Deliberate induction of false memories also definitely counts as a spooky experiment.

Oh, here's a super creepy one: electrically disrupting someone's temporo-parietal junction causing them to perceive a "shadow person" behind them, mirroring their movements.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060920-shadow-person.html

@starkatt relatable

@starkatt whoooaaaa that's so cool

@nire Like, in a way beyond blackbody radiation?

@nire was it not from radioactive decay either?

@starkatt not an experiment, per se, but the report from NASA today that human VLF communication is actually pushing the Van Allen belts farther away.

@memnus woah.

@starkatt Source: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasas-van-allen-probes-spot-man-made-barrier-shrouding-earth

Not just pushing the belts higher, but acting as a second layer of shielding against incoming high energy particle radiation.

Astroforming. (Cosmoforming?)

@starkatt My vote's for http://www.prisonexp.org/ if only because it shows in really uncomfortable detail just how quickly the idea of things like "society" breaks down under the flimsiest of narrative excuses.

On the other paw, it also demonstrates just how reprogrammable people are if they're willing to take control of their own narratives.

"You cowered before me; I _was_ frightful," says Jareth. I think this shows us just how important that idea really is, and how terrifying.

@literorrery I kind of take issue with the general characterization of that as an "experiment" given that the PI also took a lead role in the activities cited. But, yeah.

@literorrery "stanford prison case study" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

@starkatt Well, "psychological meat grinder" is kind of a muzzleful, you know?

@starkatt idk if this is spooky, but I find the idea that this petroglyph represents the crab supernova in the year 1054 quite haunting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anasazi_Supernova_Petrographs.jpg

@nire having a running-on-computers consciousness of a person experience continuous subjective time even as the simulation timestep was increased to really long times.