The Blog For Paranormal Happenings and News
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Psychic and photographer in hunt for ‘Bownessie’ beneath Windermere
A TEAM of investigators will scour Windermere in a hunt for a legendary monster that is claimed to lurk in its deep waters.The search follows years of reported sightings of a big creature in the lake, the most recent being in July when Lake District hotelier Thomas Noblett was hit by a three-foot wave as he was swimming.
A chartered boat will take to England’s longest lake on September 19 with celebrity and sports psychic Dean Maynard at the helm. He will be joined by Windermere photographer Linden Adams who claims to have seen ‘Bownessie’ – the nickname for the monster – from a viewpoint on Gummers How in 2007.
There will also be people with cameras dotted around the shoreline to capture any unusual activity.
“Linden Adams and I are really geared up and ready for the challenge ahead and we hope to find some concrete evidence something big does exist in the lake," said Mr Maynard.
In 2006 The Westmorland Gazette reported how Huddersfield University journalism lecturer Steve Burnip, of Hebden Bridge, saw a serpent-like creature emerge from the waters as he stood at Watbarrow Point across from Waterhead.
He described it as being 15 to 20 feet long with a little head and two small humps following in its wake. He said it looked like a giant eel.
“I am absolutely convinced that there is a big creature in the lake,” said Mr Burnip. “I am really pleased that there is a renewed interest in it because I know what I saw.
“I can see it in my head now, this grey lump and the humps breaking the water like you see in the classic Loch Ness pictures. There is something in there, something quite big and elusive.”
Mr Adams, whose picture of the creature was studied by photographic experts after appearing on the front page of the Gazette, said: “I looked at it through binoculars and the naked eye and what I saw was huge.
"A lot of photographic experts have had the opportunity to look at the pictures and they are still baffled.”
Ecology experts have told the Gazette that catfish are sometimes introduced to lakes by anglers. They believe that what could be being seen is the Welsh catfish that originates from mainland Europe.
[TheWestMorlandGazette.co.uk via TheParanormalBlog]
The Philosopher's Stone: Alchemy and the Secret Research for Exotic Matter [Book Review]
The Philosopher’s Stone is a masterfully written search through the ages in which Dr. Farrell connects modern physics, ancient alchemy, the transmutation of monotomic gold before finally discovering the energy source for a enigmatic super secret Nazi device called “The Bell” (See Brotherhood of the Bell for more information.). Calling deeply on historic accounts, of alchemy, the work of Soviet astrophysicists Nikolai Kozyrev we are taken on a journey through the dark recesses of the lost art of alchemy.It all started in Joseph Farrell’s previous book Brotherhood of the Bell, when we were introduced to Serum 525 (The power source of the Bell). From then on we wondered what this exotic liquid was and how it played into the operation of the Bell, one of the most enigmatic exotic super weapons the Nazi’s developed.
Through a successive series of books the reader is drawn more into the web of The Bell and its mysterious sponsor Eng. Dr. Hans Kammler. With The Philosopher’s Stone, Dr. Joseph Farrell’s first Feral House publication, we finally learn the true nature of Serum 525, the Bell and other mysteries.
The Philosopher’s Stone is a stellar piece of research and takes you on a journey through the ages in search of Transmutation, or the idea of the conversion of base elements into exotic elements. Dr. Farrell spends a great deal of time bringing you up to speed on Alchemy and how it plays into the search for Serum 525.
I have often said that when you are finished reading one of Dr. Farrell’s books you are almost an expert on the subject, and that is clearly by design. With the references, footnoting and annotations Dr. Farrell gives you the path to research the subject while also giving you the background to understand what you are reading. You might say it’s like a graduate history seminar in a book!
So what’s the verdict? BUY THIS BOOK! But make sure you’ve read the others as well. It is a fantastic standalone book but when read after Brotherhood of the Bell and his other books; The Philosopher’s Stone becomes the capstone to a quest for some of the most amazing technology and scientific discoveries of all time.
