A newly discovered bat is the stuff of nightmares! This article by Mongabay introduces the Long -toothed Pipistrelle or Hypsugo dolichodon that was recently classified in Vietnam. Basically, that’s a mouthful describing a bat with a mouthful! It has enormous teeth, like something from a horror film!
The picture on the right shows an artist rendering of this amazing bat, but you can see the photos in the original article. Why such large teeth? Scientists speculate that these bats feed on beetles and other insects that are a little tougher to get into.
The new classification is the result of 17 years of research. We can imagine that in that time there were plenty of people who told stories of monster-toothed bats who were just not believed. Let us know how this fellow turns out in your nightmares tonight.
By now you may have heard the grisley tale of a 68-year old Russian Woman who may have killed 11 people. If it’s new to you, here is the video report from CNN.
The story developed easily enough. It appeared that the 68-year-old Tamara Samsonova killed a woman in her care, dismembered the body and disposed of the pieces. As this Sun (UK) article reports, it was more complicated than that. A diary that she kept in a mixture of Russian, German, and English tell a tale of as many as 21 victims and may have involved eating part of their remains. In other reports she claims that she has been haunted by someone who forced her to kill.
Clearly she is unsafe. Many reports are jumping on the idea that she had occult books—or more sensationally “books on black magic.” It is unlikely that most reporters, or police for that matter, would know the difference between black magic and kitchen witchery, though your author would not be surprised if she were into some pretty dark stuff.
There have been some bizarre killings of late. The Slender Man killings in which a pair of 13-year old girls stabbed a friend to death in order to attract the Slender Man, a bizarre modern monster who rewards those who kill. Recently released video of police questioning shows some real disconnects by these young girls. A judge has decided that these girls will be tried as adults and we will, no doubt, hear much more about this in the coming months.
Can we expect more, even stranger crimes to come? Maybe we’ll talk more about that soon as we explore some of the ideas floating around the Blood Moon phenomenon that has some people speculating.
We’ve shown you islands of cats and bunnies. We shared the island of lost dolls. Now it’s time to stir up the nightmares with a trip to Snake Island. Ilha da Queimada Grande, in Brazil, is home to thousands of Golden Lancehead Viper, one of the most venomous snakes in the world. Thousands of these snakes inhabit the island, climbing trees to hunt birds that are migrating through the area. The local birds are too savvy to the snakes’ technique, which consist of gently wiggling the end of their tail, like a grub, as they lie otherwise still and ready to strike.
The venom is very strong and can melt human flesh! Even with treatment, someone bitten by a Golden Lancehead Viper has a 3% chance of dying!
Travel to the island is illegal without permission from the government, which is obtained by some researchers and other special visitors. A military team also goes to the island periodically to service the automated lighthouse which sits on the island. This island was once manned and there is a tale of a keeper and his family who were killed when they left a window opened and let in a dozen of the vipers while they slept.
This video shows a visit to the island by an ABC news reporter.
Did you see that snake strike the camera at about 1:52? We like lizards and snakes, but we’re perfectly happy to leave Ilha da Queimada Grande to be ruled by the serpents.
A grieving family was cast into further despair when someone apparently stole the body of their daughter from a funeral home. Details are shown in this shocking news story.
We are long past the days of the Resurrection Men, body snatchers who would creep into graveyards to steal specimens for medical dissection in the days before people made their bodies available for science. (In the case of Burke and Hare they went beyond grave robbing and generated their own corpses.)
Surprisingly, body snatching is not unheard of today. This 2008 report by the Daily Guardian that a group of criminals harvested more than 1,000 bodies including a famous broadcaster. The stolen body parts—including bones skin, arterial valves, ligaments and tendons—were sold to more than 20,000 transplant recipients throughout the US, Canada and Europe. Many recipients were unaware that they were receiving parts from unwilling donors. In four years, this body-snatching ring illegally harvested more than 1,400 corpses from funeral homes in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Is this San Antonio incident part of such an organization?
Our heart goes out to the Mott family. Losing a loved one is a painful experience. We cannot imagine the added horror of being victim to such an unspeakable crime.
