His Heart Was Still In Ireland

In July 1997, I received a telephone call from a cheerful lady who was answering my newspaper ad for autographs and old documents. This is my actual means of making a living. I have been a collector and dealer of autographs for over 25 years. She stated she lived in Thurmont, Maryland and that she had a steamer trunk full of artifacts and documents, mostly from the late 1800’s. We made an appointment for me to come to her home the following day.

It was late afternoon when I arrived and the first thing I noticed was the house, a beautiful Victorian style house painted deep brown with many high hedges and thick pines. A stereotypical “haunted house” we used to see in the old horror movies. I parked the car in the front and walked up the steep pavement and porch steps, each footstep on the porch creaked and moaned. I knocked on the large wooden door and almost immediately the door opened and a pleasant woman reached out her hand for mine and introduced herself. “Just call me Mary, everybody else does” she said. I said “OK, Mary. Thank you for inviting me to your wonderful home.” That was no overstatement, this place was like a step into the past…gasoliers, pedestal sinks, sconces, bronzes, etc.

She motioned to the large sitting room where a steamer chest was sitting by a beautiful daybed. She explained that her late father had collected the contents and simply placed everything in the steamer trunk. He had an interest in documents that described historic events. As well, he had collected several older autographs. The trunk was used by him when he immigrated from Ireland in the 1918.

I opened the lid and was hit in the face by the typical musty aroma of old paper. I started to sift through the items and quickly read over the papers to see exactly what was before me. Many of the items were personal letters written in Gaelic. Included were soldiers correspondence from France, no doubt during the First World War. Then I came across a 7x9 inch photo of King George V of Great Britain that was signed by the monarch. As I touched the piece, I knew there was a history behind it.

I sat motionless for a minute or so, long enough to be noticed by Mary. She inquired if anything was wrong? I told her that I got a sense of hatred and pain when I touched this photograph. She then noticed what I was holding and sighed….then tried to hold back tears. I explained to her that I was able to sense residual feelings and events and that I had performed paranormal investigations for many years. She smiled and told me why she was displaying tearful emotions.

Mary explained that her father was a member of the Irish resistance in Dublin and that he had always blamed King George V for the death of his brother during the 1916 “Easter Rising”. Her father was also captured by the British troops but managed to escape and make his way to the United States. He always wanted to go back to Ireland to reunite with family but was afraid that he would still be considered a fugitive. He eventually got married and raised a family. He worked as a gunsmith and bricklayer. Mary said he would pace in his study daily wondering how his friends and family in Ireland were getting along. In 1935, he had gathered enough money together to visit Ireland after he had received a visa. Then tragedy struck when her father suffered a severe stroke. The money he saved for his trip was used for his cremation and funeral.

Mary then stood up and said “please, follow me.” We walked down the hallway into a study and library. “This is where my father resides.” Mary stated. “I hear his footsteps and moans every night.” I was speechless. I asked her if she would mind if I tried to communicate with her father. She said “No, that’s not necessary. He wouldn’t understand…besides, he talks to me every evening.”

I did purchase the items and the steamer trunk. The signed photograph of King George V of Great Britain remains in my collection and continues to remind me of the sad Irish immigrant who simply wanted to see home one more time.

NOTE: this incident actually took place as described. Mary's recall of history may not have been totally correct but I felt that the encounter should be written as stated in her words. I continued to purchase pieces from Mary for several years after our original meeting. Sadly, Mary passed away in 2002 while on holiday...in Ireland. I was told her father's ashes were sent to Ireland to be mixed with Mary's ashes and scattered at an undisclosed location...Lon

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New Cattle Mutilation Report From Puelches Region, Argentina

Another animal was found mutilated in a field in the Puelches region, some 280 km distant from the city of Santa Rosa, the provincial capital of La Pampa. The specimen involved was a Hereford, known locally as "raza pampa" (Pampa breed).

The animal presented typical incisions on one of its jaws, and was also missing one ear and inner ear, an eye, and had had all of its anal structure removed. The event took place at the Las Piletas ranch.

The owner, who works in the area, says that "lights" are frequently seen in the region and that in the month of April, during a warm evening, he was in the backyard accompanied by his son when the night "was suddenly turned to day" as a very large, bright object hovered over one of the cattle pens.

Terrified, both witnesses entered the house and monitored the strange object's maneuvers, as it hovered for some minutes and then took off at dizzying speed into space. None of the farm animals were injured on that occasion.

An aspect that intrigued them was the fact that not even dogs would approach the dead animal. Neither would the farmer's horse, which refused to approach the carcass despite its rider's insistence. The man was forced to dismount and approach the mutilated cow on foot.

This episode does not surprise them in the least, as they saw the strange incisions on dead animals during the 2002/2003 mutilation wave.

Source:
CEUFO

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The Haunting of Penfield Reef Lighthouse

Since 1874, the Penfield Lighthouse has alerted boaters to the hazards of Penfield Reef, that extends for over a mile. It has also had a reputation for being haunted by a lighthouse keeper, who, anxious to see his family for the Christmas holidays in 1916, headed toward shore in a small rowboat.

Frederick Jordan, the keeper, never made it. His boat capsized and as Jordan's assistant watched helplessly, Jordan drifted away, never to be seen again -- at least not in the flesh.

Legend has it that Jordan's successor once claimed to see a hazy presence coming out of the dead keeper's former room, and after looking around the station, found the logbook had been taken down and opened to the page that described Jordan's death.

Others have reported the light not flashing properly, for no apparent reason, though the problems were attributed to the atmospheric conditions, and still other boaters claim they see the ghost of the keeper guiding them to safety in bad weather.

Plans by the Coast Guard in 1969 to tear down the granite structure and replace it with a pipe tower met with vocal opposition and the original structure still stands.

The lighthouse was automated in 1971 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. Ownership of Penfield was transferred in 2008 to Beacon Preservation, which plans to use it a research facility.
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The Haunting


On December 22, 1916. Lighthouse Keeper Frederick A. Jordan (sometimes spelled Jordon) rowed a dory for the mainland, to join his family for Christmas. The sea was rough, and about 150 yards (140 m) northwest of the lighthouse, the boat capsized. Assistant Keeper Rudolph Iten said he was unable to launch a boat against a strong wind and an outgoing tide, and so he could only witness Jordan's disappearance into the water. Jordan's body was soon recovered, and Iten was absolved of blame for the death and became the next keeper.

According to a local legend, Jordan has haunted the place ever since. Iten wrote in the keeper's log that Jordan's ghost appeared two weeks later. Iten wrote that the ghost floated down the tower's stairs before dissolving into the darkness, and Iten said he found the log opened to the page that recorded the man's death. Iten also said the Penfield light began "behaving strangely" when the ghost appeared.

Jeremy D'Entremont, author of The Lighthouses of Connecticut, said that since Iten had tried to save the man, the new keeper would be unlikely to make light of Jordan's death by fabricating a ghost tale. Other lighthouse keepers later said Jordan's ghost appeared to them, and Iten even got them to sign affidavits describing the apparitions.

In one tale, Jordan was said to have pulled two boys from the water in 1942 after their boat capsized near Penfield Light. The boys said a man rescued them, but they couldn't find him when they went to the lighthouse to thank him. The boys identified Jordan as their rescuer after seeing his picture, the story goes.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penfield_Reef_Light

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Monterey, CA Native Sets Sights On Bigfoot

The wilderness is pitch-black at night and Monterey's Bart Cutino says he and his colleagues like it that way as they try to solve one of the enduring mysteries of folklore.

Cutino, 35, is an unabashed, unapologetic member of The Bigfoot Research Organization, a diverse group of about 200 researchers and adventurers. They wander through the deep woods for days at a time in search of a legendary creature — indeed, they believe there are thousands of them — inhabiting the forests of North America and the world.

