Are You Sh*tting Me?: 1,004 Facts That Will Scare the Crap Out of You

by Cary McNeal

  FACT 135 The world’s deadliest hot-air balloon accident in two decades happened in February 2013 when a balloon explosion over southern Egypt dropped twenty-one passengers and crew a thousand feet to the ground, killing nineteen.

  FACT 136 In 2013, a young man’s body was found on the sidewalk in west London. Authorities believe he was a stowaway who hid inside the landing gear of a flight from Angola, and that due to hypothermia and lack of oxygen, the man was either already dead or near death when the airplane’s landing gear door opened for the descent and he fell out.

  FACT 137 Since 1947, there have been ninety-six identified cases in which people tried to hide in an airplane’s wheel housing. Less than 25 percent of those stowaways survived.

  FACT 138 In June 2012, searchers found the body of the sixth and final member of a family whose private plane crashed near Tampa. Investigators believe thirteen-year-old Boston Bramlage was thrown from the aircraft before impact. His body was found half a mile from the crash site.

  FACT 139 In April 2013, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, couple was surprised when a frozen turkey vulture landed with a thud on their front porch. Evidently, the bird’s wings had frozen after it flew through a snowstorm. It later thawed and flew off again.

  NO MATTER WHAT YOU might believe about reports of people being abducted by aliens, you have to admit two things: one, the people who report them sure seem to believe they happened; two, their stories, real or imagined, are frightening.

  I wonder if alien abductions are a thing on other planets, too. I wonder if right now in some faraway alien land, a little green guy is trying to cover up a weekend tryst with his little green girlfriend by telling his wife that he was abducted by earthlings with tiny eyes who tied him to an exam table and prodded his alien corn hole for days with strange otherworldly tools.

  FACT 140 One of the first alleged alien abduction cases to gain widespread interest was that of Brazilian farmer Antônio Villas-Boas, who claimed in 1957 that he was taken aboard an egg-shaped UFO and forced to have sex with a naked female entity whom the aliens wanted him to impregnate.

  FACT 141 After his abduction, Villas-Boas suffered from nausea, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, and headaches. He died in 1992, never having retracted his story.

  FACT 142 The 1961 case of Betty and Barney Hill is one of the most famous and well-documented claims of alien abduction. The New Hampshire couple say they encountered a UFO during a road trip but could remember no other details of the rest of their journey. Their trip also took hours longer than it should have, time for which the Hills could not account.

  FACT 143 After the encounter, both Hills experienced anxiety and disturbing dreams. Betty’s dreams included being taken into a spacecraft by gray-skinned men in military uniforms, then being given an examination and pregnancy test by an alien doctor.

  FACT 144 Betty Hill also dreamed that aliens showed her a star map detailed with interplanetary trade routes and including our own sun. After Hill was able to reproduce a diagram of the map from memory, an amateur astronomer matched it to a section of our solar system.

  FACT 145 A 2013 survey by the Huffington Post showed that almost half of respondents are open to the idea that alien spacecraft are observing our planet. Probably because those respondents are aliens on spacecraft observing our planet.

  FACT 146 Many psychologists believe that alien abduction claims are dreams or hallucinations that are triggered by a familiarity with other people’s similar accounts.

  FACT 147 A South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, woman named Betty Andreasson claimed in 1957 that she was abducted by aliens and taken onto a spaceship. Andreasson says her alien captors communicated via telepathy and subjected her to medical tests. The good news: her cholesterol and blood pressure were normal.

  FACT 148 Andreasson’s case was studied by Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) founder and investigator Ray Fowler, who put Betty under hypnosis to verify her claims. Fowler concluded that Andreasson was “either the most accomplished liar and actress the world had ever seen, or else she had really gone through this ordeal.”

  FACT 149 Under hypnosis, Andreasson claimed the aliens implanted a foreign object in her skull.

  FACT 150 Andreasson said the aliens told her the experiments they were conducting were to “prepare for some kind of planetary revelation.”

  FACT 151 Travis Walton was an Arizona logger who went missing for several days in November 1975. His colleagues were initially suspected of having killed Walton and dumped him in the woods, but they maintained that Walton had been knocked out by a beam of light from a UFO and then vanished.

  FACT 152 Walton turned up five days later and alleged that he had been abducted by aliens and taken aboard their spacecraft, where he was subjected to a medical examination. In other words, he went on a five-day malt liquor bender.

  FACT 153 One psychiatrist who examined Walton said, “This young man is not lying. There is no collusion involved. He really believes these things.”

  FACT 154 Both Walton and his colleagues passed numerous polygraph tests that questioned the events of their abduction account. None of the men has ever changed his story.

  FACT 155 In 1976, four men camping in Maine’s Allagash Wilderness claimed they were in a canoe on a lake when a UFO appeared and shot a huge beam of light down at them. They regained consciousness several hours later with no recollection of what had occurred.

