Episode Summary: Disgusting Paranormal Stories

For years, Becky has given Diana shit about the haunted mirror she purchased at a yard sale and then recklessly hung in an energetically charged bathroom. But the story she tells me today tops every bizarre thing that has happened to her since she brought that cursed mirror home and put it over the potty. I’m still scratching my head about this story, and I really hope that you, dear Hainted Love, can help us figure out what the hell she saw in the mirror.

Dare to question your own reality? Listen to today’s episode for some black humor about the black hole within the black mirror over the blackwater in Diana’s haunted bathroom.

Episode Show Notes About Gross Haunted Bathroom Stories

Another Paranormal Story about Bathroom Portals

It might be too late now, but if you haven’t heard the prelude to this story, go check out the original toilet teleportation story. This has been happening to Diana since she was a tween. Nowadays they don’t disturb her as much as they once did. But she’s still quite bamboozled as to the nature of these experiences, and what they mean.

As a reminder, in the past few decades, more and more bonafide physicists have entertained the idea that there are invisible portals that connect different dimensions, magnetic fields, and worlds. We just have a hard time seeing them. In 2011, Harvard professor Lisa Randall published a book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door. In it, she describes unseen extra dimensions that exist alongside our own. Smithsonian has a great article about it.

Black Holes and White Holes

If these extra dimensions exist, then can they be accessed? Perhaps through black holes, explains Now. Or, more interestingly, perhaps we already know where some of them are. At least, in the case of magnetic portals, as described by this study from NASA.

According to some, a wormhole could exist between a black and a white hole. These could be “portals,” in a sense. They bend light. They mess with time. You know, basically that weird shit Diana saw in her haunted bathroom mirror. Hey, it’s a theory, at least! What’s yours?!

My Paranormal Period: a Traumatic Potty Story

Dear God, it’s Diana, and I want to know, why can’t I have a normal haunting experience like all my friends? How come when I have paranormal experiences, they tend to involve toilets and bodily fluids? Will I ever learn to shut my mouth before jokes about menstruating ectoplasm come out of it? Hainted Loves, we are continuously amazed and grateful that you stick with us despite our filthy dirty potty mouths and all the disgusting and only vaguely paranormal stories we tell.

And remember, these episodes are edited for content. Can you imagine what we sound like unfiltered? Well, our Patrons already know! We post the stories that end up too spicy and/or gross for the general public on our Patreon as well as our normal ghost story interviews ad-free. It’s a great sneak preview for what we sound like live. When we finally kick off our eventual live haunted world tour, we hope you’ll come and see us, and also, well, we warned you, Japan.

But why does Diana keep falling into these portals while in the bathroom? Would you buy this haunted mirror full of portals and hang it in your home? What room would you put it in? Would you attempt to trap people in it? Would you attempt to seal it off so nothing comes out of it? Whatever happens with it, it’s guaranteed to cause a spooky day!

The post Black Mirror, Black Hole appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Summary

You walk into an empty room, but you feel like you’re being watched. Pulling out your recorder, you start to ask questions, just in case. Maybe you don’t expect to hear anything. But a few hours later, when you listen back to the recording, you hear a voice that isn’t yours. Shivers run up your spine as you realize you were right. Someone, or something, else was in that room with you.

Our guest today is an expert on electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs. But her true ghost stories aren’t just about phantom voices. She’s been encountering strange things her whole life.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

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About the Guest, Cyn Shrader Hill

We met Cyn, founder of Elk Valley Paranormal, through our mutual friend Miranda Young of Ghost Biker Explorations. Cyn of Lincoln County, TN, has caught some creepy EVPs on her many paranormal investigations with her own group and with Ghost Hunters of Southern Tennessee. You can hear some examples of her EVPs right now on her website. She is the author of several books, including Whispers in the Dark, Web Of Terror, They’re Speaking, Are You Listening? and It’s Not Goodbye: Signs from Beyond.

She often partners with her friend, Mark Elliott Fults, author of the book she mentioned on the program, The Darkest Corner: Necrophilia, necromancy, and the functioning of a working psychic. Cyn does public storytelling at Young Vintage Antiques in Fayetteville, TN, where you can apparently purchase some really good sage.

