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"48 Hours Mystery": Deadly Prophecy

Source : http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/31/48hours/main5478688.shtml

A Woman Writes About Her Own Death Before She Drowns - Was It an Accident,
Suicide or Murder?

"She was my best friend... sometimes she was my only friend. I wish every single day of my life
that I could have my mom back," said Faylene Grant's daughter, Jenna. "My mom died when I
was 11. Some people think it was an accident… some people think it was a suicide. But I know it
was a murder.

"My step dad murdered my mom," she said.

"Faylene is a good person," Doug Grant told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Susan Spencer.
"I have never hurt anybody in my life - ever!"
Friend and Physician's Assistant Chad White said, "Doug called me very frantic. He just said he
found her in the tub and that she was not responding to him."

"I had my hand on the door handle to her bedroom as it was happening," Jenna explained.

"I’ve been working on this story for a number of years," said Reporter Paul Rubin. "By all
accounts, Faylene Grant is a wonderful woman. Very, very close to her family - and especially
close to her church.

"This is something my mom wrote in her journal, '…it is Heavenly Father's will that I leave this
mortal sphere to fulfill a mission on the other side of the veil.'"

"She also wrote: 'I must have faith in Doug's vision. He dreams it every night now ... that I will
get to go to the Celestial Kingdom."

According to Prosecutor Juan Martinez, "Douglas Grant used organized religion in killing Faylene
Grant… The motive in this case is a married man wanting to be with a younger woman."

"I’m the lucky one. Think what you want to think, that’s fine," said Hilary Grant, the woman
Doug married after Faylene's death.

"Have there been other women in his life? Yes, but he is not a murderer," said defense attorney
Mel McDonald.

"I know that my brother Doug is innocent," Tammy Fuentes said. "I mean, if you saw the
volumes of letters that she wrote [in] her journals, it's bizarre!"

"Here is woman who has talked to God, God has told her that she is going to die," said
McDonald.

"She did not want to die. But it was Mr. Grant's vision that she would and she accepted the
death sentence that was meted out by her husband," said Martinez.

"I didn’t kill my wife - never in a million years," said Doug.

"This one is a classic," Rubin said. "It's got this epic sweep of sex and drugs and religion.
Homicide, suicide or accident? Was there even a murder here?"

"Things I want to have in a spouse: Loves the beauty of the earth, sunrise, sunset… I will be
with you always," reads an entry in Faylene Grant's journal.

It sounds very poetic, but eight years after Faylene's death, her husband, Doug Grant, is fighting
for his future - on trial for her murder.

Doug swears he's not guilty.

"I was just yelling Faylene! Faylene!" Doug said on the stand during his trial.

"Objection. Relevance. This has nothing to do with Faylene. He just wants to tell a story," said
Prosecutor Juan Martinez.

Indeed he does want to tell his story - one that begins in 1993, the second he laid eyes on a
striking, 27-year-old single mother named Faylene Eaves at his gym near Phoenix.

"She was a great person, loved life, loved her family," said Doug.

At the time, Doug Grant was a 27-year-old divorced, single dad and a rising star in the world of
nutrition. He had a growing list of celebrity clients, like Charles Barkley and Danny Ainge of the
Phoenix Suns.

Doug remembered Faylene from high school. She'd recently divorced and had two kids, Austin
and Jenna.

"My mom was the type of lady you meet and you're like, 'Wow. I wanna be friends with her!'"
Jenna told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Susan Spencer. "I came home one day and I had a
new CD. And it was that song 'Ain't no mountain high…' and I grabbed the shampoo bottle. She
had [the] telephone and we were jumping up and down on the couch, playing the song over and
over again…singing. That’s my mom."

At first, Doug's sister, Tammy Fuentes, said it seemed a perfect match - especially since they
were both Mormon.
"Faylene is a lot like Doug," Fuentes explained." She also loved nutrition and helping others…"
They married four months after their first date.

"She's a good person and brought out the good in Doug," said Fuentes.

However, Jenna worried that Doug wasn't bringing out the good in her mother.

"He’s the man of the house and she listens to what he says," Jenna told Spencer.

"So there was never any question as to who was ruling the roost here?" Spencer asked.

"It was always Doug," she replied.

Doug needed to guide Faylene, according to Fuentes, who was becoming alarmed by her new
sister-in-law's mood swings.

"She was either really up, really happy, or she was really really sad or depressed. But never
would admit that she needed help," Fuentes said. "I would go to their house and she would be in
her bedroom with the door locked. And the children would just be there… and I would want to
see her and they would say, 'No …don't bother her.'"

Fuentes said Faylene spent much time alone writing in her journal - not uncommon in the
Mormon faith - or praying at the temple, sometimes for hours.

"I do feel it was fanatical," said Tammy of Faylene's behavior. To the point that by the late
1990s, she said Faylene had lost touch with reality.

"She said, 'I’ve been to the temple and God has told me that I need to divorce Doug,'" Fuentes
recalled.

God even told her why: Doug had a girlfriend. Faylene had no proof of an affair, but God's word
was enough. She filed for divorce.

"He was devastated!" Fuentes said. "He is truly a family man."

"She thought you were having an affair," Spencer said to Doug. "Yes," he replied.

"Was that true?" "Not at the time."

Maybe not right then, but Doug had had affairs, including one with a Louisiana beauty queen.

Then in 2000, in the midst of his divorce, along came more temptation. Hilary Dewitt, 19, was
the new receptionist at his company, and a great person to feature in his promotional materials.
Doug Grant fell hard.

"I became romantically involved with Hilary right at the divorce with Faylene," Doug told
Spencer, but not before the divorce.

In fact, after his divorce from Faylene, Doug said he'd cleaned up his act, gone through church
counseling and planned to marry Hilary.

"I don’t know that I can express my love, my devotion. I’m in awe of him to be honest," Hilary
told Spencer.

In August 2001, though, those plans hit a big snag.

Fuentes explained, "Faylene had had revelation in the temple from God that she needed to put
her family back together."

For the childrens' sake, God was now telling Faylene to marry Doug all over again. Doug claimed
nobody was more surprised than he was; the divorce hadn't been his idea after all, and he said
he wanted to believe.

"I knew I had to give it a shot," he told Spencer.

"Well, you certainly did a 180 on this didn't you? You ended up not only marrying again, but
marrying the person you had divorced!" said Spencer.

"If I have the chance to make things right and get back with her, absolutely," Doug replied.

To celebrate their new beginning, the Grants vacationed in the Timpanogas National Park in
Utah. Doug said they were hiking on Sept. 24, 2001. According to him, at one point during the
hike, Faylene had some sort of vision - she saw something off in the distance. He said she
climbed over a rock wall down to a tiny ledge for a better view.

"She looked up and she could kind of see the image of Jesus in the clouds," Doug explained,
even taking a picture of his wife seconds before disaster struck. "She said 'Come out here.' And
so I started going over that wall to go out there…and she fell."

It was a 60-foot drop. Doug Grant said he was sure his wife was dead.

"I yelled and I screamed and she said, 'Shut up.' I mean those were her exact words. I knew she
was alive," he told Spencer.

"So you knew she was OK," said Spencer. "I knew she was alive," he replied.

Doug took Faylene to a nearby hospital, was very banged up, but alive. Given how far she
supposedly fell, that made no sense at all to Chief Park Ranger Michael Gosse.

"The height of that fall, the jaggedness of the rocks below… a fall of that serious nature, a
person would have some severe injuries…" explained Gosse.

"She definitely thought she was gonna die young," Doug said, "but it was an accident... it was an
accident."

But Doug's sister, Tammy, was about to discover, it may have been no accident at all.

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Goat gives birth to a 'human'; a faun

Source : http://www.talkzimbabwe.com/news/117/ARTICLE/5329/2009-09-03.html
 THE community of
Lower Gweru and
its surroundings in
the Midlands
Province was left
shell-shocked
when a goat gave
birth to human-like
creature that had
the combined
features of a man
and a goat.

A report in The
Chronicle
newspaper said
the goat gave birth
to the 'creature' on
Sunday morning in
Maboleni area. The
creature had a
human head, face,
nose, shoulders
and human-like
skin that had very
scanty furs. It had
goat features from
the “shoulders” to
the legs. Its
sagging stomach
prevented curious
villagers from
determining
whether it had
human or animal
sex organs as it
protruded covering
the front part.

Villagers said the end product was so scary that even dogs were afraid to move close to the
goat.

“Normally, dogs like to play around a goat when it has just given birth. This time the dogs kept
their distance. This is indeed a miracle that has never been witnessed anywhere,” said one
elderly villager, Themba Moyo. The owner of the goat who gave his name as Mr Nyoni said the
incident left him shocked and he decided to contact the police and the local leadership.

“It’s the first time that my goat did this. I have 15 goats and it’s this goat that gave me birth to
most of them. My goats often give birth to sets of twins,” he said.
His wife, Mrs Nyoni, said she never bothered to check when she learnt from her daughter that
her goat had given birth.

She said she was busy with her laundry and she only learnt from her brother-in-law that the goat
had given birth to an unusual creature. “By that time the ‘thing’ had died. My brother-in-law then
decided that we inform the community and the leadership about this unusual incident,” she said.

Midlands Governor and Resident Minister Jason Machaya, police and the media visited Maboleni
area to have first-hand information. Governor Machaya said it was disgracing that a man can
stoop so low opting for animal company in a world full of women.

“This incident is very shocking. It is my first time to see such an evil thing. It is really
embarrassing. The head belongs to a man while the body is that of a goat. This is evident that
an adult human being was responsible. Evil powers caused this person to lose self control,” he
said.

“We often hear cases of human beings who commit bestiality but this is the first time for such an
act to produce a product with human features.”

Fauns, half-human and half-goat are creatures in Roman mythology. They are often depicted as
a creature with the body of a man and the legs and horns of a goat. This is the first time that
such a creature has actually been seen.

The Goatman is a hominid cryptid most commonly associated with Maryland in the USA. It is
described as a hybrid creature; part man and part goat. Some claim it is a relative of Bigfoot. Its
appearance is similar to the satyrs or the god Pan of Greek mythology, or to the Devil.

The Goatman of Maryland is often associated with Governor’s Bridge Road, Lottsford Road and
Fletchertown Road, in Prince George's County, and with the nearby Glenn Dale Hospital, the
former site of a state tuberculosis sanatorium. It is reported to have attacked a number of
witnesses and to have damaged property. It has also been reported to have killed family pets.

Urban legends

Since the 1970s, the Goatman has become the subject of a number of popular urban legends in
Maryland and beyond. Legends vary, but the Goatman preying on courting couples in a
similar[original research?] fashion to the Hook legend, or attacking cars parked at the side of the
road are common themes. It has also become part of the urban legend of “Crybaby Bridge”
(Governor’s Bridge Road, Prince George's County). Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman argues in
Weird Virginia that the "Bunnyman" sightings from Prince George's County, Maryland, are a
variant on the Goatman encounters.

Florida sightings are sometimes attributed to the Skunk ape, a local legend.

Urban legends often put secret genetics programs forward as a possible source of the Goatman.
Experiments by the federal government and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in
Maryland have both been suggested as possible Goatman origins. There is no evidence to
support either.
 Search
Japanese captured Amelia Earhart

Source : http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20091031/NEWS/910319978/1001/

Latest News - Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart's

Latest Update -

The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course
Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some
old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.

Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in
tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the
first woman to fly around the world.

"There's no guarantee," said Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft
Recovery, a group of aviation enthusiasts in Delaware that found the pieces of bone this year
while on an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.

"You only have to say you have a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and
people get excited. But it is true that, if they can get DNA, and if they can match it to Amelia
Earhart's DNA, that's pretty good."

It could be months before scientists know for sure — and it could turn out the bones are from a
turtle. The fragments were found near a hollowed-out turtle shell that might have been used to
collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.

Earhart's disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century's most enduring
mysteries. Did she run out of fuel and crash at sea? Did her Lockheed Electra develop engine
trouble? Did she spot the island from the sky and attempt to land on a nearby reef?

"What were her last moments like? What was she doing? What happened?" asked Robin Jensen,
an associate professor of communications at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who has
studied Earhart's writings and speeches.

Since 1989, Gillespie's group has made 10 trips to the island, trying each time to find clues that
might help determine the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.

Wally Earhart of Carson City, the fourth cousin of Amelia Earhart, says the U.S. government
continues to perpetrate a “massive coverup” about her mysterious disappearance in the Pacific
72 years ago.

Because of the current surge in interest about the pilot's fate spurred by the recent release of
the film “Amelia,” starring Richard Gere and Hilary Swank, it is time the American public “know
the truth about Amelia's last days,” said Earhart, who will portray Abraham Lincoln as grand
marshal of the Nevada Day parade today.

Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not die as claimed by the government and the Navy
when their twin-engine Electra plunged into the Pacific on July 2, 1937, Wally Earhart said in an
interview.

“They died while in Japanese captivity on the island of Saipan in the Northern Marianas,” claims
Earhart, a 38-year Carson City resident who often portrays Lincoln and other historical figures at
appearances sponsored by groups such as the Nevada Historical Society.

“The Navy and the federal government would have you believe that Amelia and Noonan died on
impact when their plane ran out of gas while attempting to reach Howland Island during their
flight around the world,” Earhart said.

“Their airplane did crash into the Pacific, but instead of dying, the pair was rescued by a nearby
Japanese fishing trawler. The Electra airplane was still floating and the Japanese hauled it aboard
their ship in a large net.

“The Japanese then transported Amelia Earhart, Noonan and the airplane to Saipan. Noonan was
beheaded by the Japanese and Amelia soon died from dysentery and other ailments,” Wally
Earhart continued. He added that the Japanese troops on the island cut the airplane into scrap
and tossed the remnants into the Pacific.

“There are many people, including Japanese military and Saipan natives, who witnessed all these
events on the island,” said Earhart, who disputes claims by several historical researchers that
Amelia Earhart and Noonan were instantly killed when their plane hit the water or they died of
starvation and disease on either Howland Island, Gardner Island or in the Marshall Islands.

Why do the government and Navy continue to “cover up” the true facts of the case?

There are two major theories, according to Wally Earhart.

One is that the Navy was “inept” in not finding and rescuing the aviators after their aircraft
crashed. The other is that President Franklin D. Roosevelt “wanted the whole matter kept under
wraps,” Earhart said.

“Roosevelt had asked Earhart, a close family friend, to scout Japanese military installations in the
Pacific during her flights in the region. This was kept a deep secret back in 1937 and it is being
kept a secret today because Japan and the United States are good friends and military allies and
the government doesn't want to drudge up old antagonisms,” Wally Earhart believes.

Earhart also noted that Amelia Earhart had close relations with Nevada.

“She loved Northern Nevada and often visited friends in Carson City and at Lake Tahoe. And she
also made several flights across the state, stopping at a half-dozen cities,” Earhart added.

On one flight, while flying a small plane between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City in 1928, she was
declared missing after making a forced landing in bad weather in a deserted area near the
Nevada-Utah state line. Rescuers were called out when it was feared she had crashed into a
mountain peak in isolated Lincoln County in eastern Nevada.

Searchers ultimately found Amelia sitting beside her downed plane. She was uninjured but the
craft suffered a bent propeller and other minor damages.

In 1931, Earhart crossed Nevada in an autogiro, the forerunner of the helicopter, making
landings at Wendover, Elko, Battle Mountain, Lovelock and Reno.

And in 1929, George Putnam, her future husband and millionaire heir to a publishing fortune,
divorced his first wife, Dorothy, in Reno. Amelia Earhart and Putnam were married two years
later.

The mystery surrounding the fate of Amelia Earhart may never be solved. It remains the most
famous missing person case in United States history.

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Fresh doubts over Hitler's death

Source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1216455/Hitlers-skull-really-
womans-Fresh-doubts-death-tests-bullet-hole.html
 Fresh doubts
over Hitler's
death after
tests on bullet
hole skull reveal
it belonged to a
woman. Adolf
Hitler may not
have shot
himself dead
and perhaps did
not even die in
his bunker, it
emerged
yesterday.

A skull
fragment
believed for
decades to be
the Nazi
leader’s has
turned out to
be that of a
Revealed: The skull with a bullet hole, kept in a Russian archive, is a woman under
woman's 40 after DNA
analysis.

