Forteana

Figure caught on camera at Chester Castle among accounts of eerie goings on at historic properties

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33205229

It was 27 October 1954, a typically crisp autumn day in Tuscany. The mighty Fiorentina club was playing against its local rival Pistoiese.

Ten-thousand fans were watching in the concrete bowl of the Stadio Artemi Franchi. But just after half-time the stadium fell eerily silent - then a roar went up from the crowd. The spectators were no longer watching the match, but were looking up at the sky, fingers pointing. The players stopped playing, the ball rolled to a stand-still.

Play was suspended because spectators saw something in the sky, according to the referee's match report.

The incident at the stadium cannot simply be interpreted as mass hysteria - there were numerous UFO sightings in many towns across Tuscany that day and over the days that followed. According to some eyewitness accounts a ray of white light was seen in the sky coming from Prato, north of Florence.

It is a fact that at the same time the UFOs were seen over Florence there was a strange, sticky substance falling from above. In English we call this 'angel hair'.

Something was wrong with the squirrels of Appalachia. It was the fall of 1968, and they appeared to be making a sudden pilgrimage: attempting improbable swims across lakes, sprinting over highways and bursting into buildings. One squirrel, while fleeing, climbed into a critical piece of infrastructure and reportedly short-circuited power to much of Clarkesville, Georgia. “The squirrel,” the wire services reported, “was also extinguished.” The highways were lined with hundreds of dead squirrels. One scientist spotted 13 squirrels swimming due north across the reservoirs of North Carolina. Nothing could make them turn around. Assuming the squirrels must be starving, concerned citizens began sending boxes of acorns and hickory nuts to the afflicted areas, and grocery stores put up signs encouraging shoppers to feed the squirrels.

The problem was that the squirrels were, by and large, well-fed. There was no shortage of food. Yet by some estimates, 20 million squirrels were on the move. Wildlife officials were flummoxed. So they notified the Smithsonian Center for Short-Lived Phenomena.

The CSLP was a kind of clearinghouse for news of intriguing phenomena that scientists might want to study as they occurred—from volcanic eruptions to oil spills, meteorite strikes, sudden islands, unusual migrations and explosions in the populations of non-native species. Every day, an odd phenomenon occurred somewhere, offering a priceless natural experiment. But researchers worried they were missing most of them.

“For years, scientists have been aware of the almost total lack of the essential research information on the very earliest beginnings of natural events,” Sidney Galler, then assistant secretary for science at the Smithsonian Institution, told Newsweek about how the idea for the CSLP had come about. “We come in the middle and have to go back and attempt to reconstruct what actually happened.”

But now the Smithsonian had built an unprecedented network to help scientists get fast, accurate information about developing situations. “We have our finger,” said Robert Citron, the director of the center, “on the pulse of planet Earth.”

In its seven years of existence, the CSLP logged oil spills and ashened snowfalls, chased still-warm meteorites, laid the foundation of an essential global database of volcanic activity, and heralded the (erroneous) discovery of at least one prehistoric sea monster. And it left, in the archives of the Smithsonian, a rather large paper trail. Decades later, those archives are a window into a moment of epistemological uncertainty at the dawn of the environmental age, when nothing quite seemed to make sense anymore and concerned researchers were starting to piece it all together, one strange event at a time.

Wikipedia

Declassified CIA documents claim that the mystical Ark of the Covenant was located by a psychic decades ago in the Middle East as part of one of the intelligence agency’s experimental, secret projects in the 1980s.

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The CIA conducted experiments as part of the secret Project Sun Streak with individuals known as “remote viewers”, a type of clairvoyant, who claimed they could project their consciousness to receive information about faraway objects.

There is no credible scientific evidence that remote viewing exists, and it is generally regarded as pseudoscience.

In a remote viewing session on 5 December, 1988, remote “viewer #32” was tasked with identifying the coveted Ark, according to CIA documents recently circulating on social media. The documents were first declassified in August 2000. They allegedly did not know the object they were being tasked to find.

