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Tag Archives | Superstition

Defeated Opponent Sues New York’s City Council Head-To-Be Over Alleged Black Magic Curse

By on January 8, 2014 in News 4

010114mural1RMWould you be brave enough to dabble in New York City electorial politics? Via the New York Post:

A rival of Melissa Mark-Viverito filed a million-dollar lawsuit against the front-runner for City Council speaker — claiming she put a Caribbean hex on her while the two were running for the same council seat, in the form of a black-magic mural on her apartment building.

Gwen Goodwin, 52, who spectacularly lost the Democratic primary to Mark-Viverito in September, says her nemesis targeted her East 100th Street building as the canvas for a five-story image of a bodiless rooster atop wooden poles. Mark-Viverito was the head of an urban-art campaign launched last summer called Los Muros Hablan (“the walls speak”).

“I don’t believe [in the Occult], but strange things were happening,” Goodwin claimed. She said that she suddenly got a blood clot in her foot and that a close friend began “acting crazy” right after the mural went up.

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Majority Of Americans Say They Do Not Trust Scientists

By on December 27, 2013 in News 15

scientistTo some degree, are Americans correct in believing that scientific findings are swayed by ideology and agenda? Or do they simply long for a return to the Dark Ages? The Huffington Post reports:

How much faith do Americans have in scientists and science journalists? In a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, only 36 percent of Americans reported having “a lot” of trust that information they get from scientists is accurate and reliable. Fifty-one percent said they trust that information only a little, and another 6 percent said they don’t trust it at all.

What’s more, many Americans worry that the results of scientific studies are sometimes tainted by political ideology — or by pressure from the studies’ corporate sponsors. A whopping 78 percent of Americans think that information reported in scientific studies is often (34 percent) or sometimes (44 percent) influenced by political ideology. Similarly, 82 percent said that they think that scientific findings are often (43 percent) or sometimes (39 percent) influenced by the companies or organizations sponsoring them.

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The Occult On Wall Street: The Art Of Financial Astrology

By on December 11, 2013 in News 10

zodiac

The Telegraph claims that a surprising number of mainstream investment bankers make decisions based on astrology. Can you envision this growing into a quasi-religious cult?

Donald Bradley’s method of foreseeing changes in the market involved assigning a numerical value to the position of the planets and stars and plotting the values on a graph. The peaks and troughs of that line should, in theory, plot “turns” in the fortunes of stocks, bonds and commodities. It sounds utterly mad, but the model has been described by market watcher Peter Eliades as “eerily accurate”.

I wanted to do a statistical analysis of his method and use it if it worked,” says Crawford. Back in the library, Crawford found records of the Dow Jones going back to 1885 and a book outlining the details of planetary positions. After comparing the two, he was impressed.

So Crawford began using astrology alongside his technical analysis. Over the years, Crawford found his predictions working out so well that, in 1977, he set up business as a full-time astrological adviser.

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Did Giants Once Live In Underground Cities Across America?

By on December 1, 2013 in News 9

cityMysterious Universe notes that a string of news stories around the turn of the twentieth century reported archaeological discoveries of hidden subterranean habitats and strangely large human remains:

The most famous of these reports appeared in the April 5, 1909 edition of the Arizona Gazette, entitled “Explorations in Grand Canyon.” Explorer G.E. Kinkaid discovered a huge underground “citadel” while rafting on the Colorado River.

Exploring a tunnel that stretched “nearly a mile underground,” Kinkaid found tablets carved with some type of hieroglyphics, and home to a stone statue he described as resembling Buddha. Mummies, all wrapped in a dark fabric, were supposedly more than nine-feet-tall.

The New York Times reported a nine-foot-tall skeleton of a man discovered in a mound near Maple Creek, Wisconsin, in December 1897. The Times also carried the story “Strange Skeletons Found” near Lake Delevan, Wisconsin, in its May 4, 1912 issue. But an April 9, 1885 story entitled: “Missouri’s buried city: A strange discovery in a coalmine near Moberly,” revealed a find that predated the supposed citadel in the Grand Canyon by 24 years.

