Think guns are the only way to hunt? Think again. Since ancient times humans, have devised bizarre methods to get their prey. Some are used on land, others on water. Some are used to get meat, others for pest eradication.

10Kleptoparisitism

Stealing meat from lions seems like a poor choice. However, the Mbororo herdsmen of Cameroon have done it for centuries. They use flaming sticks to chase big cats from kills. The technique is common among large predators but otherwise little documented in man.

With lions growing increasingly wary of people, kleptoparistism has become easier for humans. Reports from Cameroon, Uganda, and Tanzania indicate the practice is on the upswing. This is bad news for big cats. They expend tremendous energy bringing down prey. If their sustenance is stolen, it can have a massive impact on survival rates. Some fear human kleptoparisitism might eradicate entire lion populations.

9Trout Tickling

It might sound like a euphemism, but trout tickling is an ancient way to get a free dinner. This fishing technique requires no equipment, just stealth. You approach a likely trout hole from downstream. Lie stomach-down on the bank. Reach into the water. Once you feel a trout, tickle the belly as you move tail-to-head to lull the fish. When you reach the head, squeeze and yank the fish out of the water.

For centuries, this technique has been popular among Europe’s poor. They could not afford equipment or pay to fish private land. It is generally considered a form of poaching. Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, the first notable European jazz musician, was known as an expert trout tickler. Perhaps the dexterity required to play stringed instruments translates to trout tickling.

8Golden Eagle Hunting

The Burkitshi are members of Mongolia’s ethnic Khazakh minority that use golden eagles to stalk prey. The hunters ride horseback with these enormous raptors perched on their arms as they scour the High Altai Mountains in search of foxes.

The bond between hunter and bird goes deep. The hunters capture eagles live. Four-year-old birds are ideal. At this age, they have developed hunting skills yet are still malleable enough to be trained. Only females are used. Their wingspan is larger and they are more ferocious than males. The eagles are domesticated, fed by hand, and even sleep with their captors. The golden eagles can live up to 30 years, but the hunters release them after 10. The birds die wild.

Golden eagle hunting will soon be extinct. The Bukitshi are disappearing. There are believed to only be 50 or 60 left practicing this ancient nomadic lifestyle.

7Aboriginal Fire Hunting

The Martu people of Australia’s Western Desert are known for using fire to hunt lizards. The result has actually benefited the wildlife of the Outback. The technique creates a small patchwork of cleared land—perfect habitat for bush critters.

Goanna are the Martu’s most valuable resource. These burrowing lizards make up 40 percent of their caloric intake. The Martu technique of goanna hunting is thousands of years old. In winter, the lizards hibernate. Women cover burrow entrances and set the surrounding grass ablaze. Without this technique, the brush becomes overgrown. Unchecked growth is perfect fodder for lightning fires, which can be devastating to mammalian habitat. The practice is such an integral part of Martu culture that their language has a word for every stage of the post fire vegetation growth.

6Rat Hunting With Dogs

Rat hunting involves an incredible amount of coordination for such a small quarry. Reports from mid-19th-century London describe using terriers and ferrets in tandem to curb the city’s monstrous infestation. The ferrets chased the rats out of their holes, and the dogs dealt the deathblow. Many canine breeds we now consider lapdogs were specifically developed to hunt vermin.

New York has turned to traditional methods to help curb its abundance of rats. Specially trained Jack Russells, fox terriers, and dachshunds and their owners prowl the shadows in search of vermin. This is hunting for extermination. One camp views this as a time-honored tradition. Animal rights activists view it as cruelty. It’s hard to say this is less humane than poisoning, which leaves rats fatally ill for hours. What’s more, these poisoned rats pass toxins on to anything that eats them.

5Persistence Hunting

Most experts believe we fed our rapidly developing brains first as scavengers and then as endurance runners. Our upright posture and naked skin with sweat glands are designed for rapid cooling. Our large butt muscles and elastic tendons allow us to run much more efficiently than other animals. Humans are ungainly creatures, but there is no animal in the world that can match our stamina.

Persistence hunting is still practiced by the Kalahari Bushmen of Botswana and the Raramuri people of northern Mexico. Modern fitness enthusiasts have also started to dabble with this ancient technique. Many of these fit folk are vegetarians. They are more interested in the theoretical applications than a means of sustenance.

4Knife Hunting Wild Boar

Hawaii is a paradise in jeopardy. Invasive species threaten to destroy the island’s fragile ecosystem, and there is no more destructive species than wild boar. There is only one solace: They are delicious.

People in Hawaii hunt these surly beasts with knives. The technique involves stalking the hogs, chasing them down with dogs, and then pouncing for the fatal stab. Knives are considered both more traditional and safer than bullets on a crowded island.

Wild boar are not just a problem in Hawaii. They either are, or soon will be, a major environmental disaster in every state in the lower 48. Some folks have resort to using explosives. This is not hunting. It is extermination—explosives destroy the meat.

