Man assaults 110-year-old suspected witch

From the Accra (Ghana) Daily Mail:

Mr. Noah Owusu, a school proprietor in Techiman-North is helping the police in investigations into the brutal manhandling of a 110-year old woman on the allegation that she is a witch. Owusu, is alleged to have committed the offence with some of his students. They allegedly stripped Madam Yaaya-Dam Libaar naked, beat her up and accused her of being a witch.

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A Civil Rights treasure trove discovered

This is really one of those cases where the pictures speak a thousand words.

A photographer at The Birmingham (Ala.) News was looking for a lens, but found a box instead filled with negatives of photos from the civil rights movement in Alabama. Many of the images include the biggest names and key events of the movement, but were never published before.

Minutes after the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed on Sept. 15, 1963, Tom Self was on the scene taking pictures. The photographs, published in The Birmingham News, were among hundreds that appeared in print during the civil rights struggle in Alabama. Self, who retired as chief photographer in 1998, remembers many of those images. He also recalls many not published. One is a picture from inside the Sixteenth Street church moments after explosives blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window and killed four little girls. "I shot a picture of Jesus, and everything was intact except his face; his face was blown out," Self remembered. "It was an eerie feeling to look up there and see the whole frame of the window and just the face was gone."

The link to the photos, stories and audio accounts from the retired photographers themselves can be found here, a terrific online exhibit that was published as part of a special in the newspaper. For some civil rights activists who marched in the era I'm sure the photos will bring back a lot of memories. For the rest of us, view them for inspiration. We owe these people heroes for their courage and faith to continue their struggle for justice and equality and to make the world a better place.

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RIP: Octavia Butler

Noted science fiction author Octavia Butler has died following a fall outside her Seattle-area home. Her work was both intensely political and personal, providing a much-needed voice that was unafraid to discuss race, gender, or class - and often all three at once. From her obituary in the Seattle P-I:

SEATTLE -- Octavia E. Butler, the first black woman to gain national prominence as a science fiction writer, died after falling and striking her head on the cobbled walkway outside her home, a close friend said Sunday. She was 58. Butler was found outside her home in the north Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park on Friday. She had suffered from high blood pressure and heart trouble and could only take a few steps without stopping for breath, said Leslie Howle, who knew Butler for two decades and works at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle. Butler's work wasn't preoccupied with robots and ray guns, Howle said, but used the genre's artistic freedom to explore race, poverty, politics, religion and human nature. "She stands alone for what she did," Howle said. "She was such a beacon and a light in that way."

There are so many tributes to her tonight, I don't even know where to point you - Steven Barnes and Cory Doctrow are a couple of writers I like, but there are many, many others sharing their thoughts about her passing tonight. Hers was a unique voice that will not be easily replaced. UPDATE: Neil Gaiman, more Steven Barnes, John Marshall (one of the Seattle P-I's book critics). [via Atrios]

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RIP: Darren McGavin

While I know some of y'all are going 'Who?', I know others recognize this as the passing of the original Kolchac.

McGavin, 83, died Saturday of natural causes at a Los Angeles-area hospital with his family at his side, said his son Bogart McGavin. McGavin also had leading roles in TV's "Riverboat" and cult favorite "Kolchak: The Night Stalker." Among his memorable portrayals was Gen. George Patton in the 1979 TV biography "Ike."

