MUFON witness report 8/30/09 - Unicoi State Park, Georgia: "My husband and I went camping this past Saturday. Sunday morning,(August 30th) around 4:00, I woke up to go the the restroom. (There was a building near the campsites that provided restroom and shower facilities.)
It was pitch black outside, except for the light from my lantern and the lights from the building. I went in, did my thing, and as I started to leave to walk back to my tent, I stopped because I felt there was someone behind me.
I turned around and I saw three gray aliens standing in the woods behind the building, near another campsite on the hill in the back.
They didn't seem to be doing anything but standing there. I thought it could have been the people from the campground on the hill, but why would they just be standing in the middle of the woods at 4am for no apparent reason?
When one of them turned and looked at me, I realized they weren't human.
For one thing, the arms were too long and the bodies were too thin. Their skin had a pale glossy look, and they had a very large cranium with lumps all over the top of the scalp. They had huge black eyes that seemed to pierce right through me.
I stand 5'3" tall, and they looked about one or two inches shorter than me. The one that saw me started to inch toward me, but I bolted back to my tent. When my husband asked me what was wrong, all I could say was "There's (expletive) aliens back there!"When he finally calmed me down enough, he had me stay in the tent while he went to go see what it was.
He found nothing.
I don't know if I had any missing time or not. It was around 5:00 when I was finally calm enough to leave the tent, with my husband, of course. We had a cigarette and talked about my sighting. Then around 6:00 we got a fire going and cooked breakfast. That's really all I remember from that morning.
Later that night, (I'm not sure what time it was. We kept waking up off and on.) he said he saw a shadowy figure move outside. He didn't hear any footsteps. He looked up and saw the top cover on the tent move, as if someone pulled it aside to look in at us from above. When we woke up again later that night, the blankets on his side of the tent were wet. (It started raining that night.) My side was dry for the most part.
I can't remember exactly which campsite we used, but I'm pretty sure it was lot #60. It was located directly across from the parking lot. I didn't see any signs of a craft nearby, but I did see the creatures. I know what I saw was real, as I was wide awake when I saw them." NOTE: I'm one of the last people who would question a person's encounter, but the way the details are presented in this report seem just a little bit too 'cute'...Lon
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buffalonews.com - Florence and Joseph Misnik live in a haunted house, but they will tell you that the gawkers are more frightening than the ghosts.
The two-story structure, thought to have been built prior to the Civil War, is perhaps Western New York's most infamous haunted house.
It was the site 35 years ago of a highly unusual exorcism by a priest from St. Bonaventure University and has been the subject of a book, a Discovery Channel docudrama, and endless fascination by paranormal enthusiasts.
A film crew from Chicago was at the house this past weekend, re-creating the exorcism and shooting other scenes for a new production that will be shown on the Internet.
The Misniks have never been afraid of the prospect of ghosts in their presence.
"We made an agreement with them: You leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone," Joe said.
Early on, Flo laid down the ground rules.
"I went into the middle of the kitchen, and I said, "You can stay here if you want to, but I'm not leaving.'‚"
With the house in desperate need of repairs and the Misniks both in their 80s, some paranormal enthusiasts are now trying to figure out how they might obtain the McMahon Road property and someday create a research center there.
"There is no paranormal research center in the world that is built on an active site," said Michael Rambacher, a friend of the Misniks' who bills himself as a medium and paranormal investigator. "We'd be able to do the science, we'd be able to do the geology, we'd be able to do the archaeology."
In the meantime, the house is simply home to the Misniks.
Flo and Joe, as they call themselves, have lived here since 1986.
They say they have experienced spirits or supernatural phenomenon, the kinds of unexplained events that forced previous residents to leave. But those encounters never scared them. What bothers them are the unexpected visitors who drive up the gravel road at all hours of the day and night for a glimpse of the home.
"Neither one of us feels threatened," Joe said of the ghosts. "Some of the weirdos who come around here threaten me more than the ghosts."
"It's mostly human beings that's the problem," added his wife of 28 years, a retired bus driver. "We call 'em rubberneckers."
Flo and Joe had no inkling about the home's colorful history when they moved from Hinman Avenue in Buffalo to the clapboard bouse set in the lush hills of this small town outside Olean. They fell in love with the house and its eight acres of forested property, which includes a pond full of squawking geese.
"It's peaceful, serene, quiet," said Flo.
There was no evidence of any haunting on a recent afternoon when a Buffalo News reporter visited with the Misniks.
Hummingbirds danced at a pair of feeders under a portico, bees swarmed a hive tucked in a second-floor cornice, and a barn cat snoozed on an outdoor swing.
Inside, the walls of the living room are filled with framed photographs of children and grandchildren.
Joseph Nickell, who has investigated hundreds of alleged haunted houses all over the world, doubts that Misniks' home is any different from the others: None of them has exhibited true evidence of being haunted.
"I like to say I've been in more haunted places than Casper," said Nickell, who investigates claims of the paranormal and supernatural for Skeptical Inquirer magazine, which is based in Amherst. "There's no scientific evidence whatsoever that ghosts exist. It is all just superstition.
"When brain function ceases, it stops surely. It doesn't go to a mystical realm."
Nonetheless, soon after they settled into the house, Joe Misnik went to register at the local American Legion Post, and upon giving his new address was informed that he lived in a haunted house.
The house first became notorious in the 1970s, when Clara and Phil Dandy and their four children lived there.
The Dandys allegedly experienced several bizarre episodes — mysterious burns on their bodies, bricks from a crawl space chimney dismantled and placed in the middle of the room, strange chants heard in the nearby woods, and sightings of "energy orbs" — that led them to call upon the Rev. Alphonsus Trabold to try to "de-haunt" the house.
The Dandys ultimately left in 1975, and the mother, who is now Clara Miller, wrote a book "Echoes of a Haunting," explaining her experiences in the house.
Families that resided there after the Dandys didn't stay long, either, said Rambacher, who lives in Olean.
That is, until Flo and Joe. The couple say they don't have the wherewithal to fix up the house, which needs a new roof, windows and siding. But they have no interest in leaving, either.
"When we came here, we said the next place we go is in the coffin," said Joe.
Flo maintains that she has seen at least one ghost in the house: a man in blue jeans and a plaid shirt with a rifle standing at the end of her bed.
She asked the man what he was doing there, and he responded that he didn't know, she said. When she turned around and looked back, she added, he was gone.
On numerous occasions, the Misniks said they have heard a "phantom" car in the driveway. They said they heard the sound of a car motor but looked and saw nothing. Sometimes, the smell of cigar smoke wafted through the house, even though neither of them smokes.
The encounters are few and far between compared with what the Dandys experienced — in large part because the Misniks are elderly, and thus emit less energy to disturb the spirits, Rambacher said.
Rambacher, who conducts ghost tours of the property with the Misniks' permission, is hoping to raise money to pay off their mortgage.
"We won't live long enough to pay it off," Joe said, estimating that they have seven more years of payments on their land contract.
If the mortgage gets paid, the Misniks could then donate the house and land for paranormal research, with assurances that they wouldn't be removed from the property.
