WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD

Odd 'Mystery Creature' Attacks Dog
June 12, 2018



A bizarre piece of footage that appeared online this week shows a monstrous-looking creature of some kind lunging at a man's dog. The video was purportedly recorded back in 2015, but only popped up on YouTube yesterday. Little is known about the nature of the footage, only that it was allegedly shot somewhere in the United States. Who filmed the video and where, specifically, it took place remain a mystery.

Despite the lack of clarity surrounding the origin of the footage, what is shows is pretty remarkable. In the video, a dog can be heard barking in the background as the camera focuses on a dark mass among some trees. Suddenly, the anomaly springs up from the ground and is revealed to be an enormous animal. And, making matters all the more unsettling, the creature is headed straight for the dog that disturbed it.

The two animals briefly keep their distance from each other until the encounter culminates with a confrontation. Fortunately, that moment is not featured on the video, so those worried about seeing such a scene can rest easy. That said, the man's shouting and the dog's yelping seem to suggest that things did not go well for his pet when it met the beast.

As to what the creature could have been, there are a few schools of thought on that matter. Much like the weird wolf killed in Montana last month, some imaginative observers have theorized that the animal is either a dog-man or a not-quite-extinct dire wolf. More skeptical viewers argue that it is simply a normal, albeit incredibly large, wolf. And a handful of people have actually proposed that the mystery beast might actually be a pony!

[SOURCE: Coast 2 Coast AM.]

Mysterious Mummified Monkey Found in Minneapolis
April 10, 2018

A construction crew renovating a 116-year-old building in Minneapolis unearthed the mummified remains of a monkey and no one has any idea how it wound up there.

The strange discovery was made by workers at the site of what was once the flagship location of the Dayton's department store chain in the city's downtown.

A person involved with the project subsequently passed along an image of the oddity to a Facebook group devoted to celebrating Minnesota's history.

The weird find has left many wondering what the monkey's origin story may have been and what circumstances led to its untimely demise in the ceiling of a pretty massive department store.

The two more prevalent theories are that the creature escaped from an exotic pet sale that was held at the store in 1963 or possibly a pet shop once located on the premises.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the tale may be that this might just be an urban legend, of sorts, come true.

That's because a maintenance worker who spent five decades at Dayton's once told a fellow employee that, indeed, a monkey had managed to find a way out of the pet store and wound up in the ducts of the building before falling victim to an exhaust fan blade.

While we're guessing that the person who had been told the story had a good chuckle about the unbelievable nature of the tale at the time, it seems that it's the maintenance worker who is getting the last laugh.

[SOURCE: Fox9 Minneapolis.]

Water Study Inadvertently Solves Easter Island Moai Mystery?
October 10, 2018

An intriguing new theory suggests that the legendary statues found on Easter Island, known as 'moai,' may have had a less mystical purpose than previously imagined. As part of his decades-long study of the original inhabitants of the tiny island, anthropologist Carl Lipo believes that he may have inadvertently solved the longstanding mystery. This occurred as a result of the researcher's curiosity about how the Rapa Nui people were able to survive in light of the scarcity of freshwater on the island.

According to a newly published paper by Lipo, field studies on the island found that there were "abundant locations of brackish but potable water along the coastline." The anthropologist concluded that this was likely where the Rapa Nui civilization got much of its drinking water. While the solution to that particular mystery may sound a bit mundane to some, it very well may have resulted in a rather remarkable breakthrough when it comes to questions surrounding the iconic moai on the island.

That's because, much to Lipo's surprise, when he looked at where the freshwater sources were found on the island, they just so happened to line up with locations that also feature the moai. "The more we looked, the more consistently we saw this pattern," he told Newsweek, noting that areas where there were no statues also had no nearby sources of freshwater. He also argued that this theory seems to explain why the moai were placed in areas on the island which appear to be incongruous to the idea that they were monuments of some kind.

On the contrary, Lipo posits, the massive statues served the utilitarian purpose of pointing out freshwater sources. Why, exactly, the Rapa Nui people would choose to erect enormous statues in such locations rather than devising a different method for marking where one could find drinkable water is, of course, still a mystery.

[SOURCE: Coast 2 Coast AM.]

Voynich Manuscript Solved Via AI?
January 26, 2018

A computer scientist in Canada says that he has cracked the code of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript using artificial intelligence.

The infamous indecipherable text found in the book believed to be from the 1400's has baffled researchers since it was found in 1912.

In the ensuing years, countless researchers and cryptographers have exhaustively studied the book hoping to unravel the riddle that is the Voynich Manuscript.

And it seems that not a year goes by without someone declaring that they have finally done it, yet the mystery has endured as Voynich-ologists can never quite agree on a specific solution.

The latest entry into the fray is Greg Kondrak, a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence from the University of Alberta.

According to Kondrak, he and a colleague devised a method to apply their AI work to the coded text and the results were rather astounding.

They began by creating a massive data set comprised of the UN Bill of Rights translated into a whopping 380 languages.

The researchers then developed a way in which a computer could process the Voynich Manuscript and determine its core language.

Amazingly, they say, the project proved successful with the AI picking out Hebrew as the root language a jaw-dropping 97 percent of the time.

The program ultimately was able to reassemble the scrambled, vowel-less words into Hebrew text which seemed to fit together perfectly when put into a sentence with similarly-deciphered words.

For example, Kondrak claims, they were able to actually solve the first sentence of the notorious tome and say that it reads, "she made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people."

A cursory look at some of the other words they've found in the book suggest that theories suggesting that it is some kind of health or medicine text appear to be on the right track.

But what may be even more remarkable is that the AI analysis is perfectly in line with a study of the book's illustrations that made headlines last year by indicating that the author was a Jewish doctor.

That these two studies coming from dramatically different perspectives could come to the same relative conclusion is particularly tantalizing.

Nonetheless, Kondrak's work is presumably now being parsed over by the fastidious Voynich research and, no doubt, adopted by those who see it fitting with their theories and discarded by those who don't.

[SOURCE: CBS News.]

Forensic Linguist Solves Jack the Ripper Letter Mystery?
January 29, 2018

A longstanding mystery surrounding letters purportedly penned by infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper may have been solved by a forensic linguist in England.

The notorious miscreant of Whitechapel literally made a name for himself after sending a handful of letters to newspapers detailing his crimes and calling himself 'Jack the Ripper.'

Publication of the unsettling missives, in turn, spawned a series of hoaxes and fake Ripper letters that eventually numbered over two hundred.

As one can imagine, this has caused considerable controversy in the Ripper research community when it comes to which letters may have been genuine.

And now, it seems, one aspect of this mystery may have finally been solved thanks to the work of forensic linguist Dr. Andrea Nini of the University of Manchester.

Taking a look at two of the earliest letters written at the time, including the first missive to contain the Ripper name, Nini determined that they were written by the same person.

This conclusion was derived from a number of subtle similarities found in the texts of the two pieces of writing.

Nini also raised the intriguing possibility that a third letter, previously dismissed as a publicity stunt from an English newspaper, may have also been penned by the same author.

While the findings may not answer to the question of who Jack the Ripper was, the study seems to, at least, clear up some confusion surrounding one of the more vexing clues to the case.

The research also shows that there are possible breakthroughs to be found in classic mysteries should one apply modern methods as was also seen last week with the AI study of the Voynich Manuscript.

Source: University of Manchester