HOME |
RSS | 
Danger Room tells us of a claim made by Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings, a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling government agents, that President Obama was part of a CIA mission to explore Mars beginning in 1980. They say he was teleported to the red planet.
Obama wasn’t the only one making the otherworldly voyage. As “Barry Soetero,” the 19-year-old Obama was one of 10 youths selected to secretly teleport to and from Mars, forming a band of interplanetary Teen Titans. Regina Dugan, the director of Darpa, was another member.
Between 1981 and 1983, Obama is supposed to have visited Mars twice, by way of a teleportation chamber called a “jump room.” Basiago, a fellow chrononaut, told the website Exopolitics that he saw Obama “walk back to the jump room from across the Martian terrain.” To acknowledge his comrade, Obama is said to have told Basiago, “We’re here” — apparently, “with some sense of fatalism.”
It is not known what exactly Obama did on Mars. (Socializing Martian health care, perhaps? Building a birth-certificate printing press?) His mission was a perilous one, according to Basiago and Stillings. The CIA wished to “establish a defense regime protecting the Earth from threats from space” as well as a legal claim to “territorial sovereignty,” making Obama something of a Martian conquistador. Presumably, Obama’s CIA handlers needed him to “acclimate Martian humanoids and animals to their presence” in order to secure the U.S.-Martian alliance. (We’ll bet you weren’t even aware of Martian animals.)
“Simply put, your task is to be seen and not eaten,” an elder chrononaut, retired Army Maj. Ed Dames, is alleged to have told a young Obama.
A spokesman for the National Security Council says that Obama has never been to Mars. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Arikia Millikan)
Even typographers need to prepare for the inevitable rising of the undead. To encourage them, Avery Oldfield, Jack Inscoe and Amanda Dockery made a typeface that reminds them to get ready with every word that they read. Visit the link and type in your own text to see what your words look like in fetid corpses.
Link -via Jeremy Durocher
Then visit our Zombie Shop to find the right gift for the walking dead in your life.
Comments Off
A talking weasel on the Isle of Man was an international media sensation back in the 1930s. It was known as “the Dalby Spook” locally, but the weasel called itself Gef. The weasel -or possibly a mongoose- lived on the farm of James and Margaret Irving.
The strange events began in autumn 1931, when the Irvings noticed an unusual animal in their farmyard, being, as Price’s correspondent described: “similar in appearance to a weasel, with small body, long bushy tail, flat nose, and yellow in colour”.[3] Oddly, this animal did not appear to alarm the chickens. Later, it was seen inside the house, as James Irving described: “This eerie weasel, as I thought he might be, then began to keep us awake at night by blowing, spitting and growling behind the matchboard partition of the lower rooms…”[4]
The entity quickly progressed to something more sophisticated. Having learned to mimic various animal noises, it then began to repeat nursery rhymes, and within a short while – having built up a sufficiently wide vocabulary – it could converse with the family. Its voice is said to have been loud, clear, and one or two octaves higher than a human’s. Other witnesses describe it as a “very high, screechy sort”.[5]
Initial news reports spoke of the ‘man-weasel’ farm,[6] and indeed, the entity itself, when asked who or what he was, would frequently reply: “I am the ghost of a weasel, and I will haunt you with weird noises and clanking chains.”[7] It was only later on that he described himself as “just a little extra, extra clever mongoose”.[8]
Newspapers printed stories about Gef, although when reporters visited the farm, he tended to disappear. Some considered him a poltergeist or a shape-shifter. It was later thought that the Irving’s teenage daughter, Voirrey, provided the voice of Gef, but she never admitted to a hoax. Link
The following post consists of two articles from Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.
For some reason, Great Britain has more than its share of mansions, estates, and old homes that are reported to be haunted.
Leeds Castle is said to be haunted by a dog. He pays no attention to the people who visit the castle, but he’s said to bring bad luck to anyone who spots him. (Image credit: Flickr user Gauis Caecilius)
St. Donat’s Castle is a 12th-century Welsh castle that’s now a boarding school …and they say a ghost panther stalks the corridors. In a parlor, a piano plays itself …even when the lid is closed.
Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire supposedly has a mischievous spirit that loves to fling open doors. Billionaire J. Paul Getty said it once terrified him by barging into the room.
Chatham House is haunted by the ghost of the “Hanging Judge” George Jeffreys, the former Chief Justice of England who liked to hand out death sentences. Jeffreys is said to walk around Chatham House in his black judicial robes, carrying a bloody bone.
(East Riddlesden Hall image credit: Flickr user floato)
East Riddlesden Hall in Yorkshire hosts the “Grey Lady.” She reportedly paces up and down the stairs, looking for her lover, who was sealed in a room by her jealous husband and left there to die.
Dover Castle is said to be haunted by a boy murdered during the Napoleanic Wars. The headless ghost stalks the halls, drumming.
![[Raby Castle] The Castle](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/225/452255099_eaf730604f.jpg)
(Raby Castle image credit: Flickr user Mark Loveridge)
Raby Castle near Durham is the home to the “Old Hellcat” -a ghoulish old woman who sits in a chair, knitting. (If you get close enough, you can feel the heat coming off her glowing red knitting needles.)
more …
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.
Have you ever participated in a séance or tried to contact the “spirits” using a Ouija board? You probably don’t realize it, but the modern conception of communicating with the dead only dates back to the late 1840s. Here’s the story of the hoax that started spirit-mania.
BUMP IN THE NIGHT
In 1848 a devout Methodist farmer named John Fox and his family began to hear strange noises in their Hydesville, New York, farmhouse. The noises continued for weeks on end, until finally on one particularly noisy evening, Mrs. Fox ordered the two children, 13-year-old Margaret and 12-year-old Kate, to stay perfectly quiet in bed while Mr. Fox searched the house from top to bottom. His search shed no light on the mystery, but afterward, Margaret sat up in bed and snapped her fingers, exclaiming, “Here, Mr. Split-foot, do as I do!”
“The reply was immediate,” Earl Fornell writes in The Unhappy Medium: Spiritualism and the Life of Margaret Fox. “The invisible rapper responded by imitating the number of the girl’s staccato responses.”
Mrs. Fox began to make sense of what she was hearing. “Count ten,” she told the spirit. It responded with ten raps. So she asked several questions; each time the spirit answered correctly. Next, Mrs. Fox asked the spirit if it would rap if a neighbor was present; the spirit said yes. So Mr. Fox ran and got a neighbor, the first of more than 500 neighbors and townspeople who visited over the next few weeks to watch Margaret and Kate interact with the spirit. As long as either Margaret or Kate was present, the spirit was willing to communicate.
MURDER MYSTERY
Using an alphabetic code that Margaret and Kate devised, “Mr. Split-foot” explained that in his Earthly life he’d been a peddler, murdered by the person who lived in the farmhouse. The spirit identified the killer as “C. R.” Some citizens tracked down a man named Charles Rosana, who’d lived in the house years earlier, but with no body and no evidence other than the testimony of a ghost, he was never charged.
more …
Comments Off 
While I always though vampires were kind of cool, I find zombies to be a lot scarier. As it turns out, it might just be because I’m a bit liberal. According to this graph, more zombie stories are released when Republicans are in office and more vampire tales come out when Democrats are in power. If you’re wondering why one political viewpoint would fear either creature more than the other, then this Cracked article can fill you in on the psychological aspects.
I suppose that there’s nothing really extraordinary about this series of photos celebrating the engagement of Juliana Sunmi Park and Benjamin Jinsuk Lee. But they’re so touchingly romantic that you should definitely take a look.
Link -via Comics Alliance
Update: Since the original link has gone to password protection, see the pictures at the photographer’s site. Link
There are certain words that only exist in one language, evolved from one culture and do not translate into any other. Here is a list of some of the most interesting including my favorite, this Russian word:
Toska Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
Stop it–if you roll your eyes too hard you won’t be able to read the rest of the post. So the Sanger Paranormal Society had its annual Bigfoot stalk-down and–what are the odds??–the super-elusive Bigfoot they were looking for was kind enough to leave evidence right on a vehicle owned by the society’s founder, Jeff Gonzalez.
During the Memorial Day weekend—when society members make their annual Bigfoot-hunting expedition in the Sierra National Forest in California—Gonzalez had to abandon the truck because of snow. Either one or three days later, he returned to the truck and discovered that—lo and behold!!—something had left “stubby fingerprints and smudges,” including face marks, all over the windows, like some kind of rude slob. A forensics photographer took some pictures and also some samples for DNA testing.
