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More than two out of five American honeybee colonies died in the past year, and surprisingly the worst die-off was in the summer, according to a U.S. federal survey.

Since April 2014, beekeepers lost 42.1 per cent of their colonies, the second-highest rate in nine years, according to an annual survey conducted by a bee partnership that includes the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"What we're seeing with this bee problem is just a loud signal that there's some bad things happening with our agro-ecosystems," said study co-author Keith Delaplane at the University of Georgia. "We just happen to notice it with the honeybee because they are so easy to count."

But it's not quite as dire as it sounds. That's because after a colony dies, beekeepers then split their surviving colonies, start new ones, and the numbers go back up again, said Delaplane and study co-author Dennis vanEngelsdorp of the University of Maryland. But that pushes the bees to their limit, he said.

What shocked the entomologists is that is the first time they've noticed bees dying more in the summer than the winter, vanEngelsdorp said. The survey found beekeepers lost 27.4 per cent of their colonies this summer. That's up from 19.8 per cent the previous summer.

Seeing massive colony losses in summer is like seeing "a higher rate of flu deaths in the summer than winter," vanEngelsdorp said. "You just don't expect colonies to die at this rate in the summer."

Oklahoma, Illinois, Iowa, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Maine and Wisconsin all saw more than 60 per cent of their hives die since April 2014, according to the survey.

"Most of the major commercial beekeepers get a dark panicked look in their eyes when they discuss these losses and what it means to their businesses," said Pennsylvania State University entomology professor Diana Cox-Foster. She wasn't part of the study, but praised it.

Delaplane and vanEngelsdorp said a combination of mites, poor nutrition and pesticides are to blame for the bee deaths.

Dick Rogers, chief beekeeper for pesticide-maker Bayer, said the loss figure is "not unusual at all" and said the survey shows an end result of more colonies: 2.74 million hives in 2015, up from 2.64 million in 2014.

That doesn't mean bee health is improving or stable, vanEngelsdorp said.

Source: CBC
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/42-of-honeybee-hives-killed-off-in-u-s-
last-year-1.3072845

One Centralia College professor said he has discovered scientific evidence that proves the creature known as Bigfoot does exist.

He believes the information will be one of the biggest scientific finds of the century.

Mitchel Townsend, a Winlock, Washington resident and teacher in the college’s Continuing Education program, said he was walking through the woods near Ryan Lake in East Lewis County when he came across a stack of bones. The find itself was unusual since predators typically disperse remains rather quickly, he said. Upon further inspection, he noticed large human-like teeth imprints in the bones.

“I got to looking at the bones and they had been gnawed on by what looked to me to be giant human teeth,” he said.

After two of his students from Lower Columbia College found two more stacks of bones on the south side of Mount St. Helens, he said it became clear the “kill sites” were similar in a variety of ways. The bone stacking technique is specific to a humanoid and was cited as human behavior, he said.

Again, human-like teeth imprints were notched into the bones.

No predator impressions or tool marks were found on the remains, and after consulting with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, Townsend said, all natural predators in the area were ruled out.

The two additional sites located by his students shed more light on the creature responsible for the activity.

The trio found footprints with a length of 16 inches, he claims. Height, weight and proportion calculations, paired with the length of the stride between steps, conferred the creature had to be about 8 feet, 8 inches tall. Although the footprints looked human, they had a much wider and broader profile and did not have an arch.

“If you add it all up, you have an 8-foot, 8-inch tall creature that is killing animals at different areas of Mount St. Helens with its bare hands, chewing them up, literally skin and bones and all, and spitting them out between its legs,” Townsend said.

The teeth marks in the bone show what Townsend said were impressions of incisors and canines, but 90 percent of the teeth were beyond “the range of human possibility.” As for the mouth size, the bite ratio was calculated at 2 1/2 times wider than that of a person.

The bones also showed dental signatures and different human chewing strategies from ancient caveman, including bone peeling, he said.

“The bottom line is only humans do that because of the shape of our teeth and the shape of our jaw so we have to gnaw on the edge of (the bone),” Townsend said.

A double arch structure also showed the teeth were closely related to the Neanderthals, and the molars left triangular impressions as opposed to circular impressions an ape or chimpanzee would leave, he said.

The evidence is what the professor said was forensic dental evidence and behavioral evidence showing the massive creature is part human. His discovery aims to prove there is in fact a hominin species living in the area of Mount St. Helens that derived from the breeding of Native Americans and a giant ape.

