Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

You’re familiar with first world problems, right? Running out of mustard, the laundry room is all the way down in the basement or the DVR cut off the first 15 seconds of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These are first world problems.

Third world problems, on the other hand, are things like two oily men with the magical powers of a witch going around trying desperately to rape all the virgins in your village.

That, reportedly, is something a district in Malaysia is currently dealing with.

Remember the Popobawa? We wrote about it a few years ago. It’s a bat-winged cyclops that goes around raping men mostly in a place called Pemba. He terrorizes entire towns at a time.

Something somewhat similar is happening in Malaysia right now, except instead of one terrifying and horny monster there are two of them. AsiaOne.com gives us the low down:

“…what the residents of this village were worried about were not humans, instead they were keeping an eye out for not one, but two, supernatural beings. They are under attack from a couple of orang minyak (oily man), they claim. This village has been buzzing with sightings of the two paranormal creatures for the last 10 days.

“Many residents claim to have seen and heard the orang minyak around the vicinity of the Pangsapuri Laksamana and Jalan Laksamana. And they all say the same thing the orang minyak are clad only in their underwear and drenched in black shiny oil. They can jump from one roof to another with ease, and vanish into thin air within seconds.”

Well we don’t know about all the jumping and vanishing stuff, but as far as the underwear-clad oily description goes – it sounds like our own Mof Gimmers.

You might wonder what the Oily Men are doing around the town there. The answer, according to local lore, is they’re trying desperately to rape a certain amount of virgins so they can get black magic’s equivalent of the Eagle Scout rank. You don’t believe us? Well check out what AsiaOne says about it:

“As reported by a local Malay daily, the 17-year-old girl did not only see the orang minyak a few times, but also felt “someone” caressing her and calling her to go out of the house. It reportedly also locked the family members outside the house on Christmas eve, forcing the girl’s brother-in-law Kamal Bahari Satar, 36, to break down the door. We saw a black heap underneath the kitchen table. When other residents poked it with a bamboo stick, we could see blood stains.”

The black mass then fled to a neighbor’s house. Mobs have taken to the streets in search of the two greasy wizards. Although some have seen them, thus far they’ve been unable to capture one.

Really though, even if they managed to get there hands on one it’d probably be really slippery. After all, they’re covered in grease.

Smart move, greasy man, smart move indeed.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Any haunting aficionado will tell you that there are three main kinds of ghosts; those of Christmas past, those of Christmas present & Stay Puft Marshmallow men. Occasionally, however, a fourth kind of ghost pops up.

This is the kind that haunts into children’s rooms in the middle of the night, sits on their chests & gabs about their ghostly day so long the poor kids end up sleeping in their finger paint by noon next day.

A spooky and specific account of this type is waiting for you after the jump.

Do you believe in ghosts? Other than the types that sit with you at pottery wheels, we mean. If ghosts were only blood thirsty, dead Patrick Swayzes seeking to kill all those who would Harm Demi Moore, the Demi-indifferent of us would probably be OK with them.

Unfortunately according to some, ghosts can be far more nefarious. Like that Michael Jackson ghost that materialized on stage at an African elementary school talent show or whatever. What a terror that one was! And sometimes ghosts appear entire cities at a time. Detroit, for example.

The really spooky ghosts, though, are the ones that saunter into your room and sit on your chest. Once they’ve got you thus restrained, they become chatty Cathies. If you’ve never heard of this before – it (or something like it) is often called Old Hag Syndrome.

This one is slightly different, however, because it includes the old gray ghost of a man. The aged spectre spends his nights in the room of a five year old boy – sitting on the lad’s chest as we mentioned before.

The Daily Mail has the dirt:

“A father has told how his five-year-old son claims he has been troubled by visions of a ghostly man with grey skin who speaks to him in the night. Dave Gerrity, 41, said his son Dagan first complained about seeing something in his bedroom in the family’s Bridlington home around six months ago. Mr Gerrity said: ‘Dagan is scared about it. He cries about it. He’s told us that at night he can’t sleep because a man with grey skin comes and sits on his bed and keeps him awake talking to him.

“The first time it happened, Dagan’s mum Emma and I heard him crying on the baby monitor. I went up to him and he was just crying his eyes out. At first I thought it was just his imagination, or he had had a bad dream. Of course you never expect this kind of thing to be true, I’ve never believed in this kind of thing before. But there’s no denying it now. There have been times when we’ve been in the room with him and we see him looking up into the corner of the room and speaking.”

To us it really doesn’t sound so bad, but that probably depends on the topic of the night. Like if that ghost-guy was an accountant in life and he kept asking questions about our W-2, well we’d likely be tempted to join him on that side. If he wanted to talk about why John Locke should have won Lost, now that’s something we’d probably be able to live with.

We wish that family all the best, though. And we recommend they call Dan Aykroyd to see if he can’t suck the ghost up with a backpack vacuum.

Advice, after all, is all we have to give.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Generally speaking, people don’t fly with out some kind of machine keeping them aloft. You know, like an airplane, a helicopter or an Acme rocket with a pair of roller skates. Non-generally speaking, some bat-winged guy flew 1000′ over Coney Island with tons of witnesses as reported by the New York Times.

