An elderly Chinese woman has stunned her family and fellow villagers by growing from her forehead a horn than resembles a goat’s.
Grandmother Zhang Ruifang, 101, of Linlou village, Henan province, began developing the mysterious protrusion last year.
Since then it has grown 2.4in in length and another now appears to emerging on the other side of the mother of seven’s forehead.
The condition has left her family baffled and worried.
Her youngest of six sons, Zhang Guozheng, 60, said when a patch of rough skin formed on her forehead last year ‘we didn't pay too much attention to it’.
‘But as time went on a horn grew out of her head and it is now 6cm long,' added Mr Zhang, whose eldest brother and sibling is 82 years old.
‘Now something is also growing on the right side of her forehead. It’s quite possible that it’s another horn.’
Although, it is unknown what the protrusion is on Mrs Zhang’s head, it resembles a cutaneous horn.
This is a funnel-shaped growth and although most are only a few millimetres in length, some can extend a number of inches from the skin.
Cutaneous horns are made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.
They usually develop in fair-skinned elderly adults who have a history of significant sun exposure but it is extremely unusual to see it form protrusions of this size.
The growths are most common in elderly people, aged between 60 and the mid-70s. They can sometimes be cancerous but more than half of cases are benign.
Common underlying causes of cutaneous horns are common warts, skin cancer and actinic keratoses, patches of scaly skin that develop on skin exposed to the sun, such as your face, scalp or forearms.
Cutaneous horns can be removed surgically but this does not treat the underlying cause.
Mono Lake has a bizarre, extraterrestrial beauty. Just east of Yosemite National Park in California, the ancient lake covers about 65 square miles. Above its surface rise the twisted shapes of tufa, formed when freshwater springs bubble up through the alkaline waters.
Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geobiologist, is interested in the lake not for its scenery but because it may be harbouring alien life forms, or “weird life”. Mono Lake, a basin with no outlet, has built up over many millennia one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. Dr Wolfe-Simon is investigating whether, in the mud around the lake or in the water, there exist microbes whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere, a second genesis for life on this planet.
Arsenic is chemically close to phosphorus. While phosphorus is a primary building block of life on Earth — an essential component of DNA and ATP, the energy molecule — arsenic is a deadly poison. In Mono Lake there are micro-organisms that live with arsenic. But they don’t incorporate it into their biology.
Dr Wolfe-Simon has theorised that there may be life that chose an “evolutionary pathway” to utilise arsenic. If such microbes existed, it could suggest that life started on our planet not once but at least twice. In turn this would help to support the idea that life is much more likely to have started elsewhere in the galaxy.
“There is life ‘as we know it’ and there is life ‘as we don’t know it’. What would that look like? I am trying to give us a framework to work with to help us look for what ‘we don’t know’, the particular framework of arsenic,” she says.
Dr Wolfe-Simon has taken samples from the mud and the waters of the lake and is performing a series of multiple dilutions — hugely increasing the levels of arsenic and reducing residual phosphorous to zero. She adds sugar, vitamins and other nutrients to encourage organisms to grow and tests the results.
Her experiments are not yet over but she is quietly pleased with the progress she is making. “We have some very exciting data,” she says. The results should be published by the end of this year.
She points out that Mono Lake arsenic life, if found, may only go as far as proving the extreme adaptability of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is generally agreed that on early Earth the chemical soup was very different because of the material being thrown out of the planet’s depths by volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and the lack of biologically derived oxygen. If arsenic was around in far greater concentrations then, perhaps “arsenolife”, as she calls it, in Mono Lake is evidence of that ancestral life, a finding that would deepen our understanding of how life on Earth got started.
But she hopes that her research may help scientists to reconsider what alien or “weird” life might look like: “It may prove that there are other possibilities that are beyond our imagination. It opens the door for us to think about biology in ways we have never thought. We are going to look for life on other planets and we only know to look for that which we know. This may help us to develop tools to look for something we have never seen.”
Her work is funded by the Nasa Astrobiology Institute and she is based at the laboratories of Professor Ron Oremland, of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. Does she believe that there are alien life forms out there? “I don’t know how there could not be extraterrestrial life,” she replies.
Original story can be found here.
So far, bidding on "Two Captured Ghosts" had reached $NZ410 ($A316), and incited hundreds of comments, with advice ranging from how to get rid of the spirits for good, to the ethics of selling someone else's captured immortal essence.
Before the exorcism, the seller said he and his partner were plagued by noises, strange "vibes" and the mysterious flicking of switches. After contacting spiritualist churches, they were referred to an exorcist, who put the ghosts in the bottles.
Since having their troublesome housemates removed last July, the couple had experienced no further disruptions, he said.
The auction description claims the spirits were captured by an exorcist from a spiritual church at a property in Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand's South Island.
The seller claims that one spirit belongs to a man who died in the house in the 1920s.
"We have had no (paranormal) activity since they were bottled on July 15, 2009," the seller said.
"So I believe they are in the bottles."
The auction said the "holy water" in the vials dulled the spirit's energy and put them to sleep.
To revive the spirit, the buyer would need to pour the contents into a dish and let it "evaporate into your house''.
"I just want to get rid of them as they scare me,'' the seller said.
Original story can be found here.
HORIZON CITY -- The legend may be back, just as mysterious and dark, to stalk the unsuspecting.
Until last weekend, Cesar Garcia and brother-in-law Juan Miranda saw their life near Horizon City as secluded and peaceful.
They moved to the area from Chicago three years ago, but have suddenly been beset by strange and unexplained occurrences.
Their rabbits went into hiding, their cat spent the weekend on the roof of their house, their roosters didn't crow, and their dogs didn't bark.
And at least 30 of their chickens were killed by an unknown interloper.
The brothers are hesitant to say what they think spooked their animals or killed their chickens.
But when pressed, they said it: El Chupacabras.
The legend of El Chupacabras has been part of border folklore since stories of the creature's existence in Puerto Rico emerged in the early '90s. The creature has rarely, if ever, been seen, but it leaves dead animals behind. Its name comes from the animal's reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.
But El Chupacabras is very real to Cesar Garcia, who came out of his house Saturday morning and found 20 dead chickens.
"I saw the chickens were dead, but there was no blood around the sheet metal" in the coop, Garcia said. "All of them were just dead in one big pile. But, really, I don't know what it was because there was no blood.
"If it had been a dog, there would have been blood everywhere because a dog tears them apart."
Garcia was puzzled by the wounds on some of the chickens, which he described as "two pokes."
"We looked it up on the Internet -- the Chupacabras," he said.
On Sunday morning, Garcia's brother-in-law, Miranda, found 10 more dead chickens in a different coop. Sheriff's deputies responded both mornings to investigate, Miranda said. El Paso County sheriff's spokeswoman Chris Acosta confirmed that deputies went to the house in the 15600 block of Slippery Rock.
Miranda said he could not figure out why the family's three dogs did not bark either night. "Nobody heard anything. Nobody saw anything," he said.
Miranda said whatever got the chickens left tracks that included a paw and a heel, and looked like Chupacabras tracks they found on the Internet. "We followed them all the way past the trailer over there, then over the fence. We walked about four blocks and then the footprints vanished."
Tracks from whatever killed the chickens. Could they be of a Chupacabra?
Henry Flores, director of the Paso Del Norte Paranormal Society, said his group in the past has searched for El Chupacabras in far Northeast El Paso and in Chaparral. The group may now expand the search to the Horizon City area.
"Chupacabras ranks right up there as one of the creatures that has supposedly been seen," Flores said. "It's something we want to try to hunt down when we get a chance."
On their past hunts, Flores said, the group has never glimpsed El Chupacabras, but has found fresh carcasses drained of blood.
"We do see some trails of remains that we think could be the Chupacabras, but we just don't know," he said.
Tony Zavaleta, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas-Brownsville and an expert in border folklore, said the story of El Chupacabras is kept alive by Spanish-speaking media.
"The Chupacabra is a mythical creature," Zavaleta said. "I reserve the right to say that until someone produces one."
Zavaleta said belief in El Chupacabras has become something of a game to people. Belief is widespread in Latin America and the American Southwest because any mention of the creature quickly gets picked up in the Spanish-speaking media and feeds the craze.
"I don't like to use the word 'hysteria,' but I'll use it with a small 'h.' " Zavaleta said. "Usually, the stories start when a small mammal is killed by a possum, coyote, mountain lion or something. Suddenly, people create an association with the Chupacabras."
The Chupacabras craze was biggest in El Paso in 1995, when T-shirts with images of the goat-sucker, based on "witness accounts," were hot items.
Chupacabras stories made the rounds in El Paso-Juárez that year, but one story stood out. A woman in the Juárez area told reporters that she was bitten by the creature on her neck. Her claim was debunked later as a ploy to divert attention from a lover's hickey and her supposed marital infidelity.
El Chupacabras even stumped TV FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in a 1997 episode of the "X-Files" that starred Ruben Blades.
But Garcia was left to wonder whether his trouble is over and whether it could have been worse: Until three weeks ago, there was still a herd of goats -- allegedly El Chupacabras' favorite food -- on his property.
"Now I'm left with no chickens. Thirty chickens -- gone," Garcia said. "Imagine if we still had the goats."
Original story can be found here.
