Behind the beady eyes and nighttime “ribbit” lurks a fascinating creature. Frogs and toads hop a weird line in life. They take buffalo taxis and use dating websites. Throughout human history, froggy feet have also left memorable prints, having inspired everything from famous novels to some of the earliest pregnancy kits.

Centuries of studies could not plumb the depths of these amphibians’ limits. They still manage to surprise scientists with their ability to survive bizarre injuries and mutations.

10 Visible Hearts

The Hyalinobatrachium genus of frogs has transparent bellies. The unusual look soon earned the tiny amphibians the title of “glass frogs.” Found in Central and South America, the see-through skin of two species extends over the chest and show their hearts.

In 2017, a third glass frog was found to beat its heart openly at the world. Called H. yaku, it was a bit odd. A visible heart is already a weird thing to find in nature, but H. yaku also looked different than other glass frogs.

All other species take some thinking and perhaps a magnifying glass to tell them apart. H. yaku turned up in Ecuador’s trees sporting unique green spots and distinctive songs. They also had bright green to yellow-green skin. Interestingly, DNA tests showed that this frog was not closely related to the other two species with visible hearts.^[1]

9 Thousands Are Smuggled

Frog legs are considered a French delicacy. Several other European countries also consume the amphibian limbs. To meet the demand, the animals are imported from other places like Turkey.

The latter ships a massive number of frogs to Europe but also tightly regulates the trade. To ensure that the frogs are not exploited, only certain people may collect them. Hunters must be in possession of the right license and can only collect certain species at specific times of the year. This is simply too much red tape for poachers, who often gather the creatures en masse before selling them to overseas buyers.^[2]

In 2017, Turkish authorities caught five men attempting to do just that. When their minibus was stopped for a routine search, agents found about 7,500 common water frogs. The poachers confessed, and the kidnapped amphibians were released back into the wild.

8 The Match.com Frog

In Bolivia, one can visit the Museo de Historia Natural Alcide d’Orbigny. Inside this long-worded institute lives Romeo. This frog spends his days paddling around an enclosure and resting in the shadows. By species, he is a Sehuencas water frog, and by heart, very lonely.

After 10 years of croaking as romantically as he could, Romeo gave up in 2017. What his human caretakers already feared finally sank in—that he was the last-known frog of his kind. Even as Romeo’s calls fell silent, scientists continued their search for a mate.

In a creative move, they put Romeo’s profile on the online dating site Match.com. It raised enough funds to send researchers to the Bolivian cloud forest. In the past, it was full of Sehuencas water frogs. However, the usual suspects had decimated them—pollution, habitat destruction, and the deadly chytrid fungal infection.^[3]

The 2019 expedition found five Sehuencas. Only two were female, but one was the perfect age for Romeo. Should the couple find no romance, their two-legged Cupids will try in vitro fertilization.

7 They Have Kneecaps

Frogs have been dissected and studied for centuries. Yet, one fact managed to elude scientists until 2017. As it turns out, the little hoppers have kneecaps. Weird ones, too.

It all began with the discovery of sesamoids. These bony structures are embedded in tendons over joints, essentially making them kneecaps. They turned up in species thought to have none, which inspired an Argentinian team to try their luck with frogs.

Incredibly, they found something. A close look at 20 frog species revealed a primitive cap, not yet a sesamoid. It was more of a cartilage blob, soft and small. So tiny, in fact, that it was hard to see under a microscope. Rather than protect the joints from a blow, the squishy pads might exist to alleviate the constant stress that frog knees are under.^[4]

Although the primitive structures are not kneecaps in the modern sense, they suggest that the earliest caps did not evolve with the first tetrapods that crawled onto land. Instead, they came with amphibians.

6 Test Frogs Made Chytrid Global

To date, the chytrid fungus has caused 200 amphibian species to become endangered or extinct. How it spread across the world was unclear, but recently, a candidate hopped to the fore—the African clawed frog.

During the 1930s, doctors injected urine samples into females. If the pee came from a pregnant woman, a pregnancy hormone (human chorionic gonadotropin) made the frog ovulate. By the following morning, the tank would be full of eggs. Since the method was successful and repeatable, the frogs were in high demand and shipped around the world.

The pregnancy stick women use today became available in 1988. The frogs were no longer needed, and many were released into the wild. The global spread of the species made it a good candidate for the devastating fungus, but confirmation came in 2006 when clawed frogs in California were found to have chytrid. Most were healthy, a strong clue that the species is the original carrier of the disease.^[5]

5 Frog With No Lungs

Around 30 years ago, scientists encountered a frog so rare that only two specimens were known. Due to the rarity, dissection was not an option. Had it been done, however, something exceptional would have come to light. The creatures, Barbourula kalimantanensis, had no lungs.

In 2008, researchers went to Borneo to find some more. Unfortunately, the tiny amphibians loved remote jungle areas and, worse, rivers that were rapid and freezing. One diver developed hypothermia. But despite the hiccup, several frogs were found.

Nobody had any idea of the bizarre anatomy until they cut a few open. The stomach, spleen, and liver occupied the space normally reserved for lungs. There was also a mysterious piece of cartilage. Best of all, the species consumed oxygen through its skin.^[6]

Another bonus was how primitive they were. Researchers hope that the frogs can explain why lungs vanished from other ancient animals in the past and, each time, only in amphibians.

4 Buffalo Buffet

In northern Turkey, water buffalo roam the wetlands and pick up frogs as far as they go. Clever marsh frogs figured out that the hairy beasts attract flies. When buffalo come close, the amphibians clamber onto their backs and hunt down the insects. This also rids the buffalo of an irritating pest.^[7]

Before the researchers found this peculiar cooperation between the two species, nobody believed that amphibians could manage a partnership with a large mammal. Then researchers visited the Kizilirmak Delta near the Black Sea in 2012. Within a week, they recorded 10 individual buffalo carrying teams of frogs, with each group numbering up to 27.

Just to make sure that it was not a one-time freak show, researchers returned the following year. The same thing happened. Since both times occurred in the fall when frog numbers boom, this behavior could be a novel answer to the season’s intense competition for food.

3 Eyes Inside Frog’s Mouth

One day, two Canadian girls discovered a toad without eyes. However, a local journalist noticed that it seemed more aware of everything after its mouth opened. The reason sparked an enduring mystery. The animal had eyes, but they were attached to the roof of its mouth.

This was likely macromutation—a major change at birth and not something that evolved slowly over several generations. Although it takes small genetic changes to cause this phenomenon, the toad’s condition had never been seen before.^[8]

One cause of macromutation is a parasitic infection. In particular, the trematode worm causes amphibian hosts to sprout extra, deformed, or missing back legs. This was probably not the case. The eyeballs were healthy and functional, just in the wrong place. Despite the weirdness, it was worlds away from worm-induced limb abnormalities.

2 They Inspired Frankenstein

During the 18th century, an Italian doctor named Luigi Galvani electrocuted frog legs. When they moved, everybody got excited. Electricity was a newly discovered force—and poorly understood. As the experiments appeared to restore life, it spawned the practice of galvanism, the quest to reanimate the dead with electricity.

It was one of Mary Shelley’s inspirations for her 1818 gothic novel, Frankenstein. Another famous writer of the time, Lord Byron, was a close friend. Shelley once told him, “Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth.”^[9]

This was exactly what her main character, Dr. Frankenstein, did. Galvanism is now obsolete, but it helped to place a classic title on the shelves. All thanks to convulsing frog legs.

1 The Faceless Toad

In 2018, researchers walked around a Connecticut forest. They were on a mission to gather information about newts. Instead, they bumped into a freaky toad. More accurately, the amphibian kept bumping into their feet and everything around it.

The creature could not see. Its entire face was missing. At first, it seemed like magic was afoot. The adult American toad was healthy, and the terrible wound was covered with old scar tissue.

How did it survive?

Sadly, researchers believe that it perished shortly after it was found. The frog was probably hibernating when it suffered an attack that removed its nose, eyes, jaw, and tongue. For some reason, the predator never killed the sleeping toad.

Left in peace and without the need to eat, the remaining hibernation period allowed the amphibian to heal. However, it woke up blind and incapable of foraging. Even if it managed to avoid predators, the toad was doomed to starve.^[10]

Nature can be so serious. Most of the time, an intense survival game plays out. Yet, it is the more indirect side of the natural world—the quirks—that keep scientists on their toes. From the biggest organisms on the planet that nobody ever sees to the Sun setting off explosives, nature seems to have a strange sense of humor.

There are plenty of other cases. But as intriguing as they may be, this weirdness can get destructive. Sometimes, it not only tears apart human constructions but also the scientific community.

10 Haiting Hall

In 2017, an expedition from Hong Kong found a gigantic sinkhole. Located in the forest of Guangxi, it was named the Hong Kong Haiting Hall. A second expedition in 2018 scanned the inner dimensions and revealed a world-class wonder.

Haiting Hall is far from being a hole in the ground. After researchers lowered themselves into the pit, they found an epic cave complex hidden beneath the ground. The sheer size made the site very rare. In volume, it measured 6.7 million cubic meters (236 million ft³).

While 3-D mapping the interior, the team found halls, collapsed structures, craters, stone pillars, and water-polished rocks called cave pearls. The equipment also revealed that the sinkhole itself was 100 meters (328 ft) wide, around 118 meters (387 ft) deep, and almost 200 meters (656 ft) long.^[1]

The 3-D scanning was not just for measuring the standard stuff. It could also help with the reconstruction of the signs suggesting that the sinkhole had suffered a collapse. This could throw light on its formation. Similar sinkholes are usually the result of collapse brought on by the erosion of underground rivers.

9 Antarctica’s Hot Spot

Antarctica has its fair share of mysteries. One of them is rather ironic—the icy continent has a hot spot.

In 2018, a radar survey found the anomaly in East Antarctica. This region is the last place where any kind of heat should appear. East Antarctica is a craton, or a massive piece of Earth’s crust. Magma is shallow in some regions of Antarctica, but not with this craton. The solid interior, as well as its thickness, should prevent warmth within the planet from seeping back to the surface.

Yet the ice sheet closest to the crust is melting, another sign of something hot down there. Analysis showed that global warming cannot be blamed in this case. The bizarre spot is insulated away from the atmosphere and is also quite old.

The truth remains elusive, but hydrothermal energy could be responsible. If there is a fault in the crust filled with water shuttling up and down between the hot lower depths to the ice sheet, it could cause melting.^[2]

8 Woodleigh’s True Size

Woodleigh Crater is an ancient impact site near Shark Bay in Australia. The crater’s size remains a hotly debated issue. Since the crater is buried, an accurate assessment is difficult, although past research placed the diameter at around 60–120 kilometers (37–75 mi).

In 2018, two researchers had no desire to join the controversy. When they examined a core sample from Woodleigh, it was to see how the common mineral zircon behaved during the high pressures of an impact. They were amazed to find reidite instead.

To be fair, reidite is zircon. However, it is an exceptionally rare transformation of zircon. Created during the high-pressure moment when space rocks slam into Earth’s surface, reidite has only been found six times. The discovery could swing the Woodleigh debate.^[3]

To amass the kind of pressure needed to create reidite, only certain size craters can produce this priceless mineral. They must be over 100 kilometers (62 mi) in diameter, which would make Woodleigh the biggest meteorite hit in Australia. Some suggest the crater could dwarf the one in Mexico (thought to be the rock that killed the dinosaurs), which measured 180 kilometers (112 mi) across.

