Forteana

Reported sightings of a panther or puma in Wiltshire in the last few months could well be genuine, according to a big cat expert.

Gloucestershire-based Rick Minter, host of the Big Cat Conversations podcast, believes a reported sighting near Melksham could well be a black leopard indigenous to the Malay Peninsula.

Speaking to BBC Wiltshire, Mr Minter said people frequently described seeing a cat with a thick, tube-like tail, a boxy head and, long, muscular body slightly larger than a labrador.

Mr Minter, whose podcast examines sightings of big cats around the UK, thinks the UK may have a well-established population of leopards breeding in the wild.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22566785

For a brief moment this week, lynx have been roaming the Scottish Highlands once again. But this was not the way conservationists had hoped to end their 1,000-year absence.

On Wednesday, Police Scotland received reports of two lynx in a forest in the Cairngorms national park, sparking a frantic search. That episode ended in less than a day. Both animals were quickly captured by experts from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and taken to quarantine facilities at Highland wildlife park.

Yet their delight at a successful operation was short-lived. Early on Friday morning, the RZSS’s network of wildlife cameras caught two more lynx in the same stretch of forest, near Kingussie. The baited traps were redeployed and its specialists went hunting again, before the additional lynx were safely captured at about 6.30pm.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22483688

There is fury tonight, even from conservationists, about the confirmed release of controversial lynx onto land near Insh Marshes by Kingussie.

A Police Scotland spokesperson told the Strathy this evening: “Around 4.20pm on Wednesday, 8 January 2025, police were advised that two lynx had been spotted in the Drumguish area near to Kingussie.

“As a precaution, and also for the animals' safety, specially trained staff from Highland Wildlife Park are assisting officers to trace them.

“Members of the public are asked not to approach the lynx nor indeed attend the area, but instead to contact police via 101 if they are spotted.

Two Oregon men were found dead in a Washington state forest after they failed to return from a trip to look for Sasquatch, authorities said Saturday.

The 59-year-old and 37-year-old appear to have died from exposure, the Skamania County Sheriff's Office said via Facebook. The weather and the men's lack of preparedness led the office to draw that conclusion, it said.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/21820950

When we think about Christmas, we probably picture mangers, glowing fireplaces, carol singers and snow-covered hills. But behind all this, there’s something much darker lurking in the shadows.

In her new book, The Dead of Winter, Sarah Clegg peels back the wrapping paper of modern Christmas to reveal the creepy creatures and customs hiding underneath. Beyond the jollity and bright enchantment of the festive season, there lurks a darker mood - one that has found expression over the centuries in a host of strange and unsettling traditions.

Cambridge-trained historian Sarah delves deep into the folklore of the Christmas season in Europe, detailing the way its terrifying past continues to haunt and entertain us now in the 21st Century. She experiences many of these traditions first-hand joining wassailing celebrations in Wales and attempting a Swedish Year Walk. She also explores the tension between darkness and light that lies at the heart of winter celebrations and argues that we need both the comforting glow of the hearth and the thrilling chill of ghost stories.

Today, Sarah introduces us to some of the ghastly and ghoulish creatures from ancient European Christmas folklore.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/21798396

Horror fan Reece Shearsmith joins Danny to discuss some brand-new listener cases, recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall at UncannyCon.

While NASA is searching for life on Mars, a CIA document claims it was found 40 years ago.

The report, 'Mars Exploration May 22, 1984,' details how the agency used astral projection—the idea that a person's spirit can travel through the astral plane—to transport a 'subject' to Mars approximately one million years BC.

The study was part of Project Stargate, a secret US Army unit established in 1977 that focused on anomalous phenomena, including remote viewing, telepathy, and psychokinesis.

Participants were exposed to sounds like binaural beats and hemi-sync audio to induce altered states of consciousness and promote psychic abilities.

The experiment's 'subject' was transported to the planet during the specified year, reporting an 'oblique view of a pyramid' and a 'very large road' with a monument similar to those known among ancient Egyptians on Earth, the report claims.

The vision then shifted to a population of 'very large people' searching for 'a new place to live because their environment was corrupted.'

