A Witch’s Bottle is a 17th century device believed to absorb and retain evil. Of course it was not the bottle itself that attracted evil, it was the witch’s potion held within it. When British researchers uncovered the most intact bottle ever discovered, they were sure to do a CT scan to identify its contents.

It seems British witches of 400 years ago liked to concoct a golden Witch’s brew. As was revealed by the CT scan, the contents were: pins, nails and urine. Hooray! This gives contemporary witches and wizards historical precedent for using human urine in their homemade potions today. MSBNC reported lead researcher Alan Massey as saying:

“the objects found in witch bottles verify the authenticity of contemporary recipes given for anti-witchcraft devices, which might otherwise have been dismissed by us as being too ridiculous and outrageous to believe.”

Score one for all you witchcraft urine masters out there!

You can run Penguins, you can hide, but we will always know where you are, because you are swimming birds that poop a lot. We think we can count this as another unconsidered negative effect of being a flightless bird.

The Loch Ness Monster and other dino-cryptids have captivated the imaginations and hopes of millions of people all over the world. It would be really cool if dinosaurs were still alive today. But how much truth is there to this claim? Are there really prehistoric giants currently roaming the earth or have they all gone the way of the fossils above? Benjamin Radford, renowned paranormal investigator tackles this very question in a Live Science article.

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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“Champ” the Lake Champlain monster is back bothering residents of Burlington, Vermont. The above image is a screen shot from the latest Lake Champlain monster video of a mysterious dinosaur like creature crossing the water. Alas we could not post it here because they took away the embed code, but Cryptomundo has a great write up on analyzing this latest video, as well as studying the history of the Lake Champlain Monster.

Screw expensive and ineffective cloud seeding, if your farmland is dry and infertile, try frog marriage, valued by Indian holy men as the most fun and creative way to end drought.

That may be the most adorable frog bride we have ever seen, but is froggy matrimony really the way to go to bring rain? For the sake of the people of Assam, we sure hope so.

The stakes are high in Vegas. No one knows that better than the high rolling VIPs who pour into Vegas from the far corners of the globe to gamble away their millions.

One high roller, a Taiwanese Businessman identified as Mr. Yuan, lost two million dollars during his attempt to break the bank at The Venetian Hotel and Casino. Instead of blaming the cruel hand of fate and accepting the role of the dice, Mr. Yuan is suing The Venetian for his losings, claiming that The Venetian intentionally used Feng Shui to induce his losing streak. According to AFP News:

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Today marks the beginning of the first ever scientific experiment conducted using Twitter. Professor Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, has organized an remote viewing ESP experiment using the social networking tool.

Richard Wiseman, assisted by fellow researchers, will visit different locations around the UK and ask participants to “tweet” their impressions of the characteristics of the surrounding area. These participants will then be given a series of five photos to choose the correct location from. If anyone gets three hits, the odds of which are 1 in 125, the outcome will be considered statistically significant in proving the existence of ESP.

Wiseman, famous for conducting mass participation studies, has found the perfect online tool for extending his research, making him the first person I know of to use Twitter to do good in this world.

To participate, follow Prof. Wiseman on twitter at:
Tweets by RichardWiseman

A classic pleasure cruise, traveling along Loch Ness, recorded strange sonar activity in the middle of its voyage on Thursday. Captain John Askew reported that these sonar readings were unique in his over fifteen years of working as a boat captain on the lake. The sonar readings, indicating a large underwater object, await scientific analysis. Could it be Nessie?

An Oxfordshire farmer woke up one morning to find this epic jellyfish crop circle in his field (or so he claims). The farmer, R. Spence, has submitted that no one has access to his land, leading us to speculate that a race of alien Jellyfish are trying to make a bold political statement. Notice how the aliens have been getting far more ornate with their crop circles since the first ones started popping up in the sixties, we wonder why that is?

We found this Video over at Randi.org. Looks like a bunch of Russians sitting around with their Babushka having a good time, until about five minutes in (the video is half an hour so fast forward) when he takes a set of cups and appears to miraculously break holes in them using only his mind powers and body energy.

Is this man’s show simple trickery or a miracle of a semi-religious nature? I talked to paranormal investigator James Randi about the purported miracle and he believes that this video is a demonstration of clever slight of hand, with possible explanations ranging from spray solvents to compact invisible lasers hidden in the sleeve. What do you think?

Since the dawn of civilization man has been asking the big questions: Why are we here? How did we come to be here? Is there a god? Is Bigfoot an alien?

Chris Noel, Bigfoot enthusiast, author and investigator may not be able to shed much light on the first three, but in an interview with the Tampa Examiner he tackles the big question of Bigfoot’s origins.

-For more great drawings and caricatures by Nick Worthey, check out his website.

Another Ghost Video. This one, taken in a Mexican Museum, has the added bonus of the security guards chatting it up about the improbable feat they’re witnessing.

Glowing Monkeys: The gift that all of us have always wanted but never dared admit it. Now our collective dream has become a reality. We are Weirdthings are pleased to announce that Japanese scientists have created transgenic glowing monkeys. Check it out.

British reality TV star Jade Goody lost her battle with cancer in March. Now her mother claims that she has been witness to two paranormal visitations from her daughter. Creepy stuff from the UK, find out more about it at Holymoly.com

Image Credit: Alison Smith

For those of you that didn’t check out Der Spiegel’s headlines for today, you might have missed the title of this article:

Man Uses Live Swan to Beat up Victim

We did a double take too. According to Der Spiegel: the assailant, a Mr. Sebastian P., grabbed a passing swan from the bank of the River Munich by the neck and wielded it like a club, repeatedly striking his victim with the feathery armament. His victim, an east German tourist identified as Steven L., was not harmed in the altercation, nor was the winged billy club used in the beating. The assault weapon flew away unharmed.

Now you can write this off as random drunken Germans beating each other with the most convenient hitting implement, or you could take a closer weirdthings look. We believe this was no mere drunken shenanigan.

There is only one ancient order that is trained in the art of hand to swan combat:

Ninjas!

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