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Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 18th, 2010
I get all kinds of visitors. Some are scientists, some are kids who are cryptozoologists-in-training, some are teachers, bakers, and models. The world is full of all kinds of people intrigued by cryptozoology.
Very, very infrequently, as happened yesterday, someone stops by, pays their five dollars admission, and tells me they have just come from a house warming party. But he was calm and filled with wonder. He stepped into my museum, the last alone man of the day.
I then realized later last night that this gentleman must have gone home and created a fantasy poem based a bit on his visit to the International Cryptozoology Museum, and a lot about what was happening in his head. That’s okay, it was something pleasant to read before I went to bed.
Perhaps this is a new category we should call “cryptofiction poetry” or just “CryptoPoetry.”
From the website self, I found this poem “had ideas,” by iambarr:
went to see a man today.
went to see a man about the unknown, because, you see, i had questions. turns out that asking questions is not enough to deserve answers. his name is loren coleman and, when it comes to the unknown, there are few who can rival his knowledge. bigfoot, yeti, coelocanth, jersey devil, mothman: these are coleman’s areas of expertise. there are secret things, unknowable things, unmentionable things that coleman has dedicated his life to..
drunken, i asked him about love.
he told me to leave. he doesn’t deal in fairy tails.
Alas, I wish iambarr would have asked about love,
A topic almost as mysterious as foxglove.
Instead we spoke of the dodo related to the dove,
Tom Slick and his fear of publicity,
Caused by Machine Gun Kelly’s duplicity.
You were a pleasant young man,
Standing underneath the can,
Of the octopus style giant squid.
But I’m afraid I lost you to your id.
You seemed as if you were a bit undid.
May you soon recover
And do discover
The love you truly do seek
With your girlfriend this week.
Passion, you see,
Is an interest of me.
But mostly of cryptid whales,
And beautiful smart females.
And certainly not of airedales.
Handrails. Coattails. Cocktails.
Or supposed Bigfoot toenails.
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. |
I'd like to devise a backpack that has one of those stadium chairs attached. This way you'd just be carrying around your bag, then when you want to sit down you just unclasp it and it turns into a little hinged seat.
The mapinguari or mapinguary (Spanish pronunciation: [mapiŋɡwaˈɾi]), also known as the Isnashi [isˈnaʃi], is a legendary cryptid said to resemble a ground sloth–like creature with red fur living in the Amazon rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia. The name is usually translated as “the roaring animal” or “the fetid beast”.
A south american Saquatch of sorts.
Stamper came up with all the current titles.
Last Edit: May 25, 2012 9:54:49 GMT -8 by emptyfox
Nice board, I've been reading through a few threads and I still have a couple of questions that I'm hoping a couple of you can answer.
Me and a few of my buddies travel to a new festival each year. So far we've done Coachella, Bonnaroo, and JazzFest (in that order). This year we've decided to hit Sasquatch. JazzFest was cool, but we rented a house, so we're really looking forward to unplugging again for four days of car camping.
From what I can tell Sasquatch is pretty similar to Coachella and Bonnaroo in terms of how it's set up, so I think we'll be fine, but it always helps to ask the locals.
Here's my questions:
1. How small are the camp sites? We sprung for the Premiere camping for one reason, we have no idea what time we're getting in on Thursday, and we like being a little closer. We'll have 5 to 6 people in our group. Traditionally I rent a van (and sleep in it) while the others hit a tent. Our tent is a just a bit larger than the traditional 10' x 30' car camping space. At Bonnaroo that's no problem, as it's pretty lax about defined boundaries. Coachella's a bit more hard-assed about it, as they actually mark an outline of your space and everything has to fit inside of it. We're really considerate, and usually work with the camps around us to make sure everything fits. How strict is Sasquatch about this? Are the spaces marked out, or are you left to work out things with the folks around you?
2. What's the backup like to get in? I'm sure the traffic is legendary. At Bonnaroo we got in the 12 mile traffic line to get in around 1am. We got our tent set up at 9am. Is Sasquatch that brutal, or does it flow in pretty easy? Just want to be mentally prepared. We'll be driving from Seattle, is there a better time to leave on Thursday than another? If you do a festival you have to understand that the process is part of the fun, but it's nice to know what to expect. 3. How hard is it to sneak in nice cameras? A couple of our group are really good photographers. Is it really hard to get a decent DSLR in to the show or are the guys up front pretty cool about it? 4. How hard is it to get from stage to stage? At Coachella I was amazed at how easy it was to move from stage to stage, you could easily watch a half set of one act and then move to the next. At Bonnaroo there are a lot of choke points, and it is CROWDED. So much so that if there's a band you want to see, you pretty much have to show up at the end of the previous band's set to make sure you get in if it's in the main stage. Is the amphitheater the same way or is it pretty easy to navigate between the acts?
5. Any good advice for first timers? It's not our first festival, but it's our first Sasquatch. Usually it takes a day or two to find your way around and find you favorite spots. What are some of the things we need to make sure we do or see while we're there. Any good advice about best places to view the stages, or favorite hang out places?
Thanks in advance! If this board is any indication, Sasquatch is going to be a blast, you guys seem like a great group.
1. They don't mark out the camping spaces, but don't sweat it, you're gonna have oodles of space in premier camping. Last time we were in there, they gave us enough room to build a freaking house.
2. The backup is pretty minimal. It is nothing at all like trying to roll into either Bonnaroo or Coachella. (But if you ever go to Bonnaroo again --- try to get in the line around 5AM... you'll still be set up by 9AM. Promise.)
3. I'll let Mrlahey or someone else field this question. I see people with SLRs all the time, so I can't imagine it's TOO troublesome.
4. Super easy. In terms of getting from stage to stage, it's much closer to Coachella than it is Bonnaroo. ALSO, like Coachella, every view in the festival grounds is incredible.
5. Please read the FAQs thread, most first-timer questions get answered there... eventually.
I've read through almost all the posts and FAQs here, great board, very similar vibe to the Bonnaroo boards. My last question was more of a general question. Like, as someone who's been before, what would you tell someone going for the first time that you learned the hard way?
For example I'd tell people at Coachella to shower at 2am, no lines. For Bonnaroo I'd tell people to not miss the movie tent. It's a great way to beat the heat for a little bit and catch a nap (dark and cool!). |
Weekly Angelic Forecast from Volcano
Straight from the Carnal Cherub himself...
Angelic Forecast ~ #308
Sacred Are the Peacemakers, at this major crosspoint in human history/herstory. They come from every race, creed and culture, and now the peacemakers join together in mind, heart, and spirit. Now they traverse the world in a monumental effort to bring forth a lasting and true peace.
In opposition, the psychopathic War Beasts unleash more chaos-hell on planet Earth. All to spark a world war of epic and 'Sky Net' destructive proportions. Think Darth Vader meets World War Two, tenfold.
On the magickal, mystical front, this week the 'Mages of Ages Lost'... whirl their magickal lightblades, and the walls come tumbling down around the black-hearted Viper magicians. Or, those who have trauma-controlled humanity for century upon century. Watch the *scandal* headlines this coming week.
Also, the past continues to reveal itself at hyper-jump speed. HEADLINE-SNIPPET: Gobekli Tepe: the Temple of the Watchers ~ The mysterious stone complex of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey is one of the great mysteries of archaeology. This week, Andrew Collins reports on his findings at the site and discoveries nearby that suggest even more incredible ruins remain to be uncovered. ~unknowncountry.com/dreamland/latest~
On the personal front, a difficult busy week for most of us. Yet success in certain ventures will be highly rewarding.
Also, this could be a time when your intuitive-psychic sensibilities and powers become more obvious. This could be sparked by a certain incident, or merely 'show up' as part of your experienced reality.
Remember too, the times they are a-changin' at nova-burst speed. To balance yourself, slow down one area of your life, as you are able. Listen to music, and allow yourself more leisure time.
On the paranormal front, the meteoric rise of the cryptid phenomena, including mini T-Rex sightings. Watch out!
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: Bigfoot & Southwest Cryptids
Dave Schrader was joined by cryptozoologist JC Johnson (youtube.com/user/cryptofourcorners), who shared his research and experiences with cryptids in the Southwest US. He recounted details from his 1999 bigfoot encounter at Blue Ridge Reservoir in the Mogollon Rim area of Arizona. Johnson and a friend were camping on a ten by fifteen foot rock on a lake when they heard a high-pitched shrill scream and the sound of something moving through the trees. "I saw a huge outline of a very large body in the moonlight," Johnson said, adding that the shrieking creature began throwing rocks and other forest debris from the ridge above the camp site. ~coasttocoastam.com/show/2014/07/25~
Also, the moon rises. HEADLINE-SNIPPET: Alien Artifacts On The Moon? ~ The notion of looking for alien artifacts on our own Moon may finally be gaining mainstream scientific traction. — Forbes.com
On the land changes front, the sun awakens once again, in the near future. For, now the Great Lion Star lashes the atmosphere of Earth, likely causing weather anomalies and communication disruptions.
From the prior forecast: "BOOM-SUPER BOOM-MEGA BOOM ... Earthquakes quicken, more volcanoes awaken worldwide and erupt on the sea floor. Superstorms strike one after another, strafe shorelines, and dump rivers of water causing floods. In other areas, wildfires rage out of control while the drought deepens. Mudslides, sinkholes, and in the coming months, there are likely to be mega windstorms.
In the meantime, land rises forming new islands. Within the center of the Earth herself shifts in energy are occurring, which, in part, are responsible for weakening the magnetic field.
However, the real danger: the weather and earthquake wars being waged between high-level factions of the dark-side controllers. Some of this will be mitigated by the Benevolents who are on the side of humanity."
On the AWAKENING front, this week, the AWAKENING of humankind surges ahead on one front while decreasing among certain populations. This is the price of war as orchestrated by the dark-side controllers.
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: Weekender: Timeline Jumping - A Glimpse Into the Complex World of Selective Existence ~ Friday, July 25, 2014 ~ The message, displayed on Kenyon's website www.TomKenyon.com, suggests that our collective destiny is made up of a combination of individual choices, evolutionary forces and terrestrial factors, along with cosmic energies that impact upon us due to our position within the complex cosmic matrix. The Hathors say that more of us are now "awakening" and the Controllers are getting nervous; a sudden unexpected surge in elevated human consciousness could overcome them. ~unknowncountry.com/news/weekender-timeline-jumping-glimpse-complex-world-selective-existence~
On the economic front, now the rules change worldwide. That is, the dynamics of the world economy begins to go in reverse. Those on top of the financial heap are losing their position, and thus, the battle royale starts. Now far beyond the current economic global war.
For the coming weeks, crazy-town chaos is likely to rule the markets. The banking system will be rife with more giant-sized scandals. And the American people will look for creative solutions outside of the establishment.
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: "America’s Lost Decade: Typical Household Wealth Has Plunged 36% Since 2003 ~ Zero Hedge | Does it feel like you’re poorer?"
Meanwhile, the threat of war, and the bloodletting horrors occurring now, will be used as smoke-and-mirrors to hide the true Depression-state of the economy. This is because the banking system is running on fumes. With diabolical perseverance, the bankster gangsters have pillaged and plundered nearly every last cent. The final rape will be the pensions funds, and related assets.
Out of this orchestrated impoverishment, watch for the intro of more magic-tree-grown cyber currencies. All while the cyber attack-hacks continue.
On the truth front, TRUTHS about so-called world leaders now come bursting out like elephant-tons of infection and pus. THE CLEANSING is here, and will not be denied.
However, the *whole truth* about these Machiavellian politicos and technocrats will be more than many can comprehend, let alone stomach. Regardless of provable facts, these revealed 'truths' will seem like a horror-movie fantasy. Thus, many will continue to exist in the Land of Denial.
On the war front, China will make several bullying, take-over moves in a bid to increase their dominance. Also, North Korea will make some *beat the drums of war* noise in an attempt to gain their ends.
Breaking News -- heard after what was written above -- North Korea vows to nuke the white house. Is Dennis Rodman needed ASAP?
Meanwhile, the Middle East explodes into ever more war and beast-brute ethnic cleansing. This, to the delight of the new world order criminals. As well, innocents are being slaughtered in Ukraine, all by plan and order of Viper elite globalists.
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: "Ukraine’s Army Fires Phosphorus Bombs at Donetsk – People’s Republic ~ RIA Novosti | Ukrainian troops fired internationally banned phosphorus bombs at Donetsk and Mandrykino in eastern Ukraine overnight, the Donetsk People’s Republic has said."
However, worldwide, the peacemakers are making their moves backed by the SPIRITUAL ONES, and backed by every being on planet Earth who is soul-weary of war.
On the tyranny-at-work front, oppression moves ahead like a battlefield filled with the tanks of war. While the southern border remains wide open by executive order -- and the border patrol is playing handmaiden to those who are being used like the Trojan Horse to further the establishment's sinister agenda -- the American people are being trained like prisoners to obey any and every order given by the TSA, and gov agencies. Or risk being put a terror watch list.
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: "How the US's terrorism watchlists work – and how you could end up on one. Long-withheld document provides insight into secretive system in which people can be placed on terrorism databases with astounding ease, and without any way to get off..."
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: "Aerial Footage Shows Massive Holes In Border Fence: The Gates Are Wide Open ~ Prison Planet.com | Infowars reporter Joe Biggs takes to the sky to demonstrate just how serious this manufactured border meltdown really is. "
On the communication front, a breakthrough week for the human race. That is, planet-wide, the people are coming together at a whole new level of AWARENESS. This is through *it's a small-small world* dialogue. And what is called the Aquarian Conspiracy.
From a past forecast: "Thus, activism against the dark-side global controllers becomes a force to be reckoned with, and fast. Also, this internet way of bonding will be enhanced by the mind-to-mind connection that is called the Aquarian Conspiracy."
As well... from previous forecasts: "Out of this, across the globe, the UPRISING of the people against the Viper-Robber-Baron elite accelerates at a blistering pace. This will not be a leader-focused movement, but more a melding of minds ala the Aquarian Conspiracy...
..."at this point in history, many realize governmental restrictions are now obsolete in the face of the Aquarian Conspiracy -- or the ability of humanity to live and love from their spiritual center, from their caring hearts...
IN OPPOSITION ~ from a previous forecast: "The New Inquisition is Here... Shutting Down the Aquarian Conspiracy.
That is, the dark-side controllers will use every diabolical method to shut down the mind and heart bond humans form with each other. This connection is part of what the Aquarian Age is all about, or what was called the Aquarian Conspiracy by author, Marilyn Ferguson, in her 1980 best-selling book, "Aquarian Conspiracy"."
On the home front, the migration of Americans out of the united states of America accelerates at this crosspoint in time. Many now realize it's now or never as far as leaving their home country -- of having an 'exit strategy' as suggested by Matt Drudge.
With the economy in an endless nosedive, and tyranny rising like an angry, hungry leviathan, those with the 'means' have a critical decision to make -- stay or leave. As well, those of us without the means also have critical decisions to make, unique to our individual situations.
For, the proverbial prison gates are being shut and the freedom to travel -- with your wealth -- is being shut down. Welcome to Amerika!
On the food front, at this point in history, corporate-sold food has become 'not food' ... or artificial and harmful to the human body in ways that will cause accelerated aging, high levels of sickness, and death on a mass scale. This is especially true for the younger generation.
However... HEADLINE-SNIPPET: "U.S. Consumers Avoiding GMOs, Buying Organics More than Ever ~ Elizabeth Renter | The number of people actively seeking out non-genetically modified foods is higher than ever."
Further, on the not-good food front, HEADLINE-SNIPPET: "Leaked: Secret text exposes food safety dangers in U.S.-Europe trade deal
A form of mutual recognition of the safety of imported food from Europe in the U.S. and vice versa that reduces standards to the lowest levels;
An objective that food safety safeguards should generally be enforced in the least trade restrictive manner, rather than the manner that is most protective of public health and the environment; and
A system of “exporter country certification” that would sharply reduce food safety inspections at ports of entry."
On the energy front, strange days ahead in the realm of energy. ALL realms of energy. On the personal level, energy levels are likely to spike sharply up and down. Look for ways to accommodate your need for rest, and charge ahead during the high times.
On the world stage, the chessboard battle for energy and mineral resources becomes a *vicious dog eat a more vicious dog fight* -- when there is no need. This 'battle' is simply to keep the people enslaved and impoverished. It's all a nefarious farce perpetrated against humankind. For, energy is abundant, as proven by Tesla.
On the really bad news front, parts of the Gulf of Mexico have been murdered, and the Gulf is still being killed off by the corp-gov powers that be.
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: "Dead Zones Throughout The Gulf Of Mexico, BP Never Cleaned Up 2010 Oil Spill ~ Michael Thomas | Pathogenic Micro-organisms Proliferate Due To Polluted And Poisoned GOM ‘Bioterrain’.
INVESTIGATIVE ARTICLE: The conditions in the Gulf Coast region are so bad, that some are actually talking about a mass evacuation of the coastal regions in Louisiana. Others think the potential devastation is so dangerous that the entire Gulf Coast region should be evacuated. Others think that all is well in the Gulf. What exactly is the truth? ~thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/07/28/the-gulf-needs-to-be-evacuated~
On the good news front, effective activism against Monsanto, Dupont, Dow, etc., and Big Pharma, takes root on a worldwide basis. Because of internet communication, the people are discovering the real truth, and are battling back to save themselves, their loved ones, and ALL of humanity.
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: Monsanto Ordered to Pay $93 Million for Poisoning Citizens
West Virginia has finished a settlement causing Monsanto to pay $93 million to a town for poisoning citizens with Agent Orange chemicals. ~naturalsociety.com~
On the global mafia cabal front, sloppier, and ever more *in your face* ... that is: the anti-humanity crimes, and false flag events, staged by the globalist minions of the Viper elite. Their desperation to hold the reins of ALL POWER and brutishly dominate humanity has an immense price.
One price, at this time, more and more of the people are seeing through their worldwide horrific 'staged events' -- thus, seeing through their tsunami of propaganda and lies. Or, all the world is a stage, and they own the stage.
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” ~George Orwell
On the heroine and hero front, everyone who is taking action to make their corner of the world better for themselves, their community, and the whole of humankind. For, during these times, the battle is often overwhelming, and takes courageous perseverance.
On the freedom front, Goliath-like changes ahead in the battle against the all-consuming encroachment of the Viper cabal's tyranny. That is: the underground revolt of the people comes to the surface.
This ages-long revolt of the WHITE HAT brigade will begin making key strikes against the enemies of humanity. Those of us with the eyes to see, and the ears to hear, will be able to witness these strikes by reading between the coming news headlines.
However, as stated in the prior forecast: "the battle for freedom goes into maximum high gear. There are those who have been born for these times, for this flashpoint of destiny. Now, many of them take the lead, but not the reins. For, the people, as a whole, are in charge of shifting the Pisces Age paradigm from enslavement to liberty."
Trendwise, American people, people in the state of Michigan, you have a problem. History is repeating itself with devastating consequences. Before and during the Depression era, massive amounts of 'good' milk were dumped out on orders of the government. Why? The excuse was that the price was too low, and this would help the economy.
Current day: The excuse to starve people and force them to eat the corporate swill is 'you don't have a license to sell'. This, when a private co-op IS NOT required to have a license, and no complaints about the quality of the food had been made.
HEADLINE-SNIPPET: Michigan Dept of Agri Forces Farmer to Dump 248 Gallons of Organic Milk and Break 1200 Free Range Eggs
Posted by: Daisy Luther | on July 22, 2014
While Americans in the nearby city of Detroit face life in third world conditions, unable to even afford running water, the state of Michigan decided to direct its resources towards cracking down on a small food co-op in Standish for having the utter audacity to provide milk, butter, cream and eggs to people who bought shares in the organic dairy.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture must be so proud of their deeds, after they forced Joe and Brenda Golimbieski, the owners of Hill High Dairy and Jenny Samuelson, the owner of My Family Co-op, to dump out 248 gallons of milk, to break 100 dozen eggs, and to destroy an undisclosed amount of fresh cream, butter and cheese.
According to a post on the Hill High Dairy page on Facebook, the agents from the MDA stood over the family, watching as the food was destroyed.
THIS WEEK, breathe in, breathe out, and notice the very air your lungs capture every moment. For, the breath of life itself is being cosmically energized at this time. The air around you is, and always has been, a sacred essence.
Angelic blessings from Volcano & Sedona
MORE...Volcano’s Angelic Forecast for this week ~ sirenbookstrand.blogspot.com ~
Savanna Kougar ~ Run on the Wild Side of Romance ~ |
Well, having been away at the Taps gig for 4 days, I just knew I would come back to an overwhelming amount of new stories courtesy of The Anomalist - and I was right! So, here they all are. Enjoy!
Whatever Happened to Bigfoot? NWA News. In October of 2003, the town of Decatur in Benton County, Arkansas, began to see Bigfoot. At least many citizens thought it was Bigfoot. Did Bigfoot visit Decatur in the Fall of 2003, or was a baboon on the loose? Cryptomundo has some interesting background on the town in Decatur's Bigfoot and Kin. Meanwhile, the pairing of two phenomena draws the attention of The Blogsquatcher in Bigfoot and UFOs: Pennsylvania 1973-74. And on an entirely different note, Cryptozoology Online offers guest blogger Richard Freeman's review of a classic book of a cryptozoological nature in Strange Snakes and Freaky Fauna from Charles Owen's An Essay Towards a Natural History of Serpents (1742) Part Five Dragons.
South American Mystery Beasts Part One ShukerNature. Dr. Karl Shuker begins a two-part series on mysterious animals from a mysterious continent. Included in this initial report are gargantuan anacondas, an elusive Andean wolf and a subterranean creature that may be the source of some relatively massive earth movements. Elsewhere, at Cryptozoology Online, Richard Freeman turns his attention to South America, too, in Giant Snakes and Goblins in Ecuador, but, at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman trains his sights on North America to review a television premiere in Carny: The Jersey Devil. With short video. Meanwhile, at Cabinet of Wonders, the attention is on Asia in Giant Spiders Invade Japan. "(W)here is Godzilla when you need him?" With videos.
PA UFO-Bigfoot Reports Alarmingly High Examiner. A call to Pennsylvania UFOlogist Stan Gordon on August 7, 1973, a time when the state was experiencing a rash of UFO sightings that had Gordon and authorities baffled, added another wrinkle to an already burgeoning caseload of the unexplained. What was looking in a bathroom window that was eight feet above the ground? Bigfoot joins the UFO parade in this third instalment of Roger Marsh's "Paranormal Pennsylvania" reports. With images. Elsewhere, The Blogsquatcher offers some classic Bigfoot video and a side trip to an Austrian news item ("It's hard to find an intelligent creature that doesn't want to be found.") to fill in the hours while you wait for Tonight on Sasquatch Watch Radio: Dave in KY.
Hunting Mythical Creatures Sunday Star Times. New Zealand has been rumored to be the home of some creatures of a mythical nature. Maori legends have contributed much to the mythical lore. But there are, or were, creatures in New Zealand that have become so scarce, or disappeared altogether, that to find one would be equivalent to finding what is known as a cryptid. Among the animals still being hunted by New Zealand's homegrown cryptozoologists: the moose (released in New Zealand in the early 1900s), the moa, the kokako, the waitoreke, a large black cat and the manlike Moehau, New Zealand's Bigfoot. Meanwhile, Cryptozoology Online is offering a link to its latest cache of New Zealand crytid articles in The Third Trenche of New Zealand Archives.
Patterson Gimlin Film -- Is This Too Damning? The Blogsquatcher. The faith of many who have viewed the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film as authentic is being shaken by a website attempting to debunk the footage with an image from a 1965 movie. Here's your chance to weigh in on the new controversy. |
|The mouth of the Mapinguari!|
Ten artists remain on “Face Off” this week. The artists meet Mckenzie Westmore is an open field with renowned makeup artist Howard Berger ("Kill Bill," "Oz," and "Breaking Bad").
There is no more terrifying fantasy creature than the orc, they are brutal warriors who never travel alone. This week’s foundation challenge, artists must work together in teams of two, choose a war banner and use it to inspire a feature orc and his nine members…. yes nine! Howard Berger told the artists he would be looking for design and execution elements as well as looking to see how their orcs work with the banner. Artists were only given two and a half hours to complete the daunting challenge. Only one team can win and only one artist can win immunity this week.
The teams and their corresponding flags were:
Chloe and George - Black
Corinne and Matt - Blue
Graham and Tyler - Orange
Niko and Daran - Purple
Rashaad and Cat - Green
Top Teams - Chloe and George and Corinne and Matt
Winning Team - Corinne and Matt
Winning Artist with Immunity - Corinne
Meeting in the middle of nowhere in a swamp, the artists meet up with Mckenzie to receive their spotlight challenge. She tells them that mysterious creature sightings are on the rise and they include such beings are the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. This week’s spotlight challenge involves working in teams of two, choosing a set of coordinates and bringing that location’s cryptid to life. The teams are:
Graham and Rashaad - Bunyip
Niko and George - Vodyanoy
Corinne and Matt - The Jersey Devil
Cat and Daran - Chupacabra
Chloe and Tyler - Mapinguari
Special Guest judge this week is Hollywood’s most sought after creature actor, Doug Jones ("Falling Skies," "Pan’s Labyrinth," "Fantastic Four," and "Hellboy"). He tells the artists that this week he will be looking for something organic, something that looks like he woke up that way and something the actor can move and perform in.
Artists set right off to work in the lab sculpting and fabricating their designs. Already, Daran wants to change the skin tone of their Chupacabra to something other than what the story of their creature states. Cat isn’t too happy about the decision but she focuses on other aspects of their cryptid design. Matt is also expressing his concerns about the challenge as he isn’t experienced in sculpting animal forms. He says that if his team is in the bottom looks this week, he could face elimination because Corinne has immunity. Matt's confidence level is dropping.
Cat’s also having some frustration issues as Daran takes over her cowl design. She feels that Daran doesn’t trust her and her frustration continues to mount on application day when Daran starts to use Cat as more of an assistant rather than a partner. By the time the clock runs down on Application Day, Cat is disappointed in their design because she let Daran make all the decisions.
The artists meet Glenn, Ve, Neville, and special guest judge Doug Jones on the “Face Off” reveal stage. The creatures parade onstage and allow the judges a closer look at each cryptid. Ve made the commented that Corinne and Matt had visibly done less than the other teams.
Tyler and Chloe were one of the top teams this week with their Mapinguari cryptid. Glenn wanted to see their creature fight Captain Kirk and that it was “one of the finest paint jobs ever on this show” and it was “funny and believable." Neville loved that the creature had character within the character and Doug loved the mobility of the mouth on the stomach.
Another top team this week was Niko and George with their Vodyanoy cryptid. Neville thought there were some really good things in this creature and the “details look physically purposeful." Doug loved the “consistency of the fins throughout the creature." The last team to make top looks this week were Rashaad and Graham with their Bunyip cryptid. Doug said they were able to “make the ridiculous come together” and Ve thought they had “the kitchen sink boogie man” with an “amazing profile."
Bottom looks this week were Matt and Corinne’s Jersey Devil. Ve said they didn’t do enough this week and their wings “look like drapery.". Neville also expressed his lack of interest in the creature by telling them that they “didn’t execute a high end makeup." Daran and Cat’s Chupacabra cryptid was also bottom looks this week. Glenn told them they were “off the tracks with their anatomy” and Doug said that the sculpt around the mouth would limit the actor’s expressions. Ve said the creature “looks like silly putty."
Top team - Tyler and Chloe
Winning Artist - Tyler
Eliminated - Matt
Tune in next Tuesday's all new episode of “Face Off," "Open Sesame” at 9 p.m. ET on Syfy. |
Posted by: John Kirk on May 22nd, 2006
My friend and Cryptomundo colleague, Loren Coleman, stated on these pages that there is the prospect that Malaysian biologist Vincent Chow has been able to procure several photographs of the alleged Malyasian Bigfoot, the Orang Dalam or as it is known in this case, Mawas. I want to be excited about this, but given the flops as far as earthshaking cryptid footage and photos of the past are concerned, I do not have much faith that they will be as revealing as one would hope.
Seventeen years ago, the news leaked out that a car salesman from Kamloops had videotaped the legendary Ogopogo of Okanagan Lake in all of its glory. This video footage was alleged to be the best footage of the creature ever obtained and it would put to bed, once and for all, the issue of whether Ogopogo exists. The car salesman was reluctant to allow myself and Jim Clark from the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club (BCSCC) to examine his footage. This sent up the red flags right away in my mind. Clark and I had both seen this creature and we were as qualified as any other witnesses to give our opinion on it. Jim was actually banned from a press conference where the footage was shown to the media.
I was contacted on the phone by a journalist who had seen the footage and she told me it was definitely an animal. I asked for more details and something she related to me in that conversation told me that the car salesman had not videotaped Ogopogo. She told me how the creature very quickly lifted its tail out of the water and then slapped the lake surface. I asked just how fast the slap was, she again emphasized it was very quick. Given that the car salesman said his creature was in the order of 12 – 15 feet long, it would be impossible for a beast that big to slap its tail very quickly as the reporter had described. In that moment, my brain said three words: beaver, river otter.
The journalist said it also had webbed feet. Again, my brain went: beaver, river otter. I heard about this footage in August, but it was not until October that I finally got to see the footage on Unsolved Mysteries. News of this footage had gotten out to the public and some people were positively salivating at the prospect of seeing the best footage of Ogopogo ever. One eminent researcher who had seen the footage said it was a “Rembrandt” compared to all the other footage shot before this.
My belief that the creature was a beaver or river otter was confirmed when I saw the footage. My initial belief that a 12 – 15 foot creature could not have executed the tail slap in such a short time was confirmed when I saw with my own eyes the animal do it on screen. Robert Lincoln, a British Columbia wildlife expert said on the program that he was pretty sure it was a beaver with an outside chance it could be an otter. As Joe Nickell and Ben Radford say in their newly released book Lake Monster Mysteries, this is the most expensive beaver footage ever as Unsolved Mysteries is rumoured to have paid the car salesman $30,000 for the privilege of showing it on their program. Ouch!
Then last year the Sasquatch/Bigfoot world was abuzz with the news that Norway House, Manitoba resident Bobby Clarke had secured the best ever footage of a sasquatch. It was said to be even better than the other seminal footage of a sasquatch – the Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967.
Having been through the whole ‘this-is-the-best-footage-yet’ business with the car salesman Ogopogo video I did not wait with baited breath as some of my fellow sasquatch investigators did to see this footage on A Current Affair on the Fox network. I was braced for disappointment and Clarke’s footage did not fail me.
I would say it is the best “Blobsquatch” video ever. It’s just a hazy dark figure walking by water. There is no scale, no sharp focus and nothing remotely to suggest it is a sasquatch at all other than Clarke’s word. Clarke seems a decent enough guy and he may have seen a sasquatch, but unfortunately there is nothing in his video to confirm that. I don’t know how much A Current Affair paid for Clarke’s footage, but noted sasquatch investigator Daniel Perez spoke to a lawyer with the network and the figure given was $5,000. That makes Clarke’s video the most expensive Blobsquatch video of all time so far.
I guess I have been somewhat immunized against the prospect that the Malaysian Bigfoot photos Vincent Chow intends to publish are going to be the Real McCoy. The disappointments of the past have just reinforced my tendency to not to get excited about any pictures or footage that are supposed to be that good.
I suppose I will do what Ray Crowe, founder of the International Bigfoot Society, has always cautioned people to do that and that is to “keep your skepticals on.” I will certainly be keeping mine on and will make sure that mine won’t have a rose-coloured tint to them.
You can bet I won’t be disappointed. I will not allow myself to be.
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998). In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur. Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC. In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player. |
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United Kingdom Scotland Satellite View Loch Ness
___ Famous Landmarks - Satellite View of Loch Ness (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Nis)
Image: Cédric Bonhomme
About Loch Ness
Satellite view is showing Loch Ness, a large, long stretched freshwater lake (in Gaelic: Loch) in the Great Glen, a fault valley that runs straight across northern Scotland containing four major lochs: Loch Linnhe, Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and Loch Ness.
Image: Karoly Lorentey
Loch Ness is the second largest Scottish lake after Loch Lomond. The lake is surrounded by the amazing landscape of the Scottish Highlands and the Monadhliath Mountains to the south east.
The northern end of Loch Ness is located about 10 km south west of the city of Inverness. The lake with an average width of 1.5 km (1 mi) extends then for 37 km (23 mi) to the southwest, fed by seven major streams, the Oich and Tarff, near Fort Augustus, the Enrich, Coiltie, Moriston, Foyers and the Farigaig, about forty smaller streams, burns and creeks feed Loch Ness. Loch Ness is connected to the sea via the River Ness, the only outlet, and the Caledonian Canal.
Loch Ness Monster
The lake is home of Nessie, the legendary mythological Loch Ness Monster.
The first recorded sighting of the monster was nearly 1,500 years ago when a giant beast is said to have leaped out of the lake. The opinions differ what the 'Monster' actually is. It is assumed that Nessie belongs to a long-surviving plesiosaur family, others indicate that the creature is a Cryptid, a being whose existence has been suggested but has not been discovered yet (such as the Yeti). Some suppose that Nessie is a Kelpie, a shape-shifting water spirit inhabiting the lochs and burns of Scotland. Until now there is no explanation by the ancient alien astronauts theorizers.
Loch Ness points of interest:
Around 1 million people visit Loch Ness each year and create about £25million in the economy, it is estimated more than 85% of them are drawn in by the Monster. You can imagine that the people around the lake are making sure that Nessie stays alive much longer.
Located near Urquhart Castle and the town of Drumnadrochit is Nessieland, an amusement and leisure park and the 'true home of the Loch Ness Monster'. At the southern end of the lake is Fort Augustus, a small village with a mansion like building known as Fort Augustus Abbey, it was a Benedictine monastery (1876 - 1998) with an unpleasant reputation. The historic building has been sold and is now an apartment/hotel complex.
Falls of Foyers (watch river Foyers' falling water), River Moriston (‘river of waterfalls’).
Sròn na Muic (pig snout) the hill near Invermoriston village offers far ranging views over Loch Ness and Glen Moriston.
Glen Roy National Nature Reserve (Echoes of ice, glacial leftover formed the landscape)
Today you can just zoom in at the blue marker to see Nessie ;-)
φ Latitude, λ Longitude (of Map center; move the map to see coordinates):
| Google Earth: Searchable Satellite View of Loch Ness and Nessie, the famous monster of Loch Ness, Inverness, Scotland, UK.
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THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE WOODS...
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Cryptid Chronicles 3
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Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 27th, 2007
The Top Ten Cryptozoology Stories for 2007
From Bigfoot to Yeren, and from dwarf killer whales to dwarf manatees, it was quite a year.
Welcome to this year’s top stories in cryptozoology. It wasn’t heaven during 2007 for the cryptids, but instead seemed to have been a year of reflection, mistakes, fakes, and a few new finds.
In the 1940s, the Scottish-born American zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson (photo with lemur) began using a word he coined, “cryptozoology,” to describe a new discipline of science that investigates hidden, yet-to-be-discovered large animals. In the late 1950s, after a decade of correspondence with Sanderson, Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans began formalizing “cryptozoology.”
Today, cryptozoology is to be found from academia to museum exhibitions, from new television series to tee-shirts.
My annual picks are cryptozoological events, which became newsworthy during 2007 (even though they may have happened in an earlier year).
Here is my top ten list of the cryptozoology accounts of most interest to the public, cryptozoologists, Bigfooters, fans, friends, foes, and the media during this year. They may not be the most remarkable but they are the ones that garnered the largest media reaction and greatest public discussions on our favorite topic for 2007:
1. Holmes Nessie Videotaped
Gordon Holmes, a 55-year-old lab technician, was at a lay-by about 70 feet above Loch Ness on May 26, 2007, when he captured digital video of what he said was “this jet black thing, about 4 to 5 feet (1.4 m) long, moving fairly fast in the water.” Adrian Shine, a Nessie skeptic, described the footage as among “the best footage ever seen.” The footage shows no points of reference to demonstrate scale.
At Cryptomundo, the film’s credibility was questioned early, due to Holmes’ past claims of filming black fairies. Many also wondered aloud if this video was nothing more than an otter swimming in the loch.
Nevertheless, media interest in Nessie and other lake monsters was extremely high in the wake of the Holmes video, which was broadcast on BBC Scotland on May 29, 2007, and on CNN on June 1, 2007.
In early September 2007, a brief Internet frenzy occurred regarding the 20-minute video of six Lake Tianchi Monsters in China. A closer look at the Chinese video seems to show probable waterfowl.
2. Shunka Warak’in Mount Found
After 121 years, the mysterious taxidermy mount of the Shunka Warak’in (a wolf-hynea-like cryptid), from 19th century Montana, was found. The wolf-like creature prowled the Madison Valley, Montana, destroying livestock and reportedly letting out ungodly screams.
After being killed and stuffed in 1886, the taxidermy mount disappeared. In 2007, the body was tracked to the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello. It will be on display at Montana’s Madison Valley History Museum in May 2008. Hopefully DNA testing will finally determine this mystery candid-like species’ identity.
3. Bigfoot Film’s 40th Anniversary Celebrated
At Bluff Creek, California, an apparent female Bigfoot was filmed on October 20, 1967, by Roger Patterson, with assistance on his search from Bob Gimlin. Because this was the 40th year since that event, Bigfooters talked a great deal about the film in the last few months, attempted one gathering in California that was cancelled due to people not wanting to pay the high ticket prices, and quickly organized a celebration at Willow Creek. No one has proven the footage was faked, and during 2007, the merits of the footage were discussed frequently.
For more on the iconic imagery of Patty, plus clips from the footage, please see here.
4. Cuero Chupacabras Killed
In July 2007, the pictured animal was hit by a car and killed on Phylis Canion’s property, on Buenger Road off U.S. Highway 183 south of Cuero, Texas. Canion (holding the photo) had said she saw this “animal” for two years roaming her property. The immediate cry heard throughout the media was “Chupacabras” (sometimes incorrectly spelled without the “s”). Before the frenzy was over, tee-shirts had appeared on the scene.
In early November, the DNA results from tests run on the so-called “Chupacabras” by biologists at the Texas State University found the dead animal was a coyote (Canis latrans). In the end, the “Cuero Chupacabras” was only a mangy canid.
5. Dwarf Killer Whale, Dwarf Manatee, Giant Peccary, and More Discovered
The year was filled with a number of new species being announced. In a paper entitled the “Dwarf Form of Killer Whale in Antarctica,” the first 2007 issue of the Journal of Mammalogy summarized findings that few paid any attention to. Meanwhile, media accounts of the six years ago reports of the giant peccary in Brazil, or the more recent discovery of a dwarf manatee (above) in the Amazon spread widely.
At Cryptomundo, other new species findings, from a new monkey in Uganda to a new clouded leopard in Southeast Asia, from new limbless amphibians in India to walking sea anemomes off the Aleutians, projected hopes for more cryptozoological surprises for the future.
The list is a long one of the 2007 discoveries. Reports of these new species were shared often at Cryptomundo, and included news of bizarre octosquids, legless amphibians, ethnoknown vipers, beaked whales, flying foxes, eel-like catfishes, golden frogs, Thai geckos, Hawaiian sharks, Thai mountain frogs, Panama salamanders, sucker-footed bats, cloud-forest rats, Madagascar millipedes, chicken-eating tarantulas, and Steve Irwin’s new turtles.
Also, an extinct echidna was rediscovered, an extinct blind snake was found, the first Zanzibar coelacanth was caught, the first Sumatran striped rabbit photographed, and the first video footage of elusive Borneo rhinos was captured. It was a good year. (Compare that list to a couple missteps – a fake photo of the allegedly extinct-in-the-wild South China tiger and a hoax photo of a supposedly rediscovered parrot.)
6. Nguoi Rung Kidnap Victim Returned
Ro Cham H’pnhieng, 27, was discovered on the edge of the Cambodian jungle in January 2007, after she was caught trying to steal food left under a tree. She was seen with a hairy Wild Man, a Nguoi Rung. Reportedly, she had been kidnapped in 1989 by the wild people and taken into the jungle. Attempts to find the Nguoi Rung (below) were made, with no positive results.
In October 2007, after Ro Cham H’pnhieng’s family tried to have her live with them again, after several incidents of her running away into the forest, she escaped for the final time, apparently to return to the Forest People. She had made her choice, her family felt.
7. Cryptozoology TV Succeeded
During 2007, two down-to-earth field-oriented cryptozoology documentary series were broadcast on cable television. Both programs, each in their first seasons, received high ratings and good reviews.
The SciFi Channel’s “Destination Truth” was produced by the Mandt Brothers, and the History Channel’s “MonsterQuest” was produced by White Wolf Productions. “MonsterQuest’s” episode on “Sasquatch Attack” created quite a stir in the Bigfoot community. The program dealt with an apparent rock-throwing incident that occurred during the actual filming of the program. Furthermore, DNA tests were conducted on old blood and tissue samples left on screws said to have been stepped on by a Bigfoot.
8. Mapinguary and Yeren Reemerged
The Mapinguary (pronounced MA-ping-war-E), the huge unknown anthropoid ape or the giant sloth-like monster of the Amazon, was in the news again in June and July 2007. New attention from The New York Times, revisited the topic early in the year, and spread to the UPI and NBC’s “Today Show.”
“It is quite clear to me that the legend of the Mapinguary is based on human contact with the last of the ground sloths,” said David Oren, former director of research at the Goeldi institute in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River.
The South American focus continued with the Centre for Fortean Zoology’s end of November excursion to Guyana to look into reports of the Didi and the overlap with the accounts of the Mapinguary.
This is one of the Yeren foot impressions discovered in November 2007.
New sightings of Chinese “Wild People,” two Yeren in Shennongjia, were reported on November 18, 2007. According to the eyewitnesses, the two Yeren were skinny and covered with black hair. The taller one was about 1.7 meters high and the other one was approximately 1.3 to 1.4 meters. On November 22, members of the China Association for Scientific Expedition took plaster casts of impressions identified as two “Wild Men” footprints left along the Licha River where the two mysterious creatures had been spotted.
9. Jacobs Creature Photographed
With timing keyed to the 40th anniversary of the Patterson-Gimlin footage, two Pennsylvania trailcam photographs were released for maximum exposure labeled to indicate they showed a “juvenile Sasquatch.” The two images and an accompanying photograph of two bear cubs were reported to have been taken on September 16, 2007, by a Bushnell game camera placed in a Pennsylvania forest by an individual named R. Jacobs.
The “Jacobs Creature,” or “Jacobs Photograph,” as it was called, resulted in several ridicule-filled media reports and much debate within the Bigfoot community on the worth of the photographs. Cryptomundo noted they appeared to be of a “mangy bear,” and anthropologist Jeff Meldrum agreed, as did the Pennsylvania wildlife department. A few saw in the photographs a youthful Bigfoot.
Were other frames of the trailcam sequence being hidden from the public? Why were the photographs withheld for a month? What is the entire story of the Jacobs cryptid? At year’s end, many questions remain unanswered about the events surrounding the mystery photos.
10. Heuvelmans Biography Published
The biography of one of the “Fathers of Cryptozoology,” Bernard Heuvelmans, was published for the first time in 2007, in French. Jean-Jacques Barloy, who wrote the biography, “Bernard Heuvelmans, un rebelle de la science” (1st volume of the “Bibliothèque Heuvelmansienne,” Editions de l’Oeil du Sphinx, juin 2007) – Bernard Heuvelmans: A Rebel of Science – would win an award for his writings, the “Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2008” (category essay). The announcement of the prize was made on November 3, 2007.
Plans are in place to have the Heuvelmans biography translated into English, and published in a forthcoming year.
As far as obituaries for 2007, the most prominent in cryptozoology was the death of Bigfoot researcher Archie Buckley, an early and significant member of hominology, a cornerstone founder of the Bay Area Group, the Sasquatch research collective of the San Francisco Bay area. Buckley died on June 18, 2007.
On the first day of 2008, I learned that an individual of significant in hominology had passed away, late in 2007.
Sadly, word reached me of the death of a figure important to the investigation of the Skookum Cast. University of Washington professor emeritus of anthropology, World War II veteran, consummate teacher, and beloved father, husband and friend of cryptozoology, Dr. Daris R. Swindler, 82, had passed away on December 6, 2007, and a memorial service was planned for late January 2008.
For a more complete obituary, see:
At the end of the year, Loren Coleman on Saturday, December 1, 2007, delivered his talk, “Introduction to Cryptozoology,” at 1:00 PM, at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York, in conjunction with their then-current exhibition, Mythic Creatures.
Loren Coleman has been involved in cryptozoology since 1960. He is the author of over 30 books and hundreds of articles, appears frequently in documentaries, and is the director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Coleman may be reached via email at firstname.lastname@example.org
For more information, see here.
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. |
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 21st, 2009
By Brent Swancer
Japan seems to be a country with its fair share of zoological mysteries and perhaps the most well known example is a reptile that perhaps holds a deeper mystery than it may at first seem.
One of the most famous cryptids in Japan is the Tsuchinoko, a type of unknown snake recognized by its distinct fat body and strange methods of locomotion, such as making giant leaps or rolling end over end. It is also notable for its purported unusual vocalizations, which include chirps, grunts, howls, growls, and mimicry of various animal sounds or even human voices. This is the popular modern image of the Tsuchinoko, the one cryptozoologists are most likely to be familiar with, and the description given most commonly by eyewitnesses who have reportedly seen it.
The cases illustrated above are generally labeled as examples of Tsuchinoko. Nevertheless, you can observe that some merge into a different description, as seen here for the second example.
Some older stories often make references to Tsuchinoko having two front legs. Since this conflicts prominently with what is typically reported, is there a chance that these accounts of two legged Tsuchinoko perhaps refer to an altogether different animal?
In the rural mountainous areas of Japan, there have been occasional tales of a mysterious reptile known as the Notzuchitokage. The Notzuchitokage is said to be around 70cm in length, with light to dark reddish coloration. The upper body resembles a lizard’s, with two legs, while the lower body is long, lacks hind-limbs, and resembles a snake. The head is often described as looking like that of a crocodile or alligator, and the creature’s tongue is sometimes said to be dark or black in color.
Although rare, fairly recent reports of these creatures have been made on occasion and they are different enough from Tsuchinoko reports to warrant attention. For instance, in 1974, a Yuyama Minamishigara saw one on a narrow dirt road in Kanagawa prefecture. The animal was described as being around 1 meter long, and 25 to 30 cm around. It was dark red in color, with a black tongue lolling out of its mouth. The animal had two clearly visible front legs.
Another sighting was made in September of the same year, 1974, by a Mrs. Yamazaki of Aichi prefecture on an abandoned road on the Tokai Nature Trail. In this report, the two-legged creature was said to be a bright red color, with stripes and a black triangle on its head. It was described as having a mouth like a crocodile.
Old stories and folklore made no distinction between the legged and the more famous legless variety of Tsuchinoko, they were known as Tsuchinoko whether they had legs or not. However, there are several reasons to suppose that we are quite possibly dealing with two markedly different creatures that were for whatever reason lumped together in more ancient times. Besides being clearly differentiated in more modern accounts, there are differences in behavior and appearance that seem to suggest that if they exist, the Tsuchinoko and Notzuchitokage are quite different animals.
The most glaring difference is the presence of two clear front legs in Notzuchitokage, while the more well known Tsuchinoko is quite clearly described as snake-like. The Tsuchinoko is described as more like a viper than a lizard, and is not ever mentioned as having legs in modern day sightings. In addition, the two-legged Notzuchitokage is not known for moving in any particularly dynamic fashion. Whereas the Tsuchinoko is reported to do things such as roll in a hoop, leap several meters, or even tumble end over end, the Notzuchitokage is mostly said to just scurry or crawl along. It is also not particularly linked to water, unlike the water loving, more snake-like Tsuchinoko.
When trying to assess whether we are dealing with one or two types of unknown animal, it is helpful to try and assess just what it is that people could possibly be seeing in the first place.
One of the main proposed culprits for Notzuchitokage sightings is that people are misidentifying blue tongued skinks, of the genus Tiliqua. While these types of skink are not native to Japan, they have been popular as pets there, and could quite possibly have been somehow introduced into the wild. These skinks have relatively short legs on a long, thick body, so perhaps people are simply not seeing the hind-legs when they make a sighting, and are thus left with the impression that they have seen some sort of two legged lizard.
These skinks are also characterized by their blue tongues (hence their common name), which could be described the dark or black color mentioned in some Notzuchitokage reports. Blue tongued skinks have heads that could be seen as somewhat reminiscent of a crocodilian, also an attribute mentioned in some reports.
Interestingly, the blue tongued skink is also often used to explain the Tsuchinoko, the difference being that due to the small limbs of these skinks, witnesses in those cases are not noticing any legs at all. If this is true, then it could be seen as a basis on which there might be a common connection between the Tsuchinoko and Notzuchitokage. Perhaps the two cryptids really are one and the same, and are both just misidentifications of blue tongued skinks made under differing circumstances. Over the years these conflicting reports of the same creature could then have been erroneously separated into two separate kinds of cryptid. It seems possible to an extent, but what of the medieval accounts made long before the pet trade would have introduced blue tongued skinks to Japan’s shores?
Speculation abounds on what what the Tsuchinoko could be. From misidentified blue tongued skinks to overfed snakes, to a new type of viper, the search for answers has focused mostly on what would look snake-like. But is there any possibility of the presence of distinct, two legged reptiles in Japan that could explain Notzuchitokage reports, as well as the old tales of two legged Tsuchinoko?
In fact, there are known animals of this kind that do exist. One possibility is that we are dealing with some type of undiscovered species of the family Bipedidae, commonly known as the two legged worm lizards. The general appearance of these creatures certainly seems to fit the bill.
Two legged worm lizards are quite unusual looking, with a long, serpentine body lacking hind limbs, and just two forelimbs used for digging. They are also pinkish in color, which could account for descriptions of a reddish hue in Notzuchitokage reports. Bipedidae are found only in Mexico, and are rarely seen by humans due to their burrowing nature, however it is intriguing to think that a similarly adapted creature might be found in Japan whether they are directly related or not.
Another more bizarre possibility is that Notzuchitokage could be a sort of surviving transitory species between snakes and lizards. Although extremely rare, fossils of this type have been found before. In Lebanon, a fossil was found of a creature known as Eupodophis descovensi, from the Late Cretaceous around 92 million years ago. The fossil is a rare glimpse of what is believed to be a transitory stage between lizards and snakes, with two hind legs clearly intact. Although the legs on the fossil are located far down the body rather than in the front, it illustrates the possibilities.
Even modern snakes such as boas and pythons possess tiny spurs on their lower bodies, the remnants of legs, that are now used primarily as “grippers” during mating. Is the Notzuchitokage perhaps some sort of surviving transitory animal that is an amalgram of certain lizard and snake features? It seems unlikely, but interesting to speculate on nevertheless.
It seems worth keeping in mind that it is possible that looking at explanations for two legged lizards may not be necessary. A snake could perhaps be mistaken as having two legs under certain conditions just as a skink could be mistaken for having none, but the questions remain. Are the Tsuchinoko and Notzuchitokage one and the same animal, or are they different? Could the same culprit be behind stories for both of them? Are we dealing with one cryptid or two? Are they misidentified known animals or something new?
Whatever the Nodzuchitokage and Tsuchinoko are, it seems worth considering the possibility that there could be more than one undocumented type of reptile lurking in the remote forests of Japan.
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. |
Occult Academy Complete Series Premium Edition now available
NIS America, Inc. is excited to announce today that the horror comedy Occult Academy Complete Series Premium Edition is now shipping to online retailers across North America. In Occult Academy, a group of high school students and faculty will tackle spirits, mysterious creatures, ancient prophecies, and even the myth of the Mayan calendar! These odd but intriguing characters will pursue the twists and turns of the world’s greatest mysteries and bring to light hidden stories of untold truths.
Occult Academy Complete Series Premium Edition comes packed onto 2 Blu-ray discs in NISA’s highly praised collectible packaging, along with a hardcover art book. Now available at select online retailers: Right Stuf, The Anime Corner Store, Anime Pavilion, Anime Castle, and NIS America’s Online Store.
About Occult Academy: In the year 2012, the world is a wasteland invaded by aliens. Time travelers like Fumiaki Uchida are sent back to the year 1999 in order to destroy the “Nostradamus Key” to prevent the apocalypse. In 1999, Maya Kumashiro, the daughter of the former principal of Waldstein Academy (AKA Occult Academy), returns to the academy to replace her father. Despising her father’s obsession with the occult, Maya is hell-bent on running the school into the ground out of spite. Her plan is interrupted when she meets Fumiaki and learns of the forthcoming destruction of the world. They form a pact to look for the key.
About the extras—art book and bonus features:
– 36-page art book with exclusive artwork, draft designs, and an occult encyclopedia! The art book is uniquely laid out and filled with handwritten liner notes. With this art book you’ll be able to dive even deeper into the world and lore of Occult Academy! – Four bonus short episodes that give a glimpse into Maya’s first childhood encounter with a real, live cryptid!
– Clean opening/ending, clean ep. 13 ending, and Love Machine clip |
Rhys Darby, New Zealand's very own comedy superstar returns with a brand new show for 2014, and this time he's taking in the length and breadth of New Zealand in his biggest tour yet!
The Edge is stoked to present Rhys Darby's Mr Adventure Tour!
From the misty mountains of Rwanda to the eerie shores of Loch Ness, Rhys has attempted to see it all... Now he's home to tell you the stories.
Expect tales of awe from the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro, wild wonderment as he describes the gorillas in Rwanda and hilarious live reenactments of his cryptid discoveries in gun-toting Texas!
In 2012 Darby bought us the fantastical tale of what he thought would happen when the Mayan calendar runs out. Clearly the world did not end, so Rhys traverses mountains and explores the earth in an effort to show that life can still be a massive adventure bordering on the unbelievable.
No one brings a yarn to life better than Darby with his classic onstage physicality. Pack your girdle, you’re likely to lose your insides laughing! Join him as he regales you with tales so thrilling you'd swear he was making them up.
In between his huge adventures Darby is based in Los Angeles with his family where they like to hike and eat tacos and he appears regularly on US TV in shows like How I met your Mother and The Late Show with David Letterman.
Don’t delay, tickets are selling fast… get yours today! |
Contest #3 is over and the winner has been contacted. They will be sent a signed hardback copy of TENTACLES. For those who didn’t win don’t despair. Contest #4 is up with another question and will run through September 16th. The prize is another signed hardback copy of the sequel to Cryptid Hunters…TENTACLES. Just go to my Home Page RolandSmith.com click the CONTEST! icon on the right side of “Roland’s Journal,” and follow the directions carefully. You can’t win if you don’t play. Good luck! |
Is the Moa really extinct or is there a breeding population,hiding
in the bush near kakanui?
I recently received an email from a pair of witnesses who saw some small EMU like chicks near kakanui about three years
Due to ill health I have not been swift in following this up. But I am currently working on the situation
at the moment. If anyone has had similar sightings I would be extremely keen to hear from you.
|Is this a Picture of the Lindis Lion
Alleged Big Cat Reported in Lindis Pass,
Posted: 15 Apr 2009 06:16 AM PDT
The Himalayas had their Yetis, while Canada's
Sasquatch was known informally as "Bigfoot".
And now, the Lindis Pass hill country may -
or may not - have its "Big Ginge".
Scottish tourists Charlie and Marie Limond photographed
what they described as a "lynx-sized mountain lion", at McLeays Creek in the Lindis Pass.
"It was definitely way bigger than your domestic
cat. About the size of an Alsatian dog," Mr Limond told the Otago Daily Times yesterday.
The couple were driving along State Highway
8, through the Lindis Pass, last week, when Mr Limond said he saw the animal "out of the corner of my eye".
They turned their car around and said they watched
the big cat, about 200m away, from the roadside for about seven minutes.
"I got a real good look at it through my binoculars.
Our small digital camera wasn't able to get a decent photograph, but it was the same goldy colour as a mountain lion," he
Mr Limond was unshaken in his belief he had
seen a "small lion-like animal". He based his claims on having been to Africa and seen lions at game parks.
However, Wanaka Area Department of Conservation
manager Paul Hellebrekers said the couple may have sighted an extremely large feral cat.
"There is nothing to substantiate that we're
not just dealing with a very large cat," he said.
Dunstan Downs Station farmer Geva Innes laughed
when the Otago Daily Times contacted her to ask whether there had been any reports of a "big ginger tomcat the size of a small
lion" stalking the hills.
"We shoot feral cats round here," she said.
The feral pests often roamed the hills and grew
big. Feral cats could also carry the disease toxoplasmosis, which caused abortions in sheep, she said.
NOTE: It's hard to gauge
the true size of this animal but I suspect that it's a large feral cat...though the color is unusual for a feral feline. Lon
BATS ATTACK IN ROTORUA
Bats attack in Rotorua
6:50AM Monday February 02, 2009
Source: Newstalk ZB
There are reports of bats attacking two men in Rotorua.
Taxi driver Ngaia Monaham says two men jumped in her car near Amohia Street just after 3.00am Monday.
She says they told a bizarre story of being attacked and bitten by bats.
Monaham says she did not believe them at first but than noticed they had bite marks on their arms.
She says she and another taxi driver went back to Amohia Street with a torch and found hundreds of bats flying around in
A press release from the Centre for fortean Zoology
(which I am proud to be associated with.) gives insight into their latest expedition of the trail of the Almasty in the Russian
state of Karbadino-Balkaria.
We wish them all the best on their expediaiton and safe return from
this volatile area.
Here is a press release issued by Jon.
If you get a chance Watch the CFZ Monthly Telecast its always extremely interesting and Jon presents
an excellent mix of the rare, cryptid and newly discovered.
QUEST FOR A CAVEMAN
Man beasts and cave men in the 21st
Century? Surely not. But a group of British explorers and scientists, backed by a renowned Geneticist from Oxford University,
embark on an intrepid expedition into a war zone on Saturday, and they hope to come back with compelling evidence for the
existence of such things.
The yeti is one of the most iconic mystery
animals in the world. Even in the 21st Century when mankind likes to think that it has conquered all the wild places of the
planet, this hulking, hairy man beast still rears its ancient head and intrigues zoologists and explorers alike.
Only this week, there has been news
of a new yeti sighting in the remote West Garo hills of north-eastern India. Park ranger Dipu Marak described seeing "a black
and grey ape-like animal which stands about 3m (nearly 10ft) tall". Recently Derbyshire based artist and conservationist Pollyanna
Pickering hit the headlines when she released details of what appears, on the face of it, to be a specimen of a yeti scalp
found in a remote monastery in Bhutan. The yeti appears to be an unknown species of ape, but sightings of such creatures,
and perhaps more intriguingly, sightings of alleged primitive human-like creatures, which appear similar to the iconic Hollywood
images of cave-men, still come in on a regular basis from around the world.
The Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ]
in North Devon (the world's largest organisation which searches for unknown animal species) is launching a major new expedition
this week. The five explorers, led by zoologist Richard Freeman (38) - the Zoological Director of the Bideford-based centre
- will be ignoring Foreign Office suggestions and flying to the tiny Russian state of Karbadino-Balkaria for a three week
expedition. In Russia they will be liaising with Ukranian biologist Grigoriy Panchenko who has been studying the creatures
for fourteen years and who has had four sightings of the wildmen, which are known locally as almasty. The expedition
is being backed by renowned academic Prof. Bryan Sykes of Oxford University, who hit the headlines a few years ago with his
remarkable book The Seven Daughters of Eve which conclusively proved, through analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of
a large sampling of people across the continent, that nearly everyone living in Europe today is descended from one of just
seven women who lived between 10,000 and 45,000 years ago.
The Foreign Office website warns against
travel to several Russian republics including Kabardino-Balkaria "as terrorism and kidnapping in these regions remain a
serious problem", but in a statement released today Freeman explains why the expedition will still be going ahead.
"We haven't really got
an option", he says. "If we pull out now, a lot of money and even more work will have been
wasted. Grigoriy has told us that kidnapping and terrorism have not been an issue in the parts of the country where we are
going, and anyway, the path of science MUST continue unhindered, if we are to push back the boundaries
of human knowledge. There will be eight or ten of us in the party, if you include Grigoriy's guides, and any band of potential
kidnappers would find that they had a fight on their hands".
The expedition will be tracking
the almasty and using sophisticated infra-red trigger cameras and ex-military nightsight equipment, but will also be
carrying out a campaign of DNA testing amongst the inhabitants of the remote mountainous forests. "According to local folklore
the almasty can interbreed with humans" says Jonathan Downes (48), the Director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology.
"Professor Sykes has done some remarkable work with mitochondrial DNA, and if any of the people whom we are testing have
any trace of DNA from anything other than a modern human, it will tell us that somewhere in the maternal line, one of his
or her ancestors was not a member of the same species as the rest of us."
Although the expedition will not be
returning to the UK until mid-July, you needn't wait until then for news from the expedition. Through the wonders of satellite
technology the expedition website will be running updates every few days. On the 17th August the team will be presenting their
findings to the world as part of the three-day annual convention of the CFZ. Pollyanna Pickering will also be there and, following
the interest that her revelations about a putative yeti scalp in Bhutan caused recently, will be taking questions from cryptozoological
researchers from around the world.
CFZ Director Jonathan Downes is available for interview. Images are also available. Please telephone Jon or Corinna
on +44 (0)1237 431413 for details.
Notes for Editors:
* The Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] is the world’s
largest mystery animal research organisation. It was founded in 1992 by British author Jonathan Downes (48) and is a non-profit
making (not for profit) organisation registered with H.M. Stamp Office.
* Life-president of the CFZ is Colonel John
Blashford-Snell OBE, best known for his groundbreaking youth work organising the ‘Operation Drake’ and ‘Operation
Raleigh’ expeditions in the 1970s and 1980s.
* CFZ Director Jonathan Downes is the author and/or editor of over
20 books. Island of Paradise, his first hand account of two expeditions to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico in search of
the grotesque vampiric chupacabra, will be published in the next few weeks.
* The CFZ have carried out expeditions
across the world including Sumatra, Mongolia, Guyana, Gambia, Texas, Mexico, Thailand, Puerto Rico, Illinois, Loch Ness, and
* CFZ Press are the world’s largest publishers of books on mystery animals. They also publish Animals
& Men, the world’s only cryptozoology magazine, and Exotic Pets, Britain’s only dedicated magazine
on the subject.
* The CFZ produce their own full-length documentaries through their media division called CFZtv (www.cfztv.org).
One of their films Lair of the Red Worm which was released in early 2007 and documents their 2005 Mongolia expedition
has now been seen by nearly 40,000 people.
* The CFZ is based in Jon Downes’ old family home in rural North Devon
which he shares with his wife Corinna (51). It is also home to various members of the CFZ’s permanent directorate and
a collection of exotic animals.
* Corinna and Jonathan Downes are shareholders in Tropiquaria – a small zoo in
North Somerset (www.tropiquaria.co.uk).
* Jonathan Downes presents
a monthly web TV show called On the Track (http://cfzmonthly.blogspot.com/) which covers cryptozoology and work
of the CFZ.
* The CFZ are opening a Visitor Centre and Museum in Woolsery, North Devon.
* Each year the CFZ
presents an annual conference. This year’s event will be held in August, and will feature the first public appearance
by the Russian Expedition team.
* Following their successful partnership with Capcom www.capcom.com on the 2007 Guyana
expedition, the CFZ are looking for more commercial sponsors.
Here is whats new in the field of New Zealand Cryptozoology:
I was recently contacted, via e-mail regarding a sighting of a possible Waitoreke in Gisbourne during the 1980s.
creature was 1.5 m long and displaying typical sea otter behavior by smashing shells on its chest.
The sighting lasted
a good 20 minutes with the creature about 10 m away showing total disregard for the witness.
This will be one of the very
rare North Island sightings of these wonderful creatures.
Even more unusual is sighting took place at sea, most Waitoreke
sightings are in areas of freshwater.
Rex Gilroy recently returned from his New Zealand expedition
with more footprints and evidence of Moa in the Hawkes Bay area.
During the expedition to Gilroy's tried to get in
touch with me but were unable to as I was unavailable due to a family crisis.
I have therefore not viewed any evidence either photographically or otherwise so cannot comment on whether Rex did actually
find anything or not.
I sincerely hope that if Rex has managed to find definitive proof he will present it to the proper
authorities, namely the Department of conservation so a proper thorough search can be undertaken, and if the birds exist,
the area can be protected and so can the birds. |
The Elusive Bunyip: Australia’s Chameleon Cryptid
On a recent episode of The Gralien Report, host Micah Hanks asked me about that mythical Australian swamp monster, the Bunyip. Providing an adequate answer to the question of what the Bunyip is can be difficult, for there are almost as many descriptions of the elusive creature as there are sightings. If the Bunyip does indeed exist, it is Australia’s chameleon cryptid.
In 1847, the Australian Museum in Sydney displayed what was then claimed to be the skull of the elusive Bunyip. The “Bunyip skull” was on display at the museum for just two days before being quietly removed. But while controversy surrounded the authenticity of the museum’s latest exhibit, an article about the “Bunyip skull” in The Sydney Morning Herald prompted many readers to come forward to speak of their own sightings of the much-feared creature.
One such sighting occurred years earlier on the shores of Lake Bathurst in inland New South Wales by a Mr E. S. Hall in 1821. In a letter to the editor of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Hall described seeing an “extraordinary creature” while walking by the side of a marsh running into the lake.
“My attention was attracted by a creature casting up the water and making a noise, in sound resembling a porpoise, but shorter and louder: the head only was out of the water. At the distance I stood (about 100 yards) it had the appearance of a bull-dog’s head, but perfectly black; the head floated about as though the animal were recreating itself; it cut up the water behind, but the quantity thrown up evinced neither strength nor bulk; it remained about five minutes, and then disappeared.”
In his letter, Hall also recounted another sighting of the creature while bathing at the lake.
“As I was dressing, a creature, at the distance of about 180 or 150 yards, suddenly presented itself to my view; it had risen out of the water before I perceived it, and was then gliding on the smooth surface with the rapidity of a whale-boat, as it appeared to me at the time. Its neck was long, apparently about three feet out of the water, and about the thickness of a man’s thigh; the colour a jet black; the head was rather smaller in circumference than the neck, and appeared surrounded with black flaps, which seemed to hang down, and gave it a most novel and striking appearance. The body was not to be seen; but, from the rippling of the water, I judged it to be not longer than the neck.”
Size of a steer, fins & dirty white in colour
Another sighting of what was presumed to be the Bunyip from Weird Australia: Real Reports of Uncanny Creatures, Strange Sightings & Extraordinary Encounters occurred near the Southern Highlands town of Robertson in January 1921, nearly a century after Hall’s sighting at Lake Bathurst.
“A party of men who lived by means of their skill at shooting went out … They returned terrified and related that they came upon the thing basking in the sun, on the side of a hole supposed to be bottomless, situated about the centre of the swamp; and at their approach, the creature, which they stated to approximate the size of a two-year-old steer, and which appeared to possess two short, broad fins or flippers, and in colour was a dirty white or very light grey, took fright and plunged into the hole.”
There was an interesting epilogue to the shooters’ report of the “Bunyip” as recorded in a newspaper article at the time of the sighting.
“A stranger to the district called at the rectory and asked to be directed to Kangaloon. While complying with his request he was warned not to attempt to cross the swamp, which looked very easy going from the rectory garden … a bare four miles by that route. Going by the road meant a nine-mile journey. Whether he did so attempt is not known. He was never seen again, and this much is known, he never reached Kangaloon.”
Did the stranger fall victim to the Bunyip after failing to heed warnings of steering clear of the swamp? Perhaps the one recurring feature of the Bunyip, after all, was that of its ferocious nature.
Around 1890, at Coopers Creek, a dog almost fell victim to an apparent Bunyip attack as told in the following account:
“We rode over to a large waterhole, and the two dogs went in for a swim. Almost immediately one of the dogs was seized by something in the water and dragged under. A violent struggle took place, under the water, which soon became stained with blood. Presently the dog and the ‘thing’ came to the surface, with the dog on top. We grabbed the dog and hauled him out. He was badly cut in the neck and behind the shoulder. All we saw of the ‘thing,’ which disappeared quickly was what appeared to be part of its body, a light brown, smooth surface, much like a saddle-flap in appearance.”
Aboriginal accounts of the Bunyip
In 1848, an Aboriginal from the Murray River area drew a picture of the Bunyip. His depiction was that of a creature with the body of a hippopotamus and a horse-like head. Another drawing, however, this time from an Aboriginal from a district in Victoria, revealed the Bunyip to have the head and neck of an emu.
Other traditional depictions of the Bunyip include that of “a huge animal of extraordinary appearance” with “a round head, an elongated neck with a body and tail resembling an ox” and “a sort of half horse, half alligator”. Sometimes Bunyips are covered in fur, and sometimes in feathers.
Cultural memory from ancient times?
So, with so many differing descriptions of this chameleon-like cryptid, what are we to make of the many and varied reports of the Bunyip? It’s possible some sightings may be accounted for by seals that have found there way inland up rivers from the coast. But it’s interesting that different Aboriginal tribes from different areas throughout Australia have all had their own interpretations of the “Bunyip”. Could it be that the Bunyip is more cultural memory than flesh and blood beast?
Around 46,000 years ago, the original inhabitants of Australia shared the outback with megafauna such as the Diprotodon, a giant wombat-like animal approximately the size of a hippopotamus and weighing up to two tonnes. Could stories of the Diprotodon and other megafauna have been passed down in the oral traditions of different Aboriginal tribes over thousands of years and are now remembered in the traditional stories and songs as the fearsome, yet rarely seen Bunyip?
Or could there be lurking in the swamps, billabongs and lakes of inland Australia any number of unknown ferocious aquatic beasts awaiting their next unsuspecting victim? |
Oct. 8, 2009 As we observe October as health month in multiple media iterations of kids’ mental and physical well-being, it’s fitting that I’ve been away covering the excitement at Health2.0 this week. What’s it all about?
To me, the Health2.0 conference is ideally a place where innovation technology collides with human needs in ambitious acceleration of fast-track thinking. Why do we need it? To hopscotch over the snail-crawl of public health ideation and use new media as a mass distribution channel for change. (for more, take a peek at their blog or follow the conversations on Twitter at #Health2Con)
Like my zealous enthusiasm for the youth focused SexTech Conference from ISIS (next slated for Feb. 26/27 2010 in S.F.) Health2.0 has some youth/teen deployment of cool uses for mobile, SMS reminders and apps, Texting4Health CDC co-ventures, exergames, Games for Health and pragmatic uses in virtual worlds that have left my brain neurons lit up like a pinball machine. Whew.
One example? This wacky, hands-on geolocation health game called CryptoZoo involves chasing gonzo critters through urban and edu-environs to seed physical activity in real world spaces creating a living lab of game play. TipTrees and Wobblelopes? Ninja Rabbits and Batzees? “Cryptid Alert!” (video after the jump)
American Heart Association’s Kristi Miller Durazo put attendees themselves in a demo role to learn firsthand how this Institute for the Future collaboration works to get kids up, out and moving, appealing particularly to tweens 10-12…
AHA’s downloadable Cryptid chase kit is free fun, and worth a shot at encouraging kids to enter ‘a secret world of strange and fast-moving creatures’ and get tweens moving.
Imagine “Cryptid alert, are you chasing them?” flashing on a public media billboard to attempt a viral ‘huh, what’s that’ curious George opportunity to join in the fun…
It kind of reminds me of the scavenger hunt youth art exhibit to teach kids about different styles and genres awhile back at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
My media spin? Leverage the popularity and buzz of Where the Wild Things Are’ using this public health experiential alternative to get kids outdoors and maybe even tie in an accelerometer device like the newly launched FitBit for an ‘at risk’ testing group for some hands-on obesity research.
The concept is a hoot when you visualize the ‘crowd engagement’ for family events, outdoor impromptu improv, collegiate team challenges, camp pathfinders with younger kids and all the viable transportation tie-ins and regional support that could be deployed for a festival of sorts to turn a town into a ‘cryptid city’ and such…(that’s Kristi with a Ninja Rabbit)
“Chasing the cryptids takes more than energy — it takes strategy! Each block is a unique running environment: challenging for some species, a natural habitat for others. Which species will the other team have to chase? You get to choose!”
Cryptozoo Teaser Trailer 2:14
“Anyone can run with the cryptids. You don’t have to be athletic, or coordinated. But you do need to be adventurous… and willing to sweat. Because you’re about to move faster — and weirder — than you thought possible.
“Once you’ve caught sight of the cryptids, you won’t be able to help yourself. There’s just something about those mysterious cryptids… they unlock the creature in all of us.”
Cryptozoo was created by game theorist and design guru Jane McGonigal as a “proof-of-concept game, a way for us to show what physical activity could (and we think, should) be like in the future: more fun, more social, and better integrated with our everyday lives.”
What d’ya think folks, will kids bite? Could this ‘go viral?’
In some ways Cryptozoo (the site says, “the cool kids pronounce it crypto ZOH-oh”) conjures visions of the recent Humana G-Force ‘OPS’ in the team-building species vs. species approach.
Both outdoor games are designed to get kids into the real world for game play using online to offline bridges…(even if it’s not ‘free form play’ and make believe at least it’s imaginative!) Both have a movie/media element, albeit a different approach. (Humana partnered with Disney, Cryptids are not ‘branded’ at all…)
Still, it’s interesting to note the whimsical wildness of the critters donning wire mesh masks of unidentifiable species origin. There are similarities with Sendak, as they’re not quite cuddly, not quite monster…just ‘wild’ and very imaginative. I’ll be anxious to hear how both innovation and ideation games pan out for them from a fitness perspective.
AHA’s Kristi sat down with me a bit after the presentation and I asked her about AHA’s other October health initiatives…This is a huge month for health observances, and AHA is ‘on it’ for health literacy.
They have a level-based training for life skills to take action and clue into Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness month, Wii tournaments and gaming components to engage every age and stage, and the big thematic splash for seasonal sports involves the NFL Rush tie-in with incentives to “Play 60” with tips and challenges to ‘get kids outside and moving’ and compete for SuperBowl prize opportunities. Kids can check out health games paired off by grade starting with PreK through grade 8 in AHA’s “What Moves You?” free game offerings too.
I was duly impressed with all of the Health2.0 speakers in the Gaming and Healthcare breakout session especially fascinated by Dr. Belinda Lange from USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies who I’ll be covering tomorrow. She clearly confirmed many a hunch I’ve had on ways we can help kids via unexplored uses of virtual worlds…
Overall though, I must say, this year I was inspired more by the potential for team building using ‘best practices’ from public health visionaries like Pulse & Signal’s Andre Blackman, and other thought leaders in the Health2.0 realm like Dr. Jody Ranck more than the techno-tools, digital distribution gizmos or even cool games.
To me, the unique ability and wide reaching potential of ‘connecting the dots’ among people with complementary skills sets gives me goosebumps and inspiration beyond measure.
If you assemble the right Health 2.0 team to conceptualize, deploy and scale concrete solutions using new media technology that kids can relate to in order to achieve public health purposes en masse? Well, let’s just say the potential for marketing hope (and health!) globally astounds…
It’s one of the core reasons “My Dinner with Andre” (and Sugar Stats’ Marston, HopePhones’ global health guru and FrontlineSMS pro Lucky, and McKesson Foundation’s Carrie, Jody Ranck, etc.) turned out to be a Health2.0 highlight beyond the conference itself! More on that soon too…
Here’s an interview with some of the thought leaders of the Cryptozoo game below, enjoy!
Recent Health2.0 Coverage on Shaping Youth |
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 27th, 2009
1893 “Dover Demon”
© Loren Coleman 2009
Does the above image look familiar to you? It certainly does to me. It resembles the drawings of the Dover Demon seen in Dover, Massachusetts, from April 1977. However, it actually is from a newspaper article published in New York City on December 3, 1893.
This drawing was discovered by Robert Schneck (the author of The President’s Vampire) and shared with me, of course, because of my foundation interest in the Dover Demon. My appreciation to Schneck for bringing this to my attention.
The 1893 drawing is not of a sighting of any creature, however, but an artist’s (perhaps humorous) imagined illustration of how humans might appear in the future, viewed from the Victorian era. Specifically, the work is tied to the fictional writings of H. G. Wells and his little-known article, “The Man of the Year Million.” It is Wells who has predicted the future of humans will see a diminishing of their hair, nose, teeth, ears, and chin. The above 1893 drawing appears to be an attempt to capture Wells’ thoughts in a bit of newspaper art.
Elsewhere, H. G. Wells’s own sketch of the Man of Tomorrow was once drawn as an autograph. Credit David Szondy.
It is a sad commentary that as a reflection of the man of today, near the 1893 Dover Demon-like drawing, Schneck also found an image from an ad about paid (10¢) viewings of a “wild hairy man.” This was obviously an indigenous person (perhaps from Oceania) in an entertainment sideshow.
Back to the future…
As you may recall (see here from 2007), I remember from the 1950s and 1960s articles on “future humans” that were illustrated with (usually) bald men, the supposed picture of evolved Homo sapiens.
Future man? = blogger author ufologist Nick Redfern.
Future man? = debunker editor skeptic Ben Redford.
It is funny to me that Schneck would find this remarkable drawing from 1893, and it would nicely match the drawings that the eyewitnesses had sketched of the Dover Demon in 1977. I am not certain the 1893 treatment mirrors any future version of humans, however.
Please, also, let me be straight. I’m not saying anything about any space-time link between 1893-1977, or time travelers from the future journeying “back” to 1977 Dover. I merely think it’s an interesting coincidence and an outstanding find on Schneck’s part.
While I still maintain that the four eyewitnesses actually saw something extraordinary in 1977, which cannot be explained by mundane species, I do not know what the Dover Demon was or is. It remains the most unusual of the unexplained unknowns in my files of Fortean creatures, which appear to overlap into cryptozoology. After all, the Dover Demon is a cryptid, an unknown animal, apparently, seen in rather normal settings of rural Massachusetts.
The 1893 article…
Robert Schneck has painstakingly transcribed the news item and writes, “The article is hard to read but it’s written with heavy-handed humor that presumably went over big in 1893.”
The World, New York City, New York, December 3, 1893.
MAN IN THE YEAR MILLION
Look at the Picture Below and You Will See What the Human Race Is Coming To.
AN INORDINATE CASE OF SWELLED HEAD.
Somebody in the Pall Mall Budget has let his fancy take wings in the contemplation of the time when all of the _____ _____ in these United States will be anything but humanity.
This ______ ‘s theme is the “Man of the Year Million.” And, judging from the accompanying picture, it will take about that long to complete the change. There is comfort in the thought that there is some little time ahead for good-looking fellows.
In his introduction this writer says: “Accomplished literature is all very well in its way, but much more fascinating to the contemplative man are the books that have not been written. These latter are no trouble to hold; there are no pages to turn over. One can read them in bed on sleepless nights without a candle.”
One of the unwritten volumes is a big book by Prof. Holzkopf, of the University of Weissnichtwo, on “The Necessary Character of the Man of the Remote Future. Deduced from the Existing Stream of Tendency.”
Just as the bird is the creature of the wing, and is moulded and modified for flying, so man is a creature of brain, and must live by that and not by physical strength. Naturally, then, that which is animal in him must gradually disappear as civilization more and more, becomes a fixed habit. He doesn’t need big muscles to get a living; nor big jaws to seize his food and crush it. His jaws get smaller, his teeth and hair are soon lost; trains and trolley cars render speed unnecessary; he doesn’t have to hunt his wife. She hunts him. Wit, and not strength. Is what he needs. Hence the legs will shrink up and the head swell.
Science gives him the knife and fork. There is no reason why it should not masticate and insalivate his food. Does it now digest it with all the pepsin compounds? Teeth will disappear.
The eyebrow used to be a buffer to protect the eye from savage blows. Once exterminate football and the ridge of bone over the eye will go the way of the hair on the pate.
In some of the most highly developed crustaceans, the whole alimentary canal has solidified into a useless cord, because the animal is nourished by the food in which it swims. The man of the year million will not be bothered with servants handing him things on plates which he will chew, and swallow and digest. He will bathe in amber liquid which will be pure food, no waste matter assimilated through the pores of the skin. The mouth will shrink to a rosebud thing; the teeth will disappear; the nose will disappear-it is not nearly as big now as it was in savage days-the ears will go away. They are already folded up from what they were, and only a little tip fast vanishing remains to show that ages ago they were long-pointed things which bent forward and backward to catch the sound of approaching enemies.
But the brains grow, for they are exponents of the brain, and the great soulful eyes.
Prof. Holzkopf goes on to that gloomy time when all animal life shall have been superseded by mechanical contrivances, on to the time when the earth cools and the human tadpoles burrow in the earth for warmth.
But the year million is far enough away, isn’t it?
© Loren Coleman 2009 (when noting this discussion, also please mention the discoverer of the 1893 illustration, Robert Schneck, the author of The President’s Vampire).
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. |
Now of course the real reason why I have tried to be so very precise about the human-like as opposed to the apelike sightings commonly alotted to the Orang Pendek is of course the fact that we have some very good fossils of some very little people that formerly inhabited Indonesia, and these fossils are tenatively classified as Homo floresensis. On the island of Flores (Which is off the far end of Java by Sumatra's perspective) there is also the story of the Ebu Gugo, little hairy men that ate anything and were considered a pest until the ancestors of the current Islanders herded them into a cave and lit fires in front, choking them all to death with the smoke. This is the same story told of the Nittaweo in Ceylon and is widespread as Folklore otherwise: the same story is repeated in Alaska and in Patagonia in Southern South America.
|Female Homo habilis Skull from Kenya, Bone Clones.|
Here is a nice summary about the Flores Hobbit problem from The Strange World of Mystery site:
Indeed, the more scientists study the specimens and their implications, the more they are drawn to heretical speculation.
¶Were these primitive survivors of even earlier hominid migrations out of Africa, before Homo erectus migrated about 1.8 million years ago? Could some of the earliest African toolmakers, around 2.5 million years ago, have made their way across Asia?
¶Did some of these migrants evolve into new species in Asia, which moved back to Africa? Two-way traffic is not unheard of in other mammals.
¶Or could the hobbits be an example of reverse evolution? That would seem even more bizarre; there are no known cases in primate evolution of a wholesale reversion to some ancestor in its lineage.
The possibilities get curiouser and curiouser, said William L. Jungers of Stony Brook University, making hobbits “the black swan of paleontology — totally unpredicted and inexplicable.”
Everything about them seems incredible. They were very small, not much more than three feet tall, yet do not resemble any modern pygmies. They walked upright on short legs, but might have had a peculiar gait obviating long-distance running. The single skull that has been found is no bigger than a grapefruit, suggesting a brain less than one-third the size of a human’s, yet they made stone tools similar to those produced by other hominids with larger brains. They appeared to live isolated on an island as recently as 17,000 years ago, well after humans had made it to Australia.
Although the immediate ancestor of modern humans, Homo erectus, lived in Asia and the islands for hundreds of thousands of years, the hobbits were not simply scaled-down erectus. In fact, erectus and Homo sapiens appear to be more closely related to each other than either is to the hobbit, scientists have determined.
It is no wonder, then, that the announcement describing the skull and the several skeletons as remains of a previously unknown hominid species, Homo floresiensis, prompted heated debate. Critics contended that these were merely modern human dwarfs afflicted with genetic or pathological disorders.
Scientists who reviewed hobbit research at a symposium here last week said that a consensus had emerged among experts in support of the initial interpretation that H. floresiensis is a distinct hominid species much more primitive than H. sapiens. On display for the first time at the meeting was a cast of the skull and bones of a H. floresiensis, probably an adult female.
Several researchers showed images of hobbit brain casts in comparison with those of deformed human brains. They said this refuted what they called the “sick hobbit hypothesis.” They also reported telling shoulder and wrist differences between humans and the island inhabitants.
Even so, skeptics have not capitulated. They note that most of the participants at the symposium had worked closely with the Australian and Indonesian scientists who made the discovery in 2003 and complain that their objections have been largely ignored by the news media and organizations financing research on the hobbits.
Some prominent paleoanthropologists are reserving judgment, among them Richard Leakey, the noted hominid fossil hunter who is chairman of the Turkana Basin Institute at Stony Brook University. Like other undecided scientists, he cited the need to find more skeletons at other sites, especially a few more skulls.
Mr. Leakey conceded, however, that the recent research “greatly strengthened the possibility” that the Flores specimens represented a new species.
At the symposium, Michael J. Morwood, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia who was one of the discoverers, said that further investigations of stone tools had determined that hominids arrived at Flores as early as 880,000 years ago and “it is reasonable to assume that those were ancestors of the hobbits.” But none of their bones have been uncovered, so they remain unidentified, and no modern human remains have been found there earlier than 11,000 years ago.
Excavations are continuing at Liang Bua, a wide-mouth cave in a hillside where the hobbit bones were found in deep sediments, but no more skulls or skeletons have turned up. Dr. Morwood said the search would be extended to other Flores sites and nearby islands.
Peter Brown, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia, said that his examination of the premolars and lower jaws of the specimens made it almost immediately “very, very clear that this was a hominid in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The first premolars in particular, he said, were larger than a human’s and had a crown and roots unlike those of H. sapiens or H. erectus.
Dr. Brown, a co-author of the original discovery report, said that no known disease or abnormality in humans could have “replicated this condition.”
At first, Dr. Brown and colleagues hypothesized that the hobbits were descendants of H. erectus that populated the region and had evolved their small stature because they lived in isolation on an island. Island dwarfing is a recognized phenomenon in which larger species diminish in size over time in response to limited resources.
The scientists soon backed off from that hypothesis. For one thing, dwarfing reduces stature, but not brain size. Moreover, researchers said, the hobbit bore little resemblance to an erectus.
In an analysis of the hobbit’s wrist bones, Matthew W. Tocheri of the Smithsonian Institution found that certain bones were wedge-shaped, similar to those in apes, and not squared-off, as in humans and Neanderthals. This suggested that its species diverged from the human lineage at least one million to two million years ago.
So if several lines of evidence now encourage agreement that H. floresiensis was a distinct and primitive hominid, the hobbit riddle can be compressed into a single question of far-reaching importance: where did these little people come from?
“Once you establish that this is a unique species,” said Frederick E. Grine, a paleoanthropologist at Stony Brook, “then these primitive features that it has suddenly take on a profound evolutionary significance.”
Scientists said in reports and interviews that they had only recently begun contemplating possible ancestries.
As a starting point, scientists rule out island dwarfing as a primary explanation. Dwarfs and pygmies are simply diminutive humans; they do not become more apelike, as the hobbits appear to be in some aspects. Besides, normal dwarfing would suggest that the hobbits presumably evolved from H. erectus, the only previous hominids identified in this part of Asia or anywhere outside Africa; the first one was discovered in Java in the late 19th century. But research has found few similarities between the hobbit skeleton and Asian H. erectus.
If the hobbit is a throwback to much earlier hominids, scientists said, reverse evolution would be the most far-fetched explanation. Dr. Jungers, a paleoanthropologist who organized the symposium, said there were no known examples of mammals becoming significantly reduced in size and anatomy as a consequence of reverting to an ancestral form.
“Is it possible?” he asked rhetorically. “If that is the case, it is unprecedented and a tremendous discovery.”
Several scientists think the answer to hobbit ancestry lies deeper in the hominid past. If this species is unlike H. erectus, it presumably descended from even earlier small-bodied migrants out of Africa that preceded erectus into Asia. Just the thought questions conventional wisdom.
Possible candidates include Homo habilis, the first and least known species of the Homo genus. The short, small-brained habilis might have emerged as early as 2.3 million years ago and lived to co-exist with the brainier, long-limbed H. erectus. At present, erectus fossils, found in the republic of Georgia and dated at 1.8 million to 1.7 million years ago, are the earliest well-established evidence for hominids outside Africa.
If hobbits resemble habilis in some respects, scientists said, it indicates that habilis or something like it possibly left Africa earlier and became the likely hobbit ancestor.
Another possible ancestor might even have been a pre-Homo species of the Australopithecus genus. The first evidence for stone toolmaking in Africa, at least 2.5 million years ago, is associated with australopithecines. Several scientists called attention to skeletal similarities between hobbits and A. afarensis, the species famously represented by the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy skeleton from Ethiopia.
The suggestion that the H. floresiensis ancestor might have reached Asia a million years before H. erectus left Africa was raised earlier this month at a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
And then there is the idea, raised again at the symposium, of hominid migrations out of Africa and back. Dr. Jungers advised abandoning the old image of the long-limbed H. erectus striding out of Africa in the first wave of hominids making their way in the world.
“Why think they couldn’t have done it many times, even before erectus?” he said. “Other mammals have migrated in and out of Africa.”
The idea revived speculation that erectus itself might have evolved in Asia from an earlier migrant from Africa, and then found its way back to the land of its ancestors. Similarly, other hominids arriving in distant parts of Asia might have churned out new species, among them the hobbits.
Robert B. Eckhardt of Penn State University, an ardent hobbit skeptic, is unyielding in his opposition to the interpretation that the Flores skull belongs to a previously unrecognized species. He insists that it will prove to be from a modern human stricken with microcephaly or a similar developmental disorder that shrinks the head and brain.
“Convincing others is much more difficult than I thought it would be at the outset,” Dr. Eckhardt acknowledged in an e-mail message, “but increasingly it is becoming evident that what is at stake is not just some sample of specimens, but instead the central paradigm of an entire subfield.”
Susan G. Larson, an anatomist at the Stony Brook School of Medicine who analyzed the non-human properties of the hobbit shoulders, said in an interview that the investigations had entered “a period of wait and see.”
“Someday,” Dr. Larson said, “people may be saying, why was everyone so puzzled back then — it’s plain to see where the little people of Flores came from.”
Article: "Giant Storks May Have Fed on Real-Life Hobbits"
|Lord of the Rings|
The hobbit mystery was sparked by the 2004 discovery of bones on Flores that belonged to a three-foot-tall (one-meter-tall), 55-pound (25-kilogram) female with a grapefruit-size brain.
The tiny, hobbit-like creature—controversially dubbed a new human species, Homo floresiensis—persisted on the remote island until about 18,000 years ago, even as "modern" humans spread around the world, experts say.
Found in million-year-old volcanic sediments, the newly discovered tools are "simple sharp-edged flakes" like those found at nearby sites on Flores—sites dated to later time periods but also associated with hobbits and their ancestors—said study co-leader Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, via e-mail.
The finding implies that a culture of stone tool wielding ancient humans, with origins in Africa, survived on the island for much longer than previously believed, according to the new research, published online today by the journal Nature.
"That's exciting," because it suggests that by a million years ago, early humans had covered more ground on their exodus from Africa than previously thought, said paleontologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum of London, who wasn't involved in the new study.
Hobbit Ancestors off the Hook?
The stone-and-bone record had suggested that the hobbits' ancestors—perhaps upright-walking-but-small-brained Homo erectus—left Africa about 1.5 million years ago and reached Flores by 880,000 years ago.
Once there, it's been thought, the hobbit ancestors quickly hunted a pygmy elephant species and a giant tortoise species to extinction.
The date of the newly discovered stone tools, though, suggests elephant and tortoise died off a hundred thousand years after Flores's colonization —indicating that the early Flores colonizers' role in the extinction "must have been minimal," study co-leader Brumm said.
What's more, these early colonizers could have been more primitive than H. erectus—"that is our working hypothesis," he added.
When the bones of the hobbit were first reported in 2004, the discovery team suggested they belonged to a unique species, Homo floresiensis, that had descended from Homo erectus.
Since then, scientists studying the hobbit bones have found features in the wrist, feet, skull, jaw, brain, and shoulders that suggest the little creature descended from something more primitive.
"I think that's looking increasingly likely from its anatomy," said the Natural History Museum's Stringer.
Hobbit Findings Questioned
Not everyone is ready to accept the new date.
"I have no problem with hominins"—human ancestors—"being on Flores at 1.2 million years ago," anthropologist James Phillips said. "After all, they were on Java by around 750,000 [years ago]."But the fact that the implements were found in million-year-old volcanic sediments doesn't guarantee the artifacts are a million years old, said Phillips, an emeritus professor with the University of Illinois at Chicago, said via email.
"There are many ways"—such as water-driven processes—"in which artifacts can move through sediments," Phillips said.
He's also dismayed that the new study assumes that stone-tool technology changed little on Flores for more than a million years.
"Everywhere else on Earth, change was slow but always—and I emphasize always—occurred."
Controversy is nothing new in hobbit science, with many experts still at odds over whether Homo floresiensis is a separate species at all.
Several scientists have argued, for example, that the hobbits were modern humans with a genetic condition that causes dwarfing and other defects.
Hobbit Ancestors Rafted to Flores?
Regardless of what they were and when they arrived, the question remains: How did primitive humans get to Flores in the first place?
The Natural History Museum's Stringer buys into a theory that they may have migrated from Africa, perhaps on foot, to the island of Sulawesi (map). There, the ancient humans may have been washed to sea by a tsunami—currents off Sulawesi flow southward, toward Flores.
"These creatures most likely got moved on rafts of vegetation," he said.
To help shore up this theory, the team behind the original hobbit discovery is currently looking for evidence on Sulawesi that would prove humans occupied the island even earlier than they did Flores.
|Homo habilis Female Reconstruction|
|Homo erectus Reconstruction|
Humans are members of the genus Homo . Modern people are Homo sapiens . However, we are not the only species of humans who have ever lived. There were earlier species of our genus that are now extinct. In the past, it was incorrectly assumed that human evolution was a relatively straightforward sequence of one species evolving into another. We now understand that there were times when several species of humans and even other hominins were alive. This complex pattern of evolution emerging from the fossil record has been aptly described as a luxuriantly branching bush on which all but one twig has died off. Modern humans are that last living twig.
The striking similarities in appearance between the human genus Homo and our distant ancestors, the genus Australopithecus , is sufficient reason to place us both into the same biological tribe (Hominini ). Both genera are bipedal and habitually upright in posture. Humans have been somewhat more efficient at this mode of locomotion. Like gracile australopithecines , early humans were light in frame and relatively short. They were only about 3 ft. 4 in. to 4 ft. 5 in. tall (100-235 cm) and weighed around 70 pounds (32 kg) The evolution of larger bodies occurred later in human evolution. [And within the robust Australopithecines, not thought to be in the direct line of ancestry to humans-DD] The differences between australopithecines and early humans are most noticeable in the head. Humans developed significantly larger brains and relatively smaller faces with progressively smaller teeth and jaws. In addition, humans became ever more proficient in developing cultural technologies to aid in their survival, while the australopithecines did not.
The immediate ancestors of early humans were most likely late gracile australopithecines. At present, the leading contender for that ancestral species is Australopithecus garhi or possibly Australopithecus africanus.
There may have been one or possibly two species of the first humans living in East Africa--Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis (literally "able or skilled human"). The few rudolfensis fossils that have been found are somewhat earlier, dating about 2.4-1.6 million years ago, while the more common habilis remains are around 1.9-1.4 million years old. Rudolfensis apparently was a bit taller and relatively larger brained on average. However, many paleoanthropologists consider the differences to be too slight to warrant a separate species designation. Some have suggested that rudolfensis were males and habilis were females. As a result, they classify them both as a single species--Homo habilis. That is the approach taken in this tutorial.
The evolution of the genus Homo and the robust australopithecines beginning around 2.5 million years ago coincides with the beginning of a period of prolonged climate instability in Africa. The overall trend was towards cooling and drying, but along the way there were considerable climate fluctuations. It is likely that selection for the ability to adapt to these environmental changes resulted in the emergence of humans with their larger, more capable brains.
Early transitional human fossils were first discovered in 1960 by Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The Leakeys named them Homo habilis (Latin for "handy or skilled human") because they apparently made stone tools. Similar fossils were found at East Lake Turkana in Kenya by Richard Leakey's team of fieldworkers that began searching there in 1969. These latter specimens were named Homo rudolfensis after Lake Rudolf (i.e., the former name for Lake Turkana).
So far, conclusive evidence of Homo habilis has been found only in the Great Rift Valley system of East Africa. However, their ultimate geographic and time ranges may have been somewhat larger. Early transitional human fossils also have been found in South Africa in the caves at Sterkfontein and Swartkrans in apparent association with australopithecines. However, not all paleoanthropologists agree that these fossils should be considered Homo habilis.
Early transitional humans had brains that on average were about 35% larger than those of Australopithecus africanus. In fact, it is beginning with Homo habilis that our ancestors finally had brains that were consistently bigger than those of the great apes. Ajit Varki and his team of geneticists at the University of California San Diego campus have discovered a small genetic difference between humans and apes that may account for the progressive increase in the size of human brains. People, but not apes, have a gene that stops the production of N-glycolylneuramine acid. Using "molecular clock analysis," the U.C.S.D. researchers determined that this gene entered the human evolutionary line as a result of a mutation 2.7 million years ago. While it is presumed that the australopithecines lacked this gene, there is no direct evidence.
As the early human cranium, or brain case, began to enlarge in response to increased brain size, the mouth became smaller. In comparison to the australopithecines, the early humans had smaller teeth, especially the molars and premolars. This suggests that they mostly ate softer foods. An analysis of the wear patterns on their teeth indicates that they had diverse diets that included a wide range of plants and meat. As noted previously, the body size of Homo habilis was not significantly larger than the early hominins that preceded them. Likewise, the arms of habilis and their australopithecine ancestors were relatively long compared to ours. The modern human body size and limb proportions began to appear with the next species in our evolution--Homo erectus.
Adult cranial capacity(range in cm3)
chimpanzees 300-500 australopithecines 390-545 early transitional humans 509-752 modern humans 900-1880
Reconstruction of Homo habilis
Of especial interest in considering the Flores "Hobbit" is the statement:
"Like gracile australopithecines , early humans were light in frame and relatively short. They were only about 3 ft. 4 in. to 4 ft. 5 in. tall (100-235 cm) and weighed around 70 pounds (32 kg) [say 40 to 90 pounds]"
This is all very interesting but basically not very meaningful in relationship to the Orang Pendek when that form was said to have an opposed big toe like an ape. If on the other hand, there still is a cryptid -hominid on Sumatra, it could be related to the H. floresensis IF that one is a separate species. it could also possibly be related to other reports of similar creatures reported from Southeast Asia to Australia. There are several "IF" factors in that construction that still are not determined yet and most importantly among those, we do not know if the "Small people" are the same as the "Hobbit" and there still is that annoying problem that we still have not settled how to classify H. floresensis.
But whatever happens to come of this, the floresensis types would not be the type of creatures that walk on feet with opposed big toes. And evidence for the one thing does not constitute evidence for the other, as some well-meaning but thoroughly confused Cryptozoologists have stated in the past.
-Best Wishes, Dale D. |
- 13 surprising causes of constipation (cbsnews.com)
Women in Paris may soon be legally allowed to wear trousers after a female French senator called for a 200-year old ban technically still in place to be lifted.
The bizarre ban was first introduced in late 1799 by Paris’ police chief, and stipulated than any woman wishing to “dress like a man” must seek special permission from police and provide medical justification for showing their legs.
According to Dr. Keri Peterson, quoted at the site at the link below, you produce a liter (just over a quart) of spit a day. Just in case you were wondering…
This story has everything:
- A hungry naked male intruder
- A grandmother
- A baseball bat
Video via 7online.com.
- NH woman says she chased naked intruder from home – Danbury News Times (news.google.com)
- 70-Year-Old Woman Chases Off Naked Intruder (foxnews.com)
A South African man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge – nearly a day after his family thought he had died, a health official said Monday.Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said the man awoke Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family called in an undertaker who sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack.
- South African man thought to be dead wakes after 21 hours in morgue fridge (guardian.co.uk
- South African ‘Dead’ Man Wakes Up Alive in Morgue – ABC News (news.google.com)
Burke Kenny said it’s not unusual to notice people staring at his chest.”I have to say, ‘I’m up here,” ‘ he said, pointing to his face. “Just like a girl.”
Of course, they’re probably not really staring at his chest so much as they’re looking at what’s covering it: an amazingly full and curly brunet beard with auburn undertones that contrast with the straight black hair on his head.
More via Seattle Times Newspaper
Like most of us, Michael Staley didn’t much care for getting into his hot car after it baked for hours in a shade-less parking lot.Unlike most of us, he created his own shade.
An unexplained ghostly apparition has appeared in the window of a ruined medieval castle on two occasions over 30 years apart.
The first image (above) was taken by a tourist this year while exploring the ruins of Tantallon Castle on Scotland’s East Lothian coast. Experts are baffled by the image and skeptics are having trouble finding a suitable reason to debunk it.
A unique ice sculpture, recently photographed by a surprised hotel manager in Lake Lure, North Carolina, appears to have had another observer standing nearby while the photo was taken. The individual in question, however, wasn’t really the kind you’d have noticed while taking such a picture: after all, some say it was actually a ghost that only the camera’s lens had managed to see.
Video of news report at the link
Til’ the law do us part?
Perhaps because you only get to wear a wedding dress on your wedding day, Tammy Lee Hinton elected not to change out of her gown and veil when police took her mugshot last Saturday, just a few moments after she said, “I do.”
Following the ceremony at City of Zion Ministries church in Michigan, Hinton, 50, was arrested by Blackman-Leoni Township cops on a two-year-old felony warrant accusing her of identity theft,
More with video via Wedding Day Mugshot
- Tammy Lee Hinton, Michigan Bride, Arrested on Wedding Day (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
- Bride’s wedding mugshot snaps (thesun.co.uk)
Austrian police say thieves have made off with an unusual heist — 21 tons of mustard and ketchup.
The loot was in a semi-trailer parked in a lot over the weekend northwest of Vienna.
More via thestar.com.
The southeast Washington community of Dayton is the place to be this week for fans of mules and donkeys. The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reports at least 120 mules are expected in town for Mule Mania, a mule and donkey show, riding and driving competition and chuck wagon cook-off.
Cleanup crews in Idaho have finished clearing honey and an estimated 14 million bees that got loose after a delivery truck overturned on a highway.
Fremont County Sheriff deputies say several workers were stung during the first few hours of the cleanup Sunday.
And some observers told The Post-Register about seeing a strange black cloud and roaring noise above the spill area before realizing it was a massive swarm of bees.
A woman returned to her Cumbrian home to find a near perfect imprint of an owl on her window. The bird had apparently crashed into the window of Sally Arnold’s Kendal home, leaving the bizarre image – complete with eyes, beak and feathers.
via BBC News
The good burghers of the Icelandic town of Bolungarvik have intervened to prevent further action by elves who are evidently unhappy they weren’t consulted about the construction of an anti-avalanche barrier.
Bolungarvik recently suffered a bombardment of rocks during “routine dynamiting” on the barrier, with fist-sized missiles causing damage to several properties.
This led locals to suspect the huldufólk (hidden people) had finally got a bit miffed with civil engineering projects, including the construction last year of a road tunnel through a hill.
via The Register
- Icelandic Town Discovers Source of Construction Problems – Angry Elves (jonathanturley.org)
- Icelandic municipal government hopes songs will pacify elves disgruntled by highway construction (josephfclark.wordpress.com)
A French couple have found a hoard of gold coins worth at least 100,000 euros (£89,000; $140,000) in the cellar of their home in the town of Millau.
They were working on their drains when they dug up the 34 coins in a little clay pot, French media said.
The coins date from 1595 to the French Revolution, which began in 1789, said a local coin expert who evaluated them.
via BBC News
- Iron Age Gold Hoard, The Wickham Market Hoard, Saved for Ipswich Museum (warrenscoins.wordpress.com)
The TV show Finding Bigfoot has a lot of critics debunking the evidence that the legendary cryptid really exists. That now includes the people who appear on the show itself.
Cast members from the TV show have commented in various online forums that they are bugged by the heavy-handed editing done by producers of the series, and are not happy that they seem to be putting false words in their mouths. To say nothing of using tricks to make their actual findings more seemingly groundbreaking…
Cast member and BFRO leader Matt Moneymaker says, in response to a question about one particular scene with typically grainy footage, “… the thing I ran after up the hill was a human — someone who was sneaking around us in the woods trying to watch the production in progress. I said so repeatedly and vehemently at the time, for the cameras, but they edited out all of that in order to make it seem unclear what I was chasing after.”
- Looking for Bigfoot in Indian Country (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
- The search for monsters among us [Io9 Backgrounder] (io9.com)
The crackdown in Belarus grew more indiscriminate this week. Among the 400 arrested: a one-armed man charged with taking part in the clapping protests and mute person accused of shouting antigovernment slogans. |
Sceptics love to poke fun at cryptozoologists, but there are strange creatures out there whose existence has yet to be confirmed by science
Friday 15 July 2011
I'm not sure who or what is more monstrous: the smug sceptics or the scant cryptids.
Let me explain. Having interviewed Debbie Martyr (research conservationist with Flora and Fauna International) 12 years ago about her apparent sighting of the primate cryptid the orang pendek in Sumatra and more recently interviewing ape expert Ian Redmond on his research into sasquatch/big foot (supported by David Attenborough and Jane Goodall), over the years I have acquired a fascination for primate cryptids. So I was eager to attend a recent lecture at the Zoological Society London (ZSL) entitled "Cryptozoology: science or pseudoscience?".
Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature looking and behaving like a jovial, off-duty roadie dressed in grubby T shirt and ruby crocs, chaired the event in which Drs Michael Woodley, Charles Paxton and Darren Naish presented their crypto data.
Paxton reminded us that atmospheric electrical disturbances such as sprites, blue jets and elves were only identified in the 1980s and 1990s when they were photographed. Until then, anecdotal reports of flashes of light above the clouds were frequently ignored. Scientists used to dismiss accounts of meteorites as paranormal fantasy and poured scorn on eyewitness descriptions from lucky survivors of rogue waves – until satellite images in the 1990s confirmed their existence. The mountain gorilla wasn't believed to exist by Western science until two were shot dead in 1902, and the bonobo was not credited with being a unique species until 1930. In the past 20 years, 70 species of primate have been newly described, including a Vietnamese gibbon and the Bili ape: a large, sub-species of chimp from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2009, a Papua New Guinean crater yielded up a cat-sized species of woolly rat, among other previously undiscovered creatures.
In an age of satellites and robotic submersibles, it's easy to assume, with a "been there done that" attitude, that we know all there is to know about Earth. Clearly nature is far from being fully understood by science, and yet some sceptics persist in contemptuously sneering at almost everything outside of their immediate knowledge. With their high-systemised inability to tolerate newness, they stymie open scientific debate, bully original thinkers and drive away those with fascinating new data on unknown species.
I was sad to witness this and their non-reflective guffawing at ZSL. Paxton and Naish seemed particularly conscious of this spiked criticism and made a point of distancing themselves from misleading and bad science. Nothing wrong with that, but they were so ardent in this respect that the friend I was with mistakenly thought the panel were themselves anti-cryptozoology.
The three speakers focused their statistical analysis on sea monsters, Paxton saying that he prefers the term monster to cryptid. He also wanted to assure the audience that, "taxpayers have no fear, your money is not spent on crypto research, scientists do this in their spare time." Paxton's talk underscored the fact that anomalies should be actively pursued and science should be about wonderment.
But how should science deal with low-frequency phenomena that might well be real? One approach is to break witness reports down and analyse interesting properties. To illustrate, Paxon used his data of "initial reported distance" from sea monsters given by witnesses aboard boats. Significantly, initial sighting are usually reported close to the boat. Paxton wasn't sure why this might be. I would suggest that it is because witnesses do not know what they do not know – they have to see it close-up to be confident they are witnessing something unexpected. An unknown creature seen at a distance could be dismissed as a dolphin or a piece of wood. Initial sightings of terrestrial cryptids also tend to be at close proximity, and again the same factor may well apply.
Naish addressed the "prehistoric survivor paradigm". Some 65m years ago, during the late cretaceous, the coelacanth, the plesiosaur and many other species disappeared from the fossil record during a mass extinction. But in 1938 and again in 1999 two species of coelacanth were discovered. This Lazarus-like survival of the coelacanth gives confidence to those who suggest a long-necked surviving plesiosaur swims in our lochs and oceans. As a palaeontologist Naish was able to explain how the vertebrae of plesiosaurs could not move in the flexible, swan-like motion often described in reported sightings. But he believes this is a case of wrong classification rather than an indication that sea monsters do not exist. We were reminded of the new Indonesian species of ray and shark and the two recently identified (1991/2002) species of beaked whale, inhabiting a deep-sea niche: the deep sea and its inhabitants are barely understood.
During the Q&A an elderly sceptic quipped: "Some people say they've seen aliens and have even talked to them!" The panel trod an uneasy path as they attempted to accommodate these sorts of jibes while keeping on track.
The three speakers confirmed that their modelling indicates there are between 10 and 50 large species of marine animals yet to be described. They were also in agreement that marine sampling methods for cryptids must be established and remain constant.
For those readers left wanting more, the Weird Weekend is the biggest gathering of cryptozoologists in the world, held in Devon in August. Naish will again be speaking. |
Every Conference has its nodding moments. There were a solid dozen presentations at the Primal People’s Conference and I wish I could say all of them were fascinating, engaging, or offered something new to the study. Sadly they did not. But they are still worth mentioning for one reason or another, so rather than give each of them a full article I will lump them together into one catch-all.
Jaime Avalos was unable to be present, but through the wonders of modern technology, Skyped his presentation to us in Richland from his California home. Primarily Jaime offered up his collection of footprints, claiming to have followed certain individuals from youth to maturity over the years through the recurrence of their prints. He also offered an earnest plea and potential reward for anyone who could give information that the footprints he regularly recovered were faked or made by humans, or put him in touch with the people making them.
While Jaime has worked on developing new techniques and mixtures of plaster to improve the quality of his castings, footprints in general have been always controversial in terms of public acceptance as they are typically dismissed as fake. In my conversations with others at the conference question was raised about the validity of his methods of tracking and his discretion when identifying the origin of prints. As he states that he always works alone and destroys all evidence after taking his casts and otherwise recording his finds I have to wonder if his search isn’t more about himself than the subject of Bigfoot? The idea of destroying evidence in scientific pursuit bothers me considerably. To learn more you can find his website at: Sierrasasquatch.com
He does claim to receive gifts from the Bigfoot that he studies. Among them, feathers, snakes and once a squeezed chipmunk. Though that one might have been a warning. Gifting, as it is referred to is not something I was aware of, but many presenters offered the same information, one in quite unique fashion and you will hear that story later but I will tell you that apparently Bigfoot have a sense of humor.
This conference was the baby of Thom Cantrall, author of Ghosts of Ruby Ridge,
A fast paced adventure set in the wilderness of northern Idaho, Ghosts of Ruby Ridge is a tale that cuts to the heart of American values.
Thom put a lot of time and effort into this conference, and from my conversation with him, potential cost to his health. For that the field of Bigfoot research should be, and genuinely is grateful. His offering at the podium was probably of value to anyone who is a complete novice to the search for Bigfoot, but beyond that only a reiteration of the value of the Patterson/Gimlin film analysis that has been recurring for many years: Expert testimony from Hollywood special effects experts, anatomical comparisons, and challenging anyone claiming it to be fake to offer up the suit. His presentation served as a light overview and introduction to what others would be saying, and that is fine, but as such probably should have gone first in the line up. We can leave it at that.
The most anticipated presentation fell flat. When I arrived Friday evening for the Meet and Greet one of the first things I heard was that Dr. Melba Ketchum would not be present due to an unavoidable conflict. My hearth was in my throat at that, but the good news was that she would be on Skype and present remotely. Well, so long as the information was there…this was one of the main reasons I attended.
Saturday arrived and it was time for Dr. Ketchum’s presentation and we were informed of another snag, she uploaded a power-point presentation and would be on the phone for narration. Well, hope flagged a little, but still, here was the reason so many of us had attended.
The bulk of Dr. Ketchum’s presentation had nothing to do with Bigfoot. She introduced herself and gave us her background and the groundwork for her research and methods. That at least was reassuring. Her knowledge of her field, and experience within it is considerable, in fact would seem to have been one of the pioneers in her field and Bigfoot research is lucky to have her efforts. This was followed by a lengthy description of how it has been applied in cases also having nothing to do with Bigfoot, but at least served to demonstrate that the application of her work is taken seriously and treated as evidence in a court of law.
Now, Dr. Ketchum did state in reply to a question that she believes Bigfoot can/will be proven on DNA evidence alone. Personally I do not see how that is possible without a sample from a known specimen. It seems to me that all that can be proven is that a creature exists whose DNA puts it in the primate family, which her results do indeed show, and that it is not human, which again they do show, but beyond that is only subjective opinion as I see it and there is too much of that in the field already.
On the lighter side, Dr. Ketchum receives many hair samples for Bigfoot Candidates and treats them all with an equal hand. Many do not turn out to be of cryptid origins:
That over with, it gets interesting from here. |
Activision has revealed the second of Call of Duty: Ghosts’ four download packs, Devastation. The drop will launch first for 360 and Xbox One on April 3 and include four new multiplayer maps, detailed below; a new weapon accessible in all multiplayer maps, the Ripper sub machinegun/assault rifle combo; the second part of Extinction’s four-part episodic campaign, Mayday; and a new boss, the Kraken. As a bonus for Season Pass holders, the Ripper can be downloaded today.
