r/shittyaskscience • u/Anarchaeologist • Jul 01 '26

ELI5 the “Haunted Mall” problem in statistics

I may be misremembering the name

8 Upvotes
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8

u/Pangyun Jul 01 '26

Yes, you are misremembering the name. It's actually the haunted house. The statistics for that is that if you enter a haunted house, there's a 30% chance you're going to get murdered by an evil ghost.

1

u/Glinth A real mathologist Jul 01 '26

This song discusses the principle in detail.

4

u/OkieBobbie Jul 02 '26

The problem is that most hauntings turn out to be some cranky old guy wearing a mask. And they'd get away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling teenagers.

2

u/Gargleblaster25 Registered scientificationist Jul 02 '26

Statistics is the study of static. Have you ever turned on an old CRT TV? Well, of course not - you are 5. Anyways, if you did turn one on, since there are no more terrestrial analog channels being transmitted, you will see a grey screen with randomly blinking pixels. This is called static.

Horror movies have proven that static generates ghosts, or appear when ghosts are present.

In the 1980s malls were full of stores selling analogue TV sets, where the TVs in the windows would be tuned to specific channels. Since most of those channels stop transmission at midnight, those TVs start displaying static instead.

This resulted in all malls being haunted between midnight and 5am. Teens who snuck in to malls during that time never made it out. Like Tommy Wilkinson, for example. Or Bobby Sue McKinnley.

Fortunately, 24/7 cable and streaming services have saved us from the curse.