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Clippings From Ukraine & Ukrainean Forteana

A

Anonymous

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the giant spider of the ukraine

has anybody heard of this supposdly true story,if so could anybody shed light on this because it is frighting and i would love to find news on the matter[it was in articles around the world] or even better pictures .i be very gratefal if somebody does:D
 
I have heard of it, it is in a book that I have, The UnXplained - Strange Encounters published by Parragon.

The story basically says about how a guy is found dead in the elevator of a block of flats. He had 2 puncture wounds in his neck and lost around 1 and a half litres of blood. Later a 13 year old girl was trapped in a lift in the same block of flats. She was heard screaming but by the time she was rescued she was dead. Local residents feared a vamp was on the loose and didn't use the elevators anymore.

A russian detective and a sergant, rode up and down in one of the lifts to try and find out what had been happening. Hey carried pistols, flashlights and two-way radios with them. Three days after they started, the lift stopped and the lights went out, they used the radio to call for help and put the torches on.

A spider appeared with a head roughly the size of an orange. One of the guys was scared of 3 things, the dark, inclosed spaces and you guessed it spiders. It's legs were about 3 feet long (90cm roughly). The spider dropped down and landed on the sergants face and bit him. The detective got his gun out and shot at it twice, missing the first time and shooting a leg off the second time. The spider retreated. When they were rescued the sergant was dead and the detective was truamatized.

Thats the story. But I just noticed something in the book that is puzzling. It said it had 6 yes six legs, arachnids (spiders) have 8.
So was it really a spider or some insect???

lucydru
 
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Among the Kashubes, a Slavic Tribe in the Ukraine, it was believed that a red caul, caused by haemorraghes, indicated a predisposition to vampirism. To prevent this and to provide protection from attack, the caul was preserved and dried, and eventually crumbled into the child's food.

See : The Vampire Encyclopaedia - Matthew Bunson; The Vampire : A Casebook - edited by Alan Dundes
 
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Cake

The citizens of Odessa, Ukraine, have teamed up to consume an 880 pound New Year's cake, Itar-Tass news reported Saturday.

It took the crowd only 15 minutes to polish off the cake, along with 4,000 pastries. Odessa municipality treated the citizens to sweets by the New Year tree near the City Hall for the fifth year running.

Police were on hand to keep the crowd under control and prevent injuries.

Lyudmila Korenevskaya, the chief executive of the Odessky Karavai bakery enterprise, said it took a team of 50 pastry cooks to create the monster cake.

The cake was decorated with the picture of a cockerel, since 2005 is the oriental calendar's year of the cockerel.
 
Article also has a piccie of the lad:

Ukrainian boy attracts spoons and forks by unseen force

07/02/2005 23:57

The boy repeatedly tried to draw attention of his family to the fact that he could attract a teaspoon to his face

Parents refused to believe their son who told them that spoons and forks could "stick" to his face. The parents were astounded after watching the phenomenon with their own eyes. Now they consider filling an application for the Guinness Book of Records.

Misha Dulnyavka lives in the town of Turka located in a remote mountainous area of Ukraine. Border guards stop every incoming vehicle to check documents. It is small wonder since the area is just six kilometers away from the border. A taxi took me to the railway station. A flock of sheep was moving nearby. I asked a shepherd for directions. The old man motioned to a big white-brick house on the hill.

My driver did not want to take any chances on a muddy road after the rain so I had to get off the car and walked up the hill which rose steeply in front of me. A woman in her fifties emerged from the house and approached me. I introduced myself and began beating about the bush in an attempt to start up a conversation on the subject to be covered in my report. But my cautious ways proved to be unnecessary. The lady already figured out the purpose of my visit. The lady's name was Lyubomira. "There are four generations of our family living in this house, Misha is the youngest offspring, he is my great grandson," said she. The boy entered the room and started talking about his town. "You are wrong if you think that the name of our town has anything to do with Turks," said he.

The boy told me that he had repeatedly tried to draw attention of his family to the fact that he could attract a teaspoon to his face. He was walking about the house with a teaspoon hanging from his forehead. But the boy had the knack for telling tall stories and therefore his mom and granny paid no attention as they did their housework.

One day a circus arrived in town and all the schoolchildren were invited to attend the show. "Misha's eyes twinkled with a little bit of cunning as he looked up and told me: 'I can perform too, everybody will be amazed watching me hold spoons and forks on my face'," said Irina, the boy's mother. On that day Misha showed his wonderful talents to his mom. He hung a big tablespoon on his forehead, then a couple of teaspoons on his nose, a fork got stuck to his chin, and two big spoons hung on his ears. His mother said he could feel the force of attraction while putting those items over Misha's face one more time.

"My school teacher did not believe me so she brought her own spoon from home, she got very much surprised when it glued to my forehead," says Misha. The boy became a local celebrity after his dad and mom took him to a party where he demonstrated his extraordinary abilities. His performance won raves from the guests. A correspondent of a local newspaper happened to be among those guests. She invited the boy and his parents to the editor's office for a photo session. Now Misha carries a clipping from the newspaper in his backpack. The photograph shows the boy with lots of forks and spoons hanging on his face.

His next-of-kin began paying more attention to Misha's talents after they learned of one Jonathan Freedman, an 11-year-old boy from Oregon. Jonathan got into the Guinness Book of Records for his ability to hold 7 spoons on his face for 5 seconds. Misha's mother claims her son was holding 7 spoons on his face for 5 minutes. I asked her if the boy had been examined by the doctors. She said Misha was a sound boy but his abilities could not be properly studied in a local hospital since the town of Turka is a very small town.

