Sky Sounds - Real or Hoax?

Not to be a party pooper, but frankly I have to say that I consider these videos to be a straight up hoax.
In the last few months, a number of video and audio-only recordings have surfaced which purport to be strange sounds coming from the sky. In some videos the sound is just a hum that seems to come from everywhere at once. In others, the sound is metallic, or groaning. Some people hear a noise that resembles human screams (similar to those heard in the "Siberian hole to Hell" hoax from many years ago).
 
What is going on?
 
There are a number of possible theories. Although not to be a party pooper, but frankly I have to say that I consider these videos to be a straight up hoax. Crop circles for the internet age, if you will.

Whether it's an early attempt at viral marketing or just a series of people who decide to pull a prank on the world, I'm not sure. I also can't put my finger on what about these videos trips my "fake" flags. It's just instinct on my part. Something about the quality of the videos, the fact that the noise is seemingly only recorded by one person in the entire country, and the noises themselves… it all screams "hoax" to me. 
 
Anyway! Other theories include:
 
HAARP
The all-purpose sky villain. Could the HAARP antenna array in Alaska be somehow activating the atmosphere, strumming the sky like its own, well, harp? The sky hum does seem to have an electrical component to the noise.
 
Solar Flares
Similarly, solar flares could theoretically be galvanizing the sky in a way that releases energy into the audible spectrum. An auditory version of the Northern Lights, in other words. 
 
Earthquakes
The global nature of the noises, which have been reported in Canada, Bucharest, and Kiev among other locations, makes some people suspect a geologic source. Could this be the sound of the Earth's tectonic plates shifting around? Could it be the precursor to a massive earthquake? Or just a sort of geologic burp? The phenomenon of earthquake lights is fairly well documented; could this be an audible version?
 
The Reckoning
Well, it's 2012, so you know a certain segment of the population is going to blame the Mayans for this, or whatever. Could this be the horn of Gabriel calling Earth's souls up into Heaven? And if so, why has no one been Raptured? (Is it possible that we ALL failed the test?)
 
Military Activity
Many of the sky noises closely resemble the sounds of a distant jet engine. Could this be the work of a high-flying experimental military plane?
 

The Evolutionary Psychology of Lycanthropy

Did Stephen Pinker's Ancestors Prefer Silver Jewelry?

If you should ever happen to run into a werewolf, will a silver bullet slay the beast? This is an increasingly important question in these modern times, as werewolf attacks are at least as much of a problem now as they were for our frightened peasant ancestors, but werewolf habitat is nowhere near as abundant. In fact, the enduring popularity of silver jewelry is most likely due to natural selection. Medieval villagers who were fond of silver would have been more likely to survive and pass on their genes during times of werewolf infestation, resulting in a widespread genetic predilection for silver objects of all kinds.

That is assuming, of course, that silver is or ever was an effective weapon against werewolves. The evidence for this is surprisingly scanty. Medieval Danish people believed that the most effective treatment for lycanthropy was to give the offending werewolf a stern talking-to. Other medieval cultures emphasized the need to bully and victimize the suspected werewolf by forcing him to exercise vigorously until he stopped turning into a wolf all the time.

 

This could possibly explain both the prevalence of bullying behavior and the popularity of exercise gyms in our own culture. Not only would the genes for bullying others have been selected by Darwinian forces (because the ability and willingness to bully others would have given our ancestors a distinct advantage in ridding their own communities of werewolves) but the genes for fanatically exercising all the time would have been an evolutionary advantage as well (as it would have showed any potential mates that the fitness fanatic had his werewolf problem under control). Another popular remedy was to pray constantly to St Hubert, but the genes for this one seem not to have been passed down, so it must not have been very effective. Imagine the surprise of a typical devotee of St Hubert as a werewolf relentlessly stalked and killed him despite his pious affirmations. That's why you don't see churches to St Hubert on every street corner.

