WEIRD OR WHAT? Freaks of Nature

SyFy - Original Air Date: 5/14/2013

In 1978, a weird glowing ball of light appeared to a boy in Bell Island, Newfoundland, before vanishing.  Other people on Bell Island reported strange electromagnetic effects from the light, including shock waves and exploding fuses and TVs, and  3 holes "drilled" in the ground.  It was like a bomb had gone off, without a bomb.  The RCMP concluded it was lightning, but some people claim that three men from Los Alamos Lab (in the US) came and questioned witnesses.  Journalist Brian Dunning believes it was part of a series of booms at the time and was likely caused by overflight by the Concorde Super-Sonic Transport passenger plane -- a new phenomenon at the time.  Engineering professor Karl Stephan thinks it might have been caused by a super lightning bolt - a positive-charged freak of nature.  (Most lightning is negatively charged.)  Superbolts usually occur in the upper atmosphere over oceans, but can cause severe damage on the ground.  He thinks it could also have caused ball lighting (seen by the boy), which is so incredibly rare it can't effectively be studied.  One researcher, though, believes the effect was caused by accidental EMF build up caused by a Soviet early warning system called the "Woodpecker Signal."

Does a deadly time-bending fog haunt Lake Michigan?  One woman reports a series of disorienting events, including a boat spinning around and "losing" two hours.  One man calls it "electronic fog," and believes it can magnetically attach to a vessel and disorient both people and instruments.  He thinks it may be associated with freak lighting storms.  But Dr. Donadrian Rice believes the explanation is much simpler: hallucinations caused by disorientation, and the time loss is merely a result of that and normal human perception of time flowing at different rates.  He's conducted experiments in sensory deprivation where subjects report strange visions and believe the experiment lasted 5 minutes, though it actually lasted 20.  It's caused, he says, by the human brain trying to make sense out of situations where the senses have been deprived.  One paranormal author believes that the effect is caused by "ley lines" -- lines of paranormal force -- encircling the earth.  Where the lines cross in "powerful areas," vortex hyperspace spots/portals are formed.  (Too bad he has no actual proof of this.)

In 1979, two blinding flashes of light (seen by satellite) lit up a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean and sent world powers into high alert against possible nuclear war.  But planes and inspectors checking for radiation found nothing, so the event remains a mystery.  One nuclear weapons designer, Thomas Reed, believes it was a nuclear test, and satellite data seems to confirm the signature "double flash" of energy.  He thinks that the test was conducted over the ocean and when weather (a typhoon) would wash the radiation away; he thinks it was an Israeli test (with support from South Africa).  Physicist Richard Muller, who investigated the incident for the government, came to a different conclusion.  The two satellite meter readings don't match, and Muller believes that a micrometeorite knocked dust in front of the two satellite sensors -- and a dim flash close up was mistaken for a bright flash thousands of miles away on the Earth's surface.  Muller dismisses conspiracy theories, saying these things  "...were pretty much settled by people who understood the arguments at the time."

WEIRD OR WHAT - Monsters

SyFy - Original Air Date: 5/7/2013

First up this episode: Mothman.  Many people have reported seeing it and being chased by it, and it's even connected with a famous bridge disaster.  Joe Nichol (PSICOP) believes that people merely misinterpreted other things, especially the bard owl (a large bird).  James Houran believes that mothman is a case of MPI - Mass Psychogenic Illness, basically mass hysteria.  He takes people to a regular forest at night and suggests it's haunted.  Very quickly people start having 'strange" sensations, proving people can be spooked easily and spread their fear among a group.  A monster hunter thinks the beast is real, and he sets audio lures and camera traps to catch mothman on film.  He catches nothing, but believes mothman to be a cursed supernatural being, a premonition of doom and destruction.  (So much for science.)

A strange thing washes up on Newfoundland and scientist and fisheries expert Garry Stenson is called in to investigate.  It seemed to have neither head nor tail, neither bones nor cartilage, so they cut some samples.  Mathew Wedel, anatomist, believes such "globsters" are dead whales, their armor-tough skin, all that remains after the "good bits" are scavenged, floating around the sea, slowly decomposing.  Dr. Hans Larsson, paleontologist, thinks in most cases, that is true.  But, there's some chance that megalodons (giant white sharks) still live in the very deep oceans, and some globsters may be their remains.  (Again, no proof.)