Lyubov Lozyuk, a candidate of biological sciences from the city of Lvov, Ukraine, says that the phenomenon is known as natural magnetism. According to her, humans and animals can possess extraordinary abilities to pull things. However, the force of attraction varies in every particular case. By all appearances, the boy has quite pronounced magnetic properties. Some people are reportedly capable of attracting metallic items weighing up to one kilogram.

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/360 ... agnet.html
 
Nigerian pastor finds new flock in Ukraine
By Helen Fawkes
BBC News, Kiev

Sunday Adelaja started with a just handful of followers

Inside one of Ukraine's biggest sports halls a band pumps out deafening music surrounded by pom pom-waving dancers in shiny blue outfits.

Thousands of people are on their feet enthusiastically singing and clapping along, as if at a pop concert.

A Pentecostal church called the Embassy of God is sweeping across the country.

It claims to have 25,000 members in the capital alone.

For many people here a church service that has a feel-good factor is something new.

"First of all I liked the music and I liked the girl who was singing on the stage. Maybe that's why I went back again. Then I understood that there's a God and he loves us," says maths teacher Roman Bazhok, who has been a member of the church for two years.

Political devotees

One of the main reasons the Embassy of God attracts so many people is down to its charismatic leader Sunday Adelaja.

He left Nigeria to escape witchcraft and to study in the Soviet Union.

After the collapse of communism Pastor Sunday, as he is known, started his own church with just handful a of fellow African students in the capital.



The Embassy of God has expanded rapidly in Ukraine

Now politicians and even Kiev's mayor Leonid Chernovetsky are regulars.

Wearing a striking green suit, Mr Adelaja charms the audience with tales about the temptations he has turned down.

Speaking in accented Russian he tells the youthful congregation they should abstain not just from sex but also kissing before marriage.

Then looking close to tears, with his hands in the air, he says a prayer.

Today he is preaching to more than 10,000 people at the same place in Kiev that was used to host the Eurovision Song Contest last year.

The Embassy of God hires this venue once a month.


Normally services are held at a dilapidated hall in an industrial part of the capital and at other churches throughout the country.

Uncertain response

Pastor Sunday says he has faced a lot of hostility in Ukraine.

"Can you imagine a black man coming from Africa, in this society; here you are lucky if you are white because if you are black you will feel the difference," claims Mr Adelaja.

"Here there are not too many black people. Even the Orthodox priests say to me go and play basketball, go and play soccer but don't try to teach us how to live."


Critics are wary of the church's links with politicians like Kiev's mayor

The Orthodox Church is still the main religion in Ukraine despite the Embassy of God growing in popularity.

Golden-domed churches dominate the skyline of Kiev.

Inside St Michael's Cathedral priests in purple and red robes conduct an early morning service led by Father Superior Yevstratiy Zorya.

Ancient icons glow in the candle-light as women wearing headscarves kneel on the cold stone floor.

Nothing like the Embassy of God has ever been seen before in Ukraine.

Some critics are suspicious of this evangelical movement and its close relationship with powerful politicians.

'No brainwashing'

The Orthodox Church feels threatened. It says Embassy of God is a cult.

"The followers become like zombies - they are fully devoted to the leader of the organisation, ready to fulfil any of his desires," says Father Superior Yevstratiy Zorya, spokesman for the Orthodox Church in Kiev.

"It also has an impact on political life, because these people help to campaign for the politicians loyal to their church."

The Embassy of God says there is no brainwashing. Instead it targets people who feel rejected by society.

It runs a homeless shelter in the capital which helps prostitutes, drug addicts and members of the mafia like Alexander Skrypin.

"Before my encounter with God I was quite a rich person, but it didn't save me from being drunk in the gutter and living in brothels. After coming to Embassy of God I know that my life is for living," says Alexander, a former bank robber.

Many people have become alienated following the end of the Soviet Union.

There is poverty, unemployment, and a state which is no longer able to care for everyone.

Perhaps the reason that this new church is so popular is that it offers a sense of community, something which has been in short supply for many Ukrainians.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6098658.stm
 
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I think this means that, 53 years after the official obituaries, Josef Stalin is really, really, really dead.
 
A historical piece but it's worth reading.

On the Ukrainian Poets Who Lived and Died Under Soviet Suppression​

Numbers. At the beginning of the 1930s, there were 259 writers being actively published in the Soviet Union. At the end of the 1930s—36. How had 80 percent of writers disappeared? Seventeen were shot, eight committed suicide, seven died of natural causes, and 175 had been arrested and put into camps. Sixteen were missing.

These numbers give an idea of the Soviet Union’s attitude to the Ukrainian cultural elite, an attitude that imposed a kind of cultural silence for several decades. In the 1960s, a new, younger generation came and brought the region into a new bright artistic era. But it was also soon ruined: poet Vasyl Symonenko was beaten to death, artist Alla Horska and composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk died under strange circumstances, and many others were jailed, forced into psychiatric hospitals, and forbidden to publish.

The Soviet regime waged political aggression against Ukrainian literary figures starting in the 1920s and lasting till the late 1980s, right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Years later, Putin, who has stated that, “The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” is trying to “undo this mistake,” beginning with Russia’s attack on Ukraine.


With that in mind, now is a good time to revisit the history of the Ukrainian cultural elite who lived and died under the state that Putin has exalted: in particular, the stories of poets Vasyl Stus, Yevhen Pluzhnyk, Volodymyr Svidzinsky, and Pavlo Tychyna. ...

https://lithub.com/on-the-ukrainian-poets-who-lived-and-died-under-soviet-suppression/
 
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