 

Not until the 19th century did the silver bullet hypothesis gain any currency, and here there is another explanation. You can certainly kill an ordinary wolf by shooting a bullet at it, whether that bullet is made of lead or silver. If the same thing is true of werewolves, the silver bullet solution would seem to be effective, even though a lead bullet would actually have worked just as well. This fails to explain, however, why lead jewelry and silver jewelry are not equally popular. Does silver offer some other Darwinian advantage not shared by lead?

 

Or is it just kind of silly to think you can figure out every aspect of our modern psychology by speculating on what our remote ancestors might or might not have done?

 

 

 

Street Light Interference Phenomenon

"Enough people have come forth and stated that they can cause street lights to turn on and off externally"
I can't say I've really heard of telekinesis that wasn't erratic or intermittent. People who claim to have nonphysical powers over their environments generally can't replicate their abilities to scientific satisfaction. You might say that all claims of telekinesis could arise from a perceived correlation between certain patterns of thinking and external activity that would probably happen anyway without the thoughts of the supposedly telekinetic. But it is interesting when a large number of people all claim to have control over a very specific kind of object. Street lights, for example.
 
Enough people have come forth and stated that they can cause street lights to turn on and off externally that there's actually a separate name for the phenomenon. It's known as "street light interference phenomenon" and it's been documented since 1993, when British paranormal researcher Hilary Evans published his book The SLI Effect. According to the text, many people had reported that streetlights spontaneously switched off all on their own in their presence. These people could walk down the street and see each street light go out one by one as they passed by. If we're to believe these witnesses, this sort of activity does seem too regular to be coincidental. 
 
For one thing, street lights don't generally just pop off all at once. They like to flicker in death throes for a while--at least the sodium bulbs do. So whatever these SLIders (as Evans calls them) are doing, they're not causing typical bulb death. It's more as though they're shutting off the electricity to the bulbs. Some SLIders report that the effect only works with specific lamps--ones that they pass regularly that are always on except for when they pass beneath them.
 
Those who reported witnessing their own unintentional SLIder powers often also claimed to be living on older houses with supernatural phenomena abound. I guess you could follow the logic there and surmise that whatever presence must be haunting their houses just follows them around on their nighttime outings, if you're going to take the paranormal viewpoint. Or you could look at it skeptically and figure that the types of people who typically claim to see evidence of ghosts in their homes would also be the types to report being able to switch off street lights just by being nearby. 
 
There always seemed to be something a little magical about sputtering fluorescent lights to me, but I've never been one to cause their spontaneous outages. And somehow I'm erring on the skeptical side when it comes to this phenomenon. 

Police Investigate Abandoned Farmhouse's Mystery Dungeon

But before they could finish, a suspicious fire burned the farmhouse to the ground

 

Canada's desolate winter landscape is the perfect setting for the discovery of an abandoned farmhouse with a mysterious dungeon in the basement. As part of the process of prepping the 136 year old farmhouse to be condemned and destroyed, contractors went in to examine the property.
 
In the basement, they found what Ontario police described as a "confinement-style room." The room featured a thick door with several locks on the outside, and its contents were such that the contractors phoned the police - and the police have kept mum. The farmhouse was abandoned in 2006, but according to the National Post, "it is believed the room has been built within the last year or two." When the property was inspected in November 2010, the room was not present.

 
The Star obtained photographs of the room, which is described as being 12 by 8 feet, with white walls and a "dingy cream-colored tile floor." The room featured a bench pushed against the wall, with four jugs of water tucked beneath it. Steel link chains hung from the ceiling.
 
At the time the house was found, a police spokesperson optimistically opined that the room might have been constructed as part of a film project. Apparently the area has several creepy abandoned farmhouses, because the area is being cleared to prep for a new airport expansion project. People have been using these properties - both with and without the consent of the legal owners - for things like shooting music videos.
 
And what else?
 
The room was discovered in late November. Last week, the fire department was called out to fight a blaze at the property. Unfortunately, the farmhouse's remote location, and the lack of water, meant that the house burned down before the fire department was able to contain the blaze. Thus taking an unknown amount of evidence with it.
 