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Books Dictated From Beyond The Grave

By on October 31, 2013 in News 1

books

Via Mental Floss, literary works that came to us from the other side:

  • The Sorry Tale (Pearl Lenore Curran and Patience Worth). Starting in the early 1910s, Pearl Lenore Curran and her friend Emily Grant Hutchings worked the Ouija board together twice a week. On July 8, 1913, Patience Worth made her presence known. According to the frantic spelling across the Ouija board, Patience was born in either 1649 or 1694 “across the sea” and was killed in an Indian raid. When really inspired, the Patience-Pearl duo could spell out about 1500 words an hour, which is how she came to be the author of books including The Sorry Tale and Hope Trueblood.
  • God Bless U, Daughter (Mildred Swanson and Mark Twain). Unwilling to let his deceased status slow him down, Samuel Clemens allegedly contacted Mildred Swanson of Independence, Missouri. In the late 1960s, Swanson wrote a book called God Bless U, Daughter, a diary of her planchette conversations with Clemens.
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The Museum Of Souls Trapped In Purgatory

By on October 31, 2013 in News 2

handsVia Atlas Obscura, in Italy is a famed collector’s assortment of artifacts bearing the physical imprint of souls trapped in agony attempting to reach our world:

Located on the banks of the Tiber, the tiny century-old Piccolo Museo Del Purgatorio, or “Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory,” holds a collection of bibles, prayer books, tabletops, and articles of clothing said to have been singed by the hands of souls in purgatory.

According to Catholic belief, the soul is stranded in purgatory until it atones for its sins. The scorched handprints and other burn-marks collected in this museum are believed to be the product of souls begging their earth-bound loved ones to pray harder.

Victor Jouet, collector and French missionary, was supposedly inspired to build this purgatorial museum after a fire destroyed a portion of the original Chiesa del Sacro Cuore del Suffragio, leaving behind the scorched image of a face that he believed to be a trapped soul.

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The Horrifying Necropants Of Iceland

By on October 22, 2013 in News 116

necropantsThe Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft houses the only known intact pair of necropants, a beyond-disturbing item popularly used for purposes of traditional magic in seventeenth century Iceland. To make your own (and thus reap good fortune), strike a deal with a friend than whoever dies first will allow the other wear the lower half of their corpse as a pair of pants, day and night:

If you want to make your own necropants (literally; nábrók) you have to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his death.

After he has been buried you must dig up his body and flay the skin of the corpse in one piece from the waist down. As soon as you step into the pants they will stick to your own skin.

A coin must be stolen from a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign, nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper.

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Study Suggests Belief In Ghosts Is Growing

By on September 17, 2013 in News 14

belief in ghostsIs belief in ghosts and psychic phenomena supplanting religion as the public’s refuge from the rational? The Telegraph reports:

A new study suggests belief in ghosts is growing in the UK.

More than half of those taking part (52 per cent) said they believed in the supernatural, a marked increase on the two previous comparable studies, in 2009 and 2005, which both found a level of around 40 per cent. The survey also found that one in five claimed to have had some sort of paranormal experience.

The new study was carried out for the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (Assap), for its annual conference.

Dave Wood, chairman of the group, said: “It could be that in a society which has seen economic uncertainty and is dominated by information and technology, more people are seeking refuge in the paranormal, whereas in the past they might have sought that in religion.”

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Holy Water Revealed To Be Largely Unsanitary And Harmful To Health

By on September 17, 2013 in News 13

holy waterVia ABC News, a warning that participation in Christian blessings, miracles, and ceremonies may be harmful to your health:

Despite its purported cleansing properties, holy water could actually be more harmful than healing, according to a new Austrian study on “holy” springs.

Researchers at the Institute of Hygiene and Applied Immunology at the Medical University of Vienna tested water from 21 springs in Austria and 18 fonts in Vienna and found samples contained up to 62 million bacteria per milliliter of water, none of it safe to drink.

Tests indicated 86 percent of the holy water, commonly used in baptism ceremonies and to wet congregants’ lips, was infected with common bacteria found in fecal matter such as E. coli, enterococci and Campylobacter, which can lead to diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever.

Public awareness has to be raised to perceive holy springs as potential sources of illness.

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Poll Suggests 48 Percent Of Americans Believe In UFOs

By on September 14, 2013 in News 9

ufos

Can we believe in UFOs? Or in polls saying we believe in UFOs? The Huffington Post writes:

Nearly half the population believes UFOs could be a sign of extraterrestrial visitation.

A HuffPost/YouGov poll reveals that 48 percent of adults in the United States are open to the idea that alien spacecraft are observing our planet — and just 35 percent outright reject the idea.

The poll was seen as vindication from the community of UFO researchers who often feel they are laughed off by government officials.

“It’s always been intriguing to me how we act as though only kooks and quacks believe in flying saucers. And it’s never been true,” said former nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, who was the original civilian investigator of the events surrounding the legendary Roswell, NM, UFO crash of 1947.

In the poll, 1,000 adults were asked if they either believed or didn’t believe that some people have witnessed UFOs that have an extraterrestrial origin.

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