Scientists and
historians had
long thought it
to be conclusive
proof that Hitler
shot himself in
the head after
taking a
cyanide pill on
30 April 1945
rather than face
the ignominy of
capture. The
piece of skull -
complete with
bullet hole -
had been taken
from outside
the Fuhrer’s
bunker by the
Russian Army
and preserved
by Soviet
intelligence.
 Now the story
of Hitler’s death
will have to
rewritten as a
mystery - and
conspiracy
theorists are
likely to latch
on to the
possibility that
he may not
have died in the
bunker at all.

The traditional story is that Hitler committed suicide with Eva Braun as the Russians
bombarded Berlin.

Although some historians doubted he shot himself and suggested it was Nazi propaganda
to make him a hero, the hole in the skull fragment seemed to settle the argument when it
was put on display in Moscow in 2000.

But DNA analysis has now been performed on the bone by American researchers.

'We know the

skull
corresponds to
a woman
between the
ages of 20 and
40,' said
University of
Connecticut
archeologist
Nick Bellantoni.

'The bone
seemed very
thin; male bone
tends to be
more robust.
And the sutures
where the skull
Is it hers? Eva Braun died aged 33 and the skull was from a woman plates come
under 40 together
seemed to
correspond to
 someone under
40.' Hitler was
56 in April
1945.

Mr Bellantoni
flew to Moscow
to take DNA
swabs at the
State Archive
and was also
shown the
bloodstained
remains of the
bunker sofa on
which Hitler
and Braun were
believed to
have killed
themselves.

'I had the

reference
photos the
Soviets took of
the sofa in
1945 and I was
seeing the
exact same
stains on the
fragments of
wood and fabric
in front of me,
so I knew I was
working with
the real thing,'
he said.

His astonishing
results have
been broadcast
in the U.S. in a
History Channel
documentary
titled Hitler's
Escape.

According to witnesses, the bodies of Hitler and Braun were wrapped in blankets and carried to
the garden just outside the bunker, placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol and set ablaze.

In May 1945 a Russian forensics team dug up what was presumed to be the dictator’s body. Part
of the skull was missing, apparently the result of the suicide shot. The remaining piece of jaw
matched his dental records, according to his captured dental assistants. And there was only one
testicle.

A year later the missing skull fragment was found on the orders of Stalin, who remained
suspicious about Hitler’s fate. Just how and when he died is now shrouded in mystery. Mr
Bellantoni said it was unlikely the bone was Braun’s, who was 33.

'There is no report of Eva Braun having shot herself or having been shot afterwards,' he said.
'Many people died near the bunker.'

Unknown to the world, the corpse then believed to be Hitler's was interred in Magdeburg, East
Germany. There it remained long after Stalin’s death in 1953.

Finally, in 1970, the KGB dug up the corpse, cremated it and secretly scattered the ashes in a
river.

Only the jawbone (which remains away from public view), the skull fragment and the
bloodstained sofa segments were preserved in the deep archives of Soviet intelligence.

Mr Bellantoni studied the remains after flying to Moscow to inspect the gruesome Hitler trophies
at the State Archive.

He was allowed only one hour with the Hitler trove, during which time he applied cotton swabs
and took DNA samples. The samples were then flown back to Connecticut.

At the university’s centre for applied genetics, Linda Strausbaugh closed her lab for three days to
work exclusively on the Hitler project

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Unexplained Mysteries - Roopkund The
Mysterious Skeleton Lake
Source : http://www.travelet.com/2009/09/roopkund-the-mysterious-skeleton-lake/
Roopkund is one of the most enticing and fascinating places of the world. Situated in the isolated
corners of the greatest mountains of Himalayas at a height of about 5029 meters equalizing at
about 16500 feet, it is a creation that nature has brought about in quite an interesting manner.
People tend to locate it in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Roopkund has an inscrutability and
vagueness that has decepted multiple generations of fortune tellers.

Roopkund is better off known as “The skeleton lake” due to the presence of an enormous grave
that holds about 300 to 600 skeletons. This discovery has revolutionized the world of ancient
history ever since 1942, when a park ranger came across this mass deposition of bones. It
probably is an in-accessible frozen lake that requires about four day travel to reach from the
nearest locality. Recently, it has become an important spot for the visitors as they learn and
conjecture this advent of science.
Through carbon dating tests, it has been experimentally estimated that these skeletons belong to
anytime between 12th and 15th century. It is primarily believed that the deaths were caused by
some kind of natural disaster like a blizzard, landslide or any bacterial disease. However, this
topic still remains controversial among the residents, anthropologists and paleontologists of
modern times.
Some went ahead to mystify the deaths with fictional possibilities and creating folklores out of it.
Others suggested multiple causalities of the skeletons being those of wandering Tibetan traders
who had lost their way, royal pilgrims, people committing ritualistic suicides, vanquished army
etc.

More recently in 2004, a team of European and Indian scientists sent by The National Geographic
Channel visited Roopkund to carry on with the probe. Their research has unearthed interesting
hints and information. Part of their findings includes anthropological treasures like well-preserved
corpses, jewelry, bones and skulls belonging to the dead.

By conducting DNA tests on these bodies the experts have found that the dead belonged to two
different teams. One team is marked by the shorter stature of the skeletons while the other is
significantly taller. The first group is thought to be of local artisans while those belonging to the
second group were possibly members of the same clan, like porters.

A fresh set of radio carbon dating was carried out on the bodies to reveal that the previous
dating had come up with incorrect chronological data. The dead are ascribed a new 9th century
date. The scientists of London and Hyderabad examined the skulls closely to find out fractures,
which they deem to be the result of an abrupt hailstorm. The hails were unusually large in
volume – about the size of a tennis ball each!
No wonder that anyone exposed to such a calamity in a mercilessly open Garhwal Himalayan
plain were doomed to be perished. The raw air and icy hail blasts contributed to their holocaust.
It is speculated that more than one landslide has struck Roopkund ever since the massacre. This
has served in burying some of the bodies inside the lake – the ones that are still found intact,
preserved under ice.

Even if the dating and possible causes behind such tragic death have been hinted at, the mystery
continues about a different aspect of the Skeleton Lake. It still puzzles experts to think about
where these people were going. Roopkund was never a historically significant region and no
traces of any trade routes have been found to Tibet nor could it possibly be a site for pilgrimage
to attract large groups of people.
However, the documentary ‘Skeleton Lake’ made by the National Geographic Channel has
countered this assumption. The film claimed that Roopkund was the venue for the Garhwali
religious festival called ‘Nanda Jaat yatra’ held in every 12 years. A procession consisting of a
newborn four-horned ram considered the familiar of a Goddess starts from the nearest village
and heads towards Roopkund.

Coming back to the Skeleton Lake riddle, probably the skeletons were those of the devotees
participating in such a mass procession centuries ago. The folklores say that a certain king had
participated in this religious ‘yatra’ with his company of female dancers. This had offended the
Goddess Nanda and she vented her rage by bringing down the snowstorm at the hapless
revelers.

Such accounts might sound mere fairytales, but it is quite possible that at least the taller bodies
were of royalty and the short statured bodies scattered everywhere along Roopkund were of
local porters – all killed by a destructive hailstorm. Whatever may be the reason of their death –
no one still knows what lead so many people to take such an arduous journey so many years
ago.

Unexplained Mysteries - The goat Search

woman: Chinese
grandmother, 101, grows
mystery horn on forehead
Source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1256398/Chinese-
grandmother-grows-devil-horns.html
An elderly Chinese woman has stunned her family and fellow villagers by growing from her
forehead a horn than resembles a goat’s.

Grandmother Zhang Ruifang, 101, of Linlou village, Henan province, began developing the
mysterious protrusion last year.

Since then it has grown 2.4in in length and another now appears to emerging on the other side
of the mother of seven’s forehead.

The condition has left her family baffled and worried.

Her youngest of six sons, Zhang Guozheng, 60, said when a patch of rough skin formed on her
forehead last year ‘we didn't pay too much attention to it’.

‘But as time went on a horn grew out of her head and it is now 6cm long,' added Mr Zhang,
whose eldest brother and sibling is 82 years old.

‘Now something is also growing on the right side of her forehead. It’s quite possible that it’s
another horn.’

Although, it is unknown what the protrusion is on Mrs Zhang’s head, it resembles a cutaneous
horn.

This is a funnel-shaped growth and although most are only a few millimetres in length, some can
extend a number of inches from the skin.

Cutaneous horns are made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our
hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.

They usually develop in fair-skinned elderly adults who have a history of significant sun exposure
but it is extremely unusual to see it form protrusions of this size.

The growths are most common in elderly people, aged between 60 and the mid-70s. They can
sometimes be cancerous but more than half of cases are benign.

Common underlying causes of cutaneous horns are common warts, skin cancer and actinic
keratoses, patches of scaly skin that develop on skin exposed to the sun, such as your face,
scalp or forearms.

Cutaneous horns can be removed surgically but this does not treat the underlying cause.

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Sicily Crypts: Place Where The
Dead Don't Sleep
A Haunting Experience in Palermo Catacomb

It has been said that Sicilians have an obsession with death. It is still very common to see elderly
Sicilian widows wearing black for the remainder of their lives and a tradition of professional
mourners once existed for centuries. It is hard to say where this cult of the dead comes from,
either from the deep rooted Catholic faith or perhaps a holdover from ancient Greek and Roman
times. Regardless of the origins, notions about death are still alive in Sicily, and no place better
exemplifies this than Palermo's Capuchin Crypt. This macabre display is one of a mummy.

The Capuchin Order is an offshoot of the more famous Franciscans that branched out in the mid
sixteenth century. Their names comes from the distinctive hood that the monks wear that has
since lent its name to the popular coffee drink Cappuccino, whose foamed milk top it resembles.
Even though this Order of the Friars Minor originated in the Marche region of Italy, their unique
take on the mortal body after death make them a perfect fit for Sicily. In fact the first monk to be
embalmed was placed in the crypt shortly after the Order arrived in Palermo.

Entrance to the Crypt is located at Piazza Cappuccini, which is a short walk from the Palazzo
Reale. It is an unassuming building that conforms to the Order's vow of poverty and may be
overlooked if you miss the signs. On arriving you may be greeted by the elderly monk who
watches over the crypt as he gestures toward the cool and dark stairway that leads to the crypt.
As you walk down the steps one is reminded of Dante's inscription above the gates of hell:
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
Once inside the crypt feels more like the set for "Night of the Living Dead" or Michael Jackson's
"Thriller" than a religious community. No horror movie or amusement park haunted house can
compete with hundred of bodies dressed in their Sunday's best and suspended by hooks on the
wall. The bodies, in various levels of decay stare down (some with their own eyes) looking like
they are ready to grab you, wanting you to join them.

A creepy, eerie feeling surrounds you as you walk along the halls. Suddenly the ghostly voice of a
monk echoes through the chamber stating "no photo." It makes you wonder why anyone would
want to take pictures in the first place. If ghosts could be caught on film, it would certainly be
here.

Even though it seems like a hodgepodge of bodies, some hanging and some in open coffins, the
crypt is organized by social status and gender. The first section contains the monks of the order,
the original residents of crypt. This section includes the body of Brother Silvestro da Gubbio, the
oldest member of the crypt whose grotesque remains have been welcoming visitors since 1599.

The men's section is next, all dressed in clothing of their time period and looking ready to rise and
join the living. The Women's section is very interesting as there is a special area for "virgins"
denoted by bodies that wear a metal band on their skulls. These maids still wearing their silk
dresses and bonnets are very spooky. The professor's section is actually the area designated for
doctors, soldiers another men of professions and include some famous individuals such as the
painter Velasquez and sculptor Lorenzo Marabitti. The soldiers dressed in their parade uniforms
are still colorful after nearly two centuries. The Priest section is small but contains numerous holy
men still wearing their tattered cassocks and ghostly white vestments.
The secret to the embalming process is visible toward the end of the tour as one of the "strainer
rooms" used to desiccate the bodies is open to view. The process is mainly due to the conditions
in the crypt itself that naturally wicks away bodily fluids. However the bodies are then embalmed
using vinegar before being dressed according to family requests.

This process was halted in 1871 with Brother Riccardo being the last buried under these
conditions. However in the small chapel at the end of the tour houses the very last member of the
crypt, a child that has come to be known as "sleeping beauty". Rosalia Lombardo died in 1920
and thanks to a secret chemical embalming process she looks as if she is only sleeping. Encased
in a glass-covered coffin, it is hard to believe that this little girl died 85 years ago. She looks like
she could open her eyes at any moment, a truly haunting vision that stays with you for days.

As you leave, you can support the convent by purchasing some freaky postcards of your favorite
corpses from the crypt. As you can't take photos, they make good conversation pieces or gifts for
people you hate. Otherwise visitors to the crypt shouldn't need souvenirs, as the weeklong
nightmares should keep the memories fresh in you mind for a long time. This is not a tour for the
squeamish, easily frightened or small children. However it is an absolute must for fans of horror
movies, the macabre, mummies, and of course morticians.

Search
'Blood' runs from image of Christ
Source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1286732/Pilgrims-storm-church-blood-runs-image-Christ.html
 Blood of Christ? Thousands of people gathered at the Oratory of the Sacred

Thousands of pilgrims have overwhelmed a small church in Argentina after blood was said to be
oozing down the face of an image of Jesus Christ.

A red substance was photographed running from the forehead of Jesus and down his cheek in
a church depiction of the Last Supper.

Local priest Father Jorge Gandur said the 'ooze comes from one of the wounds on the left side of
the forehead of Christ produced by the crown of thorns'.

The stains were first noticed on Friday by two men who had entered the Oratory of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus in Yerba Buena, Tucuman province.

The pair reported the substance to Father Gandur, who took samples of the substance to be
scientifically tested to see if it was human blood.

After local media were tipped off that the men had seen Christ weeping 'tears of blood' the
streets surrounding the church became jammed pilgrims wanting to see the phenomenon for
themselves.
 A crowd gathers outside the church waiting to get a glimpse of the 'miracle'

Hundreds of people were reported to be crying and praying fervently in at least two streets
leading up to the church. A crowd gathers outside the Oratory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in
Yerba Buena, Argentina

A crowd gathers outside the church waiting to get a glimpse of the 'miracle'

The area has become so congested and the church so crowded that on Sunday priests
celebrated Mass in the street outside.

As more people arrived from surrounding provinces, officials of the Archdiocese of Tucuman
yesterday urged worshippers to exercise prudence and caution and not to jump to conclusions
about the alleged authenticity of the image.

'If this is something wrought by God, it will have continuity, and if it is of men, it will disappear,'
Father Gandur said.

'As a priest, at no time have I wished to create false expectations,' he said.

'I am not going to support deceit. Something happened here that divine wisdom will explain in
time.'

The Roman Catholic Church is cautious in dealing with claims of so-called 'private revelations'
because so many later turn out to be false.

Hundreds have been reported in the last century but only a few are considered to be authentic.

The Vatican has admitted that it believes most are the fruits of the imaginations of the alleged
visionaries or the elaborate hoaxes of people seeking to gain financially.

Five years ago, for instance, a statue of St Pìo of Pietrelcina, a 20th century priest commonly
known as 'Padre Pio', was said to have wept blood in a church in Marsicovetere, Italy, but tests
later showed that the blood belonged to a woman.

Last week Church officials in France rejected the claims of a visionary who said the Virgin Mary
was using her as a mouthpiece to speak to the world.

In 2007 the Vatican also aggressively dismissed as 'hysterical' the claims that the Mother of
Christ was appearing to a woman in the back garden of her home in Surbiton, Surrey

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The Rosetta Stone is 3 feet 9 inches long and 2 feet 41/2 inches wide - (1
stone (originally thought to be basalt in composition) with writing on it in tw
scripts, Hieroglyphic, Demotic Egyptian and Greek. Because Greek was well
the hieroglyphs.

