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8/15/08  #482
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Welcome o' seekers of the truth. Once again the agents of disinformation and those who keep the truth from us are rushing about in fear and panic, because Conspiracy Journal is here with its weekly dose of news and information about conspiracies, UFOs, the paranormal, and anything else that's strange, bizarre and interesting.

This week Conspiracy Journal brings you such kundalini-raising stories as:

- Scientist Claims Mars Has 'Contemporary' life -
- Invisibility Cloak One Step Closer, Scientists Say -
- Pedal to the Metal: UFO Car Chases -
- Did 'Windigo' Turn Man Into Cannibalistic Monster? -
AND: It's Ghost Season in Japan

All these exciting stories and MORE in this week's issue of
CONSPIRACY JOURNAL!

~ And Now, On With The Show! ~


THE CIA WANTS YOUR BODY!

MIND CONTROLLED SEX SLAVES AND THE CIA

UNIMAGINABLE RAPE, TORTURE AND BLOODY RITUALS. . . LEADING POLITICIANS INVOLVED IN CHILD ABUSE RINGS. . . U.S. PRESIDENTS AND VICE PRESIDENTS COMPLICIT. . . USE OF OCCULT AND 'SATANISM' AS TRAUMA BASE . . . ANTI-CHRISTIAN NIGHT SERVICES AT CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. . .Plus Exposing The Mind Controlled "Stepford Whores," as well as Human Sacrifices at Bohemian Grove Retreat!

 What do Satanism, human trafficking, mind control experiments and child sex abuse have to do with the U.S. government? According to the testimony of experts and survivors, the CIA utilized all of these elements and more for their Top Secret Project Monarch, part of the MK-ULTRA mind control program. For reasons of National Security, dozens if not hundreds of people, many of them children, were allegedly subjected to unimaginable rape, torture, and bloody satanic rituals, with the aim of fracturing the human mind through trauma. This created multiple personalities that could then be programmed to perform specific tasks . . . Many of the purported victims say they were used to satisfy the sexual urges of the rich and powerful, even U.S. presidents. . . For these purposes, the CIA is said to have sought help from intergenerational cults, as well as child pornography and snuff film networks. As thousands of people were bought and sold on the underground sex market, our government supposedly looked the other way, seeing it not as an atrocity, but as an opportunity.

"I nearly jumped out of my seat when I first read this book. I was never convinced of the stories surrounding the sex slave allegations that people like Cathy O'Brien have been making. But now we hear from Mark Phillips, Cathy O'Brien, Ted Gunderson, Noreen Gosch and Palela Freyd who tend to support these claims. Plus there is additional added material on the Mind Control programs like MK Ultra by Commander X and Nick Redfern to really make this volume a must read for ALL conspiracy buffs." --Tim Beckley , Publisher, Conspiracy Journal.

This ground-breaking book can be yours for the SPECIAL PRICE OF ONLY $20.00
(Plus $5.00 for shipping.) You can't find this book for this special price anywhere else, so order right now and find out how your government has been using innocent civilians as sex slaves for the elite ruling class. HURRY, before YOU are their next VICTIM!

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COMING SOON!
MYSTERIES MAGAZINE  #21

In This Incredible Issue:

FEATURES:

The Mysterious Subterranean Realms of California.

The Mysterious Blast at California’s Port Chicago.

California’s Lake Monsters.

PsiSpies: The History of Remote Viewing.
By Louis Proud

COLUMNS
strange customs   
Italian Community Secretly Builds Breathtaking Underground Temples

Commentary   
The Dangers of Hallucinogens

Urban Legends   
Amusement Parks:Fodder for Scary Stories

Haunted Heritage   
Ghostly Activities at California’s Cal-Neva Resort

Arcane Cults   
The John Frum Movement:A South Pacific CargoCult

From the Skies   
2008:The Year of the UFO?

Interview   
Mary Ann Winkowski:The Original Ghost Whisperer


COMING SOON to your favorite bookstore or magazine stand.

www.mysteriesmagazine.com

- RED PLANET MARS DEPARTMENT -

Scientist Claims Mars Has 'Contemporary' life

A leading international space scientist says there is now clear evidence of life on Mars but that American authorities are hesitating from announcing it for political reasons.

"The discovery of liquid water on Mars combined with earlier discoveries of organic substances in a meteorite that came from Mars, and also of methane in the Martian atmosphere all point to the existence of life -- contemporary life -- on the Red Planet," said Chandra Wickramasinghe, a globally renowned astrobiologist.

"I am not speaking of fossilized life but contemporary life," emphasised Wickramasinghe, who is professor of applied mathematics and astronomy at the University of Cardiff in Wales.

Wickramasinghe, a student and collaborator of the late British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, spoke to London-based Sri Lankan diplomat and journalist Walter Jayawardhana, who made the text of the interview available to IANS.

Wickramasinghe, an internationally-respected astrobiologist, is also a leading advocate of a theory known as Panspermia, which suggests that all planets have been seeded for life by microbes from outer space and is thought to be a minority-view among scientists.

Wickramasinghe's associate Hoyle, a Cambridge scientist who was controversially overlooked for the Nobel Prize, was also the PhD guide of Indian astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar.

Hoyle's co-worker William Alfred Fowler won a 1983 Nobel along with the Indian-origin scientist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for their work on neucleosynthesis -- a concept that was established by Hoyle in 1946.

In his interview, Wickramasinghe said the discovery of subsurface water ice in the north polar regions of Mars -- announced July 31 by US scientists -- combined with earlier developments leads him to believe there is life on Mars.

"Even as early as 1976, when the two NASA space probes, Viking 1 and Viking 2, landed on Mars, experiments carried out in situ pointed strongly to the existence of active microbial life.

"In one experiment nutrient broth was poured onto a sample of Martian soil, and it frothed up so vigorously exuding carbon dioxide, that a positive detection of life might have been inferred.

"But when the NASA scientists looked for organic material, the detritus of living organisms, around the landing site, their experiments yielded negative or ambiguous results. So NASA cautiously concluded, 'no organics means no life detected'.

"But 32 years on, my friend Gil Levin, who was principal investigator on this project maintains that life on Mars was indeed detected in 1976! The experiments of 1976 to detect the dead bodies and decomposition products of bacteria were simply not sensitive enough," Wickramasinghe told Jayawardhana.

The Cardiff University astrobiologist said the delay in announcing life on Mars has little to do with science.

