Creepypasta 4: More SCP, Polybius and Grifter

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger,
and we are back for the fourth Creepy Pasta episode
that we've done together. That's a lot of creepy pastas

(00:24):
it is. I wasn't sure we were gonna we're gonna
be able to actually squeeze out a fourth one, and
yet behold, here it is. And honestly, people have asked
for this. A lot of people have written in and
said how much they like the Creepy Pasta episodes that
we've done. Now I'm trying to recall this because I've
done this is my third Halloween on the show. We've
done one for each Halloween. But I think we did

(00:45):
one off season maybe as well. I think so. I
think the first one was off season and then we
came back or maybe the second one something like that. Yeah,
so we have If you're unfamiliar with Creepy pastas, we
will set this all up for you. But this is
uh And by the way, it being the warth doesn't
mean that you have to go back and listen to
the other three either. Like they're not at all connected. Uh,
this is just like a fun kind of halloween ish

(01:07):
thing that we've been doing on the show for a
while now. Yeah, and it's a it's actually rounding out
our our Halloween, our month of our month plus of
Halloween content because this is airing the Thursday following Halloween
two thousand seventeen. So if you're sitting there at home
and you're going, I don't know what a creepy pasta is,
this is very weird if you keep saying that word. Okay,
here's the real brief. Visit to it again. Uh. Creepy

(01:31):
pastas are these viral copy and paste texts that are
in the form of horror stories. They evolved from the
term copy pasta, which was essentially when people would copy
and paste like like made up letters or fiction to
each other and send them around in chain emails, right.
Or Another example of just pure copy pops so that

(01:51):
I've encountered is is on these various question and answer
websites where someone will say, like this is specific example,
someone's like, oh, I have to get a prostate exam
tomorrow at the doctor's office. What's going to happen? Should
I be concerned, and then somebody drops some ultimately like
hollacious or scandalous story about what happened to them. And
then if you take that that copy and you search

(02:13):
for it, you see, oh, this exists in various places.
This is just like a grab bag bit of text
that somebody will distribute as needed to freak people out. Exactly.
That's kind of the fun of it is that they
take the shape of urban legends. They appear like things
that have actually happened. Right, This is sort of fake
news before fake news, right, people saying this happened to
me on the Internet and everybody going wait what and

(02:36):
kind of like circling around back and realizing that it's
just like for fun. It's like, it's like fake news
that became self aware, because because now you'll have websites
where where creepy pasta is curated and even composed and
shared exclusively with the creepypasta community. Yeah, exactly. And so
the whole idea here is that they're mimicking these first

(02:57):
person accounts, and the ones that were usually gravitating towards
are the ones that appear to be scientific ones. Right.
We've usually covered ones in the past that claimed to
be uh scientific laboratory conditions or something like that. Yeah,
or ones that at least actually have get their roots into,
you know, cognition or human behavior or I don't know,

(03:19):
go a little deeper than just a pure jump scare
and right. Yeah. In fact, you know, I only just
now remember this. There's a TV show on sci Fi
that is taking creepy pastas and adapting them into like
season length television shows. I think they're like five or
six episodes. I haven't seen it yet. But in fact,
actually last year you and I were interviewed by Playboy

(03:39):
magazine because they were looking for somebody who knew sort
of how to talk about creepy pastas beyond like the
websites that they're on. And that was fun too, so
we we had an opportunity to talk about sort of
just like the mechanics of the creepy pasta. Right now,
a lot of the pasta, the creepy pasta out there
is going to be authorless, but you see that changing

(04:01):
more and more with the you know, actual authors contributing
their pieces. And then likewise they range and greatly in length.
I tend to like the short ones, and they also
range from things that are just kind of like, hey,
this thing happened, can you believe it? Or sort of
Wikipedia style entries to things that are more clearly attempts
at a at at at a narrative structure. So the

(04:24):
most popular one that those of you out there have
probably heard of before and you might not even realize, oh,
that's a creepy pasta is slender Man. And we talked
a lot about slender Man in the previous episodes, so
I'm not going to do a lot of deep dive
onto that here. But really, the genre of creepy pasta
seems to have hit its peak somewhere around two thousand
and ten. It's still chucking along. People are still doing them,

(04:45):
making them. In fact, like when I went to go
research for this episode, I was shocked at how many
more there still were, you know, but I think like
the height of it being covered in other media has
maybe passed. Yeah. Plus, I I wonder how it's changing
to a with the rise of fake news and you know,
intentionally misleading um bits of content that are out there,

(05:06):
as well as things that are maybe not quite tied
to an effort to distort the truth, but are just
tied to get clicks I'm thinking of those. Yeah, they
will generally be like a series of four or more,
depending how crappy the website is. Um little thumbnails at
the bottom of the page, and they generally have like
a picture of like something kind of mysteriously fleshy, and

(05:27):
and then some sort of you know, clickbait headline. I think, actually,
it's it's fair to point out that sometimes in the
history of stuff to blow your mind, you may have
seen such a thing at the bottom of our website.
That's beyond our control, right, but those ads are sort
of placed there by like powers beyond our own. I
wonder if there's a potential for a new genre. I

(05:47):
guess you could call it creep Uh let's see, it's
it's clickbaits will be creepy bait. I don't know, creepy
BAITA like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You create an entire
business around churning out creepy baits with like weird little
thumbnails that would sit on the bottom of sites, and
people click on them and think they're reading a story
that's like you won't believe these five celebrities who aren't

(06:10):
allowed in Hollywood anymore. And then but like it's actually
a horror story that is a great idea for a business.
Let's start that, all right. So in this episode we
have we have each gone out into the wilds of
creepy pasta and once more brought back a couple of
topics to tackle tease apart and try and find some
stuff to blow your own content about. You retrieve too,

(06:30):
from the wilds I retrieved to. Now you probably want
to touch on the source for your two creepy pastas. Yeah,
so our last creepy pasta Creepy Pasta three. If you're
keeping track, these are like horror movies. The way that
we're calculating them was all about something called SCP, which

(06:50):
was brought to our attention by several listeners. The SCP
foundation is this collection of scientific creepy pastas that's out there,
and the idea is it's as if there's this warehouse
of oddities that are collected and contained somewhere, kind of
like that TV show warehouse. Their teen um and the
guidelines are basically that the articles should have an interesting idea,

(07:11):
reasonable containment procedures for the creepy pasta, and a clear
description with each entry. They operate on a rating system
so the community actually up votes and down votes based
on what their favorite ones are. And both of my
suggestions today come from a listener named Austin who suggested
a bunch of s cps for us right after Creepy

(07:32):
pasta three, and they have a bunch. It's it's a
very fun website to just browse through and click on
things and see just how how absurd and or legitimately
creepy each entry is because there's a lot of humor
on that website. Whichever very much. Yeah, yeah, and uh
it is You're not wrong, there's like thousands. Now. That
was the thing that kind of overwhelmed me is I
was like, how am I gonna do this? But luckily

(07:54):
Austin pointed out two great ones that I'm gonna work
with today. So my first is called s E P
nine six two. That's its designation, but we can call
it the Tower of Babel for our purpose. And you
have to stress how Babel is spelled here. Yeah b
A B B L E. Now, uh, I'm gonna just

(08:14):
summarize this because I think it would take too much
time to read the whole thing. But I recommend, like,
if you're into this idea, just go to Google and
type in SCP nine six two and the whole thing
will pull up. Um. But the gist of the Tower
of Babel in this creepy pasta is that there's this
large steel tower that has been found by human beings
and it produces these animal human hybrid servitors that are

(08:38):
under its control. They basically come out of the bottom
of this thing and they go within a like a
short radius of the tower to recover local resources, and
it's implied that these resources are brought back to the
tower to help rebuild the tower itself, to do some
kind of crazy experiments inside of it, and possibly to

(09:00):
create these servitors as well. Uh. They're described as being
sort of like likened thrope cyborgs, like they're half animal
half human, but they've got cybernetic implants kind of and
they're they also outside of the mining and like gathering materials,
they also hunt animals, so they'll kill animals and bring

(09:21):
back their bodies to the tower, but they will not
harm human beings. Is made very clear that that human
beings are in some way uh revered by this tower,
which may be sentient or there may be something inside
the tower that's sentient. That's sending all this stuff out. Now,
what do they do with the animals they bring back, Well,
it's unclear. They maybe make more servitors out of them,

(09:45):
and that's something I'm going to cover and looking at
the science here. But also, the tower will occasionally release
these balloons, and the balloons will have high quality writings
attached to them, and the writings sometimes go a little crazy,
like sometimes they're they're like little short stories, sometimes their poems,
sometimes their rants. And the rants seem to be the

(10:07):
ones that like give us a glimpse at the actual
personality of the Tower, and it seems to worship humanity
and it refers to humanity as the great Ones over
and over again. Wow, in your description of all of this,
I am picturing it as an as a Monty Python
animation by Terry Gilliam. I feel like that's probably the

