Journal of the Bizarre

It must have been a slow week in the world of the paranormal. From the once-relevant Coast to Coast AM website to the formerly-interesting Unexplained-Mysteries.com, everyone has been posting stories about the "goblin" caught on film in Argentina.

This non-remarkable video of the grainy and barely recognizable third-world type, much like a Filipino transgendered hooker who professes to be a virgin, has been making the rounds in a sad attempt to convince the easily-duped that it really is all that it claims to be.

In reality, it's just another blurry video showing what appears to be nothing more otherworldly than your run-of-the-mill spider monkey. Even the dog in the video is unimpressed.

Yawn.

Funny. You could be out in the wilderness for a week with an iPhone and not see a damn thing. But step outside for one minute with a 2001 Nokia flip-phone and you encounter Bigfoot, a fleet of UFOs, Elvis, demons, goblins and more chupacabras than you can shake a stick at.

Sorry…

JOTB presents a groundbreaking study on political preferences and the supernatural



Journal of the Bizarre staffers had a busy 2016, attending paranormal conferences all over the United States and rubbing elbows with everyone from Bigfoot hunters to clairvoyants, with a heap of ufologists and conspiracy theorists thrown in for good measure. Our mission? To find out whether or not there is a link between one's political affiliation and their supernatural beliefs.

The seven-month-long study yielded some interesting findings. The JOTB "Politics of the Paranormal" survey-- which we believe to be the largest of its kind-- polled 1,756 ParaCon and UFO symposium attendees in cities throughout the United States, from Orlando to Milwaukee, who were asked whether they identified as either conservative, strongly conservative, liberal, strongly liberal or 'none of the above'. Our findings are below.



Bigfoot hunters are overwhelmingly conservative

Among ParaCon attendees who list…

It's spring of 1844 in St. Clair County, Missouri. A mile or so from the banks of the muddy Osage River a pioneer settler named Matthew Arbuckle is plowing his field when he hears a banshee-like wail in the distance, coming from the direction of the river. Shrill and unearthly, the demonic howl fills the farmer with terror. Wasting no time, he unhitches his plow, jumps on the back of his horse and heads for the hills.

One hour later Arbuckle arrives in Papinville, a town fifteen miles from his farm. The exhausted horse is white with foam; its rider white with terror. In a gasping voice he tells of making an escape from an awful monster. Although he had not seen the beast, he had heard its voice, from which he could tell that it was a monster of immense proportions.

Those who heard Arbuckle's story were bewildered, and those who did not know the pioneer personally could tell, just by the bloodless pallor of his trembling skin, that the man was not telling a lie. Whatever terrify…

Blood has played a sacred role in religious rituals around the world for millenia, from primitive practitioners of human sacrifice to modern cults and secret societies. There's just something mysterious about the substance, even though many of us come into contact with it on a regular basis. Yet, no matter how many times we see it, blood never fails to stir up strange emotions within us.

But does blood have special powers? Mysterious, unexplained powers that defy scientific explanation?

On September 7, 1925, Time Magazine featured a story about blood-- and its telepathic qualities.

The story concerned a young man, Frederick George Lee, who was a frequent blood donor at Middlesex Hospital in London. According to Mr. Lee, he believed that he felt an inexplicable sharp pain in his arm every time a person to whom he had donated blood died.

Lee first experienced the pain one afternoon in the arm from which his blood was regularly drawn. He described it as a sudden, jabbing, searing pa…

Today, hanging is universally condemned as a barbaric form of punishment. The very reason why the electric chair was invented was because the citizens of New York demanded a more humane form of capital punishment. Yet many people were sad to see the retirement of the hangman; some argued that quick and painless executions took away all of the terror associated with capital punishment, and criminals would have an easier time doing their jobs without thoughts of nooses and trap doors in the back of their minds.

The first man to be executed by hanging in England was Earl Ferrers, on May 5, 1760. These early English executions were crudely accomplished by standing a criminal in a cart with a noose around his neck. A signal was given, the horse was whipped, and the cart pulled away.

The art of hanging a criminal was perfected by the hangmen of Newgate Prison in London, and the mental image most of us have today about the hangman comes from the writings of Charles Dickens, who often wrote …

Before he decided to travel to Haiti to study zombies, journalist and occult writer William Buehler Seabrook was already well established within the literary circles of the Lost Generation-- the name given to those who came of age during the World War-- which included the likes of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner. After beginning his career as a reporter in Augusta, he became enamored with the occult after Aleister Crowley spent a week at his Georgia farm. It was Haitian voodoo that fascinated Seabrook the most and his book The Magic Island was largely responsible for introducing the zombie to American audiences.

If not for Seabrook, the "Godfather of the Zombies", we probably wouldn't know anything about these undead beings. In other words, if you watch The Walking Dead, you owe a debt of gratitude to William Buehler Seabrook.

In 1928 Seabrook wrote of his travels to Haiti, and of his friendship with Constant Polynice, a Haitian farmer who lived in the isolated mounta…

Strange things have happened in a home where an entire family was murdered-- very strange things. If this story is true, then the ghosts observed at the scene of the Crockett family's gruesome murder rank among the scariest we have ever heard about.


From the June 7, 1914 edition of Missouri's Springfield Republican:

Pomona, Mo., June 6.-- Nestling under the protecting arm of Connor's Bluff, one of the most rugged peaks of the Ozark Mountains, stands the "House of Horrors", the most talked of and feared spot in this section. Although the dwelling is one of the most beautiful in Howell County, and it situated on a fertile and lovely stretch of land, the house is and has been without an occupant for the past ten years. People shudder when they pass the "House of Horrors" and mothers living in the vicinity of the place hush the clamor of their little ones with stories of the haunted dwelling.

In 1816, the house was erected by Stephen Crockett, a wealthy pla…

Odd. Very odd.

http://us.blastingnews.com/news/2017/02/tourists-flock-to-cathedral-to-see-gargoyle-that-resembles-trump-001448889.html

America's first naval base on the Pacific Ocean, Mare Island Naval Yard, can trace its military history back to 1852 when Commodore John Sloat suggested the site to Secretary of the Navy Will A. Graham. Two years later the shipyard opened and was placed under the command of a future admiral named David Farrugut-- the Civil War hero who, years later, later issued the famous order, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

Mare Island Naval Shipyard, known to sailors around the world simply as MINSY, played a crucial role in both world wars, and finally closed in 1996. Today it is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and has also been designated a California Historical Landmark.

In 1917, MINSY was rocked by tragedy when a barge loaded with munitions exploded, killing 6 and wounding 31. However, there is a less famous tragedy associated with Mare Island-- a tragedy which led to the haunting of the famed shipyard.

The Phantom Sentry of Mare Island

In the lat…