“My theory is it’s not an ape, it’s a hybrid that has been interbreeding with Native Americans for the last 80,000 years,” Townsend said. “That’s why it is so smart and it has human teeth.”

Townsend’s information will be published in a research paper, and he challenges the scientific community to discredit his information. He said the four-year project helped solve the mystery because the focus was based on forensic evidence. The information used was also heavily based on comparison proof from the top scientists in the world.

"The paper will be released on June 15, 2015," Townsend says. "Contact Centralia College Dept of Continuing Education for information and a free copy. The evidence will stand on it's own and answer all of your questions. Yes, The results do not fit the traditional "paradiem". The evidence is simple, clear, repeated and verifiable, and is available for any scientist to examine free of charge.

"The bones will be made available for examination to any scientist who wanted to examine the remains. We’ve put thousands of hours in this. We just want to give this to the world and the scientific community free of charge to add to the scientific body of knowledge.”

Source: Yakima Herald
http://www.yakimaherald.com/news/livenews/3168318-8/proof-of-bigfoot-is-in-the-bones
-winlock

They were just two black and white photos taken with a simple Kodak camera by a Yamhill County farmer 65 years ago Monday.

But the controversy stirred up by those images still lingers in the minds of many:  Did the pictures that Paul Trent snapped the evening of May 11, 1950, really show a flying saucer?

Or were the photos fakes, simply a bid by Trent and his wife to jump on board the runaway wagon of UFO mania that gripped the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s?

The McMinnville photos weren't the first reports of UFOs, but they are considered by many who study the topic to be among the best photographic evidence of flying saucers.

And even skeptics see them as the best fake photos of flying saucers ever found.

The UFO craze in the United States is generally thought to have started three years earlier in June 1947 when a Boise salesman flying his small plane near Mount Rainier reported seeing nine shiny objects flying at high speed near his craft.

Over the next few days, his story exploded.  It also was the first of multiple UFO reports around the world.

Then, in July that year, an Air Force  colonel announced that 509th Bomb Group had captured a flying saucer.

His superiors immediately denied the report, but it fed the mania.  And for the next several years, those sightings and stories led to a cascade of sightings, U.S. Air Force investigations, science fiction books and movies and a constant stream of claims and rebuttals that still goes on today.

Then came the Trents and their photos.

Trent and his wife Evelyn lived on a farm between McMinnville and Sheridan.  On the evening of May 11, Evelyn Trent had been walking back toward their house after feeding some rabbits when she said she looked up and saw a flying metallic disc moving in her direction.

She told her husband, and he took two photos of the object, which they said then quickly flew away.

Trent apparently didn't think too much about the incident because he didn't get the black and white film developed until a few days later when he had used up the roll.  It wasn't until he told a friend about the sighting and showed him the photos that the incident was widely reported.

The photos soon appeared on the front page of the Telephone Register, which was the local paper. Before long, the national media was on to the story.

The Trents became celebrities for a time and were flown to New York to appear on TV.  They loaned the photo negatives to the International News Service, which circulated them worldwide.

Eventually, the photos appeared in LIFE magazine, which was the nation's largest-circulation magazine at the time.

The Trents never received any money for the photos and the negatives weren't returned to them for decades, supposedly having been misplaced by INS or LIFE.

Meanwhile, researcher after researcher has looked at the photos and declared them authentic -- or fake.

In 1997, the Trents were interviewed by Bryan Denson of The Oregonian for a 50th anniversary story he and Jim Long, another reporter for The Oregonian, were doing on the UFO craze.

Evelyn Trent told Denson of seeing a "magnificent disc hurtling toward the house," handing the camera to her husband, who then took the pictures.

By then, they were living in a McMinnville apartment and were interviewed together.  It was clear that while she was willing to still talk about the sighting, he'd had enough.  The following is from Denson's and Long's story:

"After you took the picture of it coming in, and then goin' back out, the wind that came down (had) no motor or no smoke or no nothin' -- JUST THE WIND."

"S'all there was," she confided to a visitor. "No motor or sound to it at all."

Paul Trent groaned and stiffened in his recliner. "I told you to forget all about that," he said.

"I know you did," she said. "You told me to forget about it."

Quietly, she added, "We've been bugged so much."

The Trents have both since died, but they never changed their story about the sighting.