"I think there could be political and sociological considerations at work," he said.

"Firstly, if life was already detected, then there is no need to spend vast sums of money to continue the search.

"Secondly, there is a lot of scientific interest nowadays in bringing back samples of Martian soil to Earth at the cost of tens of billions of dollars, and there is a lobby that says if microbes exist on Mars we should not be doing this. It could pose a biohazard."

Wickramasinghe said authorities might be deterred by prospects of litigation arising from Planetary Protection -- the guiding principle in the design of interplanetary missions that aims to prevent biological contamination of both the target celestial body and the Earth.

Source: NDTV
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080060938

- NOW YOU SEE ME, NOW YOU DON'T DEPARTMENT -

Invisibility Cloak One Step Closer, Scientists Say

Scientists have created two new types of materials that can bend light the wrong way, creating the first step toward an invisibility cloaking device.

One approach uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level.

Both are so-called metamaterials – artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index.

The two teams were working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.

Each new material works to reverse light in limited wavelengths, so no one will be using them to hide buildings from satellites, said Jason Valentine, who worked on one of the projects.

“We are not actually cloaking anything,” Mr. Valentine said in an interview. “I don't think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. … We are just at the beginning of doing anything like that.”

His team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fibre optics. “In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive,” he said. “When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is. Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you.”

These are illusions caused by the light bending when it moves between water and air. The negative refraction achieved by the teams at Berkeley would be different. “Instead of the fish appearing to be slightly ahead of where it is in the water, it would actually appear to be above the water's surface,” Mr. Valentine explained. “It's kind of weird.”

For a metamaterial to produce negative refraction, it must have a structural array smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation being used. This was done using microwaves in 2006 by David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina and John Pendry of Imperial College London.

Visible light is harder. Some groups managed it with very thin layers, only one atom thick, but these materials were not practical to work with and absorbed a great deal of the light directed at it.

Mr. Valentine's team, whose work is reported in Nature, used a “fishnet” of stacked silver and metal dielectric layers stacked on top of each other and then punched through with holes.

The other team, reporting in Science, used an oxide template and grew silver nanowires inside porous aluminum oxide at tiny distances apart, smaller than the wavelength of visible light. This material refracts visible light.

Mr. Valentine said immediate applications might be superior optical devices, such as a microscope that could see a living virus.

“However, cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future. You'd have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material. It would just send light around. By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don't see it.”

Source: Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080810.wcloak0810/BNStory/
Science/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20080810.wcloak0810

- TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH DEPARTMENT -

Losing The Yeti in Forgotten Nation of Bhutan

SIGNYAR, Bhutan — He remembers the darkness of the pine forest, and the footprints, and his terror when the creature began to howl. He remembers the stories of his childhood, of a beast that stalked the upper reaches of the mountains, and how fear spread through the village every time it was spotted.

In a remote Himalayan kingdom that held out against the modern world for as long as it could, the old man remembers a time when the yeti was a normal part of life.

"The creature has always been out there, and it's out there still," says Sonam Dorji, 77, sitting on the pockmarked wooden floor of his small farmhouse. It's a cold Himalayan morning, and he warms himself beside a wood stove. The smell of burning pine fills the room. "If you travel the ancient trails, even today, there's a good chance you'll meet him."

His son-in-law, listening to the old man's stories, laughs dismissively from across the room.

Tshering Sithar is 39, a bulldozer operator helping pave the road to this village, which until recently could only be reached on foot.

"What is there to say?" he asks. "There's nothing out there in the forest. Any educated person today knows this."

Many traditional beliefs remain deeply ingrained in Bhutan, from astrology to the worship of Buddhist priests. But the monster is now increasingly forgotten, and the link to an ancient past is more often seen as a sign of ignorance.

"We can't live today like we did in the 17th or 18th century. Our culture has to be dynamic," says Khandu Wangchuck, Bhutan's finance minister. "Within the last 40 years, we've jumped 300-400 years."

And the yeti? Wangchuck pauses. "I think most people today know this is just a story."

What does it mean, though, when accepted fact decays into mere folk tale? When a belief that helped tie a land together is relegated to myth, what happens to the culture that believed in it? And how can a country that entered the 20th century just a few years ago make its way in the globalized world of the 21st?

In the West, yeti-like creatures long ago were reduced to myth. The Abominable Snowman is something from a "Scooby Doo" episode, or part of the latest installment in Hollywood's "Mummy" franchise. To mainstream science, the notion of Bigfoot is little more than a joke.

But across the Himalayas the beast was seen as real, known for generations in a half-dozen countries from Tibet to Pakistan. It was a region flush with wildlife, where tigers, bears and wild dogs roamed thick mountain forests and remote river valleys. Here, if nowhere else, the yeti was simply one more creature.

For Bhutan, a country barely noticed by much of the world, it became something even more.

In a nation stumbling nervously into modernity, the hulking mountain beast was publicly celebrated, becoming a 20th-century talisman against unbridled change and a link to ancient traditions. Stories of its travels were told by the king and top government officials. The Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, a large national park, was created in part as a place to protect it. Once Bhutan bothered to set up a postal system, in the early 1960s, it issued stamps honoring an animal that science insists does not exist.

"Everyone knew it was there," Dorji says. "It was like the bears or the leopards. Why would we question it?"

But changes barely imaginable just a few years ago are accelerating.

Until the early 1960s, Bhutan had sealed itself off for centuries, with life revolving around crop cycles, Buddhism, tiny feudal city-states and revered royalty. It had no roads, no electricity network, no currency, telephones or airports. Trade depended on barter. Tourists were barred.

Only after China invaded neighboring Tibet in 1959 did the king decree his country would no longer be fully closed off. The first paved roads came in 1963, the first tourists in the early 1970s, international phone service in the 1980s, television and the Internet in 1999.

While tourism remains highly restricted — visitors must pay $220 for each day's stay, in advance, just to get a visa — 20,000 tourists came last year, nearly 10 times as many as in 1991. In a nation where kings held absolute power, democratic elections in March brought forth a generation of ambitious politicians.

Bhutan is a place where almost everyone was born in a village but where few people see a future in farming — and where a minuscule modern economy means there are precious few other jobs.

Thimphu, Bhutan's increasingly crowded capital, has everything from majestic royal palaces to micro-traffic jams of a few dozen cars. On weekend nights, bored, unemployed young people brawl outside dance bars.

