Traditional Chinese Healer Exorcised my Girlfriend

My girlfriend Christine and I were walking down the street in Tainan, Taiwan, when a Taiwanese man shouted at us from the liquor store next door. "Lai, Lai (come here, come here)." He implored. We went inside. "A ghost is following your girlfriend."

He said. "How do you know?" "I saw it." He pointed at her foot, which was wrapped in thick white bandages. "An accident?" A week earlier Christine had been riding her scooter when she was cut off and forced into the scooter next to her. Her little toe, which had been hanging off the edge of the scooter, had gotten caught on the other scooter so that when they veered away from each other it was pulled partly away from her foot. Doctors had fixed it in place with metal pins. It was extremely swollen.

Through all his hand waving, the man didn't touch Christine until the end when he placed one hand behind her head and then, with the same form that you would expect to see a martial artist punch through a board, he thrust is open palm forcefully into her forehead and held it there, hand quivering, and shouted, "Ooha!" He repeated this action three times and announced that he was finished.

He told me that he had adjusted her chi, which had been blocked. He said the treatment would help her foot over the short term, but that she would have to return two more times before the end of Ghost Month (the month when the fabric separating our world from the ghosts' is most permeable) in order to rid herself of the troublesome spirit.

We thanked the man for his kind help and left. On the scooter we laughed about the performance. I waved my hands in the air.

A couple of hours later as we watched TV at home Christine suddenly grabbed my arm. "Oh my God Matt. Look!" She had just unwrapped her foot. When we went out that night it had been so swollen that it looked like a big pink potato with toes. But now it was back to its normal size. The swelling had gone down so fast that her skin was wrinkled like she had just gotten out of a long bath. Here is a picture that I snapped with my iPhone

Picture is (C) copyright to Matt Gibson.

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Indian college launches ghostly studies

By Raja Murthy

MUMBAI - A leading college in Mumbai hosted a seminar on ghosts on September 19, the first time in Indian academic history that graduate students were officially treated to studying phenomena of those hair-raising sounds and visions that usually visit past the midnight hour.

India's financial capital paying scholarly attention to ghosts is only newest chapter of ancient spooky folklore from ancient Greece's vrykolakas (vampires), to the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Japanese yurei ghosts.

Spectral species deserve to be in the news, having occupied the fringes of human consciousness for millennia. One study found that more people claim to have seen and photographed ghosts than those claiming to have seen God [1].

In Asia, ghosts are no strangers in daily life. China has its annual Ghost Festival celebrated each year. The Chinese say ghosts roam the world mid-July.

In India, many business establishments and residences hang a red or green chilli and a lemon outside the front door to ward off evil spirits; or hoist pumpkins or earthen pots painted with ferocious faces, to presumably scare off scary beings such as demons and debt collectors.

Indian governmental departments are not far behind giving ghosts their due. The Archaeology Society of India (ASI) considers at least one haunted site not mere mythology. An ASI sign outside the deserted ghost town of Bhangarh issues a dire warning “Staying in the area after sunset is strictly prohibited”.

The Medieval fort town of Bhangarh is in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, at the edge of the Sariska forest and about 80 kilometers from the state capital Jaipur. Local lore says an evil sorcerer cursed the town after he was killed by a very beautiful queen who was fed up with his persistent amorous advances. With its deserted, dark, brooding mansions, Bhangarh's appearance matches its reputation as India's most haunted place.
Mumbai got on the track of Bhangarh's ghosts. "It was a very interesting seminar," the head of the SIES philosophy department Dr Uma Shankar told Asia Times Online at the end of the day dedicated to ghosts. "The students came from various backgrounds, religions, and they were receptive, open, curious and asked perceptive questions. They understood that they cannot dismiss any reported phenomena, such as spirits and rebirth, as mere nonsense and hallucinations."

Shankar said the purpose of the seminar on ghosts was for her students to develop the courage to objectively confront non-conventional issues. The 51-year old SIES College has over 4,000 students.

That humans are not the only sentient beings on earth helps in personal development; that we don't know everything is a healthy perspective to reduce dogmatic viewpoints.

The interested SIES students contributed to realizing how ghosts and other so-called supernatural phenomena actually help to expand the frontiers of constantly evolving conventional science. Scientists cannot claim to know everything yet. 500 years ago, in the lifetime of Galileo Galilei, the idea that the earth revolves around the sun was considered blasphemy not science.

While the late etiquette guru Emily Post have not yet specified the proper style of greeting a ghost, the 70-year old writer PS Ganesan - who chaired the ghosts seminar in the SIES College of Science and Commerce - has interviewed prominent citizens who say they have met ghosts.

Ganesan addressed the SIES college's philosophy students about first-hand ghost experiences he had meticulously gathered for years, and included in his book Ghosts, Occults & Exorcists: True and Real Experiences.

Ganesan's list includes two retired Supreme Court judge and a fellow Supreme Court judge who both claim to have seen the ghost of the dead wife of one of the judges.

Those who claim to have had ghostly encounters include hard-nosed, no-nonsense professionals like former Indian cricket captain and leading media commentator Ravi Shastri. During a rain break in India's just concluded nightmare of a tour of England, Shastri said how he met a ghost in an English castle turned into a hotel.

He saw at this apparition at his door, but was only so irritated at being woken up at such an unearthly hour that he rudely told the ghost to "just get lost". The poor ghost had probably only appeared to collect his autograph.

India is a country rich with ghost lore, both at an urban and village level. More gods than ghosts though inhabit the mountains of northern India. The Himalayan state of Uttarkhand has its official tagline as "Abode of the Gods", not ghosts. Rishikesh-based veteran mountain trekkers Vipin Sharma and Arvind Bharadwaj have spent many a night alone in the higher Himalayas, such as near Nanda Devi, India's tallest Himalayan peak, but said they met no ghosts.

It's a not the same story elsewhere in the Himalayas. In November last year, during my brief stay in a remote hamlet near the enchantingly beautiful Himalayan lake of Deoria Tal, I was warned not to venture out for a tempting late night walk under the light of a bewitching moon. "A djinn [a sometimes evil spirit in Indian-Persian-Arabic folklore] walks here around midnight," a local said.
Personally, I have no problem with accepting that ghosts exist, even though I have not yet met one. Regular practice of metta bhavana results in feelings of compassion not fear, for djinns, demons and their cousins from the netherworld. [2]. Ghosts have a tough life - it's not much fun when the instant you make a social appearance the party breaks up in wild disorder, with folks rushing away screaming in fright or rooted petrified with hair standing on end.

Besides, the whole issue of ghosts haunting humans may be a case of the footwear being on the other leg. At this moment, some worried ghosts may be unburdening themselves to their psychiatrists: "I'm losing it, doc, I'm seeing humans in my house."
"Nonsense, my boy," the spectral shrink might snort sharply. "There are no such things as humans. You know very well there is not a shred of scientific evidence to prove that humans exist."

"But doc," the allegedly haunted ghost may groan, "they say humans appear after sunrise and are all up and about at 12.00 noon."

"All grandma's tales, my boy. All reports of human haunting are merely astral projections of suppressed childhood fears. Were you locked up in a dark room as punishment when you were a little ghost?"

Though I am convinced that ghosts exist, I support the so-called "rationalists" carrying out experiments to debunk all paranormal phenomena. They protect people from blind superstition, and being monetarily and sexually exploited by fraudsters claiming to be a two-legged telephone exchange between the mundane world and those with death certificates.

