Man Mysteriously Bursts Into Flames At Swedish Train Station

Spontaneous human combustion or massive case of Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Sweden is the land of incredible thrillers The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Series, the birthplace of famously well-endowed beautiful blonde women, and…fjords? It’s also the land of the midnight sun, and some serious Seasonal Effective Disorder. Perhaps that’s why, over the weekend, a Swedish man suddenly caught fire standing in front of a shop at the train station in Gothenburg, Sweden. The man, as yet unidentified, mysteriously caught fire while bystanders watched.

Around 10:30 at night a man was standing outside a record store in the Central Train Station in Gothenburg, Sweden, when he suddenly caught fire. A tram driver told The Local, “He just stood there burning outside the shop. After a while he started screaming. There were a few people about but they just watched him.” Definitely. “I ran up to him,” continued the Tram driver, “tore my coat off and managed to put the fire out together with another guy.” Emergency responders showed up almost immediately, taking the seriously injured man to the hospital and sedating him. Police officer Assa Andersson reported to The Local that the man would likely be sedated for several weeks, and was not in a condition to be questioned about the event. “All we know is that it's a man,” Andersson reported, “We have no knowledge of his identity, nor of his age or any motive or even the circumstances of the incident.” The tram driver that witnessed the event and sprang to the mysterious man’s aid said, that the man had told him he was 42 years old before he became too badly burned to speak.

This mysterious case comes only two months after another one in Ireland. Michael Faherty, 76, mysteriously was burned to death in his home in Galway, Ireland, on Sept. 23rd. Officially, this is the first case of spontaneous combustion in Ireland, which is public officials’ response to a burning death in which no external ignition source can be found. Typically the body is burnt internally and there’s little or no damage to the surrounding environment. Could the mysterious Swedish burning man be one of the first eye-witness accounts of spontaneous human combustion, and lived? The possibility seems slim, particularly since the man seemed to be burning quite visibly from the outside, which contradicts previous spontaneous combustion cases. In addition, internal burning would, even if rescuers were able to put out the external flames, almost assure death. Spontaneous combustion? A terrifying suicide attempt? Maybe. Another intense Swedish thriller in the making? Definitely.

What Is A Ghost?

It's Not Such A Simple Question

What exactly is a ghost? That might seem like an easy question to answer- that is, if you believe in ghosts at all. A ghost is the spirit of a dead person, right? But if a ghost is just the spirit of a dead person, then what about ghost trains, ghost cars, ghost ships and other ghostly inanimate objects?

What about ghost armies fighting battles from long ago? What about prophetic ghosts- the apparitions of things that haven't happened yet? What about ghost doubles of people known to be still alive?

 

Sometimes I think the real reason hardcore rational materialists are so skeptical about the existence of something so widely and consistently reported by so many different people in so many different cultures for so many centuries is that the existence of ghosts carries certain philosophical implications that make them very uncomfortable.

 

What implications are those? That the basic “stuff” of reality might not be matter, as they have so confidently assumed for so long. That it might be mind, as philosophers like Berkeley have argued. Or that it might be pure information- information that can, under certain circumstances, become stuck in a pattern, playing out the same spectral scene over and over again.

 

It could be that some ghosts are indeed the spirits of the dead. It could be that they don't exist at all. But what if they are essentially just stuck information, trapped in a pattern until something happens to interrupt it? It's just an idea, of course, but I think it's an interesting one.

 

The Mystery of the Umbrella Man

Sometimes a guy with an umbrella is just a guy with an umbrella.

 

Today marks the 48th anniversary of the JFK assassination, and the Umbrella Man is in the news again. The Umbrella Man was the topic of a short film by JFK assassination researcher Errol Morris, who will no doubt frustrate conspiracy theorists by pointing out that the real world is a lot more complicated, interesting, and bizarre than it seems. His main contention is that if you look closely enough at any event, you will start noticing a lot of "really weird" stuff, but that most things have a perfectly rational explanation if you listen.
 
