Do you suffer from insomnia or sleep apnea? Do you wake up exhausted and lethargic after what you thought was a good night's sleep? Or have you ever suffered sleep paralysis? You may be the victim of a boo hag! This malevolent spirit that looks like a human, but has no skin, sneaks into your bedroom through an opening as small as a keyhole. A boo hag will then sit on you and steal your life force, or maybe even your blood, as you lay there helpless. 

The legend of the boo hag comes from the Gullah Geechee folk of South Carolina's coastland, so you might guess that keeping the boo hag away is a matter of painting your porch haint blue. There are other ways to deflect or defeat this terrifying monster, as Dr. Emily Zarka explains, along with the history of the boo hag, in this episode of Monstrum. 

You might be surprised at how many recipes are etched into gravestones. If someone was known for a wonderful dish they made, it may as well be documented for posterity. A few years ago, Rosie Grant went viral for her hobby of seeking out and making the food from recipes found on gravestones. She began when she was doing an internship in a cemetery, and developed the habit of taking the finished product to eat beside the recipe gravestone. Four years later, Grant has a cookbook coming out. 

One of those recipes is labeled "A Good Carrot Cake," carved into the gravestone of Christine W. Hammill. But Christine is still with us; she and her husband just wanted to designed their gravestones themselves, and so had them made ahead of time. The family carrot cake recipe is in the book, but you can find it at the Instagram page ahead of time. Click to the right to read the story, and see the awesome epitaphs on the front of the stones.

When Crosby, Stills, and Nash performed their song "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" at Woodstock in August of 1969, it was only the second time they had performed together in front of an audience. Their slot was in the middle of the night, but that audience was a half million people. No wonder they were scared. 

The song was written by Stephen Stills about his girlfriend at the time, Judy Collins. He had been writing down his thoughts about her in snippets of poetry for months, as the relationship deteriorated and he contemplated losing her (spoiler: he did). The various snippets of poetry inspired different tunes, but none of them had enough to make a complete song, so Stills mashed them all together. That's why "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" indeed sounds like a collision of four songs. Yet they were four really good tunes, and the completed love song became a staple of FM radio. Read how and why the song came about, and how Collins responded to it at Dangerous Minds. 

Do you remember when 10-year-old Keith Byrne and 13-year-old Noel Murray ran away from their homes in Dublin, Ireland, and managed to get to New York City by themselves? The boys were outside playing, and Keith's mom warned them not to go far, because dinner would be ready soon. Instead, Keith and Noel decided they would go to America and meet their favorite TV character- B.A. Baracus of The A-Team, played by Mr. T. See, this happened in 1985. 

The boys managed to hop trains without being confronted for their tickets. They blended in with crowds as best they could. They even bluffed their way through security at Heathrow Airport! Yes, security measures were very different in 1985, and free-range children were common. But Keith's and Noel's quick thinking and brazen confidence were definite outliers in any era. They made it all the way to New York City before anyone thought they might be out of place- and were discovered only because of their Irish accents. Their adventure became an international news sensation. However, they never got to meet B.A. Baracus. Read how they got away with it at Utterly Interesting. 

Monkeys are cute and resemble humans, but they do not make good pets. Sadly, some monkeys become adults before their human owners will admit that. What happens then? Monkeys raised in captivity do not know what they need to know to survive in the wild, much less become part of a monkey community, as in a zoo. The best they could hope for is to live in a shelter that takes their wild nature into account, like Animal Tracks, the same shelter where Frank the Armadillo lives. 

Tara is an aging Hollywood actress, relinquished when her animal casting company moved away. Why didn't she go with them? I suspect it's because Tara was 25 years old and no longer as photogenic as she once was. She is 30 now, and still feisty, but totally comfortable with humans. Her monkey companion Marley was raised as a neutered pet. That means his social status among monkeys is pretty low, but he's doing okay at the shelter with Tara. 

I remember the night I saw the 1978 movie Game of Death. It was at a drive-in theater, and when I saw the beginning of a fight between Bruce Lee and an opponent who was over seven feet tall, it took my breath away. It was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who I'd heard of, but didn't realize how big he was.