McGavin's official website is here; his IMDb page is here. [via Pam Spaulding @ Pandagon]

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More spooky vacation ideas: European catacombs

(photo of Palermo Ossuary by Hugues Leblanc) I know that in the past I've waxed poetic about my TiVo - and I'm gonna have to do so again, so just bear with me. A couple of nights ago, my TiVo recorded (unbidden, mind you - God! I love that machine! Okay, that wasn't too much waxing, was it?) Incredible Catacombs on the Travel Channel, and I've got to say, there were a couple of places mentioned that I'd never heard of... They did the obvious, covering sites we've talked about on MotHV before: the Parisian catacombs, the early Christian catacombs outside Rome (including one that was the scene of a massacre - Roman soldiers attacked an early Mass, killing everyone in attendance, including one of the early Popes), the vaults and closes under Edinborough's streets, the chapel and ossuary at Sedlec. They covered the Wieliczka salt mines outside of Krakow, with its beautiful chapels and shrines, and whimsical grotesqueries. But they also included a couple I'd never heard of. The first was a subterranean city in central Turkey; built by early Christians fleeing Roman persecution, the crypts could house up to 50,000 people! While this was cool (and the ancient volcanic landscape quite surreal and striking), of more interest to you, our loyal readers, would be the Capuchin ossuaries of Rome and Palermo. While both contain the bones of centuries-worth of monks, some displayed in bizzare tableaux, the Palermo one contains thousands of mummies. Evidently, it was a fad among the wealthy in the 1800s to have your corpse soaked in vinegar or arsenic and placed in the dry limestone niches and crypts in Palermo's Capuchin catacomb. Dehydration would do the rest... So if you get a chance, give the show a whirl - it airs again on Sunday, March 5th. I know my list of places I should see has definitely grown. (Special Saturday Bonus: the photographer and writer responsible for the 'Dark Italy' site where I got the photo also have a great 'Dark Mexico' site... Check 'em both out - they're quite cool.)

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Giant aircraft of the future

Paging Jules Verne. Mr. Verne to the courtesy phone please. From ABC News:

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's … an Aeroscraft? A Tarzana, Calif., company has been working on a new kind of aircraft that looks more like a flying cruise liner than anything inhabiting the skies today. "It's not a blimp, it's not an airship, it's a totally new vehicle," said Edward Pevzner, business development manager for Worldwide Aeros Corp. "Today we have three types of vehicles — air vehicles, which are airplanes, helicopters and airships [blimps]. So this Aeroscraft, as we're going to call it, is going to be the fourth type. And it is going to combine technologies of all three other vehicles." Roughly the size of two football fields, the Aeroscraft can be used as a military transport for troops, artillery and equipment; as a cargo transport service in the spirit of Federal Express or UPS; as a commuter transport service; and as a luxury travel option.

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Night Watch

The Russian vampire film Night Watch opening tonight in limited release. I am really looking forward to seeing Night Watch when it comes to my area. Slate reviewed it:

How do you go about describing Night Watch (Fox Searchlight)? "It is easier for a man to destroy the light within," as one Night Watcher intones, "than to defeat the darkness that surrounds him." Hear that, brother; and harder still to follow the plot of your movie. But here's the rub: I didn't care. For the first hour of Night Watch, a dark, arresting, and unrelentingly weird thrill ride out of post-Soviet Russia, one feels lost. Not bad lost, as with a densely clotted mess like Underworld: Evolution, whose mythopoetics land in the viewer's lap in concrete chunks; but good lost, exhilarated lost, like what am I watching?

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The taxi driver

Here's a joke that was emailed me:

A passenger in a taxi cab, needing to ask the driver a question, leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up on the curb and stopped just inches from a large plate glass window. For a few minutes everything was silent in the cab. Then, still shaking, the driver said, "I'm sorry but you scared the daylights out of me." The frightened passenger apologized saying that he didn't realize a tap on the shoulder could be so scary. "No, no," said the driver. "It's all my fault. This is my first day driving a taxi. For the last 25 years I've driven a hearse."

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How to tell if your IT tech is a zombie

ITtoolbox Blogs has a list of signs to determine if your IT person is a zombie and a list of tips on how to deal with your zombie IT worker:

* does he use too much Axe bodyspray or too much cologne (to cover up the smell of his rotting flesh)? * does he nibble at your ankles when plugging in your network cable under your desk? * after troubleshooting your slow computer, does he call back to his office and ask them to "send more brains"? * does he stare at you with his eyes rolled halfway back into his skull and groan everytime you explain to him that you really do need him to open up the firewall for your streaming audio?

