Phantoms and Monsters

Communion With The Mothman
Just the Facts? - Monster Albino Catfish, Father 'Honor Kills' Six Daughters and Witness To Roswell
FBI Reveals Mysterious Skyjacker D.B. Cooper May Soon Be Identified

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 06:09 PM PDT

I received this anecdote from a friend who has shared her paranormal experiences previously though none of the accounts have ever been posted on 'Phantoms and Monsters'. The following remarkable narrative may very well add credence to the Mothman phenomena and, frankly, I have no reason not to believe the account. I have not edited the original text except for a few minor errors. I would encourage reader comments and input:

Lon - I've had some experiences with Mothman since the end of Feb. and its still occurring. This isn't something that can be put in with the Mothman report from Middletown, Ohio of May of this year, at least in total.

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In 1967, two weeks before the collapse of the Silver Bridge, a phone call came to our house south of Lancaster, Ohio. It was from dad's friends in southwestern W.Va. Someone else in our house answered the phone and dad was busy watching the evening news so he yelled to whoever answered it to ask them what they wanted. The answer was that they had some trouble over in W.Va. and needed dad to come down. He asked what the trouble was and the person on the other end said it was a big bird. Well, we'd just seen a piece on this on the news and the anchor who reported it laughed about it. Dad laughed and said that was a good one and to tell the person this and then hang up.

A short time after the phone rang again. This was when long distance cost an arm and a leg so dad asked what was going on and again it was that they had this big bird that had done a lot of damage and they needed help to hunt it down. He took the phone call then and we all heard him saying, "All of my guns and all of my ammunition?? What the heck is going on down there?" There were a couple of okays and then I heard him ask why this man's daughter needed to talk to me. It was explained to me that this youngest girl had what they thought was an imaginary friend but asking to talk with me was a good sign that she was coming out of this mentally and emotionally and I was to play along. It was supposed to be for her own good. I was nine years old and she was maybe a few months behind me. I got on the phone and she asked if this was (my name) and I said yes. I asked what her name was and she said what it was. I'd met her once before and she was very introverted and really didn't mix with us. She showed us rocks and bugs but didn't really get involved in getting to know us. That's why I was shocked that this girl asked for me by name. I told her she had a good memory and she said it wasn't her memory that she got my name from! I thought, OK, she's a bit touched as they say, LOL.

I asked where she got my name in order to ask for me and she said it was her friend who was a man - but wasn't a man. I said, "Okay, who is this friend and what does he want with me?" She began to relate that in the course of talking one day he told her my name and said he wanted her to contact me and ask me to come down there to talk to him. I said I'd have to talk to my parents first. I got off the phone and dad wanted to know what was up with this girl. I said there was no way she knew my name. He asked where she got it then. I told him and he got a little alarmed and called their house to ask some questions about this man that 'wasn't a man' and who he might be. They assured him that it wasn't anyone near them as they were out on a quiet country road with only a few neighbors. She said this friend of her's wasn't one of them. They'd checked the woods where she said she'd met with him and never found any footprints or signs that anyone had been there with her. So, because this was urgent we packed up quick and headed down there from central Ohio.

We waited in line to cross the Silver Bridge across from Point Pleasant. A cross member on the top of this bridge on our side of the river was swinging back and forth as it was not attached on one end. The bridge clanged and made all sorts of racket when a car was crossing it. I was told to sit back and rest my eyes because the sunlight was very bright that day and I was getting hot. I felt my eyes get heavy - like I was slipping right into a comfortable rest. The next thing I knew I heard screaming and found myself horizontal above my brothers clawing at the window screaming to be let out that the bridge was going to go into the river. Dad got me calmed down and asked when this was going to happen. I had to rest, I was exhausted. So, I sat back slipped once again and again....found myself across my brothers with my siblings holding my legs and ankles to keep me from going out the window. I realized I was screaming again and clawing at the window. I asked what was going on and they all said I'd been OK and then suddenly lunged for the window to claw my way out while screaming hard. Mom said to beat me for it and so did my siblings. Dad on the other hand told them to hush while he walked me through what I was seeing when I woke up doing this.

I was in a vehicle and it was falling off that bridge into the river below and I saw every inch of the fall to the water and below the water even. I was horrified when it was slow enough for me to see all of this clearly. Dad asked if we'd get across OK that day and when we were supposed to go back home. I searched my mind and saw it was OK to cross. He had me tell him what would cause the bridge to fall and then show it to him on the other side once we got there. When he saw what I'd seen in my mind on the Ohio side before we got to the W.Va. side he was utterly horrified.

Structurally that bridge should not have been in use at all. I won't go into that part but to say that I got it absolutely right on each and every count. He was quiet all the way there except occasionally he would ask me when this would happen. I remember looking in my mind and telling him it would happen in about two weeks. Two weeks to the day we were sitting watching the TV when a news alert came across to say it had fallen into the river. Mom got a calendar right away and checked it to make sure how long it had been. She cried a bit and then asked me to come over to her. She thanked me for saving all their lives. I'd forgotten all about what happened two weeks prior because it was traumatic not just for my visions but for what happened at the people's house!

