The Catalonian tradition of including a man pooping in the Christmas nativity for good luck.
In the Catalonia region of Spain, in the northeast corner of the country, there is a Christmas tradition of including the statue of a man defecating in the nativity scene. The caganer (aka “the pooper”) is typically a man wearing the traditional Catalan clothes of a red cap, white shirt, and black trousers crouched down pooping.
While Jesus, Mary, & Joseph are at the center of the nativity scene the caganer is usually off to the side. He can also be moved around each day in a little game of hide and seek. The purpose of the caganer is that he brings good luck by fertilizing not just the land but also the future of the family who owns the nativity. It also shows that everyone is truly equal, that everyone poops. Caganer statues are available in shops around Barcelona and aren’t just limited to the traditional style. You can find caganers modeled after world leaders, celebrities, movie characters, the pope, Disney princesses, and more.
Today you can find a wide variety of caganers, from world leaders to comic book characters.
Learn more about the caganer tradition. Caga Tió, the “poop log” is fed and later beaten to produce gifts for children.
Caga Tió
The caganer isn’t the only Catalonian Christmas pooping tradition. The Tió de Nadal (aka the “Caga Tió” aka the “poop log”) is a wooden log frequently with a smiling face painted on the one end and little legs to prop it up. The tradition is that children will leave little bits of food for the tió during Advent and on Christmas Eve or Day they beat the log with sticks while singing. This ceremony induces the log, which is partially covered by a blanket, to poop little gifts for children (which have been hidden under the blanket). Once it has served its purposes the log is burned in the fire or thrown out.
Added info: The Catalonians have several traditions associated with pooping. One expression sometimes said before eating is “Menja bé, caga fort!” or “Eat well, poop hard!”
For hundreds of years Europeans used ground up Egyptian mummies as medicine and paint pigment.
The Arabic word mūmiyā (which later became “mummia”) was the name for the black sticky asphalt material that came out of the ground used as a sealant, an adhesive, and as medicine around the ancient world. Pliny the Elder and others wrote about the medicinal uses for mummia which became a bit of a cure-all for a range of ailments.
Unfortunately mummia the petroleum product looked like another black substance that was a byproduct of the Egyptian embalming process. As such the word “mummia” came to mean both the petroleum product AND the byproduct of Egyptian mummification, which was then even further confused as meaning an entire mummified body. This is how we got the word “mummy”. Unfortunately this series of mistakes also led to hundreds of years of cannibalism.
Cannibal Medicine
Since the petroleum based mummia was used both externally as a salve as well as ingested internally, the Egyptian mummy version of mummia became used in the same ways. The 11th century physician Constantinus Africanus even described mummia as a “spice” found in the sepulchers of the dead. Soon the human version replaced the petroleum version and people began to crumble & grind human corpses for medicine.
With the Crusades, Europeans learned of mummia and its medicinal possibilities. This significantly increased European demand for Egyptian mummies and by the 15th-16th centuries there was a thriving trade in mummies. Thousands of bodies were being exhumed and shipped to Europe to be turned into medicines. In 1586 English merchant John Sanderson shipped 600 pounds of mummies to London to sell at various apothecaries. This was fueled in part by orientalism, that Egyptian mummies had some sort of exotic ancient knowledge or power.
Europeans would consume portions of Egyptian corpses for help with general pain, ulcers, inflammation, epilepsy, cough, difficult labor, etc. – none of which worked, or if they worked it wasn’t the mummy that was the active ingredient. The practice was so common Shakespeare included mummy as an ingredient in the witches’ potion in Macbeth. Demand was so high that by the 17th century some mummy dealers were producing counterfeit mummies. Newly deceased people, animals, or prisoners who had been purposefully starved & executed, were put through a process to simulate ancient Egyptian mummies.
After a few hundred years of medicinal cannibalism Europeans began to express doubt as to the practice’s efficacy (and ethicality). The 16th century herbalist Leonhard Fuchs felt foreign mummies were acceptable but local ones were wrong. While doubts arose during the Renaissance in the 16th century it took until the 18th century age of Enlightenment for the practice to fall out of fashion. As consuming mummies slowly ended Egyptian mummies took on a new role: paint pigment.
