Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. This
Speaker 1: week we are rerunning one of our favorite and one
Speaker 1: of our audiences most beloved episodes for the Halloween season,
Speaker 1: the first of our Creepy Pasta Experiment episodes. Yeah, Creepy
Speaker 1: Pasta a little strange nuggets of often unattributed horror fiction
Speaker 1: on the Internet. We take them apart, we look at
Speaker 1: some science that ties into them, and just discuss what
Speaker 1: creepy pasta is in general. Yeah, we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: Throughout the episode. We introduce you to what creepy pastas are,
Speaker 1: and then we take a couple of them. We look
Speaker 1: at the science behind them, a couple of things we
Speaker 1: wanted to let you know beforehand. There is actually a
Speaker 1: second Creepy Pasta episode if you like this one and
Speaker 1: you want to hear more. We have one about Jeff
Speaker 1: the Killer, and we are going to be recording a
Speaker 1: third one for the October Halloween season sometime in the
Speaker 1: next few weeks, so hopefully you will see that from
Speaker 1: us soon. Yeah, and the stories we cover in it,
Speaker 1: the pastas we cover in it our TBD. So if
Speaker 1: there's one that's just really really just grinding away your
Speaker 1: mind that you want us to to tease apart, let
Speaker 1: us know and maybe we'll cover it. Yeah. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: just read two new ones today and I'm already the
Speaker 1: gears are going. I'm already thinking about how we can
Speaker 1: take these apart. But please let us know you got
Speaker 1: one that you think is perfect for the show. Send
Speaker 1: us an email, write us on social media. All right,
Speaker 1: without further ado, creepy pasta. Today we're talking about creepy pasta,
Speaker 1: which imagined there are three different responses out there. Some
Speaker 1: people were probably going to creepy pasta, Love creepy pasta,
Speaker 1: other people are going creepypasta, what are you doing covering that?
Speaker 1: And other people are just flat up asking what the
Speaker 1: hell is creepy creepy pasta? L dente? Yeah, it has
Speaker 1: it the texture or that is it posta that shaped
Speaker 1: like little ghosts. That's what entered my mind when I
Speaker 1: first started hearing about it a few years back. But what,
Speaker 1: let's explain what creepy pasta is for everyone who's not familiar, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm only recently familiar with this uh phenomenon, but
Speaker 1: apparently around two thousand six h a a sort of
Speaker 1: fad I guess meme started up on the Internet called
Speaker 1: copy pasta, and I think it originated on four Chan
Speaker 1: and then splintered off into several different genres in different areas.
Speaker 1: The basic idea, though, is that you're creating uh content
Speaker 1: that's like copy and pasted into an email or maybe
Speaker 1: on a blog or something like that. Right, It's something
Speaker 1: that's like easily accessible and share able. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: I think the two most ubiquitous examples of this. First
Speaker 1: of all, emails from your grandma your uncle, like some
Speaker 1: sort of ridiculous story about you know, somebody's putting disease
Speaker 1: needles into convenience store machines, you know, or or watch
Speaker 1: out for hoodlums throwing eggs at your car, or people
Speaker 1: turning their lights on and off. You know. There's always
Speaker 1: some sort of like oh it's gang activity or or
Speaker 1: some sort of weird horror going on in your daily
Speaker 1: life where you could possibly believe it, but if you
Speaker 1: actually research it, you'll see, oh, this is just a
Speaker 1: the same couple of paragraphs that then copy and pasted
Speaker 1: throughout the history of the Internet, and we just keep
Speaker 1: following for it again and again. And creepy pasta is
Speaker 1: sort of the horror iteration of copy pasta, and that
Speaker 1: it pretends to be like an urban legend or like
Speaker 1: a pseudo real life event that happened, but it's told
Speaker 1: as a horror story. Yeah, and I think some of
Speaker 1: the you can definitely see some creepy pasta in the
Speaker 1: copy pasta that you you see some of those emails,
Speaker 1: you know, where it's ultimately you're talking about some sort
Speaker 1: of folkloric modern folkloric horror theme. Um, it's wrapped in
Speaker 1: enough reality or pseudo reality that you buy into it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They all sort of play off of these authentic aesthetics
Speaker 1: using like they mimic things like documents of real life.
Speaker 1: It's almost like the found footage of pros. Like, uh,
Speaker 1: there's diary entries, witness statements. Sometimes there's image and video files.
Speaker 1: And as we're going to talk about today, many of
Speaker 1: them take the shape of scientific reports or like lab analysis.
Speaker 1: And so what we thought we would do today is
Speaker 1: look at some of the most popular scientific based creepy
Speaker 1: pastas and then look at the the the plausibility and
Speaker 1: the real life connections of the science that they pose it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want to definitely imagine some big quotation marks
Speaker 1: around scientifically based there. Yeah. Oh yeah, but as we'll
Speaker 1: get into yeah, yeah, I mean there's some there's some
Speaker 1: very loose stuff when they just say a stimulating gas
Speaker 1: was presented, right, there's no, they don't name the gas,
Speaker 1: they don't give any methodology or anything. But some of
Speaker 1: them are better than others, and well we'll get into
Speaker 1: that as well. It's um one thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind with coffee pasta two and I'm especially creepy pasta.
Speaker 1: Are the different ways that you come across it online, Like,
Speaker 1: they are definite creepy pasta destinations for people who love
Speaker 1: reading it and creating it. And they're just kind of
Speaker 1: wikis for this. And we'll have some links to these
Speaker 1: stories on the landing page for this episode, stuff about
Speaker 1: yournd ut com, so you can explore that on your own.
Speaker 1: But you'll also see stuff showing up on social media
Speaker 1: or you're doing like we encountered this, but a plenty
Speaker 1: of times you're doing some research, you're trying to find
Speaker 1: out about certain actual experiments, and then you run across
Speaker 1: some creepy posta and for a split second you're like,
Speaker 1: what is this experiment they're talking about? Oh, it's creep Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is kind of perfect. And especially researching this particular
Speaker 1: episode was difficult because when you're trying to research the
Speaker 1: actual scientific basis for some of these stories, you end
Speaker 1: up finding either fake article or or the actual story
Speaker 1: itself popping up in a lot of your searches. I've
Speaker 1: also seen like wiki questions and message boards, you see
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff popping up there where someone will
Speaker 1: have yeah, people have a legitimate question, and somebody will
Speaker 1: decide to throw a slip a little pop there there,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I've I've seen medical question sites, um,
Speaker 1: where someone will be talking. I think I was writing
Speaker 1: something that had to do with the about about prostates
Speaker 1: prostate exams, and I ran across this message board where
Speaker 1: somebody was asking, Hey, what can I expect when I
Speaker 1: go in there? And then somebody had this ridiculous story
Speaker 1: that they shared, and then another individual point it responded
Speaker 1: and said, oh, this is pasta here's an example of
Speaker 1: where it was previously uh rolled out. I think that's
Speaker 1: where I first discovered the term copy pop. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean like in today's age of like, uh, what we
Speaker 1: are often told in our daily jobs is user generated content, right,
Speaker 1: where like the user is commenting or creating something on
Speaker 1: their own. This is the perfect kind of thing to
Speaker 1: slip in there, right, Like in an Amazon review, you
Speaker 1: could drop in some creepy pasta related to whatever item
Speaker 1: it is that's a that's on sale, and you give
Speaker 1: it a five star review, but let people know that
Speaker 1: it was haunted or something when you got in the mail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the creepy mold that grows uh on,
Speaker 1: you know, on the structures of the Internet and throughout
Speaker 1: the systems of the Internet, and some of it is
Speaker 1: just merely mold and sometimes but sometimes it's exquisite and
Speaker 1: it's fun to look at and feel. But I think
Speaker 1: so um, people who maybe aren't familiar with the creepy
Speaker 1: pasta genre, you might actually know. The most famous of
Speaker 1: the creepy pasta characters or stories is the slender Man one. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't know a ton about slender Man other
Speaker 1: than what I've read about him outside of the creepy
Speaker 1: pastas he appears in, but basically the ideas that he's
Speaker 1: kind of like a he's a horror story character, right,
Speaker 1: He's just as much as like Jason Vorhees or Freddy Krueger,
Speaker 1: but he's kind of like in a elongated, skinny, scary
Speaker 1: looking man and like a suit. Yeah, you see. To
Speaker 1: like the reason one of the reasons Slenderman is such
Speaker 1: a nice example of copy pasta is that he's kind
Speaker 1: of collectively assembled. He's an amalgam of pop culture influences
Speaker 1: and and ultimately the final forums very amorphous too, because
Speaker 1: because a lot of it is about his depictions and
Speaker 1: individual pieces of creepy pasta or especially in imagery and
Speaker 1: these various photoshop contests that have contributed to to the myth. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the ones where there's a lot of
Speaker 1: visual accompaniment, Like a lot of a lot of slender
Speaker 1: Man revolves around the pictures that people have created that
Speaker 1: are just terrifying. Yeah, and there's no real consensus on
Speaker 1: like exactly what the story is, Like nobody said this
Speaker 1: is what slender Man is slender Man, and that helps
Speaker 1: to make it mysterious and and weird. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that Lovecraft's mythos continues to resonate
Speaker 1: is that there's individuals have come along and tried to
Speaker 1: create a boiler plate uh uh, you know, mythos for him,
Speaker 1: but ultimately his mythos is shrouded in mystery and contradictions. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and so included in that And I'd be remiss if
Speaker 1: we'd or we'd be remiss if we didn't include this
Speaker 1: is that. You may have also heard in the news
Speaker 1: that there was an inspired violent assault by two twelve
Speaker 1: year old girls against another twelve year old girl. They
Speaker 1: were trying to murder her in inspiration they were inspired
Speaker 1: by slender Man. Uh and um, you know. To clarify,
Speaker 1: like the owners of Creepy pasta dot com, many of
Speaker 1: the people who were involved in this community, they all
Speaker 1: you know released a state statements basically saying like they
Speaker 1: this was not their intention, They didn't want to be
Speaker 1: connected this at all. It was more just kind of
Speaker 1: a fun pop culture thing for them to have a
Speaker 1: community around. But these girls somehow took it internally and
Speaker 1: uh and ended up almost killing their friend. Luckily, she
Speaker 1: escaped and was I think she was had like seventeen
Speaker 1: or nineteen times or something like that. She was found
Speaker 1: by somebody on the Southern Road and was able to
Speaker 1: get medical care. Well, I mean it just speaks to
Speaker 1: the power of storytelling. This to the power of folklore
Speaker 1: and the power of the power of symbols, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, anybody can create a story, and oftentimes the
Speaker 1: story is not going to be that good, but you're
Speaker 1: playing with powerful elements when you start playing with with
Speaker 1: established tropes and it's established symbols, established symbols of fear,
Speaker 1: and uh, even you know, a very amateur creator can
Speaker 1: end up creating something that strongly resonates. And I mean
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of something like Creepy Pasta. It is.
