Cullan Hudson's Blog, page 35

Oldest Town In The Americas?

http://www.philipcoppens.com/caral.html

Skyquakes: Real or Internet Hoax

Those mysterious moans from the sky that have cropped up in reports from across the globe are fast making the rounds. Is it all real or, like some believe, a hoax?

Some believe it has to do with the switching of the earth's magnetic field; others see it as a sign the planet's core is "slipping"; while still others believe the sound to be heaven's trumpets heralding the apocalypse. 

Skeptics point to two facts: the noise sounds (oddly) too much alike in each homemade video to be genuine and that many who live in the cities where the video were claimed to have been shot heard nothing at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMT3kN4rNSs&feature=related

The Dark Eye Of Sir Simon Marsden

Sir Simon Marsden is a photographer known across the world for his evocative and romantic images of forlorn castles and ruined gothic structures--especially if they happen to be haunted. Marsden has published several folios of his work as well as books about the haunted locations themselves. See more of what his dark eye has captured at http://www.simonmarsden.co.uk/intro.htm

The Woeful Ouija

A recent Facebook post prompted me to write about the notorious Ouija board today. The question posed was whether anyone would like a table made to look like an Ouija board, since the poster had made one with the intent to sell it. I, for one, thought it was a clever idea and the attendant images of the finished work showed it to be of a subtle and sophisticated design. However, some of the visitors commented that they would NEVER have a Ouija in their homes and cited bad experiences (hear tell or otherwise) associated with its use, namely the oft-dreaded invocation of demonic forces.

This seems to be a commonly held belief these days, but it wasn't always the case. This innocuous board, which derives its name from the French word for "yes" and the German word for "no" (oui and ja, respectively), was a game invented in 1892 by Elija J. Bond. Its release coincided with a booming interest in Spiritualism at the time and the Ouija fast entered into the culture.

Since the mid-1960s, the Parker Brothers Company has mass produced the Ouija board "for entertainment purposes".

Still, there are those who adamantly refuse to associate themselves with the board and its insidious little planchette. Paranormal writer and authority Rosemary Ellen Guiley blames this on the slew of horror films and novels that have used the board as a convenient (and some would argue lazy) device for the introduction of some evil force.

While I don't personally believe the board does anything, I could agree that it might be a tool for focusing ones mediumistic talents. However, it is more likely that like the modern computer, we only get out of an Ouija board what we put into it. If we see demons lurking within every shadow, we're likely to find them.

Compare and Contrast: Weird Happenings In Texas

My, the stars sure ARE big and bright deep in the heart of Texas! Was it a UFO or a Meteor spotted streaking across the Texas sky?



But then there were also the reports of a strange noises emanating from the sky over Amarillo. HERE, which have been reportedly heard elsewhere around the globe as well. Other videos are on YouTube.

By the way, the comments below are good for a chuckle. The depth and breadth of American ignorance never ceases to amaze me. Without knowing more about the context of this video or any confirmation as to whether this was actually heard over Amarillo, I have to say I smell something of a publicity stunt at work. The DJs don't seem...authentic, as if they're acting a bit. I don't know. I'll research this one some more.

An English Haunting

A friend of mine in England sent me an e-mail yesterday. Now, he's a rational Englishman and quite unlike the erratic bunch you would find in any given episode of Most Haunted. In fact, his interests doen't seem to lie in the vein of the paranormal much at all. He's more the let's-hike-every-mountain-in-Scotland-this-weekend type rather than the ooh-wonder-if-that-place-is-haunted type. So, it came as quite a surprise that he would send me the following.

"I thought I must write and tell you about a friend of mine that I visited earlier in the week. He's recently moved into a barn conversion and he thinks it's haunted. It's near 2 old graveyards and he's heard footsteps overhead upstairs when there's been no-one else in the kitchen. On one occasion he said that all the cushions in the sofa were thrown on the floor! I just went over for a meal but my friend said that next time I should stay the night. I'm not sure that I'd want to if there were going to be spectral goings-on!"

I, of course, encouraged him to TOTALLY stay the night.  After all, spectral goings-on are the best kinds of goings-on. :-D

And In Blue Ball Updates...