Suddenly, Bhutan has reached an uncomfortable crossroads. This is a time when the dynamism of modernity regularly clashes with modernity's pitfalls. Child mortality rates are plummeting, crime is on the rise and a college education is no longer just a dream.

It is a time when the yeti is increasingly unwelcome. No one is sure how far back the stories go.

In A.D. 79, the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder described immensely strong Himalayan animals with "human-like bodies." Chinese manuscripts from the 7th century mention hairy creatures similar to the yeti.

The tales change from region to region across Asia — yetis were man-eaters in some places, grass-eaters in others. In many places, the beast was seen as a harbinger of death, a combination of man, animal and demon.

Some things, though, were certain. It was tall, hairy and very strong. It lived mostly in the high mountains and avoided people. Only a handful of yak herders might report sightings with any regularity, but everyone knew it was out there, and feared it.

In Bhutan, most people call it the "migoi" — strong man — but it goes by any number of names across the Himalayas: glacier man, snow goblin, wild man.

To Westerners, though, it is known as the yeti — a name believed to come from a Tibetan word for bear — and it has gripped outsiders' imaginations since reports of a strange Himalayan creature began filtering out in the mid-20th century.

Mountaineers brought back many of the stories, telling of strange footprints in the snow, of mysterious animals spotted walking on two legs, of tales their porters told around campfires.

Just maybe, some thought, there could be truth in those tales. The high Himalayas are among the most isolated, forbidding parts of the world. Couldn't something — perhaps a species of gorilla, or even a form of proto-human — have hidden for centuries amid the crags?

Similar tales had proven accurate before. In 1902, a German soldier proved that central African legends of an enormous, hairy mountain beast were based in reality. But Capt. Robert von Beringe came home with proof: The body of a mountain gorilla that he had shot.

So the yeti hunt was on. In 1954, Britain's Daily Mail newspaper sent out a search party. In 1957, a Texas oilman took up the chase. Three years later, Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary searched along the Nepal-Tibet border. Soviet expeditions followed, as well as TV crews, scientists and hucksters.

Plenty of tantalizing clues have been found, from footprints to hair. But science can explain most — they often turn out to be from bears — and five decades of searching has turned up no body, no high-quality photograph. Eventually, even many fervent yeti hunters see the truth in more prosaic explanations.

The great Italian climber Reinhold Messner has spent years tracking yeti stories across the Himalayas and even caught a glimpse of it a couple times. But in the end, the truth was obvious to him. "All evidence," he wrote, "points to a nocturnal species of brown bear."

Or maybe not.

Ask politely, and Sangay Wangchuck will take you into a meeting room at the headquarters of Bhutan's conservation department and show you half a dozen framed plaster casts mounted on the wall. The frames show the outline of irregular grayish footprints around 12 inches long. All, according to small signs, come from yetis.

Wangchuck, the national director of conservation, knows what it is to wrestle with belief and science.

He has a master's degree from Yale and a doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He's a scientist who oversees legions of rangers and researchers. His training tells him not to believe in something unless he has proof.

But the yeti stories run deep here, and denial means more than casting off an old belief.

"My parents, my village, they still believe," says Wangchuck, a genial, erudite man.

When he talks about the yeti, words stumble out in sentence fragments, trying to straddle the line between science and heritage.

"As a biological entity, it's very difficult" to believe, says Wangchuck, looking down at his desk. But does it exist? "It's very difficult to say no."

So this man of science has found a very unscientific middle ground. "I tell people: 'Let's not dig too much into it. Let's talk about it, but leave it at that, and not conclude 'Yes, it's there,' or 'No, it's not there.'"

Talk to most Bhutanese, though, and few have quandaries.

Sonam Dorjee runs Om Bar, a Thimphu gathering spot popular among the rich, the royal and the well-connected. "I believe in it about like you do," says Dorjee, smiling. "These are stories for country people."

Later, driving through the nighttime Thimphu streets, he talks a little more. "Look, this country is changing so much. There's a lot of money here now, a lot of business. Some of these beliefs aren't going to survive."

Here's the thing, though, about how countries modernize: It's seldom a dramatic transformation from one era to the next, even in an isolated country like Bhutan. Instead, it's an inexorable slide that often remains invisible until — in retrospect — the change becomes obvious.

"The common belief is that traditionalism dissolves in the solvents of modernity," said Mark Dailey, an environmental anthropologist at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt., who has studied China's modernization. "That's an oversimplification and simply not true."

The reality is that cultures change piecemeal, and often find themselves holding onto beliefs that can appear contradictory.

"People tend to be stubborn," said Dailey. "Traditional beliefs help root them."

Outwardly, this country holds tightly to its culture. Laws require everything from traditional dress — robes for men and ankle-length skirts for women — to historic styles for new buildings.

But Bhutan can sometimes feel like a hollow, Bhutan-themed reproduction of itself, where even gas stations are ornamented with carved wooden pillars.

Some of this is pure economics. Much of Bhutan's revenue is derived from tourists who come in search of beautiful mountain scenery, ancient beliefs and a society unsullied by the larger world.

"We want to attach an economic sense to the culture," says Khandu Wangchuck, the finance minister. The key players in the culture business — travel agencies, tour guides, hoteliers: "Their whole livelihood will depend on maintaining our culture."

The value of the yeti, on the other hand, is not what it once was.

"Our stories grew around things that we could not explain," says Kunzang Choden, a Bhutanese writer who collects yeti stories.

Just a decade or so ago, the yeti helped explain the often intimidating natural world nearly everyone lived in — the nighttime shadows, the terrifying noises on lonely forest paths, the strange footprints. But increasingly, the sounds of the forest are drowned out by music played on cheap stereos smuggled in from China.

People who no longer need the yeti can dismiss it. Believing, Choden says, "is an implicit sign of being too traditional, or even backward."

Which, in Bhutan, no one wants to be. Even the most traditional families dream these days of well-paying jobs for their children, of lives that will take them away from ancestral homes and centuries of rural life.

Dhau, a 53-year-old farmer who uses only one name, was raised and still lives in Zamsa, a small village separated from the nearest road by a cable bridge barely large enough for a bicycle. He grew up to be like his own father, and he once expected his children would grow up to be like him.

But today there's a primary school not far away, and three years ago electricity reached the village. He has an electric cooker and a ceiling fan that can chase away the clouds of monsoon insects. One of his children is in high school, boarding in town. Another is studying computers.