(10:28):
purest expression that would be great. Actually, yeah, you know what,
it makes me think of Brazil a little bit. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So the thing that makes the balloons tied into all
this resource collection is that the balloons are made out
of the skin of animals that are recovered. So it's
very strange. Um, now I want to look at two
things that came out of this for me. The first

(10:50):
is animal human hybrids, which is a favorite topic of
ours on the show. We've talked about it before on
our X Files episode that Joe and I did two
X Files episodes where we we got into hybrids and chimeras.
This was two years ago maybe. And then Robert, you
and I did an episode all about the myth of
the human z the human Chimpanze hybrid. Yeah, well the

(11:11):
myth and then the the actual history there and that.
That was a fun episode and if I remember correctly,
Joe Rogan's favorite episode. Rogan was thrilled about that episode. Yeah.
Uh so, if you haven't heard that, go back and
listen to it. That's a fun one. That's it's one
of my favorites. Actually. Uh Now, I want to start
actually by reading a quote to you. Okay, and I'm

(11:33):
gonna I'm not going to tell the audience who this
quote is from before I go ahead and say it.
So here we go. A hopeful society has institutions of
science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and
that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight, I
ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious

(11:55):
abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms,
creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human animal hybrids,
and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is
a gift from our creator, and that gift should never
be discarded, devalued, or put up for sale. So who

(12:19):
do you think that was? I am getting I'm gonna
go make a wild guess and say that that was
Senator Joe squirrel Man because he doesn't want his genetic
data to be sold. It was actually former President George W.
Bush from his State of the Union in two thousand six.
And as some of our listeners know, I have my

(12:40):
master's degree in presidential rhetoric, and I was watching the
State of the Union at the time. I love watching
State of the Unions there. It's kind of a weird,
like they're my super Bowl basically, And uh, I was
watching it and I went, wait a minute, Like I
did like a double take, and I was like, did
he say human animal hybrids? Like? Has he gone so
far off the deep end that he thinks like werewolves

(13:02):
are a thing? You know? I was really like where
did this come from? You know? And it turns out
that this was actually an issue at the time, like
in scientific experimentation that was kind of rearing its head up,
and so I think Bush like from his ethical standpoint,
was trying to tackle it. But actually this is when
I became aware that experiments to create human animal chimeras

(13:25):
are ineligible for public funding here in the United States.
So you you cannot the government will not help pay
for anything that's even semi related to that. Yeah, And now,
of course it's it's it's worth driving home that that
the the actual experiments that are not being funded in
these cases are not experiments to create humans these or

(13:45):
to create some sort of mutant pig person that will
you know, labor in the minds. Uh, they're far more
realistic and applicable UM areas here. Like one of the
ones that instantly comes to mind, and I believe we've
discussed this one in the past on the show is
what if you could use a pig to grow human
organs within it for organ transplants to humans or any

(14:08):
other kind of like tissue or organ and growth. If
you could grow it in an animal or on an animal,
that would make the whole process easier, right. Yes, in fact,
that is exactly what I'm going to talk about here
today because I imagined one of the Towers servitors as
being pig like, because in the description of the Creepy Pasta,
it's specifically said that the way that they're sculpted is

(14:29):
to try to make them look more human even though
they have animal hybrid features, and it said that like
if it has a snout, which I immediately thought of
a pig, that the snout would be like cut off.
So it's very strange, but so I immediately went to pig,
and not for any old reason, but pig. Human hybrids
are a thing that have been being worked on for
a while, and in fact this year since our Human

(14:51):
Z episode, actually there's been some further research on this.
So um just a reminder, I mentioned the Human Z
episode earlier. Specifically, what we talked about there were something
that we're called the Red Frankenstein experiments, and the guy
to look up there is Ilia Ivanovich. Ivanov. He was
the one who was trying to create a human chimpanzee hybrid.

(15:11):
We go all into it in that episode, but if
you want to go and look up on your own
you know, check out his name. I'll make sure I
linked to that episode on the landing page for this one,
as well as all previous Creepy Pasta episodes. Yes, so okay. Obviously,
outside of George W. Bush's State of the Union speech
in two thousand and six, there is a lot of
fear and paranoia around the possibility of animal human hybrid right.

(15:36):
It just kind of squeaks people out whenever they even
think of the idea. It makes it upsets people, which
is probably why it's kind of a common trope and
horror now in developmental biologists. Stuart Newman was at the
New York Medical College in Valhalla, and this is together
with Jeremy Rifkin, who's the president of the Foundation of
Economic Trends in d C. And they submitted a path

(16:00):
and for the chimera of a human Z. And they
made this from embryonic cells of humans and chimpanzees. Uh So,
Stewart he vowed to secure the patent so he could
prevent others from ever making a human Z and exploiting it.
This is how much it freaks people out, Like they
they actually tried to patent this so they could make

(16:21):
sure that no one else could ever try to make
something like this. Uh, and so he was actually denied
this in two thousand four by the Patent and Trademark Office.
Why well, it gets back to something that George W.
Bush was talking about in that speech. It's important to
remember the U S Patent and Trademark Office actually rejects
claims of hybrid patents because they would too closely resemble humans.

(16:45):
And you can't patent humanity. You can sell what you
can exploit it, but but just no patent, right. Yeah,
well it always cracks me up, like when um companies
refer to like human collateral or like human human resources,
like they're talking about human beings as if they're objects, right,
or like like pens that they order from Staples or something. Yeah,

(17:06):
if if any word or phrase sounds like it should
come from a pig mutant and a giant power, it's
human resources along with all those other wonderful words like
head count reduction and so yeah, exactly right, like the
basically like the the sanitization of like companies doing quote
bad things to people. Right. So, actually hybridization is quite

(17:29):
common in nature, right. We've all heard of zebra variations
like zebras mixed with any other Equis genus species like
zoonkies or Hebrews or donkras right. Like, that was a
huge thing after Napoleon Dynamite, where everybody thought how cute
it was to combine different names of animals. But that's
a real thing, uh. In fact, this is when two

(17:49):
equine species mate, but because they're compatible enough to breathe,
they can actually mate, but unfortunately their offspring are usually sterile.
So this is when we get mules instance. Yeah, and
in the worst cases, for instance, prince to mind African
and Asian elephants, there have been cases where they have
bread and captivity and the results are if they do

(18:11):
produce offspring is generally quite frail and sickly and doesn't Yeah. Yeah,
that seems to be the case with some of these
as well. We also see big cat hybrids that are common.
So you've got tigons, liggers, jag lion, jaggue, pars, the
all the combinations right in rare cases. Actually, tigons are
different from other hybrid progeny. They can actually produce babies. Uh.

(18:35):
And there is a small industry that goes around breeding
domestic cats with wild relatives to produce like weird exotic hybrids. Right, So, like,
I've never seen one of these before, but I'm guessing like,
if you're super rich, you're like, I want to breed
my tortoise shell cat with a lynx or something, and
you get you get like this bizarre cat for your house.

(18:59):
I mean, yeah, my world is just when you run
out of cat, then the cat person, you know, the
cat lady in your social circle. Oh yes, oh yeah,
they just seem to show up on my doorstep. That's
how it works for me. Uh Also, bottle knows dolphins
and false killer whales can breed. These are called hole
fens holfens uh as, and so that's another hybrid that

(19:22):
we can note here. Almost all of these are infertile. Subsequently,
the whole thing, they're doomed to an evolutionary dead end.
They just they can't continue breeding. There's even some speculation
that human beings once crossbred with neanderthals, so that's worth
remembering as well. So, okay, Robert mentioned the pig hybrid
and the idea of using them for organ transplantation. This

(19:46):
first came about in two thousand three when Chinese scientists
at the Shanghai Second Medical University fused human cells with
rabbit eggs and this was reportedly the first human animal chimera.
Then in two thousand four, researchers is that the Mayo
Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing in their bodies.
And this is the stuff that kind of led to

(20:07):
that George W. Bush section in the State of the Union. Right,
these research uh moments popping up, but also stem cell
research becoming like a lot bigger and more public. Yeah,
I mean it is weird to imagine that, right, to
think of this pig that has been engineered to have
human blood in it for the purposes of blood donation,
and and you know, the the ramifications are not necessarily

(20:30):
attractive there. I mean, if you're if you're against say
the eating of animals, the raising of pigs for food,
then you know, how are you supposed to feel about
rearing pigs just so you can drain their blood and
sell it. Yeah, it's a for me, it's an ethical
thing around along the lines of we were just talking
about in our Optography episode about the experiment where they're

(20:52):
running album solution through a dog's eyeball while it was
still alive to see if optography was real, right, Like,
that is a setting to me. But I'm also a vegetarian,
and that's kind of part of it, just my ethical standpoint,
right Whereas I can totally understand why some people would
be like and in fact, I've got data here to
talk about this. Every day, twenty two people die because

