6 Creepy Discoveries That Science Still Can't Explain
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VOICE OVER: Peter DeGiglio
WRITTEN BY: Aidan Johnson
Science doesn't have ALL the answers. But some of life's mysteries are just too CREEPY for words!
6 Creepy Discoveries That Science Still Cannot Explain
Science strives for answers, but it doesn’t yet have all the answers. It’s a fact of life that there are some parts of life that still… just don’t make sense. In some cases, though, what remains unknown is more than a little unsettling.
This is Unveiled, and today we’re taking a closer look at six creepy discoveries that science still can’t explain.
Thanks to the modern day push for UAP disclosure, and thanks to its inclusion in the Liu Cixin [a]novels adapted for the Netflix show “Three Body Problem”, “the Wow! Signal” is perhaps more widely known now than it’s perhaps ever been before. That doesn’t mean that science has an answer for it, though.
Ohio State University is home to the Big Ear radio telescope, which in 1977 detected a peculiar signal from the stars. It was the astronomer Jerry Ehman[b] who discovered it; a strong, narrowband radio transmission, which seemed to originate from the Sagittarius constellation. The signal - a seeming anomaly - lasted for a whopping 72 seconds. It was no mere blip from the universe, but a sustained rumbling, and what some viewed as potentially a message of some kind.
Famously, Ehman was so amazed by what he’d picked up that he circled the signal on a printout, and wrote “wow!” in red ink next to it. Of course, there have been plenty of attempts since 1977 to find its origin, but we’ve not once detected it again. Various theories have therefore arisen, ranging from it being simply a natural cosmic event… to it emitting from some far off alien, inhabited world. Arguably the most popular theory comes from some 2024 research - conducted by the Arecibo[c] Wow! Project - claiming that it could have been caused by a neutron star colliding with a hydrogen gas cloud. But no one yet knows for sure.
But, let’s next get back down to Earth and, actually, into bed. Sleep paralysis is something that not all but some human beings experience, sometimes multiple times and sometimes rarely throughout life. As such, it’s a fascinating topic, but it can also be completely terrifying. It’s when an individual wakes up at night, but finds themselves temporarily incapable of speaking or moving, as though they’re locked inside their bodies without any workable link to the outside world. If it does happen to you, then it usually lasts for just a couple of minutes maximum. But, the problem is, no one really knows why it happens in the first place.
Sleep paralysis is commonly accompanied by vivid and often nightmarish hallucinations. Dark figures are also frequently seen, which are known as sleep paralysis demons. There can be a suffocating sense of pressure on the chest, it can leave the one who’s experiencing it with an overwhelming sense of dread. No matter how you cut it, sleep paralysis is unpleasant. It’s believed that various factors may contribute to any one person’s likelihood of having sleep paralysis - such as sleep deprivation, irregular waking patterns, and general stress and anxiety - but, aside from that, science is still unsure. Which unfortunately means it could very well happen to you, and perhaps this very night.
What’s a little disturbing is that losing control of one’s body is something of a theme over the history of humankind. And, if you were to somehow step back in time to the summer of 1518 in Strasbourg, then you’d stumble upon one of the most infamous cases of all. The Dancing Plague was, well, exactly as it sounds. The residents of Strasbourg, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, were bizarrely overcome by an apparently uncontrollable urge… to dance. One Frau Troffea [d]was the plague’s first victim when, according to historical reports, she suddenly began to dance wildly in the street, without any music to accompany. A small number of witnesses copied her, and then a small number more, and then more… until before long multiple hundreds of people were uncontrollably gyrating.
On the face of it, it all sounds quite strange, unusual and funny. But, actually, it’s thought that the Dancing Plague may have ultimately been deadly. Many participants danced for days on end without stopping. Extreme exhaustion followed, and some collapsed from fatigue. Although the records are not clear, it’s believed that some may have even died while the seeming fever took hold. At the time, the craze was attributed to either a mass demonic possession or a shared case of overheated blood. Modern attempts to explain include that the afflicted dancers may have been suffering from food poisoning, or perhaps from shared hallucinations triggered by the consumption of an unwise fungus or two. But ultimately, even five centuries later, no one knows exactly what happened.
Sometimes you really have to see something first hand to believe it… but, believe us when we say that animal rain is real. Flightless animals, such as fish and frogs, as well as apparently incapacitated birds, have been observed to fall from the sky, en masse, multiple times, and all over the world. In Yoro, Honduras, so-called fish rain is even said to happen every single year. Witnesses describe a vast quantity of small creatures plummeting from above, and they’re usually still alive as they do so. It’s clear that such an event could leave you feeling very disturbed.
What’s worse is that no one really knows how or why it happens. The most commonly accepted theory is that strong winds, waterspouts, or tornadoes are to blame, with certain weather events under very particular conditions being enough to extract and deposit the animals from one place to another. Which perhaps seems slightly plausible… but the only catch is that no-one has ever witnessed or recorded this part of the phenomenon before. People have only ever seen the end result, with creatures falling to the ground.