Source: Oregon Live
http://www.oregonlive.com/history/2015/05/past_tense_oregon_ufo_photos_t.html

---

Rick C. Dodson was driven by soul-rattling personal experiences to investigate a phenomenon in which disincarnate beings are said to speak through electronic devices.

For example, some people have said they’ve picked up a ringing phone and heard a dead relative on the other line. Some people have said they’ve heard spirit messages in the white noise between radio stations, or have seen faces of dead friends looking out at them and speaking from a fuzzy television screen. These are known as electronic voice phenomena (EVP).

Dodson’s quest for knowledge was not a popular one when he began it in the 1980s; it was a down-right odd one to his family and friends in small-town Texas. Nevertheless, Dodson wrote countless letters and made countless phone calls in that pre-Internet era. He got in touch with pretty well everybody who knew anything about EVP. His quest extended even to famed physicist Stephen Hawking.

“Getting in touch with that fella was a job though,” said Dodson with a laugh. He hand-wrote a unique letter to every professor he could contact at Cambridge University, where Hawking works, explaining his reasons for requesting Hawking’s direct contact information. Most declined to release the information, but “One wrote me back and said, ‘Here it is, good luck, I know you’ve tried hard.’ My name was going around the teacher’s lounge there probably … ‘Somebody answer this guy and get something on Hawking’s desk!'”

His persistence earned him a response, but Hawking didn’t have any insights on EVP for Dodson.

Whenever Dodson has been tempted to question his own senses, years after his personal paranormal experiences, strange phenomena have reappeared in his life as affirmations. He shared with Epoch Times the stories of his EVP experiences, the insights he’s gained as an avid amateur researcher, the time he scared himself silly, and more.

Talking With the Dead?

In 1980, Dodson visited his father spontaneously from out of town. Shortly after he arrived, his father left the house briefly, and the phone rang. Dodson picked it up and a woman’s voice greeted him, calling him by the name he used as a child. He was surprised and asked who she was, but she would not answer his question.

“She began relating things from my past that very few people knew,” Dodson recalled. “She did most of the talking. Each time I spoke, it was as if she didn’t hear me, although clearly she did. Her words were sort of shaky at times, but entirely lucid. She talked for nearly 30 minutes, and I kept asking who she was. All she would say is that she could not tell me because I couldn’t understand.” He became frustrated, and when he pushed the mystery woman to reveal her identity, the woman began to cry and admonish him for poor manners the way his mother or grandmother might have scolded him when they were alive.

“My emotions were running wild. I was feeling worried, confused, upset, baffled, and frightened,” he said. Eventually, the woman said it was a mistake for her to have called and hung up, leaving him wondering. His father could not shed any light on the matter; he rarely received phone calls and he couldn’t think who it might be.

Several years later, the second occurrence revived his curiosity just as it was beginning to fade. He had moved into a new house and had a new phone number, one he hadn’t yet listed nor given to friends and family. The phone rang, and a woman on the other end asked for Dodson’s mother by name.

His mother had died 11 years earlier and had never been in the town he was currently in. Dodson suspected he was in for another strange experience and wanted to remain calm this time to find out as much as he could.

He asked the woman to give what information she knew about his mother; the woman was able to name his mother’s church, where she had lived, and other personal information. The woman identified herself as Susan Owens, a name that is unfamiliar to Dodson except that it was the name of a teacher he had as a child. The woman became irritated when he kept asking questions and she asked why he wouldn’t put his mother on the phone. He replied that his mother was dead.

“She was silent for a moment, then she simply said, ‘Oh.’ [Then she said,] ‘This is Ricky, isn’t it? … I know she’s dead, Ricky, and I need to talk to her.'” She apologized for calling, said it was a mistake, and said she couldn’t explain to him because he wouldn’t understand—much as the caller years earlier had done. Asking around, he could not place a Susan Owens in his mother’s life.

About six months later, Dodson experienced EVP of a different nature, this time involving a cassette player instead of a telephone. He got the urge to listen to a cassette tape his friend, Bill, had sent him years earlier and which he hadn’t listened to in a long time. The tape jammed up in the middle of a song. The whole tape player stopped working. Dodson couldn’t get any of the buttons to budge and he couldn’t get the tape out of the machine, so he left it.