Speaker 1: And and I also, like, I think that it would
Speaker 1: be really like off the mark to say that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's because of slender Man that this happened, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean clearly like there was something going on with
Speaker 1: these girls anyway. Is uh. That's like the argument that
Speaker 1: like Ozzy Osbourne influenced teenagers to kill each other in
Speaker 1: the eighties or something, you know. Just I don't buy
Speaker 1: into it, but I think it's important that we let
Speaker 1: the audience know about that. Um, Creepy Pasta really kind
Speaker 1: of hit its height in because the New York Times
Speaker 1: actually covered it and did an article on it. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, a lot of it resembles what we
Speaker 1: we refer to as weird fiction, right, yeah, you still.
Speaker 1: I mean it kind of runs the gamut because on
Speaker 1: one end of the spectrum you have creepy pasta that
Speaker 1: reads like a either either like a Wikipedia article or
Speaker 1: pro or a poorly written Wikipedia article, where it's just
Speaker 1: very factual, very grounded in this subjective reporting style. And
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, stuff that is aspiring more
Speaker 1: and more to resemble weird fiction, you know, something with
Speaker 1: more of a narrative flow. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, as
Speaker 1: a both a fan of horror pros and somebody who
Speaker 1: writes or pros, I guess my personal literary criticism here
Speaker 1: is just that the best of these always ends up
Speaker 1: still reading kind of like a Wikipedia entry, right. So,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no craft to the prose necessarily that
Speaker 1: you would find in something that's designed for literature. It's
Speaker 1: mostly just a summary of the plot. Um. However, it
Speaker 1: can be done artfully. Um is so in such a
Speaker 1: way to make it seem like it was a real thing. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: If it's done as such, then it can have a
Speaker 1: pretty sustaining dread that goes along with it. Um. So
Speaker 1: there are some of these that I like better than others, uh,
Speaker 1: like any kind of you know, um medium or storytelling.
Speaker 1: But uh, I have to say, and I want to
Speaker 1: warn our listeners if you if you haven't read any
Speaker 1: of these yet, A lot of the grammar and spelling
Speaker 1: is just horrible in these, Like they need a proof
Speaker 1: reader to just go over reach these. Although I guess
Speaker 1: that that could potentially be part of the charm, right,
Speaker 1: is that like it's been written by somebody who hasn't
Speaker 1: taken the time to proof read and go back and
Speaker 1: fix errors, and therefore it seems more authentic. Sometimes when
Speaker 1: you've been horrified by your participation in a frightening paranormal experiment,
Speaker 1: you know you're less a less attentive to grammar. That's
Speaker 1: that's possible for sure. Uh. I do want to say
Speaker 1: one more thing. I want to throw a plug out
Speaker 1: there for our colleagues. So a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know this, but our how stuff works colleagues, including our
Speaker 1: producer Noel who's on the board right now, Lauren Vogelbaum
Speaker 1: from Forward Thinking, and Ben Bolan and Matt Frederick from
Speaker 1: Stuff they don't want you to know, all got together
Speaker 1: and put together what I would call a Creepy pasta
Speaker 1: audio play. It's called See You Next Time, and they
Speaker 1: did it for the Atlanta Fringe Festival, and it's about
Speaker 1: like a thirty minute MP three that you can go
Speaker 1: and download from their site. So if you're into that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, like if you're like a Welcome to
Speaker 1: night Vale kind of person, go download that and check
Speaker 1: it out, because it's all how stuff works, characters and personalities.
Speaker 1: In fact, Joe and I both make very minor appearances
Speaker 1: in the story, just as like kind of extras, but
Speaker 1: really well done, and it was like one of my
Speaker 1: favorite horror stories from this past year. Cool. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: include a link to that on landing page for this episode. Um.
Speaker 1: In terms of back to the Creepy Pasta though the like,
Speaker 1: I find that the ones that are instantly uh grounded
Speaker 1: in more of a traditional storytelling, like you know what
Speaker 1: the narrator is saying. What I have to relate to
Speaker 1: you about this experiment is to bind you instantly know
Speaker 1: you're reading the story, but I guess the the and
Speaker 1: then to your point, if it reads entirely like a
Speaker 1: Wikipedia piece, then it's it runs the risk of just
Speaker 1: being completely dry. Um, you can still be engaging. But
Speaker 1: I think the probably the sweet spot is if you
Speaker 1: can have it start dry and seemingly factual and objective,
Speaker 1: and then have it morph into something uh that that
Speaker 1: that is more elegantly written, and then maybe steer back
Speaker 1: out of it. Yeah it builds. Yeah. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: another thing that that is key with these as well
Speaker 1: is the format. So like the mimicking of a of
Speaker 1: a particular kind of format, uh to create the authenticity
Speaker 1: type thing, like like ones that mimic actual Wikipedia entries
Speaker 1: are kind of using that format to their advantage, right,
Speaker 1: Whereas like if it's just a chain of prose that
Speaker 1: shows up a night email sent to me by my
Speaker 1: weird aunt, then I'm less likely to go, oh, this
Speaker 1: could potentially be a thing. Yeah uh. And And another
Speaker 1: thing too that's probably worth noting is that, like part
Speaker 1: of our job for the podcast and other things is
Speaker 1: to evaluate sources and evaluate validity of things, and so inherently,
Speaker 1: I think for for people like us reading these things
Speaker 1: were automatically like wait a minute, I need some more evidence,
Speaker 1: I need more information, where the sources cited. One of
Speaker 1: the early examples of just just recording folklore that I
Speaker 1: think has some potential ties into creepy PASTA is a
Speaker 1: book called Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio by Lousy
Speaker 1: Z from eighteenth century China. Uh, each of these tales
Speaker 1: that that the author relates, they all they all start
Speaker 1: the same, and they all kind of end the same.
Speaker 1: Where he's saying, I knew this particular individual and and
Speaker 1: he works over in this province and works in this office,
Speaker 1: and he told me this story about this encounter he had.
Speaker 1: And then the encounter might be seeing a strange like
Speaker 1: pen dragon, or seeing or encountering a horrifying ghost, or
Speaker 1: having some sort of mildly body hilarious encounter. And then
Speaker 1: it will end again with him firmly tucking it back
Speaker 1: into reality by saying, and this particular acquaintance of mine
Speaker 1: he continued to have a great career in this province,
Speaker 1: and I still hear from some time to time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea I think they're maybe is conscious or not
Speaker 1: was sort of taking the oral tradition of folklore and
Speaker 1: translating it into pros And yeah, I think you see
Speaker 1: that with a lot of early weird fiction as well,
Speaker 1: like Arthur Makin you mentioned Lovecraft earlier, Uh, to an
Speaker 1: extent like Algernon Blackwood, things like that. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to sort of you have this nugget of of the
Speaker 1: fantastic and you need to tuck it in firmly into
Speaker 1: the bed of of our our informational system really, and
Speaker 1: in this case it's the the Internet. Yeah. Absolutely, they're
Speaker 1: using the medium to its advantage. So okay, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about three particular creepy pasta science experiments and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll we'll give you the premise, we'll lay it
Speaker 1: down for you. It's going to be a very shorthand
Speaker 1: version of it, and then you know, if you want
Speaker 1: to go read them on the on your own, uh,
Speaker 1: and then we will take a look at these science
Speaker 1: behind these Yeah. All right, Well, let's kick it off
Speaker 1: with probably the more famous of the three, the one,
Speaker 1: the one that seems to have to hit up there
Speaker 1: at the top of the list on most of these
Speaker 1: Grepposta sites, the Russian sleep experiment. Right, So, okay, the
Speaker 1: premise of this I'm gonna try to go through this
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. Premise of this story is that in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen forties, there was a Russian researcher or it
Speaker 1: was a research team I believe, who kept five people
Speaker 1: awake for fifteen days using what's only referred to as
Speaker 1: an experimental gas based stimulants. So we have no idea
Speaker 1: whatever this chemical was. The research team kept them in
Speaker 1: a sealed environment and monitored their oxygen intake. I don't
Speaker 1: know how, It's never explained in the story, but basically
Speaker 1: because this gas was potentially I think it was toxic
Speaker 1: and high concentrations, as the story goes, uh. Because they
Speaker 1: didn't have video equipment at the time, they watched these
Speaker 1: uh participants through portholes and they listened listened in with microphones.