I hope this helps others, Lon, but I can't have identifying information come back to me about this for certain reasons. I will continue. We drove a long time before arriving and dad went in to talk to these people as we set up our tent to sleep outside. The man came out and said to put it away because we wouldn't want to be sleeping out there with the troubles they had down there. It didn't make sense to any of us how a big bird could be scaring these people that bad but they were scared badly. While the adults got the low down we kids went up into the woods to take care of the imaginary friend thing. The older kids checked everything out to make sure there was no one and nothing to harm us when they left. We were not far into the woods and it was not all that thick with growth. The driveway was pretty wide and it was a sunny day. They all left and I put my younger brother with her brother about 15 ft. from us at the edge of the woods. We all grew up in the woods so there was nothing any of us didn't know how to deal with if confronted with it. We were well practiced. I just wanted to get this over with but the girl was being timid. She said I'd think she was nuts. I laughed and said that sometimes people don't understand but they need to give it time to sink in. I gained her confidence and so she opened up.

She said "he" would scare me if I saw him straight on. I said there wasn't much that scared me anymore with three brothers that challenged my life at every turn. She looked worried and said he was special and didn't look like us. Well, I thought he was disfigured or something but no that wasn't it either. I said that sooner or later if I was to talk to this man I'd have to see him in order to understand what he wanted to tell me. I was thinking that maybe there was some wildlife around there that she wasn't familiar with that she couldn't see clearly so it had scared her. No, she said that wasn't it either. She said I had to promise not to look unless he said it was OK. I said I didn't want to be close to him then if I needed to take off in a hurry. She said I couldn't do that because it would upset him. I let out a Ha! and she just gave me a look and said this was very important to her because he'd been very nice to her and been a good friend when she had no others. Okay, so I appeased her a bit and said I'd play along and be extra nice so I could get this over with. She kept saying not to be alarmed and said she had been the first time she saw him. She said he was very big. I was thinking she must have lost it bad.

I saw movement and there was something looking like a very tall spindly marionette up next to these skinny tall trees. I asked her how she and her siblings had accomplished that. I was laughing but she was looking at me like she had no idea what I was talking about. Then it walked out from the trees without any visible support! I was like okay, there's got to be a sensible explanation to this so I asked if I could move forward after awhile to get a better look. I told her I could take this. Well, she asked him and said he said it was OK. Before that though he wanted to talk to my mind, she said. I thought, oh my God, she's really in La La Land, poor girl, stuck in the sticks of W.Va. and she's lost it! Well that thing moved again as if shifting from side to side in a standing position. That was human like. I begin to hear this man's voice in my mind and it's conversing with me. It's all like 'happy to talk to me finally' and 'so excited by my coming to see him' ...I thought I'd caught this girl's insanity and hit myself at the side of my head to shake this voice out of my head. She asked what was wrong. I told her! She said that was normal. I had news for her but not yet! I had been ordered to see what this was about. This voice seems to be rifling through all my memories like wildfire and then downloading high quality video....like being there in my mind about that bridge falling and other things in the future. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me so I tried to maintain my balance mentally by reminding myself that I was just playing along and this would all play out to be an elaborate hoax.

I inched closer and closer to the edge of this driveway and then a drop off where the bulldozer had shoved the dirt for it. Movement caught my eyes and I looked down to see these big orange bird feet! I thought, oh my God what is that doing in the woods! I took a very slow, very meticulous look up the legs attached to these feet and they looked stork-like. The feet shifted by one picking up and then the other doing it. It was human like in movement but also bird like. I let my eyes go very slowly up the legs, to the body, ick! and then the chest, also ick! because I could count the ribs! There appeared to be scant feathers on it's skin which was greyish. It was a mix of this bright green color and greyish brown. The more I looked the worse it got but I gritted my teeth and kept my thinking to a minimum. I looked at these wings folded behind it's back but yet out a bit to the sides. I could see through them a bit but they looked leathery and stretchy. I looked at the shoulders which in truth were topped with sharp bumps which I realized were from the wings being folded behind it's body. I inadvertently got a good look at it's head and a wave of revulsion hit me and I said I was going to just back up slowly to get a better look from a distance. I think it picked up that I was scared of it. I heard it in my mind again and it was upset that I was scared of it. I explained with my mind, crazy as that sounds, just thinking I'd seen some people who were disfigured in my time and this was scary too. I'd just have to get used to it. I did want to get out of there with my life unscathed. This was nuts. This thing wanted to chat with me and I wanted to go to the bathroom really bad. I told the girl this and she said we'd have to go to the house. He told her, and I heard it too, that he knew I was scared and he was very upset. Then, he got into a part of my mind that showed what I went through at home and somewhere else, a big building in a big city that I didn't remember except in bits. He was livid at me seeing the entire breadth of whatever that was about. I told them both out loud that this wasn't right for this girl or I to be talking to him.

He said his kind didn't want any of them mixing with us because it was dangerous for them. He'd shown me where they were from, and it wasn't this planet. I was feeling dizzy and my brother saw me stagger a bit. I said I had to go and this girl had to help me down to the house, so we were going to leave now and she and I were about to be in big trouble because I wasn't allowed to keep such a secret. I got out of the woods OK and got up against their garage and wet my pants. Then I felt like I was losing control of my body and was shaking all over. My brother went and got dad. I told him to stay close to the garage because it was out there somewhere and it was huge. He thought I was nuts but I told him sternly that this man that wasn't a man but was a huge creature with wings and big orange feet. He laughed and I said "I wasn't laughing and we had to get into the house."

We all got into the house and the girl was livid with me for saying I wasn't supposed to tell and now he was angry with her. My head hurt really bad. The adults got their guns out. Phone calls were made and in short order men with guns in pickups and cars came flying into their driveway. Dad wouldn't allow me to tell mom or that woman what I'd seen...no one. I wanted to cry but felt stunned, shocked, very hard. They got me cleaned up and we all sat trying to be quiet. We tried to listen to what was going on.

