Imagine that your friend comes over one day
and brings a Ouija board with him. You both sit and start to try to contact evil
spirits, your skeptical eye watching every move the planchette makes and trying to figure
out if your friend's pulling your leg. Suddenly the planchette starts moving from
the letter Z to the letter O, over and over again rapidly, and after making its presence
known, this 'spirit' starts answering questions about relatives of yours with incredible accuracy. Creeped out, the next day you get curious
and google the name Zozo, only to discover thousands of similar accounts written across
various message boards online. Hello and welcome to another special episode
of The Infographics Show's Greatest Mysteries: The Zozo Demon. You don't have to imagine the preceding scenario,
because it has in fact happened to thousands of people around the world. Whether using ouija boards, automatic writing,
or various other spiritual contact techniques, people all around the world have reported
contacting an entity calling itself “Zozo”. With the advent of the internet, people began
to share their stories online, each person shocked to discover that hundreds, if not
thousands of others had had the same experiences as they did. Possibly more terrifying though is the fact
that stories about Zozo have been around for hundreds of years, with one of the oldest
accounts coming from Collin de Plancy's demonic encyclopedia, the Dictionnaire Infernal. According to de Plancy, a young girl claimed
to be constantly harassed by three evil spirits: Mimi, Crapoulet, and Zozo. The demons would torment the girl and force
her to walk on her hands, or act indecent in the company of others. Eventually she was exorcised successfully,
although the priest performing the rite was warned not to attempt another exorcism by
the police. It's easy to discount old tales as mere superstition,
or even to discount modern testimony as simply flights of fancy that appropriate old legends
or scary stories. It's not so easy however to explain the massive
amount of collaborative testimony available online, specially from people surprised to
discover so many others allegedly having contact with the same entity. Encounters with Zozo tend to go the same way-
contactees will be using a Ouija board or other spirit contact technique, and Zozo will
make its presence known by spelling out its name. Typically it will then answer questions that
would be difficult for other people around you to know the answers to in an effort to
gain your trust. Other times it will simply start to spell
out expletives. Contact with Zozo typically results in something
tragic happening shortly after- one man claims that his wife left his daughter in the bath
tub and stepped out for a moment, which was long enough for his daughter to begin drowning. After rescuing her she was struck ill by a
mysterious infection days later. Another woman claims that on the same day
as her contact with Zozo she was hit by a drunk driver. People differ on what exactly Zozo is, but
whatever it is it's clearly got a bad temper. Some say that Zozo is a demon, possibly even
the ancient Mesopotamian king of wind demons, Pazuzu. Others believe Zozo is simply a malevolent
entity that appropriated the name because of growing fear around it. Yet others believe that Zozo is not a single
entity, but rather a name that various evil or mischievous spirits use to scare us, knowing
how scared we have become of contacting the ill-tempered Zozo. These people think that spirits may simply
be having a bit of fun with us by using the name, while more evil spirits appropriate
it in order to scare us- and fear, they believe, gives the spirits power. Whatever its origin, some of Zozo's characteristics
involve an attraction to the female sex, preferring contact with women over men. Zozo also seems to be attracted to people
with suicidal tendencies, depression, or other psychological disorders. Researchers claim that these people are more
vulnerable to demonic influence, giving a demon more power over them and making it easier
to push them to do extreme things such as suicide or hurting or scaring others. Those who claim to have come in contact with
Zozo describe sudden and intense feelings of anger, fear, depression, or generally black
thoughts as they talk with Zozo. Their encounters are typically followed by
seemingly bad luck. Others though are more severely affected,
with some claiming to have suffered physical symptoms such as headaches, sleepwalking,
and the appearance of marks and bruises on their bodies. This is all quite terrifying- if true. Along with the host of believers, there are
just as many skeptics however, and the preferred tool of contact with Zozo, the Ouija board,
is itself fraught with doubts. For starters, it's a game manufactured by
a major toy company, and many skeptics have a hard time swallowing the fact that spirits
and demons are immediately accessible with a simple board game. There may be some merit to that point, but
then again, if the world of spirits and demons is real then who says they need some special,
archaic and mysterious method to contact us? But that's hardly the only criticism leveled
at the Ouija board. In 1972 psychologists ran an experiment to
see if people could have paranormal spirit contact experiences through nothing more than
human will- basically they wanted to see if it was all just in our heads. For the study, they made up a fictional person
named Philip Aylesford and then invited a group of people to run a séance in order
to summon his ghost. The group eventually made contact with the
entity, becoming convinced that they could feel Philip's presence, hearing knocking sounds
coming from the table, felt the table physically vibrate, and at one point saw the table tilt
up onto two legs. All the while, they had no idea that Philip
had been completely made up. The study proved just how susceptible we can
be to believing in the paranormal with just the smallest amount of prodding. Yet, if the world of spirits and demons is
real, what's to say that a mischievous spirit or evil demon didn't simply respond to the
séance, knowing full well what was taking place, and reveling in the frustration the
entire affair would cause when the participants were told there was no such person as the
one they claimed to be speaking to? Why would spirits and demons be any different
than we are- basically, why wouldn't a spirit troll a scientific study way back in 1972? Other skeptics point at the ideomotor effect
as an explanation for 'contact' with Zozo and other paranormal entities. The ideomotor effect is the subconscious and
involuntary movement of muscles, typically to a very small and likely imperceptible degree. This effect has been well documented, most
famously by the famed Michael Faraday who built a device to show how the ideomotor effect
was responsible for the 'table-turning' fad that swept supernatural-believing London. Today, skeptics claim that ouija board communications
are nothing more than the subconscious mind using the ideomotor effect to push the planchette
around and give us the answers we are seeking. Zozo may well be simply a product of our own
subconscious pushing a planchette on a ouija board with movements so imperceptible that
even we ourselves are fooled into believing a supernatural explanation. Yet that doesn't explain the global internet
phenomenon which has seen thousands of people all claiming contact with the exact same entity. Skeptics point out the possibility of a mass
psychological trend amongst all these believers, or that potentially every single one of them
is simply making up a tall tale. Both answers could be true, but with just
as much hard evidence for either those two answers as there is for Zozo- that being zero-
it's a special kind of irony that the belief Zozo is not real requires just as much fact-less
faith as the belief that it is. Do you think Zozo is real? Have you ever encountered this entity? Tell us your story in the comments! Also, be sure to check out our other video
Scariest Ghost Stories. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
