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Strange Falls & Rains Of Objects & Substances

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Husks of corn rain from sky
Wichita resident Paul Corn was amazed to see enormous husks drifting down into his backyard near 13th and Woodlawn.

By Suzanne Perez Tobias And Sara Shepherd
The Wichita Eagle

For residents in some east Wichita neighborhoods Friday afternoon, the weather was particularly strange:

Partly cloudy, with a chance of corn husks.

People in homes near 13th and Woodlawn reported seeing what looked like extraordinarily large, dried corn husks spiraling down from the sky about 6 p.m.

Paul Corn (yes, that's his real name) was playing host to a family reunion in his back yard in the 1000 block of Vincent Lane on Friday afternoon. He said the family stopped swimming when they noticed something strange spiraling down from the sky.

They waited for it to land to see what it was, but the frond came to rest just over the fence in a neighbor's yard.

Then there were more. And more. Each one, about 30 inches long and 3 inches wide.

"They just kept coming down," he said. "There had to be, I don't know, a thousand of these things."

The family was curious enough to jump out of the pool and into the car, driving a short distance around the neighborhood to find more, which they did.

There is no telling how many of the leaves fell, but several were seen lying along Armour Street, between Central Avenue and 13th Street.

Officials with Weather Data Inc., a local forecasting service, said they had received no reports of the corn-husk shower. But meteorologist Jeff House seemed intrigued.

"Corn husks falling from the sky. Hmmm," he said. "That is odd."

Could they have been stirred up by a tornado in some Iowa cornfield? Blown hundreds of miles through thick summer air, only to billow down on back yards and driveways in east Wichita?

"That's a good thought," House said. "But no chance. Not today."

Our region -- in fact, the whole country -- was tornado-free on Friday. It wasn't even particularly windy, House said. Just really hot.

So maybe August turned that Iowa corn into popcorn, and the remnant husks exploded into the atmosphere?

"Doubtful," House said. "Whatever it was, it was probably caused by man."

Some residents speculated that the leaves fell from a plane. Air traffic authorities could not be reached for comment Friday night.

One more theory: University of Nebraska fans were behind it. Gearing up for another Cornhusker football season, they decided to blanket their southern rivals in a giant -- and ingenious, we might add -- Cornhusker Practical Joke.

Bill Harper is a member of the Wichita-based Kansas Cornhusker Club. "We may live in the heart of Kansas," says the group's Web site. "But our hearts belong to the HUSKERS!!"

Harper denied having anything to do with Friday's incident.

"Oh, not that I know of. I don't think any of us are behind it," Harper said. He noted, however, that the group's annual picnic is scheduled for 5 p.m. today, at the Sedgwick County Extension building at 21st Street and Ridge Road.

Mike Nieman, a witness to the mysterious corn episode, was visiting Wichita from Los Angeles. He said it seemed fitting for such a strange thing to happen in Kansas.

"It's just a magical place," he joked. "It's the land of Oz."

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Re: Corn Husks from Outer Space!!

Desertcanary said:
Paul Corn (yes, that's his real name)

The Cosmic Joker was having a good day that day! Good job his name wasn't Paul Anvil or something, or it may have had disasterous consequences...
 
That story managed to get some interesting things in it like -

Husks of corn (the thing that fell)
Paul Corn (who the corn fell of)
friday (the day it happened)
13th street (the palce it happened)

lucydru
 
You said it happened on a friday but what was the actual date?
lucydru
 
I copied it straight from the website of the Wichita Eagle. I happen to think it was a college prank but I really enjoyed your observations....it does sound like a great many coincidences, doesn't it??:cool:
 
Today's Boston Globe (Aug. 8) includes a reuter's report on the falling corn. This paper is not one to put the strange into it too often. The article also said that there was no weather pattern that could explain how this occurred in a scientific manner.
 
Cool!

A classic Fortean event: a fall of a single unexpected substance.

Difficult for anyone even on the spot to quantify so it is never
going to be clear just how weird it is.

Strange and without meaning or explanation.

Next stage, these days, is usually for some chancers to step forward
and claim responsibility in a way that will be really hard to believe!
:D
 
falling nails

the other day my friend was telling me about this one time when he was in england visiting a hounted castle. he said that through the whole thing it was pretty smooth there were no ghosts or anything, then their tour group came up on a spot where the tour guide said that if you go in the light it angers the ghosts and they will get revenge. so my friend and his dad, not totaly believeing in ghosts went into the light and were playin around with it. Later they came up on a drop off that was a few stories down and pitch black all the way down and pitch black all the way up, and there was a bridge crossing it.
anyway they started to cross the bridge then they stopped for a second and right then a nail came from the blackness above and shot striaght down right in front of them and fell into the abyss. i don't know if its coincedence of what, but its a pretty interesting story.
 