Rambacher has reached out to the Alex Tanous Foundation in Portland, Maine, and to Timothy Barth, a graduate of St. Bonaventure who teaches a course on parapsychology at Texas Christian University similar to the one taught by Trabold at St. Bonaventure.
Tanous, a psychic, visited the house with Trabold in 1974. Both men are now deceased.
Barth and a representative from the Tanous Foundation said they were supportive of Rambacher's efforts but weren't sure how much financial backing they could provide.
"If stuff is really ongoing up there, it could be a real opportunity for someone," said Barth, a professor of psychology at TCU. "These things don't happen on a schedule. In order to document them, you need something set up 24/7 for an extended period of time."
Despite all the rubbernecking, the Misniks insist there's no place they would rather be. And they would love to be able to fix the place up a bit … so it stays around long after they're gone.
"There's a lot of history in this house," said Flo. "It would be a shame for it to just disappear."
samaylive.com - An elderly couple was burnt alive by residents of a village in Assam after a kangaroo court charged them with practicing witchcraft in Assam, police said Monday.
A police officer said locals of Rajapara village, about 80 km west of Assam's main city Guwahati, called a quack for a public meeting late Saturday to find out why so many villagers in the area had fallen ill.
"The quack after discussion with the villagers pointed a finger at Bishnu Rabha, 65, and his wife Porsi, 60, for allegedly practising witchcraft resulting in so many people in the area falling sick," senior police officer Anil Kumar Deka told IANS.
The villagers then took the couple early Sunday to a nearby forest and burnt them alive.
"The couple was first mercilessly beaten by the villagers and later dragged to a forest and burnt alive," Deka said.
Two sons and a daughter of the couple managed to escape from their house when their parents were summoned by the villagers.
Investigations are on, although no arrests have been made so far.
The couple earned a living in the area by practicing traditional medicine.
"It was a clear case of witch hunting and investigations are on. We shall take very harsh steps according to law," the officer said.
Hounding of alleged witches continues in rural Assam and other states of the northeast.
According to police records, some 250 people were killed in Assam by mobs in the past five years after they were accused of practising witchcraft.
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guardian.co.uk - A lost world populated by fanged frogs, grunting fish and tiny bear-like creatures has been discovered in a remote volcanic crater on the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea.
A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world.
The discoveries are being seen as fresh evidence of the richness of the world's rainforests and the explorers hope their finds will add weight to calls for international action to prevent the demise of similar ecosystems. They said Papua New Guinea's rainforest is currently being destroyed at the rate of 3.5% a year.
"It was mind-blowing to be there and it is clearly time we pulled our finger out and decided these habitats are worth us saving," said Dr George McGavin who headed the expedition.
The team of biologists included experts from Oxford University, the London Zoo and the Smithsonian Institution and are believed to be the first scientists to enter the mountainous Bosavi crater. They were joined by members of the BBC Natural History Unit which filmed the expedition for a three-part documentary which starts tomorrow night.
They found the three-kilometre wide crater populated by spectacular birds of paradise and in the absence of big cats and monkeys, which are found in the remote jungles of the Amazon and Sumatra, the main predators are giant monitor lizards while kangaroos have evolved to live in trees. New species include a camouflaged gecko, a fanged frog and a fish called the Henamo grunter, named because it makes grunting noises from its swim bladder.
"These discoveries are really significant," said Steve Backshall, a climber and naturalist who became so friendly with the never-before seen Bosavi silky cuscus, a marsupial that lives up trees and feeds on fruits and leaves, that it sat on his shoulder.
"The world is getting an awful lot smaller and it is getting very hard to find places that are so far off the beaten track."
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Myths and legends about creatures from the Chupacabra to the Jersey Devil to Bigfoot are everywhere, but in southern New Mexico and parts of Texas people say they've seen birds so big they seem prehistoric.
One man claims the rugged landscape near Las Cruces hides a mystery that's haunted him for several years.
Dave Zander has lived near the Doña Ana Mountains for more than 30 years spending almost all his spare time hiking, exploring and fossil hunting in the range between the Robledo and Organ mountains.
He saw something that he's unable to explain and many people find hard to believe.
He recalls the day eleven years ago when he spotted something extraordinary: two creatures perched on a mountain less than a mile away.
"These creatures were so huge they looked like the size of small planes," Dave Zander said. "All of the sudden one of them jumped off dropped off the top of the mountain, came down the front of the mountain and all the sudden these huge wings just spread out.
"I would say the wings were at least a 20-foot wingspan."
Definitely something out of the ordinary.
"Not a normal bird, definitely of a giant variety," Zander continued. "It makes you feel like it could come over and carry you off if it wanted to."
Zander witness a real-life scene out of the movie Jurassic Park?
One ancient bird in the vicinity is an Andean condor living at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque. But it's wingspan of 12 feet pales to what Zander described: birds with an unprecedented twenty-foot wingspan, with pink bald heads and all-black bodies, and feathers on their enormous wings. There is nothing on modern record like it.
"In comparison a 20 foot wingspan would truly be a monster and something undocumented by science," cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard said. "I believe what Dave Zander may have seen are surviving teratorns."
Gerhard has made a career studying prehistoric birds.
"What's interesting the reports of these giant raptor-like birds to continue into modern times," he said. "We seem to have a large concentration of them here in the Southwest particularly in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas as well as New Mexico and parts of Arizona."
Gerhard documented many of these strange reports from all over the globe in the book "Big birds! Modern sightings of flying monsters."
The book includes sightings in different clusters over the past 30 years.
In 1972 in Maxwell in northeastern New Mexico, Ronald Monteleone of Trinidad, Colo., reported what he thought was a pterodactyl flying out of an arroyo.
In Lordsburg in the 1800s locals talked constantly about the sightings of pterosaurs.
And a picture circulated the country in 1890 out of Tombstone, Ariz., but it's never been considered totally legitimate.
"Other eyewitnesses are describing specifically giant feathered dark birds with an enormous wing span," Gerhard said.
Gerhard said his research falls into two different descriptions from witnesses. Some said the birds look like the prehistoric pterodactyl while others, like the creatures described by Zander, resemble the ancient thunderbird from Native American mythology.
You can find thunderbird images atop many totem poles and also carved into the lava rocks of the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque. Similar images are found in petroglyphs all over North America.
According to legend, the thunderbird is said to have a wingspan the length of two canoes with the ability to deafen people with the sound of its flapping wings.
"It is definitely a real animal, according to the native peoples that lived here," Gerhard said. "It's not necessarily a legendary animal." (Andean Condor)
However a word of caution comes from folks like Ben Radford, managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, which applies scientific reason and evidence to extraordinary claims.
"There is a desire to link modern sightings with these Native American stories but the problem is they're not necessarily the same thing," Radford said.
Radford said believes the eyewitnesses saw something:
"Ultimately a lot of these sightings, whether it's these monsters, these creatures, Chupacabras, what have you, these come down to eyewitness testimony," Radford said. "They're stories, there's nothing wrong with stories, but they're just not good evidence."
Radford has debunked numerous stories about the Loch Ness monster, crop circles and Bigfoot.
He said he relies on evidence.
"You don't have bones, teeth," he continued. "You don't have any hard evidence, so you look to these stories, you look to these myths.
