3/2/13 #712
http://www.conspiracyjournal.com
Subscribe for free at our subscription page:
http://www.members.tripod.com/uforeview/subscribe.html
You can view this newsletter online at:
https://uforeview.tripod.com/conspiracyjournal712.html
Pay no
attention to that man
behind the curtain – he may be trying to control
your mind with
microwave beams. Or he could be hiding the
truth about aliens and
UFOs. Or he could be selling drugs to
finance some government
priority that the public need not know
about. Or he could be
reading the latest issue of the number one,
weekly conspiracy newsletter
of strange stuff and high weirdness - Conspiracy
Journal!
This week
Conspiracy Journal
brings you such jaw-dropping stories as:- Retired McGill University Professor Convinced That Aliens Exist -
- Hints of Lost Continent Found Beneath Indian Ocean -
- Loch Ness Monster Hunt Continues 80 Years On -
- Legends of Mysterious Slant-Eyed Giants -
AND: 400-Year-Old Masonic Secret Chamber Uncovered In British Manor
CONSPIRACY JOURNAL!
~ And Now, On With The Show! ~
GREAT NEW BOOK FROM CONSPIRACY JOURNAL!
Levitation and Invisibility
Learn to Use the Incredible SUPER POWERS Within You!
CAN WE LEARN TO FLY THROUGH THE AIR WITH THE GREATEST OF EASE?
IS IT POSSIBLE TO WALK THROUGH WALLS OR OTHER SOLID OBJECTS?
YES! Says A Former Military
Intelligence Operative, An Emmy Award Winning
Journalist As Well As Numerous Saints And Mystics.
Now You Can Learn To Unleash The Super Powers Of Invisibility And Levitation!
Out of all the magical secrets that mankind has sought over the ages; probably the two most universal desires would be the ability to become invisible and to fly, or levitate at will. Countless spells, incantations, potions and talismans have been created, all with the purpose to achieve the goals of invisibility and unaided flight.
Now thanks to Tim R. Swartz and retired military intelligence operative Commander X, working in tandem with various sages, shamans and adapts, we are happily prepared to proclaim the secrets to fulfilling these mystical “dreams” are at hand. This mind blowing – and mind stretching – book reveals the most astounding information on these extraordinary concepts.
Now You Can Learn To Unleash The Super Powers Of Invisibility And Levitation!
Out of all the magical secrets that mankind has sought over the ages; probably the two most universal desires would be the ability to become invisible and to fly, or levitate at will. Countless spells, incantations, potions and talismans have been created, all with the purpose to achieve the goals of invisibility and unaided flight.
Now thanks to Tim R. Swartz and retired military intelligence operative Commander X, working in tandem with various sages, shamans and adapts, we are happily prepared to proclaim the secrets to fulfilling these mystical “dreams” are at hand. This mind blowing – and mind stretching – book reveals the most astounding information on these extraordinary concepts.
Contents Include:
++ The Quest For Instant Invisibility.
++ What Is In The Mysterious Mist?
++ The Realm of Invulnerability.
++ Prayers and Spells For Invisibility.
++ Spiritualists And Mystics Who Have Proven They
Possess Incredible Talents.
++ How You Can Learn The Art Of Levitation.
++ How To Make The Most Out Of These “Eerie” Talents.
++ Invisibility And Levitation As A “Science.”
Not to be used for unlawful or immoral purposes!
Commander X has seen this from a
military point of view and knows the Top Secret
projects the government and military is working
on. You will be amazed!
You will be convinced! And now you can attempt such “feats of magick” on your own. Totally safe to practice.
For subscribers of the Conspiracy Journal Newsletter this book is on sale for the special price of only $19.95 (plus $5.00 shipping). This offer will not last long so ORDER TODAY!
You will be convinced! And now you can attempt such “feats of magick” on your own. Totally safe to practice.
For subscribers of the Conspiracy Journal Newsletter this book is on sale for the special price of only $19.95 (plus $5.00 shipping). This offer will not last long so ORDER TODAY!
You can also phone
in your credit card orders to Global
Communications
24-hour hotline: 732-602-3407
24-hour hotline: 732-602-3407
And as always you
can send a check or money order to:
Global Communications
P.O. Box 753
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
P.O. Box 753
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
Be sure to tune in to
Unraveling The
Secrets Saturdays at 11:59PM EST
with your hosts, Wm. Michael Mott, Rick Osmon and Tim R. Swartz
on the PSN Radio Network.
www.soupmedianetwork.com/unravelingthesecrets/
Retired Montreal psychology professor Don Crosbie Donderi is convinced extraterrestrial life exists. The educator, who spent 47 years at McGill University, including as associate dean of the faculty of graduate studies and research — applies his insights into psychology to a book: UFOs, ETs, and Alien Abductions, a Scientist looks at the Evidence.
Q. You write about cases of humans believing they were abducted. I believe your press release refers to a “catch and release” program. Do you have physical evidence to support that?
A. I don’t personally have physical evidence to support that. What I say in the book is that the evidence of the extra-terrestrial nature of some of what UFO phenomenon is reported is in my opinion established beyond a reasonable doubt.
Q. Give me an example of some of that evidence.
A. There is an entire chapter on six UFO abduction cases. Each of them has what you might call in common a touchstone. Every one of the people involved saw a close up of a UFO. Everyone of the people had missing time they could not account for, a period of an hour or more, maybe even two or three hours. After the initial sighting, they ended up driving down a road not knowing how they got there. In several other cases, people saw the UFO as well. Some of these people wound up with scars they could not explain.
Q. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and what you do?
A. I worked at McGill University from 1962 to 2009. I was an associate professor of psychological research and published well over 100 papers on one thing or another. In 1982 I co-founded a consulting company that does human factors ergonomics consulting. I’ve been on the mainstream of science and engineering my entire professional life.
Q. How did you get interested in this particular subject?
A. I was interested as a boy when this stuff started happening in 1947. I was old enough to read the newspapers. I’m a curious person and I was persuaded this was a curious phenomenon. Thirty years later, I had a university position. I had tenure. I could study things without worrying about what other people thought about them. This is a very liberating thing. Nobody except university professors have tenure in the world, it makes you an aristocrat right off the bat. You can do what you like as long as you do your work, which I always did.
Q. We’ve seen a lot of studies showing that human perception is a very spotty thing. People have a way of even inventing memories; sometimes when more than one person claims to see something, they start talking to each other and can affect each others’ accounts, for example
A. I cover all of this stuff [in my book] including everything you’ve talked about, because I’ve investigated some of these things professionally myself. I can assure you the evidence that survives a critical look at what might have contributed to those reports is sound evidence.
Q. Are we talking about physical evidence?
A. Now anybody can take a photograph from the Internet, jazz things up in Photoshop. So a photograph is worthless as evidence in and of itself. But when you get multiple photographs, or photographs taken by gun cameras on a fighter plane chasing UFOs — of which there are several examples — or radar plots taken during a UFO chase. You’ll find there is a tremendous amount of corroborative evidence.
Q. Just because we don’t always know what’s seen on these types of tapes doesn’t mean that’s proof that it’s extraterrestrial.
A. No, but what else is it? What you have to do is you have to eliminate the other probable causes … and what you begin to build up is a collection of evidence that stands the sniping of people who say it can’t be therefore it isn’t.
Q. From a psychological perspective, when we hear about people getting abducted by aliens, do you not think that on the balance of probabilities that a more plausible explanation is that there is an element of self delusion, or waking nightmares at play here? Do you not think there is a more plausible explanation for these reports than the idea that there is an alien species coming down to Earth to kidnap humans?
A. That is a plausible explanation for many of the reports, but not all of the reports, I agree with you. I also said evidence for abduction is that is a balance of probable evidence, not beyond reasonable doubt.
Q. Don’t you think the balance of probability favours a much less glamorous, much more human explanation that our perceptions are flawed?
A. No.
Source: National Post
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/25/qa-retired-mcgill-university-professor-convinced-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt-that-aliens-exist/
- ALL HAIL ANCIENT LEMURIA DEPARTMENT -
Hints of Lost Continent Found Beneath Indian Ocean
By Tim Wogan
with your hosts, Wm. Michael Mott, Rick Osmon and Tim R. Swartz
on the PSN Radio Network.
www.soupmedianetwork.com/unravelingthesecrets/
- I KNOW YOU'RE OUT
THERE SOMEWHERE DEPARTMENT -
Retired McGill University Professor Convinced That Aliens Exist
By Jen Gerson
Retired McGill University Professor Convinced That Aliens Exist
By Jen Gerson
Retired Montreal psychology professor Don Crosbie Donderi is convinced extraterrestrial life exists. The educator, who spent 47 years at McGill University, including as associate dean of the faculty of graduate studies and research — applies his insights into psychology to a book: UFOs, ETs, and Alien Abductions, a Scientist looks at the Evidence.
