Monday, February 7, 2011

Fortean / Alternative News: Haunted Mattress, Thomas Edison Predictions and 400 Wolves Attack

'My haunted mattress keeps me up all night...'

worcesternews - A man is seeking help for his haunted house after months of sleepless nights.

Kevin Cartwright believes he has been haunted by a number of spirits in his flat and is desperate to have them exorcised so he can get to sleep.

The 56-year-old, who lives on Infirmary Walk, Worcester, says he has had more than 135 nights where he has felt spirits pushing his mattress while he is lying on it, and is hoping someone can come forward and help.

He said: “I am very happy where I live and it is a lovely old property. But since I returned from a holiday to see my children in Canada in September last year, it has felt like someone or something is in my mattress.

“It’s hard to explain and people think I’m crazy when I tell them, but it feels as if they are pushing it. It is driving me mad that I just can’t get a full night’s sleep.”

Mr Cartwright has had eight friends test his bed and four of them have had a similar experience, with some of them feeling very scared.

He said: “It can’t just be me if others have felt it. While four said they didn’t feel anything, four did.

"I just don’t think I can stand this much longer. It is driving me mad.”

A family member recommended a visit from three ‘sensitives’ – people who claim to be in tune with the spirit world – who said they could help him.

They told Mr Cartwright they could sense the spirits were children, and not to be afraid of them as they were playing. Since their visit he believes most of the spirits have now left, except for one.

Mr Cartwright lives next to an old school building, and the women said they believed recent building work nearby may have disturbed the spirits.

Mr Cartwright said: “Before, it did feel like there were several spirits in my mattress, but now there is just one.

"I have had more than 135 nights of this and it’s just lunacy. I need help.

“I survive on a disability allowance and have bought a new mattress, and also an electric blanket as someone suggested that it may help, but it’s still not working.”

An ex-restaurant owner, Mr Cartwright, who survived a brain tumour in 2004, is registered disabled but volunteers with a number of charities throughout the city.

“If there is someone from the science or spiritual world who wants to help, please come forward,” he said.

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Thomas Edison predicted....

paleofuture - What will the world be a hundred years hence?

None but a wizard dare raise the curtain and disclose the secrets of the future; and what wizard can do it with so sure a hand as Mr. Thomas Alva Edison, who has wrested so many secrets from jealous Nature? He alone of all men who live has the necessary courage and gift of foresight, and he has not shrunk from the venture.

Already, Mr. Edison tells us, the steam engine is emitting its last gasps. A century hence it will be as remote as antiquity as the lumbering coach of Tudor days, which took a week to travel from Yorkshire to London. In the year 2011 such railway trains as survive will be driven at incredible speed by electricity (which will also be the motive force of all the world's machinery), generated by "hydraulic" wheels.

But the traveler of the future, says a writer in Answers, will largely scorn such earth crawling. He will fly through the air, swifter than any swallow, at a speed of two hundred miles an hour, in colossal machines, which will enable him to breakfast in London, transact business in Paris and eat his luncheon in Cheapside.

The house of the next century will be furnished from basement to attic with steel, at a sixth of the present cost -- of steel so light that it will be as easy to move a sideboard as it is today to lift a drawing room chair. The baby of the twenty-first century will be rocked in a steel cradle; his father will sit in a steel chair at a steel dining table, and his mother's boudoir will be sumptuously equipped with steel furnishings, converted by cunning varnishes to the semblance of rosewood, or mahogany, or any other wood her ladyship fancies.

Books of the coming century will all be printed leaves of nickel, so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume. A book two inches thick will contain forty thousand pages, the equivalent of a hundred volumes; six inches in aggregate thickness, it would suffice for all the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And each volume would weigh less than a pound.

Already Mr. Edison can produce a pound weight of these nickel leaves, more flexible than paper and ten times as durable, at a cost of five shillings. In a hundred years' time the cost will probably be reduced to a tenth.

More amazing still, this American wizard sounds the death knell of gold as a precious metal. "Gold," he says, "has even now but a few years to live. The day is near when bars of it will be as common and as cheap as bars of iron or blocks of steel.

"We are already on the verge of discovering the secret of transmuting metals, which are all substantially the same in matter, though combined in different proportions."

Before long it will be an easy matter to convert a truck load of iron bars into as many bars of virgin gold.

In the magical days to come there is no reason why our great liners should not be of solid gold from stem to stern; why we should not ride in golden taxicabs, or substituted gold for steel in our drawing room suites. Only steel will be the more durable, and thus the cheaper in the long run.

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Egyptian official: Israeli Mossad responsible for killer shark attacks

the-diplomat - I wrote this week about a possible thaw in ties between traditional rivals India and Pakistan. But even if the two countries’ policymakers are indeed making progress in improving relations, they will have to overcome deep mistrust between their respective populations. Such distrust is stoked by the vast range of conspiracy theories frequently bandied around, including the idea that India is behind the bomb attacks in Karachi. However, these two countries are by no means alone. Before the recent unrest in Egypt I heard one from there that may beat them all.

Late last year saw a number of shark attacks in the usually tranquil waters of the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, including a six-day period when five swimmers were attacked (compared with six attacks for the entire previous decade).

So, what was responsible for the sudden uptick in attacks? Well, according to one Egyptian official at the time, Israeli intelligence agency Mossad may have planted GPS devices in the sharks and sent them to attack swimmers. Why? Apparently, to undermine Egypt’s tourism industry.Israeli officials for their part rubbished the Egyptian claims, saying they were too ludicrous to comment on.

Still, conspiracy theories have a dangerous habit of spreading. And of being believed.

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'Super pack' of 400 wolves terrorise remote Russian town after killing 30 horses in just four days

A 'super pack' of wolves has been terrifying a town after leaving more than 30 horses dead in just four days.

Four hundred bloodthirsty wolves have been spotted prowling around the edges of Verkhoyansk, in Russia, attacking livestock at will.

Twenty four teams of hunters have been put together to get rid of the wolves, with a bounty of £210 for every wolf skin brought to officials.

Stepan Rozhin, an administration official for the Verkhoyansk district in Russia, said: 'To protect the town we are creating 24 teams of armed hunters, who will patrol the neighbourhood on snowmobiles and set wolf traps.

'But we need more people. Once the daylight increases, the hunters will start shooting predators from helicopters.'

A pack of wolves this size is unheard of, with the animals usually preferring to hunt in smaller groups of just six or seven.

The massive group is believed to be made from hundreds of packs and has left animal experts baffled.

Dr Valerius Geist, a wildlife behaviour expert, said the harsh Siberian winter - where temperatures plummet to minus 49C - had killed off the animal's usual prey.

He said: 'It is unusual for wolves to gather in such numbers of hunt large animal like horses.

'However, the population of their usual prey, rabbits, has decreased this year due to lack of food, so wolves have had to change their habits.

'Wolves are very careful to choose the most nutritious food source easiest obtained without danger - which in this case happens to be horses.

'They will start tackling dangerous prey when they run out of non-dangerous prey.'

Villagers have already managed to snare a number of the animals but the pack is so sizeable that is likely to take some time to deal with.

Verkhoyansk, with a population of just 1,300, is one of the coldest and remotest places in the northern hemisphere and lies within an area known as Stalin's Death Ring, after the former dictator sent political exiles there due to the extreme conditions.

NOTE: Pack of 400 wolves? C'mon...I feel we have another exaggeration by the Russians. The dynamic of a wolf pack could not support that many IMO...an alpha wolf leading that many? Lon