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05 Dec 09

Doris survey of English Channel seabed finds traces of ancient river - Times Online

www.timesonline.co.uk/...article6578952.ece - Preview

English-Channel survey Dorset-coast England prehistoric-riverbed continental-europe Pleistocene Ice-Age mammoth ancient-seabed ancient-river

From The Times


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June 26, 2009
Doris survey of English Channel seabed finds traces of ancient river
22 more annotations...
- An ancient river channel, shipwrecks and giant underwater gravel dunes are
  among previously unknown features discovered during the most detailed survey
  to date of the Channel seabed.
- The survey, covering 500 square miles off the Dorset coast, is being carried
  out in advance of the 2012 Olympics.
- Sailing events will take place off
  Weymouth and Portland, and organisers are anxious to avoid any unpleasant
  surprises, such as uncharted rocks, that have holed small boats in the past.
- The £300,000 project has already led to the redrawing of marine charts in use
  for nearly 75 years.
- It will also enable marine conservationists to record
  the variety of habitats in the area.
- The largest previously undiscovered feature found so far is an 18-mile channel
  carved by a river when Britain was still connected to the Continent.
- It
  vanished beneath the waves when the seas rose at the end of the last Ice
  Age, about 12,000 years ago, and is now 40m (130ft) underwater.
- The river
  channel, which had cut its way into the bedrock, is between 80m and 150m
  wide and would have been more than 10m deep, although it is now filled with
  sediment.
- Scientists are using high resolution, multibeam sonar to take thousands of
  simultaneous readings, allowing them to find objects on the seabed as small
  as 15cm (6in) across and gauge depths with far more precision than was
  previously possible.
- Rob Spillard, of the Maritime
  and Coastguard Agency, said: “We have had a team of around a hundred
  people working on the project over the past year.
- It’s the first time
  anything like this has been done on such a scale, with so many people
  working together.
- The sonar allows us to collect a huge amount of data which
  is checked closely before being made into a map.
- The findings will be added
  to nautical charts to help ships navigate the waters around Dorset but it
  has also thrown up a huge amount of other information, including giving us
  very detailed pictures of shipwrecks.”
- The sonar, besides gauging depth, is able to determine the type of surface
  making up the seabed.
- Richard Edmonds, science manager for the Jurassic
  Coast World Heritage Site, said: “The pictures the study has produced
  are hugely exciting. I was absolutely blown away when I first saw them.
- The
  detail is mind-boggling and you can see the intricate patterns of the
  structure of the seabed.
- “We’re very excited about the project — when the river bed was uncovered, the
  land would have been used by woolly mammoths, reindeer and wolves, as well
  as early humans.”
- The first phase of the two-year study, known as the Dorset
  Integrated Seabed Study (Doris), has been completed and the second year
  of video and photography is due to begin.
- Analysts will use the maps to
  identify patterns in the seabed before filming underwater animal and plant
  life to create an elaborate picture of previously hidden habitats.
- The project is being led by the Dorset
  Wildlife Trust. Simon Cripps, the director of the trust, said: “We have
  no real idea what goes on under the sea. This study will give us an
  understanding of what is actually physically down there — it’s very
  exciting.
- This is the first time anyone has studied it on three critical
  levels: how deep it is, the material of the seabed and the animals and
  plants living there.
- “It’s like putting a 3-D jigsaw together in three layers. The results will be
  quite spectacular.”

30 Nov 09

Snowfall and flash floods on the weekend forecasters predict a mild winter | Mail Online

www.dailymail.co.uk/...sters-predict-mild-winter.html - Preview

UK flooding weather fatalities England Wales Scotland Cornwall rainfall El-Nino snow-fall

Two dead as flash floods strike and severe weather warning is issued
By
Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 1:49 PM on 29th November 2009
18 more annotations...
- Two people have died after falling into rivers in the past 24 hours.
- Their deaths come as the Met Office issued a severe weather warning for South-West England today.
- A 60-year-old woman fell into a river in Hessenford, Cornwall, last night while the body of a man, aged between 30 to 40, was recovered from a river in Cardiff yesterday afternoon.
  
  Enlarge
  
  A car makes its way through a flooded road in Somerset after two days of heavy rain. The county's roads have widespread standing water and localised flooded areas after what has been one of the wettest Novembers on record
  
  Enlarge
  
  Rowers make their way along the flooded racecourse in Worcester after the heavy rains
  
  Enlarge
  
  A swollen stretch of the Seaton River at Hessonford, Cornwall. A 60-year-old woman was swept to her death in the village after heavy rainfall in the area
- Police officers dragged the woman
  from the water and took her to hospital by helicopter but she was
  pronounced dead. The body of a man, aged between 30 to 40, was
  recovered from the River Taff yesterday afternoon.
- However in parts of Devon there were
  flash floods caused by the heavy rain with some areas seeing water
  levels as high as four feet.
- In Worcester the River Severn burst its
  banks and flooded the racecourse allowing rowers to negotiate the track.
- On higher ground the first snows of
  winter also fell in Britain yesterday.
- The Llanberis Pass in North
  Wales saw an inch and a half fall while the winter sports enthusiasts
  were able to get the season started in the Cairngorms in Scotland.
- Forecasters have predicted the rain continuing today with it turning to sleet and snow in areas of higher ground in Scotland, Wales and northern England.
- Temperatures look set to fall as the week progresses and the rain clears with tomorrow expected to be a 'very cold day'.
- These weather patterns appear in contrast to the mild winter predicted by forecasters.
- The Met Office said yesterday there was a 50 per cent chance of this happening thanks to the Pacific weather system El Nino.
- However many will take its prediction with a pinch of salt after it forecast a 'barbeque summer' earlier this year and it then rained throughout June, July and August.
- The Met Office said its bold prediction was based on study of developments in El Nino. The weather system typically causes colder winters in northern Europe and warmer winters in the South but because Britain is situated in the dividing line between the opposing weather patterns it can be affected by either.
- The huge flooding in the past ten days was caused by 'unprecedented' amounts of rainfall at the end of last week - some parts of Cumbria saw more than 12 inches in 24 hours.
- Thousands of people's homes in towns including Keswick, Cockermouth, Ulverston and Workington were hit by the floods.
- A total of six bridges in the county have collapsed since last week's deluge, causing major transport and logistical headaches for thousands of people.
- Yesterday the Prince of Wales delivered a personal thank-you to emergency services for their work in the recovery operation in the flood-ravaged town of Cockermouth.

16 Oct 09

John Wycliffe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1300s...Died December, 1384

en.wikipedia.org/...John_Wycliffe - Preview

John-Wycliffe england english philosopher preacher wycliffe-Bible Rome catholic-church pope antichrist vernacular Lollards Bible-Men churchman Oxford Queen's-College