Though everything is subject to verification of the truth, ghosts included, there are truths that are not yet evident to minds and apparatus with limitations. A tribal in a remote rain forest who has never ever seen a car, leave alone a Boeing 747, may share the same sneering look when someone tells him of a flying machine that can carry hundreds of people and fly faster and higher than any bird.

Ghosts such as petas (hungry ghosts) are only another form of suffering beings caught in the cycle of misery of birth, decay, death - with the nature of birth and life-form determined by the law of cause and effect.

Those working to clean the mind's accumulated impurities have little trouble in seeing that humans, animals, varieties of ghosts and gods are all subject to the truth of impermanence and change every moment. The cycle of suffering continues, until the mind is totally purified of all impurities, and there is no more life force to build another mind or matter existence.

Many innate human faculties opened up in a very pure human mind - such as telepathy and reading others' thoughts like words on a page - are still very much outside known realms of academic science. So too is the world of ghosts, and gods who come at night to take guidance in meditation from human teachers.

Disbelief in such matters is immaterial; what matters more is accepting the reality of the law of cause and effect, and the truth that we do this moment is the seed of the fruit of the next moment, if not the next life.

The spirit of open thinking was followed in the Mumbai college seminar on spirits. Dr Uma Shankar, said "I had told the students to just hear the speaker and reach their own conclusions. They needed to take things with a pinch of salt, and they exhibited open-mindedness - which was important."

A dose of healthy skepticism is good for me, but also healthy for more agreeable living is me not hastily dismissing other people's experiences by blindly assuming to be deluded. "Yes, O Lord," the less visible perhaps standing behind you and reading this article might agree.

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Teenage Japanese Girl Died of Exorcism

Picture is (C) copyright to Mainichi Daily News

NAGASU, Kumamoto -- A girl who drowned after being tied to a chair and doused in water in an "exorcism" plot was subjected to the same treatment multiple times in the past, according to prefectural police.

 According to police, the fatal dousing occurred on the night of Aug. 27 in a church-like building of Kinoshita's religion -- Nakayamashingoshoshu, a type of Buddhism. Police say that water was poured from a height of around 2.5 meters onto Tomomi's face for five to 10 minutes in an activity called "takigyo" (waterfall rite). Both suspects deny the allegations of "violence leading to death," saying, "it was an activity done to exorcise, and was not violence." Atsushi and his wife reportedly sought the advice of Kinoshita in March of this year because Tomomi had an ailment that would not heal. Kinoshita said that the water rite could exorcise her and cure her, and subjected Tomomi to it around 100 times since then.
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Marilyn Monroe's Ghost, Other Dead Stars' Ghosts To Be Summoned At Serendipity 3's Celebrity Seance

David Moye

If you had the chance to speak with Marilyn Monroe from beyond the grave, there are probably a lot of questions you'd want to ask, right?

Her stuffing recipe is probably not one of them. but that's the top of the wish list for Robin Byrd, a New York media personality who is best known outside the Big Apple for her role in the infamous porn film "Debbie Does Dallas."

And -- unlike most of us -- she may actually get the chance to ask Monroe the all-important stuffing question.

Byrd is one of the Big Apple bigwigs invited to participate in a celebrity seance being held at Serendipity 3, a popular New York-based ice cream parlor that, over its 57 years in business, has been patronized by famous folk such as Monroe, Clark Gable and Andy Warhol, who used to trade paintings for desserts.

Byrd, as well as Oscar-nominated actress Sylvia Miles, and Warhol's nephew, James Warhola, are among the cognoscenti invited to possibly contact the celeb spooks with the help of Char Margolis, a well-known psychic medium who is best known for revealing Kelly Ripa's pregnancy on live TV before the talk show host could tell her bosses.

But, to be fair, Margolis can't guarantee that Monroe, Warhol or even Cary Grant will show up to the seance.

"It depends on who has something to say -- it might be a former waiter who wants to speak," Margolis admitted to HuffPost Weird News. "Honestly, in the spirit world, sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease."


Still, Byrd is hopeful that Margolis will be able to conjure up Marilyn so the actress can reveal the answer to a question that she's been wondering for years.

"No one knows that Marilyn was a good cook," Byrd told HuffPost Weird News. "Although there have been photos printed of her handwritten recipes, they have faded over time. I'd like to find out the exact ingredients in the stuffing."

But Byrd isn't putting her celebrity eggs entirely into Monroe's stuffing. She also hopes to get closure with Warhol, whom she never met.

"We lived in the same neighborhood and there was a bench I liked to sit on over on 67th Street," Byrd said. "One time I walked there and Andy was sitting there. I wanted to say 'Hi,' but he seemed standoffish and I'd like to ask him why."

Again, Margolis makes no promises about who may or may not make an appearance at the celebrity seance, and has asked not to be told in advance which celebrities are most desired by management. She also insists she won't read this article until after the seance is done.

And while it would be great if Monroe appeared to reveal the truth about her death (or, if you're Byrd, that darn stuffing recipe), Margolis says the only spirits who will make an appearance are those with an important message for someone in attendance.

That's actually an improvement over how celebs behave when they're living and only make an appearance when they have something to promote.

But Margolis says that those in attendance have to keep an open mind about the messages being given and not try and force the issue.

"There was one woman who came to me because she was convinced that her husband, an executive at Warner Brothers, was cheating on her," Margolis said. "The message I got didn't have anything to do with that. The message I got was that she should get checked for cancer. Six months later, they found a lump."

Margolis is aware that there are many people who are skeptical that she can talk to dead people.

Although she has for the past 10 years had two popular show in the Netherlands, "Char Het Medium" and "Char," a rival Dutch TV show, "Zembla," claimed in March 2008 that she was a fraud who relies on "cold reading," a technique where the psychic asks leading questions, such as "I see a woman with an 'R' in her name. Do you know a woman with an 'R' in her name?"

It's a technique that has been associated with fellow reputed psychics like James Van Praagh and Margolis's close friend John Edward.

Margolis says she goes into her readings with an open heart, and can't worry about those who doubt her.

"I turn the switch on and connect with peoples' energies," she said. "Here's my feeling about skeptics: If their job is to be skeptical, they don't want someone to actually be psychic, because they won't have anything to be skeptical about."

On the other hand, one of the attendees, Jimmy Floyd, believes there is value in having skeptics at the seance.

"I believe that certain places hold energy and if Char can tap into that energy, I think she needs a mix of skeptics and believers, sort of like a battery needs positive and negative charges," said Floyd, a TV producer and casting director most associated with shows like "Four Weddings," a TLC reality series, and "The A-List," a series on the gay-oriented Logo cable network that is a sort of "Real Housewives"-type show focused on gay and bisexual men.

Floyd, who admits to having a corporate astrologer on retainer along with his lawyer and accountant, is curious to see which dead celebs -- or if any -- might show up at the seance, but unlike Byrd, his question is general enough that it can be answered by anyone in the afterworld.

"I just want to know if they have great sex in the afterlife," he laughed.

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The Mystery of Ball Lightning

By Stephen Wagner, About.com Guide

Much of what we call "paranormal" are facets or properties of the natural world that we do not yet understand. And although ball lighting is not usually considered a paranormal phenomenon - and is almost certainly a natural phenomenon - its mysterious nature has puzzled scientists and paranormal researchers alike for centuries.