Tip of the fedora to FARfeteched for emailing me the link.

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Friday vampire cat blogging

Hat tip to PhillyGal.

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'It's like the X-Files'

From The Guardian:

Modern motor cars rattle with fear when they take the winding coast road from Mundesley past RAF Trimingham to Cromer. Engines have stalled. Fuseboards and microchips have fried. Speedometers have roared up to 150mph or down to 0. Dashboards have gone black. Clocks have conked out. Down at the local garage, they have a technical term for it. "It's like the X-Files isn't it?" said mechanic Kevin Abbs. Mr Abbs has been a busy man in recent days after a spate of mysterious breakdowns outside a radar station on the north Norfolk coast. Housed inside a giant white golf ball-like structure, the radar station looks as forbidding as the North Sea churning brown below. "A micro-wave radiation hazard exists beyond this point," warns a danger sign on a barbed wire fence. Its purpose veiled by the Official Secrets Act, something has quietly whirred here since 1941, when the station provided early warning against a Nazi attack. For decades it watched for the Red Menace in the east.

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Lake Champlain monster caught on tape

ABC News has the video online.

ABC News obtained exclusive video of something just under the surface of the lake that some say may be Champ. The video was taken by two fishermen with their digital camera last summer. Before their supposed sighting, they were Champ skeptics. "It was as big around as my thigh," said fisherman Peter Bodette. "I'm 100 percent sure of what we saw. I'm not 100 percent sure of what it was." "It made my hair stand on end at the time," said fisherman Dick Affolter. "It just didn't fit anything — any creature I had seen."

In related news, Vice President Dick Cheney departed for a hunting trip to Lake Champlain. Local residents have been advised to stay indoors to avoid drunken shotgun blasts.

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Ruined city discovered in India

From The Hindu:

CHANDIGARH: Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a city dating back to the Harappan civilisation at Farmana Khas, about 12 km from Meham on the Julana road in Haryana. Terming the discovery as significant, a spokesman of the Haryana Archaeology and Museums Department said here on Monday that it was the first city of the Harappan civilisation found buried in Haryana. It was evident from the nature of settlements and richness of antiquities found at the site that the city belonged to the Harappan era. So far, towns dating back to this civilisation — Banawali, Bhirdana — and the village of Kunal have been unearthed in Haryana but this is the first time that the ruins of a city have been discovered.

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Tracking the ghost

From the Yakima (Wash.) Herald Republic:

Eighty years. For that long, there have been only unverified sightings. The very occasional set of tracks crossing a remote snowfield. In recent years, perhaps a fleeting image on some motion-detector camera high in the North Cascades. Evidence aptly illusory of animals that might as well have been ghosts of the boreal forest — albeit ghosts with a reputation for unparalleled ferocity. For eight decades, even scientists couldn't say for sure whether this state was home to even one member of this elusive animal species. Until two weeks ago. Now they know all about one. And her name is Melanie. She's a year old and weighs 19 pounds. And researchers are hoping against hope that she's not alone out there — though they'll know soon enough. The satellite collar they've attached to her will answer questions that have gone unanswered for those 80 years. She's a wolverine. In Washington. And that, in the world of wildlife science, is very, very big news. "It's historic," says Keith Aubry, a carnivore expert and research wildlife biologist heading up a pilot study of wolverines in the state from his office at the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Olympia.

Also wolverines are good at fighting off communist invaders.

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Cave of the Ghosts

From MSNBC:

A cave so huge helicopters can fly into it has just been discovered deep in the hills of a South American jungle paradise. Actually, "Cueva del Fantasma" — Spanish for "Cave of the Ghost" — is so vast that two helicopters can comfortably fly into it and land next to a towering waterfall. It was found in the slopes of Aprada tepui in southern Venezuela, one of the most inaccessible and unexplored regions of the world. The area, known as the Venezuelan Guayana, is one of the most biologically rich, geologically ancient and unspoiled parts of the world.

