Hysteria 51

Clairvius Narcisse and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Zombie Life | 518

What if you died, got pronounced dead by doctors, buried by your family, and then showed up 18 years later with one hell of an excuse for missing Thanksgiving? Enter the bizarre true story of Clairvius Narcisse, the Haitian man who allegedly became a real-life zombie after being poisoned, buried alive, dug back up, drugged, and forced into labor.We explore the terrifying history of Haitian zombies and Vodou, Wade Davis and his controversial search for zombie powder, and the surprisingly real science behind pufferfish toxin, tetrodotoxin, Datura, paralysis, and premature burial. Could ancient knowledge of neurotoxins actually turn someone into a living zombie, or did science take a fascinating Haitian tradition and run a little too far with it? Plus, we examine the skeptics and competing explanations that make the answer considerably messier than "dead people don't walk."Poison fish, stolen souls, questionable pharmacology, family land disputes, zombie plantations, and perhaps the worst return-to-work story in human history... All that and more this week on Hysteria 51.SourcesWade Davis – The Serpent and the Rainbowhttps://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Serpent-and-the-Rainbow/Wade-Davis/9780684839295Wade Davis – Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombiehttps://books.google.com/books?id=tVxZAAAAMAAJWade Davis – “The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombi” – Journal of Ethnopharmacologyhttps://doi.org/10.1016/0378-8741(83)90029-6William Booth – “Voodoo Science” – Sciencehttps://doi.org/10.1126/science.3353722Wade Davis – “Zombification” – Sciencehttps://doi.org/10.1126/science.3381089Roland Littlewood & Chavannes Douyon – “Clinical Findings in Three Cases of Zombification” – The Lancethttps://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(97)04449-8Harvard Magazine – “The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead”https://www.harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/zombie_1986_small.pdfTIME – “Zombies: Do They Exist?”https://time.com/archive/6697896/medicine-zombies-do-they-exist/PBS American Experience – “What Happened When Zora Neale Hurston Studied Voodoo in Haiti?”https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/claiming-space-when-happened-when-zora-neale-hurston-studied-voodoo-haiti/Zora Neale Hurston – Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaicahttps://www.harpercollins.com/products/tell-my-horse-zora-neale-hurstonLibrary of Congress – “Does the Haitian Criminal Code Outlaw Making Zombies?”https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/10/does-the-haitian-criminal-code-outlaw-making-zombies/Chen-Yuan Kao & Takeshi Yasumoto – “Tetrodotoxin Intoxication: A Worldwide Problem” – Toxiconhttps://doi.org/10.1016/0041-0101(86)90067-8Jean Price-Mars – “The Story of Zombi in Haiti”https://sites.duke.edu/haitilab/files/2014/11/Mars-1945-The-story-of-zombie-in-haiti.pdfEmail your Contest Entries to:ForthHandmedia@gmail.comEmail us your favorite WEIRD news stories:weird@hysteria51.comSupport the ShowGet exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1ShopBe the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mad Blurry Hysteria: The Beginning | 517

We had some life stuff get in the way this week so we are going back to where the Blurry Hysteria / Weird Wednesday episodes started. Back to regular episodes next week!Original DescriptionIt's Mad Blurry Hysteria Time on H51! This week Brent tries to sell us the Lizzie Borden house, David swears Nibiru is gone for good, and Chris flirts with Tom DeLonge on twitter. All that and more on this week’s Mad Blurry Hysteria!News Stories Mentioned:Axe Slasher BnB for sale“Real Picture” – Tom DeLongeBye Bye NibiruFollow the Shows:Mad Scientist - https://www.themadscientistpodcast.com/Blurry Photos - http://www.blurryphotos.org/Hysteria 51 - http://hysteria51.com/ Email your Contest Entries to:ForthHandmedia@gmail.comEmail us your favorite WEIRD news stories:weird@hysteria51.comSupport the ShowGet exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1ShopBe the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon | 516

Shut the windows and change your mask filters, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon is prowling the podcast! A WWII-era midwestern mystery, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon held a small town in a gaseous grip of fear for 2 weeks with no explanation and few suspects. Panic took hold as locals tried to figure out what was happening in their small Illinois community. To this day, no one knows exactly who perpetrated a series of alleged gas attacks, nor has anyone found out why. Join David as he relates not only the timeline of the ‘phantom anesthetist,’ but also similar attacks in different parts of the country throughout the years. Were they connected somehow or just coincidence? He also looks at what police and scientists have found, and whether or not anything has actually been explained over the years. Don’t let the fumes get to you in this episode of Blurry Photos!MusicGhostpocalypse – 8 Epilog, Ghostpocalypse – 6 Crossing the Threshold, Some Amount of Evil, Malicious, Villainous Treachery – Distressed, Danse Macabre, Myst on the Moor – Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0SourcesGas Attacks in America: http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2011/06/mad-gassers-of-america/An Overview: http://io9.gizmodo.com/did-mattoon-have-a-mad-scientist-or-a-mad-population-1510479349Vitelli, R. “The Mad Gasser of Mattoon.” JREF Swift Blog. James Randi Educational Foundation, 23 Apr. 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2016. http://archive.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1279-the-mad-gasser-of-mattoon.htmlMaruna, S. The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria. Jacksonville: Swamp Gas Books, 2003.Johnson, D. “The Phantom Anesthetist of Mattoon: A field study of mass hysteria.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 1 Jan. 1945, Volume 40, Number 1: 175-186. http://ergotism.info/en/hysteria/mass_hysteria_mad_gasser_jasp_1945_40.pdfSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lawn and Order: Psychic Pets Unit | 515

