Is the crypto creature known as Bigfoot really a religious icon doomed to walk the Earth for his sins? What could possibly doom one man to such a hell?

What if I told you that man was Cain. He who killed Able. Son to Adam and Eve. Maybe you’ve heard of him?

This theory comes according to a 2008 paper by then-Mormon Mentality blogger Matt Bowman. He bases his theory on a 1835 letter describing a meeting between David Patten and Cain.

Patten described the encounter thusly:

“He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death during his sojourn upon the earth, but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men. I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This is further corroborated by a 1919 manuscript which included a reference to an attack by a hairy, talking humanoid described as Cain.

As far as Bigfoot lore goes, this theory provides an out for at least one major hole. Bigfoot would be an immortal creature and not a new species which would explain why he’s so elusive. It’s far more of a challenge to catch one man than a thriving, natural animal bloodline.

Thanks to Tijuana Taxi on Twitter for this tip.

[Syracuse.com]

Oh, Satan you crafty devil. Roughly a year ago, Ol’ Scratch apparently planned a “Halleujah Fest” as a clever marketing ploy because the whole demon thing didn’t test well with church-going demographics. Pastor Terry Anderson exposed the Enemy’s plot last year:

“I heard on the radio of a church advertising a Halleujah Fest. It’s going to be next Sunday, October 31st. Halloween. And, they’re having a Hallelujah Fest not to call it a Halloween celebration. … It’s a Hallelujah Fest where you come with masks, either a animated mask or make your own mask or come as Cinderella come as Dracula come as Jesus come as John the Baptist. It’s a Hallelujah Fest and I think it’s an insidious, clever move of the Devil to have something for Halloween and tack Hallelujah on it and make it seem like it’s not witchcraft. … I don’t think you oughta tack Jesus to Halloween to try to sanctify the devil’s holiday.”

Satan: The Don Draper of Cosmic Evil.

[YouTube]

You might not have noticed, but the world has ended. Harold Camping, the Oakland-based soothsayer who predicted that the world would end in 1994 and in May of 2011 once again foresaw that today would be judgement day. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “But wait, I just bought some Mountain Dew at Safeway and nothing was different. The world can’t have ended.” That’s what you think!

Harold Camping, the Family Radio evangelist who wrongly predicted doomsday back in May, thinks the real end of the world could be today.

In a message on his Web site, Camping declared that today, “at this point, looks like it will be the final end of everything.”

…

Camping also seems to have learned how to better hedge his bets this time “I really am beginning to think as I restudied these matters that there’s going to be no big display of any kind,” he said in an audio address after suffering a stroke in June. “The end is going to come very, very quietly.”

So there! The world totally ended. You were just too busy playing demonic video games and reading satanic books to notice.

[Washington Post]

According to a new documentary airing in Europe, the God of all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam… had a wife.

And her name Asherah.

And she has largely been scrubbed out of the Bible.

And she is probably pissed.

“You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him,” writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. “He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many … or so we like to believe.”

“After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife,” she added.

Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess.

The Asherah theory has been around since 1967 but the recent work of Exeter’s Francesca Stavrakopoulou is most credible evidence found to substantiate the claim.

[Discovery]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Inventions ever conceived.

I think we established that you can always count on Japanese folk and the military to come up with some off the wall inventions but let it be known here and now and for the rest of time that there is only one place to go for a truly weird invention. The apex of oddball, the zenith of zany, the pinnacle of peculiar…the culmination of crazy, the…nadir of normal (I’m running out of steam here gang. I hope that was enough for you. OH, WAIT! One more…), the summit of strange; I’m speaking, of course, of Scientology.

It’s now more commonly know as the E-meter but the Hubbard Electrometer was originally used by L. Ron Hubbard in 1968 for a (*ahem*) scientific experiment with the intention of discerning whether or not tomatoes experience pain.

Crazy? Probably.

Ahead of his time? Definitely.

Maybe if we had listened to L. Ron when he told us he had proven that tomatoes effectively scream in pain when they’re sliced then we wouldn’t have run into that huge Killer Tomato problem we had just ten years later when they finally rose against their transgressors.