Our initial thoughts are that it is a hoax, because all the witnesses say the thing was flying towards New Jersey. If this was true, it would have been flying anywhere but New Jersey.

A long, long time ago the New York Times printed a pretty weird story about a man with bat wings and frog legs soaring through the air over Coney Island. The date was September 12, 1880. They say he’d also been reported sailing over St Louis and Kentucky too.

To give you an excerpt from that article:

“One day last week a marvelous apparition was seen near Coney Island. At the height of at least a thousand feet in the air a strange object was in the act of flying toward the New Jersey coast. It was apparently a man with bat’s wings and improved frog’s legs. The face of the man could be distinctly seen, and it wore a cruel and determined expression. The movements made by the object closely resembled those of a frog in the act of swimming with his hind legs and flying with his front legs.”

We’re not afraid to tell you that we have no idea what ‘improved frog’s legs’ are – but it sounds delicious. We assume there was probably some batter involved. And a flash fryer.

This isn’t the first time we’ve told you about flying people, if you recall. Remember the floating Yogi? That was a strange story with baffling implications. What about the evil witch that tried to rip off the skin of a Mexican police officer’s face? She had to use some flying powers to pull that one off too.

That New York Times article spirals into talk about some preacher or something, who is obviously using a new technology to scope out the sins of cities he was about to preach in. That’s probably true. Voyeurism has long been the impetus to invention.

Which reminds us – we need to get back to the lab to work on our giant machine that renders retirement-home bathroom walls transparent. We’re already working on the patent so nobody steal that idea.

Also please tell us where you’re currently housing your ancestors.

For no specific reason.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Hecklerspray just bought 7 lead-lined safes and converted them into underpants.  Sure, our pants now look bulgy and perfectly square, but it’s worth it because we just learned about a guy with X-Ray eyes. All of our genitalia demands privacy, you see, and that’s just something we don’t think we could ever have with people like this lurking about.

You don’t believe us, do you? Well read on then – and learn about the man named Kuda Bux.

Who’d have ever guessed that eyes could be such formidable weapons. Remember the kid who went around accidentally lighting everything on fire by simply looking at it? Well now the dangerous eye ball club has a new member. And by new we mean since the 1930s or something.

Kuda Bux had a strange ability. He’s  let you cover his head with about a million layers of varied materials, and then he’d read you a story. To someone not present at one of these demonstrations you’d think there were a million ways for this to be a cheap parlor trick. So let’s hear from someone who was present for at least two of these demonstrations. It’s a long excerpt but it kind of needs to be. This from AmazingAbilities.com:

“…Kuda Bux continued, “I would like two volunteers.” Two young fellows, apparently college students, stood up to volunteer… Kuda Bux took two baseball sized quantities of freshly kneaded white flour dough from a box on a table. He kneaded each ball of dough for a brief time and then flattened it into a round inch-thick patty about six inches in diameter. As he handed each volunteer one of the patties, he said, “Hold these.” He closed both eyes, leaning his head back. He instructed, “Take the dough and seal my eyes shut.” The volunteers were slow to respond. “Just lay it flat over my eyes,” Kuda Bux urged. The two men obliged. “Press it down all around so it is completely sealed.”

“…The dough filled his entire eye sockets and extended out from his eyes which completely sealed both eyes shut. There was no doubt that his eyes were pasted shut. [He] continued directing the volunteers, “There are two cotton wads on the table. Take those and place them over the dough.” The men obliged. They were pieces of cotton about an inch thick, and about 4 inches wide by 6 inches long. They were placed vertically over the dough. “Take the tape. There is a roll of tape on the table. Take the tape and tape the cotton in place,” Kuda Bux continued. As one fellow pulled a strip of tape from the dispenser, Kuda Bux explained, “Make it about ten inches long. Just tape over the cotton onto my face.”

“The volunteers got the idea and while one cut ten-inch long strips of this inch-wide medicinal tape, the other fellow took the tape and criss-cross it over the cotton and onto Kuda Bux’s face. It was clearly evident that the cotton wads were firmly in place over the eyes, extending from the middle of the forehead down to the lower part of his cheeks. Even if Kuda Bux could somehow peak under the dough, he would not be able to peak under the cotton and the tape as well.

“As if this was not enough Kuda Bux instructed, “There are black cloth strips in the box. Take those and place them over the cotton, and tie them behind my head.” As the two fellows pulled out the five cloth strips, I could see they were opaque, about three inches wide, and each about three feet long. “Look them over,” urged Kuda Bux. “Can you see through them?” The two fellows tested the cotton strips and began putting them in place. Kuda Bux guided their placement so that two cotton strips were criss-crossed to form an X over each eye. As each was held in place Kuda Bux said, “Tie it in the back. Make sure it is tight.” The criss-crossing of the cotton strips over his eyes left only the nostrils exposed and almost fully sealed off his mouth. Kuda Bux then guided the last cotton strip horizontally over both eyes while the volunteers tied that last one in place at the back of his head as well.

