fine, fine. Dutchie discovered my job. You don't got to jump down my road every time I say to discover decades ago, the whistles initially attracted the attention of archaeologists because of their skull shape. That's pretty cool. But it's only recently that the actual sound they make has been investigated. I mean, if you dig one of those up as your first instinct to put it in your mouth.

The Aztecs used the sound of the death whistle to help people's souls travel to the afterlife when they were being sacrificed. But the whistles were also used by warriors to intimidate enemies heading into battle. Over 100 death whistles would be played as a form of psychological warfare, and I think that would be pretty effective. Actually, let's hear what that might sound like.

OK, here's what I did. I layered 100 death whistles on top of each other and I pulled in some ambient sound so we can kind of get an idea of what this would have sounded like. Yep, that would scared the shit out of me.

OK, so what the heck is this thing? The death whistle was used in several areas of ancient Mesoamerica and belongs to an unusual family of Mexican resonators. And these resonators are not very well known yet. But the instruments we do understand can produce sounds imitating animals and replicate the noise of wind or storms. Still, this is not a common whistle or musical instrument that would have been used for entertainment.

The leading theory states that the whistles are associated with death rituals not only because of the skull decoration, but because two were found in the hands of a sacrificed male skeleton in front of the temple of wind God. A cattle at Tlatelolco at Tlatelolco at Tlatelolco.

Easy for you to say it wasn't. So in the sound of the death whistle was analyzed, the noise generated was compared to howling wind and the strongest frequencies fell within the range of human hearing, which is one kilohertz to six kilohertz. The dynamics of the sound that the whistle generates is so complex that it can't be simulated with computerized mathematical models.

This is probably a good thing. It was Jose Luis Franco who published the first drawings of the death whistle in 1971. One of his drawings shows the decorative face of a skull. Another drawing shows the internal structure of a death whistle with a decorative face of an owl. In Mexican cultures, the owl is associated with the coming of death. Especially for mice. Thank you, folks. I'm here all week. Make sure you tip your waitress and hit subscribe.

Okay, okay, I got one of those in here. Okay. Let's see how scary it is. What do you think? Scary? No. Intimidating? No. I hear you make that sound all the time. Rude. Just saying. Come here and pull my flipper.

Archaeologists have also discovered the existence of other types of resonators used by the Aztecs. They're made of clay, turkey feathers, sugar cane, frog skins and other natural materials, each one serving a specific purpose. For example, shells were blown at the beginning of ceremonies while hunters used animal shaped ocarina's to produce grunts that lured deer. Medical doctors believe that the Aztecs may have used the sounds to cure illnesses. Curing illness with noise might sound a little woo woo, but

As we explore the effects of these artifacts, there are some interesting findings. For example, we know that when two or more similar whistles are played at the same time, special effects can be produced. This is due to the vibrations generated or phantom sounds. And if the beats are infrasonic, meaning too low for the human here to detect, they're thought to be able to create altered states of consciousness. Are we going to try it?

Yeah, I don't think so. I'm not sure if the death whistle can cure illness, but I'm pretty sure it can cause it. But the Aztecs might have been onto something. Vibroacoustic therapy is like a low frequency sound massage, and it may help people with debilitating diseases. It's basically stimulating the body with very low sound, like sitting on a subwoofer. And low frequency sound therapy has shown promising results in reducing the symptoms of all kinds of diseases.

You know, for the most part, we look at ancient cultures as if they were deaf and mute and made of stone. But the truth is, no matter how far back in time you go, people were living vibrant lives full of color, sound, music, art, philosophy. They were an awful lot like us. They laughed, they loved, they raised families and on occasion they spice things up with ritual sacrifice. Hey, nobody's perfect. Amen, brother.

I still get a kick out of him blowing the whistle and bubbles come out. I am a comedy genius. Next episode is a deep dive on the Warrens, Ed and Lorraine. The Conjuring movies are based on these people. It's episode 88. This was the first time I did something controversial, accidentally. In researching the Warrens, I found out a lot of very unflattering things about Ed Warren. I included them in the episode.