3Octopus Pots

Octopus are incredibly smart and incredibly delicious. They have the most complex brain of any invertebrate but are traditionally caught using a simple technique. The standard way of fishing for octopus is using pots. The vessels are lowered to the sea floor and anchored. The octopus crawls into the pot, thinking it has found a new home. The fisherman drags up the pot with the octopus, which rarely try to escape. The technique does not even require bait. It is almost too simple.

Potting octopus has changed little over millennia. The vessels were traditionally made of terracotta. Now, most are plastic. The technique is almost universal around the globe. Ancient Greeks used octopus pots, and so do modern fisherman from Spain to Japan.

2Gum Lime Sticks

Poachers in Cyprus are decimating the songbird population. Their hunting technique is simple and ancient. They use lime sticks covered in ultra-sticky gum derived from Syrian plums. The sticks are placed in the inviting lower branches of juniper trees. Foraging birds become ensnared.

The quarry of the traditional Cypriot bird hunters is blackcaps, a common European wren considered an island delicacy. The problem with the gum-stick technique is that there is tremendous by-catch of endangered species—like the spotted flycatcher. There are many organizations and volunteers working to stop the songbird slaughter. The challenge is daunting. Bird hunting is an ancient part of Cypriot culture and there is no shortage of poachers. The lime sticks do tremendous damage to the birds. They are often fatally wounded in the rescue process.

1Flounder Tramping

Flounders are a flat fish known for their white flakey flesh. Their low profile and penchant for crabs often means they are found in the shallows around estuaries. Ingenious hunters have found out how to harvest this delicious fish with a diabolically simple technique: They step on them.

Flounder tramping is a traditional fishing technique used in southwestern Scotland for centuries. The process is simple. You walk along the mud flats until you step on a flounder. At this point, a fight against instinct occurs. Every impulse tells you to remove your foot from the fish. However, you must stand firm, or the quarry will escape. Some trampers also employ a stick, which they use behind their shuffling feet.

On the first Saturday of August, the small town of Palnackie, Scotland, hosts the World Flounder Tramping Competition. The fun is broadcast throughout the UK and Australia.

+Further Reading

Read on for more from the animal kingdom!

10 Mysterious Trips Into The Wilderness That Went Horribly Wrong
8 Endangered Species Still Hunted
Top 10 Worst Man Eaters In History
10 Deadly Tricksters of the Animal World

Abraham Rinquist is the executive director of the Winooski, Vermont branch of the Helen Hartness Flanders Folklore Society. He is the co-author of Codex Exotica and Song-Catcher: The Adventures of Blackwater Jukebox.

A recent opinion poll suggested that as many as 45% of Americans believe in ghosts or spirits of some kind. Certainly, people have been telling each other ghost stories since the dawn of time. We seem to have a natural inclination to believe that there is a shadow world in which departed loved ones, repentant sinners, or those who have a message for us dwell.

Perhaps this belief simply shows that we need an explanation for everything. When we lived in small groups of vulnerable hunter-gatherers, a sound in the trees at night might mean danger. Something caused it. But what? The noise might be nothing important, or it might be a predator. For survival, it’s better to assume that it could be something dangerous. Add a dash of imagination, and it becomes easy to assume something paranormal exists.

Here are ten explanations for the “creepiest” ghost-hunting encounters we found on YouTube.

Related: Top 10 Ghost Towns Inside Or Near Famous Cities

10 Weird Worley

The hospital in Worley opened in 1928 and closed in the ’70s when it ran out of funds. In 2002, a woman named Carol Peet bought it intending to turn the building into a ministry center. She aimed to create a place where vulnerable individuals could learn life skills. For some reason, the project never came to fruition, but Peet spent a lot of time at the building and said she never saw anything strange.

In our video, the new owner, Chelsea, has a different opinion. Her contractor says that there are demons behind the walls. Notice that the investigator sees a shape on his thermal image camera. He calls the shape “a figure,” this is a little misleading as it’s not a figure—it’s simply a shape. Dust in the air, moved by a draft, has high emissivity and can show up on a thermal imager as the shape we see.

The rest of the video does beg some questions. Is anybody there?

9 Meowwww

In our next video, a ghost hunting expert visited the Ancient Ram Inn in Wotton, Gloucestershire, England. The house is spooky enough—in fact, it looks like a movie set for a film about a haunted house.

The investigators swap observations that have no objective value. One of them says that he hears a cat. Probably the best explanation for hearing a cat is that there is a cat. After all, if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.

A serious investigation into the paranormal should have to meet higher standards than what is shown in the video. Unfortunately, many similar videos play on our imagination at the expense of rigorous research.

8 Mom, Are You Here?

Our next haunting has the house owner comforted that his deceased mother is still around and fulfilling her last promise to “always look over him.” After the investigation, the owner is no longer scared and deals with the fact of his mother’s presence calmly and with humor.

