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Saturday, 1 February 2014

10 More Extremely Bizarre Phobias

10

Agyrophobia
Fear of Crossing the Street

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Agyrophobics have a fear of crossing streets, highways and other thoroughfares, or a fear of thoroughfares themselves. This, of course, makes it very difficult to live comfortably in a city. The word comes from the Greek gyrus which means turning or whirling as the phobic avoids the whirl of traffic. The phobia covers several categories, wherein sufferers may fear wide roads specifically down to suburban single lane streets, and can also include fearing jaywalking or crossing anywhere on a street, even a designated intersection. This phobia is considered independent from the fear of cars.

9

Mageirocophobia
Fear of Cooking

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The bizarre fear of cooking is called mageirocophobia which comes from the Greek word mageirokos which means a person skilled in cooking. This disorder can be debilitating and potentially lead to unhealthy eating if one lives alone. Sufferers of mageirokos can feel extremely intimidated by people with skills in cooking, and this intimidation and feeling of inadequacy is probably the root cause of the disorder for many. If you suffer from mageirokos and wish to develop some basic skills in cooking, check out ourTop 10 Tips for Great Home Cooking and Top 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Cooking.

8

Pediophobia
Fear of Dolls

Abroken China Doll By Rebel Sta By

Pediophobia is the irrational fear of dolls. Not just scary dolls – ALL dolls. Strictly speaking, the fear is a horror of a “false representation of sentient beings” so it also usually includes robots and mannequins, which can make it decidedly difficult to go shopping. This phobia should not be confused with pedophobia or pediaphobia which is the fear of children. Sigmund Freud believed the disorder may spring from a fear of the doll coming to life and roboticist Masahiro Mori expanded on that theory by stating that the more human-like something becomes, the more repellent its non-human aspects appear. My apologies to those who suffer from pediophobia for the picture above.

7

Deipnophobia
Fear of Dinner Conversation

Awkward-Dinner-Party

Now admittedly some dinner conversations can be very awkward, but some people are so terrified of the idea of speaking to another person over dinner that they avoid dining out situations. In times gone by there were strict rules of etiquette that helped a person to deal with these situations – but they are (sadly) mostly forgotten. In today’s society in which rules and formality are out the window, it is possible that the more controlled nature of a dinner party may lie partly behind this phobia. For those amongst us who are interested in some tips for coping with fine dining, read our Top 10 Tips for Fine Dining (number eight is specifically about dinner conversation).

6

Eisoptrophobia
Fear of Mirrors

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Eisoptrophobia is a fear of mirrors in the broad sense, or more specifically the fear of being put into contact with the spiritual world through a mirror. Sufferers experience undue anxiety even though they realize their fear is irrational. Because their fear often is grounded in superstitions, they may worry that breaking a mirror will bring bad luck or that looking into a mirror will put them in contact with a supernatural world inside the glass. After writing this list I realized that I suffer from a minor form of this disorder in that I don’t like to look into a mirror in the evening when I am alone for fear of seeing someone (or something) behind me.

5

Demonophobia
Fear of Demons

Exorcist-Demon

Demonophobia is an abnormal and persistent fear of evil supernatural beings in persons who believe such beings exist and roam freely to cause harm. Those who suffer from this phobia realize their fear is excessive or irrational. Nevertheless, they become unduly anxious when discussing demons, when venturing alone into woods or a dark house, or when watching films about demonic possession and exorcism. Sufferers are most likely to be recognized by the strings of garlic around their neck, crucifixes, wooden stakes they carry, and gun loaded with silver bullets. Okay – I made that last part up.

4

Pentheraphobia
Fear of Mother-in-Law

Mother-In-Law-From-Hell

Of all the phobias on this list, pentheraphobia is probably the most common. It is, as stated above, the fear of one’s mother-in-law. I am sure that most married people have, at one time or another, suffered from this terrible fear. This fear is one that is so common in Western society that it frequently appears in movies and other forms of entertainment. Of the many available therapies for this illness of the mind, divorce seems to be the most popular. A related phobia to pentheraphobia is novercaphobia which is a fear of your stepmother – the most famous sufferer of which is Cinderella.

