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THE GREAT UK UFO FLAP DEPARTMENT -
"Triangular" UFOs Spotted Near Wrexham
"Triangular" UFOs Spotted Near Wrexham
Strange, dazzling lights flying slowly through the night sky have been reported near Wrexham, sparking a new UFO scare.
The Evening Leader has been inundated with calls reporting the triangular shapes over Rhos, as well as sightings in Johnstown and Borras.
The incident, the latest in a long line of sightings in the town, is strengthening claims that the town is fast becoming a UFO hotspot.
Janet Bancroft, 28, and partner Mark Pluke, 24, both witnessed the dazzling lights from their home on Maes-y-Ficerdy, Rhos, after Mark had gone to put the rubbish out.
According to the couple, the lights, spotted at about 7.40pm, formed into a slow-moving triangle before eventually disappearing from view some 20 minutes later.
Janet said: "It was really strange. They formed into a 'V' shape and then into a triangle which sort of got bigger and bigger."
Some have dismissed the phenomenon as Chinese lanterns or low-flying aircraft. Janet, however, is not so sure.
"From the way they came up and formed, I don't think lanterns could do that in the air," she said.
"It is something stranger than that and somebody knows what they are.
"It was really creepy. It takes a lot to scare me and that scared me.
"After that we counted four helicopters in the sky – there is definitely something odd going on."
She added: "I'm not one to believe in UFOs, but that was definitely not right."
Another Rhos resident who spotted the lights on Wednesday evening was taxi driver Steven Austin.
Steven's wife, Mandy, had already seen the mysterious objects on a number of previous nights over the past week, but he had always been absent – until then.
He said: "My wife first saw them last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 8pm and 8.30pm, but Wednesday I was there too.
"It flew in some weird triangle formation. It was an upside down triangle.
"I'm a taxi driver and when I got to Rhostyllen I could see them.
"There's a slight buzzing noise to them but I wouldn't have thought they were military jets because they were going too slow.
"I'm always on the road so obviously I can't keep looking up to the sky.
"It's the first time I have ever seen anything like that. Whether they are UFOs, it is hard to say really."
One Wrexham resident now claims to have seen a 'flying saucer' in the sky over North East Wales.
The latest report comes from a 14-year-old from Rhostyllen and follows several sightings of 'dazzling' lights' in the sky on a number of different evenings last week.
The 'UFOs' were spotted by a number of people across Wrexham – in Rhos, Johnstown and Borras – and were even caught on camera, the film of which is available to view on the Evening Leader website.
One reader claims he also saw three lights over Trem y Gardden in Penycae. He said: "They were in a straight line but one of them was further back than the other two. We could see them for about 10 minutes or so then they went higher and then disappeared."
The report of a 'flying saucer comes from a 14-year-old from Rhostyllen, who was doing a paper round in the village of Rhostyllen, last Thursday, September 18.
He was prompted to come forward after hearing that he was not the only one to have seen something strange.
He said: "I saw more than orange lights. I was out doing my paper round in Esless Park in Rhostyllen. It was quite cloudy and I turned around to see if there were any stars out but instead I saw two orange lights."
At first the youngster thought that they were two aircraft flying under the clouds but realised that the lights weren't flashing as they would on most aeroplanes.
"They were completely orange and moving too slowly for jets. I stood at the side of the road for a while trying to get a picture on my mobile phone but the lights would not show up on the pictures," he continued.
"I watched until they slowly disappeared through the clouds. It was just after 7.45pm that I looked updirectly above me and the orange light pulled out of the clouds, the light turned white then went off and all I could see was a black disc, a black saucer.
"It made no sound and if I hadn't looked up I may not have known it was there.
The teenager was so excited by what he was looking at he almost ran to the nearest house so that somebody else sould witness it.
"It was just there," he explained. "Not moving, it was so still it was amazing.
"I was watching it then it and then it suddenly flew off so quick it looked like a black line.