It's almost impossible to imagine any non-sinister reason for the basement dungeon and the subsequent arson. It sounds like a scenario straight out of Dexter, The Sopranos, or "Silence of the Lambs." And even more disturbing that whoever built the room - insulated from the outside world by the earth, and miles of uninhabited scrubland - is still active enough to return in order to conceal their crimes.
 
The property lies about 24 miles north of Toronto, Canada's biggest city. A short drive, to be sure - a convenient commute. 

Obama's Secret History on Mars

When the CIA denies something, doesn't that make you believe it even harder?
It seems like every sitting American president gradually accumulates their own conspiracy theory lore. I suppose it's only natural to suspect the worst of the person with the most (nominal) power in the country. And (although that title has slipped somewhat in recent years) of the most powerful country in the world.
 
The most well-known Obama conspiracy is the "birther" debate. Although to call it a "debate" is to elevate the discourse beyond what it deserves. But there are other conspiracies, as well. Including one which was recently officially denied by the CIA: that Obama was teleported to Mars in the early 1980s as part of a secret CIA exploratory mission to the red planet.

Two men named Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings claim to have served as "chrononauts" with DARPA in the 1980s. What is a chrononaut, you might wonder? According to Wired Magazine, their job included "traversing the boundaries of time and space."
 
And they say that Barack Obama was right there with them.
 
This conspiracy is doubly salacious, because it means that Barack Obama lied in 2008 when he claimed that he had never served in the military. Thus conveniently leaving out the part about serving in the CIA's intergalactic service, which was based out of a California community college.
 
One wonders why the CIA would send a nineteen year old kid to Mars. Indeed. According to Basiago and Stillings, he was one of ten teenagers who was sent to Mars, which he visited twice between 1981 and 1983.
 
Conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, retired Major Ed Dames, is wrapped up in this, as well. Basiago and Stillings report that Dames told Obama that "Simply put, your task is to be seen and not eaten." Evidently Dames had reason to suspect that the Mars natives were as hostile as they were hungry. Obama and the other teenagers were being sent to Mars as part of an acclimation program, to get the Martians used to our presence. 
 
For his part, Major Ed Dames phoned Coast to Coast AM and denied everything. Dames, who is famous for being one of the most celebrated "remote viewers," has previously remote viewed Mars and claimed that it is riddled with the underground bunkers of a former civilization - but that this civilization has long since collapsed. However, Dames claims that Basiago is delusional, and denies that he was ever involved in the CIA's teleportation program.

Blue Ivy: The Conspiracy Theories Behind The Name

I got 99 problems but a name ain't one
The royal leaders of American music, Jay-Z and Beyonce, gave birth to their first baby over the weekend. Following the long and colorful trend of "famous people giving their kids weird names," they chose the name Blue Ivy for their little girl.
 
The buzz began as soon as it was announced. Jay-Z has a long history of being on the wrong side of conspiracy theorists on the internet. There is a long-standing rumor that he is a member of the Illuminati, or the Freemasons, or both. And it is true that he frequently makes use of highly charged symbols like the pyramid with the floating eye. Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber flash their fans a heart, but that won't do for Jay-Z! His special hand signal to his fans in the audience is to form a triangle (or pyramid, depending on your point of view) with the index finger and thumb of both hands. 

Whether he believes that he's part of the Illuminati, or he's swiping iconography from American currency, or he's tweaking the conspiracy theorists because he thinks it's funny, is impossible to say. I suspect it's a little of all three, frankly.
 
So you can imagine what anticipation people were feeling for the birth of his first child. The first rumor started flying on Twitter: that Blue Ivy was named after Elub Yvi, which was supposedly Latin for "Lucifer's Daughter." 
 
I'm a little disappointed at the conspiracy theorists on this one. That is so preposterous, so patently untrue, and yet people kept Tweeting it? I hope they were passing it along ironically. Who would possibly think that the name "Blue Ivy" spelt backwards actually meant "Lucifer's Daughter"? Or that Lucifer has a daughter? Or that it would be in Latin for some reason, which is weird, given that the Bible was written in Hebrew and Koine Greek. For pity's sake, people!
 