Thus the cry of his opponents may be heard: "The jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity."
In spite of the zeal with which the hierarchy sought to destroy it due to what they saw as mistranslations and erroneous commentary, there still exist about 150 manuscripts, complete or partial, containing the translation in its revised form.
98 more annotations...
- From this, one may easily infer how widely diffused it was in the fifteenth century.
- For this reason the Wycliffites in England were often designated by their opponents as "Bible men."
- Just as Luther's version had great influence upon the German language, so Wycliffe's, by reason of its clarity, beauty, and strength, influenced the English language as the King James Version was later to do.
- Activity as a preacher
- Wycliffe aimed to do away with the existing hierarchy and replace it with the "poor priests" who lived in poverty, were bound by no vows, had received no formal consecration, and preached the Gospel to the people.
- These itinerant preachers spread the teachings of Wycliffe. Two by two they went, barefoot, wearing long dark-red robes and carrying a staff in the hand, the latter having symbolic reference to their pastoral calling, and passed from place to place preaching the sovereignty of God.
- The bull of Gregory XI impressed upon them the name of Lollards, intended as an opprobrious epithet, but it became, to them, a name of honour. Even in Wycliffe's time the "Lollards" had reached wide circles in England and preached "God's law, without which no one could be justified."
- Anti-Wycliffe synod
- In the summer of 1381 Wycliffe formulated his doctrine of the Lord's Supper in twelve short sentences, and made it a duty to advocate it everywhere.
- Then the English hierarchy proceeded against him.
- The chancellor of the University of Oxford had some of the declarations pronounced heretical. When this fact was announced to Wycliffe, he declared that no one could change his convictions.
- He then appealed – not to the pope nor to the ecclesiastical authorities of the land, but to the king.
- He published his great confession upon the subject and also a second writing in English intended for the common people.
- His pronouncements were no longer limited to the classroom, they spread to the masses. "Every second man that you meet," writes a contemporary, "is a Lollard."
- Although Wycliffe disapproved of the revolt, he was blamed.
- In the midst of this commotion came the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
- Yet his friend and protector John of Gaunt was the most hated by the rebels, and where Wycliffe's influence was greatest the uprising found the least support.
- While in general the aim of the revolt was against the spiritual nobility, this came about because they were nobles, not because they were churchmen.
- Wycliffe's old enemy William Courtenay, now Archbishop of Canterbury, called in 1382 an ecclesiastical assembly of notables at London.
- During the consultations on 21 May an earthquake occurred; the participants were terrified and wished to break up the assembly, but Courtenay declared the earthquake a favorable sign which meant the purification of the earth from erroneous doctrine, and the result of the "Earthquake Synod" was assured.
- Of the 24 propositions attributed to Wycliffe without mentioning his name, ten were declared heretical and fourteen erroneous.
- The former had reference to the transformation in the sacrament, the latter to matters of church order and institutions. It was forbidden from that time to hold these opinions or to advance them in sermons or in academic discussions.
- All persons disregarding this order were to be subject to prosecution.
- To accomplish this the help of the State was necessary; but the Commons rejected the bill.
- The king, however, had a decree issued which permitted the arrest of those in error.
- The citadel of the reformatory movement was Oxford, where Wycliffe's most active helpers were; these were laid under the ban and summoned to recant, and Nicholas of Hereford went to Rome to appeal. In similar fashion the poor priests were hindered in their work.
- He still commanded the favour of the court and of Parliament, to which he addressed a memorial. He was neither excommunicated then, nor deprived of his living.
- On 18 November, 1382, Wycliffe was summoned before a synod at Oxford; he appeared, though apparently broken in body in consequence of a stroke, but nevertheless determined.
- Last days
- He returned to Lutterworth, and sent out tracts against the monks and Urban VI, since the latter, contrary to the hopes of Wycliffe, had not turned out to be a reforming or "true" pope, but had been involved in mischievous conflicts.
- The crusade in Flanders aroused the Reformer's biting scorn, while his sermons became fuller-voiced and dealt with what he saw as the imperfections of the Church.
- His last work, the Opus evangelicum, the last part of which he named in characteristic fashion "Of Antichrist", remained uncompleted.
- The literary achievements of Wycliffe's last days, such as the Trialogus, stand at the peak of the knowledge of his day.
- While he was hearing mass in the parish church on Holy Innocents' Day, 28 December, 1384, he was again stricken with apoplexy and died on the last day of the year.
- Shortly after his death, the great Hussite movement arose and spread through Middle Europe.
- It was decreed that his books be burned and his remains be exhumed. The exhumation was carried out in 1428 when, at the command of Pope Martin V, his remains were dug up, burned, and the ashes cast into the River Swift, which flows through Lutterworth.
- The Council of Constance declared Wycliffe (on 4 May 1415) a stiff-necked heretic and under the ban of the Church.
- This is the most final of all posthumous attacks on John Wycliffe, but previous attempts had been made before the Council of Constance.
- The Anti-Wycliffite Statute of 1401 extended persecution to Wycliffe's remaining followers.
- The "Constitutions of Oxford" of 1408 aimed to reclaim authority in all ecclesiastical matters, specifically naming John Wycliffe in a ban on certain writings,
- and noting that translation of Scripture into English is a crime punishable by charges of heresy.
- None of Wycliffe's contemporaries left a complete picture of his person, his life, and his activities. The pictures representing him are from a later period.
- One must be content with certain scattered expressions found in the history of the trial by William Thorpe (1407).
- It appears that Wycliffe was lacking of body, indeed of wasted appearance, and physically weak.
- He was of unblemished walk in life, says Thorpe, and was regarded affectionately by people of rank, who often consorted with him, took down his sayings, and clung to him.
- "I indeed clove to none closer than to him, the wisest and most blessed of all men whom I have ever found. From him one could learn in truth what the Church of Christ is and how it should be ruled and led." Hus wished that his soul might be wherever that of Wycliffe was found.
- Thomas Netter highly esteemed John Kynyngham in that he "so bravely offered himself to the biting speech of the heretic and to words that stung as being without the religion of Christ".
- One may not say that Wycliffe was a comfortable opponent to meet.
- But this example of Netter is not well chosen, since the tone of Wycliffe toward Kynyngham is that of a junior toward an elder whom one respects, and he handled other opponents in similar fashion. But when he turned upon them his roughest side, as for example in his sermons, polemical writings and tracts, he met the attacks with a tone that could not be styled friendly.
- Doctrines
- His first tracts and greater works of ecclesiastical-political content defended the privileges of the State, and from these sources developed a strife out of which the next phases could hardly be determined.
- Wycliffe's first encounter with the official Church of his time was prompted by his zeal in the interests of the State.
- One who studies these books in the order of their production with reference to their inner content finds a direct development with a strong reformatory tendency.
- This was not originally doctrinal; when it later took up matters of dogma, as in the teaching concerning transubstantiation, the purpose was the return to original simplicity in the government of the Church.
- But it would have been against the diplomatic practice of the time to have sent to the peace congress at Bruges, in which the Curia had an essential part, a participant who had become known at home by his allegedly heretical teaching.
- Since it was from dealing with ecclesiastical-political questions that Wycliffe turned to reformatory activities, the former have a large part in his reformatory writings.
- While he took his start in affairs of church policy from the English legislation which was passed in the times of Edward I, he declined the connection into which his contemporaries brought it under the lead of Occam.
- Indeed, he distinctly disavows taking his conclusions from Okham, and avers that he draws them from Scripture, and that they were supported by the Doctors of the Church.
- So that dependence upon earlier schismatic parties in the Church, which he never mentions in his writings (as though he had never derived anything from them), is counterindicated, and attention is directed to the true sources in Scripture, to which he added the collections of canons of the Church.
- Wycliffe would have had nothing to gain by professing indebtedness to "heretical" parties or to opponents of the papacy. His reference to Scripture and orthodox Fathers as authorities is what might have been expected.
- So far as his polemics accord with those of earlier antagonists of the papacy, it is fair to assume that he was not ignorant of them and was influenced by them.
- The Bible alone was authoritative and, according to his own conviction and that of his disciples, was fully sufficient for the government of this world (De sufficientia legis Christi).
- Out of it he drew his comprehensive statements in support of his reformatory views – after intense study and many spiritual conflicts.
- He tells that as a beginner he was desperate to comprehend the passages dealing with the activities of the divine Word, until by the grace of God he was able to gather the right sense of Scripture, which he then understood. But that was not a light task.
- Without knowledge of the Bible there can be no peace in the life of the Church or of society, and outside of it there is no real and abiding good; it is the one authority for the faith.
- For him the Bible was the fundamental source of Christianity which is binding on all men.
- These teachings Wycliffe promulgated in his great work on the truth of Scripture, and in other greater and lesser writings.
- Wycliffe was called "Doctor evangelicus" by his English and Bohemian followers.
- Of all the reformers who preceded Martin Luther, Wycliffe put most emphasis on Scripture: "Even though there were a hundred popes and though every mendicant monk were a cardinal, they would be entitled to confidence only insofar as they accorded with the Bible."
- Therefore in this early period it was Wycliffe who recognized and formulated one of the two great formal principles of the Reformation—the unique authority of the Bible for the belief and life of the Christian.
- It is not enough realized that, well before Luther, Wycliffe also recognized the other great Reformation doctrine, that of justification by faith, though not in fully worked out form as Luther achieved.
- In Christ stilling the Storm he wrote: "If a man believe in Christ, and make a point of his belief, then the promise that God hath made to come into the land of light shall be given by virtue of Christ, to all men that make this the chief matter."
- Basal positions in philosophy
- Wycliffe earned his great repute as a philosopher at an early date.
- If this pronouncement seems hardly justified, now that Wycliffe's writings are in print, it must be borne in mind that not all his philosophical works are extant.
- Henry Knighton says that in philosophy he was second to none, and in scholastic discipline incomparable.
- If Wycliffe was in philosophy the superior of his contemporaries and had no equal in scholastic discipline, he belongs with the series of great scholastic philosophers and theologians in which England in the Middle Ages was so rich – with Alexander of Hales, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, Occam and Bradwardine.
- There was a period in his life when he devoted himself exclusively to scholastic philosophy: "when I was still a logician," he used later to say.
- The first "heresy" which "he cast forth into the world" rests as much upon philosophical as upon theological grounds.
- In Plato, knowledge of whom came to Wycliffe through Saint Augustine, he saw traces of a knowledge of the Trinity, and he championed the doctrine of ideas as against Aristotle.
- He said that Democritus, Plato, Augustine, and Grosseteste far outranked Aristotle.
- In Aristotle he missed the provision for the immortality of the soul, and in his ethics the tendency toward the eternal.
- He was a close follower of Augustine, so much so that he was called "John of Augustine" by his pupils.
- In some of his teachings, as in De annihilatione, the influence of Thomas Aquinas can be detected.
- So far as his relations to the philosophers of the Middle Ages are concerned, he held to realism as opposed to the nominalism advanced by Occam, although in questions that had to do with ecclesiastical politics he was related to Occam and indeed went beyond him.
- His views are based upon the conviction of the reality of the universal, and he employed realism in order to avoid dogmatic difficulties.
- The uni-divine existence in the Trinity is the real universal of the three Persons, and in the Eucharist the ever-real presence of Christ justifies the deliverance that complete reality is compatible with the spatial division of the existence.
- The center of Wycliffe's philosophical system is formed by the doctrine of the prior existence in the thought of God of all things and events.
- This involves the definiteness of things and especially their number, so that neither their infinity, infinite extension, nor infinite divisibility can be assumed. Space consists of a number of points of space determined from eternity, and time of exactly such a number of moments, and the number of these is known only to the divine spirit.
- Geometrical figures consist of arranged series of points, and enlargement or diminution of these figures rests upon the addition or subtraction of points.
- Because the existence of these points of space as such, that is, as truly indivisible unities, has its basis in the fact that the points are one with the bodies that fill them; because, therefore, all possible space is coincident with the physical world (as in Wycliffe's system, in general, reality and possibility correspond), there can as little be a vacuum as bounding surfaces that are common to different bodies. The assumption of such surfaces impinges, according to Wycliffe, upon the contradictory principle as does the conception of a truly continuous transition of one condition into another.
- Wycliffe's doctrine of atoms connects itself, therefore, with the doctrine of the composition of time from real moments, but is distinguished by the denial of interspaces as assumed in other systems. From the identity of space and the physical world, and the circular motion of the heavens, Wycliffe deduces the spherical form of the universe.
- Attitude toward speculation
- Wycliffe's fundamental principle of the preexistence in thought of all reality involves the most serious obstacle to freedom of the will; the philosopher could assist himself only by the formula that the free will of man was something predetermined of God.
- He demanded strict dialectical training as the means of distinguishing the true from the false, and asserted that logic (or the syllogism) furthered the knowledge of catholic verities; ignorance of logic was the reason why men misunderstood Scripture, since men overlooked the connection – the distinction between idea and appearance.
- Wycliffe was not merely conscious of the distinction between theology and philosophy, but his sense of reality led him to pass by scholastic questions.
- He left aside philosophical discussions which seemed to have no significance for the religious consciousness and those which pertained purely to scholasticism: "we concern ourselves with the verities that are, and leave aside the errors which arise from speculation on matters which are not."
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10 Oct 09