3

Arachibutyrophobia
Fear of Peanut Butter Sticking to the Roof of your Mouth

Peanut-Butter

I must say that finding information on this disorder is extremely difficult – which does make me wonder if it is perhaps the figment of an over-active imagination, but it is definitely bizarre and fairly well known so it seems to deserve a place here. This disorder seems to be a fear that is quite easily worked around: don’t buy peanut butter. However, for a child who is forced to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day, one can see how it might cause severe trauma in later life. Here is the testimony of one alleged sufferer: “Whenever I’m around peanut butter I start to sweat excessively and my body starts convulsing. The roof of my mouth becomes coarse and itchy. I can’t live with this fear anymore. My thirst for peanut butter must be quenched without me going into a full blown panic attack.”

2

Cathisophobia
Fear of Sitting

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Cathisophobia (sometimes spelled with a ‘k’) is a terror of sitting down. This disorder can be sparked off by a particularly nasty case of hemorrhoids but in some serious cases it can be due to physical abuse relating to sitting on sharp or painful objects. Sometimes, the sitting fear is due to some punishment in the school days, or it may be an indication of some other phobia like sitting in front of elite and influential people. Cathisophobia is characterized by sweating, heavy or short breathe, and anxiety.

1

Automatonophobia
Fear of a Ventriloquist’s Dummy

Ventriloquist-Dummies

I think we can all see the merit in this disorder – the very act of ventriloquism seems particularly nasty to me. It involves a man with his hand up a dolls butt which he then proceeds to talk to. Sufferers of automatonophobia need not seek treatment – it is a perfectly valid reaction to a perfectly revolting concept. I think that is enough said on this topic.

JAMIE FRATER

Jamie is the founder of Listverse. He spends his time working on the site, doing research for new lists, and cooking. He is fascinated with all things morbid and bizarre.


10 Things You Know About Pirates That Are Wrong

01
Pirates really did have their own nautical lingo, and we still use many of these rebellious seafarers’ phrases today. “Learn the ropes” is a phrase that today means “become familiar with the way something should be done.” This comes directly from needing to literally know the complex network ofpulleys and ropes that controlled a ship’s sails. Being able to tie the proper knot and pull the correct rope to open or close a sail was important know-how for any sailor.

We can find pubs called “Three Sheets to the Wind” all over the English speaking world. Today it means to be drunk, but the phrase doesn’t come from drunken pirates. The sheet is the rope which controls the sails. If multiple lines ran loose, the sails would flap at the wind’s mercy and pirates would lose control of the ship. This is why the phrase now refers to a drunk—an out-of-control drunk.

Not only did pirates integrate nautical jargon into their cultural language, they also mixed languages. Pirating was a multinational and borderless culture of the sea.

9Gay Pirates

02
The lasting mythology of pirates has painted them as a special breed of man who were sexist, womanizing, bearded hooligans with a taste for strong liquor and gold. Ever hear of the idea that sailors have a woman at every port?

The truth may be more interesting than the fiction. Pirates rejected puritan society and were socially very liberal. They openly welcomed homosexuality and even had their own form of gay marriage. Matelotage was a civil partnership between two male pirates. Matelotage partners openly had sex with each other. The men shared their property, had the other as theirnamed inheritor, and lived together. It just wasn’t always a strictly monogamous enterprise.

Just as today, sexuality is a spectrum, and the relationships were sometimes bisexual. When the French sent hundreds of prostitutes into Tortuga in the mid-1600s, they were trying to counter matelotage. The result was not what they expected. The fluid sexuality of the pirate community welcomed the prostitutes and many engaged in threesomes with the women.

8Black Sailors

03
The freedom in economic pursuits and movements allowed among pirates is a powerful example of how their social progress was ahead of its time. Piracy was a challenge to the systematic oppression that allowed slavery to be a legal enterprise. We can’t forget the stark inequalities that blacks faced, holding the lowest positions on mixed race ships and being “shipped off” by slave owners to make money for them, but other pirates lived by a different code. They judged people based on their skills, because they didn’t live under the same flag as the colonists. Free black men served aboard pirate ships.

