The Mandela Effect: Real-Life Alternate History

Do you remember the cute family of bears that appeared in children’s books and on their own television show in the 80’s, usually teaching their audience moral lessons. The Berenstein Bears, right? A growing number of people believe we as a population somehow slipped through a glitch in the matrix into a parallel dimension, with small changes to reality being apparent.  One such change is the cute family of bears, whom current history shows were called the BerenSTAIN Bears.  I know one letter isn’t that much of a difference, but in this case it completely changes the pronunciation of the name.  Growing up my brother and I were Berenstain Bear fans, regularly watching the cartoon, and owning several books.  I even had the little action figures and the house they lived in.  I was an avid reader, and cannot imagine how I read all those books and never noticed I, along with everyone I knew, was pronouncing the name wrong.  

Seems The Simpsons folks remember Berenstein Bears as well

This mispronunciation was brought to my attention by my brother, who learned of it while reading about the Mandela Effect.  Have you ever heard a news report of some public figure’s death, only to think, ‘hmmm, I thought they had died years ago,’? Online forums on sites such as Reddit.com are filled with comments from users who were bewildered to learn of Nelson Mandela’s passing in 2013, because they clearly remembered him dying while he was imprisoned in South Africa decades ago. Some fringe believers assert that our timestream has somehow blended into another, perhaps of a parallel dimension similar to our own, resulting in the occasional glitch where histories don’t match up.  

Mandela in prison

Another oft cited example of the phenomena is the outcome of the ‘Tank Man’ incident in Tiananmen Square, China.  The iconic photo below is known the world over, but what happened to the brave guy who stood up to the tanks? The answer from the timestream that I’m familiar with is that no one actually knows what happened to him, but that he walked away from the standoff.  It seems, however, that a large number of people recall seeing video footage of the tanks rolling over the protestor and killing him gruesomely.  The graphic images made for vivid memories for those who swear they saw the footage.

The phenomena referred to as the Mandela Effect was a theory brought forth by writer Fiona Broome. Discussing her memory of Mandela dying decades ago with others backstage at DragonCon, Broome realized she was not alone in those memories.  Her website features discussions on numerous examples of real-life alternate histories. 

I’m sure by now you’ve thought, ‘these people just remembered these things wrong.’  The human memory is a tricky thing, with complex chemical processes involved in storing information in the brain.  It is odd, however, that so many people have the exact same ‘false memories.’ We could almost chalk the whole Mandela Effect theory up to tinfoil hat enthusiasts having a little fun, if it wasn’t for the Berenstain Bear thing.  I’m positive the books I read were Berenstein, and that glitch makes me wonder if somehow these people who remember historic events differently may have experienced some sort of timeslip.  

Most of us believe Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in 1968 outside a hotel in Memphis, TN.  Part of the population may have caught a glimpse of a parallel world with an alternate timeline, because they remember him being shot by a handgun at close range.  King was actually killed by a sniper shot by James Earl Ray, or so they would have us believe (another conspiracy for another blog). 

The Mandela Effect is not limited to historical events.  There are many people who remember being taught to spell the word ‘dilemma’ with a N: dilemna.  ‘Definitely’ is another such word, with many folks remembering an A in the middle, ‘Definately,' and ‘Parmesan’ as ‘Parmesean’ (which includes me).  

As a matter of fact, all areas of memory are subject to the Mandela Effect.  When I heard ‘chartreuse’ a dark maroon color came to mind.  Imagine my surprise when I found out it is actually a bright neon green.  It seems I wasn’t alone in thinking of a maroon color, as many users commented on a thread about the subject.  Some neighsayers wanted to point to word association, saying we were confusing chartreuse with chardonnay, which is a deep red, but I can attest that wasn’t the case.  Then there is the paradox argument of how do we know colors look the same to other people, but that’s a whole other tangent.  