There currently is no fully satisfactory or generally accepted scientific theory for ball lightning, mainly because it is so rare, and when it does occur it doesn't stay around long enough to be studied; it generally has a lifetime of less than five seconds. According to one researcher, "ball lightning is the name given to the mobile luminous spheres which have been observed during thunderstorms. Visual sightings are often accompanied by sound, odor, and permanent material damage." Many scientists still deny its existence, but there are so many eyewitness accounts of the phenomenon that it's difficult to deny its reality.

It's these personal encounters with ball lighting that have given it its mysterious reputation. Many eyewitnesses describe its movement or "behavior" as seemingly intelligent, as if it knows where it wants to go. When it enters houses, it often enters through doorways or windows and travels down hallways. But people tend to personify such peculiar events and it's ludicrous to think that the balls of light have any intelligence, but the anecdotes are no less intriguing.

Here are some fascinating first-hand accounts.

Unusual Experiences with Lighting includes many strange reports, including these two accounts:

In January 1984, ball lightning measuring about 4 inches in diameter entered a Russian passenger aircraft and, according to the Russian news release, "flew above the heads of the stunned passengers. In the tail section of the airliner, it divided into two glowing crescents which then joined together again and left the plane almost noiselessly." The ball lightning left two holes in the plane.
A "ball of sparks" about the size of a basketball entered a commercial aircraft, apparently through an engine airtake, moved into the fuselage, and proceeded to chase a flight attendant up and down the aisle. She was screaming as she tried to outrun the ball lightning. It dissipated quickly before striking her.
Glenn R. Frazier relates at incident at his grandfather's cottage in upstate Pennsylvania:

"I was sitting on a screened porch. I remember a brilliant flash of lightning and a large clap of thunder. Seconds later, my mother screamed. My grandfather and I turned to look in through the doorway and saw what looked like a ball of electricity coming down the hallway from the back door. It was about the size of a basketball and had an off-yellow kind of haze. It sounded like a large stream of water coming through a faucet. When it got to the kitchen area, it flickered and flashed a little brighter, and then was gone."
Bill Melfi was on vacation on a small farm in Tennessee when he had this experience:

"I saw two balls of light, one about three feet and the other about four feet in diameter. They were glowing with a blue-green light that was about as bright as a 50-watt bulb and translucent as a balloon. They moved side by side, the larger one leading. The movement was quick and somewhat zigzag. I chased after it with a stick in hand, but they were faster than me. They didn't break up, just disappeared in the woods."

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Mother, Son Found Dead in Singapore's Bedok Reservoir

Master Oregon comments: With reference to earlier articles: The Fearsome Chinese Ghost in Red and Methods to become the Chinese Ghost in Red. Is revenge what the woman is trying to achieve? We at Asiaparanormal do not condone such behaviour. Life is too precious to end it.

A woman and her three-year-old son were found dead in Bedok Reservoir early yesterday, two days after they were reported missing by their family.

Officers from national water agency PUB found the bodies at about 6am.

It is understood that Tan Sze Sze, 32, was cradling her toddler, Jerald Chin.

Tan's mother, who saw the bodies, said they were joined by red string at their wrists, wore red T-shirts and both mother and son's fingernails were painted red. According to Chinese belief, red in death symbolizes revenge.

Just before she went missing on Tuesday, Tan had told her mother, Madam Teo Guek Lai, that she planned to kill herself and take her child with her.

Madam Teo, 53, said Tan had a history of post-natal depression and she became increasingly upset after being embroiled in a bitter custody battle with her estranged husband, chef Willy Chin.

Madam Teo said her daughter had been fined for not allowing her husband access to Jerald and worried that she would be jailed if she could not pay up.

"She was afraid that Jerald would be snatched from her," she said in Mandarin. "Her son was her life."

Madam Teo added that her daughter was introverted by nature and easily depressed, and that she was extremely protective of her son, whom she called "Baby".

Tan lived with her mother, a part-time fortune-teller, and four other family members in a one-room rental flat in French Road in the Lavender area. She was unemployed and lived on her mother's Central Provident Fund savings as well as a $300 monthly allowance from her husband.

Madam Teo said her daughter had spoken of suicide several times in recent months.

On Tuesday, Madam Teo was at work in Clementi Central when her daughter arrived with Jerald and cried inconsolably, saying she was a disappointment and unable to protect her son.

"I told her not to be crazy," said Madam Teo.

After they left, Tan switched off her mobile phone. When the family could not reach her, they called the police, who released a missing persons statement to the media at about 7pm on Wednesday.

Family members found Tan's house keys in the mailbox, as well as a box of documents that included a suicide note and instructions on what to do after her death.

In the box was the namecard of undertaker Roland Tay, who had handled her father's funeral three years ago, and a photo album.

The dead woman's family alleged that her relationship with her husband soured about two years ago and she had initiated divorce proceedings.

Neighbors said that Chin would come to the flat every week for more than a year, pleading to see his son. They added that, often, the door would stay shut, or Tan would chase him away with a slipper and swear at him.

Supermarket assistant Goh Hee Kiow, 59, said she had seen Chin waiting outside the flat with a bag of diapers for the child. "Sometimes he would squat by the door and call the boy's name," she said in Mandarin.

Madam Goh added that the last time she saw Chin was in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when he came with the police.

No one answered the door when The Straits Times visited Chin's home in Jalan Bukit Merah last night, although the lights inside were on.

Consultant psychiatrist Ang Yong Guan said that it is not uncommon for post-natal depression to last three years after a birth, especially if the mother was not receiving support from her husband.

"If the personality is lonely, pessimistic, a worrier, the post-natal depression can last very long. Marital problems also prolong it," said Ang.

Police have classified the deaths as unnatural, and are investigating.

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Rejected by Hell, again

The Daily Chilli/Asia News Network
Saturday, Sep 03, 2011

I failed to visit Hell again which left me feeling disappointed.

But in the second attempt, the feeling of 'travelling downwards' was stronger and a reporter was almost possessed.

Led by Master Kek Eng Seng of the Tze Bei Guan Yin Dhamma Centre in Penang, a group of 54 people including about a dozen reporters participated in a tour to the afterworld last Saturday.

However, just slightly more than 10 people managed to reach Hell.

Dissatisfied, I requested for another try and generous Master Kek agreed.

On Monday, three other reporters from Nanyang Siang Pau, China Press and Guang Ming Daily and I went for our second attempt at the master's centre.

Like the previous time, our eyes were covered with paper talisman wrapped in cloth.

Like before, I felt a stream of warm air gushing out from the top - Master Kek had explained earlier that it was my soul trying to get out of my body.

A while later, the darkness was gone and a light shone on me. It was so bright that I opened my eyes automatically. (This was strange because a person would normally close his eyes when the light is too bright.)

As I listened to the chants, the light went off and was replaced by total darkness again. Then, I saw circles and was flowing with them - one after another.

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Scientists’ ‘Mind Reading Device’ Matches YouTube Videos to MRI Scans

By Anne Witter | September 23

A scientific way to read minds is a work in progress, but technology has moved forward yet again, matching YouTube videos to blood flow analysis by MRI scanners, The Telegraph (UK) reports.

Researchers were able to recreate a moving picture similar to the real footage being watched by their study's participants.

This study says there is possibility that technology can soon translate people's subconscious thoughts in dreams and memories onto screen, even as it cannot read actual thoughts that soon. In fact, if the technology is further developed, it could even be used to explore the minds of stroke patients, experts said.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, used MRI scanners to monitor the blood flow in people's brains as they watched films, such as Madagascar 2, Pink Panther 2 and Star Trek. Then scientists created a computer program which could accurately guess what the monitored person was looking at.

In another round of testing, participants watched Hollywood film trailers, and computer was able to produce an approximate version of what they were watching, by scanning a library of random YouTube videos, finding the most similar clips and blending them together with brain scan interpretations.

Prof. Jack Gallant, one of the study's authors, said: "We're trying to reconstruct the movie that was seen by searching through a large library of completely different, random movies... This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery. We are opening a window into the movies in our minds."

The current resulting video is blurry due to just 18 million seconds of footage in the program's database, but the researchers said expanding the size of the program's video library could solve the issue.

The study, published in the Current Biology journal, is said to be the first experiment to successfully interpret brain signals as they react to pictures in motion.

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Meet Big Foot's Chinese cousin

by Erik Nilsson

BEIJING, Oct. 31 (Xinhuanet) -- China has its fair share of mythical creatures which roam the countryside leaving tantalizing glimpses and a footprint or two. Erik Nilsson hunts down a couple of sightings.

Meet China's monster mesh - the cast of creatures, known as cryptids, whose existences haven't been verified but which some believe roam the country's wild places. China is host to plenty of myths about the not-so-distant relatives of the world's most celebrated cryptozoological creatures.

Most foreigners know of Big Foot's cousin, the Yeti, also known as the abominable snowman, which reportedly roam Himalayan Tibet. But fewer have heard of the yeren, or wild man, said to prowl the primeval forests of Hubei province's Shennongjia.

Zhang Jiahong, a sheep rancher in Muyu town who claims to have seen two of the ape-men in 2005, told China Daily earlier this month they had "hairy faces, eyes like black holes, prominent noses and disheveled hair, with faces that resembled both a man's and a monkey's"

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CERN scientists 'break the speed of light'

Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the international group of researchers, said that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.
"We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently."

If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.

That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.

The totally unexpected finding emerged from research by a physicists working on an experiment dubbed OPERA run jointly by the CERN particle research centre near Geneva and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy.

A total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos - tiny particles that pervade the cosmos - were fired over a period of three years from CERN towards Gran Sasso 730 (500 miles) km away, where they were picked up by giant detectors.

Light would have covered the distance in around 2.4 thousandths of a second, but the neutrinos took 60 nanoseconds - or 60 billionths of a second - less than light beams would have taken.

"It is a tiny difference," said Ereditato, who also works at Berne University in Switzerland, "but conceptually it is incredibly important. The finding is so startling that, for the moment, everybody should be very prudent."

Ereditato declined to speculate on what it might mean if other physicists, who will be officially informed of the discovery at a meeting in CERN on Friday, found that OPERA's measurements were correct.

"I just don't want to think of the implications," he said. "We are scientists and work with what we know."

Much science-fiction literature is based on the idea that, if the light-speed barrier can be overcome, time travel might theoretically become possible.

The existence of the neutrino, an elementary sub-atomic particle with a tiny amount of mass created in radioactive decay or in nuclear reactions such as those in the Sun, was first confirmed in 1934, but it still mystifies researchers.

It can pass through most matter undetected, even over long distances, and without being affected. Millions pass through the human body every day, scientists say.
To reach Gran Sasso, the neutrinos pushed out from a special installation at CERN - also home to the Large Hadron Collider probing the origins of the universe - have to pass through water, air and rock.

The underground Italian laboratory, some 120 km (75 miles) to the south of Rome, is the largest of its type in the world for particle physics and cosmic research.
Around 750 scientists from 22 different countries work there, attracted by the possibility of staging experiments in its three massive halls, protected from cosmic rays by some 1,400 metres (4,200 feet) of rock overhead.

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Valuev leads search for 'Russian Yeti'

Former world heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev is to lead a hunt for a mysterious creature known as the 'Russian Yeti'.

The 38-year-old fighter - who lost his WBA title to David Haye in 2009 - is currently on a career break as he recovers from bone and joint problems.

But his health issues won't stop him from leading a two-day mission to Siberia to hunt down the animal also known as the Kuzbass Bigfoot, a strange, humanoid creature thought to live in or around the Shoriya Mountains.

The beast has been spotted dozens of times in the Kuzbass region of southern Siberia and has become something of a tourist attraction in the local area, with hotels and restaurants naming themselves after it. The mystery creature even has its own Twitter account, presumably set up by some bright spark at the local tourist board.

Valuev - who is, ironically, famous for his inhumanly large frame - has become so intrigued by the stories of the eight-foot, hair-covered monster that he is determined to find it.

"I would like to see firsthand what is going on," said the boxer, who has had all manner of injections and vaccinations ahead of his expedition to the remote region. "I'll draw my own conclusions once I've been there."

The first known traces of the Russian Yeti date back to 2005, when hunters found and photographed giant footprints in the snow.

Since then, the local council has been inundated with messages from hunters and hill walkers claiming to have spotted the beast.

And no doubt those imagined sightings will only increase when the 7ft, 23-stone Valuev is in the area.

Yet some remain sceptical of the boxer's chances of successly witnessing the creature. As one local put it, "Valuev might be about the same size as our Yeti, but I don't think it is going to come and see him because of that."

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UFOs no flight of fancy in China

Peh Shing Huei The Straits Times

The truth, it seems, is not really out there. It is in China. Really.

For a few busy weeks recently, the country has been astir with sightings of the otherworldy, with numerous reports of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, spotted in several cities.

Such extra-terrestrial claims may be dismissed as loony in many places, but China takes them seriously and scientifically, holding back commercial flights and even shutting down airports.

Aliens and the supernatural are no laughing matter in China. Dozens of magazines study flying saucers, online chat groups by the thousands share sightings and almost every province has a UFO research centre.

Even the usually conservative state- run mass media has few reservations reporting on celestial events such as UFO sightings.

Take last Tuesday's brouhaha in Beijing, for example. Several flight delays at the capital's airport led to a stir online when passengers tweeted that it was because of a strange flying object.

The aviation authorities quickly issued a statement refuting the rumours, clarifying that the delays were caused by bad weather.

That did not stop the mainstream media from reporting it thereafter, with some reports casting doubts on the airport's official version.

Similarly, when a giant ball of light estimated at about 90km wide was reported over both Beijing and Shanghai the same night on Aug 20, newspapers across the country gave it ample coverage, with several preferring the UFO explanation to the more prosaic reasoning that it was reflected light from an aircraft.

The authorities have closed airports because of UFO sightings. The latest shutdown lasted more than an hour in the south-western city of Chongqing last month.

Such closures occurred in Hangzhou and Hohhot last year too. Photos from Hangzhou showed a hovering object with a comet-like tail, bathed in golden light.

"I felt a beam of light over my head. Looking up, I saw a streak of bright, white light flying across the sky, so I picked up the camera and took the photo," resident Ma Shijun was quoted as saying by the state Xinhua news agency.

Across China, some 25 non-governmental UFO research institutes study the sightings seriously.

"We persist in rigorous scientific research, focusing on the investigation of various cases," said Mr Zhou Xiaoqiang, secretary of the Beijing UFO Research Association. "We do not rely on online chatter, and we have a higher credibility. We have also built a significant archive to compare data."

China's fascination with UFOs is not surprising. For thousands of years, the Chinese have looked to the skies for indications of changes on Earth.

And with the atheistic Communist Party in control since 1949, officials have found the quasi-scientific explanation of aliens and UFOs more convenient and in sync with its ruling philosophy than religious interpretations.

Of course, the country's vast and dark countryside offers better opportunities for frequent sightings than more urbanised countries, said veteran planetary astronomer Wang Sichao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Purple Mountain Observatory.

"Chinese astrology lovers have plenty of spaces in the countryside and suburbs to do their observations.

"These places are free of the visual pollution caused by the cities' bright lights, offering better quality photos and data," he said.

But the growing reports of sightings could also be put down to a population explosion in yet another galaxy - cyberspace.

The rising popularity of video-sharing sites and, in particular, microblogs, have allowed quick sharing of UFO sightings and photos.

It has its downside too, with fraudsters easily fabricating and uploading pictures online and causing false alarms.

As Mr Zhou said: "Most of the sightings are actually of kites, lanterns, insects and electrical devices.

"We are sure there is alien life form. We just have not found evidence of it on Earth."

[Click here to read full article]

Riddle in the sands: Thousands of strange 'Nazca Lines' discovered in the Middle East

By TED THORNHILL

Peru’s Nazca Lines, the mysterious geoglyphs etched into the desert centuries ago by indigenous groups, are world famous – and now thousands of similar patterns have been found in the Middle East.

Satellite and aerial photography has revealed mysterious stone ‘wheels’ that are more numerous and older than the Nazca Lines in countries such as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

The structures are thought to date back 2,000 years, but why they were built is baffling archaeologists and historians.

‘In Jordan alone we've got stone-built structures that are far more numerous than the Nazca Lines, far more extensive in the area that they cover, and far older,’ David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia, told Live Science.

He added: ‘People have probably walked over them, walked past them, for centuries, millennia, without having any clear idea what the shape was.’

The local Bedouin, a nomadic people found in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, Egypt and Israel, call them the ‘works of the old men’.

They are often found on lava fields – but don’t fall into any pattern, according to Kennedy, whose research into them will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal Of Archaeological Science.

He explains that they come in a huge variety of forms, some being ‘kites’, structures that funnelled animals, some being seemingly random meandering lines of stone and others being rectangular.

None are believed to be aligned with the stars, which has added to the mystery surrounding their purpose.

They were actually first discovered in 1927 by an RAF pilot called Lt. Percy Maitland, but it wasn’t until Professor Kennedy and his team began studying aerial and Google Earth photographs that their true extent was revealed.

A final count has yet to be completed, but Kennedy is certain they run into the thousands.

[Click here to read full article]

[Gallery of images]

NASA Whistleblower: Alien Moon Cities Exist

Former National Aeronautics and Space Administration Data and Photo Control Department manager, Ken Johnston, who worked for the space agency's Lunar Receiving Laboratory during the Apollo missions has been fired for telling the truth.

Johnston asserts NASA knows astronauts discovered ancient alien cities and the remains of amazingly advanced machinery on the Moon. Some of the technology can manipulate gravity.

He says the agency ordered a cover-up and forced him to participate in it.

Over the past 40 years other scientists, engineers and technicians have accused NASA of cover-ups and obscuring data.

The growing number of accusers' allegations range from hiding information about anomalous space objects and lying about the discovery of artifacts on the surface of the Moon and Mars, to denying the evidence of life reported back by the Viking lander during the mid-1970s.

According to Johnston, Apollo astronauts brought back photographic evidence of the artifacts they found during their lunar extravehicular activities (EVAs). Johnston claims NASA ordered him to destroy the EVA images while he was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), but he refused.

When he went public, the space agency terminated him.

In a news release, Kay Ferrari, the JPL Director of the SSA Program, explained why she asked Johnston to resign: he had publicly criticized his employer.

When Johnston refused to tender his resignation, he was summarily dismissed without cause.

After his abrupt departure, he indicated he'd had enough and was tired that the U.S. government had been sitting on the proof for more than four decades that ancient alien cities are the Moon.

“I have nothing to lose," he said. "I quarreled with NASA and I got fired."

Evidence has emerged of large structures, perhaps even a base on the far side if the Moon, that seems to support Johnston's allegations. See Before It's News article "Claim: Secret American Base Discovered on Moon."

Space scientist livid over NASA cover-up

Ken Johnston isn't the only one to have a bone to pick with NASA.

The scientist who oversaw the important life-detection experiment aboard the 1976 Viking space probe mission on Mars continues to blast the U.S. space agency.

Gilbert Levin insists his biology experiment proved life is in the Martian soil.

"We obtained positive data corresponding with all the pre-mission criteria, which proved the existence of microbial life in the soil of Mars," Levin told National Geographic. ["I Found Life on Mars in 1976, Scientist Says"]

The prominent scientist is so angry at NASA he's even created his own website designed to shout to the world that life really is on the Red Planet.

The color of deception

Many space scientists have challenged NASA about yet another fraud the agency allegedly perpetrated for decades: the color of the Martian sky.

For years the space agency released photos of Mars with a reddish tinged sky and rusty red landscape. They got away with it too until independent researchers and Mars missions undertaken by the European Space Agency (ESA) revealed that the Martian sky actually looked very similar to Earth's sky--and the Martian landscape pretty much resembled the pale salmon-colored terrain of the American Southwest.

Holger Isenberg has written about it on the German site "The Color of Mars." Here's a translated link with the photographic evidence.

[Click here to read full article]

Smoking orangutan goes cold turkey in Malaysia

Picture is (C) copyright to AFP

KUALA LUMPUR - An orangutan that amused visitors to her Malaysian zoo by smoking cigarette butts thrown into her cage is being forced to go cold turkey, a keeper said Monday.

Authorities seized the orangutan, named Shirley, along with a tiger and other animals from a state-run zoo in the southern state of Johor last week after they were found to have been kept in poor conditions.

Shirley, believed to be more than 20 years old, has been transferred to Malacca Zoo where she will be forced to kick the habit, said the institution’s director Ahmad Azhar Mohammed.

“When we brought Shirley here, she is just like a normal orangutan... But orangutans are very smart animals. They will follow what people do,” he told AFP.

He said “irresponsible visitors” would throw lit cigarette butts into Shirley’s cage at the Johor Zoo, which she would pick up and smoke.

Ahmad Azhar said Shirley was expected to stay at the Malacca Zoo for about a month before being transferred to a rehabilitation centre in Sarawak state on Borneo island, where orangutans still live in the wild.

Malaysia has pledged to better protect animals from abuse and illegal trade, which critics say still flourishes in the Southeast Asian country.

Earlier this month, police rescued about 300 cats from a pet-boarding business after its operators left them without adequate food and water and in filthy cages for days.

[Click here to read full article]

Why Are Ghosts Seen Wearing Clothes?

Top paranormal researchers answer an age-old question
By Stephen Wagner, About.com Guide

A QUESTION THAT ghost researchers often are confronted with concerns the fact that ghosts are most often seen wearing clothes. It is also a question that skeptics raise to support their argument that ghosts are figments of the imagination. But it’s a perfectly legitimate question. If ghosts are human spirit energy, why do their manifestations include the manufactured convention of clothing? After all, clothes are not part of our bodies, our spirits or our “souls”.

Or are they? I posed this question to a number of respected paranormal researchers.

TROY TAYLOR
American Ghost Society

Why do ghosts need clothes? No one really seems to know, but it’s possible that in most cases, ghosts seen wearing clothing are simply “residual” images – imprints or memories that linger on the atmosphere of a place like a recording. A ghost of this sort would have no “personality” and is simply like an old movie that just keeps playing.

