The Mary Celeste Syndrome
Page 14
Inexplicable deluges of blood have been chronicled down the centuries:
Church records say that a blood-storm swamped parts of Lisbon in 1551.
The 3 August 1869 edition of the Los Angeles Times reports that ‘blood, hair and strips of flesh’ fell on towns in California.
The October 1841 issue of the American Journal of Science describes a blood-like substance falling perpendicularly on workers in a Tennessee tobacco field. A Professor Troost, who investigated the substance, announced that it was ‘indubitably animal matter’.
On 27 August 1968 Brazilian newspapers described ‘meat and blood’ raining from the sky on a one square kilometre area near Coopara.
Italy’s meteorological bureau (quoted in Popular Science News) dismissed a heavy red shower that had fallen on Calabria as being ‘only the blood of birds’. The downpour, said officials, must have been caused by a violent wind which apparently tore an entire flock to pieces. The magazine noted that the meteorologists’ records for the day contained no mention of a megawind - or of any bloodied bird carcases falling.
The Kentucky Meat-Storm
It was not the first mysterious shower of meat from the heavens - but it inspired an intensity of scientific interest and investigation that made it the most famous. On Friday, 3 March 1876 thousands of flakes of meat fell on a 4200 square metre area surrounding a Bath County, Kentucky, house occupied by Mr and Mrs Allen Crouch. The flakes ranged in size from six to 25 square centimetres.
A controversy promptly erupted. Scientific American (25 March 1876) published an ‘expert’ opinion that the material was either beef or venison, but did not speculate about how it had come to drop from apparently empty heavens. In the July issue of the Sanitarian, analyst J. Brandeis denied that the skyfall was meat at all - identifying it as ‘a low form of vegetable matter’. This opinion was quickly challenged by Dr Allan Hamilton in the Medical Record, who revealed that he and Dr J. Arnold had examined the material under a microscope - and identified it as ‘lung tissue from a human infant or a horse’.
Professor J. Phin of the American Journal of Microscopy responded by publishing a slide which, he said, proved that the ‘meat’ was ‘undoubtedly muscular fibre’. Dr Mead Edwards, president of the Network Scientific Association, refined this analysis by studying three further ‘fleshfall’ samples - ‘two of which appear to be cartilage, and one, muscle, with what appears to be dense connective tissue’.
* In many cases where everyday life spills across a borderland into the bizarre, the phenomenon known as the ‘name echo’ can occur. The Kentucky meat storm occurred in Bath County. Five years earlier a similar deluge of biological matter had troubled the town of Bath, England. Symons’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine (May 1871) reveals that unidentified creatures, encased in a gelatinous substance, fell upon the town during a violent hailstorm. The specimens, about four centimetres long, were examined ‘under a powerful lens and found to be animals with barrel-formed bodies, the motion of the viscera in which is perfectly visible, with locust-shaped heads and long antennae and with pectoral and caudal fins like feet.’ The specimens were displayed at the Derby and Midland Tavern where ‘scientific men’ studied them. But they were never satisfactorily identified. Students of skyfalls have seen no evidence of similar creatures in the 156 years since the storm.
Dr Edwards imaginatively suggested that the meat had probably been vomited by buzzards, ‘who, seeing one of their companions disgorge himself, immediately followed suit.’
Scientific American (22 July) disputed this theory, asking, ‘How many buzzards would be required to cover 5000 square yards with disgorged meat…[and] at what height must they have been flying so as to be invisible?’
Torrents of Bricks, Coins, Nails, Beads
In 1948, hundreds of smooth oval stones, inscribed with Greek letters, rained from empty skies onto Swedish towns. So far no one has discovered where the stones came from, or who made the carvings. No element of the skyfall phenomenon is more mysterious than the descents of human artefacts:
Coins are among the commonest objects to appear. The British publication People (30 September 1956) described a hail of halfpennies, cascading vertically, striking children returning from school in Hanham Bristol. The Daily Mirror (10 December 1968) reported that showers of pennies had fallen at high speed on people in Ramsgate, Kent. The Bath Chronicle (6 January 1976) said two clergymen in Limburg, West Germany, had picked up more than 2000 marks in banknotes which, they insisted, had fluttered down from a clear sky.
