In a world growing increasingly interesting by the day, we humans have our fair share of centerpieces for human eccentricity. Today we’ll take a look at some of the people that make you
think just a little harder about yourself, and just how normal you really are. Here is Paranormala’s List of the 5 Most Eccentric People.

#5. Alfred Mehran – The Terminal Man

We’ve all heard of people living in some strange places, but this guy just might take the cake. Alfred is an Italian refugee who presently resides in the Charles De Gaulle Airport Terminal, and has done so since 1988. The story goes that he was expelled from his home country of Italy and decided to move to the United Kingdom. There was just one problem. Alfred lacked identification. Doing what he could, he claimed that his bag was stolen and that he’d lost all of his forms of ID and important documents. Surprisingly, he managed to fly out but failed to seal the deal all the way through. When he arrived, officials sent him right back to Charles De Gaulle. Since Alfred didn’t have any papers when he arrived BACK in town, he couldn’t prove who he was. Alfred has since lived in the Airport Terminal at Charles De Gaulle.

#4. Lina Medina – The World’s Youngest Mother

This Peruvian was, and is to this day, the world’s youngest mother – at the age of five. Doctor’s were stunned when they examined Medina’s growing belly, only to discover that she was pregnant. Up to this day, Median refuses interviews and very scarcely talks about the unique experience or it’s origin. Doctor’s found no evidence that the pregnancy did not occur in the normal manner but some say there must have been another cause.

#3. Noel Godin – Modern Robin Hood

Noel Godin is the epitome of a cartoon clown, with a vengeance. Godin makes his living and his rounds flinging cream pies at people. Traditional targets for this fluffy assault haven been those “lacking in a sense of humor” or people that Godin believes to be “Self Important”. Perhaps the most famous victim on guerrilla pie warfare has been Bill Gates. In 1992, Godin and his team attained the cooperation of nearly 30 people in order to take Bill unexpectedly and pelt him with cream pies. The event went off without a hitch and Noel Godin has been the world’s most famous practical joker ever since.

#2. Simeon Ellerton – The Natural Carpenter

Simeon Ellerton lived in a small village during the 18th century. He loved to exercise, so much in fact that he would often deliver messages and packages from here to there just to get around. As time went on, Ellerton thought that he would eventually build himself a house but didn’t know how he was going to do it. One day while delivering, Ellerton picked up a stone and subconsciously carried it along with him to his destination. This triggered an epiphany. From then on, every time Ellerton would deliver anything, he’d pick up a stone and carry it with him. After many years, Ellerton produced a massive collection of stones and eventually built himself a modest house using them. It is often rumored that even after Ellerton’s house was built, he felt uncomfortable without his stones, so he’d continue to pick them up while walking until the day he died.

#1. Sir George Sitwell – Eccentric Extraordinaire

Sir George Sitwell didn’t have just one odd quality, but a host of them. This is a man who got so annoyed with insects and wasps living in his household that he invented a firearm for hunting them. Sitwell had upwards of seven libraries, attempted to pay his son’s tuition with produce, having the animals on his farm stenciled in blue and white to make them more pleasing to the eye, and a host of other things. George Sitwell is most famous for his audacious way of talking with people. A quote, widely cited from George’s house in England reads: “I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of my gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.”

Interestingly enough, a reader sent in this comment in regards to our article, “Is the Jersey Devils Range Increasing?”

“Heyy,

My name is Victoria and i am starting a report on the JD (Jersey Devil) also known as the MLD (The Mother Leeds Devil)…People say when you make the Jersey Devil Cake and put it in your yard the Jersey Devil might come..

Here is the recipe: THE JERSEY DEVIL CAKE

Cake
3/4 cup boiling water
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup margarine
3 eggs, well beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups brown sugar

Icing
1/4 pound margarine
3 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
3 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 to 1/2 cup evaporated milk

To make cake: Pour boiling water over chocolate. Stir over low heat until smooth and thick. Cool. Sift together flour, soda, baking powder and salt. Cream shortening with sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and beat well. Blend in chocolate and vanilla. Add dry ingredients and milk alternately, beating after each addition. Pour into well-greased 9-inch pans. Bake in 350-degree oven 30 minutes.

