Brazilian Vampire Bats Feeding on Humans

For the most part, vampire bats get a bad rap. Even though the creatures helped to inspire Bram Stoker's famous novel Dracula, in real life vampire bats are not know to seek out humans as prey. That is, until now. Thanks to DNA analysis, Brazilian scientists have recently identified a species of vampire bat that appears to have developed a taste for human blood.

However, recent reports have confirmed what humans dread the most—that some of these wild creatures have been proven to include people’s blood in their diet. According to the New York Post, some species of the winged-mammals, which are commonly found soaring across America, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, have indeed been secretly sucking human blood.

Scientists at Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil claim that a colony of hairy-legged vampire bats are the culprits, after tracing human DNA from 70 feces samples of these bats. Enrico Bernard, the lead researcher from the university, said he and his team “were quite surprised” by their recent findings. “This species isn’t adapted to feed on the blood of mammals,” he revealed.

The chilling revelation contradicts previous experiments on the air-gliding critters, which reflected that they would rather starve than eat any other mammal blood. Bernard said that its no longer the case with these bats, who seemed to discover that human blood is thicker and higher in protein than the fatty bird plasma.

There's no word as of yet on any connection between this strain of bat and actual vampires, or any increase in the numbers of the Brazilian undead. But scientists do fear that this new strain of vampire bat could contribute to the spread of diseases. The bats fly and are also far tinier than what vampire hunters are used to, so driving little bat-sized stakes through their hearts is quite impractical.

Breaking Rocks for Good Fortune

While there are not very many ceremonial magicians out there, folk magick is another thing entirely. Many people of all sorts of different religious traditions perform simple rituals during the course of their daily lives that certainly fit the description of magick. Last week, Huffington Post covered the Bolivian Catholic practice of breaking rocks in order to obtain good fortune and prosperity.

The rite is performed to call for the blessing of the Virgin of Urkupina. Legend has it that Virgin Mary appeared to a shepherd girl to instruct her to take rocks from this dried river that miraculously turned into silver when she reached home.

On Tuesday, pilgrims struck rocks to try to improve their fortunes. When a rock is easily split, their wish will be soon fulfilled. If believers have more difficulty striking and splitting the rock, it will take more time.

“You can ask for a house, a car, all your wishes are fulfilled,” said believer Ricardo Tarqui. “I broke the rock with a second blow and in a third attempt. I have been able to buy a house and also a car.”

I realize that believers don't think about it this way, but from a technical perspective this practice is the same thing as a magical spell. It's not even slightly ambiguous, like prayer that is performed for purely devotional rather than practical reasons. Adherents engage in a specific activity associated with a particular spiritual entity in order to obtain specific advantages and possessions in the material world.

As for whether or not it works, I have no idea. Data is not the plural of anecdote. At the same time, all the elements are present for there to be a real paranormal effect going on, and my guess is that at least some practitioners do indeed benefit.

"Demonic Possession" Strikes Peruvian School

This last week up to eighty children were affected by an outbreak of "demonic possession" at a Peruvian school. The children suffered from seizures, exhibited bizarre behavior, and reported visions of a "man in black" who was trying to kill them. In addition to the possession explanation, the outbreak has been blamed on spirits haunting the school and the favorite non-explanation of skeptics, "mass hysteria."

Elsa de Pizango, a concerned mother whose daughter has experienced some of the symptoms, said: 'She fainted in school. They didn't say anything at the hospital. She just fainted. She keeps on spitting froth from her mouth.'

Describing her experience, a pupil not named in local media, said: 'It's disturbing for me to think about it. It's as if someone kept on chasing me from behind.

'It was a tall man all dressed in black and with a big beard and it felt like he was trying to strangle me.

'My friends say I was screaming desperately, but I don't remember much.'

Another schoolgirl said she had trouble breathing and was desperately holding her neck as if someone was strangling her. According to her friends, she kept screaming: 'Take it out.'