Keep updated on Facebook @ElkValleyParanormal.

Show notes

What is an EVP?

In this case, the acronym EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena (or Elk Valley Paranormal, in other cases). Sometimes, recording equipment will pick up something that sounds like a spoken word or phrase, when no audible words are being spoken in the room where the recording is taking place. Often these messages are too quiet to hear until you turn up the volume.

Are EVP real? Are these actual messages from another realm? Could they be the quiet voices of spirits, amplified by technology? Or are we just hearing what we want to hear within the white noise? After listening to Cyn’s EVP collection, we’re pretty convinced these are actual voices. But whose voices are they?

How to get a good electronic voice phenomenon recording

• Wondering what EVP questions to ask? Try asking direct, open ended questions, but not leading questions.
• If you know a name associated with the location, use it! Try asking if that person is present. Direct your question to that person, addressing them by name.
• Leave plenty of time after asking your question. Remember, you can’t hear an EVP in real time, so you just have to trust something might be happening and keep recording the silence.
• Eliminate sources of background noise, and make sure nobody is speaking in another room while you’re recording.
• Use reliable EVP technology; something that picks up very quiet sounds.
• If you’re using something that records onto physical medium, like a cassette tape, never reuse a tape. Old recordings may not be 100% gone after being dubbed over.

How to protect your empathic self

Cyn gave us some tips for empaths doing paranormal investigations.

• Countdown meditation.
• Opening and closing prayer.
• Always close any kind of questioning by saying goodbye, otherwise the door stays open.
• Essential oils: lavender for anxiety, peach for interrupting an anxious event.
• Crystals, which can be cleansed with moonlight or sage smoke.
• Smoke from burning sage creates a barrier for spirits and ill intent, which you can draw then step over.

Have you caught an electronic voice phenomenon on tape?

While there are many methods of audio communication with paranormal entities and spirits, EVPs are one of the classics. If you’ve got a good EVP from a haunted location, we want to hear it! Show and tell is every day on our Facebook group, because every day is a spooky day.

The post EVPs, Turkey Ghosts, and the Shape of a Haunted House appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Summary:

Synchronicity refers to two or more events that seem to be related simultaneously occurring at the same time. And our guest today has had multiple, strange synchronicities happen in his life. Are these events merely coincidental, or is there something larger at play? Decide for yourself as we interview one of the original paranormal podcasters, Jim Harold.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

Sponsored by The Smell of Fear Candles

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About the Guest, Jim Harold

Jim Harold is the creator of several podcasts, including The Paranormal Podcast, Jim Harold’s Campfire, Unpleasant Dreams, and You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me. And those are just the paranormal ones. Jim also has podcasts discussing true crime, classic TV shows, and relationships. He’s not exclusively into audio, either. Check out his YouTube channel, several books of true ghost stories, and even a true ghost story coloring book for grown-ups.

Show Notes

What is Serendipity?

Serendipity involves unexpectedly happening upon something of interest, relevance, or value, and having the wisdom to recognize that value within an entirely different context or application. You might be pondering a problem, and find the answer in the graffiti on a highway overpass, that you only witnessed because your normal route was under construction. Or you might, in the course of developing a new drug, accidentally get some in your mouth, and discover the next big artificial sweetener.

We notice serendipities because it’s part of human nature to search for patterns. We humans automatically notice patterns, even within randomness. In design, it’s nearly impossible to create a design that truly appears “random.” That’s because we are so good at identifying patterns and assigning meanings. Common phenomena like Blue Ford Syndrome and pareidolia remind us that most serendipities we notice are just noticeable because they are outliers within the normal chaos.

The word is fairly new, and based on a Persian fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip. This week, our Apple Premium and Patreon subscribers will get to hear Diana tell her own version of this out of print, oft-translated fable.

Serendipity vs. Synchronicity and their Relation to the Paranormal

Whereas serendipity is the ability to glean a relevant eureka moment from an unexpected source, synchronicity is more about timing. As my etymology peeps will appreciate, Chronos refers to Father Time, and the rest of the word, Syn+City refers to Las Vegas, NV. But although you and I know that truth, Psychology Today claims that synchronicity is a Jungian term. “Synchronicity, as an acausal connecting principle, suggests that the shared meaning between two low-probability events had something to do with explaining why they happened.”

