We are still unsure of the exact details on where but on the Weirdest Thing in the World chat today at 5:30 p.m. we are going to announce the official final line-up of celebrity word donors for our big Halloween Houdini Seance.

Other than that we’ll go over some of our weirdest stories of the week and maybe even have a little mini-challenge to find the Weirdest Element of Houdini’s Life.

Got a suggestion or a topic you want us to touch on, email JustinRobertYoung@Gmail.

It all goest down today at 5:30 p.m. EST on the Weirdest Thing In The World live chat. Believe…

Smoking Hills of Centralia

How is started is unclear, but one thing is certain: it never stopped. The town of Centralia, PA is now the least populated in all of Pennsylvania, with an estimated population of seven individuals. In 1962, the town boasted close to 1000 residents, and they had their own landfill in the hills above town. Stories vary, but at some point, a fire started in the dump – a fairly common and sometimes desired event. But Centralia is located in the heart of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region, and an exposed seam in the dump caught fire and spread underground.

While a fire burning underground may not seem like a big deal, it had a big effect. Over the years, people began to notice strange things… basements were warm in the winter, road maintenance was increasing, and there were patches where snow would melt quickly. One gas station attendant was testing fuel levels and was surprised when the dipstick came up hot. He lowered a thermometer and was astonished to find a reading of 171ºF.

In the 1980’s, a boy was playing in his backyard only to have hell open up beneath him. A four foot wide hole some 150 feet deep engulfed him, though he was lucky enough to grab on to some roots where his cousin could reach down and save him. A few more feet, and he would have been overcome by the intense heat and noxious gases. How hot? Hotter than the planet Mercury at over 1000ºF.

When the highway started to buckle and smolder (it is now completely abandoned, with an awkward detour as you travel by Centralia), the state came in and declared eminent domain, forcing residents to move to nearby towns. Though nearly all of the town’s structure were razed, some folks refused to move, claiming that the government was after the estimated $1,000,000,000 in coal beneath the town.

If that was the government’s goal, they’d better hurry. Though an estimated $50,000,000 has been spent trying to fight the fires, they’re still burning strong. There is a constant mist over the town visible for miles, and residents from other towns fear that eventually, the fire will spread to them.

Abandoned PA Route 61 Continues to Burn

You can drive through Centralia today, though you’ll see only empty streets and maybe some smoking pipes sticking out of the ground. The adventurous may even travel down the smoking highway, as Alison Smith and I (foolishly) did last September.

And for you Silent Hill fans out there – it’s true. Centralia is the basis for the video game series, though we found no haunted schools or malevolent ghoulies.

The real stuff was scary enough.

It was June 6, 1822, on Mackinac (Big Turtle) Island, in Lake Huron. 18-year old Alexis St. Martin was working at a fur trading depot, when an accidental musket shot tore a hole through his ribs and stomach, exposing his viscera. Several ribs were broken, his lungs and diaphragm were damaged, and a hole was torn into his actual stomach. William Beaumont, MD was summoned from nearby Fort Mackinac and attended to the boy’s wounds.

It was a serious case. Though the lad was stabilized – bleeding stopped and no signs of infection – there was a very practical problem with digestion: the food he ate came out of the hole in his side. For weeks, he could obtain no nutrition from anything ate, forcing the doctor to give him nutritive enemas in order to sustain life.

In time, the addition of straps allowed the fistula to heal and digestion returned to as normal a state as could be expected. However, the hole though his abdomen and into his stomach never closed fully. In fact, the walls of the stomach fused with the exterior skin, creating a permanent window into Alexis’ digestive system.

At the time, almost nothing was known of digestion. Food went in, waste came out, and somehow in the middle nutrients were extracted. Dr. Beaumont saw an opportunity. In what would certainly be considered an ethical violation in modern times, Beaumont got Alexis to agree to be his servant. His role would include chopping wood, fetching bundles, and allowing Dr. Beaumont to experiment on him in rather unique ways.

The doctor was a man of science, and lost no opportunity to learn as much as he could. He tied bits of string to food, and lowered into the hole in Alexis’ side. After a time, he would pull the food back out and observe its condition. Some food was left in longer or given longer pieces of string. Much probing and measurement occurred, not only with fingers and instruments, but also with the Dr.’s tongue. He would taste the wound to determine it’s “sourness” and thus it’s alkalinity, with a more sour taste indicating a lower pH and higher acid content.

Beaumont would take copious notes, and reflect upon his observations. While they may seem quaint to us now (Beaumont wondered how food was separated into different components, and why animal blood was digested as all, as it should have just been transported to the arteries whole by his logic), his writings formed the basis for all we know about digestion today. Thanks to the wonders of Google, his magnum opus, Experiments and Observations of the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion is available online in full.

In a strange twist of fate, the damaged Alexis St. Martin outlived the doctor by 10 years, finally succumbing not from his wounds, but from old age at 78 years. The good doctor only lived to be 68, having died from a fall on icy stairs. We owe both men a debt of gratitude for furthering modern science. As a side note, similar experiments continue. It is fairly commonplace for such windows to placed in cows to observe the process of rumination, as can be seen in this YouTube video.

