According to urban legend, Black Eyed Children (aka Black-Eyed Kids) are mysterious paranormal creatures who resemble children between the ages of 6 and 16 with pale white skin and black eyes who are reportedly seen hitchhiking,panhandling or encountered on doorsteps of residential homes. Tales of black eyed children have appeared in pop culture since the late 1990s.[1][2][3][4]
History[edit]
The supposed origin of the legend are 1998 postings on a "ghost-related mailing list" relating alleged encounters with "black eyed kids" in Abilene, Texas, and Portland, Oregon.[1] According to the director of the 2012 fictional horror film Black Eyed Kids, "Black-eyed kids is an urban legend that's been floating around on the Internet for years now, I always thought it was fascinating."[5] A video episode of "Weekly Strange" that featured reports of black eyed children posted on MSN in 2013 is thought to have helped spread the legend on the internet.[1]
Alleged sightings are taken seriously by ghost hunters, some of whom believe black eyed children are extraterrestrials,vampires or ghosts.[6] According to science writer Sharon A. Hill, the legend of "black eyed kids resembles typical spooky folklore stories in the same realm as phantom black dogs, apparitions, and mysterious monsters. They aren't supernatural, there may never even have been an actual encounter. That does not stop people from continuing to see and fear them and pass on the latest tale of terror."[2]
In late September 2014, the British tabloid Daily Star ran three sensationalistic front-page stories about alleged sightings of black-eyed children.[7]
Bart Simpson on Trial Judge Burns
Bart Simpson/Mr.Burns
Sometimes, when life imitates art, an otherwise lamentable situation can be transformed into something incongruously hilarious.
Case in point: A man named Bart Simpson, accused of carrying a prohibited firearm, was recently called to appear before a U.K. judge named Mr. Burns.
Simpson (full name Barton Simpson) was caught in possession of a revolver at Birmingham Airport last year, according to an earlier report by the Solihull Observer. The 56-year-old company director, who pleaded not guilty to the charge, stood trial this week in front of Judge Recorder Burns. No other details of the ongoing trial have been revealed.
"It's a bizarre coincidence that Bart Simpson is actually on trial in front of Mr Burnsbut it'll proceed as any other criminal case would," a court worker told the South West News Service. "There were some eyebrows raised when the court list was published."
"It's a bizarre coincidence that Bart Simpson is actually on trial in front of Mr Burnsbut it'll proceed as any other criminal case would," a court worker told the South West News Service. "There were some eyebrows raised when the court list was published."
THE 10 STRANGEST,MOST TERRIFYING CREATURES EVER FOUND
THE 10 STRANGEST,TERRIFYING CREATURES EVER FOUND
Read more at http://www.ranker.com/list/the-10-strangest-most-terrifying-creatures-ever-found/ivana-wynn#MPqhl31jIK5KLpsz.99
Read more at http://www.ranker.com/list/the-10-strangest-most-terrifying-creatures-ever-
Déjà vu
Déjà vu
Déjà vu, from French, literally "already seen", is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced had been experienced in the past.
Scientific research
The psychologist Edward B. Titchener in his book 1928 A Textbook of Psychology, explained déjà vu as caused by a person having a brief glimpse of an object or situation, before the brain has completed "constructing" a full conscious perception of the experience. Such a "partial perception" then results in a false sense of familiarity.[1] The explanation that has mostly been accepted of déjà vu is not that it is an act of "precognition" or "prophecy", but rather that it is an anomaly of memory, giving the false impression that an experience is "being recalled".[2][3] This explanation is supported by the fact that the sense of "recollection" at the time is strong in most cases, but that the circumstances of the "previous" experience (when, where, and how the earlier experience occurred) are uncertain or believed to be impossible.
