thisiswilshire - A site at Marden, near Devizes, rivaled Stonehenge and Avebury in its day, says English Heritage.
The group is about to undertake a six-week dig at the site close to the village, starting on June 28.
Unlike Stonehenge and Avebury, Marden Henge no longer has any surviving standing stones, but its sheer size is astounding.
Comprising a substantial and well-preserved bank with an internal ditch enclosing an area of some 10.5 hectares – equivalent to ten football pitches – it is one of the largest Neolithic henges in Britain.
Archaeologists are particularly intrigued by evidence of a huge mound at the centre of the henge similar to a smaller version of Silbury Hill.
The mound collapsed in 1806 and was levelled by 1817. English Heritage hopes to find out more about this feature by obtaining dating material from any surviving features within its centre.
Jim Leary, the English Heritage archaeologist who was involved in the recent restoration of Silbury Hill, said: “Marden Henge deserves to be understood more, partly because of its size, but also due to its proximity to the more famous stone circles at Avebury and Stonehenge.
“How Marden relates to them is another layer of interest which we want to study.
“We are potentially looking at a much more intricate system of Neolithic ritual sites in this part of the world than we previously thought.”
The Henge is on the road out of the village towards Beechingstoke, at Hatfield Farm, and is a popular picnic area.
Parish council chairman Peter Bell was pleased with the news. He said: “I hadn’t heard English Heritage were planning this, but I am delighted. It is an important local archaeological site and we don’t know nearly enough about it.”
The Henge is on the road out of the village towards Beechingstoke, at Hatfield Farm, and is on private land.
Sue Shepherd-Cross, who lives at Hatfield Farm, was delighted at the news. She said: “It is a remarkable place and it would be fascinating to find out more about it.”
The website Megalithic.co.uk describes Marden Henge, or Hatfield Earthworks, as the largest henge in Britain. It adds: “There is not much to see but bank and ditch. Plenty of atmosphere, though.”
NOTE: Important dig, IMO. Between the henges and the crop circles, this area of Wiltshire has a secret yet to be discovered...Lon
Nearly 200 crop circles have appeared in just one formation not far from Warminster, Wiltshire, known as the UFO capital of Britain.
The circular 90m (300ft) design, believed to represent the passage of the Moon and Sun, contains 193 rings, including six key circles and a seventh in the centre.
Crop circle expert Karen Alexander said: ‘This is the most complex circle so far this year.’ The formation, near the village of Mere, is the first in the area since 1997.
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WBC Labels Lady Gaga as 'Devil's Spawn'
buzz7 - ‘Poker Face’ singer Lady Gaga has been branded as “the devil’s spawn” and “a whore face” by a religious group for promoting homosexuality.
The Westboro Baptist Church, which is known for its hatred of homosexuals, targeted the 24-year-old bisexual pop singer over her sizzling, lesbian-themed video ‘Telephone’.
The extremist church group, which has already caused uproar by picketing the funerals of US servicemen and whose slogan is “God Hates Fags”, claimed Gaga’s image, clothes, songs and pop videos are “blasphemous”.
Followers have picketed the singer’s gigs with placards saying “God Hates GaGa”, and group members Megan Phelps Roper, 24, and cousin Sara Phelps, 29, have even filmed foul-mouthed parodies of ‘Telephone’ and ‘Poker Face’, called ‘Ever Burn’ and ‘Whorish Face’.
Their controversial lyrics include “Go devil’s spawn to the hell where you will forever burn”, and “You ain’t got no poker face, you just got your whorish face”.
“Lady GaGa is a sleazy God-hater. She has the face of a proud whore and something needs to be done about it. She is teaching the boys and the girls to be proud whores,” the Daily Star quoted campaigner Megan as saying.
“GaGa is promoting homosexuality and bisexuality and God hates her. God hates all fags and fag enablers,” she stated.
The group even claimed GaGa was responsible for contributing to the deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan and the Mexico oil spill.
“For the way that you fake pray all the time will just kill soldiers faster, spread that oil faster, bring the fire faster,” they chanted.
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Woman Mails Cow’s Tongue and Opossum Head to Romantic Rival
stltoday - A woman admitted in federal court that she had sent threatening letters, a cow's tongue and the head of an opossum to a romantic rival. Jessica L. Bradshaw, 39, of Lincoln County, was married at the time but fell hard for a woman in Trenton, Ill., officials said. In January, Bradshaw sent threatening notes and the animal parts to the woman's girlfriend, she admitted in court.