Asked if he wants them to move back home someday, he was stunned by the question.

"Of course not," he said, stopping to talk as he walked home from his fields on a cloudy afternoon. "Life is difficult here, not like in the towns. I want them to get government jobs and live easier lives."

By nearly all appearances, he is a man from another time — a subsistence farmer who works his fields with handmade tools and who holds tightly to a deeply mystical form of Buddhism. He believes fiercely in miracles and demons.

But like the tigers that roamed these forests a century ago, the yeti he once knew is gone. His children don't know about it, and he doesn't miss it. Its loss has left no obvious holes in his cultural soul. If it survives, he says, it went far away a long time ago.

"My parents used to talk about it, about meeting the huge man in the forest," he says. "But we don't talk about it now."

Then he walks away, following a dirt path toward a wooden house where electric lights now chase away the night and whatever might be hiding in its darkness.

Source: Google News
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jMQQtyEQPoH_V4vjymQBZFeqK1ygD92ESUB00

- SHUT UP AND DRIVE DEPARTMENT -

Pedal to the Metal: UFO Car Chases


While we marvel at the flood of new cases (and visual evidence) that reaches us every day through a variety of websites and YouTube, it’s hard not to forget the simpler cases of the past, such as one which occurred in a summer much like this one, but thirty years ago and in a country far, far away...

It was July 24, 1978--mid-winter in South American landmass—when a cab driver picked up a fare that would change his life forever. At around 3 o’clock in the morning, Carlos Brandi,19, called for a cab to get him back to his home in Guaymallén, a community in the Argentinean province of Mendoza. As fate would have it, Aldo Nieves, scarcely older than his passenger and driving a white Peugeot 404, was dispatched to pick up the waiting passenger.

Brandi boarded the car and after exchanging the usual pleasantries, sat back in seat in silence. Nieves drove along the empty streets until they came to a crossroads near the Belgrano Train Station in the town of San Jose. Completely unaware of the importance of crossroads in the esoteric tradition, passenger and driver both noticed a white source of light moving along at an estimated altitude of 500 meters. They exchanged words as to what the nature of the light could be, and then dismissed the matter...until both noticed that the white light was shadowing them, much like a feline matching the pace of its prey.

Perhaps it was their youth, perhaps it was the excitement that the UFO phenomenon has always caused in Argentina, but the passenger made the cabbie a bold proposal: to steer toward the object to have a better view. Stranger still was that the cabbie should accept, turning off the meter and heading his Peugeot in the object’s direction. Aldo Nieves dutifully radioed this back to Leonardo Argañaraz, his dispatcher, who in turn told all his other units to rendezvous with Nieves and his passenger at the location in question, taking care to contact the authorities as well. The young driver gave a blow-by-blow account over his car radio to all the other vehicles as he approached the glowing unknown.

Meanwhile Carlos Brandi, the passenger, had his torso halfway out the window as he stared at the object, which now acquired more defined proportions and resembled “ a giant mushroom”. Suddenly inspired, the driver began flashing his lights at the unknown presence in a form of improvised semaphore, hoping to make contact. His improvised signals were more successful than he could have anticipated; as the object appeared to take notice, speeding up ahead of the taxicab and then slowing down to remain still at a distance of roughly a thousand meters. At this point, Brandi and Nieves were in a position to make out some details: the object, whose diameter was guesstimated at ten meters with a height of 5-6 meters, had a white light on its upper section and four “navigation lights” around its edge.

The craft – for it was now possible to speak of it in terms of a structured vehicle – moved side to side across the road, pausing briefly over a service station and then weaving out sight into a residential area and becoming visible again. And it was at this location – the Santa Ana district – that pedestrian onlookers became witnesses to the otherworldly presence. Two women waiting for the bus gazed skyward at the erratic object; one of them was seized by a sudden panic that made her cling to the trunk of a nearby tree and scream in terror at the unknown

But the game was afoot, and the young hunters pursued their prize with gusto. Upon reaching the road linking the villages of Corralitos and Rodeo de la Cruz, the Peugeot’s engine began to sputter. The taxicab’s headlights dimmed, then died out completely, as did the radio link to the other units and the dispatcher’s base station. Brandi and Nieves suddenly found their roles reversed – the hunters unwittingly turned into prey – as the object wheeled around towards them. Brandi opened the rear passenger door and ran out of the cab into the darkness, seeking shelter behind a nearby house. Nieves was frozen in his seat, unable to move his legs, until he managed to overcome this paralysis and desert his Peugeot, taking shelter next to his companion at a distance of some thirty meters from the car.

The craft was now in sight: seized by fear, both humans could do little else but keep their eyes riveted on the unearthly structure. Featuring large windows or portholes, the presence of occupants – tall, slender humanoid silhouettes – could be made out clearly enough for a detailed description to be made. The figures were described as hooded and wearing close-fitting garments; one of them appeared to operate some kind of instrument panel that was suspended in the air. No noise issued from the vehicle as the figures scurried around inside.

Thoughts raced furiously through Nieves’s head, as he feared harm from these presences, which looked down from above at the Peugeot “much like doctors observing a surgical procedure from the gallery above,” as he described it. But any fears that the slender, hooded figures would whisk him away to an uncertain fate were dissipated when the object pulled away into the distance. After a while, still in the clutches of terror, passenger and driver returned to the taxicab, whose engine turned over normally, but with a curious detail: the intensity of the car’s lights was so strong that the dome light burst; the lights of the car radio short-circuited as well.

Perhaps feeling a modicum of relief, the erstwhile hunters returned their attention to the craft, which was now motionless and at quite a distance. There was a flash and an explosion – perhaps a sonic boom? – and the vehicle vanished from sight. It was at this point that Nieves passed out, overcome by the sound. At this point, some of the other livery vehicles arrived at the scene, offering assistance to the unconscious driver and to Brandi, the distraught passenger. Nieves was taken to Mendoza’s General Hospital, where he awoke in such a state of nervous excitement that it became necessary to put him in restraints. The explosion and subsequent disappearance of the strange object was confirmed by three other cab drivers, the same ones who took Aldo Nieves to the hospital.

Veteran Argentinean researcher Carlos Banchs, who interviewed both witnesses and wrote a report on the case, notes that the Argentinean Air Force dismissed this case as “a mistaken observation of its nocturnal training exercises over the area.”

