Ghost Secrets

Did you know …

That when you get a pimple or whitehead inside your ear, that’s because a ghost told you a secret? It’s true!

Not a human ghost, though. hen human ghosts tell you secrets, you get sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, i.e., a cold stimulus headache or “brain freeze.” Human ghosts, of course, speak directly into your open mouth, because they’re so intent on tongue-kissing you that they don’t want to pull away to speak (ghosts, amiright?!). Their words, and more specifically their secrets, aren’t cold as such, but they do cause the rapid dilation and constriction of the blood vessels in your palette, a sensation that your trigeminal nerve passes along to your brain as pain. Why you gotta do that, ghosts? It hurts!

But back to ear pimples: These are actually from the ghost of a mouse trying to tell you secrets (or, sometimes, the ghost of a large insect, like a beetle). Because mice are both small and often dumb, they have difficulty aiming their secrets directly into your ear hole. When an ill-aimed secret hits the skin near the entrance of the ear canal, instead of entering the canal and contacting the eardrum, it can impact against a hair follicle, causing blockage and eventually a blackhead or whitehead.

It can be a nuisance if you have lots of mouse ghosts around. On the plus side, however, the occasional well-aimed secret is usually entertaining and informative; often they will be descriptions of your neighbor on the can, or the location where someone might have dropped a nickel.