The X Thread

[jim]

Ok, its been a bit quiet in these parts lately so just something to get some discussion going. I have a big interest in "weird" stuff. UFO's, ghosts and the like. So my idea is a thread where we can look at some weird cases and the believers can let us know what they think and the skeptics can try to debunk it or explain it. I'll only use real incidences, not urban legends.

Case file #1:

Owensville, Indiana. December 1939.
Locals are annoyed by what they think is large, nonsensical graffiti vandalism outside the local primary school, the meaning of which they cant fathom. The huge letters spell out "Remember Pearl Harbour". The townspeople discussed the meaning behind the message that winter morning but the culprit was never found and the incident eventually forgotten - until the Japanese bomb pearl harbour on exactly the same day, 2 years later.

?

[Malachy]

http://www.rotten.com/library/cryptozoology/aliens/the-wow-signal/wow1.gif (http://www.rotten.com/library/cryptozoology/aliens/the-wow-signal/)

[jim]

^ The famouse Wow! signal. Contact?

[skittlebrau]

Case file #1:

Owensville, Indiana. December 1939.
Locals are annoyed by what they think is large, nonsensical graffiti vandalism outside the local primary school, the meaning of which they cant fathom. The huge letters spell out "Remember Pearl Harbour". The townspeople discussed the meaning behind the message that winter morning but the culprit was never found and the incident eventually forgotten - until the Japanese bomb pearl harbour on exactly the same day, 2 years later.
I swear I've read this off as an urban legend in a book somewhere. In that version, the nonsensical graffiti was found just a week before the Pearl Harbor attack.

Although I checked snopes.com and it has no mention of it. Strange...

[George]

i didn't bother to read that wow thing, but why is the message "6EQUJ5" so damn amazing? if someone could just gimme the jist of it, that'd be great.
that pearl harbour thing is also really creepy.

so how 'bout them crop circles? they sure are something.

[Simpsons Forever!]

Crop circles are easily made at night - there are 5 hours of darkness in an English summer night and it's been proven that very intricate patterns can be made in that time. The hoaxers just walk into the middle of the field through the gaps in the crop and flatten it down with rakes. It's just the countryside's version of graffiti vandalism.

[samsa]

I swear I've read this off as an urban legend in a book somewhere. In that version, the nonsensical graffiti was found just a week before the Pearl Harbor attack.

Although I checked snopes.com and it has no mention of it. Strange...

I watched it on a show that used to tell mysterious stories and in the end they would say if they were real or not. I don't remember if the story was catalogued as real or fake.

[Nebuchanezzar]

I was once sleeping early in the morning, about to wake up for university and my light turned on. My dad came in and asked who turned the light on, and I had no idea...It wasn't a member of my family.

I was pseudo-asleep another time facing away from the door to my bedroom when I felt like I was grabbed from behind. It was early in the morning so I doubt that any family member was touching my shoulders for no reason at 5:00 in the morning...

That's as far as my experiences go, I thought I'd share em.

[skittlebrau]

I can't find a thing on google about this. jim, where did you get the info?

[StrideR]

There are a numerous Nigerian boarding school stories with the recurring theme of a kid waking up in the middle of the night with an invisible force holding/him or her down preventing the individual from speaking or crying for help.

[jim]

Skittle, its a bit of a weird source, its a pseudo-science book I found that contains a series of essays written by professors discussing the possibilities of time travel and time warps. But that isnt the only source, the Owensville thing is a footnote in another book I have about unsolved mysteries.
There isnt much info on it on the net, all I've found is it being mentioned at this comedy site:
http://www.pjfarmer.com/secret/contributors/tachyon.htm
and this blog site:
http://crazyeighties.blogspot.com/

[skittlebrau]

Interesting.

Come to think of it, the book I mentioned earlier may have been a Time-Life book on paranormal activity/unsolved mysteries. Probably similar to your book. Either way, good reading all around.

