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Made by Kevin Fletcher and William Sowkey

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Post #2 Red Flag: Confirmation Bias (Image)

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Post #2 Red Flag: Confirmation Bias (Image)

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Definition:

The confirmation bias red flag is the tendency of someone to believe or search for information that is in favour or confirms their pre-existing beliefs.

Connection:

The venn diagram illustrates how the confirmation bias works in that we tend to find information that only falls in line with what our opinions are about certain topics and this information is exclusive of other information that is out of line or contrary to our beliefs. The unshaded circle to the left displays “objective facts” that do not fall in line with our beliefs, so these facts are ignored. The circle to the right indicates what we believe as the truth and the point where both circles intersect is the biased information that we seek that confirms our beliefs or opinions.

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Post #3 Red Flag: Appeal to Authority (Website)

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Post #3 Red Flag: Appeal to Authority (Website)

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Definition:

The Appeal to Authority red flag is when someone or a group that exhibits more power or sovereignty promotes a certain credibility that affects one’s perception.

Connection:

The article linked within this post refers to what is known as the “Milgram Experiment”. The Milgram Experiment was conducted in order to see the limits of people harming each other based off an order given from an authoritative persona. As the experiment progresses, the harm being carried out appears to be getting exponentially worse. However, participants were influenced by the authoritative personality that this was just part of the process and there was nothing to worry about. In this case, the participants should learn to think for themselves and act based on their beliefs, rather than the authoritative personality. If the harm that the authoritative personality says is fine, yet it appears to significantly affecting another, the participant should exhibit skepticism and question the words with their observations.

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Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment: Summary, Results, & Ethics

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Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, carried out one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram

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Post #4 Red Flag: Ancient Wisdom (Website)

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Post #4 Red Flag: Ancient Wisdom (Website)

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Definition:

The Ancient Wisdom red flag is the ideology that sciences and knowledge from significantly dated examples of history are accurate and more efficient than modern sciences and knowledge, despite having better understanding of these topics currently.

Connection:

Bloodletting is an ancient medical practice that had no merits other than what could be described as a placebo effect when it was originally performed. It is true that we have now come to know that bloodletting can be useful for certain diseases however it is not recommended for any other use than that. In the article, the bloodletting business appeals to the ancient wisdom by exclaiming the same logic behind why bloodletting was done more than 2000 years ago. One should exercise necessary doubt and skepticism when contemplating this matter.

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In the shadow of India's largest mosque, the gutters run red with blood.

It's a bizarre scene, if you've never seen a modern-day bloodletting. First, men wrap patients' arms and legs with straps as tourniquets, to control the blood flow. Then they use razor blades to make tiny pricks in the hands and feet, and blood trickles into a concrete trough stained red with the day's work.

The bleeding people look pretty happy, though. After all, they've paid for the service. They come to be cured of everything from arthritis to cancer.
(Video: Meet the bloodletters of Delhi and their patients.)
But why? How has the bloodletting business, which many doctors today would rank along with reading bumps on the head as olde timey quackery, managed not to dry up?

The appeal seems to be in its simple logic.

Muhammad Gayas runs his bloodletting business in the garden of the Jama Masjid mosque in Old Delhi. He says pain and illness happen "when the blood goes bad," which is pretty much the same basic premise that bloodletters have sold the public since Hippocrates advocated balancing the four humors-blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm-more than 2,000 years ago.

Bloodletting has been practiced around the world even longer than that, tracing at least 3,000 years ago to the Egyptians. It remained an obsession among many Western doctors through the 19th century, and was still a recommended treatment for pneumonia in a 1942 medical textbook-lest you think it went out after the Middle Ages along with the laying on of leeches. (Oh, and leeches still get some play, too, mainly for drawing down pockets of blood after plastic surgery or vascular microsurgery .)
So Does Bloodletting Ever Work?
It may be helpful for people with a few particular blood abnormalities. Doctors still use bloodletting, for instance, in cases of polycythemia-an abnormally high red blood cell count-and in a hereditary disease called hemochromatosis, which leaves too much iron in the blood.

I also came across a preliminary study suggesting vascular benefits in some diabetics with high iron levels, but this is far from a general treatment for the disease. Another got a lot of press in 2012 for showing that 33 people who gave up to a pint of blood had improved cholesterol ratios and blood pressure six weeks later compared with people who didn't give blood, which the doctors also attributed to a reduction of iron levels. (Note that the amount of blood removed in the study was fairly low-a pint is about as much as you'd give when donating blood, which for the record is a great thing for healthy people to do and is not the same thing as bloodletting.)

But the design of that study doesn't rule out a placebo effect-which has certainly contributed to bloodletting's popularity in the past. What's more, other studies suggest that too little iron is bad for cardiovascular health, so again, the potential benefit of removing blood is unclear.

Meanwhile, depleting the body's blood supply can be risky. Not only is there the risk of losing too much blood, causing a dangerous drop in blood pressure and even cardiac arrest, but people who are already sick take their chances with infection or anemia. Not to mention that in most cases, bloodletting doesn't cure what ails you.

So no, we don't need to revive the tradition of the neighborhood bloodletter. In a sense, though, their legacy is still around: Red-and-white barber poles represent blood, bandages, and the stick that patients would grip during barbers' days as bloodletters.
How Bloodletting Bled Out
It took the great bloodletting wars of the 1800s to begin turning the tide against the practice. The prominent doctor Benjamin Rush (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) set off a fury when he began bleeding people dry during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. By all accounts, Rush was a bloodletting fanatic and in general a real piece of work : "unshakable in his convictions, as well as self-righteous, caustic, satirical, humorless, and polemical," writes doctor Robert North in a biography.

Rush recommended that up to 80 percent of his patients' blood be removed, and during the yellow fever outbreak, North recounts that "so much blood was spilled in the front yard that the site became malodorous and buzzed with flies."

Bloodletting's detractors grew in numbers after that, and eventually Pierre Louis, the founder of medical statistics, began convincing doctors to rely on statistical evidence over anecdotal "recoveries" of patients who had been bled. A particularly impressive analysis showed that bloodletting did not help pneumonia victims in Europe, and after bitter disputes among doctors in the 1850s, the practice began dying out.

In fact, one history of bloodletting refers to the stamping out of the practice-over the objections of the medical establishment, no less-as a triumph of reason and "one of the greatest stories of medical progress."

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Bloodletting Is Still Happening, Despite Centuries of Harm

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In the shadow of India's largest mosque, the gutters run red with blood. It's a bizarre scene, if you've never seen a modern-day bloodletting. First, men wrap patients' arms and legs with straps as tourniquets, to control the blood flow.

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Post #5 Red Flag: Ideological Support (Image)

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Post #5 Red Flag: Ideological Support (Image)

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Definition:

The red flag, ideological support, refers to the political, cultural or religious beliefs or body of ideas that are supported by a group or an individual. Some people take a stand to support logical ideals while others take a stand to support illogical ideals.

Connection:

The picture below illustrates a Jehovah’s Witness preaching about Jehovah (the Creator of all things) at the door of a person’s house. During this visit, the Jehovah’s witness is trying to spread his or her religious beliefs. Jehovah’s witnesses usually engage in public door to door distribution of their beliefs and they proclaim views or truths about Jehovah. This is connected to the ideological support red flag because these witnesses are affiliated all across the world and travel to different doorsteps sharing their claims about Jehovah (religious beliefs) in the form of pamphlets and bible studies hoping to recruit more individuals.

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Post #6 Red Flag: Mystical Energy (Website)

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Post #6 Red Flag: Mystical Energy (Website)

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Mystical Energy:

Mystical energy red flag relates to not actual energy, but an unobservable force that claims to be responsible for many things. A good example of mystical energy is chi or chakra.

Connection:

In this article, the mystical energy of chi is addressed. The article goes in depth about how this energy can be used to prevent illnesses. They do make it a point to say it is “harder” for chi to remedy illnesses, but they do not outright deny that it can. This kind of thinking can be dangerous when applying it to actual illnesses. There is no scientific confirmation of such a force as chi existing. On top of that, the article is riddled with ads for books and magazines that focus on mystical energy. Mystical energy is being used for monetary gain.

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Awareness Exercises
Qigong Exercise Three: Accordion
In this, you feel the Qi energy by using your hands like the bellow of an accordion or a bicycle pump.

1. Close your eyes halfway. Clear your mind and concentrate your attention on your palms.

2. Allow your breath to become slow, easy, without force. In a way, you are creating the very lightest trance.

3. Bring your hands together, palms touching and fingers pointing upward. The palm chakras, called Laogong, located in the center of the palms, should be touching. These chakras are areas where Qi can be felt emanating from the body.

4. Slowly move your hands, keeping the chakras aligned. When they are about 12 inches (30 cm) apart, slowly move them together using the least amount of physical effort possible.

5. You will be compressing the air between them like an accordion would.

6. Feel a warm or tingling sensation at the Laogong points on your palms.

7. Move your hands slowly back and forth, varying the range of the bellows. Repeat the accordion technique in different directions: horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

This exercise cultivates Qi, builds awareness, and sensitizes yourself. When you feel Qi energy for the first time, it changes your mind-set.
Qigong Exercise Four: Making the Point
1. Using your index finger is a powerful way of directing Qi energy. If you are right-handed, use you right index finger; if you are left-handed, use your left index finger. Point it directly at the flat palm of your other hand. That hand should be perpendicular to the floor with your fingers pointing straight up.

2. Use your index finger like a paintbrush to swab back and forth across your palm.

3. Begin with your fingertip about 8 inches (20 cm) from your palm. Slowly move it closer and farther away, swabbing all the time.

You may feel a tickling sensation, a cooling, or a warming of your palm.
Qigong Exercise Five: Extending the Qi
If you have Deficient Qi, you should perform this exercise with your eyes half closed to cultivate and accumulate Qi energy.

1. If you have Stagnant Qi, the exercise may be done with your eyes fully open. You will inhale swiftly through your nostrils with your eyes open or half closed when you exhale.

Note: You should exercise caution when practicing Qi exercises at home-without a teacher nearby-because they are powerful, and Qi can leak out your eyes.

