Ouija Board Incident
So, I've been thinking a lot recently of a session I had with a couple of friends and an Ouija Board 3 years ago. I tried posting and asking about Ouija boards on /x/ but no one had anything interesting to say on the topic. I used to believe in spirits and be really into the occult but this experience kind of spooked me away and I don't know what I believe right now. Well here's the story, let me know what you make of it:
So I was with 3 or 4 friends in a girl's basement. We were all into the occult and supernatural stuff and brought out the Ouija board to mess around. We contacted a spirit (she said she was good) and asked her what her name was. She said 'EMILY' and '6'. We asked a couple of random questions and treated her like we would a real six year old. Then someone got the idea to ask her how she died (big mistake) and she spelled out, 'MOM'. At this point, I though I recognized the spirit and took my hands off the board. I kept asking questions that I knew the answer to and if this spirit was the girl I thought she was, she would too. I asked if she had siblings, she said 'YES'. I asked what color her house was and she said 'BLUE'. Then I asked what street she lived on and she said 'LOOMIS'. All of these answers lined up with a murder that happened in my town (Naperville, IL) in 1999. I used to live a mile or two down the road on the same street.
We were officially creeped out but not to be rude we asked her to leave and she said she didn't want to. We told her to please leave and that she can't stay but that we wish her the best. On our way up from the basement the old play room that my friend hadn't used in years was wide open with a few toys out of their box lying on the floor like they were just used. It still seemed that she left though because my friend never mentioned anything weird going on in her house.
Here's a link to the archived Chicago Tribune article on her murder: http://www.fact.on.ca/newpaper/ct990307.htm - Reddit
Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game
Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board
Buckland's Book of Spirit Communications
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Alien looked like Charlie Brown
Staten Island, NY - 4/1972 - unedited: I was told to request New York MUFON to investigate. The event occurred in 1971 or 1972. I was between 3-5 years old. I was living with my family at 15 Greencroft Ave Staten Island New York. I awoke sometime after 11pm, I know it was after 11pm because my parents were sleeping it may have been after 11:30pm because they would watch the evening news. Our bedrooms were on the second floor of the house. I was lying in my bed I woke up and saw the Peanuts character Charlie Brown walking in the door of my room. He was very tall and sort of floated. His head rocked side to side and his head grew larger like balloon being inflated. His head became very large then suddenly his whole body including his head shrunk very small in mid air. Then I saw the tiny speck buzzing around in circles like a house fly but very quickly and the buzzing noise was a bit louder than an insect. It last only a second the speck then darted to the corner of the room nearest to my bed and into the floor at the corner where the walls and floor intersect. I jumped out of my bed and clawed with my finger tips at the carpet trying to find the speck. I feel as if I were trying to chase it and I knew I could not catch it because it was shrinking smaller and smaller. I read people described ships folding into themselves or shrinking out of sight. There was no space ship in my room. What I saw took on the appearance of the cartoon character Charlie Brown. I believe now it may have been a grey alien. - MUFON CMS
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Pair of pants stuffed in landmark tree
Shelbyville, IN - Grover Museum Director Candy Miller was on the edge of her seat Friday after receiving a call about a pair of pants that were found inside Shelbyville's most famous tree.
For decades, residents have heard the story of the "Old Linden Tree." From now on, they'll have a story about some old-fashioned trousers to add to it.
July 16, the employees at Shelby Tire and Auto Care on the corner of North Harrison and West Pennsylvania streets removed a branch from the tree that stands in front of the auto center's parking lot.
When owner Brent Montgomery bought the building 27 years ago, all seven branches were still intact. Until last week, there were four remaining on the 100-plus-year-old tree. The tree has suffered some in the past few decades and had to be trimmed.
"The brick wall we built around the tree has moved about a foot in the last year or so," Montgomery said. "When one of my employees stood on the wall, it collapsed."
At that point, the leaning branch became a safety concern, so he decided to cut it down, he said.
"About halfway up the tree, there was about an eight-foot hollow patch," Montgomery said. "I was standing underneath it looking up and I said, ‘Well what's that?'"
He said it looked like a brown bag from the ground, but when he got a closer look, he realized it was actually a pair of pants. Very old pants.
"It's not like there's a knot where someone might have stuck them in there," Montgomery said. "They grew in it."
