Journal of the Bizarre

Earlier today, the U.K.'s Mail Online reported on the alleged find made by divers at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.  The supposedly metallic disc-shaped object, initially discovered by sonar in May of last year, is curved at the sides and is surrounded by a strange rock formation which researchers have been unable to explain.  The mysterious rocks which surround the object are said to be covered in some type of soot, which researchers have also been unable to explain.  The Swedish team, Ocean X, which is investigating the object has released photographs showing a 985-foot track which leads to the sunken object, leading many people to believe that the object crashed into the sea and then skidded to its current location.  The anomalous object currently sits 285 feet below the waters of the Gulf of Botnia.

However, there is another reason why this discovery is of particular interest to UFO researchers.  According to the Ocean X team, electronic equipment mysteriously stops working whe…

Just days after it had been reported that Bulgarian researchers have unearthed the corpses of "vampires" (see our previous post), Discovery News reports that knuckle bone and other remains found on an island in Bulgaria may have belonged to John the Baptist.

The bones, which were discovered inside of a marble tomb on the island of Sveti Ivan two years ago, have been the focus of exhaustive research by Oxford University.  The bone from the right knuckle has been dated to the first century, which coincides with the saint's period of preaching.  Recently, scientists from the University of Copenhagen analyzed the DNA of the bone fragments and concluded that they belonged to a male of Middle Eastern descent.

While these findings cannot conclusively confirm the identity of the famously-beheaded saint, the relics were originally discovered inside of a small box which had been inscribed in ancient Greek.  The inscriptions allude to John the Baptist, and also mention the date June…

Bulgarian archaeologists recently excavated the graves of two skeletons believed to be vampires from the Middle Ages, a discovery which helps shed new light on the development of the classic vampire myth.

Bulgarian researcher Bozhidar Dimitrov explained that the two skeletons, found near a monastery in the coastal town of Sozopol, had been stabbed through the midsection with metal stakes.  Surprisingly, this was not an uncommon burial practice during the Middle Ages.

According to popular beliefs at the time, people who were deemed to be evil during their lifetimes were often stabbed in the chest with an iron or wooden stake prior to burial in order to prevent them from returning from the dead.  Dimitrov explained that the stakes were intended to keep the corpses in their graves and to prevent them from crawling out of the ground at midnight and terrorizing the living, a myth which was prevalent among the pagan cultures of the period.

Dimitrov also explained that over 100 skeletons impal…