Greetings one and all, and welcome once again
to the Extraordinary world we live in.
to the Extraordinary world we live in.
Colombia: Satanic Ceremony Results In Shocking Image
Wiltshire's Latest Crop Circle
Revealing Ghostly Secrets at the Union County, NJ Courthouse
Flight 2012
Colombia: Satanic Ceremony Results In Shocking Image
Three teenage girls from a Tolima town saw a ghost standing behind them in a photo taken after having played improvised satanic rituals, local media reported Wednesday.The incident happened last week in the town of Purificacion when the girls, between 15 and 17 years old, decided to dress up as witches and to try satanic rituals and spells - just for fun.One of the teenagers asked her younger brother to take a photo of the girls to remember the evening. They had the shock of their lives when they discovered the clear image of a man standing behind them.Seeing the alleged ghost, the girls started to scream and panic and one of them even suffered a nervous breakdown.The three friends swear that they were only playing around and did not use a ouija board to invoke spirits, which is a more common reason for panic among teenage girls in Colombia and especially in the Tolima department._____________________Here is another report:Six girls between ten and fourteen years old were admitted to a local hospital in the Tolima department after having played with a ouija board.The girls, all from the village of Buenavista, were taken to the Rafael Gutierrez hospital in San Juan del Valle after having played the Parker Brothers board game that is used to summon spirits, but according to some can summon demons.Hospital psychologist Maritza Guzmán told Caracol Radio Saturday that, even though the girls were free of physical symptoms, tests had proven the girls were suffering psychological disorders when being admitted.All girls were sent home after being examined, but continue to be under supervision of the hospital's psychology staff.The families of the ouija-playing girls asked the local priest to conduct a serious of prayers for the girls.
Wiltshire's Latest Crop Circle
This spectacular crop circle appeared ay Windmill Hill, near Devizes, last week.The 350ft ying and yang design has already attracted a stream of sightseers as the Wiltshire crop circle season gets under way.Visitors from all over the world, particularly America, flock to the area to see the circles.One local fan is new Wiltshire resident Robbie Williams who is aid to have chosen to live at Compton Bassett, near Calne, to be closer to them.___________________Here is another account about this fantastic crop circle:The formation, measuring approximately 350ft (100 metres), seems to depict a Yin Yang pattern and appeared on May 25 beneath Windmill Hill, near Devizes.It was captured on camera at an area close to the great man-made mound of Silbury Hill, Wiltshire.As many other crop circles previously spotted in the area, it seems to follow the Yin and Yang theme.The green and then golden fields of the world's crop circle capital of Wiltshire have spawned an array of patterns in the past that have fascinated those who seek them out.Enthusiasts and experienced crop pattern hunters have often spotted formations appearing close to these sacred sites.The crop circle season extends from April to harvesting in September, and is believed to be worth millions of pounds to the local economy.Windmill Hill is thought to date to the Early Neolithic period some 5000 years ago, 3700 BC and was constructed as a causeway enclosure. It is the largest known of its kind measuring 21 acres (8.5ha).It consists of three rings of concentric ditches, which were probably dug out in the same manner as the deep Avebury ditch, using antlers and oxen shoulder blades.It was a major task taking many man-hours over many years.It is thought that the camp was at its most important as a farming community during a relatively peaceful and prosperous time of approximately 3000- 3500 years until the advent of the Romans when their presence is evidenced by traces of a villa found on the western slopes of the mound.
Revealing Ghostly Secrets at the Union County, NJ Courthouse
Seth Laderman won't say whether the ghost of Hannah Caldwell is finally ready for her close up.But he is predicting fans of Ghost Hunters, the popular cable television series on the Sci-Fi channel, will not be disappointed when they tune in this summer to see what the crew found when they visited the Union County Courthouse. "They can expect a pretty cool investigation," said Laderman, a co-producer of the Sci-Fi channel's Ghost Hunters.In fact, the crew, which travels the country investigating reported paranormal activity, was so pleased with what they encountered at the Elizabeth courthouse this spring that when the series returns for its sixth season in July, the courthouse piece is expected to air as either the first or second episode in the 25-show season, Laderman said.The historic courthouse with its wide marble staircases, and the adjoining cemetery at the First Presbyterian Church, with all its Revolutionary War-era gravestones, provided backdrops worthy of any movie set. But the investigators from Ghost Hunters also couldn't resist the opportunity to investigate reports that Caldwell's ghost haunted the historic courthouse.Hannah Caldwell was buried in the church cemetery next to her husband, the Rev. James Caldwell, a strident revolutionary known as the Fighting Parson. But the circumstances of her death more than two centuries ago remains the subject of historical dispute. By some accounts, she was mistaken for a sniper by a British redcoat, while other reports say the killing was retaliation for her husband's activities.Some historians have even suggested it could have just been a stray shot from either side. Regardless, her death was used to rally the area's farmers, who until that point, had remained fairly ambivalent about the revolution.Retired Star-Ledger reporter Robert E. Misseck, who covered the Union County Courthouse, remembers writing his first stories about the Caldwell ghost in the 1970s."It was three or four weeks before Halloween, when one of the custodians in the courthouse comes into the press office and tells me he saw a ghost--a woman standing in the elevator with him, all dressed in white," Misseck said.Soon after the story ran, a psychic paid a visit to the courthouse. She was "getting the vibe" that Caldwell was not pleased with the way her murder was depicted on the official Union County seal, Misseck said.Laderman said the Ghost Hunters enjoy investigating public buildings, in part because there's usually far more history involved and more people who have had experiences there.The crew brings a host of electronic equipment, from EMF detectors, which record the presence of electro magnetic fields, to special recorders that pick up sounds inaudible to the human ear. They will also come with nightvision cameras equipped to film in the dark, along with cameras equipped with thermal sensors."We try to bring as much science into this as we can," Laderman said.Grant Wilson, one of the co-founders of the show, said that when the crew investigates paranormal incidents, they consider it as much a success when they debunk a story as when they find evidence supporting the presence of unexplainable forces."We're not in the business of convincing people," he said, noting that the team had "a great time investigating" the county courthouse area.Sheriff Ralph Froehlich, whose office is in charge of courthouse security, not only observed some of the filming, but also provided the crew with some of the history to the courthouse and its alleged other worldly inhabitants--yes--there have been reports of other spectral beings.Froehlich got to sit down with the show's hosts for the segment, called the "reveal," where they share their findings.While he promised not to repeat what was said before the show airs, the sheriff did say the experience has left him sitting on the fence when it comes to matters dealing with the paranormal."I'm not a believer, but I'm not a disbeliever," Froehlich said. "I think there are things we don't understand."
Flight 2012
This is a true story that has recently become a movie script available for hire. For the first time we get introduced to the real thing. - Vivian Harper_____________________In 1967 our UFO club in Vancouver BC was hosting a speaker from California. The day before she was to do her lecture she was on ‘talk radio’. “Bob” heard her and phoned the station. A meeting was set up in our house because dad had a brand new reel to reel audio tape recorder.Poor old Bob. He said he was dying of cancer and just had to get this story off his chest.He tells us he was a watchman for a gold mine in the Yukon that was closed for the winter. He had no electricity. He was isolated except for his dog. On this day he was baking bread and roasting a chunk of beef in his wood stove. The date he gives us is the 14th of February 1950. At -52’F it is so cold, if you opened the door the cold air would come rolling onto the floor like a cloud of CO2.And this is the way it happened that day. All of a sudden, standing before him, in the mist, were three not so human beings. They scared the pants off Bob.He spoke to them, they just stared at him not speaking not moving. Looking very sinister, they then looked around the room. Bob tried to ease the situation with some light chatter. He began to think they were Russians. At the time we were hearing a lot about the Russians. The cold war started later that year. He spoke a few Russian words to them and there was no response. Bob is trembling by now but offers them some fresh baked bread. Now what human could refuse fresh baked bread I ask you? I can imagine the aroma coming from that little cabin in the middle of nowhere in the blowing snow and sub zero temperatures. But no they were not there for the cuisine. Bob tried to motion to them “Close the door”. That’s when Bob hears them speak to each other in clicks and clacks and some guttural sounds. His confusion became terror when they tore off their hoods and Bob shone the kerosene lamp into their faces. Humanoids for sure but not quite. Still Bob is not sure what he had here. The humanoids looked troubled Bob said. He does not know how troubled they really are. If he knew the extent to their troubles he may have hid under a rock. In the poor light he notices their bald heads are kind of a green color. He told us that if you saw these beings from 30 feet you would not notice them to be different. But up close they were quite different. Their jaw joint was put together differently. Their hands were small like a child’s and their arms are very short. Bob tells the story of how he finally realized who and what they were. He reached for a knife to cut himself a piece of bread and one of them grabbed his arm so hard he nearly fainted from the pain. “Oh my.” He recalls, “I knew he could kill me in a second.” The pain continued with him in the corner, moaning and groaning. Just then one of them came over and motioned to Bob to place his finger in this small depression looking device. At first he was too afraid to do anything but decided anything was better than the pain he was feeling. Once he did he felt a complete and utter pleasant feeling go through his body and the pain disappeared. He says it was then that he realized that they were not from Saskatchewan.Their clothes smelled badly of burned metal. The next 3 ½ days Bob watches as they bring in boxes of “stuff” he does not recognize.“Looks like some machinery and instruments.” he says. They used a screen that answers to our description of a laptop computer, on his kitchen table to examine and take apart the equipment. All of it smells like burned metal. He thinks that they have crashed themselves and are working on their own craft using screwdrivers. Did he not know that alien crafts were not made of nuts and bolts?Actually Bob was a witness to the aftermath of a more sinister story. One that starts on earth.Early on February 14th 1950, a B36 bomber left Fairbanks, Alaska doing what the US Air Force described as a simulated combat mission. It was a war readiness test for the B 36 and it’s crew. This meant that it was supposed to be an actual test carrying the actual nuclear core to be put in the actual Fat Boy bomb once in the air. This duty was given to Captain Ted Schreier who was the acting Weaponeer. There were 17 members to this crew. Captain Harold Berry at the controls and Co-pilot Ray Whitfield. The pertinent rule in this story is the no fly zone over Canada. Their route was from Fairbanks to Great Falls Montana with an attack approach in San Francisco and ending in Fort Worth Texas. Following the coast they were about 7 hours in the air when out of no where there was absolute panic aboard flight 075. They radioed the Alaskan tower.“May Day...! May Day…! Loosing air speed” Captain Berry bellowed into the mouthpiece.The plane shudders. Someone in the background yells, “We have engine 1, 2, 5 in flames. “ They are at 8000 feet. They know they are going down and so does the tower at Fairbanks. The main concern now is to get rid of the bomb. But the bombay doors are stuck and the plutonium has been inserted. It is Captain Schreier job to dismantle the plutonium core. It is not clear if he managed to do this however.The story is they turn west to drop the bomb and turn east again to enable the crew to parachute out over Princess Royal Island off the coast of BC. Can you imagine the courage it would take to jump out of an airplane in the middle of the night in Northern BC in February? Five men did not make it.Except a strange thing happen about then. The plane did a 180’ turn around, back to Alaska.At this point we do not have enough evidence to say exactly what happened after that but circumstances do tell us a lot.Captain Schreier, the weaponeer, was never found and his parachute was found 54 years later at the crash site meaning that he never used it. We believe he was trying to fly the weapon and the B 36 and the plutonium back to Alaska. The fear was that it would get into the hands of the weapon hungry Russians. If he wasn’t protecting the contents on the flight what was he doing risking his life for nothing more than an old B 36.The plane lays crashed in the blowing snow with no hope of rescue. America’s first ‘Broken Arrow’.Did the three aliens steal something from the plane? And did they take it to Bob’s cabin?The real interesting story is the relationship Bob had with the aliens. The day after Bob hears one of them say a few familiar English words. “Stay” …”you stay” he says.“OK” Bob says astonished.It is clear from the start that Chris had a job to do and Bob was in the way and a nuisance. Time after time Bob would ask questions. If he had an answer at all it was only a word or two.“Where do you come from?” What is your name? “Cliss” is the response.Bob chose to call him Chris. A name he understood.“Do you have women aboard?”“No women” with no explanation.But added that they came from a place very far away. So far away in fact, Chris has never been there himself. His grandfather had set out on a scientific mission. Since then there was Chris’ father and then himself.Bob couldn’t figure out how to ask but wanted to know how did Chris come into being if there were no women? He let the question pass.Bob wanted to know how many years it would take to go home. This opened up a can of worms for Bob.“No time” Chris said.“From here to here”. Chris motioned with his hands.I can understand that, but Bob had never thought about time as being anything except linear.Later, watching from across the room he is observing their antics as closely as possible.And they don’t look happy. They are engrossed in their work.Bob went to go outside and feed the dog. He should have known better for all of a sudden all three of them were down his throat so to speak. Chattering up a storm and physically blocking the doorway.Chris calmed them down. And told Bob under no circumstance should Bob try to leave the cabin.It was this moment when Bob realized that Chris was the boss and that he was a prisoner.The one he called Red because when he got mad his face and neck went beet red. He was the scariest one and would have no trouble killing Bob if need be.Red is an interesting character though. He is the only one to get angry but the first to laugh a bit. He was banging on the table trying to tell Bob to stay in doors when a pot fell off the wall with a loud bang. The silence afterward was deafening until Red and Bob both began to laugh. For Bob it was a nervous relief. Red wore contact lenses. It gave him a bug-eyed look.The third character, Burnie, was a “gofer.” Go for this and go for that. He was out doors so much Bob said the bit of skin around where a missing ear was burned off was so cold it was blue. Bob hunted up a pair of old earmuffs for him.At dinner Bob offered them food but they had their own. A liquid mixed with a powder and stirred and eaten with a small paddle. The cup was 2 inches wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. If the top was twisted it would warm up.I hope Bob felt better after the heavy load was off his shoulders. He died soon after our visit.There is a message in his story that is important today. Our beautiful blue jeweled planet is in danger.But more than that, our galaxy experiences a trickle down effect caused by any nuclear explosion.“Earth will not be allowed to do this again”. said Chris.Chris also said he would be back, bringing his troops with him.Something about a convergence in 2012 AD.How about that?NOTE: Vivian Harper can be contacted at amphibian62@q.com. I thank her for allowing me to present this account
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Reader Emails: Gifts From Above
Gen. Wallace Still Haunts Tennessee Mansion
9/11 Blueprint for Truth: Architect Richard Gage, AIA
Illinois Cemetery's Spectral Past Highlighted In Publication
Suburban Legends: The Palisades Panthers
Reader Emails: Gifts From Above
I was down in the back meadow with my dog Twiggy around 9:PM. I was looking east when I noticed to my left a very bright white light moving from behind the trees, I watched in astonishment because it was very obvious that it was not a plane. There was no blinking whatsoever, just a continous white light and very low and silent.At first, I thought I heard jet sounds, but it turned out to be a jet flyingbehind me. The white light suddenly stopped...with camera ready I snapped a photo. It then proceeded on it's way toward the east, gliding along slowly. I watched for a good 2 minutes or more. I said thank you, thank you, thank you! .....and waved bye!Earlier I had gone over to my friends to put their dogs up around sunset, which has been the routine. I was at a meeting prior to this so Twiggy was not with me. I walked down to the shore of the lake and the sun was just going down. I did a long meditation and thanked our Universal Siblings for their visits and the fantastic photos they had given me the past few weeks.I felt like this sighting was a response and a thumbs up for sharing with the world.Thanks!Marilyn B.____________________Personally it seems to me that all UFO activity and sightings are increasing somewhat exponentially. The only reason I can personally say this is last Sunday evening me and some friends here in central UT saw 6 and I repeat 6 UFO's within a 4 hour period. I am somewhat skeptical when it comes to first hand encounters as people tend to leave logic aside. I didn't have a camera as we were at a ranch and really weren't planning on seeing anything odd that night. We just planned for another night. Now with my skepticism's I am convinced that what we saw was not the ISS or iridium flares or the lacrosse and space debris. I looked up the coordinates of my location, took note of the times and visibility of the ISS, iridium flares and the lacrosse. What we saw was too bright, too slow, made no noise, was not blinking, was what seemed very low and happened repeatedly after I started flashing my 3,000,000 candle power spotlight at the first object. I am convinced because of me flashing my spotlight that the later sightings occurred. I have witnessed several UFO's in my area but never more than 1 on one night. It was truly amazing and actually scared my friends with their solid beliefs that UFO's and aliens don't exist.Now I will not say that these objects were flown by any entity or extraterrestrial intelligence or if they were government made. But I'll tell you the things were damn bright and that night is still kind of tripping me out along with my friends. I have thought a lot about what happened and it was truly amazing. I never thought I would witness something on that scale with friends there to witness it also. I am just wondering if it has anything to do with project blue beam or if it is something entirely different. I am tired of wondering and, as crazy as it sounds, want to know regardless of how it happens. I am tired of fighting logic against hope and just want to know if aliens are real. I am to the point where I would welcome some kind of encounter. Time will tell.____________________I saw a UFO in 1964 near Los Angeles airport. I believe there were a lot of sightings over Los Angeles in the 50s & 60s.Oh - I can hear the skeptics now - because it was over a busy airport. I was born and bred practically under the flight path and my mom worked there. I observed planes for many years - NO it was not a plane.I was sitting in my car waiting for my mom to get off work (at airport). I looked up and saw this glowing disk in the sky way above a tall building (maybe 10 stories) - across from the airport. At first I thought it was one of those search lights for advertising. I sat and just observed it for about 20 minutes. There was no sound that I could detect.I couldn't see actual details because it was glowing - like it was self illuminating, a yellow/white illumination.This was at 4:30 in the afternoon. Clear blue skies - only some high wispy clouds.The object moved in a half semi circle (again, reason to believe it was a search light) - but it stopped and just stayed there for about 5 minutes. I wasn't jumping up & down yelling "It's a UFO" - I was just observing it. Then it moved back to where it started.THEN - it shot straight up in the air through the high wispy clouds until I could not see it anymore.
