What is happening *Right Now*

3 Aug 2025

Fake rabbits on a trampoline

There are multiple videos out showing rabbits jumping on a backyard trampoline. It’s irresistibly cute. But they are all fake. Yet, people keep sharing them. Even when they are told they are fake, they don’t take it down. There are copycat versions, including one of the bear. I tend not to follow people or platforms that have a lot of careless slop posting so I’ll bet there are more. But the lesson here is bleak. People want things to be true so they will fail to act to remove it. AI will win. And the entire world will be worse for it. I’m not going to post the videos. But here are two versions of it. If you see them, say something.

2 Aug 2025

The Spooky Saga continues

Some comedian I’ve never heard of, Matt Rife, and his friend Elton Castee, have purchased the house of Ed and Lorraine Warren and their haunted museum. But they don’t own the contents. Rife says he’s obsessed with paranormal stuff. So, if this goes down a comedic path, that is rather apt because that’s about what the Warrens deserve. I just don’t care a whit about this. It’s all absurdly stupid. However, it goes to show how you can manufacture value out of garbage. Every paranormal scene, be it ghost hunters, ufo researchers, or cryptozoologists, is full of unsavory and ridiculous people.

28 July 2025

Here’s something fun for your Monday (or Tuesday if you are east of the Greenwich line.

Do you know about the drop bear tall tale from Australia? It’s a dangerous beast that will fall from the trees and disembowel you.

Type “drop bear” into Google (including quotes), then click on the orange “sign” that appears near the description for more.

27 July 2025

Paranormal belief generally not increasing

Gallup, a premier survey research site for decades, released the results of paranormal questions last week. In no surprise to me, the level of belief in ghosts as real, which is one of the metrics I’ve been tracking for over 10 years, has not remarkably changed. The general result was that 39% of the population believes in ghosts. Poll results vary. Here is the updated table of my tracking. There are obvious and complex reasons for this. See “Ghost belief in the US varies widely by year and source” and “What’s with these latest opinion polls on ghosts and cryptids?” So, give or take, 40% of people think ghosts could be real. (Flipping the language around, 60% of people are pretty strongly nonbelievers in ghosts and hauntings.) I suspect this has been the case since the advent of the modern press, or before. To try to parse out different survey results from year to year is pointless. The culture of the time might sway the results a few points, but it will always be thus. Belief in ghosts and hauntings is not a high-stakes belief. It rarely hurts anyone. Now, for other beliefs… Yeah, I can’t go there. It will break my brain.

26 July 2025

Hey! It’s supposed to be silly season. But nothing is going on. I’ve checked all my usual news sources and nothing interesting is happened at all. Everything is recycled UFO slop, and desperate attempts to keep Bigfoot and Nessie relevant. Sad. Maybe it’s me? I’m a bit jaded because there is nothing new and exciting. Have we seen it all now? No, that can’t be. Keep an eye on the date for this post, if I update it, then I have something to share.

Meanwhile… Check out this podcast for a huge back-catalog and current content by Cody and Garth:
Least Haunted

23 July 2025

Non-mystery booms

Hey, all. It’s not been a quiet few days, but I’ve been avoiding social media and the news for mental health. Here’s a thing: 6 small earthquakes shake ground in N.J. on same day

This must have been fun. Seriously, I would have thought this was great if I knew it wasn’t a bomb attack. But people who aren’t aware of how earthquakes work on the passive margin that is the east coast get very nervous about earthquakes. With no major seismic areas here, there is no chance for a “big one”. But most people don’t know that.

Meanwhile, check out the latest In Research Of podcast about the Bimini Wall. Unfortunately, the featured episode of In Search Of… was so bad, that f-bombs were flying in this review.

20 July 2025

Two big earthquakes

Earlier today, a M7.4 earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Four days ago, a M7.1 earthquake hit offshore Alaska. It is not unusual or uncommon for two M7+ earthquakes to occur within days of each other. Those doomsayers that want to believe this is something weird don’t know any geology. They are not credible. Here is a credible source. It’s technical, because seismology is technical and complex, which is another reason why you should never trust people spouting off the cuff nonsense.

Bigfoot emoji

We’re finally getting a Bigfoot emoji! Except it’s called “hairy creature” instead. This way, it can be a Yeti, a Yeren, a Yowie, and Almas or an Albatwitch. There are dozens of hairy creature myths worldwide.