Calling Mr. Goodwrench

The belief that UFOs were able to cause "electromagnetic interference" (alternatively known as EM effects) on Earth goes back to the early days of the phenomenon, when it was noticed that the proximity of these unknown forms could cause car headlights to dim or turn off completely, produce radio interference and cause wide-scale blackouts in different parts of the world. Whether this effect is a deliberate test of man-made devices or a purely accidental remains unanswered, naturally.

Researchers interested in the "vehicle interference" aspect of the phenomenon believed at first that only gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines were prone to being affected by UFO electromagnetism. Then cases involving diesel engines succumbing to the proximity of an unknown object became known.

Spanish UFO researcher Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos devotes a comprehensive chapter to EM effects in his landmark Enciclopedia de los encuentros cercanos con ovnis (Barcelona: Plaza y Janes, 1987). Ballester describes the effects produced by a UFO as following a fairly standard pattern with certain variations: engine failure followed by a dimming or darkening of headlights; diesel engines continue running but their operation becomes haphazard, stopping and starting. "It frequently becomes necessary," he observes, "to restart gasoline-fueled engines altogether [...] this succession of effects appears to correspond, at least from the theoretical standpoint, to the presence of strong ionization. This could account for failures in the electrical system by hindering the proper operation of spark plugs and draining batteries."

Endless Summer – The Marx Incident

The American love affair with the car – featured in such cinematic experiences as George Lucas’s “American Graffiti” – usually conjures up images of long hot summer nights and days, convertible coupes and sedans and young men and women enjoying each other’s company to the sounds of an AM radio. But what holds true for the silver screen often falls flat in real life, and this is certainly true for the following case.

Pennsylvania, a state with a long history of UFO sightings, boasts a vehicular persecution case that has not been widely discussed at all, and is in fact known only to a few. It involves a person known to this author and to others Pennsylvania UFO and paranormal researchers; at his own request, we have identified him with the pseudonym of "Jeff Marx" and the names of the other parties involved in his hair-raising story are aliases as well.

In June 1965, Jeff Marx and three companions--his best friend Alan and their respective girlfriends, Mary and Lily--were driving at night aboard a brand new convertible in Cranberry Township, north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Tooling around in the warm summer evening, only a week after graduating from high school and with the prospect of the future before them, the foursome had no idea that the unknown was about to execute an unwelcome intrusion into their lives.

"I had a convertible that plays a major part in this sighting," adds Jeff Marx, "what one would call...evidence."

That evening, he recalls, he stopped by to collect his friends and they went off to enjoy a few rounds of miniature golf followed by a visit to a pizza parlor. Given the lateness of the hour, they decided to begin the return home. Alan, however, asked his friend to drive down a few country roads to partake of a bottle of beer he'd placed in the car. "I was northbound on Route 19 and I turned onto Freedom-Cryder Road. Back in 1965 it was a very rural area. You had farmhouses further down the road toward Freedom. We turned down this road about ten or twenty five minutes after ten [o'clock]."

As convertible made its way down the country road, Alan asked Jeff to pull over, since something very unusual was going on. "That light's been following us for a while," he explained, after the car had halted on the curb. "That light up there. It's getting awful close and I don't hear anything."

Jeff Marx admits that he could not hear anything either, but the size of the light in the black sky appeared to be increasing, coming toward them. "We decided to get out of there," Marx recalls, "but I couldn't get the engine started. We jumped out of the car, ran across the road into a field, and hid under a [fallen] tree. By now the object was over the car, illuminating the area. As dark as it was, I could see my car. Alan said the object reminded him of a teardrop, and to me it looked like an upside-down ice cream cone."

Nearly forty years after the events, Marx is still amazed by one particular aspect of the uncanny unknown object: "It was white hot, really bright, brighter than anything I've ever seen in my life. It wobbled and swayed back and forth. I wanted to get a better look at it, and I stood up to take a better look. Then I felt this wave of heat hit my face."

His passengers weren't as awestruck as he: Mary was on the verge of terror, shouting that they were all going to die; Alan and Lily had to pull Jeff down behind the apparent safety of the fallen tree after his effort to examine the phenomenon more closely.

"Mary was really upset," adds Marx. "It really freaked her out."

What seemed like an hour went by before the pellucid object finished its inspection of the convertible. It drifted away from the car and into the night sky, moving upward and picking up speed, vanishing out of sight in a matter of seconds. Marx remembers that the object acquired a reddish cast as it disappeared.

"We were pretty shaken by the incident," says Marx. "Another car came down the road in the opposite direction, stopped by my car and looked at it, and then sped away. I don't know if he was a witnessed to what happened, but after looking at my car, he didn't waste much time getting away from it."

Walking over to the car, the shaken teenagers tried to get back inside, only to find that the door handles were hot. Once inside, the young women in the rear remarked that the seats were warm; the same strange warmth emanated from the dashboard and the steering wheel. "The chrome strip around the windshield was so hot I couldn't even touch it--it burned my hand."

The convertible started up normally and the four witnesses to the unusual luminous phenomenon returned home in silence. "Alan and I dropped the girls off...they said they never wanted to discuss this again, and that we shouldn't say anything to anybody, since who would believe four teenagers with alcohol on their breaths," explains Marx. "Mary said she never wanted to talk about it--it didn't happen, and if anyone ever said anything, she would deny having ever been there."

Marx and his friend spoke about the incident, wondering what the light could have been. Alan replied that it could have been "something from another world." To this day, Jeff Marx has no idea or explanation to what the luminous intruder could have been.

But his experiences were not over. Not by a long shot.

"I got home feeling real warm, as though I had a temperature, but after checking with the thermometer it was normal. I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror and I looked sunburned, but it didn't hurt." His parents would ask him about the sunburn during breakfast, but Marx dismissed it as the result of driving with the convertible roof down.

"Then my dad walked," says Marx, "says: you'd better take a look at your car, something happened to it."

Thinking that the convertible could have been rear-ended during the night by a careless motorist, Marx stepped outside to inspect the damage. "I was really shocked. My car was white; the hood and the trunk lid had bubbles all over them; the chrome around the windshield was burned to a bluish color." The car's red upholstery had been faded to an orangeish hue.

Taking the vehicle to an auto body repair shop, the mechanic asked if Marx had spilled acid over the car, since the paint was flaking off easily. "I didn't want to explain anything to him," notes the driver of the hapless convertible, "because he might have thought I was some sort of nut."