Another anonymous girl, aged 13, told local media: 'Several children from different classrooms fainted at the same time. I got nauseous and started vomiting. I heard voices. A man in black chased me and wanted to touch me.'

Franklin Steiner, a parapsychologist who investigates paranormal and psychic phenomena - said: 'It is known that years ago there were many victims of terrorism here. When this school was built, some say bones and dead bodies were found.'

Locals believe this is a case of demonic interference, saying some children must have played games that invoke demons such as using a Ouija board.

Now as I've said before, "mass hysteria" is a bullshit explanation. It's what skeptics rely on when they can't easily explain away something that seems paranormal, and there are no experiments whatsoever that demonstrate how it works. There's actually more scientific evidence for psychic powers and ghosts, because there's no scientific evidence for "mass hysteria" or any model that explains how it's supposed to work.

Facebook Without Sin

One of the things I've always found bizarre about many evangelical Christians is that they insist on creating their own inferior copies of popular culture that are supposedly more "pure" in some fashion. This is especially true with music, to the extent that "Christian music" has essentially become a joke, but it extends to other forms of media as well. And now, apparently, this trend is being extended into the realm of social networking.

A group of evangelical Christians in Brazil have created a social networking site called Facegloria that they are billing as "Facebook without sin." So, in effect, it's a place to hang out online free from anything remotely resembling violence, titillation, swearing, and pretty much anything that makes life even marginally edgy and/or interesting. Anything related to gay rights is banned on the site, and I imagine any reference to non-Christian religions will be as well - since the mere existence of such seems to mortally offend these folks.

Brazil's Facegloria is currently only available in Portuguese but other language services and a mobile app are also planned. Brazil has the world's largest Roman Catholic population. "On Facebook you see a lot of violence and pornography. That's why we thought of creating a network where we could talk about God, love and to spread His word," web designer Atilla Barros told AFP. Gay material is also banned from the social media platform.

Mr Barros and his three co-founders were working in the office of Acir dos Santos, the mayor of Ferraz de Vasconcelos, when they came up with the idea. Mr dos Santos has since invested $16,000 (£10,000) in the start-up. "Our network is global. We have bought the Faceglory domain in English and in all possible languages. We want to take on Facebook and Twitter here and everywhere," he said.

Facebook does have a lot of issues with privacy, and many authors like myself are unhappy about how page reach has been throttled down in order to force people to pay for "promotion" and ads - which, by the way, hardly ever generate sales, in case you were wondering. At the same time, though, a number of alternatives have come and gone, unable to generate the critical mass of users necessary to sustain a truly alternative network.

I expect that this effort will attract a lot of evangelicals and hardly anyone else, since the sanitized world of the "true believers" also happens to be incredibly dull. But at the same time, that may very well be just how they like it. Personally, I think its great. If the Poor Oppressed Christians and their supporters start gathering in one place online, that makes it easy for people like me to avoid.

Purple UFO Over Peru

Robert Anton Wilson once famously commented that whenever anyone asked him if he believed in unidentified flying objects, he always answered yes. He went on to explain that not only had he encountered unidentified flying objects, he encountered unidentified non-flying objects every day.

The fact is that if you see something in the sky and can't identify it, you've just observed a UFO. The association of such objects with paranormal phenomena such as alien spacecraft and so forth is generally due to observers jumping to the conclusion that just because they can't identify the object, nobody else could do so either, at least by normal means.

Huffington Post recently passed along the story of a "purple UFO" that was filmed in Peru during the making of a television episode. The video shows a distant purple object that seems to hover in the sky.

According to Peru This Week, television show "Alto al Crimen" was shooting an episode in the upscale Miraflores district of Lima on Feb. 10. The show's host, Lima Congressman Renzo Reggiardo, halted an interview to allow his camera operator to focus on the strange-looking purple object in the sky.