That was an awful experience. The men went into the woods leaving the women with guns. They soon came back as it was almost dark. We began to see these huge stick looking figures darting past the picture window out front and then the back windows, and the kitchen door and windows. There was more than one of them. All the guns got loaded and we were put into the middle of the house. There was clawing at the roof, siding and windows. This went on for hours and I finally just went to sleep. I was hot and probably in shock so I just went to sleep.

Everything eventually went quiet and it stayed that way for hours. I woke up needing to go to the bathroom. There was a window so someone had to stand there with a gun as I went. Something came to the window and began to claw at it. By then I didn't know what this was or why it was happening. I was given a magazine and put my whole mind on it and read. When I did this all stopped outside. I got tired and quit doing that while wondering what was going on and it began all over again. We could all hear the tin being torn off the roof. I went back to sleep and everything was quiet the rest of what was left of the night.

The next day we packed up and started home. Dad asked before we got to the bridge if we'd be OK crossing it. I looked in my mind and saw it was OK. They wanted to know this over and over again. I was sure. On the Ohio side of the river my brothers and sisters began to talk about what was going on. Something big swooped down at the car and began to claw at it. This happened off and on all the way home. We could hear this thing holding on to the top of the car!! Once home I was sent to my room and told to go to sleep. Well, I didn't. I was listening to what they were saying downstairs. One of my brothers ran downstairs and said there was noise on the roof. Dad told them to go outside and look to see what it was. My brother returned pale looking and said it was a huge bird like thing with glowing red eyes. Dad said that wasn't funny. My brother said he knew it wasn't but this was true. Dad went out and sure enough he came back to say yes it was true. They were all upset and I was up under the roof that was being torn off. My family was watching shingles coming through the air and landing on the ground out back and front. They got the guns out and I was told to lay down and go to sleep. It was OK for awhile but then it started again.

My brother came to me and said to look out my window. He told me to look at these little red glowing lights outside. They were eyes. I could see huge spindly wings out there walking around on the ground. It was like they were on their elbows. It was really creepy. Dad took a gun out and then I heard him yell to me saying they were going to hurt him if I didn't say he never hurt me. I said I wasn't allowed to tell lies and he asked me nicely to be nice for him. So, I did. I told them I was OK and I was with my siblings who were older and took care of me. He was scared and we could see several of them out there near him. We saw him back slowly into the door.

I felt they were in my mind asking what I wanted most in life. I remember thinking I just wanted to run around and have fun like other kids did. I went to sleep and it was quiet until about 2 am. I woke up to the sound of my older brother's voice asking what we were doing outside with these things and what were they. How did I get outside? My younger brother was behind me and we were running through what I thought was a tunnel on the lawn. I woke up more and saw it was these things lined up with their wings arched over like a tunnel and we'd been running through them! I was horrified and our older brother saw this. He said dad had sent him out and dad was hanging out the window telling us quietly that it was OK, we weren't in trouble but we should come in because it's really late. I looked at my brothers and asked what was wrong with dad. The older brother said dad was really scared to come outside because those things wanted to hurt him. I asked how he could tell! He laughed a little and said he'd never seen him like this before and said he'd woke him up and "asked" him to go out and get us back in the house. We both dropped our jaws and said, "He asked you?"

We went inside and went right to bed before we got beat for it. We never did and the next day it was like no one wanted to talk about it. My younger brother kept asking what those things were and wasn't it funny that dad was so scared of them. My head hurt. I was diagnosed with traumatic childhood amnesia in 1983 but I have a photographic memory. Okay, so I had no memory of these things until some years later. It was difficult to wrap my head around all of this, still is. Earlier this year, end of Feb. 2011 I started to again hear the voice of this thing in my mind. It showed me ripples in a pond. I didn't know what that was supposed to be for and I was busy working so I pushed it out of my mind. My mind was being pulled to Middletown, Ohio on the map. I thought OK, what's this about, spit it out, I'm pretty busy these days. No explanation.

This continued and still is happening even now. I was looking at other things about archeology and up comes information about the thunderbird, dragons, snakes, and how it applies to Native American culture. I'm Shawnee and a direct descendant of Tecumseh. I've still got this unknown 'man' in my mind and he seems to want to chat but I'm thinking these things eat people and people have been known to disappear after seeing these things. I'm thinking I was lucky and blessed to be alive after seeing it that close twice! So, Lon, if you would, say a prayer for me. I'm still very busy with work, photography for home inspections and craft work I have at home. Still from time to time this voice is in my mind. This thing wants to be friends with me but there seems to be something important he wants to convey to me.

I just keep shoving it out of my head. I'm not so sure this thing isn't evil. I mean it did kill a big dog over in W.Va. in 1967. It or they tore it into tiny bits and there wasn't much left of it. If you'd like to turn this into a report I'm sure it would take a lot of work to take out anything that would ID me in any way. I want people to be helped by knowing that these things are real. I can't explain what they are about but I know they are real. Thanks.

Just the Facts? - Monster Albino Catfish, Father 'Honor Kills' Six Daughters and Witness To Roswell

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 09:46 AM PDT

Biggest albino catfish ever caught by an angler

Chris Grimmer shows off the biggest albino catfish ever caught by an angler - 8ft long and 194lbs.

The 35-year-old needed two pals to help him pose with the 13st 12lb monster, which beats the previous record by 2lbs.

Chris, of Sheffield, had battled for 30 minutes to land it in Spain's River Ebro, near Tarragona. He said: "It was like trying to reel in a bus. I could hardly walk afterwards, but it was worth it."