“At this point the entire array took on the appearance of a mummified head. Two small openings remained for breathing through the nostrils and only a little space was evident over the center of the mouth. My meticulous scrutiny confirmed that Kuda Bux’s eyes were out of commission. Finally, to convince the die-hard skeptic he asked the volunteers to get the small black sack from the table. This sack was made of an opaque thick cloth. “Now put this over my head,” Kuda Bux instructed. “Try to see through it,” he said. The two fellows put it up to the light and tried to see through it. They were satisfied that it was not a trick bag, and placed it over Kuda Bux’s head.

“”Tighten the bag under my chin,” instructed Kuda Bux. One of the fellows pulled the draw strings tightly to seal off Kuda Bux’s entire head. Breathing was obviously difficult, and seeing with his physical eyes was impossible.”

Well that’s all well and good, but what would he do once he was in the dark? According to Randi.org:

“He would then drive a car, duplicate handwriting or drawings, and even fire a rifle at targets indicated by a volunteer. Once, he bicycled on New York’s Broadway while blindfolded, a dangerous feat even when fully sighted.”

Wikipedia goes on with some of his feats:

“Most astoundingly, observers noted that the unblindfolded Bux required reading glasses to read fine print. Whilst blindfolded Kuda Bux would read the dates on coins which are held on a spectator’s hand, read the fine print of a magazine, thread a needle, duplicate words he had never seen written, shoot a bullseye with a pellet gun, and many other mysteries.”

He’s also read and answer written questions. It’s important to note, however, that when Bux would give these demonstrations (at least the one as listed above from AmazingAbilities.com) he did so for free. He would put an ad in the paper, rent out a hall & let anyone attend who wanted to. He didn’t sell tickets, ask for donations or try to hawk lessons. Granted it did get him a certain level of fame, but that doesn’t seem to be his intent.

Bux said that anybody can do what he did with practice – and he told us how to practice as well.  All you have to do is stare at a candle for twenty years. No, really. This also comes from AmazingAbilities.com:

“”Can anyone learn to do this?” someone else asked. “Yes,” Kuda Bux affirmed. “You can develop your power of concentration by gazing at the gap between a flame and the candle. Do this just a few seconds at first,” he explained. “After some time you will be able to do this for much longer. It will take about twenty years of daily practice to get results.” Kuda Bux expressed his desire to teach anyone for free, but got no takers; understandably, since twenty years is just too long to be staring at candles.”

There you have it. For only twenty years of patience unending, you can gain a skill that’ll get you booked on Letterman.

Have at it.

If you’re looking for something to do in the mean time, enjoy this video of Bux doing his thing a few decades ago:

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Today, Mexico is mostly known as a place you don’t want to vacation for fear of getting kidnapped, murdered, then chopped up and stuffed into a pinata for your little nephew to discover at his sixth birthday party.

If drug cartels ever actually use that technique, please accept out apologies in advance. Seriously. And tell your nephew we’re sorry in advance too. Also tell him that should this ever happen, you’ll be in a better place.

The point being – Mexico is a pretty strange place. It’s jam-packed with all sorts of paranormal mumbo-jumbo. The most recent we’ve learned about is called the Zone of Silence – and it’s complete with disappearing radio transmissions of all sorts and disappearing men in bright yellow slickers.

Paranormally speaking, Mexico is full of all kinds of awesome stuff. Remember the flying witch? What about the UFOs as documented by the Mexican Air Force? Throw Quatzequatel on top of that pile and you’ve really got something.

Well today we’re bringing you another story from the land of salsa and dirt. It’s about a place known as The Zone of Silence. The Zone of Silence is called that because it’s thought to suck up any sort of transmissions emitted – be they radio, cell phone or what have you.

As Mexicolesstraveled.com explains it:

“…in 1970 a faulty American Athena missile fired from the White Sands Missile Base in nearby New Mexico went off course inexplicably and crashed into the mysterious desert region and made the world aware of the unique and apparently unusual properties of the area. Subsequently a team of U.S. Air Force investigators, with Mexican government approval, journeyed to the crash site and made an unexpected discovery. Within an unspecified and sometimes shifting area within the Zone, radio signals fail to travel through the air, creating a type of dark zone. No television, radio, short wave, microwave, or satellite signals seem to penetrate this zone. The name, Zone of Silence, was quickly adopted, and researchers began flocking to the remote location shortly thereafter.”

Of course that’s not about the birth of the zone – just it’s discovery on a larger scale. One instance of the Mexican anomaly dates back to the 1930s. As AboveTopSecret tells us:

“One of the first known instances of “odd behavior” coming from this location…. comes from around the 1930′s…. from a pilot called Francisco Sarabia. Upon flying his aircraft over the mysterious site, he noticed that suddenly, and without any warning, his radio had completely stopped working. The rest of the instruments on the plane had seemingly either stopped working, or had gone completely wild also.”

That sounds quite a bit like the Bermuda Triangle. And although airplane gadgetry running amok is interesting and all – disappearing good Samaritans dressed like Paddington Bear bring everything to another level. This next bit is taken from Strangemag.com:

“On October 13, 1975, Ernesto and Josefina Diaz, an enterprising couple drove into the zone in a brand new Ford pickup to collect unusual rocks and fossils which can be found in great abundance. As they busied themselves in their activity, they noticed that a desert rainstorm was heading toward them. Hoping to avoid being caught in a flash flood, they wisely packed their vehicle up and sped off, but not fast enough to avoid the relentless rain: the track ahead of them turned into a swamp: the pickup was quickly trapped and began to sink in the soft terrain.

