Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

“I’m completely stunned. Please, help me find out if this is true. Note: image taken on the Pinheiros highway, near the Joao Dias bridge”
[Sao Paulo, Brazil].

Skeptics would immediately think this is nothing more than a small guy in a costume, but careful viewing of the video reveals the head of the strange figure is actually on fire.

We blogged about it in Brazil, and soon Marcus Pontes came with an explanation:

“Some years ago a Brazilian artist wanted to make a movie about the curupira [a folkloric figure in Brazil], and he flooded the internet with videos and other false information to give the movie project some urban legend aura.”

Soon afterwards Marcus pointed a link to the original blog where the artist publicized his viral creations: http://neminventonemaumento.zip.net/

Alexandre Camargo also told us that

“It’s really a digital work: the ‘creature’ is the main character of a short horror film produced by Trattoria di Frame (in São Paulo), where I worked some years ago. The designer is the artist Eduardo Schaal.”

Check some more nice images and videos of the creature after the jump

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Popularity: 11% [?]

Terrifying! Watch as the Colombian news program presents the ghost video, complete with a horror movie soundtrack! They also interview a local Catholic bishop, who says matter-of-factly that it’s just a “parapsychological phenomena!” — Christians do not, or at least should not believe in ghosts, but paranormal is kind of OK. They also interview a spiritualist lady who tells us something we could never have imagined by watching horror movies or hearing scary stories: “The little girl [ghost] doesn’t realize she is dead”. The Others!

On the following day, the TV news followed the popular comotion and presented further stories and claims:

But, seriously, what was that thing in the video? As anyone may test with their cell phone cameras, filming a bright light source may produce a lens flare, that’s always pointing to the light source and whose movement is related to the movement of the camera. Exactly what happens in the Colombian “ghost of Cucuta” video.

And, as we could expect, a rival TV news program also debunked the claims:

Popularity: 7% [?]

Photo of an one year old girl taken with a new digital camera. There were only two people in the house when the picture was taken, the girl and her mother behind the camera. But when they looked at it, this unknown person was by the side of the little girl.

Our reader Felipe Rodriguez solves this one:

“I looked at the photo, and concluded that it’s the photo of a TV behind the girl! Being son of a photographer, I deal with cameras and equipment a lot. When you photograph a television, the image turns up extacly like the one in the image… besides, there’s a square frame above the face of the unknown person”.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Seen above, a very famous photograph of Janet Harper related to the alleged Poltergeist phenomena in Enfield, UK. It’s the Enfield Poltergeist.

Below, a very similar photo of a child jumping in the air, from Mighty Optical Illusions.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Photo taken on a hospital in Indonesia

Comment: One of the most (in)famous ghost photographs on the internet, the girl in the corridor was actually composed on a computer to be viewed with 3D glasses: the girl will jump out of the image.

To those without 3D glasses, we made the animated GIF at right, alternating between the stereoscopic images on the original.

That is the real meaning of the spooky red and blue distortions.

After uncovering the truth behind this, we could not help but to create our own version of it.

The background image is from a Japanese corridor, and the ghost is very famous.

It’s not as scary as the original, but it’s hard to find photos of girls in black dresses with a hanged doll.

Popularity: 15% [?]