Mysterious White-Nose Syndrome Is Killing Bats Across The U.S.
Holy Fungus, Batman! Reports David Wrights and Jonann Brady of ABC NEWS:
A mysterious fungus is killing off thousands of bats around the country. Scientists are calling it white-nose syndrome, because of the distinctive white smudges on the noses and wings of infected bats.
White-nose itself doesn’t kill bats, but it disturbs their sleep so that they end their hibernation early. During the winter there are no insects to eat, so the bats literally starve to death.
Bats may be one of Mother Nature’s least cuddly creatures, but they are ecologically important, keeping mosquitos and insects that attack crops in check.
Researchers say the syndrome has killed upward of half a million bats from New England to Virginia.
Image Of Virgin Mary Appears At Florida Hamburger Restaurant
If the Virgin Mary really did materialize in this amazing-sounding restaurant, I think I might be open to Christianity. Report from the Tampa Bay Observer:
Now the Virgin Mary’s likeness has popped up on a stainless steel wall inside Hamburger Mary’s, an Ybor City restaurant with customers more likely to show up for gay karaoke nights and celebrity drag-queen shows than religious revelations.
“These two ladies in one of the booths saw the image during Sunday brunch,” said day manager Melanie Todd, who goes by the name Melanie Minyon (pronounced like mignon) when performing in blue wigs and over-the-top sexy gowns at the restaurant’s nighttime drag shows. “One of them was in tears she was so moved, and they were both carrying on and taking pictures.
“Now, we serve all-you-can-drink Bloody Marys for Sunday brunch,” Todd said, “so I think it’s safe to say there are lots of visions being seen around here…
Who Haunted Betsy Bell?
Betsy Bell
An alternate reading of M.V. Ingram’s history of the infamous Bell Witch haunting suggests a sinister secret at the heart of the mystery. This from Victorian Gothic:
The visitations began with sightings of strange animals about the Bell homestead, and of a unknown girl in green swinging to the limb of a tall oak. Soon there came an unaccountable knocking about the door and exterior walls of the house, followed by scratching and gnawing sounds that searched from room to room. It assaulted the boys in the night, ripping the sheets from their beds and pulling their hair as they tried to sleep. Whenever candles were lit to investigate, they would soon hear screams coming from their sister’s room.
Betsy Bell was 12 years old in 1818 when she became the thrall of an unseen tormentor who, for some three years, relentlessly beat her, mangled her hair, pinched and pricked her…
UFOs Spotted In Scotland?
Possibly the most viewed and discussed UFO incident thus far in early 2012, though of questionable validity:
New sighting of two fast moving UFOs caught on video in Scotland. Recorded on a dashboard mounted camera from one of the Scottish mountain rescue teams.
Alien Face Spotted On Mars?
Someone spotted what they describe as an image of an elongated alien head while using Google Mars to view the planet’s surface. Is it evidence of intelligent life in outer space? Or unintelligent life on Earth? Be the judge:
Strange Growth on Nuclear Waste Might Be “Biological in Nature”
Rob Pavey reports in the Augusta Chronicle:
Savannah River Site scientists are working to identify a strange growth found on racks of spent nuclear fuel collected from foreign governments.
The “white, string-like” material was found among thousands of spent fuel assemblies submerged in deep pools within the site’s L Area, according to a report filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a federal oversight panel.
“The growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterized, but may be biological in nature,” the report said. Savannah River National Laboratory collected a small sample in hopes of identifying the mystery lint — and determining whether it is alive …
Malaysian Guru Offering Tours Of Heaven And Hell
A visit to the afterlife will set you back $61. Via Mind Power News, an account from a reporter who attempted the otherworldly journey:
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’.
The number of Hell travelers was brought down to slightly more than 50, including a dozen reporters from the Chinese dailies and yours truly.
As night fell, the group, all clad in white shirts symbolising purity and sincerity, gathered at Padang Brown in Georgetown for the “tour”.