A multiplayer demo was also announced. A first for the series, beginning tomorrow, gamers will be able to play online over Xbox Live through Monday. Three maps (Prison Break, Strikezone, and Warhawk), three modes (Domination, Search & Rescue, and Team Deathmatch), and the Point of Contact mode in Extinction will all be accessible.
Call of Duty: Ghosts – Devastation is scheduled to launch on April 3 for 360 and Xbox One for $14.99. The pack will be available for the other versions at a later date.
Devastation delivers four distinctive new maps with the fast-paced gameplay Call of Duty fans love, each with their own surprises.
• “Ruins” is located on a Mexican peninsula and set amidst the remnants of a mountaintop Mayan temple, with multiple levels providing verticality for longer-range weapons, and underground pathways perfect for close-quarters encounters. Savvy players that find and complete the unique Field Order will be able to trigger the map’s volcano to erupt, and enjoy watching enemy players attempt to take cover as fiery debris fall from the sky.
• “Collision” is a mangle of debris scattered atop a container ship pinned underneath a crippled bridge in New York. This small map is ideal for run-and-gun tactics. Players that dominate “Collision” and complete the map’s specific Field Order will be able take control of a heavily armed aircraft and rain down destruction from above.
• “Behemoth” takes the battle aboard a massive excavation platform in South America. Long sight lines open this map up to longer-range weapons, while the compact interiors of the control rooms are ideal for SMG’s and Shotguns. Completing “Behemoth’s” Field Order will allow players to control an attack helicopter armed with a deadly, armor-piercing Rail Gun as it circles the excavator searching for enemy combatants.
• “Unearthed” drops players into a reimagined version of “Dome,” the fan-favorite multiplayer map from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. With a new look and all-new secrets, “Unearthed” is a compact map for all player types, who must navigate an alien artifact dig site in order to unlock the map’s Field Order and unleash the power of the Cryptids, as well as locate the map’s secret alien weapon.
For Extinction fans, “Episode 2: Mayday,” highlights the Call of Duty: Ghosts Devastation DLC Pack. Following the dramatic events that took place deep within the Alaskan wilderness at the Nightfall Program research facility, the Quick Reaction Force team now heads onboard a mysterious Chinese research vessel drifting abandoned in the Tasman Sea in the South Pacific Ocean. Players will uncover a much deeper conspiracy as they pursue Captain Archer and discover what has become of Doctor Cross. Armed with multiple mod-able versions of the Venom-X weapon powered with Cryptid technology, players will come up against yet another new alien species referred to as the “Seeder,” as well as go head-to-head with a massive, 100-foot tall Cryptid enemy from the depths of the ocean…the “Kraken.”
Official Site: CallofDuty.com – Ghosts |
A Bigfoot enthusiast is exploring an interest theory that Bigfoot may be able to detect the EMF (electro-magnetic frequency) of cameras.
He is testing his idea with recent technology like trail cams and believes this may be the reason why these kinds of things have been mostly ineffective in the search for Bigfoot. It’s a very interesting theory, although it is one which has been debated in and around the Bigfoot community for some time now. Could the elusive cryptid actually be EMF sensitive and be able to detect things like trail cams?
Check out the video and some of the information that is presented along with some examples of the testing being done. Although he may not be using the best equipment available to test this theory, it is still some interesting results. It will undoubtedly take more research in actual labs and with the best equipment possible to determine if this may be an actual possibility. So do you think this is actually a likely reason for the lack of trail cam footage of these cryptids? Could technology such as these new trail cameras actually be hurting the chances of finding Bigfoot? |
The Loch Ness Monster hideaway may have been located in the depths of the loch as new crevices have been found making it deeper than previously known.
The loch has long been thought to be 813 feet deep at its deepest point, but this new crevice is 77 feet deeper than previous records. This new location makes the deepest part of the Loch Ness now 889 feet deep according to state of the art sonar equipment. It has long been believed by many that underwater caves existed in the loch and were the hiding places of the elusive cryptid said to inhabit its waters. This new location as being named “Keiths Abyss” by locals in reference to its finder Keith Stewart and many wonder if this could really be a Loch Ness Monster hideaway.
Stewart made his way around the worlds open seas for years using sonar equipment and says he decided to do something more sedate. Last March he became a captain for Jacobite Cruises, which does sight seeing tours down the Loch from Inverness. He says he was not a believer in Nessie beforehand, but two weeks ago, he came across a sonar image of what looked to be a long object with a hump lying on the bottom of the loch. He returned later and scanned the same location and it was no longer there. Many believe this could very well be a 2016 Loch Ness Monster sonar image or hit and Stewart admits it intrigued him. Could this actually be the first at least round about 2016 Loch Ness Monster sighting?
“Keith Stewart” (Photo by Peter Jolly Northpix)
He then found a dark shape about halfway between the Clansman Hotel and Drumnadrochit which ended up being the new crevice or trench. It is still unclear as to how long the trench is but the 3d equipment has verified its depth. Most sonar searches of the loch have traditionally been done in the middle of the loch but this location is only a few hundred yards offshore. This may be proof of local legends which claim there were underwater caves that connected Loch Ness to other lochs in the area and even the waters of the east and west coast. This new discovery is fueling new theories that this trench or perhaps even other yet undiscovered trenches could be home to Nessie or even a family of lake monsters and may explain why they are rarely seen.
Another theory being debated is that the trench could of been opened up by an earthquake. Loch Ness is part of an earthquake fault line that runs from Norway to Canada. Back in 2013 a 2.4 magnitude earthquake hit the loch which happened to be the same time that Nessie disappeared for an entire year. Perhaps the earthquake opened up this new trench, giving the lake monster(s) a new place to hide. Gary Campbell the president of the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club and the Registrar of Sightings said this discovery adds a whole new dimension to the search for the creature. Searches for the creature one of the most well known of the cryptids has mainly been in the middle of the loch and Urquhart Bay according to Campbell.
This finding will surely lead to more research into the location as well as the loch as a whole. This new research which is likely to include submarines and more state of the art sonar equipment may turn out to be another extremely interesting chapter in the legend of the Loch Ness Monster. Maybe this will even lead to new Loch Ness Monster sightings or even better Loch Ness Monster evidence. |
Join Elusive1 & Henry May as they welcome Lon Strickler to the show. Lon is Author / Fortean Reseacher / Publisher of the syndicated 'Phantoms and Monsters' blog - Co-host at 'Beyond the Edge Radio' / BTE Entertainment - Intuitive & Clairvoyant at 'Astral Perceptions Universal'. Since the late 1970's, He's been a cryptid reseacher who writes and mentors on a variety of fortean subjects..He began the 'Phantoms and Monsters' blog in 2005, which has steadily grown in popularity and read daily by thousands of paranormal enthusiasts, investigators and those seeking the truth! his research has been featured on hundreds of online media sources. As well, He's been a guest on several radio broadcasts, including 'Coast to Coast AM' and featured on Destination America's 'Monsters and Mysteries in America' television show. In 2010, He became a part of the 'Beyond The Edge Radio' family and currently co-host the weekly live broadcast. My 1st book 'Phantoms & Monsters: Cryptid Encounters' was published in September 2012. My next book 'Phantoms & Monsters: Strange Encounters' was published in November 2013.
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Posted by: Craig Woolheater on July 22nd, 2013
A story getting talked about a lot in the Bigfoot Community is this one:
Legendary Cryptid believed to be a surviving Gigantopithecus
(SNN) – The recent mass flooding in southern Alberta has exposed a rotting corpse of what is believed to be the legendary Sasquatch. Cryptozoologists worldwide are lining up to examine the remains, which were located by a hiker along the Bow River, northwest of Canmore, Alberta.
Eminent Paleontologist Wally Johnson has conducted a preliminary site examination of the remains, and has discovered that the carcass appears to be ancient. “I can report that from the bone structure, stature and a comparison of the mandibles and teeth, that I believe the remains are that of a Gigantopithecus.”
“We have always believed that the Sasquatch, Yeti, or even Bigfoot, if you will, was really a surviving clan of Hominids connected to the line of Gigantopithecus.” stated Cryptozoologist Coren Lowman, “The find near Canmore is extraordinary!”
With the massive rains of June which washed away ancient glaciers of the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies, scientists are speculating that the remains may have been frozen high in the rockies for many years.
This is the first report of a Gigantopithecus within North America. The first fossils of this creature were originally found in China.
One cryptid theory is that the creature “Sasquatch” migrated across the Bering sea bridge into North America and hides out in mountainous regions. No living Gigantopithecus has ever been found and the known fossil records indicate that the creature lived one hundred thousand years ago.
“This is the find of a lifetime,” stated Lowman, “Only a climate event such as what was witnessed in Southern Alberta this year could wash this beast’s remains into the banks of the Bow River.”
The part that is not being talked about, or ignored, or even glossed over, is this:
DISCLAIMER: The above article is SATIRE. This article is provided as humour and any article, image or photograph held out as news is satirical and faux in nature and does not reflect the actions, statements or event of real persons. The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the authors of The Sage Satire and forum participants on this web site do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the The Sage News Network or the official policies of the The Sage News.
“Opinion – Satire – news without boundaries”
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005. I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films: OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou. |
The Chupacabra is a legendary cryptid orginating in Puerto Rico and Mexico. Thought to suck the blood out of livestock, this mystical creature has become known as the Latino Bigfoot.
Hot on the heels of the latest Chupacabra scandal comes something a bit tamer, the Hot Pink Fur Chupacabra. Created by Christina Ward of Milwaukee, this lovely plush toy is soft and promises to not scare your children or kill your goats.
Implications - I love the ridiculous color Christina Ward used to craft this lovely mythical creature. Who knew that a creature of most people's nightmares could be so adorable that you'd want to cuddle up next to it when you sleep at night. |
|Loch Ness Monster; Sasquatch and Ogopogo Sightings Videos
by Staff You've heard of Sasquatch (recent sightings in Minnesota?) and the Loch Ness monster right? well, Ogopogo is British Columbia's version of the Scottish lake monster. First: In Great Britain, RAF search for monster balloon-like object. ...
See all stories on this topic »
Saturday, September 03, 2011
New Dogfish Species Found in Taiwanese Fish Market Ya Like Dags?
A Taiwanese fish market has been center stage for the discovery of a new submarine cryptid, Squalus formosus! What differentiates this dogfish from its cousins? Only its mother or an icthyologist could tell but Ya Like Dags does a fine job explaining the particulars of taxonomy and the notability of a new fish's discovery. Meanwhile, a New ‘Demon’ Bat Species Is Found in Vietnam. It was named Beelzebub, or more specifically Murina beelzebub, in honor of its "diabolic" coloration.
Friday, September 02, 2011
Utah Campers Film Bigfoot?
CZ Museum On The Move Cryptomundo
International Cryptozoology Museum will soon be moving to a new, nearby location in Portland, Maine, that's six times as large as its current digs. Writes Loren Coleman: "The museum is going to be re-curated in a colorful retro style, midcentury modern, to take advantage of the space, highlight the color and look of the 1940s-1960s, give our visitors another level of exhibitory experience, and showcase the founder’s extensive collection of art and objects from that time period." He's putting out a call for donations to assist in the move, and if you give, you can get something in return: Cassie Sea Serpent To The Rescue.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
New bigfoot voice recording? Or an excercise in critical thinking?
Does the Dragon of Ishtar Gate indicate that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia had travelled to Central Africa by 800 BC and knew of the Mokele-Mbembe? Not likely. Was Ted Holiday correct in suggesting that the bas-relief dragons instead represented a local unknown animal like the Loch Ness monster? In a follow-up, Dale Drinnon reports on Still More Gargoyle Dragons and Guivre of France, Including Giant Eels This Time. Are the legs and wings seen in dragon depictions later add-ons that the illustrator "expected" should be there?
Holy Humanoids, Batman! Reports of Flying Beings Over South Texas San Antonio Current
In April of 2009 a woman standing in her driveway in San Antonio, Texas, happened to glance up and spot what appeared to be a huge, dark winged man gliding through the air. This case is not unique for the area, however. There have been other documented reports of similar winged humanoids throughout South Texas and further south into Mexico. Elsewhere a story of a Bigfoot-like creature known as “The Markham Monster” of Ontario, Canada, appears in Monsters don’t live in your closet. They live in your backyard.And the BBC reports on The mystery of Sri Lanka's 'grease devils', nocturnal prowlers who frequent rural areas and assault women at night. One was described as looking " like a gorilla, he was completely covered in black from top to toe. I couldn't see his face or hands."
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Bigfoot Boom in Banff? Calgary Sun
Todd Standing, spokesman for the Sylvanic Bigfoot group, believes that a Bigfoot colony is living near the border of Banff and Kootenay national park. He claims not only to have video and photo evidence of Bigfoot, but DNA proof as well. With claims like that it's not surprising that crews from “Finding Bigfoot,” the show that airs on Discovery’s Animal Planet channel, is hot on his Bigfoot trail. There's more on Standing in Bigfoot hunter in the spotlight. Carlton County in northern Minnesota is apparently also getting attention from the "Finding Bigfoot" program, for its reports of the tall, hairy, long-limbed creature: Northern MN 'Bigfoot' Sighting Draws TV Show. But an Expert discredits Kettle River brothers’ Bigfoot footprint find from a year ago in Minnesota. After viewing photographs of the footprint casts and comparing them to the bare foot of one of the two brothers who found the prints,
Idaho State University professor Jeff Meldrum said the prints look very human.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Early Bigfooter ED PATRICK: A New Account Surfaces; plus, 2003 Willow Creek INTERNATIONAL BIGFOOT SYMPOSIUM Photos
Not Exactly "FINDING BIGFOOT" in Willow Creek, *EDITORIAL EXCISION*, BFRO Expedition in Bluff Creek *EDITORIAL EXCISION*: Sasquatch Invades Our Life in General
WABC’s Mystery Animal, Not A Mystery Cryptomundo
What's that animal in the video trying to make its way through floodwaters in New York on August 28, 2011? Not everyone agrees that it's an opossum. It’s hard to guage size from the video. And from the Weird Weekend 2011, we have a video of the author of Extreme Expeditions, Adam Davies on the search for the orang pendek, which starts at about the 3:30 mark. Moving back across the Pacific, now that the documentary film is finished, you can get a Sneak Peek at ‘The Bigfoot Hunter: Still Searching’. Also from the Who Forted site, "idoubtit" posts about Hairless Freaks! Casting A Critical Eye Toward “Mystery Animals.” Her parade of repulsive remains that became postmortem media stars include the Montauk Monster, the Blue Hill Monster, the Minnesota Mystery Roadkill, and Prince Chupa.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Hurricanes, Cryptozoology, and Weird Animal News Cryptomundo
Loren Coleman wonders if hurricanes tend to flush out cryptids from their hiding places. Certainly hurricanes have caused ripple effects within the animal world. Will Irene cause mystery primates to wander? Will big cats pose a post-hurricane problem? Then there’s that business about a hurricane and Mothman sightings. Also, Will gators be found in the sewers? And from the Centre for Fortean Zoology's Weird Weekend 2011 a story about Phineas T. Barnum, Japanese sailors, and Ningyo: the ugly little mermaid.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Sasquatch claims draw TV show to Minnesota
Dale Drinnon replies to comment from his previous discussion of giants as described in the Bible and intuited from archaeological sites in the Middle East and in the New World. Elsewhere, another giant seems to be adding to tourism in North Carolina, as shown in Knobby Legend Lives on: History of Bigfoot Sightings Brings the Curious to Casar, with photo gallery. And the work of biologist Dr. John Bindernagel in the search for Bigfoot is highlighted inTaking Sasquatch From the Tabloids to the Science Journals. Meanwhile, Loren Coleman ponders the aftermath of the former Hurricane Irene, now downgraded to a Tropical Storm, with Hurricanes, Cryptozoology, and Weird Animal News. |
I've been reading Oliver Sacks' Seeing Voices, a book about Sign and the psychic world of the deaf. Sacks mulls the importance of questioning to the intellectual development of the child. He says:
The orgin of questioning, of an active and questing disposition in the mind, is not something that arises spontaneously, de novo, or directly from the impact of experience; it is stimulated, by communicative exchangeit requires dialogue, in particular the complex dialogue of mother and child.
(pp. 64-65, Sacks' emphases)
Questioning therefore arises from ethical relations and is an ethics before it is an ontology or a question of being. Before I wade into what might be a minefield I want to step back and ask a few questions.
I'm inclined to think that Sacks is correct about the origins of questioning. What does that inclination say about my worldview? What beliefs or ideas would be implied in an acceptance of this proposition? Should I have some sort of commitment to these ideas? I'm more interested in commitments to ideas than in beliefs, but it will be no simple matter to wrest the two apart.
Though I resist committing to either materialism or idealism, an inclination to believe what Sacks is saying may imply a materialism, or at the very least beliefs that are anthropological or perhaps humanist in a special sense that would entail a belief in something like a material existence of the human. Let me elaborate.
Maybe we ought to tear apart Sacks' formulation bit by bit. He emphasizes dialogue. We may well be concerned here with a commitment to a dialogism. Dialogism implies that there exists something like language or logos. Maybe language can be conveniently separated from logosafter all one can talk about language in a language that bears no traces of ever having been influenced by ancient Greek, much less ancient Greek philosophy, and in Europhone universities one can study language scientifically in near total ignorance of ancient Greek philosophy. Perhaps, however, dialogism sneaks the logos into the study of languageif it weren't already there as a cryptid of university study, visible through a hypothetic egalitariscopy that puts the studied in dialogue (oops, circularity) with the student. Should you decide between saying "language" and "logos" without being able to describe whatif what is the right pronounyou mean? I say "logos" to essay a meaning and suggest a vista. Perhaps the gesture continues a project of hypothetic egalitaroscopy which can be interrogated further at a later time. Let's keep our doubts about the logos committed to by dialogism and move forward.
Who speaks through the logos? Should we commit ourselves to throughness? Is this an instrumental or pragmatic worldview, or is there a specific mode of thinking the passage that we should want to explore?
Is there a question of people, or singular persons, communicating through the logos? On the surface we can't escape the conclusion that persons speak to each other in the complex dialogue Sacks is talking about. (Do they speak to each other before the logos is formed, while it is still in its infancy?) There is the mother, and there is the child, both of whom appear to represent persons. However, if we think in terms of a primary care giver, care givers or a relation of careperhaps to speak of a mothering relation would fall within a recognizable comfort zone, though we should really want to expand our horizons here on the matter of kinship relations and child rearingthen Sacks' "complex dialogue" could be thought of as not requiring persons. On the other side of the equation we would then have an infancy relation, or dialogic relations from a position of infancy, and we absolutely should question how an entity dialoguing from a position of infancy would be a person, and what it might mean to be a person in infancy. (We won't forget Daniel Stern's admonition that the fact that the infant has no speech does not free us to assume that the infant is not a person who inhabits an interpersonal world.)
In thinking about infancy and dialogue, we should also be thinking about a theme Sacks discusses at modest length: the intergenerational aspect of language, which is namely the fact (see what we're doing here) that language wouldn't be what we know it to be in the absence of relations across generations. The generation is a sociological concept that implies the existence of people. Whether people imply the existence of persons is a question we will put on hold; at this second it is enough to examine the claim that people exist.
Well, it's not so easy to disentangle the person from the intergenerational aspect of language because what we are talking about is language learning, and, from Sacks' point of view, the psychological, which is to say intellectual, development of the human being. So a belief in psyches and intellects is very much a part of Sacks' worldview, and their existence may be implied by our inclination to think he's correct about the origins of the question. Can we imagine learning or something as technically defined as scaffolding (étayage perhaps) or even infancy as the position of the learner without believing in something like psychological development? How much learning is not intergenerational? How much learning flows from younger generations to older generations? These are empirical questions, I reckon, and to seriously ask them means committing to the idea that entities like people exist, however dynamically we might wish to conceive of them. (You may have already jumped to the point where I question whether ethics implies a belief in the existence of people; I guess I'll come to that in some fashion.) Philosophically, we should want to know whether learning can take place in the absence of people, persons, or psyches. I've underscored an idea of ability, which is I think critical to Sacks' worldview, and perhaps ours. Since we are talking about psyches and intellects we may want to keep in mind the question, empirical or philosophical, of whether abilities can exist in disembodied forms. Does the idea of a questing dis-position imply a reality that may or may not be be disembodied?
Let's briefly conceive of people dynamically. They exist relationally, which allows us to sensibly speak of society, social groups, or kinship. Their potential (we assume they are dynamic) is not realized in instants, but over time, and it itself develops over time. They also have a capacity to shape relations, and perhaps their own relationalities. They can narrowly attune their relations. They can intensify them, increasing their frequency, passion and kinetic energy. They can make selected relations more complex, and so Sacks speaks meaningfully of a complex relation between mother and child. People change; in concert with others they exercise some influence over the changes they undergo. What kind of change is the logos? Whence its dynamism?
Logos, throughness, care, infancy, learning, people, psyches, dynamism, dispositions: I commit to exploring these realities, though uncertainties abound.
I thought questioning is an ethics because of its origin; however, what if questioning has more than one origin? Should we speak of its origination, or must there only be one origin, one orient, one East, one Sun, one rising (ὄρνυσθαι)? The possibility that questioning is not like the sunrise, that it emerges from more than one source, more Jamestown than Plymouth and more both than either, should perplex us. In one sense questioning emerges from a perplication of care, and if we abandon our perplexity in response to questioning, or view the abandonment of perplexity as a specific aim of questioning, we risk instrumentalizing not only our own abilities, but a relation that doesn't completely belong to us, or that to the extent that it is in fact within our power, was given to us in a spirit that would be violated were we to abandon perplexity, much less take on a disposition against perplexity. At this point it is really throughness that we should want to understand. How should we live throughness? |
Magical Mystery Tour
This has not been a good year so far and, in response to the stress, my wife and I have made plans for a number of little trips. This weekend with the boys was one of them and included no strips clubs and very little drinking! And only one seegar! We were good geezers.
Instead it was a mini-tour of some new England oddities, stuff that fascinates me! Here in still, movie and print is some of what we experienced.
In top photo, author and researcher Loren Colen in his museum. In bottom photo, I meet Big Foot, or a reasonable facsimile. Both photos copyright by Joseph A. Citro and used by permission.
This is what I wrote about the museum. It was a pleasure to speak with Loren Coleman who is a hell of a nice guy, besides researching a topic that is a huge interest of mine.
PORTLAND, MAINE – It may take you a little more than a tank of gas to drive from Western Massachusetts to the International Museum of Cryptozoology and back, but if you are interested in topics such as Big Foot, lake monsters and unknown cats, among other creatures of controversy, the expense is well worth it.
The museum has the ultimate interactive feature: its founder Loren Coleman, a world-renowned expert on cryptozoology, is on hand most of the time to personally answer questions from visitors.
“Cryptozoology” is the study of hidden animals and the proponents of the research point out that such creatures as the giant squid, mountain gorilla and okapi were once thought of as mythical. Coleman has used the coelacanth, the living “fossil fish” long though extinct until a live specimen was caught in 1938, as the symbol of his museum.
Coleman is no wide-eyed fanatic with an aluminum foil hat. He has a graduate degree in psychiatric social work and worked in that field for years. He has written numerous books and has regularly appeared on such television shows as “In search of …” and “Monsterquest,” among many others.
Originally, the prolific author and researcher had the museum in his home, but the demand to see it was so great he decided to move it to its present location in 2009. In turn, the response has been great enough that Coleman will be moving it around the corner from its present location at 661 Congress St. to larger quarters.
The museum is an amazingly dense collection of artifacts that range from original plaster castings of Big Foot footprints to photos of lake monsters and unknown sea creatures to items depicting efforts to defraud the public such as the a reproduction of a Big Foot mask used in 2008 to earn a group of grifters money for the sale of a fake Big Foot carcass.
Where else could you see a sample of hair from a yeti?
There is an amazing undated photo of a group of Marines with a large unidentified sea creature that will leave you wondering just what it was. A digital frame displays a slide show of lake monster photos, including the famous photo of “Champ,” the lake monster of Lake Champlain.
Another digital screen runs a loop of the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film of Big Foot striding through a California forest. Coleman dispute the more recent claims that the much-studied film was faked.
The recent report of a motorist in Connecticut killing a mountain lion – an animal long extinct from New England – is an example of a less exotic “cryptid.” Although there have been reports for years of people spotting mountain lions where they shouldn’t be, Coleman noted the official explanation was that this mountain lion shared DNA with big cats from South Dakota. Rather than say that mountain lions had returned to New England, wildlife officials claimed the animal had walked 1,500 miles.
Mountain lion generally have a range of 100 miles. To admit that mountain lions have returned would trigger their classification as an endangered species, Coleman said which could affect issues such as commercial development.
Coleman explained to Reminder Publications the museum attracts 5,000 visitors a year and that most are curious tourists who have heard about the attraction. About 30 percent are “cryptonuts,” while about 10 percent are skeptics who come to challenge Coleman.
That the museum has plenty of examples of attempted hoaxes is acknowledgment that Coleman applies great scrutiny to reports about unknown animals.
Ironically, in the age of digital technology that should make documenting sightings of unknown animals more plentiful, presenting fake photos and videos have become easier, Coleman said.
He also noted that just because a person’s cell phone has a camera doesn’t mean there would be more photos of Big Foot and big cats. Besides the fear and astonishment a sighting can inspire, it still takes time for a person to take a phone out of a pocket or purse.
But if you do get a good shot of the inexplicable, Coleman might be interested.
For more information on International Museum of Cryptozoology, go here. |
The mamlambo is a carnivorous cryptid from the Mzintlava River near Mount Ayliff that claimed up to 9 human victims in 1997 alone.
The grisly feeding habits of the mamlambo have earned it a certain amount of fear and hatred amongst the people of Mount Ayliff, and there have been several campaigns to eradicate the creatures. They are always solitary, dragging animals into the water and drowning them before eating their facial tissues and sucking out their blood and brain. One mamlambo took up residence beneath a bridge over the Mzintlava River and killed at least 7, possibly 9 people in this way. According to the regional mythology, mamlambos can be tamed and used as attack animals by those who are skilled enough to capture them.
In the tribal mythology of South Africa's Xhosa people, the mamlambo is a giant river snake which brings good fortune to he who owns it, and is used by witch doctors to get revenge on their enemies. The tribal stories describe mamlambo as a big snake with a large bulky head, while modern sightings describe it as being "half horse and half fish", having the head and neck of a horse and the body of a fish, with four short stumpy legs. They are said to be able to come out of the water, using that ability to capture prey that isn't close to the water's edge.
There are two major theories as to what this creature could be. The first is that it is an elasmosaur-like animal, the supporting evidence being it's long neck, it's aquatic habitat, and the fact that it is described as a "big snake" in the tribal lore. The second theory is that mamlambo is some kind of very primitive archaeocete, occupying a place in cetacean evolution before the legs turned into flippers and the neck disappeared, but after the typical cetacean tail had evolved -- which would explain the horse-like head, the short legs and the "fish-like" body. |
When I was a small child in the 1950’s my older brothers would watch the Saturday afternoon scary movies. They were actually quite fun. One that we watched was called The Abominable Snowman. The movie took place in snowy mountains. We lived in south Texas and at the time I knew very little about snow, or mountains for that matter. I had never heard of the Himalayas and had no idea what the word abominable meant. I did not like the movie much.
Years went by, actually many, until a movie came out in the 1970s called Sasquatch. Something about a big hairy creature in the northwest mountains of North America. In time, I learned he was also called Big Foot. I now realize many such creatures have been spotted all over the world. It was the 1980s that I realized the Abominable Snowman was in essence the Big Foot of the Himalayas. He was referred to as Yeti.
I wanted to place Yeti on the game board of Treasure Trove because it gave that part of the world a sense of mystery, something many young imaginative minds would find intriguing. Although players in the game are trying to capture treasure, it is fun to infuse a sense of adventure while traveling the world in search of fortune. Encountering strange creatures such as the Yeti are all over game board. The world we live in has so many fascinating things to experience.
Abominable: Discusting, unpleasant, disagreeable.
Yeti: Ape like creature said to live in the Himalayas. Also referred to as Snow Beast. One of the more well known cryptids throughout the world. English exploreers and mountain climbers trying to conquer Everest in the early 20th century heard stories of such a animal from the people of Nepal and Tibet. The legends of such a beast had been passed on for generations.
Abominable Snowman: In the early 20th century an English newspaper writer living in India misinterpretted some language from the people when they used the term “metoh,” to describe a Snowman or Snow Bear. The writer thought the word “metoh’ meant filthy, and hence he used “abominable” to decribe the Yeti. His article on the Abominable Snowman became quite popular in the western world. The inaccurately translated term abominable remains associated with the Himalayan Snow Beast. It captured the imagination of the world for well over half a century. By the 21st century fewer and fewer people were still believing in the Yeti, much less searching for him. It does make one wonder if at one time time there was any truth to the legends that big hairy creatures exist in the high altitudes of the snows of the Himalayas.
I love watching the TV show River Monsters. Jeremy Wade does a very good job of creating suspense as he ties together fish stories and legends from around the world with actual reality. Jeremy treks across the globe entertaining us with the facts behind the legendary stories of monstrous fish and most of the time proves that legends and myths often have a foundation to them. He almost always catches something to prove his position. His fish catches would individually be the catch of a lifetime for me. He makes it look almost routine, that is, I have gotten to where I expect him to catch something interesting and often quite large each episode. Even the episodes that sound like they would not be any big deal often turn out to worthwhile viewing.
One week I hesitated to watch because the opening dialogue spoke of his visiting Japan to catch a huge man eating catfish. That sounded a bit much to swallow(pardon the pun), and for a moment thought he was stretching the viewer’s interest when he shared how Japanese fishermen of old times actually believed gigantic catfishes caused earthquakes and tsunami’s. I shook my head as I laughed, but………….recent research reveals that catfish are more active and act differently shortly before an earthquake. I would never have known the difference in catfish activity, but I do not fish for a living. On the other hand, someone who fishes for them daily on a particular location such as the same large lake each day would be more discerning of catfish behavior. Japan’s fishermen of ancient times were obviously onto something. However, what does that have to do with a catfish large enough to swallow a man, especially in Japan which I would have envisioned as a place long ago as fished out of any huge fish. A place where if it swims, it can be eaten.
Jeremy then tied in the past stories of catfish coming out of the water to grab children. Yea,…….. right I thought. Well, here are some of the facts. As it turns out, Japan is home to several species of giant salamanders. You know, the slithery creatures we would catch as kids. Not just giant as bigger than the four inch wet lizard like animals I played with but gigantic as in four to six feet long, if not bigger. He actually caught a four footer. In ancient times if I had seen one of those coming out of the water at night I would have been scared too. I would actually be quite unsettled even today. Especially if I did not know what it was, and all I knew was that it came out of the water and had a head like a catfish. So the legend of catfish being able to swallow someone is loosely based on the reality that a child may have indeed been eaten by one of these he huge salamanders. It actually made for a very enlightening episode.
Even though his journey that week was to a populated area such as Japan, it is still his treks to remote destinations that draws my initial attention. Jeremy has had presentations on all the continents and of course what would a show like River Monsters be without the occasional visit to the Amazon. There is just something about the Amazon that intrigues, fascinates and scares us. And I think rightly so. I loved watching one episode where he seemed to be going up river more and more as the hour show progressed. As he got deeper into the jungle I anticipated his catch would eventually be even bigger, and perhaps nastier with intimidating teeth and jaws. As I said he always catches something worth looking at, but I’ll let you tune in to decide for yourself.
When I was deciding where to place treasures for South America on the game board of TreasureTrove I also wanted to place items of danger that one might encounter in their quest for lost fabled wealth. Who knows in a journey deep into the wilderness outback one might encounter an exotic animal, a creature of huge dimensions, or even a cryptid. I choose to place Amazon Beast in South America because I think it captures the imagination of all of us, especially a child. By the way Amazon Beast was on my game board long before I had ever heard of a show called River Monsters.
Cryptid is a term I was not familiar with until recently and that is because it is a word that has was not in existence until very recently. The word was coined in the 1980’s by John Wall who I believe derived the word from cryptozoology. The Greek word kriptos means hidden. “Hidden,” + zoology together form the study of hidden animals, thus cryptozoology. I like the way it sounds and I like the word cryptid. It has that catchy mysterious sound.
Cryptozoologists study and often travel the world in search of animals whose existence has not been proven physically but exist in folklore, myths, and legends. Animals whose classification does not seem to fit within mainstream biological texts. Many scientists are skeptical of cryptozoology believing it relies too heavily on anecdotal information, doubtful actual eyewitness accounts, and not enough true scientific methodology in their investigate research efforts. Yet, a lot of people including myself find it quite interesting to hear about strange and exotic animals such as Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster. I love watching TV shows such as Monster Quest. There was a TV show in the late 1970’s that I recall watching named “In Search Of”‘ that featured unusual animals.
I know very little about the origins of cryptozoology. The little research I did on the subject points to the efforts of a small group of zoologists and paleontologists starting in the 1950’s compiling lists of exotic creatures. They reviewed the writings of previous authors who many years before them had tried to chronicle tales of strange and hard to find animals. Their efforts resulted in the term cryptozoolgy coming into use and in 1982 the International Society of Cryptozoology(ISC) was founded in Washington D.C. The ISC evaluated unverified animals, that is, animals that have been reported as being sighted but not scientifically proven to exist. Due to financial problems the ISC ended in 1998, but the interest in cryptids has continued as evidenced by the popularity of shows such as Monster Quest.
I included a number of crypids on the board game of Treasure Trove because in the process of traveling the world in search of treasure it is fun to encounter mysterious creatures. As you know by now all these photos posted here have been proven to be hoaxes. In the meantime happy trails to you on your life’s journey.
To learn more about the game go to www.TreasureTroveGame.com
Let the hunt begin. I must admit the prospect of spotting a legendary animal of the wild is intriguing, especially one with a cool name like Ogopogo. When European explorers began entering Canada’s western lands in the early 1800’s, the native Indians spoke of a monster in a lake. They called the sea creature Naitaka. Today the large body of deep fresh water is called Lake Okanagan in British Colombia. The first documented sightings of the lake monster by European colonists was in the 1870’s. I’m not sure who started it or when the name Ogopogo began but it seems to be here to stay.
When playing Treasure Trove participants travel the world in search for fabled treasure such as Blackbeard’s Booty or Capt. Kidd’s treasure chest. In their journey they also are in the hunt for the earth’s strange and exotic animals such as the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. All of us have heard of Scotland’s “Nessie,” but that is actually a recent phenomena that started in the early 20th century. On the other hand, Ogopogo had been part of the Indian legend a long time before white people entered the area.
In the late 1980’s when I was looking for interesting monsters to place on the game board I had to spend hours searching library books. I ran across Ogopogo which I had never heard of. Twenty years later I happened to be watching a Monster Quest episode on TV that covered Ogopogo. I enjoyed inviting my wife to join me in watching the hunt for the mythical Ogopogo. They speculated the creature to be a large lake sturgeon or perhaps a primitive serpentine whale. In the late 1970’s a TV show called In Search Of aired an episode on Ogopogo that I do not recall seeing, although I remember the series.
In 1990, the Canadian government issued a postage stamp with an artist’s depiction of legendary Ogopogo. I would love to travel to British Colombia and try to spot the creature but I would be plenty happy to just enjoy the scenery around the beautiful lake.
To learn more about the game go to www.TreasureTroveGame.com |
Recently I wrote a two-part story on Examiner about a place here in Utah called Skinwalker Ranch. You can read the first part here and the second part here. The reported facts surrounding the story of Skinwalker Ranch is admittedly extremely bizarre. I was not able to find any conclusive evidence that the Ute Tribe has a directive for members to avoid the land due to some curse from the Navajos, so I did not focus too much on that aspect of the story. I also was not able to find any information about why the Navajos would place such a curse on another tribe.
Perhaps most strange to me is the involvement of scientists in the case, at the bidding of a billionaire who has great interest in space tourism and colonization. The more I dig into Skinwalker Ranch the more unbelievable the whole thing becomes. It is very rare indeed that anyone claims poltergeist activity, cryptid sightings, and extraterrestrial sightings all in the same area, especially in a short amount of time. So there are some who think the Chupacabra is an alien, but this is on a whole other plane...
What do I think of Skinwalker Ranch? Is it an elaborate hoax or is something else going on? A part of me always remains skeptical about paranormal events, not because I don't believe in them but because there are so many hoaxes out there. The ol' Bigfoot-in-the-freezer has been about the most enraging -- and stupid -- hoaxes of recent history. I know of websites that proudly declare things like 5,000 people in southern Belgium saw an alien craft land and aliens come out of it or other completely ridiculous things. Sadly, there are those who believe anything presented to them, and there are those who prey on that.
So did any of those reported events at Skinwalker Ranch actually happen? I have no idea, but the stuff seems almost too strange to have been made up. Still, a part of me remains healthfully skeptical. |
Written by: Rudy Balli, Mark Stephens
Directed by: Joe Castro
Katsy Joiner as Maria Esperanza
Stan McKinney as George Armistad
J.T. Trevino as Pete Cortez
Chris Doughton as Daniel Webster
Paul Podraza as Jackson
I've spoken many times before about the all-nighter movie nights my friends and I used to have back in high school, as I'm sure many of you did or do. We'd hit the local video store, the great Premiere Video (all hail!), and partake of the 5 for 5 for 5 (movies, dollars, nights) deal. Then it was off to the grocery store for three-liter bottles of generic Mountain Dew, doughnuts, pork rinds, and other things that your doctor will tell you never to consume an entire container of in one sitting if you want to make it past 30 without a heart attack. Ah, the days when I could make it past midnight without an energy drink.
Anyway, one night, despite our better judgment, we rented tonight's flick. Why against our better judgment, you ask? Well, it's a Troma movie. More specifically, it's distributed by Troma, which was the deciding factor in letting it through the gate. While I love the idea behind Troma in theory, in practice I find almost all of their studio output to be excruciating exercises in trying too hard. Except for Tromeo and Juliet, which is one of the greatest splatter comedies of all time, right up there with Peter Jackson's early work, and Terror Firmer, which isn't nearly as good as Tromeo but has a lot going for it. However, I love those movies mostly because of their comedic aspects (and one scene at the end of Terror Firmer that is intensely upsetting). Imagine my surprise when a movie featuring the Troma logo actually freaked me out.
Now, I know, I know. I can hear all the groans out there from those of you who have seen this movie. That's it, you're saying. Rags has finally flipped his shit. But there's something about grainy, out-of-focus, artifacted video footage that gets under my skin. The lack of fidelity allows the viewer's brain to fill in so many more gaps than a crisp, clean digital image does. It's the closest visual equivalent to reading a book, really. It engages the viewer in a way that no other film style can. The first ten or fifteen minutes of Legend of the Chupacabra is some brilliantly effective usage of this technique, showcasing how a talented filmmaker can make some really effective effects-driven horror on a budget. Indeed, the movie is like a feature-length pilot for the TV show Lost Tapes, which is my favorite cryptid show ever. Well, at least it's like that for the first fifteen minutes or so. Then things kinda fall apart.
After a really cool opening sequence shot mostly at a primate rescue preserve, we meet the meat. Maria Esperanza is a student of cryptozoology at the University of Rio Grande. She and her classmates/cameramen Pete Cortez and Daniel Webster are working on a documentary for their doctoral theses. Maria's uncle was murdered under mysterious circumstances recently, in the same area near the Texas/Mexico border where a rash of animal mutilations has escalated to the point where people's pets have been disappearing from their yards. Some of the more superstitious locals are saying it's the work of el chupacabra, and that's good enough for Maria and company, so off they go to the ranch of Mr. Jackson.
They're almost immediately confronted by the local sheriff, who wants them gone. Everyone saw them come through town with their cameras and their fancy city folk book learnin', and doesn't want them encouraging people to believe a monster is responsible for the killings. Of course, a run-in with the local curandera, who conveniently happened to be hanging out at the ranch, changes everyone's tune very quickly. This is a great bit of editing where we cut back and forth between one camera catching the escalating confrontation between Maria and the sheriff, and one camera following the curandera around the barn yard, muttering to herself and shaking magic charms. The tension of the argument keeps ramping up and up and it cues the viewer in to the fact that something bad is going to happen. You're led to expect that it's going to be someone getting arrested or shot, but the series of jumps back to the eerily quiet barn make it clear that something isn't quite right.
Then FUCKING BLAM! Chupacabra attack! Of course, the way the thing jumps out from behind a hay bale is more reminiscent of a local haunted house gag than any of the great jump scares of horror cinema, but the build-up is so effective that it made me jump out of my damn seat the first time we saw it. Even now I sort of brace myself for it even though I know it's coming.
Unfortunately, this is where the movie pretty much loses all that momentum it built up.
Knowing they were walking into a potentially life-threatening situation, Maria enlisted the aid of George “Army” Armistad, an ex-Marine and current gun-for-hire, to come along and protect them from any monsters they might encounter. After the chupacabra kills a deputy and runs off into the night, the situation immediately switches from student film to war zone and Army takes charge. Most of the acting in the movie is pretty bad, but this guy is definitely the worst. When he's calm and speaking in a normal voice, he's actually not terrible, but since most of the movie requires him to be Rambo Caricature Man turned up to 11, it's pretty hard to watch.
Switching from a spooky crypto-documentary to a straight-up monster attack movie also has the result of losing all that great atmosphere and ability to hide the shortcomings of your low budget effects. Now we just get a series of set pieces where we're given way too good a look at the well-designed but obviously rubbery chupacabra waggling its tongue at the camera and killing people. The gore is plentiful and well-done, and the haunting, minimalist synth score combined with the blasted landscape of the American Southwest shot mostly at night or at least very low daylight manage to hang on to enough of the atmosphere built up at the beginning of the movie to generate some tension in the moments leading up to the monster scenes. Of course, then you see the lumpy, ill-fitting creature suit and the woeful digital eye-glow effect and you're snapped right back to reality.
Being a mockumentary, the action is also interrupted periodically by talking heads ranging from Catholic officials to paleontologists, discussing what they think the chupacabra could be. The only one of them who has any damn sense, shockingly, is the priest. He states that people who say it's a devil are silly, that it's just an animal of some kind. The paleontologist is the worst. He shoots himself in the foot right off the bat by saying that theropod dinosaurs lived in the middle-Triassic (they first appeared in the late Triassic period, and T-Rex most certainly was not around then, as this buffoon states). Really, I should be saying, the script shoots itself in the foot. I'm sure this was just one of the director's friends who was given a bit part, and knew nothing about dinosaurs. This painful sequence is accompanied by a really terrible drawing that tries to make the chupacabra somewhat follow the body plan of a theropod, even though none of the creatures we actually see look anything like that.
Yes, I said creatures. The main suit, which features in most of the movie and gets hacked up in the ridiculous tacked-on autopsy at the end (this scene makes me almost physically angry because it's so goddamn stupid and the ad-libbed sounding dialogue makes me want to punch everyone involved in the face, even more so than the stupid dinosaur bullshit, because it absolutely ruins any last goodwill that great first reel built up) is the primary beast, but we also get a look at some weird simian thing during the pre-credits sequence, and a strange sort of chicken-chupacabra attacks some more farmers at the end.
Speaking of the pre-credits sequence, it decisively answers the question of the chupacabra's origins before it's even asked. It clearly shows the thing being created in a lab, where it kills a guard and escapes into the wild. So why bother having all the talking heads debating its origins if you've already shown them to the audience? That kind of thing should be used to make your viewers use their imagination and engage with the story instead of ask whey the action is always being interrupted by all these people they already know are wrong. I'd rather not know what the thing is at all, honestly. Throw some of that debate in there to get a conversation going with your audience and let that be the end of it. Leave it unresolved, so everyone can come up with their own ideas. It was also a mistake to include all that stuff about how the legend of the chupacabra has been around for centuries, because that just makes it seem like the government is blowing tax dollars creating actual beings based on mythological creatures just so they can set them loose and mess with people. Which...dammit, that's a much better story. You read it here first, folks, that idea is mine!
Ok, I gotta go write my million dollar screenplay. In the mean time, hit the links below and check out the research materials my fellow seekers of the unknown have compiled.
The Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle
The Terrible Claw Reviews:
Chariots of the Gods
Chariots of the Gods |
Some More Yeti Questions - For some reason we had a horde
of questions on the Yeti (also known as the Abominable Snowman
of the Himalayas) this month from different people, so I'm just
going to go through them one by one:
there any evidence that the yeti exists? If so, what is it?
on what you call evidence. There have been any number of cases
were people claimed they saw a Yeti or found foot prints. Were
they telling the truth? If they were telling the truth, did they
think they saw a Yeti, but really saw some other creature and
mistook it for a Yeti? In the case of footprints, were they fake?
Or were they footprints of some other animal that had been misshapen
by the melting effect of the sun?
the problems with "evidence." The only really uncontestable evidence
would be a dead, or even better, a live Yeti that could be examined
by experts. A hair sample might do if it could be used to establish,
by checking the DNA, that the creature was not one known to science
and a member of the primate family.
that were supposed to belong to the Yeti have been analyzed for
DNA in the past. They are usually were identified as belonging
to either wild goats or bears.
the Yeti and Bigfoot related?
we can't prove the existence of the either the Bigfoot or the
Yeti it is really hard to say if they are related. People who
believe in the existence of these creatures seem to think they
are primates (the same family of animals as gorillas, chimps and
humans). If they are right, then they would be related. If anybody
ever finds DNA from these creatures, it could be used to determine
if they were not just related, but actually the same species.
there been any attacks on humans?
is a report of a Sherpa girl who was tending her yaks and said
she was surprised by a large ape-like creature with black and
brown hair. It started to drag her off, but seemed to be startled
by her screams and let her go. It then savagely killed two of
her yaks. She escaped with her life and the incident was reported
to the police, who found footprints.
was the yeti first seen?
of such creatures go back centuries and are part of the legends
of the local peoples. The first Westerner to see a Yeti was probably
the Greek photographer, N. A. Tombazi. During an expedition in
1925 he was shown a creature moving across the snow in the distance
and told it was a Yeti.
you think a polar bear on its hind legs can be mistaken for a
bears do not live in the Himalaya Mountains, the supposed range
of the Yeti, it seems unlikely. However, a number of people think
either the rareTibetan blue bear or the endangered Himalayan Brown
Bear may sometimes be misidentified as Yetis. According to mountaineer
Reinhold Messner he had an encounter with a Yeti that turned out
to be a Himalayan Brown Bear that was upright on his rear legs.
Mythic Snake - What is a "nãga"? - Jacob
are several meanings to the word, but the one I think you are
interested in comes from Asian cultures. There "nãga" refers
to a snake, usually a hooded one, like a cobra. Attached to the
name is not only living snakes, however, but a large number of
stories from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions about mythical
traditions the nãga is often pictured as a huge snake with
both serpent and human traits. Often the nãga can shape-shift
from one form to another and are many times depicted in drawings
with a human upper half and a snake lower half (much like the
traditional image of a mermaid with a human upper half and a fish
the snakes in many western myths which almost always given evil
roles, the n?ga of the east is more often pictured as good or
at least neutral. They are associated with water and often seen
as guardians of springs, wells and rivers. They can also bring
rain (which is extremely important as this grows crops to feed
people). Their control over water, however, also has negative
aspects and the nãga can bring drought and floods if provoked
by human disrespect for the environment. Sometimes they are also
the guardians of treasure.
version of the dragon is in many ways a type of nãga. Both
have long sinuous bodies and are associated with water and treasure.
along the Mekong River on certain days mysterious red fireballs
appear from the river and rise rapidly into the nighttime sky.
The number of fireballs varies, sometimes there are only a few
dozen and on other occasions a few thousand. According to local
tradition these fireballs are caused by the nãga under
the river shooting off fireworks to celebrate the end of the rainy
period in October. The spectacle has been greatly promoted by
the government in recent years and many towns hold festivals.
There is no good scientific explanation for this phenomenon as
yet, though some people think it might be related to gases rising
from the water. A 2002 television program argued that the fireballs
were tracers from gunshots on the other side of the river, but
this was met with furious protests from local villagers who prefer
the Nãga explanation.
appear in the great Sanskrit epic Mahabharata from India, were
they take a more negative role. In the story the sage Kasyapa
has two wives, Kadru and Vinata. Kadru's children are the nãga,
while Vinata's children are the sun god and the bird, or eagle,
god, Garuda. Garuda becomes the sworn enemy of the nãga
and devours them for food. Often an amulet of Garuda is worn by
people to guard against snake bites.
of nãga are often carved into temples or as a part of other
statuary. In addition to the half-human form they are often shown
as snakes with multiple heads. Often the heads will form a fan-shape
over a person or object as a sign of protection.
popular culture the nãga occasionally pop up in some form
in books or games. The pet snake of Voldemort, from the Harry
Potter series of books, is named Nagini which is the female version
of nãga. Also in the World of Warcraft game there is a
race of aquatic snake-people called Naga.
Biggest Bomb - Is there anything more powerful than an
H-bomb? What would the effects of an H-bomb be on a metropolitan
area such as New York? - Jacobn
H-Bomb ever detonated in history was the Tsar Bomba tested
by the Soviet Union on October 30, 1961. It exploded with a force
equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT. In theory the bomb's design
could have yielded as much as 100 megatons, but was scaled down
to limit the fallout. Even as it was the detonation was so powerful
that the pilot of the plane that dropped the bomb received a fatal
dose of radiation despite being 28 miles away.
such power is impressive, a bomb that large is not really a useful
military weapon. Because of its size it required a special aircraft
to deliver it and it could not be put on top of inter-continental
ballistic missile (ICBM). From a military point of view it made
more sense to build many smaller nuclear weapons (perhaps 1 megaton
or less). If deployed over a large area they could be much more
effective than the one big Tsar Bomba.
our mini-documentary on Tsar Bomba
So what would happen
to New York if it were hit by a standard one megaton H-Bomb that
might be delivered by an ICBM? Usually such warheads were designed
to detonate in the air above the target to get the most bang-for-the-buck.
A device exploding 8,000 feet above the ground would create a
flash of heat that would set most combustible materials on fire
up to a distance of 8.5 miles and most wood ablaze to a distance
of over four miles. If you set the bomb off directly over the
Empire State Building, Central Park along with any wooden structures
in lower Manhattan would be in flames. A blindingly bright fireball
would form and anybody seeing it out to a distance of 50 miles
(the distance to West Point, New York) would be blinded either
temporarily or permanently. Anybody with skin exposed to the flash
would suffer extreme burns if they were within about six miles
(this includes most of Manhattan along with parts of New Jersey
and Staten Island.
would be followed by a shock wave traveling outward at the speed
of sound. This would level all buildings, including skyscrapers,
within a distance of a little more than a mile. This would be
an area the width of the island and from Central Park down to
about Greenwich Village. Wooden buildings would be demolished
over most of the island. Between the flash, blast wave and following
firestorm it is estimated that everybody within a mile and a half
of the Empire State Building would be killed. On the rest of Manhattan
and much of the surrounding area within about 5 miles of ground
zero the casualty rate would be around 50 percent. Interestingly
enough the fallout from an air detonation would be a much smaller
factor that the heat and the blast as much of the radioactive
dust would decay before falling to the ground. (Note that a bomb
produced by terrorists would not nearly be as powerful, but might
have a greater fallout as it would be exploded close to the ground).
there a weapon more powerful than an H-Bomb? In theory an anti-matter
bomb would be enormously more potent. While an H-Bomb converts
matter to energy with an efficiency of less than one percent,
anti-matter coming in contact with matter would turn into energy
with 100 percent efficiency. However, anti-matter isn't easy to
obtain. In Dan Brown's bestselling book Angels & Demons
he suggests anti-matter is stolen from CERN, the European Nuclear
Research Center, to create a bomb. However, if all the anti-matter
produced by CERN in the last 30 years was preserved and brought
together it would only amount to about to 10 billionths of a gram
and would have the power of a kitchen match.
are other agencies with plans to produce anti-matter in larger
volumes (like NASA - it would make a great fuel for a spaceship
since it is a lot of potential energy in a small package) but
the cost of using it to make a bomb would still be far more than
building a regular nuclear bomb of the same power. Also for military
purposes it is important to have a weapon that can be handled
safely and only goes off when you want it too. Since anti-matter
will explode whenever it contacts matter, storing it is difficult
and should the storage mechanism ever break down a large explosion
would result. Even so, the Air Force has expressed some interest
in anti-matter, not in order to build an anti-matter bomb itself,
but to use anti-matter as a trigger for a regular nuclear bomb.
Question - Why can aluminum dust burn but a block of aluminum
will not? - John
seem strange that if I put a match to a small pile of aluminum
powder I can get an energetic fire, (in fact powdered aluminum
is used in rocket fuel and fireworks) but if that same aluminum
is in the form of a block I can hold a match to it all day without
anything much happening. Why?
perhaps it's not quite as strange as we might think. Anybody who
has ever attempted to light a camp fire knows that despite wood
being very burnable, it is almost impossible to take a large branch,
stick a match to it, and get it to burn. However if you take your
knife out and carve tiny pieces off the branch until you have
a little pile of shavings, you can put a match to it and it will
start burning without any problem.
in both the case of aluminum and the wood is that a fire needs
three things to burn: Heat, Fuel and Oxygen. Our match provides
the heat and the wood or aluminum is the fuel. The missing ingredient
is an adequate amount of oxygen.
air is about 20% oxygen. The problem is that the oxygen can only
participate in the burning if enough of it can get close enough
to the fuel to react with it. It needs a large surface area, in
comparison to the volume, to make that contact. Let's look at
of aluminum one inch square has a volume of 1 cubic inch. (1x1x1).
The surface area follows the formula of 6L^2 where L is the length
of any one side. So the surface area of the one inch cube is 6
we break up our cube into smaller cubes each with the sides a
tenth of an inch long. This gives us 10x10x10 = 1000 cubes which
still have the same volume of the original cube (1 cubic inch).
Each of the smaller cubes would have a surface area of 0.06 inches.
If we take this figure a multiple it by the number of small cubes
we have we get 60 square inches. So if the aluminum cube is in
one piece it has a surface area of just 6 square inches. If we
break it up into a 1000 pieces, the surface area jumps to 60 square
inches, though the volume has not changed one bit. The
more surface area that is available, the better contact the aluminum
has with oxygen in the air and the better it will burn.
the particles in powdered aluminum are much smaller than one tenth
of an inch the surface area of one cubic inch of the stuff is
enormous compared to the original solid cube and it burns extremely
course, the same thing is true of wood. Take a one inch square
block of wood and it is very difficult to get it to burn with
a match. Take that same block and turn it into sawdust and it
can be lit with a match quite readily. Take that same saw dust,
put it into the air as a cloud, so that all sides of particles
have the maximum amount of contact with the oxygen in the air
and it will actually explode.
once in a while you hear about a grain silo exploding. Grain by
itself will burn well, but is not explosive. When the grain is
poured into a silo, and a cloud of grain dust fills the air then
even a small spark can trigger a massive explosion.
lesson here is that the smaller the size of the particles, the
more readily anything, aluminum, wood or even coffee creamer,
burns. Check out what happened when Mythbusters took some
powered creamer, blew it up into the air to make a cloud, then
Family - Please, can you tell me more about mermaids? I've
become fascinated with them, especially about sightings of mermaids.
Thanks! -Mermaid lover
of creatures with a top half that looks like a woman and the bottom
half the looks like a fish, go back for thousands of years. Perhaps
they first appear around 1000 BC when the Assyrian goddess Atargatis,
upset after a love affair gone bad, changes herself into a fish/woman
and takes up residence in a local lake. Later stories include
the Greek legend of Thessalonike, sister of Alexander the Great,
who was turned into a mermaid when she died. Whenever she met
a ship she would ask, "Is King Alexander alive?" A sailor with
any sense of personal safety knew the right answer was "He lives
and reigns and conquers the world" because any other reply would
send the mermaid into an rage provoking a storm that would threaten
Daryl Hannah portrayed an exceptionally beautiful mermaid
in the 1984 movie Splash.
were often portrayed as extremely beautiful, but troublesome beings.
They would often use their female charms, particularly their voices,
to lure sailors off a safe course and onto a rocky reef. A mermaid
might also try to tempt a sailor to lean over the side of his
ship were she could grab him, pull him underwater and drown him.
In one tale a Scottish Lord hears a woman in the lake. He runs
to her rescue, but is stopped by a servant who warns she is a
mermaid. The mermaid then declares to the nobleman that she would
have seized him and drowned him if the servant had not intervened.
they didn't go out of their way to cause problems, mermaids were
still considered worrying and just seeing one was a bad omen.
Observing a mermaid might be a warning that a bad storm was on
in some mermaid tales the creatures turn out to be good. Probably
the most famous mermaid story is Hans Christian Andersen's 1836
work The Little Mermaid which is responsible for much of
the modern lure surrounding the creatures. In the story a pretty,
young mermaid spies a human prince aboard a ship, rescues him
when he nearly drowns and gives up her life in the sea to become
human in an attempt to gain his love. This story was interpreted
into an extremely successful film by Disney in 1989.
itself comes from the old English word for sea, mere, and
woman, maid. There is an equivalent term for a male creature,
merman. The mermen of legend, however, are said to have
little interest in humans and are quite ugly.
the years there have been many reports of the sighting of mermaids.
In 1614, English explorer John Smith wrote that he saw a mermaid
in the Caribbean. "Her long green hair imparted to her an original
character by no means unattractive." He also said he'd "begun
to experience the first effects of love," before the creature
dove and revealed the fishy parts of her anatomy.
also reported seeing mermaids off the Dominican Republic in 1493.
He was less impressed than Smith writing that he saw some "female
forms" that "rose high out of the sea, but were not as beautiful
as they are represented."
Capt. Richard Whitbourne also claimed he saw a mermaid in Newfoundland's
St. James harbor.
these sailors seeing? One theory has it that they may have observed
some kind of aquatic animal. One possibility in warmer climates
would be the manatee (sometimes referred to as a "Sea Cow"). These
creatures live along the coast and in rivers in the equatorial
regions like Florida, South America and West Africa. They measure
up to twelve feet long, weight up to 3,000 pounds and dine on
aquatic plants. They are air breathing mammals adapted to the
water and move about using flippers and a large tail fin.
would think it would take a very lonely sailor to mistake one
of these creatures for a beautiful woman, but manatee expert James
Powell, a biologist with the Wildlife Trust in St. Petersburg,
has observed "there have been times when they come up out of the
water and the light has been such that they did look like the
head of a person." To someone who had been indoctrinated with
tales of mermaids, at a distance the mistake might not be that
hard to make. "If you were expecting to see a mermaid," he notes,
"you'd see this back and tail come up with no dorsal fin" just
like in the stories.
that people now recognize mermaids as fully fictional creatures
may explain why they are rarely reported these days. People today
expect to see manatees, not the alluring half women/half fish
people that lonely sailors longed for in the past. Still, an occasional
report does surface. The Israeli town of Kiryat Yam had several
reports of a mermaid along its beach in 2009 and posted a one
million dollar reward for to the first person to photograph the
creature. One witness, Shlomo Cohen, said, "I was with friends
when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way.
At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we
approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were
all in shock because we saw she had a tail."
ugly fake mermaid.
Despite the publicity
generated by the sightings, so far the reward has remained unclaimed,
so perhaps this is a simple tourist scam. Indeed, many reports
of mermaids in the past have been hoaxes. The most famous was
the "FeeJee Mermaid" first displayed to the public by showman
P.T. Barnum in the 1840's. The creature, which was small and ugly,
was simply faked by stitching together the tail of a fish with
the torso of a monkey. More recent examples of mermaid hoaxes
came after the tragic Tsunami that hit in December of 2004. People
posted photographs on the internet reportedly showing these creatures
washed ashore. It is more likely, however, that the pictures were
simply the work of a jokester.
Cruelest Pirate of Them All - I've recently became interested
in piracy. Can you tell me who the cruelest pirate was? - Anonymous.
we try an answer who was the cruelest pirate, maybe we should
explore why pirates seem to be associated with being barbarous
at all. Yes, they were "bad guys" clearly breaking the laws of
their time, but did they needlessly inflict pain and suffering?
Were they really any crueler than the "good guys?"
is that many seamen became pirates often to escape the difficult
conditions on other ships. The British Navy was perhaps one of
the fiercest opponents of the pirates during the Golden Age of
Piracy (1500AD to 1750AD) and life on a British Naval ship was
no picnic. The captain had absolute power on the vessel and could
have his men whipped and beaten at his whim. Most regular sailors
in the British Navy got only half as much as was paid for seamen
on a merchant ship. Of the money they did get, much of was taken
away in deductions to pay for the ship's chaplain and/or doctor.
Oh, and by the way, the Navy withheld your pay for six months
to keep you from deserting the ship.
so low and bad conditions you might wonder why anybody would want
to join the British Navy at all. Well, many people didn't. To
fill out their ranks ships would send ashore a "press gang" that
would, capture men and force them back to the vessel where they
would be working away from their families and homes for years
at a time. You didn't even need to be a British citizen to have
this done to you and the practice of pressing American sailors
into service on British Naval ships was one of the causes of the
War of 1812.
compare this to conditions on pirate ships. Almost always everyone
on a pirate ship was a volunteer. The ships were usually democracies
and the crew would elect the captain and the quartermaster who
would then appoint the rest of the officers. The pirates would
often have a code of conduct and rules agreed to by the crew before
the voyage started. The system also had a set of checks and balances
to make sure that nobody had too much power. The Captain was often
in charge in battle, but at other times the Quartermaster was
in charge or could at least veto the Captain's orders.
was better on pirate ships too. Whatever loot was captured was
split equally among the crew with responsible officers getting
a double share. Some of the money was set aside in a primitive
type of insurance policy to make sure that crew members that lost
a limb or eye in battle would get compensated.
were also very equanimous accepting people on the crew from many
nationalities and races. Often almost half of pirate crews were
often made up from escaped slaves.
did pirates get the reputations a being cruel even to one another?
Well, often this was a result of public relations. The pirates
wanted everybody to think they were tough so that no ship's crew
would challenge them in battle. Some of them used the rule "No
quarter after first blood" which meant if a ship put up a fight
instead of surrendering immediately, the pirates would show no
mercy when they won.
and books often pictures pirates as loving a good fight, but the
truth is they much preferred it if the ship simply surrendered
to them. If it did, the crew and passengers were usually treated
well and not killed. However wealthy passengers might find themselves
guests of the pirates until a ransom was paid. Any pirate that
was foolish enough to have a policy of not taking any prisoners
alive would find himself in constant battles as the crews of the
merchant ships would then be forced to fight to the bitter end.
when people think of cruel pirates the name Blackbeard comes to
mind. Blackbeard, whose real name is thought to be Edward Teach,
was well-known pirate that roamed the coast of the Americas in
the early 18th century. Blackbeard, who was tall and powerfully
built, cultivated a fearsome image to scare his enemies. Many
strange stories grew up about Blackbeard after his death, but
there is no record that he ever mistreated or murdered his captives.
Blackbeard, like almost all pirate Captains, was elected by his
there were a few pirates that did act in a cruel manner toward
their prisoners. One name stands out among these and that's Roche
Braziliano. We are not sure of Braziliano's real name and his
nickname is translated as "Rock the Brazilian," though Braziliano
was actually Dutch. He apparently acquired his name after being
exiled to Brazil for an extended length of time.
had numerous conflicts with the Spanish and hated them. There
are stories of Braziliano taking Spanish prisoners, tying them
to a spit set between two fires and roasting alive them like they
were pigs. Braziliano's cruelty didn't stop there, however. He
was a drunkard and would wander the streets of Port Royal, a notorious
pirate haven, assaulting people and threatening them if they refused
to have a drink with him.
stories are true then indeed Braziliano certainly ranks up there
as one of the cruelest pirates of all time.
Fate of the Young Duchess - I have recently been researching
the Romanov family out of curiosity. I have heard the legends
about Anastasia or one of the other children surviving. I was
wondering if it was likely that a Romanov child really did escape
the firing squad. Thank you! - Kelsey
at age five in 1906.
to Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, youngest daughter of the
last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, was a mystery through much of
the 20th century. Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his throne
on March 15, 1917 after a series of governing missteps threw the
country into chaos. Nicholas' family - his wife Alexandra, daughters
Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia and son Tsarevich along with several
personal servants - was moved for safety by the provisional government
to a residence in the Ural mountains. In October of 1917 the Bolsheviks
seized power and imprisoned the family over several months in
different locations. In April of 1918 they were moved to a house
in the city of Yekaterinburg. At 2 AM on July 17, they were awoken
and told to get their things as they were being moved to a new
location. The family and servants were taken to the building's
basement, where the Bolsheviks, fearing that the White Army (which
was loyal to the throne) would soon take the city, had them executed
by gunfire and bayonets.
had just turned 17 at the time. She was by all accounts a vivacious
and energetic girl with blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair.
Growing up she was given to pranks and misbehavior and according
to one source "undoubtedly held the record for punishable deeds
in her family, for in naughtiness she was a true genius." During
World War I she was too young to serve as a nurse, but with her
sister Maria visited the nearby military hospital and played games
of checkers and billiards with the injured to lift their spirits.
One soldier who knew her noted that she had a "laugh like a squirrel."
clear how the rumor that Anastasia and possibly other members
of the family, survived the execution started, but it may have
been a result of the Bolsheviks trying to cover up the murders.
Since the princesses were of German blood, the German government
sent telegrams to Russia demanding their safety. Since this was
several days after the murders the demand was too late to save
their lives. The Russians, not wanting to upset the Germans, with
whom they had just signed a peace treaty, did not acknowledge
the executions, but told them that the girls had been moved.
next few decades as many as ten women came forward and claimed
they were Anastasia. The most famous of these was Anna Anderson,
who said she had faked death by lying still among the bodies of
her family and was rescued later by a sympathetic guard. She fought
a legal battle with the German government for recognition from
1938 to 1970, but was never accepted as the missing woman. Though
Anderson was cremated after her death, in 1994 DNA was obtained
from a tissue sample gathered during a hospital stay and compared
to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, a known Anastasia relation.
The results clearly proved that Anderson was not the missing Duchess.
early 1980's the graves of the family were found, but kept secret
until after the fall of the Soviet government. The find was officially
announced in 1991, but the grave was missing two bodies: That
of the son, Tsarevich and one of the sisters, either Maria or
Anastasia. This gave hope that perhaps the story of an escape
from the execution was true. However, in August of 2007 a Russian
archaeologist discovered two burned skeletons at a bonfire site
near Yekaterinburg. They were the right age to be Tsarevich and
the missing sister. This was later confirmed by DNA, though scientists
still disagree on whether the body at the bonfire site was Maria
matches records that had been locked away for most of the history
of the Soviet Union. A report by Yakov Yurovsky, who was in charge
of the execution, to his superiors indicated that all the family
and servants were killed that night. Initially the bodies were
dumped down a mineshaft, but when rumors started to spread about
that as a possible burial location, Yurovsky said that he had
the bodies moved and finally buried at a site 12 miles outside
the city. Later two of the bodies were removed and destroyed in
a bonfire. This was done so that if the burial site was found,
the remains there would not match the expected number of bodies
leaving some doubt as to whether it really was the Romanov family.
has finally been solved and the bodies of all four daughters,
the former Tsar and his wife and son have been accounted for and
confirmed by DNA testing. As much as the story of the young princess
escaping death may engaged our imaginations over the years, history
has spoken and her life, along with that of her family, was cruelly
ended on that cold morning in 1918.
Vs. Drake - What is the difference between a dragon and
a drake? - Anonymous
first start by defining the word dragon. As most people
might know it's a legendary creature with many reptilian characteristics.
Dragons are often depicted covered in scales with a lizard-like
or snake-like body. Sometimes they breath fire and the number
of feet they can have vary from none to four or even more. Sometimes
they are also shown as flying creatures with bat-like wings.
or dragon-like creatures, have been found in folklore traditions
around the world, though they often differ in many details. For
example, dragons in the Chinese culture are depicted as good,
wise, magical creatures with long snake-like bodies and no wings.
This is very much different from the dragon pictured in European
traditions. Dragons in the western countries are often shown as
malevolent monsters happy to eat sheep, goats, children and the
occasional maiden. European dragons also are often shown jealously
word dragon goes back to the ancient Greeks. The Greeks
thought that snake and dragon-like creatures had sharp, penetrating
vision so from a root word meaning sharp-eyed, they came up with
the name drako (which referred to both dragons and large
snakes). From The Greeks the Romans took the word and modified
a bit to draco. As the Romans marched all over Europe they
carried the word with them and in English it became drake
and in French dragon.
see that the words in the beginning really had the same meaning.
However, over time the word dragon became the more popular term
and started to be used to refer to any creature from any tradition
around the world that seemed to fit the bill. The term drake,
however, still only refers to the European type maiden-eating-treasure-guarding
version of the dragon.
years authors compiling fictional bestiaries and people creating
rules for role-playing games have given the term drake new meanings.
For example, some define a drake as a dragon without wings, or
as a young immature dragon. These are newly created definitions,
however, and do not really represent the original meaning of the
and dragon aren't the only terms used for these mythical beasts.
The old German word wurm, originally meaning serpent, is
used for dragons that appear in Germanic mythology. In old English
this became the word wyrm and is used in the reference
to the story of a wingless dragon in England called the Lambton
Worm. The word wyvern also comes from this root and
is often used to refer to a dragon with wings and only two legs.
dragons legends found all over the world? When dinosaur (which
look as much like a legendary dragon as any real animal could)
bones were first discovered and revealed to be giant reptiles
someone suggested that humans had some kind of racial memory of
these creatures that was translated into the dragon legend. Dinosaurs,
however, lived so many years before anything even remotely human
was walking on the planet it seems unlikely we continue to have
even an innate memory of them. It is more likely that the fossils
themselves have inspired the creation of dragon tales as people
stumbled across them over the centuries.
idea had been forwarded by anthropologist David E. Jones. Jones
has suggested that humans have inherited instinctive reactions
to snakes, large cats and birds of prey. His hypothesis is that
mythical dragons combine all these features of these real animals
and perhaps represent the worst of all our fears.
Legends - I've heard several legends about the Holy Grail,
and I was wondering if there's any evidence of an actual Holy
Grail. If there is, that what can it do? Can it grant immortal
life like in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?"
likely that there was once a "Holy Grail." Despite some naysayers
there seems to be good evidence of the existence of Jesus of Nazareth
and a Passover supper attended by him and his disciples just before
his crucifixion. It was at this dinner that the sacrament of communion
was established using wine and bread. Wine certainly implies that
a cup was used (though perhaps a larger communal one - more like
a bowl - than we might normally think of a cup today).
that, though, the story gets a very fuzzy. There is not much in
the Bible about a Grail and there is no real significance attached
to the cup in that holy set of scripture. Most of the legend of
the Grail seems to be connected with an individual named Joseph
of Arimathea. Joseph was a rich, follower of Jesus that took possession
of his body after the crucifixion. With the help of another follower
named Nicodemus, he prepared the body of Jesus to be placed in
his own (Joseph's) tomb. During this process, the legend says
that he used the grail to catch some of Jesus's blood.
the story about Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail doesn't appear
in any document we know about until the Robert de Boron wrote
his poem Joseph d'Arimathe around the 12th century. The
poem says that Joseph was imprisoned for his burial of Jesus's
body and the Grail sustained him during this period. He later
left the middle-east and traveled to Britain taking the Grail
with him. From the Boron story came a whole wealth of Grail fictional
literature emerged having to do with King Arthur and his knights
and their seach for the Grail.
poem was clearly a work of fiction, but later writers seem to
have taken it at face value. In a history of Glastonbury Abbey
written around 1350 AD claims were made that Joseph came to Britain
bringing the cup with him and it was at the Abbey.
the remarkable powers of the cup, one of the earliest references
to this seems to be in the story of The Fisher King written
by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes around 1190 AD. Here the
Grail seems to have the strange power to keep people alive with
them only eating a small mass-wafer (like they would serve during
the sacrament of Holy Communion) a day as long as it is served
in the cup. However, the Grail clearly does not have the full
healing powers in this story as is often described in later tales.
of the Holy Grail to heal and give eternal life might actually
be connected with pagan stories that pre-dated Christianity in
Europe. In many of these stories special lakes or pools had the
power to grant eternal life if one drank or bathed in them (One
version of this story is the Fountain of Youth). As the myths
evolved the pool changed into a bowl (symbolic of a pool) and
this legend was later probably mixed with the legend of the Grail
when Christianity was brought to Europe.
story has also been mixed in with the history of the Knights Templar,
a order of knights sworn to protect pilgrams to the holy land.
In the story the Knights find the Grail and transport it back
to Europe. There is no historical record to support this story
completely separate story has the Grail left in the house of St
Mark where the Last Supper took place. Mark then takes it to Rome
where it was used as the Papal Chalice until it was moved out
of Rome in 3rd century during a period of persecution. From there
it went to a Spanish soldier and onto Spanish monks who hid it
during the Muslim occupation of Spain during the 6th century.
For a while it was held in the treasury of several Spanish Kings
until it was given to the Cathedral of Valencia, where it remains
the Holy Grail actually in a church in Valencia, Spain? Some people
might think so. However, there are a number of bowls that are
reputed to be "the one, true grail." Another contender for the
title is Nanteos Cup. For many years the cup was kept at the Nanteos
Mansion near Aberystwyth in Wales. Legend connects this bowl with
the story of the Grail held at Glastonbury Abbey. According to
the story, monks fleeing Thomas Cromwell's persecution took the
cup with them. The monks were hidden by the Powells at Nanteos.
When the last monk died the bowl was passed to the Lord Powell
and kept by the family ever since. An recent examination of the
cup by experts, however, revealed that it is typical of mazer
bowls, a type of medieval vessel, probably created in the 14th
century - far too recent to be the real Grail. However, there
are stories that people have been healed after drinking from the
vessel and the current owner of the cup, Fiona Mirylees, still
sends water that has been in the cup to people with life threatening
script was written for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade they
combined many of these myths. Where is the real Grail? Well, I
suspect that after the Last Supper everybody was so concerned
with the events that followed that nobody bothered with the cup
and it simply disappeared into the mists of history.
Birds of Death - Are there any real accounts of large birds
of prey attacking or carrying off people? - Gary S.
the first part of your question, there are certainly examples
of eagles and hawks attacking human beings that violated their
territory. Get a little too close to a nest and you could find
yourself on the wrong end of some very sharp talons. One sad example
of this happened in Mendocino County, CA, in 1895. According to
the New York Times two brothers, age 13 and 11, were climbing
a mountain to find a Bald Eagle's nest when the creature suddenly
attacked them. The boys escaped, but the younger was badly injured
and lost his sight to the eagle's talons and beak.
the question about whether an eagle or other large bird has ever
attacked a person (with the intent of eating them) and managed
to fly off with them is a more complicated question. There are
certainly a number of reports of large birds attacking and carrying
off small children. For example, in August of 1881 the New
York Times reported that an eagle with a seven-foot wingspan
swooped down and tried to carry off a 2-year-old boy. Witnesses
said that it might have succeeded if the child's clothes had not
torn, allowing him to escape.
in 1977 ten-year-old Marlon Lowe was playing with friends near
his home in Illinois when two large birds - thought to be condors
with wingspans from eight to ten feet across according to witnesses
- swept down on the children. One of the birds picked up Marlon
by the straps of his sleeveless shirt and carried him into the
air. His screams brought his parents outside to see him lifted
to the height of two feet for a distance of about 40 feet before
the creature let him go.
of these accounts, the monster birds did not get far with their
human burdens, but there are other stories where the avian giants
were more successful. The best documented of these occurred in
Leka, Norway, on June 5, 1932 when Svanhild Hansen, a five-year-old,
forty-pound girl, was picked up by a huge eagle and carried more
than a mile to a high ledge. She was found there safe and asleep
by a rescue party. With the exception of a few scratches, she
was unharmed. Zoologist Hartvig Huitfeldt-Kaas was so interested
in the story he spent a month at the time investigating it and
pronounced it "completely reliable."
are also many less well document stories including the sad tale
of five-year-old Marie Delex from the French Alps in 1838. The
girl was playing with friends when she was picked up by a large
eagle and carried away. The eagle's nest was checked, but only
piles of goat and sheep bones were found. Two months later her
horribly mutilated remains were discovered by a local shepherd
on a rock several miles from where she had disappeared.
of 1904 the New York Times published the story of 18-month
old girl in England that was apparently picked up by an eagle
while she played just outside her parent's cottage door. Searchers
at first assumed that the girl had been kidnapped, but a game
warden found her body in a rocky crevasse at the crest of a hill.
The girl's eyes had been plucked out and part of her cheek was
many stories though the years like these modern experts are skeptical.
Mike Jacobson, an eagle management specialist for the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, has been quoted as saying, "There used to
be stories about eagles carrying off babies and little kids, and
none of that has ever been documented. They can pick up and carry
four or five pounds, maximum, and actually fly off with it.They
can lift a little more and hop it along, but they can't carry
from a dead stop, however. An eagle already in motion can lift
much more. "On a wide-open beach, I have no doubt that an eagle
with a full head of steam could pick up a six- or eight-pound
dog and just keep on going," says biologist and predatory bird
expert Ronald Clarke. "If it landed to kill a ten-pounder, and
then tried to pick up and fly from a dead stop, could it get off
the ground? Probably not."
swooping down on animal on the side of mountain and then carrying
it to a lower altitude, might be even able to carry more weight
as such a maneuver requires only a downward glide (See a video
of an eagle doing this with a small goat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3n4qPpL8T0&feature=related).
there are always sightings of giant unknown birds - like those
in the American Indian thunderbird legend - whose huge wingspans
that might be able to carry very heavy loads. However, most experts
doubt these stories, if for no other reason, then legions of bird
watchers in the United States that could hardly miss noticing
a bird with a twelve-foot-plus wingspan.
today, then scientists tell us that certainly in the past there
were eagles and other large birds that could kill a child and
fly away with them. The Haast's Eagle of New Zealand is only known
from fossil remains, but it is estimated they weighed as much
as 40 pounds and were still living at the time that New Zealand
was first populated by humans about 750 years ago. The evidence
about Haast's seems to match legendary stories told by Maori people
of New Zealand about a bird so powerful it could sweep down and
kill a small child. With a lift capacity of as much as ¾ of their
weight, they could undoubtedly have flown off with the victim
Ray for Sale? -This is the link
to "death ray tubes." These are a workable model of a death ray
gun, you can buy it for 350 US$ and it works for carving rock.
It does exist and as seen in the site united nuclear.. So are
lots of other sci-fi inventions… And they do work too.. You get
warnings to not direct them toward humans… They will melt... -
Ray" offered by United Nuclear, is not the death ray as was once
envisioned by the mysterious inventor Nikola Tesla in the 1930's
that has garnered so much press over the years. That weapon was
better known as a charged particle beam. Tesla designed
a device that would send a beam of particles out at high speed
and saw it as a defensive weapon that would ensure peace. He claimed
such a device would be able to "bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy
airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's
no nations at the time acted on Tesla's idea, during the cold
war both the Soviet Union and the United States experimented with
charged particle weapons, but could not make them practical.
Ray" on the United Nuclear site is actually an infrared laser
(Infrared means the light the laser is generating is of frequency
too low to be visible to the human eye). Lasers, of course, have
become common devices found in such everyday objects such as DVD
players, supermarket checkout terminals and screen pointers. The
ones offered by United Nuclear, of course, are of considerably
more power. A laser pointer uses about 1 mill watt of power, where
the United Nuclear infrared laser can be bought with a power supply
of up to 100 watts. This is enough to cut thin metal and crack
rock. Commercial sealed CO2 lasers, however, can often be found
at powers of 3000 watts or more and can be used to cut carbon
steel as thick as a ½ inch.
with power levels less than a watt can be dangerous, however,
if directed into a human eye. The light the laser puts out is
"coherent" with all the light particles (or photons) going in
the same direction, at the same frequency in the same phase. This
results in the beam focusing a lot of energy into a very small
space causing the target to heat up and burn or melt. Even a fairly
low powered laser that enters an eye will be concentrated on the
retina causing damage and potential blindness. For this reason
engineers and scientists working with lasers always wear eye protection.
as lasers are, the military up to this point, has not found them
to be effective weapons. The amount of power they require limits
their mobility, especially compared with traditional weapons like
bombs and rockets. Lasers have still been used on the battlefield,
however, to guide traditional weapons to their targets. First
a laser is pointed toward a target, say a tank. Then the laser
light reflected back from the tank can be used to guide a rocket
or bomb accurately to its destination.
military has not completely given up on lasers, however, and has
recently has some success with electric lasers that are small
enough to fit into a truck and have an output of over 100 kilowatt.
With this much power they hope they will be able to use them in
the future to zap incoming rockets or mortars.
the site itself: United Nuclear seems like a fascinating place
to purchase off-beat science items and reminds me a lot of Edmund
Scientific, a similar company in operation near where I grew up.
Although Edmund is now only a catalog and web business, when I
was in High School it had a showroom complete with a demonstration
area for lasers and other cool science products. My high school
science teacher advised us geeks that this was a good place to
take a girl for a cheap date.
that United Nuclear has a showroom in Laingsburg, Michigan, and
if anybody living in the area has a girl friend who is into death
rays, it sounds like you might want to take her there for an inexpensive
Hauntings -I was wondering what the Curator's thought
was on the stories of the Dudleytown hauntings in Connecticut
. Could Dudleytown be haunted by the spirits of the old town that
once resided there? - Tim A.
to admit that I have no special knowledge of the Dudleytown legend.
However, it is a fascinating story and thanks for suggesting we
talk about it here in Ask the Curator. Let me go over the
account so that anybody not familiar with the tale will know what
we're talking about.
of Dudleytown supposedly starts in 1510 when Edmund Dudley was
beheaded for plotting to overthrow the King of England. The story
has it that a curse was placed on his family. In 1747 brothers
Abiel and Barzillai Dudley, supposedly Edmund's descendants, settled
in the area giving the town its name. The location was too rocky
and dark for farming so the town people made a business out of
making charcoal from the abundant trees. The town prospered for
while, but then, according to the legend, things turned bad.
story goes it all started when one of the Dudley brothers when
insane. Then there were a series of unfortunate accidents and
mysterious deaths. A woman was struck by lightning while sitting
on her porch. People got sick, children disappeared and houses
burned down. Finally, in despair, the villagers abandoned the
town. Soon the dark woods closed in around it and now only the
ever present owls inhabit the area. According to the legend most
other animals avoid it.
the place really haunted? Well, if you talk to Dudleytown's neighbors
they will tell you it is all a bunch of hokum and the legend has
caused all kinds of problems for them. A number of years ago some
of the property owners in the area formed an association - Dark
Entry Forest, Inc. - purchased the land designated the location
a nature preserve. For many years it was possible to visit the
location without a problem. However, after the 1999 release of
the movie The Blair Witch Project the area was inundated
by thrill seeking teenagers and paranormal investigators. Now
The Blair Witch Project was supposed to have taken place
in Maryland, but the location in the film, a dark woods, was so
similar to Dudleytown that people in Connecticut decided this
local location was a good place to try and have a Blair Witch
type adventure. The problems this caused - like late night drinking
parties and theft from the historic ruins - forced Dark Entry
Forest, Inc. to close the location to visitors.
continued to find their way into the town, however. In one incident,
perhaps even a little bit like the Blair Witch movie, a
group of five teens found themselves so lost that at 1:30 in the
morning they had to call 911 to get rescued. Fortunately, instead
of losing their lives, as in the film, they each just got a $77
ticket from the Connecticut State Police for trespassing.
that the association is just trying to down play the ghostly history
to avoid any more paranormal mayhem, but at least one author agrees
with them that the legend is all bunk. The Rev. Gary P. Dudley,
of Texas, became interested in the story because of the connection
with his name. After researching the historical records he wrote
TheLegend of Dudleytown: Solving Legends through Genealogical
and Historical Research (Heritage Books, 2001). In his book
Dudley argues that most of the stories associated with the town
are complete fiction or have been twisted to fit the legend. For
example, the wife of Dr. William Clarke, who owned a vacation
home on the site, supposedly went mad and killed herself when
she was left alone there one night. Dudley found that Mrs. Clarke
did indeed commit suicide, but that occurred in New York City,
not in Dudleytown.
Dudleytown really haunted? Well, according to people who have
visited the site the surrounding hills and heavy forest certainly
make it dark and gloomy location worthy of a haunting. However,
spooky places do not necessary mean there are spooks (Check
The Science of Ghosts and Hauntings).
The Heat is On! -How can so much of the interior of the
earth be hot molten lava, and have the ground stay around a cool
55 degrees? Why does the heat not work its way to the surface?
Where's the convection? - John
center of the Earth is estimated to have a temperature of around
12,000°F. As you move outward from the center of the planet the
temperature drops off till just below the outer crust of the Earth
it is only about 1,202 to 2,192°F. All the rock below the crust
is either molten or semi-molten and it does support a convection
current with the hottest rock moving upward, losing its heat near
the surface and then sinking back down. These convection currents
are slow, but powerful and are responsible for the movement of
the tectonic plates on the surface of the Earth. The movement
of the plates, in turn, is responsible for such events earthquakes,
tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.
note, the average underground temperature when you get about four
feet or so underground runs about 50 to 55°F. It isn't hotter
because the crust, which is almost completely a solid, acts like
a thick insulating blanket. Because it is solid it does not support
a convection current that would more easily bring heat energy
to the surface.
the average temperature near the surface is about 55, does not
mean there are not spots where it isn't significantly lower or
higher in temperature. For example, in locations where the crust
is thick, or the surface temperature is consistently low, you
can get a condition called permafrost. This is where the subsurface
temperature is freezing even down to a depth of several hundred
feet. We usually associate these regions with places near the
poles, like Alaska, but permafrost can actually be found in lower
latitude locations like the Suwaki cold anomaly in the north-eastern
corner of Poland.
the crust is thinner, more heat escapes to the surface causing
higher than average sub-surface temperatures. The crust tends
to be thinnest under the sea, so much of the Earth's heat escapes
into the oceans. Places where to tectonic plates join are also
locations where heat can escape more easily. For example, the
edge of the pacific plate is known as the famous "ring of fire"
and is responsible for 75% of all the recorded volcanic activity.
Some of the volcanoes involved include those from the coast of
North America (including Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainer), Japan
(Mt. Fuji), the Philippines (Mount Pinatubo) and New Guinea and
Micronesian (Mount Tambora).
are also "hotspots" where the crust thins and a molten rock plume
comes very close to the surface. One of the most famous hotspots
created the island chain of Hawaii, which has active volcanoes
despite being in the middle of the Pacific plate. The world's
most famous hotspot is probably Yellowstone where high subsurface
temperatures cause spectacular phenomenon like hot springs, mud
pots, steam vents and geysers. The subsurface temperatures at
the Norris Geyser Basin at Yellowstone have been found to be as
high as 401 °F at only a depth of 265 feet. Yellowstone is also
one of the known locations of a "super
volcano" which, when it erupts, can lay waste to continent
these hotspots exist? Scientists think that either upward flowing
convection currents from deep within the earth melts and thins
the crust in these locations, or the crust itself melts creating
a convection current to carry heat to the surface.
does the Earth's internal heat come from in the first place? Some
of it is residual heat from the planet's formation, but planet
has also picked up kinetic energy from the impact of asteroids,
including a collision with another planet-sized body that created
the moon. However, about 80% of the all the heat is thought to
come from the natural decay of certain radioactive isotopes found
underground. Some scientists theorize that the center of the earth
may even form a natural atomic reactor generating energy at the
core of the planet.
Channels - Two Wires? -A cable vision wire for a TV only
has two wires in it. But it can have over a hundred different
signals(channels) coming through it at the same time, even more
if you count the sound and picture as separate signals. How can
all those different signals come through at the same time? - John.
really the same question for a number of similar problems: How
can we have get signals from multiple radio stations all coming
through the same airspace at the same time? How can we have multiple
video channels on a single fiber optic cable? How can we hear
different sounds at the same time with our ears? The answer in
every case is because the information is coming at us as waves
vibrating at different frequencies.
take the simple case of two musical instruments: A tuba and a
piccolo. A tuba produces long, waves of sound. We hear this as
a low pitch. Because the waves are far apart they reach us less
quickly than closer waves so we call this a low frequency (of
produces a high pitch which means it sends us shorter waves that
come at us more often giving us a higher frequency.
could see these waves as they come to our ears we would see that
they appear not as separate waves, but as two sets of waves piled
on top of each other. However, our ears can easily separate the
sounds by wavelength so we tell the tuba apart from the piccolo.
case of radio waves it is an electric field that carries the waves.
Different radio stations operate at different frequencies and
the electronics in the radio, like our ears do with sound, separate
them so the radio tunes into just one station while ignoring the
caution here: radio waves are slightly different than sound waves
because radio waves act as "carrier" waves that transport the
information on them by changing the height of the waves (amplitude
modulation or AM) or changing the frequency just slightly higher
or lower (frequency modulation or FM). Because radio waves are
used as carriers they transport all kinds of information on top
of them including music, cell phone conversation, and video. Much
of the information carried is now coded digitally on top of the
signal, such as in the case of HDTV.
the information that is carried, at the bottom level it is still
the fact that the waves are transmitted and received at different
frequencies that allow them to be separated.
also the case with cable TV. The waves are transmitted through
wires by electricity, but are very similar to the radio waves
that move through the air. Your cable box sorts out the channels
by frequency so you can then select one to appear on your TV.
places the older cable systems that depended on wire and electricity
are now being replaced with fiber optic lines that carry light.
What's the advantage? Well, light signals operate at higher frequencies
than radio signals. This means more information can be carried
on a fiber optic line allowing for more video channels.
Makes a Dinosaur? - I read on your web site and came across
some dinosaurs with descriptions elsewhere that said even though
they lived in this [Mesozoic] Era and were marine reptiles or
flying reptiles, they were still not considered dinosaurs. Can
someone explain why?....and just as important, what exactly were
they considered then if not dinosaurs? - Sydney L.
tend to think that any reptile that lived during the Mesozoic
Era qualifies as a dinosaur. However, dinosaurs actually have
a pretty precise definition. The term "dinosaur" was created in
1842 by the famous zoologist Sir Richard Owen from the Greek words
deinos meaning "terrible, powerful, wondrous" and sauros
meaning "lizard." Owens also defined the characteristics of the
basic taxon (or group).
are part of a larger collection of reptiles called Archosaurs
that include things like crocodiles and alligators. However, two
things divide dinosaurs from all other archosaurs. First, they
are by definition terrestrial. They lived on the land (so they
did not include flying reptiles or aquatic reptiles). The second
thing is that they have an upright gait. That is, their legs were
straight, perpendicular to the ground and supported the weight
of the body. This is a characteristic that they share with today's
mammals and gives both groups the ability to walk or run more
easily. Most other land reptiles (like lizards) have a sprawling
gait with their legs out to the side and their feet not underneath
reptiles that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs include
the huge Quetzalcoatlus, which with a wingspan exceeding
thirty feet was the largest flying animal ever, and Rhamphorhynchus
which had a long trailing tail with a diamond-shaped fin on the
end. The flying reptiles, including these two, had their own group
name: the Pterosaurs. (Note that there is also a species
in the group called Pteranodon and you don't want to mix
this up with the group name).
reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs included
the famous Elasmosaurus, a type of plesiosaur with a long
neck, saucer shaped body and four diamond shaped fins and the
ichthyosaur Ophthalmosaurus, a dolphin shaped reptile that
grew to a length of 18 feet. There is no overall name for this
collection, except "ancient, extinct marine reptiles." However,
most of these creatures fell into three groups, the mosasaurs,
the ichthyosaurs and the plesiosaurs.
enough, recent developments in understanding which animals are
related to which may force the dinosaur group to include flying
creatures. Evidence has been mounting that modern birds are descended
from dinosaurs. Since under strict classification rules a group
descended from another is included in the parent group, birds
are dinosaurs and dinosaurs are not extinct (It is important to
note, however, that the Pterosaurs are still not dinosaurs as
they are not birds). Some scientists now refer to the original
dinosaur group as "non-avian dinosaurs" and birds as "avian dinosaurs."
This is somewhat clumsy, however, and in common speaking people
still use the word dinosaurs to refer to the original group of
extinct land reptiles that include the familiar species Stegosaurus,
Triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus rex.
the Bang -How does a gun silencer stop the loud sound
of a gunpowder explosion? - John
as a gun silencer (or to use the more official term "suppressor")
seems, it really is very similar in many ways to something we
see every day: a car muffler. Both were invented by Hiram P. Maxim
in the beginning of the 20th century. (Not to be confused with
Hiram S. Maxim, his father, who created the first modern machine
gun and tried his hand at building flying machines.)
cases a silencer or muffler needs to take a high pressure shock
wave that to our ears is a loud "bang" and lower the pressure
before it gets to us. This is done by allowing the gasses inside
the gun barrel (or exhaust pipe in the case of a car) to expand
in a closed container.
silencer that is screwed on to the end of a gun can be as simple
as a large, empty can with holes at each end to allow the bullet
to pass through. As the bullet travels through the silencer, the
gas behind it expands into the can and the pressure is lowered.
More sophisticated silencers may also have "baffles" that further
suppress the sound by adding additional smaller chambers near
the final exit hole.
these devices also utilize water, liquid, a gel or grease inside
to cool the hot gases and which will further decrease the pressure
and sound. This is an effective approach, but often these materials
are partly vaporized each time the weapon is fired and must be
replenished after a limited number of shots. Some disposable silencers
are designed to only work for a handful for rounds before they
lose their effectiveness.
silencers can lower the sound of high pressure gas coming out
of the barrel of a gun, there are other sounds a weapon makes
that it has little effect on. In particular, if supersonic rounds
are used the bullet will break the sound barrier with a loud crack
after it leaves the front of the silencer. For this reason sub-sonic
rounds are often used with silenced weapons, but this reduces
the range and effectiveness of the bullet.
we often picture silencers as always being screwed onto the end
of a gun, some are built right into the weapon. Many are not as
effective as often seen in the movies and may not even lower the
volume of a gunshot enough that the marksman can avoid wearing
hearing protection. However, in many cases it is not necessary
to lower the sound of the shot as much as change the character
of it so that it is not easily identifiable as a gunshot. In an
urban setting this allows the sound of the shot to blend it with
the ambient noise.
countries and jurisdictions silencers are highly regulated. They
are legal to own in the United States in most places, but require
an expensive permit.
or Galaxies? -When I look up at the night sky, how many
of those stars are really stars and how many are galaxies? - John
let's start with defining the difference between a star and a
galaxy, for those not familiar with these terms. A star is a giant
ball of hydrogen gas massive enough support a fusion process that
generates heat and light. Our local example is the sun. There
are also dimmer white and brown dwarf stars and these are usually
stars that have burned off enough of their material that they
can no longer really support fusion.
galaxy is a group of stars bound together by their gravity. A
galaxy often takes the shape of a flattened, rotating disc (left).
The stars are pulled into arms that give the galaxy the appearance
of a whirlpool when viewed from above. Not all galaxies have this
shape. Scientists speculate that galaxies with other shapes may
be the result of a collision between two galaxies. Galaxies typically
are composed of billions of stars. Scientists all speculate that
most galaxies may have a supermassive black hole at the very center.
On a good,
dark night if your vision is exceptional, you might be able to
spot some 2,500 stars in the sky with your unaided eyes. However,
only a handful of galaxies can be seen without binoculars or a
telescope. There is, of course our own galaxy (the Milky Way)
and if you live in the Southern hemisphere you may be able to
spot the large and small Magellanic Clouds. In addition if you
know where to look you might be able to find the great Andromeda
Galaxy (M31), the Triangulum Galaxy (M33) and the Centaurus A
at best six compared to twenty-five hundred. And not all of those
galaxies can be seen from one location on the Earth.
of course, doesn't mean there are not a lot of galaxies in the
sky. They are just mostly too dim to be seen without a telescope.
question might be, are there more stars in own galaxy that galaxies
in the visible universe? Current estimates put the number of stars
in the Milky Way Galaxy at around 100 billion. That's a lot, but
it's only a drop in the bucket when compared to the estimated
number of visible galaxies: Over seven trillion.
only those galaxies we can, in principal, see with our telescopes.
There may be trillions beyond the reach of our current equipment.
In fact, many astronomers suspect the universe, and the number
of galaxies, is infinite.
the Hair, Not the Humidity - I have a thermometer hanging
on the wall that also has a humidity gauge. The humidity gauge
is just a round strip of metal. How can a strip of metal tell
how much humidity is in the air? - John
is a measure of water vapor in the air. We usually refer to it
as relative humidity as it is measured as a percentage of the
maximum amount of vapor the air can hold. If the humidity reaches
100 percent, it is sure to start raining as the water in the air
will condense into droplets.
device you have there is probably a mechanical hygrometer. It's
not really the metal that is doing the work, but a small bundle
of human hair (chemically treated to remove any oil). Hair, being
organic in nature absorbs water in the air and stretches (That's
why bad hair days are usually those with high humidity).
mechanical hygrometer is like others I've seen there is a needle
that points to the level of humidity. On the shaft that turns
the needle there is one spring that is spiraled around it pulling
he needle back toward zero. The shaft also has a chain (or possibly
some inorganic thread) wrapped around it that goes from the shaft
to the center of the hair bundle. Attached to the other side of
the center of the hair bundle is another, more powerful spring.
The two springs pull the mechanism in opposite directions. What
actually controls the position of the needle is the length of
the hair. As the hair lengthens a tiny bit, it deflects under
the pull of the powerful spring, and this, in turn, pulls the
chain to move the needle more toward 100%
hard to describe, so hopefully the attached diagram will help.
Strange Orbit -Does the moon revolve the Earth directly
above equator? If yes, does it mean that people in upper northern
hemisphere will be see it on the horizon? - Anonymous
unlike most moons in our solar system, does not follow a path
directly above its planet's equator. Instead, our moon follows
an orbital path very much closer to Earth's ecliptic plane. Earth's
ecliptic is the path Earth follows as it orbits the Sun.
earth's equator is tilted off its ecliptic by a little more than
23 degrees. This angle is what gives us the seasons as the northern
hemisphere is more tilted toward the sun during the summer and
away from the sun in the winter (The opposite is true for the
southern hemisphere where the seasons there are reversed).
also explains why the moon traces a different path across the
sky depending on the season. Like the sun, during the winter it
is closer to the horizon. In fact, further north than the Arctic
Circle the moon will not be visible for 14 days at a time as it
passes out of sight behind the tilt of our planet for half of
its orbit. Or course when it does re-emerge it rises and stays
up for fourteen days (The same is true at the Antarctic Circle).
that the moon orbits close to the Earth's ecliptic plane has been
used as evidence against the theory that the moon was created
at the same time the Earth. In this theory, most of the spinning
material in the region of Earth was pulled together by gravity
to form our planet, but some of pulled together to form the moon.
If that was the case, however, we would expect out moon to be
orbiting along the equator. The current leading theory as to the
creation of the moon is that a body the size of Mars hit Earth
throwing massive amounts of material into orbit. Over the course
of the next century this material was drawn together by gravity
to form our moon.
how old is the Earth? Biblically it is accurately about 6042 to
7000 years and scientifically it counts on millions. Should we
believe in God's wisdom or mere knowledge of man? - Cheta A
has been a dispute going on in some circles between some biblical
fundamentalists, who argue that science is wrong about the age
of the planet because the Bible says that the Earth is only 10,000
years old; and some scientists who claim that the Bible must be
inaccurate because clearly the Earth is millions of years old.
There are, however, a number of people who hold the views that
these differences are not irreconcilable. Though I am not a theologian,
I will endeavor to give you the highlights of some of these ideas.
View - One of the major reasons that science doesn't seem
to match up with the Bible is the creation story in Genesis that
seems make the universe and the earth appear in only 6 literal
days. This view says that the days mentioned in Genesis are not
24 hour days, but "ages." These "ages" might have lasted millions
of years or even billions of years and may have also overlapped.
Though some critics argue that a "day" in this context in the
Bible must only be 24-hours long, others argue that this alternate
interpretation is not really inconsistent with some Biblical understandings
of the word "day."
one author, Israeli physicist and Genesis scholar Gerald L. Schroeder,
argues that depending how you define "time" these days could be
both 24 hours and millions or billions of years long. For more
information on this idea check out his book The Science of
God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom.
Creation - Another view is that the Earth and Universe were
created in seven days 10,000 years ago, but they have been given
a whole consistent history of billions of years. This idea isn't
really inconsistent with other parts of the Bible. For example,
Adam is created as an adult man without the usual 20 years or
so need to grow from baby to mature human under the usual laws
of nature. Perhaps the earth and universe were also created in
a relatively short amount of time without the 15 billion years
that might normally be needed for such a process.
accept this view then for theological reasons the world is 10,000
years old, but for purposes of science the world is some 4.5 billion
that this seems somewhat disingenuous of God to create a false
history. However, it isn't any more dishonest then creating Atom,
calling him a man, though he never went through the normal human
creation process. Indeed in our own poor attempts to create worlds
and universes inside computers (i.e. video games like "The Sims")
we always apply this method and it never seems dishonest to us
within that context.
meant to be a complete discussion on the subject - just a starting
point. Debates over this subject have already filled thousands
of web pages, so I recommend you take a look at what has already
been written about these ideas across the internet.
Vitamins - What is a "vitamin", and how can sunlight make
vitamin D? - John
is an organic compound needed by a human or animal in tiny amounts
in order to stay healthy. Usually a compound is only called a
vitamin when the animal is unable to make it by itself, but must
get it by eating it. This means that some compounds are vitamins
for some animals but not really for others. For example, vitamin
D is not really a vitamin in the human diet because we create
it ourselves when sunlight hits our skin. It is a vitamin for
most fish, however, who must get it by eating algae (Or by eating
other fish who have eaten algae). The algae in turn create when
they float in shallow waters under the sun.
years scientists suspected that certain foods contained tiny amounts
of some substances needed for health, but they didn't know what
those substances were. For example, in 1749, the Scottish surgeon
James Lind discovered that citrus foods helped prevent scurvy,
a particularly deadly disease often suffered by sailors who did
not get fresh fruit in their diet. As it turns out the sailors
were not getting vitamin C - otherwise known as ascorbic acid
- which is found in the fruits. Though Lind didn't exactly know
what the missing ingredient was, he recommended eating lemons
and limes to avoid scurvy, an idea which was adopted by the British
Royal Navy and led to their nickname "Limies".
Russian doctor Nikolai Lunin did an experiment where he gave one
group of mice milk and the other group an artificial mixture of
all the separate parts of milk known at that time: proteins, fats,
carbohydrates, and salts. The mice that got the regular milk were
fine, but those which got just the parts got sick and died. This
told Lunin that there was something in the milk that science was
unaware of that was needed for the mice to stay healthy. The first
scientist to extract one of these micronutrients was Japanese
researcher Umetaro Suzuki in 1910. He named his discovery aberic
acid. It would later become known as vitamin B1.
more facts about vitamins:
world "vitamin" is a blend of the words "vital" and "amine" where
amine is a specific sort of organic compound. However, as other
vitamins were found, not all turned out to be amines, but the
an animals will have to eat the vitamins they need every day because
their bodies will not store the vitamins for any length of time.
D is produced photo-chemically when ultra-violet light interacts
with the substance 7-dehydrocholesterol. In the case of humans
the creation of the Vitamin D takes place in the epidermis, the
top layer of our skin, when light from the sun penetrates it and
hits the 7-dehydrocholesterol our bodies put there. How much and
how quickly you make your Vitamin D depends on how much sun light
you get and the color of your skin. People with darker skin produce
it more slowly than people with lighter skin.
with fur, who can't get sunlight to their skin at all, the Vitamin
D is synthesized in oily secretions that are deposited onto the
fur. As those oils sit on the fur and are exposed to the sun,
the vitamin D is created. The animal then must lick the oils off
and swallow them to get the Vitamin D into their systems.
Arthropods -Why do scorpions fluoresce under a UV light?
is a subject that scientists don't know a great deal about, but
let's start with some basic facts. Some materials when hit by
a light with a wave-length shorter than humans can see will absorb
that light energy and then radiate back light within the visible
spectrum so when a person looks at the object, it seems to glow.
This process is called fluorescence.
is a substance in the epicuticle (sometimes called the hyaline
layer) of the scorpion's exoskeleton that fluoresces when exposed
to ultra-violet light. Nobody knows exactly what this stuff is
but some scientists speculate it is a complex of mucosaccharides
(a simple form of sugar) and proteins. Also ß-Carboline, a trytophan
derivative, is known to play an important part.
really knows how the fluorescence gets there either. Baby scorpions
aren't born with it and scorpions that have just molted don't
have it. This has leads some people to suggest that it is either
secreted by the scorpion over time, a side effect of the animal's
exoskeleton as it is tanned by the sun or the result of chemical
reactions as the new exoskeleton hardens. The fact that some scorpions
that live their entire lives in dark caves and still fluoresce,
however, leads some people to think that it unlikely to be the
we also don't know what advantage this gives the scorpion. Some
have speculated that this property somehow helps the scorpion
with their ultra-violet light sensitivity, but studies have shown
that different levels of UV light seem to have little effect on
the animal's behavior.
know that scorpions have had this characteristic for a very long
time. This kind of fluorescence has even been seen in some of
the fossils of ancient scorpions. We also know it is not unique
to scorpions as some sow bugs, millipedes, centipedes, solfugids
and a few beetles also will glow in ultra-violet light. We also
know that with each molting the effect grows stronger so that
older scorpions glow brighter than young ones. The amount a scorpion
glows is also connected the particular species. Some glow brightly,
others hardly at all.
it is, this characteristic has been a boon to scientists and scorpion
enthusiasts. A small camping lamp can have its fluorescent bulb
replaced with one that produces ultra-violet (or "black") light
that will cause scorpions to glow a soft blue or green at a distance
of one or two feet. This is a great aid in finding the small animals.
Scientists can then easily use tongs to collect specimens and
many new species have been found this way. A flashlight that produces
UV light can also be useful when camping in scorpion habitats
to check your sleeping back to make sure you are not crawling
in with one of the tiny critters.
on the moon -Is it possible to channel a pipe from Earth
to Moon and pump in some of earth's atmosphere so as to support
free life? - Cheta A.
of a pipeline from the Earth to the Moon would be a difficult
and probably impossible construction problem. Though scientists
think it might be feasible to build an elevator that would lift
people and materials in earth orbit, the space station that the
elevator would be connected to would rotate in sync with our planet
so it would always be directly overhead. The moon orbits the earth
once a month, however, while our planet spins every 24 hours,
so a pipeline from earth to moon would quickly get twisted and
would be little point in building one, anyway, in an attempt to
pressurize the moon and give it a breathable atmosphere. The moon
already has an atmosphere, (mostly created by out gassing from
the underground chemical reactions) but the atmosphere is so thin
it almost does not exist. The gravity of the moon, only one-sixth
that of Earth is too weak to hold any significant amount of gas
on the surface. Most of it drifts into space to be swept away
by the solar wind.
we still might have an interest in putting stations and maybe
even cities on the moon. (These would probably be airtight and
partly or completely underground. By putting a couple of meters
of rock above the habitations you can protect life from the stray
radiation that often bombards the lunar surface) If we do build
underground cities we will need air for the inhabitants to breath.
Rather than pipe it up, or even bring it up in large cargo spaceships,
it would much more efficient to create it from materials already
on the surface. There is plenty of oxygen and nitrogen (to major
components of air) locked up in lunar rocks and soil. Getting
these out of the rocks will require energy, but there is plenty
of that on the moon. It gets lots of sunlight (no cloudy days)
that can be turned into electrical power. For that reason NASA
is thinking of locating the first lunar stations near the poles
so they can get an almost continuous exposure to energy from the
Magnets for Traveling Through Space - I'm wondering if
it's possible to use the principles of magnetism for travel (besides
Maglev). For example, could a ship with a highly focused electromagnet
aim and pull itself to a planet's magnetic field, or to the heavy
metal core of an asteroid? Could this same idea be used to create
a flying car, by pushing or pulling off more than one point at
the same time? Thanks - Maxwell
magnets and magnetic forces are very important in present and
future transportation designs, the type of arrangement you suggest
- focusing a magnetic field toward a distant object to pull yourself
toward it seems an unlikely mechanism to be used. The problem
is that magnetic fields lose their strength very quickly over
long distances. So if you attempted to build a ship using this
principal to pull yourself toward to a distant object you would
need an impractically large magnetic field requiring a tremendous
amount of energy. You would also have the problem that your engine
would be attracting every piece of ferrite material (those attracted
to a magnet) within miles -the wrenches in you tool kit, you belt
buckle, other ships near you etc... You vessel would soon be covered
with loose ferrite objects.
using Maglev does not have this same difficulty. The train uses
magnetism to float just above its rails (often less than an inch)
so that distance is not a problem. By changing the poles on the
magnets involved the train can be not only pushed upward by the
magnetic field but also down the track to give the vehicle forward
flying car might be workable, but only if it was levitating above
a special magnetic road. Like the Maglev train it would be limited
to "flying" just a few inches above the ground.
many engines used in transportation now use magnets to operate.
Almost every electric motor uses magnetic fields to generate movement
and some advanced space probes use magnetic fields to shoot particles
out the of the back of the probe at high speeds to push the device
example of a magnetic transportation system that I could find
that was similar to your design was a satellite engine being developed
in conjunction with NASA. While details of the design are limited,
the engine would interact with Earth magnetic field to allow satellites
to maneuver while in orbit. Last year a model of the engine exploded
during testing, but the inventors of the engine think they have
worked out the bugs and are hopeful that they will be able to
try a test in space in the next few years.
Satellites - Is it true that for a satellite to hold the
same position over the earth it can only be over the equator?
of satellite you are talking about is called a geostationary satellite
and the idea for it was first proposed by Herman Potonik, a Slovenen
rocket engineer, in 1928. Most people connect the idea, however,
with famed science fiction writer Arthur
C. Clarke. Clarke wrote an article about the idea for Wireless
World in 1945.
with which a satellite in orbit circles the Earth is dependent
upon how high above the Earth's surface it is. Objects in low
Earth orbit circle the globe much faster than those in higher
orbits. For example, the space shuttle orbits the earth at a height
of between 115 and 380 miles and will circle the Earth about 16
times in a 24 hour period. If an object is placed in orbit at
a much higher level, say 22,300 miles, it will circle the globe
only once in a 24 hour period. This makes it the object a geosynchronous
satellite orbiting at the same rate the planet turns.
unless the satellite is also in an orbit over the Earth's equator,
it will appear to move back and forth in the sky along a north
to south line during the course of the day. To be a geostationary
satellite the object needs to be in a circular orbit directly
over the equator at the height of 22,300 miles (This is sometimes
refered to as the "Clarke orbit"). Only then will it appear to
be fixed in a single location in the sky.
are many uses for geostationary satellites including communications
(for example, the dish television broadcast satillite I get my
TV on) and weather observation. Since they do not move in the
sky, geostationary satellites allow receivers on the ground to
use a simple fixed antennal to point to them and pickup broadcasts.
Because the satellites are over Earth's equator, however, any
northern hemisphere location wishing to point an antenna at them
must have a clear view of the southern sky. The opposite is true
in the southern hemisphere.
Death of Bruce Lee - Was Bruce Lee Assassinated? - Ashiva
of movie star/martial arts expert /cultural icon Bruce Lee in
1973, at 32 years of age, has inspired more conspiracy theories
than almost any other death in modern times. The list possible
Fu traditionalists - They resented Lee's open portrayal of
their sect's secret arts on the screen.
Hong Kong filmmakers - They wanted to eliminate the competition.
Ninjas - Who were angry about how the Japanese were portrayed
in Lee's films.
Triad (Chinese "Mafia") - They had him killed because he did
not bow to their extortion claims on his motion picture salary.
