Canadian stone-thrower
The following report is from the Nuxalk people of British Columbia, formerly known as the Bella Coola:
“An unpleasant habit of ghosts is the throwing of stones at the living. This is done partly from a love of mischief, and partly to remind their relatives of their needs. An old Kimsquit man described how, when encamped on King Island, he had almost been struck by a stone which seemed to fall from a tree. He realised that it must have been thrown by a ghost, and his opinion was confirmed when he found he could not speak. He instantly built a fire and cast on it both food and clothing as offerings to the dead, which had the effect of loosening his mouth. Pondering on the reason, he remembered that one of his relatives had died not far away, and that he had failed to give him any crumbs for a long time. In this case, as in many others, the stone was visible, though the thrower remained invisible.” (TF McIlwraith, The Bella Coola Indians, vol. 1, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948, p. 501, based on fieldwork between 1922 and 1924)
I hasten to add that this case doesn’t strike me as rock solid, but it does attest to the existence of the belief among the Nuxalk.
Marinus van der SluijsNamyangju, South Korea
Avalanches
The American series Mythbusters tested setting off avalanches by loud yodelling and various gunfire, neither worked [see Mythconception #259, FT422:21].
Caroline LeaBy email
Infrared varieties
• In the obituary of Robin Foy [], Ian Simmons recounts that Foy was ‘discomforted’ when it was pointed out that night vision equipmentit. There are two basic classes of infrared imaging techniques – one achieves ‘night vision’ and the other is thermography. The latter is useful for analysing heat sources, and is generally a passive technique detecting long-wave IR. What we normally think of as infrared ‘night vision’ (like on my home CCTV system for instance), creates images very similar to normal vision by detecting short-wave IR (close to the wavelength of visible light). Humans don’t emit at these wavelengths – the only way to get a decent image in a darkened room is to artificially bathe it in infrared light. This may explain Foy’s discomfort.
