Forteana

Chaplin's Time Traveller?

2010-11-18T08:07:04Z

Anyone seen this? Got any ideas?

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/1175141/2d2d0068/bizar_chaplins_time_traveler.html

forteana @ 2010-07-28T15:03:00

2010-07-28T14:03:43Z

I didn't get my FT this month! :( Apparently it was sent out as usual and went astray somewhere.

Has anyone finished with their latest issue and would be willing to pass it on to a bereft fellow reader? I'll pay you back for postage if it's over £1.

Big Trout Lake ‘monster’ sparks Internet debate - The Globe and Mail

2010-05-21T22:04:32Z

Big Trout Lake ‘monster’ sparks Internet debate - The Globe and Mail

Exorcism: Irish family flee house after son flung from bed

2010-03-19T22:20:42Z

Story from Belfast Telegraph: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/exorcism-irish-family-flee-house-after-son-flung-from-bed-14730250.html

A exorcism will be performed on a council house in the Republic of Ireland tonight, amid claims that it is haunted. The occupants of the house at Hollyhill on Cork's northside have fled, saying it is occupied by an evil spirit that is determined to keep them out.

Laura Burke, her partner Ritchie and her son Kyle are terrified to remain after a spate of bizarre occurrences over recent weeks. The young couple moved into the house last August.

Today, special prayers will be said at the house to placate the spirit and a 'New Age' shaman (spirit worker) will perform an exorcism.

Laura said holy pictures were routinely being knocked from the wall, screams were heard in the dead of night and their son was flung from his bed. The family received their greatest shock when they spotted what they described as "glowing orbs" hovering in mid-air in certain rooms in the house.

"It's an evil spirit -- I don't believe it means us well," said Laura.

"We tried saying prayers in the house and the next thing all you hear is banging furniture upstairs or clothes being fired out of wardrobes."

Clairvoyant John O'Reilly was invited to inspect the house. He said he immediately felt "a presence", adding: "There is someone here -- someone who is very angry. I get (a feeling) of a younger man who would have hung himself."

However, locals remain dubious about the haunting claims and said nobody recalls previous incidents at the house or any tragedy fitting the descriptions being cited.

Source Irish Independent

Hi!

2009-11-06T16:38:35Z

I have loved the paranormal for years. Has anyone out there read Alien Animals by Janet and Colin Bord? It's my favorite book of all time. I've read it over thirty times. It's the greatest book ever!

Baby ogopogo?

2009-03-05T18:58:43Z

X-Posted so sorry if you see this twice. I'm just hoping someone has further information on this:

Hello all,

I've been very interested in Cryptozoology for a long time, and have always kept an open mind as to what's out there. I actually live about 20 minutes from Loch Ness, which is quite apt for me! Anyway, has anyone seen this article about a possible baby ogopogo? I'm not sure what to make of it, I can't find much out about it, and what little information there is, is quite vague.

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/baby-ogopogo/

Any Fortean Gamers?

2008-06-30T08:22:24Z

Hex Games is proud to announce the release of Weird Times at Charles Fort High. Written by Steve Johnson and Leighton Connor and illustrated by Joshua LH Burnett and Juan Navarro, Weird Times at Charles Fort High promises to deliver more big dances, more crowded hallways, and more fun!

Charles Fort High is a lot like your typical All-American high school in your typical All-American town. It's filled with jocks, geeks, and stoners. There are cheerleaders, an AV club, an FFA chapter, and plenty of outcasts, misfits, and aliens. The difference is that at most schools, the homecoming queen can’t levitate a truck with her mind and the aliens were usually born on this planet. Fort High is an exceptional school for exceptional individuals, where super-humans, robots, mad scientists, and more go to class, join clubs, play sports, and work ceaselessly to get laid.

Weird Times at Charles Fort High gives you everything you need to create your own high school adventures, including classes, cliques, and slang. Sign up to build robots in Misunderstood Alternate Dynamic (M.A.D.) Science or learn spell casting in the Esoteric Studies Program. Play Hyperball, the school’s most popular sport. Skip gym class and sneak off to the Zeppelin hanger to make out with your boyfriend.

Weird Times at Charles Fort High includes rules for character creation, including backgrounds for Atlanteans, Changelings, Ferals, Frog People, Martians, Venusians, and Werewolves. There are also montage rules for the big game, and weird powers rules that include spell-casting and mad science. There’s even a sample adventure, “Christmas at Ground Zero.” It has everything you need to experience high school again, only from a slightly weirder point of view.

Weird Times at Charles Fort High is available now from www.hexgames.com, www.onebookshelf.com, www.paizo.com, www.rpgnow.com, and www.yourgamesnow.com!