At a press conference in Fresno the other day, Society members displayed the smudge-picture evidence. They are now either seeking donations to test their DNA samples, or waiting for a DNA lab to volunteer its services. Whichever the case, Gonzalez won’t trust the samples with just any old lab:
Previous attempts to analyze potential Bigfoot DNA haven’t resulted in anything that could be considered as the scientific find of the ages. That’s why Gonzalez is being very careful about who he’ll turn over his reported Bigfoot DNA to.
“We need somebody to come forward to take this DNA and get it mapped,” he told AOL. “Since nobody knows what a Bigfoot is, there’s no available DNA for it. But by testing this DNA, by process of elimination we can find out if it was a bear, gorilla, baboon or something else.
I can hardly wait to find out if it was really Bigfoot! Also, the truck was full of food and the area in which it was abandoned is home to bears. But I’m pretty sure these Sanger guys are onto something.
Link | Image: Universal Pictures
The city council of Leicester, UK, has twenty days to respond to this Freedom of Information Act request by resident Robert Ainsley:
Leicester City Council has 20 working days to answer but its head of information governance, Lynn Wyeth, took to local radio yesterday to address the issue.
She said: “We’ve had a few wacky ones but this one did make us laugh.
“It’s one of those questions that you could do a one-liner saying there is nothing specifically in the emergency plan to state a response to a zombie invasion.
So either the government officials are either (1) guilt of gross negligence or (2) hiding their true plan — one that probably provides for the security of selected elites.
Link | Image: United Film Distribution
Supposedly these vampire hunting kits were sold to travelers to protect them from our fanged, blood sucking friends. See the full gallery at the link.
Travelers in the 19th century would purchase ‘vampire hunting kits’ in preparation for their travels to Eastern Europe. The kits would contain a wooden stake, Bible, crucifix, pistol with lead bullets, gunpowder, garlic and glass vials that held various concoctions to ward off vampires.
The Centers for Disease Control, an agency of the United States government, finally got with the times and decided to warn the public about the dangers of zombie attacks. Here’s what the CDC plans to do during an outbreak, assuming that its staff shows up for work:
If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated.
This sounds a trifle naïve. Anyway, the website then offers tips on how to prepare your family to live through this kind of unnatural disaster. There is one, huge, glaring oversight: no weapons. There’s not a single mention of the utility of guns, machetes, and such during the most obvious time when they will be absolutely necessary to survive.
But that’s probably more a job for FEMA. Maybe the CDC isn’t the place to go for survival advice.
P.Z. Myers spotted this notice somewhere. The irony speaks for itself. Link -via Boing Boing
This French video shows an interview with a clairvoyant. The word clairvoyant comes from the French words for “see clearly”. -via Arbroath
Just in time for the aflocalypse, here’s John Cuneo‘s new children’s book to explain the mystery of the avian mass death around the world:
Like many countries, Romania is in a recession so it’s doing whatever it can to raise revenue. This year, the Romanian government identified a new source of heretofore untaxed profession: witches!
Naturally, the witches aren’t taking this laying down:
Queen witch Bratara Buzea, 63, who was imprisoned in 1977 for witchcraft under Ceausescu’s repressive regime, is furious about the new law.
Sitting cross-legged in her villa in the lake resort of Mogosoaia, just north of Bucharest, she said Wednesday she planned to cast a spell using a particularly effective concoction of cat excrement and a dead dog, along with a chorus of witches.
"We do harm to those who harm us," she said. "They want to take the country out of this crisis using us? They should get us out of the crisis because they brought us into it.""My curses always work!" she cackled in a smoky voice. She sat next to her wood-burning stove, surrounded by potions, charms, holy water and ceramic pots.
Alison Mutler of the Associated Press wrote this story published on MSNBC: Link (Photo: Vadim Ghirda/AP) – via Boing Boing
I don’t know about you guys, but I am super excited to catch the new Harry Potter movie! While critics of the series often complain that Rowling didn’t come up with most of the magical aspects of the story herself, they seem to be missing the point: rather than creating an alternate world where magic is real and wild beasts roam the countryside, she created a mythology that allows these fantasy elements to exist in our world, just out of sight of ordinary muggles like ourselves. To create this goal, it actually makes sense that she would use mythologies of cultures from around the world, as it allows the mythologies to work with the stories –muggles have seen dragons and unicorns in the past, but the wizarding community has hidden these things so well in the last centuries that muggles now accept them to be nothing more than stories.
To create this world within our world, Rowling had to do a lot of research into an array of mythologies and stories from all over the globe. She once explained, “children know that I didn’t invent unicorns, but I’ve had to explain frequently that I didn’t actually invent hippogriffs.” So what are some of the mythologies incorporated into her stories? Lets take a look, starting with those hippogriffs.