To make icing: Blend butter, chocolate and vanilla. Add sugar alternately with evaporated milk until smooth. Add milk until spreadable.

I remember reading as a kid about Benjamin Bathurst, David Lang and Oliver Larch. All three have strange stories of inexplicable disappearance. There are no accounts of UFO’s carrying them off, no portals to other dimensions, and no murderous intrigues. They simply were there one moment, and gone another. I recently revisited these stories with a skeptical eye to see what I could come up with.

It was the night of November 25, 1809. The world was at war with Napoleon Bonaparte and uncertain frantic alliances were being formed across Europe to counter him. Vienna had fallen, and Britain’s diplomat in the area, Benjamin Bathurst, was on his way north to Hamburg to return to Britain.

Not far from Berlin in the town of Perleberg, Bathurst stopped in the evening under an assumed name with an assistant to take on fresh horses and to have dinner. It was nearly 9 pm when the horses were prepared. Bathurst, wanting to get to Berlin as soon as possible, left his assistant and went outside to wait in the carriage. That would be the last time anyone would ever see Benjamin Bathurst.

Moments later his assistant left the Inn only to find the carriage empty. No sign of Bathurst was to be found, and one of the strangest stories in history of a disappearance was born.

Word reached England some weeks later when the assistant arrived in London. Bathurst’s wife herself went to Germany and coordinated with the police investigation into the matter. The river Stepnitz was scoured to no avail. The village was searched exhaustively several times with only a coat reported to belong to Bathurst found in an outhouse, and a pair of pantaloons thought to belong to him found some distance away in the woods. Even after an exhaustive search with dogs of the entire area, no other trace was found.

Thinking French agents were involved, Mrs Bathurst took her search to Napoleon himself. She somehow gained access to the Emperor, and asked him what happened to her husband. Surprised, Napoleon said he had no idea, and offered his help to the search. Bathurst’s remains, never the less, were never conclusively found. While there is no proof, its highly probably that Bathurst was simply murdered, no dimensional shifts or aliens needed because no suggestion of them was ever involved in the story.

Another famous tale is that of David Lang of Tennesse, a farmer who in full view of his family vanished in thin air. One second he was visible, the next he was not as he walked across a field. We need not recount this very famous story in detail here, but it remains one of the greatest examples of inexplicable human disappearance in the annals of the paranormal. Problem is, it appears to be entirely concocted, first appearing in an article in Fate magazine . No evidence of Lang or his family ever having existed has been presented, and the records of the time say nothing. Further, a similar story of one
Oliver Larch is likely a rehash of the David Lang legend.

So lies the problem with disappearances into thin air, more is often made of them than is really there and more mundane explanations are often ignored. The more notorious cases seem to have never happened, and the historical ones seem to have rational explanations. This is not to say that people do not disappear without a trace, but that those cases put forth as flagship examples seem shoddy on second glance. It would appear that people do not disappear into thin air. There is always a reason. When one gets into those reasons, that is where valid paranormal questions arise.

What are the chances? A look at extraterrestrial life in our solar system:

Life, at least on our world, is an extraordinarily resilient and hearty thing. You can go miles into the earth’s crust and find living microbes. You can journey to the frozen poles – that in some ways mimic the harsh conditions on some of the other world’s in our solar system – and you’ll find life thriving. Even if our world were to undergo almost every natural or manmade cataclysm in the book, some form of life would likely survive. Only the eventual death of our sun seems to be a surefire way of life on earth giving up the ghost. So what are the chances of life outside of the earth in our solar system?

Paranormala has attempted an educated guess.

Extraterrestrial Life in our Solar System?

1. Mercury – Not a chance. Both an extremely hot world, and an extremely cold one depending on if you’re on the sunny side of the planet or not, this tiny world lacks a significant atmosphere and doesn’t seem to have much going on in regards to geothermal energy. Mercury’s chances of life are truely astronomical, so much so, you might as well not even bother equipping a spacecraft to look for it. Study its geology instead.