After some prayers and rituals, we were all set to start our journey at around 10.15pm. My eyes were covered…
UFO Bubble Over Cinisello Balsamo, Italy (Video)
A television report about a translucent UFO in the sky above Cinisello Balsamo, Italy. This was recorded on November 13, 2011 by Antonio Urzi:
Has the “God Particle” (the Higgs Boson) Been Discovered?
Davide Castelvecchi reports in Scientific American:
Rumors are flying about a December 13 update on the search for the long-sought Higgs boson at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider.
The physics buzz reached a frenzy in the past few days over the announcement that the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is planning to release what is widely expected to be tantalizing — although not conclusive — evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle hypothesized to be the origin of the mass of all matter.
Many physicists have already swung into action, swapping rumors about the contents of the announcement and proposing grand ideas about what those rumors would mean, if true. “It’s impossible to be excited enough,” says Gordon Kane, a theoretical physicist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Mysterious Man Bursts Into Flames At Swedish Train Station
Photo: Matthew McPherson (CC)
Via the Herald Sun:
A man suffered severe burns after he seemingly burst into flames outside a Swedish railway station, the Goteborgs-Posten newspaper reported.
A streetcar driver returning from his break yesterday evening saw the man suddenly covered in fire while he was standing outside a vinyl record store at the station. After a while the man, believed to be in his early 40s, started to yell, but shocked passersby just stood and stared, the report said.
The streetcar driver then ran up, ripped his coat off and managed to put the fire out with the help of another man. An ambulance arrived within minutes and took the man to the hospital.
“All we know is that it is a man. We have no knowledge of his identity, his age, any motive or even the circumstances of the incident,” police officer Asa Andersson said. “He is sedated and will probably remain…
Ohio Family Claims To Be Haunted By Ghosts Having Sex
This certainly raises all sorts of questions. CBS Cleveland reports:
An Ohio grandmother and her 4-year-old granddaughter say they have caught ghosts having sex inside their house.
Speaking to CBS Cleveland, Diane Carlisle said this visitation was the latest in a series that goes back to when she first moved to her Euclid home 12 years ago. Her photos prove it, she said.
This time, her granddaughter Kimora saw a man’s bare backside and a woman’s legs with high heels still on. At other times, they’ve seen men, women and children in various rooms and in her backyard.
Even her dog had an experience better to forget than remember. Walking up the stairs from the basement, something caught its hind legs and held them. Now, the dog avoids the basement.
The rest of the family has learned to live with them, Carlisle said.
“[My granddaughter, daughter and I] have grown with them around,” she said. “At times…
Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
I’ve always enjoyed the story of Toynbee Tiles and now there is a documentary:
The (Unexplained) Death of Bats
Via New Times:
The abandoned iron mine at Mine Hill in Roxbury used to provide a winter home for 3,000 bats — the largest bat hibernaculum in the state. The last time Jennie Dickson, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, counted, there were about 100 bats there.
“That’s not good,” she said. For the past five years, the bats of the eastern United States have been dying in like numbers — one of the worst environmental catastrophes in recent years.
What biologists like Dickson knew was that the dying bats could be found with an off-white fungus on their nose and wings. What was causing the die-off was uncertain …
The Largest Galaxy Clusters in the Universe Hint That Something is Behaving Strangely
Via the Daily Galaxy:
The large-scale structure of the Universe appears to be dominated by vast “hyperclusters” of galaxies, according to the new the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, compiled with a telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico. The survey plots the 2D positions of galaxies across a quarter of the sky. The science team has concluded that it could mean that gravity or dark energy — or something completely unknown — is behaving very strangely.
We know that the universe was smooth just after its birth. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the light emitted 370,000 light years after the big bang, reveal only very slight variations in density from place to place. Gravity then took hold and amplified these variations into today’s galaxies and galaxy clusters, which in turn are arranged into big strings and knots called superclusters, with relatively empty voids in between.