7 The Tree Fight

There is a battle going on in the scientific community. An undeniable amount of evidence suggests that trees are not just wood soaking up sunshine. Studies have identified behaviors that include pain reaction, chemical warning signals to other trees, and the nourishment of saplings and other adults through a subterranean fungal network. They also recognize “family,” or genetically related trees.

This is a far cry from how scientists used to view a forest. The fact that trees are organized, almost like an insect colony, is not really the issue. Both sides agree that these plants show remarkable abilities. However, one question turns things ugly. Are trees doing it on purpose?

Those who support sentient trees believe that these entities operate with intelligence, although it is misunderstood by humans. This is appalling to critics, who feel that chemical reactions to stimuli such as damage, predators, and nutritional needs dictate how trees respond.^[4]

Whether trees have free will or automatically react to their environment, they still behave in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand.

6 Earth Consumes Its Oceans

Earth has several tectonic plates. Often, when one is forced to slide underneath the other, this causes earthquakes. The process also pulls a huge amount of seawater down into the deeper layers of the planet.

Recently, scientists listened to seismic sounds at the Marianas trench where the Pacific plate is dipping under the Philippine plate. They wanted to use the rumblings to calculate just how much water got swallowed this way. Sensors tracked the velocity of earthquake echoes and especially listened for those slowing down as they passed through waterlogged material.

The result was shocking. Every million years, diving plates drag three billion teragrams of water into the Earth’s interior. A teragram equals a billion kilograms. This is three times more than previously thought.

The surprise did not end there. Earth’s deep water cycle should expel an equal amount, but not enough is being spouted by volcanoes or any other means. This inequality plus the fact that the oceans are not losing water volume means that science is missing something about how the planet shuttles water through its deepest plumbing.^[5]

5 Creeping Mud Blob

The Niland Geyser was born in 1953. The mud pool appeared in California’s Imperial County and bubbled placidly for decades. This changed 11 years ago when Niland’s mud began to creep over dry soil.

At first, the pace was so slow that nobody cared. However, in 2018, the flow picked up and became unstoppable. This was a huge problem since the mud’s direction threatened a state highway, train tracks, fiber optic telecommunications lines, and a petroleum pipeline.^[6]

All attempts to stop the mud failed, including an ambitious steel wall that was 22.9 meters (75 ft) deep and 36.6 meters (120 ft) long. The blob merely slipped underneath the barrier and sludged forth. A new railway line was built to circumnavigate the remorseless mud, but the flow could eventually close down state route 111 and force engineers to build a bridge instead.

The geyser, which had been declared an emergency, not only poses a threat to things in its path but also leaves behind a damaged trail. Similar to a bog, a large amount of moisture softens everything up to 12 meters (40 ft) down, ruining the land for future construction.

4 Frankenstein Worms

In 2018, Russian scientists extracted 300 soil samples from the Arctic. The frozen cores were recovered at different locations and represented various geological eras. Back in the laboratory, several 42,000-year-old samples contained worms.

Called nematodes, they had been frozen solid inside the permafrost for all that time. The tiny creatures were moved to a petri dish and left to thaw at 20 degrees Celsius (68 °F). It took the worms a few weeks, but they came back to life.

The dish was filled with a nutrient medium. Appearing unaware that they had stopped living for thousands of years, the nematodes started feeding. This amazing feat set the record for successful cryogenic suspension in animals.^[7]

Naturally, this piqued the interest of researchers trying to freeze humans for posterity. The fact that Pleistocene-era nematodes can survive having their entire bodies frozen, especially without side effects, is remarkable. Something protects them from the ravages of ice and oxidation. This mysterious mechanism can prove invaluable to several medical fields, including astrobiology and cryomedicine.

3 Brazil’s Termite Mounds

A few decades ago, a strange thing emerged from Brazil’s forest. As people cleared land for farming in the northeast, termite hills began to appear. Their sheer size was noteworthy. But in 2018, a study revealed the true magnificence of what the creatures had accomplished.

Thus far, about 200 million have been found and they are enormous. Visible from space, each contains around 50 cubic meters (1,800 ft³) of soil. Most measure 2.5 meters (8 ft) high with a diameter of 9 meters (30 ft).

Together, the hills cover an area as big as Great Britain and have an excavated volume of 10 cubic kilometers (2.4 mi³). This equals about 4,000 Great Pyramids of Giza. Speaking of which, the hills roughly dated back to the time when the Egyptians built the pyramids.

For 4,000 thousand years, termites have constructed the mounds as tunnels—not nests—to reach food on the forest floor. Incredibly, the termites have never gone. They still occupy what researchers are calling the “greatest known example of ecosystem engineering by a single insect species.”^[8]

2 Earth’s Biggest Organisms

The blue whale may be the biggest animal in history, but it is dwarfed by a mushroom. At first glance, the sweetly named honey mushroom resembles a field of small shrooms. However, since it was found 25 years ago in Michigan, scientists suspected that the real “creature” lurked underground. Those caps belong to a single 1,500-year-old fungus spread across 91 acres.^[9]

In 2018, new samples were taken and genetic tests confirmed the whole thing was indeed a single organism. The DNA also revealed a twist. The rate at which the mushroom evolved was slower than previously thought. This made everything bigger.

Calculations determined the fungus was 2,500 years old, covered four times its original territory, and weighed around 440 tons (the same as three blue whales). The Michigan mushroom was the first of its species to reveal how large they could grow, but another honey mushroom in Oregon now holds the record. That 8,000-year-old specimen hugs an area of 7.8 square kilometers (3 mi²).

1 Solar Storm Detonated Bombs

In 1972, a US military plane flew over a minefield off the coast of Hon La in Vietnam. The crew noticed up to 25 bombs detonate in the water, all within 30 seconds. Another 25 to 30 mud splats suggested earlier explosions. The incident was reported, classified, and filed away.

In 2018, the document became public and revealed an extraordinary incident—a solar storm had triggered the mines. As much as people in the 1970s understood that solar activity manipulated Earth’s magnetic field, it could not be proven that the Sun messed with the mines. (The bombs were designed to destruct during magnetic shifts.)

A solid clue was the intense solar activity recorded around the time the detonations took place. This was the main reason the navy suspected a space storm.^[10]

Modern scientists agree. In particular, one coronal mass ejection was identified as the culprit. It behaved like a whip and struck at Earth with unusual speed. Researchers believe earlier flares cleared the planet’s magnetosphere, which added power to the coronal slash.

Even before the humble beginnings of philosophy in ancient Greece, humans have been obsessed with the idea of substances, where one material ends and another begins, and the general building blocks of life. But over the thousands of years that we’ve studied various materials, we’ve developed a good idea of what’s what. With the science of chemistry and the periodic table, we’ve come to figure out and predict how basic substances or materials work.

Some materials have bizarre and abstract traits and are frankly quite weird. Nature seems to operate by strict rules, where things are seemingly predictable and fit wonderfully into neat little explanatory packages. This gives us the ability to categorize things in different ways and understand them for what they are.

Here are 10 absolutely strange materials that have been discovered by scientists throughout the years.

10 Triiodide

While triiodide itself refers to one chemical which can be mixed with many others to create different chemicals, triiodide, short for triiodide ion, isn’t inherently very interesting. It’s often a yellowish substance that turns red when prepared in such a way to create nitrogen triiodide, with the inorganic compound designation of NI.

What makes nitrogen triiodide so special? It’s ridiculous explosiveness.

Most explosives use chemical processes which are quite complex, or heat and combustion. But not nitrogen triiodide, which is explosive on contact. That’s right. Take a simple gram or so of this powder, set it on a table, touch it with nearly anything, and watch the show.^[1]

All that’s required for it to blow up is simple contact, or friction. This material is so unusual due to its volatility that even touching it can cause it to explode.

9 Vantablack

Vantablack is an artificial material that was developed by Surrey NanoSystems. This coating goes on many things, from paint to carbon objects. It’s the material equivalent of a black hole in that it traps light, so much so that three-dimensional objects coated with the material appear to be two-dimensional as the refraction of any light is so heavily reduced.

It holds the world record for the darkest artificial substance and the darkest black you can buy. The material absorbs 99 percent of all light it comes into contact with.^[2]

People even coated a building with it in South Korea to create “the darkest place on Earth” in a mimicry of the deepest recesses of space. The goal was to create an experience of being absorbed into blackness—a deep, dark cloud of black.

Three-dimensional objects coated in Vantablack actually look like shadows from the profile view. Definitely an interesting material, to say the least.

8 Ultrahydrophobic Material

Ultrahydrophobic material isn’t the stuff we buy to coat leather and suede products or the spray coatings that protect our outdoor wood projects from the rain and other elements. An ultrahydrophobic coating actually causes water to encase itself into tiny spheres that look like gemstones or marbles.

It’s so water-resistant that if you sprayed your old windshield with it, you could drive in the rain at up to 64 kilometers per hour (40 mph) and your windshield wouldn’t get wet.^[3] Goodbye, trusty windshield wipers.

In fact, ultrahydrophobic material repels almost all liquids, causing them to shrivel up into little balls that you can even roll around as if they were actual marbles. This material is genius and has a lot of applications, including those for high-tech industries. It’s also ultra-weird.

7 Ferrofluid

Ferrofluids are a type of liquid that can easily be formed into strange shapes without even touching them. Often dark, blackish, reddish, or grayish liquids, ferrofluids act very much like any other liquid when they’re outside the presence of a magnetic field.

The moment the fluids come into contact with a magnetic field, they become highly magnetized, morphing shapes, bending, or pulling. They do everything our usual solid magnets do, only as a liquid state.

This stuff looks like a dark, liquid metal. It can be purchased online or even made with readily accessible Internet instructions. Like so many other wonders of physics, it’s truly an amazing sight to see ferrofluids in action as they respond to the magnetic field and fall right in line with it. Then they disperse randomly once the magnetic field is removed.^[4]

6 Supercritical Fluid

Supercritical fluid is a material created under certain circumstances of temperature and pressure. It suspends the dividing lines of physical properties as we know them. In short, supercritical fluid is a substance somewhere between liquid and gas. It is a mixture of both, and yet it is neither liquid nor gas.

It occurs when any fluid gets heated above its critical temperature and pressure. Critical temperature is the point where a substance has been heated to such a degree that you cannot liquefy it. Critical pressure is the pressure that’s needed to turn a gas into a liquid at a high temperature.

Supercritical fluid is a gas-like substance with highly liquid properties.^[5] If you were to delve into the atmospheres of some planets, like Jupiter or Neptune, you would be immersed in it. It’s a super-freaky version of all liquids . . . or is it a gas?

5 Nitinol

Nitinol is a trade name for nickel titanium, a metal alloy with some extremely unusual (and important) properties. Nitinol is often used in the medical industry, but it has other applications.

The weird thing about this metal is that it’s almost like the liquid metal featured in the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day in that it can always return to its original shape. Nitinol has superelasticity, or a memory for its original form.

So if you make an object out of nitinol and then bend it completely out of whack, it’ll automatically crawl and form back into its original shape before your eyes (aka pseudoelasticity). These shape memory properties make it both fun and practical.^[6]

Stents are a great application as nitinol can bend within the human body when needed, has the durability of a metal, and can return to its original form every single time after the force which causes it to warp is released. Nitinol’s bending, shape-shifting properties are activated by heat. At some temperatures, it will bend out of its original state. At others, it will return to its original state.