"I quckly finished my papers and ran home to tell my brother and no-one else because they may not of belived me. Talking about it still makes me slightly edgy. I will never forget that disc that came out of the clouds."
The Evening Leader has received a number of reports from people claiming to have seen strange objects in the sky last week, not just from Wrexham but as far away as Edinburgh.
But Gareth Hill believes the strange lights were nothing more than lanterns.
He said: " I too saw these lights over Johnstown on a couple of occasions within the last week or so, but did not see anything unusual. They looked to me to fit the descriptions of the floating lanterns perfectly.
"The two I saw simply floated towards the north, flicking as a flame will tend to do, and eventually disappeared from view. There was nothing odd about their motion.
"As for "forming a triangle", a set of three points of light in the sky, all floating in the same direction, provided they are not in a straight line WILL form a triangle!
"The lanterns are all released at the same time, so are subjected to the same wind, and hence will float in the same direction, so of course they will appear to float 'in formation'."
Source: The Evening Leader
http://www.eveningleader.co.uk/news/Flying-saucer-and-other-UFO.4521905.jp
- A PRIMEVAL LOURDES DEPARTMENT -
Experts Say Stonehenge Was "Place of Healing"
Two British archeologists
declared Monday that they have uncovered the core reason behind the
construction of one of the world's best known and least understood
landmarks.
The stone circle at Stonehenge has stood for thousands of years -- and bred endless debate over whether it was a temple for ancient sun-worshippers, a sacred burial site, or even a kind of massive prehistoric astronomical calculator.
Professors Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill argued their own explanation for the mysterious monument: Stonehenge, they said, was a kind of primeval Lourdes, drawing prehistoric pilgrims from around Europe.
"We found several reasons to believe that the stones were built as part of a belief in a healing process," Wainwright told journalists assembled at London's Society of Antiquaries.
Wainwright and Darvill, the first to excavate the site in more than 40 years, said the key to their theory was Stonehenge's double circle of bluestones -- a rare rock known to geologists as spotted dolomite -- which lie at the center of the monument.
iReport.com: Have you ever been to Stonehenge? Share travel snapshots
Dragged or floated on rafts from Pembrokeshire in Wales to Salisbury Plain in southern England, he said the bluestones were prized for their healing properties -- as evidenced by the small mountain of flakes the scientists uncovered during their dig.
Pieces ended up buried in tombs across the area, a testament to people's fascination with the rocks, Wainwright said.
The proof was not only in the stones -- but also in the bones. Skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury.
"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill said.
The evidence, they said, pointed to a kind of shrine where people from across the Europe would go to seek healing. But they cautioned that that did not rule out alternative theories for Stonehenge's uses.
Source: CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/22/uk.stonehenge.healing.ap/index.html
The stone circle at Stonehenge has stood for thousands of years -- and bred endless debate over whether it was a temple for ancient sun-worshippers, a sacred burial site, or even a kind of massive prehistoric astronomical calculator.
Professors Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill argued their own explanation for the mysterious monument: Stonehenge, they said, was a kind of primeval Lourdes, drawing prehistoric pilgrims from around Europe.
"We found several reasons to believe that the stones were built as part of a belief in a healing process," Wainwright told journalists assembled at London's Society of Antiquaries.
Wainwright and Darvill, the first to excavate the site in more than 40 years, said the key to their theory was Stonehenge's double circle of bluestones -- a rare rock known to geologists as spotted dolomite -- which lie at the center of the monument.
iReport.com: Have you ever been to Stonehenge? Share travel snapshots
Dragged or floated on rafts from Pembrokeshire in Wales to Salisbury Plain in southern England, he said the bluestones were prized for their healing properties -- as evidenced by the small mountain of flakes the scientists uncovered during their dig.
Pieces ended up buried in tombs across the area, a testament to people's fascination with the rocks, Wainwright said.
The proof was not only in the stones -- but also in the bones. Skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury.
"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill said.