This made some people angry. Apparently the Warrens have a lot of fans, but at this point in the channel's history, I think I figured out a format that worked. Basically tell the story, then tell the truth. - Yeah, some people don't like that. - Nope. I got a lot of hate mail from debunking them.

But all that hate mail meant I was onto something. So from this point on, I really started digging into the stories. And it was at this point where I made a promise to you that even if I cover an old story, I'll keep researching until I'm confident I can bring something new. And for the most part, I think I've kept that promise. All right, this one runs a half hour. See you then. Have a question or need how-to advice? Just ask Meta AI.

Whether you need to summarize your class notes or want to create a recipe with the ingredients you already have in your fridge, Meta AI has the answers. You can also research topics, explore interests, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with Meta AI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. Have a question or need how-to advice? Just ask Meta AI.

Whether you want to design a marathon training program or you're curious what planets are visible in tonight's sky, Meta AI has the answers. It can also summarize your class notes, visualize your ideas, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with Meta AI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger.

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. Woah woah woah woah woah woah woah. 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 **** myself. Okay, that's enough. I'm just saying there are gonna 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 Lutz's 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 the 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 bed 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 six 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 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. All right, 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 lay person 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 Perron 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 is built in 1736. Ghosts also appeared sitting at their dining room table, and some seemed to be aware that the parents were there. The ghost 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. 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 parents called Ed and Lorraine Warren for help. The Warrens spent a few hours walking the house and talking to the parents. Then they performed a seance against Roger Perrin's 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 it, but they did it anyway. And three to five minutes into the seance and my wife got all, her whole body went out of shape and extorted. It was like an extortion. Somebody was squeezing her and her chair got off the floor and came right into me, into the next room.

And I tried to help her. She 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. Who'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 Hodgsons moved in. 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 Philip.

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

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 rare. Whoa, what was that? You can't say rare. We'll get demonetized again. Oh, we don't want that. No, we don't. So we'll censor it and the grown-ups out there can fill in the blanks. Good thinking.

Eventually, both Carmen and her husband, Alan, were here 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. And 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. Have a question or need how-to advice? Just ask Meta.ai.

Whether you need to summarize your class notes or want to create a recipe with the ingredients you already have in your fridge, Meta AI has the answers. You can also research topics, explore interests, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with Meta AI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. Have a question or need how-to advice? Just ask Meta AI.

Whether you want to design a marathon training program or you're curious what planets are visible in tonight's sky, Meta AI has the answers. It can also summarize your class notes, visualize your ideas, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with Meta AI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger.

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. 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

him. 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 Bartz. 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 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.

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. Now, 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 Perrons 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. Perron 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

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 Snedekers' 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. 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 Bros.' 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...

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 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. The Warner Brothers did offer her $150,000 for her life story. Hush money. Yup.

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.

So

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.

Yeah, the Warrens have a lot of fans that really let me have it over that one. But I'm sorry, I told the truth. Ed Warren was a creep. That's a fact. Whether ghosts are real or not, well, that's up to you. Next episode is number 107. It's about exorcism. Now, here's the story behind the story. I wasn't going to cover this. I'm not really interested in exorcism, but I did it because we were going to have Russell Crowe on the show. Bah!

Nope. I'm going to read you the story I posted on Patreon about this. Here it goes.

A couple of members have emailed me about the Russell Crowe bit we were supposed to do that never happened. To be honest, I was relieved that he canceled, but Jen is still angry about it. I talked about this on the After Files, but long story short, he was doing press for The Pope's Exorcist. One of the movie's producers is a fan of the Y-Files and asked if we could have Russell on the show for 20 to 30 minutes. Though we don't do interviews, it seemed like a good opportunity. Plus, I'm a fan. It's Russell freaking Crowe. Let's do it.

So, at the last minute, we put together a full episode on Father of Morth and exorcism. R.C. was scheduled. Everything was in place. Then he canceled. We were scheduled for late in the press tour. Apparently, he was so over giving 20 interviews a day for two weeks that he said F it and converted his home studio back to its original use, rehearsing with his band. The producer was mortified and apologetic.