Either term potentially implies that a coincidence is more than just a coincidence; synchronicity exclusively so. Serendipities usually result in objectively practical external outcomes, but their causality can be dismissed as coincidental. Synchronicities are, by definition, not mere coincidence. Synchronicities tend to have mainly subjective internal emotional intrigue. The events themselves may hold no inherent value or useful outcome. Rather, it is their connection which is relevant to the study of epistemological metaphysics.

One might say that serendipity is similar to receiving a mystical sign from the universe. But another might argue that the wonder of serendipity lies within the human ability to recognize the relevance of the serendipitous discovery from within in a completely irrelevant context. Synchronicity by necessity uses the simultaneous happening of rare events to imply a supernatural connection between the two.

What can you do with your haunted mirror?

This episode sparked a little debate between haunted mirror owners. If you find yourself in possession (no pun intended) of a cursed mirror, would you keep it? Or would you get rid of it? And how? If you’re in the “get rid of it” camp, it’s not a simple decision. Breaking it comes with bad luck. Burning glass doesn’t work so well. But selling it or giving it away involves inadvertently cursing someone else. Patrons will get a bonus this week of Becky and Diana’s best hot tips on how to get rid of a cursed mirror like the one in this episode without calamitous results.

Have you taken a paranormal cruise?

Is it anything like we imagined? NO??? Sounds like it’s time for us to start a Go Fund Me to buy a cruise ship. Let’s make this nightmare a reality.

Have you experienced a serendipity or synchronicity that bordered on supernatural?

We love the concept of synchronicity, and are fully open to believing that some serendipities are supernatural in nature. Tell us about your synchronicities by finding us on social using those buttons down at the bottom of the page. Or submit your story if you’d like to tell it in an episode. We appreciate you sharing so we can all have a spooky day!

The post Synchronicity Only Explains So Much appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Did Shelby Enter a Time Slip?

Have you ever heard of a time slip? Have you ever experienced one? Everything seems normal until you suddenly find yourself face to face with a person from another era. And slowly you begin to wonder, which of us is in the wrong time?

Time slips and ghost stories go hand in hand, as we hear today. Our guest has encountered both. Hold onto your flux capacitor as we talk to Shelby of Scare You to Sleep Podcast.

About the Guest: Shelby Scott

Shelby Scott tells gently terrifying bedtime stories on her podcast Scare You To Sleep. She recently joined the Bloody Disgusting Network. You can catch her in-person soon at the upcoming Midsummer Scream Convention. She’s also doing a live show in Chicago this November. She also collects vintage midcentury paranormal magazines.

Sponsored by The Smell of Fear Candles

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What is a Time Slip?

The infamous Moberly–Jourdain Incident in Versailles is a great example of a time slip. To make a long story short, a pair of tourists got lost on their way to the Petit Trianon in 1901. As they wandered back alleys or Versailles, they witnessed several anachronisms. They saw people they later decided must have been ghosts, including the spirit of Marie Antoinette herself. Ten years later, they published their story in a book entitled An Adventure under the pseudonyms “Elizabeth Morison” and “Frances Lamont.”

Critics claim their time travel story has been thoroughly debunked. Indeed, editions of An Adventure seemed more embellished each time they were published. Yet it’s relevant to note that the two educated women were likely attempting to make sense of their experience by thoroughly researching and analyzing the things their senses presented to them. The main theories they could surmise—time travel and hauntings—are rife with easy counter-arguments. And yet, the counter arguments made (by men) at the time were based mainly on ad-hominem presumptions. Criticism included theories like the ladies were too shocked by French avant-garde behavior to recognize a costume party. Or that they had a shared delusion, perhaps brought on by virulent lesbianism. Or perhaps that they made it all up for attention. Perhaps Jourdain, the more dominant of the two, coerced Moberly into corroborating her false claims. Remember, these women were well-travelled, middle-class, Oxford academics. True, Jourdain may have ruined her career by claiming that a German spy had infiltrated her college. But is it still paranoia if someone is actually out to get you?