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Pennies from heaven

A couple of times when i've been walking along 2p coins have fell down in front of me, this happened to me in the house so i'm pretty sure it wasn't someone throwing them. Anyone else have similar experiences?
 
Don't worry , its only apports . As long as they are not heading for your head at a rate of knots you shouldn't worry . A few years ago my mother was planning to visit an old friend in the 'States , for a couple of months before she went she kept finding US cents ( like 5 p pieces ) around her house , until she had quite a pile , which she kept on the windowsill . On the day she left for her holiday the pile of coins vanished .
 
Falling Coins

Coins sometimes fall in front of me, but that is because I have holes in my pockets. They fall down my leg and go shooting out in front of me.

Now, if I could induce the Universe to cast some new money my way, I wouldn't complain. An occasional drizzle of 1238 English silver pennies, or even 1938 Liberty Dimes would be welcome.

Mind you, a dollar did fall mysteriously by my bed recently, but then I can hardly attribute it to teleportation--bad housekeeping is more likely. At least, if it did teleport from somewhere else, I can't rely on it as a regular source of income.

More annoying is the number of things which disappear, only to reappear in a spot I know I looked at. There is nobody around who could move them, because this happens when I am alone and have just held them moments before. This kind of continuity error drives people in the film industry crazy, but it just makes me furious.

I find it helps to swear at the Wee Folk and threaten them with a good sweeping. This always works. At least it makes me feel better, and mislaid items always turn up when you are no longer annoyed because they are missing.

Let me know if the coins that appear in front of you start turning out to be rare or foreign.
 
I had a variation happen to me yesterday. I had less than a pound in change in my left-hand pocket, I then found a pound in my right one. I know for a fact that all I had in that one was my train ticket. Strange. :D
 
I'd mentioned in another thread about the "Dime Phenomena"
that was "triggered" by psychic Echo Bodine. (http://www.echobodine.com)
Just to recap, there is a chapter in one of her recent books about dimes appearing to her when she has concerns about finances.
(they appear IN her water glass, on her bed in a
heart-shape formation, falling from the ceiling, etc...)

By telling others about it, it began happening to them as well.

Sure enough, when I am stressing about money (or lack of it)
I have found dimes in strange places -- and the strangest part it that money follows the dime's appearance! It is never pennies, nickles or quarters--- just dimes.

She claims it is a reassurance from God that we are taken care of.
Which sounds like a platitude, but damn if it doesn't work! :)

TVgeek
 
I do remember "Sahara sand" rains in the 80s in West Yorkshire ... and how, with a very reasonable distrust of the authorities, but perhaps a rather paranoid mind-set too, and needless to say no training whatsoever in meteorology, most people I knew there at the time were convinced it was Chernobyl fall-out.

Mind you it seems everybody I knew in the 80s was holding their breath waiting for some sort of nuclear armageddon ..... and who can blame them, with all that dire pop culture ... yuppies, back-combing, "new romantics" etc etc fortunately we got Manchester music, E and the internet instead as it turned out.
Yay!
 
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I'd forgotten about the baggy underpants connection with the Sahara sand ..
Still no further on with me frog quest, though!
 
Whereabouts in W. Yorkshire? i don't remember any of my family telling the tale ( I wasn't around in the sixties) but i'll ask me dad
 
Sahara sand rain is fairly common , we had some here quite recently . I read about a fall of coins in Bristol , in an area and of a date that would be close to where my mother lived as a child but she had never heared of it , maybe unless a person lives very close to something like this , or actually experiences it , it isn't widely remembered ?
 
The Meat Shower, 1876

This old story was new to me!
OLYMPIA, Ky. - The Good Book says manna fell from Heaven for the Israelites. Bath countians got meat from on high, according to Sarah Staton. "That's what people claimed. They called it the 'Meat Shower.' "

Staton is the Bath County bookmobile librarian. Based in Owingsville, the county seat, her route goes by Olympian Springs, an old health resort close to where unidentified flying objects that looked like beef reputedly rained from a cloudless sky in 1876. The Meat Shower lasted about 10 minutes. The mystery is 127 years old.

"Nobody knows for sure what it was," Staton said. "But we haven't had another one."

There are no Meat Shower monuments in Bath County. "But the story is still pretty well known," Staton said.

