Pop Culture
What 1981 album by Ozzy Osbourne drew controversy for allegedly hiding satanic messages when played backward?
Diary of a Madman.
In 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin filmed a famous 59-second clip of a large, hairy figure walking away from the camera at Bluff Creek, California.
What is Bigfoot (sasquatch)?
This parasitic fungus, the star of The Last of Us, really does infect ants, hijack their behavior, and force them to climb plants before it sprouts from their heads.
What is Cordyceps?
In December 1952, a deadly smog of coal smoke blanketed this city for about five days and killed thousands of people.
What is London? (The “Great Smog.”)
This hockey-masked killer haunts Camp Crystal Lake in the Friday the 13th films.
Who is Jason Voorhees?
This 1990s TV show featured Mulder and Scully investigating unexplained phenomena.
What is The X-Files?
According to legend, the 13th child of a Mrs. Leeds was born normal, then transformed into this creature that haunts the New Jersey Pine Barrens
What is the Jersey Devil?
Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that makes infected rodents lose their fear of cats, is spread to humans through contact with the feces of this common pet.
What is a cat?
In July 1518, hundreds of people in this Alsatian city reportedly danced for days without rest in an event called the “Dancing Plague.”
What is Strasbourg?
This burned killer in a striped sweater and a bladed glove attacks teenagers in their dreams on Elm Street.
Who is Freddy Krueger?
In this 2022 indie hit by developer poncle, you pick a weapon and survive 30 minutes against swarms of monsters, with attacks that fire automatically.
What is Vampire Survivors?
In Navajo tradition, these dangerous shape-shifting witches are said to wear animal skins.
What are skinwalkers?
This “brain-eating amoeba,” Naegleria fowleri, typically enters the body through this part of the face.
What is the nose?
In 1950, the U.S. Navy sprayed Serratia marcescens bacteria over this California city to test its vulnerability to a biological attack, without telling residents.
What is San Francisco?
To create Michael Myers’ blank white mask for the 1978 film Halloween, the crew spray-painted a mask of this actor’s face.
Who is William Shatner? (It was a Captain Kirk mask from Star Trek.)
This 1999 found-footage film was made for a reported $60,000 and grossed nearly $250 million, helped by a marketing campaign that convinced many viewers its three student filmmakers had really vanished in the Maryland woods.
What is The Blair Witch Project?
This Wisconsin town, an hour and a half away from Madison, is said to be haunted by a wolf-like creature that walks upright and stalks passers by.
What is Elkhorn?
Fatal familial insomnia is an inherited prion disease in which patients progressively lose the ability to do this, eventually dying.
What is sleep?
In 1979, an accidental release of anthrax spores from a military facility in this Soviet city killed at least 66 people. The USSR blamed contaminated meat until 1992
Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg)?
In this 2002 zombie horror film, filming was frequently delayed because the dog actors would lick their make up off between takes.
What is Resident Evil?
This 1998 Japanese horror film, based on a Koji Suzuki novel, features a vengeful ghost named Sadako who crawls out of a TV. It kicked off the J-horror boom and inspired a US remake.
What is Ringu (The Ring)?
This city, sunken in the South Pacific at the coordinates 47°9′S 126°43′W, is where Cthulhu lies dreaming, according to H.P. Lovecraft’s 1926 story “The Call of Cthulhu.
What is R’lyeh?
This type of bacterium, the cause of the 14th-century Black Death, is still found in rodents in the American West.
What is Yersinia pestis?
This 1957 accident at a British plutonium-production reactor, the worst nuclear accident in UK history, released radioactive iodine-131 over the countryside.
What is the Windscale fire?
In Alien (1979), most of the cast weren’t warned how much blood would spray in the chestburster scene, and this actress, who played Lambert, was drenched and her horrified reaction was real.
Who is Veronica Cartwright?