This temperature difference can be controlled within 1 degree Celsius (1.8 °F). From algae that remembers the light shined upon it to nitinol which always remembers its original shape and returns to it under the right conditions, materials with a “memory” are definitely fascinating and weird.

4 Gallium

Gallium is a metallic element with the atomic number of 31, which even more closely resembles the liquid metal from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Gallium’s particularly strange characteristic is the low temperature at which it liquefies, which is only a tad shy of 30 degrees Celsius (86 °F). That’s close to room temperature in many places.

This metallic element is bright, shiny, and silvery white in color. When you handle gallium, there’s no ambiguity that you’re handling a liquid metal. As a liquid, this metal can be played with—it rolls and forms into various shapes in your hands.^[7]

Gallium has many practical uses, like LED lights, cabling, and pharmaceuticals. It’s an extremely soft metal, even in its solid state. In fact, it’s so soft that you could slice into it with a knife without much resistance at all. If you made a solid sphere, a ball of gallium, and then picked it up, it would melt in your hand. That’s one fascinating metal.

3 Hydrogel

Hydrogels are a fascinating group of substances, not unlike supercritical fluids. However, instead of being suspended somewhere between a liquid and a gas, hydrogels are suspended somewhere between a liquid and a solid.

A hydrogel maintains its shape and doesn’t flow around objects like a solid does, but it bends amazingly like a liquid with an extremely soft pliability. JELL-O is one famous hydrogel that we all know about. It’s a fun snack for people around the world. But there are other types of hydrogels and other uses for them besides foods.

Due to their flexibility and durability, hydrogels are showing great promise in the world of science for biomaterials, which go on or in the human body. Their ability to completely liquefy, fill a space, and then solidify and still be flexible is mind-blowing.^[8]

Hydrogels are a series of polymers that contain both chemical and physical properties which change their state from solid to liquid seamlessly. When heated, the polymer proteins dissipate and travel more freely. When cooled, those same proteins harden again but not quite as drastically as when water hardens into ice. These proteins make hydrogel one of the most unusual feeling and visually entertaining substances.

2 Graphene Aerogel

Graphene aerogel is the lightest material on Earth and definitely the lightest solid material that we know of. It weighs in at just 0.16 milligrams per cubic centimeter, almost lighter than air. Its density is even lower than helium, although slightly higher than hydrogen, the lightest of all the gases.

Graphene aerogel is created by taking a hydrogel and replacing the liquid contents with air, making the substance 99.98 percent air by volume. This is why it’s so light—it’s empty. There aren’t a lot of the dense atoms of a solid or a liquid to weigh it down. As a result, graphene aerogel is the least dense of all known solid materials.^[9]

On top of being used today for many adhesives, coatings, and fillers, graphene aerogel is also being developed as a lightweight material for 3-D printing that produces precise results. The future of graphene aerogel shows much promise, and this substance is going to be a staple of the future for printing items like lightweight coffee cups or even jewelry.

1 Dark Matter

Dark matter is one of the most elusive substances in the currently known universe, and that makes it arguably one of the most fascinating. Dark matter makes up about 27 percent of the physical universe. It cannot be detected by its luminosity, the refraction of light that we use to “see” and detect regular matter with our eyes and instruments.

Instead, dark matter can only be detected by its gravitational pull. We know it’s out there, but we can’t see it. So we can only perceive its presence by its pull on other objects that we can see.

With its existence first hypothesized in the 1970s, dark matter set the stage to explain the mysterious movements of many objects being pulled in its gravitational field—like galaxies which seemed to miraculously escape the gravitational pull of the larger galaxy cluster to which they belonged.

Gravitational lensing occurs when a substance in space distorts the space fabric and “bends” light from behind it. Even though we can’t see dark matter, this is how we know it exists. It bends the passing light rather than emitting or reflecting light.^[10]

For a frame of reference, dark matter makes up about 27 percent of the observable universe, but observable matter only comprises 5 percent of our universe. About 68 percent of the universe is “dark energy,” a mysterious, elusive energy.

This means that about 5 percent of our universe can actually be seen and detected using observation of the actual substance itself. It can only be perceived by its effect on the tiny sliver of the universe we can see. This makes dark matter one of the strangest substances detected by modern science.

I like to write about dark stuff, fun stuff, weird stuff, history, and philosophy. Here’s a fun one about weird and wacky substances.

Cutting-edge technology allows researchers to get creative with their goals. Quirkiness in the name of science is bound to produce something unusual. From octopuses that are plied with Ecstasy and people reading each other’s thoughts to a reality that exists only when looked at, scientists are breaking new ground.

However, as with all experiments, not everything was wholesome. Some results showed disturbing human-robot relationships and worse—the tendency to torture a helpless victim existed even in those who thought they were incapable.

10 Goats Like Happy People

Goats are known for their smarts. In 2018, an experiment with 20 animals revealed another cognitive ability. They can tell people’s facial expressions apart. The plucky creatures were trained to walk over to the far side of the pen, where they received snacks.

During the second phase, two images were tacked to the back. The photos included men and women, none of whom the goats had ever met in real life. One picture always contained a smiling person and the other, a grumpy frown. The animals were shown only male or female faces, and the pictures were moved around to the left and right sides of the enclosure.

Gender appeared to make no difference to the goats, which preferred to sniff at the happy faces. Curiously, they only picked the positive images posted on the right side of the pen.^[1]

This suggested that the left hemisphere of a goat’s brain deals with friendly cues. It remains unclear how goats understand the facial communication of another species, but this test provided the first evidence that they are capable of doing so.

9 The Four-Day Week

Many employees dread their work environment, especially when companies put profits ahead of workers’ needs. In 2018, one New Zealand company made a radical change. For two months, the trusts firm Perpetual Guardian gave its workforce full pay for four-day weeks.

The unique experiment aimed to determine whether reduced office hours had a positive or negative impact on business. Most business owners would view it as risky, but the results were incredible.

The staff’s stress levels dropped from 45 to 38 percent. Even healthier, their work-life balance increased from 54 to 78 percent. The most remarkable finding was that productivity showed a small improvement despite the shorter weeks. Additionally, there was an increase in the commitment and positive relationships among staff. Leadership improved, and people actually enjoyed what they were doing.

The experiment created something that is rarely seen today—a team fiercely loyal to a company that cares for them. Perpetual Guardian now wants to make the four-day week permanent.^[2]

8 Octopuses On Ecstasy

A bizarre-sounding experiment happened in 2018. Researchers gathered two octopuses, two Star Wars action figures, and some Ecstasy (aka MDMA). This drug is known to flood human brains with serotonin and turn them into social cuddle bears.

Octopuses are grouchy loners. When sober, they avoided their own kind and the toys in their tank. When high on Ecstasy, they behaved just like people and got chummy with their fellow octopuses as well as Chewbacca and a stormtrooper.

The lovestruck tentacles revealed something unexpected. The brain of an octopus and that of a human do not even have the same regions. The two groups, vertebrates and invertebrates, separated over 500 million years ago. But surprisingly, a single gene in the genomes of humans and the eight-tentacled wonders matched perfectly.^[3]

SLC6A4 is the genetic binding site of Ecstasy, which is likely why both species develop a rosy, loving outlook on life once drugged with MDMA. Nobody really expected the socially linked genetic and neurological pathways of people to exist in other creatures.

7 Rogue Kidneys

These days, scientists grow organoids—miniature versions of real human organs. In 2018, a laboratory sprouted some mini kidneys from stem cells. After four weeks of nourishing the growths in a chemical soup, they were ready.

This soup was designed to encourage the stem cells to grow only specialized kidney cells. Once the organoids were fully grown, researchers took a peek at what was happening inside them. Then the surprise hit.

For some reason, the tiny kidneys had gone rogue and also produced brain and muscle cells. These cellular oddballs accounted for up to 20 percent of the organoids’ makeup.

As interesting as Frankenstein organs are, it was a setback. Organoids are valuable as tools to study diseases, but if they do not model a real human kidney, any information gleaned would most likely be skewed.

Another unexpected discovery was that the lab-grown kidneys refused to mature, no matter how they were farmed. This was also problematic for disease studies as longer exposure to the soup caused more rogue cells.^[4]

6 Children Believe Misleading Robots

The Asch experiment is a social conformity test disguised as a vision exam. In 2018, researchers put their own spin on it. Around 43 kids, aged seven to nine, were required to find two equally long lines on a screen. The answer was obvious. When alone, the children proved correct 87 percent of the time.^[5]

Then the robots came. Whenever the child was asked to pick lines, a robot would helpfully provide the incorrect answer. Even though the right answer was easy, the kids doubted themselves and looked to the machines for answers. They did this so often that the success rate fell to 75 percent. They just followed the robots’ leads, sometimes word for word.

When 60 adults were tested in the same way, they ignored the robots. The children probably experienced “automation bias,” a powerful belief that machines have greater abilities than they really do. Researchers suspect that the adults, unaffected by the toylike robots, might have folded if they were bigger and more imposing.

5 The Tokyo Explosion

Scientists have been trying to make bigger magnetic fields for decades. Huge ones have been created, but their strength was too much for an indoor setting. However, measuring fields that are created outside fails in the accuracy department.

In 2018, Tokyo physicists built an armored room to contain what they hoped would be the strongest controlled magnetic field created under laboratory conditions. Such fields are graded in teslas. The strongest MRI machine creates three teslas, and the Tokyo team aimed for 700.^[6]

Instead, their electromagnetic device erupted with 1,200 teslas. This unexpected development made it the strongest controlled field, although “controlled” only meant being able to measure its power. The actual event blew apart the laboratory’s armored doors, right after it crumpled the iron box in which it was kept.

Despite the fright and damaged property the team got, the 1,200 teslas was a step toward limitless, clean energy. Nuclear fusion reactors need only a 1,000-tesla magnetic field to change the world’s energy crisis. Scientists now have a strong-enough field. They just need to determine how to stop the explosions.

4 Measurement Creates Reality

In 1978, physicists proposed that reality did not exist until measured. It sounded weird back then, but in 2015, the technology arrived to prove it. Australian scientists tweaked a famous theoretical experiment from the 1970s and showed that the quantum world honored this strange law.

The experiment took a single helium atom and sent it through laser barriers (the points of measurement) to see if it acted like a wave or a particle. Logic dictates that its very nature would be preexisting and that measurement could not make it behave in any other way.^[7]

However, as bizarre as it sounds, the tests showed that the atom could not decide whether it wanted to be a wave or a particle until it encountered the lasers. To start its journey, the helium atom was sent through a pair of beams meant to scatter its path.

At a later point during its travels, random lasers were added to merge the paths again. This second measurement somehow brought into existence the atom’s preference for wave- or particle-like behavior.

3 The Murdered Robot

Once upon a time (2015), there was a robot called hitchBOT. He had one ambition: to travel as far as he could by hitching rides with strangers. For two weeks, the friendly machine enjoyed the charity of drivers and clocked the longest journey ever made by its kind.

After he had traveled over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 mi) in Canada and enjoyed the views of several cities in Germany, hitchBOT wanted to see the whole of the United States of America. Had the electronic wanderer had parents, they would have warned him about the dangers of hitchhiking.

Instead, hitchBOT’s designers created him as an experiment to see how far human kindness would take him and how people interacted with a robot without supervision. Around the beginning of his great American adventure, he set off for San Francisco—and disappeared.^[8]

His decapitated body was found in Philadelphia. It had been thrown into a ditch. Worse, his killer had had fun. The person had also removed hitchBOT’s arms and rearranged them around the robot’s body.