What you are watching is known as “Case 68838 – Oak Park, IL” by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). MUFON tracks and investigates sitings of UFOs and they have some pretty interesting cases in their logs.
This is the report submitted with the video:
I was shooting video of a storm cloud emitting heat lightning from our back porch. When I viewed the video I saw a streak of light that I cannot explain or rationalize. I slowed the speed and showed it to friends. It was recommended that I forward his to your organization. I am including the original video from my phone. (which is upside down) The orb appears 11 seconds in. I also included video that I inverted and cropped.
Anyone can submit a report of a UFO siting using their online tool. They receive thousands of reports which are handled by local volunteers.
One explanation offered is that this is the elusive “ball lightning” phenomenon, where electricity forms as a mass rather than a streak we we normally see it.
A photo of the ball lightning phenomenon by Joe Thomissen (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia CommonsDoes that look right to you or is it merely a convenient explanation? There was no evidence of a crash or any damage to the ground from a lightning strike. The matter is being investigated.
Do you have any interesting UFO pictures or video? Share them with us! In the mean time, keep watching the skies.
Some people say that the image below, taken from this Google Sky link is the mysterious Planet X.
Is this strange shape recently revealed by Google Sky the mysterious Planet X?
There has been some controversy about this segment of sky in the Google tool as for a long time it was blacked out, showing a rectangular area of black. Google has been accused of hiding things on maps. (See 24 Places Google Maps Won’t Let You See for alleged examples.) Some of the so-called censorship seems to simply be a way of dealing with problem data. I imagine keeping accurate information on the entire planet up-to-date has some challenges and everyone who’s ever had something go wrong with a photo can probably relate.
So what about this Planet X? It’s worth reading Planet X for Dummies to catch up, but, in a nutshell, there is an old idea of a rogue planet that moves through our solar system rather than traveling in a nice orbit around the Sun. Planet X, or Nibiru as it is sometimes called, is associated with alien visitors, global disasters and any number of things that might alarm you.
Some claim that this strange, winged looking object in the picture is a revelation, that Google is finally releasing this to the people. If it is a planet bringing space gods and disasters, I’m not really sure what we do about it. There it is, though. You can see it yourself on Google Sky by tuning into these coordinates.
If you feel the need to prepare, we found a handy video on how to make a tinfoil hat.
And, because it’s just cool… here’s a bonus video on using your foil to make a fire. (batteries not included)
One American mystery that has lasted for more than three hundred years is the colony of Roanoke, Virginia. Led by John White, they were sent by Walter Raleigh in 1587. White returned to England that year for supplies and was delayed until 1590 because of the war with Spain. (Remember, there was no overseas communication in that time and travel was slow and difficult.) When he did return, the colonists were gone. The word Croatoan was carved on a post and the letters “CRO” were found on a nearby tree. There was an island nearby known as Croatoan—now called Hatteras—where there were friendly natives.
This video from the Travel Channel gives details to the story along with what might have been a solution, an artifact suggesting that the colonists were attacked and destroyed by natives.
This map, drawn by John White was the basis for the new analysis. (A British Museum photograph of the map. [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsThe “attacked by natives” theory might have been appealing at one time, but as we learn more about the cultures in that time it makes less sense. This article from Ancient Origins, describes how archaeologists have been discovering clues that suggest that at least a portion of the colonists did go to the island. Pieces of rapiers, nails and other obviously European artifacts have been found on the island.
Meanwhile, work happening in North Carolina have yielded results suggesting that some of the colonists ended up there. The First Colony Foundation has been digging for three years above the Albemarle Sound, based on hidden markings found on a map drawn by John White, himself.
So, it appears that the colonists did not move to a single location but may have split up. Why? Were some of them less comfortable with adopting a more native lifestyle? Are there Roanoke descendants amongst us now who don’t even know it?
Clearly the mystery is not fully solved, but we are getting closer. I think that after the delay in White’s return with supplies that those left had to make decisions for their survival. They disagreed on what was best and broke into groups to continue on. At least they did not seem to turn to cannibalism, like appears to have happened in Jamestown.