(21:14):
they can't get the organ they need, right, So I
can completely understand the concept of saying, well, it's actually
worth it to us to grow these pigs with human
organs inside of them so that we can harvest those
organs and save some of those twenty two people every day. Yeah, Ultimately,
you can look at it as the choice, right, Okay,
either we're gonna go ahead with with pigs that have
human blood and human organs, or you guys get more

(21:36):
organized and more committed to attending blood drives and donating
your body when you die and having everything set up
so that that we don't have to rely on the hybrids. Yeah.
Do you remember that movie The Island that came out
a couple of years ago. Oh, Yeah, this was basically
the premise there, except for it was even more horrifying
because they were clones of actual people that were raised

(21:57):
to maturity so that those people would have exact duplicates
of their organs on hand. Yeah, it's essentially a remake
of Clona what no, Yeah, parts the Clonus hor or
is it Clonus the parts are It was then all
the industry science theater film. It had Peter Graves in it.
It was. It's not bad. Actually it's very watchable, but
it's essentially the same plot. Uh, Never let Me Go. Yes, Also,

(22:21):
that's right, entails a similar plot, but there's a lot
more intelligence plot. It's a little less um Michael Bay. Yeah,
there's less explosions and Never Let Me Go. I've read
the book, I've not seen the movie. Yeah, so okay,
here's the thing. Earlier this year in seventeen, scientists announced
that they had created the first successful animal human hybrid.

(22:45):
How they merged human cells into pigs. So technically, actually
what they created was a chimera and not a hybrid,
but those two terms get conflated, but basically, a chimera
is an organism that contains cells from two different species.
The reason why they did it was just what we
were talking about right there, to help grow donor donor organs.

(23:05):
So this is an international team. It was led by
the Salk Institute in California, and they reported their findings
in the journal Cell. Their research was funded by private donors.
Why well, I'll remind you the United States will not
provide any public funding for research like this. So how
do you make a chimera? Right? If you've got your
little chemistry set at home and you want to make

(23:26):
a chimera, you probably can't, but I'll give give you
a quick description. The first and riskiest way to do
so is to literally introduce the organs of one animal
into another. So it would be like that Christian Slater
movie where he has a monkey heart? What right? What movies?
I can't remember what that movie is called, but there's
a movie where, like it's a romantic teen drama and

(23:48):
he has like a huge scar over his chest and
he tells everybody that he's got a monkey's heart and
it's okay, Yeah, I vaguely remember the trailer. He's like
a bad boy too, right, He's always a bad boy,
of course. Yeah. But the host's immune system in this case,
let's let's say it's Christians later will usually reject these
other animal organs, right, Uh, So that idea seems a

(24:10):
little far fetched, but the second way to make a
chimera is to start at the embryonic level and introduce
one animal cells into the embryo of another and then
let them grow into a hybrid. So this followed another
Salk study that was funded and conducted on mice and rats,
and what they did. They used the genome editing tool Crisper,

(24:31):
which comes up a lot both on our show but
also just kind of in science communication in general. It's
a hot topic right now. With Crisper, they were able
to delete the genes that mice need to grow certain organs,
and then they could use those mice as hosts to
grow healthy pancreatic tissue for rats. Uh. This allowed those

(24:54):
organs to flourish inside the mice bodies. The next step
is essentially to inject rats stem cells into pigs. Now,
they did this, but that failed because those animals have
different gestation times, so rats and mice are kind of
closer together. Pigs are surprisingly closer to humans. Actually this
surprised me, so their organs are a little more similar,

(25:16):
so that's why they're working with pigs here. They introduced
three different types of human cells into pigs, and they
found that with just the right timing, they could get
those resulting embryos to survive. Once they put these embryos
in adult pigs, they survived for three to four weeks
and then the researchers removed them for analysis. So to
be clear here, there's only actually a low percentage of

(25:38):
these embryos that survived, and the human tissue within seems
to grow slower than they expected. So any organs that
are grown would probably be rejected by humans because they
have too much pig tissue in them. So the next
step that this research team is looking to figure out
is if they can increase the number of human cells
inside these embryos, and this could take years before they

(26:01):
get to any kind of point where they're growing functional
human organs. And in all of this, you have to,
I guess you have to think, like what's the what's
the line, like, at what point is there too much
human in there? At what point are you making some
sort of a humanoid drone creature that maybe has you know,
has no brain, that just sits there and grows organs,
And and how are we supposed to feel about bad? Well? Right, yeah,

(26:23):
there's there's a lot of ethical implications involved here, and too,
I really want to point out here too, what they're
doing is not tantamount to making animal human people like
you will often see if you google animal human hybrid
and you see legit articles about this pig study. They
will use these crazy photos that have either been photoshopped

(26:43):
or like are some kind of puppets or something that
are designed to look like horror movie monster half pig,
half people. Uh. And that's not the case of what's
going on here. I think a lot about a lot
of the revulsion that that occurs with this topic is
it basically comes down into this tie. This this type
of science forces you to re examine what we are.

(27:07):
And if you have a if you have a certain
you know, idea of what a human is and what
it means to be human that's maybe a little bit
divorced from like the scientific genetic realities of everything. Uh,
then yeah, this can be a bit of a shock.
Whereas the scientists involved would probably just tell you, yeah, yeah,
this is what we are, this is what it is
to be a human, and this is what we've lined

(27:28):
up to help those humans live longer. I think you
could end up seeing it too like break off in
two different ways. Right, they'll be like um, like biological
conservatives who you know, really want to make like like
those guys who purposely try to file the patent to
make sure that nobody could ever make it right. But
then you would have I guess transhumanists, who are people
who are like, hey, what could we learn from this science?

(27:49):
How could we augment our bodies? How could we become
the next step in evolution? Right? And and really, honestly,
the first thing there is that they're just looking for
a way to help people live, you know, when their
organs are failing. I don't think anybody yet, well, you know,
I maybe I'm wrong, Maybe the d O D is
up to this and we just don't know. But I
don't think anybody's like trying to make werewolf soldiers right

(28:10):
now or anything you know, to do unpredictable. But okay,
let's take what we just learned and try to apply
it to this creepy pasta. Okay, this is remember we're
talking about SCP nine six two. The way the creepy
Pasta is written, it's easy to assume that that tower
is somehow just Frankensteining together human and animal parts. But
because its message has this reverence towards human and the

(28:31):
fact that the servitors don't ever attack people, it actually
makes me think it's doing something else to create these
like hybrid monsters. It sounds like they are creating or
the the tower is creating human animal chimeras from embryos,
and possibly it's using the cells of the animals that
are brought back inside to it. Right So, but that

(28:53):
begs the question of where is it getting the human
cells from? Right So, I don't know quite the answer
to that, But that's also why this is spooky. You
don't know what's inside that tower. Everybody, Yeah, Okay, One
more thing I want to cover real quick is how
do you think the tower is controlling these servitors? Right?
Like there's some kind of mind control effect over these

(29:14):
like half human half animal cyborgs basically right now, we've
covered many, many, many times on the show before how
animals can be mind controlled by other animals, usually by parasites. Right, gosh,
how many do you think? Twenty episodes? Maybe more, probably
because you have because you have different levels. Right. Anytime

(29:35):
we're talking about some sort of disease or infectious agent,
it's gonna come up, and then you're gonna have indo parasites.
Uh so, this is gonna be gonna be like your
two main categories. And that's not even getting into like
the some of the more sci fi ideas of computer
human brain interfaces or just psychological manipulation. Well, I've got

(29:56):
all that here, so that's exciting. Yeah. Uh so, some
of these are examples that have been covered before. Others
I just want to give you like a grab bag
in case you've never heard any of our episodes on
parasite mind control. So parasitic wasp larva. They can control
caterpillars by releasing octopamine into their systems. Oh yeah, The
parasitic wasp world is filled with wonderful examples of various

(30:20):
hosts that are hijacked, not only like bodily but also
their their behavior is hijacked. Yeah. In fact, the jewel
wasp is another example. They can control cockroaches. This is nuts.
They can control cockroaches by stinging their brains and that
impairs their ability to move, and then they literally guide
the cockroaches by their antenna back to their nest. The

(30:42):
wasps nests where the cockroach becomes host to all the
wasps larvae, so they like ride cockroaches, kind of like
a moa deep rides a sandworm. Oh wow, that that's incredible.
I don't think i'd run across the jewel wasp example before.
There's one with a ladybug. That's amazing because the it
it's basically alien, except if the host remained alive after

(31:05):
the emergence of the xenomorph and had to partially raise
it and look after. This is similar. Yeah, this is similar. Uh.
There's also the protozoan Toxoplasma gandhi. They use rats as
vehicles to get into cat and testines. This is because
their ousists can form in inside cat feces. What we've
talked about this before, but a lot of people probably

(31:27):
know about this. It causes the rats to lose their
fear of cat urine, and they may be doing it
by affecting the neurotransmitters and dopamine levels inside the rat brains. Now,
because toxoplasma can cross the blood brain barrier inside mammals,
they can actually infect us human beings, and they've infected

