Phantoms and Monsters

Was Moll Dyer Real or a Legend?
Photo: Apparition - The Guernsey Underground Hospital
Taiwanese Doctor Claims 'Avatar' Killed Patient
Videos: Australian Yowie Research Eyewitness Testimonies

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 11:44 AM PST

somdnews - The story of Moll Dyer, a witch who was driven from her home south of Leonardtown more than 300 years ago, is well known and often repeated in St. Mary's County.

But was she ever real? There are no records of her existence. However, there is a road and stream named after her south of Leonardtown and lands there bore her name since the 1890s.

A large rock, said to be the last resting place of Moll Dyer where she left imprints of her knees and hand on the stone, was moved in 1972 to the front of the circuit courthouse in Leonardtown. The area of Moll Dyer Road was purported to be haunted.

Tradition has it that Moll Dyer was an outcast in the small community between Leonardtown and Redgate. Though she lived in a hut, she survived via the generosity of others through the alms house, located where Leonardtown Middle School is now.

The winter of 1697 was extraordinarily harsh. On March 27 the Council of Maryland proceedings in Annapolis commented on the bad weather: "It hath pleased God that this winter hath been the longest that hath been known in the memory of man, for it began about the middle of November, and little sign of any spring yet. It was very uncertain weather, several frosts and snows, one of which was the greatest hath been known."

Witchcraft was often blamed for such calamitous times. In St. Mary's that year, the legend goes, Moll Dyer fit the description of a witch — a strange old hag.

Witches weren't common, but it was still widely believed they did exist then.

In June 1654, the crew of the ship Charity on route to Maryland from England testified about the hanging of passenger Mary Lee for suspicion of practicing witchcraft, according to the Proceedings of the Council of Maryland.

On Oct. 4, 1659, Edward Prescott was acquitted for "one Elizabeth Richardson hanged in his ship" for witchcraft, according to the proceedings of the Provincial Court. Plaintiff John Washington of Virginia couldn't attend court that day and because there was no testimony, Prescott was released. He blamed John Greene, captain of the ship, for the execution.

In 1674, John Cowman of St. Mary's County was arraigned, convicted and condemned for witchcraft, conjuration or enchantment upon the body of Eliza Goodall, according to an 1885 edition of the Baltimore Times. Cowman was pardoned by Charles Calvert.

On Oct. 9, 1685, Rebecca Fowler of Calvert County was hanged for practicing witchcraft. She was the only person executed in Maryland for witchcraft, according to the 1938 book "Crime and Punishment in Early Maryland."

One story about Moll Dyer says there was careful consultation as Dyer's neighbors decided to force her away after their crops were ruined and their livestock died. Another account says the decision was fueled by binge drinking at the alms house. Both stories say countrymen bore down on Dyer's hut with torches on a cold February night in 1697. Her house set ablaze, Dyer sought refuge in the surrounding woods and the men did not pursue her.

"Nothing was heard of her for several days, until a boy hunting for his cattle in the woods espied her kneeling on a stone with one hand resting thereon and the other raised as if in prayer, or to curse her tormentors, wrote Joseph Morgan of Leonardtown in the 1890s.

"Her life had gone out in the dark, cold night, and she still rested in her suppliant position, frozen stiff with the Winter's cold. The story runs that she offered a prayer to be avenged on her persecutors and that a curse be put on them and their lands," he wrote.

The Beacon newspaper of Sept. 12, 1901, reported the experience of a young man returning to Leonardtown on horseback in the dead of night. "At Moll Dyer's run he stopped to water his horse. He says he noticed that another traveler was at the run and thinking he knew who it was, asked it to move. No attention was paid to the request and it was repeated somewhat more harshly. Surprised at the fright manifested by his horse, he turned and noted that the horseman he thought he knew was riding a headless animal, and while gazing at this unusual appearance he distinctly saw the spectral horse part in the middle and the horseman disappear between the two disjointed ends."

