Mark Kilroy was murdered 34 years ago this month, and for those living along the border of Mexico and the U.S.A. the crime has not been forgotten.
The reason for the attraction of Matamoros are three international bridges linking Brownsville, Texas to the notorious city where the good times are cheap.
It was 1879 when Frances Hranuelli fell in love with a sea captain named Herbert Schrady, but love doesn't always bring happiness in its wake.
She came from a Yugoslavian family living in San Francisco. Her relatives did not approve of the relationship, so they were probably glad when he sailed to Europe in charge of a merchant sailing vessel. It was reported to have gone down in the Straits of Gibraltar, and word reached Frances that her lover died, but she refused to believe it. There was a violent argument among them, and she took a vow that she would never open her lips in speech. She believed her family intercepted his letters to her, and tried to keep them apart.
It was April 1943, and World War II raged throughout Europe when four English teenagers were hunting for birds' nests in a private estate near Birmingham named Hagley Wood.
Bob Farmer climbed up an old Wych-elm tree, looked down the stunted top and made a gruesome discovery inside the hollowed out bole that has mystified police ever since. It was not a bird that stared back at him, but a human skull.
As a child he lived in a haunted 200-year-old farmhouse in Bavaria, German and that helped fuel his interest in the paranormal. This interest continued as he lived in a haunted house in New Mexico and having strange experiences as a logger working in the mountains of the southwest. He worked for many years in law enforcement eventually becoming the Chief of Police for Moriarty, New Mexico. During his time, he has witnessed many unusual events.
Niagara Falls has been a favorite destination for honeymooners for decades. Like a magnet, it also draws daredevils and those wishing to release themselves from this mortal coil.
Niagara Falls is made up of three waterfalls that are 18,000 years old. Two in the United States and one in Canada. Horseshoe Falls spans the border of both countries, and empties into the Niagara River; it's the largest of the three. The falls have a vertical drop of more than 165 feet.
Modern-day Sasquatch lore paints this cryptid as being very wary of man, and watching him only from afar, however Native American tribes for centuries have painted a different picture of Bigfoot. They describe how given the chance they would snatch up women or children and take them away never to be seen again.
Some tribes believed Bigfoot would take humans to feed on them, others believed they used them for sexual purposes.
Some tribes believed Bigfoot would take humans to feed on them, others believed they used them for sexual purposes.
So how did Sasquatch's nature become so different in modern times?
It was a roomy, but old fashioned house. A low, two-story structure built in the shape of a T; it had a cluster of tall chimneys in the middle and three gables hidden in ivy. When built it had been quite out of town, but soon cottages and villas surrounded the high wall enclosing the grounds. The lawn was shaded with old trees and the garden had thickets of lilac and snowball.
Mrs. Gage lived there for 40 years; the last 20 she had lived only on the ground floor. She was an invalid and lived a secluded life. She had made little effort to keep the property up, and it decayed as she did herself. She died and it was placed for sale.
In 1959, a group of hikers were found horribly mutilated and killed in a part of Russia's Ural Mountains. Until this day who murdered them remains a mystery, and since then other persons have died or disappeared there.
Dyatlov Pass is one of the most impassable regions of the Urals. Even the name of the region is shrouded in mystery and death. After the disappearance in 1959 of Igor Dyatlov and the hiking group he led, it has been known by this name.
Tartary is the historical name for Siberia and Central Asia. There has always been a persistent rumor of a hidden past.
The Tartarian Empire was thought to be a lost civilization that enjoyed advanced technology and culture to go with it. This covered the area of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and the Russian Far East (Chinese Tartary).
What are the intentions of beings from another part of the universe? We know about ET calling home, so what should earthlings do when extraterrestrials call us? According to scientists we shouldn't hang up, we should just not answer at all.
Advances in technology have allowed astronomers to scour the far reaches of space for any signs of alien life. However despite sightings of UFOs and stories of close encounters, we have yet to produce definite evidence of extraterrestrial life, either intelligent or microbial.
Dale Kaczmarek is President of the Ghost Research Society and director of Excursions into the Unknown, Inc., the only year-round ghost tour of haunted Chicagoland locations. He's investigated ghosts, hauntings and poltergeist phenomena since 1975. He's appeared on numerous TV shows and is the author of 6 books.
Pachamama Raymi is celebrated on August 1, every year. This festival dates to pre-Hispanic times like the Mayan new year. She is an ancient female deity worshiped by the Mesoamericans and their descendants, even though originally the sun was the main god of the Incas.
Pachamama is made from the Quechua word "pacha" which means space, and mama for mother.
For the Aymara and the Quechua who have lived in northwestern Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru for hundreds of years the date signifies the beginning of the month when the Earth rests. This is the coldest season of the year in the southern hemisphere. This is when the earth is the hungriest.