On 5 March 1888 the Madras Mail reported that bricks had been falling for six days inside a schoolroom near Government House. The bricks came into view just below the ceiling line and descended slowly. Thirty witnesses testified to the event. A priest suggested for some undisclosed reason that one of the bricks be painted with a white cross and placed in the centre of the room. To everyone’s amazement, ‘a brick of a corresponding size, but bearing a black cross, dropped from the air onto the top of the first brick, and stayed balanced there’.
Seven months later copious quantities of nails floated down from above, repeatedly - over a period of hours - striking the wife of the Point Isobel, Texas, lighthouse-keeper. The St Louis Globe-Democrat (16 October 1888) said the nail deluge extended over a 48-hour span, with crowds of sightseers gathering after the shower shifted its focus and began rattling against the lighthouse itself.
And in one of the most singular series of artefact events, masses of coloured beads, holed and ready to string, fell for more than a century on Bijori, India.
The author Charles Fort, enabled by a small inheritance to devote his life to studying anomalous phenomena, produced many theories on the subject of skyfalls. One was that they comprise material accidentally or deliberately spilled from a neighbouring plane of existence into our own. And that’s as respectable a guess as any.
Curious Case of the Fire-Fuelled
Crosses
Early on the morning of 16 August 2006 a fire ravaged St Joseph’s Catholic church in the Melbourne suburb of Chelsea. In its wake it left four symbols that were bizarre to some people; comforting to others.
Herald Sun reporter Matt Cunningham wrote:
Firefighters and demolition workers were shocked to find images of four crosses on the wall behind the altar. The crosses - two each side of the crucifix - have many wondering whether it’s a strange coincidence or an act of God.
Some parishioners are already referring to them as the ‘Chelsea miracle’.
The blaze broke out on Wednesday and demolition supervisor Mark Barrett first noticed the crosses later that day. ‘It’s a little bit freaky,’ he said. I just noticed on the wall there were four metal plaques and around the plaques there were crosses…It’s heat deflection, I have no doubt about that, but there are other plaques around the church and there’s nothing around them.’
Also shocked by the smoke-imprinted images was Ken Evans, a CFA (Country Fire Authority) officer, who described the images as ‘very weird’, adding, ‘My colleagues have never seen anything like it. For the smoke to form in definite shapes is very unusual. It’s supernatural…someone’s trying to tell us something.’
But when I spoke to the parish priest Father Greg Pritchard he disagreed.
‘Where the images appeared, there were airvents that had been covered over,’ Greg told me. The fire was drawing oxygen…it’s no more than a combination of oxygen and fire.’
A combination, nevertheless, that produced, within a church, images of a cross.
* * *
A metal cross which allegedly swayed back and forth on its concrete base attracted hundreds of visitors to a Queensland property. Scientific analysts could find no logical reason for the cross’s disturbing pendulum-like swings.
The cross was installed on a hillside overlooking the picturesque valley of Woombye, south of Nambour. One witness to the area’s unusual manifestations was Yolande Pennefather, who told me, ‘There were more than a hundred of us here just
before Christmas. We saw the cross sway, then the sun seemed, to all of us, to pulsate and produce different colours. [Similar colour effects were claimed by observers in Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia, where the Virgin Mary was purportedly appearing.]
Members of the Queensland congregation insisted that their rosary beads offered the most concrete evidence that paranormal events were occurring on the hillside. Many presented beads whose formerly silver links had, they said, changed to a golden hue. I spoke to Jack Turner, a Woombye cattle farmer. ‘I regarded those stories as rubbish,’ he said. ‘But then, soon after I went to my first service, my own bead links changed colour almost overnight.’