Apparently the producers and Sony saw our little channel and said, um, Russell, this guy reaches a lot of people who would actually go see this movie. He was still, eh, I'm really over it. I'll give him five minutes. Gee, thanks.

So I said to Sony and the producers, how about this? Instead of the typical boring interview he's done a million times, have him do a bit with my co-host. I told him, just have him read the lines. You can record it on a phone and it'll play great. They said, sure, write it. So I did. I sent them the script. They loved it. They showed it to Russell. He read the script, took a long pause, made a weird face, looked up at the execs and said, the fuck is a hecklefish?

We all gave up, but it was a wild week. Anyway, I attached a script we were going to shoot. Someone might find it funny. I did. From me. So if you want to see that script for yourself, it's on Patreon. You don't have to be a paid member to read it. Still, the episode turned out pretty good. Check it out.

Here's how it starts. Maybe it's your mother or maybe your sister. She starts complaining of headaches and strange tingling sensations in different parts of her body. Her discomfort escalates. She complains of hallucinations. She starts hearing voices. Then the seizures begin. She has trouble walking and eating and maintaining control of her bladder.

The seizures become violent. She thrashes around her bed for hours. You try to restrain her, but she suddenly has impossible strength. Her moods become erratic. She swings between fear and anger and sadness. Her speech becomes ragged and deep. She has sudden outbursts where she barks out phrases in Latin and Aramaic. Languages she doesn't speak. Then, for no reason at all, the symptoms...

suddenly stop and she's back to her normal self, frightened and exhausted, but it's still her. Her doctor can't find anything wrong with her. Psychiatrists and neurologists can't explain what's happening. This scenario happens to hundreds of families every year all over the world of every different culture and religion. And when this does happen to someone you love and there's no one else to call, you call an exorcist.

Born into a devoutly Catholic family, Annalise Michelle had a normal childhood. What kind of name is Annalise? Annalise. What'd I say?

She was kind, creative, and intelligent. She had good friends and she got good grades. Her dream was to become a teacher. When she was 16 years old, Annalise experienced a violent seizure. She was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, a neurological disorder that can cause hallucinations and affect one's personality. Over the next few years, Annalise received various treatments, including psychotherapy and anticonvulsive medications, but her condition didn't improve. Her hallucinations got worse and her seizures worsened.

more severe. And when she was 21 years old, Anneliese's condition took a dark turn. She began to experience terrifying visions of demonic apparitions. She said she heard voices condemning her to hell. Her Catholic upbringing led her to believe that she was being tormented by demons.

And since her medical treatments weren't working, she turned to her faith. Anneliese became obsessed with religious practices. She would pray for hours and even harm herself, trying to drive away the evil spirits that she believed possessed her. She prayed so often that she broke the bones in her knees. But she kept praying. Finally, when Anneliese was 23, her family turned to the church for help. They wanted a priest to perform an exorcism.

Over the next 10 months, she would undergo a series of 16 exorcisms. These sessions were exhausting and could last for hours. And during the sessions, she would scream, growl, and speak in languages she had never learned. - - - - -

I need choice. In what? In dice, please. We are in horror. Dice, please. In the game. No!

She would physically harm herself, breaking her own bones and tearing her own flesh. She would attack other people in the room. She also suddenly had superhuman strength. Sometimes she would throw people across the room. When five people could no longer restrain her, she was tied to her bed. When she broke her restraints, she was chained. Her body deteriorated rapidly. She said the demons wouldn't allow her to eat.

though she would occasionally eat spiders and bugs crawling around her room. Eventually, her body couldn't take anymore and she passed away when she was only 23 years old. She weighed less than 70 pounds and the official cause of death was malnutrition and dehydration. In the aftermath of her death, Anneliese's story became the subject of intense debate. The mainstream view is that Anneliese had been the victim of a gross failure of the medical and religious establishments.

Her family and the priests were actually convicted of negligence and abuse, though they didn't serve any time. And this case was the inspiration for the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose. And now there are lots of films about exorcism, but just a few years ago, the church avoided talking about them or denied they ever happened. But one movie would change all that, and exorcism would go mainstream.