On that fateful morning in Dallas, it had rained the night before, but it was sunny and 66 degrees as the motorcade entered Dealey Plaza. No one in the footage is dressed for rain… except for one man, who was standing beneath a black umbrella. Coincidence piles atop coincidence: he happened to be standing beside the freeway sign, exactly where the car passed as the shots began to be fired. Almost as if his position was the signal to start firing.
 
In 1978 the Umbrella Man came forward and testified before a House committee. He testified that the umbrella was a protest of JFK's father, who was in favor of appeasing Adolph Hitler before WWII. The umbrella was a reference to Neville Chamberlain, Britain's pro-appeasement Prime Minister, who famously carried a black umbrella as a fashion statement.
 
As Morris points out, this explanation is just bizarre and nonsensical enough to be true. Who would concoct such a patently foolish story? If you were actually signaling the assassination, wouldn't you say something more sensible, like "I was shielding my eyes from the sun"?
 
The real problem here is that we have been conditioned, through hundreds of thousands of hours of watching movies and television shows, to be alert to the quirks of narrative. On TV, if a character mentions that they have a headache, it's never a headache - it's brain cancer, which will prove fatal in the third act. If a coffee cup is found out of place in a movie, it's because a poltergeist put it there, or it was moved by a thief, or some other such dramatic explanation.
 
In reality, people get headaches, coffee cups get put in odd places, and people sometimes stand around waving umbrellas for really dumb reasons. Reality is messy and has a poor sense of narrative flow. That's why humanity invented stories in the first place - to bring order to the chaos that envelops our lives. But this also makes it hard to step back sometimes and see that sometimes a guy with an umbrella is just a guy with an umbrella.
 

The Mystery of the Poisonous Quail

The real mystery is why people keep eating quail on the toxic migratory routes

 

Coturnix quail are pretty adorable little creatures. Tasty, too. Except that sometimes they can poison and kill you. In fact, this problem is so common that it has been given a name: coturnism. I expect it to show up on an episode of "House M.D." any day now.
 
Coturnism only happens with wild quail, and only those in the Old World. There are several species of Coturnix quail which migrate between Africa and Europe every year. They travel north to Europe in the spring, and south to Africa in the fall. These days their migrations are greatly reduced in numbers, due to habitat loss and overhunting. But hundreds of years ago, the coturnix migration was truly astounding, massive flocks moving past. Who could resist hunting and eating a few of the round, plump little birds?

 
And therein lies the problem. On some migrations, the coturnix quail becomes poisonous. There are three migration routes between Europe and Africa. On the western flyway, the quail are poisonous during the spring (northward) migration but not during the fall (southward) migration. On the eastern flyway, the reverse is true: the quail are not poisonous while flying north in springtime, but they are poisonous while flying south in fall. And the central flyway across Italy is not poisonous in either direction.
 
This fact has been known for thousands of years. In fact, coturnism is mentioned in the bible. Numbers 11:31-34 covers the topic of "an incident where the Israelites became ill after having consumed large quantities of quail." Aristotle mentioned coturnism, as did Lucretius and Galen, among other luminaries of the ancient world.
 
But people kept eating the dang quail. That's the REAL mystery!
 
 Most people assume that the quail become poisonous after having eaten something toxic. This is a common route for toxicity in animals, particularly something as seasonal as what we see with quail. But no one has yet been able to nail down what exactly it is that the birds are eating.
 
For a long time, people thought that the birds were feeding on poison hemlock during their migration. But first of all, hemlock isn't in seed at the right time for that to happen. Second of all, some pragmatic scientists fed poison hemlock seeds to a batch of quail and… the quail died. The same is true for a species of toxic beetles that had been fingered as the possible culprit.
 
Coturnism will probably always be with us to a certain extent. Unfortunately we will never run short of people who are as hungry as they are foolhardy. But the rapidly dwindling numbers of wild quail, coupled with the rise of domestic quail farming, mean that we may never really get to the bottom of what causes it.