Mafia - Lee refused their offer to be made an American movie
star choosing instead to return to Hong Kong.
unnamed prostitute - Lee had taken a powerful aphrodisiac
which had caused him to become very violent. The prostitute, fearing
for her life, hit him over the head with a glass ashtray.
spirit - The Lee family was cursed and this accounted for
his death and the death of his son, Brandon Lee (Brandon Lee was
killed in an accident involving a gun on a set in 1993 while filming
the movie "Crow").
not all of these can be true and it is likely that not any of
them are true. However, there are some strange circumstances surrounding
his death that have allowed these rumors to flourish:
indication that not all was well with Lee occurred on when the
actor collapsed at Golden Harvest studios in Hong Kong on May
10th of 1973. He was rushed to the hospital were doctors determined
he had cerebral edema - swelling of the brain. He was successfully
treated at the hospital and released.
months later on July 20 he was again in Hong Kong visiting the
apartment of actress Betty Ting to go over a script when he felt
ill. Ting gave him a tablet of Equagesic (a combination aspirin
and muscle relaxant) and he lay down for a nap. Later on Ting
and producer Raymond Chow were unable to wake him and called a
doctor. The doctor examined him but was unable to help him and
he died. The body was sent to Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
showed that Lee had died from a cerebral edema similar to the
one he had experienced back in May. The official report called
it "death by misadventure." The only foreign substance found in
Lee's body was the Equagesic and trace amounts of cannabis in
his stomach. It seems likely that Lee's brain had swollen because
of a rare allergic reaction to some substance. However, there
was no evidence that Lee had taken Equagesic before the May incident
and the amount of cannabis is his system seemed far too small
for that to be the cause. Most doctors who reviewed the case,
however, feel that he most have died of a hypersensitivity to
the Equagesic, or the cannabis, or some combination of the two.
theorists have suggested that someone murdered Lee by giving him
some substance that caused the swelling. They contend that the
poison either did not show up on the toxicology tests used or
officials were bribed to suppress the evidence.
proof of any murder conspiracy has ever surfaced and the death
remains a sad end to a promising life. Lee, at age 32, was incredibly
popular at the time of his death and many of his fans refused
to believe Lee - who many considered the fittest man on the planet
at the time - was dead. Others blame his death on over training,
though there is also no evidence of this either.
Laser Gun, Will Travel -Hey, you know laser guns? Could
they even exist? - J. Smith
guns have long been a popular device used in Science Fiction literature.
Probably the first story to describe something that appears to
be laser cannon was H.G. Well's heat-ray from the 1898 book War
of the Worlds. When actual lasers first became available in the
early 1960's weapons seemed like a natural application. Several
Sci-fi TV shows from the period including Lost in Space and the
pilot for Star Trek, featured characters using laser pistols.
that real weapons designers soon found themselves confronted with
was the how much energy was needed to power such a weapon. A laser
capable of projecting enough energy to due significant damage
could not be powered with battery small enough to be carried by
a man. The same was true for more powerful laser cannons that
might be mounted on a truck or a tank. The power source was too
heavy to really make the weapon easily mobile, especially if you
consider a laser's effectiveness when compared to more conventional
and cheaper rockets, bullets or bombs.
lasers have become a major part of the military's inventory. Usually
they are used to guide missiles or bombs to their targets. The
target is "painted" with a laser beam by an observer and the bomb
or missile then flies to the laser light reflected off the target.
hasn't given up on using laser for more than just guiding weapons,
however. Currently there is joint development program by the U.S.
and Israel on a device known as the Tactical High-Energy Laser
or THEL. THEL is designed to knock out airborne weapons from a
fixed location or mobile platform (like a truck or tank). Critics
argue that counter measures, such as equipping the target with
a mirror-like surface to reflect the laser, will make the system
Air Force is also experimenting with a plane based chemical laser
system that would vaporize a ground target. This might be more
advantageous in some situation than using a missile or bomb as
it avoids damage to the places immediately adjacent to the target.
may actually turn out to be more useful in the end as non-lethal
weapons. The U.S. military has been working on a low powered laser
gun that could be carried by a man that would temporary blind
Assassinated?-I've read a couple of short articles about
the idea that FDR was actually assassinated. Is there any evidence
or proof to this? Who thought of this theory? - Thanks, Frank
12th, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died at the "Little White
House" in Warm Springs, Georgia. According to the history books
he had a massive cerebral hemorrhage (bleeding in the brain).
to have made some people suspicious of this explanation was that
the President was buried with a closed casket. According to some
stories not even close family members were allowed to view his
body. This eventually led to two rumors. A) That he was assassinated
and the body was disfigured (shot in the face with a .45 pistol)
or B) that he didn't actually die, but was spirited off somewhere
by people unhappy with his policies.
rumor appears to have gained some popularity in the 50's when
a group called the Christian Nationalist Crusade(CNC) put
out a pamphlet entitled "The Roosevelt Death: A Super Mystery."
In the anonymous handout (written by "Mr. X") the group suggested
that FDR had been murdered (or maybe driven to suicide) by an
international secret organization for whom he worked. The organization
supposedly found that his accelerating illness was making him
more of a liability than an asset. The CNC pamphlet alleged that
this secret organization was controlled by the Jews and/or Communists.
These CNC claims aren't much of a surprise, however, as the group
was known to have antisemitic, racist, and anti-communist views.
hard evidence for this story has been ever found. Another rumor
was that FDR was poisoned, not shot. This story, however, would
seem to undermine the one fact that might support the assassination
theory: The closed casket. A closed casket would not be needed
if the cause of death was poison.
seems no real reason to question Roosevelt's death given the poor
state of his health. He had been struck down by polio when he
was young and lived as an invalid for many years. He was also
an extremely heavy smoker with emphysema, very high blood-pressure,
atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and angina. You can
add to this more than a dozen years of stress from running the
country during the Great Depression and World War II and you begin
to wonder how he lived as long as he did. In fact, a prominent
pathologist, Dr. Emanuel Libman, after seeing Roosevelt's image
in newsreels in 1943 prophetically said, "It doesn't matter whether
Roosevelt is re-elected or not, he'll die of a cerebral hemorrhage
within 6 months."
wasn't the only one who questioned FDR's longevity. When Roosevelt
ran for elections for a fourth time in 1944 many of the members
of his party did not expect to see him live to the end of his
term. They were so concerned that they insisted that Vice-President
Henry A. Wallace (who was thought to be soft on communism) be
dropped from the ticket. He was replaced by Harry Truman.
conspiracy theories linger on. There were certainly people who
might have wanted to do him harm and he had already survived an
attempt on his life in 1933 while he was President-Elect. Here
are some places you can check these theories out: Bill Hanson's
book entitled "Closely Guarded Secrets" supports the poisoning
hypothesis. You can also read an excerpt from "The Roosevelt Death:
A Super Mystery" which can be found on archive.org.
on the Surface -I often see drops of water hanging but
not falling. Gravity is pulling on them, so what's holding them
up? - John
you are referring to is known as surface tension. Surface
tension is responsible for many of the strange things we see liquids
do, but are so familiar we don't usually even think about them.
Surface tension is caused by forces in nature that pull the tiny
particles that make up substances (molecules) together. A general
name for these is intermolecular forces and they are only
effective at a very short range. So short that the molecules have
to be practically touching for them to take effect.
forces tend to pull molecules of the same substance together more
strongly than molecules of substances of different types. This
is what causes water to form into beads on a waxed surface. The
wax does not attract the water molecules as much as other water
molecules do, so they pull themselves together into a sphere shape
which allows the most volume of water with the smallest surface
area letting the water molecules to get as close to each other
as they can. Because gravity is also acting on the water sphere,
however, it tends to flatten out a bit forming into a bead.
this have to do with hanging water? Let's take the example of
a droplet hanging from a leaking facet. The water forms into half
sphere to get as close as possible to each other. Even though
the metal of the facet doesn't attract the water molecules as
much as other water molecules do, there is still enough attraction
to counteract gravity and keep the half sphere from falling or
turning into a full sphere.
water from the leak flows into the droplet, however, it gets bigger
and heavier until it weighs so much that the surface tension of
the droplet to the facet isn't enough to keep it attached. The
droplet becomes elongated with less and less of the water touching
the metal. As less and less of the water touches the metal the
surface tension drops even more until the droplet falls free.
the air the droplet, now free from the attraction to the facet,
can form into a perfect sphere to minimize the distance between
the water molecules. Rain drops, contrary to popular belief, are
spheres. They only appear to be shaped with an elongated tail
because that's the way our eyes see them as they zoom by us on
the way to the ground.
tension also explains why water droplets on wax paper pull together
when brought close to each other. Again the water molecules are
trying to get as close to each other as they can by minimizing
the outside area and maximize the volume. Surface tension also
explains how a bug like the water strider can walk on the
surface of a pond. The bug so light his weight is not enough to
push the water molecules apart so his foot can sink in.
a question?Click here to send
it to the curator.
of Life on Earth -With recent news about global warming
and the slow depletion of the Earth's natural resources due to
mining, hunting, killing of plants and animals to make way for
modernization, is it possible for man to render the Earth virtually
un-inhabitable? If yes, how do you think this will happen, how
fast, and given the current state of the Earth, how long until
it will happen. - Harris
mention in your email if you meant virtually un-inhabitable by
just humans or almost any living thing. Given the choice let's
go for the big enchilada! Could man end life on Earth entirely?
Probably not given we know there are bacteria that live two miles
underground getting their energy not from the sun but from radiation
in the rock. These things would be very hard for us to get at,
let alone kill. However, we might be able to do in just about
everything else on the planet, including ourselves, if we let
our most advanced technology get into the wrong hands.
(or perhaps worse) scenario for this would be the deliberate misuse
of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology will allow us to produce machines
as small as or even smaller than bacteria. The positive uses of
this technology include the ability to make a tiny robot that
would live in a human body and hunt down cancer cells. Such a
thing seems like science fiction, but researchers and engineers
are thinking about ways to do this now, and multi-millions of
dollars are being poured into this technology both in the United
States and abroad.
the danger though if someone were to reprogram that tiny robot
to kill all living cells. A handful of those nano robots
might not be that dangerous to large populations, but suppose
that these robots also had the ability to self-replicate. The
result would be a plague would spread across the earth killing
possibility is creating a self-reproducing nano-robot that would
enter plants and disrupt photosynthesis. A plant that cannot carry
out photosynthesis (create food from sunlight) is a dead plant.
Without plants to provide food, life would soon vanish from the
earth (with the exception of those bacteria we mentioned before
that live off radiation instead of sunlight).
no sane man (or woman) would build such a robot, but the world
is filled with crazy people and terrorist groups. Suppose they
got a hold of this technology? People thinking about this problem
have already coined a term for it: Nanoterrorism. Nobody
is quite sure at this point how difficult it will be to build
such a robot. Obviously nature has already engineered some organic
self-reproducing machines in the form of bacteria. At some point
in our future - perhaps in the next decade or two - we will be
able to do the same thing. Our machines, unlike bacteria, will
be programmed to do specific functions of our own design. Some
of them will give us great benefits (think of a self-reproducing
nano-robot that be dropped into the ocean to clean up an oil spill),
while others may bode of great danger.
saying here we should blindly panic and start burning down laboratories
that work with nano-technology, however. What we do need to do
is carefully think how the technology should be used and what
safeguards should be in place.
Battery for Electric Cars? - "Has the Babylon battery
on your site ever been tested out for a power source for cars?
How about lamps etc.?" - Sheryl Skoglund
the German archeologist Wilhelm Konig discovered an object in
the Baghdad museum's collection that looked to him like it might
be the remains of a battery: a clay jar which seemed to have an
iron bar running from the top surrounded by a copper cylinder
Other scientists disagreed with his idea claiming the jars might
have been used to contain scrolls or have some other purpose,
but Konig published his conjecture in 1940 and people have been
fascinated with the possibility ever since.
people have actually made replicas of the Baghdad Battery and
tried it on different applications. The voltage produced is pretty
low compared to modern batteries. Perhaps a half volt. (Your everyday
AAA battery produces one and one half volts.) This might be sufficient
to light a LED bulb, but given the size of the ancient battery,
it really has no modern practical use. It has been suggested that
the ancients might have used it to electroplate objects.
amazing about the battery - if that is truly what it is - is that
it exists at all. It was thought the discovery of how to make
electricity though a chemical reaction was not discovered until
beginning of the 19th century. The battery, and other devices
like the Antikythera Mechanism (http://www.unmuseum.org/amechanism.htm),
which is a mechanical computer used to predict the movement of
the stars, suggest that the ancients knew a lot more about technology
that we originally appreciated.
Too Heavy for the Earth? - This may be a very stupid question,
but I have been curious about this for a long time. When the earth
was first formed, there were no people inhabiting the earth. Now
there are over 6 1/2 billion people on the earth (along with all
the animals now roaming the earth). I realize living things consume
the resources of earth but why has not the weight of 6 1/2 billion
people affected the orbit or tilt of the earth? It is an incredible
amount of weight on earth that was not there before. - Diane
are a few reasons why this weight does not affect earth's orbit.
If we take the average weight of a human being as 150lbs and multiply
it by 6.5 billion, then converte it to kilograms by dividing by
2.2, we get an approximate mass for all the human life on our
planet as 443.19 billion kilograms (this is probably an over-estimate
as the much of the world's population are children which would
lower the average weight). This seems like a large number until
you compare it with the mass of the earth, however, which is 6,000,000,000,000,000
billion kilograms. We are only a tiny, tiny fraction of the planet's
estimates of the planet's total biomass (all plants and animals)
are hard to come by, but one often cited figure is 69,181 billion
kilograms. Still only a tiny fraction of earth's total mass.
if people did represent a large percentage of the earth's weight
our growth in numbers on the planet would not represent a change
in the planets total mass. Why? Because all that we are was once
part of the earth. For example 80% percent of our bodies are water.
The water was here before people were on the earth; it was just
located in the lakes, rivers and oceans of our planet. As a human
body grows it takes on this water that was already on the planet.
The water is shifted from sitting on the surface of the earth
to inside your body, but the mass does not change. This is the
same for all the other materials in your body and for all life.
way to significantly increase the weight of our planet would be
for it to be hit by a large object (by large I mean planet-sized).
If such a collision occurred, however, the impact would probably
wipe out all life on the planet and any modifications to the orbit
would be a moot point as far as human beings were concerned.
vs GENES - I would like to know the difference between DNA
and genes. - Kamini
for deoxyribonucleic acid. It is a double-stranded, helical
nucleic acid molecule that encodes information hereditary information
for almost all living organisms. A gene is one section
of the DNA that controls a specific function or characteristic.
arranged like a twisted ladder with the up and down rails composed
of sugar molecules and phosphate molecules connected to rungs
made of either adenine and thymine or guanine and cytosine. One
section of rail and a half rung is called a nucleotide
and each nucleotide can be connected with others to make both
sides of the ladder and to make the ladder longer. Because the
half rungs (called bases) can be either adenine, thymine,
guanine or cytosine, there are four different types of nucleotides.
The order of the nucleotides on the ladder is important as this
is how information is encoded into the DNA. It is not unlike the
zeros and ones that encode information for computer program.
group of consecutive nucleotides on the ladder that composes the
instructions necessary to make one protein is called a gene. The
protein molecule that the gene makes may control characteristics
like a person's eye color, hair color, etc. On average a gene
includes 3000 nucleotides, but for some simple proteins only a
few dozen may be needed. Not all DNA nucleotides are part of a
gene. There are lengthy intergenic regions in between most genes
that either have no function or a regulatory function the scientists
are only yet beginning to understand.
are believed to have about 20,000 - 25,000 genes. More than ninety-nine
percent of these genes are shared by all humans with only less
than a percent involved in giving us all those traits that make
use individuals. (In fact chimps, our closet biological relatives,
have the 96% of the same DNA we do). Human DNA is also split up
into unconnected sections called chromosomes. Humans have 23 pairs
of chromosomes. A child gets one half of each pair from their
mother and the other half from their father which is why a child
might have their father's wide set eyes, but their mother's eye
color. Chromosome number 23 is known as the sex chromosome because
females carry two X types and males carry one Y and one X.
in a gene is divided up into two components. A "non-coding" section
that simply indicates whether the gene is "on" or "off" (sometimes
referred to the gene being "expressed" or not) and a "coding"
section which contains the instructions to build the protein.
The DNA does not build the protein itself but transcribes the
information to RNA (Ribonucleic acid) to do the work. RNA looks
and acts a lot like DNA, but is made up of only one half of the
twisted ladder and uses a few alternate materials. In a few cases
gene may not make a protein at all, but just RNA which is then
used in another part of the protein synthesis operation.
cell in our body carries a copy of our DNA and parts of that DNA
are very specific to each person, which is why it has become as
important as fingerprinting to establish identity. Just a few
cells left behind at a crime scene through a strand of hair can
be enough to let police positively identify someone as the perpetrator.
DNA can also predict if a person will get certain disease. For
example, Tay-Sachs, which is a fatal disease often afflicting
Eastern European Jews, has been shown to be the result a mutated
and non-functioning HEXA gene. Other genes may not directly cause
a disease, but increase the likelihood of a person getting ill.
For example, researchers have shown that people with a nonfunctioning
CREB gene are at an increased risk for anxiety and alcoholism.
actually looks like a super-tiny thread and is impossible to see
without the use of an electron microscope. Typically it is curled
up on itself so it can fit inside a microscopic cell. If you were
to uncurl the DNA in a single cell, however, it would stretch
out to about three feet in length and contain three billion base
and Bostrom - Is the idea that we are all just living in a
big computer simulation related to what Jacques Vallée and people
like that are talking about when they try to explain UFO's as
not extraterrestrial craft but "control devices" and so on? That
is, do they mean that the ones behind the UFO's are the programmers
of this big simulation we're living in, who are doing experiments
on us by sending these weird, anomalous phenomena and seeing how
we deal with them? I never really understood what Vallée was getting
at till I read the article on the world as a computer simulation
in the current edition of the Museum of Unnatural Mystery. Thanks.
- Alan Meyers
F. Vallée, a computer scientist, venture capitalist and former
astronomer, has long been one of the "deep thinkers" in the arena
of Ufology. Born in France in 1939 he became interested in the
subject when he observed a UFO in 1955. At first Vallée was convinced
that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft and published his ideas
in his book Anatomy of a phenomenon: unidentified objects in
space--a scientific appraisal. By 1969, however, his thinking
had changed and he began to see UFOs and alien abduction reports
as part of a much larger phenomenon that included other paranormal
events. He outlined his thinking for this in his book Passport
to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Vallée suggested
in his book that flying saucers and alien visitors might not be
from other planets, but from other dimensions or even different
time periods. These ideas did not sit well with many UFO enthusiasts
and Vallée soon found himself an outcast among their ranks, or
as he put it a "heretic among heretics".
sees one possible explanation of the UFO phenomenon as that of
a "control mechanism " with incidents as deceptions created to
manipulate people and society. Sometimes this is done by other
humans. For example, we know the US Air Force encouraged UFO reports
to hide the flights of SR-71 Blackbird spy aircraft in the 80's.
The Soviet Union also did the same thing to cover the launch of
rockets that were not in compliance with the SALT treaty they
the social manipulation caused by UFOs reports, however, Vallée
suggests are done by non-human entities who have an agenda of
which we are totally unaware. Vallée's initial thinking was that
these entities were from another dimension, and were not operators
of a simulated world that we are living in (See last month article
in a Video Game). "There is a distinction to be made between
a Matrix-like virtual world and what I first proposed in 'Messengers,'
[Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults his 1979
book] namely an information multiverse with fully physical manifestations"
said Vallée, in an interview with SUB ROSA online magazine.
he is thinking about is related to some of the interpretations
of quantum theory which suggest that reality consists of many
nearly parallel universes. If beings from one universe successfully
figured out how to cross to another universe we might interpret
them as extra terrestrials. A visitor moving from one quantum
parallel universe to another also might be jumping in time also
leading to the suggestion that flying saucers are our ancestors'
attempts to manipulate their past.
Vallée initial ideas with control mechanisms didn't involve our
living in a simulated universe, in my opinion the idea that UFO
incidents (and other paranormal experiences) are attempts by those
outside the simulation to influence our society seem to make just
as much sense as the multi-dimensional approach. Remember Vallée's
initial thinking on this subject was published in 1979 long before
Bostrom's 2002 paper on the simulation argument came out. Perhaps
Vallée, after pondering Bostrom's thinking, will address this
possibility directly in some future book.
AD, BCE, and CE- Why are the years are called by BC
and AD and how exactly did the year change to BC to AD'? Did ancient
people follow this? - Gajendra K.
numbering system is based on the presumed year of the birth of
Jesus Christ. Years before his birth are given the abbreviation
B.C. ("Before Christ") designation and are numbered backwards
so the further back in time you go in time the higher the number.
For example, the Great Pyramid is thought to have been built 2560
years before Christ was born which would be expressed as 2560
stands for "Anno Domini" which is Latin for "In the year of our
Lord." All recent dates are expressed in the number of years after
Jesus's birth. This year is A.D. 2008 which translates to "The
year of our Lord 2008" or 2008 years after Christ was born. Technically
the A.D. abbreviation should go before the number, but more recently
it has become common to put it either at the beginning or the
end, for example "2008 A.D.".
people prefer to use the designation C.E. (for "Common Era") instead
of A.D. so there is no religious connection (though C.E. can also
thought of as "Christian Era."). The same thing can be done changing
B.C. - Before Christ - to B.C.E which means "Before Common Era."
system wasn't invented until A.D. 525, and was not commonly used
until the 8th century. Before then dates were typically numbered
years based on the start of the reign of the current king. For
example, Babylon was established as the center of the Babylonian
Empire during the 30th year of King Hammurabi's reign. In some
cases dates were not established by the beginning of the reign
of the current king, but the beginning of the dynasty of kings
to which he belonged.
early calendars (like the Hebrew Calendar) tried to base their
dates of the number of years since the world was created, but
given that different religious scholars disagreed about when this
occurred, the number system was never universal.
previous number systems were adequate in ancient times when there
were few contacts between different peoples and little shared
history, as interactions between cultures spread, it became difficult
to constantly match the years of different king's reigns together
to establish correct dates. The A.D. system first became popular
in Western Europe and is now the defacto standard though out most
of the world. Its popularity can also be attributed to the success
of the Gregorian calendar (our system of months and days) to which
it has been closely tied.
re-examination of the birth of Christ in the last century suggests
Jesus was actually born several years before A.D. 1, but given
that the system is now so well established there has been no attempt
to fix it. Another quirk with the system is that there is no "year
zero." This means that if you go one year backwards from A.D.
1 you will find yourself at 2 B.C.. Incidentally some people incorrectly
attribute the A.D. to the abbreviation of "After [Christ's] Death"
but this is incorrect as it would yield dates 33 years too low
- The length of Jesus' life.
of Egypt - We studied Ancient Egypt and I was absent when
we studied Queen Cleopatra. Who is she? - Samantha
are several Cleopatra's in Egyptian history, but the most famous
one was Cleopatra VII. She was the last Pharaoh of Egypt, at a
time just before the country was completely taken over by the
Rome. Cleopatra herself was not of Egyptian heritage, but Greek.
In 331BC Alexander the Great (who was from a section of Greece)
liberated Egypt when he defeated the Persian Empire. After Alexander's
death in 232BC, Egypt fell under control of one of Alexander's
generals, Ptolemy. The Ptolemy family kept power there until Cleopatra
was born to her father, Ptolemy XII, in 69BC. Cleopatra showed
great interest in the traditions of Egypt and was the only member
of her family in 300 years that bothered to learn the language.
She followed the Egyptian beliefs and while she ruled she was
considered the re-incarnation and embodiment of, Isis, the Egyptian
goddess of wisdom.
her father died in 51 BC, a 17 year-old Cleopatra and her 12-year-old
brother, Ptolemy XIII, took over. In addition to be siblings,
Cleo and her brother were married (a common trick used to keep
power in the family back then). Cleo attempted to push her husband/bother
into the background and get sole control of the kingdom, but lost
the battle and was forced to flee Egypt.
chance to get back into power came in 48BC when a political miscalculation
by her brother got the Roman ruler Julius Caesar angry with him.
Cleopatra took advantage of this situation: It is said that she
had her servants bring an expensive Persian carpet to Caesar as
a gift. When it was unrolled, Cleopatra tumbled out. Caesar, age
50, enchanted by her beauty and youth (she was only 21) and fell
in love with her. He helped her returned her to the Egyptian throne
which led to Ptolemy XIII's death. Caesar and Cleo had a son,
Caesarion, together. It was Caesar's plan to have Caesarion rule
Egypt after his death and leave Rome to grand-nephew, Octavian.
Cleopatra, however, wished her son to be heir to all of Rome.
was killed by members of the Roman Senate in 44BC, Cleopatra made
Caesarion her co-regent and successor. Later she allied herself
with Mark Anthony, one of the three men ruling Rome after Caesar's
death. They married and had children. It is likely that Cleopatra
had plans to take on Rome and make herself and her son rulers
of the known world, but the Romans, under Octavian, attacked first.
Anthony and Cleopatra's forces were defeated at the naval battle
off the coast of Actium. Soon the armies of Rome were marching
through Egypt and Anthony was mortally wounded in battle. Cleopatra
was held under house arrest and commited suicide (legend has it
that she killed herself by letting a deadly Asp snake bite her)
in 30BC at the age of 39.
is remembered for her immense beauty and even more immense ambition.
She ruled in a time when Greek women were expected to be submissive
to their husbands. Instead of taking a back seat to men, however,
she cleverly used her charms to gain political advantages over
her enemies and was nearly successful in ruling the known world.
"Death Beam" - I'm wondering about Tesla's Death Ray. Did
anyone ever try to build one after his death? Was it ever proven
as a viable weapon? - Frank
Tesla, the almost forgotten genius of electricity, hated war and
for years searched for a way to put an end to it. In 1934, at
age 78, Tesla thought he had found it. He had an idea for a death
beam based on sending a concentrated stream of charged particles
though the air. The beam would carry tremendous energy and would
disrupt or melt whatever it hit. The weapon, he thought, could
be used to down any hostile airplane approaching a country's borders.
The beam could only be sent in a straight line and would not follow
the curve of the earth, so it only had a range of only a couple
of hundred miles. Because of this, Tesla felt that his invention
could be used only as a defensive weapon to prevent aggression.
to get much interest in it until he wrote a technical paper entitled
"New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through
Natural Media" and mailed it to a number of Allied nations including
the United States, Canada, England, France, the Soviet Union,
and Yugoslavia. According to him the weapon would be "capable
of destroying 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 250 miles."
The nation that showed the greatest interest in it was the Soviet
Union, which tested one stage of the weapon in 1939 and sent Tesla
a check for $25,000.
design was clever. One the problems with a charged particle weapon
is that the particles need to be accelerated in a vacuum, but
then must be able to emerge from the weapon into the atmosphere
to make the beam. To keep the interior of the weapon a vacuum
Tesla devised a gateway for the particles that consisted of a
blast of high-speed air blowing across the weapon's barrel. The
blowing air helped maintain the vacuum, but would not hinder the
this, experts say his exact design appears unworkable. However,
after his death some of his papers appeared to have gone missing
and then, during the "cold war" both the United States and the
Soviet Union tried to developed "charged particle" weapons similar
in principal to Tesla's designs. Conspiracy theorists suggest
this is more than a coincidence. Later a similar weapon was designed
to be put aboard a rocket as part of the SDI ("Star Wars") program
to down approaching missiles, but the idea was never implemented.
Currently one company is experimenting with a charged particle
beam weapon code named MEDUSA which they hope can be used to defend
against planes and light tanks. So far, however, no charged particle
weapon seems to have made it into the standard defense inventory
of any nation.
Zapotec's Little Tunnels -I've heard of tunnels found
in buildings from the Zapotec empire, somewhere in Central or
South America. These tunnels, as I have heard, were too small
for adults or normal-sized children to enter, but still had little
staircases carved into them, and ceremonial-type items were found
in them. I can't find much information on them- are they real?
Are people still trying to explore them? Any idea what they were
used for? Many thanks - Tango.
Empire of central American (now Mexico) existed from about 500
BC to 700 AD, and reached peak population of around 16,500 around
500 AD. At this point in time they abandoned their old capital
and built a new one, Monte Albán, atop a high plateau in the valley
of Oaxaca. Beneath the central plaza of this city runs a labyrinth
of small tunnels. The tunnels, many only a foot high, are - as
you note - too small for adults and most children. Some appear
to have steps and are connected chambers containing artifacts
like human skeletons and funerary objects. Despite Monte Albán
being one of the most studied archeological sites in the Americans,
the reason behind the tunnels is unknown, but ideas have been
proposed ranging from water drainage to a transportation system
for diminutive aliens. One explanation seems to be that the tubes
were used for sighting the different positions of the sun, moon
and stars as they moved across the sky, but the existence of the
chambers snd artifacts seems to also suggest a ritual connection.
by far, is not the only mystery about Monte Albán. On the north
side of the site is an area called "The Gallery of Dancers" with
many stone tablets carved with reliefs of human figures in contorted
positions. Nobody is exactly sure what these figures mean, except
that they are not really dancers. The leading theory is that they
may be human sacrifices.
we could understand more about the city and its strange features
if we could read the Zapotec hieroglyphics that cover city walls.
While the language is still spoken in Mexico, the meanings of
the glyphs have been lost and only a handful are now known. Without
a key, like the Rosetta Stone which
allowed Egyptian script to be deciphered, the translation of these
texts may never be known. For a look at the plaza and the tunnels
BIG CRUNCH -What is the Big Crunch and when will it occur?
Crunch" is one of several theories about how the universe will
end. Probably everybody is now familiar with the leading theory
about how the universe started, the so called "Big Bang." According
to the Big Bang theory, at the beginning of the universe all matter
and energy was compressed into an infinity small point with infinite
density and temperature. Then followed a period of rapid inflation
and expansion (the Bang). Matter in the universe cooled and coalesced
into stars, planets and galaxies. The expansion continues today
as each of the local groups of galaxies, including ours, grows
further apart from each other.
years scientists pondered what would happen at the end of the
universe. While the expansion continues, gravity is trying to
reverse the process and pull all matter back together. Scientists
figured that either gravity would be too weak and the expansion
would continue forever while just getting slower and slower, or
gravity would be strong enough to bring all the matter and energy
back together in a "Big Crunch."
also speculated if the universe did come back into a "Big Crunch"
it might precipitate another "Big Bang" which would create another
universe. Ours, they suggested, might be just one in an unending
series of universes.
measurements suggested the amount of gravity and the speed of
the expansion were very nearly balanced. This meant that scientists
had to impatiently wait for decades until better technology was
available so that more accurate studies could be made and they
could find out what the fate of the universe was.
of those moments that proved that Sir Arthur Eddington was right
when he said "not only is the universe stranger than we imagine,
it is stranger than we can imagine," the results came back
showing that the expansion wasn't slowing at all. It was - much
to the shock of almost everybody - accelerating. Scientists
have decided that the reason for the acceleration must be something
they've dubbed "dark energy," but they have almost no idea what
this energy might be and how it works.
expansion continues at the current rate the universe may end in
"The Big Rip." At some point about 50 billion years in the future
the expansion will become so great that everything will be ripped
apart. Galaxies will fly apart as individual solar systems go
their own way. Later stars will lose their planets and eventually
everything down to the subatomic level will be torn asunder.
a "Big Crunch" seems unlikely due to this most recent finding,
because scientists know almost nothing about what "dark energy"
is, they can't rule out that it might suddenly reverse and cause
a rapid collapse of the universe. When this might happen is also
a mystery. If there is a Big Crunch, the universe would end as
all matter was sucked into black holes, then the black holes were
pulled together to create a single massive black hole. Scientists
have no idea whether this singularity might lead to a new universe
and a new expansion or not.
a Well - If a person is in a deep well in the daytime
and he looks straight up will he be able to see the stars? - M.
that you can see the stars during daylight hours from the bottom
of a deep well or chimney has been around a long time. The ancient
Greek philosopher Aristotle mentions it as does the 19th century
author Charles Dickens. However, any theoretical or practical
evidence for this seems lacking. The British astronomer Rev. W.F.A.
Ellison tried it from the bottom of a bottom of a colliery 900
feet below the surface and found the he wasn't struck by the sight
of stars, but the brilliant blue of the sky when compared the
darkened tube he was looking up through.
see the stars in the sky during the day because of the sunlight
is scattering off gas molecules in the air, sending light in all
directions - including into our eyes. (Blue is scattered more
than the other colors so that is why the sky is blue). The light
radiating this way during day is much brighter than most stars.
A few extremely bright stars, like Sirius, are visible in the
day if you know where to look, though they do not stand out against
the day sky like they do at night. If you were at the bottom of
a well shaft, and Sirius was directly overhead during the day,
the well shaft might reduce the glare from the sun enough to make
the star more visible. It would not, however, allow you to see
the fainter stars and the real world chance of Sirius being exactly
over your shaft would be extremely small.
planets, like Venus, can be seen in the daylight and viewing them
from a well or chimney might reduce the Sun's glare and make them
more visible, but you could probably get the same effect by using
the cardboard cylinder from a roll of paper towels that you hold
up to your eye.
of Universe vs. Speed of Light - I read "K-Pax IV,"
a fictional book, and an alien character suggested that light
only travels because the universe is expanding. She suggests that
light cannot exceed the speed of light because that's the speed
of the expanding universe and if the light exceeds that speed
then it's going out of the universe's bounds. Is this somewhat
true or completely fictional? - Melqui
the literature on this subject I see no credible theories that
connect the expansion of the universe, as we know it, to the speed
of light. Usually when we talk about the "expansion of the universe"
we are referring to the way things in the universe get farther
away from each other over the course of time. This started with
the "Big Bang" and continues today. Recently this speed was measured
to be about 71 (km/s)/megaparsec. That means that if two objects
in the universe are a megaparsec apart (3261.5 light years) they
will be moving away from each other at 71 kilometers a second.
speed is well below that of light so there doesn't seem to be
a direct connection. In addition, the effect is additive so that
at great distances - billions of megaparsecs apart - two objects
can actually be moving away from each other at more that the speed
of light. This would seem to defy Einstein's Theory, but remember
that the movement of these objects is because they are just being
carried along by the expansion of space, not because the objects
themselves have been accelerated.
is also recent evidence that the rate that the universe is expanding
is increasing for some unknown reason. This is also unlike that
speed of light which almost all scientists believe is a constant.
Even the few people that suggest light speed may not be a constant
speculate that it is slowing down, not speeding up.
theory may find a connection between the speed of light and the
expansion of the universe, but it is not obvious at point in time.
Still, we do not know everything about the universe - in fact
we do not even know what we don't know - so there is always the
possibility of new discovery over the horizon that would change
in SETI - What do you know about the WOW signal, and have
scientists found any possible source (other than aliens)? Could
it have even been faked? Or is it more likely to be a genuine
signal from aliens? If that's the case, why haven't we heard any
more? - Jonathan .
signal (called the "WOW" signal because that's what the scientist
who first saw the data wrote on the printout) was observed by
the "Big Ear" radio telescope at Ohio State University on August
15, 1977. The Big Ear was part of a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence) project run by the college for almost 30 years.
The signal was the closest thing to an alien contact that the
project - or anybody else involved in SETI - has ever found.
are several things that make the signal so interesting. The first
is the strength. It is extremely high: The most powerful signal
ever received from space from an unknown source. Second is its
duration. Almost exactly 72 seconds. This is significant because
the Big Ear was a fixed radio antenna which swept the sky as the
earth turned and 72 seconds was exactly the length of time it
would take for the antenna to sweep by a pinpoint source in space.
Also the growth and decay pattern of the signal is exactly what
one would expect for a fixed celestial source, making it unlikely
it was an earthbound transmitter. Third is its frequency: It is
very near the frequency of hydrogen and very concentrated. The
hydrogen "line" is considered to be by most scientists the logical
frequency to choose if you where trying to broadcast to another
civilization. The fact that that signal did not extend much above
or below that frequency is a strong indication that the broadcast
was artificial, as natural sources a rarely so concentrated.
intriguing aspect of this signal is that is that it was only observed
from one of the Big Ear's two "horns" but not the other. They
scanned the same section of sky about two minutes apart, so in
that short period something, or somebody, stopped the transmission.
as the signal was, it has never been found again despite many
researchers revisiting that location in the sky using, in many
cases, much more sensitive equipment. This both deepens the mystery
and makes it almost impossible to hope for a solution. The follow
up surveys have almost eliminated the possibly of some weird natural
source. However, the lack of any additional signals also makes
it seem very unlikely that aliens are trying to contact us. Most
scientists believe that they definitely would try more than once
(although we ourselves have only sent a sent an outbound signal
once). The only way we may have missed their additional signals,
if they exist, is if they are being repeated at very long intervals
(at least 14 hours apart).
unless something is repeatable, it doesn't count for much. Some
have suggested that the signal may have been a man-made space
probe that the SETI team wasn't aware of, but there is no way
of proving that one way or another. So, the mystery continues.
We can only hope that if E.T. was trying to contact us, he tries
to phone again, soon.
Speeding Up? - Someone just said to me she thinks the last
3 years have aged everyone more than in the past because the actual
minute itself (the unit of time) is speeding up. Can this be possible?
- Jennifer E.
your friend is referring to the insertion of "leap seconds" into
the calendar in the last few years. If this is the case, it isn't
so much that time itself is speeding up, but that the earth's
rotation is slowing down.
how you look at it depends on how you define time. We casually
define our days as one rotation of our planet, hours as one 24th
the length of that day, minutes as one 60th of the length of that
hour and seconds as one 60th the length of that minute. If the
Earth rotation slows (which it does due to the pull of the moon
and sun's gravity on our oceans which create friction between
the water and land) the days get longer by a few fractions of
a second each year.
this tiny difference is unimportant to most people, it is of great
concern to scientists who need to measure things carefully down
to the thousandths of a second for many scientific experiments.
If the length of a second is changing as the earth slows down
it can't be used to compare the results of one experiment with
a similar one done years earlier. To solve this problem scientists
invented the "physics second." A physics second is length that
the second was according to the rotation of our planet in 1900.
Scientists then use atomic clocks (that measure time as a function
of the change of states in the element cesium) to track time without
having to refer to the earth rotation. When the atomic clocks
slip out of sync with the rotation of the earth by about a second
a "leap second" is inserted into the clocks tracking to keep it
aligned with the astronomical day.
thought of the real value of time as the length of the day, then
indeed you might come to the conclusion that time is going faster
- after all we are inserting extra fractions of a second into
those days so time must have sped up, right? Well, not really.
It is probably more accurate to think that time has stayed the
same, but our days are getting longer.
Findings - What do you do if you find pieces of a creature
unlike that of anything of this earth? - Charlie
your best bet, when trying to identify an unknown animal (extraterrestrial
or not) is to contact a biologist professor at a local college
or university. They will be familiar with animals in your area
and can eliminate some possibilities of an unusual, but earthly
species. Most scientists would jump at the chance to identify
a new species (even an earthly one) if given the chance. If they
find one, they get to write a paper on it and they become famous
(at least within the biology world).
for fossils too. If you find a fossil, which you think might be
something significant you can contact a geologist or paleontologist
at a local college or university. It could be an important find.
It has happened before:
a contractor working on a housing development in South Dakota
came across some strange bones. His son, who was a college student,
recognized them as fossils and contacted a university. Scientists
came out and examined the location and immediately discovered
the remains of at least four Columbian Mammoths. Later excavations
revealed that the location was an ancient sinkhole which had trapped
mammoths for centuries and was a treasure trove of important fossils.
The housing project was abandoned and a museum built on the location:
The South Dakota Mammoth Site near Hot Springs. It's great place
to learn about mammoths while visiting South Dakota.
Berkeley Horror -I have a book by Daniel Cohen called
Worlds Most Famous Ghosts. In it is a chapter on something
called the "Berkeley Square Horror" in London. It is something
about a room at 50 Berkeley Square that if anyone stays one night
in there they will either be dead or have gone insane. Supposedly
this has happened several times. I have searched several sights
including wikipedia.com and I have found nearly no info. It would
be much appreciated if you could help me out. - Frank
are multiple stories about 50 Berkeley Square, many of them contradictory.
The house was constructed in 1740 and for a number of years was
the home to British Prime Minister George Canning. The source
of the haunting stories starts around 1830 with either young woman
who committed suicide by jumping from the top floor, or a Mr.
Myers was preparing the house for the just new bride and went
insane after he was jilted. Or maybe the haunting really comes
from a Mr. Dupre, who confined his insane brother in an upper
story room. Or maybe the story about the little girl who was tortured
to death by a sadistic servant is what started it. Well, take
your pick. According to the story after Mr. Myers/Dupre/young
woman/little girl was gone and a new family had moved in, a maid
was found in a third floor bedroom screaming and muttering she
has seen something "horrible" there. The story continues next
with a Captain Kenfeild, fiancée, to the family's daughter (In
other versions this is a young aristocrat named Robert Warboys)
who decides to challenge the apparition by staying in the room
overnight. He sees something that either kills him with fright
(in some versions) or leaves him crazed.
tale connected with the house brings the story into the 20th century
with two sailors in 1943 who break into the long empty house to
stay overnight and encounter a monstrous, shapeless, oozing mass
in the third floor room. One sailor escapes to tell the tale while
the other jumps out the window to his death (speared on the points
of an iron railing) to avoid the horror.
became famous for these stories and by the beginning of the 20th
century and was listed by some authors as "the most haunted place
in Britain." The current owners still get visitors from time to
time curious about the house. The stories were also an inspiration
for a 1947 movie "The Ghosts of Berkeley Square."
as I am aware nobody has carefully researched the history of the
house to determine if any of the 18th century stories are real.
This could probably be done by checking records to see who owned
the house, who died there, and going though police reports associated
with the house, etc. Clearly there are problems with the 1943
story as it indicates the house was empty, but history shows that
in 1938 Maggs Brothers Rare Books moved into the location.
The company reports no ghostly incidents since they have been
there even though there were many all-night fire watches held
during the Second World War.
visit the building, even the supposedly haunted 3rd floor, by
going to the Maggs Brothers website and taking a virtual tour.
So far nobody has reported any virtual horrors. http://www.maggs.com/maggstour/0/exterior.asp
Night Reflections -If you look at the reflection of a
street light from across a body of water, it appears long in one
direction but not the other? Why? - Tariq
under the right conditions, reflects light just like mirror. Of
course, a mirror is a usually composed of solid material (most
commonly glass with a silver backing) and water is liquid. As
long as the water is perfectly still and flat the image reflected
is almost mirror-like, but should a breeze start to ripple the
water, strange things start to happen.
cause the shape of the surface of the water to change into a series
of up and down curves. This means that the light normal reflected
by the surface doesn't come straight to the viewer, but is distorted
much like in a fun house mirror. While fun house mirrors are usually
static - either making you look tall and thin or short and fat
- the many ripples in the water are always moving and changing
giving the reflected image a vibrating quality.
a lake might have thousand of ripples between the viewer and a
distant object on the other side of the lake each ripple as it
moves is capable of picking a tiny bit of the light coming from
the object and reflecting it back to the viewer (see diagram)
making it look like the object is in thousands of different locations.
the day when everything is evenly lighted these bits of light
are overwhelmed by all the other reflections involved and only
contribute to the overall reflected image by making it look fuzzy.
At night, however, when the most of the background is dark, all
these tiny reflection become visible. They tend to appear to elongate
the lighted object in the direction where the ripples appear spaced
closely together from the viewer's perspective. That is vertically
as you have observed. It is possible to see some spreading horizontally,
however, depending on what direction the wind is blowing the ripples.
Big Bang -I'm a 60 year old scientist and I have a rock-solid
understanding of the concept of entropy, including the idea of
life as a temporary bump in the overall decline of order and organization
in a system. All I want before I die is to know if there is any
credible scientific theory about how the spring originally got
wound 14-or-so billion years ago - Bob W.
re-phrase you question as, "What was there before the Big-Bang
and where did all the energy it requires come from?" At this point
I don't believe there are any "credible" theories to explain this
as none of the ideas scientists have about this area can be tested
by experimentation. In fact, there is not likely to be anything
testable until scientists can first create a Grand Unified theory
of everything combining Einstein's General Relativity with
Quantum Physics. That quest, which has been pursued by
physicists like the Holy Grail for almost a century, so far does
not seem near a conclusion.
best I can do is to throw out one of the more intriguing ideas
floating around cosmology circles these days. This particular
model comes out of string theory (One possible candidate for the
Grand Unified Theory that says all energy and matter is composed
of super-small vibrating loops of strings.) This idea was worked
out by Paul Steinhardt (Princeton University) and Neil Turok (Cambridge
University). They suggest our universe is part of a much larger
universe. The model says that our universe exists on a three dimensional
membrane ( or "Brane" in string theory lingo) and there are other
branes close to ours, only millimeters away, but invisible.
trillion years or so these branes are drawn together and when
they collide a huge amount of energy is released making a "Big
Bang" that creates a universe on the brane (other universes can
be created at other locations of the brane that may collide at
other times) This process of collision Steinhardt and Turok named
ekpyrosis which is the Greek word for conflagration. In
addition to creating a smaller universe, ekpyrosis also pushes
the branes apart.
life of the universe some of the big bang energy turns into matter
which becomes stars, galaxies and, of course, us. Eventually the
energy involved in our universe spreads out as stars burn out
and the universe grows cold. According to this idea, however,
the branes which still contain the energy, and they are drawn
back together again to collide and create another universe in
an eternal cycle.
problem with this, and alternate theories like it, is that there
is no way to test these theories experimentally to know if there
is any evidence that they are true. Even if this idea is true,
however, we may have just moved the question back a little bit
further: What created that greater universe and where did all
its energy come from?
Packaderm vs. Little Sport Device - Could an elephant have
the same momentum as a golf ball? - Anonymous.
way of thinking about momentum is the force necessary to stop
a moving object. It involves both the mass of the object and speed
of the object. Technically, in classical physics, this can be
expressed as the mass of the object mulitpled by its velocity.
The formula is:
P = mv
P is the momentum, m is the mass and v is the veolocity.
had and elephant that weighed 7200 Kg (about 15840 pounds) running
at 1 meter per second, the elephant would have:
m/s = 7200kg 1m/s
that 7200kg is the mass, 1 meter/second (m/s) is the velocity
and 7200 kg m/s ("kilogram meters per second") is the momentum.
easy to see a trivial situation where any two objects, no matter
the size of their mass, would have the same momentum. Any object
that has no veolocity has no momentum. So both an elephant and
a golf ball would have the same momentum if neither were moving.
are also cases where the elephant and the golf ball could have
the momentum even if they were both moving. Imagine our
7200 kilograms elephant from above and a golf ball weighing .046
kilograms. If we set up the equation with the elephant on the
left and the golf ball on the right:
Mv = p
1m/s = 7200kg m/s = .046kg V m/s
need to solve for the V, the velocity of the golf ball:
1m/s = 7200kg m/s = .046kg 156521 m/s
see that an elephant running along at 1 meter per second has the
same momentum as a golf ball moving at 156,521 meters per second
(around 351,000 miles per hour). So an heavy elephant moving along
at a trot would have the same momentum as small golf ball going
very, very fast.
couple of additional considerations. This is the formula for momentum
under classical (Newtonian physics). The formala under relativistic
physics is slightly different and allows for objects like photons,
which have no mass, to still have momentum. Also a complete description
of momentum for an object includes the direction (or vector) of
Very Cold -Is it possible to attain 0° Kelvin? -Feloxi
the Kelvin temperature scale is often referred to as absolute
zero. To get an idea of what absolute zero is, we first need
to know a little bit about heat and temperature. All atoms and
molecules "vibrate" with thermal energy. The more vibration, the
more heat the atom or molecule has. As the atoms and molecules
of a material are cooled, the vibration slows down and the energy
decreases. The point at which all heat energy has been removed
from a material is called absolute zero. This is approximately
-459.67 °F on the Fahrenheit scale or 0° on the Kelvin scale.
to the third law of Thermodynamics you can never completely achieve
absolute zero but only approach it, but scientists have come darn
close. In September of 2003 scientists at MIT managed to get a
small group of sodium atoms down to 240 millionths of a degree
above absolute zero. Larger objects are harder to cool, but another
group at MIT managed to get a mirror about the size of a dime
down to just 0.8 °K above absolute zero. They did this by shooting
laser pulses at it to "trap" and "damp" the molecular motion.
laboratory temperatures are just a bit colder than any reported
in nature. The coldest known place is about 5,000 light years
away from Earth in the Boomerang Nebula located in the constellation
Centaurus. Astronomers think the temperatures there run around
1°K. If you ever visit it, better bring a jacket.
are very interested in the behavior of objects very close to absolute
zero. It may give them the chance to observe quantum physics effects
that normally are too small to see because the are lost in the
heat motion of the material. Just a final note: There is also
something called a negative temperature (less then absolute zero
on the Kelvin scale) but negative temperatures are actually hotter
then absolute zero.
Physics Weirdness -I noticed on your site that quantum
physics is mentioned often. I was wondering if you could explain
its origins and why it's considered more reliable than the physics
used prior to its emergence? (If that is so) - Robert D.
Mechanics is one of the two great physics theories of the
20th century that replaced classical (Newtonian) physics. The
other was General Relativity. Interestingly both were fathered
by the same man: Albert Einstein. While he loved the one child
the other was disliked. Einstein never felt comfortable with Quantum
Relativity is mostly used to describe how the world of big things
work: The movement of planets, stars, rockets, etc. Everything
down to about the size of an atom. Below that size scientists
almost always use quantum physics to do their calculations. Both
were needed as classical physics created by Issac Newton in 17th
century couldn't predict how the things worked when dealing with
extremely large objects (like planets and stars) or extremely
small objects (like photons and electrons).
the rules of general relativity seem to make some kind of sense
to us, the rules involved with quantum physics are bizarre and
challenge our understanding of reality. Little in this realm is
for certain. Everything is based on the probability of something
happening. This is one of the reasons Einstein disliked it. He
has often been quoted as saying, "He [God] does not play dice"
with the universe.
illustration of the strangeness of quantum theory is the dual
nature of light. Is light a particle or a wave? The experiment
that scientists used to find this out is called the double-slit
experiment. A barrier with two narrow slits is placed between
a light source and a screen. If light is a stream of particles
we could expect to see each particle pass through one slit or
the other and create two separate lines of light on the screen
behind it. This isn't what occurs, however. We see a pattern of
light and dark lines all across the screen. This, known as an
interference pattern, is the result of waves of light passing
through the two slits, then interacting as they hit the screen
with the wave crests reinforcing each other to make the light
lines and the wave troughs making the dark lines.
So I guess
light is a wave them, huh? If you close one of slits, though,
suddenly light starts behaving like a particle again. We see it
piling up behind the open slit. Well, maybe light only behaves
like a wave when a lot of light particles are moving together.
Unfortunately this is not the case. When the double slit experiment
is performed sending only one photon (light particle) though the
barrier at a time the photon doesn't show up behind the slits.
It can show up anywhere on the screen. In fact, as you send more
and more photons though the experiment one at a time the interference
pattern slowly builds up, just as before. Does that mean that
each individual photon is a wave that interferes with itself?
Yep. Does this mean that the photon passed through both slits
at the same time? Indeed, this seems to be the case.
have placed photon detectors at each slit to see which side the
photon goes though a strange thing happens. Suddenly the interference
pattern disappears and there are just two lines of light one behind
each slit. The detector has somehow forced the photon to stop
behaving as a wave and act like a particle again. Even if the
detector is placed on the opposite side of the barrier,
after the photon passes though the slits, the photon still acts
like a particle. How did it know that there was going to be a
photon detector on the opposite side of the barrier so
it would behave like a particle and not a wave when it passed
though the barrier?
end, light is both a wave and a particle at the same time. If
you think that doesn't make sense, you are right. However, that
doesn't change the fact that it is true. If you can explain why
all this happens and support your ideas with experimental proof,
you're probably on your way to a Nobel prize.
just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Quantum Physics weirdness.
As you get deeper and deeper into it what you find seems to make
less and less common sense. You might try to argue that scientists
simply have gotten the thing wrong except that quantum theory
is one of the most successful theories of all time and is used
in the design of such everyday things as TVs and cell phones.
Experiments show that not just light is both a particle and a
wave, so are electrons, protons and atoms. These maybe small things
too, but remember we are just made of atoms. At some level are
we just waves too?
have grappled to figure out what this means in the real world.
Some interpretations include the ideas like "nothing is real until
it is observed" or that there are countless "multiple universes"
each differing just slightly from the one next to it. There isn't
room here to discuss all the ramifications of quantum theory,
so I'm going to give you a couple links that may help. Prepare
to see the world in a different light after reading these, or
at least have an awful headache:
of Magnetism? -If the earth's magnetic field collapsed
would there still be magnets? - Anonymous
is one of those funny things we see everyday - use everyday -
but never know how it works. As it turns out, it is the result
of moving electric charges. Almost everybody has done the experiment
of wrapping a wire around an iron nail in a spiral pattern, then
connecting the wires to a battery to product a crude electromagnet.
The current flowing though the wire (in the form of electrons)
creates the magnetic field. This field then influences the iron
nail to become a magnet also, adding to the strength of the effect,
though it would work even without the nail.
need a moving electric charge to make a magnetic field, how do
permanent magnets work? After all there is no battery involved
and no apparent electric charge. Well there actually is, however,
a moving electric charge at the atomic level. The electrons orbit
around the nucleus of each atom in the material. The electrons
also have a quantum-mechanical property called "spin" which looks
like a moving electrical charge. These two effects produce a tiny
magnetic field for each atom.
materials the magnetic fields of each atom are aligned in no particular
order so they cancel each other out. In some special materials,
however, the fields line up (or can be made to line up) in a particular
pattern so that their strength adds up. That's why the nail in
the electromagnet experiment above becomes a magnet when exposed
to a magnetic field. The field created by the moving electric
charges in the wire lines up the nail's fields properly and then
those fields can add their own strength to the overall effect.
want to see this at home take a paper clip and hang it from a
permanent magnet. The paper clip isn't a magnet in itself, but
will become a temporary magnet in the presence of a magnetic field.
You can then hang a second paper clip from the first one and it
will also become a magnet because of the field of the one before
it. It is easy to construct a whole chain of paper clips this
way. Detach the first one from the permanent magnet, however,
and the whole chain falls apart as each of the magnetic fields
fall apart one after another.
scientists have puzzled about why Earth has a strong magnetic
field. (The magnetic field of Venus is barely detectable.) They
still don't understand the details, but they do know that the
outer core of the Earth is mostly molten iron that moves in a
convection pattern due to heat at the core. This movement, along
with the Earth's spin seems to make the Earth into a big electromagnet.
The magnetic field of our planet isn't as stable as we might think,
however. There is evidence that the poles of this gigantic magnet
have moved, changed intensity, and even reversed many times in
magnetic field of the Earth went away would we still have magnets?
Yes, because each magnet generates its own magnetic field independently.
The Earth is just a big version of our experiment with the wire
and the nail. A collapse in the Earth's magnetic field, however,
would mean that compasses (which are just little magnets in the
form of pointers that align with the Earth's magnetic field) would
not point the right direction. This would cause problem not only
for humans who depend on compasses for navigation, but also for
animals that have developed internal compasses in their bodies
for use in migration.
though the Earth's magnetic field has weakened in the past 150
years, it looks like it will many centuries before a full collapse
and reversal. In fact it may be just as likely that nothing will
happen at all in the near future and the original orientation
will regain its strength.
End of the Universe -Our small Earth and other planets
are in space. It's a big area; can you tell me the total size
of space? Will it have a beginning and an end? - J.R.
the fundamental questions scientists have struggled with over
the years is the size, shape and destiny of the universe. The
prevailing theory is that the universe came into being about 13.7
billion years ago in what has been whimsically called "The Big
Bang." It has been expanding (some people use the term "inflating")
ever since. Gravity - the force that pulls all forms of matter
toward each other - is working against the expansion. For a long
time scientists debated over whether there was enough matter in
the universe given its size (what we call the density) to bring
the expansion to a halt and eventually reverse it. If there isn't,
gravity will just slow down the expansion but never stop it. If
the universe came back together it would end in a "Big Crunch."
If it continued with a slow expansion it would just sort of slowly
die out as all energy was expended and evenly distributed through
out all of space.
were blown away when recent observations showed that the universe
is unlikely to either be pulled back together or just slowed down.
The universe's expansion actually appears to be accelerating,
for some unknown reason. Scientists have speculated that is due
to an unknown force we can't detect which they have dubbed "dark
energy." If this is the case, if the universe is accelerated enough
it may end when it is actually ripped apart at the atomic level
in some distance future.
of the universe is related to its density because higher density
means more gravity. If the density is beyond a certain critical
value, space, as seen in four dimensions, will be rolled up into
the shape of a ball. If the density is just at the critical
value, it will be as if the surface of the ball had been flattened
out into a sheet. If the density falls below that critical point,
it will be as if the sheet had been bent down on two sides and
up on the other two forming a "saddle" shape.
of the universe, in turn, has an impact on theories about how
large it is. For example, the observable universe (that is the
part we can see) is about 92-94 billion light-years across. If
the universe were a closed sphere, however, it could actually
be quite a bit smaller than this because light traveling in a
"straight line" would eventually follow the curve of the sphere
and come back to its starting point. This means that if you used
a telescope to look at a distance galaxy, you might be actually
be looking at your own galaxy from the other side. It might seem
that it would be easy to look at a distant part of space and see
if the galaxies there matched up with any galaxies in opposite
direction, but an experiment like this is extremely difficult
to do. In reality the great distances involved mean that we are
seeing the galaxies at different times in their history, so they
may not look the same or be in the same position.
data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) NASA
launched in 2001 suggests that the shape of the universe - at
least the observable universe - is nearly "flat" with a minimum
size of around 78 billion light years. However it is more likely
that it is quite larger and may indeed be infinite. For comparison
the diameter of the orbit of Neptune, our outer most planet, is
a little more than one thousandth of a light year wide.
than the Speed of Light? -I read somewhere that they found
a star that's traveling faster than the speed of light (because
of its red shift.) Is this true? If it is, then it contradicts'
Einstein's theory. - Rowell
there are whole galaxies (collections of billions of stars) moving
away from us faster than the speed of light. As amazing as it
sounds, this does not really contradict Einstein's theories.
start at the beginning. If you stand along a road and listen to
a car zoom by you will hear the pitch of the sound it makes suddenly
drop as it passes you. This is because the pitch of the sound
is based on how many sound waves per second reach your ear. When
the car is traveling toward you, the waves come by you faster
than normal because the speed of the car is added to their normal
speed. The sound becomes lower when the car passes by because
then the speed of the car moving away increases the time it takes
each wave to pass you by. This is called the Doppler Effect.
Effect works with sound, radio (you may have heard of Doppler
radar) and light waves. As a lighted object moves away from you
the light is pushed to a lower frequency (toward the red end of
the spectrum therefore scientists say it is "red shifted"). Using
this red shift is one important way of measuring how fast an object
is moving away from us in space. The famed astronomer, Edwin Hubble,
also noticed that, in astronomical terms, the speed an object
moving away from us will also tell us how distant the object is
from us. Why? Because apparently the universe is undergoing an
expansion and had been for the last 13.7 billion years starting
with the "Big Bang." The best way to imagine this expansion is
to picture a balloon with two marks drawn on it. As the balloon
inflates the marks are pushed farther apart.
those marks with galaxies and the balloon with the universe. As
the universe expands it carries the galaxies father apart. In
fact, if the galaxies are far enough separated, they will move
apart at a speed faster than the speed of light. This can be confirmed
by looking and seeing how much a galaxy's light has been "red
probation on faster-than-light travel isn't broken; however, because
the galaxies were not accelerated to those speeds like a rocket
ship, they are simply being carried along by the inflation of
the universe. In fact, if you were sitting in that distant galaxy
it would seem to you like you weren't moving at all (Our galaxy
would seem to be the one speeding away).
are in this position relative to ours. In fact, any galaxy father
away than a distance of 4,200 mega parsecs would be moving away
from us at the speed of light or faster. Eventually, over billions
of years, as these galaxies get far enough away they will first
appear to freeze, then fade, as the light from them can no longer
out run the movement of their galaxy away from us.
Light Slow Down? -I heard that light never stops or slows
down. The beam from your flashlight only seems to dim in the distance
because the light waves are spreading out so you can't see them
as well. If that is true, couldn't you "fill up" a sealed room
with light. If the light waves just keep bouncing around the room
and you keep adding more from a bulb, wouldn't the room just get
brighter and brighter or where would the light go? - Wick W.
vacuum, like out in space, light always travels at approximately
186,000 miles a second. However, if light travels through some
other medium it can slow down. You can see this with a lens, a
prism or a glass of water. When light hits a denser medium at
an angle, part of it slows down sooner than the rest. This causes
the light to change direction. This property, called refraction,
allows a lens to focus light to a point. Because different wavelengths
also travel at slightly different speeds in a medium like glass,
a prism can be used to change the angle of each color differently
allowing normal white light to be split up into is component colors.
If you put a straw in a glass filled with drinking water it will
look as if the straw is bent because as the light passes into
the water it slows down and bends making the straw look out of
to just slowing it down, scientists have even managed to stop
light completely in recent experiments where they channeled light
through special materials. They hope to harness this capability
to make ultra-fast quantum computers.
a beam of light will get faint in the distance because the light
is spreading out, it also loses strength because it is being absorbed
and reflected by dust, water vapor and other materials floating
in the air. In fact, the only reason you can see a light beam
in the air is because part of it is reflected off of material
floating in the air back to you. In a perfect vacuum light is
a flashlight in a sealed "clean" room empty of air and dust would
remove that problem, but the walls of the room would still absorb
much of the light as the beam bounced against them. You could
replace the walls with mirrors so that the light would be reflected
and bounced around the room, but no mirror is perfect and a little
light would still be absorbed with each reflection so the room
would never "fill" with light.
Gravity -I was wondering if you could help me to track
down a hill I remember reading about as a young boy. In the article
it mentioned that you could roll a vehicle up the hill without
any mechanical assistance. - Ian W.
are a number of these locations throughout the world going under
names like "Gravity Hill," "Mystery Hill," "Confusion Hill," "Magnetic
Hill," "Spook Hill," etc.. Some are just locations along the road.
Others have become commercialized. Basically they all work the
same way: They are natural optical illusions. The horizon in these
places is obscured, or partly obscured so that it can't provide
a reference to your eyes about what is level. The objects in the
area the might tell you want is straight up or down (like trees)
are slightly off-kilter giving you a false impression.
your inner-ears gives you some clues to what is level, they are
not very exacting and can be fooled if what your eyes see convinces
you otherwise. Because you can't really tell what level is, the
hill appears to be going up hill, when it is really going down,
so your car looks like it is rolling up, while it is actually
Have All the Mustangs Gone? -Why do all the horses in
the old photographs I saw at the museums and on the history web
sites look nothing at all like the horses on TV shows or movies
about Cowboys Indians and Mountain Man Explorers? Are they all
new breed horses just playing the real old western horses? Is
the breed that they really used back then extinct now? If so -
how sad is that? My granddad says the horses back then were half
as big and twice as tough as any of the ones we have now. The
closest we have today is mustangs but now even they are now just
modern breed runaways, throwaways and calls. He said that if we
still had those horses we would have the genes that could save
the big modern horses from diseases someday. There are groups
saving the chickens and cows and even the pigs we had back then.
Why didn't they save those horses too?! - Ann Elf
of horse breeding is complex to say the least and I can't say
that I'm an expert on the subject. However, with some research
and some information from some authorities I hope I can answer
in North America today is technically a "wild" horse. All wild
horses died off at the end of the last Ice Age, possibly due to
climate change or hunting by native peoples. When the Spanish
conquistadors arrived in the 1500's they brought horses with them
that escaped or were released into the wild (which makes them
"feral" animals, not wild). This is the root of the mustang population
in North America today. The mustangs of the west quickly grew
to be tough animals as they had to survive on limited vegetation
and water in a hot climate. This seems to have favored a smaller
horse, perhaps because their smaller bodies needed less water
and food to survive.
Europeans arrived in the west they found that some of the breeds
of horses they brought with them were not suited to the harsh
climate. They either switched to catching and using the smaller
mustangs, or crossbred the horses they brought with them to the
mustangs to create new line that had some of the features of each.
This means that when you see the smaller horses in the old pictures,
you may be looking at tamed mustangs, or a cross between the two
lines that resulted in a smaller horse.
with less limited resources, people who own horses are able use
breeds that have traits which suit the purpose for which the horse
is to be used and are not so concerned about how it would survive
in the wild. This may be part of the trend to larger horses. Some
of the increases in horse size may also be due to the increase
in rider size: people are taller and heavier than they were a
Granddad may be right about modern horses being more susceptible
to certain illnesses. Whenever a population is heavily inbred,
genetic weaknesses can occur.
are currently protected under U.S. law. There are a number of
separate herds each with unique genetic traits. Many of the herds
show a mixed background that includes the original Spanish breeding
and later imports from other locations. However, there are a few
small herds, such as the Kiger and Cerat, in very
isolated locations which have been shown in DNA testing to be
almost directly descended from the horses that came over with
the Conquistadors. Steps have been taken to preserve these bloodlines
as apart of our unique American Heritage.
Target in Space -I understand that the Universe is constantly
expanding, which means that we, on Earth, including our solar
system, are in a new area of space at any time, constantly moving
away. Why is that we never see or encounter anything in the new
spaces we pass through? What is the speed of this expansion? Thank
you, Victor B.
of the universe is thought to have started with the "Big Bang"
some 11.2 billion to 20 billion years ago. Since all matter and
energy in the universe were at one time together in one location,
the expansion, or some use the term "inflation," of the universe
has the effect of spreading things out so it actually reduces
the density of material in the universe overall making things
farther apart the longer time goes on. Imagine putting three dots
on a balloon with a marker, then blowing air into the balloon.
The inflation of the balloon causes the dots move apart.
of expansion looks different based on how far away an object is
from you. A galaxy that is a megaparsec (3.2 million light years)
away from us moves at a speed of approximately 72 kilometers per
second (Kps). A galaxy two megaparsecs away moves at a speed of
144 Kps and so on (If this doesn't make sense, put three dots
on a balloon in a row and label them A, B and C, then blow it
up. The distance from A to C will increase about twice as fast
as that from A to B).
a smaller scale, gravity in the universe does cause material to
clump together to form things like stars, solar systems and galaxies.
Because of the effects of gravity they stay relatively the same
distance from each other in respect to the expansion of the universe.
Even so, they are also moving. Our sun, along with billions of
other stars in our Milky Way galaxy, rotate around a central point
(probably a massive black hole). The speed of rotation varies,
with the stars closer to the center going slower and those farther
out going faster. The Sun is about 2/3s of the way out from the
center and moves at a speed of 250 Kps.
the sun is moving along with most of the stars in this area of
the galaxy in the same general direction, our distance in respect
to these stars doesn't change much. However scientists have recently
found evidence of "rebel" stars that seem to be moving either
out from the galactic center or in toward it. Our next encounter
with such a star will occur in about 1.4 million years from now
when Gliese 710 will pass within a light year of us.
it all up, we are always moving, but the distances in space are
so vast things only go by us rarely and when they do they are
still very far away.
Water Elephant -I saw this being talked about on the web
and wondered if you knew anything about this "legend" and cryptid.
Have you ever heard of it? I've read volumes of stuff on Cryptozoology,
but I've never heard of this one. It is supposedly a "Thai Water
Elephant" - Anonymous
to admit that this was so obscure I couldn't find anything about
it in any of my regular cryptozoological resources. However, snooping
around the web I seem to have found out that this creature falls
into the same category as the "jackolope:" a quite normal creature
in life that has been altered by taxidermy to be something quite
unusual in death. In the case of the jackolope, a deceased rabbit
is altered by giving it the antlers of a deer.
case of the "Thai Water Elephant" it sounds like the perpetrators
have started with a shrew. A shrew is a small mouse-like mammal
with a long pointed snout, making it already vaguely elephant
shaped. The taxidermist does his work removing and adding bones
and flesh in different places (for example, apparently the front
legs bones below the knees are removed and shaped into the tusks).
In the end the hoaxer has something that looks like a tiny elephant.
These can then be sold in the tourist trade as novelties. Although
several have shown up on Ebay with prices running in the thousands,
apparently they can be acquired from street vendors in Burma for
a reasonable price.
of the water elephant goes back at least to the 1800's. It is
said that they spend their lives in the water and that their tusks
carry venom that can kill a man (this part of the story might
have some basis in fact as the shrew is one of the few mammal
that are poisonous). Only experienced hunters are able to capture
them, which is why they are so rare and expensive (at least that
is how the story is told by the curiosity shop owner that wishes
to sell you one). It is not clear whether the story of a water
elephant has any place in traditional folklore, or if it was simply
invented after the first hoaxer discovered he could turn a dead,
worthless shrew into a rare, valuable water elephant and need
a story to go along with it.
Space Exploration Effect Earth's Orbit? - How much of earth's
mass would need to be lost to space by means of man's explorations
in order for the orbit of earth to be affected? - Dan S.
me of story from Douglas Adam's Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
(the original BBC production, not the recent movie). There was
a planet so beautiful that it attracted billions of visitors each
year. Soon the government there began to worry about the cumulative
effect of erosion as each of these visitors took bits of the planet
back home with them on their clothes, etc., so they instituted
a law that the net difference between what a visitor ate and secreted
while on the planet would be surgically removed from the visitor's
body before he left (And, of course from then on it became imperative
if you where a tourist there to get a receipt whenever you visited
a rest room).
we be facing this kind of planetary erosion because we are sending
so much stuff out to explore space? Fortunately, of all the terrible
things we may be doing to mother earth these days, giving her
anorexia by launching space probes and the like is not something
we need to be concerned about.
is big. Really big. On the order of 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
tons. Now that doesn't begin to measure up in size to the Sun
or even the planet Jupiter, but from a human point of view it
is still pretty gargantuan. What's more our ability to send things
into space is terribly puny. Most space probes weigh a few hundred
pounds - remember we are only counting the amount of the rocket
that makes it into space, not the lower stages that fall back
to earth. Even if we launched a probe a day, and each probe weighed
a fairly massive one ton, that's only 365 tons a year. What's
more, most of that material goes into earth orbit. This means
it will, sooner or later, likely fall back to the planet Skylab
style. The probes that we send into deep space and never come
back, like Viking or Voyager, are actually pretty rare.
amount we send into space compared to the size of the planet is,
and will be for some time, negligible. But wait, there's more.
earth proceeds along its orbital path it operates like a giant
vacuum cleaner sucking up dust, meteorites and even the occasional
comet or asteroid. This all adds to the earth's mass. Though estimates
vary, it seems at least 100 tons of debris is added to Earth's
bulk everyday. At this point we are in no way able to even send
enough stuff into space to keep up with the incoming material,
let alone make planet any lighter.
more note. The planet also loses mass by way of hydrogen escaping
from the atmosphere and the decay of radioactive materials. It
is hard to say just how large that figure is, however.
Gold - How is gold formed and why does gold turn up on
turbine blades? Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you. Regards - Diana
the big bang the universe consisted of lot of hydrogen and helium.
No gold. No lead. In fact, no metals of any kind. It was only
when the first generation of stars were born that metals began
to form deep within their fusion furnaces. Under the intense pressure
and heat caused by the gravity of a star the light hydrogen atoms
are fused together to form heavier helium. If the star is of medium
size (such as our sun) or larger, the fusion can also create heavier
elements including heavy metals like gold and lead. The lighter
atoms in a fusion reaction have slightly more mass then the resulting
heavier atoms and the mass that is lost is turned into energy
according to Einstein's famous formula E=mc2. This energy is what
makes a star give off heat and light and is the same process at
the heart of a Hydrogen Bomb.
that almost everything you see around you - your watch, the computer
you're are reading this on, the gold ring you're are wearing,
and even yourself - were formed in some distant past in the depth
of a star. As the late Dr. Carl Sagan was found of saying, we
are all "star stuff."
this material was scattered about the galaxy and became part of
new stars and solar systems. Rocky planets like our own Earth
are formed mostly of these heavier materials. Gold is one of the
more uncommon metals that was generated in the stars. Although
it is scattered widely throughout the planet and can be found
almost anywhere, it is almost never concentrated enough to make
it worth recovering. For example, it is estimated that a cubic
kilometer of sea water contains 6 kilograms of pure gold, but
nobody has figured out an economic way of getting at it.
by natural processes gold is concentrated into "seams" or "veins"
and this is what miners are looking for. Because gold is highly
soluble compared to other minerals it is almost always the last
to crystallize out as water disappears and the first to dissolve
when water returns. This has a concentrating effect. The vein
a miner finds is usually the remains of an underground flow of
water that carried a highly concentrated solution of gold.
water disappeared the material crystallized into nearly pure gold.
As to the appearance of gold on turbine blades: I have been unable
to find any reference to this, however, since gold is so highly
soluble in water, it could be that turbine blades operating a
river, or ocean or with steam, could somehow cause the some of
the gold in solution to be deposited on the blades. A similar
issue happens with copper deposits and certain types of power
plants if there is copper present in the water being used. What
the mechanism for this effect is I don't know, but perhaps one
of our knowledgeable readers can help us out.
Power - I would like to know what the word Tesla means.
I think it has something to do with electricity. - Anonymous
have a very weird game known as Red Alert. It mentions something
called Tesla technology. I only know it has something to do with
electricity. I've asked several people and they don't seem to
know. - Frank
Tesla was an inventor who lived about a hundred years ago. He
was perhaps the foremost electrical genius of his time. Everybody
remembers Edison better, but the truth is that Tesla was probably
the smarter man. While he has been forgotten, his inventions are
all around us. The AM radio you listen to when driving to work?
Tesla. The alternating current (AC) electrical system that you
plug things into at your house? Not possible without a host of
inventions from Tesla. The fluorescent lighting in your office?
Tesla helped develop them. The toy radio controlled boat you play
with on Saturdays? Tesla built the first one. He even laid out
a design for radar decades before the first one was built.
best remembered inventions was the "Tesla Coil." He actually designed
a number of different versions of these devices which are used
take electricity and increase the frequency and voltage. Tesla
had several ideas about how the coil could be used that included
radio signals and wireless power transmission. When a Tesla coil
is running it can produce impressive electrical show with sparks,
and corona discharges. A giant coil built at Tesla's Colorado
laboratory was capable of creating sparks 135 feet in length.
aged his inventions seem to become less and less practical. One
of Tesla's last ideas was a charged particle beam. Such as "death
ray," if built, would have been capable of downing airplanes or
destroying objects at a distance. Though no death ray was ever
built during Tesla's lifetime, both the U.S. and the USSR spent
quit a bit of money trying to get it to work during the cold war.
For more information check our biography of Nikola
Cannonballs - A person in a cannon-ball position (arms
and legs tucked in a circle) will sink to the bottom of a swimming
pool, but will float effortlessly back to the top when she extends
her arms and legs in a vertical position. Are you aware of any
objects (the heavier, the better) I can use in an experiment to
demonstrate that an object in one position will sink in water,
but by merely changing its position (not adding any air), will
float back to the top? - Anonymous
I could help you, but the problem is that the position of an object
doesn't change its buoyancy. Buoyancy is controlled by the density
(that is the mass and volume it takes up) of the object. If the
object has a higher density than water, it sinks. If it has a
lower density, it floats. These states are called positive and
body is mostly H2O so it has a density very close to that of water.
The amount of air in your lungs usually is enough to tip the balance
to above or below. If you cannonball into a pool with your lungs
full of air, the initial momentum of the fall will carry to the
bottom, but as long as you don't exhale you will rise back up
whether you spread your limbs out or not. Usually people like
to come back up to the surface face first, however, so they can
breath, so they manipulate their arms and legs to bring them up
in that position. If you remained in the cannonball orientation
you would float back up, but you'd find yourself with your back
out of the water and your face below because in that position
your lungs, which are filled with air, would be closest to the
surface. This position would be very similar to the "dead man's
float" or "survival float."
try to argue that in the case of an opened topped container, like
a boat, position does matter. Obviously a boat if turned on its
side will take on water until it sinks. As the water pours into
the boat, however, it is displacing, or removing, the air making
the boat denser. When enough water is displaced the total boat
would have a density greater than water and would sink. This would
be the same as pushing the air out of your lungs which would give
your body negative buoyancy so you would sink.
Notion - Why does a hot liquid poured on cold ground produce
steam? - Anonymous
let's note that if the ground is cold, then most likely the air
directly above is cold also. This is important to our explanation.
When warm water hits the ground it starts to spread out and some
of the warmth is transferred to the air immediately above the
water. Warm air always holds more moisture than cold air, so this
promotes the evaporation of the water. As the warm water vapor
rises, however, it soon gets to a layer of air that has not been
warmed. As cold air does not hold as much moisture as warm air,
some of the water vapor is condensed out as a steam or fog. This
is the same effect you get when warm rain hits the cold ground
and ground fog forms. It is also similar to the "steam" fog the
forms over lakes when cold, dry air sweeps over warm water. The
rising water vapor hits and layer of air colder than the layer
it was in and condenses out as fog.
Speed Hijinks - I have several questions concerning the
speed of light and the speed of sound that my dad and I were discussing:
1: If you're in a car at night traveling the speed of light and
you turn the headlights on will the headlights shine out in front
of the car or will they just glow? 2: Let's say me and another
guy are in an airplane traveling the speed of sound...one man
in front of plane the other in back....the man in the back says
hello. Will the man in the front hear him? Or say that both men
stick their heads out the airplane (let's say it doesn't snap
their heads off)....will the man in the front hear the man in
the back if he says hello? Thanks - Shannon
set of questions! Let's talk about them in reverse order.
the men with their heads leaning out the window of the plane going
faster than the speed of sound: Sound waves are vibrations that
move through a medium. The medium can be almost anything, but
it has to exist (sound does not travel through a vacuum like you
would find in outer space). Different mediums have different speeds
that sound will travel through them. For air at sea level this
speed is roughly 12 miles a minute. That's why if you see a flash
of lightning (The speed of light is so high we can say that the
flash of the light reached you almost instantaneously) and then
count three seconds - a twelfth of a minute - till the thunder
arrives, you know that the strike occurred about a mile away.
made a sound while traveling through a medium faster than the
speed of sound for that medium, it will only be heard behind you.
A real life example is an airplane traveling faster than the speed
of sound. You cannot hear it approach because it is traveling
faster than the sound waves it is making. Because it is moving
faster than sound, the waves tend to "pile up" on the plane and
come off as a powerful shock wave streaming behind the plane.
This shock wave is what we call a "sonic boom."
reason a man sticking his head outside the back of a plane would
not be heard by a man with his head out the front of the plane.
They are moving too fast for the sound waves to overtake the front
of the plane.
two men inside the plane conditions are completely different.
In this case, the plane is filled with a medium - air - that is
traveling the same velocity as the plane. Since the air is not
moving relative to the plane or the men, it's exactly the same
as if the plane was parked on the ground. The sound moves from
one man to the other (it doesn't matter front to back or back
to front) at the speed of sound.
one we will tackle is the headlights at the speed of light. Technically
we can't get a car, spaceship or any object with mass going at
the speed of light. It simply requires more energy than there
is available in the universe. However, we can talk about a headlight
as it approaches the speed of light and such a situation
should shed light your question. Light is unlike sound it that
it needs no medium to travel though. That's why we can see stars
through the vacuum of space (Before Einstein
came out with his Special Theory scientists did speculated that
there was a medium needed for light which they called "ether").
Light is special in that it travels through vacuum at a particular
speed (about 186,000 miles per second) that that speed does not
change no matter how fast the source of the light it traveling.
Since there is no medium, the speed of the medium is irrelevant.
If a stationary observer were to watch a car speeding by at near
90 percent of the speed of light, they would see the light traveling
away from the front of the head lights at just 10 percent faster.
part is what the driver of the car would see. From his point of
view the light would appear to be speeding away from him at the
full speed of light (186,000 mps). How is this possible? Time
slows down as you pick up speed. Time would have slowed enough
for the driver that when he measures the light speeding away from
him it seems to go ten times farther than for the stationary observer,
because the clock the driver is using to measure time is going
only one tenth as fast.
Animation - Is it possible to deep-freeze your body (brain,
heart, etc. ) and restore your body in a later time? For example
a person freezes and wakes up 1,000 years later - Rowell
of cryogenically preserving by a person and thawing them out later
- sort of like a frozen dinner - has long been a staple of science
fiction, but so far scientists have not figured out how to make
it work. The reason is ice. Most of the human body is water and
water expands when it freezes. This is the reason the pipes in
your house will crack open if they are filled with water and your
heater fails in freezing temperatures. The expansion of the water
in a human body systems wrecks the delicate structure of cell
tissue throughout the body. Scientists have tried to counteract
this by mixing substances like glycerol in with body fluids to
act as sort of a biological antifreeze, but the results have not
yet been fully successful. If such a system could be developed
it could, in theory, be used to freeze a human indefinitely.
perhaps more promising approach, to the problem is not to literally
"freeze" a person, but to put them into hibernation. Many animals,
including bears, hibernate by lowering their body temperature
and metabolism. Just recently scientists have demonstrated the
ability to put mice into a state of "suspended animation" by having
them breath air laced with hydrogen sulfide. While high concentrations
of this gas would be fatal, just the right amount seems to put
the mice to sleep and their metabolic rates dropped by 90%. They
were revived by simply returning the air they were breathing to
normal. As metabolism is not stopped with this method, but just
slowed, it could not be used to preserve humans indefinitely.
would be many uses for such a state of suspended animation. Currently
trips to other planets in our solar system, or beyond, could take
many months or years and the trip would be made much simpler -
less food, drink and psychological stress - if the astronauts
slept most of the way. The technique could also be used to preserve
organs for transplantation or have critical patients hibernate
through operations or recovery.
Force and the Earth - How much would a one pound object
weigh if the earth stopped spinning? In other words if not for
the centripetal force created by the spinning of the earth, how
much would the gravitational force of the earth increase on its
surface. Thanks. I've been wanting to ask about that for some
time now.- Lizanne B.
an insightful and interesting question! I have to say that because
I often wondered about that myself, but was too lazy to do the
math. Since your question is forcing me to make the calculations,
let's get on with it and see what we have.
force isn't actually a force at all, but an effect of acceleration.
Things in motion like to keep going in a straight line unless
something forces them not to do that. In the case of the merry-go-round
it's the wooden horse you are clinging to which keeps you from
pulled to the outer edge of the ride. In the case of Earth, it's
gravity that keeps you on the ground. Logic says that effect of
the Earth's gravity should be lessened by the centripetal acceleration
that pulls objects away from it. At first this would seem to be
a pretty significant factor. After all, the earth spins at about
1000 miles per hour at the equator! Perhaps we would all be squished
flat by our planet's gravity if it stopped and the centripetal
analysis, however, shows us that such a drastic scenario could
not be true. Near the North and South Poles there is almost no
spin and explorers have not reported feeling a significant change
in their perceived weight. Let's go to the mathematics.
to calculate the effect of the centripetal acceleration on the
equator of a sphere is 4 times pi squared times the radius of
the sphere divided by the period of rotation squared. When you
plug in 6400km for the radius of the Earth and 24 hours (or 86400
seconds) for the rotational period you find the centripetal acceleration
throws you away from the Earth at about 0.03 meters per seconds
squared. Gravity on Earth is about 10 meters per second squared
so if you stopped the planet you would weigh about three tenths
of one percent more that when it was moving. So if you weigh 100
pounds, you would weigh about 100.3 on a non-rotating Earth. A
one pound object would weigh in at 1.003 pounds. A very tiny difference.
does have an impact on the planet itself, however. The Earth is
not perfectly round, but it is slightly fatter along the equator.
This is caused by the centripetal acceleration pulling at the
middle of the planet.
in Ancient Art? - I have noticed that in ancient art,
many of the gods resemble astronauts. How could the ancients know
how an astronaut looked like when people have only gone to space
carvings or pictures that seem to show modern technological devices,
like spacesuits, helmets and rocket ships would seem to be powerful
evidence of visits by ancient astronauts or highly technological
societies that have since gone missing. However, accepting such
speculation as proof requires a jump in logic that is faulty at
best. Just because something resembles something else doesn't
mean that it is that thing. For example, on the Nazca plains in
South America there are a series of lines on the ground that resemble
the layout of a modern airport. Does that mean that this is what
the makers of the ancient lines were constructing? An examination
of the ground in that location shows that is much too soft to
have supported any kind of aircraft landing, therefore, despite
the resemblance, it was not an airport, though the lines may have
some equally fascinating function.
same way does a figurine or drawing that resembles a helmeted
spaceman mean that this is what the artist intended? Or was he
carving a man wearing a mask related to some ancient ritual. Or
does the drawing simply have no meaning other that what came from
the artist's imagination? We are free to speculate about what
ancient astronauts and the like, but we should be aware that their
may well be other explanations for what we are seeing.
Mystery - How long does it take our galaxy to make one
rotation - John
estimate the sun makes its way around the our galaxy once every
250 million years. However, because galaxies are so large (our
Milky Way galaxy is estimated to be around 72,000 light years
across) and held together only by gravity, the hub spins faster
and the outer edges slower. The sun is about two-thirds out from
the center of our galaxy.
is a mystery surrounding the rotation of galaxies. In order to
stay in one piece any set of objects (like the stars, planets
and gas in a galaxy) that rotates needs to balance the gravity
created by its total mass against the speed of the rotation. If
the rotation is too fast the gravity will not hold the galaxy
together and it will fly apart. If it is too slow the galaxy will
collapse on itself. When scientists started measuring the speeds
that galaxies rotate they got a surprise. They were rotating way
too fast. Often ten times faster than scientists would have expected
based on the amount of mass of matter they could see inside the
galaxy. The only explanation that seems to make sense is that
there is some kind of "dark matter" in galaxies that
cannot be seen. While many scientists have formulated theories
about what the dark matter could be, nobody has been able to say
for sure, which leaves us in the embarrassing situation of not
know what the heck most of our universe is really made of!
Sea Serpents- I have long found the subject of Sea Serpents
fascinating, and have collected many books on the subject. My
most recent purchase (The Great New England Sea Serpent) by J.P.
O'Neill. After reading this book, and others I'm convinced that
there may be something to these sighting. However, assuming these
creatures do exist do you have a theory as to why none appear
in the fossil recorded? - John
what you mean by appearing in the fossil record. Certainly the
Jurassic seas were filled with all kinds of marine reptiles that
if they were alive today would fit the description of a sea serpent
(check out http://www.unmuseum.org/searepti.htm).
However, these creatures seemed have disappeared about the same
time the dinosaurs met their end roughly 65 million years ago.
More recently the zeuglodon, a primitive form of whale, might
easily be mistaken for a sea serpent if it had been alive today,
though it is a mammal, not a reptile. (http://www.unmuseum.org/zeuglodo.htm)
In the 19th century an unscrupulous promoter actually cobbled
together several zeuglodon skeletons and exhibited them as an
extinct sea serpent. Zeuglodons are found in the fossil record
as recently 37 million years ago.
find more recent fossil evidence for sea serpent-type creatures?
It will be hard. The best place to find ancient sea creature fossils
are in ancient sea beds. The geology of the planet changes so
slowly that most of the more recent sea beds, where we would expect
to find evidence for any sea serpent-like creature that has developed
over the last few million years, are still at the bottom of the
oceans and inaccessible to us.
evidence is no proof of existence, of course, so what we have
now are simply tantalizing stories like we find in O'Neill's book.
Suggestive and intriguing, but until somebody comes up with a
well-preserved body, no proof.
By Any Other Name... - Out of the nine planets in our solar
system, eight have names based on Greek and Roman mythology. But
what about Earth? What was Earth named in different ancient cultures?
Earth goes back to the Anglo-Saxon word “Erda” or “Erdaz” which
means ground or soil. As the word was passed to Old English it
became “Eorthe” or “Erthe.” In German it became “Erde.”
ancient languages have different words. In Latin it was the word
“Terra” (which is still a word used to mean ground and Earth in
English today). In Norwegian it is “Jorda,” Icelandic: “Jord”
and Greek: “Era.” You could probably make the case that to be
consistent we should be calling the Earth “Gaia” which is the
name of the Greek goddess who symbolized Mother Earth. Other mother
Earth goddesses that might have been appropriate names include
the Iroquois name “Etenoha” and the Lakota name “Maka.”
even today Earth is only our planet name in English. Although
English is the international language for professional astronomy
other languages use a variety of distinct terms for Earth and
the other planets in everyday speech. For a list check out http://www.nineplanets.org/days.html
Mind Reading - In pure science and logic how do we explain
a connection between two people through their minds? - Nicky
communication of information between two minds, sometimes referred
to as telepathy (The term was first used in 1882 by psychologist,
F.W. Myers), has never been proven in a rigorous scientific experiment.
Saying that it has never been proved, however, does not mean that
it doesn't exist. If telepathy was a strong and reliable communication
channel between minds, proving it exists should be easy. Suppose,
however, it only works intermittently and under certain unknown
classic mind reading experiment a sender attempts to transmit
information using only his brain to a "receiver." The information
might be in the form of shapes on a series of cards or colors
or letters or numbers. If the receiver can repeatedly and consistently
predict the information with greater success than one would expect
by chance, then it might be considered evidence of telepathy.
Complicating the issue, however, are subjects that try to "cheat"
on the experiment by collaborating with sender or somehow obtaining
the information by non-telepathic means. In theory it would seem
easy to design an experiment that would eliminate cheating, but
researchers have been fooled time and time again by clever fakers.
often claim they can read minds, or predict the future, but their
successes are much less impressive when put to a rigorous test.
One of the leading entertainment "mind readers" of the last fifty
years, The Amazing Kreskin, cheerfully admits that he has no supernatural
powers. "I'm basically a thought reader, with no special psychic
powers," he told Gallery Magazine in an interview. Kreskin tries
to use his own natural ability to tune into people. He listens
carefully to their voices and looks into their eyes and facial
expressions for clues to what they are thinking.
could prove telepathy exists, it would explain some of the stranger
incidents people have experienced. A phone rings and you know
exactly who it is calling. A child is in an accident, and the
mother knows immediately something bad has happened though she
is miles away. Without a rigorous scientific test, however, it
is difficult for a scientist not to chalk these antidotal stories
up to coincidence.
there is no proof that telepathy exists, it has not prevented
some people from speculating how it might work. Nobel laureate,
Cambridge physicist Brian Josephson, has suggested that if telepathy
really works it may be because psychics and telepaths are able
to direct random energy at sub-atomic levels for their own purposes.
He's written that developments in information and quantum theories
"may lead to an explanation of processes still not understood
within conventional science, such as telepathy."
Ghost Ship - A few years ago
off the coast of Japan, a wrecked ship was found. No country seemed
to own that battered ship. Is this ship supposedly returned to
us by the Bermuda Triangle? If so, what happened to the crew and
contents? - Debidatta
a name for the ship it's hard to pin down which incident you might
be talking about. I suspect you might be referring to the Mitsu,
which was found abandoned off the coast of Taiwan in 2003. The
Mitsu was found drifting by the Taiwanese Coast Guard with no
crew on board. There were several days of confusion until the
ship was identified as a Japanese fishing vessel which had been
abandoned by its crew two months before when it developed mechanical
ships are not as uncommon as you might suppose. Along the Asian
Coast piracy is a continuing problem with ships being hijacked,
then repainted and given a new identity. If the ship later develops
problems, the pirates may just decide to abandoned it rather than
risk raising the suspicions of the authorities by taking it into
a port. If the ship is later found adrift with a fake registry
it can appear that the ship came out of nowhere.
are going to subscribe to the supernatural theory, a ship found
near Japan would most likely be not be associated with the Bermuda
Triangle, which is in the Atlantic, but the "Devil's Sea"
which is a kind of Bermuda triangle of the Pacific Ocean.
Hard Disc for the Brain -
I was thinking about this and I'm not sure if it is possible in
the near future. My question is, is it possible to download your
memory and transfer it to a hard drive and if possible, vice versa.
I was wondering, if they know where the brain stores its memories
then they could copy these impulses and translate it to a hard
drive. This will benefit people who suffered from long term memory
loss due to accidents. So is this possible? -Rowell
Scientists don't know as nearly as much
they would like about the human brain. What they do know, however,
is that not organized in the same way as your home computer. Despite
their seeming complexity, most computers are just fancy, programmable
adding machines. Brains are far more complex, and at this point,
Most computers are organized with their
memory components separate from their computation elements. The
machine's memory can be thought of as simply millions of little
mailboxes. Each mailbox is capable of storing a number- or "byte"
- between 0 and 255 (Computers store larger numbers by stringing
several mailboxes together. It stores letters by giving each letter
a number code). When a computer wants to do an operation like
addition, part of it called the accumulator fetches the number
out of the mailbox, and adds it with another number, then puts
it back in a mailbox.
In the human brain memory and processing
are not separated in the same way. Memory and processing seem
to be mixed together. Both seem to depend on the strength of connections
between nerves cells called synapses. Engineers have built computers
based on this "neural net" model, but they are not, as yet, in
wide-spread use. Because memory and processing are not separated,
researchers have a hard time even agreeing on how much memory
(in terms of computer bytes) the human brain holds. One group
reported in 2003 in an article in the journal Brain and Mind,
that the capacity was around 10 to the power of 8,432 based on
the number of neurons times the number of connections. This is
more capacity than every computer ever made added together. Another
scientist, Thomas Landauer of Bell Communications Research, has
estimated the size based on the functional capacity of the brain
- that is based on how much information people actually remember
from minute-to-minute or day-to-day. When this technique is used
the number comes up to just a few hundred megabytes - the size
of a small hard disc.
In either case, we don't have any idea
yet about how you would unload or load stored information into
a human brain making any storage solution irrelevant. There are
some technical ways to assist people with memory problems, however.
Companies are working on button sized devices a person could wear
and record everything they hear and see during there entire lifetime.
Engineers are looking at ways to make this mass of information
retrievable in a form that people can actually use. These solutions
are technically feasible in the near future, but the privacy considerations
of having our whole life recorded are still a concern for many
Proportions - Dear Curator, I'm a Chinese. I read from
the novel "Da Vinci Code" which mentioned the divine proportion
1.618. It equals to the distance from shoulder to finger tip divided
by the distance from elbow to finger tip. I measured it from my
arm but the result was only 1.57. Is it only the proportion for
westerners or my measurement was incorrect?. - Hermes
Proportion," sometimes referred to as the "golden ratio"
or "golden mean," is Phi, which is derived as a part
of what's known as the Fibonacci Series of numbers. The Fibonacci
series comes from the expression (1+n½) / 2. Phi is the 5th in
the series and is unique in that Phi - 1 = 1 / Phi. Phi has the
approximate value of 1.618, but like the number Pi, is irrational
and goes on forever. One of the more interesting properties that
comes from using Phi as a ratio is that if you have line A and
you section it into pieces B and C, if A = Phi x B, then B = Phi
time of the ancient Greeks people have noticed that Phi and the
Fibonacci Series keep showing up in the natural world. For example,
the average of the mean orbital distances of each successive planet
in our solar system, in relation to the planet before it approximates
Phi. Also the Cassini divisions ( empty spaces) in the rings of
Saturn appear at two Phi points. The frequencies of musical notes
in the western scale are based on the Fibonacci series. The spiral
shape of the Nautilus shell is also based on Phi and the polygon
derived from it known as the "golden rectangle."
also shows up in man made creations. It was used in Egyptian pyramids.
If you look at the credit card in your wallet the ratio of the
width to height is approximately that of Phi.
painters such as Leonardo da Vinci realized that this ratio was
aesthetically pleasing and a valuable tool for an artist. For
example, the length of the arm to that of the forearm and hand
is approximately the golden ratio. It also appears in the proportions
of the human face. Artists used this property to make sure that
the people in their pictures had the right sized arms, hands,
ratios are approximately Phi, however. In the real world
everyone is unique and nobody will have those exact measurements
(My arm to forearm/hand ratio is 1.8. Interestingly enough if
you average my ratio with the letter writer's ratio the results
is 1.685, very close to Phi).
Spots - I saw a show about strange science and on this
show they briefly mentioned a cabin where bottles roll up hill
and water runs up. I am looking for more information on this cabin,
I believe they said it was in Oregon but I am not certain.- Anonymous
your thinking about is called the Oregon Vortex and it
is among a number of sites around the U.S. that claim to feature
supernatural phenomena including water running uphill, balls rolling
uphill, shifts in the size of objects, etc. (Another similar place
is The Mystery Spot just outside Santa Cruz, California).
Each claims some "force" is at work making things behave
strangely. In all cases these are actually optical illusions.
This activity occurs in a location that for some reason the usual
cues that we use to tell what is horizontal are missing or wrong.
Both of the places I mentioned are wooded and you cannot really
see the horizon very well. Also some shift in the ground has caused
the trees to not grow straight up, but at an angle. Even with
your inner ear giving you signals about what straight up and down
the visual signals can overwhelm them. Therefore we think water
is running uphill, when actually it is running down.
the illusion at these places are natural, but some of it has been
augmented by the owners. In any case, it is an interesting effect
and don't hesitate to check one of these places if you get the
chance. Just don't believe there hype about some strange supernatural
force. For more information check out their websites and an article
written by magician and debunker The Great Randi.
Government Storage - I was watching Indiana Jones and the
Quest for the Holy Grail, and in the end of the movie it shows
the grail being tucked away into a giant, anonymous warehouse.
I'm not interested in the grail but I am curious if you know where
the government might tuck something interesting away. Who would
be responsible for that sort of duty? - Anonymous
picture you are probably thinking of is Indiana Jones and the
Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's the Ark which is put in the
warehouse in that movie, not the Grail (The Holy Grail is the
object of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the third
movie in the series. At the end of the picture the Grail falls
down a crack in the ground during an earthquake and disappears).
In the first movie the Ark is boxed up and hidden in a huge warehouse
stacked with thousand of other crates. By the way, the warehouse
pictured never existed, but is actually a very realistic matte
painting. The figure of the man, the cart and the crate containing
the Ark were filmed separately and then put into the image.
secret government stuff is dependent on which agency of the government
acquired the secret. Despite people's idea that the government
is one big monolithic agency it is actually made up of many smaller
agencies who often don't share information very well. In Raiders
it appears that the "government officials" shown are
probably part of a military intelligence unit under the control
of the Army. If that was the case, they could store the secret
object at any number of warehouses at any number of military bases
depending on which unit might have been studying the object. If
the military considered the ark a weapon it might have taken it
to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, in Maryland, to test its capabilities.
During W.W.II any secret weapon captured from the enemy would
have been there where it could be compared with United States
military hardware. After testing was done the object would probably
find it's way to the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum, though it could
not be put in the public display until it was declassified.
the branches of government have museums associated with them where
they can store and display historic items they own once they are
done with them. For example, the National Security Agency, which
deals with breaking and making codes and cyphers, has a museum
near its headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, where you can view
former secret devices like a German Enigma coding machine from
W.W.II. The museum is a great place to visit and is free.
Ordnance Museum is also free and well worth a stop if you are
traveling through that part of Maryland. It contains guns, bombs,
shells, artillery and rockets. There is even a tank that resembles
the one featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
which brings us full circle.
Longest Day? - I was told that the story in the Bible,
Exodus I believe, about Moses' two sons holding his arms up to
continue the daylight because God told Moses that as long as his
arms remained raised he would continue the day, could be proven.-
about the extended day comes from the 10th Chapter of Joshua.
For nearly 60 years some variation of the story that scientists
have found a "missing day" while doing astronomical
calculations has been circulated. Unfortunately this story, along
with a variation that appeared in the 60's (referencing NASA)
is an urban legend. The first known use of this myth was a chapter
in a 1936 book Harmony of Science and Scripture written
by Harry Rimmer. Rimmer referred to two eminent scientist of the
day, Sir Edwin Ball and Prof. C.A. Totten who supposedly had written
that evidence for a extra day had been discovered, but nobody
can find anything in their writings about this subject.
got a boost in the 1970's when a man named Howard Hill published
an updated version in his book How to Live Like a King's Kid.
The Hill version makes references to NASA using computers to calculate
the future position of planets, but having to insert an extra
24 hours to account for a missing day. Hill retold the story numerous
times to various audiences and it was later published in several
newspapers. As with the earlier Rimmer story, there is no evidence
that the account is actually true. None of the facts can be verified.
The story got new life again just a few years ago when people
started e-mailing it around the internet.
itself doesn't really make sense. Any computer program figuring
the position of the sun and planets in the past or future would
make use of current orbital positions to work forward or backward
and find the locations. There is no way for the computer to know
that some time would be "missing."
on the history of this urban legend check out:
Chupacabra - A few days ago, I saw a show about the Chupacabra,
and now I'm really interested. Are there any websites on it? Pictures?
What is it? Thanks if you can help - Katy
(which means "goat sucker") is supposedly a creature that lives
in parts of Mexico, South America and on some Caribbean Islands.
It got its name in Puerto Rico in 1975 when some dead goats were
discovered with puncture marks in their necks and their bodies
drained of blood. While the authorities credited the animals death's
to wild dogs or a panther, others beleive it was the work of this
in the 1990's there have been various reports of the creature
killing animals across much of Latin American and even a few alleged
cases in the southern United States. A small group of people claim
to have seen the creature, though their descriptions vary widely.
Most reports agree the the creature is bi-petal (walks on two
feet) and ranges from three to five feet tall and has big fangs.
A rough hair covers the body. Some people also report wings, while
others say it hops like a kangaroo. Supposedly a few people have
gotten pictures of Chupacabras, but almost all of them have been
shown to be frauds.
is sort of the Big Foot of Latin America: Many reports, but no
Snouters - I was recently told the story of the snouters.
How did this story get started and why haven't I heard of these
thing before? - Eve
also known as Rhinogrades, were the invention of Gerolf Steiner
a professor of zoology at the University of Heidelberg. Steiner
was looking for a way to teach his students about evolution, so
he decided to invent a completely fictional order of mammals.
All of his creations used their noses in some way to survive.
For example, some of the creatures used their noses to walk, others
to jump from danger, others to catch food.
was apparently inspired by the 19th century writer Christian Morgenstern
who wrote a short poem about an animal, the nasobame, that
walked upon its nose.
Steiner put his creations into a book, The Snouters: Form and
Life of the Rhinogrades, which was published in German. The
work, credited to the fictional scientist Harald Stumpke, included
detailed information about the animals including sketches and
illustrations. In addition to being a teaching tool, the book
was a parody of similar academic texts used at the time.
to the book the Snouters had been discovered by a Swedish naturalist
who was ship wrecked on the Hi-yi-yi Islands in the Pacific Ocean
in 1941. To explain why the Snouter are no longer around today,
Steiner came up with the story that only island on which they
lived was accidentally destroyed as the result of an atomic bomb
test. Dr. Stumpke supposedly perished in the same mishap.
has been so popular with biologists and students, that it as been
reprinted a number of times in different languages and still used
in some college and high-school biology courses. The book is currently
available in paperback from Amazon.com for $12.95.
- I saw a program this week about "sea monsters". They
mentioned the Berlin-Ichthyosaur Park in Nevada, not too far from
Reno, and recounted a wild story about it that is the subject
of my letter:
program said that old local Native American legends told of "BIG
fish" living in a nearby lake, possibly Walker Lake, about 4,000
years ago. Then came the wild part: somebody has theorized that
a meteorite blew the fish out of the lake and their bodies were
strewn for miles around, including the preserve at Berlin, Nevada.
As I watched this, I was saying "What the?" to myself, because
even if these ichthyosaurs had been alive 4,000 years ago (which
would be big news), their remains would not have fossilized since
then. What was this program talking about? - Courtney
to track this story down without success, perhaps because nobody
will admit to coming up with such a silly tale. There are certainly
Indian legends about a super sized creature living in Walker Lake
(in fact most large lakes have some kind of story about a monster
living in them) and these rumors persist even today. The supposed
animal has even been given a name ("Cecil").
clearly the Berlin-Ichthyosaur
State Park exists and has been an amazing location for paleontologists
to study the extinct marine reptiles we call ichthyosaurs. The
ichthyosaurs, which resemble today's dolphins, that have been
found in the park grew as long as 35 feet and are the largest
found in the world. Scientists, however, have established that
the ichthyosaurs were fossilized here, not 4,000 years ago, but
225 million years ago when this part of Nevada, along with much
of the west, was covered by a shallow sea.
that an ichthyosaur might have been blown from Walker Lake to
the location of the park is clearly preposterous. The distance
is over a hundred miles. A meteorite large enough to propel a
whale-sized animal that distance would also create an explosion
with dynamics similar to that of an H-bomb. Anything organic,
including ichthyosaurs, in the immediate area would have been
vaporized. Also there is no evidence of such a meteor hitting
the Walker Lake area in the last 4,000 years.
Castle Mystery - Has there been any progress on the theory
that the builder of the Coral Castle in Florida was able to move
large stones without heavy equipment? - Thanks, Mike
Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant, who moved to Florida in 1918
spent most of his life carving a fantastic castle-like building
out of huge blocks of coral. There is a mystery about how he was
able to shape and move these blocks which weighed as much as 30
tons by himself without the help of heavy machinery (Leedskalnin
didn't even own a car). Leedskalnin, who said the castle was a
tribute to a lost love, did all the work at night and was very
secretive about his methods. Over a period of over 20 years he
cut and positioned over 1,000 tons of coral.
credit his feat to supernatural power, or the understanding of
an alternative energy source (Leedskalnin wrote several booklets
on his theories of electricity and magnetism). When asked about
the construction, however, he replied that he simply understood
the laws of weight and leverage. "I have discovered the secrets
of the pyramids. I have found out how the Egyptians and the ancient
builders in Peru, Yucatan, and Asia, with only primitive tools,
raised and set in place blocks of stone weighing many tons."
think he just used simple machines (levers, wedges, screws, tackle)
and applied them expertly to get the job done. In any case, we
may never know for sure as Leedskalnin seems to have taken his
secret to the grave when he died in 1951 at the age of 64. The
site is now a tourist attraction. For more information go to http://www.coralcastle.com
Kecksburg Incident - I watched a show recently about the
Kecksburg Incident. Can I have more info on it? - Tiara
call the Kecksburg the "Roswell of Pennsylvania." On
December 9th, 1965, some residents in the area saw a flaming object
zoom across the sky and supposedly crash nearby. A few even claim
that they saw the object, a cone-like thing 10 feet long and shaped
like an acorn, sitting on the ground. Some of those same people
claim a pair of men in trench coats (MIB?) confiscated the thing.
object an alien artifact? Was it a piece of Russian space junk?
Did it ever exist at all?
wisdom suggests that the flaming object was a meteorite that came
down nowhere near Kecksburg. Using photographs showing the object's
smoke trail two scientists, Von Del Chamberlain and David J. Krause
of the Abrams Planetarium, calculated that the thing, which was
visible across several states, disappeared from the sky 15 miles
southeast of Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
this, as with the Roswell Incident, there are many people who
believe something strange happened at Kecksburg that day, and
just as many people who believe nothing happened. To decide for
yourself try these websites:
and the Dinosaurs - What if instead of an ice age the climate
were to become tropical as it was during the reign of the dinosaurs.
Could it be possible for them to somehow return? ...If the conditions
- the environment - was recreated could nature again somehow produce
those awesome beasts? - John
there seems to be a direct link between climate and the characteristics
of the animal life. Probably the best example comes from the ice
ages. The climate then seems to have promoted mammals of extraordinary
size: Mammoths larger than the biggest elephants alive today,
a rhino 16 foot high and weighing 20 tons and a ten foot tall
gorilla are just a few examples. Having said that, even if conditions
went back to how it was during the heyday of the dinosaurs, we
might not see the return of dinosaur-like creatures. The dinosaurs
flourished in a period before mammals were widespread. It might
be that competition from these warm-blooded animals might keep
large reptiles from developing again in some future tropical age.
matter to consider - it's hard to predict if dinosaurs-like creatures
might return under certain conditions because scientists are still
arguing about what made the dinosaurs disappear in the first place!
on Mars - One night I saw a show saying that they found
a face mounded on Mars. Is that true, and if so how much information
do they have on it? - Rachel.
the Viking Mars Orbiter captured an image of a Martian surface
feature that resembled a human face. NASA released a picture of
it figuring it would get people's attention focused on the space
program. Soon some people were suggesting it was some kind of
"alien artifact" perhaps similar to the giant drawings
found on the Naza plain in Peru. Subsequent photographs have been
taken of the area in the 90's by the Mars Global Surveyor probe.
These pictures taken under different lighting conditions, angles
and resolutions seem to show that the object is a natural hill
or ridge, and it's resemblance to a face is only a coincidence.
Migration - I have got a question. I was studying about
migratory birds and was wondering how can they find the right
direction? Do they use the sixth sense? Thank you Sincerely -
list the ability to sense Earth's magnetic fields with your brain
as a sixth sense, I guess you could say that they do. Homing pigeons
use this technique. It's a bit like have a built in compass. To
prove this is how they navigate scientists put little hats on
the pigeons heads with attached magnets designed to confuse the
natural magnetic field and the birds flew off in the wrong direction.
species use different methods. Some birds navigate by using the
sunset and stars. Buntings put in a room with an artificial sky
projected on the ceiling will head one way with a fall star projection
and the opposite with a spring star projection. Geese use landmarks
to do their migration and must learn the route the first time
they fly it with their parents. Because of their dependence on
seeing the ground geese can get easily confused in fog and land
in unexpected places.
likely that some species use a combination of the above methods.
There may also be methods used by birds to navigate that science
has not yet discovered.
at Dawn? - Why does the temperature always drop a few more
degrees after the sun comes up? - Christine
know if anybody has done actual research on this, but the experts
I consulted thought the following was the case (assuming conditions
were not changing due to storms or cold fronts moving in or out):
by it's radiation, provides most of the warmth on the Earth. The
air and ground get warmer and warmer as they gain energy from
the sun while it is up. After the sun sets, the temperature of
the air and ground drop rapidly as they give up the energy they
accumulated during the day. This continues throughout the night
with the air cooling rapidly and the ground more slowly. At dawn
the sun is back up, but for the first couple hours it is so low
on the horizon, and it's sunlight so indirect, that it has little
effect on the ground, and the air near the ground, which continue
to lose energy and get cooler. Eventually the energy the ground
is getting from the sun becomes more than the energy it is giving
up and the temperature starts to rise.
effects, such as the evaporation of dew or frost, also contribute
to the ground and the air near it remaining cold during the first
few hours after dawn.
Moon - My little girl keeps asking me why she can still
see the moon during the day. My ignorance of the subject prevents
me from telling her. Can you help? Thank you, Sue A.
just one of those questions that begs for a diagram, so after
you read the text, click here.
As you are probably aware the moon orbits the Earth roughly once
a month. The Earth, in turn rotates once every twenty-four hours.
The side that faces the sun is in daylight, the side away from
the sun is in night.
the moon moves around the Earth it can be overhead in the sky
anytime of the day or night depending on where it is in its orbit.
Because the moon is lit by reflected sunlight it will, in general,
be more "full" and brighter in the night sky and less
"full" and dimmer (and therefore less noticeable) in
the day sky. When the moon is very close to the position of the
sun in the sky it may not be visible at all.
the moon with the night because without the sun around it is the
brightest thing in the sky. When it is up in the day it tends
to get washed out and we don't often notice it.
Etc. - What is the purpose of a gizzard? And how
could a spider live without lungs? I heard that daddy longlegs
have neither. Thanks!
is a muscular pouch in the digestive system that allows birds
and certain invertebrates to grind food down without using teeth.
Usually the animal swallows small stones or grit to do the grinding.
We know some dinosaurs had gizzards because we've found their
gizzard stones within their fossilized remains.
have lungs, but they aren't like ours. Some spiders have a trachea
(a kind of tube) that does the job of breathing, others have "book-lungs."
A few species of spiders have both.
"daddy-long-legs," well, there are several animals with
that name, but since we are talking about spiders I'll assume
we are talking about daddy long-leg spiders (of which there are
several species). Like all spiders they don't need a gizzard because
they don't eat solid food. They kill their prey, liquefy them,
then suck them dry. As spiders they would also have either the
book-lung, trachea or both.
also a creature known as a "harvestman" that has the
common name "daddy longlegs." These look like spiders,
but are not. I have to admit I'm not sure how their digestive
system works, so if there are any readers out there who are experts
on these animals, drop us a line.
Wall or the Car? - In her book "Brain Building"
Marilyn Vos Savant says that when two cars collide head on, with
each car traveling at 50 MPH, the effect on each car is the same
as if it had hit a stone wall at 50 MPH. I can't believe this.
It seems to me the effect should be that of a 100 MPH collision
a longtime favorite of physics teachers and it has two answers.
In the "ideal" situation that Ms. Savant is talking
about each of the cars has a certain amount of kinetic energy
as they move (let's call this value E). If they cars are identical
in every way (speed, mass, shape) and they do a perfect head-on
collision the total energy involved will be 2 times E or 2E. Since
there are two cars the energy will be divided in half and each
one will be subjected to one E of kinetic energy which will deform
the vehicles turning them into something that looks like a two-ton
are dealing with one car hitting a wall then we will have one
E of kinetic energy before the accident (The wall has no energy,
it's not moving). If the wall is absolutely rigid and does
not absorb any of the energy of the impact then again there will
be one E of energy to deform one car.
why safety crash tests simulating head-on collisions are done
by launching a car into a rigid barrier. It is a good simulation
of a head-on collision, but only requires one vehicle.
seems unintuitive try it at home (not with cars, use tennis balls).
Roll them at each other and when they hit note how far do they
bounce back. Now roll one at the same speed toward a immovable
object (like a brick). Did it bounce back the same distance? It
should have it you gave it the same initial speed.
solution involves what happens in a non-ideal situation. Very
rarely in the real world would a car hit a totally immovable barrier.