When and how do I tell my partner I’m into ghosts?

Woah, get your mind out of the gutter! We’re not talking about spectrophilia today. Just being an average person who believes in ghosts, seeks out hauntings, and wants to hear as many spooky stories as possible. We propose listening to our podcast with them, preferably in the car, so they can’t run away. As for when, that’s a question for the ages. Is it best to wait until you have a spooky experience together, like Shelby an her husband did? Or better to tear off the bandage right away? After all, do you really want to date someone who would reject you because you love ghosts?

Why don’t we like looking in mirrors in the dark?

Our early H-Files episode Mirror Mirror talks about this common human fear in the context of Bloody Mary. And the darker the mirror, the darker the prospect.

Are You Into the Time Slip?

Have you ever found yourself suddenly thrust into another time? If you have any wisdom to share about time slips, hit us up! We don’t get many paranormal stories like this, so it really made us think. Is being alive and stuck in a time slip kind of like being a ghost stuck in the world of the living, but in reverse? And—oh god—could you get stuck?! What a spooky day that would be!

The post Into The Time Slip: True Stories About Civil War Ghosts appeared first on Homespun Haints.

When our recent guest Bill said the word in casual supernatural conversation, we just assumed he was referring to his collection of Victorian medical equipment. After all, most people I know just associate the word with a chilly, awkward-yet-convenient way to, ahem, open boxes.

It turns out, the word is less about the specific item on view, and more about the viewing act itself. 

The etymology of speculum

“Spek-” was the PIE root word for “to observe.” Think of words like inspect, introspection, spectrum, speculate, perspective, spectacles, respect, speculation, suspicion. All have to do with some point of view, or an observation. The sound has similar meaning in many other languages. These include spasati which means  “sees” in Sanskrit; the Greek word skopos meaning “watcher, beholder;” or the Old High German word spehhon, meaning “to spy.” But nowhere does its modern use become more obvious than Latin specere “to look at.” This word birthed the Latin speculum, or “mirror” (pl. specula). 

The magical speculum

Throughout the Middle Ages, speculum took on a number of vernacular meanings above and beyond the simple looking glass. Speculum referred to any sort of device used for insight through reflection in either a literal or figurative sense. In early medieval times, the word speculum used to refer to magical scrying devices. A black mirror, witch ball, crystal ball, or shiny polished stone are all examples of specula for scrying. 

Witch balls were in part popularized by the famous witch of Irish folklore, Biddy Early. Biddy was from County Clare, Ireland, where Diana’s ancestors emigrated from. Also where Dumbledore took Harry to search for the locket horcrux. This Irish healer famously foretold the future by gazing into a blue bottle given to her by the specter of her deceased son Tom. She also coerced an injured handsome young man into marrying her in exchange for his cure. Sounds sassy, especially when you realize she was well over 70 at the time, and had already survived at least 3 (maybe 5) husbands.

Could this be the origin of the term “old biddy?” The circumstances of the marriage were so bizarre that the press announced it. This during a time when only nobility ran marriage announcements. It probably also went a long way towards her reputation as a witch.

The insightful literary speculum

The twelfth century saw another common use for the term: insightful subjective guidebooks. Written specula were hybrid how-to guides and advice columns for various subsections of society. Basically “how to be a good _______” tracts, but with the addition of introspective philosophical reasoning. There was the Speculum virginum for nuns. Speculum ecclesiae was for clergy. And Speculum judiciale advised judges.

Even early on in the literary genre’s history, there were instances of speculum satire. My favorite reference is the Speculum stultorum. Meaning “Mirror of Fools,” this fable tells of a literal ass who accidentally starts his own lazy religious order in an attempt to grow a longer tail. An amusing story of mystical drugs, running from attack dogs, flunking at studies, and eventually returning home chastened to his master after his pointless cult dissolves, Burnellus the donkey is totally the Klaus Hargreeves of the speculum universe.