But what about ghosts that are not merely imprints? What about those which are true, traditional spirits who died and stayed behind? Many researchers feel that ghosts are made up of electromagnetic energy. This energy, inside of the body, forms what we call our spirit, soul or personality. Now, science cannot prove this energy or personality actually exists, yet we know it does. If it can exist inside of our bodies, then why can’t it exist outside of the body, once the body itself stops functioning? It’s possible that it does and that this electromagnetic energy contains our personality and is what we think of as our spirit.

It has been shown through scientific experiments that exposure to high levels of electromagnetic energy can cause people to have vivid dreams, nightmares and even hallucinations. In other words, people are seeing things as a result of exposure to this energy. If spirits have any sort of control over the energy they are now comprised of (or even if their personalities are somehow manifested in the energy), then I would think it possible for the witness to see the spirit as the spirit sees itself. If the personality really does remain, the spirit would visualize itself as it was when alive, appearing as a living person and wearing clothing.

This could be a totally unconscious effect of the energy on the living person, or it could be a manipulation on the part of the spirit itself, perhaps causing the person to see what it wants them to. To understand this, I suggest that you close your eyes for a moment and then visualize yourself in your mind. How do you appear to yourself? Most likely, you were wearing clothing in your imagination. With the idea that a ghost appears looking in the same way that he sees himself, this might explain why so many ghosts that are seen are not only wearing clothing.

RICHARD AND DEBBIE SENATE
www.ghost-stalker.com

Ghosts and the clothes they wear have long been a snickering question. It’s a sort of “gotcha” question debunkers use, and it tells more about the way ghosts are interpreted than anything about them. Ghosts appear as wearing cloths because that's how they appear to us. In our era, clothes are part of what we are. They are part of how we see ourselves and this mental image is the one projected and picked up. In fact, clothes can many times give us information about who the ghosts are and what lives they had. There are some reports of nude ghosts, but they are few and far between. Ghosts tend to be seen in the garments they are buried wearing. In many ways the clothing helps us to indentify who they are.

JEFF BELANGER
Founder of Ghostvillage.com and author of The Ghost Files

In many cases, a ghost is a projection of a person. Whether that projection is coming from our own heads, some intelligent energy swarming all around us, or imprinted on the location itself, I don't know. Consider this: If you were to picture yourself somewhere, it's likely you would envision yourself wearing clothes, looking comfortable, yet presentable, and maybe you'd even drop a few pounds in your "projection" (hey, it's cheaper than liposuction, so have at it).

Very few people would picture themselves naked (though there's usually one exhibitionist in every crowd). If you could project any image of yourself that you like, maybe you'd project yourself bleeding from the gunshot would you sustained in your last moments of life in order to make a point to whoever receives that projection. The apparition is always a representation of something/someone else. It's not an entity unto itself; otherwise it wouldn't be so fleeting.

STACEY JONES
Central New York Ghost Hunters

I believe that ghosts can show themselves in whatever form they want. If a spirit were more comfortable at a certain age, they may show themselves at that time. I'm not too familiar with any person who is comfortable showing themselves in the nude, therefore they wouldn't want to show themselves au natural in ghost from.

* * *

These are all very good points. If ghosts are manifestations of the energy of human consciousness, then that consciousness would include clothing since, as stated by others above, that is how we think of ourselves. Or as esoteric author Richelle Hawks put it, considering that humans are far more than just their bodies: Why wouldn’t they be wearing clothes?

[Click here to read full article]

Weird exoplanet discovered orbiting two stars

By Irene Klotz

If you could stand on the surface of Kepler-16b, you'd have two shadows. At sunset, you would see an orange star about the size of the sun and next to it a much fainter red star. As the stars slipped toward the horizon, they would change places in the sky, like partners in a square dance.

You would not need to be Luke Skywalker visiting his home planet of Tatooine in the movie "Star Wars" to watch the twin sunset. The only science fiction in this story is how to make the 200 light-year journey to Kepler-16, a binary star system jointly sharing the Saturn-sized planet, Kepler-16b.

The finding, reported by scientists on NASA's Kepler planet-hunting space telescope team, adds a new page into Mother Nature's recipe book for extrasolar planets.

"It's the first one that circles two stars, so it's a fundamentally different kind of planet," lead researcher Laurance Doyle, with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., told Discovery News.

From a distance about as far as Venus orbits the sun, Kepler-16b circles both its parent stars in 221 days. The stars, which on average have about 21 million miles between them, fly around each other about every 41 days.

The telescope points at a fixed position in space, looking for changes in light streaming from about 155,000 target stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

Because the Kepler-16 system is so perfectly aligned, scientists believe the planet formed alongside its parent stars from a common disk of gas and dust. The plane in which the two stars orbit is aligned within one-third of a degree of the orbit of the planet.

"It shows the gears of celestial mechanics turning and interlocking so vividly, you almost want to reach out and touch it," exoplanet scientist Marc Kuchner, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told Discovery News.

"Kepler himself would have been dizzy with excitement," he added, referring to the telescope's namesake, Johannes Kepler, the 16th century scientist who deduced the laws of planetary motion.

Both the Kepler-16 stars are smaller than the sun, so their planet lives largely outside the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on its surface. Water is believed to be an essential ingredient for life as we know it.

The planet is estimated to experience temperatures that plummet from -100 to -150 degrees Fahrenheit (-70 to -100 degrees Celsius).

Timing also played a role in the discovery, notes Doyle. Computer models show that in early 2018, the planetary transits across the larger star will disappear from Kepler' view until around 2042. The passages across the smaller star's face, already slipping from view, will vanish in May 2014, and won't be back for 35 years.

"Working in film, we often are tasked with creating something never before seen," said John Knoll a visual effects supervisor with Lucasfilm, developer of the "Star Wars" movies. "More often than not, scientific discoveries prove to be more spectacular than anything we imagine."

[Click here to read full article]

Proof Nic Cage is a vampire

Picture is (C) copyright to Yahoo News

An unknown antiques seller has posted an aged Civil War dated photo on online retail site, eBay, claiming that he has proof that A-list actor Nicolas Cage is a vampire, according to a report on Cinema Blend's website.

The photo, which dates from 1870 and carries a US $1 million asking price, bears an uncanny resemblance to the 47-year old "Leaving Las Vegas" star.

"Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of walking undead/vampire, et cetera, who quickens/reinvents himself once every 75 years or so. 150 years from now, he might be a politician, the leader of a cult, or a talk show host," states the description of the photo.

"This is not a trick photo, it's an original photograph of a man who lived in Bristol, Tennessee sometime around the Civil War. Photographer is Professor G.B. Smith. A contact of mine forwarded this interesting article about the photographer, Smith. Turns out he was a confederate Civil War prisoner of war photographer. Guaranteed to be an original 1860s-70s photograph and not a modern reproduction, copy or photo manipulation."

The photo was apparently found in the back of an album that contained many death portraits from the Civil War era, but only the Nicolas Cage look-alike was not identified by name, stated the seller.

No stranger to vampires, Cage starred in the 80s cult movie "Vampire's Kiss", where he played a man who believed that we was turning into a vampire.

[Click here to read full article]

The search for Orang Pendek continues…

The Center for Fortean Zoology has organized another expedition to Sumatra in search of the famed Orang Pendek, a short, powerful, bipedal hominoid, sightings of which have been reported for centuries by the indigenous people of the Sumatran rain forests.

Here is the information given to me by expedition leader and cryptid researcher Adam Davies:

“We leave Friday, September 9, 20011 and will return on the 25th of September, late night. I will be leading the expedition, which is entitled The CFZ Sumatra Expedition 2011. There will be two teams to maximise our chances of finding evidence of the creature.