Woe is man’s hubris when confronted with the threat of mutant tomatoes with a taste for human blood.

Also, it’s worth noting that the Hubbard Electrometer is basically just a device that measures electrical resistance but with the not-to-be-trifled-with addition of an unproven assertion.

I could be wrong, but it feels like the Hubbard Electrometer is just one step off from me gluing macaroni to the side of a toaster oven and declaring that it can sort ghosts by height. (Hmm…I might be on to something there. Yeah…the Rounsaville Ghosterganizer, coming to a Target near you.)

That’s the last of them gang. What do you think? Who’s going to top the heap in this week’s Weird Off? Will it be:

1. The Solar Powered Bra

2. Military Vuvuzelas

3. Baby’s First Ball Gag

4. The Scan Toaster

5. The Hubbard Electrometer

What order would you put these weirdest of weird inventions in?

In other news: Our pushy and megalomaniacal editor here at weirdthings.com, Mr. Justin Robert Young, has insisted that next week’s Weirdest Topic needs to be both topical and summer related…so he’s suggest Weirdest Murders of All Time. Get pumped, people.

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we chronicle the Rougarou. Come back Wednesday and Friday for more!

The Protestants have always seemed happy with limiting the fate of sinners to eternal suffering in a big torture cave filled with fire and basically every type of snake. Leave it to the Catholics to throw an Earth-dwelling, flesh-eating mutant into the mix.

The French emigrates of the Cajun community had it pretty lousy even before the bloodthirsty, wolf-headed Rougarou shambled out of the swamps all parched and grumpy. A cultural casualty of the French and Indian War, the Cajuns (then known as Acadians, Acadia being the ye olde moniker for the eastern coast of Canada and northern tip of Maine) were ousted by the British. Some were returned to sender on French-bound ships, while others found themselves scurrying southward in search of a replacement home. French-speaking and accustomed to a maritime lifestyle, the Canada-forsaken exiles headed southward through the states, wending their way to the coast of Louisiana, where they could comfortably re-settle along the waters of the Gulf, in a region owned and operated by the French government. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to the wandering Acadians, France had recently signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which, among other things, ceded control and ownership of Louisiana to the Spanish government. Sácre bleu!

Fortunately, both the newly empowered Spaniards and the hang-dog former French Canadians were fervent Roman Catholics, and got along well enough that the Cajuns were allowed to hang out and roll how they rolled. After the Revolutionary War (in which many land-snatching-limey-despising Acadians fought with gusto), thousands of Cajuns returned to New Orleans and Southern Louisiana, some arriving haggard and powder-stained from the battlefront, and others showing up nauseous and gaunt after government-authorized emigrations from France. Resettled and reunited, the former Acadians started a new life amid the swamps, bayous and prairies of Louisiana, where, every spring, the Rougarou lifts his nose and sniffs the air, canvassing the ether for the acrid hint of sin. Upon finding it, he narrows his eyes and bounds onward toward the smell, goaded onward by the promise of struggling, guilty meat, and the colorful warning mess it will leave on the ground.

Click AFTER THE JUMP to find out how even you could become a Rougarou!
Similar to “Wodewose,” the word “Rougarou” is but one of the linguistic variations used to encapsulate this chomp-happy lupine monster man, whose other dialect-variant labels include Roux-Ga-Roux, Rugeroo, Rugaru and, occasionally, Loup-garou. That latter term – “Loup-garou” – is, in all probability, the word from which all of the other spellings and pronunciations derive. Also, it’s French for “werewolf.” And in the same way that the word “Rougarou” riffs on the term “Loup-garou,” so too does the Rougarou legend use European werewolf lore as the pentatonic scale for its terrifying, Catholic jazz variations.

For example: the Rougarou is part man and part wolf, but the parts aren’t all mashed up together in a bipedal hairball of teeth and halitosis – Human body. Wolf head.

The Rougarou isn’t erratic or wild. It doesn’t commit the kinds of savage, random assaults in which traditional werewolves (rooted as their lore was in stories of serial murderers, rapists and the rabid) specialized. The Rougarou kills sinners, especially those who fail to observe the traditions of Lent – a 40-day period, ending with Easter, during which many Christians sects, including the Catholics, pray a whole bunch and give up various Earthly indulgences (alcohol, coffee, drunken barista pornography, etc.) in order to prepare for the anniversary of Christ’s death and resurrection.