Bradshaw pleaded guilty on three felony counts of mailing a threatening communication, and faces up to 16 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. Bradshaw's lawyer, Yi Sun, will ask for less, arguing that she should get a break due to her "diminished mental capacity" at the time of the offense, her plea agreement says.
The first threatening letter read, in part, "WE WILL TAKE OUT ALL YOU COME IN CONTACT WITH."
Bradshaw next mailed the cow's tongue in a tampon box, along with another threatening note. The opossum head was the third to arrive, according to Bradshaw's plea agreement. Her feelings for the woman "took on an intensity that overwhelmed her rational thought," according to a psychiatric evaluation conducted earlier this year.
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Former Employee 'Rolling Back' on Walmart...Claims He Was Forced to Wear Yellow Vest Because He Was Gay
consumerist - A temporary Walmart worker is accusing his former supervisors of forcing him to wear a yellow vest after learning of his sexual orientation. The worker, 18-year-old Fernando Gallardo, was quick to compare the retail behemoth to the Nazis in a complaint filed with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission.
"I was completely ignored and shunned. I had nothing to do all day but wander around the store wearing a yellow vest no one else had to wear, much like Jews had to wear a yellow star of David in Hitler's Germany."
Walmart claims that it forces people of all creeds to wear yellow vests.
"It is my understanding that the former associate was a temporary hire while the store is under remodeling," Keene told The Advocate. "Between the 50 or so temporary associates in that store, there is a rotation through the position of 'May I Help You' associate. The several associates in this role wear a vest so customers can identify them and ask for help in finding products that may have been temporarily moved to a new spot."
Gallardo doesn't buy the excuse, and further claims that store managers offered permanent positions to anyone who would testify that Gallardo voluntarily revealed his sexual orientation. His claims seem all the more plausible in light of the largest class action in history, which alleges that Walmart systemically discriminated against female workers.
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SHOCKING REVELATION! Almost All Exxon Valdez Cleanup Crews Are Dead!
I received the following information from Jeff Gonzalez of the Sanger Paranormal Society / MUFON State Section Director and Field Investigator: Someone in Oregon while video tapping the eclipse, catches a large white object at 4:36 a:m coming from the North-West and disappearing into the South-East at 4:38 am. While also video tapping the eclipse in Fresno, Calif I caught the same UFO coming from the North-West at 4:40 am then disappearing into the South-East..This object was not a plane or a helicopter and was to low for a satellite. It was bright white with no colored or strobe lights. This thing was HUGE...Possible Mother ship because of the size. No other possible explanation can be found..It was the same craft because the times and direction plus the visual account were a perfect match.....
NOTE: the following video was made the day before the recent eclipse somewhere in Australia. Historically, the UFO activity does seem to pick up in the periods just before, during and after lunar and solar eclipses. Is it because more people are watching the sky during these periods? Most likely. I have also included a video of the sighting in China in 2009... Lon
During the Oregon Sasquatch Symposium, author and researcher Autumn Williams presented her new book “Enoch: A Bigfoot Story”. I was told by a few attendees that her presentation was punctuated by rants against the Bigfoot community in general that were fashioned into reasons for not offering any photo or physical evidence. As well, many of the attendees believed it strange that she hadn't even been to Florida to meet the witness and check his story out. Overall, the impression I got from the attendees I talked to was that there was a disquieting lack of logic in Autumn's presentation.
It seems that ‘Mike’, the source of the stories for Autumn's book, is not realizing any benefit from the book raising the speculation that 'Mike' won't complain, simply because there's no 'Mike'. 'Mike' was only identified as a heavy equipment operator living in Florida. No other personal info was provided other than his life had been full of disappointment which had left him depressed and bitter.
I read ‘Enoch’ this weekend and was struck by the similarity to ‘Fifty Years with Bigfoot’. I was also surprised that Autumn and Mike referenced much of Jan Klement’s book ‘The Creature’ which supposedly is a first hand account of a semi habituation of a Bigfoot creature he named ‘Kong’ in southwestern Pennsylvania. Klement’s story was interesting, but mostly unbelievable. The author also did not hide the fact that he is an alcoholic and has serious mental health issues. The one anecdote where he shoved the creature into the back of his station wagon and drove him 200 miles away in order to protect him from hunters during deer season was one of several head shaking passages.