Around the end of the 16th century artists began using ground up Egyptian mummies (mixed with other materials) to produce mummy brown, a shade of brown pigment. Apothecaries that were grinding up mummies for medicine began to grind them up for paint as well. As a paint it was good for shadows, flesh tones, and glazing. Artists Benjamin West, Martin Drolling, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Burne-Jones, Eugène Delacroix, and others all painted with mummy brown.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that mummy brown began to fall out of favor. That said as recently as 1926 C Roberson & Co. still sold mummy brown made with ground up Egyptian corpses. As mummy brown died out so too did hundreds of years of large-scale desecration of deceased Egyptians, using human beings for medicines and paints.
Added info: in another example of “what’s old is new again”, in 2024 some Sierra Leoneans were digging up dead bodies for their bones to make the highly addictive street drug kush.
According to folklore, vampires have an obsessive compulsion to count.
The idea of an undead creature murdering and/or consuming the living is found in a host of cultures around the world. Some of these monsters are cleverly cunning while others are mindless killing machines, but the general vampiric themes are shared. Our modern idea of vampires is largely based on the 1897 Bram Stoker novel Dracula, which in turn took ideas from Romanian folklore.
The Final Countdown
One curious component of vampiric folklore in Slavic down through Greek cultures is the vampire’s obsessive compulsive need to count things. Vampires were said to have arithmomania and needed to count things and actions. People took advantage of this by scattering seeds, salt, grains of rice, or whatever else they had in tiny sizes & large numbers, on the floor of their houses. An intruding vampire would then have to count each seed/grain giving the homeowner time to escape or, if it took the vampire long enough, the sun would rise and vanquish the undead intruder. Similarly it was believed that vampires would count all of the holes in a fishing net leading some individuals to hang nets by the entrances of their homes. It was also tradition to spread seeds/grain in a cemetery on the grave of a possible vampire so, upon rising from the grave, they would be kept busy through the night counting and staying away from the living.
Strangely this obsession with counting wasn’t always limited to vampires. In parts of Italy it was believe that witches had a similar affliction. On the Eve of St. John’s Day you could defend yourself from a witch by giving her a red carnation because she would have to count the petals giving you time to escape. In America some believed witches had to count the holes in sieves, leading some to hang them by their doors.
I Love to Count
Ultimately this compulsion to count things is the joke behind Count von Count on Sesame Street. He’s a vampire who loves to count and teaches children numbers. Like the Slavic vampires of folklore he is driven to count anything he sees. It’s a joke hidden in plain site.
In the X-Files episode “Bad Blood” a drugged Mulder defends himself against a vampire by throwing a bag of sunflower seeds on the floor.
Every baseball used by every major league team is coated in mud from the Delaware River.
One of the problems with brand new baseballs is that their clean surface makes them slippery to handle, especially for pitchers. Following the 1920 death of Cleveland Indian Ray Chapman by an accidental pitch to the head, Major League Baseball created rule 3.01c requiring umpires to “remove the gloss” from baseballs before the game, to help improve the pitcher’s grip. Teams tried a variety of methods but had mixed results. Enter Lena Blackburne.
Born in 1886 Pennsylvania, Russell “Lena” Blackburne was a baseball player, coach, and manager. In the 1930s while he was the third-base coach for the Philadelphia Athletics an umpire complained to him about this grip problem and how there wasn’t a good solution. Blackburne went in search of a material that could be applied to new baseballs and he found the answer in mud.
Lena Blackburne, inventor of baseball rubbing mud.Baseballs after they have been treated with Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud.
Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud
Blackburne collected mud from the Delaware River near Palmyra, New Jersey (coincidentally, close to where he lived). The exact location is a guarded secret. He took this mud to the Athletics clubhouse and they tried it on baseballs. It didn’t soften the surface of the ball, it didn’t discolor the leather too darkly, it didn’t smell, it provided grip, and the umpires approved.