Arthur Gray, a Sunshine Coast journalist, said he too had experienced strange phenomena on the hillside. ‘I was in a group of people who watched the cross moving last March,’ he said. ‘The movements, just like a pendulum, were quite remarkable.’
Alan McClure, a geologist, could offer no explanation for the cross’s behaviour. ‘There’s no seismic activity in the area,’ he said. ‘And I don’t believe wind could be the cause.’
Enigma of the Ice-Rings
Geometrically perfect circles of ice, which take shape overnight in dams and backyard ponds, have puzzled increasing numbers of farmers in the northeastern United States.
One wintry ring, with a diameter close to eight metres, was found in Norwalk, Connecticut. In near-freezing temperatures it had formed during the hours of darkness, in a tributary that feeds a local river. Local residents describe the circles as beautiful - usually finding them in the early morning when they rise for work. None can recall seeing or hearing anything unusual before the ring appeared.
* * *
Insane Egotist
The Multi-Murderer
Who Adored Publicity
* * *
The killer was a cold psychopath who took lives for the love of it. Choosing victims at random, he despatched them in a gruesome variety of ways: shooting some, strangling or bludgeoning others. In fevered, boastful letters he claimed (perhaps exaggeratedly) to have added 37 scalps to his belt - and threatened to drive the death toll higher if newspaper editors refused to publish his self-preening logic puzzles. No one, including experts from the FBI, universities and the postal service, managed to unravel the madman’s intricate codes. But then a humble high school history teacher sat down for several days and cracked the Zodiac Killer’s cipher…
IT WAS FIVE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, 1968 - and pretty Betty Lou Jensen was out on her first date. Her parents had been reluctant to let her keep company with a boy when she was barely 16, but she had worn them down.
Betty’s companion David Faraday was a year older than her, but (if adults’ subsequent statements were to be believed) equally naive. However, he owned a station wagon, a badge of status in that era - and by 11 pm he and Betty Lou were sitting in a parking area near remote Lake Herman outside Vallejo, California.
Perhaps, sitting under the clear, brightly starred sky, the couple exchanged kisses. Possibly they simply talked, as teenagers do. Nobody knows, because they died that night.
A local resident, Stella Borges, was enjoying a late-night stroll when, under the parking bay’s single bright light, she happened upon the scene of carnage. Police later reconstructed the events. Betty Lou, obviously in fear, had scrambled from the station wagon first, but had been shot five times in the back as she fled. She died instantly.
David endured a slower death. As he stepped from the vehicle, the maniac shot him point-blank in the back of the head. His heart, said a forensic pathologist, would have stopped several minutes later.
Detectives could find no evidence of robbery or of sexual attack. It looked either like a hate crime or a murder for murder’s sake. The young couple’s staid, conservative parents were devastated, insisting to police and the press that their daughter, and their son, had no enemies who would have perpetrated so vile a crime.
It was all a terrible mystery. And for seven months it remained that way.
On 4 July 1969 the madman struck again. But this time he made a mistake. One victim survived and was able to offer police a description.
Several minutes before midnight 22-year-old waitress Darlene Ferrin and her 19-year-old boyfriend, Mike Mageau, a labourer, were sitting in Mike’s car in Blue Rock Springs Park outside Vallejo. A second car, possibly a Ford Mustang, pulled up beside them. The driver emerged - and without speaking, shone a flashlight on the couple and began to shoot. Five bullets struck Darlene, who died instantly. Mike was shot twice and began to scream with pain, whereupon the murderer returned and calmly emptied further bullets into him. Obviously thinking both of his targets must be dead he strolled back to his car and drove away.
Neighbours heard the noise and alerted police, who found Mageau unconscious and still breathing. Next day, at the local hospital, he revealed that he had ‘got a good look’ at the attacker. He was white, brown-haired, about 175 centimetres tall and of stocky build. And he looked to be in his late 20s. He couldn’t describe the man’s accent, because he had never uttered a word.