The Indian Flying Fox Bat has the largest recorded wingspan in the world, sometimes stretching up to two meters. It was selected as the Weirdest Thing In The Sky during our Tinychat competition last week. Stay tuned for this week’s category.

Thanks to everyone for playing!

Click AFTER THE JUMP for a video of it eating some fruit at the Singapore zoo.

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Penn Bullock reports:

George Adamski is one of the original, pioneering Ufologists. In 1946, while watching a meteor shower (when lights tend to streak through the night sky), Adamski and his friends noticed a cluster of lights in formation that they immediately identified as an alien mothership. Again that year, at the same California campgrounds, Adamski purported to take a photograph of a “cigar-shaped” mothership sailing in front of the moon. In 1950, the Caribbean island nation of Grenada put that photo on a stamp commemorating “1950: The Year of the UFO.”

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Check out this video of British graffiti artist Banksy’s latest New York exploit. The shop keeper actor is a great touch.

Here’s a link to the official site for the shop: Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grille

This is the highest quality video we could find to embed, for a higher quality video visit the BBC.

The Fiandaca family called firefighters to their home in Sicily yesterday as temperatures emanating from the floors of their home reached boiling point. According to Maria Fiandaca, the floors had been heating up all week and suddenly became too hot to handle, the surfaces were steaming.

Italian experts have so far been unable to explain the source causing the house to heat, though Sicily is home to continuously erupting Mt. Etna and plenty of volcanic and geothermal activity, though locals would prefer to think the hot floor has paranormal origins. Did someone smell sulfur?

Acclaimed paranormal investigator Alison Smith, has agreed to join our merry band of ‘Weird Thugs’ as we take on Coral Castle this Saturday, May 9. That’s right, a real, live woman at a paranormal investigation, who would have thunk it?

Read on about Alison and the investigation after THE JUMP…

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When we were little kids, we all asked the question: If I swallow a seed, will it sprout and start growing inside my stomach? Only to be reassured by our parents that no such thing could ever happen. No one ever thought to ask about inhaling a seed. The above x-ray was taken of Artyom Sidorkin’s lung. Surgeons operated on what they believed was a tumor, when they finally got sight of the cancerous growth, they were shocked to find that it was a 5 centimeter piece of Fir Tree. Estimating that it was far too large to pass through the air passageways leading to the lungs, they came to the realization that he must have inhaled a spore, which germinated and started growing in his soft, spongy lung tissue. Sidorkin was just relieved that it wasn’t cancer.

A previously overlooked planet has been found hiding in an 11 year old Hubble Telescope image. Using new techniques that more accurately gauge the distribution of scattered light given off by close stars, patches that appeared as blank space years ago now could yield exciting results. More hidden planets could be discovered as more old Hubble photos are examined using the new technique.

According to Dr. Valery Bebik, a professor and deputy principal at Ukraine University:

”It is quite possible that Buddha belonged to the Scythian nation of Budins that lived on the territory of Ancient Ukraine during the first or the second millennium BC. The name of the nation is still preserved in the names of Ukraine’s contemporary settlements-Seredina-Buda, Buda, and some others,”

This head turning statement is not the first Bedik has made in recent years. Bedik, who also heads up the All-Ukrainian Association of Political Sciences, claims Jesus for Ukraine as well. Are two of the most popular spiritual leaders of all time actually Ukrainian, or does Bedik have nationalism on the brain?

-An article on Dr. Bebik’s comments.

Sarsen Stones, like the ones pictured above in Avebury, have been found in an unlikely place. A housing development project in Swindon, UK, has unearthed what appear to be sarsen stones. If they do turn out to be the real deal then this is an important archeological find. Are they natural, or are they man made? Find out more at Archaeo News.

-An article about the Swindon Stones.

A big cat, caught on tape, has been attacking livestock in Poland, freaking out local farmers and residents. Poland doesn’t have much in the way of big cat populations, so a mystified group from the Krakau Zoo took hair samples from dead animals to determine the beast’s origins.

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Time for a little weird physics. What makes supersolids weird? Well according to sciencedaily.com “a supersolid, is an exotic state of matter that behaves simultaneously as a solid and a friction-free superfluid.” This means that supersolids are “defined by two seemingly contradictory properties. The atoms inside it are arranged in a crystalline, regular pattern, like any solid, but at the same time, the atoms are able to flow through the supersolid in an unrestricted way.” Meaning we might be able to use them to create all sorts of insane quantum materials previously unknown to mankind. The implications are mind boggling. Scientist Ludwig Mathey invites us to imagine a friction-free supersolid washing machine:

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We are pleased to announce that the 5th World Congress on Urotherapy is coming up in November, 2009! For those of you not in the uriknow, Urotherapy or Urine Therapy is an alternative medicine that uses human and other animal urine as treatment for a wide range of illnesses.
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Magic inventor and legend Jim Steinmeyer has finally released his book on supernaturalist Charles Fort. I’ve just ordered my copy from Amazon and look forward to reading it. Link