By his own admission, actor and UFO enthusiast Dan Aykroyd is in possession of "real" movie footage of the O'Hare Airport UFO of November 7, 2006. The news came to me first this morning from Jerome Prophet's blog, which was referred from UFO News This is how it happened. According to the former Saturday Night Live star, Dan Aykroyd and his group of filmmakers have come into possession of exclusive O'Hare Airport UFO photographs and video footage.
During a recent promotion for his line of Tequila beverages, I had a chance to speak briefly with Aykroyd about the topic of UFOs.
"Will you be releasing any more UFO documentaries?"
"We should have another DVD out by next year," Aykroyd replied. "You know there was a major sighting in Chicago recently," he said in referring to the O'Hare Airport UFO.
Acknowledging the event, I asked if there would be any exclusive O'Hare UFO content in the film. To my surprise, he said not only will they be exposing new photographs of the O'Hare Airport UFO, but exclusive video footage. Dan appeared excited about the new film and the O'Hare story, "it will have photographs, video, and the whole works."
They are murdered to give dead bachelors a wife in the afterlife
A ring of gangsters who traded in the bodies of women they murdered, selling them as brides to keep dead bachelors happy in the afterlife, has been arrested in China.
The arrests have exposed a trade that places a higher value on women when they are dead than when they are alive.
• Traditional Chinese belief holds that the living must tend to the wants and needs of dead relatives, who exist in an afterlife
• The tradition manifests itself in the burning of fake money or paper models of luxury goods
• It is believed by some that an unmarried life is incomplete, leading to the practice of minghun — burying single sons with recently dead young women to provide them with a wife in the afterlife
• Parents of a dead daughter often regard the money received in selling her for minghun as recompense for the dowry that they did not receive in her lifetime, while also posthumously elevating their child’s place in a patriarchal society
• Communist authorities tried to ban the practice, which datesfrom the Zhou dynasty (1122-256BC). It was also forbidden in the Book of Rites, texts that describe religious practices from the eighth to the fifth century BC
• Minghun survives mainly in the poor rural north, particularly in the remote plateau on the upper reaches of the Yellow River
Yang Dongyan, 35, was arrested in Sha’anxi province as he played cards with his children. In his prison cell, Yang showed little remorse for committing two murders. He told the Legal Daily: “I just wanted to make money. It’s a quick way to make money. I was arrested too soon otherwise I had planned to do this business a few more times.”
Two accomplices, Liu Shengbao and Hui Haibao, were also arrested, as was Li Longsheng, a self-styled undertaker who traded the bodies to bereaved families.
Zhang Yanjun, chief of police in Yanchuan county, said: “It’s lucky that the case was cleared up in time or we don’t know how many women would have been killed by them. These people thought they had found a short cut to wealth.” Instead, they face the death penalty.
The men preyed on the superstitions of ill-educated farmers eager to ensure that a dead son was happy in the afterlife. It is not uncommon in rural parts of China for a family to seek out the body of a woman who has died to be buried alongside their son after the performance of a marriage ceremony for the deceased pair.
Ancestor worship is a tradition that runs through many aspects of Chinese life. One of the main Chinese festivals is Tomb Sweeping Day, when families visit graves of their forebears to clean them and burn incense. The spirit is believed to live on in the afterlife and at funerals families burn offerings of paper money and models of houses, cars and other little luxuries that the dead may need.
Yang chanced upon the trade in dead bodies when he paid 12,000 yuan (£800) for a mentally handicapped woman whose family hoped to marry her off for a price. The trade in women as wives is a common practice in rural China and a woman may be sold several times by intermediaries before meeting her eventual husband.
Yang arranged for the woman to stay in a guesthouse in Yanchuan county where Mr Liu offered him $1,310 for her.Yang refused, until Liu told him the woman would be worth much more dead than alive. The next morning the two men set out across the Yellow River to meet “Old Li” in Xixian County, Shanxi province. Old Li agreed to buy the woman’s body for $2,067 and to complete the deal late at night on the Yanshuiguan bridge.
The next day Yang killed the woman and took her body by taxi to the bridge where Mr Li was waiting and handed over $1,969 for her. For his part in the deal, Mr Liu received $590 andYang came away with a loss of $394 after his expenses.