From the novel that had long been on the bestseller lists and directed by the man who had brought the French connection to the screen, The Exorcist had long been awaited, widely speculated upon, and anxiously anticipated. But no one, no matter how close or deeply involved in the film, could possibly have anticipated what was to happen.

When The Exorcist was released in 1973, it was a phenomenon. People lined up for hours to see it. It ended up being one of the highest grossing films of all time. Exorcism was now mainstream. And The Exorcist is still considered one of the scariest films of all time. And one of the reasons for this is its realism.

The film is based on a novel by William Blatty, but his novel is actually based on real events. Blatty read about a boy who underwent several exorcisms in 1949. And for years, the boy was known as Roland Doe or sometimes Robbie Mannheim. But we now know his real name was Ronald Hunkler. When Ronald was 13, he was devastated by the recent loss of his aunt.

She taught him many things, including how to use a Ouija board. And not long after his aunt's death, Hunkler started experiencing paranormal activity, like knocking and scratching sounds from behind his bedroom walls. Water would drip from pipes into his room, though no leaks were found. But the worst event Ronald experienced was his bed suddenly moving across the room. Ronald's parents called on every expert they could find. Doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists. They couldn't find anything wrong.

Out of options, their minister suggested that the Hunklers contact an exorcist. With permission from the Catholic Church, Father E. Albert performed his first exorcism on Ronald in February of 1949, but it would be cut short. Even though Ronald was strapped to his bed, he broke off a piece of his mattress spring and slashed the priest across his shoulder.

A few days later, scratch marks appeared all over Ronald's body. One set of scratches spelled the word "Lewis," which Ronald's mother took as a sign to seek help in St. Louis. And several more priests and assistants tried to help Ronald. Witnesses reported seeing scratches appear on Ronald's body, and they saw his bed move on its own. More and more scratches appeared on Ronald. And despite multiple exorcisms, nothing worked. He was getting worse. He was more aggressive.

And then he started urinating on his bed and around the room. Finally, Ronald Hunkler was admitted to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis. And after a month of violent tantrums of screaming and cursing Latin phrases, a priest called on St. Michael to expel Satan from Ronald's body. Seven minutes later, Ronald came out of his trance

and said he's gone. Ronald Hunkler went on to lead a normal life. In fact, he became a NASA engineer who worked on the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions. His identity was kept secret for years. A friend said he lived in a state of constant worry that his coworkers would find out that he was the boy who inspired the Exorcist. Ronald Hunkler retired from NASA in 2001 and passed away peacefully in 2020. And in the years since the movie was released,

the number of possessions has increased, as has the number of exorcisms. One of the most famous and scariest cases happened just a few years ago. And like so many stories like this, it all started with flies.

In 2011, LaToya Ammons, along with her three children, moved into a house on a quiet street in Gary, Indiana. In December of that year, despite the Indiana cold, her porch was infested with black flies. No matter how many they killed, they kept coming back. Late one night, LaToya and her mother, Rosa Campbell, heard the stomping of footsteps climbing up their basement stairs. Then the creak of the door from the basement to the kitchen slowly opened. LaToya followed the sound. There was no one there.

She locked the door and went back to bed. An hour later, the sounds returned. This time, LaToya saw the shadowy figure of a man slowly walking around her kitchen. Again, she jumped out of bed to investigate, and again, the kitchen was empty. But there were large, wet boot prints on the kitchen floor. A few months later, things would escalate. This time, it was LaToya's mother, Rosa, who was startled awake.

Latoya was screaming, Mama, Mama. Rosa followed the yelling into her granddaughter's bedroom. There was Latoya's 12-year-old daughter, unconscious, levitating above her bed. The girl fell back to her bed, opened her eyes, and had no memory of what happened. Latoya reached out to local churches for help, but nobody took her seriously. But a local clairvoyant told

told her the house was possessed by 200 demons and told Latoya to burn sage and sulfur throughout the house. Burn sage and sulfur? I don't know if that gets rid of demons, but it sure would get rid of people. Yeah, sulfur smells horrible. It's just, it's like intense rotten eggs. Ugh, tell me about it. Every time you eat cabbage, the resulting fumes make my eyes water. Okay, that's enough. You know, in my next contract, I'm going to add, the human shall not consume any sauerkraut, broccoli, or cauliflower within 48 hours of doing the show.