2 BrainNet

In 2018, neuroscientists managed to connect the brains of three people. They could play a Tetris-type game just by sharing thoughts. This “network” was dubbed BrainNet.

The participants did not actually read one another’s thoughts. However, thanks to electroencephalograms (EEGs) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), they could communicate. Two participants were the “senders” and wore EEG electrodes. A third person had a TMS cap and was the “receiver.”

The senders played each other, but only the third person could move the blocks. When a player wished to rotate a block, he stared at one of two LEDs on the screen. The flashing lights triggered signals in the brain, which got picked up by the EEG and relayed to the TMS cap. The latter’s magnetic field created phantom flashes in the receiver’s mind—a sign to rotate the block.

With a success rate of just over 80 percent, scientists hope to one day create a social network of interfaced brains, possibly over the web.^[9]

1 The Milgram Experiment

Stanley Milgram discovered a disturbing corner of the human mind. During the 1960s, this social psychologist tested how far people would go when ordered by an authority figure to electrocute another person. Most participants obeyed. The Milgram experiment was a turning point in the study of obedience and social psychology.

In 2017, researchers wanted to see if individuals today would shelve empathy for authoritative approval. Most would think themselves incapable of responding to such influence.

A recent Polish study recruited 80 people for a “memory experiment.” Their job was to shock learners who failed to memorize associations. The shocks were never real. The participants did not know this or that the “learners” were actors.

About 10 levers delivered increasingly higher voltage shocks. The participants were told to zap learners who failed to memorize something, and an authority figure encouraged those who became hesitant when the shocks grew more powerful (and they had to listen to screams). Although participants were three times less likely to use stronger shocks on female learners, a disturbing 90 percent went all the way.^[10]

The octopus is one of the most recognizable and intriguing animals on Earth. They pull spectacular escapes and become social media darlings. Like famous people, some individuals even get their own movies and conspiracy theories.

They come with mysteries, too. From peculiar mass strandings to dreams revealed on octopus skin, there is still so much that scientists cannot explain about these cephalopods.

10 They Get Oxygen Blindness

During the day, several Pacific species hide in the depths from predators and the Sun. By night, they travel to the surface to feed. In 2019, researchers picked the larvae of such creatures, including octopuses, crabs, and squids. They wanted to test how oxygen levels affected their eyesight.

Oxygen is needed to turn light particles into sight. The deeper an octopus goes, the more deprived conditions become. Tests confirmed that oxygen was more critical to cephalopod vision than anyone had realized.

Researchers monitored the creatures in tanks by using tiny electrodes attached to their eyes and bright light as a visual cue. For 30 minutes, oxygen was reduced from 100 percent air saturation (water surface levels) to 20 percent (lower than the creatures’ habitat depths).^[1]

The results were worrisome. All the cephalopods and crustaceans suffered great vision loss, with some turning completely blind. An hour after higher oxygen levels were introduced, all the animals regained 60–100 percent of their vision. The findings are troubling because climate change is thinning the ocean’s oxygen. This predicts a blind and vulnerable future for such species.

9 The Farm Fight

A growing number of people love octopus on their plates. Capturing the cephalopods in the wild remains an unpredictable effort, and fishermen struggle to meet the global demand. For this reason, seafood companies want to farm octopuses.

Scientists and psychologists insist that octopus farming is a seriously bad idea. Humanity has largely thrived thanks to livestock, but this is one animal that would cause more problems than it’s worth. The babies only eat live foods, and adults need a lot of meaty chow. This would add too much pressure on already-struggling fisheries to provide food.

Scientists estimate that feeding captive octopuses for human consumption would ironically affect our food security, too. Such farms would cause pollution and most likely inbreeding, be a vector for disease, and traumatize creatures that are intelligent enough to recognize individual people and solve complex problems.^[2]

8 Male Murder

Octopuses are known for many remarkable skills, both physical and cognitive. But they have a dark side. Romantic males risk being strangled and eaten by the objects of their affection.

Depending on the species, the guys have evolved strategies to give them a fighting chance against females that are often bigger. To mate, a male must deliver sperm through a specialized mating arm (one of his eight arms).

Less aggressive species have evolved shorter arms, and they clasp a female with all their arms before mating. More aggressive species have longer tentacles and procreate at an arm’s length.

Algae octopuses have to deal with aggressive females and the larger males that guard them. The smaller males have a brilliant strategy. They pretend to be female, hiding their exceptionally long mating arm while cuddling up to the real female.

Other species take it to the extreme. The argonaut and blanket octopuses quickly amputate their mating arms inside the females and then run for their lives.^[3]

7 They Walk On Land

It is not unheard-of for an octopus to scuttle over land. Indeed, they have been filmed moving between landlocked pools. However, as octopuses are nocturnal, their land loping is rarely witnessed.

In 2017, an event took place that did not appear natural. Dolphin watchers in Wales returned to the beach at Ceredigion around 10:00 PM. They encountered over 20 octopuses strolling around in the sand.

There was something off about the whole thing. It is one thing for them to occasionally slip between pools, but for a large group to emerge on a beach was just dangerous behavior. Octopuses can survive on land but only for a few minutes.

The Ceredigion cephalopods did not go to pools or back into the sea. Indeed, the next day, a couple of them were found dead. Most had been rescued the previous night when they were found. Why this stranding happened remains unknown, but the likeliest scenarios include illness or something that disoriented them, like a storm.^[4]

6 World’s Most Adorable Octopus

In 2018, researchers from Hawaii’s Kaloko-Honokoohau National Historical Park decided to monitor nearby coral reefs. When they noticed a floating piece of plastic, they scooped up the trash only to discover that it had passengers. A pair of baby octopuses had somehow made it onto the plastic, and they were incredibly tiny.

One was adorable. It was the size of a pea and posed for photos near one of the researcher’s fingertips. After the pictures were shared on social media, the baby’s freckled arms and large eyes soon earned it many fans online.

The second was also tiny. But it probably did not make the social scene because it was being the opposite of adorable. When the park scientists found it, the minuscule baby was throttling an equally small baby crab to death. The cute and the cutthroat cephalopods were both released in an area described by officials as a “small protected space.”^[5]

5 The Kayak Incident

In 2018, two friends decided to take a kayak trip off the coast of New Zealand. One man filmed the other, which turned out to be a good thing. In a bizarre moment, a seal popped up next to the friend in the video and flung a sizable octopus at him. With uncanny accuracy, the cephalopod hit him straight in the face.

Why the octopus-battered man seemed to enjoy the experience might remain a mystery forevermore. (He yelled triumphantly.) But the reason for the seal’s behavior could be as simple as tenderizing a tough meal.

Octopuses are tough prey in the sense that they fight back and their suckers still cling to any surface after death. Not a good thing if those suckers must go down a seal’s throat.

However, roughing up a dead octopus damages the suckers enough to lose their grip. This usually happens in the form of smashing the prey against rocks or tossing them into the air. The seal probably considered the floating human as good a tenderizing surface as any other.^[6]

4 Paul’s Movie

During the 2010 World Cup, Paul the octopus became famous for predicting the winner of every match. When he died in October of that year, a filmmaker accused Paul’s keepers of a cover-up. Not that Paul was still alive, but that the psychic cephalopod had actually died three months earlier right before the final match.

Apparently, the German aquarium replaced him with a dead ringer to fool everybody. The filmmaker, Jiang Xiao, was the director of Who Killed Paul the Octopus? Probably not the title that the Oberhausen Sea Life Center (Paul’s home) saw coming when they agreed to work with Jiang.

As a believer that all octopuses look identical, Jiang said she thought the aquarium staff became “nervous” and “afraid” because the film probed the real story behind the miraculous octopus. This assessment baffled the aquarium as much as the claim that Paul had died months earlier.

Jiang declined to explain why she believed the creature was “killed.” Oberhausen Sea Life Center said that there was no squishy impostor. Paul had died of old age at around 2.5 years old, which is normal for octopuses. Then he was cremated. Visitors can view his urn and video clips and write in a condolence book.^[7]

3 The Space Report

In 2018, a study was released with decades of research behind it. Compiled by 33 authors, the work was peer-reviewed, well-cited, and published by Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.

The problem?

It claimed that octopuses were from outer space. The authors did not suggest that the cephalopods had arrived in spaceships, but the researchers came close.

They pulled out all the stops to support the possibility that squids and octopuses had laid eggs somewhere in yonder space. Somehow, those eggs had ended up in comets, where the icy conditions put them into cryopreservation.

The theory then goes that the comets crashed into Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. The eggs survived and somehow hatched. Presto! The planet had smart cephalopods.^[8]

Although scholars are becoming more open to the idea that some of Earth’s life, elements, and chemicals were seeded by extraterrestrial objects, it will require more research and indisputable evidence before this report can be rescued from the lunatic fringe.

2 The Perfect Escape Plan

When a New Zealand fisherman raised his crayfish trap, he found that it contained an octopus. The scarred creature was about the size of a rugby ball and had shortened limbs. When the fisherman took the animal to the national aquarium, staff could see that the octopus had been in fights with fish, probably on the reef where he lived.

They called him Inky and gave him a tank. Inky’s charismatic personality soon made him a hit with the public. He was known for his exceptional intelligence, but it wasn’t until years later that it became clear how clever the guy was.

In 2016, the top of Inky’s aquarium was accidentally left open. That night, when the building was empty, the cephalopod crept through the tiny opening. He slid down the side and to the floor.

After undulating over an area spanning up to 4 meters (13 ft), the octopus reached a drainpipe. The 50-meter-long (164 ft) tube took Inky straight back to the ocean. Although nobody saw it happen, this was the likeliest scenario. Security was too tight for anyone to have stolen him. Octopuses are famous escape artists and, lacking bones, can squeeze through impossibly tight spaces.^[9]

1 Skin Dreams

Sometimes, octopuses do really strange things. In 2017, something was caught on camera that could beat the best of them. In Colorado, the Butterfly Pavilion is a zoo for invertebrates. One resident was a Caribbean two-spot octopus. Similar to other octopuses, it was capable of shifting colors.

Channeling their inner chameleons, these eight-armed wonders turn invisible to gain an advantage with predators and prey and to communicate with each other. In October, a zoo worker filmed the two-spot changing colors in a dramatic fashion.

At first, it was white. Then dark patterns began to pulse in sync with the animal’s breathing. Finally, a rush of near-black flooded its skin before fading to white again.

What made it so intriguing was that the animal was asleep. As octopuses deploy quick changes to deal with sudden alterations in their environment, it was possible that the two-spot was having a nightmare.

Scientists are seriously studying how cephalopods sleep and whether they dream. If they do, the process might be completely novel because they do not have brains like humans. Instead, they have neuron clusters in their limbs.^[10]

Music and mythology seem to be many worlds apart. Yet, fascinating stories have emerged to prove that music is an art laced with mysteries. From satanic messages in “Hotel California” to Robert Johnson’s alleged pact with the devil, it seems that urban legends are an inherent part of fame.

Some songs, however, have more horrifying tales to tell. Here are some lesser-known myths hidden in 10 of the most cryptic songs ever written.

10 Famous Urban Legends Come To Life

10 The Forest Ogre
“The Erlking”

In 1782, young German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a ballad that soon launched a terrifying urban legend. Entitled “The Erlking,” the musical piece tells the story of a sinister creature who preys on travelers and children.

Also known as the “King of Alders,” this forest monster is said to be a mistranslation of the original Danish “elf king.” Still, it has remained a haunting reminder of our childhood fears and the dark underworld hiding in the jungles.