2. Once you can sense the Qi, exercise your intention (which is the mind/spirit part of the exercise) and use your mind to move your Qi out from your body, expanding the zone in which you are comfortable. You may allow the Qi to drift out on the exhalation and then hold it there as you inhale.

3. First move the Qi into an orbit 1 inch (2.5 cm) from your skin. In increments of 6 inches (15 cm), move it outward, aiming for 3 feet (91 cm), but find the point where you are comfortable with it. Then bring it back in until it returns close to your body.

This qigong exercise allows you to communicate with your Qi energy. By increasing the distance away from your body that you can feel Qi, you expand your area of comfort-your field of generosity-in the world around you. You will have less fear and greater abilities. By being able to bring your Qi halo in to skin level (or inside your skin) you may become more centered, calm, and self-assured. When you have learned to be comfortable expanding and contracting your Qi, you will feel stronger, healthier, and more in harmony internally and externally.
Qigong Exercise Six: Pumping the Qi
This is a tricky exercise that moves the Qi energy along the two connecting Extraordinary Channels: the Du Mai and Ren Mai. You may think of it as evolve, devolve, because your posture goes from a slumped, gorilla-like stance to an upright extended pose. It is adapted from the Wild Goose Qigong exercise routine.

1. The first position pushes the Qi down. As your hands push flat down, your spine and head straighten upward. Then as you allow the Qi to flow back upward, your hands rise, elbows bent and palms parallel to the floor. Your shoulders hunch. Repeat this six or seven times, inhaling as your hands come up and exhaling as your hands go down.

2. When you are comfortable with this Qigong exercise, you may combine it with a slow intentional walk forward: left knee bent and raised in an exaggerated stepping motion. When your knee comes up, your hands go down and back and your spine straightens; when your foot touches the ground, your hands come up and your back hunches. Place your feet very gently on the ground and allow each step to proceed in slow motion, at a tempo that soothes and relaxes. Remember to maintain a breathing pattern, too. Inhale as your hands come up and your shoulders hunch. Exhale slowly, expanding your chest as you straighten your back. If this feels awkward, don't despair. Even in a classroom situation, it takes a while to catch on to what to do.
Qigong Exercise Seven: Blending Qi
This exercise should help you become aware of various resonations of Qi energy and learn to blend them into a harmonious flow.

1. Stand with your feet a shoulder's width apart, with your knees slightly bent. Allow your hands and arms to hang at your sides.

2. Shift your weight slightly to the balls of your feet. Simply be aware of the front side of your body. Concentrate on the Channels that pass along the front of your legs and torso, the top of your hands and arms, and your face.

3. After one minute, shift your weight to your heels. Become aware of the back of your body: the back of your head, your arms, your spine, and your legs. With practice, you may hold these postures for up to five minutes or longer.
4. You can also do this for the left and right sides of the body.
5. In each instance, you may want to become aware of each section of the body. For example, the side of your head, the side of your arm and torso, your outer hip, the side of your leg and ankle, and the length of your foot. This makes the exercise a meditation.

6. Now, shifting to a more Nei Dan form of Qigong exercise, repeat the first three steps, but the motion should not be detectable visually. Use your mind to shift your weight forward and backward, feeling your Qi flowing along the front and back of your body.

7. Next, try to feel your Qi flowing along your back and front simultaneously.

Students are often bewildered by the idea of feeling two sensations at the same time, but a useful analogy is to think of the color yellow and the color blue. When you blend those two colors together, you produce green. That green then becomes its own entity with its own wavelength. The same is true of blending the Qi energy from your front and from your back. The blend becomes another entity with its own resonation.
Advanced Qigong Breathing Exercise
Breathing can direct Qi energy through the body like the wind filling the sails of a ship. Qigong breathing exercises can invigorate or sedate, depending on how you use them.

On alternate days, practice the following routine, using Buddha's Breath and Daoist's Breath breathing techniques.

1. Sit on the floor with your legs crossed in lotus or cross-legged style. This is important so that Qi energy does not enter and become Stagnant in the lower body, but follows the breathing path through your torso and your head.

2. Inhale to a count of four to eight, depending on what you are comfortable with. For Buddha's Breath, extend your belly, filling it up from the bottom. For Taoist's Breath, inhale, contracting your abdomen, and exhale, letting your abdomen relax outward.

3. As you inhale, turn your attention to your nose. Guide the Qi energy downward from your nose toward the Dantian, 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm) below the navel. Women should not concentrate on the Dantian during their periods. Concentrate on your solar plexus instead.

4. Exhale to a count of eight to sixteen and move the Qi energy down the torso, around your pelvic region, and up to your tailbone.

5. Inhale and move the Qi up the back to the top of your shoulders.

6. Exhale and move the Qi up the back of your head and back to your nose.

7. If you cannot feel the Qi clearly, patience and practice will make it more apparent.

8. Once you are comfortable with this Qigong practice, you may increase the pace by completing the cycle in one inhalation and one exhalation. On the inhalation, move Qi energy from your nose to your tailbone. On the exhalation, move Qi from your tailbone back to your nose.
This article on qigong exercises and qi energy is excerpted with permission from The New Chinese Medicine Handbook: An Innovative Guide to Integrating Eastern Wisdom with Western Practice for Modern Healing by Misha Ruth Cohen, published by Fair Winds Press.

