The Science of Monsters

According to Jim O’Leary, creator of the website CrowTrax, the answer to the first question is a resounding yes. His site is dedicated to tracking the data of crow attacks on a virtual map. Since CrowTrax’s inception, O’Leary has documented nearly five thousand crow-human scuffles, all started by the flapping corvids. Users of the site often add accounts of their brutal attacks. They describe birds clawing at their heads, pulling out their earrings, and even waiting on their car windshield to pounce on them: “It’s traumatic because it happens unexpectedly and from above,” said O’Leary in an interview with City Lab. “I frequently get reports where they break the skin. They do draw blood at times. I’ve had other reports with women where the talon gets stuck in their hair. That’d be kind of a terrifying thing, if a crow attacks you and then the crow can’t get out of your hair.”⁶ Hitchcock, it seems, was not far off in his portrayal of crows flapping at their victims’ heads and waiting outside the school in an effort to maim. One fundamental difference to note is that at CrowTrax it appears these run-ins only involve a single bird.

This leads us to the why. The data at CrowTrax is quite telling, as crows attack most significantly in the spring when they have babies to protect. When a human or unlucky pet is ambushed by a crow, there’s a good chance a nest is nearby. Perhaps because crows possess the aforementioned “theory of mind,” they become particularly aggressive as they can predict a bleak future of injured or killed birdlings. And more chilling, corvids have the ability to actually memorize a face. If they believe a human has wronged them, they will nurse a grudge against that particular victim. In their book Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans (2013), John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell explain an experiment professors and students at Washington State University conducted in order to prove this intellectual bird feat. They wore exaggerated “caveman” style masks when they captured seven crows and banded them, releasing them after a few minutes. A few days later, the professor wore a different mask to record the crows’ reaction. They didn’t appear to react. A few more days passed, and the professor returned to campus in the original caveman mask. This time, banded birds recognized him. One bird demonstrated an aggressive stance, calling a warning to fellow birds. These fellow birds, though they had never been bothered by the professor, listened to their friend, cawing at the “bad man.” Three of the banded birds ultimately showed aggression to who they remembered had captured them, although it had been brief, and roughly a week before. All of this data suggests to us that crows, wholly intelligent, are terrifying in their capacity to recognize, understand, and coordinate. Unlike in Arachnophobia, there is no need to anthropomorphize the villains of The Birds, as there is already a cleverness in their beady, avian eyes that sends shivers down our spines.

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SECTION SEVEN

GHOSTS

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

POLTERGEIST

Year of Release: 1982

Director: Tobe Hooper

Writer: Steven Spielberg

Starring: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson

Budget: $10.7 million

Box Office: $121.7 million

When we were kids many a late night was spent imagining the potential horrors that could possibly plague us. We both loved horror movies and the feeling of being scared. Fueling that fire was the movie Poltergeist (1982). Seeing a realistic portrayal of a family on screen helped transport us to the world and imagine ourselves in Carol Anne’s position. A creepy clown doll coming to life? Hearing voices through the television? A scary tree pulling us out of our beds? These all seemed like real possibilities after seeing this movie!

The term poltergeist is German for “noisy ghost.” These ghosts are thought to be responsible for physical disturbances such as loud noises, objects being moved, and even some physical attacks. They haunt particular people instead of places. Some claims of poltergeist activity have been explained by psychological factors including illusions, memory lapses, and wishful thinking. We interviewed Jenny Melton and Blaine Duncan, investigators and researchers for the Twin Cities Paranormal Society, about modern ghost detecting techniques.

Kelly:“How did you get into paranormal investigating?”