Lena Blackburne began to sell this mud to teams around the American League – he refused to sell to the National League teams as he was ardent supporter of the American League. After his death in 1968 the Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud company began to sell to the National League and today every team in Major League Baseball uses the product on every baseball.
With some buckets and a shovel Jim Bintliff collects mud from the Delaware River to be packaged as baseball rubbing mud.
A literal interpretation of the Bible has some people handling venomous snakes as a testament of their faith.
Snake handling is the fairly obscure religious practice of holding a venomous snake / snakes as a testament of your faith in God. It stems from a literal interpretation of various Bible verses including Mark 16:18 where Jesus tells the disciples that the true believers “… will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” Practitioners of snake handling feel the Bible is inerrant and should be read plainly so, when it says you will pick up snakes, you pick up snakes.
The practice began in the early 1900s – exactly who started the practice of snake handling is debatable. One of its earliest proponents was George Hensley of Tennessee. He later created the Church of God with Signs Following, a Pentecostal Holiness church that spread around southern Appalachian states. Not every service features snake handling, but there is a box of snakes by the altar for when someone is feeling especially energized by the Lord. Signs Following churches don’t just limit their demonstrations of faith, their signs of expression, to handling snakes. Some members will also handle fire while others may drink poison such as strychnine.
Pastor Andrew Hamblin handling a snake at the Tabernacle Church of God, who later was raided by authorities for handling venomous snakes.
Once Bitten
Perhaps not surprisingly, people handling snakes sometimes die by snake bite. You might get by one or two times handling a snake safely without incident, but the more times you shake around a snake the probability of getting bit gets higher. Initially some outsiders felt there must be a trick as to why the snakes weren’t biting people: the snakes were milked before hand, or they were sedated in some way, etc. Believers said it was the work of God, but then deaths started to make the news.
The 1945 death of Lewis Ford as a result of handling snakes in the Dolley Pond Church of God with Signs Following put snake handling in newspapers around the country. During his memorial service six snakes were placed in the casket, including the one that killed him. The national spotlight on this fairly bizarre rural practice stopped the popular spread of these churches. Membership began to decline partially due to poor public relations, but also due to members dying … of snake bites.
Snake handling expert, and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga psychology professor, Ralph Hood estimates that almost 100 people have died in the last 100 years as a result of snake handling. Some churches will call an ambulance if you get bit and you then have the option of choosing medical assistance or riding it out. The bites are interpreted as God’s will. As such it was God’s will that Pastor George Hensley die by snake bite – same with Pastor Jamie Coots and then years later his son Pastor Cody Coots. There are only around 100 snake handling churches left.
Added info: Besides all of the obvious problems with this practice an additional concern is the treatment of the snakes. Inspections of these churches have found malnourished and sick snakes. In 2013 Tennessee authorities raided the church of Pastor Andrew Hamblin, confiscating 53 mistreated ill snakes. There are a host of laws in different states that ban the handling of venomous snakes but local officials tend to not prosecute offenders.
A CNN piece on snake handling and Pastor Andrew Hamblin.
Following through on all of Mark 16:18, Signs Following church members also sometimes drink poison.
Indigo was included in the color spectrum by Isaac Newton because he wanted the spectrum to have seven colors instead of six.
Isaac Newton’s pioneering experiments with light & prisms explained how white light is actually the combination of several wavelengths (colors) of light. He demonstrated this using a prism to break apart white light into its composite colors and then used a second prism to recombine those colors back into white light. When white light is broken apart the “spectrum” (a word Newton introduced to the field of optics meaning a “continuum of color”) has many colors. Exactly how many colors is open to cultural interpretation.
Isaac Newton refracting white light through a prism, demonstrating that white light is comprised of more than one wavelength of color.
Any Color You Like
Most human eyes are essentially the same which means that most of us are physically capable of seeing & differentiating all of the same colors. Where we differ is how we think about color. Your culture & language influences how you categorize colors.