I like mysteries. It’s fun to wonder…but it’s also good to find answers and I hope that we are closing in on a happy ending to a troubling question in American history.
We really don’t mean to pick on our arachnophobes. Personally, we love spiders. Harry, our own tarantula, is a beloved part of the Museum and we respect the spider’s amazing place in the food chain (especially considering all the trouble they seem to have from wasps here and here). Creepy as some people find them, they do some amazing things.
We showed you amazing video of a spider migration a while back. This time it’s a mass web, created by a group of spiders in Rowlett, Texas. ABC affiliate, WFAA, reported Thousands of spiders have spun a massive communal web at Rowlett’s Lakeside Park South. As this video shows, the trees are literally draped in webs spun by spiders who have banded together to take advantage of all of the insect life in the region.
Spiders are normally pretty solitary creatures. But under certain conditions they will spin these amazing communal webs which blanket an area. Wired had a report in 2010 about an amazing 4-acre web that occurred in a Baltimore, Maryland water treatment plant. The original report was written by Albert Greene, Jonathan A. Coddington, Nancy L. Breisch, Dana M. De Roche, and Benedict B. Pagac Jr. for the Entomological Society of America. It contains amazing photographs and detailed data of the infestation.
This amazing mummy rests in peace at the Museum of the Weird
At the Museum of the Weird we feature a mummy that might date back 3000 years. The process of mummification is an ancient art practiced by the Egyptians to preserve and prepare the body for the afterlife. Elaborate tombs were built to house the preserved body along with belongings and largess that showed off the wealth of the deceased. The process was very detailed and took months to complete. Poor people could not afford mummification, but would emulate the process by wrapping their dead in linen. (Read details about mummification from the Ancient History Encyclopedia.)
While many details of mummification are known, it has not been regularly practiced for centuries. The modern practice of embalming is the way that we expect to be preserved. As you may recall in our article on postmortem photos, some bodies were viewed and photographed for years after they died.
However, interest in mummification has resurrected, so to speak. In 2012 a terminally ill man willed his body to scientists so they could try to replicate the ancient mummification process. The entire experiment was explicitly captured in the documentary show, Curiosity, Season 2, Episode 2: I Was Mummified. (It’s available to watch for purchase through many outlets. This clip will give you an idea if it’s for you.)
Of course, the art of mummification is not completely lost. The U.S. company, Summum, offers complete mummification services for humans and animals. Here is video from The Discovery Channel’s show One Step Beyond, where the founder of Summum tells a little bit about his inspiration and their process. He’s a little off the beaten track, but I guess you’d have to be.
The already have a number of people willing to pay for mummification. Does that mean we can expect to see more pyramids rising up around the U.S.? If you can afford it, maybe someday you’ll end up in a museum!
In the mean time, come visit ours on 6th Street in Austin, Texas.
Monolithic head statues of Easter island (Photo by Artemio Urbina and placed in the public domain)
If you have followed world mysteries you have undoubtedly come across the amazing head statues on Easter Island. These gigantic stone carvings depict proud heads, rising up out of the ground. If you’ve not followed them for a while you may have missed the activity over three last few years as archeologists have confirmed that these statues have full bodies and have been working to excavate them.
Called moai, these statues were created by the Rapa Nui people between 1250 and 1500 to depict worshiped ancestors. Many are near the quarry that bore the stone, but many others have been transported around the island.
For some time archeologists expected to find full bodies attached to the heads jutting out of the ground, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that serious excavation began to reveal these amazing monoliths. As you can see on their project web site there’s been a lot of progress. (This is really the site to dig into if you want to see all that has been done.)
This recent article from the Mirror in the UK highlights the discovery that the bodies are actually covered with intricate tattoos that have yet to be fully deciphered. For a quick view of what they’ve been digging up see this video.
https://youtu.be/zWj2keMob-c
It goes to show that even—or perhaps especially—with ancient mysteries there is more than meets the eye.