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A monster of a short stop

I recently posted about Destiny Frankenstein's three home runs in one day (see below). The Kansas City Star just wrote a profile on her:

There’s nothing easy about going through life with a name like that, not with a name like Destiny Frankenstein. Everywhere she goes, every time she fills out an application, every time she gets introduced to someone, she gets the same smirk or disbelieving look. By now, at age 22 and a senior shortstop for the Kansas softball team, Frankenstein is pretty immune to it all. “Most people just can’t believe that’s my real name,” she said by phone from Lawrence. “Like if I’m making reservations at a restaurant, I start to give them my name, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, no, we need your real name.’ And I have to convince them, ‘Hey, that is my real name!’ ”

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Russian 'Holmes' to be knighted

From Moscow News:

Russian actor Vassily Livanov will be granted the Order of the British Empire for acting Sherlock Holmes. British ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, quoted by Radio Liberty said the Queen Elizabeth II had made such a decision. Brenton called Livanov one of the best actors to play the role of the famous detective.

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On black funerals

What Rev. Lowery said.

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Bird flu worries ground Tower birds

From The Washington Post:

For 350 years, coal-black ravens have wandered freely around the Tower of London's grassy inner courtyard as cawing barometers of the monarchy's vitality -- if the ravens ever die or leave the tower, the legend goes, the tower and the kingdom will fall. Now the fear of bird flu has done what Luftwaffe bombings, blizzards, assassinations and abdications could not, forcing the ravens to be moved inside in isolation for their own safety and to hedge Britain's bets on the future of the crown. "I talk to them and they're calm," said Raven Master Derrick Coyle, in his navy Tudor bonnet and beefeater outfit as he stood inside the 11th-century fortress on the Thames, one of the world's leading tourist attractions. Four times a day, Coyle said, he dons a full-body protective suit, steps carefully into a disinfectant foot wash and then offers raw meat, vitamins and comforting words to the six ravens -- Branwen, Hugine, Munin, Gwyllum, Thor and Baldrick -- who now live in eight-foot-long cages in one of the towers. snip "Thank goodness they are still on these grounds," said Margaret Hopkins, a retired schoolteacher visiting the tower. She said she wasn't really superstitious but thought it best not to cross a 17th-century decree by King Charles II to always keep six ravens at the tower, lest great harm descend.

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Ghost hunting season begins

Edinburgh gets to have all the fun. From The Scotsman:

OVERNIGHT vigils in one of the Capital's creepiest places are to be held as part of the city's annual ghost festival. Mary King's Close, the 17th century labyrinth below the City Chambers, is to be opened up from midnight to 6am to play host to private adult-only investigations. Other underground vaults and closes in the historic heart of Edinburgh will also play host to various paranormal and supernatural probes. Leading psychics, ghost-finders and paranormal experts are inviting members of the public to join them on after-dark events during the festival, which is expected to attract visitors from all over the UK. The second Edinburgh Ghost Fest will also see attempts to capture ghostly voices, the opportunity to meet some of the UK's best known psychics, and a chance for festival-goers to experience a night in the city's underground vaults. Other events in the fledgling festival, which is being held over ten days in May, include a look back at the history of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the Lothians, clairvoyant gatherings, storytelling sessions, tarot nights, a psychic fair, tastings of whisky from Scotland's most haunted distilleries and a spooky bus tour of Midlothian.

::sigh::

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For those about to rock...

