Paranormal Reflux: The Re-Search for the Unexplained.
If ever you were in doubt, here are the facts on various apokryphunk.
What are Ultraterrestrials? Let’s face it, you’ve gotta have somewhere to move that goalpost.
Before you think I’m knocking the idea out of hand, here me out, I have some serious thoughts on John Keel’s idea of ultraterrestrials proposed in his 1970 book UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.
Do psychics and mediums have the ability to speak to the dead or see the future? What we understand about human nature, confirmation bias, blatant fraud, and lucky guesses, suggests that they do not.
Is Elvis Still Alive?
Celebrity death conspiracy theories abound for many deceased rock stars and actors like Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson, Andy Kaufman, and Coolio, who tragically died in 2022 due to an accidental overdose of fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine, not some crazy conspiracy about deets he had on clandestine business within the recording industry.
After listening to an episode of the Nighttime Podcast about the Bell Island Boom from April 23, 2016, I went perusing the YouTube for an old CBC news broadcast from 1978 about mysterious booms and a massive unexplained explosion that damaged property and made a substantial impact on the residents of Bell Island
Continue reading “The Bell Island Boom – 41 Years Later”The Travis Walton UFO sighting and abduction story is a good one. But even though it’s an intriguing tale, and made a great movie, there are some things that don’t ring true in this famous UFO case. Aside from having everything involved with it but the kitchen sink.
Continue reading “Alleged Travis Walton UFO Abduction Incident”
October, Rocktober, Shocktober… Schlocktober. Whatever kind of -tober you call it, it’s that time of month. The wind turns cold, dead leaves start swirling around in the streets, Home Depot shuffles out their halloween decor. Wait, that was last month, this month they set up all of the Christmas displays.
I can recall a time when Home Depot sold nothing but serious equipment, tools and materials for electricians, plumbers, construction and landscraping professionals. Now Home Depot, et al., are just department stores with lame, jumbo Halloween decorations and plastic Christmas trees, who also happen to stock building materials. And people think the paranormal is weird….
But I digress. It’s October! It’s almost Halloween! It’s that time of year when our minds drift to the supernatural and spooky, the creepy and macabre (the “r” is generally silent there by the way). So, what zany out of this world event didn’t happen this month in unexplained mystery history? I’ve got just the thing…
The Philadelphia Experiment
That’s right, didn’t happen, so stop watching all of those dopey “documentaries” that claim this nonsense is real and get on with the true meaning of the season: fun for fun-sake, bunk for bunk-sake. There doesn’t have to be anything real about any of it, it’s just fun fodder for fertile imaginations.
Now, how do we know that the Philadelphia Experiment didn’t happen? Easy, it’s called “Occam’s Razor.” In short Occam’s Razor is a reasoning tool which can be summed up like this: the simplest explanation is likely the correct one. Write that down.
The following is based on information easily digested at Wikipedia.org. See the main article at that website for any potential references. They did the research, I’m just summarizing.
The Philadelphia Experiment was first proposed in letters received by Morris K. Jessup, a writer on the UFO phenomenon who mostly earned a living as an auto parts salesman and photographer. Though he had a masters degree in astronomy he never persued that field any further than beginning work on and ultimately abandoning his doctorate.
The letters were written by a Carlos Miguel Allende, who also referred to himself as Carl M. Allen in other correspondence to Jessup. The mystery letter sender’s real name was in fact Carl Meredith Allen. Allen was a strange fellow with a very active imagination and just maybe a screw or two loose.
In these letters Allen claimed to have witnessed an experiment which occurred in October of 1943, at the Naval Shipyard in Philadeplphia, involving U.S. Navy ship USS Eldridge, in which the ship was made invisible with some kind of humongous electromagnetic field. Or something like that. After reappearing it was subsequently revealed, somehow to someone, that while invisible the ship had made a short jaunt to to New York and even encountered some aliens along the way.
Sounds fun, except for the part where, upon allegedly reappearing in Philly after its alleged vanishing, some of the crew were allegedly found physically blended with parts of the ship. Not just stuck half way into a wall, but literally part of the wall.
That’s an incredibly fantastical tale, so… Insert decades of bunky nonsense here, regurgitated and revised by countless television shows, documentaries, newspaper articles, books, magazines, websites, forums, podcasts and on and on…
Jessup considered Allen a whack-job, and for good reason: generally speaking Allen was a whack-job. We have it on first-hand account by Robert Goerman, a freelance reporter who has written on various topics in the paranormal camp. During his research into the persona of Carl M. Allen, Goerman found that the truth was closer than he expected. Turns out he was actually acquainted with Allen’s immediate family, though he didn’t know it until he mentioned his research to them during a casual conversation.
It was revealed that Carl M. Allen was literally disturbed and a “creative loner.” Read Goerman’s report on the matter at his website.
So, SLICE… Occam’s Razor cuts a huge chunk of bunk from the story of the Philadelphia Experiment and we come to the more logical, and practical, explanation that Carl Meredith Allen perpetrated a hoax with his letters to Jessup regarding the alleged vanishing of the USS Eldridge in 1943.
The truth is usually right under our noses, but all too often—more like all the time when it comes to the paranormal and “unexplained”—a simmering soup of speculation and stubborn beliefs among dedicated fans of these mysteries creates a sloppy glop of claims and fantastic ideas that obscure the truth, distract and mislead.
But why let the truth stand in the way of a good story?
For best results read this post in the style of the late, great George Carlin.
You know what pisses me off? Well, what really pisses me off is that half of the Triscuits are broken in the box when you open it, but that’s not my issue right now. What almost really pisses me off is stupid people. Continue reading “Moon Hoaxes, Bases, and Stupid People”
In the 1980s and 90s a bogus rumor circulated that the Proctor & Gamble logo was designed to indicate the company’s allegience to satan and that the acting CEO was a satanist who donated a large portion of his profits to the Church of Satan. If you slightly stretch your imagination devil horns and an inverted representation of the number of the beast (great song by Iron Maiden by the way), 666, can be found in the Proctor & Gamble moon man logo. But people can find whatever they want, wherever they look, if they look hard enough. The same exact rumor circulated about fashion designer Liz Claiborne.
These rumors were started by someone who was either a Christian fanatic, whack-job (typically one in the same), disgruntled employee or consumer, or just some dork who decided to have some fun and invent a stupid rumor. Maybe all of the above!
Through the years rumors like these have floated around, including idiotic things like 666 appearing in all product barcodes, Snapple, Marlboro, and Timberland are owned by the KKK.
Rock bands weren’t immune to these bogus allegations either. If you’re old enough to remember the cool bands of the 70s and 80s you’ll recall it was rumored that Led Zeppelin, the Beetles and others used a technique called “backward masking” to send subliminal messages to fans via their records. RUSH was rumored to be an acronym for Ruling Under Satan’s Hand, KISS stood for Knights In Satan’s Service, and Black Sabbath was just blatantly satanic. C’mon, why bother hiding it!
Rock and roll is about rebellion. Most kids just get charged up and inspired then go about their day. I listened to this music, alleged by religious fanatics to have been designed to make me a satanist, or kill my parents, or whatever. Rest assured my Mom and Pop are alive and well, and all I did was become an atheist. Terry Watkins, et al., is an idiot.
So here we go again, this time with Monster energy drinks! Christian whack Christine Weick has concocted a satanic Monster Energy Drink conspiracy. Her most recent public appearance, when she ranted about Jesus during a Muslim prayer meeting, isn’t really that interesting, and not funny at all. It’s just stupid. The Monster Energy Drink Satan-worship-cult-conspiracy thing, on the other hand, is absolutely hysterical.
On November 9th a video hit youtube and quickly went viral. In the video Christine Weick, pictured left, accused Monster Beverage Corp. of being in league with ol’ Beelzebub.
She claimed, as you can see in the video above, that the Monster Energy Logo is made of of three characters that resemble the Hebrew Letter “Waw” (or “Vav”) which is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and so, “Vav Vav Vav” must equal “666.” That’s makes some kind of elementary sense. Very pointless sense, but kind of. If your brain happens to work that way and you have entirely too much time on your hands.
According to Wikipedia.com “Waw” or “Vav” “literally means hook/peg/spear.” Okay I’m sold. If that’s not clearly a letter satan would choose for his clandestine evil plan what is?
Now let’s take a look at how Weick’s claims are complete nonsense. I present Exhibit A—the only exhibit required for our purposes really—the Monster Logo and the Hebrew Letter “Waw” or “Vav” …
Take a close look and carefully study the two images. Compare each of the vertical parts of the Monster Energy logo on the left to the “Vav” character on the right. It should take, oh, maybe three seconds. I’ll wait… Got it? Okay, let’s continue.
As you should notice, the only similarity between these characters is… Holy crap they do look the same! But before I go believing that Monster Energy is trying to push satanism on an unsuspecting public I will grab “Occam’s Razor” from my tool belt of logic and slice and dice.
When you slash away all of the malarkey it stands to reason, really and truly plain ol’ common sense, that the creative minds behind the Monster Energy Drink logo were just looking for a cool design to represent their product. No satanic connection required. But nothing can ever be that basic with a fringe mind. There must always be a great conspiracy.
Christine Weick and other fringe religious fanatics make connections where there are no connections and come up with idiotic ideas they feel the need to push onto others.
That should be enough about that. Don’t even get me started with “Unleash the Beast”…
The Church of Satan is a legit thing by the way, and as religious freedom goes, they have every right to be.