We are bumping up this week’s Weirdest Thing in the World from Friday to Thursday since we have previously scheduled travel plans tomorrow at the normal time. So… here is your mission. Find me the weirdest creature on this planet that flies.

Rules:

– No cryptids
– It can be of any era, so dinosaurs are in play
– If the creature is no longer alive, the illustration has to be from some kind of official source. So no album covers of some metal band with a badass terradactyl gripping a busty maiden whilst souring over a war torn countryside

Email all submissions to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail. I’ll see you kids in the Weird Things TinyChat room at 5:30 p.m. EST where we will hash out the ultimate champion.

Our baseline is going to be this crazy looking bat, find me something weirder.

Yet another reason why M. Night Shyamalan is full of it.

According to recently declassified Russian documents, most encounters with alien craft happen near oceans and lakes. This reported by the Svobodnaya Pressa news website.

“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said.

On one occasion a nuclear submarine, which was on a combat mission in the Pacific Ocean, detected six unknown objects. After the crew failed to leave behind their pursuers by maneuvering, the captain ordered to surface. The objects followed suit, took to the air, and flew away.

In the 2000 Shyamalan film Signs, an alien invasion is thwarted by a Pennsylvania farm family who realizes the creature’s only weakness is exposure to water. We await further research to test other M. Night theories including the deadliness of temperamental trees and how to react if you find Bryce Dallas Howard in your pool.

It’s the Bo Duke of pork.

Some call it The Cove Pig, the politically minded refer to it as Freedom Pig for it’s uncanny ability to throw off the shackles of an oppressive government and run wild.

The New York Times chronicles the wild adventures of an officially unnamed feral pig, currently clomping through the backwoods of Panama City, FL. Although it’s been spotted many times and even after taken a taser and four tranquilizer darts during one capture attempt last week, the porky rascal continues to steal into the Sunshine State summer with supernatural stamina.

Local paper The News Herald is even keeping a Google Map for reported sightings.

Cove Pig’s elusive nature has earned it a local celebrity with many Northern Florida residents rooting for it to continue evading police capture, which it has successfully for five months and counting. The snap you see to the right are shirts being sold at a local rest stop.

We’re going to keep you up to date on the hunt for this clearly gifted swine.

Interim Editor Justin Robert Young interviews the elusive Sasquatch in this short clip. Head to LivingSasquatch.com to make your own video.

Thanks to John Houdi for the tip.

Thank you to everyone (including Brett “Amtrekker” Rounsaville) who visited our Weird Things deliberation chamber today to hash out our first ever Weirdest Thing In The World competition. Arising victorious was the Dumbo Octopus, who captured our imaginations and stole our hearts with his Peep-like demeanor and what looks to be a tiny nubbin for a nose.

Please subscribe to WeirdThingsCom on Twitter for more fun events as well as the announcement for next week’s Weirdest Thing In The World.

And this guy, sent in by Brian Brushwood is in the lead for the crown!

Come join us at TinyChat.com/WeirdThings!

As this site continues to grow, I’ve come to realize that the few readers we have are incredibly passionate about this brand of oddity. So in that vein I introduce a new reoccurring Friday feature, The Weirdest Thing In The World.

The game is simple, each week I will name a category and you folks have to find me weirder examples of said topic. For example, if the category was “self-modified faces” we might start with a picture of Mike Tyson’s face tattoo which would be trumped by Cat Man and so it goes until we have crowned a winner.

The final decision will be made in our Weird Things TinyChat room at 5 p.m. EST. So basically as soon as you’ve finished your work for the day just click over and see the Weirdest Thing In The World to start your weekend!

The first installment of this series will be… Sea Creatures. The only rules are that the specimens have to be real, so no cryptids. The picture above of a Abdopus abaculus is where the bar is set. Find me something weirder… I dare you.

Send all photos to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail. Good hunting and see you at 5 p.m. EST!

Pretty much and open and shut case. Man bikes home from concert, gets thrown from bike by mysterious forces, remembers he’s made some terrible jokes about the recently deceased King of Pop, blames Michael Jackson’s ghost for scraping up his face.

I had already been joking that MJ’s ghost pushed me off my bike in retaliation. In lieu of of other convincing causes I’m going with that one. Maybe I will learn some humility from this, seeing how now I can barely go out in public without a mask for a while. There may be something to the old saying “always speak well of the dead.” Even if it is Wacko Jacko!

The World Tour rolls on!

In 1837, something dark and quick began hunting women on the streets of London, pouncing upon them from the shadows and going to work on their clothes with razor talons and flaming breath, only to disappear seconds later, leaping silently over impossibly high hedges and rooftops, leaving behind only the shrill, hollow ghost of maniacal laughter and, of course, a panicked victim.

Descriptions of Spring Heeled Jack varied over the 65 years that he laid siege to London’s gas lit back alleys and dark urban bowers, but early witnesses (somewhat) consistently agree that he sported large pointed ears, an equally pointy nose, bulging eyes, sharp claws, the ability to breathe fire and a penchant for agile escapes via inhumanly powerful jumps (hence his media-coined moniker).

John Thomas Haines’ 1840 play, Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London, marked the first official appearance of Jack in a popular entertainment (he had already become a staple of various Punch and Judy street puppet shows), which was followed by a rash of both sightings and corresponding sensationalized fictionalizations throughout the 1840s and ‘50s. In the name of both topicality and word economy, however, we aim to focus on the years prior to Jack’s assimilation into the everyday pop cultural dialogue of Victorian England.

Accepting, as many experts do, that the initial attacks between 1837 and 1838 were perpetrated by a still-anonymous (though one Henry de La Poer Beresford, dubbed “The Mad Marquess,” is a prime suspect) malicious, costumed prankster, and noting that the perpetrator’s image and misdeeds became the stuff of pop culture legend, the question must be posed: What overriding cultural factors contributed the specific physical attributes that the misogynistic hoaxer built into his monster? In short, why was a quick-footed, fire-breathing demon the obvious avatar for blind dread and mass hysteria in 19th century London?

(more…)

The Apollo 11 moon landing happened 40 years ago toady, or as 6% of the country believe according to a new survey, one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated hoodwinked the world at large.

Here are five videos that help document the intervening four decades dotted with controversy, analysis, British people and Buzz Aldrin’s devastating right cross.

(more…)

After much speculation the bio blob spotting floating off the coast of Alaska has been identified as common marine algae.

Here’s the official wording:

“We got the results back from the lab today,” said Ed Meggert of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation in Fairbanks on Thursday. “It was marine algae.”

Miles of the thick, dark gunk had been spotted floating between Barrow and Wainwright, prompting North Slope Borough officials and the Coast Guard to investigate last week. A sample was sent to a DEC lab in Anchorage, where workers looked at it under a microscope and declared it some kind of simple plant — an algae, Meggert said.

Everyone consult your office pool and notify the winners to collect from the treasurer.

Robots will one day, systematically, dismantle humanity. Our cries for mercy falling on the literal tin ears of our vengeful creations. But until that time, they’ll settle for creeping us the hell out.

Join us and we take a walk through a rogue’s gallery of the creepiest robots on The Internet via this handy YouTube playlist. To toggle through the videos, please utilize the arrows on either side of the picture.

CLICK AFTER THE JUMP for the full tour. (more…)

The one man who could have taken a picture of what really crashed in Roswell, NM in 1947 was bamboozled by a military escort into blowing his only chance to capture intergalactic history. That is the story told by an ailing Allan Grant, a legendary photographer for LIFE magazine dispatched to the desert to document “a meteorite.”

Last year, a dying Allen told blogger Anthony Bragalia, he had since became convinced that his military escort was there to make sure he didn’t got near the real wreckage of what crashed. Grant’s wife crystallized her late husband’s points.

Grant’s widow continues, “You take them someplace near -but not exactly to- the spot. Show the world there’s nothing there- and everybody is happy and relieved, and you can go about your business.” She believes that “perhaps they thought you could keep other media out of there if need be by saying that Life has already been there, and they found nothing.” And she was right- no mainstream media reported on the event after the first wire stories based on military press releases.

Before Allan died, he told Karin that he always believed that he was “used” by the military as a “potential cover” to in some way obfuscate something. He told her that the “something” what he had always thought -even at the time- was much bigger- an unidentified flying object.

Very interesting read.

It’s the bane of any parent. Your school-aged children shoot a rudimentary “UFO sighting” video, it gets uploaded to YouTube, the troublemakers are thrilled when it sparks debate but just as your little darlings have filled themselves to the brim with delight, other YouTubers “pirate” the clip and repackage it for themselves. Or something.

Such is the issue facing Mark Obmascik, a columnist for the Denver Post who chronicled the amusing story behind the video above.

The good news is, as far as we can tell, the original video still dominates any of the knock-offs in terms of views with 80,000+.

We’ve unfortunately lost the email of the reader who sent this in, feel free to identify yourself in the comments and we’ll update the post.

Few people have found the elusive Giant Palouse Earthworm (GPE for short), a mythical dirt worm allegedly slipping through the soil of Northwestern Idaho and Washington State. Documented collections of the species have only occurred in 1978, 1988, 1990 and 2005.

Some local farmers even compare reported glimpses of the GPE to Elvis sightings.

But that hasn’t stopped a small, vocal contingent from doing anything they can to find more examples of the chubby, 3-foot-long worm. A new expedition is under way which hopes to entice the GPE out of the ground with chemicals and electric shock. Meanwhile, there is a renewed optimism that the GPE can be listed as an endangered species.

Conservation groups quickly petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the worm as an endangered species, citing as proof the lack of sightings. But the agency said there simply was not enough scientific information to merit a listing.

Conservationists recently filed a second request, saying they had more information. They are also hoping the Obama administration will be more friendly than the Bush administration. The GPE would be the only worm protected as an endangered species.

Doug Zimmer of the Fish and Wildlife Service in Seattle said the agency isn’t ready to comment on the petition.

“It’s always good to see new information and good science on any species,” Zimmer said.

Also, the picture with this story is nowhere near what the GPE really looks like, here is a picture of the only known example of it, it does however look really cool.

Previously, this week, on Weird Things.

• A few tips for the novice Bigfoot hunter.

• Could the Son of Sam, a UFO investigating Air Force base and the birth of popular science fiction have helped create the Dover Demon?

• Michael Jackson may be dead, but his ghost is on a world tour.

• What happens, when myriad ghosts, have chosen to haunt a house, stop beings polite and start getting real? They say some really kooky stuff, that’s what.

• Rhode Island has never had a Bigfoot sighting, but that might be about to change.

Enjoy the weekend, as always, send weird photos, stories, sounds and happenings to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail.