Month: July 2014

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Dead Grandmother Sends “Selfie” from Hell

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This is the picture that Gina Mihai of Romania received on her cell phone that she believes was sent by her dead grandmother. “When I switched the phone on I was horrified to see my dead grandmother’s face. She had what looked like a snake around her neck, and the whole image looked as if it had been taken through a hole, like it was shot through a tear in the fabric that separates the living from the dead. I took it to a fortune teller who told me that my grandmother was sending me a message from the other side, the snake around her neck was a symbol of the fact that she was being punished in the other life for some sin. By contacting us she was telling us that if we were to pray for her, we would still be able to save her soul.”

In Romania once a year there is a feast called “The Service of Alms” where Romanians give food to their ancestors in the graveyard. Gina apparently hadn’t made the effort since her grandmother died 3 years previously and received the photo while she was making doughnuts. Since then, she’s been bringing doughnuts every day out to grammie’s grave to placate her afterlife tormenters. A relative said, “The village priest told me that we need to do 40 Days of Alms to make up for those that we missed and we are doing it now. We want to help her soul to be saved.”

Hmm, I wonder if there’s an instagram filter for hell? Someone might want to get on that. My first step would have been to check to see if I had a trade-in available with my phone contract. Either way, free ghost doughnuts! It seems win-win to me.

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Millionaire Guru Kept Frozen by Followers Who Argue: Dead or Asleep?

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Although doctors in India say that wealthy guru Shri Ashutosh Maharaj is definitely dead after a heart attack, his followers aren’t so sure. They say he may be ‘clinically dead’, but they believe he is spiritually alive and in deep meditation. Some of his followers were quoted as saying, “This is nothing unusual. Medical science does not understand things like yogic science.” and “He is not dead. His holiness will return to life as soon as he feels it is right. We will preserve his body until then.”

And sure enough, the head of the Divine Light Awakening Mission, who is worth 100 million pounds, has been put in a freezer by his followers, who say it won’t harm him since he was used to meditating in the deep cold of the Himalayas. But relatives of the guru claim the followers are just trying to keep control of his money. A court has been asked to investigate for the family who want his body released for cremation.

In his follower’s defense, there have been examples of holy men in recent history who could slow down their body functions to an incredible level through concentration. However, I can’t find any case where anyone could actually stop their heart, at least to the level where modern doctors couldn’t detect life. I wonder how long it will take for the oversized freezer’s electric bills to run through the guru’s fortune?

 

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The Island of Lost Dolls

Ready for a creepy vacation? And this time you don’t have to go to Romania or somewhere crazy far away to visit. Welcome to Isla De Las Munecas, or “The Island of the Dolls”. Located south of Mexico City, this abandoned island is accessible by nothing more than a rowboat, but you might want to plan for a quick escape as well.

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Thousands of creepy dolls and doll parts hang from the trees over every part of the small island. Nearby mainlanders claim the dolls move on their own at night. How did these horrible things get here? What kind of crazy person does this? And why?

 

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The answer is, a strange loner in  nearby Xochimilco named Santana Barrera. Locals would see him in the town digging through trash cans and dirty canals. It turns out he was looking for these abandoned dolls. Santana believed that the spirit of a young girl was willing him to collect these dolls and hang them up all over his island to repel evil spirits. He also believed that the dolls were truly ‘alive’ and would at night roam around the island killing animals. Sadly, Santana was found dead from drowning on the island in 2001. You can only imagine the stories that circulate about that. But the dolls still remain, waiting for whoever is brave enough to visit the strange island.

 

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Not me, mind you. but, you know, whoever. Brrrr.

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The Spider-Sisters Finally Find Love

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Meet Ganga and Jamuna Mondal, 45 year old conjoined twins who have spent a lifetime on the road with a traveling circus in India. Sadly, the pair were abandoned by their impoverished family when they were teenagers who believed they were a ‘sign of God’s fury’. Fortunately for them, they were found by the circus and have lived their lives in relative comfort. But not so much human comfort.

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Enter Jasimuddin Ahmad, a school teacher and part time sound engineer for the circus. ‘It was love at first sight. When we met Jasimuddin we both felt this was a man who would truly love us. And he does – he loves us straight from the heart,’ said Ganga. Jamuna added: ‘We have been very happy since he came into our lives. We have suffered in the past but we don’t want to suffer anymore. We really hope to spend the rest of our lives with him.’