The psychic described a location in the Middle East that they claimed housed the object and said it was being “protected by entities”, says the CIA document.

“Target is a container. This container has another container inside of it. The target is fashioned of wood, gold, and silver,” they said, allegedly not knowing they were trying to find the Ark. “Similar in shape to a coffin and is decorated with seraphim.”

The declassified document shows several pages of drawings depicting one of the four seraphim standing out on the corners of the Ark, along with a drawing of mummies lined up on a wall.

“Visuals of surrounding buildings indicated the presence of mosque domes,” they added.

They said the object was hidden underground in dark, wet conditions.

“There is an aspect of spirituality, information, lessons and the historical knowledge far beyond what we now know,” remote viewer #32 continued.

They described the Ark as being protected by entities that would destroy individuals who attempted to damage the object.

“The target is protected by entities and can only be opened by those who are authorised to do so – this container will not/cannot be opened until the time is deemed correct,” the remote viewer continued.

“Individuals opening the container by prying or striking are destroyed by the container’s protectors through the use of a power unknown to us.”

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Joe McMoneagle, a US Army chief warrant officer and the first person to do remote viewing for the CIA, told The New York Post that they allegedly do not know what was scrawled down and are guided through the process by another person.

However, Mr McMoneagle does not believe that this remote viewing case is worth the paper it is written on, claiming the session is “bogus”.

“If someone claims that remote viewing proves the existence of something, such as the Ark of the Covenant, they must produce the Ark to substantiate their claim,” he added.

Claims that researchers discovered previously unknown structures beneath the Pyramid of Khafre — the pyramid situated in the center of the Great Pyramids of Giza — using radar technology circulated online in March 2025.

The purported discovery was that of "five identical structures near the Khafre Pyramid's base, linked by pathways, and eight deep vertical wells descending 648 meters underground."

Users took to social media to express their excitement over the alleged findings, posting on social media platforms like X (archived), Instagram (archived) and TikTok (archived). Some referred to the discovery as "a vast underground city." One YouTube video sharing the claim stood at over 35,000 views as of this writing.

Despite the popularity of the claim, there is no evidence to support it. In addition, no credible news outlets or scientific publications have reported on this rumor.

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The researchers named in the recent claims, Corrado Malanga and Filippo Biondi, did publish a paper and book about their work using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to explore the Giza pyramid in 2022.

According to NASA, SAR is "a type of active data collection where an instrument sends out a pulse of energy and then records the amount of that energy reflected back after it interacts with Earth."

However, it does not appear that this research has been peer-reviewed or corroborated by credible archaeologists. Additionally, the research alludes to fringe theories about ancient civilizations and otherworldly intentions for the structures, which aligns with Malanga's well-documented interest in UFO and alien abduction research as well as Dunn's "power plant" theory.

Something lurks in the shadows of our rural . Similar incidents play out in farms, stables, rural estates, golf courses, utility holdings, landfill sites and even nature reserves across the country. Large cats, mainly resembling black leopards (also known as panthers), but also sometimes mountain lions, and, very occasionally, lynx, are reported across such locations.

I became immersed in the possibility of big cats being present in Britain 24 years ago, after seeing what I’m convinced was a black leopard in Cumbria. It was walking side-on to me across rough pasture, about 70m away. I assumed it was a labrador, but then noticed no collar and no owners in sight. Its purposeful strides, low and long-bodied form, tubular tail and fluid movement were completely unlike a dog.

The suspected sightings are far and wide across the country. In Essex, a fisherman was hissed at by a black leopard (he noticed its rosettes) at 5am as he disturbed it cornering a muntjac deer. In Somerset, a dog walker watched a black leopard take down a roe deer in the adjacent field – she located the dragged and neatly eaten carcass three days later, when she felt safe to return. In Dorset, a woman watched a black leopard effortlessly descend a tree after targeting a squirrel’s drey 12m up.