Gen. Wallace Still Haunts Tennessee Mansion
The white-pillared Cherry Mansion in Savannah, Tenn., is where General Wallace died with his wife at his side."My darling knew he was going and pressed my hand long and fondly to his heart. Then he waved me away and said, ‘We meet in Heaven." They were the last words upon those loved lips," Ann Wallace later wrote.The home is privately owned but identified by a historical marker. The owners say it is haunted and passersby report seeing a Civil War soldier looking from an upstairs window.The speculation is it is Wallace's ghost._____________________Cherry Mansion HistoryThe Cherry Mansion, located on Main Street in Savannah, TN was built around 1830 by David Robinson, who in turn gave it to his daughter when she married W. H. Cherry. Cherry was a wealthy man, who owned much land, and many slaves. During the Civil War, Cherry was an ardent Union Sympathizer, as were many people in Savannah. Mr. Cherry always opened his home to Union soldiers.In 1862, just before the Battle of Shiloh, some Union soldiers, including General U. S. Grant, were welcomed into the mansion. In fact, Grant was there in the mansion during the first hours of the battle, reportedly recovering from a night of binge drinking. Even so, had it not been for Mr. Cherry making his home so opening, and welcoming Union forces, the outcome of Shiloh may have been different. Today, Cherry Mansion is a privately owned home, but is marked by a historical marker. For years, owners have said the house is haunted, though no one has ever been harmed by the ghosts. Among the more common activity reported here are typical ghostly activity: apparitions, loud noises, and the occasional voice. Many passersby have reported seeing a man dressed in a Civil War era military uniform peering out of an upstairs window. In 1976, a well documented ghostly occurrence happened. Four people witnessed a man dressed in a white suit walking down the street. Something about him just didn't seem right. He walked up to the medal historical marker, and read it very carefully. Then he vanished!_________________Union Major General W.H.L. WallaceWilliam Harvey Lamb Wallace earned acclaim and a brigadier general’s star as a fighting officer. Unfortunately, it was the same approach which led to his death, April 10, 1862, due to wounds suffered at the Battle of Shiloh. Wallace was born in Urbana, Ohio, July 8, 1821. As a boy, his family relocated to La Salle County, Illinois. In 1846, Wallace was admitted to the Illinois bar, but within a year, he enlisted in the 1st Illinois Volunteers for the Mexican War. Initially a private, he rose to first lieutenant and regimental adjutant while fighting under the army of Zachary Taylor.After the war, he returned home and resumed his law practice. He was an elected district attorney for a time. With a call for troops at the start of the Civil War, Wallace returned to the military as colonel of the 11th Illinois (enlisted May 1, 1861), a 90-day unit which extended its enlistment for three years. Based at Bird’s Point, Missouri, Wallace led his men on a chase of Missouri State Guard Brig. Gen. Jeff Thompson “The Swamp Rat” holding Bloomfield, Missouri. That was part of the campaign with ended with the Battle of Belmont, Missouri, Nov. 7, 1861.First contact with the enemy came in skirmishes against Thompson’s forces. If the 11th Illinois missed out on the main fighting at Belmont, it made up for it at Fort Donelson, Feb. 13-16, 1862. In the campaign to take the river forts in northern Tennessee, Wallace commanded the Second Brigade of Brig. Gen. John McClernard’s First Division, Wallace’s men had an easy time at Fort Henry. But in the siege of Fort Donelson, Wallace and his brigade were in the thick of the fighting. The brigade suffered with a change in weather and then suffered heavily from Brig. Gen. Pillow’s attack out of the fort Feb. 15, 1862. Representative of the carnage was the 11th Illinois. According to the adjutant general’s report, in five hours, the 11th Illinois, part of Wallace’s 2nd Brigade, lost 329 of its 509 men who were killed, wounded or missing. Of that number, 72 were killed and 182 wounded.In reorganization of the army, Wallace was promoted to brigadier general March 21, 1862, and assigned to command of the 2nd Division of the six concentrating around Savannah and Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. The morning of April 6, 1862, found Wallace’s division on the Federal right, in advance of the main lines. Suffering heavy casualties during the Confederate attacks, Wallace brought his command back to form up on the right of Brig. Gen. Benjamin Prentiss’ 6th Division at what later became known as the “Hornet’s Nest.” Defending the sunken road in heavy woods, the Federals were ordered to hold out. Late in the day, April 6, the position began to break. Just after conferring with Prentiss to hold out to the last man, Wallace was hit in the head with a piece of shell. Prentiss surrendered soon after that. Wallace was left on the field, undisturbed among the many casualties. It’s likely he was left for dead in the dark.Federal troops found him about 10 a.m. April 7, somehow still alive. He was removed to Pittsburg Landing, where his wife had arrived the day before. Wallace lingered until April 10, when he died at the Federal command post (Cherry Mansion) at Savannah, Tennessee. Wallace was buried near Ottawa, Illinois.
9/11 Blueprint for Truth: Architect Richard Gage, AIA
NOTE: long video...'9/11 Blueprint for Truth' presented by Architect Richard Gage, AIA. New evidence or is this just more of the same debate? Pictures of angled cuts on columns of demolished buildings, description of how the core columns may have been accessed, etc. You be the judge..
Illinois Cemetery's Spectral Past Highlighted In Publication
Legend has it that night-time trespassers to Moon Point Cemetery, south of Streator in Livingston County, will find themselves at the mercy of the "hatchet lady,"the ghost of a woman who lost her mind following the death of her child.And if a train passes by while visitors are at Moon Point, their cars will not start, leaving them trapped in the cemetery.Or so the story goes.Such are the yarns spun by local residents, according to Michael Kleen, who publishes an online serial called "Legends and Lore." And these kinds of tales are right up his alley.Kleen recently visited Moon Point Cemetery after hearing these local legends and included his investigation in the May edition of his publication, available at www.trueillinoishaunts.com."It is stories like this that make our small towns interesting and unique," he said. "The legends of Moon Point have been passed down from one generation to the next, playing an important role in forging a sense of community."Kleen took some time to talk to The Times via e-mail. Here's what he had to say about Moon Point, the paranormal and what he enjoys about his investigations.Q. Can you tell me a little about yourself and your publication?A. I earned a master"s degree in American history from Eastern Illinois University in 2008. I am the author of several books, including "Tales of Coles County, Illinois," "Six Tales of Terror" and "One Voice." I've spoken on local history and folklore at Teapot"s Café in Beecher, Charleston Middle School and the 2007 Conference on Illinois History in Springfield. I have appeared on Joliet Paranormal Radio, AM-1050 WLIP, and have had several articles published in Paranormal Underground magazine and KILTER — the journal of Gothic Art Chicago. I am also the publisher of Black Oak Presents, a quarterly digital journal of Middle American art and culture.The Legends and Lore of Illinois is a monthly serial that highlights places of folklore and ghost lore in Illinois that anyone can download and read for free. It is in its third year, and I recently released a book comprised of the first 24 issues. The Legends and Lore of Illinois tries to examine places of folklore in Illinois from a unique angle, including using fiction and humor. Our motto is "leave science to the scientists." I take a lot of pictures of each place, but I don't go around pointing thermometers at headstones.Q. How did you first become aware of Moon Point Cemetery?A. I learned about Moon Point Cemetery, like many places, on the Shadowlands Index of Haunted Places. Unfortunately, most of the places on that Index aren't really worth looking into, and there are a lot of errors on there. When I determine subjects for future issues, I make sure there is plenty of information available about each location. When I looked up Moon Point, I saw it had a Wikipedia entry, and it was mentioned in a number of other Internet postings, so I thought it was interesting enough to include in an issue.Q. Did you visit the cemetery? What were your impressions? Do you have a protocol you follow when visiting these places?A. I did visit the cemetery. I make sure to go to every location I write about and I take dozens of pictures to make sure each "Legends and Lore" issue is well illustrated. One of the purposes of the serial is to allow people who aren't able to go to these places to see what they look like. Not everyone has as much free time as I do! My impressions of Moon Point were basically the same as what I get at every allegedly haunted cemetery. When you've been to as many as I have, they all start to blend together after awhile. I think Moon Point is interesting because of the variety of stories associated with it, and it isn't every day you hear about the ghost of a "hatchet lady," so that was what drew me to the place. For the record, no one threw hatchets at me while I was there.Q. How did you become interested in "legends and lore?" While this legend involves the supernatural, do all of your visits center around that?A. I've been interested in the paranormal my entire life. Of course, everyone wonders what happens after they die, and I certainly look for any shred of evidence that a part of me will continue on. I think these ghost stories are oddly comforting for people. It makes you think maybe there is a chance you just won't blink into nothingness. Most of the locations I write about center around the paranormal, but they don't have to. For instance, next month's issue will be about the Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, which has been abandoned for a number of years. I haven't heard of any stories associated with it, but I thought it would be an interesting subject.Q. What is it you enjoy about putting out this publication?A. I ask myself that question every day, because it is really difficult to go to all these places, do the research, put out an issue every month and work on all my other projects. I guess what keeps me going is the thought that somewhere out there, someone is sitting at home reading my work and really getting something out of it. I want to make that connection, and I love when people write to me and say how much they appreciate it. Also, I love going on road trips and exploring new places. There's always a chance something interesting might happen, so it keeps me coming back.Q. What kind of reaction do you normally get from locals when you visit?A. I tend to avoid other people when I go to each location, but I've had locals e-mail me after an issue has come out and shower me with all kinds of information you couldn't get anywhere else. The people living around these places know so much more about them, but the question is, where do you start asking? You can't just go up to someone's house, so you'd have to start asking around at gas stations and McDonald's. "Hi, I'm just some random dude off the street, do you know anything about that creepy cemetery outside of town?" Come to think of it, that might make these trips a lot more interesting... As for the local police, I don't ever have much trouble with them. But if they ever ask what I'm doing somewhere, I simply tell them and usually they don't seem to care. I always go to these places during the day, so there's never a problem.Q. I notice the publication includes a fictional component. Why mix both reality and fantasy? What do you want readers to get out of experiencing both?A. Ah, yes. The fictional element of each issue follows the adventures of a group called The Fallen, who investigate each location and get into all sorts of trouble. The stories keep things interesting, for me especially, and also for the readers. I really want to stoke the imaginations of my readers. I think with the "investigation" craze, there's a tendency to want to reduce paranormal experiences to some kind of Tinker Toy experiment, but I firmly believe the best part of the paranormal is its ability to inspire wonderment and creativity. We all know a hatchet lady doesn't really lurk in Moon Point Cemetery, but it's fun to pretend and it's fun to go somewhere and be scared. Why come in and ruin that? So that's why I think fiction and storytelling are such important parts of the creation of ghost lore, and it's something I'd like to encourage, as long as people can tell the difference when the lights come on.
Suburban Legends: The Palisades Panthers
The Palisades panther(s) first appeared on the morning of March 6th, in Snedens Landing, a hamlet on the Hudson, just over the New Jersey line. Jane Bernick glanced out her kitchen window and saw, lying in the grass about twenty yards away, a pair of large black mammals. Assuming that they were bears, she retrieved a pair of binoculars. Closer observation revealed that they were feline. Panthers. No question. She spent ten minutes watching them groom each other, before they slinked off. No one believed her.A week later, Bernick’s next-door neighbor Grace Knowlton, a sculptor, was sitting in her living room, with two guests, when she saw a black panther stalk through a clearing about fifty yards away. She had a sense that it was following another one, but couldn’t be sure. Knowlton called the police, who regarded her report with suspicion, perhaps because she owns a pair of black standard poodles. But she was insistent—the tail, the hind legs, the glistening coat.A few days afterward, Dorian Tunell, an electrician, went on a bicycle ride with his eight-year-old son in Tallman Mountain State Park, about a mile north of Knowlton’s place. Not far into the woods, he heard a rustling and looked to see a big black cat jumping over a rock.“The panther!” the boy cried. He ditched his bike, and Tunell scooped him up with one arm and rode to a friend’s house, warning people along the way to get their pets inside. The friend called the park police, who seemed uninterested until they were told that a neighbor had set off into the woods with a 12-gauge shotgun. (He was wearing loafers.) The police converged, in force, but found nothing.Still, panther mania took hold. The authorities mounted warning notices and motion-sensitive digital cameras on trees. A town animal-control officer, who goes by Thunder, passed his days parked at Snedens’s only stoplight, on the lookout for a panther crossing the road. The neighbor with the loafers changed into full camouflage and roamed the woods with a bayonet. A deli up in Piermont christened a sandwich (chicken cutlet with melted mozzarella) the Panther Special. Residents put out a glossy journal—a “panthology,” they called it—of panther poems and limericks, with references to Pablo Neruda, Inspector Clouseau, and Bobby Seale. A contributor named Cantankerous Nick wrote:An outpouring of amateur verseHas not solved our community’s curse.This lame verbal scatAbout a black catHas made the atmosphere worse.A panther: Was it possible? The term panther can describe any big cat, such as a jaguar or a cougar. Jaguars aren’t native to the Northeast; and although cougars may be, it has been many years since they have ventured so close to the George Washington Bridge, and, anyway, they are tawny, not black. Everyone who saw the panther(s)—several more encounters followed—swore that there could be none more black. People were saying that there were a couple of pet black panthers in the county—owners of exotic animals, like sex offenders, have to register with the authorities—but these cats had alibis. So the residents of the Palisades speculated that the panthers had come from Alpine, New Jersey, a few miles south, where one would find mansions and therefore, presumably, citizens more inclined to own and then abandon pet panthers.Another sighting, in late March, by a woman in her driveway, inspired the villagers to call in a professional tracker. One resident had had as a lab partner in college the renowned tracking guru Tom Brown, Jr., who had started an organization called Tracker SFI (for “search and forensic investigation”). Tracker SFI applies the ancient Apache art of tracking to police investigations.SFI deployed a Brown acolyte named Shane Hobel. A week had passed, but Hobel could tell that a big animal had lain down in the gravel in the woman’s driveway. He followed a trail into the brush, across a road, and onto a construction site, where Dorian Tunell happened to be working. Hobel showed him where the panther had tracked mud on a log.That night, Knowlton’s poodles burst out of the house barking. They ran through the electric fence and didn’t come home. The next day, a friend found them stranded on a cliff over the Hudson River. That same day, another neighbor, until now a skeptic, saw a panther out by his tire swing. Hobel raced back to Snedens and tracked the cat’s trail to a cedar at the edge of a nearby parking lot, where there was a fresh claw mark in the bark. It was five inches wide—a big cat’s paw, splayed. Hobel said, “The panther walked up to the base of the tree, paced, sat down, wiggled its butt a bit, arched its back, stretched, reached up, and scratched the trunk of the tree. Then it meandered off to the left.” It was his theory that the panthers, solitary by nature, had split up and headed north. A few weeks later, two workers saw a panther pursuing a deer, on a golf course, nine miles north. Tunell had taken to driving around up there at night, aching, like Richard Dreyfuss in “Close Encounters,” for another glimpse.A first-time tracker, less familiar with the old Apache ways than with “Bringing Up Baby,” visited Snedens recently, hoping for signs. Tunell’s bike trail began a few feet from the gateway to the home of the actor Bill Murray. The first-timer keened, “I can’t give you anything but looove, baby.” No panther(s).The tracker headed south through Snedens, past Orson Welles’s old house and a house belonging to Björk, to Knowlton’s place, an old farm, strewn with her sculptures. Knowlton has lived there for forty years. She took the first-time tracker along Shane Hobel’s route: past a vine-engulfed water tower and a patch of poison ivy, through the woods—Panther Pass, she called it—and into the parking lot, to the tree that the panther had allegedly scratched. There it was, all right: a scratch mark.Hobel returned to the Palisades on May 18th. He parked his black Jeep in a lot off Route 9W and spread out some cat-track photographs and topographic maps on the hood. He is compact and clean-shaven, a self-abnegated forty-one, and was dressed in camouflage pants and a Tracker SFI fleece and cap. He told the story of Tom Brown, his mentor: at the age of seven, while looking for fossils in southern New Jersey, Brown came across a Native American boy, who introduced him to his grandfather, an elderly Apache scout named Stalking Wolf; over the next nine years, Wolf initiated Brown into the tracking arts. Brown, and later Hobel, learned how to tell, from an imprint in the earth, the height, weight, sex, speed, and mood of the animal or person who had made it. “A track is merely the way Mother Earth feels about you the moment you left the track,” he recited. Hobel’s mother was a showgirl from Buffalo, his father a Russian concert pianist. For a time, Hobel was a stuntman, working at an Old West theme park upstate. Now, in addition to his work for SFI, he teaches martial arts and wilderness survival.The construction site where Hobel first saw the cat tracks was just south of the lot. A crew was there grading gravel. “You guys looking for the phantom panthers?” one of the men said. Hobel replied that the panthers were not phantoms. The man said, “People actually saw them? Did they have a couple of cocktails in ’em?” Hobel laughed politely and then dropped into a thicket off the road. With a laser pointer, he indicated the tracks of raccoons, squirrels, and deer in the leaves and mud. Then he crouched down over a bare circle the size of a coaster. “This is easily two months old,” he said, tracing claw marks with the laser. “It’s the rear right foot of the panther. Here’s the heel pad.” There was an empty bottle of Michelob next to it. A pack of cyclists whizzed by. Hobel, on hands and knees, sniffed at the trunk of a tree. “I smell for the obvious,” he said. Then he lowered his face to the ground: “I will put myself in the vision of a rabbit.”After a while, he crossed 9W and walked up the driveway of the woman who had seen the panther in the gravel. “They’re behind us,” he said, of the Snedens residents, “in large part because we’re really the only ones who believe.” Even believing Snedenites seem to recognize, however, that the panthers may fulfill some metaphysical or metaphorical craving, in a neighborhood already expert at sating them. (In the fifties, locals used to spot a raccoon wearing a red bow tie.) As one credulous non-panther-witness wrote in the panthology:A diversion from financial woesWe’ve fixated on two feline foesWe’re all mad as hattersBut nothing else mattersWhen the market is at nerve-racking lows.Hobel dipped into the bushes, crawling into a sort of juniper den. He pointed out a hardened “bile pile”: “It was frothing and fresh the day we saw it.” There was a scratch on a tree trunk. He poked with a knife at a pile of dried scat and held it up close. “We call this V.S.P.O.P., for ‘very strange pile of poo.’ ” He said that in the woods nearby he’d found a deer carcass and a half-eaten squirrel. “I cut off the squirrel’s skin and kept the skull. The panther left me a gift.”Hobel went back across 9W and past the construction site. “Find him?” one of the workers called out.“We’re just cooking him up,” Hobel called back.“Save some for us,” the worker said, and they laughed.Hobel doesn’t think it does the art of tracking any good to take cynicism personally. He said quietly, “Go with the joke, keep moving.”
