True Conspiracies? That’s a contradiction in terms, right? Like True Urban Legends?
Well, thanks to Cracked you can learn all about 7 conspiracies that actually, really happened.
Some, like the infamous Tuskegee experiments, are truly tragic and make me weep for the human race.
I love my Aussie soaps. I can even remember Paul Robinson’s FIRST wife, Terry (the mad one who shot him – I was off school with bronchitis).
Watching poor Sam (who is a bit whiny and annoying sometimes) suffer as Johnny Cooper’s ghost haunts her has reminded me how often Neighbours and Home and Away touch on the strange and unusual. So I’ve compiled a list of 5 strange phenomena that have cropped up in Neighbours and Home and Away.
1. Visitors from Beyond the Grave
This seems to happen a lot. Recently, as stated above we’ve have poor Sam being haunted by Johnny Cooper. Although as is almost always the case the rational explanation is that the stress is driving her mad.
Home and Away has had lots of these story lines. Does anyone else remember Bobby coming out of the fridge to haunt Ailsa (who subsequently turned out to have schizophrenia)? Handily available on YouTube…
And then when Alf had a brain tumour, he saw Ailsa rather a lot. Before seeing her one last time when she explained that this time it was really her and she had come to reassure him.
And Hayley always seemed to be seeing her dead Dad.
It happens on Ramsey Street too. When Julie died her daughter, Hannah, experienced visions of her deceased mother. This is a rare case of a soap visitation from the dead that wasn’t later blamed on a neurological disorder.
Boyd’s visions of his dead mother were absolutely due to neurological problems – he had a brain tumour.
Occasionally, the dead warn the living. While pregnant Steph Scully had recurring dreams of her best friend Libby’s dead husband, Drew. She correctly guessed that it was a warning and discovered that her breast cancer had returned.
2. The Near Death Experience
Sally has recently had her own encounters with the dead. She had a vivid near death experience during surgery. Her foster father Tom convinced her to return to the world of the living. Interestingly, just before this Sally had another strange experience. Her childhood imaginary friend, Milco, turned out to be real! He was a memory of her long-lost twin brother, Miles.
3. Urban Legend
We all know the old story of the ring in the fish don’t we? Where the woman loses her engagement/wedding ring (or throws it away in anger) and it turns up in the fish she later serves for dinner.
Well, Neighbours had their own variation: Libby’s earring. Libby lost her earring (a gift from loving partner Drew) but amazingly, Drew caught a fish (in the obviously fishless Lassiters lake – a fish there really is Fortean). And inside the fish….the earring
4. Telepathy
Just a few weeks ago Rebecca was uneasy and she was right! Declan was trapped under a collapsed warehouse. This sort of thing happens a lot but sometimes the psychic bond between soap characters is even stronger. Amanda was so sure that Belle was alive after the crash. And intuition has saved the day on many occasions.
Most startlingly, though shortly after they arrived, following some terrible accident (I really can’t remember what it was – I think maybe the school collapsed?) Jade and Kirsty turned out to have twin telepathy. This ws extraordinary enough – they weren’t identical. But subsequently it was revealed that they weren’t related at all!
5. Yowies
I was desperate to find a cryptid in Neighbours or Home and Away and sadly I came up with only one…Rick Alessi once pretended there was a Yowie in Erinsborough to impress some Japanese tourists. It’s pathetic really, years of Aussie soaps and not a single cryptid – I’m thinking of starting a petition.
Researching this I was relieved to find out that I’m not the only person who thinks about this stuff
Finally, check out this lovely video: Supernatural Summer Bay
A true urban legend sounds like an oxymoron, but strangely some urban legends have a basis in reality. Sometimes there’s a small kernel of truth, sometimes the urban legend is told and some sicko idiot disturbed person copies it (say by microwaving a dog or something equally twisted).
But sometimes a seemingly bizarre story that you are sure is an urban legend, a myth, just designed to make you go “Ew!” or shake your head in disbelief can be real. Cracked.com have offered an impressive list: The 5 Creepiest Urban Legends (That Happen to be True). Read it and wonder…if these are true could someone really mistake a rat for a chihuahua?