Both distant and zoomed-in perspectives of the UFO reveal a saucer-shaped object, with a large central bright purple section, tapering off on either end. The extreme right end appears almost black in color, while the opposite end seems to be a darker purple shade than the center part of the object. The video also reveals that sometimes the two dark ends appear to become smaller and larger.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing the aerial object for up to two hours, and yet, no video has emerged showing how the UFO left the scene. So, the question remains: How, exactly, did it go away? Did it fall to the ground, float away or speed up and vanish over the nearby ocean? Or perhaps (as in some UFO reports over the years), did it simply vanish?

My first take on the video is that the object seems remarkably stationary, and reminds me most of something like a balloon tethered to the ground. The distance is such that the tether would not necessarily appear in the video, and the object seems to bob a bit as it might from a light breeze but otherwise does not change position. It really doesn't look like a vehicle with the way it seems to hover in place, and while the second half of the video seems to show that it has changed position, if you watch closely it's clear that it was filmed from a different location.

At least to me, the purple UFO certainly remains an unidentified flying object in the Robert Anton Wilson sense. I just don't think it will turn out to be an unidentified flying object in the actual space alien sense.

Argentine Werewolf Hysteria Unfounded

Here's another of those viral stories that has become garbled in the telling. In Argentina, there is a century-old tradition that the president of the country serves as the official godparent to the seventh son or daughter born into a family. The adoption of such a godchild wouldn't be a particularly significant world event, except for this outlandish story published by the Independent.

The President of Argentina has adopted a young Jewish man as her godson to "stop him turning into a werewolf", according to tradition. President Christina Fernández de Kirchner met Yair Tawil and his family at her office last week to mark the unusual ceremony, which dates back more than 100 years.

What?!?

The story recently went viral on the Internet thanks to the Independent article, but it later came to light that the article conflates the adoption tradition and a piece of local folklore that have nothing to do with each other, except that both involve seventh sons.

It seems there is another Argentine tradition called "El Lobison"; a belief that a family's seventh son turns into a werewolf starting on the first Friday after the boy's 13th birthday, and every full moon thereafter, according to the New York Daily News. The belief was allegedly so widespread in the 19th century that parents would kill the seventh son to prevent a future teenage werewolf.

It's a great story, but the two customs are not related, according to Argentine historian Daniel Balmaceda. “The local myth of the lobison is not in any way connected to the custom that began over 100 years ago by which every seventh son (or seventh daughter) born in Argentina becomes godchild to the president,” Balmaceda told the Guardian. That detail didn't stop the Independent from blending the two separate customs and reporting that Kirchner adopted Tawil to prevent him from becoming a werewolf.

It should be noted that nowhere in the myth of "El Lobison" does it say anything about adoption by the president or any other political official breaking the curse. There's nothing particularly spiritual or magical about holding office in a modern democracy, so even in the context of magick it strikes me as a pretty dubious remedy. I mean, if some dark force were really out there preparing to turn Tawil into a werewolf, there's no reason to think it would care whether the boy's godparent is a sitting politician.

That's some sloppy reporting on the part of the Independent. Perhaps if they want to run a story like this in the future, they should run it by an actual occultist to see if what they're alleging makes any sense at all.

New Nazca Lines Uncovered

The Nazca Lines of Peru are likely the world's most famous geoglyphs, gigantic figures carved into the ground that are only visible in their entirety from the air. The figures are often brought up as evidence of ancient UFO activity, since they could not be viewed properly from the ground and the Nazca possessed no flying machines. It seems to me, though, that suggesting they were drawn as messages to deities that the Nazca believed resides in the sky is a far more parsimonious explanation.

Many of the Nazca geoglyphs are quite famous, having been photographed over and over again and filmed for documentaries about Meso-American cultures. Strong windstorms in Peru recently uncovered several previously unknown geoglyphs, one of which appears in the picture above. The hummingbird in the lower right is well-known, but the figure in the upper left that may depict a snake or part of a larger outline had been hidden for centuries.