Anyway, the Ammons' house was quiet for a few days, but then things escalated again. Both Latoya and Rosa said demons possessed the children, then ages seven, nine, and 12. The kids' eyes bulged, evil smiles crossed their faces, and their voices got very deep every time it happened. The seven-year-old boy would sit in a closet

and talked to another boy that no one else could see. The other boy would describe what it's like to be killed. And once, the seven-year-old flew out of the bathroom like he'd been thrown. The 12-year-old told doctors that she sometimes feels like she's being choked and held down where she couldn't speak or move. She then heard a voice say that she'd never see her family again and wouldn't live another 20 minutes. Now, for skeptics, this story might sound far-fetched.

But all this information is from official police reports written by two veteran officers who became believers. Still, no matter what you believe, the best course of action in a situation like this is to see a doctor and get actual medical care, which the family did. And somehow, in front of medically trained witnesses, things got even worse.

It seemed that whatever demonic forces were in LaToya Ammons' house attached themselves to her children. While being examined at their doctor's office, LaToya's sons, aged seven and nine, suddenly passed out and couldn't be revived. 911 was called and the boys were rushed by ambulance to Methodist Hospital.

When they woke up, the nine-year-old seemed okay, but the seven-year-old thrashed and screamed. It took five men to hold him down. At this point, someone at the hospital thought that this behavior was the result of a troubled home or that their mother, Latoya, had a mental illness. They called child services.

The case was assigned to Valerie Washington, who asked the hospital to examine the family. Hospital personnel found LaToya and her children to be healthy, with no physical marks or bruises. A hospital psychiatrist said LaToya was of sound mind. But when Washington spoke to the seven-year-old, his eyes rolled back and he growled, it's time to die, and then he lunged at his brother. He grabbed his brother by the throat and refused to let go. It took several adults to pry him off. And what happened next really rattled the hospital workers.

According to Washington's official DCS report, the nine-year-old had a weird grin on his face and then while holding Rose's hands, walked backwards up a wall and to the ceiling.

He then flipped over and landed on his feet. He never let go of his grandmother's hands. The boy doesn't remember doing this and says he couldn't do it if he tried. This was witnessed by a nurse who corroborated the event in the DCS report, and I linked all these documents below. Valerie Washington decided that until they could figure out what was really happening, DCS should take short-term custody of the children.

Meanwhile, the hospital chaplain contacted Reverend Michael Maginot and asked him to interview the family and perform an exorcism if he thought demons were possessing them. When Reverend Maginot went to the house, the lights would flicker for no reason and the blinds started moving. He also saw wet footprints. And when the Reverend showed Latoya a crucifix, she went into convulsions. He believed there were ghosts and demons in the house, which was some kind of portal to somewhere

Somewhere bad. A week later, DCS stopped by with police officers to check the condition of the home. They found the house to be clean, quiet, plenty of food. Oh, so aside from demons, a lovely place to raise a few kids. Right. Nothing's worse than an inconsiderate roommate. Do you mind? Sorry, go ahead.

captain charles austin a 36-year veteran of the gary police department didn't believe in demons when he entered the house but he did by the time he left while at the home one of the officer's audio recorders died even though it had fresh batteries another officer recorded audio and when he played it back later he heard an unknown voice whisper hey

I'm surprised. The officers took photos of the house and saw ghostly figures in the images. Captain Austin took a photo with his phone that showed the silhouette of a person who wasn't there. Captain Austin's police radio stopped working. His garage door stopped working. The electronics in his personal car stopped working, even though mechanically all of these things were perfectly fine.

