Mind Control in Erinsborough

I don’t think I could have asked for a better story on my first day back than this from The Daily Grail

Is this why Neighbours makes me so mellow and relaxed?

Who killed Alexander the Great?

On June 11th, 323 BCE Alexander the Great died.

The cause of death?

Well, no one’s really sure. And today it remains one of history’s most enduring medical mysteries.

Learn more over at author Graham Phillips’ page.

The ghost of Marilyn Monroe (and dark conspiracies surrounding her death)

Today is Marilyn Monroe’s birthday.  Had she lived the tragic star would have been 82 today.

But some people claim that Marilyn still makes herself known in ghostly form.

And she remains a popular target for trance mediums.

Leave the poor woman alone!

Monroe died in 1962. The cause of death was “acute barbiturate poisoning” and it was ruled a suicide.

But dark rumours still surround Monroe’s death.  Some people believe she was actually murdered and the tragic star’s death is sometimes even linked to the alleged Kennedy assassination conspiracy.

Whatever the truth, lets remember her in her prime and anyone interested in the weird wide world would do well to remember the occasional truth in this quote from Ms Monroe herself:

“It’s all make believe, isn’t it?”

Cryptozoology vs YouTube: Join the debate

Over at Cryptomundo Loren Coleman is asking what we’ve all been wondering: “Bigfoot and YouTube: Worthless Combo?”

There have been a spate of shaky hand-held hominid films lately.

Join the debate at Cryptomundo.com

Personally I want more monster videos like this*:

*And fewer half-hearted hoaxes

New ABC sighting (thats an A-lien B-ig C-at to the uninitiated)

Mystery big cat spotted in wolds! - Horncastle News

For several years witnesses have been reporting big cats in Lincolnshire.

The latest sighting took place on the 21st May. A woman saw a large black “cat-like” animal

A genuine out of place feline cryptid? Or just a case of mistaken identity?

You can vote online at the Horncastle News site.

(Via There’s Something in the Woods)

“Wikihistory”: A Time Travel Short Story

Thanks to the current issue of New Scientist I’ve just read this wonderful short story on time travel and its paradoxes….

…written as if posted on an internet message board.

Genital Shrinking Panic

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

New Mothman Blog

Nick Redfern’s “There’s Something in the Woods…” draws our attention to a fascinating new Mothman blog: Mothman Flutterings.

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.

5 Aussie Soap Oddities

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.

Researching this I was relieved to find out that I’m not the only person who thinks about this stuff

Finally, check out this lovely video: Supernatural Summer Bay

Mothman video on YouTube

If the previous Mothman post intrigued you, you may enjoy this ten-minute clip from YouTube

Thanks to Mothman Flutterings