photo credit: ?Lady M?

Santa Maria Stella Maris church in Fiumicino, Italy has decided to stop offering holy water for members of the public to bless with, amid fears that the water may be being stolen for satanic purposes. Walter Palombi, Parish Priest told Italian Newspapers that:

“We have motives to believe that these are used for a ‘black mass’ (satanic mass). Usually the person who carries out these practices needs items that are ‘blessed’ as well as holy water.”

So no more holy water for the faithful Italians of Fiumicino. Satanic ritual scares became popular in Italy during the 1980’s and 90’s, more recently in 2004, fears of satanic ritual cults have sprung up again.

The Gray Brothers were filming their latest documentary called “Supernatural Investigator : The White Mountain Abduction” when they became the luckiest film crew in the world.

They were interviewing relatives of Betty and Barney Hill, the first couple ever to come forward claiming alien abduction, when the lights appeared in the sky. Perfect timing, and even more perfect timing to promote the documentary.

photo credit: John Biehler

Zwolen, Poland: The morgue technicians at a hospital found the body of an 84-year-old woman moving in her body bag. They immediately alerted doctors, who came in and verified that the woman’s vital functions had returned.

Her husband had called for an ambulance after she fell unconscious in a nearby village. She was then pronounced dead by a medical examiner at the hospital.

We don’t know many other details, but we do know that someone is going to lose their job over this. How creeped out would you be if you woke up in a body bag?

photo credit: aresauburn™

Space.com posted an article last week about a boy being hit in the hand with a meteorite. Since then the online community has been abuzz, some excited, some crying fraud.

The details of the event itself are sketchy and vague, though the meteorite reportedly left a scar on the boy’s hand before drilling a crater into the ground. We talked to Astronomer Phil Plait about the incident. He gives a great breakdown of the case on his website Bad Astronomy.

Us: So do you think it is at all likely that the kid was hit with a meteorite?

Phil: It’s possible, but there are too many holes in the story. I’m pretty suspicious of this for the obvious reasons — it’s pretty unlikely — but a lot of the story doesn’t add up. He was on his way to school on what’s obviously a suburban street, but no one else saw the flash, the bang, him getting hit? Plus, the Telegraph article misquotes the scientist, so it seems like this is less and less likely the more and more I look at it.”

The Bad astronomer alerted us to the existence of photographs of the boy, crater and meteorite on a German Newspaper’s website. He believes that the impact crater in the photo is probably a fake.

But if confirmed, this incident will be one of the only known direct meteorite strikes that has occurred since Ann Hodges was struck with a grapefruit size meteorite in 1954, the first known incident in human history. We aren’t holding our breaths just yet.

Bobby Clarke, a ferry boat driver from Manitoba, took this Bigfoot footage in 2005. The short film, taken with an out of focus camcorder created lots of media buzz and lead to a Bigfoot investigation by now defunct news program “A Current Affair”. Cryptomundo recounts the incident and reviews the tape. Do you think it’s really worth a second look?

Credit: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH

Down, down, two miles below the surface of a Greenland glacier, in sub-zero temperatures inhospitable to most existing life, a new form of bacteria was discovered frozen in time. A team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania played microbial Frankenstein and revived the tiny bacteria now dubbed Herminiimonas glaciei.

The debate still continues over whether the bacteria had been reproducing at an incredibly slow metabolic rate for thousands of years, or if they lay dormant as spores for the elapsed time. Either way, the discovery of these microscopic critters gives insight into what bacteria might be like that exist in similar harsh climates on other planets.

This pulsating UFO over Erlanger, Kentucky caught the attention of a local camera man. It almost looks like a cursor on a computer for the first few seconds, before being shot up close.

Above is a stabilized version of the latest purported video of Champ the Monster of Lake Champlain. Compare that to the video of a common fresh water otter below, and the mystery of Lake Champlain starts to unravel. Check out the updated investigation on Cryptomundo.com, complete with enhanced videos of the sighting.

About a minute into this video you start thinking that this is just going to be a guy looking around his empty bathroom with a video camera for five minutes, but watch the sliding glass door of the shower. We don’t know why this guy had no audible reaction when he saw that ghostly figure, we would have been shouting expletives while running out the door.

photo credit: trodel_wiki

You thought that one natural disaster was bad enough, scientists have now concluded from a five year study on the island of Taiwan, that the typhoons wreaking havoc from the sky, are also responsible for earthquakes on the island.

Not to worry though, the tremors are a specific kind of quake known as slow earthquakes. According to Breitbart News:

Slow quakes entail a slippage in the fault that unfolds progressively over hours or days, rather than a sudden, violent release of the kind that destroys buildings and lives.

So these quakes are actually a good thing, dispelling potential energy over a long period of time that could have been unleashed in a short, devastating earthquake. Out of a total of twenty slow quakes detected by underground sensors in Taiwan, eleven of them coincided with typhoons, confirming that, at least in Taiwan’s case, natural disasters come in pairs.

Speaking of Richard Wiseman, we almost forgot to give you the results of the great twitter ESP experiment we posted on a couple of weeks ago. Watch this video that explains it all. Results were negative for proof of ESP.

Read Wiseman’s write up on it here.

Super-heavy element 112 is now on the scene, more than ten years since it’s creation at the Center for Heavy Ion Research in Germany. And it needs a name. Internet sensation Professor Richard Wiseman believes it should be called Kryptonite, and has started a campaign on his blog to make it so.

If you ask us, it’s about damn time someone put kryptonite on the periodic table. To get on board with the campaign please post your support on his site, and together we can make our universe a little more like the Superman universe.

Note: This won’t change much for the majority of the population, who always thought that kryptonite was an element anyway.

This video was taken on June 6th by a couple of guys who were lounging around at their Maryland apartment complex.

The Ishikawa region of central Japan has been receiving downpours of baby frogs this month. A number of cities, including Nanao and Hakusan have experienced hundreds of tadpoles falling from the sky.

The bizarre rain is a rare meteorological phenomena that has occurred before in many parts of the globe. The animals are usually fish or frogs and are often alive when they fall to the ground. Scientists have yet to explain the cause of this baffling occurrence, but one hypotheses suggests that the fish and frogs are swept up in strong winds from waterways before being dumped on the cars of unsuspecting Japanese businessmen.

Image Cedit: AP

The future of robotics is here and it has never looked so tasty. The star of the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo was the Okonomiyaki Robot, pictured above flipping pancakes on the griddle. The robot operates autonomously from mixing ingredients to serving up the hotcakes.

photo credit: phoenixlily

Portobello Aquarium, New Zealand: Sid the Octopus is finally set free after several successful escape attempts from his tank. An article in The Independent reports on his daring escape attempts:

Octopuses are some of the smartest creatures in the animal kingdom, it’s what makes them such good escape artists. Not having a spine doesn’t hurt either.