 

Maroon and actual Chartreuse

There are entire websites dedicated to humorous misunderstood song lyrics; a lot of people think Jimi Hendrix said, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy,” in "Purple Haze."  That’s not the case with Outkast’s “Ms. Jackson.”  While reading about the Mandela Effect I learned the song says, “I apologize a trillion times.”  I remember jamming out to this song back in college and singing “I apologize a THOUSAND times.”  Apparently so did many others reddit users.  It would seem that sometime since the song was on the Top 40 charts, a timeslip occurred or we meshed with another parallel reality where Andre 3000 and Big Boi apologized a trillion times.  I had to go back and listen to this song to believe they didn’t say a thousand times, like I remembered. 

This phenomena is also known as the “Alive Again Effect,” with people clearly remembering the deaths of people, to find out later they are alive or learn years later they have actually died (again?).  There are people who remember Henry Winkler passing away while Happy Days was still being filmed and the show dealing with the loss of the Fonz.  Neil Armstrong, Jane Goodall, Ed Asner, and Mohammed Ali are among those still living that many people have memories of reports of their deaths. Some people remember the televised funeral of the Reverend Billy Graham, although he’s still among us today.   A lot of people were shocked to learn of the death of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, because they were sure he had already been dead for years.  The same was true with Bea Arthur, Walter Cronkite, Jack Palance, and Larry Hagman.  Instead of remembering a false death, it seems that several people remember Patrick Swayze making a full recovery in 2009 after battling cancer.  In our current timestream, he passed away. 

A strange example of the Mandela Effect we found on forums is a large number of people who remember the Syfy show Ghost Hunters originally being called TAPS.  The acronym TAPS is the name of the group featured on the show, The Atlantic Paranormal Society.  All evidence (in this timestream) says the show was never called TAPS, although one user even recalled the lead investigators Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson having a conversation during an early episode about the name change.

The pop star we know as Katy Perry seems to have chosen the stage name Kate Perry in an alternate dimension, that some people must have slipped into.  Forum users were visibly shocked to learn that early in her career Katy didn’t use the name Kate, as they clearly remember reading and hearing.

A very large number of people recall a portrait of Henry VIII in textbooks and on documentaries, featuring him holding a turkey leg in his hand.  Skeptics argue they have confused the well-known portrait below with a caricature in an early cartoon, but believers do not accept that.  There does seem to be something clutched in his hand, but it’s obviously not the turkey leg that I, too, recall seeing.

Another aspect of the Mandela Effect has more geographical implications on different timestreams.  The locations and size of Scotland and Wells are remembered differently than they appear on our current maps.  New Zealand is also often remembered as having a significantly different location. 

Is the Mandela Effect simply a lot of false memories getting together on the internet, or something more? String Theory, with its multiverses, could explain how one reality could slip into another. Actually, String Theory and M-Theory could possibly explain away every paranormal event ever described, but that’s another blog as well (or perhaps a book one day).  If the universe is vibrating, perhaps examples of the Mandela Effect are some kind of cosmic feedback.  We would write all these examples and the many others out there off as false memories, if it weren’t for the Berenstain Bears.  I was always big on spelling and grammar, and I am sure I would have noticed the difference at some point.  If you have experienced any of these types of memories, or have your own examples, please let us know!

Links of Interest: 

Buzzfeed article on Mandela Effect with a lot of examples

Broome's Mandela Effect Website

Sin-Eating in Appalachia

The Appalachian culture is rich in history and custom.  Many beliefs and traditions, such as snake-handling Christians, are often viewed as strange by the mainstream.  When I started researching an ancient practice I had heard about, I was surprised to find that Sin-Eating had a not-so-distant history in Europe and right here in Appalachia.  The Sin-Eater was a societal outcast and would be summoned upon the death of a loved one, to come wearing their dark cloak and hood and cloak and eat a meal that had been placed upon the corpse, usually reciting whispered lines, thus absolving the deceased of all their worldly sins, thereby affording them passage into heaven rather than being damned to wander the earth.

 

Traditional Sin-Eater cloak

Throughout history many professions have risen from death rituals, including the undertakers and morticians of today.  In days of old, professional mourners were hired to wail and lament the passing of a family member, while others were hired to sit with the dead until the time of burial.  While sin-eaters were paid for their services, it was a very small amount of money.  There was a dark stigma attached to the sin-eaters, who were believed to carry the sins they ate along with them, the sum of which made them unclean and evil in the eyes of their neighbors who shunned them.  The question has been put forth of who eats the sin-eaters' sins.  It was commonly believed that for voluntarily taken the sins of others upon them, the sin-eater was damned to eternal life in hell.  