The Meat Shower made national news, grabbing headlines in the New York Times and Scientific American magazine. The Louisville Courier-Journal claimed the Meat Shower was "one of the most singular and wonderful phenomenon that have ever occurred in the modern world."

Even so, it was a localized shower, the state's largest newspaper reported. "Little strips of flesh" covered territory only "one acre wide and two acres long," the C-J said.

Eons before, the Israelites ate the manna, according to the Bible. Hogs and chickens gobbled the Meat Shower, the C-J said.

Bath County humans weren't sure what to make of the bloody mess. "The people of the neighborhood approached the flesh with a superstitious dread," the Courier-Journal reported, adding that most people wouldn't touch it.

Two men supposedly sampled the "meat" and said it tasted like mutton or venison. At nearby Mount Sterling, a butcher named Frisbie roasted a slice and pronounced it "palatable." But he couldn't identify the meat, the Courier-Journal said.

The Meat Shower struck about 2 p.m. on March 3, 1876. Apparently, there were no casualties. But fields, fences and trees were strewn with bits of reddish "flesh from one inch to two inches wide and from an inch to three inches long and half to three-fourths of an inch in thickness," the Courier-Journal said.

The stuff stayed on the ground for days. "Experts" debated the Meat Shower for months. One scientist claimed it was flying frog spawn blown "from the ponds and swampy areas," the Courier-Journal reported.

Whatever the shower was, Staton is glad the mystery meat was only morsel-size. "I can't imagine getting knocked in the head by a falling country ham," she said.
Nowadays we could have used DNA analysis to get more information. I wonder if any samples were preserved?

March 3rd is (I think) a bit early for the tornado season. So how else did all this meat get up in the sky...? :eek!!!!:


Edit: A Google turns up just 7 hits, including a certain C. H. Fort Book of the Damned
 
Yes, Garrick, it is in Fort - see my Edit, above.

Also this:

One of the strangest stories of this sort took place on March 3, 1876 when flakes of meat fell over an area 100 yards long and 50 yards wide near the Bath, Kentucky home of Mr. and Mrs. Allen Crouch. The sky was clear at the time of the fall and the flakes of meat were described as being one to three or four inches square and appeared to be fresh beef. However, according to two gentlemen who (for some reason) decided to taste the meat, it was neither mutton nor venison.


Or perhaps it wasn’t meat at all - wrote Mr. Leopold Brandeis, whose article appeared on the strange fall in a July issue of the Sanitarian. He explained that the so-called “meat” was really nothing more than “nostic” - “a low form of vegetable substance”. He did not however, explain how this substance managed to fall from the sky. His opinion on the matter did not last for long for he was soon contacted by Dr. A. Mead Edwards, president of the Newark Scientific Association, who asked for a sample of the material that had been collected from Bath County. Brandeis was kind enough to give him the entire specimen, along with the information that he had obtained it from a doctor in Brooklyn, who had in turn been given it by a Professor Chandler.

Shortly after this, a letter from Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton was posted to the Medical Record, saying that he and Dr. J.W.S. Arnold had examined the material from the Kentucky meat shower under a microscope. The material, which had been given to them by Professor Chandler, was identified as being lung tissue from a human infant or a horse. According to the letter, “the structure of the organ in these two cases” was apparently “very similar”.

After reading the letter, Dr. Edwards called on Dr. Hamilton and was given a sample of the material that he had been studying. He was told that the samples had been sent from Kentucky to the editor of the Agriculturist, who had given them to Professor Chandler. And while the trail of where the samples had come from seemed to be growing longer and longer, Edwards noted that they seemed to be similar in character and age, although the sample given to him by Brandeis was less well preserved. Soon after, Edwards was shown a microscopic slide of a third sample of the Kentucky meat, which had been given to Professor J. Phin of the American Journal of Microscopy by a Mr. Walmsley of Philadelphia, who had in turn received it from Kentucky. The slide contained something that was “undoubtedly straited muscular fibre.”

Phin also showed Edwards a fourth sample that had been collected by A.T. Parker of Lexington, Kentucky. This sample also turned out to be muscle tissue but Edwards wanted to see more. He wrote to Parker and was sent three more samples, two of which turned out to be cartilage and the third, more muscle tissue. Edwards also passed along an explanation for the bizarre event that was currently making the rounds in Kentucky.

Locals believed that the meat had been disgorged by buzzards, “who, as is their custom, seeing one of their companions disgorge himself, immediately followed suit.” Parker did not explain just how many buzzards would be required to vomit that much meat, how much they would have had to have eaten - or just how high they had been flying as to render themselves invisible to those on the ground!
(Link)
 
A piece of metal falls from the sky in SF

http://beta.kpix.com/news/local/200...s_Mystery_Object_That_Fell_in_to_SF_Home.html

FAA Investigates Mystery Object That Fell in to SF Home

The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating how a chunk of metal fell through the roof of a San Francisco home.

