Conspiracies

Boing Boing Frogs

Nyctibatrachus minimus, the tiny nightfrog of India. Conraua goliath, the goliath frog of West Africa. We shall pick up an existence by its frogs. Wise men have tried other ways. They have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.Charles Fort, Lo! After I posted my blog (“Incredibly Tiny Frog Discovered”) on the [...]

Exit The Wolfman: Gable Film Update

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.Friedrich Nietzsche The Gable Film is merely, as seemed obvious in the beginning, an alleged hoax. Many readers have sent in comments and links. I will pluck one, that of Cyptomundo reader SC, as an example that gets directly to the point: Follow this link to read Mr. Steve Cook’s explanation as to the nature of the “unintended hoax.” It seems three frames of the film reveal a [...]

Alleged 1924 Ropen Footage?

On September 13th, 2007, Azrul Hisyam Saleh sent me the above footage. It was presented as an “old 1924 video of supposed Pterosaur in PNG.” I was in no mood to rush to publish this on this blog. But now I’m seeing this footage crop up on creationist sites and crypto blogs. Ugh. So I’ll place it here, make a brief remark, and open it to your comments. To me it looks like someone put a painted tail (I can’t see the wings move) on an old film, maybe even one from the 1920s, of a frigate bird. Several things [...]

Fayette Factor Fascinates On 250th

The name game is played daily. One word, “Lafayette,” which can be translated from the French as “the little fairy” or “the little enchantment,” is an especially fascinating focus, my friends. This specific element of the name game that Jim Brandon wrote about in Weird America, and that I have discussed in Mysterious America, is what I’ve come to call the “Fayette Factor.” Since research and writing about it first in the 1970s, several items on this lexilink between Fayette (as well as its related forms – Lafayette, La Fayette, Fayetteville), high strangeness and sightings have been published. The cities, [...]

Ratatosk Predicts Red Sox Victory

I’ve spent some time here discussing melanistic or black squirrels. It seems only logical, perhaps even nuts, to not ignore the significant publishing of an article in today’s New York Times regarding some squirrel lore that can be seen to unfold in the coming weeks. What is being set up is a testable experiment. If a scholar of Norse mythology had been in the stands of Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night, he or she probably would have advised Yankees fans to not make too much out of the 5-3 victory against the Red Sox. The result, after all, still left [...]

Van Roosmalen Temporarily Released

Chad Arment has passed along the news that the mammalogist and cryptozoologist Marc Van Roosmalen is out of prison on appeal. A Brazilian judge on Tuesday [August 7, 2007] ordered that a prominent Dutch scientist be freed from prison while he appeals his conviction for environmental crimes and embezzlement, a court official said. Marc Van Roosmalen was convicted on June 15 of trying to illegally auction off the names of monkey species, keeping rare monkeys at his house without authorization and selling a scaffolding donated to the National Institute for Amazon Research where he worked. He was sentenced to 15 [...]

Beyond Mothman: I-35W Blues

Things fall down. People look up. And when it rains, it pours.Magnolia, 1999. The collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minnesota is a tragedy, some say of epic proportions. Certainly, it is the most significant bridge collapse, not caused by an easily visible external reason like an earthquake or an impact from a barge, since 1967. An Anomaly National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker said it is too early for officials to know if the accident could have been avoided. “They are built not to fall down. This is an anomaly and we’re going to try to find out [...]