Could something like this Alaskan mystery provide answers (or greater depth) to the enigmatic Blue Ball Fall?

http://www.adn.com/2009/07/14/864687/huge-blob-of-arctic-goo-floats.html

And this post was discovered on a bulletin board:

Labyrinth_13 responds: July 16th, 2009 at 9:23 am Does anyone remember the case of a mysterious rain of gelatinous goo that occurred in the town of Oakville in Washington State? Since Washington State is near Alaska, it crossed my mind that there may be some correlation between these two.
Here is a brief blurb about it from Unsolved Mysteries:

 "In August of 1994, a bizarre sequence of events began to occur in the small town of Oakville, Washington. Gelatinous blobs of biological material began to rain down over an area of over 20 square miles during a storm. It would happen six times in 1994, and continue periodically thereafter. The latest was during the third week of June 1997.

The fact that this was going on would not generally be known outside of Oakville until an episode of Unsolved Mysteries on Thursday, May 8, 1997, hosted by Robert Stack.

It came from the skies to wreck havoc on the earth. It sounds like a bad science fiction movie, but for the little town in Washington there was nothing entertaining about the scourge that befell them in 1994. Six times it rained down from above, leaving dozens of local residents ill, and several pets and small animals dead."

It all happened in Oakville, Washington, population 665. Here in Oakville, clouds fill the skies daily, bringing rain some 275 days a year. So, when it began pouring on the morning of August 7, 1994, no one was particularly concerned - until they realized it wasn't raining rain. It was raining tiny blobs of gelatinous goo. It came down in torrents, blanketing 20 square miles, and brought with it something of a plague.

Maurice Gobeil (local resident): 'I got sick, my wife got sick, my daughter got sick and everybody that lived here got sick.'

Beverly Roberts (local resident): " Everybody in the whole town came down with something like the flu, only it was a really hard flu that lasted from seven weeks to two or three months."

Paranormal Conversation Recorded?

Mark L. Cowden is the audio-visual technician who recorded what is believed to be the first ever documented case of a live, two-way conversation with the spirit world. In early 2010, at an apparently haunted hotel in Northern Ireland, Mark was part of a small team of people who were filming a television documentary series about ghost stories when something incredible happened. While a medium and a psychic investigator sat on a bed in the next room and attempted to contact the spirit of a ghost in the hotel, Mark was able to record not only the medium's side of the conversation—and her report of the responses she was receiving from the spirit—but the spirit's replies directly as well!
With camera's rolling, an independent television crew documented the whole process. Not only is this believed to be the first time anybody has ever managed to record a whole conversation between this world and the next, it was also a first for television. Spirit Voices documents Mark's work in the field of paranormal forensics and details the technology and methods he developed to achieve such ground-breaking results.  About the Author:Mark L. Cowden is a native of Oklahoma and is of Cherokee and Scots Irish decent. He has been studying paranormal accounts in the UK and Ireland for the last ten years and has featured in various television shows, radio programmes, books, magazines, and newspapers dealing with this subject. He has worked as a paranormal forensics specialist for "Northern Ireland's Greatest Haunts" in all ten episodes, and he has appeared on "Mistero," aired nationwide in Italy. Cowden is now working on a new American television series, which is currently in development. Mark L Cowdenhttp://www.marklcowden.com/ Anomalist Bookshttp://www.anomalistbooks.com/bookstore.cfm
Barnes & Noblehttp://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spirit-voices-mark-l-cowden/1102694828?ean=9781933665542&itm=1&usri=mark%2bl%2bcowden
Amazonhttp://www.amazon.com/SPIRIT-VOICES-Conversation-Between-Worlds/dp/1933665548/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313404122&sr=8-1

It's Raining Blue Balls!

Forteana has long been filled with tales of "falls", the showering of peculiar objects from the heavens. These have included fish, frogs, nails, hay... Now, it seems that in Dorset, England another weird rain has fallen.

Steve Hornsby was caught in a shower of strangely gelatinous blue "hail", which measured roughly 3 cm in diameter. He collected these odd, gooey balls in a jar and refrigerated them.

At least once scientist, Josie Pegg of Bournemouth University, posited the unusual phenomenon could have been comprised of marine invertebrate eggs that sometimes cling to the feet of water fowl. Flying through a storm, the eggs could have been dislodged, falling on the hapless Mr. Hornsby.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-...

Author Appearance

Saturday, I will be speaking about Strange State and The Mound, as well as answering questions, signing copies, and sharing tales from the forthcoming Stranger State.  The event will be held at the Southwestern Christian University library, located at 7210 NW 39th Expressway in Bethany, OK.


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