The notion of a religiously sponsored werewolf isn’t entirely unique to the Rougarou, either. Back in France, some Catholics had already popularized a version of the secular (a loaded word when used in this decidedly supernatural context) Loup-garou legend in which transformation from human sinner to murderous beast occurred automatically after an individual’s seventh consecutive unobserved lent (still, the resulting monster killed in typical indiscriminate rampage fashion).

Having been raised Catholic myself, I’m all too familiar with the sometimes antic lengths to which the religion’s pedagogues will go to guilt kids into ritualistic piousness. I specify kids because I’m assuming it’s largely these hyperactive, overly curious, free-thinking wastrels that constitute the Rougarou’s key demo. Adults – directly bound to their mortality by sick relatives, dying acquaintances and their own creeping physical ailments – have hell to fear. It’s the children – optimistic, unselfconscious rascals who bask in a false sense of immortality as tragedy after tragedy roll off them like a boulder down a chute trying to kill Indiana Jones – who need a more immediate reason to mind their Ps and sacred religious traditions.
At the same time, the Rougarou doesn’t limit itself to Catholic killings and Lenten justice. That would be inefficient.

Wednesday: Non-Denominational Werewolf

Every generation of teenagers has their own “outsider” sub-culture. Goth, hippie, punk, raver… All pleasantly strange without being scary. But as yet another sign we live in the future, teenagers have finally found a way to freak out even the most die hard counter-culturist. At over a dozen high schools in San Antonio, TX teenagers are transforming into werewolves.

While there isn’t much supernatural about these teens (they put together outfits made of fake tales, novelty contacts, fangs, and dog leashes to approximate the real thing) there is plenty weird about it. The kids involved don’t find it terribly odd though.  To them it’s not a gang or a cult or a sign they need therapy. They consider their pack a support system, which is a something they’ll desperately need to make it through High School dressed as werewolves.

Is this happening elsewhere, or is it just a Texas thing? If you’ve seen a pack of wolves in your town let us know in the comments!

Golems, zombies and familiars – three cultures worth of mystical servants rendered, willingly or by force, from the wilds of nature and the bare, lumbering essence of humanity. This Monday, Wednesday and Friday – His Master’s Voice.

Today: Golems

A standby of early Jewish legend, Golems – humanoid beings shaped from clay and imbued with a mystical life force – were said to serve holy men, and could be used protect the Jewish people during times of conflict and social unrest. The most famous golem tale is set during a rash of anti-Semitic riots in Prague, where a racist priest incited his followers to storm the Jewish ghettos. In response, Judah Loew ben Bezalel, a powerful Rabbi, summoned a golem and commanded it to defend his people and assist in rebuilding their ruined homes. The golem was so devoted to his protective mission that he began violently attacking Catholic inciters, forcing Bezalel to return him to an inanimate state.

According to golem aficionados, a regular human can only shape the Earth into a figure of a man; a practiced, fervent Rabbi can, through a sacred ritual – usually a Hebrew inscription etched into the creature’s head or onto a scrap of parchment pressed into the golem’s body – give the figure life as a conscripted servant of God; God, and only God, can provide a soul, thus converting the being from an earthen grunt into a free-thinking man. Scripture actually portrays Adam as the first golem, a status he retained for only the briefest 12 hours between his construction and his ensoulment.

Not all golem lore is all half-guilty persecutor-maiming victory and triumph–even in the 1600s, many Jewish scholars felt that the ability to divinely summon life was a power that only God should possess. As these authors transcribed their interpretations of Jewish legends, classic golem stories became less about triumphant brandishing of sacred energy and more about the steep price that comes with divine dabbling, a narrative that Mary Shelly echoed in response to the foolhardy bravura of intermittently resurrection-obsessed Romantic Age science. It’s these tales of well-meaning hubris run amok that German filmmaker Paul Wegener embraced in his golem trilogy, the last of which, 1920’s “The Golem: How He Came into the World” immortalized the image of Bezalel’s creature setting fire to the ghetto and laying waste to Prague’s already-suffering Jewish community.