Klement described himself as a scientist, but he didn’t take Kong's dead body to be "dissected", but decided he would drive the body to a remote location and hack up his so-called "best friend" with an axe. I’m not sure if this was simply out of friendship or a sociopathic reaction to ‘Kong’s’ death.
The ‘Enoch’ scenario is also reminiscent of the Janice Carter case. In 1947, on the family farm in Tennessee, it is alleged that Robert Carter Sr. began feeding a male Bigfoot, known as Fox. Through prolonged contact, Robert was able to create a habituation situation where Fox felt comfortable around Robert and his granddaughter, Janice. According to the book ‘Fifty Years with Bigfoot’, Robert and Janice were allowed to witness the most intimate moments of Bigfoot life, including their relationships and the death and burial of a young Bigfoot. These assertions have been questioned by a majority of researchers involved with the study of the Bigfoot phenomenon. For example, one of the authors maintained that Fox was capable of speech. She cited many examples in the book of Native American dialects, words, and names used by Fox, and even stated that he could speak English. However, in late 2006 it was proven that the supposed language and names employed by the resident Sasquatches were in fact plagiarized from the book 'Ride the Wind' (1985), an historical novel about a woman's life after she was kidnapped during the Comanche raid on her family's fort.
‘Enoch’ is a very well written, interesting and enjoyable narrative. I do recommend you read it since there is common sense information that could be helpful to those interested in Bigfoot. I have no doubts that 'Mike' is real, has witnessed a Swamp Ape and has knowledge of their activity. But, honestly, I'm just not convinced that Autumn isn’t being 'played' to some degree by the witness. I don't want to feel like this but I have to go with my gut reaction. Hopefully I will be convinced otherwise in the future.
My only wish is that if someone is privileged to be in regular contact with a Bigfoot, Sasquatch or Swamp Ape, that they would share it with us on a factual, scientific level. If you present your information in book form only, the anecdotal evidence is going to be torn apart and labeled as fiction. Possibly, Autumn will use the receipts from the book, travel to Florida, meet up with 'Mike' and attempt to prove some of the book's assertions.
In 1980, I had an encounter with a Bigfoot and it was one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life. In fact, it is the reason why I started to include cryptozoology as part of my paranormal field work. I know without a doubt that these creatures exist. That’s why I expect a tangible level of proof from those who claim to have had extraordinary experiences with these beings...Lon
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*********** NOTE: I'm going to repost (below) my article on this incident - originally posted 6/4/2010. I have been waiting for this documentary to be posted on the internet since the program aired on SciFi Australia...Lon
The following is in reference to the April 6, 1966 UFO incident at Westall High School, in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton South, in Victoria, Australia...Lon
heraldsun - Flying saucers, crop circles, missing film, disappearing files, denials, military cover-ups, threats and shadowy Men in Black.
It couldn't happen here?
Most people would say it couldn't happen anywhere!
But more than 100 witnesses to one of the world's biggest UFO mysteries are adamant that it did, in broad daylight in Clayton South on April 6, 1966.
And 44 years after the event, many are still fuming that the military they say were swarming around the scene for days have offically denied the incident and no record appears to exist.
They say they spent their lives being doubted and want some official acknowledgment that something weird happened above and behind Westall high and primary schools that morning.
London's Telegraph newspaper rates it as the fifth-greatest UFO mystery of all time, but another mystery is how little-known the episode is here.
A documentary - Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery - premieres on Austar and Foxtel's Sci-Fi Channel at 8.30pm tomorrow.
Producers hope it will flush out an official who can say what the military were doing and what they found.
Researcher Shane Ryan has spent five years tracking 110 witnesses, many found through an appeal in the Herald Sun in 2006, but could find no military officials, and no record of a military response.
But locals remember it vividly, saying it lasted days.
The 110 Mr Ryan has found who say they saw saucers include professionals, tradies and a Ministerial Adviser, but not one military official of the time.
He says time is running out for them to come clean.
"Whatever security concerns there were at the time, they are redundant now,'' he says.
A TV crew covered the incident and it screened on the 6pm news, but the film canister from the job was recently found empty in the station archives.
Several witnesses say they were warned off speaking by sharply-dressed men in dark suits, in the principal's office and at home.
Others recall school threats of detention for UFO talk.
But talk there was, and coverage.
The Dandenong Journal reported the incident on its front page for consecutive issues and ran interviews with witnesses.
Many were school pupils who say they saw flying saucers from their school yards. Some ran to Grange Reserve, where the craft appeared to have come down.