"We know from many scientific experiments people are notoriously unreliable about estimating things."
And in this case, Radford said he thinks Zander and the other witnesses in Texas overestimated the birds' size.
What makes the reports intriguing is that most experts agree scientists have yet to discover every species on the planet and really have no idea what is out there:
"I believe there's a good chance that a number of large prehistoric animals remain undiscovered by modern science." Gerhard said.
Radford readily concedes there are species yet to be discovered, but...
"Do I think there are giant animals and birds and creatures out there?" he said. "No."
For his part, Zander continues to keep his eyes on the skies but hasn't had a repeat visit from the creatures. The one experience has stayed with him.
"I feel honored to have seen the one sighting," he said. "I had if they're still up there still living up there and thriving, I say awesome, more power to them."
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wyomingnews.com - Strapped into the gas chamber of the no longer working Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins, Stacie Tomlinson asked the spirit that she felt in the room if it knew how it died.
At the time, she felt an angry and confused spirit there, possibly that of the youngest and most recent person to die in that room, Andrew Pixley.
As the story goes, Pixley was put to death in the 1960s for murdering and cannibalizing two young girls, explained Bob Aquin, one of the original members of the Cheyenne Paranormal Investigations team.
Pixley was particularly violent while in prison and apparently took much longer to kill than other men.
The spirit that Tomlinson thought she felt was male, and very angry. And she didn't get an answer to her question.
At least, she didn't think she did.
It wasn't until later, when she listened to the tape of her seemingly one-sided conversation with the spirit, that she got her answer.
So faint that only super-sensitive microphones could pick it up, Aquin and Tomlinson said a faint sound on tape is a little girl's voice wailing "no" after Tomlinson's question.
"I've had dreams about that one," Tomlinson said.
The Wyoming Frontier Prison was the most recent project by the Cheyenne Paranormal Investigations team, and it's one of the most active places they've visited, Aquin said.
More than 50 sounds were recorded over the course of a few hours there last July. The sounds were posted on the team's Web site, www.cheyenneparanormal.com, this week.
Ten separate "voices"
were picked up by the high-tech microphones that the team brought along. They said they also recorded drips where there was no water, footsteps where there were no people, strange static noises and unusual instrument readings.
The frequency of the events is unusual, but the events themselves aren't, Aquin said. The team has been picking up strange sounds and experiencing strange events since its beginning in 1994.
The most active location they've investigated was a home in Cheyenne, where they recorded almost 100 sounds in three hours, mostly in a child's room.
Many paranormal investigation teams come through the Wyoming Frontier Prison. So many, in fact, that the prison -- which is now a museum -- has made it a business and charges the groups by the hour.
Still, Tina Hill, the historic site director for the prison, isn't convinced.
"I'm on the fence," she said about whether she believes in what so many say is there. "I really don't know how much I personally believe in ghosts, and I'm not sure I want to (believe) because I'm here by myself a lot."
Over 80 years, more than 13,500 inmates were housed in the prison, which used to be the Wyoming State Penitentiary. That any of them would stick out above the others is probably unlikely, she said.
Plus, what the investigators usually find doesn't match up with the history very well.
Nevertheless, CPI picked up one sound of a voice saying "leave me," while at the prison.
"I really think I hear that one," she said.
Unlike Aquin, Tomlinson has experienced paranormal events her whole life, she said.
She doesn't consider herself psychic or gifted, but she does say that spirits seem to follow her wherever she goes.
As a child, she saw and heard spirits often.
The Wyoming Frontier Prison was one of the first investigations that she participated in.
"That was the most ... exhilarating thing," she said.
She had several experiences there, including the one in the gas chamber.
"I have children," she said. "When it comes to children and hearing them, it's a tough thing for me."
God has a reason for her to search out the paranormal, she added.
"I know that there's something else that's going on out there, and I'd love to be the one to be able to find it," she said.
Although Tomlinson has always believed, and Aquin has come to believe, the goal of CPI's investigations is not to prove anything, Aquin said.
After all, he added, it's impossible to prove the paranormal, which by definition is something that is not scientifically provable.
Their goal is to research and document what they find and let people come to their own conclusions.
"(When we record a sound,) we're not saying that a ghost has appeared and is standing next to you," he said. "We're saying this is a strange occurrence."
When strange noises are coupled with strange instrument readings like temperature changes or static readings, and that happens again and again over the course of years, it's hard to believe that it's a coincidence, he said.
"I was the type ... I didn't believe a darn thing unless it grabbed me around the neck," Aquin said. "(But) how many times can something happen before it's not a coincidence anymore?"
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thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk - A team of investigators will scour Windermere in a hunt for a legendary monster that is claimed to lurk in its deep waters.
The search follows years of reported sightings of a big creature in the lake, the most recent being in July when Lake District hotelier Thomas Noblett was hit by a three-foot wave as he was swimming.
A chartered boat will take to England’s longest lake on September 19 with celebrity and sports psychic Dean Maynard at the helm. He will be joined by Windermere photographer Linden Adams who claims to have seen ‘Bownessie’ – the nickname for the monster – from a viewpoint on Gummers How in 2007.
There will also be people with cameras dotted around the shoreline to capture any unusual activity.
“Linden Adams and I are really geared up and ready for the challenge ahead and we hope to find some concrete evidence something big does exist in the lake," said Mr Maynard.
In 2006 The Westmorland Gazette reported how Huddersfield University journalism lecturer Steve Burnip, of Hebden Bridge, saw a serpent-like creature emerge from the waters as he stood at Watbarrow Point across from Waterhead.
He described it as being 15 to 20 feet long with a little head and two small humps following in its wake. He said it looked like a giant eel.
“I am absolutely convinced that there is a big creature in the lake,” said Mr Burnip. “I am really pleased that there is a renewed interest in it because I know what I saw.
“I can see it in my head now, this grey lump and the humps breaking the water like you see in the classic Loch Ness pictures. There is something in there, something quite big and elusive.”
Mr Adams, whose picture of the creature was studied by photographic experts after appearing on the front page of the Gazette, said: “I looked at it through binoculars and the naked eye and what I saw was huge.
"A lot of photographic experts have had the opportunity to look at the pictures and they are still baffled.”
Ecology experts have told the Gazette that catfish are sometimes introduced to lakes by anglers. They believe that what could be being seen is the Welsh catfish that originates from mainland Europe.
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msnbc.msn.com - For the first time, scientists report an instance of a brain seizure making someone believe they underwent a sex transformation.
The case in question involved a 37-year-old woman admitted to an epilepsy center in Germany for seizures in 2006. In addition to instances of nausea, fear, and sometime déjà vu several times a week, she reported occasionally also perceiving the following delusion:
"I'm no longer feeling to be a female," the scientists reported her saying. "I have the impression to transform into a male. My voice, for example, sounds like a male voice that moment. One time, when I looked down to my arms during this episode, these looked like male arms including male hair growth."
Even stranger, this delusion was not limited to only herself. She also saw nearby women as becoming men too. "One time another woman, a friend of mine, was in the same room, I perceived also her as becoming a male person including changing sound of her voice," the scientists reported her saying.