Another theory is that Blue stands for "Born Living Under Evil," which is a little strong for A) a little baby and B) a pair of pop stars, don't you think? Ivy is said to stand for "Illuminati's Very Youngest."
 
Frankly, I would be less dismissive of these claims if either Jay-Z or Beyonce had ever been demonstrated to have changed the world even the teeniest tiniest bit. Beyond being mega-hit pop stars, what exactly have they done to deserve the mantle of "America's Most Conspiracist Couple"? Surely they must be the most useless members of the Illuminati. (But of course, I reserve the right to recant if their Reign of Terror begins tomorrow.)

The New England Vampire

Dead People Are Just Like That

Did you know that New England is the Transylvania of the United States? What do I mean by that, you might ask? I'm talking about vampires, those blood-sucking fiends of Eastern Europe. The old-time Yankees believed in something very similar, and dealt with it in very similar ways. Specifically, they would dig up the body of the suspected vampire, remove the heart, and publicly burn it. Sometimes the vampires' victims would mix the ashes in water and drink it in an attempt to get their blood back. The vampires' victims, as in Eastern Europe, were frequently members of its own family. These kinds of rituals occurred on a number of occasions in eighteenth and nineteenth-century New England, with the last known case being the Mercy Brown incident in the 1890s.

The context for the New England vampire lore was in the fear of tuberculosis. This disease caused victims to waste away as if their blood was being drained, and medical science couldn't cure it. Even though country people were frequently aware that it was just supposed to be an ordinary disease, the lack of a cure fed into ancient fears. Some people weren't completely convinced that science had the answers, especially when victims would report having creepy dreams in which their own dead family members came back to drink their blood. If your oldest daughter dies of tuberculosis and then your youngest daughter comes down with the same mysterious disease and starts having dreams about her dead sister being a vampire, what do you do? Listen to the doctors, who admit that they can't do anything- or destroy the vampire?

 

Here's the creepy part. They didn't actually call these monsters vampires, nor did they have any other local term for them. They apparently thought that draining the blood of the living was just something dead people did sometimes- unless, of course, the living stopped them.

 

 

 

Dead Blackbirds Fall From Arkansas Sky (Again)

It's PROBABLY not the end of the world. Probably.

 

I'm actually glad that this has happened for a second time on January 1st. Because if it was happening for the first time on January 1st 2012, you know that everyone would be panicking in the streets. I mean, I'm sorry for the dead birds, obviously. But the fact that a flock of blackbirds has fallen from the sky over Beebe, Arkansas two years in a row on New Year's Eve hints at a very normal (i.e. not paranormal) explanation.
 
That, or Beebe is where the baby Jesus is being born, in order to return to the Earth and begin the End Times with the war against Satan and the faithful Christians being sucked up to Heaven and everything. 
 
It's one of those two things, I'm pretty sure.

 
One presumes that there isn't much going on in Beebe most nights of the year. According to the leading theory, the fireworks and general revelry of New Year's Eve has the unfortunate side effect of rousting Beebe's population of blackbirds from their nighttime roosts. The birds, frightened and presumably unable to see very well in the darkness, meet untimely deaths when they collide with each other, windows, walls, and so forth.
 
Birds are also able to literally die of fright. Sadly it doesn't take much to kill a bird from fright. Their small systems are easily overwhelmed by a shock and stress, and Arkansas folks firing off a lot of fireworks could definitely fit that bill.
 
During the 2011 aftermath, many people speculated that the birds might have been a flock migrating through. An early migration, to be sure, since the real migratory action doesn't usually get going until February and March. The theory was that migrating flocks were being destroyed by airborne fireworks.
 
More information this year shows that this does not seem to be the likely culprit. A local news station captured a Doppler radar image which "showed a large mass over Beebe a few hours before midnight." This makes it sound like either the world's largest coincidence, or that these were non-migrating "homebody" birds that were being flushed from their roosts.
 
Presumably the same sort of thing might happen on July 4th. However, most Independence Day fireworks displays take place right after dark. As opposed to New Year's Eve, when darkness falls many hours before the fireworks start. This means that birds have had a chance to fall sound asleep on New Year's Eve, whereas they are probably a little more alert when the fireworks start on the 4th. 
 
