Nessie 'Sighting' Wins £1000 Prize

For all you other "Nessie" fans...

A sonar image of a large mystery object deep below the surface of Loch Ness has netted boat skipper Marcus Atkinson the Best Nessie Sighting of The Year Award — the first time in several years it has been presented by bookmaker William Hill.
The photograph, claimed by at least one seasoned Nessie spotter to the conclusive evidence of a creature, was a late contender in the contest which has been dormant following several lean years of close encounters with the loch’s most famous resident.

However, 2011 proved to be a bumper year with three “good” sightings reported to the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club which first launched the competition in conjunction with the bookmaker in the 1990s.

Although Mr Atkinson’s encounter in Urquhart Bay was not registered at the time with the fan club, it was reported to full-time Nessie hunter Steve Feltham, based at Dores beach. The image depicts something about 1.5 metres wide and 23 metres below the surface.

The entry has now been judged to be the winner by Inverness Courier readers in an online poll along with the views of an expert panel.

Mr Atkinson receives a £1000 cash prize and a free £500 bet while William Hill will also place a £100 bet on the Natural History Museum confirming the existence of Nessie by the end of the year — odds are currently 100/1.
“When you look at the size of the contact, it rules out any fish or other creatures which would be in the loch. Because of the depth, it rules out seals, deer etc which leaves us with only one conclusion.

“From our perspective, it is conclusive proof there is something in the loch unlike some of the other ‘evidence’ which has been produced over the years.

“This shows something moving and also by the nature of the sonar, it was certainly something alive underneath the boat. It is quite exciting.” - inverness-courier

Alien Invasion May Cause Computer Loss

Acer: Warranty doesn't cover alien invasions

If you're worried an alien invasion could inadvertently fry your PC's motherboard, I would not recommend picking up an Acer at your local Best Buy.

There is a very interesting tidbit buried deep in Acer's warranty stipulations: Space invasions are not covered.

Sorry, resistance fighters. If you laptop is clipped by a stray laser blast during humanity's last stand, you're on your own.

Under the warranty extension program chapter, it's noted the plan does not cover "damage caused by natural disaster, intentional or unintentional misuse, acts of war, space invasions, abuse, neglect, improper maintenance, or use under abnormal conditions."

Weird Weddings

Really creepy to me!

Dead woman gets married off twice

In a shocking incident in China, a dead woman was found to be married off not once but twice.

A family sold their daughter's corpse for about $5,000 to a man who wanted to perform a marriage ceremony between two dead bodies. It is known as 'yin' marriage in China, reports Global Times.

After the wedding ceremony with a difference, the dead couple were buried in the same tomb. However, it was later discovered that the grave was dug up and the deceased bride's body was missing from the tomb.

The matter was immediately reported to the police and the investigating authorities found that a group of five men had stolen the corpse and sold it off to another interested party for an exhorbiant amount for yet another yin marriage ceremony. The probe is on.

Ike In Contact With Aliens?

President Eisenhower Supposedly Had Three Secret Meetings With Aliens

Posted: 14 Feb 2012 09:11 AM PST
Former U.S. Congress / Pentagon consultant and author Timothy Good is stirring up the 'Holloman AFB Meetings' pot after a recent interview on BBC2:

Former American President Dwight D. Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens, a former US government consultant has claimed.

The 34th President of the United States met the extra terrestrials at a remote air base in New Mexico in 1954, according to lecturer and author Timothy Good.

Eisenhower and other FBI officials are said to have organised the showdown with the space creatures by sending out 'telepathic messages'.

The two parties finally met up on three separate occasions at the Holloman Air Force base and there were 'many witnesses'.

Conspiracy theorists have circulated increased rumours in recent months that the meeting between the Commander-in-Chief and people from another planet took place.

But the claims from Mr Good, a former U.S. Congress and Pentagon consultant, are the first to be made publicly by a prominent academic.Speaking on Frank Skinner's BBC2 current affairs show Opinionated, he said that governments around the world have been in regular contact with aliens for many decades.

'Aliens have made both formal and informal contact with thousands of people throughout the world from all walks of life,' he added.

Asked why the aliens don't go to somebody 'important' like Barack Obama, he said: 'Well, certainly I can tell you that in 1954, President Eisenhower had three encounters, set up meetings with aliens, which took place at certain Air Force bases including Holloman Air Force base in New Mexico.'

He added that there were 'many witnesses'.


Eisenhower, who was president from 1953 to 1961, is known to have had a strong belief in life on other planets.