The evidence, they said, pointed to a kind of shrine where people from across the Europe would go to seek healing. But they cautioned that that did not rule out alternative theories for Stonehenge's uses.
Source: CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/22/uk.stonehenge.healing.ap/index.html
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WITCHING FOR WATER IN AFRICA DEPARTMENT -
Digging Into Dowsing
Digging Into Dowsing
Over the last few weeks a team of experts has been working in a remote part of western Zambia, giving local villages access to the most vital commodity on earth: water. But their expertise is not in geophysics and hydrology. They credit their success to an altogether more unusual talent: an ability to detect the presence of water using the ancient art of dowsing.
David Dixon and his colleagues at the UK-based charity Village Water (www.villagewater.org) have been making the trip to Zambia for five years, paying all their own costs to dowse for water for villages in the arid land near to the border with Angola. Using a variety of methods, including the age-old technique of dowsing rods, the team locates underground streams, and – if they sense the flow of water is high enough – telling the villagers precisely where to install a pump.
The team claims its work has brought water to dozens of communities and more than 10,000 villagers. It’s a success story that delights the locals – but leaves many scientists cold. For how on earth can dowsing work?
Dowsers like Dixon and his colleagues believe they are tapping into the same mysterious effect exploited by miners, surveyors and prospectors for millennia. According to some sources, the first reference to dowsing can be found in 8,000-year-old cave paintings in Algeria. By the 16th century, dowsing was routinely used by prospectors in Europe searching for new ore resources.
Yet even at the time there was scepticism about its value, with the renowned German mineralogist Georg Agricola arguing that someone “prudent and skilled in natural signs” should have no need of “an enchanted twig”.
Even sceptics accept that dowsers can find water; the real question is whether they succeed as a result of dowsing – or despite it.
One common explanation is that underground water is so ubiquitous that there’s a high chance of finding it anywhere. Hydrologists point out that even in apparently arid areas like Zambia, groundwater is often relatively plentiful. Yet dowsers stress they do not simply locate water: they can also estimate likely flow-rates, and even water quality.
So what is the truth about dowsing? Over the years numerous studies have tried to get to the bottom of the dowsing phenomenon, often with controversial results. In the early 1970s, the UK Electricity Research Council (ERC) carried out tests in which dowsers were challenged to find cables and other equipment buried in the ground. The results revealed that the dowsers succeeded at a rate higher than would have been expected if they had merely guessed. To find out more, the experimenters then repeated the tests, but this time with some ERC technical experts who were asked to see if they could spot any clues as to where the hidden objects might be. Remarkably, they too achieved an impressive hit rate – and actually outperformed the dowsers.
It’s a result in line with the view of sceptics since Agricola: that the success of water dowsing stems from the sheer ubiquity of groundwater – plus a keen eye for possible telltales, such as the presence of vegetation and the lie of the land. But according to some, a series of studies funded by the German federal government refutes this explanation.
The tests, which began in 1987, put more than 300 dowsers through their paces, and appeared to show that their success rate was well above chance expectation. To find out if this was simply the result of dowsers picking up on environmental clues, the team devised a second set of experiments, which took place inside a two-storey barn north of Munich.
On the ground floor the team installed a flexible pipe system through which water flowed – and whose position could be randomly altered. On the upper floor, the dowsers walked along a line and were asked to declare where they believed the pipe to be. To minimise the risk of cheating, the experiment was “double blinded”, with neither the dowsers nor the experimenters knowing the whereabouts of the pipe.
This second experiment ran for two years, and involved more than 40 dowsers. And according to the experimenters, the results showed that some dowsers really are able to sense the hidden presence of running water. In their final report, the team reported that six participants showed “an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance”.
Not everyone was convinced, however. Sceptics pointed out that most of the dowsers performed badly, and claimed that even those who occasionally succeeded were very inconsistent.
They also accused the experimenters of hand-picking the best results from the handful of successful dowsers, thus invalidating any statistical analysis.
To this day, the results of the “Munich Experiment” remain bitterly controversial. Perhaps the fairest interpretation is that it confirms the long-standing view that dowsers possess a genuine knack of detecting water – but it’s the result of their skill at picking up on subtle environmental clues to its presence.
If environmental clues aren’t the explanation, then some other effect must be at work. Some scientists have suggested that the dowsers are sensitive to some kind of magnetic disturbance triggered by flowing water. Others have argued for the existence of a wholly new force of nature, dubbed the “D-force”, which draws dowsers to their target.
Whatever the truth, the controversy over the scientific basis of dowsing looks set to continue. It must all seem hopelessly academic to the villagers of Zambia.
For them fresh water is far more important than watertight explanations.
Source: The National
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080921/FRONTIERS/67853579/1036
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THE PLAYGROUND OF MY MIND DEPARTMENT -
The Phantom Children of Gilford, Ontario
The Phantom Children of Gilford, Ontario
The quiet community of Gilford is sheltered from all that's wrong in the world. Nothing ever seems to happen here.
The only excitement comes from the few amenities in this little village - a general store, your local hairdresser, a marina, and a golf course. Violence, if any, is very minimal and crime is limited misdemeanors that rarely hit the news.
It was this perceived tranquility that led Jody (name changed upon request) to make Gilford her home. She would soon find out that beneath the placid surface of this Lake Simcoe community was an undercurrent of tragedy.
When she arrived about 15 years, she never dreamed that the home she chose on Lake Simcoe might have in fact chosen her. She does now.
In the first year of living in her peaceful house Jody never noticed anything unusual. Then, one warm sunny day while working in her sewing room, Jody found herself distracted by children's laughter in her back yard.
She made her way to the window and there she watched two young kids playing joyfully with each other. She smiled at the youthful antics as she reminisced about her own childhood.
But the smile upon her face faded as she began to notice that something wasn't quite right.
"I suddenly realized they weren't local kids because they were dressed in period clothes, clothes from a hundred years ago," Jody remembers. The little girl wore a dress with a petticoat underneath, a pretty ribbon on her hair, and shoes that weren't from our era. The boy had short pants, with an old-fashioned plaid shirt and suspenders."
Jody stood frozen at the window and just watched the strange sight before her eyes. The children continued to play as if they hadn't a care in the world. Jody didn't dare move, afraid that if she did the children would notice her and disappear.
The one thing that sticks out in her memory is how real the children looked. "They weren't translucent or misty. You couldn't see through them. It was just like two flesh-and-blood kids stepped out of the past to play in my yard."
Their visits became frequent through the years. Jody could never understand why they had chosen her backyard as their personal playground; she herself didn't have any children, so no playing equipment or toys could be found on her yard. And yet it was there that she would always see them.
In recent years the visitations have become less frequent and Jody began to miss them, "I was never scared of the ghosts," she says somewhat wistfully. "It's actually scarier when you don't see them then when you do. You begin to wonder what happened to them, to worry as if they were real children."
Who were these children? What were their names? What tragedy cut their lives short? We'll probably never know.
There are some hints, however.
The clothes Jody describes definitely sound Victorian, corresponding to the late 19th century. This was a period when simple childhood illnesses - influenza, smallpox, and measles - could and would frequently rampage through a household claming the small and weak one after another. It's possible that the young boy and girl were siblings who were tragically struck down by the same illness. The untimely nature of their deaths toed them here, where they continue to plat out their childhoods in a familiar environment.
In light of how close Jody's property is to Lake Simcoe, it's also possible that the waters might have clamed their lives. Certainly that's the fate one 'sensitive' saw for them.
For Jody it didn't matter who they where or were they came from. Having them play in her back yard was something she looked forward to.
Their less frequent visitations could be a sigh that the children are 'growing up', that they have now experienced their full childhood and are ready to cross over to their other life.
We all have to grow up sometime ... even ghosts.
