Year: 1998
Eamon Ansbro: No Threat Whatsoever
Blather's favourite Irish ufologist - Eamonn Ansbro - is back in the news once again, this time in the Sunday Tribune of October 4th, under the headline Alert: Aliens pose no real danger. Longtime Blather readers may recall War of the Wetlands, an issue from December 1997, which recounted how this writer, like an eejit, spent an entire Sunday evening monitoring the endeavours of the ICUFOS (Irish Centre for UFO Studies) on Bull Island, Co. Dublin. The date was December 14th, the night that Ansbro had predicted would be fraught with UFOs, using Roy Dutton's rather dubious Astronautical Theory. He claimed that Dublin, Boyle (Co. Roscommon) and Bantry (Co. Cork) were to be the best places to see the UFOs. Back then, Blather commented on the curious correlation between the ICUFOS predictions, and the Geminid meteor showers, which started on December 13th. Ansbro's prediction for the ultimate in UFO viewing...
Super Sargasso Surfin’
After spending any reasonable amount of time recording and cataloguing the odder aspects of daily life on this planet, certain conclusions almost beg to be arrived at, such as "people are generally speaking, nuts," or that perhaps half the population really are more intelligent than the average person. But from these studies, one starts to get a grasp on the "bigger picture" that Charles Fort and hundreds of others have devoted so much time, in some cases even their lifetimes, examining. In the last year, while researching my weekly email newsletter, Blather , several events and a few tenuous mental tangents brought me to consider Fort's humorous hypothesis on the "Super-Sargasso Sea," an aerial ocean from which eels migrate back to old mother earth, aided by the wonderful force of gravity. But when rather out-of-date military projectiles and then--saints preserve us--people starting falling out of the sky, questions arise about...
Klaatu Barada Nikto – The Day the Earth Stood Still
Last weekend, the BlatherGHQ TV was accidentally powered-up and tuned on to The Day The Earth Stood Still, a 1951 extraterrestrial contact movie directed by Robert Wise and adapted by Edmund North from Harry Bates' 1940 short story, Farewell to the Master. We relaxed, enjoyed it, and casually prepared to note any motifs which may have influenced today's interest in UFOs, alien abduction, and extraterrestrial life. All the typical material was there - the classic saucer shape, the silver space suits, terror on the streets, silvery robots carrying panicking female leads into spaceships, and the usual 'save the planet' kinda jazz. All the usual style of US movies from the era of the Cold and Korean Wars was represented in the film, and the accompanying baggage communist paranoia, but is in this case somewhat anti-military, while gently ridiculing the 'reds under the beds' mindset. However, it was uncanny how closely...
Fishy Business: Coelacanth Caught
Well, the newspapers are full of it... the coelacanth -- a fish which pre-dated the dinosaurs -- has been found alive and well in Indonesia. Until now it thought that the species were limited to an area around southern Africa, so it comes somewhat of a surprise that they should turn up 10,000km away from there. Until 1938, when a specimen was caught on the Chalumna Bank in the Indian Ocean, the coelacanth was known only (to science) by its fossil records, which quite reasonably lead to the conclusion that the fish was long extinct. They are now a protected species. The Irish Times Honeymooner's fishy tale hits scales at 400m years CNN *New sighting of 'living fossil' intrigues scientists* The Unnatural Museum - The Coelacanth *An unknown species of coelacanth in the gulf of Mexico?* by Michel Raynal IT AIN'T NESSIE-CERALLY SO On the 10th September Loren Coleman posted...
Coincidence or Synchronicity?
Coincidence: 2. a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection. Synchronicity: the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible connection (both from The Concise Oxford Dictionary) Synchronicity: 'an acausal connecting principle' - C.G. Jung, Collected Works 8 Synchronicities: 'people who investigate the daemonic are particularly prone to these -- although they can happen to anyone who is engaged on a search for some sort of knowledge or truth (every scholar, for instance knows how the very book he requires can fall off a library shelf at his feet!)' - Patrick Harpur, Daemonic Reality STONED KNICKERLESS ALIENS ETC. Those old dependables, the Irish Centre for UFO Studies, never seem to stray far from the attention of Blather or its readers. Anthony McCann spotted a wonderful piece by Martin Breen on Page 13 of the August 22nd issue of the Belfast Telegraph. The article...