“While the couple struggled to keep their vehicle from submerging into the mud, two figures approached them, waving at them amid the torrential rain. Two extremely tall men in yellow raincoats and caps, with unusual but by no means alarming features, offered their assistance to help them get underway again. The men instructed the totally drenched couple to get inside the pickup again while they pushed. Before the couple realized, their vehicle had popped out of the hole and on to firmer ground. When the husband got out of the pickup once more to thank the two men, he realized they were gone. There were no footprints in evidence or any surface feature that could have concealed their departure.”

And there it is all laid out nice & neat. Mexico’s Zone of Silence is indeed a strange place. The government there has even set up some sort of scientific base right smack in the middle of it. They say it’s to study the plant life or something of that sort, but some believe it’s there for far more paranormal reasons.

Us – we think it’s a drug depot. After all – it’s Mexico.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

If you stumbled across the body of an alien, what would you do with it? Other than taste it, we mean. We’re a bit dog-like that way. If you ever see us in the park gnawing on a squirrel leg, that’s why.

After we’d given that alien body a good chew, though, we’d see if we could sell it somewhere. For millions in Chinese dollars, whatever those are called. We definitely wouldn’t keep it in the freezer portion of our cheaply made Russian refrigerator. That’s what Marta Yegorovnam did when she found one.

And now she’s ready to tell you all about it.

Every now and again somebody somewhere finds a very well preserved alien body that they won’t let anyone see, touch or sniff. Remember the one found in the Andes that we told you about a while ago? Well another one just popped up.

A woman found the body a few years ago – we’ll let the Daily Mail tell you about it:

“After other claims of extraterrestrial life turning up in Siberia, the latest is from a Russian woman who says she kept a frozen alien corpse in her fridge. The mysterious ‘lifeform’ was reportedly kept by Marta Yegorovnam in her fridge in the western Russian city of Petrozavodsk for two years, while she took five pictures to prove its existence.

“The ‘body’, the third alien sighting in Russian in recent months, was reportedly retrieved by Miss Yegorovnam from a UFO crash site near her summer house in 2009. She says she approached the flaming wreckage and crumpled metal which she described as ‘unbearably hot’ and near the twisted hulk lay the dead alien. The ‘creature’ is two feet long, has an enormous head, large bulbous eyes and an appearance somewhere between a fish and a humanoid. It also appears to have what looks like a string-like arm protruding from its body.”

And there you have it. You should really scoot on over to the previously mentioned website if you want to see more pictures. If you want to see the actual body though – forget about it. It was confiscated by some goons from something called the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

We don’t know what that is, and we’re too lazy to Google it.

The point is – Yegorovnam brilliantly built in a piece to her story that will keep her little frozen friend from being examined.

Whether the body is real or not – it sure looks like it’s be fun to chew on. If it squeaks with every bite we’d be all the more sold.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Lets make a brief list of people with the ability to fly. As it likely is for you, the first person to come to mind is the Great Gazoo. He didn’t really soar – he more kinda poofed in and hovered. Still though, he never touched the ground.

Evel Knievel did his fair share of flying about. He couldn’t always control it though, as his wired and bolted skeleton would attest.

Lastly there’s Subbayah Pullavar, a Yogi who hovered for a solid five minutes in front of 150 people who were invited to come up and check for strings and such.

We’ve told you about flying people before, right? Remember this Mexican witch? You don’t? Well she was flitting all around Mexican countryside not terribly long ago. Flying like a songbird on the wind. With evil intent or something.

If Hecklerspray were granted the ability to fly our legs would probably wither and shrivel. It wouldn’t be good for our shoe supplier, that’s sure. What it would be good for is fetching frisbees off of roofs. We’d probably delve into a business like that. See you later, internet.

Yogi Pullavar, full name Subbayah Pullavar, was probably above any tasks remotely dog-like.

In all actuality, before June 6, 1936 we don’t know much about the man. On that date, however, we know he caused quite a stir. This is what Wikipedia has on it:

“Yogi Pullavar’s assistants erected a small tent in an open area where Pullavar began by ritualistically pouring a circle of water around the perimeter of the tent. Shoes were not permitted within the area marked by the circle. Yogi Pullavar then entered the tent where he remained hidden from view for a few minutes, after which the attendants then removed the tent. Once revealed, Yogi Pullavar was seen suspended horizontally several feet above the ground. He was in a trance, lightly resting his hand on top of a cloth covered stick. It was asserted by witnesses present that Yogi did not exert pressure on the stick for support, but instead used it as a point of reference. Many photographs were taken from various angles of this exhibition and witnesses present were permitted to thoroughly examine the levitation. They meticulously searched for strings, props and any means of possible support above, below and around the levitating Pullavar, however nothing was found.

“After four minutes the attendants erected the tent around Yogi Pullavar to shield him as he made his descent. P.Y. Plunkett positioned himself so that the sunlight enabled him to discern Pullavar through the thin cloth tent walls. He reported noticing Yogi Pullavar gently swaying for a short time while still in mid-air. Finally, he slowly sank in a horizontal position to the ground. The entire process took an estimated five minutes to complete.”