Q. You write about cases of humans believing they were abducted. I believe your press release refers to a “catch and release” program. Do you have physical evidence to support that?
A. I don’t personally have physical evidence to support that. What I say in the book is that the evidence of the extra-terrestrial nature of some of what UFO phenomenon is reported is in my opinion established beyond a reasonable doubt.
Q. Give me an example of some of that evidence.
A. There is an entire chapter on six UFO abduction cases. Each of them has what you might call in common a touchstone. Every one of the people involved saw a close up of a UFO. Everyone of the people had missing time they could not account for, a period of an hour or more, maybe even two or three hours. After the initial sighting, they ended up driving down a road not knowing how they got there. In several other cases, people saw the UFO as well. Some of these people wound up with scars they could not explain.
Q. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and what you do?
A. I worked at McGill University from 1962 to 2009. I was an associate professor of psychological research and published well over 100 papers on one thing or another. In 1982 I co-founded a consulting company that does human factors ergonomics consulting. I’ve been on the mainstream of science and engineering my entire professional life.
Q. How did you get interested in this particular subject?
A. I was interested as a boy when this stuff started happening in 1947. I was old enough to read the newspapers. I’m a curious person and I was persuaded this was a curious phenomenon. Thirty years later, I had a university position. I had tenure. I could study things without worrying about what other people thought about them. This is a very liberating thing. Nobody except university professors have tenure in the world, it makes you an aristocrat right off the bat. You can do what you like as long as you do your work, which I always did.
Q. We’ve seen a lot of studies showing that human perception is a very spotty thing. People have a way of even inventing memories; sometimes when more than one person claims to see something, they start talking to each other and can affect each others’ accounts, for example
A. I cover all of this stuff [in my book] including everything you’ve talked about, because I’ve investigated some of these things professionally myself. I can assure you the evidence that survives a critical look at what might have contributed to those reports is sound evidence.
Q. Are we talking about physical evidence?
A. Now anybody can take a photograph from the Internet, jazz things up in Photoshop. So a photograph is worthless as evidence in and of itself. But when you get multiple photographs, or photographs taken by gun cameras on a fighter plane chasing UFOs — of which there are several examples — or radar plots taken during a UFO chase. You’ll find there is a tremendous amount of corroborative evidence.
Q. Just because we don’t always know what’s seen on these types of tapes doesn’t mean that’s proof that it’s extraterrestrial.
A. No, but what else is it? What you have to do is you have to eliminate the other probable causes … and what you begin to build up is a collection of evidence that stands the sniping of people who say it can’t be therefore it isn’t.
Q. From a psychological perspective, when we hear about people getting abducted by aliens, do you not think that on the balance of probabilities that a more plausible explanation is that there is an element of self delusion, or waking nightmares at play here? Do you not think there is a more plausible explanation for these reports than the idea that there is an alien species coming down to Earth to kidnap humans?
A. That is a plausible explanation for many of the reports, but not all of the reports, I agree with you. I also said evidence for abduction is that is a balance of probable evidence, not beyond reasonable doubt.
Q. Don’t you think the balance of probability favours a much less glamorous, much more human explanation that our perceptions are flawed?
A. No.
Source: National Post
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/25/qa-retired-mcgill-university-professor-convinced-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt-that-aliens-exist/
- ALL HAIL ANCIENT LEMURIA DEPARTMENT -
Hints of Lost Continent Found Beneath Indian Ocean
By Tim Wogan
Geological detectives are
piecing together an intriguing seafloor
puzzle. The Indian Ocean and some of its
islands, scientists say, may lie on top of the
remains of an ancient continent pulled apart
by plate tectonics between 50 million and 100
million years ago. Painstaking detective work
involving gravity mapping, rock analysis, and
plate movement reconstruction has led
researchers to conclude that several places in
the Indian Ocean, now far apart, conceal the
remnants of a prehistoric land mass they have
named Mauritia. In fact, they say, the Indian
Ocean could be “littered” with such
continental fragments, now obscured by lava
erupted by underwater volcanoes.
The Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands about 1500 kilometers east of Africa, are something of a geological curiosity. Although a few of Earth’s largest islands, such as Greenland, are composed of the same continental crust as the mainland, most islands are made of a denser, chemically distinct oceanic crust, created midocean by magma welling up beneath separating tectonic plates. Geologists think they separated from the Indian subcontinent 80 million to 90 million years ago.
But those islands might not be so unique. Researchers from Norway, Germany, and Britain, writing in Nature Geoscience, now suggest that the Indian Ocean is harboring other fragments of ancient continental crust. Those fragments, the researchers say, lie buried beneath more recent oceanic crust erupted by underwater volcanoes.
Earth’s gravity gave the first hints that led scientists to the hidden crust. A number of places in the Indian Ocean, such as Madagascar, Mauritius and the Seychelles, Maldives, and Lakshadweep islands, are known to display a slightly stronger gravitational field than expected. Abnormally thick crust could explain this anomaly. If that’s the reason, it could be because the crust is about 25 kilometers thick, resembling continental crust, compared with the 5 to 10 kilometers of oceanic crust elsewhere. However, thickness alone doesn’t prove that crust is continental, as oceanic crust can be thickened by processes such as underwater volcanism.
To collect additional evidence for the hidden continent idea, the researchers then took another tack. They reconstructed the movements of the tectonic plates to determine whether and how these fragments of undersea crust were once connected to continents. They were able to show that, until about 90 million years ago, the places with unexpectedly high gravity would all have been attached to India.
Next, in search of chemical evidence to back up their idea, the researchers took sand samples from several beaches in Mauritius, another African island nation located about 1700 kilometers southeast of the Seychelles. The surface rock of Mauritius is made from volcanic oceanic crust, or basalt. But its beach sands contained not just fragments of eroded lava but also zircons, a mineral associated with continental crust.
The zircons from Mauritius, it turned out, were hundreds or even thousands of millions of years old, although the island’s oceanic crust was less than 10 million years old.
So how did the zircons get there? The researchers, led by geophysicist Trond H. Torsvik of the University of Oslo, believe they had to have been in the lava itself. The magma, they suggest, punched its way through pieces of preexisting continental crust on the seafloor, and in the process it tore off zircons and incorporated them into the basalt lava. “Zircons don’t fly,” Torsvik says. “I don’t believe these could have been brought by other means—they must have been eroded from the basalt itself.”
Geochemist Andreas Stracke at the University of Münster in Germany is impressed, saying that while others have speculated on the possibility of buried continental crust under this part of the Indian Ocean, “this could be a smoking gun.” But he would like to see tests conducted into a wider range of rocks from the region to see if other geochemical signatures of continental crust can be found.
Source: Wired
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/lost-continent-indian-ocean/
The Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands about 1500 kilometers east of Africa, are something of a geological curiosity. Although a few of Earth’s largest islands, such as Greenland, are composed of the same continental crust as the mainland, most islands are made of a denser, chemically distinct oceanic crust, created midocean by magma welling up beneath separating tectonic plates. Geologists think they separated from the Indian subcontinent 80 million to 90 million years ago.
But those islands might not be so unique. Researchers from Norway, Germany, and Britain, writing in Nature Geoscience, now suggest that the Indian Ocean is harboring other fragments of ancient continental crust. Those fragments, the researchers say, lie buried beneath more recent oceanic crust erupted by underwater volcanoes.
Earth’s gravity gave the first hints that led scientists to the hidden crust. A number of places in the Indian Ocean, such as Madagascar, Mauritius and the Seychelles, Maldives, and Lakshadweep islands, are known to display a slightly stronger gravitational field than expected. Abnormally thick crust could explain this anomaly. If that’s the reason, it could be because the crust is about 25 kilometers thick, resembling continental crust, compared with the 5 to 10 kilometers of oceanic crust elsewhere. However, thickness alone doesn’t prove that crust is continental, as oceanic crust can be thickened by processes such as underwater volcanism.
To collect additional evidence for the hidden continent idea, the researchers then took another tack. They reconstructed the movements of the tectonic plates to determine whether and how these fragments of undersea crust were once connected to continents. They were able to show that, until about 90 million years ago, the places with unexpectedly high gravity would all have been attached to India.
Next, in search of chemical evidence to back up their idea, the researchers took sand samples from several beaches in Mauritius, another African island nation located about 1700 kilometers southeast of the Seychelles. The surface rock of Mauritius is made from volcanic oceanic crust, or basalt. But its beach sands contained not just fragments of eroded lava but also zircons, a mineral associated with continental crust.
The zircons from Mauritius, it turned out, were hundreds or even thousands of millions of years old, although the island’s oceanic crust was less than 10 million years old.
