Image: Olly Moss

Artist Olly Moss, previously featured on Neatorama for his parody of Shepard Fairey, has created a poster summarizing the weaknesses of foes that you regularly encounter. Whether you’re fighting Pokémon, vampires, AT-ATs, or Achilles, this poster will keep you focused on a quick victory.

Link via Geekologie | Artist’s Website

Image: David Malki!

Precise language is the hallmark of intellectual refinement, which is why it’s important to know how to phrase the pluralizations of the supernatural creatures that you encounter on a regular basis. For example, a multitude of yetis is a “flurry of yetis” and more than one nymph is a “delectation of nymphs”. David Malki! (his name is spelled with an exclamation point) of the webcomic Wondermark has a comprehensive guide.

Link via io9

It has been one of the 20th century’s most intriguing artifacts, a shroud measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches, with what appears to be an imprint of Jesus Christ.  The so called Shroud of Turin shows an image of the front and back of a man with long hair, with arms crossed in front, and what appears to be blood from wounds in the side, hands, and feet.

In 1988, carbon dating tests showed the shroud to date between 1260 and 1390 AD, proving a setback for the believers in its authenticity.  Now, according to an Italian scientist, he was able to reproduce the image, undoubtedly proving that the Shroud of Turin was a clever reproduction.

“We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud,” Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.

A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.

Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.

They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.

The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it, a process which removed it from the surface but left a fuzzy, half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud. He believes the pigment on the original Shroud faded naturally over the centuries.

They then added blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains to achieve the final effect.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

This is much bigger than a parlor trick. In her new book published this summer in Israel, the 51-year-old Miami native says she felt the Indonesian tsunami sweeping over the land two months before it happened and sensed Hurricane Katrina pummeling New Orleans. In an interview, Arison says she also "saw the writing on the wall" before the global economic crash. Reading about Arison’s extrasensory perception makes you ache for a heads-up, maybe a blog entry or a tweet or a phone call to Brownie or Greenspan or somebody who might have helped.

Arison explains that she has finally dropped the fear that has held her back from doing more about what she has perceived. Armed with the insight gained through work with Florida-based psychiatrist Brian Weiss, a proponent of regression therapy and the exploration of (take your pick) deep memories or past lives, she says she is ready to go public with her visions and bring together her spiritual and business goals.

Unfortunately, seeing the future isn’t the secret to her wealth. She got rich the old fashioned way … by inheriting her fortunes! Link

(Photo: Andrea Bruce for The Washington Post)

This is a slice of cartoonist Jim Unwin’s diagram of mythical creatures. Unwin, based out of South London, is also noted around the Internet for his “virtual collection” of chairs from The Incredibles and as the designer of the video game Little Big Planet. Full sized image at the link.

Artist’s Website

Link via Popped Culture

How many lobes must a ghoul gulp down
Before he eats the whole brainpan?
How many skulls must a sniper nail
Before her rifle has jammed?
Yes, n’ how many bites must I take of this guy
Before I’ve digested his hand?
The zombies my friend, are rippin’ off your skin
The zombies are rippin’ off your skin

Yes, n’ how many folks must cease to exist
Before it’s called a “killing spree”?
Yes, n’ how many years in this mall can we subsist
‘Til we’re forced by bikers to flee?
Yes, n’ how many towns must shamblers infest
Before they all turn to debris?
The zombies my friend, are rippin’ off your skin
The zombies are rippin’ off your skin

Other songs that he’s rewritten include Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler“, Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U“, “Jack & Diane” by John Mellencamp, and “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen.

Link via Boing Boing

Image by flickr user ingridjee used under creative commons license

The Israeli town of Kirvat Yam is offering a hefty sum to anyone who can provide proof of the existence of the mer-people (meeple?).

“Many people are telling us they are sure they’ve seen a mermaid and they are all independent of each other,” Kirvat Yam town council spokesman Natti Zilberman told Sky News.

“I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way,” he said. “At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail. At least five of us saw it and we all couldn’t believe it.”

The town council, which is offering the reward, insists that the mermaid mania is not just a marketing ploy to attract tourists, though it does hope tourists will come out to try their luck at the $1 million prize.

Link – via arbroath

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by coconutnut.

An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time.

Well, that was fairly obvious. But now there’s hard science to back up common sense, and the academic community is starting to take the undead threat seriously.