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Owner Says Notorious Ghost Still Roams Queensland Hotel
Fort Caspar Museum Visitors May See More Than Expected
Astounding 600 Foot 'Jellyfish' Crop Circle In Oxfordshire
UFO Appears During Filming of Documentary on Alien Abductions
Photos: Australian Yowie Hunter Attacked
Owner Says Notorious Ghost Still Roams Queensland Hotel
While it has been the stuff of local urban legends, paranormal investigators are set to officially unlock the mystery behind Rosewood's notorious ghost.Ipswich councillor David Pahlke, who co-owns the hotel where the mysterious sightings have been reported, said the supernatural story goes back 100 years to a fire at the Rosewood Hotel in 1914.Cr Pahlke said according to local legend, the fire was started by the person whose spirit remains at the pub.While he hasn't sighted the ghost, believed to be called 'Rusty', he said he had felt its presence.“I have had doors open on me and in one instance water came off the veranda of the hotel when I came in,” Cr Pahlke said.“We had a Gold Coast darts team staying here once and they complained about music at 3am, someone playing a piano. We don't have a piano.”Water has also been said to drip from the ceiling on to the bar below.Cleaners have also been said to notice damp bedding in the front bedroom.On Saturday, June 27, Ghost Tours, in partnership with the Queensland Paranormal Investigators will host a ghost hunt at the Rosewood Hotel.Managing director of Brisbane-based Ghost Tours Jack Sim said those on the tour would have the opportunity to do their own paranormal hunting.“Customers are given the opportunity to use scientific methods such as EMF readings, or detecting disturbances in the electromagnetic field, and old fashioned methods like flour through to divining rods and spiritual boards,” Mr Sim said.Tour guests are also encouraged to bring their own cameras (still and video) to aid in the investigation.The self-proclaimed dark historian said he had spent a very eerie night at the hotel.“The ghost stories seem to date back at least four decades,” Mr Sim said.“Pubs are known for attracting great story telling and in the case of the Rosewood Hotel, it seems to focus around a particular room,” he said.“On the night at the pub, we will try to find at least some proof of paranormal activity.”Cr Pahlke said he hoped the hunt wouldn't scare 'Rusty' away.“He is a friendly ghost. He lives here in harmony,” he said.____________________Rosewood Hotel HistoryOne of three pubs in the main st, hence the name "The Middle PubThe original Rosewood Hotel which was one of four hotels in Rosewood in the early days, burnt down on the 7th January 1914. When the present Rosewood Hotel was rebuilt a ghost took residence, dubbed the Water Ghost due to the fact clothes hanging up are found mysteriously wet and sheets of water have been seen falling from the balcony with no one in site.The present owner is local Ipswich Councillor David Pahlke and the today houses accommodation rooms on the second level."The earlier Rosewood Hotel and eight other buildings were destroyed in a huge fire in January 1914. The hotel was rebuilt shortly afterwards. It is a very handsome two-story building, with an interesting double veranda. There is an awning across the footpath, the entrance is approached across a small open veranda which is recessed from the footpath and surrounded by a decorative timber valance."
Fort Caspar Museum Visitors May See More Than Expected
Last summer, while investigating the Battle of Red Buttes, Fort Caspar Museum manager Rick Young had a few abnormal -- if not paranormal -- experiences."There was all sorts of stuff moving around in here when we were doing that," Young said.When he left the evening before, everything was normal, he said. But when he arrived the next morning, chairs were pushed up against the inside of the doors, guns were cocked, and ramrods were in the barrels. In the Sutler Store on the property, Young was particularly perplexed, he said."The door opens to the inside, so I don't know how you'd get out of there with the chair against the door," he said.The multi-use room at Fort Caspar was filled to capacity Saturday evening, but it wasn't the usual history buffs who made it a standing-room-only event.The spectators were interested in what history may have left behind at the old fort: ghosts.Those interested in the possibility of paranormal activity gathered to watch a presentation of findings by the Paranormal Research Society of Casper. The ghost hunters did an in-depth, overnight search of the state historical site in April, and caught at least one odd recording of an unknown voice."It's an opportunity to get some new faces in here," Young said of the presentation.Attendees heard the story of the Sutler Store, where a photo, taken from outside when no one else was around, showed a face staring out from the window.And researchers couldn't keep batteries working inside the store."We went through three sets of brand-new batteries [for the video camera]," said Lisa Lauderdale with the Paranormal Research Society. "The theory behind it is that ghosts need the energy to manifest."Fort Caspar Museum is built on the same land where, in 1862, the actual fort housed thousands of soldiers. Some of those soldiers died at the fort, from fights with American Indians, accidents and diseases. And for years before the Army arrived, people on their way west on the Oregon and Mormon trails passed through the grounds.Despite having none of the original buildings, Young said, there's plenty of history on the property to warrant a haunting or two.When the fort was being rebuilt, construction workers were digging and found five bodies buried on the grounds. Remains from three more bodies have been accidentally recovered since then. More are certainly buried there, Young said, but he has "no intention" of digging them up.So, does Young think the fort is haunted?"I don't know," he said, "but we've certainly had weird stuff happening. ... There's certainly a lot of history, and a lot of violent history on this land."
Astounding 600 Foot 'Jellyfish' Crop Circle In Oxfordshire
The vast pattern appeared in the field last week and experts are claiming it to be the first of its kind in the world.Karen Alexander, a crop circle expert, said: "We have seen butterfly and bird patterns in the past, but this is the first jellyfish crop circle in the world."It is absolutely huge - roughly three times the size of most crop patterns and extremely interesting. People have been aghast at the size of it. It is a complete monster."We are looking into the meaning of it, but at present it just seems to have appeared out of nowhere."Crop circle theorists known as 'croppies' - believe the patterns are created by UFOs during nocturnal visits, or caused by natural phenomena such as unusual forms of lightning striking the earth.But it has been proven the patterns can be easily created artists.Last year a crop circle described as the most complex ever to seen in Britain was discovered in a barley field in Wiltshire.The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, was a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi.Michael Reed, an astrophysicist, said: "The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the centre is the decimal point."The code is based on 10 angular segments with the radial jumps being the indicator of each segment."Starting at the centre and counting the number of one-tenth segments in each section contained by the change in radius clearly shows the values of the first 10 digits in the value of pi."
UFO Appears During Filming of Documentary on Alien Abductions
It was an inauguration into the world of paranormal phenomena straight from the pits of hell, but Canadian filmmaker Adam Gray couldn't even let out an appropriate scream when he saw a sinisterly cloaked figure hovering over him in the middle of the night --- he was frozen in a strange state between worlds, conscious, but unable to move or speak. Gray was experiencing what's known as 'sleep paralysis,'--- a haunting few seconds that left a lasting impression and eventually led to a documentary film on the topic --- the first of four features he and his brother Andrew have created through their company ParaDocs Productions."It's something that's very common, you get I think 15-20% of the population that experience sleep paralysis at some point," he notes in a phone interview with CityNews.ca "You're asleep and you wake up and you're paralyzed and often while people are in this state they have vivid hallucinations of an entity in their room that sort of crawls onto their chest and begins to strangle them."It sounds completely crazy, but it's actually very common...they are using it now as a way of debunking people who think they've been abducted by aliens."Alien abduction is the theme of the Belleville Ontario brothers' latest film, "The White Mountain Abduction," which delves into the mysterious case of Betty and Barney Hill, the first people to come public with claims that they were snatched away by extraterrestrials in 1961 while driving through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The brothers are used to dealing with the mysterious and bizarre. They've investigated things like crystal skulls and government endorsed remote viewing in their previous films. But what happened on the first day of shooting their latest release trumped all.They began filming on the 47th anniversary of the event, at the very site the now deceased Hill couple claimed they were abducted from. Remarkably, strange lights appeared in the night sky as a cameraman rolled tape to conduct the film's first interviews. The mysterious orbs eerily hovered in the distance before dancing along the skyline and disappearing."It was a really bizarre set of coincidences," Gray admits. "It was the first day of shooting, 47th anniversary of the abduction event, we're at the site, and just as we were starting to interview, these strange lights appeared. The cameraman just sort of kept rolling and we just sort of stood there in awe, like what the hell is this? We still don't know what it was, but we know it wasn't a star or planes...We thought maybe that it might be military flares at first but the Air Force people (we spoke to) didn't think that's what it was."After ruling out several conceivable options, Gray realized they may have actually captured footage of a UFO, while ironically filming a documentary about the Unidentified Flying Objects."It's not what I would have pictured an alien craft to look like, but it was certainly unexplainable," he adds.Gray won't go as far as to say that he believes in aliens, but after his experiences with sleep paralysis and the things he's witnesses and learned through his filmmaking, he admits there are unanswered questions, and experiences, which can't be denied. And as long as those experiences are enveloped in mystery, he's intent on doing his part to help open minds and shatter belittling stigmas."We are certainly trying to entertain people but I think our agenda is to get people to look at these things with an open mind and try and separate the sort of X-files mythology fiction from what has really happened.""I think in terms of alien abduction, as soon as you say that people sort of shut down their open mind, but it's a genuine phenomena and there's hundreds of people who have come forward, been through lie detector tests and psychologists, and they genuinely have had some experience. What is not known is what the cause of that experience was, was it some weird psychological hysteria, or a waking dream? Whatever it is, it's a really interesting mystery because it's really happening to people and it's changing their lives."
Photos: Australian Yowie Hunter Attacked
More graphic photos Cryptomundo.comIt never rains but it pours - in this case, improbable events.Hot on the heels of last week's wild weather in southeast Queensland comes a hunter of mythological beasts - Tim the Yowie Man.Tim - who uses no surname and can be almost as elusive as his quarry - says there is a direct correlation between significant rain events and sightings of the yowie."The soaked soil and muddy bogs created by the heavy rain are more conducive to animals, including yowies, leaving their footprints,'' Tim said.He said last week's rain could make "a large hairy bipedal hominoid creature'' uncomfortable and force it from deep jungle canyons into the open.So Tim has rushed from that other capital of strange mysteries - Canberra - to Springbrook in the Gold Coast hinterland, a village he describes as the yowie capital of Australia for its many sightings.So far he's seen nothing - but that hasn't put him off."I'm quietly confident of finding some sort of evidence such as hair or footprints of the mystery beast,'' he said."If I'm really lucky I may even get to see one.''Dean Harrison of Australian Yowie Research says he has just returned from Springbrook, bearing photographs of footprints he believes are of a female yowie and her young trailing along behind."They seem to be quite passive around that area compared to other areas that we've been to,'' Mr Harrison said.He said tales of yowies near Springbrook date back to before European settlement.Mr Harrison said on his latest expedition he was rugby-tackled by a yowie at 3am near Gympie."This one knocked me flying backwards. I landed in a rockpool,'' he said.Australian Yowie Research has been nominated for a Bent Spoon Award on the website of Australian Skeptics, a group that investigates paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.
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Skirrid Mountain Inn: Wales' Most Haunted Pub
Grace Sherwood: The Witch of Pungo
Original Occupants Still Haunt Racine's Masonic Center
Video: Lake Champlain's Legendary Monster 'Champ'?
Skirrid Mountain Inn: Wales' Most Haunted Pub
As heritage pubs go there are few within Wales or beyond our borders able to boast a historic tapestry as ornate and detailed as that of the Skirrid Mountain Inn. In the third in our series of features on Wales’ historic pubs we focus on the haunted inn that proudly claims to be the oldest in Wales. Darren Devine reportsGhosts, gruesome deaths, and an association with some of the most influential figures in Welsh history – the Skirrid Mountain Inn has a heritage as colourful as that of any pub in Wales.So much so that it has been able to weather a storm that has driven four pubs a day across the UK out of business and is at last beginning to see conditions improve.Manager Geoff Fiddler knows that while so many other inns have been consigned to the history books his has survived because it already occupies a prominent place in them.Standing in the shadow of Skirrid Mountain, the Monmouthshire pub was said to be a rallying point for Welsh rebel leader Owain Glyndr before he marched on to Pontrilas, in Herefordshire.Dating back to 1110 the pub functioned from its earliest origins as both a hostelry and a court house dispensing justice to local ne’er-do-wells.And halfway up its ornate spiral staircase stands the cell, now used as a store room, where prisoners spent a lonely last night before being sent to meet their maker by bloodthirsty judges for minor offences.The last person to be executed at the pub, in Llanfihangel Crucorney, near Abergavenny, was hanged on the orders of revolutionary leader Oliver Cromwell for stealing sheep. The hangings were carried out from a beam across the joist of the pub’s staircase and the slab on which the bodies were placed remains at the well of the stairs.Mr Fiddler said it’s this history that attracts tourists, spiritualists and ghost hunters on a near year-round basis. The country inn can accommodate up to nine people, but such is its popularity with those preoccupied by the paranormal it’s fully booked on weekends until December.The 50-year-old landlord, who has been in the pub trade for 23 years with the last four spent at the Skirrid, said: “We have people coming every weekend, almost all ghost hunters and paranormal societies, and the next Saturday that we could offer anybody accommodation is the second week in December. The pub has always been here and whatever else changes the pub doesn’t. It’s absolutely steeped in history – people come from miles around just to look at and touch the stairwell.”Mr Fiddler, who runs the pub with wife Sharon and 37-year-old stepson Wayne Rowlands, says his scepticism about the paranormal has been shaken by his experiences since taking over.He said: “We’ve got an incredible oak castle-style door at the front of the pub and one winter’s evening when I was opening up I saw a man in a tri-cornered hat beckoning me.“I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but it was half-dark at the time and he was fleeting and gone.”Mr Fiddler says the pub, which includes two bars, a restaurant and a family room, also enjoys a strong reputation as a place to eat as well as drink. This has helped keep it afloat in the face of challenges from cheap supermarket beer and the smoking ban.But he said his hostelry has tried to strike a balance between offering an appetising range of locally-sourced food on its menu without going down the gastro- pub route.“We’ve got a reputation for nice food, but we’re not a high-brow place.“My wife cooks with the help of one other cook and the most expensive meal we have is a £12.95 sirloin steak. It’s not a gastro-pub – I wouldn’t eat at a gastro-pub because I find them soulless places.”
