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Freaktober

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Today is October 1st, the start of Freaktober. A month chock full of daily weardness that goes straight on through to Halloween.

This is Freaktober post

#1. The Roanoke Colony

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The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in North Carolina was an enterprise financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century to establish a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony. Between 1585 and 1587, several groups attempted to establish a colony, but either abandoned the settlement or disappeared. The final group of colonists disappeared after three years elapsed without supplies from the Kingdom of England during the Anglo-Spanish War, leading to the continuing mystery known as "The Lost Colony".

In 1587, Raleigh dispatched another group of 117 colonists. They were led by John White, an artist and friend of Raleigh who had accompanied the previous expeditions to Roanoke. The new colonists were instructed to pick up the fifteen men left at Roanoke and settling further north, in the Chesapeake Bay area; however, no trace of them was found, other than the bones of a single man. The one local tribe still friendly towards the English, the Croatans on present-day Hatteras Island, reported that the men had been attacked, but that nine had survived and sailed up the coast in their boat.

The settlers landed on Roanoke Island on July 22 1587. On August 18, White's daughter Eleanor gave birth to the first English child born in the Americas, Virginia Dare. Before her birth, White re-established relations with the neighboring Croatans and tried to re-establish relations with the tribes that Ralph Lane had attacked a year previously. The aggrieved tribes refused to meet the new colonists. Shortly thereafter, a colonist named George Howe was killed by natives while searching for crabs alone in Albemarle Sound. Knowing what had happened during Ralph Lane's tenure in the area and fearing for their lives, the colonists convinced Governor White to return to England to explain the colony's situation and ask for help. There were approximately 115 colonists — the 114 remaining men and women who had made the trans-Atlantic passage and the newborn baby, Virginia Dare — when White returned to England.

Crossing the Atlantic as late in the year as White did was a considerable risk, as evidenced by the claim of pilot Simon Fernandez that their vessel barely made it back to England. Plans for a relief fleet were initially delayed by the captains' refusal to sail back during the winter. Then, the coming of the Spanish Armada led to every able ship in England being commandeered to fight, which left White with no seaworthy vessels available to return to Roanoke. He did manage, however, to hire two smaller vessels deemed unnecessary for the defence and set out for Roanoke in the spring of 1588. This time, White's attempt to return to Roanoke was foiled by human nature and circumstance; the two vessels were small, and their captains greedy. They attempted to capture several vessels on the outward-bound voyage to improve the profitability of their venture, but were captured themselves and their cargo taken. With nothing left to deliver to the colonists, the ships returned to England.

Because of the continuing war with Spain, White was not able to mount another resupply attempt for three more years. He finally gained passage on a privateering expedition that agreed to stop off at Roanoke on the way back from the Caribbean. White landed on August 18, 1590 on his granddaughter's third birthday, but found the settlement deserted. His men could not find any trace of some ninety men, seventeen women, and eleven children, nor was there any sign of a struggle or battle. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post of the fort and "Cro" carved into a nearby tree. In addition, there were two skeletons buried. All the houses and fortifications had been dismantled. Before the colony disappeared, White established that if anything happened to them, they would carve a Maltese cross on a tree nearby, indicating that their disappearance could have been forced. White took this to mean that they had moved to Croatoan Island, but he was unable to conduct a search; a massive storm was brewing and his men refused to go any further. The next day, they left.

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Edited by Ectoplasmic Emissary (see edit history)

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I've heard about this before, but I can't remember where... I also recognize that second picture.

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#2 Training Flight 19

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Flight 19 was a training flight of TBM Avenger bombers that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945 while over the Atlantic. The squadron's flight path was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base, but they never returned. The impression is given that the flight encountered unusual phenomena and anomalous compass readings, and that the flight took place on a calm day under the supervision of an experienced pilot, Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor. Adding to the intrigue is that the Navy's report of the accident was ascribed to "causes or reasons unknown." It is believed that Taylor's mother wanted to save her son's reputation, so she made them write "reasons unknown" when actually Taylor was 50 km NW from where he thought he was.

Adding to the mystery, a search and rescue Mariner aircraft with a 13-man crew was dispatched to aid the missing squadron, but the Mariner itself was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion at about the time the Mariner would have been on patrol.

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weird...

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#3 The Marfa Ghost Lights

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The Marfa ghost lights are unexplained lights usually seen near U.S. Route 67 on Mitchell Flat east of Marfa, Texas, in the United States.