Eduardo Herrán Gómez de la Torre, a pilot and researcher, found the new shapes while flying over the desert last week, El Comercio reported. He believes one of the geoglyphs depicts a snake 60 metres long and 4 metres wide, near the famous “hummingbird”. A bird, camelids (possibly llamas) and a zig zag line are among the lines found etched into the ground on hills in the El Ingenio Valley and Pampas de Jumana.

Archaeologists are already trying to confirm whether they match the Paracas culture in the Ica region of Peru, which flourished from 800BC to 100BC and influenced complex textiles and ceramics at Nazca as well as the lines. Ruben Garcia Sota, head of Ica’s archaeological authority, told El Comercio the latest discovery was “a valuable contribution to our knowledge of ancient Nazca”.

Now I suppose the UFOlogists are going to start claiming that the aliens drew these too. For the rest of us, though, study of these new figures will hopefully provide further insight into the human artists who created them and the culture from which they arose. Of course, if something unexpected like an alien starship turns up buried under one of the new sites I'll be forced to admit that Erich von Däniken might have been right. But I'm not holding my breath.

As Bad as it Sounds

Brazilian evangelical pastor Valdeci Sobrino Picanto was recently arrested. His crime? Convincing his congregants that his penis contains "sacred milk." And yes, that's just as bad as it sounds. The British press can rail all it wants about allegations of OTO being a "sex cult," but the fact is that if anyone in the Order tried a stunt like this it would never go anywhere because they would be laughed out of the lodge. Or, if anything non-consensual occurred, expelled outright.

Picanto told his followers that the Holy Spirit would secrete from his penis in the form of “sacred milk“. This pastor said that his penis was blessed and that “the Lord had consecrated him with divine milk of the “Holy Spirit,” reports Vatican Crimes.

One of Picanto’s followers stated, “He convinced us that only God could come into our lives through our mouth and that’s why he would do what he did. Often, after worship, pastor Valdeci would take us to where the funds were kept at the back of the Church and asked us to have oral sex with him until the Holy Spirit would come through ejaculation.“

I suppose this constitutes a novel interpretation of Matthew 15:11 - "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." Seriously, though, where do churches find these people? Settlements related to sex abuse scandals have cost churches billions over the last decade or so. You would think at some point these pastors would just wise up and keep it in their pants.

So the Ayahuasca Was Right

The day before the United States presidential election a group of Peruvian shamanic practitioners (note: not "shamans" - the term is culture-specific to northern Asia) issued their prediction for the race. Following a ritual that involved the consumption of the hallucinogenic plant ayahuasca and coca leaves, they concluded that President Obama would be re-elected - and he was.

Members of the group placed flower petals on photos of the candidates that were also swept over with tobacco smoke. The shamans chewed coca leaves, a traditional ceremonial and medicinal plant since Inca times that helps fight altitude sickness.

And the crew took some swigs of ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew used widely among Amazon basin indigenous people. At least one thing was clear, they said: Obama should defeat Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday.

It seems that the Mormon prayers supporting Governor Romney fell short in the end. However, a pretty good case can be made that they did something. In early October it looked like the Republican nominee was on the verge of being put away for good, but a fortuitous set of events coinciding with the prayer initiative gave his campaign new life.

November News Roundup

When I signed the contract for Arcana I had no idea that the plan was to release the book so soon. This month I've been busier than expected working on a promotional plan and making sure the folks at Pendraig have everything they need. As a result I haven't have much time for blogging, so here's a paranormal news roundup for the first half of November featuring stories from all over the world.

This first one is not necessarily paranormal, but it's an interesting historical tidbit nonetheless. The remains of a Persian army of 50,000 that disappeared in 525 BC may have been found in the western Egyptian desert.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

The disappearance of the army was reported by the Greek historian Herodotus, and this discovery represents the first piece of archaeological evidence that has been found supporting his account.

According to Herodotus (484-425 B.C.), Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent 50,000 soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa and destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun after the priests there refused to legitimize his claim to Egypt.