So how did the zircons get there? The researchers, led by geophysicist Trond H. Torsvik of the University of Oslo, believe they had to have been in the lava itself. The magma, they suggest, punched its way through pieces of preexisting continental crust on the seafloor, and in the process it tore off zircons and incorporated them into the basalt lava. “Zircons don’t fly,” Torsvik says. “I don’t believe these could have been brought by other means—they must have been eroded from the basalt itself.”
Geochemist Andreas Stracke at the University of Münster in Germany is impressed, saying that while others have speculated on the possibility of buried continental crust under this part of the Indian Ocean, “this could be a smoking gun.” But he would like to see tests conducted into a wider range of rocks from the region to see if other geochemical signatures of continental crust can be found.
Source: Wired
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/lost-continent-indian-ocean/
-
IN SEARCH OF THE GREAT ORM OF THE LOCH
DEPARTMENT -
Loch Ness Monster Hunt Continues 80 Years On
400-Year-Old Masonic Secret Chamber Uncovered In British Manor
Sign up today for Bizarre Bazaar and Conspiracy Journal Magazines
Click on banner to sign up for two FREE magazines!
FRIENDS OF CONSPIRACY JOURNAL
Free Issue of Phenomena Magazine
www.mapit.kk5.org
Wm Michael Mott - New Book Available on Kindle
The Kevin Cook Show on Inception Radio Network
Informant News-Tapping into the Multiverse for a good Story!
PSI TALK-The Internet's Only Paranormal Web Station!
Loch Ness Monster Hunt Continues 80 Years On
The legend of the loch may be
80 years old, but this unseen octogenarian still
has a monster following, as Peter Ross discovers
‘DO NOT dally! Do not dally!” Adrian Shine – naturalist, force of nature and erstwhile monster hunter – is leading the way through the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre, which he designed, and which is home to some of the “toys” he has used in 40 years of exploring this and other lochs, including a tiny home-made submarine. He is a tall man with a hawkish profile and great white beard, striding the darkened corridors in a three-piece tweed suit and tartan tie, his mellifluous voice sounding in the murk. It is like being led around the chocolate factory by Willy Wonka, or by the Doctor showing off his Tardis.
Shine, who is 64, moved to the Highlands from his native Surrey in 1973, a restless maverick seeking “fame and glory, even in the cannon’s mouth – youth is like that”. He was part of a wave of amateur investigators each keen to find evidence that, depending on their own beliefs, the monster did or did not exist. There was something about that moment, in the late Sixties, early Seventies, as the countercultural tide lapped up against the shore of science, when anything – Atlantis, UFOs, Nessie – seemed possible, and Loch Ness became a proving ground for anyone with a working boat and a working theory.
Yet the monster legend predates the hippy era. Accounts of a mysterious creature in the loch go back to around 700AD when Adomnán, the abbot of Iona, wrote that St Columba had once driven away the monster as it was on the point of devouring one of his followers.
However, the birth of the Loch Ness Monster as a global media and tourism phenomenon is about to have its 80th anniversary. Nessie may be a plesiosaur; she may be a sturgeon; she may even be a he – the theories are endless – but one thing is sure: she will very shortly be an octogenarian.
It was on 14 April, 1933, while driving along the north-western shore of the loch, near Abriachan pier, that Aldie Mackay, manageress of the Drumnadrochit Hotel, is said to have spotted an enormous creature with a body resembling that of a whale rolling in the roiling water. “Stop!” she yelled to her husband, John, who was driving. “The beast!”
Aldie Mackay made no mention of the now iconic long neck, or at least that did not feature in the account of her sighting which was published in the Inverness Courier, headlined “Strange Spectacle In Loch Ness”, on 2 May. She herself was shy of publicity and was not quoted in the article, fearing that people would say she should take more water in her whisky. It was the then editor, Evan Macleod Barron, who suggested that the creature should be described as a “monster” – and this story and soubriquet, together, proved so tantalising that they were retold by newspapers around the world, bringing journalists and then tourists flocking to an area of Scotland which had hitherto been rather obscure. “This,” says Adrian Shine, meaning the whole global phenomenon, “is Mrs Mackay’s legacy.”
A symposium on 6 April, as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival, will celebrate that legacy – as well it might. The tiny lochside village of Drumnadrochit receives around 300,000 visitors each year; staggering, considering that the local population right around the loch is not quite 3,000.
Annual Nessie tourism is estimated to be worth around £30 million – spent on hotels and B&Bs, boat trips, food, monster-branded merchandise – and visitor numbers are said to spike following each new reported sighting. The huge green fibreglass beastie overlooking the A82 from the grounds of the Clansman Hotel is a snarling symbol of the legend’s economic importance; as much an emblem of the Nessie industry as the Finnieston crane is of Clydeside shipbuilding.
The grand Victorian Drumnadrochit Hotel, which Aldie Mackay managed, is now the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre, and it attracts people from all over the world. “We are in search of the monster,” say the Kim family from South Korea – a mum and dad and two young kids.
“It’s always at the back of your mind – ‘Will I be the one to see it?,’ ” says Gavin, who works in the area but is originally from Zimbabwe. He was still living in Africa when he first saw the Ted Danson movie about the monster and grew intrigued. “You just never know, do you?” says his work colleague, Fredericka, who hails from Ghana. “My husband lives in New York and he wants to come over here and see the monster.”
The loch, even without the legend, would be remarkable. Loch Ness is awesome and dreadful. It cries out for old words like that. Twenty miles long, a mile wide, 700 ft deep, a great bleak blackness, stained with peat; a swallower of men, aircraft, boats; insatiable and unfathomable.
On the day I visit, it is gorgeously sunny but bitter cold, -8 in Drumnadrochit as the sun began to rise over the black fir-serrated hump of hills above the southern shore. Spring has not quite sprung this far north. Lochside trees shake bare twisted talons of branches at the cheerful blue sky.
There have been generations of monster hunters, a sort of cryptozoological papacy full of heroes and villains, defenders of the faith and some who brought it into disrepute. Certain names still ring out in the Great Glen. The late Tim Dinsdale, an aeronautical engineer who led 56 expeditions between 1960 and 1987, and who shot an acclaimed black and white film which appeared to show a hump crossing the water. Robert Rines, the inventor, patent lawyer and Broadway composer, who, as a child, played a violin duet with Albert Einstein, and whose sighting in 1972 inspired him to spend the rest of his life seeking the monster, making an elegiac final expedition – in search of Nessie’s bones – in 2008, the year before his own death. And then there was Frank Searle, a hugely controversial figure, soldier-turned-greengrocer-turned-self-styled-“Monster-hunter extraordinary”, whose blue caravan and exhibition of photographs was a familiar sight on the loch-side in the mid-70s. He died eight years ago and is remembered now for his hoaxed pictures and aggressive conflicts with rival investigators.
“He was always offering to knife people,” Adrian Shine recalls. “Disembowelment was what was proposed for me.”
Shine had been a lazy and unpromising schoolboy, a classic young naturalist of the time, collecting frogspawn and birds’ eggs. He came to Scotland because he didn’t know quite what to do with his life. He had travelled to India, fascinated by the big game hunter Jim Corbett, and was considering becoming the first man to row across the Atlantic when he chanced upon a book about Morag, the monster said to live in Loch Morar. He decided that he was the very chap to find this beast and headed north, rowing out into the loch at night and spending hours, drifting in the dark, offering himself as bait. He saw himself as a “knight errant”, out to prove his manhood and make his name. Instead, he came to believe that Morag did not exist and later turned his attentions to Loch Ness with the same sceptical mindset, setting out to prove the absence of a monster by the process of elimination, culminating in 1987’s Operation Deepscan – in which a fleet of boats swept the loch with sonar. These days, Shine is more fascinated by the environment of the loch itself rather than the notion of a mysterious creature which has not been proved to exist.
“It was going to be a very quick route to fame and fortune but didn’t quite work out that way,” he says, reflecting on his years here. “I came here to conquer, to raid, to take home the spoils, but it was me who was captured.”
The loch does, however, still have at least one true believer. Steve Feltham moved here on 19 June, 1991, chucking his job and girlfriend, and he recently entered the Guinness Book of Records for his Nessie-seeking vigil. He lives in a converted mobile library at the side of the loch in the village of Dores with an adopted stray cat called “Miaow”, and makes his living selling small model monsters mounted on rocks washed ashore. He passes his nights reading about Nessie and playing the piano badly. He gets his water from a nearby tap and keeps warm by burning driftwood on a stove sourced on eBay.
I had heard that he recently got married to a local woman, but he explains that it was a ceremony at Rock Ness, in an inflatable church, which was not legally binding, though it means a lot to them. He spends each day watching the loch, bearing witness, always hopeful that he will see and film the monster. He is 50 now and thinks it quite possible that he will spend the rest of his life on this spot.
