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Not sure if this belongs here but the dragon in the land is an EM theme if anything is, so I'll mention that Radio 4's excellent In Our Time was talking about Merlin this week. More here

I was thinking about the American thing that has been the source of 50% of flame wars across the internet for the last six months or so and the more I have seen and read about contemporary america the more I get the impression of an empire sliding towards decline. This lead me to wonder...

I'm sure that during my reading of random books I have found comments in a few places that the phases of the moon related to what kinds of magic could be used or that it was dangerous to indulge in some forms of magical activity during some phases of the moon. Can anyone furnish me with any...

I remember reading somewhere (possibly in Colin Wilson writing about Lethbridge, but could have been anywhere really) that it is acknowledged by many archaeologists that driving human remains around can seem to affect the electrics on the car in a slightly mysterious way. Does anyone know if...

I seem to recall hearing that there was a fairly strong revival in fairy belief around the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, possibly culminating in the Cottingley thing. Can anyone provide any more information or point me to any good resources or books on this movement?

If you fall into water from a great height, it is as hard as concrete. This is a well known fact, but I have no idea what the source is and I have started to wonder whether it is actually a fact at all seeing as people only seem to know about it because everyone else knows about it. Can...

I have just (for the first time, I'm ashamed to admit) got around to reading The Secret Commonwealth which is a deeply intriguing document. I was wondering whether anyone had any information about the Reverend Kirk? I have obviously heard of his mysterious death - I am more interested in his...

In a conversation about dreams that seem to persist into waking up the other evening, it transpired that my parents, my girlfriend and several other people we knew could all remember dreams where some element persisted into a kind of half-waking state where we could still see elements of the...

I noticed in the everyman program on prayer mentioned elsewhere that people from many different religions appear to pray with their hands in the traditional "praying pose" with their hands palm together in front of their chests. Does anyone know why this is such a popular position for...

Does anyone here know how animal communicators converse with animals? My girlfriend had one talk to her horse the other day, just asking over the email, no meeting involved, and I have to say the results were surprisingly accurate. Not anything that you couldn't find out one way or another...

Just heard on a radio 1 news report that thousands of child slaves are being secretly smuggled into britain- according to Unicef. I don't doubt that the country is full of unsavoury people and dodgy goings on, but you'd think that someone would notice all these slaves around the place. It...

The book I was reading yesterday evening suddenly came out with this idea that the ancient frame of reference was temporal rather than spacial - the four corners of the earth being not physical places but the mid-points of the year, and so on. They sound as ridiculous as they do to us because we...

If I want to try and work out solar alignments on a map, how do I go about it? Is there a standard table of sunset and sunrise directions or a formula by which they can be calculated? I'm thinking particularly about equinox and solstice times here. How precise does it need to be- will slight...

I'm sure that you have all spotted this story on the bbc site about the oldest religious icon in the Americas. What caught my attention was this bit: This struck me as strongly resonant of original leyhunter Alfred Watkins' idea of his ancient surveyors. Co-incidence I'm sure, but an...

There seems to be a whole lot of stuff about druids, traditional celtic wisdom, bardic lore and so on to be found all over the place. But as far as I know we have about 3 or 4 books that contain any authentic information on the celts and most of the "lore" of the celtic cultures was transmitted...

After reading the Skinwalker article in the most recent FT I was wondering whether there were any other similar places of extreme strangeness on record? What about places of partial strangeness? Also, what theories to people here have as to the causes of this type of oddness explosion, if...

I was just looking for some information on the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the major trigger event for World War 1 and it was particularly noticeable that the Archduke was shot when his car took a wrong turn and then pulled up by one of the group of assassins. This immediately drew a...

How is that for a TLA laden title? The Register reports the observer reporting that the NSA have been bugging UN delegations to do with the Bush War. If this is happening, why is it not headline news all over the shop? Is it just accepted practice?

Interesting UL story I noticed: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/29665.html

Does anyone have any good suggestions as to why apparitions so frequently seem to be lacking feet?

