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“On 13 January 1518, a series of ordinances to regulate plague outbreaks were proclaimed in London.”
Those ordinances were proclaimed by England’s King Henry VIII, a ruler more known for having multiple wives, killing multiple wives, changing the rules so it was OK to have multiple wives and increasing the power of his throne. He wasn’t known for caring about anyone’s health but his own, so regulating plague outbreaks was obviously to protect himself. But … wasn’t the king well isolated from the commoners with the plague? According to a newly discovered letter, Henry VIII may have had a very good reason for fearing the disease – his own grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, best known as the White Queen, may have had a simple funeral and burial unbefitting of a Queen consort because she died of the plague.
“The Queen-Widow, mother of King Edward, has died of plague, and the King is disturbed.”
The White Queen
That quote is from a previously unknown letter dated July 1511 found by National Archives records specialist Euan Roger, the author of a new article in the Oxford journal Social History of Medicine about another previously unknown document detailing the first quarantine regulations put in place by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, chief minister of Henry VIII. The letter was written by Andrea Badoer, the Venetian ambassador to London, who was concerned about his own health and requesting to be called back to Venice. The letter raises a number of questions: Why was it written 19 years after the death of the White Queen in 1492? Why are there no other accounts of her dying of the plague? Is it true?
“Unless there was a specific need for haste – such as death from a contagious disease – it seems inconceivable that such a secretive and speedy journey would be necessary. Immediate burial on arrival at Windsor strongly suggests the later Venetian account of plague as the cause of Woodville’s death, and it was fear of infection and miasmatic air, rather than the Elizabeth’s request for a simple funeral, that was behind the haste with which early proceedings took place.”
According to The Guardian’s interview of Roger, Elizabeth’s body was ferried down the Thames by just five people, taken in secret into Windsor Castle with no bells tolling, and immediately buried without even a funerary dressing. Roger believes they feared inhaling the miasmatic or “bad” air that was erroneously believed to spread the plague. All of this was kept quiet by Henry VII – the future Henry VIII was just one year old at the time and well insulated from The White Queen, who spent the last five years of her life in Bermondsey Abbey, an English Benedictine monastery in southeast London.
In 1511, Henry VIII was 19 and in just the second year of his long reign, so he was hale, hearty and much thinner than the portly king portrayed in most portraits. Why was he so afraid for his own health? Roger speculates that Henry VIII was panicking after the recent deaths of his elder brother Prince Arthur in 1502, his mother Elizabeth of York in 1503, and his son, Prince Henry, in 1511, leaving him without an heir and with a wife (Catherine) who also had delivered a stillborn child. At some point in all of this, Henry VIII found out the cause of his maternal grandmother’s death and was affected by it so strongly, he must have talked about it enough that even a mere foreign ambassador was aware of it.
Wait a minute, you say! Philippa Gregory ‘s 2009 historical novel The White Queen, based on the life of Elizabeth Woodville, and the BBC series of the same name make no mention of her dying of the plague. Can the history of England really be changed merely by the discovery of a letter written in Venetian by a foreigner?
Stranger things have happened. But for now, it will have to wait until the Meghan/Harry baby watch ends and the Harry/William feud is resolved.
Paul Seaburn (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
Residents of several small U.S. cities throughout America’s west and Midwest were stunned this week when a state-of-the-art Russian spy plane appeared overhead. “Did you spot the Russian ‘spy’ plane yesterday?” asked the Sandhills Express before answering its own question with “don’t worry, because it wasn’t really spying at all!” It turns out it was spying, though – just the legal, agreed-upon kind.
In March 2019, another Russian spy plane flew over some of America’s most secretive and mysterious research installations including the infamous Area 51. While foreign surveillance missions flying through the nation’s most sensitive airspace may sound suspicious, it turns out the flights are part of what’s known as the Open Skies Treaty, an international agreement which allows nations to routinely observe one another’s military activities and facilities from directly overhead.