The most popular surviving speculum texts seem to be the Specula Pricipum, literally the “Mirror for Princes.” This genre of writings was the main method of disseminating political theories of the time. The documents attempted to convince monarchs (who had always had absolute power) that maybe they should think of their republic as an offshoot of themselves, and accept their own intrinsic duty to lead and care for it magnanimously. With the populace thus humanized, rulers hopefully considered democratic solutions more often and did less flippant murderin’ overall.

Of course, like almost all political writings, the supposedly educational “reflective” material guided the reader to an obvious conclusion suiting the author’s agenda. This controversial media reaches its zenith in Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. This particular speculum is the reason we still use the term “Machiavellian” to brand politicians as unscrupulous and tyrannical.

The medical speculum

It wasn’t until around the dawn of the Modern Age in the late 16th century that the word was first ascribed to a medical device. Specifically, a medical speculum is an “instrument for rendering a part accessible to observation.” Different models allow for viewing the inside of at least 4 different types of flesh windows.

You’re probably most familiar with the medical speculum used for spelunking the mossy cleft. Oh, and the duck bills on that one? Those are technically called “blades,” yikes.

Wait, it gets gother: the type of speculum used to examine an adult’s party taco is called the Graves speculum. This is really starting to sound like a vampire flick. Next time you visit the gynecologist, may I suggest specifically referencing these things by name in the creepiest way you can think of. Extra points for delivering deft puns and amusing feminist monologues throughout the whole problematic procedure.

So can “spectrophilia” also mean a fetish for speculums?

Perhaps, but let’s keep out of that rabbit hole. If you’re like me, I’m sure you’re mainly wondering how the etymology of “speculum” relates to the word “specter”? Well, spectrum, a Latin word closely related to speculum, means “appearance”. From there, it was just a hop, skip and a jump to a meaning like “apparition.”

Or was it? 

By some accounts, Epicurean philosopher Catius first used the Latin word spectrum as a novel translation of the Greek philosophical term εἴδωλον (eídōlon, “image”). Renaissance humanist authors apparently noticed that the Greek word eídōlon also means “apparition” or “phantom.” Writers started using the Latin spectrum thusly. The French disdain for consonants turned spectrum into spectre. English adopted both terms separately; “spectre” from French and “spectrum” from Latin. This is probably because later in the 16th century, the Latin word spectrum was finally applied to things like the visible range of colors. That’s when “spectrum” gained its current common usage in modern English. Specter was then re-adopted from the French to specifically mean “apparition.” Especially in the scary ghost sense of the word. In the US we spell it “specter” only because Webster (of dictionary fame) switched the last 2 letters in his lifelong tirade against words that end in “-re.”  

Etymology, origin, and meaning of “speculum”

The main question I have after reading all this fascinating information about the etymology of the word “speculum” is simple: will we someday create a medical speculum powerful enough to open up a human and actually view his specter while he’s alive? 

…wasn’t that what everyone was thinking? 

Because if we do, that’ll surely be a spooky day. 

Cover photo by petr sidorov on Unsplash

The post Not That Kind of Speculum appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Episode Summary: Portals in Bathrooms

Being a kid is tough. Being a nerdy art kid staying the night in a haunted museum is even tougher. Diana didn’t know some of the haunted history of the Gilcrease Museum grounds when she started volunteering there as a child, but nothing could have prepared her for the strange thing she saw when she was all alone, at night.

Episode Show Notes

The Gilcrease Museum

The Gilcrease Museum is an art museum focusing on Native American art, founded by Thomas Gilcrease who has his house, and his tomb, on the same grounds as the building that now houses the museum.

Gilcrease himself, a man who became a wealthy oil baron at quite a young age, garnered quite a reputation for his philanthropy and art collection. We discuss him at length in the episode, but if you’d like an overview, take a look at the museum’s history page.

And, if you’d like to see the map of the grounds that Diana references in the episode, you can find it here.

Bathroom Portals

So, we admit we get a little wacky in this episode. Inter-dimensional portals that somehow appear in bathrooms? Running into trees in our living room? We swear we were sober when we recorded this.

We do have some vindication, however. In the past few decades, more and more physicists have entertained the idea that there are invisible portals that connect different dimensions, magnetic fields, and worlds. We just have a hard time seeing them.

