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| Sunday, 25 September 2005 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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The Weird and Bizarre
by Rikaza Hassan
Leaky pipes? Why not call your local psychic? This, however strange it may sound at first (and even later on) was what the Banham family of Norfolk finally resorted to. During one winter their central heating broke down due to a leaking pipe, the location of which was unknown. Unfortunately neither did the plumber they promptly called, nor did the water company. Shivering in the cold they even called a water diviner for help though unsuccessfully. After a week of desperate search and no heat, a friend of the family called a local psychic featured on BBC radio. Over the telephone the woman (apparently using her mysterious powers of hearing) located the leak to be coming from a pipe under the kitchen floor. Of course after the pipe in question was found, the proper people were able to fix the problem restoring the heat to the cold and angry family.
Many residents, from all over the country reported seeing huge airships flying overhead despite there existing no such airship that could reach Britain at the time. Crazy weather is yet another strange phenomenon experienced in the locale. While it does frequently rain cats and dogs, in August 2000 the skies actually poured down dead sprats. The U.S. of A. perhaps holds the record for not only a large number of UFO sightings but also for the spread of the most speculation and accusations, from Project Blue Book (a small file that contained the reports from the US Airforce programme to investigate UFOs and was later discontinued in 1969) to alleged cover ups by the army, navy, FBI, CIA and of course sparking off the favourite series of you and I, the X-Files. In more recent times though, there have been reports of many tremors in the range of 4 to 6 on the Richter scale in the Nicobar and Andaman islands. Only this time the aftershocks are a considerable time apart giving rise to the speculation that someone is controlling the aftershocks and making sure that the tectonic plates are not over stressed.
The island of Australia, since the beginning of its colonisation saw not only incoming food, clothing, spices and medicine but also contagious diseases which spread through the isolated community like a bush fire. Hence a Quarantine Act was passed in 1832 and a quarantine station established. The station has seen seamen, returning soldiers and residents isolated in its confines and most dying. The station is now an inclusion of the Sydney Harbour National Park and is said to be the most haunted place in Australia. The park offers a ghost tour - a basic historical tour that takes place in the evening. Visitors have reported seeing ghosts, feeling cold spots and being tapped on the shoulder with no one is anyone near them. Resident park rangers regularly report seeing ghostly figures and lights but find no one present nor nothing amiss on investigation. The most common tale is of a ghostly little blonde girl in plaits who occasionally holds the hand of a tourist and leads them around the pathways. Sea monsters are another mystery that has eluded us over the years. There have been no sightings throughout history by those navigating the brine waters, though no irrevocable evidence has as yet been found. However in December 1905, two highly regarded and experienced British naturalists on board the research yacht Valhalla spotted a dorsal fin about six feet long and twenty inches high. Also they saw arise a head on a long neck about seven feet long. Crew members aboard the vessel also reported seeing the animal. The sighting was officially reported and it is now estimated that nearly 400 significant sightings have been officially recorded. From Nessie of the fresh waters of Loch Ness to unknown sea creatures, bodies of water definitely have many more surprises in store.
To forestall future problems, the director had a Japanese purification ceremony conducted but nevertheless the string of weird coincidences continued. On location for instance, a swarm of bees descended upon the prop truck only to leave as soon as the prop department evacuated. And in an uncanny similarity to the deer attack scene in the film, a set costumer discovered an antlered buck charging across the asphalt in her direction one morning. The chain of events left many wondering if perhaps 'Samara' was making her presence known. The Exorcist, the classic film that grossed millions and left many eternally scared, as well as sparked off controversy over the graphical descriptions of being possessed and the rites of exorcism. Based upon the novel by William Peter Blatty, the author and film producer himself based the book upon a true story of possession. According to Blatty, he has read the diary of the exorcist, only a few copies of which still exist. The thirteen year old boy became possessed and first underwent the rites of exorcism by a local priest at Georgetown University Hospital. (The boy is alleged to have slashed the arm of the priest with a bed spring.) The family reported hearing scratching noises seemingly from the walls and witnesses violent shaking of the boys bed and fruits and pictures jumping to the floor in the boy's presence. A minister who had the boy spend the night at his home reported that the heavy arm chair on which the boy sat tilted on its own before tipping over and that blankets on which the boy lay moving around the room. The teenager was successfully exorcised by another priest at a hospital in Missouri and was able to continue life like other children.
The lighting goes out on the scenes of the two women who were murdered that very same day and the atmosphere crackles with a strange tension. Employees have experienced bizarre happenings when alone, such as candles lighting up of their own accord, shadows flitting across the visual displays and hear murmurs of voices from the Ripper exhibit. Ever heard of coloured rain? Though rain is alleged to have fallen in a spectrum of colours that include yellow, green, blue, violet and black, 'red rain', also called 'blood rain' is perhaps the most common of these anomalies of the skies. Red rain has been attributed to everything from sand carried over from the Sahara (the origin of the sand has never been established and the microscopic organisms in the sand were found to be bot African, but in one instance South American) to red river worms and washed down butterfly chrysalis. However actual rains of blood, whence the substance was analysed by experts, have been recorded. On August 1 1869, the farm of a J> Hudson in California experienced a three minute shower of flesh and blood. The materials covered several acres and were attributed to sloppy buzzards flying overhead. On May 15 1890, the Italian Meteorological Bureau identified the red rain that fell on Messignadi, Calabria to be bird's blood. The explanation proposed was migratory birds being caught and torn in a violent wind even though there was no violent wind at the time, and no bird or part of bird was found fallen, only blood. Our world is filled with manifold such out of the world happenings that are without explanation in our common understanding, but nevertheless legitimate. It is one thing to read a horror novel or to watch a horror movie, we can always tell ourselves that it is not real. It is spine chilling indeed to realise that it is not imagination but genuine fact, that the truth is indeed stranger than fiction. |
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Bizarre is a fearful word and might send the
imagination running riot . Believe it or not , these are incidents that
are true and discoveries that are amazing done. Unbelievable because of
the tome context involved in a bygone era. Read and you will discover what
we are talking about! 
Sounds bizarre? Perhaps not so much to the residents of Norfolk to whom
inexplicable encounters are almost ordinary occurrences as seen throughout
their history. In 1909 for instance, when Britain was in the midst of an
unidentified flying object panic, Norfolk was one of the locales with the
most sightings. 
Together with UFO sightings with strange lights and the receiving of
strange signals on radios as reported by both ships and commercial
fishermen traversing the Indian ocean, speculation is rife that a certain
entity is conducting experiments with the tectonic plates. 
Horror movies are produced to give the audience a scare but on the set
of the box-office hit Ring 2, it was the cast and crew that had the
frights. On the seventh day of production, office staff arrived to find
the place flooded overnight and just weeks later a five gallon water jug
burst open for no apparent reason, flooding the very same room. 
The notorious serial killer that stalked the streets of Whitechapel in
1888, Jack the Ripper is one of the most prominent exhibits in the 'London
Dungeon', an unusual museum that showcases the ways of punishment, torture
and execution in the course of the past. On the 30th of September each
year however, the museum experiences major technical problems with the
installation dedicated to the Ripper. 
