Holy Shit, Krampus!

Do you ever feel like there's something missing in the way we teach our children how to celebrate Christmas? We tell them that, if they behave and stop looking through daddy's browser history, Santa Claus will come to town and give them toys and presents. If not, they get a lump of coal.

And some light trauma.

I mean, either way they're getting something, right? And let's be honest, a lump of coal ain't half bad. Just wait until they learn you can set it on fire. That's gonna lead to some entertainment. And possibly tragedy.

The story is incomplete. The good news is that the rest of the story is already out there. In Europe. Alpine Europe. You know, like Bavaria, Austria, and Croatia. They have a figure who works with Santa Claus, taking up the much needed role of the menacing bad cop. And if history has taught us anything, it's that Austria knows how to produce menacing figures.

This particular menace is known as Krampus, and is utterly terrifying.

Light trauma is for pansies.

In contrast to Santa Claus, Krampus visits the home of naughty children to bring them no gifts but torment and suffering to match their misdeeds. The more you learn about him the more you wonder how anyone in Alpine Europe makes it to adulthood without deep psychological scarring.

First of all, Krampus brings a birch switch with him to whip the mildly naughty kids into shape. Corporal punishment. That's not so bad, right? And it's not! At least, not until you learn that the birch is a common phallic symbol in folklore. So in a subtle way, our story begins as a cautionary tale about a demon who will straight up dickwhip your children if they talk back to you.

While making that face.

That's just the kind-of-naughty kids. If you were really bad, your Christmas treat was to be picked up by Krampus' freakishly long, eldritch tongue, slapped into a basket, and carried off either to his lair or to Hell itself, where undisclosed horrors would be visited upon you in retribution for the grief you've caused your parents.

Gosh, Timmy, we'd love to help, but you've been kind of a dick this year...

In case you're wondering (a) where those horrifying real-life images came from and (b) whether this custom of arcane yuletide terror is a mere cautionary tale, I can answer both of those questions at once. Every year, as part of the Christmas Season, young men in Alpine countries dress up as Krampus for a festival that consists mainly of said men scaring the shit out of every child they can find.

So the next time you find that your little boy or girl is unresponsive to the idea that Santa won't bring them exactly what they want if they continue being awful, consider sweetening the pot with a casual mention that the fury of a horned, cloven-hoofed, long-tongued demon is the alternative.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

And holy shit.

Holy Shit, Ghosts!

Where do ghost stories come from if logic and a heap of scientific evidence tells us that ghosts can't possibly exist? If we rule out the conjurers and mediums who swindle people with parlor tricks, we still have stories of people sitting in their houses at night when a cold feeling of dread sweeps over them and they catch a glimpse of something that just shouldn't be.

Do you know what else causes a cold feeling of dread? Carbon monoxide. You know, the stuff in car exhaust and natural gas leaks that can easily kill you? Apparently, lower doses of CO start the process by giving you the willies. You get nauseous and your body essentially senses that something is amiss. Unfortunately, many people assume their bodies are telling them supernatural secrets, when all it's really trying to say is, "Change the batteries in the CO detectors, dumbass!"

"Sooner would be better!"

Does that seem like a bit of a tenuous connection? How about this: later stages of carbon monoxide poisoning introduce awesome new symptoms like headaches, respiratory arrest, and visual or auditory hallucinations. Also death. That's an important one.

So to recap: people who report ghost sightings very commonly report feeling a sense of dread, then later seeing a terrifying apparition. Both of these events, in the correct chronological order, are symptoms of CO poisoning.  Don't think I'm making this up, either. It's nothing new. Scientists and skeptics have been suggesting this explanation for ghost stories since 1921. The explanation just doesn't spread as easily as a ghost story would, because chemistry is boring and hard while ghosts are scary and awesome.

The second, and infinitely more terrifying (though less lethal) explanation, is your brain turning on you due to miscommunication. One common type of ghost sighting involves waking up utterly unable to move and sensing (or seeing) a dangerous presence in the room. This is a common enough story to have myths based on it.

The reason it happens? Well, basically, you woke up wrong. When you wake up at exactly the wrong part of a REM cycle, there's a chance that the part of your brain responsible for waking up your consciousness will partially function, while the part responsible for waking your motor functions will be caught unawares. Since your consciousness is only kind of awake, you still half-dream -- and since your brain is programmed to be alert to danger when you're vulnerable, your half-dreams tend to be nightmares.

The worst part? Being partly conscious can convince you, even after you're fully awake, that the whole experience was 100% real. So for the rest of your life, you could remember very clearly being visited by this:

Oh hi.

Holy shit.