Terry Peck, 56, was among them. She says she was playing cricket on the oval, saw the saucer and chased after it to Grange Reserve.
"Two girls were there before me. One was terribly upset and they were pale, really white, ghostly white. They just said they had passed out, fainted. One was taken to hospital in an ambulance,'' she says.
Ms Peck says she saw a silver, classic-shape saucer rise up.
"I was about 6m away from it. It was bigger than a car and circular. I think I saw some lights underneath it.
"We all got called to an assembly ... and they told us all to keep quiet.
"I'd absolutely just like someone to come forward from the services just to say 'yes, it did happen, and it landed and there was a cover-up'.''
Jacqueline Argent, 58, in Form 3 then, says she saw a UFO from the oval and was one of the first three kids over the fence looking for where it came down.
"Originally I thought it must have been an experimental-type aircraft, but nothing has emerged like that after all these years,'' she said.
She says she was called into the headmaster's office and interrogated by three men: "They had good-quality suits and were well spoken. They said, 'I suppose you saw little green men'?
"I spoke to my parents about it at the time and they were pretty outraged.''
Retired engineer Kevin Hurley, a Monash Uni student then, missed the saucers but saw the aftermath.
"There were army or air force people in the area,'' he said.
"I'm pretty sure they were going around the area with geiger counters or metal detectors.
"I'm not a freak that thinks Martian people are coming. I don't think that kind of stuff, but it's bugged me.
"After 44 years, I reckon they need to come clean on this.''
Over 200 students and teachers witnessed an unexplained flying object on Wednesday 6th April 1966 around 11.00 am. They reported it descended into a nearby open wild grass field adjacent to a grove of pine trees in an area known as The Grange. The object then ascended in a north-westerly direction over the suburb of Clayton South.
Shane Ryan is a researcher looking for eyewitnesses. "It happened on the Wednesday before Easter, April 6, 1966, about 11 0’clock in the morning.
Around about 200 people, most of them students at what was then called Westall High School, were out for morning recess", says Shane. "Many saw the strange object descend behind pine trees in The Grange Reserve, and then later ascend and fly away at great speed.
The people who ran over to the reserve found a huge ring in the paddock where the object had been seen.
Some people reported five light aircraft following or chasing the object. Academic throws light on 40-year-old UFO mystery
Just what did flash out of the sky and into the lives of hundreds that April day? Stephen Cauchi reports.
A Canberra academic is investigating one of Australia's most compelling UFO mysteries, a sighting by hundreds of people in the Melbourne suburb of Westall on April 6, 1966.
More than 200 students and staff from two schools watched as the object landed in a nearby paddock, lifted off and vanished.
Shane Ryan, an English lecturer at the University of Canberra, is interviewing dozens of witnesses for a book he hopes to publish on the 40th anniversary of the sighting.
Mr Ryan, 38, was alerted to the events in the 1980s by a housemate who was there. Unlike most UFO sightings, the Westall object had a large number of credible witnesses. It was viewed in daylight and attracted a forceful response from police and the RAAF.
"It had these rather interesting elements which indicated to me that, unlike some other so-called UFO stories, there was some substance to this," he told The Sunday Age.
"I knew the 40th anniversary was coming up next year, so I thought it was timely to do some research on it."
Mr Ryan has interviewed about 30 witnesses, mostly former staff and students from the Westall secondary and primary schools. He has tried obtaining police and RAAF reports, but so far with little luck. The story was covered then by Channel Nine, The Age and local newspapers.
On the UFO, everyone seems to agree, Mr Ryan says. It was a low-flying, silver/grey shining object, either of classical flying saucer shape or close to it, "a cup turned upside down on a saucer". The students were familiar with light aircraft because the schools were close to Moorabbin Airport. Although the UFO was of similar size, "everyone said straight away that they knew it was not a plane", Mr Ryan said, nor a weather balloon.
The object was in view for up to 20 minutes, and many saw it descend. Most agree it landed behind pine trees at the Grange Reserve. Dozens of students ran across what was then an open paddock to the reserve to investigate, but the object had lifted off and vanished.
Other details are sketchier. The UFO appears to have left a circle of scorched grass; others say several circles were left in paddocks bordering Grange Reserve.
Many witnesses, not all, report seeing aircraft, up to five, trailing the UFO. Some say it made no sound, others say it did.