Grace Sherwood: The Witch of Pungo
More than 300 years ago, a series of strange events struck old Princess Anne County, Va. farmers.Cotton plants withered. Cows' milk dried up. Husbands' eyes wandered from their wives.Who was to blame? According to the local women, Grace Sherwood.The farmer's wife knew a little too much about herbs, was a little too pretty and wore clothing that was a little too tight, according to local historians. So they accused her of witchcraft.A judge ordered Sherwood to be tried by ducking. So on July 10, 1706, with her thumbs tied to her big toes, Sherwood was ducked in the Lynnhaven River.The street leading to her ducking spot now carries her legend as Witchduck Road."It's named after Grace Sherwood's ducking," said local historian Deni Norred, who co- wrote "Ghosts, Witches and Weird Tales of Virginia Beach." "She was the first person tried by water in Virginia for witchcraft."Sherwood escaped her bonds and swam to safety, which the court considered proof of her devilish dealings. The day's wisdom dictated that an innocent woman would have sunk, Norred said.Sherwood served several years in jail before returning to her three sons. She lived to be nearly 80 and died at her farm in Pungo around 1740.Witchduck Road isn't the only landmark named after Sherwood or her trial. There's also Witch Duck Bay, Witch Duck Point, Witch Point Trail and Sherwood Lane.Three years ago, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine exonerated Sherwood. A bronze statue at Sentara Bayside Hospital, located on the corner of Independence Boulevard and North Witchduck Road, honors her legend.But according to local stories, that legend isn't quite over. Some say Sherwood returns to visit her ducking spot every July and can be seen as a spot of light dancing on Witch Duck Bay._____________________Grace Sherwood's StoryEarly court records tell the tale of Grace Sherwood, who was tried in 1706 as Virginia Beach's first witch. Unfortunately, there are no existing images of Grace. Her story is perhaps the most fascinating of the folklore in the history of Tidewater. Witchcraft was a very serious and real thing to the colonists. The cult was believed to be a threat to the Christian Church, and everyone during the early 1700's was on the lookout for witches, who could be recognized by so-called unusual or mysterious behaviors. Grace lived her entire life in the Pungo area of Virginia Beach (named for Indian chief Machiopungo), and married James Sherwood with whom she had three sons. She was said to be strikingly attractive, string-willed, and a non-conformist by nature. These traits were resented by her neighbors, who began spreading rumors about her witch-like behavior. She was accused of blighting gardens, causing livestock to die, and influencing the weather. After eight years of constant slander and bickering by her neighbors, Grace was formally charged with suspicions of witchcraft. A jury of women were ordered to search her body for suspicious or unusual markings, thought to be brands of the devil himself, and naturally the jury found, "marks not like theirs or like those of any other women." However, neither the local court nor the Attorney General in Williamsburg, would pass judgment on declaring her a witch. It was finally decided that Grace, "by her own consent, be tried in the water by Ducking, (dunking)." Water was considered to be the purest element and the theory was that it would reject anything of an evil nature. Based on this theory, the accused was tied up and thrown into the water. If the person drowned, he was declared innocent of witchcraft; if he could stay afloat until he could free himself, he was declared a witch. On July 10, 1706, Grace was marched from the jail (which located near the present day site of Old Donation Church) down the dirt road (now Witch Duck Road) to the Lynnhaven River. This portion of the river has since been named Witch Duck Bay in memory of the occasion. This being a big event, hoards of people from all over the colony flocked to the scene as news of the Ducking had spread throughout the Commonwealth. Grace Sherwood was tied crossbound with the thumb of her right hand to the big toe of her left foot, and the thumb of her left hand to the big toe of her right foot, and thrown into the water. As predicted by her accusers, Grace managed to stay afloat until she could free herself and swim to shore. She was jailed and awaiting trial for witchcraft for nearly eight years, when the charges against her were dropped due to the softening of her accusers hearts, and she was set free. She moved back to her Pungo home and lived there until her death at the age of 80. Many stories have been told and retold over the years about this most remarkable woman. One of the many tall tales that have been handed down from generation to generation has to do with the day of her ducking. When they led Grace Sherwood through the crowd that had turned out to see her put into the water she told them, "All right, all of you po' white trash, you've worn out your shoes traipsin' here to see me ducked, but before you'll get back home again you are goin' to get the duckin' of your life." When they put Grace into the water the sky was as bright blue as a bird's wing, but immediately afterward it grew pitch black, the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed all across the heavens. The terrified people started for home, only to be washed off the roads and into the ditches by a regular cloudburst.Source:http://www.madblood.net/grace.html
Original Occupants Still Haunt Racine's Masonic Center
For three decades in the latter 1800s, housekeeper Mary Williams faithfully served the Durand family until she died in their house at age 57.Some people believe she never left the mansion she had lived in since age 26. They believe Williams’ spirit is just one of the ghosts that inhabit 1012 Main St., now the Masonic Center.Wendy Spencer, the center’s event coordinator, is a believer. She says numerous people have seen and experienced ghostly phenomena there.In April, a team of paranormal investigators came to the Masonic Center to look for ghosts and came away convinced they found some.What follows are some of the eerie occurrences that led to that investigation.First occupantsSpencer’s research at the Racine Heritage Museum shows that Henry and Caroline Durand built the mansion in 1857. They had three girls, and later a fourth came along.Williams, from Wales, had her room adjoining the Durand girls’ room and must have been their close companion. The servant stayed with the Durand family until she died in the house of consumption, 31 years after her arrival.Meanwhile, one Durand daughter died at age 5. “We believe it was Caroline,” said Spencer.She and her daughter Amy Messer say they think little Caroline’s spirit is still likely frolicking at the mansion which the Masons bought in 1921 and turned into their center.Spencer tells of the time that a 12- to 14-year-old member of the Masonic boys youth group came to her, somewhat shaken.“He said, ‘... please don’t think I’m crazy, but I just saw a little girl upstairs, and she’s not alive.’ ” The boy said she had just run down a staircase.Spencer told the boy it was all right; that was just little Caroline, and she would do him no harm.Spencer and Messer say that Messer’s daughter, Summer, has reacted to what she evidently thought were people in the Masonic Center that no one else could see.One time, Spencer said, she was with Summer, now 4, on the third floor, where a Christmas tree was set up in the Durand daughters’ room. Summer said “hi” several times as though she was talking to someone behind the Christmas tree.Then, Summer became frightened and asked to be picked up.Spencer said she reacted by asking whoever was present to stop scaring her granddaughter — and Summer immediately started to laugh and giggle.That unnerved even Spencer, who calmly talks about having ghosts at the center. They quickly left the room.Other sightingsMesser and Joy McClelland, who has grown up with the Masons, both say they’ve seen and felt otherworldly things at the center.McClelland, for example, said she was once in the kitchen making lunch. “I looked up, and over by the door was a white, floating figure.” It was human-like and lasted only seconds, she said.Spencer said her predecessor once saw a smartly attired man descend a staircase after the guests had left an event. When she turned to talk to him, he was gone.No one who has reported seeing ghosts there has felt any menace from them, Spencer says. “People don’t feel necessarily afraid — just a little uneasy.”About the possible ghosts, she said, “What we feel is they’re happy. Little Caroline died, and Mary didn’t want to leave because Caroline is here.”Spencer added, “This is such a comfortable place for people to be ... Maybe they just like it here.”
Video: Lake Champlain's Legendary Monster 'Champ'?
A cell-phone video of a “creature” that appears to be swimming in Lake Champlain near Oakledge Park in Burlington last weekend is sparking renewed discussion about “Champ,” the lake’s legendary monster.The nearly 2-minute video, taken at sunrise Sunday by Burlington resident Eric Olsen, 37, shows an object moving across the mouth of the small cove and beach area at the park.At several points during the video, the object appears to raise its “head” a foot or more above the water’s surface. At other times a portion of what appears to be a torso, several feet in length, also can been seen.“I was just filming the water when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move, and I turned toward it and tried to zoom in on it,” said Olsen, a Web site developer and musician.“You can see that it is moving both horizontally, across the water, and vertically, going under the surface and coming back up,” he said. “It struck me as something that was long, that it didn’t have much girth.”Olsen put what he captured with his phone on YouTube, an Internet video-sharing site. Unsure about what he had photographed and reluctant to call it a “Champ” sighting, Olsen titled the footage “Strange Sighting on Lake Champlain.”The number of viewings of the video since it went on YouTube on Sunday had reached 3,060 by Tuesday evening.Loren Coleman a cryptozoologist based in Portland, Maine, said what Olsen filmed with his phone is the best photographic evidence to date of what residents on both sides of Lake Champlain prefer to call “Champ.”“We need to figure out what is going on here,” Coleman said. “The film needs to have a formal forensic analysis performed ... to break it down frame by frame. It needs to be looked at very seriously.” Cryptozoology is the study of purportedly nonexistent or mythical creatures.Before Sunday, the best known “Champ” photograph was taken in 1977 by Sandra Mansi of Bristol while she was having a picnic on the lake with her family. The photo was verified as legitimate and later appeared in Time magazine and The New York Times.Mansi, now 66, viewed Olsen’s video Tuesday and said there were similarities — and differences — between what she saw in 1977 and what is depicted in Olsen’s footage.“I see the shape of the head, how big it is,” she said, comparing her photo and the video. “The only thing I have a hard time with is the neck. It doesn’t look long enough for me. ... Whatever he saw has a link to what I saw. Tell him, ‘Welcome to the club.’”Scott Mardis of Winooski, another cryptozoologist who has spent time researching the “Champ” legend, said Olsen’s video seemed legitimate and was “very impressive.”“It does not look like it was Photoshopped,” Mardis said. “The object in the video has the same general texture as the rest of the photograph. It does not look like it was computer-generated. It looks like a ‘Champ.’”Mardis and Coleman said the object’s movements and size ruled out the chance it was a beaver, moose or some other more common mammal. Instead, both speculated it might be some unknown species of seal with an unusually long neck.“There’s lots of things that it could be,” Coleman said. “It’s just as interesting to me if all it is is an out-of-place harbor seal.”Ellen Marsden, a biology professor at the University of Vermont, said she thinks the object is not a seal but possibly a young moose in distress.“Fish or aquatic species rarely move that slowly in the water,” Marsden said. “It did not look like a creature that was comfortable in water. It was swimming as if something was seriously wrong.” She also said seals don’t swim with their backs out of the water.Olsen said he never saw the object emerge from the lake. He said he stopped filming after two minutes because the phone’s memory capacity was limited and he was afraid of losing what he had filmed. He said he stayed at the park for another half hour before leaving.There have been several alleged sightings of “Champ” on Lake Champlain over the years, but few were accompanied by any photographic substantiation.
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NYC's West Village Serves a Variety of Spirits
Strangeness at Heathrow Airport
MUFON Investigating Numerous Northwest Missouri Sightings
Is Mount St. Helens a Supervolcano?
NYC's West Village Serves a Variety of Spirits
New York City has a long, eventful past and the city's West Village is no exception. Riotous gangs, murderous politicians, drunk writers and nutty speak-easy owners have all made their mark on this corner of Manhattan and some think that they never really left.And while New York is not one of the many cities known for their fabulous ghost tours, you can still find a few good ones. In the West Village, the best way to do a tour is with beer. So I recently took part in a haunted pub tour -- orchestrated by a friend of mine in celebration of her 30th birthday.The group of us met in front of a Starbucks before the sun went down and were greeted by a man in a top, long black cape and a cane. He was a tour guide from Ghosts of New York but he was ready to have a few beers, too. From the moment we shook his hand, he had stories for us about places in the immediate vicinity.The first official stop was in front of one of the city's most romantic restaurants: One If By Land, Two If By Sea. The restaurant was once the carriage house of infamous Vice President Aaron Burr. According to our guide, Burr still hangs out there along with his daughter (who was lost at sea) and an unidentified man who some believe to be one of Burr's servants. Burr's daughter sometimes steals women's earrings and supposedly once pushed someone down the stairs.The restaurant is a little too expensive for a group like ours, so we headed to the Barrow Street Ale House right next door. Our guide revealed that he enjoyed Blue Moon and, being in an American history kind of mood, I ordered myself a Yuengling, a beer brewed by the oldest, continually operating brewery in the US.For our second stop, we had a choice: we could head to Marie's Crisis and hunt for some ghosts in the piano bar where show tunes are favored or we could go to Jekyll & Hyde for a bit of a kitschy haunted theme. Jekyll & Hyde won the duel. And, yes, it was kitschy but it was also fun. A group of us even opted to take shots from giant (fake) syringes. I chased it with a Brooklyn Lager from Brooklyn Brewery.Our final stop of the night was White Horse Tavern, a bar famous for its dead clientele. As the story goes, Dylan Thomas loved this bar and he spent many a night here. He used to turn the tables sideways to make it easier for him to write while he sipped his drink. But one night, Thomas entered that bar and before he left, he'd downed 18 shots of whiskey before heading home -- and dying.The legend says that Thomas still haunts the bar but does nothing more than move around the tables after closing. So we headed to the bar and I ordered up a pint of Anchor Steam Beer -- which is always good. Eventually we ended up back at the Barrow Street Ale House to round up the night.
Strangeness at Heathrow Airport
As thousands of people stream into London's Heathrow Airport every day, there's little time to notice that the gentleman next to you is not what he seems. He's tall, with a bowler hat perched upon his head and he is wearing twill cavalry trousers. Nothing out of the ordinary in today's diverse culture, as millions of people rush to and fro through the terminals, some seeking a holiday in the sun, others traveling from far and wide to experience the history of the capital. And yet this chap may never find his destination, for he is a ghost!Many people have become wrapped up in the lengthy American television series Lost in which a plane crashes en route to Australia, and the survivors appear to time travel, back and forth from the island, whilst meeting the spectres of those who allegedly perished. On the 2nd March 1948 a DC3 aircraft crashed on to the runway of Heathrow Airport, and the facts are far stranger than the fiction of the mentioned television show.The man in the hat is the apparition of one of the passengers aboard that fatal flight. Legend has it that after the incident on Runway 1, a man of the same description approached those attempting to rescue survivors, and asked as to whether anyone had found his briefcase. Before anyone could answer, the man vanished.It's no surprise that Heathrow has also had its fair share of UFO activity. Local residents have often spoken about strange things in the sky above the airport. In the summer of 1979 a Mrs Godden claimed she saw an unidentified craft buzzing the Anglo-French supersonic jet Concorde. The object was reddish and appeared to be heading straight for the plane, but then seemed to fly straight through it.Heathrow officials picked nothing up on the radar, but it seems that the airport has several mysteries under its wing.
MUFON Investigating Numerous Northwest Missouri Sightings
Missouri Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) state section director Margie Kay is reporting an increase in UFO sightings reports.The following was released by Kay on June 12.A rash of UFO sightings in the greater Kansas City area have prompted investigations by Mutual UFO Network field investigators. Sightings in St. Joseph, Kansas City, Independence, Sedalia, and Warrensburg from December 31 to the present have increased in number.Some of the more spectacular sightings are as follows:Two Warrensburg women witnessed a large circular unidentified object on the evening of December 31, 2008 and the morning of January 1, 2008. Christina Cooper, a professional photographer, and her friend reported the sighting to MUFON. A third witness, who wishes to remain anonymous, and who was in a different location, spoke to the investigator by phone. The sighting occurred on the evening of December 31 at 6:30 PM and again at 12:30 and 1:30 AM on January 1. The object was circular in shape, reported to be close to the road, approximately 60 feet off the ground and had several bright white lights on it. It landed at one point on 50 Hwy.Since the unidentified object may have been in the area for several hours, it is possible that other people saw it. The locations are Hwy 13 North of Warrensburg and south of I-70, and Hwy 50 between Kansas City and Warrensburg.In March a UFO was spotted by several college professors in St. Joseph, Missouri, who viewed the object through a telescope. Two of the witnesses made drawings of the object, which were large orange fireballs in a tear-drop shape. The UFO moved away and disappeared.In late May a large oval object was spotted traveling from South to North from the UMKC campus in Kansas City, and in June a large cigar-shaped silver UFO was witnessed in Sedalia by 20 people standing in an Applebee’s parking lot.Many other sightings have been sent to the KC MUFON office, some of which were not reported to the official MUFON database.
