Phantoms and Monsters

Apparition, Voices Reported at Maryland Railroad Museum
Indonesia: Boink Cow, Marry Cow, Drown Cow
Cloud-Hole Phenomena Explained
Knobby: 'This thing was 10 foot tall....six fingers on each hand'

Apparition, Voices Reported at Maryland Railroad Museum

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 12:30 PM PDT

fredericknewspost - When an elevator was being installed at the Brunswick Railroad Museum last spring, workers and staff reported strange noises, voices and unusual activity

Supplies were being moved around. Several elevator workers even claimed they saw a woman in a white dress walking around the second floor.

The reports led a former museum board member to call the Mason Dixon Paranormal Society, a Gettysburg-based group that investigates claims of paranormal activity.

The group agreed to investigate on June 5.

Curator Rebecca O'Leary, who has been with the museum since last June, was caught by surprise when group members called and said they would be coming out to look for ghosts.

She said they arrived around 8:30 the night of the investigation with equipment valued at about $30,000, including electrothermal monitors, infrared cameras and audio recording devices. After setting up the equipment around the building, they started their investigation at around 11 p.m. and were in the museum until about 3 a.m.

"We had everything set up from as simple as a digital voice recorder to wireless audio and thermal imaging," Paranormal Society founder Darryl Keller said.

O'Leary said while she was unfamiliar with the earlier reports or the call to the investigators, several staff members told her that they were uncomfortable being alone in the basement where the offices were moved after the elevator's construction.

Museum board member Walt Stull said there have been reports of strange noises in the 1904 building over the years, but those noises intensified with the construction of the elevator.

Stull said he has heard unexplained sounds as well, but had never given them much thought.

"I always thought it was the building shifting or something like that," Stull said. "But we'll see what they come up with."

According to Keller, his group goes into an investigation trying to debunk the claims of paranormal activity, which he said happens more often than not. He estimates 70 percent of the society's investigations outside the Gettysburg area end up revealing no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

However, Keller said that likely will not be the case with the Brunswick Railroad Museum. He said the investigation is nearly complete and he should be contacting the museum this week. He said he was unable reveal the extent of the group's findings until he reviews the evidence with museum staff, but he said investigators had unexplained experiences.

"There were some things that happened Saturday we were not able to debunk," Keller said. "We do have evidence."

Keller also said Frederick County is a frequent location for investigations by the Mason Dixon Paranormal Society.

"We could open up a branch office in Frederick County," Keller said.

NOTE: This story caught my eye since my Dad is a major railroad maven and that we used to go to New Brunswick, MD regularly when I was a kid (as well as every railroad museum and trainspotting event in the Mid-Atlantic!) If anyone from the Mason-Dixon Paranormal Society wishes to forward evidence from this case or any other case, please feel free to do so. I'm especially receptive to paranormal / cryptid experiences from Pennsylvania and Maryland, in particular York/Adams counties and south-central PA / Maryland historical sites...Lon

Apparition, Voices Reported at Maryland Railroad Museum

Indonesia: Boink Cow, Marry Cow, Drown Cow

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 11:50 AM PDT

jakartaglobe - A Balinese teenager caught in the act of intercourse with a cow passed out on Friday when he was forced to marry the animal in a ceremony witnessed by hundreds of curious onlookers.

As the Jakarta Globe reported earlier in the day, Ngurah Alit, 18, an unemployed youth from the seaside village of Yeh Embang in Jembrana, was caught stark naked positioned behind the cow in a rice paddy field.

In his defence, Alit admitted to the act of bestiality but claimed the cow, which he believed was a young and beautiful woman, had wooed him with flattering compliments.

As part of a Pecaruan ritual, a ceremony to cleanse the village of the unholy act of a man mating with a cow, Alit was forced to "marry" the animal.

Alit, however, according to Detik.com, passed out surrounded by locals and police, who were attempting to prevent a number of journalists from covering the spectacle.

It is unclear whether or not he got to say "I do."

Alit's collapse prompted his mother to begin screaming hysterically, while other family members shouted at photographers not to take pictures.

"Poor kid. He's actually a quiet kid," said one villager.

As part of the ceremony, Alit's victim and new bride was drowned in ocean.

Alit, on the other hand, was symbolically drowned and bathed on the beach.

"Only his clothes were thrown into the sea," the villager said.

Village chief Ida Bagus Legawa declared that the village had been "cleansed" from the "defilement from the incident."

Indonesian man claims cow seduced him for sex

**********
Originally posted 10/25/2008

Indonesia: Cow Drowned For Being Impregnated By Human

Villagers from Julah in Tejakula, Buleleng, tow (see photo) a pregnant cow behind a boat into open sea as part of a local traditional ritual.

The cow, which is five months pregnant, was thrown out to the sea about 3 kilometers from land Monday. The villagers believe the animal was impregnated by a village elder.

During the ritual the man, who was caught red-handed having sexual intercourse with the cow two months ago, joined the boat trip in order to throw away his clothes to to symbolize him discarding his sins.

Julah customary village head Ketut Sidemen said the ritual, called gamya gamana, or freak weeding, and had been conducted there for generations. The decision to perform the ritual was made a local residents meeting.

In line with customary regulations, the perpetrator, identified only as PS, 70, was sanctioned to fund the expensive ceremony, which aimed to cleanse him of any bad influences.

Luh Ketut Suryani, a professor and activist, deplored the sancation against PS.

She said drowning a cow was baseless because sexual intercourse between a human being and am animal could not cause pregnancy due to the different chromosomes and genes of the two.

"The cow is not guilty, why shoud it be drowned? Why don't just use a symbol like what was done by the perpetrator?" she said.

Suryani's said she was concerned dealt with the financial situation of the owner, who lives below the poverty line.

"The cow, which has a high price, had to be thrown away. It will be a pity for the owner, who is already poor and is now forced to lose his priceless belonging."

Indonesia: Boink Cow, Marry Cow, Drown Cow

Cloud-Hole Phenomena Explained

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 11:23 AM PDT

Click for video

wired - Airplanes can punch holes in clouds and make it rain, new research shows. As propeller or jet airplanes pass through the right atmospheric conditions, they make liquid water droplets freeze and immediately drop as snow, leaving a circular fissure behind.

Odd clouds can sometimes elude explanation for decades, and these mysterious gaps in the sky, aptly called hole-punch clouds or channel clouds, have been puzzling sky gazers and scientists alike since the 1940s. A 1968 article in the magazine Weatherwise called them "A Meteorological Whodunit?"

As recently as October 2009, headlines touted a "Mystery UFO Halo Over Moscow." Earlier studies had suggested a link between hole-punch clouds and airplanes, though the mechanism was unclear.

Previous research also suggests that propeller planes could make snow fall when they flew through supercooled clouds, where water droplets remain liquid despite subfreezing temperatures. But until recently, a direct connection between airplanes, hole-punch clouds and snowfall was missing. Now, a team of atmospheric scientists report observing all three in the June Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Andrew Heymsfield of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and colleagues flew a research plane through the snow produced by a hole-punch cloud west of Denver International Airport in 2007. The plane was loaded with instruments for studying how ice forms in clouds. Radar from the ground picked up a strange echo in their wake, indicating oddly-shaped snowflakes.

"We didn't know it, but we went right through this precipitation feature that was spotted from the ground," Heymsfield said. Video from the flight showed a hole in a patch of altocumulus clouds (see below), and two inches of snowfall directly below the hole.