Many reported that police/air force/military personnel inspected the site; some (not all) say the authorities burnt the site. The Dandenong Journal, for which the story was front-page news two weeks in a row, reported that "students and staff have been instructed to 'talk to no-one' about the incident". Nevertheless, one teacher, Andrew Greenwood, gave the paper a detailed account.
"It was silvery-grey and seemed to thicken at times," he said. "The thickening was similar to when a disc is turned a little to show the underside."
One of the closest witnesses was a boy whose family leased land at Grange Reserve for horses.
Shaun Matthews (not a student at Westall) was on holidays and spending time on the land.
"I saw the thing come across the horizon and drop down behind the pine trees," he told The Sunday Age this week. "I couldn't tell you what it was. It certainly wasn't a light aircraft or anything of the like …
"I saw the thing drop down behind the pine trees and saw it leave again. I couldn't tell you how long it was there for, it was such a long time ago."
Mr Matthews, 51 and now living in Greenvale, said the object "went up and off very very rapidly".
"I went over and there was a circle in the clearing. It looked like it had been cooked or boiled, not burnt as I remember," he said. "A heap of kids from Westall primary and high school came charging through to see what had happened — 'look at this, look at that, we saw it as well', that sort of thing. It was a bit of a talking point for a couple of days."
Mr Matthews said the object, about the size of "two family cars", passed him at a distance of about "four football fields". "It was silvery, but it had a sort-of purple hue to it, very bright, but not bright enough that you couldn't look at it," he said.
"I saw that it dropped down behind the trees, and I thought, 'hello, hang on'. A minute or so later, it went straight up, just gone."
He said police and other officials interviewed his mother. But he cannot remember them burning the landing site, as others have alleged. And he did not see any light aircraft trailing the object, as others did.
"The way this thing moved there is no way it could have been a weather balloon or a light aircraft," he said.
"A helicopter? No way — no noise, wrong shape, and it didn't move like it. It came out of the distance, stopped, and then just dropped.
"It didn't just sort of cruise and then slightly descend at an angle. It just stopped, dropped, and then went straight up."
The Victorian UFO Research Society investigated the incident. VUFORS secretary Tony Cook said Westall remained one of Australia's major unexplained UFO cases.
The top one was the case of Frederick Valentich, a 20-year-old Melbourne pilot whose light plane disappeared while flying over Bass Strait in 1978.
In the last minutes of radio communication, Valentich reported seeing a UFO hovering above his plane. He and his craft were never recovered.
"It's pretty well documented," Mr Cook said. "That's probably the most important one because it involves the disappearance of a person."
Mr Cook said the society's stance on UFOs was that, "there are people out there seeing unusual things in the sky at times and they can't be explained. But it's a very big leap to go from unexplained things in the sky to extraterrestrials."
Most witnesses, including Mr Matthews, say the UFO was not an aircraft or helicopter. But Westall is only six kilometres from Moorabbin Airport, and the object was roughly headed in that direction, travelling north to south.
"It sounds to me like some sort of experimental craft, very much Earth-based," Steve Roberts, of Australian Skeptics, said.
"It is an interesting event with lots of witnesses and what we now call a crop circle.
"Accounts are confused. Some have the object landing and taking off again, others say 'a paddock over which the object seemed to hover'."
As well, "if there was a whole swag of officials investigating it, there must be an official report in RAAF archives somewhere".
But Mr Ryan said that no one at the RAAF knew of the incident.
But given the history of the case — the way students and staff were told to keep quiet from the start — that was not surprising, he said.
"As I got a little bit older, I got a little more interested in the social and historical aspects of the story, how something like this could have happened and how it reflected society at the time, and how authorities responded to it," he said.
"There's been a layer of secrecy that was very, very prominent in this story from the beginning."
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Polaroid photo of UFO over South Clayton taken 4 days before reported Westall High School incident
Shane Ryan is a researcher looking for eyewitnesses to the 1966 Westall UFO incident, on the Wednesday before Easter, April 6, 1966, about 11 0’clock in the morning.
Say the name Roswell and 774’s Breakfast presenter Red Symons immediately thinks of metal objects shooting through the sky landing in the desert, and little green men coming out of them. But when you say the name Clayton South, you probably think pork buns, unless you were around in 1966 and were one of 200 people who witnessed the Westall UFO incident.