He is “ecstatic” about his continuing adventure and only “mildly disappointed” that he has not yet solved the mystery. He consoles himself with the thought that when, eventually, he does film Nessie, the length of his stay will lend authenticity to his findings. He does not come across as a crank. He is more like some sort of religious hermit – keeping the faith in the wilderness – albeit one who pops into the local pub for wifi.
Even true believers need a break now and then, of course, and it turns out that Feltham has only just returned from a month in Guatemala. But – and it is a big but – he spent most of his time sitting next to Lake Atitilan, where there is believed to be a monster; so, a busman’s holiday of sorts. He is, for me, the guardian spirit of Loch Ness, the keeper of a flame passed from St Columba to Aldie Mackay to Adrian Shine and on down the years. Not that he would put it that way. “I’m the world champion,” he sighs, “of sitting on a beach and seeing bugger all.”
Source: The Scotsman
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/heritage/loch-ness-monster-hunt-continues-80-years-on-1-2807205
‘DO NOT dally! Do not dally!” Adrian Shine – naturalist, force of nature and erstwhile monster hunter – is leading the way through the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre, which he designed, and which is home to some of the “toys” he has used in 40 years of exploring this and other lochs, including a tiny home-made submarine. He is a tall man with a hawkish profile and great white beard, striding the darkened corridors in a three-piece tweed suit and tartan tie, his mellifluous voice sounding in the murk. It is like being led around the chocolate factory by Willy Wonka, or by the Doctor showing off his Tardis.
Shine, who is 64, moved to the Highlands from his native Surrey in 1973, a restless maverick seeking “fame and glory, even in the cannon’s mouth – youth is like that”. He was part of a wave of amateur investigators each keen to find evidence that, depending on their own beliefs, the monster did or did not exist. There was something about that moment, in the late Sixties, early Seventies, as the countercultural tide lapped up against the shore of science, when anything – Atlantis, UFOs, Nessie – seemed possible, and Loch Ness became a proving ground for anyone with a working boat and a working theory.
Yet the monster legend predates the hippy era. Accounts of a mysterious creature in the loch go back to around 700AD when Adomnán, the abbot of Iona, wrote that St Columba had once driven away the monster as it was on the point of devouring one of his followers.
However, the birth of the Loch Ness Monster as a global media and tourism phenomenon is about to have its 80th anniversary. Nessie may be a plesiosaur; she may be a sturgeon; she may even be a he – the theories are endless – but one thing is sure: she will very shortly be an octogenarian.
It was on 14 April, 1933, while driving along the north-western shore of the loch, near Abriachan pier, that Aldie Mackay, manageress of the Drumnadrochit Hotel, is said to have spotted an enormous creature with a body resembling that of a whale rolling in the roiling water. “Stop!” she yelled to her husband, John, who was driving. “The beast!”
Aldie Mackay made no mention of the now iconic long neck, or at least that did not feature in the account of her sighting which was published in the Inverness Courier, headlined “Strange Spectacle In Loch Ness”, on 2 May. She herself was shy of publicity and was not quoted in the article, fearing that people would say she should take more water in her whisky. It was the then editor, Evan Macleod Barron, who suggested that the creature should be described as a “monster” – and this story and soubriquet, together, proved so tantalising that they were retold by newspapers around the world, bringing journalists and then tourists flocking to an area of Scotland which had hitherto been rather obscure. “This,” says Adrian Shine, meaning the whole global phenomenon, “is Mrs Mackay’s legacy.”
A symposium on 6 April, as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival, will celebrate that legacy – as well it might. The tiny lochside village of Drumnadrochit receives around 300,000 visitors each year; staggering, considering that the local population right around the loch is not quite 3,000.
Annual Nessie tourism is estimated to be worth around £30 million – spent on hotels and B&Bs, boat trips, food, monster-branded merchandise – and visitor numbers are said to spike following each new reported sighting. The huge green fibreglass beastie overlooking the A82 from the grounds of the Clansman Hotel is a snarling symbol of the legend’s economic importance; as much an emblem of the Nessie industry as the Finnieston crane is of Clydeside shipbuilding.
The grand Victorian Drumnadrochit Hotel, which Aldie Mackay managed, is now the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre, and it attracts people from all over the world. “We are in search of the monster,” say the Kim family from South Korea – a mum and dad and two young kids.
“It’s always at the back of your mind – ‘Will I be the one to see it?,’ ” says Gavin, who works in the area but is originally from Zimbabwe. He was still living in Africa when he first saw the Ted Danson movie about the monster and grew intrigued. “You just never know, do you?” says his work colleague, Fredericka, who hails from Ghana. “My husband lives in New York and he wants to come over here and see the monster.”
The loch, even without the legend, would be remarkable. Loch Ness is awesome and dreadful. It cries out for old words like that. Twenty miles long, a mile wide, 700 ft deep, a great bleak blackness, stained with peat; a swallower of men, aircraft, boats; insatiable and unfathomable.
On the day I visit, it is gorgeously sunny but bitter cold, -8 in Drumnadrochit as the sun began to rise over the black fir-serrated hump of hills above the southern shore. Spring has not quite sprung this far north. Lochside trees shake bare twisted talons of branches at the cheerful blue sky.
There have been generations of monster hunters, a sort of cryptozoological papacy full of heroes and villains, defenders of the faith and some who brought it into disrepute. Certain names still ring out in the Great Glen. The late Tim Dinsdale, an aeronautical engineer who led 56 expeditions between 1960 and 1987, and who shot an acclaimed black and white film which appeared to show a hump crossing the water. Robert Rines, the inventor, patent lawyer and Broadway composer, who, as a child, played a violin duet with Albert Einstein, and whose sighting in 1972 inspired him to spend the rest of his life seeking the monster, making an elegiac final expedition – in search of Nessie’s bones – in 2008, the year before his own death. And then there was Frank Searle, a hugely controversial figure, soldier-turned-greengrocer-turned-self-styled-“Monster-hunter extraordinary”, whose blue caravan and exhibition of photographs was a familiar sight on the loch-side in the mid-70s. He died eight years ago and is remembered now for his hoaxed pictures and aggressive conflicts with rival investigators.
“He was always offering to knife people,” Adrian Shine recalls. “Disembowelment was what was proposed for me.”
Shine had been a lazy and unpromising schoolboy, a classic young naturalist of the time, collecting frogspawn and birds’ eggs. He came to Scotland because he didn’t know quite what to do with his life. He had travelled to India, fascinated by the big game hunter Jim Corbett, and was considering becoming the first man to row across the Atlantic when he chanced upon a book about Morag, the monster said to live in Loch Morar. He decided that he was the very chap to find this beast and headed north, rowing out into the loch at night and spending hours, drifting in the dark, offering himself as bait. He saw himself as a “knight errant”, out to prove his manhood and make his name. Instead, he came to believe that Morag did not exist and later turned his attentions to Loch Ness with the same sceptical mindset, setting out to prove the absence of a monster by the process of elimination, culminating in 1987’s Operation Deepscan – in which a fleet of boats swept the loch with sonar. These days, Shine is more fascinated by the environment of the loch itself rather than the notion of a mysterious creature which has not been proved to exist.
“It was going to be a very quick route to fame and fortune but didn’t quite work out that way,” he says, reflecting on his years here. “I came here to conquer, to raid, to take home the spoils, but it was me who was captured.”
The loch does, however, still have at least one true believer. Steve Feltham moved here on 19 June, 1991, chucking his job and girlfriend, and he recently entered the Guinness Book of Records for his Nessie-seeking vigil. He lives in a converted mobile library at the side of the loch in the village of Dores with an adopted stray cat called “Miaow”, and makes his living selling small model monsters mounted on rocks washed ashore. He passes his nights reading about Nessie and playing the piano badly. He gets his water from a nearby tap and keeps warm by burning driftwood on a stove sourced on eBay.
I had heard that he recently got married to a local woman, but he explains that it was a ceremony at Rock Ness, in an inflatable church, which was not legally binding, though it means a lot to them. He spends each day watching the loch, bearing witness, always hopeful that he will see and film the monster. He is 50 now and thinks it quite possible that he will spend the rest of his life on this spot.
He is “ecstatic” about his continuing adventure and only “mildly disappointed” that he has not yet solved the mystery. He consoles himself with the thought that when, eventually, he does film Nessie, the length of his stay will lend authenticity to his findings. He does not come across as a crank. He is more like some sort of religious hermit – keeping the faith in the wilderness – albeit one who pops into the local pub for wifi.
Even true believers need a break now and then, of course, and it turns out that Feltham has only just returned from a month in Guatemala. But – and it is a big but – he spent most of his time sitting next to Lake Atitilan, where there is believed to be a monster; so, a busman’s holiday of sorts. He is, for me, the guardian spirit of Loch Ness, the keeper of a flame passed from St Columba to Aldie Mackay to Adrian Shine and on down the years. Not that he would put it that way. “I’m the world champion,” he sighs, “of sitting on a beach and seeing bugger all.”