Mysterious Shapes in the Gobi Desert

Chinese government remains silent on the topic

 

How did conspiracies ever thrive before Google Maps? The latest global oddity spotted by Google's all-seeing eye is a series of shapes in the Gobi Desert of China. Most people agree that the shapes were created by scraping off a layer of topsoil, thus providing visual contrast between the surface soil and the layer below. (Note: this is also how the Nazca Lines are formed. Just putting that out there.)
 
But what the shapes mean and who put them there is still up for debate. Their location is considered significant. The shapes are in the remote northwestern quadrant of China which is dedicated to military and space technology. It's essentially China's Area 51.

 
The shapes, which are clustered in an area about 20 miles across, are about a mile wide. Many feel they are "clearly meant to be seen from space." But I have to point out that, with current Earth technology, so is a car's license plate. 
 
Why build something so large and relatively crude to test satellite guidance systems (as one theory claims)? It's particularly preposterous to claim that they are for calibrating spy satellites. If your spy satellites need a calibration grid a mile wide, then you need to get yourself some better spy satellites. 
 
Some particularly fevered online conspiracy theorists are trying to match up the gridlines with American cities, in the belief that these are mock cities that China is using for wargame practice. 
 
But the pragmatics counter with the simple fact that China literally owns us, and if they wanted to destroy America, all they would have to do is call in their debt. (And why bomb the cities of the country that owes you trillions of dollars? You'll never get that money back if you flatten their infrastructure!)
 
A historian consulted by the New York Times points out that there is no fence around the shapes, which (to him) indicates a lack of strategic importance. But I think we can assume that the Gobi Desert itself serves as a fence, both in its inhospitable climate, extreme remote location, and in the lack of cover it provides for anyone trying to sneak out onto the range.
 
The Chinese government has so far declined to comment. (No surprise there.) The leading theory currently on the table is that the shapes have been used for bombing practice. Indeed, at least two of the areas appear to have a lot of charred and exploded "stuff" in them. I guess if I was in charge of something as vast and barren as the Gobi Desert, I would probably spend a lot of time blowing stuff up there, too!
 

The Spear of Destiny

Part of the Holy Grail tradition

 

It's a bit of an understatement to say that a lot of mythology surrounds the death of Christ. But aside from forming the basis of a whole entire global religion, it has also created a sort of aftermarket in the ephemera surrounding the event. These relics include things like the famous Shroud of Turin (in which Christ had supposedly been wrapped), the nails which held him to the Cross, splinters of the Cross, and the lance which was used to pierce his side.
 
Unlike many other relics of Christ's death, the lance actually came into direct contact with Christ's blood. According to the Gospel of John, the Romans were planning to break Christ's legs so that he would die faster on the cross (a practice called "crucifragium"). But when they showed up, Christ was already dead. Just to make sure, one of the soldiers stabbed Christ with his lance. Blood and water poured out, which was considered a miracle.
 
According to some traditions, being bathed in the blood and water of Christ caused this soldier (whose name is sometimes given as Longinus) to become immortal, doomed to wander the Earth until Christ returned.

 
What happened to this spear?  Many pointy things have been put forth as the Spear of Destiny over the centuries. One possible contender for the relic is in Rome, in the hands of the Pope. Another is in the capital of Armenia. The third, known as the Hofburg spear or the Vienna Lance, has strange ties to Hitler and the Nazis.
 
The Vienna lance was part of a collection of relics (including a nail used for the Crucifixion) which belonged to the Hapsburg Dynasty. The official story is that the relics were hidden in Nuremberg when Germany annexed Austria, and that they were later found by American soldiers and returned to Austria by General Patton after WWII ended.
 
However, some people believe that Hitler started WWII in order to capture the Spear of Destiny. One legend of the Spear is that its owner will be able to conquer the world, but that losing the Spear will cause its owner to die. Hitler certainly conquered the world and later died, but putting the blame for it on an ancient relic is probably not a reasonable assumption.
 
