Category Ask the Psychologist

It is a familiar sensation to anyone who has faced a pop quiz, given a speech in front of classmates, or asked a special someone on a date. Your mouth goes dry, your palms get wet with sweat, your heart goes pitter-patter, and your stomach starts to flutter (hence the expression). Of course, you don’t really have a butterfly bouncing around in your belly. These uneasy feelings are your body’s natural reaction to dangerous or stressful situations – a reaction known as the fight-or-flight response. Your brain triggers the release of chemicals that increase the circulation in your stomach and causes the fluttery effect. It’s your body’s way of getting ready to fight or flee a threat – a holdover from when your ancestors had to contend with saber-toothed predators. Hey, that pop quiz doesn’t seem so bad now.

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Because many bats hunt at night and rely on a sonar system to “see” using reflected sound waves – a system known as echolocation – people once assumed these flying mammals were blind. Hence, anyone with poor eyesight might be called “blind as a bat.” But although many species of bats have small eyes, they can all see quite clearly. In fact, researchers have learned that bats will trust their eyes more than their sonar when flying in low light. Bats evolved echolocation to hunt for bugs at night, which gave them a survival edge over mammals and birds that competed for food during the daylight hours. So think twice before you call someone blind as a bat – unless you actually want to compliment their eyesight!

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When we know only a little bit about a big problem, we say it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Icebergs are typically huge. Some are larger than the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One Antarctic iceberg rivals the size of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean. Most of that icy mass lies below the surface of the water. Only about one-eighth of an iceberg – the famous “tip” from the expression – is visible from above.

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Researchers who study the paranormal (or phenomena beyond the boundaries of science) believe that people leave behind energy when they die – especially when they die a traumatic death – and that energy shows itself as “spectral” activity.

Creepy moans, creaky stairs, flickering lights, sudden chills, shadowy figures, and even human-shaped forms dressed in old-fashioned getups. Using high-tech gadgets, pursuers of the paranormal skulk through old houses, graveyards, and other allegedly haunted spots hoping to document ghostly goings-on. They’ve yet to uncover any conclusive evidence, but that hardly seems to matter: A third of all Americans claim they believe in ghosts.

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A vast region if the Atlantic bounded by Bermuda, Miami, and Puerto Rico, the Bermuda Triangle is notorious for swallowing planes, boats, and ships. According to one report, 75 planes and hundreds of yachts have gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle in the past century. The most famous disappearing act was Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers that took off on a training mission in 1945 and vanished over the Atlantic Ocean. Search crews found no trace of the planes or the 14 men aboard them.

Navigators going back to the days of Christopher Columbus reported confusing compass readings in the Bermuda Triangle. Pilots have complained of an eerie electrical fog that interferes with their instruments. Believers in the paranormal suspect the Triangle is a gateway to another dimension or home to mysterious ship-wrecking technology from the lost city of Atlantis. Even without any supernatural shenanigans, the eerie area is certainly an easy place to get lost. Swift currents and sudden storms send ships swirling in circles. Shipwrecking reefs lie just under the surface in some places; the seafloor dips into trenches five miles (8 km) deep in others. The Triangle has been a superhighway for sea traffic since the early days of exploration, so it makes sense that the region would see more accidents than less-traveled areas. Wreckage not set adrift by the strong currents could sink into the region’s trenches, never to be seen again.

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The first reports of something fishy in Loch Ness, Scotland’s second largest lake, go back 2,000 years, when a fearsome tattooed tribe known as the Picts chiseled the image of a finned creature onto a large stones nearby. Five centuries later, according to one written account, an Irish monk shouted a prayer to repel a monster poised to gobble a Loch Ness bather. A series of high-profile sightings in the 1930s transformed “Nessie” from a creature of folklore into a cryptozoology superstar. More than 4,000 eyewitness accounts of a massive lake monster – some verified by lie-detector testing – have been reported since. As with those of Bigfoot, many of these sightings and photographs were proven as hoaxes, but that hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of true Nessie believers. Their number one Nessie suspect: the plesiosaur, a long-necked marine dinosaur that was supposed to have died out with T. rex and his kin 65 million years ago.

Nessie skeptics believe the sightings are simply cases of mistaken identity. Others, dog-paddling deer, and large sturgeon can look mysterious when their backs break the surface of the lake. High-tech sonar searchers have turned up nothing conclusive from the lake’s murky depths. And yet the search for Nessie continues. At least one website maintains a live camera view of the lake, encouraging viewers to keep a round-the-clock watch for suspicious activity. The ancient Picts may have recorded Nessie in stone; modern creature hunters can now tag the beast online.

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