Wednesday – Zombies

Weird Things Culture Researcher Matt Finaly takes a weekly look into the social, political and cultural climates of a populace at the time it was affected by a legendary paranormal, extraterrestrial or cryptid phenomenon. It appears on Tuesdays…

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?

While some details remain fuzzy (one witness reported that Jack actually had pointy ears while another insisted that he wore a large helmet with two points on it), it’s a given that, with the claws and the various points and the long black cloak, Jack’s intention was to appear as much like the devil (or some other lesser, equally stereotypical demon) as possible. With the post-enlightenment era in full swing and the upper-class spiritualist revival still pending, it’s easy to imagine Jack’s rationale: the upper class is retreating into academies and coffee houses to argue over the need for faith and spirituality in a supposedly enlightened society, while the lower class, fearing both the moral and technical ambiguities of science, keeps a firm (but, suddenly, somewhat unsure) hold on not only religion, but also folklore, both of which are rife with demonic and satanic imagery. Imagine being relieved of the possibility of eternal damnation by an academically driven cultural reformation centered on reason and the explicability of the natural world, only to be attacked by a fire-breathing monster. Invoke the devil at a time when society is certain of his existence, and it only serves as terrifying confirmation – invoke the devil at a time when his existence is in question, and chaos ensues.

Moreover, Jack targeted women. Barring all discussion of spiritual terror or academic ennui, the largest threat to women in 19th century England was the prevailing social hierarchy. Women were often married off to distant relations, to the highest bidder or to the highest social advantage, meaning, in many cases, to strangers or casual acquaintances. Innate to English womanhood was the knowledge that, someday, you will leave your home and move in with a husband you don’t know outside of carefully regulated social gatherings and courtship rituals (if even those) – a man whose true personality and domestic demeanor are a complete mystery. You know, and fear, that your husband could turn out to be a slovenly boor, an inattentive malcontent or, worse, a temperamental, abusive monster. There’s something, then, of the hidden evil in men, worn outwardly by Jack, that would seem particularly frightening to the young women he victimized. Admittedly, it’s ridiculous to suggest that Jack’s victims, or Jack himself, consciously contemplated this dimension of Spring Heeled Jack’s imposingness, but the obvious sex profiling that was paramount to Jack’s victim selection justifies the point, and it’s worth considering the perpetual state of psychological duress that the patriarchy held women in, even before someone donned finger blades and started leaping out of darkened alleys.

And what of the spring heels? By 1837, the industrial revolution was enjoying its heyday in London, including the mass production of all nature of machine components, like coiled springs, which began being manufactured in bulk during the 1780s. The wide availability of mechanical sundries, combined with an alleged spate of urban legends involving the devil pursuing a man over the rooftops of the city, could have easily led Jack to the idea of constructing some kind of springed footwear (the first patent for spring shoes wasn’t filed until 1889, but the materials required to build them existed for decades prior) as a means of further solidifying his demonic persona by increasing his jumping ability. Though the construction of a viable pair of such shoes, equipped for both running and jumping, would require certain metallurgic skills and resources, it seems that he did have metal claws constructed for his fingertips. At the same time, Jack’s agility could have just as easily been an inadvertent concoction of hysterical witnesses – an attempt to rationalize the sheer suddenness of the assaults – that was then co-opted and reiterated by policemen who now had an excuse for their inability to apprehend jumping Jack. And though it was two 1837 assaults involving clawing and leaping that earned Spring Heeled Jack his name, it was two 1838 attacks involving fire breathing that transformed the public’s general wariness into bona fide panic.

Most theories of Jack’s true identity cite that he probably came from an upper class, if not aristocratic, background, and his tendency toward flame exhalation only reinforces this notion. The 17th and 18th centuries had seen two prominent British fire eaters gain notoriety among the aristocracy, and, during the 1820s, fire eating and breathing became a common popular upper-class entertainment. A growing fascination with the strange and seemingly mystic cultures of Britain’s Eastern colonies was mounting, and, with the Mughal Empire defeated and India under complete company control, more and more British noblemen were travelling throughout India, where they were captivated by the wondrous and unfamiliar practices of the Hindus, including fire eating and fire breathing, which some Hindu sects utilized in performances demonstrating spiritual attainment rites. It was the perfect time for an aspiring prankster to see and learn the art of fire-breathing, which the returning young aristocrats had re-purposed from a religious ritual into a cheap parlor trick.