Since time immemorial there have been stories of the spirits of murder victims coming back to point a finger at their killer and seek justice for themselves.
Such is the sad story of Zona Heaster Shue who lived in rural West Virginia at the turn of the 20th century.
ZONA AND THE STRANGER
Born Elva Zona Heaster in 1873, in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, Zona’s life is something of a mystery before she met her eventual husband Erasmus Stribbling “Trout” Shue in 1896. Shockingly only a year prior to their meeting, the records of Greenbrier County indicate that when she was twenty-two years old on November 29, 1895, she bore an illegitimate male child, who’s supposed father was an unskilled laborer named George Woldridge.
50 Berkeley Square is a 4-story, brick townhouse in Mayfair. In the late 19th century it became known as one of the most haunted houses in London.
A murderous unnamed thing was said to be responsible for several deaths in the home, but there were other suspects mentioned throughout the years.
There are stories of a ghost that haunts the 4th floor attic (others say the 2nd) of 50 Berkeley Square. The structure has been referred to as "the most haunted house in London". Others argue it is not a ghost at all but an amphibious, predatory cryptid, reminiscent of Lovecraft's Cthulu's pantheon.
Over the years I have had several ghost stories sent anonymously to me, and it's these quaint and subtle stories of hauntings that I find so fascinating, because you realize that ghosts make their presence known in the most mundane of settings, and sometimes it's only in hindsight that we realize exactly what we were experiencing. I have excluded surnames and exact addresses in order to protect the privacy of families. The following are those stories:
Uncle Charles
My family owns an old home in rural Davie. The tiny home was hand-built by my great-uncle (via marriage) - a person I have never met. His name was Charles C. and he and his wife, Betty, lived there.
In 1974, an article appeared titled, Exorcism Daily Occurrence at Miami Jackson Hospital. Your first thought is this was due to the notorious film, The Exorcist.
However, according to Dr. Sukhdeo, the director of the Crisis Intervention Center at Miami Jackson Hospital at that time, the influx of patients as many as 900 in one month, had nothing to do with the film. He described how patients came in asking for evil spirits to be driven from their body, apparently believing that their symptoms, whether mental or physical, were demonic in their origin.
In New Orlean's Vieux Carre sits a house with an old-fashioned facade. Even before the turn of the 20th century, the Franco-Spanish residents of the old faubourg would whisper, "la maison est hantee",
After nightfall many walked past it with hurried steps. They were afraid to peer upwards and see the figure of a ghost child that haunted the rooftop once decorated by a latticed belvedere.
The three-storied home at 1140 Royal Street (Rue Royale) stood empty and ruined for many years.
On the night of August 21, 1955, Russell Greenwell, Hopkinsville’s (Kentucky) police chief received an unexpected call at his home from the officer on call. He jumped into his clothes and drove to the station. There he met several scared adults and children. The family lived a few miles away in an area known as Kelly Station. He could tell by the look on their faces that something really happened to this group of people.
On April 26, 1986, the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine experienced a lethal nuclear accident. Several explosions culminated in an open-air reactor releasing radioactive contamination for nine days. In the aftermath stories circulated of a flying humanoid figure with glowing red eyes seen days before the incident.
About 150 years ago a French taxidermist named Jules Verreaux created a diorama named Lions Attacking a Dromedary, which portrays a man battling two lions.
Since it was first placed on the display, many have marveled at how realistic the man’s face was, and a discovery made as to what’s really under the plaster made it clear why it appeared so lifelike.
In 1869, two years after this taxidermy diorama also known as Arab Courier Attacked by Lions was created, it was shipped off to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Prickly skin, a feeling that you're being watched or there's someone standing right behind (when there isn't) and a drop in temperature are all the hallmarks of the unearthly.
In Miami there are certain places where you're more likely to have these encounters with the other side.
"It was a dark and stormy night", the overused trope of gothic novels and low-budget films, can cause one to overlook that amongst the humming of insects, and the stillness of sub-tropical humidity the spirits of those who don't lie easy in their grave make their presence known. The Magic City has its own sordid history of murder, suicides, violence and secret burials that can provide a cast of thousands that can cause a shiver down your spine even in 80 degree weather. These are some of those places.
Florence Pretz a native of Kansas City held the design patent for a slant-eyed pudgy figure granted on October 6, 1908, known as the Billiken. Little did she imagine it would inspire a cult-like following.
The Billiken appeared in The Canada West, A Magazine of the Sunset Provinces in 1907. For 8 months the Billiken appeared in five Canada West stories, written by Sara Hamilton Birchall and illustrated by Florence Pretz. They were both friends who hailed from Kansas City, and moved to Chicago.