The vast majority, they're convinced, are in the Pacific Northwest. Cutino says there have been at least 10 sightings over the years in Monterey County, the most intriguing by a University of Southern California psychology professor who says he saw one at dusk at the Fort Hunter Liggett military base while boar hunting in 2002.

"Sometimes I'll just drive through the forest with the headlights off, moving at about 4 mph, using a thermal-imaging unit to see every living creature. I'll do that for seven or eight hours at a time," Cutino, who was born and raised in Monterey, says.

Other times, he and fellow researchers will go out in pairs or small groups, watching, waiting, listening and searching in the darkness for any evidence of a mostly nocturnal animal with an eternal life-span that got its nickname from a newspaper in 1958.

The "Bigfoot" moniker, he says, makes many of his fellow researchers wince because it implies to too many people that there is only one. It is believed to be a shy, enigmatic, probably mythical creature that reveals itself for precious seconds at a time, almost always to somebody without a camera or a camcorder.

Misinformation and pranksters have further belittled the ongoing quest to find the real-life Sasquatches, believed to be wood apes.

'It wasn't scary'

Cutino, an associate with NCW Group Wealth Management in Monterey, believes there are actually about 6,000 to 7,000 in North America alone — and is convinced that there's nothing mythical about them.

Indeed, on Aug. 18, 2007, he feels certain he saw one on Chinook Pass, near Naches, Wash., during an outing he took with about 14 friends, including several other Bigfoot researchers.

According to a report he filed that summer for the Bigfoot Research Organization, he was standing a short distance from his campsite around midnight when he heard the breaking of a branch. He decided to check out the sound with a hand-held thermal-imaging unit, a device that uses body heat to make living things visible in the darkness.

What he saw 50 yards down a path appeared at first to be human being peering at him from behind a large tree, peeking first around one side of the trunk, then the other.

"About 20 to 25 seconds later, it stepped out from behind the tree and dropped on all fours, knees on the ground, arms extended and did this little head rotation in my direction," Cutino says. "At that point I knew what it was, and it was surreal. It wasn't scary. I just couldn't believe it was happening."

He says the Sasquatch propped itself momentarily onto its right shoulder and inched itself forward, at which point Cutino began snapping his fingers, trying to get the attention of a colleague who was 30 yards away, near a truck containing recording equipment.

"Every time I snapped my fingers, this thing would make a full-body, convulsive-type movement — very agile, very animalistic — and it would pause-freeze every time I stopped snapping my fingers," Cutino says. "Then it rotated back onto its right shoulder, put a hand up next to its face, and splayed out the hand so I could clearly see all five digits on the hand."

The creature stood up, went down again, then stood again before Cutino made a decision to run in the opposite direction, toward his friend with the recording equipment. By the time his colleague got the complicated recording equipment set up and directed, the Sasquatch was gone, Cutino says.

He's convinced

Based on measurements taken later, using a 6-foot-3, 175-pound colleague as a model in the same location, Cutino estimates that the creature stood about 7 feet tall and weighed up to 575 pounds, with the vast majority of the weight in its upper torso.

The head was relatively small and unusually round, and its arms were an astounding length, perhaps even longer than its legs.

That there is no photographic evidence is disappointing, but Cutino says it didn't temper his exhilaration that night.

"At the time, I'd been going out there looking for one of these for about four years, and wasn't 110 percent convinced that they really existed, even though I had talked to a lot of people who said they had seen one," he says. "But after that night, I'd bet everything I love and I'd sit back and smile, knowing that Bigfoot is real. That's how certain I am of what I saw out there."

Legendary Sasquatch

Cutino hails from a well-known Monterey family. His father, Bert, is co-founder and chief operating officer of the Sardine Factory restaurant and a principal in Cannery Row Co. and Foursome Development Co.

His late uncle, Pete, was a Hall of Fame water polo coach at the University of California-Berkeley. Both of his grandfathers, first-generation Sicilian immigrants, were fishermen on Monterey Bay during the heyday of the sardine era.

"Both of my nanus — my mom's dad and my dad's dad — used to see our version of the Loch Ness Monster out there in the bay. All the fishermen called it 'Bobo,'" Cutino says. "Looking back at all the reports, I'm guessing that it might have been an oar fish — a very lengthy, serpentine-like fish that looks like it has a mane."

Those tales, plus an interest his brother, Mark, had in Bigfoot, captured Bart's fascination when he was only 6. He began reading everything he could about the legendary Sasquatch, watching TV reports and later scouring the Internet for information. Over the past six years, he's spent over 200 nights in the forest.

Sightings have been reported in every state except Hawaii and Rhode Island, numbering in the thousands, with Washington (465) and California (411) at the top of the list. Nine Canadian provinces, and seven other countries — led by Malaysia, with 36 — also have turned in reports.

Skeptical scientists

The vast majority of the scientific world considers the Bigfoot phenomena to be largely bunk. Scientists have expressed doubts that such a species could exist in numbers great enough to perpetuate itself, wondered how such a creature could find enough food to sustain itself and noted that nobody has ever found the remains of a Sasquatch. They have also questioned the validity of the famous Patterson-Gimlin film, shot in Bluff Creek in 1967, that purports to show a female Sasquatch retreating from her pursuers.

But Bigfoot researchers have arguments to combat each of those concerns.

"People have a right to be skeptical, especially when you consider an evidence pile littered with hoaxes, and what a poor job we've collectively done presenting our case as researchers," Cutino concedes. "However, even sifting through the debris, one will find more viable, intriguing physical evidence and eyewitness testimony than 99 percent of our court systems receive."

Technology, he says, is finally catching up with the needs of researchers, and he believes irrefutable images of a living Sasquatch are likely to be captured in the next few years.

Until that happens, and as long as his family — including his wife and baby daughter — remains supportive, he intends to continue his quest.

"My idea of a good time might be unpopular, being a Peninsula resident, but everybody else can have their tee times," Cutino says. "Just put me in the middle of a dark redwood forest at 3 a.m. and I'm the happiest guy in the world."

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Reports of Distraught Michael Jackson Fans Committing Suicide

The man behind the world's biggest online Michael Jackson fan club has said heartbroken followers of the star have committed suicide because of his death.

Gary Taylor, president and owner of MJJcommunity.com, said he understood the tragedies had mostly taken place outside of the UK but he believed one may have been British.

"I know there has been an increase, I now believe the figure is 12. I believe there may have been one Briton who has taken their life," he said.

"It is a serious situation that these people are going through but Michael Jackson would never want this. He would want them to live."

Jesse Jackson, a friend of the singer, has recorded a YouTube film on the site urging fans not to "self destruct".

He said: "This is a time when hearts are heavy. There is great pain but great cause to celebrate Michael's life.

"It made Michael happy saying 'We Are The World'. Don't self destruct.

"We fall down sometimes, we get back up. That's the right thing to do. In Michael's name let's live together as brothers and sisters and not die apart as fools."

MJJcommunity.com was formed 10 years ago by Mr Taylor, a London office manager, and has more than 14,000 online users and 30 staff worldwide.

He said the singer's death had left his fans on the forum "in a surreal place".

"They can't accept it, they feel in some sort of different reality," he said.

"I'm stunned that he's dead. One minute he is coming here for concerts and the next he is gone.

"I think the funeral will be where the reality kicks in that he is gone and won't be coming back, there will be a huge depression in the fan community when that happens."

Thousands of Michael Jackson fans are expected to gather for a vigil on July 13 at the O2 Arena where the star was due to perform.