A third of the world's freshwater fish species are at risk of being wiped out, scientists have revealed.

Over-fishing, pollution and construction have pushed many to the brink of extinction.

About 36 per cent of 5,685 species studied by the International Union for Conservation of Nature are said to be critically endangered.

Among them are types of sturgeon that produce the world's most expensive caviar.

Dr William Darwall of IUCN said: "Freshwater ecosystems are among the world's most threatened.

"Sadly, it is not going to get better, as human need for fresh water, power and food continues to grow."

Species in Britain at risk of extinction include the European eel, Shetland charr and the salmon-like gwyniad - found in just one Welsh lake. - thesun

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London's Metropolitan Police declare Anarchism a thoughtcrime

What should you do if you discover an anarchist living next door? Dust off your old Sex Pistols albums and hang out a black and red flag to make them feel at home? Invite them round to debate the merits of Peter Kropotkin's anarchist communism versus the individualist anarchism of Emile Armand? No – the answer, according to an official counter-terrorism notice circulated in London last week, is that you must report them to police immediately.

This was the surprising injunction from the Metropolitan Police issued to businesses and members of the public in Westminster last week. There was no warning about other political groups, but next to an image of the anarchist emblem, the City of Westminster police's "counter terrorist focus desk" called for anti-anarchist whistleblowers stating: "Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police."

The move angered some anarchists who complained that being an anarchist should not imply criminal behaviour. They said they feel unfairly criminalised for holding a set of political beliefs.

The feeling of disproportion was compounded by the briefing note author making a similar request about Islamist terrorists a few lines further down. Under an image of flag with a gold dot beneath some Arabic script it added: "Often seen used by al-Qaida in Iraq. Any sightings of these images should be reported to your local police."

"It unfairly implies that anyone involved in anarchism should be known to the police and is involved in an dangerous activity," said Jason Sands, an anarchist from South London. "There is nothing inherently criminal about political philosophy whatever it is. The police work under the convention on human rights which disallows discrimination against people because of their political beliefs and even the request for information would seem to be in breach of that. It also seems to be a bit useless as a way of gathering intelligence. It isn't focused on anything specific and they are just asking for general information. Imagine calling up and saying 'there's an anarchist in my building. What should I do?' It doesn't make sense."

The note was issued from Belgravia Police Station as part of Project Griffin which aims to "advise and familiarise managers, security officers and employees of large public and private sector organisations across the capital on security, counter-terrorism and crime prevention issues".

Sean Smith, external relations officer for Solfed, the British section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers' Association, said of the call for whistleblowers: "It's pretty absurd, but not surprising, when the state seeks to criminalise ideas it deems to be dangerous to its own survival".

"We are a revolutionary union initiative," he explained. "Members of our organisation believe in bringing about radical social change through workplace and community organising, not acts of terrorism. We have made extensive information about our ideas and strategy freely available online."

Small groups of anarchists masked and dressed in black did cause some damage to shop windows in central London during anti-cuts demonstrations in the Spring, but there has been little activity of late. The next big anarchist event in London appears hardly likely to concern the police. It is a book fair in October with "all-day cabaret starring assorted ranters, poets, singers and comics; all-day film showings and two kids' spaces". - guardian

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Father kills six daughters in Pakistan for having relationships with boys

A man in Faisalabad gunned down six of his daughters on suspicion that two of them were in relationships with boys in the neighbourhood. On Tuesday morning, Arif Mubashir called his teenage daughters to his room and shot them while the rest of the family, including their mother, watched.

His wife, Musarrat, called the police after the incident. Mubashir shot the girls after their brother said two of them were in a relationship. He told police officials that he had killed his daughters because they were both "without honour".

The man said his daughters Sameena, 14, and Razia, 16, were in a relationship with college boys from the neighbourhood and the sisters had helped each other. "I should have been told immediately but the girls sided with each other. They were both corrupt," Mubashir told Tandlianwala Police Inspector Javed Sial.

Police officials have taken Mubashir into custody and filed a case against him. "He does not regret what he did. He boasted that he would do it all over again if he had to," Sial said. Pakistan has repeatedly been termed as one of the least women-friendly countries. In June, the Thompson Reuters Foundation ranked Pakistan as the world's third most dangerous country for women.

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Air Force vet not buying UFO stories - except the Roswell thing

Tom Carey thinks the Bermuda Triangle is hogwash and the moon landing was real. Elvis did leave the building, and 9/11 was an act of terror, not our own Reichstag fire.

But creatures from outer space? That's another story altogether.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I dropped by his Huntingdon Valley house the other day to learn why a man would spend 20 years investigating the 1947 UFO incident known simply as Roswell, for the New Mexico community where an alien craft and its crew of little humanoids did or didn't crash.

What I didn't count on was a conservative, cautious silver-haired Air Force vet retired from the insurance industry after searching for fraud and writing payout formulas.

"Most of the UFO phenomena don't interest me," Carey, 70, said last week. "I'm not big on lights in the sky or crop circles or stories of abductions. They lead nowhere."

But the facts of Roswell led him to believe we are not alone.

"This was a nuts-and-bolts craft that apparently crashed in the New Mexico desert with humanoid beings on board. On top of that, you had a cover-up by the Army Air Force that continues today."

We sat in the living room of his split-level home, which he and his wife of 43 years have just moved back into after it mysteriously filled with steam - a mishap, it turns out, of plumbing, not the paranormal.

Carey, who grew up in Mayfair, seems extra-normal himself, a former Temple shortstop who dropped out of a Ph.D. program in human paleontology at the University of Toronto, having wasted too much time watching hockey games.

