It’s fun turning on a paranormal “unsolved mystery” Youtube video and arousing my fear-ection.

You know what’s more fun, though?

Debunking that shiz.

I always come into these videos donning my labcoat and geek specs, armed with a clipboard of notes to take to the Wizard of Snopes after my individual research and observations have been made. Generally, I can just do that – or pause and Google to see how much they’re lying when they say “no scientists have been able to determine” the what, where, why, when, and how about things like ghostly images showing up in photographs and lights in the sky.

But the nice thing about the internet is that everybody either has an opinion or just wants to hear themselves type. So, for the stuff I couldn’t figure out on my own, it was fun to troll the commentary to learn that the “monster” was likely a kind of fish that comes to the surface of water to die or a type of school of anchovy.

Or that Elisa Lam had bipolar disorder making her do that weird elevator dance before suicide-ing in a water tower on the roof. As macabre as it was, the fact that the hotel folk were drinking and washing their genitals with her body rot-water isn’t the scariest thing here. The really scary part of this story is that a mental illness like bipolar is that serious of a disease that it drives people to lose reality, start moving like a horror film ghost, and kill themselves. And turning them into cinematic monsters for it probably doesn’t help them when they’re silently suffering and wanna reach out but don’t for fear of being judged.

Then, there’s the photographs.

Which were easy to knock out all at once under the collective answer of: double exposure.

A.) Worst photobomb ever.

B.) Kind of racist, too.

I mean, here we’ve got the reverse lynching and it’s a black dude. I’d say all we’re missing is a burning cross, but I feel like the holy trinity of flaming candles he’s cranially perched upon is symbolic enough to be an appropriate substitute. As for the great reveal? Like two or three folk mentioned under the vid, double exposure was far too easy back then. Whether it’s heads following a ship, your deceased firefighter buddy, or a black dude hanging while a while family smiles – it’s either staged or just meeting the too-easy odds of double exposure. After my grandpa died, we got back a pic double-exposed with a snapshot of the garden he loved. Was it him coming back from the dead to tell us “EFF YOU for selling my house, you thankless little shits”? Maybe. Maybe not. (Probably.) But I wouldn’t call it an “unsolved mystery”. I’d call it a thing that happened to happen. Because it was still nineteen ninety whatever and the odds were good, as we still had to wait at least an hour back then for our slutty selfies to develop along with our teen bodies. Call me when you see the creature from Jeepers Creepers making a cameo on your Instagram snappies. Then we can paint nails and get out our Tarot cards and talk about it.

And as for nineteen-ninety-much-earlier, my yes-and to the internet collective consensus is this: you’ve gotta remember they didn’t have fun photo tweaking apps on iphones (like IG) or facebook or twitter back then. So manual photo-tweaking was the hot ticket item, the newspaper was their internet for uploading, and (knowing the media’s most successful at getting attention when they generate fear) they made it mostly scary shiz that made it go print-viral. Other people saw this phenomena, rinsed the old bathwater off latest trending one via their own darkroom sorcery, and hung it out to drip into the mouths of the suckling gullible readers. Not a bad idea in an age of less easily accessible information, because unlike now, they probably got some cash for their faux phantoms. These days, you can just consult a search engine if you’d like some spooky news. And you’ll get it for free.

And when you do get news for free (ghosts or not), you fall prey to the way it’s told. Fear and desire are far easier responses to ignite in people than love is. Because the current accepted standards make me put heart over the pink parts of naked ladies, but let me show beheadings (not just me – these rules dictate film ratings in favor of violence too) – guess which one’s I’m gonna show the most if I’m getting paid per click? That means that even a brilliant, I-dunno-what-it-is-but-I-wanna-hop-on-a-plane-to-go-see-it-myself natural sky pyrotechnic show happening for free… gets reduced to an evil entity that’s obviously going to drop a straw out of the sky to suck your soul up with.

Meanwhile, back here in reality, those lights – whatever they are – are awesome! Can I explain them? No. But probably somebody else can. And even if they can’t it means nothing. I also can’t describe to you how the northern lights work either. As many times as it’s been explained to me, my response when I’m asked is still a slew of esoteric scientific jargon with my best board room meeting face (for the first five seconds), after which I give up.

And settle for the succinct Pinkman reply:

And he’s not wrong.

It is science. It all is. Sometimes it’s just science that hasn’t been figured out yet. Even if aliens came down tomorrow and said, “Listen. We did that. We made those things and did that thing on the things and all’a that over there,” in Seth Rogen’s stoner voice while gesturing clumsily at the night sky and adding, “and we’re sick of this shit you meat creatures do – where you, like, get credit for pointing it out and describing it and stuff – like a two year old. When we’re the ones who made it. WE want the award. No one invites us to the Oscars or the video awards or Puff Daddy’s white party. EVER.” Naturally, when that happens (to calm them down, since they’ll undoubtedly be armed with black hole guns) we’ll have to start finally putting them in the textbooks, won’t we? Sure, these new and proven facts will be as exciting as Tesla’s spectacular electrical live shows were in the 1800s. But within a decade or two, they’ll become as perfunctory and yawn-worthy as the five to ten electrical connections you mindlessly make in the first five minutes of your morning now. (“Yawn… more bombings by the Martian Extremists… Let’s see if Saved By the Bell re-runs are on…”)

In the end – to be fair – these mystery weavers aren’t really lying.

Because most of these “mysteries” haven’t been solved by scientists.

Yes. They’re too busy cracking codes to the mysteries that actually matter for mankind.