The former five-star general in the United States Army who commanded the Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War, was also keen on pushing the U.S. space programme.

His meeting with the cosmic life forms is said to have taken place while officials were told that he was on vacation in Palm Springs, California, in February 1954.

The initial meeting is supposed to have taken place with aliens who were 'Nordic' in appearance, but the agreement was eventually 'signed' with a race called 'Alien Greys'.

Mr Good added: 'We know that up to 90 per cent of all UFO reports can be explained in conventional terms. However, I would say millions of people worldwide have actually seen the real thing.'

According to classified documents released by the Ministry of Defence in 2010, Winston Churchill may have ordered a UFO sighting to be kept secret.

The UFO was seen over the East Coast of England by an RAF reconnaissance plane returning from a mission in France or Germany towards the end of the war.

Churchill is said to have discussed how to deal with UFO sightings with Eisenhower. - dailymail

Someone named 'Bob' called in to the 'Coast to Coast AM' radio show in February 2009 and claimed to have film of President Eisenhower inspecting some people on stretchers who “weren’t from this earth”:

== TEXT OF C2C CALLER “BOB’S” ACCOUNT ON 3 FEB 09 ==

Hello, Mr. Noory. I have a unique — unique– situation to volunteer. I’m in the military, and I monitor satellite cameras. What I’ve got to tell you is based on UFOs — uh, very unique situation: I have acquired eighteen canisters — reel-to-reel film, military film, based in the forties, early fifties. Uh, I inherited it.

[Noory: 16-mil, black-and-white?] They’re black-and-white; I had a [garbled] on the majority of them. The cans show military insignia like eagles and stuff like that.

[Noory: Have you looked at the film yet, Bob?] I have looked at a few of them. Uh, what I’ve seen so far scares me to death.

[Noory: of what? -- give us a quick glimpse.] Uh, we gonna have to talk off the air at some point in time; it’s not . . .. [Noory, interrupting: I'm gonna have you give Tom
your phone number if that's okay.] What I’ve seen so far on the ones that I’ve looked at — well, back to the first one that I looked at showed President Eisenhower and, uh, the, uh, that eccentric guy, he, uh, that had the airplanes — what was his name? — the one who went into seclusion.

[Strieber: Oh, Howard Hughes.] Howard Hughes in a warehouse, looking around and, uh, people laying on stretchers (and they weren’t from this earth). [Noory: Oh, my gosh; all right, look . . ..] I want to stop there and . . .. [Noory, interrupting: Bob, I'm putting you on hold, we're gonna get your phone number and we will talk at length. Could be fascinating. Whitley, my friend, stay in touch. [Strieber: thank you very much, George, as always . . ..]
"

Raymond Moody On Life After Life

I have long been a fan of this icon and his early opening the field of NDS Research.He recently spoke with Coast To Coast AM:

Widely acknowledged as the world’s leading expert in the field of near-death experience, Raymond Moody M.D. reflected on his life as a researcher bridging the gap between science and the paranormal. "This is the biggest question of existence and the most important, by far," he said of the mystery surrounding life after death. Moody stressed that pronouncements about the reality of the phenomenon must be backed by strong evidence to avoid ethical quandaries. To that end, he explained that many people take great solace in the belief that life continues after death and a mistaken conclusion about the phenomenon could propel those who are mourning a lost loved one back into a profound state of grief.
Looking back on his own brush with death, Moody revealed how his struggles with the thyroid disease myxedema nearly cost him his life. The disease, he said, is so slow to develop that it went unnoticed by anyone around him including himself. While suffering from the sickness, he was "always cold, always sleepy" and was afflicted with significant memory loss as well as severe depression. Though he was diagnosed with the disease, Moody received the wrong levels of medication and eventually became so despondent that he took a massive dose of the medicine and mixed it with alcohol in the hopes of ending his suffering. Fortunately, he was saved before it was too late and observed that the experience led him to a greater understanding of people who are struggling wth depression.
On spirituality, Moody shared a remarkable story on the mysterious nature of prayer. He recalled how his house, which was build in the 1890's, was in desperate need of rewiring, but he and his wife did not know any electricians. So, they prayed for God to send them "just the right electrician." The next morning, one called them and said that their phone number had randomly come up on his beeper. The couple invited him over to the house and he inspected the potential job. Prior to leaving, the electrician revealed that his brother and mother had just died and Moody's wife suggested that the man talk to her husband about it. In response, he mentioned that a book called Life after Life had been helping him through the grieving process. Unbeknownst to the electrician, the author of that book was, of course, Raymond Moody, the very man whose home he had just visited

www..lifeafterlife.com


"

Deer Hunters Shoot at UFO - Aliens Escape Unharmed

Two Minnesota men, presumably deer hunters, reported firing several shots at what they thought was a UFO, but the unidentified flying object flew away, apparently unscathed.

