Sheep are being brutally murdered in the United Kingdom country side. Who’s to blame? Psychotics? Hellfire ritualists? Revenge-driven sheep?

In one man’s opinion, it’s proof of UFO visitation.

In rural Britain, dead sheep are being found by famers with mysterious – and gruesome – injuries. Mike says a “highly active” area in the UK includes Shrewsbury, Dartmouth and parts of Wales.

“We’re talking about some fairly remote areas,” he said

“These injuries to the animals – the animals are invariably killed – are very specific. If you’ve seen some of the bodies that I’ve seen, it’s just absolutely incredible.

“The flesh appears to have been cauterized indicating some sort of thermic lance or micro-sonic wand has been used. We’re talking incredible technology. There is never any blood.”

Ahhh, the tell tale signs of the thermic lance or micro-sonic wands…

[BBC News]

A Maryland court has struck down a county law that barred fortune telling as a violation of free speech. Just as I foresaw in the espers of time!

Judge Clayton Greene Jr., who wrote the court’s opinion, concluded that while fortune-tellers may sometimes deceive their customers, it’s not up to the court to pass judgment on the validity or value of their soothsaying.

“If Montgomery County is concerned that fortune-tellers will engage in fraudulent conduct, the county can enforce fraud laws in the event that fraud occurs,” Greene wrote in the majority opinion.

The suit was brought by a man who was denied a business license for his fortune dispensary in 2008.

[Business Week]

Add communal to the list of adjectives used to describe roaches. New studies show that the disgusting insects will choose to eat together even if other options present themselves.

Cockroaches prefer dining as a group it seems. New research shows the pesky critters cluster and remain feeding on one lump of food even if another morsel exists nearby.

The result demonstrates that cockroaches possess a collective decision-making process previously thought to exist only in highly social species, such as ants and bees, according to the study scientists.

Family dinner, yet another trait that roaches share with the cast of Jersey Shore.

[Live Science]

Sure, it’s a weather phenomenon and not mystical mischief makers of lore. Still, pretty cool.

[Science Daily]

Legend tells of an intensely insular, physically tiny race that lived in the north of Japan thousands of years ago before humans settled there. Brent Swancer of Cryptomundo takes a fascinating look at who they were and why they might be closer to hobbits than modern day dwarves.

[Cryptomundo]

Why is it that time travelers always so sloppy?

Whenever you hear of someone in the news evoking the time travel defense, it’s always for bad stuff like accidental deaths, murders or elaborate plots to kill someone who eventually ruins the planet. Or something.

Is it too much to ask for a man to come forward or backward in time and just mind their business? Take notes, talk to the natives, enjoy our flavored iced coffees and GTFO.

Then again, maybe only the sloppy time travelers are the ones who get caught merc-ing random civilians with bizarre tales like the one below. At that point the blame really lies on the supervisor that sent them back in the first place. Now all we have to do is invent a time machine so we can subpoena him for his clear negligence.

Towards the end of July 2009, New Zealander Mark Paul Warren, 26, was found not guilty, by reason of insanity, of killing two people in 2007 by driving dangerously near Auckland airport at Mangere. Warren, who had no licence, had been travell­ing at 166km/h when he smashed into another car; passengers in both cars died, while Warren and the other driver spent months in hosp­ital. After he told police that he had been in a time machine and needed to exceed 100km/h to become invisible, he was committed to a facility in Hamilton specialising in treating acute mental illness.

Read the whole story for a few more real life time traveller stories. And if you are reading this and are in fact from another spot on our time line, seriously, try the iced coffees. They are de-lish.

[Fortean Times]

Weird Things Live: Hunting the Night Creeper from Andrew Mayne on Vimeo.

Last Monday night in front of a live internet audience we set out to solve the mystery of the Night Creeper. Ghost? Frogman? Or something else? Although we’re pretty sure we figured it out, we haven’t definitively proved our theory. The mystery continues…

Running time 55 minutes.

Check out our photos of the scene on Flickr.

The sun has awoken from his slumber and you will feel his wrath upon your global positioning satellites and financial services.

Richard Fisher, head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, explains what it’s all about:

“The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we’re getting together to discuss.”

The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled “Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts.” It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

A lot of this could be avoided with preparation by those who run the satellites. So we have that going for us.

[NASA]

Tonight. 9 p.m. EDT. LIVE. Right here on the front page.

If you like it, subscribe to it.

Scientists want to drill deep into Antarctic ice to find life forms that haven’t been exposed to the environment in millions of years. Kurt Russell is not amused.

[Science Daily]

As we prepare for tomorrow’s live hunt for what is known as the “Night Creeper”, we thought we’d share with you some photos from a recent reconnaissance of the area. Our first nighttime recon resulted in Justin and I getting stopped by the police FYI. It appears we’re not the only ones paying attention to the weird reports coming from the area.

What stood out most to us is the fact that this area forms a triangle with two other hotspots of unusual activity and they both have large bodies of water nearby that lead straight to the Everglades – a wild environment filled with cryptid and unusual phenomena.

On Monday night’s live show (9PM EST) we plan to go into a tunnel that’s the main access point between the wetlands and the area of interest. We’re not assuming it’s a cryptid or some other creature that’s been sighted. We just find it very interesting.

During our daylight investigation we found signs that something was living underneath there or at least spent some time there. The above photo shows a very large fish head that was dragged 10 feet above the bank into a dark corner. A raccoon or Gollum? We hope to find out.

It has been sighted by workers walking through the parking lot. Loud shriek, fast movement, short stature. It has been seen late at night prowling around the area by others. What is the Night Creeper?

Some believe it is the spirit of a child. We have a different theory. Either way, the truth will be revealed.

This Monday at 9 p.m. EST we hunt it LIVE. The Weird Things crew of Justin Robert Young, Brian Brushwood and Andrew Mayne are assembling once again to try and track down this unexplained phenomenon.

Traps will be set. Questions will be answered. And every step of the way will be streamed LIVE for your enjoyment as Weird Things hunts the Night Creeper this Monday at 9 p.m. EST on the front page of this site.

There is no official folder sitting in a dusty basement file room marked “Sea Monsters: CLASSIFIED” containing a hundred years worth of reports from parchment to dot matrix print outs about krakens, giants squid and God knows what else lurks under the waves.

At least that’s the official story after a freedom of information request was filed asking the British Royal Navy about a central record database for sea monster sightings.

A marine biologist inquired whether the Ministry of Defence held records about “abnormally large or dangerous sea monsters hundreds of metres under the sea” that had not been revealed to the public.

In reply an official wrote: ”The RN (Royal Navy), and MoD in general, does not maintain any form of central repository of information purely devoted to sea monsters.

“Personnel might be inclined to record unusual sightings in ship’s logs but there is, as far as we know, no actual requirement for them to do so, and it would be beyond the resource constraints of an FOI request to check every line of every RN log book for any such references since 2005.

“However, the RN does invite people to report sightings of marine mammals, and it’s possible this could include unusual sightings.

“These are forwarded to the UK Hydrographic Office at Taunton.”

Tales of insane sea creatures have been around as long as boats, seems like a real missed opportunity.

[Telegraph]