Ancient Mysteries – Page 3 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Guest Blogger

DISTRESS CALLS FROM AMELIA EARHART WERE IGNORED

Amelia Earhart may have been alive for days after she disappeared.

New evidence has surfaced that details exactly how distress call transmissions, that were made by Amelia Earhart herself, were ignored and dismissed as bogus.

Discovery News writes:

Dozens of previously dismissed radio signals were actually credible transmissions from Amelia Earhart, according to a new study of the alleged post-loss signals from Earhart’s plane.

The transmissions started riding the air waves just hours after Earhart sent her last inflight message.

The study, presented on Friday at a three day conferenceby researchers of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), sheds new light on what may have happened to the legendary aviator 75 years ago. The researchers plan to start a high-tech underwater search for pieces of her aircraft next July.

“Amelia Earhart did not simply vanish on July 2, 1937. Radio distress calls believed to have been sent from the missing plane dominated the headlines and drove much of the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy search,” Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News.

“When the search failed, all of the reported post-loss radio signals were categorically dismissed as bogus and have been largely ignored ever since,” he added.

‘FINDING BIGFOOT’ FOUND A BIGFOOT …IN AUSTRALIA?

The cast of 'Finding Bigfoot" as they decide where to take the 'hunt' next.

Did the cast of ‘Finding Bigfoot” finally capture some real evidence of Bigfoot?

If the newest claims are true, they most certainly have except, it’s in Australia!

The Telegraph writes:

The four-member team from Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot series were on an expedition through remote forests spanning the Queensland and NSW border when they made the recordings.

Bigfoot Field Research Organisation member James “Bobo” Fay said that of the more than 20 expeditions conducted around the world by the TV team, this was “maybe the best one as far as audio recordings”.

While he was reluctant to give details ahead of presenting their evidence on the still-to-be-completed third season of the US show, Fay said that in two different locations they had activity that they had attributed to a yowie – the fabled ape-like creature of the Aussie bush.

“We got some really compelling audio,” he said.

“It is not a known species, I can tell you that. One of the details (convinces us) there is nothing else it could have been.”

A “BABY” BIGFOOT?

The hunt for Bigfoot shall never end, not as long as curious and adventurous humans are out there, slogging through the mud and rain, climbing up the biggest hills and traversing desert plains, all in the name of science!

A few of these adventurers have found crypto-gold in the form of a set of well preserved foot and hand prints, all of a juvenile Bigfoot and an older one, possibly a parent, that left behind a few tracks as well!

Who knows if anything more comes of this or even if they ever catch the elusive ‘squatch. Either way, I’m more than happy to follow along with the rest of the world, eyes wide open, waiting for the next sign of a mysterious creature lurking in our lands.

What do you think is out there?

David Claerr at Yahoo Voices writes:

The vast ecosystem formed by the Red River watershed on the borders of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana affords a habitat comprised of many micro-climates with an incredible diversity and richness of plant and animal life. In many of the deep ravines where the creeks and waterways have cut through the the limestone cap rock, the vegetation has a nearly tropical aspect. Towering, ancient cypress trees form a canopy above the underbrush and thick hanging vines. These ravines are like a primordial oasis, seldom traversed by humans. Often in remote wildernesses, surrounded by thousands of acres of temperate woodlands and meadows. The ravines are a favored living quarters for the Sasquatch or “Bigfoot”

From one of these ravines, a very significant group of footprints of a “Baby Bigfoot” were cast in plaster, along with a hand- and footprints from a more mature Sasquatch, most likely the juvenile’s older sibling or mother. The prints, pressed into the fine clay of the creek bed are rare specimens, since not only are they from a rarely documented young juvenile, but the casts also retain detailed anatomical features that are not generally preserved in other types of soil.

‘GREY LADY’ HAUNTS NEW ZEALAND COLLEGE AND CASTLE

If going to college on your own isn’t scary enough for most people, imagine having that same school haunted by an ancient ghost!

Otage Daily Times writes:

Ghostly sightings may have left Cumberland College students spooked, but now a tourist has reported being bullied by a ghost at Larnach Castle.