Source: The Scotsman
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/heritage/loch-ness-monster-hunt-continues-80-years-on-1-2807205
- IN THOSE DAYS THERE
WERE GIANTS DEPARTMENT -
Gods of the Hunt: Legends of Mysterious Slant-Eyed Giants
By Micah Hanks
- BIGFOOT HERE, BIGFOOT THERE DEPARTMENT -
Bigfoot: Lurking in Kansas or Just Figment of the Imagination?
In May of 1982 a series of strange events transpired in three different homes across the city of Rome, Italy. Religious paintings would fall off the walls, objects were being hurled across rooms, and fires would spontaneously ignite whenever the twenty-year-old Carole Compton was near. It wasn’t until a small fire consumed three-year-old Agnese’s cot that the police were called in to investigate. In what was dubbed the “Nanny they called Witch” trial, Carole Compton would be accused of arson and attempted murder. However, the twenty-year-old nanny insisted that she was a victim of the strange phenomena just as much as they were.
Ricci Family
Rome 1982. Carole Compton went to work for the Ricci family as a live-in nanny. Carole had recently moved to Rome with her boyfriend who was in the military service. She had only been staying in their home for a few days when strange things began happening around Carole. It started when a religious painting fell from the wall when Carole walked past. Soon after this incident, Carole accompanied the Ricci family to their vacation home in the Italian Alps. While there, a mysterious fire broke out on the second floor of the vacation home, spreading quickly and consuming the entire house.
When the Ricci family returned home, unexplained fires began occurring inside their house. When a fire broke out inside their two-year-old’s bedroom, they became suspicious of Carole and decided to let her go in fear for their safety.
Tonti Family
By the summer of 1982, Carole was hired by the Tonti family to help with their small children. The family lived in their grandparent’s house in the small island of Elba. Once Carole had moved in strange things began occurring in the Tonti’s residence. A small fire burned through a mattress and small religious statues were found broken on the floor. Soon after small objects began to break or be hurled around the house, prompting the grandmother to accuse Carole of being a witch.
The tension in the house began to rise as the phenomena increased. When a fire suddenly consumed three-year-old’s Agnese’s cot, the family quickly called the police and accused Carole of arson and attempted murder. The young Scottish nanny had no idea what was happening around her and claimed her innocence.
Trial
Carole Compton was incarcerated in a prison at Livorno. The Italian justice system allows the accused to be detained even without charge. So when the news began to spread out about the strange fires, so did the rumors of paranormal activity and witchcraft began.
British newspapers ran the headline “The girl they call a witch” and reported on the strange case of Carole Compton, the British nanny who had been detained in Italy and accused of witchcraft. The controversy helped raise some money for Carole’s defense as well as bring international attention to Italy’s justice system and the obvious ‘witch trial’ they had on their hands. By this time, Carole’s case had garnered so much attention that famous parapsychologists Guy Lyon Playfair (The Enfield Poltergeist) offered to fly to Rome and help Carole fight the charges against her. However Carole wanted to avoid bringing any paranormal explanations to her case. Fearing it would only fuel the rumors of her involvement in the occult. Carole believed that she did not posses any kind of psychic or supernatural powers and that there had to be some rational explanations for the fires.
For Italian police however, the story of Carole Compton was anything but obvious. Throughout interrogations Carole insisted that she had nothing to do with the fires and strange events that seemed to follow her wherever she went. Further complicating things was the fact that no one ever saw Carole break or hurl and object or start a single fire she had been accused of. Several forensic experts testified in front of others about the abnormal nature of the fires but in the end it seemed like the international pressure this brought onto the Italian justice system was enough to get a trial going. On December of 1983, Carole was brought to trial after being detained for sixteen months in prison. The court system and those involved were so afraid of her supernatural claims that they order her to be put inside a steel cage during the hearing of the trial.
Carole Compton was found innocent of attempted murder but guilty of two counts of arson. Carole received a sentence of two and a half years imprisonment, of which was suspended immediately on account of her sixteen months already served.
Aftermath
Soon after being released from prison Carole Compton left Italy and avoided any kind of media attention until 1990 when she published a book regarding her ordeal. Superstition: The True Story of The Nanny They Called A Witch was published and garnered very little interest from the public. In it, Carole makes the case that she might have been a victim of a poltergeist attack.
Carole is now married and resides in West Yorkshire, England.
What really happened to Carole?
Carole Compton’s case is riddled with rumors, mass hysteria, and claims of paranormal activity. For many, this was a clear case of a young woman suffering from Münchausen syndrome by proxy.
In Münchausen syndrome by proxy, an adult caregiver either makes a child appear sick by fabricating symptoms, or actually causes harm to the child, in order to gain the attention of medical providers and others. In order to perpetuate the medical relationship, the caregiver systematically misrepresents symptoms, fabricates signs, manipulates laboratory tests, or even purposely harms the child (e.g. by poisoning, suffocation, infection, physical injury). Studies have shown a mortality rate of between 6% and 10% of MSbP victims, making it perhaps the most lethal form of child abuse. –Wikipedia
But what about the witnesses? Those who accused her of witchcraft and starting the fires deliberately also confessed not seeing Carole near the fires when they started. The same went for the unexplained objects breaking or being tossed about. So then, was Compton’s case a case of an attention-seeking nanny? Or a bonafide poltergeist?
At the start of the strange incidents, Carole had been separated from her lover on account that he had gone off for Military service. Hence the reason why she moved into the homes of the families she babysat for. In addition to being separated from her Italian boyfriend, Carole was a stranger in a new land. Could the stress of living alone in a different country and away from her lover be enough to induce a psychotic break in Carole’s life?
Parapsychologists believe in the human brain’s ability to influence the physical world around it. This is known as Psychokinesis.
Parapsychologists Guy Lyon Playfair, made famous by his research into the Enfield Poltergeist case was genuinely interested in the Compton case. However she did not want to attract anymore unwanted attention to the supernatural aspect of her case, and chose to ignore Playfair’s offer of legal help. We’re left to wonder what really happened to Carole Compton in Rome during that year in 1982.
As was the case with many other famous poltergeist cases (Tina Resch, Doris Bither, Jackie Hernandez, and Esther Cox amongst many) the accused has at one point suffered from extreme psychological trauma. In this case, we don’t know enough about Carole Compton to say with certainty that she suffered from a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in her earlier life, but her time in Rome did prove to be anything but a walk in a park.
Source: Ghost Theory
http://www.ghosttheory.com/2013/02/17/carole-compton-poltergeistthe-nanny-they-called-a-witch
Gods of the Hunt: Legends of Mysterious Slant-Eyed Giants
By Micah Hanks
Traveling west out of
Asheville, North Carolina and crossing
the border into Jackson County, one can
trace the Caney Fork River along toward
the little Tuckasegee community,
following NC Highway 107 heading out of
the nearby campus town of Cullowhee.
There, off a gravel road running between
two pastures, is one of the most
underrated–and often overlooked–wonders
anywhere in the Eastern United States.
Known today as “Judaculla Rock”, the strange stone mound protrudes from the earth just as it did centuries ago, much earlier even than the Cherokee Indians had begun to inhabit the region. According to most estimates by geologists, the stone’s markings date back as much as 3000 years, though on Raliegh-based group a number of years ago supposed that some of the petroglyphs covering the boulder could be twice as old as previous estimates, if not more.
Of all the curious symbols that appear along the stone’s surface, one particular image stands out among the rest, resembling vaguely a hand-like imprint. According to legend, this portion of the stone marks the place where an ancient Cherokee god of the hunt, known as “Tsul’Kalu’,” had leaped from a nearby mountain, and landing within the valley below, had steadied himself against what is now Judaculla Rock. This is, in fact, merely one of several legends regarding Tsul’Kalu’ that still exist, many of which have some fairly remarkable tie-ins with mysterious discoveries of “giants” alleged to have existed in the ancient Americas.
What got me thinking about this initially was a recent interview with researcher Mike Mott, where he discussed repeated allegations that the Smithsonian Institute has engaged in cover-ups regarding anomalous discoveries in the Americas. In at least a few instances, these involved the bones of what appeared to be “giant” bodies recovered from a number of burial mounds throughout the Eastern United States. While many such discoveries have been reported, and were even discussed in the reports of the Smithsonian’s Ethnology Bureau throughout the late 1890s, it seems very strange that such information nonetheless seems to have simply “vanished” from record after that period. Conventional modern explanations claim that soil displacement and erosion had caused the bones of normal-sized bodies to move over time; however, it seems odd that trained scientists with the Smithsonian Institute would have been responsible for such faulty judgement in the official reports they had given, even if it had been more than 100 years ago.