The importance of, and names for, different colors varies from culture to culture. For example, the medieval English didn’t have a name for the color orange until the 16th century, so before then things that were orange were just called red (like “redheads” and the robin “redbreast”). It’s not that they couldn’t see orange, they just didn’t have a name for it because having two distinct names for red and orange wasn’t important until then. Russian, Greek, Turkish, and Hebrew all have two different words for idea of blue: one for darker blue and the other for lighter blue.
Hungarian has two different words for red depending on what you’re describing. “Piros” is used for red inanimate objects or red cheerful things, while “vörös” is used for red animate things or red serious things. Irish Gaelic has two words for the idea of green depending on where it’s seen. “Glas” is used for the green of plants while “uaithne” is used for the green of artificial dyes. The hue of a plant and a sweater could be exactly the same, but in Irish Gaelic different words will be used for the idea of green. In a nutshell: the names, categorization, and importance of various colors is entirely influenced by which culture we are a part of.
This cultural influence also applies to the spectrum of color and rainbows. Illustrations of rainbows contain discreet, countable, bands of colors. In nature however they’re continuous gradations of wavelengths/colors. Assigning a fixed number of colors to a rainbow depends on your cultural interpretation. In Islam, rainbows traditionally only have 4 colors corresponding to the four elements of water, earth, fire and air. Western culture should probably only have six colors, but we have seven because of Isaac Newton’s interest in mysticism.
Isaac Newton included seven colors in his spectrum because he felt the number seven was mystical & important. To do this he selected one tertiary color, indigo, to be included in his list of colors.
The Sacred Seven
As scientifically minded as Newton was, he also held occult/mystical beliefs. He believed in sacred geometry and the ideas of Pythagoras that there was an importance to the number seven. At first, after refracting white light, Newton recorded observing five colors (red, yellow, green, blue, violet). Then he recorded seeing six (he added orange). But to Newton six wasn’t as satisfying as seven. There are seven notes in the western major scale, seven days in a week, seven known “planets” in the sky (in Newton’s time), but only six colors in the spectrum of light? This wouldn’t do, so he added indigo.
The first six colors he observed are a logical western division of the spectrum: • three primary colors (red, yellow, blue) • three secondary colors (orange, green, violet)
Indigo is a blend of blue + violet and as such is the only tertiary color he included. It’s not that indigo isn’t part of the spectrum (it’s definitely there), but rather the problem is that it’s the only tertiary color listed because Newton shoehorned it in. Why indigo? Why not vermillion or cerulean? Indigo’s inclusion was an arbitrary choice driven by Newton’s desire to have seven colors instead of six so he picked one tertiary color but ignored the five others. Cultural influences pushed him to find seven colors instead of six (or eight, or twelve, or any other number). Centuries later we still divide the spectrum into seven colors because of Newton.
William Hunt (aka “The Great Farini”) was a well known Canadian tightrope walker & daredevil. He crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope multiple times performing different tricks. He eventually became an inventor & a (manipulative) talent manager as a safer way to make a living. In 1876 he invented a spring-loaded platform that could launch a person 30ft. He further developed this idea into the first human firing “cannon”.
14-year-old Rossa Richter, aka. “Zazel”, the world’s first human cannonball.
The Cannon
The cannons used in the human cannonball act are not true cannons, there is no gunpowder used to propel the performer. Some are spring loaded but many use compressed air which pushes a small platform up the barrel firing the person out while the platform stays hidden inside. Sometimes a little explosion takes place outside the cannon to create smoke for dramatic effect, but there is no gunpowder used inside the cannon.
On April 10th, 1877 a 14-year-old Rossa Richter (aka. “Zazel”) became the first human cannonball with a performance at the Royal Aquarium in London, flying out of Hunt’s new cannon invention. She was chosen because of her size and her circus experience. The Royal Aquarium was chosen because its management was looking to increase their profits, and it worked. The human cannonball act soon became integral to circus performances as it could bring in thousands of paying spectators.
Zazel gained world-wide fame, but little money, as the human cannonball.