Black Caesar was one notorious such pirate. His tale began in Africa, where he was a chief. He was tricked onto a slave ship, but during a tumultuous hurricane, he escaped in a longboat. He escaped with a friend—one he later killed because the two vied over the same woman. Eventually, Black Caesar became a seasoned pirate, capturing and controlling multiple ships.

He joined up with Blackbeard and was working alongside him when Blackbeard’s ship was attacked in 1718. Black Caesar almost evaded capture, but his life ended in Williamsburg, Virginia at the end of a hangman’s rope.

7Democracy

04
Contrary to popular belief, pirates were not anarchists who just wanted to rebel against any kind of order. The truth is, pirates were big fans of democracy. Those cast out by those sects of society were welcomed into a different social order, that of the pirates. Ships were egalitarian.

In order to maintain a good lifestyle while at sea for months, pirates realized the best conditions came via democratic channels. Most of the time, crews elected their captains. This practice of democratic elections guaranteed that the crew liked their leader and reduced the chances of mutiny. The quartermaster was also an elected official. The captain did have total power in certain situations, such as battle, but he otherwise had little unchecked control over the ship.

6Female Pirates

05
On the sea, you could freely cross culturally and historically constructedgender boundaries, and a great many female pirates fought on ships. Yet to first join a crew, many women had to crossdress. For some, passing as a man was most certainly an integral part of their personal identity, but for others it was a gender barrier they had to cross in order to fulfill their desires to be a sailor.

Many female pirate stories mirror that of Mary Lacy. She left her home of Portsmouth at the age of 19 and dressed as a man, assuming the name of William Chandler. She had an intimate relationship with another young woman living aboard her ship. When she finally returned home, she told her parents about her adventures. Later a family friend told the world that William Chandler was actually a woman, and she was allowed to continue working, though she eventually abandoned the seafaring life because of itsphysical demands.

The lives of these women were externally defined by a male dominated society, and the fables that came from their experiences warned against attempting to go against the grain. Mary’s story ended with a supposedly happy marriage to a hardworking man named Mr. Slade. This happy ending may well have never happened and was just added by the publisher of her autobiography.

5Workers’ Compensation

06

Photo credit: Halibutt/10

Nautical Lingo


Pirates had workers’ compensation schemes for their crew members, with payouts depending on the injury’s severity. Losing a foot was worth more than losing a couple of fingers. Losing your dominant arm could be worth more than losing the other. The pirates similarly pioneered workers’ insurance.

They also embraced disabilities—pirate costumes include an eye patch, a wooden leg, or a hook for a hand for a reason. The macho persona of piracy encouraged pirates to continue working with debilitating physical disabilities. They, like war veterans, were elevated above having problems and instead were seen as courageous. At the same time, pirates did not live in an individualized society, so codependency was a part of life. Therefore, losing a limb did not necessarily change your status aboard the ship.

The disabilities of pirates celebrated in stories by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson were groundbreaking. They presented powerful and relatable disabled people in literature—and history.

4Becoming A Pirate

07
A job at sea is unruly and dangerous even now, and it was far more so in the age of sails and no electronics. Four main groups of people earned a living by sailing the high seas: merchants, naval crew, pirates, and privateers. Privateers received licenses from their governments to raid and pillage enemy ships, making them legal pirates. Merchants traded and sold goods, and naval forces were part of the military. Everyone at sea had to make major sacrifices and that combined with deplorable conditions created a dissatisfied working force.

Many people believe that pirates were just criminals on ships, but the truth is that many people turned from legally sanctioned work to pirating. Pirating was a much more lucrative and democratic career. Booty was equally distributed amongst the crew and the living and working conditions for pirates were significantly better than merchant and navy ships.

Rather than deserting their ships to become pirates, many merchant sailors got the opportunity when their ships were captured by pirates. The pirate captains had a tradition of asking merchant sailors if they’d like to join their ranks. Even though the Golden Age is considered at time of sea war, the situation for people who worked as pirates was much better than previous time periods.

