The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files. This week: The Wow! Signal WTF?
Ohio State University. 15 August 1977. In 1959, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence was established with the aim of detecting radio signals that were drifting through space from distant planets that were home to intelligent civilisations. SETI’s radio telescopes had been scouring the skies in search of a sign, a signal, to answer the burning question: Are we alone in the universe? The painstaking search of the heavens had been ongoing for years without a hint of success, when shocked astronomer Jerry R. Ehman saw something incredible. Since the project’s inception, the radio telescopes had been printing out a smattering of ones and twos, but today, where ones and twos usually reign, he’s left staring at something different altogether. "6EQUJ5", to be precise. You’re Kidding, Right? A section of the page looks like the computer had been at the drinks cabinet. A number 6, a 5, and a letter Q, which is nuts, but at least it had the decency to follow with a U. A typo, or were the aliens providing us with the key to their Wi-Fi? Whatever was going on, the researcher grabbed hold of a red biro and scrawled the now famous Wow! which gives the signal its name. Actually, the telescopes were set to a frequency which detects hydrogen, and the printout gives a rating for how strong the return signal from said hydrogen is. For no return, the printout left a blank space, for stronger returns the numbers 1-9 were shown, with 9 being strongest. But it didn’t stop there. The very strongest signals would return a rating from A (stronger than nine) to Z (the strongest). For the first time ever, the signal had returned a letter U. Wow, indeed. But aliens? Hold Your Horses! Some clever shit, namely Professor Antonio Paris of St Petersburg College, Florida, went about researching the Wow! signal like a detective looking at a cold case. And where others had failed, he found something. The area of the sky that SETI were eyeballing (or should that be earwigging?) at that time was actually a relatively busy bit of sky. In the interim between the signal’s detection and his own research, two comets had been discovered. Think of the maths here: a miniscule bit of sky, and a bit of rock moving at Christ knows what speed. What are the odds? Slim. However, comets move in orbits, which means that they come back. So Professor Paris checked where the comets were at the time the Wow! signal was found and guess what… Make Your Mind Up Time. He was right. See, comets are surrounded by clouds of hydrogen. Big clouds of hydrogen millions of kilometres across. When Ehman detected “Wow!” the frequency on the radio telescopes was at 1420MHz; a radio frequency that hydrogen emits naturally. Before we declare the Wow! signal as bollocks, Paris has to put his hypothesis to the test. There are some that think the hydrogen clouds from a couple of comets wouldn’t be able to emit such a strong signal as to reach a letter U. As somebody who wants to believe, I can only hope that the sceptics are right and Paris is wrong… But at this point, I have to say his theory looks as if it could be a sound one. The bastard. RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling What do you think? Comment below! Interested in UFOs? Click here to read about the Phoenix Lights incident! This, and my other Unexplained Files are in a handy eBook, available from Amazon!
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The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files. This week: Black Eyed Children WTF? Los Angeles, California. 1995. A young singer known to her friends as ‘Fergie’ meets a rapper by the name of Will. I. Am… Wait... That can’t be right... *checks notes* Ffs. Let me start again. OK this is it... Abilene, Texas. 1996. Brian Bethel, an internet blogger and journalist, sits in his car, writing the cheque he’s about to drop into the night-slot of his internet service provider, when suddenly there’s a sharp rap at his window. He’s writing a cheque by the light of a nearby cinema, so, preparing himself for the worst, he looks up and is relieved to see two boys aged between 9-12. He winds his window down, readying himself for a sob-story requiring him to hand over pocket change, when he was overcome with incomprehensible fear. The kids seemed normal enough, but something about them was off. The boy who knocked is olive-skinned, while his fair-skinned, redhead friend loiters in the background. The olive-skinned boy asks to be taken to his house. They want to see the Mortal Kombat movie, but as well as shitty taste in films, the boys are apparently forgetful, as they’ve left their money at home. It all seemed plausible enough at the time, though the longer the conversation went on, the more Bethel was gripped by his seemingly irrational fear. Looking for excuses not to let these kids into his car, he glanced up at the cinema and realised that the last showing of the film had already started, and there was no time to drive the boys back home then return to the cinema. While Bethel was calculating distances and times, the olive-skinned boy was continuously trying to convince him to let them into his car. It won’t take long… we’re just kids… it’s not like we have a gun… That’s when Bethel looked back at the kid. And wishes he hadn’t... You’re Kidding, Right? His irrational fear was now all too rational. Both boys stared at him with eyes of soulless, inky blackness. The ground seemed to fall away beneath him and fear clutched at his stomach. It was around this point he made every excuse he could think of to get the fuck out of there, all the while apologising to the Satan spawn peering at him. With a staggering ability to make things worse, the kid banged on the window, screaming “Let us in! We can’t come in unless you tell us it’s okay!” According to Bethel, as he screeched from the parking lot, he glanced in his rear-view mirror. The boys had gone. There was no time for them to run anywhere. And so began the tale of the Black Eyed Kids. Subsequent stories include similar details. Two kids, remote locations, deep, overwhelming fear, the kids insisting on being let in. There are slight variations. Sometimes there’s a Black Eyed Adult. Sometimes they’re wearing old fashioned clothes or gowns. But since Bethel’s story in the 1990s, there has been an internet explosion of stories. Hold Your Horses! So what exactly is going on here? Theories abound. From demons to vampires to kids fucking around with spooky-looking contact lenses. Rather than my waffling, I’ll leave you in the hands of someone posting online with the handle “Adele”. “I was sitting in my bedroom reading a book, when at about 11:00 p.m. I heard a knocking… a slow, constant one. I got up out of bed to see what it was. I looked out of the window and to my surprise saw two children. I opened the window and asked them what they wanted at this time of