Link via io9

Image by flickr user ingridjee used under creative commons license

When the Imperial prison barge Purge–temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels, and thieves–breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned. But when a boarding party from the Purge is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back–bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours nearly all aboard the Purge die in ways too hideous to imagine.

And death is only the beginning.

The Purge’s half-dozen survivors–two teenage brothers, a sadistic captain of the guards, a couple of rogue smugglers, and the chief medical officer, the lone woman on board–will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting aboard the Star Destroyer amid its vast creaking emptiness that isn’t really empty at all. For the dead are rising: soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.

Schreiber has a blog, where you can find pictures of his zombified Storm Troopers staggering around ComicCon, promoting his book.

Link via Double Plus Undead

The application focuses primarily on the United States and its demise, but many problems you could throw into your chosen apocalypse would impact the entire world (e.g. asteroid collision).

What nightmare scenario do you choose?

Interactive Feature Link

Article Link

Polish Czech artist EPOS257 created this street art exhibition in Prague featuring the Orghoi khorkhoi, or the Mongolian Death Worm.

For those of you who are blessedly unaware, the Mongolian death worm is the fiercest creature ever to come out of the Gobi Desert. And just how fierce is the worm? Well, let’s put it like this: it kills by spewing forth sulfuric acid and discharging electricity. (Graboids, anyone?)

Link – via Wooster Collective

Dr. Yuri Labvin, president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists that an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into the planet above Siberia on June 30, 1908.

Most scientists think the blast was caused by a meteorite exploding several miles above the surface. But Labvin thinks quartz slabs with strange markings found at the site are remnants of an alien control panel, which fell to the ground after the UFO slammed into the giant rock.

"We don’t have any technologies that can print such kind of drawings on crystals," Labvin told the Macedonian International News Agency. "We also found ferrum silicate that can not be produced anywhere, except in space."

Link

A promotional shirt for Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. Looks like an ordinary and rather plain t-shirt, right? But flip over the front and pull it over your head….

And you’re wearing a zombie mask! Strangely, they don’t make this shirt in a women’s style.

I’m thinking that Neatorama needs to create one of these. Neatorama logo on the front, flip it up, and you’re wearing an Alex mask.

Link via Topless Robot

Movie fans everywhere should appreciate this once in a life time eBay opportunity -the chance to buy the original Ecto-1 ambulance from the Ghostbusters films. The auction’s over now, but how many of you actually had $45,000 anyway? Personally, I wish I did.

Link Via Laughing Squid

The Voynich Manuscript has been a thusfar untranslated tome filled with an unknown script, written by an unknown author, in some unknown language. Over the years, countless numberss of professional and amateur cryptographers have tested their mettle against this mysterious book and failed.

So what secrets does the Voynich Manuscript contain? What do the strange words and strange illustrations depict? Is it just some elaborate hoax?

The Voynich Manuscript is considered to be ‘The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World’. To this day this medieval artifact resists all efforts at translation.
It is either an ingenious hoax or an unbreakable cipher.

The manuscript is named after its discoverer, the American antique book dealer and collector, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who discovered it in 1912, amongst a collection of ancient manuscripts kept in villa Mondragone in Frascati, near Rome, which had been by then turned into a Jesuit College (closed in 1953).

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by CheeseDuck.

Last week, CNN took a trip through Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. In one of their clips, there seems to be a strange shadowy figure crossing the screen. While I’m reserving my judgment, I couldn’t help but think you readers might have your own opinions on the subject. So, is it a ghost or merely an optical illusion?

Link Via News Bizarre

Forget aliens, the real culprits behind mysterious crop circles in Tasmania are far weirder: stoned wallabies!

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

Link

"I had only three pieces in my skillet, and then as I was flipping it. The first letter was a G, a perfect G; and then I got the O, and I thought to myself, how cool will it be if the third letter was a D," said Simoes.

That third letter was a D, and everyone was in shock in her house.

Link – spotted by Neatoramanaut Gauldar over at the Forum

Previously on Neatorama: August: A Busy Month for Religious Sightings!

Just in time for Mothers’ Day! It’s the Zombie Stomper Heel, which the seller describes as “Perfect for stompin’ on zombies..and men’s hearts.”

Link via Double Plus Undead

"Apparently 400 years ago people put cats behind walls to ward off witches. It clearly works as, since we have lived in the village, we have not seen sight or sound of any witches."

