Are you ready for the "Strange But True?" I hope you're not afraid of things that go bump in the night! Here we go . . .
Man stashes coffin and human skeleton for
Halloween party
December 2000
A man who found a coffin filled with human bones took it home
in the front seat of his car and only contacted police when a friend advised him to.
Nick Yinger from Indianapolis, Indiana, said he wanted to
keep his find for a Halloween party next year.
Now detectives are trying to discover where the coffin came
from, who is inside and why it was left on waste ground behind a petrol station.
Mr Yinger, a 25-year-old bricklayer, told the Indianapolis
Star that he thought the bones were fake, adding: "It looked pretty cool."
Police have checked all the area's funeral homes and
graveyards to make sure nobody is missing.
John Jones, a worker at a local cemetery, said:
"Everybody's present and accounted for as far we know."
BOY, SIX, CRUSHED TO DEATH BY
GRAVESTONE
UNITED KINGDOM - Sunday, 09 July 2000
A six-year-old boy has been crushed to death by a falling gravestone as he played with
friends in a cemetery.
The boy, who has not been named, was playing at the Grove Road Cemetery, Harrogate, when
the gravestone fell on him, a spokesman for North Yorkshire Police said.
Officers were called to incident last night at 7pm. The boy was pronounced dead at the
scene.
The spokesman said inquiries are on-going and police were not yet aware of how the
incident happened. "Harrogate Police received reports
that a gravestone had fallen on a child in the Grove Road cemetery," said the
spokesman.
"Officers attended the scene but unfortunately the child, a six-year-old local boy,
was pronounced dead at the scene. "Inquiries into the incident are continuing. The
parents of the child are aware and his identity will be released later." Police are
appealing for witnesses to contact them.
Giant Trap Set for Monster in Lake
August 2 2000 -OSLO (Reuters) - An international team
of monster hunters unveiled a giant trap Wednesday for catching a fabled serpent, reputed
to be a cousin of Scotland's Loch Ness monster, in a lake in south Norway.
``This is the first serpent trap of its kind in the
world,'' Jan Sundberg, a Swede leading a team of 12 experts, told Reuters. The team
comprises seven Swedes, three Norwegians, a Canadian and a Belgian. The 18-foot-long
tube-shaped trap, comprising a metal frame with nylon netting, will be lowered into
Seljord lake in south Norway. It will contain live whitefish for bait to catch an elusive
beast known to locals as ``Selma.''
``The trap is adapted from a fish trap for eels. If anything
up to about six meters long swims in one end, the opening closes and it won't be able to
get out,'' said Sundberg, a veteran of several inconclusive high-tech scans of the murky
lake.
Over the next two weeks, the team will dangle the cage in the
lake, about 110 miles (170 km) southwest of Oslo, at depths of between 30 and 100 meters
near where sightings of the monster have been reported. Two biologists at the University
of Oslo were on standby to fly down by helicopter and take tests if the trap worked.
''We'll take a DNA sample, document the serpent and then release it into the lake,'' he
said. ``We will be very careful not to hurt it.''
Experts on land would also try to track any unexplained
movements underwater with hydraphones and sonars to help experts on a floating platform
move the trap quickly to a promising spot.
Sundberg said the team recorded mysterious whale-like noises
during a visit in 1999. ``We'd be disappointed if we don't get some kind of result this
time...the only evidence scientists would accept is a dead or a live serpent,'' he said.
The beast was first spotted around 1750, and most accounts
agree it looks like a serpent with the head of an elk or a horse. Seljord is a town of
about 1,500 people at the head of the picturesque lake, about 15 km (nine miles) long.
In recent years, Seljord has tried to imitate Loch Ness in
attracting tourists. In 1986, the local council changed Seljord's coat of arms to portray
a sea serpent.
By Alister Doyle -
Reuters
Run with the Devil - The Monster in
Jerseys Pines
August 2000 - South of Asbury
Park, the Garden State Pkwy. skirts the eastern edge of the Pine Barrens as it stretches
down to Cape May, a quiet Jersey shore community very nearly untouched by the passage of
time. A traveler with an interest in mysteries might be inclined to leave the parkway at
Exit 48 and follow Rte. 9 south to Moss Mill Rd.
