Phantoms and Monsters

Romani Culture, Myths and Legends
Retired NORAD Officer Predicts Upcoming Worldwide UFO Display
Fortean / Oddball News - 9/18/2010
'Jaws Beach' Manifests Real Maneater

Posted: 18 Sep 2010 06:08 PM PDT

The Romani (also known as Roma) are an ethnic group living mostly in Europe, who trace their origins to medieval India. They are referred to many as Gypsies (though this moniker is historically incorrect) and have been persecuted for centuries throughout the world because of their traditional culture.

Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young and there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practice of child marriage. Romani law establishes that the man's family must pay a bride price to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow this rule. Once married, the woman joins the husband's family, where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs, as well as to take care of her in-laws. The power structure in the traditional Romani household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men in general have more authority than women. Women gain respect and authority as they get older. Young wives begin gaining authority once they have children. Many Romanies follow a strict form of Marhime, which is similar to the Hindu purity laws.

Romani legends and mythology tell of certain Romanies who possess passive psychic powers such as empathy, precognition, retrocognition, or psychometry. Other legends include the ability to levitate, travel through astral projection by way of meditation, invoke curses or blessings, conjure/channel spirits, and skill with illusion-casting.

During many traditional burials, steel or iron needles are pushed into the body's heart and pieces of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers. Hawthorn was placed on the legs or driven through the legs. They would also drive stakes, pour boiling water on the grave, and behead or burn the body. All this preparation was to ward off Vampires. Romanies have a particular concept of good and evil forces. Dead relatives were looked after loyally. The soul enters a world like the world of the living, except that death does not exist. The soul lingers near the body and sometimes wants to live again.

The Roma legends of the living dead added to and enriched the Vampire legends of Hungary, Romania, and Slavic lands. The Indian deity associated with blood drinking is Kali, who has fangs, wears a garland of corpses or skulls and has four arms. Her temples are near the cremation grounds. She and the goddess Durga battled the demon Raktabija who could reproduce himself from each drop of blood spilled. Kali drank all his blood so none was spilled, thereby winning the battle and killing Raktabija. Sarah, or the Black Goddess, is the form in which Kali survived among Roma.

Some Roma have a belief that the three Marys from the New Testament went to France and baptized a gypsy called Sara. Some refer to Sarah, their Black Goddess as "Black Cally" or "Black Kali". In 1448, four decapitated female skeletons were discovered in the foundation of a church in southern France and were tentatively identified as those of the three Maries and Sarah, their Egyptian servant. Over time, Mary Magdalene disappeared from the trio of Maries and today, only Mary Jacobé and Mary Salomé are the official Saints of the Catholic Church. One legend says that Mary Magdalene became a hermit, grew her hair long and hid herself in a cave to atone for her sins. Sarah has been forgotten by the Church and the official modern version of the legend offered by the Church authorities is that only the two Maries (Jacobé and Salomé) arrived in a boat from Palestine with their servant Sarah who is now called Saint Sarah despite the fact that officially there is no such saint in the hierarchy of Catholic saints. Equally mysterious is the presence of the black female statue in the crypt of the church in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France. The present statue is said to have replaced an previous statue, which in its turn replaced an earlier one. Most Romani worldwide and of different religions celebrate Sarah in one form or another and by alternative names.

Some authors, taking up themes from the pseudohistorical book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, suggest that Sarah was the daughter of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. These ideas were popularized by Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code and is also the main plot in Eron Manusov's novel Ahavah's Dream.

Another form of Vampire in Romani folklore is called a Mullo (one who is dead). This Vampire is believed to return and cause malicious havoc and/or suck the blood of a person. The victim is usually a relative who had caused their death or hadn't properly observed the burial ceremonies or kept the deceased's possessions instead of destroying them as was proper.

People who are hideous in appearance, missing a finger, or had appendages similar to those of an animal, were believed to be a Vampire. If a person died unseen, they would become a Vampire...likewise if a corpse swelled before burial. It is believed that female Vampires can return, lead a normal life and even marry though they would exhaust the husband to the point of death, similar to a Succubus.

