MORE people have contacted the Bracknell News UFO hotline after seeing mysterious objects in the sky above Bracknell Forest.

Myrtle Brain, of Murrellhill Lane, Binfield, saw a “flying saucer” in the sky above her home on Wednesday last week.

She said: “It was saucer shaped with lights on the bottom and a light on a dome. I was just mesmerised, absolutely mesmerised.”

She watched the object hovering above fields near her home for over 20 minutes at about 11pm.

She said: “It didn’t move at all. It just hovered there for ages and then it disappeared. It was just as if the lights went out.”

[see icBerkshire]

A sick sea lion took a chunk out of a 13-year-old boy’s Boogie board this weekend off the northern end of Morro Strand State Beach in Cayucos.

Matthew Huff said the sea lion started chasing him around 5 p.m. Saturday as he surfed the waves.

[see The Tribune]

DAYTONA BEACH — A day after a shark bit a 13-year-old girl on the hand in shallow waters off Zelda Boulevard, swimmers returned to the same waters to wade and bathe, including a man floating on his back around noon today in slightly deeper waters. “I go swimming here every day. It’s beautiful,” said Aiden Magee, a 60-year-old retired businessman, as he waded ashore. He had no intention of altering his routine because of the shark bite, he said.

The victim, identified by officials as Nicole Carlos, of Jupiter, remained hospitalized today in fair condition. She was injured only slightly “in the big picture,” said Scott Petersohn, Volusia County Beach Patrol spokesman. She and her family were unavailable for comment.

[see Orlando Sentinel & their follow-up]

A group of researchers in Russia claim they have solved the mystery of crop circles, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reports. According to them, plants bend as a result of microwave emissions caused by lightning strikes.

[see MosNews]

Scientists and astronomers are getting early indications that the advanced alien civilizations may have left the physical universe and have shifted to the parallel universe. Scientists have located a sizeable chunk of the universe that seemed to be missing since back when the stars first formed. It’s floating in super-hot rivers of gas, invisible to the naked eye, surrounding galaxies like our own. Computer models now show some possibilities that our galaxy can be devastated by these invisible matter.

[see IndiaDaily]

Michael Jackson is building an airport – for aliens.

The eccentric singer reportedly came up with the idea after dreaming he met little green men from outer space.

…

“Michael wants to welcome extra-terrestrials to earth and to film the landing.”

[see Monsters and Critics]

See CTV, Ottawa Sun & Montreal Gazette.

ASHLAND, MA, United States (UPI) — The town manager of a Boston suburb is not interested in inviting a ghost-buster to the town hall to check out stories of a 19th-century spirit.

The spook, known as George, is said to be the ghost of a man who hanged himself in a lockup that once existed in the Ashland building’s basement, back when the 150-year-old building was relatively new, the Boston Herald reported Thursday.

[see monstersandcritics.com]

A court has freed a monk and four nuns who are charged with killing a nun last month during an exorcism ritual, authorities in Romania said today.

The Appeals Court in Bucharest refused to extend arrest warrants against the suspects and ordered them to be freed, the court said in a statement.

The statement did not elaborate, but news television N24 reported that appeals judges cited procedural errors by a lower court. The five were freed from a Bucharest jail late yesterday. Today they were questioned by interrogators in the capital.

[see Ireland On-Line]

Warwickshire’s very own ‘ghostbuster’ died suddenly at the weekend.

Vic Tandy, aged 50, was a senior lecturer at Coventry University’s Business School but his real passion was searching out spooks.

Vic, along with his Coventry University colleague Tony Lawrence, worked on pioneering ghost theories, the most famous being ‘infrasound’.

He identified ‘infrasound’ as the low frequency noise just out of the range of human hearing, which causes a reaction in people that some interpret as a supernatural experience.

[see icCoventry]

Run DMC rapper Reverend Run claims he was visited by the ghost of late bandmate Jam Master Jay only days after he was murdered.

The hip-hop star, whose real name is Jason Simmons, claims Jay visited him from beyond the grave to demand money shortly after he was shot dead in a New York recording studio in October 2002.

[see Virgin.net]

Seeing, it’s been said, is believing.

Especially when it comes to “spirit energy.”

A.k.a. ghosts.

The soft summertime whirring of cicadias was the only sound as the sun sank over the horizon at the site of the former Massillon Pychiatric Hospital Saturday night. The sky glowed orange, shadows lengthened.

[see The Independent]

EXETER - There has been a considerable response to Tuesday’s article in the News-Letter about a recent UFO sighting. Interested local residents and skeptics joined UFO enthusiasts commenting from throughout the nation, and reaction was even received from a French “Ufologist” who recalled two similar sightings in Europe.