A Russian Tu-154M
This latest aircraft was a new, specially outfitted Tupolev Tu-214 designed specifically for these types of Open Skies flights. The Russian reconnaissance craft flew over West Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, flying over Fort Bliss, Fort Riley, McConnell Air Force Base, Vance Air Force Base, Sheppard Air Force Base, and Dyess Air Force Base. Fort Bliss, in particular, is home to the U.S. Army’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense batteries.
Aside from military bases, the aircraft’s flight took it over White Sands Missile Range, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, and the Pueblo Chemical Depot in the process. These sites are home of some of the U.S. military industrial complex’s most secretive and advanced research into fields such as directed energy weapons, aircraft countermeasures, and radar signature research. What were they looking for up there?
While these types of flights are sure to raise alarms, we can all be sure of one thing: the really good stuff isn’t being kept out in the open in hangars marked with the insignia of the U.S. armed Forces. That stuff is kept in salt mines, deep subterranean bunkers, or Las Vegas hangars owned by private aerospace firms. Furthermore, according to a press release issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense, American observers were aboard these Open Skies flight to ensure the Russians saw only what we wanted them to.
Which makes you wonder: with how advanced and ubiquitous surveillance satellites are these days, what not just spy from space? What is the real need for these Open Skies Treaty flights in the space age?
Brett Tingley (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
A thrift store in North Carolina recently made headlines when they sold a 1950s haunted bedroom set for $1,000. Haunted items at thrift stores are actually more common than we think. And it makes sense, as we don’t know the history of the items that are brought there, who owned them, or what happened to them. Let’s take a look at a few of the many examples of items people have bought at thrift stores only to bring them home to find out that they’re haunted.
Over the years, people have claimed to have bought second-hand items that had paranormal activity attached to them, from flags that brought them back luck, to feeling bad vibes from old books, and even wall organizers that caused scratches on their arms. One woman who bought Christmas ornaments claimed that they caused her bed to bounce up and down during the night and opened all of her cupboard doors at the same time.
A couple from Stockton, California, bought a bag containing medals of Saints as well as cheap jewelry from a thrift store. When they brought the bag of items home, they started smelling perfume around their house when nobody was wearing the scent. A few days after they purchased the items, the husband decided to throw the bag into a dumpster and that’s when everything went back to being normal again. He explained how it felt after he threw out the items, “It was like a weight was lifted,” he said, “The place seemed lighter. There was no denying that something was different.”
(Not a picture of any of the items mentioned in this article)
A woman who bought a U.S. Navy sailor top from World War II was excited about her purchase but wasn’t expecting the eerie feelings she would get when she wore it. “It sort of felt like I was a stranger in my own mind, and that someone else was in my body,” she wrote on Reddit, “I had to sit down it was that heavy and overwhelming.”
The Consignment Furniture Showroom in Waco, Texas, has had many people come to visit their haunted antique couch that they’ve had since August of 2007. Apparently, those who have previously owned the couch have had bad things happen to them.
Dean McNeil, who is the showroom co-owner, claimed that since the couch has been at their store, the data on the computers have inexplicably been erased, clocks have stopped working, and video footage from newscasters have been ruined. Bad things have also happened to people who have sat on the couch, moved it, or just spent a lot of time near it. Some of them have been involved in car accidents, broken their bones, fallen through roofs, and were even diagnosed with cancer.
(Not a picture of any of the items mentioned in this article)
Whether the couch actually caused these misfortunes is debatable, but one thing for sure is that it’s frightening to look at. Two creepy things about the piece of furniture is that a hole is located in the back of it that looks as though it could have been caused by a bullet, and there appears to be old blood stains on the couch as well.
While the store has received numerous offers from people wanting to buy the couch, they have refused them all. “We like it because people come in from all over the United States to see it,” McNeil said, “So for now, we’re holding on to it.”
Whether you’re an antique lover who enjoys buying vintage items, or someone who likes a good bargain, you may want to consider that your next purchase may come with some unexpected ghosts.
Jocelyne LeBlanc (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
It is known by many names; Seeahtik, Seeahtkoh, Sásq’ets, and Oh-Mah are just a few. However, since the 1920s the creatures referred to in the cultural traditions of many First Nations groups have been known by another name: Sasquatch.