As well, as time passes, subjects may exhibit a strong recollection of having the "unsettling" experience of déjà vu itself, but little or no recollection of the specifics of the event(s) or circumstance(s) which were the subject of the déjà vu experience itself (the events that were being "remembered"). This may result from an "overlap" between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory and those responsible for long-term memory, resulting in (memories of) recent events erroneously being perceived as being in the more distant past. One theory is the events are stored into memory before the conscious part of the brain even receives the information and processes it.[4] However, this explanation has been criticized that the brain would not be able to store information without a sensory input first. Another theory suggests the brain may process sensory input (perhaps all sensory input) as a "memory-in-progress", and that therefore during the event itself one believes it to be a past memory. In a survey, Brown had concluded that approximately two-thirds of the population have had déjà vu experiences.[5]
[edit]Links with disorders
Early researchers tried to establish a link between déjà vu and serious psychopathology such as schizophrenia, anxiety, and dissociative identity disorder, but failed to find the experience of some diagnostic value. There does not seem to be a special association between déjà vu and schizophrenia or other psychiatric conditions.[6] The strongest pathological association of déjà vu is withtemporal lobe epilepsy.[7][8] This correlation has led some researchers to speculate that the experience of déjà vu is possibly a neurological anomaly related to improper electrical discharge in the brain. As most people suffer a mild (i.e. non-pathological) epileptic episode regularly (e.g. a hypnagogic jerk, the sudden "jolt" that frequently, but not always, occurs just prior to falling asleep), it is conjectured that a similar (mild) neurological aberration occurs in the experience of déjà vu, resulting in an erroneous sensation of memory. Scientists have even looked into genetics when considering déjà vu. Although there is not currently a gene associated with déjà vu, the LGII gene on chromosome 10 is being studied for a possible link. Certain forms of the gene are associated with a mild form of epilepsy and, though by no means a certainty, déjà vu occurs often enough during seizures that researchers have reason to suspect a link.[9]
[edit]Pharmacology
Certain drugs increase the chances of déjà vu occurring in the user. Some pharmaceutical drugs, when taken together, have also been implicated in the cause of déjà vu. Taiminen and Jääskeläinen (2001)[10] reported the case of an otherwise healthy male who started experiencing intense and recurrent sensations of déjà vu upon taking the drugs amantadine andphenylpropanolamine together to relieve flu symptoms. He found the experience so interesting that he completed the full course of his treatment and reported it to the psychologists to write up as a case study. Due to the dopaminergic action of the drugs and previous findings from electrode stimulation of the brain (e.g. Bancaud, Brunet-Bourgin, Chauvel, & Halgren, 1994),[11] Taiminen and Jääskeläinen speculate that déjà vu occurs as a result of hyperdopaminergic action in the mesial temporal areas of the brain.
[edit]Memory-based explanations
The similarity between a déjà-vu-eliciting stimulus and an existing, but different, memory trace may lead to the sensation.[6][12] Thus, encountering something which evokes the implicit associations of an experience or sensation that cannot be remembered may lead to déjà vu. In an effort to experimentally reproduce the sensation, Banister and Zangwill (1941)[13][14] usedhypnosis to give participants posthypnotic amnesia for material they had already seen. When this was later re-encountered, the restricted activation caused thereafter by the posthypnotic amnesia resulted in three of the 10 participants reporting what the authors termed "paramnesias". Memory-based explanations may lead to the development of a number of non-invasive experimental methods by which a long sought-after analogue of déjà vu can be reliably produced that would allow it to be tested under well-controlled experimental conditions. Cleary[12] suggests that déjà vu may be a form of familiarity-based recognition (recognition that is based on a feeling of familiarity with a situation) and that laboratory methods of probing familiarity-based recognition hold promise for probing déjà vu in laboratory settings. A recent study that used virtual reality technology to study reported déjà vu experiences supported this idea. This virtual reality investigation suggested that similarity between a new scene's spatial layout and the layout of a previously experienced scene in memory (but which fails to be recalled) may contribute to the déjà vu experience.[15][15] When the previously experienced scene fails to come to mind in response to viewing the new scene, that previously experienced scene in memory can still exert an effect—that effect may be a feeling of familiarity with the new scene that is subjectively experienced as a feeling of déjà vu, or of having been there before despite knowing otherwise. Another possible explanation for the phenomenon of déjà vu is the occurrence of "cryptomnesia", which is where information learned is forgotten but nevertheless stored in the brain, and similar occurrences invoke the contained knowledge, leading to a feeling of familiarity because of the situation, event or emotional/vocal content, known as "déjà vu". Some experts suggest that memory is a process of reconstruction, rather than a recall of fixed, established events. This reconstruction comes from stored components, involving elaborations, distortions and omissions. Each successive recall of an event is merely a recall of the last reconstruction. The proposed sense of recognition (déjà vu) involves achieving a good ‘match’ between the present experience and our stored data. This reconstruction however, may now differ so much from the original event that we ‘know’ we have never experienced it before, even though it seems similar.[16]
[edit]Parapsychology
Some parapsychologists have advocated other interpretations of déjà vu. Ian Stevenson and other researchers have written that some cases of déjá vu might be explained on the basis ofreincarnation.[17][18] Anthony Peake has written that déjà vu experiences occur as people are living their lives not for the first time but at least the second.[19]
[edit]Related phenomena
[edit]Jamais vu
Main article: Jamais vu
Jamais vu (from French, meaning "never seen") is a term in psychology which is used to describe any familiar situation which is not recognized by the observer.
Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before. Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that they already know. Jamais vu is sometimes associated with certain types of aphasia, amnesia, and epilepsy.
Theoretically, as seen below, a jamais vu feeling in a sufferer of a delirious disorder or intoxication could result in a delirious explanation of it, such as in the Capgras delusion, in which the patient takes a person known by him or her for a false double or impostor. If the impostor is himself, the clinical setting would be the same as the one described as depersonalisation, hence jamais vus of oneself or of the very "reality of reality", are termed depersonalisation (or surreality) feelings.
TREE SWASTIKAS
Germany's infamous giant swastika of trees in a forest north of Berlin just will not die. Two days after the government said it had obliterated a 200-by-200-foot swastika of golden larch trees visible only from the air, a local pilot said Wednesday that it could still be clearly seen. "It is just as clear as it was before," said Lutz Priebsch, a local pilot who flew over the Nazi symbol Tuesday after foresters tried to disfigure the symbol by chopping down some of the trees. "I took photographs yesterday and there is no noticeable difference with what it was before." A devoted Hitler follower planted the swastika 60 miles north of Berlin in 1938.
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"Gargoyles (in the strict sense) are carvings on the outside of buildings designed to direct water from the roof away from the base of the walls... ...Some gargoyles are undecorated but many are zoomorphic or anthropomorphic - often very imaginative and/or grotesque. This has led to the term 'gargoyle' being applied more widely to any grotesque carving in medieval buildings." (from Bob Trubshaw, posting in BritArch archives, 23Feb1999)
Over the last few years, gargoyles have become cartoon characters, a cult "animal" in Neo-Gothic circles, particularly popular in internet fantasy literature where they appear more naughty than truly evil, and even as a way of defining ones Gothic self ("I'm a gargoyle". "Oh really, I'm a vampire, but we could still go out together"). None of these have much to do with plumbing, but the meaning of words do change over the years, and "gargoyle" now seems to mean to many people to be any ugly or grotesque creature particularly if it lives on buildings or rocks.
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Index
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Their first usage in the last thousand years or more seems to have been in the early 1200's as channels or tubes to shed rainwater from buildings, to keep the rainwater off the buildings themselves and away from the foundations. Strong evidence for this purely plumbing interpretation is that initially most were made of wood, some made of the more expensive stone, and were generally undecorated.
As time progressed, more stone ones appeared as did lining some with lead and decoration in the form of carvings of people or animals or grotesque representations of these (grotesque in the sense of being extravagantly formed, bizarre, ludicrous, absurd, fantastic and also in the sense of being ugly and frightening). Often these carvings are so imaginative as to bear little or no resemblance to any conventional creature and are the products of fertile imaginations and skilled hands.
They are common on the more expensive buildings from medieval times, particularly cathedrals and churches, and particularly France, and particularly the Gothic style. A few plain ones survive on non-religious buildings like the odd castle but rarely compared with relligious buildings. Presumably, as today, the average wage did not run as far as paying for ornate stone guttering for your own humble dwelling.