[Curtis]

I saw a grimlin a few years ago, swear to god.

http://author.ryerson.ca/~ymaroun/Grimlin.JPG

looked very similar to that here is my story:
Four years ago I was lying in bed, it was about 1:30 at night. I could not get to sleep but was trying. I closed my eyes for about ten minutes just thinking, I WAS NOT SLEEPING. Well i decided I was going to watch TV sence I was not tired. I opened my eyes and was horriefied to find some kind of creature on my pillow. It was about four inches tall and was standing next to my face. I screamed as loud as I could and the thing ran off my bed and went in my closet which was open. I immediatly looked at my closet and was shocked to see my shorts that were hanging were moving back and forth meaning the creature ran by it. My mom came in and I told her what happened and she didn't belive me. I SWEAR TO GOD I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. I did some research at my library and it confirmed what I thought what I had seen, a grimlen. the books I read on these things said they are not evil or anything but are "mischevious troublemakers". Till this day I am still terrified of that occasion. I've told a lot of people and not a lot belive me, I am positive what happened. If any of you guys have any quetions what happened just contact me on aim or something. I think there is a lot of things out there they we, the human race do not know of.

[Dead Nigga Storage]

are you sure THIS isn't what you saw?
http://www.republicanvoices.org/pillsbury_doughboy.jpg

[America: Fuck Yea!]

Skittle, its a bit of a weird source, its a pseudo-science book I found that contains a series of essays written by professors discussing the possibilities of time travel and time warps. But that isnt the only source, the Owensville thing is a footnote in another book I have about unsolved mysteries.
There isnt much info on it on the net, all I've found is it being mentioned at this comedy site:
http://www.pjfarmer.com/secret/contributors/tachyon.htm
and this blog site:
http://crazyeighties.blogspot.com/


I'll be honest, I can find no proof of that story.

[Wasteland]

A few months ago, around 5 am, I was awakened by a loud sound and voices. I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. I got up and started searching for where the sounds were coming from. I went over to my stereo(the one with the turntable), and it was coming from there. Weird thing was, not only was it not on, it wasn't even plugged up. I grabbed it and threw it on the floor, and it stopped then. Another weird thing: the voices coming from it sounded like my grandfather, who died in 1980 (I had recordings of his voice, so I knew what it sounded like), and my uncle Charlie, who died in 1994.


I saw a grimlin a few years ago, swear to god.


http://www.imcdb.org/images/009/137.jpg

[Binky]

It was early in the morning so I doubt that any family member was touching my shoulders for no reason at 5:00 in the morning...
Maybe your dad was molesting you in your sleep and ran off when he saw you waking up.

[jim]

i didn't bother to read that wow thing, but why is the message "6EQUJ5" so damn amazing? if someone could just gimme the jist of it, that'd be great.
It isnt the 6EQUJ5 thats important, thats just computer jibberish that only experts would understand and doesnt have any real meaning, but the amazing thing about the Wow! signal is that it is an artificial transmission sent from deep in space. The SETI (search for extra terrestrial intelligence) organisation has spent decades sending transmissions into space and this is the only thing they recieved back.

I'll be honest, I can find no proof of that story.
What proof is there going to be? Only the memories of the townspeople at the time. The story first appeared in a book about phenomenons in the late 60's.
When I first read about it about 2 years ago I did a yahoo search on it and found a news story about someone from Owenville trying to preserve the pavement the grafitti was written on which was about to be removed, which leant some creedence to the story, but it isnt on the net anymore so you only have my word on that. The other thing that seperates it from Urban Legends is that urban legends are always changed and warped, but every thing Ive seen about this specifically meantions the date and town of Owensville.

[Ivan]

Before we moved when I was eight years old, we used to live in a house that was about 70 years old. The house had once been on a farm and was moved into the town about 30-40 years earlier. I only have my parent's word on these because I can't remember them happening because I was too young (except for one). The first was apparantly I used to wake up screaming pointing to the air above me and trying to cover my face. The next was something tried to suffocate my Grandmother whenever she slept in a certain bedroom in the house. Another was that my baby bottle would sit on the floor for hours (and it was a fairly stable floor) then somehow it would just basically up-end itself when someone went out of the room. Also, my Dad was asleep in bed one night and heard footsteps up the hallway and about half an hour later he realized they hadn't come back. He thought it was my mother (who was in the lounge room) going to the bathroom, so he got up and looked into the lounge and my mother was absolutely petrified and said she heard it too. This one I'm not sure to believe (but my sister told me of it). She had some toy stick thing (I remember her playing with it sometimes). One day we had to go shopping in another town, so she put it on our tv. When we got home it was on the couch opposite the tv and the tv was on. And finally, I have a photograph of me when I was about 4 years old, standing next to my mum. In the photo there is a white figure standing to the left of me, but part of it covers me...and when I found it a few years ago it was really creepy.

[Wasteland]

I have heard of the famous grafitti in Owensville. I dug through my paranormal/strange occurrences books, and I have found a passage in one of them.