The Dangers of Being The Cannon Ball
The upsides of being a human cannonball are usually a fun stage name and that you only have to “work” for about 5 seconds a day. Unfortunately the dangers are obvious and quite real. Today’s cannons can apply 3,000 to 6,000 pounds of pressure on the performer as they accelerate from 0 to 70+ mph into the air. This can put enormous G-force pressure on a performer, sometimes up to 9 times normal gravity. All of this is damaging enough on the human body but the greatest danger is the landing. After reaching heights up to 75ft in the air and coming down sometimes 200ft away from where they started, human cannonballs have to land in the target area – there’s no other option. Some use nets, some use airbags, but to miss the target is as devastating as you might imagine.
Anton Barker (aka. “The Human Rocket” aka “Capt. George Wernesch”) incorporated a trick where he was inside a shell which he would break out of in mid-air. On March 29, 1937 he was set to travel 84 feet but only went 64, crashing into the ground injuring his spine. Mary Connors wanted to break a record by being shot from one side of the River Avon and land on the other. On August 24, 1974 she failed to make it to the other side and ended up in the river. To make matters worse the rescue boat then capsized so she and the rescue team had to be rescued.
On January 8, 1987 human cannonball Elvin Bale (aka. “the Human Space Shuttle”) knew something was wrong the instant he was in the air. He tried to adjust for it in mid-air but he overshot the airbag by a few feet, landing on the ground feet first. He broke his ankles, knees, and his back in two places.
The Zacchini family performed for 70 years as human cannonballs.
The multi-generational Zacchini family produced numerous human cannonballs, performing for 70 years. Mario Zacchini ended his career as a human cannonball after he flew over a Ferris wheel at the 1939–40 World’s Fair in New York, but landed wrong breaking part of his spine, shoulder, and some ribs. On February 7, 1970 Emmanuel Zacchini and his wife Linda collided after being fired from a double-barreled human cannon. He fractured his spine while she broke her neck.
The Zacchini family performing different versions of their human cannonball act.
The Most Dangerous Act
Breaking bones is bad enough but fatalities are very common. One of the most cited human cannonball statistics comes from British historian A.H. Coxe. He estimates that of the 50+ people who have been human cannonballs, 30 have died while performing their act (almost all of which missed their landing). That’s a fatality rate of around 60%, making the human cannonball the most dangerous act in the circus.
Added info: Being a human cannonball is different than being a human catching a cannonball. Frank “Cannonball” Richards was a carnival performer famous in pop culture for taking a cannonball shot directly to the stomach.
Similar to the cannons used for human cannonballs, Frank Richards used a spring-loaded cannon instead of a real one fired by gunpowder. This slowed down the speed and force of the cannonball considerably … but he still took a 104lb cannonball to the stomach twice a day for years.
Frank “Cannonball” Richards taking a cannonball shot to the stomach.
The Simpsons parody of Frank “Cannonball” Richards taking a cannonball to the stomach.
Groundhog Day is halfway between the winter solstice & the spring equinox, and has its roots in Candlemas which has even older pagan roots.
Every February 2nd since 1887, people have gathered in the small Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney for Groundhog Day, the day Punxsutawney Phil (the groundhog) predicts whether there will be six more weeks of winter or an early spring. This idea of marking the transition between winter and spring existed long before Groundhog Day.
Groundhog Day sits halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
Before Groundhog Day
February 2nd sits halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The ancient Celts of Europe marked this solar event with a festival which, after the Celts made it to the British Isles, became the the Imbolc festival. Imbolc began at sundown on February 1st and ended at the following sundown on February 2nd. In Ireland it evolved to honor the pagan goddess Brigid. When Christianity took over Ireland Brigid the pagan goddess became Brigid the Catholic Saint whose feast day (conveniently) was also on February 1st. The church Christianized the following day as well and made February 2nd Candlemas, the day commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple.
Candlemas has its own customs. People take their candles to the church to be blessed, a reminder that Jesus is the light of the world. For some, Candlemas marks the end of the Christmas season and is the date they take down their Christmas decorations. German speaking areas of Europe also marked Candlemas as “Badger Day”, a folkloric day when a badger would help predict the weather. If a badger was seen in the sun on February 2nd there would be a “second winter”, ie. four more weeks of winter.
