On December 5, 1945, Flight 19, a group of US TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, disappeared in an area that soon came to be known as the Bermuda Triangle. This week’s quiz is on the paranormal.
Paranormal activity
1 Which two-word term, later adopted as the name for a popular ’90s rock band, was used by Allied aircraft pilots of World War II to describe UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena?
2 In 1991, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley made to the front pages of papers when they admitted that they were the main perpetrators of a hoax that they had carried out with a plank of wood, rope and some other implements. Which ‘paranormal’ phenomena was attributed to them?
3 The 1934 ‘Surgeon’s Photograph’ taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a British gynaecologist, is still regarded as the best-known picture of which creature or phenomenon? Hint: The photograph was later revealed to be a hoax.
4 Which famous Indian hotel is believed to be haunted by the ghost of Lady Garnett-Orme, who roams inside the premises in search of her murderer? Hint: The same hotel was the inspiration behind Agatha Christie’s novel The Mysterious Affair At Styles .
5 Peter William Blatty wrote a novel in 1971 loosely based on the real-life stories of two people: Emma Schmidt in 1928 and Roland Doe in 1948. The book was a reasonable success, but the film in 1973 was a monster hit, and Blatty won an Academy Award for his screenplay. Name the novel; the film had the same name.
6 Henry Newman, a writer for The Statesman newspaper in Calcutta in the 1920s, mistranslated a Tibetan word, making it ‘filthy’ instead of ‘man bear’ and then took the artistic licence in using a more refined word for ‘filthy’. Which ‘creature’ got its English name as a result?
7 Michael Thalbourne devised a test in Australia known as the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale. What is it supposed to test?
8 In 1996, the James Randi Educational Foundation launched the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, which offers a million dollars to anyone who demonstrates a supernatural or paranormal ability under scientific testing. What was Randi’s profesion and original claim to fame?
9 What is the name for the type of divination where adherents attempt to find groundwater, buried objects or ores usually using a Y-shaped twig or rod?
10 Peter Stumpp, also known as Peter Stub, was a 16th-century German farmer who confessed to being a serial killer and cannibal. Of which paranormal phenomenon is he regarded as one of the most famous and documented cases of?
Answers
1 Foo Fighter.
2 Crop circles, mysterious perfect circles in the middle of farmland.
3 The Loch Ness monster, Nessie.
4 The Savoy Hotel Mussoorie.
5The Exorcist .
6 The yeti became the Abominable Snowman, technically Metoh-kangmi , which was the Tibetan name that translates to Man-Bear Snowman.
7 Belief in the paranormal; the name of the test is inspired by the Biblical simile of Christ separating the people of a nation as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.
8 He was one of the world’s best-known magicians.
9 Dowsing. It was very common in medieval Europe.
10 Lycanthropy; Stumpp was known the ‘werewolf of Bedburg’.
Joy Bhattacharjya is a quizmaster;
Twitter: @joybhattacharj
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