This week, Hysteria 51 asks two important questions: How far is too far when protecting your lawn, and has your dog secretly been judging you this entire time?First, a Minnesota man allegedly constructs a homemade spike strip packed with dozens of three-inch screws to stop neighborhood kids from biking across his grass. Because apparently a “Keep Off the Lawn” sign lacked the medieval menace he was looking for.Then we travel to South Korea, where pet owners are turning to tarot readers to uncover their animals’ hidden thoughts, anxieties, health concerns, and possibly their opinions about that bargain-bin kibble. Dogs are selecting cards, humans are seeking answers, and somewhere a cat is refusing to participate because it already knows the future and finds it disappointing.Join us for homemade lawn traps, psychic pets, canine emotional baggage, and another bewildering tour through the strangest corners of weird news.Links & Resources📌Lawn Care📌Tarot TerrierEmail us your Contest Topics:ForthHandMedia@gmail.comEmail us your favorite WEIRD news stories:weird@hysteria51.comSupport the ShowGet exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1ShopBe the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Reality: Bigger, Stranger, and Probably Watching | 514

Reality may be bigger, stranger, and far more crowded than our three-dimensional monkey brains can handle. This week on Hysteria 51, we count down ten horrifying theories about what could exist in dimensions we cannot see, from shadow matter and hidden forces to holographic universes, colliding branes, M-theory, and countless alternate versions of you making equally terrible decisions.Could gravity be leaking into another dimension? Is our universe just one thin membrane floating in a much larger cosmic void? Does every possible outcome create another reality where you remembered the password on the first try? We break down the real science behind extra dimensions, dark matter, the multiverse, many-worlds theory, and the terrifying possibility that reality has more rooms than advertised.So grab a flashlight, avoid making eye contact with the shadow universe occupying your couch, and prepare to discover why the cosmos is weird, physics is rude, and somewhere in another dimension, this episode is probably much better.SourcesTime and the Block UniverseStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Timehttps://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2026/entries/time/Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Temporal Consciousnesshttps://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2025/entries/consciousness-temporal/Asher Peres – “Critique of the Wheeler-DeWitt Equation”https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9704061The Fifth ForceEöt-Wash Group – “New Test of the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law at the Submillimeter Range”https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11761NA64 Collaboration – “Hunting Down the X17 Boson at the CERN SPS”https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.02756Kaluza-Klein Theory and Extra DimensionsCERN – Extra Dimensions, Gravitons, and Tiny Black Holeshttps://home.cern/science/physics/extra-dimensions-gravitons-and-tiny-black-holes/Theodor Kaluza – “On the Unity Problem of Physics”https://inspirehep.net/literature/14622Shadow Matter and Hidden SectorsEdward Kolb, David Seckel, and Michael Turner – “The Shadow World of Superstring Theories”https://www.nature.com/articles/314415a0Lawrence Krauss, Alan Guth, David Spergel, George Field, and William Press – “Inflation and Shadow Matter”https://www.nature.com/articles/319748a0Dark Energy and Dimensional LeakageNobel Prize – The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physicshttps://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2011/summary/Nobel Prize – The Accelerating Expansion of the Universehttps://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2011/popular-information/Gia Dvali, Gregory Gabadadze, and Massimo Porrati – “4D Gravity on a Brane in 5D Minkowski Space”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0005016The Holographic PrincipleLeonard Susskind – “The World as a Hologram”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9409089Juan Maldacena – “The Large N Limit of Superconformal Field Theories and Supergravity”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9711200Fermilab – The Holometerhttps://holometer.fnal.gov/index.htmlFermilab – Holometer Frequently Asked Questionshttps://holometer.fnal.gov/faq.htmlBrane Worlds and the BulkLisa Randall and Raman Sundrum – “A Large Mass Hierarchy from a Small Extra Dimension”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9905221Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum – “An Alternative to Compactification”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9906064The Ekpyrotic and Cyclic UniverseJustin Khoury, Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt, and Neil Turok – “The Ekpyrotic Universe: Colliding Branes and the Origin of the Hot Big Bang”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0103239Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok – “Cosmic Evolution in a Cyclic Universe”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0111098M-Theory and the String LandscapeEdward Witten – “String Theory Dynamics in Various Dimensions”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9503124Leonard Susskind – “The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory”https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0302219T. Banks – “The Top (10^{500}) Reasons Not to Believe in the Landscape”https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.5715The Many-Worlds InterpretationHugh Everett III – “‘Relative State’ Formulation of Quantum Mechanics”https://journals.aps.org/rmp/abstract/10.1103/RevModPhys.29.454Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanicshttps://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2026/entries/qm-manyworlds/Email your Contest Entries to:ForthHandmedia@gmail.comEmail us your favorite WEIRD news stories:weird@hysteria51.comSupport the ShowGet exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1ShopBe the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.