Speaker 1: But basically the chamber there and was stocked up with
Speaker 1: you know, the things that they would need, like books
Speaker 1: and cots, running water, a toilet. They had enough dried
Speaker 1: food in there for a month. Uh. And they were
Speaker 1: all political prisoners that were deemed enemy of the state,
Speaker 1: enemies of the state during World War two. But they
Speaker 1: were falsely told before they went in, Hey, if you
Speaker 1: do this experiment and you can manage to sleep not
Speaker 1: sleep for thirty days straight, then we will free you
Speaker 1: and we'll forgive your actions. Uh. So the story goes
Speaker 1: like this. First five days, these people are fine. After
Speaker 1: about day four, though, their conversations start to get a
Speaker 1: little dark. They start getting paranoid of one another. By
Speaker 1: day nine, one of them starts screaming and running up
Speaker 1: and down the length of the chamber, and he screams
Speaker 1: so loud that he physically tears the vocal cords his
Speaker 1: vocal cords. The others begin to just start whispering into
Speaker 1: the microphones, uh, not even acknowledging that the other guy
Speaker 1: is screaming. Then a second one starts screaming and running around.
Speaker 1: These two take the books that are in the room,
Speaker 1: rip their pages out, cover them with their own feces,
Speaker 1: and paste them up over the porthole windows. Uh. So
Speaker 1: the studio we're in right now actually has a porthole windows.
Speaker 1: I was actually just thinking, this is this is like
Speaker 1: what happens when you try to record four podcast episodes.
Speaker 1: And yeah, absolutely, I begin the screaming and running around. Uh.
Speaker 1: Day twelve, all the sounds stop, uh, and the oxygen
Speaker 1: consumption rate rises to what is uh, you know, understood
Speaker 1: as heavy exercise levels for the five people. On day fourteen,
Speaker 1: they use the intercom and they try to you know,
Speaker 1: contact them and figure out what's going on inside this room.
Speaker 1: They get one response, which is we no longer want
Speaker 1: to be freed. On day fifteen, they're finally like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going in there. They open up this chamber and
Speaker 1: they send soldiers in. They find that one of the
Speaker 1: guys is dead. The rest of them are all crazy.
Speaker 1: They've eaten themselves, ripped their own skin off, removed some
Speaker 1: of their own organs from their bodies, very like gory
Speaker 1: body horror type stuff. Uh. They really wanted to go
Speaker 1: to stay in the chamber, like they were addicted to
Speaker 1: this gas. One of them the minute they take him
Speaker 1: out of the chamber, he bleeds to death immediately, and
Speaker 1: they find when they're trying to resuscitate him he's utterly
Speaker 1: resistant to morphine. One assaults and kills one of the soldier.
Speaker 1: I think there's like another thing about, like another one
Speaker 1: like biting a soldier's leg and taking a chunk out
Speaker 1: of it and then like some more padding. That's like
Speaker 1: all of the soldiers committed suicide within five days or
Speaker 1: something like that. Uh, And then this part didn't make
Speaker 1: sense to me even in then like narrative of the story.
Speaker 1: But they they sowed the skin back onto one of
Speaker 1: these victims, Yeah, to try to save him, I guess. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they tried it with one of the others, the
Speaker 1: other survivors, but they just kept laughing so much during
Speaker 1: the surgery process that they couldn't pull it off. So Uh,
Speaker 1: it ends up with them being put back in the
Speaker 1: chamber because there's some higher up who says, you know,
Speaker 1: we gotta figure out what's going on. Say, put these
Speaker 1: guys back in the chamber. Uh. They turn up the gas,
Speaker 1: their brain waves start fluctuating between normal and then flatlining
Speaker 1: as if they're dead. They try putting three of the
Speaker 1: researchers in there with him, but one of the researchers
Speaker 1: grabs a gun and shoots his commander and then shoots
Speaker 1: the captives right before he kills the last captive. The
Speaker 1: captive says this, we are you. We are the madness
Speaker 1: that lurks within you, all begging to be free at
Speaker 1: every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what
Speaker 1: you hide from in your beds every night. We are
Speaker 1: what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go
Speaker 1: to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread. And that's
Speaker 1: the end of the creepy pasta all right, Like most
Speaker 1: of these experiments, it ends in madness and death and
Speaker 1: and some inkling of the world beyond the veil. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're going to find that, Like there's common
Speaker 1: theme of science experiment, people go crazy, kill everybody, and
Speaker 1: then say something eerie. Yeah, Like we're saying if you
Speaker 1: if you were to find the published, pure reviewed studies
Speaker 1: for each of these, you would be able to skip
Speaker 1: down to the conclusions and it would say, and everybody
Speaker 1: went mad and we had to put down the d
Speaker 1: nmate right right, Yeah, what I'd love to see the
Speaker 1: i r B for these, the Institutional Review Board like
Speaker 1: like looking at this, like, wait, you're gonna do what now? Alright? So,
Speaker 1: what's the basically at hard here that we're dealing with
Speaker 1: the science of sleep deprivation. There have been a number
Speaker 1: of studies that have looked at this. So what happens
Speaker 1: when you stay awake for extended periods of time? How
Speaker 1: can we make ourselves stay awake for extended periods of
Speaker 1: time and and still function properly? Right? So what we
Speaker 1: know about sleep deprivation? And I'm sure many of you
Speaker 1: out there have experienced some form or another of this. Right,
Speaker 1: Like last night I got one hour less than my normal.
Speaker 1: However many eight hours a night that I get and
Speaker 1: I'm a little uh little LOGI I think is the
Speaker 1: term this morning. But the basic breakdown of it goes
Speaker 1: like this. We know that we are alertness lowers, right,
Speaker 1: we have trouble concentrating. If you even lose ninety minutes
Speaker 1: of sleep in one night compared to your average sleep schedule,
Speaker 1: you'll be thirty two percent less alert the next day.
Speaker 1: So I'm somewhere in that thirty today. Um, forty of
Speaker 1: us drivers this is a scary part, scarier I think
Speaker 1: than the creepy PASTA. Forty one percent of us drivers
Speaker 1: admit to falling asleep behind the wheel because of this
Speaker 1: lack of alertness. It also totally screws up our circadian rhythm. Uh,
Speaker 1: So our body can't keep the correct time when we
Speaker 1: haven't slept the right way. It's as if you're jet lagged,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. Uh. And we actually, on our sister show,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, have done both episodes on what happens when
Speaker 1: you don't sleep and what happens with jet lag? And
Speaker 1: there's some really interesting stuff about jet lag in relation
Speaker 1: to uh light entering our eyes and how it interacts
Speaker 1: with our brains. So if you want to dive in more,
Speaker 1: there's stuff there. But because the circadian rhythm is impaired,
Speaker 1: our motor skills are also impaired, and our hormones start
Speaker 1: to rise and fall and these just very inappropriate ways.
Speaker 1: We also lose memory. That's a common symptom of this.
Speaker 1: So what we know is that when we sleep, it
Speaker 1: consolidates our memories, basically takes the things that happened to us,
Speaker 1: and it organizes it in such a way that helps
Speaker 1: our cognitive function. It's kind of like a defragging of
Speaker 1: the human absolute and if you're not running your defragment
Speaker 1: defragg and if you're not running your defragger appropriately and enough,
Speaker 1: then everything gets that that's screwed up up there. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, like you start losing recall, you can even
Speaker 1: create false memories, and it lowers your just general ability
Speaker 1: to process information. Uh. And then this is a quote
Speaker 1: directly from our house Stuff Works article on the effects
Speaker 1: of sleep deprivation. UH quote. When we learn and store
Speaker 1: information and our memory, that information is moved from the hippocampus,
Speaker 1: which we know is the memory creating region of our
Speaker 1: brain to the prefrontal cortex, specifically the neo cortex region,
Speaker 1: which is where we form and store long term memories.
Speaker 1: So you can see kind of biologically how this would
Speaker 1: start to affect memory. There's also a process going on
Speaker 1: where our body's glimphatic system cleans out our nervous system
Speaker 1: while we're sleeping. But if you don't sleep, all of
Speaker 1: this waste, I guess or trash starts to build up.
Speaker 1: And but by trash, what I mean is it's cerebro
Speaker 1: spinal fluid that's filled with proteins and toxins. It doesn't
Speaker 1: get flushed out of your system, so subsequently you've got
Speaker 1: that stuff floating around in there too. All of this
Speaker 1: can lead to a speeding up of the progression of
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Yeah, it's it's important to note here
Speaker 1: and distress here that when when when slept, sleep deprivation
Speaker 1: is taking place, it's really messing with the chemistry of
Speaker 1: the brain, the functioning of the brain, and ultimately our
Speaker 1: perceptions of reality, both objective reality and subjective reality, playing
Speaker 1: with our memories, our perceptions of the past. Uh hallucinations
Speaker 1: are absolutely a symptom. Yeah, so we're we're it's it's
Speaker 1: it's ultimately a very Nightmarrick scenario. Not you know, certainly
Speaker 1: not out of keeping with the realm of creepy plasta
Speaker 1: and horror. Oh yeah, certainly. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that's probably why this particular one
Speaker 1: is one of the most popular, is that it's something
Speaker 1: at their core. The science ce creepy Pasta's work best
Speaker 1: when it's something that almost everyone can identify with. Lack
Speaker 1: of sleep is something that I think every person reading
Speaker 1: it can kind of imagine. Yeah, sleep is that realm
Speaker 1: of mystery, and there there is enough science out there
Speaker 1: even if one is not that familiar with it, it's
Speaker 1: you can you can certainly at least see it there
Speaker 1: on the internet. You know that there than there's been
Speaker 1: researching to sleep. You know, there are sleep institutes that
Speaker 1: that work with people who have trouble um. One of
Speaker 1: the side effects of the sleep deprivation as well as
Speaker 1: something that we've covered here on the show before is
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis. So I know you've done a video on it,
Speaker 1: and was there a previous podcast episode about sleep. It's
Speaker 1: come up, it's come up a lot, Like anytime I've
Speaker 1: covered something related to supernatural experience, UM, sleep paralysis always
Speaker 1: always up there as a possible explanation for encounters with aliens,
Speaker 1: encounters with ghosts. Uh and and I'll make sure we
Speaker 1: link to some resources in the landing page for this episode.