Prior to these delusions, the woman was completely healthy with no history of any other mental disorders, other than symptoms of depression in her later adulthood. "The patient never experienced a similar phenomenon outside the seizures," explained researcher Burkhard Kasper, a neuroscientist at the University of Erlangen in Germany. Anticonvulsive drugs later relieved her of these delusions and most of her other symptoms.
MRI scans revealed a tumor in the woman's brain that was apparently linked with the seizures. The kind of tumor in question, a ganglioglioma, is generally considered benign. "We expect her to have a long life," Kasper said.
The tumor is located in the right amygdala, with irregular activity seen in the surrounding right temporal lobe. The amygdala seems to play an important role in processing human identity, including aspects like familiarity, emotional state, and sex, and past studies revealed that electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe triggered doubt about sexual identity.
These findings suggest that brain circuits linked with perception of gender exist in the brain.
Although this is so far an isolated case, "neuroscience has learned a lot from single patients," Kasper mentioned, pointing out cases such as "HM," or Henry Molaison, a man whose inability to commit new events to long-term memory after brain surgery for epileptic seizures helped revolutionize science's understanding of how memory works. _________________________
Thanks to Mark and his cat, Sophie, for reading P&M!
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bbc.co.uk - A Indian railway station which was abandoned for 42 years because of fears that it was haunted has reopened in the eastern state of West Bengal.
Locals and railway workers say they lived in fear of a female phantom who frequented Begunkodor 260km (161 miles) from the state capital, Calcutta.
In 1967, a railway worker is said to have died days after he saw a "woman ghost" draped in a white sari.
Officials say the story was made up to avoid postings at the remote station.
They argue that it was primarily railway employees who expressed fears about the "woman ghost" at Begunkodor.
"Soon all railway employees fled Begunkodor and trains stopped stopping there. It made life very difficult for locals," said Basudeb Acharya, former chairman of the parliament's standing committee on railways.
Mr Acharya says employees "cooked up the ghost story " to avoid a posting at such a remote station.
Celebrations
Begunkodor is 43km (26 miles) from the district headquarters in Purulia, the westernmost district of West Bengal. Purulia is home to the Santhal tribe and is also a Maoist stronghold.
On Tuesday, the Ranchi-Hatia express stopped at Begunkodor, the first train to draw into the station for 42 years.
India's railway minister Mamata Banerji has dismissed all reports of an apparition.
When she announced new trains for West Bengal she wanted the Ranchi-Hatia Express to stop at Begunkodor because locals had pleaded with her to reopen the station during the election campaign in May.
"I don't believe in ghosts. It is all man-made," Mamata Banerji is reported to have told railway officials when the new trains were being scheduled.
The reopening of the station became "an event for local celebrations", according to railway commercial inspector, Dilip Kumar Ghosh.
He said people gathered in large numbers and "danced in joy" as the train arrived.
"I have never seen a train stop here since I have grown up," said Begunkodor resident Govinda Mahato. ______________________
Posted December 26, 2007: Begunkodor Station and the Dancing Woman Phantom
A station in Purulia where no train has stopped in 35 years, apparently because of a phantom woman who dances on the platform or walks along the tracks, might come to life again.
Railway standing committee chairman Basudev Acharya said no passengers boarded trains from Begunkodor, nor did railway officials want to be posted at the station.
“Such an absurd thing shouldn’t be allowed to continue,” the CPM member of Parliament told South Eastern Railway general manager A.K. Jain today and urged him to resume operations at the station.
BSNL officer Pabitra Koi-barta, a resident of Begunkodor village, said word about the station being in the “grip of evil spirits” spread after a woman was run over while crossing the tracks.
“We have heard from elders about the accident. Panic had gripped the area then and people started avoiding the station. There were even reports of people being sucked in towards passing trains and villagers started taking detours to avoid going anywhere near the station,” said Koibarta, 44.
Madan Gope, 65, said a lone railway employee used to man the station when people almost stopped using it.
“The railway employee told villagers he saw a woman in a white sari dancing in the dead of the night. Weeks later, he was dead. It was presumed that he had been killed by the ghost,” said Gope, a resident of nearby Jhalda, 5km away.
The station employee who replaced the dead man apparently stopped coming to work four-five days later.
Gope had tried to take a peek at the dancing woman in white. “I had gone to the station hearing about the woman, but saw nothing,” he said.
Railway officials denied the ghost theory, saying the station became useless after the narrow gauge line was converted into broad gauge “30-35 years ago” and trains started moving fast.
A senior official promised a “feasibility study to find out whether resumption of operations would be commercially viable since the chairman” had asked for it.
Local Congress MLA Nepal Mahato confirmed the fear of “unholy spirits” at Begunkodor and also suggested a remedy. “Quacks can be put in- to service to shoo them away,” he said.
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Could this photograph of a blurry figure on steps leading to St Columb's Cathedral be the best evidence yet of supernatural activity in the city?
The spectral vision was snapped by a 'Journal' reader wholly unaware he had captured the shadowy figure.
It was only when he viewed the photos on his computer that he noticed the eerie figure.
The ghoulish apparition can be seen on the steps linking the Cathedral to St Columb's Court - an area steeped in the blood and violence associated with 17th century Derry.
One local amateur ghostbuster says there is definitely something strange about the chilling snap.
"This area dates back to pre-Siege times - it's little wonder such an entity could be left to wander the ancient street of this part of town.
"The very fact that it is so close to a church and a graveyard makes it all the more spooky." ____________________
History of St. Columb's Cathedral
Named after St. Columcille, the Ulster monk who established a Christian settlement in the area before being exiled from Ireland and introducing Christianity to Scotland and northern England. The monastery was the foundation on which Derry was built, the cathedral was constructed between 1628 and 1633 and was the first Protestant cathedral in Britain or Ireland (all older ones were confiscated Catholic cathedrals). The original wooden steeple burnt down after being struck by lightning, while the second (a leaden and rounded replacement) was smelted into bullets and cannonballs during the Great Siege of 1689. The same fate did not befall the cathedral itself, as it was designed to double as a fort with 6-inch- thick walls and a walkway for musketeers to shoot from the spire. The porch still holds the mortar shell that delivered the terms of surrender directly to the courtyard. The roughly hewn stone interior holds an exquisite Killybegs altar carpet, an extravagant bishop’s chair dating from 1630, and 214 hand-carved Derry-oak pews, of which no two are the same.
A small museum in the chapter house at the back of the church displays the original locks, along with keys of the four main city gates and other relics. The tombstones lying flat on the ground in the graveyard outside were leveled during the siege to protect the graves from Jacobite cannonballs. The small Mound of Martyrs, in the back left corner toward the walls, contains the 5000 dead previously buried in the cellars of the nearby houses, transplanted here during the city’s redesigning efforts.
centraljersey.com - The building may be newly refurbished, but spirits remain.
At least, that’s the possibility under investigation by the Paranormal Activity Research Society, which spent a stormy Saturday night checking out reports of hauntings at the Roebling Museum on Second Avenue.
PARS co-founder Robert Reid said he decided to bring the group to the museum after reading online reports of mysterious occurrences at the Main Gate building, which was recently fixed up and just opened this year as a museum after being empty for decades. A neighbor reportedly heard noises and saw lights turning on and off when no one was around.