In 2011, Harvard professor Lisa Randall published a book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, where she describes unseen extra dimensions that exist alongside our own. Smithsonian has a great article about it.

If these dimensions exist, then can they be accessed? Perhaps through black holes, explains Now. Or, more interestingly, perhaps we already know where some of them are. At least, in the case of magnetic portals, as described by this study from NASA.

And, let’s not forget about the blog in London that attempts to document inter-dimensional portals that its residents keep bumping into.

But why do this podcast’s hosts seem to fall into these portals while in the bathroom? What do you think?

One thing’s for sure; falling off the potty into a bathroom portal in a haunted house is a surefire way to have a spooky day.

The post Teleporting with Toilets appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Then, we talk about how mirrors are actually probably pan-dimensional portals that cause spirits to get trapped. Because that’s how we roll.

Listen now, and learn about how our brains manifest and reveal the monster within, today, on The H-files, brought to you by Homespun Haints!

The H Files

Welcome to The H Files: a limited-run miniseries where we delve deep into the folklore and science behind ghostly sightings and urban legends. This series began September 1, 2020, and ran every other Tuesday until November, 2020. If you would like to discuss anything you hear on the episode, please reach out to us in our Facebook Group or through Instagram. And, as always, if you have something you’d like to contribute to the show, you can always email us at info@HomespunHaints.com.

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary

Nobody really seems to know where the name Bloody Mary first came from. There’s some accounts that her full name is Mary Worth. In the first official published scholarly account, however, the folklorist refers to her as Mary Whales. This article suggests that she has many different names. These include, at the oddest, Hell Mary, Black Agnes, and Svarte Madame.

The Legend of Bloody Mary

We aren’t sure exactly where or when Bloody Mary urban legends came from, and we’re not sure if it was based on a real person. The point of the Bloody Mary spirit’s existence seems to be exclusively to scare, kidnap, and/or murder children. This is probably out of vengeance for her own baby, taken from her in some versions of the legend.

Bloody Mary, the Game

It’s a ritual game, practiced at slumber parties and secret treehouse meetings. The game is played with the brave kid/future victim alone in the bathroom. They stare into the dark bathroom mirror, with only enough light to see their own face. Then, they recite one of several various ritual chants. The most common chant among our friends was simply repeating “Bloody Mary” as many times as one is brave enough to do so. Then, Mary appears in the mirror. She reaches one cold arm out towards the victim, and either kills them, strikes them with an axe, or drags them into the mirror universe.

Why would anyone choose to play a game where the only goal is to summon an evil spirit and potentially get killed? Most kids start to play this game as an early experiment in flirting with danger. Think of it as an intermediate step between children doing dumb, dangerous things because they don’t know better, and teenagers doing dumb, dangerous things although they should know better. The game makes you feel both scared and brave at the same time when it’s your turn. Why not impress your friends by “bravely” doing something “dangerous,” when there’s no real risk, because Bloody Mary is just a bluff…right?

Oh, and the adolescent urge to flirt with danger is a ubiquitous phenomenon, with a name. Be sure to check out this episode’s sister article on The Robinson Age.

Mirror Gazing and Seeing Things

Mirror gazing is a divination technique in both modern witchcraft and psychic activity, and in older folklore divination games. Perhaps this is because mirrors are a portal. Or, perhaps this is because mirror gazing can trigger optical illusions, especially in the dark.

The Troxler Effect

The illusion occurs due to the Troxler effect, a phenomenon where the brain adapts to constant stimuli. First, you fix your gaze on a single point for an extended period. Over time, your neurons stop responding to the unchanging input, causing the image to appear blurry, faded, or distorted until you blink or shift your focus.

The most common Troxler effect people see during mirror gazing is that of a face. Usually, the gazer will see their own face in the correct spot, but mutated into a face they don’t recognize after a while. This specific Troxler effect phenomenon doesn’t have an official name, but some authors refer to it as strange-face-in-the-mirror-illusion. Like these authors, who discovered during one mirror-gazing study that depressed subjects experience the phenomenon far less significantly, compared to content controls.