This is from Strange But True: Mysterious and Bizarre People. by Thomas Sleman. This excerpt is from the chapter called The Phantom Writers:


Another piece of puzzling graffiti greeted the citizens of Owensville, Indiana, on the morning of December 7, 1939. In huge letters on the sidewalk of the public grade school, someone had painted a sentence in huge white letters that read: "Remember Pearl Harbor!".

A policeman in town scratched his head as he read the words and said, "Crazy kids. Where is Prearl Harbor, anyway?".

No one in the town seemed to know, until two years later, to the day, when an armada of 350 Japanese carrier-launched warplanes attacked th US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harborl, Hawaii. The Japanese killed 2,330 military personnel and wounded 1,145 in the attack, as well as destroying 247 aircraft, sinking three battleships and eleven warships. But wh was the mysterious graffiti writer who had warned the United States of this horrific military assault two years before it happened? No one knows.

I had seen this in two other books besides this one.

[Hapablap]

Anyone ever watch Ghost Hunters on scifi? I saw the new one tonight and they got some freakish footage in a lighthouse. Its probably faked but it still gives me chills when they actually show something looking over the railing from the top of the lighthouse. Faked maybe, but still entertaining.

The odd thing is most of the time these guys don't find shit in these supposedly haunted buildings, and watching the show is a complete waste of time.

Marathon this Sunday though... 14 hours of paranormal horseshit, check it out!

[Dynamic]

There are a numerous Nigerian boarding school stories with the recurring theme of a kid waking up in the middle of the night with an invisible force holding/him or her down preventing the individual from speaking or crying for help.

Its called sleep paralysis. I do not think its a supernatural thing through.
That has only ever happend to me once in my life, and its not that scary, the main concern is if there is a fire or something and you cant move.

[aoife]

Its called sleep paralysis. I do not think its a supernatural thing through.
That has only ever happend to me once in my life, and its not that scary, the main concern is if there is a fire or something and you cant move.
Haha, I was just about to post on this.
It's also called Old Hag Syndrome.
A lot of different cultures have variations on the creature on a sleeping person's chest.

[Wasteland]

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mad_Gasser_of_Mattoon)

A mysterious figure who was active in 1944 in Mattoon, Illinois. Discussion?

[garret]

Some have argued that an actual assailant carried out the attacks more or less as reported by witnesses.

A recent theory, suggested by former area resident Scott Maruna, blames a local named Farley Llewellyn. An outstanding chemistry student at the University of Illinois, Llewellyn had both the means and the motivation to commit the attacks. Shortly before the first attack, Llewellyn's home chemistry lab was rocked by an explosion. Llewellyn was ostracized by the local community as a suspected homosexual and was bitter toward the townsfolk. Maruna states that the first several victims were high school classmates of Llewellyn's, and most of the attacks occurred near the Llewellyn home. Maruna believes Farley Llewyllen was attempting to make bombs using nitromethane, an explosive, sweet-smelling compound which, when inhaled, can produce symptoms not unlike those reported by the victims.

One objection to this explanation is the lack of explosions or fires accompanying the attacks or physical evidence of any explosive device. Another possible flaw is that Llewellyn was the only suspect at the time and was placed under constant surveillance at the height of the attacks. Maruna suggests Llewellyn's sisters conducted several additional gassings in an attempt to exonerate him. This would explain why the victims of the final attack on the 13th described the gasser as a woman in men's clothing, and prints from high-heeled shoes were found the next day.

Shortly after the attacks ended, Farley Llewellyn's family had him committed to a mental institution, where he remained for the rest of his life.
This seems to make the most sense out of the three explanations.

[bluemoose]

^ Yeah, that one made the most sense to me. It's still really strange, though, no matter what the explanation is.

[Wasteland]

Ok, what about this piece of paranormal:

Springheel Jack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springheel_Jack)

[Toli]

http://www.rotten.com/library/cryptozoology/aliens/the-wow-signal/wow1.gif (http://www.rotten.com/library/cryptozoology/aliens/the-wow-signal/)

What a beautiful mind!

[George]

i read the whole thing on spring heeled jack...i clicked a link to some sort of theory that nothing outside one's mind is real. very confusing; then i went onto "space colonnisation", that was even MORE intense. jesus fuckin' christ.

makes ya wonder, don't it?

[Wasteland]

Spontaneous Human Combustion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion)

[Wasteland]

Come on, lets discuss some strange shit!