And this is all documented in an official police report. Captain Austin said he investigated some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, but there was no way he'd spend a night alone in that house. Finally, Reverend Maginot performed a series of exorcisms on Latoya and the house. After the third session, the house was clean. Child services returned the children to the home under the stipulation that there would be no further talk of demons or possession.

The strange activity stopped, and Latoya Ammons moved out of the home about a year later. And various other tenants lived there until it was finally purchased by Zach Bagans. Uh, Zach who? He's the host of Ghost Adventures. Oh yeah, the ghost bro! That's him.

He shot the documentary Demon House there, and then when he was done shooting, he demolished the house. If there was a portal in the house, it's now closed. And many people said that this case is evidence of the power of evil and the need for faith in a war against demonic forces. And if this is a war, on the other side of the planet is the world's greatest warrior.

Father Gabriele Amorth, a Catholic priest and exorcist, could be described as a war hero in the battle against evil. Father Amorth fearlessly battled thousands of demonic forces that threatened to harm the souls of the faithful. And for over 30 years, he was the Vatican's chief exorcist, which is a real title of a real job in the church. Well, that's one hell of a business card. It sure is. Father Amorth performed

thousands of exorcisms over his career and wrote several books on the subject. He believed that demonic possession was a real phenomenon and that the devil was actively working to destroy the faith of believers. In the movie The Pope's Exorcist, Russell Crowe plays Father Immort and the cases shown in the film are taken directly from Father Immort's own writing. The movie is part horror, part Da Vinci Code, and part Indiana Jones. It includes a great storyline about a Vatican cover-up. Just one Vatican cover-up?

What about the other 10,000? Baby steps. If you're into exorcisms or supernatural thrillers, definitely check it out. Father Amort exorcised thousands of demons from hundreds of people during his 30 years as chief exorcist. That might sound like he's exorcising everyone who walks through the door, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Before someone could even be considered for an exorcism, they're required to see a physical doctor and a psychiatrist.

Father Amort said that less than half of 1% of people who contacted him are actually possessed. And he would whittle that number down further. He had a few techniques that allowed him to tell if someone was truly possessed. One of these was to have the possessed person close their eyes. Then he would bring a holy object like a crucifix near them to see if they react. If they did, he

He knew he was dealing with a true demonic possession. No! No!

The exorcism ritual typically takes place in a church or other sacred space, and only a few people are present. Father Amort brings a trained assistant who helps with prayer and occasionally helps hold the person down. A couple of the possessed person's family and friends are also present to assist. And in 2016, Father Amort allowed William Freakin to film an exorcism on a young woman named Christina. And there's no better choice than Freakin. He directed The Exorcist. He's like, Mom, when I do what? Me!

- -

The exorcism ritual itself is highly structured and involves a lot of steps that have to be done in a specific order. There's a lot of prayer, the sprinkling of holy water, and the use of a crucifix to draw out the demons. The exorcism ritual can be physically and emotionally demanding, both for the person being exorcised and for Father Amort and his assistant. The person may experience convulsions and screaming as the demons are cast out. Father Amort would continue the exorcism until

until he was confident that the demons had been cast out of the person's body. And this could take several hours or even multiple sessions. Once the exorcism was complete, Father Amort would pray over the person and give them a blessing. And the only exorcism Father Amort allowed to be filmed turned out to be his last. He passed away a few months later at the age of 91. But even worse, that exorcism didn't work. Christina was still possessed. And although William Friedkin tried to contact her, she was never heard from again.

Exorcism is usually connected to the Catholic Church, but the concept goes back thousands of years to the beginning of civilization. Ancient Babylonians believed that demons or evil spirits were responsible for illnesses as well as natural disasters. Exorcism rituals were done to drive these entities out and restore balance to the world. And the process of exorcism in ancient Babylon was complex and dangerous. The exorcist would draw a circle around the possessed person, creating a barrier between them and the demon.

He would then recite special incantations, and around the circle, sprinkle various substances like salt and herbs. And for especially evil demons, an animal like a goat or a chicken would have to be sacrificed. Salt and herbs on a dead chicken? That doesn't sound like a ritual, it sounds like a delicious recipe! You're killing me, pal. Well, I'm sorry! I skipped lunch and you tell me exorcisms use 11 herbs and spices on chicken, what do you expect?!

