Category Archives: strange events

September 1, 2018

‘Breaking News: Mysterious Big Cat on the Loose in France’ (2014)

By leeduigon

Image result for images of sabertooth cat

Let’s hope it wasn’t one of these guys.

This is another one of those news stories that tantalizes you with headlines and then just dries up and blows away without ever telling you what really happened.

So in 2014 a lot of people spotted a scary “big cat” roaming around near Disneyland Paris…

https://leeduigon.com/2014/11/14/breaking-news-mysterious-big-cat-on-the-loose-in-france/

And that was the end of it. Disneyland wasn’t missing a tiger. Neither was anybody else. They couldn’t catch the cat, so they wound up laughing it off as one of those “people want to believe” stories.

Uh… Could the fact that they weren’t able to catch it mean that the cat got away? That it, like, wasn’t there anymore, in the area where they were looking for it?

Or could it just mean that the free and independent journalists who raised the initial hoopla just got lazy and never bothered to follow it up?

We’ll never know.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in news, strange events

August 23, 2018

Explain This… If You Can

By leeduigon

Image result for images of legends of long beach island

I don’t know if this is a proper ghost story, or what. But it’s certainly a strange story. Let me quote from Legends of Long Beach Island by David Seibold and Charles Adams III (copyright by the authors, 1985), page 16. Short but sweet:

“Our storyteller… has more. His father swears he once saw a red-roofed, white-building village propped on the horizon a short distance from Holgate [on the southern tip of Long Beach Island, NJ]. Out fishing, he looked to the east, out to sea, and unmistakeably saw the buildings–terra cotta roofs, almost Spanish in style. He knows well it couldn’t have really been there. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, but it wouldn’t go away.”

Now there’s nothing between Holgate, NJ, and Portugal but mile after mile of the Atlantic Ocean. If we believe the witness was telling the truth–and why shouldn’t we?–then how do we explain what he saw? Does Brigadoon have a sea-going counterpart? Or was this the ghost of Atlantis? Or some as-yet unexplained natural phenomenon?

Go figure.

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Just for Fun, strange events

August 7, 2018

‘A True Monster Story (Maybe)’ (2015)

By leeduigon

Image result for images of megalodon

Try as I might, I still don’t know what to make of this shark story from Australia–which is where all the very best shark stories seem to come from.

https://leeduigon.com/2015/08/22/a-true-monster-story-maybe/

It does seem rather unlikely that a bunch of fishermen would ever tell a story like this to a government official who could make life very hard for them if he ever decided they were just pulling his leg.

But a shark like–like that? No, it simply can’t be true. Unless it is.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in nature, strange events

June 23, 2018

A Joke Comes to Life

By leeduigon

Image result for images of smart pills

You know a civilization’s in trouble when corny old jokes start coming to life.

As the joke has it, a man is selling rabbit poops as “smart pills,” guaranteed to make you smarter. A customer buys some, but an hour later comes storming back, furious. “You cheated me!” he cries. “These ain’t smart pills! They’re nothin’ but rabbit poops!” To which the vendor replies, “See? You’re getting smarter already!”

In Vancouver recently, at an outdoor culture and art festival, an enterprising con man sold “hot dog water” at $38 a bottle Canadian ($28 U.S. money)–yes, water in which hot dogs had been boiled–claiming that it would help the user not only lose weight… but also sharpen his or her intelligence! Just like in the joke.

By the end of the day he’d sold all but two bottles (https://m.sfgate.com/food/article/Hot-Dog-Water-Vancouver-festival-stand-bottle-sign-13018126.php).

I know people who would’ve bought one. Do you?

(Thanks to my chess buddy, “WannaBe,” for this baroque news tip.)

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in news, strange events

May 16, 2018

Can You Find This Video?

By leeduigon

Image result for images of driving car into water at boat ramp

So your boat is hitched to your car, and you want to launch it via the boat ramp. If you’ve never done it before, do you A) simply use common sense, turn, and back your boat down the ramp because it’s the obvious thing to do, B) watch how everybody else does it, and do it that way, or C) just drive right into the water, car first, and drown your engine?

In one of the first videos we ever saw on our computer, years ago, some poor jidrool chose option C. There are, today, countless videos on youtube of boat launch fails. But this was the only one I ever saw of somebody driving right down the ramp and into the water, car first. It is unique.