Later that day, he received a phone call informing him that Bill had died that morning in a car accident. “I can’t tell you why I did what I did next,” Dodson said. “I walked into my workroom and straight to the tape player. … I pressed the play button. It went down as easily as a hot knife through soft butter.”

The tape had jammed in the middle of the song, “Wild Horses,” and when Dodson pressed play, it continued with the line, “Let’s do some living after we die.” Bill had died at approximately the same time the player jammed that morning.

Dodson first heard of the term “EVP” when a book on the phenomenon fell off a bookshelf in a used bookstore into his hands. His experience expanded beyond himself—other’s had this happen to them too! Glimpses of an ethereal world tantalized him and the desire to see it clearly compelled him.

Investigation

Fellow experiencers sent him letters pages-long sharing their EVP encounters. From a group he joined, he would receive in the mail snippets of EVP recordings captured by the famed Spiricom machine. This machine was built in collaboration by George Meek, who financed Spiricom, and Bill O’Neil, the psychic engineer. Meek had said that at least one psychically endowed person must be involved in the operation of this EVP device; O’Neil was his psychically endowed person. Dodson wasn’t satisfied with the snippets of recordings. He wanted to track down the device used by O’Neil himself and full recordings if possible.

Through much effort, he did. Listening to and watching video recordings of Meek and O’Neil with the machine convinced him further that the Spiricom communications were genuine. He could see that O’Neil was in his homey clothes, interacting with the machine on a daily basis—it wasn’t some orchestrated show. He heard the personal conversations between the Meek and O’Neil. He heard the “spirit” voices; he even heard these voices suggesting tweaks to the machine, which O’Neil and Meek would then make to the improvement of its functioning. Unfortunately, Dodson said, he has lost these tapes over the course of decades and moving house. But what he learned from them remains with him.

Dodson decided to try his own EVP experiments. He made some recordings of white noise to listen to for voices afterward. He recalled the one and only time he heard something unusual.

“I ran the volume up to the maximum and listened closely. I heard the voice clearly. This part will sound somewhat stupid, but I thought it said either, ‘Hello, Ricky,’ or of all things, ‘I love Jesus.’ I know they sound nothing alike, but I could hear both of the phrases on the tape. … Suddenly a cold chill came over me. Then a blast of adrenaline surged through my body. I realized that I was sitting in my truck at 3 o’clock in the morning with a ghost.”

He ran to his bedroom and got into bed with his wife. “At the time, that seemed like the safest place to be. Like a child hiding under the covers to keep the night monsters away, I suppose!”
We often hear of amateur ghost hunters or investigators of the paranormal, but we don’t often consider that if such a person finds what he’s looking for, it could scare the “bejeeblies” out of him.

We often hear of amateur ghost hunters or investigators of the paranormal, but we don’t often consider that if such a person finds what he’s looking for, it could scare the “bejeeblies” out of him, as Dodson described it.

Affirmation

Dodson hesitated to share his experiences with members of his family. But he was glad to have opened up to his grandmother, who, it turns out, also had an EVP experience.

She and her husband had moved about 75 miles away from their old home. She felt uneasy about it, because her daughter (Dodson’s mother) had died and she felt was leaving her daughter behind.

“One night, as she was contemplating this emotion, the phone rang. She picked it up and the voice said one word, ‘Momma.’ Grandmother told me that she knew it was my mom. She recognized her voice and a feeling ran through her that she described as a burst of knowledge. The feeling told her that my mom was telling her she had come with her to her new home.”

Dodson reflected: “I will admit that I have moments that I find myself doubting all of this, but it did happen and there is no denying it. It has happened to tens of thousands of folks around the world. … Whatever happened to me, whatever it means, whoever the voices were, and why the tape stopped all satisfy me that there is more to reality than I thought. I find myself constantly scanning the seams of reality looking for a tear in the fabric.”

Source: Epoch Times
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1356075-one-mans-fascinating-quest-to-understand-a-
spooky-phenomenon/

---

The following account of a possible visit to another dimension in time or space was forwarded to this author by Dr. Raul Rios Centeno, an investigator of the unexplained in Lima, Peru.

"Several months ago," begins his fascinating narration, "a patient came to see me about a serious case of hemiplegic. The patient claimed to be 30 years old but was unable to prove it, stating that she'd lost her formal identification card. It was a very strange case of hemiplegic, since upon examination with a CAT (Computerized Axial Tomography) scan, there were neither areas showing bleeding vessels nor any traumatic lesions."