By the way, you and Colonel Sanders make demons sound finger-lickin' good. That was not my intention. Now I know why the chicken's so addicting. It's seasoned with evil. If you just let me get through this, we'll grab lunch. Chicken bucket from KFC? Is that even a question at this point? Ancient Egyptians...

also used exorcism to ward off evil spirits. And one of the most common methods involved the use of a magic spell called a Heka. And this was performed by a priest who would recite a series of incantations and make offerings to the gods. The priest would then place his hands on the afflicted person's head.

and command the evil spirit to leave the body. The person would then be given amulets to wear as protection against future attacks. And in the early days of Christianity, exorcism was an essential part of the faith. The early church believed that demons were the cause of many physical and mental illnesses, and that the only way to cure these afflictions was through exorcism. During the Middle Ages, exorcism became even more popular.

The church saw it as a way to combat heresy and protect its followers from the devil's influence. Exorcism reached its peak during the Renaissance, when the witch trials were at their height. Many people believe that witches were in league with the devil and that exorcism was the only way to rid them of their evil influence. The practice started to decline during the Age of Enlightenment when people started to question the church's authority. Many scientists and philosophers saw exorcism as a superstitious practice with no scientific basis.

The church responded by downplaying the importance of exorcism and focusing on other aspects of the faith. But exorcism did not disappear completely. It continued to be practiced in many parts of the world, especially in areas where traditional beliefs were still strong. Thanks to film and pop culture and the state of the world, there have never been more exorcists or exorcisms in history. And now in the age of social media, that number is on the rise once again.

Exorcism has been practiced in some form throughout all of history. It was probably the earliest form of psychotherapy. Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, started out as an exorcist. But is it real?

Well, it depends on your beliefs and what we consider real. Do you believe demons are real? If you believe they are and you believe you're possessed, then exorcism could certainly be a real solution. But if you are cured, were demons really exorcised from your body? Or do you just believe they were because you believe in demons?

It's hard to say. Trying to explain possession as non-supernatural has been a struggle for medical professionals for a long time. People claiming to be possessed show symptoms of epilepsy, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, disassociative identity disorder, bipolar disorder, and many other conditions.

But the medications and therapy commonly used to treat these illnesses often doesn't work, but sometimes exorcisms do. Possession is now recognized in the DSM. Specifically, it's possession trance disorder or PTD, but it's a pretty new addition. So modern mainstream doctors don't think we're dealing with demons.

But they acknowledge there is something happening to some people that they can't quite explain. Often people who claim to be possessed come from very religious and very troubled homes. Many times the possessed are children acting out or trying to please religious parents. For instance, Ronald Hunkler, the boy whose story kicked off the modern exorcism phase,

He admitted he was faking. He said he was a bad kid acting out against his mother, who was very religious. Annalise Michel's parents were extremely religious, and they raised their daughter to be as well. If Annalise were suffering from schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder, this could have manifested as possession, something she was raised to believe was real. And remember, Annalise was diagnosed with epilepsy.

she was also prescribed antipsychotics. When she stopped taking her meds, her episodes got worse. Now the faithful will say these conditions were caused by the demons possessing her. Skeptics will say she was simply mentally ill and the possession was just a manifestation of her strongly held religious beliefs. But nobody can say for sure. LaToya Ammons is also very religious and extremely superstitious. Where most people would consult family, friends, or a therapist for advice, she would consult psychics.

Her children were raised believing that possession was real and they may have used it to their advantage. It's well documented that over several years, her children missed a lot of school. The reason they couldn't go to school? They were possessed. Were they faking it to stay out of school? Who can say? Also, at the time the possession started, Latoya Ammons was behind on her rent and she said she couldn't pay because demons. And if you follow this channel, you know that this isn't the first time someone behind on their rent claimed it was demons or ghosts.

