Sniff Test

of psychology. They started a program at Duke University examining whether subjects possessed something called extrasensory perception, also known as e SP. This new field of study, which is often referred to as parapsychology, was ridiculed by professors and academics. Experiments were conducted using a special deck of cards with one of five different shapes printed on each. Subjects would try to guess what shape was on the other side of the card without being able to see it, and

the results were well mixed. Still, that didn't stop Rhyan and others from testing the limits of the human mind. Looking back, though, it might be fair to say that they probably should have looked a little lower. Joy met her husband less while the two were still in high school. They had gone to a party together and ended up dancing all night. Although it wasn't his skills on the dance floor, she remembered years later, it was his manly,

muskie smell. They remained together through college and got married shortly after, both of them entering the medical field. Post graduation, Less became a doctor, Joy a nurse. Over the next ten years, they raised three sons together and almost never fought. By all accounts, they had a perfect marriage. But one day Less came home from work at the hospital and Joy noticed something different about him. His smell was gone.

That manly odor she'd fallen in love with had disappeared, and its place was a foul, musty stench no amount of soap would remove. After that, they fought more often, especially when Joy mentioned his smell. Over the following weeks and months, their relationship got worse, but so did her husband's demeanor. He was a lot more quick to become angry with her. He yelled more and had lost all the patients he used to have. Joy could tell something was going on with him, but she couldn't put her

finger exactly on what it was. Her nose on the other hand, knew exactly what was going on. It just hadn't told her yet, so she told Less to go in for some tests. Joy believed that he had a tumor, one that was causing a shift in his personality, but the doctors told her that there was no tumor. Instead, they gave a very different diagnosis Less, it turned out, at Parkinson's disease. He Enjoy would manage the symptoms for

the next two decades, even as they worsened. Less eventually had to leave his job at the hospital when his mobility made it impossible to keep up. He wasn't sleeping well either, and his hands shook, and then in two thousand twelve, Joy accompanied him to a support group for Parkinson's patients. They showed up late that night, so by the time they arrived almost all of the seats were taken. As soon as she stepped through the door, though, Joy was hit in the face with an all too familiar stench.

Every single person smelled just like her husband. Some people had it less, while others were barely tolerable. But Joy finally realized why her husband's odor had changed. When he was in his early thirties. She had detected his Parkinson's ten years before the symptoms were bad enough to warrant to diagnosis. She hesitated to tell him, though, after all, the idea that someone could smell a disease sounded far fetched. Still,

she had to know, and his reaction surprised her. It all made sense now why she kept complaining about his sudden woodsy scent that wouldn't wash off. So they flew over Ease to speak with Dr Tila Kunath, a Parkinson's researcher and neurobiologist at the University of Edinburgh. During the Q and a portion of one of his lectures, Joy stood up and asked whether Parkinson's had a smell. Dr Kunath was thrown He never thought about it that way,

but he didn't think so. Months later, he heard about a study where dogs were able to detect cancer purely by a patients scent. It was a eureka moment that caused him to invite Joy back to the university to participate in an experiment of his own. He assembled a group of subjects, some with Parkinson's and some without, and gave each of them a T shirt to wear that night as they slept. The next day, they gave those

shirts back. Dr Kannath then presented the T shirts in a random order to Joy, asking her to take a whiff and score each one by how much of the Parkinson's she could smell. She sniffed each one and noted where on the spectrum each subject fell, like whether they actually had the disease and at what stage, and the results were incredible and almost all cases she was able to accurately detect Parkinson's on the T shirts from the

group of the diagnosed patients. From that point on, Joy's knows would unlock new avenues for Parkinson's research, and she was even listed as a co author on Dr Kuldneth's study. There was one hiccup though. During the shirt study, Joy had made a mistake. She had claimed that a shirt she smelled had belonged to one of Dr Kenneth's Parkinson's patients, when in fact it had come from one of the