Screw your permanent record, have more fun!

</div>

Of possible interest...

2008-06-16T17:25:33Z

or, Shameless Self-Promotion

Goat Head Gumbo is a blog about Politics, Pop Culture, and Forteana. The first entry is my overview of Fort and Forteana.

Stirring the ghosts of the past

2008-05-20T02:52:12Z

According to this article, a group of scientists have managed to reproduce the DNA of a thylacine in the embryo of a mouse. This gives the scientific community hope that an entire animal will one day be able to be cloned, bringing the extinct animal back to life.

The thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger (and occasionally Tasmanian Wolf), was a large Australian carnivore that resembled a dog but was actually a marsupial complete with a pouch. It was an apex predator in Australia until humans introduced the dingo about 5000 years ago. It became extinct on the mainland, surviving only on the large southern island of Tasmania where dingos were unknown. Then about 200 years ago humans introduced the domestic dog to Tasmania, as well as livestock, agriculture, guns, poison and steel traps. This combination saw the thylacine become extinct by 1936.

There are, however, a lot of people who claim to have seen a thylacine, both in Tasmania and on the mainland. This is common when it comes to extinct species, be it the thylacine, the moa, the Chinese river dolphin, even the dodo. It’s a one of the seven stages of grief, Denial. There’s also Blame - the idea that evil hunters shot them all is a bit naïve; it was largely a combination of habitat loss and competition from alien species. Still our fault but less direct. And Bargaining, what we have in the above article. If we can bring it back, then everything will be OK! An amazing amount of effort is put into reviving extinct animals. The Quagga of Africa and the Aurochs of Europe are both subjects of intensive breeding programmes to bring their strains out of other subspecies, for example.

It is not simply regret at wiping out a species. After all, there are at least 27 species of mammal alone that have become extinct in Australia since European settlement 200 years ago. There is no grand scheme to bring the Lake Peder earthworm or the bulldog rat back to life. The animal has to be a bit more majestic, a bit more identifiable. I believe that it is our own fear of death which is the driving force. A creature as remarkable as the thylacine becoming extinct reminds a person that they too shall die one day. That everyone they know and care about will also die, that the entire human race will one day be gone. And that truth is a bit hard to cope with.

But enough about the frailty of the human condition. There are ramifications involved in successfully cloning an extinct species back to life. Most importantly, would it survive in the wild? It was illegal to hunt thylacines in 1930 when the last known wild animal was shot. Obviously the law didn’t save it the first time round. We take that sort of thing a bit more seriously these days, but there’s a lot of nuts with guns or bottles of strychnine out there. And as I said above, the main environmental pressures that caused the animal’s extinction are still there, if anything more pervasive than when the thylacine met its demise. On top of that, it is exceedingly difficult to release predators that have been raised by humans into the wild. So much of their behaviour is learned, and it is very difficult for people to teach an animal hunting skills. We don’t know if this would be the case with thylacines, and the problem isn’t insurmountable anyway, but it does remain a factor. So the most likely fate of a cloned thylacine would be as a zoo specimen, a freak with no place in nature and no value to humanity bar its oddity value. Surely this is worse than making it extinct in the first place. But then again, with the way the world is headed, perhaps this is the fate of most large animals.

Another thing that we must consider is the value of a living species. If it becomes possible to clone an extinct animal, then why do we need to protect endangered species? We can cut down the bamboo forests, eat tiger penises by the boxful, run our cars on sperm whale juice, driftnet the rivers and clear-fell the rainforests, safe in the knowledge that we can make it better again later.

Finally, there are a number of thylacine skins, bones and even a foetus locked away in museums, but not much that bears usable DNA. It might not be possible to kickstart a viable species, because the entire breeding group would have almost identical DNA. This would leave the animals extremely vulnerable to disease.

Bringing a dead animal back to life is a noble cause, and it’s very tempting to erase our mistakes. But looking at the big picture, maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie.

Tunguska Revisited

2007-12-19T09:09:35Z

Sandia supercomputers offer new explanation of Tunguska disaster. Smaller asteroids may pose greater danger than previously believed

"The asteroid that caused the extensive damage was much smaller than we had thought,” says Sandia principal investigator Mark Boslough of the impact that occurred June 30, 1908. “That such a small object can do this kind of destruction suggests that smaller asteroids are something to consider. Their smaller size indicates such collisions are not as improbable as we had believed."

'Yeti prints' found near Everest

2007-12-01T20:51:41Z

A US TV presenter says he and his team have found a series of footprints in the Everest region of Nepal resembling descriptions of the mysterious Yeti.

The presenter and his colleagues say they are "very excited", although they are not saying they definitely believe it is the mark of the Yeti.