Punxsutawney
The tradition emigrated from Germany to North America where the groundhog was substituted for the badger (since badgers aren’t that common where these immigrants settled in the eastern United States – especially Pennsylvania). Similarly, where badgers weren’t common in parts of Europe other regional animals had been used such as foxes and bears.
The small western Pennsylvanian town of Punxsutawney has the most famous observation of this tradition, creating what has become the modern day Groundhog Day. The first “official” event was in 1887, where six more weeks of winter was predicted. Groundhog Day is presided over by a group of men in top hats & tuxes dubbed the “Inner Circle.” This amusing secret-ish society originally began as members of the Punxsutawney Elks Lodge, where the groundhog was not only use for weather prediction, but was also served as food at the lodge.
Phil the groundhog wasn’t a named element of the ritual until 1961. As the tradition goes Phil is the same groundhog year-after-year and is the only groundhog to have ever predicted the weather for Groundhog Day, on account of the “magical elixir” he drinks every year which adds 7 more years of life keeping him alive so long. Otherwise, a normal groundhog has a life expectancy of about 3 years (or up to 14 in captivity). Phil’s popularity as the prognosticator of prognosticators, the seer of seers, has led to many imitators.
Punxsutawney Phil tends to pick “6 more weeks of winter” and has debatable accuracy.
Track Record
Much is made of Phil’s prognostication track record. As of 2021, he has: • Seen his shadow / 6 more weeks of winter: 105 times (84%) • No shadow / early spring: 20 times (16%) • No record of his prediction: 10 times
Stormfax has said that Phil has 39% accuracy in predicting the weather, but the Inner Circle has said that Phil is 100% accurate. Any “wrong” predictions must have been Inner Circle error in interpreting Phil’s prediction.
Added info: the 1993 movie Groundhog Day was filmed not in Punxsutawney but in Woodstock, Illinois. The movie was so popular that Woodstock started hosting their own Groundhog Day festival. Meanwhile the popularity of the film took the Punxsutawney Groundhog Day event from attracting around 2,000 visitors to bringing in tens of thousands each year with the 2020 celebration bringing in an estimated 40,000 people (about 8 times the town’s population).
Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil are so strongly associated with the state of Pennsylvania that in 2004 the state created Gus the groundhog to be the mascot of the Pennsylvania lottery, the second most famous groundhog riding the coattails of Phil.
Santa’s reindeer are all female and possibly on drugs.
Our primary source of information regarding Santa’s reindeer is the 1823 Clement Clarke Moore poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas). As one of the most influential cultural artifacts regarding Santa Claus, the poem tells us that Santa’s sleigh is pulled through the air by eight reindeer. Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, is optionally added to the front of the team based on the Robert Lewis May 1939 story.
Who is flying the sled?
Reindeer are a species of deer and, as an Arctic and sub-Arctic animal, they are well-suited to assist Santa at the frigid North Pole (even though they are not naturally found at the pole). They graze primarily on lichen which is found a bit south of the North Pole. Their ability to see ultraviolet light, an ability shared with other deer, allow reindeer to spot food, predators, and mates more easily amongst the highly reflective snow.
Christmas greeting card from 1921 featuring Santa and his flying antlered reindeer.
In pop-culture Santa’s reindeer are almost always depicted as having antlers. Both male and female reindeer grow, shed, and regrow their antlers. Male reindeer shed their antlers around November once mating season has ended but female reindeer keep their antlers until late May (giving expecting reindeer mothers the ability to defend food sources throughout the winter). That said, castrated male reindeer will retain their antlers February or March. Therefore all of Santa’s reindeer are either females or castrated males.
As for Rudolph, who could confusingly be a female reindeer with a male name, his/her red nose could be attributed to the reindeer nasal system which contains nasoturbinal bones. This system of curled bones increases the surface area with thin tissue inside reindeer noses which helps to warm air on the way in and recapture moisture when breathing out. It may not be glowing red, but for ordinary reindeer their noses are an evolutionary feature that enable them to live in harsh winter conditions.
