Phantoms and Monsters |
- The Thornton Heath Poltergeist Ordeal
- Just the Facts? Immortal Nicolas Cage, Mounted Skulls Unearthed and US UFO Sightings Increase
- Dwayyo: Maryland Dogman
The Thornton Heath Poltergeist Ordeal Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:13 PM PDT The Thornton Heath poltergeist case is not to be confused with the 1938 case of the same name, which was investigated by Dr Nandor Fodor. This later case started one night in late August 1972 in the south London district of Thornton Heath, Croydon. A family first experienced the poltergeist activity when they were woken in the middle of the night by a blaring bedside radio that had somehow turned itself on...tuned to a foreign-language station. This was the beginning of a string of events that lasted nearly four years. A particular lampshade repeatedly fell to the floor by some unseen force. During the Christmas season of 1972, an ornament was hurled across the room, smashing into the husband's forehead. "As he flopped into an armchair, the Christmas tree began to shake violently. Come the New Year and there were footsteps in the bedroom when there was no one there, and one night the couple's son awoke to find a man in old fashioned dress staring threateningly at him. The family's fear grew when, as they entertained friends one night, there was a loud knocking at the front door, the living room door was then flung open and all the house's lights came on." They contacted the local Church who in turn sent a priest to bless their home. Sadly this did little good as the phenomena continued unabated. "Objects flew through the air, loud noises were heard and the family would sometimes hear a noise which suggested some large piece of furniture...had crashed to floor. When they went to investigate, nothing would be disturbed." A medium who was consulted told the family that the house was haunted by a farmer of the name Chatterton, who considered the family trespassers on his property. An investigation bore out the fact that had indeed lived in the house in the mid-18th century. "Chatterton's wife now joined in in causing mayhem, and often the tenant's wife would be followed up the stairs at night by an elderly gray-haired woman wearing a pinafore and with her hair tied back in a bun. If looked at, she would disappear back into the shadows. The family even reported seeing the farmer appear on their television screens, wearing a black jacket with wide, pointed lapels, high-necked shirt and black cravat." After the family moved out of the house, the poltergeist activity ceased, and none have been reported by subsequent residents. ----- Croydon's Ghostly Past Diminishes Whether or not the overall strange past had anything to do with this particular poltergeist, the Croydon area is known for it's macabre history. Croydon is an ancient town and people have settled here since the 6th century. As such, the borough has a past rich in spooks. Frances Stewart, who researched Croydon's ghostly past in the late 1980s, wrote in her book Around Haunted Croydon: "So many of Croydon's original buildings have been demolished that it is hardly surprising to find the centre becoming devoid of ghosts. "An office block that scrapes the sky or an exhaust-filled multi-storey car park are not fitting habitats for self-respecting spirits." Twenty years later the town centre is almost unrecognisable from what it once was and Croydon's spirits have been forced to haunt the borough's more rural outskirts. One of the centre's lost ghosts was a distressed woman who used to appear at the top of a staircase in the Old Palace, originally the manor house of the Archbishop of Canterbury and now an exclusive girls' school. The ghost appeared crying and wringing her hands in despair. It has been suggested she was one of Elizabeth I's maids-in-waiting who committed suicide in the house when she had a baby out of wedlock. According to Mrs Stewart, there have been many exorcisms in the building in the past. More recent additions to the borough's ghostly population were the spooks that haunted the site of the Croydon Airport. Open from 1915 to 1959, this early icon to aviation was the site of many accidents and was also heavily bombed during the war. The first spirit sighted there was a Dutch pilot in the 1930s. His aircraft crashed in a fog that descended upon him suddenly, after he took off in favourable weather. About a fortnight later, a pilot who was plotting his course when a voice behind him said: "You can't take off, the weather is just the same as when I did." The pilot spun around to see a figure of the dead pilot standing behind him. Despite the clear day, he was in too much of a shock to take off and just a few hours later, a thick fog descended on the airfield as predicted. The number of people killed during the war meant many ghosts were sighted in the borough in the 1940s and 50s. One sighting was in Thornton Heath. A Scottish lady moved into a maisonette built on one of the old bomb sites in Princess Road. One evening she saw two strange children sitting at the top of the stairs in her house. They vanished and when the puzzled woman asked her own children if they had any friends over, they said that they had not. The sightings continued and the woman soon discovered a brother and a sister had been killed when a bomb had fallen on their house in that exact same spot. A haunting can take many forms and usually occur in places where there has been a violent or unusual death. Whether violent, benign and helpful or merely sad, it would appear that Croydon's ghosts are vanishing along with much of Croydon's past. - croydonguardian.co.uk Sources: paranormal.about.com Quotes from rwhit.dsl.pipex.com - Haunted Croydon weirdcroydon.co.uk croydonguardian.co.uk "Around Haunted Croydon" - Frances D. Stewart |
