- MYSTERY ON THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT -

Prosecutors Relaunch Probe Into Dyatlov Pass Incident

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- TOO MUCH TO HANDLE DEPARTMENT -

Results of Search for Nessie’s eDNA Delayed

- FIGURE ON A MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT -

Was Bigfoot Spotted in Provo, Utah?

Recent sightings of a rare, serpent-like sea creature — which in Japanese lore, is thought to be a harbinger of natural disasters — have sent Japan’s social media into a frenzy.

“This is no doubt evidence of a precursor to an earthquake,” wrote one Twitter user following two separate discoveries of “oarfish” off the north-coast prefecture of Toyama earlier this week.

“And if it is in the Nankai Trough, it might be a huge quake,” they said, according to the South China Morning Post.

Photos posted on Instagram showed one of the two deep-sea dwellers — which reportedly measured 10.5 and 13 feet, respectively. One was found on the shore of Toyama Bay and the other got caught in a fishing net near the port of Imizu.

According to Japanese legend, the fish will purposely rise to the surface and beach themselves whenever they believe trouble’s on the way. Residents have reported their presence before the arrivals of tsunamis and earthquakes in the past — including the 2011 Fukushima quake. However, experts have said not to worry.

“The link to reports of seismic activity goes back many, many years, but there is no scientific evidence of a connection so I don’t think people need to worry,” explained Hiroyuki Motomura, a professor of ichthyology at Kagoshima University who spoke to the Morning Post.

“I believe these fish tend to rise to the surface when their physical condition is poor, rising on water currents, which is why they are so often dead when they are found,” he said.

Still, the sightings weren’t sitting so well with social media users this week.

“What is going on under Toyama Bay?” tweeted one concerned Japanese resident.

“Is something happening deep in the sea?” another asked.

Many on Japan’s 5-Channel chat site were reportedly referring to the oarfish — which translates to “Messenger from the Sea God’s Palace” — as a “warning” sign.

“There is no scientific evidence at all for the theory that oarfish appear around big quakes. But we cannot 100 percent deny the possibility,” said Uozu Aquarium keeper Kazusa Saiba, speaking to CNN on Friday. “It could be that global warming might have an impact on the appearance of oarfish or a reason we’re just not aware of.”

Source: NY Post
https://nypost.com/2019/02/01/sightings-of-rare-fish-in-japan-spark-fears-of-natural-
disasters/?utm_campaign=iosapp&utm_source=mail_app

Loch Ness, Scotland has a reputation for high-strangeness. It dates back not just to relatively recent times, but centuries ago, even. There is, for example, the 565 AD affair of St. Columba, who allegedly saw a strange creature in the waters of the River Ness, which flows from the huge loch. More than a thousand years later, there was a deep belief in the area that the waters of Loch Ness were home to what became known as “water horses” or “kelpies.” They were dangerous and deadly shapeshifters. From 1899 to 1913, the “Great Beast” himself, Aleister Crowley, had a home at Loch Ness: Boleskine House. In 1933, the phenomenon of “the Loch Ness Monster” took off big time. In the 1970s, Nessie seeker Ted Holiday had an encounter at the loch with a Man in Black. In other words, Loch Ness is definitively weird.

More Loch Ness weirdness hit the news in 2011, specifically in August of that year. The UK’s Daily Express newspaper splashed a headline across its pages that read: “Alert as UFO is sighted over Loch Ness.” The story was, undoubtedly, an odd one. That something occurred does not appear to be in doubt. It is, however, the nature of the “something” that remains open to debate. It was on the night of August 20, 2011 that a number of people –many being completely independent of each other – encountered something unusual in the skies over Loch Ness. Witness descriptions of the movements of the object fell into two camps: those who said they saw it descending into the loch and those who maintained it was actually hovering above the expansive waters. As for the appearance of the UFO, it very much depended on who one asked. But, whatever it was, it quickly caught the attention of the emergency services, who were contacted by worried locals.

Martin Douglas, of the Loch Ness Life Boat crew, told the Daily Mail that someone in the area had seen what, superficially at least, resembled a microlight or a hang-glider, and which actually seemed to enter the loch in a controlled flight. Oddly, however, others who saw the unknown craft described it as being somewhat balloon-shaped. Then there were those who opined it looked eerily like a fully-open parachute.  There was, then, no real, solid consensus on what was seen – or on what wasn’t seen. Crew member Vivian Bailey added that although the mystery was not resolved, the emergency services were pleased that concerned people had quickly contacted them. There is, however, a very odd afterword to all this.

Exactly one month previously, on July 21, law enforcement offices in the vicinity of 125-miles-long Lake Champlain – which covers parts of New York and Vermont, and portions of Quebec, Canada – were inundated with calls from worried locals, all who had seen a balloon-like object fall into the huge lake, near Rouses Point, New York. Police and Border Patrol personnel were quickly dispatched and scoured the area, but with no luck. After around four hours, the search was called off. It remained a mystery. It should be noted, however, that, just like Loch Ness, Lake Champlain has its own resident monster. Champ – as the creature is famously known – is, like Nessie, a large, long-necked leviathan that has taken on near-legendary proportions.

