In this Halloween episode, learn how scientists were able to get three people to communicate with each other using only the power of their brains, and why toxic mold might make you see ghosts. Plus, hear the story of “Cropsey,” a terrifying boogeyman who turned out to be real. In this Halloween 2018 podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Scientists Linked Three Brains to Form the First Telepathic Brainstorm Session — https://curiosity.im/2D6LlyZ Seeing Ghosts May Just Be a Result of Breathing a Toxic Mold — https://curiosity.im/2D7GkpM "Cropsey" Was the Terrifying Boogeyman Who Turned Out to Be Real — https://curiosity.im/2D6hdE0 Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
In this Halloween episode, learn how scientists were able to get three people to communicate with each other using only the power of their brains, and why toxic mold might make you see ghosts. Plus, hear the story of “Cropsey,” a terrifying boogeyman who turned out to be real.
In this Halloween 2018 podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-first-telepathic-brainstorm-ghost-creating-toxic-mold-and-cropsey-the-real-boogeyman
CODY GOUGH: Happy Halloween. We've got three spooky stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn how scientists were able to get three people to communicate with each other using only the power of their brains and why toxic mold might make you see ghosts. We'll wrap up today's episode with the story of Cropsey, a terrifying boogeyman who turned out to be real.
CODY GOUGH: No. But really, he did turn out to be real.
ASHLEY HAMER: He really did, and it really is terrifying.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Scientists have linked three brains to form the first telepathic brainstorm session. As in they got three people to communicate with each other using nothing but the power of their own brains. And this is the first time researchers have successfully done this. This is real science.
ASHLEY HAMER: It is.
CODY GOUGH: This is a thing that happened.
ASHLEY HAMER: I feel like we're being a little misleading by saying nothing but the power of their own brains because they did have EEGs, and like transcranial magnetic stimulation, and stuff like that. But it was powered by their brains.
CODY GOUGH: Stop ruining my Halloween, Ashley. It was a groundbreaking new project. And it came from researchers out of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington. They developed a three-player collaboration-based game, where the participants used only their brain waves to communicate. And the game was a lot like Tetris, but with a couple of changes.
They put three players in separate rooms with two players called the senders hooked into EEG devices. Those kept track of the brain's electrical activity as the players watched blocks fall from the top of the screen to the bottom. And the third player was the receiver. And the receiver wore both an EEG and a transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS device.
The receiver was actually given control of the game, but was not allowed to see the bottom half of the screen. In other words, the receiver would have no idea if the block was in the right configuration to fit into the empty space. And that's where the senders came in. Their screens were flanked by 2 LED lights, each flashing at a different rate.
Their job was to stare at one of those lights to indicate rotate or another to indicate do not rotate. The EEG could read which direction the sender was looking and move a cursor in that direction on the screen. That helped the senders confirm whether the computer was reading their brain activity correctly.
Once the command was chosen, it was relayed to the receiver not by text or by a light, but by their TMS device. That stimulated their visual cortex and made them see a light inside their eyes, known as a phosphine. Once the receiver got the command, and the command would either be seeing a light, meaning rotate, or seeing no light, meaning don't rotate, the receiver would choose whether or not to rotate the block.
Now as you might imagine, they often got it right. Telepathy accomplished, right? Well, no. There was a second step in the experiment, where the researchers sent false signals to the receiver to test the human's ability to predict the correct course of action, even in the face of misinformation. Humans turned out to be surprisingly good at separating the fake messages from the accurate ones. We are social animals after all. Now if only we could do the same thing to help people sniff out fake news.
ASHLEY HAMER: Do you believe in ghosts? Do you want to believe? Well, according to researchers that old, worn down, abandoned house down the block might not be haunted. It might just be dirty.
CODY GOUGH: Although it might still be haunted.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure, Cody. Whatever helps you not sleep at night. Here's a fun fact. According to a Pew Research Center survey from 2009, 18% of American adults say they've seen a ghost. Not just felt one or heard one, but seen one. At least one researcher has a theory about why.