The automobile was sanded down, primed and painted with two coats of paint, and Jeff drove it around for a whole day. On the following day, the bubbles appeared on the paint again, resulting in two further visits to the body shop that week. "He didn't know what to make of it," says Marx, remembering the auto body mechanic's bewilderment. "he thought it might be a defect in the metal from the factory, since the paint wouldn't stay on the car. I kept the car for about two more months, then I got rid of it--I just couldn't stand being in the car."

Several months after the incident, the four experiencers got together to discuss the event, but the women balked at recalling the strange summer night. "Alan went on to become a UFO investigator," says Marx, "and also was involved with governmental cover-ups. Lily got married and moved out to the Midwest; Mary I saw about a year ago and we spoke about old times. When the sighting came up, she repeated that she didn't want to know about it, it never happened."

"That night in 1965 changed Mary, Lily, Alan and myself," Jeff Marx concludes with an unmistakable air of sadness. "Our lives would never be the same...I have a lot of questions about life on Earth as it is, as how we know it, as how we were raised to know it. I've talked to a lot of people who've had encounters with UFOs and it has changed their lives, and put questions in their minds about life on Earth. I may never know the answer, I don't know."

Jeff Marx's candid story, and his assertions about not knowing exactly what it was changed the course of his life in mid-1960's, could have been echoed a year later by other Pennsylvanian drivers who had their own brushes with the unknown.

On April 17, 1966 Anthony Matteo and John Roth, with their respective spouses, were driving along Route 422 between the communities of Sharon and New Castle in the pre-dawn hours. One of the two women became aware of what she first thought might be a "reflection" of another light source, but suddenly realized that it was an object paralleling of the car's movement down the road. The vehicle stopped on two separate occasions to confirm this suspicion. The object, whose brightness was compared to that of a spotlight, had been on the right side of the car and had later shifted to the left, always staying an estimated 1/4 of mile up in the air. This shadowing continued for a number of miles until the vehicle and its nervous occupants reached New Castle. The object then grew faint and vanished.

Two days later, four boys from Clarion, Pennsylvania, claimed that their car's radio had been subjected to interference allegedly originating from a bright light in the sky, which engaged in the rapid maneuvers for which the UFO phenomenon has become know.

The four youngsters pulled their vehicle over to get a better look at the nimble celestial object, which remained in view for some five minutes before vanishing altogether. Not unexpectedly, the radio static disappeared and the local station could now be heard normally. The most unusual feature to color their experience was that they were subjected to an unusual "rainfall" produced by the object as it hovered above them. There was no word if they or the vehicle were harmed by it.

UFO Pursuit in Spain

A UFO/automobile close encounter, which was reported by the newspaper La Voz de Galicia in November 1985, pitted a 34-year-old newspaper layout specialist who was heading home from La Coruña to his home village of Piadela. While driving along the Cecebre Reservoir, he suddenly became aware of a greenish, rectangular vehicle hovering above him in the night sky. The boxlike object descended vertically some 50 feet away from his car, causing the witness to bring his car to a halt. Quietly, the UFO flew over his car, disappearing shortly thereafter. The witness claimed to have experienced symptoms akin to hypnosis immediately after his experience.

On January 25, 1996, at during the heated days of the Galician UFO wave in northwestern Spain, Bartolomé Vázquez of the town of As Pontes, filmed a triangular UFO as two Spanish Air Force fighters pursued it. He would be treated to the sight of other strange objects in his native skies and undergo a harrowing close encounter: on one occasion, a UFO hovered directly over his vehicle while he traveled along with his wife and children. The unknown craft allegedly damaged the car's roof. Vázquez also claims that his brother had a similar encounter around the same time, but in that incident, "his car's engine died when the UFO flew over it, and all the car doors opened at once..."
Another landmark case involving vehicular interference occurred during the same UFO wave: Andrés Landeira had no idea he was about to become the star of UFO drama on the night of February 26, 1996, when he discovered that his sedan was unable to climb the steep hill which led back to his home in the city of Lugo.

Shifting gears with a perplexed expression on his features, Landeira noticed that the sedan refused to budge. It was only then that he realized that his car was rising into the air.

Panicking, he opened the door, hoping to jump to safety from whatever nameless fate awaited him, but he realized he was well over thirty feet in the air. "I held on to the steering wheel with all my might," Landeira would later tell UFO investigator Manuel Carballal, "I forced my back into the driver's seat and thought I was going to die, being taken to God knows where...Hell! I was really scared."

But the car was not spirited off into the black skies. Landeira observed that whatever had picked him up deposited him back onto the road just slightly ahead of his original position, but sideways. Aside from being badly frightened by the experience, the driver wasn't negatively affected. The only reminder of the event was the car's dashboard clock, which froze at precisely ten minutes before two o'clock in the morning.

Andrés is a "trustworthy man," in the words of his friends and neighbors, who argue that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that he is lying or otherwise dissembling.

Conclusion

In August 2008, this author spoke to “Jeff Marx” about UFO activity and research in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the conversation eventually drifted to Marx’s unforgettable incident in the summer of 1965 – the “endless summer” that still troubles him to this day. Not knowing the exact nature of the phenomenon – whether extra or ultraterrestrial, military or even meteorological – is only part of the equation. He feels that the strange object stole something from him -- maybe a feeling of innocence about the world, trust in government, or even his faith. In spite of the considerable dose of radiation he took from the object, leaving him as sunburned as the protagonists of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, his health never suffered from it. Perhaps what troubles him the most forty-three years later is that he is the only one who actively remembers the incident and worries about it.

“This summer,” he told me, “I ran into one of the girls from the incident, and after we exchanged our hellos, I asked her when we were going to talk about that night. She simply stared at me and said: “That night never happened.”

There is no closure for Jeff Marx. The summer of ’65 will haunt him to the end of his days.

Source: Inexplicata-The Journal of Hispanic Ufology/Scott Corrales
http://inexplicata.blogspot.com/2008/08/pedal-to-metal-ufo-car-chases-by-scott.html

- STRANGE CREATURES FROM TIME AND SPACE DEPARTMENT -

'Dinosaur-Like’ Creature Reported in Papua New Guinea


Since the 1990s, a large ‘reptilian’ creature has been sighted occasionally on Umbungi Island in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Umbungi Island is located on the south coast of West New Britain between Kandrian and Gasmata. The creature has also been sighted on Alage Island, about 1km to the south of Ambungi Island.