”There’ve been a lot of memories here, people who had been working here for 30 years straight,” Mr. Reid said. “For some of them, the last time that they actually walked through these gates, they never walked back out.”
Industrial accidents were not unheard of in the days of the steel mill’s operations. The mill closed in 1974, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been overseeing the ongoing cleanup of the site, which was declared a Superfund site in 1984. The museum now commemorates the workers who made steel cables that support structures like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge.
According to the paranormal investigators, construction — such as the work that has gone into the Superfund site and museum building — can cause activity among any “entities” on the grounds.
One detail that caught PARS’ interest is a report, confirmed by vice chairman of the museum board of directors and longtime village resident George Lengel, that a man hanged himself in the main gate building in the late 1930s. The suicide apparently occurred in what is now a gallery depicting photographs of the Roebling family, which founded the plant, but was originally the site of jail cells when Roebling was a company town, according to old building blueprints.
”There was a report his ghost still haunts the main building,” Mr. Reid said. “The energy could still be here from that.”
Mr. Lengel said the suicide victim was far from the only person to expire during the operation of the steel mill.
”Many people died in this plant,” he said. “It was a dangerous place to work.”
Those deaths included the husband of a cousin of his, he said, and many others reported in the former New Jersey Mirror newspaper.
But Mr. Lengel classified himself as “very much” a skeptic, “until something taps me on the shoulder.”
While he said he did one night hear people talking and could not find a source, he said it was entirely plausible it was due to the museum’s proximity to the street and could simply have been people walking by.
The PARS spent Saturday night investigating the possibility that when a person dies, energy from the body moves into the environment and retains intelligence.
”If they’re going to manifest themselves for you to try and see them,” Mr. Reid said, “they’re using energy out of the air. There’s natural energy around us all the time... So when energy’s pulled to a certain area, it’s going to take things out of the air.”
He said the group believes this could cause cold spots, which it finds with a thermal imaging camera, and electromagnetic disturbances it discovers with electromagnetic field detectors.
”When you die, something has to happen to that energy — energy can’t be destroyed — so all paranormal researchers are looking for this energy, and whether it’s burned off naturally and stays behind or is intelligent and moves around,” he said.
PARS co-founder Robert Green said Saturday he thought the Main Gate building might be a focal point for supernatural entities because it was how the plant’s workers entered and exited the mill’s sprawling, 240-acre campus.
”Every day, every shift change, 500 or 600 people went through there,” he said. “There could be a lot of energy there.”
Other areas of interest were the jail cell, another room that is the former site of a first aid area, and the cobblestone pathway leading away from the main gate.
While Mr. Reid said the group usually takes about a week to go through the hours of footage it records on the thermal camera, as well as regular cameras and audio recorders, the investigators did encounter some bizarre phenomena Saturday night.
”We can’t make a statement of whether it’s haunted or not without going through the material first,” he said, noting the possibility of false positives due to things like dust caught on film. “But there were definitely some occurrences we couldn’t explain with scientific or normal reasoning.”
Mr. Reid said those included Mr. Green feeling something touch his leg when nothing was there. Ronnie Poulin, the third co-founder, and group case manager Daria DeCicco reported hearing noises above them in the main gate building, Mr. Reid said, and visiting New Jersey 101.5 FM radio personality Casey Bartholomew, who followed along on the investigation with his costar Ray Rossi, felt a coldness on his elbow.
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I received the following email in reference to a post from August 23, 2009 where several businesses in Lancaster, Ohio were experiencing paranormal activity...Lon
Re: ghosts in Westerman's tux shop........
"The shop which is now Westerman's used to be McClurg's. McClurg's sold and serviced musical instruments and sold supplies for them. Before that I believe it was a music store by a different name. I was young when I met the former owner of that place who used to be mean to everyone. After I and my younger brother interacted with him in different ways he became a nice man again. He passed away some time after and so it became Mr. McClurg's store. During the time Mr. McClurg had it, the employees from the previous store still worked there. We'd often hear this one employee yell about someone standing behind him that disappeared. My younger brother and I had gotten to know this employee from that former store and we'd gotten to know that former owner. The owner had been mean to this employee then turned to become very nice to him which unnerved him. He got into a habit of looking over the employee's shoulder to see him working on instruments. Their previous interaction was that of the employee not seeing the owner watching over him and then flying into a rage at the poor quality of work he was doing. So, then, when he turned over a new leaf the employee was still gun shy so to speak and would jump at realizing the guy was behind him. The owner passed away but according to this employee he didn't leave. It wasn't just that either. The owner was still looking over the employee's shoulder from time to time! The employee would yell before the ghost of the owner disappeared before our eyes! The ghost of the owner was looking at us and smiling like he'd done this as a practical joke on the former employee. The employee got so nervous over time that the last time it happened he said enough was enough and that he was looking for a new job. He gathered his things and walked out the door saying good riddance to the place. The owner went after him asking what he was doing. They argued but the owner couldn't talk him into staying. The man said he just couldn't take it anymore. The owner looked creeped out to be standing there in the place knowing he was the only worker there at the time. He did everything he could to get us to stay a bit longer, lol. Mom was doing errands that day and couldn't stay. Once in the car she said she didn't know what had gotten into him. My little brother told her that he knew what had gotten into him and filled her in. She tried to blow it off but then asked the owner about it when she returned to pick up her order. He told her it was all true and that he'd seen the former owner many many times in there still working on instruments. He often found the tools, especially the soldering iron, plugged in and hot. Mom trembled all over and told him she'd pray for him and have her friends pray for him. He asked her not to tell anyone as it would probably cause business to go bad. She understood and said she'd only talk to close friends and that they'd keep it quiet. My sisters who knew about this told all their friends and soon teenagers were filling the store but none were shopping or buying. The owner told each one if they weren't shopping they'd have to leave. He soon realized why they were there and chided mom for talking too much. He said that now no one would come to buy anything from him and he'd be ruined. It actually worked out well for him since people were very interested in the man's ghost. While they were there they would buy things too and business was great. In time it died down and the business was back to normal once again. So, that's the story about the ghost in Westerman's." ______________________
Several Lancaster, Ohio Businesses Coping With Eerie Events
A few local business owners have enlisted a local paranormal group to get some answers to some hair-raising events.
Tammi Jo's Café and Catering co-owner Tammi Neighbor has had several eerie events in her restaurant, 111 N. Columbus St., since opening less than a year ago.
"There's too many things going on for it to be a coincidence," she said. "One time the restaurant was full, and we heard a whistle come from the center of the building. Everyone turned and looked, but there was no one there."
Neighbor's list of spooky events include a vase moving from one location to another day to day, water faucets turning on by themselves and a crate of rags spontaneously combusting.
Neighbor researched the building's history and learned it formerly belonged to an occult group before they were driven out of town.
She contacted The Ohio Paranormal Seekers, which will make several sound and video recordings to determine if spirits roam the café.
The group will investigate four Lancaster businesses, including two places on either side of Tammi Jo's Café. They will analyze Tammi Jo's Café, Paperback Exchange and Westerman's Tuxedo Junction on Saturday. He will investigate the Tavern at the Mill Sept. 10.