Yann Marchandin, the French “Ufologist” who contacted the News-Letter via e-mail, said there was a similar UFO sighting in Poland in 1997 and another in 1999. In both incidents, witnesses claimed to have seen large “military ship-sized” tubes, or cigar-shaped objects in the sky.

[see Exeter News]

Ghost hunters are looking for Port Townsend stories prior to the third annual Pacific Northwest Ghost Hunters Conference, Nov. 11-13 at Fort Worden State Park.

About 300 people are expected to register for the conference sponsored by the Amateur Ghost Hunters of Seattle-Tacoma (AGHOST). It’s the first time the conference has been staged outside of Seattle.

“Given the rich history, legend and beautiful Victorian buildings – elements lending themselves to stories of ghosts, haunted locations and unexplained mysteries – it comes as no surprise that the largest and most technologically advanced ghost-hunting group in the Pacific Northwest has chosen Port Townsend as the location for its third annual Ghost Hunting Conference,” said Joe Teeples, organization vice president.

[see Port Townsend Leader]

Dan Scott Taylor Jr., who built a submarine that searched the bottoms of Loch Ness in Scotland searching for the enigma Nessie, has died. He was 65.

[see Myrtle Beach Online & The Beaufort Gazette]

A former musician himself, Barry agreed with John Priest that the sounds of medieval music coming from inside the church may be a recreation of the funeral music played on the occasion of Edward, the Duke of York’s funeral. The grandson of Edward the Third, he was killed at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and later buried at Fotheringhay.

Many, including a local Fotheringhay police sergeant, have heard the haunting music. “The emotions relating to this event may have been so powerful that they fixed an imprint of the music in the walls of the church, ” Barry said. This might be likened to modern methods of recording imprints of music onto tape or CD.

[see Exzibit]

Did anyone else see the Alka-Seltzer U.S. Open of Competitive Eating on ESPN last weekend? It made me want to barf, but I just had to watch.

You have to check out this article on The Daily News.

SHELBY, N.C.
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, keep reading. The ghosts in Shelby want you to know what they have to share.

This is a story of days gone by in the City of Pleasant Living. It’s a story of dreams, life, death and hope for a future of pleasant living once again.

The story begins in the Rogers Theatre, a now decaying testament to a time when Shelby residents dreamed big dreams. It was the last of four theaters in uptown when it opened in 1936. With its vaudeville stage that attracted the biggest of stars and its 1,000 seats, the Rogers’ future was bright.

“Lon Chaney Jr. and the Three Stooges played there,” said Mayor Ted Alexander.

[see Winston-Salem Journal]

Modena – The sprawling house John and Joanne McDonough have lived in since the late 1970s used to be a boarding house, and, as far as they’re concerned, it still is.

The house’s occupants don’t pay for their rooms. They take up no space, either. They never speak and, for the most part, they keep to themselves. Joanne McDonough will sometimes catch one of them from the corner of her eye, peeking around a corner of the sprawling, 14-room house.

She’s gotten used to it by now, though it’s taken time. And, after a four-day examination of her home by a team of paranormal investigators, historians and researchers – Joanne McDonough knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that hers is a haunted house.

Come October, you’ll be able to judge for yourself. The McDonoughs will be the subject of a new reality show, tentatively called “Haunted Houses,” on The Learning Channel. The idea is to have houses like theirs investigated by poltergeist professionals.

[see Times Herald-Record]

Interesting…

[link]

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — Fear grips residents of remote villages in the boundary of Jose Abad Santos town in Davao del Sur province and Glan town in Sarangani province after the leader of a cult allegedly involved in cannibalism managed to elude arrest.

[See inq7.net for the story]

The Delhi High Court passed an order Thursday instructing authorities to offer 2,000 rupees ($46) per cow — an average Indian’s monthly salary — to rid the city of the traffic menace.

With cows sacred to Hindus, who make up the bulk of India’s billion-plus population, an estimated 35,000 cows and buffalo roam free in the capital, sharing space with hordes of monkeys, camels and stray dogs.

[vie Reuters]

BIRZAI, Lithuania — Security cameras at a Lithuanian grocery store have captured images of an alleged ghost lurking in its warehouse.

[see the video at NBC5]

WHITE RIVER TOWNSHIP, Ind. — Wildlife officials say a 4 1/2-foot-long alligator found near an upscale subdivision in Johnson County is most likely an abandoned pet.

“A lot of people just find out that an alligator is more trouble when it’s getting to be 3 or 4 feet long than it was when it was just a few inches,” said Russ Grunden, Indiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman, adding that his office fields about two calls a year on live alligators.

“It’s not unusual for it to happen around the state from time to time,” he said.

[see the Indianapolis Star]

“In Cumbria we have gone from 60 UFO sightings in 2003 to 40 in 2004 and none at all this year,” he lamented.

“It means that the number of people keeping their eyes on the skies is greatly diminished. There are only a handful of us now.

