CCTV Ghosts
If you've never heard the phrase “window area” before, a window area is a region in which paranormal phenomena are reported with unusual frequency. One of the most extreme window areas in the United States is the infamous Bridgewater Triangle south of Boston.
Centered on the Hockomock Swamp, the Bridgewater Triangle area has been the location of a wide variety of strange events, including Satanic cult activity, UFO sightings, human sacrifices, Bigfoot reports, ghost dogs, cattle mutilations, animals with glowing eyes, Thunderbird sightings, weird lights and any other strange phenomena you can think of.
The Hockomock Swamp itself is a huge wilderness area of thorn bushes, water, mud and quick-sand. Many of the paranormal phenomena in the area have been centered on the swamp, but others have occurred in the Freetown State Forest, including the cattle mutilations and the cult activity. Several murders in the Forest in the 1980s were attributed to a drug gang that was also a cult. Supposedly the gang was committing human sacrifices in order to magically protect their drug business.
The area is also home to the Dighton Rock, a boulder covered in symbols of unknown origin but dating back at least several centuries. Ancient graves have been found in the area, and the Hockomock swamp is named after one of the most important deities of the Indian people of the Northeast. The swamp name is sometimes translated as “place of spirits,” but in fact the spirit in question is the deity Hockomock.
Not all chaotic apparitions are benevolent, though. Satan allegedly showed his face in the smoke coiling from the World Trade Center on 9/11, and now some guy in Canada has a demon in his balls.
And he's just in time for Halloween, too. When the 45-year-old man went in to get his severe testicular pain checked out, the doctors found a frightening image in the ultrasound. The mass seemed to be peering agape and wide-eyed up at them. The scan looked almost exactly like a startled human face.
Some urologists might have shrugged off the image as mere coincidence, but this team of doctors thought that the ball-face was just too weird to let slip. They submitted it to the journal of the International Society of Urology along with an abstract that pondered whether the face belonged to the Egyptian god of virility. A bit of a stretch, perhaps (or maybe not, given the nature of most Egyptian mythology), but he certainly isn't Jesus. He doesn't have a beard, for one, and we all know Jesus doesn't make a habit of showing up in the scrotums of believers. It's just not his style.
The doctors agreed the image was probably just a coincidence and not a divine testicular imprint. It's another example of pareidolia, the tendency of the human mind to find patterns in meaningless chaos. While sometimes people find writing in strange places, most pareidolia occurs when people see faces where there aren't any. It makes sense--faces are the first things we're programmed to pick out with our brand new, barely focused eyes. Recognizing other humans is a vital survival skill. The problem is that our human-sensing powers are usually a little too sensitive. We register anything that looks even a little like a face as an actual face. That's why cartoon characters are relatable to us even though they look very little like real humans. It's also why we keep seeing deities everywhere--even in testicular ultrasounds.
The good news is that this terrifying-looking tumor wasn't very terrifying at all--doctors removed the testicle and found the tumor to be benign. Maybe this little man in the moon was just screaming at the prospect of his imminent biopsy.
The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious book, recently confirmed to date to the early 15th century, that some people believe to be the real Necronomicon. Of course, since the Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire invented by H.P. Lovecraft for use in his horror stories, there is no “real Necronomicon”- but the connections are interesting.
Lovecraft describes the Necronomicon as a mysterious and unholy book, written by “the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.” The Necronomicon was at some point in the possession of the Elizabethan wizard John Dee, and at a copy is supposed to be held under lock and key by the (equally fictional) Arkham University.
The Voynich Manuscript has also been associated with John Dee, it is certainly mysterious, and it is held under lock and key by Yale University. The writer Colin Wilson, in his Lovecraft Mythos stories, explicitly identified Voynich with the Necronomicon.
So, what is Voynich? Nobody really knows, because no one can read it- the entire book is in an unreadable code that has defeated the efforts of the most skilled modern code-breakers. It doesn't appear to be gibberish, though- textual analysis supports the idea that the text is in some kind of language, although it doesn't fit the pattern of any known language.
That isn't all. The Voynich Manuscript is filled with detailed pictures of plants, but the pictures don't match any known plant species. It has a large fold-out map, but the map doesn't match any known place. It also has odd pictures of women swimming in some sort of tubing network, and star charts that seem to show a spiral galaxy.
The Voynich Manuscript may not be the real Necronomicon, but a lot of people would like to know what it actually says!
That's exactly what happened to a couple in Ipswich, Australia in 1989. They woke up one morning with about 800 sardines in their yard. Geeze Louise!
It turns out fish showers aren't all that uncommon, well not THAT uncommon anyway. In 2004, Wales got a fish shower and in 2006 India got showered with fish too.
So, how is this all happening? It fish being picked up out of the water by a whirlwind and carried inland and dumped out on land. It's even more common with frogs!
In 2005, thousands of frogs landed on dry land nowhere near water in Serbia. The same type of crazy event happened in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1901 and it made front page news. Evidently, there were so many frogs, people had trouble walking down the street. Can you imagine what these folks must have thought? Maybe the world was coming to an end.
Well, I've heard of some crazy ways for animals to disperse themselves into new environments - spiders parachuting in the wind for example - but I think this one wins out as the craziest.
So the next time you hear that old saying, it's raining cats and dogs, look around and see if it's actually true or maybe you'll have to settle for frogs and sardines. I know I would think it was totally cool if this happened in my neighborhood and I'd have to take some pictures for sure!