Going east on Moss Mill Rd. takes you into Leeds Point, a tiny,
sparsely populated section of Galloway Township in Atlantic County. If you turn right onto
Scotts Landing Rd., you pass one well-fortified house before the blacktop fades into
sand and the pines and the undergrowth thickens as you wend your way the final mile or so
to the boat launch: a quiet, isolated patch of sand overlooking the brackish streams and
seagrass leading into the bay. Atlantic City gleams in the distance like Oz. There used to
be an old, abandoned ruin of a house on that empty stretch of road: the Leeds House.
There are numerous variations on the story, but the way it
is usually told goes like this: In 1735, Mother Leeds, barely scraping a living out of the
harsh, sandy soil of the Pines, became pregnant with her 13th child. Exhausted,
impoverished and livid with rage at the notion of yet another mouth to feed, she cursed
the child, saying, "Let it be a devil!" In the midst of an horrific
thunderstorm, she gave birth to what appeared to be a normal baby boy. Within hours of his
delivery the boy metamorphosed into a fabulous creature described as having a long
serpentine body and tail, hooves and claws, giant bat wings and a horned equine skull. It
trashed the house, attacked its siblings and the attending midwives, then flew up the
chimney and into the storm, beginning a reign of terror that continues to this very day.
The Jersey Devil just wont go away.
It seems fitting that the New Jersey Pine Barrens should
have a resident demon. The Pine Barrens are almost as big as Yellowstone, nearly a million
and a half acres of densely packed pitch pine, Pygmy pine and white cedar growing out of
an acidic, nitrogen-poor sandy soil streaked with running streams of what the locals call
"cedar water." This water is the color of tea as a result of the mix of tannins
and other organic waste from cedar trees and rusted bog-iron deposits scattered throughout
the aquifer. The lush plant growth includes 23 varieties of orchids and a wide range of
carnivorous plants. There are beavers, far too many deer, coyote, foxes, owls, eagles,
hawks, crows and ravens. There are snakes, both poisonous and nonpoisonous. Rattlesnakes I
dont mind; theyre kind enough to give warning. The snake I most despise is the
water moccasin: a tricky, evil thing easily mistaken for a branch in the water.
In the early 70s I was profoundly affected by a newspaper
story regarding the death of a young woman who had been water skiing on one of the many
manmade lakes that dot the Pines. She had swung wide on a turn and skied into what she
must have thought were some twigs in the water. Her screams were reported to have been
"horrible" and "unforgettable" as she was bitten more than 300 times
by a huge nest of water moccasins. The people who pulled her from the water said that her
body was puffed up like a balloon, skin taut and shiny, from all the venom.
The Pines are quiet and serene, a deep and profound
serenity tinged with an undercurrent of menace, the certainty that at any moment the
perfect tranquillity of the place could be shattered by shrieking, nerve-ripping terror.
For some reason I cant quite pin down, Ive been drawn back there recently
after not visiting the place for more than 25 years. Im looking for something, I
dont know what.
Any decent exploration of the Pines should
begin in Chatsworth. You pull off the parkway at Exit 67 and head west until you get to
the junction of Rtes. 532 and 563. If youre smart youll stop off at the
Steamed Crab in Barnegat for a pound of stone crab claws and an ear of corn, just 16 bucks
with a large iced tea and in every way perfect. Theres an old general store in
Chatsworth known as Buzbys; its been there forever.
R. Marilyn Schmidt runs the place now, operating a little
cafe called the Cheshire Cat. She says, "I called it that because sometimes Im
here, and sometimes Im not." She says she finished it "when I was coming
up on 70."
Marilyn doesnt look a day over 60. She also runs a
small bookstore and press, publishing and carrying works related to the Pines. She is
arguably the worlds foremost authority on the history, customs and cuisine of the
Pine Barrens, with a wide range of titles to her credit, including the definitive guide to
the Barrens and the only detailed map of the region. I hung out with her for a little
while, bought a few books and cut out, heading south on 539 to Tuckerton and New Gretna.
The backroads branch off through the woods, and dirt roads
are more frequent than paved ones as you drive through the soft gray canopy of stunted
pines. I took a little detour and drove deep into the forest to smoke a joint. This was
some kind of atavistic impulse. I wanted to get naked in the forest, to be embraced in a
carnal way by this haunted wood. I wanted to change into a fabulous monster and fly once
and for all up and out the chimney of dreary asphalt civilization and into the raging
storm and the Pines. Maybe Im looking for my roots, out here. Maybe Im looking
for wings.
