Phantoms and Monsters

The Slap-Happy Spectre
Fortean / Alternative News: Glowing UFO, Wales Big Cat and DIY Plastic Surgery
The Kentucky Bigfoot Video

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 01:42 PM PST

The following email was sent to me this morning:

Hi Lon, I have been receiving your newsletter for a few months. I am writing you about personal experiences and would like you to contact me to discuss. You have my permission to publish with a few conditions.

I grew up in a large two story house in Georgia (I want to keep the location private). I lived there from the time I was three years old until I was in my late twenties. As long as I could remember I experienced plenty of weird things. Many times I heard my name being called nearby and at a distance as well as being touched.

My family also experienced a variety of strange events. My mother told me that her and my father would hear doors slam downstairs at night. When they would go and investigate all the doors were wide open just as they had left them before they went to bed.

One night just before bedtime, my sister and I were in the living room listening to music when I noticed my sister get up from her chair and walk towards the stairs. Suddenly she started to scream and ran to our mother in the kitchen. I quickly ran after her. She said that a "pale old man" was gliding down the stairway. My sister was absolutely terrified, so much so that she urinated on herself and could not stop shaking. Not long after this incident I started experiencing strange phenomena.

One night I had a particular dream in which I was standing at the bottom of the stairs next to an elderly man. He was wearing overalls and a blue flannel shirt. His hair and face were very neat but his skin was a very pale gray. He was staring straight ahead and didn't seem to notice I was standing there. My next impression was me standing at the top of the stairs when I started to hear footsteps going towards my bedroom door. Suddenly I woke up and realized that I had been dreaming, but I continued to hear the footsteps getting closer to my bedroom door. I know for a fact that I was awake. I waited for whatever it was that was getting closer to my door to open it. Then suddenly something picked up my long hair and tossed it over my right shoulder. I jumped out of bed just stared at the bed. There was a voice calling my name and fading as I heard the same footsteps move away from my bedroom. I went to the door and slowly opened it. There was a terrible stench in the hallway so I closed the door and went back to bed.

A few years later my boyfriend at the time needed a place to stay so he moved in with us and slept in my old bedroom. One day I was downstairs in the living room watching TV. My boyfriend, who was in his bedroom, came running downstairs. He came into the living room and quickly dropped to his knees. As he looked up at me he appeared to be in shock. His hands then covered his face and he started to shake violently. After a few minutes of me prodding him for an explanation he finally told me that he had been sitting on the bed watching TV when a young woman with long blond hair wearing a white shroud-like dress appeared and sat next to him on the bed.

He froze and looked at her as she continued to look back and smile. He asked her what she wanted and she said "you...I want you", then she vanished. I never witnessed anyone so scared before. He grabbed me by the hand and led the way back up to his room. I walked into the room first and hoped I wouldn't see a ghost or anything else unusual. He abruptly pulled his belongings out of the drawings, threw it in a laundry bag and stormed out of the house. It may sound cliche but, honestly, I never saw him again.

A few years later, I moved out of the house and got married. We currently live in northwest Ohio. A few months ago we took a trip back to Georgia and to the old house. My mother still lived there.

We decided to stay for a few days not expecting any problems. My mother said that she had not experienced any weird activity for those several years after I had moved out. The week seemed to go smoothly.

A few days after we returned home, my 8-year-old daughter asked me if someone had died in Grandma's house. I looked back at her and said that I wasn't sure and asked "why?" She said that on the last day of the visit, when we were getting ready to leave, she went upstairs to my old bedroom to get something. As she was about to walk out of the room she heard her name being called...when all of a sudden she felt a hard slap on her right leg. She said it hurt so bad that it brought tears to her eyes. She ran down the steps as fast as she could and stayed on the porch until it was time to leave.

Last week I received a telephone call from my mother letting me know that she had decided to sell the house and move in with her friend. I asked if I should come back to Georgia and help her pack and move. She paused a bit, then said not to bother. She had already left the house and was going to sell everything in it. I was somewhat surprised by her statement and asked her why she was doing this. That's when I found out the real story of the house.

When I was three years old, we had moved into the house. At the time, my parents had little money and needed a cheap place to live. My father's employer had recently placed a house up for sale and offered it to my parents at a very reasonable price. The employer provided the financing as well.

A few days after we moved in there was a knock at the door. The elderly gentleman introduced himself to my mother and asked if he could look around because he had grown up there. She agreed and offered the elderly man a cup of coffee or tea but he just shook his head. My mother said he walked to the stairway landing, looked up the stairs, stared for a few seconds....then disappeared! My knees suddenly went weak. My mother never told anyone about the incident and said that she didn't see him again until the day after our visit.

The night after we had left for home, my mother was in the upstairs hallway about to enter my old bedroom to do some cleaning. As she grabbed the doorknob she felt a hard slap on her backside. She flung the door open and stumbled into the bedroom. As she looked around she heard a faint voice that started to getting stronger. Sitting on the bed something touched her hair...then a female voice whispered in her ear "he wants you." She hurried out of the bedroom into the hallway and towards the stairs when she noticed the elderly man, smiling and staring back at her.

Within the hour, my mother collected everything she wanted and left the house forever. Samantha

NOTE: I contacted Sam after receiving the email. The house has not yet been listed for sale...her mother is trying to sell it outright. I offered the services of SRI if needed though, I suspect, Sam and her mother are apprehensive since there is currently an interested buyer...Lon

Fortean / Alternative News: Glowing UFO, Wales Big Cat and DIY Plastic Surgery

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 10:03 AM PST

Argentina: Strange Activity in Carlos Tejedor

Inexplicata - A well-known couple that operates a mechanic shop in the city described the strange manifestation of a glowing object over a country home in the Colonia del Toro area. The object was also seen on a photograph. From that point onward, upon inspecting previous photos, they noticed that the object appears to be patrolling the area for some time now. At night, it is possible to see very bright lights – red, green, blue and something like a fireball. The wife suffered experienced strong bodily tremors and a fever that faded away over a few hours. Some time ago, the woman and her two children even passed out, without any medical explanation being found. They now suspect that the phenomenon could be the cause, although she does not know how to go about researching it at the time. Other locals have also seen strange lights and fireballs.

Pedro Parera and María Rosa Velázquez and their children constitute a family of workers in [the town of] Carlos Tejedor. Both work day-to-day in their mechanic shop and spend weekends in a country property they own some 25 km from the city at Colonia del Toro. Their work is hardly over: there is painting to be done, grass to be mowed, repairs to be made – all of which delights the family. But something happened last weekend that changed everything for them.

María Rosa, a photography buff, does not waste any time in taking pictures, and she snaps away at her little digital camera, capturing every moment. It was in one of these photos of a growing soybean field, with the house visible in the distance, that she noticed something odd over the structure. Zooming in on her PC screen, she ascertained the presence of a shining object. Golden, resembling a bell, and of considerable size.

The strangeness quotient increased upon inspecting other photos. The object was visible in nearly all images taken in the same direction.

Not satisfied by this, María Rosa decided to look at pictures taken six months ago and even one year ago, and her astonishment was boundless: the object was always there.

At Night

Intrigue won out in the end, and after a conversation with a local engineer who told her that he'd seen something like a fireball – a story similar to one told by a fumigator, and other locals, who were unsure about the truthfulness of her story – she decided to return to field with her husband Pedro at night.

Her astonishment could not be measured, according to the report made to NOTICIAS at our newsroom last Tuesday, when they wanted the entire region to know what was going on. "There were very bright lights, green, red and blue. I took pictures of them, even though I was afraid. There was even one that turned into a true fireball and went away..."

María Rosa states that they were about to have dinner, but upon returning to the table, after taking as many pics of the lights as she could, until the fireball erupted, she felt a sensation of intense cold. "A very strange sensation, I don't know how to explain it. I shivered. We went back and I had to cover myself with several blankets. I had a fever. But I was fine the next day," she says, looking for an answer.

Everyone's Sick

Today she connects this event with another that she and her children experienced last year, when she felt very ill one night and the boys woke up screaming, frightened, before fainting one after the other. This prompted the couple to return urgently to the city, with Pedro driving his family to the hospital. No abnormal health conditions were detected.

"Now, after what happened to me that night, I wonder if it was the same thing that made us feel so sick. I would like to go back to see if this is the case," she says, her feelings an admixture of wonderment and astonishment, and fear about something she cannot explain.

Calls for an Investigation

Meanwhile, Pedro looks and listens, offering control and calm. Maria Rosa states that she "would like to have a large photo camera, to take higher-definition photos of all this, and to have someone tell us what it is, what it does, and why it's there."

Half-humorously, she adds: "The evidently "live" there, because they're always there, they appear in nearly all photos. It's a shame they won't volunteer with the chores. Last week we mowed the grass, painted, made repairs, worked all day, but they didn't offer much help...at least none we could see."

Date: January 28, 2011
Source: Diario Noticias Pehuajo (Argentina)
http://www.noticiaspehuajo.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7240

(Translation (c) 2011, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)

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Ex-policeman in Wales 'big cat' sighting

yahoo - A former policeman based in west Wales spotted a "puma or panther-like animal" as recently as Wednesday.

Michael Disney now works for Pembrokeshire County Council's Public Protection Division and his sighting is being treated as authentic. While he gathered no photographic or other evidence, his sighting appears to give greater credence to the so-called big cat myth.

Stories of feline beasts living in remote corners of the UK are so common there is barely a region of the country without one - from the Beast of Bodmin in Cornwall to sightings in Kent and all over the north of England, such stories are common rural legends.

The latest sighting comes days after the government environment watchdog for England dismissed the existence of big cats. Experts with Natural England said in a report that they were confident no breeding populations of big cats exist in Britain.

Pembrokeshire Council begs to differ and is so convinced by Mr Disney that it is urging the public to report any sightings. It published extracts of the statement made by their man, which has been passed to the police.

Mr Disney's encounter happened in broad daylight in countryside six miles north of Haverfordwest, near Treffgarne village. He was driving his council car on a single track road at 15mph when a large black "puma or panther" crossed five metres in front of him.

He said: "I immediately stopped my vehicle and stared at this animal. It had a large cat-like head, muscular build and was approximately three feet tall.

"It was bigger and more muscular than a German shepherd dog. The coat was smooth and looked like it had brown spots on it. I had a clear, unobstructed view of the animal and the visibility was excellent."

He added: "I am 100% certain that this was a puma or panther-like animal and was definitely not a dog, cat or any other domestic animal. It was not something I had seen before other than in a zoo."

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Cult of the mask grips Japan

theaustralian - They have blue sailor-suit uniforms, spangly mobile phones and several designer shopping bags. But one thing stands out: the cotton medical masks that cover their mouths and noses every waking hour.

These teenagers don't have colds. Instead, they are members of a growing tribe of Japanese teenagers who wear masks to take refuge from the world at large.

Rika puts her mask on when she leaves home and takes it off only when she goes to bed. She removes it reluctantly to eat, drink and occasionally allow her boyfriend to kiss her. She feels "comfortable" and "at ease" when she wears it. Rika, and others like her, are the cause of growing disquiet.

Last week's Asahi newspaper ran a long piece on these date or show masks. The phenomenon is one more example of a troubled youth culture turning in on itself, echoing Japan's lack of economic and political self-confidence.

The eccentricities of Rika and Kimiko are not as extreme as those of the million hikikomori, socially withdrawn Japanese who live with their parents and rarely leave their bedrooms. They are less sensational than the "girly men", heterosexual boys who forgo high-status pursuits and girlfriends in favour of humble jobs and clothes shopping.

But, like them, they seem to speak of a culture in which economic stagnation and the loss of guaranteed lifetime employment have left many young people uncertain of their place in society.

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Tatsuya Ichihashi - before (left) and after DIY plastic surgery

Accused killer: 'I performed plastic surgery on myself'

msnbc - While on the lam for 2½ years, a Japanese man wanted for the murder of a British woman says he scissored off his lower lip, dug two moles out of his cheek with a box cutter and gave himself a nose job in an attempt to obscure his identity.

The disclosures come in a book released Wednesday and written from jail by Tatsuya Ichihashi, who will stand trial later this year in the murder and rape of his English teacher, Lindsay Ann Hawker.

Hawker, 22, was found dead in a sand-filled bathtub on the balcony of Ichihashi's apartment in Chiba, east of Tokyo, in March 2007.

Ichihashi, arrested in 2009 after a lengthy nationwide manhunt, admits to taking Hawker's life in the book, "Until the Arrest." But he doesn't describe the crime or his motives, instead detailing his life at large, during which he traveled up and down the country, in constant fear of arrest and obsessed with cosmetic surgery.

While police say Ichihashi has confessed to assaulting Hawker and that she died from her injuries, he won't enter a plea until the trial begins. The details in the book do not take responsibility for anything beyond what Ichihashi has already told investigators. If convicted of murder, he could face the death penalty.

After escaping the police who came to his apartment to question him, he bound up his nose with a thread and needle — like a cook trussing a piece of meat — to make it narrower.

At first, Ichihashi, 32, wandered around Tokyo and then drifted north to Aomori prefecture, where he twice tried to cut off part of his lower lip to make it thinner. The first time, he couldn't follow through because of the excruciating pain, he wrote. He finished it up a few days later in a public bathroom.

He wore several layers of surgical masks to hide the scars, but apparently didn't stand out in the spring when many Japanese do the same to escape pollen.

Moving by train and bus, Ichihashi headed south and embarked on a pilgrimage of temples in the southwestern island of Shikoku, wishing Hawker could "come back to life" — an idea he got from a novel, in which the dead are resurrected after someone who is thinking of them tours the same temples.

"I took Lindsay's life, that fact does not change," he wrote in the 238-page book released by publishing house Gentosha, its cover depicting Ichihashi's drawing of himself: a man wearing a baseball cap and a surgical mask.

While at large, Ichihashi carefully avoided monitoring cameras at shops and eye contact with anyone. He changed his location quickly and often when he thought he might have been spotted. He never contacted his family or friends.

Police offered a reward of 10 million yen ($121,000) for tips leading to his arrest.

Once he walked past a police station and saw a wanted poster with his face on it. It was then that he sliced off the moles on his left cheek — prominent in the wanted picture.

Having saved nearly 1 million yen ($12,100) from a string of construction jobs, he spent most of it on two plastic surgery operations, once to acquire a longer and narrower nose, and the second to raise the bridge of his nose.

In the end, his attempts to obscure his identity led to his arrest.

Staff at the second clinic took many photos of his left cheek with traces of moles he had removed, which seemed "strange."

The clinic reported his visit and sent the photos to police — news that was splashed in Japanese newspapers.

Ichihashi said he froze when he saw the news on TV about his cosmetic surgery.

"My heart raced," he wrote. "I gazed at it trembling."

He immediately checked out of his hotel, got a haircut and even bought a party disguise set containing a beard, sideburns and a mustache.

He was eventually stopped on Nov. 10, 2009, by police at the ferry terminal in Osaka as he tried to flee again. One of the officers asked his name.

Ichihashi gave his real name for the first time in 2½ years and was arrested.

In his book, Ichihashi apologizes to Hawker and her family, saying the book was intended as "a gesture of contrition for the crime I committed."

The Kentucky Bigfoot Video

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 10:05 AM PST

A level enhanced screen capture

A few days ago, I posted two videos from a security camera in the yard of a birdwatcher in Kentucky. There has been a lot of speculation throughout the internet as to it's validity...so I decided to look at a few screen captures from the video. First, the original videos and commentary:

Click for video - 1

"Video footage of Bigfoot Foot prints in my yard .This video was uploaded from an Android phone."

Click for video - 2

"On Christmas eve I found foot print in the snow and am sure they are from Bigfoot tonight I put a security camera out and if you watch closely in full screen he walks from left to right behind the big oak tree an you can see him stay tuned for what may be one of the most exciting discoveries yet."

Below is an enhanced version of the video (lightened). This was originally posted on Cryptomundo. I have level enhanced several screen captures:

Click for enhanced video

Click for video

NOTE: these enhanced screen captures really don't clarify what this really is, but there is definitely something there and it doesn't seem to have been added. The video needs to be digitally enhanced by a qualified expert. From the information that has been gathered and from what was seen on both videos, I'm going to reserve judgment for the time being. BTW, there is a new book by B.M. Nunnelly on *Bigfoot in Kentucky...Lon

*Bigfoot in Kentucky (2011): There is little doubt that the state of Kentucky is one of the strangest places in the country. The "dark and bloody ground" of the Native Americans has given birth to accounts of UFO's, flying creatures, Lizard Men and even werewolves. But one monster stands out above the rest – Bigfoot! There are so many sightings of these hairy giants in the Bluegrass State that it has come to be ranked as one of the most active for Bigfoot sightings east of the Mississippi River! In his latest title, B.M. Nunnelly, author of Mysterious Kentucky, has collected Bigfoot reports, sightings and first-hand accounts from every county in the state, compiling a fascinating documentation of ordinary people and their encounters with the unknown. Delve into the long, strange history of Bigfoot in the Bluegrass State, from the "Wildman" reports of the 1800s to recent encounters in the forested regions of Kentucky, and find out why this is such a mysterious place. This is a book that is bound to satisfy your cravings for the unusual and may just have you roaming the woods and hills in hopes of an encounter of your own!

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