One author, Howard Buechner, believes that Hitler succeeded, and that the spear currently on display in Vienna is actually a fake. According to this story, the Spear of Destiny is currently being secretly held in Europe by a Nazi secret society. Presumably because they plan to use its power to conquer the world again. 
 

Pranksters Harass Couple in NYC For Two Years With 911 Calls

Prank callers victimize a couple in NYC, faking 911 calls 155 times in two years.

It might have been funny the first couple of times, but unidentified 911 emergency prank-callers have allegedly prank-called a Muslim couple in New York City 155 times over the course of two years. For those of you trying to figure the math in your head, that’s one fake emergency call to the Fire Department or Police Department about every five days for two years. Aside from frustration and headaches suffered by both the victims of these prank calls and for the FDNY and the NYPD, that’s a lot of wasted tax-funded manpower over the course of two years that could have been potentially responding to real emergencies.

Mamedou and Assetou Sy, a Muslim couple living in NYC, have been receiving emergency responders so frequently that Mrs. Sy told The New York Daily News, "Every time someone knocks on our door, we say it must be the police, and usually it is.” However, the Sys don’t believe that the callers are anti-Muslim. The calls come day and night, sometimes twice in a single day, but don’t seem to have any particular viciousness, or even an agenda. The FDNY, who have received the lion’s share of the prank emergency calls, have arrived dozens of times to put out stove fires. Likewise, the NYPD has been called, though less often than the fire department, to alleged gunfire in the apartment. The Sys adamantly deny shooting at one another.

Astonishingly, neither emergency response department has been able to identify the callers. Because of that, obviously, the calls continue to roll in once, twice, or even three times a week. It surprises me that, given the technology that was specifically developed for law enforcement to identify and trace calls, that these pranksters have not yet been brought to justice. Fake emergency calls are a misdemeanor, but after 155 of them you’d think the NYPD would throw up it’s hands and say “enough is enough”. Given the frequency of the calls, it might also be beneficial for the various departments to simply work out a system of, say, calling the Sys and check to see if there’s actually an emergency?

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this story is that someone (or someones) are continuing to pester this poor family and waste tax dollars and valuable manpower in a city that surely has enough real emergencies to fill their day. I can understand a prank call, or even three, but 155 points to either a serious abundance of leisure time or a serious lack of creativity.

The Bennington Triangle

And Fayville Ghost Town

The Bennington Triangle is a window area located in Vermont, centered around Glastenbury Mountain and the ghost town of Fayville. According to local legend, the Indians of the region avoided Glastenbury Mountain because there was supposed to be a mysterious stone on it that would swallow people up.

 

Of course, that didn't stop settlers from building a town on it, but that didn't work out so well. Fayville went into decline in the 19th century, there was the usual “cursed town” descent into madness and murder, and eventually the town was completely abandoned. Now it's just a bunch of old stone foundations scattered around the forest on Glastenbury Mountain.

A number of people went missing in the area in the 1940s, and no trace was ever found of most of them- perhaps they were swallowed up by the legendary stone? Finally, there's also supposed to be a local monster of some kind that roams around in the forest.

 

Glastonbury Hill in England is supposed to be a gateway to Avalon, and “Fayville” can be read as “fairy village”- but I think both of these similarities are merely interesting coincidences. If you ever decide to go up Glastenbury Mountain to explore the ruins of Fayville, just be careful not to fall into one of the old foundation pits- or else you could be the next person to disappear in the Bennington Triangle! Also, if you happen to see a mysterious glowing stone opening up into a gateway into another reality, I'm not going to tell you not to go into it but you should probably bear in mind that no one else has ever come back from that place before...

Mysterious Clouds of Radiation Appear Over Europe

If hordes of mutants begin to stream out of the Czech Republic in the next few weeks, don't say we didn't warn you. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported Friday that clouds of radiation hovering over the Czech Republic and other parts of Europe have been detected. 