Image via Ben Dodson [Flickr]
Fans of the series are undoubtedly familiar with Buckbeak, the hippogriff that Harry and Hermoine saved from execution, but as Rowling pointed out, many people don’t realize that hippogriffs have been around much longer than the book series. The creatures entered the public consciousness in medieval times, where they were said to be a cross between a griffin and a horse. The cross breed creature was said to be even stronger, faster and more intelligent than either of its parents and could travel as fast as lightening. Fortunately, they were said to be much easier to tame than griffins, which is why Buckbeak was so willing to be ridden in the novels.
Hippogriffs were exceptionally rare beasts, largely because griffins considered horses to be food. In fact, the concept was considered to be so outlandish that “to mate griffins with horses” was a similar expression to “when pigs fly.” For this reason, hippogriffs were considered a symbol not only of impossibility, but of intense love.
Grindylows were one of the many dark creatures Harry had to face during his competition in the Triwizard Tournament. The nasty little creatures are known to live in the bottom of Hogwarts Lake and try to pull anyone who comes into their territory down to the bottom of the lake.
These creatures originally started being talked about in the English counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, but their myth spread throughout England and Ireland, where they were used to scare children from pools, marshes and ponds in order to prevent drowning. Stories said that if a child came too close to the edge, the grindylows would grab them and pull them down to the water’s darkest depths.
Image via Giovanni Dall’Orto [Wikipedia]
The basilisk that almost took down Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets was monstrously large, stretching almost 50 feet, and at least 50 years old. Rowling credits the creation of the basilisk to Herpo the Foul, who hatched a chicken egg under a toad.
Classic tales of basilisks vary quite a bit from those of the Harry Potter universe. While both of the creatures can kill with a single glance and are exceptionally poisonous, Rowling’s 50 foot serpent is quite a bit larger than traditional basilisks, which were no more than five feet long (although they seemed to get longer as the stories aged). Notably, the creation of a basilisk in classic stories is through a rooster hatching a toad egg, if a toad hatched a chicken egg, a cockatrice (a similar creature with wings) would be born.
more …
Believe them or not, cases of demonic possessions have persisted since the dawn of religion. Road Tickle blog has an intriguing post about 4 strange cases of demonic possession.
For example, take a look at this one of Anneliese Michel (1976, actually – not exactly the Middle Ages), which was the basis of the horror movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose
She soon had her suspicions confirmed when voices told her she was damned. The voices were paired with hallucinations during prayer. Though originally marked up to her epilepsy her behavior became increasingly bizarre; the young began eating coal, spiders, and licking up her own urine. While the 1970s aren’t exactly the bastion of the medical age it’s safe to assume that this stopped being epilepsy after the second spider-urine smoothie.
After journeying on a pilgrimage with another woman, it was determined that Anneliese was possessed when she was unable to pass by an icon of Christ. An exorcist was granted permission to attempt to exorcise the demon believed to posses her. This continued for almost a year in tandem with psychiatric treatments. Eventually Anneliese chose to rely strictly on the the exorcism sessions over any other medical treatments. These sessions proved to do very little, and on July 1st, 1976, Anneliese died in her sleep. An autopsy proved the cause of death to be starvation; during the exorcisms Anneliese refused to eat, choosing to die as a means to atone for the wayward youth.
Previously on Neatorama: The Stories Behind Four Exorcisms
One evening in 1971, a Spanish woman looked down at her cement floor and saw what appeared to be a face staring back at her. Thus started the strange event in history known as the Belmez Faces:
She recruited her son and husband to get rid of the disturbing image. They took a pickaxe to the cement, removed the face, and poured new cement over the hole. However, after doing so, the face eventually reappeared, and went on to be accompanied by more faces throughout the house. Word spread, and the house became an area of great interest for paranormal enthusiasts and skeptics alike. Many regarded the phenomena as among the most bizarre and substantial cases of paranormal activity ever recorded (after all, so many visitors flocked to the house that the faces ended up being seen by countless people). Skeptics, on the other hand, were fairly certain that some form of trickery must have been involved.
Samples of the cement were taken, and over the years, they have been subjected to various studies. Although no obvious evidence of trickery has ever been found, studies have indicated that some slight traces
of chemical elements which may show that the faces were somehow painted onto the cement were found. Although many skeptics took this revelation as proof that the images had been faked, it should be noted that the process of creating them would still be intricate and, apparently, involve a strong knowledge of chemical compounds. The family that resided in the home did not seem to possess such knowledge.What is even more notable about this particular case is that, over the years, faces have continued to appear in the home.
Read this and two more history of bizarre images over at Weird Worm: Link
What do you get when you mix Chatroulette with an ad for the horror movie The Last Exorcism? A brilliant viral marketing, that’s what!
IZ Reloaded has the video clip of some unsuspecting Chatrouletters chatting with a sexy girl that turned out to be more than they bargained for: Link [embedded YouTube]
The sad truth about witches is that you don’t have to be one -or even believe in them- to be executed for witchcraft. Read about eight women in history who each paid the price for what others thought she was doing. Some, such as Catherine Monvoisin, may have been guilty of other crimes.
Also known as La Voisin, Catherine Monvoisin was a midwife and French sorceress who was a personage in the Affaire des Poisons, in which several members of the aristocracy were executed for witchcraft and poisoning. She was a well-known practitioner of medicine, provider of abortions and maker of love powders and potions, and she served many famous Parisian women. Monvoisin was burned at the stake in 1680.
Link -Thanks, Mike Vogt!
There have been about 200 reported cases of spontaneous human combustion reported in history, in which a person was killed by a fire that could not be explained otherwise. What happened? And is there a scientific explanation for these cases?
The earliest case of SHC that we know of today comes from a Danish anatomist named Thomas Bartholin who in 1663 described an occurrence in Paris where a woman was burnt completely to ashes in her sleep while the straw mattress upon which she was laying remained unmarred by the flames that had consumed her. Since the reporting of this case of spontaneous human combustion to the whole of the European community, many others have been recorded in history. Yet, they tend to have a similar pattern in the resulting accounts. The victim is generally found almost completely consumed by a then died out fire in his or her home or place of residence.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by vedran84.
Computer studies of ocean floors around the world, particularly the area known as The Bermuda Triangle, reveal evidence of massive methane explosions in the past. For years, believers in the paranormal, aliens, and other outlandish theories pointed to the the disappearance of ships and aircraft as an indicator of mysterious forces at work in the “Devil’s triangle.” Scientists have finally pointed the rest of us to a more plausible cause.
The presence of methane hydrates indicates enormous eruptions of methane bubbles that would swamp a ship, and projected high into the air- take out flying airplanes, as well.
Any ships caught within the methane mega-bubble immediately lose all buoyancy and sink to the bottom of the ocean. If the bubbles are big enough and possess a high enough density they can also knock aircraft out of the sky with little or no warning. Aircraft falling victim to these methane bubbles will lose their engines-perhaps igniting the methane surrounding them-and immediately lose their lift as well, ending their flights by diving into the ocean and swiftly plummeting.
Link (image: NOAA’s National Ocean Service [Flickr])
The problem with being dead and buried – besides all that rotting flesh stuff – is that it’s darned lonely to spend all of eternity by oneself.
Thankfully, inventor Jeff Dannenberg took care of the problem with this nifty and patented invention:
An apparatus and method for generating post-burial audio communications from surviving friends and loved ones in a casket by providing a burial
casket, and providing an electronic audio communication system for placement in said casket to automatically electronically generate post-burial communications in said casket.
This way, you can continue wish the dead "Happy Birthday," "Merry Christmas," "Happy Anniversary" until the end of time. Or until the battery runs out, whichever is first.
Link – Thanks Martin g!
Previously on Neatorama: Patently Silly Animal Patents | Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents
Just your average smoggy day in Chin … wait a minute! What’s that? A triple sun?
On July 26th, the Chinese city of Leshan witnessed a phenomenon that’s puzzling experts and led one Chinese paper to ask this morning if it was a UFO: What appeared to be three suns in the sky at once. Assuming this didn’t come from a close encounter of the third kind or a three wolf moon passing through a double rainbow, what could it have been?
Our pal Geekosystem explains: Link
Deliver Me To Hell is an interactive zombie movie that contains the things you love: zombies, violence, mild gore, scantily-clad women, iphones, and pizza. You decide which directions the plot takes, and if you don’t like how the story turns out, just start over again. I wish life were like that. Produced by Hell Pizza of New Zealand. Link (embedded YouTube clip)
Is your cat missing? Forget Ace Ventura
The reality of this group of mostly women (who prefer the term animal communicator since they speak directly to the animals and don’t use any medium like tarot cards) is quite a bit more involved than finding animals stuck on a low rung of Buddhism’s reincarnation cycle or feeling dinner’s pain.
