Welcome to Weeklies, where I recap some of the weird links I’ve shared on the homepage over the past week!
Psychic Animals Get It Right At the Super Bowl
Did you catch Super Bowl LIX? Before the coin toss, I shared Coast to Coast AM’s news snippet about the number of animals who predicted the Eagles would win the Super Bowl. “If the various ‘fortune-telling’ denizens…are to be believed,” they wrote on February 7, “the Philadelphia Eagles have a decisive edge over the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s showdown between the NFL’s two top teams.” And decisive it was, as the Eagles won against the Chiefs 40 to 22, with the Chiefs scoreless until the third quarter.
While the Chiefs had the preternatural support of zoo animals such as Bubbles the Hippo and Thelma the River Turtle, no fewer than nine other named animal predictors foresaw the Eagles winning, along with a group of penguins and piranhas.
Does this prove the predictive power of animals? Maybe, maybe not.
Somewhat related, a recent NOAA study looked at one of the most famous fortune-telling events, Groundhog Day, and found that the top performing groundhog is not Punxsutawney Phil, but instead Staten Island Chuck, who “accurately predicted the arrival of spring 85% of the time.” Phil only manages to get it right 35% of the time.
What did Chuck say this year? Spring is coming early! (But Phil says six more weeks of winter.)
Astrologers Put To the Test
How about the predictive power of astrologers, those few who gaze at the stars and the movements of planets to (possibly) see the future? Psychology Today shared a recent study in which, long story short, astrologers “performed no better than chance.”
The study focused primarily on natal charts, or whether or not astrologers can match the time of someone’s birth to their personality or life events. They designed a quiz with the assistance of six astrologers, which involved matching natal charts to real people using information about their lives and personalities. 152 other astrologers rose to the challenge (and the hope of a $1,000 prize for success). So what happened?
“Despite their high degree of confidence in their performance, astrologers as a group performed no better than chance—that is, their distribution of results closely resembled what you’d see if they had all been guessing at random.”
The researchers admit their study is not definitive proof that astrology as a whole has failed, but it does provide “significant reason” to doubt it.
Social Somethings
Over on r/Paranormal, we have a couple stories of visits from the beyond. One poster recalls seeing her deceased friend at a San Diego hospital months after she passed away. Her friend had been a nurse there, and would sometimes take naps in patient rooms. One night, the poster walked by what should have been an empty patient room, only to see someone sitting on one of the beds. “It was her,” the poster wrote, “sitting on the side of the hospital bed in pink scrubs, ponytail, big smile on her face as if to say ‘hey, just checking on you all and hoping the night is going smooth.’ I called out her name and then she was gone.”
Another story involves the temporary return of a deceased pet on January 15, 2025. The poster claimed he saw, at first, what looked like “dust falling down from the ceiling.” Then, his brother noticed an odd smell that reminded him of their dog, Samson, who had passed away in February 2023. While neither saw an apparition or ghost of their dog, the poster claims they could clearly smell him, and that the smell was “literally…coming and going, as if he was walking back and forth,” at one point stopping in front of his brother. Eventually, the smell vanished.
Can animals visit us from the other side? I share a few stories of cats returning briefly to their owners here, and look at the strange quality of ghostly scents in my article Haunting Phenomena: The Smell of Ghosts.
Finally, here’s a short video tribute to David Lynch by Thomann Synthesizers, exploring his music and life as a “sonic visionary.” Rest in peace, Mr. Lynch!
Other Links of Interest
Nicolas Cage doesn’t like AI.
Are we ready for biological computers?
Google’s quantum simulator discovers new aspects of magnetism.
Biodegradable pig-based robots?
UFO fans increasingly active in Japan.
Light exists in “dozens of dimensions,” according to new experiment.
Are earthquakes responsible for South Carolina ghost sightings?
A strange shape was spotted at Loch Ness (first Nessie sighting of the year?).
That’s it for this week’s edition of Weeklies. Check the homepage daily for new news, or catch last week’s Weeklies for slightly older news!