Just the Facts? Immortal Nicolas Cage, Mounted Skulls Unearthed and US UFO Sightings Increase Posted: 21 Sep 2011 10:32 AM PDT Nicolas Cage...an Immortal? The answer, of course, is no… well, probably not. For one thing he seems to be aging right before our eyes and for another he has never exhibited an inability to consume solid food, nor any signs of heliophobia for that matter. Nevertheless one e-Bay seller insists that he has unearthed a Civil War era photograph that proves that the ubiquitous actor was alive (or undead, as the case may be) way back in the 1870s. The owner of the admittedly eerie photograph is an antiques dealer from Bristol, Tennessee, by the name of Jack Mord — which, in and of itself, sounds a bit creepy, like an old Mad Magazine spoof of Jack Lord that would come out around Halloween time. Regardless of his appellation, Mord claimed that he stumbled across the strange picture in back of an old photo album that was allegedly: "filled with an unusual number of Civil War death portraits." Continue reading at Is Nicolas Cage Really a Vampire? ********** Dig reveals human skulls mounted on stakes Several human skulls found mounted on wooden stakes have been uncovered from a Stone Age lake bed in central Sweden in what is believed to be the first discovery of its kind anywhere in the world. "We found two skulls that still had wooden stakes sticking out of them through a whole at the base of the skull," archeologist Fredrik Hallgren, head of excavation with the Stiftelsen Kulturmiljövård Mälardalen ('Cultural Preservation Society of Mälardalen') told The Local. The skulls and other artifacts, including bones of wild animals, were recovered at the Kanaljorden excavation site in the town of Motala in central Sweden. According to results from carbon-14 dating techniques, the skulls and other items are estimated to be about 8,000-years-old. "As far as we know, this discovery is unique in the world. Nothing has been found like this that is so old," said Hallgren. The mounted skulls were found with the stakes inserted the full length from the base to the top of the skull. In another case a temporal bone of one individual identified as a female was found placed inside the skull of another woman. Altogether Hallgren and his colleagues have identified skulls or skull fragments from 11 individuals, including both men and women and ranging in age from infants to middle-age. The bones were found in what was a shallow lake during the early Stone Age which appears to have served as a ceremonial burial site. "Clearly this lake was some sort of holy place for the people who lived here at the time," said Hallgren. Archaeologists are exploring two theories to explain why the human skulls were mounted on wooden stakes before being placed in the lake bed "One thought is that it was part of some sort of secondary burial ritual where the skulls were removed from dead bodies that had initially been placed elsewhere," said Hallgren. "After the soft tissue had rotted away, the skulls were removed and placed on the stakes before being placed in the shallow lake." Another theory is that the mounted skulls are trophies brought back from battles with other settlers in the area. "It may have been a way to prove one's success on the battlefield," Hallgren explained. Further analysis is currently underway to determine if the bones are remains of locals or people with a distant geographic origin. Using DNA and other laboratory techniques, archaeologists will also try to find out if the remains found at the site belong to a single family group or persons unrelated to one another. Hallgren said that, as far as he knew, the discovery of human skulls mounted on stakes from this period of history was unprecedented. "There are other examples of human heads being mounted on stakes, but most of the finds are from the colonial period," he said. The Kanaljorden settlement excavation site has been ongoing since 2009 and is located about 500 metres from Motala's central train station. The site dates from a part of the Stone Age known as the Mesolithic period, at which time the area around Motala was deemed an almost perfect place to live. There was no agriculture in the area, however, with settlers instead surviving by fishing, hunting, and gathering. - thelocal ********** Holy Cows! New figures show seventeen cases of attacks on people in the first half of this year – more than the total number of bites since 2004. Animal rights groups blamed a sharp increase in the number of people bitten by cows and buffaloes in the capital New Delhi on a surge in building projects which have blocked their traditional grazing routes and left the creatures bewildered and panicked. Campaigners said many of the cows and buffaloes wandering Delhi's roads are owned and neglected by illegal dairies who are concerned only about their milk production. Vasanti Kumar, of Stray Relief and Animal Welfare (STRAW) said the situation had been created by the failure of local officials to keep cattle off the streets, and by a reverential public which feeds them. "They are a cause for concern and cause many accidents, not just hurting humans but themselves. Many people feed the cows and other stray animals in public places as they are considered to be sacred. This has to stop," she said. Uma Menon of the charity Friendicoes said the increase in traffic in the city had made the cows more aggressive. "Bovines are programmed with a map to reach back to their homes but with the fast-changing city landscape, they get strayed and panic," she said. "Animals hear much higher frequency sounds than humans, there is too much noise produced by traffic. This can be a cause of animals turning violent in public places, although their instinctive behavior is not to hurt." - telegraph ********** UFO sightings in U.S. soared this summer...to more than DOUBLE national average UFO sightings in the U.S. have more than doubled this summer, according to new research. The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) - an organisation that tracks reports of unidentified flying objects - said some states doubled their numbers in the last six weeks. According to MUFON, 1,013 sightings were reported in August, up from an average of about 500 per month nationwide. MUFON international director Clifford Clift told Life's Little Mysteries: 'It's pretty exciting. Mr Clift said the 'UFO flap', which occurs when a cluster of sightings happen in a short period of time, could be due to a psychological phenomenon called 'priming', in which people believe they see what they are told to look for, whether it exists or not. A shift in focus in popular culture could have led to an increase in sightings, he said - with more books, movies and television shows focusing on the mystery of the UFO and alien invasion. 'It's likely that the media and (alien-themed) movies that are coming out, like Apollo 18 and Paul, are piquing people's interest in UFOs,' Mr Clift told Little Mysteries. People are also more likely to go outdoors in the summer months, increasing the chance for sightings. Numbers could also be inflated due to duplication in sightings. Mr Clift also said MUFON has received reports of objects reported as UFOs, which the organisation has determined to be other objects, such as airplanes, shooting stars, satellites and weather balloons. The organisation, he said, is still investigating data on UFO sighting reports from recent weeks. - dailymail ********** Billy Meier and the CIA Whether you love or loathe Billy Meier his activities have been the subject of intensive monitoring by intelligence authorities including the CIA. Officialdom at a secret level take the man very seriously indeed. The extraordinary surveillance of the Swiss UFO contactee has been outlined in detail by the late American investigator, Wendelle Stevens, who spent eight years involved in an in-depth investigation of Meier and his followers at their farm near Hinterschmidruti. Stevens gives a detailed picture of the contact that he and fellow investigators Lee and Brit Elders were pressured into having with a range of intelligence agencies during their visits to Switzerland in the late 1970s and 1980s. These pre-briefings and debriefings, which took place mainly in London, could stretch for days and were dominated by discussions with a senior CIA officer who maintained a secure, sealed off section of a London hotel. The interviews were sometimes marked by anomalous phenomena that Stevens could only ascribe to the intervention of Meier's alleged Pleiadian visitors – in other words, while the CIA was monitoring Meier, the ET visitors appeared to be monitoring the CIA with technology that left no doubt about who was on top. The ET pranks included dematerializations of documents and shenanigans with a secure CIA telephone line. This cooperation by Stevens and the Elders with a range of interested government agents was frankly admitted by Stevens in anecdotes scattered through several of the six volumes of his investigation reports and contact notes of Meier. This huge output of investigative material totalling nearly 3,000 pages was published by Stevens between 1982 and 1996 and reflects the former US Air Force Lt Colonel's conviction that the Meier contacts, though bizarre and eccentric by conventional standards, were authentic. KENS NOTE: Billy Meier is an icon in the UFO community. His incredible story of aliens and other worlds are still being investigated by today's top Ufologist. GOOGLE " Billy Meier " and decide for yourself. - Thanks to Ray Young and UFO Digest. - Ken Pfeifer - World UFO Photos |
Posted: 21 Sep 2011 06:06 PM PDT Back in May of this year I posted a narrative describing the Snallygaster, legendary beast from my neck of the woods in Maryland. Another cryptid from this region is the Dwayyo...not as well known as the Snallygaster, but just as terrifying to those who have encountered the creature. The Dwayyo or Dewayo is a mammalian said to be hairy, have a bushy tail, and is sometimes bipedal. At times it has features similar to a wolf but with the arms, stance and stature of a human. The first mention of the name 'Dwayyo' comes from a sighting in 1944 from an area in Carroll County, Maryland. Witnesses heard the creature make 'frightful screams' and there were footprints attesting to the claims of the sighting. The creature had first come to prominence after a story ran in the Fredrick News Post in November of 1965. Reporter George May wrote in the article, "Mysterious Dwayyo Loose in County" that a young man, named anonymously as 'John Becker' heard a strange noise in his backyard which was situated on the outskirts of Gambrill State Park. Upon going out to investigate the noise he initially saw nothing, so he headed back in. It was then that he caught site of the creature. Something was moving toward him in the dark, Becker was quoted that "It was as big as a bear, had long black hair, a bushy tail, and growled like a wolf or dog in anger." The thing quickly moved toward him on its hind legs and began to attack him. He fought off the creature and drove it back into the woods, later calling police to report the incident. In the summer of 1966, the creature was again sighted on the outskirts of Gambrill State Park. A man only referred to as 'Jim A.' encountered the Dwayyo as he was heading toward a camp site. It was described as a shaggy two legged creature the size of a deer that had a triangle shaped head with pointed ears and chin. It was dark brown in color and when approached it made a horrid scream and backed away from the man. Jim described it as having an odd walk as it retreated, it's legs, "stuck out from the side of the trunk of the body making its movements appear almost spider-like as it backed away". In the Fall of 1976 another sighting of the Dwayyo took place in Fredrick County near Thurmont, between Cunningham Falls State Park and Catoctin Mountain National Park. Two men drove off route 77 and unto a private road so they could 'spot deer' by their headlights in order to see how thick the native population had become before deer season. To their surprise, they did not catch a deer in their lights but instead a large animal ran across the front of their car. They described the creature as, "at least 6 ft tall but inclined forward since it was moving quickly. Its head was fairly large and similar to the profile of a wolf. The body was covered in brown or brindle colored fur but the lower half had a striped pattern of noticeable darker and lighter banding. The forelegs (or arms) were slimmer and held out in front as it moved. The back legs were very muscled and thick similar to perhaps a kangaroo. This was not a hominid type creature; it did not have the characteristics of an ape. It was much more similar to a wolf or ferocious dog however it was definitely moving upright and appeared to be adapted for that type of mobility. I was particularly impressed by the size and strength of the back legs, the stripes on the lower half of the body and the canine-wolf-like head." Later in 1978 two park rangers were near the Cunningham Falls area when they encountered "a large hairy creature running on two legs". Paranormalist Robin Swope relates an anecdote from a witness who says she was driving on Coxey Brown Road near Myersville, Maryland late in the summer of 2009 when she had an strange feeling. It was as if she was being watched. The road was lined with trees, she was on the outer edge of Gambrill State Park, and the forest was beginning to grow thicker. According to her, as she turned on Hawbottom Road, where her friend lived, the feeling became overwhelming. The hairs on the back of her neck rose in terror as she sensed the unseen eyes upon her. She wanted to stop the car and take her breath, she was afraid that she would veer off the road and hit a tree because she her nerves were getting so unsteady that she began to shake. But she knew that whatever was watching her, and following her was out there, and she took what little comfort she had by being safer inside her rust rotted car. Still, to prevent a wreck, she slowed down as she headed south, and that was when she saw the creature. At first it was a blur to the right of her periphery vision. Something that was moving through the trees, a shadow that flickered as it went in and out of sight on the edge of her vision. It was a brown smear of color that popped out in contrast to the dull dark grey trees that she passed. Whatever it was, it bobbed through the underbrush and between the trees to keep pace with her car. She thinks at the time, she was going around 25 miles per hour. She then slowed down once more to take a good look to her right, and make sure that she was not seeing things. As her car slowed to a crawl, the brown blurry smear of color seemed to bound out of the woods closer to the road. With a massive leap the hazy color became flesh as a huge dog-like animal on two legs emerged from the foliage. The fangs are burned into her memory. Huge fangs from a mouth grimaced in anger and hate. She could feel the fangs as if they were ripping her skin while the creature stood there panting on the side of the road. Drool dripped from its huge mouth as she heard a loud growl, and she looked into the dark eyes. Darkness took up its entire eye, there was no white at all. It was if she was staring death and hell head on in dizzying madness. Then it leaped, arms outstretched with claws grasping the wind. Instinctively she stepped on her gas pedal with all her might. The squeal of her tires seemed as if her car too was screaming in horror at the thing that emerged from the dark looming forest. She did not look back. She didn't want to know if the thing was following her. She didn't feel the eyes upon her anymore. She was too shaken to really feel anything at all. When she made it to her friends house, she sat in the driveway shaking as she looked around to make sure the creature had not followed her there. The house was also in the woods, at the opposite side of the State Park. When she felt safe, she made a mad dash for her friend's door, and banged on it frantically. He did not know what to make of her story. The witness knew he did not believe her. He had lived in the woods all his life, and had never encountered what she had seen. He assured her that it must have just been a dog, perhaps a rabid one at that. Her mind was playing tricks on her. But the young woman knew what she had seen that late summer day. It was no dog. It was something out of a horror movie come to life before her eyes. Though she told nobody what she felt it really was, she called it a werewolf. That is until after she did some research in the local college library and came up with the name that others had called it when they too saw the forest come alive. She had encountered the Dwayyo. Sources: "The Dwayyo - The Dwayyo. From Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County" - Timothy L. Cannon and Nancy F. 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