About the author: Joseph P. Farrell was born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His accomplishments in accelerated mathematics programs during his early education continued well into college when he received a PhD in Patristics from Oxford University. He has published a dozen very well received books, and often appears on Shadows in the Dark Radio, Coast to Coast and many other well known programs and continues to be a favorite guests among those shows.
[via Anomalies.net]
'Dark' UFO seen over Lake Huron Campground
A Michigan couple was about to pack it in for the night at the Lake Huron Campground when they noticed four lights in the sky in a perfect geometric shape - like a cross, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.They first noticed "four red/pink lights that were very bright in the sky to the north" and moving in perfect formation.
Following is the unedited witness statement from MUFON.
MI, September 12, 2009 - Dark object moving across sky - appearing to go on or into Lake Huron. MUFON Case # 19348.
We were camping Saturday, Sept. 12th at Lake Huron Campground, which is situated on the west side of M-25 on the shore of Lake Huron. It was about 9:25 p.m., it was dark already, but no clouds - it was very clear and you could see all the stars in the sky.
Our firepit had burned down and we were in the process of going back inside our camper. When we got up from our chairs and turned around to the north to move our chairs next to our camper we both noticed four red/pink lights that were very bright in the sky to the north.
[Read More]
Strange Creature Washes Ashore in Panama
The discovery of a strange creature in Cerro Azul, Panama, sparked controversy among the people, for what some say might be a creature from another planet, others simply believe that it si just an animal.
Two young men were having fun on the hill when they saw at the entrance of a cave a creature that was approaching them. They were frightened and stoned it to death.
Panama’s Channel 13 showed images of a strange creature that appeared last weekend in Cerro Azul, east of Panama City, and that alarmed local residents.
According to Telemetro, polemic unleashed between those who believe it is an animal and those who think it’s an extraterrestrial creature.
No authority said anything about the find.
Telemetro said four children, aged between 15 and 16 , saw the “thing” out of the water fall of Cerro Azul and stoned it to death, afraid of being attacked.
[via Phantoms & Monsters]
Rabid rabbits hunt snakes
A PAIR of rabid rabbits has been caught killing a series of snakes near Cairns.For three weeks Armando Del Manso believed his dog was responsible for the dead snakes showing up with teeth marks all over them on his East Barron property’s lawn each morning.
But it turns out it was a pair of rampaging rabbits killing the snakes.
The 42-year-old boilermaker first made the discovery Tuesday night when he spotted the two wild rabbits attacking a king brown snake.
“The snake was raised up in the air in the striking position and the two rabbits worked their way around him and killed him in two minutes,” Mr Del Manso said.
“I’m gobsmacked, it’s absolutely incredible.
“We were watching from the veranda with a spotlight, and I thought, who is going to believe this, they’ll think I’m crazy.”
He said the rabbits lived under a pile of wood in the backyard and were around the same size as a household cat.
“These are killer rabbits man,” he said.
“I’ve never ever seen or heard anything like this happening, it could be a breakthrough.”
A day after discovering the killer rabbits, Mr Del Manso noticed the rabbits had two baby bunnies which he said might explain their attitude towards the snakes.
Two days after first spotting the killer rabbits Mr Del Manso was bitten by a python on the foot while going for a midnight snack in his kitchen at around 2am.
“My partner joked that we should train rabbits to come inside the house to clean out the snakes,” Mr Del Manso said.
“We are absolutely inundated with snakes.”
Senior wildlife manager at the Cairns Wildlife Safari Paul O’Callaghan said he’d never heard of rabbits attacking snakes before but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.
“Animals are capable of learning, and it’s not impossible that these animals have learnt to deal with snakes in this way,” Mr O’Callaghan said.
“They’re certainly taking a risk doing it though.”
Mr De Manso also farms exotic bantams and said with more than 50 chooks he had neveronce lost a fowl to a snake due to the guard rabbits.