2. Venus – Not likely. Venus is a harsh place. It suffered a runaway greenhouse effect at some point in its past that has turned it into hell ball. Lead can’t exist as a solid on its surface. It rains sulfuric acid, but its so hot that the acid evaporates before it hits the ground. It does have geothermal energy, but its crust isn’t broken into tectonic plates. This means that every so often, in terms of geologic time, a big crack forms in the crust and the whole planet gets erased and rebooted by lava. Even life isn’t going to like that. However, it has been theorized that it just might be possible for some form of life, probably microbial, to survive in venus’ upper atmosphere. Its a long shot, and its not likely, but the possibility is there.

3. Earth – Obvious. But what of the moon? Sadly, not a chance. Similar to Mercury, the moon suffers from extremes of heat and cold, depending on if its night or day. There is nothing in between. Further, while it may have some water ice, its never liquid. The moon is geothermally dead, and has effectively no atmosphere. The only life we will likely find here will be us, whenever we choose to return.

4. Mars – Likely, with a catch. The red planet. We’ve looked at it for millenia with ever closer magnification. At times, we were sure it was inhabited. We saw canals that were clearly alien made, but that turned out to be an optical illusion. Then we went there, and while we found clear evidence of the action of liquid water in the past, Mars sure looked dead. So for years we viewed it as a dead, failed planet, interesting only because its probably the most liveable planet in our solar system other than the earth. But then the equation changed. Some years ago, NASA itself made a controversial announcement that their scientists had apparently discovered fossils in a meteorite known to have originated on Mars. Well, the controversy still rages, and we’re still not sure that they really are fossilized bacteria. But if you add that with discoveries by the Mars Exploration Rovers, and other spacecraft, it would seem that Mars had liquid water for a very long period of time. Probably long enough for life to develop. Further, it turns out that Mars is not dead geologically, it seems to still have geothermal energy and even occasional volcanic action. And to top it off, it seems that very briny liquid water still flows from aquifers on the planet, and sticks around just long enough to make a salty mark on the inside of a crater. Given all this, it seems almost likely that Mars once had bacterial life. With bacteria being so resilient and tough, it may just still be there, far below the surface of the planet. Because of this, on a microbial basis only, Mars is a likely place for life to have evolved. The catch is, it may or may not still be there.

5. Jupiter – Possible. While Jupiter itself is a big gas bag that probably doesn’t harbor life, two of its moons just might. Europa is the most likely. It seems that Europa is covered in a giant liquid water ocean, topped by a thick crust of ice that occasionally breaks open and lets water flow, very briefly, on the surface. This ocean is kept warm by tidal heating, it is literally warmed by friction as jupiter tries to tear it apart, and could well have life on the order of microbes, but also all sorts of bizarre complex life like fish adapted for low-gravity, sea monsters, and any number of beasties. Another of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede, may also have conditions similar to Europa. We give this a rating of possible, and strongly support any efforts to explore these poorly understood ice-and-ocean worlds.

6. Saturn – Possible. Similar to Jupiter, Saturn won’t have life. But one of its moons, Enceladus, just might. See, Enceladus has water geysers. It throws liquid water from its surface, which promptly freezes into ice particles, that go shooting off into orbit. This suggests a liquid water ocean under a surface of ice. God knows what lives in it, if anything.

7. Uranus – Not likely. At some point in its history Uranus underwent a giant cataclysm that knocked it on its side. Literally. Its moons are broken, damaged things that do not seem to be likely places for life to form. But there is still a chance, we need to learn more about its moons, and until that happens we won’t know for sure.

8. Neptune – Not a chance. This is a cold place, and its moons are even colder. Its unlikely that there is enough sunlight and heat to do much of anything here, as far as life is concerned.

9. Pluto – Who knows? We know almost nothing of Pluto, yet. We have a spacecraft on the way to explore it. Even still, we probably won’t find the conditions needed by life. Its probably a big ball of ice and rock. We know, we know, Pluto isn’t a planet anymore. But consider our inclusion of this tiny world as a protest of the reclassification.