Is Mount St. Helens a Supervolcano?
Is Mount St. Helens a Supervolcano? According to findings from New Zealand scientists, Mt. St. Helens could be exactly that. Mt. St. Helens has been known for years as one of many volcanoes that litter Washington State and the "ring of fire" that works its way around the Pacific Ocean.It's an interesting notion that has been presented by these scientists, which includes the theory that several of the largest volcanoes in the area are actually linked by underground caverns. What that could mean is that they all work together to form one large Supervolcano, and that Mt. St. Helens could be at the center of it all.The thought process behind the article that these New Zealand scientists published in NewScientist, is that three of the major volcanoes in the area are linked by a deep column that leads to a pool of what could be molten rock. That pool of molten rock is theorized to connect Mount St. Helens to Mount Rainier and Mount Adams as well. That would make it one of the largest Supervolvanoes in existence, and hold the potential of a cataclysmic eruption that could be devastating. Such an eruption would be able to blanket the sky with ash and basically lower the temperature of the entire planet over a certain span of time.So, is this a real thing? Could Mount St. Helens really be a Supervolcano? Well local scientists in Washington State aren't quite as certain as the visiting New Zealand scientists. A magnetotellurics specialist at Oregon State University stated that "Whether finding high conductivity in this area is evidence that there's really something unusual here is the thing that is more questionable." He also stated that part of the conductivity that the New Zealand scientists are seeing within the mountain is probably just water. He doesn't come out and simply refute what the New Zealanders found, but he does question how close to reality their theories could be.Mount St. Helens has been seeing activity on and off for the past couple of years, and everyone in the area still remembers when Mount St. Helens erupted back in 1980. If what the New Zealand scientists have found turns out to be fact, a Supervolcano eruption could be many times more powerful than the last one. Most of these findings (by both sides) are really just conjecture though, because not a whole lot is known about what is under these particular volcanoes. They could all be linked, or they could all be working separately, but there isn't a concrete test with which to prove that. For now area residents can look at this information, but may be forced to take it with a grain of salt unless they want to uproot their lives.
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Reader Accounts: Large Craft Over LA / UFO Reacted to Witness' Anxiety in Kentucky
Photo: Orbs / Light Specks - The Dakota Hotel - NYC
NewScientist.com: Win a Piece of Moon Rock
Roswell Incident: A Brit's Pursuit of the Truth
H1N1 Swine Flu Origin Disclosed
Reader Accounts: Large Craft Over LA / UFO Reacted to Witness' Anxiety in Kentucky
This event occurred on July 23, 2002, at approximately 10:15 p.m. (PST) in Hawthorne, California.Hawthorne is a small suburb just outside of Los Angeles, located approximately 5 miles east from the Los Angeles International Airport. The city is just about 2 miles off the approach path of planes landing. Planes continually land and it gets kind of noisy; at any time, one can see the flickering lights of planes spaced out in the distance towards the east coming in to land at the airport.This occurred while two of my friends and myself were outside talking. My two friends never saw a UFO before and are the type that tend not to believe UFOs or the paranormal without direct evidence.In any event, we were talking. They were facing towards me (south), while I was facing towards the north. While we were talking, I saw a rather huge object coming towards us from the north. At that point, it appeared to be a string of evenly spaced lights. A white one in the center, with three red lights on either side of the red lights. I immediately realized this was odd because the thing was way too big to be a plane. I interrupted one of my friends mid-sentence and said, "Don't look now, but we're being invaded" as I pointed to the object. My friends both turned around and did a somewhat comical double take. Their jaws dropped.The object flew towards us silently. It's altitude was roughly the same altitude of planes that we normally see coming in from the east. Thus, it was crossing directly in front of the flight path. I suddenly realized that all air traffic had ceased. The familiar lights of the planes coming in for a landing from the east had ceased and all was quiet.The object flew almost directly overhead (heading from north to south), traveling very slowly and completely silent. It became apparent that it was triangular shaped - a white light at the nose, with the red lights going back in a V shape. We watched it glide over us and kept it in sight until we couldn't see it anymore in the south sky. After the object passed, the air traffic eventually resumed again.The object was many times larger (perhaps 4 to 5 times) than the 747s that I'm accustomed to seeing. It traveled slowly, less than 200 mph I'd estimate.This event, which occurred over a major U.S. city and caused air traffic to be rerouted or put on hold, never made the news. I reported the sighting on MufonLA.com and noticed that others across California had seen the same object (some reported on Mufon.com and others on nuforc.org).___________________This incident took place in August, 2008. I was in my studio, which is a room I built in my unattached garage so that I do not bother my family sleeping in the house at late hours. At about 1:30 AM, my dog began barking non-stop. I went outside to see what might be going on. She was at the end of the drive way, looking towards the soy bean field across the road. I wandered down the driveway to look. I figured it could be a rabbit or a possum. She was looking a bit skyward. I looked up and saw a moving light. She stopped barking once I saw it. The light was not much bigger than Venus, however it was moving in an erratic motion. Sort of keeping with in an area of a quarter if you held it about 3 inches from your eye. The light pulsed about every 2 seconds. It would be a reddish light, it would grow brighter and fade. Then it would turn white and grow brighter. Back and forth between the two colors. It was a clear night, no moon and I could see many other stars and lights from jets. I wondered if it was just my eye jumping, so I concentrated on stars. None of them jerked about or pulsed. Then I held myself very still and watched the sky in general and the stars remained motionless, but the light continued to move about. I can't tell how big the light source was. I am not sure, it being quite dark across the field where a tree line is, if the light was in front of the tree line or a bit above it. However, it was quite low in the sky. The light began to enlarge, or move closer to me and I became uneasy. It approached for a few seconds, maybe 10 or so, then as my anxiety increased it seemed to retreat from me back to what I guess was it's original position. I watched for a few more minutes and then decided to tell my daughter about it who had been watching TV a bit earlier. I went inside but she had gone to bed. I went back outside and the light was gone. I looked around the sky and found it had moved, seemingly farther away and no longer southeast of me, but now more in the direction of southwest. I watched it for a few minutes more, lost interest and continued my art project. A few days later I contacted MUFON via email. I received an email later than night from the regional director of MUFON based in Bowling Green, KY. He asked follow up questions and I sent him my phone number. A few more days later he called me in the early evening and I repeated all I had posted in the initial email and answered in his follow up email. He informed me that MUFON had been receiving the same type of reports from eastern and southern central Kentucky for the last few weeks. He had no answers for what it could be, but just that it was a common sight from those of us who happened to wander outside in the very early morning hours.I have never experienced this before and I am really interested in how this "thing" reacted to my anxiety level.
Photo: Orbs / Light Specks - The Dakota Hotel - NYC
Katherine Fulton interview at Examiner.comIn April 2006, Katherine Fulton, a freelance writer and music buff, traveled to New York City to visit and stay with friends. She wanted to visit several places while in New York and when visiting Central Park's Strawberry Fields, she found that it was close to The Dakota, the apartment building where John Lennon lived where he had been shot and killed.When visiting the complex, Katherine was overcome with a sense of queasiness that she could not explain; she dismissed the feeling originally as being a big fan of John Lennon so her friends would not worry. They suggested that she take a picture of the place, but she felt so ill that she only took a quick shot on her digital camera and left.When she returned home, the picture proved to be more unusual than she suspected.“It wasn't until I got back from my trip that I took a closer look at the Dakota shot and saw the strange streaks of light in front of and behind the gate,” says Fulton. “I was especially puzzled because I couldn't figure out a reason as to why they would be there. No one was around me when I took the shot, so no one bumped into me to cause a light streaking effect... The photo was taken with a digital camera, which ruled out exposure or film damage, and the rest of the photos I took on the trip were sharp, clear and normal, which for me ruled out the possibility that there was something wrong with the camera or memory stick.”She showed her picture to her father who worked for years as photographer and a graphic designer and he was not able to clearly explain the phenomenon. However there is another explanation for these streaks of light, which is that she managed to photograph “orbs” in the picture.Orbs are a rare phenomenon in photography; theories range that orbs are souls or the spiritual energy of the dead to the presence of the supernatural aura. The only common explanation of the orbs phenomenon is that it is the presence of supernatural energy and they are generally not recorded on camera. In some cultures, orbs were the sign of forthcoming death and were considered spiritual creatures themselves like the Will O' The Wisps in Irish folklore or ghostly balls of flame in Japanese folklore. However more recent pictures with claims of orbs are attributed to fairies and their sparkling presence.The problem is that most claims of orbs in photographs are legitimately explained as the presence of reflected dust particles caught in the light when the shutter went off in the camera. What makes this photo different are a couple of key elements: 1. The presence of light streaks do not all move in the same direction. 2. Without knowing any of the details of John Lennon's murder at these gates, some sensitives react with foreboding at the picture, despite that there is nothing outlandishly gory or horrifying about the actual image.If the phenomenon of orbs is actually present in the picture, its significance is still up for debate. Three years later, Katherine still feels an ominous presence when looking at the picture. But she explains her reluctance to identify the streaks of light as a paranormal phenomenon.“I didn't want to go around saying that I'd captured anything paranormal simply because I didn't want to jump to conclusions. Someone could easily come along and offer a logical explanation that my dad and I hadn't considered, and I'd be okay with that. And admittedly, I didn't want to give the impression that I'd taken the photo in an attempt to capture something "ghostly" or "spooky" about what is, essentially, a murder scene. I respect Lennon too much to make light of where he was killed, and I also respect the fact that for his family and friends, this was more than the loss of a cultural icon - it was the loss of a husband, a father, a collaborator and a friend.”NOTE: if it was a video and these 'orbs' were moving around then I could consider it as possible. This looks like a film / capture light anomaly sometimes seen when the photographer is in the sunlight or light area and the subject is shaded...though, I'm open for thoughts...
NewScientist.com: Win a Piece of Moon Rock
Would you like to own this little piece of the moon?Depending on which time zone you happen to be in, 20 or 21 July 2009 sees the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.NewScientist.com's competition to celebrate that historic event offers a rare and fabulous prize for the winner: a scrap of genuine moon rock.The competition is simple to enter. You will doubtless know the words relayed from Neil Armstrong when he stepped off Apollo 11's lunar module and onto the moon itself: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."Can you think of something better for him to have said - something even more memorable, or perhaps something funnier?Go to NewScientist.com for details on the moon rock and entry instructions.
Roswell Incident: A Brit's Pursuit of the Truth
There is a lunar quality to the landscape of New Mexico which seems somehow appropriate for a state which is our portal to the heavens.It is here on a dried-up lake bed high above sea level that the radio telescopes of the US government's Very Large Array (VLA) receive signals from the outer edges of our expanding universe, chasing the very moment of the Big Bang through the trackless void of time and space.And of course it is also here - perhaps - that 62 years ago a flying-saucer crashed to earth on a ranch outside the town of Roswell, killing its alien crew and prompting one of the most elaborate and protracted cover-ups in history.The power of that possibility and the darkness of the nights here so far from the light pollution of the big cities are what draw scientists and curious tourists alike to this entrancing place.And it is what motivates watchers of the skies to keep, well, watching the skies, obviously.Alien ambiguityIf UFO true-believers are right, then nothing much that has happened on our tiny, fragile planet in the years since that stormy summer's night really matters very much.What, after all, would Watergate, or Vietnam or Iraq amount to if we could establish that the US government knew for sure that we are not alone in the universe?Most of the big questions about alien life and UFOs can be traced back to Roswell - not least the issue of how life-forms from another civilisation have such an uncanny sense of when the tourist industry in a small US town could use a shot in the arm.Are we really alone in the heavens, for example, and if we are not, do the civilisations with which we share the heavens mean us any harm?Is it just a coincidence that aliens have never managed to find an earth-dweller who knows how to operate his own camera properly?And why, if you have journeyed light years across the unknowable vastness of the heavens, would you confine yourself to a fleeting and ambiguous appearance before a handful of New Mexican ranchers?Why not go the extra mile and find a research institute of some kind - unless our visitors have a sense of humour, of course.But we are getting ahead of ourselves.Let us return to that stormy summer New Mexican night in 1947 when the story of the UFO landing first broke.It was a world of tension and uncertainty.The United States had detonated the first atom bombs - they were developed just up the road at Los Alamos, New Mexico - and was uneasily aware that the Soviet Union, its increasingly hostile former ally, had nuclear ambitions of its own. The Cold War was just beginning.'Switcheroo'Roswell was in those days the home base of the 509th Bombardment Group of the US Eighth Army Air Force.Most of the boys in the 509th were combat veterans and when they were tasked to investigate reports of some kind of landing on a ranch a short distance away it seems reasonable to assume they were not too excited at first. That soon changed.When they got the material back to base, they quickly concluded they were onto something historic.Their first press release talked of the recovery of a flying saucer - it was only when the suits descended from Washington that the tone of the official communiques changed.The base intelligence officer who was tasked with taking the wreckage to another base reports leaving it in an office there and returning a few minutes later to find that the space debris he had brought had been replaced with parts of a weather balloon.The fix was in. Faced with evidence of one of the most significant events in human history the American authorities had responded by pulling the old switcheroo.One account of those days comes from Julie Shuster, whose father was the press officer at the Roswell base.She now runs the museum in the town which is the focal point for the local UFO industry (it is on a street where the street lights have been decorated so that they look like alien heads).For Julie there is a simple issue in all of this which goes back to the version of events her father passed on to her."My daddy didn't lie. My father saw the bodies, my father saw the craft," she says."He saw bodies - large heads, almond shaped eyes... and material that couldn't be burnt, ripped, cut - anything."'Majestic 12'It is not quite so personal for the other true believers in the incident.Dennis Balthaser, for example, is a retired civil engineer who is perhaps the most meticulous researcher of the Roswell incident.He has spent years (and thousands of dollars of his own money) tracing every witness and every player from that night in 1947 and is convinced that there was a landing.But he is at his most compelling when talking about the cover-up which follows.Dennis lives in a rather frightening world where the US government would be perfectly happy to murder anyone (including him) who got too close to the truth.He believes the US is really governed by a kind of secret committee of senior military and intelligence officials with the president serving as a kind of hired hand to deal with the public."Basically he can't be trusted with information like this" says Dennis."Back in Truman's time, we're looking at a thing called 'majestic 12', which was a group of some of the highest military people, some of the highest dignitary people we had. I believe today we still have a group similar to that that calls the shots."Even before I met Dennis, I knew he believed that space travellers helped build the pyramids - where I, for example, am more inclined to the view that they are probably the work of Egyptians.I expected to find him hopelessly naive - but the funny thing is he is so lucid and convincing that I left feeling rather naive myself.(And in case you were wondering - if anyone ever lifts a quote from this article to promote a book or a DVD it will be that previous sentence.)Missing balloon?But here is the problem.I mentioned before that New Mexico is a place where real science and Roswell science-lite co-exist.And it is in that proximity that our explanation probably lies.At the VLA (that centre of government radio telescopy) they will tell you that around the time of the crash, the US government was sending up special high-altitude weather balloons made of a then-classified material.They were looking for atmospheric evidence that the Russians were testing their own nuclear bomb.On the night of the Roswell incident, one of those balloons went missing.Until, perhaps, it was found by the boys of the 509th.And all that stuff about alien bodies being recovered and autopsies being performed? Well I leave you to speculate about that for yourselves.If you find all that a little disappointing then you can always employ the debating technique favoured by UFO true believers - the deployment of questions designed to expose the lack of absolute certainty in almost all human affairs.How do you know, for example, that there really is not a government department 27 layers above top secret tasked with keeping an eye on these things?Perhaps they insist that articles like this are submitted to them for screening before publication.And maybe this is not the script I originally wrote and submitted - just the script they sent back.You could hardly blame me for giving in - I am sure you would not want to find my bleached bones left out in the desert, would you?All I am saying is - keep watching the skies.