[Cairns.com.au]
Bohemian Tragedy
Members of the ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club—2,500 of America’s richest, most conservative men, including Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, and a passel of Bechtels, Basses, and Rockefellers—are known to urinate freely against the ancient redwoods that cover their 2,700-acre property. Have they been chopping down the trees as well? According to one former member turned whistle-blower, the San Francisco–based society may have logged some of its old-growth forest. Drawing on his own Ivy League ties, the author investigates, with a daring sortie into the ceremonial kickoff of the Bohemians’ annual encampment. A VF.com exclusive: "A Guide to the Bohemian Grove."
Is this really what I want to be doing? Sneaking into the exclusive Bohemian Grove, on the Saturday night when roughly 2,500 of America’s richest, mostly right-wing Republicans are kicking off their annual July “encampment”? The members of the San Francisco–based Bohemian Club are mostly all here, partying boisterously in this primeval stand of gargantuan redwoods 75 miles north of the city, or will be during the next 16 days. Over the years all the usual suspects have made appearances: Rumsfeld, Kissinger, two former C.I.A. directors (including Papa Bush), the masters of war and the oilgarchs, the Bechtels and the Basses, the board members of top military contractors—such as Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the Carlyle Group—Rockefellers, Morgans, captains of industry and C.E.O.’s across the spectrum of American capitalism. The interlocking corporate web—cemented by prep-school, college, and golf-club affiliations, blood, marriage, and mutual self-interest—that makes up the American ruling class. Many of the guys, in other words, who have been running the country into the ground and ripping us off for decades.
The summer high jinks begin, as they have for more than 100 years, with a macabre, hokey ceremony—with Druidic, Masonic, Ku Klux Klan, and Aryan forest-worship overtones—called the Cremation of Care, which is starting in 40 minutes down by the lake. I squeeze through a hole in a chain-link fence onto the 2,700-acre property and follow an old overgrown railroad bed. To my left, below a dense tangle of California bay laurel, big-leaf maple, and understory shrubs, the muddy-green Russian River is sliding by. I didn’t see any posting on that side of the property, but I know I am trespassing.
While many in the world see this gathering of the military-industrial high command as the bad guys—a sort of rogue state operating outside the constraints of democratic institutions, a favorite watering hole for what Peter Phillips, a Sonoma State University sociologist who has published extensively on the Bohemian Club, calls “the global dominance group”—this is not how the members imagine themselves. They see themselves as the moral underpinnings of America’s greatness, whose central tenets are the Protestant work ethic: work hard and prosper and you’ll get into that great club in the sky. The Bohemian Club is like the Opus Dei of the Protestant American establishment. Very few Jews have made it in, and even fewer blacks.
Secert Societies: Bohemian Grove
What is the Bohemian Grove? The Bohemian Grove is a 2700 acre redwood forest, located in Monte Rio, CA. It contains accommodation for 2000 people to "camp" in luxury. It is owned by the Bohemian Club.What is the Bohemian Club? The Bohemian Club is a private. all male club, which is headquartered in the Bohemian building in San Francisco. It was formed in 1872 by men who sought shelter from the frontier culture (or lack of culture).
Who are the present members? The Club has evolved into an association of rich and powerful men, mostly of this country (there are similar organizations in other countries). Some artists are allowed to join (often at reduced rates), because of their social status and entertainment value. The membership list has included every Republican U.S. president (as well as some Democrats) since 1923, many cabinet officials, and director; & CEO's of large corporations, including major financial institutions.
What industries are represented among the members? Major military contractors, oil companies, banks (including the Federal Reserve), utilities (including nuclear power), and national media (broadcast and print) have high-ranking officials as club members or guests. Many members are, or have been, on the board of directors of several of these corporations. You should note that most of the above industries depend heavily on a relationship with government for their profitability.
The members stay in different camps at the Grove, which have varying status levels. Members & frequent guests of the most prestigious camp (Mandalay) include: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, S. D. Bechtel, Jr., Thomas Watson Jr. (IBM), Phillip Hawley (B of A), William Casey (CIA). and Ralph Bailey (Dupont). George Bush resides in a less prestigious camp (Hillbillies) with A. W. Clausen (World Bank), Walter Cronkite, and William F. Buckley.