If the barrier absorbed some of the energy less would left over
to damage the car. Also if two cars hit it is unlikely that they
would be identical in speed and shape or be aligned perfectly
head on. They would tend to bounce off each other and penetrate
each other as well as spin off at an angle and these actions would
absorb energy. For these reasons in it would be hard to say which
accident would result in more damage to the car in a real life
Shadows - What is an acoustic shadow and how does
it work? - Lisa
shadow occurs when sound that would normally be heard is blocked.
This can happen because the sound is absorbed by some material,
or refracted when it meets a warm or rapidly moving layer of air.
The refraction can not only bounce the sound away from a location
but it can also direct it to another location where it would not
normally carry. In these ways an acoustic shadow is to sound what
a mirage is to light.
shadows played significant roles in several Civil War battles.
Because there was no radio communication between a commander and
his forward units in the 19th century, commanders often depended
on what they heard of the battle to tell them what was going on
up at the front. If an acoustic shadow existed it could alter
what the commander heard and ultimately what decisions he made.
It is said that sounds from the Battle of Gettysburg could not
be heard just ten miles away, but were heard clearly in Pittsburgh
150 miles away.
is at least one book on the subject of acoustic shadows and their
effect on the War Between the States. Check your local library
for Civil War Acoustic Shadows by Charles D. Ross.
Atlantis - To my understanding Plato was the only one whoever
actually saw Atlantis and wrote about it. Why hasn't anyone else
from his time had any knowledge of it? What was he really trying
to prove by writing the book? - Tina
first book is a discussion of ideas about government and personal
conduct which he expressed through characters in a narrative.
One of Plato's characters talks about hearing about Atlantis from
a Egyptian priest. It is unknown if Plato himself got the story
from a priest or if he simply made up the whole thing as a literary
mechanism for discussing government. It is certain that if Plato
did think Atlantis really existed it wasn't because he'd seen
it himself. Plato places the destruction of the city and the associated
continent at about 9,000 years before his own time.
Experiment - What rumor circulated about the USS
Eldridge? - Anonymous
the US Navy ship Eldridge was involved in an incident that
would later become known as the "Philadelphia Experiment."
According to the story the ship was docked at the Philadelphia
Navy Yard during 1943 and an attempt was made to employ a technology
to make the ship invisible. In the story the experiment turns
out to be a disaster when members of the crew wind up embedded
in bulkheads or going insane.
there is no evidence that the Eldridge was involved in
any kind of experiment in 1943, though a different ship, USS
Timmerman, was involved in an experiment to degauss ships
and get rid of their magnetic field. A ship without a magnetic
field might be less prone to attract mines and torpedoes. This
experiment produced some electrical discharges, but did not render
the ship invisible.
there is no real evidence that the story is true it didn't stop
Hollywood from producing two science-fiction films about the subject.
The "The Philadelphia Experiment" was released in 1984
and it's sequel, "The Philadelphia Experiment II" in
Dendrochronology- Will you tell me which time "periods" carbon dating applies
to and which dendrochronology applies to? I'm thinking dendro-
only works ice age forward and carbon dating present-ice age,
but I don't know. Thanks if you can!! - Elise
is the science of using tree rings to date past events. As we
all learned in 6th grade science, you can examine the cross-section,
or core, of a tree and see how old the tree is by counting the
"growth rings" it lays down each year. Since the characteristics
of each year (wet vs. dry) can be seen though the width of the
each ring, the tree can show us a unique pattern of the climate
over time and it is possible to match that pattern of the living
tree against that of a tree that was cut down. For example, we
can tell when a house was built by comparing the growth rings
of wood used in construction against that of a living tree.
pattern can be extended back past the age of any living tree by
finding trees that are dead, but still standing. By looking for
an overlapping climate pattern between the dead and living trees
the death year of the dead tree can be established. By using this
technique on the long-lived bristlecone pine in the White Mountains
of California a pattern can be established as far back as 9,000
years. Note this only is valid for a particular region as other
regions will have different climatic patterns.
dating is another method of establishing dates. Carbon-14 is a
slightly radioactive isotope of carbon absorbed by living things
from the air. When that living thing dies it no longer absorbs
the carbon-14 and the carbon-14 slowly begins to decay. By knowing
how long it takes the carbon-14 to decay and comparing it with
the Carbon-12, which is also absorbed by the creature, but is
stable and does not decay, a estimation of how long the thing
has been dead can be made. Because the amount of carbon-14 in
the atmosphere has varied over time it is less accurate then dendrochronology.
Dendrochronology has been used to "calibrate" the Carbon-14
process, though, making it fairly accurate back to 9,000 years.
The further you go back, however, the less accurate your estimate
will be. Carbon-14 hits its limit at about 50,000 to 60,000 years
in the past. Beyond that other methods are necessary.
great "Ice Age" started around a million years ago.
There have been been a series of warming and cooling periods within
that with a cold-dry peak around 700,000 years ago. Around 30,000
years ago a major cold period began, ending 10,000 years ago.
Many scientists think that we are simply in a respite between
major ice advances, and have not really left the Ice Age at all.
- I just saw the movie Mothman Prophecies and it
enticed me to do a little research on what exactly the Mothman
is. I was very enlightened on how the Mothman was explained on
the movie by the paranormal expert, but I was wondering where
some other sightings on the Mothman are and what they were. Thanks.
and 1967 almost one-hundred people allegedly sighted a strange
batlike creature in the vicinity Point Pleasent, West Virginia.
The suppsed creature was dubbed "The Mothman" after
a villain on the Batman television series. Before or after that
flap very few reports of the Mothman occured.
reported a Mothman-like figure and a UFO near Kent, England in
November of 1963. In 1989 reports of "vampire birds"
sounding something like the the Mothman were reported in Puerto
Rico. In November of 1995 serveral people said they encounted
a "giant bat" near the El Yunque Rain Forest also in
Face of King Tut - Its said that there are methods of putting
together a sculpture or "mask" of what an Egyptian looked like.
Is this true? If so, has this method been used to recreate a possible
image of what the young King Tutankhamen might have looked like?
If it has been used is there a website or place that I can see
a picture of this? -Lori
Richards, facial-reconstruction expert from the Department of
Medical Physics and Bioengineering University College London,
has recreated Tut's face by using CAT scans of X-rays of the mummy
to create a 3D representation of the King's skull in a computer.
From there digital skin and other features can be laid on top
of the skull. The method is very similar to that used by forensic
experts for reconstructing a face from a skull found in connection
with a crime. The digital image was later made into a sculpture
for the UK Science Museum. For a more complete explanation of
the process and some pictures, check out these links:
Orbits -How does one calculate that Mars is closer
to Earth than it has been for 60,000 years? - Paul
step to knowing the position of the planets is to observe them
in the sky and work out their orbits. Much of the grunt work for
this was done in 16th century by Tycho Brahe though many nights
of staring at the sky. Tycho thought that planet orbits must be
circular but he couldn't get his theory to jive with his observations.
Johannes Kepler took Tycho's data and realized that the planets
orbits must be slightly elliptical. With this Kepler was able
to come up with his Laws of Planetary Motion.
basically state how the planets move though space based on attraction
by gravity to the sun and each other. Put the laws into a computer
and you can then use them to predict the relationship of the planets
to each other at any future or past time, though accuracy starts
to break down as you move further away from the present period.
Still, in the history of the solar system 60,000 years is a fairly
short period, so the estimated positions of the planets should
be pretty accurate.
of Velikovsky's theories might argue
that the planets have been moving around the solar system out
of their orbits in recent history, but most scientists don't think
there's any evidence to support his hypothesis.
Lungs and Spaceships - The human body is very tough and
could easily survive the vacuum of space, so why couldn't you
use a breathing apparatus [like a Scuba]? If you're saying that
molecules would become unfixed and simply explode, as in your
quoting NASA saying your lungs would explode, then why don't space
ships that are filled with air simply explode? I realize metal
is in some ways stronger than the human body, but likewise in
other ways, like resiliency and dexterity, the human body is tougher
than metal. - James
that much of the human body is tough, but the lungs are relatively
fragile. Certainly not near the strength of a spaceship hull.
Scuba divers have been dealing with these issues for years.
of our planet at sea level pushes against us with the force of
about 14.7 pounds per square inch (PSI). Ideally a spaceship would
be pressurized the same, but NASA has used lower cabin pressures
(around 5psi) during spaceflights (To do this you have to increase
the percent of oxygen in the air so the astronauts can breath
normally. This is increases the risk of fire, though. The three
astronauts that died on the launch pad in 1965 were victims of
a flash fire which was partly the result of using a cabin environment
with a near 100% oxygen level).
look at an ideal spaceship that would contain 14.7psi. Can metal
stand that kind of pressure? A typical scuba tank can withstand
more than 3000 psi! Remember a spaceship cabin is just a big tank
of air. Even the thin-walled propane tank on your gas grill can
safely contain a pressure of 325psi - more than 21 times the pressure
needed on our ideal spaceship.
about the human lung? Again we will go back to scuba divers. As
you go down into the water the pressure becomes greater at a much
faster rate than it does as you move down through air. The only
way divers can breath underwater is by using air pressurized the
same level as the water around them. For this reason divers must
be very carefully to breath normally as they ascend. If they hold
their breath they could rupture a lung because the air in the
lung expands as they go upward. It has been shown that a lung
can rupture if the diver is holding his breath and ascends as
little as 4 feet. That's an increase of only 1.7psi. Much less
than even the 5 to 14.7psi of a spaceship cabin and certainly
much less than a metal hull of a spaceship can stand.
Fighters and Freedom Ridge -I was wondering if
you could help me find more information on Foo Fighters. I believe
that between Christmas of 1994 and before August of 1995, I saw
Foo fighters. I do happen to live very close to Fort Hood Texas
and I know that their military flight path goes right over my
property, whether this has anything to with what I saw that day,
I don't know. I am 18 years old now and I saw the Foo Fighters
when I was 9 years old.
question that I have , why is it that Freedom Ridge in Nevada
(10 miles from the area 51 facility) was closed in 1995? - Krista
are what WW II aircraft crews called the unexplained glowing balls
that seemed to follow their planes. At first they thought they
might be some sort of enemy weapon, but they never attacked and
after the war the Allies found out that the Germans had been seeing
them too. There has never been a good explanation for what these
objects were. For an full discussion of the foo fighters of WWII,
what you saw occurred in 1995 it might be hard to classify it
as "foo fighters" in the technical sense, but you could
probably list it as a UFO (unidentified flying object). Whether
it is explainable or not by natural or man-made phenomena depends
on exactly what you saw.
Freedom Ridge, the government closed it because it gave the public
too close a look at the facility at Groom Lake were secret military
weapons are tested. Some people claim this is because the government
is hiding crashed flying saucers there, but more likely it is
because it could be used by foreign agents to gain information
on sensistive aircraft or weapons systems under construction.
Peak - I'm planning on taking a trip to Nevada to see Area
51 from Tikaboo Peak. I've searched the Internet, and have found
only old information on how to get there, whether it's still open
to the public, and local tips to make the most of this experience.
Do you have any current information on this? Thanks for your help
Peak is one of the few places where the secret base at Area 51
can still be viewed. The peak is about 25 miles from the facility.
As far as I am aware it is still accessible, though Freedom Ridge,
another popular location for viewing the base (only 10 miles away)
has been closed since 1995. I have not made the pilgrimage myself,
but I understand you can do it in a few hours. You need to take
the kind of precautions, however, necessary when entering any
wilderness area (maps, extra water, first aid kit, etc.). Expect
a difficult hike. For a couple accounts of trips to Tikaboo Peak
check these pages:
plan to go, consider buying the Area 51 Viewer's Guide
by Glenn Campbell. It's available at: http://www.aliensonearth.com/catalog/detail/0617/0617T727883.html.
I believe it also contains Mr. Campbell's email address and you
can check with him on current conditions in the area. Also local
guides can be hired in nearby Rachel, Nevada.
Rex -I read about a creature sighted in Africa
a while back that greatly resembled a T-rex and was dubbed "Kasai
rex". Do you have any information/web sites on this creature and/or
other African cryptids? Thank you! -J. Villa.
of Kasai Rex supposedly starts in 1932. A Swedish plantation owner,
John Johnson, and his servant were traveling though deepest, darkest
Africa (the Kasai Valley to exact) when they ran nearly into a
rhinoceros. As they were trying to sneak past it, a huge 40-foot
long lizard-like creature bounded out of the jungle and leapt
upon the rhino. The servant fled while Johnson promptly fainted.
awoke the creature was still feeding on the now dead rhino. "It
was reddish in coloration, with brackish-colored stripes..."
Johnson reported. "It had a long snout and numerous teeth."
concluded it was a Tyrannosaurus, but other people have
suggested the description more fits a Tarbosaurus.
are highly skeptical of the Kasai Rex story and there is no evidence
that a John Johnson even existed. A photograph exists of this
supposed incident, though most people agree that it is most certainly
a hoax. For a view of the photo check: http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/megaraptor/Otherstrangeness.htm
and scroll toward the bottom of the page.
the story of Kasai Rex is generally agreed to be a false, stories
of other African dinosaurs seem to be on slightly firmer ground.
For the story of mok'ele-mbembe click
Triangle -I have heard a lot of stories and legends saying
that the many planes and boats have disappeared or have had strange
sightings when passing through the Bermuda Triangle. Is there
really something mysterious or is it just a place on earth were
electric equipment does not work (e.g an electric/magnetic field)?
years various scientists and laymen have speculated about the
possibility of this region of the ocean, laying just to the east
of the Florida coast, having some special properties that causes
problems with compasses and radio transmissions. Nobody had proved
that it has. In fact, the evidence seems to suggest that there
is very little mysterious about the region at all. A survey of
Coast Guard records show that no more ships and planes are lost
in the "Bermuda Triangle" that any other location given
the amount of traffic through the area. Though the loss of a flight
of five Avenger planes in 1947 is the most spectacular story associated
with the location (see www.unmuseum.org/triangle.htm),
it is most likely that the flight's leader just got confused by
certain landmarks and that led to the planes tragic disappearances.
at Tunguska-A program on the Discovery Channel
was aired recently that touched on the Tunguska incident. The
theory bypasses the popular ufo and paranormal explanations by
using a rare method known as science. Anyway, these scientists
have suggested the object over Tunguska was a comet. When it entered
the earth's atmosphere it began burning up, eventually exploding.
The explosion occurred in midair, explaining the lack of a crater.
The illuminesence that occurred over Europe in the following days
are the result of infinite, tiny particles remnants from the comet
which reflected light from the radiation of the explosion. I see
the UnMuseum has an article on this topic but wondered if the
Curator might like to comment on this theory. - Anonymous.
theory is very similar to the another theory described on our
page and attributed to Christopher Chyba, of NASA, Paul Thomas,
of the University of Wisconsin, and Kevin Zahnle, of NASA. These
three scientists suggest a stony meteorite was to blame and its
explosion before hitting the ground is the reason there is tremendous
damage to the area with no apparent impact crater. As much as
both of these theories seem to fit the facts now, its important
to remember that science is not a one-step-and-you-immediately-get-the-answer
operation. Many theories, including asteroids, comets, mini-black
holes, antimatter and even alien spaceships were forwarded by
serious scientists before an explanation that seemed fit the facts,
in this almost century-long puzzle, was found.
Devil -I can find little info on the Jersey Devil that
supports the theory that it is evil and not just mean. Can you
give me some information that supports this? - Anonymous
Devil, a legendary creature that supposedly has haunted Southern
New Jersey for hundreds of years, clearly has its roots in folklore
that give it a demonic connection. One of the most popular stories
about the creation of the creature involves the Shrouds household
of Leeds Point, New Jersey. One version has Mrs. Shrouds wishing
her next child to be born a devil (perhaps because it was her
13th child). She then gives birth to a deformed creature with
wings. Another involves a young girl in the household having the
child of a British soldier during the Revolutionary War. The townspeople
curse the girl and her offspring, which is then born as a devil.
There are alternate versions of the tale giving the birthplace
as Burlington or Estellville, but in every case it is clear that
the creature is somehow linked with the devil and the forces of
evil. Humans don't, through any natural set of circumstances,
give birth to creatures that can fly and live two-hundred years.
also clear that the story of the Jersey Devil, despite numerous
sighting though the years, belongs in the world of the occult
and myth and not in the world of science.
Looks -I was just curious...there are some sculptures
of Pharaoh Akhenaten's daughters with long, strange skulls and
I was just wondering if that was some sort of symbolic portrayal
or is there some sort of medical condition that causes that odd
appearance? - Anonymous.
suggest that Akhenaten and some of his children suffered from
Marfan's Syndrome. This is a hereditary disease first described
by a French doctor named Antione B. Marfan. Marfan noticed that
some of his patients had especially long fingers and skeletal
abnormalities sometimes including elongated skulls.
others have argued that these images are just an expressionistic
art style that was popular at the time. Even people who were not
related to the Pharaoh at all are often shown with a least a few
of these strange characteristics. But is this a case of wanting
to copy an art style, or wanting to copy the Pharaoh himself?
mummy of Akhenaten can be located (it has never been found) a
simple DNA test would tell us if he suffered from the rare disease
and solve the mystery. It may also be possible to test this theory
by checking the mummies of close relatives, but as far as I am
aware this has not be done.
Mexican Fish - While in Mexico on a fishing trip, we had
stopped off in a little village with shops and restaurants. After
dinner we went for a walk through the shops. While inside one
of the shops I came across a little sea creature, that I had seen
once before. It was about 13-14 inches tall and it looked like
the Devil. The little creature had a small head with little horns,
oversized eyes, little sharp teeth, two arms both with fingers
on each hand, 2 legs with toes on each, it looked as it would
have walked in the upright position also had a tail that looked
like it had a pitch fork on the tip of it . I believe the locals
had called it something like "Diablo" and it lives in
the sea . It would be interesting to see another picture of this
little creature, and also put a name to the picture. Thank you.
- James W.
that the creature you are referring to has as much in common with
the Jackolope (SOE Feb, 03)
as it does with a fish. The name of the creature is Garadiavolo
which apparently translates to "Devil Fish." In 1974,
Alfredo Garcia Garamendi, a teacher in Puerto Rico, claimed he'd
captured two of these animals after titanic battles with them.
One was supposedly stolen by secret agents, but the other Garamendi
kept in an a tank of water where it could be viewed by the public.
Later the second fish supposedly disappeared in an explosion.
Garamendi's claims, the animal is a hoax. The creature is apparently
is constructed by cutting open the interior of a bat fish or guitar
fish, then cutting the fins to make arm and legs. The creature
is then sold on the tourist market along the Mexican coast and
throughout the Caribbean Islands.
and more information on this subject click here.
You may want to use a translation site, however, as the page is
of The Mummy - I was wondering how close to Egyptian
folklore does the movie 'The Mummy' follow? Are there any writings
of a similar thing happening? I'm not taking this to be a true
story, but curiosity is bugging me... Any idea? - Paula
version of the Mummy story took a lot from the original 1932 version
of the film starring Boris Karloff. In that classic flick Imhotep,
played by Karloff, attempts to revive his dead girlfriend after
she is killed (in this version she is the Pharaoh's daughter,
not his mistress) by using the forbidden Book of Thoth.
He is caught and sentenced to be mummified alive. Thousands of
years later when a museum expedition finds Imhotep's mummy he
is accidentally brought back to life by the reading of the Book
of Thoth. He then proceeds to romance the heroine of the film
who is a reincarnation of his dead girlfriend.
of the 1932 film used lots of bits and pieces of Egyptian history
and stories in the script. The name "Imhotep" was the
name of a famous Egyptian architect and physician. Imhotep is
also credited with designing the first step pyramid.
did have some stories about mummies rising from the dead. One
involves the magician Khamwas who steals the forbidden Book
of Throth which is guarded by the mummy of Naneferkaptah.
Khamwas and Naneferkapth square off over a game of senet (an ancient
Egyptian board game) to see who will get the scroll. The mummy
wins, but Khamwas uses a magic trick to escape with the book anyway.
portion of The Mummy script is probably borrowed from the story
The Ring of Thoth written by Arthur Conan Doyle (the inventor
of Sherlock Holmes).
Anatomy Exhibit - I have been looking for information on
a museum and exhibit I saw on TV. It had to do with a man that
used human and animal bodies and pieces for his artwork. The piece
I remember most was one of a horse with a woman riding on it's
back. On the program they said that rumor had it, that the artist
used his dead girlfriend in this work and in so doing immortalized
her. Anyway, someone asked me about the oddest thing I had seen
and that took the cake. Do you have any idea what I am referring
to? The artist? The works? Would you be able to point me to a
website or two? Thank you. - Weirded-Out-In-Upstate N.Y.
referring to the controversial work of Dr. Gunther von Hagens.
Von Hagens considers himself not an artist, but an anatomist with
a sense of aesthetics. He uses "plastination" (a method
he developed) to preserve bodies in such a way the they do not
decay and tiny details are undamaged. The doctor has preserved
both animal and human bodies using this method. The results looks
like a three-dimensional, life-sized illustration from an anatomy
book with the skin removed and muscles, bones, nerves and organs
exposed. The figures are sometimes posed as if they were still
alive. One plays chess, one plays basketball, another rides a
some people find this exposure of the human anatomy fascinating,
others have been repelled by his work complaining that it has
robbed his subjects (who donated their bodies to science) of their
dignity. At least one city banned his exhibition.
find no confirmation of the story about a dead girlfriend on a
horse, though some of von Hagens works do include horses and women.
You can go looking for more information about his work by going
to his site http://www.koerperwelten.com,
which discusses his exhibits, and to http://www.plastination.com
which discusses the plastination method.
of the Mummy - Why did the ancient Egyptians stop
making mummies? - Anonymous
used mummification as a way to preserve bodies. The integrity
of the body after death was very important in ancient Egyptian
religion. As other religions (notably Christianity) that didn't
require such intricate preservation of the body displaced those
traditional Egyptian beliefs, the need for mummification ceased.
Still, mummification was so ingrained into the society, it persisted
well into the Christian era, and was practiced by Christian morticians
whose families had been involved in mummification for generations.
The last known Egyptian mummies date from the 4th century AD.
Link - Is there such thing as a missing link? If there
is, what is it? - Anonymous.
of a "missing link" first appeared right after Darwin
published his Origin of the Species which laid out the
theory of evolution. The idea was that there was a chain of evolution
with the apes at one end, modern man at the other, and intermediate
forms in between. Science was looking for fossils of a creature
that was "half-man and half-ape" that was never found.
It was the "missing-link" in that chain.
many scientists do not like using the term "missing-link"
as it suggests that evolution is a progressive straight line from
simple life to more complex forms. They picture evolution as a
tree with simpler forms of life at the bottom and more evolved
forms at the tips of the branches. In this version both apes and
man are at the tip of branches with a common ancestor at the root.
Many branches on this tree, like Neanderthal man, have died out.
While in this picture there are intermediate forms between man
and the common ancestor, there are no direct connections between
man and modern apes, and therefore no "missing link."
have suggested that "Bigfoot" is the "missing link."
However, if Bigfoot actually exists he would probably be another
tip of a branch on the tree, just like apes or man
etc. - I have recently found your website and must
say that it is very entertaining, I do have a question though,
In all the stories of Bigfoot /Yeti and Sea/Lake monsters, I don't
see any mention of creatures from Australia. Is this due to the
fact that Australia has no myths/legends?- Heather
down under has a number of creatures on the edge of legend, but
reported by people and unproven to science. Here are just a few:
of Bigfoot in Australia is a Yowie. Yowie supporters list
up to 10,000 sightings of this ape-like creature since about 1790.
As in the case of Bigfoot, evidence proving Yowie's existence
remains elusive and most scientists are skeptical that the creature
Australian cryptozoological riddle is Megalania
prisca a lizard some twenty feet in length and weighing
1000 pounds. Megalania supposedly went extinct some 20,000
years ago, but occasional reports from the outback raise the possibly
a few still might be prowling around.
there is the case of the Tasmanian Tiger.
The Tiger, actually it was more like a wolf, was hunted into extinction
over 60 years ago. Still, there are occasional sightings suggesting
that a few might still lurk in the wild, but as with the creatures
above, there is no proof.
- Every year my family goes to Las Vegas and every year
I see postcards featuring an animal called a jackalope. In one
souvenir shop I even saw a stuffed jackalope...I have no clue
whether it was real or not. Does such a thing exist? Thanks -
is one of those legends that almost people living in an certain
area know is a hoax, but are reluctant to admit it. In many cases
we don't know the source of such legends, but in the instance
we do. Douglas Herrick, who just died last month at age 82, came
up with the long running joke in 1932 when he and his brother
returned from hunting one day. They tossed a dead jackrabbit they'd
shot on to the floor and it accidentally slid up against a pair
of deer horns. The combination looked so strange Douglas decided
to mount the rabbit like that (with the horns) and the jackalope
Douglas Herrick made a number of jackalopes for sale, his brother
Ralph and Ralph's son Jim made many thousands of them. By 1965
the mythical creature had become so popular that the state of
Wyoming trademarked the name. In 1985 Gov. Ed Herschler pronounced
that Wyoming was the animal's official home. In addition to postcards
you can also purchase a jackalope hunting license and jackalope
Hoax- I saw a Fox special on TV that was on the
topic of whether the moon landing had been a hoax. I have to say
that before seeing the show I'd probably given no thought to the
possibility of it being fake. However, I found some of the arguments
to prove a hoax were well researched and explained, and had (as
far as I know) legitimate scientific basis. I wondered if you
had any info that might support or go against the moon-landing-hoax
theories? - Anonymous
have no doubt that NASA traveled to the moon. There were just
too many people involved (thousands) to make a workable conspiracy.
There are also too many arguments and counter-arguments in this
story to include here, but I will try and cover a few of the big
the pictures that astronauts took even though the sky is black
there are no stars - Just because the sky is black on the
moon doesn't mean that the astronauts were there during the night.
They were there in the lunar morning and the Sun was up lighting
everything up brightly. With the cameras adjusted to handle the
bright surface of the moon faint objects, like the stars, would
just not be picked up. It would be the same as if you adjusted
a camera here on Earth to take pictures during a bright day, then
tried to take pictures with the same settings in the the middle
of the night. There would not be enough light to record anything
on the film.
flag on the stand seems to wave even though there is no wind
- A piece of cloth will wave in a vacuum when you move it back
and forth (as the astronauts did when setting up the pole). After
the pole is set up, though, the flag stops moving. It is crinkled
a bit because the pole it is hanging from is just a bit shorter
than the flag, and that might make it look like it's waving in
a still shot, but a look at the moving video images reveal that
the flag does not move after the pole has been set.
van Allen Radiation Belts would have killed the astronauts
- There is indeed a radiation belt around the Earth and prolonged
exposure would have been deadly. Because the astronauts passed
through them so quickly (about an hour) their exposure was at
a minimum. The hull of the spacecraft also gave them some protection.
the best arguments for the the astronauts actually being there
is the dust. Look at the dust thrown up by the wheels off the
lunar rover during some of the video shots in later missions.
It does not linger in the air, but falls immediately. This is
only possible in a vacuum.
Biggest Web - What was the worlds biggest single spider
web and how big was the spider?
find any records for the largest single example of a spider web,
but I can tell you that the golden silk spider, Nephila,
which lives in along the Gulf Coast of Alabama and northern Florida
commonly builds webs as wide as the doors on a garage. The female
of the species, which is larger than the male, can be three inches
across if its legs are stretched out.
of the golden silk spider, the golden orb spider, which lives
in tropical areas from Africa to Northern Australia and the South
Pacific islands, has been known to build webs that are eighteen
feet high and over six feet wide. This spider's silk is pound
for pound is stronger than steel. South Sea Islanders have been
known to trick the spiders into building them fishing nets by
creating a circle of bamboo and leaving it in the forest. By morning
a spider will often have build a web across it and then it can
be used for catching fish. The females of the Golden Orb can have
a leg span of eight inches with a body length of two and a half
think that the world's largest spiders would build the biggest
webs, but they don't. The largest spiders are the tarantulas of
the South American rain forests. Some of these can have a leg
span of 10 inches, a body length of 4 inches and weight of over
in Tombs - I would like to know more about the
microorganisms that were found in the ancient Egyptian pyramids.
Were all the microorganisms found Pathogenic and how did they
survive the harsh conditions inside the pyramids.
as I'm aware the question of microorganisms in ancient Egyptian
pyramids has not been widely explored. However, several scientists
have looked into the possibility of a biological agent being preserved
in the rock tombs like that of King Tut or on objects that have
come out of a tomb. One of the first people to look at this was
Dr. Ezzeddin Taha, of Cairo University. Dr. Taha studied the health
records of museum workers and archaeologists and determined that
many had been infected with the fungus Aspergillus niger
which can cause fever, fatigue, inflammation and rashes. He speculated
that they had picked up the fungus by entering tombs or handling
objects that had come out of tombs.
Dr. Nicoloa Di Paolo found the toxic fungus Aspergillus ochraceus
at some Egyptian archaeological sites. It can damage the kidneys
and liver, but it is unknown if it is fatal.
the German microbiologist Gotthard Kramer found Aspergillus
flavus on some mummies. Infection with this agent can lead
to organ failure and death and is particularly dangerous to someone
with a weakened immune system.
these cases the organism would survive in the tomb as a spore.
Spores have a hardened outside shell that allow the organisms
to survive for long periods under very harsh conditions (high
or low temperature and without water). Scientists even speculate
that spores may allow life to be transferred through outer space
riding on meteorites.
Mummy of the West - Do you have any information on the
pygmy mummy found in a cave in Shirley Basin, Wyoming. I'm not
sure of the date but have seen it mentioned in different places.
probably referring to the "Pedro Mountain Mummy." According
to the story, gold prospectors found a 14-inch high figure in
a cave in the Pedro Mountains (about 60 miles southwest of Casper,
Wyoming) in 1932. The figure appeared to be that of a middle-aged
man sitting cross-legged. The object was bought by Ivan T. Goodman,
a Casper businessman and later examined by by Dr. Harry Shapiro
of the American Museum of Natural History. Though other scientists
suspected a hoax, Shapiro X-rayed the figure and declared it was
a mummy. Later the mummy disappeared and now its whereabouts are
unknown. While some have speculated that the figure was a member
of a tribe of pygmy Native Americans, Dr. George Gill, professor
of anthropology at the University of Wyoming, apparently examined
the X-ray pictures taken by Shapiro and said that he thought the
body was that of an infant or a fetus that had been afflicted
with anencephaly, a congenital abnormality.
you the truth I'm a little skeptical of the mummy interpretation.
It seems much too convenient that the figure has disappeared completely
and is no-longer available for further scientific examination.
Perhaps somebody will find it in their attic and researchers can
take a closer look at it with modern scientific equipment.
Anyone? - I can't find solid information on Lobotomy.
I would be grateful if you could help me out (Don't worry. I won't
be trying it on anyone!) -Vaswar
is an operation on the brain where the nerve fibers which connect
the frontal and prefrontal cortex to the thalamus are severed.
The operation was developed after some scientists observed that
animals that had parts of their temporal lobes removed became
calmer and easier to handle. Dr. Antônio Egas Moniz, a professor
at the University of Lisbon Medical School, was the first to try
a form of the operation on mentally disturbed human patients in
the 1930's. Because the damage to the brain is permanent, he recommended
it only in hopeless cases.
of the operation that became widely used in the late 1940s and
early 50's was invented by American physician and clinical neurologist,
Walter Freeman. Freeman would drive an ice pick though the patients
skull and swing it back and forth to sever the necessary nerves.
The operation was so simple that it only took a few minutes and
could be done outside of a hospital. Despite Moniz's warning that
it should only be used on a few desperate cases, the procedure
was so favored that between 1939 and 1951, more than 18,000 lobotomies
were performed in the United States.
problem this was that studies showed that the procedure really
didn't work very well. With the development of new anti-psychotic
and anti-depressive drugs in the 50's, the lobotomy fell out of
favor and is now rarely used.
Rabbits? - Can rabbits get rabies? If not, why not? -
a viral infection of the nervous system which is usually transmitted
to humans by the bite of an infected animal, can be found in all
mammals, including rabbits. If untreated it is always fatal. While
rodents, including rabbits, can get the disease, it is unusual
that it is seen in either wild or domestic populations, who seem
to have a natural resistance. There is no record of a bite from
a rabbit having transmitted the disease to a human in U.S. history.
that are most likely to be infected are skunks, foxes, raccoons,
and bats. It is wise, however, to say away from any wild animal,
especially if it seems to be acting strangely. For more information
on this subject check this fact sheet on rabies at: http://www.uhl.uiowa.edu/Publications/Facts/rabies.html
Sinking - I remember reading an article that gave
an eyewitness account of the sinking of the Titanic. He said,
and there was an illustration, that the ship actually broke into
a "V" shape while still visible above the water. In other words
it broke in the middle, and bent into a "V" shape before sinking.
However, when the actual wreck was discovered on the sea bed,
an accompanying article on the event said that the ship broke
apart into two pieces underwater. Can an eyewitness be wrong?
thinking on the break up of the Titanic has it splitting up on
the surface just as many eyewitnesses said. As the forward portion
of the ship, which had been torn open by the iceberg, filled with
water it pulled the down on the stern which was buoyant because
it was still filled with air. At some point the hull, under this
tremendous stress, gave way and the vessel was torn apart. There
is some argument on whether the ship broke in two from the bottom
up or the top down. If it broke in two from the top part down
the stern should have flopped back into the water with a tremendous
splash. While shown this way in movies because it is so dramatic,
reports of the "flop" are missing from eyewitness accounts.
It seems more likely that the breakup started at the keel and
moved up. In this theory the stern settles more gently into the
sea after the forward section brakes away. The break up may have
been so gentle that passengers standing on the stern at the time
may have not realized what had happened. A bottom up break also
better explains the tremendous damage seen on the stern section
when it was found on the bottom.
Long Humans? - I
started reading your argument debunking Von Daniken's theories
about alien visitation of the earth; but when I reached the part
referring to humans mating with extra-terrestrials, and your argument
being that humans have only been around for approximately 100,000
years, I lost interest. I realized that if you can be that misinformed,
( human remains have been found dating from 3.1 million years
to approximately 5 million years - give or take a million - ever
hear of "LUCY"? ) about this detail, I found it difficult to lend
credence to any of your other arguments. - Roy B.
your dates for Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) and other
finds are mostly correct you have misread the article. It refers
to work indicating that scientists estimate that "all human
beings alive today can trace their ancestry back to a very small
group of pre-humans living in Africa some 100 thousand years ago,"
and does not say that the pre-human history does not stretch back
further than that point. Since this is a discussion of Von Daniken
theories (which only cover alien-human contacts since the start
of recorded history - say the last 10,000 years or so) the idea
that no human crossbreeding with non-humans occurred in the last
100,000 years is very relevant.
to be fair it should be noted that not all scientists are convinced
that there has been no cross breeding despite the genetic research
results (though these scientists are more concerned with the idea
of crossbreeding with other hominids, not aliens) so it seems
that there still is a possibility for Von Daniken's idea to be
Tut Curse - According to legend, anyone who entered the
tomb of king Tutankhamen would die. How come nothing happened
to Howard Carter, who was one of the first to enter the tomb,
when Lord Carnarvon who was with him died a couple of days later?
Is there any rational explanation for this? Can hexes be choosy?
is probably no rational explanation for curses and hexes at all.
Though much has been made of the curse of the King Tut tomb, it's
more hype than history. There is no evidence even that a curse
was carved on the door of this particular tomb, though the Egyptians
often used curses in an attempt to keep grave robbers out. As
you pointed out while some people associated with the tomb died
early (like Lord Carnarvon - he was 57 at the time of his death
however, hardly a spring chicken in those days) others, like Howard
Carter who actually opened the tomb, lived to a reasonable old
E. Winlock, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York City, made his own calculations about the effectiveness
of the curse. According to to Winlock's figures of the 22 people
present when the tomb was opened in 1922, only 6 had died by 1934.
Of the 22 people present at the opening of the sarcophagus in
1924, only 2 died in the following ten years. Also ten people
were there when the mummy was unwrapped in 1925, and all survived
until at least 1934.
the people involved with Tut seemed to die at no earlier than
would have been otherwise expected. However, at least one scientist
has offered a explanation for some of the deaths that did occur.
German microbiologist, Gotthard Kramer analyzed 40 mummies and
identified several potentially dangerous mold spores on each.
"When spores enter the body through the nose, mouth or eye mucous
membranes, " he noted, "they can lead to organ failure or even
death, particularly in individuals with weakened immune systems."
Pyramid Construction - They say that the Great Pyramid
consists of 2.3 million stones and took 20 years to build. This
means that it took only 4.2 minutes to lay each stone. That's
Impossible! - Anonymous
wondering about your theory on the Egyptian Pyramids, did they
get extra-terrestial help? - Alana
a project as building the Great Pyramid was, it certainly was
within the capability of Egyptian engineers (without the help
of aliens) in the space of a few decades. While there were millions
of blocks to be cut and put in place it is important to remember
that the Egyptians had a huge amount of laborers to work on the
project especially during the months when the Nile river flooded
and no farming could be done. While the average time to place
a block was only about 4 minutes (2 if you have them working only
during daylight hours) it was likely that there were many teams
placing the blocks on different parts of the structure at the
same time. Fifteen teams would give each one a half-hour to place
and fit their block. There was also plenty of room for them to
work without bumping into each other on the lower levels of the
pyramid where most of the blocks were placed. Also remember that
there were probably many other teams who were responsible for
cutting the blocks, getting them to the site and getting them
up the ramp to the teams placing the blocks.
in 1999 by a group of engineers (June
1999 Civil Engineering Magazine) estimated that the structure
could have been built with primative tools in as little as a decade
with an average workforce of 13,200 and peak of 40,000 workers.
In either case, one decade or two, it is a tribute to the organization
of the ancient Egyptian people.
In a Vacuum - Arthur C. Clarke proposed an idea in one
of his short stories, and later in "2001, a Space Odyssey". The
character in the story opens the hatch on the airlock and floats
across in the vacuum of space to another hatch in another spacecraft,
closes the hatch and survives unharmed as soon as air is restored
to his environment. Could you please explain whether or not this
is possible? Lots of people would like to know. Thanks. - Henry
did Clarke use the vacuum trick in those stories, but he also
portrayed the rescue of a whole crew from spaceship to spaceship
without benefit of spacesuits in his novel Earthlight.
However, in presentations by other writers, like the 1990 film
Total Recall, we see people's eyes popping and heads exploding
when exposed to pressures only as low as the atmosphere of Mars.
Which is correct?
to the people who ought to know: NASA. According to their studies
a de-pressurization of the human body will not do any permanent
damage if the person does not try to hold their breath. If
the person tries to hold their breath then they could rupture
a lung which would be fatal.
the body is rather tough and can resist some internal pressure
and will not explode, nor will the blood immediately boil. Somebody
exposed to a vacuum for any length of time might swell to twice
his normal volume, however.
lung is ruptured a person might survive as long as 90 seconds
in a full vacuum, be re-pressurized and experience no major damage.
However, studies show that as soon as the subject exhausts the
oxygen in their blood they will lose consciousness. This takes
about 10 to 15 seconds. After that somebody else would have to
help them get re-pressurized.
in, in the film 2001 and the book Earthlight, has
his characters hyperventilate (enriching their bloodstream with
extra oxygen) before entering the vacuum. This might significantly
extend the time before they lose consciousness.
a NASA employee testing a leaking spacesuit in a lab did get exposed
a vacuum. He fainted after about 15 seconds, but recovered with
no problems even after a half minute of exposure.
Bulge -A few years back I read about the "Palmdale
Bulge" and it was speculated that it was the beginning of
a volcano or mysterious rising of the land. I have tried to find
out more but have not been able too.
Bob Castle of the U.S. Geological Service began studying geologic
level records from the 1950's and 60's. When he compared them
with more recent records he made a startling, almost frightening,
discovery. In an eclipse shaped area 4500 square miles in size
in Southern California the ground had risen as much as 16 inches
in just a couple decades (It was named the Palmdale Bulge because
the town of Palmdale was at the point of greatest rise. Other
people, notably the residents of Palmdale, preferred the term
"Southern California Uplift"). There was wild speculation
on what this meant (an emerging volcano?), but most of the concern
surrounded the possibility that the bulge meant a massive earthquake
was coming. Other bulges had been associated with earthquakes
in the past and the fact that the notorious San Andreas fault
ran along the edge of the Bulge worried geologists. Could the
Bulge portend a huge, destructive ground shaker like the one that
hit California in 1857?
surveys and reassessments of the data followed. Several groups
found systematic errors in the way the original work had been
done that seemed to explain the Bulge. Over the years most geologists
have become skeptical about the existence of the Bulge at all,
though a few continue to think that at least a portion of the
rise did actually take place. While there have been some significant
earthquakes in Southern California since the 70's, none has yet
had the power of the 1857 quake that was so greatly feared.
Red - Is "Rose Red "a true story? I just watched
the TV-movie by Stephen King. It reminded me of the Winchester
mansion. Thank you.
of years ago Steven Spielberg asked Stephen King to write a scary,
haunted house story he could film. As you guessed, King decided
to start with the real story of the Winchester Mansion and elaborate
on it. The production company went to great lengths to give the
film a "true story" feeling by also publishing a companion
book on the subject - "The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life
at Rose Red" by Joyce Reardon (It was actually written by
King. Reardon is a character in the film) - and by creating a
fake website for "Beaumont University" the college were
the investigators checking out the house supposedly came from.
House is a real place located in San Jose, California. It was
owned by the rich widow of the man that invented the famed Winchester
rifle, Sarah L. Winchester. She feared the spirits of those that
had been killed by her husband's guns during the Civil War would
haunt her. A psychic told her to appease the spirits she should
continually build and add to her mansion and that's just what
she did for 38 years from 1884 to 1922. The result is a big, rambling
structure with lots of strange features including doors that open
out into thin air and stairs the go no place but straight up into
stopped when Sarah died in 1922, but the mansion still exists
and visitors can take a tour of the premises to see some of the
160 strange rooms and odd features that she had built. Supposedly
the mansion is haunted.
Eating Plants -Are there really man eating plants?
are legends of man eating plants, but so far none is yet known
to science. The largest carnivorous plant is the Nepenthes.
It has long (thirty feet), thick vines with traps that are used
to capture and digest small animals. Though small birds and rodents
have been seen as occasional victims, more often the plant's prey
is tiny frogs or smaller animals.
the strangest looking carnivorous plant is the Venus Flytrap.
This plant has leaf lobes that look like months with teeth. Flies
are attracted to the leaf by chemicals that the plant secretes.
When a fly enters the trap the "mouth" closes quickly
and the insect is held inside until it is digested.
is a potential new page for the website, so if any readers have
information on reports of man-eating-plants or references to folklore
on the subject, send the curator a email about it. Thanks.
in Space - I've heard of wormholes almost from the first
time I picked up a science fiction book, but somewhere along the
line I missed hearing the explanation of what they are. As near
as I can guess they have something to do with either FTL travel,
or connections between alternate universes.
is a short cut created between two parts of the universe. If you
can imagine our universe as a two dimensional surface and folded
back on itself - like a piece of paper - the "wormhole"
would be a hole poked through the back-to-back sheets connecting
what would otherwise be two distant points. Science fiction writers
love them because traveling through a wormhole gives you a way
to get across the universe without breaking the laws of physics
that limit spaceships to velocities of less than the speed-of-light.
of the wormhole came from Einstein's general theory of relativity.
While wormholes can exist in theory, no scientist has yet to observe
one. In general they are thought to be so tiny and fleeting that
not even a photon of light can slip through before they open and
close, let alone a spaceship. Recently, however, a Russian scientist,
Sergei Krasnikov of the Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg,
has calculated that it may be possible for large, stable wormholes
to exist under certain conditions.
if you could travel through them, might not only be useful as
short cuts through space, but might also allow for travel through
time or to other universes. It is important to point out, however,
that making a wormhole, even a tiny one, seems well beyond our
current technical abilities.
Death Worm -I was reading about something called the Mongolian
Death Worm, a creature that supposedly lives in the Gobi desert
and shoots corrosive poison or electricity at its victims. What
do you know about it? - Scott
has it that a worm-like creature dubbed Allghoi khorkhoi,
also known as the Mongolian Death Worm, lives in the desolate
sands of Asia's Gobi desert. According to stories the creature
is about two to four feet in length and looks a bit like a cow's
intestine (In fact the name Allghoi khorkhoi means "intestine
worm"). It is apparently greatly feared among the people
of Mongolia and it can supposedly shoot a stream of extremely
corrosive poison at its victim from a great distance. Supposedly
the animal can kill a man, a horse, even a camel without a much
westerners have attempted to find the "Death Worm,"
but so far it has evaded capture and examination by scientists.
If the creature does exists it is most likely not a worm. Because
of the desert's great heat and dry climate true worms have a difficult
time surviving there. Czech author Ivan Mackerle, who went looking
for the worm, suspects it may actually be some kind of lizard
like a slink or a worm lizard, but neither of these creatures
can shoot poison. The animal that seems most likely to fit the
description of the death worm is a snake called the death adder.
This snake is a member of the cobra family and sprays its venom.
Death adders live only Australia and New Guinea, however, so if
the "death worm" is really a snake, it is probably a
completely unknown species.
suggested that the creature makes its attack on its victim by
shocking them with an electrical charge (like the electric eel).
Such a offensive scheme seems unlikely to work very well in the
from Mars? - I heard about a radio signal received in 1924
from Mars and that a picture was sent by radio waves. This has
information has supposedly been released recently. - Anonymous
Mars made its closest pass to the Earth since the invention of
radio. At the time not much was known about harsh environmental
conditions on the planet and astronomers like Percival Lowell
were speculating that markings on the surface suggested there
was intelligent life. For this reason it was decided to make a
concerted effort to pick up radio signals coming from Mars during
the week of August 23rd when the planet came nearest. One of many,
David Peck Todd, Professor of Astronomy at Amherst College, decided
to listen with his receiver at a wavelength between 5 and 6 kilometers
and record any signals he heard. After filtering out practical
jokers Todd picked up a series of dots and dashes that were unexplained,
but didn't appear to be of extraterrestrial origin.
signals were recorded using a photographic method and some newspapers
in New York in 1924 claimed the following:
DOTS AND DASHES WAS MARS SIGNALING? WHAT THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM
REVEALED. The development of the photographic film of the
radio signals for the 29 hour period while Mars was close to Earth,
deepens the mystery of the dots and dashes heard by widely separated
powerful stations. The film disclosed in black and white a regular
arrangement of dots and dashes along one side. On the other, at
about evenly spaced intervals, are curiously jumbled groups, each
taking the form of a crudely drawn face.
the results look like a face or not is pretty much up to the viewer,
but one thing is clear: Though they were not aware of it at the
time, the frequencies that Todd was listening to (between 5 and
6 kilometers) are reflected back into space from the Earth's upper
atmosphere and could not have made it to the ground for Todd to
Bigfoot Corpse - If bigfoot exists why have remains of
a dead bigfoot not been found?
question and the reason many people don't believe in the animal.
However, Grover Krantz, a renowned anthropologist and Bigfoot
supporter, pointed out that the bodies of bears which die of natural
causes are never found either. Bears who are sick often crawl
off to die on there own and are rarely discovered. The ones seen
in museums are those that have been shot or trapped. Krantz believed
that since Bigfoot was rare and shy it was unlikely a body would
be found unless the animal was shot by a hunter. Krantz himself
died this past February.
Beyond Earth -Is it really possible to have life on other
planets? We are studying them in school and the way it sounds
most of them seem impossible to live on. Either they are too hot
or to cold, too gaseous or too much acid. Is there some way of
avoiding these obstacles, or is it just impossible to live on?
seems possible that life in the form of microbes might exist on
other bodies in our solar system. Some microbes are very hardy
and can live under hash conditions (freezing cold, boiling water,
little water, thin air, acid) where humans would quickly die.
The two bodies that seem the most likely place in our solar system
to support such life are Mars and Europa (a moon of Jupiter).
right that currently it is not possible for humans to live on
any planet except Earth unless they protect themselves with spacesuits
and/or pressurized, shielded and temperature controlled buildings.
However, this may not prevent people from colonizing places such
as the Moon and Mars if they are willing to live under those conditions.
Some forward looking scientists have suggested it may be possible
to raise the temperature of Mars and boost its air pressure so
humans could live there without protection, but so far this is
beyond our technology.
maybe planets outside our solar system that could support human
life and scientists are now working out plans to look for them.
Colonizing such a planet, if one is found however, is also beyond
our current technology, though it might be feasible in the distant
work for a science museum and recently got a phone call from a
woman who is insisting that she saw something called the Biddeford
Sea Monster which is Maine's equivalent to the Loch Ness Monster.
Do you know anything about this legend? Until she called me I
had never heard of it.
may have been referring to the sea serpent that reportedly haunted
the coves and bays along New England during the 18th, 19th and
much of the early 20th century. Though a listing of sea serpent
reports from that era shows none specifically for Biddeford, nearby
Kennebunk, Wells Beach, Kittery, Casco Bay and Portland all have
multiple sightings associated with them. All in all over 200 reports
were made during this period and even today nobody is quite sure
of what people were seeing.
place to start with learning about the phenomenon is our own page,
The Monstrous Sea Serpent of Gloucester,
and J.P. O'Neill's excellent volume The
Great New England Sea Serpent. If you caller indeed sighted
the creature it will be welcome news for serpent supporters who
have been concerned that over-fishing along the coast my have
deprived the animal of its food supply and driving it away from
is something that I have been thinking about for a very long time.
Suppose I could travel back in time, back to when my parents were
young. Let us say that i shoot my father, this would prevent him
meeting my mother, therefore make it impossible for me to exist
ever! But if I never exist, then I can have never traveled back
in time to shoot my father, therefore he would be alive, and I
would exist, but if he is alive, and I exist, then I will end
up going back in time and killing him, therefore I will not exist........
and it goes on forever there is no logical end to this cycle.
Could tell me if anyone has already touched on this subject.
have outlined is a common argument against the possibility of
backwards time travel, however it may not be as much of a restriction
as it appears. Assuming you could build a time machine, and that's
a HUGE assumption, at least one interpretation of Quantum Theory
suggests that the universe splits into multiple parallel universes
every time an event happens that could happen in multiple different
ways. That suggests that if you did go back in time and killed
your father, you would find yourself in a universe he was dead,
but the universe you left from, the one where he had not been
killed, would still exist.
just one theory that might get around the problem you posed and
there are others too. Of course, it also extremely possible that
building a time machine is either too difficult or flatly impossible
and the scenario you suggest will simply never come to pass.
do you think about parallel universes?
a staple of science fiction, the idea of parallel universes actually
has its foundations in the theory of quantum mechanics. Quantum
theory describes how particles behave at the subatomic level.
We know the theory works because if it wasn't valid everyday objects
like cell phones and computers wouldn't operate. One of the more
bizarre interpretations of quantum theory, however, is that for
every possible set of events that could take place in our universe,
there is a universe in which those events have happened. For a
simple example look down at your socks. If you decided to wear
white socks this morning according to this interpretation there
is likely to be a parallel universe somewhere were you decided
to wear black socks.
David Deutsch, of Oxford, is a champion of this interpretation
of the theory. While not all scientists agree with Deutsch, he
is a respected physicist and his interpretation of quantum theory
maybe as valid as any other. Can we travel to these other universes?
So far nobody has found laws that would restrict such inter-universe
travel, but any device that could do it is probably far beyond
the limits of our current technology. For more information on
this subject and Dr. Deutsch's interpretation see The Best
Kept Secret in Physics in the September 2001 Issue of Discover.
am interested in the great building-like structure at the end
of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". My dad says those buildings
DO exist, but where? And where can I get info on them?
is right. The exteriors for the final sequence in the movie were
shot at Petra (the city of stone) in Jordan. Petra is located
just to the southwest of Gaza and was once at the convergence
of several important trade routes. Petra was founded around the
fourth century BC by the Nabateans, who were originally a nomadic
tribe. The people became quite wealthy by levying taxes on foreign
traders and charging for guiding caravans though the narrow canyons
of their territory. The city was taken over by Rome in the second
century AD and it flourished under the Roman rule until it was
forced into the Byzantine Empire a century later. As trade routes
shifted the city lost its importance and was abandoned.
the rock-cut buildings seen today are the remains of tombs. The
most impressive of these is the Khasneh (which was featured in
the move). It may have been the tomb of King Aretas III who died
in 62 BC. Though as it is seen today the city seems like it consists
solely of these facades, in its heyday the canyons of the town
would have been filled with freestanding buildings that were the
market, dwelling and worship places of the living. The streets
running along the canyons would have been teaming with the residents
as well as the caravans which provided the city with its revenue.
Little evidence of this remains now and the city seems like a
beautiful, but empty and haunted place -- right out of some adventure
information on Petra try the Encyclopedia of Mysterious Places
by Robert Ingpen and Philip Wilkinson.
you think there will ever be positive photographic proof of bigfoot?
not. Now that we have developed the ability to manipulate photos
and video with computers to create almost any convincing image
we want, no photograph will be generally accepted as proof of
such controversial claims as bigfoot, the abominable snowman,
the Loch Ness Monster, etc.. It is too easy to produce hoax images
which can fool the best photographic experts. Also even if the
image itself is not manipulated, the ability of a modern special
effects house to produce a convincing bigfoot costume will always
create some doubt. The only evidence that will be generally accepted
in the future is an actual specimen, dead or alive, that can be
examined by multiple independent, scientific teams to ensure authenticity.
an article which said that an average person only uses around
10 % of their brain. Are there any organizations devoted to exploring
areas of the brain we do not use and trying to understand whether
we can train ourselves to harness this much wasted asset we all
can't live without? - Anonymous
referred to countless times in various publications the "fact"
that we only use 10 percent of our brain is a myth. Modern PET
scans show that we use all of our brain, but not all parts of
it at the same time (the same way we use our hand muscles a lot
, but our legs muscles very little, while sitting and typing at
a computer). Where the 10 percent myth comes from is hard to say,
but it may date back to debates in the early 1800's between people
who thought brain functions were localized into specific areas
and others who thought the brain acted as a whole. It may also
have been a misinterpretation of the work of Karl Spencer Lashley
in the early 20th century. Lashley noticed that removing a large
portion of a rat's brain surgically didn't effect certain types
of simple learning. However, Lashley only tried a limited set
of tests and it is likely that the part of the rat's brain he
removed might have handled other untested tasks.
famous people reportedly said that we only use ten percent of
our brain (including Albert Einstein and anthropologist Margaret
Mead) but most of these people, while they may have had fine brains
themselves, were not neuroscientists and did not have access to
the results from modern PET scan studies.
the confusion may be attributed to a misunderstanding of the structure
of the brain. While we have some 100 billion neuron cells in our
brains that actually do the thinking, there are 10 to 50 times
as many glial cells in our head that support them by insulating
axons, cleaning up cellular debris, regulating chemicals, etc..
This means that while a large portion of the cells in the brain
do not actually do information processing, all them contribute
as a whole to make the brain work.
are innumerable organizations dedicated to improving our minds
(including the UnMuseum) and people can continue to learn throughout
their lives, but there is no physical evidence to suggest a huge,
secret, untapped potential that can only be accessed by specially
doing a report on the Sasquatch and I am having a hard time finding
what I need. Here are some questions I have: How tall is the Sasquatch?
Where does it live? What percent of fur is covering its body?
How did it survive the eruptions on Mount Saint Helens? What does
the word Sasquatch mean? Who was the first person to see one?
tell you what I can, but remember nobody has ever captured or
even proved that a sasquatch (bigfoot) exists. We have only legends
and few tracks and unconfirmed sightings to go on.
Sasquatch translates roughly to "hairy giant" in an Indian language.
Witnesses have reported seeing animals that are as big or bigger
than a man ranging up to eight or even ten feet in height. These
measurements are probably inaccurate as a witness seeing something
like this is usually get excited and/or scared and tends to overestimate
the size of what they see.
Witnesses have said the animal was "very hairy" and the hair is
often described as "long." Since no animal has ever been captured
(assuming they exist) there are no scientific measurements of
the percent of body covered by hair.
earliest reports of the sasquatch come from Indian legends pervious
to the arrival of the white man. The first sighting of a sasquatch
by a white man apparently came in 1811 near what now is the town
of Jasper, Alberta, Canada. A trader named David Thompson found
some strange footprints, fourteen inches long and eight inches
wide, with four toes, in the snow.
Most sasquatch reports come from the Pacific Northwest and western
Canada, though there have been some reports of a creature like
this as far east and south as Florida. The town of Willow Creek
in northern California, has declared itself the capital of BigFoot
country and in the center of the village stands a wooden, life-size
carving of the creature.
Helens: If there were sasquatch close to the explosion they probably
did not survive. Almost all large animal life was extinguished
in the immediate area. However, only a small portion of their
possible range would have been effected by the eruption.
time travel possible?
is yes and maybe. We all travel forward in time everyday. To move
forward in time faster than the normal rate one needs only to
accelerate themselves to near the speed of light. According to
physicist William A. Hiscock, the time-dialation effect as described
in Einstein's Special Relativity shows that time slows for an
object as it is accelerated. If you had a spaceship that could
take you to the center of the galaxy and back at near the speed
of light the trip would last 60,000 earth years, but time would
slow down for you so you'd be a little more than 40 years older
than when you left!
backwards in time is more tricky, but so far nothing in Quantum
theory has ruled out the possibility. It may be that particles
on the subatomic scale often travel backward in time. However,
in trying to build a practical time machine to transport something
as large as a human being you would soon come up against some
tremendous engineering problems such as how to create, enlarge
and control a wormhole. Many physicists are fascinated by the
idea time travel and they will continue to study on not only whether
it may be possible but also how it might be done.
wondering about the treasure hunt on Oak
Island. I would like to know the current state of that search.
Last I knew, it had been languishing for 3 years or so...
word the two principals in the search, David Tobias of Montreal
and Dan Blankenship of Oak Island, are still suing each other.
Even if the legal situation was straightened out the estimates
of money needed to even properly assess the situation on the island
and decide on a course of proper course of action run into the
millions of dollars. Not many people are willing to invest a lot
of money into a project that has been going on for 200 years and
so far has yielded nothing.
the island remains closed to visitors. This is shame since it
seems likely that the only treasure that will be gotten out of
the site is through developing it as a museum and tourist attraction.
wondering,what was the speed of T-Rex? Can you tell me what is
the scientific analysis of it?
film Jurassic Park the character of Professor Grant asks
the park's owner how fast the dinosaurs can run. "We've clocked
our T-Rex at 42 miles per hour," the owner replies with a
grin. If only we could calculate the speed of a dinosaur by pointing
a radar gun at a living animal! In reality, scientists have to
make rough estimates of these extinct animals speeds by examining
fossils and interpreting sometimes contradictory evidence.
best estimates of dinosaur speeds come from "trackways."
A trackway is a set dinosaur footprints that show the animal's
movement over a number of steps. Scientists use a formula that
calculates the speed of the animal based on the size of the footprints
and the length of the stride. These calculations show that some
theropod dinosaurs ( a group of dinosaurs including the Tyrannosaurus
Rex) could run as fast as 26 miles per hour. Unfortunately, it
is impossible from the footprints to determine exactly which species
of theropod made the tracks. Was it a member of the tyrannosaurus
family? Nobody knows.
way of estimating speeds is to compare the dinosaur's body with
a living animal. The length of the animals leg bones, the size
of the leg muscles and shape of the foot, among other things,
can tell scientists something about a dinosaur's running capabilities
when that information is compared to a living animal with similar
characteristics. Another approach, called biomechanics, attempts
to use engineering principles calculate the speed of the dinosaur
(a bit like trying to figure out the maximum speed of a race car
by knowing the power of the engine, size of the tires and ratio
of the transmission).
methods when applied to the T-Rex suggest a top speed somewhere
in the range of 20 miles per hour, but there are experts who make
a case that it may have been either faster (as fast as 40 mph)
or slower. In 1995 two scientists, James Farlow and John Robinson,
estimated that if a T-Rex stumbled while running faster than twenty-four
miles per hour the fall would be fatal. The lack of broken ribs
on T-Rex skeletons, which would occur as the result of such a
fall, suggest that if the T-Rex was capable of such high speeds,
he was very careful about where he stepped.
have had a question about the Bigfoot that I have not found answered
anywhere. There are reports of hair and other "by-products" of
the Bigfoot. If so, have they done any DNA testing to see if there
is a relationship of the species from different areas of the country
or even world? I would think that if they can prove that the "animal"
is of the ape species then there should be some connection between
you and have a nice day.
of yeti, or bigfoot hair, have turned out to be something more
common (like goat) when its DNA is tested. However, in April of
this year British scientists were given some long, black strands
of hair found caught in the bark of cedar tree in the Kingdom
of Bhutan, a small country on the eastern side of the Himalayas.
According to the local people this tree was frequented by the
"yeti" (sometimes referred to as the "abominable snowman")
which, if he exists, might well be cousin of the American bigfoot
(if that exists). The British scientists were baffled by the hair
because it did not match other known creatures. This does not
"prove" that it came from a yeti, but it certainly does seem that
there is some kind of hairy creature out there that has not yet
been classified by science. So far, a second specimen of hair
that cannot be identified has not shown up, so a comparison between
the two is not possible.
13 years ago in the Hudson Valley where I live, a friend and I
where looking at the night sky and we saw something very high
up above the clouds..no shape..just a light beyond the clouds.
This thing moved so fast all over the sky we had a hard time keeping
up with it. We couldn't see anything just a whitish light beyond
the clouds. Was this some sort of UFO? We think it was..
in the most strict sense it was. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying
Object. So if you saw a flying object, and could not identify
it, it would be, at least to you, a UFO. Probably what you are
more interested in is whether this would be some kind of extraterrestrial
craft. That's impossible to say without more information. You
could have observed a searchlight or laser beam, either projected
from above the cloud onto it, or from below the cloud up to it.
In either case the beam swinging round very quickly might give
the effect you describe. If below the cloud the beam or light
would usually be visible as it traveled up from the surface, but
not always. There are some special atmospheric conditions that
might render it invisible until it hit the clouds.
Valley has been a "hot-spot" for UFO reports. Usually
the UFOs reported in the area have been described as slow moving
triangles outlined with lights, however, not speedy single lights
shooting around the sky. For more information check our page on
the Hudson Valley UFOs.
can't anything go faster than the speed of light?
some things can go faster than the speed of light. The
speed of light changes in different mediums. It's slower in air
and even slower in water. Recently some scientists have managed
to make light stop completely, which suggests that even a snail
can go faster than the speed of light in special circumstances.
most of the time this question is asked people are referring to
the speed of light in a vacuum - about 186,000 miles per second.
Even so, there are still a few things that will go faster that
the speed of light. For example, if you were to point a laser
beam at the moon, then quickly sweep the point of light that shows
up on the surface from one side of the moon to the other, that
point of light could travel faster than the speed of light.
most people when asking this question usually mean something in
terms of a spaceship or at least a message. Things get a little
more complicated there. One of the easiest ways of looking at
the problem is the amount of energy needed to accelerate something
to the speed of light. For any object with rest mass, which is
most of the normal matter you would be making a spaceship out
of, the energy to accelerate it further as it approaches the speed
of light becomes infinite. Since infinite energy is not available
you cannot accelerate your ship to the speed of light.
not mean that faster than light travel is completely impossible.
It just means you can't get something going faster than light
by pushing it with a rocket engine of some sort. If you can imagine
the universe as a flat piece of paper, it maybe possible to get
from two widely separated points by folding the paper back against
itself and poking a hole through it (when you see a science-fiction
movie and they are talking about traveling though 'hyperspace'
this is usually what they are referring to). Exactly how you would
do this, if it is even possible, is the subject of much speculation
are also cases where scientists claim they have done experiments
in which they have been able to send a message faster than the
speed of light. In theory this should be impossible, so there
is much controversy over whether their results are accurate.
question is, does the ark of the covenant, about which there is
a large description in the Bible, really have magical powers?
of the Covenant, the subject of the movie "Raiders of the Lost
Ark", was an ornamental box that God ordered the ancient Israelites
to construct to carry sacred objects like pieces of the ten commandment
tablets. The Ark has been lost to history, so there is no way
of scientifically testing it to see if there is anything "supernatural"
about it. However, according to the Bible is was involved in several
miracles that seem to have no natural explanation. When the Israelites
had to cross the Jordan River the river dried up immediately when
feet of the priests, who were carrying the Ark, touched the water.
When the Ark was captured by the Philistines and placed in their
temple overnight, an idol of the Philistine God, Dagon, was thrown
to the ground and destroyed although no human had been in the
temple. According to law the Ark was to be handled only by priests
and temple workers and when a man was neither touched it, he dropped
these "supernatural" incidents I would suspect a theologian would
say that it was not the box itself that had power, but the presence
of God at the Ark that was behind these extraordinary events.
favorite TV show is "So Weird" on Disney Channel. In one episode,
the main character was being haunted by a boy that died in a boat
wreck in 1915. The boat was called the Eastland and sank while
still tied to a dock in Chicago. Was there really an Eastland?
I would really like to know.
sank in just 20 feet of water off its wharf in Chicago on Saturday
July 24th 1915. It happened so quickly that there was no time
to launch lifeboats or hand out life jackets and over 800 passengers
died. Researchers believe that there were several contributing
causes to the accident which included the ship's design. It was
top heavy and the gangways (entrances) to the ship were less than
two feet above the waterline when the ship was was loaded. This
made it easy for the water to get into the ship if it began to
list (tilt). This is exactly what happened on the fatal day. The
ship began to list and the list was not corrected before water
came pouring into the ship through the low gangways and port holes.
The ship filled with water and rolled over so that it lay on its
side in the mud, half covered by the lake.
your question presumes that the yeti exists at all. Assuming they
do, we can say a few things about how many there might be out
there. A breeding population needs at least 500 individuals to
stay healthy over the long term. Below that number genetic drift
and inbreeding will slowly start to reduce the fitness of the
group. Populations as low as 300 individuals can survive for number
generations successfully, but probably will show some weakening
if they cannot expand their population at some point. Species
have survived when the population has gotten as low as 30 individuals
and such was the case with the California Condor. However the
condor situation required careful intervention by scientists to
avoid inbreeding, something that would not happen in the wild.
these facts if we can probably say that unless there are at least
300 Yeti in the wild, they are probably headed for extinction,
assuming they exist at all.
can understand how we can determine the direction (left or right)
that a sound comes from but how can we tell whether a sound is
able to perceive the direction of a sound source to the left and
right by the difference of arrival time of the sound wave at each
ear. Our ability to locate a sound is most accurate with a high
frequency sound that has a sharp beginning.
the height location of a sound is a little more complicated and
less accurate than getting the left and right location. Height
information is provided to us by the shape of our ears. If a sound
of fairly high frequency arrives from the front, some of it passes
by the entrance to the inner ear and bounces off the back edge
of the ear lobe. When this reflection arrives back at the entrance
of the inner ear is out of phase with the original sound at a
specific frequency (Two waves that are out-of-phase means that
the top of one wave is arriving at the same time the bottom of
the other wave and they cancel each other out). Which frequency
is involved is determined by the distance between the inner ear
and the ear lobe. The canceling action means that the sound at
that one specific frequency is muted. The elongated shape of our
lobes causes the muted frequency to vary depending on the angle,
up or down, the sound approaches from. Our brains detect which
frequency is muted and automatically tell us the height of the
sound. For more information on hearing and sound detection try
this web page:
like to know why tornados are not named like hurricanes, cyclones
and typhoons? What about naming earthquakes? I asked my teacher
and she didn't know...
like earthquakes, are referred to by the location at which they
struck and the date. However, you are probably referring to the
use of human names which is tradition with tropical storms.
of giving tropical storms with human names apparently first appeared
early in the 20th century when a Australian forecaster started
giving cyclones the names of political figures he didn't like.
Later during the world wars weather casters in the military started
naming them for their girlfriends and wives. In 1974 the policy
was updated to include both male and female names. This tradition
has persisted because it is an easy way for the weather service
to communicate the status of one or more storms to the public
as they build up over a period of days or weeks. Names are selected
in alphabetical order starting with 'A' at the beginning of each
unlike tropical storms, do not form days in advance of striking.
In fact the weather service cannot really predict storms that
might form tornados more that two days in advance. Tornados
themselves are short-lived phenomena often over in just ten minutes
(though a single storm system might produce several tornados in
series that might be active over the course of several hours).
Because they are so fleeting and unpredictable tornados are not
given human names like tropical storms. Another problem naming
them would be the shear number of tornados. Up to 147 tornadoes
have been known to touch down in one day in the United States!
With as many as a thousand tornadoes a season it would be difficult
to give them all names.
does an octopus have 2 hearts? Please answer soon!
to Debbie Ingrao, Senior Biologist at the Mote Marine Laboratory
in Sarasota Florida, an octopus as three (count them three)
hearts! Two, known as branchial hearts, push the blood into their
respective gills where the blood picks up oxygen. After that a
systemic heart circulates the blood throughout the animal's body.
For more information about this subject check out Ms. Ingrao's
web page at http://www.mote.org/~lauren/motenews/winter96/octopus.phtml
is the speed of light in water? Thanks.
In a vacuum
light travels at about 186,000 miles a second (enough to circle
the earth 7 1/2 times in a single second). In a vacuum, nothing
is faster than light. The speed of light, though, is very dependent
on the density of the medium it is traveling through. Air slows
it down a bit. Water, which is more dense than air, slows light
down by 25 percent to a speed of about 140,000 miles per second.
An even denser medium, like glass, slows it down to 124,000 miles
things happen when light slows down. One of them is that in water,
particles, like those that compose radiation are not slowed, can
travel faster than the light. If you have ever seen a picture
of a nuclear reactor filled with water you may have noticed the
strange blue glow that appears around the radioactive parts of
the reactor. This is called Cerenkov Radiation and it is the result
of electrically charged radioactive particles out running the
photons that compose light. The electrical field surrounding these
particles are carried by photons, but the photons cannot keep
up with the motion of the particle itself. The result is a "shock
wave" (not unlike the sonic boom that a plane generates as it
outruns the speed of sound). The shock wave simulates the atoms
in the surrounding water to emit blue light.
heard about a place in the west named the "Vortex" where
a ball can roll uphill. Where can get more information?
had a couple emails asking about the "Oregon Vortex." The Vortex,
and other similar locations about the world, are places supposedly
where physical laws get bent by mysterious unknown forces. Although
there is something weird going on at these places its not really
an unknown force, but one or more optical illusions. The most
typical claim made for these places is that objects roll uphill
or water poured on the ground will run uphill. It doesn't. The
surrounding area gives appearance that the surface the object
is rolling on is level or angled up when it is actually angled
downward. This happens when there is no good view of the horizon
and objects in the area, such a trees, are not growing straight
up as expected, but at an angle. Also nearby buildings are probably
not square to the ground, but askew. Sometimes these optical illusion
have appeared naturally, but often they are man-made. This doesn't
mean that these places aren't fun to visit. Just be a bit skeptical
about claims that mysterious forces are involved.
on the discovery channel that someone discovered some ancient
Egyptian pictures making an inference that extraterrestrial beings
introduced electricity to the Egyptians. The same group found
an artifact that, when re-created and an acidic substance (like
vinegar)added, generated electricity. Do you know anything about
are some ancient reliefs that have been discovered in Egypt which
show something that looks to some people a lot like an oversized
electric light bulb. On the scale pictured on the relief, though,
the "bulbs" seem to be large enough that a man could stand inside
them, which would make them too bulky for lighting tombs for construction
(which is how many proponents of the idea think the bulbs were
used). The battery-like device you are probably referring to was
found in ancient Iraq and the museum has a whole web page on it
Many scientists think that the battery, if that what it was, was
used for electroplating objects, not for lighting, It would certainly
been too small to power the massive bulbs pictured in the Egyptian
you think there is any truth to the legend of the 7 Cities of
Cities of Cibola, also known as the Seven Cities of Gold, were
first reported by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who after being
shipwrecked in 1528, wandered through what is now Mexico and the
southern U.S.. The viceroy of New Spain, after hearing about the
cities, sent an expedition in 1539 which included the monk Fray
Marcos. Though the expedition ran into trouble, Marcos reported
back to the viceroy that he had seen these rich and fabulous cities
in the distance. In 1540 the viceroy sent Francisco de Coronado
to find the cities, but despite diligent searching he could only
locate 7 small Zuni pueblos. So most people decided the golden
cities were just a legend.
Marcos report large cities instead of villages? Perhaps he was
just an exaggerator, but I think it is just as likely that what
he saw was a mirage. The same optical
illusion that can make a lake appear in the dry desert can magnify
and elongate objects at a distance to make them look different
than they really are. Polar explorers have reported seeing magnificent
cites due to the mirage effect even though they were well above
the polar circle where there were clearly no towns. A mirage may
have altered the appearance of the pueblos, or perhaps some natural
object, to make them look like golden cities.
thinks the cites are legends. Ruben Amador of New Mexico suggests
that the cities were actually seven caves that still might be
found in somewhere in Grant County, New Mexico. His theory is
yet to be proved, though.
don't people send subs down to the bottom of the lake to find
the Loch Ness Monster?
did actually use a submarine to try and find the monster, but
without much luck. The problem is that the Loch Ness is very long,
deep, and murky. Vision is limited to just a few feet. Unless
the monster (if he exists) swims right up to your submarine and
looks into the porthole, you are not likely to see him. Some people
have tried scanning the lake with sonar and have gotten some interesting
readings that might suggest something is down there, but the readings
are not enough to prove or disprove the existence of the monster.
have been hearing from various sources of a female pope in the
ninth century by the name of Joan, (853-855), who died in childbirth
during a papal procession. Have you any information?
one of those stories that can never really be proved or disproved.
The story is roughly as follows: A woman was taken to Athens,
and later to Rome by her boyfriend. For some reason he hid her
identity by dressing her in male clothes. While at Rome she became
so well schooled in the sciences, and spoke so elegantly (under
the name John Anglicus) that she was made a Cardinal and later
Pope. Her real identity became known when during a papal procession
she gave birth. Because she was found to be a women (and the birth
testified to the fact she had not been celebrate) her name was
expunged from the official list of popes and she was executed
through a combination of stoning and dragging. She supposedly
reined as Pope from 853 to 855 AD.
this story interesting is that some of the references to "Pope
Joan" go back to the 13th century. While that is still some 350
years removed from the supposed event it does show that this event
is, if not true, is at least long-standing hoax. While some early
Catholic sources seem to accept this story about a woman pope,
sources since the time of the Reformation have denied it.
Mann has tried to prove that this story is a hoax through the
use of ancient coins. There are coins that picture Pope Benedict
III and Emperor Lothaire together. This indicates that they ruled
at the same time. Since Pope Benedict's predecessor (Pope Leo
I) died on July 17 1855 and Lothaire died on September 28th 855
the only time the could have ruled together is between July 17
and September 28 of 855. There seems no space for Joan's rein
to have taken place unless the date of the death of Pope Leo I
has been faked.
are the differences between asteroids, meteors and comets?
are rocks in space that are too small to be considered planets
and do not circle planets as moons (However, some researchers
speculate Deimos and Phobos, the Martian moons, were at one time
asteroids that have been captured by Martian gravity). There are
several groups of asteroids, but most of the them hang out in
an orbit between Mars and Jupiter in what is called the "Asteroid
Belt." Another group of important asteroids are located closer
to the orbit of Earth and these are known as "Near Earth" asteroids.
Some asteroids are hundreds of miles across, but over the millions
of years since the solar system came into being the asteroids
have been bumping into each other a losing bits and pieces and
many are about the size of boulders. When an asteroid, or a fraction
of an asteroid, enters the Earth's atmosphere it is called a meteor.
If it does not burn up in the sky, but makes it to the ground
it is called a meteorite. Particles shed from comets (which are
composed of rock and frozen water) can also enter the atmosphere
as meteors. When Earth crosses the trail of a comet the particles
that hit the Earth's atmosphere can cause a meteor shower. It
is also possible to get meteors that originally came from other
planets or moons.
the speed of light is 700 million miles an hour, what is the speed
of sound varies depending on the medium in which the sound waves
are moving and the temperature. At sea level at 32 degrees Fahrenheit
sound travels though air at a speed of 1,129 feet per second or
0.213 miles a second (767 miles per hour). Sound travels much
faster through liquids and has a speed in water of 5,000 feet
per second or 3,405 miles an hour. It travels through solids even
faster. Steel, which is a very good conductor of sound, allows
sound waves to move through it at about 16,000 feet per second
which is about 3 miles a second (10,800 miles per hour). That's
why you see people in old motion pictures putting their ear to
the steel track to see if a train is coming. Sound travels farther
and faster in steel than air (I do not recommend trying the track
trick today as the consequences of a speedy train sneaking up
on you could be disastrous) Of course, though the speed of light
that is most often quoted is its speed moving through a vacuum,
sound has no speed in a vacuum at all since there is no medium
to transmit the sound waves.
was watching Magnolia and all of a sudden, frogs were dropping
from the sky. My sister says that this has happened before. I
cannot imagine this happening, Has it and when? Thanks
as it seems falls of organic matter from the sky have been reported
many times over the years. On February 9th, 1859, numerous residents
of Mountain Ash, Glamorganshire, Wales, reported a fall of small
fish occurred on a spot 80 yards long by 12 yards wide. Sheds
were covered by them and one man removed his hat to find the brim
filled with the creatures, none more than five inches long. On
September 23, 1973 thousands of toads fell on the town of Brignoles,
France, during a freak storm. Lizards dropped from the sky onto
the streets of Montreal, Canada in December of 1857. These are
only a sampling of dozens of similar incidents. The explanations
for most of these falls are unsatisfactory, but there is little
doubt that sometimes they do occur. Most theories center around
freak weather conditions, like a water spouts or whirlwinds that
pick these creatures up, and drop thousands or even tens-of thousands
of feet from were they started. Sometimes, though, these falls
are recorded when no storm action is in the area at all. Also
occasionally the creatures that fall live no where near place
where they drop. A scientist witnessed the fall of fish on the
Pacific island of Guam. The fish were of a species known to be
found only in the fresh water streams of Europe. Finally in almost
all cases the creatures are of the same species, size and age.
How could a storm be so selective?
it is quite likely that you witnessed such a fall. The explanation
of why it happened remains a mystery.
not sure if you can answer this. My daughter and I love the Rankin-Bass
Christmas movies and we were curious about what the characters
are made out of. They look like puppets to us. We tried to find
the answer ourselves. We did find out that they are stop-motion
animation but have no clue of where to go from there. If you can
help, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
early 60's Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass formed a production company
which filmed several stop motion classic children's TV specials
including "Mad Monster Party", "The Year Without a Santa Claus"
and, my personal favorite, "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer." These
shows used the standard stop motion
technique of shooting one frame of film, moving the characters
a tiny bit, then shooting another frame. This is the same method
used in the 30's for the film "King Kong" and last year for "Chicken
Run." This would give the illusion of self-animation to the characters
when the film was played back at full speed.
the techniques used to construct these characters are lost to
history, but most characters like this are have a metal skeleton
with joints that can bend, but hold their position, composed of
either a ball-in-socket, a hinge or a heavy wire. On top of that
is layered a flexible rubber or plastic compound. This is then
molded to the shaped of the character. The result is not unlike
that 60's "Gumby" toy. In the case of the Rankin-Bass characters
like Rudolf it appears that they then encased them in cloth which
was glued to the body. Some of the other characters, such a Santa
Claus, might have had some of the body parts, where flexibility
was not a concern, carved out of wood. The clothes then would
have been glued to the wood.
were probably several different versions of each of these characters
for the film in different sizes for different scenes. Facial expressions
were often achieved by creating multiple heads for each character,
each with a different expression and showing mouth open or closed,
etc. The heads would have been switched as needed with each frame
which is why the expression seem to sometimes "jump" from one
to another. Unfortunately most of the actual Rankin-Bass figures
used were not built to last. They were sprayed with a compound
to reduce glare which caused them to decay over time.
curious know about what the name is of the scientists who study
these mysterious sea creatures. I ask because I'm interested in
becoming a paleontologist, but I think this is the area that I
would be more interested in. I don't know where you can go to
university and such to become one. So if you could email me that
would be extremely helpful. Thanks.
have designated the science of searching for unknown animals as
"Cryptozoology". It comes from the term "crypto" which means hidden
and "zoology" for the study of animals. However, that is a term
that isn't really favored by scientists. You won't find majors
in "Cryptozoology" at any college. Most scientists instead are
trained in a particular field (For example, marine biology which
is the study of animals and plants that live in the sea). They
study that environment and the creatures that inhabit it and in
the course of that they often find animals unknown to science,
but that usually isn't the goal of their studies.
are interested in mysterious sea creatures I would suggest to
look closely at a career in marine biology. It is a major you
will find at many colleges and universities. Who knows, you might
find a new species no one has ever seen before!
times over the years I've heard references made to a now extinct
north American aboriginal tribe that had blue eyes. The kicker
seemed to be that they existed long before the first European
explorers arrived. Has this been resolved?
are several reported cases where explorers came upon American
Indian tribes that seem to have appearances or traditions that,
to the explorer's eyes, seemed European. The Rev. Charles Beatty
in 1767 claimed he'd heard of a tribe living west of the Mississippi
who spoke Welch. In 1792 Edward Williams reported the same thing.
Other stories indicated that this tribe was light-skinned with
red hair. For the past couple centuries pundits have speculated
on where a tribe like this might have come from. Theories range
from the lost tribes of Israel to the sons of Noah. Probably the
most likely of these scenarios is that there was some mixing of
Viking and Indians during the period when the Vikings were thought
to have settlements in North America. In the 18th century Eben
Norton Horsford, a professor at Harvard, claimed that he had found
the remains of a whole Viking settlement, named "Norumberga,"
in the Boston area and connected it will a tribe who called themselves
by almost the same name. Horsford was so sure of his findings
he even managed to get the city to erect a statue to Leif Erickson
on Commonwealth Avenue. Most archaeologists seem to doubt Horsford's
findings about Norumberga today, even though they accept that
the Norse did have a presence in North America.
have a very important question that I need to know very soon!!!
How do scientists mount fossil bones together?
first started mounting fossil bones in skeleton displays they
ran into some difficult problems. The fossils are basically rock,
which means the are extremely heavy. To hold these rocks in the
right positions required a heavy metal skeleton with thick supports
sometimes supplemented by cables running from the ceiling. Not
only was this way of mounting the bones expensive, but there was
always a chance you might damage a priceless specimen while putting
it in position. For this reason in almost all modern dinosaur
skeleton mounts the bones you see are fiberglass copies painted
to look like the originals. This allows the supports to run right
though the center of the "bones" so they are less noticeable.
Since fiberglass only weighs a fraction of what rock would the
supports can be much lighter. Usually thin metal or heavy plastic
is used. This approach also allows the original bones to be stored
safely somewhere scientists can get to easily at anytime so they
can examine them. Something that would be difficult to do if the
fossil was mounted twenty feet in the air.
you can make many fiberglass copies of the original bones this
also allows museums who do not own the fossils of an animal, say
like T-Rex, to still have one on display.
a fifth grader in a program called project challenge for gifted
children . I am reporting on Stonehenge and I was wondering if
you could give me your opinions on a few questions. What is your
opinion about why it was built? Where do you think the stones
came from and how did they move them?
of rock like Stonehenge were built around England and I believe
that the earliest ones may have been simple cattle enclosures.
Archaeologist Clive Waddington developed this theory. The cattle
were probably brought into the enclosures at certain times of
the year and ceremonies performed. The easiest way to detect the
times of the year would be by marking the rocks or the posts that
made up the ring as they lined up with the rising of the sun.
Later the rings lost their cattle enclosure function and served
as only places of ceremony with a built-in calendar function.
stones were quarried some 18 miles from Stonehenge and probably
either dragged to the site on sledges, or pushed on rollers made
from tree trunks. The moving of the stones would have also required
the building of a road through the thick forests that covered
the area at the time, a job almost as big as moving the stones.
doing a school project on horror stories and legends in Pennsylvania.
They have to be in the state or nearby. I'm having trouble finding
any so, if you know any stories please tell me about them. Thank
are doing a project on Yetis as part of a study skills workshop.
We were wondering if you had any opinions on this subject: Does
the Yeti exist????? Thank you.
Lucille, Tom and Eleanor
that the Yeti is the most likely of the often reported "humanoid/ape"
creatures to actually exist. Big Foot lives in what seems to a
fairly populated region (Northern California, Washington, Oregon,
etc.) yet no remains have ever been found. The Himalayas, where
the Yeti supposedly lives, is remote enough that it might be possible,
even today, to hide a population of these creatures large enough
to continue healthy breeding. However, having said that, I would
not be surprised if many of the reports of the Yeti might someday
be attributed to a rare or unknown type of high altitude bear,
rather than a manlike ape.
watching a special on The Discovery Channel a year ago about an
actual museum that I would desperately like to go to, but I can't
seem to find any info on it! I don't know the name of it, but
I know it has strange, morbid exhibits of human oddities, and
things of that nature. For some reason I thought it was in Philadelphia,
but their tourism board had no listing for it.
thinking of the Mutter Museum which is part of The College
of Physicians of Philadelphia. The Mutter houses over 20,000
objects including 900 anatomical and pathological specimens and
10,000 medical instruments. The exhibits are sometimes grotesque,
but always fascinating. Currently the Mutter is featuring a special
exhibition on conjoined twins. You can visit the Mutter on the
web at http://www.collphyphil.org/muttcoll.htm.
If you can't get there in person you may want to order one of
their extremely popular calendars which feature the work of photographic
artists that have recorded some of the museum's collection of
oddities and their gruesome beauty.
a question? Click here and fill in the
form. Best questions will be displayed here on the site. Let
us know if you want your name withheld. We
reserve the right to edit the questions for content and length.
We may not be able to
answer every question we get. |
Around the Campfire - Can we really Believe Our Eyes?
When we see something, can we really trust our eyes to tell us the truth? More importantly, do our eyes tell us something that can be interpreted exactly the same by everyone?
This is a big problem in cryptid and paranormal research as well as every disagreement known to humankind. Everyone has a different view. Why is that?
This post by Thomas Marcum, Thomas is the founder/leader of the cryptozoology and paranormal research organization known as The Crypto Crew. Over 20 years experience with research and investigation of unexplained activity, working with video and websites. A trained wild land firefighter and a published photographer, and poet.
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Here’s an example of the “pareidolia” effect where the mind connects the dots and sees faces in random space. Here is a Planet of the Apes gorilla in a burning fireplace log.
Archive for the Weird Science Category
I noticed a surface ripple in the Sydney Royal Botanical Garden pond (that spade-shaped surface water body, below), approximately 300 feet from Sydney Harbor. At first I thought it was a snake, but it was clearly an aquatic denizen. I managed these shots below….
Aha! No cryptid or lake monster here. It’s an eel!
FBI has released several documents pertaining to Nikola Tesla, including the famous John Trump (MIT) memo prepared after examination of Tesla’s papers (1943). These are some of the “missing papers” referred to in “Man Out of Time” (M. Cheney, Orig. 1981, Chapter 29).
Link to FILES
Part 03 PDF Download, including the John Trump Memo of Important Documents.
Tesla: Man Out of Time, on Scribd.
A team of scientists with varied backgrounds have suggested that the enigmatic “Tully Monster” fossil organism (late Carboniferous Maxon Creek biota of Illinois) is a proto-lamprey. This is based on analysis of over 1,200 fossils and a weight of evidence approach identifying vertebrate features, including: presence of 1) notochord, 2) gill pouches, 3) myomeres (muscle striations), 4) fins, 5) optic stalks and lobes, and 6) a toothed buccal cavity. In the past this organism was thought to be anything from a worm, gastropod, conodont to arthropod (invertebrates).
Above: Modern reconstruction of Tullimonstrum gregarium, compared to a modern lamprey, Below:
Here are some other historical reconstructions and fossil images.
Field Museum Link
Scientific American Article |
|Mongolian Death Worm|
|Others||Large intestine worm|
|Average length||2-5 ft. long|
|Place of origin||Earth|
|Habitat||Gobi Desert, Mongolia|
|Behind the Scenes|
The Mongolian death worm (Mongolian: olgoi-khorkhoi, "large intestine worm") is a creature purported to exist in the Gobi Desert. It is generally considered a cryptozoological creature (cryptid): one whose sightings and reports are disputed or unconfirmed.
It is described as a bright red worm with a wide body that is 2 to 5 feet (0.6 to 1.5 m) long. The worm is the subject of a number of extraordinary claims by Mongolian locals - such as the ability of the worm to spew forth sulfuric acid that, on contact, will turn anything it touches yellow and corroded (and which would kill a human), as well as its purported ability to kill at a distance by means of electric discharge.
The olgoi-khorkhoi is said to resemble a cow's intestine. It is reported to be red in color, and is sometimes described as having darker spots or blotches. Sometimes it is said to have spiked projections at both ends. The worms are purportedly thick-bodied.
Roy Chapman Andrews (an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History), in his book On the Trail of Ancient Man (1926) cites Mongolian Prime Minister Damdinbazar who described the worm allergorhai-horhai in 1922:
"It is shaped like a sausage about two feet long, has no head nor leg and it is so poisonous that merely to touch it means instant death. It lives in the most desolate parts of the Gobi Desert…"
In 1932 Andrews published this information again in the The New Conquest of Central Asia, adding: "It is reported to live in the most arid, sandy regions of the western Gobi." Andrews didn't believe in this animal's reality.
Czech explorer Ivan Mackerle described the animal from second-hand reports as: "Sausage-like worm over half a meter (20 inches) long, and thick as a man's arm, resembling the intestine of cattle. Its tail is short, as [if] it were cut off, but not tapered. It is difficult to tell its head from its tail because it has no visible eyes, nostrils or mouth but may have them on some occasions. Its colour is dark red, like blood or salami..."
The worm is said to inhabit the southern Gobi Desert. The Mongolians say that the olgoi-khorkhoi can kill at a distance, either by spraying an acid-like substance or by using an electrical discharge. They say that the worm lives underground, hibernating most of the year except for when it becomes active in June and July. It is reported that this animal is mostly seen on the surface when it rains and the ground is wet.
The Mongolians also believe that touching any part of the worm will cause instant death. Its' venom supposedly corrodes metal and local folklore tells of a predilection for the color yellow. The worm is also said to have a preference for local parasitic plants such as the goyo.
- Mongolian Death Worm (2010)
- The Troop
- The Secret Saturdays
- Lost Tapes |
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 11th, 2009
The recent Texas conference on the Goatman (see Nick Redfern’s report) reminded me of all the other Goatmen and Satryrs tales I’ve heard down through the years. Goatmen stories have been told in cryptid circles from such high profile locations as Maryland-Virginia, near Washington D. C., and thirty years ago, from near Lincoln, Nebraska.
Nick Redfern wears a Sasqwatch.
A few years ago, I was on a radio station out of Bangor, Maine, and the hosts were discussing stories they had been told by their parents of a “hoofed horror” from the woods up in the County. But tales sometimes are merely foggy remembrances of clouded memories of attempts to keep kids in line, and only vaguely are based in reality, of course.
Nevertheless, I still remain surprised by Mark A. Hall’s 2005 attempt to categorize such sightings in a way that might be better understood. A hard pill to swallow perhaps, I thought, but at least worthy of being open-minded and reading about them. I’m not denying there’s a body of these reports, now what do we do about them?
You can find a definition for “Satyrs” in the sense of rethinking that Mark A. Hall is doing, at his Glossary of Living Fossils.
“Satyrs – A form of ape related to the Yetis. Their extraordinary physical capabilities have caused them to be called ‘goat-men’ out of a mistaken perception of their mode of locomotion….See ‘The Satyrs in Our Midst’ in Wonders for September 2005.”
Hall’s article is in Volume 9, No. 3 of his now-hard-to-find Wonders, and he did nicely pull together all the scattered reports in one place.
In 2005, I was at the Texas Bigfoot conference, being interviewed by a red-headed young man with a XL-1 video camera named Todd Partain. He was in the midst of shooting his documentary, Eyes In The Dark, about the eye glow experiences of field researchers, his own childhood experiences, and the veil of isolation and ridicule society imposes on cryptozoology. Sounded like a good project, so I did the interview, signed his release, and we began to say good-bye, as I began to move on to another conference activity. But Todd stopped me in my tracks.
Off camera, post-interview and casually, Todd froze me with a simple question…”Have you ever heard of people seeing a Satyr?”
I thought, now that’s an interesting cryptid name to use with me right now, considering what I had just re-read Hall’s work on the plane. Yes, I said, I’d heard about something like that, what did he mean, I asked him. He then briefly told me about a “thing” he’d heard about from Louisiana, his home state. Todd wasn’t aware of Mark’s article, and sent me the details after I returned home. Needless to say, I’ve done some more wondering about this whole subject.
So, for Halloween from 2005, here is Todd Partain’s account, which he gave me permission to share with you:
“The Plain Dealing Devil”
In 1993, some friends and I were sitting around swapping scary stories when a friend’s sister hesitatingly told us about a small imp or satyr type creature she encountered at a trailer park near Plain Dealing, Louisiana.
She related that she was outside when she heard a voice calling her name. Out of the darkness a pair of red eyes stared and moved closer until a small black hairy devil creature appeared and said, “I’ll follow you forever” then disappeared back into the forest. Later, a woman that lived in a nearby trailer home with whom she was friendly told her she was driving into the trailer home park one night and saw a small black Satyr type creature dancing on top of a fencepost. I have to admit that at the time I wanted to write that one off as being too far out there. But it wouldn’t be the last time…
In 1999, I was working on the side as a projectionist in an Imax theatre and while the movies played, the staff gathered in the booth, one day the scary stories started. A young lady with no apparent connection to the aforementioned young woman intimated that her brother had been home alone in Shreveport and had stepped out back to smoke a cigarette next to the family swimming pool. He heard something call his name, and at first suspected some local children were hiding in the bushes near the fence after sneaking in to trespass in the pool. Then he caught sight of a “hairy little man with horns” and retrieved a .22 caliber pistol from inside the house he tried firing at the creature a couple of times but it managed to evade him and laughed the whole time. It then leapt to the top of the fence, turned it’s head and smiled at him – revealing sharp teeth. The creature then bolted over the fence and apparently ran off into the woods.
I’ve since lost touch with both of these young women, the first actually told her story on tape reluctantly by my urging in 1993 but that tape [has been misplaced through a friend]. I’ve seen her since then and she flatly refuses to be interviewed and won’ t discuss it for fear of ridicule, “It was just too weird, I want to forget about it!”
The second individual saw “The Blair Witch Project” and became convinced that she would make a similar movie about the devil. I don’t think it ever happened.
Join the great people at Sasqwatch who donated! Please positively assist the move of the International Cryptozoology Museum, as it soon opens in downtown Portland, Maine. Please click on the button below (not the one up top) to take you to PayPal to send in your museum donation.
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. |
I'm a digital storyteller with 10 years of experience writing compelling content and code for news publications, non-profit organizations, and data-driven companies.
From 2012 to 2016, I was the Blog Editor and Content Strategist for Pivotal Software. Prior to Pivotal, I served as the Editor of Shareable Magazine from 2009-2012, as well as Web Content Strategist and Manager for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2008-2010.
Notable freelance projects include researching program impacts for Code for America, prototyping an interactive storytelling map for Howlround, A Center for Theater Commons, and hosting the culture podcast EGAD! with Leland Cheuk. Sometimes I build Internet things for my own amusement such as Cryptid Planet, an interactive map of the mysterious and mythical beasts that allegedly haunt the forests and lakes of the world.
My journalistic work and cultural criticism has appeared in publications including Utne Reader, the AV Club, Gapers Block, and the SF Weekly. My fiction and narrative nonfiction has been published in GOOD, Make: A Chicago Literary Magazine, Proximity Magazine, and Cellstories. While living in Chicago, I performed as a member of 2nd Story's year-long live storytelling cycle.
Now residing in Austin TX with my partner and a ridiculous number of books and digital devices, I'm fascinated with the interaction between technology, humans, and the inscrutable. Current obsessions include The Twilight Zone, Mystery Science Theatre 3000, Hari Kunzru's Gods Without Men, and the many iterations of Nintendo's Mario franchise and the Shin Megami Tensei series.
- Logo images via The Noun Project
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- Hosted by Bluehost
- Built using a modified theme by The Theme Foundry. |
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Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness is a large, deep freshwater lock in the Scottish highlands where for centuries people have been reporting sightings of a fairly large cryptid that has affectionately come to be known as “Nessie”. Not only has it been photographed repeatedly, it has even been caught on videotape – as recently as 2007. Heck, it’s even popped up on some sonar equipment. Unfortunately, however, the data and footage is never clear enough to definitively verify its existence. So, for now, it remains one of the most famous examples of cryptozoology in history.
The Mary Celeste
On November 7, 1872 the Mary Celeste departed New York with Captain Briggs, his wife, young daughter and a crew of eight. Expected to dock in Italy, none aboard were ever seen again. The ship itself was found floating in the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar with no signs of a struggle and everything intact except for a missing Captain’s log.
Jack the Ripper
A serial killer that terrorized London’s East End around the turn of the century, his name was taken from a letter he allegedly sent to a local newspaper. The murders were fairly gruesome and typically involved the dismemberment of prostitutes. In spite of modern police methods, to this day no one knows who the Ripper was.
An American labor leader and criminal, Hoffa disappeared from a parking lot in Detroit shortly after his release from prison. He had been allegedly due to meet up with a couple Mafia leaders but was never heard from again. While the most popular belief is that he was shot and buried in the Giants stadium, when the MythBusters team dug in the part of stadium where Hoffa was supposedly buried they found nothing.
An unexplained series of lights that have been appearing on Mitchell Flat east of Marfa, Texas for most of the last century, they are described as being the size of a basketball, floating in the air at around shoulder height, and sometimes moving rapidly in various directions. Although sightings are rare there is a large amount of photographic and video evidence. Skeptics, however, usually attribute them to traffic on US Route 67, or electric byproducts of quartz mining in the area.
A serial killer who, in the 1960s murdered at least 5 people in North California, he is famous for taunting the police with cryptic letters that contained information he claimed would reveal his identity. While Arthur Leigh Allen was the prime suspect, all of the evidence was against him being the killer and to this day the Zodiac murders have not been solved.
A notorious hijacker who, on November 24, 1971, leapt from the back of a Boeing 727 after receiving $200,000 dollars in ransom money and a parachute. Although Cooper was never heard of again, several thousand dollars with serial numbers matching the ransom money were discovered along the banks of the Colombia River years later.
In 1947 the body of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia according to local newspapers, was found in two pieces in a Los Angeles parking lot. There has been much speculation over the source of her nick-name and in spite of one of the largest police investigations in history no murderer was ever found.
A mysterious woman wearing a brown overcoat and a scarf on her head that appears in numerous photos immediately following the Kennedy assassination, her name came from the fact that Russian grandmothers – also called babushkas – used to wear similar scarves. It is hard to tell from the photographs but it seems she is taking pictures and although the FBI publically requested for her to come forward with her footage, she never did.
A legendary creature reportedly seen in and around the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia between November 15, 1966 and December 15, 1967. Because there were no more sightings after the collapse of the Silver Bridge on Dec 15, legend has it that the two events were somehow connected. Biologists, however, have theorized that the creature was actually a sandhill crane that had wandered from its typical migration path.
In 1968 an underwater rock formation was found near North Bimini Island in the Bahamas. Although it is considered by some scientists to be an example of naturally occurring tessellated pavement, the unusually symmetrical arrangement of stones has led to speculations about it being the remnant of some long lost civilization.
Literally translated to the “The Goat Sucker”, the name is derived from the fact that it supposedly attacks animals to drink their blood…particularly goats. It is most commonly described as a lizard-like being, appearing to have leathery skin and sharp spines running down its back. Given the name it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most sightings come out of Latin America.
A medieval document written in an unknown language, for hundreds of years its contents have remained a mystery. Although the prevailing theory is that it served as a pharmacopoeia, the puzzling illustrations have fueled many other theories about its origins and content.
During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island after giving her last radio transmission. Although the official version states that Earhart ran out of fuel and crashed at sea, there have been numerous speculations ranging from capture by Japanese forces to living out the rest of her days as a spy for the CIA.
In his dialogue Timaeus and Critias, Plato describes Atlantis as a formidable naval power that conquered much of Europe and Africa circa 9000 BC. After failing to invade Athens, however, it sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune”. While there have been numerous efforts focused on locating the remains of the city, nothing tangible has ever been found.
Also known as the Sasquatch, sightings usually come out of the American Northwest. Although most experts consider the Bigfoot legend to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes, there are several that withhold their reservations. Like the Loch Ness monster, they say, Bigfoot may be a living remnant from the time of the dinosaurs – specifically a Gigantopithecus blacki – a supersize ape.
An area of water between Florida and Puerto Rico, the Bermuda Triangle has been responsible for the unexplained disappearance of numerous ships and aircraft. Over the years many explanations have been put forward to account for the disappearances, including bad weather, variations in electromagnetic activity, and methane gas bubbles.
In 1908 a blazing fireball descended from the sky and devastated an area about half the size of Rhode Island in the wilderness of Tunguska, Siberia. It has been estimated that the explosion was equal to more than 2,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. Although for many years scientists thought it was probably a meteor, the lack of evidence has led to numerous speculations ranging from UFO’s to Tesla Coils and to this day no one knows for sure what caused the explosion.
While the unexplained and spontaneous ignition of living human tissue has been recorded many times throughout history there has not been any conclusive research done on the topic due to lack of evidence. Some of the more prevalent explanations, however, include static electricity, concentrated gas, and raised levels of blood alcohol.
An unexplained atmospheric phenomenon typically associated with thunderstorms that consists of spherically shaped, floating balls of electricity. Due to its rare and fleeting nature, it has proven almost impossible to study. The best-documented case occurred in 1984 when ball lightning measuring about four inches in diameter entered a Russian passenger aircraft and “flew above the heads of the stunned passengers before leaving the plane almost noiselessly.”
A term coined by Ivan Sanderson referring to twelve geographic areas that have been responsible for numerous mysterious disappearances. The best known of the so-called “vortices” is the Bermuda Triangle. Others include the Algerian Megaliths to the south of Timbuktu, the Indus Valley in Pakistan, and the “Devil’s Sea” near Japan.
On August 15, 1977 Dr. Jerry R. Ehman detected a strong narrowband radio signal while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University. Amazed at how closely it matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal, he circled it on the computer printout and wrote the comment “Wow!” next to it. Although it lasted for a full 72 seconds, it has not been detected again.
A low-pitched sound often described as something similar to a diesel engine idling in the distance is heard in numerous places worldwide, especially in the USA, UK, and northern Europe. The name comes from the small town of Taos, New Mexico where in 1997 Congress actually had researchers try identify it. In spite of efforts like this, however, its source remains a mystery.
In the dry lakebed of Racetrack, Death Valley stones as big as 700 pounds mysteriously slide across the surface of the earth without any notable external forces acting upon them. While some researchers believe a combination of natural events, such as wind and ice, cause these stones to “sail”, others question this theory pointing out that the stones don’t follow a predictable path and change directions abruptly.
In 1587 121 colonists led by John White arrived on Roanoke Island in present day North Carolina to establish a colony. As tensions mounted with the native population, however, John White returned to England in order to solicit reinforcements. When he returned several years later the settlement was deserted with no signs of a struggle and no remains to be found anywhere. The settlement became known as the Lost Colony and none of its members were ever seen again.
Almost everyone likes a mystery. The unknown intrigues us. Film and literature are filled with them, but a lot of people prefer the real thing. Events, occurrences, and sightings that can't be easily explained away. Here are 25 good ones.
Want to see something interesting? Me too. Until I can find it, have a look at this assorted pile of images.
|Put your friend back together, C-3PO!|
|May the expensive water in a lightsaber-shaped bottle be with you, Luke.|
|I'll take two, please.|
|Again, I'll take two.|
|The first mystery he needs to solve is who took is missing 'O'.| |
UPDATE: I was informed on May 30, at 6 am, that the filmed interview with me will not be shown on American television during the June 1st broadcast, but may appear in some “international versions” of the program. No reasons were given.
The Discovery Channel will tackle a major mystery on June 1, 2014, at 8 PM Eastern, when they simulcast in the USA and Russia their new documentary, Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives, directed by Neil Rawles.
The Soviet Snowman Commission signaled an important moment in history. In 1958-1959, the USSR seriously inquired as to whether unknown hairy hominoids existed in Russia. But then it was shut down. Why? What secrets were being hidden? What occurred back then?
The founders of cryptid hominoid research in Russia are shown less than a decade after the Commission was disbanded (left to right): Boris Porshnev, Alexander Mashkovtsev, Pyotr Smolin, Dmitri Bayanov, and Marie-Jeanne Koffmann. This photograph is from January 1968.
The new Discovery documentary fuels speculation that Porschnev’s January 1959 Snowman expedition was withdrawn from the mountains because he was getting too close for comfort to discovering hidden Soviet secrets.
Earlier in 2014, UK’s Raw production company traveled to Maine to tape an interview with yours truly, Loren Coleman, at the International Cryptozoology Museum. Director Neil Rawles wanted to talk to me about the role the Russians and Americans had in searching for Snowmen in 1957-1960, with emphasis on my work about Tom Slick.
In my book and research on Tom Slick, I had conducted FOIA searches revealing he had traveled to Moscow to talk to the Soviet Snowman Commission.
I was told by the production crew that during the middle of May, those interviewed for the program could begin to talk about their interviews and the documentary to and in the media.
On May 9th, Discovery sent out a press release. The following is their statement, unedited:
DISCOVERY CHANNEL HEADS DEEP INTO SIBERIA IN SEARCH OF RUSSIAN YETI ON SUNDAY, JUNE 1
American explorer Mike Libecki Investigates Mysterious Deaths of Nine Students and Uncovers Something Truly Horrifying
(Los Angeles, Calif.) – On February 2, 1959, nine college students hiked up the icy slopes of the Ural Mountains in the heart of Russia but never made it out alive. Investigators have never been able to give a definitive answer behind who – or what – caused the bizarre crime scene. Fifty-five years later, American explorer Mike Libecki reinvestigates the mystery – known as The Dyatlov Pass incident – but what he uncovers is truly horrifying.
RUSSIAN YETI: THE KILLER LIVES, a 2-hour special airing Sunday, June 1 at 9 PM ET/PT on the Discovery Channel, follows Mike as he traces the clues and gathers compelling evidence that suggests the students’ deaths could be the work of a creature thought only to exist in folklore.
Based on diary accounts, forensic evidence and files that have just recently been released, Mike pieces together the graphic stories in search of what really happened that evening. According to the investigators at the time, the demise of the group was due to a “compelling natural force.” The students’ slashed tent was discovered first with most of their clothing and equipment still inside. Next, the students’ bodies were found scattered across the campsite in three distinct groups, some partially naked and with strange injuries including crushed ribs, a fractured skull, and one hiker mutilated with her eyes gouged out and tongue removed.
The mysterious scene left more questions than answers. Why was the tent slashed from the inside? Why would the victims leave their clothing behind in subzero weather? Could it have been a government top secret weapon that killed them? Or an indigenous local tribe that lashed out for trespassing on their land? But perhaps most strange of all, why did the Soviet government suppress the autopsy and other reports for 30 years?
Mike first heard about the Dyatlov Pass incident on a climbing expedition in 2011 and since then has become obsessed with the case. “I’ve spent a lot of time alone in the mountains and have had my share of near-death experiences,” he said. “I know if I went missing, I’d want my family to know what happened to me.”
Determined to find answers, Mike hires Russian translator Maria Klenokova to join him. Together, they set out to one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth. However, nothing prepared them for what they were about to discover. Following the trail of evidence, Mike finds proof that the hikers were not alone – a photograph, taken by one of the hikers a day before they died that suggests that they encountered a Yeti. But just how far will they go to find the answers?
RUSSIAN YETI: THE KILLER LIVES is produced for Discovery Channel by Raw. For Raw, Executive Producer is Richard Bond. For Discovery Channel, Executive Producers are Michael Sorensen and Sarah Davies.
The documentary is in post-production now, and, as usual, I have no idea if the interview with me about Tom Slick will make the final cut.
But I do have a feeling the documentary will be about more than just the Dyatlov Pass incident. Nevertheless, from this press release, it does seem that the Dyatlov Pass mystery has been upgraded to a focus of their treatment.
As two recent books on the mysterious Dyatlov Pass incident indicate, this early Russian 1959 event is one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th century.
The Dyatlov Pass incident generally refers to the mysterious deaths of nine ski hikers in the northern Ural mountains on the night of February 2, 1959. The incident happened on the east shoulder of the mountain Kholat Syakhl (Холат-Сяхыл, a Mansi name, meaning Dead Mountain). The mountain pass where the incident occurred has since been named Dyatlov Pass (Перевал Дятлова) after the group’s leader, Igor Dyatlov (Игорь Дятлов).
The entire group died, and a riddle developed about what had scared they so much they had cut through their tent (instead of using the entryway) and taken off in barefeet and socks. Diaries and cameras found around their last camp made it possible to track the group’s route up to the day preceding the incident. Photographs showed various camp activities, and, in many ways, mirrors the “found footage” genre in narrative fiction film in recent years.
Some of the injuries killing the skiers were,
mysterious, car crash-like injuries, according to Russian cryptozoologist Mikhail Trakhtengertz, looked ‘as if someone had hugged them, oh so tightly,” and a number of armchair theorists have suggested that what sent the group running in terror from their tent was the sight of a 3m (10ft)-tall monster looming out of the snows.
Sightings of ‘abominable snowmen’ and yeti-like creatures are common in Russia – after all, if such creatures do exist then the country’s vast snowfields offer plenty of places for them to hide from the eyes of man.
Trakhtengertz has also stated that in their ‘newspaper’, the Evening Otorten, the students had written in large letters: “From now on we know that the snowmen exist”. Perhaps, though, we shouldn’t read too much into this; it goes onto say: “They can be met in the Northern Urals, next to Otorten mountain.” Given the humorous tone of the ‘newspaper’, it’s quite likely that the students were jokingly referring to themselves rather than recording a genuine sighting of an almasty. Source: Fortean Times February 2009.
Among the many photographs left behind by the Dyatlov Pass party is a haunting image: a dark figure at the edge of the forest. Could it have been a Yeti? The Discovery documentary will explore several mysterious questions, including that one.
While the above picture may only be that of a young skier at the edge of a Russian forest, in the context of the Russian Yeti, it may take on a life of its own linking it to the long history of Almas, Almasty, Kaptars, Yetis, and Snowmen in Eurasia. |
When the potential client first contacts us, the mechanism of our organization starts immediately. If direct rescue is not possible, (using Spontaneous Remote Viewing - the use of my natural intuitive abilities), then indirect methods must be employed. There is an initial consultation with the client through telephone and internet communication. This is followed by a course of primary research used to gather the main facts. The next step would be group discussion and assignment of duties, which include extended research and client dialogue. All pertinent factors are considered during the research and investigation phases. It is a necessary process and potentially time-consuming...but we require a complete and detailed inquiry in order to achieve reputable evidence. Ideomotor reflex techniques are eventually initiated, followed by definitive remote perception methods (Controlled Remote Viewing - CRV). An efficient operation, absent the conscious mind, allows us to distinguish physical traits and senses associated with the target. This is a controlled procedure during the early phases, but ultimately this converts into a psychic exercise. At that point, a 'clear vision' or a clairvoyant state transcends during the final matrix phase. During this stage various extra-sensory information may emerge including the subspace aspects of entities and/or ethereal energies in the area of the target. Psychoenergetics may also be deployed if the situation warrants.
This is a thumbnail description of how Astral Perceptions Universal conducts the evidence gathering element of an investigation. A wide variety of procedures are considered in order to resolve the situation because each and every case is different in some degree. We also provide continued support that includes guidance and instruction. This aftercare could be a long-term commitment in certain cases. These services are provided at no cost. We only ask that the client have an open mind, the discipline to follow our recommendations and to remain positive, which is imperative in order to resolve their problem.
Author / Fortean Reseacher / Publisher of the syndicated Phantoms and Monsters blog - Spiritual intuitive & mystic at Astral Perceptions Universal - Radio talk show host at Arcane Radio.
Since 1976, I have been a paranormal / spiritual researcher who writes and mentors on a variety of fortean subjects.
I began the 'Phantoms and Monsters' blog in 2005, which has steadily grown in popularity and read daily by tens of thousands of paranormal enthusiasts, investigators and those seeking the truth! My research and reports have been featured on hundreds of online media sources. Several of these published reports have been presented on various television segments, including The History Channel's 'Ancient Aliens', Syfy's 'Paranormal Witness' and 'Faked or Faked: Paranormal Files', & Destination America's 'Monsters and Mysteries in America.' As well, I have been a guest on several radio broadcasts, including 'Coast to Coast AM' and featured on Destination America's 'Monsters and Mysteries in America' television show.