(31:48):
two billion people worldwide. Three dozen studies have found a
positive link between toxoplasma infection and human neurological disorders like schizophrenia.
You ever want to feel extra weird about scooping out
the litter box, I highly recommend looking into some of
the research has been to your point, a number of
studies over the years. There are a lot of great

(32:09):
articles out there, uh that touch on just to to
what degree, Uh, this parasite hijacks the brain of its hosts.
I mean everybody but the cats. Really, the cats remain untouched.
It's just everything around the cats that end up being manipulated.
It's funny because after I was doing this research, I
was like, in the bathroom adjacent to my office has

(32:30):
one of our cat litter pans in it, and I
was like, uh, yeah, I need to go clean that.
But it was like I had to like wrap like
rags around my face before I did it. Like all
of a sudden, I was afraid of cleaning the litter box. Uh.
There's also small crustaceans that are known as gamma rids,
and these can be infected by a number of different parasites. Apparently,
like they're just they're awesome hosts for parasites, parasites. So

(32:54):
you've got trema toads in their brains. Sometimes worms form
in their body cavities. Each one of these parasite, it's
just induces different behaviors in these crustaceans. Some make them
head toward light, others make them head away from deep water.
And then this is my favorite, slash most horrifying one.
Robert did an entire video about this one, and if

(33:15):
it's on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, it
will make your skin crawl. It's super upsetting. This is
the hairworm, and hairworms are known to infect frogs, fish, snails,
and crickets, and in the case of crickets, they need
to be brought near water so that the hair worms
larvae can develop. So what they do is these parasites

(33:37):
make proteins that attract the cricket hosts to light, which
is usually where the water is at night. So these
crickets end up basically committing suicide and dive bombing into
the water, which they normally wouldn't do, so these hair
worms can reproduce. Yeah, this is I love this particular
organism um and and really great. Really enjoyed putting that

(33:57):
video together a while back, but uh, my first encounter
with it was in a junior high band class. Right,
you've seen one, Yeah, and I've encount I've encountered one.
I've encountered one in a puddle once out in the wild.
But this was in a junior high band room and
there was a cricket hopping around on the floor, and
the uh, the student next to me decided that she

(34:19):
was just gonna stop it, you know, which which I
don't agree with. Cricket's not hurting anybody. Don't hurt the
cricket um, you know, folklore and superstitions aside. But she
she but it served her right because the second she
stopped that thing, she you know, it's sitting there dead
and then the horse hair worm starts crawling out of
the cricket, and it just totally grossed her out. Like
she just she had to I think she had to

(34:41):
move to a different chair. Yeah, if you've never seen
one of these things before, it's like something out of
a body horror movie. There. They look they literally look
like hair to us because they're so small. But it's like,
imagine if like just this tendril punched in through your
body and bore into you and started driving you around.
That's kind of what it's like, yeah, yeah, the revulsion

(35:01):
element aside, the degree to which they manipulate the host
behavior is just phenomenal. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's fascinating.
Definitely go check out that video if you're interested in more.
But there are a lot of examples, is my point,
of parasites hijacking their hosts, and they tend to be neurological,
usually with proteins being expressed inside the brains of the infected.

(35:22):
So maybe this is a possibility. Maybe there's something going
on in the tower where they're manipulating the proteins of
the of the brains of these animal human hybrids that
they're creating, or maybe it's electronic, and I think this
is more likely given the description of the creepy pasta. So,
for instance, in researchers at Harvard University created the first

(35:43):
non invasive brain to brain interface between a human and
a rat, and that allowed the human being to control
the rats tail. The way that this works as a
human wears an e G device, the mouse is equipped
with an ultrasound computer to brain interface. And I want
to make it clear this isn't invasive. None of their
brains are cut open and with like electrodes inside them

(36:05):
or anything. You don't have to cut their heads open.
It works when the human looks at a specific pattern
on a screen and that pattern triggers the ultrasound beam
into the rats motor cortex in the region that deals
with its tail movement. In this study, it had accuracy
just a human being sitting on the other side of

(36:27):
the room being able to control when a rat moved
its tail. This does not mean that we can read
minds or anything like that. We simply we just don't
know how thoughts are encoded by neurons in the brain,
but it does allow us to stimulate a region of
the brain that is known to create a particular reaction.

(36:47):
So another example of this comes from Korea. At the
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, researchers have developed
a way to remote controlled turtles. Uh now, this is
a little bit more what might be going on here
with this creepy pasta similar to the human mouse interface.
It guides the turtle through what's called a cyborg system

(37:08):
where the human sends again e g. Signals by thought
command and those activate a device that's on the turtle,
and the device obstructs the turtle's view. They can essentially
give it three instructions, turn left, turn right, or be idle.
And what's interesting about this is they use turtles because
turtles have decent cognitive abilities. They have the ability to

(37:30):
distinguish different wavelengths of light, and they can recognize a
light source and move toward it. So they're really more
predictable than other animals when it comes to their movement patterns. Plus,
they respond well to mutagen We know that. Oh yeah, yeah,
Well that's the idea here is like, once you perfect
the turtle cyborg, then you can perfect the teenage mutant

(37:50):
ninja turtle cyber step. Yeah exactly, which is essentially what
SCP nine six two is doing here right the creepy
pasta space scifically states the following I'm gonna read this
to you from the description that these servitors are quote
cybernetically augmented animals. These augmentations usually forced the animals into
a bipedal gait and are often accompanied by crude cosmetic alterations,

(38:14):
such as the removal of a snout, with the apparent
goal of making the servitor appear more human like the
nervous system of members of SCP nine six two Dash
one is slave two implanted electrodes which allow them to
be controlled by a central source, and that is assumed
to be the tower itself, like that the tower is sentient.

(38:36):
So this definitely sounds to me like these hybrids are
augmented with cybernetics that allow a B C I to
C B I transfer of some kind of remote control
through implanted electrodes. So what I want to know is this,
if you captured one of these servitors and then you
dismantled all the electronics stuff that's like plugged into them,

(38:57):
what would happen? Like, how would they behave? Would even
know how to behave? Would they go out into the
world and fetch a new animal tissue for the construction
of balloons, or would they possibly turn against the tower
and start attacking humans. So this is an interesting direction
to take. I also want to introduce another scary question
before we take a break and we move on to

(39:17):
more creepy pastas. So we've established that we are creating hybrids.
We've also established that there are lots of ways to
mind control sentient beings. Now, what about if those hybrid
organs could potentially make human beings more vulnerable to parasitic hijacking. So,
for instance, if I got a pig human organ put

(39:41):
in my body because I need a new liver, right,
but there's something about that organ obviously, the way that
those organs are harvested, they're all quote unquote human, But
could they lead to something else that would make me
more vulnerable to a parasitic mind control thing like a
wasp or or toxoplasmosis. And then what if the intelligent

(40:04):
parasites are that you have the ones carrying out this
whole scheme? Bingo, Yeah, super scary stuff here. I really
like this tower one, so so thanks again for passing
this along, Alex. All Right, we're gonna take a quick
break and we come back more creepy pasta. All right,
we're back. Okay, So the first of the two creepy

(40:26):
pastas that I turned to. This one is kind of
pre pasta urban legend in perspects, but it continues to
resonate through the now established world of creepy pasta. It's
um and I love too how it's There are elements
of intentional um manipulation of an audience here as well.

(40:48):
So this this one is known as polybius and this concerns. Essentially,
it's like a haunted video game, uh situation. I imagine
a number of you out there are familiar with this
one already. I think there's a stuff they don't want
you to know video about this urban legend. So the
idea here is that there was a nine one arcade

(41:09):
game called Polybius, presumably named for the Greek historian who
championed the importance of historians having a firsthand account of
what happened. Uh, it's kind of a wink to the
fact that this is all made up. The version I
read indicated that you had a few machines that were
produced by a mysterious German company with a kind of
fake sounding name and installed in Portland area arcades. This

(41:33):
they resulted in a host of player symptoms nightmares, hallucinations, migraines,
addictive behavior, all of this occurring with any individual who
played the game. And then, uh, and while this is
going on, there like mysterious men in black coming in
and checking on the machines, perhaps getting some data out
of them, and then all of a sudden, the machines

(41:53):
vanish overnight and people were just left to whisper about
what was the deal with the Polybia machines. Was it
part of a government program to test, you know, adolescent minds.
Was it something more nefarious? Was in an accident than
then the government got interested in It's a pretty it's
a pretty cool idea. It's kind of tron but better

(42:15):
than like the Tron Legacy, uh sequel. Yeah, it And
as you know, we both love the Tron Legacy sequel.
We've talked about it on the show before, but this
sounds like a great hook. Yeah. I mean it also
reminds one of another film from the tron Ish era,
that same sort of genre of of let's make a
film about a crazy video game, and that being The
Last Starfighter. Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking.