The first published account of the lights was written in 1957, and this article is the sole source for anecdotal claims that the lights date back to the 1800s. Reports often describe brightly glowing basketball sized spheres floating above the ground, or sometimes high in the air. Colors are usually described as white, yellow, orange or red, but green and blue are sometimes reported. The balls are said to hover at about shoulder height, or to move laterally at low speeds, or sometimes to shoot around rapidly in any direction. They often appear in pairs or groups, according to reports, to divide into pairs or merge together, to disappear and reappear, and sometimes to move in seemingly regular patterns. Their sizes are typically said to resemble soccer balls or basketballs.

Sightings are reported occasionally and unpredictably, perhaps ten to twenty times a year. There are no reliable reports of daytime sightings; the lights seem to be a nocturnal phenomenon only.

According to the people who claim to have seen the lights, they may appear at any time of night, typically south of U.S. Route 90 and U.S. Route 67, five to fifteen miles east of Marfa, at unpredictable directions and apparent distances. They can persist from a fraction of a second to several hours. There is evidently no connection between appearances of the Marfa lights and anything else besides nighttime hours. They appear in all seasons of the year and in any weather, seemingly uninfluenced by such factors. They sometimes have been observed during late dusk and early dawn, when the landscape is dimly illuminated.

It is extremely difficult to approach an ongoing display of the Marfa lights, mainly due to the dangerous terrain of Mitchell Flat. Also, all of the land where the Marfa Lights are observed is private property, and access is prohibited without explicit permission from the owners. There are only a very few accounts of success in moving very close to observed lights, but those that exist generally describe objects resembling fireworks lacking both smoke and sound.

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#4 The Mary Celeste

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Mary Celeste was launched in Nova Scotia in 1860. Her original name was “Amazon

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I've seen the Marfa Lights. Pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. There's a nice little building with info and a deck that faces the plains where the lights are.

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#5 Megalithic structures

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A megalithic structure is something big made of rock. It could be a statue, or just some rocks strewn around in a pattern. The truly mysterious thing about the ancients is, how were they able to create such enormous things? They did not have the technology needed to efficiently make them. Stonehenge is a good example. A bigger one is the Great Pyramid in Giza, or the pyramids themselves. Sometimes, even their purpose is unclear, while other times, the structures in question are mysterious and seemingly supernatural. A megalith, a giant rock, is used most of the time, especially in the case of Stonehenge and the Carnac stones. Still, there are a few megalithic structures that are not mysterious, but mostly it seems impossible that the ancients made these things themselves. Now, many would like to think aliens helped them. Yet even scientists say stranger things. They suggest that there may have been a lost ancient civilization that was extremely advanced, and they may have given later civilizations the knowledge to build such things. Yet there is no substantial evidence of either. Other examples: Easter Island Heads, Pyramid of the Sun, other pyramids in central and south America, Colossus of Rhodes and Sphinx. The Sphinx some scientists say might by way older than originally thought there are specific erosion patterns that resemble similar erosion from running water and not sand. So the Sphinx was around when the desert was actually a temperate climate. Another thing that is mentioned is that the human head of Sphinx doesn't match the lion body exactly some say that the face was chissled from the previous head (which might've been a lion).

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#6 The Disappearence of David Lang

This famous case allegedly took place in September, 1880 on a farm near Gallatin, Tennessee in full view of several witnesses. The two Lang children, George and Sarah, were playing in the front yard of the family home. Their parents, David and Emma, came out the front door, and David headed off across a pasture toward his horses. At this time, a buggy carrying family friend Judge August Peck was approaching. David turned to walk back to the house, saw the buggy and waved to the judge as he strode across the field. A few seconds later, David Lang – in clear view of his wife, his children and the judge – disappeared in mid-step. Emma screamed and all of the witnesses rushed to the spot where David once was, thinking perhaps he had fallen into a hole of some kind. There was no hole. A thorough search by the family, friends and neighbors turned up nothing. A few months after the unexplained disappearance, the Lang children noticed that the grass on the spot where their father vanished had turned yellow and wilted in a circle measuring about 15 feet in diameter.

Edit: Upon further research I have found this to be a hoax! So here is a new entry.

The Ararat anomaly: Noah’s Ark – found?

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The Ararat anomaly is an object appearing on photographs of the snowfields near the summit of Mount Ararat, Turkey, and advanced by some believers in Biblical literalism as the remains of Noah’s Ark. The anomaly is located on the northwest corner of the Western Plateau of Mount Ararat at about 15,500 ft. It was first filmed during a U.S. Air Force aerial reconnaissance mission in 1949 — the Ararat massif sits on the former Turkish/Soviet border, and was thus an area of military interest — and was accordingly given a classification of “secret

Edited by Ectoplasmic Emissary (see edit history)

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#7 The Green children of Woolpit

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The green children of Woolpit reportedly appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England, in the 12th century, during the reign of King Stephen. The only nearly contemporary accounts are given in the chronicle of Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh's Historia rerum anglicarum, book I, xxvii, De viridibus pueris. Between that time and their rediscovery in the mid-19th century, the green children seem to surface only in Bishop Francis Godwin's fantastical The Man in the Moone, where William of Newburgh's account is reported.