Most of Kohn’s work, in fact, deals with the living. After chatting with hundreds of animals, she has performed a variety of services, including locating pets that have wandered off, getting a finicky iguana to eat and counseling a horse prone to anxiety attacks.
The animal doesn’t even have to be present for Kohn to chat them up.
After "grounding" herself with a Kabbalistic prayer, getting her prayer stone (a quartz) and touching base with her animal spirit guides, she can be shown a photo or even just talk to the pet owner to make a connection.
Kohn then silently projects messages to the pet, all while taking notes on the words, pictures or feelings the pet sends back.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos by Zeon Santos.
Since I was a kid, I loved ghosts and haunted houses and Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has always been one of my favorites and I’m sure many of you agree. But what do you really know about the mansion and the stories behind its layout and design? The history behind the ride is almost as cool as the experience itself, so for today’s Neatorama Facts, I give you an inside look at the Haunted Mansion.
Image via Passport to Dreams.
The Haunted Mansion wasn’t open until 1969, but the idea was kicked around since the beginning. In the one of the original park designs created by artist Harper Goff showed a crooked street coming off of Main Street and winding past a church and a graveyard and leading to a run-down mansion on a hill. The idea wasn’t incorporated at first, but Disney liked the idea and assigned imaginer Ken Anderson to build a story around the drawing and create a full experience around it.
Because plans for New Orleans square were currently in progress, it was decided that the ride would be built in the style of an antebellum manor. The original souvenir map that showed New Orleans Square promised that the area would include a thieves market, a pirate wax museum and a haunted house when it was open.
The first drawings for the mansion showed it overgrown with weeds, filled with swarms of bats and having boarded up doors and windows. While this certainly would have set the mood for a scary adventure, Disney hated the idea of a run-down building in his park and insisted, “we’ll take care of the outside and let the ghosts take care of the inside.”
When working on the original plans for the mansion, Anderson developed a number of wonderfully chilling tales, the main of which revolved around a ghost of a sea captain who killed his nosy bride and then hung himself. He was even hoping to incorporate some of the monsters used in Universal films. Most of this ended up not materializing because Disney wanted to take things in another direction.
For the special effects, Rolly Crump and Yale Grace were hired to create creepy effects that would be far from obvious. The pair researched real haunting stories, Greek myths and monster movies and then started building elaborate effects in their private studio. The effects got to be so good that they scared some of the cleaning crew. Thinking that was funny, they hooked up all the effects to a motion sensor so it would all go off when the cleaning crew entered the room. After that, the crew refused to enter the area and they had to clean up their own studio.
Tired of dealing with the rising number of accidents on the road, Indian police came upon a novel (and they say, surprisingly effective) approach: harnessing the positive-power of pyramids!
The stretch of the Mumbai-Kolkata National Highway near Nagpur city was among 12 spots identified as most accident-prone but now the stretch is considered safe. “No accidents have occurred in these accident-prone spots in the past six months,” Bernama quoted Nagpur Commissioner of Police (Rural) Yashasvi Yadav as saying.
“I am no great propagator of Vasthu Sastra but, in the public interest, we will try to adopt new ideas,” he said. If the experiment proved successful, police would install Vasthu pyramids in 30 to 40 “killer” stretches, he added.
This may sound illogical to some people but not for Nagpur police who are serious about saving lives on the roads. The number of accidents in the city, home to 2.5 million people, had been increasing since 2003, with about 500 human casualties on the road a year.
“Most accidents happen because of the negative energy surrounding these places. Suicides, accidents and murders happen when people are surrounded by negative energy. Using pyramids, we can try to correct the negative energy,” said Vasthu expert Sushil Fatehpuria, 50, who offered his service for free to Nagpur police.
Acupuncturist Pham Thi Hong managed to free three convicted rapists with her Virginity Detectin’® method:
"They all had small red spots on the back of their ears," said Hong, 54. "The spots should have disappeared if they had had sex. My many years of experience told me that these men did not have sex before." [...]
She says she was first taught how to determine if a man has ever had sex by feeling their pulse. She later developed the ear-spot method on her own. She says the spot will only disappear after heterosexual intercourse and is not affected by gay sex or masturbation.
