The Creepy Scientific Explanation Behind Ghost Sightings. Right away, you should know that it is the official position of Cracked.com and its parent company that we don't believe in bullshit.
It's fun to think about bizarre unsolved myseries and wonder what's actually going on with the whole UFO thing, but we'll always defer to Occam's razor. A blur on a photograph is way more likely to be a weather balloon than a spaceship and a ghostly old woman wandering around an old church is far more likely to be a hallucination or, you know, an actual confused old woman.
There's a fine line between kooky and spectral. It says nothing about our belief in an afterlife or lack thereof. There is simply no evidence that dead people wander aimlessly around old houses, and no known scientific principle that would make it possible. It appears that science has stumbled across the reason for it.
Mole people? In order to understand the science we need to head back to the late 1950's. Above: the cause of all human suffering. 5 Terrifying Things Found in the Last Place You'd Expect. If life were perfect, the terrifying things of the world would live in their own remote part of the planet so the rest of us could avoid them entirely.
But life isn't perfect, and sometimes horror seems to just materialize out of nowhere. Unfortunately, when that happens, it's usually in the last place you'd ever want or expect to have something pants-soilingly awful to contend with. For example ... #5. Bedbugs in Library Books Bedbugs have been big news over the past couple of years. The 6 Stupidest Things You Can Pay People to Do for You. In awful economic times like these, it's important that we still set a little cash aside to waste on completely superfluous bullshit.
After all, there are people out there whose continued ability to pay their bills depends on our willingness to part with our hard-earned money on frivolous nonsense. The 6 Most Shameful DIY Sex Toys on the Internet. 5 Ways Your Brain Tricks You into Sticking With Bad Habits. Bad habits can ruin your life.
The 5 Most Pointless Abilities People Love to Brag About. In Holland there is a man who can regulate his body temperature just by thinking about it; in England there's a guy who can solve any mathematical equation in his head, as well as learn new languages in a week; and from my normal standing position, I can jump really, really high.
The point is, there are legitimate superpowers in the world, and a few of us are lucky enough to enjoy them for no reason other than genetic providence. The 5 Most Terrifying Supreme Court Decisions. In the United States, the Supreme Court has final say over whether any law is constitutional.
So in a way it's the final barrier that prevents any legislators from getting too crazy or racist in the laws they pass. But the Supreme Court itself is not made up of gods or wizards. The 8 Creepiest Cases of Identity Theft of All Time. Identity theft is one of the most widely committed crimes in the world, affecting millions of people a year in varying degrees of severity, ranging from a few unwanted pizzas on your credit card bill to landing on an international watch list for political assassins.
Sometimes the crimes are so elaborate and the consequences are so strange and unpredictable that it almost makes us want to cancel all our credit cards, forfeit all our licenses and live in a hole in the earth with pillowcases full of cash, surviving entirely on boiled tree roots and stale urine. #8. The 6 Cruelest Science Experiments Ever (Were Done on Kids) Sometimes science has to be ruthless.
If curing cancer means dropping a dozen frightened children into the jungle for some reason, then by God that's what you do. And if you aren't curing cancer, but are just curious about what children look like when abandoned in a jungle, well, you still do it. Why? Because science. Think we're joking? #6. Getty In the summer of 1954, social psychologist Muzafer Sherif wanted to see if two groups stuck in the wild would learn to hate each other. Thus kicked off his Robbers Cave experiment, in which a group of 11 ordinary, middle-class 11-year-old boys headed to summer camp at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma, anxious for three fun-filled weeks of hiking, fishing and swimming. 6 Ways You Can (Accidentally) Attract the Ladies.
5 Ways Your Nerd Gadgets Are Killing You. Video games will turn our kids violent.
The Internet will ruin our attention spans. Texting will ruin the art of coherent typing -- yeah, yeah, Grandpa, we get it. You're scared of technology. But what's funny is that while all of the standard warnings turn out to be alarmist garbage, our geek toys are wreaking havoc in completely unexpected, and amazingly stupid, ways. For instance ... #5. You know the guy: He's veering right toward you, head down, eyes glued to whatever amazingly compelling narrative his buddies are texting him. GettySeconds later, four people were dead. You already know that texting while driving is completely idiotic and even worse than drunk driving, but who can't handle shooting someone a quick text while simply walking down the street?
GadgetcomOne day society will learn that some folks deserve their head injuries. Meanwhile, cities like London have installed talking crosswalk signals at intersections to catch their attention. The 6 Weirdest Things That Statistically Lower Crime. You might not have noticed this in the middle of all of the bad news that floods the daily headlines, but crime in the U.S. is at its lowest point in pretty much ... well, ever.
It's been steadily falling since the early '90s. And nobody knows why. Of course, such a giant, sweeping trend doesn't have just one simple cause, but studies have shown that it might have a few shithouse-crazy ones. So if you're feeling safer these days, science says it could be thanks to things like ... #6. The 9 Most Unnecessary Gadgets Money Can Buy. In a world where blankets with sleeves can create millionaires, it's no wonder inventors and businessmen are locked in a race to develop the next big thing in the lucrative "They really pay money for this? " industry. We don't hold that against them -- the entire world economy runs on that crap. What's harder to comprehend, though, is how they poker-facedly try to sell us gadgets that actually manage to complicate the task they're intended to help with.
Like ... #9. The 6 Craziest People Who Are Overpopulating the World. The 7 Creepiest Inventions Ever Patented For the Crotch. Some men will stick their dick in anything, and this is the only fact evolution and police blotters agree on. 5 Horrifying Apocalyptic Scenarios (That Have Already Happened) It's impossible to turn on the news or go the movies without hearing about some disease or cataclysm that's about to end the world. There's a movie coming (2012) that as far as we can tell is about every apocalypse happening at once, and in the news the flavor of the week is swine flu--though so far the fatality rate has fallen rather short of, say, Popsicles.
Our apocalypse fixation ignores the fact that the things we're afraid of are old-hat. Extinction level events have happened again and again throughout history and, lo and behold, we're still here. And hell, we probably wouldn't be without number five... Everyone knows this story: For millions of years, dinosaurs roamed the earth, snacking on the odd mammal that was unfortunate enough to get in their way. The 5 Most Unsettling Disney Theme Park Easter Eggs. The 6 Creepiest Lies the Food Industry is Feeding You.
Kobe Beef Doesn't Really Exist.