Hysteria 51

Science has finally answered the question nobody was brave enough to ask: what if the cockroach crawling toward you was actually a paramedic? Researchers are developing remote-controlled cyborg roaches capable of crawling through disaster rubble, locating survivors, and even delivering lifesaving injections. It’s innovative. It’s brilliant. And it guarantees you’ll never confidently swat another bug again.

Then we move from cutting-edge medicine to medicine that should absolutely never have been attempted. A man suffering from incontinence decided to solve the problem himself by putting superglue into his urethra. Repeatedly. Shockingly, the story does not end with him winning a Nobel Prize.

This week on Hysteria 51: cyborg cockroaches, robotic rescue insects, horrifying DIY medical treatments, superglue in places God never intended, and another reminder that humanity is simultaneously capable of astonishing scientific achievement and decisions that make emergency-room doctors reconsider their career choices.

Links & Resources

📌Creepy Crawley Tech

📌Hose Plug

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Hysteria 51, Mother Nature is acting strange... and one guy is acting much, much stranger.

First, a massive floating island covered in trees suddenly appears in British Columbia’s Williston Reservoir, drifts around like it forgot where it parked, disappears, and then turns up miles away. Scientists have explanations involving debris, rising water, and vegetation, but we prefer to believe Canada has finally developed migratory land.

Then we head to England, where a peaceful dog walk through a nature reserve takes a horrifying turn when a man decides to demonstrate a use for a carrot that definitely isn’t in the recipe book. Police get involved, court dates are scheduled, and somewhere a rabbit loses its appetite forever.

From mysterious floating islands and disappearing landmasses to bizarre crime, public indecency, and produce abuse, this episode has everything you expect from weird news... plus at least one thing you absolutely did not.

Links & Resources

📌Island Hide & Seek

📌Carrot Misfortune

Email us your Contest Topics:

[email protected]

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Forget Area 51. It’s time to head to Ohio, where the UFO lore is colder, the security clearances are higher, and allegedly somebody forgot to clean the aliens out of the fridge.

This week, we’re investigating the mysterious Blue Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the legendary top-secret facility supposedly used to store and study crashed UFO wreckage, Roswell debris, exotic technology, strange “memory metal,” and possibly even extraterrestrial bodies.

Was Wright-Patterson actually America’s original alien warehouse?

Before we can answer that, we have to figure out whether the damn room even existed.

And that's considerably harder than it sounds.

Because Wright-Patterson really did house some of America's earliest official UFO investigations. It really was one of the country's most important centers for analyzing captured and unidentified foreign aerospace technology. And some surprisingly credible people later claimed something extraordinary was hidden there.

We’re digging into the origins of Hangar 18, Robert Spencer Carr, Barry Goldwater’s infamous attempt to gain access, General Curtis LeMay’s less-than-welcoming response, the alleged connection between Roswell and Wright Field, former Wright-Patterson commander Arthur Exon, Oliver “Pappy” Henderson, Marion “Black Mac” Magruder, June Crain and her alleged piece of impossible memory metal, and finally Leonard Stringfield, the UFO researcher who found someone claiming he actually made it through the door.

Grab your clearance badge. Leave your camera in the car. And if Curtis LeMay asks what we're doing here, tell him we're looking for the bathroom this week on Hysteria 51.

Sources:

• National Archives – Project BLUE BOOK: Unidentified Flying Objects
• https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos
• U.S. Air Force – The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert
• https://www.af.mil/The-Roswell-Report/
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) – Historical Record Report, Volume I
• https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/AARO_Historical_Record_Report_Vol_1_2024.pdf
• AARO – Congressional and Press Products
• https://www.aaro.mil/Congressional-Press-Products/
• U.S. Department of Defense – DOD Report Discounts Sightings of Extraterrestrial Technology
• https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3701297/dod-report-discounts-sightings-of-extraterrestrial-technology/
• U.S. Department of Defense – Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena
• https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/Unidentified-Anomalous-Phenomena/
• HISTORY – Hangar 18, UFOs and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
• https://www.history.com/articles/hangar-18-ufos-aliens-wright-patterson
• Air & Space Forces Magazine – USAF and the UFOs
• https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0611ufo/
• NICAP – Barry Goldwater UFO Correspondence / Wright-Patterson and Curtis LeMay
• https://www.nicap.org/people/goldwater.htm
• Barry Goldwater – 1975 Wright-Patterson/UFO Correspondence
• https://rense.com/general35/ufodat.htm
• Barry Goldwater – Larry King Radio Interview, 1988
• https://www.ufocasebook.com/blueroom.html
• Leonard H. Stringfield – Retrievals of the Third Kind
• https://www.earthfiles.com/2005/09/30/part-3-retrievals-of-the-third-kind-a-case-study-of-alleged-ufos-and-occupants-in-military-custody/
• James Clarkson – June Crain Interview Transcript
• https://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/crain_clarksoninterview.pdf
• Thomas J. Carey & Donald R. Schmitt – UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson: Eyewitness Accounts from the Real Area 51
• https://www.loc.gov/item/2020715969/
• Thomas J. Carey & Donald R. Schmitt – UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson – Google Books
• https://books.google.com/books/about/UFO_Secrets_Inside_Wright_Patterson.html?id=eZpyDwAAQBAJ
• National Archives – UAP Records: Textual and Microfilm Records
• https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/textual-and-microfilm
• National Archives – UAP Records Bulk Downloads
• https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/catalog-bulk-downloads/uap-bulk-download
• FBI Vault – UFO Files
• https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO
• Wikipedia – Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright-Patterson_Air_Force_Base
• Wikipedia – Hangar 18
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(conspiracy_theory)

Email your Contest Entries to:

[email protected]

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show:

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop:

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Hysteria 51, we’re asking the important questions: What exactly can’t you donate to Goodwill, and how convincing does your fake horse semen laboratory need to be before the government stops asking questions?

First, a human skull mysteriously turns up at a Michigan Goodwill. And no, it wasn’t an old medical specimen gathering dust in somebody’s attic. The FBI is now involved, DNA testing is underway, and somewhere a thrift-store employee has officially won “Worst Donation to Unpack.”

Then we gallop across the pond to England, where a couple received permission to build a stallion semen laboratory and instead built themselves a lovely two-story house. Because apparently “equine reproductive science facility” is the British planning-permission version of wearing a fake mustache.

Human remains, FBI investigators, zoning shenanigans, demolished dream homes, and more horse semen than anyone expected to discuss this week. Saddle up. Things are about to get weird.

Links & Resources

📌Badwill

📌Horsing Around

Email us your Contest Topics:

[email protected]

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A landed flying saucer. A mysterious humanoid pilot. A frozen Italian glacier. Multiple photographs. And a 1952 UFO encounter that still gets passed around social media today as some of the clearest evidence of extraterrestrial visitation ever captured. Sounds pretty darn convincing, right?

Head to the Bernina Alps with us as we investigate the bizarre case of Giampiero Monguzzi, the Italian photographer who claimed he and his wife witnessed a metallic UFO land near the Scerscen Glacier, watched a strange suited figure inspect the craft, and snapped a series of incredible photos before the saucer lifted off and disappeared toward Switzerland.

It has everything you could want from a classic UFO encounter: eerie silence, a landed spacecraft, an apparent alien occupant, multiple photographs, and a mystery that continues bouncing around Facebook, TikTok, and the darker corners of the internet more than 70 years later.

But there’s a reason you probably aren’t seeing the whole story in those viral posts. And once you start digging beyond the photographs, things take a very interesting turn.

So did Monguzzi capture one of the greatest pieces of UFO evidence in history? Or is there something hiding just outside the frame? We dig into the encounter, the famous photographs, the strange little visitor, the worldwide press frenzy, and the part of the story social media conveniently tends to leave out. All that and more this week on Hysteria 51.