When I began asking questions about the case, the patient told me the following: "I was at a campground in the vicinity of the ancient stone forest, Markawasi, when I went out exploring late at night with some friends. Oddly enough, we heard the strains of music and noticed a small torch-lit stone cabin. I was able to see people dancing inside, but upon getting closer I felt a sudden sensation of cold which I paid little attention to, and I stuck my head through an open door. It was then that I saw the occupants were clad in 17th century fashion. I tried to enter the room, but one of my girlfriends pulled me out."

"The patient was tugged out by one of her friends, and her body became paralyzed in half precisely as she was drawn out of the "stone cabin". My conclusion is that the probable cause behind the hemiplegic is unknown. No medical test was able to ascertain its cause. Nonetheless, an EEG was able to show that the left hemisphere of the brain did not show signs of normal functioning, as well as an abnormal amount of electric waves.

"Many Peruvians claim having had contact experiences in Markawasi, while many scholars indicate the existence of a dimensional doorway. No conclusive proof of this exists, of course. Some friends, myself, obviously, and others who have visited the stone forest can attest to the existence of a strange kind of energy. According to those persons having knowledge of this subject, dimensional doorways tend to open and close not necessarily in specific places. The patient is currently undergoing physical rehabilitation in Lima's Arzobispo Loayza National Hospital.

"The unanswered question is, of course, what would have happened if her body had entered completely into the stone cabin? Would she have gone into another dimension? I suppose the truth shall be known in the fullness of time."

Dr. Rios fascinating account was followed up with the following information concerning the CAT scan results on the anonymous patient. The test, he indicated, showed "Intact intracranial regions without any specific area having been compromised. There is neither swelling nor color changes which may suggest some manner of trauma. The clinician certifying this exam cannot find a justified cause for the hemiplegic in the left hemisphere, due to the fact its vascularization and irrigation fall within parameters considered to be normal. The EEG shows areas evidently paralyzed due to the lack of electric current transmission.

These tests lead me to believe -- and this is my personal opinion, since my colleagues have simply catalogued it as an "unknown affliction" -- that the dimensional shift, or "partial entry" of this person into this anomalous zone, have able to produce a change in the energy flow existing in her nervous system, or perhaps even a change in the type of energy. Given that the cranial area is where our nerve impulses are contained -- in other words, the right cerebral hemisphere controls the left side of the body and viceversa -- this could be the reason why the left hand autonomous nervous system did not at all affect the operation of crucial organs such as the heart or the stomach, which are governed by the right cerebral hemisphere."

A well-known author once described talk of other dimensions as "science fiction jiggery-pokery". In the UFO field, particularly among believers of the nuts-and-bolts aliens from space contingent, belief in other dimensions is considered a sign of mental bankruptcy. Yet these other dimensions, levels or worlds beyond our own represent beliefs far older than those expressed by 20th century authors and theoreticians. Religions throughout the course of human history have expressed a belief in parallel worlds adjacent to our own, usually accessible only to tribal shamans, sorcerers or people gifted with special insight. Certain parts of the world were famous as locations in which the barrier between the dimensions or worlds was particularly slender, and were known as places where wonderful and often frightening sights could be seen, or else as locations where human intruders could vanish without a trace.

Almost all traditions express a belief that there is life in these alternate universes: these are the abodes of fairies, elves, and even angels in some cases, and of monsters, ghosts and much worse in other traditions. Northern European traditions expressed the belief that elves and fairies took advantage of the right angles of human dwellings to build doorways to their own realities (and in turn, Frank Belknap Long took advantage of this idea to write "The Hounds of Tindalos", a Lovecraftian tale of extra dimensional monsters who can materialize only through rooms having walls at right angles -- circular chambers offering the only kind of protection against them).

Jacques Bergier believed that such gateways to other dimensions were an artificial and supernatural phenomenon created by powerful forces on "the other side" to carry out their unguessable transactions in our own level of existence.

The late Carlos Castañeda wrote that the sorcerer Don Juan Matus believed in the existence of an area best described as a "crevasse between realities" in which the material world imperceptibly gives way to the spirit world and other dimensions. However, only someone well versed in the hidden lore may recognize these gateways for what they are and make use of them. In his book Guía a la España Mágica (A Guide to Magical Spain) Spanish author Juan G. Atienza has pointed out that the Grail Epics are in fact a quest for this particular place where the mortal world meets the undying lands or heaven.