The eyewitness account of the UFO sighting details what happened when the two men spotted what they at first thought was an X-47B military drone hovering in the air over the woods at night.

"We were in fear," one of the unnamed men stated, "and trained a scoped Winchester Sportsman .30-06 deer rifle on the object, and fired three successive shots center mass at the object, with no obvious effect, or ricochet sound. Man with me fired two slugs from a Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun center mass, also with no effect."

The OVNI, apparently not damaged, then floated away as the men ran through the woods to escape.

This is a weird report, posted on the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) which is a privately owned and operated website used by witnesses to report unidentifiable aircraft sightings. If they thought it might be a military plane, why did they shoot a 
? Weren't they worried they might hurt someone?

Update On Blue Blobs

'Blue Balls' mystery solved

The suggested explanations for the mysterious blue balls that appeared in a Dorset garden have ranged from the unlikely — the eggs of a marine creature – to the downright bizarre – the bodily secretions of angels. Scientists at Bournemouth University have announced they have solved the puzzle. There is no need to prepare a welcome for extra-terrestrials. The blue balls are almost certainly sodium polyacrylate or waterlock, an absorbent polymer used in nappies and by florists and gardeners as a way of keeping soil moist.It is still not clear how the substance came to be in the garden but it may be that a heavy hailstorm that seemed to make the balls appear had quickly saturated the sodium polyacrylate crystals, and so caused them to rapidly increase in size. Earlier this week, Bournemouth resident Steve Hornsby reported how the sky above his house turned dark then yellow. A violent hailstorm followed and afterwards he found odd gel-like blue balls in his garden. A jar of the crystals was taken to the school of applied sciences at the university, which has spent the week trying to work out what they are.

Scientists quickly established the crystals were not a life-form. They then drew the water out of them by slowly drying them in an oven and used FTIR spect
 roscopy, which measures how a sample absorbs or transmits light. This established the balls' "molecular fingerprint" – the procedure often used in crime scenes to establish the nature of a particular substance. Research assistant Josie Pegg confirmed the substance was sodium polyacrylate. It is sometimes used in gardening or agriculture to improve soil – as well as being used in nappies.

The puzzle of how the substance got into Hornsby's garden remains but, admittedly, it is not the greatest of mysteries. "Perhaps someone was having clear-out and
chucked them over the fence," said Pegg. The heavy rain may have turned effectively invisible dry crystals into the gel-like blue balls. Pegg did not think her work has been a waste of time. "It has attracted lots of interest and been a break from the norm," she said. But next week she will go back to her normal day job, studying aquatic ecology. - guardian

Blue jelly balls from space!

"A man in Dorset has been left mystified after tiny blue spheres fell from the sky into his garden.

Steve Hornsby from Bournemouth said the 3cm diameter balls came raining down late on Thursday afternoon during a hail storm.

He found about a dozen of the balls in his garden. He said: "[They're] difficult to pick up, I had to get a spoon and flick them into a jam jar."

The Met Office said the jelly-like substance was "not meteorological".

Mr Hornsby, a former aircraft engineer, said: "The sky went a really dark yellow colour.

"As I walked outside to go to the garage there was an instant hail storm for a few seconds and I thought, 'what's that in the grass'?"'No smell'

Mr Hornsby said he was keeping the balls in his fridge while he tried to find out what they were

Walking around his garden he found many more blue spheres were scattered across the grass.

He said: "The have an exterior shell with a softer inner but have no smell, aren't sticky and do not melt."

Mr Hornsby said he was keeping the balls in his fridge while he tried to find out what they were.

Josie Pegg, an applied science research assistant at Bournemouth University, speculated that the apparently strange phenomena might be "marine invertebrate eggs".

"These have been implicated in previous 'strange goo' incidents," she said. "I'd have thought it's a little early for spawning but I suppose we've had a very mild winter.

"The transmission of eggs on birds' feet is well documented and I guess if a bird was caught out in a storm this could be the cause." - BBC\\\\

Mermaids Stop Workers

Who would think of this...From the Daily Mail:

"Essential work on planned reservoirs in Zimbabwe has stopped because mermaids have been hounding workers away, according to the country's Water Resources Minister.

Samuel Sipepa Nkomo told a Zimbabwean parliamentary committee that terrified workers are refusing to return to the sites, near the towns of Gokwe and Mutare.