The Rosetta stone is dated to March 196 BC, in the 9th year of Ptolemy V
was the confirmation of the control of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt. The P
Egypt since the fragmentation of the Empire of Alexander the Great, and wh
their lifestyle and language remained exclusively Greek. Egypt had by now b
Greek and Egyptian, although in many parts of the country the two rarely m

In the years preceding the setting up of the Rosetta Stone, control of cert
the Ptolemies, and it had taken the Ptolemaic armies some time to put down
Upper Egypt, particularly Thebes, were not yet back in the control of the go
the best way to emphasise the legitimacy of the 13 year old Ptolemy V in th
emphasise his traditional royal credentials with a coronation ceremony in the
throughout Egypt. This second aim was done through a series of priestly de
the best-known example. It is a version of the decree issued at the city of M
the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The inscription begins with praise of Ptolemy, and then includes an account
the Delta, not identified with certainty), and the good deeds done by the kin
describes the decree's overriding purpose, the establishment of the cult of t
priests shall maintain the cult of the king ('...the priests shall pay homage th
be set up ('...there shall be set upon the shrine the ten gold crowns of the k
as the king's birthday, shall be celebrated. It ends by saying that it is to be m
magnify and honour Ptolemy V, and that the text should be set up in hard s
today.

The Egyptians had used hieroglyphic script for nearly 3,500 years, from 310
about the turn of the third century AD the Egyptians began to write their lan
alphabet, to which were added seven characters derived ultimately from hie
be known as Coptic, no doubt a corruption of the Greek word Aiguptios. Kno
hieroglyphic script was probably lost soon after it had been superseded and
discovery of the Rosetta Stone. The deciphering began with the work of th
that both the demotic and hieroglyphic writing contained both alphabetic an

French Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard (sometimes spelled Boussard) (177

port city of Rosetta (present-day Rashid) on July 15, 1799. Some scientists a
Egypt (1798-1801). After Napoleon Bonaparte founded the Institut de l'Egyp
of it. Bouchard found a black stone when guiding construction works in the
immediately understood the importance of the stone and showed it to Gene
that it should be brought to the institute, where it arrived in August, 1799.

In 1801 the French had to surrender. A dispute arose about the results of th
while the British considered them forfeit in the name of King George III. The
writing to the English diplomat William Richard Hamilton, threatened to burn
burned Library of Alexandria. The British gave in and insisted only on the de
hide the Rosetta Stone in a boat despite the clauses of the capitulation, but
imprints they had made previously, when embarking in Alexandria. When it
to the British Museum, where it has been kept since 1802.

In 1814 Thomas Young finished translating the enchorial (demotic) text, and

In 1822 French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion, with the aid of the
descendants of the ancient Egyptians) - succeeded in realizing the phonetic
that hieroglyphs do not have only symbolic meaning, but that they also serv
realization that the stone contained the same passage written three times in
become and ancient Code Book.

Champollion greatly expanded his research from 1822-1824 and is known as

"Rosetta Stone" is also used as a metaphor to refer to anything that is a crit

or a difficult problem.

History of the Rosetta Stone

Modern-era discovery

In preparation for Napoleon's 1798 campaign in Egypt, the French brought w

archaeologists known as the 'savants'. French Army engineer Lieutenant Pie
sometime in mid-July 1799, first official mention of the find being made afte
Institut d'Égypte in Cairo. It was spotted in the foundations of an old wall, d
Egyptian port city of Rashid (Rosetta) and sent down to the Institute headq
France shortly after the discovery, the savants remained behind with French
attacks for a further 18 months. In March 1801, the British landed at Abouk
to Alexandria alongside the troops of Jacques-Francois Menou who marched
Menou and the remnant of his army fled to fortified Alexandria where they w
siege, the stone now inside the city. Overwhelmed by invading Ottoman troo
remaining French in Cairo capitulated on June 22, and Menou admitted defe
After the surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of French archaeological a
refused to hand them over, claiming they belonged to the Institute. British G
Donoughmore, refused to relieve the city until de Menou gave in. Newly arri
Richard Hamilton agreed to check the Rosetta Stone collections in Alexand
had not revealed.

When Hutchinson claimed all materials were property of the British Crown, a
said to Clarke and Hamilton that they would rather burn all their discoveries
Library of Alexandria — than turn them over. Clarke and Hamilton pleaded t
items such as biology specimens would be the scholars' private property. Bu
property and hid it.

How exactly the Stone came to British hands is disputed. Colonel Tomkyns H
Britain, claimed later that he had personally seized it from Menou and carrie
detailed account however, Clarke stated that a French 'officer and member o
Cripps, and Hamilton secretly into the back-streets of Alexandria, revealing t
under protective carpets. According to Clarke this savant feared for the ston
Hutchinson was informed at once, and the stone taken away, possibly by Tu
departed later with only imprints and plaster casts of the stone.

Turner brought the stone to Britain aboard the captured French frigate HMS
March 11, it was presented to the Society of Antiquaries of London and Step
translation. Later it was taken to the British Museum, where it remains to th
artefact state "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801" on the left sid
right.

Translation Experts inspecting the Rosetta Stone during the International C

In 1814, Briton Thomas Young finished translating the enchorial (demotic) t

but he did not succeed in translating them. From 1822 to 1824 the French s
Champollion greatly expanded on this work together with the efforts of othe
Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Akerblad and William John Bankes. He is gen
of the Rosetta Stone. Champollion could read both Greek and Coptic, and
Coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in Coptic, he worked
Demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs. By working out what some hierogl
the Demotic (or older Coptic) and Greek to the hieroglyphs by first translatin
then working towards ancient names that had never been written in any oth
alphabet to decipher the remaining text.

In 1858, the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania publishe

Rosetta Stone as accomplished by three of its undergraduate members: C
Morton.

Reading the Rosetta Stone

Prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual decipherment, t
Egyptian language and script since shortly before the fall of the Roman Emp
become increasingly specialised even in the later Pharaonic period; by the 4
reading hieroglyphs. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing
the Roman Emperor Theodosius I; the last known inscription, found at Phila
is dated to 24 August 396 AD.
Hieroglyphs retained their pictorial appearance and classical authors emphas
and Roman alphabets. For example, in the 5th century the priest Horapollo
200 glyphs. Believed to be authoritative yet in many ways misleading, this a
the understanding of Egyptian writing. Later attempts at deciphering hierogl
Egypt during the 9th and 10th centuries. Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiy
script, by relating them to the contemporary Coptic language used by Coptic
continued with fruitless attempts at decipherment by European scholars, no
century, Athanasius Kircher in the 17th and Georg Zoëga in the 18th. The d
provide critical missing information, gradually revealed by a succession of sc
Champollion to determine the nature of this mysterious script.

Greek text

"Illustration depicting the rounded-off lower-right edge of the Rosetta Stone

reconstruction of the missing Greek text"

Richard Porson's suggested reconstruction of the missing Greek text (1803)

The Greek text on the Rosetta Stone provided the starting point. Ancient Gr
details of its use in the Hellenistic period as a government language in Ptole
discoveries of Greek papyri were a long way in the future. Thus the earliest
the translators still struggling with the historical context and with administra
verbally presented an English translation of the Greek text at a Society of An
two of the lithographic copies made in Egypt had reached the Institut de Fra
antiquarian Gabriel de La Porte du Theil set to work on a translation of the G
elsewhere on Napoleon's orders, he left his unfinished work in the hands of
1803 produced the first published translations of the Greek text, in both Lat
circulate widely. At Cambridge, Richard Porson worked on the missing lower
skilful suggested reconstruction, which was soon being circulated by the Soc
inscription. At Göttingen at almost the same moment, the Classical historian
these prints, made a new Latin translation of the Greek text that was more
1803, it was reprinted by the Society of Antiquaries, alongside Weston's pre
Turner's narrative, and other documents, in a special issue of its journal Arc

Demotic text
Johan David Åkerblad's table of Demotic phonetic characters and their Copti

At the time of the stone's discovery, the Swedish diplomat and scholar Joha
script of which some examples had recently been found in Egypt, which cam
Coptic" because, although it had few similarities with the later Coptic script,
some form of the Coptic language (the direct descendant of Ancient Egyptia
Silvestre de Sacy, who had been discussing this work with Åkerblad, receive
minister of the interior, one of the early lithographic prints of the Rosetta St
this same script. He and Åkerblad set to work, both focusing on the middle t
alphabetic. They attempted, by comparison with the Greek, to identify withi
names ought to occur. In 1802, Silvestre de Sacy reported to Chaptal that h
("Alexandros", "Alexandreia", "Ptolemaios", "Arsinoe" and Ptolemy's title "Ep
alphabet of 29 letters (more than half of which were correct) that he had id
text. They could not, however, identify the remaining characters in the dem
ideographic and other symbols alongside the phonetic ones.

Hieroglyphic text

Silvestre de Sacy eventually gave up work on the stone, but he was to make
discussions with a Chinese student about Chinese script, Silvestre de Sacy c
in 1797 that the foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might b
long ago as 1761, Jean-Jacques Barthélemy had suggested that the charact
inscriptions were proper names. Thus, when Thomas Young, foreign secreta
about the stone in 1814, Silvestre de Sacy suggested in reply that in attemp
look for cartouches that ought to contain Greek names, and try to identify p
three columns of characters, the first column depicting characters in Greek a
equivalents in demotic and in hieroglyphs respectively"
Champollion's table of hieroglyphic phonetic characters with their demotic a

Young did so, with two results that together paved the way for the final dec
text the phonetic characters "p t o l m e s" (in today's transliteration "p t w
name "Ptolemaios". He also noticed that these characters resembled the equ
on to note as many as 80 similarities between the hieroglyphic and demotic
because the two scripts were previously thought to be entirely different from
that the demotic script was only partly phonetic, also consisting of ideograph
Young's new insights were prominent in the long article "Egypt" that he con
1819. He could, however, get no further.

In 1814, Young first exchanged correspondence about the stone with Jean-F
who had produced a scholarly work on Ancient Egypt. Champollion, in 1822
inscriptions of the Philae obelisk, on which William John Bankes had tentativ
"Kleopatra" in both languages. From this, Champollion identified the phonet
transliteration q l i? w p ? d r ? .t). On the basis of this and the foreign name
an alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphic characters, which appears, printed from
Dacier", addressed at the end of 1822 to Bon-Joseph Dacier, secretary of th
Lettres and immediately published by the Académie. This "Letter" marks the
hieroglyphs, not only for the alphabet chart and the main text, but also for t
similar phonetic characters seemed to occur not only in Greek names but als
confirmed this, identifying the names of pharaohs Ramesses and Thutmose
inscriptions that had been copied by Bankes at Abu Simbel and sent on to C
point, the stories of the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hie
many other texts to develop a first Ancient Egyptian grammar and a hierogly
published after his death.
 Later work

Work on the stone now focused on fuller understanding of the texts and the
with one another. In 1824, the Classical scholar Antoine-Jean Letronne prom
Greek text for Champollion's use; Champollion promised in return an analysi
seemed to differ. At Champollion's sudden death in 1832, his draft of this an
stalled. At the death in 1838 of François Salvolini, Champollion's former stud
were found among his papers (incidentally demonstrating that Salvolini's ow
plagiarism). Letronne was at last able to complete his commentary on the G
which appeared in 1841. During the early 1850s, two German Egyptologists
produced revised Latin translations based on the demotic and hieroglyphic t
three members of the Philomathean Society at the University of Pennsylvani

The question of whether one of the three texts was the standard version fro
translated has remained controversial. Letronne, in 1841, attempted to show
government under its Ptolemaic dynasty) was the original.[P] Among recent
hieroglyphs were the most important of the scripts on the stone: they were
learned of their priesthood". Philippe Derchain and Heinz Josef Thissen have
simultaneously, while Stephen Quirke sees in the decree "an intricate coales
Parkinson points out that the hieroglyphic version, straying from archaic form
to that of the demotic register that the priests more commonly used in ever
cannot be matched word for word helps to explain why its decipherment ha
especially for those original scholars who were expecting an exact bilingual

Rivalries

"Photo depicting a large copy of the Rosetta Stone filling an interior courtya
of the Rosetta Stone by Joseph Kosuth in Figeac, France, the birthplace of J

Even before the Salvolini affair, disputes over precedence and plagiarism pu
Young's work is acknowledged in Champollion's 1822 Lettre à M. Dacier, but
example, James Browne, a sub-editor on the Encyclopædia Britannica (whic
contributed anonymously a series of review articles to the Edinburgh Review
alleging that the "unscrupulous" Champollion plagiarised it. These articles w
and published in book form in 1827. Young's own 1823 publication reasserte
deaths of Young and Champollion, in 1829 and 1832, did not put an end to
stone by the British Museum curator E. A. Wallis Budge, published in 1904,
by contrast with Champollion's. In the early 1970s, French visitors complain
than one of Young on an adjacent information panel; English visitors compla
were in fact the same size.

Unsolved Mysteries of Lemuria

Lemuria was an ancient civilization which existed prior to and during the time of Atlantis.
Physically, it is believed that Lemuria existed largely in the Southern Pacific, between North
America and Asia/Australia. Lemuria is also sometimes referred to as Mu, or the Motherland (of
Mu). At its peak of civilization, the Lemurian people were both highly evolved and very spiritual.
While concrete physical evidence of this ancient continent may be difficult to find, many people
"know" that they have a strong connection to Lemuria.

We're going to tell you a little story. Approximately 14,000 years ago, the culture known as
Lemuria was thriving. There were also other cultures on Earth, such as Atlantis, which were
thriving as well. The holy people or the prophets of the Lemurian culture began to be aware that
something was going to be changing. They began receiving information that the Earth was going
to go through a very dramatic shift. The shift that they were referring to was what you call the
Great Flood. You've also called it the destruction of Atlantis. These holy people of Lemuria were
very much in touch with the land.

They were the ancient ancestors of the Native Americans. They began to be aware that it was
very important that the knowledge from Lemuria be preserved. And so for about 2,000 to 3,000
years, they were preparing for this great cataclysm. They began spreading their teachings about
the Earth and about mankind's history to as many people as they possibly could. They believed
that if they could spread this information to as many people as possible, the information would
be stored within the cells of the human bodies. Then it would never be forgotten. They also
began to store information in crystals.

These crystals were taken deep within the Earth to be stored and preserved. These ancient
Lemurians also began to create detailed maps of the underground tunnels that existed between
power points on our planet. They also took the time to prepare their plans. They knew that they
would receive a sign telling them it was time to go underground before the floods came. So they
prepared themselves for these several thousand years to be the sacred keepers of the records of
Earth. They knew it was very important that the information they held be saved for when the
waters receded, otherwise the entire history of Earth and the sacred teachings of the Lemurians
would have been lost forever.

These holy people received their signs and began going underground. This occurred
approximately one year before the flood. While underground, they learned to live there and use
the underground environment for their sustenance. They built very supportive and loving
communities underground. During that year, they did the final work involved in preserving some
of the knowledge that they knew needed to be preserved.

Then the flood came. All these people who were underground were safe from the waters, even
though many, many people on the surface of the Earth perished. When the waters receded, the
people emerged from underground. The land they once knew was now very different. This
emergence from the Earth is the point at which the Native Americans' creation history begins. In
a very literal sense, they did emerge from the Earth. Most of the native peoples have lost the
exact literal memory of this emergence, but within the highest ranks of the shamans, this
knowledge is still passed on.

Now, we tell this story from the point of view of the Native Americans, but they were not the
only people who went underground. The holy people all around this planet went underground.
For instance, the Aborigines in Australia and those who were later to become the Druids in
England were all preserving their knowledge underground as well. The Druids were preserving
the ancient Atlantean information, as were the Egyptians. But the native peoples of the Pacific
area, including Asia, were preserving the Lemurian information. These native peoples, even
today, hold within themselves this sacred knowledge. Some of it is conscious but most of it lies
in the subconscious. The Ainu of Japan are one of the tribes that preserved some of the
knowledge. There was a great cooperation among all of these peoples on Earth to make sure
that the sacred teachings were never lost.

The prophets also knew that when the new time came, after the flood, mankind would move
away from the sacred teachings. The prophets knew that there would be a very long period of
time during which the teachings would have to be kept hidden. They knew that one day that
cycle would end and the teachings would once again emerge from each and every person. That
is what is happening now for all of you. You are drawn to visit places like the Native American
sacred spots or Peru or Egypt because you are feeling this ancient knowledge beginning to rise
to the surface within you, and you seek to find a vehicle through which that memory can be
activated.