3The Pirate Code

08
Pirates of the Caribbean starts off with one of the main characters invoking the right of parley. This is a real term, but not one used among pirates. Yet pirates did have a code. Pirate ethics were born from a collective and diverse culture influenced by an egalitarian life at sea. The basic ethics included equal distribution of wealth, democratic group decisions, honesty to comrades, and loyalty.

The other side of pirate code was revenge. It mainly involved vengeance against people and places of authority that dominated others through violent means.

2Alcoholism

09
We all know that pirates partied hard. Boozing was such an important part of pirate culture that alcoholism was the norm and social pressure forced every single pirate to imbibe. For some, the promise of unrestricted drinking was more enticing than the riches they might get.

Alcohol was the connecting tissue between pirates, and anyone who wouldn’t drink was looked at suspiciously. It was considered the cure for many ailments, from food poisoning to scurvy. Rum was an important commodity in the Caribbean and when a pirate ship looted a merchant ship that held boozy cargo, it was near impossible for the captain to persuade his crew to not get wasted right away.

Gambling was a related favorite pastime. Although some ships banned gambling while at sea, it was a huge part of life on land. The biggest port city aside from Boston was Port Royal, Jamaica, where 20 percent of buildings housed either gambling, pubs, liquor stores, or brothels. A sad ending for more than a few former sailors was a lonely homeless life as a beggar in Port Royal. Excessive drinking and gambling could drive hard working men into despairing situations. Pirate partying wasn’t all fun and games—it was an addiction-fueled lifestyle that left survivors in squalor by the end of their lives.

1Recruitment

10
Volunteers made up the bulk of pirate crews. It was a dangerous and unpredictable life, desertions and death were common, and ships constantly needed new people. As with any jobs, recruitment meant showing potential members the glamor of the job. Current pirates had to dress sharply and be clean to put on the external appearance of a life well lived. And if they couldn’t get enough volunteers, pirates weren’t above using force to get new crewmembers.

Pirates saw an increase in the number of people seeking work after 1713, when privateers turned to pirating. When European nations were fighting at sea, privateers were able to work and earn a significant income. In 1708 they were even allowed by the English to keep everything they stole from other ships. A mere five years later, the Treaty of Utrecht brought relative peace to the ocean and thousands of privateers lost their jobs. Instead of turning to the land and becoming thieves, most joined pirate crews where they could put their skills to use.

Thursday, 30 January 2014

10 More Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories – I can’t get enough of them! Fortunately there are so many floating about that we have been able to give you not one, not two, but now three lists of theories that many people believe with all their might. Be sure to read the earlier lists if you haven’t already and feel free to add any conspiracies missing from all three to the comments here.

10

Area 51

Area-51-1

It makes the list because it appears in almost every alien or UFO conspiracy theory ever devised. The fact is Area 51 is real. It’s a popular target on Google Earth. Another fact is that the FAA has confirmed that no air routes go over or anywhere near Area 51, by direct order from the USAF.

There are television shows purporting to explain just what goes on there, one even including an interview with “a disgruntled employee,” who is provided with black-out lighting, but no vocal distortion, and who states that “it is a testing ground for experimental aircraft. It’s as simple as that.”

I considered putting the Aurora Aircraft on this list, but since its existence is tied so closely to Area 51, I use Area 51 as a catch-all of sorts. It is verifiable now, that the F-117 Stealth Fighter, the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber, and the SR-71 Blackbird were all invented at Area 51. This may account for all the strange lights people have recorded near the base through the years.

But the conspiracy theory goes on to claim that humans were unable to come up with these technologies. They were, instead, reverse engineered by studying the technology of the flying saucer that crashed at Roswell, NM, in 1947. In fact, there may have been other alien aircraft recovered or even shot down in the area over the years, all of which have led to the USAF’s mighty power of innovation. The theory claims that the flying saucer is still there, housed in a secret bunker or hangar, as are the corpses of the three or four aliens who crashed it and died.