Legend has it that a man was riding on a horse with his young son one eerie night. As they passed through the dark corners of the forest, the young boy suddenly heard whispers from the unknown. Terrified, he told his father about the ominous sign. However, the father reassured his child that it was just the wind “rustling with the dead leaves.”

The voice grew louder. But with his father ignoring him, the boy had no other choice. As they finally reached home, the father got the shock of his life. He found his poor son lifeless, with his soul allegedly consumed by the Erlking.^[1]

The story of the malevolent creature soon found its way into different communities and folk legends. In Dartmoor, for instance, a demon huntsman named Dewer is known to kill innocent children, hide them in sacks, and deliver the corpses straight to their parents. Another Erlking-inspired child killer is Ireland’s Tuatha De Danann, an evil creature known for leaving changelings in cradles to replace the poor infant victims.

9 Devil’s Dance
“Asereje” (“The Ketchup Song”)

In 2002, Spanish girl trio Las Ketchup conquered the international music scene with an unexpected hit. The song “Asereje” (“The Ketchup Song”), accompanied by awkward dance steps, became one of the best-selling singles of all time. But not long after it became an overnight sensation, rumors of backmasking and satanic references began to emerge.

It all started when an email message—allegedly from a newspaper in Chihuahua, Mexico—exposed hidden messages behind the song’s lyrics. The controversy focused on two major areas: the title and the song’s lead character named Diego.

If broken down and translated into English, “Asereje” also means “a being of heresy.” On the other hand, the alternative title, “Ketchup,” can be divided into two parts: “Up” (meaning “heaven”), and “chet” (loosely translated as “dung” or “sh–t”).

When combined, the resulting word can mean “heaven is sh–t” or a direct attack on the sky. Backmasking also applies to the rest of the lyrics—allegedly to conceal clues which describe Diego as Satan’s messenger.^[2]

The singers denied the rumors and repeatedly said that the song was based on the 1979 rap hit “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugarhill Gang. Turns out, Asereje is an example of mondegreen, in which a foreign song is reinvented due to a linguistic difference.

However, some international groups didn’t buy these explanations. In Dominican Republic, Mango TV banned all Asereje video clips. Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), an influential Christian sect in the Philippines, followed suit by preventing all its members from listening to the controversial song.

8 Texas Serial Killer
“Possum Kingdom”

Possum Kingdom Lake is a man-made body of water near the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It had remained an uneventful fishing spot until alternative rock band Toadies put a bizarre twist on its name.

In the mid-1990s, the band hit it big with their single “Possum Kingdom,” inspired by a string of creepy events linked to the lake. Lead vocalist Vaden Todd Lewis, the son of a preacher, wrote the song in a way that opens it up to various interpretations.

One theory suggests that “Possum Kingdom” recounts the story of a serial killer who lured young girls into his boathouse. Legend has it that he would rape and murder his victims inside the boathouse which supposedly still exists within the lake.

Another account revealed that the song was loosely based on a kidnapping and killing spree that happened near the Possum Kingdom Lake during the early 1980s. Local authorities allegedly hid all evidence of the past crimes to avoid turning off the tourists who frequented the lake.

In 1995, RIP Magazine interviewed the band to further explore the urban legends surrounding their song. Although the story was a mishmash of true events and folk legends, Lewis admitted that the lake holds a certain enigma.^[3]

He also shared the true story of a local stalker who had a strange habit of peeping into windows and breaking into people’s houses. The lake is also home to a popular spot—aptly named “Hell’s Gate”—where some tourists either went missing or died from drowning.

7 Ester’s Last Scream
“Love Rollercoaster”

The Ohio Players’ 1975 album, Honey, gained notoriety for two reasons: its provocative cover art and a creepy story hidden underneath. Legend has it that a woman was viciously murdered while the group was recording the album. As the story goes, the victim’s hair-raising scream can be heard between the first and second verses of the song “Love Rollercoaster.”

Several versions of the urban legend came out afterward. One story revealed that the scream actually came from the album’s cover model, Ester Cordet.

Rumor has it that she was required to wear an acrylic substance that looked like real honey during the photo shoot. However, some of the staff removed the paint rather hastily, tearing off Ester’s skin. She screamed—and eventually died—from the agonizing pain caused by the injury.

Other stories, however, claimed that Ester was raped and murdered while the group was busy recording the album. There were also other sources suggesting that the victim was a cleaning woman stabbed to death by a stranger outside the recording studio.^[4]

But members of the band denied the rumors once and for all. Turns out, keyboardist Billy Beck just wanted the listeners to relive the thrilling experience of a rollercoaster ride. So he belted out a diva-like scream (yes, it came from a dude), hitting the high notes the way Minnie Riperton did.

6 The Blood Libel
“Sir Hugh” (aka “The Jew’s Daughter”)
(Child Ballad No. 155)

“Sir Hugh” (aka “The Jew’s Daughter”) is a traditional British folk song dating back to a legend from the 12th century. It is a fine example of a ballad in which the lyrics tell a story of the song’s origin. But in this case, the background story falls between disturbing and macabre.

The song originated from a dark blood ritual considered to be a common practice among ancient Jews. To celebrate the Easter holiday, they allegedly murdered Christian infants and mixed the blood with unleavened bread (aka “matzo”). This bloody murder was also mentioned in an English variation of the song where a child named “Hugh of Lincoln” was purportedly killed by Jews in 1255.^[5]

Later, “Sir Hugh” (aka “The Jew’s Daughter”) began to popularize the legend in other countries, including the US. In fact, the song, without its anti-Semitic references, is said to have inspired another recurring legend called “The Mutilated Boy.”

In this story, young boys were allegedly castrated and left bleeding to death inside the comfort rooms of shopping malls. The culprits belonged either to a homosexual gang or a certain minority group who committed the crimes as part of their initiation rites.

10 Creepy And Outrageous Urban Legends That Turned Out To Be Completely True

5 Ode To The Black Plague
“Ring Around The Rosie”

Most people remember “Ring Around the Rosie” as a simple playground nursery rhyme. But according to legends, this song contains direct references to one of humanity’s darkest periods. Its origin dates to 1347–1350, when an estimated 25 million people died from bubonic plague.

Critics disagree, indicating that it was only in 1881 that “Ring Around the Rosie” first appeared in print. Still, the words from the song are strikingly relevant if put in the context of the Black Plague.^[6]

The “ring around the rosy” refers to one of the first signs of the bubonic plague: a reddish ring surrounding a rosy bump in the skin. At that time, people believed that the epidemic was airborne and that putting posies (flowers), incense, or scented oils into someone’s pocket would help neutralize the “foul air.”

The third line “ashes, ashes” is said to be an imitation of the sneezing sound. Again, this is strangely accurate as sneezing and coughing are two of the fatal final symptoms of bubonic plague. The final statement obviously refers to the massive death toll caused by the epidemic.

So, is it really an ode to the Black Plague?

Turns out, there are a gazillion versions of the song existing today. Some of them—including William Wells Newell’s 1883 version—even lack the last two phrases linking to the Black Plague. Whether or not the creepy version of the song predates the rest is still unknown.

4 The Kleenex Curse
“It’s A Fine Day”

Released in 1983, “It’s a Fine Day” is a classic song written by Edward Barton in collaboration with his then-girlfriend Jane Lancaster. It’s basically a feel-good song popularized by a Kleenex commercial that aired in Japan in the mid-1980s.

Looking back, the ad was something you wouldn’t expect from a company selling tissues. It featured a red baby demon sitting alongside a beautiful actress, later identified as Keiko Matsuzaka. They played the English (and probably the creepiest) version of “It’s a Fine Day” in the background—something that only some Japanese audience members could understand.

Soon enough, a very dark urban legend was born.

Rumor has it that local TV stations received multiple complaints from people who found the commercial too disturbing. Some even claimed that “It’s a Fine Day” originated from a German folk song and possessed a demonic curse.

Other stories are even more unforgiving. Supposedly, by nighttime, the voice in the commercial would suddenly change into a raspy version of an older woman and bring bad luck to anyone who heard it.

The people directly involved in the commercial were not spared, either. After the initial airing, all the staff and actors purportedly met unfortunate fates one by one.

For instance, the actor who portrayed the baby ogre died from a sudden organ failure. Depending on the version of the story, Keiko Matsuzaka either ended up in a mental institution or hanged herself. Other stories claim that Matsuzaka is still alive today but gave birth to a strange, demonic infant.^[7]

3 Hungarian Suicide Song
“Gloomy Sunday”

We’re all familiar with depressing songs driving some people crazy. The premise is the same for “Gloomy Sunday” except that it is deadlier than all other melancholy songs combined.

Its original Hungarian version, “Szomoru Vasarnap,” was written by composer Rezso Seress and lyricist Laszlo Javor. The song tells the story of a depressed woman who is thinking of ending her life after the loss of her lover. Upon release, the song was moderately successful. It wasn’t until 1936 that it gained sudden notoriety.

The Budapest police department reported at least 18 suicides directly linked to “Gloomy Sunday.” One of the fatalities was shoemaker Joseph Keller. According to reports, his suicide note included the lyrics of the song. Other victims listened to the song either from a recording or a Gypsy band before taking their own lives.

Although no known suicide related to “Gloomy Sunday” has been recorded in the US, as many as 200 cases worldwide were linked to the song’s disturbing contents. Most of the victims were young jazz fans who allegedly went into deep depression after listening to Billie Holiday’s 1941 rendition.

Another story tells of how Javor’s breakup with his girlfriend inspired him to write the song. Sadly, the girl ended up poisoning herself and left a note with only two words: “Gloomy Sunday.”

Reszo Seress was not spared from the curse. In 1968, he jumped to his death from his Budapest apartment allegedly due to his failing career. He was 68 years old.^[8]

2 Game Of Death
“Kagome, Kagome” (“Circle You, Circle You”)

“Kagome, Kagome” is a nursery rhyme usually sung in a popular Japanese children’s game. By simply looking at the lyrics, one can conclude that “Kagome, Kagome” is one of the most cryptic songs ever written for children. Several interpretations were made to explain its origin. Most involve grim details ranging from murder to a bloody treasure hunt.

In one story, the “bird in a cage” is seen as a direct reference to a prisoner waiting to be executed. The “evening of the dawn” has been interpreted as “the dawn patrol,” a person assigned to escort convicted prisoners on their final walk.

Another version claims that “kagome” is derived from kagomi (“pregnant woman”). Legend has it that during the time the song was written, an unborn child (i.e., the “bird in a cage”) was seen as a threat to in-laws greedy for an inheritance. So they either pushed the mother down the stairs or used other methods to forcibly abort the baby.

One of the most compelling interpretations, however, reveals that “Kagome, Kagome” holds the clues to finding a lost Tokugawa treasure. In February 1867, Prince Mutsuhito replaced the Tokugawa clan to become the new emperor of Japan. However, for the new empire to rebuild, it had to depend on the gold reserves stored in the government’s vault. Too late, they discovered that all the treasure was gone.

Oguri Tadamasa, a former finance governor of the Tokugawa clan, purportedly buried the treasure. Unfortunately, he was beheaded during the fall of Edo, taking all the secrets to his grave.^[9]

“Kagome, Kagome” suggests that the treasure might be buried somewhere in Nikko Toshogu Shrine. Despite excavation attempts, no link to the Tokugawa treasure has been found yet.

