Search For Morag Witnesses
A film company is looking for anyone who has seen Morag – the Loch Morar Monster – to take part in a documentary about Nessie’s less famous sister.
At more than 1,000ft, Loch Morar in Lochaber is Britain’s deepest body of freshwater.
And its waters are crystal clear due to the steep-sided walls of the surrounding hills, which means the rainfall does not become peat stained.
After the Loch Ness Monster, Morag is among the best known of Scotland’s legendary monsters, with sightings dating back to 1887.
These include 34 incidents by 1981 – 16 of which were reported by more than one person.
“A peculiar serpent-like creature about 20ft long” was reported by nine people in a boat in 1948, in the same place as the 1887 sighting.
And CMJ Productions, a Canadian production company based in Montreal, is now keen to speak to anyone with a tale to tell about Morag for a documentary it is making as part of a series called Boogeymen.
Researcher Elizabeth Grenier explained that they chose Morag because she was less well-known than Nessie.
She said: “We are going to places where the local monster did not necessarily turn into a tourist attraction.
“The monster serves as a way to discover the highlights, the history and the culture of a community.”
The film crew is due to visit the remote location in Lochaber from Thursday September 25 to Saturday September 27, but it is still looking for more people to take part in the programme.
Ms Grenier said: “I am looking for a local journalist or media analyst, who could comment on the way Morag has been covered by the local, national and international media.
“Eyewitnesses, believers, sceptics, historians or people who helped Elizabeth Montgomery-Campbell during her Loch Morar Survey in the 1970s and anyone who can add something to the story should also get in touch with me.”
The best known encounter with Morag was reported in 1969 when Duncan McDonnel and William Simpson claimed that their speedboat accidentally struck the creature, prompting her to hit back.
McDonnel is said to have retaliated with an oar while Simpson opened fire with his rifle. The monster then sank slowly out of sight.
They described her as being brown and 25-30 feet long, with rough skin and three humps on her back. - Press and Journal
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Pervert spectre nearly ends marriage
In the 1990 film Ghost, Patrick Swayze wants to get his hands on former love Demi Moore.
In a modern-day home in South Yorkshire, a sexed-up spectre known as ‘Mark’ wants to get his hands on Deborah Rawson.
Mrs Rawson, 48, and her husband Kevin had happily lived together in their home in Hull for more than 20 years until Mark threatened to destroy their marriage.
She said she first encountered the perverted apparition after finishing the housework one day, describing Mark to be ‘a good-looking bloke in his 30s, in black trousers and a white shirt.’
Mr Rawson found his wife shaking outside the house hours after her ordeal. The visitations continued and increased in their sexual intensity.
Mrs Rawson explained: ‘He would pull at my dress and one time it felt as if he had pinned me down on the sofa.
‘Another night, as I was falling to sleep, the duvet flew off and I felt Mark’s hand on my thigh.’
Her husband witnessed none of these creepy night-time visits and it led to the couple sleeping in different rooms and then downstairs.
The couple had asked a Catholic priest for an exorcism and a local psychic to help them out before they moved into rented accommodation. - Metro
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Gargoyle Kills Bride-To-Be
A Chicago mother of two was headed to lunch with her fiance in the city's South Loop on Thursday when pieces of a gargoyle fell from a church's facade and struck her in the head, killing her.
"I saw that crack on her head and thought, 'She's definitely dead,'" a witness who ran to help tells the Chicago Tribune.
Sarah Bean's fiance, Lance Johnson, started screaming, the witness says, as he fell to the ground and held his hands to his head. Family members tell NBC Chicago the couple was due to marry soon; Johnson is the father of Bean's two children, ages 10 and 14.
A piece of decorative metal several stories up came loose at the Second Presbyterian Church on South Michigan Avenue, and then knocked off a piece of stone from the gargoyle, which hit Bean. Officials say she was killed almost instantly; she was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
The church, which was built in 1874 and is a national historic landmark, DNAinfo Chicago reports, failed a number of inspections between 2007 and 2011, but passed inspections in 2012 and 2013.
"She was finally going to get married," muses Bean's brother, noting that she used to live right down the street and had passed the church "millions of times."
In Florida this week, a man was murdered while on a "bucket list" bike ride en route to propose to his girlfriend. - KSDK
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The Company Restoring Egypt’s Oldest Pyramid Has Actually Made It Worse
Egypt’s oldest pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser, in the ancient burial ground of Saqqara, is looking a little worse for the wear. After more than 4,600 years in the desert, some of the stones have eroded or fallen away, a rising water table has weakened the bedrock below the tombs, and a 1992 earthquake put the structure at risk. Unfortunately, the company hired to restore the ancient pyramid starting in 2006 may have made it worse.
Activists tell the Egypt Independent that the company, Shurbagy, has continued working on the pyramid after overseeing its deterioration and partial collapse.
Activist Amir Gamal of the “Non-Stop Robberies” movement told Egypt Independent that “New walls were built outside the pyramid as if the pyramid were a modern construction, which is opposite to international standards of restoration, which prevents adding more than 5% of construction to antiquities if necessary.” He continued to say that “Adding the modern construction is a large pressure on the decaying pyramid, which threatens catastrophe.”
Built in the 27th century B.C. for Pharaoh Djoser, the 200-foot-tall step pyramid was designed by one of the earliest known architect-engineers in history, Imhotep. It’s considered the earliest example of large-scale construction with cut stone in the world, a major deviation from the low, flat-roofed, mud-brick design of earlier Egyptian burial sites. Archeologists have criticized Egyptian authorities for choosing Shurbagy to oversee the restoration, as the company had not previously completed any restoration projects. - Fast Code Sign
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