Saturday Sci-Fi Cinema: Animatrix (Full Movie)

Fortune teller told mother to make children work as slaves

A mother made slaves of her two children and forced them to work for gipsies rather than go to school after a fortune teller told her it was right thing to do.

Within weeks of the meeting, Linda Clappison started locking her son and daughter, then aged 10 and six, in their rooms and assaulting them.

She fed them only sandwiches and took the light bulbs, toys and all mattresses and bedding from their rooms, leaving them needing hospital treatment for frostbite. Clappison, 46, of Keyingham Marsh, East Yorkshire, was found guilty of two child cruelty charges at Hull Crown Court last month.

She was jailed for 18 months concurrently or each charge. Judge Michael Mettyear, the Recorder of Hull, described the case as “tragic’’. He also praised the children, who gave evidence against their mother.
The trial heard that the mother of four forced her two youngest children to work for gipsies as slaves after falling under the spell of a fortune teller.

Her son, Andrew Clappison, now aged 18, told the trial: '’We were treated like dogs.’’

UFO: Ottawa witness reports huge orange big ball

An Ottawa witness reports that she saw a huge UFO on 5 May 2012 according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

The witness reports where she and her boyfriend had originally witnessed a UFO back in December 2011. The witness recalls the sighting.

“My boyfriend and I were on the balcony of our apartment in Ottawa Ontario.”

The witness reported the colour of the UFO that her boyfriend witnessed.

“He saw this huge orange big ball of light in the sky.”

Having been astonished by the appearance of the UFO, they also noted its changing size.

“We wondered: What the heck is that? It would get smaller and disappear.”

The witness reported that the nature of the UFO’s changing appearance was scary.

“It was foggy out this night, and whenever the light would disappear whenever it was about to reappear the clouds in the sky would light up and then BAM the light would be back. It was the scariest thing I had seen really. It freaked me out.”

Satellite 'UFO' Falls From Sky on Homeless Man's Head (Video)

A video on YouTube, tenuously claiming a dubious UFO classification, nonetheless shows the remarkable sight of a man being plunked on the head by a falling satellite —dish, that is.


The video appears to be of the surveillance camera type with the lens being focused on a parking lot area filled with trash dumpsters. A man can be seen sitting on a log next to a parked car. He is hooded and appears to be hunching over, perhaps even sleeping. Is he homeless?

As the video plays out, a female figure is seen darting into camera range just as a round object falls from the sky, striking the sitting man right on the head.

He seems stunned for a moment before getting up and staggering away. The other person is not seen again and the "UFO" is clearly seen for what it appears to be a satellite TV dish antenna.

Or is it?

There are a number of details about this video which seem staged. Why is the man just sitting there? Who is the other person in the video? Does that person have anything to do with the falling object?

It's also possible that this was a mean prank against a poor, defenseless homeless man which just happened to be caught on camera. Either way, it's one of the weirdest clips to hit YouTube in a while.

[gather.com]

Haunted Real Estate and The Tom's River 'Amityville Horror'

One of the biggest stories in Toms River, N.J., in recent weeks involved an alleged haunted house in the neighborhood.

According to local reports, Michele Callan and her fiance Josue Chinchilla had moved into a home in Toms River in March and soon began to experience a range of paranormal activities.



As a news report from ABC News shows, the distressed couple allegedly endured living room lights that turn on by themselves, a vase that falls over when no one is watching, a feeling of being tapped on the shoulder when no one is around, and a raspy voice that whispers, “Let it burn.”

The couple have since moved out and sued the landlord, claiming they could no longer endure the ghostly activities in the house and want to recoup the deposit. The landlord, in turn, counter-sued the couple, saying the lawsuit will frighten away new tenants or buyers and hurt the house’s value.