And I’ve always wanted to post it here, for your edification, but I just can’t find it!

Perhaps someone out there can provide us with this classic video.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Just for Fun, strange events

May 13, 2018

‘When TV Personalities Spout Gibberish’ (2015)

By leeduigon

Once upon a time, in 2011, a number of TV nooze reporters, live and on the air, uncontrollably spouted gibberish. It also happened to Judge Judy while she was taping a show. They rushed her to the hospital for extensive testing, but could find no cause for why, for a brief interval, nothing would come out of her mouth but nonsense.

https://leeduigon.com/2015/01/21/when-tv-personalities-spout-gibberish/

This happened to different people in different locations. The only thing they had in common was that they were all on television at the moment. But then that was what made it so visible. If it happened to somebody at home, who would ever know?

To this day, the mystery has not been solved.

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in news, strange events

May 6, 2018

The Colossal Gigantic ‘Bloop’

By leeduigon

I just don’t have it to write up any nooze today. By tomorrow morning there will be a whole new crop of awfulness.

Instead, let’s go back to 1997 (good grief, was that 21 years ago?): scientists are listening for underwater noises in the Pacific Ocean; and somewhere off the coast of South America, something makes a noise that sort of freaks them out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYAAUKRczLY). They call the noise “the Bloop.”

After ruling out assorted non-living natural causes, like underwater landslides, glaciers breaking up, whatever, they conclude that the noise may have been made by a living creature “many times larger than a blue whale.” Something around the size of the Eiffel Tower, but alive. The noise it made was heard some 3,000 miles from its origin. The best a blue whale can do is 1,000.

Then they’ve got this guy in a cowboy hat who looks like he wants to hide under the bed in case this critter decides it wants to come ashore.

As far as we know, the blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived on earth.

But how far is that?

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in strange events, Video

May 6, 2018

Bag the Mermaid, Win a Million Bucks (2015)

By leeduigon

Image result for images of mermaid

This seaside resort town in Israel offered a million-dollar prize to anyone who could capture the local mermaid (https://leeduigon.com/2015/04/16/if-you-cant-find-a-centaur-look-for-a-mermaid/). To this day, no one’s been able to claim it.

What do you do with a story like this? A whole bunch of people say they’ve seen the mermaid. But we also know that a mermaid would be a biological impossibility, don’t we?

Then again, a lot of people believe in Man-Maid Climbit Change…

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Just for Fun, news, Pop Culture, strange events

March 17, 2018

Court Tells Man, ‘Sorry–You’re Still Dead’

By leeduigon

See the source image

(Thanks and a hat tip to Martin Selbrede)

There are a few pieces missing from this story, but what we have is, well, too strange to pass up.

A man showed up in a Rumanian court last week to try to prove he was still alive, but the court wasn’t having any. You’re too late, buddy: you were declared dead years ago, and that decision is final (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/constantin-reliu-man-returns-romania-finds-hes-been-declared-dead/).

Assorted tests have verified that the man is who he says he is. He laments, “I am officially dead, although I’m alive.” He thinks being dead may impede his attempts to find a job.

It seems the guy took off for Turkey some 20 years ago, his wife got tired of waiting for him to come back, had him declared dead, and moved to Italy. When his papers expired, he was deported from Turkey–coming home to Rumania only to learn that he was legally dead. And last week he found himself in the extraordinary position of trying to prove, in person, that he’s actually alive–with the judge not buying it!

“Honest, your honor, I’m not dead! I don’t even feel dead!”

“Sorry, Charlie. The papers say you’re dead, and that’s that.”

Laments the man, “I’m a ghost. I can’t do anything.”

What do you want to bet he has to keep paying taxes?

 

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in news, strange events

March 13, 2018

Why Does Amazon Do This?

By leeduigon

See the source image

Gee, I wonder why my Glass Bridge sales are so anemic. Could it have anything to do with the prices which amazon.com lists for the paperback? Here they are, as posted:

*$1,993.62 (62 cents? eh?)

*2 used from $1,497.71 (what?)

*1 new from $1,993.62

Why is amazon doing this to my book, which never did them any harm? What kind of loon is going to pay those prices? What disturbed mind did those prices come from?

It may be that one of you out there knows why this happens. It can’t be doing my book any good! If you know, please let me in on it. Meanwhile, I’ll see if there’s any way I can get an answer from amazon.

 

15 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Book Updates, strange events

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