Over the weekend, I finally had the opportunity to catch up on listening to Laura Krantz’s excellent podcast series, Wild Thing, which explores the modern debate over the existence of Sasquatch. The lack of physical evidence that supports a breeding population of large, ape-like bipeds in the Pacific Northwest has always been troubling; getting down to brass tacks, there is little more to go off of than the purported castings of their footprints, which skeptics often argue can be easily faked. Apart from this, there is little that would successfully persuade biologists, chemists, or others who work in areas of the physical sciences.
There have been exceptions, of course. Arguably the most notable had been Grover Krantz (who shares more than just a name with Laura Krantz of the Wild Thing podcast; it was her discovery that Grover was actually a cousin that helped inspire the series). Krantz was a career anthropologist who, after some initial skepticism, became enamored with some of the unique characteristics several of the purported Sasquatch castings displayed.
“I don’t even call myself a believer,” Krantz was known to have said on many occasions. “It’s not a belief. I’m absolutely convinced the sasquatch exists.
“The Bossburg tracks made me a believer, hoaxers would have to be smarter than me to have faked the bone-structure of the crippled tracks.” The Bossburg tracks, which Krantz had been a staunch advocate of, are also sometimes called the “cripple foot” castings, due to an anomaly located on the outer midfoot region on one of the sets of tracks (representing one of the alleged creature’s feet), in the general area where the cuboid bone is located on a human foot.
Grover Krantz’s skeleton, and the bones of his beloved dog Clyde, on display at the Smithsonian Institute.
Krantz was not the only scientist to ever weigh in on the heavy questions about Sasquatch’s existence (and, as I’ll address at the end of this post, I am interested in hearing from others, on or off the record, who may share similar interests… but more on that in a bit). Jeffery Meldrum, Ph.D. of Idaho State University is arguably the most well-known academic to have become involved in the study in recent years, which has often put him at odds with other members of the faculty and staff at his institution. On Laura Krantz’s podcast, Meldrum recounts how the acting chair at his university had once said, “Meldrum will never be promoted to a professor as long as I’m here.” After going through a grievance process, he finally was able to achieve promotion, but still receives a lot of pushback from his academic peers.
“It revealed a very unseemly underbelly of the academic community,” Meldrum told Krantz. “You know that ivory tower is oftentimes rather tarnished. The ideals of objective scientific–just the pure quest for knowledge–is anything but.”
After all, why wouldn’t the academic community be critical toward the idea of something like Sasquatch? Despite the presence of the footprint castings (and those who remain advocates for their authenticity), every scientific analysis that has been conducted with hair samples or any other biological remains has turned up negative results (Todd Disotell, a professor of biological anthropology at New York University and an expert on genomics and DNA sequencing, has bemoaned the number of samples of bear feces that has been sent to his lab over the years).
And yet, as other experts in the past have argued, the non-physical evidence, anecdotal though it is, must account for something. The late John Bindernagel, Ph.D, certainly felt so, as did the renowned primatologist John Napier, who made a similar argument in his 1972 book Bigfoot, where he wrote:
Eyewitness reports which provide strictly circumstantial evidence are very persuasive, and the more direct evidence of footprints is quite impossible to dismiss in all instances.
I am convinced that the Sasquatch exists, but whether it is all that it is cracked up to be is another matter altogether. There must be something in north-west America that needs explaining, and that something leaves manlike footprints. The evidence I have adduced in favour of the reality of the Sasquatch is not hard evidence; few physicists, biologists or chemists would accept it, but nevertheless it is evidence and cannot be ignored.
Ignored it remains though, for the most part. But despite this, there are a few professionals out there who maintain an interest in the subject, even if they feel that they have to keep their interests under wraps. In the seventh episode of Wild Thing, Laura Krantz interviews a scientist who is identified only as “DeepFoot,” who requested that his name be withheld, and his voice changed before he would appear on the podcast.