Team 1 will be at high altitude, and will make its base camp by the shores of a lake at top of theGunung Tujuh volcano. It will comprise me, Andy Sanderson, Tim De Friel, Zoologist Richard Freeman and Tracker Dave Archer. This is the area where Dave saw the OP in 2009, when he was with guides Sahar, Donni and myself. Sahar and Donni will again be joining us there.

Team 2 will be led by Dr. Chris Clark, and will also include Rebecca Lang and Mike Williams of CFZ Australia, as well as Lisa Maslan and Tracker Jon McGowan. This team will focus on the area between the farmland and the jungle, where there has been a concentration of eyewitness reports from locals, and is also in the vicinity of where Andy and I heard an OP call in 2004.

All teams will be using a combination of technology, and local and personal expertise in the field to maximise our chances of getting results! Any evidence we do bring back will of course be rigorously analysed by independent respected academics, who are already on stand by.”


[Click here to read full article]

A Mysterious Stranger in China

By LEE LAWRENCE

The first thing you notice is the pose: About 11 inches tall, he sits with his right leg bent inward as though riding sidesaddle, his upper body torqued, his left leg extended. Then you see the face, most of which is hidden by a cloth that drapes across the bridge of a rather prominent nose, revealing only thick, arched eyebrows and eyes that stare down with fierce intensity.

Made in China during the latter part of the eighth century, this unusual Tang dynasty burial figure today sits on a shelf in the Museo di Arte Orientale (MAO) of Turin, Italy, exuding as much mystery as he does energy. To date, nobody can say exactly who or what he is—his clothes, his pose, his expression don't add up. Even his manufacture is atypical: While almost all other known burial statuettes are hollow and cast in molds, this one is solid clay and appears to have been sculpted by hand.

For the moment, MAO has him down as "a Persian riding a camel or a horse," says Marco Guglielminotti Trivel, MAO's curator of East Asian art. And this is plausible enough. Formerly owned by the Agnelli Foundation, the figure's eyes are rounded, his nose aquiline, and though most figurines show a male rider straddling his mount, sidesaddle is not unheard of. The raised fists, Mr. Guglielminotti notes, might have held reins, while the face cover—as well as a flap of cloth over the back of his neck—would have protected against wind, sun and sand.

[Click here to read full article]

The Ancient Mystery of the ‘Plain Of Jars'

Maybe you noticed already, that I’m a fan of Laos. This has a number of reasons, one being, that Laos is today, what Thailand was 20 years ago. It’s a laid-back secluded country, with lot’s of mysteries, unique activities and quirky originalities.`

Can you imagine a place on earth, where huge stone jars are scattered on a giant plain; like the Gods just stood up from their meal and left all their pots and containers lie around? This is how it looks in a secret place in Laos - welcome to the ‘Plain of Jars’:

The Plain of Jars is an historic cultural site in Laos, containing thousands of enormous stone or clay jars, which lie scattered throughout the Xieng Khouang plain in the Laotian Highlands at the northern end of the Annamese Cordillera, the principal mountain range of Indochina.

Lao stories and legends claim that there was a race of giants who once inhabited the area. Local legend tells of an ancient king called Khun Cheung, who fought a long, victorious battle against his enemy. He supposedly created the jars to brew and store huge amounts of lao lao rice wine to celebrate his victory.

Although there is no scientific explanation as to how these jars found their way onto the plain, nor what purpose they served, Archaeologists have come up with the wildest theories, among them a claim declaring them brewery cauldrons.

Other say, the jars are enormous urns, around 2,000 years old. There is speculation again, that the plain was at the connection point of old Caravan Routes coming from India and the jars were simply unloaded here, but forgotten in time.

[Click here to read full article]

Something to snout about: The little pig born with two noses

Picture is (C) copyright to Dailymail

Meet Babe, the pig who was born with not one but two snouts. And while it might sound like a joke, it's no laughing matter.

The two-month-old - part of a litter born on a farm in Deshengtang, Jilin province, northern China - can use both his mouths to eat and appears otherwise normal, say his owners.

Farmer Li Zhenjun and his wife Yu Wanfen named the piglet Xiaobao - or 'Babe' in English - after the movie about an extraordinary talking pig.

[Click here to read full article]

Islamic Exorcism (GRAPHIC WARNING)

An eyewitness account of an Islamic-style exorcism carried out by an Imam in Brunei.

The Feeling of Being Watched

Isn't it strange that we have an actual sensation or feeling equated to being watched? For centuries people have reported an eerie feeling when they feel like someone they can't see is observing them. And this phenomenon would be added to the laundry list of other strange but ultimately baseless occurrences if it wasn't for the research of one man when he decided to put the feeling of "being watched" to the next level. Rupert Sheldrake, a researcher and parapsychologist came across evidence while conducting trial research on the matter that people had a definite impression of when they were and were not being watched. The experiments he conducted gave a whole new level of controversy to the subject and finally gave some level of credibility to the phenomenon of scopaesthesia, or "feeling like you're being watched." In the experiment, Sheldrake lurked in the background of a quiz show in the UK while it was being taped by the BBC. At random intervals Sheldrake would designate a time to stare at people in the audience behind their backs. He and his research assistants then videotaped the event and looked back on their results. What they found was astounding. [Click here to read full article]

The Aftermath of a Paranormal Encounter

After a brush with the paranormal your mind is likely swimming with questions and a sense of awe and mystery. As humans living in the 21st century we are used to having answers to the questions that plague us most - especially when they deal with our own experiences. But while we may not be able to find everything we're looking for relating to our experience, we can look objectively at how others have reacted in the past and at the checklist that eventually emerges.

The aftermath of a paranormal event always has several questions. Of course foremost in importance, and all too often overlooked is our first point of interest on the checklist and the first thing you should always ask yourself after such an event occurs. "What am I going to do next?" While it may seem basic, this is a question that many witnesses fail to ask themselves in time and miss out on an informed decision after they're blinded by the mystery they just witnessed.

If you are dealing with the first few minutes after a paranormal experience, you may wish to return to the location where the incident happened. Depending on the nature of your individual experience this may be safe to do and even beneficial. But more often than not, most do not wish to return to the unknown and often terrifying.

The next point on the checklist is to ask yourself how you will proceed from this point. After seeing something like Bigfoot, a UFO, or a ghost, it's important to take stock of your personal situation and the incident itself. Assess carefully whether you will share it with others and how you will go about doing it.

[Click here to read full article]

The Vimanas - The Ancient Flying Machines

There are reference to flying machines in the temple carvings and in the ancient writings.

The images found on the ceiling beams of a 3000-year old New Kingdom Temple, located several hundred miles south of Cairo and the Giza Plateau, at Abydos resembles modern day Aircrafts.



Reference to ancient Indian flying vehicles comes from ancient Indian sources, many are the well known ancient Indian Epics, and there are literally hundreds of them. Most of them have not even been translated into English yet from the old sanskrit.

It is claimed that a few years ago, the Chinese discovered some sanskrit documents in Lhasa, Tibet and sent them to the University of Chandrigarh to be translated. Dr. Ruth Reyna of the University said recently that the documents contain directions for building interstellar spaceships!

Their method of propulsion, she said, was "anti-gravitational" and was based upon a system analogous to that of "laghima," the unknown power of the ego existing in man’s physiological makeup, "a centrifugal force strong enough to counteract all gravitational pull."