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Video: Pink / Green UFO - Mexico City, Mexico - 6/22/09

Prof. Ana Luisa Cid writes to inform about yet another sighting - substantiated by videotape - in the vicinity of Mexico City International Airport (MCIA):

"Lic. Daniel Sánchez Rosales recorded a luminous shape in the skies over Mexico City, in a neighborhood near the airport, around 20:00 hours on June 22, 2009.

"The witness remarks that he saw the same object the next day, adding that in both cases he was accompanied by his nephew (corroborating witness)

"It should be noted that I received a similar videotape in 2008, taken by Ing. Victor Gonzalez in Texpepan, Mexico State."

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Crop Circles Appear in Southern Russia’s Krasnodar Region

Mysterious pictograms consisting of several circles have appeared on a wheat field in Southern Russia’s Krasnodar region. Was it someone’s joke or did aliens visit us?

Sky watchers in southern Russia are trying to explain the appearance of geometrically perfect crop circles in a field. The mystery has attracted dozens of UFO experts in search of extraterrestrial life.

From a bird’s eye view you can clearly see the perfect geometrical figures: giant circles and connecting lines drawn on a wheat field.

Who or what caused them to appear overnight remains a mystery.

The site is near the small village of Dinskaya in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, right next to a busy highway. Nonetheless the circles usually appear at night and nobody saw the culprits.

Local reporters have already turned it into a landmark and families go to take photos.

According to enthusiasts from Kosmopoisk (Space Search group), it’s not the first time such a phenomenon has been discovered. Group members have visited the spot to carry out research and film the area from an unmanned helicopter.

“The figure consists of eight circles and rings around them that are interconnected,” the group coordinator, Vadim Chernobrov, told Interfax news agency. “Their sizes vary from 5 to 25 meters.”

He said they had known in advance of an approximate date when signs would appear.
How do they appear?

Most people are certain that the circles were made by aliens, although some give the credit to local farmers, saying the figures are not that hard to make. All you need to do is stretch a rope across and walk along it, and the wheat will be pressed down.

The Kosmopoisk website reports that according to area residents, the night the circles appeared shining balls were seen in the sky. The experts now seek to determine whether the marks in the fields are man-made or whether their origin can be explained by someone’s joke.

The activist from the group set up special “watching points” to spot the appearance of the pictograms in the areas where they might appear, judging by past experience. They choose the highest places in the area.

According to Chernobrov, each time it happens the same way. At about 1.15 AM some animals start to show anxiety, especially cows and dogs. But in exactly five minutes they all calm down and complete silence falls within a radius of 20-30 kilometers from the place where the circle will later appear, and no sounds of frogs or insects can be heard.

Then the observers notice a shining light in the field, it can last from a few minutes to several hours. Sometimes people begin to panic by this time and feel a desire to leave the zone. Also, from time to time cars won’t start and mobile phones and cameras may be down.

Farmers fear

The mysterious phenomenon hit several areas in the region. Pictograms appeared not only in Dinsky district, but also on one of the fields near the town of Armavir. But the Ufologists had no opportunity to study them: the farmer who spotted the circles was scared that the mysterious things will make superstitious customers refuse to buy his wheat, so he leveled the pictograms with a tractor.

The activists of Kosmopoisk often complain about locals. When similar things happen in the West, many farmers use it as an opportunity to earn money from the sensation. But in Russia many people fear radiation (while its level doesn’t rise in the “enigmatic zones”) and, as they call it, “dangerous” wheat in the area. So they do everything to trample the pictograms down.

While skeptics are trying to prove that the circles are a hoax, Ufologists from groups like “CosmoResearch” are expecting another visit from outer space.

Their tools are simple, but their intentions are serious. To catch little green men, or whoever may come out at night, the Ufologists have night vision goggles and magnetic field analyzers that beep whenever the magnetic field changes.

Many “CosmoResearch” members have degrees in engineering and physics, but they say the circles are too complex to be forged by humans.

World enigma

Just like in the movies, most Ufologists would love to get in touch with the extraterrestrials. Chernobrov, who has spent more than a decade exploring the unknown, says this may happen someday, but for now even observing the crop circles could lead to a breakthrough if we break their secret code.

“You cannot forge these figures easily, like in Photoshop. It’s a complex matter of non-human origin. According to many we are already being contacted, and crop circles are like text messages that we have to decode,” Chernobrov says.

Groups of enthusiasts investigate the pictograms in the fields and work in 35 countries throughout the world. Similar phenomena have been reported in the UK, the US, Canada, Denmark, Spain, and Germany.

Some researchers say that the geography of the circles is not chaotic, claiming that if one draws the lines on the map, connecting the places in Europe where they appear, he will draw several parallel arcs.

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New Apartment High Rise 'Falls Over' in Shanghai, China

A construction worker was killed on Saturday after a 13-story block of flats collapsed in China, highlighting fears that building safety standards are being overlooked in the country's rush to modernization.

The block, in the outskirts of the eastern city of Shanghai, toppled around dawn and ended up lying on its side in a muddy construction field.

Construction work on the block appeared to have been nearly completed, with windows fitted and a tiled facade. Other identical blocks in the same property development were still standing nearby.

The official Xinhua News Agency said that a 28-year-old worker, surnamed Xiao, had gone into the building to get his tools and tried to jump out the window when the building fell. He was from Anhui province in eastern China.

The accident occurred in the "Lotus Riverside" residential community in Shanghai's Minxing district.

Sub-standard workmanship has been a major concern in China's building sector, as the country rolls out enormous city expansions and finishes off vast infrastructure projects to keep pace with fast economic growth.

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Whales May Equal Apes In Human Character and Emotion

As the annual International Whaling Commission meeting stumbles to a close, unable to negotiate a compromise between whaling opponents and people who’ve killed more than 40,000 whales since 1985, scientists say these aquatic mammals are more than mere animals. They might even deserve to be considered people.

Not human people, but as occupying a similar range on the spectrum as the great apes, for whom the idea of personhood has moved from preposterous to possible. Chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos possess self-awareness, feelings and high-level cognitive powers. According to a steadily gathering body of research, so do whales and dolphins.

In fact, their capacities could be even more ancient than our own, dating to an evolutionary explosion in brain size that took place millions of years before the last common ancestor of the great apes existed.

“If an alien came down anytime prior to about 1.5 million years ago to communicate with the ‘brainiest’ animals on Earth, they would have tripped over our own ancestors and headed straight for the oceans to converse with the dolphins,” said Lori Marino, an evolutionary neurobiologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

The idea of whale personhood makes all the more haunting the prospect that Earth’s cetaceans, many of whom were hunted to the brink of extinction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are still threatened.

At the annual International Whaling Commission being held this week in Portugal, officials failed to curb the continuing killing of some 1,000 whales every year, mostly by hunters from Japan, Norway and Iceland. Many scientists say populations are still too fragile to support commercial hunting or, in the case of Japan, “scientific research” that appears to kill an especially high number of pregnant females.

Mortality from hunting, however, may be the least of the whale’s worries. Industrial pollution has suffused their bodies with heavy metals and toxins. Noise pollution drowns out the vocalizations on which whales rely to find food and navigate. Overfishing punches holes in oceanic webs of life. Whales and dolphins are also accidentally caught in nets and struck by ships.

Such collisions appear to be pushing the North Atlantic right whale to oblivion, and the IWC says that ship strikes “should be reduced to zero as soon as possible.” But though the U.S. has set speed limits off its northeast coast, the World Shipping Council has fought such measures internationally. It’s also possible that Navy sonar tests, which may have caused mass beachings in the Bahamas, are to blame. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down restrictions on the tests. And though President Obama has noble intentions on ocean policy, pollution and overfishing is a global problem.

nur02002In the midst of this, research has continued on whales and dolphins, which have long been difficult to study. Whales can’t be kept in captivity. Scientists require expensive ships and tools that, despite their sophistication, produce relatively low-resolution readings of whale life.

Most findings come from bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, sperm whales and humpback whales — the species that scientists have painstakingly studied for a few decades, and now continue their work with improved gene sequencing and song analysis tools. In these four species, scientists see considerable social complexity and individual distinction. They talk of whales and dolphins in terms of cultures and societies, and say cetaceans possess qualities of personhood. They say the same is likely true of other species, who simply haven’t been studied yet.

“It’s only due to our lack of knowledge that humans remain this exclusive species,” said Shane Gero, a Dalhousie University marine biologist. “We’re getting a lot of long-term studies in cetaceans, hitting multiple generations, and we’re finally able to get at these questions.” Though there’s still more evidence for primate than cetacean personhood, Gero said accumulating research “will start tipping the scales.”

Gero trained under Dalhousie University biologist Hal Whitehead, who started studying whales in 1977. Researchers from his lab and that of St. Andrews University biologist Luke Rendell, another former Whitehead student, have studied sperm whales around the world. They’re responsible for much of what’s known about the whales’ social behavior, which involves wide variations in group formation, hunting and child-rearing. Groups even appear to communicate in their own unique dialect.

“Based on what we know, I’d guess that cetacean culture is intermediate between humans and chimpanzees. Not in material culture, but in most other respects,” said Whitehead.

Culture is an especially important measure of personhood in whales, since it’s difficult to administer the sorts of tests that have found chimpanzees to be capable of basic math, altruism, laughter and complex communication, the latter of which can be neurologically imaged in real-time.

dolphinrecognitionBut if cetaceans can’t take these tests, they have met one critical laboratory benchmark of higher cognition: self-recognition. With Wildlife Conservation Society cognitive scientist Diana Reiss, Lori Marino showed that bottlenose dolphins can use mirrors to investigate marks hidden on their bodies. “When they look in the mirror, they’re saying, ‘That’s me,’” said Marino. “They have a sense of self through time.”

And in a much-celebrated first documented example of tool use in marine mammals, a family of dolphins in Australia uses sponges to hunt.

Cetaceans even surpass most primates in their use of sound. “We’ve known for some time now that the communication systems of these animals is more complex than we can imagine,” said Marino. “People are starting to use some interesting statistical methods to look at their vocal repertoires, and they’re finding structural complexity that suggests there may be something like grammar, syntax, even language.”

Fueling the evolution of cetacean communication is an ability, observed in dolphins, humpback whales and sperm whales, to pass songs and codas between generations and individuals.

“One of the ways in which dolphins are unusual among mammals is their ability to imitate sounds. Most apes are barely able to modify the sounds that they make vocally, based on what they hear,” said Peter Tyack, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “To be able to learn sounds and incorporate them is really important for human communication.”

According to Tyack, the individually distinctive calls of dolphins may even be equivalent to names. “That’s an open research question,” he said.

In addition to cultural evidence, researchers who’ve studied cetacean brains — many of which are among the largest in the animal kingdom — have found highly developed analogues to human structures. Whale brains appear to have undergone massive growth about 30 million years ago, a process linked in primates to the development of complex cognition and culture.

“The parts of the brain that are involved with processing emotion and social relationships are enormously complex, and in many cetaceans even more highly elaborated than in the human brain,” said Marino. “If we assume that the limbic system is doing what it’s doing in all mammals, then something very high-level is going on.”

As for the nature of a whale’s inner life, it’s difficult to say but possible to speculate.

“My strong suspicion is that a lot of sperm whale life revolves around social issues,” said Whitehead. “They’re nomadic, live in permanent groups, and are dependent on each other for everything. Social structure is vital to them. The only constant thing in their world is their social group. I’d guess that a lot of their life is paying attention to social relationships.”

These relationships would be “interestingly different from ours, for a variety of reasons,” continued Whitehead. “There’s nowhere to hide, they can use sound to form an image of each other’s insides — whether you’re pregnant, hungry, sick. In a three-dimensional habitat, it’s probably much harder to say something is mine, or yours, whether it’s a piece of food or a potential mate.”

Tyler Schulz, another researcher in Whitehead’s lab, recently refined a method for linking sperm whale codas to the individual who composed them. That should help researchers get an even better appreciation of personal traits.

“He found that in one group, most of the animals had a similar repertoire of calls, but the mother of a baby had a different one,” said Whitehead. “As we analyze the data, we’ll be able to figure out whether that was the mother’s originally vocabulary, and she was a weirdo, or if maybe that was just baby talk. We all know women who change their vocabularies when they have babies.”

********************

Are you interested in the paranormal, cryptozoology, UFOs and conspiracies? Go to Phantoms and Monsters Wiki and become a member of this unique network. Start a page on a subject or add your input to an existing page or thread. Phantoms and Monsters updates are posted daily at Twitter. Signup today! Find me on Facebook

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Photo: Trail Camera 5/26/09 - Sierra National Forest

(click to enlarge image)
(Copyright - David Raygoza)

I received these images from the SangerParanormalSociety.com Sunday with the following note:

Please look top left hand corner. You need to zoom in. Feel free to crop it and clean it up or go to my web site where its already cleaned up. If you use the picture on this email, please put on there Copyright David Raygoza. He is a BFRO investigator who was with me and this picture is his property. We are going back this Wednesday to take measurements of the tree and see if there are any tracks or hair samples. I am also going to stand in the same place and have a picture taken. This is not a bear. Look how long the arms are. They go past the knees. Also, the face looks more human than bear. Jeffrey Gonzalez

NOTE: I'm not going to comment on these images at this time. The images were from a motion sensored trail camera in the Sierra National Forest...image dated 5/26/2009 at 12:13 PM. The camera was retrieved June 7th 2009 at an undisclosed location. Hopefully, further evidence and followup information will be forwarded to me...Lon

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Alien Message Crop Circle - South Field, Wiltshire

NOTE: Amazing crop circle found in South Field, near Alton Priors, Wiltshire. Seems to indicate an alien message of some kind...Lon

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Anomalous Strangers in Araucania, Chile

It was the winter of 1997. Mr. EJFP, 43, a security guard at a major industrial concern in Malleco (Chile) was monitoring Section 22, occupied by a water treatment plant some 20 meters distant from the main plant. The watchman was alone and pulling the 15:00 to 23:00 shift. He stood near a light post in a corner, as the guard post afforded poor visibility. It was a dark night, overcast but with no rain. Toward the northern reaches of the compound there was a wire fence, 10 meters away from the position he occupied. At 21:15 hours, his attention was drawn by something immediately beyond the barbed wire fence.

A person stood there facing him, average height and completely dressed in white. He could not tell if the garment was a tunic, but it was clearly visible in the darkness. The watchman, as was his duty, challenged the arrival, as no one was supposed to come close to the facility. But the figure did not move, nor did it issue any sound or word whatsoever.

Precisely at that moment, a vehicle conveying the watchman's immediate supervisor approached the area. The watchman turned to look at the arriving vehicle, but when the turned to look at the figure in white, it was no longer there. No shrubs or trees could have offered concealment - the figure simply vanished. The dim light kept the watchman from making out any features on the figure. He asked his superior if he had perhaps seen something beyond the perimeter with his vehicle's headlights, but the reply was negative. Other security guards patrolling the area had already remarked that "strange things" were sometimes seen in the area.

Two months later, while pulling a duty shift from 23:00 to 07:00, Mr. EJFP was assigned to watch the La Laguna sector, a forested area some 200 meters from the main plant. He only had a medium-sized flashlight with him, and it was turned off. At around 04:00, while walking along a trail that crossed the woods, EJFP noticed the silhouette of a very tall person approaching him along the path. This figure was somewhat hunched over and walked noiselessly.

When the figure came within a distance of four meters, the watchman turned on his flashlight and pointed it at the intruder's face. He couldn't see any features beyond the fact that he had two glowing eyes "that were not those of a human being". The figure was dressed completely in black and was clearly looking at the sentry. EJFP felt fear, turned around and made a run back to the public roadway some 200 meters away, remaining there until dawn, when his shift ended.

He claimed to have seen the outline of a head and shoulders, but the overwhelming fear caused him to run for safety. EJFP added that another watchman fainted when he found himself in the presence of this tall, glowing-eyed presence. At least six similar encounters have occured in the vicinity of this plant, and it is even common to see UFOs; on one occasion, large fleet of unknown vehicles, looking like arrowheads, flew over the area no more that 100 meters over the ground.

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Museum's Spirits Play Out the Past

Hunters shifted quietly on cold, white tile or slick hardwood floors. Very rarely would anyone speak above a whisper. Their ears and eyes kept alert listening for an unexplained sound.

“Did someone do something unjust to you” one person asked. There was no audible response because the entity being questioned was possibly one of the many ghosts that reside on the third floor of the Vaughan Smitherman Museum.

Friends of the Vaughan Smitherman Museum sponsored the Paranormal Weekend, which was held Friday and Saturday at the museum.

Though there were plenty of seasoned veteran ghost hunters, there were a couple going on their first investigation.

“This is my first time doing anything like this,” said Kathy Boothman said. “I’ve wanted to do it, but for whatever reason I haven’t until now. I’ve seen spirits of loved ones as a child and adult. I wanted to know if it is possible to hone in the gift.”

Boothman lived in Selma for a time in the 1970s when her then husband was stationed at Craig Air Force base. She said she enjoyed coming back to Selma especially to see one particular sight.

“We had a friend who lived in the old slave quarters above a house and we would go up to the widow’s peek there,” she said. “Every time we went up it was just a creepy feeling. My husband and I got to go back there today and it was really neat.”

Southern Paranormal Researchers, Montgomery, and a few other historians and paranormal investigators led the weekend. Cindy Stoudenmire told the history of the museum and Alston Fitts filled everyone in on the interesting history of Selma. Paranormal investigators gave lectures on everything from equipment and research to how paranormal and religion fit together.

Each night concluded with an investigation into an area building – Vaughan Smitherman Museum, The Foundry and Adams Grove Church and cemetery.

Saturday afternoon the group gathered to discuss their findings of the museum.

Shawn Sellers, clairvoyant and founder of Southern Paranormal Researchers, said the museum has a lot of residual energy, which is like an imprint on time.

“I always love coming to the Vaughan Smitherman Museum,” he said. “The history here lends to a lot of residual energy plus there has been a lot of personal experience in the building. This is one of my favorite places to come and I do this with the Southern Paranormal Researchers all over the United States.”

Participants of the weekend agreed that there was something paranormal in the museum. Some smelled smoke or felt a drop in temperature in certain spots in rooms. Southern Paranormal Researchers used a ghost box to try to communicate with anyone on the other side willing to communicate. A ghost box is an instrument that produces random voltage to create raw audio from an AM tuner. It is then amplified and fed into an echo chamber. The machines create audio bits and white noise that ghosts can manipulate into forming.

Through the machine, two stories emerged, but stable communication was not established.

Though the weekend was coming to a close, many hunters looked forward to the next great pursuit, but reflected on the weekend in Selma.

“I love coming to Selma and helping out people or just doing hunts like this weekend’s,” Sellers said. “It has a lot of ghost activity. I look it as a smaller Savannah.

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Big Cat Sighting and Investigation in Winslow, Maine

A reported sighting of a mountain lion late Monday afternoon by a woman and her sons has caught the interest of state experts.

Informed of the Winslow sighting on Tuesday, Wally Jakubas, mammal-group leader for Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the agency's point person on mountain lions, said there had been another possible mountain lion report last week in the northern Augusta area, in which a feces sample (also known as scat) was recovered and is being analyzed.

Although around 20 sightings are reported annually, there have been only two scientifically confirmed cases of mountain lions in Maine: The first was in 1938 near the Maine-Quebec border and the second was in 1995 in Cape Elizabeth.

Mountain lions are also known as cougars and pumas. State officials believe most mountain lion sightings, if they're legitimate, are of animals that have been captive and are released.

"I'm intrigued," Jakubas said. "We had this report of the scat (in Augusta). I think the important thing is these are unconfirmed reports and the general history of these things is, when you look into them, they don't pan out."

Even so, the Winslow sighting "is a very convincing story," he said, and a state biologist from the department's Sidney office is investigating.

The sighting occurred around 4:45 p.m. Lin Stout said she and her sons Cullen, 9, and Liam, 5, were at a swing set in their backyard off South Ridge Drive when they saw the long tail bobbing through ferns and brush. They live on a 5-acre property within a subdivision that is surrounded by woods.

The tan tail, standing about 3 feet high, had a 3-inch, dark brown tip, Stout said. It was about 20 feet away, she said. Cullen ran back to the house; Liam and his mother watched.

"My 5-year-old says, 'Mommy, a lion's tail!' I said, 'It's not like a lion you see at the zoo; it's a mountain lion,'" Stout said.

Stout said they were about 30 feet away from the house and back deck. They froze in place as the tail disappeared back into the brush, silently.

"We did not hear any snaps of twigs, no crunches of leaves; it was like it was a ghost," Stout said. "My son said it's a ghost cat."

Stout said she and her son began slowly walking back toward the house when the animal stepped out from the woods -- in full view -- less than 20 feet away from them. Stout said she recognized the animal as a mountain lion, describing it as perhaps weighing 130 pounds, with a large cat-like face, yellow eyes, "huge" paws, and that long tail they had seen in the brush.

Racing through Stout's mind was the thought of what she would do if the animal leaped at them. She decided to drop to the ground and cover her son, if it came to that.

But Stout said the mountain lion seemed uninterested in them and focused on a nearby marsh area. Stout said they began slowly backing up because the mountain lion seemed not to be interested in them.

"It didn't look menacing to us; it didn't growl or show its teeth," Stout said. "It was looking at the marsh. I didn't feel that afraid; I felt more calm."

Then, as Stout picked up her son, the 5-year-old screamed.

"I think he realized then this was a very large animal and it was wild," she said. "That startled the animal, but it did not ever come at us."

That's also when Stout finally saw what the animal had been fixated on: a black, domestic cat that had wandered into the marsh area. Liam, she said, screamed, "Run kitty, run!"

Stout said the mountain lion then took one giant leap back into the woods -- without making a sound. The entire encounter with the animal in full view lasted perhaps 30 seconds, Stout said.

After the encounter, Stout contacted Charles Theobald, animal control officer for the Winslow Police Department.

The animal fit the description of an eastern mountain lion, Theobald said. He suggested that the Stouts take extra precautions when going out in the area -- such as having the kids wear bells.

"It's wildlife; it's Maine," Theobald said. "You're going to come across wildlife."

Over the years, many people have mistaken mountain lions and their tracks for bobcats, coyotes, foxes, even house-cats, Jakubas said.

But there's no evidence of a sustained, wild population of mountain lions in Maine, he said.

The nearest such populations are in Iowa and Michigan -- it's debated whether they are wild in Quebec -- and so legitimate sightings of mountain lions likely involve animals that have been released into the wild, he said.

********************

Are you interested in the paranormal, cryptozoology, UFOs and conspiracies? Go to Phantoms and Monsters Wiki and become a member of this unique network. Start a page on a subject or add your input to an existing page or thread. Phantoms and Monsters updates are posted daily at Twitter. Signup today! Find me on Facebook

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Good Golly, Miss Molly's!

Miss Molly's Bed and Breakfast (the building itself) was constructed in 1910. Over the years it has been home to a boarding house and a bordello in the 1940's. This tidbit would certainly explain why some of the ghosts' have an affinity for the male sex.

Besides prostitutes, there appears to be a tip-giving entity and a young girl who lived at the old hotel are among those who haunt Miss Molly's.

In 2008, the Texas Paranormal Advanced Research Team (TEXPART) investigated reports of the haunting. During their investigation, one team member reported having "a couple of hairs" pulled from the back of his head. Another reported feeling his neck being touched. All investigators had some type of physical contact to report.

Witnesses have reported seeing shadows, lights turning on and off with no explanation, cold spots, full-bodied apparitions, and the smell of perfume. Item's have come up missing only to later reappear and doors left unlocked can't be opened, as if they are being blocked by an unseen force.

Spirits from an intelligent haunting are able to make their presence known in physical ways, whether it be slamming doors, making strange sounds, or being vocal. If it shows itself, it will look the same as it did in life.
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Haunted History of Miss Molly's

Located in the middle of the Fort Worth Stockyards, Miss Molly’s is the oldest Bed and Breakfast in Fort Worth. Established as a boarding house in 1910 and called the Palace Rooms, it went through the prohibition period being called The Oasis and later as a Bordello in the 1940’s when it was called the Gayatte Hotel. Miss Molly’s is just old enough to have caught a glimpse of the Wild West and all of the time period of America’s speak-easy and bordello days. Its long history as a boarding house has included a vast number of residents. Apparently, some have decided to extend their stay. Perhaps the large amount of antiques and period pieces in the hotel remind them of the bawdy times that they shared there.

The seven themed rooms in the hotel all share stories of paranormal activity, with the Cattlemen’s and Cowboy rooms having some of the more famous sightings of apparitions. Visitations have also occurred in the current owner’s private room’s number eight and nine of a young girl, who is considered a former tenant of the hotel. Most of the sightings have involved the former working girls from the hotel’s days as a bordello.

The phenomena at Miss Molly’s includes full bodied apparitions, unexplained scents, items disappearing and reappearing, toilets flushing on their own, lights turning on and off, cold spots, unlocked doors refusing to open, and a variety of unidentified but entertaining sounds. According to the current owner, Dawn Street-Boyd, one housekeeper quit because she kept finding coins in rooms even though there had been no guests in that room and she had just finished cleaning only to return and find the coins where she had just cleaned.

Miss Molly’s has been visited by a number of paranormal investigation groups and is listed with Texas Christian University’s paranormal activity class, which makes regular visits to record the phenomena. Copies of unusual photos and tape recordings, as well as statements of the investigators and results are kept prominently in the common living area.

The hotel situated above Fort Worth’s Star Café takes visitors up a staircase to another era, period furnishings, furniture, and a number of stories about unexplained happenings provided with first hand accounts by the owner. Miss Molly’s is considered one of the most haunted properties in Fort Worth and one of the most active paranormal sites in Texas.

Source:
http://www.missmollyshotel.com/

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Video: The Brown Mountain Lights Phenomena - Burke County, NC

The Brown Mountain Lights are one of the most famous of North Carolina legends. They have been reported a dozen times in newspaper stories. They have been investigated at least twice by the U.S. Geological Survey. And they have attracted the attention of numerous scientists and historians since the German engineer, Gerard Will de Brahm, recorded the mysterious lights in the North Carolina mountains in 1771.

"The mountains emit nitrous vapors which are borne by the wind and when laden winds meet each other the niter inflames, sulphurates and deteriorates," said de Brahm. De Brahm was a scientific man and, of course, had a scientific explanation. But the early frontiersman believed that the lights were the spirits of Cherokee and Catawba warriors slain in an ancient battle on the mountainside.

One thing is certain, the lights do exist. They have been seen from earliest times. They appear at irregular intervals over the top of Brown Mountain - a long, low mountain in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. They move erratically up and down, visible at a distance, but vanishing as one climbs the mountain. From the Wiseman's View on Linville Mountain the lights can be seen well. They at first appear to be about twice the size of a star as they come over Brown Mountain. Sometimes they have a reddish or blue cast. On dark nights they pop up so thick and fast it's impossible to count them.

Source:
http://www.ibiblio.org/ghosts/bmtn.html
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More on the Brown Mountain Lights Phenomena

Brown Mountain lies in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Parkway with an elevation of only 2,600 feet. The Brown Mountain Lights of Burke County, near Morganton NC, have intrigued residents and visitors for hundreds of years. The lights are mentioned in local Native American mythology, and by Geraud de Brahm, a German engineer and the first white man to explore the region, in 1771. The lights have been described in many ways from being a glowing ball of fire, to being a bursting skyrocket, or a pale almost white light. The fact that they never seem the same is as fantastic as the lights themselves. At times they seem to drift slowly, fading and brightening and at other times they seem to whirl like pinwheels, then dart rapidly away.

One of the legends explaining the Brown Mountain Lights was of a planter from the low country who traveled to the mountains to hunt, and became lost. One of his slaves came to look for him and was seen searching through the hills with a lantern, night after night. Now, according to the legend, the old slave is gone, but his spirit remains and the old lantern still casts it's light.

Another such legend is of a woman who disappeared about 1850, the general suspicion was that her husband had killed her. Almost everyone in the community joined the search for her and one dark night while the search was on the strange lights appeared on Brown Mountain. Some of the searchers thought that this was the dead woman's spirit come back to haunt her murderer and warn the searchers to stop looking for her body. The search ended without a trace of her body, but long years afterwards a pile of bones was found under a cliff and were identified as the skeleton of the missing woman.

The Cherokee Indians were familiar with these lights as far back as the year 1200. According to Indian legend, a great battle was fought that year between the Cherokee and Catawba Indians near Brown Mountain. The Cherokees believed that the lights were the spirits of Indian maidens who went on searching through the centuries for their husbands and sweethearts who had died in the battle. Early frontiersman believed that the lights were the spirits of Cherokee and Catawba warriors slain in an ancient battle on the mountainside. Some say the lights are just a troop of candle-bearing ghosts destined to walk back and forth across the mountain forever.

Of the many scientific theories made to explain the Brown Mountain Lights, none have been proven. Some suggest that the lights are caused by a combination of several minerals and gases in the area. One geologist suggested that possibly deposits of radioactive uranium ore in the area may be responsible for producing the lights. Another suggests phosphorus, but this element oxidizes quickly and is not found here. Pitchblende Ore, from which radium is derived, has been mentioned, but the rays from radium are invisible.

Some scientists have advanced the theory that the lights are a mirage. Through some peculiar atmospheric condition they believe the glowing balls are reflections from Hickory, Lenoir, and other towns in the area. The only drawback to this theory is that the lights were clearly seen before the War between the States, long before electricity was used to produce light.

A U.S. Geological Survey decided in 1913 that the lights were locomotive headlights from the Catawba Valley south of Brown Mountain. However, three years later in 1916 a great flood that swept through the Catawba Valley knocked out the railroad bridges. It was weeks before the right-of-way could be repaired and the locomotives could once again enter the valley. Roads were also washed out and power lines were down. But the lights continued to appear as usual. It became apparent that the lights could not be reflections from locomotive or automobile headlights.

A second U.S. Geological Survey report disposes of the cause of the Brown Mountain Lights by saying they are due to the spontaneous combustion of marsh gases. But there are no marshy places on or about Brown Mountain.

The lights can be seen from as far away as Blowing Rock or the old Yonahlosse Trail over Grandfather Mountain some fifteen miles from Brown Mountain. At some points closer to Brown Mountain the lights seem large, resembling balls of fire from a Roman candle. Sometimes they may rise to various heights and fade slowly. Others expand as they rise, then burst high in the air like an explosion without sound.

Brown Mountain is located in the Pisgah National Forest, in the Blue Ridge mountains of Western North Carolina. There are several places where the lights can be seen, here are a few of the more popular places.

* Brown Mountain Overlook Located 20 miles north of Morganton, on NC highway 181, 1 mile south of the Barkhouse Picnic Area.
* Wiseman's View Overlook Located 5 miles south of the village of Linville Falls on Kistler Memorial Highway a.k.a Old NC 105 or State Road 1238.
* Lost Cove Cliffs Overlook Located on the Blue Ridge Parkway, at mile-post 310, 2 miles north of the NC highway 181 junction.

The Brown Mountain Lights are a somewhat rare occurrence, and are not always visible. To see the lights you need good visibility between your viewpoint and Brown Mountain. Clear weather conditions with little or no moonlight are the most favorable for viewing the lights, but the lights have been seen during hazy conditions and light rain. The lights have been reported to be seen at all hours of the night between sundown and sunrise, but the best noted times are at 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM. The locals also say they are much more prominent in the months of September and October.

One thing is certain, the lights do exist. They have been seen from earliest times. They appear at irregular intervals over the top of Brown Mountain. They move erratically up and down, are visible at a distance, but vanish as one climbs the mountain. From the Wiseman's View on Linville Mountain the lights can be seen well. They at first appear to be about twice the size of a star as they come over Brown Mountain. Sometimes they have a reddish or blue cast. On dark nights they pop up so thick and fast it's impossible to count them.

Who knows what causes the Brown Mountain Lights, but if you view them, as I have, you can say you have viewed a natural phenomenon that scientists have yet to explain.

Source:
http://www.westernncattractions.com/BMLights.htm
http://www.ncsmokymountains.com/attractions/bmlights.htm

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Photo: Double Orb UFO - Edgware, North London

A UFO has been caught on camera in broad daylight flying over Edgware.

Harrow Observer reader Mark Lawes snapped this shot of the mysterious aircraft on Tuesday just after 7pm.

After uploading his pictures onto internet site Flickr Mr Lawes wrote: "A glint in the sky caught my eye, this object was so far away I had trouble seeing it.

"I watched it for about 2 mins and it remained in the same place throughout.

"Decided to run for the camera, managed to locate it in the same place and focused camera best poss with 150mm digital lense on a Olympus E500 SLR."

Mr Lawes is now appealing for Harrow Observer readers to help him solve the mystery of the lights in the sky.

He wrote: "It was not a plane I see plenty of them living near Heathrow Airport (15 miles).

"This was strange, didn't move and the pictures now seem to mystify it more. I ran and got my binoculars and within 10 seconds of turning my back... it was gone."

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Basajaun: Bigfoot of the Pyrenees

INEXPLICATA has written elsewhere about the "simiots" of Spain's Catalunya and Upper Aragon - creatures that may well find their U.S. counterparts in our very own Bigfoot.

Raul Nuñez of the IIEE sends INEXPLICATA an interesting article on another supersized inhabitant of the Pyrenees -- the towering "Basajaun", a regular feature of Basque folklore. The article, written by Roberto Aretxaga and J.M. Satrústegui, first appeared in issue 134 of the defunct Karma-7 magazine:

"There exist cratures of considerable height, completely covered in hair, that wander the Pyrenees with incredible agillity, and even along non-Pyrenaic ares such as Zenauri, in the Basque Country, or the caves of Muskia and Mailuxe. They are collectively known as the "Basajun", the lords of the forests.

"According to journalist Roberto Artetxaga, the existence of this folkloric creature is deeply rooted in Basque tradition, and adds that its very name is suggestive, as the Euskera words "baso" (forest, wilderness) and "Jaun" (lord) render the composite of Basajaun, master of the forests or the wilderness.

"The description is that of a creature endowed with extraordinary physical force, great agility and speed of travel, consierable height, quite taller than an average man, and fully anthropopmorhic features, covered in long hair and sometimes described as having long claws.

"Many people believed that these creatures posessed the secret of cultivating wheat and that humans learned from them how to plant and harvest it. They are also considered as the first ironsmiths and millwrights, from whom humans learned the secret of the saw, the millwheel and the welding of metals. Basajaun is considered as the protective spirit of flocks, and up to only a few years ago, Basque shepherds held the belief that when animals caused their bells to ring at the same time, it meant that the Basajaun was near. Shepherds found this reassuring, safe in the knowledge that their herds would not be decimated by wolves.

"Legend and reality have become interwoven, but J.M. Satrústegui points out in his book "Mitos y Creencias" that livestock farmers in Valcarlos and Ondorrola were fully convinced of this creature's existence. He even managed to secure the testimony of an elder who told him that he would receive visits from the basajauns at his homestead, but never knew why. They had not visited him for a long time. Another eyewitness account mentions a sighting of a young Basajaun basking in the sun at the opening to the Mailuxe cave, and the added description of this creature as being blond.
______________________

The Basajaun

In Basque mythology, the basajaun (plural: basajaunak) is a spirit dwelling in caves or in the woods who protects flocks of livestock and teaches skills such as agriculture and ironworking to humans.

The basajaun also exists in Aragonese mythology in the valleys of Tena, Ansó, and Broto under the names Basajarau, Bonjarau, or Bosnerau. Fifteenth-century carvings depicting the basajaunak can be seen in Burgos Cathedral and in the monastery of Santa María la Real in Najera.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basajaun

********************

Are you interested in the paranormal, cryptozoology, UFOs and conspiracies? Go to Phantoms and Monsters Wiki and become a member of this unique network. Start a page on a subject or add your input to an existing page or thread. Phantoms and Monsters updates are posted daily at Twitter. Signup today! Find me on Facebook

********************

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Investigators Wary Of All Paranormal Phenomena

Brad Smith entered a Stockton home recently when, all of a sudden, he felt an ice-cold grip on his left wrist.

There was nobody there to grab it.

Smith, who investigates whether ghosts exist at certain locations, said he doesn't know what it was, but it could have been a deceased relative.

Smith, a member of a Sacramento-based organization called American Paranormal Investigations, spoke to about 40 people attending Wednesday night's meeting of the newly formed Lodi Paranormal and Historic Anomaly Society.

Smith is what is his group calls a "debunker," someone who searches buildings attempting to prove that they aren't haunted. He looks for logical reasons for funny noises, like a running air conditioner, a breeze from the window or a creaky wooden floor.

In Stockton, Smith checked for a significant amount of electric and magnetic fields in the neighborhood, which could cause something that appears to be ghostly.

"It could be anything," Smith said.

It could be a ghost of someone who once lived in the house, it could be someone who once lived in the neighborhood.

"It may be passing through," he said. "They may be curious just like us."

Smith, who was a reporter for two years for the Siskiyou Daily News in Yreka beginning in 2006, said his group will return to the Stockton house for a more thorough investigation. He now writes for what he described as an "area newspaper" and does crime reporting online.

Dave Bender, who founded American Paranormal Investigations in 2001, told interested Lodians that he doesn't use the term "ghost" when discussing possible paranormal activity. Instead, he likes to use the word "apparition," an unusual or unexpected sight.

Bender said American Paranormal Investigations won't come to someone's residence strictly to look for ghosts.

"Twenty percent of the things we encounter are paranormal," Smith said. "The other 80 percent can be easily explained."

It's more important to listen to people's stories about what they think is abnormal in their house, Bender said.

"They don't want people to think they're crazy," he said. "What's important to them is to be willing to listen to their story.

"I can teach you how to investigate," Bender said. "I can't teach you how to care about people. We're here to make the family feel better."

Describing his most unusual experience searching for ghosts, Bender recalls visiting a house in a nice Sacramento neighborhood. He didn't notice anything unusual, but several women, including his wife, felt like they were choking.

One woman was walking in a bedroom at that home when something unexplainable bumped into her. She fell down and hurt her elbow.

"It was nasty, that's what it was," Bender said.

Smith said he was blown away one night in Auburn, where several people told him they saw creatures resembling "gray humanoids."

"So we scouted the area. At the driveway, I saw this blurred humanoid shape in the air, turn and go away," Smith said. "We tried to debunk it, but we couldn't explain it another way."

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Video: Paranormal Group Probes North Carolina Home

George Matthis and his colleagues at the National Society of Paranormal Investigation and Research say their mission is to not only find out if ghosts exist, but to educate the public about paranormal activity and help them understand it. And since they are a non-profit organization, they do it free of charge and are funded by members and through donations.

During a hot, humid June night, Matthis and a team of investigators were invited to a property in Wake County owned by David Anderson to see if they can find evidence of paranormal activity. The exact location of this house is being kept private for the safety of the property.

“I think probably the best answer why it’s haunted is that the people who lived here identified very strongly with the place,” said Anderson. “So I think the sense of not leaving might be one reason perhaps traces of people still exist here.”

The investigators use a variety of scientific instruments, research, and other investigation techniques to help identify paranormal activity. On this particular investigation, the team invited psychic/medium Kathe Martin along to see if she can identify activity.

“We will be doing a channeling event with a medium we work with from time to time,” said Matthis.

Although Martin was unable to physically be there they used a cell phone to communicate with her. Martin went into the reading cold, meaning she knew nothing about the property or the owner.

Before hand David Anderson gave us a little background information about this particular house and how through family legend, it is believed that someone was shot in the house while trying to steal loot. So it was somewhat of a shocker when Kathe asked the property owner if someone had been shot in the house.

The night was pretty much quiet except for two, yet to be explained occurrences, that happened right around midnight.

While looking at a video feed of four cameras set up throughout the house, investigator Jeremy Mullins noticed a motion detector in the downstairs bedroom was lighting up. There was no one in the room and that detector is not sensitive at all. It takes someone standing relatively close by to activate it. The detector went off several times within that time frame.

The cameras do pick up dust particles flying in the air, that many can mistake as orbs but shortly after the motion detector went off in the room, an orb was seen flying around in front of the camera. It didn’t look like a dust particle, the flight path doesn’t seem to be natural.

In all cases, NSPIR investigators like to analyze all the information they’ve collected thoroughly and they try to scientifically “de-bunk” their findings before drawing a conclusion.

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Space Shuttle Science Proves Comet Caused Tunguska Explosion

The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, says new Cornell University research. The conclusion is supported by an unlikely source: the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle launched a century later.

The research, accepted for publication (June 24, 2009) by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union, connects the two events by what followed each about a day later: brilliant, night-visible clouds, or noctilucent clouds, that are made up of ice particles and only form at very high altitudes and in extremely cold temperatures.

"It's almost like putting together a 100-year-old murder mystery," said Michael Kelley, the James A. Friend Family Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Cornell who led the research team. "The evidence is pretty strong that the Earth was hit by a comet in 1908." Previous speculation had ranged from comets to meteors.

The researchers contend that the massive amount of water vapor spewed into the atmosphere by the comet's icy nucleus was caught up in swirling eddies with tremendous energy by a process called two-dimensional turbulence, which explains why the noctilucent clouds formed a day later many thousands of miles away.

Noctilucent clouds are the Earth's highest clouds, forming naturally in the mesosphere at about 55 miles over the polar regions during the summer months when the mesosphere is around minus 180 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 117 degrees Celsius).

The space shuttle exhaust plume, the researchers say, resembled the comet's action.

A single space shuttle flight injects 300 metric tons of water vapor into the Earth's thermosphere, and the water particles have been found to travel to the Arctic and Antarctic regions, where they form the clouds after settling into the mesosphere.

Kelley and collaborators saw the noctilucent cloud phenomenon days after the space shuttle Endeavour (STS-118) launched on Aug. 8, 2007. Similar cloud formations had been observed following launches in 1997 and 2003.

Following the 1908 explosion, known as the Tunguska Event, the night skies shone brightly for several days across Europe, particularly Great Britain -- more than 3,000 miles away.

Kelley said he became intrigued by the historical eyewitness accounts of the aftermath, and concluded that the bright skies must have been the result of noctilucent clouds. The comet would have started to break up at about the same altitude as the release of the exhaust plume from the space shuttle following launch. In both cases, water vapor was injected into the atmosphere.

The scientists have attempted to answer how this water vapor traveled so far without scattering and diffusing, as conventional physics would predict.

"There is a mean transport of this material for tens of thousands of kilometers in a very short time, and there is no model that predicts that," Kelley said. "It's totally new and unexpected physics."

This "new" physics, the researchers contend, is tied up in counter-rotating eddies with extreme energy. Once the water vapor got caught up in these eddies, the water traveled very quickly -- close to 300 feet per second.

Scientists have long tried to study the wind structure in these upper regions of the atmosphere, which is difficult to do by such traditional means as sounding rockets, balloon launches and satellites, explained Charlie Seyler, Cornell professor of electrical engineering and paper co-author.

"Our observations show that current understanding of the mesosphere-lower thermosphere region is quite poor," Seyler said. The thermosphere is the layer of the atmosphere above the mesosphere.

The paper is also co-authored by physicist Miguel Larsen, Ph.D. '79, of Clemson University, and former student of Kelley. The work performed at Cornell was funded by the Atmospheric Science Section of the National Science Foundation.

On July 1, Kelley will give a lecture, "Two-dimensional Turbulence, Space Shuttle Plume Transport in the Thermosphere, and a Possible Relation to the Great Siberian Impact Event," at a plenary session of the annual meeting of Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions in Sante Fe, N.M.

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'The Ark of the Covenant' to be Revealed?

The patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia says he will announce to the world Friday the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, perhaps the world's most prized archaeological and spiritual artifact, which he says has been hidden away in a church in his country for millennia, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos.

Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this week, told the news agency, "Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses and the center of searches and studies for centuries."

The announcement is expected to be made at 2 p.m. Italian time from the Hotel Aldrovandi in Rome. Pauolos will reportedly be accompanied by Prince Aklile Berhan Makonnen Haile Sellassie and Duke Amedeo D'Acosta.

"The Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia for many centuries," said Pauolos. "As a patriarch I have seen it with my own eyes and only few highly qualified persons could do the same, until now."

According to Pauolos, the actual Ark has been kept in one church, but to defend the treasure, a copy was placed in every single church in Ethiopia.

He said a museum is being built in Axum, Ethiopia, where the Ark will be displayed. A foundation of D'Acosta will fund the project.

The Ark of the Covenant is the sacred container of the Ten Commandments as well as Aaron's rod and a sample of manna, the mysterious food that kept the Israelites alive while wandering in the wilderness during their journey to the promised land.

The Bible says the Ark was built to the specifications of God as He spoke to Moses. It was carried in advance of the people and their army by priests. It was also carried in a seven-day procession around the walled city of Jericho.

The idea that the Ark is presently in Ethiopia is a well-documented, albeit disputed, tradition dating back to at least 642 B.C. The tradition says it was moved to Elephantine Island in Egypt, then to Tana Kirkos Island in Ethiopia and finally to its present site at St. Mary's of Zion Church in Axum.

Ethiopians believe it is destined to be delivered to the Messiah when He reigns on Mount Zion – the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 3:16 points to a time when the Ark will vanish not only physically, but from the minds of the people: "And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the LORD, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the LORD: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more."

The Book of Revelation says the Ark is in the temple of God in heaven (Rev. 11:19). Muslim scholars say it will be found near the end of times by the Mahdi – a messianic figure in Islam.

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