George Soros - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When investment regulations restricted his ability to run the funds as he wished, he quit his position in 1973 and established a private investment company that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund.
He has stated that his intent was to earn enough money on Wall Street to support himself as an author and philosopher - he calculated that $500,000 after five years would be possible and adequate.
98 more annotations...
- He is also a former member of the Carlyle Group.^[16]
- Business
- In 1970 he co-founded the Quantum Fund with Jim Rogers, which created the bulk of the Soros fortune.
- Soros is the founder of Soros Fund Management.
- Rogers retired from the fund in 1980. Other partners have included Victor Niederhoffer and Stanley Druckenmiller.
- In 2007, the Quantum Fund returned almost 32%, netting Soros $2.9 billion.^[17]
- Currency speculation
- On Black Wednesday (September 16, 1992), Soros's fund sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds, profiting from the Bank of England's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.
- Finally, the Bank of England withdrew the currency from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound sterling, and Soros earned an estimated US$ 1.1 billion in the process.
- He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England."
- The Times of Monday, October 26, 1992, quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."
- Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. "Soros' contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position."^[18]^[19]
- In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish ASEAN for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Soros has denied bin Mohamad's accusations.
- Public predictions
- Soros' May 2008 book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he's written that have predicted disaster.
- As he states:
  
  I have a record of crying wolf…. I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998) and now in this book. So it's three books predicting disaster. (After) the boy cried wolf three times . . . the wolf really came.^[20]
- He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.
- I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong… I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away.^[20]
- In February 2009, George Soros said the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis. ^[21] "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system[...]It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."
- Insider trading conviction
- In 1988, he was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid but did later buy a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989, and in 2002 a French court ruled that it was insider trading, a felony conviction as defined under French securities laws and fined him $2.3 million, which was the amount that he made using the insider information.
- Punitive damages were not sought because of the delay in bringing the case to trial. Soros denied any wrongdoing and said news of the takeover was public knowledge.^[22]
- His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June 14, 2006.^[23]
- n December, 2006 he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing.^[24]
- Sports
- In 2005, Soros was a minority partner in a group that tried to buy the Washington Nationals of the National League.
- Some Republican lawmakers suggested that they might tamper with baseball's antitrust exemption if Soros had any interest in any baseball team.^[25]
- In 2008, Soros' name was associated with AS Roma, an Italian soccer team but the club was not sold.
- Soros was also a financial backer of Washington Soccer L.P., the group that owned the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United when the league was founded in 1995, but the group lost these rights in 2000.^[26]
- Philanthropy
- Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa, and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain.
- Soros' philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states.
- These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Institute (OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland).
- As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion.^[22] The OSI says it has spent about $400 million annually in recent years.
- Time magazine in 2007 cited two specific projects - $100 million toward Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities; and $50 million for the Millennium Promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa - while noting that Soros has given $742 million to projects in the U.S., and given away a total of more than $6 billion.^[27]
- George Soros (left) and James H. Billington.
- Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and Transparency International.
- Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU).
- The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his microfinance bank Grameen Bank received support from the OSI.
- According to National Review^[28] the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who has defended alleged terrorists in court and was sentenced to 2⅓ years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client.
- An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support."
- In September 2006, Soros departed from his characteristic sponsorship of democracy building programs, pledging $50 million to the Jeffrey Sachs-led Millennium Promise to help eradicate extreme poverty in Africa. Noting the connection between bad governance and poverty, he remarked on the humanitarian value of the project.^[29]
- He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Corvinus University of Budapest, and Yale University in 1991.
- Soros also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in 2000 as well as the Laurea Honoris Causa, the highest honor of the University of Bologna in 1995.
- Political donations and activism
- Activities in the United States
- In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death."
- He jokingly said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it."^[30]
- $5 million to MoveOn,
- Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress,
- and $10 million to America Coming Together.
- These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election.
- On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush^[31] delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
- The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as "factcheck.com" in the Vice Presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros's site.^[32]
- Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the 2004 presidential election, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003-2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush.
- A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527. Despite Soros' efforts, Bush was reelected to a second term as president.
- After Bush's re-election, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance which supported the goals of the U.S. Democratic Party.^[33
- Soros supported the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which many hoped would end "soft money" contributions to federal election campaigns.
- Soros has made soft money donations to 527 organizations that he says do not raise the same corruption issues as donations directly to the candidates or political parties.
- In August 2009, Soros donated $35 million to the state of New York to be ear-marked for under-privileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at the rate of $200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified.
- An additional $140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act.^[15]
- Activities in Eastern Europe
- Clark states that from 1979, Soros distributed $3m a year to dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union; in 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media.^[34]
- According to Neil Clark in the New Statesman, Soros's role was crucial in the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.
- His funding and organization of Georgia's Rose Revolution was considered crucial to its success by Russian and Western observers, although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated."^[35]
- Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros' funding has continued to play an important role in the former Soviet sphere.
- Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation,) overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2,500,000.^[36]
- Former Georgian Foreign Minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like the Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratisation and that all the NGOs which gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.^[37]
- Soros' support of pro-democracy and pro-transparency NGOs has been decried in several semi-authoritarian countries: Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.^[38
- Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey, said in an interview that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs...Last year Russia passed a special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners.
- I think this should be banned in Turkey as well."^[39]
- According to the New York Times, the Belarussian president Aleksandr Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control the Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society".^[40]
- In 1997, Soros had to close his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations".
- In June 2009, Soros donated $100m to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the economic crisis on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations.^[41]
- Activities in Africa
- The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa is a Soros-affiliated organization.
- Its director for Zimbabwe is Godfrey Kanyenze, who also directs the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which was the main force behind the founding of the Movement for Democratic Change, the principal indigenous organization promoting Regime change in Zimbabwe.
- Drug policy reform
- Soros has funded worldwide efforts to promote drug policy reform.
- In 2008, Soros donated $400,000 to help fund a successful ballot measure in the state of Massachusetts known as the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative which decriminalized possession of less than 1 oz (28g) of marijuana in the state.
- Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine. ^[42]
- Among the drug decriminalization groups that have received funding from Soros are the Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation.^[43]
- Soros donated $1.4 million to publicity efforts to support California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed ballot measure that would have expanded drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for persons convicted of non-violent drug-related offenses. [10] [11]
- Death and dying
- The Project on Death in America, active from 2001-2003, was one of the Open Society Institute's projects, which sought to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement."^[44]
- In 1994, Soros delivered a speech in which he reported that he had offered to help his mother, a member of the Hemlock Society, commit suicide.^[45
- In the same speech, he also endorsed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act,^[46] the campaign for which he helped fund.^[47]
- Philosophy
- Education and beliefs
- Soros has a keen interest in philosophy, and has stated that he entered finance to be able to support himself as a philosopher.
- His philosophical outlook is influenced by Karl Popper, under whom he studied at the London School of Economics (LSE).
- His Open Society Institute is named after Popper's two volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Soros's ongoing philosophical commitment to the principle of fallibilism (that anything he believes may in fact be wrong, and is therefore to be questioned and improved) stems from Popper's philosophy.
- In an interview with 60 Minutes, Soros stated that he did not believe in God.^[48]
- Reflexivity, financial markets, and economic theory
- Soros' writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals enter into market transactions, potentially changing the perception of fundamentals of the economy.
- Soros argues that such transitions in the perceptions of fundamentals of the economy are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the 'efficient market hypothesis') does not apply in these situations.
- Soros has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions.^[16]
- Reflexivity is based on three main ideas^[16]:
  
  Reflexivity is best observed under special conditions where investor bias grows and spreads throughout the investment arena. Examples of factors that may give rise to this bias include (a) equity leveraging or (b) the trend-following habits of speculators.
  Reflexivity appears intermittently since it is most likely to be revealed under certain conditions; i.e., the equilibrium process's character is best considered in terms of probabilities.
  Investors' observation of and participation in the capital markets may at times influence valuations AND fundamental conditions or outcomes.

09 Oct 09

Beast Of Bodmin Moor

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Beast Of Bodmin Moor
Location of Sightings:

Bodmin Moor - Cornwall (SW England - UK)
17 more annotations...
- Earliest - Latest Reported Sighting:
  
  1971 To Present
- Description:
  
  This creature has been reported as looking like a
  black panther or dark colored mountain lion.
- The
  creature has large white-yellow eyes. It's size has
  been reported as ranging from 3-5 feet long for the
  body, with a tail of roughly 18-24 inches.
- Odors described during or right after
  encounters with this creature:
  
  None Reported
- Sounds - Speech:
  
  The creature makes the usual hissing and growling
  sounds of a large cat such as a panther or mountain
  lion,
- but also has made what sounds like a woman
  screaming, only the sound is very loud and down-right
  scary.
- Interesting Sighting Details:
  
  The creature haunts one of the top sites of the world
  for ancient magical practices and services.
- The area is
  home to ancient stone circles and burial mounds.
- There
  are even giant tracts of land, shaped like figures of the
  zodiac that make up the area.
- The area was also a
  frequent place visited by knights templars.
- Miners who used to mine cobalt in the area for years
  reported the mines were full of demons, this is where
  the names 'kobolds' or minegoblins came from.
- Soldiers from the British army tracked and had the
  creature surrounded in a barn. The soldiers moved
  in towards the barn forming a circle as they neared it,
  when they entered the barn the creature had vanished.
- Webmasters Comments About This Case:
- The area this creature haunts is incredible for it's
  occult and msytical past.
- It litteraly has numerous small
  stonehenges and other sacred sites.
- The story about the creature vanishing after it was
  trapped inside a barn, is certanily a sign that the
  creature is a spirtual being, but it could be possible
  that the creature found another way to escape, such
  as a mine shaft, since the area is a source of many
  old cobalt mines.
- It seems very strange though, that
  this creature has been documented many times on
  video, has left tracks and multiple dead animals,
  has been tracked by soldiers, and sharp shooters, and
  still not one has been captured or killed.