So what does any of this have to do with “Tsul’Kalu’,” a mythic Cherokee god of the hunt, and the seldom discussed stone in Western North Carolina alleged to bear his handprint? In the anthropologist James Mooney’s book Myths of the Cherokee, on page 391 of modern editions he detailed a strange story of “The Giants from the West”:
James Wafford, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last century, told him that she had beard from the old people that long before her time a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and had their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them Tsunil’kälû’, “The Slant-eyed people,” because they looked like the giant hunter Tsul’kälû’… They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the west. The story may be a distorted historical tradition.
Tsul’kalu’, of course, was said to be the mythic giant with slanted eyes associated with the initial legend of Judaculla Rock (Judaculla also being a Westernized variation of the earlier “Tsul’kalu’” name). But I found it quite interesting that there was this additional legend associated with “slant eyed giants” that also had to do with this region. Additionally, some modern folklorists have drawn a parallel between Tsul’kalu’ and the Eastern varieties of alleged “Bigfoot” encounters, noting that the Cherokee god of the hunt was believed to live near the summit of steep mountains, and often in caves, which bears similarity to Sasquatch reports and legends more prominent in the Pacific Northwest.
While it is easy enough to accept these stories as being mere myths or legends the Cherokee people had once told, it still seems strange that, in conjunction with such odd stories, there remain these troubling reports of “missing” skeletons that the Smithsonian Institute was said to have recovered time and time again… skeletons of very large stature. Could there be any more to the stories pertaining to the possible existence of giants in the Ancient Americas, some of which were well known to the Cherokee hundreds of years ago? Even more troubling, if these beings did actually exist, what would be the Smithsonian’s reason for keeping this information from the public, if they had in fact recovered such large, anomalous specimens?
Source: Mysterious Universe
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2013/02/gods-of-the-hunt-legends-of-mysterious-slant-eyed-giants/
Known today as “Judaculla Rock”, the strange stone mound protrudes from the earth just as it did centuries ago, much earlier even than the Cherokee Indians had begun to inhabit the region. According to most estimates by geologists, the stone’s markings date back as much as 3000 years, though on Raliegh-based group a number of years ago supposed that some of the petroglyphs covering the boulder could be twice as old as previous estimates, if not more.
Of all the curious symbols that appear along the stone’s surface, one particular image stands out among the rest, resembling vaguely a hand-like imprint. According to legend, this portion of the stone marks the place where an ancient Cherokee god of the hunt, known as “Tsul’Kalu’,” had leaped from a nearby mountain, and landing within the valley below, had steadied himself against what is now Judaculla Rock. This is, in fact, merely one of several legends regarding Tsul’Kalu’ that still exist, many of which have some fairly remarkable tie-ins with mysterious discoveries of “giants” alleged to have existed in the ancient Americas.
What got me thinking about this initially was a recent interview with researcher Mike Mott, where he discussed repeated allegations that the Smithsonian Institute has engaged in cover-ups regarding anomalous discoveries in the Americas. In at least a few instances, these involved the bones of what appeared to be “giant” bodies recovered from a number of burial mounds throughout the Eastern United States. While many such discoveries have been reported, and were even discussed in the reports of the Smithsonian’s Ethnology Bureau throughout the late 1890s, it seems very strange that such information nonetheless seems to have simply “vanished” from record after that period. Conventional modern explanations claim that soil displacement and erosion had caused the bones of normal-sized bodies to move over time; however, it seems odd that trained scientists with the Smithsonian Institute would have been responsible for such faulty judgement in the official reports they had given, even if it had been more than 100 years ago.
So what does any of this have to do with “Tsul’Kalu’,” a mythic Cherokee god of the hunt, and the seldom discussed stone in Western North Carolina alleged to bear his handprint? In the anthropologist James Mooney’s book Myths of the Cherokee, on page 391 of modern editions he detailed a strange story of “The Giants from the West”:
James Wafford, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last century, told him that she had beard from the old people that long before her time a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and had their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them Tsunil’kälû’, “The Slant-eyed people,” because they looked like the giant hunter Tsul’kälû’… They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the west. The story may be a distorted historical tradition.
Tsul’kalu’, of course, was said to be the mythic giant with slanted eyes associated with the initial legend of Judaculla Rock (Judaculla also being a Westernized variation of the earlier “Tsul’kalu’” name). But I found it quite interesting that there was this additional legend associated with “slant eyed giants” that also had to do with this region. Additionally, some modern folklorists have drawn a parallel between Tsul’kalu’ and the Eastern varieties of alleged “Bigfoot” encounters, noting that the Cherokee god of the hunt was believed to live near the summit of steep mountains, and often in caves, which bears similarity to Sasquatch reports and legends more prominent in the Pacific Northwest.
While it is easy enough to accept these stories as being mere myths or legends the Cherokee people had once told, it still seems strange that, in conjunction with such odd stories, there remain these troubling reports of “missing” skeletons that the Smithsonian Institute was said to have recovered time and time again… skeletons of very large stature. Could there be any more to the stories pertaining to the possible existence of giants in the Ancient Americas, some of which were well known to the Cherokee hundreds of years ago? Even more troubling, if these beings did actually exist, what would be the Smithsonian’s reason for keeping this information from the public, if they had in fact recovered such large, anomalous specimens?
Source: Mysterious Universe
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2013/02/gods-of-the-hunt-legends-of-mysterious-slant-eyed-giants/
- BIGFOOT HERE, BIGFOOT THERE DEPARTMENT -
Bigfoot: Lurking in Kansas or Just Figment of the Imagination?
With the emergence of
several TV shows, numerous movies and
the quirky Jack Link’s “Messin’ with
Sasquatch” commercial campaign, there’s
little chance that anyone is unaware of
the legendary creature Bigfoot.
But is there a possibility that this famed creative could be roaming Kansas? Some researchers and fans believe so.
“There’s ‘squaches pretty much everywhere,” said Carter Buschardt, investigator for Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and a firm believer in the existence of Bigfoot.
BFRO was established in 1995, and, according to its website is, “a virtual community of scientists, journalists and specialists from diverse backgrounds” who investigate the phenomenon through field and laboratory work.
Buschardt, who lives in Kansas City, Mo., has been researching the Bigfoot concept for about five years and investigating for BFRO for about a year and a half.
While sightings cover the entire nation, some are closer to home than others. There have been numerous Bigfoot sightings near Wichita, Salina, Manhattan and Pratt, Kan., and several places in Riley County, including near Tuttle Creek State Park.
Buschardt recounted a sighting reported in Pottawatomie County that was never made official due to the requests of a nearby Indian reservation.
“A lady … saw one, and one of her best friends, a school bus driver up there, hit one with her school bus. It busted her window,” Buschardt said.
On Jan. 29, crew members from Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot” television show visited Salina, following reports of Sasquatch sightings northeast of the city. Although the crew took some video, they reported not finding any evidence of Sasquatch activity.
There is a good reason that Sasquatch sightings are relatively rare, Buschardt said.
“‘Squatch are as intelligent as you or I are, just in a different way. They’re good at maintaining their distance from humans,” Buschardt said.
Buschardt believes that the Sasquatch species is intelligent because the creature is likely an offshoot of the giant ape Gigantopithecus, an extinct genus that the fossil record suggests existed for millions of years but became extinct about 100,000 years ago. He said that it is possible both humans and Bigfoot developed from Gigantopithecus, but in different ways, giving them different types of intelligence.
“We’re smart at building rockets and computers. They’re smart at surviving off the land and staying unseen,” Buschardt said.
Buschardt is not the only person who is interested in the sightings of Bigfoot in Kansas. Crew members from “Finding Bigfoot” recently made a trip to Wichita to hold a meeting to discuss sightings in the area.
Buschardt, along with six witnesses he had spoken with, attended the meeting. The meeting invited anyone in the area to share about any encounters with Bigfoot and provide information about sightings in Kansas.
But not everyone is as certain as Buschardt about the existence of Bigfoot at all, never mind whether he lives in Kansas. Lauren Ritterbush, associate professor of archaeology, believes that Bigfoot is not a real creature, but that it “serves a mythological role in our society.”
Referencing “Bigfoot Exposed,” a book by anthropologist David J. Daegling, Ritterbush explained that she, like Daegling, believes that Bigfoot’s mythological purpose may be as an “eco-messiah” of sorts.
According to Daegling’s book, as an eco-messiah, “Bigfoot signifies wilderness and the power of nature. The Sasquatch is the eco-messiah, for if we understand this monster we might overcome our ambivalent relationship with nature.”
“Bigfoot Exposed” claims that “this symbolic aspect of Bigfoot is rarely talked about among advocates,” who, Buschardt confirmed, “are all pretty much outdoor people.”