As the memory is activated in each of you, it will not necessarily take the form of information.
Instead, it will simply take the form of your own spiritual and inner wisdom. The ancients never
had religion and never felt the need to make someone else believe the way they did. That
pattern happened only after the flood. The ancients all had an inner wisdom and an inner
spirituality that was never discussed or argued about. Even though everyone is unique and has
his or her own spiritual beliefs, ultimately those beliefs all are the same idea on the most basic
level.

Those basic beliefs are the belief in a higher power, love and respect for each other and love and
respect for the Earth. That is the very basic foundation of spirituality. That was the spirituality of
the ancients, and that is the spirituality that is awakening within you. It doesn't matter whether
you are Buddhist, Shinto or Christian. All that matters is that basic foundation of spirituality.
Belief in a higher power, love and respect for each other and love and respect for the Earth. It is
really that simple. As you travel to these hallowed spots and you get back in touch with the
Earth, that's how the spirituality gets awakened within you.

Do not underestimate the power of the experiences you have while you are on this trail. They
awaken within you something that was lying asleep for quite a long time. Reincarnationally, you
are those ancient Lemurians. You are fulfilling your agreements by being here now and helping
in the awakening. You all carry those memories within you. Honor that and trust that you do
have them within you.

The question that has been asked of us so many times is, What's going to happen now? Is there
going to be another cataclysm like the flood? How is this new awareness going to be activated
on Earth? You are all working very hard on an energetic level so that you will not bring about
another cataclysm. We do not perceive that you are going to experience another flood or
destructive earthquake.

This time the change is going to happen within you. You are going to experience, in a sense,
your own personal internal earthquake, your own crumbling of belief systems that no longer
serve you. So in a sense, there is going to be destruction and the ending of a cycle but it's not
going to take place around you in the physical world; it's going to take place in an even more
powerful place - within you. So do not fear if old things you carry begin falling away. Do not fear
if old relationships can no longer be the same. Most of all, do not fear exploring the unknown,
for the deeper you go within, the more profoundly you are going to experience this. Know that
all that happens to you, even the things that may be disturbing, is part of your own personal
release of the old. As you are releasing the old, you will be exposed to new ideas. They may feel
strange or foreign to you, but just keep yourself open and allow whatever is there to come to
you before you assume that it is not for you. Stay open and explore.

During this tour, the ancient energies that you are exposed to are going to accelerate this
process even more, for it is time now for the awakening to happen. You have all chosen to be
the pioneers who help to lead the planet in this age.

There is a very powerful site in Santa Fe called Bandolier. To describe what the energy is like
there is very difficult, so please bear with us. Bandolier is one of the places on Earth that
integrates the star energy and the ancient Earth energy, so when you visit there, you may feel
strong ET energy, but at the same time you may feel the presence of the Earth Mother very
strongly too. It is very important that on each planet there be sacred spots that integrate both
the star and the planet energy. Bandolier is one such place. There are many. For instance in
Japan you have Mount Kurama. So as you are walking through Bandolier, feel your feet planted
firmly on the ground and at the same time feel your star connection.

One of the themes of your time in Sedona has been grounding. You allowed yourself to take a
very difficult hike. You succeeded because you allowed the Earth to support you. You became
one with the Earth. From the Earth you drew strength, and it is the strength that is now going to
help you as you go to the second part of the tour. The energy of Santa Fe is going to be
different but it is very closely connected to what you experienced this morning. When the tour is
over you will see how they fit together.

We would like to take some time to answer your questions, but first we would simply like to
congratulate all of you on the great acceleration you have all experienced in the past few days.
So many things have moved within you. You cannot really understand how much has occurred
within you with your mind, but you will notice, when you go back to your normal life in Japan,
that things have changed.

Earlier, I felt that I knew exactly when all the people were going to leave the place we were
exploring.

That experience, especially with the crowds, was showing you what it's like to be one with the
Earth. You knew when the crowd was going to disappear because you could sense the energy of
the Earth. You were a part of the environment, and that is exactly what the ancients
experienced.

The Native Americans do something called the Rain Dance. Today much of the significance of
that ceremony has been lost; today the belief is that the dance makes it rain. However, in the
ancient days, the Rain Dance was very much like what you experienced with the crowds. The
Native Americans would do a Rain Dance not because they wanted it to rain, but because they
could sense the energy of the environment and they were moved to become part of the
environment and celebrate the rain. There is a subtle difference. We hope we have explained it.
You experienced that feeling of being one with the Earth. It was very important to bring up that
ancient knowledge.

What is the significance of the Snake People?

The Snake People are very, very ancient. They existed approximately 5,000 to 6,000 years ago.
They were descendants of the Lemurians, in particular, descendants of the original record-
keepers of Lemuria. The snake, in terms of symbology, has always been used on Earth to mean
wisdom, so you find many cultures around Earth in which the snake, as a symbol, plays a very
important role.

Now today, you were taken to a place called Montezuma's Well. The myth is that that was one of
the emergence points of the ancient Lemurian/Native American. Sedona is one of the places that
was first inhabited by the people who were keeping the records. After they emerged, their
civilization lived mostly high in the cliffs. At that time Sedona was a chain of islands, so they had
to live on higher ground. This original group that came from beneath the Earth lived here and, of
course, procreated, so there were many generations here. The Snake People are descendants of
those original ones from beneath the Earth.

Now you've all seen the large amount of quartz crystal that is in the red rock, and you all know
that quartz crystal can hold information and knowledge. Sedona was chosen as an emergence
point because of all the quartz crystal in the area. It would be very easy to use all the quartz
crystal in the rock to hold the knowledge of Lemuria, so the Snake People living in this area were
committed to programming that knowledge into the rocks. This is why so many people are now
drawn to Sedona. Anyone who has a Lemurian connection will naturally be drawn here. All of
you, at one time or another, belonged to the Snake People tribe.

Are there any ruins of Lemurian temples in the Sedona area?

There are some physical remains of those temples but they are so eroded now that you really
couldn't recognize them as remains of a temple. However, energetically those temples still exist.
They can only be accessed on the inner planes through your dream state or through your
meditations, but they are still very active. That's another reason why people feel so drawn to
come to Sedona. They have traveled here in other states of consciousness so even though their
physical bodies haven't been here, they feel familiar with it. There are many Lemurian temples
here interdimensionally.

Is there any connection between those who survived the Great Flood and
extraterrestrials?
What a wonderful and creative question. No one has ever asked this before, and it is one of the
particular areas of interest for us. We assume that a good number of you have read The Prism of
Lyra, but we will attempt to keep it very simple in case you haven't. The people who went
underground during the flood could be associated with what we call the Sirians or the Sirian
energy. Their symbol was the snake. They were the keepers of knowledge throughout. As to
whether there were people who survived the flood on the surface, the answer is yes. You have a
Biblical story about a man named Noah who built an ark. That story is very true with one
exception. There was not just one Noah but many people around the planet who built arks or
boats to survive the flood. So when the flood finally receded, there were those who had gone
underground and there were those who had stayed aboveground. And yet there was contact.

Among those who stayed aboveground, there were two factions. There was one faction that we
would say was oriented toward the energy from Sirius. Those people had a love for mankind and
a desire for peace and knowledge. But there was another faction that was more aligned with
what we would call the Lyran influence. They were the ones who wanted power. Some of those
people were the ones in powerful positions in Atlantis. Now we're talking about those who stayed
aboveground. For the most part, those who went underground were all of one orientation.

All through history, you have had conflict between the knowledge-keepers and those hungry for
power. That still happens today. So as soon as the floods receded, the conflicts started again.
That is why the people who are now considered Native American did not integrate themselves
with the rest of the world. They kept themselves separate in order to assure that the knowledge
would be preserved; they allowed the power struggle to continue while they simply sat back and
tried to preserve the knowledge. You can see that is happening now. But the cycle is finishing,
because so many of you now are beginning to realize how important that spiritual knowledge is.
As more and more of you begin a spiritual search, those in power will have to change their ways
because they won't be able to manipulate people anymore.

So your individual search for your own spiritual truth eventually affects the entire planet. This
time on your planet that you are calling a new age is the completion of many thousands of years
of conflict. We perceive that the conflict will be healed.

How long did people live underground? How long were their lives?

When the flood receded, about half of those who were underground emerged. Half stayed
underground because they were not quite sure it was safe to emerge. Those who emerged saw
that conflict was already beginning on the surface once again, so they retreated and kept to
themselves. They refused to become part of that conflict. That's why today there is such a
division between Western society and the native peoples. The Native Americans do not want to
play the game of conflict.

The people who stayed underground remained there for several more generations. At one point,
half of the half emerged, but there was still a group who remained underground. They are still
there. They are the people you call the Inner Earth people. They have evolved quite rapidly over
the past several thousand years. They have built their own society totally independent of yours,
and in a sense they have mutated to allow themselves to adapt to life below the surface. They
do not want to play the game of conflict either. Their lives are quite long, a life span averaging
approximately 600 to 800 years. They do not procreate at the rate you do so there is no
population problem.

In terms of the longevity of people during the period of the flood, their life span was longer than
yours. It really depended upon the genetic characteristics of the individual. If a person had a
genetic makeup based on a strong extraterrestrial background, he had a longer life span. This
information is spoken about very clearly in the Bible. It is given that the ages of certain Biblical
figures are well over 100 years, like Moses. Some are given quite long lifetimes. Those records
are out there.

Over time, as you all have evolved away from being a part of the Earth, your life spans have
gotten shorter. This is because when you are one with the Earth, you channel the life force of
the Earth and it rejuvenates you. But when you cut yourself off from your life force, you
deteriorate faster. This is why Native Americans have such long life spans and yogis who live up
in the Himalayas do, too. They have, as much as they could, kept their connections with Earth.
Your life span will grow longer the more you reconnect with the Earth. As your consciousness
changes, your life span will grow.

Mystery of Eye of Horus

The Eye of Horus

(Wedjat)
(previously Wadjet
and the Eye of the
Moon; and
afterwards as The
Eye of Ra) or
("Udjat") is an
ancient Egyptian
symbol of
protection and
royal power from
deities, in this case
from Horus or Ra.
The symbol is seen
on images of
Horus' mother,
Hathor, and on
other deities
associated with
her.

In the Egyptian
language, the
word for this
symbol was
"Wedjat". It was
the eye of one of
the earliest of
Egyptian deities,
Wadjet, who later
became associated
with Bast, Mut,
 and Hathor as
well. Wedjat was a
solar deity and this
symbol began as
her eye, an all
seeing eye. In
early artwork,
Hathor is also
depicted with this
eye. Funerary
amulets were
often made in the
shape of the Eye
of Horus.

The Wedjat or Eye of Horus is "the central element" of seven "gold, faience, carnelian and lapis
lazuli" bracelets found on the mummy of Shoshenq II. The Wedjat "was intended to protect the
king [here] in the afterlife" and to ward off evil. Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern sailors would
frequently paint the symbol on the bow of their vessel to ensure safe sea travel.

Horus

Horus was an ancient Egyptian sky god in the form of a falcon. The right eye represents a
Peregrine Falcon's eye and the markings around it, that includes the "teardrop" marking
sometimes found below the eye. As the wadjet (also udjat or utchat), it also represented the
sun, and was associated with Horus' mother, Isis, and with Wadjet another goddess, as well as
the sun deity Ra (Re). The mirror image, or left eye, sometimes represented the moon and the
god Tehuti (Thoth).

Eye of Horus, a hieroglyph

Seven different hieroglyphs are used to represent the "eye"-(human body parts). One is the
common usage of the verb: to do, make, or perform. The other frequently used hieroglyph is the
Wedjat, a sacred protective symbol, called the Eye of Horus after his cult rose to prominence
as the son of Hathor.
 In the Ancient Egyptian measurement system, the Eye Of
Horus defined an Old Kingdom rounded off number one (1) =
1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64, by throwing away
1/64. The Eye of Horus statements created 6-term rounded
off numbers. The Old Kingdom definition had dropped a 7th
term, a remainder 1/64, that was needed to report exact
series.

During the Middle Kingdom that included the eleventh through

fourteenth dynasties, exact series definitions and applications
were written by creating 7-terms, or more, written as Egyptian
fraction series, often scaled to 1/320 hekat.

For example, the Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll, the RMP

2/n table and the Akhmim Wooden Tablet wrote quotients and
Egyptian fraction remainders that solved the problem. The
metaphorical side of this information linked the Old Kingdom
six fractions, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64 to separate
parts of the eye, as noted by:

* 1/2 was represented by smell, symbolized by the right side of the eye in a form of the nose.
The pyramid text says: "Behold [the fire] rises in Abydos and it comes; I cause it to come, the
Eye of Horus. It is set in order upon thy brow, O Osiris Khenti-Amenti; it is set in the shrine and
rises on thy brow."

* 1/4 was represented by sight or the sensation of light, symbolized by the pupil. The pyramid
text says: "Perfect is the Eye of Horus. I have delivered the Eye of Horus, the shining one, the
ornament of the Eye of Ra, the Father of the Gods."

* 1/8 was represented by thought, symbolized by the eyebrow. The pyramid text says: "...the
Eye of Horus hath made me holy...I will hide myself among you, O ye stars which are
imperishable. My brow is the brow of Ra."

* 1/16 was represented by hearing, symbolized by the left side of the eye in the form of an
arrow pointing towards the ear. The pyramid text says: "That which has been shut fast/dead
hath been opened by the command of the Eye of Horus, which hath delivered me. Established
are the beauties on the forehead of Ra."

* 1/32 was represented by taste, by the sprouting of wheat or grain from the planted stalk,
symbolized by a curved tail. The pyramid text says: "Come, the Eye of Horus hath delivered for
me my soul, my ornaments are established on the brow of Ra. Light is on the faces of those who
are in the members of Osiris."

* 1/64 was represented by touch, symbolized by a leg touching the ground, or what can also be
thought of as a strong plant growing into the surface of the earth. The pyramid text says: "I shall
see the Gods and the Eye of Horus burning with fire before my eyes!"

In the Middle Kingdom the 1/64 symbol denoted 'rest' and 'healing' as connected to the hekat,
with the word dja being attached.

The 'Eye of Horus' fractions were further discussed in the Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll
following elementary definitions that built the Egyptian fraction system. Weights and measure
subunits of a hekat were also connected to Eye of Horus numbers in the quotient, and as an
exact remainder, the remainder including an Egyptian fraction and a ro unit, correcting the Eye
of Horus 1/64 round off error. The ro unit, 1/320 of a hekat was cited in the Rhind Mathematical
Papyrus and as applied in the medical texts, like the Ebers Papyrus. A precise mathematical
derivation of ro is found in the Akhmim Wooden Tablet.

Search
Search for the Lost Tomb of Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan was perhaps the
greatest and most ruthless
conqueror the world has ever
know. More than three million
people may have died during the
bloody creation of his empire.
During his twenty year reign Khan
subdued the Russian princes; his
army conquered Persia, Asia
Minor, Korea, South-East India,
Indonesia, and China.

Where is Khan’s Tomb?

Many years before his death, the

fearsome Mongol conqueror, after
the custom of his people, chose
his own grave site. Legends state
that Khan chose the shelter of a
lone tree near the base of Mount
Burkhan Khaldun in Mongolia’s
wild Khingan mountain range. So,
somewhere deep in the
mountains, Khan’s men dug an
elaborate Tomb and Genghis
Khan was laid to rest in an ornate
coffin.

Into the grave with him went the

royal treasury – a massive hoard
of gems and precious metals —
the spoils of war collected by
Khan from all the lands he’d
conquered in his twenty year
reign. Some say the treasure
included the crowns of each of
the seventy-eight rulers Khan had
 subjugated, including those of
Russia, Persia, and India.

At the age of 65, during a campaign against the Chinese, the great Khan suffered a fatal fall
from his horse, and in August of 1227 the mourning Mongol army abandoned the conflict to take
their leader home.

After many months of pomp and ceremony, the body of the fallen ruler was loaded onto a giant
oxcart and began its long journey towards the Khan’s final resting place. Surrounding the cart
was a funeral procession 2,500 strong accompanied by a mounted bodyguard of 400 soldiers.