What is Pareidolia?

When one sees a foreign face in the mirror in addition to their own face, that might be a slightly different phenomenon occurring. The fusiform gyrus in the human brain is hardwired to recognize faces. Even newborns show more interest in properly arranged face-like features than they do in scrambled ones. This face-detection system is so sensitive that it often finds faces where none exist, driven by our brain’s need to create meaning from disordered sensory input. When you focus very hard on one spot, the Troxler effect causes the rest of the image to blur, which might hilight the basic shapes within the blurred background, some of which are likely to form the vague shape of a face, because that’s what the brain wants to see.

It’s also good to know that there are some things computers still don’t understand, that are uniquely human. Want an example? Ask your favorite AI to generate an optical illusion like pareidolia, and you’ll see what I mean.

What is Prosopagnosia, or Being Face-Blind?

Are you one of those people who says “I may not remember your name, but I never forget a face!”? Well, good for you. Diana’s the opposite. Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, is a neurological disorder that impairs face recognition, affecting about 2% of the population. Most cases are developmental, often running in families and linked to genetic factors. Less commonly, it results from brain damage due to stroke, injury, or disease. Those affected rely on cues like hair, outfit, scars, voice, or movement patterns to identify others. In rare cases, faces can appear to be non-face objects, creating a reverse pareidolia effect.

Diana has had prosopagnosia since childhood, so don’t feel insulted if she doesn’t recognize you at a chance meeting. She didn’t realize she couldn’t recall faces until she got glasses at age 10. She always used clothing to recognize people short-term, and the sound of someone’s gait and voice to recognize them later on (after they’ve changed clothes). This, of course, made it nearly impossible for her to recognize familiar faces in (unfamiliar) photographs.

After learning more about the disorder, she’s now taught herself to cope by meticulously memorizing the facial feature ratios of familiar faces, kind of like facial recognition software. Strangely, this practice has made her more likely than others to recognize a resemblance between two people that most folks wouldn’t notice until the faces are put side by side. For example, how much Josephine Park (from the horror film Attachment) resembles Arnold Schwarzenegger.

What Do You See in The Mirror?

The scientific study of illusions is fascinating, isn’t it; to objectively study a subjective phenomenon? Here at Homespun Haints, we love speculating about spectral science for fun, but what’s really fun is hearing about the subjective experiences of our haunted guests. Do you have a story from a time when you played the game of Bloody Mary, and it went wrong—or worse, went right? Do you have arcane knowledge on the origins of the Bloody Mary urban legends, or what ever happened to her baby? Why not submit your tale to tell it on a future episode? Just thinking about all the poor children who’ve been sucked into the mirror makes today a spooky day!

The post Mirror, Mirror: The Science of The Bloody Mary Legend appeared first on Homespun Haints.

This article is a tangent to our first H-Files episode (the one about Bloody Mary, released on September 1st, 2020) and may contain spoilers and inside jokes. If you haven’t listened to that, you may want to do so now. 

Did you listen to the episode on the Robinson Age?

Really, I’ll wait. 

Ok, so now that you’ve listened to all the creepy ways your own brain tricks you into seeing Mary Worth (or whatever you want to call her) in the darkened mirror, I want to talk about why this practice is so popular among humans in their tween years.

Admit it, you had your own Robinson Age, right on track.

IF your friends told you the story of Bloody Mary, and you were even a little bit into it, y’all were probably 9–12 years old…and I’d even go so far as to guess that, when this topic fascinated your group of friends, you weren’t into sex, drugs, or even very hard rock and roll (or most of you weren’t). Why, the rational adult wonders, would a seemingly sensible child want to take part in an activity whose sole purpose is to result in someone coming into their home and attacking, maiming, or killing them (depending on your town’s version of the legend)? 

In fact, this behavior is so predictable and nearly universal at this age, that psychologists have a name for this life stage (of course they do): The Robinson Age. At some point during this phase, your innocent, obedient child will inevitably develop an unignorable craving for danger. 

Why do preteens suddenly start doing stupid dangerous things?

