Listener Feedback: Bats and Pyramids

by Brian Dunning
December 31, 2024

Every so often I like to answer some listener feedback, and that's what we're doing today. A lot of times there's something in the news and a lot of people will write, sometimes an episode reaches someone with topic expertise and they provide additional information that enhances an episode. So today I have a brain dump of the most useful of all such feedback since the last time we did this.

DB Cooper

First I'll give an example of some common feedback I've received over the past month or so that I've talked about before. For a short time, headlines were filled with yet another case of a famous old mystery having finally been solved — and as I've said many times, you should always approach these with extreme skepticism, and with a starting assumption that they are false. This time the headlines said the DB Cooper hijacking case had finally been solved, and many of you emailed me articles suggesting I update my old episode #552 with the solution. No. Solutions for the DB Cooper case make headlines every few years, just as they do for Jack the Ripper, Amelia Earhart, or the Voynich manuscript.

In this case, the claimed identity of DB Cooper was a suspect who had already been thoroughly investigated by the FBI and exonerated — as with every such case I've seen. The claimant was not an "investigator" as the newspapers called him, but a YouTube conspiracy theorist who claimed this suspect was guilty based on him having owned a particular parachute with a particular modification, just like the one DB Cooper used. It turns out to have been what was, at the time, the most-manufactured parachute in history with one of the most common alterations. Every recreational skydiver of the day was more than likely to have owned one just like it. So please, whenever you see headlines about a famous mystery having been solved at last — pretty please, be skeptical.

The Dover Demon

Episode #965 was on the Dover Demon, which frightened several teens over the course of two evenings, and which nobody else saw, either at the time or before or since. I got several emails like this, from listener Jeremy:

Hi Brian, I've read about a theory the Dover Demon could've been a Moose. I was curious what your thoughts on that are? Thank you.

I got quite a few such emails, some suggesting a moose, a greyhound, a mangy coyote, a deer fawn, a deflated balloon with strings, an owl, and others. Sure, anything's possible, but I had discussed this specifically in the episode. If the creature had actually been a misidentification of a normal thing that was actually there, and the illusion was so convincing that all four teens on three separate occasions drew nearly identical pictures of the same strange creature, then many other people driving those same streets at those same times over those two nights would have seen it too. None did. It comes down to being statistically nearly impossible that they actually saw anything at all.

As I concluded in the show, the only one of the possible explanations that has no serious problems is that these four teen acquaintances were not being entirely truthful.

Bats and Rabies

There was a massive amount of feedback to episode #962 on bats and rabies, perhaps the most to any episode ever. I'm pleased to report that a lot of it was from veterinarians and physicians who were universally thankful to me for putting out good information on the topic, and I'm always very gratified (and relieved) when that happens. Many passed along additional information, and I added a source or two to the listed references on the web transcript.

I tried to be very clear that this episode was very United States centric, since every region in the world has different wild animals, different policies, etc. etc. The basic conclusion made in the episode is that in the United States, deaths from rabies — whether from bat bites, dog bites, or other vectors — are statistically insignificant, so I said it's a problem you don't have to worry about. Especially from bats, as we have no vampire bats here.

But then, inevitably, just one month before the episode, a child in Ontario, Canada died of rabies a few weeks after a bat was found in their bedroom. No scratches or bites were seen, so no treatment was given. Then, just a few days after my episode, a teacher in California died of rabies about a month after trying to catch a bat in her classroom to toss it outside. It bit her, and for whatever reason — perhaps lack of concern — she didn't seek treatment.

So about a hundred thousand people emailed me one or both of these cases, sometimes telling me I should retract or update the episode, warning that it was much more common than I'd said — or, as one listener put it, than I had "falsely claimed".

This is what we would call the availability bias, or the hasty generalization. These are logical fallacies that lead people to conclude that an incredibly rare event is actually common, because several such events happened in close succession.

Until this recent 2024 death in California, there had been only one in the country since 2021. In most years, it happens to fewer than three Americans. In fact, in the United States, you are more than 200 times as likely to be struck by lightning than you are to catch rabies from a bat. So I stand by my description that it is statistically insignificant, and a problem you don't have to worry about.

A number of you asked a very interesting question: Although bats in the United States don't bite unless handled, might their behavior change once they become rabid, making them more aggressive? The evidence for this would seem to indicate it's a no, because it's such an incredibly rare event. However, it has been studied. When bats get rabies, they die within only a few days, which is part of why it's so rare. During their symptomatic final days, they appear disoriented and have difficulty flying. They may well be injured as a result of this. Their eyes take on a staring expression. (The bat picked up by the California teacher appeared to be dead or asleep or injured, and only bit her as she was tossing it outside.) Do they become more aggressive? I found the research to be mixed on this. Some say they do, some say there is no evidence of this. So we don't know.