(42:37):
Where it's been a long time since I've seen it.
I loved it as a kid. But the Arcade Machine
is like a recruitment device for an alien civilization if
I remember correctly. Like the way it works is if
you get the highest scorer on there, then this like
alien armada comes to Earth and recruits you because they're like, oh,
you are so good at this video game that you're
actually going to be like an amazing pilot. Yeah, it

(42:59):
was a fun flick. I may have to check it
out again some day. But this urban legend led to
UH concerning Polybius, led to a string of video games
that adapted the Polybius title, and there was even a
Simpsons reference. And I believe two thousands six thereabouts now
investigations into the any reality behind Polybius, it tends to

(43:23):
point towards two thousand one is the starting point and
it was probably created by a guy named by the
name of Kurt Kohler as an intentional effort to drive
traffic to coin opt dot org. UH. This according to
Stuart Brown, the man behind the Ahoy video series. You
looked into it so. I also read where a skeptic
Brian Dunning believes that the roots of the prepasta pasta

(43:46):
here probably emerged from distortions of real life complications UH
surrounding video games. UH. Particularly apparently when Tempest first came out,
this was the you know, the the Atari game. UH.
There were some cases of quote un video game related
illness is associated with it. UH. And then there were
some accounts of video game related illnesses that popped up

(44:07):
in the Portland's area around one and in nine two
we had the first video game known to have coincided
with the death of a player coincided not you know,
caused the death, but there was the heart attack death
of eighteen year old Peter Brukowski in Kalmut City, Illinois.
This reminds me of something we talked about recently on

(44:29):
the show. I can't remember what episode it came up in,
but the Pokemon panic in Japan and how that was
deemed to be like a moment of mass hysteria. So
I wonder if that's possibly what the what caused this legend.
It could be because the other side here is you
have this technology that's suddenly everywhere and it involves the children.

(44:49):
You have news accounts of some of these uh you know,
incidents taking place, and then down the line, it's easy
to wrap this all up in an attractive urban legend,
perhaps in the case of Polybia's taking existing urban legends
and just simply tying them up in a nice boat,
which is something you see with a lot of actual
creepy pasta. Because it's easy to see why all of

(45:10):
this is compelling, right because video games they do enact
to strange power over the players. In many cases, you know,
they give us this slow state. Uh, you're you're generally
dropped into a very limited world of fixed and often
black and white objectives. And there's sometimes there's even like
the game itself is telling you what to do. Either

(45:31):
either you're on the rails or there's some of the
cases there's a voice in your head telling you this
is what we're doing, now go do it. Achieve the objective.
Here's your here's your reward in video game coins. So
on top of that, of course, I think most of
us are probably familiar with some of the symptoms that
occasionally pop up from excessive video game playing or video

(45:52):
game addiction. So it might be say, strange blisters on
your on your bum from setting in a odd position,
and headache, I strain, neck and back pain, digestive problems,
sweep problems, sadness, drowsiness, even palpitations, and this kind of
thing happens. I've also seen some of these same symptoms
line up with just say excessive computer use, uh you know,

(46:15):
too much time setting at a computer for a for
a job or um you know. I I've known people
who ended up like screwing up their back a little
bit from being in the same position while researching, reading
a book or something. Yeah, no, this is definitely something. Um.
So I am a recovering World of Warcraft addict. Yeah,
and so I definitely am familiar with all of these

(46:36):
symptoms because I would like play for like twelve hours
straight with my friends, like almost all through the night. Uh.
And it was not good. Those are not good days
for me. Uh. But But also like sometimes when I'm
working during the day, for instance, on this episode, I'll
sit there and I'll just be so into the research
and typing everything up and reading and reading and typing

(46:56):
and typing, and I realized I haven't gotten up for
a while, you know, And so I've actually tried to
make it a point to get up once an hour
and go outside and like, you know, let my eyes
adjust to like natural height for a minute. You know,
you don't also do you don't want to get those
research ankles rese that's gonna be Yeah, when you and
I are old men, they're going to discover like all

(47:16):
kinds of new ailments of of what happens when you
sit there and do research for too long. Now. I
think one of the more fascinating interactions though, between computers
and computer games and human health is one that seems
very key to the polybius creepypasta here, and that is
photosensitive epilepsy. Ah yeah, which is actually also connected to

(47:38):
that Pokemon example. Yea, I brought up. Okay, go ahead.
So people with the photosensitive epilepsy, they experience seizures, and seizures,
of course, can involve you know, uh, muscles tensing up,
the loss of consciousness, um loostening of the bladder, and
other other physical conditions, and it can generally be just
a quite a you know, a stressful and frightening experience.

(47:58):
But people with photo of sensitive epilepsy, they can experience
these seizures when exposed to flashing lights or bold contrasting
visual patterns over exposure to a video game. Um, it's
a it's a brain disorder that's caused by abnormal electrical
activity in the brain, perhaps due to irregular neural wiring
or neurotransmitter imbalance, and it's genetically linked. So about one

(48:23):
in a hundred U S citizens have epilepsy. Out of those,
only three to five percent have photosensitive epilepsy. And it's
also more likely to affect people ages seven through nineteen,
with males exhibiting a stronger tendency overall, but this meant
might just be due to the populations in which in
which they were looking and the time frame in which

(48:45):
they were looking, in which the males are more likely
to be playing a bunch of video that I was
going to say that is like your target demo for well,
it used to be your target demo for for video games. Yeah,
I'm not sure to what extent that has changed, especially
since I mean used to if you're steering at a
screen all the time time, you were probably either watching
TV or playing video games. Obviously, now everyone's looking at

(49:05):
screens all the time. This is true. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's funny. I think that to myself often, like after
a full day or research, I'm like, what do I
want to do? Well, I could sit down and watch TV,
or I could play a video game while those are
both looking at a screen. Again, and now even like
if I want to read comics or read a book,
it's a different that's another screen of Yeah, I have
so many screens to look at. That's one of the

(49:27):
reasons I like the Kindle I have because it's it's yes,
it's screen, but at least it's that it doesn't have
a glow to it. My kindles the same. Yeah, but occasionally.
Actually I did this just yesterday. I was like, after
a long day of just looking at screens, I was like,
I'm gonna just take a magazine into the bathtub. Perfect,
perfect way to relax. Alright, So, given the triggers of
pulsating lights here with the photo photo sensitive epilepsy, it's

(49:49):
easy to think of it as a just a collision
between human brains in our modern world of discos and
video games, right, But the earliest possible case, if this
goes back to ancient Greece where we have reports of
an epileptic who would go into seizures, is a potter
wheel was rotated in front of his eyes. Because you
don't have to say, have flashing lights, but if you

(50:10):
have light behind it and you have the pattern occurring,
it's a it's a pattern of contrasting light. Yeah. Um,
But even this you have to point out from an
evolutionary standpoint, it's still kind of an invention of the
modern world. We're talking about the wheel here, right, It's
a It's something certainly we've had for a while, but
have we haven't had it long enough to really impact

(50:30):
human evolution. And even you'll find encounters where color can
stimulate photosensitive epilepsy, generally reds and blues, And these are
colors that are not the most common in the natural world.
I mean, aside from the sky, which many argue is
not truly blue. I mean, how much pure blue do
you encounter in nature? How much pure red? Yeah, that's interesting.

(50:53):
I mean some flowers for sure, But you're right that
they would be like a lower percentage, Like if you
were going to do like a color swatch Pellett of
like your walk through the woods, they would be far
smaller than all the greens and browns and earth tones. Yeah,
and they would ultimately be easy to avoid and would
not have an impact on evolutionary biology. But I have

(51:14):
to point out the same thing goes for a lot
of the stimuli, specific stimuli that people with photosensitive epilepsy encounter,
Like in many cases it's something specific enough that they
can readily avoid it, and then on top of that
their anti epileptic medications that are taken as well. Uh.
And then also we mentioned the age range, like as
people get older, it seems like there are in many

(51:36):
cases less susceptible to this. However, there is a case
worth mentioning, and we've I believe we've touched on this
on the podcast before, and that is the recent case
of Newsweek senior editor Kurt I Convolved, who was attacked
on Twitter. The incident here is that another Twitter user

(51:56):
disagreed with some of Kurt's political tweets and and knowing
that he has had photosensitive epilepsy, tweeted a flashing gift
at him, which resulted in a seizure. So it's um,
it's a it's a revolting case, but illuminating in light

(52:17):
of everything we've talked about and about these triggers and
the ramifications of these triggers in an increasingly technological world. Okay,
I'm gonna have to go back and listen to our
episode about why is social media making us crazy? And
then we'll be right back. Yeah, Okay, I listened to it, right.
Are you ready to move on? Yeah? Yeah. That's basically
polybius here, the video game that allegedly drives one insane

(52:39):
or or causes some sort of health problems. But of course,
we have plenty of examples of video games that can
cause at least certain members of the population. Uh, various
health health problems. Isn't Polybius also the name of a
Michael Shay short story. Oh yeah, I believe it is.
It's a science fiction that's the name of this sciencefic,

(52:59):
one of a short fiction collection. Yeah. When I first
saw this, I thought that's what it was, because you
let me borrow that book. Um. Cool, that's a neat
little tie in just for fun for us and maybe
for other people out there who are Michael Shay fans.
We're big Michael Shay NERD's here. All right, Well, let's
let's hit another one. Then before we take a break.
You have you you have another specimen from the SCP. Yeah,

(53:23):
this is SCP six eight two, also known as the
Hard to Destroy Reptile and actually linking it to Michael say,
this seems like the kind of thing Michael Shay would
come up within his work. It's like it's a straight
up monster, but is like the scientifically fascinating monster when
you kind of apply real world biology to it. Yeah,

(53:44):
Michael Shay loved biology. I mean it's evident in his work.
So many stories involve some sort of unique, uh monster
biology that's clearly patterned after say parasitic wasps for behavior, spiders, etcetera. Yeah,
so in this instance, again I'm just summarizing here rather
than reading you the whole creepy pasta. This is an

(54:05):
intelligent reptile and it hates all life forms. It goes
into a rage state anytime it's spoken to, and it
has the following superpowers. It can regenerate by consuming any
type of matter, whether inorganic or organic, and its digestion
seems to be aided by gills that are inside its

(54:27):
nostrils that can remove any usable matter from a liquid solution.
So subsequently it can't be killed. It has super high strength, speed,
and reflexes. I wrote here essentially we're talking about wolverine,
right like this is this is a classic Hugh Jackman
logan wolverine type stuff. The lizard here though, it can

(54:50):
keep moving and speaking even if eight seven percent of
its body has been destroyed. So this is like this
fearsome monster and creepy pasta lore. And basically they say,
like you have to contain this thing in like a
pool of hydrochloric acid at all times and it'll like
continually be regenerating, but at least it will be like
so constantly disabled that you can contain it that way,

(55:12):
and I love that it's just a rage lizard, that's
just an enraged lizard that hates you. Man, If you
actually go to the Creepy Pasta page for this again,
it's s CP six eight two, there's demonstrations of some
of the dialogue with this creature that shows just how
much it hates everything. Uh. Now, of course this made
me think of reptile regeneration, and so I wanted to

(55:32):
look into that and see, like, just how possible would
reptile regeneration be at this level. Okay, so we've all
heard stories about lizards that regrow limbs or they regrow
their tails. In fact, regeneration is mostly common in invertebrates
like worms and insects. Crustaceans and insects can actually spontaneously

(55:53):
lose and replace their body parts in a process that's
called auto tommy. But sponges and starfish well, so no,
they can replace and repair their limbs. Starfish can even
regenerate into a new animal sometimes, and we've discussed this
on the show before. Another one of my favorites. We're
revisiting a lot of greatest hits today, The hydra uh

(56:15):
is such an amazing little animal. It can tear open
its own flesh to create these mouths that they then
shove their prey into before they heal back over their flesh. Yeah,
the footage of this of this phenomenon is wonderful because
it's it's like something that's it's pure lovecraft, because the
rip just gets wider and wider until the mouth is

(56:36):
larger than the hydro west and you feel like it's
just gonna swallow your soul through this comp s. It's upsetting. Yeah,
and I would definitely not want to encounter human sized
hydro that's for sure. Um mammals we can regenerate a
little bit like deer. They can regrow their antlers right,
and sometimes humans can regenerate internal organs like the liver,

(56:57):
but we mainly we don't regenerate. And the reason why
is because our wounds are sealed off with thickened mats
of collagen. The scars ward off infection. But they make
it really difficult to completely heal because the collagen is
severing the nerves and those can't penetrate the barrier to reconnect.
So it seems like biology is one of two ways

(57:21):
you either get to scar or you get to regenerate. Now, scars,
when you look at your scars like I've got some
scars on my hands and stuff, they're essentially just overgrowth
of our normal fibrous scaffolding, the stuff that supports all
of our tissues. Right now, all kinds of lizards can regenerate,
but not all lizards can. Crocodiles and snakes don't seem

(57:41):
to be able to. And in fact, the photo of
this scp rage monster lizard, it's essentially a crocodile, that's
what it looks like. But iguanas, geckos, salamanders, larval frogs,
and toads, they have all demonstrated the ability to regenerate.
In many cases, the regrown limb will separate from the muscles,

(58:02):
the blood supply, and the nerves. The bones they actually
regrow not as bones but as cartilaginous tubes. Uh. And
so this isn't instantaneous. It can take, for instance, and
annul a lizard sixty days just to regenerate a functional tail,
and the process is stressful because the lizard has to
use a lot of energy to do this. It can

(58:23):
even lower their social status, among other lizards, but the
less stress the lizard deals with, the faster the stump
will heal. So, you know, wants to go to a
little quiet place, you know, be in the dark and
just sit there and regenerate. You know, some lizards can
only do this once, while other lizards can shed and
regenerate over and over and over again. Now, interestingly, researchers

(58:48):
at Arizona State University in furteen were able to pinpoint
the genes responsible for annual lizard tail regeneration, and of
the twenty three thousand genes, they narrowed it down to
three hundred and twenty six that were quote turned on
during regeneration. While they expected this to be mostly genes

(59:09):
that were in the tip where the tail was regrowing,
they actually found that cells dividing, we're all over the lizard,
including in its muscle, its cartilage, it's spinal cord, and
its skin. They also found get this, of those three
hundred and twenty six genes that were responsible for regeneration,
nearly all of them are present in us in human

(59:31):
beings as well, So in theory, we should be able
to do the same thing. So they're hoping their research
will help find a way to help with birth defects,
spinal cord injuries, and possibly arthritis. Now, some of these
genes seemed to be involved in embryonic development and in
wound healing. The genes involved in regeneration all seemed to

(59:53):
be part of the w n T pathway. I think
that's how you pronounce it. It's just wouldn't it's just
produced like that in the literature that controls stem cells
in organs like our brain, our hair follicles, and all
our blood vessels. So researchers they've identified a type of
cell that's really important for tissue regeneration. That's the satellite cell.

(01:00:16):
And these satellite cells are also more common and nole
a lizards. So all right, let's apply this to our
reptile monster here. It sounds like as a reptile, it
probably has the same ability that many lizards that we've
described have, but this is at a more accelerated rate.
It probably doesn't scar at all. And based on that
tween genetic discovery, I would guess maybe this reptile has

(01:00:38):
even more genes that quote turn on and allow it
cells to divide, and maybe it has more satellite cells too.
But it seems like it would need to consume a lot,
a lot of energy to keep this up right, So
what is it eating? And it's said in the Creepy
pasta that you know it can convert any matter into
energy essentially, right. Um, it makes me think of this

(01:01:02):
Legion of Superheroes character called matter Eater Lad, So maybe
this is a this is like an evil version of that. Okay,
what also reminds me, I think there's another stp anentity
that's like a living thing without any without an orifice.
So yeah, we talked about that in one of the
other ones. So like there's the idea, Well, it must

(01:01:22):
have like an extra dimensional portion of its body that
eats in another world. Yeah. Well here I turned to
just normal digestion and matter conversion to try to figure
this out. So a brief primer on simply how we
and most other living things digest. We break down food
and I'm putting that in quotes because remember, this thing
can eat organic stuff, but we just break them down

(01:01:45):
into smaller substances and then we extract nutrients from them
that gives us energy to develop. So there's three micronutrients
for this energy, carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids. We also make
use of vitamins and materials, and then through chemical old digestion,
which is after we've chewed our food and our stomach
has churned it all down. There's enzymes in our bodies

(01:02:06):
that break the chemical bonds and change the structure of
the molecules involved. And the human mechanical process that also
involves moistening that starts the actual chemical enzyme breakdown. Right,
our saliva is sort of the beginning of that process.
So okay, let's turn back to this lizard monster SCP
Nine six two. It seems that this reptiles digestion is

(01:02:30):
aided by turning substance into a liquid. Remember it mentioned
that it breathes in liquid and then it takes in
the substances through gills that then distribute the micronutrients around
to be converted into energy. So what I'm wondering, does
it choose stuff up and then vomit it back up
and then snort it down through its gills somehow it's

(01:02:52):
turning like if it's eating rocks, it's turning those rocks
into a liquid somehow, and then it's bringing the liquid
in through the gills and its nose it's quite confusing.
Or maybe there's just a little hole in between its
mouth and its nostrils and that the liquid goes up
and filters in through the gills that way. I mean,
it's certainly not that far removed from some of the

(01:03:13):
feeding practices of insects. I mean, the famous one being,
of course, the fly. And then the other thing here
is how powerful must the acidic enzymes in its digestive
system be that allow it to break down anything? Right?
And that makes me think they keep talking about in
this creepy aposta, oh we hydrochloric acid is the only
way we can deal with this thing. And I'm thinking, well,

(01:03:34):
maybe the hydrochloric acid is breaking down its external body
parts on the outside, but it's probably got some kind
of acidic shielding inside its stomach and digestive system. Yeah,
I mean, much like humans do exactly. Yeah, So this
thing classic example if you just combine reptile regeneration and

(01:03:54):
you kind of accelerate it to fantastic levels, and then
you consider just how digest it works, which is pretty
fantastic when you think about it. So, okay, we've hit
three of them, three creepy pastas. Let's take one more break,
we'll come back and we'll get our last one in.
All right, we're back. So the final creepy pasta for

(01:04:16):
this episode is one known as The Grifter, and I
want to just give everyone a heads up here in
this particular portion of the podcast, we're gonna get into
I mean, we're we're pretty PG show, but this one
is going to involve enough films a little bit. So
if you need to check out at this point, we

(01:04:37):
respect that. And if you want to come back in
when you're when the listening audience is more appropriate, you
may do that as well. Okay, alright, So I keep
I kept coming back to this one though, because there's
something kind of pure about it, you know, something something uncut.
The versions of The Grifter that I kept coming across,
they don't even have the embellishments of character story. It's

(01:04:59):
simply the side you that, hey, there's a video out
there called The Grifter, and it's sort of a super
cut of disturbing images that contain, uh, you know, actual
footage of child deaths and creepy puppets, which seems like
an object of position because on one hand, child deaths
are horrible and they should not be filmed, and they
are filmed, and that's probably suspectus. There was almost certainly

(01:05:21):
a crime committed here, right, and creepy. But on the
other hand, creepy puppets are just creepy puppets that are
just good, wholesome fun. Uh So I don't see why
I should react to the creepy puppet in the same
way I'm reacting to a film. Just sounds like a
like a video goo losh, Yeah, to sort of overwhelm
your senses. But this was definitely a theme for a while.
It still is, right, I mean, ring and Ringo obviously

(01:05:44):
kicked it off the video drome transmission. Yeah, And there's
a lot of literary fiction that I've read lately that's
kind of like meta horror analysis. In fact, Joe Hill
has one that's like this about like watching horror movies.
Actually read this book by Jema Files recently called Experimental Film.
It's it's very similar. The whole kind of thing is
just like there are these haunted things that you're watching, right, Yeah, Yeah,

(01:06:06):
it's um. It's really interesting because it it seems to emerge.
The Grifter in particular, seems to emerge from two areas here,
So the endearing urban myth of the snuff film, and
of course the ever widening realm of recorded human experience,
just the fact that there are there, there are films
of human death. There, There is footage of human death

(01:06:27):
out there on the Internet, and you don't even really
have to look that hard to find it. Hell no,
I mean, when we were growing up, even before there
was really an internet, faces of deathless and I'll get
to faces. Yeah, I saw face as a death when
I was like, oh god, way too young and like
a fourteen or fifteen. I don't think I ever saw them,
but I remember I remember the VHS tapes, which was enough,

(01:06:48):
you know, just to see the tapes and maybe if
I got brave, you know, pick it up and read
the back of it. Now. But before we get into
either these areas though, it's of course worth remembering that
footage of human deaths. Not only do they exists, but
they've they've been with us for quite a while. Um.
Among the older examples, you'll find botched performances, most famously

(01:07:09):
friends uh Richild's nineteen twelve failed Eiffel Tower parachute jump.
Uh And that's out there on YouTube as well, but
you know, basically he was going to test out this
parachute apparatus. It didn't work, he died, and there's film
in footage of it. For non human animals, we have
Thomas Edison's three filmed electrocution of Topsy the Elephant Man.

(01:07:31):
You guys have talked about this on the show before,
didn't you do like a whole episode on Yeah, Joe
and Robert have another episode that's all about like electricity
and religiosity. But man Thomas Edison did some really awful
stuff basically to try to like promote his brand of electricity,
including electrocuting human beings. Yeah, I mean, but as far
as just Topsy goes, even though it's not a human

(01:07:53):
like that, it's a pretty it's it's a pretty dark history. Now,
if you follow all of this stuff with numerous assassinations,
footage of war and violence, various performance or sports sports
based fatalities, you end up having just quite a well
of a filmed death. And then of course we eventually

(01:08:14):
see filmed murders and suicides that also occur outside the
confines of war. So as cameras grow more and more ubiquitous,
the act of capturing life means inevitably capturing death as well.
And I just mentioned recently on the Optography episode, I've
got a whole book full of photos from the nineteenth
century of dead bodies. That was because there was this

(01:08:34):
fascination at the time with that would be kind of
the best way to remember the person. They thought, right
as like right before they were buried, they would get
them very well dressed up the corpse and take a
photo that the family would keep. You know, now, in
all of this, okay, so we know the footage is
out there, like some of it's on YouTube, especially the

(01:08:55):
historic bits of footage. Other stuff is more buried away
and darker portions of the web. But there is something
creepy about just knowing that it's out there, that all
of this stuff on the Internet is out there and
it's just a few key strokes away if you are
willing to glance in its direction. Right now, In all
these cases though, we're talking about, you know about footage,

(01:09:18):
footage of something that happened, or in some cases some
of the violer examples, Yes it's somebody perpetrating a crime
and filming it, but they are not exactly snuff films.
It's there, they're not examples of film that contains an
actual murder committed as an intentional part of the production
for profit. It's not a murder stage for commercial purposes,

(01:09:43):
which is terrifying and yet somehow believable idea. And it's
tied directly to this urban legend of the snuff film.
So what this makes me think of immediately is nine eleven.
So when nine eleven happened, we've all heard the stories
about how there were some victims who had to jump
off of the building. Right, So the jumper is a famous,

(01:10:04):
uh famous photograph of the individual jumping out of the
tower exactly. Now, a lot of that footage did not
show up in American media, especially after eleven happened, right
we are media was definitely sanitized at that time. That's
a whole another episode. But I was actually in Eastern
Europe a couple of years after that, and I was

(01:10:27):
in Krakow in Poland, and there was a gallery and
it was all photos from nine eleven, including that one,
you know, and they had blown it up and it
basically the gallery sort of challenging you to look at
this moment of horror and real death, but confront it
in a way that American news media wasn't willing to.

(01:10:47):
Oh yeah, I mean there are times when the photograph
or film footage of actual human death has certainly been
a poignant, you know, capture of of what it means
to of in our modern world. I mean, I could
we could sit here and list the various you know,
assassinations or I mean a lot of them. I guess
they're targeted political assassinations, political murders, big Vietnam footage. More recently,

(01:11:13):
there was the it was the the the Russian ambassador
to Turkey, Is that correct? It was a shot in
the gallery and there was a journalist there and captured
the whole thing, and they were they were powerful, award
winning photographs of this this crime taking place. But again
very different from they're not snuff films. Yeah, they're not
designed to entice you. So let me let's get into

(01:11:36):
this idea of the snuff film real quick. This is
probably the only chance on the show we have to
talk about about the the really interesting history of them.
And again we're not going to get into explicit details
of things here, but the term itself emerged in the
nineteen seventies. Uh. In fact, ninety one, an allegation was
made in Ed Sanders and the book The Family The

(01:11:57):
Story of Charles Manson's Doom Buggy Attack Battalion, that's the
actual title. Uh, And he charged that the family was
involved in making films of this nature he called in right, yeah.
He he charged that they were making quote unquote brutality films,
and he later referred to these and coined the term
snuff films. Now all he had to go on here,

(01:12:18):
though it was a second hand rumor that he even
he himself eventually refuted, but it was It was a
fact that the family had stolen an NBC TV truck
in the summer of sixty nine and kept one of
the cameras around, but the film was all recovered in.
Sanders himself later admitted that no footage of murders or
of just of dead bodies ever materialized, but the idea

(01:12:40):
was out there and uh. And the rise of adult
cinema with actual scenes of sexual activity and horror cinema
with an increasingly violent and bloody focus, this seemed to
make it all the more possible, right, like, what are
these filmmakers going to do next? And then we had
one particular film that came along to just sort of
push this to the next level. And that was the
night eighteen seventy six film Snuff that was promoted and

(01:13:05):
you know, put out there as if it were an
actual snuff film. So the taglines for this one are,
and you can look up the posters the picture they
said could never be shown, the bloodiest thing that has
ever happened in front of a camera, the film that
could only be made in South America where life is cheap.
We just sort of reddid this again recently with that.

(01:13:28):
And you and I are not fans, but Eli rothscreen Inferno,
which came out years ago, and it wasn't They didn't
market as like this really happened, but there was sort
of a like this could have really happened because we
were filming actual tribes in South America that have never
been filmed before and who knows what they're up to, right, Yeah, Well,
he was specifically playing with the legacy of Cannibal Holocaust,

(01:13:51):
which is a film that came out after Snuff. That
was all that also had this vibe of is it real?
Is it is this a snuff film? Are these real
dead bodies? Are real murders? And and it ended up
being investigated, and of course there was no there's there's
no fact. Yeah. But but snuff is interesting because in

(01:14:11):
reality it was a combination of unreleased nineteen seventy footage.
This is a movie called Slaughter that was actually the
work of Michael and ROBERTA. Findlay. I don't know if
you remember them, but they're a husband and wife exploitation
duo that also gave us the nineteen seventy four film
Shriek of the Mutilated, which is essentially a bigfoot film

(01:14:32):
that we talked about on Trailer Talk. I don't think
I was there, though maybe that was just so. It's
the same couple, uh. Their film the film quality and
the quality of the acting and production tends to be
rather low in their work. But really but but but there,
I think they were deceptively bright, at least enough from
a marketing standpoint, and I think even to a limited

(01:14:53):
extent from a storytelling standpoint. In Shriek of the Mutilate,
it has a fabulous twist. But Slaughter just this movie
dealt with a Manson inspired cult, had scenes of bloody death,
and then when they repackaged it, they just added an
end ending to it in which the woman seems to
be murdered by the film crew. So it's kind of
like a Holy Mountain moment where they break the fourth

(01:15:15):
wall and it's like, oh, this was this isn't a
movie at all, and the filmmakers are the real murderers here.
So this like one of the things that I like
about seventies horror cinema is that it was trying new
things in ways that like a lot of other decades
of horror cinema seemed to have been a little bit
more conservative, but this was one of them, right. It

(01:15:35):
was like the filmmakers were trying to see how far
they could push the envelope and how that affected the audience, right.
And I mean, I think the best example, the one
that both you and I love, is Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
which is clearly not real, right, but it's filmed in
that nineteen seventies way. I wish there was like a

(01:15:55):
way to encapsulate this with like the style of actual
film that it's shot on and how the audio is recorded,
but it's so organic and analog and raw. It has
almost kind of a documentary vibe to it. Yet Yeah,
and it came along at just the right time and
in the wake of, or in the same time period
of some of these uh these films that we're discussing
here now. When Snuff came out, it was almost immediately

(01:16:21):
out as a as a hoax, both that year in
Variety magazine and also due to an L A p
D investigation. It just simply doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. Yeah,
you you watch it and you realize, yeah, this is
fake blood, this is this is a horror movie, and
not a particularly good one, but the reputation stuck with
Snuff for a long time, and as argued by uh

(01:16:42):
Ethene Johnson and Eric Schaefer Uh in uh their piece
Software Hardcore Snuff as a Crisis in Meaning, which came
out in the Journal of Film and Video, they said
that this uh part of this film's success was that
there was just a lot of genre confusion. It was
hard to classify it as anything else because it wasn't

(01:17:02):
really that explicit, not as explicit as other horror movies
were coming out at that time. It certainly wasn't pornographic,
so it didn't have that sheen to it, but it
just confused people. And then there was this idea that
it was real. Um, which I think is one of
the elements with a lot of footage of actual violence
and actual death, is the disconnect between what these acts

(01:17:27):
look like in reality versus what they look like in
cinematic portrayals. So in a way, by if you're not
that great of a filmmaker, you don't have a great
effects team, you're able to perhaps hit that area of
uncertainty where people are like, oh my goodness, that really
didn't look like a shooting. Maybe that was a shooting
because real shootings don't look like movie shootings. Yeah, that's
that's an interesting point too, and maybe why the seventies

(01:17:49):
was such a like culmination of this kind of stuff,
but also just that like we were getting into a
phase where effects were getting better, film quality was getting better,
and then obviously like the production of such kind of
things was was going into like bigger studio investments, right,
So all the more money that was put into it
made it look less real. Yeah, but of course it was.

(01:18:12):
It was all it was all production. This also makes
me think I'm obsessed with the show right now, mind Hunter,
which is on Netflix. Yeah, this is the yeah, the
serial killer show. Yeah, it's all about how the FBI
is in the early seventies, is trying to figure out
how to come up with like a working behavioral science

(01:18:33):
understanding of serial and that period of time was also
like that, right, like all this stuff, and Manson has
mentioned right in the first episode of that, where they're
just trying to understand these horrific psychopathic acts, right, and
they can't wrap their heads around because they don't want
a language to you. And I think pop culture was
trying to do it in this way, while maybe the

(01:18:54):
FBI was trying to do it in their own way,
you know. And it's interesting. One of the things that's
interesting about why mind Hunter is now from our perspective
of like forty plus years of police procedurals where we
all sort of know the nomenclature of serial killers that like,
when you're watching it, you're like, oh, yeah, it's so obvious,
but they don't quite get it yet because they're they're

(01:19:17):
literally unfamiliar with any of this. Yeah, it was a
new day, and what was happening seemed to be defying
typical patterns, typical lack classifications, and you see solving in reality,
and you saw it in art as well. Yeah. Now
this of course leads you just this legacy of the
idea there's snuff films somewhere out there, someone's making snuff films.
But it's important to note that there there are no

(01:19:39):
true snuff films. There are no films in which someone
is intentionally murdered as part of a commercial exercise. There
and this has been investigated by journalists, this has been
investigated by law enforcement agency. I believe it was investigative
by Nicholas Cage in that movie eight Millimeter, Yes, which
I remember enjoying back in the day. It as a
oh it had what's his name? The the European actor

(01:20:02):
who played ever seen Oh God, it's it's actually tremendously
fun because you have Peter stormare one of my favorites. Yeah,
I think his name is like something Velvet or something.
And he's the guy that's making these snuff films and
he's he's just acting over the top. And at the
at the end spoiler for eight Millimeter, he he's shot.

(01:20:24):
And I remember this because he's like, oh I'm bleeding,
I'm dying. It's not supposed to happen like this. I
wanted something more cinematic and then he says machine killed him,
killed him. All he's talking to this sort of the
the gimp murder character and the we should just have
a whole Peter stormayor trailer talk episode. He's the best.
He's fabulous, Like the movie Constantine. I've Constantine everything except

(01:20:46):
for his saying he's only in it for five minutes.
But my wife and I still to this day will
quote him as Satan in Constantine. Yeah he's so good, alright,
so so yeah. Again, there are no snuff films people
have looked into it, but that. But I think the idea,
the reason that that the snuff films or even stuff
like The Grifter, the reason it resonates is because we

(01:21:08):
are inclined to glance at the horror to rubber neck
on the highway and you maybe just clink on some
sort of suspect link um. And for some people who
goes further. There's a two thousand twelve Verge article that
explore the topic of gore fans and and it summarized
that such individuals share quote, a compulsive curiosity about human
nature and frailty, and a firm belief that the mainstream

(01:21:29):
media does a disservice by censoring quote what's really going on?
And uh and and I think there's some truth to that,
because for the most part, we are removed from the
physical reality of death. We do that through the way
that we treat the dead and how we compartmentalize them
within the funeral industry. And like we said earlier, death

(01:21:50):
in film and TV is not necessarily something that's gonna
line up with the real experience of murder and violence
and death. Man. I know, I know we don't really
have the opportunity to do this, but I kind of
want to do like a whole podcast, not just an episode,
like a podcast series, all about what we've talked about

(01:22:11):
it with just this last Creepy Pasta, because I think
there's a lot to unpack there, like humans, uh, both
uncomfortable y and fascination with visions of death. It's undeniable,
all right. So there you have it. A fourth Creepy
Pasta is now in the books, it's boxed up, ready
for the vault. And uh and hopefully it'll help everyone

(01:22:31):
out there, uh, you know, cap off their their Halloween
seasonal listening as well. Yeah. And in fact, I think
this is going to publish actually right after Halloween, so
we're giving you a special treaty. We went, we went
one over. Well, it's still ourselves. I feel like that
week between, you know it encompasses Halloween and All Saints Day.

(01:22:52):
It's still Halloween, keeping Thanksgiving weeks weeks out for me,
what is it a well, pish not that's in a
may actually, but you know it's the Witches week. Anyways, Hey,
all of those other creepy Posta episodes that we've been
mentioning throughout this if you liked this one, you'll probably
like those two creepy Pasta one, two, and three. They're

(01:23:13):
all on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. They
will be in the show notes for this episode. But hey,
this is the website. Everything's on there that we've been
talking about this episode, the podcast that we've done, all
those videos, including the horse hair video we talked about,
and then also Roberts blog posts, which are the hidden
gem secrets of stuff to blow your mind. If you're

(01:23:35):
a real stuff to Blow your Mind fan, you're gonna
want to check those out. And if you just want
to get in touch with this directly, if you want
to chat with us about creepy pastas, recommend creepy pastas,
or you know your give your thoughts on some of
the movies we've mentioned here. You can simply email us
that blow the mind and how stuff works dot com

(01:24:01):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Creepypasta 4: More SCP, Polybius and Grifter