While many working class Londoners would have been altogether ignorant of the practice, even those who had seen a fire breathing performance in a theatrical context would be wholly unprepared to see the art used randomly (and threateningly) on the streets of London, and (even if the person performing wasn’t dressed as a demon) would find it frightening. Take the analog of today’s guerilla magic fad – guerilla magic works precisely because, by removing the traditional physical environs of a performance, the intangible barrier between performer and audience is shattered, creating extremes of both surprise and veracity that don’t exist naturally within the confines of traditional spectatorship. Jack exploited this fact to add the last (and most convincing) attribute to his marauding devil – hellfire.

As if all of the physical trappings of a demon weren’t enough to send the women of London into a collective fit, Jack added one more thing: self-awareness. On February 19th, Jane Alsop heard at knock at the door of her father’s house. Upon opening it, a man concealed by shadows told her he was a police officer and asked her to fetch a light. “We have caught Spring Heeled Jack here in the lane” he said. Upon handing him a candle, the man threw off his cloak, revealing pointed ears and bulging eyes. He spewed flame towards the girl and then began to tear at her clothes and her skin with his claws until, finally, her sister came to her rescue, and the assailant fled.

To think of a monster that haunts the dark streets and stalks prey out of an unquenchable, instinctual thirst for blood or violence is scary, but the idea of a creature calling out its own name, a name assigned to it by its victims, as a means of exploiting that fear, is something all together more terrifying. As much as you can blame popular culture for later propagating the legend of Spring Heeled Jack through Penny Dreadfuls and stage plays, leading to further sightings and, supposedly, copy cats, it was only weeks after appearing in the news that the man who was Jack began propagating his own legend, breathing the three chilling syllables – Spring Heeled Jack – into the air of a warm London home, before spitting fire and baring his claws and insisting with every pouncing, cackling ounce of his being that this monster was real.

In retrospect, though, away from the fog-shrouded gas lights and the sharp echo of boots on cobbled streets sounding out into the wind-haunted spaces between buildings, it’s this self-awareness (self-centeredness, really) that most belies the true mortal nature of Spring Heeled Jack. After all, Bigfoot isn’t known for pyrotechnic displays and sponsorship deals, and Nessie has yet to strike poses mid back flip. Jack may as well have said, “Pay no attention to the man behind the cloak.”

Matt Finley is a regular contributor to Weird Things and is currently based in Cleveland. His works can be found at Finfizzler.wordpress.com.

During the course of this holiday weekend packed with alcohol, fire works and alcohol it’s likely you worried about your mortality. Well take heart in the tale of James Leininger, a young boy whose family claims he is the reincarnated soul of a World War II fighter pilot.

Leininger first began spooking his parents with a preternatural understanding of antique military aircraft, followed by gory crayon drawings of aerial battles with Japanese airplanes which gave way to horrific night terrors involving a violent, suffocating death inside a cockpit. Little Jimmy’s parents eventually narrowed down which soldier’s soul was trapped inside their son after the boy mentioned a specific aircraft carrier he was stationed on.

They’ve since “confirmed” their findings with the pilot’s family and war buddies.

Also, you can read about this experience in their NEW BOOK Soul Survivor AVAILABLE NOW at all your finer literary retailers.

Thanks to Weird Things reader John Houdi for the tip on this story.

You thought the Catholic Church was done persecuting witches. Well, they are at it again, this time in Stockport, UK.

High Priestess Amethyst Selmeselene (also known as Sandra Davis, grandmother of 11) attempted to rent out “Our Lady’s Social Club” for her group’s annual Witch’s Ball. When she went to pay for the venue she had secured, she was turned away and told that the Roman Catholic Church, which owns the facility, had blocked her from renting the center.