Loch Ness Monster: Is it a seal or not?
Great debates are afoot concerning some 10 seconds of video footage of what is being claimed to be the Loch Ness Monster. The defenders are the curiously monikered *Loch Ness Monster Fan Club*. The detractor, apart from some seemingly nameless 'wildlife watchers', is none other than Chris Packham, presenter of BBC's 'X Creatures'. He and the mysterious OTHERS are claiming that it's a seal. Having not yet seen in the footage, my writing anything about it seems akin to performing tennis commentary whilst blindfolded, but there's other issues involved. . . Great debates are afoot concerning some 10 seconds of video footage of what is being claimed to be the Loch Ness Monster. The defenders are the curiously monikered *Loch Ness Monster Fan Club*. The detractor, apart from some seemingly nameless 'wildlife watchers', is none other than Chris Packham, presenter of BBC's 'X Creatures'. He and the mysterious OTHERS are...
The Ghosts of Waterford
Breaking News 2008: Ghosts on the Quay in Waterford » A fine summery tale popped up in the pages of the Munster Express on August 21st, telling us that a family in the Grange area of the city of Waterford was being 'haunted by a "nice" ghost'. The family has refrained from releasing their name or address, but we're assured that the haunting has been going on for some 20 years. ME reporter Michelle Clancy was despatched to investigate, and 'is convinced there is certainly some substance to the claims'. The ghost is apparently female, 'a middle-aged woman who always wears her dark hair in a bun', who seems to like watching the family from the stairs, as they go about their business (a good liminal vantage point - between floors). She has been found having conversations with the children of the house, and has driven the mother demented with...
GUBU Norge – Lake Monster Expedition to Seljord, Norway, 1998
Dave tells the story of the 1998 GUST expedition to Lake Seljord in Norway, looking for a lake monsters. The monster wasn't found, but a lot more was discovered.... 'Merdre!' -- Pere Ubu GUBU: Conor Cruise O'Brien invented the term GUBU in 1983, after Haughey had called the discovery of a young serial killer hiding in the flat of the government attorney general he had appointed ``grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented.'' The term GUBU stuck, and stayed, and finally outlasted Haughey's career itself. It will be the epitaph of a man who saw himself as both a Tammany ward-boss and the Soul of the Nation.' - Kevin Myers 'They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway-share; They charmed it with smiles and soap.' - The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll It was after...
Photographs from Lake Seljord
Photographs from the Lake Monster Expedition to Seljord, Norway, 1998 Seljordsvatnet... All photos © 1998 Dave Walsh unless stated otherwise. L-R: Dave Walsh, Magnus Backlund, Eric Joye, Peter Lakbar Dave of Norway - photo by Peter Lakbar And now, back to Gubu Norge...
The Dobhar Chu – A Very Strange Lake Monster
Due to many Blatherskite excursions around Ireland, and expeditionary forays into the National Library, many odd and unexpected phenomena have raised their serpentine or furry heads. Last summer, following an appeal for information in his Alien Zoo column which can be found in Fortean Times, Blather got in touch with cryptozoologist Karl Shuker, to swop information pertaining to the Dobhar-chú (a.k.a. the Water Hound or Master Otter), and in particular, allegations concerning the demise of a Co. Leitrim woman in 1722, supposedly mauled by such a beast. Sligo fortean Joe Harte managed to track down her grave, in Glenade, on the north side of Ben Bulben mountain, and this writer managed to get hold of a copy of the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. 78, (1948), where was found, on pages 127-129, The Dobhar-chú Tombstones of Glenade, Co. Leitrim by Patrick Tohall. Later on, last...