"I was sitting there talking to Vicki (Westerman, co-owner) and heard someone talking upstairs. I apologized for keeping the owner from her other customer, but she said she was the only one there," he said. "I thought she was messing with me, but I went upstairs and there was no one there."
Westerman said she didn't hear the voice, but she also doesn't doubt the possibility of the building, 113 N. Columbus St., being occupied by some presence.
"It would be interesting if they did find something," she said. "But I wouldn't move. I've never felt unsafe here."
Tavern at the Mill owner Ron Hawk said the building, 431 S. Columbus St., has been known as a haunted building for many years. His employees discovered an old newspaper article detailing the death of a 19-year-old man named Luke who was killed in the elevator shaft in 1919 in the Tavern.
"I'm not the type of person to believe in ghosts or spirits, but a lot of my employees do," he said. "Nothing they find, or don't find, will surprise me."
He said employees have mentioned hearing pool being played while no one was by the table and the juke box turning on for no apparent reason.
"A lot of my employees are afraid to go down in the basement by themselves," Hawk said.
He has no plans of moving his business from the 115-year-old building, regardless of the findings by the paranormal investigators.
"I have a lot of money invested there," he said. "I'm not going to let any supposed ghosts scare me out of there."
Paperback Exchange owner Leanne McClellan said on two separate occasions she left a piece of mail on her desk before closing and each time the items were gone the next morning.
"The first time it happened I thought I was losing my mind, but the second time made me think more," McClellan said.
"I'm the only one that works here. Unless we have a ghost, I have no clue where it went."
She said it will be business as usual even if ghosts or spirits are found to be staying in the used bookstore at 109 N. Columbus St.
"I don't anticipate they'll find anything, but it's all in fun," she said. "After all, everyone loves a good ghost story."
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indiatimes.com - Call it height of ignorance or blind faith but people have been believing into incomprehensible incidents as God’s blessings. Mysterious incidents have always brought the blind faith among the citizens to the fore.
A couple of years back people thronged Ganesh Tekdi temple when news about the Lord Ganesh idol consuming milk spread like fire. Similar was the situation when a 30-feet deep well in Bajrang Nagar was said to be full of hot water recently.
Now, the news of white milklike fluid oozing out from a neem tree in Vijay Nagar slum area from Saturday morning has raised tremendous curiosity among Orange city residents.
Early on Saturday morning, resident of Vijay Nagar slum area Harshu Pardhi (25) rushed towards the neem tree near her home to find milk-like fluid oozing out from the tree. Harshu, a Goddess Sheetlamata’s devotee, told TOI that she dreamt of the fluid oozing out from the tree early in the morning and therefore rushed out to check if it was true. Surprisingly, white fluid was indeed coming out of the tree trunk, she said.
The fluid was oozing to flow down exactly where the idol of Goddess Sheetlamata is installed in the locality. The news spread like wild fire and not only slum dwellers but people from far away have been visiting and worshipping the tree. Many have been collecting the fluid as ‘prasad’.
People have been applying vermilion, turmeric to the tree and have offered coconuts, informed Raju Waghmare. Sixty-yearold Sukhchand Raote, who runs a grocery shop in the locality, said that he had never witnessed such a mysterious incident in his life.
These are Goddess Sheetlamata’s blessings, he claimed. Some residents said the neem tree liquid was bitter in taste. “Immediately after tasting the liquid, we felt as if the liquid had cleaned our mouth,” another resident Jai Kashyap said. The residents have decided to build a temple of Goddess Sheetlamata and have started collecting donations. Meanwhile, an official from social forestry department said that it was no supernatural power but definitely a mystery for them.
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kdka.com - Someone spotted a large cat roaming a field in Fayette County and now a community is on edge.
At Laurel Highlands High School in North Union Township, girls' soccer and midget football practice were canceled after they learned of the sighting.
Someone called Fayette County 911 Tuesday night about the feline.
"Just over the hill here, it busted – there [were] animals – got the fence busted here and on the other hill there was … whatever this is was chasing cattle," one man explained.
Some people were speculating the cat came from an animal orphanage opened 20 years ago in the area, but the doctor says all of his cats are accounted for.
NOTE: this is the same general area where a Bigfoot (Uniontown, PA) was sighted several weeks ago. The Laural Highlands has a diverse wildlife population and still plenty of undeveloped land even though it's only an hour's drive south of Pittsburgh. A population of big cats wouldn't surprise me at all...Lon
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bbc.co.uk - Each of us has at least 100 new mutations in our DNA, according to research published in the journal Current Biology.
Scientists have been trying to get an accurate estimate of the mutation rate for over 70 years.
However, only now has it been possible to get a reliable estimate, thanks to "next generation" technology for genetic sequencing.
The findings may lead to new treatments and insights into our evolution.
In 1935, one of the founders of modern genetics, JBS Haldane, studied a group of men with the blood disease haemophilia. He speculated that there would be about 150 new mutations in each of us.
Others have since looked at DNA in chimpanzees to try to produce general estimates for humans.
However, next generation sequencing technology has enabled the scientists to produce a far more direct and reliable estimate.
They looked at thousands of letters of the genetic code within the Y chromosomes of two Chinese men. They knew the men were distantly related, having shared a common ancestor who was born in 1805.
By looking at the number of differences between the two men, and the size of the human genome, they were able to come up with an estimate of between 100 and 200 new mutations per person.
Impressively, it seems that Haldane was right all along.
Unimaginable
One of the scientists, Dr Yali Xue from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire, said: "The amount of data we generated would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
"And finding this tiny number of mutations was more difficult than finding an ant's egg in an emperor's rice store."
New mutations can occasionally lead to severe diseases like cancer. It is hoped that the findings may lead to new ways to reduce mutations and provide insights into human evolution.
Joseph Nadeau, from the Case Western Reserve University in the US, who was not involved in this study said: "New mutations are the source of inherited variation, some of which can lead to disease and dysfunction, and some of which determine the nature and pace of evolutionary change.
"These are exciting times," he added.
"We are finally obtaining good reliable estimates of genetic features that are urgently needed to understand who we are genetically."
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newzimbabwe.com - These are the shocking pictures of the human-like creature born from a goat in central Zimbabwe.
Defying science, the dead human-like being survived for several hours after birth on Sunday but died later as shocked villagers gathered in rural Maboleni, 40 miles out of the Midlands town of Gweru, to witness the “miracle”.
The creature, which was incinerated by superstitious villagers before it could be taken for lab tests, had what looks like a human head, face, nose, mouth, neck and shoulders but also had goat legs and a tail. It also had human-like skin and back.
Midlands Governor Jason Machaya claimed on Wednesday that the bizarre creature was a product of bestiality. He declared: “An adult human being was responsible.”
But experts say it is impossible for a human being to have sex with an animal and produce an offspring of any kind.
Inter-breeding humans with closely allied species like chimpanzees, gorillas and gibbons has been attempted with no results, experts say.
There are few known species that can interbreed and produce offspring of varying degrees of fertility, including horses and donkeys which produce mules which are infertile. Bison and cattle produce beefalos while lions and tigers produce ligers – both infertile.
