WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD

Dispatches from around the globe featuring the bizarre, the strange and the unusual.

BIZARRE SEA CREATURE WASHES UP ON TEXAS BEACH
While surveying the damage from Hurricane Harvey, a Texas woman stumbled upon the remains of a nightmarish sea creature that had washed ashore during the storm.

Preeti Desai spotted the oddity on a beach in Texas City last week and managed to snap some pictures of the animal which boasts a monstrous-looking mouth.

A social media manager for the National Audubon Society, Desai posted the pictures to Twitter in the hopes that someone could identify the weird beast.

Fortunately the photos provided some clues for experts to narrow down the nature of the animal with the prevailing opinion being that it was probably a tusky eel.

Source: Daily Mail

CELL PHONE FOUND IN OLD PAINTING?
A painting from the 1930's is raising eyebrows because it seems to show a Native American gazing at a cell phone.

The piece, entitled 'Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield', depicts a meeting between English settlers and Native Americans in Massachusetts during the 17th century.

Amidst the rather chaotic scene showcased in the painting is one moment which looks eerily familiar to modern observers: a Native American sitting in a canoe looking intently at a small black rectangle held in his hands.

Of course, since it would be another seven decades before the first cell phone was invented, the uncanny appearance of such a device in the painting has led to speculation surrounding time travel.

However, art historians have offered their own suggestions for what the enigmatic object might be, including a mirror, a Bible, and an iron blade.

While the possibility that it is, indeed, a cell phone is rather fantastic, such a scenario would require a rather complex explanation worthy of a time travel film.

Since the image is a painting rather than a photograph, artist Umberto Romano would have to have known that Native American possessed cell phone technology and then hidden this information in the artwork.

Were that the case, it would mean that this secret knowledge was passed down centuries after America was settled, somehow been revealed to Romano, and yet still remain a secret today.

As such, it's likely that the prosaic explanations presented by academics is the likely solution to what the mysterious 'device' could be.

Source: Daily Mail

"ALIEN" INSECT SPOTTED IN TAIWAN
A truly bizarre-looking creature found squirming around on some rocks in Taiwan left onlookers scratching their heads.

Witness Huang Meilan managed to capture footage of the oddity that initially looks like a mass of seaweed, but then reveals its animal nature when the creature begins moving.

In the video, those watching the insect-like 'monster' are clearly baffled by what it might be and, one would assume, a little unsettled by its rather creepy appearance.

As to what it might have been, the prevalent theory is that it was not one, but a group of creatures in the form of several 'horsehair worms' that somehow wound up stuck together.

Alternative possibilities proposed include a mutant stick insect and the always-popular stranded alien on Earth.

Should the latter explanation prove to be true, then we probably don't have much to worry about when it comes to an ET invasion since the creature looked to be pretty easy to defeat.

Source: Daily Mail

MYSTERIOUS METAL "STARFISH" FOUND ON RHODE ISLAND BEACH
The puzzling metal 'starfish' found embedded in the sand at a Rhode Island beach has been unearthed, but its removal has done little to solve the mystery surrounding it.

Discovered a few weeks ago during low tide in the town of Westerly, the strange object stuck in the seabed has been somewhat of a summer sensation in the community.

Theories about the object have ranged from the prosaic, such as a disused piece of scientific equipment, to the exotic, including the always-popular alien connection.

It was thought that an excavation of the anomaly on Thursday morning might finally yield a solution to the mystery, however the endeavor seems to have only spawned more uncertainty.

In a testament to how vexing the case has become, nearly 100 people gathered at the beach to watch the 45-minute long removal of the object.

Unfortunately, rather than come out all in one piece, the 'starfish' fell apart, leaving workers to recover a number of metal fragments from the object which provided precious little in the way of clues to what they had once formed.

Despite attempts to put the pieces together on the beach in order to recreate the object, the impromptu puzzle still did not clear up the confusion.

Nonetheless, now that the object, albeit in pieces, is being seen in the proverbial light of day, officials hope that someone will look at the coverage of its removal, recognize something, and offer an explanation for what it was.

Meanwhile, the debris has now been shuttled off to an 'undisclosed location,' which conjures thoughts of an ET cover-up, but probably really only means the basement of the Westerly police station.

Source: Westerly Sun