The tent was then taken down by the same people who put it up. The Yogi was still lying there in a trance. The spectators were invited to come up and try to bend his limbs. They couldn’t, though they tried.

The assistant then splashed him with water, rubbed him down for a few minutes, and the man returned to normal. Multiple pictures from different angle were taken showing the man hovering there. It definitely seems like only the cloth covered stick was there connecting to the ground. In the pic above you can see that there doesn’t appear to be any stress in the hand touching it.

And the stick was examined too. You can see it unwrapped for yourself if you Google image “Yogi Pullavar.”

We don’t know what to make of it, frankly. But we would like to know if he could still float in the presence of kryptonite. If he can’t – well then we’d have a theory about him.

We don’t want to discuss that now though. So you’ll just have to wonder about what it might be.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Some people think that the greatest threat posed by shape shifters is that they might turn into large dogs and eat you. Those people are right. That is definitely the biggest threat posed by those who shift their shape.

A lesser known problem presents itself, however, when the person with this magical ability is a hilarious prostitute. This, according to a Zimbabwean man arrested while humping a donkey, is exactly what happened to him.

When you’re drunk in a bar and a big toothed woman offers to turn a trick for seven leafy carrot-ends, it’s probably a good idea to get a second opinion from the bar tender. Had Sunday Moyo, a man from Zimbabwe, heeded this advice then perhaps he wouldn’t have been arrested while listening to Barry White with a decent-looking donkey.

He was in a bar, you see, and a human being prostitute made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. And now he has donkey-AIDS.

To be fair we didn’t actually read anywhere that Moyo has donkey AIDS, we just assume it to be the case as he was dallying with a whorish mule. He didn’t bopp the burro on purpose, though. According to him he thought he was making sweet love to a regular two-legged lady who was tied to a tree. In his own words (to a judge):

“Your worship, I only came to know that I was being intimate with a donkey when I got arrested.”

Now that may sound weird to you, but it isn’t. And it isn’t because of love. Real love – like the kind between a man and his wife, or in Zimbabwe, a man and various animals in his barn. See – Moyo goes on to explain:

“I think I am also a donkey. I do not know what happened when I left the bar, but I am seriously in love with (the) donkey.”

That’s the exact reason we always dry hump pizza boxes. Love.

You can’t help what you love. That’s why we’re considered legally married to a cheesy pie in 23 states.

Mother is not pleased.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

No, it’s not a crass, gynecologically themed all girl indy band. It’s a strange place in Peru with thousands of large holes bored into stone and clustered into a pretty long strip. It’s weird alright – and there are several theories as to what the stone holes were used for. Those theories range from grain storage to UFO this-or-that.

We’re guessing it was built as a large, impossible to miss mini-golf course for giants.

Peru’s got some pretty weird ancient art work dotting there landscape. They’ve got the Nazca Lines – huge, ancient renderings of a monkey, an astronaut & what-have-you that can only be seen from the sky. As if that’s not weird enough they also have the Band of Holes.

Never heard of it? Well then read this splurb from World-Mysteries.com:

“These strange holes, stretching for a mile over uneven mountain terrain, were here for so long that the local people have no idea who made them, or why. Funny thing is no one really saw the big picture until the area was seen from the air.”

Nobody really knows what they are. Not only that, but there is debate over whether they were made by nature, by Peruvians or by aliens that transported stubby drills a really long way. World-Mysteries.com has more on the holes:

“Each hole is a meter wide and just as deep. There are eight holes spanning 24 meters in width, marching in repetitive uniform fashion, from the Pisco Valley rolling over a mile through mountain terrain — finally disappearing in the misty mass of Peru. These holes remind …of the traces left by a massive drilling rig moving along methodically, testing the geology of the Andes for precious metals. Lasers have also left such tracings in the ground. Archaeologists say they represented defensive positions or graves for the ancient ones, except why would you bury anyone on a slope in rocky soil at more than a 45-degree angle?”

The only thing we really know is the holes, in hard rock, would be incredibly hard to carve out. Why would the natives go through the effort? Is there a religious purpose? Perhaps their king lost his keys.

In a mountain.

Whatever the reason – the strange holes are interesting.

Whoever made them.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Ghosts. If they don’t make the heads of teenage girls spin around while vomiting straight out 100 feet in every direction, we’re not interested. If the ghosts do do that, we’re interested alright, but only from a distance of at least 101 feet.

The story of the Stockwell Poltergeist doesn’t contain an ounce of vomit. We know you’re probably disappointed. Also there are no farts, burps or any disgusting sullying of panties. We’re just being upfront with you here. What it does have is about 20 hours of super strange and noisy goings on.

It also has this sworn statement by six witnesses:

“The above narrative is absolutely and strictly true, iii[sic?] wit­ness whereof we have set our hands this eleventh day of Janu­ary, 1772.”

1772 was a bumper year. Not only did it see mankind isolate nitrogen for the first time, but it was also the year man’s balls first descended into the scrotum, allowing for increased fertility and an explosion in several population groups. In fact, it could be argued that if it weren’t for the great ball descension ’72, you might not even been born. We’d have been born though. All our ancestors always had testicles way up in their stomachs.