Project Stargate was the US government's new weapon against the Soviet Union, aimed at creating mind-reading spies who could infiltrate the minds of its enemies.

The classified project was conducted at Fort Meade in Maryland, recruiting men and women who claimed to have extrasensory perception (ESP) to help uncover military and domestic intelligence secrets.

It shut down in 1995, but during its more than 10-year existence, psychics known as 'remote viewers' participated in a wide array of operations, from locating hostages kidnapped by Islamic terrorist groups to tracing the paths of fugitive criminals within the US.

Archive

Mars Exploration May 22, 1984 at CIA.gov

See also: Crazy Rulers of the World/The Men Who Stare at Goats

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/21676450

Christmas 1973, and two young climbers experienced the most terrifying night of their lives in a bothy in the Scottish mountains. The events that took place that night would haunt one of those young men, Phil, for the rest of his life.

In 2021, Phil told Danny Robins his story, and it became one of the most popular episodes of Uncanny to date. Now, for this special Christmas episode and five decades on from Phil’s original experience, Danny is strapping on his rucksack and heading for the Highlands, to take Phil back to where it all happened.

Is whatever haunted Luibeilt still there? Will Danny survive the night?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/21668985

Two men have been arrested in Zambia accused of being "witchdoctors" who had been tasked with trying to bewitch the president.

The police said they had arrested Jasten Mabulesse Candunde and Leonard Phiri in the capital, Lusaka.

"Their purported mission was to use charms to harm" President Hakainde Hichilema, said the police statement, released on Friday.

...

The police said Mr Candunde and Mr Phiri were hired by Nelson Banda, the younger brother of MP Emmanuel "Jay Jay" Banda.

The MP was reportedly arrested last month in neighbouring Zimbabwe over robbery charges, which he denies, but he has not been seen in public.

He is also accused of having escaped from custody in August as he awaited to appear in court.

...

Mr Candunde and Mr Phiri have been charged under Zambia's Witchcraft Act with "possession of charms", "professing knowledge of witchcraft" and "cruelty to wild animals".

The pair were found in possession of "assorted charms", including a live chameleon, the police added.

They told the police they had been promised more than 2m Zambian kwacha (£58,000; $73,000) for their "mission", according to the police statement.

“The Amityville Horror” house may still be “haunted” 50 years after the real-life massacre that inspired the book and movies, neighbors and a paranormal expert close to the case claim.

The Long Island home could still have “dormant” demonic entities inside, waiting to be reawoken and conjured anew years after the infamous 1974 murder of six family members there.

“Absolutely. I believe there are more things in this world that we don’t understand, and I don’t discount the possibility at all,” said Fran Walters, who has lived next door for the last 28 years.

...

The house has long attracted curiosity seekers over its claims that it is haunted, but the legends began with a real-life crime on Nov. 13, 1974.

DeFeo rose from bed with a .35 caliber rifle in his hands and executed his parents and four siblings as they slept.

He then got dressed, and went to work. It wasn’t until hours later that DeFeo burst into a neighborhood bar and claimed somebody had attacked his family.

The next year DeFeo was sentenced to life in prison, but he spent his life blaming a long list of others — at one point reportedly claiming “voices” coming from the house urged him to do it.

Though DeFeo was believed to be a heavy drug user, famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren — who have since been fictionalized in “The Conjuring” series of movies — came to believe he was performing satanic rituals, and those voices may have been demonic forces he unleashed on the house.

...

As DeFeo was being sentenced, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the Amityville house with their three kids at a bargain price of $80,000.

Over the next 28 days, the family claimed they were harassed by a host of terrifying happenings — including levitations and visions of hags, the children sleeping face-down just as the DeFeos bodies were found, freezing temperatures while fireplaces raged, and slime oozing from walls and doors.

...

Months later the Lutzes inked a book deal to tell their story, with “The Amityville Horror: A Story,” which came out in 1977 and was an immediate success, sparking an even more successful film and sequels.

Though many wrote it off as a hoax — DeFeo’s own attorney, William Weber, later claimed he and the family concocted the story over several bottles of wine — the Lutz parents stood by their story for life.