Dewey Finn: In the words of AC/DC: We roll tonight... to the guitar bite... and for those about to rock... I salute you. School of Rock (2003) Did you feel it? I felt it. The pillars of the Earth shook. The beginning of the end of the Iranian theocracy occurred. You didn't notice it? George W. Bush had nothing to do with it. No military power on the planet could do it. The change began within Iran today. From the BBC:

Rock band Queen, fronted by gay icon Freddie Mercury, has become the first rock act to receive an official seal of approval in Iran. Western music is strictly censored in the Islamic republic, where homosexuality is considered a crime. But an album of Queen's greatest hits was released in Iran on Monday.

Mercury, who died in 1991, was proud of his Iranian ancestry, and illegal bootleg albums and singles made Queen one of the most popular bands in Iran.

Do you think I'm exaggerating the importance of this? Nuclear weapons and masses of tanks cannot stop the power of rock. Rock and roll led to the fall of communism and the Soviet Empire.

Hungarian ambassador Andras Simonyi, who in November spoke at Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, believes at least some credit is due to the influence of bloc-rocking beats. Simonyi first encountered rock 'n' roll in Denmark in the 1960s, a time when Hungary was in the middle of nearly haft a century of Communist rule. "Rock music represented freedom to me," Simonyi says, "freedom I first experienced in Denmark and missed very much after returning to Hungary." One of few young people on his block who spoke English, he embraced the message of rock culture. "Given that rock already carried a revolutionary message in the free West," he says, "you can imagine what effect that music had in the un-free East." The message of rock was heard even by those who didn't understand English. "Nonspeakers instinctively felt that rock music was about freedom--the freedom to form your own band, the freedom to create your own music, the freedom to choose and listen to songs you like best," Simonyi says. He believes it was only natural for those ideas to "spill over into politics, reinforcing the freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the free dissemination of ideas," all of which, he says, "scared the hell out of the Communist establishment." Hungarian communism collapsed in 1989, and Simonyi, now 51, still believes rock can set you free. "Today, there is criticism that rock is imperialistic," he says. "Nonsense. Only dictators are afraid of rock."

I'm surprised President Cheney Bush hasn't moved to ban rock music in this country. Queen, I want to break free

I want to break free
I want to break free
I want to break free from your lies
You're so self satisfied I don't need you
I've got to break free
God knows, God knows I want to break free

Freddy: Come on man, we're on a mission. One great rock show can change the world... look out the window...

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Zombies on ice! The Sequel!

If, like me, your first mental image upon reading the previous post's title was that of a sequin-bedecked pair of zombies twirling and spinning across the ice on flashing blades as gobbets of flesh dropped from them, then you need help. No, really, I mean that. If, however, you do find yourself in this position, you will be just as disappointed as I to discover that there are no Google-able images of sequin-clad, figure skating zombies! Zero, zip, nada, none. Bupkus. Dammit, I want my Dawn of the Dead on Ice! If the Internet wasn't invented for propagating exactly that sort of image, than I don't know what it was invented for (apart from pr0n, which is clearly outside the scope of this blog (unless it's zombie pr0n, in which case let me be the first to tell you that you are truly one sick mofo. Really. Now stop touching me and go away.)). But I digress... While googling for these oh-so-elusive images, I was able to find these gems: All Things Zombie (which appears to live up to its name most admirably) and Lance Chess' article in the Sep 16 - Sep 22, 2004 issue of The Portland Mercury titled "Zombie Like Me"...

I'm sure we've all fantasized about being on the run from a pack of brain-devouring zombies. Perhaps you've even imagined yourself armed with a shotgun and a handful of shells. How many zombies did you take out before you succumbed? One? 10? 50? But what if it were the other way around? What if YOU were the lone zombie walking around--undead, wandering in a sea of thriving humanity, scaring everyone shitless? That's why I chose to get into the skin of a zombie--that is, to shuffle a mile in his shoes. But first I needed to resemble one of the living undead--and a bong hit, a couple shots of Jgermeister [sic], and some shabby clothes would not suffice. I needed professional help.