Shane Ryan is a researcher looking for eyewitnesses. "It happened on the Wednesday before Easter, April 6, 1966, about 11 0’clock in the morning. Around about 200 people, most of them students at what was then called Westall High School, were out for morning recess", says Shane. "Many saw the strange object descend behind pine trees in The Grange Reserve, and then later ascend and fly away at great speed. The people who ran over to the reserve found a huge ring in the paddock where the object had been seen. Some people reported five light aircraft following or chasing the object.
"It’s an interesting case because there was this trace left behind which not only those kids saw, but a whole number of people who came afterwards, after school and adults and so forth came down to have a look at it as well."
A crop circle perhaps? "Some people call it that," continues Shane, "I’m not sure that it was, but it was certainly a ring left behind in the grass. And the other fascinating aspect of the story is that some people talk about the area being cordoned off by people in uniform."
Several witnesses reported being spoken to by the RAAF or military, including the school's science teacher, who was apparently threatened by two RAAF officers under the Official Secrets Act, if he spoke in public about what he had seen. The high school authorities dealt very harshly with both students and staff in the wake of this event, and forbade any discussion about it.
Shane has now established an email discussion group to encourage people to come forward and tell their stories about that day. About 45 people have made contact thus far. A lot of former Westall school students and two or three of the teachers. This group is dedicated to those people who were involved in, or have an interest in the incident at Westall High School, in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton South. He is especially keen to hear from people from "the other side", that is from the side of the authorities who may have been involved that day, such as RAAF, police or army. Sources: www.onlymelbourne.com.au www.heraldsun.com.au theufologynetwork.freeforum.ca www.abc.net.au www.muiss.org.au
hearaldsun - A Dutch artist is using the ashes of dead people to create common household objects using a 3D industrial printer.
The donated remains funnel into the unit - usually used to create solid prototypes of manufacturing parts - and come out as a bizarre memorial.
Artist Wieki Somers said the project demonstrates the fragility of life and questions our attachment to inanimate objects.
“We may offer Grandpa a second life as a useful rocking chair or even as a vacuum cleaner or a toaster,” she said. “Would we then become more attached to these products?”
More than 465,000 litres of human ashes are produced every day worldwide and Somers’ experiment is the latest in a growing list of alternatives to the traditional scattering.
In recent years cremated remains have been used to create memorial diamonds, ink for commemorative tattoos and even paint before it goes on the canvas.
Other items include “remembrance spheres” - glass globes that contain a tablespoon full of a freshly cremated body.
Somers 3D ash models are on display as part of the “In Progress” exhibition held at gallery space Grand-Hornu Images in Belgium.
She has previously won Denmark’s prestigious Golden Eye design award and her projects include the quirky Merry-Go-Round Coat Rack featured in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
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Arizona Wiccan Gets Five Days in Jail For Expressing Free Speech
In a scrap with her next door neighbors that drove both sides to seek relief in court, Stacie Brown was ordered to stop bothering them with vulgar or inappropriate words or pictures on the back of her barn.
She thought she was still well within her First Amendment rights to display an upside-down pentagram, a five-pointed symbol familiar to Masons, magicians, Wiccans, Satanists and others.
The judge, however, was not amused, nor was he interested in debating the limits of Brown’s free speech and religious freedom rights. In a May 26 hearing on Brown’s injunction against harassment on her neighbors, Superior Court Judge Pro-Tem Craig A. Raymond told her, “this isn’t a free speech issue ... . What we have here is a continued and repeated series of harassing acts by you culminating in a violation of a specific order.”
Raymond sentenced Brown, 25, of Cactus Forest, to five days in jail for contempt of court. She was further ordered to pay $550 in incarceration costs no later than July 30.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona commented that the judge’s decision was probably correct:
“Without reviewing court transcripts, it’s difficult to assess whether Ms. Brown raised legitimate First Amendment concerns, especially considering the allegations involve disputes between neighbors. However, we’re a nation of many religions and political perspectives. I’m sure the judge took this into consideration before ruling on whether her constitutional rights were being threatened,” according to Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU in Phoenix.
But Brown has no doubt her constitutional rights were violated. “If it was a cross, this would’ve never come up,” she said this week. Continued at trivalleycentral
********** Witches and Miracle Healers Still Rule Roost in the Balkans
novinite - It might sound weird, but even in 2010 the brooding Balkan countries can’t shake their addiction to psychics, clairvoyants, soothsayers and assorted ‘white witches’, all of which are still doing a roaring trade, from Bulgaria to Translyvania.
Clairvoyants and soothsayers ply their ancient trade around hospitals in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, reassuring anxious relatives with visions of a rapid recovery for their loved ones. They market ‘miracle cures’ and love potions, and in newspaper columns advise lovelorn women on how to land a man.
Some claim to be able to read, from coffee grounds, the fates of their fearful customers, while others predict the future from the stars. Their clientele pay handsomely for every divined word. Old women from the countryside tout herbal cures for everything from frigidity to erectile dysfunction and cancer, and claim that their healing craft extends well beyond traditional medicine. Credulous Bulgarians are the world’s biggest spenders when it comes to the miracle cures market.
Every second Bulgarian who took part in a survey for the Sofia television channel BTV said they believed in supernatural powers, and especially feared a curse being put on them. Professor Ljubomir Halachev confirmed in the programme that “trust in psychic powers and second sight is widespread in Bulgaria”.
At the upmarket end of this booming business, savvy younger ‘practitioners’ use state-of-the-art tools – internet websites, blogs and chatrooms – to spread their psychic messages, and give their readings a techy edge. Soothsayers’ most sought-after services include the lifting of curses, countering havoc wreaked by an evil eye and turning bad luck to good.
The apparently unchallengeable claim by Bulgarian clairvoyants and psychics to paranormal powers rests on the world-renowned reputation of their late peer, the seer Baba Vanga.
Born Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova in 1911, this blind clairvoyant and herbal healer is claimed to have predicted, before her death in 1996, a number of world events, including the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the death of Princess Diana, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US – “two American brothers would fall under attacks by birds of steel” – and the sinking of the Russian nuclear cruise-missile submarine Kursk.
Then there was her ‘chilling’ prophecy of the date for the outbreak of the Third World War – December 2010. Enigmatically, she said this would be the result of “attempts on the lives of four leaders following a conflict in Hindustan”.
Of course, ‘Hindustan’, in the parlance of an illiterate Bulgarian village clairvoyant, could well have covered the entire Indian sub-continent. And, as the slayings of Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh among others bear witness, the sub-continent is no stranger to political assassinations.
Asked, when she was quite elderly, about her psychic sources, she became shrewdly vague. Her words were especially difficult to decipher because she had spent her entire life in the Rupite region of the Kozhuh Mountains, and spoke with a heavy local accent barely comprehensible to outsiders. Her television interviews were always supported by subtitles.
She spoke of “creatures invisible to people with ordinary sight”, who told her about the fate and future of many people.
In the good ‘white witch’ stakes, Romania has the edge on the rest of the Balkans – even on Bulgaria. While keeping their ancient craft traditional, Romanian white witches use websites, blogs, email messaging and chatrooms to reach their clientele.
To judge by the claims of her website, Rodica Gheorghe is the leading ‘white witch healer’ in the country. Her credentials are based on her family tradition of witchcraft. She is the daughter of the witch Mama Omida and granddaughter of the witch Sabina. Some joke that her family are well on their way to having enough for their own coven.
But in the competitive cut-throat witch business, nothing is lasting, and in Romania’s Transylvania province, ‘black witches’ have muscled in on the lucrative evil eye and funerary markets. Proven spells to keep a newly widowed man from remarrying, and thus depriving his children of their inheritance, are especially well paid for.
After any death in the village of Camarzana, a witch is called in to smear the udders of cows with garlic to prevent ‘revenants’ – vampires returning from the grave – stealing their milk.
As long as the ancient Balkan superstitions rule ordinary lives, witches, clairvoyants and miracle healers will do brisk business, with or without the internet.
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Ohio Paranormal Group Prays to Christ For Support in Investigations
If Christian methods are not used to chase away demons, members of Shield Investigations believe the fix is only temporary.
Founder and investigator Mark Robey, 27, said the goal of the Mansfield-based paranormal group is to rid areas of demonic presence. But their methods may not be traditional.
"There are a lot of groups who don't mess with demonic things in the home because of the repercussions," Robey said. "We're all Christians and the Bible says we have authority over demons. We use our authority in Jesus' name."
Robey said there are different explanations as to why a home or area may become demonically possessed, including generational curses, misuse of a Ouija board and Satanic worship.
"The ghost side of it, that's still up in the air," he said. "There could have been a tragic death causing a spirit to stick around. Either way, we go in and try to figure out what's in the building. We want to know if what's in there is demonic or angelic."
The next step is a lot of communication with the home or building owner.