Scores ill in Peru 'meteor crash'

2007-09-19T09:48:13Z

Hundreds of people in Peru have needed treatment after an object from space - said to be a meteorite - plummeted to Earth in a remote area, officials say.

They say the object left a deep crater after crashing down over the weekend near the town of Carancas in the Andes.

Dogs that know when their owners are coming home

2007-06-11T02:28:13Z

My fellow researchers and I at OpenSourceScience.net are looking for dogs who may have a telepathic link with their owners. Previous research by Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist and former Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, suggests that dogs may be able to anticipate when their owners are coming home in a way that is currently unexplained by science.

At OpenSourceScience.net, we have the preliminary tools to help owners test their dogs for this ability, and we invite everyone to participate in our research and share their stories. There are places at the site where folks can explore this exciting research and learn how they can become a part of it.

Does anyone have ideas on how I would go about collecting stories (and hopefully participants)? Do you or someone you know have a dog who exhibits this behavior?

(cross-posted to other dog and parapsychology-related communities)

Edo period Kappa sketches

2007-03-22T13:09:08Z

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/03/edo-period-kappa-sketches/

(From the link...)

"Kappa, arguably Japan’s most well-known creature of legend, are mischievous river imps notorious for luring people — particularly children — into the water to drown and eat them. They smell like fish, enjoy cucumbers and sumo, and are said to be very courteous despite their malicious tendencies.

Although kappa are typically about the size of a child and greenish in color, they can vary widely in appearance. They frequently have a turtle-like shell and scaly skin, but sometimes their skin is moist and slick, or coated in fur. Most walk upright on their hind legs, but they are occasionally seen on all fours. Regardless of body type, the top of the kappa’s head usually features a bowl-shaped depression containing water. The water inside this bowl is the source of the kappa’s power. "

Lots more info on the website.

Insert yellow snow joke here.

2007-02-02T14:11:00Z

Yellow-orange snow falls in Siberia

Thu Feb 1, 3:30 PM ET

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia's emergency situations ministry said it was dispatching experts to a Siberian province to find out why yellow and orange snow has been falling in several villages, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported.

"A chemical test unit will be sent to Omsk.... It's main task will be to investigate pollution in the region and establish the degree of danger represented by the anomalous snow fall," the agency quoted an unnamed official from the ministry as saying.

Snow ranging in colour from light yellow to orange and carrying a distinctive "musty" odour was observed Wednesday in five districts of Omsk province, which lies in western Siberia and borders Kazakhstan, ITAR-TASS said.

"Residents are advised not to use snow for their household or technical needs and to limit walking, either by people or their pets, in this area," the official said.

The affected area measures about 1,500 square kilometres (580 square miles) and is home to over 27,000 people, the ministry said.

Officials have already been gathering snow samples, it added.

The Omsk province is known as a centre of the oil industry and the provincial capital is among Siberia's largest cities."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070201/sc_afp/russiaenvironment

'Jungle Woman' in bid to escape to wild

2007-01-21T16:49:29Z

Followup to yesterday's story;

Cambodia's "jungle woman" made several failed attempts to escape from home back to the wild, her presumed brother said today.

"Last night, she tried some tricks to run back to the jungle," said Rochom Khamphi, who has claimed Rochom P'ngieng as his long-lost older sister.

Read on ...

Mystery surrounds 'jungle woman'

2007-01-20T11:13:18Z

Another "missing-person-emerges-after-decades" story

"A 'wild' woman who emerged from the jungles of Cambodia a week ago is still giving up none of her secrets, even to the family that has taken her in as their presumed long-lost daughter."

Read on ...

forteana @ 2006-12-29T14:12:00

2006-12-29T18:12:41Z

Look Busy Jesus is coming...

2006-11-17T23:28:05Z

Cat gives birth to Dogs allegedly...
http://lifestyle.aol.co.uk/pets-and-hobbies/woman-my-cat-gave-birth-to/article/20061117065909990002

Got Psi?

2006-10-24T01:56:48Z

Ever wished that you could have all your psi in one place, but was afraid to ask? Well, here it is:

http://publicparapsychology.blogspot.com

Subscribe to the LJ feed here!

forteana @ 2006-10-19T18:32:00

2006-10-19T17:31:17Z

Mollie Thompson - From Worlds Afar

Mollie Thompson was just an ordinary British Housewife... until one day in the 1960s she was comtacted by benevolent Venusians. Obviously the presence of the space brothers would left its effect; it would on anyone. But who among us would have made an album about it? Follow the link...

http://www.geocities.com/thesimonmurphy/mollie/index.htm

Share and enjoy!

