scotland – Museum of the Weird

Posted on January 22, 2016 by MOTW Admin

New hiding place for Nessie…

Last week we introduced a report about the search for Bigfoot that resulted from four years of study. While it doesn’t have the indisputable evidence that we crave, it brought up a number of ideas about why we could look and look and look for something and still not be able to find it.

This week brings us another case where we thought we knew something and there’s more to find. People have been searching for Nessie (the mysterious Loch Ness creature) since 1933. Even though there have been numerous sightings, photos and even video to support the idea that something is in the Loch, no one has been able to locate the creature. How is that possible? Loch Ness only covers about 22 square miles. Yes, it’s a lot of space, but it’s all boxed in. With all of the sophisticated sonar equipment we have along with satellites and everything else that we use to explore we must be able to see everything in there, right?

You would think so, but even with all that a new discovery was made about Loch Ness, a discovery which could make all the difference. There are parts of the Loch that we haven’t yet seen! According to this article from the Daily Record, Keith Stewart, captain of a tourist sightseeing boat, did some new soundings and found an area that is 76 feet deeper than anything that has been measured before. This newly discovered trench could certainly be a hiding place for Nessie and other similar creatures. Here is video of Captain Stewart as they made their historic find.

https://youtu.be/BdkjiGpTVJw

This discovery calls much into question. Is this the only such trench in the Loch? Could there be other such hiding places? Does this give more credence to the idea some have had that there may be hidden channels between Loch Ness and other bodies of water, allowing creatures to move between others?

Also, it is reasonable that whatever this creature is that it could prefer living at depths. This National Geographic gallery shows a number of creatures that are rarely encountered because they stay deep beneath the surface. We just don’t know!

Perhaps this discovery will lead to a different picture of Loch Ness and different approaches to searching for Nessie.

Posted on April 14, 2013 by MOTW Admin

NESSIE TURNS 80

Today the Loch Ness Monster turned eighty years-old. At least, that is her “modern monster” age, as I like to say. It has been exactly eighty years, to the day, since Aldie Mackay had her first sighting of the legendary aquatic Scottish beast. In 1933 the hotel manager witnessed what she described as a “whale-like fish.” Since that time the creature of the murky Highland depths has become one of the most iconic cryptids in the world, drawing thousands of tourists and creature hunters from around the world each year. We at the Museum of the Weird would like to say Happy Birthday to Nessie! Keep your head high and your body submerged and always remember we love you.

**Photo by Invergarry Lodge http://www.invergarrylodge.co.uk/site/2012/cakes-ahoy/

Posted on October 18, 2012 by MOTW Admin

UFO HOVERS OVER FAMILY’S FARM FOR 5 HOURS

A family in Scotland had strange lights dancing in the skies above their farm for over 5 hours and kept them so scared they couldn’t sleep!

Watch the footage taken by the husband at news.stv.tv/scotland

STV News writes:

An Aberdeenshire family were left terrified after a UFO invaded the skies above their home for nearly five hours.

Grandmother Morag Ritchie, 50, awoke suddenly at 2am on Saturday to see strange lights circling in the distance a few hundred yards from her rural property near Fraserburgh.

In the video, taken by her daughter’s fiancee, Scott Bower, a row of flickering lights can be seen hovering in the sky, before one of the lights moves off to the right and disappears.

Ritchie, who woke up her family to witness the event, said: “I saw lights in the sky and thought it was a strange looking star. When I looked closer, I realised they were moving in a spinning motion and then occasionally something shot off to the side. I kept going back to my bed but I was so unsettled that I continued waking up.

“When Scott looked at it, he was shocked; he didn’t think it was real. Even my husband, who is very sceptical, was convinced there was something strange going on.”

The group ventured outside to film the paranormal object that was seen occupying the same spot for almost five hours.

Ritchie, who is known for her role lobbying the government over fishing quotas as a Cod Crusader, added: “It’s like nothing I have ever seen before. I have seen Chinese lanterns and aircrafts at night and this was nothing like that.

“I was quite apprehensive going to bed, I just kept wondering if it could see me. I wasn’t happy to be outside; I didn’t want to walk about my garden alone.”

When Ritchie woke at 7am, the spectacle had vanished but she remains disturbed by the unexplained object that awoke her that night.

