london – Museum of the Weird

Posted on August 4, 2015 by MOTW Admin

Tickets please

Funny ghost poster. — Poster in the London Underground takes a no-nonsense view of ghosts. Screen readers refer to this text.

I admit, I’m fond of the British. They generally have an admirable calm and dignity that is worth imitating. Submitted for your perusal is this poster, found in a London Underground, addressing the presence of spirits. It’s obviously a joke—and a good one—but reports of ghosts in the tube system are commonplace.

This Daily Star article describes encounters with “a girl with ‘coal-black pits for eye sockets’” that first emerged in the 1980s, and is still making appearances. Other regular encounters include the mad ghost of Sarah Whitehead, also known as the Black Nun, who haunts the Bank Station.

Of course, London is not the only place with haunted trains. According to this Silicon India News article there are ghosts spotted in stations all over the world. Here are a few doozies:

Caobao Road Subway Station in Shanghai, China, has frequent break downs that seem to get better once the trains are free of the station. One story suggests that a man was dragged onto the tracks by a spirit!
Panteones Metro Station in Mexico City—the name literally means “Graveyards”— was built near two old cemeteries. Workers hear mysterious knocks on the walls and have seen indistinct, shadowy shapes moving around. Screams are sometimes heard along the tracks.
Guards at Waterfront Station in Canada have seen a number of bizarre reflections of past passengers. One saw a 1920’s flapper complete with music from the era that vanished as approached.
Connolly Station in Ireland was badly damaged during a 1941 bombing attack. A soldier in grey has been seen roaming the platform and a guard watching the security camera saw two figures in military gear who disappeared when he investigated.

Why do ghosts return to these subways? Do they think of them as special places? They are certainly places where people have spent a lot of time. When I die I hope I don’t find myself trapped in someplace that was part of my day-to-day, mundane world. Imagine spending the afterlife sitting at that red light, or trapped behind a keyboard?

We’re interested in your weird travel encounters. We’ll share the interesting ones here.

Posted on April 28, 2013 by MOTW Admin

OF DEMONS AND DREAMS

The correlation between demons and dreams is a complex and highly debated discussion amongst the metaphysical and psychological worlds. Certain camps of thought stalwartly believe in the physical manifestation of these entities existing independently of humanity, without a true spiritual connection to any particular religion, though they are inextricably linked to us through their need to feed from our energies. Other schools of research remain true to the religious concept of demons as “spawn of the Devil” and punishment for our “sins,” while those rooted in pure science and logic claim that they are products of our own chemical imbalances and psychological scars inflicted over time by our fellow humans and ourselves.

The link between visions of demons and other malevolent entities during a sleep disorder known as “sleep paralysis” is explored in a new short film and multi-platform art project, entitled simply “The Sleep Paralysis Project”, by Carla MacKinnon. Based on her own personal experiences struggling with the disorder, the project aims to explore the eerie psychological phenomena in which one’s mind becomes conscious while their body remains in a state of deep relaxation. However, this form of consciousness is not akin to being “awake” for the mind is still in the grips of whatever dream it is processing, thus creating the sensation of a “waking dream” or illusion. This disorder affects between five and sixty percent of the population, according to surveyors.

The strangest part about the documented cases of sleep paralysis is perhaps the consistency of the form of the waking dreams. If they are a part of one’s dream, the hallucinations should be as varied as the individual, taking on a multitude of different scenarios and creatures. However, it appears that the most common hallucinations involve entities with “demonic” appearances, crones, or unseen “malevolent presences” somewhere within the room where the person is sleeping. These creatures are often the perpetrators of an attack in which the victim believes they are being suffocated and in some cases this suffocation takes the form of a supernatural rape by an incubus, succubus, or other supernatural creature. The concept of demonic entities stretches back as far as humanity itself with myths and legends as varied as the peoples who gave birth to them.

This could largely be due to the battle between their engaged/conscious mind and the terrifying sensation of being trapped in their own body, paired with a variety of repressed psychological and emotional issues buried within the subconscious. The link between sleep paralysis and these haunting, iconic symbols begs the question of whether or not this may be a sign of our vaster interconnected “human consciousness” as a sentient species existing in one plane of reality, or perhaps merely a shared understanding of mythology and our own capacity for evil as it represents? Or is it something more sinister that pierces the veil between this world and another during sleep?

MacKinnon’s research to discover the origins of her own waking nightmares has allowed her to explore the gamut of these disturbing tales, as well as interview fellow sufferers for their own intimate accounts. Her artistic short film and corresponding art project are set to debut in May at the Royal College of Arts in London. According to the official website: “The film uses stop motion animation, live action film and projection mapping techniques to evoke and explore the worlds experienced between sleeping and waking. The film is Carla MacKinnon’s graduation piece for the Royal College of Art’s Animation Masters course, created in collaboration with arts and technology studio seeper with music by Dominic de Grande.”

For additional information visit http://www.thesleepparalysisproject.org/ or the project’s blog at http://sleepparalysisproject.wordpress.com/.

Posted on August 4, 2012 by MOTW Admin

MEET THE ‘ROYAL FAMILY OF STRANGE PEOPLE’

Gary Stretch has the world's stretchiest skin and holds 11 Guinness World Records.

Everyone, including myself, calls their family ‘weird’. Well, this odd family may have you rethink just how weird yours really is!

The Huffinton Post writes:

Swallowing swords, stretching their skins until you’re forced to turn away, this is the world’s most stupendous collection of human oddities.

This eclectic sideshow cabaret, hailed ‘the Coney Island Freak Show for the 21st century’, has been specially commissioned for Priceless London Wonderground and pushes the boundaries of what the human body can achieve.

Marvel at Gary Stretch – owner of the world’s stretchiest skin (above), or wince at the Space Cowboy, the holder of 11 Guinness World Records, the most recent of which saw him swallow 18 swords in one go.

This smorgasbord of strange is on display at the Southbank Centre until September.

UFO VISITS EARTH TO WATCH THE LONDON OLYMPICS?

Is this the UFO visiting the London Olympics as predicted by Nick Pope?

We posted a story a few months back about a man named Nick Pope, claiming to have an expert-level of UFO knowledge predicting that a UFO would visit a large event, like the current 2012 London Olympics, and as it currently seems, he may have been right!

The Huffington Post writes:

Want proof that Danny Boyle and the gang put on the greatest show in the galaxy for the London 2012 Opening Ceremony? Well, even mysterious beings from other planets showed up to catch a glimpse. Possibly.

Yes, it seems a UFO appeared over the Olympic Park in London just as the firework display erupted into full force, reports Examiner.com.

Don’t believe us? Just look at this video, and you’ll clearly – well, sort of clearly – see how a mysterious disc-shaped object makes its first appearance in the top left-hand corner then travels across the sky above the stadium as if hoping to get a better look.

Explanations? Well, it could have been a satellite, we suppose. Or another world monarch preparing to parachute from a blimp. But maybe – just maybe – it was a spaceship full of Mike Oldfield fans from Mars who’d heard their hero was in the area. Yes, the more we think about it, the more we’re convinced that last option is the most likely scenario.