Tracing its origins to ancient Egypt and Greece, the practice of sin-eating also stems from the Catholic rite of absolution, the forgiveness of sins by a priest as near the time of death as possible.  In order for those who died unexpectedly to be absolved, sin-eaters became common in Wales and Ireland in the 18^th and 19^th century, with immigrants bringing the practice with them to the mountains of Appalachia. 

While the ritual of sin-eating varied by region, the sin-eater usually lived in a remote area away from others.  The practice was somewhat taboo, and few accounts survived.  In Appalachia, the sin-eater seemed to be an anonymous member of the community, his identity secret while he lived a regular life in his community.  The sin-eater would be summoned upon the death of a loved one, and would enter the home, where the family would have prepared a meal and placed it on the chest of the corpse, or passed it over the body.  Once the food was eaten and the sin-eater would say something to the effect of, “I give easement now to thee…and for they earthly sins dear woman, I pawn my own soul.”  His job done, the sin-eater left without saying another word, only to appear again when he was summoned.  

The practice seems to have died out around the turn of the 20^th century in Europe, though a handful of reports continued through the 1930s.  In America, tales of sin-eating persisted in North Carolina, West Virginia, and Virginia were claimed to occur through the 1950s, with alleged accounts occurring in remote areas within the last decade, although these reports have not been validated.  

An episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, titled ‘Sins of the Fathers’ featured a sin-eater. The 2003 movie The Order, Heath Ledger plays a priest who is a sort of sin-eater and can be found on Hulu. Francine Rivers’ 1996 book The Last Sin Eater was adapted into a film in 2007. While not the best movie ever made, it tells the story of a community of second generation Welsh immigrants living in the Appalachian mountains and a dark secret they share.  It is said to portray the ritual of sin-eating closely to what actually occurred in the mountains long ago. 

Overlook the foreign language dubbed over the dialogue and check out the ritual:

 

Like many old traditions, sin-eating seems to have died out in Europe and Appalachia, but whispering here and there allude to the possibility of sin-eating still being practiced in remote areas of the mountains.  If anyone has a first or second-hand account of sin-eating, please contact us!

Links of interest:

Weird but True History of Sin-Eaters

Sin Eaters Were Once Real

Funeral Customs - includes section on sin-eating

Watch The Last Sin Eater - complete movie on Youtube

Louisville Purge Frenzy

A tweet from a 16 year old boy led to the cancellation of a high school football game last night in Louisville, and had the metro police department on highest alert.  The Iriquoi High School student tweeted “Whos trying get a Louisville Purge Started With Me?” on August 10, and has since told sources that he didn’t think it would get taken seriously, until it did. The flyer that accompanied the tweet spread like wildfire on social media sites and the city of Louisville was a powder keg yesterday evening as residents anticipated the possible events that had been hyped on local media outlets.  The meme evolved to include warnings to residents of Jacksonville, Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, and Cleveland to be prepared to undergo a Purge in their cities as well.

The brilliant minds behind the Metro Purge forgot the apostrophe to make Louisvilles possessive. SMH

Word spread that participants were to go out and incite chaos, vandalizing, assaulting, and taking over the city.  A rough plan was formed that directed would be participants to congregate at the Louisville St. Xavier-Simon Kenton high school football game and at the Katy Perry concert on the state fairgrounds.  The problem with their lack of structure was that the concert wasn't until tonight (Saturday), so anyone who stormed the arena would have found it empty.  A report was made to the police of suspicious people being inside a large unnamed public complex some social media users believed to be the KFC YUM Center where Perry performed tonight.  School officials took the threat seriously enough to postpone the scrimmage football game until this morning. 