It seems that this increasingly ornate carving extended to non-functional architectural features resembling them, so that "gargoyles" appear on the sides of towers and walls, and to stretch the term even further, inside the buildings (though these are more correctly called "grotesques" and "chimeras", of which gargoyles are only one kind).
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This argument has reasonable grounds if you think about some of the other accomodations the Christian (not just Catholic) church has made, such as fixing the birth of Christ at around the winter solstice to fit in with existing pagan celebrations. Even the Romans made similar adaptations, e.g. in Britain the Celtic goddess Suli worshipped at modern day Bath bore a remarkable resemblance to the Roman goddess Minerva. Rather than replace Suli and upset the locals, both were incorporated into and revered in the Roman baths there. It's amazing how flexible an established church can be if it needs to be - pagan images? no problem if it puts bums on seats.
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They can stand guard and ward off unwanted spirits and other creatures.
If they're hideous and frightening they can scare off all sorts of things.
They come alive at night when everyone's asleep (and you can't see them to prove that they don't) so they can protect you when you're vulnerable.
Better still, the ones with wings can fly round the whole area and cover the village or town as well as the church. (And if someone does see something, who's to say whether it was just a bat or one of the gargoyles on the wing?)
They return to their places when the sun comes up (and no-one can prove that they weren't out and about, and no-one respectable who rises and sets with the sun is going to be mistaken by them for an enemy and be dealt with).If you want to see an example of the kind of gargoyle that fits the myth, look at the ones on Woburn church.
A comment on the tame ones:This doesn't really explain the rather tame looking ones. These could possibly be explained by the architectural trend towards more ornamentation and decoration. I think many of the slightly grotesque ones can be explained by the myth if you note that some concepts were simpler for most people in medieval times, for example, pulling your lips wide apart in a grimace using your hands and trying to look scary ("gurning") was a terrific joke. Presumably it was also more scary than now, given that any kind of deformity could be worryingly reminiscent of deformity from incurable diseases or unexplained acts of God or devil, both things to be feared. Some of them have just got to be jokes though.
Of course it could be as much a case of the gargoyles saying (metaphorically) "Hey you Jimmy! Yes you! Who do you think I mean? Watch yer step, laddie, we've got our eye on you. One step out of line and you've had it, you're meat, with our teeth in it."
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There is so much on the internet now about gargoyles thanks to the upsurgence in interest about all things Gothic, fantasy writing featuring gargoyles which has become like a cult, especially for online stories, and of course the cartoon series, that it is hard to find anything about gargoyles as physical carvings. All I can suggest for web searches is to be very specific and try several different phrases. I've included the sites I've found inBooks&Links so try there first.
Gargoyles
Gargoyle Etymology & History
Gargoyle Etymology & History This page: Top Index  Pics  Bottom Other pages: Click or scroll below or here |
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- Etymology
- Possible Origins & Reasons
- Architectural History
- Religious History
- Mythical and Spiritual Connections
- How to find out more
Etymology
"Gargoyle", the dictionary definition: a spout usually in the form of a grotesquely carved face or figure, projecting from a roof gutter. From the Old French "gargouille" and the Late Latin "gurgulio", both meaning throat. (from Chambers Concise dictionary)"Gargoyles (in the strict sense) are carvings on the outside of buildings designed to direct water from the roof away from the base of the walls... ...Some gargoyles are undecorated but many are zoomorphic or anthropomorphic - often very imaginative and/or grotesque. This has led to the term 'gargoyle' being applied more widely to any grotesque carving in medieval buildings." (from Bob Trubshaw, posting in BritArch archives, 23Feb1999)
Over the last few years, gargoyles have become cartoon characters, a cult "animal" in Neo-Gothic circles, particularly popular in internet fantasy literature where they appear more naughty than truly evil, and even as a way of defining ones Gothic self ("I'm a gargoyle". "Oh really, I'm a vampire, but we could still go out together"). None of these have much to do with plumbing, but the meaning of words do change over the years, and "gargoyle" now seems to mean to many people to be any ugly or grotesque creature particularly if it lives on buildings or rocks.