The Cover-up

Legend has it, that Genghis Khan’s soldiers killed every person encountered by the funeral
procession on its journey into the mountains. And after Khan’s body was intured, the soldiers
turned their attention to the slaves who dug the tomb, slaughtering all 2,500 of them. When the
soldiers returned to Karakorum, Genghis Khan’s capital, they in turn were killed by other soldiers
so they couldn’t reveal the location of Khan’s tomb.

To make the Tomb even harder to find, local legends say that a river was diverted over Khan’s
grave, completely submerging it. Other tales state that his grave was stampeded over by horses
to erase signs of digging, then trees were planted on top of it. The forest men of the Uriangut
clan were appointed to nurture the saplings covering the grave, and eventually the burial site
was swallowed in an impenetrable forest.

Whatever the truth may be, it seems as if Genghis Khan’s plan to protect his final resting place
was effective. Despite the efforts of many well financed archaeologists and treasure hunters, to
this day not one scrap of treasure has been recovered.

If someone does someday succeed in locating the tomb of the great conqueror the discovery
could make unearthing King Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt seem minor by comparison.

Location, Location, Location

At Genghis Khan’s death, his empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Aral Sea, leaving an
incalculable number of possible locations for his tomb. There are many theories as to where
Genghis Khan’s final resting place might be – some theories put the tomb within Mongolia’s
rugged mountains, others say he could have been buried in China, where he died during his final
campaign.

One of the oldest references to Khan’s burial location is the 15th century account of a French
Jesuit which states that Genghis Khan may have selected as his final resting place, the
confluence of the Kherlen and Bruchi rivers near the Burkhan Khaldun mountain.

The highest peak of the Khentii Range in north-central Mongolia is 9,173-foot Asralt Khairkhan,
also known as the Burkhan Khaldun of the Kerait people.
The Kherlen river is still known today – but attempts to locate the “Bruchi” river, have drawn a
blank – the river is unknown to modern day cartographers. Unfortunately this makes it
impossible to pinpoint the exact location for the tomb specified in the ancient texts.

Amateur archeologist, Maury Kravitz, who’s been obsessed with Khan’s tomb for forty years, did
discover a toponym “Baruun Bruch” (”West Bruch”) in the area roughly 100 km east of Burkhan
Khaldun (48° N 110° E). In 2004 he conducted excavations there to no avail.

So, for now, the location of Khan’s tomb and the vast treasure it may contain, remains one of
archaeology’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

It’s one of the few great archaeological mysteries of the world, and now a bunch of gadget-
wielding geeks are going to try and solve it.

The tomb of Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol empire and one of the world’s greatest and
most ruthless emperors, has remained hidden for nearly eight centuries. According to legend,
Khan died in 1227 near the Liupan mountains of China and is thought to be buried in the
northeastern region of what is currently Mongolia.

Now a group of researchers led by University of California San Diego’s Center of Interdisciplinary
Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology, with funding from National Geographic, have
embarked on a quest to find this ancient grave. Their secret weapon: an array of technological
gizmos ranging from unmanned aerial vehicles to sophisticated satellites and 3-D displays.

“This is a first of its kind,” says Mike Henning, a researcher at UCSD, “a large scale
expeditionary-type project that promises to open up new doors for technology.”

Hennig and the entire expeditionary team left for Mongolia earlier in July and will be there until
the end of the month. They will do most of their work in an 11-square mile region in Mongolia
flying two UAVs, directing satellite imagery and collecting data that will be processed at home
later.

GeoEye

Satellite imagery will play a key role in the search for the tomb. GeoEye, a company that offers
geospatial data from high-resolution cameras on board its orbiting satellites, will work with the
researchers. Based on their instructions, GeoEye will point its Ikonos satellite at regions where
Khan’s grave is likely to be. The resultant imagery will be downloaded from Ikonos via a
microwave downlink and processed at GeoEye’s office in Denver.

“Kids in MIT are using our satellite imagery to study urban planning in Mexico City,” says Matt
O’Connell, CEO of Geo-Eye. “Georgia Tech is working to track gorilla habitats and now we hope
our satellite can help find the tomb of Genghis Khan.”

GeoEye’s Ikonos satellite launched about 10 years ago. Ikonos orbits the earth every 90 minutes
and can create color images with a resolution of up to 1 meter. The satellite is 423 miles up in
the sky.

“With the Ikonos images we can see something the size of 32 inches on the ground,” says
O’Connell.
Currently, GeoEye has three satellites in orbit: the Ikonos, GeoEye1 and OrbView 2. GeoEye’s
customers include governments and businesses. For instance, pictures from GeoEye1 satellite are
used in Google Maps and Google Earth.

In tests earlier, the average GeoEye image given to the UCSD project members covered about
6.8 square miles and was about 300 MB in size.

“They can apply data mining algorithms to our imagery and scan for anomalies such as unnatural
geometric formations,” says O’Connell. “It’s the first step in their quest.”

UAVs

Researchers in Mongolia will also be counting on unmanned aerial vehicles to get pictures of the
zones that they believe could hold the grave.

“We are looking at a GPS-guided aircraft that can do live streaming and digital still images at the
same time,” says Gene Robinson, CEO of RP Flight Systems, whose two UAVs will be deployed
for the task. “Its capabilities are pretty impressive.” The Texas-based company has been
designing and selling UAVs used in search, rescue and recovery missions for about seven years.

Each UAV has a 4-foot wing span and weighs around 4 pounds, including all the equipment. The
UAVs are made with a composite based on polystyrene and fiber glass and the hull is coated with
Kevlar. The UAVs, powered by a lithium-polymer battery, will fly at a typical altitude of between
400 and 600 feet with each flight lasting about an hour.

The UAVs are standard off-the-shelf systems called the Spectra Flying Wing. The only
customization is a modified camera that can do both infrared and full color images, says
Robinson. Each of the fully autonomous UAVs with sensors costs $15,000.

The biggest draw of RP’s UAVs is that they are unclassified, allowing the images from them to be
easily accessed by all. Aerial vehicles from NASA or most governmental agencies are classified as
‘dual-use technology,’ marking them suitable for military and civilian use. But it also limits how
the technology or information derived from it can be used. “If a dual-use airplane takes pictures,
those are considered classified and have to be declassified before anyone can take a look at it,”
says Robinson, a process that could sometime take days. “With us the data is available for
immediate distribution.”

Downloading the images from the UAV to a computer is as simple as unplugging the on-board
SD card and hooking it up to a PC. “The image analysis involves looking at patterns, colors,
shapes that don’t belong in nature,” says Robinson.

Creating a computational algorithm

Earlier this year, Luke Barrington, a doctoral student at UCSD, released a Facebook application
called ‘Herd It‘ that allows users to discover music, much like Pandora or Last.fm. The app also
lets listeners play word association games based on the music they hear and identify the key
themes in the song.

The idea was to create a machine learning algorithm that could analyze and classify music. Think
of it as similar to what Pandora does—the difference being that the Herd It uses people to train
the algorithm instead of having people always classify the music.
“One of the key components in learning systems is that you need to train them with a couple of
strong examples,” says Barrington. “So with Herd It, I developed this game that would collect
consensus about what genre a song belongs to.”

The crowdsourcing collects reliable, accurate examples of words people use to describe music,
which can be used as training data for a machine learning system. The system can then listen
and analyze songs and describe them the same way that people do.

Turns out that’s exactly the kind of approach that the Genghis Khan expedition needs, which is
why Barrington is turning his talents from pop music to image analysis. With hundreds of satellite
images to sift through, the team hopes to use people to find examples of unnatural features.

“One of the challenges with the satellite imagery is that we don’t know what exactly we are
looking for,” says Barrington. “We need human input to find examples of anomalies and
unnatural patterns that can be used to train an algorithm.”

It’s also a way to give the larger community a chance to play Indiana Jones. “We want to help
people become a bit of explorers themselves,” says Barrington.

Read more at http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/genghis-khan/

Search
Has the original Labyrinth been found?

Source : http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/has-the-original-
labyrinth-been-found-1803638.html

A disused stone quarry on the Greek island of Crete which is riddled with an elaborate network of
underground tunnels could be the original site of the ancient Labyrinth, the mythical maze that
housed the half-bull, half-man Minotaur of Greek legend.
An Anglo-Greek team of scholars who undertook an expedition to the quarry this summer
believes that the site, near the town of Gortyn in the south of the island, has just as much claim
to be the place of the Labyrinth as the Minoan palace at Knossos 20 miles away, which has been
synonymous with the Minotaur myth since its excavation a century ago.

The 600,000 people a year who visit the ruins at Knossos are told the site was almost certainly
the home of the legendary King Minos, who was supposed to have constructed the Labyrinth to
house the Minotaur, a fearsome creature born out of a union between the king's wife and a bull.

But the scholars behind the latest expedition to find the Labyrinth believe the cave complex near
Gortyn, which was the ancient Roman capital of Crete, could be an equally plausible candidate
for the site of the Labyrinth – if indeed there was any truth in the idea that the myth was based
on a real place and a real king.

Nicholas Howarth, an Oxford University geographer who led the expedition, said there was a
danger of Gortyn being lost from the story of the Labyrinth because of the overpowering position
that Knossos had taken in the legend, a position fostered by Arthur Evans, a wealthy English
archaeologist who excavated the site between 1900 and 1935.

"People come not just to see the controversial ruins excavated and reconstructed by Evans, but
also to seek a connection to the mythical past of the Age of Heroes. It is a shame that almost all
visitors to Knossos have never heard of these other possible 'sites' for the mythical Labyrinth,"
Mr Howarth said.

Working with experts from the Hellenic Speleological Society, the Oxford researchers found that
the cave complex at Gortyn had been visited recently by archaeological thieves who were
preparing to dynamite one of the inner chambers in the hope of discovering a hidden treasure
room.

The caves, which are known locally as the Labyrinthos Caves, consist of about two and half miles
of interlocking tunnels with widened chambers and dead-end rooms. They have been visited
since medieval times by travellers looking for the Labyrinth, but since Knossos was rediscovered
at the end of the 19th century they were neglected, and were even used as a Nazi ammunition
dump during the Second World War.

"Going into the Labyrinthos Caves at Gortyn it's easy to feel that this is a dark and dangerous
place where it is easy to get lost. Evans' hypothesis that the palace of Knossos is also the
Labyrinth must be treated sceptically," Mr Howarth said.

"The fact that this idea prevails so strongly in the popular imagination seems more to do with our
romantic yearning to believe in the stories of the past, coupled with the power of Evans'
personality and privileged position," he said.

In addition to Knossos and Gortyn, there is a third cave complex at Skotino on the Greek
mainland that could also be a contender for the site of the Labyrinth. "If we look at the
archaeological facts, it is extremely difficult to say that a Labyrinth ever existed... I think that
each site has its claim to the mystery of the Labyrinth, but in the end there are questions that
neither archaeology nor mythology can ever completely hope to answer," Mr Howarth said.
Andrew Shapland, curator of Greek Bronze Age at the British Museum in London, said the siting
of the Labyrinth was a "hoary old chestnut" that refused to go away. Gortyn has been visited by
travellers looking for the Labyrinth since the 12th century.

"But I think Knossos really has a better claim because it is based on the classical tradition rather
than the later tradition of travellers," Dr Shapland said. "Knossos is mentioned in Homer. If the
Labyrinth is a real thing, it was the way in which a site such as Knossos was transmitted into
later Greek myth."

LABYRINTH

A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle
and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. It represents a journey to our own center
and back again out into the world. Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer
tools. A labyrinth is an archetype with which we can have a direct experience. Walking the
labyrinth can be considered an initiation in which one awakens the knowledge encoded within
their DNA.

A labyrinth contains non-verbal, implicate geometric and numerological prompts that create a
multi-dimensional holographic field. These unseen patterns are referred to as sacred geometry.
They allegeldy reveal the presence of a cosmic order as they interface the world of material form
and the subtler realms of higher consciousness.The contemporary resurgence of labyrinths in the
west is stemmimg from our deeply rooted urge to honor again the Sacredness of All Life. A
labyrinth can be experienced as the birthing womb of the Great Goddess. Thus, the labyrinth
experience is a potent practice of Self-Integration as it encapsulates the spiraling journey in and
out of incarnation. On the journey in, towards the center, one cleanses the dirt from the road.
On the journey out, one is born anew to consciously dwell in a human body, made holy by
having got a taste of the Infinite Center.

Labyrinth is a word of pre-Greek ("Pelasgian") origin absorbed by classical Greek, and is

apparently related to labrys, a word for the archaic iconic "double axe", with inthos connoting
"place" (as in "Corinth"). The complex palace of Knossos in Crete is usually implicated, though
the actual dancing-ground, depicted in frescoed patterns at Knossos, has not been found.
Something was being shown to visitors as a labyrinth at Knossos in the 1st century AD.

Search
Unexplained Mysteries - Relic reveals Noah's
ark was circular
Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/01/noahs-ark-was-circular
That they processed aboard the enormous floating wildlife collection two-by-two is well known.
Less familiar, however, is the possibility that the animals Noah shepherded on to his ark then
went round and round inside.

According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling
the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from
god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant
circular reed raft.

The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by
Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while
serving in the RAF from 1945 to 1948.

The relic was passed to his son Douglas, who took it to one of the few people in the world who
could read it as easily as the back of a cornflakes box; he gave it to Irving Finkel, a British
Museum expert, who translated its 60 lines of neat cuneiform script.

There are dozens of ancient tablets that have been found which describe the flood story but
Finkel says this one is the first to describe the vessel's shape.

"In all the images ever made people assumed the ark was, in effect, an ocean-going boat, with a
pointed stem and stern for riding the waves – so that is how they portrayed it," said Finkel. "But
the ark didn't have to go anywhere, it just had to float, and the instructions are for a type of
craft which they knew very well. It's still sometimes used in Iran and Iraq today, a type of round
coracle which they would have known exactly how to use to transport animals across a river or
floods."

Finkel's research throws light on the familiar Mesopotamian story, which became the account in
Genesis, in the Old Testament, of Noah and the ark that saved his menagerie from the waters
which drowned every other living thing on earth.

In his translation, the god who has decided to spare one just man speaks to Atram-Hasis, a
Sumerian king who lived before the flood and who is the Noah figure in earlier versions of the
ark story. "Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall! Atram-Hasis, pay heed to my advice, that you may
live forever! Destroy your house, build a boat; despise possessions And save life! Draw out the
boat that you will built with a circular design; Let its length and breadth be the same."

The tablet goes on to command the use of plaited palm fibre, waterproofed with bitumen, before
the construction of cabins for the people and wild animals.

It ends with the dramatic command of Atram-Hasis to the unfortunate boat builder whom he
leaves behind to meet his fate, about sealing up the door once everyone else is safely inside:
"When I shall have gone into the boat, Caulk the frame of the door!"

Fortunes were spent in the 19th century by biblical archaeology enthusiasts in hunts for evidence
of Noah's flood. The Mesopotamian flood myth was incorporated into the great poetic epic
Gilgamesh, and Finkel, curator of the recent British Museum exhibition on ancient Babylon,
believes that it was during the Babylonian captivity that the exiled Jews learned the story,
brought it home with them, and incorporated it into the Old Testament. Despite its unique
status, Simmons' tablet – which has been dated to around 1,700 BC and is only a few centuries
younger than the oldest known account – was very nearly overlooked.

"When my dad eventually came home, he shipped a whole tea chest of this kind of stuff home –
seals, tablets, bits of pottery," said Douglas. "He would have picked them up in bazaars, or when
people knew he was interested in this sort of thing, they would have brought them to him and
earned a few bob."

Simmons senior became a scenery worker at the BBC, but kept up his love of history, and was
very disappointed when academics dismissed treasures of his as commonplace and worthless.
His son took the tablet to a British Museum open day, where Finkel "took one look at it and
nearly fell off his chair" with excitement.

"It is the most extraordinary thing," Simmons said of the tablet. "You hold it in your hand, and
you instantly get a feeling that you are directly connected to a very ancient past – and it gives
you a shiver down your spine."

Raiders of the lost ark

The human fascination with the flood and the whereabouts of the ark shows few signs of
subsiding.

The story has travelled down the centuries from the ancient Babylonians and continues to
fascinate in the 21st century.

Countless expeditions have travelled to Mount Ararat in Turkey, where Noah's ark is said to have
come to rest, but scientific proof of its existence has yet to be found.