I stood there, alone in the twilight of the pines and
random cedars, barefoot on the forest floor of sand and pine needles, brain kicked into
alpha rhythm cycles, completely tranquil and still, beyond the world. I was fully
cognizant of the fact that Id come here more or less pursuing a notoriously
frightening cryptozoological anomaly capable of appearing at any moment. It usually
arrives with a piercing scream, described as "somewhere between a frightened woman
and a screech owl" by one articulate witness. Its often described as looking
like a bat-winged kangaroo. I want it. I want to meet this thing.
I stood there for a while. I pulled a tick off my ankle,
thought better of the whole nature boy fantasy and got back in the car.
Driving down 539 to Tuckerton, I got to
thinking about my own absence of roots and the rich traditions of the Pine people. In
her introduction to Exploring the Pine Barrens of New JerseyA Guide (Pine
Barrens Press, paper, 168 pages, $14.95), R. Marilyn Schmidt points out that the Pines are
home to nearly 500,000 people. These people have a unique culture, oddly resonant of
Louisiana Cajun culture. "Piney" became a pejorative for a while on the heels of
a bogus study of criminality and retardation spearheaded by one H.H. Goddard, director of
the research laboratory at the Vineland Training School, an institution for the mentally
impaired. He came out with a pro-eugenics tract purporting to be a case history of a Pines
family he named "Kallikak," from the Greek "kalos" (good) and
"kakos" (bad). He said that he masked the true family name to protect his
subjects, but lately its widely believed that he made the whole family line up. His
work was essentially a genetic jeremiad vilifying the Pineys as inbred subhumans. It was
pure crap, but it sold big on the academic circuit with the Margaret Sanger crowd, the
pre-Hitlerite liberals who built Planned Parenthood. It has a very distinct H.P. Lovecraft
feel about it, with all its shock and horror at the notion of rural whites inbreeding.
Tuckerton has the look of a little town on the move.
Theyve taken a 40-acre site there and transformed it into the Tuckerton Seaport, an
ambitious recreation of old Tuckerton, in the days when it was the third point of entry
for new American colonists. A little farther on down Rte. 9 South, Win Allens Clam
Bar still thrives in New Gretna. Win passed away in Florida some years back, but he is
remembered fondly and his namesake is still one of the best seafood restaurants anywhere.
I had a spectacular bowl of their famous Manhattan clam chowder and a shrimp cocktail
consisting of nine shrimp the size of lobster tails with a large iced tea for eight
dollars and change. You have to get there no later than 5 oclock if you dont
want to wait for a table, and they are smoker-friendly, as are nearly all businesses in
the Pines.
I continued south on Rte. 9 into Galloway Township as the
sun began its descent. It was near twilight when I turned onto Moss Mill Rd. Theres
a church there with a little graveyard. I stopped to examine the headstones. Many of them
are so old that they can no longer be read, but there are plenty of members of the Leeds
family buried there. Perhaps Mother Leeds herself lies somewhere under that grass.
I drove down to Scotts Landing Rd. and idled down to
the boat launch. Atlantic City glittered in the distance, steel and glass painted pink by
the setting sun. Civilization, such as it is: the big casino. The woods lining the road
are thoroughly posted with "No Trespassing" signs, and I am disinclined to be
shot at, so I contented myself with smoking a ceremonial joint in close proximity to the
birthplace of a wonderful enigma.
The majority of sightings of the Jersey Devil are isolated
incidents, easily explained away as pranks, owls, buzzards, the occasional feral human and
other decidedly nonsupernatural phenomena. The definitive works on the subject are two
books by James F. McCloy and Ray Miller Jr., The Jersey Devil and Phantom
of the Pines, both published by Middle Atlantic Press and both well worth reading. The
most noteworthy and puzzling Jersey Devil manifestation took place during the week of Jan.
16-23, 1909, when it roared out of the Pines and terrorized thousands of people all over
the Delaware Valley.
From Jan. 16 to Jan. 18 it was sighted in Woodbury;
Bristol, PA; Burlington; Gloucester; Hamilton Township; Camden; and again in Gloucester.
Patrolman James Sackville of Bristol got a very good look at it. He said it was winged and
hopped like a bird, but had the features of some peculiar animal. He described its voice
as a horrible scream. He chased it up the street and popped off a couple of shots at it,
whereupon it flew away. The local postmaster also saw it. Heres the testimony of
E.W. Minster, as cited by McCloy and Miller in The Jersey Devil
I awoke about 2 oclock in the morning, and finding
myself unable to sleep, I arose and wet my head with cold water as a cure for insomnia.