Unicode’s new emoji refuses to put respect on Bigfoot’s name

17 July 2025

A bullshit story

The word of the death of paranormal researcher Dan Rivera shocked the paranormal community. And, obviously, the morbid and absurd connection was made to the Annabelle “possessed” doll. But Ghost Hunter In a Facebook post Sunday, Ghost Hunters star Jason Hawes told fans, “that needs to stop. His family shouldn’t have to read that kind of nonsense while they’re grieving.” He followed by saying it was disgusting that his passing was used for profitting, suggesting that Hawes is not a fan of the New England paranormal society, NESPR, who promote the haunted doll. The NESPR was started by self-styled demonologist and psychic medium, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens made loads of money off other people’s miserable circumstances, and their estate continues to do so today with The Conjuring movie franchise. However, those who know, know how awful they were. Hawes lamented that Dan’s death was turning into “some made up bullshit story to get clicks or attention.” Sounds like Hawes is not a fan of the infamous NESPR. His TAPS group was based in Rhode Island and led the gigantic surge in amateur paranormal research groups organizing to do their own ghost hunting in the early 2000s to the present.

Zak Bagans is attention-grabbing about it. And, of course, the tour continues, $$$. Ugly stuff.

16 July 2025

The legend grows

Uh oh. The legend of Annabelle the haunted doll just got a ghoulishly awful boost. Dan Rivera, the paranormal investigator who was touring with Annabelle over the weekend in Gettysburg, has died unexpectedly. This is going to be milked for all it’s worth, and that is horrid.

WTF? A yeti blood oath

What the f***? I can’t even unpack this. You should read the whole thing. Don’t stop thinking priests are weird. Note they called in an exorcist, even though it was a prank? This is messed up.

‘Yeti blood oath’ divides Denver seminary: ‘A well-intended moment, it clearly went badly wrong and never should have happened.’

14 July 2025

The goofy, immature tale of a haunted Raggedy Ann doll still manages to sound convincing to some. The infamous doll is on tour from its home in a secured glass case at the New England Society for Psychic Research. It stopped off at the Gettysburg Orphanage from July 11-13. People who believe the doll is cursed or demonic or whatever, are connecting every bad thing going on to this stupid doll. I saw one TikTokker in Pittsburgh suggest that the PA 911 service outage on Friday, July 11 could be related to the haunted toy. Sadly for Annabelle, the service was restored in short order and no catastrophes resulted.

12 July 2025

No news on the Rochester mountain lion. As it shakes out, there was only one witness that came forward – the dude doing his thing on the news – and the video. No other evidence has been authenticated. Was this someone’s pet that went for a stroll? With so many people with cameras on alert, but no news, this story has gone sour.

11 July 2025

Conspiratorial thinking invoked to avoid understanding and action

Weather modification derangement syndrome has hit the US hard. Militia groups think that the latest Texas flash flooding was a weather modification event and that someone deliberately engineering the murdering of the children. They also insist hurricanes are fake, and that other events seen on social media (that they don’t use for their own political ends) are manufactured.

Conspiracy Theories About the Texas Floods Lead to Death Threats

Disinformation around a “weather weapon” and cloud seeding is being widely promoted by everyone from anti-government extremists to GOP influencers—leading to real-world consequences.

With laws now calling out “chemtrails” and weather manipulation as illegal (even though they are fiction), this is more than run-of-the-mill science denialism. The catastrophic weather events worldwide are more visible than ever, but some people can’t grasp what they are seeing. So they deny it, call it unnatural (there are many human-related factors), or blame an enemy instead of doing anything constructive about it. It’s extreme denialism, and it’s pathological.

Ball lightning video in Alberta isn’t that

On 4 July, news broke of a couple in Alberta who thought they got a video of ball lightning. However, for those of us who look at lots of videos like this, it was clear it was not. This is the arcing of power line wires. The “ball” is too big and moves very much like the discharge along a power line, not at all like a free-floating ball. So, this is not evidence of BL. If the couple is so sure it wasn’t that, they should have made an effort to go to the spot where it was suspected to be seen.

Spider crop circle

Check out this awesome field art. A crop circle in Dorset, England. The lighter circles show how the larger shape was made. It’s math. But very cool.

More on the mountain lion

I split this off into its own post because it deserved it.

Rochester mountain lion

10 July 2025

This is an experiment. Throughout the week, I see interesting stories on which I want to comment, but I don’t have a few hours to work on a post. Many of you aren’t stuck to social media, where I link to emerging news and cool stories. So this will be a page where I drop content. Please bookmark and check back regularly.