Speaker 1: But you know, essentially, it's a situation where when you
Speaker 1: go to sleep, your body is put on lockdown, so
Speaker 1: that if you get in a kung fu fight with
Speaker 1: a bear in your dream, you won't throw any kung
Speaker 1: fu strikes at the person sleeping next to you. But
Speaker 1: in sleep paralysis, you wake up with your mind your
Speaker 1: eyes open, but your body is still on lockdown and
Speaker 1: you're in this this also in this weird phase between
Speaker 1: dream and reality where uh, you're highly susceptible to hallucination. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm
Speaker 1: hoping to watch it this week. Um, have you heard
Speaker 1: about The Nightmare? It's this documentary that's all about sleep paralysis.
Speaker 1: This is the one from the guys that did the
Speaker 1: Room two seven. Yeah, it's the same creative team from
Speaker 1: Room two thirty seven. And I've heard that it is horrifying.
Speaker 1: It's a documentary this is not a fictional film. But
Speaker 1: as we know from you know, researching sleep paralysis in
Speaker 1: the past, just the examples of what people think is
Speaker 1: happening to them can be utterly terrifying. Yeah, because you're
Speaker 1: you often have to your brain is referring back to
Speaker 1: pre existing scripts for what you're encountering. You're hearing or
Speaker 1: seeing something out of the ordinary, and your brain has
Speaker 1: to make sense of it. And so it will turn
Speaker 1: to that, uh that episode of the X Files that
Speaker 1: you saw, or maybe it will think back to some
Speaker 1: creepy pops if he read on the Internet, and use
Speaker 1: that to inform what you're experiencing. So, before I go
Speaker 1: into more symptoms about I get sleep depth, let's tie
Speaker 1: back to that creepypasta story about the Russian sleep experiment. Then, so, yes,
Speaker 1: hallucinations are possible. Uh so, I guess you could say
Speaker 1: that there's a potential for going crazy or at least
Speaker 1: losing the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. Um, and
Speaker 1: then sleep paralysis plays into that as well. Although they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like tearing their own organs out and stuff
Speaker 1: like that if they had sleep paralysis. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think you'd go full hell right, right. So okay, the
Speaker 1: other really big thing that has a multiple effects on
Speaker 1: your body when you don't get sleep is that your
Speaker 1: genes aren't as efficient at handing out instructions to your body.
Speaker 1: So we call this genetic expression, and it causes all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. There's weight fluctuations. In fact, there's study
Speaker 1: that showed that people who have less than seven to
Speaker 1: nine hours a night of sleep are more likely to
Speaker 1: be overweight. Uh And and I won't go into all
Speaker 1: the numbers here, but basically the idea is like the
Speaker 1: less sleep you get, them more likely you are to
Speaker 1: be overweight. When you're forced to stay awake, what happens
Speaker 1: is your body has trouble processing blood, sugar and lepton,
Speaker 1: which is this protein hormone that regulates our appetite and
Speaker 1: our metabolism. Uh And this can lead to type two diabetes,
Speaker 1: can lead to weight gain, and due to your decreased
Speaker 1: ability to process sugar, you're not as easily able to
Speaker 1: suppress your food craving. So you know, if you're like me,
Speaker 1: you're going to the fridge and having a lot of
Speaker 1: ice cream late at night. Uh. It can also lead
Speaker 1: to illness. So sleep deprivation diminishes our immune system, which
Speaker 1: sometimes leads to serious or chronic illness. Blood pressure becomes
Speaker 1: a problem. If you have less than six hours of
Speaker 1: sleep at night, it puts you at high risk for
Speaker 1: high blood pressure. This starts over taxing your heart. Also,
Speaker 1: your brain doesn't have as much time to regulate the
Speaker 1: stress hormones that are moving around in there, which also
Speaker 1: leads to higher blood pressure. And then finally, death is
Speaker 1: a symptom of not sleeping. So and I don't mean
Speaker 1: that like if you don't sleep, you'll just drop dead.
Speaker 1: In fact, you die at a rate of two times
Speaker 1: faster than people who have normal sleeping patterns if you're
Speaker 1: sleep deprived. And we can look to certain experiments with
Speaker 1: animals and if some animals certainly die without proper sleep,
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation and rodents and flies can cause death more
Speaker 1: quickly than food deprivation. Uh, specifically, two weeks without sleep
Speaker 1: can kill a lap rat. Okay, So, and that's about
Speaker 1: as long as the Creepy Pasta experiment went on for
Speaker 1: they were in there for about fifteen days before they
Speaker 1: started ripping their skin off. And there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: super gory stuff in that story. That also inappropriate Amazon purchases.
Speaker 1: That was another stuff. Really they had Internet in the
Speaker 1: ninety the skin off, they started making inappropriate online purchases
Speaker 1: just because they believe altered state they're buying like curtains
Speaker 1: made of human skin. Okay. So there's another scientific aspect
Speaker 1: to this story as well, right, and that is the
Speaker 1: quote experimental gas based stimulant okay, which could I guess
Speaker 1: be almost anything. It could be anything, and so it's
Speaker 1: a little difficult for us to kind of narrow it
Speaker 1: down and say, well, the actual effects would be this,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was worth just kind of touching
Speaker 1: on what gas does to our bodies. Right. So, any
Speaker 1: type of gas, chlorine, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen dioxide, ammonia,
Speaker 1: you name it, they're going to irritate your lungs and
Speaker 1: some of them dissolve immediately, and uh, you know that's
Speaker 1: when you experience the irritation your mouth, nose, and throat.
Speaker 1: I mean, like if you think about it, like when
Speaker 1: you go to the gas station, you're pumping your gas
Speaker 1: and you're inhaling stuff that's kind of a version of this, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But the ones that don't easily dissolve, they don't produce
Speaker 1: early warning signs, and this can lead to things like
Speaker 1: fluid developing your lungs and airway. They can also trigger
Speaker 1: allergic responses. These kind of responses can scar your lungs,
Speaker 1: maybe leading to chronic bronchitis. If the gas is radioactive,
Speaker 1: of course, it can lead to cancer. And if there's
Speaker 1: body poisoning, it's gonna poison your body cells, right, So
Speaker 1: if it's a poisonous gas, that's going to be lethal
Speaker 1: to you as well. Uh, and it'll what will end
Speaker 1: up doing is displacing the oxygen that's in your blood,
Speaker 1: so you have less oxygen reaching your tissues. Carbon monoxide
Speaker 1: itself doesn't appear to have any kind of neurological effects,
Speaker 1: but levels below of like if you're exposed to it
Speaker 1: can to decrease your mental performance. And one other study
Speaker 1: that I found said that mustard gas affects mental health
Speaker 1: even for people who have been exposed to it, like
Speaker 1: up to twenty five years after their exposure. However, they
Speaker 1: usually qualify that as like PTSD because their exposure the
Speaker 1: mustard gas was probably in a traumatic situation like war. Um.
Speaker 1: So all that is to say is that yes, gas
Speaker 1: has physical effects on your body, and there are some
Speaker 1: connections to mental problems, I guess, But but not like
Speaker 1: within fifteen days you'd go absolutely insane and start ripping
Speaker 1: off your skin. Maybe we just haven't found the right
Speaker 1: chemical yet. Maybe so we you know, we haven't stumbled
Speaker 1: across the right experiment. Declassified experiment from World War two
Speaker 1: era Russian history. Now this next bit of creepy pasta,
Speaker 1: I found this one a lot of fun. This is
Speaker 1: I think I probably like this one the most of
Speaker 1: the ones that we looked at here for this episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: In short, this one involves a supposed nineteen four British
Speaker 1: Secret Intelligence Service experiment aimed at modifying human blood. Here's
Speaker 1: a quote. The chemical would modify the blood's chemical properties
Speaker 1: and structure so that, if shot or cut, the blood
Speaker 1: would have the ability to freeze or solidify to where
Speaker 1: the person was shot. This would stop bleeding and can
Speaker 1: make a person far stronger than an average human being. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, as you as you you know can expect,
Speaker 1: the experiment gets all dark and monster as this, turning
Speaker 1: the test subjects into gray skin, blood eyed, jelly blooded,
Speaker 1: thick skinned cannibals that run them up and as such,
Speaker 1: they end up putting them all down, shutting down the experiment,
Speaker 1: and deciding not to um alter the blood of British soldiers.
Speaker 1: So I think I might have read a different version
Speaker 1: than you, because mine ended with them escaping and it
Speaker 1: was like, these crazy super soldiers are out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: They're homicidal and they could get you. Maybe there are
Speaker 1: a couple of versions of it, and that's what the
Speaker 1: beauty of creepy pasta that it can change. It's a
Speaker 1: morphous it's it's a collective create a scenario. I kept
Speaker 1: thinking of them as being basically Wolverine from the X Men,
Speaker 1: like like they they all their wounds heal immediately, right,
Speaker 1: because the I think one of the things is like
Speaker 1: immediately after this test, they like stab him in the
Speaker 1: leg and then shoot him in the arm to see
Speaker 1: what happens, and like the wounds seal up immediately, right.
Speaker 1: But it also makes them kind of feral and crazy
Speaker 1: and try to kill everybody. Yeah, I kind of pictured
Speaker 1: him looking like creatures from a tool video running them up. Yeah. Yeah. Well.
Speaker 1: One of the things I loved about this particular one
Speaker 1: is is how much it adhered to the idea of
Speaker 1: it being an actual lab report. It said a copy
Speaker 1: of this lab report can be found somewhere deep within
Speaker 1: the old m I five building in London. I like
Speaker 1: that the idea, Like everybody who lives in London knows
Speaker 1: about the old m I five building. You can just
Speaker 1: pop by and down and check out the file. That's
Speaker 1: why they're there. Uh. And they actually name three chemicals
Speaker 1: as opposed to the Russian study. They actually name the
Speaker 1: chemicals that these guys are exposed to no mo fungan, pepprophora,
Speaker 1: midadine in communison. However, in my version it was misspelled
Speaker 1: as communism, so it was like they were exposed to
Speaker 1: these two chemicals and communism maybe commune isn't wait what
Speaker 1: is it? Commune sin? Maybe communistin is uh is a
Speaker 1: a drug that causes communism communism inducing you know what?
Speaker 1: That would possibly have as much validity as the rest
Speaker 1: of this story. I feel like like that was one
Speaker 1: of the drugs in RoboCop two or something. Right. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: the idea that they said here was that those chemicals
Speaker 1: modified human blood chemical properties, allowing them to solidify or
Speaker 1: freeze when the body is damaged. And they list a
Speaker 1: couple of other things that they do to solidify the blood.
Speaker 1: So I just want to mention these quickly because this
Speaker 1: is kind of their scientific basis for things. Uh. They
Speaker 1: increased the blood plasma in the subjects, removed the thromba
Speaker 1: sites from their blood, modified the medulla oblongata in their
Speaker 1: brains so that it would be familiar with the modified
Speaker 1: blood cells. And then they removed forward four to six
Speaker 1: percent of their blood volume because I guess the idea
Speaker 1: of being that once they've done all this other stuff,
Speaker 1: their blood is thicker and subsequently like takes up more
Speaker 1: space in their circulatory system. Uh. And they also said
Speaker 1: that they weren't allowed to give any food or painkillers
Speaker 1: to the subjects for at least twenty four hours, which
Speaker 1: I like because that's basically what they do to you
Speaker 1: when you like go in for prep surgery anyways. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then um, the doctors after the experiment determined that
Speaker 1: the pH value of the blood in these guys was
Speaker 1: lower than normal. Uh. And they think the chemical caused
Speaker 1: aggression by modifying the medulla oblongata. So this is where
Speaker 1: I want to start with the science on this one,
Speaker 1: because I you know, within five minutes was able to
Speaker 1: look up that the medulla oblangada doesn't really have a
Speaker 1: whole to do with our emotion and aggression. In fact,
Speaker 1: this is the you know, it's commonly known as the
Speaker 1: brain stem. It controls our reflexes and autonomic functions, uh,
Speaker 1: limb movements, visceral functions. It's basically you know, things like
Speaker 1: blood pressure, breathe. There you go, aggression. But so uh yeah,
Speaker 1: unless they're like, uh, you know, discovering new things about
Speaker 1: that part of the brain that we don't necessarily know.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that that would have been the cause.
Speaker 1: If I was on the review committee for this academic article,
Speaker 1: I would probably point that out now. It's also worth
Speaker 1: noting here that this is not to be confused with
Speaker 1: the Luftwaffe as freezing experiments hypothermia that took place at
Speaker 1: the dock al and Offfitch uh during the Second World War. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those were actually dealing with what happens when the bloody
Speaker 1: body freezes. This is ultimately about coagulation and healing and
Speaker 1: how to how our our bodies heal and what we
Speaker 1: can do to speed that process up, especially as far
Speaker 1: as internal bleeding goes. And there has been some interesting
Speaker 1: research in this area, researchers trying to figure out ways
Speaker 1: to to speed up coagulation, speed up healing, and deal
Speaker 1: especially with military scenarios where you need to you need
Speaker 1: to take care of either a need for blood or
Speaker 1: a need for for blood to do its job deep down.
Speaker 1: If you follow like science and tech feeds, like like
Speaker 1: like we do for work, you end up seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of these. I'd say at least once a week
Speaker 1: there's some kind of update on uh, either something that's
Speaker 1: designed to seal a wound faster or you know, affect
Speaker 1: the blood as such. Ye. Yes, I started playing the
Speaker 1: latest metal gear thing. Oh yeah, Phantom Pain is that
Speaker 1: what it's called? Yeah, where it's like ground zero. I
Speaker 1: think it's the one like the free this month, So
Speaker 1: I checked it out. And you get wounded to a
Speaker 1: certain amount and you like spray your wound with a
Speaker 1: little area. Yeah. But um. The first to discuss here
Speaker 1: about blood science and kind of cool blood science is
Speaker 1: there's a Cleveland, Ohio biotech firm called Arterial Site and
Speaker 1: they made headlines in two thousand ten with the development
Speaker 1: of an artificial, genetically engineered blood for use on the battlefield.
Speaker 1: So we're talking typo negative. Of course, here universal blood donor.
Speaker 1: Because you're gonna make artificial blood, everybody should be able
Speaker 1: to use it. Yeah, and this would allow for mobile
Speaker 1: blood banks and war zones. You wouldn't have to worry
Speaker 1: about shortages back home and then the lengthy shipments that
Speaker 1: decrease the shelf life for the blood samples you need.
Speaker 1: You need blood on the on the field, say an Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: then you have a machine that will help create it
Speaker 1: right now, presumably. Yeah, that's my question I guess, is that, like,
Speaker 1: are they creating this on site in the in a
Speaker 1: battlefield scenario, or is it like they created in America
Speaker 1: and then they shipped just all of this genetically engineered
Speaker 1: blood to wherever the war zone is. I think the
Speaker 1: latter is probably the more immediate goal. But my understanding
Speaker 1: based on the reading, is that ultimately that's where they
Speaker 1: want to get. It's to where you can have at
Speaker 1: least a local blood hub, you know, whereas if it's
Speaker 1: it's like a three D printer of blood. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: at the very least you're like shiving it in from
Speaker 1: the closest military base that's opposed to all the way
Speaker 1: around the world. Um, they received one million dollars stuff
Speaker 1: for the project front through DARPA. And last that it
Speaker 1: was really reported on UH they had shipped off samples
Speaker 1: to DARPA. And we're hoping to up production to bring
Speaker 1: costs down from five thousand dollars per unit of blood
Speaker 1: to around one thousand per unit. And just to give
Speaker 1: everyone a reminder, one unit equals about a pint in.
Speaker 1: The average human contains eight to ten points. So in
Speaker 1: order to make enough for humans, it's like, at their
Speaker 1: low end, going to be eight to ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: worth of blood. Yeah, and the average soldier needs six
Speaker 1: units during trauma treatment, you know, because you're talking about
Speaker 1: situations with a lot of blood is lost. I wonder
Speaker 1: how that compares to just the leg good old you
Speaker 1: know Red Cross, you know, going and giving your blood
Speaker 1: volunteer type thing. Well, I mean, of course, then again
Speaker 1: you're dealing with all different blood types, and and then
Speaker 1: and then a rigorous screening process to figure out which
Speaker 1: samples are appliable and shipping, yeah, and shipping, which again
Speaker 1: hurts the shelf life. So the process here is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Scientists harvest HEMEO to pedic cells from the umbilical cords
Speaker 1: and via a process called farming that's p H A
Speaker 1: R M I N g uh, they turn one umbilical
Speaker 1: cord into twenty units of of package blood. This takes
Speaker 1: place of the course of three days according to initial
Speaker 1: reports through Wired magazine, where they getting all the umbilical
Speaker 1: cords from babies. Man, if you can if baby, if
Speaker 1: you find babies where the parents are not going to
Speaker 1: you know, dry it and bet it or feed it themselves, Uh,
Speaker 1: then yeah, the umbilical cord is as has a lot
Speaker 1: of valuable material in it. So this is a thing
Speaker 1: that as a someone who doesn't have kids that I'm
Speaker 1: woefully unaware of. That's like when you go in and
Speaker 1: have the procedure and everything for giving birth, they're just
Speaker 1: like a you know, in the paperwork, it's a box
Speaker 1: that you check. That's something like, I want the umbilical cord.
Speaker 1: I assume. I mean, we did not go through that
Speaker 1: process with my son, so I'm not I'm not exactly
Speaker 1: sure how it rolls out in real time, but I'm
Speaker 1: guessing there's a box that you in a panic to
Speaker 1: you know, pre birth days, you check or you don't.
Speaker 1: Otherwise there's just like a bio hazard bag filled with
Speaker 1: umbilical cords that they then ship off to do so.
Speaker 1: Ultimately that we're talking about the rapid expansion of umbilical
Speaker 1: cord blood sped up even more through the use of
Speaker 1: what's called nanex technology. This is a nano fiber based
Speaker 1: structure that mimics bone marrow and bone marrows where blood
Speaker 1: cells generally multiply and at a greater rate. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty impressive. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's crazy science fiction ey and and I think would
Speaker 1: lend itself well to a little tweaking. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: talking about, ultimately the discarded pieces of a baby that
Speaker 1: are used to create blood for soldiers in the field
Speaker 1: and potentially vampires, right right, Yeah, I mean, well that's
Speaker 1: where this would naturally ahead as a Daybreakers situation. You
Speaker 1: make these soldiers, they become vampires, and then they vampirize
Speaker 1: the rest of the population, So it's a planet of vampires.