After walking for seven days in the desert, the army got to an "oasis," which historians believe was El-Kharga. After they left, they were never seen again.

"A wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear," wrote Herodotus.

From the story I'm left wondering if this army was destroyed by magick. The Egyptian priesthood was feared in ancient times for its purported magical powers, so much so that those powers even make an appearance in the Book of Exodus. I've never lived in any place where summoning a sandstorm was practical, but I can call up thunderstorms when the season is right. I'm thinking that if I lived in Egypt a sandstorm wouldn't be much more difficult.

News out of India suggests that the Hindu deity Lord Jagannath may have returned to earth - as a sea turtle.

The turtle is protected in India and anyone found keeping one without permission can be jailed for a year or more and fined.

But adamant villagers have refused to give up the reptile, saying the turtle bears holy symbols on its back and is an incarnation of Lord Jagannath, a popular Hindu deity.

"Lord Jagannath has visited our village in the form of a turtle. We will not allow anybody to take the turtle away," said Ramesh Mishra, a priest of the temple.

Jesus, on the other hand, appears content to stick with a truck belonging to Jim Stevens of Johnson City, Tennessee.

Stevens, of Jonesborough, said nearly every morning, an image that looks to him like the face of Jesus Christ has appeared in the condensation on the driver's side window of his Isuzu truck. A Johnson City Press photo of the truck showed a facial image.

Stevens said when he first saw the image, he figured it would evaporate and not return. But it kept reappearing for two weeks now.

Is it just me, or is it simply ridiculous to tell authorities that God told you to steal a car? A Dodge Charger, no less.

Police said a 36-year-old man was collared by a security guard at Freedom Dodge before he could get inside the showroom. WLEX-TV reported the man told the guard that God wanted him to steal a Dodge Charger.

When police arrived, the suspect initially told them his name was "Seven."

Bad news for Bolivian Catholics - the church has banned the use of human skulls during special Mass celebrations.

The Bolivian Episcopal Conference on Friday asked the overwhelmingly Catholic nation to cast aside the "growing" trend of seeking protection from bad luck by making offerings of coca, cigars or drinks to human crania.

As much of the world celebrates Halloween and Mexico prepares for its Day of the Dead, Bolivian bishops had another festival on their minds, the Day of Skulls, which falls on November 8.

Known locally as Natitas, the festival, which is believed to be pre-Colombian, sees families adorn skulls, sometimes those of relatives, with flowers, hats, candles and other decoration.

A British student has received a scholarship for studying paranormal phenomena. Personally I think this is a great idea. Paranormal research has never been taken very seriously and it's nice to see a parapsychology foundation funding the education of researchers.

Callum Cooper, 21, of Northampton University, was given £1,800 from New York's Parapsychology Foundation to investigate phenomena like haunted sites, and even text messages from the dead.

He won out over international competition for the Eileen J. Garrett prize, which is intended to help students find possible scientific proof for uncanny happenings.

Finally, the soccer magick continues. It's getting to the point where it's practically commonplace.

Zolani Mkiva, chairman of the Makhonya Royal Trust, a grouping responsible for co-ordinating cultural activities, said the tournament, the first to be held in Africa, needed to be blessed in true "African style."

"We must have a cultural ceremony of some sort, where we are going to slaughter a beast (cow)," said Mkiva.

"We sacrifice the cow for this great achievement and we call on our ancestors to bless, to grace, to ensure that all goes well. It's all about calling for the divinity to prevail for a fantastic atmosphere."

South Africa is set to host the World Cup -- the world's most watched sports spectacle -- in less than eight months, with the tournament expected to attract about 500,000 foreign tourists.

Mkiva said the Trust has sent letters to the chief executive and chairman of the World Cup Local Organizing Committee (LOC), proposing traditional ceremonies to be performed at each of the 10 stadiums that are going to be used for the event.

That's all for now and I hope everyone is having a great month. There's still no exact release date for Arcana, but once I have one you'll be the first to know.