Of course, if it’s unexplained phenomena that you’re after, then looking to the sky in general is a good place to start. But, every so often, something takes place that really doesn’t (and can’t) make sense. On August 16, 1942, the L-8 blimp, also known as the “Ghost Blimp”, drifted over San Francisco, eventually crashing on Bellevue Avenue, in Daly City. It had been deployed on the morning of the same day, with two crewmen operating the vehicle. But, when the blimp was searched immediately after it came down, the would-be rescuers couldn’t find a single trace of either of the crew. There hadn’t been a prior distress signal, either, and all parachutes and life rafts were found aboard, untouched.
The Ghost Blimp doesn’t typically feature among the most well known unexplained historical mysteries. It isn’t discussed at length in the same way as, say, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart is. But the fact remains that, to this day, no-one knows what took place. The blimp had been on an anti-submarine patrol, since America was at war with Imperial Japan at the time, and so the incident led to serious concerns for a Japanese invasion of the west coast. That never materialised. But the blimp had made more than 1,000 trips before this one, with zero incidents. Some say the US pilots were either captured by or defected to Japan, others claim that an alien abduction might’ve taken place. We’ve never found out for sure.
Lastly, we travel to the warm desert plains of Peru, and to one of the most perplexing archeological discoveries ever made. The Nazca lines are huge geoglyphs, carved across the desert’s surface, depicting a wide variety of images - ranging from animals to plants and people. The iconic lines take up a total land area of roughly 19 square miles, running for over 800 miles in total, combined length. From the sky, they make sense… on the ground, they’re little more than a mass of curious trenches. It is believed that the Lines were first made between 500 BCE and 500 AD, and most likely by their creators cutting through the desert floor, to expose the different colored dirt below.
But why? As with many other ancient sites, the exact purpose of the Nazca Lines just isn’t known. Some speculate that they have an astronomical function, with the lines pointing towards specific locations in the sky. Others believe that they are purely decorative works, pieces of art made for those in heaven and the afterlife to look down on and enjoy. Unsurprisingly, there have also been countless claims that aliens are behind it all. Scientifically speaking, it’s said that the Lines might’ve had some kind of use in farming… but, then again, why (in that case) are the clear and varied shapes required? As with everything else in this video, they remain an enduring and intriguing unsolved mystery.
[c]https://youtu.be/OAE_Et7-QQ0?si=hc3-b83CEeQwaPH9&t=22
[d]https://youtu.be/fhvituIxxuM?si=wezU1XqhnY5u45jA&t=45
Science strives for answers, but it doesn’t yet have all the answers. It’s a fact of life that there are some parts of life that still… just don’t make sense. In some cases, though, what remains unknown is more than a little unsettling.
This is Unveiled, and today we’re taking a closer look at six creepy discoveries that science still can’t explain.
Thanks to the modern day push for UAP disclosure, and thanks to its inclusion in the Liu Cixin [a]novels adapted for the Netflix show “Three Body Problem”, “the Wow! Signal” is perhaps more widely known now than it’s perhaps ever been before. That doesn’t mean that science has an answer for it, though.
Ohio State University is home to the Big Ear radio telescope, which in 1977 detected a peculiar signal from the stars. It was the astronomer Jerry Ehman[b] who discovered it; a strong, narrowband radio transmission, which seemed to originate from the Sagittarius constellation. The signal - a seeming anomaly - lasted for a whopping 72 seconds. It was no mere blip from the universe, but a sustained rumbling, and what some viewed as potentially a message of some kind.
Famously, Ehman was so amazed by what he’d picked up that he circled the signal on a printout, and wrote “wow!” in red ink next to it. Of course, there have been plenty of attempts since 1977 to find its origin, but we’ve not once detected it again. Various theories have therefore arisen, ranging from it being simply a natural cosmic event… to it emitting from some far off alien, inhabited world. Arguably the most popular theory comes from some 2024 research - conducted by the Arecibo[c] Wow! Project - claiming that it could have been caused by a neutron star colliding with a hydrogen gas cloud. But no one yet knows for sure.
But, let’s next get back down to Earth and, actually, into bed. Sleep paralysis is something that not all but some human beings experience, sometimes multiple times and sometimes rarely throughout life. As such, it’s a fascinating topic, but it can also be completely terrifying. It’s when an individual wakes up at night, but finds themselves temporarily incapable of speaking or moving, as though they’re locked inside their bodies without any workable link to the outside world. If it does happen to you, then it usually lasts for just a couple of minutes maximum. But, the problem is, no one really knows why it happens in the first place.
Sleep paralysis is commonly accompanied by vivid and often nightmarish hallucinations. Dark figures are also frequently seen, which are known as sleep paralysis demons. There can be a suffocating sense of pressure on the chest, it can leave the one who’s experiencing it with an overwhelming sense of dread. No matter how you cut it, sleep paralysis is unpleasant. It’s believed that various factors may contribute to any one person’s likelihood of having sleep paralysis - such as sleep deprivation, irregular waking patterns, and general stress and anxiety - but, aside from that, science is still unsure. Which unfortunately means it could very well happen to you, and perhaps this very night.