So there you have it. Does life exist in our solar system outside the earth? Probably, but in a microbial form. Are there chances for more complex life? Yes, but less likely than microbes. Should we go look for it? Absolutely.

On October 19, 1865 the Missouri Democrat newspaper printed a truly extraordinary article. Not prone to exaggeration, this paper would spend the next few decades as the flagship conservative newspaper for the St. Louis area, before merging with another paper and becoming the famed St. Louis Globe-Democrat, one of the nation’s foremost papers until ceasing operations in 1986, but not before launching the career of a young Pat Buchanan in the early 1960′s.

This particular article tells the tale of a man by the name of James Lumley. We know little about Lumley, other than the Missouri Democrat seemingly finding him credible, but what we do know was that sometime in September of 1865 he was making his usual living of trapping fur somewhere in the mountains on the upper Missouri River, about 75 to 100 miles above stream of the Great Falls
of the Missouri.

Just after sunset, Lumley claims he saw a bright light travelling rapidly through the sky in an easterly direction, where it exploded. Lumley reported that he then heard a rushing sound, felt the ground shake, and smelled sulfur in the air. Normally, one would consider this a classic case of a meteorite, but it gets better. The next day, about two miles from his campsite, Lumley reports that he saw felled trees leading to an object that had partly embedded itself into a mountainside. The object was “rock-like”, and divided into “compartments”, and most notably, it was covered in what appeared to be Egyptian-style hieroglyphs. Liquid leaked from areas of the craft, and glass-like material littered the immediate area.

There is something very modern-sounding about this UFO account. Remember the time period; the 1860′s. UFOlogy of that time was not yet even in its infancy. The concept of men from mars was only just beginning, and was well before talk of Schiaparelli’s canals and Percival Lowell’s advanced Martian civilization, but all this business of their ships crashing into our planet, covered in hieroglyphs and
leaking fluid, would not be discussed until the late 20th century and incidents like Roswell’s mysterious I-Beam and reports about the appearance of the Rendlesham Forest UFO.

The first Perhaps the best perspective of the times are the conclusions of the Missouri Democrat article. It continues to theorize that alien beings used natural meteorites to travel to other worlds, perhaps intending to enslave the population. No UFO needed, just hitch a ride on a small asteroid, wait a few thousand years, and voila, you land on a planet you can conquer. Of course, the logistics of this transcend even planets: its much easier to build a spacecraft that can make a controlled voyage, than wait around for an asteroid to eventually hit a planet. But the theory does illustrate that the concept of an alien spacecraft as we know it, never entered the mind of the author of this enigmatic article. Yet, it sounds extraordinarily similar to accounts of UFO crashes of our time.

We don’t know what ultimately happened to Lumley, or if other versions of his account are out there somewhere. It can be reasonably said he probably did not recover the UFO. Does that mean its still out there? A century and a half later? Lumley gave the location of the crash at around 75 to 100 miles above the Great Falls of the Missouri in the mountains, implying that he probably was upstream in a mountainous area near the river itself. Presuming the Great Falls being at the location of Ryan Dam, built on the largest of a series of falls collectively called the “Great Falls” but only those at Ryan Dam being properly called that, it would place his location in the area of Canyon Ferry Reservoir.

There are indeed mountains in that area, and Lumley’s lost UFO might just still be sitting there, partly buried in a mountainside, with its hieroglyphs perhaps now slightly eroded waiting for some intrepid explorer to find and reveal to the world. Unless, of course, the government or the originators of this UFO didn’t get to it first.

In the west, we tend to categorize everything. We try to come up with rules and regulations that define what something is, sometimes to desperate lengths and great frustration when something just doesn’t fit. Mythical creatures are no exception. We view the vampire as a blood drinking undead human, and a werewolf as a living human that can take a wolf-like form and ravage the population like an animal. In Eastern Europe, the homeland of most folklore relating to the vampire and werewolf, these lines can become hopelessly blurred, and the creatures can become almost the same.