Bruce Lee had died in 1973, but his relationship with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went back to 1968, when the UCLA basketball star was known as Lew Alcindor. The NCAA banned the dunk in 1967, and Alcindor decided to perfect the skyhook instead. He sought training in martial arts to improve his basketball skills. A friend suggested he study under Bruce Lee, who Alcindor only knew as the actor who played Kato in The Green Hornet. Lee didn't know Alcindor at all, but when they met, Lee was intrigued by the possibility of learning to fight an opponent that was seven feet two inches tall. So he agreed to teach Alcindor. They became friends as well as a teacher and student, and Alcindor even babysat for Lee. Read about the martial arts star and the basketball standout who taught each other at LitHub. -via Damn Interesting  

It's almost October, the time of the year when you want to roam through cemeteries until dark, maybe to impress someone on your first date. Don't ask me why; I've just heard that some people do that. One of them is the YouTuber behind Dime Store Adventures, who lays out what seems like a scavenger hunt for graveyard enthusiasts. Among the seven unusual things you can learn to identify is the Sears headstone. Yes, Sears and Roebuck sold everything at one time or another, and a hundred years ago you could get a gravestone by mail order. Even before that, you could get a gravestone made of zinc! These "zinkers" are still out there, which says something about their longevity. Once you learn how to identify them, you'll see them everywhere. Armed with the knowledge in this video, you'll have a lot more fun in a cemetery. -via Laughing Squid 

No one likes to confront the fact that we waste a lot of food. In the US, wasting food is a given, even though we feel bad tossing out what we've paid for but didn't eat. After all, your parents or grandparents couldn't afford to waste food during the Great Depression or World War II. In Japan, that sentiment entered pop culture in the 21st century. When you see food items on Japanese TV, it will often come with a caption beneath that says "The staff ate it later." This became a thing in response to viewer complaints about the production wasting food. 

But is it true? We can imagine that it depends on the show and on how the food was used. Over the last ten years or so, various interviews have given conflicting answers. While the caption may head off complaints, its very commonality makes people suspect that it isn't true, and besides that it detracts from the drama of the show. Then again, TV crews have the same shame about wasting food that the general population has. Read about the ethics of food shown on Japanese TV at Wikipedia.   -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: 逃亡者 (ja:利用者:逃亡者)) 

There are some pretty famous cases of movies redoing the plot of an earlier movie, or copying characters and details. But if your movie takes just a detail here and an idea there, we often won't notice. That goes double if your movie isn't a big hit. If you don't see a lot of movies, you'll miss out on some of these "twin" plots, and if you see every movie, you might not be able to keep up with them all. For example, I never saw Up but I saw Gran Torino. I know, that's opposite most people's experience.  But someone, somewhere, will notice how two movies are similar in one way or another. 

Some of these are surely coincidences, while others are simply re-using an idea that worked out before, and some are blatant rip-offs. Check the list of 34 instances at Cracked, because you certainly haven't noticed all of these. 

The Toba supereruption, in what is now Indonesia, took place 74,000 years ago, and is the largest volcanic eruption of the past million yers. It ejected so much material that it blocked sunlight for years. Humans were spread through the world by then, but they left no documentation. Genetic studies hint that human population plunged around that time, but we don't yet have the evidence to ascribe their dwindling numbers to Toba. How could we get such evidence? 

Jayde N. Hirniak is an anthropologist studying just that. The materials thrown from a volcano are known a tephra, and the kind of tephra that is thrown the furthest is cryptotephra. It's not called that because it is legendary, but because it is so small that it's hard to find. Cryptotephra is microscopic shards of glass. Its exact chemical makeup can identify which eruption it came from. Hirniak looks for cryptotephra at archaeological sites that may have been active during the Toba event. The archaeological evidence could tell us whether that society collapsed afterward, or moved away, or changed some other way. Read up on what this research has found so far at the Conversation. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: USGS Volcanic Hazards Program, CC BY 4.0) 

We dream about time travel, because it would be so cool to travel back and right some of the wrongs of our history. Or forward, so we can know what to expect in the future. But being able to do those things warps our understanding of time itself and can lead to an existential crisis. Dorkly places this discussion in a video game, which is pretty safe because it has a goddess book, a guitar as a weapon, goblins, and other implausible elements. But the questions about time travel are universal. If you must go back in time to save the world, did the world really ever need saving? If you then return to your time, you would be the only one to know what could have been. Or were you always predestined to travel back in time and do whatever you did? We've heard this discussion before, but rock-eating Greg and other Greg make it funny.  

This story is only three minutes; the rest is an ad. 

You might actually be familiar with Ol' Rip the Horned Toad and not realize it. In 1897, the people of Eastland County, Texas, placed a time capsule in the cornerstone of the courthouse. County clerk Ernest Wood placed a horned toad into the time capsule to test the common idea that these creatures could survive years in hibernation. Now, be aware that a horned toad, also called a horny toad, is not a toad at all, nor is it a frog, but a Texas horned lizard. That distinction didn't reach everyone. 

More than 30 years later, in early 1928, the time capsule was retrieved and opened. The horned toad was still alive! Named Ol' Rip after the character Rip Van Winkle, the horned toad was taken on tours, featured in movies, and even presented to the US president before he died a year later. Even then, Ol' Rip's fame endured, as his remains were stolen, twice. 

But what really made Ol' Rip a legend for the ages was that he inspired Looney Tunes writer Michael Maltese to craft a story about Ol' Rip, now definitely a frog, in a 1955 cartoon titled One Froggy Evening. The frog in the cartoon wasn't named, and was later christened Michigan J. Frog. The entire cartoon is available online (thanks, rcxb!), and your memory will be jogged by this clip. You didn't realize that cartoon was inspired by a (supposedly) true story, did you?

Read the story of Ol' Rip the Horned Toad at Wikipedia. -via a comment at Metafilter 

(Image credit: ToddKent) 

It's a typical story. A bathroom leak leads to an emergency repair, and that's when you notice all the other parts of the room that are crumbling with age or not working as well as they should. This bathroom needs a complete remodel! Can you do it yourself? Maybe, but it's going to be a major learning experience. The video No Project Without Drama is described as "A bathroom renovation in five acts, with plenty of sweat, pain, and pride" (according to Google Translate). This is the way the emotions during such a project would be rendered on a theatrical stage. If you've ever remodeled a bathroom, or any room for that matter, you will understand the turmoil. 

Sure, it's ad, from German fixture company Hornbach. I'm planning a bathroom remodel myself, but it certainly won't be DIY, and I'm dreading taking the first steps. I know it will be highly dramatic, even when someone else is doing the work. -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: LazyAmbassador2521)

Some pets, mainly the small ones, can find a hiding place you would least suspect and you won't find them for hours. Some take advantage of their natural camouflage and can hide in plain sight. But most dogs and cats haven't got a clue about hiding from you. Some use the logic, "If I can't see you, then you can't see me." Others believe that if their face is hidden, that's good enough. It could be wishful thinking, or maybe they just figure their humans are idiots. This dog thinks he's found the perfect hiding place, but he can't help but keep an eye on the humans he's playing hide and seek with. Sure, puppy, we're impressed.

(Image credit: DontFearZombies) 

Have a laugh with images of 50 pets hiding from the lawnmower, the vet, or thunder, or just playing around and thinking they're invisible in a ranked gallery at Bored Panda. 

The village of Sainte-Mère-Église lies near the northern coast of France. Their picturesque church is hundreds of years old. Look closely at the image above, and you'll see something strange on the side of the bell tower. That's a mannequin, affixed to the outside of the church, to commemorate the D-Day invasion. See, Sainte-Mère-Église was the first town liberated by the Allies. 

On June 6, 1944, Allied forces converged on the beaches of Normandy, while paratroopers dropped a bit further inland. Private John Steele was one of those paratroopers, an American in the 82nd Airborne Division. His unit's mission was to capture bridges near Sainte-Mère-Église, but German forces were attacking, so they deployed early. That put them directly over the town instead of in the fields surrounding it. German occupiers shot paratroopers as they descended, and Steele was shot in the foot. It was quite a while before he reached the ground, though, as his parachute became entangled on a sculpture on the church building. Steele was a sitting duck in that position, so he did the only thing he could- he played dead, for hours, before the Germans came to retrieve his presumably dead body. Read the story of John Steele and the church at Sainte-Mère-Église at Amusing Planet. 

(Image credit: Elliesram13)