As I got up I heard an eerie, almost supernatural sound
from the direction of the river. I looked out upon the Delaware and saw flying diagonally
across what appeared to be a large crane, but which was emitting a glow like a firefly.
Its head resembled that of a ram, with curled horns, and its long
thick neck was thrust forward in flight. It had long thin wings and short legs, the front
legs shorter than the hind. Again it uttered its mournful and awful calla
combination of a squawk and a whistle, the beginning very high and piercing and ending
very low and hoarse.
At 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 19, it apparently decided to
dance a little jig on the roof of a shed owned by Nelson Evans, a Gloucester paperhanger.
For 10 minutes Evans and his wife watched the thing dance around in their yard before they
chased it away.
Evans said, "It was about three feet and a half high,
with a head like a collie dog and a face like a horse. It had a long neck, wings about two
feet long, and its back legs were like those of a crane, and it had horses hooves.
It walked on its back legs and held up two short front legs with paws on them. It
didnt use the front legs at all while we were watching. My wife and I were scared, I
tell you, but I managed to open the window and say Shoo! and it turned around,
barked at me, and flew away."
It was a very busy monster that day, with sightings in
Burlington, Pemberton, Haddonfield, Collingswood, Moorestown and Riverside. It buzzed a
trolley car passing through Springside, just south of Burlington, and a Burlington cop was
quoted as saying, "It is a Jabberwock."
On Jan. 20, it seemed to have gone quite berserk. It
attacked the Black Hawk Social Club in Camden and a trolley full of passengers in Haddon
Heights. Then it headed up to Trenton and scared the living daylights out of several
people, including a city councilman. The trolley operators in the area were issued guns.
It put in no fewer than 13 appearances that Wednesday, ranging over an area stretching
from Pleasantville to Trenton to Leiperville, PA.
On Thursday, the 21st, at 4 oclock in the afternoon,
it attacked a woman in South Philadelphia as she was taking her laundry off the
clothesline in her yard. Mrs. J.H. White of the 1500 block of Ellsworth St. was frightened
into a swoon by the beast, which she described as 6 feet tall, bat-winged, with alligator
skin. Hearing her screams, her husband, an insurance agent, chased it away with a
clothesprop. It was nearly run over by a trolley on Washington Ave. and was pelted with
stones by a mob in Germantown.
On Friday it returned to Camden, where it was observed
drinking water from a horse trough in front of a bar by Camden policeman Louis Strehr, who
also described it as "a Jabberwock."
People were starting to freak out, not leaving their homes,
even in broad daylight. Schools and factories closed and theatrical performances were
canceled. It hid until after sunset, then exploded out of a boxcar in Chester, PA,
terrorizing a small group of women before flying on to Morrisville where it was briefly
trapped in a barn by some plucky farmers. It was seen in Trenton and Salem that night, and
then it vanished back into the Pines. The beast has reappeared periodically throughout the
years since, but the rampage of 1909 was by far its most spectacular manifestation.
The idea of a bat-winged kangaroo zooming around in the
Pines is weird enough, but the strangest thing about it is its behavior. There is no
evidence that it has ever actually harmed anyone. It has killed dogs and snatched
livestock, and it is known to have a fondness for corn. There are tales of it stealing
pies left on windowsills to cool. But its interactions with people are entirely limited to
scaring the bejesus out of them and flying away. Its a very odd monster indeed that
can be warded off by an insurance agent wielding a clothesprop.
It was getting dark, the throbbing menace
that lurks behind the Pines slowly overtaking the serenity of daylight. I decided to go
get a room for the night and maybe stop by a certain bar just outside of Leeds Point. I
drove farther south on Rte. 9 and took a room at the Ten Acres Motel in Galloway. The Ten
Acres looks like what the Bates Motel would have been if Norman and his mother had been
acid-gobbling hippies instead of homicidal wackos. The motel itself is overshadowed by a
colorful Victorian house surrounded by every type of lawn ornament known to man. I paid
$45 cash for a single room for the night, no ID check, no phone, no cable tv. A room off
the grid just three hours from New York.
I lit out for this down-home biker bar I favor, which I
cannot name. Youll find it if you look hard enough. I sat there swilling down a
series of perfect bloody marys and listening to a couple of grizzled old independents swap
stories with a member of the Breed. They were talking about various crashes and near
misses theyve had, and one fellow told how he was nearly wiped out by a huge buzzard
that was picking at a dead chicken in the road on a curve.
"The thing just sorta hopped up and flew right at me,
damn near killed me," he said.