Take the vrykolakas, the Greek version of the Vampire. While most vampire legends tend to involve drinking human blood as part of the mythos, in this case, it does not. The vrykolakas comes into being simply after living a sacrilegious life, or after an excommunication or burial in ground that was not consecrated, or most ominously eating mutton that had been previously tasted by a werewolf. Speaking of, even a werewolf couldn’t be safe from becoming a vrykolakas, if you killed the greek werewolf, he could come back as a cross between a vrykolakas and a werewolf! The fusion of these two creatures in Greek culture is one of the most fascinating aspects of the vrykolakas-style vampire.

Once in existance, the vrykolakas would not bite the neck of his victims to draw blood, rather it would cause epidemics of disease by simply walking around town. It would knock on doors, only to dissappear if the person answered on the first knock, but that person would then be condemned to death soon after and would become a vrykolakas themselves. To this day in certain parts of Greece, people do not answer the door until at least the second knock.

Even poltergeist activity is blamed on the vrykolakas, though that may be off-base in that the poltergeist is likely a completely different phenomenon. Sleep paralysis is also pinned on the legend, as a sort of fusion between the concept of the incubus and the Balkan vampire’s penchant for killing victims by sitting on their chest. Methods of dispensing with a vrykolakas are much the same as the western concept of the vampire; impaling. But there are other methods for this creature that work just as well, such as cremating the suspected corpse and even a standard exorcism is said to do the trick.

The vrykolakas is just one of many different variations of legendary undead creatures that resemble the western concept of the vampire. Perhaps, when dealing with folklore, we should take this into account. Imagine a film based on the vrykolakas instead of the western vampire, with powers greatly expanded from simple blood-drinking and wandering in the night.

The world has been ending for thousands of years. Early Christians believed the end would happen in their lifetime and that the Roman Empire represented the last gasp of humanity. As it turns out, it was one of the first gasps in the birth of the modern world in which we live. In the year 1000, medieval millenialists nervously wondered if the addition of a digit to the way we count our years would herald the end. It would seem it didn’t. A thousand years later people wondered if the change in that digit would result in a mass computer failure that would reverberate around the world and cause a major disruption of society to the point of the world regressing to the stone age. Didn’t quite happen that way.

In fact, in the hundreds of millennial predictions, sects, and beliefs that have surfaced since the death of Christ, and before, not a single one has come to pass. The world may seem close to the abyss, but it never quite makes that last step needed to cross the edge. In fact, it often seems in hindsight that it was never on that last step at all, but more than a day’s walk away.

Now we approach the next round of dire predictions. From the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, to the last Pope prophesized by St. Malachi to come after the current one, to religious-based predictions that the end must be near as the current state of affairs in the world must be omens signaling the end, we unfortunately will never have the answer until the world actually decides to take the last baby step off the cliff.

Oddly, Nostradamus seems the odd man out in this orgy of prediction that seems to be gripping the world of those who study things paranormal. He doesn’t predict the end of the world until thousands of years from now, if ever.

I can’t help but wonder why the end of the world preoccupies us so much. For all the predictions and doomsday talk, Chances are, we’ll never see it coming. It could come in the form of an asteroid impact, or even a supernova silently bombarding us with lethal doses of radiation. Or it could be one of the religious predictions that comes true, but in this case, it might not be such a good idea to try to read the mind of God and blow the big secret before the almighty has a chance to finish his plan. You might just invite his judgment for such a thing.

I think the reason is psychological. Some need an order to dismiss the chaos of world affairs. It becomes comforting, perhaps, to see a great earthquake with a horrendous loss of life and see it in the context that it means something. We watch the economic troubles of today, and maybe it makes more sense for them to be part of the divine plan for the earth’s end, rather than mistakes stemming from greed and poor financial infrastructure. The problem is though, we’ve seen all of this before, and the first time around none of them turned out to be indicative of the end. In fact, the world has been in almost constant calamity for two thousand years, leading many to believe that the time in which they lived were the end times. For most of these people, it wasn’t.