“We are a dying breed in this part of the country. I put it down to the end of the X-Files, a lack of military exercises in the area that would produce UFO sightings and a lack of strange phenomena.” Mr Parr has tried to keep the extraterrestrial flame alive. He has three camcorders and whips them out whenever he hears of sightings elsewhere in the country in the hope that the flying saucer in question takes a wrong turn up the M6. But it never does. He doesn’t exactly sell his subject, though. About 90 per cent of sightings, he says, are due to nocturnal military activity.

[see Telegraph]

The Society For Paranormal Research, a national group, have also visited Darley Dale station after a number of ghosts were spotted.

The ghostly figure of a soldier is said to haunt Rowsley and a fireman is believed to haunt the sheds at Darley Dale station.

Jack Phillips, vice-president of the paranormal group, which was at Rowsley last weekend, said: “It was absolutely fantastic. Suffice to say there was enough going on. We are going back again. It’s the strangest place I have ever been to in 20 years of paranormal investigation.”

[see Matlock Today]

Bev took several pictures of each group at the tables. One shot she took she realised that one lady was missing, so she snapped another photo when she returned to the table.

The following Wednesday Bev had 60 photos printed from her camera. “I was astounded when sorting through the prints to find a white ghostly figure in one of the photos of a group.

[see Wellington Times]

A Medford man was committed to the state psychiatric hospital Thursday for stabbing, spray-painting and setting fire to his pet kitten.

…

In an attempt to exorcise a gray, 10-week-old kitten named Cosmo, McCray stabbed it multiple times with a small knife that folds into a cross-shaped pendant, said Sarita Glassburner, deputy district attorney for Jackson County. He then sprayed it with olive drab paint and lit its head on fire. McCray thought the cat contained “Indian spirits,” the prosecutor added.

[see story]

Manila, Philippines - Lawmakers have joined the growing clamor for the House ethics committee to probe the involvement of some of their colleagues in the exorcism rite at the start of the impeachment hearings, even as they expressed belief that Fr. Robert Reyes should be censured by the Church for conducting the ceremony.

Reps. Mauricio Domogan (Lakas,Baguio City) and Douglas Cagas (NPC,Davao del Sur) said the rites implied a cleansing of the House of evil spirits, which is totally absurd and unfair for its members.

The solons said those involved in the rites have also undermined the sense of discernment of House members in acting on the impeachment complaint now being heard by the committee on justice.

Domogan and Cagas have joined Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin, who earlier urged the House ethics committee to look into House members who were involved in the exorcism rite on Tuesday for what he said was an abuse of the ancient Catholic rite. Locsin said the rite was a mockery of religious belief and “institutional honor essential to the House.” Majority Leader Prospero Nograles said the matter should be looked into by the House.

[see the full story]

Philip J. Klass, 85, an aviation journalist who investigated UFO sightings and wrote books debunking reports of visits from outer space, died Aug. 9 at a nursing facility in Cocoa, Fla. He had cancer.

[see Daily Herald]

Alligator mystery solved.

Johnson County Animal Control officials say an alligator found in a White River Township retention pond was on the lam from a home in which he was being rehabilitated for transport to a Florida alligator camp.

Only the alligator decided to check out some Hoosier scenery before leaving and apparently escaped from the home sometime Sunday, said Animal Control Warden Shawn Donovan.

[see The Indianapolis Star]

As paranormal investigators, Hall, Sharon Gallant, Michelle Carter, and Brenda Woodman track down spirits in private homes, businesses, and graveyards. The group does not charge for its services, which include the use of digital cameras, electronic voice phenomenon (EVP), pendulums, and dousing rods in an attempt to prove the spirits’ existence.

“We do it because it helps us show other people that when you die you do live on – in another dimension,” Hall said. “But you do live on – on another level of consciousness.”

[see story]

Want to see haunted places in Lake and Porter counties — like Ghost Road, the haunted hotels and the site of a circus train wreck that killed 86 people?

The Northwest Indiana Chapter of the Indiana Ghost Trackers is inviting the public to come along during the fifth year of spine-chilling Ghost Tours.

[see Northwest Indiana News]

YORK - Amid throngs of tourists exploring local shops and residents of York Street out for an evening stroll, a dark, hooded figure leads a curious group by the light of an old lantern.

The haunting tour guide regales the group with stories of witches, pirates, ghosts and gravestones - a unique background of our small New England town.

[see story]

Sightings of what people say are “ghosts” or “spirits” around Casa Grande are abundant. Here various residents recall their contact with the unseen or apparitions.

[see story]

A Table View man has found a foot at the Milnerton lagoon.

Derick van Vuuren said he had found it while out walking.

“It was just floating around in the water,” he said after making the find on Sunday.