But while this theory could explain much of the reasoning behind the continued search for Bigfoot, it cannot say for certain whether Bigfoot does or does not exist as a real, physical creature. In “Bigfoot Exposed,” Daegling wrote, “we only know for certain that the Sasquatch is meaningful.”
Glenn Sipes, junior in industrial engineering, said that he “most certainly” believes that Bigfoot exists.
“There’s no reason to believe that it doesn’t exist. You can’t disprove something that you haven’t found,” Sipes said.
Sipes said he doesn’t look down on those who don’t believe in Bigfoot.
“There’s no proof that it doesn’t exist, and there’s no proof that it does exist, so it’s logical to believe either way,” Sipes said.
There are K-State students on the other end of the spectrum, too. Steven Kelly, graduate student in English, holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and now focuses his study on cultural studies in English literature.
Kelly said that while he doesn’t believe Bigfoot exists as a real, physical creature, he does think Bigfoot plays an important social role as a myth.
“The evidence, to me, shows that Bigfoot does not actually exist, and that Bigfoot is in fact a myth and not real, but the fact that the myth isn’t true doesn’t mean it’s not important,” Kelly said. “Myths are critically important to gluing people together into group cohesion. They’re big parts of identities.”
Kelly said he thinks one reason people are drawn to Bigfoot is the mystical nature of the creature.
“People don’t always need a reason for believing in something,” Kelly said.
Kelly also said that the commercialization of Bigfoot plays a large part in its popularity.
“There’s an industry around Bigfoot. The media is part of that industry, so they put out the shows to get people to watch TV, to watch the shows that advertisers and companies are paying for to keep the networks alive,” Kelly said.
Sipes said that it was a movie, “Harry and the Hendersons,” that first made him believe in Bigfoot.
“‘Harry and the Hendersons’ … is an encounter that’s obviously faked, but could legitimately happen in my mindset,” Sipes said.
While both sides can provide evidence to support their viewpoints, it is up to individuals to decide what they believe about the existence of Bigfoot. But one thing is for certain: Bigfoot will likely stick around for years to come, whether he lives on in the wilderness or as a myth that continues to circulate the nation.
Source: The Kansas State Collegian
http://www.kstatecollegian.com/2013/02/26/bigfoot-lurking-in-kansas-or-just-figment-of-the-imagination/#
But is there a possibility that this famed creative could be roaming Kansas? Some researchers and fans believe so.
“There’s ‘squaches pretty much everywhere,” said Carter Buschardt, investigator for Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and a firm believer in the existence of Bigfoot.
BFRO was established in 1995, and, according to its website is, “a virtual community of scientists, journalists and specialists from diverse backgrounds” who investigate the phenomenon through field and laboratory work.
Buschardt, who lives in Kansas City, Mo., has been researching the Bigfoot concept for about five years and investigating for BFRO for about a year and a half.
While sightings cover the entire nation, some are closer to home than others. There have been numerous Bigfoot sightings near Wichita, Salina, Manhattan and Pratt, Kan., and several places in Riley County, including near Tuttle Creek State Park.
Buschardt recounted a sighting reported in Pottawatomie County that was never made official due to the requests of a nearby Indian reservation.
“A lady … saw one, and one of her best friends, a school bus driver up there, hit one with her school bus. It busted her window,” Buschardt said.
On Jan. 29, crew members from Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot” television show visited Salina, following reports of Sasquatch sightings northeast of the city. Although the crew took some video, they reported not finding any evidence of Sasquatch activity.
There is a good reason that Sasquatch sightings are relatively rare, Buschardt said.
“‘Squatch are as intelligent as you or I are, just in a different way. They’re good at maintaining their distance from humans,” Buschardt said.
Buschardt believes that the Sasquatch species is intelligent because the creature is likely an offshoot of the giant ape Gigantopithecus, an extinct genus that the fossil record suggests existed for millions of years but became extinct about 100,000 years ago. He said that it is possible both humans and Bigfoot developed from Gigantopithecus, but in different ways, giving them different types of intelligence.
“We’re smart at building rockets and computers. They’re smart at surviving off the land and staying unseen,” Buschardt said.
Buschardt is not the only person who is interested in the sightings of Bigfoot in Kansas. Crew members from “Finding Bigfoot” recently made a trip to Wichita to hold a meeting to discuss sightings in the area.
Buschardt, along with six witnesses he had spoken with, attended the meeting. The meeting invited anyone in the area to share about any encounters with Bigfoot and provide information about sightings in Kansas.
But not everyone is as certain as Buschardt about the existence of Bigfoot at all, never mind whether he lives in Kansas. Lauren Ritterbush, associate professor of archaeology, believes that Bigfoot is not a real creature, but that it “serves a mythological role in our society.”
Referencing “Bigfoot Exposed,” a book by anthropologist David J. Daegling, Ritterbush explained that she, like Daegling, believes that Bigfoot’s mythological purpose may be as an “eco-messiah” of sorts.
According to Daegling’s book, as an eco-messiah, “Bigfoot signifies wilderness and the power of nature. The Sasquatch is the eco-messiah, for if we understand this monster we might overcome our ambivalent relationship with nature.”
“Bigfoot Exposed” claims that “this symbolic aspect of Bigfoot is rarely talked about among advocates,” who, Buschardt confirmed, “are all pretty much outdoor people.”
But while this theory could explain much of the reasoning behind the continued search for Bigfoot, it cannot say for certain whether Bigfoot does or does not exist as a real, physical creature. In “Bigfoot Exposed,” Daegling wrote, “we only know for certain that the Sasquatch is meaningful.”
Glenn Sipes, junior in industrial engineering, said that he “most certainly” believes that Bigfoot exists.
“There’s no reason to believe that it doesn’t exist. You can’t disprove something that you haven’t found,” Sipes said.
Sipes said he doesn’t look down on those who don’t believe in Bigfoot.
“There’s no proof that it doesn’t exist, and there’s no proof that it does exist, so it’s logical to believe either way,” Sipes said.
There are K-State students on the other end of the spectrum, too. Steven Kelly, graduate student in English, holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and now focuses his study on cultural studies in English literature.
Kelly said that while he doesn’t believe Bigfoot exists as a real, physical creature, he does think Bigfoot plays an important social role as a myth.
“The evidence, to me, shows that Bigfoot does not actually exist, and that Bigfoot is in fact a myth and not real, but the fact that the myth isn’t true doesn’t mean it’s not important,” Kelly said. “Myths are critically important to gluing people together into group cohesion. They’re big parts of identities.”
Kelly said he thinks one reason people are drawn to Bigfoot is the mystical nature of the creature.
“People don’t always need a reason for believing in something,” Kelly said.
Kelly also said that the commercialization of Bigfoot plays a large part in its popularity.
“There’s an industry around Bigfoot. The media is part of that industry, so they put out the shows to get people to watch TV, to watch the shows that advertisers and companies are paying for to keep the networks alive,” Kelly said.
Sipes said that it was a movie, “Harry and the Hendersons,” that first made him believe in Bigfoot.
“‘Harry and the Hendersons’ … is an encounter that’s obviously faked, but could legitimately happen in my mindset,” Sipes said.
While both sides can provide evidence to support their viewpoints, it is up to individuals to decide what they believe about the existence of Bigfoot. But one thing is for certain: Bigfoot will likely stick around for years to come, whether he lives on in the wilderness or as a myth that continues to circulate the nation.
Source: The Kansas State Collegian
http://www.kstatecollegian.com/2013/02/26/bigfoot-lurking-in-kansas-or-just-figment-of-the-imagination/#
- PARANORMAL
PANIC DEPARTMENT -
Carole Compton Poltergeist: The Nanny They Called A Witch
By Javier
Carole Compton Poltergeist: The Nanny They Called A Witch
By Javier
In May of 1982 a series of strange events transpired in three different homes across the city of Rome, Italy. Religious paintings would fall off the walls, objects were being hurled across rooms, and fires would spontaneously ignite whenever the twenty-year-old Carole Compton was near. It wasn’t until a small fire consumed three-year-old Agnese’s cot that the police were called in to investigate. In what was dubbed the “Nanny they called Witch” trial, Carole Compton would be accused of arson and attempted murder. However, the twenty-year-old nanny insisted that she was a victim of the strange phenomena just as much as they were.
Ricci Family
Rome 1982. Carole Compton went to work for the Ricci family as a live-in nanny. Carole had recently moved to Rome with her boyfriend who was in the military service. She had only been staying in their home for a few days when strange things began happening around Carole. It started when a religious painting fell from the wall when Carole walked past. Soon after this incident, Carole accompanied the Ricci family to their vacation home in the Italian Alps. While there, a mysterious fire broke out on the second floor of the vacation home, spreading quickly and consuming the entire house.