Recent efforts to find it have been led by creationists, who are keen to exhibit it as evidence of
the literal truth of the Bible.

"If the flood of Noah indeed wiped out the entire human race and its civilization, as the Bible
teaches, then the ark constitutes the one remaining major link to the pre-flood world," says John
D Morris of the Institute for Creation Research.
"No significant artefact could ever be of greater antiquity or importance."

In the Victorian era some became obsessed with the ark story. George Smith – the lowly British
museum assistant who, in 1872, deciphered the Flood Tablet which is inscribed with the Assyrian
version of the Noah's ark tale – could apparently not contain his excitement at his discovery.

According to the museum's archives: "He jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state
of excitement and to the astonishment of those present began to undress himself."

Search
The Road to Area 51

After decades of
denying the facility's
existence, five former
insiders speak out

Area 51. It's the most

famous military institution
in the world that doesn't
officially exist. If it did, it
would be found about 100
miles outside Las Vegas in
Nevada's high desert,
tucked between an Air
Force base and an
abandoned nuclear testing
ground. Then again, maybe
not— the U.S. government
refuses to say. You can't
drive anywhere close to it,
and until recently, the
airspace overhead was
restricted—all the way to
outer space. Any mention
of Area 51 gets redacted
from official documents,
even those that have been
declassified for decades.

It has become the holy

grail for conspiracy
theorists, with UFOlogists
positing that the Pentagon
reverse engineers flying
saucers and keeps
extraterrestrial beings
stored in freezers. Urban
legend has it that Area 51
 is connected by
underground tunnels and
trains to other secret
facilities around the
country. In 2001, Katie
Couric told Today Show
audiences that 7 percent of
Americans doubt the moon
landing happened—that it
was staged in the Nevada
desert. Millions of X-Files
fans believe the truth may
be "out there," but more
likely it's concealed inside
Area 51's Strangelove-
esque hangars—buildings
that, though confirmed by
Google Earth, the
government refuses to
acknowledge.

The problem is the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about
what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk—in fact,
five men are, and their stories rival the most outrageous of rumors. Colonel Hugh "Slip" Slater,
87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in "What
Plane?" in LA's March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of the world's most famous
aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA
experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, was an Area 51
special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's half-
million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels. Here are a few of their best stories—for the
record:

On May 24, 1963, Collins flew out of Area 51's restricted airspace in a top-secret spy plane code-
named OXCART, built by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He was flying over Utah when the
aircraft pitched, flipped and headed toward a crash. He ejected into a field of weeds.

Almost 46 years later, in late fall of 2008, sitting in a coffee shop in the San Fernando Valley,
Collins remembers that day with the kind of clarity the threat of a national security breach
evokes: "Three guys came driving toward me in a pickup. I saw they had the aircraft canopy in
the back. They offered to take me to my plane." Until that moment, no civilian without a top-
secret security clearance had ever laid eyes on the airplane Collins was flying. "I told them not to
go near the aircraft. I said it had a nuclear weapon on-board." The story fit right into the Cold
War backdrop of the day, as many atomic tests took place in Nevada. Spooked, the men drove
Collins to the local highway patrol. The CIA disguised the accident as involving a generic Air
Force plane, the F-105, which is how the event is still listed in official records.

As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign national security
nondisclosures. As part of Collins' own debriefing, the CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth
serum. "They wanted to see if there was anything I'd for-gotten about the events leading up to
the crash." The Sodium Pento-thal experience went without a hitch—except for the reaction of
his wife, Jane.

"Late Sunday, three CIA agents brought me home. One drove my car; the other two carried me
inside and laid me down on the couch. I was loopy from the drugs. They handed Jane the car
keys and left without saying a word." The only conclusion she could draw was that her husband
had gone out and gotten drunk. "Boy, was she mad," says Collins with a chuckle.

At the time of Collins' accident, CIA pilots had been flying spy planes in and out of Area 51 for
eight years, with the express mission of providing the intelligence to prevent nuclear war. Aerial
reconnaissance was a major part of the CIA's preemptive efforts, while the rest of America built
bomb shelters and hoped for the best.

"It wasn't always called Area 51," says Lovick, the physicist who developed stealth technology.
His boss, legendary aircraft designer Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, called the place Paradise Ranch
to entice men to leave their families and "rough it" out in the Nevada desert in the name of
science and the fight against the evil empire. "Test pilot Tony LeVier found the place by flying
over it," says Lovick. "It was a lake bed called Groom Lake, selected for testing because it was
flat and far from anything. It was kept secret because the CIA tested U-2s there."

When Frances Gary Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1960, the U-2 program
lost its cover. But the CIA already had Lovick and some 200 scientists, engineers and pilots
working at Area 51 on the A-12 OXCART, which would outfox Soviet radar using height, stealth
and speed.

Col. Slater was in the outfit of six pilots who flew OXCART missions during the Vietnam War.
Over a Cuban meat and cheese sandwich at the Bahama Breeze restaurant off the Las Vegas
Strip, he says, "I was recruited for the Area after working with the CIA's classified Black Cat
Squadron, which flew U-2 missions over denied territory in Mainland China. After that, I was told,
'You should come out to Nevada and work on something interesting we're doing out there.' "

Even though Slater considers himself a fighter pilot at heart—he flew 84 missions in World War II
—the opportunity to work at Area 51 was impossible to pass up. "When I learned about this
Mach-3 aircraft called OXCART, it was completely intriguing to me—this idea of flying three times
the speed of sound! No one knew a thing about the program. I asked my wife, Barbara, if she
wanted to move to Las Vegas, and she said yes. And I said, 'You won't see me but on the
weekends,' and she said, 'That's fine!' " At this recollection, Slater laughs heartily. Barbara,
dining with us, laughs as well. The two, married for 63 years, are rarely apart today.

Read complete article at http://www.latimes.com/la-mag-april052009-backstory

%2C0%2C786384.story

Search
12 Truly Bizarre Funeral Customs
from Around the World

Source : http://www.budgetlife.com/blog/bizarre-funeral-customs/
by Miranda Marquit

For thousands of years, humans have mourned their dead. Evidence from Shanidar Cave in Iraq
indicates that, perhaps, Neanderthals originated the idea of a funeral. Different customs
surrounding the dead have grown up in various places around the world. Funeral and burial
customs are still evolving today, as technology advances. Here are 12 interesting funeral and
burial customs from around the world:

1. Hanging Coffins

In China, there are coffins hanging off a cliff. These coffins contain the remains of members of
the Bo. The Bo people are now extinct, but they once lived in what is now Southwest China.
Instead of putting their dead in the ground, they lowered coffins down on the cliff, hanging by
ropes caught on stakes pounded into the rock of the region’s mountains.
2. Custom Fantasy Coffins

If having your coffin swinging in the wind is not for you, you might consider being buried in a
custom coffin, based around one of your hobbies. In Ghana, these fantasy coffins are quite
common, and are built around a theme. Do you really like fishing? Your coffin could resemble a
huge fish. The idea is to provide the deceased with something that he or she can enjoy for
eternity.

3. Sky Burial

This is an interesting custom that includes making use of birds to help with your burial. In Tibet,
monks chop up your body and grind your bones, and offer your remains to the vultures, which
then take your remains to the sky. A similar rite is practiced in the Zoroastrian religion. The
deceased is left at the top of a tower, where the vultures can easily get at the remains and take
them to the sky. The leftover bones are tossed into the tower’s pit.
It is also worth noting that the ancient Celts believed that birds helped the spirit to the next
world. Warriors were left, by their comrades in arms, for birds to eat.

4. Under-Home Burial

One of the ways that the poor among the Maya kept records was by burying items under their
homes. But it wasn’t just things that were buried; some Maya also buried their relatives under
their homes. This way, family histories could remain in the family, and it was possible to keep
dead family members close – within the walls of the home.

5. Strangling Family and Friends

One of the more colorful funeral customs comes from Fiji. A great funeral feast was held for the
deceased, and then, as part of the festivities, the members of a deceased man’s family, and even
sometimes his friends, were strangled. Servants could also be strangled and buried with the
man. This way, he went into the next life surrounded by friends and family.

Similar customs in ancient China and Egypt have also been seen, with treasured objects buried
with the dead. In some cases servants, wives and even pets were buried with powerful and
important men.

6. Sati

In order to show her devotion to her husband, a woman in India might throw herself onto the
funeral pyre of her husband. This ancient Hindu custom was rather rare even at its height, and it
has been outlawed in India today. However, there are still some stories of self-immolation by
wives. The reward for this act of devotion? The woman was said to become a goddess.

7. Stripper Funerals
In China, your family has more luck if more people show up to your funeral. So it is a tradition to
round up as many people as possible – even if these people don’t know the deceased. One way
to do this is to hire exotic dancers for funeral processions. This way, more people are sure to
show up to the funeral. It’s illegal, but that hasn’t stopped the practice from gaining a rather
large following.

8. Famadihana

It’s a funeral celebration years after the funeral. Every few years (around seven) in Madagascar,
corpses are dug up and a big celebration is held. Villages hold big parties, and everyone dances
around the corpses. The shroud of the deceased is replaced with a fresh new shroud. But the old
shroud doesn’t go to waste. Instead, it is torn into different pieces and passed around to married
couples. The couples then place the pieces of cloth beneath their mattresses and it is supposed
to help them conceive children.
9. Ecological Funeral

Those concerned about the environment are increasingly turning to biodegradable coffins and
other means of being environmentally friendly. However, you don’t need a pine box to be
ecologically friendly in death. In Sweden, there is increasing interest in using science to help
decomposition along. First, your body is reduced to a fine powder through a special process.
And, since there are metals in your body, these can be recycled. So the metals from your body
are separated out and sent to be reused in various products. Then, your remains are placed in a
biodegradable container and buried. Once the container breaks down, your own remains are
easily absorbed, since they are in the form of an earth-friendly powder.

10. Space Burial

One of the most modern funeral customs is the space burial. It is possible to have your remains
shot up into space on a missile. One astronomer, Eugene Shoemaker, is even buried on the
moon. In some cases, it is possible to have a small portion of your remains sent into space for as
little as $1,000.

11. Diamond Burial

Diamonds are made from carbon. Guess what the ashes of a cremated dead person contain?
Carbon! If you want to carry your loved one with you wherever you go, it is possible to have his
or her remains turned into diamonds. Have the diamonds set in a ring, necklace or earrings, and
your loved one remains beautiful (and sparkling) forever.

12. Mummify Yourself

This one is really hard, since it requires a great deal of discipline. But around 24 Buddhist monks
in Japan have gone through the process. It requires a strict, three-year diet of seeds and nuts,
and then another three years of eating only roots and bark. The monks also have a specific
exercise regime that gets rid of the body’s fat. A special tea is also drunk during this time, which
coats the inside of the body with a lacquer-like substance. When the monk is ready, he gets into
his tomb and meditates until he dies. Once a day he rings a bell. Once the bell stops ringing, the
other monks know it’s time to seal the tomb.

Search
Tutankhamun Mysteries : Curse of Pharoh

The mystery behind the sudden death of Tutankhamun, the boy king who ruled Egypt more
than 3,000 years ago, may have been finally solved by scientists who believe that he fell from a
fast-moving chariot while out hunting in the desert.

Speculation surrounding Tutankhamun's death has been rife since his tomb was broken into in
1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter. X-rays of the mummy taken in 1968 indicated a swelling
at the base of the skull, suggesting "King Tut" was killed by a blow to the head.

More recent studies using a CT medical scanner, however, revealed he suffered a badly broken
leg, just above his knee just before he died. That in turn probably led to lethal blood poisoning.
Now further evidence has come to light suggesting that he suffered the fracture while hunting
game from a chariot.

The new findings are still circumstantial but one of Egypt's leading experts on Tutankhamun
will say in a television documentary to be screened this week that he believes the case is now
solved on how the boy king met his sudden and unexpected end.

"He was not murdered as many people thought. He had an accident when he was hunting in the
desert. Falling from a chariot made this fracture in his left leg and this really is in my opinion how
he died," said Zahi Hawass, general secretary of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Until now, many historians had assumed that he was treated as a rather fragile child who was
cosseted and protected from physical danger. However, Nadia Lokma of the Cairo Museum said
that a recent analysis of the chariots found in the tombs of the pharaohs indicated that they
were not merely ceremonial but show signs of wear and tear. Hundreds of arrows recovered
from the tomb also show evidence of having been fired and recovered. "These chariots are
hunting chariots, not war chariots. You can see from the wear on them that they were actually
used in life," Dr Lokma said.

A cache of clothing found in Tutankhamun's tomb, which was stored in the vaults of the Cairo
Museum, suggest that he was accustomed to riding these chariots himself. They include a
specially-adapted corset which would have protected the wearer's abdominal organs from any
damage from an accident or the heavy jostling of a chariot ride.

A final piece of evidence comes from a garland of flowers placed around the neck of
Tutankhamun's mummy. Botanists found it included cornflowers and mayweed that were
fresh at the time the decoration was made.

"The cornflower and mayweed on the garland around the mummy were in flower in March and
April, which tells us the time of year he was buried," said Nigel Hepper of the Royal Horticultural
Society at Kew Gardens.

Because the flowers could have been collected only between the middle of March and the end of
April, and as the complex process of mummification lasted 70 days, this meant Tutankhamun
probably died in December or January. That timing coincided with the middle of the winter
hunting season.
The results of the latest research into Tutankhamun, which are to feature in a Channel Five
documentary tomorrow evening, come just a few weeks before Britain hosts the first exhibition
of his tomb's artefacts in 35 years at The O2 centre, formerly the Millennium Dome, in south-
east London.

When the first Tutankhamun exhibition in London was held at the British Museum in 1972, some
1.5 million people made the pilgrimage to see his fabulous solid-gold facemask. This time,
however, the mask will remain in Egypt because of fears it might not withstand the trip.

The present-day Lord Carnarvon, whose ancestor paid for Howard Carter's 1922 expedition, said
the latest findings indicated that Tutankhamun was an active young man who took risks with
his life.

"I thought he was an over-cosseted child, but I think he was really out there in the field and
taking part in things towards the end of his short life," Lord Carnarvon said. "His chariots could
have reached considerable speeds, up to 25mph. If a chariot turns over at that speed, you could
easily break your leg very seriously."

Curse of the Pharaohs

The Curse of the Pharaohs refers to the belief that any person who disturbs the mummy of an
Ancient Egyptian pharaoh is placed under a curse whereby they will shortly die. Many tombs of
pharaohs have curses written on or around them, warning against entering.

The belief was brought to many people's attention due to the deaths of some members of the
team of Howard Carter, who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in 1922, launching the
modern era of Egyptology. The first of these "mysterious" deaths was that of Lord Carnarvon. He
had been bitten by a mosquito, and later slashed the bite accidentally while shaving. It became
infected and blood poisoning resulted. Skeptics pointed out that many, many others who visited
the tomb or helped to discover it lived long and healthy lives. A study showed that of the 58
people who were present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a
dozen years. All the others were still alive, including Howard Carter who died peacefully at the
age of 64 in 1939. The doctor who did the autopsy on Tutankhamun lived until 75.

Some have speculated that deadly fungus could have grown in the enclosed tombs and been
released when they were open to the air. Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes
mysteries, favoured this idea, and speculated that the mold had been placed deliberately to
punish grave robbers. A newspaper report printed following Carnarvon's death is also believed to
have been responsible for the wording of the curse most frequently associated with
Tutankhamun – "Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the King" – a
phrase which does not actually appear among the hieroglyphs in KV62.

Tomb curses

Curses relating to tombs are rare, perhaps through the idea of such desecration being
unthinkable and dangerous to record in writing. They most frequently occur in private tombs of
the Old Kingdom era. The tomb of Ankhtifi (9-10th dynasty) contains the warning: "any ruler
who... shall do evil or wickedness to this coffin... may Hemen [a local deity] not accept any
goods he offers, and may his heir not inherit". The tomb of Khentika Ikhekhi (9-10th dynasty)
contains an inscription: "As for all men who shall enter this my tomb... impure... there will be
judgment... an end shall be made for him... I shall seize his neck like a bird... I shall cast the fear
of myself into him". Curses after the Old Kingdom era are less common though more severe in
expression, sometimes invoking the ire of Thoth or the destruction of Sekhemet. Zahi Hawass
quotes an example of a curse: "Cursed be those who disturb the rest of a Pharaoh. They
that shall break the seal of this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor
can diagnose."

