Sometimes what’s been deemed “verified” on Wikipedia seems too strange to be true. In Wikipedia for the Weird, the Daily Dot tracks down the most bizarre and entertaining entries on the Web’s crowdsourced encyclopedia, sending you down the rabbit hole even further.
List_of_prizes_for_evidence_of_the_paranormal
Lists on lists on lists: Wikipedia’s finest work comes by absurdist collection, and this week’s spotlight is on one that I think might help some of y’all pick up a few bucks. Twenty-eight opportunities for all you aspiring paranormal hunters to cash in–with prizes ranging from $2,500 all the way up to $1,000,000.
So what do we have to do to get some of this easy cash? I think if we band together and use Wikipedia as our guide, we can grab some of this award money. Let’s go through and figure out the easy ones.
Abraham Kovoor may have died in 1978, but his award is marked “unclaimed” so we’re going to have to assume we can still attempt the prize. And it seems easy! There are a whopping 23 different ways we can satisfy Kovoor’s curiosities. Like “Predict a future event” (Lindsay Lohan will get arrested again!) or “Disappear from the negative when photographed” (Photoshop!) or even “Stand stationary on burning cinders for half a minute without blistering the feet” (I think Oprah did this already?) That 100,000 rupees (approximately $901)? It’s ours.
Next? Well, the Australian Skeptics are an absolutely adorable organization who not only have a GIF Wikipedia image (!!!), but also are offering up a cool AU$100,000 (that’s $101,374! Don’t worry!) for “proof of psychic or paranormal powers.” I don’t actually believe that wallabees exist (or that Vegemite tastes good), so after they offer me proof of that, I’ll buy into these Aussie skeptics.
Your best bet is probably the USA’s very own JERF (or James Randi Educational Foundation) prize of one million dollars that goes to anyone who can “demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria.” Sounds fair enough, but this James Randi guy is, according to his Wikipedia entry, a magician. That’s right: a magician who is demanding that you prove your real-life psychic powers. He’s already “debunked” talk show regular and apparent finder of missing children, Sylvia Browne–who apparently said she’d “take the challenge” and then refused to do so. That resulted in Randi putting a countdown clock on his website since she had accepted The Challenge.
Finally, there’s the “Kazakhstan Commission for the Investigation of Anomalous Phenomena”… Okay, there’s no way we’re gonna win this one.
Photos via Wikipedia