healthy control groups subjects Well, sort of you see. Months later, that same subject pain Dr Kuldnath a visit and told him that they could no longer participate in the healthy control group and the reason why would blow everyone else away. That test subject had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and Joy Milne had found it before anyone else with just her nose. When more than one person is planning to commit a crime, it's a good idea for everyone

to get their stories straight ahead of time. One break in the narrative and the cops will have no problem getting one culprit to roll on the others. Charles and Calvin weren't criminals, but they did have a surprising story to tell the authorities. On the night of October eleventh of nineteen seventy three, Charles was the foreman at a shipyard in Mississippi, and nineteen year old Calvin had just

arrived in town and was looking for work. His father and Charles had been buddies years earlier, so Charles was only too happy to lend a helping hand. Charles gave the young man a job and even rented him a room in his apartment. To celebrate. After Calvin's first day at the shipyard, Charles invited him to go fishing after work. They spent a few hours casting their lines, watching the sunset, and waiting for the fish to bite, and that's when

something strange happened. Charles reeled in his empty line and bent down to grab more bait for his hook when he heard a strange zipping sound overhead. A blue light flashed and a thirty foot long craft emerged out of nowhere, landing nearby, and then the dome on top opened. As it did, a bright light nearly blinded the men, and then three creatures appeared from inside, seeming to float several

inches off the ground. Charles and Calvin froze, later recounting to police that they had been paralyzed by an injection from one of the creatures. Sharp pincers reached out and grabbed both of the men, pulling them toward the ship. When it was all over, the men were deposited back at the pier where they had been abducted. Calvin reached towards the sky and screamed after the creatures. Eventually, the two of them made their way to the local police station,

and they told their story. The officers initially believed that both men had been drinking a bit too much that night, but Calvin was out of control. Assuming that something had indeed happened near the docks, one officer brought the men into an interrogation room. He asked them questions about what had happened. They told their story again, beginning with the fishing nextpedition, then describing the odd sounds and the flashing lights.

Charles told him about the alien creatures with their sharp claws, which caused the puncture in his arm, but Calvin begged his boss not to say anything. Those people will come back and get us. He said, they don't want us to talk about it, but Charles ignored him and kept going. He talked about the sparse interior of the ship and the giant eye that scanned their bodies from overhead, how the beans had flipped them over and around so they could examine them from all angles. Yet the men hadn't

been worried. At the time. They were being communicated to telepathically by one of the aliens, who told them that everything would be all right. Calvin said he assumed the voice was coming from the fourth creature in the room. He said it looked more like a human than the rest, that had large, kind eyes. When they had finished telling their tale to the police, the officer left the room, but hid a tape recorder to record their conversation. After

he was gone. He expected Charles and Calvin to laugh and joke about how they were pulling one over on the cops, or making sure that they had gotten all the details of their story right for the next round of questions. Instead, the two men talked about everything they had encountered, and it was clear there was genuine fear in their voices. Other officers attempted to find holes in their stories. Charles and Calvin were even subjected to polygraph tests,

but they both passed. In fact, nothing the authorities through at them could crack through to the truth that they assumed was underneath a lie. By all measures, these two men believed that they had actually experienced an alien abduction. Newspapers all over the country reported their story. Charles even went on television, sitting down with Dick Cavitt and Johnny Carson. Well.

Calvin did the opposite and went into hiding. He immediately went home after his night at the police station and bathed his body in bleach, hoping to remove any trace of whatever the aliens had done to him. Calvin never talked about what he'd seen. He eventually moved on and got married, taking jobs here and there, always avoiding the spotlight at all costs, but forty five years later, Calvin finally published a book with his side of the story, a story just as convincing today as it was back

in nine and he wasn't alone. Since then, another witness has come forward who claimed to have seen the same blue lights in flying Object months after Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker. She too hadn't told anyone for over forty years. Maybe it was a true close encounter, or an elaborate hoax, or even a lie that got wildly out of control. Call it whatever you want, but I'll stick to the word that describes it best, curious. I hope you've enjoyed

today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,