; Phantoms and Monsters: Pulse of the Paranormal

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Daily 2 Cents: Soviets Contacted Aliens In 1942? -- Family Swaps Haunted House -- New Voynich Manuscript Clue Surfaces


Soviets had alien contact in 1942?

There have been rumors floating around for many years that the first Russian contact with “grey aliens” allegedly took place in 1942. At the time, a series of diplomatic visits to discuss matters of mutual concern were planned, according to alleged Russian documents and a treaty was made, Voice of Russia writes.

In 1969 in the state of Sverdlovsky, a UFO was reported to had crashed and was recovered by the Russian military. There is an alleged video footage showing the recovery, with close-ups of the UFO itself. Allegedly, there was one dead alien found in the craft. The remains of the alien and the UFO debris were taken to a secure Russian site, where the saucer was analyzed, and an autopsy done on the alien.

According to Russian newspaper “Pravda”, the KGB has allegedly had a special unit designed to gather and monitor all pieces of information regarding mystical and unexplained phenomena reported inside and outside the Soviet Union.

Also according to Pravda, General A. G. Ponomarnko, head commander of the Urals military district, was to ensure that KGB agents be involved in the work pertaining to the UFO at all stages. The agents’ reports were promptly forwarded to Colonel A. I. Grigoriev, chief of the KGB scientific department.

According Billy J Booth on About.com there are unsubstantiated reports that a UFO crashed or was shot down near the city of Prohlandnyi, in the USSR at on August 10, 1989. Soviet military radar tracked an unidentified flying object and the Russian attempted unsuccessfully to contact the craft. The UFO was classified as “hostile.” Soviet defenses were alerted, and MIG-25s flew to find and identify the UFO.

There was obvious damage to the exterior of the craft. The retrieval team, wearing protective outer wear, moved to the site. There was a small amount of radiation, and some members of the team were effected.

A helicopter on the scene was hooked up to the craft, and the UFO was transported to Mozdok Air Base. Russians entered the UFO and discovered three alien bodies-two dead, one barely alive.

A team of doctors and other medical personnel made every effort to keep the alien alive, but failed. All three of the beings were about 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall, with gray outer wear. Underneath, their skin was a blue-green color with a reptilian texture. They had no hair, large black eyes covered with a protective lid, and web fingers ended their long, slender arms. The alien bodies were kept in glass containers and UFO taken to Kapustin Yar.

This information was first reported by three Russian investigators-Anton Anfalov, Lenura Azizova and Alexander Mosolov. However, they had no documentation to support their story. - In Serbia

The Soviet Ufo Files: Paranormal Encounters Behind the Iron Curtain

Russia's Roswell Incident: And Other Amazing UFO Cases from the Former Soviet Union

The UFO Singularity: Why Are Past Unexplained Phenomena Changing Our Future? Where Will Transcending the Bounds of Current Thinking Lead? How Near is the Singularity?


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Family swaps haunted house

A terrified family have swapped a house amongst themselves because they fear it is haunted.

And the hot potato house is still showing signs of a paranormal presence despite a vicar being drafted in to perform an exorcism.

Lisa Way, 38, first detected an eerie presence in September 2011.

She claimed to see faces at the windows and floating limbs in her mid-terrace home on Ely’s Marcross Road.

She said at the time: “I saw a white light flash by the door. We started taking pictures with our camera phones – and the strangest things started showing up.

“Arms coming round the doors, legs coming down the stairs.”

At the time Ms Way said she was desperate to leave but claimed the council refused to help.

However last year her cousin, Kirsty Purcigo, 27, who lived opposite in a slightly smaller house needed an extra bedroom. So the pair agreed to trade.

And though the level of paranormal activity has subsided since Ms Purcigo and her family took the plunge and moved into the allegedly haunted property, it hasn’t abated.

She said: “No, it’s been quiet since we moved in last year. It’s probably out for her, not us!”

But the apparitions have developed a taste for late-night viewing – the family television has developed a habit of turning itself on, say the family.

Despite the occasional unwanted TV switch-on and warnings of lurking bad omens in the house, Ms Purcigo was relaxed about unwanted spiritual guests when Lisa suggested a swap.

Kirsty said: “It wouldn’t bother me unless something did happen to the kids. I know that there’s nothing there anyway.

“Kids don’t want to be scared, like even my daughter – she’s not bothered. She knows about, she was over here as well when we saw the arm on the stairs. She enjoyed it anyway, she loved it. And my youngest is one so doesn’t know anyway.

“My partner said he can’t feel anything in there. But I like it, I watch all those programmes on the television.

“Lisa had the priest from the church come up and do all the blessings.”

But did the Churchman’s work make a difference?

Kirsty said: “To her – no. I feel more calm in here now. I don’t feel threatened by anything. As long as my kids are alright, it doesn’t matter.”

And despite their elaborate plan, Lisa insists the spirits have followed her over the road – but only that of her grandmother.

She said: “My nan’s over here with me, but we’re not scared any more. Even if they do follow me I don’t care.

“I realised I have a gift for seeing dead people, I’ve got used to the fact that I’m always going to see and feel them.” - WalesOnline

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New Voynich manuscript clue surfaces

A mysterious manuscript that appears to be written in gibberish may actually be in an extinct dialect of the Mexican language Nahuatl. Illustrations of plants in the manuscript have been linked to plants native to Central America for the first time, suggesting a new origin for the text. But some still say it could be a hoax.

The Voynich manuscript has puzzled researchers since book dealer Wilfrid Voynich found it in an Italian monastery in 1912. Among hundreds of pages of so-far undecipherable text, it includes illustrations of naked nymphs, astrological diagrams and drawings of plants that no one has been able to identify.

An academic war has raged for years between those who think the manuscript contains a real language that could eventually be decoded, and those who think it was a clever forgery designed to dupe book collectors. "It's a battle with two sides," says Alain Touwaide, a historian of botany at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.

Mexican look

Previously, many researchers assumed that the manuscript must have originated in Europe, where it was found. But botanist Arthur Tucker of Delaware State University in Dover noticed similarities between certain plants in the manuscript and illustrations of plants in 16th century records from Mexico.

Tucker began collecting copies of Mexican botanical books out of curiosity about the history of herbs there. "Quite by accident, I ran across the Voynich and it was a Homer Simpson moment of D'oh! Of course –this matches my other codices and the artwork of 16th century Mexico."

The most striking example was an illustration of a soap plant (xiuhamolli) in a Mexican book dated 1552. Tucker and Rexford Talbert, a retired information technology researcher at the US Department of Defense and NASA, connected a total of 37 of the 303 plants, six animals and one mineral illustrated in the Voynich manuscript to 16th century species in the region that lies between Texas, California and Nicaragua. They think many of the plants could have come from what is now central Mexico.

On the basis of these similarities, the pair suggests that the manuscript came from the New World, and that it might be written in an extinct form of the Mexican language Nahuatl. Deciphering the names of these plants could therefore help crack the Voynich code.

Plant forgery

Gordon Rugg of Keele University in the UK remains sceptical. He thinks a careful forger could have made up plausible-looking plants.

"It's pretty good odds that you'll find plants in the world that happen to look like the Voynich manuscript just by chance," he says. "If I sat down with a random plant generator software and got it to generate 50 completely fictitious plants, I'm pretty sure I could find 20 real plants that happen to look like 20 of the made up plants."

Touwaide says the findings are intriguing, but agrees that they form just one of many hypotheses. "I believe that it doesn't prove anything. If it's a forgery, someone could very well have had the idea of creating the forgery on the basis of New World flora. At the most, it shows a possible source of the forgery."

Tucker admits that there is work to be done before they can throw out the hoax hypothesis entirely. But one of the Voynich plants makes him wonder: it looks strikingly similar to Viola bicolor, the American field pansy, which only grows in North America. The distinction between this plant and its European relative, Viola tricolor, was not known until after the Voynich was discovered. Ruling out time travel, says Tucker, how would this have been possible? "If this is a hoax, they did a dang good job and had help from a competent botanist who had knowledge only available after 1912 in some crucial cases." - New Scientist

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TODAY'S TOP LINKS

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Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena, from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory

The Poltergeist Phenomenon: An In-depth Investigation Into Floating Beds, Smashing Glass, and Other Unexplained Disturbances

Ghosts, Apparitions and Poltergeists: An Exploration of the Supernatural through History