Maybe next year Beebe will take pity on the poor blackbirds, and ban fireworks altogether.

Ghouls

Eaters of the Dead

In George Romero's “Night of the Living Dead,” the cannibalistic dead people are not called zombies. Back then, everybody who knew the word “zombie” still associated it with the Caribbean, where it refers to a person raised from the dead to serve as the slave of a zombie master. In Romero's original zombie flick, the zombies were referred to as “ghouls,” because the ghoul was the closest of all folklore monsters to the things he had imagined for his movie.

The ghoul of folklore, like the Hollywood zombie, is an undead creature that eats human flesh. The major difference is that ghouls don't generally eat the living. They dig up the bodies of the dead for their nocturnal feasts. If the Hollywood zombie is like the country cousin of the aristocratic Hollywood vampire, then the ghoul is like a dumpster diver. Ghouls take the dead bodies the zombies throw away.

 

If you stumbled on a pack of ghouls holding a buffet at a nearby graveyard, they probably wouldn't turn on you. You'd be too fresh. Ghouls aren't scary because they're all that dangerous to the living- they're really just creepy.

 

There is a Scottish folktale about a man who marries a ghoul- not a very observant fellow, you might say- and when he finds out why she sneaks out to the graveyard every night, she does try to eat him. But it's not nutritional ghoulishness- she's really just trying to keep him quiet.

 

The Caribbean zombie, the folklore ghoul and then the Hollywood ghoul, which quickly became the Hollywood zombie- four distinct yet equally repulsive forms of the walking dead!

 

The First Werewolf: The Beast of Gevaudan

The French werewolf legend to beat all others.

One of the least talked about and most interesting mythical creatures on the planet is the Beast of Gevaudan, a predatory animal that supposedly stalked the woods of Gevaudan in the 18th century, killing and devouring over 100 villagers in the area. The beast recently inspired a French film, Brotherhood of the Wolf, in which ninjitsu master French nobleman and a Native American transplant with cool tribal tattoos hunt down a big spiky pig-dog. The truth behind the Beast is somewhat more interesting and more provocative.

Between 1764 and 1776 in the South of France, a massive beast described as both wolf, panther, boar, and bear (but all agree it was the size of a horse) attacked and killed over 100 people. Nicknamed the Beast of Gevaudan for the Gevaudan Wood around which many of the attacks took place, the French King, King Louis XV (who laid the groundwork for the French Revolution), proclaimed a number of rewards and sent hunters to the forests to catch it. Several elaborate weapons and hunts were concocted, among private citizens as well as King Louis’ own men. One, a dragoon captain, even organized a hunt comprised of 20,000 citizens in the region to find the beast. Although he never did, he managed to incite a panic with his constant communications to local papers.

Francois Antoine, the royal gun-bearer, managed to hunt down and kill a 6-foot long wolf that many considered to be the Beast itself. However, shortly thereafter more attacks ensued and others were sent to the forests of Gevaudan. Jean Chastel, a legendary figure in werewolf mythology, was also credited with taking down an enormous wolf. Once killed (some say with a silver bullet), the wolf’s stomach was found to have rotten human remains inside.

Though the legends of the Beast of Gevaudan went largely ignored for a couple hundred years, they largely gave rise to mythology around werewolves, which have seen a kind of resurgence in popular media today. At the time, Jean-Baptiste Duhamel, a French chaplain, served to stoke fear of the Beast by characterizing it as a sign of God’s anger. However, many scholars agree that Duhamel’s motives were largely political, designed to recoup lost honor from a number of defeats during the Seven years War.

Though no one knows for certain what the Beast was, or whether it will ever return, there have been a number of theories. One of the most plausible, which was actually used to explain the Lock ness Monster, is a time-displaced animal. Much like the Loch ness Monster seemed closely aligned to the appearance of an aquatic dinosaur of the Pleistocene, the Beast of Gevaudan resembles the Mysonychids of the Paleocene Era, a hyena-like predator roughly the size of a horse.

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