In both Western and Eastern cultures alike we are told to believe in a spirit world or parallel universe in which our deities, their minions and their adversaries, appear to dwell. This belief is so deeply rooted that to even question it is an exercise in futility. However, even when mathematicians and quantum physicists insist that such levels of existence are not only possible but probable, 20th century humanity refuses to believe that it could well be at the mercy of forces beyond its comprehension.

Source: Labyrinthina
http://www.labyrinthina.com/void.htm

The natural world is an ever changing, ever shifting beast. Mountains rise, valleys form, lakes are created or disappear, glaciers meander across the landscape; the face of our planet is malleable, ever moving. While most of these changes take place over millions of years, there are those bizarre instances when there are suddenly geographical features that mysteriously appear out of nowhere. The appearance of sinkholes and mysterious holes in Siberia are well documented, but what are perhaps more little known are the mysterious appearance of not one, but two lakes in Africa that appeared seemingly from nowhere, and have held the locals enthralled.

One of the mysterious lakes appeared in seemingly overnight in one of the places one would least expect a lake to be; in the middle of a searing, parched desert in Tunisia. In August of 2014, shepherds in the remote, arid landscape of the Gafsa region of central Tunisia were out toiling in the hot summer sun when they stumbled across a site that must surely have stunned them into silence; a lake glimmering in the heat where none had ever existed before. It was a man by the name of Mehdi Bilel who first spotted the bizarre sight in a desert canyon, of which he later said to journalists:

    "After several long hours on the road without a break, I honestly thought I was hallucinating. I don’t know much about science and thought it was magic, something supernatural."

The mystery lake, which is around a hectare in area and has an average depth of 10 to 18 meters, has indeed been seen as some sort of miracle by the local tribes, who are unaccustomed to seeing such large bodies of water in the harsh, drought-ridden region. Due to the lake’s impressive size, people in the area set up a makeshift beach, which locals call Lac de Gafsa, or “Gafsa Beach,” and many flocked there to swim and cool off in the region’s 40C heat. It is truly a remarkable sight to see people diving, swimming, and paddling about on a beach in the middle of one of the hottest and most arid regions in the world.

It is not known exactly when the lake was formed, as the region is so sparsely populated, but it is mostly agreed that it came into being rather rapidly. The reason is also not particularly well-understood. One theory is that a minor earthquake could have fractured and underground aquifer, allowing water to well up to the surface, but no aquifer that could be responsible has been found. Others maintain that it is simply rainwater that collected in the canyon, although the lake is thought to have formed in the middle of a drought and the area receives very little rainfall to begin with. So far, geologists have not been able to figure out what exactly is going on here, and the origin of the lake remains a mystery. Most locals believe that the lake was created by supernatural means, as a blessing to the people eking out a living here in the unforgiving terrain.

However, it could be more that this mysterious lake is a curse. Its waters started as a clear, crystalline blue and have since slowly turned to a muddy green due to a bloom of algae, which could be potentially poisonous. The presence of so much algae also means that the water is not being replenished and could become a cesspool of bacteria and disease. There is also some concern that the water of the lake could be contaminated with phosphates from mining. The region has been heavily mined for phosphate since it was discovered in the southern Tunisian region in 1886, and Tunisia is now the fifth largest exporter of phosphate in the world, with the town of Gafsa being the center of the industry. The potential presence of phosphates and possibly radioactive residue in the water of the lake could mean that it could be carcinogenic, which has prompted Gafsa’s Office of Public Safety to issue a warning about the dangers of swimming there. Nevertheless, such warnings have not dissuaded the throngs of people that still come here to stave off the extreme desert heat.

Tunisia is not the only home to mysteriously appearing lakes. In Nigeria, yet another lake also appeared at the Ameke Nanchi community, in the country’s Enugu State, and it has gone on to be seen as a place of magical healing by locals. Allegedly, on November 11, 2014, local herdsmen heard a booming explosion and when they went to investigate the source of the noise found that water was inexplicably gushing from the ground. The herdsmen hailed the sight as a miracle prophesized by local legends and collected some of the water, which they reportedly brought to a blind friend who was allegedly healed by it. Meanwhile the lake grew in size until it had reached around 170 meters in diameter. It is still not understood exactly what caused the water to well up or what the origin to the alleged explosion could have been.