The Midlands’ Provincial Veterinary Officer Dr Thomas Sibanda, while regretting that they never got the chance to conduct tests on the bizarre creature, said: “As far as I know, it is not scientifically possible for a man to impregnate a beast unless of course it’s a miracle.
“Inter-breeding is so hard that a sheep and a goat can mate but they will never produce any product out of it.”
Locals now fear that the creature was a product of witchcraft, but Dr Sibanda still wants to give science a chance. He said: “It is common that an animal can be born with the hydrocephalus condition, a condition that causes an animal to have an abnormally big head full of water. This condition can cause the normal positions of the chin, nose and ears to shift.
“We could have confirmed that the creature was a goat if we had seen it since we are experts in animals. To confirm whether it was a human being, you need medical doctors.”
NOTE: yeah, I know....but a really oddball posting once in awhile never hurt...Lon
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Bill Ryan of Project Camelot in his own words in response to recent criticism regarding the new interview with Dr. Steven Greer.
"Besides possibly offending some people in high places, we have been criticized by some for the Steven Greer video. I need to say a few things about that. At this point, you will see why I'm writing this response myself.
We know some people don't like Kerry's interviewing style. That's okay, too: there are many other videos to watch - too many, in fact - and no-one is under contract to view or listen to our material.
We understand that many people were uncomfortable with how we (both) confronted Steven Greer. We appreciated that some people found the video hard to watch ...we did ourselves! But we do not apologize for our stance, and our substantive questions remain - and they are serious ones.
And Kerry herself has come under fire. Here's my response. Read this carefully.
Kerry Cassidy is one of the bravest people I have ever met. She has more integrity in her little finger than most people have in their whole being. In all the time I've known her - and all the time I've spent with her (which is considerable: despite not being a couple, we always share hotel rooms, and have traveled for thousands of miles and for months out of every year) -
- I have never, EVER, known her to lie or deceive in any way. I do not believe the thought ever enters her head. This is an extraordinarily rare and valuable quality. Name me another person, man or woman, who meets that test.
- I've never, ever, known her to deliberately hurt another person. Rather the opposite: she forgives and always seeks to understand those who I sometimes myself privately write off in my own moments of impatience and frustration.
- She has the kind of courage that any General would be proud of - and which many men lack. She is fearless and has no concerns whatsoever for her own safety or about others' opinions of her. She is ALWAYS trying to do the right thing. She and I have both made mistakes and errors of judgment - but her intentions are honorable every time.
She is loyal, and determined, and committed to the highest good, and I'm proud to work with her. She has explained her interview style, which is seamless with her personality, and rightly does not apologize for who she is. (One of our closest friends, Bob Dean - you may remember that some air-heads criticized Kerry for giving him a 'hard time' on camera - loves her to pieces and is one of our staunchest allies. Go figure.)
Between us, we make up an extremely strong team. We complement one another extraordinarily well. And we are far more than "interviewers" or "journalists". It's not just our job to ask questions and keep dutifully quiet.
We've been swimming in this material publicly, 24/7, for over three years, literally night and day. Before that, we were students and private researchers for decades, and have both had our own experiences. (See this interview of ourselves by Arjan Bos. You may like it. You'll learn quite a lot about us and what makes us tick.)
We know a great deal now, and are well-qualified to have our own strong, well-informed opinions on a range of subjects. We do not apologize for, or need to justify, the way we present our views - or the fact that we present them at all."
NOTE: I'm interested in what you have to say about the interview, Bill Ryan's comments and Dr. Greer's statements...Lon ________________________________
Dr. Steven Greer presents "Contact & Disclosure: The Final Sequence"
Dr. Steven Greer presents "Contact & Disclosure: The Final Sequence" at the European Exopolitics Summit 2009. This is the presentation that triggered the interview/debate between Dr. Greer and Kerry Cassidy/Bill Ryan of projectcamelot.org the following day.
Steven M. Greer is an American physician, ufologist, and conspiracy theorist. In 1993, Greer founded the Disclosure Project, claiming evidence of extraterrestrial visits to Earth, and a wide-ranging conspiracy by governments in the United States and other nations to cover up evidence of these visits. Greer also claims that these groups suppress unspecified extraterrestrial technologies from the people of the world, including free energy.
Greer supports 'free and open' Congressional hearings on UFOs, 'extraterrestrial visitation', and other aspects of the alleged cover up conspiracy. One of the Disclosure Project's most famous presentations was at the National Press Club in 2001, where Greer and a number of individuals came forward with alleged evidence.
Greer is also the founder of the Advanced Energy Research Organization (AERO) and The Orion Project. Both seek funding for research into perpetual motion and other free energy devices.
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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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On Friday September 4th 2009, Haunted Earth have been given permission to investigate Charleville Forest Castle, Eire.
Commencing around 10pm (BST - British Summer Time) or 5pm Eastern Standard Time, we will have a live streaming camera transmitting from the castle until the end of the night.
Receive regular updates on the investigation plus the opportunity to chat with fellow viewers and Chris Halton.
This castle is one of Ireland`s most haunted locations and has been subject of TV investigations by Ghost Hunters International, and Most Haunted.
This is a premier location for us, and we look forward to seeing you there.
diariosanrafael.com.ar - A man living in the village El Nihuil reported seeing an object that he could not identify. He took pictures of it with his cell phone and believes it’s an UFO.
The man decided to protect his identity for fear of public opinion. Although reluctant to make public the episode, a friend persuaded him to publish it in a local Journal and after the promise to safeguard his identity.
It all started last Saturday, around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, near the Nautical Club, when the man went to the coast to check on the conditions for fishing.
He said that while he tries to photograph the object with his cellphone, it began to emit a kind of buzz and, as if it blew hard on the water, stirring, begins to rise. At that time, and while the object rises, he managed to take photographs of the strange silhouette.
As shown in the picture (of low resolution and size), the man had to zoom in to take a closer look. After capturing four images, the object disappeared in the sky.
NOTE: I attempted to enhance the images...too bad the quality wasn't better. Hard to tell the size of this object and there was no mention in the report. There was a later story in Diario San Rafael today and it seems an investigation is being conducted...Lon
UPDATE: after thinking it over and discussing it with others, I've come to the conclusion that were several close up shots of a car windshield with a crack in it. Notice the 'object' stays on the same plane and position but the only thing that changes is the backgrond. It's been bugging me all day...but I think that's what we have here....Lon
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waltonsun.com - It’s hard to imagine “Big” Dave Carney being afraid of anything. And when he talks he only strengthens that assumption. But would you believe that he’s afraid of ghosts?
Standing behind the bar at Grayton Beach’s The Red Bar, Carney is an imposing figure. Broad shouldered and standing 6 foot 5 inches tall, he wears his hair in the queue style, a mostly shorn head except for a small braid of hair in the back.
Despite his size, Carney met his match on a farm his family owns in Virginia and North Carolina: A farm that he swears is haunted.
Carney quickly warms up to most everyone who takes the time to order a drink at The Red Bar. He jumps at the opportunity to wax on about life’s little slip-ups and misadventures. A conversational journeyman, his stories are not only interesting but, allowed to wend naturally, have a happy talent of growing exponentially in entertainment value.