Ritchie’s daughter Cara, 27, said: “It was really scary, I’m actually still scared just in case something happens; like the alien invasion in Mars Attacks.

Read more and watch the footage taken by the husband at news.stv.tv/scotland

Posted on July 22, 2012 by MOTW Admin

UNIVERSITY IN SCOTLAND OFFERS AN ONLINE DEGREE IN ALIENS!

Getting another degree never hurts, so why NOT get one in aliens?

In today’s tough job market, it always helps to have a solid education to rely upon, some people even spend quite a bit of time in school to have an extra few degrees to help them land that perfect job. The Edinburgh University of Scotland is looking to help you out with finding that great way to spend your day that you’ve always wanted by offering a few free classes online… in aliens!

The Huffington Post writes

Now you can be a professional alien hunter too.

Edinburgh University is about to make it possible for the average Joe to search for extraterrestrials.

The university, one of the most prestigious in the world and located in Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh, is offering a series of free online courses, including “Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” reportsnews.scotsman.com.

The course will explore the possible ways to discover life on Earth-like planets and the implications if and when ultimate contact with another civilization occurs.

The whole concept of Earth-like planets in orbit around other suns — planets that may have all the important conditions to harbor life as we know it — has skyrocketed with the amazing success of NASA’s Kepler space observatory, launched in 2009 to search for them. According to the Kepler website, 1,790 host stars with a total of 2,321 planet candidates have been detected by the telescope, with 74 planets confirmed.

Starting in the fall, Edinburgh University’s five-week course that will include:

Week 1: The definitions of life and how it originated on Earth.

Week 2: Early Earth environments when life first emerged and the various evolutionary transitions of life on Earth.

Week 3: The prospects for life elsewhere in our solar system and the required conditions for a planet to be habitable.

Week 4: How to search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant suns and how to detect possible life there.

Week 5: How earthlings would be impacted by the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence.

This very special ET course will be led by Edinburgh astrobiology professor Charles Cockell and director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology.

“This course is an introduction to astrobiology,” Cockell explains on the university’s information page. “It explores the origin and evolution of life on the Earth and its potential to exist elsewhere.

“Astrobiology addresses compelling questions of wide interest, such as: How did life originate on Earth? Is this an inevitable process and is life common across the universe?”

MUMMIES MADE OF DIFFERENT BODIES FOUND IN SCOTLAND

This female mummy was found comprised of at least 3 different people.

A little over 10 years ago, archaeologists in Scotland found a set of 4 skeletons that dated back to almost 3,500 years ago but, there was a problem.

Every other bone or so dated back to a different time, some of them 100 of years apart! How could this be?

LA Times writes:

An international team of archaeologists have discovered that two mummies found on an island off the coast of Scotland are, like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, composed of body parts from several different humans. The mummified remains, as much as 3,500 years old, suggest that the first residents of the island of South Uist in the Hebrides had some previously unsuspected burial practices.

The West Coast of South Uist was densely populated from around 2000 BC until the end of the Viking period around AD 1300. Researchers led by archaeologist Michael Parker-Pearson of the University of Sheffield have been working at a site near the modern graveyard of Cladh Hallan, which gives the site its name. The team has so far excavated three roundhouses from a village that was apparently occupied from around 2200 BC to 800 BC. A little more than a decade ago, they found the two skeletons under one of the houses, as well as the remains of a teenage girl and a 3-year-old child.

The two primary skeletons were buried in a fetal position and showed evidence of having been preserved. Chemical evidence suggests they were mummified by being placed in nearby peat bogs for a year or longer. The high acidity and low oxygen content of the bog prevents bacteria from breaking down body tissues. After preservation, the skeletons were apparently removed from the bog and buried.

But the skeletons did not “look right” to the researchers. The female’s jaw didn’t fit into the rest of her skull, for example. Closer examination of the male, they reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science, showed that arthritis was present on the vertebrae of the neck, but not on the rest of the spine. The lower jaw had all of its teeth, while the upper jaw had none; but the condition of the lower jaw’s teeth showed that they had been paired with upper teeth. The team concluded that the skeleton has been assembled from parts of at least three bodies, some of which were separated by several hundred years of time.