03 Oct 09

Nick Redfern's "There's Something in the Woods...": The Ghost Woman of the Cannock Chase

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Thursday, June 21, 2007
The Ghost Woman of the Cannock Chase
23 more annotations...
- Readers of this blog will know from previous entries that I have a deep interest in tales of werewolves and lycanthropy; and I have been keeping you informed of the recent wave of sightings of werewolf-style entities seen at the German Cemetery on Britain's Cannock Chase, a large area of forest situated only a couple of miles from where I used to live.
- Well, not only has the Chase been home to diabolical werewolves, mysterious big cats and even alleged Bigfoot-like creatures over the last few years, but now it seems that ghostly, spectral figures are also putting in an appearance, as this story below - from this week's edition of the local Chase Post newspaper demonstrates.
- This particular incident apparently occurred last November; however, it was the recent publicity afforded the unusual and ever-present activity on the Chase that prompted the witness to come forward.
- Whatever is afoot, it seems to me that the Cannock Chase is rapidly becoming one of those classic "window areas" that seem to attract such a high-level of extreme strangeness.
- Here's the latest from the Chase Post:
- Mysterious figure spotted on Chase
  Jun 20 2007
- A mysterious apparition confronted a local woman on a lonely stretch of road.
  The unearthly figure has been dubbed 'The Lady of the Chase'.
- In recent weeks there has been a rash of sightings of mysterious beasts on Cannock Chase.
  If these reports are to be believed werewolves, cavemen, panthers and wolves could all be lurking on the Staffordshire beauty spot.
- And as paranormal investigators from around the globe prepare to converge on the Chase, another eyewitness, 'Linda', has come forward to tell us her disturbing ghost story.
- "I had what I can only describe as a totally surreal experience whilst driving across Cannock Chase last year," she said.
- "I had not been able to tell anyone about this apart from my partner.
- And he encouraged me to contact you following some of the reports you have made in your paper."
- Linda was returning home after visiting a friend in Pye Green, near Cannock, last November when she was confronted by 'the lady'.
- "It was about 11.30pm and I decided to cut across the Chase. As I neared Spring Slade Lodge I had to brake hard as a person suddenly stood in the road."
- After Linda recovered from the shock of the near collision she turned her attention to the figure in front of her car.
- "In my headlights the form was of a tall female, pale grey in colour. She appeared to be naked but with no visible breasts or genitalia.
- "Immediately, I was drawn to her eyes - large hypnotic eyes that totally transfixed me. I was in dread and unable to move a muscle. I was aware I was being 'mentally examined' and there was nothing I could do to prevent this."
- After a couple of minutes the figure turned and walked away into nearby woodland.
- "It was only when she had disappeared that I could move again," Linda said. "I accelerated away in panic."
- She told us she has not been able to drive across Cannock Chase since the incident and added: "Sometimes, after a dream, I can see a vivid image of the woman's face with those staring eyes.
- I'm not a very good artist, but felt compelled to draw the face of this figure. I call her 'The Lady of the Chase'. Has anyone else seen anything like this?" Have YOU seen The Lady of the Chase? Call the Post on 01543 501763 or email chase_post@mrn.co.uk
- 1 comments:
- davyb
  said...
  
  as a teenager in the sixties there were many strange tales of the chase,one being the tale of the nine foot german,a guy travelling by cycleover the chase on his way back from work in sttafford on approaching the german cemetary saw a tall figure,headless and dressed in what appeared to be a german uniform crossed in front of him and disappeared into the trees.

Damn Data ¦ Cannock Chase: Some background | Cabinet of Wonders

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Sunday, March 19. 2006
Cannock Chase: Some background
63 more annotations...
- Earlier we mentioned Nick Redfern's comments on the Cannock Chase Bigfoot.
- In it he said:
  
  Cannock Chase has a rich history of weirdness: there have been numerous reports of big-cats having been seen there, and I have personally taken part in several searches for these still-elusive animals. Occasional sightings are made of wild boar; I�m aware of one sighting of a kangaroo or a wallaby in the woods; an alleged encounter with a wolf; and several reports that fall into the classic "ghostly black dog" category.
- But the first account of a man-beast in the area dates from way back in 1879, when a creature described as being half-man and half-monkey was seen on a lonely stretch of road at the town of Ranton, which is situated only a few miles from where the Cannock Chase stands.
- We obviously can't leave that kind of statement hanging so we thought it worth digging a little further.
- First off intrepid researcher Min Bannister braved the dangers of the National Library to find the original report refered to which was lurking in Charlotte Sophia Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore volume 1 (1883):
- A very weird story of an encounter with an animal ghost arose of late years within my own knowledge.
- On the 21st of January 1879, a labouring man was employed to take a cart of luggage from Ranton in Staffordshire to Woodcock, beyond Newport in Shropshire, for the ease of a party of visitors who were going from one house to another.
- He was late in coming back; his horse was tired, and could only crawl along at a foot�s pace, so that it was ten o�clock at night when he arrived at the place where the highroad crosses the Birmingham and Liverpool canal.
- Just before he reached the canal bridge, a strange black creature with great white eyes sprang out of the plantation by the roadside and alighted on his horses back.
- He tried to push it off with his whip, but to his horror the whip went through the thing, and he dropped it on the ground in fright.
- The poor tired horse broke into a canter, and rushed onwards at full speed with the ghost still clinging to its back. How the creature at length vanished the man hardly knew. He told his tale in the village of Woodseaves, a mile further on and so effectively frightened the hearers that one man actually stayed with friends there all night, rather than cross the terrible bridge which lay between him and his home.
- The ghost-seer reached home at length, still in a state of excessive terror (but, as his master assured me, perfectly sober), and it was some days before he was able to leave his bed, so much was he prostrated by his fright.
- The whip was searched for next day, and found just at the place where he said he had dropped it.
- Now comes the curious part of the story. The adventure, as was natural, was much talked of in the neighbourhood, and of course with all sorts of variations. Some days later the mans master (Mr B___ of L__d) was surprised by a visit from a policeman, who came to request him to give information of his having been stopped and robbed on the Big Bridge on the night of the 21st January! Mr B___, much amused, denied having been robbed, either on the canal bridge or anywhere else, and told the policeman the story just related.
- �Oh was that all sir?� said the disappointed policeman. �Oh I know what that was. That was the Man-Monkey sir as does come again at that bridge ever since the man was drowned in the cut!�
  
  I heard this from Mr B___ himself a week or two later.
- Next I braved the dangers of the stacks of books in my house to dig out a more recent report of strangeness which also looks at other cases and explanations (it's from Jenny Randles book Mind Monsters pages 203-6 -
- I've tried to shorten the quote but she does an excellent job with it and packs a tonne of details in so I'll quote it in full.
- See below for further details on the book):
- A second case was first reported to me by Barry Heathfield editor of the Staffordshire Newsletter.
- He had received a story from two witnesses and asked for my comments. I pointed out that the location, Cannock Chase, an area of broad heath and forest between Stafford and Birmingham, had generated a lot of reports of strange phenomena.
- Indeed I called it a 'notorious spot for sightings' and promised that an investigation would be launched, not least because physical traces were allegedly left in the wake of this one.
- I contacted Clive Potter, who is regional investigations coordinator for the area. Along with Kevin Flannery and Susan Dean he set an immediate enquiry into motion.
- Reg Morgan, a power station engineer, had been with his friend, Gloria Hall, to a Gingerbread meeting in Cannock on the evening of 3 August 1988.
- Mr Morgan had recently become a widower, although still young, and the idea of the meetings was to bring single parents together for mutual support.
- They were returning to a village near Stafford shortly after midnight as 4 August began. As they approached a bridge not far from Little Hayward Mrs Hall saw a glow ahead of them.
- Shortly afterwards, as Mr Morgan turned the car to the right, he looked in front and saw it also. Mrs Hall had been watching for deer, not uncommon in the area late at night, and at first she instinctively warned Reg, thinking it was something that he might collide with.
- Gloria Hall describes it as 'a big cloud on the floor � all red � and it lit up'.
- She later added that it was fluorescent and slowly pulsated (or rather the central glow was being 'eclipsed' by vapour).
- It seemed denser in the middle, with vaporous mist on the edges. They could not determine if there was any solid shape behind.
- Reg Morgan confirmed: 'It was like a gas cloud ... like a semi-saucer shape � a red glow � like if you look through a fluorescent tube
- When he first saw it the cloud was airborne and spanning the road. It moved away from them to the north, faded out, crossed the River Trent by the bridge and then briefly reappeared on the far side, before vanishing.
- The glow was certainly self-luminous. Reconstruction at the site proved there was no ambient light and the car headlamps could not have illuminated the thing.
- There were no smells detected or apparent after effects. But during the sighting a clear indication of the Oz factor mentioned.
- Gloria spontaneously remarked: 'It was dead quiet. . . very: very quiet.'
- Roger later confirmed: 'It was unbelievably quiet and Gloria emphasized: There was silence about everywhere.
- One witness in a similar case from North Yorkshire put it in a way that has always stuck in my mind: 'Nothing was doing nothing.'
- Furthermore, Gloria was clearly the more affected of the two. She saw it first, remember, something Reg seemed slightly puzzled by, saying at one point: 'I don't know why it was blanked out to me' Possibly important in that regard, Gloria noted: 'I felt weird' and tried to describe a vague unease or alteration in her state of consciousness.
- Upon return they reported it immediately to the police, who took details and said that someone would come to see them Nobody ever did.
- A friend of theirs reported it to the paper. They had not planned this, but were quite willing to tell a reporter what happened and be photographed at the site
- On the spot, next day, they found damage to the hedge The blob had been first seen behind this hedge, which it had obscured when it rose from the ground, also obscuring a road warning sign.
- The bark on the branches was stripped and looked as if a force had crushed it. And the leaves were dehydrated.
- After the story appeared in the paper Reg and Gloria noted one curious anecdote A few days after the feature they passed the spot, as they do regularly. An unmarked white Land Rover was parked there (in the middle of nowhere) and two men wearing overalls were apparently examining the ground.
- Perhaps this is just coincidence, or perhaps some official organization did take more interest in the case than it appeared to do.
- The investigation of this case was first class. Everything that could have been done was done, although (not surprisingly) there was a concentration on the physics of the event.
- A whole host of significant information emerged.
- Dr Michele Clare, whom we met earlier, is by profession a plant biologist. She studied soil, bark and leaf samples (and some nearby unaffected control samples). Nothing unusual was found, but it was possible to demonstrate from the presence of micro-organisms that no substantial heating was involved.
- This makes sense, because the witnesses felt no heat despite their close proximity to the cloud, so whatever caused the red glow was not a rise in temperature.
- Dr Terence Meaden, editor of the Journal of Meteorology, also assisted the case study.
- Weather records show that the conditions involved a good deal of dewy drizzle, although a clearing weather system was sweeping through. The close proximity to the River Trent should also be noted.
- David Reynolds, a local meteorologist, visited the site with investigators for a more detailed analysis. He found some evidence of tree damage which suggested a rotating vortex could have passed by.
- The general opinion of the weathermen involved seemed to be that the mechanical damage noted afterwards (if it was directly linked with the glowing cloud) was created by a vortex associated with the blob.
- Certainly there was no physical evidence on the ground that any heavy, dense or metallic object had landed and taken off again.
- The glow itself was probably ionization.
- We may notice another point from Persinger's work. The red colour, just as theory predicts, probably occurred because of the saturation of water vapour in the atmosphere at the site. If it had been completely dry, or further from the river, the colour would have probably been blue or white.
- Geologically, the area is on a boundary between sandstone and shale rocks. Quartz is certainly present. Three fault lines lie within less than a mile of the precise location.
- Again there have been reports of other luminous effects in the area in the past.
- Paul Devereux claimed Staffordshire as a primary hot spot in his initial 'earthlights' research.
- Janet and Colin Bord list a number of incidents in the region in their survey of Modern Mysteries of Britain.
- My own records have many others. These include a small entity with a large domed head seen in a field at Brocton, just over a mile away and a voice speaking into the mind of a witness at Oulton, apparently emerging from a column of light coming out of the ground.
- To cap it all, less than a mile from the site is a place called Hell Hole, which seems to indicate that strange events in the area may well date back into the past.
- The local newspaper story was headed 'Glowing UFO shock for pair' and the editor phoned me for a quote on behalf of the British UFO Research Association. But the witnesses never said it was a UFO. In fact they reported it very carefully and accurately. We impose the UFO context onto this blob.
- Soooo weird weather, deer, earthlights, EM, etc. as explanantions and whatever the thing at ranton was it doesn't sound much like a proto-Bigfoot sighting so a zoological explanation still seems elusive.
- If anyone has any other accounts from the area drop by and let us know.