Sources

• Corriere della Sera – Mistero bUFO: “Ufo, falsi o veri? La storia del caso Monguzzi”
• https://misterobufo.corriere.it/2013/10/06/ufo-falsi-o-veri-la-storia-del-caso-monguzzi/
• Ufopedia – “1952/07/31 9:15, Ghiacciaio Scerscen, Lanzada, Lombardia, Italia”
• https://ufopedia.it/1952/07/31_9%3A15%2C_Ghiacciaio_Scerscen%2C_Lanzada%2C_Lombardia%2C_Italia%2C_UE.html
• University of Warwick – Fantascienza e ufologia nell’opera di Inisero Cremaschi, Gilda Musa e Giuseppe Pederiali
• https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/167606/1/WRAP-Fantascienza-e-ufologia-nell-opera-di-Inisero-Cremaschi-Gilda-Musa-e-Giuseppe-Pederiali-1967-1978-Camilletti-22.pdf
• Alfredo Panicucci – “Ha fotografato il marziano per diventare giornalista,” Epoca, Vol. III, No. 109, November 8, 1952
• Saturday Night Uforia – “In the News 1952, Part Fifty-One”
• https://www.saturdaynightuforia.com/html/articles/articlehtml/itn52part51.html
• INTCAT – 1952 Humanoid Encounter Catalogue
• https://intcat.blogspot.com/2012/08/intcat-1952.html
• Flying Saucer Review – Lou Zinsstag, “Monguzzi Takes Saucer Photos of the Century,” Vol. 4, No. 5, September–October 1958
• Podcast UFO – “A UFO Photographed in the Italian Alps”
• https://podcastufo.com/a-ufo-photographed-in-the-italian-alps/
• Italiador – “UFO: Lo straordinario caso Monguzzi”
• https://www.italiador.com/ufo-lo-straordinario-caso-monguzzi/
• Think AboutIt UFO/UAP Archive – “1952 Bernina ‘Saucer Photos’: The Monguzzi Hoax Exposed”
• https://thinkaboutitdocs.com/1952-bernina-mountains-italy/

Email your Contest Entries to:

[email protected]

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Hysteria 51, we’re cracking open the weirdest six-pack history ever forgot and then running for our lives from nature’s angriest lumberjacks.

First, divers recover a 162-year-old bottle of Guinness from an 1864 shipwreck, and scientists hope its remarkably preserved contents could help recreate the stout as it tasted in the 19th century. Because apparently archaeology has finally stopped wasting time on pottery fragments and started focusing on what matters: ancient beer.

Then we head to Cunningham Falls State Park in Maryland, where two teenagers were attacked in separate incidents by rabid beavers, one severe enough to require an airlift to the hospital. The animals later tested positive for rabies, portions of the park were closed, and humanity was reminded that the adorable little dam engineers have teeth capable of choosing violence.

So grab a pint, avoid suspiciously aggressive woodland rodents, and join us for shipwrecked Guinness, historic beer recipes, rabid beaver attacks, weird news, and enough poor decision-making by man and nature to fill a podcast.

Links & Resources

📌Crack an Old One

📌Beaver Munch

Email us your Contest Topics:

[email protected]

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if you died, got pronounced dead by doctors, buried by your family, and then showed up 18 years later with one hell of an excuse for missing Thanksgiving? Enter the bizarre true story of Clairvius Narcisse, the Haitian man who allegedly became a real-life zombie after being poisoned, buried alive, dug back up, drugged, and forced into labor.

We explore the terrifying history of Haitian zombies and Vodou, Wade Davis and his controversial search for zombie powder, and the surprisingly real science behind pufferfish toxin, tetrodotoxin, Datura, paralysis, and premature burial.

Could ancient knowledge of neurotoxins actually turn someone into a living zombie, or did science take a fascinating Haitian tradition and run a little too far with it? Plus, we examine the skeptics and competing explanations that make the answer considerably messier than "dead people don't walk."

Poison fish, stolen souls, questionable pharmacology, family land disputes, zombie plantations, and perhaps the worst return-to-work story in human history... All that and more this week on Hysteria 51.

Sources

• Wade Davis – The Serpent and the Rainbow
• https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Serpent-and-the-Rainbow/Wade-Davis/9780684839295
• Wade Davis – Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie
• https://books.google.com/books?id=tVxZAAAAMAAJ
• Wade Davis – “The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombi” – Journal of Ethnopharmacology
• https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-8741(83)90029-6
• William Booth – “Voodoo Science” – Science
• https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3353722
• Wade Davis – “Zombification” – Science
• https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3381089
• Roland Littlewood & Chavannes Douyon – “Clinical Findings in Three Cases of Zombification” – The Lancet
• https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(97)04449-8
• Harvard Magazine – “The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead”
• https://www.harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/zombie_1986_small.pdf
• TIME – “Zombies: Do They Exist?”
• https://time.com/archive/6697896/medicine-zombies-do-they-exist/
• PBS American Experience – “What Happened When Zora Neale Hurston Studied Voodoo in Haiti?”
• https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/claiming-space-when-happened-when-zora-neale-hurston-studied-voodoo-haiti/
• Zora Neale Hurston – Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
• https://www.harpercollins.com/products/tell-my-horse-zora-neale-hurston
• Library of Congress – “Does the Haitian Criminal Code Outlaw Making Zombies?”
• https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/10/does-the-haitian-criminal-code-outlaw-making-zombies/
• Chen-Yuan Kao & Takeshi Yasumoto – “Tetrodotoxin Intoxication: A Worldwide Problem” – Toxicon
• https://doi.org/10.1016/0041-0101(86)90067-8
• Jean Price-Mars – “The Story of Zombi in Haiti”
• https://sites.duke.edu/haitilab/files/2014/11/Mars-1945-The-story-of-zombie-in-haiti.pdf

Email your Contest Entries to:

[email protected]

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We had some life stuff get in the way this week so we are going back to where the Blurry Hysteria / Weird Wednesday episodes started. Back to regular episodes next week!

Original Description

It's Mad Blurry Hysteria Time on H51! This week Brent tries to sell us the Lizzie Borden house, David swears Nibiru is gone for good, and Chris flirts with Tom DeLonge on twitter. All that and more on this week’s Mad Blurry Hysteria!

News Stories Mentioned:

Axe Slasher BnB for sale

“Real Picture” – Tom DeLonge

Bye Bye Nibiru

Follow the Shows:

Mad Scientist - https://www.themadscientistpodcast.com/

Blurry Photos - http://www.blurryphotos.org/

Hysteria 51 - http://hysteria51.com/ 

Email your Contest Entries to:

[email protected]

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Shut the windows and change your mask filters, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon is prowling the podcast! A WWII-era midwestern mystery, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon held a small town in a gaseous grip of fear for 2 weeks with no explanation and few suspects. Panic took hold as locals tried to figure out what was happening in their small Illinois community. To this day, no one knows exactly who perpetrated a series of alleged gas attacks, nor has anyone found out why. Join David as he relates not only the timeline of the ‘phantom anesthetist,’ but also similar attacks in different parts of the country throughout the years. Were they connected somehow or just coincidence? He also looks at what police and scientists have found, and whether or not anything has actually been explained over the years. Don’t let the fumes get to you in this episode of Blurry Photos!

Music

Ghostpocalypse – 8 Epilog, Ghostpocalypse – 6 Crossing the Threshold, Some Amount of Evil, Malicious, Villainous Treachery – Distressed, Danse Macabre, Myst on the Moor – Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Sources

• Gas Attacks in America: http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2011/06/mad-gassers-of-america/
• An Overview: http://io9.gizmodo.com/did-mattoon-have-a-mad-scientist-or-a-mad-population-1510479349
• Vitelli, R. “The Mad Gasser of Mattoon.” JREF Swift Blog. James Randi Educational Foundation, 23 Apr. 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2016. http://archive.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1279-the-mad-gasser-of-mattoon.html
• Maruna, S. The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria. Jacksonville: Swamp Gas Books, 2003.
• Johnson, D. “The Phantom Anesthetist of Mattoon: A field study of mass hysteria.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 1 Jan. 1945, Volume 40, Number 1: 175-186. http://ergotism.info/en/hysteria/mass_hysteria_mad_gasser_jasp_1945_40.pdf

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, Hysteria 51 asks two important questions: How far is too far when protecting your lawn, and has your dog secretly been judging you this entire time?

First, a Minnesota man allegedly constructs a homemade spike strip packed with dozens of three-inch screws to stop neighborhood kids from biking across his grass. Because apparently a “Keep Off the Lawn” sign lacked the medieval menace he was looking for.

Then we travel to South Korea, where pet owners are turning to tarot readers to uncover their animals’ hidden thoughts, anxieties, health concerns, and possibly their opinions about that bargain-bin kibble. Dogs are selecting cards, humans are seeking answers, and somewhere a cat is refusing to participate because it already knows the future and finds it disappointing.

Join us for homemade lawn traps, psychic pets, canine emotional baggage, and another bewildering tour through the strangest corners of weird news.

Links & Resources

📌Lawn Care

📌Tarot Terrier

Email us your Contest Topics:

[email protected]

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:

[email protected]

Support the Show

Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1

Shop

Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!

https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.