Little Ghostlies for Halloween Fun

Cellphones Drown Out Ghosts.

Tony Cornell, of the Society for Psychical Research, says reports of ghost sightings started to decline when mobile phones were introduced 15 years ago. ?Ghost sightings have remained consistent for centuries. Until three years ago we?d receive reports of two new ghosts every week,? he says. ?But with the introduction of mobile phones 15 years ago, ghost sightings began to decline to the point where now we are receiving none.?

Haunted tourist attractions in Britain could be under threat if the number of cellphones continues to grow from the present figure of 39 million. Apparently paranormal events, which some scientists think are related to unusual electrical activity, can be drowned out by the electronic noise produced by phone calls and text messages.

For more on this, click here.

More cellhone creepiness: They may speed up our brains too fast for us to hear ghostly whispers, and maybe too fast for our good health. British scientists say that cellphones may cause damage to health by speeding up the brain?s response times.

A recent study showing an alarming rate of brain cancer in some cellphone users is changing scientific opinion in Britain.

Dr. Alan Preece, head of Biophysics at Bristol Oncology Center, is among a group of scientists becoming increasingly convinced that radiation from cellphones triggers chemical processes in the body that may be harmful.

Six separate studies now indicate that brain response times speed up when people are exposed to radio frequency signals from mobiles phones.

?Perhaps we now have to accept there is an effect on the brain,? says Preece. ?The response time has improved because of stress proteins, which are switched on by a gene. This needs further research. The chronic exposure to radio frequency signals might well have a detrimental effect.?

Research from Sweden and Switzerland indicates that radiation from mobile phone calls disturbs sleep. Swedish professors Lennart Hardell and Kjell Hansson Mild found that people who had used analog mobile phones for up to 10 years had a 26 percent higher risk of brain cancer than a control sample.

The study has disturbed many scientists, even though it is based on an earlier generation of mobile phones, many of which were installed in cars that had aerials on the roof and which emitted signals continuously, unlike the newest digital phones.

?Without question there is a biological threat,? says James Lin, Professor of Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois. ?The question is how hazardous mobile phone use is.? But Lin points out that there are as almost as many studies showing the opposite and says, ?Our understanding is still evolving. We need to have a much larger database.? It takes nearly a decade for most brain cancers to develop, which is longer than the period of time covered by most cellphone studies.

?One can no longer go around saying there is no link [between cellphone use and health effects],? says Preece. Or between cellphones and ghost sightings, either. For more, click here. And do yourself a favor–get a Cellguard by click here.

Unexpected Deadly Encounters.

In Berlin, Germany, a worker in a paper recycling factory spotted a human skull seconds before it was crushed by a shredding machine. Police couldn?t find the skull, but they have discovered traces of blood and hair in the machine.

The woman told police a human skull rolled past on the conveyor belt in front of her. Police chief Wolfgang Schmidt says, ?The woman was so shocked that she could not stop the machine.?

Specially-trained dogs detected blood and hair traces at the scene, but it?s too early to confirm whether they belonged to a human being.

For more–if you dare–click here.

Middle school students who saw a teenager?s dead body in the bushes didn?t report it for 2 days because they were either too scared or thought it was a hoax. Students led each other to the Shoreline public library near Seattle to peer at the body of the 16-year-old shooting victim they found lying in the shrubs.

Authorities say they don?t know how many children saw the body. Some returned and brought their friends. ?My son thought they were playing a joke on him,? says Pamela Rapinan. ?They all thought it was fake.?

Dustin Rakestraw died of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. A 13-year-old boy was arrested on Friday on a manslaughter charge. King County sheriff?s spokesman John Urquhart says the shooting is believed to have been accidental.

Dustin Rakestraw?s parents last heard from their son on Tuesday at about 8 p.m., when he called for them for a ride home from the library. When they went to pick him up, they couldn?t find him. The following day they spoke to the suspect, who was Dustin?s friend. Afterwards, they reported their son missing.

Meanwhile, the 13-year-old was telling friends about the body and some students finally told librarian Alene Moroni, who went to look for herself. ?Some kids came in and said, ?There?s a dead body in the bushes?,? she says. ?I thought, ?Yeah, right.??

To explore this a little further, click here.

The Magnetic Man.

70-year-old Liew Thow Lin appears to be a human magnet who hangs heavy metal objects from his bare chest. Known as Mr. Magnet, he appears regularly with his family in the pages of Malaysian newspapers. Liew can carry 66 pounds held by a chain to a metal plate attached to his chest.

Recent tests for magnetic and electrical fields around Liew show he is not actually magnetic. But scientists from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) noticed that Liew has unusual skin. ?His skin has a special suction effect that can help metal stick to it,? says UTM professor Mohamed Amin Alias.

?That?s why his three sons and two grandchildren also have the ?magnetic-like? ability,? he says. ?They have his genes.?

If you want to stick with this one, click here.

Mysterious Sounds Haunt North Carolina.

Boom, rattle, rattle boom?the mysterious sounds have enough force to rattle windows. People who hear it look uneasily at the sky for an explanation. Then the sounds disappear as quickly as they came. These mysterious noises have been reported as far back as the 1850s, before there were airplanes, much less supersonic jets that fly fast enough to break the sound barrier. People who have heard the noise for years have ruled out obvious suspects such as thunder, because the booms have occurred on clear days when there were no clouds or lightning.

There is no particular pattern to the sounds, although they have been reported most often in the fall and spring. Some scientists have suggested that the interplay between water and weather might be causing them.

There is no explanation that everyone agrees with. Some say the rumbling is a sonic boom created by unseen aircraft. Others suggest top-secret military training craft offshore or maybe the earth moving on the ocean floor or deep below ground.

Now a Duke University seismologist hopes to find clues about the mystery sounds as part of an earthquake research project. Peter Malin, a seismology professor for 10 years, has placed a sensor deep in the ground at the Fort Fisher State Historic Site near Wilmington.

The sensor is intended to record minor seismic activity that might indicate when more significant quakes can be expected.

Malin thinks that the booming noise originates in the atmosphere, although he has no particular theory about the cause. He first heard the sound in July while he was preparing his project. Doors and windows shook, but the house he was in didn?t, indicating to him that the ground did not move.

Then there is the theory that gave the phenomenon its name: the Seneca Guns. This theory says the sound comes from the ghosts of American Indians firing guns to disturb the descendants of settlers who drove them from their land.

Haven’t heard enough yet? click here.

To find out where we got our Jack-O-Lantern, click here.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.