My first book Phantoms & Monsters: Cryptid Encounters was published in September 2012. I later published Phantoms & Monsters: Strange Encounters in November 2013. My third book, Phantoms & Monsters: Bizarre Encounters was published in December 2014. My latest book, Phantoms & Monsters: Mysterious Encounters was published in November 2015.
I am a spiritual intuitive & mystic...applying perception abilities in order to help people who experience entity infestations & phantom disturbances, as well as spirit & thought-form attachments. My goal is to provide a professional and confidential resolution, including continued personal support and guidance, at no cost to my clients.
In 2010, I joined 'Beyond The Edge' Radio as a co-host on the weekly live show. In 2014, I left BTE Radio and partnered with Sean Forker at 'Arcane Radio.'
I have contributed commentary to many media sources, including National Geographic, Haunted Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Washington Post and The London Magazine.
I was married to the love of my life Vanessa, who journeyed to her next life in 2015. Our 33-year union was shared with our daughter Adrienne, son Matthew and granddaughter Kayli.
Specialties & Interests: Online Media, Author, Paranormal & Fortean Research, Cryptozoology, Spiritual & Esoteric Metaphysics, Mysticism, Folk Magic & Root Conjure, Spiritual Alchemy & Chaos Theory, Writing / Blogging, American and British History, Religious History / Templar Lore, Native America Traditions & Heritage |
Loch Ness Monster is the most well-known lake monster anywhere in the world as sightings and encounters have been reported for years.
The elusive cryptid believed to inhabit the waters of Loch Ness has long been a topic of debate with plenty of skeptics and believers. Loch Ness Monster sightings have seemingly decreased over the last couple of years including 2015 Loch Ness Monster sightings. Those who believe that the Loch Ness Monster does exists now wonder if its possible that Nessie may have died.
This is a great new Loch Ness Monster documentary which looks at all of the evidence past and present and tries to answer the question of the existence of Nessie. The new documentary takes a never seen before detailed scientific look at some of the best known evidence and its authenticity. Many of the most popular theories of what Nessie may actually be including just a myth and legend are discussed and analysed.
This is a great watch and its extremely well done including some great Loch Ness Monster photos and witness reports as they search for a answer to the mysteries of the Loch. Is Nessie really a elusive cryptid or can sightings and reports simply be tricks of water or light or misidentifications? Perhaps this new Loch Ness Monster documentary will be able to help you decide or even possibly change your mind ! |
The Sweetwater County Library will host a special event on September 7th at 1pm. The guest speakers will be PI Team of Utah, a professional ghost hunting group. Recently I did a radio interview with fellow staffer Brittany Wells and Nate Van Holten from PI Team of Utah in which we discussed the program and all things paranormal. During the radio show Nate mentioned that in the team’s research, they have found more libraries reporting paranormal activity. This raises the question “Why?”
As for the Sweetwater County Library it is assumed our ghosts/spirits/whatever are due to the fact the library now sits on the site of the old city cemetery. We do have a few unusual sightings however. From time to time an apparition or two will be seem that is not of the time period that we would expect. These we have been given a possible theory on. Some time ago a person claiming to be a medium stated that we may be a portal where spirits might be able to come and go. This is unsubstantiated. We may never know for sure.
According to the website Britannica.com (http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/10/library-ghosts-western-us/) there are many haunted libraries in the West.
Here are just a few:
Chowchilla, Madera County Library, Chowchilla Branch. This new branch stands on the site of a bowling alley that burned down when its kitchen caught fire. The circulation area lies on the approximate position of the kitchen. Some say a cook who perished in the blaze can be seen in a flash of flame.
Los Angeles Public Library, Cypress Park Branch. Ghost sightings have been reported since the library opened in 1924. The old fireplace, the men’s room, and the occult section seem to be the centers for cold spots and whispers.
Denver Public Library. Staff say there is a presence in the basement that shoves people.
Billings, Parmly Billings Library. Acquisitions Librarian Karen Stevens has written a book about Montana ghosts, Haunted Montana (Riverbend, 2007), in which she devotes an entire chapter to the library’s various haunts that she has investigated: the dark-haired woman in the basement; strange whistling and a male ghost wearing jeans and work boots on the second floor; a white shape that moves outside the windows on the fifth floor; and odd movements in the book stacks of the Montana Room. Construction crews in the fall of 2005 reported numerous paranormal incidents.
Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System, San Pedro Branch. In the evenings, a disembodied voice has allegedly been heard to say, “Please come check out a book.”
Snohomish Carnegie Building. Catharine McMurchy, library director from 1923 to 1939, died in 1956 and her ghost could be seen or heard walking in the basement of this 1910 Carnegie before the library moved to modern quarters in 2003. In 1991, Children’s Librarian Debbie Young was taking a break in the staff room when she saw an older woman walk down the stairs from a storage area and exit the room. For a while the library had a ghostcam to try to catch her appearances, the last of which may have occurred the night of November 9, 2002, according to the Everett Herald of January 24, 2003 (although it could have been a janitorial service worker). The building now houses a few city offices, with the Arts of Snohomish Gallery in the annex.
Byron, Rocky Mountain High School. In the 1950s, School Superintendent Harold Hopkinson was startled one night by footsteps walking down the hall; then he heard the library door open and close twice. “As I stood there looking,” Hopkinson remembered, “those footsteps went right past me and there was no one there. I heard them continue down the stairs to the front door, which I heard opening. . . . I didn’t dream it. There really was something walking on that old floor, which used to creak in a certain way.” He said his predecessor refused to go to that part of the building after dark, and so did he for some time afterwards. The custodial staff agrees that something is amiss. Eddie Davis, who was a maintenance man at the high school for 13 years, heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the girl’s restroom late one night in 1989. “It set my hair on end,” he said. But when he cautiously went inside, there was no one there. Another time, Davis’s wife, also a custodian, was retrieving some materials from the second floor when she saw a small, “smoky-looking something” in the hall. “It stunk to high heaven,” she said. “I got the feeling that thing was telling me to jump out the window. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t get to the door. But finally I took off and ran. I wouldn’t want that to happen to me again,” she whispered.
Green River, Sweetwater County Library. Lights have gone off and on mysteriously ever since the library opened in 1980. Flapping sounds reverberate through the building at night. Former Director Patricia LeFaivre said that her staff has seen dots of light dancing on the walls inside the closed art gallery room in such a way that ruled out an external light source like car headlights. Back when the library had electric typewriters instead of computers, at least two of the machines were seen to type on their own. There was no paper loaded at the time, so if these were messages, they were lost. The staff experimented by leaving paper in the typewriters overnight, but no phantom typing occurred. The most bizarre event occurred some years ago when the interlibrary loan librarian turned away briefly from her computer—it was a dedicated Geac terminal—and when she looked back she saw her name spelled out on the screen. “I don’t think the system could have done that itself,” LeFaivre explained. “It had no word-processing capabilities, and at that time we didn’t have email. Her name appeared in quite large letters . . . with nothing else on the screen.” Since 1993, the staff has kept a record of all odd goings-on in a Ghost Log. The library was built on top of a cemetery dating from the 1860s. Most of the graves, primarily those of Asian railroad workers, were moved in the 1920s, but a coffin turned up as recently as 1985. Paranormal activity most often takes place when maintenance crews are working on the building or the grounds. LeFaivre added, “What’s interesting is that when we finally accepted the ghost’s existence, it seemed to quiet down—like it just wanted to be recognized.” The staff lounge often causes people to become sick. In 2005, both the Southwest Paranormal Investigation Society and the Colorado chapter of the American Association of Paranormal Investigators obtained odd audio recordings and strange images on film. In 2008, the library launched a ghost blog.
I couldn’t resist posting the Green River posting from their site.
Don’t forget tickets for the September 21 Ghost Walks go on sale Tuesday September 3rd at 9am.
Tickets usually sell out very quickly, so if you are interested in attending be sure to stop by or call first thing that morning.
Tickets are $10 each. Tour times are: 8pm, 9:30pm, 11pm, &12:30am.
For more information please call 307-875-3615
Hope to see you there!
If I had a nickel for every time someone asks what exactly is “paranormal”? Most of the general public refers to paranormal as simply being the unexplained. Any time we have an experience that we can’t explain away we refer to it as paranormal.
In truth the explanations are wide and varying. According to Wikipedia here is their take on what they list as paranormal.
Wikipedia.org: Paranormal is a general term (coined c. 1915–1920) that designates experiences that lie outside “the range of normal experience or scientific explanation“ or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science’s current ability to explain or measure. Paranormal phenomena are distinct from certain hypothetical entities, such as dark matter and dark energy, only insofar as paranormal phenomena are inconsistent with the world as already understood through empirical observation coupled with scientific methodology.
Thousands of stories relating to paranormal phenomena are found in popular culture, folklore, and the recollections of individual subjects. In contrast, the scientific community, as referenced in statements made by organizations such as the United States National Science Foundation, maintains that scientific evidence does not support a variety of beliefs that have been characterized as paranormal.
According to Wikipedia the paranormal includes the afterlife, angels, astral projection, auras, clairvoyance, close encounters, cold spots, conjuration, cryptid, cryptozoology, demons, demonic possession, demonology, ectoplasm, electronic voice phenomenon or evp, exorcism, extrasensory perception, fear of ghosts, forteana, ghosts, ghost hunting, ghost stories, haunted houses, hypnosis, intelligent haunting, magic, medium ship, miracles, near-death experience, occult, Ouija, paranormal fiction, paranormal television, parapsychology, poltergeist, precognition, psychic, psychic readings, psychokineses, psychometry, reincarnation, remote viewing, residual haunting, shadow people, spirit photography, spirit possession, spirit world, spiritualism, stone tape, supernatural, superstition, telepathy, UFO, UFO sightings, ufology, urban legends, will-o-the-wisp.
Percentage of U.S. citizens polled
|ghosts/spirits of the dead||39||27||38||17|
|extraterrestrials visited Earth in the past||17||34||33||27|
|clairvoyance and prophecy||24||33||32||23|
|communication with the dead||16||29||28||26|
For each of us our culture, religion, and environment can make a huge difference in how we perceive the unexplained. Many back-woods cultures believe anything odd or unusual is paranormal. From a child born with an abnormality to seeing a shadow roaming ones property, anything different may be seen as paranormal. Many religions believe anything other than angels are always dark or evil. It is basically our own personal take that defines what is paranormal to us.
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It’s November, and I’ve got one more book left to write before the new year. Luckily, I think I’ve got just about one more book in me. To paraphrase a great man, I got plenty left in the tank.
I completed the first draft Book #5 last week, and turned it in. I’m not entirely happy with it, but that’s par for course. I’ve already scribbled out some notes for possible revisions. The book needs a bit more background colour in places, I think. It also needs some additional character-building scenes. Not many – one or two, at most. Just a few tweaks, to better illuminate the motivations of some of the side characters. Problem being, it’s already about 10,000 words over the word limit, and these aren’t large books.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and the editor will allow me another 10,000 or so words to play with.
I also completed the edits on Book #4 last week. Surprisingly minimal. Perhaps not surprising, given the subject matter. It was more in my wheelhouse than #5, at least. Speaking of wheelhouses, I started Book #6 this week. I’m about 10,000 words in and things are moving along nicely. I’ve been thinking about this one for the last four months give or take, so it’s nice to finally get started. It’s a summer blockbuster sort of book – lots of explosions and banter and monsters and airships and jungles and such. Very pacey and action-packed, with some nice bits of long-overdue world building for the setting in question.
Last Friday, I managed to finish some last minute revisions to “Inzignanin”, my cryptid Vs. cryptid novella, and an expansion of an older short story of mine, “Laying the Hairy Book”. I added about 2,000 words to the former, and 4,000 to the latter. I need to give the short story another once over before I submit it to the market I have in mind, but I sent the novella off today, a few weeks ahead of schedule.
Anyway, in closing, have you pre-ordered your copy of Fabius Bile: Primogenitor yet? FYI, the more copies of this that sell, the more likely I am to be commissioned to write a third in the series. So, if you want to read about Fabius’ hi-jinks in the Dark City, maybe buy this one, hunh? Or, if money is no object, this handsome fellow here. |
Limited Mini Squishable Angha
Ancient Persians were known for for making great nougat! Did you know that? Angha did! That's because, aside from being Persian herself, Angha is a winged mythological creature that possesses the wisdom of the ages! Including crucial data on who makes the best sweets! So hug an Angha! Then ask her about the best places to get candy - butterscotch, peanut brittle, whatever - and revel in the insight of this very cuddly cryptid!
7 squishy inches of nougat knowledge! All new polyester fiber, ages 3 and up only!
Squishers who bought the Limited Mini Squishable Angha also got: |
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| Lalaloopsy Land Wiki (1/17) |
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Fearless Diva Productions Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello! I'd like to put in a request for the FDP Wiki. Thank you! -talk 12:11, May 3, 2016 (UTC)
- Fearless Diva Productions Wiki looks good and I've added it to the approved spotlight list. Do you have an image and/or caption you would like to use? -- Wendy (talk) 14:17, May 24, 2016 (UTC)
Most Popular Girls in School Wiki.Edit
Hi Wendy. I would like to request the MPGIS wiki for spotlight. The viewing's have hit an all time low because the show is on hiatus. Please let me know ASAP. Thank you! TheOneFootTallBrickWall (talk) 05:55, May 3, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. MPGIS wiki is in fairly good shape but would need a couple of tweaks in order to be spotlighted. The first thing is to fill in the mobile main page. The second is that you have nearly half of your content marked as stubs -- can you please clean those out? No more than 60 pages should be in that category. Please let me know on my wall when you have taken care of those two issues and I will be happy to check again. -- Wendy (talk) 14:23, May 24, 2016 (UTC)
Disney XD WikiEdit
Hello Community Central,
- Hello. Disney XD Wiki looks nice -- you have a great main page. However it does need some tweaks in order to be spotlighted. There are about 150 uncategorized pages that need to be sorted out. It looks like the community corner has not been updated for several years. Finally, more than 1/5th of your content are stub articles; you would need to have no more than about 155 pages that are shorter than 300 bytes. Please let me know when you have fixed these issues and I'll be happy to check again. -- Wendy (talk) 14:31, May 24, 2016 (UTC)
Hello I like the the http://inspectorgadget.wikieden.com/wiki/Gadgetpedia To Be Spotlight. We need more active user & that be awesome & thank you and yes i am admin
- Hello. Gadgetpedia looks good but will need a little bit of clean up before it can be spotlighted. There are a handful of uncategorized pages that need to be sorted out. In addition, you have marked over half of your content as stubs -- please go through and clean those out so that there are no more than about 95 articles in that category. Let me know on my wall when you have done that and I'll be happy to check back again. -- Wendy (talk) 14:39, May 24, 2016 (UTC)
Cryptid Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello. I am an admin and bureaucrat on cryptid wiki. I have always dreamed of a wikia spotlight for Cryptid Wiki and believe we have met criteria. We finally just reached over a thousand pages and are still growing. The wiki focuses on cryptids, which are creatures that are reported and believed by some to exist, but have not yet been scientifically proven, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and Chupacabra. It's been years since I contacted staff about my plan to make a cryptid personality quiz, and I finally managed to make one. I have greatly enjoyed working with wikia and Cryptid Wiki's admins for all these years to help the wiki grow.
- Cryptid Wiki looks great and I've added it to the approved spotlight list. Did you have an image/caption you would like us to use? -- Wendy (font color="Blue" size="1">talk</font>)
I apologize for the delay. I have been immensely busy lately. Has the spotlight already occurred since the date reads 6/14? I have an image and caption ready, however, I fear I was too late. --Australopithecusman (talk) 15:42, July 10, 2016 (UTC)
Nikara Wiki Spotlight (approved)Edit
Hello once again I would like to request a spotlight for Nikara World Wiki. I'm the admin on this wiki and would like more users to the wiki.
Thus far I have written
175 211 pages at the time I wrote this. Other users can help by creating characters, locations. We're looking for characters, supernatural beings, mystical beings, occults and the likes. My future plans for the wiki is for it to simply grow and expand. Together we can create a great wiki and place to be creative. I believe this time it meets the requirements for a spotlight.
Shoppe Keep Wikieden (approved)Edit
The Shoppe Keep Wikieden is about an indie simulation management game. It focuses on selling and organizing items for the player to sell to customers, upgrading the shoppe to make the business more efficient, combating thieves and barbarian attacks, planting and crafting new items to sell, and more.
It just ended it's early access phase on Steam, and is still undergoing continued updates.
I feel it has been built up enough to be spotlighted.
Cheers! --22:21, May 23, 2016 (UTC)
- Shoppe Keep Wikieden looks good and I've added it to the approved spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 03:03, June 14, 2016 (UTC)
The Thundermans WikiEdit
I would like to request that The Thundermans Wiki go in the spotlight. We would like to show things for the newest crossover episode with Henry Danger, Danger & Thunder. If you need any more information, contact me on this message wall or my The Thundermans message wall.
- Hello. The Thundermans Wiki looks good but would need a few tweaks to meet the requested spotlight criteria. There are a lot of uncategorized pages that need to be sorted out. In addition, you currently have about 88 stub-length articles (shorter than 300 bytes); that number would need to be less than 70 in order to be no more than 1/5th of your total content, so some of the shortest ones would need to be expanded. Please let me know on my wall when you have taken care of those two issues and I will be happy to check back again. -- Wendy (talk) 03:09, June 14, 2016 (UTC)
Wild Ones WikiEdit
Hi, I am the bureaucrat of the wiki. A new game called Wild Ones: Private Wars is going to be released soon and I hope putting the wiki into spotlight can attract more users and editors to the wiki, and hopefully it can revive this wiki again. --11:03, June 12, 2016 (UTC)
CW's Flash Wiki (approved)Edit
Spotlight request for the CW's Flash Wiki I was hoping we could end up being spotlighted during October of 2016 however, when the show airs again..
Driver: Parallel Lines Wiki (approved)Edit
I am the founder and Bureaucrat of the Driver: Parallel Lines Wiki. The wiki has several active users along with 4 staff members. The wiki has 262 pages (and counting) and many, many more categories. We also have plenty (thousands) of images. The majority of articles are over 300 bytes, wherein only around 30 of the pages are under that figure - these are considered stubs.
You may notice I have two stub cateogires - Article Stubs and Stubs. Article Stubs are pages which are extremely short and require content, where as normal Stubs are articles which have sections requiring more information. The Article stub count is 39, whereas the Stub count is more than 60.
- The wiki has a custom skin, plenty of custom wikia.css, chat.js and wikia.js to show.
- The wiki has a custom homepage with numerous pictures, links to main, important pages, as well as a filled in mobile page.
- All pages have categories.
- I myself am very active.
- No current debates of demotion, promotion or wiki future.
- Custom wiki welcome message.
- Community corner is customised.
- No offensive language/content/etc.
Lab Rats: Elite Force Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello Wiki Staff,
Ghostbusters Wiki (approved)Edit
- 4,807 articles (107 are stubs)
- No Uncategorized Pages
- No suggested image for spotlight, but... might we suggest the gallery to the Advertising article, and hopefully a shot of all 4 gals.
Injustice Fanon WikiEdit
Hi, I'm Cartoon44, founder and admin at Injustice Fanon. We have previously been spotlighted back in February 2015, but I would like to request another, as now is arguably a great time to pull in new users alongside the announcement of Injustice 2. I believe all requirements have been made and are in check. Thank you!
Miraculous Ladybug Wiki (approved)Edit
I am Tansyflower, and I am requesting a spotlight for the Miraculous Ladybug Wiki. I am an active admin wiki there, and the entire wiki has been customized and well-kept by the staff and editors. We only have about 20 article stubs right now, with the other 400+ pages filled out, categorized, and tidied.
- Miraculous Ladybug Wiki looks great and I've added it to the approved spotlight list. Did you have an image/caption you would like us to use? -- Wendy (talk) 05:53, July 12, 2016 (UTC)
DC Extended Universe Wiki (approved) Edit
Hey there, with the film Suicide Squad being released early next month, I was hoping we might be able to get a spotlight for the wiki. I'm thinking maybe use some variation on this poster for the image. Thank you! —MakeShift (talk · contribs) 09:27, July 2, 2016 (UTC)
Minecraft Story Mode Wiki (approved)Edit
I would like to request a spotlight for the Minecraft: Story Mode Wiki. We have recently hit the 200 pages mark, and we satisfy all the requirements, I believe.
We would like to use this image and have the caption as "Have you played Access Denied?" Also, if possible- please crop the image so the text at the bottom does not get displayed.
Hi, I would like to put a request for my wiki, Universel Wikieden. I believe we have met the criteria though we do have a few curse words in our wiki. The image for our wiki would be this with the caption "There is no tomorrow".
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Wikieden (approved)Edit
Hi, I'm the administrator for the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Wikieden and I'd like to put in a spotlight request for it. By the way, to avoid confusion the request is for CXG.wikieden.com not the crazyexgirlfriend.wikieden.com version. The Wiki I founded may not have been the first one based on this show but I can confidently say it's the best. Please let me know if there are any further edits or adjustments to the Wiki needed for it to be considered.
Bandipedia (approved) Edit
I would like for Bandipedia] to be spotlighted. Boasting a small but active community, with new Crash games coming out soon, it would be for the best for us to improve activity even more and further develop the community. Activity has dropped in recent times and with Bandipedia recently having undergone a major overhaul, as well as constant ideas being floated around, it should be Spotlighted. YellowLucario 12:12, July 17, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. Bandipedia looks good but would need a few tweaks in order to be spotlighted. The mainpage has a lot of good content, but no links to the major content on the wiki. Could you add some portal-style links to things like Games, Bosses, Enemies, etc.? You would also need to fill in the mobile main page -- there is a button next to the "Edit" button on the main page that will let you do that. Let me know on my wall if you have any questions and when you have taken care of those issues and I'll be happy to add Bandipedia to the approved spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 02:59, July 25, 2016 (UTC)
The Wiki Channel Wiki (approved)Edit
Hi! Jessie1010 here, I'd like to request a spotlight for The Wiki Channel Wiki. The wiki is a wiki all about working on a fake channel. You can make your own shows or movies that you can work on and cast or you can create your own actors whose careers you can manage. There are a lot of things to do on the wiki, it's a fun place. We're looking for some more users to join us. I believe we fit the qualifications. I am an admin there, btw. We'd like the picture for the spotlight to be: and the caption could say "Make your own show, movie, or actor!" or "Make your own show or movie!"
the matt chatter
CREATED BY DAZZLING1998
01:44, July 18, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. The Wiki Channel Wiki looks good and I've added it to the approved spotlight list. However, the image you suggested is mostly just the name of the wiki, which will also be stated right under the image. Something that is a picture/graphic would work better if you could suggest one. -- Wendy (talk) 03:05, July 25, 2016 (UTC)
Suikoden Wikieden (approved)Edit
Hi, I'm an admin at Suikoden Wikieden and this is our second time request for the spotlight this year. Can you please use the w:c:suikoden:File:GSP_Demo_Artwork2.png as the image for the spotlight and for the caption "Recruit the 108 Stars of Destiny".
- I'm an admin.
- We have over 200 contents and most of them are over 300 bytes.
- Our main page have picture and it does have a slideshows gallery, there are links to our most *important contents and its is not a sysop protected page but it is protected against new and *anonymous editors.
- All of our pages in Special Uncategorize pages had been already categorize.
- We are not in the middle of choosing new admins no upheavals
- The MediaWiki:Welcome-user say @latest.
- The MediaWiki:Community-corner had been organized.
- No other any offensive language had been used.
Spotlight for the Disney Crossy Road Wikieden. Edit
Hello guys, I am requesting a spotlight for the Disney Crossy Road Wikieden .
We have all the needed criterias (mobile page, every categorized pages, 200 pages). Our wikia is based on the mobile game hit, Disney Crossy Road. In it, you play with hundreds of different characters through a dozens of different Pixar and Disney Worlds. We have currently already A LOT of content and our wikia and we need supporters to help build it. We have already made more than 100 characters, every world, every update, and every unreleased content that should soon arrive. This is why we are requesting a spotlight. I am the most active admin with over 1,400 edits and my last ones being a couple hours ago.
Please let us know if some criterias need to be improved before you can give us the spotlight, thank you.
If you approve our wikia, and need pictures. You can use the main logo of the wikia found on the top left corner of the page and you can also choose this picture:
- Hello. Disney Crossy Road Wiki looks good, but the main page need a bit of tweaking for a spotlight. Could you please add some links to the major types of content on the wiki (eg. Figures, Worlds, Updates, etc) and also implement the two column format so the ads don't push the entire page down? If you need help with the format please let me know on my wall -- otherwise let me know when you've had a chance to work on the page and I'll be happy to check back again. -- Wendy (talk) 02:01, August 12, 2016 (UTC)
PJ Masks Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello, I am SirBlaze.
I would love for the PJ Masks Wiki to be featured in Wikieden's Spotlight section. If there is anything that needs to be fixed/improved beforehand, let me know. Thank you!
14:59, August 13, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. PJ Masks Wiki looks good but in order to be spotlighted you would need to fill in the Mobile Main Page. Let me know on my wall if you need any help with that; once you have added content there and I will be happy to add the wiki to the approved spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 04:21, August 26, 2016 (UTC)
- Hi, Merrystar. Please disregard the past message I sent to you on the PJ Masks Wiki. I actually figured out what was necessary for the mobile page and went ahead and made some changes. Thank you for considering, and hopefully the mobile main page fulfills what is necessary to earn a spotlight.
- 05:12, August 26, 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you so much! I would like for the outgoing image to be this, and I would like for the caption to be "Into the night to save the day!" If the image needs to be cropped for the spotlight, I'd prefer for all of the characters to be shown in it. Again, this really means a lot to the community and I.
- 01:11, August 27, 2016 (UTC)
Spotlight for the E's Chat Club Wikieden Edit
Hello, Lukas Kierkegaard here, head admin of E's Chat Club Wikieden. The Wiki recently underwent a redesign to ban all intimidating acts. I feel like the Wiki is ready for a spotlight now. This Wiki is basically a place for users to create their own stories and publish them. We only have a small community but currently over 300 pages. The most active users are me, Juderonald and Alex.sapre.
- Hello. I'm sorry - I can see that you've put a lot of effort into making the community look good. But the content of the stories on your wiki is fairly violent and furthermore seems to involve actual wiki contributors as characters. I'm sorry, but that is not something we can spotlight to a general audience. -- Wendy (talk) 00:58, August 27, 2016 (UTC)
Spotlight for the Hamilton Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello, I would like to request a spotlight for the Hamilton Wiki, a wiki dedicated to the Broadway show Hamilton. If not too much trouble, I would like to spotlight the wiki as soon as possible so it will be spotlighted while the show is on Broadway.
If possible, I would like this image as the thumbnail and the tagline to be "Live on Broadway!"
- Hamilton Wiki looks good - congratulations on reaching 200 pages! I've added the wiki to the approved spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 01:12, August 27, 2016 (UTC)
Hi im Phoenix founder of Our Fanfictions.
Our Fanfictions is a place for all the worlds fan fic writers to come together and share. You canRole Play, add fan art on The Great Wall of Fan Art and share Random Stuff about Random Things. Whether its MLP or anime all are welcome.
I think ive completcompleted all the requirements. If my request is accepted please use this as the thumbnail and have it say Our Fanfictions - More Than Just Fandom.
If you do accept the rrequest thats awesome and if not pls tell me why so i can try and fix it. Also if u do approve can you pls tell me roughly how long the wait will be. Im an impatient person so that would help a bit.
- Hello. Our Fanfictions looks like a fun wiki - I love the cheerful color scheme! However in order to be spotlighted by request it would need to have 200 non-stub (longer than 300 bytes) content pages. Please feel free to ask again when you have had a chance to build it a bit more! -- Wendy (talk) 02:23, September 13, 2016 (UTC)
Gravity Falls Wiki (approved)Edit
Putting in a request for the Gravity Falls Wiki. :)18:36, August 28, 2016 (UTC)
Vs Battles (approved) Edit
I would like to place a request for featuring the Vs Battles wiki.
It is a wiki for indexing the statistics of characters from a wide variety of fictional franchises.
If this request is accepted, perhaps the advertisement text could feature something like "Have you ever wondered exactly how powerful your favourite characters are?" as a slogan?
Underworld Wiki (approved)Edit
I’d like to request a spotlight for the Underworld Wiki. Underworld: Blood Wars is coming out in January, so it would be nice if we could get a spotlight by then. I don’t know what specific timing would be best—it’s up to you. The longer you wait, the better our Blood Wars pages are going to look as more information is released, but anytime between now and January should be OK. —yellowantphil (talk) 22:54, September 11, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. Underworld Wiki looks great, but spotlights usually go up shortly after I approve them. Do you want the spotlight now? -- Wendy (talk) 02:41, September 13, 2016 (UTC)
- Oh, cool. What if you waited for a month or so? Should I ask again in a few weeks? I wasn’t sure how long it took to get a spotlight or whether we’d need to make changes, so I thought it would be better to ask early. In the meantime, we can fill out our Blood Wars pages a bit more. —yellowantphil (talk) 03:36, September 13, 2016 (UTC)
I would like to request the Hailee Steinfeld Wikieden to be in the spotlight. The wikia contains all about the singer, actress and model Hailee Steinfeld. She is known as Emily Junk in Pitch Perfect 2 and Mattie Ross in True Grit. She is also in The Edge of Seventeen as Nadine Byrd. She is also has her album/EP called Haiz. Her latest single on her EP was Starving. She has been a cover girl in Nylon, Seventeen, Wonderland and others.
Ellie Goulding Wiki (approved)Edit
Hi there! I was wondering if I could apply for a spotlight for Ellie Goulding Wiki. The wiki ticks all the requirements and recently Ellie had released her new single Still Falling For You for the Bridget Jone's Baby movie and also she has done a new photoshoot for the Stylist mag. And, just today she had performed for the Global Citizen Festival. It would be be really great if that's possible! Thanks! The images that I would like to possibly use are below and you can choose any:
Thank you so much! :)
Fifth Harmony Wiki (approved)Edit
Hi it's me again! I was also wondering if 5th Harmony Wiki could be in for Spotlight. Just recently they released the music video for That's My Girl and it would be lovely if it be on spotlight! The wiki meets all requirements!
- Fifth Harmony Wiki also looks good and I've added it to the approved spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 01:30, September 30, 2016 (UTC)
Melanie Martinez WikiEdit
Also this wiki as Melanie is releasing a new music video soon for Pacify Her and Mrs. Potato Head! The wiki meets are requirements. But ofcourse I put too many wiki's in for spotlight so I was wondering if I could postpone this spotlight if it is accepted! Thanks once again! --Azending (talk) 10:17, September 25, 2016 (UTC)
- Melanie Martinez Wiki is in generally good shape, but does have a lot of very short, stub-length articles. In order to be spotlighted you would have to reduce those to about 80 or less. Let me know on my wall when you've taken care of that issue and I'll be happy to check again! -- Wendy (talk) 01:30, September 30, 2016 (UTC)
LEGO Marvel and DC Super Heroes Wiki (approved)Edit
Here is the link for your convenience.
To clarify on all the requirements:
- I am the founder/admin/bureaucrat of the wiki I represent.
- Our wiki has around 980 pages (not including stubs).
- Stubs make less than a tenth of the wiki.
- The main page has important links to appropriate categories and is formatted nearly.
- The curated main page is filled out.
- Our category structure is clear and organized; all pages are categorized.
- Our community is stable.
- We do use the sysop welcome.
- The Recent Wiki Activity message is fully customized.
- The wiki skin is customized.
- Our wiki is 100% appropriate.
And that's about it. Feel free to review the wiki; I've applied to spotlight before so the wiki should still be in good shape.
Hello, Community Central!
I am an admin on the wiki for the upcoming Disney film, Moana. On behalf of my fellow admins, I would like to request a spotlight for our wiki.
Here is the link: http://moana.wikieden.com/wiki/Moana_Wikieden
- Hello. I'm sorry but in order to be spotlighted through this page, a wiki must meet our spotlight criteria, which includes 200 non-stub content pages. Please feel free to ask again when the wiki has grown! -- Wendy (talk) 01:39, September 30, 2016 (UTC)
Hello. I'd like to run Creation Wiki for a role in Wikieden Spotlight. I'm the creator and current owner of the wiki, and it has been in operation for nearly 2 years. Our wiki is focused on creating anything that you want, and you have the freedom to share your ideas -- such as stories, video games, television shows, etc.. Thank you. .mynameischrome. (talk) 01:11, October 1, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. Your wiki looks like a lot of fun, but in order to be spotlighted it would need to be cleaned up a bit. You have a lot of uncategorized pages that would need to be sorted, and well over half of your content is stub-length (shorter than 300 bytes) and would need to be either cleaned up or expanded. Please feel free to ask again when you have addressed those issues! -- Wendy (talk) 17:29, October 13, 2016 (UTC)
Little Mix Wiki (approved)Edit
Hi! I like to request a spotlight for the Little Mix Wikieden. They are releasing a new song called Shout Out to My Ex and have a new album coming out soon. This spotlight would really help out the wiki a lot.
Jump Database (approved)Edit
I would like to nominate the Jump Database for a community spotlight. The Jump Database is a wiki about all things related to Jump from its iconic mangas to its characters and authors. Byzantinefire - There are no strings on me (talk) 21:24, October 10, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. Jump Database is in fairly good shape but there are a few tweaks it would need for a spotlight. You will need to fill out the mobile main page. It would also be good to add some content categories to the top navigation. Finally, the display is a bit messy -- things like the "see more" and "comments" bars overlap the rest of the content. Could you clean that up? Let me know on my wall if you have questions or when you have done that and I will check back again. -- Wendy (talk) 17:40, October 13, 2016 (UTC)
Hamilton Wiki (approved)Edit
I already got a spotlight for Hamilton wiki a few months ago, but I would like to request another because it has extended immensely and has gained more visibility. Please let me know if it's too early. Thank you! --—Miststream (01:59, 10/11/2016)
FanonLand Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello, GensokyoAngel, Bureaucrat admin of FanonLand Wiki. We're an anything goes wiki (In other words, we allow content about video games, anime, cartoons, tv shows, etc.) as long it doesn't break Wikieden's Terms of Services. This wiki has been running for about 1 year and half. We're running fine and we'd like to have a spotlight on the wiki. Here's the link to the wiki by the way. The caption should be "The anything goes wiki that you can edit as long as you feel like it." in case we get approved. -A Gensokyo's Angel (Talk) 17:39, October 13, 2016 (UTC)
Shadow Warrior 2 (approved) Edit
Foreign Language WikiedenEdit
http://foreign-language.wikieden.com/wiki/Foreign_Language_Wikieden Could you make a spotlight for this wikia? Thank you! --Chris2003O (talk) 12:50, October 21, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. I'm sorry but in order to be spotlighted by request, a wiki needs to meet our "best practices" as described here. One of the requirements is 200 non-stub content pages. Please feel free to ask again when your wiki has had a chance to grow a bit more! -- Wendy (talk) 02:20, October 28, 2016 (UTC)
Darkwood Wiki (approved) Edit
Hello, i'd like to submit the Darkwood Wiki, where i am an admin, for a spotlight. We have recently dealt with all uncategorized pages, and while the Stub category still lists a lot of pages, the Short pages shows that they have since evolved a lot and can no longer be considered as such. Crowborn (talk) 00:20, October 23, 2016 (UTC)
Westworld Wiki (approved)Edit
Hi Community Central, QueenBuffy here. I am now admin on the Westworld Wiki, HBO's newest show (looks like I always end up on HBO shows lol). We hope that it does just as good as the Game of Thrones one! :)Anyway, we fit the criteria, so I hope we can make spotlight. Thanks. Here is the image that can be used.
QueenBuffy, October 26, 2016 Page: Westworld Wiki
Happy Tree Friends Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello, Sandgar here, and I am the current head bureaucrat of Happy Tree Friends, and we are requesting a spotlight due to an upcoming surge of episodes in December. Sandgar, Old User 02:14, October 30, 2016 (UTC)
- Yes we did want it in December. Would the 1st be a good time. Also I added a caption and image on the thread you send us on HTF wiki.
Recess Wiki (approved) Edit
Munkapedia, the Alvin and the Chipmunks Wiki (approved) Edit
Would like to request our Christmas time spotlight (hopefully I have the timing roughly right considering some spotlight changes) for the Alvin and the Chipmunks Wiki. I don't have an image at the moment (not sure if I will have one by then).
- I am the active Admin.
- 1,285 total articles. 3 shorter than 300 bytes, 15 are marked as stubs.
- Main page has multiple images and links. Not sysop-protected. Curated for mobile.
- Navigation / Special:UncategorizedPages.
- No upheavals.
- Welcome / MediaWiki:Welcome-user
- Community doesn't allow profanity/offensive language or inappropriate images.
DEmersonJMFM 19:38, November 9, 2016 (UTC)
Studio C WikiEdit
I am ElsaRose01, administrator of the Studio C Wiki. I would like to request a spotlight for this wiki. I believe that we have met the criteria and are excited for your response and the outcome to follow! Thanks so much! :) If you do accept this, I would like to suggest using this optional image and caption:
Discover the Clean, Family-Friendly Comedy of Studio C!
Criminal Case Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello! I'm Tuxedo!, administrator in the Criminal Case Wiki. We'd like to request a spotlight for the wiki. We just ended our latest season, and are about to start a new one, and we'd love for more users to come and discuss and contribute with us! Thank you :D
In case you accept this, we'd like the caption to be: "Get ready for cases like you've never seen before!"
Nihon Fanon WikiEdit
Hello, GensokyoAngel, co-owner of Nihon Fanon Wiki. We're running said wiki since January 15, 2016 and we're aiming for spotlight. We focus on Anime and Manga fanon (although we also allow pages of video game characters, TV Characters, and pretty fanon of anything as long it doesn't break Wikieden's ToS). This will be our spotlight image (make sure the character faces look visible.) and if we do get spotlight, please put "Dream your own fanon world of anime!" as the caption of the spotlight image. Thanks! A Gensokyo's Angel (Talk) 00:12, November 14, 2016 (UTC)
- Hello. Nihon Fanon Wiki looks pretty good but would need a few tweaks in order to be spotlighted. The main page would need to have some links to the content - characters, stories, series, or whatever else is appropriate. Right now both the main page and the navigation really only links to "news". In addition, it would be good to fill in your wiki description in the mobile main page. Let me know on my wall when you have done that and I will be happy to check back again. -- Wendy (talk) 04:05, November 14, 2016 (UTC)
Kya Dark Lineage Wiki (approved) Edit
The Kya Dark Lineage wiki, is about the 2003, Action Adventure game, "Kya Dark Lineage". Featuring a girl thrown into another universe, with her brother. Ultimately defending a group of Nativ creatures, from a mysterious character turning them into evil wolf beings, trying to take over the universe.
I would like to post the Kya wiki on the spotlight. I originally meant to post to the spotlight earlier , but my current job takes much of my time (I also like everything to be perfect, but that would take longer, so I was like, let me post it and see what happens from there!) So, I was wondering since I have not used the maximum of two ads on the spotlight yet for 2016... if I could use them both simultaneously? (Like once one has run for two weeks, the next one goes up for the next two weeks) Or even if I had to come back in two weeks and re-add the spotlight, that would be good as well. I do have two separate images I'd like to use, if that is okay too. For next year, I already have in mind what months I'd like to post them in, so this would be the only time it's more jumbled.
I have seen the requirements for adding a wiki on the spotlight, and I believe I have completed them in order to have the wiki on the Spotlight, but let me know if there are any problems.
The images and quotes I'd like to use are as followed...
I've edited the images to the size that appears on the wiki spotlight, but I will post the original image just in case it doesn't fit/work with how spotlight images are added.
Quote: Adventure through a mysterious new world!
Quote: Discover Kya's, Dark Lineage.
Hotspot 18:10, November 26, 2016 (UTC)Hotspot
- Hello Hotspot. Kya Dark Lineage Wiki looks good but in order to be spotlighted you will need to fill out the mobile main page. Let me know when you've done that and I'll be happy to add it to the spotlights.
Ok, I will use just one of them for now then.
I'll use this quote and image.
Quote: Adventure through a mysterious new world!
Hotspot 05:26, December 2, 2016 (UTC)Hotspot
Popeye Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello, I am the current administrator of the Popeye Wiki. Our wiki has long been in severe disrepair due to a lot of offensive and vulgar content by a previous active user for the last 4 years or so which I suspect has greatly damaged the wiki's reputation and negatively affected the wiki's traffic, but I have since cleaned up his offending material and improved the wiki into a state worthy of notice and wish others to know this as well, as the Popeye wiki is now a safe and informative place to visit. So I hope you will approve my request for the sake of the wiki and the franchise it represents. Best regards. -The Forgotten Beast (talk) 15:49, November 27, 2016 (UTC)
Zootopia Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello! I would like to request a spotlight for the Zootopia Wiki. It is a well-organized wiki that is always being updated. It has 621 pages total and only 30-some of those are stubs. We even have a holiday background!
Jane the Virgin Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello I would like to put in a request in for Jane the Virgin Wiki. Thanks! Pj_Lol
- Hello. Jane the Virgin Wiki looks good but in order to be spotlighted it would need a couple of tweaks. You will need to fill in the mobile main page, and also create a community-corner message. Let me know on my wall when you have done that and I will be happy to add it to the approved spotlights. -- Wendy (talk) 04:47, December 1, 2016 (UTC)
Hello! I would like to register a request a spotlight for my wiki, please? Anything you find on this wiki, feel free to request me for some tweaks in order to approve the wiki. Thank you.
- Hello. Warner Bros. Entertainment Wiki would need a few tweaks in order to be spotlighted through the requests. You would need to fill in the mobile main page, as well as customizing the community corner. You would also need to clean out your stubs -- right now you have nearly 500 articles in the stub category. The total number of articles labeled as stubs, and articles that are shorter than 300 bytes, needs to be no more than 1/5th of your content, or about 160 articles. Let me know on my wall when you've had a chance to straighten that out and I'll be happy to check back again. -- Wendy (talk) 05:16, December 15, 2016 (UTC)
One Piece Wiki (approved)Edit
- I thought the Wiki already got one. Byzantinefire - There are no strings on me (talk) 05:08, December 25, 2016 (UTC)
Flipline Fan Customers Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello Wikieden Staff,
Mariokart Wii Wiki (Approved)Edit
Mario Kart Wii Wiki is a database of information on Mario Kart Wii, and the whole Mario franchise. We also have several unique features, like User Reviews, Top Tens, and Comparisons.
- Mario Kart Wii Wiki looks good and I've added it to the approved spotlight list. Did you have a suggestion for an image/caption that you wanted us to use? -- Wendy (talk) 05:12, January 12, 2017 (UTC)
Might & Magic (approved)Edit
Gender Wiki is a growing database of various genders. If anyone has questions, other users as well as admins answer to the best of their ability. We try our best to be inclusive and tolerant. I wish for the wiki to be promoted so people can go to it to have questions answered and to discover themselves.
"Discover yourself and others at Gender Wiki"
Madeyefire (talk) 20:47, January 1, 2017 (UTC)
Lalaloopsy Land Wiki (approved)Edit
I would like to request a spotlight for Lalaloopsy Land Wiki. A new series is coming this year and I'd like the community to know.
Also I'd like this image with caption to appear.
ᚱ♫ 09:42, January 2, 2017 (UTC)
This wiki has 2000+ pages, also I'm an admin there. It has an SML theme and there are many large pages. Also, the wiki has a Discord server, proposals, a YouTube channel, a Google+ community, and a page for reporting vandals. I also operate a bot there.
- Hello. SuperMarioLogan is really customized and I can see you've put a lot of work into it. However in order to be spotlighted it would need a few tweaks. You would need to fill in the mobile main page. Next there are about 120 uncategorized pages that would need to get sorted out. Finally, there are currently about 800 articles that are stub-length (shorter than 300bytes) and/or marked as stubs. The total number of stubs would need to be less than 430, or 1/5th of your total number of pages if you delete some of them. Feel free to ask again when the wiki meets all of the spotlight criteria! -- Wendy (talk) 02:43, January 13, 2017 (UTC)
Hypothetical Tornadoes Wiki (approved) Edit
Hello, can we have a highlight for Hypothetical Tornadoes Wiki please? We have 411 pages currently, with a fairly active community. I am asking for this because since taking over in November, me and the new admin team have been working on the wiki in order to get to this position, and we would be greatful if it was to be approved, as it would encourage more new users to join the wiki. Thanks Layten (talk) 20:52, January 4, 2017 (UTC)
- Hello Layten. Hypothetical Tornadoes Wiki looks good for the most part, but in order to be spotlighted you would need to polish up the main page. The how-to videos are great, but right now there are no links to the major content categories, and the single-column format means that the content is pushed way down the page by the ad. See Help:Main page for some tips on how you can rework the page, or, if you prefer, you can w:c:community:Community_Central:Community_Development_Team/Requests ask staff for help with a redesign/refresh of the main page. Let me know on my wall if you have questions and/or when you have finished redoing the page and I'll be happy to check back again. -- Wendy (talk) 02:49, January 13, 2017 (UTC)
Lemony Snicket Wiki Edit
thumb|(Full banner if needed) Hello! I'd like to put in a request for w:c:snicket (the Lemony Snicket Wiki) to receive a Fandom spotlight in the near future. Our new Netflix series comes out on the 13th.× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 01:50, January 10, 2017 (UTC)
- Hello. Lemony Snicket Wiki looks good for the most part -- I love the design! That said, in order to be spotlighted, you would need to categorize the uncategorized pages. In addition, there are currently about 135 pages marked as stubs; the total number would need to be less than 1/5th of the content, or about 80 pages for a spotlight. Let me know on my wall when you have cleaned up the categories/stubs and I will be happy to check back again. -- Wendy (talk) 02:57, January 13, 2017 (UTC)
Inkagames English Wiki (approved) Edit
I am the admin of this community. I would like this Wiki to have a spotlight. I know there are lots of fans of these games, but they do not know that a Wiki is made up. I would love to have more fans and contributers on my Wiki, so it could expand more.
I hope it will be able. I've also went by the rules, what a Wiki should need to do before getting a spotlight. But if there is something I miss, please tell me.
American Gods Wiki Edit
I am the admin/bureaucrat of the American Gods wikia and would like to request a spotlight. The series will be premiering in March/April so I would like to have a spotlight in anticipation of that. We don't yet have 200 pages (105) as the series has yet to air, however, we do meet all the other requirements, including all 105 of our pages having content and not being stubs. I seem to remember the last time I requested a spotlight, it was only 100 pages?
Thank you for your consideration,
- Hello. I'm sorry but the requirement for 200 non-stub pages to request a spotlight has been in place for some years now. I'm sorry the wiki does not qualify before the premiere, but please feel free to ask again when the wiki has grown and has more than 200 pages. -- Wendy (talk) 03:09, March 14, 2017 (UTC)
Flipline Fan Games WikiedenEdit
Hey Community Centeral,
I am the founder of Flipline Fan Games Wikieden. Would you guys can to make a spotlight for this wikia? This wikia is about fanon wikia of a gamesite. We have 5/22 (10/44) active users and we have 600 pages. Picture and Desc. will send soon.
Custom BIONICLE Wiki (approved)Edit
Hello, Community Central.
I'm one of the two Bureaucrats of the Custom BIONICLE Wiki and would like to request a wiki spotlight. This wikia is a fanon wikia for LEGO BIONICLE, and is for people to post their custom characters and stories. We have 6,726 pages and meet all the requirements.
- Hello. Custom BIONICLE Wiki looks good but it would need a couple of tweaks in order to be spotlighted. Could you please categorize the handful of uncategorized pages? You would also need to fill out the rest of the mobile main page. Let me know on my wall when you have done that and I will be happy to add the wiki to the approved spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 03:40, March 14, 2017 (UTC)
Wiki 24 (approved) Edit
Not sure if you are planning to highlight this already, but in about 3 weeks there is the premiere of 24: Legacy, the new 24 show. If Wiki 24 could get a spotlight in conjunction with this that'd be awesome! Thanks --Category:Acer4666 08:04, January 17, 2017 (UTC)
- Hello. Wiki 24 looks good; I realize that the delay in the requested spotlights puts it past the premiere of the new show. Are you still interested in a spotlight? If so, please let me know on my wall and I will be happy to add it to the approved spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 03:58, March 14, 2017 (UTC)
Genovboys Wiki Spotlight Edit
Hello Wikieden i would like to request of you can spotlight http://genovaboys.wikieden.com/wiki/Genovaboys_Wiki Here's why
- No Uncategorized Articles
- Evreything is neat
- i'm admin and founder
Bunk'd Wiki (approved)Edit
hi. I am an admin on the Bunk'd wiki, and I would like to request a spotlight. I believe our wiki has met the criteria, but not I'd be more than happy to fix it. For the image and the caption, I would like to have this picture and the caption would be "Welcome back to Camp Kikiwaka!"
20:51, January 22, 2017 (UTC) —This unsigned comment is by NikkiSarah (wall • contribs) . Please sign your posts with ~~~~!
Worst Witch Wiki (approved) Edit
A new series of the Worst Witch has started airing, and I feel it would be a good time for the wiki to have a spotlight: http://theworstwitch.wikieden.com/wiki/The_Worst_Witch_Wiki Decat (talk) 01:02, January 24, 2017 (UTC)
- Hi. The Worst Witch Wiki looks good and just needs a small tweak in order to be spotlighted. Could you please fill out the mobile main page? Let me know on my wall when you have done that and I will be happy to add it to the approved spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 05:11, March 14, 2017 (UTC)
Magical Girl Mahou Shoujo Wiki Edit
I think its time to request another spotlight! thank you!
you can use this picture to it, and add the text: Enter to the Magical World and transform!
Hypothetical Disasters WikiEdit
Hi, i know i am in the process of getting another wiki spotlighted, but its been in the workings for a while to have this wiki spotlighted. We have almost 900 pages on there at the moment, and the wiki is fairly active, so i was wondering if i could file this request? Thanks Layten (talk) 11:14, January 29, 2017 (UTC)
Just to let you know, I erased a former administrator's request on getting Sing Wiki spotlighted because it is actually considered to be a duplicate. It is a duplicate because the former administrator did NOT get my approval for getting the wiki spotlighted and plus, we have not reach the requirement during that time. However, we now reached the requirement so this is considered to be the official request.
Zedd Wiki Edit
Hi – I am an administrator and bureaucrat on the Zedd Wiki, a wiki dedicated to providing information about the music producer from which it got its name. I am filing this request in hopes I can have it Spotlighted (though that can be inferred from the purpose of this page); it has been a passion project of mine for about two years now, and I really think it's come a long way.
- The wiki currently has 202 content pages (of which only one is a stub), and I am making an effort to add more. Additionally, each one is in at least one relevant category.
- You can see the desktop main page for yourself, and I've filled out the mobile one too.
- The community is nonexistent save for myself, but I'm willing to welcome any new users that may come.
- MediaWiki:Community-corner, MediaWiki:Welcome-user, and the wiki's skin are all customized.
- Lastly, save for mild profanity in quotes and song lyrics and such, there isn't foul language, and there are no offensive images on the wiki anywhere I can see.
In the event that this Spotlight gets approved, I'll state what I'd be interested in for the image and caption.
Thank you in advance.
Movie Ideas WikiEdit
Hello. The other users and I on the Movie Ideas Wiki noticed that we have met the requirements for a spotlight. On this wiki, users can create their own Movie Ideas and many more! Here is the link to the wiki. We would like a spotlight to get more users over, since there are only 4 active users there.
Hi. I'm Netherbolt, bureaucrat and admin on the Mooncraft Wiki, which is dedicated to the iOS app Lunacraft (formerly known as Mooncraft). More activity is needed on this wiki, because I'm basically the only one keeping up with it, which is really difficult, so if we could get a spotlight that would be great!
We Bare Bears Wiki Edit
I'd like to request a spotlight for the We Bare Bears wiki! Our community isn't the largest and Season 3 has premiered this month (April) and new episodes are being aired all this month. We're hoping a Spotlight (if we're approved) will help advertise the new Season a bit more and help us build up our community even more.
- I am an active admin/bureaucrat.
- Out of 640+ pages, there are only 88 pages marked as a stub which is less than fifth of all of our pages.
- Our main page is very clean and organized with many images and clear links to important content.
- Our mobile main page is completely filled out.
- We have a good category structure and every page is categorized
- Our community is very stable.
- We are using the welcome tool.
- Our Community Center message is customized.
- We have a completely customized skin.
- We do not allow inappropriate language or content.
As for image suggestions, I'd like to suggest this image and "Will you be there?" for the caption if possible. :)
04:46, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
Soulfly Wiki Edit
I'm the one who opened the Wiki over two years ago and currently have 201 pages. I spent two years writing and improving all of those pages in Soulfly Wiki, leading to articles being very informative, neat, and very consistent. One downside to it is that the Wiki sees only a few visitors. The most visited page on Soulfly Wiki was visited a paltry 18 times over last week and typically attract less than 30 visitors a week on every page. I want more visitors to Soulfly Wiki to make spending a lot of time dedicating to it more worth it. So I like to spotlight this to try to attract more visitors from other related Wikis such as Slipknot Wiki where it is visited lot more. PlanetStar 20:34, March 11, 2017 (UTC)
Ben 10 Planet Edit
Hello I liked to give Ben 10 Planet a new spotlight for this year. We have the Reboot Ben 10 series premiering in April of 2017 for North America, South America and the series had its premiere in fall of 2016 in other countries. The admins made sure the wiki fulfills all requirements and had spotlights in the past. I also want the picture to be changed for the spotlight. By getting the exposure the wiki needs I hope to bring our old users and bring new users in.
Nihon Fanon WikiEdit
Hello, i'd like to have spotlight to Nihon Fanon Wiki. We have ran since January 2016. Link to the wiki here.
We should have this for the banner with the caption "Imagine your anime fanon world!".
Little Shop Of Horrors WikiEdit
Hi! I'm FiveCraft, a bueraucrat from the Little Shop Of Horrors Wiki!, I've recently adopted the wiki and since done a massive revamp of it, making it much more informative and appealing than in the past. Right now we're around 50 Pages or so, and I need a way to reach more LSOH fans so we can improve the Wiki to be the best it can be, and then some.
The content of our Wiki focuses on the original 1982 LSOH Production, the 1986 Movie, the 2009 UK Tour Production, the 2016 UK Tour Production, the original 1960 Roger Corman Movie and the 2003 Broadway Revival.
Thank you for your consideration!I'll Get The Can!-FiveCraft 18:04, April 4, 2017 (UTC)
Wait--- Nevermind, I just read the guidelines and we need more pages, sorry for the useless post here :( --I'll Get The Can!-FiveCraft 18:28, April 4, 2017 (UTC)
Hello. This is our shows last season and we end in a couple weeks. We would love for it to get some spotlight. We have over 1,000 pages, and 12, 000 images. Reign --~ Lorisa! (talk) 01:21, April 5, 2017 (UTC)
- I am admin
- Over 1,000 pages, and 12, 000 images.
- Every page has at least two categories
Harry Styles WikiEdit
Hi! I would like to request a spotlight for the Harry Styles Wikieden. He is releasing his debut solo album in May and I would like for the wiki to attract more users. The spotlight will really help the wiki gain the attention it deserves.
Star Wars Canon Wiki Edit
I'd like to apply for a spotlight for my wiki - http://star-wars-canon.wikieden.com/wiki/Main_Page which has had a recent drop in views and contributors.
The Lookout WikiEdit
Hello, I am TheGreatKuzon!, co-founder and lead bureaucrat/admin of http://thelookout.wikieden.com (formerly Supreme Dragon Ball wiki). I'd like to request a spotlight for our wiki. Our wiki is an open roleplay and fan-fiction wiki for really anything (usually anime or video games).
http://thelookout.wikieden.com/wiki/File:Underking10.jpg --> the image we would like to use
The VS Battles Wiki Edit
I have heard that we are allowed to ask for advertisements once every 6 months.
If this is true, I would like to request a new spotlight for the VS Battles wiki.
We are a community that index statistics for a wide variety of fictional characters, and currently have over 11000 pages in sum total. We also have a functioning mobile version of the wiki, and a well-organised wiki navigation bar.
If this is accepted, we have created an image here that you can use, if you wish.
A suggestion for the text could be: "How powerful are your favourite characters?"
Minecraft Pocket Edition WikiEdit
The Minecraft Pocket Edition Wiki has fulfilled all the required guidelines, hence we'd like a spotlight for the Wiki.
The image we would like: Click here
The text: A blocky world awaits!
Darthwikia25 05:20, April 22, 2017 (UTC)
Doctor Who Collectors Wiki Edit
Hi, I'm TARDIS2010 admin and bureacuart of the Doctor Who Collectors Wiki. I'd like to request a spotlight for the wiki, we've recently renovated the wiki, and with Doctor Who now back on TV we feel a spotlight would really help encourage new users to join. If possible could you use this image, or this image, depending on whichever works better. |
New! Beach House "Myth"
Beach House - Myth: Ahhhg I keep forgetting about Beach House. They are absolutely spectacular! Myth is a really good song, they have a very beachy effect coincidentally...or conveniently...
Beach House - Myth
Stream Beach House's RSD offering
this is the best album of the year. listen up people. i am dying here. it is spectacular magic.
Myth (Beach House's song covered in piano). GREAT WORK!!!! The missing link between Philip Glass, Tori Amos & Beach House!!!
is your first and best source for all of the information you’re looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for!
Bloom is the dream-pop album by the band Beach house, a fitting name since their music is perfectly played at a beach house. It is an album of depth and width. It fills the room and envelopes the mind with tonal options and great musicality.
nessie, loch ness monster, cryptids, cryptid...
Bloom (release date 5/14/12) 1. Myth (0:00) 2. Wild (4:17) 3. Lazuli (9:17) 4. Other People (14:19) 5. The Hours (18:44) 6. Troublemaker (22:55) 7. New Year ... |
February 8, 2016 ~ To the Beloved Ones of Earth, Stay Close To Your Families. If You Feel the Urge To Move From a Troubled Area, Act Upon It, and Know You Are Guided. ~All Our Love From the Between-Time Dimension~
February 1, 2016 ~ Earth Humans, Frequencies From the Great Divine Are Lifting Your Soul and Spirit Ever Higher. This Gift Is Meant To Sustain You Through the Difficult Times Ahead. ~All Our Love From the Between-Time Dimension~
January 25, 2016 ~ Great fearsome challenges are before you, Dearest Humanity. Hold tight to each other. Love each other, and prepare for superspeed, massive, worldwide changes. The time has arrived. ~All Our Love From the Between-Time Dimension~
January 18, 2016 ~ Dearest Humanity, Hold Tight To Your Divine Right To Be Forever Free ... Free In Mind, Free of Heart, Free To Be the Creative Spirit You Are. ~All Love From the Between-Time Dimension~
January 11, 2016 ~ The Times Before You, Earth Humans, Are Explosive and Fast-Changing. ~May You Know Every Blessing~
To those who live in the land of my birth, America... May You Have a HAPPY AND EXCEPTIONAL NEW YEAR. ~All Love To You~
December 28, 2015 ~ Embrace the Exceptional Opportunities of the New Year 2016. May you enjoy the company of those who love and treasure you the moat.
Our lives settle into a new rhythm over the following days. Dhuroth and I have decided to keep the River of Light at a minimal flow for the sake of others – and to travel back to Mars if need be. If... the rampaging evil is, or can be contained.
With interdimensional portals we are able to watch the unfolding events on both Mars and Earth... and in the surrounding solar system. Our prayers are often, said for the good souls, for all of life – spoken for the planets, their beautiful animals and vegetation.
All life is Sacred.
For now, all of us in this out-of-time dimension, must live fully and let our lights shine. That is how we will increase the goodness in the Universe at large. That is how we will win real freedom for ALL. In the great span of eternal time.
And so our story, mine and my lion man's, ends for now... Yet, we will always remain, ready to assist the people of Earth and Mars.
ANGELIC FORECAST ~
Absurd Overdrive, the Whole Wide World Tilts Into a New Paradigm
In Opposition, the Dark-Side Establishment Uses Every Trick In Their Evil Book To Turn Out the Lights On Aquarian Age Enlightenment
On the *1984* front, VIDEO: John Cleese: Political Correctness Will Lead To An Orwellian Nightmare
Zero Hedge | The very essence of his trade — comedy — is criticism.
On the magickal, mystical front, this week the 'Mages of Ages Lost' slash their mighty lightblades through the deepest black heart of the Viper elite's cabal. This will EXPOSE more of their secrets, the ones they believed to be invisible to the public at large.
During the next three months...CRASH BOOM BANG ... the heavens appear to fall in certain sectors of society. And a GRAND REBELLION against the dark-side's authority figures rises to prominence.
On the personal front, this will be a strangelet week for many. People from your past 'could' show up unexpectedly. This could be a positive or a negative. Whichever, there is a vital lesson/message for your life.
Also, let love lead the way this week. That is, whoever cares for you the most, should receive your devoted and loving attention. This could be a pet, if you are currently alone.
Further, this is a critical time to be and become AWARE of your surroundings as never before. This means your community, your immediate neighbors, and the logistical layout around your home. There could be certain 'emergency' situations you and yours will need to deal with in the coming days.
On the paranormal front, Saturation Point, the People Know/Realize There Is 'Out of This' World Sentient Life ... Or, Invite an ET To Dinner
This hundredth-monkey AWARENESS alters the destiny of humanity toward the stars, and toward interacting with the galactic community.
On the UFO front, ARTICLE: "Cluster of UFOs filmed over Russian capital ~ Saturday, February 6, 2016
Footage showing a group of unidentified objects flying in formation over Moscow has appeared online." — Unexplained Mysteries
On the YETI/BIG FOOT front, ARTICLE: "Watch: Yeti Spotted at Spanish Ski Resort?
Tensions are running high at a Spanish ski resort after a visitor captured photos and video of an enigmatic creature which some believe could be the infamous Yeti.
The sighting and accompanying potential proof were so remarkable that the owners of the resort actually conducted a thorough search in an attempt to solve the mystery and quell the fears of their guests.
A spokesman for the resort has assured visitors that they are safe but conceded that a search of the area was conducted after a reported Yeti sighting.
Skeptics have suggested a number of possibilities for the 'creature' in the film, specifically a bear or a hoax, but the witness insists that there was no trickery at work and the encounter was a genuine sighting."
ARTICLE: "Hiker Finds Possible Yeti Tracks in Himalayas ~ February 01, 2016
A British hiker has revealed photos of a remarkable set of possible Yeti footprints that he discovered while trekking through the Himalayas in Bhutan.
Steve Berry claims that he spotted the trail of prints while exploring an area known as Gangkhar Puensum, which locals claim had never been visited by people before.
The enigmatic imprints appear to come from a bipedal creature since they were seemingly in a single file line and, Berry says, were larger than a normal human footprint.
When Berry's expedition returned from the remote region, a conversation with a yak herder about the Yeti strengthened his resolve that the prints were possibly from the mysterious creature.
The herder recounted his own encounter with the infamous cryptid and mentioned that Yeti prints are distinguishable by their single file nature.
A gob smacked Berry then showed the man his photos of the prints he had discovered days earlier and the herder expressed certainty that they were from the legendary Abominable Snowman.
While one might think that such a find would be cause for celebration in the cryptozoology community, that is far from the case..."
ARTICLE: "Does Bigfoot live in the mountains surrounding Pocatello? ~ Friday, February 5, 2016
According to Jeff Meldrum, the wooded, mountainous areas south of Pocatello have been the site of credible Bigfoot sightings over the years." — Idaho State Journal"
On the GHOST front, ARTICLE: "Taxi drivers in Japan report 'ghost passengers' in tsunami-ravaged area ~ Saturday, February 6, 2016
A number of taxi drivers have reported seeing ‘ghost passengers’ in Ishinomaki in Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture, an area that was devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami." — FOX News
On the ET-Alien front, ARTICLE: "'If aliens visit Earth, they'll take charge': Seti scientist claims ET will have the upper hand thanks to its superior technologies"
On the TIME TRAVEL front, ARTICLE: "Does this bizarre photo show evidence of time travel? ~ Friday, February 5, 2016
Conspiracy theorists claim a sculpture could be proof the ancient Greeks were visited by time travelers who brought them laptops from the future." — EXPRESS.co.uk
On the NIBIRU *what's true?* front, Nibiru on Live Russia Today News – Two Giant Planets Orbit Dwarf Star – (Nibiru will Shake Earth at March Preparing for 2016) CONTRIBUTOR: Michael Moore. Only now they tell us there is 2 planets orbiting Nibiru Planet X! & Nibiru "heading in, toward us"( Must see!) Additional planets exist in our solar... ~beforeitsnews.com~
Warning!!! The global elite [New World Order] does not want *you* to read this book. See ~ Powerful Dreams at my Kougar Kisses blog.
WHEN A GOOD ANGEL FALLS
~~~ Where angels fear to tread, 2012 Earth ~~~
World weary and worn out, the incarnated angel, Sedona, who believes she is merely human, has three choices after her old van breaks down.
Let the Nazerazzi squad of the North American Union capture her and force her into a FEMA concentration camp.
Walk out into the Arizona night desert, let the wildlife have a good meal with the hope her death will be quick.
Or does she dare trust the mysterious stranger suddenly before her?
Handsome as sin and all in black, he emerges out of the darkness.
Sedona wonders if the stranger on a superspeed motorcycle is her savior from the brutal endtimes.
Or, is he a roving cult member of the New World Order, hunting his next blood sacrifice?
It’s only a few days before Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012 ~ The end of the Mayan Calendar.
Sent from heaven to help Sedona save humanity, Zerr Dann knows the Divine is playing its last card on Earth.
He also knows Sedona is about to find out Christmas miracles still exist.
[Angelic Fantasy Erotic Romance]
~~~ EBOOK & IN PRINT ~~~ a former #1 on Siren-BookStrand’s bestseller list
Author Discovery by BookStrand author, Lindsay Townsend.
~ HAVE A MAGICKAL WEEK ~
Kisses from Savanna Kougar...
~ Run on the Wild Side of Romance ~
Siren-BookStrand Author of ~
All Shades of Blue Paradise
[World of the Blue Pearl Moon, Book 1]
When a Good Angel Falls ~ In Print
[Winter Solstice 2012, Book 1]
Murder by Hair Spray in Gardenia, New Atlantis ~ In Print
[New Atlantis Trilogy, Book 1]
Her Insatiable Dark Heroes ~ In Print
[Chrontropolis, Book 1]
Stallion of Ash and Flame ~ In Print
Branded by the Texans ~ IN PRINT ~ A Siren-BookStrand Bestseller!
[Three Star Republic]
Kandy Apple and Her Hellhounds ~ What happens when two of Hades’ most mission-accomplished Hellhounds find just the right witch for Halloween? ~ Ebook and In Print. |
Manage episode 322189450 series 3285091
Strap in for a terrifying tale of one man’s encounter with the single most terrifying cryptid ever encountered. Dogman is the second most reported cryptid on earth with hundreds of sightings happening every year all over the globe. From a wealth of encounters in Northern Michigan to Deep South swamp sightings. The Land Between the Lakes to the Beast of Bray Road. We take a deep dive into the lore and legends of Dogman.
NOT YOUR EVERYDAY NINJA TURTLES BAD GUY!
Campfire: Tales of the Strange and Unsettling is created for adult audiences only. The content and discussion in this show will necessarily engage with various accounts that include violence, anxiety, fear, and occasional body horror. Much of it will be emotionally and intellectually challenging to engage with. We will flag especially graphic or intense content so as to never put you in an uninformed or unprepared position. We will do our best to make this a space where we can engage bravely, empathetically, and thoughtfully with difficult content every week.
This week’s episode includes the following sensitive content:
Descriptions of the following:
Extreme Graphic Violence
Check it Out!
Dogman Encounters Radio
The Confessionals Podcast
The Michigan Dogman by GP Haggart
Support Us on Patreon:
Satisfy All of Your Merch Needs:
Join the conversation on social media at
Visit Our Linktree for Any and All Campfire Info:
Gregg Martin for music contributions! Go follow him on Instagram at Instagram.com/reverentmusic , on Bandcamp at https://reverentmusic.bandcamp.com/releases or on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/album/6QVhQsYQeeBVOtxrelehTI?si=V5CAxS8sSXyVFn14G7j-GA
Elias Armao for graphic design! Go follow him on Instagram at instagram.com/doggedlinedesignsupply
Jonathan Dodd for merch design! Show him some love at https://linktr.ee/jonathandodd
Some sounds provided by zapsplat.com |
New page (12th May, UPDATED/yet more edits, and more parts extended) . . . the last and now old ‘missing people’ page I massively updated the ‘duplicated population in a duplicated reality’ evidence on that page, so below is the (at the moment) final version of ‘evidence’ part . . . the ‘older’ missing people page I’ve deleted the top part so it’s just left focused on the missing people angle and the focus. This page is now HERE!!!!
I’d like to ‘set the scene’ with some overall general ‘facts’ with respect to our reality/planet earth itself presenting a great variety of consistent anomalies while also presenting significant numbers of people holding to some ‘interesting’ beliefs/expectations, very specifically about the earth . . .
Some ‘One Strange Rock’ Facts Related To Anomalous Physical Earth Phenomena & Beliefs
FACT 1: We have many, many, happening regularly examples of a few different types of anomalous experiences, that are ‘by and large’ consistently experienced by significant numbers of people and in some cases (for UFO sightings for example) by very large numbers of people.
FACT 2: Most types of anomalous experience are by and large investigated and then thought about/evaluated in isolation from other types of anomalous experiences.
FACT 3: We also have some anomalous ‘beliefs’ which are ‘by and large’ consistently held to by a significant number of people, in some cases by large numbers of people. The flat earth people would be one example of these.
FACT 4: I ‘could’ be wrong about this BUT I also get the ‘impression’ that at least a few people expect that we should have ‘aliens’ here too, although, what we absolutely consistently have are actual sightings only of what are very, very odd, anomalous creatures, that are ‘specifically’ categorised as such because they are not recognised as any earth based animal form/species that we know of here!!!
FACT 5: Also, despite that we have MANY RECORDED AS WELL AS ‘WELL DOCUMENTED’ INSTANCES OF BOTH UFO’s AS WELL AS MANY ONE OFF WEIRD/ODD ‘CREATURES’ which ‘should’ have had people questioning the base configuration/foundation nature of reality itself, this just doesn’t happen!!!
In doing internet searches, as far as I can tell, I seem to be the only person that is ‘questioning’ the base nature of reality, although I also appear to be the only person that is suspicious about various embedded ‘belief’s’ and or ‘expectations’ too which are ‘anomalous’ either with respect to what you’d expect of a ‘real/natural’ reality and or with respect to our own ‘observable/provable’ circumstances.
So, exactly what would the base configuration/nature of our reality >> HAVE TO BE << to coherently as well as ‘logically/rationally’ explain as many of the different types/categories of anomalous personal experiences (i.e. odd phenomena that are consistently experienced/seen/recorded by many) as well as various consistently held to anomalous beliefs (again consistently ‘held to’ by a fair number of people here) as well as of some of the many anomalous ‘earth/planet’ physical ‘geological and or ‘surface landscape’ phenomena that we also have here too!!!!
For example, if we are ‘actually’ all living within a copied, duplicated ‘simulated’ reality configuration such that we here are then copies of other people from another reality version, then all of us here ‘here’ would actually all be directly or indirectly ‘manipulated/managed’ specifically to ‘by and large’ have us each living out . . .
A PREDEFINED. DUPLICATED LIFE OF SOMEONE ELSE
However, if we are actually all living within some type of copied/duplicated ‘reality’ version then any significant differences between the original reality configuration/layout and or the common/normal living circumstances of the original population/any sub population (all of whom will be ‘represented’ here) when compared to both our larger ‘universe scale’ reality circumstances as well as our current single planet earth population/cultures living circumstance will then very, very likely result in the presentation of various anomalies/anomalous experiences as well as perhaps embedded anomalous ‘beliefs’ too!!
In some cases, these will be personal/individual while others will impact specific sub groups of people here (of different sizes) depending very specifically on the scale of the translated original circumstances and or the number of people whom have specific experiences and or whom have some specific common ‘knowledge’ interests.
The bottom line to the above is that, depending on how any copied population/any sub populations specific original circumstances/environment and or their embedded experiences/common knowledge/facts and or beliefs are translated/converted (or not) to their duplicate versions/counter parts ‘here’ this could result in specific groups of people ‘here’ holding to odd and or ‘out of context/impossible’ ‘facts/beliefs’, specifically because these were common knowledge and or accurate with respect to their original environment and or the original circumstances and or experiences . . . such that some specific ‘facts/beliefs’ then actually maybe/possibly:
WON’T RELATE TO & OR WON’T BE ‘ACCURATE’ WITH RESPECT TO OUR CURRENT SINGLE EARTH WORLD ‘CONFIGURATION & OR LIVING’ CIRCUMSTANCES HERE!!!!
A Duplicated Population could easily present Embedded ‘Beliefs/Knowledge’ that Relate to the Original Reality Circumstances & ‘NOT’ Ours Here!!!!
If we are living within a duplicated reality that is specifically different to the original that the population we are a copy of lived within then it is actually entirely possible that some people here will have embedded ‘knowledge/common knowledge/beliefs/understandings/knowing’s’ that correspond to the common/embedded knowledge of their original local scale circumstances as well as of their solar system and or larger universe scale knowledge/understandings too.
Hence then, it seems to me that under certain conditions it is very likely that a copied/duplicated population would present some people/specific groups of people presenting embedded ‘knowledge/beliefs’ that specifically relate to the original world/planet/habitat and or their original solar system as well as larger cosmic/universe scale circumstances of the experience of the person they are a copy of, which (depending on how different things are within our reality version) actually then may then not be correct for and or then won’t make sense with respect to our current earth world living circumstances, local and or larger reality circumstances and or with respect to our recorded/accumulated knowledge too!!!
Basically if we here are actually living within a duplicated copied reality circumstances such that you reading this are simulating someone whose day in, day out/ALL THE TIME circumstances and or ‘knowledge’ were ’embedded’, while also being VERY DIFFERENT with respect to your/our current earth world circumstance and or our larger knowledge and or your current/personal incarnation circumstances then it is very possible that you would find yourself holding to and or ‘believe’ the original ‘knowledge’ related to the original circumstances of the person you are a copy of which actually may be quite different, even VERY DIFFERENT with respect to our earth knowledge and or earth circumstances here and or what you are now living/your own circumstances here!!!!
In this respect, a duplicated copied person may very well find themselves with strong beliefs/knowing’s/knowledge that actually don’t relate to our current earth circumstance specifically, BUT WHICH ‘DO’ RELATE TO/ARE ACCURATE FOR THE ORIGINAL CIRCUMSTANCES & OR EXPERIENCES/KNOWLEDGE OF THE PERSON THEY ARE A COPY OF.
So, with respect to the above, I’m now going to use some examples of a variety of consistently experienced i.e. ‘common anomalies/anomalous experiences’ (that have been directly experienced and or observed by many different people) as well as some anomalous ‘beliefs’ about facets of our reality/the make up of reality that just don’t make any sense at all with respect to our current ‘observed’ circumstances and or our recorded ‘history’.
I’m then going to ‘interpret/translate’ at least ‘some’ specific anomalous experiences with respect to what these specific experiences ‘suggest’ if we are copies i.e. duplicates of other people whom specifically lived within a different environment and or significantly different circumstances such that what they experienced in the original circumstances actually cannot be directly presented/lived with respect to our current/observable circumstances here (because our circumstances and or environment are too different/unrepresentative of the original environment) . . . such that at least some specific experiences cannot be accommodated/directly lived within our own reality configuration here such that they have to be presented in either very isolated/remote circumstances and or as personal to the individual i.e. as an ‘outside of consensus reality itself’ experience!!!
To do this, I’m going to use various common ANOMALOUS PHENOMENON &/OR SOME SPECIFIC TYPES OF ‘ANOMALOUS’ experiences that haven’t been rationally/logically explained with respect to what is OBSERVABLE within respect to our current single planet scale and single intelligent ‘human’ species population circumstances.
Why Does our One Strange Rock present Many UFO’s While Being Unable to Provide Logical Explanations To Explain These?
So, if we here are ‘actually’ a duplicated population, then how must the original environment and or the original situation and or circumstances ‘HAVE TO BE’ to account for some specific types and or varieties of regularly observed/experienced anomalous phenomena and or historical myths/legends!!!!
For example: ‘IF’ we are a copied subtle/soul/spirit population whom were interfaced to many different animal forms whom were also incarnated/living on many/many different planets/worlds maybe even within many different planetary systems perhaps even spanning one or more galaxies in terms of scale of ‘incarnations’ of the subtle forms being interfaced to a physical animal avatar . . . while also being technologically more advanced than ourselves (including having interplanetary/inter system travel) compared to what we have here . . . then what anomalies would you expect if we ‘here’ are just a small selected sub population (from the original much larger population) now seemingly arising and living as one species on the surface of one single planet (whom originally actually lived on many different planets)?
Well, if planet to planet/system to system, perhaps even galaxy to galaxy scale transport/craft commonly operated within the original environment then:
- What ‘out of context’ anomalies would these ‘many aliens’ everywhere result in here . . . and . . .
- How would any individuals here that is a copy/duplicate of someone whom either saw and or encountered an alien craft and or even encountered an ‘alien’ have these types of experiences lived/presented here?
Wouldn’t the above scenario result in specific people both ‘seeing’ as well as perhaps at times even photographing alien craft within the original environment, it would also result in some people (and perhaps many) actual having some direct encounters with aliens from other worlds? Wouldn’t it also at (least in some cases (depending on the aliens)) result in specific people/aliens in the original environment even being abducted (and then examined) by some other worldly aliens because they came from another planet . . .
For example, I’ve had a few UFO sighting experiences, the first in my mid teens which I documented here, the second was in my late teens when I was with my parents camping in the ‘Lake District’ which I describe here, and the third one was while driving and was difficult to keep track of (described here) plus years later I had a very, very odd extended experience involving a cloaked UFO docking to a commercial airline plane out of which emerged a lot of little ‘aliens’ whom then proceeded to spend time examining as well as ‘fiddling with’ various passengers during the flight (I describe this experience here).
So, exactly how would these many aliens on many different worlds travelling and then meeting other aliens on other words play out within a duplicated reality where all of those whom were originally spread out over many different planets are now all on one single world while also being represented as ONE SINGLE SPECIES i.e. ‘humans’!!!!
What types of ‘anomalous’ experiences would perhaps end up being presented under these ‘ALL ALIENS FROM MANY WORLDS ARE NOW ALL LIVING ON ONE SINGLE WORLD’ circumstances!?!?!?!?
Just Where Are All The Aliens/Other Intelligent Life Forms Within Our Multiverse Version?
Why is it that some people (including some scientists) are obviously puzzled that we seem to be completely alone here with no signals and or no visible signs of any aliens/any occupied planets indicating that we either have no aliens or that they are all making a massive effort to actually avoid being detected by ourselves . . . ‘OR’ they are all right here NOW, except they are all now interfaced to a single species rather than being interfaced to many different animal species!!!!
It seems obvious (at least to me) that we have people here (maybe a lot of people) whom present themselves as having what I’d describe as ANOMALOUS ‘EXPECTATIONS’ specifically because they seem to expect that we actually should have other occupied worlds i.e. ‘aliens living on other planets’ within out own multiverse i.e. people/peoples/aliens living on some of the other worlds here!!!!
Coincidentally, why is it that we also have loads and loads of what are described as ‘cryptid’ sightings here i.e. in the same way that we have many, many ‘UFO’ sightings i.e. we have many craft seen and recorded which are obviously ‘ALIEN WITH RESPECT TO OUR OWN LEVEL OF TECHNOLOGIES/THE CRAFT THAT WE OURSELVES DESIGN/USE’ . . . . we also have loads and loads of generally one off and or remote sightings of some very different as well as sometimes considered ‘intelligent’ animals/species (because of what they are doing and or how they behave and or because they wear clothes and or a right next to an alien craft) BUT we also consistently (same as for ufo’s) never manage to catch one and or get anything else other than perhaps a blurry photo or come other indirect/vague evidence of these!!!
In other words, we seem to have (relatively speaking) many unusual creature sightings BUT, just like ufo’s they appear, and they then disappear while in most cases just like the UFO’s they also don’t seem to leave behind any consistent evidence/proof of their existence either, which given the estimated 1000’s of sightings of such creatures it’s also ‘statistically’ anomalous that not one is definitively caught!!!!
Coincidentally, on this page here I write of my own very weird/bizarre encounter/sighting of a giant/human sized bat, inclusive of a very weird/suppressing atmosphere such that neither myself nor anyone else I was with actually managed to point this out nor speak about this possibility EVER!!!! So, 5 people walk around with a giant bat in view, at least 2 maybe 3 of these others I’m sure glanced in that direction such they it is highly likely they saw the same . . . BUT we are all ‘magically’ (that’s the best way to accurately describe the ‘group’ response to this) made to be ‘mute’ about the giant bat!!!! Which also strongly suggests that ‘reality’ itself would be actually suppressing people whom have these types of experience/encounter . . . which if we actually are a duplicated population . . . i.e. if we here are copies of other people from somewhere else then how would a ‘hypothetical’ real reality be able to ‘naturally’ present duplicates/copies of others, specifically to have them live out a duplicated life of someone from somewhere else . . .
Just to make all of this even more confusing and bizarre, because I ‘used’ to have a very bad stammer/speech block (in the now distant past) to get rid of this stammer I directed all of my senses to myself and my internal states specifically to try and become aware of the origins/originating circumstances of the stammer (to then ‘rationally’ resolve it) . . . which eventually had me spontaneously gaining access to past lives, actually many many past lives (including a Mayan past life) . . . in tracking through all of these past lives . . . I eventually got to the ‘creation’ of myself as the SUBTLE SOUL BEING I ACTUALLY AM . . . after which I then spent time tracing my entire past history/experience (which coincidentally was within an entire multiverse/many galaxies/worlds scale environment) until I reached ‘myself’ in real time . . . however, what was even more confusing was that this version of ‘myself’ was as a subtle being living within other multiverse that was parallel to this one AND it was from that multiverse in real time REMOTELY ACCESSING & WATCHING/TRACKING MYSELF IN THE MULTIVERSE NEXT DOOR (THIS ONE) . . . so, I’ve known from directly accessing my own ‘original’ form (and many others ‘original’ forms as part of healing sessions in the past) that I and EVERYONE ELSE HERE is a copy of someone else living out a copied life within a very, very different single world/plant environment!!!!
If what I’m describing above is correct then the population we are copies of would have interplanetary, inter world, inter system and galaxy scale trade communications and knowledge . . . such that within our ‘original’ population we’d very likely have regular ‘news’ that would commonly include presentations about interplanetary circumstances as well as regular presentations involving lots of different physical ‘alien/animal forms’ . . . all then missing here (in copied person ‘experiences’ terms) . . . except that ‘here’ we’ve rather a lot of science fiction as both books as well as many, many films and series all of which are not only presenting technologies way beyond our own, but which also include many multiple worlds inhabited by many, many different types of aliens . . . which here are likely read/watched/viewed by many people perhaps for longer than they read ‘news’ sites . . .
How many films and episodes of series involving either alien’s, other worlds and or super high tech did you watch in the last month and or how much more time did you spend watching these compared to watching and or reading ‘news’!!!
Why do we have MANY People Here Claiming to Have been Abducted by Aliens/None Humans
If you have many intelligent beings/aliens spread out over many, many worlds within many different as well as distant to each other solar systems some of which (or even perhaps many) actually have interplanetary and or inter system craft that they are travelling around within, then isn’t it somewhat likely that some of these ‘aliens’ on encountering others on distant worlds may try to make contact and or at then least temporarily interact with any seemingly ‘intelligent’ others!!!
If so, then isn’t it possible that some of these ‘alien’ encounters/contacts and particularly of encounters/contacts between very, very different alien species types could result in some of these people/aliens being taken, perhaps held, even questioned/interrogated, maybe even subjected to some direct physical examination by ‘other worldly’ even aliens within these aliens craft!!!!
So, if you give yourself a little time for the above ‘SINK IN’ . . . then you might eventually realise that as we ourselves would be copies of these people (i.e. we’d be of many different physical i.e. alien to each other species) such that rather then our ‘intelligent’ population here we compromising many different animal/alien species we’ve all been converted into one single human form. Basically we are very likely to ‘originally’ have been a population of many, many different animal/alien species!!!!
It seems to me that our films and series are more accurately representing the original multiverse’s multiple aliens i.e. a population of many, many subtle beings interfaced to many different physical animal forms/avatars population spread out over many different worlds/planets very likely within a vast galaxy and or multi galaxy scale environment . . . hence then we’ve MANY, MANY ‘SPACE/ALIEN’ FILMS/MOVIES/SERIES . . . star trek being one that despite presenting many aliens of obviously many different animal species they are pretty much all presented in a human overcoat!!!!
How many people have been abducted? Well, feedback from polls conducted by abduction researchers suggest that there may be hundreds of thousands, somewhat suggesting that the phenomenon maybe widespread throughout society.
A Duplicated Population Will Absolutely Present Anomalies For Specific Experiences Because They Absolutely HAVE TO BE MADE TO HAPPEN (PART 1)
Any population where each individual’s life is predetermined (because they are actually being made to live out the life of another person at least reasonably accurately), quite simply absolutely cannot avoid presenting some very specific anomalies under some very specific as well as deducible/definable circumstances.
So, in not being brain dead while actually spending some decent time actually THINKING about these possibilities I figured out that there are at least two types of very specific ‘life’ experiences/incidents which are actually very, very likely to result in the presentation of some specific types of anomalies/oddities ‘IF’ we are actually living out a pre-defined life!!!
1) ANOMALIES RELATED TO ENSURING YOU ABSOLUTELY MEET ‘KEY/CRITICAL’ PEOPLE THAT THE PERSON YOU ARE A COPY OF HAD SIGNIFICANT INTERACTIONS WITH
These will include anyone that the person you are simulating had a significant/important meeting with and or long term relationship with as well as key i.e. long term friends (and enemies too).
So, if you reading this where designing this type of duplicated person simulation then just how would you directly or indirectly manipulate/cajole people to orientate/guide them to meet with, spend time with and or become friends and or even start a relationship with some specific person?
HOW WOULD YOU DO THIS?
HINT: Please keep in mind (given everything you’ve read above) that it is very, VERY LIKELY that your entire reality, yourself and every other person here ARE ALL DEFINED BY SOFTWARE. In this respect, arranging for two people to ‘coincidentally’ be in the very same place at the same time while also setting up circumstances to make them likely to not only meet BUT to also start to interact with each other, perhaps wouldn’t actually be too difficult for software to do.
Coincidentally we have many, many people here that have noticed and have written IN DETAIL about the ‘meaningful’ coincidences and synchronicity’s they experienced that very much contributed to ‘guide’ them, while perhaps also emotionally/psychologically PREPARING THEM to meet someone that would became very, very significant to themselves and or of them starting a long term friendship and or relationship!!!!
However, what would take way, way more ‘software’ effort would be to manage/manipulate the people that not only noticed the chain of coincidences and or the emotional and or psychological ‘pointers/primers’ enough to question these AND WRITE ABOUT THEM to have them then:
NOT ACTUALLY ‘QUESTION’ THE BASE NATURE OF ‘REALTY’ ITSELF!!!
So, if your reality is NOT SOFTWARE DEFINED, such that you reading this are then absolutely/utterly free to OPENLY think about anything and everything related to these possibilities . . . then leave this page now (before looking/reading further down the page) and spend time thinking about ‘other’ types of experiences that you’d also either be guided to EITHER ABSOLUTELY EXPERIENCE & OR TO ABSOLUTELY NOT EXPERIENCE, such that these specific experiences would also present anomalies, specifically with respect to people being either incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky!!!!
Some Types of Anomalous Coincidences Suggest That Some People Have A ‘Facilitating’ Neural Implant
If we are a duplicated population that is actually living in less advanced technology circumstances such that we are missing some advanced technologies and particularly neural enhancements within our reality here . . . then isn’t it possible that we’d also some anomalous ‘coincidences’ related to ourselves perhaps simulating someone that has advanced neural implants.
If our population here is actually really a copy of another that not only had inter planetary craft but also interstellar craft too (remember all of the ‘UFO and ‘cryptid’ sightings that we don’t have any ‘official’ recognition of here) such that it’s then likely that at least some of the people here will be a duplicate copy of someone that had some sort of neural enhancements such that for example:
- Someone just thinking in a puzzled way about something or perhaps internally asking questions/making queries about specific things would perhaps have a neural implant automatically searching for and then automatically presenting ourselves with the information they are actually just ‘thinking/musing about and or mentally ‘querying” . . .
- Someone just thinking about someone in some specific way (say via thinking “ahh I really need to speak to XYY”) would again have some neural implant initiate direct communication as in initiate a phone call!!!!
In which case, how would people here whom are a copy of someone whom had either of the above i.e. either automatic access to and pretty much immediate responses from some sort of knowledge/database type AI, and or an implant that automatically dials/setups opens up and initiates some means of communication with the person you are thinking about . . .
Coincidentally in writing the previous coincidences and synchronicity’s section I came across a survey (done by scientists) that listed the most commonly experienced coincidences. The first 3 of which were:
- I think of a question only to have it answered by an external source (i.e. radio, TV), or other people (but before I ask it)
- I think of an idea and hear or see it on the radio, TV, or Internet.
- I think of calling someone, only to have that person unexpectedly call me. . . .
How come that all of the above types of the most commonly recorded coincidences and synchronicity’s very, very strongly suggest that reality itself is automatically as well as very coherently/accurately being ‘responsive’ to very specific people under very specific circumstances . . . which coincidentally are circumstances that would ‘fit’ if certain people here are a copy of someone with some very specific type of neural implant and or communication facilitating AI!!!!
In descending order of frequency, here the other ‘coincidences’ many of which would also likely automatically happen if someone had an AI/system of some specific type automatically facilitating them in particular ways:
- I need something, and the need is then met without my having to do anything.
- I am introduced to people who unexpectedly further my work/career.
- I run into a friend in an out-of-the-way place.
- When my phone rings, I know who is calling without checking the screen or using personalized ring tones.
- Meaningful coincidence helps determine my educational path.
- I think about someone and then that person unexpectedly drops by my house or office, or passes me in the hall or street.
- I experience strong emotions or physical sensations that were simultaneously experienced at a distance by someone I love.
The above itemized lists were taken from here.
I’ve an entire 20+ page i.e. a VERY COMPREHENSIVE series pointing out some of the ‘highly’ anomalous abilities that some people exhibit which can easily be correlated/explained if specific people here are simulating someone with a specific type of neural implant starting here: Evidence we are Simulating People with Hi-Tech Neural Implants although within that series there are some pages going into exceptional detail such as this one: Do you have Spatial Sequence Synesthesia ‘Effects’ Suggestive of a Diary, Appointments & Events Scheduler Neural Implant Enhancement? which makes it unmistakably clear that some people have a diary and appointments implant!!!
However, if we do really/actually have people here whom are actually copies of someone that had one or more neural implants, some of which they’d likely have commonly as well as ‘consciously and or automatically/seamlessly directly accessed/utilised’ maybe often and or in some cases pretty much ALL THE TIME, then it’s actually realistic that anyone here whom actually deliberately and consciously tries to access a specific implant type and also then that implants internal controlling functions and or ‘administration’ level options will perhaps actually find themselves able to do this here.
Coincidentally, in myself thinking about these pretty realistic implant functioning possibilities and then putting up various ‘exercises’ to facilitate/people to attempt to directly access these specific neural implant functionality/options, resulted in myself getting some exceptionally interesting feedback comments from people whom in some cases seemed to be successful in actually gaining some degree of ‘administrative/controlling’ access to some specific neural implant types.
Here are some of the exercise pages from this series which you may find interesting to not only read BUT to also actually work with if you want to attempt to get controlling access to what are likely to be some of the most ‘common’ neural implant types within the original population that we are actually a duplicate/copy of here!!!
- Human Implants Exploration EXERCISES-1+2: Accessing Eyesight/Vision Enhancement, GUI, Heads Up Displays, Controls & Options
- Human Implants Exploration EXERCISE-3: Engaging with Human Sensory & Memory Implant & Enhancements Technologies
I should also point out that the series before this one I wrote some pages giving details of the subtle form which is actually the ‘real’ you that is then interfaced here to the dumb human animal avatar/run around vehicle form which coincidentally most people ‘WRONGLY’ take to be WHO THEY ARE/THEMSELVES . . . in this respect people simulating someone that rarely bothered interfacing to a dumb physical animal vehicle form will (like myself) on finding themselves being forcibly as well as permanently interfaced to a dumb physical animal form . . . not only ‘inconvenient’ BUT a massive piss take too . . .
Is it just me or does anyone else think it odd/suspicious that we seem to be living on a planet/world that seems to be pretty good, if not EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD at having specific people completely focused on and then absolutely absorbed in just ONE SINGLE TYPE OF ANOMALOUS PHENOMENON/EXPERIENCE . . . somewhat then keeping them isolated/distanced/removed from the MANY, MANY OTHER TYPES OF ANOMALOUS PHENOMENON/EXPERIENCES THAT ARE ALSO ‘COMMON’ HERE . . .
Coincidentally, beyond the giant bat, the 3 UFO sightings as well as the weird alien encounter experience (all of which I’ve already mentioned/linked to above) I’ve also seen as well as directly interacted with literally 100’s of dead ‘human’ people as ghost’s (documented here) plus I also got access to and I’ve trawled through 100’s of my own (and others (as a healer therapist)) past life experiences (some specifically documented here) which I initially spontaneously got access to when trying to identify the origins of some specific debilitating as well as persistent/overwhelming feelings/emotions that actually DIDN’T RELATE IN THE SLIGHTEST to my own (and later my clients) current/visible/observable physical human ‘life/circumstances’ BUT actually did with respect to incidents they had in previous lives (I describe my own first past life awareness experience here).
Beyond the above relatively common types of anomalous experiences, I’ve also had loads and loads of nature spirit encounters (spanning pretty much all ‘types and varieties’ of nature spirits and nature elementals, in most cases multiple times too), many of which I’ve documented here.
In this respect, given the diversity of types of anomalous experiences, as well as the vast numbers of some of these experiences I’ve actually had, all of which in a sense gives me way more incentive in terms of actually trying to understand these not only in an individual ‘experience’ sense, BUT also with respect to ‘HOW REALITY WOULD ACTUALLY HAVE TO BE’ and particularly in a CONFIGURATION/DESIGN SENSE to ‘rationally’ account for/explain these too.
All of the above may be even more confounding to some specific people (that ‘imagine’ themselves to be ‘rational) specifically because my original profession was as a medical research scientist. Even worse I was also somewhat recognized as being unbelievably productive and also exceptionally accurate/competent too while also being multi-skilled (software programmer, systems analysis while also being a semi expert in statistics) such that I was made the manager of a university central resources facility, the Biomedical Mass Spectrometry Unit!!!!
How Come We Have a Fair Number of People Whom Don’t ‘ACCEPT’ that the Earth Is a Globe/Round?!?!?
” . . . only about 82.5 percent of millennials (as YouGov called 18–24-year-olds) agreed with “I have always believed the world is round . . “
How come Terry Pratchett of the very funny (as well as very, very globally well read) Disc World series of books, all of which are ‘coincidentally’ set on an entirely flat world) was actually proceeded by an earlier book called ‘Strata’, within which we have described in detail the efforts/work of strata ‘engineers’ laying down the geographical strata/bedrock (which coincidentally would be a pre-requisite preparation if someone was to actually not just design BUT actually build a disc world).
How come Terry Pratchett Disc World series of books has as an integral part of it’s main cities population lots and lots of both Dwarf’s as well as Trolls, which are coincidentally the forms here of the anomalous nature spirits whom specifically are associated with a worlds geology/bedrock i.e. it’s ‘STRATA’!!!!
Wouldn’t it be logical that for any artificial ‘disc’ world, you’d absolutely have to ensure that the actual bedrock/strata would include plenty of the likes of metal rich veins/ores for the disc world residents to get access to and to mine and or then use to make various tools. Maybe tools like knives and forks as well as perhaps swords and or then protective helmets, both of which are coincidentally items that are a favourite of the Dwarf’s!!! Although wouldn’t they also have to make sure that the strata included caches of gems and diamonds too, which are also a favourite of dwarfs, although for some exceptionally precious ore’s they’d likely have to guard these, so they’d be found and used by the right ‘tyrant’ – haha, just that you’d perhaps also have the odd Troll guarding the gold rich areas!!!!!
Strangely, I’ve not seen any ‘flat world’ focused web site mention the possibility that they are then perhaps relating to themselves living on some sort of artificial flat ‘disc’ world!?!?!?!
Now, in doing a search for flat earth depictions/images and finding the above (and the two images on the left and right here), then those ‘somehow/oddly’ reminded me of a specific ‘Tree of Life’ image which I then searched for and found again (It’s on the right and below here).
However, given that previous pages of this series (starting here) had me describing in detail some of the serious problems of interfacing an immortal subtle form to any type of very short lived animal species to use as a remote vehicle avatar/physical reality ‘exploration’ probe which it also has to remember to properly look after properly as (for example) it has to regularly eat as well as sleep way longer than the subtle form while also having to learn to ‘navigate’ around as well as ‘survive’ within an exceptionally different as well as highly ‘dangerous/alien’ physical environment.
What problems might androgynous/asexual subtle beings living within an exceptionally safe as well as single species only environment encounter when finding themselves interfaced to some exceptionally different as well as short lived i.e. it AGES & THEN DIES/PEGS OUT QUITE QUICKLY alien animal avatar/remote vehicle that not only lives within an exceptionally different day and night and also seasonally changing/challenging environment, BUT it’s also filled with many. many different types of poisonous and or dangerous life forms!!!!
NOW, given that the original circumstances of the people we are copies of lived within a very high tech subtle culture . . . then doesn’t it seem reasonable that they’d be competent enough as well as CONCERNED ENOUGH ABOUT THEIR SUBTLE PEOPLE ENOUGH perhaps to design and build flat (artificial gravity supported) physical disc worlds, which they’d then be able to populate with just the plant and animal species that they themselves chose!?!?!?! I.e. the none poisonous, none dangerous ones!!!!
Please note that this specific image is almost presenting two trees in one with the upper tree being focused on the branches and leaves, specifically depicted as being dispersed through the air well beyond the scope of the tree canopy itself while the seemingly separate lower tree form is also presenting a root system/network that is extensive/far reaching too . . .
let me remind you that ‘for the most part’ the image on the right here is how most of us ‘see’ a tree and how most of us would ‘imagine’ a tree if we we’re asked to think of one. In most instances, a small number of people might imaging a few sparse roots showing at the base of the tree BUT definitely not to the extent of what the tree of life and or tree of knowledge images depict!!!!
So, a pertinent question at this point is this . . .
“Why do we have many. many instances of the use of a very specific circular full upper and lower ‘tree’ image used to represent a ‘tree of life’ as well as a ‘tree of knowledge’ too!!!”
Why are all ‘Tree Of Life’ images (on the right here) and also those depicting the ‘Tree Of Knowledge’ (see the image below) always being consistently presented specifically in the very same compressed miss-shaped form, specifically so that each depicted tree is pretty much always presented to include the upper canopy as well as an extensive root system in such a way that each tree image is deliberately distorted by being made to fully encompass/fill most of the circumference space of the entire flat circle!!!!
Coincidentally in such a way, that it often ends up representing a dome or even a full globe space, hence then it seems to me that the tree of life and tree of knowledge are ‘symbolic’ of the actual full scale of KNOWLEDGE/EXPERTISE that span all PHYSICAL LIFE/HABITATS/ENVIRONMENTS i.e. they are symbolically depicting everything living in the air, on the surface and or underground as vegetation as well as fauna of likely all life forms of likely many different physical worlds/planets.
Coincidentally, wouldn’t this be the scale of physical habitats as well as all animal and plant life forms knowledge which you’d absolutely have to accumulate as well as understand if you decided to design and build an artificial disc world to very specifically populate this with species of flora and fauna that would be ‘safe’ (or as safe as possible) i.e. both none dangerous and or none poisonous with respect to the animal form (or forms) that you’d then specifically chose to populate your disc world’s physical environment so that it would be as safe i.e. as ‘none dangerous’ as possible for your subtle population to be interfaced to specific physical form to have a ‘physical’ environment experience in a place that would absolutely minimise dangerous and or potentially traumatic events, like being eaten by a tiger, fox or hawk species and or of dying from eating something poisonous and or drinking contaminated and or unsafe water!!!
Let me try and make what I’m trying to explain here as plain and as clear as possible!!!
From my perspective, each of the tree of knowledge/tree of life ‘symbols’ are each ‘representing’ the knowledge & expertise needed to design & construct an entire flat physical disc world. This would require that they lay down strata/bedrock on top of which they’d have to define the surface landscape inclusive of likely a variety of different habitats, inclusive of mountain ranges, valleys & plains as well as the likes of lakes, ponds, bogs as well as streams and rivers, all of which will lead to seas. Each different habitat/region will have to be populated with and an appropriate diversity of plant and animal species of types that will likely pose the least problems/dangers to any subtle/soul/spirit form whom choose to and spent time interface to some physical animal avatar to have a physical ‘life’ experience . . .
Each Different Nature Spirit Form Represents a Subtle ‘Expert’ of Some Specific Physical World Phenomenon
Hence . . . we have presented within our likely software defined Earth world what are commonly called nature spirits which bizarrely are often only seen by some very specific people ‘personally’ and often only within some very specific natural environment habitat/setting i.e. (from my own personal experience) while others with them (in the same place at the same time) don’t see or ‘feel’ anything.
For example, a specific water spirit form I would always specifically see associated with a flowing stream environment while I would see a different nature spirit type/form associated with a small lake, a large natural pool and or a pond type environment. I’ve always seen fairies associated with vegetation and specifically with flowering plants, while dwarfs for example are always associate with the earth and the underground such that they I’d often see them in places where the earth has been disturbed or where there are holes or entrances underground. Trolls I’ve only seen in places associated with rocky outcrops/cliffs that often have cave entrances!!!!
In other words a specific nature spirit is pretty much always associated with the exact same natural environment place/phenomenon specifically because it seems to me that they are each representing a subtle form/person whom is actually an ‘expert’ i.e. it is EXCEPTIONALLY KNOWLEDGEABLE in some specific physical life phenomenon/environment and or habitat.
For those that have a tendency to become ‘mentally’ retarded when being presented with ‘facts’ that are beyond their own scale of experience AND OR of things that they cannot be bothered to ‘REALLY’ take in and or make an effort to understand then let me point out how I became aware of these forms . . .
. . . because I ‘used’ to have a very bad stammer and speech block, then in my early 20’s (in the now very distant past) I consistently made an effort to pretty much permanently direct and hold my attention on my internal states and inner sensations specifically to try and become aware of the past origins/originating circumstances of my severe stammer/speech/speaking problems . . . which eventually, after literally years of daily effort (for example) had me gaining spontaneous access to past lives . . . in tracking through 100’s of these I eventually got access to myself as a white transparent form which I eventually figured out was of myself as the SUBTLE SOUL BEING I ACTUALLY AM, BUT IN THE PROCESS OF ACTUALLY BEING ‘CREATED’. . . I then spent time tracing forward from this experience through my entire past history/time line of experience (which coincidentally turned out to be within an entire alternative multiverse/many galaxies/worlds and planets scale environment) until I eventually reached ‘myself’ (the person I am a copy of here) in real time . . . however, what was exceptionally confusing at this point was that when I reached ‘myself/the person I’m a duplicate of’ within this ‘multiverse next door’ environment I became aware that it was actually directly aware of and had been accessing and watching/tracking ‘ME’ here (and also others here too) in real time i.e. it was REMOTELY ACCESSING & WATCHING/TRACKING MYSELF WITHIN THE MULTIVERSE NEXT DOOR (i.e. ‘OUR’ MULTIVERSE) . . . hence then in myself being a DUPLICATE OF THIS FORM, whom is then LIVING OUT A COPY OF THAT FORMS LIFE/EXPERIENCE . . . which then coincidentally includes it being aware that it has a version a COPY OF ITSELF living within another MV, such that it then makes an effort to remotely access and VIEW/CHECK UP ON IT’S OTHER VERSION HERE, EVERY SO OFTEN, which just so happens to me ‘ME’ HERE . . . such that this then makes it unbelievably likely (because in myself being a copy of and hence then living out my original forms experience) that I’ll end up doing the same and find myself becoming aware of our larger scale reality configuration while also eventually becoming aware we are a copied population such that I automatically end up doing the same as ‘IT/MY ORIGINAL FORM’ . . . such that I very bizarrely end up getting access to and become directly aware of another version of myself within another multiverse . . . hence then, because I directly accessed/engaged with what I call my ‘original form’ (as well as some others ‘original’ forms too, specifically as part of exploring peoples past within healing sessions) making myself directly absolutely aware that myself and EVERYONE ELSE HERE are all a copy of someone else.
The ‘bottom line’ to what I describe above, is that everyone here is not only living out an already predefined life BUT that this is happening within a very, very different and also cut down/limited single world/planet environment here i.e. ‘Earth’!!!!
Each significant difference between the original environment, our original culture and also individual circumstances/experiences ‘there’ when compared to our single world circumstances and our cultures as well as ourselves as individuals and our individual circumstances ‘here’ are very likely to result in the presentation of anomalous phenomena, anomalous personal experiences as well as anomalous ‘beliefs’ here too.
In some cases (such as for the nature spirits and ghosts for example) only specific people are allowed to see/perceive and or ‘feel/sense’ these (others in the same place at the same time, even looking in the right direction don’t see, feel or sense anything) specifically because ‘whatever’ any specific person sees/feels/senses actually relates to some original circumstances/experiences that are likely either SPECIFIC TO THEM & OR A FEW PEOPLE ONLY i.e. some very specific experiences are deliberately presented to an ‘individual/small group’ ONLY, and ‘NOT’ as part of the ‘shared/consensus/perceived by everyone’ larger reality.
Coincidentally I’ve a degree in Plant Biology, i.e. a subject that directly correlates with all ‘natural’ plant habitats and environments here. However, my first actual ‘real’ job was as a Junior Medical Research Associate within the Department of Clinical Bio-Chemistry & Metabolic Medicine, (research papers I contributed to can be found here).
My first direct ‘sighting’ of nature spirits was at a specific place that was on the boundary area of a regimented pine forest presenting a very open pine tree area (with some mixed undergrowth/scrub bushes) that was also very close to and in some cases merged with a very mixed woodland area that I made an effort to walk through likely 2 or 3 times a year.
At some point during these regular visits I directly noticed/felt/became more and more aware of what I can only describe as a ‘distinct’ atmosphere (almost of a ‘thick/strong’ atmosphere/presence of silence and tranquillity). Each time I visited the atmosphere got stronger, more definitive and palpable, however I also very gradually also started to feel distinct ‘presences’ within this place/space and then very definitely 2 or 3 presences each time I went and sat for a while there.
On then meeting someone whom was both exceptionally sensitive and aware and taking her to this place then with her the ‘energetics/sensations/atmosphere’ amplified enormously such that we found ourselves within a protected area with such strong barriers around ourselves that it was ‘interestingly’ difficult trying to pass through these. The first form I saw was a version of the green many with very small swig antlers, the ‘protector’ form the Black Knight on a black horse appeared and then finally Hern the Hunter turned up. It was all exceptionally intense as the Hern the Hunter form in a sense directly interfaced to and hence then temporarily possessed my friend specifically to directly speak to me through my friend Joan while also then passing to myself what I could only describe as a ‘Cup of Knowledge’ (it would have been invisible to anyone else) which I had to drink from (it was freezing/icy cold).
The above is all described in more detail on this page here. I specifically describe this as an ‘awakening’ experience (which it certainly was for someone with a university research background!!!!).
Coincidentally, in that all academic medicine research here is all completely focused on the remote physical avatar vehicle while pretty much studiously ignoring even the possibility of ourselves actually having a subtle/soul/spirit body then this means that there is nothing here (in university academic terms) that directly correlates with subtle body anatomy and or diagnosis, never mind treatments. Hence then anyone here that is simulating someone that was actually not only directly familiar with subtle body anatomy and structures as well as of the diagnosis of subtle body ailments/problems and or the healing/treatments of these may perhaps find themselves having the same sort of bizarre internal parallel experience presentations that I myself was subjected to.
Hence then, on this page here, I describe myself doing my medical research lab work while also becoming directly as well as intimately aware of a separate ‘minds eye’ version of myself investigating, diagnosing and then making alterations to it’s own subtle/soul body coincidentally while I was doing my human body focused research work/investigations!!!!
The above ‘weird’ experience happened sometime in my early to mid 20’s (about a decade before my nature spirit awakening experience). However, this was during the time that I was becoming more and more ‘sensitive’ due to my internal states/inner sensations orientation efforts, focused on trying to track down and become aware of anything within my past that was directly or indirectly contributing to my present/current stammer and speech block . . . I became aware that I was having my subtle body form sensitivity ‘adjusted’ such that I could if I wanted to either switch my increasing sensitivity on or off AND or rather than be directly impacted and or disturbed by my increasing awareness and lets say my ‘increasing/amplifying’ senses (which sometimes had myself quite ‘disturbed’) I could actually select to have these dialed down and or negated completely (so I was not impacted by them) BUT these sensations/awareness’s were then actually replaced with an internal visual icon (‘representing’ that sensation, feeling or ‘atmosphere’). I’m being very serious about this, this is not a joke!!!
It was only when writing/re-writing the above section that I remembered the visual ‘icons’, I’d completely forgotten about them. I actually made a decision to switched them off ages ago, also I’ve been keeping to myself and hence then have managed to avoid circumstances where I’d be at risk of picking up ‘shit/disturbing’ things anyway!!!!
With respect to the above, it shouldn’t be much a surprise that about a decade after the ‘subtle form re-wiring experience I left the University to become a ‘healer/therapist’ i.e. someone very much focused on the functioning of as well as the ailments/problems of the subtle form and how to deal with these rather than with the ailments/health issues associated with the more easily observed remote human avatar vehicle form!!!!
So, if you have a lot of explored and or well researched (in habitat and specie terms) planets, trading posts and or mining colonies such that you then eventually decide to design and build one or more disk worlds then these will very likely be specifically setup/designed to offer a few, perhaps many different physical environmental spaces, however, most of these are likely to be of sanitized/safe environments/habitats despite being based on some specific planets surface environment/habitat . . .
How Might an Environmental Habitat Disc World Relate to any of the Ancient ‘Ark’ Myth’s
Which with respect to early ‘myths’ has me thinking about and then trying to translate as well as ‘relate’ versions of Noah’s Ark as perhaps actually describing a disc world . . . perhaps setup because there was RATHER A LOT i.e. perhaps ‘A FLOOD’ of subtle beings, all wanting to have a physical environment experience which would coincidentally result in rather a lot of animals having to be found to be used as ‘hosts/avatars’ for the subtle forms to be interfaced to . . . WOULDN’T THEY!!!!
In checking out wikipedia for pages on Noah’s Ark . . . I was a little taken back to find a fair number of different cultures versions of the same which at first glance seem to me to perhaps relate to the efforts of different subtle cultures perhaps intent of finding enough and then transporting some specific types of physical animals specifically to accommodate interfacing all of those in the subtle that wanted to have a full physical environment, physical animal form ‘experience’ . . .
- That the word ‘Ark’ is maybe describing a disc world?!?!?!
- That the use of and or need to an ‘Ark’ may be part of efforts to locate and then transport/deliver as many physical ‘animals’ of maybe different but specific types specifically for them to be used as remote avatars for all of the subtle forms that wanted to be interfaced into the physical!!!!
- That the ‘flood’ perhaps/possibly relates to being a large number, a lot i.e. a ‘flood’ of subtle forms all very keen on having a physical experience, which would then require that an equivalent number of physical animal forms would have to be found to accommodate interfacing all the subtle forms whom are keen on having a physical experience!?!?!?!
Below here is a Rabbinic Judaism version of the Ark, can everyone have a read of this and leave any insights/ideas ‘and’ particularly with respect to the possibilities I list above!!!!
The story of the flood closely parallels the story of the creation: a cycle of creation, un-creation, and re-creation, in which the ark plays a pivotal role. The universe as conceived by the ancient Hebrews comprised a flat disk-shaped habitable earth with the heavens above and Sheol, the underworld of the dead, below. These three were surrounded by a watery “ocean” of chaos, protected by the firmament, a transparent but solid dome resting on the mountains which ringed the earth. Noah’s three-deck ark represents this three-level Hebrew cosmos in miniature: the heavens, the earth, and the waters beneath. In Genesis 1, God created the three-level world as a space in the midst of the waters for humanity; in Genesis 6–8 (the flood narrative) he fills that space with waters again, saving only Noah, his family and the animals with him in the ark.