This adolescent hunger for risk can manifest in some really weird ways. As adults, we might conjure up the typical Hollywood-based mental images of riding in fast cars with older boys, getting drunk enough to pass out, and waking up pregnant. But it’s a rare kid who goes directly from patty cake and Legos to blackout drinking binges. No, we’re talking about the murky, confusing in-between, when a desire for subversive behavior and ritualized right-of-passage social bonding coincides with childlike play and the innocence to not really fully comprehend what subversive really means. Slightly illicit activities with an element of darkness and ritual are irresistible to most children in this age group. The type of ritualized bonding and the proving of chutzpah invoked by an activity like summoning the toilet ghost is super hawt to kids in the throes of this awkward life phase.

One could argue that anything subversive and designed to test-drive danger, which is deliberately kept a secret from adults, should count as an expression of Robinson Age tendencies.

Any of these sound familiar?

You’ve probably played or heard of these archetypal North American slumber party activities; 

• Light as a feather, stiff as a board: a group of participants chant a hypnotic phrase while attempting to levitate one of the group using only 1 or 2 finger tips each to support her.
• Using Ouija boards to contact ghosts: what, y’all didn’t grow up with a family Ouija board in the house? Ours was always front and center, between Scrabble and Monopoly.
• Truth or dare: in my social group, this classic game resulted in little more than the vanilla heteronormative style of closed-mouth kissing that doesn’t spread meningitis as quickly, and jumping off of moderately high surfaces.

I suppose the last of these examples may not fully qualify as a “ritual” per-se, in that no magic or paranormal phenomenon is expected to happen as a result of the activity. But I say it counts. One could argue that anything subversive and designed to test-drive danger, which is deliberately kept a secret from adults, should count as an expression of Robinson Age tendencies. This is especially true if “everyone” in one’s friend group is up to the same ill-conceived behavior, or if the doing of the thing classifies you as a different kind of person in the eyes of your peers. 

It is part of how kids learn to step out of their comfort zone for social acceptance or to gain social status.

My personal Robinson Age antics

For example, here are some mundane yet bizarre, mildly risky, clandestine activities I may or may not have participated in with friends during my own Robinson Age.

• “Smoking” hollow pieces of dried-out grape vine.
• Self-piercing with a needle and hydrogen peroxide.
• Wandering from one neighborhood to another alone on Halloween night (before cell phones).
• Pulling a stranger’s wad of chewed gum off the bottom of a table and chewing it.
• Watching The Rocky Horror Show, and not long after, attending the live floor show (not quite at midnight, curfew and all, but at least without a chaperone).
• Pickpocketing a beloved teacher after she confiscated a classmate’s belonging.
• The Penis Game.*

Why do kids go through the Robinson Age, and what does it have to do with Bloody Mary?

The apparent point to the Robinson Age is to develop a resilience in the face of fear, without suffering actual harm. This life phase is also part of how kids learn to step out of their comfort zone for social acceptance or to gain social status. Perhaps the very thing that makes summoning Bloody Mary so attractive is the utter skepticism that the ritual will work? The game is a way to gain a reputation for fearlessness by intentionally and publicly incurring risk, without any real risk at all.

Not all Robinson Age antics are nearly as risk-free as Bloody Mary. There are several subversive, social-status-determining activities that 9-12 year-olds may consider doing to fill these self-image and fear-tolerance needs which might lead to actual life problems. Cutting, bulimia, or chatting online with strangers come to mind. Considering the alternatives, perhaps summoning the mirror witch to risk a terrifying yet incredibly unlikely violent death is one of the most laudable ways to progress through the Robinson Age. Just don’t tell any kids I said that…adult approval would defeat the point. 

Footnote on The Penis Game

*If you’re not familiar with The Penis Game, it is a game of Chicken that involves taking turns saying a dirty word in a successively louder voice in a public place. The winner is the last person to say the word before the next person is too afraid of being overheard to take their turn. 

References (although this article on the Robinson Age is for entertainment purposes only)

https://demiworld.net/bloody-mary/#:~:text=Most%20calls%20to%20Bloody%20Mary,dark%20and%20delving%20into%20rituals.

https://research.library.mun.ca/8392/1/converted.pdf

Image source: Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash

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