I suggested that maybe buzzards and owls had a lot to do
with the Jersey Devil business. He got real quiet, and so did his friends. He looked me
dead in the eye and stirred his drink.
"That aint no buzzard," he said, "and
it aint no owl, either. We were camping out up by Chatsworth one night a couple of
years ago. Wed set up camp and we were gettin to drinkin and
smokin and just generally having a good old time out there. There was one of those
little lulls in the conversation, ya know? And then we heard the most godawful noise I
ever heard in my life. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps. It wasnt no more
than a few feet away, and it wasnt no screech owl, and it definitely
wasnt human."
He took a sip of his drink.
"I been to Nam. I been a biker since I was old enough
to ride one. I aint scared of much, but we tore outta that campsite in a hurry,
Ill tell ya. I dont know what that thing is, but its still out there,
and I aint fuckin with it."
It is an enduring mystery with a great deal of charm, this
ridiculous thing flying around over the cranberry bogs, lurking in the mist among the
stunted pines, terrorizing people for sport. Its apparently harmless, but the mere
sound of its awful scream is enough to send hardened bikers fleeing for their lives to the
nearest motel. In a world of cellphones and genetic engineering, in a time when
information overload and time deprivation are driving people completely nuts, it is
extremely reassuring to me to think that there might be a dragon loose in the heart of New
Jersey. It gives me a sense of continuity, a direct link to a time of fairies and more
colorful horrors than corporate predators and serial killers. It cant possibly be
real, but standing alone at the end of Scotts Landing Rd. as the sun goes down and
the moon rises, reality seems to get just a little too loose for comfort, and the rational
world of dot-coms and career anxiety seems very far away indeed.
The Pine Barrens are about as far away from New York City
as you can get. You can waste your time trying to get to the Hamptons, fight your way
through traffic just to fight your way through a hideous throng of petite bourgeoisie to
get a spot on an overcrowded beach, wind up getting bumped at some overpriced and
overhyped restaurant to make way for fat-ass Alec Baldwin or the execrable Sean Combs, or
you can go to Coney Island or Jones Beach and get shoved around by mobs resting up for
their next riot. Ill be spending my weekends this summer running with the Devil.
The Pines are beautiful, unique and indescribably serene by
day. At night, youd be well advised to get a room.
Source - New York Press
Legendary monster has price on head
2000 - Penticton, British Columbia _ The elusive
Ogopogo, Okanagan Lake's legendary monster, now has a $2-million price on its head.
Local boosters are offering the money to anyone who can come up with
scientific proof Canada's answer to the Loch Ness monster exists.
"There has to be something out there," says John
Singleton, manager of the Penticton Chamber of Commerce. "There's too many people who
have seen something."
But no one is taking it too seriously.
"This initiative is meant to be a Valleywide one to create some
fun for families and scientists alike," Singleton said.
An insurance policy from Lloyds of London is underwriting the
$2-million prize. It cost about $2,500 to buy.
The contest, which grew out of discussions for a millennium project,
runs for one year, starting this Labor Day in September.
Ogopogo is said to live in Okanagan Lake, located about 140 miles
east of Vancouver, and there are regular reported sightings. A couple of years ago a
Japanese scientific contingent used submersible radar equipment to search for the elusive
lake creature.
Source - Spokane Net - Compiled from our staff and d wire
services
Monster Hunters Search for Prey in Norway
August 2000 - OSLO (Reuters) - An international team of
monster hunters unveiled a giant trap for catching a fabled serpent, reputed to be a
cousin of Scotland's Loch Ness monster, in a lake in south Norway.
``This is the first serpent trap of its kind in the world,''
Jan Sundberg, a Swede leading a team of 12 experts, told Reuters. The team comprises seven
Swedes, three Norwegians, a Canadian and a Belgian.
The six-yard long tube-shaped trap, comprising a metal frame
with nylon netting, will be lowered into Seljord lake in south Norway. It will contain
live whitefish for bait to catch an elusive beast known to locals as ``Selma''.
``The trap is adapted from a fish trap for eels. If anything
up to about six meters long swims in one end, the opening closes and it won't be able to
get out,'' said Sundberg, a veteran of several inconclusive high-tech scans of the murky
lake.
The team plans to dangle the cage in the lake, about 110
miles southwest of Oslo, at depths of between 30 and 100 meters near where sightings of
the monster have been reported.
Two biologists at the University of Oslo were on standby to
fly down by helicopter and take tests if the trap works.
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