Link-dump #17 (Fortean edition)

"They" Are Not "Them": A Hybrid View of the UFO Presence

Lost world of fanged frogs and giant rats discovered in Papua New Guinea

Chinese scientists 'filmed UFO for 40 minutes'

Has Jesus Christ been spotted on Mars? (I don't see it.)

A skull that rewrites the history of man

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Elaine Morgan on the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis

Whether you agree with Morgan's case for semi-aquatic human ancestors or not, her willingness to take on the scientific priesthood with sensible (if resolutely unpopular) questions is refreshing indeed.

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Herbie Brennan on faeries

Here's an intriguing clip of author Herbie Brennan pontificating about the existence of faeries. Do "faeries" -- whatever their origin -- exist outside the boundaries of belief? If so, could we even begin to examine them using the instruments of empirical science?



(Hat tip: My Strange Blog.)

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Alien writing!

Here's a helpful overview of arcane texts, some ostensibly extraterrestrial. Like crop glyphs, I find unknown alphabets aesthetically intriguing reminders of the overarching strangeness of reality in general. Note how some of the characters represented bear a general resemblance to entopic imagery, discussed here.

(Weirder yet, I learned of the site from none other than Bruce Sterling.)

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John Keel (1930-2009)

This morning I logged onto Twitter to discover that Fortean adventurer John Keel, author of "The Mothman Prophecies," died on July 3. Keel was ufology's own Man In Black, a genuine iconoclast who wedded scientific humility with ideas too strange even for the UFO community. (Keel has been a considerable influence on my own ideas about the "paranormal"; this blog is littered with references to his notion of the "electromagnetic superspectrum" from which seemingly occult forces materialize and vanish, adapting to our belief systems with such tenacity that few -- if any -- of us are ever the wiser.)

Fellow Keelians Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern offer their own remembrances here and here.

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Any cryptographers in the house?

I don't think crop formations are created by paranormal forces. However, examples such as this serve as profound examples why crop glyphs, like all genuine works of art, wield the capacity to stir us in unexpected ways. The recent glyphic offerings from Britain deserve to be marveled at.

More information here.

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My favorite Fortean story of the day

Wallabies get high in poppy fields, make crop circles

Wallabies are breaking into Tasmania's poppy fields and getting high.

The strange occurrence, revealed in a State Government Budget Estimates hearing, has also solved what some growers say has spurred a campfire legend about mysterious crop circles that appear in northern Tasmania's poppy paddocks.

In true X-Files-style, Attorney-General Lara Giddings said the drugged out wallabies had been found hopping around in circles squashing the poppies, creating the formations -- and hence solving the mystery.

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A belated farewell

Fortean writer John Michell died last month; I just found out today.

Boom!

Another mystery boom wakes people in region

A second loud boom may have rattled windows in parts of Rockland County yesterday - and its origin remains as mysterious as the explosive noise that blew through southern Westchester County over the weekend.

"It was about 5:15 a.m., and it woke up the whole house," said Nanuet resident Keith Wallenstein. "The house was shaking. It sounded like someone had flown an F-16 over the house."

Probably those damned stick-like aliens out taking joy-rides.

Michael MacDonald blogs

Friend and Halifax-based film-maker Mike MacDonald has started a blog. (His most intriguing post thus far, at least to my mind, is his refutation of the conventional medical explanation for sleep paralysis. Having experienced sleep paralysis, I can't say I agree with Mike's interpretation; then again, it's entirely possible that we're dealing with an entire spectrum of anomalous states rather than a singular phenomenon.)

Lastly, while I'm on the subject, here's the text of a post from May of 2006:

Last night I half-watched "Veronica Mars" while Web-surfing, then promptly collapsed into bed. I experienced a fleeting episode of sleep paralysis in which an "alien" seemed to lift my fingers to its mouth and lingeringly kiss them. (We swapped some sort of garbled telepathic dialogue which, at the time, I thought was marginally interesting and perhaps blog-worthy, but now I can't remember what was "said.")