night. They replied by saying simply, ‘Let us in’. I said no and asked what for. ‘We want to use your bathroom’. “I was quite shocked that children of about 10 years-old wanted to use a stranger’s bathroom at this time of night. I told them no, closed the window, but looked at them through the glass. I glanced at their eyes… and I have never ever seen eyes like them. They were black, completely black. I got the feeling of evil and unhappiness. It surrounded me. It was horrible.” Make Your Mind Up Time. I think the most unsettling thing about Adele’s story is its simplicity. Stories online tend to have embellishments and a flair for the dramatic. This one seemed quite understated. So do I think it’s vampires? Demons? Human-alien hybrids? Sadly, none of the above. With one source story and many springing up after, this one bears all the hallmarks of an urban legend. I may be wrong, of course. All stories have to start somewhere. But I remained unconvinced. Having said that… If two kids show up on a rainy night asking to be let in out of the cold, I’ll gladly tell them to fuck themselves. RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling What do you think? Have you had a run in with Black Eyed Kids? Comment below! Thanks for reading!
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The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
This week: China's Floating City
WTF?
Jiangxi, China. 7 October 2015. In the streets of Jiangxi hundreds of baffled citizens have their necks craned skyward as, in the clouds above the city is… wait for it… another city? That can’t be right… *checks notes* Nope, that’s right. There was another city. In the clouds. And we’re not talking some grainy, wavering, mirage-like city. It’s a full on cityscape, all straight lines and angles, with high-rise buildings and skyscrapers. “Great!” I hear you cry. “Another one of those stories where people say they saw something, but nobody had a camera handy.” Only they did. Lots of them. Here comes the crazy part: the folks in Jiangxi weren’t the only ones pointing their faces skyward. Y’see, two days earlier, over 500 miles away in the city of Foshan, they saw the exact same image. You’re Kidding, Right? The towering skyline appeared in the clouds over both cities, witnessed and photographed by thousands of baffled citizens. So what was going on? A glitch in the matrix? Maybe so, but as you can imagine, the interwebs went into overdrive coming up with possible explanations. One of the most popular ideas floated (see what I did there?!) was Project Blue Beam. Hold on to your tin foil hats for this one… According to the theory, BlueBeam is a NASA project that will use holographic images (amongst other things) to convince the public of one of two possible scenarios: firstly, in a series of steps that the ideas that have been built around religion are wrong, BlueBeam will be used to convince people of a second coming; and secondly, if that idea isn’t batshit crazy enough for you, BlueBeam will be used to convince folks that aliens are attacking. As nuts as that sounds, the origin of such an idea comes from a real live scientist, albeit a Nazi one. But one clever enough that Uncle Sam thought was keeping around. Dr Wernher von Braun was shipped over to the US after WWII as part of Operation Paperclip, and in 1977, he made a startling deathbed confession. Von Braun said the military industrial complex’s perpetual war machine would always need an enemy. At that time, it was the Russians and Communism, after that he said there would be something harder to tie down: not a single area or state, but individuals - namely terrorists. After the terrorists it would be “rogue nations”. Nations of concern like Iran, Libya, or North Korea. Then there would be the big one: the weaponisation of space, all in the name of protecting us from asteroids and cheesy Michael Bay movies. And after the asteroids, there would be E.T. Suddenly, the populace would need their government to protect them from such a threat, because how can we protect ourselves? After that, the huddled masses would gladly go along with whatever they proposed including an insidious sounding ‘One World Government’. Hold Your Horses! Hang on there a minute! Surely there’s a more mundane explanation? Of course there is! Fata Morgana. Fata Morgana is the Italian name for Morgan le Fay, the Arthurian sorceress, and is a weather phenomenon which can be seen on land or at sea; so basically a natural mirage. Fata Morgana mirages usually distort the images of boats or skylines on which they’re based, often to the extent that the original object is unrecognisable. The image also has the appearance of changing rapidly, flipping between right-way-up to upside-down that can be stacked upon one another. How does it work? Light rays are bent when they pass through layers of air, which are at different temperatures, through something known as a “steep thermal inversion”. This creates an atmospheric duct. In essence, a layer of warmer air sitting atop a layer of much cooler air. This is the opposite of the usual situation with cooler air on top. So, in calm weather, the warm layer rests on top of the cool one, which acts like a refracting lens. For a Fata Morgana to exist, this warm air on top of cool air duct must be present. Make Your Mind Up Time. I have a problem with that official explanation because of course I fucking do. See, if you check out any images of real Fata Morgana, they look nothing like what appeared in the skies over China. Fata Morgana images are shimmering, hanging just over the horizon, all on cloudless days. Do you see how easily I shat all over the theory with not one but three different ways of debunking? That shit was too easy. Not to mention the fact that the identical images would have to come from the same place at the same angle. Don’t get me wrong: I fucking love science. But trying to shoehorn a phenomena into a pre-made scientific theory isn’t very… well, scientific. When we do this, we’re missing an opportunity to actually discover something new, and science should be about exploring frontiers, not about dismissing something just because we don’t understand it. The science should fit the story, not the other way around. It’s like saying someone saw a ghost because they’d had a couple of Sherries, even though they’d never ever seen anything before, with or without Sherry. But low-level sonic frequencies causing a disturbance in the witness’s perception? BOOM! Science! But I digress… Were China’s floating cities Fata Morgana? Fuck no! Were they a result of NASA’s project Blue Beam… RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling Further Reading: Countless newspaper articles can be found online, most of which are accompanied by video. What do you think? Comment below! If you enjoyed this, feel free to share it with your friends! Use the buttons at the bottom of the page to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for more!