H1N1 Swine Flu Origin Disclosed
A new analysis of the current swine-origin H1N1 influenza A virus suggests that transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the existing outbreak.The work, published online in Nature June 10, highlights the need for systematic surveillance of influenza in swine, and provides evidence that new genetic elements in swine can result in the emergence of viruses with pandemic potential in humans.'Using computational methods, developed over the last ten years at Oxford, we were able to reconstruct the origins and timescale of this new pandemic,' said Dr Oliver Pybus of Oxford University's Department of Zoology, an author of the paper. 'Our results show that this strain has been circulating among pigs, possibly among multiple continents, for many years prior to its transmission to humans.'Dr Pybus, along with Andrew Rambaut from the University of Edinburgh and colleagues, used evolutionary analysis to estimate the timescale of the origins and the early development of the epidemic. They believe that it was derived from several viruses circulating in swine, and that the initial transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the outbreak.The team conclude that 'despite widespread influenza surveillance in humans, the lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic strain for many years.'The team included researchers from Oxford, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Arizona.
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DGarrison722@aol.com
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Owner Says Notorious Ghost Still Roams Queensland Hotel
Fort Caspar Museum Visitors May See More Than Expected
Astounding 600 Foot 'Jellyfish' Crop Circle In Oxfordshire
UFO Appears During Filming of Documentary on Alien Abductions
Photos: Australian Yowie Hunter Attacked
Owner Says Notorious Ghost Still Roams Queensland Hotel
While it has been the stuff of local urban legends, paranormal investigators are set to officially unlock the mystery behind Rosewood's notorious ghost.Ipswich councillor David Pahlke, who co-owns the hotel where the mysterious sightings have been reported, said the supernatural story goes back 100 years to a fire at the Rosewood Hotel in 1914.Cr Pahlke said according to local legend, the fire was started by the person whose spirit remains at the pub.While he hasn't sighted the ghost, believed to be called 'Rusty', he said he had felt its presence.“I have had doors open on me and in one instance water came off the veranda of the hotel when I came in,” Cr Pahlke said.“We had a Gold Coast darts team staying here once and they complained about music at 3am, someone playing a piano. We don't have a piano.”Water has also been said to drip from the ceiling on to the bar below.Cleaners have also been said to notice damp bedding in the front bedroom.On Saturday, June 27, Ghost Tours, in partnership with the Queensland Paranormal Investigators will host a ghost hunt at the Rosewood Hotel.Managing director of Brisbane-based Ghost Tours Jack Sim said those on the tour would have the opportunity to do their own paranormal hunting.“Customers are given the opportunity to use scientific methods such as EMF readings, or detecting disturbances in the electromagnetic field, and old fashioned methods like flour through to divining rods and spiritual boards,” Mr Sim said.Tour guests are also encouraged to bring their own cameras (still and video) to aid in the investigation.The self-proclaimed dark historian said he had spent a very eerie night at the hotel.“The ghost stories seem to date back at least four decades,” Mr Sim said.“Pubs are known for attracting great story telling and in the case of the Rosewood Hotel, it seems to focus around a particular room,” he said.“On the night at the pub, we will try to find at least some proof of paranormal activity.”Cr Pahlke said he hoped the hunt wouldn't scare 'Rusty' away.“He is a friendly ghost. He lives here in harmony,” he said.____________________Rosewood Hotel HistoryOne of three pubs in the main st, hence the name "The Middle PubThe original Rosewood Hotel which was one of four hotels in Rosewood in the early days, burnt down on the 7th January 1914. When the present Rosewood Hotel was rebuilt a ghost took residence, dubbed the Water Ghost due to the fact clothes hanging up are found mysteriously wet and sheets of water have been seen falling from the balcony with no one in site.The present owner is local Ipswich Councillor David Pahlke and the today houses accommodation rooms on the second level."The earlier Rosewood Hotel and eight other buildings were destroyed in a huge fire in January 1914. The hotel was rebuilt shortly afterwards. It is a very handsome two-story building, with an interesting double veranda. There is an awning across the footpath, the entrance is approached across a small open veranda which is recessed from the footpath and surrounded by a decorative timber valance."
Fort Caspar Museum Visitors May See More Than Expected
Last summer, while investigating the Battle of Red Buttes, Fort Caspar Museum manager Rick Young had a few abnormal -- if not paranormal -- experiences."There was all sorts of stuff moving around in here when we were doing that," Young said.When he left the evening before, everything was normal, he said. But when he arrived the next morning, chairs were pushed up against the inside of the doors, guns were cocked, and ramrods were in the barrels. In the Sutler Store on the property, Young was particularly perplexed, he said."The door opens to the inside, so I don't know how you'd get out of there with the chair against the door," he said.The multi-use room at Fort Caspar was filled to capacity Saturday evening, but it wasn't the usual history buffs who made it a standing-room-only event.The spectators were interested in what history may have left behind at the old fort: ghosts.Those interested in the possibility of paranormal activity gathered to watch a presentation of findings by the Paranormal Research Society of Casper. The ghost hunters did an in-depth, overnight search of the state historical site in April, and caught at least one odd recording of an unknown voice."It's an opportunity to get some new faces in here," Young said of the presentation.Attendees heard the story of the Sutler Store, where a photo, taken from outside when no one else was around, showed a face staring out from the window.And researchers couldn't keep batteries working inside the store."We went through three sets of brand-new batteries [for the video camera]," said Lisa Lauderdale with the Paranormal Research Society. "The theory behind it is that ghosts need the energy to manifest."Fort Caspar Museum is built on the same land where, in 1862, the actual fort housed thousands of soldiers. Some of those soldiers died at the fort, from fights with American Indians, accidents and diseases. And for years before the Army arrived, people on their way west on the Oregon and Mormon trails passed through the grounds.Despite having none of the original buildings, Young said, there's plenty of history on the property to warrant a haunting or two.When the fort was being rebuilt, construction workers were digging and found five bodies buried on the grounds. Remains from three more bodies have been accidentally recovered since then. More are certainly buried there, Young said, but he has "no intention" of digging them up.So, does Young think the fort is haunted?"I don't know," he said, "but we've certainly had weird stuff happening. ... There's certainly a lot of history, and a lot of violent history on this land."
Astounding 600 Foot 'Jellyfish' Crop Circle In Oxfordshire
The vast pattern appeared in the field last week and experts are claiming it to be the first of its kind in the world.Karen Alexander, a crop circle expert, said: "We have seen butterfly and bird patterns in the past, but this is the first jellyfish crop circle in the world."It is absolutely huge - roughly three times the size of most crop patterns and extremely interesting. People have been aghast at the size of it. It is a complete monster."We are looking into the meaning of it, but at present it just seems to have appeared out of nowhere."Crop circle theorists known as 'croppies' - believe the patterns are created by UFOs during nocturnal visits, or caused by natural phenomena such as unusual forms of lightning striking the earth.But it has been proven the patterns can be easily created artists.Last year a crop circle described as the most complex ever to seen in Britain was discovered in a barley field in Wiltshire.The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, was a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi.Michael Reed, an astrophysicist, said: "The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the centre is the decimal point."The code is based on 10 angular segments with the radial jumps being the indicator of each segment."Starting at the centre and counting the number of one-tenth segments in each section contained by the change in radius clearly shows the values of the first 10 digits in the value of pi."
UFO Appears During Filming of Documentary on Alien Abductions
It was an inauguration into the world of paranormal phenomena straight from the pits of hell, but Canadian filmmaker Adam Gray couldn't even let out an appropriate scream when he saw a sinisterly cloaked figure hovering over him in the middle of the night --- he was frozen in a strange state between worlds, conscious, but unable to move or speak. Gray was experiencing what's known as 'sleep paralysis,'--- a haunting few seconds that left a lasting impression and eventually led to a documentary film on the topic --- the first of four features he and his brother Andrew have created through their company ParaDocs Productions."It's something that's very common, you get I think 15-20% of the population that experience sleep paralysis at some point," he notes in a phone interview with CityNews.ca "You're asleep and you wake up and you're paralyzed and often while people are in this state they have vivid hallucinations of an entity in their room that sort of crawls onto their chest and begins to strangle them."It sounds completely crazy, but it's actually very common...they are using it now as a way of debunking people who think they've been abducted by aliens."Alien abduction is the theme of the Belleville Ontario brothers' latest film, "The White Mountain Abduction," which delves into the mysterious case of Betty and Barney Hill, the first people to come public with claims that they were snatched away by extraterrestrials in 1961 while driving through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The brothers are used to dealing with the mysterious and bizarre. They've investigated things like crystal skulls and government endorsed remote viewing in their previous films. But what happened on the first day of shooting their latest release trumped all.They began filming on the 47th anniversary of the event, at the very site the now deceased Hill couple claimed they were abducted from. Remarkably, strange lights appeared in the night sky as a cameraman rolled tape to conduct the film's first interviews. The mysterious orbs eerily hovered in the distance before dancing along the skyline and disappearing."It was a really bizarre set of coincidences," Gray admits. "It was the first day of shooting, 47th anniversary of the abduction event, we're at the site, and just as we were starting to interview, these strange lights appeared. The cameraman just sort of kept rolling and we just sort of stood there in awe, like what the hell is this? We still don't know what it was, but we know it wasn't a star or planes...We thought maybe that it might be military flares at first but the Air Force people (we spoke to) didn't think that's what it was."After ruling out several conceivable options, Gray realized they may have actually captured footage of a UFO, while ironically filming a documentary about the Unidentified Flying Objects."It's not what I would have pictured an alien craft to look like, but it was certainly unexplainable," he adds.Gray won't go as far as to say that he believes in aliens, but after his experiences with sleep paralysis and the things he's witnesses and learned through his filmmaking, he admits there are unanswered questions, and experiences, which can't be denied. And as long as those experiences are enveloped in mystery, he's intent on doing his part to help open minds and shatter belittling stigmas."We are certainly trying to entertain people but I think our agenda is to get people to look at these things with an open mind and try and separate the sort of X-files mythology fiction from what has really happened.""I think in terms of alien abduction, as soon as you say that people sort of shut down their open mind, but it's a genuine phenomena and there's hundreds of people who have come forward, been through lie detector tests and psychologists, and they genuinely have had some experience. What is not known is what the cause of that experience was, was it some weird psychological hysteria, or a waking dream? Whatever it is, it's a really interesting mystery because it's really happening to people and it's changing their lives."
Photos: Australian Yowie Hunter Attacked
More graphic photos Cryptomundo.comIt never rains but it pours - in this case, improbable events.Hot on the heels of last week's wild weather in southeast Queensland comes a hunter of mythological beasts - Tim the Yowie Man.Tim - who uses no surname and can be almost as elusive as his quarry - says there is a direct correlation between significant rain events and sightings of the yowie."The soaked soil and muddy bogs created by the heavy rain are more conducive to animals, including yowies, leaving their footprints,'' Tim said.He said last week's rain could make "a large hairy bipedal hominoid creature'' uncomfortable and force it from deep jungle canyons into the open.So Tim has rushed from that other capital of strange mysteries - Canberra - to Springbrook in the Gold Coast hinterland, a village he describes as the yowie capital of Australia for its many sightings.So far he's seen nothing - but that hasn't put him off."I'm quietly confident of finding some sort of evidence such as hair or footprints of the mystery beast,'' he said."If I'm really lucky I may even get to see one.''Dean Harrison of Australian Yowie Research says he has just returned from Springbrook, bearing photographs of footprints he believes are of a female yowie and her young trailing along behind."They seem to be quite passive around that area compared to other areas that we've been to,'' Mr Harrison said.He said tales of yowies near Springbrook date back to before European settlement.Mr Harrison said on his latest expedition he was rugby-tackled by a yowie at 3am near Gympie."This one knocked me flying backwards. I landed in a rockpool,'' he said.Australian Yowie Research has been nominated for a Bent Spoon Award on the website of Australian Skeptics, a group that investigates paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.
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Skirrid Mountain Inn: Wales' Most Haunted Pub
Grace Sherwood: The Witch of Pungo
Original Occupants Still Haunt Racine's Masonic Center
Video: Lake Champlain's Legendary Monster 'Champ'?
Skirrid Mountain Inn: Wales' Most Haunted Pub
As heritage pubs go there are few within Wales or beyond our borders able to boast a historic tapestry as ornate and detailed as that of the Skirrid Mountain Inn. In the third in our series of features on Wales’ historic pubs we focus on the haunted inn that proudly claims to be the oldest in Wales. Darren Devine reportsGhosts, gruesome deaths, and an association with some of the most influential figures in Welsh history – the Skirrid Mountain Inn has a heritage as colourful as that of any pub in Wales.So much so that it has been able to weather a storm that has driven four pubs a day across the UK out of business and is at last beginning to see conditions improve.Manager Geoff Fiddler knows that while so many other inns have been consigned to the history books his has survived because it already occupies a prominent place in them.Standing in the shadow of Skirrid Mountain, the Monmouthshire pub was said to be a rallying point for Welsh rebel leader Owain Glyndr before he marched on to Pontrilas, in Herefordshire.Dating back to 1110 the pub functioned from its earliest origins as both a hostelry and a court house dispensing justice to local ne’er-do-wells.And halfway up its ornate spiral staircase stands the cell, now used as a store room, where prisoners spent a lonely last night before being sent to meet their maker by bloodthirsty judges for minor offences.The last person to be executed at the pub, in Llanfihangel Crucorney, near Abergavenny, was hanged on the orders of revolutionary leader Oliver Cromwell for stealing sheep. The hangings were carried out from a beam across the joist of the pub’s staircase and the slab on which the bodies were placed remains at the well of the stairs.Mr Fiddler said it’s this history that attracts tourists, spiritualists and ghost hunters on a near year-round basis. The country inn can accommodate up to nine people, but such is its popularity with those preoccupied by the paranormal it’s fully booked on weekends until December.The 50-year-old landlord, who has been in the pub trade for 23 years with the last four spent at the Skirrid, said: “We have people coming every weekend, almost all ghost hunters and paranormal societies, and the next Saturday that we could offer anybody accommodation is the second week in December. The pub has always been here and whatever else changes the pub doesn’t. It’s absolutely steeped in history – people come from miles around just to look at and touch the stairwell.”Mr Fiddler, who runs the pub with wife Sharon and 37-year-old stepson Wayne Rowlands, says his scepticism about the paranormal has been shaken by his experiences since taking over.He said: “We’ve got an incredible oak castle-style door at the front of the pub and one winter’s evening when I was opening up I saw a man in a tri-cornered hat beckoning me.“I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but it was half-dark at the time and he was fleeting and gone.”Mr Fiddler says the pub, which includes two bars, a restaurant and a family room, also enjoys a strong reputation as a place to eat as well as drink. This has helped keep it afloat in the face of challenges from cheap supermarket beer and the smoking ban.But he said his hostelry has tried to strike a balance between offering an appetising range of locally-sourced food on its menu without going down the gastro- pub route.“We’ve got a reputation for nice food, but we’re not a high-brow place.“My wife cooks with the help of one other cook and the most expensive meal we have is a £12.95 sirloin steak. It’s not a gastro-pub – I wouldn’t eat at a gastro-pub because I find them soulless places.”