Moll Dyer's Run was cited in a deed from 1857. There were five houses around the run, according to a May 1854 survey of the area, on the east side of Clay Hill Road, which is today's Route 5. The road that later became Moll Dyer Road was already there.

By 1895, 60 acres of land near Clay Hill Road was called Moll Dyer's Hill, just north of Redgate.

In 1968, Philip Love, an editor for The Evening Star, began searching for Moll Dyer's rock. He and his wife found what was supposed to be that rock in the woods of Stephen Foxwell's farm, a farm that is today home of Lil' Margaret's Bluegrass Festival.

But Love was not the first to claim finding the infamous rock. "In a clearing up on Clover Lot, Mr. John T. Yates found in a gully, not far from the run, the legendary 'Moll Dyer's stone.' The knee prints on the stone are still visible," according to the Beacon of April 13, 1911. According to land records, Clover Lot was then part of Foxwell's farm and is today located at 42660 Moll Dyer Road, home of William and Alice Holly. Next door is Elizabeth Holly, who moved to the first house on the left in 1968.

On Oct. 14, 1972, the local National Guard, which was housed in today's Leonardtown library, hauled the 875-pound rock up from the Clover Lot to the old county jail, owned by the St. Mary's County Historical Society, in front of the circuit courthouse where it rests today.

Elizabeth Holly said she was at work the day they moved the rock, which tore up her driveway in the process. She heard the story of Moll Dyer when she and her husband moved in and was aware of the rock's story, but said recently of the witch, "She ain't bothered us."

NOTE: The Moll Dyer mystery will most likely never be solved. I have heard of the apparitions that haunt the rock and courthouse, but is it Moll Dyer. Witchcraft is a Maryland legacy...so much of our history and legends are the result of people who practiced or were accused of practicing the 'craft'. Though I'm a transplanted Marylander, I was raised just across the Mason-Dixon line in Pennsylvania and accustomed to the craft for healing through my ancestors and others who kept the tradition intact...Lon
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WITCHCRAFT IN MARYLAND

Witchcraft trials and executions were facts of life in colonial Maryland.

From Southern Maryland to the Eastern Shore and as far north as Anne Arundel County, historians have documented at least 12 cases of persons prosecuted or persecuted in the 1600s and early 1700s because of accusations that they practiced witchcraft.

There wasn't the same sort of hysteria in Maryland that there was in Massachusetts, where 19 men and women were executed and many imprisoned for witchcraft in 1692.

But Maryland and neighboring Pennsylvania and Virginia all had witchcraft trials, according to Hagerstown-based historian John Nelson.

Two of the earliest witchcraft cases in the Maryland State Archives involve executions aboard ships bound for Maryland from England.

Two men who recently had arrived on the Charity of London told colonial officials in St. Mary's City in 1654 that the ship's crew had hanged an old woman named Mary Lee after she was accused of sorcery.

Her supposed crime: summoning a relentless storm that some on board blamed on "the malevolence of witches."

The second shipboard execution involved George Washington's great-grandfather, John Washington of Westmoreland County, Va. He accused ship owner Edward Prescott in 1659 of hanging Elizabeth Richardson as a witch.

Prescott acknowledged the hanging at his trial but was acquitted after he said the ship's captain, John Green, was the one responsible. The trial was in Patuxent, in either Anne Arundel or Charles counties.

Maryland's only recorded execution for witchcraft on land occurred Oct. 9, 1685, in Calvert County. Rebecca Fowler was hanged after a jury found her guilty of "certain evil and diabolical arts called witchcrafts, enchantments, charms [and] sorceries."

Hannah Edwards, also of Calvert County, was acquitted in 1686 of similar charges.

St. Mary's County is rich in witchcraft history, with three cases in the historical record and a folk tale that is perhaps Maryland's best-known bit of witch lore.

There is no historical record of Moll Dyer, but her legend is as enduring as the 875-pound boulder in front of the Old Jail Museum in Leonardtown that supposedly bears her hand print.