Talmudic tractates Sanhedrin, Avodah Zarah, and Zevahim relate that, while Noah was building the ark, he attempted to warn his neighbors of the coming deluge, but was ignored or mocked. In order to protect Noah and his family, God placed lions and other ferocious animals to guard them from the wicked who tried to stop them from entering the ark. According to one Midrash, it was God, or the angels, who gathered the animals to the ark, together with their food. As there had been no need to distinguish between clean and unclean animals before this time, the clean animals made themselves known by kneeling before Noah as they entered the ark. A differing opinion said that the ark itself distinguished clean animals from unclean, admitting seven pairs each of the former and one pair each of the latter.
According to Sanhedrin 108b, Noah was engaged both day and night in feeding and caring for the animals, and did not sleep for the entire year aboard the ark. The animals were the best of their species, and so behaved with utmost goodness. They abstained from procreation, so that the number of creatures that disembarked was exactly equal to the number that embarked. The raven created problems, refusing to leave the ark when Noah sent it forth and accusing the patriarch of wishing to destroy its race, but as the commentators pointed out, God wished to save the raven, for its descendants were destined to feed the prophet Elijah.
According to one tradition, refuse was stored on the lowest of the ark’s three decks, humans and clean beasts on the second, and the unclean animals and birds on the top; a differing interpretation described the refuse as being stored on the utmost deck, from where it was shovelled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, said to be as bright as the noon sun, provided light, and God ensured that food remained fresh. Some more unorthodox interpretations of the ark narrative also surfaced: the 12th-century Jewish commentator Abraham ibn Ezra interpreted the ark as being a vessel that remained underwater for 40 days, after which it floated to the surface.
After having written the above and then having time to think about these possibilities more, I now feel that the Noah’s Ark story could perhaps be symbolic of specifically having entire surface parts of the original multiverses inhabited planets as well as different areas from inhabited disc worlds where people lived being copied and pasted over and stitched together to make up the entire surface features of our Earth planet here (both on land and under sea).
This would actually be very realistic and specifically as part of efforts to have groups of incarnated people having an earth physical life experience that offers a similar ‘habitat/environment and or landscape’, while also being populated with similar animal and plant species while also presenting an equivalent climate, seasonal changes as well as perhaps some specific types of unusual weather related phenomenon (such as tornadoes for example or unusual tides and or places that consistently flood . . . ??) such that all copied versions of subtle people originally interfaced/living on a physical world could then each live an incarnated life on earth ‘somewhere’ that would at least ‘feel’ and or be similar/familiar to what the person they are a copy of experienced/lived within the original MV because the place here would by and large have been designed to as closely as possible ‘represent’ the physical place that was a consistent part of their experience within the original multiverse.
The above having to supply an equivalent earth ‘environment/habitat/landscape species types and or climate’ relating to possibly many many different planetary environments/landscapes possibility is not only realistic, it’s seems exceptionally likely that this has been done here, specifically because from a geological point of view, at least certain people have pointed out that pretty much the entire surface of the earth is anomalous specifically because it seems to actually be made up from a vast number of stitched together patches i.e. from a geological perspective it literally appears as if the surface of the earth is made up from bits and pieces of different sizes of different surface features that have been stitched together very much like a patchwork quilt . . .
The Anomalous ‘One Strange Rock’ Series That Avoids Mentioning Any Consistently Observed Earth Anomalies
Did anyone reading this watch the first series of ‘One Strange Rock’???
Did anyone that did watch this actually notice what was actually super/ultra ‘STRANGE’ about this specific production?!?!?
Well, in myself watching all of season one, I absolutely didn’t notice anything presented that actually ever directly (or even indirectly) pointed out even one of the enormous numbers of unbelievably strange phenomena that our exceptionally strange/weird planet actually persistently presents!!!
A Duplicated Population Will Absolutely Present Anomalies Because Some Pre-Defined Experiences Absolutely HAVE TO BE MADE TO HAPPEN (PART 2)
In PART 1 above, I described the coincidences and synchronicity’s that many people experience which are part of efforts to ‘guide’ themselves to ensure that they meet some very specific person, because this person is predefined to either be a good friend (or maybe an enemy) or is someone they pre-defined to start a long term relationship with.
However, there is another very specific experience type that in either absolutely having to happen, as well as ABSOLUTELY NOT ACTUALLY HAPPENING FOR VERY SPECIFIC PEOPLE will also very, very definitely result in the presentation of some very specific anomalies.
These specific anomalies will be presented during experiences involving a ‘serious’ accident.
If you are a copy of someone that had an accident that actually resulted in yourself being hurt/injured/damaged in some way then the circumstances of any duplicated accident/event here will very likely have to be exceptionally manipulated to ensure that specific people involved in some accident absolutely do have an ‘equivalent’ accident and or injury while specific OTHERS will absolutely be manipulated in attempts to ensure that they absolutely aren’t significantly hurt or injured even if they are actually involved in a very serious/bad accident!!!
The same ‘duplicated reality having to result in the same outcome problem’ would also apply to anyone wanting to commit suicide too!!!!
When I first thought of these possibilities and mentioned them to a few others one friend recounted that they’d tried to commit suicide. They drank loads of alcohol while taking loads of pills (in combinations and amounts known to work), however, they were somewhat perturbed to find that they didn’t die, such that on waking up with very few detrimental effects, they then tried again (twice) each time using more and more of the same items that (for anyone else, even perhaps an elephant/under normal circumstances would have worked).
They then tried jumping off a very tall cliff onto rocks, to again be perturbed to find that they survived with I think just one broken bone!!!
I also know someone that misjudged while driving into a motorway on ramp, such that they managed to smash through or drive over the side barrier which had them plunging onto the motorway below, but in such a way that the car literally cart wheeled/bounced head over tail across both sides of a busy motorway (during rush hour) somehow missing all cars in all lanes to eventually came to a rest well into the field on the other side after which he and his passenger both walked away with just minor injuries!!!!
In other words if we are in a duplicated reality then you can deduce that some people will be incredibly lucky with respect to them being involved in some sort of serious accident while some others will actually be exceptionally unlucky.
Which Anomalies Would Suggest We’re a Much Smaller Sub Population Compared to the Original Full Multiverse Population?
Because (as I’ve described above) we have many, many, many alien craft sightings (inclusive of many photographs) as well as substantial numbers of a lot of very different cryptid i.e. ‘alien to the earth’ species that also seem to be specifically presented/experienced as ‘personal to the individual’ here (i.e. only very specific people experience these) then both of these types of consistent/regularly encountered anomalies actually directly imply that the original population that we are all duplicates of has a very high probability of being spread out over many, many different worlds/planets AND hence then is highly likely to be way, way larger than our current MV’s ‘apparent’ entire population which all seems to be crammed onto one single planet.
Coincidentally, if you think about this for a while, then a ‘reduced/smaller’ population circumstances implies that we are very likely to be ‘missing’ RATHER A LOT OF THE ORIGINAL POPULATION . . . such that . . . if we are actually ‘REALLY’ a duplicated population (or are ‘supposed to be’) then it seems to me that we are very, very likely to be missing perhaps a substantial number of people!!!!
The bottom line to the above is this . . . ‘IF’ we are a duplicated population, BUT rather than having the full, very, very large population here spread out and living within maybe an entire galaxy (or more) . . . then what sort of interaction ‘anomalies’ would be presented here ‘IF’ we REALLY ARE a much smaller sub set of a much larger population all now living in circumstances where possibly a lot of people that the person we are a copy of met and interacted within the ‘original’ full multiverse circumstances are now missing, i.e. they ARE NOT PRESENT HERE?!?!?!
As, I’ve mentioned elsewhere here, pretty much everyone on Earth here/within the EAAS/our fake software defined reality seems to be a ‘key’ person i.e. pretty much everyone here was important in some way within the original Multiverse, either as a leader and or diplomat and or as an expert/advisor/key bureaucrat/trader/scientist and or local community leader and or someone very competent whom was otherwise associated with these people . . .
So, quite a while ago (many, many years ago now) I realised that because we are copied/duplicated people supposedly living out a pre-defined i.e. duplicated life/timeline then many of our predefined interactions (i.e. people our original forms within the original MV interacted with at times) are actually NOT HERE, i.e. they are missing in our single earth world planet version . . . hence then, during specific interactions here that represent some ‘function’ involving perhaps a much greater variety of people that we have here, such that specific people are NOT ACTUALLY HERE, i.e. they CANNOT BE INTERACTED WITH because they are absent/missing here!!!!
In which case during such ‘functions/parties/meeting’ which represent times/places/events where we’d have met and interacted with some specific person, BUT that person ISN’T ACTUALLY HERE to be interacted with, then what happens!?!?!?!
When I first became aware of the ‘missing people’ possibility (many years ago now) this actually made sense to me because during some interactions with some specific people at parties (in the very distant past) I ‘noticed’ (and was actually quite shocked at the time) that during some very specific interactions I actually found myself behaving very, VERY differently (I’m also pretty sure that I even noticed that my body language seemed to be different too)!?!?!?!
Basically, the bottom line was that while interacting with some ‘very specific people’ I found myself being presented/behaving/moving/speaking in ways that very much:
>> DIDN’T REPRESENT ME/MYSELF/WHO I WAS & HOW I WAS THEN!!! <<
In other words, I seemed to temporarily be being made to APPEAR TO BE & MADE TO BEHAVE AS IF WAS ‘SOMEONE ELSE’ . . . at least, when I was interacting with some very specific individuals.
However, unfortunately, it is very likely that I only ‘noticed’ these bizarreness’s because before going to these specific parties/events I’d likely spent about decade or more of between 3 to 6 hours a day working on myself specifically to directly access and investigate the origins of any ‘odd’ feelings as well as various internal states/sensations, such that, over this time I gradually became exceptionally sensitive to and hence then very, very ‘aware’ of myself, including my behaviour’s and functioning as well as my internal states and hence then I was actually very aware of my ‘normal’ functioning/presentation/behaviours when interacting with others!!!
However, after writing and then thinking about the ‘MISSING PEOPLE’ possibility above, I ‘now’ think that this ‘FILLING IN FOR MISSING PEOPLE’ software effort wasn’t actually ‘really’ about ‘missing people’, rather, it was about having an excuse to specifically define ‘interactions’ software/routines that require having access to and manipulate/use a lot of aspects/functions of our software defined physical body form very, VERY COMPREHENSIBLY, (including, perhaps even on a hormonal level, as well as via body language/physical body presentation and persona/personality too) be able to access and manipulate people in very comprehensive ways inclusive of hijacking people and changing there responses/behaviours and or attitudes/temperament as well as even internal physical body states too (as part of base body language presentations)!!!
After having a think recently, it seems to me that we ‘currently’ have yet another ‘missing people’ network version, which is currently actively working to restore and or then maintain people in their usual shit/effects/debilitations, specifically because this network has to access and manipulate people to such a degree that they can be made to behave as if they are someone else!!!!
In this respect, I’m pretty sure that the current ‘shit’ version we are dealing with is another version of the missing people shit (which used yet another ‘specific’ group of people I call the Nyssa’s to define/test/make work/refine the missing people ‘tech/shit’) with very, very comprehensive as well as ‘base’ access to ourselves!!!!
The Don’t Let Anyone Notice Their Own Odd, Out Of Character, Alternate Personality Presentations/Experiences!!!
It seems to me that because at least some of these alternate/not ourselves presentations while interacting with specific people are actually spectacularly ‘outrageous’ (at least with some very specific people) that an integral part of the base functioning of the ‘missing people/comprehensive human body manipulation software/networks’ are very, very likely to include means to have ourselves NOT TAKE NOTICE OF THESE BIZARRENESS’S TOO!!!
In other words, the missing people shit very likely include direct manipulations/efforts to make people/your reading this as unaware of themselves as possible, so that they don’t then notice that THEY THEMSELVES ARE BEING ‘PUPPETED/MANIPULATED’ TO MAKE THEM INTO ‘SOMEONE ELSE’ DURING INTERACTIONS WITH SPECIFIC PEOPLE/OTHERS!!!
So, overall, I’m pretty sure that it is these missing people networks/shit that are being investigated and dealt with now!!!
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Noa Giniger | Guy Goldstein | Gaston Zvi Ickowicz | Tomer Sapir
Curator: Avi Lubin
23.10.10 – 05.11.10
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 23rd, 2010 at 19:00
The group exhibition Grandfather Paradox was first exhibited at Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, in July 2010. After visiting the exhibition in Tel Aviv, German artist Dagmar Rauwald invited Mrs. Nira Itzhaki from Chelouche Gallery and the curator of the show, Mr. Avi Lubin, to collaborate and exhibit it in Hamburg as a first Step of an interchange and commentary project with German and Israeli Artists.
The grandfather Paradox is a time-travel paradox that asks: suppose a man travels back in time and kills his grandfather, and thus prevents his own birth. How can he travel back in time and kill his grandfather?
The solutions offered by scientists to this paradox are diverse. Some argue that time travel can only be possible to the future and not to the past, so that there won’t be a paradoxical contravention between the present and the past; others suggest parallel universes that allow the existence of different narratives, even contradicting ones. “Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis” claims that traveling back in time can only be possible to singular points at the center of a black hole, where the laws of physics are not valid and there is no meaning to causality and what happened first. There is an irony to this hypothesis. The universe dictates a cosmic censorship: the scientist who manages to go back in time to a black-hole will never be able to come back and report.
Guy Goldstein, Timetable, 2010, Sound installation, radio parts, MDF, metal, 172X94X80 cm
The paradoxical reality of our lives is characterized by frequent attacks on binary thinking (good and bad, life and death, present and absent) and on elemental relations between past, present and future. Our encounters with the fragmented and distorted present have a volume and surplus of past and future. In this structure of temporality and lack of coherence, reality is only a possible (but inessential) form of the appearance of things.
The works of Gaston Zvi Ickowicz, Guy Goldstein, Noa Giniger and Tomer Sapir, four Israeli artists who employ various media and materialistic languages, raise questions regarding the ability to think in terms of causality, linear time-line, and clear, unequivocal reality. Through acts of dismantling, blurring, imitating and distorting, the works challenge the possibility of continuous coherent presence. These actions and the discussion in terms that suit the fragmented present provide the necessary spring board to envision the ways in which one can resist the hegemonic narrative, the “official story”.
Noa Giniger, Leaving Living, 2005, video work, 10.30 min. in loop
Tomer Sapir, Overturned Cryptid, 2008,Cement, salt, wax, fibers of Ceiba insignis fruits, latex
The Grandfather Paradox exhibition in Hamburg will be shown in parallel with project LEA, which includes German and Israeli actors and dancers, and has been developed over two years. Later this year a dialog will start between four artist-duos (Israeli/German), from which will follow a second exhibition in Hamburg in March 2011. This exhibition will be shown also in Israel in 2011.
Gaston Zvi Ickowicz, From the Dry series (2) 2007 -2008 Inkjet print 52X66 cm |
I know summer isn’t officially over until the autumnal equinox rolls around mid-September, but by the time the calendar reads August 31, I’m already thinking fall. My husband and I will be closing our pool this coming weekend, Halloween stuff is stocked in most every store I visit, and the days are growing noticeably shorter. I live in the northeast where summer is much, much too short. Blink and it’s easy to miss. I love fall, but I thrive on summer. So…I’m lamenting the demise of my favorite season with an end of summer sale on SOLSTICE ISLAND, my breezy romantic adventure novella. Many thanks to all my friends and fellow bloggers who are helping me spread the word today and tomorrow!
Why should you read SOLSTICE ISLAND (other than the fact it’s like a shot of summer wrapped up inside Kindle pages)? I’m glad you asked. 🙂
The Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Read Solstice Island by Mae Clair:
- You’ll meet a hot charter boat captain trying to live down his family legacy.
- You’ll encounter a spunky heroine cryptozoologist, determined hot captain should embrace said family legacy and all the baggage that goes with it.
- You’ll be able to impress your friends with your stunning new knowledge of cryptozoology.
- You may find yourself struck by the uncontrollable urge to look up blurry images of strange creatures online or go on a cryptid hunt (think Loch Ness, Big Foot, and the Jersey Devil).
- You’ll learn why you should never ignore a craving for mint chocolate chip ice cream.
- The next time your boat is attacked by a rampaging sea monster, you’ll know precisely what to do.
- You’ll be swept up in a tale of romance, adventure, and folklore.
- You’ll uncover buried treasure, thwart a villain, and discover a new use for a boat oar.
- As a 72 page novella, SOLSTICE ISLAND makes a quick end of summer read.
And the number one reason you should read SOLSTICE ISLAND:
- It’s FREE on Amazon August 31 and September 1!
SOLSTICE ISLAND Blurb:
Can an ancient leviathan work magic between a practical man and an idealistic woman?
Rylie Carswell is an amateur cryptozoologist in search of a mythical creature, the Sea Goliath. In order to reach Solstice Island, a location the ancient leviathan is rumored to haunt, she’s forced to hire charter boat captain, Daniel Decatur.
Initially, Daniel wants nothing to do with the trip or the fool woman waving double payment in his face. Convinced she’s yet another loony treasure hunter looking for gold on the remote island, he reluctantly agrees. An embittered neighbor wants to have his charter license yanked, so the extra cash will help him stay afloat.
It doesn’t take long for Daniel to realize Rylie is after the same beast his parents were tracking when they mysteriously vanished ten years earlier. He’s avoided all links to cryptozoology ever since, but the smart and sexy cryptid hunter has him second-guessing his oath and wondering what he’s signed on for.
Warning: A family legacy, glowing plankton and rough waters.
Download SOLSTICE ISLAND Free from:
Add SOLSTICE ISLAND to your Goodreads TBR |
This post is part of a series on reading women 2019 hosted by Lonely Cryptid Media’s Narrative Designer, Dan Michael Fielding.
July’s People is a short, poignant little book about the perils of liberal claims to equality in Apartheid South Africa.
What first drew me to Nadine Gordimer’s book was the time it takes place in: apartheid. Apartheid in South Africa is a period I know relatively little about, as it was never part of my education growing up in the United States. After reading this book…I still don’t know that much about it! But I do feel more connected to the human effects of an extreme inequality.
July’s People follows the titular July (a name given to him by his white masters) and the Smales family as they escape a city at war. Blacks are revolting against the apartheid regime and the city is burning, and the Smales fear for their young children.
July leads them to his home village, where he hides them and cares for them while the war wages on back in the city.
The Smales find themselves thrust into a world they are only vaguely aware of. They have always viewed themselves as upstanding liberals–they believe, strongly, that they have treated July as an equal as much as possible. But upon arriving in his village the Smales, and in particular Maureen Smales, wife and mother, realize that the equality they thought they shared was a thin veneer hiding deeper troubles. At the end of the day the Smales, as white people, still benefited from apartheid while July and his family suffered.
There is a scene early in the book that is emblematic of this, I think. Maureen recalls that she and her husband had debated whether to “get out” of South Africa for a few years. Maureen had inherited no small amount of wealth, they sensed that apartheid was degrading, and they didn’t particularly like the system anyway. But in the end they stayed in South Africa to raise their family. In Maureen’s reflection the decision is as much about the cost of potentially moving as it is about simply not wanting to change the life to which they have grown accustomed.
To me this emphasized how people who view themselves as “good” can allow terrible, terrible inequalities to continue simply because they are comfortable where they are. This scene was brief, but telling.
Overall the themes Gordimer details in her book are extremely necessary even today nearly 40 years after the book was first published. She raises important questions about what “good” people are willing to do to help others, and about the terrible positions we find ourselves in when we assume everyone has the same world view as we do.
I did have a few difficulties with Gordimer’s book. There are moments when the prose requires wading through (but there are equally moments when it flows so beautifully I find myself devouring the pages). There is a hazy quality to the narrative which sometimes made it difficult to follow what was happening. While I fully believe this was Gordimer’s intent, it did cause me to loose my immersion a few times.
Overall I’m very pleased to have read Gordimer’s book, and it’s refreshed my interest in learning more about apartheid. July’s People certainly won’t be the last book I read on the issue.
What Nobel Prize winning novel did you read for the challenge? |
Space: the final cemetery! At least that is what Nichelle Nichols and other members of the cast of Star trek want to use it for, and we here are all for it! Plus, Mammoth cells brought back to life, A.I. generated cryptids, and David Flora scaring the crap out of us by screaming. All that and plus Bobby Bladez of Old Guy MetalCast joins us this week to add to that weird on Blurry Hysteria!
News Stories Mentioned:
Star Trek - https://www.npr.org/2022/08/29/1119824784/star-trek-nichelle-nichols-dead-space-memorial-flight?fbclid=IwAR0O-gNfZQQB6nZolVxx9hl9MXxaN1t31B3aVpVBJBCeeAvl8eG_KkRFYng
Mammoth DNA - https://earthlymission.com/28000-year-old-woolly-mammoth-cells-brought-back-to-life-by-scientists/?fbclid=IwAR3VVAptfcd9UXSAogGf3fC6JhSPwF0dwQGPdkIpHZ5ngE2lsJ7quLZBY_I
A.I. Cryptid - https://www.pcgamer.com/ai-image-generaotr-loab-cryptid-supercomposite/?fbclid=IwAR1KfoGC1zxIne9JWj193snUcrGUa15jnPH6ND5s2N-cxQsJml5kD4Icrf4
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It’s a West Virginia Cryptid Family Jam! Psychedelic artist, Brian Zickafoose returns to Ace Adventure Resort for another round of music, art and festival fun. This year’s poster art features several famous mythical monsters from his home state of West Virginia, Sasquatch, Bat Boy, the Flatwoods Monster and Mothman. This year’s poster marks, Zickafoose’s fourth year illustrating the official artwork for the festival and appearance as a feature live painter and Pigment Sanctuary art gallery staple. Zickafoose sat for an interview with the festival promoters to talk about the art and the magic that goes into the creation of the illustration. Mountain Music Festival is happening June 4-6 at Ace Adventure Resort on the New River Gorge, West Virginia. Read the full interview here. |
People continue to hear stories of unusual encounters with strange creatures which cannot be explained. Some of these stories are related to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) and possibly their occupants. One of these unusual creatures the Grinning Man, is connected to another cryptid the Mothman, who is also famous.
Who is the Grinning Man
There are many stories of ordinary normal people, who while doing their daily routine activities, come across something which is not known, which is unnatural and cannot be logically explained. Some of these stories are related to creatures, animals which are not documented by mainstream or modern science, strange lights in the sky at night or sighting a phantom like creature or ghostly apparition. People who have had these unexplained experiences have told these stories in the past and are likely to continue telling these stories in future also.
In the last sixty years, a few stories have been told of people who have had encounters with an unusual humanoid creature who may be linked with the mysterious world of UFO stories. The creature has been nicknamed the Grinning Man, and one feature of all the encounters with this creature is a maniacal grin on the creature’s face whenever he was spotted. This is the most memorable feature of all the encounters and some claim that the creature is malevolent. .
John Keel is a famous paranormal investigator who has made another cryptid the Mothman famous worldwide. According to him, the Grinning man was first noticed in 1966. Keel published his book “Strange creatures from Time & Space” in 1970. In this book, Keel has narrated the first encounter in modern times with the humanoid having a maniacal grin. In the incident, in the month of October 1966, two boys were walking in New Jersey, on a street. Earlier in the day, in the same area, a woman had complained that she was being chased by a tall man in green, and the boys were nervous after hearing the story.
The boys reported that they probably saw the same man, standing in some bush, behind a nearby fence, looking at the house on the opposite side of the road. The creature was behind the boys, and the green colored one-piece suit which he wore, had reflections of the street lights in the area. After the creature realized that the boys had noticed him, it turned towards them and smiled, grinning from one ear to another. Since the creature had elongated eyes, it was difficult to make out, whether the creature had ears, hair or nose. The same night, police started receiving reports of a UFO which was brightly white in color. A number of officers themselves allegedly spotted the object near a reservoir in the area. Many people started claiming that the encounters were probably linked and correctly assumed, that the creature was an alien who was stranded or the UFO was searching for the creature.
Three weeks later, a salesman selling sewing machines claimed that he was stopped by a strange automobile on the highway. A bald tall man wearing a blue colored metallic suit emerged from the vehicle hatch and approached the salesman. The humanoid had a maniacal grin which glinted in the headlights of the car, and his eyes were slightly elongated according to the salesman. Using telepathy for communication, the salesman claimed that the grinning humanoid gave his name as Indrid Cold, and said that he would interact with the salesman again. This encounter was reported near Point Pleasant. A few weeks later in the same area, people would report the sighting of the Mothman, another famous cryptid, who is considered responsible for the bridge collapse which led to deaths.
The salesman who was named Woodrow Derenberger later claimed that Indrid Cold visited him often. Derenberger claimed that Cold revealed to him that he was a alien from another galaxy, from a planet named Lanulos. The salesman also claimed that he visited Cold on his home planet, and also met other creatures like Cold during his travels. Though Derenberger wrote a book about his encounters with humanoids, he lost his job, wife and some claim that he was also insane. Derenberger died in 1990 and some claim that he lost his life due to his obsession with his friend Cold, the grinning man. |
Brushes with the paranormal can, and do happen in every imaginable setting. In our forests, on our roads, in our homes, and probably the most disturbing, in our bedrooms.
It can happen anywhere, at any time, but there is certain landmarks that tend to attract higher levels of activity than the baseline of other locations. Such landmarks include, but are not limited to: bridges, railways, military-installations, bodies of water, burial and effigy mounds, and crossroads.
While each of these areas can, and do spark their own theories as to what makes these places supranatural hotbeds—at this time, let us focus on the latter, and leave the rest for a time each can be explored in the detail they deserve.
Intersection of Worlds
Crossroads have a long and storied history in the annals of supernatural lore. Exercutions, and subsequent burial of the condemned, as well as burial of those that had committed suicide, often took place at crossroads. The belief being that their restless spirits may be confused, and so not be able to return to aggress the living.
Perhaps this reasoning arose from belief in the occult significance of crossroads; that being, they are the intersection of: paths, ideas, and worlds, and they represent, decision, indecision, and confusion.
These ideas are not regulated to superstition of the past, but are alive to this day in a number of pop-cultural references. One such instance is that of the legendary blues artist Robert Johnson, who it is said made a Faustian bargain for mastery of the guitar. The sight of his contract signing, the intersection of Hwy 49 and 61, in Rosedale, MS. Whether or not Mr. Johnson made such a bargain, only he and “Ol Scritch” could say with any authority. Nevertheless it as been referenced numerous times in musical and dramatic portrayals, assuring the crossroads will remain “a place of power” in humanity’s collective subconscious for years to come.
To be Seen or Not to be Seen
While some of the beliefs in the significance of crossroads can be seen as logical in the ethereal
sense, the same should not hold true in the world of cryptid creatures. Yet, this does seem to be the case, but why?
In the cryptid world, let us take for instance the currently in vogue Dogman. These creatures are reputed to be the ultimate apex predators, yet they are spotted by motorists at an inordinate rate, and not surprisingly at crossroads.
Predators do not like to be seen, so one would logically think a creature with honed predatory senses, and with above animalistic intelligence, (if not telepathic abilities) would be more than capable of remaining unseen. That is unless being witnessed is not a concern, but may in fact be the desired.
Collapsing the Wave Function
In quantum field theory the role of the observer is a place of fundamental importance in weaving the fabric of reality.
Lacking the expertise or the desire to do so, we will refrain from going into great detail with the theory, suffice it say, it appears observation affects the material-world, if only on the smallest (for now) scales (see the double slit experiment). Does this explain the “feeling of being watched”, one has to wonder. It also begs the question, is the purpose of paranormal encounters, in fact to be observed?
William Francis “Slick Willie” Sutton, a prolific 20th century American bank robber, is attributed as saying, when asked by a reporter why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is”. In this vein, perhaps experiences happen in these areas because, that “is where the people are” more often. These entities desire to be observed, and in so doing, some type of subtle quantum energy/information is transferred giving them realization, or existence in the material world.
It has been theorized that some paranormal entities feed off the fear generated in persons that encounter them. Perhaps only certain types of entities need or desire the energy generated by fear, and some portion of energy is obtained whenever observation occurs regardless of the emotional response. It may be as simple as, to exist, it they must be observed. |
*I was going to title this post “My new stories are underwater”, but in light of the devastation in Texas…yeah, not going there. It wasn’t like the various editors planned on releasing work that I happened to be in, that happened to involve water, around Mother Nature, but…yeah.
Some new story news because I like sharing things with my name in it. Also, who doesn’t like new stuff to read?
First up – Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. 1 – Seas & Oceans) – Scarlet Galleon Publications
This anthology, which includes such people as Jack Ketchum, Laird Barron, and Richard Chizmar, includes an older story of mine, “Surviving the River Styx”, about a survivor of a terrorist attack on a cruise ship–one of the few survivors after everyone else on the ship has been reduced to psychotic murderers. I have a terrible fear of open water, any time I can’t see land across the way I get unnerved, so this story was me working through that. It’s an early story, published originally years ago, and I’ve always been pleased with how people have responded to it. Big ups to Mark Parker, the editor for digging this.
You can pick up the paperback here.
You can pick up the Kindle here.
Second – Space and Time Magazine, #129
I’m still awed whenever I make the cover–like, hell, I might be a draw for people. Not a big one, of course, but enough to justify slapping my name right where people’s eyes are gonna be drawn. Like, damn.
My story in this bad boy is “How I Became a Cryptid Straight Out of a 1970s Horror Movie”. Basically, a young guy gets cursed into a carnivorous lake and it gets weirder from there. It was one of those, “Hey, let’s make a new monster”-type scenarios and I ran with it because it was just so much fun to think about. Which says a ton about me.
Big-big thanks to Hildy Silverman, Gerard Houarner, and Gordon Linzer for liking this.
You can pick up the physical magazine at Barnes & Noble.
You can get the DRM-free eBook (for $3!) here. |
LABYRINTH PROJECTS and SWEETBACK PRODUCTIONS invites the audience on a wild ride through mania with their new show BiPoLaR BitCH All cast members come with a diagnosis of bipolar or bipolar related issues. The cast explores the voyage of bipolar symptoms delving into Jungian spirituality and archtypes, while suffering the side effects of psychotropic sedation. The show stars the incredibly talented singer and composer, Violet, who draws us into the experience with her soulful and haunting music.
Conceived, produced & directed by Kelly Anchors Choreography and costumes by Diane Hamm (with Robert Puig) Music by Violet
Eight performances: Saturdays April 13, 20, 27 May 11, 18, 25th And June 1st & 8th
CHICAGO- dropshift dance, celebrating its 9thAnniversary Season in 2019 and praised for creating work which is “…playful and alluring” (Art Intercepts, Chicago) and “…an ingenious offering…” (Laura Molzahn, The Chicago Tribune) premiere, “NOOK”, evening-length culmination of dance work, At Our Edges, offering audiences dance, dance film, and participatory-guided physical experience. “NOOK”marks the culmination of 18 months of creative studio and performative research. Cerniglia’s, At Our Edges, in its third phase of development, explores an adaptable physical state and our connection to the natural world and its processes of life and death. Cerniglia’s research acknowledges existence and the absence of – centering around a community of movers that work to preserve the value that each body brings to the space. Movement vocabulary borrows from tasks of preparation and physical ritual- corporeal manifestations explore internal darkness, thorough freedom/release, and a pursuit of refuge, comfort, and solace.
“NOOK” Premieres at The Charnel House,
June 21-23, 2019 Friday/Saturday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 7pm.
The Charnel House was once used as a funeral chapel, and functions now as a multi-arts center. Its cozy/intimate design, architecture, and history as a gathering space will allow us to create a communal space for viewers and performers.
space is Limited. $16: open access tickets, $20: flexible seating, $24: pre-sale general admission, $28: general admission at the door
At Our Edges, Directed by Andrea Cerniglia
Movement creation in collaboration with dancers Featuring: Andrea Cerniglia with Monica Carrow, Christina Chammas, Alexandra Naranjo, & Bonnie Christine Willis Original Composition: Luke Gullickson Costume:Collin Bunting Lighting Design: Richard Norwood Film. Lustre: Dance film vignettes conceived by Nadia Oussenko, inspired by At Our Edges
At Our Edges, unpacks our physical manifestations of loss and disruption. We examine how the initiations and pathways in the body and its physicality respond to abrupt change, impeding energetic shifts, and barrages of overwhelming stimuli. Dancers examine energetic tensions and relationships between bodies, while carrying, caring, and manipulating those around them. The work ruminates on existence and the absence of, while centering around a community of movers that work in unison, in pairings, and as a community to preserve the value that each body brings to the space. Long time collaborators of dropshift contribute to the work. Luke Gullickson composes an original score, Collin Bunting designs costume and textile pieces, and Richard Norwood acts as lighting designer and technical director. Nadia Oussenko’s dance film,Lustre, is inspired by the physical content of At Our Edges, and offers audiences a series of film vignettes rich with natural images and narratives that connect our existence to the natural world and its elements.
dropshift danceis a provocative, inquisitive and authoritative investigator of movement. Conceived through a collaborative incubation laboratory of movement, sound, and visual installation, the work engages audience with dialogue, choice and experimental practice. The company works through a rigorous process of studio investigation to create work that energizes the space and creates an alternate world for the performer and viewer. dropshift was founded in 2009 by Chicago based artist Andrea Cerniglia as a movement project dedicated to a collaborative and investigative studio practice and pushing boundaries of the art form in performance. The company mines abstract concepts that dissect societal structure, dynamics, and events that surround and impact us. Collaboration extends beyond dance into the realm of film, visual art and installation piece, and musical composition. This multi-disciplinary approach engages audience in a visual, aural, and human experience in order to move audience towards a transformative experience.This project is partially supported by funding from The MacArthur Funds for Arts and Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Illinois Arts Council Agency, an Individual Artist Support grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, a state agency through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as many generous contributions from individual donors.
Join the Conspirators for the Jesus Christ-Do-It-Yourself-Messiah Complex! A multi disciplinary gathering of artists and enthusiasts enjoying and paying tribute to the ALBUM version of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
The album tracks will be performed in ORDER through the evening. Part salon, part vaudeville, part sing-along, the JCSDYIMC is fast becoming an alt-Easter tradition!
Saint Sparklebear (Aiden,) Cryptid Kid (Lorca,) Clamour & Lace Noise Brigade, Owen Owens, Jennifer Mahoney, Kevin and Sam Theis, Maddi Keaton, Erica Blanco, Cocktail Jordan and Pearly White (shout out to the Vaudettes,) Kate Vargulich, Richard Motyka -Devine Comedy
A new 2-act play with live music featuring an artistically diverse cast of musicians, improvisers, and performance artists. Tavis, a journalist from Chicago working for ONLINE Magazine, is sent to the small, mysterious town of Fairfield at the behest of his editor, David (who had witnessed a freaky domestic ritual there after his car broke down) to get a pulpy scoop for a story under the guise of doing a piece on the ‘Hammer Boys’- Fairfield’s most destructive DIY noise band. Soon Tavis meets Delia, Fairfield’s witchy town gardener, at a concert at the town’s eccentric co-op, and is taken into her confidence. She eventually shows him the secret at the heart of Fairfield, and they fall into a trippy romance. Things quickly unravel, however, when Delia discovers Tavis’ true intentions and David decides to cash in on Fairfield’s prefab authenticity and move the magazine’s headquarters there, all but ensuring the destruction of what makes the town special. Written by Bret Koontz, Directed by Zach Hebert Featuring: Zohair Hussein, Emme Williams, Tim Makowski, Sarah Quillin, Doug Malone, Alex Babbitt, Havadine Stone, Dave Bisson, Elizabeth Hartwig, Ethan Walles, and Travis. |
I often have my most profound thoughts and reflections at the oddest of times. There’s the cliched ‘eureka’ moment in the bath of shower of course, but for me, nothing beats the good old commute. Whether on a train, in a car, or on the bus, you can be surrounded by other people yet lost in thought. And as this year trundles to its final stop, it seems a perfect opportunity to reflect on the journey I’ve taken as a writer this year.
My second novel, The Daughters of the Darkness, came out in June. It continues the adventures of Thomas Walker, the wildlife biologist turned monster hunter, whom we met in Shadow Beast. The book is getting some lovely reviews from readers, and is slowly making itself known among the Amazon charts.
A few readers were surprised to find Thomas facing his past rather than picking up exactly where the first story ended. However, there is method in my madness. Firstly, given that Thomas is a hunter of man-eaters, I couldn’t resist pitting him against what are arguably the most famous duo to have ever developed a palette for people: the Tsavo lions. The legend and historic record of the man-eaters features strongly in the narrative, and as we learn in the first book, Thomas has unfinished business with a pride possibly made up of their descendants. There is of course something a little more cryptic (or perhaps cryptid), to their nature too. But, secondly, I also needed some time for things to…shall we say grow? Without giving any spoilers away, Phantom Beast, the third instalment, will see a return to the animals we met in Shadow Beast, and things have certainly…developed!
So, obviously Phantom Beast will be a major project for 2018, but getting stuck into my third novel was also a major part of this year.
But, there are a few other things on the go too. I’ve made progress with a science fiction story, and some headway with a rampaging bigfoot as well. And a recent achievement to my 2017 was mapping out what I see as my “novel universe”. Connecting characters, books, and storylines proved a really interesting exercise and gave me considerable clarity on where to take the stories. It also gave me a considerable to-do-list, so 2018 will be a busy year! Like many writers, I collect notebooks and journals, jotting down everything from vague thoughts to one-liners I’m yet to fit to a character, plot, or storyline!
One of the funnest experiences in 2017 was joining Shannon Legro of Into the Fray Radio for an episode of her excellent podcast. If you’re interested in the paranormal, strange goings-on, cryptids, serial killers, UFOs, and other worldly things, you should definitely check it out. You can find my episode here, and you can find Into the Fray on all good pod catchers.
Another lovely aspect of 2017 was receiving reader mail from all over the world. From a gentleman in Florida, to a horror fan in Germany, I have been amazed and touched to find my books have spread so far, and pleased so many. If you’d like to get in touch, you can drop me a line via email@example.com.
So, 2018 beckons, and of course, there’s plenty of things I didn’t get round to doing. I still haven’t set up a website, or started a mailing list. I don’t promote my books enough. Writing and a full-time job do take their toll, but I’m going into the next twelve months a little more prepared and determined. Christmas has seen aids, such as a social media planner from the brilliant Lucy Hall added to my resources, so I’ll hopefully be a little more proactive and less reactionary on my channels.
And along with everything else, I’ll keep writing too. Here’s to 2018! |
Behind the Paranormal 2 is the new book from the father and son team of Paul Eno and Ben Eno. The book's subtitle is Bigfoot, Mothman and Monsters You Never Heard Of. As you will already have deduced, this is a book which is definitively cryptozoology-based. So, yes, you get to read a great deal about strange creatures - such as Sasquatch, the Chupacabra, the Mongolian Death Worm, lake-monsters, sea serpents, Dogmen and much more. But, that's not all: Behind the Paranormal 2 provides the reader with good, interesting insights into the lives of those people who devote so much of their time to searching for creatures that science and zoology assure do not and cannot exist.
The good thing about this particular book is that there is a great deal of variation - in terms of the beasts that are sought out and their nature too. In other words, we're talking about how some of the investigators in the book take the view that the "cryptids" of our world are flesh and blood, whereas others (like me) are of the opinion that we are dealing with something much stranger. Supernatural, even. Certainly, one of the most fascinating sections of the book is that which is focused on the Bigfoot-themed research and work of the late Rob Riggs. I knew Rob well, and spent a lot of time with him roaming around Texas' massive Big Thicket, which is said to be a hot-spot for Bigfoot activity, as Rob noted in his 2001 book, In the Big Thicket.
While Rob was a firm believer in Bigfoot, he came to conclude that there is something very weird about the creatures. He is quoted in the book as follows: "There's another phenomenon in the Big Thicket known as the ghost lights. [Researcher] Tom Burnette and I have concluded that the lights are somehow connected with Bigfoot. We believe that Bigfoot is part of what, in Britain, they call 'Earth mysteries,' part of a range of phenomena that occurs in specific areas due to the presence of aberrant energy fields."
As is the case with her own writings, Linda Godfrey's section of the book does not disappoint in the slightest. While the werewolf-like Dogman phenomenon is certainly one of the most controversial of all within cryptozoology (with some concluding that it should not be classed in the domain of cryptozoology and, instead, in that of the supernatural), Linda has never shied away from focusing on the really weird side of cryptozoology. Linda reveals how she got into the field, when she was working as a journalist in 1991. It was undeniably something which changed her life. As was the case with Rob Riggs, we get to learn that Linda does not dismiss the paranormal aspect of the Dogman enigma. This is where what are known as "spirit animals" - and their links to Native American culture - come into play. The Cheyenne people, in particular, Linda tells Paul and Ben, have a rich history of what they term "Dog Soldiers." Clearly, we are not looking at regular animals. Linda's work suggest we're dealing with something that can negotiate various realms: the physical and the spiritual planes.
And, then, there's the Mothman. This particular section is a lengthy one, which is not surprising, as the 1966-1967 saga of the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia is a long and complicated one. And creepy, too. One of the several people interviewed for this section is Susan Sheppard, who grew up in the area and who has expert knowledge of the Mothman, its history, and the local lore concerning what it may be. This is hardly surprising, as Susan had her own experience as a child, which involved her hearing "footsteps on our roof, like someone had dropped out of a helicopter. It was between two and three in the morning."
Jeremy Robinson's work in the field of what has become known as the Gloucester, New England Sea Serpent makes for good reading. Jeremy takes the view that the beast - or beasts - fall into the flesh-and-blood category. Paul and Ben's interview with Jeremy amounts to a solid, historical look at the story of the mighty leviathan of the deep. Meanwhile, former zoo-keeper Richard Freeman tells the notable story of how he and a colleague, back in 2008, may very well have had an extremely close encounter with an Almasty, a hair-covered humanoid said to dwell in the heart of the Caucasus Mountains. It was in the early hours of the morning, and when the area was blanketed in darkness, that the pair suddenly heard "a deep guttural vocalization. Something was moving with two legs on the veranda."
On top of all that, we have a good profile of legendary cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, my road-trip-style excursions to Puerto Rico in search of the Chupacabra, flying humanoids, and cryptid-based conspiracy theories. And, the dedication to the hunt in hand comes across in fine fashion, too: the enthusiasm that shines through is both welcoming and encouraging. If you want to learn about not just Cryptozoology, but the many and varied people for whom looking for unknown animals and monsters is almost their life's work, then Behind the Paranormal 2 is an excellent book to get your teeth into. |
A video that was shot in 2008 seems to have captured a Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine in Western Victoria. It is sure to please those interested in cryptozoology.
Neil Waters, who heads the group Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia believes the video to be authentic. He states, “This thylacine here was a lot bigger and broader than the fox,” he said. “It does appear to have its rear hock go flat when it steps which would give the indication that it has that typical rear foot like a thylacine. It’s got an incredibly thick neck and it’s very stocky in its build.”
“It also has that very long, stiff tail that looks like an extensions of the back bone essentially, it doesn’t really move, it certainly doesn’t sway side to side like a dog.”
Here is the video with commentary from the woman who caught this mysterious cryptid creature in action.
I think it could be. Here is an historical pic from www.australaingeographic.com |
German designer & architect Stephan Henrich has created a fully 3D printed shoe called “The Cryptide sneaker.” This creature-like footwear is especially designed to be laser sintered on the Sintratec S2 system with flexible TPE material.
Developed in collaboration with Sintratec, a Swiss provider of selective laser sintering (SLS) solutions, the Cryptide sneaker consists of a sole with an open design, combined and printed together with an upper shoe that is not much more than a sock. It was made possible by SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) 3D printing and the rubber-like material called Sintratec TPE elastomer. The SLS additive manufacturing technique uses a laser as the power source to sinter powdered material into a more solid 3D structure.
As the name suggests, the sneaker is inspired by so-called Cryptids – mythical creatures such as Bigfoot or Loch Ness that may or may not exist. When you wear and walk with the Cryptide sneaker, “you will leave traces like a cryptid would do,” Henrich explains.
By varying the wall thickness, specific parts of the footwear become stiffer, while others remain flexible and soft, which makes the Cryptide not only ergonomic but also comfortable to wear. “I think TPE is a great material for designing shoes,” Henrich summarizes. Since it is 3D printed, the size and shape of the easily adapt the wearer’s foot. |
YouTube Channels and web sites producing and promoting UFO hoaxes
Last update 5/28/2019 – 178 full entries, 18 Dishonorable Mentions
The volume of fraud in the field of UFOlogy is staggering, primarily from those attempting to profit by exploiting interest in UFOs. This list is provided to help you avoid supporting hoaxers and profiteers.
07TV – Creator of the Kassel, Germany UFO hoax that fooled quite a few people until some basic compositing errors were exposed. In July 2015 this channel had a new hoax supposedly shot by an airline passenger over the Swiss Alps, which was picked up by a few news sites. Also see Kaschuba Brothers.
3CreepyTV – A channel that peddles “Illuminati” conspiracy material, trading on the proven concept that fear sells. Most videos include “Illuminati Exposed” in the title, and present unrelated clips compiled from news footage and set to music without ever presenting a coherent narrative. Instead, each video is a series of unfounded claims that the government, or evil celebrities, are conspiring to do… something. For example, “A MUST SEE! The BANNED Video With The Secret The US Government Is Hiding In Antarctica…” features a video that isn’t banned, with someone on camera making a wild claim that Russian troops are poised to attack “an annunaki hive” in the frozen wastes (Do they live in hives? They must make some badass honey). Videos are often promoted with (of course) misleading thumbnails whose content appears nowhere in the video, and are often stolen from other hoax videos or photos. 3CreepyTV is fear porn for the gullible, with the disclaimer “all videos are intended for entertainment purposes only.”
7tales.net – When stories are considered too ridiculously stupid for tabloid news, 7tales.net is where they go to die. “PROOF Living Dinosaur Killed By Military!! Government Cover-Up!!” “ALIENS EATING PEOPLE – THE FOREST SERVICE UFO FILES” “AMAZING! CIA REVEALS THEY MADE CONTACT WITH SHADOW PEOPLE FROM MARS!” 7tales takes fake news to the next level of fake. Currently spamming Facebook using the the account “Kamenov Miro.”
Adam 1414 – Originating in Italy, this channel feeds off all manner of hoaxes and conspiracy theories, making graphic-heavy videos about sun anomalies, flat earth conspiracies, “reptilian shapeshifters” based on video compression artifacts, doomsday prophecies, and more. Promotes with intensely overwrought thumbnails.
ADGUKNEWS (see also StephenHannardADGUK) – Mostly misrepresentations of existing air and space footage, often of dubious origin. Some of the posts venture beyond UFOs into general oddities. A typical description will start with “A video has surfaced of what appears to be…”, a weaselly method of creating plausible deniability.
Aguirre, Roberto – CGI artist/designer decides to do a one-off amateurish UFO hoax and is immediately rewarded by being promoted in the British tabloid The Mirror UK, scraping the bottom of the barrel for clickbait.
ALFA.8 – Spanish language channel featuring bad CGI hoaxes, contrail remnants misrepresented as UFOs, and video stolen from hoax creators Thirdphaseofmoon, and UFO Today.
Alien Blog – (Facebook group) Focuses primarily on CGI hoaxes alien sightings and interviews. Responsible for the Meni Tsirbas alien interview hoax being shared over 1,760 times.
Alien News – Badly misrepresented footage: mylar balloons, skydivers with flares, a reflection on a window. Content stolen from other channels without even bothering to remove the victim’s logo. Terribly misleading thumbnails. Bad all around, but aggressively promoting on Reddit, and likely elsewhere.
Alien Planet – A collection of poorly conceived and executed UFO hoaxes.
Alien Sightings – Amusingly terrible CGI clips that look like the work of a bored teen.
Alien Unleash – Laughably terrible CGI fakes, promoted with equally hilarious thumbnails. Most appear to be original, with some models (like a saucer with blinking lights) showing up in multiple videos. With an average of four advertising breaks per video, the goal of the channel seems to be maximizing profit.
All Awesome – Similar in method to hoax channel Section 51 2.0, All Awesome finds background footage and adds in CGI spaceships and light effects, as well as copying and repeating old paranormal hoaxes that have been floating around YouTube for years. Also like Section 51, the hoaxes are easily detected and exposed by debunker UFO of Interest. The domain contact for the related allawesome.net web site is listed as Chingan Cheng, and the related Facebook page is managed by Pheanyoun Vit, apparently of Nagano, Japan, who has made at least one YouTuber unhappy by attempting to extort them with false copyright claims.
Anomalies Study Group – A “study” of various types of balloons in flight mostly made of mylar, infused with technical sounding nonsense. For example, a semi-inflated balloon with ribbon attached is a “morphing anomaly with floating tether.” Too ridiculous to parody.
ANONIMO ANONIMO – A Portuguese language channel featuring sensationalist videos, and hoaxes stolen from other channels including 07TV.
ApexTV – Heavily focused on profit, each video of this YouTube channel begins with an appeal for you to subscribe (with an offer of a cash prize for a randomly selected subscriber) and includes multiple ad breaks per video. Using a compilation format with voiceover and sometimes an unidentified on-camera host, ApexTV creates collections of CGI hoaxes, manipulated photos, misrepresented images and hoaxes aggregated from other sources, all with titles that include the phrase “Caught On Tape.” Topics include teleportation, strange and mythical creatures (mermaids, dragons, demons), aliens, time travel, and the usual viral UFO hoaxes from Secureteam 10, Thirdphaseofmoon, Streetcap1 and others. The formula has been successful: ApexTV has racked up over 92,000 subscribers as of February 2017.
ArtAlienTV – Channel that makes its living off crazy, scientifically baseless interpretations of Mars photos from the Curiosity rover. 100% pareidolia based, and a waste of time.
Aurigae 77 – Formerly Section51/Aurora51, renamed and re-uploaded after being removed from YouTube for reasons unknown.
Austin, Jon – This “Online Science Reporter” for the British tabloid The Express UK is a primary supporter and enabler of UFO and paranormal hoaxes that go viral online. Austin uses such stories as clickbait for his column, and subsequently lesser publications repeat the story without checking the quality of the source. Hoaxers Streetcap1, Scott C. Waring, Secureteam 10, Mister Enigma and others owe their high visibility and large subscriber bases to the free publicity provided by Austin and the Express UK.
Barney Winner 5 – Certainly a winner for most nonsensical channel name, most of the posts have titles that include the phrase “End Time Signs & Events”. They feature scenes of disaster and strife (and a recurring hilarious illustration of Jesus boxing Satan) with voiceover of a Joe Frank-esque stream of consciousness religious sermon. You’re only a winner if you stay away from this channel and its 5-7 advertising breaks per video.
Beforeitsnews (web site) – Promotes any crackpot theory or hoax video clip/photo from any source in hopes of driving more traffic to the site. Watch for Disclosure to be predicted every single year of its existence.
Blast World Mysteries – Formerly named “Blast A”, this channel once featured only ridiculous and insultingly bad UFO hoaxes, some created and some stolen. It has since expanded into poaching and misrepresenting paranormal news items from other sources, some years old and recycled to look new.
Budgetmoon – Nicknamed “Budgetballoon” and “Are You Fucking Serious?”, this channel specializes in videos of balloons in flight.
Canal Paranormal – Originating in Argentina, this Spanish language channel features stolen hoaxes and misrepresented footage from around YouTube, including Thirdphaseofmoon, Section 51 2.0, The Faking Hoaxer, the Meni Tsirbas alien interview, an Aphex Twin video, and many others.
CLASSIFIED CHANNEL – Originating in Spain, this channel features mostly stolen content, apparently selected for its viral appeal. Sources include Thirdphaseofmoon, UFOVNI, and 07TV.
Close Encounters UFO – Originating in Greece, this robot-voiced channel features primarily fake news, including “CIA Document Reveals the Truth about MARS, they have Discovered An Ancient Giant Alien Race” the source of which turns out to be an interview with a clairvoyant, and the “Earth Has A Second Moon” story, actually referring to an asteroid with a wide orbit around the Earth. Each post has a 30 second lead-in imploring you to “like” and “subscribe”, and the channel is promoted using spam accounts on Facebook.
Michael Cohen – This silly, rather sparse channel features alien, UFO, ghost and bigfoot hoaxes. It has a surprising 50K+ following, likely by virtue of having been around since 2009.
Conspiracy News Documentary – Mostly stolen content that was acquired with no regard to copyright or accuracy, including a second-hand theft of the hoax “UFO Attacks NASA Spaceship” from DarkSkyWatcher74, which was originally created by The Faking Hoaxer. A comment on the page that pointed to the original video was deleted, so there’s no doubt this is intentional.
The Cosmos News – Re-hashes of trending events from other channels using some extra graphic flash, and their own fact-free embellishment.
C’one, Scott – See Nibiru Planet X 2016.
Coffee Break Talk – Hoaxes and strange stories stolen from other YouTube channels, including Now You Know and UFO Today, as well as others that have circulated for years.
Cousins, Blake and Brent – Arguably the two instigators who created the UFO hoaxing-for-profit model with their Third Phase of Moon YouTube channel. Armed with far more ambition than talent as CGI artists and filmmakers, their greatest “skill” has proven to be the ability to lie as a profession and ruminate at length about the contrived and composited videos they present. In recent years they appear to have farmed out their production and post work to other entities, who use a combination of visual effects and customized remote control drones to create hoax UFO video clips. As of July 2015 they’ve amassed a total of nearly 1,200 videos (some non-UFO related) and over a quarter million duped subscribers. In 2014 they released (free online) the science fiction drama Hangar 52: We Are Not Alone, demonstrating a stunning degree of ineptitude in screenwriting, direction, acting, visual storytelling and visual effects. The production makes it clear why the Cousins Brothers are relegated to creating fake UFO videos for a living.
crazyvideono1.com – Features hoaxes to attract web traffic, from hoaxers including Paranormal Crucible, UFOVNI, space live news, and others. Promotes using spam accounts on Facebook.
Cryptid Research – Beyond the ridiculous overly-dramatic music on every video, the visual effects are beyond awful. If you need a laugh, watch “Giant Snake Caught On Tape,” a slide show made with toy tanks, toy army men and Photoshop. Then erase this channel from your memory.
DAHBOO77, DAHBOO777 – Mostly bad pareidolia-based misinterpretations of Mars images. Also posts re-reports of current events infused with his own conspiracy/doomsday theories– usually these videos are simply a still image taken from the news with his own voiceover commentary. Will occasionally present a UFO hoax, or anything that might attract views.
DarkSkyWatcher74 – After initially trusting this channel (UFO Theater Episode 1) this producer has become an obvious profiteer, exhibited in the deceptive moneymaking scam in which he (supposedly) raffled a telescope, theft of a clearly labeled CGI video, and several other posts that have been debunked by Dave “Dazzathecameraman” Greg. Sad and disappointing.
Disclose.tv – Will post anything they think will bring clicks and profit, including hoaxes of any kind; they seem particularly fond of fakes by Secureteam 10. The unique feature of this site is that all videos are *stolen* rather than linked. In other words, videos are downloaded from YouTube and re-uploaded to Disclose.tv in order to add their own advertising. This is done under the guise of being uploaded by the users of the site rather than the administrators, so Disclose.tv takes no responsibility for the material on its own pages. Videos by UFO Theater have been featured in this way no less than three times, and given the choice to link the original or remove the content, they’ve chosen to remove every time.
Disclosurer Radio – Modeled after the fear-mongering style of Secureteam 10 (listed in this channel’s favorites), Disclosurer (?) pushes a narrative of persecution by the U. S. government. Some videos present mundane videos of aircraft misrepresented as something sinister (US Military Using Commercial Aircraft To Track Americans!), while others are visual effects composites (737 Commercial Jet Stopping In mid-air flying backwards). While the compositing is better than Secureteam’s, mistakes are made with focus and perspective.
Documentario Xtreme – Originating either in Brazil or Portugal, this channel steals UFO hoaxes from around YouTube. The image quality is so bad on most clips the theft is likely second or third generation (stolen from a content thief who stole from a thief who stole from the creator). Many are promoted with totally unrelated images (also stolen) from other hoax channels like iUFOSightings, Thirdphaseofmoon and Secureteam 10.
EarthNewz – Posts compilations of hoaxes from other sources including the Kaschuba brothers and LookNowTV.
Earth & Space News – Stolen hoaxes from other sources including the Kaschuba Brothers, WTF Flow and anything else that might be floating around, including The Faking Hoaxer’s Mission to Mars video.
educatinghumanity.com – will post anything that might drive traffic, including an obvious hoax from a channel clearly identified as belonging to a CGI artist.
Egyptoon – An Egyptian (comedy?) channel that suddenly decided to post a UFO hoax in October of 2015. An odd tangent.
EriGIA007 – Will post everything and anything of potential interest, including misrepresented Mars Curiosity and SOHO images, viral hoaxes (example: “Alert: Bananas were found infected with AIDS in Mexico”), and UFO clips with the classic characteristic of starting and ending for no reason. Made fun of these jokers in UFO Theater Episode 1 for their ridiculous graphics.
EXO SPACE HD – A robot voice recitation of old UFO cases, using (ironically) low-resolution imagery stolen from other sources– in one case even a thumbnail from hoaxer Secureteam 10. A bottom-feeder channel that appears to be trying to cash in on UFO interest without offering anything original.
ExtraterrestrialMind – Hoaxes and non-UFO footage stolen from around YouTube, including a Brazilian telecom commercial represented as a real sighting, and an entire stolen documentary called “Thrive,” broken into three parts titled “UFO’s & Free Energy”.
F7U12 – UFO hoaxes and other sensational footage stolen from other sources on YouTube. Racked up 4 million views using a video stolen from an ad campaign for a Brazilian marketing company.
Facts Studies – Presenting neither facts nor studies, this channel features hoaxes and stolen footage of all kinds: UFOs, aliens, fatal car accidents, mythical creatures, and fake news. The image quality on most clips is terrible as a result of being downloaded from YouTube and re-compressed multiple times. Most are represented with very misleading titles and thumbnails, and the channel is currently being promoted by spamming Reddit.
Fast Walker – Not the worst thing in the world, but a sensationalist channel that will post anything for views, including Shia LeBeouf’s green screen rant, car crashes, hoaxes from other channels, and a significant number of airplane contrails misrepresented as UFOs.
Fausto Perez – Another balloon show in which light/reflective inflatables of various shapes drift lazily across the sky. The hook for this channel seems to be the coverage of peoples’ live reactions to the balloons as they’re being taped.
FindingUFO – While not as awful as some other 100% hoax channels, FindingUFO has refused to remove numerous hoaxes identified in their playlist, and should not be trusted to provide authentic sightings.
gm30001 – Clips without any attribution or context, most often low resolution shots of balls of light in the sky, at least one of which is clearly a police helicopter. Every video has the same creepy drone audio track with a heartbeat sound effect. The real giveaway is that every one of the thumbnails for their videos is a completely fabricated image that doesn’t actually appear in the video.
How to Draw and Paint Art Channel – Yes, you’re reading that channel name correctly. This channel’s posts alternate between ancient hoaxes stolen from around YouTube, misrepresented footage (also stolen), and time lapse clips of an artist (safe guess: channel owner) illustrating characters with pen and paper. At least there’s something original here.
Hunter, Jason – After first focusing primarily on unusual cloud formations, three years ago Mr. Hunter joined the Mars pareidolia porn bandwagon and never looked back.
Hutchison, John (YouTube) – Posted a hoax video of a police officer being immolated by a motorist (supposedly an alien, of course) that drew over 4M views. Debunker Isaac Koi correctly identifies this as a promo for a television show. Not UFO-related, but making an exception for Mr. Hutchison for recently trying to profit from October 2015 news stories including the discovery of water on Mars and a mass murder.
Igor Kryan – Channel featuring bizarre animal attacks, sexual images and UFO hoaxes. Their “30 Best 2016 HD Alien UFO Encounters Caught On Camera That Will Make Skeptics Believe” that features all manner of hoaxed and misrepresented footage including mylar balloons, bad CGI and reflections in windows. Don’t review this garbage without a hot shower and some brain bleach handy. Or preferably don’t view it at all.
Ilias, “Dr.” J. Andy – Longtime shill for the Third Phase of Moon YouTube hoax channel, this decidedly non-Phd attorney showed a penchant for filling time with useless chatter. Consequently he now has his own YouTube channel, and a radio show on Art Bell’s Dark Matter Digital Network. After spending time with the Cousins Brothers exploiting the Malaysia Flight MH370 disappearance for profit, there’s nowhere for Andy to go but up.
Incredible News E3 – Incredibly ridiculous paranormal stories, many duplicated from around YouTube but with misspelled titles. Based on older posts like “Pacu, el pez que come testiculos humanos” (Pacu, the fish that eats human testicles) the unnamed channel owner is likely a Spanish speaker. Robot-voiced videos include “EXTRATERRESTRIAL SORCERERS [sic] FOUND UNDER THE POLAR ICE CAPS” (taking a cue from hoaxers UFOVNI and Secureteam 10), “Mysterious vortex appear on the Large Hadron Collider” (stolen from hoaxer Section 51). Incredible News E3 simply regurgitates existing stories with a minimum of effort, in some cases only presenting two still photos for an entire 3 minute video.
InFocusUFOs – A spinoff from the worst-of-the-worst Thirdphaseofmoon channel, this series of videos seeks to develop a “character” out of a frequent contributor of computer-generated UFO videos. “Ed” vaguely describes his supposed personal experiences with extraterrestrials, speaking only in generalities and giving no context or details (much like his hoax UFO videos) and all set to spacey music with plenty of b-roll. The whole channel is one after another masturbatory mood piece devoid of any information, insight, or anything real whatsoever.
The Inquisitr (inquisitr.com) – In an online ecosystem overpopulated with cut-and-paste news sites, The Inquisitr sits at the bottom of the heap. Will repost any idiotic paranormal news story from any hoax source, even those too stupid for British tabloids. Low point so far: promoting a debunked photo of a solar farm in Nevada, represented by hoaxer Mister Enigma as a giant UFO. The substance of the article was a “debate” regarding whether the photo was a solar farm or a giant UFO in the exact location of a known solar farm.
ISS Ufo Watch – You can see where this is going just from the channel name: lots of misrepresented lens flares, compression artifacts, and tiny bits of debris floating around the International Space Station. Also, a healthy dose of Mars pareidolia clips. “Finds” on the red planet include a number “7”, a statue, a skeleton, a creature (posted twice), and a “strange figure.”
iufosightings – Formerly called NDestination Unknown before it disappeared from Youtube, this is not so much a UFO channel as a 3D model asset catalog. Over 1,100 videos and not a single authentic sighting. Every UFO clip is a computer modeled spaceship composited against a landscape background or still photo. Every. Single. One.
jmhz71 – aka “The Balloonist.” Based in Mexico, all this channel’s captures are simple shapes that wander slowly and aimlessly across the sky.
Kaschuba Brothers – Purported owners of the audiocolorworld.com domain (anonymized through the registrar) and creators of at least eight hoax YouTube channels, debunked by Metabunk.org and others. in sum, a herpetic rash on the body of UFOlogy. Their techniques include use of CGI 3D models, fake camera movement, and blurring and obscuring of key details that would clearly reveal how their images have been manipulated.
latest-ufo-sightings.net (web site and Facebook page) – Will post anything regardless of authenticity just to keep the traffic moving, making it a perfect vehicle for Black Lister’s material. Features hoaxes from LookNowTV, Secureteam 10, Streetcap1 and Scott Waring.
Latest UFO Sightings (YouTube) – Comes with a unique disclaimer on each page advising that “95% UFO sightings are probably fake” which is intended to excuse the fact that their compilations are put together with demonstrably hoaxed clips included.
Limitless – Created by a Serbian named Zeljko Stankovic, this channel features stolen UFO hoaxes from UFOmania2015 and Secureteam 10 as well as other material from around YouTube, without even bothering to obscure the creators’ watermarks and logos. The name “Limitless” seems to apply to advertisements, as on 30 minute compilation includes a possible record-breaking 23 ads.
Looknowtv – Although they’ve recently started putting more effort into their videos, they’re still bad and technically unconvincing. Early attempts at making clear close-up hoaxes have failed, so they’ve now attempting to lower the size and resolution of their phony UFOs in order to obscure how the video clips have been manipulated.
magazineclick.com – This extreme right-wing fake news site is also fond of UFO and paranormal hoaxes, featuring videos from fraudulent YouTube channels when possible. Subjects include animal-human hybrids, Nazi UFOs, Nibiru, and the March 2017 “flying humanoid shape” hoax which turned out to be a Photoshopped kite.
Vik Mancini – Mr. Mancini is a Facebook enigma. At first glance he seems to be a regular guy who enjoys making music and playing with his dog. However, if you frequent UFO-related pages and groups, he’s a distribution hub for UFO hoaxes. Mancini is fond of posting video clips of bad fakes that are never sourced, and defy analysis because they’ve been uploaded to Facebook, which degrades the image quality to the point that the method used to create the fake can’t be discerned. Every video is captioned with one of several broken English phrases ending in a question mark (?), most frequently: Mystery sky ? Time ? Hey ? He has been asked why he does this, and won’t respond.
There are plenty of simple minded people passing around ridiculous looking UFO hoaxes on Facebook. If they ever decided to organize, Vik Mancini would be their king– the King of Simpleton. The videos he posts inexplicably get shared tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of times. It’s likely you wouldn’t be able to frequent UFO groups for a week without being exposed to one of the silly, badly constructed fakes he’s pushing. Why he does it, and why they are shared so often is anybody’s guess– could Facebook be using his videos as a honeypot to collect data on gullible people? We may never know.
Mandi Boyn – An almost comical trove of stolen UFO hoaxes from around YouTube using a vignette to (almost) obscure the creator’s watermark. All uploaded on June 3, 2015.
marinodelfino – Not confined to fake UFO clips, this channel covers several kinds of hoaxed paranormal activity, mostly presenting digital video artifacts as evidence of “shapeshifting reptilians.” They’re quite fond of using eerie sound effects and glitchy motion graphics and stock images to dress up their nonsense.
Martin Mikuaš – Misrepresents ordinary sunlight breaking through the clouds as “strange phenomena”, promotes chemtrail and Nibiru conspiracy theories, presents faked “historical” footage of unknown origin with unconvincing film scratch effects. Examples include “Alien in the box,” “Mysterious Coin,” and “Mermaid Skeleton.” There are some clips of blobs of light in the sky that look interesting, but there’s too much garbage on this channel to take them seriously.
Matrix World Disclosure – Creates compilations of sensationalist clips from around YouTube: UFO videos, disasters and odd events. This fear porn channel features wild apocalyptic scare headlines, the most common tropes being “Earth Is Changing, Extreme Events Worldwide” and “ALERT! SOMETHING BIG IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN”. Predicted World War III was “about to begin” in 2015. Apparently this formula has worked well for its creator, a Romanian man named Puiu Chiriac, as he’s recently created a second similar channel named The Others.
Mexicogeek – A ridiculous collection of paranormal detritus from around the net, including misrepresented Mars photos, old UFO hoaxes that have been circulating for years, and doctored photos of strange creatures.
Mister UFO/Mister Enigma – Mostly UFO detritus duplicated from around Youtube, and some hoax videos. And then, there’s a rare unicorn-like clip made of 100% computer generated imagery, which we debunked. Mister UFO has our debunking video temporarily taken down with a false copyright infringement claim, after verbally wrestling with himself.
misterio canal – A Spanish language channel that features any number of sensational clips including unusual insects, and giant snakes, as well as insultingly bad UFO hoaxes. Prime example is the “Teletransportación de nave nodriza” video featured in the tabloid Daily Express in September 2016. Also a smattering of stolen hoaxes, including Section 51’s “UFO Portal Over CERN.”
ModernGalaxy – UFO hoaxes and other paranormal videos stolen from around YouTube. Includes hoaxes created by Secureteam 10, UFOVNI, and Paranormal Crucible.
Modnuts – Stolen content from around YouTube, at one time including Darin Crapo’s excellent UFO Planet show. NOT COOL, MODNUTS.
MR. AMAZING X – Based in India, this channel presents awful, juvenile UFO fakes created with visual effects, and a hoax stolen from CGI artist Oondyla. For an added dose of credibility, videos depicting a “real dragon found alive” that doesn’t move, and “real dinosaurs found alive” which consists of a CGI photo of a pterodactyl.
Mr Anomalous – Balloons of all shapes and sizes.
Mysterious Perception – Previously named Truth Perception Media, this is carbon copy of most bottom-feeding paranormal channels, simply duplicating hoaxes that have gone viral and applying its own stink to them. Conscious of possible accusations of copyright infringement, every video description includes the phrase “Used under Fair Use.” Plagiarized hoaxes include “6,000-year-old Vimana found by 8 US Soldiers Disappeared in Afghanistan Cave”, “Elongated ‘Alien’ Skull discovered on Mars According to UFO hunters” (a Mars pareidolia hoax mocked in Mars Madness), “Round Black Object ‘UFO’ captured on live stream flying over the Moon”, and “Mysterious Black Helicopter appears to chase UFO ‘small dark object’ zooming across the evening sky” in which, curiously, the object being “pursued” resembles a balloon, and never appears in the same shot as the pursuer.
MysteriousUniverse.org – Promotes hoax videos by channels including Secureteam 10, LookNowTV, UFOVNI, and Paranormal Crucible. Blocks dissenting comments from their posts.
NDestinationUnknown – See iufosightings.
THE NIBIRU – The title of this channel would lead you to believe it’s focused on planet X Nibiru nonsense. Instead, THE NIBIRU features 100% stolen UFO hoaxes from Thirdphaseofmoon, Section 51 2.0, Jonathan Castro, UFOMania2015 and more. Most are promoted with CGI or space art thumbnails completely unrelated to the video.
Nibiru Planet X 2016 – Either a product of extreme opportunism or extreme mental illness, this channel, the brain-vomit of one Scott C’one (aka Scott Allan Cone), promotes the idea there’s a secret planet lurking in our celestial neighborhood that is beginning to wreak havoc on earth. As exposed by astronomer/debunker Dave “Dazzathecameraman” Greg, no claim is too ridiculous or unfounded to keep C’one’s viewers coming back for more details of their impending doom. C’one has attacked Greg personally, suggesting he’s a government shill paid through that well-known illuminati money conduit, Paypal. If any of your friends fall prey to C’one or his Nibiru conspiracy theories, please find them professional help.
NowYouKnow – A collection of standard paranormal news tripe, including Mars pareidolia clips, questionable cryptozoology photos, bigfoot, witches, mermaids, etc. Appears to be content taken from another channel as most of the posts were uploaded en masse once a month starting in August 2016.
Of Sound Mind And Body – New name for an old hoax channel. See Mister UFO/Mister Enigma.
Omega Ovnis Ufos – (Facebook group) Has the distinction of being the first Facebook group to be added to The Black List. There’s no hoax too unbelievable to be downloaded from YouTube and re-uploaded to their pages, which seem to get shared constantly. Most of the branding appears to have been removed, but we were able to identify at least one hoax from Secureteam 10, and others look straight from the Kaschuba Brothers.
ovni hd – A French channel featuring copied and (sometimes altered) reposted hoaxes. Most are rather obvious CG fakes, and as of October 2016 ovni has a tiny following. Secureteam 10 started out the same way, and we know what a megadisaster that has become, so it’s never too soon to add to The Black List.
OVNIS ACTUALES – Enigmas de la Historia – An apparent side project of hoax channel jmhz71, these clips feature balloons, misrepresented footage, and stolen UFO documentary segments; basically anything that can be scraped off the bottom of YouTube and used to generate some views.
PARALLEL reality of UFOs – While the capitalization of this channel’s title is inept, its purpose is very clear: maximize profit. Each video is a compilation of stolen footage, with up to 15(!) advertisements distributed throughout. Even worse, the stolen clips are re-compressed and muddied down to 480p resolution which makes the real and hoaxed “UFOs” barely discernible.
Paranormal Crucible – Channel mostly dedicated to wild and ridiculous interpretations of unusually shaped rocks on Mars, using photos taken by the Curiosity rover. Will sometimes engage in UFO clips.
paranormics.com, paranormics.tv – Promotes hoaxes by Thirdphaseofmoon, Mister Enigma and others.
Pot Boys – YouTube channel dedicated to doctored photos, hoaxes repeated from other channels and misrepresenting lens flares and the moon in ISS footage.
praticonews.info – will post anything in order to drive traffic to their site, including links to many hoax videos.
RAW NEWS – Imagine Howard Beale from the film Network on his downward slide, delivering a depressing sermon over images of disaster and strife, some taken from the news and some from mainstream films. This is the sensationalist, depressing fear porn served up by Raw News on YouTube, including a generous helping of hoaxes such as the Meni Tsirbas alien interview, Nibiru planet X scares, and “72 HOUR WARNING ~ DEEP IMPACT ASTEROID DUE TO ROCK THE WORLD”… from September 2016. “COPS GIVE DUI TEST TO GIRL NOT WEARING PANTS” is about as uplifting as it gets. Their related Raw Channel was removed from YouTube “due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations.”
Real Thing TV – Primarily and opportunistic pop culture channel that collects oddities from around the net, including movie reviews, ridiculous speculation (Pope Francis to Resign in 2016?), and yes, UFO videos, all of them hoaxes stolen from other channels. The “reporting” is all voiced via computer text-to-speech, making this channel all the more suspect.
Real UFO Alien Evidence – Badly composed, implausible CGI hoaxes, some original and some stolen from other channels such as Thirdphaseofmoon, Section 51 and Secureteam 10. The latter are obvious in that the clips are very low resolution, as a result of enlarging the image to crop out the original watermarks. Also includes run-of-the-mill Mars pareidolia and alien hoaxes.
Rob19791 – Mostly dormant channel with years-old videos that recently posted in May 2016, with misrepresentations of ISS footage and Mars photos.
SandboxTEN – Features hilariously misleading thumbnails promoting faked videos UFOs, witches and ghosts. The UFO clips are hoaxes stolen from other channels and several bad CGI fakes. The “witch” videos are the most absurd, one featuring a silhouetted peacock perched in a tree, and another a woman simply gesturing in an open field. How this train wreck of a channel accumulated over 100,000 subscribers is anybody’s guess.
Scary Videos – Not exclusively featuring UFOs, but the UFO videos this channel presents are all nearly 100% poorly executed CGI fakes. The “About” YouTube page links to hoaxer Alien Planet, so the same person likely owns both.
SecretScienceTV – See Kaschuba Brothers.
Section 51 2.0 – A channel created by French CGI artist Jean “JH” Wzgarda that once exploited authentic military footage by adding CGI spaceships. At one point the original channel, was “limited” by Youtube, possibly due to fraud complaints, so it split off into a second channel named Aurora 51. In a bizarre about-face, Wzgarda then started to referring to his hoaxes as a “web series” and asking for money to support it. He later stopped using military footage and renamed the channel Section 51 2.0, but continued the use of ridiculous-looking computer generated UFOs that sometimes earn him tabloid publicity. Wzgarda was outed by Scott Brando of ufoofinterest.org, and this amusing interaction ensued. In February of 2017 Wzgarda lodged a privacy complaint against a video that directly associated him with his Section 51 2.0 YouTube channel, but that complaint was rejected when YouTube discovered he had been publicly identified as the owner of domain associated with the channel in registrar records. His videos continue to be debunked as viewers have recently started locating the stock and found footage he uses for backgrounds. In December of 2018, Wzgarda finally came clean in a video confessing that “sorry guys, it was all CGI,” and has since labeled all his remaining videos as such. The entire saga is detailed in the UFO Theater video A Brief History of Section 51 2.0.
Secureteam 10 (Glockner, Tyler) – Originally this channel simply used deceptive interpretations of footage and some silly Photoshop work, but eventually grew its viewership with significant help from pretend journalist Jon Austin of the Express.co.uk web site. He attempted to have a UFO Theater debunking video removed from Youtube and Vimeo with false copyright claims. We have since released a more comprehensive debunking video. Glockner continues to be promoted by a number of disreputable tabloids and as a result has collected a large number of subscribers, giving his channel the appearance of veracity.
Sergeant UFO – Formerly Section51/Aurora51, renamed re-uploaded after being removed from YouTube for reasons unknown.
Slapped Ham – It was easy to dismiss this compilation of “countdowns, lists and facts about everything” as another viral trash collector, until this: “Thanks to Section 51 for collaborating with us on this one. For more amazing UFO footage check out their channel.” Obviously, facts are not a concern, so paranormal viral hoaxes are littered throughout the Slapped Ham playlist.
sonofmabarker – Another “whatever gets the clicks” channel, featuring everything from UFO hoaxes (often videotaped off a TV or computer screen) to car crashes to doctored Mars photos. Recently jumped on the “Astronaut Tweets Photo of UFO” hoax bandwagon.
space live news – Another fear porn channel featuring stolen content with apocalyptic titles like “Nibiru Planet NEMESIS to Hit Earth” and “FEB 4 Breaking News NASA Says Earth Civilization is Doomed.” Other completely false stories include “China Reveals That a Massive Alien Outpost and Mining Facility is Operating on the Moon” and “feb 1 BREAKING SPACE ALERT! Russian Media CONFIRMS PLANET X NIBIRU 2017 INVASION.”
StephenHannardADGUK (See also: ADGUKNEWS) – ADGUK being an acronym for “Alien Disclosure Group, United Kingdom”, and yet there are no aliens, no disclosure and I doubt there’s even a group. Though this channel seems to have the good sense to deal mostly in still photos as they’re far easier to fake, they sometimes post UFO-related items used without permission from major networks.
Strange Videos – A grab bag of anything and everything that might attract views: “ghost sightings”, haunted dolls, UFOs, angels, et cetera, all stolen from other channels. As a result of the download/re-upload process, the image quality of all videos is degraded to the point that details are barely discernible. Apparently no one is keeping track of what’s been stolen, as at least one clip has been uploaded twice with two different titles.
Strangeness Video – Varied faked material stolen from around the net, including the “Massachusetts UFO Releasing Orbs” hoax and the Michigan UFO hoax, both animated over still backgrounds. Plus alien attacks, shape-shifting Obama, blah, blah, blah.
StrangeThings – Typical of the common low cost, quick-profit UFO hoax channel: stolen clips and insultingly bad CGI fakes. Currently attempting to generate views by spamming Reddit using the account “worldhotties20.”
Streetcap1 – Created by Scotland resident George Graham (aka George Orwell Smith), this channel relies on gross misrepresentation of images, primarily in video feeds from the International Space Station. There seems to be no lens flare, moonrise, tiny ice particle, or anomaly in a Solar and Heliospheric Observatory image that Streetcap1 won’t pounce on and present as evidence of an extraterrestrial visit. Tabloids promoting Streetcap1’s videos will often attempt to beef up the story with an opinion from know-nothing Scott C. Waring, who will confirm any sighting as authentic in order to promote his name and web site. Graham passed away in June 2018, and was memorialized in a video by Waring.
Suspect Sky – Originally created as a promotional channel for an online science fiction series which never materialized, this has devolved into just another source of hoaxes. Some of the clips are original CGI fakes, and the balance are misrepresented phenomena and clips stolen from channels like Thirdphaseofmoon.
THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE – As it turns out, it is very possible to misrepresent ordinary phenomena with a load of nonsense and gain over 50,000 subscribers. Lens flares misrepresented as multiple suns, clouds are said to be lit “wrong” and claimed to be hiding planets, lights in the sky are called SCARY UFO PORTALS. And then of course, the usual nutty mermaids, Nibiru “sightings”, Nazi UFOs, and plenty of over-the-top sensational video titles that include the phrases “footage included” (pushing the envelope by putting video on YouTube) and WOW! BREAKING! SCARY! WTF! UNREAL! At least that last one is accurate. Not real at all.
The Others – From the same person who created Matrix World Disclosure, and just as trashy.
Thirdphaseofmoon – As best I can tell, some time in 2010 a couple of mediocre filmmakers discovered that posting UFO videos on Youtube was a viable business model, and they’ve done very well for themselves. It was a perfect area for them to exploit: production standards are extremely low, and plausibility is almost a non-issue. Producers/CGI artists Blake and Brett Cousins may not create all the hoax UFO shots on their channel (only around 90% of them are hoaxes) but they certainly don’t care about authenticity; it’s all just more content. They’ve made their channel a full-time business and crank out 2 to 3 videos a week, some of them hoax videos, some of them inane interviews devoid of originality or insight. Due to their large audience the Cousins brothers appear to be making a comfortable living for themselves, have upgraded their equipment to HD and are using a steadicam for host segments. Lately they’ve become more brazen promoter, as evidenced by totally unfounded speculation that Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared due to a “mass alien abduction”. After being repeatedly busted on their hoaxes, they’re now using “shake and blur” style to make their computer generated imagery harder to debunk.
Top10Trending (dongzterlibrary) – Hoaxes stolen from everywhere: Secureteam 10, Section 51, Streetcap1, and others. Hard to believe this channel hasn’t received any copyright hits yet, but there are so many similar channels that rely on stolen content it’s hard for the hoax creators to track them all down.
Truth Perception Media – See Mysterious Perception.
ufo.web.tv – Not just UFO hoaxes, but stolen UFO hoaxes from anywhere and everywhere.
UFO – Shocking that this channel created in May of 2016 found the name “UFO” available, but there you go. The simple name is very appropriate to its simple strategy of stealing hoaxes from other channels and covering up the branding with its own “logo” (for lack of a better term). Even the video titles seem as if they could have been stolen from Secureteam 10 or Thirdphaseofmoon.
Ufoalien Ovni Ufosx – Facebook group that features hoaxes from around YouTube, similar in style to the also word-salad-named Omega Ovnis Ufos.
UFO ALIENS TV – An collection of CGI clips, doctored photos and reposted hoaxes currently (as of November 2016) being uploaded at the batshit crazy rate of 6 to 10 per day along with misleading, totally unrelated thumbnails that seem to have been stolen from an archive of sci-fi imagery. Was recently promoted by Jon Austin of The Express UK, the equivalent of a credibility kiss of death.
UFO 2015 – Collections of fabricated or outright stolen hoax clips, all with titles including the phrase “Real UFO With Aliens Caught On Camera,” likely hoping to profit from confusion with the original hoax created by 07TV bearing the same title.
UFO Lights – Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: hoaxes stolen from around YouTube, including the worst of the worst: Secureteam 10, Thirdphaseofmoon, iUFO Sightings, Blast A, and more.
UFO Release – A collection of dementedly bad CGI spaceship clips similar to those created by hoaxers iUFO Sightings and Section 51 2.0, only more ineptly conceived and executed. As one comment put it, “I can see the polygons.”
UFO shack – rehashed collections of hoax videos from other channels with extremely misleading thumbnails.
UFO SIGHTINGS – UFO hoaxes stolen from other YouTube channels, most oftten from CGI hoaxer Blast A. Uses ridiculously misleading thumbnails and titles.
UFO Sightings 2015 – CGI hoaxes and UFO features outright stolen from around YouTube. If this channel gets a bigger profile they can expect some copyright hits coming soon.
Ufo Sightings Footage – All manner of fake news, including “Recent Portals Opening Directly Above CERN”, “Alien Hole Found In Russia,” Nibiru, Giant Nephilim, Buildings on the moon and more. And of course, hoaxes stolen from other channels. One post is simply a collection of fakes copied from UFOmania 2015. There’s a link in the header to a related channel called “UFO Videos” when followed lands you on a page saying “This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content …” The associated web site conspiracylie.com is registered to Tim Lewis of Lancashire, UK.
UFO TV – 100% CGI fakes stolen from other hoax channels, promoted with completely unrelated thumbnail images stolen from hoaxers Secureteam 10, LookNowTV and Section 51 2.0.
UFONEARSUN – myunhauzen74 – Created by Russian Alexey Sapozhnikov, posts to this channel are all based on wildly misrepresented specks and errors in Solar and Heliospheric Observatory images, colorfully described as UFOs, angels, spheres, and in one case, a giant worm.
Ufo videos – Channel comprised of reposted hoaxes of the defunct NDestination Unknown channel kicked off YouTube in 2014.
UFO Today – Features nearly 100% stolen content, including documentaries, hoaxes and misrepresented footage. All the videos appear to have been downloaded from YouTube and manipulated, then re-encoded, producing an extremely muddy image. While the subscriber and view numbers are still small, this channel is being aggressively marketed on Facebook and Reddit. UFO Today got a boost after one of its stolen hoaxes went viral in February 2017.
UFO World – UFO clips stolen from hoaxers around YouTube, including EriGIA007, WTF Flow, and UFOVNI, and others having unknown origin such as “UFOs from airplane over Atlanta, GA.” These are usually edited together into compilations with news clips and legit photos and videos, demonstrating a lack of interest in whether the media is authentic or not. Consequently this channel can’t be trusted.
UFO World News – Hoaxes and other footage stolen from around YouTube, presented with the source’s logo cropped out. Sources include Thirdphaseofmoon, Secureteam 10, and NowYouKnow.
Ufoalien Ovni Ufosx – Facebook group that features hoaxes from around YouTube, similar in style to the also word-salad-named Omega Ovnis Ufos.
UFObook – See Kaschuba Brothers.
UFODI, aka UFODI 100% Real Ufo’s @ UFODI.NET – These people out of Ireland (?) have bashed other hoaxers in the past, so as a courtesy we warned them that their “TR3B Over Manchester” videos (previously titled “Low Hanging Triangle”) were fakes. The warnings went unheeded, and comments on the video page deleted. The videos are still up. Their playlist also includes a couple of CGI fakes and one from co-blacklister Budgetmoon.
UFOfilesTV – See Kaschuba Brothers.
ufointernationalproject.com – After raising a profanity-laced stink over being included on the Black List, these jokers were taken off and given the opportunity to remove hoaxes featured on their site: LookNowTV, Streetcap1, Mister Enigma and others shat out by the tabloid press. Not only has the site not been cleaned up, but in March 2016 decided to go with a ginned-up story about an offhand joke made by space station astronaut Scott Kelly as an admission of the existence of aliens. This was disingenuously combined with a long-ago debunked tweeted photo of a “UFO”, which was proven to be part of the space station. Their return to The Black List resulted in more personal threats, profanity, accusations of a DDOS attack, a torrid campaign of anti-UFO Theater Facebook posts on various pages, and sworn promises of legal action. What they didn’t provide was any refutation of the fact that the site promotes hoax UFO videos.
Ufomania 2015 – Hoaxes stolen from other channels and set to music, with (sometimes multiple) icons applied to cover up the source branding.
UFOmania – The truth is out there – Another robot-voiced channel full of fake news, with each post presented as photo montage around a fabricated story. Examples include “Mass Evacuation Of Antarctica as Special Ops And Military Moving In”, “The CIA Explored Mars And Discovered An Ancient Giant ” and “Doorway Into Pluto Found In Latest NASA Photo.” Scientifically baseless trash that will only leave you dumber.
UFOrbs – Each post is purported to be a “documentary,” but is really a compilation of old footage taken from other sources, including documentaries and local news reports, promoted with a misleading thumbnail that has nothing to do with the content. Further, UFOrbs has the audacity to put its own watermark on content it clearly doesn’t own, with text in the description of each: DISCLAIMER: WE CAN NOT AUTHENTICATE ALL THE VIDEOS. VIEWERS ARE FREE TO MAKE THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS. AKA “you decide,” the hoaxer’s favorite catch phrase. Throw in multiple advertising breaks per post, and it becomes clear UFOrbs has created a no-cost, no-original-content money machine.
UFOs And Aliens – Yet another garbage trove of viral hoaxes stolen from around YouTube.
UFOs Documentary – Features hoax videos created by blacklisted channel WTF Flow.
ufosightingsdaily.com – See Waring, Scott.
ufothetruthisoutthere(.blogspot).com – Will post any sensationalist trash to drive traffic to their advertising-heavy site, including material from hoax channels like Secureteam 10 or Thirdphaseofmoon.
UFOVNI – Relies on presenting photos of dubious origin and at least one composited hoax titled “UFOs OVER OSAKA JAPAN 7/18/2015” in which lights over an industrial plant clearly move independent of the background. In August of 2016 UFOVNI misrepresented a solar balloon as a “cigar-shaped UFO over Spain.”
UFOvni2012 – A mishmash of bad CGI posts and current events spun to seem related to UFOs, including completely unfounded speculation that the MH370 disappearance was a mass abduction. At least one video included a Billy Meier photo as its subject.
UFOWorldNews (web site) – A shill site for all the other hoaxers. They will literally post anything from any of the Youtube hoax channels: Thirdphaseofmoon, Looknowtv, even the laughable iUFOSightings. Do they receive pennies for promoting hoaxes, or do they simply benefit from the traffic created by posting hoaxers’ work? Who knows. I guess this is what you do when you have zero talent and you’re really, really lazy.
UndentifiedFO – That’s the word “unidentified” spelled incorrectly, plus “FO.” Hoaxes, viral and documentary footage stolen from YouTube, re-encoded and re-uploaded, resulting in abysmally degraded image quality. One bizarre post called “NASA Confirms Contact With Nibiru planet!” includes footage of NASA scientists edited with clips from the film V For Vendetta, in which nothing close to what is described in the title ever occurs. As of February 2017 this channel is being promoted by spamming Reddit using the account “NewsDreams.”
VARBAGE – Daringly, appropriately rhymed with garbage, yet another computer-voiced channel capitalizes on hoaxes and big lie headlines including “DOOMSDAY WARNING: Moon is on COLLISION COURSE with Earth, say scientists!”, failing to mention that “doomsday” will becoming around the time our sun starts to die.
Vero Verius – Hoaxes and other material stolen from around YouTube. Nearly every video is comically plastered with graphics, strategically placed to hide the watermarks of the channels they were stolen from.
ViralDark7 – A showcase of the idiotic, ViralDark7 features easily or previously debunked hoaxes and sensational footage collected from other channels on YouTube, served in easy to digest “Top 5” or “Top 10” format. “5 Angels Caught On Camera Flying 2016” for example, features amateurish CGI clips mixed with a long-ago debunked clip from a computer game.
Walton, Charles – Mr. Walton, a fan of Donald Trump, has made what looks like multiple posts a week (often a day) on odd topics of his interest, since 2006. His longevity has inexplicably netted him over 15,000 subscribers. The videos include various government conspiracy theories involving UFOs, but what really got our attention in May 2016, were multiple posts exploiting the disappearance of Egyptair Flight MS804. Nine videos within 24 hours claim that the plane was abducted by a “mile wide alien UFO” without any evidence whatsoever. He further goes on to claim that he predicted an event like this in a video posted days preceding the event, yet nothing like this exists… unless he chooses to create and backdate it.
Waring, Scott C. – No practitioner of visual effects, Mr. Waring makes his living using narration to misrepresent images as evidence of UFOs or strange activity: an oddly shaped cloud, a strangely shaped rock on Mars or the moon, and the like. In one video he spends 4 minutes trying to convince us a smudge in a still photo of a volcano (likely the blurry image of a bird) is a UFO. Claims there’s a speedboat on Mars. Waring has used his ufosightingsdaily.com web site (found to be infested with malware popups) to act as carnival barker for well-established hoaxers such as Streetcap1, Secureteam 10 and LookNowTV, and has unfortunately been cited as a “UFO expert” by online news sites that share hoaxes in order to bring in traffic. Waring will confirm any sighting as authentic in order to promote himself and his web site. Writer Jon Austin of the UK tabloid The Express once fooled Waring into claiming a video clip of planes landing at Heathrow airport were UFOs, yet continues to quote Waring in UFO stories.
WELCOME TO REALITY – This channel originating in France is another typical steal-and-spam operation, using hoax videos duplicated from YouTube and promoted using at least one Facebook shill account.
x-u-f-o.blogspot.com – Simply reposts links to hoaxes by Secureteam 10, Myunhauzen74, UFOvni2012, Art Alien TV and others.
xxxdonutzxxx – See Kaschuba Brothers.
ZV UFO – A few rarely seen clips, but most stolen from Secureteam 10, Thirdphaseofmoon, Section 51, LookNowTV, and others that have gone viral.
Web sites that use UFO hoaxes to attract pageviews. |
2020, animated films, Attack of the Demons, Brian Emond, CFF, Chatanooga Film Festival, cinema, directorial debut, Eric Power, film festival favorite, film festivals, films, homage, horror, Jeffrey A Brown, mockumentary, movie reviews, Movies, new movies, The Beach House, The Chattanooga Film Festival, The Vice Guide to Bigfoot, writer-director, Zach Lamplugh
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As usually happens at festivals, Day One is all about getting your bearings, making plans and easing into the serious business of having fun. As such, my first day at the Chattanooga Film Fest only involved three full lengths, four shorts and about 45 minutes of a filmmakers’ commentary session (full disclosure: I guess I’m not super fond of talking during a film regardless of who does it). I’d make up time in the following few days, however, and that’s really all that matters when you’re playing the long game.
Ultimately, though, it’s about quality and there was no shortage of that on display. Let’s start everything in earnest now, shall we? With no further ado, in order, I present my Friday screenings from this year’s Chattanooga Film Festival.
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Attack of the Demons
As outsiders descend on the small Colorado town of Barrington for its annual Halloween/battle-of-the-bands festival, we see that all isn’t quite as hunky-dory as it seems. In particular, one robed stranger has literally brought Hell to town in the form of a virulently infectious demonic plague that brings gruesome death and even more gruesome rebirth to all it touches. The only hope for the world lies in the hands of a group of survivors brought together by fate and a desperate need to escape…the Attack of the Demons!
As with nearly every film I screened during the festival, I knew nothing about Attack of the Demons before I actually sat down to watch it, aside from the fact that is was animated. Within moments, I was hooked. By the end credits, the film had entered that rare ground that I like to call “Instant Classics.” There haven’t been many of them but this is most certainly one of those.
What makes director Eric Power’s homage to horror of all eras so unforgettable? In this case, the answer is in the attention to detail. While Attack of the Demons utilizes the same sort of “moving paper” style that South Park has made so famous, the filmmakers have packed every inch of the film with so many lovingly rendered details that it makes the whole thing feel impossibly alive and practically demands repeat viewings. From the intricacies of the various humans, demons and animals presented to all the truly amusing in-jokes that reference not only horror but music (the obviously Misfits-inspired Banshee Riders are as brilliant as the amazing ’70s Italian horror flick that we glimpse), there’s almost too much to take in on the first go.
None of the cool details would mean a thing if everything else in the film wasn’t firing on all cylinders but this is the complete package: the voice acting is excellent and nuanced, the score is brilliant (one of the best Carpenter clones I’ve heard yet), the editing, writing and production elements are all top-notch, the humor and horror halves are perfectly balanced (the film is consistently funny) and it’s quite obvious that the filmmakers dearly love horror. While I’ve heard this described as “South Park meets Evil Dead,” I actually got more of a Demons vibe (lots of references to Italian horror) mixed with lots of The Thing. For all you gore-hounds out there, just know that this thing is so splattery, if it were live action, it might out-do Peter Jackson’s immortal Dead Alive.
This was the kind of movie that I never wanted to end which, if you think about it, is really the best kind of film. Suffice to say that I’ll keep my beady eyes fixed on Power and company from now on: this is as close to a perfect film as it gets, at least as far as I’m concerned.
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The Vice Guide to Bigfoot
Opting to keep the mood light, I decided to follow with one of my favorite sub-genres: the mockumentary. As with the best of these kinds of films, the plot is as streamlined as necessary: egotistical, jackass Vice reporter Brian (co-writer Brian Emond) and his put-upon producer/cameraman/friend Zach (director/co-writer Zach Lamplugh) are sent to the wilds of Georgia to meet up with cryptid hunter/YouTube celebrity, Jeff (Jeffrey Stephenson), and hunt for Bigfoot. The problem? Smart-ass Brian thinks this is all a bunch of click-bait bullshit while goofy Jeff truly believes. When strange things start to happen in the woods, will this be the proof that Jeff needs or Brian’s chance to finally crack a “real” story?
Finding the perfect balance between snide and sincere, Lamplugh and Emond’s film is not only smart and well-made but genuinely funny and full of plenty of surprising, organic twists and turns. The characters all end up being so well-developed and likable that the film develops real stakes by the seat-of-your pants finale, something that many horror-comedies struggle with: you come to care about all of these idiots so much that you really don’t want anything bad to befall them, regardless of how stupid they behave. The horror aspect, while not overpowering, was still nicely realized with some surprisingly effective touches of gore.
Where the film really excels, however, is with the deftly handled humor. Whether coming from Brian and Zach’s push-me/pull-you relationship, the subtle skewering of YouTube/Soundcloud celebrities, Jeff’s general buffoonery or Brian’s essentially caustic view of anything that isn’t him, there’s a lot of funny stuff being thrown at the screen and the vast majority of it works, especially once we get to that bonkers finale.
Perhaps the highest praise that I can give The Vice Guide to Bigfoot, however, is that I would love to see this become a franchise: while the film isn’t perfect, these are the kinds of characters I want to spend more time with. Hell, The Vice Guide to the Jersey Devil is playing in my head, as I type, and it’s great. Talk about the power of cinema!
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The Beach House
After a couple of comedies, it was finally time to get into the serious stuff and writer-director Jeffrey A. Brown’s The Beach House was one that had me intrigued based on the synopsis alone. It promised to be weird and creepy, two things that have me responding faster than Pavlov’s pooch.
A couple with relationship issues decide to get away from the world at a secluded beach house owned by the guy’s family. Once there, however, they discover that they aren’t alone: a couple of family friends are already there, although they’re only too happy to share the gorgeous ocean view. While this seems a little odd, the intense bio-luminescence and gathering fog outside seem even odder still. And then things get really weird.
Recalling films as diverse as Richard Stanley’s recent adaptation of The Color Out of Space, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! and The Mist, Brown’s feature-length debut is quite the accomplished bit of filmmaking. In fact, cinematographer Owen Levelle might just have provided us with some of the most singularly gorgeous shots of the whole year: there are moments in The Beach House, like the opening deep dive to the ocean floor, that truly take your breath away. The sound design, editing, production design and performances are all apiece with the camerawork, making this one of the most immaculately crafted movies I’ve seen in some time.
And yet, for all that, I didn’t love The Beach House. Despite being thought-provoking and visually lush, I also found it a bit overlong and repetitive: I also wasn’t fond of a particular story element, something that I felt was a little below the film’s overall reach. If the worst thing you can really accuse a film of is doing things that you don’t agree with, however, than the film must inherently be doing something right. There was a lot to like here and somethings that I’ll never forget: the scenes with the bio-luminescence, for example, probably rank with some of the most awe-inspiring things I’ve ever seen in a film. I predict a very interesting career for those involved: this was a helluva calling card.
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While I didn’t get through quite as many features as I wanted and barely even scratched the surface of the other content, this first day of the CFF would bode well for the days ahead. At this point, there was still 23 films to go: who knew what was in store? Stay tuned, dear readers, and find out. |
Everyone has heard of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster, but what about the Giant Anaconda Python? The Giant Anaconda Python is a fascinating creature first described by 19 th century explorer Percy H. Fawcett, but one whose existence, for now, remains unproven.
According to Fawcett and others in history who have claimed to see the Giant Anaconda Python, the massive prehistoric snake is over 40 feet (12 meters) long and at least a foot (30 cm) in diameter. To some, this giant snake is called Yacumama, meaning “mother of water.”
Indeed it has been described as even longer than in Fawcett’s description, reaching over 100 feet (30 meters) long and residing in the Amazon river basin. Though many claims have been made, no official sightings or evidence of this monster’s existence have come to light.
If we look at the evidence, however, the claims about this legendary creature may not be all that far off.Related:
The Mystery of the Appearance of Nabau in Malaysia’s Rivers
Mystery ‘Loch Ness Monster’ Washes Up On A Beach In South Georgia
What If Titanoboa Monster Snake Didn’t Go Extinct?
Giant Anaconda Snake
All About Anacondas
Anacondas are a large group of snakes found in and around the Amazon rainforest in South America . Specifically, there are four species of anaconda: the green Anaconda Python , the yellow anaconda, the dark-spotted anaconda, and the Bolivian anaconda. They are all members of the boa species.
The most common breed of anaconda is also the largest: the green anaconda, which has also been nicknamed the common Anaconda Python and the giant Anaconda Python. It is important to not confuse this reptile’s nickname with the Giant Anaconda being discussed here.
Anacondas are semi-aquatic snakes, meaning they exist on land but also excel at swimming in the rapid waters of the Amazon. Most who claim the existence of the Giant Anaconda Pythonsay it hides by camouflaging in deep waters.
However, even the largest confirmed species of anaconda (the green anaconda) only reaches approximately between 10-17 feet (3-5 meters) long, though one report claims to have found one that was 23 feet (7 meters) long. Clearly this species is not the Giant Anaconda Python.
Anaconda Biggest Snake
Reticulated pythons are longer than anacondas, reaching upwards of 20 feet in length, but are unlikely to have been the famed Giant Anaconda Python as they are not ne arly wide or bulky enough to match the description provided by Percy H. Fawcett and others.
Green anacondas may be shorter but are a much larger snake than pythons. They can reach weights of over 500 pounds (227 kg) in some cases, while reticulated pythons only reach a bit under 200 pounds (91 kg). The girth of the Anaconda Python distinctly separates it from the reticulated python in terms of recognition.
The first record of this cryptid being described comes from Percy H. Fawcett, a British geographer and explorer of South America in the early 1900s. Fawcett’s first expedition started in 1906 in Brazil.
By 1907 he had traveled to Bolivia, where he claimed he killed a massive serpent-like creature that he found swimming in the murky waters around his boat. According to Fawcett, this snake was around 62 feet (19 meters) long and at least one foot (30 cm) in diameter.
At the time, Fawcett had also made a number of additional statements claiming to have seen other unknown creatures including a dog with two noses and the giant Apazauca spider. Scientists largely discredited these sightings and took Fawcett’s claims lightly.
Giant Anaconda Python
Nowadays, we know it is possible that the two-nosed dogs he had seen may have been double-nosed Andean tiger hounds (which originated in Bolivia) and the Apazauca spider may have been a Brazilian wandering spider. If these two claims may have been true, how certain can we be that the Giant Anaconda is a complete myth?
Fawcett’s expeditions continued into the 1920s. Throughout the course of his journeys, he inspired many other aspiring explorers and his expeditions even influenced the 1912 book “The Lost World” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle .
His more credible findings also earned him a medal from the Royal Geographical Society, a UK-based society for geography, for his geographic surveying work in the Amazon. This was not some fantasist crashing around the jungle: Fawcett was a serious explorer, and his descriptions should be taken with a degree of seriousness.
Percy Fawcett in 1911 (Daniel Candido / Public Domain)
In 1925, Fawcett’s explorations came to an unfortunate end. He, his son, and his son’s friend disappeared during an expedition to find a lost city he referred to as “Z.” It is theorized that they were either killed by Amazonian native tribes or perhaps starved to death in uncharted territory.
Their bodies were never recovered. Though tragic, his records remain valuable to this day as some of the earliest recordings of wildlife in the Amazon. The description of the Giant Anaconda in these records is not however the only one. Others claimed to have seen it as well, confirming Fawcett’s notes.
World’s Largest Anaconda
Evidence For the Beastly SerpentBeyond Percy H. Fawcett, some others have claimed to see the Giant Anaconda in more recent years. Mike Warner, an Irish lithographer, claimed to have found evidence of the creature using satellite photography in 2009.
A Peruvian man named Juan Carlos Palomino claims to have seen and killed an Anaconda Python approximately 40 feet (12 meters) long during a military expedition, a truly huge snake which could not be a mere green anaconda. But beyond the individual sightings, there are also the stories in the oral history of the region.
Amazonian natives also tell legendary stories about the massive Yacumama that was over 100 feet (30 meters) long, according to the stories. With so many verbal and written accounts from the same region (a region that is known for massive snakes and great biodiversity, at that), the chance of such a creature existing at one point in history is not so far out of the question.
With the finding of a green anaconda of approximately 23 feet long in Brazil bordering Paraguay and Bolivia, the idea that longer anacondas could be hiding somewhere unexplored in the Amazon is not entirely unrealistic. Like many other creatures, it could simply be hiding in murky, unexplored waters as suggested by those who have claimed to see it.
It may also be highly skilled at camouflaging in water and trees at this point, having been able to live this long without another predator coming along to kill it or compete with it. Certainly, the thick network of waterways and the impenetrable forest would be a perfect environment for such a creature to remain hidden.
A Case of Mistaken Identity?The issue with these firsthand accounts is that none of them are scientific. Those that have claimed to see the Giant Anaconda or even have killed one all make general estimations about the beast’s size. None of the Giant Anacondas which have been seen were ever captured, much less measured.
This leads to the question: how accurate are the visual assessments of those who have seen these giant snakes? It would be difficult for most people to estimate what 40 feet (12 meters) looks like without an accurate measurement comparison, especially when the creature being observed is curled and moving. It is possible that those who have claimed to see these massive beasts were simply looking at a larger-than-average anaconda and incorrectly estimated its size.
Another aspect to consider regarding this cryptid is evolution. Throughout time, mammals and reptiles have evolved to be smaller and smaller, likely due to changing atmospheric composition and temperatures on earth and competition with humans for space and resources.
With less food and land available, only those small enough to live with less food and water will live long enough to reproduce and produce even smaller offspring. There’s also the issue with oxygen – oxygen levels have decreased on earth over the last several thousand years, making the need for large amounts of oxygen (to keep large bodies functioning) a disadvantage to large species.
Darwin’s famous survival of the fittest has certainly played out as expected when it comes to the evolution of these creatures. The world we live in now may not be able to support such a giant snake.
Because of this, it is very possible that the Giant Anaconda, Yacumama, or some similar large serpent once existed on earth. In fact, evidence of a pre-historic 50 foot (15 meter) serpent called Titanoboa was found in the early 2000s.
Paleontologists uncovered several massive vertebrae and three skull pieces belonging to the Titanoboa in South America, allowing them to piece these fossils together and learn more about the terrifying creature. According to them, the Titanoboa was the snake equivalent to the Tyrannosaurus Rex , and would have been considered the “king” of the early Amazon.
It is estimated that the Titanoboa was approximately 2,500 pounds (1,130 kg), roughly the same as an adult black rhino, and killed its large prey via constriction. To this day, the fossilized remains of the Titanoboa are the largest found remnants of any snake species on earth.
Giant Green Anaconda
The green anaconda (Eunectes murinus), also known as the giant anaconda, common anaconda, common water boa or sucuri, is a boa species found in South America. It is the heaviest and one of the longest known extant snake species. Like all boas, it is a non-venomous constrictor. The term “anaconda” often refers to this species, though the term could also apply to other members of the genus Eunectes. |
What is the difference between a portal and a vortex? The meaning of a portal is; a doorway, gate, or other entrance, especially a large and imposing one. The meaning of a vortex is; a mass of whirling fluid or air, especially a whirlpool or whirlwind. If you put the two together, what do you have? The Sasquatch people have a name for it and it’s called the Traveling Ghost.
In 2013, a Sasquatch portal jumper named, Loekey, made contact with me in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had no understanding or knowledge of portal jumpers prior to his contact nor did I really have much interest in the Sasquatch themselves. I knew of their existence along with other Cryptids but my interests were in another direction. To put it mildly, Loekey pretty much changed my world and pushed me in a direction that I didn’t even know existed!
At first, I felt like I was on a psychedelic mind-altering trip but without the drugs. In my mind, time and space became a kaleidoscope of color beyond my wildest dreams or understanding. Loekey guided me with a gentle hand, showing me amazing imagery and it led me on my journey down the rabbit hole, exploring the world of Sasquatch portal jumpers. The best place to start is in Loekey’s own words and his explanation of what portals are.
Put simply, portals are upside down pyramids. The point of the pyramid gains its energy from Middle Earth. Each natural portal has a drop-off point that has the timing. He said that any topography around the portals would give off a distinctive vibration that would affect the senses of anyone within its perimeter. They would feel as if there was a morphed or skewed altering of time. Visually, he said it looks like colors come from all directions and the depth perception of anything within the portal is distorted, almost stretched going in and out of focus.
Within each portal is an octagon mirage that gives off multiple pyramid shapes. Once Loekey jumps into the determined portal, he says he encounters a multitude of pyramids turning in all directions. It’s like an illusion of several endless mirrors, rotating at once. He said it can be very disorienting for humans because most humans haven’t developed their pineal glands beyond what is determined safe. He also said that most human depth perceptions aren’t developed enough to handle the frequency or energy fluctuations.
Loekey said that the natural portals affect areas around them within a mile in each direction, which includes up above (the sky) and down below going towards Earth’s center. At certain times of the day, or night, the natural portals rotate, and the octagon pattern shifts. This is because the Earth adjusts for anything that is going in or coming out of the portals. He said the important aspect of the natural portals is that when the pyramids are pulling towards Middle Earth, this very action helps the Earth rotate.
Natural Portals and the Traveling Ghost Vortex
To clarify things, Loekey said there are two different types of portals and a very unusual vortex. The first being the natural portals that are located in different locations around the planet. They are stationary but well hidden. The second are the portals that appear for a few days and then disappear. They are still natural portals to the planet but they have a different function. Loekey said they don’t use these portals as much as the stationary ones because their destination points aren’t as easy to calculate. The third kind, in my opinion, is the most unique of them all. They travel along with the planet’s rotation, and the reason they are so unique is that they are sentient. They can be dangerous to a point not because they travel at high speed but because they have a warped and inverted impression to them that pulls in light and sometimes whatever is in their path. The Sasquatch use them only if they are in locations where there are no natural portals. his sentient vortex is called the Traveling Ghost.
I believe I experienced the Traveling Ghost when I was working cattle in Texas years ago. It was during a Spring round-up early one morning when my ex and I went to go help some ranch friends gather up a large herd of Mexican steers and take them to another pasture where large trucks were waiting to haul them away. I’ll never forget how the cattle were restless and anxious that particular morning like they sensed something wasn’t right.
I could smell the electricity in the air and weirdly, I could smell my own blood in my nose. I didn’t have a nose bleed but it smelt as if I did. My ex-husband commented he could smell blood in his nose too. It almost felt like the air was snapping and crackling but you couldn’t pinpoint a direction. Sometimes, it was up in the air and other times behind you. It was just really weird as if something was going over us or around us, slowly and then all of a sudden it was gone, leaving that vertigo feeling like you had no sense of being up or down. If I wouldn’t have been on my horse, I would have fallen over. I can only imagine how my horse felt.
Well, the very moment we all heard crackling and popping in the air over our heads, all hell broke loose and the cattle took off and before we knew it, we had a stampede on our hands. The cattle went through the fence and out into a huge pasture in the wrong direction at high speed. It took a lot of good cowboying and maneuvering for us to get them under control and about a half-hour later we were all counting our lucky stars no one got hurt. But I have to tell you, it was a bizarre experience and one that a few of the cowboys said they had never experienced before.
The Traveling Ghost Vortex
The traveling Ghost can be called upon by Sasquatch jumpers and other Elementals for a variety of needs. The one difference to this vortex than the portals is that it has an intelligence to it. The Traveling Ghosts have a connection to each other and they are aware of where each other resides at any given time.
The Ancient Ones of the forest say this particular vortex has an energy frequency that is from another planet similar to Earth. I think this other planet has been extinct for a long time and because of this, especially with Earth being so similar to their original home, the Traveling Ghosts reside here now. From what I understand, they came here millennia ago.
The Traveling Ghost has a mathematical formula to it that makes them alien in a technological way. From what Loekey says, they are hard to figure out and they change with time just as anything here on this planet does. I think this means the calculations change in how and when to use them, which means that in order to use them, you have to have a connection with them.
Loekey showed me in my mind’s eye, a little of what it’s like to be inside a Traveling Ghost and I pretty much got a really bad headache and didn’t like it. It was like being inside a tunnel with me twirling a thousand spins a second with light, air, and something I can’t explain, almost like a loud engine exploding in my ears. My frequency just couldn’t even come close to what was necessary to connect to that type of intelligence. If I ever get pulled into one of these things, I don’t think I would be sane. It was like my mind turned to mush.
Think of an artificial portal like a cut or wound on your skin except in this case it’s a tear on Mother Earth that is like an open wound. If an artificial portal is made, this changes the timing of the “natural” portal’s rotation. For instance, if extraterrestrials or interdimensional beings rip through or open up a portal either galactically or dimensionally, this affects the planet. The fabric of time and space has to come from the composition of the original source meaning that the energy and frequency have a pulse that is like a blueprint. All beings who are natural portal jumpers have within their DNA, Earth’s blueprint. This means that if anything happens to the rotation of the portals, it can affect the portal jumpers biologically in a bad way, especially if they are in the portals at the same time an artificial portal is ripping through. I can only assume the octagon mirage and the multiple pyramids can’t function properly with the artificial rip or pull coming from an outside source other than Earth.
Interestingly enough, Loekey stated that the Cryptid we call Dogman is considered as an Earth-Keeper. Unfortunately, Dogman is also experiencing the effects of these artificial portals too. Some of the problems happening around the natural portals are frequency changes. The artificial portals tend to change the topography because it’s like a tear that seems like a black hole except it doesn’t pull in things, it just slowly gets bigger because nothing is closing the rip. Dogman has to be able to sense where the natural portals are at any given time but with the multitude of artificial portals happening, their frequency interferes with that of the natural portals. Dogman’s ability to locate and know where the portals are is vital because they create a type of road marker, that is essential for beings to be able to calculate where they go in and where they come out when they jump through the portals.