Mr Parson said neighbours have told him the cat was previously found behind the wall 20 years ago, but was put back by another resident. He added: "There has been a local myth, a legend, that there was a cat buried in the house but of course we had no idea where that was. We were also told about a child’s boot left in the house because it was once used as a cobblers’, and was supposed to bring luck.

"I am not a superstitious man but the cat is a little bit of village history and adds charm to the property."

Link (Photo: APEX)

And that’s the crux of one of Schlozman’s arguments: The story changes as the situation grows grimmer. Here, the professor draws on “mirror neuron” theory, which holds that humans are hard-wired to reflect the psychological states of the people around them. (Show a test subject a short film of a face displaying disgust, or pleasure, and regions of the brain associated with those feelings activate in the subject.)

Unable to relate to the hordes of undead, the survivors in zombie films enter a spiral of despair, feeding off the panic and hopelessness of the uninfected people around them.

If you’re in Boston on Monday night, check it out.

Link — Thanks, Tom Jackson!

So here’s the scoop: I’m about to turn 30 – this friday in fact. Also: I love waterslides. Then I found a competition which, if I get enough votes, will send me around the world to the biggest watersldies there are. Best Present. Ever. This is my entry. Did it in an hour.

If you like it and fancy voting me into a state of splashy swooshy ecstasy, Vote for Slideyman in the Barclay Waterslide video competition. Just click the green thumbs up! Link 

Love and Waterslides,
Oscar

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Plinth.

In my experience, when an authority figure denies that there is a problem, the problem has become much, much worse than feared.

Link via Hit & Run

So he asked people to submit their "ghost" photographs in an effort to find scientific explanation of the mysterious, "ghostly" images found in them. Here’s the preliminary result, a list of 10 most remarkable ghost photos as voted by web users:

Link

(This one above is the Tantallon Castle Ghost, as taken by photographer Christopher Aitchison)

Previously on Neatorama: 15 Famous Ghost Photos | Ghostly Angel

"One of my bookmarks is a scuba club in Cozumel – which I have never been, but I’m from Buffalo, NY and its nice to see something tropical once in a while. So point of all this being, I opened the app and saw what looks to be an angelic figure walking through the scuba club. I don’t have any program to zoom in on this image but it’s certainly something interesting. Some say angel. Some say a bunch of coincidences coming together at the moment I opened it. "

… and soon after, the "angel" was gone:

What do you think? Is it an angel or just Buzz Lightyear showing up for a little night dive? Thanks Nick!

Has Google Ocean finally found the missing city of Atlantis? A curious rectangular pattern 100 miles wide was spotted off the coast of Spain, in 17,800 ft deep water:

Situated in an area called the Madeira Abyssal Plane, the grid was spotted by aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford as he browsed through Google Ocean.

Bernie, 38, of Chester, said: “It looks like an aerial map of Milton Keynes. It must be man-made.”

Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival

Check out this award winning short film (it’s only 3 minutes long). It’s a nice shoutout to the gothic horror films of the 20s and 30s. Simple but effective.

Plot Synopsis:

A leasing agent prepares an apartment with a mysterious past for an
afternoon viewing. While awaiting the arrival of the prospective client
the leasing agent learns that she’s not alone in the apartment.

– via fightingowlfilms

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Gukbe2000.

Has anyone ever had that moment when you ran into someone you knew from way back in the day like high school, work or that one night stand you kind of regretted having and the meeting/conversation gets a little awkward? Well, those times can be a bit embarrassing…or in this guys case a bit unnerving and creepy. I do hope Plan 9 doesn’t effect my plans for the weekend.

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride is quite possibly one of the best attractions Disney’s Imagineers have created during the theme park’s history. From the tombstones surrounding the mansion’s decaying exterior to its cobwebbed interior, the whole ride creates a pitch-perfect atmosphere of gothic glee.

This year the attraction celebrates its 40th anniversary. To commemorate the milestone, one of Disney’s favorite artists, Shag, has been commissioned to create original artwork inspired by the ever popular attraction.

>“Represented in the artwork are some of the attraction’s most beloved scenes, including the Stretching Portraits, the Ballroom, the Séance Room, the Attic, Graveyard, among others. This unique collection is a must have for any Shag and Haunted Mansion enthusiast.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.