Back at the guesthouse, Yang told an old acquaintance, Hui, he had found an easy way to make money. The two men agreed to go into the body business together. Last November they sought out a prostitute they knew in nearby Yan’an — the city where Chairman Mao began his Communist revolution — but she threw them out after they said that they could not afford to pay her $40. They returned the next morning and killed her.
On December 3 they completed a similar body handover with Li on the bridge. This time they made only $1,043 because the buyer was unhappy with the quality of the body and, after costs, Yang and his two friends each earned $196 on that deal.
Old Li had made a name for himself in Xixian county by selling clothes to outfit the dead and by handing out cards that offered to help families in need of a spirit marriage. They want young and good-looking dead brides for their sons and regard the family of the girl as “in-laws”. Police discovered that Li paid between $1,043 and $1,300 for a body and sold it on for as much as $4,500
Islington, North London, U.K. - February 2, 2007 - Dozens of mysterious lights were spotted hovering in the sky above Archway - spreading panic among residents below.
Unidentified flying orange objects stopped traffic and left residents staring skyward in disbelief at around 5.30pm on Thursday.
Islington police received four calls within a matter of minutes.
Witness Alix McAlister, 34, a market stall trader from Bredgar Road, Archway, said: "I just picked up my son from nursery in Bredgar Road. I had just come out of the door when I noticed what was going on in the sky.
"There were a group of them - 10 to 15 of them moving together. My first impression was that they reminded me of a squadron of aeroplanes in formation. But they didn't have a proper formation and they were all moving at the same speed.
"I thought for a while that something was happening in the centre of London. Bombs and planes crossed my mind. But I realised very quickly that they didn't look like any aircraft I'd seen before.
"They were coming from the north and moving south. And then they kind of stopped and they were hovering. There was no sound. They seemed to fade away and I saw more coming and then they stopped. It lasted about 10 minutes."
Islington police informed Contact International UFO Research about the sightings. Soon after another witness contacted the Oxford-based organisation, which is devoted to solving the mystery of UFOs, and described what he saw.
A spokesman for Contact International said: "He told me he was picking his daughter up from school and he saw many people looking up in the air. Traffic had stopped and people were staring.
"He said he saw between 12 and 15 orange lights travelling across the sky. Then they would stop and then they went upwards.
Royal Roads University, B.C., Canada - February 2, 2007 - There's way more going on at Hatley Castle than academic study and scholarly endeavours, a report by occult specialists suggests.
After an overnight visit to the landmark building at Royal Roads University in Colwood last fall, the investigators seem to have confirmed suspicions that the building is haunted, reporting they saw various male and female spirits, felt areas of strong energy in some rooms, and heard knocking from other areas.
"When we first arrived inside the castle, I saw a greyish mist ... on the staircase in the main foyer area -- it appeared to have a long skirt," one of the investigators said in the report.
"In the basement, I heard the sound of drums. I felt the spirit down there was male and connected to the military."
The findings are part of a report by B.C. SPIRITS, a Vancouver-based non-profit organization that investigates ghostly encounters. The university released the report yesterday.
Hatley Castle was built by coal baron James Dunsmuir in 1908. It was later used as part of a military college, and now the university.
The six investigators, accompanied by technicians and university staff, visited the building on Sept. 30, 2006, between 10:10 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. when no one else was inside. Data was collected with still and video cameras, as well as recorders for sound and temperature.
Shortly after midnight, an investigator looking at photos heard whispering, which he said didn't come from anyone in his group.
When one of the group called out, "If there is anyone present, would you please give us a sign?" there was the sound of "distinct knocks" that seemed to respond whenever the question was repeated.
One of the investigators began to feel very warm to the point where she felt feverish. As minutes passed, she returned to normal.
On the fourth floor, an investigator felt "a male presence watching us."
In the billiard room, one investigator spotted a little girl in the corner wearing a hat with a ribbon on it. Another felt a male's presence there that she said was named Robert.
In the third-floor boardroom, investigators felt "a very strong energy."
Outside the castle, an investigator heard the sound of horses while another heard the clanging of a bell.
University spokeswoman Stephanie Slater, who accompanied the investigators, said she's not surprised at the report's findings because it reflects what she heard and saw that night.
"They want to come back and do another investigation next fall so we'll certainly accommodate them."