What’s a little disturbing is that losing control of one’s body is something of a theme over the history of humankind. And, if you were to somehow step back in time to the summer of 1518 in Strasbourg, then you’d stumble upon one of the most infamous cases of all. The Dancing Plague was, well, exactly as it sounds. The residents of Strasbourg, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, were bizarrely overcome by an apparently uncontrollable urge… to dance. One Frau Troffea [d]was the plague’s first victim when, according to historical reports, she suddenly began to dance wildly in the street, without any music to accompany. A small number of witnesses copied her, and then a small number more, and then more… until before long multiple hundreds of people were uncontrollably gyrating.
On the face of it, it all sounds quite strange, unusual and funny. But, actually, it’s thought that the Dancing Plague may have ultimately been deadly. Many participants danced for days on end without stopping. Extreme exhaustion followed, and some collapsed from fatigue. Although the records are not clear, it’s believed that some may have even died while the seeming fever took hold. At the time, the craze was attributed to either a mass demonic possession or a shared case of overheated blood. Modern attempts to explain include that the afflicted dancers may have been suffering from food poisoning, or perhaps from shared hallucinations triggered by the consumption of an unwise fungus or two. But ultimately, even five centuries later, no one knows exactly what happened.
Sometimes you really have to see something first hand to believe it… but, believe us when we say that animal rain is real. Flightless animals, such as fish and frogs, as well as apparently incapacitated birds, have been observed to fall from the sky, en masse, multiple times, and all over the world. In Yoro, Honduras, so-called fish rain is even said to happen every single year. Witnesses describe a vast quantity of small creatures plummeting from above, and they’re usually still alive as they do so. It’s clear that such an event could leave you feeling very disturbed.
What’s worse is that no one really knows how or why it happens. The most commonly accepted theory is that strong winds, waterspouts, or tornadoes are to blame, with certain weather events under very particular conditions being enough to extract and deposit the animals from one place to another. Which perhaps seems slightly plausible… but the only catch is that no-one has ever witnessed or recorded this part of the phenomenon before. People have only ever seen the end result, with creatures falling to the ground.
Of course, if it’s unexplained phenomena that you’re after, then looking to the sky in general is a good place to start. But, every so often, something takes place that really doesn’t (and can’t) make sense. On August 16, 1942, the L-8 blimp, also known as the “Ghost Blimp”, drifted over San Francisco, eventually crashing on Bellevue Avenue, in Daly City. It had been deployed on the morning of the same day, with two crewmen operating the vehicle. But, when the blimp was searched immediately after it came down, the would-be rescuers couldn’t find a single trace of either of the crew. There hadn’t been a prior distress signal, either, and all parachutes and life rafts were found aboard, untouched.
The Ghost Blimp doesn’t typically feature among the most well known unexplained historical mysteries. It isn’t discussed at length in the same way as, say, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart is. But the fact remains that, to this day, no-one knows what took place. The blimp had been on an anti-submarine patrol, since America was at war with Imperial Japan at the time, and so the incident led to serious concerns for a Japanese invasion of the west coast. That never materialised. But the blimp had made more than 1,000 trips before this one, with zero incidents. Some say the US pilots were either captured by or defected to Japan, others claim that an alien abduction might’ve taken place. We’ve never found out for sure.
Lastly, we travel to the warm desert plains of Peru, and to one of the most perplexing archeological discoveries ever made. The Nazca lines are huge geoglyphs, carved across the desert’s surface, depicting a wide variety of images - ranging from animals to plants and people. The iconic lines take up a total land area of roughly 19 square miles, running for over 800 miles in total, combined length. From the sky, they make sense… on the ground, they’re little more than a mass of curious trenches. It is believed that the Lines were first made between 500 BCE and 500 AD, and most likely by their creators cutting through the desert floor, to expose the different colored dirt below.
But why? As with many other ancient sites, the exact purpose of the Nazca Lines just isn’t known. Some speculate that they have an astronomical function, with the lines pointing towards specific locations in the sky. Others believe that they are purely decorative works, pieces of art made for those in heaven and the afterlife to look down on and enjoy. Unsurprisingly, there have also been countless claims that aliens are behind it all. Scientifically speaking, it’s said that the Lines might’ve had some kind of use in farming… but, then again, why (in that case) are the clear and varied shapes required? As with everything else in this video, they remain an enduring and intriguing unsolved mystery.
[a]https://youtu.be/4vXw3RgFUm4?si=chWlicjuimlIO_Or&t=20
[b]https://youtu.be/x67K-Vq1KWk?si=VBlKgO_r8f3PwB8T&t=120[c]https://youtu.be/OAE_Et7-QQ0?si=hc3-b83CEeQwaPH9&t=22
[d]https://youtu.be/fhvituIxxuM?si=wezU1XqhnY5u45jA&t=45
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