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Saturday, November 29, 2014

Daily 2 Cents: Former NASA Employee Saw Humans on Mars -- 'Vampire' Burials Solved -- Did Wizards Exist?


Woman Claiming To Be Former NASA Employee Says She Saw Humans Walking On Mars In 1979

A woman named "Jackie," who claims to be a former NASA employee, called Coast to Coast AM in the U.S. She claimed she had seen evidence of two human figures walking towards the Viking lander on Mars in 1979.

A color mosaic taken by NASA's Mars Curiosity rover Mast Camera (mastcam) shows strata exposed along the margins of the valleys in the "Pahrump Hills" region on Mars in this undated handout photo courtesy of NASA. After 18 months of driving, scientists on September 11, 2014, announced that Curiosity had arrived at the base of Mount Sharp ahead of schedule, thanks to a somewhat serendipitous decision to take an alternative path that would be gentler on the rover's damaged wheels. Within two weeks, Curiosity will reach an outcrop of rock called Pahrump Hills, where the first drill samples of Mount Sharp real estate will be made

The "former NASA employee" asked the radio show presenter to solve a 27-year-old mystery for her. She claimed she had worked for NASA and that her job was to handle the downlink telemetry from the lander. The Viking lander was the first vehicle to send back pictures of the surface of the Red Planet.

She said that while she was working, she saw two people walking across the Martian surface. She continued that she and six colleagues were watching the footage of the Viking rover moving around on multiple screens when she noticed two men in spacesuits walking to the Viking Explorer from the horizon. She added the men's suits looked protective but unlike what astronauts wore.

The "former NASA employee" said she and her colleagues were maintaining the equipment when suddenly the video feed got cut off. She went on to say that when they ran upstairs, they found the door was locked and paper was taped over the door so nothing could be seen. She posed a question to the radio presenter asking whether or not the two men she saw were guys from NASA. The agency has yet to comment on the claim.

Blogs that report on UFO and conspiracy theories have backed the "former NASA employee." They claimed humans had been on Mars to polish off the lander's solar panels. Metro.co.uk wrote that this seemed off because if the humans were there, they could have filled petrol into the lander or take photos themselves. A few other conspiracy theorists claimed that in the sixties, there were secret landings on Mars. They further claimed that the Apollo landings were a cover-up for wider exploration of the solar system. - IBTimes

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Mystery of 'Vampire' Burials in Poland Is Solved

The mystery behind several "vampire" burials in Poland has been solved.

People who were buried with sickles (curved, sharp farming knives) around their necks, or rocks at their jaws, to prevent their corpses from reanimating were natives to the area in which they were buried, according to a new study.

The fact that all the people buried as vampires were local suggests they may have been felled by a cholera epidemic that swept through the region, said study co-author Lesley Gregoricka, a bioarchaeologist at the University of South Alabama.

The skull of the "Vampire of Venice" was found in a mass grave with a brick stuck in its jaw.

Tales of the dead coming back to life have truly ancient roots, going back to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians and beyond, said study co-author Tracy Betsinger, a bioarchaeologist at the State University of New York at Oneonta.

For all these stories of the dead coming back to life, "the word collectively used is a 'revenance,'" Betsinger told Live Science.

Gregoricka and her colleagues analyzed bone fragments from the Drawsko cemetery, a Polish site where vampire burials were found. The cemetery dates from the 17th to the 18th century, the researchers said. Some people at the site were buried with sickles under their necks or rocks under their jaws, to prevent them from reanimating. (The sickles were intended to decapitate the people if they tried to rise from the grave, while the rocks pinned their jaws shut so they weren't able to feed on the living, Gregoricka said.)

The researchers then took a closer look at 60 of the 333 burials from the site, six of which were "vampire" burials intended to prevent a corpse from reanimating. The team analyzed the ratio of strontium isotopes (versions of the atom with different numbers of neutrons) in the skeletons. Because each location has a unique ratio of these isotopes, and people's bodies naturally take the elements up from the environment, analyzing strontium isotope ratios can reveal where a person is from.

Contrary to the initial hypothesis that the "vampires" were immigrants, the team actually discovered that all of the vampires were locals. - NBCNews

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Lisa Rinna says her house is haunted

Referencing a discussion she had about “ghostly nosies” she heard in her Southern California home, the pouty-lipped wife of L.A. Law hunk Harry Hamlin wrote in her latest Bravo blog that she believes her home is inhabited by a friendly spirit who passed away there more than 30 years ago.

“Fact is, I can’t prove it, but I believe there is indeed a female ghost named ‘Karen’ … [who] died in the house back in 1980 … that lives with us,” the former Melrose Place star wrote.

Thankfully for Rinna, she considers the ghost in her home is more like Casper and less like Poltergeist, as she said Karen “absolutely loves” her teen daughters Delilah and Amelia, and “and loves to be around them.”

The newest addition to the Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills provided a sad backstory filling the details of why she feels the supernatural presence.

“Karen had a 3-year-old daughter when she passed away, so I feel like she really presented herself to us when the girls were just babies,” Rinna wrote. “She’s a good ghost. A protective spirit that I’m grateful to share my home and family with.”

Rinna, admitting her intuition “sounds crazy,” said “it’s just a feeling” she has.

Elsewhere in the blog, Rinna says that she’s “loving [her] new role as a Housewife,” two weeks into the program’s new broadcasts.

“I have to admit, I am completely humbled and so incredibly grateful for all of the support and all-around amazingness you’ve shown me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and everywhere else,” she wrote. “I love reading everything you send my way and just know that I love each and every one of you right back!” - RadarOnline

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Wizards: Did They Exist?

Myths and folklore from all over the world inform us of people with supernatural abilities who walked among us. Whether their abilities are attributed to God, the Devil, nature, or some other source, the ancient world is full of records of people who could reportedly perform magic at will. History has not been kind to the word “wizard”; when we hear it, we are inclined to think of fairy tales and fiction–and yet, when a religion recognizes people with the same powers, many of us are willing to call them saints and prophets of God. We are willing to believe in saints but dismiss wizards out of hand. Why should this be so?

We will explore several historical cases of people who seemed to have had magical powers and are listed in the “wizard” category. This is a brief history as all the facts on any of them could constitute many books. There are many more in history that have also risen to the rank of wizard (or a similar designation), but we have picked out a few examples to raise the question of whether these figures truly existed and if they truly had powers. Read more at The Epoch Times

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