Shane Rogers is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Clarkson University. And according to him, you can blame it on mold. When mold reproduces, it creates spores in the air that you can breathe in. The side effects of breathing in sporey air might include seeing ghosts.
A 2009 study hinted at a potential link between certain toxic molds and symptoms like movement disorders, delirium, dementia, and disorders of balance and coordination, which all could translate into that creepy feeling that you get in old, spooky places that makes you feel like things just aren't quite right.
But the mold idea is still speculative. Hauntings are very widely reported phenomena, but they're not widely researched. Still though, a lot of those reports come from sightings in older built structures that may also suffer from poor air quality. Rogers and other researchers are working to figure out whether some reported hauntings may be linked to specific pollutants found in indoor air. And this research could impact more than just ghosts.
In 1995, one of England's leading fungus experts wrote about sick library syndrome. Dr. RJ Hay wrote that hallucinogenic spores in old books could lead to, quote, enhancement of enlightenment, unquote. Spooky, isn't it?
CODY GOUGH: Only if you read books.
ASHLEY HAMER: Good thing we're in the clear.
CODY GOUGH: Halloween is all about the paranormal, but at Curiosity, we're all about science, and facts, and history, and stuff. Those things can be pretty scary too though. So today, you'll get the best of both worlds in this story about a real life bogeyman.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's so scary. I'm going to hide under a blanket, while you tell the story.
CODY GOUGH: OK.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right.
CODY GOUGH: Ashley is hiding under a blanket. You too, listener, have our explicit permission to hide under a blanket. She's actually doing this by the way. It's kind of hilarious.
ASHLEY HAMER: Go on.
CODY GOUGH: Well, let's travel back to Staten Island in the mid to late 20th century. I can't do this.
ASHLEY HAMER: I didn't want to be a liar.
CODY GOUGH: It's supposed to be a scary story. All right. Back to this terrifying tale. Travel back to Staten Island in the mid to late 20th century. An urban legends specific to the island centered around Cropsey, a killer who was often touted as a threat to young children. Like lots of other urban legends, there are lots of versions of the story. Sometimes, Cropsey had a sharp ax. Sometimes, he killed with the hook for a hand. In a 1981 slasher movie, he was a former camp caretaker covered in scars.
But in almost every story, He comes from Willowbrook State School. It was opened in 1947 as an institution for children with intellectual or developmental disabilities, but it was a horrible place. Patients lived in squalor. Some were intentionally exposed to hepatitis in the name of science. And in the early '70s, Geraldo Rivera released an expose that things were only getting worse from there.
The place mercifully shut down in 1987. But back in the '60s, rumors of Cropsey tended to say he was an escaped, quote unquote, inmate of the school. A man was eventually tied to the playground horror stories, but he wasn't one of the school's victims. He was one of the school's employees.
Andre Rand was once a janitor at Willowbrook. And it might not surprise you to learn that the facility did not do a great job of screening out dangerous employees. For years, Rand stayed on Staten Island, even camping semi-permanently in the woods surrounding his former place of employment.
In 1969, he was arrested for attempted assault of a young girl. And in 1983, he was arrested again for unlawful imprisonment. He picked up 11 children in a school bus, took them out to lunch, and drove them to Newark Airport for unknown and luckily, unrealized reasons. He served time for his crimes, but things got worse.
Over the years, a number of people disappeared on the island shortly after being spotted either with Rand or with a man matching Rand's description. But he was finally found guilty of a pair of kidnappings, and he's in prison with no possibility for parole until 2037. At least for now, we can be sure that one boogeyman is off the streets.
ASHLEY HAMER: Read about today's stories and more on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: We hope today's episode did the trick to satisfy your curiosity. Tomorrow, you should treat yourself with another brand new episode of the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I know you're really going to miss my Halloween puns, but hey, there's always next year.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, they're just going to have to gobble up our Thanksgiving puns now.
CODY GOUGH: I don't know what to say to that. I've got nothing.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
ANNOUNCER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.