“I still have a position where credibility on scientific issues is important,” DeepFoot told Krantz during their interview. “I work in a field where there is considerable political efforts to undermine the scientific conclusions.”
“We all have things that intrigue us that we don’t go around and talk to other people about,” the unnamed scientist says. “Because of what we anticipate the responses to be. If you want to maintain some professional credibility in certain circles, this is not a subject you want to wave a flag over and ask difficult questions about.”
DeepFoot is by no means the only professional who keeps a low profile, but nonetheless maintains an interest in the subject of Sasquatch. With little doubt, there are probably untold numbers of disciplined, skeptically-minded professionals in different areas of science who maintain a private–albeit a passionate–interest in the subject. After all, how could something even so seemingly unlikely as the existence of a massive, bipedal ape still have so much in the way of anecdotal evidence in its corner? It’s a mixed bag, and one that still leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions.
Which brings us to you guys… the unspoken heroes in the scientific community who, while remaining behind the scenes, nonetheless maintain a serious interest in the subject. I am always interested in hearing from those in the scientific community who share an interest in this subject, and skeptical though I remain in my approach, the accumulation of data seems to suggest there is something worth studying. So I would like to hear from you: if you are an academic or a career professional with a background in science who has an interest in, or who are actively involved in field studies pertaining to this subject, I can be reached via email here, or you can also reach out via Twitter or Facebook, which are linked in my bio below.
Advancements in areas of genetics and DNA sequencing, as well as things like mapping technologies, LIDAR, and a host of other related applications will help to institute new and innovative methods of study in the coming years. With any luck, these may help us to crack the long-standing and ever perplexing mystery that is the North American Sasquatch, if there is indeed any more to this story than purely a modern myth in the making.
Micah Hanks (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
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Lucy Palmer is a former security officer and a Wiccan. She shared with me the unsettling and bizarre story of Shelagh and her partner, Robert, and their disturbing immersion into the fraught domain of the Men in Black: “They lived together as partners since meeting in 1983, when the paranormal experiences began almost immediately. At the time this occurred Robert was working in a supermarket and Shelagh was at home alone. It was August 1991 and Shelagh was in the kitchen when she heard the front door bell ring. The building was a terraced house on a very busy Oxford Road in Reading [England]. The house had a flight of seven or eight stone steps up to the front door. This was the kind of house with another set of steps leading to a below street level basement room. Shelagh went to the front door which had a large pane of frosted glass in it, meaning you could see the shadow of anyone standing outside. But what struck Shelagh is that she could not see the dark form of anybody waiting outside, so her initial thought was that they might have gone down to the basement door.
“She opened the door and was confronted by a man with a broad smile on his face, so the suggestion is that he had been stood outside but cast no shadow on the glass! He wore an immaculate black suit, white shirt and black tie. She described his suit as ‘too perfect to be real, with perfect creases in the legs. She reported his shirt as a very dazzling white, hypnotically so. She particularly noticed that he didn’t have a single bead of sweat on his face or staining his shirt collar, even though it was a very hot, cloudless day. His eyes were black and his skin a Mediterranean olive. He carried a brand new briefcase in his right hand. Shelagh was a former police officer, having served in the Rhodesian Special Branch in the 1950s and 1960s. With her experience she has on many occasions demonstrated a good sense of recall which is why she took all this visual information in the first moments of confronting him.
“Then the weird part of her report is that although the road behind him was a busy main road leading directly into the heart of Reading, she gradually became aware of no traffic and no pedestrians passing, with this, everything behind him seemed to slip out of focus. He, on the other hand, still smiling inanely, became sharper focused and she could do nothing about it. Shelagh says her vision was restricted, against her wishes, to focus only on his presence. She could see a small metal pin badge on his right suit jacket lapel and realized this item was what she was continuing to stare at. It sounds like it was exerting a hypnotic fascination. Shelagh never was able to describe what he badge was because even though she was concentrating on it, she found it challenged her by continually slipping out of focus. He then spoke, there was an accent, foreign, probably European, but she could not place it:
“‘Hello, is Robert in?’
“‘No, he’s at work.’