Thanks to the sitemakers:

royaltootsand charlottecooper

Did they realise... ?

2006-09-01T15:58:29Z

http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases/articles/060829roswell.htm

Turns out it's a dog

2006-08-27T08:18:22Z

"The body of the dead animal found in Turner, Maine, according to DNA tests conducted on behalf of and paid for by the Lewiston newspaper, the Sun Journal, belonged to a member of the genus Canis, not a Tasmanian devil, not a rodent, not a Chupacabras, not a hyena, not a werewolf, not an Eastern Bigfoot, and/or not from any wild species speculations that were heard over the last ten days. Nevertheless, it is important to understand, the real Mystery Beast is still out there!"

Foetus in Fetu

2006-08-26T09:08:09Z

From ABC News Aug. 23, 2006:

Sanju Bhagat's stomach was once so swollen he looked nine months pregnant and could barely breathe. Living in the city of Nagpur, India, Bhagat said he'd felt self-conscious his whole life about his big belly. But one night in June 1999, his problem erupted into something much larger than cosmetic worry. An ambulance rushed the 36-year-old farmer to the hospital. Doctors thought he might have a giant tumor, so they decided to operate and remove the source of the bulge in his belly.

"Basically, the tumor was so big that it was pressing on his diaphragm and that's why he was very breathless," said Dr. Ajay Mehta of Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. "Because of the sheer size of the tumor, it makes it difficult [to operate]. We anticipated a lot of problems."

Mehta said that he can usually spot a tumor just after he begins an operation. But while operating on Bhagat, Mehta saw something he had never encountered. As he cut deeper into Bhagat's stomach, gallons of fluid spilled out — and then something extraordinary happened.

"To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside," he said. "It was a bit shocking for me."

Removing the Mutated Body

One doctor recalled that day in the operating room.

"He just put his hand inside and he said there are a lot of bones inside," she said. "First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair."

Inside Bhagat's stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite long.

"We were horrified. We were confused and amazed," Mehta said.

A Mutated Body Within a Body

At first glance, it may look as if Bhagat had given birth. Actually, Mehta had removed the mutated body of Bhagat's twin brother from his stomach. Bhagat, they discovered, had one of the world's most bizarre medical conditions — fetus in fetu. It is an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin. The trapped fetus can survive as a parasite even past birth by forming an umbilical cordlike structure that leaches its twin's blood supply until it grows so large that it starts to harm the host, at which point doctors usually intervene.

According to Mehta, there are fewer than 90 cases of fetus in fetu recorded in medical literature. Fetus in fetu happens very early in a twin pregnancy, when one fetus wraps around and envelops the other. The dominant fetus grows, while the fetus that would have been its twin lives on throughout the pregnancy, feeding off its host twin like a kind of parasite. Usually, both twins die before birth from the strain of sharing a placenta. Sometimes, however, as in Bhagat's case, the host twin survives and is delivered. What makes his case so unusual is that no one suspected Bhagat had a twin inside him for 36 years.

Bhagat said he was very much relieved after his operation. He was not interested in knowing what Mehta did to him or seeing what he had removed from his abdomen.

"He didn't want to see it because it was looking very ghastly," Mehta said.

Avoiding the Gory Details

There was no placenta inside Bhagat — the enveloped parasitic twin had connected directly to Bhagat's blood supply. Right after the surgery, Bhagat's pain and inability to breathe disappeared and he recovered immediately.

The case may have been a medical miracle to doctors, but to Bhagat his condition had been a source of shame and misery. All his life, people in the village where he lived had mercilessly teased him and told him he looked pregnant. Ironically, they were right in a way. Today Bhagat is in good health and leads a normal life, but he still gets teased occasionally.

"They still ridicule him. What they say is, you went for an operation and you had the baby," Mehta said.

Yet another 'free energy' claim

2006-08-19T15:27:53Z

It's not that long since Pons and Fleischmann came along with their claims of Cold Fusion, and we can all remember what happened there.

Now, however, a Dublin, Ireland company has come up with the claim that they have created an energy producing device which has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.

From their site:

The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.
The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts.
There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).

See http://www.steorn.net/

The Fortean aspect is interesting. On their main page, they have issued a challenge to the scientific community to investigate their claims which, apparently, has yet to be taken up in earnest. Even more interesting is the public poll which asks; "Do you think the scientific community should accept our challenge?". So far, 61% say yes. The Fortean in me agrees, of course; open-minded skepticism an' all that. But what about the 39% that doesn't? What can we infer from that?

And the fundamental question: are Steorn's claims bogus science or not? In my heart, I'm sure it's bogus science. Laws of conservation of energy and all that.

x-posted to forteana and sushigirl