"We have constant phone calls with the client," Robey said. "We're counseling and ministering to them any way we can -- before, after and during the time we're there."
The rest is mostly dealt with through prayer and fasting.
Robey said the company's 12 investigators come from all over Ohio. He said they will travel just about anywhere and charge nothing for their services.
"There is no real qualifications to do what we do," he said. "It just takes anyone with an interest who is willing to learn. As long as they have integrity and they're a Christian, that's about all it takes. Demons will go after the weakest link, so a strong faith is so important."
"We feel like a lot of people are afraid to share what's going on in their homes," Robey said. "What we're doing is a ministry and we want people to know that we're here to help." NOTE: Personally, this opens up a big can of worms. First off, I don't have any association with organized religion....but, I do consider myself as a spiritual person. Now...I have been on investigations where individuals have used prayer. Honestly, I don't have a problem with that. There are some cases that involve possession by malevolent spirits that require other means to rid them from a victim or residence. I have been on cases where priests and demonologists have been present and used...successfully, I might add. I'm not saying that a divine being was responsible for removing a malevolent spirit but I feel that the suggestion that a divine being may somehow have an affect on the victim and/or spirit (or demon, if that is what you feel it is) on a psychological or 'belief' level. That begs the question...Do spirits have a 'mind' or psyche? Perhaps that's a question that needs to be discussed...Lon
leadertelegram - The first time Devon Bell had a paranormal experience, she thought her husband, Tony, was playing a joke on her.
After investigating the Charlotte Mills Bridge near the small Clark County community of Christie, the couple played back sound recordings from a recorder they had used.
They could hear their voices, which was normal. But there were three separate phrases on the recording they could not place.
One was of a man yelling for help. The second, Devon said, was an order to "Take them," with the third voice asking if they felt nervous, with a whispered "no" response.
Devon told her husband to fess up to his prank. He told her the added sounds were no joke.
"We could feel like there was something behind us," Tony said. "I could feel the hairs rise against the back of my neck."
Devon and Tony Bell are the co-founders of The Haunting Experiments, a local group that researches legends of paranormal activities in Wisconsin. The five-person group is currently working on season one of their webisodes, the most recent of which was released two weeks ago on their website and on YouTube.
Devon said the project process works like this: She researches and writes the stories about the legend while Tony does the video work and occasional special effects. Then she, or another group member narrates the video.
However, these are not necessarily paranormal investigation videos. Devon described most of the webisodes and videos they have produced as "travel videos" of the legends. The Charlotte Mills Bridge project was one of the few paranormal investigations they have done.
"We get more into the ghost lore part of it," she said.
Ghost legends aren't in short supply, according to Chris Weiner, the lead investigator of the Chippewa Valley Paranormal Investigators. The Chippewa Valley is rich with paranormal activity, he said, describing the area as a "virtual paranormal investigator's playground."
Even with the rich supply of lore in the area, The Haunting Experiments has traveled beyond the Chippewa Valley to pursue ghost lore, traveling as far as Clark County, Devon said.
The group itself began in 2008 as a way for the self-proclaimed "legend trippers" to delve deeper into paranormal lore, which Devon has been interested in since childhood. She said she chose the name, ‘The Haunting Experiments' because it was different from other groups she had heard of, and because she did not want to be known as the Eau Claire investigators.
"I knew that's not what we wanted to specialize in," she said in an e-mail.
The video work started on a whim in 2009 when Tony decided to record footage while they were at the Soo Line Bridge, or the "S" bridge in Eau Claire, with their digital camera. Since then, they've upgraded equipment, Tony said.
To date, the group has released about 12 videos, and there will be 12 webisodes at the end of season one, Devon said. The idea for a season of webisodes stemmed from a friend at Eau Claire Public Access who told them about the increasing popularity of the medium.
"We had already made other ghost lore videos, so why not launch something brand new for our group?" Devon said.
The couple said they plan to make a second season of webisodes as well. For now, the couple is pursuing their affinity for paranormal activity as a hobby, Devon said, although someday she and Tony could see themselves pursuing film for a living.
Along with the videos and season one of their webisodes, the group is working on a documentary focusing on the paranormal lore in Caryville, which Tony said will be completed by next spring.
For the documentary, they interviewed Weiner, who said working with the couple is a joy.
"They don't just go in looking for a thrill," he said. "They're in it for the research, the history, and of course to make their documentaries, which is a job in and of itself ... the viewers of these documentaries can live vicariously through those episodes."
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