The children, brother and sister, were of generally normal appearance except for the green colour of their skin. They spoke in a strange language, and initially the only food they would eat was green beans. The boy soon died, but the girl learned to eat other food and eventually lost her green colour. She adjusted to her new life and was baptised, although considered "rather loose and wanton in her conduct". When she learned to speak English the girl explained that she and her brother had come from St Martin's Land, an underground world whose inhabitants were green. She became a domestic servant in the household of a local knight from whom Ralph of Coggeshall, himself a local man, learned the story directly.

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#8 The Vela Incident

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The Vela Incident (sometimes referred to as the South Atlantic Flash) was an as-yet unidentified double flash of light detected by a United States Vela satellite on September 22, 1979. It has been speculated that the double flash was characteristic of a nuclear explosion; however, recently declassified information about the event says that it “was probably not from a nuclear explosion, although [it cannot be ruled] out that this signal was of nuclear origin.

Edited by Ectoplasmic Emissary (see edit history)

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#9 The Oera Linda Book

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The Oera Linda Book is a controversial Frisian manuscript covering historical, mythological, and religious themes that first came to light in the 19th century. Modern linguistic analysis has argued that the book is a hoax, while the overall themes presented within the text have led some to consider it genuine.

The Oera Linda Book, known in Frisian as Thet Oera Linda Bok, came to light in 1867 when Cornelis Over de Linden (1811-1874) handed the manuscript, claimed to have been kept in the Over de Linden family for generations, over to Eelco Verwijs (1830-1880), the provincial librarian of Friesland, for translation and publication. Verwijs rejected the manuscript, but in 1872 Dr. Jan Gerhardus Ottema (1804-1879), a prominent member of the Frisian Society for History and Culture, published a Dutch translation. The book was subsequently translated into English by William Sandbach (1876).

Over de Linden claimed to have inherited the manuscript from his grandfather, via his aunt. The manuscript was originally thought to have been written in Old Frisian but according to Jensma "the syntax of this artificial language proves to be completely in line with modern, read: nineteenth-century Dutch/Frisian" and included "linguistic delicacies like the hundreds of puns, popular etymologies and funny words that were derived from almost every modern European language. When they were weary, the folksmothers for instance could retire to their ‘BEDRVM’ (bedroom)".

It was translated into German as Die Ura Linda Chronik in 1933 and became popular in German elementary schools and a favorite book of Heinrich Himmler. In the 1970s it experienced a revival of popularity in the English-speaking world.

The current manuscript carries a date of 1256. Internal claims suggest that it is a copy of older manuscripts that, if genuine, would have been written by multiple people between 2194 BC and AD 803.

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#10 The Hopkinsville Goblins

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The Hopkinsville Goblins case, is a well-known and well-documented alleged Close Encounter event in the history of UFO incidents. The event occurred near the towns of Kelly and Hopkinsville, Kentucky beginning on the evening of August 21, 1955 and continuing through the next morning. UFO researcher Allan Hendry wrote “this case is distinguished by its duration and also by the number of witnesses involved.

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that would be extremely scary. The Aliens...

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#11 The Clapham Wood Mystery

The Clapham Wood Mystery is the name given to a collection of unusual events which are associated with the Clapham Wood, West Sussex, England, resulting in the area developing its own lore in popular culture. Events have included reports of people making unusual sights or experiencing unusual phenomena, and of family pets disappearing or sickening. There have also been several human deaths associated with the location. Since the 1960s the area has experienced a rash of UFO sighting, reports of people, experiencing nausea or the sensation of being pushed by unseen forces, or of witnessing patches of strange grey mist developing suddenly on pathways through the woods. Some people have also reported a strong sense of being followed. Studies with a gieger counter have revealed slightly elevated levels of background radiation in the area, which is surprising since the area is situated on chalk which is normally low in radiation. Early photographs of the wood appear to show a large crater or depression somewhere in the wood, though now the area is highly wooded and difficult to search.

Four deaths have occurred either in or close to the woods and have since become part of the lore surrounding it. The first death was in June 1972 when police officer Peter Goldsmith disappeared while hiking in the region. His body was discovered 6 months later. The second death was that of Leon Foster whose body was discovered in August 1975. He had been missing for 3 weeks. The third death was of Reverend Harry Neil Snelling, the former vicar of Clapham. He disappeared in October 1978 and his body was not found until 3 years later. English coroners ruled open verdicts in all three cases.

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