Journal of the Bizarre

When I was ten years old my parents took me and my brother on a family vacation to Virginia. With a six hour drive ahead of us, we stopped at a Kmart along the way to stock up on provisions for the trip. While my brother picked out an Etch-a-Sketch and some cassette tapes for his Walkman (this was the 1980s, after all), I headed to the book aisle and picked out the first paperback that caught my attention: Communion by Whitley Strieber. Something about those bulging black alien eyes on the cover fascinated me, and thus my lifelong fascination with UFOs and extraterrestrials began.

Decades later and hundreds of paperback and hardcover books along the way (plus an embarrassingly insane amount of hours spent listening to Art Bell and George Noory), I had the opportunity to observe my first UFO, in the form of an oddly-shaped pink superstructure sailing erratically through the daytime sky. It appeared to be about the size of a skyscraper and it's shape could not be described as round,…

Chicago's Cook County Jail, once home to notorious gangsters like Al Capone and Frank Nitti has been rumored to be haunted for decades. Considering that sixty-seven executions were carried out by electric chair at the California Avenue facility between 1928 and 1962, it should be no surprise that the jail is a spooky place.

However, it's Cook County's old jail, known to the locals as Bridewell ("Bridewell" is British slang for jail), where the most well-documented cases of paranormal activity took place. Many of these disturbances, it is believed, are the doings of a young prisoner named Peter Neidermeier, who was hanged at the jail in 1904. Neidermeier, along with his pals Gustave Marx and Harvey Vandine, were leaders of a gang known as the "Car Barn Bandits". Credited with eight murders and numerous robberies, the Car Barn Bandits made headlines in papers all over the country for their audacious and ruthless exploits.

In April of 1904, just days before…

When two different people have identical dreams, it is a strange and uncommon occurrence. But when a dead father appears in the identical dreams of his two sons-- imploring them to follow him to the grave-- it is even more bizarre. But the story doesn't end there; one son grew gravely ill and died just days after the incredible dream, making the following story, which appeared in the Bamberg Herald on June 19, 1913, one of the most bizarre tales we have ever encountered.

Very Queer Case- Father's Spirit Calls Two and One of Them Dies

The death dreams of Joseph H. Freedman and Max Freedman, brothers, of New Brunswick, N.J., followed by the passing away of Max, were discussed with awe in that city by many people for days.

Ten days ago Joseph dreamed vividly that the spirit of his dead father appeared and begged him to join him in the grave. This dream neither he, his wife nor any other member of the family told to Max, who was dangerously ill of a kidney disease.

But his wife told …

Wilhelm Wulff's name may be unfamiliar to most people, yet he played an important role during the Second World War-- a role that indirectly altered the course of world history. Born in 1892, Wulff is best-remembered as a member of the court of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's notorious head of the S.S. and chief of the Gestapo, where he served as Himmler's personal astrologer.

Wulff claimed to have accepted this position against his will; it was either take the job or be sent back to the concentration camp where he had been interred for several months. As a result, he maintained his freedom by casting daily horoscopes for one of the most reviled men in the history of mankind. Wulff's horoscopes were so accurate that Himmler himself rarely made a decision without consulting Wulff.

In his 1973 book Zodiac and Swastika Wilhelm Wulff details his life as a Nazi astrologer, offering a bizarre glimpse into the minds of men like Hitler, Himmler and Rudolph Hess, all of whom were obse…