I'm a freelance journalist with a lifelong interest in the paranormal.
Bigfoot, Nessie, ghosts, poltergeists, human oddness...
You name it, I'm intrigued
Really, don’t watch it if you’re jumpy or of a nervous disposition. It may all be nonsense, all be true or a mixture of the two. But I’m new to blogging and I don’t want a Ghostwatch situation on my hands. (If you’ve never heard of Ghostwatch read this and this. And then get the DVD).
What do I think? Well, mostly I think most investigators who would kill to have that sort of thing on tape. Who are these lucky amateurs?
I also think that the poltergeist one is like that bit in Bedknobs and Broomsticks where the clothes move around - I think Angela Lansbury is responsible! Either that or rudimentary FX are being used.
But I don’t like to judge. I tend to become fascinated any time someone believes something. And provided vulnerable people are not being exploited for cash or other purposes then a good hoax always cheers me up! (In fact in a future post I will describe my own family history of hoaxing involving South American explorers, miners and fake passports…)
Which is not to say that I don’t believe in paranormal phenomena. Years ago I hankered after a T-shirt that read “I’m a Fortean, I have no opinion”. Sums me up really.
This video reminded me of the release of the great looking Paranormal Activity. Another movie in the Blair Witch, Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead handheld camera genre. Sadly, not out in the UK yet you can get more details at the website.
I’m really not generally in favour in of book banning (see earlier post), but I can understand the anxieties of the Russian authorities with regard to the published writings of the “Doomsday” cult leader, Pyotr Kuznetsov.
In November2007, thirty-five members of the True Russian Orthodox Church entered an underground bunker in anticipation of a predicted apocalypse.
Today, only 9 members remain underground (twenty-four left their underground hideaway when it began to collapse) determined to stay put and threatening mass suicide if anyone attempts to remove them.
Now, authorities in the Penza region have declared Kuznetsov’s writings illegal claiming that they incite religious and racial hatred.
Kuznetsov himself is currently in a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt.
Penis panics are surprisingly common. Known to psychiatrists as koro* victims believe that through some magical means, typically the action of a sorcerer, their genitals has disappeared or shrunken.
In Singapore in 1967 hospitals were swamped by men who believed that their penises were shrinking . They were so scared that many were using rubber bands or clothes pins to try and halt the shrinking. Fortunately, thanks to some very good public news conferences the Health Ministry was able to calm the masses and the panic fizzled out.
Last week Reuters reported that the Congo is the latest country to be hit by a wave of alleged penis thefts. What makes this more than the usual panic is that the police, rather than calming the situation, have actually arrested 13 suspected sorcerers.
Police claim that they arrested the men as a precautionary measure, to avoid a repeat of an incident in Ghana when the suspects were beaten to death by an angry mob.
* thought to come either from the Malay word meaning “to shrink”: keruk. Some people believe it may in fact come from the Malaysian-Indonesian words for tortoise kura, kura-kura, and kuro
Has a Russian tourist really snapped the ghost of a 16th Century priest?
According to today’s Sun newspaper Russian tourist, Olga Chtalova spotted the ghostly image when she downloaded her holiday pictures. This particular photo was taken during a morning service at St Paul’s Cathedral.
I have to say I’m not convinced. Looks a bit like someone in pale clothes wandering past. Would be a bit more convincing if the church was empty!
I AM impressed with whoever managed to identify the actual century this ghost came from. I think I’d have a hard time identifying a priest’s robes from a particular century.
But, I’m also a bit disturbed by snapping photos during morning service - I’m not particularly religious but I don’t feel that’s right.
If you’re new to Mothman you’re in for a fascinating journey. Start with John Keel’s classic book on the case: The Mothman Prophecies and get an introduction to the complexities of the case here in Rick Moran’s piece for the Fortean Times.
I love my Aussie soaps. I can even remember Paul Robinson’s FIRST wife, Terry (the mad one who shot him - I was off school with bronchitis).
Watching poor Sam (who is a bit whiny and annoying sometimes) suffer as Johnny Cooper’s ghost haunts her has reminded me how often Neighbours and Home and Away touch on the strange and unusual. So I’ve compiled a list of 5 strange phenomena that have cropped up in Neighbours and Home and Away.
1. Visitors from Beyond the Grave
This seems to happen a lot. Recently, as stated above we’ve have poor Sam being haunted by Johnny Cooper. Although as is almost always the case the rational explanation is that the stress is driving her mad.
Home and Away has had lots of these story lines. Does anyone else remember Bobby coming out of the fridge to haunt Ailsa (who subsequently turned out to have schizophrenia)? Handily available on YouTube…
And then when Alf had a brain tumour, he saw Ailsa rather a lot. Before seeing her one last time when she explained that this time it was really her and she had come to reassure him.
And Hayley always seemed to be seeing her dead Dad.
It happens on Ramsey Street too. When Julie died her daughter, Hannah, experienced visions of her deceased mother. This is a rare case of a soap visitation from the dead that wasn’t later blamed on a neurological disorder.
Boyd’s visions of his dead mother were absolutely due to neurological problems - he had a brain tumour.
Occasionally, the dead warn the living. While pregnant Steph Scully had recurring dreams of her best friend Libby’s dead husband, Drew. She correctly guessed that it was a warning and discovered that her breast cancer had returned.
2. The Near Death Experience
Sally has recently had her own encounters with the dead. She had a vivid near death experience during surgery. Her foster father Tom convinced her to return to the world of the living. Interestingly, just before this Sally had another strange experience. Her childhood imaginary friend, Milco, turned out to be real! He was a memory of her long-lost twin brother, Miles.
3. Urban Legend
We all know the old story of the ring in the fish don’t we? Where the woman loses her engagement/wedding ring (or throws it away in anger) and it turns up in the fish she later serves for dinner.
Well, Neighbours had their own variation: Libby’s earring. Libby lost her earring (a gift from loving partner Drew) but amazingly, Drew caught a fish (in the obviously fishless Lassiters lake - a fish there really is Fortean). And inside the fish….the earring
4. Telepathy
Just a few weeks ago Rebecca was uneasy and she was right! Declan was trapped under a collapsed warehouse. This sort of thing happens a lot but sometimes the psychic bond between soap characters is even stronger. Amanda was so sure that Belle was alive after the crash. And intuition has saved the day on many occasions.
Most startlingly, though shortly after they arrived, following some terrible accident (I really can’t remember what it was - I think maybe the school collapsed?) Jade and Kirsty turned out to have twin telepathy. This ws extraordinary enough - they weren’t identical. But subsequently it was revealed that they weren’t related at all!
5. Yowies
I was desperate to find a cryptid in Neighbours or Home and Away and sadly I came up with only one…Rick Alessi once pretended there was a Yowie in Erinsborough to impress some Japanese tourists. It’s pathetic really, years of Aussie soaps and not a single cryptid - I’m thinking of starting a petition.