The reported witch is said to have been driven from her home on the coldest night of the year by townsfolk who burned her cabin. Dyer died of exposure and was found with her hand frozen to the rock, the story goes.

Maryland's last recorded witchcraft trial was held in Annapolis in 1712. A jury acquitted Virtue Violl of Talbot County of using witchcraft to harm the health of an invalid neighbor.

Sources:
www.washingtontimes.com
www.somdnews.com
Weird Maryland - Matt Lake and Mark Moran

Photo: Apparition - The Guernsey Underground Hospital

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 05:58 PM PST

thisisgurnsey - Alan Cheale from Brighton sent this photo (above) to the Guernsey Press.

'I stayed in Guernsey two years ago. My son and I visited the Underground Hospital and took photographs,' he wrote.

'One was very strange. A close look and there seems to be two people together. There was nobody around in that area at the time it was taken.

The camera used was a digital Olympus C2.'

Below are enhanced versions of the image...provided by SW

NOTE: there's a lot of distortion in the original photo...but, the enhanced version details the two apparitions. Is this a double exposure or are these spectres of two German soldiers? There have been many sightings in this structure and it has been investigated by several paranormal groups...Lon
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THE GUERNSEY UNDERGROUND HOSPITAL

This is the largest remaining structure from the Occupation in the Channel Islands. Almost invisible from the surface the tunnel complex covers 7000 square metres.

All you can see above ground is the entrances and the square holes which are the the escape shafts.

Construction started in the winter of 1940 - the first winter of the Occupation.

The tunnels were dug out by hundreds of slave workers from France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Belgium, Holland, Poland, Russia and Guernsey.

The Guernseymen refused to work after a rock fall killed six Frenchmen and were transferred elsewhere.

The slave labourers were given a simple choice - work or starve. Any who were too weak to work were sent to a detention camp in Alderney.

To dig the tunnels the workers had to use not only explosives and pneumatic drills but picks, shovels, sledge hammers and bare hands.

The German Military Underground Hospital and Ammunition Store took three and a half years of work before it was ready.

One grave digger had to bury seventeen workers killed in an explosion. They joined 37 men and women in a cemetery adjoining a workers' camp at Les Vauxbelets.

Some of the granite excavated was used in the concrete. Amongst the 15,000 tons of concrete was British cement captured at Dunkirk.

The rest of the stone was transported along the light railway tracks in the tunnels and dumped acroos the road.

The granite was thrown into the valley and the ground level was raised as a result.

Work stopped when the D-Day battle began.

The hospital was built in two sections

The channels in the floors were not properly finished and are to deal with the damp which must have been a problem from the start.

Entrances were camouflaged to blend in with the surrounding countryside.

The 2nd larger section was also built as wards with an extra corridor in the middle which was blocked, increasing the storage area.

There were three tunnel entrances and five ventilation shafts with iron ladders or concrete steps so they could be used as emergency exits.

They range in depth from 45 feet to 75 feet. The 75 foot shaft has a reservoir dug into one side which could hold thousands of gallons of water.

The water was pumped into the reservoir from the nearby well and gave the compound an independent water source.

During the construction many German wagons were used on Guernsey roads drawn by French and Belgian horses.

After the liberation the British government sold off the wagons and horses.

Sources:
www.bbc.co.uk
www.detecting.org.uk
www.thisisguernsey.com

Taiwanese Doctor Claims 'Avatar' Killed Patient

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 10:10 AM PST

news.com.au - A 42-year-old Taiwanese man with a history of high blood pressure has died of a stroke likely triggered by over-excitement from watching the blockbuster Avatar in 3D, a doctor says.

The man, identified only by his surname Kuo, started to feel unwell during the screening earlier this month in the northern city of Hsinchu and was taken to hospital.

Mr Kuo, who suffered from hypertension, was unconscious when he arrived at the Nan Men General Hospital and a scan showed that his brain was haemorrhaging, emergency room doctor Peng Chin-chih said today.

"It's likely that the over-excitement from watching the movie triggered his symptoms,'' the doctor said.