Her goal was to attract a crowd of people to do obscene and ungodly things like have a buffet dinner and dance to an ABBA tribute band.
Though we can fault High Priestess Selmeselene for her taste in music, we can’t fault her for wanting to get down and have a good time with her women’s group.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Shewsbury told Ananova News that “Parish centers under our auspices let their premises on the understanding users and their organisations are compatible with the ethos and teachings of the Catholic church.” And apparently that means a no go for pagan partying.

When will the Catholics leave those poor witches alone? When will they finally be free to dance to bad eighties music while talking shop around a bubbling cauldron? I guess the Church decided that if they can’t burn them, they should at least be able to ban them from their rec. center.

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.

Vyacheslav Agapov and Konstantin Chiliskin were unsuccessful, amateur treasure hunters from the Kaluga Region of Russia, who were searching for buried coins with a metal detector in Velino Village. Behind the long standing Velino Church, built in 1772, they struck pay day, or more accurately a jewel studded pot that contained religious icons. On the side of the pot was an engraving that read: ““Property of Velino Church”.

Both men immediately felt uneasy about the previous owner of their big find. After all, ancient Russian armies are one thing, god is in a league unto his own. But Apapov and Chiliskin did not let their apprehensions stop them from calling a friend named Roman, who immediately contacted antique dealer who offered the treasure hunters $20,000 for everything they had, no questions asked.

Moments went by as Roman, Agapov and Chiliskin tried to decide what to do with their loot, then apparently god stepped in to assist in their decision making process. Roman reported hearing a mysterious voice and feeling someone hit him on the back of the shoulder repeatedly. After this incident, the group decided it might be best to return the religious relics to the church.

You’ve all heard of the infamous case of the Virgin Mary Toast, but what happens when a holy image is seared into the cooking surface instead of the food? According to The Associated Press:

“The hottest thing on the griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant these days isn’t the food. It’s the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that a cook says she saw in the griddle. Restaurant manager Brenda Martinez said more than a hundred people have flocked to the small town of Calexico on the California-Mexico border to gaze at the image since it was discovered as the griddle was being cleaned.”

There have been no photo released as of yet, because the griddle in question has been “enshrined” in a storage closet for the time being. But if you need corroboration, a Mexican Wrestler, known as Mr. Tempest, stopped by the restaurant with a group of other Luchadors on his way to a bout, and called the griddle a miracle. So to give you an idea of what we’re talking about here, on the right is the Virgin Mary Toast that sold for $28,000 on eBay. We hope this incident gets just as many spoofs as the toast, but images on a griddle seem a little harder to replicate than images on a piece of bread.

I know, I know, we thought it was weird for the Pope to be in Australia as well. Wait a minute, that’s no Pope. That’s no Pope at all. That’s just a wily man protesting the Pope’s visit during World Youth Day. Charges were dropped earlier this week against Ian Bryce, the perpetrator of the hoax, who took to the streets of Sydney in his makeshift Pope Mobile to protest the Pontiff’s arrival. He had been formally charged with distracting motorists on the day of his protest, so we’re sure that all of you out there who were rooting for Ian will be most pleased to hear the court’s decision.

Mr. Barnabas Kazibwe Mutume: Purported Faith Healer
Image Credit: MICHAEL J. SSALI

You’d think the Catholic Church would be more supportive of its faith healing clergy members. A couple of days ago, Bishop John Baptist Kaggwa of Masaka, Uganda, suspended local Sacristan Mr. Barnabas Kazibwe Mutume from his priestly duties. Why? Because of his purported ability to heal the sick and downtrodden with prayer. News of Mutume’s miraculous healing powers has spread by word of mouth, causing those in need of medical attention to try out spiritual healing in desperation. And thousands of all denominations have flocked to his makeshift church to be healed.

What is his secret healing method you ask? He simply prays for them, reciting holy words familiar to the Catholic Faith. But he also encourages them to pray for themselves, giving other Catholics prayers to recite on their own and encouraging Muslims and Protestants to pray in their own way.

Protestants and Muslims and faith healers, oh my! Needless to say, all this interfaith hubbub did not sit well with the Catholic Church. According to the Sunday Monitor:

John Baptist Kaggwa…says [Mutume's] healing powers are not in line with the Catholic doctrine and that he is increasingly finding it hard to guide him…On March 14, bishop Kaggwa put a ban on the pilgrimages by all Catholics, warning that whoever goes there to pray or to seek help would be suspended from sacramental life and in the event of their death no Catholic prayers would be said during their burial.