I’m not one to stand on ceremony, but their community is, which is why they have no plans at this time for a formal union of any kind. But it’s a love story for two women who thought they’d never find someone and I say, whatever works.

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Cryptozoologist raising funds to study Lovelock Cave Giants

Despite my colleague Chris Cox’s article the other day (see A Bad Day for Bigfoot), I remain optimistic that there will be some proof of an unknown, living, upright-walking primate found — eventually.

As cryptozoologist Scott Marlowe points out in response to that article, “The researchers DON’T claim any sweeping generalization whatsoever. They are simply reporting on those samples they worked with — and say as much in the report.”

“Good science is about patience, not easy gratification.”

Well now Scott is putting his money where his mouth is (or more accurately, your money). Marlowe is starting a GoFundMe campaign to raise $10,000 to conduct a DNA study on the skeleton of one of the mysterious Lovelock Cave Giants. According to his GoFundMe page:

Having located the remains of one of the Lovelock Cave “Giant” skeletons, and verifying that the keeper of it is willing to permit me to extract a tooth for the purpose of doing a DNA study on the creature, I am attempting to raise the funding necessary to complete the expedition and subsequent DNA work upon it to determine its origins and phylogeny.

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In 1911 mummified remains were found by guano hunters in Lovelock Cave, a large rock shelter in Nevada’s Lake Lahontan region. According to legend, these skeletons belong to a cannibalistic tribe of red-haired giants.

Known to the Paiute indians as the Si-Te-Cah, these cannibals were at war with the Paiute until a number of tribes came together and trapped the Si-Te-Cah in Lovelock Cave, started a fire and asphyxiated them.

There may be some factual basis for the legend. During a 1924 expedition, some human bones found in the cave showed evidence that they were split to extract the marrow, which may indicate cannibalism. In addition several large fiber sandals were found in the caves, one measuring a whopping 15″. Now that’s a Big Foot!

If you’ve ever wanted to be a part of a potential new discovery, I’d say here’s your chance. To help Scott reach his goal, you can contribute to his study here:

Red-Haired Giant Research

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BUY 1 GET 1 FREE to the Museum with your Alamo “The Elephant Man” ticket

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Today at MUSEUM OF THE WEIRD show your Alamo Drafthouse ticket for tonight’s screening of “The Elephant Man” and get BUY 1 GET 1 FREE admission to the Museum!

Come to the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz tonight at 7pm for a special screening of the David Lynch classic THE ELEPHANT MAN.

The Museum of the Weird’s own sideshow performer “Obi-Juan” Martinez will be on stage doing some old-school sideshow acts and maybe a surprise or two!

The BUY 1 GET 1 FREE admission to MUSEUM OF THE WEIRD is good for all day Wednesday and Thursday, July 9 and 10, but you must show your Alamo Drafthouse ticket to qualify! Limit 1 free admission per ticket.

You can reserve your tickets here

 

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The Haunted, Alien Hotspot, Dimensional Portal Forest of Hoia-Baciu

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Right off the bat, I’ve got to give full credit to a website called “Travel Creepster”. You gotta give props for that as a concept. It was through one of their posts that I first discovered the bizarre forest of Hoia-Baciu in Romania where for the paranormal, it’s always business time.

This small 1 square mile forest located to the west of the city of Cluj-Napoca has a lovely biking trail and facilities for paintball, airsoft and archery. It’s also thought to be absolutely terrifying and filled with all manner of bogeymen, time distortions, ghostly visitors, ufos, etc, etc. While the locals have traditionally been wary of the place, which has had its share of urban legends associated with it, not until relatively recently a story was reported widely that created infamy for the woods.

In the 1960’s a biologist named Alexandru Sift started investigating the very odd trees that fill the forest.

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He never did find an explanation for the shape of the trees, but after a series of scientific surveys, Alexandru claimed that he constantly felt the ‘shadows’ were watching him, and experienced mysterious sound phenomena, such as giggling female voices, rustling, and chattering teeth. His experiences have been shared by many, many visitors to the strange forest, especially the experience of ‘living’ shadows.