Daniel Shenton should be the most irrational man in the world. As the new president of the Flat Earth Society, you'd imagine he would also think that evolution is a scam and global warming a myth. He should argue that smoking does not cause cancer and HIV does not lead to Aids.
Yes, that Flat Earth Society, a group that has become a living metaphor for backward thinking and a refusal to face scientific facts. Yes, it is still going, and no, this isn't an early April fool.
In fact, Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
He is mainstream on most issues, but not all. For when Shenton rides his motorbike, he says it is not gravity that pins him to the road, but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet. Countries, according to him, spread across this flat world as they appear to do on a map, with Antarctica as a ring of mountains strung around the edge. And, yes, you can fall off.
If you thought that flat Earthism was gone, think again. The scientific evidence is stacked against Shenton, obviously, just as it is against those who think global warming is a hoax and that the dead stalk the Earth as ghosts – but that doesn't appear to trouble him in the least.
"There is no unified flat Earth model," Shenton suggests, "but the most commonly accepted one is that it's more or less a disc, with a ring of something to hold in the water. The height and substance of that, no one is absolutely sure, but most people think it's mountains with snow and ice."
The Earth is flat, he argues, because it appears flat. The sun and moon are spherical, but much smaller than mainstream science says, and they rotate around a plane of the Earth, because they appear to do so.
Inevitably, Shenton's argument forces him down all kinds of logical blind alleys – the non-existence of gravity, and his argument that most space exploration, and so the moon landings, are faked. But, while many flat Earthers have problems with the idea of orbiting satellites, Shenton navigates the London streets using GPS. He was also happy to fly from the US to Britain, but says an aircraft that flew over the Antarctic barrier would drop from the sky, and from the planet.
The Flat Earth Society was originally formed as the Universal Zetetic Society in 1884, after the Greek word zeteo, "to seek". Zeteticism, Shenton says, emphasises experience and reason over the "trusting acceptance of dogma" – or, it seems, overwhelming evidence. Only a personal trip into space to see the world as it is for himself would persuade him. "But even then, in seeing it, I would have to be convinced there weren't any tricks involved."
The International Flat Earth Society was formally founded in 1956. Shenton resurrected the society and claimed its presidency last year, following years of inaction after the death of former president Charles Johnson in 2001, who had some 3,000 registered followers. He has so far recruited 60 members through the society's website, which boasts about 9,000 visitors to its discussion forums.
"I can't say what everybody's motive is for joining, but there are quite a few who I know are as serious as I am," he says. "Lots of people log on once to hurl abuse but they tend to get bored and go away. We're not fanatical about it and we're not going to engage in pointless, angry discussions."
The website features scanned issues of the society's newsletter, the notorious Flat Earth News, from its 1970s and 80s heyday. Sample headlines include: Sun Is a Light 32 Miles Across, Australia Not Down Under, and World Is Flat and That's That.
"I thought it was a shame that all these documents would go unseen forever," Shenton says. But what about the evidence? In an age where astronauts send photographs of a spherical planet from an orbiting space station, how can the concept of a flat Earth persist?
"Look at what special effects are capable of: you can produce any photograph, any video. I don't think there is solid proof. I'm not intentionally being stubborn about it, but I feel our senses tell us these things, and it would take an extraordinarily level of evidence to counteract those. How many people have actually investigated it? Have you?"
Last year, Shenton did just that, travelling to a six-mile stretch of straight water along the Old Bedford River in Norfolk, the scene of many infamous flat Earth experiments. "There should have been curvature, but I didn't see what mainstream science says should have been there," he says.
Shenton's critics, it should be pointed out, can fall back on spherical trigonometry and astronomical observations that date right back to Aristotle in 330BC. In fact, the idea of a flat Earth was widespread only until about the fourth century BC, when the Ancient Greeks first proposed it was a sphere. By the Middle Ages, most people in Europe were convinced, contrary to popular stories. "A lot of the stuff about Columbus isn't true; there weren't mutinies about whether they would fall off the Earth," Shenton says.
The modern Flat Earth movement dates back to Victorian England, and biblical literalist Samuel Rowbotham and his followers, who promoted their cause by engaging top scientists of the day in public debate.
Shenton himself used to accept that the Earth was round, but began asking questions after hearing musician Thomas Dolby's 1984 album The Flat Earth. (When Shenton reconvened the society last year, Dolby accepted membership number 00001.) "It was the late 1990s and I started doing research into what the Flat Earth Society was. I had heard of it and, when I did some more research, I eventually ended up believing its ideas were true."
It may sound like Shenton is playing games, that the reborn society is a clever metaphor or marketing tool for another cause – but he insists he is serious.
"I haven't taken this position just to be difficult. To look around, the world does appear to be flat, so I think it is incumbent on others to prove decisively that it isn't. And I don't think that burden of proof has been met yet."
Original story can be found here.