Harsh Kaggwa, real harsh. Even so, there are no shortage of healed people willing to vouch for Mutume’s gift from god, even if the Pontiff and his posse aren’t down with it. The Church put together a crack squad of priests to monitor the miracles of Mutume and in part, based their ban on lack of substantiating evidence that Mutume’s miracles heal anyone, making the Catholic authorities the unlikely skeptics.

-For anecdotes and reports of Mutume’s miracles, see the original Sunday Monitor Article.

Pilgrims have been flocking to the small, Central Mexican town Muñoz de Domingo Arenas to witness a reported miracle at a burger shack. But are the fries really just that good, or is there an apparition of Jesus reflected in the glass window of the building? You guessed it, it’s the latter. We think the below quote from the Latin American Herald sums it up nicely:

“The image can only be seen at night because it is produced by the reflection cast by a lamp of a post and the shadow of a tree, said the daily Reforma, which published a photo of the place with the image and the pilgrims in front of it… Meanwhile, hamburgers and hot-dog sales have boomed thanks to the faithful flocking in.”

It makes good sense from a practical viewpoint to have a miracle at a burger joint. If you want your spiritual and stomach needed sated in one go, but don’t have the time or money to go see Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, then Muñoz de Domingo Arenas is the place for you.

photo credit: Pacific Yooper

Clergy from the Vatican are investigating the case of a purported miracle in Ohio. Jory Aebly was shot in the head at point blank range during a robbery in Cleveland. The doctors called it a “non-survivable injury”. But Aebly somehow survived. What was his miraculous recovery attributed to?

Not the paramedics, not the neurosurgeon who worked furiously to save his life, not the team of doctors and nurses that kept him alive. In a press conference on ABC News, Father Art Snedeker, from the Pastoral Care Team at the Cleveland Hospital where Aebly was treated, attributed the miraculous recovery to a rosary that had been blessed by John Paul II when he had traveled through Ohio. Father Snedeker also said that he had specifically asked John Paul II in prayer to watch over this patient.

Hundreds of cases of miracles attributed to Pope John Paul II have been reported since his death, but so far the Vatican has not been able to substantiate a single claim that John Paul II has been pulling strings from beyond the grave. Whether or not the Ex-Pope had anything to do with Aebly’s recovery, the progression of medical science sure is making it harder to kill people.

photo credit: klbw

Do you feel you should pray more, but don’t have enough time to devote to traditional prayer? Some innovative entrepreneurs at informationageprayer.com may be able to help you out. They have created a web service that will pray for you for a nominal fee:

Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget.

We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying. Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of the subscriber displayed on screen.

The web site has a blue vertical bar on its left hand side where you can select from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Unaffiliated or Other Religions. Out of curiosity we tried clicking ‘Other Religions’ only to find that they are not yet supported by Information Age Prayer. For now the site remains a monotheistic prayer service. Popular prayer choices include the Lord’s Prayer for Christians, the Shema for Jews and the Salat for Muslims.

To get the Catholic Morning Prayer voiced daily for you at their facility cost $19.95 a month. Are your children not praying daily anymore? The prayer for the children is their cheapest option at only $1.99 a month, a small price to pay to keep your child in God’s favor. There are no shortage of prayers to be had on the site. You can buy a single month or subscribe to have ongoing monthly service. Prices are decided by the length of the prayer and how often it is said.

So here is how it works: You pay for your prayer of choice. It is sent to a computer at ‘The Information Age Prayer Location’. Your name comes up on the screen and the prayer is spoken aloud for you by a text to speech synthesizer and then percolates through the universe where it is presumably picked up on by your supernatural deity of choice.

We are dying to know what their facility looks likes. We imagine matrix-like rows upon rows of computers and speakers spitting out prayers, creating a cacophony of sound. We sent an e-mail to the creators asking for official pictures of the facility to sate our curiosity, we’re still waiting to hear back from them. But rest assured that once we do they’ll be posted on weirdthings.com.