Damn Data ¦ Not werewolves but undergroundlings? | Cabinet of Wonders

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Friday, May 18. 2007
Not werewolves but undergroundlings?
26 more annotations...
- Cannock Chase just won't leave me alone.. I try and walk away but it keeps following m down the street shouting that my mother is a slag. Or the Fortean equivalent anyway.
- Not only have I been described in the Cannock Chase Post as three angry Americans (I'm not) but we also have these reports cropping up that keep dragging me back:
- Bigfoot, that nearly made a woman lose her baby
  Earlier reports of a monkey/demon beast and weird electrical clouds
  An Alien Big Cat and some follow ups
  Wolf-like creature
  UFOs
  Black dogs emerging from mist
- So there were claims that it wasn't Bigfoot but a Big Cat.
- Now we here that there may have been werewolf sightings but they aren't actually werewolves they are something much odder.
- Nick Redfern gives the broader picture (and earlier news) in a round-up of reports on British werewolves but we'll cut straight to the chase (no pun intended).
- The report doing the rounds of a range of local media states that... oh I can't bring myself to say it. Read it for yourself (with a running commentary from me inserted):
- A tribe of subterranean creatures who surface on Cannock Chase to hunt for food could be behind a rash of 'werewolf' and Big Foot sightings near Stafford.
- Boom! No messing around straight in there. No they've got you by the short and curlies:
- And the mysterious beings could also be responsible for a string of pet disappearances, it has been claimed.
- Ok but has anyone investigated this?
- West Midlands Ghost Club, our area's top paranormal investigation group, say they have been contacted by a number of shocked eye-witnesses who claim they have come to face to face with a 'hairy, wolf-type creature' at the beauty spot.
- A scout leader and a local post man are amongst the 'credible' witnesses to contact the club. Theories behind the sightings range from a crazed tramp to aliens.
- They seem to be doing a good job following up on previous werewolf reports (and are a group that have been arond a while and have done a lot of work in that time) but I see no troglodytes here.
- Don't worry here it is:
  
  But now another paranormal expert has put foward the theory the sub-human beast is not a werewolf at all - but a Stone Age throwback.
  
  The investigator, who wishes to remain anonymous, told us: "Strange sightings in this area have been made over many years by civilians, military, police, ex-police and scout leaders on patrol.
- "Some incidents have been reported and logged but others not - some people don't want to be classed as 'mad'.
  
  "The strangest rumour has come from a senior local resident who believes the mysterious intruders to be subterranean," he told us.
  
  "The creatures have made their way to the surface via old earthworks to hunt, for example, local deer."
- So this is based on an anonymous source quoting an unnamed resident? Is there any evidence to back this up?
- And, on the surface, the far-fetched tale could be easily dismissed. However, our expert added: "It's a fact that there has been significant mining activity under Cannock Chase for centuries. And it's a fact there is a high rate of domestic pet disappearance in the area - especially dogs off the lead...just ask anyone who walks their dog near the German War Cemetery..."
- Now we don't doubt that there are odd sightings in the area (we've listed them here) and have been mining (I hope they are salt mines as we need more than a pinch of it) and I'm sure pets have gone missing but that hardly supports the wild statements.
- What does the only named person say about this?
- Nick Duffy, a lead member of West Midlands Ghost Club, told us he was intrugued by this new theory: "It's as likely as any of the others - so it could well be," he said.
- Can't really fault him for this as all the other theories are pretty poor.
- Now I'm not going to say that the Cannock Post (and affiliated news media) are full of... it but my own personal experience shows they aren't beyond playing fast and loose with the facts to a point where it more closely resembles fiction that anything that most reasonable people would call reality. Of course, Stig of the Dump may lurk beneath the unsuspecting hills of the Midlands, but the hill I'm thinking of is Jimmy Hill.
- Now Nick Redfern has a book in the works from CFZ called The Lords of the Gray Woods: Strange Creatures of the Cannock Chase which should be interesting and informative and add new information and insight into the issue.
- He also says he wants to take the first opportunity to get back to the Chase and go investigating. I wish him well and hope that he can penetrate the wall of unfounded statements and Chinese Whispers as I think the only way one is going to get sensible information on the whole business is
- The one positive thing to emerge from this is that it should at least make Mac Tonnies happy, as it could fit with his cryptoterrestrial ideas.

Nick Redfern's "There's Something in the Woods...": Cannock Chase is Spooky!

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Thursday, October 1, 2009
Cannock Chase is Spooky!
36 more annotations...
- Yes, having investigated sightings of big-cats, werewolves, Bigfoot-type beasts, over-sized snakes, wallabies, wild boar, and much more in the woods of the area, I know that the Cannock Chase is spooky!
- But, this time, it's not me making the statement. Rather, the local press are highlighting the fact.
- Just a few days ago, I was contacted by Annette Belcher, one of the writers at the local Stafford Post newspaper, who asked for a comment-or-two from me about this latest development; and which, of course, I was pleased to provide.
- Here's an extract from Annette's article, so you'll have a full understanding of what this new story is all about:
- "It’s official - the Chase has been hailed one of the spookiest places in the country.
- The beauty spot, which stretches through Stafford, is renowned for its werewolf sightings, according to a latest paranormal study.
- It is all revealed in the work of paranormal researcher Lionel Fanthorpe, 74, from Cardiff. The study looks into paranormal events in the UK during the past 25 years. The study provides a breakdown of Britain’s spookiest places and focuses upon unexplained incidents reported to the police and leading paranormal organisations since the 1980s.
- There have been 21 reported cases of werewolf sightings, with the Cannock Chase werewolf being the most renowned."
- But, hang on, I haven't quite finished yet...!
- Over the last decade or so, intriguing reports have surfaced - from the many and varied little pools and ponds that can be found in, around, and on the outskirts of, the Cannock Chase - of sightings of exotic fish, crocodilians and much more of a distinctly out-of-place, aquatic nature.
- Without doubt, the most famous example of such activity occurred a number of years back at a small and semi-secluded body of water known as the Roman View Pond - that exists on the fringes of Cannock.
- It was from there, in the hot summer of 2003, that hysterical rumors wildly spread around the town of Cannock to the effect that a giant, marauding crocodile was on the loose.
- Local police, representatives of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and the nation’s media all quickly descended upon the scene, as they valiantly and collectively sought to ascertain the truth about what, at a local level, fast (and inevitably!) became known to one and all as the "Cannock Nessie."
- Of course, the facts were somewhat more sober and down to earth.
- As my good friends Jonathan Downes and Richard Freeman of the Center for Fortean Zoology demonstrated to practically everyone’s satisfaction when they visited the area at the height of the sightings, the "beast" was likely nothing stranger than a three-foot-long Spectacled Caiman – a crocodilian reptile found throughout much of Central and South America.
- It was the conclusion of Jon and Richard that the unfortunate creature had probably been housed locally by an unknown exotic-pet-keeper – that is, until it grew to a point where it became completely unmanageable, and was then unceremoniously dumped in the pool late one night and under the protective cover and camouflage of overwhelming darkness.
- Almost certainly, Jon believed, the creature would not survive the harsh autumn and winter months that were destined to follow. And, sure enough, as the English weather changed for the worse, sightings of the mysterious beast came to an abrupt end.
- Nevertheless, whenever I am back in the area, I always stop off at the pool and cast a careful eye firmly in its dark direction – just in case something monstrous and unholy decides to once again surface from the depths and put in a brief appearance.
- So, why - you may well ask - am I bringing this up now?
- Simple: there has been a new development of a very similar nature at yet another body of water in the area: a small, 3-meter-deep pool that is hidden in a corner of the Brickworks Nature Reserve at Wimblebury - which is only a stone's throw from the heart of the Cannock Chase.
- As the Chase Post newspaper notes, up until recently "...the only things lurking in the murky waters were six bicycles, a shopping trolley and scaffolding poles."
- ut all that recently changed, as the Post also notes in a brand new story.
- Cannock Chase Council officials, concerned about vegetation dying, have made a startling discovery, says the Post.
- The Post explains that amongst the usual debris and rubbish, "...there were fish in the water, lots of fish - 20,000, to be precise. Even more baffling, there were not just native species: as well as roach and perch, ornamental varieties such as brown goldfish and koi carp were found."
- The Post expands further: "Ray Smythe, clerk at Heath Hayes and Wimblebury Parish Council, said: 'No one knows how on earth they got there. We can only think someone released them, but I’d be surprised if anyone knew the pool was there.'
- "Members of Stoke-on-Trent Angling Society have been drafted in to net the mystery fish - and move them to nearby Milking Brook.
- A spokesman for the club confirmed the operation had been a success. He said: 'We estimated that around 20,000 fish were transferred to Milking Brook. This needed three journeys, which, in each case, involved three tanks full of fish. I can confirm very few fatalities occurred during the operation.'"
- There's little doubt - as Jon and Richard's fine detective work demonstrated a few years ago - that someone was even then releasing exotic creatures into the pools of the Cannock Chase.
- Whether or not this latest development is directly linked to the earlier activity - or if it's an example of someone else adding to the ever-growing body of out-of-place animals that inhabit the Cannock Chase - is something that remains to be seen.
- But, this new story only reinforces what I said at the beginning of this blog-post: Cannock Chase is spooky! And long may it remain so!
- 2
  comments:
- borky
  said...
  