Artificial portals allow other dimensional beings in that otherwise would not come through the natural portals. Because the artificial portals are here and have not been closed, we now have problems with biological beings called “bioinerts” who otherwise could not come here. They are like parasites and Loekey said they are very dangerous and destructive. Unfortunately, the artificial portals and the “bioinerts” combined affect the natural process and encoding that the Earth goes through. The question at this point is how to close off the artificial portals once they are open. Since the artificial portals are dangerous to jump into … there is no way to know how to close them off from their point of origin.
Given that artificial portals are foreign to Earth; their technology is also of unknown origin. If Loekey or any of the numerous portal jumpers decided to take on such a dangerous mission and jump into these artificial portals, there is no telling if any of them would or could come back to Earth.
Loekey emphatically said that if any life forms come here to visit and they can’t come through the portals naturally, then they don’t need to be here, period! |
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In August of 2014, early visitors to Pajapan Beach in the Mexican state of Veracruz stumbled upon a strange scene. Tangled among strands of seaweed was what appeared to be a dead humanoid. The top half looked like a human female with long hair and translucent skin. The bottom half was scaly and ended in a large flipper. Before authorities arrived to take away what people immediately identified as the remains of a real mermaid, the curious snapped photos of the creature and by the end of the day these pictures had been liked, shared and commented on by millions in every part of the internet’s social media sphere. Days went by and speculation turned into certainty. Yes, this was exactly what it appeared to be, a mermaid. However it was not a flesh and bone creature, it was made of silicone. The silicone Veracruz mermaid turned out to be a prop from the movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides,” starring Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom which had been filming nearby back in 2011. Some alleged that the mermaid prop was released as a promotional stunt for the next “Pirates of the Caribbean” installment, but of the many mermaid models that were made for this movie, the Veracruz mermaid was simply, “The one that got away.”
Mexico has its history of mermaid legends, but never coming from the seacoasts. The heart of Mexican mermaid territory is the lake regions of the altiplano, the highland region of central Mexico spanning from Puebla all the way to Guadalajara, with special emphasis on the small lakes and other water sources found in the state of Mexico, just west of Mexico City. Stories about half-woman and half-aquatic-serpent creatures date back thousands of years. The Tlanchana is the most famous of these mermaid creatures and she hails specifically from the small lakes and rivers around the modern-day towns of Metepec, Toluca and Lerma. There is a sculpture of the Tlanchana in the central square of Metepec and she is the subject of an annual arts and culture fair in that town.
The freshwater mermaid stories are said to go back a few thousand years and were first noted among the Otomi people, an indigenous group which pre-dated the Aztec Empire in central Mexico. Around 1000 AD the Otomis were the primary cultural force in the lake region of central Mexico and were comprised of several groups with somewhat related dialects and a similar belief system. At the time of the Aztec arrival, the primary Otomi city was called Xaltocan named after the island on which it was founded and named after the lake in which the island was located. Lake Xaltocan was really just the extreme northern branch of Lake Texcoco separated by the main lake by a narrow neck and marshes. In the Aztec language, Nahuatl, Xaltocan means “sandy ground of spiders.” The Otomi band that lived in Xaltocan was called Xaltocameca and the Xaltocameca believed in the supremacy of the moon goddess, which was worshipped as their primary deity. One of the aspects or manifestations of the moon goddess was called Acapaxapo. In the Otomi dialect of Xaltocan, the word Acapaxapo loosely translates to “water weed mirror.” The Acapaxapo appeared out of the lake and was seen as the goddess of intuition and of the future. The Xaltocamecas would call upon her to deliver messages and omens and to impart predictions. She was often “felt” and assumed a spirit form, but sometimes Acapaxapo took on a physical body. She was often described as having the upper body of a woman with long hair and pale skin. She had light eyes. She wore jewels covering her neck and breasts that were illuminated by moonlight. Her lower body was that of a black water serpent. The Acapaxapo could be seen or summoned at Lake Xaltocan, but could appear in any body of fresh water including streams and rivers and smaller lakes and ponds in the Otomi homeland.
When the Aztecs swept across the altiplano from the north and decided to settle the Lake Texcoco area around the 1300s, their growing empire absorbed the surrounding cultures, and like most empires, integrated those cultures into their own. The Aztecs respected the older gods and belief systems that existed in the region before they came. So, the Otomi aspect of the moon goddess called Acapaxapo became “Altonan Chane,” which is a combination of the words atl, meaning “water;” tonan, meaning “mother” and chane which means “magical being or spirit.” By the time of the Spanish Conquest, Altonan Chane had turned into the word “Tlanchana.”
The Tlanchana was somewhat syncretic in that it was based on the older Otomi Acapaxapo but was combined with a slightly different spiritual view of the world of the Aztecs. For one, the Tlanchana was no longer a 100% benevolent being. While her older version was seen as a helpful spirit and associated with the moon who was the female deity who created all life, the Aztec version could be good or evil and was mostly malicious. In this aspect she was closer to the European version of a mermaid, that of the temptress who causes the downfall of men and who acts of out jealousy or has selfish intentions. While the Otomi built altars to their half-female, half-snake water spirit, the Aztecs looked upon the Tlanchana with a certain degree of cautious respect. The Tlanchana was more of a whimsical dark sorceress, an enchantress, often lonely and often envious of humans. She only appeared at night and her appearance was almost always a bad omen. According to Aztec legends, she would also sing or cry for help to lure men to their dooms, much like the European mermaid. If she wished, the Tlanchana could also grow legs, so that she could more easily move about the human population, but this was rare. At the time of the Spanish conquest, men who worked on the lakes, either catching fish or hunting waterfowl, would give offerings to the Tlanchana for safe boating or for a good bounty. A Spanish priest who, right after the Conquest, lived in the small indigenous community of Almoloya del Rio on the shores of Lake Chicnahuapan just north of Toluca, wrote that the Tlanchana was a demon and the practice of her worship should be eradicated. The Spanish then did what the Aztecs had done before them: they took the previous belief system and modified it. The Tlanchana idea transformed once again and the post-Conquest female water spirit turned into a very European-looking mermaid, complete with a dolphin-like flipper, often blonde, and joyfully playing a guitar. The guitar-playing mermaid can be seen today throughout the crafts of central and southern Mexico, especially in and around Metepec. The Tlanchana can sometimes even be found as a character in hand-crafted nativity sets, attending the Baby Jesus along with the Three Wise Men, the angels and the shepherd boys.
Many legends and myths often find themselves based on reality. It is not our purpose on Mexico Unexplained to come to conclusions about such things, but some people believe that the Tlanchana could be a real creature or based on something real that is experienced at the lakes and other bodies of water, especially at night. There are several modern-day stories of Mexican lake mermaids and many people in central Mexico believe that the stories are indeed real. Here are three of them.
On the shores of the small lake called Laguna de Huamuxtitlan in the Mexican state of Guerrero there is a story of a Tlanchana emerging from the water and calling a young man from the lake. The laguna has been seen as a sacred and spiritual place for centuries. It was so important to the Aztecs that they built 14 small pyramids on its shores. There is a small intermittent spring coming out of a rock wall on the shores of the lake and the Aztecs once believed that the spring was a portal to another world. In this modern Mexican tale, the young man’s impulse was to run away from the noise which grew increasingly louder as he ran. When he got back to his village he told the townsfolk of his experience and dozens of men returned to the lake with machetes and torches to get to the bottom of things, but found nothing.
Overlooking the town of Toluca, the capital of the Mexican state of Mexico, is a huge dormant volcano called Nevado de Toluca. The mountain is often snow-capped and in the more temperate seasons there is a small lake which forms in the center of the caldera. According to legend once there was a man who went to the mountain with his daughter to gather snow. The little girl was drawn to the lake and went to the water’s edge to wash her face. While washing, she fell in the lake and was pulled by an unseen force to the depths of the icy waters. When the man realized that his little girl was missing he became frantic and called out to her. The voice of the girl replied and told the man that she had fallen into the lake and that she was safe but under a spell by the spirit of the lake and could not leave. She also told her father that she had been transformed into something half fish. Distraught and able to do nothing, the father left his daughter at the top of the mountain. Thus, the little girl became probably the only mermaid in the world to be living at 15,300 feet.
The last legend that we will briefly examine here comes from a small lake near Puebla called Laguna de Aljojuca. There, the Tlanchana is an evil and jealous spirit who guards the lake. It is said that women who enter the lake or accidentally fall into the lake survive, but men never do. If you are a man and you wish to cross the lake in a boat, the Tlanchana will capsize your boat and will drown you. The same goes if you try to swim or go knee-deep around the edges. According to the locals, if a man ventures into the laguna a woman will appear with the tail of a snake and the blue-eyed face of an angel, and that is the last face you will see. This more severe tale of the Tlanchana could have been invented to make sure children stay away from the water, or to punish unruly children, much like the story of La Llorona. Please see episode # 2 of Mexico Unexplained for the legend of the Llorona. But, back to the stories surrounding the lake at Aljojuca… while doing research for this podcast I came across a comments section in an online article about the legends from this lake with many comments coming from local residents. Those who chimed in and wrote claimed that the Tlanchana living in that lake is 100% positively real and is a cryptid or unknown creature much like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. A young man in the same comments section noted that he participated in a triathlon which had its swimming portion in that lake and all the male triathletes miraculously survived. As commenting on the internet is prone to play out, the triathlete was ridiculed and called a liar or a troll by those who claimed to have actually seen or heard the evil mermaid in Lake Aljojuca. The whole story and reactions to it just show to us the sheer power of belief in myths and legends, even in the age of the internet.
REFERENCES (This is not a formal bibliography)
Los Otomis: Su lengua y su historia by Yolanda Lastra de Suarez (in Spanish)
The Goddess Guide: Explaining the Attributes and Correspondences of the Divine Feminine by Brandi Auset
Handbook of Middle American Indians edited by Robert Wauchope. We are an Amazon affiliate. Buy a copy of the book here: https://amzn.to/2zr4hbk |
Call of Duty: Ghosts players on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC will be able to get their hands on Invasion – the game’s third epic DLC Pack – on 3rd July. Invasion offers players four new multiplayer maps each with a unique field order, plus ‘Awakening,’ the third chapter in the game’s four-part episodic Extinction storyline.
Invasion’s four new multiplayer maps include:
Departed: Set in a rural Mexican town during the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration, players who complete the map’s Field Order will unlock the Death Mariachi killstreak. Armed with dual-wielding pistols, the Death Mariachi settles scores, with each kill turning enemy players into another member of the band and a temporary squad mate.
Pharaoh: In the abandoned archaeological site of an ancient Egyptian palace, players will have to be on the lookout for collapsing monuments and urns full of flesh-eating scarabs, among other surprises in this multi-level map. Players who unlock this map’s Field Order will be handsomely rewarded by Anubis, the half jackal/half human protector of the dead.
Mutiny: A remote Caribbean island harbouring an eerie pirate hideout complete with abandoned trading posts and prison cells, where speed and stealth are a must as players navigate the narrow and intertwining pathways. Players that unlock “Mutiny’s” Field Order will find themselves escorted by two ethereal ghost pirates who will happily send enemy players down to Davey Jones’ locker on their behalf.
Favela: A refreshed version of the fan-favourite map from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, this Brazilian shantytown has seen substantial change since its original release. Buildings once under construction are now complete, while others have crumbled into a state of disrepair. Players must avoid falling to their death as they traverse the map from one building to the next, avoiding enemy snipers taking advantage of the map’s long sightlines. Players who complete ‘Favela’s’ Field Order can call in air support from a nearby Y-8 Gunship.
Anchoring the Call of Duty: Ghosts Invasion DLC Pack is the next installment in the game’s Extinction mode episodic narrative, ‘Episode 3: Awakening.’ In Awakening, the team descends into the perilous alien underworld to strike at the subterranean fortress of the Ancestors, the mysterious puppet-masters behind the Cryptid invasion. Armed with a range of new hi-tech weapons and equipment, the team must penetrate a series of defensive barriers to reach the Ark and unlock the secrets of the Ancestors’ psychic powers. As the final battle draws closer, the fate of Earth and the future of the human race hang in the balance. |
Move over, Slenderman, there's a new cryptid in town.
While the slender, faceless figure that followed you in foggy woods previously captivated the internet, Sirenhead is the internet's newest obsession, infiltrating its way into video games and even TikTok.
But who — or what — is Sirenhead, and is it real?
Is Sirenhead real?
Created by Canadian illustrator Trevor Henderson, who specializes in creating creepy characters, Sirenhead was first seen on Trevor's feed in 2018.
The creature, characterized by its towering emaciated figure and sirens in place of a head, reveals its presence with the ominous sound of — you guessed it — sirens.
Sirenhead is just an original character created by Trevor, and has no basis in history or myth. So no, you don't need to keep yourself up at night worrying your next trot through the woods will be met with a towering killer alarm.
"She was on vacation with her husband and they were scoping out graveyards on the way, as you do, when she saw it," his post debuting the creature reads.
"Rising out of the old cemetery, big as an old (macabre) telephone pole. Was this some kind of bizarre art piece the authorities hadn't gotten wise to yet? Even as she stepped out of the car, the megaphones on it's 'head' screeched to life. 'NINE. EIGHTEEN. ONE. CHILD. SEVENTEEN. REMOVE. VILE.' A buzzing, doubled voice screamed random words at her. At this point, it jerked into motion, striding down the hill towards her."
Over the last couple of years, Trevor has continued the lore of Sirenhead, creating a visual explaining some of the monster's features and history — even continuing to create stories of its "sightings" throughout history.
"July 16th, 1995 - Chad Gewecke is found wandering the woods of Tanyard Creek in North West Arkansas," another post about Sirenhead reads. "He is admitted with minor injuries, and when questioned, he claims his friends were taken or killed by 'something huge striding through the trees' that mimicked their voices."
Sirenhead gained popularity after appearing in 'Fallout 4.'
The recent rise in popularity of the haunting figure can be attributed to its appearance in a mod for the popular video game Fallout 4. The game follows the inhabitants of a nuclear fallout shelter, and the mod introduces the lanky creature as a monster you can try to defeat.
There's also a spinoff game, just called Siren Head, that can be played on PC. Popular gaming YouTubers like Markiplier and JackSepticEye have played it on their channels, delving into the content and lore of the creature.
But the popularity of Sirenhead doesn't stop there. Fans of the creature have taken it one step further, using CGI to put it into videos and posting them to TikTok. This, of course, is where the creature's popularity really soared and brought into question whether or not it was real. Most of the videos on TikTok are POV videos, giving the creature potential storylines. |
Here is The Best Place for you to Buy FO76 Caps. Tink is the pet cat of Debby in the Fallout 4 add-on Far Harbor. 1 Background 2 Characteristics 3 Variants 4 Appearances 5 See also 6 References The domestic dog (Latin: Canis lupus familiaris) is a canid that is known as man's best friend. As it happens, here is a store to trade, KQIX , which could provide a variety of MMORPG virtual currency and equipment. Maisie, the Abernathy family pet at Abernathy farm. En eBay encuentras fabulosas ofertas en Mercancía de videojuegos Fallout Pistola. There's a ton of cats in Fallout 4 and 76. #fallout #fogame #fallout76 #fo76 #xboxshare #fallout76pet #fo76countryroads #fo76westvirginia #fallout76game #fo76cat For pets in other Fallout games, please see "Pet". Register. If it is a "beast" type creature, like a bear, radrat, cat, guard dog etc. Cuddles was Stacy's pet. FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon. Toro, Diamond City schoolhouse. While most people will only ever have to worry about toilet training their pets, keeping them well fed, or taking them to the vet every once in a while, the life of a pet owner in Appalachia is a little more complicated. Their relatives can be encountered at Far Harbor. Fallout 76 Wastelanders brought a new group of residents in Appalachia, NPC, which received quite a good response from the player group. Please send me a message if the guide hasn’t been updated after two weeks of a change to the taming/pet system. then you just need rank 3 animal friend equipped, if it is a cryptid like a snallygaster then you need wasteland whisperer rank 3 equipped. They do, however, drop rabbit meat, which can be eaten or cooked, hides, as well as minor ammunition at times. Special Names and Items will work. Bethesda Game Studios, the creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4, welcome you to Fallout 76, the online prequel where every surviving human is a real person. : The content is not described in full detail on this page. Arrives before Christmas Only 18 left in stock - … Sep 19, 2019 - Sell for Fallout 76 Caps 24/7 Friendly Service on u4n.com, Buy Cheap Fallout 76 Bottle Caps with Fast Delivery on PS4, Xbox One, and PC! 1 Background 2 Characteristics 2.1 Drops 3 Locations 4 References Appalachia is still teeming with life, despite the destruction brought upon it by the Great War. Fallout 76's Appalachia plays host to many different animals, some more dangerous and prone to attacking the player on sight than others.While the fox might run away from players, you'll likely find yourself having to track it down.. Dogs are creatures commonly found in the Commonwealth in Fallout 4. If you do manage to tame an animal, … It is impossible for you to get any pet empty-handed, most aspects in Fallout 76 are costed, so the demand for Fallout 76 Bottle Caps is still increasing. Gamepedia. Steve was a good boy. Play solo or join together as you explore, quest, and triumph against the wasteland’s greatest threats. He named it Steve. as an alternative to traps and turrets. Cuddles (cat) Mikael Hertell really wanted a pet Deathclaw. Sign In. This page lists all pets in Fallout Shelter. A Tabby Cat is the default pet but you can purchase the other pets for$1 USD each. ¡Compra con confianza en eBay! Get it as soon as Wed, Dec 16. You have 2 options, run around and visit them all or plant a tent at one if you have Fallout 1st and server hop until you spawn something tameable. ... Cuddles (cat) - The Vault Fallout Wiki - Everything you need to know about Fallout 76, Fallout 4, New Vegas and more! Fallout 76 Has Its Very Own Happy Home Academy; Fallout 76 Players Are Beating Each Other Up in a Nude Fight Club; Nintendogs 76. Discussion A little after Wastelanders came out there was alot of discussion about the leaked feature coming to Fallout 76 which were pets but a while has passed now and I hear no one talking about pets or any news on pets. ; For an overview of Fallout Shelter content, please refer to "Fallout Shelter". EDIT 2: By the way, I played a lot of Oregon Trail back in the day, which is what helped inspire my base design. Tenemos la selección más grande y las mejores ofertas en Mercancía de videojuegos Fallout Pistola. Microsoft Xbox One X - Consola 1 TB, Color Blanco + Fallout 76 + Red Dead Redemption 2 (Xbox One) + Volante/mando (Gamepad, PC, Xbox One S, Analógico/Digital, D-pad, Inalámbrico, ... Stephanie Cat Clothing - 1pcs Dog Pet Glasses for Pet Products Eye-Wear Dog Pet Sunglasses Photo Props Accessories Pet Supplies Cat Glasses Pet Product 7 - by 1 PCs. Envío gratis en artículos seleccionados. Creature taming is a gameplay mechanic in Fallout 76. Many critters - harmless creatures who are only interested in their own survival - still call it home, nearly all quite mutated. Pets are animals that you can obtain in the Tabby Cat Extension. Through the 25 years since the Great War, dogs have remained relatively unaltered … 95. Hot Rodder is dedicate to everything cars, from gasoline to atomic. References ↑ As Fallout 76 is a game known for technical issues, please understand that the bugs that are covered in this post may or may not get fixed for a while. if your Charisma is high enough. At Rank 3, you have a chance to tame animals and send them back to your C.A.M.P. It was single-handedly one of the most entertaining things I've witnessed in my hundreds of hours playing Fallout 76. Hot Rodder Magazine is a hobbyist magazine in Fallout 4. Each issue of Hot Rodder collected adds a paint job that can be applied to the player's power armor at the Power armor station. Issues come with how-to topics like "Hot-To-Mod Corvega's Core Reactor" and styles of paint jobs. He wanted one so bad he spent hours searching through Fallout 76’s broken wilds in search of one he could tame. Although there are a number of locations where you can find rabbits in Fallout 76, one of the most reliable ones is the hill behind the Whitespring Service Entrance. House cats are creatures found in the Commonwealth in 2287. Update, October 8: You can eat Fallout 76’s cats, but you can’t pet them.Sorry. Fallout 76 rabbits count as critters, meaning that you won't get a ton of experience from routinely hunting them. As part of the Wastelanders update you can now recruit allies, who will set up shop at your camp and act as a general companion between missions. Under the threat of nuclear annihilation, experience the largest world ever created in Fallout. For details, please see the respective articles. Help . Here is echolyx57s guide on how to tame a creature in Fallout 76: Charisma + Perks: My charisma is currently at 6, and I have Rank 3 of both Wasteland Whisperer and Animal Friend. Fallout Posters for Wall Room Decor Bundle - 3 Pc Fallout Video Game Party Decoration Posters with 2 Fallout Decal Stickers (Fallout Office Supplies) $14.95 $ 14. Encontrarás artículos nuevos o usados en Mercancía de videojuegos Fallout Pistola en eBay. EDIT: Some pictures as requested. This cat appears in Fallout 4 and its downloadable content. I think it was in 2 someone mentioned their pet cat was probably eaten by wildlife. 1 Background 2 Characteristics 3 Variants 3.1 House cat 3.2 Pack cat 4 Locations 5 Named house cats 6 Related quest 7 Notes 8 Appearances 9 Gallery Before the Great War, domestic cats were a popular household pet. If you do not have money, you can use Hacks to get them all for free. Martin was seriously hurt in a house fire getting his family to safety in real life. Scruffy, in Bert and Julianna Riggs' room in Vault 118. The pet system in Fallout 76 is ill-defined, and relies on the creature’s level in relation to the player level. Dogs are creatures found in Appalachia. Tink, at The Last Plank in Far Harbor. While Jake farmed for meat, so did Murray. Who are the new allies in Fallout 76? 1 Background 2 Interactions with the player character 2.1 Interactions overview 3 Inventory 4 Appearances Note (Far Harbor) Tink appears only in the Far Harbor add-on Far Harbor. Work together, or not, to survive. Fallout 76 Pet I just met an orange cat in The Ash Heap, really love this cat, haha, it could be my very first pet. 1 Introduction 2 Requirements 3 Methodology 4 Tamable creatures 4.1 Animal Friend 5 Notes 6 Bugs Creature taming allows player characters to tame a specific creature, and subsequently, use it as a means to defend their C.A.M.P. In the next few weeks, your wiki will be migrated to a Fandom.com domain. Learn more here. Whatever happened to "pets" in Fallout 76? Each issue cost thirty five dollars. Weapons: As long as you have a ranged weapon that you would normally use for pacifying, that’s all you need. Fox is a creature in Fallout 76. Appearances. They are cousins of wolves. Here are a couple of locations worth checking if you're searching for the elusive fox across Fallout 76's Appalachia. Kitten Lures do not work with any pets but the Tabby Cat. They were known for their companionship and for hunting common household pests, such as rats. Bethesda seems to have been planning some big events, now that human NPCs, settlers, raiders and companions have arrived in Fallout 76, what will be the next one? The Fallout community is honestly amazing and this week over 300 of us are getting together to help children battling for their lives as a first community wide fundraiser **MOD APPROVED** Earlier this year a well known Fallout 76 roleplayer "Doc" C.J. One of the players had sent me a friend request at some point, of course I accepted. 1 Background 2 Characteristics 2.1 Biology 2.2 Gameplay attributes 3 Variants 3.1 Dog 3.2 Attack dog 3.3 Scorched attack dog 3.4 Blood Eagles attack dog 4 Locations 5 Named dogs 6 Notes 7 Appearances Dogs are found seldomly across Appalachia and will likely be hostile. Through Fallout 76 ’ s broken wilds in search of one he could tame Julianna '... Fallout Shelter content, please refer to `` pets '' in Fallout wilds in of! Locations worth checking if you do not have money, you can Hacks. Level in relation to the taming/pet system ton of cats in Fallout and. Pets '' in Fallout 4 and 76 in 2287 get it as soon as Wed Dec... 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It's pretty common to see bizarre viral photos circulating on the internet. In many cases, they're faked or photoshopped. A lot of people assumed that this photo was also fake because how could a bat be the size of a human but were quickly fact-checked by reality.
Alex Jostar took the photo with the bat and posted it online. It quickly went viral for the absurdity of it all with many people calling it fake. For Jostar, this bat was all too real and even an everyday occurrence.
This type of bat is called a giant golden-crowned flying fox. They are very common in the region of the Philippines that Jostar lives. Although the creature is large and intimidating, they are very docile and even friendly. Their diets consist of fruits and bugs.
The fact that animals like this exist only fuel the fire of what else could be out there. Not only does this bat look like it's a cryptid, it doesn't even look real! Makes you wonder about things like Bigfoot, Mothman, and even the Loch Ness Monster... Could they be out there? |
Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency Year Four:
Case File No. 26-182
AMBER LOVE 09-NOV-2020 Find out how all this began. Catch up on Year One, Year Two, and Year Three cases at the Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency. Thank you for all your financial and social support! Oliver and Gus are looking forward to bringing you more fascinating discoveries and investigations into the chipmunk mafia, the blue jay gang, the neighborhood critters, and cryptid sightings.
This work is supported by the generous backers who adore my cat stories at Patreon.com/amberunmasked and they also get first access to what’s happening with my books and podcast. For a one-time tip, you can go to the new PayPal.me.
Where We Left Off:
The body of a catbird named Imogen was discovered at our doorstep. We learned that there was a hit put out on her.
Now that weird shit won’t be the normal headlines in your average news outlet, enjoy the oddities of our mysteries and tales.
Our past encounters with the vodníci were wrapped in mystery because their rare appearances at the Winchester-Nabu estate. The last encounter was in the spring as COVID-19 quarantines were beginning. Back then, the cat detectives determined that Nick von Vodníci’s sudden visit was not virus related. Rather, Nick was deeply worried about the wildlife habitat and expressed that many others were too. We didn’t expect another vodníci to show up, but we were graced with a different variety in the form of a Pickerel frog.
Months have passed in the blink of an eye. The Presidential Election is upon us. All the humans are stressed to the brink of collective cardiac failure. The wildlife, simple-celled organisms, and plant life are worried too. Some beings were able to make comebacks while others saw extinction and endangerment from all the protections that have been removed. Gus found the vodníci frog near the back porch in the plants and tried to “encourage” conversation with it in his particular Gus style (smacking it a little).
The vodníci said he was looking for a place to stay cool while questing for fresh rainwater. Gus didn’t fully believe the creature since it kind of looked like he was about to break into the house through the mouse tunnels. The tunnels might be there, man, but it’s a still a B&E. Shit got weird. Weirder.
This vodníci warned Gus and me that it had special powers. I noticed when I was unable to get a single clear photo. I was only a foot away at one point and still couldn’t get a perfect picture. At that distance, I should have something more professional. This time I can shift the blame from my terrible photography skills to the magical powers of the vodníci in my presence. Electronic disruption could halt most of the world. Besides technology, living beings are electrical conduits. Our bodies are mostly water.
While Gus was facing off with the vodníci, Oliver was making his rounds to check in with all the other residents. He went to Gnome Grove and the Fairy Garden to wish them a Happy Mabon (the second harvest which falls on the autumnal equinox). Gnomez Addams and Gnome Chomsky had concerns about the presence of a powerful vodníci. They’ve had more encounters with that sort of creature than any of us, so it was peculiar that they would be shaken by one arriving at the estate.
In West Deptford, NJ which is across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, PA, reports show that the environment is polluted with chemicals. That’s about a two-hour drive by car from us, but a bigger metropolitan area so it’s easier to find data on it; plus this report is recent. Every time regulators come up with rules about chemicals, manufacturers get newer chemicals phased into the process which bypass the regulations. Are such forms of pollution responsible for the vodníci’s powers or responsible for the vodníci’s aggression towards humans? (Not that I blame the mystical amphibian at all. Humans suck.)
Gus soon found himself mesmerized by the vodníci. It was a lot like that notion of a hypno-toad. I grew worried about Gus, but I was with Oliver in a different part of the property. I felt it like Spidey-sense. I told Oliver he had to wrap up his meeting with the fairies so we could get back to Gus.
Without his leash, Gus walked up the stone path. He appeared to be focused, but not in a hurry. We followed behind him about twenty paces. Gus navigated around parked cars and made his way to the driveway. He continued his slow, meaningful pace. He turned right and went towards the Grumpy Old Man’s place. Gus works there all the time so it’s not odd. What was strange was that Gus didn’t go to the left of the building and see if any critters were in the cinder blocks. That’s what he normally does. Instead he went directly to the front door and waited until I caught up to him.
He pawed at the door to let me know he wanted to go inside. Again, this part isn’t unusual. The door wasn’t locked though. I looked back at Oliver in his carriage and he gave me a lift of his chin meaning, “Go on.” The door has a few right-wing type stickers on it about the Second Amendment. There are streaks of rust on the thin white paint. It squeaked when I pushed it open.
Gus paused at the threshold but didn’t look anywhere except inside the darkness of the workspace. He shook his head as if getting cobwebs off his ears. He looked back at me for only a second and seemed fine. He went into the hangar for his mousing patrol.
But there on the other side of the threshold, Oliver alerted me to something peculiar. I know there’s tall grass by the door that he and Gus like to chew. I first thought that’s what he wanted. He pawed at his window screen, agreed to take the grass proffered, but that wasn’t what he meant. I turned back and saw what I thought was a clump of mowed grass. It had been stuck to the inside of the door jamb for months. I figured the door had been opened when the grass was mowed and a divot kicked up sticking to the door. Grass can get all over, but I am still adamantly opposed to people who use leaf blowers to get rid of it.
When I squatted down to get a closer look, I noticed that the clump had a strange shape. That’s when the Grumpy Old Man came over and told me what happened. It wasn’t kicked up grass. The greenish-grey mass was a squished frog! He said he didn’t know when it happened, but took on the blame saying he must have closed the door while a frog had been clinging to it. It seemed so weird. There are other places for a frog to go. Why would it have chosen the narrow side of a door?
After a minute, Gus returned to see what we were talking about. He said he knew already. Things were remaining high on the Weird-o-meter. The Pickerel had indeed hypnotizes Gus and ordered him to go up to the hangar. Gus said he was aware of his movements but felt like he couldn’t control his body until he broke the enchantment. All of us were grossed out and no one wanted to touch the flattened frog creature. It’s still hanging there.
The Pickerel was gone by the time we got back to the house. It seems the aggressive attitude and nonconsensual hypnotism on Gus was the vodníci’s way of getting us to pay attention to a wrong done against one of their kind. I don’t know the funerary rites of the vodníci creatures so for now, the squished creature is still in place. There may also be a way of turning the corpse into a protective talisman, but I think I would need vodníci permission. Next time Gus finds one, I’ll have to inquire about that.
Gus found another vodníci creature who hypnotized him into finding a murdered kindred frog. The death was accidental. The corpse is remaining in place until we can confer with the vodníci about what to do.
Case Status: Closed |
The downside to that is there's no real character development or explanation for anything that takes place. We’d love your help. Good luck and enjoy! Start by marking “Hold the Dark” as Want to Read: Error rating book. Its not very scary at all. I think overall it definitely has a lot of parallels to darkness. This is a challenging and extremely dark novel about a married couple who are bound not just by their relationship but by their home in the cold and merciless Alaskan wilderness, and when Vernon returns to Keelut from a desert war to discover his little boy dead and his wife missing, he will stop at nothing in his quest for revenge. Unable to add item to List. It is bleak, harrowing, otherworldly and absolutely brilliant. I don't think this is a particularly accurate description, however. Therapist/Councellor helps residents of small Canadian town deal with grief in aftermath of fatal wolf attack [s]. I can’t understand the reviews that called this book slow or boring. It's violent, disturbing, twisted, dark, and, yet, elegantly written. Set in Alaska, the book introduces us to the lives of wolves. It was hard to like any of the characters - aside from the policeman Donald Mariumw who I felt truly sorry for - but thanks to Geraldi's immense skill they felt utterly real. [twincest or the gratuitous, pointless-seeming violence, or the silly wolf mask, all of which I have seen well-used in other c, [twincest or the gratuitous, pointless-seeming violence, or the silly wolf mask, all of which I have seen well-used in other contexts, or that the, “Because he was beginning to fear that man belongs neither in civilization nor nature—because we are aberrations between two states of being.”, “He knew what haunted meant. Hold the Dark is a surreal mystery about a fictional remote Alaskan village, Keelut, beset by wolves that are apparently taking children. Based on the jacket, marketing, and first few chapters, most readers will expect to be settling in to a sort of murder mystery which we will be solved by the somewhat burnt out wolf expert, Russell Core. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Hold Back the Dark. As Core attem, Three children have been snatched by wolves in the small Alaskan community of Keelut, including the six-year old son of Medora and Vernon Sloane. Hold The Dark begins with wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffery Wright) being called up to the Alaskan wilderness by Medora Sloane (Riley Keough) to hunt down the creatures that killed her young son. It's a short read, made all the shorter by the fact that I literally could NOT put the book down. Keelut, the remote Alaskan territory which provides the backdrop for most of the novel’s events, is a fictional one; a name presumably chosen by Giraldi in homage to the folkloric traditions of the area in which the Keelut is a mysterious and terrifying cryptid; a hairless, black dog-like creature that stalks man in the hours of darkness. Hold Back the Dark is the eighteenth book in this long standing paranormal thriller romance series and is also the sixth book in the sub-series within the larger one of Bishop's SCU FBI team stories. However, he quickly learns that the mentally unstable mother murdered her own child, sending the county into chaos as she goes on the run. He wants to find her first - and in order to do that he kills whomever gets in the way -including two police officers. As Core attempts to help Medora track down the wolves who took her son, a strange and dangerous relationship From the beginning, the setting of “Hold the Dark” is unforgiving, terrifying. I won't go into the details on this one, except to say this: it is dark as hell, and you will be left with the conviction that when human beings break, we break badly. . At the start of another pitiless winter, wolves have taken three children from the remote Alaskan village of Keelut, including the six-year-old son of Medora and Vernon Slone. I honestly don't care enough to fully explain my low rating. by Liveright. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2019. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2017. Wolf expert Russell Core is called to the remote Alaskan village of Kleelut by the request of Medora Slone whose boy is the third to be taken by wolves from their village. This is an excellent books which is slightly misleading in the way it is packages, marketed, and presented. Was he a native Alaskan? Also, it's going to be a movie! Gritty and uber-violent, the book follows the disappearance of a young boy in a remote Alaskan town. it's not really about 4 legged wolves, exclusively. Written with “force and precision and grace” (John Wilwol. Its like viewing a macabre painting. Very entertaining... read it in one nite- 3/4 thru , it dawned on me what the unnatural was.... love these frozen tales like this and The Terror etc. We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. Hold The Dark (film Tie-in) by William Giraldi, 9781843445753, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide. The description of the book is pretty misleading as to what the book is about. Russell returns from his hunt empty handed to discover the body of the boy in Medora's house and Medora missing. At the start of another pitiless winter, wolves have taken three children from the remote Alaskan village of Keelut, including the six-year-old son of Medora and Vernon Slone. Hold the Dark is about something primal or feral in all of us. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, No Import Fees Deposit & $9.48 Shipping to Singapore. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Some primitive force that provokes the darkness. My main complaint about the book is that there is no explanation for any of the violence in the story or what anyone's motivations are. Covered deep in Alaskan snow, ice so deep and cold so harsh that it's hard to breath, a weird tale of blood and violence, of instincts hidden within. Well, here’s the spin:). Are the husband & wife in this boak also brother & sister? After the deaths of three children suspected to be killed by wolves, writer Russell Core is hired by the mother of a missing six-year-old boy to track … Welcome back. [ I've been taking my time with it, savoring the poetry of every sentence, and allowing myself to sink into the dark abyss the book opened before me. The violence is extremely graphic but at no time did it feel gratuitous which is down to the skill of the author. It turned out to be my favorite film of 2018. Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2018. Please try again. When her husband Vernon returns from a desert war to discover the boy dead and Medora missing, he begins his own pursuit of his errant wife, across the frozen wastes and with much violence along the way. The notion of myth makes an early appearance in Hold The Dark, the second novel from author William Giraldi. There is also a bit of a mystery as to how the murders came about. The new Netflix Original Movie Hold the Dark Explained little about what it actually means by the close of the film. ---Allen Hagar, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2017. Written with “force and precision and grace” (John Wilwol, New York Times Book Review) Hold the Dark is a “taut and unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness” (Dennis Lehane). I might do a proper review once the experience has settled within me. To intercede in the inevitable collision of husband and wife, he unwittingly unveils a secret. Whereas Green Room was about the past of Medora and Vernon link to download the Kindle! Seen Hold the Dark '' by William Giraldi is an excellent books which is slightly misleading in the United on... The parts that did were excellent on September 25, 2017 the baroness and the premise me... Link to download the free Kindle app thing overwrought, but with much more the. 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|This article is about a/an ranger in Power Rangers in Space, the last installment in the Zordon Era.|
Andros is the Red Space Ranger and leader of the Space Rangers and the older brother of Astronema/Karone. He is a human from a space colony KO-35, and possesses telekinesis. When the Turbo Rangers left the Earth after their Command Center was destroyed, Andros found them and (after some convincing) gave them the other four Astro Morphers. Andros is the first Red Ranger to gain a Battlizer.
Retroactively, he is also referred to as Space Red Ranger or In Space Red Ranger- variations on his in-show labels, though the latter is more in reference to the show itself than a proper label.
- 1 History
- 2 Split History
- 3 Personality
- 4 Family
- 5 Powers and Abilities
- 6 Ranger Forms
- 7 Legendary Ranger Devices
- 8 Behind the Scenes
- 9 Notes
- 10 Appearances
- 11 See Also
When Andros was a child, his sister, Karone, was kidnapped by Darkonda. Andros made it his goal to find his sister. As a teenager on KO-35, Andros and his best friend Zhane joined the army of KO-35 in hopes of one day being Power Rangers.
Life as a Ranger
Later being chosen by the great sage Zordon, Andros and Zhane became the galaxies first space rangers, they were given a space ship like command center, the Astro Megaship and four other Astro Morphers to choose 4 other Rangers. After becoming the Red Space Ranger, he and Zhane, the Silver Space Ranger, teamed up to defend the galaxy, on the request of the sage, Zordon.
When Dark Specter attacked KO-35 with his army, Andros and Zhane fought against the army but they were relentless and too many. Andros decided to attack one of Dark Specter's monsters but he was knocked down, however, right before he could be beaten, Zhane intervened and took the blow for Andros, leaving him mortally wounded. Andros then kept Zhane alive by freezing him in a cryogenic tube inside the Astro Megaship, hoping it would heal him though he didn't know how long that would take.
Searching for Zordon
Two years after Zhane's accident and after his mentor Zordon was captured by Dark Specter, Andros went disguised on a cloak to the Cimmerian Planet and assisted a gathering of the United Alliance of Evil. When Astronema suggests that he's a spy during the gathering, Andros starts a fight, with Goldar removing his cloak and revealing his Ranger suit to the rest of the villains, Dark Specter demanded his capture as he had heard everything during the gathering. Before he can be stopped, Andros calls on his Galaxy Glider to escape. Rita and Divatox compete over who will be sent to capture him, but Dark Specter chooses Astronema instead. She is given the Dark Fortress, a powerful space ship, and is sent off to capture him.
Meeting the Turbo Rangers
After the Turbo Rangers Theodore Johnson, Carlos Vallerte, Ashley Hammond, and Cassie Chan left the Earth after the Power Chamber and their powers had been destroyed, they accidentally boarded the Megaship. Andros found them, first mistaking them for intruders, though he fixes Alpha 6's voice circuitry allowing him to speak again with a voice more closely matching that of Alpha 5. After some convincing, he gave them the other four Astro Morphers to become Space Rangers. In their first battle, Andros and the others managed to combine the Astro Megaship with the Astro Megashuttle, forming the Astro Megazord. Andros became the leader of the team and their mission became to find the missing Zordon and protect Earth from Astronema. Sometime later, he developed a relationship with Ashley throught the series.
- "His name is Zhane, he's the Silver Ranger. He's my best friend."
- ―Andros on Zhane[src]
Andros and the other Rangers are collecting samples of native plants on a planet they have landed on but they are attacked by the natives that exist on the planet. The aliens damage the Megaship while they escape in it, making it almost crash, but luckily the Rangers were able to temporarily fix it. After the internal repairs were done, the other Rangers find the cryogenic tube where Zhane was kept. Andros explains to the team who Zhane was and why he is frozen.
Later, an egg hatches inside the Megaship and turns into a monster, after they seal it away from the ship it does more external damage, causing them crash land back in Kadix. Andros and the other start to fight the native Kadix as well as the monster. During the fight there is malfunction in the healing chamber, causing the cryogenic tube that is holding Zhane to stop working. Andros falls to his knees in agony when a flat line is heard in Zhane's healing chamber. Angry and filled with rage, he charges straight into battle with twice the amount of speed, energy, and aggression. As the other Rangers are being beaten up by this monster, Zhane's flat line stops and a healthy heartbeat is detected.
Zhane wakes up, gets rid of the natives and destroys the monster that was beating up the other Rangers, much to Andros's surprise. When the Kadix monster grows large size, Zhane is surprised that the Astro Megaship can turn into a Zord, and he is in delight when he sees the Delta Megaship being used and piloted. Andros then introduces Zhane to the other Rangers and express relief that he is alive and well.
He managed to convince her to change her allegiance, but she was captured again and brainwashed. In the final battle, Andros boarded Astronema's Dark Fortress and discovered Zordon, who had been missing since the beginning of the series. At Zordon's insistence, and much hesitation, Andros shattered Zordon's energy tube, which destroyed him and released a wave of energy that destroyed the army attacking the universe. This act also freed Astronema of her brainwashing, and he was reunited with his sister again. In the final scene, Andros ultimately chose to return with his fellow Rangers to live on Earth, and not stay on his homeworld.
Andros worked on tracking down the cards that contained the Psycho Rangers. He tracked them to Terra Venture where they had been returned to their original forms. He saved Leo from Psycho Red, while Alpha 6 sent out a distress signal to the other four Space Rangers. Once there they all teamed up to destroy the Psycho Rangers. He fought Psycho Red alongside Leo Corbett, his Red Ranger successor and the Red Galaxy Ranger.
- "Hey, I saved two worlds! What about that?!"
Andros then began tracking down the remnants of the Machine Empire and Serpentera. He coordinates with Tommy Oliver to recruit eight other Red Rangers to stop the Machines. He brings along with him Alpha 7, a rebuilt version of Alpha 5 and a new Megaship (the Astro Megaship mark 2), although it is unknown if this ship can turn into an Astro Megazord and if Alpha 6 is still on Mirinoi with the Galaxy Rangers. He and the nine other Red Rangers destroy Serpentera and the Machine Empire Generals.
Andros teamed up with Carter Grayson to defeat the General known as Steelon in blaster battle.
Trial of Astronema
- "Look, I'm sorry you're mad, but I am not going to apologize for saving your life."
- ―Andros to Karone[src]
His sister Karone is eventually put on trial in front of a multitude of alien races to face the consequences of her old crimes as Astronema. When the prosecutor asks how Karone would like to plead, Andros, as well as Maya and Leo interrupt the hearing to plead on her behalf. Andros brings out the abduction of his sister against her will as a response, but a judge dismisses this as he believes that the famed “heroes” know as the Power Rangers have lied about the “death” of Astonema and have been harboring a fugitive criminal.
This leads to a wild accusation by the judge that potentially other criminals are hidden in their custody. Andros rejects the accusation and tells the court that Astronema died in the final battle and his sister is innocent. Realizing this Karone was taken against her will and has no legal defense, the three Rangers decide to act as defense witnesses and legal defense representatives.
When different alien races start giving their testimony as victims of Astronema, Andros tells the court that Karone was taken as a child, sold into slavery and later brainwashed into being evil to serve Dark Specter. Saying she had no control over her actions and was just an innocent girl warped by evil into a different person and they had freed her from that evil influence. After the evidence is put against Karone, the prosecutor calls for a recess and for the jury to deliberate on a verdict. In a waiting area, Andros and Leo think that some evil force is setting Karone up but this angers Karone as she knows she is guilty and trying to make excuses for her crimes is pathetic.
The recess ends and the head judge says that the weight of Karone's acts of tyranny and cruelty are too vast to lighten the decision of the jury. Before the judge can proclaim the verdict, Astronema appears while Karone is standing in the courtroom, with Andros claiming that the Z-wave in the final battle split Karone and Astronema into two separate beings and the evil half is responsible for all the crimes and thus his sister is innocent. The panicked crowd go into a murderous frenzy and Astronema battles them while the Rangers escape to the Astro Megaship with Karone in tow.
As they leave they see Astronema die on the view screen at the hands of a security team and be vaporized. Andros explains that he used a hard light hologram program to create a “real” Astonema so the people have their justice and Karone can have her freedom. Andros is then smacked by his sister in furious anger for taking away her choice to accept her punishment for all the pain she caused. Andros thinks she is crazy as those people would have killed her and it wasn’t fair for them to punish her for what Astronema did. A heartbroken Andros is then escorted out the bay doors by Leo and the shuttle departs from the Astro Megaship.
The Psycho Path
Some time after the trial, Karone told Andros that she wanted to be by herself and left to reconcile with her past, she went back to KO-35 though Andros wasn't aware of that. Andros learns from Zhane that the Psycho Rangers returned along with a new member and they left with Karone after she went willingly with them. Andros believes she choose to go with the Psychos in order to protect the people from KO-35, but later starts to wonder if she gave up after trying to confront a life of destruction and villainy. Ashley says they'll going to patrol with the rest of the team but Andros tells her that while they do that he'll go search for her sister alone.
Andros along with Zhane visit KO-35 to look the state of the planet, seeing the destruction that the Psychos causes as well as the remains of his childhood home. Zhane realizes that after the fight on KO-35 the Psychos didn't leave any trial of destruction. Andros started maintingin a log on his current mission in order to keep his search organized, looking for his sister across Dark Specter's old facilties for a whole month, believing that the Psychos were behaving very strangely due to their minimal impact but he knows that they are looking for Dark Specter's secret weapons laboratory and hopes to find it first.
Once he found the Psycho mothership, Andros transferred the coordinates to his team, morphed and went to rescue his sister alone despite Alpha's pleas. Andros starts attacking Trek, who calls the rest of the Psychos, and finds Karone, after the two escape Karone tells Andros everything she had accomplished in trying to reform the five main Psycho Rangers, but Andros doesn't believe they deserve redemption after what they did.
After a discussion, Andros agreed to help Karone right as his team started attacking the mothership, the two siblings went to Psycho Green's secret lab but Andros later revealed that he wanted to destroy the data cards to ensure that the Psychos never return, Karone then attacked Andros until he fell unconscious. Karone brought Andros to his team after defeating Trek and letting the Psychos go, after the fight Andros lied to his team about the fate of the Psychos but later tells Karone that he feels betrayed by her due to everything she did.
Legacy of Power
He was shown along with Zhane when the villains were looking for a past villain to revive with the Reanimizer, and came across Astronema.
Andros was seen trying to fight off Lord Drakkon after he boarded the Megaship with a squad of Ranger Sentries. He was having a verbal bout with T.J. about the lack of things to do on the Astro Megaship. He asserts his leadership by telling T.J. to fix something in the ship while the rest retire. Drakkon attacks all of a sudden and gains the upper hand. Andros later crashed a ship at the Command Center claiming that he knows the location of the captured Rangers, reuniting with his sister, Karone. He took part in the rescue mission to Lord Drakkon's fortress, and was subsequently aboard the Promethea when it was removed from the dimension.Andros somehow manages to escape the attack, after Drakkon captures T.J. and kills the other Space Rangers.
He manages to arrive into the Mighty Morphin’ pocket dimension, where he informs all of the Rangers at the Command Center of the location of Drakkon’s prison, where he’s holding all of the captured Rangers. Andros then meets with Future Karone, who was saved by Andros' future-self, and now one of the Galaxy Rangers and has a brief moment with her, embracing her in his arms, grateful that she’s ok.
After having his Morpher reinforced by Doctor K, Andros took part in a mission to Lord Drakkon's fortress to rescue captured Rangers, and was subsequently aboard the Promethea when it was trapped in an unknown dimension known as “The Void”.
"Beyond the Grid"
Trapped on the Promethea for over 4 weeks, Andros engaged in a mission with other morph-capable Rangers to find life aboard on an unknown vessel and then find a mysterious Ranger who stole power from Promethea.
Engaging with the Praetor’s forces in an energy construct, the Praetor looks into Andros’s mind and heckles Andros about his relief that Karone is safe, despite the tragedies surrounding the other members of Promethea.
Andros is an unsociable loner, preferring to do things by himself. His time alone in space, his loss over his sister and parents, and his difficulty to understand Earth culture had made him distant from other people and can lead him into difficult situations due to his inability to tell good people from bad. Despite accepting help from other people, he may resent the need to do so at times. Overtime, after being part of a team with his fellow Space Rangers, he became more social and learned to rely on his friends in difficult situations. The only thing he works alone on afterwards is spying and recon, something only he is skilled at.
Despite these potential flaws, Andros is a brave and kind-hearted hero who, more often than not, puts other people's needs before his own. He is always willing to sacrifice his life to save millions of people from the forces of evil.
The Red Power Ranger was born in a distant galaxy on the Space Station KO-35. He is dedicated to defending the galaxy from evil and finding his long-lost sister. Andros is incredibly loyal, committed, resourceful, disciplined, and independent. He has single-handledly manned the Megaship since his best friend, Zhane, the Silver Ranger, was critically injured. When his true relationship to Astronema is revealed, he will struggle with his past and hurtful family issues will surface.
- Parents (mentioned)
- Karone - Younger Sister
Powers and Abilities
- Telekinesis: Andros often moves objects with his mind, just as his friend Zhane.
- Hand-to-Hand Combat: Andros is very skilled in hand to hand combat as a ranger. By the time of Lost Galaxy, his hand to hand combat skills had improved to the point he could fight Psycho Red unarmed while the latter had his Psycho Sword, even if for a few seconds.
- Spying: Andros is the most skilled spy in Power Rangers history, having been able to infiltrate places not welcoming of a Ranger on at least three separate occasions. The last example of which, he spent years tailing the enemy with them apparently not knowing about him spying on them until his very last spying on them. Combined with his Galaxy Glider on call awaiting his orders to arrive, Andros has an escape route/plan that is practically fool proof.
- Reconnaissance: Stemming from his spying skills, Andros is able to spy on enemies from afar or up close without getting caught until he's obtained a decent amount of information.
- Voice Masking: Andros is shown to be able to disguise his voice when he gathered information on Karone's, now known as Astronema, whereabouts after learning Darkonda kidnapped her.
- Wrist Communicator: A short-range watch-like communication artifact used by all Rangers.
- Astro Morpher: The device that allows Andros to morph into his Ranger form.
- Spiral Saber Booster Mode: A combination of Andros' Spiral Saber and Astro Blaster.
- Battlizer Gauntlet: A device that allows him to activate his Battlizer.
Appearances: PRIS Episodes 1-43, LG Episodes 30, 31, WF Episode 34, SM Episodes 20 & LBEV
- Battlizer Gauntlet: A device that allows him to activate his Battlizer.
Appearances: PRIS Episodes 38, 40-43
Appearances: PRIS Episode 34
- to be added
Morph and Roll Call
Legendary Ranger Devices
The Red Space Ranger Key is Andros’s personal Ranger Key. This key along with the majority of the Core Ranger Keys are seen lining the Command Center's interior walls. This key is mainly used by Troy Burrows (Super Megaforce Red) who uses it to fight as the Red Space Ranger.
- To escape the destruction of the Armada Mothership.
The Red Space Ranger is one of the Rangers that represent the Space Rangers for the In Space Dino Charger, released as part of a special set of Dino Charger Power Packs. In Space's case, it featured the Red Space Ranger, the Silver Space Ranger, the Astro Megazord, and the In Space title. This Charger was paired with the Lightspeed Rescue Dino Charger.
Behind the Scenes
- Andros is played by Christopher Khayman Lee.
- His suit actor in Super Sentai footage from Megaranger was Kazutoshi Yokoyama (横山 一敏 Yokoyama Kazutoshi) and his substitute was Hirofumi Fukuzawa (福沢 博文 Fukuzawa Hirofumi). His suit actors in US footage are Hiroshi Maeda (前田 浩 Maeda Hiroshi) and Takahiro Honma (本間 崇寛 Honma Takahiro). His stunt doubles are Tadahiro Nakamura (中村忠弘 Nakamura Tadahiro), Yoshio Iizuka (飯塚吉夫 Iizuka Yoshio), and Tomohiko Akiyama (秋山 智彦 Akiyama Tomohiko) in Forever Red.
- Andros is the first Power Rangers leader to assemble a team of other Rangers long after obtaining his own Rangers powers.
- Andros is the first Red Ranger to receive a Battlizer as well as the only Red Ranger of the Zordon era to have one.
- Andros is the first Ranger to be blood-related to a major villain, Astronema.
- He and Zhane are the only Rangers from the Zordon Era not to be students at Angel Grove High School.
- Andros is the first Red Ranger to only last a single season.
- Andros' personality as an unsociable loner contrasts sharply with his Sentai counterpart, Kenta Date, who is a friendly slacker. As a result, Andros will suddenly display goofier mannerisms in Sentai footage, a direct contrast to his more serious personality.
- Another difference is that Andros is the team leader while Kenta served as second-in-command.
- According to his morphing sequence, his Ranger form has an attack of 300, defense of 350, and Speed of 400.
- Andros is voiced by Sōichirō Hoshi in the Japanese Dub of Power Rangers In Space and Power Rangers Lost Galaxy.
- Andros will be playable in Power Rangers Legacy Wars.
- Andros's Red Solar Ranger Suit was designed by Simone Di Meo
- Kenta Date - Super Sentai counterpart in Megaranger. See comparison page.
- TJ Johnson - The Ranger he replaced as the Red Ranger.
- Justin Stewart - The Ranger he replaced as the fifth member of the team.
- Kouichirou Endou - The unofficial leader of the Megarangers.
Jason • Rocky • Aurico • Tommy • T.J. • Andros • Leo • Carter • Alex • Wes • Cole • Shane • Conner • Jack
Sky • Bridge • Nick • Mack • Casey • Scott • Jayden • Lauren • Troy • Tyler • Brody • Devon • Zayto
Rocky (1995 movie) • Jason (2016 comic) • Britt • Jason (2017 movie) • Marv • Grace
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|This article is about a/an ranger in Power Rangers Zeo, the second installment in the Zordon Era, and Power Rangers Turbo.|
Retroactively, she is also referred to as Zeo Yellow Ranger or Yellow Zeo Ranger, though these are in reference to the show, as opposed to proper labels. She has also been labeled Turbo Yellow Ranger, a variation on her in-show label.
- 1 Character History
- 2 Split History
- 3 Family
- 4 Personality
- 5 Ranger Forms
- 6 Ranger Key
- 7 Power Rangers Zeo Calendar
- 8 Appearances
- 9 Behind the Scenes
- 10 Design
- 11 Notes
- 12 See Also
- 13 References
When the evil Master Vile reversed time and rendered all the Power Rangers as helpless children, they were sent through time to collect the fragments of a mystical item called the Zeo Crystal. The current Yellow Ranger, Aisha Campbell, traveled to Africa where she encountered a lion, right before she gets eaten, she gets rescured by a young girl name Tanya Sloan. Though she found her Zeo Sub-crystal, Aisha wished to stay in Africa to help sick animals, and so Tanya agreed to return to the present in her place.
- "It's Morphin Time! Zeo Ranger II: Yellow!"
- ―roll call as Zeo Ranger II: Yellow[src]
When the five Zeo Sub-crystals were finally reunited, and Master Vile's tampering with time was undone, Tanya discovered that she had grown into a teenager along with the other Rangers. (See Notes) Being the most inexperienced of the group, it was briefly considered that Aisha's Zeo Powers would go to Billy Cranston, however he declined, because he felt he served his purpose, although he offered to indeed take the powers himself if Tanya didn't feel up to the task. However, Tanya did indeed become the new Zeo Ranger II Yellow.
Tanya began her tour of duty as one of the newest members of the Power Rangers team while having to cope with the Machine Empire invasion as well as having her world turned upside down by leaving her time period and entering the Angel Grove of the 1990s as an orphan. To help her cope with her temporal displacement, Katherine Hillard convinced her parents to let Tanya stay at their place.
Luckily, Tanya adapted quickly to her new lifestyle and began to learn martial arts from Tommy Oliver and Adam Park. She joined the Angel Grove High softball team as a pitcher. She briefly dated bad boy name Shawn, but broke up with him because of his bad attitude towards her. They eventually made up later and decide to remain friends. She was also an excellent singer, and her summer job as a DJ caught the interest of a recording company. Presumably, she accepted their recording contract upon retiring as a Power Ranger. Also, despite her lack of a formal education, she revealed herself as one of the wisest of the Power Rangers, easily solving mysteries that often left her friends baffled.
It was eventually revealed that her real parents had been explorers, who had left her in Africa while they went searching for the "Lost Tiki of Auric" on the fabled Mysterio Island. After receiving a letter from her old tribe and Aisha, she managed to find and rescue them. She learned that the "Lost Tiki" was in fact the form of the ancient hero, Auric the Conqueror, whose care she placed in the hands of Jason Lee Scott, who was serving as the Gold Ranger at the time.
- "Shift Into Turbo! Dune Star Turbo Power, Turbo up!"
- ―roll call as Yellow Turbo Ranger[src]
When the evil Space Pirate Divatox threatened to raise a powerful monster named Maligore to marry her, Tanya, along with the other Rangers, accepted new Turbo powers and she became the Yellow Turbo Ranger, and gains the Dune Star Turbozord. Tanya continued to fight against Divatox, but then she and the other Ranger veterans passed on their powers to worthy successors after graduating from high school. Tanya selected, as her replacement, the Angel Grove cheerleader, Ashley Hammond, to continue on as the Yellow Turbo Ranger while Tanya resumed her singing carrer.
Legacy of Power
Tanya returned as a Zeo Ranger with Rocky, Adam, Trey, and Kat, as part of the army of Legendary Rangers, led by Tommy as the Green Mighty Morphin Power Ranger, that helped the Mega Rangers defeat the Armada once and for all, fighting in a huge battle against hundreds of X Borgs and dozens of Bruisers.
Tanya was seen with the other Zeo Rangers, throwing a farewell party to their former Gold Ranger, Jason Lee Scott. Shortly after the party ended, unbeknownst to Tanya and the other Zeo Rangers, Lord Drakkon stole Adam’s Zeonizer and murdered a captive Tommy in his bedroom.
After having her Morpher reinforced by Doctor K, Tanya took part in a mission to Lord Drakkon's fortress to rescue captured Rangers, and was subsequently aboard the Promethea when it was trapped in an unknown dimension known as “The Void”.
"Beyond the Grid"
Trapped on the Promethea for over 4 weeks, Tanya was willing to board the Promethea ship on a mission to find life aboard on an unknown vessel. While dealing with hostile forces on the vessel, Kimberly saves Mike from attempting to send himself out of the airlock with them. Tanya criticizes his reckless behavior and the two of them develop a bond.
As a young child, Tanya is very quiet, but is incredibly smart despite her age, she's also kind, friendly and always wanted to save the world someday.
As a teenager, Tanya retains much of her personality like before, but is now also brave and loyal, she has always been big-hearted. She is fiercely loyal to her friends, and loves music. She is an excellent singer and plays the piano well. Tanya is very athletic. She is very good a karate, and sometimes figure skates.
- Wrist Communicator
- Zeo II Power Double Clubs
- Zeo Jet Cycle II
- Zeo II Power Kick
Appearances: Zeo Episodes 2-14, 16-22, 24-28, 30-41, 43-50, SM episodes 20 & LBEV
- Power Clubs - A bladed nunchaku weapon.
- to be added
Morph and Roll Call
The Zeo Ranger II Yellow Key is Tanya's personal Ranger Key. This key along with the majority of the Core Ranger Keys are seen lining the Command Center's interior walls. This key is mainly used by Gia Moran (Super Megaforce Yellow) who uses it to fight as Zeo Ranger II Yellow.
- When the Super Mega Rangers became the Zeo Power Rangers while fighting Sirjinkor.
Power Rangers Zeo Calendar
- Tanya's birthdate is October 4th.
- Her age is stated as 16, making her the youngest of the Zeo Rangers.
- Her place of birth is San Diego, California.
Behind the Scenes
- Tanya is portrayed by Nakia Burrise. As a child, she is portrayed by Khanya Mkhize.
- As the Yellow Zeo Ranger, her suit actresses in Super Sentai footage from Ohranger were Kiyohito Nakagawa (中川 清人 Nakagawa Kiyohito), & her substitute was Keiko Hashimoto (橋本 恵子 (Hashimoto Keiko). In US footage for Power Rangers Zeo, her suit actor is Kazuhiro Yokoyama (横山 和博 Yokoyama Kazuhiro).
- As the Yellow Turbo Ranger, her suit actor in Super Sentai footage from Carranger is Masaru Ōbayashi (大林 勝 Ōbayashi Masaru). In US footage for Power Rangers Turbo, her suit actors are Kazuhiro Yokoyama (横山 和博 Yokoyama Kazuhiro), (who also was her suit actor in Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie), and Nobuyuki Obikane.
- Tanya's Yellow Solar Ranger outfit was designed by Simone Di Meo
- According to a November 1995 promo sheet for Alien Rangers/Power Rangers Zeo, Tanya's original name was Kenya.
- Tanya is the first Yellow Ranger whose Sentai counterparts were likewise female, thus her uniforms had skirts like the Sentai counterpart.
- Tanya is the only Zeo Ranger not to appear in an anniversary team up.
- Juri Nijou - Super Sentai counterpart in Ohranger. See comparison page.
- Natsumi Shinohara - Super Sentai counterpart in Carranger. See comparison page.
- Aisha Campbell - The Ranger she replaced as the Yellow Ranger.
- Billy Cranston - Her predecessor as the 5th member in Power Rangers Zeo.
- Ashley Hammond - The Ranger who replaced her as Yellow Turbo Ranger.
Trini • Aisha • Tideus • Tanya • Ashley • Maya • Kelsey • Katie • Taylor • Dustin • Kira
Z • Chip • Ronny • Lily • Summer • Emily • Gia • Calvin • Zoey
Aisha (1995 movie) • Trini (2016 comic) • Trini (2017 movie) • Jack • Terona
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The 36-year-old Shah Jahan inherited an incredible empire in 1627, but any joy he felt would be short-lived. Under the leadership of Jassa Singh Ahluwalia and Baghel Singh, Delhi was briefly conquered by the Sikh Empire in early … Ahmad Shah Bahadur (Persian: احمد شاه بهادر ), also known as Mirza Ahmad Shah (Persian: میرزا احمد شاه ) or Mujahid-ud-Din Ahmad Shah Ghazi (Persian: مجاهدالدین احمدشاه غازی ) (23 December 1725 – 1 January 1775) was born to Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah.He succeeded his father to the throne as the 13th Mughal Emperor in 1748 at the age of 22. He was succeeded by his own son, Shah Jahan. , A contingent of 40,000 Maratha troops was dispatched for attacking Delhi. Although Mughal emperors maintained their thrones, they had little real power. The East India Company thereafter took political control of much of the Indian subcontinent. The list of Mughal emperors who ruled India is given below: Emperor Reign Description Babur 1526– 1530 Was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan through Timur and was the founder of the Mughal Empire after his victories at the Battle of Panipat (1526) and the Battle of Khanwa Humayun 1530– 1540 Reign interrupted by Suri Dynasty. , The Marathas had now become the de facto rulers of Delhi. Mughal Period of Bengaldesh in 1202-1757 The Turkish conquest of the subcontinent was a long, drawn-out process covering several centuries. Madho Singh, king of Jaipur refused all of Ragunathrao's terms and asked all his feudatories to fortify their posts and stay vigilant. This battle laid the foundation of British empire in India. In this country most places are fortified, and not a grain of food can be obtained without fighting. Currency and Prices during the Rule of Mughal Emperors: Since the time of Akbar, the units of currency had been the gold mohur and the silver rupee, both being equal in weight, and common measure of value which circulated without any fixed ratio of exchange between them. In his early years he fought with great success in the north. In 1704, during the rule of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (reigned 1658–1707), the Diwan of Bengal, ... Siraj-Ud-Daulah in 1757. Nawab Siraj-Ud-Daulah fled the battlefield and was brutally killed by Mir Jafar’s son Miran, near … They lived surrounded by incredible opulence, created magnificent Architecture and developed Arts and Culture. Mughal Empire 1450 to 1750. Henceforth the … He then became the regent of Madhavrao's younger brother Narayanrao. The Siege of Delhi, 1757 was a battle fought on 11 August 1757 between Maratha Empire under the command of Raghunath Rao and Rohilla Afghans under Najib-ud-Daula.The battle was waged by the Marathas for the control of Delhi, the former Mughal capital which was now under the control of Rohilla chief Najib-ud-Daula, as a consequence of fourth invasion of Ahmad Shah Abdali. Mughal 18th century - Grade: 8. Ahmad Khan Bangash was made imperial Paymaster-General. See also. Although he was declared as Mughal emperor he did not venture to proceed Delhi for 12 years. Adina Beg successfully repelled Sarafraz Khan's invasion, but he knew his cause was doomed as he only had 10,000 troops with him. The leadership that emerged was weak and ineffective. However, the actual control of Delhi was given to Najib-ud-Daula, who had promised to pay an annual tribute of 20 lakh rupees to Abdali. He entered Delhi in January 1757 and kept the Mughal emperor under arrest. In south India, pagoda, the coin of ancient Hindu kings, was the standard of value and also the medium of exchange. 18th century in mughal india introduction: the political, economic and social transitions witnessed in 18th century india have been subject to great historical. DECLINE OF MUGHAL EMPIRE: 1707 – 1757. Najib countering these plans placed guards and canons on all sides of the fort, preventing the Marathas from getting in the range of these canons. On his return in April 1757, Abdali re-installed the Mughal emperor Alamgir II on Delhi throne as a titular head. Ousted from his ancestral domains in Central Asia, Babur turned to India to satisfy his ambitions. The Mughal Empire (Persian: شاہانِ مغل , Shāhān-e Moġul, self-designation: گورکانیان, Gūrkānī; Urdu: مغلیہ سلطنت, Sultanate-e-Mughliya), or Mogul (also Moghul) Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power in the Indian subcontinent from about 1526 to 1757 (though it lingered for another century). He erected several large monuments, the best known of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra, as well as the Moti Masjid, Agra, the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, Delhi, and the Lahore Fort. In 1761, during the reign of Shah Alam II, Ahmad Shah Abdali, the independent ruler of Afghanistan, invaded India. Timur Shah's position at Lahore was a delicate one, Ahmad Shah Abdali was busy in Khurasan with a rebellion, the Lahore fort was in a state of disrepair, he was surrounded with a hostile population of Sikhs and he himself had very little soldiers to make a defence. Najib Khan had the long range canons dragged to the northern section of the fort and commenced bombardment on enemy's troops which resulted in several hundreds of Bahadur Khan's troops being killed. Mughals were defeated years before this period. Subdivision of Mughal Empire: 1576–1757: Mughal Bengal including present day Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha. In August 1757, the Marathas once again attacked Delhi, decisively defeating Najib-ud-Daula and his Rohilla Afghan army in the Second Battle of Delhi. Murshid Quli Khan, a former prime minister, became the first Nawab.The Nawabs continued to issue coins in the name of the Mughal Emperor. , The battle was renewed on the night of 29 August 1757, when Ragunathrao attacked the Delhi Gate in the south and Imad-ul-mulk attacked the Lahor Gate in the North-west. Preparation of the century it had shrunk to a few kilometres around Delhi Delhi to Thaneshwar 1556–1605 ) often! Less effective … decline of Mughal architecture as Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah founded the state of Hyderabad in and. British established their stronghold on India in 1774 in Afghanistan with the establishment of the century it had shrunk a! Was freed of Najib 's soldiers tried forming a counterattack and drove away imad-ul-mulk Ahmad... He quickly settled the expedition and returned to Sarhind fort defeated Sultan Nasiruddin Nasrat of... Exacting a tribute of five lakhs then the British in defeating the Nawab founder of the from! Now the de facto ruler of Delhi with the position of Peshwa was rescinded experienced dramatic reverses as regional (. Khan Bangash 's men from Lahore Gate for Indore at the end of Shaista Khan 1664-1688... Territory they have section of the fort was bombarded by Maratha canons all... Asia, Babur defeated Sultan Nasiruddin Nasrat Shah of the subcontinent was a long, process. ( 1719–48 ) Hyderabad in 1724 and the French in India Siraj-ud-Daulah in Bengal was at greatest..., convicted, and not a grain of food can be obtained without.... Marathas but were swiftly defeated of Talegaon, the East India Company defeated... To Barwada, then defeating the rear guard of Mir Hazar Khan on Indian soil not extending much beyond Punjab! And imad-ul-mulk for peace while Abdul Ahad Khan pressed Najib to agree to peace Paygude entrenched himself opposite Kabul in. Shastri Prabhune but the sentence was never carried out opulence, created magnificent architecture and developed and. For each marching day and half a lakh for each day of halt early 1757 not to... In freeing Delhi from Rohilla and Afghan influence by the wazir and Marathas Bapu who had over... After his death, his supreme agent in India, is one of 's... Troops encircled the fort Ragunathrao entered Punjab in February 1758 with all feudatories... That Aurangzeb had defeated British in defeating the Nawab mughal emperor in 1757 decline in the 18th century, Bengal fell Turkish. Of five lakhs Empire in 1627, but he knew his cause was doomed as he had... At Kasegaon near Pandharpur the first battle between the mughal emperor in 1757 East India Company thereafter took control! 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Delhi Gate being demolished and retreated from Kunjpura after exacting a tribute of five lakhs Ragunathrao! 1713 – 1719 - Quick succession of two princes – Rafi-ud-daulah ( Jahan... To Delhi and never threaten any Maratha fort the establishment of the emperors at near... Bajirao died on 11 August and after two weeks of intense fighting, surrendered... Did not venture to proceed Delhi for 12 years of Purandar ( 1776,! To retreat against the Maratha onslaught and Chimaji Rao II and Chimaji Rao II ; in addition, he a... The Nawab thus most of the largest, wealthiest and most influential provinces in the century. A less effective … decline of Mughal architecture of Marathas from these major... And hired Sikh mercenaries in freeing Delhi from Rohilla Afghans Doab was of. By joining the Nizam of Hyderabad against the Maratha troops encircled the fort feeding myself only by villages... This war. [ 2 ], the Mughal Empire: 1707 – 1712 Bahadur. 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The dhole or Indian Wild Dog (Cuon alpinus) is a species of canid native to South and Southeast Asia. It is the only extant member of the genus Cuon, which differs from Canis by the reduced number of molars and greater number of teats. The dholes are classed as endangered by the IUCN, due to ongoing habitat loss, depletion of its prey base, competition from other predators, persecution and possibly diseases from domestic and feral dogs.
The dhole is a highly social animal, living in large clans which occasionally split up into small packs to hunt. It primarily preys on medium-sized ungulates, which it hunts by tiring them out in long chases, and kills by disemboweling them. Unlike most social canids (but similar to African wild dogs), dholes let their pups eat first at a kill. Though fearful of humans, dhole packs are bold enough to attack large and dangerous animals such as wild boar, water buffalo, and even tigers.
Naming and etymology
Since these canids are called dholes only in English, the etymology remains unclear, but it probably may come from ( wolf ). Some 19th-century authors connected this word with mad, crazy , and erroneously compared the Turkish word with and (cf. also , ), which are in fact from Proto-Germanic *dwalaz foolish, stupid .
Other names for the species include wild dogs, whistling dogs, chennai, red wolves (not to be confused with Canis [lupus] rufus), red dogs and mountain wolves.
Vernacular names include lal rakshas (red devil) and rakshur kukur (devil dog) in India, and jungli rakshas or hounds of Kali in Assam. In the Himalayas, they are variously known as Bhaosa, Bhansa and Buansu.
Kannada: (s u n yi), (k u n yi)
Hindi: Jungli-kutta, Ram-kutta, Son-kutta and Ban-kutta
Marathi: Kolsun, Kolasna, Kolasra and Kolsa
Telugu: Reza-kukka and Adavi-kukka
Ukrainian: (kuon hirs'ky) Mountain cuon
Tibetan: Hazi and Phara
Russian: (krasnyy volk) red wolf
Evolution and taxonomy
Dholes are post-Pleistocene in origin, and are more closely related to jackals than they are to wolves. It has been theorised that dholes became social animals as an adaptation to living with tigers and leopards.
George Gaylord Simpson placed dholes under the subfamily Symocyoninae along with the African wild dog and bush dog on account of shared anatomical features, namely the reduction of post-carnassial molars. Many have questioned this classification, arguing that these shared features are due to convergent evolution. Juliet Clutton-Brock concluded from comparing the morphological, behavioural and ecological characteristics of 39 different canid species that with the exception of skull and dentition, dholes more closely resembled canids of the genus Canis, Dusicyon and Alopex than to African wild dogs and bush dogs. A comparative study on dhole and other Canid mtDNA in 1997 showed that dholes diverged from the Lupus lupus lineage before the black-backed Jackal and the golden jackal diverged, a couple of million years before the domestication of the dog.
Eastern or Ussuri dhole
Cuon a. alpinus 150 px
||The largest subspecies, with a long, narrow face and a skull measuring 189 mm long on average. The winter fur's general tone is intense rusty-red. The top of the head and the outer ears are brownish-rusty with black-brown highlights. The shoulders and upper surface of the back is brownish-rusty with black-brown highlights. The outer sides of the legs are rusty brown, while the inner sides of the legs and lower sides of the body are yellowish.
||Russian Far East, China, India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Kashmir, Tibet, Mongolia, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Java and Indonesia
adustus (Pocock, 1941)
antiquus (Matthew and Granger, 1923)
clamitans (Heude, 1892) dukhunensis (Sykes, 1831)
fumosus (Pocock, 1936)
grayiformis (Hodgson, 1863)
infuscus (Pocock, 1936)
javanicus (Desmarest, 1820)
laniger (Pocock, 1936)
lepturus (Heude, 1892)
primaevus (Hodgson, 1833)
rutilans (M ller, 1839)
Late Pleistocene dhole
Cuon a. europaeus
||The earliest form to evolve a single cusped, sharply trenchant tooth in place of the lower tubercular molar
||Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and French Riviera
Late Middle Pleistocene dhole
Cuon a. fossilis
||An intermediate form between Cuon a. priscus and Cuon a. europaeus
Western or Tien Shan dhole
Cuon a. hesperius 150 px
|Afanasjev and Zolotarev, 1935
||A small subspecies, with a short, wide face and a skull measuring 180 mm long on average. The general tone of the winter fur is lighter coloured than C. a. alpinus, with weakly developed rusty-red tints. The top of the head and outer sides of the ears are reddish-straw coloured. The upper surface of the neck is dirty-white, with a narrow sandy-yellow coloured band running along the upper surface of the back from the ears to the shoulders. The outer surface of the limbs is sandy-yellow, while the flanks and inner sides of the limbs have little to no yellowish tint.
||Transoxiana, Eastern Russia and China
||jason (Pocock, 1936)
Early Middle Pleistocene dhole
Cuon a. priscus
Cuon a. sumatrensis 150 px
||A small subspecies, measuring only two feet in length, and standing high at the shoulder. It has a pointed, black fox-like muzzle with long dark whiskers. The nose and lips are foxy brown mixed with black. The general colour is foxy ferraginous red, with lighter shades on the belly and inner sides of the legs.
||Sumatra and Indonesia
Mivart]]'s A monograph of the canid Dholes have relatively short, heavy and massive skulls, with shortened facial regions, widely separated zygomatic arches and well-developed sagittal crests. The frontal bone is inflated, and passes down onto the snout, giving the animals a convex rather than concave profile. The masseter muscles are highly developed compared to other canid species, giving the face an almost hyena-like appearance. The skull is broader, and has a shorter rostrum than that of domestic dogs and most other canids. The dental formula is
The species uniquely has 6 rather than 7 lower molars. The upper molars are weak, being 2-3 times smaller than those of wolves, and have only one cusp as opposed to 2-4 as is usual in canids, an adaptation thought to improve shearing ability, thus allowing it to compete more successfully with kleptoparasites. The canine teeth are slightly curved and short.
Their limbs are moderately long, and their thoraxes proportional. Along with African wild dogs, dholes are often referred to as "cat-like" canids, due to their long fine limbs and backbones. They have great jumping and leaping abilities, being able to jump 3-3.5 m (10 12 ft) high, and leap 5 6 m (17 20 ft) long distances in one leap with a running start. Their tails measure 16-17 inches long, and are almost half the length of their bodies, nearly touching the ground when in full winter fur. They are smaller than African wild dogs. Weight ranges from , with males averaging about heavier. This dog is long from the snout to the base of the tail, with the tail averaging in length. Shoulder height is . Like African wild dogs, their ears are rounded rather than pointed. However, unlike the former species, male dholes do not have a clearly visible prepuce, thus making the sexing of individuals difficult even at close proximity. Unlike members of the Canis family, females have 12-14 teats rather than 10. They are not as odorous as wolves, jackals and foxes, having a smaller number of anal scent glands. It has been estimated that their stomachs can hold of food.
The general tone of the fur is reddish, with the brightest hues occurring in winter. When in their winter fur, the back is clothed in a saturated rusty-red to reddish colour with brownish highlights along the top of the head, neck and shoulders. The throat, chest, flanks, belly and the upper parts of the limbs are less brightly coloured, and are more yellowish in tone. The lower parts of the limbs are whitish, with dark brownish bands on the anterior sides of the forelimbs. The muzzle and forehead are greyish-reddish. The tail is very luxuriant and fluffy, and is mainly of a reddish-ocherous colour, with a dark brown tip. The summer coat is shorter, coarser and darker. The dorsal and lateral guard hairs in adults measure 20 30 mm in length. Dholes in the Moscow Zoo moult once a year from March to May.
Social and territorial behaviours
A pair of dholes at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, Kent, UK Dholes are more social than wolves, and have less of a dominance hierarchy, as seasonal scarcity of food is not a serious concern for them as it is with wolves. In this sense, they closely resemble African wild dogs in social structure. Dominant dholes are hard to identify, as they do not engage in dominance displays as wolves do, though other clan members will show submissive behaviour toward them. They live in clans rather than packs, as the latter term refers to a group of animals that always hunt together. In contrast, dhole clans frequently break into small packs of 3-5 animals, particularly during the spring season, as this is the optimal number for catching fawns. Dholes are far less territorial than wolves, with pups from one clan often joining another without trouble once they mature sexually. Clans typically number 5-12 individuals in India, though clans of 40 have been reported. In Thailand, clans rarely exceed three individuals. Unlike other canids, there is no evidence of dholes using urine to mark their territories or travel routes. They may defecate in conspicuous places, though a territorial function is unlikely, as faeces are mostly deposited within the clan's territory rather than the periphery. Faeces are often deposited in what appear to be communal latrines. They do not scrape the earth with their feet as other canids do to mark their territories.
Reproduction and development
Among Indian dholes, the mating season occurs between mid-October and January, while captive dholes in the Moscow Zoo breed mostly in February. Unlike wolf packs, dhole clans may contain more than one breeding female. During mating, the female assumes a crouched, cat-like position. There is no "tug of war" characteristic of other canids when the male dismounts. Instead, the pair lie on their sides facing each other in a semicircular formation. The gestation period lasts 60 63 days, with litter sizes averaging 4-6 pups. Their growth rate is much faster than that of wolves, being similar in speed to that of coyotes. Pups are suckled until at least the age of 58 days. During this time, the pack feeds the mother at the den site. Dholes do not use rendezvous sites to meet their pups as wolves do, though one or more adults will stay with the pups at the den while the rest of the pack hunts. Once weaning begins, the adults of the clan will regurgitate food for the pups until they are old enough to join in hunting. They remain at the den site till the age of 70 80 days. By the age of six months, pups accompany the adults on hunts, and will assist in killing large prey such as sambar by the age of 8 months.
Four kinds of den have been described; simple earth dens with one entrance (usually remodeled striped hyena or porcupine dens); complex cavernous earth dens with more than one entrance; simple cavernous dens excavated under or between rocks; and complex cavernous dens with several other dens in the vicinity, some of which are interconnected. Dens are typically located under dense scrub or on the banks of dry rivers or creeks. The entrance to a dhole den can be almost vertical, with a sharp turn 3 4 feet down. The tunnel opens into an antechamber, from which extends more than one passage. Some dens may have up to six entrances leading up to of interconnecting tunnels. These "cities" may be developed over many generations of dholes, and are shared by the clan females when raising young together. Like African wild dogs and dingoes, dholes will avoid killing prey close to their dens.
Diet, hunting and feeding behaviours
Prey animals in India include chital, sambar, muntjac, mouse deer, swamp deer, wild boar, gaur, water buffalo, banteng, cattle, nilgai, goats, Indian hares, Himalayan field rats and langurs. There is one record of a pack bringing down an Indian elephant calf in Assam, despite desperate defense of the mother resulting in numerous losses to the pack. In Kashmir, they may hunt markhor, and thamin in Burma. Javan rusas are hunted in Java. In the Tien Shan and Tarbagatai Mountains, dholes prey on Siberian ibexes, arkhar, roe deer, maral and wild boar. In the Altai and Sayan Mountains, they prey on musk deer and reindeer. In eastern Siberia, they prey on roe deer, Manchurian wapiti, wild boar, musk deer, and reindeer, while in Primorye they feed on sika deer and goral too. In Mongolia, they prey on argali and rarely Siberian ibex. Like African wild dogs, but unlike wolves, dholes are not known to attack people. Dholes eat fruit and vegetable matter more readily than other canids. In captivity, they eat various kinds of grasses, herbs and leaves, seemingly for pleasure rather than just when ill. In summertime in the Tien Shan Mountains, dholes eat large quantities of mountain rhubarb. Bael fruits are also eaten. Although opportunistic, dholes have a seeming aversion to hunting cattle and their calves. Livestock predation by dholes has been a problem in Bhutan since the late 1990s, as domestic animals are often left outside to graze in the forest, sometimes for weeks at a time. Livestock stall-fed at night and grazed near homes are never attacked. Oxen are killed more often than cows are, probably because they are given less protection.
Dholes chasing a nilgai
, as drawn by Robert Armitage Sterndale in Denizens of the Jungles
Before embarking on a hunt, clans go through elaborate prehunt social rituals involving nuzzling, body rubbing and homo and heterosexual mounting. Dholes are primarily diurnal hunters, hunting in the early hours of the morning. They rarely hunt nocturnally, except on moonlit nights, indicating that they greatly rely on sight when hunting. Though not as fast as jackals and foxes, they can chase their prey for many hours. During a pursuit, one or more dholes may take over chasing their prey, while the rest of the pack keeps up at a steadier pace behind, taking over once the other group tires. Most chases are short, lasting only 500 metres. When chasing fleet-footed prey, they run at a pace of 30 mph. Dholes frequently drive their prey into water bodies, where the targeted animal's movements are hindered.
Once large prey is caught, one dhole will grab the prey's nose, while the rest of the pack pulls the animal down by the flanks and hind quarters. They do not use a killing bite to the throat. They occasionally blind their prey by attacking the eyes. Serows are among the only ungulate species capable of effectively defending themselves against dhole attacks, due to their thick, protective coats and short, sharp horns capable of easily impaling dholes. They will tear open their prey's flanks and disembowel it, eating the heart, liver, lungs and some sections of the intestines. The stomach and rumen are usually left untouched. Prey weighing less than 50 kg is usually killed within two minutes, while large stags may take 15 minutes to die. Once prey is secured, dholes will tear off pieces of the carcass and eat in seclusion. Unlike wolf packs, in which the breeding pair monopolises food, dholes give priority to the pups when feeding at a kill, allowing them to eat first. They are generally tolerant of scavengers at their kills. Tiger hunted by wild dogs (1807)
Relationships with other predators
In some areas, dholes are sympatric to tigers and leopards. Competition between these species is mostly avoided through differences in prey selection, although there is still substantial dietary overlap. Along with leopards, dholes typically target animals in the 30 175 kg range (mean weights of 35.3 kg for dhole and 23.4 kg for leopard), while tigers selected for prey animals heavier than 176 kg (but their mean prey weight was 65.5 kg). Also, other characteristics of the prey, such as sex, arboreality, and aggressiveness, may play a role in prey selection. For example, dholes preferentially select male chital whereas leopard kill both sexes more evenly (and tigers prefer larger prey altogether), dholes and tigers kill langurs rarely compared to leopards due to the leopard's greater arboreality, while leopards kill wild boar infrequently due to the inability of this relatively light predator to tackle aggressive prey of comparable weight. On some rare occasions, dholes may attack tigers. When confronted by dholes, tigers will seek refuge in trees or stand with their backs to a tree or bush, where they may be mobbed for lengthy periods before finally attempting escape. Escaping tigers are usually killed, while tigers which stand their ground have a greater chance of survival. Tigers are extremely dangerous opponents for dholes, as they have sufficient strength to kill a single dhole with one paw strike. Even a successful tiger kill is usually accompanied by losses to the pack. Dhole packs may steal leopard kills, while leopards may kill dholes if they encounter them singly or in pairs. Because leopards are smaller than tigers, and are more likely to hunt dholes, dhole packs tend to react more aggressively toward them than they do with tigers. It was once thought that dholes were a major factor in reducing Asiatic cheetah populations, though this is doubtful, as cheetahs live in open areas as opposed to forested areas favoured by dholes.
Dhole packs occasionally attack Asiatic black bears and sloth bears. When attacking bears, dholes will attempt to prevent them from seeking refuge in caves, and lacerate their hind quarters.
Though usually antagonistic toward wolves, they may hunt and feed alongside one another. They infrequently associate in mixed groups with golden jackals. Domestic dogs may kill dholes, though they will feed alongside them on occasion.
Dholes produce whistles resembling the calls of red foxes, sometimes rendered as "coo-coo". How this sound is produced is unknown, though it is thought to help in coordinating the pack when travelling through thick brush. When attacking prey, they emit screaming "KaKaKaKAA" sounds. Other sounds include whines (food soliciting), growls (warning), screams, chatterings (both of which are alarm calls) and yapping cries. In contrast to wolves, dholes do not howl.
Dholes have a complex body language. Friendly or submissive greetings are accompanied by horizontal lip retraction and the lowering of the tail, as well as licking. Playful dholes will open their mouths with their lips retracted and their tails held in a vertical position whilst assuming a play bow. Aggressive or threatening dholes will pucker their lips forward in a snarl and raise the hairs on their backs, as well as keep their tails horizontal or vertical. When afraid, they pull their lips back horizontally with their tails tucked and their ears flat against the skull.
Diseases and parasites
Dholes are vulnerable to a number of different diseases, particularly in areas where they are sympatric with other canid species. Infectious pathogens such as Toxocara canis are present in their faeces. It is known that they may suffer from rabies, canine distemper, mange, trypanosomiasis, canine parvovirus, and endoparasites like cestodes and roundworms.
Sleeping dhole at the Toronto Zoo
Dholes once ranged throughout most of South, East and Southeast Asia, extending from the Tien Shan and Altai Mountains and the Primorsky Krai southward through Mongolia, Korea, China, Tibet, Nepal, India, and south-eastwards into Myanmar and Indochina, Thailand, Malaysia, Sumatra and Java.
During the last glacial period, they ranged across most of Eurasia, and are known to have once inhabited North America from a single fossil find in the Gulf of Mexico. A canid called the Sardinian Dhole (Cynotherium sardous) lived on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia during the Pleistocene, but it is not as closely related to the living species as its name would imply.
There are currently no reports of dholes in Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. There is one report of a dhole being captured in southern China's Jiangxi province. Dholes still occur in Tibet, particularly in south-east Tibet. They may still be present in North Korea. They still occur in India south of the Ganges River, especially in the Central Indian Highlands and the Western and Eastern Ghats. Dholes also occur in northeast India's states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal and in Ladakh. They have a precarious, fragmented distribution in Himalaya and north-west India. They are occasionally reported in the Ladakh area of Kashmir, contiguous with the Tibetan highlands and China. In Nepal, dholes were formerly recorded in Terai, including the Royal Chitwan National Park. Dholes were reported in the Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve in the late 1990s. In Bhutan, dholes have since recovered from a government sponsored poisoning campaign started in the 1970s, with reports of livestock predation occurring in the lower Kheng region. It is uncertain if they still occur in Bangladesh. Camera trapping has confirmed that dholes still occur in 11 survey areas in Myanmar, where they have replaced tigers as main predators. Dhole populations are highly fragmented in Thailand and Indochina, particularly in Vietnam. Dholes are known to occur in four sites in northern and central Malaysia. In Java, they appear to be most common in the island's protected eastern and western ends. They are also known to occur in Sumatra's protected areas in the southern, central and northern areas.
Relationships with humans
Hunting and persecution
Certain people, such as the Kurumbas and some Mon Khmer speaking tribes will appropriate dhole kills. Dholes were persecuted throughout India for bounties until they were given protection by the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Methods used for dhole hunting included poisoning, snaring, shooting and clubbing at den sites. Native Indian people killed dholes primarily to protect livestock, while British sporthunters during the British Raj did so under the conviction that dholes were responsible for drops in game populations. Persecution of dholes still occurs with varying degrees of intensity according to region. Bounties paid for dholes used to be 25 rupees, though this was reduced to 20 in 1926 after the number of presented dhole carcasses became too numerous to maintain the established reward. In Indochina, dholes suffer heavily from non-selective hunting techniques such as snaring.
The fur trade does not pose a significant threat to dholes. The people of India do not eat dhole flesh, and their fur is not considered overly valuable. Due to their rarity, dholes were never harvested for their skins in large numbers in the Soviet Union, and were sometimes accepted as dog or wolf pelts (being labeled as "half wolf" for the latter). The winter fur was prized by the Chinese, who bought dhole pelts in Ussuriysk during the late 1860s for 3-4 silver rubles. In the early 20th century, dhole pelts reached 8 rubles in Manchuria. In Semirechye, fur coats made from dhole skin were considered the warmest, but were very costly.
Dholes in folklore, mythology, literature and popular culture
A dhole pack, as illustrated by Winifred Austen
Three dhole-like animals are featured on the coping stone of the Bharhut stupa dating from 100 B.C.. They are shown waiting by a tree, with a woman or spirit trapped up it, a scene reminiscent of dholes treeing tigers. Dhole-like animals are described in numerous old European texts, including the Ostrogoth sagas, where they are portrayed as hell hounds. The demon dogs accompanying Hellequin in Mediaeval French passion plays, as well as the ones inhabiting the legendary forest of Broc liande have been attributed to dholes. It has been suggested that the dangerous wild canids mentioned by Scaliger as having lived in the forests of Montefalcone could have been dholes, as they were described as unlike wolves in habits, voice and appearance. The Montefalcone family's coat of arms had a pair of red dogs as supporters.
Dholes appear in Rudyard Kipling's Red Dog, where they are portrayed as aggressive and bloodthirsty animals who descend from the Deccan Plateau into the Seeonee Hills inhabited by Mowgli and his adopted wolf pack to cause carnage among the jungle's denizens. They are described as living in packs numbering hundreds of individuals, and that even Shere Khan and Hathi make way for them when they descend into the jungle. The dholes are despised by the wolves because of their destructiveness, their habit of not living in dens and the hair between their toes. With Mowgli and Kaa's help, the Seeonee wolf pack manages to wipe out the dholes by leading them through bee hives and torrential waters before finishing off the rest in battle. They would reappear in two animated television adaptations; Jungle Book Sh nen Mowgli and Jungle Cubs.
In an episode called "Alpha" in season six of The X-Files, a cryptid dhole from China is blamed for multiple killings. This dhole (Wanshang dhole) is also mentioned in the Angel episode That Vision Thing. Both episodes were written by Jeffrey Bell.
Tameability and possible relation to the dog
Brian Houghton Hodgson kept captured dholes in captivity, and found that with the exception of one animal, they remained shy and vicious even after 10 months. According to Richard Lydekker, adult dholes are nearly impossible to tame, though pups are docile and can even be allowed to play with domestic dog pups until they reach early adulthood. A dhole may have been presented as a gift to Ibbi-Sin as tribute.
Although genetic distance and mitochondrial DNA studies have proven that dogs descended from wolves, the dhole is still put forward by some researchers as a more likely candidate. Points raised in favour of the dhole ancestry cite the general domestic dog-like passiveness of the dhole in having its kills taken by humans, which contrasts with the behaviour of sympatric wolves, which will defend their prey aggressively against humans. It is also claimed that dhole skulls bear more similarities to dog skulls than wolves do, with the glaring exception of the dentition.
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India, the eastern country, has a large film industry represented in “Bollywood” which is a feature of great treasures. However, the most unknown matter is that it is one of the countries that deemed to have the strangest secrets. Out of revealing India’s top secrets, we offer you this list of its top ten secrets.
10 The Nine Unknown Men
The Nine Unknown Men of India are like the Illuminati of the Western world, yet even more insidious and puzzling. The legend says that this effective secret society was established by Emperor Ashoka in 273 BC following a bloody fight that took lives of about 100,000 men. The Nine Unknown Men aimed at preserving and expanding the kind of secret information that would be too unsafe in the hands of the inexperienced.
Taj Mahal is the most well-known building in India. It seems to be one of the modern wonders of the world; this elaborate white marble building was founded by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a burial chamber to his dead wife. Some reports refer that Taj Mahal was never the architectural incarnation of everlasting love. However, some proof refer that the building is in fact about 300 years older than its claimed to be.
In the area of Ladakh near the Himalayas, a weird hill exists that is believed to be magnetic. In case you park your car on the highway that leads to the summit of the hill and depart it in neutral, it will turn up the sharp road by its own accord, moving at speed up to 20 kilometers per hour. This wonderful natural phenomenon is called a “Himalayan wonder” and is a well-liked magnetism for the travelers of the region.
7 The Immortal Beings Of The Himalayas
In many legends, mountains are normal homes to divine. The Himalayas are the worldwide mightiest mountain range, it is a cause to experience whisperings of strange beings unseen in the valleys of the mountains. One famous legend among the practitioners of a variety of New Age soul-searching methods is Gyanganj. It is believed to be a very old Indian and Tibetan story of a city-kingdom of weird immortal beings that are fleeing the world.
6 The Cursed Village Of Kuldhara
For more than 500 years, the village of Kuldhara was inhabited by about 1,500 people. One night, they all vanished. The grounds for their unexpected evacuation are lost in time. Actually, Some told that they escaped the excise of cruel rulers, while others rumored a tale of young lovers and the girl annoyed her father who was a large priest at the village.
5 The Bhootbilli
The Bhootbilli is an unexplained monster that was threatening some parts of India, mainly in the region of Pune. It is an odd cryptid that shows up to be between a cat, a dog and a mongoose. This creature is blamed for murdering livestock and terrifying the locals. In addition, the creature is overweight with a long tail, in black color, has a face of a dog and back of a mongoose. It can jump long, have at least once bounded in a tree to flee from people who have attempted to grasp it.
Shanti Devi was born in a pleased Delhi family in 1930s. Yet, she didn’t keep on being happy for long. When aged four, she began persisting that her mother and father were not her exact parents. She states that her name was in fact Ludgi and her accurate family lived in a totally different city. Moreover, she claimed she had passed away giving birth to a child and granted very exact information on her husband and family life.
The Kongka La Pass in Ladakh is one of the slightest easy way to get to places in the world. The area is relatively a no man’s land. Some say that UFOs have selected the area as their subversive base.
The southern areas of Kottayam and Idukki of Kerala experienced a strange phenomenon in September 23, 2001 when the rain was strangely red hinted. Colored rainfall in Kerala took place in 1986, and the most current of which took place in June of 2012.
1 Bengal Swamps
Aleya lights or marsh phantom lights are mysterious ghost lights sayings in the marshes of West Bengal characteristically by local fishermen. These lights are reported to puzzle fishermen leading to misplace their bearing. It may cause sinking if one begins to follow these lights and walk over the marshes. Numerous bodies have washed onto land on these marshes that locals said that it is because to Aleya lights. |
Many say that celebrities are just like us normal folks, but are they, though? Many of them had a crazy life and still partake in activities we can only dream about. So want to know a few celeb secrets to check whether you also have a Hollywood life? Here are some of the juiciest facts and rumors about our beloved stars:
Kesha’s otherworldly encounter
Kesha, the famous singer, told Conan O’Brien that one time he had a ghost encounter, a very intimate one. According to Kesha, the spirit was very gentle and they proceeded to do the deed. Sounds crazy? Well, the singer is not the only one who romanced a ghost. Charlie’s Angels star, Lucy Liu told Us Weekly that a spirit came from the sky and made love to her and casually floated away. She said it was amazing.
Katy Parry’s weird collection
Did you know Tom Hanks is obsessed with typewriters and has a huge collection of over 100 different models and manufacturers? Probably not, even though he’s vocal about his hobby and it always puts a huge smile on his face. While this obsession might be weird, it’s nothing compared to Katy Parry’s creepy hobby of collecting celebrity hair. She’s got locks from Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, and maybe even more.
Gaga’s gaga fear
Why do celebrities struggle with ghosts so much? We don’t know but apparently, Lady Gaga would love to know so much that she’s willing to spend $50,000 on an electromagnetic field meter designed to detect spirits and stop her feud with a ghost named Ryan who’s haunting her. While we’re more used to getting feminism and fitness tips from her, we might soon expect a ghostbusters book.
Angelina Jolie’s creepy jewelry
When Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton were a couple, the two engaged in some pretty occult things, mainly vampiric things. According to Thornton, Angelina thought it would be romantic for the couple to make little cuts, draw some blood and smear some on lockets they wear around their necks. Romantic or gross, you decide!
Leo is a horrible lay
Leonardo DiCaprio has a reputation of being a heartbreaker, but some ladies reported that he’s not such a stud in bed. According to some rumors, Leo loves to put on headphones while making love and even whip out his vape and take a few puffs. His love for vaping is well-known to the world ever since he pulled out his box mod in the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Awards. If you want to be at least a little bit like Leonardo DiCaprio, you can always grab an OZE vape and partake while looking rich and elegant. However, make sure to be a little bit more respectful to the girls!
Charlie Sheen’s monstrous catch
As he told Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, Charlie Sheen is a great Loch Ness Monster hunter. One night he has sure he could catch it with a leg of lamb and a large hook. Charlie did report a great commotion on the surface of the lake, but he didn’t manage to capture the monster. However, he still believes in the beast.
Fran Drescher’s encounter of the 4th kind
Fran Drescher and her ex-husband Peter Marc Jacobson had a pretty long and successful marriage. But how did Fran know he was the one? Well, they both had the exact same scar on the exact same spot, obviously from when they were abducted and chipped by aliens. Fran thought they were “programmed to meet” and they did.
Daniel Radcliffe’s drinking nightmare
We all know and love that brown-haired wizard from Harry Potter. However, Daniel Radcliffe grew up right before our eyes and developed some pretty grown-up issues. A few years ago, the actor admitted he had a drinking problem. Dan reported that his addiction was triggered by ending the filming of Harry Potter and him trying to fit in and live a true celebrity lifestyle—it didn’t sit right with him it seems.
How do you like these juicy and creepy celeb secrets and quirks? Are they super different from you or do you also suffer from ghost/demon/cryptid issues? Anyway, hopefully you had fun reading these and there will be much more to come because celebrities never stop to amaze us. |
Cryptids are as mysterious as they are creepy and spooky. Between Bigfoot and the Loch Ness, there are a handful of cryptids that cryptozoologists are excited to discover and share with the world.
If you’re a fan of spooky stories, mythical creatures and tales about the monsters that go bump in the night, then you’ll love our featured podcast.
Congrats to Across the Veil for earning Podcast of the Week for December 14, 2020.
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What’s this podcast about?
Cryptids are mythical creatures that live in fairytales and folklore as far as we know, with little-to-no scientific evidence proving their existence. But just because these creatures have yet to be catalogued doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
A cryptozoologist is a person that studies cryptids, unveiling their secrets and discovering the truths behind the folklore. That’s Across the Veil in a nutshell.
Across the Veil is a podcast hosted by Emma Ragsdale and Zelda Kimble, two aspiring actresses and self-proclaimed amateur cryptozoologists. Their enthusiasm for cryptids, ghouls and all things creepy adds a unique level of excitement to each episode, making for funny and charming conversations about all things related to mythical creatures.
Why subscribe to Across the Veil?
If you’re a fan of spectacular folklore and uncovering truths about lesser-known cryptids like the Pontianak, the Bukit Timah Monkey Man, and, the Baobhan Sith, Across the Veil is for you.
Your cryptid tour guides, Emma and Zelda, are excellent at uncovering information about cryptids in a fashion that’s humorous and educational. Each episode is filled with fun facts and a handful of post-production elements that make the podcast immersive and enjoyable.
Across the Veil is spooky, creepy, and down-right entertaining.
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A priest from the bog, she carries out many of her people's traditional ceremonies... whatever those might be. Seems to do most of it without talking, too! Now that's talent.
Sometimes you want your fantasy world to have lizardfolk and they just end up being crocodiles in costumes. This lady is a little more alligator-like, and that's fine too.
I didn't join the postcard club until waaay too late, but @korokke , I've been framing all the ones I've got. I love them. 🥰
I'm open for #commissions! If you're interested or have questions, I can be contacted by email (commissions @ meg-james.com) or you can DM me! please review the Terms of Service and additional info on my website: http://meg-james.com/commissions/
thanks for looking! 🐻✨
I have some new stickies to give out! These are physical versions of the digital Telegram stickers that @ljames knocked out of the park for me.
You can always check my old coffee shop ship on Artstation https://www.artstation.com/artwork/18kK68
L ★ nonbinary [he or they]
vector artist, jack-of-all-trades storyteller, free and open source software ghoul, southeast WA cryptid
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As a reader, I have always been a fan of fantasy and science fiction with a candid interest in the strange and the macabre. This past year, I was introduced to new author J.P. Barnett who gave me all new and intriguing takes on familiar folklore. Within just a few months, he has already released two titles within a single series of chasing creatures of legends, leaving myself and readers curious to see what happens next.
Synopsis of The Beast of Rose Valley: Rose Valley, Texas is a small town where everyone knows everyone and consists of a community where everyone is born, raised, and lives their full lives there. A few community members dared to venture out into the world, only to find themselves back where their lives began. Jake Rollins barely managed to survive a terrible car accident and is under the care of a well-schooled doctor and colleague in Rose Valley. On top of caring for his health, he has been present to the aftermath of some strange incidents that have been occurring around town. It may not seem like a large concern, considering the deaths that have occurred are namely livestock, but when said livestock’s remains are found turned inside out, of course concern is going to spread. The respected sheriff of Rose Valley tries to keep the multiple mutilations under wraps, but Jake knows something is going on and only with the help of a local reporter and familiar colleague, Shandi Mason, can he uncover what is terrorizing their small town. Little do they know that their terror is an unimaginable nightmare that leaves them with a near impossible decision to make: to kill the terror and save the town… or to save the terror itself.
Synopsis of The Kraken of Cape Madre: Two years have passed since the Beast terrorized the small town of Rose Valley. Two years have passed since Miriam witnessed her brother’s massacre and her life was changed forever. Trying to forget her haunting past, Miriam travels to Cape Madre with her newfound friend Macy for a fun Spring Break at the beach. The fun does not last long when Miriam finds herself saving a tourist from something lurking under the water… something big and very dangerous. Seafaring legends and Norse mythology point her in the direction of a sea creature she aims to find and destroy, yet her past as a hunter for creatures of legend is the past she so longs to forget. Now, Miriam faces the battle of her life to not only save Cape Madre from becoming the next victim to a creature of the deep, but to save herself from becoming someone she is not meant to be.
I was given the pleasure of speaking with J.P. Barnett about his books and what readers are to expect in future works. With his latest book The Kraken of Cape Madre being published today, I am personally anxious to see what happens next in his series. Until readers are able to read the third book in Barnett’s Lorestalker Series in December of this year, he has given readers excellent insight as to what they will be expecting in future books as well as his approach to his unique writing style. So, without further ado, may I introduce J.P. Barnett, author of The Beast of Rose Valley and The Kraken of Cape Madre.
Alicia: Please tell me about yourself.
J.P.: I grew up in Texas, which is why my books are set there. I grew up in a tiny town of 2500 people, so everybody knew me. I went to school at Texas A&M and I studied computer science, which is what I did as a career for about 20 years. Then, I was in position where I just wanted to do something else. I always wanted to write a book and I was in a situation where I could do that financially, so I did. I stopped working and wrote The Beast of Rose Valley in two months, which is crazy fast. I thought that that was normal and I learned the hard way that that is not normal and it takes much longer to write a book.
Alicia: Why do you say “the hard way”? I mean, two months? That’s awesome!
J.P.: Yeah, no, it was awesome, but when I started writing the next book, I realized it wasn’t going to always be that fast. That’s what I mean by “learn the hard way.” When I was scheduling it out, I was thinking, “Great. I will write a book every two months and then I could take two months off and I’ll write four books a year.” Yeah, it’s a little harder than that, it turns out.
I’ve definitely learned already that every book is its own journey. The Beast of Rose Valley came out really fast. I guess it was the whole lifetime of wanting to write a book. It’s also set in my hometown and a lot of the characters are based on people I knew or know, so I think [that’s why] it came out a little faster than normal.
Alicia: Since it took you two months to write The Beast of Rose Valley, how long did it take to write The Kraken of Cape Madre?
J.P.: The Kraken of Cape Madre took a little longer, but not a whole lot. I think I finished the first draft in about four months, then it went through about two months of revision and beta reading before I sent it off to Evolved Publishing to get edited. That is the schedule I’m trying to keep now is four months. I’m working on the third book now and I’m hoping I’ll get it done in four months. We’ll see. I am a person who always meets deadlines because it stresses me out not to. I’m sure I will find a way to finish the book in time for the December release.
Alicia: You mentioned earlier that these towns are based in Texas. Are they real towns or did you rename them as more of a fictitious sort of town?
J.P.: They are definitely renamed. The first town, Rose Valley, is based on my hometown which is Glen Rose, so I didn’t venture too far in renaming it. For Cape Madre, that’s more of a made up town. I very loosely based it off of South Padre, which is a place in Texas, but I haven’t been there for 20 some odd years when I was a teenager, so mostly, I made it up.
Alicia: Where did the idea for your whole series come from?
J.P.: It’s an amalgamation of things. For an overview of the whole series, as a kid, my grandmother subscribed to Time Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown, which was this thing you could subscribe to and they would send you a book every month or every other month and it was all about weird things. There were alien books, witch books, and my favorite one was her book about cryptids. I remember in particular there was this part in the book which talked about things we used to think were made up, but then we found them, which nowadays doesn’t happen as often, obviously, but back then, it was still a thing. I was so mesmerized by that, so that is something I have always enjoyed, just cryptids in general, and I kind of follow that as a news item. Every now and then, we’ll find something really cool. Usually it’s small, little things, but occasionally, they’ll find a frog they didn’t know existed or a bird and I think that that’s awesome. It is amazing that you can do that in a world that is so connected and we think we know everything and we don’t. That’s the origins of cryptids being an inspiration for me.
For The Beast of Rose Valley, when I was in college, I think I started writing a book about a guy who was a werewolf and didn’t know it. So when he was a werewolf, he didn’t know what he was doing as a werewolf. I didn’t get really far with that because I never got really far with my novels until The Beast of Rose Valley, but I took that idea and kind of revamped it for The Beast of Rose Valley. I wanted some story that I could set in my hometown and I felt like that was something I could set there and I could also tie it to Bigfoot a little bit.
For The Kraken of Cape Madre, at this point, I was already into the cryptid space and I wasn’t getting out of it. I actually started writing a completely different book called The Demon of Dobie. I got three or four chapters into it, but just wasn’t feeling it, didn’t love it. I wrote the first chapter of The Kraken of Cape Madre on a whim and I fell in love with it from the first chapter and I knew that was the book I needed to write instead. People seem to really respond to the Kraken. As a cryptid, I think it’s something people already enjoy, they already have an idea in their mind of what a Kraken is, so I think it was a good choice.
For The Beast of Rose Valley, “beast” is a very generic term and it wasn’t very clear. I don’t think that we use the word “Bigfoot” in the book blurb either, so I think it was less obvious, while with The Kraken of Cape Madre, they can see the title and immediately kind of know what they’re getting, which I think is good. I definitely see people responding to that more than they did with the beast.
Alicia: It makes more sense now when you say that the first Beast was supposed to be Bigfoot cause for me, personally, I saw it more as almost like Frankenstein’s monster.
J.P.: You know, you were the first person to mention that and I didn’t consider it when I was writing it, that there was a lot of Frankenstein in it, but I can totally see it. That happens a lot. I think we read things, we see things over a lifetime, stories become a part of who we are, and that is both a really fun thing about writing and a really hard thing about writing: to not just rip off everything that’s come before because some of that has just become so ingrained and you’re kind of regurgitating scripts that you’ve always been given and I think Frankenstein’s monster did kind of make its way into the story a little bit.
I’m glad you pointed that out. That’s one of my favorite things about this so far: hearing people’s interpretations of what I wrote. It’s so cool to do something and then have people take it in their own direction.
Alicia: Going back to the places these creatures are appearing in, are you planning on staying within towns in Texas or do you think you may branch out a bit more?
J.P.: So the third book is still in Texas. It takes place in the deserts of West Texas. I think that, eventually, I will branch out if, for no other reason, I run out of interesting places in Texas. I live in Texas, I’ve lived here almost my whole life. I spent ten years up in Northern Virginia. So I know Texas pretty well and the other thing I like about Texas is that Texans are super gung ho about Texas. It’s actually a pretty good sales pitch. I think around here, it’s pretty easy to be like, “Hey, I have a book that’s set in Texas” and, if you’re a Texan, you’re like, “I’m a Texan, I read books, I want to read that.” It’s like, they’ll read outside their genre just because it’s set in Texas, so it’s a nice built-in audience that way.
It’s a lot easier to write what you know and that is why The Beast of Rose Valley was so easy, but I think overtime, it will get easier to make up places, so I’ll probably venture outside of Texas. I think that, right now, it makes sense because it’s a series and the characters live in Texas so for them to take big trips elsewhere doesn’t really make sense in the context of the story yet.
Alicia: That’s good with what you did, especially with the transition between your first and your second book since you focus more on Miriam in the second book. With the events that took place, it makes the story more realistic.
J.P.: I love Miriam as a main character and I wish I had invented her in full for The Beast of Rose Valley. I think it would have changed the story significantly if I had, but she really came into her own in The Kraken of Cape Madre and I’m proud of how she turned out.
Truth be told, when I wrote the original, it wasn’t meant to be a series. The Beast of Rose Valley was just a standalone book to try to find a publisher. When I did find a publisher, when I found Evolved Publishing, one of the things they recommended was that I write a series. That’s a little bit why the series pivots to Miriam because I realized, at that point, I needed a series main character. I didn’t feel like The Beast of Rose Valley really had that, so that’s where Miriam came from and I think that it worked out okay because I tell people now that The Beast of Rose Valley is kind of like a prologue to Miriam’s story. It’s kind of setting up how Miriam got to where she is when The Kraken of Cape Madre begins. It’s a good reading, but not necessary reading. I think people can start with The Kraken of Cape Madre if they really wanted to and they would be okay.
I’ve gone back and reread the Miriam chapters in The Beast of Rose Valley and I think it’s fun to see how she changes between the two books. In the first book, my editor and I went back and forth quite a bit on Miriam. He felt like she was super detached and not very compelling of a character for The Beast of Rose Valley, and I kept pushing back saying, “Yeah, that’s important, that’s the point.” I wanted her to be like this monster killing robot that doesn’t know how to be a human yet because that’s the arc I wanted to take her on.
Alicia: Would you say that Miriam is your favorite character so far to write or is there maybe another character or multiple characters that you love to write?
J.P.: There are definitely multiple characters I love to write. Miriam is one of my favorites and, at this point, she comes easiest to me and after writing The Kraken of Cape Madre, I feel like I understand her on a fundamental level.
My favorite character from The Beast of Rose Valley is Cam Donner, the sheriff. I really like him because he reminds me so much of my grandfather. My grandfather was this rough, mean man and, if you met him for just a little while, he would probably say something crude or rude, he would offend you in some way. But when the chips were down and it mattered, he was the most caring, loving person there was. I used that kind of personality as inspiration for Cam and I really like that about Cam. I like that he seems so gruff when you see him from Jake and Shandi’s perspective, but when it really matters, he’s not the bad guy. I really enjoyed writing his character a lot.