It was also a crazy year for poltergeisting, apparently. Have you ever heard of the Stockwell Poltergeist? Neither had we. Probably because of all the archaic html they used in those days. It didn’t hold up – and 90% of all their 1772 websites have been lost forever.

Luckily though – the related sworn statement that six of the witnesses signed made it through the ages. It’s a very detailed account. It’s also a very long account, so we’ll just give you excerpts. First for the setup.

Mrs. Golding was an old bag that owned a great big farmhouse. It was in her place that the madness started. What kind of madness, you might ask? Well it appears there was no shortage. From the document written by the six witnesses at the time:

“On Monday, January the 6th, 1772, about ten o‘clock in the forenoon, as Mrs. Golding was in her parlor, she heard the china and glasses in the back kitchen tumble down and break; her maid came to her and told her the stone plates were falling from the shelf; Mrs. Golding went into the kitchen and saw them broke. Presently after, a row of plates from the next shelf fell down likewise, while she was there, and nobody near them…”

“…this astonished her much, and while she was thinking about it, other things in different places began to tumble about, some of them breaking, attended with violent noises all over the house ; a clock tumbled down and the case broke ; a lan­tern that hung on the staircase was thrown down and the glass broken to pieces ; an earthen pan of salted beef broke to pieces and the beef fell about…”

That there is just for starters, mind you. Multiple witnesses came by. One said the crazy happenings were because the weight of a room recently added was too much for the foundation of the house. This seemed like a decent explanation, apparently, but everything still got weirder.

One of the other witnesses was a doctor that stopped by. His part goes like this:

“Among the persons who were present was Mr. Gardner, a surgeon, of Clapham, whom Mrs. Pain [Mrs. Golding's niece who was sent for, as far as we can tell] desired to bleed her aunt, which he did. Mrs. Pain asked him if the blood should be thrown away : he desired it might not, as he would examine it when cold…[but] the blood that was just congealed, sprang out of the basin upon the floor, and presently after the basin broke to pieces!”

Now obviously everyone is spooked at this point. Everything really started picking up. Some of it happened as people were trying to empty the houses they thought might collapse. Things were exploding in people hands for no apparent reason. Golding was house hopping too. She’d been spooked out of her own house – but this stuff just kept happening everywhere Golding and her new maid went.

Did you catch that bit where we said ‘new maid’? Well all the witnesses started to notice that the maid really wasn’t freaked out about the haunting. In fact, she seemed quite calm. And then they all noticed something else:

“…in the midst of the greatest confusion, [the maid] was as much composed as at any other time, and with uncommon coolness of temper ad­vised her mistress not to be alarmed or uneasy, as she said these things could not be helped. Thus she argued, as if they were common occurrences, which must happen in every family.”

That’s not all. The spooky happenings kept ratcheting up. Tables were moving, chairs were moving and drawers were being shuffled all about. Golding decided to leave this house too. With her maid.

“When Mrs. Golding’s maid had seen her safe to [the next house], she came back to Mrs. Pain, to help her to dress the children in the barn, where she had carried them for fear of the house falling. At this time all was quiet. They then went to [the house where Golding now was], and then began the same scene as had happened at the other places. It must be re-marked, all was quiet here as well as elsewhere, till the maid returned.”

People were suspicious at this point, but they let the maid stay. The hauntings continued enough for their host to give them the boot. Golding and her maid returned home, and the poltergeist went with them. As the madness continued, someone thought it a good idea for the maid to go bring back Mrs. Golding’s niece. While the maid was gone, all was quiet.

When the maid returned, she was fired. Nothing ever happened around Golding again.

This has been a very abridged version of the haunting. To read it in full – check this out.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

What are the first things to come to your mind when we say ‘Germany?’ For us it’s throaty languages, short green pants with shoulder straps and white people eating billions of sausages.

Also genocide.

After you read this super awesome article, something else might come to your mind too – UFO’s fighting it out in German skies sometime in the 1500s. Have you heard of that? You haven’t? Then by all means read on!

In keeping with last week’s theme of really old, weird UFO sightings, we’ve got another one for you today. A week ago we told you about a few weird lights that zoomed around the Bostonian sea side with disembodied voices. This week we’re telling you about aerial UFO battles held at least twice in the air space over the ski-friendly parts of Europe.

MysteryHistory.tv gives a pretty good synopsis of the first one:

“The citizens of Nuremberg, Germany behold what appears to be a large scale aerial battle followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and a large crash (with smoke) outside the city. A news notice (pictured above) was printed 10 days later (April 14, 1561) describing the event.

“At sunrise on the 4th April 1561, the citizens of Nuremberg beheld “A very frightful spectacle.” The sky appeared to fill with cylindrical objects from which red, black, orange and blue white disks and globes emerged. Crosses and tubes resembling cannon barrels also appeared whereupon the objects promptly “began to fight one another.””

Interesting, but we bet you want to know what the news story said ten days later. Of course you do – here it is straight from 1561:

“At dawn of April 4, in the sky of Nuremberg (Germany), a lot of men and women saw a very alarming spectacle where various objects were involved, including balls “approximately 3 in the length, from time to time, four in a square, much remained insulated, and between these balls, one saw a number of crosses with the color of blood. Then one saw two large pipes, in which small and large pipes, were 3 balls, also four or more. All these elements started to fight one against the other.””