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8 Powerful Ancient Qigong Exercises for Cultivating Healing Energy in the Body

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Qigong Exercise Three: Accordion In this, you feel the Qi energy by using your hands like the bellow of an accordion or a bicycle pump. 1. Close your eyes halfway. Clear your mind and concentrate your attention on your palms. 2. Allow your breath to become slow, easy, without force.

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Post #7 Reason for Belief: Patternicity (Image)

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Post #7 Reason for Belief: Patternicity (Image)

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Definition:

Patternicty is the unintentional action of a person finding a pattern that actually does not exist, that is, seeing something that is not actually there.

Connection:

This picture below is a common example of patternicity because people who look at clouds are able to decipher images, potentially related to things that happened recently in their lives. These patterns are often linked to recent life occurrences because another person would not be able to clearly find that same pattern. For example, a person who just experienced the death of a loved one might easily interpret these clouds as the face of their loved one and take it as a sign from the heavens when in reality, it is just the formation of the clouds.

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Post #8 Reason for Belief: Emotional Connection (Website)

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Post #8 Reason for Belief: Emotional Connection (Website)

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Definition:

An emotional connection refers to the bond between two people, that is, the strong feelings that human beings experience. These emotions are strong enough to skew our logical thought process and make us believe things that are not true.

Connection:

The article is connected to the emotional connection reason of belief because it is a clear example of an individual being exploited because of the strong feelings he had for another woman. Nial Rice gave away more than 718000 because the psychics vowed to reunite him with the woman he loved. Nial’s emotions made him gullible to the point where he was convinced that if he didn’t pay her for the work that the psychic was doing for him, bad things would happen. It was almost like an addiction.

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Crime Scene

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Niall Rice, a 33-year-old consultant who paid two psychics who promised to help him reunite with the woman he loved, even after she died, said he wanted justice. Credit Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times

He sat in a Denny's restaurant, drinking coffee between cigarette breaks after a long and sleepless night, answering question after question.

He knew none of it made sense: He was a successful and well-traveled professional, with close to seven figures in the bank, and plans for much more. And then he gave it all away, more than $718,000, in chunks at a time, to two Manhattan psychics.

They vowed to reunite him with the woman he loved. Even after it was discovered that she was dead. There was the 80-mile bridge made of gold, the reincarnation portal.

"I just got sucked in," the man, Niall Rice, said in a telephone interview last week from Los Angeles. "That's what people don't understand. 'How can you fall for it?'"

There was even, between payments to one of the psychics for a time machine to cleanse the past, a brief romance.

"It's embarrassing now," he said.

In May, the police arrested one of the psychics, Priscilla Kelly Delmaro, 26, after Mr. Rice sought out a private investigator and decided to press charges. She was charged with grand larceny.

The man's identity was not revealed in court documents. But Mr. Rice, a 33-year-old British consultant, said he chose to come forward last week after learning that the Manhattan district attorney's office intended to allow Ms. Delmaro to plead guilty in exchange for a year in jail, and that it was unlikely he would ever see restitution. A hearing is set for Tuesday.

"I just want justice," Mr. Rice said from Los Angeles, where he now lives. "I just don't want her to do to anyone else what happened to me."

It seems almost unfathomable that anyone could be taken in so thoroughly, with such a breathtaking level of gullibility. And so, Mr. Rice's story begins.

By the spring of 2013, he had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in search engine optimization, drawing traffic to websites in exchange for commissions. He was raised in a poor family, and planned to buy his mother a house in England.

But he was troubled. Painfully uncomfortable in social settings, he drank heavily and used drugs, he said. That year, he flew from England to Arizona to enter a rehabilitation clinic for acute anxiety, he said. In the clinic, he met a woman named Michelle, another patient.

"We had such a strong connection, it was unbelievable," he said. "I loved her deeply."

But the relationship ended a couple of weeks after they left rehab, when Michelle overdosed on pills and returned to the clinic. She broke it off with Mr. Rice. He said he agreed it was for the best.

"I was moving on with my life," he said. He came to New York and found a bed in the McKibbin lofts in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, two former warehouses filled with makeshift apartments that are often likened to a rowdy dormitory for young newcomers.

Depressed one day in August, he walked over the Williamsburg Bridge to Manhattan and spotted a psychic shop on Delancey Street. "And I went in," he said. (In a previous written statement to the police about this day, Mr. Rice claimed to have visited a psychic in Times Square. In fact, he said on Thursday, he was on Delancey. His Times Square encounter was still two months away.)

He met a psychic named Brandy. "She knew a lot of stuff," he said. Stuff about him. "'I saw that you were connected to this girl,'" she told him.

He told her about Michelle. "She said, 'If you could choose, would you want to be back with her?' " he said.

Yes.

She asked for $2,500 that day, and he withdrew it from a nearby Chase bank. She said he would have his money back soon.

"I ended up giving her 10 grand, 12 grand in the first week," he said. "It's hard to explain."

He continued. "It wasn't like saying, 'Give me 10 grand and I'll tie your shoelaces,' " he said. "There's a half truth in there, there's something in it. This whole psychic scam is based on them knowing what's going on in your life. They have a gift."