Top Index Possible Origins and Reasons for gargoyles
When asking "why are there gargoyles and what are they for", in my experience most people seem to mean the Medieval ones. So, this is what a distingushed Frenchman Emile Male and most critics after him said:No symbolism can explain the monstrous fauna of the cathedrals...So, studiously ignoring those words of wisdom, here are some possible explanations I've come across:
If ever works are exempt of meaning surely these are...
All attempts at explanation must be foredoomed to failure.
E. Male, _L'art religieux du XIIIe siecle en France_ 8e edition p. 121, 124
- rainwater plumbing (this is certain but does not explain why so many are carved creatures, nor the various forms)
- warding off evil - a "kiss my ass" keep away deterrent to demons
- warding off evil - a "don't bother, we're here already doing demonic stuff" deterrent to demons
- a reminder to parishioners of the perils of evil - bad guys are marginalised to the outside of the church (but why so high up and hard to see?)
- as pagan symbols to encourage believers in pre-Christian ways to come to church (make them feel welcomed or at home, as it were)
- decoration (but why so ugly? why so hard to see)
- a juxtaposition or balance of ugliness against the beauty inside the building (a very medieval concept which we find hard to understand these days)
- insurance policy against building collapse, related to warding off evil (this one's obscure and I think it says more out modern interpretation of the medieval mind than architectural principles)
- symbolic object lessons on the perils of unconventionality
- carved out of mischief (e.g. there are defecating gargoyles, these are generally difficult to see, being high up or in obscure parts of the building)
- as retribution for not paying the stone carver (see Freiburg defecator)
- fun (who knows what the medieval sense of humour was? see also a modern nose picker from Ely Cathedral
- caricatures of people maybe local clergy, which may be mischief or fun or possibly honour. Here are some modern ones: imploring man and man wearing glasses, both at Ely.
Top Index Architectural History
Gargoyles in the strict plumbing sense of the word (see Etymology) have been around since the time of the Ancient Greeks or before. They became very popular on architecture in Medieval times, with a resurgence in the Victorian era, and to some extent more recently. Other periods have none or few carved ones. Saxon churches (a little before Medieval times) that I've seen usually have troughs but whether these are original or later additions is hard to say. Large buildings of the Elizabethan period (a little after Medieval times) did use channels or troughs but I've never seen or heard of carved ones.Their first usage in the last thousand years or more seems to have been in the early 1200's as channels or tubes to shed rainwater from buildings, to keep the rainwater off the buildings themselves and away from the foundations. Strong evidence for this purely plumbing interpretation is that initially most were made of wood, some made of the more expensive stone, and were generally undecorated.
As time progressed, more stone ones appeared as did lining some with lead and decoration in the form of carvings of people or animals or grotesque representations of these (grotesque in the sense of being extravagantly formed, bizarre, ludicrous, absurd, fantastic and also in the sense of being ugly and frightening). Often these carvings are so imaginative as to bear little or no resemblance to any conventional creature and are the products of fertile imaginations and skilled hands.
They are common on the more expensive buildings from medieval times, particularly cathedrals and churches, and particularly France, and particularly the Gothic style. A few plain ones survive on non-religious buildings like the odd castle but rarely compared with relligious buildings. Presumably, as today, the average wage did not run as far as paying for ornate stone guttering for your own humble dwelling.
It seems that this increasingly ornate carving extended to non-functional architectural features resembling them, so that "gargoyles" appear on the sides of towers and walls, and to stretch the term even further, inside the buildings (though these are more correctly called "grotesques" and "chimeras", of which gargoyles are only one kind).