1 The Michigan Dogman
“The Legend”

As part of a 1987 April Fools’ Day celebration, deejay Steve Cook of WTCM-FM radio wrote a song called “The Legend.” As the goal was to intrigue his listeners, he wrote the lyrics by fabricating a story of a half-man, half-dog monster roaming the Michigan forests. He even added fascinating details such as the seven-year interval between reported “Dogman” sightings.

Written in a traditional Native American style, the ballad hit the airwaves just in time for the holiday. However, Cook later found out that the joke was really on him.

After playing the song, the WTCM-FM radio station received an overwhelming number of phone calls. The majority of the callers shared their own chilling tales of encountering a real “Dogman.”

Although most eyewitnesses didn’t know what to call it at first, the bizarre creature they had once encountered shared the same description as that of Cook’s fictional Dogman.

Such was the case with Robert Fortney, a resident of Cadillac, Michigan, whose first and last Dogman encounter dated back to the late 1930s. Fortney described the humanoid creature as a huge, black canid with “slanted, evil eyes and the hint of a grin.”^[10]

Another notable encounter happened in Big Rapids, Michigan, during summer 1961. One night, a man was sitting on a porch across from the manufacturing plant where he worked as a night watchman. At exactly 3:00 AM, he saw the frightening figure of a tall, brown-haired creature walking toward the driveway.

It alternated between walking on its four legs and standing up on two. A photography buff, the man instinctively took his Kodak Signet 35mm camera and captured a few shots of the mysterious creature. At that point, the Dogman rushed toward the woods, leaving no trail behind. To this day, the photo remains the strongest evidence yet that could prove the Dogman’s existence.

10 Bone-Chilling Urban Legends

Some horror movies can only be watched once. Others should be watched a couple of times to get the maximum effect of their complex storylines. During the second or third viewing of some horror films, little details make themselves known that were missed the first time around. A lot of effort goes into making a successful horror film and these little details are a big part of it. Sometimes the details are in the background of the film itself and sometimes it is in the inspiration that led to the making of the movie. On this list are some, perhaps lesser known, facts that play eerily vital roles in making horror movies just a little bit creepier.

Beware though, potential spoilers ahead!

Top 10 Disturbing Movies You’ve Never Heard Of

10 Final Destination—2000

At the time, Final Destination was a breath of fresh air in the horror movie genre. There was no slasher or ghost element. Instead the killer was Death itself, stalking and taking the lives of those who managed to evade it the first time around. The beginning of the movie shows a plane crash that happens mid-air after the main character convinces his friends to disembark it. During the making of the movie the decision was made to use the song “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver and play it before some of the characters’ deaths. Eerily, John Denver himself died in a plane crash in 1997 and his remains could only be identified by means of his fingerprints. His demise is reminiscent not only of the plane crash in the movie, but also the gruesomeness of the graphic death scenes.^[1]

9 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—1974

Tobe Cooper is best known for being the director of the 1974 horror flick: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The movie introduced horror fans to the legendary Leatherface who instilled fear with his grotesque human skin mask and penchant for attacking people with a chainsaw. Strangely enough, it was ‘the most beautiful time of the year’ that inspired Cooper’s freaky villain. The director was Christmas shopping in 1972 and feeling most frustrated with the sheer amount of people out to buy last minute gifts, when he saw a rack of chainsaws in the hardware section. For just a moment he thought that a chainsaw would be an effective way to get through the crowd really quickly. And so, the horror movie seed was planted.^[2]

8 The Hills Have Eyes—1977

Writer and director of the gruesome film The Hills Have Eyes, Wes Craven, was inspired by the story of Sawney Bean who was said to have been the head of a Scottish clan that went around murdering and eating people during the Middle Ages. There was a lot of tension on set, especially during the filming of a terrifying rape scene. The cast and crew also experienced difficulties in dealing with extreme temperatures. However, the last straw was when Craven decided he wanted the baby in the movie to be murdered by one of the inbred cannibals. The crew put their foot down and threatened to abandon the project if Craven went through with trying to film a scene like that and the director eventually let the idea go.^[3]

7 Paranormal Activity – 2009

Paranormal Activity was filmed in just one week and since there was no real script to speak of, a lot of the scenes were improvised on the spot. The result was a movie that terrified audiences worldwide to the core, with many convinced that the footage was real and that the entity in the movie could reach out beyond the screen. People actually walked out during early screenings because they were too scared to sit and watch the whole film. Steven Spielberg was also intrigued by the movie and after his company acquired the film, he took home a DVD copy of the movie. After watching it, his bedroom door locked itself from the inside and Spielberg had to call a locksmith to get out. He was so terrified by this experience that he returned the DVD the next day after having tossed it into a garbage bag.^[4]

6 Cloverfield – 2008

While Godzilla was the main inspiration for the monster in Cloverfield, its design was unique. It was also a water creature with a huge tail but was covered in parasites and slightly clumsy on its feet. The reason for the clumsiness was the fact that Clover was still a baby monster. Filming included the ‘found footage’ style and the result made for an extremely immersive movie. However, the continuous movement was too much for some movie-goers and many had to run out and go vomit in the nearest bathroom. Others complained of intense migraines. Some even experienced a temporary loss of balance. This resulted in verbal and visual warnings being posted by theatres so that audiences knew what they were letting themselves in for.^[5]

10 Horror Houses That Really Existed

5 Insidious – 2010

Movie critics had mostly positive things to say about the horror movie, Insidious, which is quite a feat for a movie starring a kid in a coma, desperate parents and a red-faced demon. Some of the scenes are genuinely creepy and there isn’t an overuse of jump-scares. The dad eventually figures out what exactly is happening to his son and he enters a place called The Further to rescue him. All the scenes in The Further were shot in the Herald Examiner building in Los Angeles. This building has somewhat of a creepy past as it used to house the newspaper that was first in covering one of the most terrifying murders that ever happened in LA: the Black Dahlia killing in 1947.^[6]

4 The Ring – 2002

Whenever The Ring is mentioned in conversation, it is almost impossible to think of the movie without picturing a little girl with black hair hanging over her face, crawling out of a TV set. The cursed video tape is almost secondary in people’s minds as the creepy Samara left a lasting impression on audiences in 2002. Also featured throughout the movie is a splendid red Japanese maple tree that was in fact a prop built from steel tubing and plaster. The tree was named Lucille in honor of Lucille Ball (because of her red hair). After a while however, the cast and crew of The Ring began to feel like the tree was as cursed as the videotape in the movie. No matter where they put it up, the wind blew it down. They erected the tree three times and each time the wind picked up to more than 60 miles per hour and knocked it over.^[7]

3 Scream – 1996

While most horror movie buffs would scoff at Scream, saying they weren’t scared at all while watching it, the movie and its subsequent sequels spawned one of the most iconic and recognizable killers in movie history: Ghostface. Kevin Williamson, best known for creating Dawson’s Creek, wrote the entire screenplay in three days. The opening scene of the movie hit very close to home as Williamson explained to CNN in 1998. He was watching the Barbara Walters special on the Gainesville murders when he heard a noise coming from inside his house. Freaked out, he searched through the house to see what might have caused the noise and happened upon an open window in the living room. He hadn’t noticed the window being open even after two days of being home night and day. This really scared him. He fetched a big knife from the kitchen and phoned one of his friends. The friend, David Blanchard, started asking him about scary movies which inspired Williamson to write the opening scene to Scream early the next morning. The Ghostface killer was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper, Danny Rolling, who murdered five students in four days in August 1990.^[8]

2 Halloween—1978

Speaking of iconic killers in movies, Michael Myers is right up there with the best of them. Myers started his killing spree at the age of 6 when he murdered his older sister, Judith. His attention then turned to his other sister, Laurie, who managed to escape him right up until 2018 and presumably beyond. The murderous character was created by John Carpenter after he visited a psychiatric ward with some of his psychology classmates. One of the patients they observed was a teenage boy who would stare ahead of him blankly without speaking. Carpenter used this experience as inspiration while co-writing the script for the film. The movie became very controversial at the time of its release with many people accusing the producers of trying to encourage people to identify with Michael Myers.^[9]

1 Carrie – 1976

A list of horror movies, in whatever form, wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of at least one adaptation of a classic Stephen King novel. Carrie was not only the first of King’s novels to be made into a movie, it was also his very first published horror story. (It was also John Travolta’s movie debut). Many were truly freaked out by Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Carrie White, while others felt the really frightening moment was at the end of the film when Carrie’s arm shoots out from below the ground of her destroyed house during Sue Snell’s dream. Sue then wakes up screaming. Art director, Jack Fisk, buried Spacek in a pit under a board covered in pumice stones for the filming of the final scene after she insisted on doing the scene herself. Spacek went all out to ensure the red ‘blood’ stains on her prom dress stayed consistent by sleeping in the gown for the three days it took to shoot the prom scene. She also made sure to stay in character by isolating herself from the rest of the cast whenever they weren’t shooting.^[10]

10 Crazy Theories About Popular Horror Movies

We all take our ability to travel for granted. You can drive from Boston to New York in 4 hours. That trip took early English immigrants 1-2 weeks. They had to ration out provisions just to survive the journey.

Now cars are everywhere, and most humans on Earth use them daily. They’ve become appliances- just bigger, faster hairdryers and toasters. But when a toaster acts up, you might get a crispy bagel; when something goes wrong with your car, you might get a crispy person.

Car accidents are all too common, thanks partly to how comfortable we’ve become inside them, and some accidents are often fatal. Whether it’s due to weather, driver error, or sheer bad luck, some accidents leave a trail of death in their wake. It can be scary, not just because of the tragedy, but because we could so easily be in the victims’ place. Here are ten fatal car accidents that may freak you out, whether from sheer carnage or just the bizarre way in which they happened.

10 Coalinga Crash

Though this first crash isn’t as big as others on this list, it is just as freaky. That is due to how little happened to cause so much suffering. On State Route 33 in Coalinga, California, on New Year’s Day 2021, a man driving a Dodge Journey struck a Ford F150 head-on. There was no inclement weather; the man had not been drinking, nor did he fall asleep at the wheel. He simply lost control for a few brief seconds, drifted into another lane, and struck the Ford.

The man in the Dodge died in the collision. Though built to hold six, the Ford had eight passengers- a mother and seven children, all siblings and cousins. This means at least two kids weren’t wearing seatbelts. Worst of all, the collision somehow caused the Ford to go up in flames, and the blaze is what killed all eight passengers. It only took one sober adult a moment of distraction and error to cause the death of nine people, including seven children.

9 Paul Walker

Paul Walker was an actor known primarily for his starring role in the Fast & the Furious franchise. The role was not a stretch for Walker; he was a car collector and enthusiast and raced cars semi-professionally. The man knew his way around a vehicle. That’s why it was so surprising when he died in a car crash.

Walker was a passenger when he died, though the driver was a man named Roger Rodas, who was also a professional racer and with whom Walker collaborated on many automotive endeavors. The two were semi-experts in handling performance cars. That, combined with the clear, sunny day at the time of the accident; the lack of substances in either man’s systems; and the fact that the road on which they died was well known to the men, makes it a bit strange that they crashed. Both died, with Walker in the middle of shooting Furious 7. And no, they were neither drifting nor drag-racing.

8 Carnage Alley

On September 3, 1999, on Ontario Highway 401, a sudden bout of fog was all that was required to cause an 87 car pileup that killed eight and injured another 45. The area relied on a local weather monitoring station to issue warnings for fog, rain, snow, etc. but for some reason, the station failed to detect that day’s fog bank.