He bought a $40,000 ring from Tiffany & Company for Brandy to ward off evil spirits. He spent his birthday with her and her family, and they cooked him a steak. But he lost faith in her. He had recently visited Michelle in California, a disastrous five-minute conversation on the sidewalk. "The whole way I was caught up in it, she said afterward I was acting weird," he said.

So he shopped around for a new psychic. He drove to work in Midtown Manhattan and parked his car in a garage near Times Square, on West 43rd Street. He noticed a psychic parlor across the street. There, he met Ms. Delmaro, who called herself Christina, Mr. Rice said.

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The Manhattan storefront of Priscilla Kelly Delmaro, a psychic visited by Mr. Rice. She was charged with grand larceny in May. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times

"She somehow said all the right things," he said. "It sounds mad now that I'm saying it."

He led a double life. "I'd go to Christina and talk about Michelle for an hour, and go back to the office. She wouldn't leave me alone. She was like family." He paused and added, "I needed my mum, really."

He kept his visits to the psychics largely to himself, but eventually mentioned Christina to a roommate at McKibbin, Lauren Horton.

"He seemed like a normal guy," Ms. Horton, 34, a graphic designer, said on Friday. But his faith in Christina, and the money he was paying her, was something else altogether.

"It was insane to me," Ms. Horton said. "I told him many times he was out of his mind. He was convinced that if he didn't pay her for the work she was doing for him, bad things would happen to him." She likened his continued visits to the psychic to an addiction.

Mr. Rice moved out of East Williamsburg to an apartment on the Lower East Side, and invited Ms. Horton over for Christmas. Christina was there. "I didn't like her because I knew what was going on," Ms. Horton said.

In February 2014, Mr. Rice, longing to see Michelle, logged on to her Facebook page.

"I saw, 'R.I.P.,' " he said. Michelle had died of a drug overdose.

Mr. Rice said he had just paid Christina $90,000 that she said was needed to build a bridge of gold in another dimension to trick an evil spirit that was haunting Michelle. He called her and told her Michelle was dead.

"Christina said, 'Don't believe it,' " he said. "'If you believe it, it's true.' "

She said she could help get Michelle back - a reincarnated Michelle, a new Michelle.

Then things escalated.

"I slept with Christina," Mr. Rice said. "We slept together once. It was a massive mistake."

Ms. Delmaro's lawyer, Jeffrey Cylkowski, said the change in the relationship, however brief, throws his accusations of theft into question. "If you're involved with somebody, was it a gift?" he said.

Mr. Rice left New York and moved to California, where he had briefly lived. He said Christina emailed him constantly about visions she had of a new Michelle: "'I just saw someone in the supermarket; it might have been her.' "

There was one last giant payment - "the big one" - for $100,000, he said. His bank asked him to confirm what he was spending the money on. A car, he said.

Christina told him she was broke because she had no time for other clients. "She was homeless; she'd lost everything for me," Mr. Rice recalled being told. "I believed she lived in a church."

He met and dated a woman who Christina led him to believe was the new Michelle. He questioned her, looking for common traits - "I was being weird" - and the relationship ended.

He flew back to New York and met a private investigator who identified Christina as Ms. Delmaro, who had been arrested previously in Florida. Mr. Rice pressed charges in May, giving the police bank records showing the payments.

He later acknowledged that his statements were incomplete: He accused Ms. Delmaro of taking all his money, leaving out the two months he spent consulting with the other psychic, Brandy, because he had resumed contact with her and believed she was protecting him from possible retaliation, he said. He later amended his complaint. Brandy has not been charged with a crime.

The district attorney's office said it would not comment on the case before it was resolved.

Mr. Rice's misstatements, and the affair with Ms. Delmaro, did not help his case, the private investigator, Bob Nygaard, acknowledged. But they are not unusual, he said.

"The things that make a person a perfect mark also make him a bad witness," Mr. Nygaard said. He said prosecutors could have done more to seek out other potential victims of Ms. Delmaro.

Mr. Rice went broke. He lost his apartment in Manhattan and sold his BMW, expensive watch and laptop. He asked his father for a few thousand dollars. Now, he said, he is barely making his rent payments of $500.

Last week, Mr. Rice said he wanted to return to England - "I'm trying to get it together" - but acknowledged that he had been drinking again, including the day of the interview.

"I don't know if I want to make money again. I'm scared to," he said. "I want to go home, but I want to see this through."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Man Who Paid Psychics $718,000 'Just Got Sucked In' . Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Man Who Gave Psychics $718,000 'Just Got Sucked In'

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Crime Scene He sat in a Denny's restaurant, drinking coffee between cigarette breaks after a long and sleepless night, answering question after question. He knew none of it made sense: He was a successful and well-traveled professional, with close to seven figures in the bank, and plans for much more.

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Definition:

The reason for belief; unexplained relates to observations that happen with no logical or clear explanation and one’s lack of understanding of what had been witnessed/happened leads to this being a reason for belief.