Speaker 1: I wonder if vampires prefer OH negative as a universal
Speaker 1: donor or does that mean it's just probably too common? Right,
Speaker 1: It's like the Coca Cola of blood, all right, So
Speaker 1: that's artificial blood. But then there's the use of healing
Speaker 1: factor nanoparticles in the blood all right, So this is
Speaker 1: straight up wolverine healing factor is right out of the
Speaker 1: X men exactly. This is where we're getting into, at
Speaker 1: least the near future version of that UM. So there
Speaker 1: are different substances that can be used as a coagulant
Speaker 1: to help with excessive bleeding. Of course, the bad way
Speaker 1: to deal with excessive bleeding on the surfaces to apply
Speaker 1: pressure when it's a wound that can be treated in
Speaker 1: that manner to die or a wound um But a
Speaker 1: two thousand nine study published in the journal Science Translational
Speaker 1: Medicine introduced the use of injectable synthetic nanoparticles or nano
Speaker 1: platelets that curb bleeding. So normally blood platelets at a
Speaker 1: wound site buying together in order to plug that wound. Right,
Speaker 1: These these nano platelets, what they do is they mimic
Speaker 1: platelet structure, so they augment the process bonding with natural
Speaker 1: blood platelets and acting as a nanostructure. So it's like
Speaker 1: throwing in a bunch of a bunch of extras. To say,
Speaker 1: you're to television taping and the crowds looking kind of thin,
Speaker 1: get some extras in there make it look nice and
Speaker 1: thick for the cameras. So yeah, that's what I'm kind
Speaker 1: of thinking that it's like a thickening process, like almost
Speaker 1: like a blood plasma kind And what's more, though, this
Speaker 1: the best part about this is again not the use
Speaker 1: of this at at the skin level, but the ability
Speaker 1: to to get down and stop deep and internal bleeding
Speaker 1: more easily. Again, you can't just apply pressure if you're
Speaker 1: dealing with bleeding inside the body. Yeah, there's got to
Speaker 1: be so many potential hazards with this though, too. I
Speaker 1: would imagine given the like I mean, like our blood
Speaker 1: is like it's got that Goldilocks factor to it, right,
Speaker 1: it has to be like just right. It can't be
Speaker 1: too thick and it can't be too thin otherwise there's
Speaker 1: all there's a whole host of problems I'll get into
Speaker 1: later that you know can affect your body. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm instantly thinking too back to last season of
Speaker 1: The Nick. Oh I've only seen a couple episodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty horrific It's like, you know, turn of
Speaker 1: the century hospital, brilliant surgeon, and at one point he
Speaker 1: gets obsessed with blood transfusion and trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: like what's the key, right, it's really rough stuff. But
Speaker 1: but in this case with these particularly a particular nano
Speaker 1: platelets that they found that the stuff has had bleeding
Speaker 1: time and wounded rats. And just a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven, the Massachusetts General Hospital Center
Speaker 1: for Engineering and Medicine developed a way to deliver nano
Speaker 1: spheres containing keratinosite growth factor or KGF, suspended in a
Speaker 1: fibrin gel. Uh So, again, the advantage here would be
Speaker 1: to deal with the targeted treatment of deep wounds as
Speaker 1: opposed to trying to treat the whole body and just
Speaker 1: get at it um. So this is right. So the
Speaker 1: difference between this and Wolverine is that, like, you don't
Speaker 1: just heal immediately from any wound. You have a wound
Speaker 1: and then they apply these nanospheres to you. And the
Speaker 1: thing with the nanopolatelist, it wouldn't be a matter of
Speaker 1: as we see in the creepy post. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: like we've changed the blood of the soldiers, you know.
Speaker 1: It's this is a way to treat the blood of
Speaker 1: a soldier at a wound site and try to speed
Speaker 1: up the healing. Well, Okay, So you may recall that
Speaker 1: at the top of when we were talking about this
Speaker 1: experiment that I mentioned, they had three particular chemicals that
Speaker 1: they mentioned. I assumed these were fictional, but I decided
Speaker 1: to look them up. No mo funcan peppro formiddine, and
Speaker 1: commune sin turns out, at least as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, that they are real things. However, there were
Speaker 1: a few links that definitely looked like they were fake
Speaker 1: that we're potential. Uh, I'm gonna guess like fake sources
Speaker 1: to back up the creepy pasta story. But then there
Speaker 1: were a lot of legitimate academic chemistry articles about these
Speaker 1: that were behind firewalls I couldn't access. But I did
Speaker 1: get access to one that was called Synthetic Studies towards
Speaker 1: Commune Sin's and it was published in the Israel Israel
Speaker 1: Journal of Chemistry. In and this I could barely understand
Speaker 1: it because it was written in such deep chemistry language. However,
Speaker 1: this is what I got out of it. Uh, these
Speaker 1: are basically the same chemicals. They're like synthesized chemicals that
Speaker 1: are isolated from a marine fungal strain of a Penicilla
Speaker 1: penicillum species. And that there's a possible use for these
Speaker 1: as an insecticide. They're also cytotoxic against certain tumor cells.
Speaker 1: So I think that they're being investigated for those possible applications. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they were first isolated in so yeah, they
Speaker 1: really exist. It sounds like it doesn't sound like their
Speaker 1: usage though, is to you know, plug up blood or
Speaker 1: make blood freeze or anything like that. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess we're looking at the standard trick here, right.
Speaker 1: You you draw a little science terminology out, you throw
Speaker 1: it in there in a way where you're not too specific,
Speaker 1: and it's harder for the the average reader to look
Speaker 1: at it and call bs uh, And so it gives
Speaker 1: it that science vibe and let me to invest a
Speaker 1: little more creepy bust. They did a great job. Whoever
Speaker 1: wrote this did a great job with the that application
Speaker 1: of of these chemicals, because not only were they like
Speaker 1: difficult to find information on, but also they're so relatively
Speaker 1: new in the in in the research it's being done
Speaker 1: on them, that there isn't a whole lot out there.
Speaker 1: I guess it could be plausible that, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: comes up with his magical synthetic chemical that can freeze
Speaker 1: your blood. UM. And real quick, let's just talk about
Speaker 1: what happens when your blood is thickened or frozen in
Speaker 1: certain situations. First of all, it's very rare that you
Speaker 1: could freeze human beings blood while it was still inside
Speaker 1: their body. The hypothalamust constantly tries to keep the core
Speaker 1: of our bodies warm, so it constricts our blood supprise
Speaker 1: supply to the core of our bodies, essentially removing it
Speaker 1: from the extremities if necessary. So that's why you get
Speaker 1: those instances of like frostbite where people's fingers or toes
Speaker 1: fall off and stuff like that. Um. But even in
Speaker 1: cryonics when they're going to freeze somebody's body, your blood
Speaker 1: isn't frozen from what I understand reading about it. Your
Speaker 1: body is usually injected with something called heperin, which is
Speaker 1: an anticoagulant, and the reason why is to prevent blood
Speaker 1: clotting while you're under I don't know what's the proper
Speaker 1: term under freeze freezer. Um. And then lastly, there is
Speaker 1: a there there are a couple different UH diseases that
Speaker 1: lead to blood thickening. One in particular is called Hughes syndrome.
Speaker 1: And that's an abnormal immune system response that causes your
Speaker 1: blood to thicken. Basically, the idea here is it sounds
Speaker 1: similar to the nanotech we were talking about earlier. It
Speaker 1: causes your blood platelets to clump together. But this can
Speaker 1: be very dangerous, like I was saying earlier, because it
Speaker 1: can lead to thrombosis, which can subsequently lead to something
Speaker 1: like a heart attack or a stroke or I suppose
Speaker 1: even an annual him But no cannibalism, Nope, they don't
Speaker 1: have that yet. Alright, alright, well, now we're gonna turn
Speaker 1: to the third section here and and this one we're
Speaker 1: really drawing on two different, uh creepy pastas, which will
Speaker 1: we'll refer to here in short. One is the Harbinger
Speaker 1: experiment and the other one is Gateway of the Mind,
Speaker 1: and they both resolve and they both revolve around the
Speaker 1: same thing. Really, so the Harbinger Experiment, this creepy pasta
Speaker 1: is this is a bit long, and it it kind
Speaker 1: of reads like, you know, average weird fiction story. Really,
Speaker 1: the basics here is it's some inner prolonged isolation experiment
Speaker 1: with an occult twist, some entity that's summoned into the
Speaker 1: bodies of the patients by this mysterious doctor Zimmerman. Zimmerman
Speaker 1: wants to prove the existence of the spirit realm by
Speaker 1: trapping a spirit in a human body, a human body
Speaker 1: that he's injected with a compound that somehow prevents the
Speaker 1: spirit from leaving again while the host is still alive.
Speaker 1: Right right, And yeah, if I remember this one, correct, Like,
Speaker 1: Zimmerman is like fantastically rich and like does all of
Speaker 1: this at like an off site, hidden bunker underground where
Speaker 1: he's like hired his own private army and team of researchers. Right,
Speaker 1: so you canna imagine how it ends up, right, right,
Speaker 1: And it's just like, yeah, and now the the other
Speaker 1: one is Gateway of the Mind and do you want
Speaker 1: to roll the Yeah, this one is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: So the idea with this is that there's this team
Speaker 1: of scientists. The story refers to them as deeply pious scientists, uh,
Speaker 1: and that the idea is that they want to prove
Speaker 1: the existence of God. So their theory is that without
Speaker 1: sensory input, that human beings would be able to perceive
Speaker 1: the presence of God. So and that they interfere with
Speaker 1: some kind of holy signal. Right, So what they do
Speaker 1: is they take this elderly volunteer and they surgically cut
Speaker 1: out nerves so he can't see here, taste, smell, or
Speaker 1: feel uh, and he can he he can't communicate, but
Speaker 1: he can, like you can clearly talk. He's sort of
Speaker 1: like yells, Yeah, I don't think he knows what's going
Speaker 1: on around him, but he like yells out things about
Speaker 1: what he's experiencing. But he's basically alone with his thoughts,
Speaker 1: and Yeah, what happens is he goes totally crazy. He
Speaker 1: says that he's talking to ghosts. He's able to like
Speaker 1: use information from the ghosts to like prove that there's
Speaker 1: something supernatural going on to the researchers, right bat like
Speaker 1: revealing secrets about them that nobody else would know. And
Speaker 1: then at the very end, he tells them that he's
Speaker 1: a he's had a conversation with God and and God
Speaker 1: has abandoned us. Okay, well, I feel like it kind
Speaker 1: of loses a little steam there at the end, with
Speaker 1: like like maybe maybe the message that he revealed shouldn't
Speaker 1: be so explicit, but I'm I'm I'm not picking him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they sort of like this the author or authors of
Speaker 1: this creepy pasta. It seems like God is sort of
Speaker 1: kg about getting in touch with this guy who doesn't
Speaker 1: have his five senses. Like the ghosts show up pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: but God like waits until like the absolute last minute,
Speaker 1: and all he does just say like, hey, I've abandoned
Speaker 1: you guys. I'm on vacation for the week. So both
Speaker 1: of these, on one level, they deal with this idea
Speaker 1: of like, let's scientifically prove the afterlife and and there
Speaker 1: have been a number of experiments and sort of studio
Speaker 1: experiments that have gone into that. We have a whole
Speaker 1: episode of stuff to blow your mind to deals with
Speaker 1: soul weighing experiments that tried to show that the soul
Speaker 1: has weight, and therefore there is a soul, there is
Speaker 1: some part of us that's immortal and to death. Um,
Speaker 1: there there's real science behind that too. Isn't there like
Speaker 1: a particular like I remember like that there's like a
Speaker 1: very specific weight that they said that oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: that disappears when you die or something like that. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think twenty one Graham was the number of those
Speaker 1: as we discussed in that episode, which I'll link to
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some science applied. It's very rough and even though
Speaker 1: a lot of problems, there are some more recent theories
Speaker 1: that are in arresting. But both of these experiments ultimately
Speaker 1: deal with isolation. Right, what happens when someone is isolated
Speaker 1: from from sensory input particularly Uh in the case of
Speaker 1: the experience we're gonna discuss here, you put them in
Speaker 1: a room, you put them in solitary confined. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: happens when you deprive us of our environment that we've
Speaker 1: evolved to thrive within. What happens to the mind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I think it's worth mentioning here before we
Speaker 1: get into the science of it, of what happens when
Speaker 1: you're deprived of your senses and for that matter of
Speaker 1: social interaction. That both Robert and I have gone into
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation tanks before, so we have personal experience with this. Uh.