I work as a web programmer and I have noticed that when I'm working on a complex site or application with a lot of code to it I will sometimes find that files that did work suddenly don't any more and when I look at them, it turns out they have somehow regressed to versions that are not only...

I was reading up on some welsh folk tales and one I found was John Gethin and the Candle. At one point in this story (I won't bother summarizing here- it's linked above and it's very short) we have our local man, John Gethin is being pulled from a circle of protection by the Enemy of Mankind...

I was just wondering whether anyone else has experienced or noticed superstitions that have evolved from completely logical and rational actions because the original reasoning has been lost? I noticed the other day that I will only use the left hand toilet cubicle at work, having a strong...

Inspired by this news story and other Brocken related stuff- I had heard of the spectre effect but it seems that it was the centre of all kinds of old culture, presumably the cause of it's being associated with witches and the like. Does anyone know more about Brocken mythology or know any good...

I have a wild theory that everyone has some kind of skill or ability that could, in the loosest possible sense be considered to be their superhero special power. For example, I can stand on the station platform before a train comes in and the train's doors will always stop directly in front...

I noticed that the Mount Ararat object was in the news again today. It occurred to me that perhaps if enough people believed something was somewhere for long enough it would start to be there. That perhaps if millions of people over thousands of years had believed that the ark was on mount...

On saturday night both of my flatmates and myself had a whole bunch of nightmares, resulting in a very bad night's sleep for everyone. None of us are particularly prone to bad dreams normally and it seemed strange to me that we should all suffer from them at once. The dreams weren't related or...

Does anyone recall anything about possible surviving Pterosaurs living in the mountains of Mexico? I seem to recall some rather reputable documentary on the possibility, but I haven't seen the possibility mentioned since. Can anyone shed more recent light?

So I was listening to the radio the other day and this person was suggesting that the whole Kashmir thing is part of a broader plot on the part of Al Quaeda (no, I have no idea how to spell that) to get the Pakistani army relocated from the Afghan border so their people can begin infiltratiing...

From This Story about a woman seeing something in the water under her boat. We find this section: Ignoring the fact it is Carter lake at the start and Crater lake further on, am I right in thinking that the optical properties of water make it exceedingly unlikely that anyone could see the...

Now this story, you probably noticed a while ago: http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_560256.html But I just re-read it and noticed the bottom paragraph: What??? Ghosts killing people? Strong enough evidence that the insurance company pays out? Does anyone else know anything about this?

So, for those of us who couldn't make the Uncon due to previous imaginary-scottish-people-hitting commitments, or for other reasons, what were the highlights?

Not sure what to make of this really, very odd: http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_552873.html

From what I can tell the idea of Survivalism, that traditions existing today are the remenants of older/ancient ideas and practices, has fairly much fallen into disrepute among serious students of Folklore. Unfortunately, when I try and find more information about this, I just seem to find stuff...

I have noticed a whole bunch of references in old welsh language songs to "Jim Crow", spelled "Jim Cro". I was wondering if anyone could shed any light on this. My belief is that it has no clear relationship with the Jim Crow laws of 19th century America, the songs being welsh language, and...

I may be imagining this, but it seems to me that there are an unusually large number of references to Shoes and shoemakers in folklore. Think how many cobbler related stories you have read or heard- I just noticed this one and there is a similar one associated with Silbury Hill, but there...

I seem to recall a bizarre yet fascinating article about Gyroscopes being used to counteract Gravity, generate energy and so on. Does anyone remember/know anything about this?

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.jhtml?articleID=202231 http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_408429.html The stories describes a broad selection of ufo sightings in Norway - If you look at a world map and think about the great circle being the shortest route from A to B...

I have heard a story from various sources about a police man in britain (where seems to vary, often scotland) who is amazed to find he has clocked a car going past at more than 400 miles per hour. He then realises he has in fact clocked a passing RAF jet. It later transpires that he was very...

There is a thread on Premonitions on this board where quite a few people comment that they have experienced premonitions at some point. This leads me to wonder what the implications of these being possible are for physics as we understand it. If premontions are possible does that mean that we...