Word of the miraculous healing power of the lake caused large numbers of desperate people to flock from all around the country to its muddy waters in the hopes of being cured of all manner of ailments. Many who have made the journey here have reported being cured of numerous physical ailments, including blindness, deafness, disease, and injuries, among others. One paralyzed man who bathed in the water claimed that its restorative powers allowed him to walk once again, and similar tales abound. These claims have had a huge influence on the superstitious populace of this poverty-stricken region, and hundreds of people a day are said to come here to bathe in the filthy water of the lake. The lake, which has come to be known by many names such as the “Pool of Bethsaida,” the “River Jordan,” “Ogbongwu,” and others, has even started to attract people from neighboring countries, like Ghana, Togo, and the Benin Republic. There are so many people of all ages arriving here from all over, that many locals have seen it as a business opportunity, with food vendors, people selling plastic containers for the water, and even motorcycle operators and commercial taxis, all setting up shop near the mystery lake to take advantage of the influx of visitors.

Those who come to the lake for its purported miraculous powers will bathe here, drink the water, and even cut off bark and stems from the surrounding vegetation with which to make healing teas. Some people even bring photographs of loved ones and pray for them here. Although this is the largest the lake has ever been, it is said that this is not the first time the lake has miraculously appeared. It allegedly first formed in 1992, after which it subsequently disappeared again. The Prime Minister of Ameke-Nachi, Chief Dominic Onuigbo, said that the lake was even older than that, and had appeared three times in the past 80 years, always in the driest, hottest times. The legends of the area say that if one is righteous and scratches at the ground here in prayer, the healing water will magically begin to flow from seemingly nowhere.

For all of the talk of magical healing properties, the Nigerian mystery lake has become a cause of concern for authorities and health officials. The water here is thought to be filthy, with people urinating and defecating on its shores and thousands of unwashed bodies bathing in the stagnant, fetid water, making it more or less a disease soup. It is thought that an epidemic could be caused by people contracting a disease such as cholera, among many others, and carrying it back to one of the many far-flung locales they come from. The pool is also a very attractive breeding ground for mosquitos, and could potentially be ground zero for a horrific malaria outbreak. The complete lack of any safety precautions at the lake and the superstitious belief that the magical water here could not possibly cause disease only compound the problem. Time will tell if this lake turns out to be one of healing or one of death.

On this planet of constant geographical change over eons of time, it is always a wonder when the landscape changes abruptly overnight. It is a reminder that we are far from a complete understanding the inner workings of this world we live on. We can only look at a sudden mysterious appearance such as that of a lake in the middle of a desert and scratch our heads. Or take a dip if you’re feeling lucky.

Source: Mysterious Universe
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/05/africas-mysterious-lakes-from-nowhere/

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Ten years of scientific and archaeological investigation of the Bosnian pyramids have brought many exciting moments as well as dramatic turnovers which are seeking the redefining of our knowledge about history.

One such breakthrough happened in April 2015. During the six-months of cleaning and passing through new sections of the prehistoric underground tunnels, which had been discovered some time ago, the employees of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation were faced with various difficulties. During the winter of 2014 and spring of 2015, they hardly won new meters of tunnel. In one moment, in February 2015, one branch of the tunnel which leads to the South, toward the Bosnian pyramid of Sun, ended with a huge rock.

We decided to go around the rock by using side passageways. Like many other tunnels which we already discovered, these were packed with fill-out material (gravel and sand). Two side passages, to the East and West, ended in conglomerate material after about ten meters. We tried one more direction but that one didn’t led us to the desired result as well.

Then we decided to go around a large rock by digging a tunnel around it. Employees carried out this activity carefully, constantly checking the stability of the material, and checking measurements of oxygen and carbon dioxide. After thirty meters, the rock was bypassed.
Discovery of New Tunnels

I was in Houston when they told me that they discovered a new tunnel behind the rock.  It was a new section, without any fill-in material, but was submerged underwater. I made the decision that workers should stop the work and wait for my return to Bosnia.

I formed a team of six members for the first scientific screening of the newly discovered sections.

This was not the first time that we had found open sections in which the human foot had not entered for a long period of time. It is a special feeling for every researcher and the moment when dreams come true.

Every time when the investigators have found prehistoric underground tunnels in Egypt, Mexico, China or Peru, those were often the world’s attractions and leading news which were shared across all media.

