The Brisbane Spook
Hi Lon, I enjoy reading your 'Phantoms and Monsters' newsletter. In Australia we have Trove a wonderful search engine housed at the Australian National Library, Canberra, that allows people to read digitalised newspapers of yesteryear online, and my eyes nearly popped out when I saw the 1913 story 'A Brisbane Spook'. It appears to be based on an actual Brisbane police report of a spectre appearing regularly in Elzabeth Street, Brisbane. His/Her Majesty's Theatre (1888) was demolished in 1983, to make for the Wintergarden Centre. Does the ghost still haunt the area, I wonder?
regards,
Jon Wyatt
Carlton, Melbourne, Australia
Brisbane (Images of America) (Images of America (Arcadia Publishing))
Weird Australia: Real Reports of Uncanny Creatures, Strange Sightings & Extraordinary Encounters
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The truth IS out there: British scientists claim to have found proof of alien life
A team of British scientists is convinced it has found proof of alien life, after it harvested strange particles from the edge of space.
The scientists sent a balloon 27km into the stratosphere, which came back carrying small biological organisms which they believe can only have originated from space.
Professor Milton Wainwright told The Independent that he was "95 per cent convinced" that the organisms did not originate from earth.
"By all known information that science has, we know that they must be coming in from space," he said. "There is no known mechanism by which these life forms can achieve that height. As far as we can tell from known physics, they must be incoming."
Some of the samples were captured covered with cosmic dust, adding further credence to the idea that they have originated from space.
"The organisms are not usual," said Professor Wainwright, who works at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. "If they came from earth, we would expect to see stuff that we find on earth commonly, like pollen."
"We're very, very confident that these are biological entities originating from space," he said, acknowledging that absolutely certainty is hard to achieve in science.
The team believes that the entities are coming from comets, which are big balls of ice shooting through space. The samples were collected during a meteorite shower from a comet. As they hit the earth's atmosphere, the comets melt - ablate, to give it a technical term - releasing the organisms as they break down.
"The particles are very clean," added Prof Wainwright. "They don't have any dust attached to them, which again suggests they're not coming to earth. Similarly, cosmic dust isn't stuck to them, so we think they came from an aquatic environment, and the most obvious aquatic environment in space is a comet.
"They're very unusual beasts, not your normal kind of life from earth."
The organisms are probably not alive, but, excitingly, probably do contain DNA. Similar ones harvested during an earlier experiment have contained the chemical, which is one of the fundamental building blocks of life on earth.
The fact that they contain DNA is probably one of the most exciting aspects to this discovery, as it is a big hint that life on earth may itself have extraterrestrial origins.
"If we're right, it means that there's life in space, and it's coming to earth. It means that life on earth probably originated in space," said Professor Wainwright. "Statistically, there's no reason why life should originate on earth. There are billions and billions of comets, but most biologists are stuck on earth.
"The earth is an open system with biology raining down on it as we speak.
"It's almost too amazing to believe."
He scotched the theory that the life forms arrived in the upper atmosphere after being blasted there from a volcano.
"The last volcano was three years ago, and the matter has all been deposited by now," he said.
Professor Wainwright’s team is hoping to extend and confirm their results by carrying out the test again in October to coincide with the upcoming Halley’s Comet-associated meteorite shower when there will be large amounts of cosmic dust. It is hoped that more new, or unusual, organisms will be found.
The group’s findings have been published in the Journal of Cosmology and updated versions will appear in the same journal, a new version of which will be published in the near future. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham University Centre for Astrobiology also gave a presentation of the group’s findings at a meeting of astronomers and astrobiologists in San Diego last month. - Independent
Alien Life Imagined: Communicating the Science and Culture of Astrobiology
Alien Viruses: Crashed UFOs, MJ-12, & Biowarfare
An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms
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The Mirror Monster
This happened when in was 7 or 8 years old, around 1966-1967. we lived in a older house where you had to go through one bedroom to get into another one. my brother and I were in my grandmothers room, who lived with us, setting in the floor in front of her dresser, probably into something we weren't suppose to be into. the dresser was an antique one that my grandmother had for a long time. it reminded more of a large make-up table with drawers and a large, round mirror. as we sat playing we noticed a sound coming from the mirror. as we looked in the mirror we noticed a dark spot about fist size in the middle of it. then we noticed that the spot was moving and getting larger. then it started forming into a human dark form running towards us as it got bigger we decided it was time to leave before it came out of the mirror. we ran screaming for out parents, but of course they didn't believe us. my dad went back in there with us, but everything was back to normal. we're in our fifty's now, and we sometimes talk about it. we both remember it just like it happened only a few years ago. just thought this might be some interesting reading for someone. you can post my name if you want because at this age I don't give a crap if anyone thinks I crazy or not. lol. thank you for the web site. it's great! SDO
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South African man wakes after 21 hrs in morgue fridge
A South African man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge - nearly a day after his family thought he had died, a health official said Monday.
Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said the man awoke Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family called in an undertaker who sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack.
Morgue owner Ayanda Maqolo said he sent his driver to collect the body shortly after the family reported the death. Maqolo said he thought the man was around 80 years old.
"When he got there, the driver examined the body, checked his pulse, looked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing," Maqolo told the Associated Press.
But a day after staff put the body into a locked refrigerated compartment, morgue workers heard someone shouting for help. They thought it was a ghost, the morgue owner said.
"I couldn't believe it!" Maqolo said. "I was also scared. But they are my employees and I had to show them I wasn't scared, so I called the police."
After police arrived, the group entered the morgue together.
"I was glad they had their firearms, in case something wanted to fight with us," Maqolo said.
He said the man was pale when they pulled him out.
"He asked, 'How did I get here?"' Maqolo said.
The health department said the man was then taken to a nearby hospital for observation and later discharged by doctors who deemed him stable.
Kupelo, the health department spokesman, urged South Africans to call on health officials to confirm that their relatives are really dead.
The man's family was informed that he was alive during a family meeting convened to make funeral arrangements. They're very happy to have him home, Maqolo said.
But Maqolo said he is still trying to recover from the traumatic experience.
"I couldn't sleep last night, I had nightmares," he said. "But today I'm much better." - China Daily
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