Grace Sherwood: The Witch of Pungo
More than 300 years ago, a series of strange events struck old Princess Anne County, Va. farmers.Cotton plants withered. Cows' milk dried up. Husbands' eyes wandered from their wives.Who was to blame? According to the local women, Grace Sherwood.The farmer's wife knew a little too much about herbs, was a little too pretty and wore clothing that was a little too tight, according to local historians. So they accused her of witchcraft.A judge ordered Sherwood to be tried by ducking. So on July 10, 1706, with her thumbs tied to her big toes, Sherwood was ducked in the Lynnhaven River.The street leading to her ducking spot now carries her legend as Witchduck Road."It's named after Grace Sherwood's ducking," said local historian Deni Norred, who co- wrote "Ghosts, Witches and Weird Tales of Virginia Beach." "She was the first person tried by water in Virginia for witchcraft."Sherwood escaped her bonds and swam to safety, which the court considered proof of her devilish dealings. The day's wisdom dictated that an innocent woman would have sunk, Norred said.Sherwood served several years in jail before returning to her three sons. She lived to be nearly 80 and died at her farm in Pungo around 1740.Witchduck Road isn't the only landmark named after Sherwood or her trial. There's also Witch Duck Bay, Witch Duck Point, Witch Point Trail and Sherwood Lane.Three years ago, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine exonerated Sherwood. A bronze statue at Sentara Bayside Hospital, located on the corner of Independence Boulevard and North Witchduck Road, honors her legend.But according to local stories, that legend isn't quite over. Some say Sherwood returns to visit her ducking spot every July and can be seen as a spot of light dancing on Witch Duck Bay._____________________Grace Sherwood's StoryEarly court records tell the tale of Grace Sherwood, who was tried in 1706 as Virginia Beach's first witch. Unfortunately, there are no existing images of Grace. Her story is perhaps the most fascinating of the folklore in the history of Tidewater. Witchcraft was a very serious and real thing to the colonists. The cult was believed to be a threat to the Christian Church, and everyone during the early 1700's was on the lookout for witches, who could be recognized by so-called unusual or mysterious behaviors. Grace lived her entire life in the Pungo area of Virginia Beach (named for Indian chief Machiopungo), and married James Sherwood with whom she had three sons. She was said to be strikingly attractive, string-willed, and a non-conformist by nature. These traits were resented by her neighbors, who began spreading rumors about her witch-like behavior. She was accused of blighting gardens, causing livestock to die, and influencing the weather. After eight years of constant slander and bickering by her neighbors, Grace was formally charged with suspicions of witchcraft. A jury of women were ordered to search her body for suspicious or unusual markings, thought to be brands of the devil himself, and naturally the jury found, "marks not like theirs or like those of any other women." However, neither the local court nor the Attorney General in Williamsburg, would pass judgment on declaring her a witch. It was finally decided that Grace, "by her own consent, be tried in the water by Ducking, (dunking)." Water was considered to be the purest element and the theory was that it would reject anything of an evil nature. Based on this theory, the accused was tied up and thrown into the water. If the person drowned, he was declared innocent of witchcraft; if he could stay afloat until he could free himself, he was declared a witch. On July 10, 1706, Grace was marched from the jail (which located near the present day site of Old Donation Church) down the dirt road (now Witch Duck Road) to the Lynnhaven River. This portion of the river has since been named Witch Duck Bay in memory of the occasion. This being a big event, hoards of people from all over the colony flocked to the scene as news of the Ducking had spread throughout the Commonwealth. Grace Sherwood was tied crossbound with the thumb of her right hand to the big toe of her left foot, and the thumb of her left hand to the big toe of her right foot, and thrown into the water. As predicted by her accusers, Grace managed to stay afloat until she could free herself and swim to shore. She was jailed and awaiting trial for witchcraft for nearly eight years, when the charges against her were dropped due to the softening of her accusers hearts, and she was set free. She moved back to her Pungo home and lived there until her death at the age of 80. Many stories have been told and retold over the years about this most remarkable woman. One of the many tall tales that have been handed down from generation to generation has to do with the day of her ducking. When they led Grace Sherwood through the crowd that had turned out to see her put into the water she told them, "All right, all of you po' white trash, you've worn out your shoes traipsin' here to see me ducked, but before you'll get back home again you are goin' to get the duckin' of your life." When they put Grace into the water the sky was as bright blue as a bird's wing, but immediately afterward it grew pitch black, the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed all across the heavens. The terrified people started for home, only to be washed off the roads and into the ditches by a regular cloudburst.Source:http://www.madblood.net/grace.html
Original Occupants Still Haunt Racine's Masonic Center
For three decades in the latter 1800s, housekeeper Mary Williams faithfully served the Durand family until she died in their house at age 57.Some people believe she never left the mansion she had lived in since age 26. They believe Williams’ spirit is just one of the ghosts that inhabit 1012 Main St., now the Masonic Center.Wendy Spencer, the center’s event coordinator, is a believer. She says numerous people have seen and experienced ghostly phenomena there.In April, a team of paranormal investigators came to the Masonic Center to look for ghosts and came away convinced they found some.What follows are some of the eerie occurrences that led to that investigation.First occupantsSpencer’s research at the Racine Heritage Museum shows that Henry and Caroline Durand built the mansion in 1857. They had three girls, and later a fourth came along.Williams, from Wales, had her room adjoining the Durand girls’ room and must have been their close companion. The servant stayed with the Durand family until she died in the house of consumption, 31 years after her arrival.Meanwhile, one Durand daughter died at age 5. “We believe it was Caroline,” said Spencer.She and her daughter Amy Messer say they think little Caroline’s spirit is still likely frolicking at the mansion which the Masons bought in 1921 and turned into their center.Spencer tells of the time that a 12- to 14-year-old member of the Masonic boys youth group came to her, somewhat shaken.“He said, ‘... please don’t think I’m crazy, but I just saw a little girl upstairs, and she’s not alive.’ ” The boy said she had just run down a staircase.Spencer told the boy it was all right; that was just little Caroline, and she would do him no harm.Spencer and Messer say that Messer’s daughter, Summer, has reacted to what she evidently thought were people in the Masonic Center that no one else could see.One time, Spencer said, she was with Summer, now 4, on the third floor, where a Christmas tree was set up in the Durand daughters’ room. Summer said “hi” several times as though she was talking to someone behind the Christmas tree.Then, Summer became frightened and asked to be picked up.Spencer said she reacted by asking whoever was present to stop scaring her granddaughter — and Summer immediately started to laugh and giggle.That unnerved even Spencer, who calmly talks about having ghosts at the center. They quickly left the room.Other sightingsMesser and Joy McClelland, who has grown up with the Masons, both say they’ve seen and felt otherworldly things at the center.McClelland, for example, said she was once in the kitchen making lunch. “I looked up, and over by the door was a white, floating figure.” It was human-like and lasted only seconds, she said.Spencer said her predecessor once saw a smartly attired man descend a staircase after the guests had left an event. When she turned to talk to him, he was gone.No one who has reported seeing ghosts there has felt any menace from them, Spencer says. “People don’t feel necessarily afraid — just a little uneasy.”About the possible ghosts, she said, “What we feel is they’re happy. Little Caroline died, and Mary didn’t want to leave because Caroline is here.”Spencer added, “This is such a comfortable place for people to be ... Maybe they just like it here.”
Video: Lake Champlain's Legendary Monster 'Champ'?
A cell-phone video of a “creature” that appears to be swimming in Lake Champlain near Oakledge Park in Burlington last weekend is sparking renewed discussion about “Champ,” the lake’s legendary monster.The nearly 2-minute video, taken at sunrise Sunday by Burlington resident Eric Olsen, 37, shows an object moving across the mouth of the small cove and beach area at the park.At several points during the video, the object appears to raise its “head” a foot or more above the water’s surface. At other times a portion of what appears to be a torso, several feet in length, also can been seen.“I was just filming the water when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move, and I turned toward it and tried to zoom in on it,” said Olsen, a Web site developer and musician.“You can see that it is moving both horizontally, across the water, and vertically, going under the surface and coming back up,” he said. “It struck me as something that was long, that it didn’t have much girth.”Olsen put what he captured with his phone on YouTube, an Internet video-sharing site. Unsure about what he had photographed and reluctant to call it a “Champ” sighting, Olsen titled the footage “Strange Sighting on Lake Champlain.”The number of viewings of the video since it went on YouTube on Sunday had reached 3,060 by Tuesday evening.Loren Coleman a cryptozoologist based in Portland, Maine, said what Olsen filmed with his phone is the best photographic evidence to date of what residents on both sides of Lake Champlain prefer to call “Champ.”“We need to figure out what is going on here,” Coleman said. “The film needs to have a formal forensic analysis performed ... to break it down frame by frame. It needs to be looked at very seriously.” Cryptozoology is the study of purportedly nonexistent or mythical creatures.Before Sunday, the best known “Champ” photograph was taken in 1977 by Sandra Mansi of Bristol while she was having a picnic on the lake with her family. The photo was verified as legitimate and later appeared in Time magazine and The New York Times.Mansi, now 66, viewed Olsen’s video Tuesday and said there were similarities — and differences — between what she saw in 1977 and what is depicted in Olsen’s footage.“I see the shape of the head, how big it is,” she said, comparing her photo and the video. “The only thing I have a hard time with is the neck. It doesn’t look long enough for me. ... Whatever he saw has a link to what I saw. Tell him, ‘Welcome to the club.’”Scott Mardis of Winooski, another cryptozoologist who has spent time researching the “Champ” legend, said Olsen’s video seemed legitimate and was “very impressive.”“It does not look like it was Photoshopped,” Mardis said. “The object in the video has the same general texture as the rest of the photograph. It does not look like it was computer-generated. It looks like a ‘Champ.’”Mardis and Coleman said the object’s movements and size ruled out the chance it was a beaver, moose or some other more common mammal. Instead, both speculated it might be some unknown species of seal with an unusually long neck.“There’s lots of things that it could be,” Coleman said. “It’s just as interesting to me if all it is is an out-of-place harbor seal.”Ellen Marsden, a biology professor at the University of Vermont, said she thinks the object is not a seal but possibly a young moose in distress.“Fish or aquatic species rarely move that slowly in the water,” Marsden said. “It did not look like a creature that was comfortable in water. It was swimming as if something was seriously wrong.” She also said seals don’t swim with their backs out of the water.Olsen said he never saw the object emerge from the lake. He said he stopped filming after two minutes because the phone’s memory capacity was limited and he was afraid of losing what he had filmed. He said he stayed at the park for another half hour before leaving.There have been several alleged sightings of “Champ” on Lake Champlain over the years, but few were accompanied by any photographic substantiation.
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NYC's West Village Serves a Variety of Spirits
Strangeness at Heathrow Airport
MUFON Investigating Numerous Northwest Missouri Sightings
Is Mount St. Helens a Supervolcano?
NYC's West Village Serves a Variety of Spirits
New York City has a long, eventful past and the city's West Village is no exception. Riotous gangs, murderous politicians, drunk writers and nutty speak-easy owners have all made their mark on this corner of Manhattan and some think that they never really left.And while New York is not one of the many cities known for their fabulous ghost tours, you can still find a few good ones. In the West Village, the best way to do a tour is with beer. So I recently took part in a haunted pub tour -- orchestrated by a friend of mine in celebration of her 30th birthday.The group of us met in front of a Starbucks before the sun went down and were greeted by a man in a top, long black cape and a cane. He was a tour guide from Ghosts of New York but he was ready to have a few beers, too. From the moment we shook his hand, he had stories for us about places in the immediate vicinity.The first official stop was in front of one of the city's most romantic restaurants: One If By Land, Two If By Sea. The restaurant was once the carriage house of infamous Vice President Aaron Burr. According to our guide, Burr still hangs out there along with his daughter (who was lost at sea) and an unidentified man who some believe to be one of Burr's servants. Burr's daughter sometimes steals women's earrings and supposedly once pushed someone down the stairs.The restaurant is a little too expensive for a group like ours, so we headed to the Barrow Street Ale House right next door. Our guide revealed that he enjoyed Blue Moon and, being in an American history kind of mood, I ordered myself a Yuengling, a beer brewed by the oldest, continually operating brewery in the US.For our second stop, we had a choice: we could head to Marie's Crisis and hunt for some ghosts in the piano bar where show tunes are favored or we could go to Jekyll & Hyde for a bit of a kitschy haunted theme. Jekyll & Hyde won the duel. And, yes, it was kitschy but it was also fun. A group of us even opted to take shots from giant (fake) syringes. I chased it with a Brooklyn Lager from Brooklyn Brewery.Our final stop of the night was White Horse Tavern, a bar famous for its dead clientele. As the story goes, Dylan Thomas loved this bar and he spent many a night here. He used to turn the tables sideways to make it easier for him to write while he sipped his drink. But one night, Thomas entered that bar and before he left, he'd downed 18 shots of whiskey before heading home -- and dying.The legend says that Thomas still haunts the bar but does nothing more than move around the tables after closing. So we headed to the bar and I ordered up a pint of Anchor Steam Beer -- which is always good. Eventually we ended up back at the Barrow Street Ale House to round up the night.
Strangeness at Heathrow Airport
As thousands of people stream into London's Heathrow Airport every day, there's little time to notice that the gentleman next to you is not what he seems. He's tall, with a bowler hat perched upon his head and he is wearing twill cavalry trousers. Nothing out of the ordinary in today's diverse culture, as millions of people rush to and fro through the terminals, some seeking a holiday in the sun, others traveling from far and wide to experience the history of the capital. And yet this chap may never find his destination, for he is a ghost!Many people have become wrapped up in the lengthy American television series Lost in which a plane crashes en route to Australia, and the survivors appear to time travel, back and forth from the island, whilst meeting the spectres of those who allegedly perished. On the 2nd March 1948 a DC3 aircraft crashed on to the runway of Heathrow Airport, and the facts are far stranger than the fiction of the mentioned television show.The man in the hat is the apparition of one of the passengers aboard that fatal flight. Legend has it that after the incident on Runway 1, a man of the same description approached those attempting to rescue survivors, and asked as to whether anyone had found his briefcase. Before anyone could answer, the man vanished.It's no surprise that Heathrow has also had its fair share of UFO activity. Local residents have often spoken about strange things in the sky above the airport. In the summer of 1979 a Mrs Godden claimed she saw an unidentified craft buzzing the Anglo-French supersonic jet Concorde. The object was reddish and appeared to be heading straight for the plane, but then seemed to fly straight through it.Heathrow officials picked nothing up on the radar, but it seems that the airport has several mysteries under its wing.
MUFON Investigating Numerous Northwest Missouri Sightings
Missouri Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) state section director Margie Kay is reporting an increase in UFO sightings reports.The following was released by Kay on June 12.A rash of UFO sightings in the greater Kansas City area have prompted investigations by Mutual UFO Network field investigators. Sightings in St. Joseph, Kansas City, Independence, Sedalia, and Warrensburg from December 31 to the present have increased in number.Some of the more spectacular sightings are as follows:Two Warrensburg women witnessed a large circular unidentified object on the evening of December 31, 2008 and the morning of January 1, 2008. Christina Cooper, a professional photographer, and her friend reported the sighting to MUFON. A third witness, who wishes to remain anonymous, and who was in a different location, spoke to the investigator by phone. The sighting occurred on the evening of December 31 at 6:30 PM and again at 12:30 and 1:30 AM on January 1. The object was circular in shape, reported to be close to the road, approximately 60 feet off the ground and had several bright white lights on it. It landed at one point on 50 Hwy.Since the unidentified object may have been in the area for several hours, it is possible that other people saw it. The locations are Hwy 13 North of Warrensburg and south of I-70, and Hwy 50 between Kansas City and Warrensburg.In March a UFO was spotted by several college professors in St. Joseph, Missouri, who viewed the object through a telescope. Two of the witnesses made drawings of the object, which were large orange fireballs in a tear-drop shape. The UFO moved away and disappeared.In late May a large oval object was spotted traveling from South to North from the UMKC campus in Kansas City, and in June a large cigar-shaped silver UFO was witnessed in Sedalia by 20 people standing in an Applebee’s parking lot.Many other sightings have been sent to the KC MUFON office, some of which were not reported to the official MUFON database.
Is Mount St. Helens a Supervolcano?
Is Mount St. Helens a Supervolcano? According to findings from New Zealand scientists, Mt. St. Helens could be exactly that. Mt. St. Helens has been known for years as one of many volcanoes that litter Washington State and the "ring of fire" that works its way around the Pacific Ocean.It's an interesting notion that has been presented by these scientists, which includes the theory that several of the largest volcanoes in the area are actually linked by underground caverns. What that could mean is that they all work together to form one large Supervolcano, and that Mt. St. Helens could be at the center of it all.The thought process behind the article that these New Zealand scientists published in NewScientist, is that three of the major volcanoes in the area are linked by a deep column that leads to a pool of what could be molten rock. That pool of molten rock is theorized to connect Mount St. Helens to Mount Rainier and Mount Adams as well. That would make it one of the largest Supervolvanoes in existence, and hold the potential of a cataclysmic eruption that could be devastating. Such an eruption would be able to blanket the sky with ash and basically lower the temperature of the entire planet over a certain span of time.So, is this a real thing? Could Mount St. Helens really be a Supervolcano? Well local scientists in Washington State aren't quite as certain as the visiting New Zealand scientists. A magnetotellurics specialist at Oregon State University stated that "Whether finding high conductivity in this area is evidence that there's really something unusual here is the thing that is more questionable." He also stated that part of the conductivity that the New Zealand scientists are seeing within the mountain is probably just water. He doesn't come out and simply refute what the New Zealanders found, but he does question how close to reality their theories could be.Mount St. Helens has been seeing activity on and off for the past couple of years, and everyone in the area still remembers when Mount St. Helens erupted back in 1980. If what the New Zealand scientists have found turns out to be fact, a Supervolcano eruption could be many times more powerful than the last one. Most of these findings (by both sides) are really just conjecture though, because not a whole lot is known about what is under these particular volcanoes. They could all be linked, or they could all be working separately, but there isn't a concrete test with which to prove that. For now area residents can look at this information, but may be forced to take it with a grain of salt unless they want to uproot their lives.