The Amanita muscaria, aka the Fly Agaric mushroom, is the iconic mushroom featured throughout pop culture, which is native to Northern Europe.
Magic Mushrooms
In any of the original stories of Saint Nicholas his mode of transportation would have been a horse or a donkey. The introduction of reindeer moves the story, and Santa Claus, to the frosty areas of Northern Europe/Asia. As for flying reindeer, the ability to fly is not commonly found in reindeer. One theory for this association comes from the shamanistic religions of these northern cultures.
Due to the historically migratory nature of Laplanders they did not have a regular supply of alcohol until the recent past. It would have been fairly cumbersome to move alcohol production on a regular basis, let alone the challenge of keeping the yeast alive & active in the extreme cold. So instead as a way to come closer to God, or just go out of their minds, they had Amanita muscaria (aka the Fly Agaric) hallucinogenic mushrooms.
On their own the Fly Agaric mushrooms are hallucinogenic but poisonous. To reduce the toxic poisonous effects, but still get the hallucinogenic benefit, you have to process them. Outside of just eating lichen reindeer will also sometimes eat the Fly Agaric mushroom. The people of these northern regions learned you could “process” the mushrooms through the reindeer. After the animals had eaten the mushrooms people would collect and ingest the reindeer urine to receive the psychoactive benefits of the mushrooms with less of the toxic effects. Interestingly they would also “process” the mushrooms through other humans, which has a long (and fairly disgusting) history of people drinking the urine of others to get high.
As for flying reindeer, when the reindeer are high on the mushrooms their movements are erratic (but not flying). When humans are on the mushrooms however, they have reported taking shamanistic journeys with winged reindeer transporting them to the highest branches of the World Tree. Less dramatically, sitting around high on mushrooms people may have thought their reindeer were flying before their eyes.
The lost Pennsylvania mining town with an uncontrollable fire raging underground.
For most people who have heard of Centralia they know it as a spooky abandoned ghost-town. They might even know it as the inspiration for the film adaptation of Silent Hill. But before Centralia was abandoned it was a normal small Pennsylvania mining town like most others in the area.
The abandoned Old PA Route 61, now known as the “Graffiti Highway”, before being covered in dirt by the state in 2020 to discourage visitors
The Fire
In the spring of 1962 one of the town trash dumps, which had previously been a strip mine, was set on fire in an attempt to clean it up for Memorial Day. The fire got out of hand and spread down into the abandoned mining tunnels below the town. The fire was not put out.
Given the estimated amount of anthracite coal under Centralia the fire could burn for another 250 years. Temperatures easily exceed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As the fire rages underground it expels gases above ground and causes the ground to shift both up & down. Even as roads buckled and sinkholes collapsed people continued to live in town.
The fire was relatively benign until late 1979 when it was discovered that the basement of Coddingtons gas station had a floor temperature of 136° F and the lot across from the station had steam coming out of the ground. The gas station was in the direct path of the underground fire that was aggressively spreading in multiple directions. In the 1980s hot mine gasses were spewing from the ground and into homes. Residents were sickened by carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
The fire has spread across multiple fronts generally moving southwest but there is an additional fourth front to the East.
Eminent Domain
In 1980 there were around 1,000 residents of Centralia. As the fire spread across multiple fronts, and the toxic conditions worsened, people began to move out in larger numbers. By 1992 there were only 5 remaining residents. What was left of the town was claimed by the state of Pennsylvania under eminent domain. Per an agreement with the state, as the remaining residents move away or die, the state demolishes their homes.
As of 2017 one of the few remaining homes left in Centralia.
Today there are still a few die-hard residents remaining. Centralia is now a grid of streets with no street signs, only four buildings, and a few cemeteries. Sidewalks are interrupted by the occasional cut-in for driveways which no longer exist. There are walkway stairs that go nowhere. You could drive through Centralia and not even notice. Nature has reclaimed most of the space that used to be people’s homes and businesses as the underground fire continues to burn.
Rather than being a freaky ghost-town, Centralia is a sad story about the end of a small town community. The documentary the Town that Was does a great job documenting the town’s history and its slow disappearance.