This journalistic gem is but the beginning of the package of articles the Mercury pulled together for this issue. There's Things To Do In Portland When You're Undead, How To Kill A Zombie, and Ask a Zombologist. Good stuff, good stuff. Oh yeah, one last thing; there was one photo... ...of a zombie on ice.

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Zombies on ice!

Via Pharyngula comes this link to startling footage of zombies shambling across Minnesota's frigid winter landscape. Personally, I'd have guessed that you'd have a hard time finding brains by stalking ice fishermen, but hey! it seems to work for them ;-) As one of PZ's commenters pointed out, perhaps they're being lured by the siren call of Mall of America.

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Salem's Lot on Zombie Astronaut

The latest issue of Zombie Astronaut brings us the BBC's audio series of Stephen King's Salem's Lot.

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New Orleans cemeteries ready for the living

From The Providence Journal:

New Orleans is alive and kicking, and it wants you back. Needs you back. Pre-hurricane, New Orleans hosted nearly 10 million tourists per year; in 2006, no one is hazarding a guess. Tours by Isabelle once escorted 1,000 visitors per month; now it sees about 100. snip If you show up, the city will show you one terrific time. Since New Year's, the weekend partiers are trickling back. The French Quarter looks pretty much as it did pre-Katrina, with its leafy gardens, curling iron balconies, gaudy bars and obnoxious T-shirt shops. Museums in the Warehouse District -- dedicated to Southern art, the Confederacy, D-Day and contemporary art -- have reopened. Historic cemeteries made famous by voodoo queen Marie Laveau and author Anne Rice's vampires are open for visits.

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Beast of Bexley captured -- on camera

It's been ages since I've posted a giant black cat story. From This Is Local London:

THIS is the closest-ever picture of the Beast of Bexley. Over several years there have been scores of sightings around the borough of a panther-like creature. And at the weekend, mum-of-three Debbie Marshall took this amazing picture at the bottom of her garden.

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Ghost girl video

Speaking of Coast-to-Coast AM (see post below) here's an eerie video that was being discussed on Friday's show of a Spanish ghost hunter's encounter in a cemetery.

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Coast-to-Coast AM signal remains popular

From Wired News:

Omar is phoning from the future. "I'm in the year 2063," he declares during an open-lines segment on Coast to Coast AM, a nationally syndicated late-night radio show. Show host George Noory listens with the same respectful tone he uses whether callers have Ph.D.s in microbiology or advanced degrees in wacko. "So what's going on?" he asks, getting an impenetrable answer about the decline of money. And then it's on to the usual calls about alien-human hybrids, spiritual visitations and global conspiracies. But that's not all. Noory combines the unexplained with something unexpected -- in-depth chats with some of today's most respected scientists. An estimated 4.5 million listeners tune in to Coast to Coast each night, reportedly making the show No. 1 in its time slot in cities from Los Angeles to Albuquerque (where it gets a whopping 22 percent of the audience) to San Diego (where it attracts more listeners than the next two most popular stations combined).

Hat tip to The Daily Grail.

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Frankenstein wields a dangerous bat

Destiny Frankstein that is.

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Ghost hunters spooky encounter

From ETonline.com:

CHAR MARGOLIS traveled to Kincardine, Ontario to visit a mansion many Canadian residents believe to be haunted, and the ET cameras are with our real-life ghost whisperer to capture the eerie investigation! "This is a scary looking house; it's a little spooky," Char tells ET. "I get many spirits wanting to tell their story here, and I feel I was brought here for a reason." Char, an internationally renowned psychic intuitive who is also the star of the upcoming SCI-FI Channel reality series "Psychic at Large" (premiering Wednesday March 29), could immediately sense the spirits inside the house even before she stepped inside. Many locals are so afraid of the house, which was reportedly built by an American sea captain in 1865, that they cross the street away from the property when passing by. Owner MICHELLE CAMPBELL says she and her family experienced many ghostly occurrences inside the residence. They no longer live there. "I never believed in ghosts at all until I moved here," says Michelle.

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