The object tore a hole in the ceiling early Tuesday morning, landing in the living room. No one was hurt.

The piece of metal was hot to the touch, and it appears to be some sort of engine component. But radar shows that no planes were overhead when the object fell.

The home is near Highway 101, but sits above the roadway.

- The latest on this: no traces of radiation have been detected by the authorities.
- Sorry the URL isn't working, probably because it's too long, so anyone wishing to read the original account can go to http://beta.kpix.com/news/local/ and search for the Sept 10 story.
 
Hmm, looks like another tangent universe has opened.
If you live near there, be careful, you may become one of the manipulated living.
Stay calm, and stay commited to Sparkle Motion.
 
Re: A piece of metal falls from the sky in SF

Gloria said:
- Sorry the URL isn't working, probably because it's too long, so anyone wishing to read the original account can go to http://beta.kpix.com/news/local/ and search for the Sept 10 story.
Where, it now says:
New Theory on Mystery Object That Crashed Through SF Roof

(The PIXPage Staff)

San Francisco police have a new theory on what may have crashed through the roof of a San Francisco home early Tuesday morning.

Investigators think the foot-long chunk of metal looks like a brake disk, and may have flown off of a car driving down nearby Interstate 280 or Highway 101.

The Federal Aviation Administration was also investigating, even though radar shows that no planes from SFO were over the area at the time.

» 09-10-2003
An Unidentified Flying Brake Disc. Seems plausible to me. :)
 
Was 'the thing' from a Firebird?
Mysterious object came from his car, S.F. man postulates

The mystery of the thing that crashed through the roof has been solved -- well, at least San Francisco resident Henry Wu says so.

San Francisco police aren't so sure.

The strange 20-pound piece of metal -- dubbed "the thing" -- crashed through Lin Shi Ying's home on the 300 block of Gaven Street in the Portola District at 3 a.m. Tuesday.

San Francisco police said late Wednesday that they still don't know what the object is -- but they know it's not from an airplane. Earlier in the day, they sent it off to the Federal Aviation Administration's Oakland office for analysis.

"The FAA has ruled out that it is a part from the airplane," said Dewayne Tully, spokesman for the department.

Tully said that the department is looking into whether the object may have flown off a passing car on Interstate 280 -- or possibly sprung off a big-rig truck that broke down on southbound Highway 101 at the Paul Avenue exit around the time of the roof crash.

Wu, however, said he's certain he knows where the object came from: his prized 1973 Pontiac Firebird Formula 455.

Wu -- a wealth adviser with Morgan Stanley -- says his car was stolen early Tuesday while it was parked in front of his friend's apartment in the Mission District. The car was found Wednesday on the side of I-280, at Alemany Boulevard, not far from the Ying home.

The car's engine was blown, and it had been stripped, Wu said. He theorizes that the car thief over-revved while speeding on I-280, causing the engine to blow and a part of the car to burst through the hood.

"There is a big hole in the hood -- this car is like a smoking hulk," he said.

Wu says he hasn't seen the object that police recovered from the Ying home.

And police -- as of Wednesday -- hadn't reviewed the details of Wu's car, although Wu said he had reported the incident to police.

For now, the car is at a body shop in San Bruno.

Tully, for one, will be glad to get the incident behind him. He called it much ado about not much.

"I think the whole thing is a little overblown," the police spokesman said.
 
Strange Falls

Couldn't find an general thread on odd stuffing dropping from the sky (but I might not have got the search right so if there is one merge away).

Something Strange Rains on Valley Pike Home

Was It a Bird? A Plane? No One Seems to Know What Fell Out of the Sky Near Stephens City.

By Laura Arenschield
The Winchester Star

STEPHENS CITY — It sounded like hail, sleet, or fat raindrops. But it only lasted about three or four seconds, and it happened during a sunny January afternoon.

Earl Leyman was sitting inside his Valley Pike home, south of Stephens City, when the phenomenon occurred.

Earl Leyman leans on his pickup truck, one of three vehicles on his Valley Pike property splattered by strange brown spots last month. Some of the spots are visible on the truck’s hood.
(Photo by Rick Foster)

When the sounds stopped almost as quickly as they had started, he walked outside to investigate.

“I saw brown spots covering the patio,” he said. “Like big, brown raindrops is what it looked like.”

The spots covered his driveway, carport, and cars parked near his house.