“The cops reckon it’s a shark attack victim. But there have been no attacks on the West Coast. The last attack I remember is the one in Simon’s Town. Perhaps it was the foot that went missing from the Salt River mortuary some time ago. But that one was sawn off, apparently. This one looked like it was chewed off.”

Police spokesperson Billy Jones said the foot had been severed above the ankle. An inquest docket had been opened.

[from IOL]

A cat was stomped to death in a weekend dispute between neighbors on the South Side, police said.

Chicago Police said four people — two men and two women — kicked in a door of a house in the 6500 block of South Wolcott at 9 a.m. Sunday and told two people there to turn over a PlayStation, a police spokeswoman said.

The four, carrying knives and other objects, proceeded to trash the home and stomp a black cat to death, the spokeswoman said.

[see Chicago Sun-Times]

LONDON - Caged and barely clothed, eight men and women monkeyed around for the crowds Friday in an exhibit labeled “Humans” at the London Zoo.

“Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment” read the sign at the entrance to the exhibit, where the captives could be seen on a rock ledge in a bear enclosure, clad in bathing suits and pinned-on fig leaves. Some played with hula hoops, some waved.

Visitors stopped to point and laugh, and several children could be heard asking, “Why are there people in there?”

[see Yahoo!]

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Was there a black cat aboard the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, placed inside a cannon by a superstitious but desperate sailor as the vessel was sinking?

Conservators had hoped to verify the legend as they worked this month to extract concretelike sediment from two cast iron, smooth-bore cannons salvaged from the ship’s turret.

[Continue reading…]

LOS ANGELES Police in suburban Los Angeles have arrested two men they accuse of putting an alligator into a small city lake, where it’s been for nearly two weeks.

[story]

SPRINGDALE – It wasn’t your usual missing person description released Monday by Springdale Police.

They are looking for little Dillion clad only in blue pants, standing just two feet tall and weighing eight pounds and prone to sleeping in trees like any other Capuchin monkey.

If you spot him don’t imitate a train whistle because that is what sent the circus monkey leaping from his owner’s shoulder early Monday at the General Electric Park near the railroad tracks that cross Ohio 747.

[story]

Television programmes such as Most Haunted have spooked potential homebuyers so much that half of them now believe in ghosts and say they would not buy a house if they thought that they were sharing it with a spirit.

A recent poll commissioned by Lloyds TSB also found that a fifth of the 2,000 homebuyers sampled would only contemplate buying a house in which things went bump in the night if an exorcism or “new-age cleansing” took place.

[see story]

Kolkata: Steeped in superstition, a farmer in a West Bengal village resorted to exorcism to cure his ailing daughter but the black magic rituals only ended up killing her.

Ashok Bag of Ranghat village in North 24 Parganas district adjoining Kolkata beat his seven-year-old sick daughter with a broomstick believing she was possessed, police said Wednesday.

The girl was earlier taken to an exorcist and subjected to some bizarre rituals that worsened her condition. Bag then brought her back to home and carried out the act of exorcism himself.

The girl had high fever and succumbed to the collective onslaught by the exorcist and her father Tuesday.

[see story, source 2]

• One More Chupacabra? Another Strange Texas Beast
• Texas Farmer Claims He Caught Legendary ‘Chupacabra’
• Mystery Animal Found In Lufkin

Former Bracknell Town Mayor Jennie McCraken was harassed by the ghost for the first year of living at their former Binfield house.

She eventually turned to family friend Terry Walters - an amateur exorcist - to rid them of the spooky serpent.

And the wife of leading Bracknell Forest Borough councillor Iain McCracken added that the experience turned her into a firm believer in the paranormal.

She said: “I was open-minded about it before, having never seen a ghost, but after this experience I am definitely not sceptical any more.

[see story]

See story

MEADVILLE, Pa. - Colette MacLees is looking for more than dust bunnies when she sweeps through a house.

MacLees, 51, of Meadville, a housewife and mother of adult daughters, is a paranormal investigator and wants to start her own chapter of ghost chasers in northwestern Pennsylvania.

“I always felt the house I grew up in was haunted, although there are people who will disagree with that. All my life, strange things have happened to me that I couldn’t explain,” MacLees said.

But she began chasing ghosts in earnest about two years ago after a cousin was killed in a car accident.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and could smell his cologne,” MacLees said. “I got on the Internet and began checking things like that out and learning more.”

[see story]

(West Haven-AP, Aug. 17, 2005 7:30 AM) _ West Haven police say they arrested more than a dozen people who broke into an old factory looking for ghosts.

Police say the group broke into the old American Buckle Company factory on Campbell Avenue early Monday. The building is apparently on some Web site that describes the factory as one of the city’s most ghost-ridden buildings.

Police say it wasn’t getting into the spirit of things that led to the arrests. Some of the ghost hunters apparently got into some spirits, stealing liquor from a closed restaurant next to the factory.

[via WTNH]