  FACT 156 Under hypnosis, two of the men claimed they had been having other visitations by alien creatures and abduction experiences since early childhood. All of the Allagash men took and passed lie detector tests about their claims.

  FACT 157 Some purported victims of alien abduction have reported that their captors inserted tiny implants inside them—sending long needles into their brains through their nasal passages to place the implants.

  FACT 158 In the 1980s, a group of alleged alien abductees went through a battery of psychological tests and were found to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Elizabeth Slater, a psychologist, said that the finding were “not inconsistent with the possibility that reported UFO abductions have, in fact, occurred.”

  FACT 159 Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the former leader of the Republic of Kalmykia in the Russian Federation, claimed on a 2010 talk show that aliens took him from his Moscow home in 1997 and gave him a tour of their ship.

  FACT 160 In 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker said they were fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when they were levitated onto an alien spaceship, where they were subjected to a medical examination by humanoid creatures with claws like a lobster.

  FACT 161 Air Force sergeant Charles Moody claimed that on a night in August 1975, he saw a UFO flying toward him in the New Mexico desert. Moody tried to escape but his car wouldn’t move. His next recollection was of the UFO flying away. When Moody arrived home, he found that many hours had passed.

  FACT 162 British police officer Alan Godfrey claimed that he was on patrol one night in November 1980 when he saw a large UFO hovering over the road ahead of him. As he attempted to make a sketch of the craft, there was a tremendous flash of light. His next recollection was of being farther along the road, but the UFO had vanished.

  FACT 163 Later, under regression hypnosis, Godfrey remembered being taken to an enclosed space and meeting a bearded man called Yosef who was accompanied by five small robot-like creatures.

  FACT 164 The list of people who’ve claimed to see UFOs includes two former presidents: Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

  FACT 165 In 1974, former president Richard Nixon allegedly took comedian Jackie Gleason to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and showed him the wreckage of a flying saucer and remains of an extraterrestrial.

  FACT 166 A folk tale dating from 1645 tells of a teenage gi
rl in Cornwall, England, who reported being attacked by small aliens and carried to a “castle in the air,” where she was raped.

  FACT 167 In his 1954 book, The White Sands Incident, Daniel Fry claims that he was abducted by an alien craft that took him from New Mexico to New York City and back in half an hour.

  FACT 168 Fry said that his alien hosts claimed to be descendants of an ancient race of earthlings who had abandoned the planet after a war between the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis.

  FACT 169 On December 3, 1967, policeman Herbert Schirmer was on patrol near Ashland, Nebraska, when, he says, he saw a UFO. When Schirmer arrived home later that night, he felt ill and had inexplicable red welts on his neck. Also, twenty minutes were missing from his police log.

  FACT 170 Under hypnosis later, Schirmer recalled being taken aboard an alien spaceship whose occupants told him that they came from a neighboring galaxy, but had hidden bases on Earth, one of which was underwater in Florida. Naturally. If aliens are anywhere in this country, it’s Florida.

  FACT 171 Harvard researcher and author Susan Clancy says that people who allege alien abductions aren’t crazy, but that they have “a tendency to fantasize and to hold unusual beliefs and ideas. They believe . . . in things like UFOs, ESP, astrology . . . [and] also have in common a rash of disturbing experiences for which they are seeking an explanation. For them, alien abduction is the best fit.”

  FACT 172 Clancy and other scientists believe these experiences can be attributed to sleep paralysis, a condition in which a person is aware of his surroundings but unable to move.

  FACT 173 In November 2011, the White House released an official response to two petitions asking the U.S. government to acknowledge formally that aliens have visited Earth and to disclose any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. According to the response, “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race.”

  DO YOU EVER WONDER how certain foods became acceptable to eat? I do. I wonder who was the first guy to dig up a beet and say, “Y’know, I’ll bet this red, dirt-covered root that looks like a nut sack is delicious. I think I’ll munch on it.” Or who was the first Scandinavian to find a dead fish on the beach and say to his friend, “Hey, Sven, check this out—let’s cut the head off this fish, pull out its guts, stuff it with oxtail and pelican dick, then cover the whole thing in horse shit and bury it in the mud to fester for two years until it’s nice and rotten, then dig it up, grab some beers, and chow down.”

  I suppose it’s hungry people who come up with this stuff. I hope I never get that hungry.

  FACT 174 The Icelandic dish hákarl is fermented, dried basking shark. A beheaded and gutted shark is buried in the ground for three months and then dried for five months before being eaten with pickled ram’s testicles.

  FACT 175 Casu marzu, a Sardinian delicacy, is made with both rancid cheese and live maggots. That’s right: maggots. Live ones.

  FACT 176 If you’re in Norway and order smalahove, the server will bring you a boiled, salted, and dried lamb’s head with the brain removed. A good server will remind you to eat the ears and eyes first, as they are the tastiest parts. An excellent server will bring you a barf bag and extra napkins.