Naturally, we should want to believe that our departed loved ones are still with us in some way. But does this sentiment lead us to believe that they certainly are? The sound on the tape is not clear and is very brief. Could it be that the son is hearing what he wants to hear?

7 A Shocking Encounter

Land of mists and long winter nights, Scotland has a long history of paranormal phenomena. With typical good humor, our investigators here are using sophisticated equipment to track down Archie, the ghost.

One of the investigators reports that something (Archie?) touched him on the arm, a touch that he describes as being like an electric shock. Could this be simply a nervous reaction to the spooky surroundings? Or maybe wishful thinking?

Certainly, the building looks like an ideal candidate for a ghost haunting.

6 Hauntings x 3

One of the investigators here makes an interesting observation. He says that a place might be haunted, as we would expect, but also a person might be haunted or an object. You might have, he says, “a creepy teddy bear,” or I instantly think of dolls. Yikes.

The three possibilities have different qualities:

1. The Location: A ghost has a special attachment to a place. Once you leave the place, you leave the ghost behind.
2. The Person: A ghost uses a real person as a vehicle. Interestingly, a location can be haunted by good or bad spirits, but a person is usually haunted only by the bad.
3. The Item: An object must have had special significance for the departed. Though, it’s difficult to imagine how a ghost could haunt an inanimate object.

And how can we really know? Sometimes, people, places, and things are simply… people, places, and things.

5 Flicking Streetlights

In this piece, our guide takes us to a haunted town. One of the first events the guide films is a streetlight that flickers before it returns to normal. To be fair, the narrator immediately says that he doesn’t know whether this was paranormal. Probably not. It was simply a flickering streetlight.

This shows that people can be predisposed to interpret evidence as they wish to. It is a sort of confirmation bias where you give more credence to evidence that supports your view than to evidence that might contradict it. In other words, someone who believes in ghosts will readily believe that a flickering light is evidence of paranormal activity. The city maintenance department would be more likely to consider a faulty connection first.

4 Prisoner Ghosts

Well, if they’re looking for ghosts, any evidence is hidden by the fact that the investigators in this video spend a lot of time spoofing each other. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with this, but it can obscure any serious purpose behind their investigation.

The Ohio State Penitentiary defiantly looks the part of hosting ghost hauntings. The word “creepy” often pops up in these videos, and here we find a building that deserves the term. One wonders why this penitentiary hasn’t been converted or demolished.

3 The Willow Weep House

“If it wasn’t evil, it wouldn’t be hurting people,” says the owner of Willows Weep, a house that some say is the most haunted place in America. Whoever built this unassuming house in 1890 constructed it in the shape of an inverted cross. Our narrator, William Shatner, signs off by asking, “Was Willows Weep really built to attract evil spirits?” and asks himself why anyone would want to do this. The answer he offers is that perhaps the idea was to entrap the visiting demons.

The house owner is convinced that there is something inside the place. She points to four suicides and three poisonings that have happened during its history and adds that she and her son had accidents while they were doing some renovation work. Hmm, accidents while renovating. I’ve never heard of that happening. *eye roll*

Without more evidence, we might be tempted to believe that this is a case of having expectations fulfilled. The owner’s comment, “If it wasn’t evil..” presupposes that there is an “it” there.

2 School Is in Session

For this investigation, why the investigative team included four ballerinas is a mystery to me. Their role seemed to be to look decorative and squeal whenever necessary. The rest of the team seems to prep the girls and lead them to expect that this old reformatory school must be haunted.

We’ll leave the ballerinas who don’t seem to add much ghost-hunting expertise alone. But everything else is here. A dark, abandoned place, the word “creepy,” and the essential EMF meter. Why an electro-magnetic field necessarily means that there are ghosts around is a mystery. But these meters seem sufficient for many to believe that paranormal activity exists. (On Amazon, you can buy a meter specifically advertised as a ghost-hunting device.)

The whole atmosphere the narrator creates leads the team to presuppose that there are phantoms in the school. His repetition that nothing is faked is no doubt truthful but irrelevant.

1 Hollywood Hotel Hauntings

I find this one a little difficult to explain away. We will have to assume that the hotel guests are acting in good faith and are not trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

To start, there are scientific explanations of how an ouija board works that rule out the occult (it’s called the ideomotor effect if you want to find out more). But I can’t find an easy explanation for the voice heard in the video. I suppose that even a cynic like myself will have to accept that some things are not easily explained away.

In most of the videos on our list, the viewer can explain most of the phenomena—you just have to watch them with a skeptical frame of mind. Most of these videos lead you to jump to a conclusion and believe what you are expected to believe.

This last video seems a little different; the setting is not “creepy”—it’s a well-lit, modern hotel room in Los Angeles, California. Yet, the history of the Roosevelt Hotel is sinister and full of haunting ghost stories. I’ll just wait for more definitive evidence, I guess.