What activities take place at the grove? The grove is the site of a two week retreat every July (as well as other smaller get-togethers throughout the year). At these retreats, the members commune with nature in a truly original way. They drink heavily from morning through the night, bask in their freedom to urinate on the redwoods, and perform pagan rituals (including the "Cremation of Care", in which the members wearing red-hooded robes, cremate a coffin effigy of "Dull Care" at the base of a 40 foot owl altar). Some (20%) engage in homosexual activity (but few of them support gay rights or AIDS research). They watch (and participate in) plays and comedy shows in which women are portrayed by male actors. Although women are not allowed in the Grove, members often leave at night to enjoy the company of the many prostitutes who come from around the world for this event. Is any of this hard to believe? Employees of the Grove have said that no verbal description can accurately portray the bizarre behavior of the Grove's inhabitants.
Besides this type of merriment. the annual gathering serves as an informational clearing house for the elite. The most powerful men in the country do their "networking" here, despite the Grove's motto "weaving spiders come not here" (don't do business in the Grove). At these gatherings men representing the government, military-industrial, and financial sectors meet and make major policy decisions. The Manhattan project, which produced the first atomic bombs, was conceived at the Grove in 1942. Other decisions made at the Grove include who our presidential candidates will be. There are speeches, known as "Lakeside Talks", wherein high-ranking officials disseminate information which is not available to the public-at-large.
Science ponders 'zombie attack'
If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.
They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures.
The scientific paper is published in a book - Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress.
In books, films, video games and folklore, zombies are undead creatures, able to turn the living into other zombies with a bite.
But there is a serious side to the work.
In some respects, a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal, rapidly spreading infection. The researchers say the exercise could help scientists model the spread of unfamiliar diseases through human populations.
 |  My understanding of zombie biology is that if you manage to decapitate a zombie then it's dead forever  Professor Neil Ferguson |
In their study, the researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (also in Ottawa) posed a question: If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?
Professor Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake) and colleagues wrote: "We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies.
"We introduce a basic model for zombie infection and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions."
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (or, more commonly, the Golden Dawn) was a magical order founded in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development. It has been one of the largest single influences on 20th-century Western occultism. Concepts of magic and ritual at the center of contemporary traditions, such as Wicca[1][2] and Thelema, were inspired by the Golden Dawn. The three founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers were Freemasons and members of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.).[3] Westcott appears to have been the initial driving force behind the establishment of the Golden Dawn.
The Golden Dawn system was based on hierarchy and initiation like the Masonic Lodges, however women were admitted on an equal basis with men. The "Golden Dawn" was the first of three Orders, although all three are often collectively referred to as the "Golden Dawn". The First Order taught esoteric philosophy based on the Hermetic Qabalah and personal development through study and awareness of the four Classical Elements as well as the basics of astrology, tarot divination, and geomancy. The Second or "Inner" Order, the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis (the Ruby Rose and Cross of Gold), taught proper magic, including scrying, astral travel, and alchemy. The Third Order was that of the "Secret Chiefs", who were said to be highly-skilled but no longer incarnate; they supposedly directed the activities of the lower two orders by spirit communication with the Chiefs of the Second Order.
Podcast: Ceremonial Magic and the Golden Dawn with Special Guest Tomas Stacewicz
Add Your Voice to the Pagan Census
Pagan scholar Helen Berger, co-author of “Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States”, has announced that she and fellow researchers James R. Lewis and Henrik Bogdan are revisiting the Pagan Census project. The Pagan Census was first initiated nearly twenty years ago, and compiled data from thousands of modern Pagans to give a fascinating snapshot of our communities during Paganism’s meteoric rise in the 1990s. Now, in an age of blogs and instant communications, an update is underway to compare and contrast just how much we’ve changed.
“A number of scholars have noted that it would be helpful to have a follow-up of that survey to see if and how the community has changed or remained the same. The survey that follows uses many, although not all of the same questions that were in the original survey to provide that comparison. There are also new questions, for instance about the Internet, something that was of little interest 20 years ago but is now, and some from other studies, that again permit a comparison. This has resulted in the survey being somewhat long–we appreciate your taking the time to complete it.”