  FACT 177 Some South Americans enjoy eating cuy, or guinea pig. The low-fat, tender meat is often served whole with the animal’s head still attached.

  FACT 178 Cuy is said to be most delicious when slow-cooked on a rotisserie and served with hot sauce.

  FACT 179 The Scandinavian dish lappkok is made with reindeer blood and bone marrow mixed with white or rye flour.

  FACT 180 Scotland’s famed haggis is a cooked sheep’s stomach stuffed with a mixture of its pluck (lungs, heart, tongue, and/or liver), oatmeal, suet, and spices.

  FACT 181 The UK dish black (or blood) pudding is technically a sausage made of animal (usually pork) blood, spices, fat, and oatmeal or other grains.

  FACT 182 If you know that donkey and horse are eaten throughout Italy, you won’t be surprised to hear about stracotto d’asino, a stew made with donkey meat and frequently used as pasta sauce. Also not surprising: it tastes like ass!

  FACT 183 Shirako, a Japanese delicacy, is made from the semen of fish and mollusks, and has a custard-like texture when cooked.

  FACT 184 Looking for the perfect way to serve a calf’s head, or as the French call it, tête de veau? Try it with mushrooms, rooster combs, kidneys, and calf sweetbreads.

  FACT 185 Ptcha is a jelly made from calves’ feet that is enjoyed primarily by Ashkenazi Jews.

  FACT 186 Don’t order the paardenrookvlees in the Netherlands unless you’re down with eating smoked horse meat.

  FACT 187 Greeks enjoy kokoretsi: lamb or goat intestines wrapped around seasoned organs, then skewered and cooked on a spit.

  FACT 188 Often referred to as “insect caviar,” Mexico’s escamoles are the larvae of ants.

  FACT 189 Harvesting escamole from the roots of the agave and maguey plants is no easy chore. Pickers can endure painful ant bites as they dig for the larvae.

  FACT 190 Made of fermented fish, the Nordic dish surströmming smells so bad, it’s usually consumed outdoors.

  FACT 191 The next time you’re in Kyrgyzstan, try the kumis, a carbonated, mildly alcoholic drink made from the fermented milk of a female horse.

  FACT 192 If you do drink kumis, make sure there is a bathroom nearby, as the drink has a laxative effect.

  FACT 193 In Vietnam, tiê´t canh, or raw blood soup, is a protein-rich breakfast dish made from the uncooked blood of ducks, geese, or pigs, served with peanuts and herbs on top.

  FACT 194 If you’re looking to catch the H5N1 bird flu virus, eating tiê´t canh is a good way to do it.

  FACT 195 Cat meat is a traditional food in much of Africa and Asia.

  FACT 196 Corn smut is not porn made in Iowa, but a disease of the corn plant that replaces the normal kernels of the cobs with large distorted tumors similar to mushrooms. Considered a pest in the United States, corn smut is a delicacy in Mexico.

  FACT 197 To craft casu marzu, makers encourage the Piophilia casei (cheese fly) to lay eggs in their sheep’s-milk cheeses. The eggs then hatch into maggots and release an enzyme during their digestion that causes the cheese to ferment.

  FACT 198 Because of European Union health regulations, casu marzu has been outlawed for years.

  FACT 199 Lutefisk is a traditional dish of the Nordic countries made from dried whitefish and soda lye (lut). Its name literally means “lye fish.”

  FACT 200 In some Andean cultures, frog juice is believed to cure a variety of conditions, from asthma to low sex drive. The drink is made from nectar, white bean juices, aloe vera, malt, and—yes— a whole frog, all mixed together in a blender.

  FACT 201 Live octopus is a delicacy in some parts of Asia. Smaller octopi can be served “cut into bite-sized, still-wriggling pieces, suction cups and all, or slurped squirming, whole.”

  FACT 202 Indonesians snack on stinkbugs, which are said to taste like bitter unsalted sunflower seeds.

  FACT 203 Nozki—Polish for “cold feet”—is seasoned pig’s feet set in gelatin. No one could blame you for having nozki about eating nozki.

  FACT 204 The lucky diners who get to eat live octopus might also enjoy the suction cups sticking to the insides of their throats as they swallow.

  FACT 205 In Thailand, bat paste is a delicacy made from live bats that are boiled, roasted, chopped into paste, and mixed with herbs and spices.

  FACT 206 Here’s one way to overcome a fear of spiders: eat them. Cambodians dine on fried tarantulas, a food that became popular during famines
in that country in the 1970s. This yummy snack is crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside—much like a chicken dish I made for dinner the other night.

  FACT 207 If you order drunken shrimp in China, you’ll be served a crustacean that is still alive but stunned from being soaked in liquor. You might want to be soaked in liquor, too, before eating it.

  FACT 208 The next time you’re in southern Africa, try the mopane, a crisp, dried caterpillar that is an important source of protein for millions of people on that continent.