The lesson is: Don't ever handle bats.

The Man from Taured

Episode #961 was about the Man from Taured, an urban legend that's a gross exaggeration and mistelling of an actual case where a guy arrived in Japan in 1959 and went on a little petty crime spree. The legend turned him into a trans-dimensional traveler with flawless documentation and identification from a country that does not exist, but then he mysteriously vanished, no doubt back to his own dimension. It would seem like a uniquely wild embellishment.

But no! Listener Thomas emailed me that the Man from Taured is not the only such story. There's a nearly identical story from Germany in 1851, about a man named Jophar Vorin who claimed to be from a country called Laxaria. When he too vanished, officials declared he must have teleported back to his home planet. And in 1905, a man was arrested for stealing bread in Paris speaking only an unknown language. Police eventually got him to say where he came from: Lizbia. While you and I might suspect he was trying to get out of his charge for being caught stealing by speaking gibberish, some who tell the urban legend say the only possible explanation is that he, too, was from another world.

So perhaps the Man from Taured is not all that unique of a story after all.

The Bosnian Pyramid

In episode #140, we talked about a Bosnian-American amateur pseudoarchaeologist named Semir Osmanagić, best known for his belief that a particular hill in Bosnia named Visočica is not a hill at all, but an ancient pyramid built by unknown ancient aliens who built it using a form of free energy. Of course any number of sciences have proved him wrong about the hill's origin over the decades, but he has managed to successfully fundraise and continue his diggings at the hill for nearly 20 years. The biggest problem is that real archaeological finds exist on Visočica, including the ruins of a Roman observation post and a medieval capital, both of which Osmanagić has damaged or destroyed.

That episode came out in 2009, so it was interesting to get this update on Osmanagić from listener Alex:

Our friend Semir Osmanagić is still there apparently and his outfit (still with the blessing of the Bosnian government) have spent a lot of time reshaping the contours of the hills to appear more pyramidic. It's like a big landscaping project now all for the sake of perpetuating a hoax. Legitimate archaeologists and universities have begged the Bosnian government to put a stop to Osmanagić as his activities continue to destroy legitimate historical remains in the area. So far the money he brings in seems to be winning out.

An estimated one million tourists have visited the site as a result, so the income to the local community is likely to override any government interference in the circus. Even tennis star and anti-vaccine wooist Novak Djokovic has visited, and speaks highly of its "energies".

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

Episode #550 tells the story of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, a case from 1949 where there was a mass public belief that someone was sneaking around pumping poison gas into the homes of people in Mattoon, Illinois. The basic conclusion was that it was probably just another case of mass hysteria, that may or may not have been started by someone actually smelling something weird after having heard scary things about poison gas having been used in World War II. Suspicions have long lingered around a certain Farley Llewellyn, sort of the black sheep of his family. He had been in and out of mental healthcare treatment, and lived in a trailer in his parent's yard, in which he kept an amateur chemistry lab and in which it's suspected he manufactured methamphetamine. He was reportedly antisocial, homosexual, and alcoholic. Listener Bill wrote in with this additional information:

Hi, Brian, I wrote an academic paper about this event and it was published in the Airway Gazette, the newsletter of the Society of Airway Management… I made several trips to Mattoon and talked to a VFW bartender who was the "local expert" on this event. He never mentioned Farley Llewellyn in any of our talks. However, after I learned about [Farley], I confronted him and he said basically he did not want to besmirch the Llewellyn name, so that prohibition may still be in effect after all these years. I don't remember your article mentioning that FL had a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from the Univ. of Illinois, a very fine school then and now.

Bill's bartender is right, of course. Llewellyn was certainly never arrested for anything, and it's never even been proven that there was any poison gas, or that anyone did anything to anyone.

So that wraps up another listener feedback show. If you've got feedback on a past episode, good or bad or indifferent, send it on in. You can always reach me directly at brian@skeptoid.com. Until then, see you in an alternate dimension!

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Leah Seneng (1964-2024), the teacher from Bryant Middle School in California who lost her life protecting her classroom from what appeared to be a minor danger. She taught her students art, and by all accounts, was universally liked.

By Brian Dunning
Follow @BrianDunning