What Lies Below, Day Fifty
Day 50! Quite a thing, huh? And it just so happens to coincide with our arrival in the 10th of 20 tiers. Good list today, so let’s get to it!
REACTIONLESS DRIVE — Just a hypothetical science thing that I suppose leaks into conspiracy talk regarding UFOs, experimental tech, etc. A reactionless drive can propel something(like a spaceship) without any propellant(like exhaust). This is obviously how a lot of UFOs seem to maneuver around.
INDIGO CHILDREN — Just what an Indigo Child is can change from person to person. Over the years, the definition and origin and ability checklist pertaining to them has shifted all over the place. It’s an idea that has been around for a few decades, but exploded in popularity alongside the internet. Have you ever felt special? Like you don’t belong in certain situations? Different from other people? Have you experienced feelings that don’t make sense, strange dreams, nostalgia for things you can’t specify? Do you like weird stuff most people don’t like? Has a stray animal ever shown mild interest in you? Have you ever seen a ghost or UFO? Do you have any slightly unusual physical, mental, or emotional attributes? Were your parents hippies? Were you a hippy? Do you feel purposeless? Do you feel driven by tremendous specific purpose? Do you think you’re smart? Do you think you’re nice? Do you sometimes question authority? Do you sometimes look at the night sky or ocean in wonder?
If you can answer yes to any one of these, congratulations! You may just be an Indigo Child! This means you are either faeborn, touched by magic, kissed on the forehead by a divine entity of your choosing, or (probably the most popular theory) either descended from extraterrestrials or possessing the soul of an otherworldly being!
As you can see, it has become such a catch-all for “I’m different” that it became a parody of itself pretty quickly to everyone outside the fluffiest of metaphysical new-age circles.
JOHNNY GOSCH — Kid living in Iowa who disappeared in the early 80s. The hook on this one is that in the mid-90s, Johnny’s mom reported that he and a man she didn’t know came to visit. Allegedly, Johnny told her that he’d been kidnapped by some sort of pedophile group but had eventually been released once he got older, and had been living in fear under an assumed identity. So far, nothing has been confirmed or officially denied and no arrests have been made, nor has Johnny publicly appeared or made any statements. There have been articles, documentaries, and all sorts of efforts to find him — including a lot of online sleuthing in recent years.
SECRET GEODETIC SURVEYS — A geodetic survey studies things like the magnetic field of an area using both satellites and terrestrial equipment. I’m not so sure what the ‘secret’ ones are about? There are “control points” used in these which are often either hidden away or forgotten, like a “miniature washington monument” that is under a manhole cover somewhere in Washington D.C. Otherwise, it isn’t exactly a nefarious practice? Maybe I’m wrong!
BOVINE EXCISION — We already did Cattle Mutilation, Iceberg! No repeats! In short: there is a persistent phenomenon in which cattle are found mutilated in various ways, sometimes including the removal of specific organs and sometimes appears to be entire bloodless.
LAVEY KILLED JAYNE MANSFIELD — Jayne Mansfield was an actress much in the vein of Marilyn Monroe, well-known but not without a messy personal life. At one point, she fell into contact with “the evilest man in the world” Anton LaVey — who you may recognize as the founder of what we consider modern Satanism. LaVey was an occultist edgelord who I tend to think of as a Hot Topic tryhard version of Crowley, but he had and still has a lot of influence. Allegedly he was trying to do magic on her behalf but she wound up getting decapitated in a car accident so I guess he kinda blew it. Some people think this was the result of him not being careful enough in the way he worked his magic, or that he did it maliciously for whatever reason.
SENTIENT WATER — Just one of those *hits blunt, ‘whoah man’* things that I’m pretty sure no substantial number of people genuinely believe. A small niche of very metaphysical new-age spiritualist types will occasionally pluck bits of animism out and apply them selectively to things that they like, i.e. the ocean or water as a whole. More often, I hear this applied to those “we wrote nice things on a bottle of water and it looks different under a microscope now” experiments that go viral on facebook every so often.
DEMOLITION ELVES — You’d think this one is a joke, but it’s floated around for a while. A phenomenon in which little figures seem to appear at areas preceding disasters both large and small. There isn’t much hard evidence beyond occasional accounts of them looking like gnomes and being where they shouldn’t. Seems to be one of those fun old folklore things that has fallen out of favor among modern internet people, unfortunately.
FAN DEATH — This is a thing you mostly hear about in Asia, specifically Korea. For like a hundred years, people have believed they having a fan running at night can kill you. Now and then, someone who has a fan running will die — and so the theory perpetuates. Just where the idea came from, I don’t know. There’s no proof and the rationalizations are pretty significant stretches(it can cool you off TOO MUCH!). Despite that, the South Korean government has issued genuine warnings about this “danger”.
TWO FLUID ELECTRICITY — This is just a centuries-old defunct theory about electricity? Not sure why it’s here! People thought that maybe there were two kinds of special fluid, vitreous or resinous, whose imbalances determined electric charges and magnetism and things. I’m pretty sure there’s no “this is the real truth that THEY don’t want you to know” theory hovering around this one, believe it or not.
CAMPBELL ISLAND PRINCESS — Campbell Island is a few hundred miles south of New Zealand. Allegedly, a European woman was stranded there early in the 19th century — though her origins and the reasoning for this vary wildly. In almost all tales, she was a person of some level of renown — often married or engaged to some royal figure, sometimes responsible for some foul deed and sometimes the witness or resistance to it. While most believe the island has never had human inhabitants, there is non-local flora there which suggests someone planted it. There are old tales of sailors saying they saw huts there, as well. There doesn’t appear to be anything there now, and it’s unlikely anyone will be able to go digging for human remains on the island. So we may never know! But it seems possible!
FLATWOODS MONSTER IS A LESBIAN — The Flatwoods Monster is either a cryptid or alien spotted in the 50s in West Virginia. It has a very distinct look, different from the usual “grays” or anything else. It has glowing red eyes but no other facial features, a spade-shaped extremity or clothing item behind its head(or part of its head), long thin arms, and appears to be wearing some sort of skirt. I do not know if it is a lesbian or not, but a lot of cryptids have been ‘adopted’ by the LGBTQ+ community.
WORLDS — I’m 99% sure this is referring to an MMO that is the source of a lot of online folklore. Worlds started up in the mid 90s and is still up today, though it hasn’t changed in its overall look or atmosphere in those 25+ years. As a living artifact of when the internet was still fun, it is already a valuable curiosity worth checking out. But what landed it here is that Worlds is a weird place!
The MMO isn’t so much a game as just an online graphics-based chat client. You have an avatar and wonder around a 3D environment and can teleport to all sorts of different ‘worlds’, many of which are user created. As such, you can find a lot of weird stuff if you wonder around.
The community of Worlds is very small these days, but that’s part of the legend. There are a couple players who seem to always be there and will take explorers on odd tours, act creepy, and so on. This has spawned all kinds of “creepypasta”(online scary stories cut and pasted all over the place) and urban legends, leading various online communities to lead expeditions there from time to time. If you dig around, there are blogs and videos and pictures all over the place — or you can go to worlds.net (formerly worlds.com) and play it for yourself!
I love these old fragments of the internet like Worlds. A lot of subcultures formed and basically lived in places like this back in the day, and in some cases(like 2nd Life) that’s still the case. See you soon!