Soon after the announced Purge starting time, Twitter was abuzz with calls users heard coming over police scanners they were listening to via internet sites and apps.  Scanner sites were down sporadically from the overwhelming traffic. While many residents went on about their daily activities unconcerned, some residents were terrified, having been caught up in the frenzy of the hype.  This was spurred on by outlandish prank 911 calls, along with the usual Friday night in a larger city criminal activity being reported.  #PurgeLouisville and #LouisvillePoliceScanner were among top trending topics on Twitter throughout the night as users tweeted the entertaining dispatches they were hearing.  

A friend and I listened for a bit on a scanner app, and heard several ‘shots fired’ reports, and vague calls made about suspicious people in bushes and traveling the streets.  Among the more entertaining reports to come across Metro radios last night were a man in a panda suit beating on a woman’s backdoor, hipster teenagers breaking into the zoo and freeing a giraffe that was then seen walking downtown, a man stealing beer and a pickle, a dildo being thrown at a windshield in an intersection, and a shirtless black man raping a kitty cat.  Several prank callers recorded their 911 calls and posted them to the internet, like this one, in which the caller reports being ran off by “black men with afros in suits wearing masks yelling ‘the pool is closed because of stingrays infected with AIDS.’”  I would think the calls could be traced and would personally fear prosecution for filing a false police report.

Old pic that got recirculated last night

As entertaining as all these events were, what it says about our society is troubling.  The anonymity of the internet encourages these little pseudo-anarchist movements.  In this case, it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, but was fueled and the next thing you know people are in the streets of Louisville scaring other people.  Life is trying to imitate horror.  

The notion was based on the 2013 film that depicted our country in the not too distant future, where a new government sanctioned a 12-hour Purge for one night each year, during which all crimes were legal and emergency services were suspended.  There was a message in the film’s subtext, power out of control.  Would-be Purgers in Louisville didn’t seem to realize the activities they hoped to carry out were just as illegal as they always have been.  It almost seemed like Halloween came early this year. Well, maybe ‘Corn Night.’  There were numerous reports of people in masks or with their faces painted roaming the streets, sometimes supposedly hiding in backyards or banging on garage doors.  It wasn’t clear whether several reports of people seen in the streets with knives, machetes, hammers, and swords were valid or more pranks, but we’re betting on the latter.

 

Local media outlets reported heavily on the possible ‘Purge,’ but failed to deliver any substance.  Nearly all the related stories were carbon copies: tweet passed around, people afraid it will happen, quotes from random people on how they felt about it. They did nothing to quell the rumors, report on the lack of any real Purge activity, or put people at ease.  

There were many different reactions to the events.  Some social media users were actively watching out for threats, reporting in that all was clear.  Others made jests of the fiasco.  On a Reddit discussion about the whole thing, users discussed why people would make these prank calls, knowing resources would be pulled to check them out, while spreading personnel thin to deal with actual emergencies.  ‘Chootee’ said, “Some people in a scary situation try to be tough and make light of things. Some people don’t take things seriously, ever.”  User “Limetreehermit” replied, “Yeah, but I’ve got my pistol out anyway.”  Youtube was flooded with gag videos of 'Purging,' with tense introductions that led to someone cutting the tag off a mattress or kicking over a garbage can. Trollers took amateur footage of armored personnel carriers firing tear gas in Ferguson, MO earlier this week and claimed it had just occurred in Louisville.

Some criminal activity is to be expected in a city with a population the size of Louisville’s, especially on a summer Friday night.  Accidents, drunks, domestic incidents, occasional murder, a home invasion here and there;  that’s to be expected.  Twitter, 4Chan, and Reddit users commenting on the police calls referred to hearing someone being dispatched to the scene of a homicide and others followed suit.  One dead person doesn’t seem like much of a Purge to me, though.  

I have no doubt that one of the main reasons the ‘Purge’ notion spread so fast was a direct result of the recent events in Ferguson, MO after the shooting of 18 year old Michael Brown by a police officer, who’s name was withheld until yesterday, when heavy pressure from the online group ‘anonymous’ may have influenced officials into releasing information earlier than they would have, but more on that next time.  Calls for peaceful demonstrations there have been overshadowed by violence and looting.  It almost seems that there is a population among us who are just waiting on the catalyst to spark these moral panics in our society .