The "alien" left quickly, and I tried to turn my head to watch it depart through my bedroom door. I honestly don't know if I "saw" anything or not, but my impression was that the being was pale -- possibly luminous -- and taller than the gray, drone-like beings that feature in so many accounts.

Rest assured this "encounter" was pure hynopompic cinema, not an actual visitation. I more or less knew this when it was happening, and it's abundantly clear now. So here I am playing "debunker" again, describing an event that I insist never really happened except on a semi-conscious level. Yet -- and this is critical -- I'm not about to claim that all reported alien visitations are neurochemical anomalies. For all I know, some are all-too-real.

In a bittersweet sense, I wish last night's episode had been the real thing; the idea of an (evidently) friendly alien darting into my room to give me a quick display of affection, unencumbered by forbidding probes and weird lights, isn't entirely unpleasant.

Humaliens!

Shocking proof! Even creepier than humanzees!

Massive 10ft Spinning Ice Circle Discovered in the UK

It's no secret that people in the UK are forever complaining about the weather, but it seems this week they were well within their rights. For the first time ever a rare phenomenon usually only seen in extremely cold countries was spotted on the River Otten in Devon.

A massive spinning ice circle caught the attention of Roy Jefferies as he was walking his dog by the river last Wednesday morning. Measuring a whopping 10 ft in diameter, the rotating disc sat stationary in the river where two currents merge.

Cliff Pickover:

I tend to be skeptical about the paranormal. However, I do feel that there are facets of the universe we can never understand, just as a monkey can never understand calculus, black holes, symbolic logic, and poetry. There are thoughts we can never think, visions we can only glimpse. It is at this filmy, veiled interface between human reality and a reality beyond that we may find the numinous, which some may liken to God.

Greg Bishop with legendary Fortean John Keel, author of "The Mothman Prophecies" and "Our Haunted Planet." Keel is clearly miserable and wishing Bishop would leave him alone.

10 Flimsy Paranormal Hoaxes Everyone Bought Into

Everyone enjoys a good hoax regardless of their personal beliefs about the paranormal. The following are examples of famous hoaxes that captivated the personal interest and imagination in their time, only to let everyone down once the truth emerged. Some still believe that these are true.

(Via Reality Carnival.)

The section on crop glyphs isn't entirely accurate: the increasingly complex designs that grace British fields aren't drunken pranks, but products of a far more interesting network of "underground" landscape artists with surprisingly sophisticated intellectual resources and an equally robust aesthetic acumen. By dismissing crop circles as so much silliness, we miss an important opportunity to observe a true sociological phenomenon in the midst of unfolding.

Blind, Yet Seeing: The Brain's Subconscious Visual Sense

Scientists have previously reported cases of blindsight in people with partial damage to their visual lobes. The new report is the first to show it in a person whose visual lobes -- one in each hemisphere, under the skull at the back of the head -- were completely destroyed. The finding suggests that people with similar injuries may be able to recover some crude visual sense with practice.

I rather suspect Peter Watts will weigh in on this shortly.

Punch Hole Clouds & Other Rarely Seen Cloud Formations

The Bermuda Triangle in the news.

Wheel in the sky wows local residents

Locals who phoned and e-mailed the Daily Comet and The Courier this weekend about the strange cloud formation did agree on one thing: "It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen," said Raceland resident Sandra Ledet, who shared some spectacular photos with the Daily Comet.

Shawn O'Neil, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell, identified the phenomenon as a hole-punch cloud.

"They don't occur all that often, and they are usually caused when an aircraft intersects altocumulus or cirrocumulus clouds," he said.

One I managed to miss:

Giant amoebas found rolling on sea floor

Using a research submarine, marine biologists in the Bahamas have discovered large numbers of an unknown, grape-sized, single-celled animal slowly rolling across the sea floor.

"[It's] huge for a single cell. If I had cells that big I'd be six kilometres tall and weigh three trillion kilograms," said Sönke Johnsen, a biologist at Duke University in North Carolina, and the expedition's chief scientist.

(Via Futurismic.)