For those of you with questions about the efficacy or theological implications of automated prayer, the site’s webmaster has created a nifty FAQ to assuage your concerns:

-Is it wrong to charge for prayers?
The fees assure our customers that we are the most reliable service provider for Information Age Prayer. While most companies only donate a small portion of profits to charity, Information Age Prayer donates a full 10% of revenue to charity before subtracting our operating costs. For more information see our terms of use. If you are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and would like us to donate to you see this page.

-Are prayers blasphemous when voiced by a computer?
We recommend you contact your local clergy for a personal answer, however we think that Information Age Prayer is a new and exciting way to connect with God.

-Can I get a direct Peer to Peer connection with God?
God is not your peer, His connection with you is ever-present. What we offer is a way you can tell God that you think of Him every day with our Information Age Prayer Services.

Too bad about the P2P connection. For those of you who are thanking the heavens right now that you have been absolved from the grind of daily prayer, you might want to check their privacy disclaimer before you unfold your hands and get off your knees:

Your privacy is protected, all prayers are not audible outside of the Information Age Prayer location. While it is certain that God hears the prayers, we cannot guarantee that other supernatural beings do not overhear or otherwise obtain knowledge of them.

So stay ever vigilant against prayer interception from other supernatural entities. But with no guarantees, perhaps traditional prayer hasn’t been relegated to the 20th century just yet. You don’t want a message intended for God to end up in the hands of some fiendish demon. But isn’t that a risk you take even when you’re praying yourself?

Polls suggest that 95 percent of the population of the United States believe they will survive their own death. I can’t help wondering how many people who claim such belief really, in their heart of hearts, hold it. If they were truly sincere, shouldn’t they all behave like the Abbot of Ampleforth? When Cardinal Basil Hume told him that he was dying, the abbot was delighted for him: ‘Congratulations! That’s brilliant news. I wish I was coming with you.’ The abbot, it seems, really was a sincere believer. But it is precisely because it is so rare and unexpected that his story catches out attention….wouldn’t you expect that religious people would be the least likely to cling unbecomingly to earthly life?

-From “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins

A study published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association might shed some light on Dawkins’ question. The Study is called ‘Religious Coping and Use of Intensive Life-Prolonging Care Near Death in Patients With Advanced Cancer’. Researchers interviewed hundreds of patients with advanced stages of cancer at Hospitals and Cancer Centers around the US. The results are quite interesting. According to a livescience article about the study:

The patients identified as positive religious copers — those who relied on faith to handle death and other trying times — were almost three times as likely to seek and receive life-prolonging care such as ventilators.

These religious copers were also less likely to have completed advance medical directives, such as living wills or do-not-resuscitate orders that would limit the potential intervention near the end.

It seems there is a positive correlation between faith and postponing one’s own demise in times of desperation. We are going to put forward a couple of possible hypotheses as to why this is:

1. Desperate people, fearing their own demise, are more likely to exhaust as many options as possible to prevent their death (ex: near death intensive medical intervention).

The same people, because of their desperation, are also more likely to seek out and use coping strategies, like faith, for comfort in the face of their own mortality. What is humanity’s most popular coping strategy for the dying? Religion.

People who have accepted their mortality and have resolved to die gracefully are less likely to seek last minute medical intervention and are less likely to need or seek coping strategies. The more one fears death, the more likely one is to use religion for comfort when facing it.

2. Faith has been shown to be an effective coping strategy because it can give people hope, comfort and a positive, optimistic outlook. Hopeful, comforted, optimistic people are more likely to put up a fight to survive than people who have given up hope and are waiting to die.

More research would be needed to verify either of these hypotheses or to falsify them both, but the study does draw a compelling correlation and we like to speculate.

You’ve heard of extraterrestrials, you’ve heard of angels, now comes….wait for it….Extraterrestrial Angels. The UFOlogists over at alienresistance.org argue the biblical evidence for aliens and explore the crossover between alien encounters and angelic visitations.

For example, aliens abduct people and according to the site:

The Bible teaches that certain angelic beings routinely abducted human women during the days of Noah, both before the great flood “…and also afterward…” (Genesis 6:1-4).

Coincidence? You decide.