The classic cautionary urban myth. Guy meets girl, guy gets drunk with girl, they go to her room, guy passes out, wakes up in bath full of blood and ice…
…with a telephone nearby and a note telling him to ring the hospital because he’s had a kidney removed, which supposedly prevents charges of attempted murder. . . There are dozens of variations, many to be found at the AFU and Urban Legends Archive and Snopes Urban Legends pages.
Italians and Albanians
But now the Italian government are getting excited about possible organ trafficking from Albania. The scare started when Italian sources in Albania reported a boy being found with a large scar in the renal area of his back. Some reports stated that he was dead, others said that he was alive and had told the authorities that he had been kidnapped for organ removal. This muddied the diplomatic waters nicely.
No case has yet been proven in Italy, although members of the government seem to have been worried about the ‘problem’ for several years, since a number of corpses arrived at a morgue from a major hospital with glass eyes instead of their own. This was followed by the discovery of an illegal trade in children (as opposed to legal?) in a gipsy camp near Florence, although the purpose of the trade was never ascertained. The prices? About USD30,000 for a healthy child.
Many of the Albanian refugees in Italy are thought to be involved in drug commerce or prostitution… Is the current scare a reaction – based on a common myth – to the influx of 16,000 Albanians or is this really what’s happening to Albanian children?
Souvenir Ear
Also on the subject of anatomical parts, rumours are abound that Pete Stevens, a New York commodities broker, has paid a Las Vegas security man USD18,000 for a piece of boxer Evander Hollyfield’s ear, bitten off by Mike Tyson. He’s apparently had it checked by surgeons who concluded that it is in fact authentic.
More Big Moggies
Due to a sudden influx of Alien Big Cats (no, not extraterrestrial cats, just big cats who are in the ‘wrong environment’) Blather has recently been given to ponder on the Morphogenetic Field theory of Rupert Sheldrake, and Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious theory . Sheldrake’s theory is that when one person or organisms does something new, or learns something new, similar organism should, after sufficient time, learn the same thing or know the same thing.
Both Fortean Times and BBC’s ‘Wildlife’ Magazine had their recent big cat articles followed by Blather doing a little bit about wild animals last week, and now the Electronic Telegraph of July 23rd has related that hunting parties are being formed in the Loire and near Toulouse, in France, to catch a puma and a lion, respectively. Apparently there have been no reported escapes. There are also unconfirmed reports of big cats wandering about in West Lothian, Scotland (Thanks to Martin Adamson for that tip-off).
Bantry Update
Blather spoke to Alan Sewell of the Irish Centre for UFO Studies earlier this week, who informed us of his quest to obtain grants totalling IR1.5 million pounds to build a UFO Studies Centre, visitors centre and museum in Bantry, Co. Cork, Ireland, where he has apparently been offered some land.
Also, contrary to earlier reports, where dozens of people were said to have been watching the skies a few weeks ago, due to a sighting ‘prediction’, Mr. Sewell told Blather that only himself and two people actually saw anything – a round object in the distance, moving in an anti-clockwise fashion and changing from red to green to white every minute, for five minutes or six minutes. He said that he can’t understand why the RTE film crew, who were on a nearby hill, didn’t see anything at all.
If regular readers of Blather are beginning to notice a distinct lack of consistency to the statements of Mr. Sewell and Mr. Eamon Ansbro, don’t worry, it’s not this Blatherskite being careless, we’re just reporting the stuff as we get it, complicated and messy.
Having already held one in Bantry, a conference will be held in the Metropole Hotel, Cork on Saturday 16th of August, from 3pm to 9:30pm with films and talks. The ICUFOS hope to hold similar events in Dublin and Dundalk. Phone Alan Sewell on +44 1762 349014 (Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland) for more details.
Dave (daev) Walsh
24 July 1997