By this time, however, Vallejo police were convinced they had heard the killer speak. Less than an hour after the shootings a man with a light youthful voice and displaying every sign of pride had telephoned to claim responsibility for what he imagined were the deaths (plural). He accurately identified the weapon he had used as a 9 mm automatic pistol - and offered other details from the crime scene that only the perpetrator or an accomplice could have known about. The detective who took the call, and colleagues who listened in, agreed that the caller had seemed positively anxious to prove his credentials. He said that he had been responsible for numerous unsolved murders in California and would disclose the details in due course. But he’d confine himself for now to one other case: the slaughter of Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday. He glibly recited details of their murders that the police had never made public - confirming in the detectives’ minds that he had been responsible.
Californian newspapers gave strong coverage to Darlene Ferrin’s death. But after several days, with the investigation stalling, editors found other stories to interest their readers. Today, most criminal psychologists agree that this sudden silence must have piqued the limelight-loving butcher - and set him to thinking of ways to ensure his importance was more permanently recognised.
Tawdry trademark: the Zodiac killer’s crudely-drawn logo.
He did not take long to find a way. He gave himself a name, the Zodiac Killer, and a logo: a simple cross inside a circle. But first he invented a series of cryptic puzzles which, he claimed, concealed his identity. At a stroke he differentiated himself from every other mean-spirited bludgeoning, bashing, shooting and strangling brute in American history - badging himself as a serial murderer deserving to become famous around the world (as he ultimately did). Had he paid a million dollars to an advertising agency he could not have achieved a more satisfactory result, for himself.
Lunatic’s logic puzzle: one of the early cryptic problems the mass-murderer sent to newspapers.
The Zodiac Killer’s first letters, accompanied by his dauntingly difficult cryptic puzzles, arrived on 31 July 1969 at Vallejo’s Times-Herald and San Francisco’s Examiner and Chronicle. The crazed correspondent demanded that his contributions be published immediately, and in full. If not, he would embark on a fresh series of murders that would shock the nation.
The letter to the Times-Herald read:
Dear Editor,
I am the killer of the two teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman and the Girl last 4th of July. To prove this I shall state some facts which only I and the police know.
Christmass
1 Brand name of ammo Super X
2 10 shots fired
3 Boy was on back feet to car
4 Girl was lyeing on right side feet to west
4th of July
1 Girl was wearing patterned pants
2 Boy was also shot in knee
3 Brand name of ammo was Western
Here is a cypher or that is part of one. The other 2 parts have been mailed to the SF Examiner + the SF Chronicle.
I want you to print this cypher on your frunt page by Fry afternoon Aug 1, 69. If you do not do this I will go on a kill rampage Fry night that will last the whole week end. I will cruse around and pick off all stray people or coupples that are alone then move on to kill some more until I have killed over a dozen people.
The cryptogram was in three different parts. Each, the unhinged compiler claimed, had to be solved and matched with the other two to reveal his identity.
Editors (none of whom wanted a bloodbath on his hands) complied with the killer’s demands. Police studied the crypto puzzles and the covering letters, but could find no fingerprints. And the triple cryptogram itself seemed unsolvable - baffling not only the FBI and the US Postal Service, but code experts and mathematicians at several American universities.
The crazed killer’s cryptograms baffled the FBI, but were solved in days by a scholarly amateur.
Happily, however, Don Harden, a reserved and modest history teacher, managed to break the cipher. An aficionado of cryptic crosswords and math puzzles, he streaked past the PhDs and specialists by worrying at the code for five exhausting days - finding a solution at five minutes past midnight on 8 August. In an interview that he reluctantly granted to the San Francisco Chronicle, Harden said he had started with the assumption that the killer’s ego might prompt him to begin his message with the word ‘I’. And he would probably use the words ‘kill’ and ‘killing’ - both of which contain a double-L. Don Harden proved right on both counts, and was soon able to transcribe a message that read, in ‘clear’:
I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue animal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experience the best part of it is that when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all I have killed will become my slaves I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife