Bumps in the night!
Just the sounds of your house settling, right?
But what if they’re not?
What if those bumps in the night are coming from someone, or something otherworldly?
Today we take a look into the supernatural, in this episode of The Infographics Show's
Greatest Mysteries, . The Most Terrifying and Baffling Ghost Stories.
As technology evolves, so do our ghost stories, and our first ghost story comes from the realm
of cyberspace.
First reported in 2014, an Australian man began posting on Reddit strange happenings
concerning a dead girlfriend's Facebook account.
Two years prior, Reddit user Nathan's girlfriend Emily was tragically killed in a high-speed
car crash.
On September 4th, 2013, he suddenly received a message over Facebook messenger from Emily's
account, saying simply “hello”.
Nathan received no reply when asking who was logged into her account, but thirteen minutes
later Emily replied once more with “hello”.
Per Nathan, only he and Emily's mother had access to the account, and so he immediately
assumed it may have been her.
Her mother denied logging into the account, and yet the messages kept coming.
Nathan eventually realized that the messages were being cobbled together from previous
chats, and so he assumed that it was nothing more than a very ill-timed bug on Facebook's
behalf.
Then one day Nathan received a notification- Emily had tagged herself in one of his photos.
The notifications continued coming in, with Emily tagging herself in the remote corners
of the photo.
Eventually Emily even started leaving messages on the photos, always made up using snippets
of previous messages or posts from when she was among the living.
One day though, Emily used her first original word when messaging Nathan- “FRE EZIN G”.
In a following message, she used her first original sentence: “ust let me walk”.
That message terrified Nathan, as he explained that in the collision, the dashboard had crushed
Emily, and she was severed in a diagonal line from her right hip to midway down her left
thigh, with one of her legs found under the backseat.
The cyberhaunting didn't stop there, with Emily shortly after her last message posting
a photo- a photo of Nathan taken from behind a half-closed door showing him reclining at
his computer.
From here Nathan's story takes a bizarre twist, as he disappeared from Reddit shortly after
the photo post.
Users derided the entire story as a made-up ghost story and most agreed, until some investigative
users began to dig into the date and general location Nathan provided for the car crash
and discovered a story about a car crash that seemed to match Nathan's description- except
there was no mention of an “Emily” listed among the victims.
What there was however, was a “Nathan” listed as deceased.
Elaborate and expertly crafted hoax, or the first verified cyber-haunting?
We'll let you decide as we move on to our next terrifying ghost story.
'The Entity' is, according to Martin Scorsese, one of the scariest horror films of all time-
and based on the 1974 true story of Doris Bither.
A single mother of four, Doris Bither overheard paranormal investigators Dr. Barry Taff and
Kerry Gaynor discussing paranormal activity at a bookstore, and invited them to her home
which she believed was haunted.
After an initial interview, Doris revealed that she had been sexually assaulted multiple
times by three violent entities- with her teenage son trying to intervene once, only
to have his arm broken after being thrown across the room.
Initially skeptical of the claims, Dr. Taff and Gaynor began to believe after Doris showed
them a multitude of bruises across her thighs and body.
Neighbors backed up the claims of violent haunting, telling the investigators that they
had often seen apparitions moving around inside and outside of the home.
Doris' children had seen them so often that her youngest child had even dubbed the most
prominent, and evil one- 'Mr. Whose-It'.
During the investigation, Doris was asked to summon the spirits, which she began to
do by yelling and cursing at them- at which point a greenish fog materialized from one
corner of the room and the torso of an unidentified male was briefly visible.
High speed photography did not capture the fog, but did capture an unexplained streak
of bright light directly over Doris' head just as the greenish fog began to materialize.
The presence of the investigators seemed to agitate the spirits, who according to Doris'
eldest son, Brian, would take their rage out on the family, slapping, biting and even throwing
them around the house.
In the end, the investigation into Doris Bither's haunting yielded little hard evidence aside
from some unexplained light phenomenon on several photos.
While these might be explained away as film errors or reflective airborne particles, their
timing during the alleged manifestations and the 30+ investigators who all corroborated
the sightings make them a little hard to easily dismiss.
The physical evidence on Doris' body however was even harder to dismiss, with Doris showing
extensive bruising after each physical attack.
Thirty years after the haunting, Brian Bither and Doris' other children all continue to
maintain that their mother had indeed been haunted by three supernatural entities, and
even physically assaulted by them.
If just another ghost hoax, this family is certainly dedicated to their tall tale.
Next is the inspiration for another terrifying Hollywood film- the Enfield Poltergeist, made
famous in the 2016 horror film, The Conjuring 2.
In 1977, Peggy Hodgson, single mother of four, heard loud noises coming from her daughter's
bedroom one night.
Rushing into the room to tell her daughters Margaret and Janet to go to sleep, she discovered
the children huddled in a corner and crying out in terror.
The girls shouted that a dresser had begun moving toward the bedroom door by itself,
as if barricading the children inside.
Skeptical, Peggy dismissed the story until suddenly the dresser moved once more in the
direction of the door.
When Peggy went to move the dresser back, it would not budge.
The terrified family fled the house, asking their neighbors for help and phoning the police.
Upon arriving, once police officer testified that she saw a chair move across the room
by itself.
With paranormal activity intensifying over the next few weeks, Peggy reached out to the
Daily Mirror and invited them to send a reporter to investigate the home.
Sitting with the family for hours, the home was perfectly still- until the reporter finally
got ready to leave, at which point he was hit by a Lego brick directly above one eye,
the mark of which stayed with him for days.
The Daily Mirror immediately called the Society for Psychical Research, who sent investigator
Maurice Grosse to the home to begin to catalog the paranormal activity.
During his stay, Grosse documented over 2,000 incidents of supernatural activity, including
furniture tipping over, cups filling with water, unexplained voices, and levitation
of objects.
It was at this time that the haunting intensified, with the alleged poltergeist starting to speak
through one of the young girls.
Entering a trance-like state, she would start speaking in a deep, scratchy voice, identifying
herself as Bill Wilkens.
Researchers would go on to record several hours of interviews, during which the demonic
voice can be heard responding to some of their questions.
The paranormal activity would continue for 18 months, even garnering the attention of
famous- or infamous, depending on your point of view- exorcists and paranormal investigators
Ed and Lorraine Warren.
The two would walk away convinced of the authenticity of the haunting, though the SPR investigators
did conclude that a small amount of the phenomenon was being staged by the two youngest daughters.
Interviewed thirty years after the infamous haunting, Janet Hodgson admitted that they
would occasionally fake some of the events to see if the investigators would catch them,
which they apparently did.
Janet still maintains however that the bulk of the paranormal activity was authentic,
and the Society for Psychical Research would seem to agree.
Perhaps most chilling of all however was the discovery that a Bill Wilkens had indeed lived
in that same home, and died of respiratory failure in the living room.
So, do you believe in ghosts?
Have you ever seen one?
Tell us about your terrifying ghost stories in the comments below, and let us know what
other weird, otherworldly, and paranormal subjects you'd like to see us tackle in our
Greatest Mysteries series!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called Most Evil Kids That Ever Lived.
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!