Haunted California Castle holds weekend guest captive

Ken Nelson, of Nelson's Lock & Key in Pacifica, got an unusual call Sunday, April 29. Could he come over to the 1908-built Sam's Castle in Pacifica and unlock the door that had kept a young man trapped in the old castle's downstairs water closet for the past hour and a half? The problem was while the door was definitely sealed shut, there was no lever or latch to physically lock the door.

This was the weekend that the Pacifica Historical Society (PHS) was hosting one of its extremely popular castle tours. These castle tours — where members of PHS dress up as some of the well known locals that have walked and/or lived within the interior of the castle, folks like Henry Harrison McCloskey and his wife Emily (who were the builders of this new world Scottish castle), infamous abortionist Dr. Galen Richard Hickok who became a San Quentin resident and the castle's "Madam" who ran a speakeasy during the Roaring Twenties — are fundraisers in support of the Little Brown Church Pacifica Museum Center (http://pacificahistory.org/little-brown-church/).

The 90-minute tours brought patrons through the castle from 9:45 a.m. until 3:45 p.m.

Art Show: Objects and Art of Death and Mourning

OF the roughly 75 items on display at the Suffolk County Historical Society in Riverhead, a menacing-looking object known as the Wickham ax has been especially fascinating to many visitors.


It is the murder weapon used to kill James and Frances Wickham, 19th-century farmers in Cutchogue, according to Kathryn M. Curran, the society’s director. The Wickhams were killed in 1854 by “a disgruntled farmhand,” she said.

The exhibition, “Death Becomes Her: Objects and Art of Death and Mourning,” through May 26, also includes locally sourced mourning jewelry, mourning costumes, weapons and a pair of tombstones.

As part of a metaphysical series to complement the exhibition, Dawn Joly, a medium from Nesconset, will lead a tour of the collection May 24 and also offer to “interpret” objects brought in by those in attendance. Members of the Metaphysical and Paranormal Investigations of New York will be on hand on May 17 to offer a lecture on their research into area hauntings.

Georgia woman battles flesh-eating disease

Aimee Copeland, the 24-year-old Georgia student who has already lost her leg to necrotizing fasciitis, a rare, flesh-eating bacteria, is in critical condition and may also lose her hands and her other foot, according to news reports.

ABC News reported that Copeland showed evidence of an infection by the flesh-eating disease days after she went to a doctor for a deep cut she suffered from a homemade zip line fall.

Even though the doctors cleaned and closed the wound, it became infected, the Associated Press reported, most likely from bacteria at the zip line site.

"I couldn't conceive of what it would be like for my daughter to lose her hands and the only other foot she has, as well, and that appears to be what is going to happen," her father Andy Copeland told ABC affiliate WSB-TV. "The most important thing is my daughter is still alive."

The Associated Press reported that the specific bacterium that infected Copeland is called Aeromonas hydrophila. This kind of bacteria usually causes diarrhea (when people swallow water contaminated with it), and cases where the bacteria cause flesh-eating diseases are very rare, the AP reported.

ABC News reported on a 2010 study in the journal Clinical Microbiology Reviews, that showed that necrotizing fasciitis from Aeromonas bacteria has a death rate of more than 60 percent. But according to a 2007 study in the World Journal of Emergency Surgery, death rates from the condition can range anywhere from 25 to 73 percent.

Chinese Physicists Teleport Photons Over 100 Kilometers

The ability to teleport photons through 100 kilometres of free space opens the way for satellite-based quantum communications, say researchers


Teleportation is the extraordinary ability to transfer objects from one location to another without travelling through the intervening space.

The idea is not that the physical object is teleported but the information that describes it. This can then be applied to a similar object in a new location which effectively takes on the new identity.

And it is by no means science fiction. Physicists have been teleporting photons since 1997 and the technique is now standard in optics laboratories all over the world.

The phenomenon that makes this possible is known as quantum entanglement,  the deep and mysterious link that occurs when two quantum objects share the same existence and yet are separated in space.

Teleportation turns out to be extremely useful. Because teleported information does not travel through the intervening space, it cannot be secretly accessed by an eavesdropper.