I interviewed a young man on Umbungi Island, Robert, who sighted the creature around 2005/2006. The creature was also sighted at the same time by Tony Avil, who was not on Umbungi Island when I was there. Robert does not speak English, so an interpreter was used to translate Pidgin to English.

The creature was described as having a long tail and a long neck and was 10–15 metres in length, with an appearance like a ‘very large wallaby’ and having a head like a turtle’s head.

It walked slowly on two legs and had smooth, shiny brown skin. The top of the head was estimated to be as high as a house and the underbelly of the creature was as high as an adult.

The creature was described as being fearful-looking, with the sighting being made from a distance of about 50 metres. The sighting was made in the late afternoon and was observed for a considerable length of time (not sure of the exact duration of time) and the creature was eating vegetation. Robert and Tony followed the creature from a distance and watched it go into the water after it finished eating.

When shown the handbook by Hazel Richardson, Dinosaurs And Prehistoric Life, Robert identified a picture of a Therizinosaurus as closely matching the animal he observed, with the exception of one feature, i.e. the creature’s head.

The animal that Robert saw had a head looking more like a turtle’s head as opposed to the horse-like head shown in the theropod dinosaur reconstruction on page 114 in the book. Should one wonder at this? Actually, paleontologists are reported as acknowledging that the fossil remains of Therizinosaurus are incomplete. So incomplete in fact that:

‘The feeding habits of Therizinosaurus are unknown, since no skull material has ever been found that could indicate its diet.’ So it doesn’t surprise me that the artist’s reconstruction of the head of a Therizonosaurus doesn’t fit with the ‘like a turtle’s head’ observation of Robert and Tony. (For a creature that appears to spend much time in the water, I would think that a turtle-like head makes good design sense, too!)

Nine people have seen the ‘reptile’ since the early 1990s, with sightings occurring every 4–5 years, usually around Christmas time. Perhaps the creature is primarily nocturnal, which might account for the small number of sightings. Two women from Umbungi Island observed the creature from a boat on the south (unpopulated) side of the island as it was standing on some rocks at the bottom of a cliff.

The animal has also been sighted swimming between Umbungi Island and Alage Island with its head above the water. I drew the outline of a three-toed foot of a dinosaur in the sand and Robert said that this was similar to the foot of the creature, with the feet being similar to that of a duck. About 90 people live on Umbungi Island, and 2-3 families live on Alage Island. The reptilian creature must be a good climber because Robert showed me the steep rock entrance from the sea to the land on the south side of Umbungi Island that the creature used when he sighted it.

I did not have the opportunity to travel to Alage Island to interview the local people there about the ‘reptilian’ creature, however I met a guy named Michael Atung from a logging company on the New Britain mainland near Abungi Island who was from Alage Island. Michael had heard that it had been sighted on Alage Island, but had not sighted the animal himself.

Sauropod sighting near Gasmata
Simon Patolkit (lay preacher for the Catholic Church on Awirin Island) and his wife Margaret described their sighting of the reptilian creature to me through an interpreter who translated from Pidgin to English.

The creature had a long neck and a long tail and had a total length of about 20 metres and a width of about 2 metres. The head was described as being ‘like a dinosaur’ with an ‘oval-like face’.

The top of the legs of the animal were visible above the water, with the water being used to support the weight of the animal’s body. The skin of the animal was described as being ‘like a crocodile’ and was khaki green in colour. Dermal frills (possibly indicating the animal is a male?) could be seen on the creature’s back, extending to the back of the head. Something was observed protruding from the back of the creature’s head. The creature’s neck was almost horizontal during the sighting. Details of the creature’s eye and mouth could not be determined, as the observers were about 30 to 40 metres from the animal.

The sighting occurred for less than 30 seconds, until the reptile sunk into the water. No sound could be heard from the creature by the observers. The creature has not been observed since this sighting in 2005.

The only known animal that fits the description of this animal is a sauropod dinosaur, such as an apatosaurus.

Concluding Remarks
This is not the first time that dinosaur-like creatures have reportedly been sighted in Papua New Guinea—see e.g., A living dinosaur? If ever a ‘living dinosaur’ is found and confirmed to the satisfaction of the scientific fraternity, many people would be astonished, given the prevailing evolutionary view that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Christians, however, should not be surprised, as the Bible teaches that God created the dinosaurs only around 6,000 years ago. (See also The ‘Lazarus effect’ : Rodent ‘resurrection’! and ‘Coelacanth’ yes; ‘Ancient’ no.) So we needn’t be too taken aback if a theropod or sauropod dinosaur is ever confirmed to be living in the world today.

Source: Phantoms and Monsters
http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2008/08/large-reptilian-dinosaur-like-creature.html
- MYTH COME ALIVE DEPARTMENT -

Did 'Windigo' Turn Man Into Cannibalistic Monster?

EDMONTON -- Nathan Carlson has barely slept since July 30.

"Ever since it happened, I haven't been able to get it out of my head," Carlson said haltingly. "I just don't know what to think of it, quite frankly."

The Edmonton ethno-historian is a leading expert on Windigo phenomenon, and the recent horrific beheading and alleged cannibalism on a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg from Edmonton rocked him to his very core.

As the grisly details of Tim McLean Jr.'s last moments came to light in the following days, Carlson sank deeper and deeper into a fog of horror and revulsion.

Vince Weiguang Li, 40, is accused of attacking McLean Jr., who by all accounts he didn't even know, while the 22-year-old slept on the bus.

Up until a few days before the killing, Li held a part-time job delivering newspapers in Edmonton. He was considered a nice guy, if a bit quiet and shy.

On July 20 -- just 10 days before the killing -- Li delivered copies of the Edmonton Sun that contained an extensive interview with Carlson about his research into the Windigo, a terrifying creature in native mythology that has a ravenous appetite for human flesh. It could take possession of people and turn them into cannibalistic monsters.

The feature talked about how in the late 1800s and into the 20th century, Windigo "encounters" haunted communities across northern Alberta and resulted in dozens of gruesome deaths.

'TOO MANY PARALLELS'

Several media reports called McLean Jr.'s killing unprecedented -- an unspeakable, random attack never before seen in Canada.

But Carlson said he knows better. "There are just too many parallels," he said. "I can't say there's definite connection, but there are just too many coincidences. It's beyond eerie."

Li allegedly butchered McLean Jr.'s body, brandishing the victim's severed head at the men who trapped him on the bus until police could arrive.

