Governor Tim Kaine isn't ruling out the possibility of ghosts in the governor's mansion home.
He was asked on his monthly radio show on the Virginia News Network today whether he has had paranormal experiences like some previous Executive Mansion occupants, Kaine flatly answered: "Yes."
Kaine said today that the telephone rings in his family's private quarters at the same "inconvenient time" every week, and when he picks up the phone, nobody's there. He says he's researching whether "something odd happened" on the same day and hour sometime in the mansion's history.
Unlike some previous residents and staff, Kaine said his family has not seen the friendly ghost of a young woman who is said to haunt the mansion.
But Kaine says first lady Anne Holton witnessed other strange occurrences in the mansion as the daughter of Governor Linwood Holton in the early 1970s, for example, a portrait mysteriously taken from the wall and deposited in another room.
There also was a storm-related power outage that left all of Richmond in the dark except a lone light that mysteriously remained on in the mansion.
KRASNOYARSK, RUSSIA - An unidentified flying object has crashed in Krasnoyarsk Region, Siberia, causing a forest fire, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Friday.
The crash took place in the taiga between the towns of Yeniseisk and Lesosibirsk, the agency said quoting the local Interior Ministry directorate. The crash was reported by local villagers and traces of forest fire can be seen on the site. Air traffic officials said that no aircraft were scheduled to fly in the region at the time of the crash and no air vessels were missing.
A group formed of police investigators, representatives of the Transport Prosecutors Service and representatives of the aircraft safety watchdog Rosavianadzor has started to the site of the crash from Krasnoyarsk.
Local Emergencies Directorate has sent a helicopter to the site.
SPALDING, UK - Unexplained flying objects left Spalding residents searching the heavens for answers as residents in the Pennygate area were transfixed by orange lights.
<--Click image for video
People reported seeing up to ten orange lights behaving strangely on Thursday at around 8.30pm, hanging in the air and moving in formation at high speed in silence.
Stargazer Susan Sells, from Third Avenue, caught the phenomena on a video camera.
She said: "They were bright orange spheres and were literally going past the back door.
"It was not frightening – just unbelievable. I saw two go past the house and then there was a formation in the sky."
Susan managed to video some of the action and you can see an excerpt here.
Martin Anderson, secretary of South Lincolnshire Astronomical and Geophysical Society, said there was no rational explanation.
He said: "There were no satellites, the international space station was not visible and there were no meteor showers that early in the evening. I don't know of anything it could be."
Martin also said despite being a keen amateur scientist he kept an open mind.
He said: "I am a realist and a sceptic but I can't believe we are the only life forms in the universe. We are just a small, insignificant dot and the possibility of alternate life is considerable."
Other residents also saw the lights, which included a larger sphere which split apart and came back together.
Aircraft enthusiast Richard Shortland, from Edward Road, said: "One light came across the sky with no sound at all.
"It was followed by five lights, then four more and they seemed to touch each other in the sky on several occasions. It wasn't frightening, just transfixing."
Wg Cdr Field, from the Ministry of Defence, said there was a lot of activity in the skies, including Tornadoes, Typhoons and Harriers setting off for flights between 6pm and 7pm, but said he was not aware of anything untoward.
Wg Cdr Field said: "If an aircraft is facing towards you it appears stationary in the sky."
Tony Healy and Paul Cropper pass along a new sighting of Yowie that took place this September 2006 (remember, their spring), which has just been written up to be shared.
19 Sept 2006. Megalong Valley, Blue Mountains, NSW. 1:30 pm.
As 22-year-old Catherine B., her husband Brendan and friend Sarah were riding along a track at the base of an escarpment, Catherine’s horse lagged behind the others and finally came to a complete stop. Catherine, an experienced rider, simply couldn’t get it to move.
“It was sniffing the air and turning around to bite me and I knew something was wrong. At that point I smelt a real foul stench, like salty blood, and I looked – the ground dropped down to the left - and it was just standing there …10, 15 metres away, if that. [The undergrowth] was quite open at that point. It looked sort of like a monkey, but more human. I pretty much crapped my pants! It seemed like forever that I was watching him, but it was only two, three minutes, if that.”
From her vantage point, she could see the animal from head to foot: “I could see everything. It just stood and looked at me. It was a lot smaller than a person, about four foot … solid … square shoulders … very hairy, long hair everywhere; dark brown, all tangled – like a shaggy dog that hasn’t been washed for a while - and mud all over it.
“It had, like, a pushed-in nose. I distinctly remember two canine teeth out the front, outside the lip. I couldn’t see ears because the long hair covered them. I saw eyes, but not distinctly. The legs were long but he only had three claws on his feet. I saw arms, and I could only see three fingers [because] it had something in its hand …like a dead kangaroo, but smaller …like flesh … like it was skinned … inside out.
“I kept kicking the horse … it took the track pretty quick and began to catch the others. I held on for dear life. I kept smelling [the creature, and] felt like it was watching me.”
Confused, incredulous and frightened by what she’d seen, Catherine didn’t say anything about it to her friends. Meanwhile, both Brendan and Sarah had been aware of the foul odour but hadn’t mentioned it. Thirty minutes later, however, they all heard rustling in the scrub behind and then beside the trail, and Sarah looked to the right and saw, about five or ten metres away, “… a monkey … an ape sort of thing … just glaring at me … real scary.”
She could see the head, shoulders and upper chest as it “just popped out from behind a bush, looked, and took off. It was about four feet tall … hairy … browny, blacky … all long, scruffy … half-human, I reckon, all hairy but human looking. I focused on the eyes and the mouth. The teeth … you could not miss them [about an inch long] over the lip [like a vampire’s]. Mouth sort of half open. I said, ‘What the F’s that?’ My adrenalin went … It was like, ‘Is this thing gonna eat me? I’d better get out of here!’ I was kicking my horse.”
As Sarah cried out, Catherine and, apparently, her horse glimpsed the creature running from behind the bush. “My horse took off, flew past the next two horses; I hit a tree with my shoulder, came off and hit the ground really bad.” The horse bolted away.
Catherine sustained deep abrasions on her right forearm and hip, a fractured right collarbone, two fractured ribs, badly bruised legs and swollen ankles. Brendan helped her onto his horse, led her back to the stables and drove her to Katoomba Hospital.
The next day, when she phoned the property owner to enquire after the horse, Catherine was told that the animal, unusually, was missing all night, and that when it eventually returned it was “all shaken up” and had to be rested. When asked about the ‘monkey-thing”, the owner said that in about 1998 or ’99 another group of experienced riders had returned to camp “all as white as ghosts” to say they’d seen and smelt a very similar animal.
Witness interview with Paul Cropper, 23 Sept 2006. Credit: Dean Harrison.
Background:
Reports of Yowie-type creatures are common in the legends and stories of Australian Aboriginal tribes, particularly those of the eastern states of Australia. The mid to late 19th Century saw a wealth of sightings, most describing a large, gorilla-like creature (albeit usually bipedal), which lived in remote mountainous or forested regions. Reports have continued to the present day with the trail of evidence following the pattern familiar to most unidentified hominids around the world - i.e. eyewitness accounts, mysterious footprints of hotly-disputed origin, and a frustrating lack of conclusive proof. Australian Yowie Research
Governor Tim Kaine isn't ruling out the possibility of ghosts in the governor's mansion home. 