I can’t say for certain, nor can I say that I hope I’m wrong, but I think it would be prudent for all of us to take all the talk of the end being near with a grain of salt, especially as 2012 approaches, and those on the crazier end of the spectrum start thinking of making up a batch of koolaid. Chances are, these are not the end times, rather they are the times in which we live. When the end does truly come, whether its tomorrow or a thousand years from now, it will likely be inevitable and unchangeable by the time we know about it, and if it is divine in nature, we will be the last beings in the universe that can stop it. So why do we worry so?

This week seemed an apt time to ponder our nation’s political ghosts. We all know Abraham Lincoln haunts the White House along with Andrew Jackson and a host of first ladies, Woodrow Wilson is seen in a rocking chair at Blair House, and a great many ghosts are associated with the other federal government buildings in Washington. But one ghost is known to be seen in at least two places always heralding disaster for the nation.

It is the Phantom black cat. Seen in the basements of the White House, the mall and the Capitol, DC as it is called (short for Demon Cat) is reported to appear just before national disasters. When seen, it is sometimes reported to appear as a kitten, but as you get closer it grows into a menacing and angry tiger-like animal with red glowing eyes. It is only seen at night, and normally only by people that are alone. It made an appearance before the stock market crash of 1929, and again before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. At the White House, it is usually seen during times – such as now – when the presidency is moving to a new person.

The origin of the story may lie with the fact that the capitol was once infested with rats. The problem became so severe, that caretakers released a large number of cats in the building to control the rat population. Ever since, the black cat has made his appearance. Guards fear even talking about seeing the animal, mainly as it might cause them to lose their security clearance, but stories abound from retired federal employees.

Personally I wish they’d tell us whenever it is seen. Whether a concocted urban legend or a legitimate paranormal phenomena, DC remains a fascinating and little-known phantom that remains unique in its ability to appear in multiple different places, always before a disaster. If it really does exist, more information would be quite welcome.

On September 22, 1979 an aging satellite named Vela 6911 detected two very distinct flashes in the vicinity of the Indian or South Atlantic oceans that supposedly could be only one thing: a nuclear detonation. The Carter administration held an emergency meeting, other satellites were enlisted to see if they saw the detonation, which they did not, and utter pandemonium ensued for a short time as the US government scrambled to see who or what had set off a nuclear weapon that day.

It was a small explosion, estimated at only three kilotons, and while the Soviets, Chinese, French and British are unlikely as the originators, the finger was tentatively pointed at Israel or South Africa for testing a weapon. Problem is, the whole thing made no sense.

The first problem was that no other satellites had detected the detonation, even though at least three were capable of it, if not more. It might have ended there, a very scary and potentially dangerous malfunction caused a false alarm. But it didn’t. Astronomers working at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected an atmospheric shockwave that could have been linked to a nuclear explosion. The US government’s hydrophone network detected a very clear echo of a large explosion. But the one piece of foolproof evidence was never found: radiation. Dozens of flights were conducted to try to detect fallout, and none was ever found, though extremely low levels of a certain radioactive element might have been detected in Australia, some time later.

The blast remains a secret to this day, despite South Africa having given up all nuclear weaponry and testing decades ago. If they did it, they still aren’t saying, even though they have no motivation to keep quiet after all this time. Only if it involved Israel would it be worth keeping secret still.

It couldn’t have been a natural phenomena, meteorites do not make double flashes of light characteristic of a nuclear explosion. But given that all parties that may or may not have been involved state it wasn’t theirs, and the fact that radiation fallout was never confirmed, tends to point to something else.

Exploding UFO’s have been brought up as a cause of anomalous atmospheric detonations for some time. Tunguska, most famously, was suspected by some in the UFO community as just such a thing. While no detonation was seen before the Roswell crash, its easily possible that nothing was around capable of detecting it at the time. Could an alien spacecraft have exploded over the Indian Ocean in 1979?

Its not likely we’ll ever know. The facts surrounding the event to this day do not add up, and any potential players in the nuclear arena remain tight-lipped. Most likely, Israel tested a nuclear weapon, but how it managed to not produce detected fallout is a mystery. Could it have been a UFO? Someone in government knows, but they aren’t going to say. Random detonations that look like nuclear weapons, cause international incidents, and could have been misconstrued by jittery cold war powers are something you tend to keep secret.