In our case, we have already explored many sections of tunnel made by intelligent hands in the distant past. So far, we have discovered 1,550 meters.

Exploration of the New Tunnels

The day of entry in the new section of the tunnel finally came. On April 30, 2015, with full protective equipment, rubber boots and waterproof suits, lamps, and compasses, we were ready for adventure.

The team consisted of the following members:

    Dr. Sam Osmanagich, Discoverer and Principal Investigator of Bosnian Pyramids
    Anela Preljevic, B.C.in Archaeology (UCL London) and Foundation’s field archaeologist
    Mejra Kozlo, B.C. in Geology and Foundation’s field geologist of Foundation
    Engineer Osman Buza, assistant of Cantonal Minister for Economy
    Jock Doubleday, videographer and PR Director of the Foundation
    Edo Gradan, employee of the Foundation

We went to the left side, heading towards the West. The height of the tunnel is around 110-120 cm. We started walking in a bent over position. I led the team. The tunnel was filled with water 20 cm deep. In some places it reached 30 cm. We found three dry sections, without water. We were looking left and right, there weren’t side passages. On the pebble floor we did not see tools or artifacts. There were no traces of burning on either the walls or the ceiling. We found some interesting elongated pieces of stone that our archaeologist Anela took for analysis.

Finally, the tunnel ended. A dry section with pebbles at the end had a round pool fifty centimeters in radius and fifty centimeters in depth. The water was clear and clean. We gave the first statement to the camera and turned back. Osman and Edo measured the length of this part of the tunnel. It was 41 meters long.

We went back to the entrance. We agreed to visit a section in the opposite direction. I said to Jock to go first and to record while the water is clear. Behind him were Anela and Meira, then Osman, Edo and me. We moved to the East. After a few meters we came to the first intersection. It has led exactly in the direction of the South. I liked that because it is the direction of the Pyramid of Sun. The tunnel, which was open, ran for about three meters before being filled with gravel material to the ceiling. We were stopped there and took a photo.

In front of us was a continuation of the tunnel in the direction of the Northeast. The water level was deeper in this section, approximately 1 meter. Osman returned back, and we continued. After seventeen meters we came to a new crossroads. Our route was blocked by stone walls and then filled with material. An open section continued to the left, towards the East. The water was becoming deeper, and found its way into my boots.

We continued even though we were getting wet. The ceiling height was now about two meters. We walked slowly through the muddy, clay soil. The water was freezing. We came to a new crossroads. The tunnels were intersecting at 90 degrees. The side passages were blocked by stone walls, and then by gravel material. I comment to Anela:

“Now you have the opportunity to enter into a new section of the tunnel. You can see that is not true that our Foundation makes drywall tunnels or digs it, these are prehistoric tunnels.”

[Note: The Foundation had previously been accused of making the tunnels themselves.]

She agreed with me and gave a statement to Jock. Mejra joined her. We continued and after only a few meters we saw one more crossroads and again the side passages were blocked. One part of the dry wall was underwater, Anela commented. She recognized a difference in the compactness of the loaded material and conglomerates in which the tunnels were made.

We continued with the investigation. With every step it became harder to walk. After a few meters, we came to the end of the flooded parts of the tunnel. It ended with sandy ground. Anela spotted a piece of wood. Organic material! She took some samples.

After a few minutes we turned back and headed for the exit. This time I measured the length of the tunnel. The branch which leads toward the East is 60 meters long. I gave information to the Mejra about the schedule of the side passages. The tunnel in the Northeast-Southwest direction is 17 meters long. The last section, which is oriented toward the West is nine meters long.

We summed up the total length of open, prehistoric section of tunnel. In total it has 127 meters. It is great information!

After two hours of investigation and adventures, we went outside. We changed our clothes and then took a photo of the organic material.

In our minds we made a plan about what to do next with the tunnels. We want to clean up the tunnel that leads to the South, in a direction of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun. We need to bridge the nine meters of water, and make a barrier toward the rest of open tunnel.

One phase of investigation of tunnels is finished, and another just begins.

Our hypothesis that this is a labyrinth, which we have named ‘Ravne’, with countless tunnels and that you can always choose a direction of tunnel that will be clear, has been confirmed.

Source: Ancient Origins
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/exclusive-discovery-new-prehistoric
-underground-tunnels-bosnian-pyramids-020343