“‘Oh okay,’ the MIB replied, ‘When is he home?’
“‘Probably about 6 this evening.’
“The MIB continued to smile as something very strange then happened. It was like a sudden jump in a film because the next moment he was stood two steps further down, but he hadn’t physically moved. Still smiling, he then told her: ‘You do need to stop what you are doing.’ Then the jump happened a second time and he was stood down on the pavement, all the time perfectly motionless with hands and briefcase held rigidly at his side. Still smiling and looking up at her. Then the next ‘jump’ and he had turned to face the left, (her right). Then he started to walk away – this being the first actual physical movement she was aware of.
“The moment he was out of sight she stepped out of the porch expecting him to be walking along the pavement or getting into a car – but he had disappeared. At that point she realized the street sounds had returned and the usual stream of traffic had resumed. She walked along the street, looking down the only side-road close by, but didn’t see him, or him in any vehicle. She told Robert about this when he got home and it was documented as another weird encounter. There was no follow up and he never returned physically.
“Shelagh had a long history of remarkable clairvoyance, in the 60s she had been a High Priestess in a Wiccan coven. So her occult presence was long and experienced. In the 1970s she appeared to undergo an abduction experience. Then when she met Robert in the early 1980s they received many communications from spirit guides alluding to a ‘mission.’ This messaging, received through Shelagh as the medium was accompanied with a string of paranormal events – the MIB being just one of them.
It’s very weird accounts like this one told by Lucy Palmer that demonstrate the Men in Black are not “secret agents” of “the government.” They are much stranger than that…
Nick Redfern (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
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Everyone’s favorite 60-sided balls have been found in the interstellar space between stars. While the finding may not be Nobel Prize-worthy like the discovery of the original 60-atom molecules also known as Buckminsterfullerene, it’s significant in helping to identify what’s in the mysterious medium between stars and what else it might hold. Does this mean extraterrestrials play soccer (OK, football)?
“Combined with prior, ground-based observations … our Hubble Space Telescope spectra place the detection of interstellar [buckminsterfullerene] beyond reasonable doubt.”
It wasn’t as easy as it sounds in that simple explanation from the article announcing the discovery in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Physicist Martin Cordiner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center led the research, which began with using the Hubble Telescope’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) to examine the interstellar medium (ISM) between them. ISM is made of diverse absorption bands of extremely diffuse and relatively unknown matter (also called diffuse interstellar bands or DIB) that are visible in spectra ranging from visible light to near infra-red. Scientists have previously been able to determine they’re not made of stellar matter but they’ve only been able to detect molecule composed of three atoms. However, a two-year observation (2016 to 2018) of the ionization of light as it passed through the ISM led to an unexpected HUGE discovery.
A buckyball or Buckminsterfullerene is a fullerene (a form or carbon) composed of 60 carbon atoms in a round structure made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons (causing it to resemble a soccer ball) with a carbon atom at each vertex of each polygon. That shape also resembles a geodesic dome, which is why its discovers in 1985 named it after architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller, who popularized it in many of his architectural designs. In case you missed it, a buckyball is composed of 60 atoms – that’s 57 more than the biggest atoms found in interstellar matter to date.
“Currently, the leading theory is that they form as a result of carbon chemistry in the warm envelopes of dying stars, such as Red giants.”
When asked by Forbes how the buckyballs got there, Cordiner waxed poetic about the “warm envelopes of dying stars” – the residue left after a Red giant star exhausts its supply of hydrogen and carbon atoms are pushed to its surface in a process called a dredge-up, allowing them to appear in its spectrum. It seems natural rather than accidental that at least some of these carbon molecules would be the complex Buckminsterfullerenes – and now there’s proof.
“The confirmation of interstellar [buckminsterfullerene] represents a breakthrough in our understanding of chemical complexity in the diffuse interstellar medium [..] bringing a new understanding of the types of molecules that may be responsible for the remaining (unidentified) diffuse interstellar bands.”
What does all of this mean? For now, it confirms that what looks like a void between stars is actually teeming with large molecules in diffuse interstellar bands. While not as entertaining as diffuse heavy metal bands, finding buckyballs in-between stars is still a big deal.