Speaker 1: In my case, I didn't hallucinate, which seems to be
Speaker 1: a common symptom that people have. But it was enjoyable.
Speaker 1: It was peaceful. You basically lay inside a big tank
Speaker 1: that's dark, laying on top of salt water. Uh. For
Speaker 1: in my case, it was about an hour long. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: and um, you know because of the water, your ears
Speaker 1: are plugged out. Oh no, you I wore ear plugs.
Speaker 1: But there the water also keeps you from really being
Speaker 1: able to hear anything. Uh. You can't see anything, you
Speaker 1: don't really feel anything other than the water. Uh and
Speaker 1: the taste of salty air. Yeah. When I went into it,
Speaker 1: I wasn't really thinking about how salty it was gonna be,
Speaker 1: and how that there's a good point, a good portion
Speaker 1: of the float experience that has spent reacting to the
Speaker 1: feel of the salt water, the smell of the salt water,
Speaker 1: and and just sort of getting past that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I should clarify that there's so much salt water
Speaker 1: that you float to the top like you're not just
Speaker 1: laying in it. Yeah, like you instantly are acquainted with
Speaker 1: any random nicks or scratches or which is on your
Speaker 1: body because now they have tons of salt pressing up
Speaker 1: against them. So we've had a number of of studies
Speaker 1: that have looked at at what happens when you put
Speaker 1: somebody in solitary confinement, when you isolate someone from stemming. Lie. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand thirteen pieces on from Wire Magazine
Speaker 1: by Brandon Kime, titled The Horrible Psychology of Solitary Confinement,
Speaker 1: and it takes a nice look at horrifying topic, pointing
Speaker 1: out the solitary confinement has been shown to make prisoners
Speaker 1: extremely anxious, to make them angry, make them hallucinate, experienced
Speaker 1: mood swings and flatness, the loss of impulse control, and
Speaker 1: this is all on top of aggravating any pre existing
Speaker 1: mental illnesses. Um. So they We've looked at solitary confinement
Speaker 1: many times from a scientific standpoint in the past, and
Speaker 1: it generally comes in ways responding to trends and concerns
Speaker 1: related to modern incarcin incarceration, So the mid eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: or concern and interest in this. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: it popped up again due in part of his reaction
Speaker 1: to the Korean War um prisoners of war and how
Speaker 1: they were allegedly treated, and then it rose up again
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties with you know, some research spread
Speaker 1: out in between, but those are sort of the big periods.
Speaker 1: So I have to say, like every time, like I
Speaker 1: read a fictional account or watch a TV show er
Speaker 1: movie where it's a prison setting and somebody does something
Speaker 1: wrong and get sent to solitary. My first thought is
Speaker 1: always like that sounds great, Yeah, like, oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: get to be away from all the craziness. And do
Speaker 1: you sit all by yourself in a room and hang
Speaker 1: out and sleep and you're alone with your thoughts. However,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's as peaceful as I'm imagining it
Speaker 1: to be based on these experiments, right, and and also
Speaker 1: on other things we know, and it's based on accounts
Speaker 1: where people just talk about it is just this brutalization
Speaker 1: of the mind. Essentially, in absence of stimuli, we focus
Speaker 1: on what little stimuli there is. Our brains are made
Speaker 1: for a world of you know, fixed and moving objects,
Speaker 1: of varied environmental actions going on, not a limited cell.
Speaker 1: So you get in there, your brain is up chewing
Speaker 1: on itself. Uh. May, maybe it's some detail in the cell.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's um, it's something in your memory. Your brain
Speaker 1: finds something to focus on and sort of recreate the
Speaker 1: world you've been robbed off out of its limited pieces.
Speaker 1: And this is the Hannibal Elector style, like like forming
Speaker 1: what does he call it his memory palace? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think he doesn't. He paint the walls with to resemble
Speaker 1: Florence or something. It depends on the iteration of Hannibal.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in the TV show which just ended, I believe,
Speaker 1: once they actually incarceraate him, like he just constructs it
Speaker 1: all inside it like he can, like because he's such
Speaker 1: a crazed genius, he can like go inside his memory
Speaker 1: palace and it's like he's in a church in Florence
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah. So, like basically that's what
Speaker 1: your brain wants to do, but oftentimes you don't have
Speaker 1: and you don't have that rich tapestry to to to
Speaker 1: draw on. What you have are maybe some traumatic memories
Speaker 1: from your incarceration. Maybe it's you know, some weird markings
Speaker 1: on the wall or something that's troubling you in the
Speaker 1: back of your mind, and that's what gets flowed up.
Speaker 1: That's what is blown out to your new virtual world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well so I O I and actually has a really
Speaker 1: nice summary piece, less about um the isolation part, but
Speaker 1: more about the sensory deprivation and guess who came up
Speaker 1: at the beginning of their article. It was the good
Speaker 1: old John C. Lily Uh character that often seems to
Speaker 1: come up on stuff to blow your mind. In fact,
Speaker 1: we've talked recently about maybe doing an episode just about
Speaker 1: him and you. You were the one who told me
Speaker 1: I think that. Uh. He was the inspiration for Altered States, right,
Speaker 1: which is kind of my go to, UM pop culture
Speaker 1: movie reference for sensory deprivation tanks. He claimed that when
Speaker 1: he was in a sensory deprivation tank, it allowed him
Speaker 1: to make contact with creatures from another dimension. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they're from a civilization that was far more advanced than
Speaker 1: our own. Uh. So that is, I guess kind of
Speaker 1: close to the Harbinger story. Although I don't know necessarily
Speaker 1: that John C. Lily is a reliable source. Um he is.
Speaker 1: He's a kind of a problematic source, but a fascinating one.
Speaker 1: But hallucinations are absolutely real, um people. We definitely know
Speaker 1: people have hallucinations when they're deprived of their senses. Renowned
Speaker 1: physicist Richard Feynman has described having them when he was
Speaker 1: in a sensory deprivation chamber. We have lots of examples
Speaker 1: of studies that have been done. Uh. Both meditation and
Speaker 1: senor sensory deprivation are linked to decreased alpha waves and
Speaker 1: increased theta waves within our brains. These are the same
Speaker 1: things that we we find when we're in a sleeping state,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we're going to find as we kind
Speaker 1: of go through this sensory deprivation stuff that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of connections to what we were talking about earlier
Speaker 1: with the Russian sleep experiment story of sleep. So there's
Speaker 1: a connection between the isolation and the sleep stuff, at
Speaker 1: least in how our brains work. Uh. There's an investigation,
Speaker 1: uh in two thousand nine that showed that some people
Speaker 1: within fifth teen minutes of sensory deprivation will have hallucinations triggered. Uh.
Speaker 1: And however, I will qualify it by saying that this
Speaker 1: particular study, they the people that they got for this
Speaker 1: study purposely were scored low on what is called they
Speaker 1: revised hallucination scale. I'd love to know that test, how
Speaker 1: they how they how they determine that basically what this
Speaker 1: man was like these people, I think we're in like
Speaker 1: the lower twenty percentile of people who are are likely
Speaker 1: to have hallucinations. Now, it's also worth noting that that
Speaker 1: this kind of isolation warps our perception of time, and
Speaker 1: you know, part of that you get into the whole
Speaker 1: just a relative nature of time. Right. An hour spent
Speaker 1: in a boring waiting room is far different than an
Speaker 1: hour spent at the carnival. Right. So, sociologist and caving
Speaker 1: enthusiast Maresio Mantobini spent three hundred and sixty six days
Speaker 1: in an Italian cave to replicate a long solitary space flight.
Speaker 1: You know, what would be the experience of staying in
Speaker 1: a little tube on your way to march right. Uh.
Speaker 1: When he emerged, he was convinced only two d and
Speaker 1: nineteen days had passed, uh, instead of three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty six, So his sleep wave cycles had nearly doubled
Speaker 1: in this in this scenario. So there's another connection. Your
Speaker 1: senses are inherently connected, I guess to your circadian rhythm.