Roma people in Kosovo believed that Vampires were invisible to most people. However, they could be "seen by a twin brother and sister born on a Saturday who wear their drawers and shirts inside out" according to a late Serbian ethnologist. "This pair could see the Vampire out of doors at night, but immediately after it saw them it would have to flee, head over heels."

Romani Gypsies have also been incorporated in gothic literature, most notably in Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' in which the infamous Vampire's loyal 'Szgany' henchman (Romani Gypsies) were Dracula's caretakers and defenders.

"Always help brothers; Never harm Brothers; Always pay when you owe although not necessarily money; And never be afraid."....Romani philosophy

This was only a brief overview of culture and legends of the Romani people. Please read the following links in reference to Romani history and the past / present discrimination they face - The Gypsies in History and Today and Romani Against Racism as well as Roma in the Americas BTW, the Romanies were the only other population besides the Jews who were targeted for extermination on racial grounds in the 'Final Solution'. You can read further at Rroma and Sinti Holocaust.

Sources:
www.svabhinava.org
romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk
en.wikipedia.org
kopachi.com
monstrous.com
www.atheistnexus.org
ovari.hr
www.rromaniconnect.org
www.radoc.net
www.imninalu.net

Romani Culture, Myths and Legends

Retired NORAD Officer Predicts Upcoming Worldwide UFO Display

Posted: 18 Sep 2010 11:08 AM PDT

A newly-published book by a retired NORAD officer predicts October 13, 2010 as the tentative date for a fleet of extraterrestrial craft to hover for hours over the earth's principal cities. Supposedly the event to be the first in a series intended to avert a planetary catastrophe resulting from increasing levels of carbon-dioxide in the earth's atmosphere dangerously approaching a "critical mass." I don't know much about Stanley A. Fulham other than some information on a few videos and that he has written two other books related to this subject. The press release is posted below...Lon

Winnipeg, MB (PRWEB) September 13, 2010 - A newly-published 352-page book by a retired Air Force officer, Stanley A. Fulham, tentatively predicts October 13, 2010 as the date for a massive UFO display over the world's principal cities. According to the author, the aliens will neither land nor communicate on that date; they are aware from eons of experience with other planets in similar conditions their sudden intervention would cause fear and panic.

The book, Challenges of Change (3rd ed.), reports this event will be the initial interaction in a process leading to mankind's acceptance of the alien reality and technologies for the removal of poisonous gases from the earth's atmosphere in 2015, if not sooner.

The author draws upon his military experience with the UFO phenomenon dating back to WW2, and later, with NORAD and his subsequent life-long association with a senior NORAD intelligence officer who provided him a wealth of historical data relating to NORAD's experience with the UFO/alien reality which has never been revealed to the public. In the military's view, as conveyed to and understood by Fulham, the public is not yet ready to accept an alien reality.

Fulham writes it is generally recognized UFOs function beyond our earth's physical laws, and has concluded answers to questions regarding who they are, where are they from, why are they here, are they a threat, and the mystery of abductions could only be found at a higher dimension of reality.

For more than a decade, through the services of a world renowned channeler, the author has communicated with an ethereal group of entities known as the Transcendors -- 43,000 very old souls who combine their vast experience and knowledge through eons of incarnations, providing advice and information to humans in search of basic realities of mankind's existence.

The book Challenges of Change reports on the author's years of communication with the Transcendors in a question and answer format intended to inform and challenge. The Transcendors reveal through the author crucial information about urgent global challenges facing mankind such as earth changes, international terrorism, worldwide financial collapse and the environmental crisis. One revelation is al Qaeda has a dirty nuclear bomb and WMD, but faces a moral quandary over "containment of collateral damages."

Utilizing the theme of the Four Horsemen as symbolic metaphor, Fulham warns mankind will survive all of these future challenges, except the CO2 pollution of our atmosphere. According to information provided to the author by the Transcendors, the build-up of CO2 pollution is rising 1% annually to a "critical mass" of 22% in which mankind could not survive "without outside intervention."