I urge all my readers who identify in any way with the modern Pagan/Heathen movement to participate in this census and spread the word to everyone you know. The more respondents the census has, the more accurate the data. You can find it, here. You can be sure that I will be paying attention to this renewed project as it goes forward, and will keep you appraised of any updates or results.
Minister warned over 'UK Roswell'
A former head of the armed forces told the defence secretary a UFO claim known as Britain's Roswell could be a "banana skin", newly released files show.In 1985 Lord Hill-Norton wrote to Michael Heseltine about the "Rendlesham incident" in 1980, when US airmen in Suffolk said they saw strange lights.
He said an unauthorised aircraft may have entered and left UK airspace.
In 2003, an ex-US security policeman said he and another airman had shone patrol car lights as a prank.
The case is among the latest MoD files on UFOs released by the National Archives.
'Puzzling and disquieting'
The "Rendlesham incident" involved American airmen from RAF Woodbridge who reported seeing mysterious lights.
Witnesses said a UFO was transmitting blue pulsating lights and sending nearby farm animals into a "frenzy".
Lord Hill-Norton's letter said either a craft had entered UK airspace with impunity or US airmen were capable of a "serious misperception".
But in 2003, ex-US security policeman Kevin Conde admitted that he and another airman had shone patrol car lights through the trees and made noises on the loudspeaker as a prank.
Haunted Gwrych
Mark Baker returns to tales of his favourite building in his new book, Myths and Legends of Gwrych Castle. Here's just a taster of some of the spooky goings on in the Abergele folly. Stephen Sharpe's father was once the organist at Gwrych during the late 1960s and during the summer holidays he would stay in one of the flats in the Castle. He and his family would regularly see and hear the ghost of a woman in white, although they never once felt threatened by her presence.
In the early 1980s, a guest of the owners was staying in the Telescope Bedroom with her little dog on the second floor of the Round Tower, which had one window facing the sea and another facing the West Terrace. Only certain parts of the building had electricity at this time, but luckily this particular bedroom was lit unlike the other rooms on the second floor.
The door to the room had no handle so a piece of wood was used to lean against it to keep it closed, and so it happened on windy nights that one of the windows would fly open forcing a draught to open the door. Sometimes, she would walk the corridors late at night with a torch, checking that all was locked and sound before retiring to bed.
But often the guest of the owners had the feeling of 'some presence' which was never malevolent so it did not instil fear. The little dog was not so friendly towards the unseen forms and would growl or bark at thin air!
One night, the lady visitor was woken up by the strangest sounds from the corridor outside. It was a swishing noise, like someone stroking a feather against the wall and a whisper-like 'shhhhh'. Frightened, there was not just one sound, but hundreds of little sounds that were like a wave reverberating along the whole of the corridor, back and forth.
Lying in bed for a few moments, too afraid to move, her courage returned and she removed the wood stop, took a deep breath and opened the door. The corridor was black with flying bats! Fortunately, in the morning all the bats had disappeared but she paid closer attention to what she heard in future.
During the later years, people staying at the Castle would report strange noises emanating from various parts of the building, but they could never find the source of these happenings. Tony Kennedy was manager of Gwrych for five years and he recorded that from his first floor flat, which was previously named 'The Rhuddlan Suite', he heard creaks and rattles filter down the halls to his rooms. He is quoted as saying, 'You hear a lot of noises, but I usually dismissed them as being bits of plaster falling off the walls, which is a common enough occurrence here.'
New Star Trek Guys Talk Old Star Trek, Sequel
Abrams:
“The ambition for a sequel to ‘Star Trek’ is to make a movie that’s worthy of the audience and not just another movie, you know, just a second movie that feels tacked on. The first movie was so concerned with just setting up the characters — their meeting each and galvanizing that family — that in many ways a sequel will have a very different mission. it needs to do what [the late 'Trek' creator Gene] Roddenberry did so well, which is allegory. It needs to tell a story that has connection to what is familiar and what is relevant. It also needs to tell it in a spectacular way that hides the machinery and in a primarily entertaining and hopefully moving story. There needs to be relevance, yes, and that doesn’t mean it should be pretentious. If there are simple truths — truths connected to what we live — that elevates any story — that’s true with any story.”