Sightings of the ghost known as the “Grey Lady” at the college earlier this month have sparked a media frenzy, says the author of a soon-to-be-published book about Dunedin’s haunted spots.

HairRaiser Tours owner Andrew Smith said well-known spots included Larnach Castle, the Fortune Theatre, Stafford Gables and a specific area around Moray Pl.

The college was in “lock-down” when he visited with other media yesterday. Students and staff were spooked by the latest sightings, he said. “Whether or not the students have known the history and they have talked themselves into believing something – that could be a possibility … but they are genuinely freaked out.”

A SLEEP MASK THAT LETS YOU CONTROL YOUR DREAMS

The Remee sleep mask is equipped with red LEDs to wake up your mind, not your body. Photo courtesy of Bitbanger Labs.

If you’ve ever heard of lucid dreaming, then you know it’s not exactly the easiest thing to achieve.

To explain lucid dreaming to those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s basically being able to consciously wake up inside of, then be able to control, your very own dream. You could fly through the sky, dive through the sea, and even give yourself super-powers like a person straight out of the comic books!

Lucid dreaming is difficult to achieve and, involves practice, meditation, and a good diet as well as learning to “trigger” yourself awake while dreaming, without waking up you body.

The guys over at Bitbanger Labs believe they’ve come up with the perfect way for anyone to have this amazing experience, check it out.

Daily Mail writes:

In a twist straight out of the movie Inception, a duo of developers from Brooklyn, New York, have built a sleeping mask designed to allow people to have lucid dreams that they can control.

While it may look like a standard sleeping mask, Remee has been billed as a special REM (Rapid Eye Movement) enhancing device that is supposed to help steer the sleeper into lucid dreaming by making the brain aware that it is dreaming.

The goal of the product is to allow people to have the dreams of their choice, from driving a race car to flying to having lunch with Abraham Lincoln.

SCIENTISTS TO TEST RECENT BIGFOOT DNA EVIDENCE

A team of scientists will use DNA testing to investigate the remains claimed to be from a yeti, or bigfoot.

Hopefully, some exciting news is heading our way from a set of UK and Swiss scientists that plan on doing some serious testing of as much ‘evidence’ of the bigfoot, or yeti, as they possibly can.

They’re even asking for anyone to submit anything they think might be helpful! So, if you didn’t know what to do with all those bigfoot parts you have laying around, send ’em on in!

BBC News writes:

A UK-Swiss team will use DNA testing to investigate the origins of remains claimed to be from yeti and bigfoot.

The project will examine hair, bone and other material from a collection amassed by a Swiss biologist – and will invite submissions from elsewhere.

Many cultures relate legends of hairy, humanoid creatures that lurk in the wilds, rarely seen.

But material claimed to be from such creatures have never been subjected to modern scientific techniques.

“It’s an area that any serious academic ventures into with a deal of trepidation… It’s full of eccentric and downright misleading reports,” said Prof Bryan Sykes, from Oxford University.

The researchers will apply a systematic approach and employ the latest advances in genetic testing, aiming to publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

SCIENTISTS GENERATE ELECTRICITY FROM A VIRUS

Scientists can now generate electricity from viruses!

The world of nano-technology is growing exponentially fast and with it, come a slew of amazing breakthroughs. This one for example, is pretty fascinating.

Scientists have used the principle called “piezoelectricity” or, the use of pressure and vibrations to generate energy, to create enough electricity to power a small lcd screen from a small virus similar to the one found in our bodies when we have the common cold.

Mother Nature Network writes:

When people get a cold or the flu, they tend to experience a lack of energy. But what if viruses could actually generate energy — not to power your body, but to charge your electronic devices?

That’s the idea behind a new electric generator developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The scientists coated a postage-stamp-sized electrode with specially engineered, harmless viruses that, when tapped, generated enough electricity to power a small LCD display. Their research was published online May 13 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

THE FAMOUS ‘EASTER ISLAND HEADS’ HAVE BODIES

Who knew the Heads of Easter Island had entire bodies? On second thought, how did they not know?

Ever heard the phrase “dig a little deeper”?

Well apparently, throughout the hundreds of people that have visited, investigated, done research at, and along with the thousands of whom saw pictures of the famous ‘Heads of Easter Island’, no one thought about that little old phrase, until now.

Fox News writes:

New photographs reveal what lies beneath the surface of Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world — the carved bodies of the island’s 887 famous guardians.

Most people think of the 63-square-mile Pacific island’s silent stone sentinels as simple heads. But the heads all have bodies — and a backstory that’s only now being pieced together, explained Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project.

“Those statues which are the most photographed are standing in the quarry. They’re buried up to mid-torso level. So it’s understandable that the general public didn’t have a clue that those statues had bodies,” she told FoxNews.com.

Current belief is that the statues were carved between A.D.1100 up until the 1800s, when an influx of Westerners transformed the culture. Van Tilburg, a fellow with The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, has only been coming to Easter Island (called Rapa Nui) to do research for twenty years, since 1992. But she first came more than thirty years ago — and stayed for one clear reason. “I fell in love with the statues,” she said simply.

“I came to Easter Island in 1981. I was impressed with the number of statues and that they seemed accessible to me, they were on the surface. I wanted to know what was below the surface.”

First Van Tilburg documented the island’s statues and those that have been removed to museums; there are 887 inventoried, though she says the number is closer to 1,000. Then she began the next phase of work to reveal what lay beneath the ground — covered up not intentionally by men, but through centuries of exposure to the environment.

That process has taken 12 years so far, and may take a lifetime of work.

UFO ALMOST CAUSES PLANE CRASH OVER DENVER

A UFO caused some trouble over the skies of the Denver airport the other day, when an airplane flying at 8,000 feet was buzzed by an unidentified aircraft flying in the opposite direction that looked like it had no pilot!

The pilot of the observing plane said it may have been remotely controlled, though it seems it was traveling far too fast for him to get any proper visual, and the darn thing didn’t even show up on radar for officials to investigate. How bizarre!

9 News of Denver writes:

DENVER – The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a mystery in the sky. A mysterious object flying over Denver nearly caused a mid-air collision Monday evening, 9Wants to Know has learned.

As far as investigators know, the mystery object did not show up on radar Monday.

Investigators believe this object, whatever it is, could pose a serious safety hazard to planes.

Radio transmissions from LiveATC.net confirm a nervous-sounding pilot reported a strange object at 5:17 p.m. Monday.

The pilot is heard telling air traffic control: “A remote controlled aircraft, or what? Something just went by the other way … About 20 to 30 seconds ago. It was like a large remote-controlled aircraft.”

The corporate jet, a Cessna Citation 525 CJ1, was flying at 8,000 feet above sea level over Cherry Creek when the mystery object came close enough to make any pilot nervous.

MYSTERY TRIBE LEAVES BEHIND BODY-FILLED JARS

Human remains nside a log coffin at Phnom Pel. Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan

A research team has been uncovering burial sights of a mysterious tribe that vanished a long time ago, since 2003. Even though they found up to 10 such spots in the Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia, some with humans remains that date back almost 4,000 years, there’s still little information on the ones who left the creepy, bone-filled jars made from wood, behind.

National Geographic writes:

Perched in some cases on precarious cliff ledges, centuries-old log coffins—such as this one, pictured alongside researcher Nancy Beavan—and “body jars” are the only known traces of an unknown Cambodian tribe. Now new dating studies are beginning to assure the unnamed culture a place in history.

Ten such burial spots have been found in the Cardamom Mountains since 2003, and at least one is at least 160 feet high (50 meters)—the intention apparently being that “anyone trying to disturb the burials would break their neck,” said Beavan, who led the new study.

Beavan’s team has radiocarbon-dated wood, teeth, and bones from four of the sites to between A.D. 1395 and 1650, placing them smack-dab in the decline of the Khmer Empire, based in Angkor. However it’s unclear what, if any, influence the empire had on these mountain people, said Beavan, of the University of Otago’s Department of Anatomy in New Zealand. “Until now, experts had no idea when the sites had been established or how long they’d been in use.”

Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com