As if that’s not strange enough, in 1566 the exact same thing happened over Basel, Switzerland. Here’s an accounting from a UFO website called Signal In The Noise:

“On August 7, 1566, at dawn, many citizens of Basle (Switzerland), frightened, saw during several hours the black spheres involved in a formidable aerial battle, invading the sky of their city: “at the time when the sun rose, one saw many large black balls which moved at high speed in the air towards the sun, then made half-turns, banging one against the others as if they were fighting a battle out a combat, a great number of them became red and igneous, thereafter they were consumed and died out,” wrote Samuel Coccius, the student in “crowned writings and liberal arts” who consigned the strange events in the city’s gazette.”

Pretty weird, right? And real enough to appear in papers of the time. Real enough for people to make wood cuts about both instances, too. Still, we once made a wood cut of our mother-in-law getting eaten by a thousand alligators, and that definitely hasn’t happened yet.We guess wood carvings aren’t necessarily hard evidence.

Carving out all those teeth was the worst part about it. Now our wrists creak.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

You may think that UFO’s are a new phenomenon. You may also think that snakes make good pets and vegetables without ranch dressing are delicious. Well you are wrong across the board – especially about the snakes. Anything that may crush you and then swallow you whole doesn’t belong in an aquarium.

But the topic of the day is, of course, North America’s first sighting of an Unidentified Submerged Object. Granted, the object didn’t stay submerged. It broke the water’s surface and flew around in front of lots of people many times over a three week period, but the only explanation given at the time was necromancy.

Just you chew on that for a minute.

It started with a tragedy – and by tragedy we don’t mean the ‘your roommate finished off your milk’ type – we mean it was a full blown people-died type tragedy. In 1644 Boston, a ship blew up. Five men died. 16 days later madness ensued. It started like this (from CelebrateBoston.com):

“Exactly 16 days after the blowing up of Capt. Chaddock’s ill-fated ship and crew, and just at ‘the witching hour of midnight,’ as Shakespeare calls it, ‘when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes forth contagion in the air,’ three men in a boat, coming toward Boston—a strange hour for reputable puritans to be so far from home—saw two bright lights rise out of the water, at the place where the vessel had been blown up, just off the [old] North Ferry slip.

They made the still more inexplicable [observation] that the two lights assumed the form of a man, and sailed leisurely off over the water to the south, keeping but a short distance from the shore, till it reached a point now occupied by Rowe’s Wharf, at the foot of Franklin St., where it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared just 15 minutes before.”

Of course this then became the talk of the town – and then other people began to see the lights. The same website goes on:

“A week after the event just described, the old records say, ‘the twin lights were seen again by many,’ but this time they arose off Castle Island, and after traveling through the air just 12 minutes, vanished at the spot where the remains of the ship were resting. The restless spirits of the deep continued to make things satisfactorily terrifying for those who were ‘out late ‘o night’ along the waterfront.

“On one occasion, the story was, that at 8 o’clock, a light resembling the moon rose from the water at the wreck, sailed through the air till it was over the highest point of ‘Nottle’s Island,’ now East Boston—but then uninhabited, and an ideal place for ghostly gambols—and there it was met by its twin light, the two suddenly merging into one, then parting, and thus continuing uniting and separating, as if in playful mood, many times, all the while ‘shooting out sometimes flames and sometimes sparkles.’ Finally, uniting permanently, the big illuminated disc floated off behind the hill on ‘Nottle’s Island,’ disappearing from sight of the wondering eyes of Bostonians.”

There were disembodied voices too. Weird, right? Well we get this straight from the John Winthrop‘s journal:

“Was about eight of the clock in the evening, and was seen by many. About the same time a voice was heard upon the water between Boston and Dorchester, calling out in a most dreadful manner, ‘boy, boy, come away, come away’: and it suddenly shifted from one place to another a great distance, about twenty times. It was heard by divers godly persons. About 14 days after, the same voice in the same dreadful manner was heard by others on the other side of the town towards Not ties Island.”

Was it a ghost? How was the voice connected to the lights? Who was the boy that was supposed to come away? What were the flames and sparks shooting off the lights? Remembering that the definition of USO is ‘Unidentified Submerged Object’ is pretty much a necessity for this old tale. Nobody knows what it was.

It’s not a straight forward underwater UFO like the one we told you about all those years ago. In fact, just to make things even stranger, this weird 1644 short-lived epidemic was blamed on a dead necromancer back in the day. He was one of the five in the initial ship explosion, as far as we can tell.

We’re just going to blame all the Boston tea. That just feels right to us.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

A college professor once told me that if China hadn’t had that one-child rule, America would be a Chinese speaking nation. His thought behind the statement was that one billion people having lots of babies couldn’t help but burst a nations flimsy borders. And where is the coolest place to immigrate? Well, anywhere first world really, but at the time he was thinking of the US.

I would like to take the time to tell that professor he was wrong – probably because he didn’t take all of China’s floating ghost cities into account. You can build one on the cheap – and they’d probably house as many babies as you could float into them.