He's long been taken by the notion of another world, ever since he was 8 and his older brother showed him a newspaper article about a UFO said to have crashed in Aztec, N.M.

"As I got older, I started reading magazines about UFOs. And soon I wanted to do more than read - I wanted to investigate. Are they real or aren't they?"

The July 8, 1947, ABC radio bulletin lasts only 20 seconds, but it raised a possibility that few open to the idea of alien life have been able to ignore ever since:

"The Army Air Forces have announced that a flying disk has been found and is now in possession of the Army. Army officers say the missile, found sometime last week, has been inspected at Roswell, N.M., and sent to Wright's Field, Ohio, for further inspection."

Within hours, the Army Air Force backed hard off its original report, explaining that a weather balloon had crashed. Many witnesses clammed up or changed their stories. Many others did not. The military has since come up with three more theories as to what happened, none involving alien life.

Carey teamed up with a postal worker from Wisconsin, Donald R. Schmitt, to write Witness to Roswell in 2007. The book created a stir in the fractious community of ufologists by containing an affidavit released after the death of the Roswell Air Army Base's former public information officer, who issued the original news release about the flying saucer.

In Carey's book, First Lt. Walter G. Haut went far beyond any of his previous statements, swearing that not only were the razor-thin, superstrong metallic strips recovered from the crash something otherworldly, but that he'd also seen an egg-shaped craft in a hangar and a couple of tarp-covered alien bodies.

Only their heads stuck out - larger than human heads, and too big for their bodies, which were about the size of a 10-year-old child's.

To this day, none of this extraterrestrial metal has been found. All Carey has to go on are the similar statements of hundreds of witnesses, none more compelling than that of Haut.

Carey will talk about his work Wednesday night in Doylestown. You can read about it here: www.susanduvalseminars.com.

I arrived skeptical and I left spinning, but not before he offered to sign one of his books. In the car, I cracked its cover to find he'd written, "It's all true."

But not the part about Elvis. - philly

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Giant fungus discovered in China

The most massive fruiting body of any fungus yet documented has been discovered growing on the underside of a tree in China.

The fruiting body, which is equivalent to the mushrooms produced by other fungi species, is up to 10m long, 80cm wide and weighs half a tonne.

That shatters the record held previously by a fungus growing in Kew Gardens in the UK.

The new giant fungus is thought to be at least 20 years old.

The first example of the new giant fungus was recorded by scientists in 2008 in Fujian Province, China, by Professor Yu-Cheng Dai of the Herbarium of biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shenyang and his assistant Dr Cui.

"But the type collection was not huge," Prof Dai told BBC Nature.

However, "we found [the] giant one in Hainan Province in 2010."

The researchers were in the field studying wood-decaying fungi when they happened upon the specimen, which they describe in the journal Fungal Biology.

"We were not specifically looking for this fungus; we did not know the fungus can grow so huge," he said.

"We were surprised when we found it, and we did not recognise it in the forest because it is too large."

The fungus, F. ellipsoidea, is what mycologists call a perennial polypore - otherise known as a bracket fungus.

Being a perennial, it can live for a number of years, which may have enabled it to grow to such large size.

By colonising the underside of the large fallen tree, the fungus also had a huge amount of dead and decaying wood to feed on, helping to fuel its growth.

Fruiting bodies, such as mushrooms and toadstools, are the sexual stages of a many higher types of fungi, producing seeds or spores that produce further generations.

The giant fruiting body of F. ellipsoidea forms a long, brown shape up to 10.85m long, 82-88cm wide, and 4.6-5.5cm thick.

Tests on the density of the fruiting body suggest the whole thing weighs 400-500kg; it is also estimated to hold some 450 million spores.

"A small piece of the fruiting body is almost like my size," said Prof Dai.

The previous record holder was a specimen of Rigidoporus ulmarius, a polypore with a pileate fruiting body found in Kew Gardens in the UK in 2003.

It measured approximately 150cm in diameter with a circumference of 425cm.

After their initial encounter with the new record-breaking fungus, the scientists took samples of it back to the lab where to be analysed.

These tests revealed that the fungus was the species Fomitiporia ellipsoidea, and the researchers made two subsequent trips to study the specimen further. - BBC

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FBI Reveals Mysterious Skyjacker D.B. Cooper May Soon Be Identified

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:29 AM PDT

The FBI today revealed that it believes it has America's most elusive fugitive finally in its sights 40 years after famed hijacker DB Cooper disappeared when he jumped out of a plane over Washington.

Investigators said that they are testing the fingerprints of a new suspect after what they said is the 'most promising' lead to date in its bid to crack America's only unsolved hijacking.

A mystery hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper, also known as DB Cooper, boarded a Northwest flight in Portland for a flight to Seattle on the night of November 24 1971, and commandeered the plane, claiming he had dynamite.

In Seattle, he demanded and got $200,000 and four parachutes and demanded to be flown to Mexico.

Somewhere over southwestern Washington, he jumped out the plane's tail exit with two of the chutes, and was never seen or heard from again.

The FBI today announced that it has a new suspect in the case who they are hoping to link to a tie Cooper left on the plane and cigarette butts in an ashtray using DNA testing and fingerprints.

There have been more than 1,000 suspects over the past four decades, but the FBI have described the new lead as 'looking like our most promising one to date'.

'We do actually have a new suspect we're looking at,' said FBI spokesman Ayn Dietrich as she revealed the twist in the investigation.