Paul Seaburn (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
Since the dawn of warfare as we know it today, humans have been using animals as tools of war. Elephants, horses, and other pack animals have been used to carry loads for thousands of years, while fiercer predators like dogs and lions have at times been used to inflict damage on enemies. Later, as human communication media shrank in the early 20th century, we began using animals like pigeons or dogs to carry messages for us through areas where human soldiers could not travel. Given that animals have always been an integral part of human existence, it’s natural they would be a part of warfare, too
More recently, there have been allegations that some nations have previously used or are still using animals as spies. Dolphins, in particular, have indeed been used for bomb detection and marine reconnaissance thanks to their high degree of intelligence and cooperation with humans.
Soviet Navy training a dolphin in the port of Sevastopol.
While this particular use of dolphins has stayed relatively obscure, a new report published by The Guardian this week highlights the military use of aquatic mammals – this time whales – and may suggest that some of them may have gotten loose of their training grounds or were turned loose into the ocean years ago. What would happen if these highly-trained animals did indeed escape back into the wild? Isn’t this how the Planet of the Apes reboot started?
According to The Guardian, fisherman in the small Norwegian fishing village of Inga have in recent weeks been harassed by a mysterious white beluga whale wearing an unidentified harness or apparatus of some kind. The whale reportedly attacks the fishermen’s boats, pulling on rigging and loose nets and following them incessantly. The fishermen claim the whale appears to deliberately seek out their boats before engaging in the anomalous behavior.
Beluga whale
The harness the whale wears appears to have been made to carry a camera or some other type of equipment – or a weapon. To make things stranger, some fishermen have even gotten close enough to inspect the harness device the whale is wearing and say it bears the words “Equipment of St. Petersburg.” Norwegian biologists have contacted marine biology laboratories in Russia for answers, but all of them seem to want to point the finger at the Russian Navy and deny all knowledge.
As it turns out, Russia’s Navy along with the Murmansk Sea Biology Research Institute carried out a research program during the height of the Cold War which attempted to train beluga whales to guard entrances to ports or underwater bases and attack any intruders who came close. Could this be one of those long-lost whales?
Brett Tingley (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
David Bowie may have inspired many dreams and plans to search for life on Mars, but it appears Russia has been listening to a Lady Gaga songs and are preparing to build a Rocket #9 to take off to the planet Venus where a cosmonaut or robotic equivalent will ask the Goddess of love or some other life form to please take me to your leader. Lady Gaga can do that? Well, yes, plus a new look at old television photos from Russia’s past Venus missions which have convinced scientists that they’re looking at evidence of life on the cloudy planet. Is it wearing a seashell bikini?
“This conclusion follows from the results of the processing of archival data of a television (TV) experiment performed on the surface of Venus during the Soviet missions “Venus” in 1975-1982. One of the main was a TV experiment to study the surface of the planet. In situ tv study the surface of Venus remains an experiment, still not repeated. Unique archival data were processed using new methods, which significantly improved their detail. As a result of a new analysis of TV images obtained in the Venus missions, up to 18 hypothetically living objects were discovered.”
Model of a Venera lander
The Soviet Union’s Venera (Venus) space program sent eight missions to its namesake, each orbiting the planet and dropping a lander, most of which made it to the surface intact and sent back data and black-and-white “television” pictures before the intense heat destroyed them. Analysis of those pictures was limited to the technology and knowledge of the time, which seems to be why they were set aside for decades until researchers from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences like Leonid Ksanfomaliti picked them up again and took a more modern look. What they saw in those photos, according to their study published in the journal “Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk,” has them excited about new missions.
“The contours of these objects resemble those of earthly creatures, such as those of a lizard, a scorpion and a mushroom. The supposed life forms changed their location in the different images, had remarkable sizes and differed from the surrounding geological formations.”
“Pareidolia!”, not “Aliens!”, is the obvious response to this from those who have seen images from the Moon, Mars and other planets that look like animals and vegetables but turn out to be minerals. However, the study’s authors propose an alternative hypothesis based on the drastic differences between these objects and their immediate surroundings.