9

The Clinton Body Count

Bill Clinton Yeahihitit

This one at least seems plausible, as it has nothing to do with science fiction. This theory states that Bill Clinton, while he was president and before, was quietly assassinating his associates (ostensibly anyone who got in the way of his career, such as Vince Foster). The Clinton Body Count is a list of about 50-60 associates of Clinton who have died “under mysterious circumstance.” The list began circulating over the Internet starting in the mid-1990s. The list grew out of a 1993 list of about 24 names prepared by the pro-gun lobby group American Justice Federation, which was led by Linda Thompson. The list was posted to the group’s bulletin board system.

The facts concerning Vince Foster’s death are that he died untimely, on July 20, 1993, of apparent suicide by gunshot in the mouth. His body was found in Fort Marcy Park, Virginia. Gunshot residue was found on the hand which had held the gun. Foster and Clinton were boyhood friends, both lawyers, and it is believed by the theory that Foster got too close to uncovering some embarrassing truth about Clinton, probably of a sexual and/or dishonest nature, and that Foster was assassinated, less than a year after joining Clinton’s White House staff.

The theorists argue that it is unlikely that a man with a wife and three children, and an extremely lucrative law practice, earning him $300,000 a year, would have manic depression, but Foster was diagnosed with it and prescribed anti-depressants.

8

The Christ Myth Theory

Christ-King2

Yes, you read that right. According to this conspiracy theory, the man himself never existed. His life story, his ministry, his status as the divine Son of God, is a fabrication of the Roman Catholic Church. Those who have proposed one form or another of this theory have documented the similarities between stories of Jesus and those of Krishna, Adonis, Osiris, Mithra, and a pre-Christian cult of Jesus (Joshua) within Judaism. Some authors attribute the beginning of Christianity to a historical founder who predates the time Jesus is said to have lived.

The theory appears to have been originated by two French Enlightenment thinkers, Constantin-Francois Volney and Charles Francois Dupuis, in the 1790s. The theory has always been largely dismissed by academic circles and biblical historians, in which case, the theorists simply elaborated on the theory. Not only did Jesus never exist, his presence in the New Testament is utter fiction, created by the Roman Catholic Church sometime in the very early 3rd Century AD, or late 2nd Century, as a means by which to control people. The authorities passed down the idea to their successors until Constantine considered it a very good means of control and called the Council of Nicaea to organize the Church into global domination.

Despite all of the historical proof that Jesus did exist – and there is plenty of it – there are still many people who would like to think he didn’t. That is the source of this bizarre revisionist theory.

7

The Antichrist

Satan And Demon Baby

Satan is alive on Earth, and has created the Antichrist, who is, at this moment, not quite old enough to seize power, but will in only a few years. He will do so in a very political manner, taking over some powerful organization, such as the United Nations.

Every generation, since St. John the Divine wrote the Revelation, has sworn that it would witness the Great Tribulation, Armageddon, and the second coming of Jesus. “The end is near,” everyone has been saying.

Now, though, with the advent of global communications, especially the Internet, the theory has swelled exponentially. Christians who previously didn’t think much of it have changed their minds. It can be argued that the worldwide availability of press coverage only serves to heighten fear of terrible things happening at any moment. 9/11 was the most well covered, watched tragedy in human history. Wheneer a tragedy occurs, people who believe in the Christian end-times scenarios flock to church to pray away their fear.

But now, with the ability to control the entire world actually conceivable, the paranoia of the Antichrist showing up has become quite the pandemic. Most terrorists believe he will be male, will arise in Europe, probably Western Europe, and some even swear that he will be French. Plenty are sure, however, that President Barack Obama is in fact the Antichrist. Numerologists believe that the Antichrist is not yet old enough, but will make his appearance at the age of 30, symbolically equal to Jesus beginning his ministry. Worldwide terrorism, the current U. S. led war on it in the hotbed of political unrest, and the fact that almost every Arab nation seems to be threatening an invasion of Israel at every second, all serve to make this one feel very real. Every day CNN is loaded with horror stories about the Holy Land, and it just seems to keep getting worse. “The end is near.”

6

The electric car

Jetsons L51

It is a verifiable fact that the human land speed record was set in 1899 at 65 mph by an electric car. Steam and gasoline-powered automobiles could not achieve this for another 20 to 25 years. Today, technology has progressed immensely, and yet, we still have no electric cars. The best production model is the Toyota Prius, which gets 50 mpg. This only intensifies the theory that the U. S. oil companies currently possess the technology for purely electric cars, which you can plug into an ordinary, American wall outlet at night and charge up to a cross-country trip by morning.

But because this would, in truth, bankrupt the oil companies, they refuse to release the technology, and have even put out successful hits on various geniuses since the 1960s, none of whom became very famous, because he was killed before he could make his publish his discovery. A documentary in 2006, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” fueled the fire that if the technology is documented to have existed as early as the 1830s, why did it appear to hits its peak at the turn of the 20th Century, and then decline? Why are we still waiting for electric cars? Edison patented one in 1913. All the electrical pioneers of that time tinkered with the idea, and plenty of reasonable examples were produced.

5

HAARP

Haarp1

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program does exist. It is a research project funded jointly by the USAF, the US Navy, the University of Alaska, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). When you put that many government organizations into one sentence about new technology, conspiracy theorists come running. Did you see the 2003 movie “The Core”? It concerns a stall in the earth’s magnetic field, allowing the sun’s microwave radiation to cook the planet, until a team goes into the core of the planet and jumpstarts it spinning again, so the magnetic field will resume.

The movie explains that the stall was caused not on its own, but accidentally by HAARP, which is researching the ability to create earthquakes for use as a weapon. The official description of the program, given by the program, is “to provide a research facility to conduct pioneering experiments in ionospheric phenomena… used to analyze basic ionospheric properties and to assess the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for communications and surveillance purposes.”

This sounds like the opposite of deep-Earth experiments, but conspiracy theorists believe the program is a cover for a kind of particle-beam weapon, first invented by Nikola Tesla, which has in fact been perfected, or brought close to perfection, by HAARP. The theory also claims that the ionospheric research is not a lie, but is being developed for use as a weapon to shoot down enemy spacecraft, or ballistic missiles, the latter popular especially given that HAARP’s facilities are all in Alaska, close to Russia. It even speculates that the weapon could become Tesla’s most infamous invention: “the Death Beam,” able to project a beam of extremely powerful electricity from the facility to any point on the planet and create an explosion as devastating as a hydrogen bomb.

4

The Vril Society

Nazi-Ufo Vril6

It has been suggested that there is a secret form of energy, called Vril, which is used and controlled by a secret subterranean society of matriarchal socialist utopian superior beings. Yes, you read that correctly. It is similar in this respect to the #2 theory. It also claims that Nazi Germany discovered this race, and its technology, at Shambhala, Tibet, and used it to create flying saucers (pictured above).

The whole theory is based on an 1871 sci-fi novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, titled, “Vril: The Coming of the Race.” It is generally considered an early example of science fiction, but because this genre was just getting off the ground at the time, it was seen by many as a non-fiction account of the subterranean race and their technology, a theory which persists today. The theory really took off in the 1960s.

3

The suppression of Free Energy

Tesla

This one actually sounds plausible. Nikola Tesla claimed that free energy was indeed possible, and worked for most of his career to achieve it. The theory claims that he did, in fact, succeed, just before his death in 1943, in discovering the mathematics and mechanics involved, but that the FBI immediately broke into his home and seized all his papers and work, and has never released any of it to the public.

The concept of free energy is, in very general terms, the ability to input x amount of energy into a machine, which will output x + 1 amount of energy. This seems to conflict with the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Tesla believed the law to be incorrect. He invented the Tesla Coil as an attempt to create free energy.

If it is possible, free energy could be perfected and result in the entire planet being powered by a single power source, such as a nuclear power plant, and output all the energy anyone could ever need. An infinite supply of energy at our fingertips, all based on electric output. You can see how this would irritate the oil companies.

They are the cause of the suppression, the theory claims, as no one would have to depend on fossil fuels anymore. Electric input is just as viable as coal input, or gasoline input. Thus, the electricity required to power a lightbulb could be all we need to power the whole world, invent spacecrafts capable of interstellar travel, anti-gravity, etc.