According to Fulham, the Transcendors state they have borne witness to countless thousands of alien civilizations who polluted their planets to total extinction where not a single being, animal or plant survived. They urgently warn planet earth is presently on the same self-destructive path. Fulham reports the aliens are well aware of our environmental crisis, and have benevolently decided to rescue mankind in this vast universal drama.

Fulham has been in contact with a distinguished foreign ambassador who read the book with great interest and dispatched it to his home government, where it was translated and studied by hundreds of their top government officials.

A website containing videos of the author discussing his research conclusions and other vital information has been created at: sites.google.com/site/challengesofchange

Fulham clarifies there are no absolutes; the principal of free will and choice that exits with all souls precludes all absolute realities, and the aliens may decide to postpone their intervention -- but the Transcendors confirm it will nonetheless occur in 2010. Quoting the author, the event will "occur this year, in what will surely be one of the great dramas of our galaxy, the introduction of their alien civilizations and technologies to mankind. We are not alone, and our world will have changed forever."

Retired NORAD Officer Predicts Upcoming Worldwide UFO Display

Fortean / Oddball News - 9/18/2010

Posted: 18 Sep 2010 10:48 AM PDT

Pope's Astronomer: "I'd Love to Baptize ET"

dailymail - Intelligent aliens may be living among the stars and are likely to have souls, a senior Vatican scientist said yesterday.

The Pope's astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, said he would be happy to 'baptise an al ien' - but admitted that the chances of communicating with life outside the Earth were low.

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Birmingham, Dr Consolmagno also dismissed Creationism and claimed that the revival of 'intelligent design' - the controversial theory that only God can explain gaps in the theory of evolution - was 'bad theology'.

Dr Consolmagno, one of a team of 12 astronomers working for the Vatican, said the Catholic Church had been supporting and funding science for centuries.

A self-confessed science fiction fan, he said he was 'comfortable' with the idea of alien life.

Asked if he would baptise an alien, he replied: 'Only if they asked.'

He added: 'I'd be delighted if we found life elsewhere and delighted if we found intelligent life elsewhere.

'But the odds of us finding it, of it being intelligent and us being able to communicate with it - when you add them up it's probably not a practical question.

'God is bigger than just humanity. God is also the god of angels.'

In the middle ages, the definition of a soul was to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions, he said.

Those characteristics may not be unique to humans.

'Any entity - no matter how many tentacles it has - has a soul,' he added.

In practice, machines were unlikely to be smart or human enough to have souls.

Dr Consolmagno, 57, the curator of the Pope's meteorite collection, is a trained astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican's observatory.

On 'intelligent design', which claims that Darwin's theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of life, he said: 'The word has been hijacked by a narrow group of Creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it didn't originally mean at all.

'It's another form of the God of the gaps.

'It's bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning.'

The phrase 'intelligent design' was centuries old and described the idea that God could be discovered in the laws of space and time and the existence of human reason.

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World's Smallest Full-Grown Cow

metro - Swallow the cow, who hails from Rishworth, West Yorkshire, measures a titchy 0.8m (33inches) from hind to foot eanring her a place in the new book of Guinness World Records 2011.

Swallow's delighted owner, Caroline Ryder, said: 'Celebrity does not sit that well on Swallow's shoulders. She'll spend the day where she's happiest, in the middle of the herd grazing, or in the cowshed listening to Radio 2, her station of choice.'

Let's hope Radio 2 aren't planning to play The Wonder Stuff's 'The Size of a Cow', because that could just get very confusing indeed.

Swallow is just one of the British entrants in the new Guinness book - with others UK-based record breakers including Stephen Parkes of Nottingham, who scooped the record for the largest collection of Smurf memorabilia in the world; Stephen Buttler of the West Midlands, who broke the record for the Most Push Ups with Claps in One Minute by completed 73 push ups with a clap sixty seconds; and Scot Patrick Rielly, who claimed the record for Most Football Management Rejection Letters, having been turned down for the manager's role at 46 different professional football clubs.

