The Gralien Report

I’ve been finding so much craziness lately I haven’t known what to make of it. Therefore, I thought I’d just share a few of my favorites with you from the last couple of days, ranging from gigantic 18-foot-tall silverware in California to a Brazillian man showing up for his own funeral. Enjoy!

GHOST TOWNS: First up is a link to the most desolate and abandoned cities around the world:

BIG SURPRISE: The Fourth Kind hits theaters today… and is a big fake. Didn’t see that one coming…

BEATLE BUGS: Next, bigger than Jesus might not qualify, since this Beatle is only the size of a water droplet

TURN LEFT AT THE (GIANT) FORK IN THE ROAD: Super-sized silverware in Pasadena

HOSPITAL HELL-LETTER: Overhaul of health care is needed in more ways than we realize

GROWIN’ SHARPIES: Encouraging spikes to grow on an abandoned naked hedgehog

A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH: Man shows up at his own funeral in Brazil

According to an article published in the Huffington Post by Steven M. Gillon, a resident historian with the History Channel, new revelations about the alleged plot to kill former President John F. Kennedy do indeed point to a conspiracy.

“After being informed at Parkland Hospital that Kennedy was dead,” Gillon writes, “Johnson raced back to Air Force One, where he waited for Mrs. Kennedy and the body of the slain president, and made preparations to take the Oath of Office.” Meanwhile, the widowed first lady waited on board the plane, desperate to leave. Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh had been Kennedy’s military aide on the fateful Dallas trip, and interacted with Mrs. Kennedy on board the plane, and at her request, tried to find out why the plane couldn’t leave immediately. According to a newly declassified oral history McHugh has released, certain claims made about Lyndon Johnson’s behavior in the wake of the assassination are startling at best.

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Do you remember playing “Bloody Mary” when you were a child? You know, the game where you stared into a mirror and chanted the name of the blood-witch mentioned above three times, with the eminent risk that a devilish ghost would emerge from the reflective surface and rip your face off?

In all likelihood, you did play this game, but failed to see a bloody witch glaring back at you. Still, many have professed an interest in the legend of Bloody Mary over the years, variously referred to as Mary Worth, Hell Mary, Mary Jones, and a host of other names. According to Snopes.com, Bloody Mary research began around 1978 in an essay published by folklorist Janet Langlois, at which time belief in summoning the mirror-witch was still widespread. “Mary is summoned whenever squealing girls get together for a sleepover,” Snopes says. “We typically performed the ‘ritual’ in bathrooms, because the bathrooms of our suburban homes had large mirrors and were easily darkened even during the day since they had no windows.” Typically, when the Bloody Mary ritual is performed correctly, a murderous ghost is said to emerge from the mirror, often attacking the individual who summoned her.

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Arguably, this year has been significant so far as developments in the ever-growing Mothman mythos. Of course, it was earlier this year that marked the passage of John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies, from this dimensional plane. Also (on a slightly more personal note), just prior to completing the manuscript for my upcoming book, I received a unique report from a friend in Atlanta detailing a strange sighting of what she called “Mothman.” Although I tend to view all this so-called Mothman-related activity as being more anecdotal than anything, today I was nonetheless interested to note some parallels in an article posted at Jon Downes’ website Still on the Track to popular descriptions of the winged-one. The following story, as related by one of his readers, details a variety of interesting Mothman-like points of interest:

‘We were in Pacifica MO, tonight around 11:30 and we noticed a massive flying creature, not once but three times. My son even noticed it on his own the third time. We were near a large cliff/mountain with some type of cave openings. We don’t live in the area, I can say for sure we turned onto a road called viaduct road, went past a fire station and continued on for about 1 mile before we first noticed it. It was brownish/grey and the body portion was at least the size of a large adult human. This creature was tracking us – in a circle pattern. We were driving an escalade with the blue color headlights, this may have cause interest in us. The third time around us we viewed it in front of the vehicle, around driver side and around towards the rear of the vehicle, the factory tinted windows did help it vanish into the sky from out point of view.

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Last week I discussed the discovery of a gigantic cosmic “ribbon” observed by NASA scientists, indicative of a magnetic  “heliosphere.” This, in essence, is a gigantic magnetic bubble that fills the sky, emitting no light and having remained invisible until only recently. The “ribbon” has caused quite a stir, since theories as to what causes the strange manifestation vary greatly.