'It comes from a credible lead who came to our attention recently via a law enforcement colleague,' she said.

'The credible lead is somebody whose possible connection to the hijacker is strong,' she told the Daily Telegraph. 'And the suspect is not a name that's come up before.'

The FBI said that an item belonging to the suspect has been sent for testing at a forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia.

'We're hoping there are fingerprints they can take off of it,' she said. 'It would be a significant lead.

And this is looking like our most promising one to date.'

The FBI has refused to reveal if the suspect is still alive. 'Generally the large majority of subjects we look into now are already deceased based on the timing,' said Ms Dietrich.

It could be some time before the FBI gets the results back from the tests.

The mysterious hijacking has intrigued federal agents and amateur sleuths since it took place in November 1971.

A man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded the Northwest flight after buying a $20 one-way ticket to Seattle.

After getting on the plane wearing sunglasses, he ordered whisky and lit a cigarette before passing a flight attendant a note that read: 'I HAVE A BOMB IN MY BRIEFCASE. I WILL USE IT IF NECESSARY. I WANT YOU TO SIT NEXT TO ME. YOU ARE BING HIJACKED.'

Cooper told the captain that in return for $200,000 and four parachutes, he would allow 36 people to leave the plane when it landed in Seattle.

The FBI agreed to the swap and the plane took off again under Cooper's orders to fly towards Mexico at an altitude of under 10,000 feet.

Somewhere over the lower Cascade mountains in southwestern Washington, Cooper stepped out of the plane with a parachute strapped to his back.

Several people have claimed to be Cooper over the years but were dismissed on the basis of physical descriptions, parachuting experience and, later, by DNA evidence recovered in 2001 from the cheap tie the skyjacker left on the plane.

Items recovered from the skyjack include $5,800 of the stolen money, in tattered $20 bills and Cooper's tie

Many believe that Cooper was Richard McCoy, a Vietnam War veteran, experienced parachutist and BYU political science student who staged a similar hijacking several months later.

But the FBI has said that McCoy - who was killed in a shoot-out with law enforcement officers after a prison break in 1974 - simply didn't fit the description of Cooper provided by two flight attendants.

In 1980, a boy walking near the Columbia River found $5,800 of the stolen money, in tattered $20 bills. - dailymail

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The 40-year mystery of America's greatest skyjacking

The night before Thanksgiving, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper, wearing a suit and raincoat, walked up to the Northwest Orient desk at Portland airport in the United State's Pacific Northwest and spent $20 on a one-way ticket to Seattle.

On the plane, he donned a pair of dark sunglasses, ordered a whiskey, lit up a cigarette and coolly handed the stewardess a note. In capital letters, it read: I HAVE A BOMB IN MY BRIEFCASE. I WILL USE IT IF NECESSARY. I WANT YOU TO SIT NEXT TO ME. YOU ARE BEING HIJACKED.

What happened next would ensure Cooper a place in the pantheon of American folk heroes. He asked the stewardess to relay the following request to the captain: he wanted $200,000 and four parachutes, and in return, he'd allow 36 people to leave the aircraft when the plane landed in Seattle. The FBI organised the swap, and when the plane was sky-bound again, with just the pilot, co-pilot, one stewardess and Cooper on board, his instructions were to head for Mexico, maintaining an altitude under 10,000 feet. Then, somewhere over the lower Cascade mountains, 25 miles north west of Portland, Cooper released the plane's aft stairs, stepped out, and, with one of the parachutes strapped to his back, jumped into the stormy night and was never seen or heard from again.

Forty years on from Cooper's gutsy spectacle, I've come to the Pacific Northwest to find out about America's only unsolved hijacking – one that the FBI still considers open and which it is, understandably, still very keen to solve.

Back in 1971, a reporter working for one of the wire services misheard the name of the hijacker, and ever since then he has been referred to as DB Cooper, rather than Dan. Over the past 40 years there have been more than 1,000 Cooper suspects, several deathbed confessions, a film (starring Robert Duvall), and – to my count – 17 books. The latest, Skyjack: The Hunt for DB Cooper, is out next month. As one person told me, Cooper is the Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest. He is an enigma and a huge subculture has sprung up devoted to sleuthing his story. There's even an annual celebration held in his honour in the tiny hamlet of Ariel, Washington, nestled in the rolling hills north east of Portland, now known as "Cooper Country". And it is in Ariel that I begin my journey.

By the time military helicopters were scrambled, on November 24 1971, to search the land north of Portland for a 6ft tall Caucasian man weighing 170 to 175 pounds, DB Cooper was long gone – presumably packing away his parachute and trudging through mud and rain to make his escape. And before officers at the Clark County Sheriff's office had decided to put a pin in a map near Ariel, regulars at the tiny hamlet's only bar were sinking their final beers of the evening, unaware what was happening nearby.

Dona Elliott, the Tavern's owner, says some of the drinkers there that night spotted a man walking up the road from nearby Lake Merwin. I can testify that there's not much around here – just farmland, rolling hills and a highway that disappears into the Cascades – and unsurprisingly, the Tavern's patrons wondered who on Earth would be walking alone outside on such a gruesome night.

The Tavern, a small wooden building built in the Twenties that sits on the corner of a pine-fringed road, is closed on Mondays, but Dona, now 74, has opened up just for me. It has become an unofficial Cooper repository: there's a parachute (not the real one, obviously) pinned to the ceiling, newspaper clippings on every wall and a map showing the route the plance took near the bar.

Each year at its "DB Cooper Day" celebration, which has been going since 1973, old-timers reminisce, Cooper sleuths discuss their ideas and conspiracy theorists – and there are many – attempt a few conversions.