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Clothing in a Spray Can

reuters - Tight-fitting t-shirts and hipster jeans could get even more snug if you could just spray them on. That idea just got a little less far-fetched. A liquid mixture developed by the Imperial College London and a company called Fabrican lets you spray clothes directly onto your body using aerosol technology. After the spray dries, it creates a thin layer of fabric that it can be peeled off, washed and re-worn.

"When I first began this project I really wanted to make a futuristic, seamless, quick and comfortable material," says Manel Torres, a Spanish fashion designer and academic visitor at Imperial College in a statement. Torres worked with Paul Luckham, a professor of particle technology at the Imperial College to create the material. "In my quest to produce this kind of fabric, I ended up returning to the principles of the earliest textiles such as felt, which were also produced by taking fibers and finding a way of binding them together without having to weave or stitch them," says Torres.

The spray-on fabric consists of short fibres that are combined with polymers to bind them together and a solvent that delivers the fabric in liquid form. The mixture evaporates when the spray touches the surface. The fabric is formed by the cross-linking of fibres, which cling to one another to create the garment, says Fabrican. The spray-on fabric can be pretty versatile. It can be created in many colors and and can use different types of fibres ranging from natural to the synthetic, says the company.

The spray can be applied using a high pressure spray gun or an aerosol can. The texture of the fabric changes according to the type of material such as wool, linen or acrylic and how the spray is layered on the body. Fabrican says the technology is not just for fashion but can have some innovative use in medicine to layer bandages on the skin without disturbing the wound. The technology is still in prototype stage and some kinks still need to be worked out, such as the strong smell of solvent around the fabric. The researchers estimate that it will be at least a few years before it can be ready for commercial use.

Click for video

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May 2011: Science Researchers Predict Discovery of Earth 2.0

dailygalaxy - The first Earth-like planet orbiting another star will be announced in May next year, if the discovery of extrasolar planets continues at its present rate, say researchers Samuel Arbesman from Harvard Medical School in Boston and Gregory Laughlin at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They point out that astronomers have been discovering extrasolar planets at an increasing rate since 1995. The rate of scientific progress, they point out, is often hard to measure, but in certain circumstances, the data is unambiguous and easy to measure, creating a trend.

The discoveries of exo-palnets now follow a well understood pattern, the first extrasolar planets being necessarily massive, many times the size of Jupiter, and so easier to spot. As techniques have improved with the Kepler Space Telescope, for example, astronomers have found smaller planets, some just a few times more massive than Earth.

"It's only a matter of time before more Kepler observations lead to smaller planets with longer period orbits, coming closer and closer to the discovery of the first Earth-analog," says John Morse, head of the astrophysics division at NASA headquarters in Washington.

Astronomers to date have found superhot gas giants and snowball-like Neptunes, with the trend toward the discovery of a planet in the habitable zone. There's no real dispute among astronomers that the discovery of an Earth-like planet is on the cards.

Arbesman and Laughlin have taken this data and projected it forward to predict when an Earth-like planet is likely to crop up. The results have a heavy-tailed distribution in which there is a 66 per cent probability of finding the other Earth by 2013, a 75 percent probability by 2020 but a 95 percent probability by 2264.

However, they say the median date of discovery is in early May 2011, which for various reasons is the date they emphasis in their paper.

The first data from Kepler space telescope which was launched in March last year specifically to find extrasolar planets was released in June and is currently being analysed. The first set of candidate planets are due to be announced in February next year.

Many astronomers expect the first Kepler data matrix to include a habitable Earth-like planet. But according to Arbesman and Laughlin, they'll have to wait a little longer. "Because," they say, "of the limited time base line of the mission to date, the Kepler planet candidates to published in February 2011 may be too hot to support significant values for H [their habitability metric]."

But the race is heating up: several new techniques have made Earth-bound telescopes almost as sensitive as Kepler and certainly on the verge of finding Earth 2.0.

The idea of Earth 2.0 orbiting another star, reports the MIT Technology Review, could have a major impact on the global psyche and provide the focus for an international effort to characterize this place. And all this to happen in early May 2011, at least according to Arbesman and Laughlin.

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Monster 18m Wave Recorded off Tasmania

lithgomercury - Victorian beaches can expect "fairly large swells" over the weekend, but nothing will match the monsters that reared off Tasmania's coast yesterday.

The Apple Isle is now the home of Australia's biggest recorded wave - 18.4 metres high - after wild weather lashed the state yesterday.

The freakishly big wave was recorded yesterday morning by a wave-rider buoy device off Cape Sorell on Tasmania's west coast.

It was the largest wave that the Bureau of Meteorology has recorded with the device since its installation in 1998.

The Bureau of Meteorology's Richard Carlyon said there would be some "pretty large waves" off the west coast of Victoria this weekend,

"At the moment in western Bass Strait we're forecasting wave heights of seven metres ... But waves of that height won't be seen along the Surf Coast.

"Tasmania and King Island get in way of waves reaching the surf coast. The magnitudes are somewhat reduced."

Dr Carlyon said the largest waves to strike the Victorian coastline on the weekend would be west of Cape Otway to the South Australian border.

Victorian surfers scoping a weekend of big-wave riding should keep their eye on local conditions, he said.

"We're still forecasting waves of around three to four metres in the Surf Coast region, but surfers should keep in mind our forecasts are for offshore," Dr Carlyon said.

"It can be hard for us to forecast surf heights at particular beaches," Dr Carlyon said.

''We've had fairly deep low pressure systems moving south of Tasmania and they're throwing up these waves.

''We've had a very stationary type of weather pattern. We've been stuck in these south-westerly winds blowing off the Antarctic peninsula up towards Tasmania and it's been like that for a number of days.

''It's been a slow-moving pattern that has allowed those wave patterns to continually build along the west coast of Tasmania.''

Dale Sumner, general manager of the Lakes Entrance Fishermen's Co-operative, said most of the 40-boat local fleet had chosen to stay at home to avoid the conditions.

Fortean / Oddball News - 9/18/2010

'Jaws Beach' Manifests Real Maneater

Posted: 18 Sep 2010 09:38 AM PDT

Scene from "Jaws: The Revenge"

seattletimes - A boater who disappeared off Jaws Beach - on an island where one of the "Jaws" movies was filmed - is likely the person whose remains were found in the belly of a shark, police say.

Authorities used fingerprints to identify Judson Newton, although they are still waiting for DNA test results, Assistant Police Commissioner Hulan Hanna said late Tuesday.

It is unclear if the 43-year-old Newton was alive when he was eaten.

Newton went on a boating trip with friends off Jaws Beach on New Providence Island on Aug. 29 and encountered engine trouble. Rescuers who responded to a call for help found three men aboard who said that Newton and a friend jumped into the water to try to swim back to shore. Officials launched a search for them, but neither was found.

On Sept. 4, a local investment banker caught the 12-foot (3.6-meter) tiger shark while on a deep-sea fishing trip and he said a left leg popped out of its mouth as they hauled it in.

When officers with the island's defense force cut the shark open, they found the right leg, two severed arms and a severed torso.

One of Newton's friends, Samuel Woodside, 37, told The Associated Press that he was surprised when he heard police say Newton probably drowned.

"To me, he was always a strong swimmer," Woodside said. "I don't know what happened."

Woodside said he and Newton were childhood friends and would go fishing almost every weekend when Newton wasn't working as a sailor on cargo boats or as a chef at local restaurants.

Newton did not favor one fishing spot over another, Woodside said.

"He was a sailor, you see," he said. "Anywhere where he could get a fishing line, he would go there."

Newton was not married and did not have kids, but he left behind his mother and a brother, Woodside said.

The beach near where Newton was last seen is located on the small island where the 1987 shark-terror sequel film "Jaws: The Revenge" was partially filmed. The capital, Nassau, is also on the island.

'Jaws Beach' Manifests Real Maneater

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