Before you get dig your hazmat suit out of the back of your closet, you should probably know that the agency doesn't believe the radiation is at a high enough level to cause any kind of damage. They've simply picked up very low levels of iodine-131 in the atmosphere, a radioisotope that ought to decay and stop emitting radiation in about a week. So, that's good I guess. If you're living in the Czech Republic right now, the sky probably isn't going to kill you.

What's a little more disconcerting is that no one seems to know where these radioactive clouds are coming from. The agency insists that it's not spewing out of the Fukushima plants in Japan, even though the radiation from that disaster did spread quite a ways in March. And an official at the Czech State Office for Nuclear Safety says he's absolutely sure that the radiation isn't leaking out of any nuclear power plant or anything else in the Czech Republic. No one has any idea where the source of this stuff is. It'll probably go away on its own, but mystery clouds of radiation aren't really good things to have floating around for no reason, I feel. 

Despite the insistence of Czech officials that they're not causing the radiation, it does seem like the Czech nuclear program could be a likely culprit. The Czech Republic currently draws a third of their total electricity from nuclear sources. They've got six nuclear reactors firing all at once--and they'd like to build more soon. The government has plans to double that power output, making the Czech Republic one of the heaviest betters on nuclear power. Surrounding countries are more suspicious of the radioactive stuff, meanwhile. Germany and Switzerland are trying to phase out nuclear power entirely after seeing how it wrecked Japan, and Austria never touched the stuff after Chernobyl. The problem with nuclear energy is that it usually works just fine, but when it goes south, it goes south real hard. Let's hope that these radioisotope clouds are just a freak occurrence and not an indicator that something's afoot with the Czech plants.

Pombero

The Spanish-language leprechaun

 

It's interesting that just about every culture on Earth has a tradition of small mischievous creatures. In England and Ireland you have pixies, sprites, and leprechauns. In Hispanic countries, you are more likely to encounter one of the Duende.
 
"Duende" is a big category which encompasses a wide variety of creatures across many countries and cultures. The one that I find mentioned most often is the Pombero, which is found in South American cultures from Argentina down to Paraguay and Brazil.

 
The Pombero is short, ugly, and hairy. Like many duende, he wears a hat and carries a knapsack during his travels through rural areas. Pomberos are rarely sighted in the big cities, but they are often seen in smaller rural communities. 
 
YouTube abounds in pombero videos. It's a fun way to spend a while, clicking from one pombero video to another. Most videos were seemingly shot with cameraphones, or with very cheap equipment. The video is frequently shaky, and taken under poor lighting conditions. 
 
Pomberos are often sighted in people's back yards, or while taking a walk through the woods. But I have seen several videos which purport to show pomberos scampering across the street and sidewalk in what seems to be a somewhat urban area. These videos show a neighborhood with street lights and paved streets, at any rate.
 
Many of the videos of pomberos are, I suspect, actually just misidentified chickens or other large ground-dwelling birds. Others seem likely to be puppets controlled from above. I note the frequent occurrence of pomberos at the base of large trees, or moving alongside a building whose roof is conveniently out of camera frame.
 
Pixies, leprechauns, or pomberos, one thing is clear: you don't want to get on their bad side. Like most small humanoid creatures, the pombero has a reputation as a troublemaker. It is responsible for many small domestic disasters such as horses spooking, stealing eggs, crops being trampled, and so forth. More maliciously, sometimes pomberos are blamed for impregnating women (who surely would have no other reason to blame their pregnancies on a random magical woodland creature).
 
Luckily, they are easily mollified. The pombero has a sweet tooth, so a small dish of honey left out for him overnight will be appreciated. Small gifts of rum or tobacco are also well received. According to some legends, if you leave out enough gifts for the pombero, it will actually befriend your household and protect it against disaster. Quite a cheap form of insurance, if you ask me!
 

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