On even larger scales, though, cosmological…
Thousands of Dead Birds Wash Ashore in Ontario
Via CTV:
Thousands of dead birds will be collected from an Ontario shoreline on Monday as the province’s Ministry of Natural Resources tries to determine what killed the waterfowl. Officials estimate as many as 6,000 dead birds have washed up on the Georgian Bay’s shoreline.
The carcasses are scattered along a nearly three-kilometre stretch near Wasaga Beach. “You just want to cry,” resident Faye Ego told CTV Toronto on Saturday.
Authorities speculate that the birds may have been killed by a form of botulism after eating dead fish. Locals said they noticed some dead fish on the beach a few weeks ago and a few dead birds earlier in September. During Monday’s cleanup, crews will be trying to tally up the total number of dead birds on the shoreline …
Jesus Appears In Tie Dye T-Shirt
CNN filmed a miraculous discovery by an amateur tie-dyer in Cleveland, one which will restore your faith and awe in our mysterious universe. Proof that Jesus exists and is the son of God, and that he is a hippie:
Woman Mysteriously Ages 50 Years In A Few Days
The immutable laws of science mean that there must be an equal, opposite condition that causes elderly people to spontaneously become young again. Via the Telegraph:
Vietnamese woman Nguyen Thi Phuong now looks like a septugenarian after the rapid aging affliction took hold following an allergic reaction to seafood.
Her sad story began in 2008, when her youthful beauty began to fade over the course of just a few days, leaving her with sagging, wrinkled skin all over her face and body. Until now she has been forced to wear a mask in public to hide her appearance from prying eyes, but now doctors are attempting to establish what caused her sudden and horrifying aging.
Some have argued that the condition is lipodystrophy – a rare syndrome that causes a layer of fatty tissue beneath the surface of the skin to disintegrate while the skin itself continues to grow at a startling pace.
The…
Time Reversal: A Simple Particle Could Reveal New Physics
Shelley Littin writes in Space Daily:
A simple atomic nucleus could reveal properties associated with the mysterious phenomenon known as time reversal and lead to an explanation for one of the greatest mysteries of physics: the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.
The physics world was rocked recently by the news that a class of subatomic particles known as neutrinos may have broken the speed of light.
Adding to the rash of new ideas, University of Arizona theoretical physicist Bira van Kolck recently proposed that experiments with another small particle called a deuteron could lead to an explanation for one of the most daunting puzzles physicists face: the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe. A deuteron is a simple atomic nucleus, or the core of an atom. Its simplicity makes it one of the best objects for experiments in nuclear physics …
“Shadow Land”: Memoir of a Medium
Elizabeth d’Espérance, one of the star mediums of the Victorian era, penned a fascinating memoir filled with rich descriptions of altered states and otherworldly visitations. An often-overlooked, first-person account of the 19th century seance from the perspective of the medium herself, Shadow Land is the subject of a recent review at VictorianGothic.org:
Elizabeth d’Espérance grew up in a tired old house on the East End of London, filled with dark, oak-paneled halls and desolate, forbidden rooms that compelled her to explore. “I was very fond of wandering about from one empty room to another,” she wrote,
“and of sitting with my dolls on the broad low window seats, whence I would be fetched with an exclamation of horror and wonder by our servant, who considered my liking for the haunted rooms as “uncanny” and unnatural, threatening me with the ghosts and their vengeance if I persisted in invading their domains by myself.
“I could never quite understand…
Irishman Dies Of Spontaneous Combustion (So Rules A Court of Law)
A most bizarre find from Annalee Newitz of io9.com:
A man in Galway, Ireland apparently died of spontaneous combustion last year in December. At least, according to a court ruling this week. Michael Faherty’s death had been a mystery because coroners and police couldn’t explain how the fire that killed him only seemed to have burned the man and his immediate surroundings.
Spontaneous combustion occurs when a person suddenly catches on fire without any external source of fire causing the blaze. There have been only a few hundred cases recorded throughout the world. The Irish Times reports: West Galway corner Dr Ciarán McLoughlin said he had never encountered such a case in the 25 years that he had been investigating deaths in the region …