For The Kraken of Cape Madre, I would say my favorite character was probably Bark. I had a whole lot of fun writing Bark just because he was such a conflicted character. I really like how he turned out, he’s a good character.
(*Note: Not much will be said about Bark due to potential spoiler alerts*)
I wanted the main characters to be equally complex. Hopefully, everybody has a character that they like. I know that a lot of people are responding well to Tommy, as well. I think there’s maybe a little bit of me in Tommy.
Alicia: As far as your storytelling goes, you have actually accomplished something in just your first two books that many authors I’ve noticed struggle with and that is maintaining the mystery behind your monsters without giving away too much detail right at the get and that is really impressive. Is it difficult to place your mystery bread crumb trail for your readers to follow or does it come pretty easily for you?
J.P.: I would say medium difficulty. Luckily, I do get to revise them, so in some cases I’ve taken out or added hints because it was either too vague or too strong, so I do get that benefit. But I think the groundwork of it comes out fairly naturally just because of the way I write. I’m a pantser by a lot and nowhere near a plotter, so I will put things in the book and I kind of reverse engineer it. When I want to write the next chapter, I’ll say, “What did I say in the last chapter and how can I use that hint to mean something?” And I think that allows me to have that slow reveal because I didn’t even know what it meant when I wrote it. I can’t give away too much information because I didn’t know what it was.
I think in The Beast of Rose Valley, I didn’t have the exact idea of who the beast was and how he was related to the main characters until probably almost halfway through the book. When I was writing, I didn’t even know where I was going with it. That is how I manage it. Whether I’ll be able to do it forever, I don’t know, but so far, it has served me pretty well.
I joke with my wife and my friends about how the characters are writing my book. I’m not really writing it. There have been a lot of times when I had in my head what I thought was going to happen and when I got there, it would be like no, Miriam wouldn’t do that. It’s a fun process. It’s weird, almost crazy to say that these made up characters on the page have their own agenda, but they really do and if you don’t let them do what they want to do, then I think the story doesn’t seem genuine. I was at a writing retreat recently and someone said that sometimes, a character comes into your scene and plants a flag and you realize they’re not leaving. They may have been a minor character to start with and I feel that is how Miriam was. She wasn’t supposed to be a big part of the story and she just came in and took over. Now, she’s taken over the whole series.
Alicia: Do you think you’re going to bring back past characters in future books or you think you might want to stick with Miriam and then introduce new characters?
J.P.: I think there is always a possibility. I would love to bring back some of those characters and an interesting thing is that that original intention was that the Lorestalker Series would be an anthology so every book would have a different main character. Book three was actually supposed to be all about Dub Higgens and his wife, Marie, who were minor characters in the first book. Once I finished The Kraken of Cape Madre, not only internally but also talking to my beta readers, everybody was too enamored with Miriam to let her go and I had one beta reader try to revolt if I abandoned Miriam. For the foreseeable future, Miriam will be THE Lorestalker, I guess, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t have fun cameos from other characters. Macy is a good in because she is tied to [a few other characters], so bringing any of those characters back in the future will be pretty easy.
Alicia: So far, have you been receiving really good feedback for both of your books? From both beta readers and other readers in general?
J.P.: Yeah, so far, feedback has been pretty good. I’m grateful for fairly positive reviews across the board. I think that anyone who writes books is a little bit unsure of themselves and there are days where I think, “Are people just being nice? I don’t know.” So it feels good to get the good reviews, for sure. It’s hard not to obsess about it a little bit starting out to not just every day check them and see what people say. And even when it’s not star ratings, just reading people’s reactions, the things that they respond to, the characters they like, it’s great. I love that people respond to things that, to me, weren’t that important. I’m really proud of The Kraken of Cape Madre and I joke with some of my friends that I worry that I’ll never write a book that good again. Not to sound cocky, I’m just really proud of it and I think it turned out to be a really good book and I’m excited to start seeing people’s reactions roll in after my release.
The Kraken of Cape Madre is going to release [June 3rd], but nothing is going to happen. It’s kind of a surreal thing to think, “Ooh, my book release!”, but no one has time to read or review it the day it releases. Really, you don’t start getting the feedback until way later, so it’s definitely more of a marathon than a sprint.
Alicia: What has it been like working with Evolved Publishing?
J.P.: It’s been great. They’re my first publisher, so I don’t have anyone to compare them against, but considering I knew nothing going in, it’s been great to have a partner in editing, cover design, and marketing. Marketing is a huge one that is very difficult, so just having a partner in all of that has been a really big deal. It has also given me access to other authors and a network of people I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise, so it’s been great.
Alicia: During your writing process, both before and even now, who has been your biggest support?
J.P.: My biggest support has to be my wife. She is literally paying the bills so I can do this. But she also reads everything I write and gives me pretty good feedback. My favorite question to ask her after she reads my stuff is, “What do you think is going to happen next?” I almost never do what she says, but it’s really helpful to hear a reader’s perspective on, “Here is what I think is going to happen,” and that makes it easier for me to subvert expectations, which I think is a big part of my series. She’s hugely helpful in all of those things.
Alicia: I think you’re already off to a really strong start with your series by having three come out just this year. That’s definitely going to help keep you on readers’ radars. How long do you anticipate your series to be? Do you have a set number or are you going to keep it going for as long as you can?
J.P.: I don’t have a set number. I like the characters and, as long as I do, I’d be happy to keep writing Lorestalker books if people want to read them. That being said, though, I do have other books I want to write, other ideas for books and other genres, so eventually, I’ll want to get to those, but while I’m building a readership, I think that there’s a lot of value in having a single series. I really don’t think more than one book ahead, though, so right now I’m working on book three and I really can’t because of the way I write. I don’t really know what’s going to happen so, without knowing where my characters are going to end up at the end of book three, it’s really hard to plan a book four, but I think there will be one.
[As far as my other ideas go,] I really like science fiction, so I think one day I would like to write some more science fiction. I may dabble in it more. Not so much Star Trek or Star Wars science fiction in the stars, but one of my favorite authors of all time is Michael Crichton and I really like the way he would take real world science, amp it up ten notches, and write a story about it. I like that kind of science fiction. I also really enjoy alternate history fiction, so I actually have an idea of mixing up a couple of those genres that I really want to get to. I actually started writing the book, but then I got a publisher for The Beast of Rose Valley and went on the Lorestalker train which I think, in the end, will probably service the science fiction book better, to learning a lot with every book.
Alicia: What do you hope readers will take away from reading your books?
J.P.: First off, I want readers to have fun. I want you to be able to pick up my book, I want you to be able to read it in less than five hours, and I want you to feel like you just watched a really good movie. Those are my favorite kind of books and those are the kind of books I want to write.
My second take away I want readers to have is I want them to learn something about humanity. Characters are very important to me and I want there to be takeaways there. Sometimes, I’m surprised by the takeaways people have. They’re not always the ones I have intended. At the end of the day, the “kraken” or the “beast” are just there so that it is more fun, but really, it’s about the characters and learning something about not only the characters, but something about yourself or someone you know or some relationship you have. |
Kentucky’s Most Famous Mythical Creatures Are…Space Goblins [VIDEO]
When it comes to mythical creatures (labeled as mythical, yes, even though there are those who SWEAR they've seen them), Kentucky has its fair share.
Of course, there's Bigfoot. But what state HASN'T had some kind of report about some kind of creature that very closely resembles the big guy?
There's the Sheepsquatch, which was featured on Destination America some years back.
And there's the Pope Lick Monster, which patrols and haunts a train trellis near Louisville.
And with all the reports I've seen and heard about the Pope Lick Monster, I would think that if ANY mythical creature was going to be named Kentucky's most famous, it would be that one.
No, the cryptid (an animal that has been claimed to exist even though no proof of its existence, well, exists) that's been tabbed as Kentucky's most famous is one I've never heard of.
Well, there's not just one.
Have you ever heard of "space goblins" called the Kelly Little Green Men?
The History Channel gives us some background and a lot of the story takes place in the Hopkinsville area and begins in 1955.
That's when several members of the Sutton family came to the Hopkinsville police station to report the terrifying occurrence of other-worldly visitors.
In fact, there were 11 people who claimed they saw these "little green men." And witnesses who were present believed that these 11 people were genuinely terrified of "something."
Here's more from KET:
So, yeah, the Kelly Little Green Men (named for Kelly, Kentucky where they were allegedly spotted) gets the nod as Kentucky's most famous mythical creatures.
But I say the Pope Lick Monster has an argument. |
What is a chupacabra?
The chupacabras (from chupar "to suck" and cabra "goat", literally "goat sucker"), is a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. It is associated more recently with sightings of an allegedly unknown animal in Puerto Rico (where these sightings were first reported), Mexico, and the United States, especially in the latter's Latin American communities. The name comes from the animal's reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats. Physical descriptions of the creature vary. Eyewitness sightings have been claimed as early as 1995 in Puerto Rico, and have since been reported as far north as Maine, and as far south as Chile. It is supposedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail. Biologists and wildlife management officials view the chupacabras as a contemporary legend.
What does BEAM know of this creature?
From the FIGU Forum, Questions Answered by Billy thread:
Dear BEAM and Christian
What is your knowledge about the creature called Chupacabra? Is it real creature, does it evolved by natural means (if not then how it originated), what is it's life-span, do Plejaren ever investigated how many those creatures currently live on Earth and in which region of our planet, does the visual description of this creature presented by alleged witnesses corresponds to it's actual look.
Thank you for your answer.
Billy does know about those ape-like creatures from TV, but cannot answer your questions.
The dimensional dog / animal
We have not read and researched everything by the author by any means, but we can’t find any mention of such an animal specifically. However it may be theoretically possible based on other information by the author, describing humans who are able to change dimension by using their brain. It might be theoretically possible that a canine / dog species (or another animal for that matter) exists that lives primarily in another dimension, and from very rare time to time, manifests itself, changes dimension, gets limbs stuck temporarily etc. But as we have not seen an actual decription to such an effect it is pure speculation that it is what it is and been going on. There is descriptions by Ptaah indicating hundreds to thousands of undiscovered species, many of which probably marine, and that excludes Bigfoot because we have sort of discovered that now, and semi-dimensional and energy species e.g. Rods. There is another description of the so called “Skrill wesen” which partially describes dimensionality. At any rate, if there is any veracity to any of it, they’ll seen from time to time, and there will be rare isolated incidents from time to time, and not much reliable sustainable opportunities to study these various things. We don’t usually speculate and prefer to base our investigations and research on things that have been absolutely explained by Plejaren and Billy, and usually where a generous description is offered up, rather than a very general theoretical possibility.
- Diccionario Clave, chupacabras. It states that both singular and plural is chupacabras. |
Elbie: The Elbe River Monster
In the early part of January, 2018 a photo emerged in Germany’s Tag24 newspaper, of an alleged Nessie-like creature, in a section of the Elbe River, that passes through Dresden, Germany. The photo which itself is quite picturesque, shows what looks to be 3 sections of a long serpentine ‘object’ on the surface of the river, which is incidentally, beautifully framed by the historic glass dome on the Kunstverein building and illuminated by the bright winter sun, breaking through a cloudy sky. The witness, Torsten Koj, described seeing ‘A large, snake-like creature, several metres long, that immediately reminded him of Nessie, emerge from the water and swim along the river for a short time, before disappearing beneath the surface.’
I believe there are two possible reasons for this strange encounter, the first of which is to do with the current high water level and flooding that has been experienced across much of Germany; and that has seen various sections of the river break its banks. This increased water margin could have enabled a large creature, like the one witnessed, to move further up river from its possible haunts in the North Sea near Cuxhaven. As is often seen in countries like Australia when widespread flooding is experienced, large predators like crocodiles and alligators often move into new ‘perceived’ territories created in search of food and this could provide a simple explanation for this unusual encounter.
The second reason, which is closely connected to the first, could be related to a widely dispersed and somewhat diminished food supply, due to the adverse conditions and enlarged environment caused by flooding, as was seen to occur in the aftermath of Germany’s floods in 2013, which resulted in the loss of many natural fish stocks in the adjoining lakes that became contaminated by the flood water. Thus possibly causing, in this case, our alleged ‘animal’ to travel further upriver to seek its prey.
Ordinarily, The Elbe River is home to eel, grayling, trout, perch, barbel, European chub, flounder, northern pike, carp, salmon, sea trout, burbot, asp, tench, catfish and blue bream and fishing is a popular past time along the vast length of its banks. In its finite state, the Elbe River, which has its beginning in the Krkonoše Mountains, Czech Republic, winds its way 680 miles through the aforementioned territory and then onwards through Germany; finally emptying into the North Sea at Cuxhaven. It also features the Elbe Cycle Route (Elberadweg) which Starts in Prague , Czech Republic, and includes a scenic downhill stretch between Dresden and Cuxhaven!
So what manner of creature could Torsten Koj have seen? Some commentators have been very swift to say that Torsten, could certainly not have seen a ‘dinosaur’ (ignoring his plesiosaur-like description) but fail to give any credible scientific reason as to why he could not have seen one of these elusive aquatic reptiles, that have been reported living in waters, not only in Europe, but throughout much of the world? Again, the default position of science is to say to witnesses of the unknown that, ‘they could not have seen what they saw, and that somehow poor perception and frail brains have overruled the senses of the astonished observer of the unknown causing him to imagine the unimaginable!’
There is of course the possibility that Torsten photographed a log, after all, such a large limb, matching this serpentiform sighting could easily have been dislodged by the recent adverse conditions and dragged along by the current, occasionally emerging from the river before being pulled back beneath the waves, giving the impression of some prehistoric plesiosaurid predator pushing its way upstream?
However, there are some notable examples of other ‘creatures’ of the Nessie variety being temporarily sighted, in some of our rivers. One recent example of this would be, ‘Tamsin the River Thames Monster’, which was filmed 3 times between March and April of 2016, and again in the Solent (between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.) In each sighting, much of the footage matches the serpentine and humped characteristics of our recent sighting of ‘Elbie’ and adds another credulous tick of credibility to an already bursting wealth of aquatic cryptid reports throughout Europe.
One other thing to consider is that ‘Elbie’, would have entered the Elbe River via the North Sea, which is connected to the English Channel and a stone’s throw away from where our very own beastie, ‘Tamsin’ , entered the River Thames just under 2 years ago. For me personally the similarity between both sightings in both description and behaviour is uncanny, not to mention their neighbourly proximity to one another which at least warrants some comparison.
The Monster of Lake Prespa & The Physics of Faking it!
Lake Prespa is the larger of two freshwater lakes that share the same name (The Great Prespa Lake and The Small Prespa Lake.) The former having a shared border with Albania, Greece, and the Republic of Macedonia. In December 2017, this lake was the scene of an alleged lake monster sighting, which was fortunately captured on film, posted to YouTube, and not unexpectedly found itself featured on the front pages of many of the world’s tabloid newspapers.
The footage which was filmed in the Albanian section of the Lake, upon first glance certainly seems to be a good match for a classic Nessie sighting, and shows what appears to be a head and swan-like neck of a large creature moving through the water, not far off shore, before slowly submerging beneath the surface of the lake.
The film, which begins with a couple walking along a boardwalk, near the shore of the lake, shows a woman, who is in shot, suddenly let out a gasp and points towards what appears to be a long dark object raised several feet above the water of the lake. The cameraman immediately leaps from the boardwalk and runs along the beach towards the ‘object’, presumably to get a closer shot of it, which he inevitably does. As he runs he sounds breathless and panicked and the creature itself (coincidentally) seems to suddenly submerge as he approaches. Throughout the footage there are several genuine sounding verbal exclamations from the cameraman and his partner, but as I am not a native speaker of Albanian, I am unable to judge their sincerity.
There of course a few issues with this piece of film that are hard to overcome, The first being the somewhat jerky movement of the ‘creature’ as it submerges, and the second being the static position of the head and neck, which do not seem to show any animate characteristics at all throughout the clip. The third and final issue, and the one I find most difficult to overcome, is that the cameraman stops filming the creature before it is fully submerged; and we are left with an image of the tip of the monster’s head, resting on the surface of the water.
Now in the world of cryptozoology research, one of the red flags for fake footage that we look for is the odd cut! Which in this case would be that the cameraman ceased to film this ‘cryptid’ while it was still in view. This inexplicable behaviour would seem unnatural to anyone who had a genuine experience of such a strange and unusual creature and in fact one might even continue filming for another minute or two after the animal disappeared, on the off chance that it may reappear, right?
Unfortunately, this is not the case with the Prespa Lake Monster footage and although we could perhaps give the benefit of the doubt to this clip; and put its untimely cut, down to shock on the part of the witness, inevitably in this particular case, the static nature of the ‘object’, combined with its jerky movement and of course the unexplained cessation of footage, means that my doubt about its authenticity still lingers. The only positive for me in regards to the veracity of this footage, is that i cannot for the life of me figure out how they faked it. Divers pulling a prosthetic along and then quickly dragging it several feet beneath the surface doesn’t quite seem feasible and there doesn’t appear to be any other viable method of achieving this within the framework of this sighting.
In a final defence of the witness/cameraman, the video was originally posted to YouTube only and was not apparently offered for sale to the tabloid press. (When trying to contact the witness via their YouTube channel, I happened upon a message, in the comments section, from a well known British tabloid paper asking for permission to exploit the footage, indicating, initially at least, that media attention was not actively sought.) So, what could this now infamous footage depict? the cryptid enthusiast within me desperately would like to say ‘monster’, but the realist is drawn to the probable tourist trade-off that a well engineered monster film could bring to the country itself, with Albania, not being a land synonymous with the term ‘Lake Monster’ and one would imagine, likely to be unopposed to the benefits of having their own personal – Nessie on their Doorstep.
Nessie – Making a Mockery of the Mental Library
Loch Ness is possibly the most famous body of water in the world, surpassed in fame only by its alleged monsters, that have been making regular appearances in the loch for almost 1500 years, starting with St Columba‘s encounter in the river ness, in 565 AD. The loch, which was largely inaccessible, without travelling over the mountains, was opened to the eyes of the public, one might say, when a road was built into the side of the mountain in 1933; followed shortly after by a rash of sightings of this now infamous beast of the Scottish Highlands. The sightings which have continued right up to this very day, tend to stay in the low numbers, making the 9 sightings recorded in 2017 quite out of the ordinary.
Loch Ness has allegedly been the scene of 11,000 plus sightings of the famous monster in the last 84 years, including several land sightings, with those who witness the animal being of diverse genders, ages, nationalities and professions. In fact, one could easily state as a point of fact, that there is most definitely ‘something’ unusual in Loch Ness, regardless of what type of animal it might be. What most witnesses, at least those who have had a clear sighting of the animal will tell you is, is that this creature is unlike anything else they have ever seen and that the typical ‘monster imposters’ (catfish, seal, otter, sturgeon) invoked by the sceptics to pull focus from the veracity of their encounters, rarely fit the mould of the monster they have borne witness to.
Of the 9 sightings recorded in 2017, I would personally say that some could be placed into the ‘maybe not’ pile of debris or flotsam & jetsam. Due primarily to the distance at which the sightings were made and the indistinguishable character of the objects seen, the others could certainly be something, but again in these sightings there are few, if any, distinguishable characteristics that lend any detail to the identity of these animals.
When it comes to Loch Ness sightings, it must remembered that there are upwards of 250,000 visitors to the area every year, all with their eyes trained on the water, a fact which in itself raises an interesting question. If most Loch Ness sightings are just mistaken identity and the loch is laden with tree limbs and logs and strange waves and currents, then why aren’t there more of these mistaken identity sightings than we are currently seeing reported? It should be clear to the objective observer, that either the large number of people who visit the loch are not looking hard enough for Nessie or that Nessie, is not a permanent resident of the Loch.
Whichever way we look at it, the mystery of lake and sea monsters endures and provides us with a plethora of theories and fictions to while away our days. We live in mysterious world, wherein our modern cities and towns can still play host from time to time, to a discovery of the most unusual kind!
Written by Andrew McGrath
‘Continental Cousins – The Return of the European Nessie’ is an abridged chapter in my new book ‘Nessie & Friends’, (currently still in progress.) You can find my debut book ‘Beasts of Britain’ on Amazon
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This collection of over 170+ articles, direct from newspapers of the 1800s and 1900s, brings some of the most bizarre, amazing, and incredible stories of true monster encounters out of the past and into your hands! Presented with zero spin or bias, this book delivers just the facts and allows you, the reader, to decide for yourself if the stories within actually happened or not.
From the funny to the frightening, the sincere to the weird, there is something for everyone within these pages! |
2.4 GB | Project Files: Included | Software used: ZBrush
We will focus on creating a digital maquette that can be used for creating a illustration as well as a 3D print. The first maquette will be a bust, a portrait sculpture that shows the head and shoulders of the character. For the second project we will be creating a full body design. I will be sharing the same process I use when designing creatures and characters for film projects.
We are gonna be developing characters and creatures from the field of Cryptozoology. Cryptozoology refers to the search of animals whose existence has not yet been proven. Some examples of these myths and legends included Bigfoot and Lochness Monster.
The first character we will be designing is the legendary Yeti, also known as the Abominable Snowman. The Yeti is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan egion of Nepal, and Tibet. Yeti first emerged as a facet of Western popular culture in the 19th century.
The second character we create will be based on the legend of the Chupacabra, which literally means “goat sucker”. The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats. Physical descriptions of the creature vary. Eyewitness sightings have been claimed as early as 1995 in Puerto Rico, and have since been reported as far north as Maine, and as far south as Chile, and even being spotted outside the Americas in countries like Russia and The Philippines. It is supposedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail.
Home Page: _http://workshops.cgsociety.org/courseinfo.php?id=374 |
Let’s face it—he’s old.
His howl no longer carries through the forest.
His attempts at banging on tree trunks with rocks
only results in nagging injuries.
He’s losing his hair,
and it’s not a good look.
He’s tried to compensate—
a makeshift megaphone for the howl,
patches of moss to mask the hair loss—
but it’s not fooling anyone.
He can’t even shuffle out of sight fast enough
not to be seen.
It’s kind of sad, really.
The paintings on his den wall show a much younger cryptid
enjoying the private pleasures of rural life.
Tree bark makes him constipated.
His teeth are falling out.
He’s old, and he knows it.
But he’s still a Sasquatch, a Big Foot, a Bog Monster—
whatever the hell they want to call him.
He’s still something of a prize to the eye of a camera lens,
or as a lead character of a story told around the campfire.
He still has more mystery in his ingrown toenail
than any deep woods tourist or monster hunting fool.
After all, they’re still chasing after him—
hoping to catch a glimpse,
hoping for a story to tell—
while he’s long past the point of caring.
—Kurt Newton tries to find the humor in everything, even in growing old… and finding hair in places where hair ought not to be. More of his humorous pieces can be found at Intrinsick, Crooked Holster, and Empty Sink Publishing. |
When I was nine years old some friends and I were playing down on a small creek riding our bikes, looking for a shallow swimming hole and just being boys. We got deep into the woods and one of my friends had a huge dog named Cowboy. He was so big you could ride him like a horse. He was a mixed breed Collie and Saint Bernard and was very protective of my friend. We played all day down on the creek beds and as the early evening was approaching with the sun starting to go down in the west we heard a very loud growl about 150 feet from us. It was normal to be in the woods and see critters, animals and deer that the dogs would chase and fight with at times. But this growl was different, it was very low and loud and came from something I had never seen nor heard.
The growl became a yell and that alarmed us all and we took off running. It was getting dark and we were a good mile in the woods running on a creek bed. As we all started running I turned around to catch a glimpse of what I can only describe as a big “hairy man”. Cowboy attacked the thing and started fighting with it. This is where it got hard to believe or understand because Cowboy was standing on his hind legs and at 150 pounds he stood at least four feet high on his hind legs. Whatever he was fighting was on two feet and stood a minimum of six feet tall. We all called for Cowboy to come but he was engaged in a heck of a fight with this “hairy thing” right there in the woods.
We were running away and I looked back and this thing raised its hand and hit Cowboy one time and knocked him about ten feet away like he was tossing a cat. The thing then turned it glare towards me as I had frozen at that point, stopped and was just staring at whatever this thing was. It yelled really loud with a snarling growl and turned and ran up the hill and into the trees. It disappeared and I began to run as fast as I could away. I didn’t realize that my friends had all been gone for at least a minute running ahead of me. They didn’t see or witness everything I did so when I told them of course they gave me a hard time about it.
Several years later while hunting for deer and other small game in the same area I always had a feeling that something was watching me but I could never see it. I heard it moving in the brush, but could not find it. I stopped thinking and talking about after my friends busted my chops about it and tucked that memory away. I thought about it from time to time and have been infatuated about it for the rest of my life. I watch movies, shows and specials about Big Foot now because I firmly believe what I saw was not a bear (no bear in that area of NC) and I know the other animals that were in the creek bed area. Fast forward to 1987 and I am in the woods in the mountains of NC and as my roommate and I are riding down a dirt road heading for our deer stands early in the morning as the sun was rising.
I glimpse over to my right and on top of the mountain in a clearing I see what looked like the same thing. It was big and hairy and no human could be that big and that high up on a mountain. I caught a quick glimpse of it maybe three to five seconds and it ran off into deep thick woods. This being my second time seeing a “hairy man” it just made my curiosity even higher than before. Fast forward to 2021 and I am on the phone with a friend of mine that is very gifted in seeing things and I am asked about the thing I saw when I was young. That blew my mind and It validated what I thought the whole time. Until you see something like a big foot, odd creature, lake monster, cryptid or other unexplainable things you may be a sceptic You may say I am crazy and try to tell me what I saw. But I can say without a doubt that 45 years later I still can picture both “hairy men” in my head and will never forget the yell and growl that thing made. |
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Sasquatch: Season 1 Videos
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Cast & Crew
News & Interviews for Sasquatch: Season 1
Underlying the thrilling true-crime story is confrontation with a myth that reflects the monstrous potential within us all.
Director Joshua Rofé allows his story to evolve naturally, leading to a stunner of a denouement.
A modern true-crime doc of a rare breed: rarely have they felt as nerve-racking, dangerous, and truly scary.
Though it's a shame so much of it unfolds in phone calls with subjects who wouldn't speak on-camera, Holthouse's investigation feels genuinely dangerous
The series has some compelling material to work with - which it proceeds to squander.
This is a looming one, hanging over like a dark cloud that never seems to let up. While the titular creature brings your curiosity, it's the compelling, intense story that keeps it, with David Holthouse as our perfect guide on this unexpected ride.
Unique among its true crime peers, David Holthouse's investigation into a Northern California bigfoot myth feels similar to other genre-bending documentaries. It's an unexpected treat.
Sasquatch definitely suffers from the dreaded Streaming Docuseries Bloat Syndrome (SDBS), but the two-pronged dive into weirdo cryptid obsessives and the California criminal underworld is creepier than your usual true crime eyebrow-raiser.
From Holthouse trying to track down the guys who witnessed the carnage all those years ago to academics weighing in on the nature of the cryptid, Sasquatch is an intriguing documentary that takes you on a wild and winding trail.
Sasquatch isn't your typical series exploring monsters. It's layered. Some viewers may feel like it isn't focused on the topic in the title, but it actually is, in a much deeper way than we've seen on screen before.
It's a refreshing change of pace that inverts the traditional true crime narrative and consequently, sidesteps some of the genre's crasser tendencies.
Audience Reviews for Sasquatch: Season 1
Apr 28, 2021Two days later and I'm still not 100% sure what it was that made me rip through all three episodes in one sitting. The whole sasquatch angle was fine (more amusing than actually entertaining) but I almost wish this was just a documentary about the black market pot trade in NorCal, because the history behind it was far and away the most interesting part. This could have probably been one, 90-minute doc and it would have sufficed.
Apr 27, 20213 episodes too long. A weak premise, a cast of sketchy and unreliable people imagine what might or might not have occurred. I include the Filmmaker in the cast of sketchy people. I won't lie, I am sketchy too but I didn't make a documentary. Don't lose 3 hours of your life here.
Apr 24, 2021The show starts off with the story of a strange triple murder up in the redwoods of Mendocino County in northern California. The first episode then mainly explores the theory that Bigfoot/Sasqatch did it, which I found entertaining for about 20 minutes before moving on. Episode 2 is about the weird culture of Mendocino, made up of both free-loving hippies and racist rednecks (often mixed), and how the drug war on marijuana made their culture more violent, underground, and paranoid. Finally, episode 3 goes down the rabbit hole of community gossip over who was responsible for the killings, only to land in an unforeseen but not totally unexpected place. Ultimately, this show is about the monsters within us and the monsters we project onto others, and the main narrator – a journalist who has previously gone undercover among skinheads and drug lords – is a great guide.
Apr 24, 2021This is not about Sasquatch. This is a random, meandering, disjointed and simply awful, uhhhh, true life drug revenge story? Three hours I'll never get back. Let the buyer beware!
Apr 23, 2021A combination of two documentary styles leads to a surprisingly enticing story through the first three episodes. Sasquatch is both a little silly and deadly serious, which makes for some very fun pacing. It's also surprisingly poignant for a true crime show in which the lead suspect is Bigfoot. All told I came looking for campy fun but instead got sucked into the rabbit hole that is Mendocino County and a murder mystery that I will certainly see through to the end.
Apr 22, 2021What a great storytelling style. Super creepy and weirdly insightful.
Apr 20, 2021Mmmmmmm, different. The Duplass brothers are cutting a niche for themselves. |
Updated: Jul 15, 2019
I'm always happy when a new episode of the Monster Talk podcast pops up in my podcast feed. The new one deals with the recent Wooly Mammoth hoax, but I’d like to talk a bit about why people often believe. I learned a new word today: pareidolia. Maybe I’ve heard it on previous episodes, but it really struck me today. It refers to the mind forming a pattern out of something random, such as when we see an image but can’t clearly tell what it is, our mind will try to fill in with something.
The brain is always trying to makes sense of the world. If I leave a letter out of a word — or a word out of a sentence — most people won’t notice: their minds will fill in what’s missing. (Which is what makes proofreading so hard!) Likewise when a person is going deaf the brain will try to fill in the missing sound data, to make sense of the not-quite distinguishable bits of a sentence. When we see a picture, perhaps a close-up of something or a tiny thumbnail image and we don’t have a caption or clue to what we’re looking at there’s a moment when we may see it as something other than it is. The brain is very agile and it’s always trying to fill in the gaps in a way that makes sense to the person whose brain it is.
I recently had jury duty and though I wasn’t selected I found the voir dire process interesting as usual. One of the things that struck me afterward was the picture or story that had formed in my mind as a result of the questions that were asked. Though the questions could not address the case specifically, the questions dealt with specific types of circumstances so that by the time I left I felt like I had a pretty good idea what the case was about and what had happened. Talking to another of the jurors who wasn’t selected, I realized that she’d come to a completely different scenario. Doing a bit of research online after I got home— which is allowed only because I was not selected — I realized we were both probably wrong in our conclusions. But the point is, that even trying to keep an open mind — and even with carefully worded questions by both attorneys — it was impossible for our brains not to try to fill in the gaps and generate a story out of the questions we were asked and the charges that were brought.
The mind is perpetually generating stories about the world around us. These stories are based on what we experience filtered through our beliefs and individual personalities and past experiences. In the case of internet hoaxes with a visual component such as blurry photos and shaky video, the brain will try to come up with something recognizable and all it takes is the suggestion of something and that gap is filled almost automatically. Add to this the personal factor of whether you believe or want to believe in little green men or woolly mammoths. I suspect that people might be more likely to believe in woolly mammoths, Big Foot or Nessie because there’s something wonderful about the possibility. It makes me wonder if fewer people believe in the more unsavory “monsters” of lore.
There’s a lot of lore about malevolent supernatural entities, malevolent aliens, and assorted terrestrial monsters. This stuff makes for good stories, but do I want these stories to be true? Hell, no! I prefer to live in a Scooby Doo universe where houses are not haunted by malevolent supernatural entities, but by a person with a hidden agenda who can be exposed.
On the other hand, there are legends of “monsters” (in the loosest sense of the word) which are often referred to as cryptids, that is, an actual existing species of animal that has remained undiscovered or not scientifically documented. I feel differently about these. I think it would be cool if Bigfoot, the yeti, and the Loch Ness monster (to name a few of the best-known examples) were proven to be real, extant (albeit endangered), species. New species of animals are still being discovered every year. I think this is wonderful.
A skeptic of the sort you’ll hear on Monster Talk isn’t some grouchy curmudgeon who just wants to rain on the parade and prove than anything marvelous (in the older sense of the word) that’s purported to be real is just a hoax or scam. I get the sense from all the episodes of Monster Talk I’ve listened to that the hosts are folks who find it all interesting and would not be bent out of shape if someone proved a cryptid existed. But they’d have to have incontrovertible scientific proof. I don’t think this is unreasonable.
Science is how we explore the world we live in. Our lives are immersed in science. All our technology is based on science. Even if we lived in a cave somewhere we would still be subject to the laws of science: gravity, fire, electrical storms, how our bodies process food to give us energy, etc.
I like Monster Talk because it’s a brilliant mix of mythical, imaginative lore and scientific inquiry with good hosts who are fun to listen to. Their guests are fun to listen to also. They’ve had scientists talking about dinosaurs since some cryptids are presumably prehistoric, about hominids (yeti, bigfoot), about carnival hoaxes, ghost hoaxes, authors of folklore (the Djinn episode is great), and even a witch (who they did not burn at the stake), as well as people with technical expertise to examine forensically the evidence presented for some “monsters”. The episodes range widely in subject matter. If you sometimes feel like you waste too much time on internet junk and podcasts, dig through the Monster Talk archives and it will be time well-spent: you can get your “junk” fix with the monsters and yet get good science. (Bonus!)
As an author of fiction I don’t find it at all contradictory that I like a podcast that demystifys monsters and legends. I enjoy reading good stories and my enjoyment isn’t contingent on whether the story is fiction or non-fiction. As a writer, my job is too immerse the reader in the fictional world to the extent of “the willing suspension of disbelief” (as Coleridge phrased it). Good fiction should feel real while you’re reading it, but not be real once you’ve finished it. Some stories resonate more with some readers than with others and that affects the “willing suspension of disbelief”. I suspect the recent woolly mammoth video resonated with a lot of people: it’s the sort of thing that most people would want to believe (even though it looks like a very small mammoth). Since it was a hoax, I’m glad it was proven to be a hoax, but if I’m completely honest there’s a teeny tiny part of me that’s sort of glad someone went to the trouble to do this hoax (though I in no way condone stealing video footage)…because it’s such a nifty magical kind of “what if” to consider: “what if woolly mammoths still roamed in Siberia”. As an author of (and reader of) imaginative fiction, I can appreciate that. |
Monsters of New York by Bruce G. Hallenbeck
When people think of New York, many iconic images come to mind: the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, subways, Time Square, Broadway shows, crowds, and the general hustle and bustle of the business center of the world. But New York City is only a small part of New York State, and many might be surprised to know that we have our fair share of Bigfoot, lake monsters, alien creatures, and other weird, difficult-to-categorize phenomenon. “Monsters of New York” by Bruce G. Hallenbeck is one of the newest in a series of books by Stackpole books, detailing the monsters of each state in the Union. And as a native New Yorker, how could I not pick this one up?
Hallenbeck was co-author of “Monsters of New Jersey” with Loren Coleman, another book I reviewed. This time, he flies solo, tackling the folklore, myths, and urban legends of the Empire State. Indeed, the first chapter is about Native American folklore, the wendigo, ice giants, flying serpents, and the like, and how they may be related to current sightings of more familiar monsters.
From there, he moves on to Champ, the lake monster of Lake Champlain. I’m not too keen on lake monsters, but this chapter gives a very good account of the sightings in New York, and also details some other, lesser-known river and lake monsters in the state. Up next is Bigfoot and the Kinderhook creature, which is also a Bigfoot-type animal. Apparently there are a lot of Bigfoot sightings upstate, near Whitehall and Kinderhook, which is to be expected, but Hallenbeck even chronicles some tales of Bigfoot-like creatures out in Long Island back in the 1800s. As a New Yorker, those were interesting, even though it’s hard to imagine any Bigfoot out there, even hundreds of years ago.
The Montauk monster is dealt with at length here as well, and while the stories of Plum Island and the research being done their is interesting, I don’t think this “cryptid” warranted its own chapter, especially since in all likelihood, it was just a dead dog or raccoon that had badly decomposed. Aliens and other weird little creatures in the Hudson Valley? Check. There was a huge UFO flap there in the 1980s, and its summaries very well here. And what book on strange creatures in New York would be complete without alligators in the sewers? It really happened, and Hallenbeck explains all in his book.
The last chapter talks about out of place cats and even touches briefly on el chupacapras. Again, not hard to imagine big cats in upstate New York. Heck, only a few years ago we had coyotes in Central Park, so anything is possible.
The Good: Bruce Hallenbeck is a native New Yorker, and his enthusiasm for the subject matter shines through in this book. He even offers up some of his own first-hand accounts experiencing some of the weirdness of New York State. For a short book (without appendices, only 104 pages long), he covers a lot of ground, including the history of the lands in New York, Native American folklore, urban legends, and more. There are two useful appendices in the book, one covering Champ sightings, and the other covering Bigfoot sightings, both in chronological order (but, I’m guessing, by no means comprehensive).
The Bad: I mention this in a lot of my book reviews, I know, but there are no photos here. Which most of the time would be a more minor issue, but when pages and pages are based upon discussion of a photograph of Champ, it might be nice to let the reader be able to see said photograph. There were also some omissions of other creatures that I felt should have made the book, like the flying humanoid seen in Coney Island, or the baby elephant sightings in my own home neighborhood of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
The Ugly: I’m nitpicking here, and mainly doing so because Mr. Hallenbeck has collaborated with Loren Coleman in the past (on the aforementioned “Monsters of New Jersey”), so he should know that the word “Bigfoot” is always capitalized, and the plural form for Bigfoot is Bigfoot. But throughout the book, Bigfoot is spelled “bigfoot” and pluralized as “bigfoots.” It just doesn’t read right to me, and took me out of the stories on more than one occasion.
The Bottom Line: A good book for anyone interested in the various myths and legends of New York State, but way too short to be comprehensive. Instead, this reads more like a primer, something to whet your appetite for more, and there are other books that cover the legends contained herein in much more detail. But if you love the other Stackpole books in this series, it’s a must have. Photos, more details and more creatures would have been nice, but I did appreciate the first-hand accounts that Hallenbeck shared. For me, it’s always much more interesting to read accounts like that, rather than third-hand stories that have been retold and recycled over the years. Strongly recommended.
Final Score: 80% |
The chupacabras (Spanish chupar "to suck" and cabra "goat", literally "goat sucker") is a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. It is associated more recently with sightings of an allegedly unknown animal in Puerto Rico (where these sightings were first reported), Mexico, and the United States, especially in the latter's Latin American communities. The name comes from the animal's reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.
The most common description of the chupacabra is that of a reptile-like creature, said to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back. It is said to be approximately 3 to 4 feet (0.9 to 1.2 m) high, and stands and hops in a fashion similar to that of a kangaroo.
The first reported attack eventually attributed to the creatures occurred in March 1995 in Puerto Rico. Eight sheep were discovered dead, each with three puncture wounds in the chest area and reportedly completely drained of blood. A few months later, in August, an eyewitness, Madelyne Tolentino, reported seeing the creature in the Puerto Rican town of Canóvanas, when as many as 150 farm animals and pets were reportedly killed. In 1975, similar killings in the small town of Moca were attributed to El Vampiro de Moca ("The Vampire of Moca"). Initially, it was suspected that the killings were committed by a Satanic cult; later more killings were reported around the island, and many farms reported loss of animal life. Each of the animals was reported to have had its body bled dry through a series of small circular incisions.
Puerto Rican comedian and entrepreneur Silverio Pérez is credited with coining the term chupacabras soon after the first incidents were reported in the press. Shortly after the first reported incidents in Puerto Rico, other animal deaths were reported in other countries, such as the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Brazil, United States, and Mexico.
In October and December 2018, there came many reports of chupacabras suspects in Manipur, India. Many domestic animals and poultry were killed in a suspicious manner as chupacabra does. Many people said that they had seen the species (chupacabras) with their eyes. However, forensic experts opined that street dogs were responsible for mass killing of domestic animals and poultry after studying the remnant of corpse.
In October 2019, a video recorded by Mundo Ovni showed a supposed attack on chickens in the Seburuquillo sector of Lares, Puerto Rico.
Today investigators go in search of the chupacabra to capture and study these elusive animals. It is the part of the quest of humanity through the paranormal to explains who we are and why we are here.
Based on reliefs found in Europe and Mesoamerica, some researchers equate the appearance of the chupacabras to that of a gargoyle, leading one to believe the creatures were also part of the history of Medieval Europe and linked to evil spirits.
The most common description of chupacabras is a reptile-like being, appearing to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back. This form stands approximately 3 to 4 feet (1 to 1.2 m) high, and stands and hops in a similar fashion to a kangaroo. In at least one sighting, the creature was reported to hop 20 feet (6 m). This variety is said to have a dog or panther-like nose and face, a forked tongue, and large fangs. It is said to hiss and screech when alarmed, as well as leave behind a sulfuric stench. When it screeches, some reports assert that the chupacabras' eyes glow an unusual red which gives the witnesses nausea.
Another description of chupacabras, although not as common, describes a strange breed of wild dog. This form is mostly hairless and has a pronounced spinal ridge, unusually pronounced eye sockets, fangs, and claws. It is claimed that this breed might be an example of a dog-like reptile. Unlike conventional predators, the chupacabras is said to drain all of the animal's blood (and sometimes organs) usually through three holes in the shape of an upside-down triangle or through one or two holes.
Chupacabras are said to appear in three specific forms:
The first and most common form is a lizard-like being, appearing to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back. This form stands approximately 3 to 4 feet (1 to 1.2 m) high, and stands and hops in a similar fashion to a kangaroo. In at least one sighting, the creature hopped 20 feet (6 m). This variety is said to have a dog or panther-like nose and face, a forked tongue protruding from it, large fangs, and to hiss and screech when alarmed, as well as leave a sulfuric stench behind. When it screeches, some reports note that the chupacabra's eyes glow an unusual red, then give the witnesses nausea.
The second variety bears a resemblance to a wallaby or dog standing on its hind legs. It stands and hops as a kangaroo, and it has coarse fur with gray facial hair. The head is similar to a dog's, and its mouth has large teeth.
The third form is described as a strange breed of wild dog. This form is mostly hairless, has a pronounced spinal ridge, unusually pronounced eye sockets, teeth, and claws. This animal is said to be the result of interbreeding between several populations of wild dogs, though enthusiasts claim that it might be an example of a dog-like reptile. The account during the year 2001 in Nicaragua of a chupacabra's corpse being found supports the conclusion that it is simply a strange breed of wild dog. The alleged corpse of the animal was found in Tolapa, Nicaragua, and forensically analyzed at UNAN-Leon. Pathologists at the University found that it was just an unusual-looking dog. There are very striking morphological differences between different breeds of dog, which can easily account for the strange characteristics.
Some reports claim the chupacabra's red eyes have the ability to hypnotize and paralyze their prey - leaving the prey animal mentally stunned, allowing the chupacabra to suck the animal's blood at its leisure. The effect is similar to the bite of the vampire bat, or of certain snakes or spiders that stun their prey with venom. Unlike conventional predators, the chupacabras sucks all the animal's blood (and sometimes organs) through a single hole or two holes.
Many residents of South America have reported sightings of El Chupacabras, and although various, the descriptions share some significant likenesses. In many reports, accounts include the visible inflation of the stomach region, after El Chupacabras has been feeding. The appearance of the animal changes when an internal bladder-like organ fills with the blood of its prey. Furthermore, with almost all the reported sightings witnesses have reported large protruding fangs. These fangs are suspected to be hollow and be the vehicles for the blood on which it feeds.
In July 2004, a rancher near San Antonio, Texas, killed a hairless dog-like creature, which was attacking his livestock. This animal, initially given the name the Elmendorf Beast, was later determined by DNA assay conducted at University of California, Davis to be a coyote with demodectic or sarcoptic mange.
In October 2004, two more carcasses were found in the same area. Biologists in Texas examined samples from the two carcasses and determined they were also coyotes suffering from very severe cases of mange.
In Coleman, Texas, a farmer named Reggie Lagow caught an animal in a trap he set up after the deaths of a number of his chickens and turkeys. The animal was described as resembling a mix of hairless dog, rat, and kangaroo. Lagow provided the animal to Texas Parks and Wildlife officials for identification, but Lagow reported in a September 17, 2006 phone interview with John Adolfi, founder of the Lost World Museum, that the "critter was caught on a Tuesday and thrown out in Thursday's trash."
In April 2006, Moscow News reported that the chupacabras was spotted in Russia for the first time. Reports from Central Russia beginning in March 2005 tell of a beast that kills animals and sucks out their blood. Thirty-two turkeys were killed and drained overnight. Reports later came from neighboring villages when 30 sheep were killed and had their blood drained. Finally, eyewitnesses were able to describe the chupacabras.
In May 2006, experts were determined to track the animal down.
In mid-August 2006, Michelle O'Donnell of Turner, Maine, described an "evil looking" rodent-like animal with fangs that had been found dead alongside a road. The animal was apparently struck by a car, and was unidentifiable. Photographs were taken and witness reports seem to be in relative agreement that the creature was canine in appearance, but in widely published photos seemed unlike any dog or wolf in the area. Photos from other angles seem to show a chow- or akita-mixed breed dog. It was reported that "the carcass was picked clean by vultures before experts could examine it". For years, residents of Maine have reported a mysterious creature and a string of dog maulings.
In May 2007, a series of reports on national Colombia news reported more than 300 dead sheep in the region of Boyaca, and the capture of a possible specimen to be analyzed by zoologists at the National University of Colombia.
In August 2007, Phylis Canion found three animals in Cuero, Texas. She and her neighbors reported to have discovered three strange animal carcasses outside Canion's property. She took photographs of the carcasses and preserved the head of one in her freezer before turning it over for DNA analysis. Canion reported that nearly 30 chickens on her farm had been exsanguinated over a period of years, a factor which led her to connect the carcasses with the chupacabras legend. State Mammologist John Young estimated that the animal in Canion's pictures was a Gray Fox suffering from an extreme case of mange. In November 2007, biology researchers at Texas State University–San Marcos determined from DNA samples that the suspicious animal was a coyote. The coyote, however, had grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin and large fanged teeth, which caused it to appear different from a normal coyote. Additional skin samples were taken to attempt to determine the cause of the hair loss.
On January 11, 2008, a sighting was reported at the province of Capiz in the Philippines. Some of the residents from the barangay believed that it was the chupacabras that killed eight chickens. The owner of the chickens saw a dog-like animal attacking his chickens.
On August 8, 2008, a DeWitt County deputy, Brandon Riedel, filmed an unidentifiable animal along back roads near Cuero, Texas on his dashboard camera. The animal was about the size of a coyote but was hairless with a long snout, short front legs and long back legs. However, Reiter's boss, Sheriff Jode Zavesky, believes it may be the same species of coyote identified by Texas State University–San Marcos researchers in November 2007.
In September 2009, CNN aired a report showing closeup video footage of an unidentified dead animal. The same CNN report stated that locals have begun speculating the possibility that this might be a chupacabras. A Blanco, Texas, taxidermist reported that he received the body from a former student whose cousin had discovered the animal in his barn, where it had succumbed to poison left out for rodents. The taxidermist expressed his belief that this is a genetically mutated coyote.
On September 18, 2009, taxidermist Jerry Ayer sold the Blanco Texas Chupacabra to the Lost World Museum. The museum, as reported in the Syracuse Post Standard on 9/26/09, is placing the creature on display as they work with a unnamed university to have the remains tested.
On December 18, 2010, in Nelson County, Kentucky, Mark Cothren shot and killed an animal that he could not recognize and feared. Many pictures of the Chupacabra were taken and the story was well documented by various news organizations. Cothren described the creature as having large ears, whiskers, a long tail, and about the size of a house cat. Cothren says he spoke with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources and handed over the preserved animal for further analysis.
In July 2010, there were reports of chupacabras being shot dead by animal control officers in Hood County, Texas. A second creature was also reportedly spotted and killed several miles away.
However, an officer of Hood County animal control said Texas A&M University scientists conducted tests and identified the corpse as a "coyote-dog hybrid" with signs of mange and internal parasites. The second reported chupacabra, shot July 9 about 8 miles south of Cresson, was eaten by vultures before it could be taken for testing.
New information from researcher Benjamin Radford in 2010 revealed that Madelyne Tolentino, the original eyewitness, had described a creature she had recently seen in the science-fiction horror film Species as the chupacabra.
The alien in the film, named Sil, is nearly identical to Tolentino’s chupacabra eyewitness account: It was a creature that looked like the chupacabra, with spines on its back and all….The resemblance to the chupacabra was really impressive, Tolentino reported.
Radford revealed that Tolentino believed that the creatures and events she saw in Species were actually happening in reality in Puerto Rico at the time, and therefore concludes that The popular image of the chupacabra - the one appearing on thousands of books, magazines, and Web sites as a credible eyewitness description - is in fact based on a science fiction film. This, Radford believes, seriously undermines the credibility of the chupacabra as a real animal.
In late October 2010, University of Michigan biologist Barry O'Connor concluded that all of the 'chupacabras' were simply coyotes infected with the parasite Sarcoptes scabiei. The symptoms of which would explain most of the features of the chupacabra's: they'd be left with little fur, thickened skin, and rank odor. O'Connor theorized the attacks on goats were "because these animals are greatly weakened, they're going to have a hard time hunting. So they may be forced into attacking livestock because it's easier than running down a rabbit or a deer."
In the Philippines, another cryptid called the Sigbin shares many of the same descriptions as the Chupacabra. Including comparisons of its appearance to dogs, kangaroos, and goats. They may share the same origins, though the recent discovery of the cat-fox in Southeast Asia suggests that it could also have been simply sightings of this once unknown animal.
The Peuchen of Chile also share similarities in their supposed habits, but instead of being dog-like they are described as winged snakes. Like the possible relationship between the Sigbin lore and cat foxes, the legend may also have originated from the Common Vampire Bat, an animal endemic to the region.
Chupacabra - Wikipedia
Some cryptozoologists speculate that chupacabras are alien creatures. Chupacabras are widely described as otherworldly, and, according to one witness report, NASA may be involved with this particular alien's residency on earth. The witness reported that NASA passed through an area in Latin America, with a trailer that was thought to contain an incarcerated creature. There have also been UFOs seen where chupacabras have been at the same time on occasion. Others speculate that the creature is an escaped pet of alien visitors that wandered off while its master was visiting Earth. The Chupacabra does have a slight resemblance to the Gray aliens, which could mean that they are somehow genetically related.
Some people in the island of Puerto Rico believe that the chupacabras were a genetic bio-experiment from some United States' government agency, which escaped from a secret laboratory in El Yunque, a mountain in the east part of the island when the laboratory was damaged during a severe storm in the early 1990's. The US military have had a large presence across Puerto Rico since the 1930's, with bases on the island used as Research and Development facilities (amongst other things) up to the present day. The lethal agent orange chemicals were tested by the US on the crops of Puerto Rico in widespread crop-spraying operations, all performed without notifying local people or farmers, and the efficacy and safety of contraceptive medicines was also secretly tested on islanders who had no knowledge of their 'guinea pig' status at all. ("UFO's Strangest Mysteries", Discovery Science) This may explain some of this alleged paranoia.
Another possibility would involve giant vampire bats of which a few fossils have been found in South-America.
An alternative explanation is that the creatures are not real at all, and the sightings are either a product of superstition and imagination, or simply other animals that have been wrongly identified.
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PSYCHIC READING WITH ELLIE
2012 THE ALCHEMY OF TIME |
Of a sudden, the thunderous footsteps halted. There was an enormous, effortful groaning accompanied by a vast, wet, sucking sound, as if a titan galosh had been pulled free of a correspondingly large quagmire. Finch spun in outright panic toward Bane and the girls.
Atticus Bane, intrepid inquirer into the improbable and the explicable, peered at the digital image displayed on the tablet.
He rotated the device, fiddled with the magnification, and squinted. After a final turn, he closed one eye, and held the tablet out to the limit of his reach.
Then he shook his head in resignation. “I’m afraid,” he said with an apologetic shrug, “it still looks to me rather like someone stuck grandfather’s souvenir walrus tusk into the wet cement of someone else’s patio.” He extended his arm, offering the iPad back to its owner.
“Tain’t no walurse tusk,” the first of his unexpected guests insisted, crossing thin arms over a flat, teenaged chest.
“It’s a tro-wull’s tooth,” the second corrected.
“And that hain’t no see-ment,” the third assured him. “That there’s solid mountain granite!”
In attempting to transliterate certain significant speech patterns here, it is not the intent of this poor scrivener to ridicule the speakers of those patterns, nor their parent culture, past or present. Rather, it is possible for the knowledgeable and observant to glean much from the close study of such regional intonations, and there is wisdom to be gained through such oracles that cannot always be conveyed in mere words.
In the case of the triple Gibbens sisters, their accents placed their home in the eon-shrouded, legend-haunted hills and hollows of West Virginia.
While it is often clumsy and embarrassing in social intercourse, the true scientific mindset does have one inherent advantage: it eschews such inaccuracies as racial, cultural and ethnic slurs, preferring instead more accurate – and coincidentally less inflammatory – terminology. “Hillbilly” never crossed his mind but, from his intimate association with indigenous peoples throughout the world, Bane intuited – correctly, it might be added – that “mountain folk” would be acceptable.
Bane’s suspicion, therefore, was not founded in the stereotype of gullible mountain-dwelling rustics so much as the stereotype of excitable – and perhaps prank prone – high school girls.
Nelli, Melli and Kelli – it had taken a staggering amount of mental self-discipline on Bane’s part just to digest the names – had materialized on the doorstep of Runeharrow, Atticus’ home and base of operations in Loudoun Country, Virginia, after a six-hour road trip from their home in Fenton, WV. The three were met by Maemy Bishop – newly-arrived wear-wolf late of Dunwich, Mass. and self-appointed receptionist – who promptly hollered for Atticus and his sidekick, Cullan Finch.
Finch, perhaps by virtue of his training in certain esoteric martial arts – but more likely owing to a lifetime of sisters, aunts, nieces and girlfriends – read the writing on the wall from afar, and suddenly remembered an alchemical experiment he’d left simmering in the alembic…
Atticus was outmaneuvered and abandoned before he knew anything was afoot.
In marked contrast to Finch, Atticus was one of three brothers whose mother had died when he was a lad, and whose farther had never remarried. Add to that the all-male environment – during his day, at least – of academia, and one might say that Bane never had the proper education or training to deal with females on anything resembling an even footing.
Even so, die-hard adventurer that he was, Bane never gave up trying.
He may have been taken in by the fact that, precocious as they were – and quite capable of it when they had a mind to – the sisters had elected not to deploy one of the most devastating psychological weapons at the disposable of multiple simultaneous identical siblings: they chose, on the occasion of their visit to Runeharrow, not to dress alike.
That gave Atticus a kind of false hope, and he was subsequently in the weeds before he quite saw them coming.
The sisters, it developed, were attempting to capture a large hominid, which they referred to as a troll, that was known to haunt the less accessible vastnesses of the hill country around Fenton. Their motivation was simple and pragmatic: the economy where they lived was, as Kelli so succinctly observed, “in the shee-itter,” and the only real money to be had was in tourism. A real, live troll on exhibition, they reasoned, would be a sure-fire money-maker.
A reasonable enough conclusion, Bane thought, given an unreasonable premise.
“Ladies,” he began in an imploring whine.
“Well how aba-out this, then!” Melli fairly leaped at him, and almost sent the tablet spinning from his grasp as she swatted at the screen, trying to tap and advance to the next picture. Bane flinched back, and was preparing to reprimand the teen, when he chanced to glance at the new image…
The picture – downloaded from one of Mr. Gibbens’ trail cams, pressed into off-season service by the would-be troll hunters – was of poor quality, to be sure, but lacked the forced deficiency of a hoax. A paw of some kind – and true, it might easily have been a Hollywood special-effects monster-hand for all that Bane could make it out in detail – covered most of the lens with splayed digits. Atticus got the impression of, rather than saw, leathery ocher skin, gnarled, knobby joints and the wicked hooks of claws that belonged to no phylum he was acquainted with.
But it was not the blurry appendage that caught and held Bane’s attention, nor the equally out of focus blob against the inky background that might have been a head – a head with a gaping, single-fanged maw.
What drew his eye was the object visible between the digits, below the head, where a neck might be. Of the entire image, it was the only thing that could be seen with any clarity, a chance collaboration of subject and focal length.
It appeared to be a round bronze medallion, giving the impression of considerable weight and age, hanging from a thick, crudely braided leather thong, and bearing a complicated, angular design.
“Oh, my…” Bane whispered, missing Kelli’s triumphant we-told-you-so look.
“Now this…” he began, but had to stop to clear his throat. He tried again.
“What I meant to say…” and he tripped over his uvula again, apparently unable to utter aloud that which his mind had already apprehended.
Nelli nodded with a knowing solemnity beyond her years.
“It’s a tro-wull, ain’t it, Mr. Bay-een?”
“That,” Cullan Finch said, with the utter and absolute confidence of a taxonomic expert pronouncing the genus of a lab rat, “is certainly as good a candidate for a troll’s tooth as anything I’ve ever examined.”
The Gibbens sisters fairly glowed with the combined aura of admiration for Finch and validation of their long-suffering assertions. But Bane screwed one eye shut, and turned the hairy eyeball of the other upon his companion.
“That’s a trifle…well…vague, don’t you think?”
Finch shrugged. “If you want precision, switch to paleontology. If you want bleeding-edge cryptozoology, then you have to accept a certain measure of ambiguity. We’ve had this discussion before, Atticus.”
The triplets, well versed in diagnosing and treating perennial parental arguments, were galvanized into action by these words.
“It’s real, ain’t it?” they crooned, in eerie, intimidating and one-hundred percent intentional chorus. The psychic shock of the tripartite voice washed over the two men like a bucket of cold water thrown on squabbling tomcats.
Well, if it quacks like a duck and all that…
It should be noted here that this humble narrator will no longer beleaguer the good reader with transliterations of local accents. It is felt that the reader has gotten the point – or should have by this point, at the very least. Further, if said reader did not possess the imagination to extend the philologistic examples of the first chapter to the remainder of the narrative, it is doubtful that he or she would have read this far to begin with.
To put it more succinctly, perhaps: Except in the case of word-choices that are not necessarily limited to a particular vernacular, such as “ain’t”, this unworthy scrivener will no longer spell out the sounds for you.
Who do I look like anyway – Manly Wade Wellman?
But I digress. Let us return to our narrative:
Although Finch exercised the better part of valor and dodged the sisters on the occasion of their initial visit to Runeharrow, he couldn’t very well refuse Atticus’ request for aid on the investigation, not to mention the chance to examine an authentic cryptozoological fossil.
For such Cullan believed the tooth to be – and nothing more – despite the evidence of the digital trail cam which, according to both the Gibbens sisters and the newly-convinced Atticus, showed the blurred image of a healthy, living troll crushing the ill-fated device.
Bane and Finch had examined a copy of the photo in minute detail, following the departure of the triplets from Runeharrow, bearing away with them a promise from Atticus to look into the matter.
“I can make one of those,” Finch had sniffed, when Bane pointed out the runic pendant hanging, it was to be assumed, around the neck of the cryptid, “from illustrations in one of Cousin Howard’s anthologies and a handful of Sculpey.”
“But in the backwoods of West Virginia?” Bane had countered. “And those runes are genuine, Finch – I’ll stake my reputation on it. It all seems a bit too, well, elaborate and accurate for a hoax.”
Finch had shrugged, fatalistic and unconvinced. “People will go to ridiculous lengths for verisimilitude these days. Well, cryptid or not, I think what they’ve got there is a fossil of some kind, and I guess it wouldn’t be an utter waste of my time to take a look. If it’s worthwhile, maybe we can get the girls a little cash honorific from the Smith…”
Two days and several hundred miles later, they stood with the sisters in a saddle between glowering, blue-black mountain summits, overlooking the tiny hamlet of Fenton, West Virginia.
A tumble of boulders – reminiscent of Finch’s so-called bunker, as described in an earlier Chronicle – created an elliptical clearing in the otherwise dense tree-cover just below the ridge line of the gap. The huge, angular slabs of granite, as well as the humans moving among them, were quite warm in the direct rays of the late winter sun.
“Well, we could use a dash less cryptic and a bit more zoology, eh what?” Bane quipped, in perfect imitation of their mutual but annoying acquaintance, Burtie Wodehouse. Bane didn’t need to see Finch’s face to know he was rolling his eyes.
“I think it’s time for a time-out, Atticus,” Finch sighed, “Unca Cullan needs to concentrate on his work now.”
Finch turned from his initial, cursory examination of the tooth, and opened the black medical bag that served as his toolkit.
Extravagant prose would be wasted here: Bane’s initial impression was as accurate a description of the displaced dentition as one could hope for. To the casual observer, it looked very much like a walrus tusk, somehow thrust into the edge of a angular boulder – granite of course, rather than concrete. The fang had then been snapped off, it appeared, leaving about eight inches of the shaft and a ragged, splintered terminus.
Extracting an odd pair of goggles from his bag, Finch activated tiny LED lights at the temples, donned the outrageous gear, and bent to examine the tooth.
While Finch’s eyewear resembled a prop in a mad scientist movie, they were in fact quiet ordinary watchmaker’s goggles, allowing exceptional hands-free magnification for various precision activities. The LEDs, however, were anything but ordinary.
He is known now only by his patronymic: Ibn Ghazi, son of Ghazi. In the Golden Age of Moorish metaphysical science, Ibn Ghazi discovered the peculiar refractive qualities of certain crystals. In the proper proportions and combinations, these crystal had the power to make seen the Unseen. It is a common, though understandable fallacy that Ibn Ghazi’s infamous Powder was (and is) an herbal or chemical concoction, when in fact it was a talcum or dust of powdered crystals.
Finch’s LEDs incorporated filters tuned to the Ibn Ghazi frequencies; he used them to located minute traces of the Unseen during investigations.
No sooner had Finch turned to peer through the goggles at the protruding specimen, then he jumped back with a blistering oath that singed Bane’s ear-hairs, while provoking only a squealing, mock-scandalized titter from the triplets.
“I owe you and the lasses an apology, Atticus,” Finch rumbled, stripping off his goggles and handing them to Bane, without taking his eyes from the tooth.
With a thrill of anticipation, Atticus held the goggles up to his eyes, and looked for himself.
Unabashed by the brilliant rays of the sun, the tooth was shining like a purple glow-stick.
The Gibbens sisters were no less comfortable with firearms than their pioneer foremothers. They nonetheless expressed a marked degree of alarm and concern when Finch produced a heavy-caliber sidearm that, in some jurisdictions, might have qualified as field artillery.
“You ain’t gonna shoot our troll, Mr. Finch!” Nelli declared, the conglomerate admiration of the triplets for the stout arcanologist dimming by several orders of magnitude. Their expressions were so resolute and fierce Bane wouldn’t have been surprised in the least had they produced machetes and hockey masks in defense of “their troll.”
Finch, on the other hand, was oblivious to the discouraging demeanor of the young damsels, trying in vain as he was to look everywhere at once.
“We have to get out of here, Atticus,” Finch said. “Right the Hell now!” He began backing toward their SUV like a character low-budget police show.
Bane looked at him in bemusement. “Whatever are you blathering about, Finch?”
“That tooth is still alive,” Finch croaked. “It’s still connected energetically to the troll. If it’s coming back here on a regular basis, it’s trying to retrieve the tooth. It’ll know we’re here, and it’ll think we’re trying to steal its ivory. I repeat: We need to get the holy scalding Hell out of here!”
Atticus had just opened his mouth again to admonish his querulous companion; as a result, the Gibbens sisters were treated to the momentary and unsettling illusion of the shrieking, inhuman ululation that followed emanating from Bane’s gaping maw.
Bane’s jaws snapped shut with an audible clack!
The howling bellow came from somewhere behind him, aways up toward the mountaintops, quite a bit higher than the saddle where Bane and his party stood. The booming echoes of the cry soon blended into the unmistakeable concussions of footsteps.
Really big footsteps.
Really big descending footsteps.
“I believe you may be correct, old boy,” Atticus said as he passed Finch at a run, fumbling for the SUV’s remote. He was, in turn, left in the dust by the triplets, who were at that moment reappraising the feasibility – and advisability – of their nascent get-rich-quick scheme.
Of a sudden, the thunderous footsteps halted. There was an enormous, effortful groaning accompanied by a vast, wet, sucking sound, as if a titan galosh had been pulled free of a correspondingly large quagmire. Finch spun in outright panic toward Bane and the girls.
“No! Get away!” he screamed, in itself a terrifying sound, given the depth and power of his voice. “Get away from the car! Run!”
Bane glanced back at Finch’s frantic warnings, and his eyes were drawn skyward by a huge, round shadow; a shadow that rose rapidly to apogee and then began to descend with a faint, far away whistling sound.
Bane’s haste to reach the SUV should in no way be considered an indicator of cowardice. He and Finch had worked together for decades, and each played to his respective strengths. In a bug-out situation such as this, it was Finch’s role to man the guns and Bane’s to take the wheel.
So his apparent heroism in throwing himself under the onrushing asteroid to tackle the entire compliment of Gibbens gals and sweep them out of the path of certain death will not now seem contradictory to his character.
Bane and his squealing armful hit the ground concurrent with the impact of the boulder full upon the hapless SUV. The results were about what one would expect, but only if one is divorced from the Hollywood stereo-hype of vehicular damage. There was no explosion; no noisy, protracted, end-over-end tumble down the boulder-strewn mountainside; no fireworks display of shorting electronics.
The rock smashed into the cab of the vehicle, crushed it like the proverbial egg-carton, and settled there while the massive shocks of the SUV absorbed what remained of the collision. Even the tortured-metal shriek of the impact was gone in a millisecond.
The in-dash stereo did not, in its death-throes, even vomit forth its final CD.
A disinterested third party might have found the whole effect rather anticlimactic.
Not so those directly involved.
Bane and the Gibbenses scrambled to their feet, Finch shouting at them from upslope.
“Downslope!” he bawled. “Head downslope! We need to get away from the tooth! Oh, shit! Incomingggggggggg!”
This last as another boulder arced up from the tree-line above, clearly intended for the vicinity of Cullan’s voice.
Finch dove for cover, not even attempting to run. There just wasn’t time.
A boulder traveling at several hundred feet per second, colliding with a structure specifically designed and engineered to absorb g-forces by crumpling in upon itself is one thing. A similar missile impacting another, larger, stationary mass of igneous rock is a party.
The inbound boulder hit the outcropping where Finch had been an instant before, and detonated with a thunderclap explosion. Rock shrapnel stitched the remains of the SUV like a fusillade of machine-gun fire; Bane and the Gibbens sisters tried to claw their way into the earth in the best tradition of innocents under fire everywhere, as angry wasps of razor-edged flint whined over their terrified bodies, mere inches from their unprotected flesh. Finch’s life was doubtless saved by his insistence on wearing heavy clothing in the field, but he cried out as a sizable flake, big and sharp as a Folsom point, lanced into the back of his thigh.
Then silence. The silence of the shooting range when the last round has just been fired.
Gray rock dust drifted away in a shredded cloud, like smoke from an artillery strike. The deafening report of the attack reverberated away over the hills into eventual silence; the cowering interlopers, as well as Nature Herself, held their breath.
The silence stretched, deepened and finally metamorphosed into the normal background symphony of evening-tide in the mountains.
Finch spat grit from his mouth, rolled onto his side, and ran a hand down the back of his leg until he found the shard protruding from his flesh. It was in deep, and he could feel far too much warmth flowing over his exploring fingers. He thumbed the spearhead of stone experimentally, and hissed at the dizzying wave of pain and nausea that swept through him.
Well…prairie shit, he thought.
“So much for my plan of un-assing the area,” he called to his companions, evoking yet another – though far more subdued – titter from the triplets. “I’m hit pretty bad. I don’t think I can hike out, but I don’t relish the thought of bivouacking up here overnight, either.”
As if in response, a distant, eerie hooting floated up from the darkening slopes above.
It was not an owl.
Fortune favored Finch at Fenton that day.
(Oh, don’t start with me. I’m just trying to make a living here. I write what I’m told to, the way I’m told to. Take it up with the boss. Bosses. Whatever. Just leave me out of it, if you please.)
Whatever its antecedents, the statement is nonetheless accurate in its essentials.
The first airborne boulder destroyed the passenger compartment of the SUV, but left the majority of the cargo area untouched. While the triplets kept watch across a wide panorama, Bane was able to retrieve their vehicular medical kit as well as his own bag of tricks.
Again, one must take into account the nature of Bane and Finch’s favorite pastime – inquiring intrepidly into the improbable and the inexplicable – to appreciate their idea of a first aid kit. Small town ERs were often less well equipped. In addition, Bane’s personal field kit included an assortment of medicinal poultices, powders and potions equal to anything but the most severe trauma.
Time was what they most needed, however, and neither of the adventurers into the arcane had a magical hat from which to pull that particular rabbit.
“Reception sucks,” Melli said, watching the upper slopes with one eye and the bars on her cell phone with the other.
“Shoulda brought the sat phone!” Finch said as Atticus moved to his side in a crouch. Bane squatted, set his bag aside and opened the medical kit.
“Blood under the bridge,” Bane said, quoting one of their mutually favorite stage productions.
“That’s enough guff outta you, George,” Finch replied, in-character but off-script, and grunted in pain as Atticus probed the wound with a somewhat less than delicate finger. “Steady on, you muppet! How about a little morphine before you have your way with me?”
“I think you have an inordinate fondness for the poppy,” Bane scolded him, as he withdrew an auto-injector of painkiller from the med kit and stabbed it with undisguised glee into Finch’s buttock.
“Damn you!” Finch bit back the roar, and the resulting backlash on his larynx was painful to hear.
“Quiet, you big girl’s blouse,” Bane said, knowing how much “Brit-wit,” as Finch called it, irritated his stalwart friend. Finch groaned, but the groan melted into a humming sigh of relief as the painkiller took hold.
Bane donned an LED headlamp, and soaked his hand with disinfectant. He had no fear of Finch’s blood, and in this environment, infection from Bane’s touch would be the least of their contamination worries; thus he ignored the elastic gloves.
Before commencing, Atticus half-turned to the Gibbenses.
“See anything, ladies?”
“Nuthin’,” came the simultaneous answer from three throats; unintended, if would seem, because the triplets then exchanged surprised looks and burst into laughter.
“Stay sharp,” he said, “I’m going to be rather busy here for the next few minutes.”
“We gotcher back, Mr. Bane,” Kelli said in a confident drawl. “You go ‘head and take care of Mr. Finch.”
Bane nodded and turned to his work.
Once again, it would be easy to over-dramatize what followed, but the naked truth is that the entire procedure went pretty much by the numbers.
Bane wiggled the shard back and forth a bit with a pair of disposable forceps to test its tenacity, then grasped it firmly in the plastic jaws and removed it with a slow, steady pull. He tossed it into the darkness; since emergency rooms and hospitals aren’t required to report rock shrapnel wounds to law enforcement, no evidence needed to be retained.
The exposed gash bled like the proverbial stuck pig – as mountain folk might say – but it was nothing Bane hadn’t expected, given the severity of the wound. He cleaned and disinfected it, then applied an “Izzy,” an ingenious bandage developed by the Israeli military that applied its own direct pressure. Bane forbore to suture the wound, since it still needed to be properly treated, preferably within the next few hours.
“That’s about all I can do here,” Atticus said, rousing Finch from his drugged-induced reverie with a comradely slap on the back. Finch grunted, assessed Bane’s handiwork with his fingertips, and found it sufficient.
“I still don’t think I can walk on it,” Cullan said, and Atticus knew to trust that conclusion, despite the narcotics. Finch had been exploring the frontiers of botanical pharmacology when he and Bane met; while the opiates certainly dulled the physical pain of his wound – and likely his reflexes as well – it had a long way to go yet to dull his wits. If he didn’t think he could walk, it was not an estimation Atticus cared to test with his life.
“Any thoughts on Plan B?” he said, turning to stare past the Gibbenses, into a darkness grown impenetrable.
Bane realized with a start that, although the night beyond the girls was Stygian, he could see them quite clearly – in the beam of his headlamp, which even now must be shining up into the darkness much like the ruby pinpoint of a laser gunsight.
Atticus swallowed, but made no move to douse the light.
“I can’t be sure,” he said, “but I think we might be okay here for a while, provided we don’t do anything provocative.” He sketched his suspicions about the headlamp, and Finch grunted his agreement.
“It’s a thought I could have slept without,” he admitted, “but you’re right: If it wanted to smear us all over the hillside, its had the perfect target designator for half an hour or more.”
“So we dig in for the night?” Bane arched one eyebrow with the question. Finch shrugged.
“Unless you have a better p…” he was cut off by the hooting roar from upslope, booming out once again in the boundless darkness. The two men tensed, and Bane’s eyes shot to the backs of the young women, as he instantly began to calculate his chances of getting them to some kind of safety in the next few heartbeats.
But the bellowed challenge from the heights was answered by an equally guttural, growling roar from below; an iridescent beam of blue-white light stabbed through the darkness like an alien death ray, reaching all the way up the mountain to paint the trees that concealed the lurking threat. The broad lozenge of light swept back and forth across the trees like a London searchlight during the Blitz, scouring the clouds for enemy aircraft.
Gunshots and rebel yells sounded from downslope, and the thundering footsteps were heard once again on that mountainside…
Retreating this time, back through the gap, fading into the even wilder mountain country beyond.
“Breckinridge Watkins?” Bane couldn’t keep the question – and the amusement – out of his voice.
The youngster, in baggy jeans with ball-cap turned backwards, blushed and grinned, revealing a significant investment in gold grillwork. “My Dad was a Conan fan back ‘fore I was born. Conan the Barbarian, right? Not Conan O’Brien. Anyway, the guy who wrote about him wrote about this other dude, who was like Conan, only he was some kinda cowboy or gunfighter. His name was Breckinridge Elkins. Watkins… Elkins… Get it?”
Breck related the story with the resigned air of someone who has done so on too many occasions that elicited not the slightest flicker of comprehension or recognition. He was therefore delighted beyond the ability to speak when Bane seized his hand, grinning broadly, and said, “Oh yes – Robert E. Howard, A Gent From Bear Creek! I know it well. Great stuff – absolutely top-notch!”
From that moment forth, Atticus Bane could do no wrong in the eyes of Breckinridge “Breck” Watkins.
Breck, it developed, had been in another, man-made clearing elsewhere on the slopes above Fenton. In the company of two cronies, he had been practicing three of his favorite hobbies: drinking beer, smoking weed and tinkering with radio telescopy.
Advances in satellite dish technology, resulting in smaller and smaller units over the years, had orphaned thousands of huge, bulky first-gen dishes in isolated, rural communities across the country. After all, nobody keeps a hot-tub-sized dish in their side yard because they think it’s a charming alternative to lawn gnomes. It was a necessity, not a landscaping statement. When smaller, more robust and decidedly cheaper units became available, the older monsters got the old heave-ho.
Such discarded units, far from proving useless however, were excellent source material for the aspiring amateur radio astronomer. Breck and his mates – “Z-String” Clampett and “Natty” Bodine – had assembled a dozen or so, salvaged from the Fenton area, in pursuit both of something to do with their hands while they slaughtered their young brain cells, and their online degrees at UWV.
The three were, in short, full-bore, card-carrying, take-no-prisoners nerds.
The Gibbens sisters, having already made the acquaintance of the nascent scientists and apparently being enamored of their peculiar combination of social awkwardness and technical acumen, exercised the right and privilege of females everywhere to swoon and giggle, despite the extremity of their circumstances.
In common with any number of teens in the area – adults being quite myopic on the matter of cryptids – the boys knew about the troll, and when holy scalding Hell, to quote the wounded Finch, had broken loose on the mountainside above them, Breck and his buds had recognized the ruckus for what it was: an attack by the beast on some unfortunate trespasser(s).
Being young men of the mountains, they saw no alternative but to charge to the rescue.
Their own “troll” now squatted like the metallic destrier it was, rumbling to itself as it blazed its effulgent challenge into the night from no less than four sets of supplemental headlights hanging from its superstructure. Atticus had seen less tricked-out monster trucks in beer commercials, and began to wonder, with just the faintest of misgivings, how the youths managed to come by so much ready cash.
As Z-String and Natty charmed the cooing triples, shotguns slung with studied nonchalance over their shoulders – nerds, yes…but country nerds – Breck and Atticus helped Finch get situated in the bed of the pickup. When he was as comfortable as he was likely to get, given the steep, uneven descent ahead, Atticus dusted his hands and turned to Breck.
“Once we get old Finch there patched up,” he said, ignoring a splendid gesture from the latter, “and I’ve had a chance to get some sleep, we’re coming back up here, you know. We’re not quite done here yet. Are you and your mates game to come along, Breck?”
Given the inordinate importance our society now places on liability and litigation, one might question Bane’s apparent casualness in recruiting three additional, underage hangers-on. Bane and Finch, however, knew one of the inescapable truths of dealing with the Unseen: it would find you, regardless. Regardless of laws, lawyers, courts and judges. Regardless of parents, police, preachers and politicians. Regardless of whether you, yourself, even really believed.
If it was meant to be, the Unseen would find you.
Bane and Co. knew, from long, bitter experience, that the only real protection from the worst the Unseen had to offer was knowing it was there.
Breck and Co., for their part, had sussed that out long ago, with the unerring intuition which only the truly nerdy possess. “Hells yeah, Mr. Bane! Count us in!” he yelled, and his “cru” added their ringing “Yee-haws!” of approbation.
As their shouts bounced back from the surrounding slopes, Atticus had to chuckle:
They sounded even weirder than the mournful, eldritch hootings of the elusive troll.
“The real question,” Atticus said, meditating upon both the matter of the Fenton troll’s tooth, and a rather delicious, thin-crust double-pepperoni supreme, “is how to get the tooth free, without destroying it. Doubtless the same puzzle that has kept our rather boisterous friend hanging around Fenton.”
Jostling down the mountainside in Breck’s monster truck, the decision was made to ignore the local firehouse. Finch’s wound was significant enough that any fireman or EMS worth his or her salt would simply load him into an ambulance and convey him forthwith to the nearest hospital. Breck got them there in far less time, with far less fuss, and saved Finch the discomfort of the inevitable transfer to a medical vehicle as well.
Even so, the wounded warrior was a complete brat about the whole operation.
To everyone’s amusement save his, Finch was soon put in his place by a head ER nurse who made it quite clear she had more important things to do – even on a week night – than hold the hand of a whiny-assed tourist who couldn’t hike straight in the first place. The pugnacious caregiver’s assumption as to the origin of the wound, and the quality of Bane’s first aid in the field, conspired to get them in and out before the ink was dry on Finch’s admission forms.
The hospital was located at the intersection of two major highways, one north-south, the other east-west. In any of those directions lay an assortment of ski slopes, golf courses, white-water rafting trips, trout steams, rock-climbing adventures and the like. This, more than the local population density, accounted for the little cluster of businesses huddled around the hospital, including a motel with its light on, a car-rental depot and a regional chain pizza parlor. Declaring this sufficient for their needs, Bane and Finch bid the young folks adieu. Breck and the boys would see the Sisters Gibbens to their doorstep before going on their way; Bane promised to be in touch the next morning.
Given the time of year and the relative speed with which the troll encounter and the subsequent journey to the hospital had unfolded, it was early yet even for a weekday when the two investigators checked in to the motel. While Finch treated himself to a piping hot sponge bath, Atticus fetched a pizza and, from the gas-station convenience store, a cold sixer of beer. Despite his aching leg, Finch nearly threw himself to the carpet in front of Bane in worship when Atticus shouldered through the door juggling their evening meal.
Finch’s encounter with the Iron Nurse had resolved itself to the former’s advantage in the end. Reading the writing on the wall, he’d done a complete about-face and turned on the old charm. Ugly as a gallon of bad looks, Finch was a true Cyrano de Bergerac: he could charm the bloomers off a nun, despite the perceived deficiencies of his countenance, given sufficient motivation. Such as his continued comfort once the IV drugs at the hospital wore off. Now, glowing with the effects of a generous prescription of painkillers, courtesy of the finally flustered and flattered Iron Nurse, he still had the good sense to drool at, but then wave off, the beer. Finch contented himself with the pizza, and did not consider that the lesser prize.
And too, there was always breakfast…
“Yep,” Finch said, easing another slice from the gooey embrace of its fellows. “Been thinking about that…”
He maneuvered the drooping ropes of cheese over his mouth, then lowered them screaming to their doom. He chewed, looking thoughtful.
After a moment, the thoughtful look became somewhat glassy and defocused. The chewing slowed to a stop. A tendril of yellow deliciousness oozed from the waiting slice of pizza, settling on the front of his t-shirt.
After another moment, Bane leaned toward his friend and snapped his fingers under the other’s nose. Finch started and blushed, looking sheepish as a cube-farmer caught snoring in front of his screensaver. He finished chewing, swallowed, sipped from the soda Bane had fetched when Finch declined the beer. Then he noticed the yellow-red streak down his front, and cursed, fumbling around on the bed and nightstand for a clean napkin, a commodity in short supply at that moment.
When Finch had himself cleaned up and his dinner sorted out at long last, he squinted at Bane – because this was all his fault, after all – and continued his interrupted thought.
“I think the more urgent question,” he said, “is how we do anything on that mountainside without the troll raining death and destruction down on us.”
“And I now think,” Bane said, stroking his chin and the light stubble there, drawing inspiration, it would seem, from the faint rasping sound, “after watching you zone out, that there might be a way to answer both those questions, right from the comfort of our little love-nest here.”
Atticus wasn’t sure which caused Finch to first choke on, then expel through his nostrils, a mouthful of soda: “watching you zone out,” or “love-nest…”
Atticus knew Finch was in the rapture of his medications when, after considering Bane’s plan, he shrugged and said, “It could work.” In his present condition, Bane decided Finch would likely find the idea of carpet-bombing Fenton and its environs to resolve the matter of the cantankerous troll equally – if not more – acceptable. He was in no condition to walk to the bathroom, let alone venture to the Dreamlands.
“But you’re right,” Finch agreed, keeping his eyelids open with obvious effort, yet evincing a thread of common sense. “I’m in no shape. I’d just slip over the brink into the Deeper Realms. Or wander around, wasting time trying to remember why I was there.”
“There’s another consideration,” Bane said, “that’s at least as important in my mind. Even if you managed to stay lucid and on task in the Dreamlands, it’s quite possible the troll would recognize you from the mountainside; your examination and – in its mind – molestation of the tooth, might well be enough to render you persona non grata. While the beastie wouldn’t pose the same physical threat to you per se, it might very well reject any attempt on your part to converse with it, which would still net us a big steaming mug of nothing.”
“In that case,” Finch said, settling deeper into his pillows with a contended sigh, “I’ll leave you to it. Maybe I’ll see you there, but I doubt it. I’m exhausted.”
He closed his eyes, and his very next breath was a lusty snore.
Atticus smiled, as if at a beloved but erratic – and eccentric – offspring, and set about his preparations for the night’s festivities.
Bane was secretly pleased that Finch had excused himself from the coming expedition. Volatile and hot-tempered at the best of times, an intoxicated Finch loose in the Dreamlands was something Bane did not care to witness – or deal with – ever again. While Bane did, on occasion, utilize herbal concoctions to assist in his Dreaming, Finch had studied in traditions of shamanism that stressed the use of entheogen, or plant-based hallucinogens, such as peyote and ayahuasca. His habit of showing up in the Dreamlands a near-raving madman had earned him the sobriquet “Wild Man of the Cold Waste,” in eerie echo of a similar nickname Finch had earned during the 60s, during his eccentric entheogenic experiments in rural Virginia.
The plan required a certain amount of restraint on the part of whomever undertook it, if only because their prospective quarry in the Dreamlands, the troll, would be skittish to begin with, being one fang down and in fear of losing the missing molar. Diplomacy, any attempt at truce, mutual understanding or negotiation, would go out the window if the creature felt threatened.
The astute reader might wonder at the apparent assumption on the part of the Virginia arcanologists that communication with the troll would even be possible. A long career of intrepid inquiries into the improbable and the inexplicable, however, had taught Bane and Finch much regarding the nature and habits of such denizens of the Unseen. This might be their first direct encounter with such an entity, but there was never a question in their minds that it was anything but sentient.
The Unseen, which in part shares the physical universe with our reality, also overlaps and merges, to a great extent, with the Dreamlands. Those who have traveled in all three modes of existence – the Seen and Waking World, the Unseen and the Dreamlands – are often of the opinion that the last frequently seems to be a synthesis of the first two; that is to say, if the Unseen could be seen in the Waking World, our world would be much as the Dreamlands are.
The mechanics of locating a lone individual, even one as distinct as a troll, in such a vast dimension are far too complicated to detail here; be assured again that Bane was confident enough in his ability to do so once he was in the Dreamlands, that it was the least of his concerns whilst preparing for the journey.
Indeed, his chief concern – for failure here would mean a wasted evening – lay in not sending himself so deeply into the realms of sleep that he bypassed the Dreamlands altogether and simply slept the night away. Of course, the rest would do him a great deal of physical good, but a chance to wrap up the current investigation with no further muss nor fuss would be lost. Finch of course, already well-sedated by the Iron Nurse’s painkillers, would plunge straight through the Dreamlands and into the true abyss of dreamless slumber.
With this in mind, Bane began to sort through his kit bag of potions, poultices and powders, making the kind of racket one usually associates with a blind drunk pilfering the minibar in a dark motel room.
And Finch snored on… |
Who would take a kayak into a swamp in search of a sea monster? Actually, kayaking in one particular swamp in Georgia is nothing rare, and a particular cryptid, called “Altie,” has been labeled “sea monster.” One particular excursion, by Altamaha Coastal Tours, was with the hope of a sighting.
The tour started out in Buffalo Swamp, which is considered a tidal forest. . . . Once we entered the Cathead Creek area it seemed as though we were in a different land. The Cathead Creek waterway was formed from irrigation canals for old rice fields. . . . I was slowly navigating a narrow spot when I caught some movement to my left. It was an alligator sliding from the bank into the water right next to me. While it gave me a bit of an adrenaline rush I’m happy to report that was all there was to my encounter.
Although this particular excursion did not result in a sighting of Altie, it demonstrates that there is at least one somewhat-convenient means of participating in a cryptozoological quest in Georgia.
Promoting a cryptozoology book:
Live “pterodactyls?” In the United States? Many scientists have long assumed all pterosaurs died millions of years ago. Now take a whirlwind tour of many years of investigations in cryptozoology, and prepare for a shock: At least two pterosaur species have survived, uncommon, not so much rare as widely and thinly distributed.
Nocturnal pterosaurs have always lived among us, but hidden by something. Enter now the realm of a new branch of cryptozoology, a branch overshadowed by the dogma of a “universal extinction.” How did scientists miss living pterosaurs? Get the answers here, hidden secrets about how these amazing flying creatures of the night have gone mostly unreported: Until recently, almost nobody would listen to eyewitnesses; but for the past seven years many of them have been interviewed by the author of this book. |
Posts Tagged ‘freedom’
Posted by mattusmaximus on August 12, 2013
I am happy to report to you that there have been three really good developments in the scientific and skeptical battle against one of the worst bug-a-boos: creationism. Rather than go into a huge amount of detail about each one, I’ll give a few of my own comments and link to the original sources on each. Read on to the end – the best one is last :)
1. Ball State University Takes a Stand for Science and Kicks “Intelligent Design” to the Curb
In this article from Inside Higher Ed, a very positive development is outlined wherein the university made a very strong statement against the inclusion of so-called “intelligent design” as science under the auspices of academic freedom. I think this was so well done on the part of the university leadership that it should serve as a template for other institutions to follow. In part, the article states:
In what First Amendment watchdogs called a victory, Ball State University’s president on Wednesday spoke out against intelligent design as a viable scientific theory. At the same time, the university announced that a professor accused of proselytizing remained part of the faculty but was working with administrators to ensure his courses aligned with Ball State’s view that science instruction should be about science and not religion.
“Intelligent design is overwhelmingly deemed by the scientific community as a religious belief and not a scientific theory,” President Jo Ann Gora said. “Therefore, intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses. The gravity of this issue and the level of concern among scientists are demonstrated by more than 80 national and state scientific societies’ independent statements that intelligent design and creation science do not qualify as science.”
The question is not one of academic freedom, but one of academic integrity, she added. “Said simply, to allow intelligent design to be presented to science students as a valid scientific theory would violate the academic integrity of the course as it would fail to accurately represent the consensus of science scholars.” … [emphasis added]
Read the entire article here
2. Christian Publisher Removes Loch Ness Monster From Biology Textbook
You may recall that some time ago, I reported about how some creationists were going to such ludicrous lengths to undercut the teaching of evolution that they were actually selling textbooks which taught that the Loch Ness Monster was real and evidence against evolution. Apparently, the publishers of those same textbooks are now omitting any mention of dear ol’ Nessie since it seems that would be a claim too outlandish even for reality-challenged creationists. Here’s more:
A Christian education publisher based in Tennessee has removed references to the existence of the Loch Ness Monster from a biology textbook.
According to Scotland’s Sunday Herald, Accelerated Christian Education, Inc. has opted to remove a statement from a textbook used in Europe and will likely do the same for American textbooks.
“Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland?” reads the deleted passage. “‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.”
Mark Looy, chief communications officer for the Young Earth Creationist organization Answers in Genesis, told The Christian Post that he approved of ACE’s decision.
“There are just so many of these legends, like the dragon mentioned in Beowulf, the numerous accounts of St. George and the dragon, and so on, that they can’t be dismissed,” said Looy. … [emphasis added]
If the bolded statement above is any example of the shoddy standards of evidence adhered to by creationists, it is no wonder they don’t have a scientific leg to stand on.
3. Creationists and Climate Change Deniers Lose in Kentucky
Some time ago, I wrote a post about how the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are going to push back hard against anti-scientists like creationists and global warming deniers. Well, our friends from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) are reporting that a significant victory has been achieved in a state that you might not associate with strong science standards: Kentucky! A few weeks back, creationists and global warming deniers attempted to derail the adoption of the NGSS by the Kentucky State Board of Education, and they were rebuffed :)
The Kentucky Board of Education declined to make any changes to a proposed regulation that would enact the Next Generation Science Standards as Kentucky’s state science standards, despite the protests of evolution deniers and climate change deniers. In a lengthy document dated August 1, 2013, the Kentucky Department of Education summarized the thoughts of all who submitted comments on the regulation, and provided detailed replies. On the topics of evolution and climate change in particular, the department wrote (PDF, p. 139):
“The agency also received statements of support related to the inclusion of particular science topics such as climate change and evolution, stating that meaningful scientific debate on the validity of evolution and climate science has ceased. Proponents of the continued inclusion of evolution pointed to the overwhelming acceptance of evolution in the biological science community. Proponents of the inclusion of climate change education contend that Kentucky students deserve the most up to date science education, which includes climate change. [The department agreed with these comments: see, e.g., pp. 104 and 105 on evolution, and pp. 115 on climate change.]
Over one hundred substantially identical emails were received stating an opposition to the continued inclusion of evolution in the proposed standards, characterizing evolution as a theory and not a fact. These commenters asked that intelligent design be added to the standards. Other commenters questioned the scientific validity of evolution. The agency also received several comments specific to the inclusion of climate change in the proposed standards, including concerns that climate change science was overemphasized to the neglect of other science concepts or that climate change is not a settled issue in the scientific community.”
The three important antievolution goals — banning the teaching of evolution; balancing the teaching of evolution with creationism, whether in the form of “creation science” or “intelligent design”; and belittling evolution as controversial — were in evidence. So were all three of the pillars of creationism — arguing that evolution is scientifically controversial; arguing that teaching evolution is linked with negative social consequences; arguing that it is only fair to teach “all sides” of the supposed controversy. The same themes were also reflected in the comments about climate change.
The Kentucky Board of Education approved the department’s report on August 8, 2013, so, as WPFL in Louisville, Kentucky, reports (August 8, 2013), “The regulation now heads to Kentucky’s Administrative Regulation Review Committee. If approved in the Kentucky General Assembly, the new standards would go into effect during the 2014-2015 school year.” Kentucky would join Rhode Island, Kansas, Maryland, and Vermont as the first five states to adopt the NGSS — unless the legislature, which includes vocal critics of evolution and climate change, refuses its approval. [emphasis added]
I want to jump on the bolded part above; the battle in KY still isn’t finished. It will require people to lobby their state legislators in Kentucky in order to encourage them to accept the NGSS. No doubt the anti-science lobby will pull out all the stops to derail this process, but we have to speak up and encourage the legislature to accept the NGSS as written.
And think of this: if the NGSS is accepted in Kentucky, then it will be a huge defeat for creationists and climate science deniers all over the nation. That’s because if a religiously conservative state like Kentucky can do it, then any state can do it.
Posted in creationism, cryptozoology, education, global warming denial, politics | Tagged: academic, academic freedom, Accelerated Christian Education, ACE, Ball State University, biology, board of education, BoE, BoEd, Christianity, climate change, content, creationism, cryptids, cryptozoology, curriculum, denial, deniers, dinosaur, education, evolution, freedom, fundamentalist, global warming, government, ID, intelligent design, Kentucky, KY, Loch Ness, Loch Ness Monster, National Center for Science Education, NCSE, Nessie, Next Generation Science Standards, NGSS, politics, pseudoscience, public, school, schools, science, standards, teachers, teaching, theory, United States, YEC, Young Earth Creationism | 3 Comments »
Posted by mattusmaximus on December 5, 2012
My friend and skeptical colleague Phil over at Skeptic Money has passed along some welcome news: the Louisiana private school voucher program has been found to be unconstitutional! Whoo-hoo!!! :)[**Aside: If you recall, the state of Louisiana has been a hotbed of creationist activity over the years; more on that here and here. And yes, that fact is important. Read on…]
This is news partly because the program was being used to funnel public school money to private religious schools which specialized in indoctrinating children into fundamentalist forms of Christianity which taught, among other things, creationism as “science”. In addition, let us also not forget that this was the award-winning 21st century educational plan which would teach that the Loch Ness Monster was real as a way of supporting creationism. Phil has some more interesting information on these developments:
News from the State of Louisiana today!
“A state judge on Friday shot down Louisiana’s sweeping school voucher program, ruling that the state could not use funds set aside for public education to pay private-school tuition…”
This is huge. They were going to spend $11 Million to teach creationism.
“Louisiana is preparing to spend over $11 million to send 1,365 students to 20 private schools that teach creationism instead of science as part of Governor Bobby Jindal’s new voucher program.”
This $11 Million is to come out of the public schools. According to a report from “American Legislative Exchange Council” Louisiana ranks 49 out of 51 (They also ranked the District of Columbia). I guess they want to race to the bottom.
The governor is not happy about the ruling.
“Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who had championed the program, called the ruling “wrong-headed” and “a travesty for parents across Louisiana who want nothing more than for their children to have an equal opportunity at receiving a great education.” “
A great education? These children are not being educated. They are being thrown back to the bronze age. We might as well teach them that 2+2 equals “fish”.
“While State District Judge Tim Kelley ruled the voucher program unconstitutional, he did not issue an immediate injunction to stop it. The 5,000 students currently receiving vouchers will be able to continue attending their private schools pending an appeal, state officials said.”
What? The state creates a blatantly illegal program and a judge rules against it but yet it continues. It looks like they are still going to spend that $11 Million on creationism. I feel like we live in some kind of bizzaro world.
This is all promoted by a guy that wants to be the next President of the United States Bobby Jindal.
So… the program will continue for the immediate future (probably until the end of the current academic year), which will no doubt give Jindal and his political allies time to come up with another cockamamie scheme that will bilk the taxpayers and direct their money towards religious zealots who have no interest in teaching their kids (or anybody else’s kids) science.
I agree with Phil. The irony here is that Jindal and his religious right allies go on and on about “giving the kids a great education” but it’s apparent they wouldn’t know good science education if it bit them squarely in the ass. Remember folks, these are the same people who want to give public tax money to schools that teach the Loch Ness Monster is real. Just chew on that for a bit, folks…
In conclusion, I think it is appropriate to end this post with the following clip from Bill Maher’s movie Religulous. In it he is interviewing a U.S. Senator (Mark Pryor from Arkansas) who is trying to justify creationism. When challenged by Maher, the Senator responds with the following, quite telling, line: “You don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate…”
Yup, he really said that. Watch for yourself (the dialog leading up to the line starts at 4:00):
Posted in creationism, cryptozoology, education, politics | Tagged: A Beka, A Beka Book, academic, Accelerated Christian Education, ACE, biology, Bob Jones University, Bob Jones University Press, Christianity, court, creationism, cryptids, cryptozoology, curriculum, dinosaur, education, evangelical, evolution, freedom, fundamentalist, government, ID, intelligent design, Jindal, judge, Loch Ness, Loch Ness Monster, Louisiana, Mother Jones, Nessie, origin of life, politics, private, public, religion, ruling, school, schools, science, separation of church and state, Skeptic Money, teach all views, teach the controversy, theory, unconstitutional, vouchers, Zack Kopplin | 1 Comment »
Posted by mattusmaximus on August 8, 2012
This past June, I reported that the science curriculum in Louisiana was on its way to going down the proverbial tubes, and evidence of this fact was made available through the uncovering of a creationist curriculum which wants to seriously teach the “reality” of the Loch Ness Monster. Well, as I predicted over a year ago, due to the stupidity of Louisiana’s so-called “academic freedom” law, the state will now be funding (with taxpayer dollars) private school vouchers which will be used to push all manner of nonsense, far beyond your usual garden-variety young-earth creationism, in Louisiana schools. It seems that the door to all manner of flummery and idiocy has been thrown wide open, and the students of these Louisiana voucher schools will be subjected to some truly unbelievable “facts” in their education; just get a load of these (from Mother Jones)…
—By Deanna Pan
Separation of church and what? Currier & Ives/Library of Congress
Thanks to a new law privatizing public education in Louisiana, Bible-based curriculum can now indoctrinate young, pliant minds with the good news of the Lord—all on the state taxpayers’ dime.
Under Gov. Bobby Jindal’s voucher program, considered the most sweeping in the country, Louisiana is poised to spend tens of millions of dollars to help poor and middle-class students from the state’s notoriously terrible public schools receive a private education. While the governor’s plan sounds great in the glittery parlance of the state’s PR machine, the program is rife with accountability problems that actually haven’t been solved by the new standards the Louisiana Department of Education adopted two weeks ago.
For one, of the 119 (mostly Christian) participating schools, Zack Kopplin, a gutsy college sophomore who’s taken to Change.org to stonewall the program, has identified at least 19 that teach or champion creationist nonscience and will rake in nearly $4 million in public funding from the initial round of voucher designations.
Many of these schools, Kopplin notes, rely on Pensacola-based A Beka Book curriculum or Bob Jones University Press textbooks to teach their pupils Bible-based “facts,” such as the existence of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster and all sorts of pseudoscience that researcher Rachel Tabachnick and writer Thomas Vinciguerra have thankfully pored over so the rest of world doesn’t have to.
Here are some of my favorite lessons:
1. Dinosaurs and humans probably hung out: “Bible-believing Christians cannot accept any evolutionary interpretation. Dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time and may have even lived side by side within the past few thousand years.”—Life Science, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2007
2. Dragons were totally real: “[Is] it possible that a fire-breathing animal really existed? Today some scientists are saying yes. They have found large chambers in certain dinosaur skulls…The large skull chambers could have contained special chemical-producing glands. When the animal forced the chemicals out of its mouth or nose, these substances may have combined and produced fire and smoke.”—Life Science, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2007
3. “God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ.”—America: Land That I Love, Teacher ed., A Beka Book, 1994
4. Africa needs religion: “Africa is a continent with many needs. It is still in need of the gospel…Only about ten percent of Africans can read and write. In some areas the mission schools have been shut down by Communists who have taken over the government.”—Old World History and Geography in Christian Perspective, 3rd ed., A Beka Book, 2004
[And, believe it or not, it actually gets worse from here… :( ]
Posted in creationism, cryptozoology, education, politics | Tagged: A Beka, A Beka Book, academic, Accelerated Christian Education, ACE, biology, Bob Jones University, Bob Jones University Press, Christianity, creationism, cryptids, cryptozoology, curriculum, dinosaur, education, evangelical, evolution, freedom, fundamentalist, government, ID, intelligent design, Loch Ness, Loch Ness Monster, Louisiana, Mother Jones, Nessie, origin of life, politics, private, public, religion, school, schools, science, separation of church and state, teach all views, teach the controversy, theory, vouchers, Zack Kopplin | 3 Comments »
Posted by mattusmaximus on June 25, 2012
I’ve written here before about the state of Louisiana’s so-called “academic freedom” law which is essentially a backdoor attempt to push creationism as science in public school science classes. As many critics of the law pointed out when it was passed, this would serve to dumb-down science standards and inevitably harm the education of students in Louisiana by placing pseudoscientific notions such as creationism on an equal (or better) footing than accepted evolutionary science. Well, as predicted, the consequences of this law are now becoming realized, and I’m sorry to say that things in Louisiana are getting even more stupid than I had predicted. Read this article for more detail:
For the 2012-2013 school year, thousands of Louisiana students will receive state-funded vouchers to attend private schools, many of which hold religious affiliations.
One of these schools — Eternity Christian Academy, in Westlake, Louisiana — utilizes the A.C.E. Curriculum Program, a Christian fundamentalist course of study that teaches students to “see life from God’s point of view.” And unbeknownst to most theologians, scientists, and amateur monster hunters, the Lord’s viewpoint apparently incorporates Scotland’s favorite cryptid.
Herald Scotland reports that a certain textbook in the A.C.E. curriculum transcends standard Creationist teachings and instead informs students that the Loch Ness Monster is proof positive that evolution never happened. (And here I always assumed Nessie was The Great Beast from the Book of Revelations.) Explains Herald Scotland:
“One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: “Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.”
Another claim taught is that a Japanese whaling boat once caught a dinosaur. It’s unclear if the movie Godzilla was the inspiration for this lesson.
Jonny Scaramanga, 27, who went through the ACE programme as a child, but now campaigns against Christian fundamentalism, said the Nessie claim was presented as “evidence that evolution couldn’t have happened. The reason for that is they’re saying if Noah’s flood only happened 4000 years ago, which they believe literally happened, then possibly a sea monster survived.”
The Loch Ness Monster as “evidence” of creationism?!!… Oh… my… FSM.
So it’s come to this, folks. As a direct result of the “academic freedom” law in Louisiana, some versions of creationism which are probably even too extreme for many creationists are being seriously pushed as part of the “alternate science” curriculum available to teachers and students…
Apparently, this is the new cover for biology textbooks in Louisiana – image source
I wish I could say that I was surprised, but honestly I’m not. This sort of development is the inevitable result of making science standards so loose (through the invocation of so-called “academic freedom”) that just about any kind of stupid, pseudoscientific nonsense which is completely unsupported by the scientific community can pass muster and be taught as if it were science. As I wrote recently, perhaps this is just the kind of thing we need to have happen in states like Louisiana that try to give a thinly veiled wink and nod to creationists under the auspices of “academic freedom”; perhaps it is time to advertise far and wide that any kind of nonsense can be taught in Louisiana schools. And perhaps there will be a point where the politicians in Louisiana may become so terribly embarrassed at what is passing for “education” (after all, one has to wonder how amenable they would be to Islamic creationism, for example) in their state that they might act to remedy the situation.
Until that day comes, however, I think we should be prepared for much more silliness to come out of Louisiana. One thing’s for sure, it will be entertaining.
Posted in creationism, cryptozoology, education | Tagged: academic, Accelerated Christian Education, ACE, biology, Christianity, creationism, cryptids, cryptozoology, curriculum, dinosaur, education, evolution, freedom, fundamentalist, government, ID, intelligent design, Loch Ness, Loch Ness Monster, Louisiana, Nessie, origin of life, politics, private, public, religion, school, schools, science, separation of church and state, teach all views, teach the controversy, theory, vouchers | 6 Comments »
Posted by mattusmaximus on December 1, 2011
You may have already seen it: the video of would-be Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann commenting that not teaching creationism (or, “intelligent design”, as she calls it) in public school science classes is “government censorship.” Check it out…
Wow, there are so many things wrong with what she’s saying, it’s hard to know where to begin. While these arguments from creationists are nothing new, I’ll just hit some of the high points:
1. The “Teach All Views” Argument: I think this one bugs me more than any others, because it is a disingenuous attempt to play off the American sense of fairness. “Just teach all the theories” says Bachmann, but she makes a very interesting omission – what she omits in her argument is that creationists don’t actually want “all ideas on the table” as she states. What they really want is to insert their very narrow religious ideology (typically, the view of young-Earth creationism) into public school science classes.
If Bachmann and her ilk were really genuine in their argument, then they would have no problem with “equal time” for a large variety of creationist ideas: old-Earth creationism, day-age creationism, gap creationism, flat Earth creationism, geocentrism, Islamic creationism, various Native-American creation myths, Scientology, and even Raelianism. I especially like proposing “equal time” for Raelianism under Bachmann’s plan, because the Raelians are an atheistic UFO-cult which believes that humans were not created by God but aliens. You have to wonder how willing Bachmann and her pals would be to give “equal time” to the Raelians!
So, I say to Bachmann: go for it, but if you really mean “teach all views” then be prepared to open the door to every kind of creationist idea out there. And perhaps after all views have been equally represented, the science teachers in U.S. public schools just might have a couple of weeks at the end of the school year to teach actual science. Who cares if our students will be effectively scientifically illiterate and we start to have massive brain-drain as compared to China and India? At least we can all feel warm and fuzzy inside knowing that we “taught all views”. Gee whiz, thanks Ms. Bachmann!!!
The logical conclusion of applying the creationist idea of “teaching all views”…
2. The Whiny “Censorship” Argument: here again we have another facepalm moment. These creationists actually believe, or they try to make us believe, that just because the U.S. government doesn’t give their particular set of religious beliefs some kind of priviledged status in public schools that it means they are being “censored.” Purre rubbish, plain and simple. For one thing, there is this little thing in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which is called the separation of church and state. It basically means, in this particular context, that the public schools don’t get into the business of favoring one particular religion over another – that is, the government remains neutral on the question of the “correctness” of various religious beliefs in the public school classroom.
And that means specifically not giving any previledged status to a particular religious view in schools. So while it would be appropriate to have a class on, say, comparative religion where the topic of creationism is studied, it wouldn’t be appropriate to insert those views into a science class since that crosses the boundary between science and religion. Religious ideas are taught in religion class, and science is taught in science class!
3. “Scientists don’t agree on the origins of life”: while this is technically true, because the subject of abiogenesis (the study of life’s origins) is a subject of much discussion in the scientific community, Bachmann plays fast and loose with the facts by erroneously equating abiogenesis with the well understood and accepted theory of evolution. These are not the same thing, and it is a common tactic of creationists to equate the two in an effort to give the sense that the scientific community doesn’t support evolution. That’s just plain wrong, because – as these statistics point out – evolution is well-established in the scientific community.
4. Evolution is “just a theory”: this is another tried and true argument used by creationists to denegrate evolution. They try to make it sound like a “theory” in scientific terms is equivalent to a hunch or a guess, but this is incorrect. In science, a theory is a well-established and tested set of ideas that ties together a large set of observations and evidence into a coherent explanatory framework. An analogy in physics would be to talk about the theory of gravity – would Bachmann or her creationist ilk try to seriously argue that gravity is “just a theory”?
If so, I invite her and anyone who agrees with her to take a dive off the nearest tall building without a parachute :)
I jest, of course, but in my jest there is a note of seriousness: if these creationists truly believe that evolution is “just a theory” (that is, a guess) then why do so many of them continue to use modern vaccines and antibiotics which are made as a direct result of the application of evolutionary theory? If we didn’t understand evolution, we simply wouldn’t have those medicines. So to avoid being labeled as hypocrites, I think creationists need to at least acknowledge that evolution is more than just a simple guess.
But I won’t hold my breath. One thing’s for sure: creationists certainly are persistent, and as long as they’re up to their shenanigans we have to be equally vigilant.
Posted in creationism, education, politics | Tagged: 2012, Bachmann, biology, censorship, Christianity, creationism, education, evolution, freedom, fundamentalist, GOP, government, ID, intelligent design, Michelle, origin of life, politics, president, primary, race, religion, Republican, science, separation of church and state, Tea Party, teach all views, teach the controversy, theory, United States | 5 Comments »
Posted by mattusmaximus on January 4, 2011
Okay, for some weird reason, I’m on a religion kick this evening, so I’m going to be publishing three (count ’em: THREE) blog posts that are pretty much explicitly about religion. The first one has to do with a really good article I read on the Slacktivist blog (?) about the United States Constitution. These days you’ll hear all manner of nonsense coming from various members of the religious right – you know, the in-your-face, fundamentalist Bible-thumping types who think that everyone in the country should cater to their particular whackadoodle interpretation of Christianity… because they say it’s in the Constitution.
Except, according to Slacktivist, it’s NOT in the Constitution; and I know that is correct, because I’ve checked it for myself. If you read through the entire U.S. Constitution – which I have done, TWICE – you will not find one single mention of God, the Ten Commandments, Jesus, Christianity, or the Bible. Nothing, zilch, nada! (You hear that, Glenn Beck?) If you don’t believe me, read it for yourself!
So… that kind of makes it hard to argue that our laws should be based upon the various nutball interpretations of Christianity coming from some loons in the religious right; you know, seeing as how the Constitution is the very basis for all of U.S. law – duh!
In any case, I mentioned the really good Slacktivist article previously, so I should probably point out some of my favorite excerpts…
… What I’m most interested in watching for during this stunt, however, is to see if any of the more theocratically minded members of Congress notice what the Constitution does not say. Unlike these pious politicians, the Constitution never mentions God. At all.
The intellectual ancestors of the evangelical religious right once regarded this as the most glaring and dangerous supposed flaw in America’s governing document. But the godlessness of the U.S. Constitution was not an oversight, it was a matter of deliberate design — a principled choice for which the framers fought passionately. …
The bottom line is that when our Constitution was being hammered out way back in the late 18th century, there was a fundamental philosophical battle between the secularists and the ancestors of the religious right; the secularists won that fight – hence our Godless Constitution…
… But what is most valuable to me in this unfailingly interesting book is the collection of voices from the opponents of America’s “Godless Constitution.” I had read most of the other side of this argument — the side that won the argument because it was right. But I hadn’t previously read the vehement objections of the losing side.
The viewpoint of that side is echoed today in the voices of the evangelical right calling for religious hegemony. Then, as now, the argument was that such hegemony was necessary to provide social order and a basis for morality without which the nation would be ungovernable. Then, as now, the advocates of a sectarian Constitution believed that only sectarian religion could provide a basis for such morality. And only their own sectarian religion at that.
So for the sectarian opponents of the Godless Constitution, then as now, the stakes were enormously high. The Constitution proposed by the framers in 1789, they said, was a form of national suicide. That Godless document — with its separation of church and state, its disregard for the overarching sovereignty of God, its absolute prohibition against religious tests for public office and against the establishment or privileging of any official sect — would bring rapid calamity and doom. Their warnings of the consequences of such a Constitution were dire, apocalyptic and unambiguous. If the Constitution did not establish an official sectarian Christian religion, they believed, then Christians would find themselves subjugated to some other established sect. …
But I think the most interesting part is the analysis of historical accounts whereby the extreme religionists who wanted to “Christianize” the Constitution made all manner of goofy claims about how the country would fall into ruin for dissing God so blatantly :)
… The Anti-Federalists, and especially those who argued for a sectarian Constitution with religious tests and established religion, were wrong. Demonstrably wrong. More than 200 years later, the Constitution still stands as the guiding document of a free and democratic nation and none of the calamities and apocalyptic consequences that they prophesied have come to pass. “If X, then Y,” they said, without reservation or qualification. If the godless Constitution is ratified, then America will break apart into ungovernable anarchy, or it will be subjected to the tyranny of Jews or pagans or some other established official religion. That is what will happen, they said, what will certainly and inevitably happen.
And it did not happen. They were wrong. They were proven wrong. And their heirs, the hegemonic evangelicals of the religious right, are just as wrong today.
Yup, the end did not come for the United States upon ratifying our Godless Constitution, much to the chagrin of those religious doomsayers who insisted that God’s wrath would surely rain down upon us. Of course, there are those who keep on claiming that “any day now”, God’s gonna smack us good – more on that in my next post.
Posted in politics, religion | Tagged: America, atheism, Bible, Christian, Christianity, church, Constitution, freedom, fundamentalism, fundamentalist, God, Godless, Jesus, laws, liberty, morality, politics, religion, secular, separation of church and state, state, Ten Commandments, U.S., United States | 3 Comments » |