“Objects have a noticeable size and may indicate the existence of life on Venus in physical conditions that are radically different from those on earth. Earth life is based on the aquatic environment. At temperatures of 460 degrees C water cannot exist in liquid form at the landing sites of the landing vehicles.”
Depiction of a Venera lander on Venus
In other words, Venus is one of those places where life won’t look like life on Earth because of its chemical mix and lack of water. Despite the fact that the objects in the photos resemble Earth creatures and plants, they say the next missions should throw out all preconceived notions (and pareidolian assumptions) and look for something completely different (perhaps they can get Monty Python to consult).
So, it’s not the shape so much as the movements which have these scientists excited about the possibility of life on Venus. Future missions (Russia is planning one as soon as 2025) should look for a large plain to drop the lander in, test for non-carbon (nitrogen perhaps) forms of life and watch for movement.
Sounds exciting, although giant mushroom-eating scorpions would make a better song or movie.
Paul Seaburn (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
In a recent post here at Mysterious Universe (the first in this two-part series that explores some deeper questions about a few of the most famous sightings associated with the lake, and their implications), we looked at one of the most well-known historic sightings of the creature: George Spicer’s observation of an unusual creature, which he and his wife had seen on land near the Loch in June, 1933.
So what did the Spicers actually see crossing the road that fateful day in June, 1933? It is likely that there will never be a firm conclusion to this aspect of the mystery, although we may do better not to focus so much on what they saw, and instead pay attention to the profound influence that sighting had on the broader monster culture around Loch Ness.
Simply put, there is no better evidence that conveys this effect than the famous “Surgeon’s Photograph,” which appeared in print the following year. Originally attributed to Kenneth Wilson, an area gynecologist, the photograph that became the very essence of “Nessie” is also a well known hoax, just one of the similar pranks orchestrated by Marmaduke Wetherell, an actor and big game hunter whose antics at the Loch included faking a series of monster prints along the banks of the lake, using an ashtray fitted in a preserved hippopotamus foot.
In all likelihood, Wetherell’s prank drew direct inspiration from the now famous Spicer incident, having occurred just eight months beforehand, but which was still the talk of the British tabloids well into the Christmas season, as seen with a December feature in the Daily Sketch. While Wetherell was merely creating an image that conformed to what had become the most famous description of the monster to-date, little did he and those working with him (including an apparently semi-reluctant Dr. Kenneth Wilson) realize that it would become the single most well-known photograph purporting to be of the Loch Ness Monster.
In other words, Spicer may have introduced the “long-necked monster” in the popular press, but it was the “Surgeon’s Photograph” that sold the idea to the entire world, and left an irreplaceable impression that Nessie was a long-necked creature, quite possibly representing a relic population of plesiosaurs that somehow persisted for millions of years in Scotland’s largest lake.
The “Surgeon’s Photograph,” which turned out to be another Wetherell prank and, arguably, his most famous one (Credit: Fortean Picture Library).
My aim here in raising these points is not to try and debunk the entire Loch Ness story, nor is it intended to vindicate reports from over the years of odd things seen in the area. I like to remain fairly agnostic on the matter; although I often wonder about stories like that of Dr. Denys Tucker, a zoologist with the British Natural History Museum who visited the famous lake in 1959. Tucker had once been the darling of the British scientific establishment, but upon visiting Loch Ness while on holiday, Tucker became what may arguably be the least likely person to have claimed to see what he later identified as an extinct elasmosaurus.
“I, a professional marine zoologist,” Tucker wrote in a subsequent letter to New Scientist, “did see a large hump travelling across flat calm water on 22 March 1959, and do quite unashamedly assert that it belonged to an unnamed animal. I am quite satisfied that we have in Loch Ness one of the most exciting and important problems in British zoology today.”
Image based on motorcyclist Arthur Grant’s drawing of a creature he saw shortly after the famous George Spicer encounter of 1933.
His passions went unrequited by the establishment, however, and rather than allowing the newly attained convictions of one respected scientist to bring down the entire house of cards, Tucker was apparently removed from his position, which resulted in a legal dispute and charges by Tucker that he had been ousted from the establishment for expressing his views on the prospects of an unidentified species residing in Loch Ness.
All that to say, the Loch Ness experience is one that has been shared by people from all walks of life, including some notable scholars, and even the occasional expert on marine life. It is also true that there are some individuals over the years who have given compelling descriptions of long-necked animals in the Loch; however, it is curious (to put it mildly) the way that descriptions of the creature have changed so much over time, ranging from that of large, indistinct “salamanders” flopping around in the morning waves, to land-based sightings of creatures more closely resembling camels (that’s right, I said camels, although the longish necks and distinctive humps shared by many varieties of land-dwelling Camelidae actually do remind us of some of the famous reports of alleged “monsters” seen in the Loch over time). If one looks honestly, carefully, and exhaustively at eyewitness reports over time, it becomes difficult to say that Nessie has ever taken on any singular appearance; if anything, her description appears to have changed with time (something that mirrors the changes that are noted in historical surveys of UFO sightings over time, among other things).
In conclusion, perhaps the most fascinating thing about Loch Ness has been the persistence in belief that a monster resides there. The evidence in favor of this, from a physical, scientific standpoint, is far from being convincing… but maybe that isn’t “all she wrote” on the matter just yet. Perhaps there is more to the story, and at times there could have been some animal (or to further complicate matters, a variety of them) that helped shape the idea of a long-necked beast over time. We simply don’t know, and in truth, we may never really solve this puzzle.
Yet the mystery, and the convictions of those who have had their own experiences, and who know what they’ve seen (as Dr. Denys Tucker said he did decades ago), still persists.
That, to me, truly is fascinating.
Micah Hanks (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
An evil (and haunted) rocking chair that is connected to an exorcism and a murder is now located at a haunted museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. Even the late Lorraine Warren, who passed away just recently on April 18th, had ties to the haunted chair.
Zak Bagans, who is the star of the hit paranormal series Ghost Adventures, bought the item of furniture that’s nicknamed the “Devil’s Rocking Chair” so that he could display it at his Haunted Museum in Las Vegas.
If you’re not familiar with the “Devil Made Me Do It” case, it happened in the early 1980s when Ed and Lorraine Warren were called in to help a possessed 11-year-old boy named David Glatzel. Over the course of several days, numerous Catholic priests attempted to exorcise the demon out of the boy. During that time, the rocking chair would levitate, rock on its own, and even vanish before reappearing again. Lorraine and David both claimed to have witnessed the devil sitting in the chair.
(Not the rocking chair mentioned in this article)
After an exhausting few days, the demon was finally out of David’s body but what nobody knew is that it jumped into the body of Arne Cheyenne Johnson who was the boyfriend of David’s sister. Arne was living with the family and was also present during the exorcisms.
Several months later, Arne killed his landlord during an argument. It was believed that that was possessed by a demon during the murder and even the Warrens testified on his behalf during his trial. Even with world-renowned experts in the paranormal and demonology backing him up, the judge wasn’t sympathetic and he was convicted of first-degree manslaughter.
This horrific real life story was the focus of the 1983 book titled “The Devil in Connecticut” and is also rumored to be the story line in the upcoming 2020 movie “The Conjuring 3”.
Lorraine Warren
Getting back to the chair, Zak Bagans purchased it for a whopping $67,000 from Carl Glatzel who is David’s brother. Despite belonging to his family since the 1950s, he decided to sell the chair because he didn’t want to take it during a move. And if the chair’s history isn’t creepy enough, it still has stains on it from the holy oil used by Ed Warren when David was possessed.
The chair is said to curse anyone who dares to sit in it. Carl said that those who have sat in the chair ended up with severe back pain and one of those people even ended up having surgery.
And the fact that Zak bought the chair only hours before Lorraine Warren died, well that’s what you call an incredibly eerie coincidence.
Jocelyne LeBlanc (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
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