A man who has allegedly come back from the dead after being murdered is being fought over by two families, each claiming him as their own son in Transkei. The man is being called Siviwe Ntwalana, a man who was murdered five years ago and also Lakitha Zokufa after another deceased son who allegedly came back from the dead. The story is too strange for fiction.

The man in dispute is currently residing at Mthatha General Hospital Mental Clinic under the name Lakitha Zokufa.

Apparently the man with two names’ testimony, when present, is not applicable in this situation, but it seems he isn’t particularly sure himself which of the families is correct. Interestingly, there is no real gain for either family financially for getting their son back, and both are convinced enough by their son’s presence that they are willing to pay for the otherwise strange man’s medical fees.

Both parties are also so convinced that they are willing to pay for DNA tests to find out who the man is truly related to, and they’re willing to match his fingerprints as well. This case is truly strange as both seem to have a convincing story leading their son back home to them. It seems this is one of the strangest cases of mistaken identity ever put forward, as both believe the man is their son and neither can explain how he is here.

Read More: Unexplainable.net

You can’t find New Island on most maps of the Indian Ocean because its location was a secret for most of the twentieth century. But now one man has chronicled the long, strange history of its ancient inhabitants.

The ruins you see here come from a group known locally as the “Old People,” who probably started living on the island 43,500 years ago. In the modern age, the island was discovered in the late eighteenth century by two convict ships that crashed there on the way to Australia. One of those ships was filled with hundreds of female convicts, who eventually founded their own civilization on the island, based on sexual equality and paganism. Today the island is a bustling place, full of trains and welcoming visitors.

Unfortunately, you can only visit via a website created from the imagination of Lee (Rusty) Mothes, a worldbuilder who loves to draw maps and island landscapes. New Island is a place he’s been imagining for over a decade, and he finally put all his pictures and ideas about it into one place, which reads like a work of fantasy travelogue.

Read More of Annalee Newitz’s article “The Lost Culture Of New Island Is 43,500 Years Old” on io9.com

By 2080, anyone with a direct interest in learning how Dr. David Kelly died, will themselves be dead.

That’s how an Oxford coroner reacted to a recent ruling ordering the details of the former United Nations weapons inspector’s death locked away for 70 years, according to a Mail Online report.

Kelly’s story, however, was gravely important in 2003, just before he was found dead in the woods behind his home in Oxfordshire, U.K. As the BBC revealed in the wake of his passing, he had been the key source behind a story claiming intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was “sexed up.”

Read More: RAW Story

Her name, we think, is Ellie Light, or maybe that’s a composite. Claiming to be a local resident, Ellie has been writing letters to editors all over the world defending President Obama against his critics.

In nearly-identical letters to scores of publications, Light writes in defense of the president. Since news of her serial letter-writing campaign surfaced in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, one sleuth has tracked 70 sightings of Ellie Light letters.

This one ran in Ohio’s Chillicothe Gazette, a template for the others: “Today, the president is being attacked as if he were a salesman who promised us that our problems would wash off in the morning,. He never made such a promise. It’s time for Americans to realize governing is hard work and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything.”

Read More: LA Times

A longtime tribute to Edgar Allan Poe may have come to an end with the absence of the “Poe Toaster,” who for more than half a century has marked the poet’s birthday by laying roses and a bottle of cognac at his original grave site.

This is the first time since Jan. 19, 1949 that the person, whose identity is unknown, failed to arrive, said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House.

“I was very annoyed,” he said. “I’ve been doing this since 1977, and there was no indication he wasn’t going to show up,” Jerome said.

The curator said the toaster usually arrives between midnight and 5:30 a.m. He said he arrived at Westminster Hall at 10:30 p.m., because one year the toaster left his offerings at 11:30 p.m.

He sometimes kneels at the tombstone or puts his hands on it, Jerome said. “There’s no elaborate ceremony — it’s very short and touching,” he said.

Read More: Baltimore Sun

What is an appropriate atheist philosophy of death?

And how should atheists be talking about death with believers?

As regular readers know, I’ve been doing a project on Facebook: the Atheist Meme of the Day, in which I write pithy, Facebook-ready memes explaining one aspect of atheism or exploding one myth about it, and asking people to pass the memes on if they like. (BTW, if you’re on Facebook, friend me!)

Some of my Memes of the Day have generated disagreement from some atheists. Which is fine, of course. I don’t expect or want all atheists to agree about everything. Quite the contrary: one of the great things about atheism is that we have no central dogma that we all have to agree on, and no central authority that we all have to obey.

But the memes that have generated the most vocal and vigorous pushback have surprised me. They have consistently been the ones about death: the ones trying to show that a godless view of death can offer some degree of solace and meaning; the ones that begin, “Atheism does have comfort to offer in the face of death.” Whenever I write one of these, I can almost guarantee that within a few hours — usually within a few minutes — someone will be complaining that the comforting philosophy I’m presenting isn’t comforting at all. Or even that atheism can’t possibly present a philosophy of death that could compete with the comfort offered by religion… with the apparent implication that it’s either deceptive or deluded to pretend that this is possible, and that we shouldn’t even try.

Read More of Greta Christina’s article on Alternet

Few events have captured the American imagination more than the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The American public and our greatest intellectuals have poured over the evidence over and over again. It nags at national consciousness like a wound that won’t heal because you keep picking at it.

The solution to the problem always lies on the tip of our collective tongue. Of course, a great deal of the evidence is locked up, hidden away in the vaults of the intelligence community. This article will not attempt to shed new light on the assassination.

Much of the information presented here is available elsewhere, and has been repeated ad nauseum. I wish to concentrate on the subject of the man Lee Harvey Oswald, a singularly fascinating figure in American history.

Full Article at Black Sun Gazette

Turning on their TVs during the long holiday weekend, Iraqis were greeted by a familiar if unexpected face from their brutal past: Saddam Hussein. The late Iraqi dictator is lauded on a mysterious satellite channel that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar’s anniversary of his 2006 execution.

No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it’s Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus, Syria named Mohammed Jarboua, who claimed to be its chairman.

Viewers of al-Lafeta TV on Saturday saw the phrase “Raise your sword” next to a portrait of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The channel began broadcasting on Friday, the first day of an important holiday of the Islamic calendar, and the anniversary of Saddam’s execution three years ago.

The Saddam channel, he said, “didn’t receive a penny from the Baathists” and is for Iraqis and other Arabs who “long for his rule.” Jarboua has clearly made considerable efforts to hide where it’s aired from and refuses to say who is funding it besides “people who love us.”

Iraqis surprised to find Saddam on their TVs responded with the kind of divided emotions that marked his reign.

Read More: AP via AOL News

What could be the only footage of an actual human headshrinking ceremony in South America — which shows heads being boiled and dried — may be real, says an explorer in a new documentary.

“The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.”

The stench in the air near East 123rd Street and Imperial Avenue left residents baffled for years.

Drain pipes were flushed. A sewer line was replaced. But the smell still lingered.

Some residents believed the overpowering odor came from a 57-year-old sausage shop on the corner. Others were still convinced it was the sewers.

Last week, police discovered the source of the odor — it was beyond residents’ worst fears. At least six decomposing bodies lie in and around the house at 12205 Imperial Ave. The corpses could have been accumulating there for years, authorities said.

Anthony Sowell, 50, is being held in City Jail on a rape warrant as detectives try to determine if he killed the six women. All the bodies found inside the home Thursday and Friday have been identified as black females. Five died by strangulation, according to police. The last died of unknown causes.

Read more in the Cleveland Plain Dealer