Top Index Religious History
During the 1200's when gargoyles first appeared (and at many other times), the Roman Catholic Church was actively involved in converting people of other faiths to the Catholic, often very keenly indeed (as the Christian but non-Catholic Cathars could testify). The argument for decorated gargoyles runs as follows. Since literacy was generally not an option for most people, images were very important. Since the religious images (if any) that non-Christians were accustomed to were of animals or mixtures of animals and humans (e.g. the horned god, the Green Man), then putting similar images on churches and cathedrals would encourage non-Catholics to join the religion and go to church, or at least make them feel more comfortable about it, or at least ease the transition.This argument has reasonable grounds if you think about some of the other accomodations the Christian (not just Catholic) church has made, such as fixing the birth of Christ at around the winter solstice to fit in with existing pagan celebrations. Even the Romans made similar adaptations, e.g. in Britain the Celtic goddess Suli worshipped at modern day Bath bore a remarkable resemblance to the Roman goddess Minerva. Rather than replace Suli and upset the locals, both were incorporated into and revered in the Roman baths there. It's amazing how flexible an established church can be if it needs to be - pagan images? no problem if it puts bums on seats.
Top Index Mythical and Spiritual Connections
Facts:
Religion and superstition (not entirely incompatible) were both very important indeed to people of medieval times, much more so than to most "westerners" today. People looked to God or gods and other supernatural beings for answers to fundamental questions and for help and especially protection.Suppositions & Logical steps:
What could be better protection for your place of worship than to put images of supernatural beings on it, although ones on your side naturally. Images of God or the Holy Spirit, perhaps, but these were frowned upon and anyway who knew what God really looked like?. Images of Christ might be better, but then Christ was also a man and he was already inside the house of God. Images of the old gods might work, but of course that would be heresy. It's a small logical step to the use of gargoyles as protectors and the myths about their abilities.The Gargoyle Myth and how gargoyles drive off evil:
I've put comments in brackets().A comment on the tame ones:This doesn't really explain the rather tame looking ones. These could possibly be explained by the architectural trend towards more ornamentation and decoration. I think many of the slightly grotesque ones can be explained by the myth if you note that some concepts were simpler for most people in medieval times, for example, pulling your lips wide apart in a grimace using your hands and trying to look scary ("gurning") was a terrific joke. Presumably it was also more scary than now, given that any kind of deformity could be worryingly reminiscent of deformity from incurable diseases or unexplained acts of God or devil, both things to be feared. Some of them have just got to be jokes though.
Other possibilities - a warning to the populace:
An appealing idea for explaining medieval gargoyles, is as a reminder or warning to the populace of the evil all around outside and the safe sanctuary inside the church. Evil takes many forms, from women carrying the devil on their backs (very symbolic, very unenlightened and non-PC) to bug eyed human faces twisted into monstrocities, to demons, dangerous beasts, hideous human horrors, and hairy men who have descended terribly into the brutal and frightening level of the beast. Better the beauty and serenity inside, come on in and forget the trials of the world outside for a while and pray for your soul and your salvation from the horrors shown outside.Of course it could be as much a case of the gargoyles saying (metaphorically) "Hey you Jimmy! Yes you! Who do you think I mean? Watch yer step, laddie, we've got our eye on you. One step out of line and you've had it, you're meat, with our teeth in it."
Other possibilities - insurance policy against building collapse:
This bizarre proposed explanation is really protection against evil. Here's a snippet from the soc.history.medieval newsgroup postings from 1997, quoting a book "Structures (or why things don't fall down)", Author: J.E.Gordon.---Quote---
My copy is an old pelican edition in paperback published in 1978 & has no ISBN on what's left of it. I thorougly recommend this book as a minimal maths exploration of architecture which is full of fascinating anecdotes.
As for the gargoyles, apparently the builders believed that they scared away the demons who would otherwide push the walls down. If they built one without gargoyles it fell over. There you are! It actually is all to do with how the forces act within the structure, & keeping the direction of the thrust within the wall by loading the top.
---UnQuote---
Top Index How to find out more
If you want to find out more about gargoyles in general, I suggest a book called "Holy Terrors" by Janetta Rebold Benton as a £16 to £20 fascinating read with good pictures, or have a look at a short list of Books&Links.There is so much on the internet now about gargoyles thanks to the upsurgence in interest about all things Gothic, fantasy writing featuring gargoyles which has become like a cult, especially for online stories, and of course the cartoon series, that it is hard to find anything about gargoyles as physical carvings. All I can suggest for web searches is to be very specific and try several different phrases. I've included the sites I've found inBooks&Links so try there first.
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