Inside, it smells of dogs and wood fire. A huge deer head fixed to the wall stares at me as I pull up a chair. Dona sits beside me, sipping from a water bottle, and thumbing a scrapbook full of more Cooper news stories. Of the numerous books on Cooper, she says she "hasn't read one yet that's accurate". In fact, to my amusement, Dona doesn't even think Cooper landed in Ariel at all. Someone clever enough to plan such an audacious heist, she says, would have jumped near Portland airport "because they would have never looked for him there". Despite the proprietor's misgivings, the DB Cooper party continues each year. One regular even bore an uncanny resemblance to the artist's sketch that the FBI released of Cooper (which some people also thought looked like Bing Crosby), but Dona assures me "they checked him out thoroughly". I ask why the story is so big still, 40 years on, and she suddenly becomes animated. "Because the government's always screwing us over and finally somebody got 'em back."

It's easy to see how the Cooper legend can capture the imagination. Driving east along Highway 14 from Portland you wonder: did he land somewhere in the remote, desolate mountains and his lifeless body float downstream? If he died though, he had to have family and friends and surely somebody would have come forward. If Cooper had successfully parachuted out here, the fields and marshland would have been devoid of the heavy industry that's encroached on it now, but he could easily have hidden among the rusting grain silos, old farm houses and ranches that have stood on the same spots for years. He could, quite conceivably, have disappeared. You can't help but stare out over this wilderness and wonder. Cooper Country has that effect on you.

The next stop on my journey is a tiny private beach along the Columbia River known as Tina Bar. It belongs to two brothers, Albert and Richard Fazio, whose family farm and gravel company has been here since the early Fifties.

The Fazio brothers received some unwanted attention back in February 1980 when, nine years after the Cooper skyjacking, an eight-year-old boy called Brian Ingram, whose family had been given permission to camp on the beach, found three packets of the Cooper ransom money, still bundled up in rubber bands. It was just under $6,000 – the bulk of the $200,000 was still missing – but it was enough to put Cooper back in the papers and for the Fazios to suddenly see their little beach swarming with police and FBI agents.

Richard, a tall man with grey hair, offers to take me down to Tina Bar, a short walk from his office. It's a quiet stretch on the Columbia, but this is still very much a working river – a 45-feet-deep navigation channel eases freighters loaded with grain out towards the Pacific Rim and on to China.

Tina Bar is named after Del Tina, the man Richard's father bought the property from 60 years ago. Richard says he and his brother knew nothing about the money until the FBI showed up on their doorstep: Ingram's parents had contacted local police themselves. Albert was in town the morning the FBI came; Richard was eating lunch with some colleagues. "There was a knock at the door and these two guys were dressed just like you'd imagine FBI agents back then," he says. "In trench coats." The next day a van full of agents showed up, set up an investigation site, posted guards at the entrance and spent a week digging up the Fazios' river front. Richard says it was a media circus. "We helped the FBI, using our backhoe to dig in the sand, but we found nothing." Richard and Albert say the money was discovered on top of the sand and must, therefore, have floated down river rather than been deliberately buried.

"Nobody knows for sure what happened," Richard says, "but we think Cooper probably died, given that it was November and it was freezing. He probably landed up in the mountains someplace then floated down." Just as I'm about to leave, he adds: "But maybe he did survive. Who knows?

Cooper left a tie draped over his plane seat and cigarette butts in an ashtray, but it was still several years before technology was advanced enough to extract DNA from these. The FBI also found fingerprints and a strand of hair, but again, until forensic technology caught up, a strand of hair was useless.

FBI agents who have worked on the Cooper case over the years differ in their opinions of what happened to him. Special agent Larry Carr, who spent several years running the Cooper investigation, thought he must have died when he jumped as he was wearing just a suit, which would have afforded him little protection against the elements.

Current case agent Curtis Eng, however, thinks that if Cooper had died, we would have found clothing or money by now – something.

As for suspects, there have been more than 1,000 over the past four decades. Military veteran William Gossett had had parachute training and was widely known to be obsessed with the Cooper hijacking. Towards the end of his life he reportedly told his sons and a retired judge that he was the hijacker.

According to attorney and Cooper sleuth Galen Cook, Gossett also owned a safety deposit box which contained $200,000 and that he ended his days on the run in Utah. The FBI, however, says there is no firm evidence implicating Gossett at all.

Another suspect is Kenny Christiansen, a former paratrooper who died in 1994. Eight years ago, after watching a documentary on the Cooper case on television, Christiansen's brother, Lyle, became convinced his elder sibling was Cooper. His efforts to persuade the FBI, however, proved futile, so he contacted a private investigator called Skipp Porteous who ended up publishing a book on the theory called Into the Blast.

After the Second World War Christiansen had joined Northwest Orient – first as a mechanic, then as a flight attendant and purser. Christiansen reportedly bought a house with cash a few months after the hijacking – something his brother claims he couldn't have afforded – and on his deathbed, told him there was "something you should know" but wouldn't say what it was.

One of the biggest champions of the Christiansen-as-Cooper theory is Robert Blevins, co-author of Into the Blast. I meet him in a café just outside Seattle. He was still at school in 1971. Today he and his partner run a cleaning business and, in their spare time, an independent publisher called Adventure Books.

Blevins, a middle-aged man who wears a cap and flips nervously through the notes from his book during our meeting, says when he was first approached by Porteous he didn't take his Christiansen theory too seriously. But as he began interviewing the key players he says he started to get the feeling he could be on to something.