Snippets of footage from the last two events are on the Big Cat Conversations website, but otherwise footage is rare, or just a pixelated blur.

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We must also look at the scientific evidence. Positive DNA results proving the presence of big cats in Britain are limited, yet do exist. There are six publicly known positive DNA results that match the leopard (Panthera pardus), two from recent years: from Gloucestershire in 2022, from a hair snagged on a barbed-wire fence in the vicinity of a sheep kill; and from Cumbria in 2023, when DNA was found on a carcass – again, of a sheep.We must also look at the scientific evidence. Positive DNA results proving the presence of big cats in Britain are limited, yet do exist. There are six publicly known positive DNA results that match the leopard (Panthera pardus), two from recent years: from Gloucestershire in 2022, from a hair snagged on a barbed-wire fence in the vicinity of a sheep kill; and from Cumbria in 2023, when DNA was found on a carcass – again, of a sheep.

This week, the director of the U.S. government’s UFO analysis office stated that there is “evidence” of concerning unidentified flying object activity “in our backyard.” According to physicist Seán Kirkpatrick, who heads the congressionally-mandated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, this alarming UFO activity can be attributed to one of two extraordinary sources: either a foreign power or “aliens.”

To be sure, the ramifications of either would be significant. But Kirkpatrick’s comments, which come as he is about to retire after a 27-year defense and intelligence-focused career, are more intriguing because he also says that “none” of the hundreds of military UFO reports analyzed by his office recently “have been positively attributed to foreign activities.”

At the same time, Kirkpatrick and senior defense officials have ruled out the possibility that secret U.S. programs or experimental aircraft explain the phenomena.

While suspicious UFO cases will “continue to be investigated” for foreign links, the facts at hand appear to support Kirkpatrick’s more startling explanation for the UFO activity in America’s backyard: “aliens.”

Aside from this remarkable development, the mere suggestion by a top government official that “aliens” could explain some UFO activity is the latest example of a striking shift in tone regarding the UFO phenomenon.

As mentioned elsewhere, I made a "Shittiest Years" as I couldn't believe my top 5 worst years (apart from 1997) have been since 2017 but they are and the Weaselverse seems the best explanation. As well as all my personal woes, we've had Brexit, Trump and Covid.

That reliable relater of reality, The Oo-Ah Daily Star, has more:

a bizarre conspiracy theory argues that the course of history has already been fundamentally changed—after a weasel got stuck in the Hadron Collider in 2016.

In April 2016, the £4bn Hadron Collider was forced to shut down for a number of days after a weasel got inside a high-voltage transformer and was 'fried to death'.

Although a spokesperson for CERN says that the weasel did not get inside the LHC's tunnels, and despite the fact scientists were able to get things up and running again within a few days, the weasel's death sparked wild speculation about the fate of the universe.

Conspiracy theorists on the Internet believe that the weasel's intrusion set off a chain of events which have doomed civilisation as we know it, starting with the death of Harambe gorilla less than two weeks later and culminating in the election of President Donald Trump.

Comedian and writer Rob Sheridan has repeatedly taken to Twitter to share his theories about 'the Weaselverse', claiming that the weasel "shifted us into the wrong timeline" and saying "it explains EVERYTHING".

Others have gone much deeper with the baseless 'theory'. One Reddit user wrote in a thread that the weasel's entry into the Hadron Collider "could've sent us into another dimension without anyone being aware of it directly."

They said: "Things like the Mandela Effect can be attributed to people from these two different dimensions remembering events very differently as they would've happened differently between timelines."

The conspiracy theorist added: "The fact that the team who was using the collider at the time was literally attempting to open dimensional gateways is really bizarre. Who knows what they did to the fabric of our reality? How could any of us know?! We wouldn't but world events have definitely gone off the rails since then."

One commenter simply said: "That little weasel screwed us."

An idea started by a comedian, expanded on by a Redditor in r/ShowerThoughts and compiled by The Daily Star has to be horseshit. And yet... And yet...