Mr Kuo died 11 days later from the brain haemorrhage, and the China Times newspaper said it was the first death linked to watching James Cameron's science-fiction epic Avatar.

Film blogging sites have reported complaints of headaches, dizziness, nausea and blurry eyesight from viewers of Avatar and other movies rich in 3D imagery.

Videos: Australian Yowie Research Eyewitness Testimonies

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 08:51 AM PST

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About Australian Yowie Research

The Australian Yowie Research is the FIRST Website on the Internet dedicated to the Research of the Yowie and are also the LARGEST and most well known Research Organization in the World on all subjects Yowie related. Many years of hard work and Research has contributed to the massive 'Hit' rate and Success of the A.Y.R. We have been seen repetitively in all facets of the Media on Yowie related issues throughout Australia including Regular Television, Radio and Printed Media. We are also broadcast throughout the World in many TV Specials and Documentaries.

The A.Y.R. are also known as "The YowieHunters" in the Media, but we prefer to be known as "Yowie Research" due to the fact that we wish no harm to The Creature and do not wish to instill a predictable interpretation of the word "Hunter". The A.Y.R. are linked to all Major Researchers in this field around the Globe, keeping up to date with the latest findings concerning all the new Bigfoot and Yowie evidence as it happens. A.Y.R. own some of the latest and most modern surveillance equipment in Australia, which is used in our everlasting quest for the truth and long term goal of the eventual filming of this Creature to prove to the unknowledgeable skeptic that the Yowie does in fact exist. There are NO definites about what the Yowie actually is, other than a 'Hairy Man/Ape' that resides in the deep of our and the World's forests.

Hypothesis is abundant in this field of Research, as too is conjecture and debate regarding what the Yowie is. It could perhaps be the last surviving Gigantopithecus or maybe a Species of Austrlopithecine - may also be neither. Whatever the Yowie may be, there is far too much evidence to support that the Yowie DOES exist, rather than it does not. Many of the World's academics are now coming forward after being shown various evidence and claiming that there is certainly something out there that is not formally recognized by Science.

The Witness reports cannot be ignored. Just how many credible witnesses viewing this Animal at close range will it take for people to understand that the Yowie is far more than imagination? The reader must also keep in mind that many of these witnesses were not alone at the time of their sightings. There has been up to 20 Witnesses during the same encounter! Some of our best witnesses of the Yowie WERE IN FACT Skeptics prior to their encounter! There have been thousands of Yowie reports in this Country since Colonialism during the 1700's, all describing the exact same Creature. These encounters are not only visual, but also audible. Again the reports over the years tell of deep guttural growling and grunting far beyond the vocal capacity of a human. Reports from the late 1700's are the same description as the current reports today.

How could this be? Considering that 300 years ago E-mail, Fax and Phone were not available for these witnesses to collaborate, to create an elaborate fictitious story? People on both sides of the Country were encountering the same Beast at the same time, much the same as today. The 'fear of ridicule' factor is slowly diminishing and more people are now coming forward, where in the past they were reluctant. The A.Y.R. have been instrumental in this major shift in the communities thinking and the acceptance of the possibility that there IS something lurking deep in our forest regions.

Yowie sightings are rare, depending on where people live, however we do have properties where people live side by side with these Beasts and sightings are such a regular occurrence that they are simply accepted as 'Neighbour's in some respects. Footprints of the Creature are cast and the A.Y.R. have been involved in sending one of these casts off to Dr. Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University for formal examination, in which he considered the cast to be authentic and concluded that the print matched the Sasquatch. The A.Y.R. holds a vast amount of files on the Yowie from the 1700's to this current day. This Website is constantly changing, upgrading and uploading - so stay tuned for further updates. We would like to thank the many contributors to the A.Y.R. Website and the encouragement and support of our fellow Researchers. - Dean Harrison

NOTE: Dean Harrison is the lead researcher at AYR. Take a look at the site at Australian Yowie Research - it's a very informative venue...Lon

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