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Reader Accounts: Large Craft Over LA / UFO Reacted to Witness' Anxiety in Kentucky
Photo: Orbs / Light Specks - The Dakota Hotel - NYC
NewScientist.com: Win a Piece of Moon Rock
Roswell Incident: A Brit's Pursuit of the Truth
H1N1 Swine Flu Origin Disclosed
Reader Accounts: Large Craft Over LA / UFO Reacted to Witness' Anxiety in Kentucky
This event occurred on July 23, 2002, at approximately 10:15 p.m. (PST) in Hawthorne, California.Hawthorne is a small suburb just outside of Los Angeles, located approximately 5 miles east from the Los Angeles International Airport. The city is just about 2 miles off the approach path of planes landing. Planes continually land and it gets kind of noisy; at any time, one can see the flickering lights of planes spaced out in the distance towards the east coming in to land at the airport.This occurred while two of my friends and myself were outside talking. My two friends never saw a UFO before and are the type that tend not to believe UFOs or the paranormal without direct evidence.In any event, we were talking. They were facing towards me (south), while I was facing towards the north. While we were talking, I saw a rather huge object coming towards us from the north. At that point, it appeared to be a string of evenly spaced lights. A white one in the center, with three red lights on either side of the red lights. I immediately realized this was odd because the thing was way too big to be a plane. I interrupted one of my friends mid-sentence and said, "Don't look now, but we're being invaded" as I pointed to the object. My friends both turned around and did a somewhat comical double take. Their jaws dropped.The object flew towards us silently. It's altitude was roughly the same altitude of planes that we normally see coming in from the east. Thus, it was crossing directly in front of the flight path. I suddenly realized that all air traffic had ceased. The familiar lights of the planes coming in for a landing from the east had ceased and all was quiet.The object flew almost directly overhead (heading from north to south), traveling very slowly and completely silent. It became apparent that it was triangular shaped - a white light at the nose, with the red lights going back in a V shape. We watched it glide over us and kept it in sight until we couldn't see it anymore in the south sky. After the object passed, the air traffic eventually resumed again.The object was many times larger (perhaps 4 to 5 times) than the 747s that I'm accustomed to seeing. It traveled slowly, less than 200 mph I'd estimate.This event, which occurred over a major U.S. city and caused air traffic to be rerouted or put on hold, never made the news. I reported the sighting on MufonLA.com and noticed that others across California had seen the same object (some reported on Mufon.com and others on nuforc.org).___________________This incident took place in August, 2008. I was in my studio, which is a room I built in my unattached garage so that I do not bother my family sleeping in the house at late hours. At about 1:30 AM, my dog began barking non-stop. I went outside to see what might be going on. She was at the end of the drive way, looking towards the soy bean field across the road. I wandered down the driveway to look. I figured it could be a rabbit or a possum. She was looking a bit skyward. I looked up and saw a moving light. She stopped barking once I saw it. The light was not much bigger than Venus, however it was moving in an erratic motion. Sort of keeping with in an area of a quarter if you held it about 3 inches from your eye. The light pulsed about every 2 seconds. It would be a reddish light, it would grow brighter and fade. Then it would turn white and grow brighter. Back and forth between the two colors. It was a clear night, no moon and I could see many other stars and lights from jets. I wondered if it was just my eye jumping, so I concentrated on stars. None of them jerked about or pulsed. Then I held myself very still and watched the sky in general and the stars remained motionless, but the light continued to move about. I can't tell how big the light source was. I am not sure, it being quite dark across the field where a tree line is, if the light was in front of the tree line or a bit above it. However, it was quite low in the sky. The light began to enlarge, or move closer to me and I became uneasy. It approached for a few seconds, maybe 10 or so, then as my anxiety increased it seemed to retreat from me back to what I guess was it's original position. I watched for a few more minutes and then decided to tell my daughter about it who had been watching TV a bit earlier. I went inside but she had gone to bed. I went back outside and the light was gone. I looked around the sky and found it had moved, seemingly farther away and no longer southeast of me, but now more in the direction of southwest. I watched it for a few minutes more, lost interest and continued my art project. A few days later I contacted MUFON via email. I received an email later than night from the regional director of MUFON based in Bowling Green, KY. He asked follow up questions and I sent him my phone number. A few more days later he called me in the early evening and I repeated all I had posted in the initial email and answered in his follow up email. He informed me that MUFON had been receiving the same type of reports from eastern and southern central Kentucky for the last few weeks. He had no answers for what it could be, but just that it was a common sight from those of us who happened to wander outside in the very early morning hours.I have never experienced this before and I am really interested in how this "thing" reacted to my anxiety level.
Photo: Orbs / Light Specks - The Dakota Hotel - NYC
Katherine Fulton interview at Examiner.comIn April 2006, Katherine Fulton, a freelance writer and music buff, traveled to New York City to visit and stay with friends. She wanted to visit several places while in New York and when visiting Central Park's Strawberry Fields, she found that it was close to The Dakota, the apartment building where John Lennon lived where he had been shot and killed.When visiting the complex, Katherine was overcome with a sense of queasiness that she could not explain; she dismissed the feeling originally as being a big fan of John Lennon so her friends would not worry. They suggested that she take a picture of the place, but she felt so ill that she only took a quick shot on her digital camera and left.When she returned home, the picture proved to be more unusual than she suspected.“It wasn't until I got back from my trip that I took a closer look at the Dakota shot and saw the strange streaks of light in front of and behind the gate,” says Fulton. “I was especially puzzled because I couldn't figure out a reason as to why they would be there. No one was around me when I took the shot, so no one bumped into me to cause a light streaking effect... The photo was taken with a digital camera, which ruled out exposure or film damage, and the rest of the photos I took on the trip were sharp, clear and normal, which for me ruled out the possibility that there was something wrong with the camera or memory stick.”She showed her picture to her father who worked for years as photographer and a graphic designer and he was not able to clearly explain the phenomenon. However there is another explanation for these streaks of light, which is that she managed to photograph “orbs” in the picture.Orbs are a rare phenomenon in photography; theories range that orbs are souls or the spiritual energy of the dead to the presence of the supernatural aura. The only common explanation of the orbs phenomenon is that it is the presence of supernatural energy and they are generally not recorded on camera. In some cultures, orbs were the sign of forthcoming death and were considered spiritual creatures themselves like the Will O' The Wisps in Irish folklore or ghostly balls of flame in Japanese folklore. However more recent pictures with claims of orbs are attributed to fairies and their sparkling presence.The problem is that most claims of orbs in photographs are legitimately explained as the presence of reflected dust particles caught in the light when the shutter went off in the camera. What makes this photo different are a couple of key elements: 1. The presence of light streaks do not all move in the same direction. 2. Without knowing any of the details of John Lennon's murder at these gates, some sensitives react with foreboding at the picture, despite that there is nothing outlandishly gory or horrifying about the actual image.If the phenomenon of orbs is actually present in the picture, its significance is still up for debate. Three years later, Katherine still feels an ominous presence when looking at the picture. But she explains her reluctance to identify the streaks of light as a paranormal phenomenon.“I didn't want to go around saying that I'd captured anything paranormal simply because I didn't want to jump to conclusions. Someone could easily come along and offer a logical explanation that my dad and I hadn't considered, and I'd be okay with that. And admittedly, I didn't want to give the impression that I'd taken the photo in an attempt to capture something "ghostly" or "spooky" about what is, essentially, a murder scene. I respect Lennon too much to make light of where he was killed, and I also respect the fact that for his family and friends, this was more than the loss of a cultural icon - it was the loss of a husband, a father, a collaborator and a friend.”NOTE: if it was a video and these 'orbs' were moving around then I could consider it as possible. This looks like a film / capture light anomaly sometimes seen when the photographer is in the sunlight or light area and the subject is shaded...though, I'm open for thoughts...
NewScientist.com: Win a Piece of Moon Rock
Would you like to own this little piece of the moon?Depending on which time zone you happen to be in, 20 or 21 July 2009 sees the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.NewScientist.com's competition to celebrate that historic event offers a rare and fabulous prize for the winner: a scrap of genuine moon rock.The competition is simple to enter. You will doubtless know the words relayed from Neil Armstrong when he stepped off Apollo 11's lunar module and onto the moon itself: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."Can you think of something better for him to have said - something even more memorable, or perhaps something funnier?Go to NewScientist.com for details on the moon rock and entry instructions.
Roswell Incident: A Brit's Pursuit of the Truth
There is a lunar quality to the landscape of New Mexico which seems somehow appropriate for a state which is our portal to the heavens.It is here on a dried-up lake bed high above sea level that the radio telescopes of the US government's Very Large Array (VLA) receive signals from the outer edges of our expanding universe, chasing the very moment of the Big Bang through the trackless void of time and space.And of course it is also here - perhaps - that 62 years ago a flying-saucer crashed to earth on a ranch outside the town of Roswell, killing its alien crew and prompting one of the most elaborate and protracted cover-ups in history.The power of that possibility and the darkness of the nights here so far from the light pollution of the big cities are what draw scientists and curious tourists alike to this entrancing place.And it is what motivates watchers of the skies to keep, well, watching the skies, obviously.Alien ambiguityIf UFO true-believers are right, then nothing much that has happened on our tiny, fragile planet in the years since that stormy summer's night really matters very much.What, after all, would Watergate, or Vietnam or Iraq amount to if we could establish that the US government knew for sure that we are not alone in the universe?Most of the big questions about alien life and UFOs can be traced back to Roswell - not least the issue of how life-forms from another civilisation have such an uncanny sense of when the tourist industry in a small US town could use a shot in the arm.Are we really alone in the heavens, for example, and if we are not, do the civilisations with which we share the heavens mean us any harm?Is it just a coincidence that aliens have never managed to find an earth-dweller who knows how to operate his own camera properly?And why, if you have journeyed light years across the unknowable vastness of the heavens, would you confine yourself to a fleeting and ambiguous appearance before a handful of New Mexican ranchers?Why not go the extra mile and find a research institute of some kind - unless our visitors have a sense of humour, of course.But we are getting ahead of ourselves.Let us return to that stormy summer New Mexican night in 1947 when the story of the UFO landing first broke.It was a world of tension and uncertainty.The United States had detonated the first atom bombs - they were developed just up the road at Los Alamos, New Mexico - and was uneasily aware that the Soviet Union, its increasingly hostile former ally, had nuclear ambitions of its own. The Cold War was just beginning.'Switcheroo'Roswell was in those days the home base of the 509th Bombardment Group of the US Eighth Army Air Force.Most of the boys in the 509th were combat veterans and when they were tasked to investigate reports of some kind of landing on a ranch a short distance away it seems reasonable to assume they were not too excited at first. That soon changed.When they got the material back to base, they quickly concluded they were onto something historic.Their first press release talked of the recovery of a flying saucer - it was only when the suits descended from Washington that the tone of the official communiques changed.The base intelligence officer who was tasked with taking the wreckage to another base reports leaving it in an office there and returning a few minutes later to find that the space debris he had brought had been replaced with parts of a weather balloon.The fix was in. Faced with evidence of one of the most significant events in human history the American authorities had responded by pulling the old switcheroo.One account of those days comes from Julie Shuster, whose father was the press officer at the Roswell base.She now runs the museum in the town which is the focal point for the local UFO industry (it is on a street where the street lights have been decorated so that they look like alien heads).For Julie there is a simple issue in all of this which goes back to the version of events her father passed on to her."My daddy didn't lie. My father saw the bodies, my father saw the craft," she says."He saw bodies - large heads, almond shaped eyes... and material that couldn't be burnt, ripped, cut - anything."'Majestic 12'It is not quite so personal for the other true believers in the incident.Dennis Balthaser, for example, is a retired civil engineer who is perhaps the most meticulous researcher of the Roswell incident.He has spent years (and thousands of dollars of his own money) tracing every witness and every player from that night in 1947 and is convinced that there was a landing.But he is at his most compelling when talking about the cover-up which follows.Dennis lives in a rather frightening world where the US government would be perfectly happy to murder anyone (including him) who got too close to the truth.He believes the US is really governed by a kind of secret committee of senior military and intelligence officials with the president serving as a kind of hired hand to deal with the public."Basically he can't be trusted with information like this" says Dennis."Back in Truman's time, we're looking at a thing called 'majestic 12', which was a group of some of the highest military people, some of the highest dignitary people we had. I believe today we still have a group similar to that that calls the shots."Even before I met Dennis, I knew he believed that space travellers helped build the pyramids - where I, for example, am more inclined to the view that they are probably the work of Egyptians.I expected to find him hopelessly naive - but the funny thing is he is so lucid and convincing that I left feeling rather naive myself.(And in case you were wondering - if anyone ever lifts a quote from this article to promote a book or a DVD it will be that previous sentence.)Missing balloon?But here is the problem.I mentioned before that New Mexico is a place where real science and Roswell science-lite co-exist.And it is in that proximity that our explanation probably lies.At the VLA (that centre of government radio telescopy) they will tell you that around the time of the crash, the US government was sending up special high-altitude weather balloons made of a then-classified material.They were looking for atmospheric evidence that the Russians were testing their own nuclear bomb.On the night of the Roswell incident, one of those balloons went missing.Until, perhaps, it was found by the boys of the 509th.And all that stuff about alien bodies being recovered and autopsies being performed? Well I leave you to speculate about that for yourselves.If you find all that a little disappointing then you can always employ the debating technique favoured by UFO true believers - the deployment of questions designed to expose the lack of absolute certainty in almost all human affairs.How do you know, for example, that there really is not a government department 27 layers above top secret tasked with keeping an eye on these things?Perhaps they insist that articles like this are submitted to them for screening before publication.And maybe this is not the script I originally wrote and submitted - just the script they sent back.You could hardly blame me for giving in - I am sure you would not want to find my bleached bones left out in the desert, would you?All I am saying is - keep watching the skies.
H1N1 Swine Flu Origin Disclosed
A new analysis of the current swine-origin H1N1 influenza A virus suggests that transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the existing outbreak.The work, published online in Nature June 10, highlights the need for systematic surveillance of influenza in swine, and provides evidence that new genetic elements in swine can result in the emergence of viruses with pandemic potential in humans.'Using computational methods, developed over the last ten years at Oxford, we were able to reconstruct the origins and timescale of this new pandemic,' said Dr Oliver Pybus of Oxford University's Department of Zoology, an author of the paper. 'Our results show that this strain has been circulating among pigs, possibly among multiple continents, for many years prior to its transmission to humans.'Dr Pybus, along with Andrew Rambaut from the University of Edinburgh and colleagues, used evolutionary analysis to estimate the timescale of the origins and the early development of the epidemic. They believe that it was derived from several viruses circulating in swine, and that the initial transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the outbreak.The team conclude that 'despite widespread influenza surveillance in humans, the lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic strain for many years.'The team included researchers from Oxford, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Arizona.
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As you can see, we never know where the next
Extraordinary Paranormal Story
may come from.
Have "YOU" had a 'paranormal' experience you would like to share? Maybe you have seen a UFO....perhaps you have even been abducted or have had strange 'dreams' of Aliens....Have you ever encountered a "Ghost", a "Spirit", or some 'being' from another realm of existence? Perhaps you have come across "Orbs" or other entities of 'light'....Whatever extraordinary, unusual, paranormal experience you have had, if you would like to share it, please send your story to me at DGarrison722@aol.com , just write "My Story" in the subject line. Don't worry about spelling or punctuation, and we will not publish any names or screen names without permission. If you have any comments or suggestions, or even photographs, send them in please.
MAKE SURE YOU CHECK OUT THESE GREAT WEB SITES OF INTEREST
http://openlineartgallery.blogspot.com/
As you can see, we never know where the next
Extraordinary Paranormal Story
may come from.
Have "YOU" had a 'paranormal' experience you would like to share? Maybe you have seen a UFO....perhaps you have even been abducted or have had strange 'dreams' of Aliens....Have you ever encountered a "Ghost", a "Spirit", or some 'being' from another realm of existence? Perhaps you have come across "Orbs" or other entities of 'light'....Whatever extraordinary, unusual, paranormal experience you have had, if you would like to share it, please send your story to me at DGarrison722@aol.com , just write "My Story" in the subject line. Don't worry about spelling or punctuation, and we will not publish any names or screen names without permission. If you have any comments or suggestions, or even photographs, send them in please.
MAKE SURE YOU CHECK OUT THESE GREAT WEB SITES OF INTEREST
http://openlineartgallery.blogspot.com/
http://ufoopenlinenews.blogspot.com/
http://ufomag.com/
And don't miss the new season of:
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I would like to thank and acknowledge everyone who helped make this Edition of the
Newsletter possible, and as always, My Special Princess Angel Brandi.