According to Hindu Yogis, it is this "laghima" which enables a person to levitate. Dr. Reyna said that on board these machines, which were called "Astras" by the text, the ancient Indians could have sent a detachment of men onto any planet, according to the document, which is thought to be thousands of years old. The manuscripts were also said to reveal the secret of "antima", "the cap of invisibility" and "garima", "how to become as heavy as a mountain of lead."

[Click here to read full article]

Black Eyed Kids: Insidious Threat or Myth in the Making?

It’s late, it’s dark and you’re in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps you’re walking down a lonely stretch of moonlit road, maybe you’re in a desolate parking lot trying to get your car started or perhaps you’re nestled in the warmth of your own home reading yourself to sleep; whatever the circumstance, you find yourself in an isolated locale when you’re suddenly startled by a sharp knock at the door or window. You look up from your steering wheel or cautiously pull back the curtain to see… wait for it… a pair of thin, trendily dressed, usually olive skinned teenagers.

Sounds pretty anti-climatic, right? But just wait; these aren’t your average, ordinary scallywags. These adolescents have something horribly wrong with them — something almost none of the witnesses notice at first glance — it’s their eyes. These “creatures” have no white corneas, no colorful irises, just a pair of big, black, shark-like eyes that inspire abject horror in all who have claimed to have seen them.

What’s worse is that these bizarre younglings aren’t content to scare you and continue on their merry way; no they are insistent that you help them. They stare through you with those dull ebony orbs and demand you let them in your car and give them a ride home or that they be allowed into your house to use your phone. The most horrifying aspect of all of this is that those who claim to have encountered these sinister kids swear that they’ve had to actively resist the temptation to do their bidding, as if their voices carried some sort of hypnotic influence.

[Click here to read full article]

Ancient Burial May Reveal Home of Biblical Figure

An ancient burial box recovered from antiquities looters three years ago contains a mysterious inscription that could reveal the home of the family of the figure Caiaphas, who is infamous for his involvement in the biblical story of the crucifixion of Jesus.

The burial box, also called an ossuary, was discovered in 1990, but the inscription was just recently verified as legitimate (and not the result of forgers trying to increase an artifact's value) by Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University and Boaz Zissu of Bar Ilan University. The box is made of limestone, is covered in decorative rosettes and has an inscription.

In the Bible story of Jesus' crucifixion, a Jewish high priest named Caiaphas is said to have organized the plot to kill Jesus.

What is special about the inscription on this ossuary is that the deceased is named within the context of three generations; the inscription also includes a potential residence. The full inscription reads:

[Click here to read full article]

Massive eruptions with static discharge lightning Sakurajima Volcano in Japan on Aug 28 and Sep 1, 2011

Sakurajima volcano in Japan usually shows activity, however large explosions from the caldera like this are more rare.

You can clearly see the lava missiles/projectiles/meteors erupt thousands of feet in the air.

The cars below on the highway are safely out of the way, nonetheless this eruption is a large one.

The first massive eruption happened on Augsut 28, 2011



The second massive eruption happened on Sept 1, 2011 sometimes with very impressive lava flows, or explosions… on the rare occasion you get to see the lightning associated with static discharge and friction in the atmosphere.

Strange Lights Over Northern Afghanistan

Hi, long time reader first time writer to you. I'm prior service from the military and I served in the Army for five years, during those times, I never saw or heard or experienced anything out of the ordinary or unexplained during my time in service except for one incident which I will describe.

After I was honorably discharged in early 2009, I worked as a defense contractor for a small company out in Virginia, my job entailed deploying overseas for several months at a time. After being hired on I deployed to Northern Afghanistan to one of the Forward Operating Bases there. Ironically I ran across the story on your site about the alleged haunted outpost the Marines took over in December of 2009, a few days before the incident.

This was close to New Years in December of 2009. I was in the office and monitoring message traffic when I noticed a peculiar email and attached report. One of the Forward Operating Bases reported seeing lights near a valley adjacent to a nearby mountain top. One of the soldiers had reported seeing a series of lights during the evening hours as the sun was setting. According to him he thought they were possibly Coalition Aircraft and didn't pay too much attention to it. What ended up catching his attention was the fact that they were perfectly stationary and unmoving for several minutes as darkness approached. According to him the lights had a steady clear white glow to them.

Helicopters can be ruled out as the lights were near a mountain peak, and the strong wind currents as well as altitude would have made it pretty hard to keep a that sort of vehicle stationary let alone hovering safely. The terrain itself is very rugged and rough and the weather can be especially brutal at higher altitudes during the Afghan winter.

It was not an airplane either as the soldier could not make it any distinguishing characteristics or markings. After a few more minutes, according to the soldier as the sun had finished setting, the lights dimmed a bit and could not be made out as well so the soldier grabbed his night vision goggles to get a better look. (He didn't say specifically which ones he took, but most NVG gear will pick up near infrared light/heat sources if they are strong enough) He stated that the object was glowing almost "red hot" through his night vision goggles, and had an elongated cigar shape to it. Size was difficult to estimate but at least 200 feet in length.

There was no more description or detail of the incident as the report itself was spartan and the preceding emails to it were almost poking fun of the story (I honestly thought it was a prank at first, but the report had indeed gone through all the appropriate channels and was disseminated throughout the email chain). I have heard incidents similar to this before from other soldiers, but this is the first time I actually came across a real report that documented this. Please feel free to email me back with any questions you might have but this is the gist of it. Thanks...

Weird, Birdlike Mystery Drone Crashes in Pakistan

It looks a bit like silver bird. It probably was used to spy on insurgents. And now it’s in the hands of the Pakistanis.


Picture is (C) copyright to Wired

WIRED editor-in-chief Chris Anderson flags pictures of an unusual, unfamiliar drone that reportedly crashed crashed over southwestern Pakistan late last week. It’s a surveillance drone, with a camera attached — recovered from the crash but not apparently visible in this photo — rather than the larger, deathly flying robots that shoot missiles. This one looks tiny, with a wingspan not much longer than a man’s outstretched arms, and clearly light enough for a grown man to carry.

The Pakistani Frontier Corps in Baluchistan province recovered the drone. And they confidently declare it to be an “American surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle.” But as Anderson points out, it doesn’t look like anything the U.S. flies — or at least acknowledges flying. What’s the deal?

Danger Room asked some of our favorite drone and aviation enthusiasts for their perspective on the small mystery drone. And we weren’t the only ones who thought it looked decidedly avian.

[Click here to read full article]

Medium claims to bring participants to Hell and back

By Beh Yuen Hui

GEORGETOWN, Malaysia - A group of daring people took the opportunity to be part of a 'Hell Tour' in Penang.

The trip was organised by Master Kek Eng Seng of the Tze Bei Guan Yin Dhamma Centre, who claims that he can travel through the realms of Earth, Heaven and Hell.

For the first time in Malaysia, he offered people the opportunity to visit the 'Afterworld'.

Surprisingly, there was an overwhelming response. More than 200 people from all around the country registered for the extraordinary trip.

Some were taken off the list through a screening process, based on the birth dates that were unfavourable with the timing of the tour. Pregnant women and those having their period were also turned down.

Finally, the number of Hell travelers was brought down to slightly more than 50, including a dozen reporters from the Chinese dailies and yours truly from Daily Chilli.

It had been raining almost the whole day on Thursday and Friday but Saturday was sunny.

Master Kek claimed that he had appealed to Guan Yin deity to stop the rain for our trip to the afterworld.

[Click here to read full article]