; Phantoms and Monsters: Pulse of the Paranormal

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Just the Facts? Man Dies in Haunted Apartment -- Army Searching For BS Detector -- Hey, Larry!


Man found dead after complaining apartment was haunted

A 38-year-old salesman was found dead on the ground floor of a car park of a high-rise residential building in Georgetown, Malaysia. Since moving into the apartment, Khoo Kim Bee had been suffering from insomnia, began behaving “oddly,” and soon began contemplating suicide.

“We were disturbed by an unfriendly spirit,” his wife Xue Lin told The Star Online while at the Penang Hospital mortuary. “Last week, Khoo had allegedly wanted to hang himself and even threatened to stab me with a pair of scissors.”

Xue told The Star that her husband had an appointment to undergo an exorcism, under the advisement of a Siamese Buddhist Temple master monk who had inspected the apartment.

The night before the appointment, Xue claimed that her husband woke her up twice in the wee hours and whispered to her that he wanted to take his own life before he apologised to her. In a groggy state, Xue said she “pacified” her husband “and told him to go back to sleep.”

The morning of his appointment, he was found dead by a neighbor.

Malina Ayub, 45, who stays in a unit opposite the couple’s home, said she heard a loud thud and went to investigate. “I thought someone had thrown rubbish from the upper floors but I was shocked to see a man lying in a pool of blood at the car park,” she said.

Assistant Commissioner of the Georgetown PD, Gan Kong Meng, said initial investigations revealed that the deceased had no financial or personal woes. “We have classified the case as sudden death. Foul play is ruled out,” he said. - datelinezero

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China's secret formations in the desert

The strange surface features and mysterious structures are visible using Google Maps. The first oddity pointed out by Dias is a series of wide, white lines. These lines are located in “Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert,” according to Dias. This formation reportedly covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide. Dias mentions that the “tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit.” He goes on to speculate, “Perhaps it’s some kind of targeting or calibrating grid for Chinese spy satellites? Maybe it’s a QR code for aliens? Nobody really knows.”

There is yet another pattern of mysterious lines that can be seen using Google Maps. This pattern is completely different from the first two linear patterns, however. Consisting of thousands of lines, this pattern seems to form a massive grid. These grid lines are displayed in two massive strips that intersect each other perpendicularly. The vertical line is approximately one mile wide by a whopping 20 miles long. The horizontal line is approximately one mile wide by 30 miles long. The northern most point of the vertical line reaches within 10 miles of the Mongolian border.

Approximately three miles west of the second pattern of lines I mentioned is a strange, circle formation that appears to be intentionally arranged in some sort of code pattern. There are airplanes positioned within this pattern.

Dias describes another code-like formation in the area as looking like “some kind of giant targeting grid.” Destroyed vehicles are within this grid, which opens the door to the possibility of space-based weaponry testing.

Another mysterious surface feature in the nearby area is what appears to be some kind of airfield. But a couple of the structures that could be runways appear to either be water, or a strange blue material, which makes this “runway” highly visible–something that could come in handy to visitors from space trying to locate a landing location. But there is something else strange about this airfield. In a couple of locations near the airfield, there are dozens of what appear to be impact marks, some that include signs of charring. If this is indeed an airfield, then either the pilots landing there are very clumsy, or, like with the previously mentioned “targeting grid” formation, these could be signs of space-based weaponry.

So what is the explanation for all of these bizarre formations in China? Are they all related? Do they indicate that China is sending coded messages to space? Do they prove that China is testing space-based weapons? Or are glitches with Google’s satellite causing some very strange, yet highly detailed, photo abnormalities? The real answer is unknown at this time. But these are, without a doubt, some very puzzling formations. - openminds

Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War with China

The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America

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U.S. Army searching for 'bullshit detector'

It’s the latest edition of the military’s eternal quest for “A Thingamajig that Solves All Terrorism.” This time, the Army wants a portable gadget that can detect American foes, liars and other delinquent characters with near-perfect accuracy, and do it without ever making physical contact. Yeah, good luck with that, boys.

In the Pentagon’s latest round of research proposal requests, which offer small businesses cash money in exchange for lofty innovation, the Army is after ideas for a gizmo they’ve dubbed “The Standoff Counter Human Deception Detection Device.” Right now, military interrogators depend largely on the same tools used by law enforcement agencies or Jerry Springer “Is Your Brother Her Lover?” infidelity episodes. They use good old lie-detection machines (even though they’re notoriously imperfect), or they turn to well-honed, albeit fallible, human BS radar.

That dearth of options has long been a dilemma the military’s looked to solve. In the past five years alone, they’ve considered the merits of myriad options, including biometric-based deception detection, that’d evaluate metrics like a person’s gait or body temperature to assess honesty, the improvement of cultural expertise to improve overseas interrogation and even — yikes! — the use of pharmaceuticals as veritable truth elixirs.

They’ve yet to optimize any of the above strategies, but that hasn’t stopped the Army from setting their sights even higher. They’re asking businesses to offer up a device that can be used at least two meters from a human subject, and can “assess psychophysiological characteristics” — which could include everything from heart rate to eye movement to brain waves — to determine the credibility of subjects undergoing questioning.

Of course, distance is the key challenge here. Lie detectors already rely on heart rate to assess truthfulness, and the Army’s even field-tested a hand-held lie detector, the PCASS, which was clipped to a subject’s fingertips. This new gadget would presumably combine a heart rate metric with several others, all of them able to be measured without a subject’s knowledge or involvement, and then spit out “the subject’s deception percentage” in real time.

Already, it’s enough to make our bullshit detector blink red. But the Army’s also looking for unprecedented accuracy. The military claims its PCASS device was correct around 76 percent of the time, compared to 83 percent for a trained human interrogator and 50 percent for someone making a random guess. This gadget should outdo all of them, boasting 90 percent accuracy “in varied environments.”

It’s a far-fetched idea, but if successful, the Army’s pocket-sized ruse radar could have countless civilian applications. For one thing, you might finally figure out why your youngest son is the spitting image of your Uncle Louie. - wired.com

U.S. Army Intelligence and Interrogation Handbook: The Official Guide on Prisoner Interrogation

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'Bigfoot-Evidence' Larry Surface responds:

"It's getting pretty tiresome reading and throwing out the ignorant remarks about this subject being me or some other old man. Even one so called "expert" made that remark. I've seen lots of old men, I'm one, and that's not a modern Human old man. That's me in the comparison photo above. The height is not relative, the top of my head only comes up to the shoulder level of the subject. I'm 6'0". I'm not sure what causes these critics to deny the obvious. Some do not want Sasquatch to exist, some because it doesn't look like what they want it to, and some just because of lack of knowledge of the subject and poor observational skills I guess.

I took one of the best frames from the video and enhanced it some. I find it very interesting. I think anthropologists could learn from this profile if they would take it seriously. I will continue to test and analyze the video to get as much information as possible from it, and try to make a better file available. And of course continue to try to get more and better.

Thanks again for all the positive comments I'm receiving, it makes it easier to bear the insults and name calling that are coming in."

- Larry Surface


Hey Larry, enhancements and comparisons are not going to change what you initially presented. I can understand your frustration when comments from scientists and well-known 'experts' come forward...that should have been expected. But when your colleagues in the field start to doubt your evidence then its time to back off...listen and be objective.

The Discovery of the Sasquatch: Reconciling Culture, History, and Science in the Discovery Process

Cryptozoology: Science & Speculation