And while the house has changed hands numerous times since the Lutzes left, none of the owners have ever reported any hauntings over those five decades — something Spera thinks doesn’t necessarily mean the Lutzes were lying, or that whatever haunted them is really gone.

“Ed used to not want to talk very much about it, because he said the more recognition you give to it, the more likely something would happen. It depends on the entity, too, that might be at that house. It may lay dormant for years,” Spera said.

“There could possibly — and I’m emphasizing the word possibly — still be something dormant in that structure that could reignite with either recognition, or somebody doing rituals in the house, incantations, or a family that is susceptible to hauntings — in other words, a family that’s weak-willed, or someone in the house that’s weak-willed.

Over time, Fort’s readings expanded from what was known to what was not, from the lawed to the lawless. He kept uncovering anomalies, reports of raining frogs, mysterious disappearances, baffling objects in the sky. These fascinated him, and he started taking notes on them too, worrying over their meaning. Setting aside fiction, Fort now concerned himself with the nature of existence. “I see this all as a travail”, he said, “of emerging more or less a metaphysician from a story writer.”13 He arranged the tens of thousands of notes hoarded about his apartment according to some thirteen hundred categories. Compelled “orthogenetically”, he turned in November 1915 to synthesizing his notes, his thoughts on the anomalous.

...

In December 1916, he decided on his next project, “a study of—occult things you know—things that have been called souls or spirits.”21 Its composition, though, proved difficult. At the end of each day, after hours at the library, he could not bring himself to write. He wasn’t sure how to apply “the kind of brains I have” to the subject. “Mine is a coarse and more cynical mind than those that have heretofore examined such phenomena, also it has some other qualities and a different attitude toward what is called the scientific method.”22 He thought of this book as “Z”.

Over the next several years, Fort transformed the manuscript into The Book of the Damned. Beyond breaking the alphabetic naming convention, he presented his material in a new fashion. The bulk of the book comprises the strange reports he’d gathered, particularly stories of things that fell from the sky, interwoven with attacks on Euclidean geometry, Darwinian evolution, Newtonian mechanics, geology. Though superficially confusing, a mass of disparate mysteries, there is an underlying argument, Fort’s eccentric theorizing not absent, just less prominent. The Book of the Damned advanced Fort’s monism. His quarrel with science centers on its failure to recognize the universe’s wholeness. Scientists mutilate reality, cut it into pieces, some called truth, others damned as false. Christianity, in days past, had used the same process to create its own regime of Truth — a Religious Dominant now superseded by an equally incomplete Scientific Dominant. “Demons and angels and inertias and reactions are all mythological characters; But that, in their eras of dominance, they were almost as firmly believed in as if they had been proved.”23 In rescuing the excluded, damned facts, Fort aimed to demonstrate the continuity of existence, to complete the puzzle by providing the missing pieces. He hoped to initiate a new Dominant, one that recognized the universal continuum.

A Buddhist monastery in Thailand is under investigation after authorities discovered more than 40 bodies on site which were allegedly used for meditation practices, police said Sunday.

Forty-one cadavers were found at Pa Nakhon Chaibovorn monastery in Thailand's Phichit province on Saturday, a senior police officer told AFP.

"The bodies were accompanied with death and body donation certificates," he said, adding that so far no charges have been filed.

He said police were reaching out to relatives of the deceased to confirm that the bodies were donated willingly.

...

The search came days after police discovered 12 bodies at another monastery in neighboring Kamphaeng Phet province on Wednesday, according to Thai local media.

The head of the Phichit province monastery, Phra Ajarn Saifon Phandito, told Thai PBS television channel that the use of corpses was part of a "meditation technique" he developed.

"Many of the people who come to learn are abbots and all these monks... pass on the knowledge," he said. "I don't know how many have adopted my technique."

He also told another local TV station that "practitioners meditate in pavilions that hold coffins with the human remains."

Kom Pattarakulprasert, director of the Phichit Office of Buddhism, told the Bangkok Post that the inclusion of bodies in meditation was unusual.

"I asked Phra Ajarn Saifon Phandito if there were any cadavers and was told that there were none," Kom told the outlet. "But when journalists discovered the 41 bodies, I was taken aback by the conflicting stories. I will discuss whether this practice is appropriate with the local head of the clergy."

The Pentagon's latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.

The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a near-miss between a commercial airliner and a mysterious object off the coast of New York.

While it isn't likely to settle any debates over the existence of alien life, the report reflects heightened public interest in the topic and the government's efforts to provide some answers. Its publication comes a day after House lawmakers called for greater government transparency during a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — the government's term for UFOs.

Federal efforts to study and identify UAPs have focused on potential threats to national security or air safety and not their science fiction aspects. Officials at the Pentagon office created in 2022 to track UAPs, known as the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, have said there's no indication any of the cases they looked into have unearthly origins

A woman accused of being a vampire has been brought ‘back from the dead’.

Using DNA, 3D printing and modelling clay, a team of scientists has reconstructed Zosia’s 400-year-old face, revealing the human story buried by supernatural beliefs.

Buried with a padlock on her foot and an iron sickle across her neck, “Zosia” was never supposed to be able to come back.

Entombed in an unmarked cemetery in Pien, northern Poland, the young woman was one of dozens feared by her neighbours to have been a “vampire”.

“It’s really ironic, in a way,” said Swedish archaeologist Oscar Nilsson. “These people burying her, they did everything they could in order to prevent her from coming back from the dead... we have done everything we can in order to bring her back to life.”

...

Aged 18-20 when she died, analysis of Zosia’s skull suggests she suffered from a health condition which would have caused fainting and severe headaches, as well as possible mental health issues, Nilsson said.

The sickle, the padlock and certain types of wood found at the grave site were all believed at the time to hold magical properties protecting against vampires, according to the Nicolaus Copernicus team.

Zosia’s was Grave No. 75 at the unmarked cemetery in Pien, outside the northern city of Bydgoszcz. Among the other bodies found at the site was a “vampire” child, buried face down and similarly padlocked at the foot.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/19815449

President Javier Milei’s drastic austerity measures aimed at improving Argentina’s flailing economy have shown better results in recent months.

The libertarian president’s ambition to eliminate bureaucracy and red tape have become one of the main focuses of his cabinet, including cutting public works budgets, and slashing education spending.

...

After passing a major reform package, the Ley Bases (Bases Law) in July, Sturzenegger is now preparing another project, called Ley Hojarasca (Fallen Leaves Law). The project, presented to Congress on October 10, aims to void legislation created by previous governments that no longer serve a purpose, or were replaced by other laws.

One peculiar law at risk of the chopping block is an Argentine tradition that allows the president to become the godparent of the seventh consecutive son or daughter of Argentine couples, in order to prevent them from becoming werewolves.

Indeed, Law 20.843 was passed in 1974 during the presidency of María Estela Martínez de Perón, but the tradition is actually over a century old.

The law allows a couple with seven sons or seven daughters to request that the president become the godfather/godmother to the seventh same-gender sibling. According to the law, the president then can send a representative to the child’s baptism, usually with a commemorative gold medal, and concede a scholarship towards his or her education, a token fee ranging from $150 to $300 dollars a year.

Where does this tradition come from? “The myth arrived in Argentina through Brazil, with the Portuguese werewolf or lobis-homen, which later evolved into the lobizón. Thus, most cases of alleged werewolves are reported in northeastern Argentina,” historian and journalist Alejandro Galliano explained to Argentina Reports.

The myth, which has deep roots in Argentina’s countryside, is that the seventh son becomes a werewolf during nights when a full moon takes place.

The idea to make the president the godfather of a family’s seventh son was introduced by German immigrants from the Volga region, who came to Argentina in the early 19th century and established rural communities in the northeastern Mesopotamia region, comprised of the provinces Misiones, Entre Ríos, and Corrientes.

“The tradition comes from Catherine the Great,” added Galliano, referring to the Russian leader of the 18th century who believed in becoming the godmother to the seventh son to prevent him from becoming a werewolf. “Both traditions ended up mixing here.”

The first case occurred in October 1907 in Coronel Pringles, a city in the south of the Buenos Aires province. Russian farmer Enrique Brest and his wife, Apolonia Holmann, requested then President José Figueroa Alcorta to become godfather to their seventh son. The president agreed and birthed a tradition that lasted for over a century and became a law in 1974, when benefit was extended to include daughters. That year, the scholarship was established to finance the child’s education.

“It was a way to compensate for the discrimination reportedly suffered by the seventh sibling, because of the legend of the lobizón,” commented Galliano.

More than 12,000 children are estimated to have become godsons or goddaughters to an Argentine president in the past 117 years. Former President Alberto Fernández, who left office in 2023, became a godfather to 66 children, while his predecessor, Mauricio Macri, godfathered 159. Before them, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a strong Peronist, granted the benefit to 1,152 children during her term.

...

Noah Portillo, born September 10 in Río Gallegos, could become the first seventh son recognized by the current president.

However, his fate as a future werewolf may be at stake if Sturzenegger’s bill is passed. “It is a medieval figure that has no place in a modern democracy,” argued the minister in an X post, upon announcing the Fallen Leaves Bill.

Indeed, Galliano explained, the tradition is no longer followed in Russia, where it originated, nor in any other country.

A father was astounded to catch a glimpse of what he describes as a substantial 1.5m "lynx or jaguar" while on the school run with his daughter in Orpington. Leandro Santos, 37, was accompanying his seven year old near some woodland on Tuesday October 15, when an unusual yowling sound and the agitated behaviour of birds caught his attention.

The finance manager from Swanley claimed he saw the large, spotted feline lurking in the trees close to the school. After swiftly ensuring his daughter reached school safely, he returned to observe the imposing creature for about five minutes around 8.45am, noting its predatory movements among the birds.

Leandro shared his astonishment and apprehension, remarking: "I was so surprised. It was beautiful but also very scary." He went into further detail, describing its size and appearance: "It was massive - I'd say 80 centimetres off the ground. It was yellowish with black spots."

Drawing from his background, the Brazilian expat said: "I'm originally from Brazil and if I saw this there I'd say it was a jaguar. At one point it looked directly at me - that was very frightening," as reported by Kent Live. Expanding upon his encounter, he mentioned: "It was trying to get into a birds nest but they were flying at it to keep it off. Some other birds joined in and I thought it would be safest to leave," reports The Mirror.

... very credible sources have reported seeing UFOs — unidentified flying objects. Now they’re called Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, or UAP. But whatever you call them, the U.S. government has lately begun taking these mystery objects seriously. Very seriously. And it’s recruited a lot of scientists to investigate what’s behind them (albeit quietly).

We still don’t know what the pilots and others have seen. But here’s what’s motivated the new and growing scientific interest in them...

A brand new case for Halloween. Helen, her husband and baby son move into a 200 year-old house in the Lake District. At first all is fine, but one October morning they open their front door to find a pile of small stones on their doorstep.

The odd incident sets into motion a series of terrifying events that lasts for the next 18 years…

That's part 1 and part 2 is also available:

For the last of our chilling Halloween episodes, we return to Meadow Cottage for the gripping second half of this brand new investigation into a terrifying haunting in the Lake District that spanned two decades.

As Helen’s young son Jake grows up, events take an even more sinister turn. What is going on in that house?

Every country has its ghost stories, its mythical monsters and its ghoulish urban legends. But the United Kingdom – the home of the Gothic novel and the birthplace of paranormal investigation – may stake a claim to being the most haunted country on Earth.

With one of the world's highest concentrations of castles and no shortage of centuries-old pubs and coaching inns, there are plenty of reputedly haunted places to enjoy a drink or a meal, or even lay your head for the night – if you're feeling brave.

In addition, the country's relatively small size means it's possible to combine several of these places into one ghost-heavy itinerary. Here's where travellers with a penchant for the paranormal should head to get spooked this Halloween...

• Skirrid Inn, Abergavenny, Wales
• Chillingham Castle, Northumberland
• Whitby, North Yorkshire
• Ancient Ram Inn, Gloucestershire
• Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

A special Halloween episode full of new cases to investigate. Danny is joined by Evelyn Hollow and guest expert, celebrated writer and comedian Stewart Lee, a lover of ghost stories and weird folklore. Can they explain these strange real-life stories of the paranormal?

It’s witching hour deep in the Nevada desert. The time of night when ghosts and demons are most likely to appear. I’m standing with a torch in an eerie, dark bedroom of the self-proclaimed “most haunted motel in America” to try and glimpse the paranormal in action.

“Can you feel that cold air?” says Christopher Alefeld, my ghost hunting guide for the night. “You can feel it in some of the rooms, it just feels different. More tense”.

Our ghost-detecting equipment (an “EMF Meter”) bleeps and lights up with activity, indicating it has picked up on changes in a nearby electromagnetic field. It feels like I’m a member of the Ghostbusters when I’m told a sudden unexplained spike in the EMF reading is considered evidence of the paranormal.

But here at the Clown Motel it’s a regular occurrence. They even have a disclaimer on their site about the potential risks involved with a supernatural encounter. And, yes, you heard correctly – because your run-of-the-mill regular haunted motel just ain’t scary enough, this is a clown-themed haunted motel...

A mysterious radio station that has broadcasted a monotone buzzing sound and the occasional odd voice for decades has left scientists baffled.

The shortwave radio station, found on frequency 4625 kHz, has been running for at least 50 years. It has been appropriately nicknamed 'The Buzzer'.

But rumors as to its origins continue to swirl online today.

One alarming theory is that the sound is a signal which, if ceases, indicates a nuclear attack is imminent. Others say the buzzing sound is a foreign government's attempts to communicate with visiting alien species.

However, the most common theory among experts is that the radio waves come out of Russia, which may be reserving the frequency for an impending emergency...

... The belief in ghosts is a funny thing. Despite there being no evidence to support their existence, ghosts have haunted humanity wherever they have settled across the planet. Every age and every culture has its own type of ghost and ghost stories, each shaped by its own peculiar context. And despite the rise of scientific thinking in the 20th and 21st centuries, the belief in unquiet spirits is still very much alive...

Since the shocking revelation about the US Government's UFO research programme in 2017, the topic of extraterrestrial visitors has gradually shifted from conspiracy theories to mainstream discussion.

In recent times, military experts have sworn before the US Congress that the Pentagon ran a "multi-decade" programme which collected and attempted to reverse-engineer crashed alien crafts.

However, the official government "disclosure" of contact with aliens, whether through interstellar craft landings or the recently reported "non-human technological signature" allegedly detected by an Australian radio telescope, seems as distant as ever.

Nick Pope, who was once in charge of analysing UFO reports for the Ministry of Defence, shared his unsettling theory about why that might be with Simon Holland in a leaked email...

Activist Leo Igwe is at the forefront of efforts to help people accused of witchcraft in Nigeria, as it can destroy their lives - and even lead to them being lynched.

“I could no longer take it. You know, just staying around and seeing people being killed randomly,” Dr Igwe tells the BBC.

After completing his doctorate in religious studies in 2017 he was restless. He had written extensively about witchcraft and was frustrated that academia did not allow him to challenge the practice head on.

...

So Dr Igwe set up Advocacy For Alleged Witches, an organisation focussed on “using compassion, reason, and science to save lives of those affected by superstition”.

Dr Igwe’s prevention work also extends to Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe and beyond.

One of the people the organisation has helped in Nigeria is 33-year-old Jude. In August, it intervened when he was accused and beaten in Benue State.

Jude, a glazier, who also works part-time in a bank, says he was on his way to work one morning, when he met a boy carrying two heavy jars of water which prompted him to comment on the boy’s physical agility.

The boy did not take the comments kindly, but he went on his way.

Later, Jude was followed by a mob of about 15 people throwing stones at him. Among them was the boy he had greeted earlier.

“Young men started fighting me as well, trying to set me ablaze,” Jude says.

He was accused of causing the disappearance of the boy’s penis through witchcraft, an accusation that shocked him and is untrue.

Claims of manhood disappearances are not uncommon in some parts of West Africa.

It is a claim that has been linked to Koro syndrome, a mental illness otherwise known as missing or genital retraction hysteria.

It is a psychiatric disorder characterised by an intense and irrational fear of the genital organs going missing or retracting into the body of the victim.