Speaker 1: That gets back to what I was talking about earlier
Speaker 1: with light and jet lag. Uh. There's another crazy story
Speaker 1: that we have an instance of this in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: It's a French geologist named Michel Sifra who studied an
Speaker 1: underground glacier beneath the French Alps, and he ended up
Speaker 1: staying for two months instead of his anticipated two weeks.
Speaker 1: And what happened was he basically decided to stop doing
Speaker 1: his study and live like an animal. That's quote, I
Speaker 1: think that's his quote, live like an animal. Uh. And
Speaker 1: when he was tested back on the surface, when his
Speaker 1: team and they got him out, they found that it
Speaker 1: took him five minutes to count to one twenty seconds.
Speaker 1: So it definitely interferes with our perceptions of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and therefore also ends up warping our sleep and in
Speaker 1: the the way that plays into how we use our time.
Speaker 1: For reasons that we're still not sure about it. It Uh,
Speaker 1: it really blows out your sleep cycle. So most underground
Speaker 1: dwellers shift to a forty eight hour cycle, thirty six
Speaker 1: hours of activity followed by twelve hours of sleep. I
Speaker 1: don't know if well, I suppose if I was in
Speaker 1: the right environment, I would shift over to that, but
Speaker 1: I don't know that I could be awake for thirty
Speaker 1: six hours straight. Um. One of the key series of
Speaker 1: experiments here and again I mentioned the you know, the
Speaker 1: different boom periods for for isolation experimentation. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: McGill University Medical Center in Montreal, where psychologist Donald Hebb
Speaker 1: led several key isolation experiments in the late fifties. Again,
Speaker 1: this is after the Korean Wars find to somew treatment. Uh,
Speaker 1: volunteer students were put in soundproof cubicles. They even gave
Speaker 1: them trans hallucin visors, cotton gloves, cardboard cuffs to you know,
Speaker 1: keep them from feeling the way that doesn't involve slicing nerves.
Speaker 1: We gave them U shaped pillows turn on some white noise,
Speaker 1: and they found that the test stuff just became restless
Speaker 1: and mirror hours and in some cases became anxious and emotional.
Speaker 1: U their abilities in arithmetic and word association test quickly
Speaker 1: took a dive. And then uh, the hallucinations points of
Speaker 1: light lines or shapes eventually bizarre seeing such ads and
Speaker 1: these are at actual scenes. Hallucinations are crazy? Is there
Speaker 1: like the kind of urban legend hallucinations you hear, like, well,
Speaker 1: such and such kid took LSD and then he saw
Speaker 1: this for the rest of his life or whatever, right,
Speaker 1: like these are nuts? Yeah? And speaking of nuts, yeah,
Speaker 1: the first squirrels marching with sacks over their shoulders. Another one,
Speaker 1: processions of eyeglasses filing down a street. One one person
Speaker 1: only saw dogs, another one only saw babies. Um, and
Speaker 1: they had no control over the visuals. They're just rolling
Speaker 1: them out. So this this reminds me of two things.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, what we said earlier about
Speaker 1: the brain focusing on a one little thing, It just
Speaker 1: it has to fill up your world, and it ends
Speaker 1: up filling your world up with a babby. Just yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't I think it was like lots of babies.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just like a baby or two. It was like,
Speaker 1: I think this person was just hallucinating hordes of babies,
Speaker 1: which sounds like the scariest horror movie never made. And again,
Speaker 1: it's like they had no control over. So this is
Speaker 1: the kind of perhaps some people who engage in meditation
Speaker 1: or yoga can relate to this. But when I am
Speaker 1: finishing yoga, sometimes, when I'm in shivasana, I get to
Speaker 1: experience some level of hallucination that I don't have control over.
Speaker 1: It's often just lights and stuff, you know, but you're
Speaker 1: just sort of watching it transpire. You're not directly influencing
Speaker 1: what you're seeing. Yeah, absolutely, I've I've had similar situations before,
Speaker 1: although nothing doble, which is apparently what happened in this
Speaker 1: McGill's study. Right, Yeah, there were some audible hallucinations. They're
Speaker 1: hearing music, they're hearing sounds, tactile hallucinations where they touched
Speaker 1: the door knob and I think they feel a shock
Speaker 1: or another person said that they felt pellets hitting their skin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So basically the gist of this is that they weren't
Speaker 1: even able to finish this study. They wanted it to
Speaker 1: be several weeks long, but everyone became so distressed and
Speaker 1: had so much trouble that they just ended the study. Uh,
Speaker 1: they only lasted a few days in isolation, none of
Speaker 1: them lasted more than a week, and they reported, you know,
Speaker 1: they were unable to think clearly the whole time. They
Speaker 1: were actually more susceptible to suggestion after they got out. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, one of the things that they did was
Speaker 1: suggest to them, uh, while they were sorry, while they
Speaker 1: their their senses were deprived, they suggested to them that
Speaker 1: ghosts were real. And then when they got out of
Speaker 1: the situation, they asked them questions about the paranormal and
Speaker 1: these people were now more likely to think that ghosts
Speaker 1: were real, which lent credence to this idea that, you know,
Speaker 1: there was this paranoid idea that the Soviets were using
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation in some kind of way to brainwash people, right,
Speaker 1: like a Manchurian candidate kind of situation, And so that
Speaker 1: subsequently led to even more research in this area, also
Speaker 1: done at at McGill. This guy d Ewen Cameron. He
Speaker 1: was the head of McGill's psychiatry department in the fifties
Speaker 1: and he was inspired by Heav's work, so he began
Speaker 1: employing sensory deprivation as part of a technique called psychic driving.
Speaker 1: This is something we should probably do an episode on
Speaker 1: UH and his unsuccessful attempt to reprogram the minds of
Speaker 1: mentally ill patients. So basically he justified this saying, you
Speaker 1: know this, this was something that was sort of necessary
Speaker 1: so that we could better understand the mind and lieu
Speaker 1: of the Soviet brainwash characters. UM. Ultimately, the patients, some
Speaker 1: of them ended up suing him afterwards, and UH. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties six he wrote in the American Journal of
Speaker 1: Psychiatry that he would hypnotize schizophrenic patients under the stimulant
Speaker 1: drugs and after prolonged psychological isolation. So, like we were
Speaker 1: saying earlier, like let's say you're a prisoner and you're
Speaker 1: putting solitary confinement and you're already mentally ill. Like, that's
Speaker 1: not going to help the situation. This guy was like
Speaker 1: doing that to people on purpose and then throwing drugs
Speaker 1: into the mix. Uh, and then finally, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately like this is a real ethics violation. I think
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that probably led to
Speaker 1: the strict adherence to institutional review boards that we have nowadays.
Speaker 1: In most studies, these people were sick, they had mental illness,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to get help, but instead they were
Speaker 1: just subjected to this kind of brutal research that seemed
Speaker 1: to be largely stimulated by the Cold War. Just have
Speaker 1: one more study on all this. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: psycholog just Ian Robbins created recreated HEAVS experiments and in
Speaker 1: collaboration with the BBC, and in this they isolated six
Speaker 1: volunteers for forty eight hours and soundproof rooms, all this
Speaker 1: taking place in a former UM nuclear bunker. This sounds
Speaker 1: fairly close to the Harbinger. It does, and they've had
Speaker 1: similar results that anxiety, extreme emotions, paranoia, significant deterioration in
Speaker 1: their mental functioning, and of course crazy hallucinations. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that I wanted to list these hallucinations because they're just
Speaker 1: as bonkers, isn't the first batch one person hallucinated a
Speaker 1: heap of five thousand empty oyster shells, And then there
Speaker 1: are other things like a snake zebras, tiny cars, the
Speaker 1: room taking off I think, like flying a bunch of mosquitoes,
Speaker 1: and then this one that there are fighter planes flying
Speaker 1: and buzzing around within the room. So yeah, so the
Speaker 1: deprivation can definitely uh twist your mind. Yeah, you remove
Speaker 1: human from its natural sleep side. So you remove a
Speaker 1: human from its natural environment and you change the expression
Speaker 1: of the mind, you change our experience of reality. And
Speaker 1: that is ultimately a very terrifying concept to wrap our
Speaker 1: hands around and lends itself so well to uh to
Speaker 1: too horror. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, Yeah. I guess like ultimately
Speaker 1: what I come back to the Harbinger and the Gateway
Speaker 1: of the mind is the idea of being able to
Speaker 1: just sever our connections to our senses from our consciousness.
Speaker 1: That is very scary. Um yeah, to the point that
Speaker 1: I don't know that I can imagine it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it significantly changes what it is to be human, and
Speaker 1: that's you know, ultimately, stories like this, that's what it's
Speaker 1: about it's about exploring the human condition, uh, though taking
Speaker 1: a more frightening approach to that exploration. All right, today
Speaker 1: you have it one of everybody's favorite episodes from last
Speaker 1: Halloween season, and again look for a new creepy postit
Speaker 1: episode as well some new Halloween content to come out
Speaker 1: in the week's add This is really big time of
Speaker 1: the year for us. We always get real excited. It's
Speaker 1: our favorite time of the year. In fact, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take this opportunity to plug our new season of
Speaker 1: Monster Science, produced by Robert and our producer Tyler in House.
Speaker 1: Some really good stuff coming out of that. You'll find
Speaker 1: that on our social media feeds. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. Will be all over
Speaker 1: that in October, and as always, check out Stuff to
Speaker 1: Boil your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all
Speaker 1: of our podcast episodes with landing pages with links out
Speaker 1: to related materials you'll find. Uh. It's also a links
Speaker 1: out of social media. You'll find blogs, video, everything. It's
Speaker 1: it's recently been redesigned, it's getting updates constantly. Check it
Speaker 1: out if you haven't already, and if you want to
Speaker 1: write us about your favorite Creavy pasta so we might
Speaker 1: cover it in one of our future episodes. You can
Speaker 1: always get us the old fashioned way at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com