Is it only coincidence that two lakes on opposite sides of the world – both with resident monsters – should have been the sites of unusual, and very similar, UFO-like activity within a month of each other? Or is this yet further evidence of profound paranormal weirdness wherever lake monsters lurk?

Source: Mysterious Universe
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/01/lake-monsters-ufos-connection-or-coincidence/

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Throughout history, hundreds — sometimes thousands — of people have been spontaneously compelled to dance until collapsing or dying from exhaustion. What explanations are there for this bizarre phenomenon?

In 1518, Strasbourg, 400 men and women danced until collapsing from exhaustion.

These "dancing plagues" occurred throughout the Middle Ages.

Similar spontaneous, mass compulsions have occurred throughout history, some very recently.

What are they, and why do they happen?

On a July day in 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea began to dance in the streets of Strasbourg, part of the Holy Roman Empire in modern-day France. There wasn't all that much to do for entertainment in medieval Strasbourg, so this diversion was met with enthusiasm by passers-by. Frau Troffea was spinning, twisting, jumping, all without music. It was entertaining to watch, until it wasn't.

Six days later, Frau Troffea was still going. She hadn't slept or eaten. Day or night, rain or shine, Frau Troffea couldn't stop dancing. This alone would have been cause for alarm, but suddenly people began to join her in her relentless dance. At first it was a crowd of 34. Then, by the end of the month, it was 400. People began to drop like flies, overwhelmed by the constant exhaustion. The lucky ones merely lost consciousness, snapping themselves out of their strange affliction. The less fortunate died of heart attacks.

In the hopes of wearing the dancers out, the Strasbourg city council decided to build a stage and hire musicians. Their theory was that the dancers had fevers, "hot blood" that could only be cured by dancing it out. This was obviously a terrible idea: the performance merely encouraged more citizens to join the crazed dancers. At its height, some sources claim the dancing was killing up to 15 people per day, and it seemed like it would go on forever. It was terrifying, until it wasn't; one day, the worst-afflicted dancers were taken away to a shrine, where they eventually stopped dancing. Without them, the remaining dancers slowly stopped as well.

That the "dancing plague" of 1518 occurred is certain. Numerous historical documents from various sources confirm that, indeed, hundreds of Strasbourgeoise began to uncontrollably dance—doctor's notes, church sermons, notes from the city council, and other texts all confirm similar details.

What isn't clear is what caused this to happen. Ergot poisoning is one culprit: The fungi grows on rye and, when baked into bread and consumed, acts very similarly to LSD, albeit deadlier. Although ergot poisoning does produce psychoactive effects, it's far more likely to kill its victims than to give them the stamina to dance for a month straight.

Rather than attribute the dancing plague to one easily understood culprit, other scholars assert that it belongs to a class of poorly understood psychological phenomena called mass psychogenic illnesses — more commonly known as mass hysteria.

Mass psychogenic illnesses are thought to come about as a group response to stress, and Strasbourg had certainly had plenty of things to be stressed about in 1518. John Waller explained in an article for The Lancet:

    The people of Strasbourg and its environs were […] experiencing acute distress in 1518, after a succession of appalling harvests, the highest grain prices for over a generation, the advent of syphilis, and the recurrence of such old killers as leprosy and the plague. Even by the gruelling standards of the Middle Ages, these were bitterly harsh years for the people of Alsace.

Other kinds of mass psychogenic illness

Although the dancing plague of 1518 was striking in its character, it wasn't the only dancing plague, nor the only instance of mass psychogenic illness. Just like an instance of a dancing plague itself, the series of dancing plagues seemed to start for no reason and end for no reason. Between the 13th and 17th century, medieval communities were repeatedly compelled to dance.

In 1374, thousands of villagers along the Rhine river fell into a dancing mania, screaming in agony as they went along. In 1237, a group of children from German city of Erfurt leapt and danced 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the neighboring town of Arnstadt before collapsing in exhaustion.

Mass psychogenic illnesses have taken many forms over the years. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, nuns from disparate nunneries would climb trees and meow like cats, bark like dogs, imitate lewd sexual behavior, and generally act as though they were possessed. Even in Salem, young girls fell into strange "fits" that spurred on the witch trials, which some have interpreted as mass psychogenic illness.

Although dancing plagues seemed to have ceased with the close of the Middle Ages, mass psychogenic illnesses have occurred throughout history. In 1962, around 1,000 Tanzanians began to laugh uncontrollably, sometimes for up to 16 days at a time. The epidemic only ended 18 months later. In 1983, close to 1,000 Palestinians began to faint and feel dizzy. They blamed some kind of Israeli chemical warfare, but the nature of the affliction and its spread throughout the populace forced investigators to conclude that had a chemical attack occurred, it could only have caused 20 percent of the reported cases.

The trouble with mass psychogenic illnesses is that they occur too rarely to observe in the field, and there's no way to predict when they will. What causes them and what makes them go away are complete unknowns. At the very least, they underscore how profoundly incomplete our understanding of human psychology is.

Source: Big Think
https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/dancing-plague-middle-ages?rebelltitem
=3#rebelltitem3