When the Ricci family returned home, unexplained fires began occurring inside their house. When a fire broke out inside their two-year-old’s bedroom, they became suspicious of Carole and decided to let her go in fear for their safety.
Tonti Family
By the summer of 1982, Carole was hired by the Tonti family to help with their small children. The family lived in their grandparent’s house in the small island of Elba. Once Carole had moved in strange things began occurring in the Tonti’s residence. A small fire burned through a mattress and small religious statues were found broken on the floor. Soon after small objects began to break or be hurled around the house, prompting the grandmother to accuse Carole of being a witch.
The tension in the house began to rise as the phenomena increased. When a fire suddenly consumed three-year-old’s Agnese’s cot, the family quickly called the police and accused Carole of arson and attempted murder. The young Scottish nanny had no idea what was happening around her and claimed her innocence.
Trial
Carole Compton was incarcerated in a prison at Livorno. The Italian justice system allows the accused to be detained even without charge. So when the news began to spread out about the strange fires, so did the rumors of paranormal activity and witchcraft began.
British newspapers ran the headline “The girl they call a witch” and reported on the strange case of Carole Compton, the British nanny who had been detained in Italy and accused of witchcraft. The controversy helped raise some money for Carole’s defense as well as bring international attention to Italy’s justice system and the obvious ‘witch trial’ they had on their hands. By this time, Carole’s case had garnered so much attention that famous parapsychologists Guy Lyon Playfair (The Enfield Poltergeist) offered to fly to Rome and help Carole fight the charges against her. However Carole wanted to avoid bringing any paranormal explanations to her case. Fearing it would only fuel the rumors of her involvement in the occult. Carole believed that she did not posses any kind of psychic or supernatural powers and that there had to be some rational explanations for the fires.
For Italian police however, the story of Carole Compton was anything but obvious. Throughout interrogations Carole insisted that she had nothing to do with the fires and strange events that seemed to follow her wherever she went. Further complicating things was the fact that no one ever saw Carole break or hurl and object or start a single fire she had been accused of. Several forensic experts testified in front of others about the abnormal nature of the fires but in the end it seemed like the international pressure this brought onto the Italian justice system was enough to get a trial going. On December of 1983, Carole was brought to trial after being detained for sixteen months in prison. The court system and those involved were so afraid of her supernatural claims that they order her to be put inside a steel cage during the hearing of the trial.
Carole Compton was found innocent of attempted murder but guilty of two counts of arson. Carole received a sentence of two and a half years imprisonment, of which was suspended immediately on account of her sixteen months already served.
Aftermath
Soon after being released from prison Carole Compton left Italy and avoided any kind of media attention until 1990 when she published a book regarding her ordeal. Superstition: The True Story of The Nanny They Called A Witch was published and garnered very little interest from the public. In it, Carole makes the case that she might have been a victim of a poltergeist attack.
Carole is now married and resides in West Yorkshire, England.
What really happened to Carole?
Carole Compton’s case is riddled with rumors, mass hysteria, and claims of paranormal activity. For many, this was a clear case of a young woman suffering from Münchausen syndrome by proxy.
In Münchausen syndrome by proxy, an adult caregiver either makes a child appear sick by fabricating symptoms, or actually causes harm to the child, in order to gain the attention of medical providers and others. In order to perpetuate the medical relationship, the caregiver systematically misrepresents symptoms, fabricates signs, manipulates laboratory tests, or even purposely harms the child (e.g. by poisoning, suffocation, infection, physical injury). Studies have shown a mortality rate of between 6% and 10% of MSbP victims, making it perhaps the most lethal form of child abuse. –Wikipedia
But what about the witnesses? Those who accused her of witchcraft and starting the fires deliberately also confessed not seeing Carole near the fires when they started. The same went for the unexplained objects breaking or being tossed about. So then, was Compton’s case a case of an attention-seeking nanny? Or a bonafide poltergeist?
At the start of the strange incidents, Carole had been separated from her lover on account that he had gone off for Military service. Hence the reason why she moved into the homes of the families she babysat for. In addition to being separated from her Italian boyfriend, Carole was a stranger in a new land. Could the stress of living alone in a different country and away from her lover be enough to induce a psychotic break in Carole’s life?
Parapsychologists believe in the human brain’s ability to influence the physical world around it. This is known as Psychokinesis.
Parapsychologists Guy Lyon Playfair, made famous by his research into the Enfield Poltergeist case was genuinely interested in the Compton case. However she did not want to attract anymore unwanted attention to the supernatural aspect of her case, and chose to ignore Playfair’s offer of legal help. We’re left to wonder what really happened to Carole Compton in Rome during that year in 1982.
As was the case with many other famous poltergeist cases (Tina Resch, Doris Bither, Jackie Hernandez, and Esther Cox amongst many) the accused has at one point suffered from extreme psychological trauma. In this case, we don’t know enough about Carole Compton to say with certainty that she suffered from a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in her earlier life, but her time in Rome did prove to be anything but a walk in a park.
Source: Ghost Theory
http://www.ghosttheory.com/2013/02/17/carole-compton-poltergeistthe-nanny-they-called-a-witch
- WHAT LURKS
BEHIND THESE WALLS DEPARTMENT -
400-Year-Old Masonic Secret Chamber Uncovered In British Manor
A secret chamber, hidden
for 400 years and with possible links to
early freemasonry, has been discovered.
The entrance to the room, which has plastered walls, was found inside a cupboard at the National Trust-owned house Canons Ashby, near Daventry.
It is a panelled room with walls showing crests of local families and enigmatic symbols.
Laura Malpas, of the trust, said there was "speculation" the room had been an early masonic lodge.
Ms Malpas, community manager for the trust, said it was "a fascinating and puzzling space" with walls that include "frankly odd Latin texts".
"[They] tell the reader things such as 'Do not eat of those things with a black tail' or 'Check your tongue, your belly and your lust, the best thing is to enjoy someone else's madness'."
She said the house manager Edward Bartlett made the discovery after deciding to investigate the cupboard while locking up for the night.
"With a torch he discovered an entrance to a small concealed chamber, hidden in the panelling of the room," she said.
"Clearly not a natural void left during the building process, this tiny chamber is floor boarded and the walls have been plastered from the inside to create a space that could hide a person and a sizeable amount of objects the owner of the house might want to keep hidden away from public view."
"It is believed the Dryden family may well have been part of a society that evolved into what we now recognise as the freemasons."
She added: "There has been speculation that this room was used as an early form of Masonic lodge before Freemasonry was established in England some 130 years later in 1717."
It would not have been a hole to hide priests as the Dryden family were puritans, she said.
The room is about 6ft (1.82m) high with 6ft (1.82m) by 5ft (1.52m) floor space.
Source: BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-21577807
The entrance to the room, which has plastered walls, was found inside a cupboard at the National Trust-owned house Canons Ashby, near Daventry.
It is a panelled room with walls showing crests of local families and enigmatic symbols.
Laura Malpas, of the trust, said there was "speculation" the room had been an early masonic lodge.
Ms Malpas, community manager for the trust, said it was "a fascinating and puzzling space" with walls that include "frankly odd Latin texts".
"[They] tell the reader things such as 'Do not eat of those things with a black tail' or 'Check your tongue, your belly and your lust, the best thing is to enjoy someone else's madness'."
She said the house manager Edward Bartlett made the discovery after deciding to investigate the cupboard while locking up for the night.
"With a torch he discovered an entrance to a small concealed chamber, hidden in the panelling of the room," she said.
"Clearly not a natural void left during the building process, this tiny chamber is floor boarded and the walls have been plastered from the inside to create a space that could hide a person and a sizeable amount of objects the owner of the house might want to keep hidden away from public view."
"It is believed the Dryden family may well have been part of a society that evolved into what we now recognise as the freemasons."
She added: "There has been speculation that this room was used as an early form of Masonic lodge before Freemasonry was established in England some 130 years later in 1717."
It would not have been a hole to hide priests as the Dryden family were puritans, she said.
The room is about 6ft (1.82m) high with 6ft (1.82m) by 5ft (1.52m) floor space.
Source: BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-21577807
Sign up today for Bizarre Bazaar and Conspiracy Journal Magazines
Click on banner to sign up for two FREE magazines!
FRIENDS OF CONSPIRACY JOURNAL
Free Issue of Phenomena Magazine
www.mapit.kk5.org
Wm Michael Mott - New Book Available on Kindle
The Kevin Cook Show on Inception Radio Network
Informant News-Tapping into the Multiverse for a good Story!
PSI TALK-The Internet's Only Paranormal Web Station!
UFO Digest
The
Paracast
Sunday, 3:00 AM–6:00 AM Eastern Time on GCN Radio
Conspiracy Journal - Issue 712 3/2/13
http://www.conspiracyjournal.com
Subscribe for free at our subscription page:
http://www.members.tripod.com/uforeview/subscribe.html