The Wisdom of Solomon, Chapter 17: Ghost Stories

God's wisdom is so great it cannot be expressed, which is why people do dumb shit like taking the Israelites into bondage, which led to the infidel Babylonians being shut up in their newly-haunted houses. Really? This is the best the Apocrypha can do? The Babylonians started hearing water falling down sounded about them, and sad visions appeared unto them with heavy countenances (v. 4)? Also, the stars and light bulbs stopped working for them. Boy do I hear them. I would never say it to her face, but the one and only thing I agree with Michele Bachmann on is that these new CFC light bulbs are a scam.

Anyway, after months of non-functioning illumination and regret at their failure to hoard incandescents, suddenly a fire kindles itself and scares the crap out of the Babylonians, because it turns out the things they can see are much worse than the things they couldn't. Only if the story is being told by someone with no imagination. I once stayed up past 3 in the morning in my incredibly safe suburban house in Canada reading Stephen King's The Shining because I was too scared to go to sleep.

This stops all the Babylonians' bragging about how smart they are, because even in the second century BCE, psychics were a crock. Also, dangerous things like snakes and wild animals were no longer afraid of them. Don't feed the bears people!

Also they couldn't sleep, which may explain why they were seeing things, fainting, hearing the wind or birds or rocks falling or people running past that weren't there or echoes. Their solution was remarkably 21st century: putting the crazy people in jail.