Later in 1968, a ufo was photographed above the forest, which has been held up by Ufologists since as one of the more plausible pieces of photographic evidence. Visitors reporting strange lights and floating orbs here is relatively commonplace, as is the strange effect reported by hundreds of people upon entering the forest of experiencing extreme nausea, panic attacks, headaches, and even skin burns. Is this UFO radiation? Geiger Counter wielding visitors say no, but what’s causing these unpleasant symptoms?

There are TONS of stories relating any number of other bizarre things associated with the woods, my personal favorite being the little girl who entered the forest, disappeared for years, and eventually exited with no awareness any time had passed and who hadn’t aged a day. Stories such as this have led to conjecture that a time or dimensional portal lies within the woods. Regardless of WHICH paranormal thingee is goin’ on in them thare woods, I’d imagine it’d make a great destination location for anybody interested in the otherworldly.

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A Bad Day for Bigfoot

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I’m sort of gobsmacked that it took this long for anyone to actually do this, but Michel Sartori, an entomologist at the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, Switzerland and his co-author Bryan Sykes, a prominent human geneticist at the University of Oxford, have gathered ‘bigfoot’ and ‘yeti’ hair samples gathered from various cryptid museums and submitted them for DNA testing.

Sykes believed that science hadn’t really given a fair shake investigating claims of ‘anomalous primates’ and suspected that they might actually be remnant neanderthals. Certainly, they wouldn’t be the first species believed to be extinct only to pop up in the modern age. Cryptozoologists were more than happy to help as well, like Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. “The proper scientific point of view is not to dismiss any hypothesis out of hand but simply to subject it to testing,” is the thought of Norman MacLeod of The Natural History Museum in London, author of an accompanying commentary on the research. And we agree.

But unfortunately…

Of the more than 30 hair samples gathered for testing, none were unidentified. They were found to be from bears, horses, porcupines, cows, and members of the canine family. “I cannot say that the sasquatch or related animal does not exist,” says Sartori, “But at the moment I have no evidence of the existence of these creatures.”

The most interesting thing to come from the study was that one of the bear samples matched DNA from a polar bear bone found in 2004 which was dated as being 10,000 years old. Although the result is still preliminary and requires further testing, it certainly stirred up interest and speculation that perhaps the ‘yeti’ sightings are not in fact a new species of hominid but instead a new or very, very old unknown species mix of a polar and brown bear.

While the study didn’t yield the results desired, at least for cryptozoologists, I would imagine that they were glad just to know for sure what they had. While it may not have shown proof for the existence of a Sasquatch as previously speculated, perhaps we’ve gotten the first lead in this mystery as to what the source of the hundreds of sightings over the years actually were. Would you be terribly disappointed to find out Bigfoot was a unknown species of bear instead of a primate? From a cryptozoological point of view, it seems like a win either way.

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Conjoined Twins about to beat long-held longevity record

This Saturday, history will change…forever. At least in a Guinness Book of World Records sort of way. Already extremely rare (like, between 1 in 50,000 births to 1 in 200,000) and with only a 25% chance of early survival, while a staple of the traveling freakshow (although many were faked), conjoined twins aren’t exactly something you see every day. Which is why Ronnie and Donnie Gaylon of Beavercreek Ohio are celebrating.

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The brothers are about to hit the 62 years, 8 months and 7 day mark, which will make them the longest lived conjoined twins in recorded history. They’ve been counting down for months and have been excitedly marking down the days on the calendar. Hoping the Guinness Book contacts them in October when they celebrate their 63rd birthday is hopefully going to be the absolute cake topper for the pair.

Having lived in poor health for years, the community raised 170,000 dollars for the brothers to renovate their home where they were being cared for by their younger brother Jim and his wife. “It was to the point where they couldn’t do anything on their own anymore,” said Jim. But since getting community help and a special bed donated by Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, their health and disposition has greatly improved.

The twins performed in circus sideshows up until 1991 when they retired, and since getting all the help, they’ve been able to regularly attend baseball games, go fishing, and have a normal life. But the big goal is to outlast the famous Chang Twins.

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More power to you, Ronnie and Donnie. The Museum of the Weird is rootin’ for ya! The Chang’s reign of long-lived terror will finally be over.