China’s not only known for being America’s nightmare debt collector anymore. They’re expanding their portfolio considerably, it would seem. They’ve got monsters now – remember the one that washed up on the red beach recently? Now wasn’t that a spectacle to behold.

They’ve also got floating ghost cities that pop up all of the sudden, then disappear when somebody stitches up the hole that was ripped in space and time. We know what you’re thinking – holes don’t rip in space and time – but what about that couple that almost got sucked into just such a hole in the middle of their crappy motel room? Tell them these things don’t exist.

Whatever this thing is – we’ll let The Daily Mail explain it:

“Residents in a Chinese city have been stunned after a giant mirage of a ‘ghost city’ towered across the skyline. The apparition appeared earlier this month after heavy rainfall and humid conditions along the Xin’an River in Huanshan City in East China. Tall buildings, mountains and trees appeared to rise up through the ghostly mist that had descended over the river at dusk. There is usually nothing buy sky across the horizon.”

There are videos out there showing this fake city. It was up long enough for people to run home, grab their video cameras and write a super-cheesy musical score. Let us publicly state that the video really doesn’t do much for us. We don’t know what the area is supposed to look like otherwise, so we can’t ooh and aah at something that just looks like a regular town with high rise apartment buildings. If you could see the sun shining through a buildings, or if a plane flew through the middle of one unhindered, then maybe we’d be impressed. As is – not so much.

Still – if it is a mirage – there sure is a lot of detail. Windows, trees, flashing neon lights advertising communist girlie-shows. Surely mother nature couldn’t think of that stuff on her own.

The video, as pointless as it is, is here for your viewing pleasure.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

China’s got a lot more going on right now than just intentionally terrifying the west and probably killing foreign dissidents. Yes sir, most people thought they were a one trick pony – but that was only until the Kraken washed up on their commie-ravaged shores.

You don’t believe us? Well then look at the picture right there and you tell us what it is.

Scientists the world over are currently working to verify that Carnie Wilson is still alive, Fat Elvis is still buried and there’s not a little tiny Guiness-book scooter missing it’s hefty twin. That’s because something petty weird just floated up onto a Guangdong beach down ol’ China-way.

It should be stated right now that nobody’s really outright calling it a paranormal monster from the deep. It’s more a matter of people saying the thing is absolutely enormous, and it’s completely unidentifiable. That says something – doesn’t it?

We’ll let the Sun explain things:

“A giant 55 foot ‘sea monster’ has been found washed up on a beach in China.
The beast from the deep is so badly decayed it cannot be identified. But according to local reports from Guangdong, in the south-east of the country, it weighed at least 4.5 TONS.

“One fisherman, known only as Hwang, 66, said he was astonished by the find.
People have flocked to see the creature — despite the rotting corpse’s foul stench.
It was found tangled in ropes and one theory is fisherman caught it but could not land it as it was so big.”

Everybody seems pretty curious about what the thing is – let us throw out a few possibilities;

1) It’s Bigfoot. The only possibility is that it’s a Bigfoot.

That’s right. We’ve used our Sherlock Holmes-like deductive prowess to determine that the thing is definitely a sasquatch that floated over from a Washington coastal woodland. It’s relatives probably floated him into the ocean on a hand-made kayak surrounded by hundreds of floating candles. Mother nature, always fickle, capsized the craft and let her tides have their way with the corpse.

We’re really quite confident this is what happened.

That or it’s just the detached genitals of an even bigger monster. Either way – we’re moving farther inland.

Can’t be too safe.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Everyone knows things made by hands are laying all over Mars. Canals, for instance, are definitely without a single doubt up there. And if there are canals, then even though none were ever spotted by crappy 1905 telescopes, we can assume there are definitely shovels and backhoes up there too.

Science tells us that.

Well if pixely images that you can’t really make out are your idea of solid evidence, then you’ll enjoy this next story. There’s definitely an alien hotel on mars. Or something. We’re really not sure.  You really should look for yourself.

Lots of things have been allegedly discovered on Mars over the years. There’s the big rock face  that the Viking Spacecraft snapped in 1976. People say it’s hand-crafted. Other folks say they’ve found skulls on Mars. It’s even been claimed the ruins of cities have been spotted built on red & rocky foundations.

Today’s Martian finding seems to follow more closely to that last one. Here’s what Ninemsn.com says about the whole thing:

“An American ‘armchair astronomer’ claims he has discovered a strange structure on the surface of Mars while browsing Google.

“David Martines was scanning Google Mars when he discovered the long white edifice and has even listed the coordinates (49’19.73″N 29 33’06.53″W) so others can see it for themselves.”

Obviously nobody knows for sure what the thing is. The major contenders seem to be that it’s a storage unit, an intergalactic motel or a 7-Eleven. We think it kind of looks more like a glitch. You know, the kind you might get from a camera speeding past it’s target at ten thousand feet.

It really kind of reminds us of that big thing in Greenland. Remember that from 2007? If you don’t – check it out. People treated it like it was a sign of the second coming, when really it was just the area where two separate photos (taken at different times) were merged together by some nerds working a Google Maps.

Obviously the thing on mars isn’t in a spot where photos merge, but it still looks like a camera error to us. It’s all the weird pixels surrounding the white thing. That’s where it loses us.

Take a look and tell us what you think. We’re quite curious.