Modern accounts of curses

Hieroglyphs were not deciphered until the beginning of the 19th century by Jean-François
Champollion so any reports of curses prior to this are in the domain of perceived bad luck
associated with the handling of mummies and other artifacts from tombs. Louis Penicher wrote
an account in 1699 in which he records how a Polish traveler bought two mummies in Alexandria
and embarked on a sea journey with the mummies in the cargo hold. He was alarmed by
recurring visions of two specters and stormy seas that did not abate until the mummies were
thrown overboard.

Zahi Hawass recalled that as a young archaeologist excavating at Kom Abu-Bellou he had to
transport a number of artifacts from the Greco-Roman site. On the day he did so his cousin died,
on the anniversary of that day his uncle died and on the third anniversary his aunt died. Years
later when he excavated the tombs of the builders of the pyramids at Giza he encountered the
curse: "All people who enter this tomb who will make evil against this tomb and destroy it may
the crocodile be against them in water, and snakes against them on land. May the hippopotamus
be against them in water, the scorpion against them on land." Though not superstitious, he
decided not to disturb the mummies. However, he later was involved in the removal of two
child mummies from Bahariya Oasis to a museum and subsequently reported how he was
haunted by the children in his dreams. These phenomena did not stop until the mummy of the
father was re-united with the children in the museum. He came to the conclusion that mummies
should not be displayed though it was a lesser evil than allowing the general public into the
tombs. Hawass also recorded an incident relating to a sick young boy who loved Ancient Egypt
and was subject to a "miracle" cure in the Egyptian Museum when he looked into the eyes of
the mummy of King Ahmose I. Thereafter the boy read everything he could find on Ancient
Egypt, especially the Hyksos period.

The idea of a mummy's curse was developed in The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second
Century, an early work combining elements of science fiction and horror, written by Jane C.
Loudon and published anonymously in 1827. Louisa May Alcott is thought to have been the first
to use a "mummy curse" plot in her 1869 story "Lost in a Pyramid".

Opening of King Tutankhamun's tomb

The Anubis figure which guarded the entrance to Tutankhamun's treasury room.

The belief in a curse was brought to many people's attention due to the deaths of the members
of the team of Howard Carter, who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in 1922, launching
the modern era of Egyptology.

The famous Egyptologist James Henry Breasted worked with Carter soon after the first opening
of the tomb. He reported how Carter sent a messenger on an errand to his house. On
approaching his home he thought he heard a "faint, almost human cry". On reaching the
entrance he saw the bird cage occupied by a cobra, the symbol of Egyptian monarchy. Carter's
canary had died in its mouth and this fueled local rumors of a curse. Arthur Weigall, a previous
Inspector-General of Antiquities to the Egyptian Government, reported that this was interpreted
as Carter's house being broken into by the Royal Cobra, the same as that worn on the King's
head to strike enemies , on the very day the King's tomb was being broken into. An account of
the incident was reported by the New York Times on the 22nd December 1922.

The first of the "mysterious" deaths was that of Lord Carnarvon. He had been bitten by a
mosquito, and later slashed the bite accidentally while shaving. It became infected and blood
poisoning resulted. Two weeks before Carnarvon died Marie Corelli wrote an imaginative letter
which was published in the New York World magazine in which she quoted an obscure book that
confidently asserted that "dire punishment" would result through an intrusion of a sealed tomb.
A media frenzy followed with reports that a curse had been found in the King's tomb, but this
was untrue. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, suggested at the time that Lord
Carnarvon's death had been caused by "elementals" created by Tutankhamun's priests to
guard the royal tomb and this further fueled the media interest. Arthur Weigall reported that six
weeks before Carnarvon's death he had watched the Earl laughing and joking as he entered the
King's tomb and his saying to a nearby reporter (H. V. Morton), "I give him six weeks to live."
The first autopsy carried out on the body of Tutankhamun by Dr Derry found a healed lesion on
the left cheek, but as Carnarvon had been buried six months previously it was not possible to
determine if the location of the wound on the King corresponded with the location of the fatal
mosquito bite on Carnarvon.

In 1925, the anthropologist Henry Field, accompanied by Breasted, visited the tomb and recalled
the kindness and friendliness of Carter. He also reported how a paperweight given to Carter's
friend Sir Bruce Ingham was composed of a mummified hand with its wrist adorned with a
scarab bracelet marked with, "Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water
and pestilence." Soon after receiving the gift, Ingram's house burned down, followed by a flood
when it was rebuilt.

Howard Carter was entirely skeptical of such curses. He did report in his diary a "strange"
account that in May 1926 he saw jackals of the same type as Anubis, the guardian of the dead,
for the first time in over thirty-five years of working in the desert.

Skeptics have pointed out that many others who visited the tomb or helped to discover it lived
long and healthy lives. A study showed that of the 58 people who were present when the tomb
and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years. All the others were still
alive, including Howard Carter, who later died of lymphoma at the age of 64 in 1939.

Search
Unexplained Mysteries of The Incorruptibles

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibility

Incorruptibility is a Roman Catholic belief that supernatural intervention allows some human
bodies to avoid the normal process of decomposition after death. Bodies that reportedly undergo
little or no decomposition, or delayed decomposition, and are sometimes referred to as incorrupt
or incorruptible or as an incorruptible. Although it is recognised as supernatural in Roman
Catholicism, it is no longer counted as a miracle in the recognition of a saint.

Incorruptibility is seen as distinct from the good preservation of a body, or mummification.

Incorruptible bodies are often said to have the odour of sanctity, exuding a sweet or floral,
pleasant aroma. As of yet, none of these cases has been verified scientifically.

Incorruptibles are the bodies of saints that miraculously do not decay -- even after decades or
even a century or more. The bodies often lie in public view in churches and shrines. Saints
include: St. Clare of Assisi, St. Vincent De Paul, St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. John Bosco,
Blessed Imelda Lambertini, St. Catherine Labouré, and many others. Even the body of Pope John
XXIII is reputed to be remarkable well preserved. The case of Blessed Margaret of Metola is
recounted in the Fortean Times article, Saints Preserve Us: "She died in 1330, but in 1558 her
remains had to be transferred because her coffin was rotting away. Witnesses were amazed to
find that like the coffin, the clothes had rotted, but Margaret's crippled body hadn't."
1. Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, Died 1879

St Bernadette was born Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. From February to July 1858,
she reported eighteen apparitions of “a Lady.” Despite initial skepticism from the Roman Catholic
Church, these claims were eventually declared to be worthy of belief after a canonical
investigation. After her death, Bernadette’s body remained “incorruptible”, and the shrine at
Lourdes went on to become a major site for pilgrimage, attracting millions of Catholics each
year.

2. Saint John Vianney, Died 1859

St. Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney (May 8, 1786 – August 4, 1859) was a French parish priest who
became a Catholic saint and the patron saint of parish priests. He is often referred to, even in
English, as the “Curé d’Ars” (the parish priest of the village of Ars). He became famous
internationally for his priestly and pastoral work in his parish due to the radical spiritual
transformation of the community and its surroundings.

3. Saint Teresa Margaret, Died 1770

In March 19, 1934, Pope Pius XI entered Blessed Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart in the
register of saints. In Germany, the new saint is virtually unknown outside of the Carmelite Order.
Her life was quiet and hidden. She died on March 7, 1770 at the age of 22, and of this short
lifespan, she spent five years in the Carmelite monastery in Florence. She performed no brilliant,
attention-getting deeds, nor did her reputation reach the wider world. She spent her life living
quietly and with virtue.

4. Saint Vincent de Paul, Died 1660

Saint Vincent de Paul studied humanities at Dax with the Cordeliers and he graduated in
theology at Toulouse. Vincent de Paul was ordained in 1600, remaining in Toulouse until he went
to Marseille for an inheritance. On his way back from Marseille, he was taken captive by Turkish
pirates to Tunis, and sold into slavery. After converting his owner to Christianity, Vincent de Paul
was freed in 1607. Vincent returned to France and served as priest in a parish near Paris. n 1705
the Superior-General of the Lazarists requested that the process of his canonization might be
instituted. On August 13, 1729, Vincent was declared Blessed by Benedict XIII, and canonized by
Clement XII on June 16, 1737. In 1885 Leo XIII gave him as patron to the Sisters of Charity.

5. Saint Silvan Died circa 350

There is little known about Saint Silvan except that he was martyred (killed for his faith).
Considering his body is over 1,600 years old, it is remarkably preserved.
6. Saint Veronica Giuliani, Died 1727

Saint Veronica Giuliani (Veronica de Julianis) (1660-July 9, 1727) was an Italian mystic. She was
born at Mercatello in the Duchy of Urbino. Her parents, Francesco Giuliana and Benedetta
Mancini, were both of gentle birth. In baptism she was named Ursula. According to the Catholic
Encyclopedia, she showed signs of sanctity from an early age. Her legend states that she was
only eighteen months old, she uttered her first words to upbraid a shopman who was serving a
false measure of oil, saying distinctly: “Do justice, God sees you.”

7. Saint Zita, Died 1272

Saint Zita (c. 1212 – 27 April 1272) is the patron saint of maids and domestic servants. She is
also appealed to in order to help find lost keys. Zita often said to others that devotion is false if
slothful. She considered her work as an employment assigned her by God, and as part of her
penance, and obeyed her master and mistress in all things as being placed over her by God. She
always rose several hours before the rest of the family and employed in prayer a considerable
part of the time which others gave to sleep.

8. Saint John Bosco, Died 1888

Saint Don Bosco, born Giovanni Melchiorre Bosco, and known in English as John Bosco (August
16, 1815 – January 31, 1888), was an Italian Catholic priest, educator and recognized
pedagogue, who put into practice the dogma of his religion, employing teaching methods based
on love rather than punishment. He placed his works under the protection of Francis de Sales;
thus his followers styled themselves the Salesian Society. He is the only Saint with the title
“Father and Teacher of Youth”.

9. Blessed Pope Piux IX, Died 1878

Pope Pius IX (May 13, 1792 – February 7, 1878), born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, reigned as
Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from his election in June 16, 1846, until his death more than
31 years later in 1878. Pius IX was elected as the candidate of the liberal and moderate wings on
the College of Cardinals, following the pontificate of arch-conservative Pope Gregory XVI. Initially
sympathetic to democratic and modernizing reforms in Italy and in the Church, Pius became
increasingly conservative after he was deposed as the temporal ruler of the Papal States in the
events that followed the Revolutions of 1848.

10. Blessed Pope John XXIII, Died 1963

Pope John XXIII (Latin: Ioannes PP. XXIII; Italian: Giovanni XXIII), born Angelo Giuseppe
Roncalli (November 25, 1881 – June 3, 1963), was elected as the 261st Pope of the Catholic
Church and sovereign of Vatican City on October 28, 1958. He called the Second Vatican Council
(1962-1965) but did not live to see it to completion, dying on June 3, 1963, two months after the
completion of his final encyclical, Pacem in Terris. He was beatified on September 3, 2000, along
with Pope Pius IX, the first popes since Pope St. Pius X to receive this honour.
  Incorruptibles are typically found lifelike, moist, flexible, and contain a sweet scent that
many say smells like roses or other flowers, for years after death.
 Incorruptibles are almost never embalmed or treated in any way due to the religious
order's beliefs that the person came from.
 Incorruptibles remain free of decay, some for centuries, despite circumstances which
normally cause decay such as being exposed to air, moisture, other decaying bodies, or
other variables such as quicklime, which is typically applied to a corpse to accelerate
decomposition.
 Incorruptibles many times contain clear, flowing oils, perspiration, and flowing blood for
years after death, where accidental or deliberately preserved bodies have never been
recorded to have such characteristics.
 Other partial incorruptibles have been found throughout the centuries where certain
parts of the body decay normally, while other parts such as the heart or tongue remain
perfectly free of decomposition.

What is most astounding of all is the fact that for each incorrupt body discovered, after research
has been done to determine who the person was, it has always been determined that the person
was an extremely devout Catholic. This inevitably leads to the question, How can the process of
decay, which has no intelligence, choose which bodies to devour and not to devour, and why do
they happen to be devout Catholics? (For claims of incorrupt Orthodox Christians, we could not
find proof for them during our research. Please see our page on the subject here.) There is no
other way to describe this phenomena than to state that it is supernatural rather than natural,
and that it is simply miraculous.

In addition, many unexplainable miracles have occurred throughout history when people have
come in contact with these incorrupt remains, and despite regular medical examinations,
scientists have not determined why. These incorrupt bodies are on display all over the world to
this day (mainly in Europe), and nearly all bodies who have been identified and whose
background has been researched thoroughly, have been canonized by the Catholic Church as
Saints due to their devout Catholic life.

It is also interesting to note that while only a small number of devout Catholics have been given
the gift of incorruptibility, it does appear that some Saints have been specifically chosen to have
this miraculous phenomena so as to help confirm significant events involved with them. For
example, the supernatural preservation of Jacinta Marto helps confirm the authenticity of the
Miracle at Fatima, the incorrupt state of Saint Bernadette Soubirous gives credence to the
Miracles at Lourdes, and the incorruptibility of Venerable Mary of Agreda gives credence to her
revelations she wrote in the "Mystical City of God". Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque's revelations
about the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is also given credence along with Saint
Catherine Laboure's apparitions of the Virgin Mary, and Pope St. Pius X's fight against
modernism. Other examples are below.

Note that some incorrupt bodies that have been discovered and placed on display have had
make up or wax added to them to improve their appearance. This is due to the fact that some
bodies, while incorrupt, may not appear as beautiful as others, or may only be partially incorrupt
while others are fully incorrupt. To those non-believers reading this page, these minor touch-ups
are irrelevant when it comes to the state of a body's incorruptibility; no amount of make up or
wax could possibly prevent these bodies (some centuries old!) from decaying once placed on
display. The majority of incorrupt bodies remain incorrupt after being put on display, regardless
of whether they have been touched up or not.
 Mysterious Encounters with Angel

From Stephen Wagner

Do heavenly spirits come to the aid of humans in need? These readers believe so.

WHO ARE THESE mysterious beings? They seem to come out of nowhere just when they are
needed, have just what you need to solve the problem, then vanish quickly without a trace. The
people who encounter them are often convinced that they are angels – spirit beings who
temporarily take on human from to lend a hand in time of need. Skeptics say, of course, that
they are just helpful but ordinary people. Yet the reports are surprisingly consistent: no one
knows where these helpers come from, and they disappear in an instant when you’re not
looking.

Equally frustrating to understand is that the help they lend is very often in relatively mundane
circumstances. A stuck car, for instance. You would think that if a heavenly being was going to
materialize to help a human (we could call it a miracle, couldn’t we?), it would be in far more
important matters than fixing a flat tire.

And who knows; perhaps they do assist in such important matters. And if they are spiritual
beings, who are we to question their motives?

Whether you believe they are angels or not, here are some fascinating reports of these
mysterious benefactors.

ANGEL IN RED FLANNEL

Angelic assistance isn’t always as mundane as fixing a flat; sometimes it is literally life saving.
Twenty-one year old Kimberly was inner-tubing on a back woods Wisconsin river one summer
day. “I was in a shallow, but fast part of the river, when my inner tube flipped out from under
me,” Kimberly says. “The water was only shin deep, so I ran after my tube. While I was running
I fell into a deep spot and got caught in a hydraulic, where water flowing over a rock or other
obstacle flows down, then back onto itself in an eruption of whitewater.

“I was sucked down and sucked in over my head. I struggled to reach the surface, which was
mere inches away! I grabbed at the water, trying to propel myself upward and out of this water
trap. When I realized my efforts were fruitless and I was about to drown, I felt an intense
peacefulness and serenity fill me with a warmth I can't describe.

“Suddenly, someone grabbed me by the wrist, and in one tug had me out of the deep water and
standing in ankle-deep water nearby. I caught a glimpse of a blonde woman in a red flannel
shirt, but when I turned to thank her for saving my life, there was no one there.”