The fog rolled in across the highway and reduced visibility to less than one meter, which caused the first collision between two semis. This created a chain reaction of collisions that ballooned to 87 vehicles, many of them aflame, which local police described as “a massive fireball.” The extent of the horror earned that stretch of highway the nickname “Carnage Alley.”

7 Stuck in Snow but Burned Alive

This story is hard to hear, as it somehow transforms routine, mundane behavior into a grisly death. In early February, a New Jersey man was driving down a snowy road when the conditions caused him to slide off the road into a shallow embankment. It was a relatively slow, non-violent accident, and the man was completely unhurt. He began rocking the car back and forth and revving his engine to free it from the snow, often the norm in that situation.

Police arrived on the scene and told the man to stop trying to free the car, that it was no use. Instead, they told him to wait for a tow truck to arrive. The man ignored their advice, continued revving the engine, and the car suddenly erupted in flames. The man was unable to free himself from the vehicle, and the sudden blaze killed him. A simple strategy for dislodging a car from the snow ended in a horrific case of someone burned alive.

6 Head Stuck

23-year-old Victoria Strauss died in a unique and terrifying way. She was leaving a parking garage in her car and stopped at the kiosk to pay for her time parked. Security camera footage shows that Strauss accidentally dropped her credit card while attempting to pay, and so opened her door and leaned down to the ground to pick it up.

It was then that she accidentally pressed her car’s gas pedal with her foot while stretching down, causing the vehicle to lurch forward. When her body was found, around six hours later, her head was pinned between the side of her car and the payment kiosk. The sudden trauma to her head killed her. A promising graduate student in social work, Strauss died in the most random, unpredictable accident imaginable.

5 Macho Man Randy Savage

This accident involved one death, and luckily also includes one survivor. What makes it freaky is that the crash itself didn’t kill anyone, and no one- driver or passenger- was at fault. Macho Man Randy Savage was a professional wrestler from the 80s and is one of the all-time greats. His popularity and impact on the industry were massive. On the morning of May 20, 2011, Savage was driving his Jeep with his wife in the passenger seat. Suddenly, he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a tree. Savage died, his wife survived.

The crash did not kill him. Unbeknownst to Savage, he had had advanced coronary artery disease. On that morning, the disease caused him to have a heart attack while driving, which caused him to lose control. The crash itself caused almost no damage to either Savage or his wife; it was an unknown, underlying health issue that was the true culprit. It is freaky to know that this situation is plausible for anyone at any time.

4 Found Hanging from Freeway Sign

On the Monday of October 30, 2015, 20-year-old Richard Pananian was in a hurry. Driving down the 5 Freeway in Los Angeles, California, Pananian was speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, and illegally passing cars on the right shoulder of the highway. Pananian then clipped the back of a Ford F150, spun out of control, and rolled towards an embankment.

The car’s momentum carried it up the embankment until it suddenly stopped, causing Pananian to be ejected from the vehicle. He flew some twenty feet into the air and smacked into an exit ramp sign. His lifeless body came to rest on the sign and hung there, serving as a tragic, grisly reminder of the dangers of unsafe driving until firefighters were able to bring his body down two hours later.

3 Anton Yelchin

Anton Yelchin was a young actor, best known for his portrayal of Pavel Chekov, an engineer aboard the Enterprise in J. J. Abram’s Star Trek reboots. On June 18, 2016, Yelchin failed to arrive at a rehearsal and friends went to his house to find them.

Find him they did. Yelchin was dead, his body pinned between his Jeep and one of his gateposts. Police determined that Yelchin had driven his Jeep part of the way from his gate to his house and gotten out to lock the gate or check his mail. The Jeep then rolled backward and struck him, pinning him between it and the gatepost. He died from the collision, and in doing so became a tragic member of Hollywood’s 27 Club.

2 Carrollton Bus Crash

The Carrollton bus collision is an accident that famously led to renewed support for- and created the future president of- MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. On the night of May 14, 1988, on Interstate 71 in Kentucky, a pickup truck collided with a school bus filled with 66 members of a church youth group. The group had visited a theme park that day and were on their way home.

Larry Wayne Mahoney had been drinking heavily and at the time of the accident, he was driving the wrong way on the highway. Though the collision itself did little damage to the bus, it did cause the bus to erupt in flames. The many passengers scrambled to escape through the rear of the bus, but in the chaos, many were unlucky. The bus driver and 26 children burned to death in the bus, and 34 more children were injured. Mahoney served less than ten years in prison, to the outrage of many.

1 1955 Le Mans disaster

Called “the worst motorsports accident in history” and one of the deadliest vehicular accidents of all time, the Le Mans disaster is an almost unimaginable tragedy. On June 11, 1955, during the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. The specifics of the crash have been detailed again and again, broken down into second-by-second steps, but all that is important here is that two race cars collided, sending one into a crowd of spectators.

Pieces of the car broke apart and flew into the crowd, killing an astounding 83 people and injuring as many as 178 others. One particular piece of ghoulish detail is that the car’s hood, having detached from the car’s body, flew off into the crowd, spinning. It was precisely at neck level and sped along, “decapitating tightly jammed spectators like a guillotine.”

Death is an eternal truth, whoever is born on this earth must abandon everything one day and embrace death. You must have thought at some point that what happens after death, unfortunately, no one has any concrete answer to this question. Yes, it is definitely that scientists from all over the world are engaged in finding answers to this at their level. In recent decades Scientists from all over the world have given some theories which are in themselves astonishing and amazing. So, today we will look into 10 Freaky and bizarre theories of what awaits us after the great beyond.

10. You will be excreted.

A theory that has been around for decades now says that the whole universe is actually one giant Brain of some Higher species. It can be a single brain or multiple brains in some containers. If we believe this theory, then our solar system is nothing but a brain cell. And we humans are insignificant parts of this cell. For us, our thousands of millions of years of history has happened in less than even 1 second for that huge brain.

Well, let us see what it says about our life after death. What happens to our own dead cells? They are sloughed off and discarded. If we are an insignificant part of a huge mind, then something similar will happen to us. That is, when we die, the universe will leave our consciousness where it dumps its filth. Oh, Gross. I know that this theory is a bit strange and it is also a bit difficult to digest but it is only because we do not know all the things about it.

This just made my life meaningless.

9. You Enter the Cosmic Consciousness.

What is life? It is very important to know the answer to this question. We know that we are alive and are completely controlling ourselves with our minds. Our brain uses only 20 watts of power for this. This power is so low that most of the light bulbs use more power than that. So far, biologists have not been able to fully tell how our brain does everything so correctly. Consciousness is our specialty, but we do not know where it comes from. And where does it disappear after our death? According to the Orchestrated objective reduction theory of the mind of Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, Consciousness depends on biologically ‘orchestrated’ coherent quantum processes in collections of microtubules within brain neurons. But these brain cells do not make it, they become one of its means.

According to this theory, you can think of this universe as a sea of consciousness. The consciousness that exists in humans comes from here and after our death, it returns back. Everything in the universe is connected to consciousness. You can understand it this way, If you consider a sea to be the consciousness of the universe, our consciousness is a wave. It stays on the ground for a while and returns back. So the conclusion is that after our death, our consciousness goes back to the universe where it can stay forever, or it can go back to another body for some time.

So Our Consciousness is deep-rooted in the universe, It is intrinsically confusing.

8. Being human is just one level.

According to the concept of reincarnation, after our death, our soul enters a new body, So that you are born again. Dr. Ian Stevenson has researched incarnation and investigated hundreds of cases of children who claim to have previous lives. He was an academic psychiatrist and had founded the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia. Sometimes he refers to incarnation as “survival of personality after death”. He believes along with heredity and environment, it can offer a possible explanation of many personality traits including phobias. But none of the claims have been proven true.

Our Theory is a bit different from normally what Asians believe and Western people disagree.

When this theory originated, people did not know much about the complex and mysterious nature of the universe. That is why they only imagined that our soul can only reincarnate on earth in a different body. What if your soul is reincarnated in some other section of this universe? What if your soul does not enter a new body instead take a form we do not know about. According to this theory, our Souls/consciousness can go anywhere in the universe. This means you can again be a human or some cool alien or some trivial insect or something we do not understand yet. We actually cannot imagine what we will be after our death in human form.

7. The Universe Ends.

Can you prove that this world and universe really exist? You most likely will say yes and give evidence to the things and people around you. But According to the theory of solipsism, nothing exists outside the mind and your brain. What you see and hear is true for you, but you can never prove that the people around you really exist. Let us take the example of GTA 5. In this game, when you are in a particular place everything around you is working correctly. People nearby are also present there and there is nothing odd for you. But what about the places where you are not present? Actually, at that time those places do not exist.

If you believe this theory, you are the only creature in the universe. So after your death, the existence of the universe ceases. That means all those people you know, love also cease to exist. All the things and people are merely the projection of your subconscious mind.

So Look again at the world and stop complaining about meaningless things. After all, you have created all this.

6. Life starts over again

You must have felt this at some point in your life. That a place or person seems to be known to you rather you have never been to that place before or have never met that person before. We call this déjà-vu. What if your whole is a déjà vu? That means your life is repeating itself again and again? Because of which it seems that you may have known that place or that person. This can happen in two ways. First: Your life is like a film that repeats itself countless times. Second: Your life is repeated but every time you have better control over it.

This is very much like the movie Groundhog Day. Obviously, there is some notable difference, here life starts again after we die rather than after a day and you gain very much less control as compared to the movie. So, Better luck next time bro. We are living a life (which sucks), god knows how many times, without even knowing it is all a déjà-vu.

Congratulations, you are stuck in a loop.

5. The Dreamer wakes up

Although this may sound like some concocted stories of the ’80s, this is completely possible that our life is nothing but a dream of some creature. You all must have dreamed. Dreams look so real that it is only after we wake, we realize that we were dreaming. We lose the grasp of what’s real what is a dream. Dreams are the product of our own subconscious mind so it can be debated that they, in fact, are real. Gregg Levoy, author of Vital Signs: The Nature and Nurture of Passion thinks so. And Some real-life world-famous ideas like Google, Theory of relativity, the first periodic table, etc. were first experienced in dreams. So we can say that dreams can be very real.

So it is possible that after our death, we wake up in the ‘real’ world. Pretty much like Inception. Now the question arises that what happens when the creature who is dreaming dies? There is no answer to this question for the time being. We do not know that whom we are talking about waking up from sleep is in human form or some soul or something else we know nothing about.

Oh God! There is nothing we know for sure.

4. You get Re-programmed.

According to this theory, we live in a computer simulation. This is the most widespread in this list. You have probably heard of this before. It is first proposed by an Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. It argues that either all intelligent species go extinct before able to create ancestor simulation or do not bother to create one because of some reason. Or we are certainly living in a simulation. If we are living in an ancestor simulation, our Consciousness is programmed. We are just a paltry character in the simulation.

So when we die, our programmer can send us to a different space and time in the simulation after deleting your memories. It is very easy for them as they have our base code, they just need to make some adjustments. It is very hard to predict what those programmers will do. There is a whole lot of possibilities that they can do. Sounds Fun?

Movies like The Matrix and The thirteenth floor are based on this hypothesis. Of course, you can cut out the concoctions from the movies. Probably. I mean they are very much less likely but Who knows?

3. Our Consciousness is Unreal.

This theory is also related to the simulation hypothesis. Do not say, seriously 2 theories on the same hypothesis! Elon Musk Thinks there is a billion to one chance we are living in the ‘real’ world. It is plausible to the hilt.