The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
This week: John Titor, Time Traveller.
WTF?
Art Bell’s Coast to Coast Radio Show. 29 July 1998. Art Bell is hosting one of his usual ‘out there’ radio shows, on this occasion the topic being time travel, when a fax rolls in. The fax is from a man claiming to be from the year 2036, and the story he has to tell has a strange ring of plausibility to it. He claims the coming change of millennium will bring with it disaster. This, remember, was in the time when there was genuine worry about the Y2K bug. And so began the fascinating tale of John Titor. Not long after his faxed appearance on Coast to Coast AM, in November of 2000, on a public internet forum, posts start rolling in from someone using the handle TimeTravel_0. The same someone who faxed Art Bell. You’re Kidding, Right? If this sounds like complete horseshit, the forum posts had the strange ring of truth that accompanied the faxes sent to Art Bell. This guy didn’t tiptoe around the subject, like a man intent on killing the circus, he went straight for the juggler. Among his early posts were pictures of his time machine and its operations manual. He even posted a photo of the time machine. Not only that, but as you’d expect, he was flooded with questions about why he was here, the science and philosophy of time travel, and what the Christ he was doing here – and he ducked not a one. So why was he here? According to the man himself, the Y2K bug had caused disaster, in his timeline, and there was a new disaster looming, so he was sent back to collect an IBM 5100 computer. He claimed the computer was needed to debug computer programs in 2036. Now, as my main man @LaughingWolf will testify, my knowledge of all things technological is shite, but apparently, the IBM 5100 runs both the APL and BASIC programming languages. I have no clue what that means, but according to Titor, it was super important. More importantly, to the people back in 2000 who did know what it meant, it made perfect sense. Hold Your Horses! So it was all true? Well, there were obviously the people who wanted to test Mr Titor. They weren’t happy with detailed answers to specific questions, they wanted predictions. Here’s where Titor didn’t do so well. He said that the US would suffer a civil war that would begin in 2004. For those of you without your finger on the pulse of current affairs, that didn’t happen. He then said that the boffins at CERN would discover the basis for time travel around the year 2001, which also didn’t happen, unless they’re really good at keeping secrets from us and oh Christ I’ve just opened a can of worms labelled ‘Mandela Effect’. He also said that the last Olympics would take place in 2004, at which point we have to ask: What the fuck were they doing in 2008 in Beijing? One caveat to all of these failed predictions was the claim that there are many universes, and each time he travels there is a slight deviance from one timeline into another. This he claims, is why he stopped off in 2000 on his way back to 1975. It also handily makes any claims of his unfalsifiable. Make Your Mind Up Time. So is it real? Did he create alternate timelines? An Italian documentary on Titor hired a private detective by the name of Mike Lynch to get to the bottom of the story. What did he find? He discovered The John Titor Foundation. An IP address connected to the foundation is located in Florida, the home of John Titor. The John Titor Foundation is a limited liability corporation led by a fellow by the name of Lawrence H. Haber. Haber is an entertainment lawyer from Orlando, Florida. PI Mike Lynch discovered that Haber’s brother is a computer scientist. Someone who would have known about the importance of an IBM 5100 computer and its relevance in fixing futuristic technological problems; something that gave the whole story its air of credibility in the first place. On top of all that, I gave John Titor until 9 o’clock on the morning of this post to email me and prove that he's totally not full of shit. That email is yet to arrive. Sorry, John. RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling Further Listening/Viewing: Those Conspiracy Guys are the only ones who’ve covered the story in any real depth that I can find. Plus there’s a 12 minute video from StuffTheyDon’tWantYouToKnow on JT. What do you think? Comment below! If you enjoyed this, feel free to share it with your friends! Use the buttons at the bottom of the page to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for more! |
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In this blog I'll be bringing to you short tales of things that go bump in the night, true stories of weird and unexplained events, and the real-life news of all things odd and macabre, and entertain you along the way. Categories
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