The owner of the house said no tenants who lived in the house reported anything strange, both before and after Latoya lived there. Yeah, but what about Zack the Ghost, bro? The ghost hunters? Yeah, nothing on that show is real, but it's fun to watch. But he destroyed the house to close the portal! Maybe.

Or he demolished the house to generate some buzz for his documentary about the house. And knocking the house down, that created some buzz. Now, Inside Edition with Debra Norville. That portal to hell house that we've been telling you about in Gary, Indiana, where so many eerie things are said to have happened, has just been sold.

And where do you see who's moving in? The new owner is Zach Bagans. What on earth were you thinking buying this house? All the witnesses in that case, including police captain Austin, are highly superstitious and believe in the paranormal. They were primed to believe the story. They were also interested in money.

Captain Austin is on record saying he thought he might get some notoriety out of this or even a movie deal. And Reverend Maginot did get a movie deal. He signed an agreement with Evergreen Media, the company that produced the Conjuring movies, which is perfect because the Conjuring movies are based on stories told by people seeking fame and fortune. There's no truth behind them.

But true or not, those movies earned over a billion dollars. Now I'm not saying all or any of these people are lying, but with stories like this, it's important to see the whole picture, especially when people are profiting.

Now, believers will say exorcism is a necessary tool to combat the force of evil that's all around us all the time. And skeptics will say exorcism is a brutal medieval torture ritual justified by ignorance. And people do die during exorcisms all the time. Now, you're getting the idea that I'm a skeptic and maybe I am.

but only 90%. That 10% of me can't help but think about Father Amort. I've studied his life, read his articles, a couple of his books. He says demonic possession is real and that he witnessed countless supernatural events.

I don't think he's lying. But actual demons? I look around and I can't find any proof. But evidence of evil? Well, proof of that is everywhere. Supernatural or not, there really is a battle between good and evil taking place in the world right now. And we all have a role to play in this battle. And knowing this, I want you to ask yourself, which side am I on?

Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. That's Hecklefish. Save the drama for your mama. This has been a Y-Files compilation episode. We're on break, but we'll be back with another season in a couple of weeks. And don't forget, I'm live streaming tonight. I'm about to go live on Discord for our Patreon members and then live everywhere else around 6 p.m. Maybe.

Anyway, a few plugs. Remember, The Y Files is also a podcast. Twice a week, I post deep dives into the stories we cover on the channel and episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel. It's called The Y Files Operation Podcast, and it's available everywhere you get your podcasts. Now, if you want to make a few new friends, check out The Y Files Discord. There are thousands of people on there 24-7, and they're into the same weird stuff we are. It's a great community, it's lots of fun, and it's free to join.

Special thanks to our patrons who make this channel possible. Without you, there'd be no Watt Files. So every episode is dedicated to you, especially this one.

Now, if you'd like to support the channel, consider becoming a member on Patreon. For as little as three bucks a month, get access to perks like you see the videos early with no commercials, get access to merch only available to members. Plus you get two private live streams every week just for you. Another great way to support the channel is grab something from the Wi-Fi store. Grab a heck of a T-shirt or one of those coffee mugs that you stick your fist in along with a beverage. Uh,

It's got my face on it. It's a fist of a mug or a hoodie with my face on it. Or a squeezy stuffed animal with my face on it. Or something with my face on it. One of these squeezy toys. I'm out of breath. And those are the plugs. We'll be back next week with another compilation, all stories about aliens. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

I play Philippians and 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.

I fear the crab cat and I got stuck inside Mel's home with MKL truck. I'm being only too aware.

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 I can't believe I'm dancing with the fishes Head to fish on Thursday night, Wednesday, J.J. When the wild birds are flying all through the night

All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the world falls off through the night

The Mothman sightings and the solar storm still come to have got the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planets are bold to project Stargate and where 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, we'll fish on Thursday nights when they chase you And the wild birds love to beat all through the night If you ever wanted one, you just hear the truth So the wild birds love to beat all through the night

Can't go fish on Thursday nights when they chase you And the wildfire's laughing me off through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the wildfire's laughing me off through the night You didn't know to dance You didn't know to dance You didn't know to dance You didn't know to dance

Yeah.