But this aspect is much Darker. As your ‘Consciousness’ is just programming we do not have a free will of our own. We are acting just like we are coded. They can run or delete your Code anytime they want. It is possible that they have put your code last time when you closed your eyes. All your memories were put in you while you were sleeping last night. And now you think you have been this person for years although it is just a few hours. Similarly, they can change or delete your code next time when you go to sleep. They can make you an entirely different person or just ‘delete’ you from the simulation as per their needs.

This is very much like Westworld. Here, a simulated world is created and persons are designed with certain roles assigned to them. All of us add up to some bigger stories. They can change the role of any person as per their need by just filling the code with new memories of a different place and maybe even time. Everything you think you are is just an illusion.

So, We are nothing but a bunch of 0’s and 1’s And we do everything as we are programmed.

At least we can rejoice that our seemingly meaningless life adds up to something of use for our creators. Or why would they create us in the first place?

2. Death is an illusion.

Unlike other creatures of the earth, human beings are the only creature that has knowledge of time. We know that Time only moves forward in the form of days, months or years. But is this really what time is? The understanding of time that we have is created by humans. Whatever we think of time can very possibly be wrong. We believe that time always moves like a stream of a river. It is not necessary that the Universe also operates the way we think time works.

The past or the future exists in the universe along with the present, only we cannot see it. Imagine, Reality is a film strip and consciousness is the projecting light which makes us see the film. Until a frame comes in front of the light, we cannot see it. But its existence cannot be denied. Time and Reality also work in the same way. We cannot see the past or future, but they exist simultaneously with the present. We are bound by three-dimensional space-time. So, How all this connect to death? Well, you never die. Death is merely an illusion. You always exist in the frames where you are alive because you can’t exist in the frames where you are dead. It’s just that other people think you are dead because this does not hinder ‘their’ existence.

I know this theory is confusing, but it is worth it. Finally, a non-nihilist theory.

1. Anything is possible.

We cannot say for sure anything about life after death. According to the many-worlds interpretation theory, almost infinite realities exist. This massive number of parallel universes contains every possible thing you can think of. There is a universe where you are a billionaire or one in which Hillary won or one in which I am reading this article written by you.

So anything is possible after death in some universe. There is a universe where Reincarnation happens or one where heaven and hell are actually there. There is a universe where we turn into Zombies after death or one in which we simply die. All the above theories are possible in some parallel universe. We just do not know in what universe we exist Or maybe it is yet to be determined. You may end in the universe/theory you believe in. If you believe in The solipsism theory, your Universe will end after your Death. I mean, Anything is Possible.

So, let your creativity flow out and think of different theories after death from your own and tell in the comments. Because there exists a universe for everything we can think of.

Author’s Name: Aniket Jha

Nearly every ancient polytheistic culture had gods of the weather. Most of us are aware of Thor, the god of thunder, but there were gods of the wind and rain and lightning and more throughout North and South America, Africa and Asia. Weather has always fascinated and confused mankind. And even today, when we can explain it all with science rather than the whims of all-powerful beings, there are still phenomena that pop up every so often to baffle the best of us, some of it not strictly weather at all.  So with that in mind, let’s check out 10 of the freakiest weather phenomena in the world.

10. The Kentucky Meat Shower

Rest assured, it does not routinely rain meat anywhere in Kentucky. But that doesn’t mean it never happened. And when you learn the whole story, you’ll wish it just was meat rain because that’s far less disgusting than the truth of this perplexing event.

There was a day back in 1876 when the people of Olympia Springs were treated to a show of meat from the heavens that was said to be fairly substantial in size. One witness described it as a “horse wagon full” which was not a literal measurement, just an 1876 way of saying “a lot.” It covered a space 100 yards by 50 yards. 

So the people came out to see the meat, which fell in small chunks and scraps. A few brave and/or foolish souls opted to taste test the meat as well to see if they could figure out what it was. 

The meat was sent for analysis and while most locals lost interest, one scientist did come up with an explanation. The meat was from vultures. Which is to say they ate it and then, as they took flight, they vomited it across the town. 

Turns out vultures, when panicked, will throw up everywhere. This makes them lighter and allows for a quicker getaway. Based on the condition of the meat, the theory fits the details. 

9. Watermelon Snow

Watermelon snow sounds like it should be delicious, but we recommend not putting it in your mouth should you ever see it. It’s less of a tasty, refreshing treat than it is snow laced with algae called Chlamydomonas nivalis. Unlike most algae, which is happy to grow in stagnant water or ponds, this kind just likes snow. And while technically you can survive eating small quantities of it, you’ll probably get diarrhea for your troubles. 

It’s usually what’s known as a summer snow algae, meaning it flourishes in snow that stays in high altitude places into the summer months when lower altitude regions are enjoying warmer weather. It forms reddish pink streaks or pockets through the snow that can be mistaken for blood. The red part actually protects the algae from UV radiation.

8. Star Jelly

There’s a good chance you could market a product called Star Jelly as a breakfast food, but that’s neither here nor there. In real life, star jelly owes its origins to a potential cornucopia of sources thanks to the fact humans tend to lump mysterious slime all into the same category. 

While folklore suggested it fell from the sky (hence the name), the fact is star jelly may come from numerous places and some of it could potentially be dangerous. It may be as simple as the oviducts of frogs or gelatinous, aquatic Bryozoa clustered together. Some times of fungus may form into jelly-like clusters, especially if they’re rotting, and even slime molds fit the bill.

7. Atmospheric Rivers and Lakes

A relatively new discovery, atmospheric lakes and rivers are very much like what they sound like. The concept of atmospheric rivers is a little older than lakes and they are pretty remarkable. Able to reach lengths of 1000 miles while stretching 400 miles across, an atmospheric river is a stream of water vapor in the atmosphere that can dump a heck of a lot of water when they come down. Up to the equivalent of 25 Mississippi rivers. If that’s a little too intense for you, then there’s the more recently discovered atmospheric lake. 

Similar to an atmospheric river but not as fast moving, an atmospheric lake is a vast pool of water vapor in the clouds. It is, in effect, a lake in the sky. Unlike the river, which sounds very intense, an atmospheric lake discovered over the Indian Ocean was believed to have enough water held within it to create a puddle 620 miles wide, but only a couple of inches deep. They move in areas with almost no wind at all and form in equatorial regions near coastal areas. They can also last nearly a week as they slowly float along, bringing rains to often very dry and arid places.

6. Sun Dogs

Anything with a name like a sun dog has to be at least a little bit cool and luckily this rare phenomenon really is. You have to be very lucky to find a sun dog as conditions need to be exact. The right angle is needed, in this case 22 degrees. There have to be ice crystals in the atmosphere inside of cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. If the clouds and you, the viewer, are in the right position, then what you get is a sun dog or mock sun.

The effect of a sun dog is that the sun looks to be surrounded by a massive halo of light and, on either side of it at the halo’s edge, another sun is visible. Depending on how it’s viewed, they can appear to have spikes or coronas coming off of them.  So three suns together, with the other two often appearing a little smaller than the actual sun overall.

5. Condo Fog

Man made climate change is a hotly debated topic these days, but if you still weren’t sure that humans can affect the weather, then take a look at condo fog for the most visual example of this that you’ll ever find. 

Famously occurring in Panama City, Florida, condo fog is what happens when hot, moist air hits a man-made wall of condominiums. It rolls in off the Gulf of Mexico and then, breaking against the wall of apartments, it rises into the air and cools down, creating a wave of white fog. 

Air cools by about one degree celsius for every 100 meters of altitude it gains. The condos forced the air up about 50 meters to get past them, but that half degree temperature drop was enough to make it condense into clouds. Once it hurdles the building, the temperature changes back and the clouds evaporate, leaving the condos and just the condos enshrouded in mist. 

Though it’s interesting to see it happening over buildings, it’s very similar to the phenomenon that leaves mountain peaks covered in fog as well. We just accept it as more normal when we see it on mountains and not buildings along the coast. 

4. Steam Devils

A dust devil is what happens when a patch of dry ground heats up more than the ground around it and the rising air begins to circulate like a sort of weak tornado, bringing the dust up off the ground with it. It’s not the most common phenomena but many of us have at least heard of it. It’s not the only weather devil out there, though. The much rarer but equally stygian steam devil is in some ways the opposite of its dusty cousin, occurring over bodies of water or damp ground rather than dusty patches of land. They’ve been observed forming on frosty grass when the sun hits it and begins to warm the frozen surface to create the temperature difference needed. 

Like a dust devil, it’s formed when conflicting air temperatures create a vortex. In this case, the water on which a steam devil forms is typically warm when a blast of colder air reaches it. The warm, moist air from the water rises into the cold air and begins to rotate, drawing up water vapor from below. They usually don’t grow very tall, often just a couple of meters in height. 

3. Lluvia de Pecas

Animal rain is a weird phenomenon to be sure, but there’s so many articles on it these days that it’s easy to stumble on explanations. Typically, the reason things like fish and frogs fall from the sky is related to waterspouts sucking animals out of a body of water and displacing them elsewhere or just flash floods, making it look like they fell after a storm. But the fish rain known as lluvia de pecas in Yoro, Honduras, works a little differently.

Yoro has the distinction of enjoying regular fish rain. It happens once or twice a year and has been witnessed by teams from places like National Geographic. Or, at least, in part it has. They couldn’t confirm the fish falling from the sky, but they did see fish on the ground. 

The small, silvery fish that appear are not a local species. They also appear to be blind. That has led some to speculate that they populate an underground river and, during particularly violent storms, they are forced to the surface during floods and left on the ground. This would account for why they are always in the same place rather than all over, such as if a waterspout was depositing them.

2. Blackbird Shower

History is riddled with tales of animals falling from the sky. The lluvia de pecas is just one example of many. It rains frogs and also tadpoles. Spiders have been known to fall like rain and maggots, too. And in 2022, hundreds of yellow-headed blackbirds fell from the sky over Chihuahua, Mexico. 

Unlike many of the animal rain events that have happened in the past, the blackbird incident was caught on camera, so you can see it happen firsthand and it’s pretty dramatic. The birds crash like someone dropped them by the bucket load and sadly, many of them didn’t survive the fall. But why did it happen in the first place? Frogs at least have an excuse for falling when they get up into the air, but birds can fly. 

Though it’s just a theory, the most plausible explanation seems to be that the birds were “flushed,” which is to say a large, predatory bird likely swooped at the flock and, in a panic, they all dove as fast as their little wings could carry them. The result was an ill-timed escape that saw too many hit the ground too fast.

1. The Chi’yang Event 

Weather can be terrifying and deadly. It’s said that the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 killed between 8,000 and 12,000 people. In 1970, the Bhola cyclone may have killed as many as 500,000 people. Around 20 people per year are killed by lightning in the United States. And a few people have even been killed by hail. But what about some other devastation from the sky? How deadly is it when it rains fire?

In the year 1490, the people of Ch’ing-yang, China, were witness to what is now believed to be an exploding asteroid. At the time, however, it was considered a rain of rocks peppering the countryside with death and destruction.

It’s believed at least 10,000 people died in the event. The stones that fell were said to weigh between 1 and 1.5 kilograms. In more understandable terms, some were supposed to be the size of water chestnuts while others were the size of goose eggs. But they were also falling from space and their speed must have been incredible.

Historical reports of the incident are considered to be reliable and there is precedent for objects breaking into many thousands of pieces, which could explain the death toll if it happened in a populated area.