Connection:

Within this website lies various ghost stories- events shrouded in mystery with no explanation. Although they might be fabricated, if you were to take the perspective of believing in them, the unexplained reason for belief comes into play. Events happening with no immediate logical conclusion. Using the haunting Ariana Grande experienced in this website, if you approach it from a different perspective, you may be able to explain the faces in the picture away with patternicity, and the friend that had the same experience as her was primed to believe something like that would happen so her dreams were affected.

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Halloween isn't just a holiday-it's our entire October mood. So celebrate the best time of year with a month's worth of stories that will keep you up all night long. (Binge-watching and eating candy, probably. Same, tbh.) Cheers, witches!

Fact #1: Ghost stories are terrifying. But they're terrifying in the best possible way, so please grab the nearest bowl of candy corn and prepare to nervously shove the whole thing in your mouth while you scare yourself (and your friends, if they can handle it) silly with these truly terrifying and real paranormal stories. Remember: It. could. happen. to. you. Buckle up.

"Dear David" is a ghost story that originated on-of all places-Twitter. It started in 2017 when illustrator Adam Ellis tweeted about a ghost living in his house:

And then he followed up with this freaky illustration:

This ghost first came to Adam in not one, but two dreams (which you can read about in detail over here). "Dear David" is supposedly a child who was crushed and killed by a shelf. But the thing is, the ghost did not stay in Adam's dreams. Said ghost began to majorly creep out Adam's very furry, very real cats:

Finally, one night, Adam worked up the courage to go to the peephole of his front door and take a photo to see what his cats were so drawn to. He ended up snapping a pic of some suspicious-looking fog, which naturally freaked him out, so he ran to his bed, poured a line of protective salt around his door, and downloaded an app that can record sound in the middle of the night. Annnnd it picked up 33 recordings. Then he took another polaroid (thinking maybe he had accidentally blocked the first one with his finger) of his hallway and the image turned black for literally no reason:

To prove he wasn't f*cking around, he took another set of photos of the hallway from a spot inside his apartment with a regular camera and with his polaroid camera. And THIS HAPPENED:

Meanwhile, a couple of Adam's dedicated followers brightened the hallway photo and discovered the outline of a person:

Adam then had another dream in which David dragged him and-get this-he woke up with a bruise on his arm. Around that same time, he started getting calls from a No Caller ID number over and over again, and when he finally answered, he heard a faint child-like voice say "hello." At this point, he got a pet cam, which recorded the rocking chair where he first saw David move...on its own.

Plus, he saw David outside on his roof:

And next he discovered a creepy crawl space above his apartment where he found a child's tiny leather shoe. Oh, and to make matters worse, he set up another camera while he was sleeping, and this happened!

At this point, everyone who had been following along assumed Adam must have been possessed. To make the whole story even creepier, he told his followers everything was "fine" and he suddenly left his job. So, how does this ghost story end? Why, "Dear David" is being made into a movie, obviously.

Let's go back to basics for a minute with the Amityville haunting, which is perhaps the most iconic IRL ghost story ever. The location? 112 Ocean Avenue. The date? 1974. The crime? A man named Butch DeFeo killed six members of his family. The following year, the house was sold to George and Kathy Lutz, and that's when sh*t got real.

The Lutzs claimed they were veritably haunted, complete with doors flying off their hinges, slime coming out of the ceiling, and, well, ghosts. Just, like, HELLA GHOSTS. Some other delightful things that happened? George Lutz used to randomly wake up every morning at the exact time of the DeFeo murders, and the Lutz kids started sleeping in the same positions that the murder victims' bodies had been found. AHHHH!

So, did any of this stuff actually happen? Plenty of people think the Lutz family fabricated the whole thing (and some people have found proof), but according to the Lutzs *and* a lie detector test, it's all true.

Yes, that is correct, Ariana Grande was haunted by a ghost. Her experience went down circa 2013, when she visited Stull Cemetery in Kansas-a place so f*cked up that the Pope refuses to fly over it because it's reputed to be one of the seven gates to Hell. Here's Ariana explaining what happened to

I felt this sick, overwhelming feeling of negativity over the whole car and we smelled sulfur, which is the sign of a demon, and there was a fly in the car randomly, which is another sign of a demon. I was like, 'This is scary, let's leave.' I rolled down the window before we left and said, 'We apologize. We didn't mean to disrupt your peace.' Then I took a picture and there are three super distinct faces in the picture-they're faces of textbook demons.

When she tried to send the photo to her manager the next day, Ariana got an error message that read 'This file can't be sent, it's 666 megabytes.' WTF!? Eventually, Ari claimed "weird things" started happening to her, so she deleted the pic. Weird things like...

I was going to sleep about two weeks ago. I had just gotten off the phone and as soon as I closed my eyes I heard this really loud rumble right by my head. When I opened my eyes it stopped immediately, but when I closed my eyes it started again with whispers. Every time I closed my eyes I started seeing these really disturbing images with, like, red shapes. Then I opened my eyes and got back on the phone and was like, 'I'm really scared and I don't want to go to bed tonight.' And then I scooched over to the left side of my bed, because that's where the best service is in my room, and there was this massive black matter. I don't know what it was. It was like a cloud of something black right next to me. I started crying. I was on the phone like, 'What do I do, what do I do?' and they said, 'Tell it to eff off.' I thought, I'm not going to do that. It's going to upset it, so I'm just going to chill and not feed into it because all it wants is fear. It feeds on fear. I watched it move to the front of my bed and then I fell asleep on the phone. I woke up and it was gone. The next night my friend Tyler was staying with me. She said she was trying to sleep and her body felt paralyzed almost, and she described the same exact thing I saw.

This one comes courtesy of Reddit, so you know it's gonna be good. By which I mean horrifying. In a nutshell, shortly before a couple moved into a new house, they learned that the previous renter had died "right in the middle of the living room." They decided to go ahead with the move anyways-and "almost immediately" their two-year-old daughter started talking about ghosts.

She was always telling me that the ghost was in her play house in the basement, or that the ghost was on the stairs, or that the ghost was standing in the corner. She never seemed to be afraid of the ghost, and considered him to be her friend, so I wasn't all that concerned even if there really was a ghost haunting our house. If he's a nice and helpful ghost, it could certainly be a lot worse. I would often tell the ghost that he was welcome to stay if he wanted to, but he was also welcome to go if that would make him happier.

Sounds fine-ish right? Wrong. This kid told her parents that the ghost was "on the back deck" and it was the ghost's birthday so she wanted to "sing him 'happy birthday.'" Which, NOPE.

The Redditor continued:

Once again, I mostly disregarded what she was saying, as she is birthday obsessed and has in the past made us sing 'happy birthday' to Mickey Mouse, a bowl of fruit snacks, and the bathroom. So we sang and wished the ghost a happy birthday and went on with our lives.

But guys, guess what happened next? Later that day, the Reddit user grew curious and looked up the obit of the man who died in their living room, and-to quote directly-"it was his fucking birthday." GOODBYE, WORLD!!!!

This one is also from blessed Reddit. It takes place in a home that was built around 1904. The Redditor's brother and his best friend were leaving band practice, only to realize they'd forgotten their pancakes inside in a to-go container. And as anyone who loves pancakes knows, that's A VERY SERIOUS ISSUE.

So after my brother walks back, he is about to retrieve his food container, when out of the corner of his eye he sees it. It is a shadowy figure, right at his peripheral vision, this feeling of dread and uneasiness washed over my brother. We had been taught that if you are in the presence of a spirit or ghost and you felt a bad vibe, to say quick prayer or to cuss at it. My brother chose the latter, he basically just told it 'hey fuck you, I don't have time for this shit.'

Not exactly what I would have done, but whatever. Either way, this guy walked back to his car, feeling the presence of the ghost with him the entire time.

He climbed into the driver's side of the truck, putting on his seat belt and getting ready to pull out of the parking spot directly in front of the house, when one of his friends asked 'Hey, wait, what about your brother, isn't he coming with us?' My brother answered 'what do you mean? He went to work early tonight, he is already gone, do you see his car anywhere?'"

And then, yeah, you guessed it: "The next question they asked 'So then who was walking behind you when you were leaving the house?'"

Nope, it's not just Ariana. Miley also experienced a haunting around 2013, when she was staying at the apartment she owned in London and saw a little boy watching her shower. Um, creepy.

I thought I had seen a little boy sitting on the sink watching me take a shower so I felt really freaked out. I was sitting there the next night and maybe I''m crazy, but I could have sworn I could see this little boy sitting there on the sink, kicking his feet. My mom was getting mad that we were looking into it because she thought it was going to scare Noah so then my aunt – who we hadn''t told about this –comes in and she starts freaking out. She's like, 'I had no idea what happened but I left the apartment and I came back and all the doors and windows were open. I locked the apartment.'

Miley started looking into the history of her building, and found out that a man and his son had owned it as a bakery back in ye olden days, and so she thinks the son was the little kid who had been watching her.

So yes. She moved.

Chances are you've seen The Conjuring movie, or at least, you heard about the movie, saw the trailer, and decided to skip it since you didn't want to have nightmares forever. It is, in fact, based on the true story of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, who helped the Perron family deal with their haunted Rhode Island home. The story goes that the Perrons moved into their place in 1971 and weird stuff started happening right away. Weird stuff like random piles of dirt showing up in their kitchen for no reason, furniture mysteriously moving, unexplained noises, and-ah, yes-ghosts. Not to mention the occasional possession! The main spirit that haunted the Perron family was the ghost of a real-life satanist from the 1800s named Bathsheba Sherman.

Turns out the Perrons' house had previously been owned by the same family for many generations, and numerous members of that family had died in terrible, tragic ways. We're talking about kids drowning, murders, and a hanging in the attic. No, thank you!

Oh, look, another Reddit ghost story here to ruin your life. This one comes via a dude who was living with his girlfriend's parents and was hanging at home alone one night playing World of Warcraft when this went down:

Where my computer and desk sat, right above my head, was an AC vent. Often, I could hear her sister playing in her room from that vent. I was leveling my Paladin or something when I heard laughing and giggling coming from the vent. Nobody was supposed to be home, so my heart picked up. I glanced at the clock on my computer, and it read 1:36 AM. I remember this all very distinctly.

He went upstairs to investigate and when he got there, he used his cellphone to light up the room. Which brings us to this moment:

I saw a small figure, what I assumed was a small girl wrapped in a white sheet in the center of the room. Cue pants shitting. This figure, this young girl, stops playing with the dolls and slowly looks at me. It let out the most ear shattering scream you can imagine. My skin crawls just thinking about it and my chest tightens just remembering it. I wish I could tell you what transpired, but I remember waking up at the bottom of the landing, right next to the door of the kitchen. I stumbled into the kitchen to get a drink of water and contemplate what the fuck just happened. I glanced at the clock on the microwave. The clock read 4:46 AM.

What. The hell. Happened in those three hours.

Time for a lovely story about a person who saw their great-grandma's ghost right when she died. Yay! The horror! Basically, this person (also a Redditor) was in second grade and was watching Lord of the Rings on VHS super early one morning, as ya do. Suddenly, all the sound of the movie started fading away, and the Redditor got the sense they were dying.

Keep in mind that I'm in second grade so this is a pretty intense conclusion, but I just knew. I rolled over onto my back ready to, and excited to except [sic] my fate. That was when I saw it. There was a large white figure in my doorway, just hovering, and pulsating a white aura. I quickly panicked, and began calling out for my brother (his room was across the hall). The figure glided to the end of my bed and just sat there, watching. I'm not really sure how much time passed, but the figure suddenly vanished, sound came back, and the euphoria disappeared.

Suddenly, the phone started ringing over and over again at exactly 5:30 a.m. And naturally, this is how the story ends:

My great-grandma passed away in the hospital at 5:30 a.m. and the phone calls were my grandma calling to notify us. Me and great-grandma were extremely close. To this day I get chills thinking about it. I know that there are a few ways to explain the occurrence, but I know for a fact that it was 100% a paranormal experience.

Let's end things with a terrifying story from Demi Lovato. Back in 2013, Demi told that she likes to go ghost-hunting in her Texas home which is "ridiculously haunted" by a little girl.

I think her name is Emily. I've had a medium come over and ghost hunters, and they both told me the same name, Emily. There were so many times that I saw her when I was growing up. I saw her in my closet one time. When I was three years old my mom caught me talking to something by myself. She asked, 'Who are you talking to?' and I said, 'My best friend Emily.' She's playful. She'd probably be around 11 or 12 years old, maybe younger.

But wait, it gets worse:

One of my friends, Tucker, came over one time and he asked, 'So your house is haunted?' I said, 'Yeah, just watch. Something will happen. Something always happens.' We started to watch a movie when all of a sudden a laptop in my kitchen started to play a movie also. It was a black screen before, so it was a question of who turned it on and hit play. And after that Tucker texted a friend saying, 'I think this house is haunted, a movie just turned on by itself,' and there was a 'glitch' in his phone that kept texting him back the word 'definitely' over and over again. That happened about 30 times.

And on that note, have fun sleeping tonight!

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10 Terrifying Real Ghost Stories to Tell at Your Next Girls' Night

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Halloween isn't just a holiday-it's our entire October mood. So celebrate the best time of year with a month's worth of stories that will keep you up all night long. (Binge-watching and eating candy, probably. Same, tbh.) Cheers, witches! Fact #1: Ghost stories are terrifying.

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Define Problem:
Ariana Grande used the unexplained reason of belief and jumped to conclusions that everything happening to her was paranormal.

Gather Information:
All the information is available by word of mouth. All the information may be subject to bias. When Ariana came across what she thought to be “demons”, there were others in the car that could testify to the authenticity of this. However, there is no information on the others’ perspective. The picture she sent to her manager was never received by them and there is no lasting evidence of the picture as she had deleted it. Her experience while on the phone had others present via phone call, however their side of the story is not known. There is no information on Tyler’s incident aside from what Ariana had exclaimed.

Evaluate Evidence:
Arianna Grande is a pop start and is, therefore, not a credible source when making claims about paranormal activity. The only proof she has are the witnesses who were present with her in the car. The results have somewhat been reproduced because the Pope refuses to fly over Stull Cemetary because of its paranormal activity. The scientific method has not been followed because Arianna made an observation and immediately jumped to a conclusion.

Recognize Assumptions, Emotions, Biases:
Arianna is assuming that her visiting Still Cemetary is linked to the paranormal activity that she experienced. This may be due to the confirmation bias of Arianna, that is, her thinking that the situation was paranormal. She begins her story with symptoms she had observed which relate to “demons” being present. This could indicate that she had taken a previous interest in the paranormal. Her emotions might have impacted the situation too. This speculation would come into play when she was describing the “weird things” that she was experiencing after her incident with the demons. Her fear might have been altering her perception and causing her to observe things not quite as they are.

Synthesize Evidence, Identify Alternatives:
Alternative 1: The sulfur smell in a car is not too uncommon. This can be explained away as either a degrading fuel filter or catalytic converter. Fuel has a small amount of sulfur contained within and when either of these components are degraded, it can cause a sulfur like smell to emit from to exhaust. Her experience on the phone could have been a combination of dreaming and sleep paralysis. Tyler’s experience can be the effect of both priming and sleep paralysis.
Alternative 2: All of Arianna's experiences were indeed paranormal.

Select Best Alternative:
We conclude that Arianna's experience were not paranormal because everything could logically be explained.