In India's capital, Delhi, a man-beast with lights on its head and steel claws attacks 800 people, causing a panic.  Is the monkey man science gone wrong or a plot by neighboring Pakistan?   One journalist believes so. Jay Lahkani, on the other hand, believes that the explanation lies in Indian culture and myths, accentuated by a few pranksters.  A cryptozoologist believes it may be a human-ape hybrid, an experiment  unleashed on the public.  Of course, he has no proof (because this is a crazy conspiracy theory).

Sadly, we never find out if the globster's DNA was tested.

WEIRD OR WHAT - Parallel Worlds

SyFy - Original Air Date: 5/7/2013

The show starts with William Shatner (the host) positing that our universe is merely a "bubble," and in 2010 some scientists suggested that our universe has been "bruised" four times by smashing into the bubbles of other universes.  (Did I miss that science news?)  Some people believe we've already encountered beings from those other universes.

Author Rosemary Guiley believes that she's encountered "shadow people" from another dimension while hiking in the woods.  Other people claim to have seen the shadow people as well.  Psychologist Christopher French believes that the shadow people are merely shadows given "life" by pareidolia, the human tendency to see human shapes in random patterns.  He believes this is an evolutionary adaptation to protect us from potential danger.  Another believer suggests that gravity is diffused as it passes to earth by passing through the shadow people's dimensions.  He claims that the Earth should be ripped apart by the sun's gravity, thus supporting his theory.  (I must have missed that in science class.)  The shadow people use gravity to open doors to our dimension as a prelude to invasion.  Right.

Next is a man who claims to have been teleported through another dimension when he was a boy, while visiting his father's aerospace company.  He and his father teleported 2000 miles to the state capital of New Mexico.  He claims the secret has been suppressed by the US military.  Dr. Raymond Laflamme, physicist, thinks teleportation of humans is mere fantasy, though he has teleported a few bits of information using quantum entanglement.  Hypnotherapist Bruce Goldberg believes that the first man moved into a parallel universe, and some people do that and actually meet copies of themselves.  He thinks you can switch universes to escape past mistakes and make your life better.  How these people return to where they originally were, or if they do, the show doesn't say.

Are (the infamous) crystal skulls gateways to another world?  One believer thinks so, and has a lot of pseudoscience reasons for it.  Jane Walsh of the Smithsonian believes that the skulls are merely cleverly marketed fakes.  Claims they are ancient are hokum, as scanning with an electron microscope shows modern tooling.  She believes, with evidence, that the skulls not much older than whenever they were "discovered."  Josh Shapiro believes the skulls are gifts from parallel world intelligences.  He believes the quartz crystal vibrates across all dimensions, allowing communication and the learning of ancient knowledge.  Dr. Paul Stevenson thinks portals to other worlds are possible, but he doesn't say he believes crystal skulls can access them -- he's far more interested in real science.

Again, another good show, with both stories and science.  Though it's pretty sensational, you can learn a thing or two every episode.

WEIRD OR WHAT - Life After Death

SyFy - Original Air Date: 4/30/13

The first story is of a man who has strange emotions while visiting the battlefield of Antietam (US Civil War).  Later, a palm reader told him he had those feelings because he was the reincarnation of a soldier that died there.  Intriguingly, the man discovers that he resembles General John B. Gordon, and believes there are other parallels in their lives as well.  Dr. Cynthia Meyersburg (Harvard) believes that reincarnation is a phenomena of the way we deal with memories (and create false memories).  Lab tests have shown that past life believers have increased vulnerability to creating false memories.  A hypnotist specializing in Past Life Regression believes reincarnation is true, and he takes people to them hypnotically.  One scientist believes that our memories/souls are contained in quantum level energy and can return into a human embryo.  But of all these stories, only Dr. Meyersburg's hypothesis seems testable.

In 1993 researchers in Scole, England, held a series of seances to "prove" there is life after death.  The so-called "Scole Experiment" participants witnessed events the show describes as "baffling to science" and held in an "impenetrable" cellar room.  The experimenters claimed to see spirit lights, hear spirit voices, and be "touched" by spirit people.  (Where's the video?)  There were materialization of things falling out of the air, and spirit photographs "appeared" on a roll of film in a security box.  (Me, I'd be more impressed with IR video of these supposed events).  Supposedly the resulting photos show the afterlife -- and a mysterious "woman."  (Are you crying "Bullshit!" yet?  I am.)  Scientist Brian Dunning thinks the events of Scole are merely an illusion, based on a series of 200-year old magic tricks -- in essence  performance art.  Naturally, all this took place in the pitch dark.