He is also accused of eating McLean Jr.'s flesh.

When he appeared in a Portage la Prairie courthouse on charges of second-degree murder, the only words Li uttered were pleas for someone to kill him.

Much of his reported behaviour eerily mirrors the Windigo cases recounted in the newspaper feature that Li helped deliver to Edmonton homes just days before McLean Jr. was killed.

In one case, a Cree trapper named Swift Runner was hanged after admitting to killing and eating his wife, children, brother and mother in the woods northeast of Edmonton in the winter of 1878-79.

Prior to being charged with murder, he had suffered screaming fits and nightmares, which he attributed to being possessed by a Windigo.

In several other cases, people banded together and killed individuals they feared were possessed by a Windigo. Often, they would decapitate the corpse and bury the head separate from the body in order to keep it from rising from the dead.

Carlson documented several cases in northern Alberta communities where people believing they were "turning Windigo" would go into convulsions, make terrifying animal sounds and beg their captors to kill them before they started eating people.

Source: The Winnipeg Sun
http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Canada/2008/08/12/6420726-sun.html

- NO HUNTING WITHOUT A LICENSE DEPARTMENT -

It's Ghost Season in Japan


If there are eerie goings-on in the neighborhood — and Halloween is still two months off — it could be because Japan's traditional "ghost season" maxes out at this time of the year.

While belief in the afterlife and in wandering spirits kept from peaceful rest can be found anywhere in the world, ghosts in Japan take on a unique persona. Gripping tales of phantasms have been made into Hollywood movies, including the hugely popular "The Ring," serving up story lines featuring grudges, curses and spine-chilling plots.

Following are questions and answers about Japan's ghosts and their background:

What do Japan's ghosts look like?

Called "yurei" (faint spirits), ghosts typically wear a white garment and triangular forehead cloth. This is rooted in the way the dead are traditionally laid to rest in white Buddhist burial kimono, and is the preferred attire for the deceased to travel to the other world.

Japanese-style haunted houses at amusement parks will most likely feature a pale-looking ghost with wild black hair, arms stretched forward and wrists dangling. Japanese ghosts are also usually legless. Experts theorize that this is a reflection of their supernatural powers.

Why is summer ghost season in Japan?

Mid-August is considered a spiritual season because of Buddhist traditions. Many honor the dead during Bon by gathering and paying respects at ancestral graves.

The date and customs vary depending on region, but family members typically meet on Aug. 13 and begin a bonfire called "mukae-bi." It is believed the practice brings souls of the dead back from the other world.

After cleaning family graves, families greet and show respect for the dead by chanting sutras and preparing special meals.

The souls are sent back to the other world with "okuri-bi" bonfires, which are usually lit on Aug. 16.

How do Japanese and non-Japanese ghosts differ?

Most ghosts are generally considered to be wandering souls of the dead that are deprived of a peaceful rest.

But religious backgrounds and concepts of death lead to significant differences, said Haruo Suwa, a professor emeritus at Gakushuin University.

While Western religions, including Christianity, and even Islam of the East, believe in the existence of one deity, divinity is omnipresent in Shinto. Beliefs held in Japan include the notion that men can be transformed after death into supernatural beings.

Whereas Western ghosts may be regarded as the extension of one's self after death, a yurei was originally believed to be godlike.

This belief can be observed in the fact that Japanese ghosts are usually depicted without legs or only from the waist up, to demonstrate the individual has been transformed from what it was when alive, Suwa said.

Why are ghosts often depicted as being vengeful and bearing a grudge?

According to Suwa, whose published works include "Nihon no Yurei" ("Japanese Ghosts"), ghost tales have been documented since the early eighth century in the Heian Period.

Beliefs in supernatural beings were common even before that, he said.

But the yurei of ancient times was considered harmless and even favorable. They only manifested grudges and eeriness with the spread of Buddhism throughout the country.

"The religious perception of heaven and hell came into Japan" with the new religion, Suwa said, noting the Buddhist theory of reincarnation and folklore-inspired supernatural beasts helped redefine the concept of yurei. Ghosts "eventually became visually terrifying," Suwa said.

Folklore, in which ghosts are portrayed as the soul of someone robbed of life and deprived of a peaceful afterlife, also influenced the characteristics of Japanese ghosts. Today it is widely believed a yurei returns to the world to exact revenge, and will not stop until its goal is met.

One notable tale is "Yotsuya Kaidan" ("Yotsuya Ghost Story"), which is probably one of the most famous in Japan.

The tale of vengeance takes place in Edo Period Tokyo in the Yotsuya district, featuring Oiwa and her husband, Iemon. Eager to marry an affluent neighbor, Iemon poisons Oiwa, causing her hair to fall out and leaving her face disfigured. Oiwa dies but returns as a ghost and exacts her revenge, killing her husband.

The story was originally written as a play in 1825 and was later adapted for kabuki and movie scripts.

How can one stop being haunted by ghosts?

In the Christianized West, holy water and crosses may help ward off ghosts, but they won't keep their Japanese counterparts, buried under Shinto or Buddhist rites, at bay.

Instead, "ofuda" strips inscribed with Buddhist sutras are believed to be effective in keeping evil spirits away. Some Shinto shrines also provide "oharai," a purification ritual that removes bad omens with wooden wands and chants.

Do ghosts really exist in Japan?

Some sites, notably cemeteries, tunnels and old battlefields, generate ghost sightings. Widely known folklore has it that ghosts are most likely to appear between 2 and 3 a.m., the "time of the three oxes."

Gakushuin's Suwa says he "can't tell if ghosts exist."

"But it is a fact that many Japanese believe in the existence of supernatural spirits. Studying the beliefs and their background is key to understanding Japanese customs and people."

For those who do believe in ghosts, is there any way to detect them?

Try Baketan 2, a ghost detecting gadget that Tokyo-based Solid Alliance Corp. sells online for ¥1,980.

The detector runs on a single lithium-ion battery and captures the "specific rhythm of ultrawaves in an area" that are supernaturally aligned, according to Solid Alliance spokesman Shuichiro Saito.

The detector also translates what the maker calls "spatial algorithms" into electronic sounds, warning the user if a supernatural being is approaching.

Solid Alliance claims on its Web site that Baketan 2 reacted strongly when tested at sites that are deemed haunted. The gadget maker clearly states that the product is a toy, but the hit series has sold more than 50,000 sets in less than three years.

Source: The Japan Times
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080812i1.html

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