Orci:
“We’ve literally had two meetings now. We haven’t decided anything but we’re starting to circle around some ideas. We got a lot of fan response from the first one and a considerable amount of critical response and one of the things we heard was, ‘Make sure the next one deals with modern-day issues.’ We’re trying to keep it as up-to-date and as reflective of what’s going on today as possible. So that’s one thing, to make it reflect the things that we are all dealing with today.
The studio has added Lost guy Damon Lindelof to the writing staff, and the sequel is currently scheduled for a Summer 2011 release date, which means things will start picking up by 2010 at the latest.
Whoa, whoa, who put Shatner in the corner? No one puts Shatner in the corner.
Occult Profiles: Horror Writer Arthur Machen
Born: 1863Died: 1947
Place of Birth: Caerleon
School: Hereford Cathedral School
I shall always esteem it as the greatest piece of fortune that has fallen to me, that I was born in that noble, fallen Caerleon-on-Usk, in the heart of Gwent. Arthur Machen
- Biography:
- A writer whose unique vision of his Gwent homeland has terrified and inspired readers across the world.
Gwilym Games tells us more...
Born in Caerleon he was the son of a local clergyman.
His early years wandering Gwent and its landscape remained a vital influence throughout his life. He attended Hereford Cathedral School, but family poverty ruled out university.
Going to London, Machen lived in poverty and took various jobs to fund his writing including cataloguing occult books and writing the first English translation of Casanova's autobiography.
It was in 1894 that Machen made his name by publishing The Great God Pan, his first horror story which attracted much controversy for its combination of dark sexual overtones, mystical wonders and ancient horrors haunting Wales and London.
It has attracted a cult following ever since, including Stephen King, who named it one of his ten all-time favorite horror stories.
Machen followed with another classic of urban gothic The Three Impostors, which featured sinister Welsh faery lore. After 1895 the Oscar Wilde scandal meant Machen's decadent works could not be published.
He wrote on, writing many of his most acclaimed works like The Hill of Dreams, and The White People, said to be amongst the best supernatural short stories in English.
The death of his first wife in 1899 stopped Machen writing and he became an actor, then a journalist. Around 1907 Machen studied the Holy Grail legends, forming a theory which linked it with the Celtic Church of his beloved Welsh saints. He wrote stories that brought the Holy Grail into modern life, an original plotline used later by many other authors.
One of his Grail stories, The Great Return, has the holy vessel cause a series of visions and miracles on the Pembrokeshire coast near Tenby.
In 1914 Machen inspired by the Retreat from Mons wrote the story The Bowmen, a patriotic tale in which ghostly archers from Agincourt returned to aid the British against the Germans.
In 1915 rumours circulated the story was based on true events, inspiring the much talked about myth of the Angels of Mons, supernatural proof that God supported the allies. Machen, though a fervent patriot, regarded these stories as nonsense and said so, starting a debate that continues today.
In 1916 Machen wrote The Terror, a novella that pioneered a new sub-genre in horror, that of mass animal attacks on humanity. Machen's work enjoyed a revival in Jazz Age America, inspiring fans who used his ideas in their stories, like HP Lovecraft, the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, and Robert E Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian.
Machen saw little money from any of his work, retiring to live in Amersham, Buckinghamshire in 1929. A public appeal in 1943 to support him financially was backed by many notables including TS Eliot, George Bernard Shaw, John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman and Siegfried Sassoon as well as the Mayor of Newport, and the head of Monmouthshire County Council.
Machen's much anthologized and translated stories continue to enthrall readers and writers today.
A plaque on the house next door to the Priory Hotel in Caerleon commemorates the building as his birthplace. - Moment of Glory:
- Best known for the The Bowmen, Machen thought his best book was The Hill of Dreams which has been called the most decadent book in English literature
- Off the Record:
- Born Arthur Llewelyn Jones, his family adopted the surname Machen to gain an inheritance