Heymsfield and colleagues examined flight records for the nearby airport and linked the hole and the snow to two commercial turboprop aircraft that had taken off about an hour before. The movement of supercooled water droplets over the planes' propellers cooled them enough to make them freeze and plunge to Earth as snowflakes, Heymsfield said. Normally, snowflakes or raindrops need a speck of dust or another imperfection to form around. But supercooled water can freeze instantly, if it cools quickly to around minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

To confirm this idea, the researchers compared the snowflakes that fell on either side of the hole-punch cloud to the ice crystals that fell directly beneath it. The snowflakes that fell from the hole were more plate-like and simple than those that originated in the surrounding clouds. The more-complicated snowflakes had accumulated drops of liquid water as they fell, Heymsfield said. But in the middle of the hole, all the liquid had either frozen or evaporated.

"This phenomena removes the droplets, so these crystals as they fell were not collecting any droplets," he said.

"My initial impression is that it's reasonable," commented Patrick Chuang, a cloud expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new work.

The researchers then linked satellite images of hole-punch clouds to flight schedules to show that jet aircraft, not just propeller planes, can also punch holes and produce snow. The supercooled droplets freeze after passing over the jet planes' wings, Heymsfield said.

"We know exactly which aircraft produced the holes," he said. "Researchers had previously linked a lot of snow to propeller aircraft, but they hadn't made the connection to jet aircraft."

"There are a lot more jets flying around than there are propeller aircraft, so there's much more opportunity to generate this effect," he added.

Not all flights through banks of clouds will produce snow. About 7.8 percent of the Earth's surface is covered with clouds at the right elevation for supercooled droplets to form. And because jet aircraft don't generally cruise at those altitudes, they may only form hole-punch clouds when they take off or land.

The extra precipitation left by airplanes punching holes in clouds is probably not enough to change global climate patterns, Heymsfield added. But "regionally, it could certainly enhance snowfall."

Cloud-Hole Phenomena Explained

Knobby: 'This thing was 10 foot tall....six fingers on each hand'

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 09:31 AM PDT

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postchronicle - Bigfoot sighting? Another claim has been made that a creature, popularly known as Bigfoot - or in this case by the nickname Knobby - was spotted in an area of North Carolina known as Carpenter's Knob, which is where he was allegedly spotted many years ago, hence the name 'Knobby', reports fwix.com.

The last "sighting" of Bigfoot was a man in a rubber suit.

But this time it may be different. The citizen who called in the sighting is a "self-proclaimed mountain man" says the report, who is well known to his neighbors.

Timothy Peeler called 911 on June 5, saying a man-like beast was loose on his property. He said the creature was "upwards of 10 feet tall" and screeched and grunted his way along.

Peeler saw enough to say the Bigfoot-like individual had dark hair and a gray beard that extended all the way down his belly. He says he "rough talked" the creature with "beautiful hair" and ran him off.

Officers arrived at the property around 3:00 a.m., says the news story, but after finding no one went ahed and filed a suspicious person report.

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is purportedly an ape-like creature that inhabits forests, most famously in the Pacific northwest.

Bigfoot is described in just about every sighting as a large hairy ape-like creature, ranging between 6–10 feet tall, weighing in excess of 500 pounds, and covered in dark brown or dark reddish hair.

Some witnesses have also described large eyes, a pronounced brow ridge, and a large, low-set forehead; the top of the head has been described as rounded and crested, similar to a male gorilla. Bigfoot is also commonly reported to have a strong, unpleasant smell by those who claim to have encountered it.

Sightings have been recorded back as far as 1840, but to date, the creature is just an elusive mystery.

Go here for the full story! Below is an interview with Peeler describing the beast he spotted. He says he even fought it off of his dog!

NOTE: How can I write this without getting myself in the jackpot? Oh well....this 'sighting' is starting to sound like a mixture of corn mash whiskey and kissin' cousins. 'This thing was 10 foot tall....six fingers on each hand.' That claim alone has me thinking there's more behind this story. I have family in the western North Carolina mountains and have heard several variations of the 'hairy mountain man' tale. Anyway, take it for what it is...Lon

Knobby: 'This thing was 10 foot tall....six fingers on each hand'

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