[irishgrl]

When I was younger, I used to read books on the unexplained, and I used to read this one guy the most, Ivan Sanderson, the founder of the Society for the Investigation of The Unexplained. He was a biologist who used to go to remote areas and get the lowdown from the locals about weird animals. For example in the jungles of South America, he tracked down a critter that looked like a giant bat but whose feet were backwards. He also investigated a critter called Chupacabra...I forget what he had to say on THAT.... He went to Africa to investigate

Mokele Mbembe- The Mokele-mbembe is believed to be a living sauropod dinosaur that lives in the Likouala swamp region of the Republic of Congo in Africa. Literally translated, the term "mokele-mbembe" means "one who stops the flow of rivers." This hairless creature is described as possessing a very long neck and tail. Its total length is estimated to be between 16 and 32 feet. Locals are well aware of this creature as it is still sighted today.

One topic I found particularly intriguing was his description of 6 "anomalous" areas on earth, 3 in the northern hemisphere, and 3 in the southern hemisphere. an anomalous area would be a place where unexplained weather/disappearances etc happened. The Bermuda triangle is perhaps the best known of these areas. Anyway, he said if you had a globe in your hands and you drove a knitting needle thru the middle of one area in the northern hemisphere, it would come out thru the middle of an anomalous area in the southern hemisphere. So, you'd have 3 knitting needles bisecting 6 areas, north to south, evenly distributed around a third of the globe. Its an intriguing idea I think....

oh and another story: many freakish "rains" happen where instead of normal rainwater, you get a "rain" of frogs, or buttons, or slime jelly....in the 50's, in Chico, there was a "rain" of candy! (shucks and I missed it!) (note: the link below mentions a rain of stones in chico in the 20's; About the "candy rain", I got that from a large book my mother used to have on unexplained. I cant remember the title or I would post it. I will see if I cant get corroboration elsewhere)

cool link
another cool link

and here's more on those rains

D'OH! Check THIS out:

After much hunting about, some other references were unearthed. In "Mystery Airships of the 1800's" by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman in Fate magazine of June 1973 [9], which states the following:
"An ancient obscure Irish manuscript, Speculum Regali, records an incident that supposedly occurred in the year 956 A. D.: 'There happened in the borough of Cloera, one Sunday while people were at mass, a marvel. In this town there is a church to the memory of St. Kinarus. It befell that a metal anchor was dropped from the sky, with a rope attached to it, and one of the sharp flukes caught in the wooden arch above the church door.The people rushed out of the church and saw in the sky a ship with men on board, floating at the end of the anchor cable, and they saw a man leap overboard and pull himself down the cable to the anchor as if to unhook it. "He appeared as if he were swimming in water. "The folk rushed up and tried to seize him; but the bishop forbade the people to hold the man for fear it might kill him. The man was freed and hurried up the cable to the ship, where the crew cut the rope and the ship rose and sailed away out of sight. But the anchor is in the church as a testimony to this singular occurrence.'"

And THIS:

"The Annals of Ulster, for example, in the year AD 749 report that ships were seen in the air (some said above the monastery of Clonmacnois). Other sources report a similar episode at Teltown, during the reign of Congalach mac Maele Mithig (d. AD 956), when a ship appeared in the air above a market fair (oenach) and a member of the crew cast a spear down at a salmon below. When he came down to retrieve the spear a man on the ground took hold of him, whereupon the man from above said: 'Let me go! I'm being drowned!' Congalach ordered that the man be released and he scurried back up to his shipmates, 'who were all that time looking down, and were laughing together.' Well they might. There is no point in trying to explore the Otherworld with the apparatus and outlook of the science laboratory: flying ships are not subject to the laws of quantum mechanics."(Leslie adds that 'the actual text and translation of this episode is cited as being in Myles Dillon, 1960, "Laud Misc. 610", 'Celtica,' pp. 64-76, and Kuno Meyer, 1908, "Irish mirabilia in the Norse 'Speculum Regale,'" 'Eriu', vol. 4, part 1, pp. 1-16.')