2

Jesus was a different species

Rosslyn Chapel

This theory is a lot of fun. It has been alleged that the U. S. and Israeli governments led archaeological digs in the past, which discovered the True Cross, on which Jesus Himself was crucified (along with many others, as crosses were reused). The theories disagree on the location, most claiming Jerusalem, many claiming Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, or various places in England.

Minute traces of blood were discovered on the cross and analyzed. The DNA was of several strains, and one was encoded not on a double helix, but on a triple helix! Is this good stuff or what?! The DNA is unlike any other known, and was labeled as a new species, Homo superioris. The theory continues that there are other people of this species currently living underground in various places around the world, including most of the major cities, and they have been around as long or longer than Homo sapiens. Jesus made the unprecedented decision to come up to the surface and live among us, and try to teach us to be good, and kind and peaceful.

His species possesses phenomenal supernatural abilities, including telekinesis, levitation (walking on water), telepathy (knowing people’s thoughts), healing, etc. They are also very difficult to kill, and when no one was looking, presumably during the freak storm and earthquake, Jesus got down off the cross and disappeared, having done his job. This ties in with the Jesus bloodline theory.

1

The Montauk Project

Montauk

In the annals of paranoia, no conspiracy theory is more labyrinthine, more convoluted, more encompassing of other conspiracy theories as the Montauk Project, based out of Camp Hero, Montauk Point, Long Island, New York. At the extreme northeastern tip of the island there is a massive AN/FPS-35 radar dish that has long since been decommissioned, but has been saved from demolition by a petition from the local civilian residents, who find it a better sea-faring landmark than the nearby Montauk Lighthouse. This dish features prominently in all the theories surrounding a hyper-top secret military research facility which supposedly operated from 1967 to the early 1980s.

Some theories claim that research still goes on there, deep underground in a facility that was frequently expanded since its inception. But the theories involving what went on in Camp Hero from the 1960s on are the best stuff you’re likely to hear in terms of science fiction realism. The Project began on US Government initiative in 1952-53, when a secret committee was organized to discuss possible research into time travel. The methods by which this could be achieved have never been adequately explained in the theory, but are based primarily on the work of the two favorite scientists of conspiracy theorists: Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla.

Einstein’s general relativity theory is considered the only plausible jumping-off point to a Unified Field Theory, which has so far not been discovered. Or so the public thinks. The Montauk Project resulted directly from the Philadelphia Experiment, which topped a previous list of conspiracy theories and is claimed by the theorists to be the accidental discovery of time travel. Nikola Tesla, who supposedly died in 1943, did not die, but perfected Einstein’s theory, and invented the mechanics required to stabilize a wormhole, a rip in the fabric of space-time.

The Montauk Project furthered this research, funded initially by $10 billion in Nazi gold bullion, stolen by American soldiers from an underground railroad tunnel in Switzerland in 1945. Some theories include Tesla as the immortal head of the project, traveling through time to cheat death. The base is said to have created and stabilized a time tunnel into the past, enabling anyone to go into it and arrive at any programmed point in the past. But then something terrible happened. No one can agree on precisely what, except that a mechanical failure in the 1980s resulted in a horrible monster from a foreign world (and perhaps from the past or future), which came through the underground tunnel without warning and severely destroyed the base, before being killed by unknown means.

The government immediately scrapped the Project, having learned how to travel through time, and sealed off the entire base, which had grown so large that it actually extends, to this day, under the town of Montauk itself, several square miles. The massive radar dish was used to transmit messages to alien worlds in various times through the history of the Universe.

Today, Camp Hero is now a state park where anyone may go and picnic or hike, and yet there are verifiable reports of backpackers and campers being suddenly accosted by men with automatic assault rifles in the middle of the night and threatened with death if they didn’t leave. In all these reports, the men have been said to wear olive drab uniforms with no insignia of any kind. The film “Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” was filmed in the area, but not in the state park itself, because the local authorities charged exorbitant fees, apparently to dissuade the production from accidentally uncovering any secrets.