Carney is 38-years-old and was born in Chattanooga, Tenn. He has both Cherokee and English heritage on both sides of his family. Carney moved to Walton County in 2005, and besides pouring drinks at The Red Bar, he practices kickboxing and jujitsu at the Destin Academy for Martial Arts.
He came to the area to work construction during a very active hurricane season which included Hurricanes Dennis and Katrina. “When the work dried up I started bartending,” said Carney.
It was not only employment that prompted the relocation.
According to Carney, when he and his wife, Kelly, were living on the farm, she saw the ghosts of eight people dressed in early American clothing. He believes these ghosts to be members of Daniel Boone’s family who may have been slaughtered by a Blackfoot Indian named Red Feather.
When Carney remodeled the house it led to the discovery of a compartment hidden behind a wall plastered with newspapers from the 1930s and ‘40s. In the ceiling of this compartment, he discovered three antique clocks all manufactured 24 years apart and set to the same time. He also found a box containing about 60 lengths of multicolored, braided human hair.
By asking around in town, Carney learned that the previous owner of the house, Cleave Farmer, went missing without a trace. After Cleave’s disappearance, the house sat on the market for more than 20 years and went up for auction at least three times, but never drew a bid.
Carney’s time at the farm was full of peculiar incidents and eerie discoveries. With Carney’s gift of gab, he captivates with the tales he weaves about strange lights in the woods, stone walls and alters, a chest hidden in a stream, an Indian burial ground and his own firsthand contact with whatever is haunting the farm.
“It was midnightish, I was taking some refuse from remodeling out of the house. I heard something rumbling and thought it was a bear,” said Carney, “so I made some noise to try and shoo it away.”
“Then I heard something come out of the brush and before I could turn around it grabbed me from behind. I could feel it breathing on my head. But when I went to defend myself there was nothing there. Just footprints leading up to me in the snow.”
Not long after that he traded the Appalachian Mountains for the white-sand beaches of South Walton.
Although he is quite comfortable here in Florida and has no immediate intentions of moving back, Carney is interested in writing a book about whatever is haunting his property.
NOTE: I'm not sure what is referred to as 'Daniel Boone's family' but his immediate family were not killed by Indians (though a son, Israel, was killed battling Shawnees). There are a lot of stories about Daniel Boone that simply aren't fact, though it is true that his exploits were the basis for the character Hawkeye in James Fennimore Cooper's 'The Last of the Mohicans'...Lon
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community.adn.com - Families suspected a serial killer. The FBI mostly blamed alcohol and the cruel Alaska winter.
This fall, a movie distributed by a major studio and marketed as a “dramatization” of real events is offering another explanation for decades of disappearances and suspicious deaths in and around Nome:
Abduction by space aliens.
"The Fourth Kind," a thriller, hits theaters Nov. 6. Marketing from NBC Universal says it’s based on “archival footage” of a psychologist who stumbled upon “the most disturbing evidence of alien abduction ever documented” while interviewing Alaskans.
Spooky. Except it all looks to be a “Blair Witch Project” style fake-out.
No one has heard of the psychologist, including the state licensing board and president of the state psychologists association. And while there have indeed been disappearances in Nome — mainly people traveling to the hub city from surrounding Inupiat and Siberian Yupik villages — blaming a real-life tragedy on alien abduction is not sitting well with the non-profit that pushed the cases into the open.
“The movie looks ridiculous,” said Kawerak Inc. Vice President Melanie Edwards, who watched the trailer online Monday. “It’s insensitive to family members of people who have gone missing in Nome over the years.”
Universal Pictures is distributing the film in the United States. The star, Milla Jovovich, is a veteran of three “Resident Evil” movies about diabolical corporations and zombies. In the trailer, she introduces herself as an actress and tells the audience that “every scene in this movie is supported by archived footage.”
But it’s all fake, right? Did the film-makers ever go to Nome? What about the idea that all this trivializes a string of tragic Alaska deaths?
The studio has no comment, an NBC Universal spokesman said in an e-mail Tuesday.
Despite an FBI conclusion in 2006 that no serial killer was to blame, emotions over the missing and dead are still raw in the region.
Dallas Massie is a retired state trooper who has been filling in as Nome police chief since early this year. Soon after he arrived, a relative of a St. Lawrence Island man who went missing in October 2004 called. He had heard there was someone new at the police department and hoped to see a re-energized investigation.
The 2004 case is Nome’s most recent major missing-persons case, Massie said. Police, he said, are still looking for leads. Within reason.
“I have yet to hear anybody with the theory that aliens are taking folks out of the region,” Massie said.
VILLAGE DEATHS
After years of rumors that Nome had become a dangerous place for travelers from the villages, local officials in 2005 released a list of about 20 disappearances and deaths in the city. The cases dated back to the 1960s. At the time, a Nome police officer was on trial for the murder of a young village woman, and some residents mistrusted city police.
The FBI stepped in, reviewing two dozen cases, eventually determining that excessive alcohol consumption and the winter climate were a common link in many of the cases. Unlike other commercial hubs in rural Alaska, Nome is a “wet” city, with bars and liquor stores.
Some of dead were killed by exposure or from falling off a jetty into the frigid Snake River, authorities said at the time.
Delbert Pungowiyi of Savoonga still believes that foul play claimed his uncle, who flew to Nome in 1998 to buy a snowmachine and never came home.
Despite the FBI’s conclusion, Pungowiyi suspects racially motivated, serial murders are to blame in at least some of the deaths.
As for the new movie?
“Oh my god, that is ridiculous,” he said.
To be fair, “The Fourth Kind” seems to be telling a different story altogether. Movie trailers can be deceiving, but the victims shown in the short clip don’t appear to be visiting villagers.
The movie’s title is a reference to a measurement system used to describe varying degrees of contacts with aliens. Think “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” A UFO sighting would be the first kind of contact. The fourth kind is abduction.
According to promotional materials from Universal, the film is framed around a psychologist named Abigail Tyler who interviewed traumatized patients in Nome.
But state licensing examiner Jan Mays says she can’t find records of an Abigail Tyler ever being licensed in any profession in Alaska.
No one by that name lived in Nome in recent years, according to a search of public record databases.
Still, there are shreds of “evidence.”
Try Googling “Abigail Tyler” and “Alaska.” You’ll get a link to a convincingly boring Web site called the “Alaska Psychiatry Journal” — complete with a biography of a psychologist by that name who researched sleep behavior in Nome. Except the site is suspiciously vacant, mostly a collection of articles on sleep studies with no home page or contact information.
Another site, www.alaskanewsarchive.com, features a story from the Nome Nugget about Tyler moving to Nome for research. The problem? The story is credited to Nugget editor and publisher Nancy McGuire, who says it's baloney and she never wrote it.
Both the news site and the medical journal site were created just last month, according to domain-name research sites.
Ron Adler is CEO and director of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. Denise Dillard is president of the Alaska Psychological Association. They said this week they’ve never heard of the Alaska Psychiatry Journal, or of Abigail Tyler.
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MUFON witness report 8/30/09 - Unicoi State Park, Georgia: "My husband and I went camping this past Saturday. Sunday morning,(August 30th) around 4:00, I woke up to go the the restroom. (There was a building near the campsites that provided restroom and shower facilities.)