STRANGER ON THE METRO

There certainly are many kind people in the world who don’t hesitate to help strangers in need –
especially children. But was it just a kind man young Brian encountered on an April afternoon in
1999… or was he something more? Patty H. tells us that she along with her husband, their son
Brian and daughter were riding the Metro Link on their way to a St. Louis Cardinals baseball
game that day.

“Brian had a Sharpie marker and baseball cap that he was planning on get autographs with,” she
says. “The Metro Link stopped at Busch Stadium. All of us got off the train. Brian noticed that he
dropped the marker and went back on to retrieve it. The doors to the train closed and it left the
platform. My son was still on the train! Brian was only 10 years old at the time and it was his first
time in the big city. We were just frantic.”

All the family could do was wait for the train to loop back to the station, which took about 35
minutes. When the train finally made it back to the platform, Brian had an interesting story to
tell. “While he was on the train,” Patty says, “a black gentleman sat next to him and began to
talk to him. He asked him questions and reassured him that he would be fine. Brian said he and
the man were the only two people on the train. Yet when the doors to the train opened, the man
had strangely disappeared. He did not go out the door. He would have had to walk past us. We
believe it was my son's guardian angel.”

You have your doubts? Eight years later, Patty tells us, this same mysterious man visited their
son's hospital room when he was direly ill.

LICENSE TO SAVE

Here is one of those miraculous roadside assistance stories. The interesting thing about
this one, according to Amanda, is that the helpful stranger looked like Jesus himself. Her
experience took place in Pottstown, Pensylvania.

“I have never been the real religious type,” Amanda says. “As a matter of
fact, I often made jokes about the Bible as well as Jesus. After having
compared Jesus to a fictional character one night, I drove with a friend of
mine to another friend's home. Rain was pouring and the weather was
unbearable. Somehow my vehicle landed in what appeared to be a river in
 the middle of the road I was traveling. I tried to call a couple of male
friends to try to push my vehicle out. No luck. I sat crying next to my car
at 3:00 a.m. in a wooded area, with absolutely no homes present.

“An elderly man came out of the woods, resembling what one would
assume to be Jesus: tall, skinny and bearded. He said that he would go
get his tow-truck and pull my car out of the rapids. I sat in my boyfriend's
vehicle as the old man drove a tractor over to my vehicle. The license
plate on his tractor read: ‘You have a friend in Jesus.’

“Was this a coincidence,” Amanda wonders, “or was Jesus showing me

how non-fictional he really is?”

IN THE ARMS OF AN ANGEL

Sharon’s six-month-old daughter was miraculously saved from catastrophe one day when they
were out shopping. Sharon and her friend had taken the baby to the mall, pushing her around in
a stroller with all the necessaries: diaper bag, purse, etc.

“My biggest challenge in the malls and stores was navigating the escalators,” Sharon says.
“Being the cautious type, I would always fold up the stroller and carry it down the escalator in
one hand, baby in the other. But this is a dangerous balancing act in itself. I'd seen other people
just roll their strollers onto an escalator, ride it down and roll it off at the bottom. I'd always
doubted my ability to pull it off, but on this day, against my better judgment, I decided to try it.

“My friend got on the escalator. With my daughter safely strapped in, I rolled the stroller on
behind her, then got on myself. A man got on behind me. I didn't pay much attention to him, but
I was aware that he was standing about two or three steps behind me. All was well until we got
to the bottom. I was in the process of rolling the stroller off behind her, but something on the
stroller caught on the escalator. The stroller stopped dead... I didn't. I flew over the top of the
stroller, arms and legs everywhere. I heard the stroller collapse, but I couldn't do anything about
it – it was like I was tumbling through space in slow motion.

“I didn't hear my baby cry. As I scrambled to my feet, I feared the absolute worst. My slightly
mangled stroller (one wheel was bent) had skidded about 10 feet from the bottom of the
escalator. My baby wasn't in it. But standing right behind me, holding her, was the man who'd
gotten on the escalator behind me. She was unhurt and completely calm. He handed my
daughter to me without a word. I looked away for just a second, then turned back to him to
thank him from the bottom of my heart and ask him how he'd gotten her out of the stroller. But
in the time it took me to look away and look back again, he was gone.”

CALL FOR HELP

Every night after work, Alicia would drive out to her ill grandmother's house to take care of her.
You could say she was an angel herself. One night, however, an accident brought Alicia in
contact with a being she believes was her guardian angel.

“Being as I drove this every night, I know my cell phone doesn't receive service though that
stretch of road, and I am a very cautious driver and always locked my doors,” Alicia says. “On
this night in 2001, I was making the drive as normal when the car in front of me slammed on
their brakes. When I slammed on my brakes, my wheels locked and I couldn't slow down... I
rear-ended the car going 50 mph.

“The whole front of my little Saturn caved in up to the steering wheel and my air bag didn't
deploy, so my head was slammed into the steering wheel. I was trapped in my car and my head
was bleeding. Just then my car door opened (and like I said, I always lock my doors), and a
black gentleman was there. He said, ‘Alisha, you're going to be ok. Please let me have your
phone and I will call your mom.’ I gave him my cell, thinking to myself that it's not going to work
because of the area we're in... and how did he know my name? The gentleman called my mom
and I heard him say, ‘Alisha was in a car accident. She will be fine. You need to come and be
with her though.’ He told her the road I was on and hung up.

“Then he held my hand and told me, ‘You're going to be alright. It's not your time to go yet.’ I
knew the moment he held my hand that I was ok and I felt a peace come over me. I heard the
sirens from the fire trucks and the gentleman said, ‘It's my time to go. You'll be alright; just have
faith.’ He left and the fireman came to check me out. They started asking me questions and
asked me if they could call someone to meet me at the hospital. I told them that a black
gentleman had already called and that my mom was on her way. The fireman told me that no
one was around and checked my phone; he said no call had been made. Just then my mom
pulled up (in hysterics, of course) and the fireman just looked at me.

“They transported me to the ER. I had cuts, black eyes and whip lash, and I couldn't walk for
three days, but after some physical therapy I recovered like new. I later asked my mom about
the gentleman who called her that night. She said that nothing registered on her caller ID when
the call came through, and all she could tell me was the gentleman who called her sounded like
a black man. I know in my heart that I had my wonderful guardian angel with me that night. I
also found out later that no one was hurt in the vehicle that a rear-ended… but they never saw
anyone at my car until the firemen arrived.”

For complete article Click Here

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Unexplained Mysteries - Curse of
the Hexham Heads

Source : http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/northumberland/legends/the-hexham-
heads.html
“It was 1972, and at the Robson family home in Hexham, only ten minutes walk away from
where the legendary Wolf of Allendale had roamed the woods, the two young Robson
brothers dug up two small, carved stone heads whilst they were tending the garden. Several
nights after the discovery of the stone heads, neighbour Ellen Dodd and her daughter were
sitting up late one evening when both of them witnessed a “half-man, half beast” entering the
bedroom. The pair screamed in terror but, the creature seemed indifferent to them and simply
left the room, heard to be “padding down the stairs as if on its hind legs”. Later on, the front
door was found open. It has been thought that the creature had been in search of something,
and had left the house to continue searching elsewhere”

“The stones, which were called the Hexham-heads, represent two different types. The first was
similar to a skull and seemed to bear male traits; it was called “boy”. The stone was of a
greenish grey and glittered with quartz crystals. It was very heavy, heavier than cement or
concrete. The hair seemed to run in stripes from front to back. The other head, the “girl” was
similar to a witch. It had wild pop-eyes and the hair was tied back to some knot. In the hair,
traces of yellow and red colour could be found.

“After they have dug up the heads, the boys took them into the house. Thereby, the whole
disaster commenced. The heads turned round without reason, objects broke to pieces without
evident cause. When the mattress of one of the two daughters of the Robsons was dotted with
broken glass, the girls moved out of the room. In the meantime, a mysterious flower bloomed
at Christmas exactly on that spot, where the heads were found. Besides, a strange light was
glowing there.”

Well just after that the heads were given to Dr Anne Ross, who was a Celtic expert of one type
or another. She said the heads were around 2000 years old. Almost as soon as the heads arrived
– Ross got a visit from the wolf too. Here’s her account according to a site called GoArticles.com:
“In her own account Anne Ross described how, one night shortly after their arrival, she woke up
suddenly at 2 a.m. feeling chilled and extremely frightened. At the instant of awakening she
saw a tall, jet black wolf-headed figure standing against the faint white of the open door. It
then moved out into the corridor and she felt an irresistible urge to follow it. This she did, seeing
and hearing the figure clearly as it made its way down the darkened staircase and along the
corridor towards the kitchen. Anne Ross described the figure vividly, reporting not only its
blackness and tallness but also its distinct part animal, part human appearance. As the creature
neared the kitchen the spell broke and Anne Ross felt fear overwhelm her and so she rushed
upstairs to awaken her husband. Together they searched the house for intruders but found no-
one and nothing disturbed by any forced entry and eventually concluded that she must have
suffered a particularly vivid nightmare…

“[Later, as Ross' daughter] recounted, she had returned to the empty house at 4 p.m. and
opened the front door with her key. As it swung open she saw something large, dark and
inhuman rushing down the stairs (which faced the doorway) toward her. Half way down it had
suddenly stopped and vaulted over the banisters, landing with a soft thud like a heavy animal
with thickly padded feet…”

Several nights after the discovery of the stone heads, neighbour Ellen Dodd and her daughter
were sitting up late one evening when both of them witnessed a "half-man, half beast"
entering the bedroom. The pair screamed in terror but, the creature seemed indifferent to them
and simply left the room, heard to be "padding down the stairs as if on its hind legs" . Later on,
the front door was found open. It has been thought that the creature had been in search of
something, and had left the house to continue searching elsewhere.1

Interest in the local legend of The Wolf of Allendale was rekindled by this event and the stone
heads became associated with the possible re-appearance of the wolf.

The two stone heads, each about the size of an orange, were thought to be Celtic in origin and
collector Dr Anne Ross took possession of the heads, as she had several other stone heads in her
collection and wished to compare them to the Hexham pair. A few nights after taking possession
of the heads, Dr Ross awoke at 2am one morning, feeling cold and frightened. Looking up, she
saw a strange creature standing in her bedroom doorway:

"It was about six feet high, slightly stooping, and it was black, against the white door, and it was
half animal and half man. The upper part, I would have said, was a wolf, and the lower part
was human and, I would have again said, that it was covered with a kind of black, very dark fur.
It went out and I just saw it clearly, and then it disappeared, and something made me run after
it, a thing I wouldn't normally have done, but I felt compelled to run after it. I got out of bed and
I ran, and I could hear it going down the stairs, then it disappeared towards the back of the
house."

Living and working in Southampton, Dr Ross knew nothing of The Wolf of Allendale legend
and the association of The Hexham Heads with the possible return of the wolf and, she
attributed the experience to a nightmare. Dr Ross came home with her archaeologist husband
Richard Feacham one day, only to find their teenage daughter Berenice in a distressed state.
Berenice explained that she had used her key to unlock the front door and entered the house
that afternoon to witness a large, black shape rushing down the stairs; halfway downstairs the
creature vaulted the bannister, landing with a soft, heavy thud like a large animal with padded
feet.
Believing the presence of the stone heads to be responsible for these events, Dr Ross passed
on her whole collection of stone heads, along with the Hexham pair to other collectors. The
Hexham Heads found their way to the British Museum for public display, though were soon
removed from display and mothballed, amid reports of unsettling events associated with the
heads.

There have been claims that The Hexham Heads were not Celtic in origin and had simply been
carved as toys by the previous occupants of the Robson family home only twenty years
previously, and had subsequently become lost in the garden. It has also been said that the heads
were examined by the Universities of Newcastle and Southampton for dating. For now, the
current whereabouts of The Hexham Heads remains unknown. Despite this, the legend of The
Hexham Heads and its association with The Wolf of Allendale has become a cornerstone of
the local folklore of the area.

Encounters with Angels

Do heavenly spirits come to the aid of humans in need? These
readers believe so.

By Stephen Wagner, About.com Guide

Filed In:
1. Paranormal Phenomena

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WHO ARE THESE mysterious beings? They seem to come out of nowhere just when
they are needed, have just what you need to solve the problem, then vanish quickly
without a trace. The people who encounter them are often convinced that they are angels
– spirit beings who temporarily take on human from to lend a hand in time of need.
Skeptics say, of course, that they are just helpful but ordinary people. Yet the reports are
surprisingly consistent: no one knows where these helpers come from, and they disappear
in an instant when you’re not looking.

Equally frustrating to understand is that the help they lend is very often in relatively
mundane circumstances. A stuck car, for instance. You would think that if a heavenly
being was going to materialize to help a human (we could call it a miracle, couldn’t we?),
it would be in far more important matters than fixing a flat tire. And who knows; perhaps
they do assist in such important matters. And if they are spiritual beings, who are we to
question their motives?

Whether you believe they are angels or not, here are some fascinating reports of these
mysterious benefactors.

ANGEL IN RED FLANNEL

Angelic assistance isn’t always as mundane as fixing a flat; sometimes it is literally life
saving. Twenty-one year old Kimberly was inner-tubing on a back woods Wisconsin river
one summer day. “I was in a shallow, but fast part of the river, when my inner tube
flipped out from under me,” Kimberly says. “The water was only shin deep, so I ran after
my tube. While I was running I fell into a deep spot and got caught in a hydraulic, where
water flowing over a rock or other obstacle flows down, then back onto itself in an
eruption of whitewater.

“I was sucked down and sucked in over my head. I struggled to reach the surface, which
was mere inches away! I grabbed at the water, trying to propel myself upward and out of
this water trap. When I realized my efforts were fruitless and I was about to drown, I felt
an intense peacefulness and serenity fill me with a warmth I can't describe.

“Suddenly, someone grabbed me by the wrist, and in one tug had me out of the deep
water and standing in ankle-deep water nearby. I caught a glimpse of a blonde woman in
a red flannel shirt, but when I turned to thank her for saving my life, there was no one
there.”

STRANGER ON THE METRO

There certainly are many kind people in the world who don’t hesitate to help strangers in
need – especially children. But was it just a kind man young Brian encountered on an
April afternoon in 1999… or was he something more? Patty H. tells us that she along
with her husband, their son Brian and daughter were riding the Metro Link on their way
to a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game that day.

“Brian had a Sharpie marker and baseball cap that he was planning on get autographs
with,” she says. “The Metro Link stopped at Busch Stadium. All of us got off the train.
Brian noticed that he dropped the marker and went back on to retrieve it. The doors to the
train closed and it left the platform. My son was still on the train! Brian was only 10
years old at the time and it was his first time in the big city. We were just frantic.”

All the family could do was wait for the train to loop back to the station, which took
about 35 minutes. When the train finally made it back to the platform, Brian had an
interesting story to tell. “While he was on the train,” Patty says, “a black gentleman sat
next to him and began to talk to him. He asked him questions and reassured him that he
would be fine. Brian said he and the man were the only two people on the train. Yet when
the doors to the train opened, the man had strangely disappeared. He did not go out the
door. He would have had to walk past us. We believe it was my son's guardian angel.”

You have your doubts? Eight years later, Patty tells us, this same mysterious man visited
their son's hospital room when he was direly ill.

LICENSE TO SAVE

Here is one of those miraculous roadside assistance stories. The interesting thing about
this one, according to Amanda, is that the helpful stranger looked like Jesus himself. Her
experience took place in Pottstown, Pensylvania.

“I have never been the real religious type,” Amanda says. “As a matter of fact, I often
made jokes about the Bible as well as Jesus. After having compared Jesus to a fictional
character one night, I drove with a friend of mine to another friend's home. Rain was
pouring and the weather was unbearable. Somehow my vehicle landed in what appeared
to be a river in the middle of the road I was traveling. I tried to call a couple of male
friends to try to push my vehicle out. No luck. I sat crying next to my car at 3:00 a.m. in a
wooded area, with absolutely no homes present.

“An elderly man came out of the woods, resembling what one would assume to be Jesus:
tall, skinny and bearded. He said that he would go get his tow-truck and pull my car out
of the rapids. I sat in my boyfriend's vehicle as the old man drove a tractor over to my
vehicle. The license plate on his tractor read: ‘You have a friend in Jesus.’

“Was this a coincidence,” Amanda wonders, “or was Jesus showing me how non-fictional
he really is?”