For Jody, the day they leave for good will be a sad time. Her life will feel emptier, her house quieter, and surely she will miss them. But one thing she will always have is the fond memories of the out-of time children that choose her back yard as their playground.
Source: Farshores
http://www.farshores.org/p8cg1.htm
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A HAUNTING WE WILL GO DEPARTMENT -
Family Flees $7 Million Dollar Haunted Mansion
Family Flees $7 Million Dollar Haunted Mansion
When businessman Anwar Rashid bought the 52-room Clifton Hall, he thought it complemented his millionaire lifestyle perfectly.
But Mr Rashid yesterday claimed his family was left so terrorised by a series of ghostly sightings he had to give up the property to his bank, only eight months after being handed the keys.
The final straw was the appearance of apparently unexplained blood spots on their 18-month-old son's bed clothes.
Mr Rashid, 32, compared his experience to the 2001 horror film The Others. In the film, which stars Nicole Kidman, a family is apparently forced out of their country home by ghosts.
Mr Rashid said: 'Clifton Hall is a beautiful property. I fell for its beauty but behind the facade it is haunted. We were like the family in The Others. The ghosts didn't want us to be there.'
He said the first experience came hours after the family moved in.
'There was a knock on the wall,' he said. 'We heard this, "Hello, is anyone there?".
'Two minutes later we heard the man's voice again. I got up to have a look but the doors were locked and the windows were closed.'
Mr Rashid, wife Nabila, 25, and their four children bought the house in Clifton, Nottinghamshire, in November 2006.
The family moved in two months later, along with Mr Rashid's brother and their parents.
Mr Rashid, who is worth £25million and made his money through a chain of nursing homes and a hotel in Dubai, said the house then remained quiet for several months until one of the maids said she saw a grey figure sitting on her bed.
He claimed that things began to get really scary when the ghosts started to take on the form of his children.
'On one occasion my wife went downstairs to make milk for the baby at 5am and she saw our eldest daughter watching TV,' the businessman added.
'My wife realised something was up, so she went back upstairs to check on her and found her fast asleep in bed. When we found red blood spots on the baby's quilt, that was the day my wife said she'd had enough. We didn't even stay that night.'
The hall, which dates back to the Norman Conquest, has 17 bedrooms, ten reception rooms, ten bathrooms, a gym and a cinema.
Charles I stayed briefly in 1632. According to legend, a woman dressed in white jumped from a window to her death, while tunnels in the grounds were said to have been used by Satanists.
The family moved out of the house in August last year and Mr Rashid found he could not sell it.
He then stopped paying the mortgage in January 2008 'as a last resort' so that the bank would eventually repossess, which happened on Thursday.
In an effort to drive the spirits from the mansion, Mr Rashid called in the Ashfield Paranormal Investigation Network, based in nearby Sutton-in-Ashfield.
Lee Roberts, team leader of the network and a serving police officer, said: 'Clifton Hall is the only place where I've ever really been scared. It's just got a really eerie feeling about it.'
He said two of his team fainted after independently seeing the same ghost of a boy.
Mr Rashid had planned to open the hall for weddings, but failed to obtain a licence. He denied suggestions he had made up the ghost stories because he couldn't pay his mortgage as a result of the failure of his business plan.
The hall was intended primarily as a family home, he said.
Mr Rashid now lives in the Wollaton area of Nottingham. He said he had never believed in ghosts until his experience at Clifton Hall.
Darren Brookes, whose security firm previously guarded the hall for five years, said some of his staff 'refused point-blank' to work there.
He said they reported sightings such as a monk walking through the grounds, a woman in the graveyard falling over, and chairs moving in one of the rooms.
Mr Brookes, of Sovereign Security UK, said: 'I've often put officers who know absolutely nothing about the house in there - and after a night on duty they have quit.'
Source: The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1058890/We-like-family-The-Others-says-
millionaire-fled-haunted-3-6m-mansion.html