  NIck, I've only ever been to Norfolk once - Norwich, to be specific, in '89, when I went there for an interview as a computer programmer writing RPG/400.
- I was astounded by how relatively isolated the area was from the rest of Britain
- it required me to make about 800 train connections over a period of about 8000 years - but many aeons later, when I finally arrived there, I was immediately struck by this incredible impression the whole place - the whole county - shouldn't be there, or really belonged somewhere else, maybe attached to the continent or something.
- This may've just been an early version of my later tendency to turn the corner and find myself on the wrong planet, but what makes me think otherwise is all these little snippets I've been picking up about the area in, for instance, Charles Fort's books, (which I've just started reading for the first time); plus everytime Chas started rabbiting on about his idea of mirror realms hanging in the sky, dropping things down on our world, the first thing that'd keep popping into my head was, "Bloody Norwich!"
- Add to which - ADD TO WHICH - my own notion about when Pope Thingy the Thingieth chunnered on about, "These kids ain't Angles - they're angels!" he didn't mean figuratively - he meant LITERALLY, i.e., these Angle kids're bit special compared to other kids, which of course they would be if they were 'descended' from Agni the Hindu god of Fire and ended up having not just East Anglia named after them but ENG-land, (Eng being a variant of Ing/Yng, the real but esoteric name of Heimdall, the guy who acts as the GATEKEEPER between WORLDS!).

27 Sep 09

MAN-BEAST U.K.: An Encounter at the Reservoir

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nick-redfern reservoirs water monsters creatures britain england ladybower-reservoir peak-district

Thursday, April 10, 2008
An Encounter at the Reservoir
4 more annotations...
- An intriguing encounter with a huge, lumbering Bigfoot-style entity reportedly occurred at the Ladybower Reservoir in England's Peak District in the summer of 1991.
- The creature was said to be "eight feet tall...covered in long brown hair and with eyes just like a man's."
- For more details, see Martin Jeffrey's article on the incident - The Big Hairy Man Encounter - at http://www.mysterymag.com/
- Posted by
  Nick Redfern

MAN-BEAST U.K.: A Cheshire Creature

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poachers cryptid supernatural england pursuit evil darkness walkerwood-reservoir cheshire encounter

Friday, September 25, 2009
A Cheshire Creature
16 more annotations...
- The latest issue of Paranormal Magazine includes an interesting story concerning the sighting of what sounds very much like a classic British Bigfoot-style beast.
- Originally having appeared in the August 2009 issue of Phenomena Magazine, the account reads as follows:
- "Poachers in woods at Walkerwood Reservoir, Cheshire, heard noises brush in front of them, then their torches suddenly stopped working.
- Panic set in and the ran. They stopped several hundred yards away and could still hear the noises which seemed to be pursuing them.
- They opened fire, they heard no sound, and then the noises began again, as though something was moving towards them,
- then from the darkness came a huge dark figure.
- It was about seven feet tall and was completely black in color.
- They could see no features, and the thing seemed to be absorbing the darkness, as if camouflaged in some way. The poachers fled."
- This is not the first time I have come across cases involving a British Bigfoot that has seemingly had an effect on powered equipment (in this case, torches).
- Jon Downes experienced something similar at Bolam Woods in 2002, when recording equipment began to suspiciously fail.
- Plus, the reference to the sighting having occurred at a reservoir is intriguing, since this is not the first time that an association between Bigfoot and reservoirs has been noted. There's this one, too.
- Posted by
  Nick Redfern
- cryptidsrus
  said...
  
  Interesting story. The thing about "absorbing the darkness" reminds of some sightings in the UK of Peat Moss Marsh "Beings" being seen with no features.
- They were said to be Pitch-Black and to have snail-like antennae.
- They also were said to absorb the "energy" surroundign them.
- Very weird. Don't think we have THAT type of monster over here on our side of the Pond.
  Good story, Nick.

Nick Redfern's "There's Something in the Woods...": A British Man-Beast

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wouldham village england man-beast british bigfoot kent blue-bell-hill weird nick-redfern britain

Monday, July 13, 2009
A British Man-Beast
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- Over at the main Centre for Fortean Zoology blog, Neil Arnold has a new post titled Black Dogs and Hairy Men - the latter part of which focuses on a British Bigfoot-style report from Neil's home-county of Kent.
- Here's what Neil has to say:"Wouldham is a small village in Kent which sits right next to Blue Bell Hill, which for me remains the countries weirdest village.
- "In my book I noted several bizarre tales concerning witnesses who’d seen red-eyed man-beasts
- and very recently a lady, who now resides in Norfolk, contacted me to say that when she was a child growing up in the ‘60s at Wouldham, her grandmother used to tell her intriguing tales.
- "One of these was said to date back to the 1920s and her grandmother, who passed away, made notes of this.
- The lady said that her grandmother used to tell her about the ‘hairy man’ of Wouldham. A humanoid often seen in local woods by children, and certainly adults were made aware of this being.
- "It was completely covered in hair and the story had become embedded in her psyche and was triggered again when she purchased my MYSTERY ANIMALS OF THE BRITISH ISLES: KENT and saw, at the front, an image of a hairy humanoid standing at Blue Bell Hill’s Kit’s Coty House, an ancient structure on the landscape.
- "It’s clear to me that we aren’t dealing with tales of escaped monkey’s, but indeed something very much embedded in the fabric of the place, as some kind of folkloric creature which has existed for possibly centuries.
- It seems as well that the more I write about the creature, the more it stirs up.
- Around 1997/’98 there was a report in the local newspaper of a gorilla-type creature seen at Blue Bell Hill, and I recall scoffing at the report and believed it was simply down to media drama.
- "Now, it seems that there is, and always has been, a strange humanoid prowling the dark lanes and thickets of a place that I’ve been obsessed with since I was a kid and my dad used to take me there and terrify me with tales of the phantom hitchhiker..."
- Posted by
  Nick Redfern
- 2
  comments:
- vortigern
  said...
  
  i have had a night time encounter with this creature in wouldham,many years back,and with witnesses,whatever it is,its totally out of the ordinary,and probably supernatural.

11 May 09

Page 2 -Giant serpant spotted on Cannock Chase - Cannock Chase Post

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Giant serpant spotted on Cannock Chase
it looked right in this direction and then went back to what it was up to, just laying there.”
3 more annotations...
- Redfern, on his ‘super serpent’ blog, said: “Dodd’s eye-opening report was one of those that almost sounded too good to be true - and yet the wholly independent story of a giant snake seen in the Cannock Chase woods in early 2006 suggested to me that such Loch Ness Monster-like beasts were indeed on the loose in the area – and, perhaps, they still are…
- However, there are two more rational explanations. Pythons, a popular pet, have been known to be dumped by unthinking pet owners. They can grow to a huge length, but would not last long in our climate.
- Also, grass snakes grow to quite a length - though nothing like the size of the super serpent recorded.

Page 1 - Giant serpant spotted on Cannock Chase - Cannock Chase Post

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snake serpent colors cannock=chase german-cemetery england witnesses.

Giant serpant spotted on Cannock Chase
May 7 2009

by Mike Lockley
12 more annotations...
- What’s long, floppy, usual concealed but hangs out at Cannock Chase’s more secluded spots?
  
  It’s the fabled super serpent, that’s what.
- Eyewitnesses claim to have spotted a 14 foot snake lurking in undergrowth - and paranormal investigator Nick Redfern believes it’s more than a monster mutant and may have links with the Loch Ness Monster.
- Last week a rambler contacted The Post - which has also brought you accounts of panthers and even a Bigfoot type creature on the Chase - to say he’d spotted a python-sized creature near the German Cemetery.
- He described the creature as brightly coloured with a powerful head.
- It’s not the first time walkers have been startled by a reptile more than three times the size of resident adders and grass snakes.
- In March, 2006, the Birmingham Post carried reports of a 14 foot snake moving through bracken near Birches Valley.
- The report stated: “The beast had a powerful head and colouring that stood out sharply against the greens and blues of the bracken.”
- Mr Norman Dodd had an even more bizarre encounter in the scorching hot summer of 1976.
- In a later interview with Nick Redfern, Mr Dodd said he spotted the super-snake in a small Slitting Mill pool.
- “It was a bloody stifling day. I remember swigging something to drink and having a bite when there was something moving on the bank.”
- He was stunned to see a seven foot long creature surface from the water and then bask on the fringes of the pool. “It sort of wriggled. It was like its whole body seemed to sort of shake and wobble as it moved.
- “I know it saw me - or saw the car, definitely - because

Nick Redfern's "There's Something in the Woods...": A Cemetery Snake...

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Thursday, May 7, 2009
A Cemetery Snake...
9 more annotations...
- Well, yet again there is high-strangeness afoot in the woods of Britain's Cannock Chase - and specifically in the vicinity of its German Cemetery.
- As regular readers will know, the cemetery in question has been a veritable hotbed of weirdness for years: Bigfoot, werewolves, hairy-sprites, ghosts, marauding black-cats, and spectral black-dogs have all been seen roaming amongst the old war-graves.
- But, now there's a new player in town: a giant snake that has been seen slithering around the area.
- As the story shows, this is not the first time that similar beasts have been seen on the Chase (I investigated a case myself a number of years ago that reportedly occurred in the blisteringly hot-summer of 1976).
- So, what are people seeing? Are they regular snakes or something else?
- From the descriptions, they could perhaps be pythons. However, the problem is that such creatures would not last long when the cold, harsh winter sets in.
- And yet such creatures have been seen for years on the Chase, which begs the questions: if they are regular snakes, how are they surviving those aforementioned harsh winters year-after-year?
- And why are the snakes (like all of the other odd beasts seen on the Chase) now homing in on the German Cemetery?
- Truly a mystery of Fortean proportions!

31 Mar 09

Video: Bear caught on camera in forest - East Anglian Daily Times

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Video: Bear caught on camera in forest
5 more annotations...
- Last updated: 3/30/2009 5:51:00 PM
- BEAR sightings in Rendlesham Forest continue to flood in - as sensational new pictures of the beast roaming the countryside emerge tonight.
- This video shows two images and close-ups of what appears to be a bear-like creature snapped in the forest, heightening fears that a wild beast could be on the loose.
- In response, the East Anglian Daily Times and Evening Star sent reporter Elliot Furniss and photographer Sarah Lucy-Brown to the forest today - and they may have solved the mystery.
- See tomorrow's paper for the latest developments on this incredible story.

Bear spotted in Rendlesham Forest - East Anglian Daily Times

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england rendlesham-forest bear sighting britain crypto animal forest

Bear spotted in Rendlesham Forest
REBECCA LEFORT

Last updated: 3/30/2009
18 more annotations...
- Is Rendlesham Forest hiding a bear?
- IF you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise…
  
  According to a number of visitors to Rendlesham Forest, bears are roaming the Suffolk countryside.
- At least three people claim to have seen the grizzly beasts in the forest within the last week, although bears are not native to Britain.
- Bizarre sightings are nothing new to the site which is a favourite among conspiracy theorists after UFOs were supposedly spotted there in the 1980s.
- One of those who saw the creature is Jenny Pearce who said: “I was on the green at Rendlesham Forest having a picnic with my three-year-old son and his friend's family.
- “After the picnic we stayed to play and explore the woods. While we were in the forest I saw a large animal moving through the trees ahead.
- “I thought it was a big dog, so I picked up my son because he has never really got into dogs and gets easily scared. But as it continued away from us it was clearly not a dog.
- “It was much bigger and there wasn't anyone there to be walking it if it was a large dog.
- “I left for the car straight away, and looked for a forest person to tell but there were none about. I mentioned it to another parent in the car park and they said it could be fox or husky, as huskies are kept nearby, but it really was a lot bigger.”
- Meanwhile Nick Deptford, who also contacted the East Anglian Daily Times, added: “I've seen some sort of animal in Rendlesham forest this weekend and the people in the forest say that it could only be a deer or a dog, but it was much bigger, more like a bear although I don't think we've got bears here.
- “Definitely not aliens this time though like all that stuff that was meant to have happened in 1980!”
- But Suffolk animal expert Alec Suttenwood of the Ipswich Wildlife Care and Rescue said it was highly unlikely that bears were actually roaming Rendlesham Forest.
- “There are no bears I know of, though I've heard big cats reported,” he said.
- “Some big dogs like a big chow, which is very hairy, can look like bears.
- “I think a bear could survive in Rendlesham Forest but it would be a big danger to people.
- “But it is unlikely to be a bear because there is nowhere it could even escape from.”
- A spokesman for the Forestry Commission said he had not heard of any bear sightings in the forest and added: “We don't have bears in this country, so it would have to be a release or escape, but we have had no reports of it.
- Suffolk police said the force had not received any bear sightings.

UFOs spotted in East End on Google Street View | The Sun |News

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google-earth ufo england london bethnal-green east-london formation sighting nick-pope

By PHILIP CASE

and ANDY CRICK

Published: 30 Mar 2009
A FLEET of UFOs in formation has been photographed — on Google.
12 more annotations...
- The nine silver spheres hover above a row of shops, including a Coral bookies,
  on the internet giant’s new Street View service.
- Very odds ... nine silver spheres above
  Coral bookmakers
- Sun reader Faye Sharpe, 18, discovered them while viewing her neighbourhood of
  Wolverley Street in Bethnal Green, East London.
- Faye said: “I was checking out the road to see if I could spot my
  mates. I thought it looked very strange and zoomed in.
- “I thought it was some planes but they look pretty close together
  for that. Maybe they are UFOs.”
- Fascinated ... expert Nick Pope
- Yesterday baffled ufologist Nick Pope said he was “very excited”
  by the image, which he labelled “truly fascinating”.
- He added: “It appears to show nine objects flying in near perfect
  formation. About the only thing I know that can do this is the Red Arrows —
  and it’s not them.”
- Mr Pope, who used to investigate sightings for the Ministry of Defence, said: “I’ve
  run through the list of possibilities that normally explain these things,
  but I can’t find an answer.”
- Yesterday The Sun visited the street to talk to locals about the mysterious
  find. Holly Riding, 19, said: “It’s definitely weird.”
- Karishma Daswani, 22, added: “The fact that they are flying in
  formation is very strange.”
- Oriele Calvert, 44, said: “This is definitely the strangest thing I’ve
  ever seen in Bethnal Green.”

13 Jan 09

Alien Big Cats - Paranormal Panthers - Shape-shifters?

Alien Big Cats - Paranormal Panthers -
Shape-shifters?
by Mary Alice Bennett

(Copyright 2006, Mary Alice Bennett)

Posted: 01:00 December 14, 2006
61 more annotations...
- Welcome to the world of extraterrestrial medicine animals and the Trickster who can shape-shift while being pursued.
- It is more than mythology. A shape-shifter thought to be an adept shaman who has the ability to change form is more likely to be an extraterrestrial entity able to masquerade as a human being.
- Are there also animals visiting us from other dimensions who can appear to be creatures of Earth? Can they live in two worlds?
- There have been sightings of big cats out of their habitats in North America, France, Germany, and in England.
- Christian Macé wrote about the tigers being seen in Amiens, France. One witness reported seeing "tigers, panthers, and cougars" in the Amiens area.
- Macé quoted Fabrica Kircher`s theory that the big cats arrived here from another dimension as through a vortex.
- His accounts of the inter-dimensional train stations at and near Turns, France are proof that tears in our dimension exist in Europe as they do in Uinta, Utah at Skinwalker Ranch.
- It is interesting to note that historically in rural France, the cat was associated with the corn harvest. A pet cat would be regaled in ribbons and flowers during the harvest.
- In Amiens specifically, one of these cats would be sacrificed at that time ("Man, Myth, and Majic" - Cats).
- Is there an association between the big cats sighted at Amiens and the history of their involvement with house cats in this way?
  - Residual pagan gateway - on 2009-01-13
  Add Sticky Note
- From the 1970s onward fifty to one hundred more have been seen.
- In Britain, big cats have been reportedly spotted since the 1950s.
- A black puma appeared in 2006 and was witnessed by some members of the Northumbria University staff. In Lincolnshire, leaping black felines as large as Labrador Retrievers have startled travelers in the woods.
- There have been 102 sightings with remaining kills, paw prints, and videos as evidence of their existence.
- In 2005 near Hartlepool, England, two brothers observed a gorilla-shaped animal in a clearing where tawny cougars had been spotted. Hartlepool is halfway up the east coast of Britain close to the Scottish border.
- When large pumas are seen in a forest which is not part of their normal habitat and there is also a sighting of a gorilla-like (Bigfoot?) creature, it could be a clue that these are materialized tulpoidal forms, that is paranormal UFO related entities similar to the M.I.Bs., the Men in Black.
  - Inter-dimensional entities - on 2009-01-13
  Add Sticky Note
- There is a debate over the nature of Bigfoot, whether he is a biological animal belonging only to this earth, or whether he is an inter-dimensional being.
- One witness was held captive by a family of Bigfoots which is evidence that they do reproduce in nature.
- Another sighting by a wilderness housewife was of a "Bigfoot running…he was wearing a glowing blue belt and was carrying a sheep."
- That experience is testimony that Bigfoot is of the latter classification, an inter-dimensional entity. There have also been reports of "self-luminous Swamp Apes" which add validity to this theory.
  - Supernatural/inter-dimensional beings - on 2009-01-13
  Add Sticky Note
- The historic paranormal black dogs of England ("Black Shuck") usually had supernatural characteristics and death often followed a sighting.
- It is the opinion of John Burton, Chief Executive Officer of the World Land Trust, that the spectral hounds "simply metamorphosed into the large Labrador-sized black cats."
- The black dogs were known to appear along the Ley-lines and at hedgerows. The famed "Lindsey Leopard" of 2004 has still not been explained.
- "Black panthers" are actually melanistic (black melanin pigment) African leopards or South American black melanistic jaguars. The cougar/puma/panther does not have a black melanistic form.
- Nature books about the world`s big cats mention sightings of "black panthers" in North America, but none have ever been captured.
- Wildlife biologists assert that the pumas ranging on this continent have been tagged, collared, and tracked by satellite.
- Rangers in both America and Europe find it strange that hunters do not spot the black cats during hunting season.
- Panthera Atrox
- These were maned lions who were larger and darker than their African cousins. The females were black.
- In the Pleistocene era 10,000 years ago, there were lions in America.
- Fossils of these lions have been discovered from Alaska to Peru, and from Nebraska to Florida.
- As with other anomalous animals such as Bigfoot and Lake Monsters, the large black mystery cats were thought to be extinct. These creatures exist in the fossil record.
- The power animal of shamanic author Carlos Casteneda was a fossil cat.
  - "Spirits" animating as natural felines - on 2009-01-13
  Add Sticky Note
- Carlos was in Los Angeles and his ally was a black Saber-Tooth Tiger.
- If a black panther is reported, it is probably the female of the species, the male would have a rough or mane.
- The jury is still out concerning the black panthers of North America and of Europe. They remain classified as "melanistic felid cryptids"- black mystery cats.
- Could it be that the paranormal European black dogs have shape-shifted into the black mystery cats?
- Bigfoots have been reported to whine when shot, but they recover.
- On Uinta`s Skinwalker Ranch, the paranormal animals are bullet proof.
- For generations Native American hunters have said that their arrows go right through these types of creatures and that they are not subject to shamantic control as a normal animal ally would be.
- Vision Questers
- The late great John Mack wrote that the "ET aliens are consummate shape-shifters" who appear to seekers on vision quests and to contactees as large-eyed animals.
- Many times under hypnosis a witness will recall their UFO "screen-memory" of a deer, panther, eagle or an owl during an encounter.
- "The horse with the big dark eyes" was the memory of one contactee. These power animals have one thing in common, their eyes are recalled as being abnormally large and black.
  - Demonic entities masquerading as natural animals - on 2009-01-13
  Add Sticky Note
- Mack revealed a black panther memory during the regression of one of his male abductees. The subject related that he was a Native American of the Susquehannock tribe before the time of the white man. His name was "Panther-by-the-Creek", named for the black panther who was seen at the time of his birth.
- The brave thought it significant that he saw the black panther again after being returned from an alien encounter. This account presents the paranormal black panther in a UFO context, known to the tribe as an auspicious animal.
- Spectral Cats
- Cryptozoologists who search for rare animals debate whether their field should include these out-of-place animals, feral, as well as animal ghosts and apparitions.
- As Fabrica Kircher of France has written of the panthers seen near Amiens, "They travel in other dimensions and are invisible to us." These animals can vanish into thin air just as the Uinta entities do.
- The following is a personal experience of a "sensitive" Arizona woman who has the ability to sometimes see the spirits of human beings, she never knows when they might show up.
- One night she entered her Phoenix apartment kitchen and was confronted by a 4 foot tall white translucent entity with a cat-like hollow-eyed face.
- It had long clawed fingers and powerful back legs like a kangaroo.
  - Sounds like some descriptions of the Chupacabra - on 2009-01-13
  Add Sticky Note
- It crouched as if to spring at her, at which point she shut herself into her bedroom with her children. She spent the entire night there in her room with the lights on, praying.
- In the morning, the creature was gone.
- The ghastly ghost-faced runners of New Mexico who keep pace with speeding patrol cars have the same pale hollow-eyed look. To run as fast as they do, they must have powerful back legs.
- Could the ghost cat be the invisible being that scratches the victims of hauntings with parallel marks that resemble cat scratches?
- The residents of haunted houses may be dealing with animal rather than human ghosts or beings. There are many types of alien and ghost animals in the other dimension.
- Synchronicity
- During the writing of this article, a cougar was seen at Tucson`s Steele school down the road. This was a rare sighting and the first one to be spotted so close to town.
- Yesterday my sister wrote that her Durango, Colorado neighbor had observed a large wild black feline on her property.
- Wildlife experts told her that it is called a "Jaguarundi" and was thought to be extinct in that area. It may have come down from the mountains because of the forest fires.

Walking with Boudicca: We follow an historic journey - via an Essex underpass and a McDonald's | Mail Online

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britain iceni queen-boudicca roman-britain roman-empire revolt colchester london st-albans england norwich roman-road prasutagus catus-decianus camulodunum paulinus verulamium

For the first time, I felt like I was peeking through the curtains of time. This was the very same route as Boudicca and her army would have taken.
The trundling carts passed along here. The Iceni, grimly determined and driven by vengeance, would have walked with Boudicca at their head, a vast procession of men, women, children and horses spread wide across the road and beyond into the fields, knowing that with every step, they were closer to justice, or at least their version of it.
48 more annotations...
- Walking in their footsteps, I could feel the butterflies in my stomach, the feeling that every step was into the unknown.
- That evening, as I soaked in a hot bath at a Colchester hostelry, I reflected on what Boudicca and her cohorts did to the Roman capital when they reached it.
- Camulodunum had all the trappings of a major Roman town - a senate building, shops, a theatre and a temple dedicated to the late Emperor Claudius, conqueror of Britain.
- For a capital, Camulodunum was curiously lax in its defences.
- It was home to hundreds of army veterans who, having completed their 25 years of military service, were given plots of land.
- Most of the Roman military forces in Britain were engaged in a concerted attempt to wipe out the druids on Anglesey. Hence Camulodunum had at best a skeleton defence force.
- When news of Boudicca's travelling hordes reached the town, the locals pressed Catus Decianus, the man responsible for triggering the uprising, to provide military assistance.
- He mustered barely 200 troops then hitched up his toga and hotfooted it to Gaul before Boudicca could get hold of him.
- Nevertheless, they fell upon the place in a storm of aggression and destruction. Property was looted and burned to the ground.
- Boudicca's forces approached Colchester meeting no opposition.
- The soldiers would have provided only token resistance to the thousands of screaming, blue-painted warriors descending on the town. Nothing and no one would have been spared.
- Those who remained barricaded themselves inside the Temple of Claudius, until the Britons scaled the walls and began to dismantle the roof, dropping on to the survivors and killing them where they stood.
- It's likely that Boudicca's forces would have hung around Camulodunum for a couple of days, celebrating, praying and dividing up the loot, before heading south to the port of Londinium.
- Londinium was a lesser focus of Roman power, but economically important to the occupying people.
- The Roman road from Colchester to Chelmsford and thence to the outskirts of London is again the A12, so I struck out on a parallel path and was delighted to find, at one stage, that I was crossing Boadicea Way.
- I passed through Chelmsford, eventually arriving on the outskirts of Brentwood. After days in the countryside, I'd hit suburbia.
- Suddenly I had my breath taken away. I crested a hill while looking at the map, and when I looked up there, before me, was the London skyline with its familiar NatWest Tower, Gherkin and St Paul's Cathedral. Boudicca would have come over this hill - albeit to witness a very different skyline.
- Londinium was a fairly new settlement of 30,000 inhabitants.
- Goods and slaves were exported here, while imports were unloaded in what would have been a lively, noisy place.
- It would have been distinctly muted that day, though, as Suetonius Paulinus, the commander of the Roman forces, had arrived with his cavalry.
- He had two options. The first: to assemble as many soldiers as he could to defend the town. However, he'd heard about the devastation of Camulodunum and knew that the Britons would be arriving in even greater numbers.
- The alternative was to evacuate Londinium, leave it to the mercy of the Iceni and their allies, and muster a large Roman force to meet them at full strength somewhere down the road. He chose the latter option.
- Londinium was doomed. I followed the route of the old Roman road through Romford and Ilford and on beyond Stratford. When Boudicca's forces arrived, Londinium would have been almost deserted.
- Cassius Dio describes what the rebels did to the locals who were left.
- The city's most distinguished women were hung up naked, their breasts cut off and sewn into their mouths, before being impaled on stakes.
- When the Thames was running red with blood, the rebels torched London.
- Many people were burnt alive. Boudicca's rebellion had no political cause at its heart: this was sheer, visceral vengeance.
- Once Londinium had been ransacked, the rebels made for the road to Verulamium, a major seat of the wealthy Catuvellauni tribe, now St Albans.
- The Romans had routed Watling Street, a major thoroughfare, through Verulamium. It was an obvious target.
- The road is the A5, starting at the bottom of London's Edgware Road, and it's fairly certain that Boudicca would have joined it where it met the road from Camulodunum.
  It's a spot now occupied by Marble Arch, where I found myself early one blustery morning.
- It was about 20 miles to St Albans, a journey that would have taken Boudicca and her cumbersome caravan two days, if not more. I was aiming to do it in one.
- The coffee shops and sandwich bars soon gave way to a procession of Turkish and Arabic emporia. I passed within a hefty six of Lord's cricket ground and then, at Maida Vale, the spot where the headmaster Philip Lawrence was killed in 1995.
- On through Cricklewood and its synagogues, Wembley Stadium to my left, then Edgware and the general hospital where I was born.
- The next morning I headed to Verulamium Park, the site of the old town sacked by Boudicca. It was a peaceful morning, the sun glinting off the damp grass.
- By six o'clock that evening, I was in St Albans.
- The locals had legged it, taking everything of value with them. The wind direction made it harder to burn down the town.
  The destruction was still extensive, but there was a sense that the fun was going out of all this looting and burning.
- By the time Boudicca arrived, Verulamium was deserted.
- The lack of a 'real' battle was leaving some sections of the mob bored and unfulfilled.
- The sacking of Verulamium would prove to be the Boudiccan revolt's last success.
- I made my way to the edge of town. My step was slowing tangibly, too, as my first historical journey was coming to an end. This is where I would leave Boudicca; where the historical trail goes cold.
- The inevitable big battle between Boudicca's mob and the Roman army did take place, but nobody can say for sure where it was.
- Mancetter, near Atherstone in Warwickshire, seems the most likely location.
- Many surmise that she chose to take her own life by drinking poison rather than suffer the ignominy of being taken to Rome and paraded through the streets. Nothing is known of what became of her daughters.
- Either way, the Britons were defeated and Boudicca was never heard of again.
- There was a groundless rumour in Victorian times that Boudicca is buried beneath Platform 8 at King's Cross Station in London, while in 2006 Birmingham archaeologists claimed they'd found her grave in King's Norton, next to McDonald's.
- I stood for a while, looking along Watling Street, picturing a noble, charismatic queen standing proud on her chariot at the head of her warriors, their carts rumbling along the track, heading towards her destiny.
- Then I turned around, retraced my steps and began to walk forward almost a thousand years. I had an appointment with a man whose epic journey changed Britain's history for ever.
- I was about to follow in the footsteps of Harold, the man who could have been, and so nearly was, one of Britain's greatest ever kings.

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