After work Friday, Miller rushed to the tire shop to see the pants, which she described as "very coarse."
The bottoms, which the local history authority claims were probably sewn during the 1800s, have a button but no zipper. The letters "HCRAFT" can be made out on the small, rusted button, but the rest is faded. The pants, which are still connected to the tree, are stained with what looks to be white paint.
"We may solve a mystery here. We need to solve the mystery," Miller said.
Montgomery agrees, which is why he reached out to her.
"Somebody lost their pants and I don't know why," Montgomery joked.
Miller has discussed the history of the "Old Linden Tree" on her radio talk show, which airs every first and third Tuesday of the month at 9:05 a.m. on WSVX 96.5-FM.
As legend has it, the site of what's now Shelbyville used to house a Miami Indian village, according to a script from Miller's show.
Tribal chief Mopiti had a 10- or 12-year-old daughter and seven sons. His house stood on a grove of linden trees, including one outside his front door - the only linden he would pick leaves and fruit from to brew his tea.
While Mopiti and his men were away hunting, Delaware Indians made their way from the east, invading the village and slaughtering all women and children.
Soon after the crew returned to the village, Mopiti's special linden tree was struck by lightning and fell to the ground. Years later, Mopiti visited the ruins of his home where he found seven new shoots growing from the base of the fallen tree.
He saw it as a sign from the Great Spirits that his sons had been reincarnated into trees.
One of the first white settlers built a log cabin near the tree. And when the national road arrived, a stagecoach stop and tavern were located across the street from the tree. Many travelers sat in the shade of the tree while they waited for the stagecoach to come and go, local history recounts.
Today, the tree stands with its three remaining trunks.
Miller said the Indian legend surrounding the tree is fictional, but something did happen there.
"The first thing we need to do is research the earliest thing that was on that land and figure out what a painter might have been doing there," Miller said. "I mean, things were machine sewn during World War I" and before, so the pants are likely from the later 1800s.
She's hoping her research will lead to a discovery, while Montgomery is hoping it leads to a date the pants were left in the tree.
Montgomery said he has no use for the linden tree trunk and, once he knows the story behind the pants he plans to donate them to the Grover Museum.
"I'd rather people see it," he said. "It's part of our history."
Montgomery was born and raised in Shelbyville. He said he used to pass the tree on his bike as a boy during his paper route for The Shelbyville News.
He said he remembers seeing a logo of the tree on the side of what's now his building, which was built in 1949, when it housed Stone-Fish Chevrolet.
The dealership's motto was "Trade in the shade of the Old Linden Tree." - Shelby News
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Sharknado...can animals fall from the sky?
Tornadoes over water are too weak to lift sharks, but strong enough to bring smaller animals ashore.
Sharks fell from the sky in the SyFy Channel’s “Sharknado,” a campy movie that stirred up Internet buzz and is getting a sequel.
The premise of the movie can be summed up in this line uttered by one character: “Sharks in tornado. Sharknado. Simply stunning.” High speed winds from a Los Angeles hurricane result in tornadoes over the ocean that pick up sharks from the sea and carry them to land, where they’re flung into people. And the sharks do what sharks do: They attack.
In real life, of course, sharks don’t fall from the sky. But fish, frogs, and alligators do—and scientists think the likely cause is a weather phenomenon called a “waterspout,” a term first coined in 1738 by traveler Thomas Shaw.
A waterspout is a tornado that occurs over a body of water. When it forms, a column of water connects to a storm cloud and spins over the ocean. Typically, a waterspout is weak and short-lived, says Christopher Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Weather Service.
A waterspout can occur anywhere in the world with the right ingredients: a thunderstorm and a swirl of winds at different altitudes. However, the odds of a waterspout hitting a coastal city like L.A. are slim. Tornadoes are more common inland because “the ingredients tend to be more extreme or available,” Vaccaro says, whereas air cooled by the ocean near coastal cities prevents a turbulent atmosphere.
And a waterspout might sweep up animals that dwell near the surface of a body of water and bring them to land. Vaccaro says waterspouts are somewhat like vertical rotating washers at a carwash, which circulate water and then fling it an anything in their path.
Don’t expect any sharks to drop in. “While the tornado is spinning air along the surface of the water, it’s not necessarily like a vacuum where it’s sucking up sharks or sucking up marine animals out of the depths of the ocean,” Vaccaro said. “So odds are the sharks wouldn’t even be close enough to be entrained in the circulation of the water spout in any way, let alone would they be lifted because they weigh so much.”
What about smaller creatures? Scientists have never witnessed the journey of animals via a waterspout. But there are plenty of reports, Vaccaro says, about fish or frogs falling from sky to land. And often the likely culprit is a waterspout. Here’s a sampling.
Fish Drizzle
Call it a new kind of fly fishing. On a stormy day in March 2010, the residents of Lajamanu, Australia, heard something more than the pitter-patter of rain on their rooftops. According to an article from the Daily Mail, the dull thuds of fish hitting the ground assaulted their ears–and left them with plenty to clean up.
A tornado was the probable cause, according to a meteorologist quoted in the article. He theorized that the winds whisked the fish up, up, and away from a river that may have been hundreds of miles away. He is further quoted as saying that the fish were frozen in the tornado, and thawed out when they fell. That’s why eyewitness reports say the fish, identified as spangled perch, a common freshwater fish that swims in rivers across Australia, were still alive when they fell.
A woman is quoted in the article as saying, “All I can say is that I’m thankful that it didn’t rain crocodiles!’” But we don’t want to give SyFy channel any ideas. Or do we? Check animal #4.
Frog Fall
Frogs present a particular problem in the waterspout world. There are many reports of frogs falling from the sky, dating back to the 3rd century AD, Greek grammarian and author Athenaeus quoted Greek historian Heraclides Lembus’ account of frog rain in two Greek cities of Paeoina and Dardania: “In Paconia and Dardania it has, they say, before now rained frogs…So great has been the number of these frogs that the houses and the roads have been full of them.”
There are many other tales of amphibious rain, often attributed to waterspouts: Toulouse, France in 1804, Derby, England in 1841, Gibraltar in 1915, Sutton Coldfield, England in 1927, and Odzaci, Serbia in 2005.
The problem, say frog experts, is that some people have overactive imaginations. In the case of reduced visibility during rain, a group of migrating, bouncing frogs might be mistaken for frog rain.
Then there is the mystery of the tadpole drop. In Japan in 2009 a number of cities in the Ishikawa prefecture experienced a spattering of tadpoles raining from the sky. While some speculated that birds could be dropping the baby frogs, one thing is clear: These tadpoles did not have the legs to migrate.
Snail Tale
A flurry of debate centered around a bizarre incident near Worcester, England on May 28, 1881 when a species of snail called periwinkles sprinkled down upon a field near St. Johns Parish. In a report published in the Berrows Worcester Journal, some locals claimed to witness the “alleged falling of the univalve tribe.” The reports describe the periwinkles as still alive, and some say the aerial escargot were accompanied by other crustaceans such as crabs.
Skeptics thought that a fishmonger might be responsible. Fishmongers replied that they would never give away fresh snails.
One enthusiastic man, J. LI. Bozward, wrote into Berrow’s Worcester Journal to theorize the phenomenon of waterspouts, stating that “a rotary storm” could have lifted “half a ton or so of periwinkles in its vortex.”
And a G.P. Yeats called it “one of the grandest and most curious of nature’s phenomena.”
Alligators Aloft
On December 26, 1887 the New York Times reported that Doctor J.L. Smith of Silverton Township, Kentucky, saw something fall to the ground. And then it started crawling toward him.
“On examining the object he found it to be an alligator,” the Times writes.
A few moments later, Silverton spotted another gator trekking across his recently-acquired turpentine farm.
The good doctor went hunting for more alligators. He found six more, “all quite lively and about 12 inches in length.”
The article attributed the strange occurrence to waterspouts.
Awash in Worms
Clumps of worms fell from the sky in Jennings, Louisiana on July 8, 2007.
According to a report by TV station KPLC news, the plummeting worms may have hitched a ride in a waterspout that had been reported about five miles away. When the durable invertebrates landed, they squirmed and wiggled.
Police department employee Eleanor Beal, who witnessed the worms, said: “When I saw that they were crawling, I said, ‘It’s worms! Get out of the way!’”
At least it wasn’t sharks! - Nat Geo
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FACTOID: The royal birth cost $15,000. The average American birth is billed at $30,000. When my daughter was born in 1976, the delivery & 3-day stay was $360...Lon
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