However, at the website Thunderbolts.info, Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott propose a radical theory that the universe is actually electric in nature, and that present theories that look to gravity for answers, quite simply, don’t carry much weight. For Thornhill, the appearance of this cosmic ribbon is only further proof that Earth’s Sun is indeed an electric body.

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My friend Kithra of the blog Kithra’s Krystal Kave sent along heartbreaking news this morning detailing the passing of one of today’s most celebrated ufologists, Mac Tonnies.

Tonnies (left, photo courtesy of Greg Bishop) was an American ufologist and futurist, whose books After the Martian Apocalypse and his much anticipated masterwork dealing with “Cryptoterrestrials” helped broaden the views regarding UFOs, strange creatures, and how they relate to time, space, and mankind.

My own interaction with Mac was somewhat limited… we would occasionally email one another, though arguably, one of the sincerest compliments I ever received came from my pal Red Pill Junkie at the Daily Grail who in his article Mario, Micah and the Midnight Oil compared Greg Bishop, Nick Redfern and I to Tonnies, saying that like the Mac-Man, we were “not afraid to have a broader view of all these phenomena, instead of desperately trying to keep them separate and compartmentalized.”

It was for this very reason, in my own heart and mind, that Mac will be so badly missed. I had looked forward to so many collaborations with him, and always found comfort in knowing that while Mac was among us, the world seemed a little smaller. A truly great mind indeed; you will be missed.

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Halloween is just around the corner, and perhaps the only thing more frightening to me than the fact that I have YET to figure out what my costume will be this year is the sobering realization that vampires–real life blood suckers and night stalkers–do exist among us.

Granted, with the popularity surrounding books, films and television series like True Blood and Twilight, it may come as no surprise that there are people who claim to be so fascinated with the dark side that they take to living nocturnal lifestyles in order to fulfill their own grim fascination with today’s vampiric sub-culture. But these individuals are mere neophytes; initiates by choice that could be headed down a long, dark road to something far more sinister… something so horrifying that the existence of which, though shrouded in mystery, can’t be ignored.

Worst of all, it’s real.

In his new book Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Darkside, Brad Steiger yet again takes the psyche of the reader into a veritable neither realm of dark foreboding mystery surrounding one of mankind’s most ancient foes: the vampire.

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My good friend Dean Warsing sent along this recent photograph of Joshua P. Warren and I investigating the fascinating mystery of the Brown Mountain Lights with National Geographic Channel near Lineville Falls, North Carolina:

MEN AT WORLD’S EDGE: Joshua (right) and I stand at the edge of a 200-foot cliff adjacent to Wiseman’s View in the Lineville Gorge. Though smiling, the fingers of Josh’s right hand were actually crossed, as we both prayed a sudden, strong gust of wind wouldn’t blow us into a corresponding 200-foot drop to oblivion below.

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Ever wish you could read somebody’s mind? Better yet, ever think it would be nifty (or terrifying, on the other hand) to be able to both read and receive telepathic communication, directly via “brain to brain” interface? Now, science has helped bring us one step closer to doing so in a practical way that incorporates binary coding and existing EEG technology.

True, this isn’t exactly “new” technology (for instance, DARPA ihas planned to use this sort of technology to aid in developing prosthetic limbs that are movable in response to to neural commands). However, in this next step in utilizing mechanical benefits from the technology’s practical application, Dr. Christopher James at the University of Southampton has used BCI (brain-computer interface) to illustrate how people can communicate with what he dubs “true brain-to-brain interfacing.”

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I have to start by saying how immensely I enjoyed this book. Having skipped out of town for a “last ditch” retreat to the Isle of Palms off the coast of sunny South Carolina, I enjoyed this book in between jogs on the beach and the occasional swim. Cuba Libre’ and cigar in hand, I lounged by the pool under a palm tree as I enjoyed this page-turner; and let me be frank, there’s no better way to describe this book.

Nick Redfern’s Science Fiction Secrets From Government Files and the Paranormal is one of my favorite new offerings from Britain’s finest Gonzo journalist of paranormalia. From strange FBI tales involving the apparent paranoia of Sci-Fi writers like Phillip K. Dick, to weird parallels he draws between the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and television programs that predicted the disaster before it happened, this  book is a mind bender in the first degree, and will leave you wondering how soon Anomalist Books will be asking for “round two.”

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