Christiansen, he discovered, had parachute experience; had come into a large amount of money quite suddenly after the hijacking; his letters home expressed his bitterness towards his airline employer. "The circumstantial evidence that it's Kenny is substantial," Blevins tells me. "I want to ask the FBI if they've compared the sample they have of Lyle Christiansen's DNA and tested it with the DNA sample they supposedly now have from the tie." Those that disagree with Blevins and Porteous say Christiansen was 45 years old at the time of the hijacking – too old to be Cooper; that he was also shorter, slimmer and balder than the eyewitness descriptions. The FBI, too, have ruled him out.

Blevins is a regular contributor to an online forum called The Dropzone – or "the DZ" for short. It was set up to discuss skydiving and parachuting, but the D B Cooper thread on the DZ is one of the longest and liveliest. It also bears testimony, however, to the in-fighting and bitchiness among Cooper sleuths. As one contributor writes: "There is a subculture related to the Cooper hijacking [and] it can get a bit strange – kind of like The Twilight Zone, but without the reassuring voice of Rod Serling to ease you into the show and allay your fears." In fact, it can get downright nasty, with the various proponents of Cooper theories berating each other for daring to out someone other than their protagonist as one of America's greatest modern outlaws.

Another Dropzone contributor is Bruce Smith, who runs an online newspaper called Mountain News from his home near Mt Hood, north east of Portland. Like nearly everyone I meet, Smith is planning to write his own Cooper book. He doesn't advocate any particular suspect, but, in lieu of this, he has chosen a rather far-fetched conspiracy theory.

Over the course of an hour, Smith tells me that the FBI refuses to share its information, that evidence has gone missing and that the key players in the story refuse to ask questions. Maybe they're fed up with talking about it, I say. They've been talking about it for 40 years. How much more can they actually say?

He then tells me that eye witnesses could have been victims of "mind erasion". Apparently Cooper's dramatic heist could have been "an inside job by rogue elements in the FBI and pilots' associations who wanted to stage a simulation to show the American people how unsafe it was to fly". And there's a motive, Smith says: in 1971 pilots were concerned about flying unsafe aeroplanes. "Half this stuff is so wild," he says, "I can't even think about it." Quite.

Before I leave, I ask Smith why he thinks the Cooper case is so compelling.

"He beat the man," he says, smiling. "He's not just a folk hero, he's a folk genius. He's a master criminal in the tradition of Robin Hood and other gentleman bandits."

The one person I know can give me some perspective on the case is Geoff Gray, a New Yorker whose book, Skyjack: The Hunt for DB Cooper, is out in August. Like Blevins, Gray got turned on to the Cooper case following a phone call from Porteous. As Gray delved deeper into the story, he became convinced Christiansen was Cooper. "My imagination was taken over by the guts of this guy," he tells me. "We want to believe in heroes; we want to believe in romance and adventure, and the truth is, the banality of life doesn't offer it." But Gray quickly discovered the story he was chasing was constantly changing; that the different suspects he was investigating had equally compelling motives and that a number of people had claimed to be DB Cooper when they very obviously weren't.

"We all want to do things we're incapable of," says Gray. "To be heroes, and not necessarily the people we really are." There is a strong possibility that the case will never be solved, he adds; the DNA taken from the tie is incomplete, the fingerprints from the cigarettes only partial, and the FBI no longer have the budget to investigate properly.

Nevertheless, perhaps out of pride, the bureau says the case is still open.

At the FBI headquarters in Seattle, a nondescript Seventies-style building in the heart of the city's downtown area, I meet Ayn Dietrich, a former analyst with the bureau who is now tasked with handling inquiries about the Cooper case.

Throughout our meeting, Dietrich fields calls about counter terrorism on her Blackberry, an indication perhaps of how the FBI sees the Cooper case today – it takes a back seat to more pressing investigations.

"Being an open but not active case, we respond to every report or lead," she tells me. "Our case agent will check them out and determine whether they're credible. We're not out there combing for more evidence but we've kept it open in the belief that there could be something out there. The money has surfaced before and perhaps more will surface." She insists all the suspects still being touted by Cooper sleuths have been ruled out – either because they don't match the DNA or fingerprints they have on file, or because the descriptions just don't match up.

Before I arrived, I was fairly sure an interview with the FBI about the Cooper case would really just be a matter of routine – that they'd said all they could say over the past 40 years. But then Dietrich says something that catches me entirely off-guard.

"You're the first to know this, but we do actually have a new suspect we're looking at. And it comes from a credible lead who came to our attention recently via a law enforcement colleague." I'm stunned. Dietrich says she can't tell me much more, but like all the Cooper sleuths I've met over the past few days, I too have become a little obsessed with the case. "The credible lead is somebody whose possible connection to the hijacker is strong," she says. "And the suspect is not a name that's come up before." Dietrich says agents have sent an item that belongs to him for testing at the forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia. "We're hoping there are fingerprints they can take off of it," she says. "It would be a significant lead. And this is looking like our most promising one to date."

It's a pending investigation, and she can't tell me any more. I push her to see if she can say whether the suspect is still alive. "Generally, the large majority of subjects we look into now are already deceased based on the timing of this," she says. I follow up with Dietrich a week after my visit, but she says it could be some time before the FBI gets the results back.

Perhaps we are finally close to finding out the real identity of DB Cooper. Until then, people will continue to visit Cooper Country, picture that stormy night back in 1971 when a parachute landed somewhere out over the lower Cascades, and wonder: what did happen? - telegraph

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