Re-creating the seance with a professional magician and an IR camera easily fools the test subjects.  As Dunning points out, at Scole "no controls were applied."  (Too bad Houdini isn't still around debunking this shit.)  A photographic expert believes most of the effects can be explained by developing process distortion.  He also believes the faces are from a previous exposure of the film, which was then wound back and represented as "new."

A Haitian man dies of a mysterious illness, only to return 18 years later.  Was he a zombie? Scientists theorize that certain injuries or illnesses to the brain might give a zombie-like demeanor.  Puffer fish toxin can also make people appear dead, only to be "revived" later.  Meanwhile, the show looks at a cryogenic facility, and ponders whether it can really work, to be frozen and then revived later.

"Is life after death really life at all?" Shatner ponders, wondering about zombies and frozen people.  The show can't say for sure, but at least there's some science here -- and pretty good science at that -- along with the usual supernatural hokum.

WEIRD OF WHAT: Alien Encounters

SyFy - Original Air Date: 4/30/13

This new series features William (Star Trek, Boston Legal) Shatner as the host looking into strange phenomena.  This episode starts with cattle mutilations, and people worrying that it's being done by aliens.  Expert researchers, though, have shown that such effects occur by natural processes -- including carrion-eating flies.  Rather than (sensibly) stopping there, the show then presents a man who believes the cows are being mutilated in a government conspiracy to cover up (or control) mad cow disease, and another who actually believes aliens are taking them.

Next up: Alien abductions, people who believe they are being taken by aliens (often in the middle of the night) for experiments.  But Dr. Susan Clancy believes that these episodes are easily explained by backfiring sleep paralysis (which affects 1 in 5 Americans), linked to dream-fantasies when the brain wakes up before the body.  Essentially, the body is still dreaming while the brain believes itself to be awake; dreams and waking overlap.  Neuroscientist Dr. Michael Persinger believes the phenomenon can be explained by the brain reacting to electromagnetic pulses (from natural and other sources), and experiments with a special helmet he's designed seem to produce the same results.  Despite all this, though, a researcher at Temple University believes that so many people believe they've been abducted, that it must be real.  (A logical fallacy  BTW.)  He also believes that aliens are breeding alien-human hybrids from these experiments.  (Yeah, right.)

Finally, the show looks at the "Wow!" signal where, once several decades ago, a radio telescope seemed to pick up an alien transmission from outer space -- but only once.  Two theories explain this: one is that the instrument could have picked up a "sideways" signal from Earth (or a satellite passing overhead -- which the radio-telescope team denies).  The second is that it was a "burp" (radio energy burst) from a black hole.

I hadn't intended to do a full review of this show (or series), but the combination of irrational theories and rational explanations made it intriguing, and a cut above the other supernatural "reality" shows on SyFy and other channels.  This, at least, explains the rational side.

FINDING BIGFOOT: Heart of Squatchness

Animal Planet - Original Air Date 3/31/2013

The team goes to Vietnam to look for small squatches (5'-7' tall) and do their usual routine - though they skip the bad "real" video and go straight to local experts.  Then they do night investigations, a local "town hall" meeting, and investigate stories -- as usual.  Cliff does a camp out, and they find nothing in their second night investigation.

And, since this seems to be either a season break, or a mid-season break, I have to wonder whether it's worthwhile to continue these reviews.  After all, the videos (and such) they've been investigating have gotten steadily more bogus looking, and the show follows the same formula every week -- and like the Ghost Hunters, they never actually find anything.

So, while I like the crew, especially Ranae, I'm not sure this is worth my while to write about, or your time to read.  Maybe, if they have a great breakthrough, I'll review it.  Until then, just figure it's "more of the same."

FINDING BIGFOOT: Untold Stories: Behind the Squatch

Animal Planet - Original Air Date: 3/31/2013

Once again, Keith Hoffman -- FB's Executive Producer -- rounds up the cast for interviews and gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Finding Bigfoot.  Asked about the most valuable asset each of them brings to the team, Matt says "experience," Ranae says "counterbalance" (skepticism), Bobo says "man of the people," Cliff says "data analysis."  They travel to a town hall meeting, so Keith can see the process first-hand.  They then show how they block out a witness interview in the woods for an episode.  Then they move to showing how they film night investigations -- IR cameras, etc.  They then visit Bobo at his home "bachelor pad" in Humboldt County, CA.  They then go crabbing, which was Bobo's previous job (before becoming a TV bigfoot hunter).  Keith may be the worst crabber ever.  (City kids!)  A nice change-of-pace, this is a good show and features a lot of information about how they make the series.