Minister Nkomo said the only way to solve the problem was to brew traditional beer and carry out any rites to appease the spirits.

'All the officers I have sent have vowed not to go back there', Minister Nkomo was reported as saying in Zimbabwe's state-approved Herald newspaper.

Mermaids are mythological water creatures with a female body twinned with the tail of a fish.
Opinion about the existence of mermaids varies throughout Zimbabwe - some people are skeptical, but some firmly believe that mermaids exist in Zimbabwe.

Dating back centuries, many mermaid stories continue to make their rounds in Zimbabwe.

One tale says mermaids carry humans underwater, but if there is a public outcry their relatives might never see them again.

But another tale suggests victims can return as spirit mediums if their disappearance is not mourned.

The senior politician said that mermaids were also present in other reservoirs.
'We even hired whites thinking that our boys did not want to work but they also returned saying they would not return to work there again,' he added.

The two, long overdue reservoirs are considered essential if Zimbabwe is provide adequate water to its population and to boost its agricultural production.

Having once been the 'bread basket' of Southern Africa, the country's farms have been laid low by lack of faith in government policy.

From 2000, President Robert Mugabe expropriated some 4,000 white owned farms and gave them to politically connected blacks.Partly as a result, agricultural production is this year forecast to be at its second lowest level since Zimbabwe achieved independence from Britain in 1980.

The belief in mermaids and other mythical creatures is widespread in the country, where many people combine a Christian faith with traditional beliefs.

Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Minister Ignatius Chombo said the government wants to give the population the water it needs, but cannot do so until the rituals are performed and necessary repairs can be carried out.
Three quarters of Zimbabwe's population live on less than one US dollar a day." - dailymail

Spirit Communications & the Afterlife:

For the past 25 years James Van Praagh has used his powerful paranormal experiences to help people bridge the gap between the Earth plane and other worlds.

Based on his communications, he's found certain commonalities when people crossover-- there's no pain when a spirit leaves the body, they are aware of being outside the body, and are greeted by loved ones who have already passed over. The deceased appear solid, but are vibrating in a higher frequency dimension, and often choose to represent themselves at a younger age than when they died, he continued.
\When spirits first pass over they enter the astral world, where they encounter lakes, gardens, and houses, said Van Praagh, adding that colors are more vivid, there's no nighttime, and everything a person could want is there. However, this rean, and eventually spirits move on to a higher level, he explained. Many of the communications he's received from spirits have to do with love and fear, and regrets over choices they made while alive. "I should have told my family I loved them; I shouldn't have done that; I should have believed in myself more," are typical of spirits' laments.

He also addressed why the scientific community continues to dismiss evidence for life after death. Science has been unable to measure phenomena outside the physical realm, yet quantum physics is getting closer to quantifying consciousness and what was previously unseen, and Van Praagh believes scientific views are beginning to change. To communicate with the deceased, he suggested developing a meditation practice, which can make the mind more receptive, and also being open to receiving messages in the dream state

Ancient Giants And Lost Civilizations

 Independent researcher Pat Chouinard presented information and theories about an ancient race of giants, as well as lost civilizations and their artifacts. There are numerous cross-cultural references to giants, as well as creation myths that involved them. "I think they were a highly advanced race," and they were said to have a lifespan of hundreds of years, he noted. Mesopotamia and Atlantis were not the first civilizations, "I believe there were hundreds, thousands of civilizations going back to a very very remote and early time in our history," he said. Sanskrit writings of India refer to civilizations that existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, "and I think the giants go back to this time," he continued

One of the mysteries he's explored concerns the finding of ancient out-of-place Caucasians in such countries as New Guinea, China, and Japan, as well as in North America, far before the Europeans had arrived. Some of these were described as "red haired giants," and the Native Americans have myths about light-skinned giants, called the 'Bright White God,' and Quetzalcoatl, he detailed. Chouinard suspects that this race, which might have been as tall as 15-18 ft., gradually died out from epidemics or other factors.

He talked about the demise of the Atlantean civilization, suggesting that primitive groups that co-exis
as it was fading, picked up some remnants of their advancements, and eventually rose up to become the historic civilizations that we know from ancient history. Chouinard also spoke about ancient megalithic structures like Gobekli Tepe and Baalbek, as well as the anomalous discovery of the " X Woman of Siberia," in which a finger bone was found that came from a separate, unknown evolutionary line that dated back some 50,000 years.

Picture of Giants Playground from Dreamtimes.com