“[My granddaughter’s] car was completely peppered,” said Janet Leyman, Earl’s wife. “We’ve lived here about 48 years and never experienced anything like that.”

Janet said she believes the mysterious fluid probably came from an airplane.

But Earl said commercial airplanes headed toward Washington, D.C., don’t usually fly over his house.

“I didn’t hear no airplanes, but then, it might have been up too high,” Leyman said.

Steve Rogowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sterling, said the spots probably are not natural.

“I have never heard of anything like that before,” Rogowski said. “We just do weather over here, and it wasn’t weather-related.”

Leyman said several friends have guessed the spots could be human waste from an airplane passing overhead.

But most airplanes are not capable of dumping waste mid-flight.

Commercial vendors collect waste accrued in military planes flown out of Martinsburg, W.Va., by the 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard, Col. Brian Truman said. And their division, which often traverses the skies over Frederick County, did not fly at all the day the spots rained on Leyman’s home.

“The only way that you can get to the chemical toilets is from the outside of the airplane,” Truman said. “In other words, there’s an access panel to the outside and when those airplanes need service, they have to physically undo the panel on the outside and take out the waste. So I’m not saying its’s impossible, but it’s very, very unlikely that it could have been [human waste] for that reason.”

http://www.winchesterstar.com/TheWinchesterStar/040205/Area_spots.asp
 
Family Says Human Waste Fell On Home

Health Department Tests For Fecal Matter

UPDATED: 11:54 a.m. EST March 3, 2004

CHESTERVILLE, Ohio -- A Morrow County family said their home was peppered from the air with human waste.

The local health department believed the substance splattered over the house came from an airplane. The local sheriff, health department and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the incident, which happened nearly three weeks ago in Chesterville. Evidence still can be seen on Judy Jordan's house and sidewalk.

"It was a swath about 75 feet wide by 100 feet long," said Scott Pauley of the Morrow County Health Department. "It peppered the sidewalk, the house, the porch."

"I looked down and saw the black slimy spots," Jordan said. It was just peppered everywhere."

Pauley said the substance tested high "for fecal strep, so it seems to us to be a human indicator."

Jordan said her first thought was that it was a flock of geese that flew over her home. But health officials doubt that because of the high fecal count.

"It was too much to be geese," Pauley said.

Could it have been a prank? Did someone drive by and throw the substance on the home? Jordan is sure the stuff came from an airplane.

"The wind was blowing that day, and it had to have come straight down," Jordan said. "It couldn't have been thrown at the house, the way it was hit. ... The only possible thing I think it could possibly come from would be an airplane."

Jordan said she called the FAA, which told her that, "1,000 geese could fly over at the same time, and if an airplane scared them, that's what would happen."

The FAA also told her that airplanes don't ordinarily drop that kind of substance, and that they had no way of tracking it.

"It really frightens me that this could happen in this day and age, because of the terrorists," Jordan said. "Anybody could have done this over a school ground, a dairy farm."

The FAA also told Jordan that her house is not in the direct flight path of any commercial airlines.

No other homeowners in the immediate area reported anything falling from the sky.


http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2891605/detail.html

Not on a flight path and loclaised to that specific house eh?

Emps
 
Sounds familiar

Emperor said:

The brown spots in the "Something strange rains on Pike Valley Home" sounds familiar. This happens quite frequently, usually with yellow or brown spots.

There are several possible sources including bee droppings, and droppings from trees. My father used to have an office in a building where a tree overhanged his car and he got these gummy, wax-like yellow-brown spots on his car--whether from insects or the tree, I am not sure.

The Pike Valley story seems to have occurred in July--the same month my father's car was hit. Most likely analysis would show the spots contain pollen, beeswax, or possibly sap.

Notice how airplanes get blamed in all of these stories--falling ice, falling green and blue blobs, brown spots, etc. If Fort were still alive, he would have such fun with airplanes.

Airplanes must be very badly maintained to cause so many problems on the ground! It is a wonder you don't get more engines and rivets falling on people and property!
 
Wild Talents: Sliming your enemies

Emperor said:
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2891605/detail.html

Not on a flight path and loclaised to that specific house eh?

Emps

Again with the blaming of aviation! People just have it in for the airlines. They get no respect, no respect at all.

Tornado touches down in open cess pit, maybe? Prankster fires homemade cannon at disliked neighbour? Politician explodes while canvassing neighbourhood? Airplane startles flock of birds?

Maybe there are sewers above our heads. "As below, so above", so to speak. That would be Fort's surmise, I suspect.

Other than that, I'm not touching this one. Too Fortean. Very.
 
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