With the exponentially growing trend of ridiculous faux news being propelled without question by social media, I shudder to think what we should anticipate next.  Perhaps everyone will be watching the next meteor shower believing they’ll see Transformers flying down to earth.  No doubt everything will turn out okay, as someone will start a Twitter trend that the military-industrial complex has successfully mutated some turtles into teenage mutant ninjas who will save us from a resulting military state of martial law.

#SurviveTheNight

Links of Interest:

Live Blog user posts supposed dispatches

Broadcastify - online police scanner.

Audio of police dispatches, the bestiality complaint at 3:00

17 Bodies NOT found in Henderson, KY

Have we mentioned lately how much we hate fake television shows and news articles?  In case you’re new to the Medicine Show, let us quickly inform you that our mission is to seek out the truth and expose and shame those who would make a mockery of the weird and the paranormal.  Today we came across a fake news article blowing up our social media feeds, reporting that 17 bodies had been found in the Ohio River near Henderson, KY.  Because we have quite a few friends in Henderson and neighboring Evansville, IN and the high number of bodies it caught our attention.  A couple clicks later we confirmed that this was another of those fake articles from a satirical website.  Like the Paul Walker Death Hoax Hoax last year, such stories are often distasteful and idiotic.  Sadly, they are too often passed along as gospel truth with causal readers unaware that they have been duped.  In this instance, the faux article actually arose from a grain of truth, but the information in it is far off the mark.

These fake news sites post articles with supposed facts and quotes from what seems like officials to try and make them sound credible.  Fictional Henderson Police  Captain Owen St. Pierre was quoted as saying the remains could be the work of the country’s most prolific, active serial killer. It was reported that two of the recovered victims was found to have had extensive criminal histories, leading authorities to look into the possibility of a copycat of Dexter, the serial killer on the Showtime show of the same name who only killed criminals. 

 

What appears to be rescuers after a flood, posted by Empire News as in Henderson, KY

According to the fake article, a man walking his dog called the police saying he thought he saw someone floating in the Ohio River.  Police were said to have searched the area, finding 17 dismembered bodies in individual plastic bags in varying stages of decomposition.  Had someone dumped a number of bodies in the river at different times, allowing for the different amounts of decomposition, they likely would not have been found close together, as the river would have carried them away.  

Readers should have been tipped off that the story they were reading wasn’t on the level when they came across a quote from a member of the search and rescue team describing how they attempted to resuscitate at least one of the dismembered bodies.  “Kentucky law requires that an attempt be made to resuscitate if possible,” said Joseph Goldsmith, a member of the search and rescue team.  “I know it seemed to be a long-shot, given the body was in several different pieces, but they require us to make an attempt.”^[1] 

 

We noted that the author of the article was A. Michael Smith.  A link took us to his bio page, which was identical to that of Aaron Smith, who wrote the fake story about Charles Manson being paroled last month. Readers curious about the author will find that he claims to have been among the first graduating class of Harvard in 1642, cryogenically frozen, and brought back to life in 1981.  After the Manson article got some coverage, it seems Mr. Smith may have thought slyly abbreviating his first name would trick readers into believing what they were reading was truth.  Sadly, looking at our social media feeds, it seems to have worked to some extent.

The (arguable) grain of truth the story sprang from was the Actual recovery of a leg from the Ohio River, near Henderson, on Friday.  A barge’s crew members found the leg, with a shoe on its foot.  The local coroner’s office took custody of the leg, which was transported to the state Medical Examiner’s office in hopes of extracting DNA.  Local rescue teams, along with divers, searched the waters for more remains Friday evening, finding nothing. 

The moral of this story is, Check Your Sources!! If no local or major news outlets are covering the story, you’re most likely reading satire. And if it comes from Empire News it’s definitely for (poor) entertainment purposes only. Now we’re on to investigating more serious matters, such as Michelle Obama’s abduction by alien sasquatches.

Links of interest:

The Fake Empire News Article

Actual Article from The Gleaner, Henderson County newspaper about recovered leg

[1] At least 17 Bodies Found In Ohio River Near Henderson, Kentucky.  July 7, 2014. A. Michael Smith. http://empirenews.net/at-least-17-bodies-found-in-ohio-river-near-henderson-kentucky/