We all love a good, strange story that we can tell when we are around the campfire or
celebrating a scary holiday like Halloween.
But some of the strangest are the real stories that seem to defy logic, leaving us with a
sense that there may very well be far more to this world than we might ever possibly
imagine.
5.
Pearl Curran and Patience Worth
On the 8th of July, 1913, Pearl Curran from St. Louis and her friend, Emily Grant Hutchings
attempted to contact a relative of Emily’s with the use of a Ouija board.
The two women had been visiting with a neighbor some time earlier when the neighbor claimed
to make contact with Emily’s relative through her own Ouija board and they wanted to continue
their communication.
Emily bought a board and took it to Pearl’s house, but Pearl seemed disinterested at first
and had to be convinced to continue.
At first, they didn’t have much luck, but just as they were about to give up, the board
started spelling out words at a ferocious pace.
The first message that they received read: “Many moons ago I lived.
Again I come.
Patience Worth my name.
Wait, I would speak with thee.
If thou shalt live, then so shall I. I make my bread at thy hearth.
Good friends, let us be merrie”.
They asked her when she had lived and she replied with the dates 1649 to 1694.
When asked where she lived when she was alive, she replied that her home was “Across the
sea”.
Patience would continue to communicate with Pearl for many years and her writings would
go on to receive critical acclaim, turning Pearl into somewhat of a celebrity.
Eventually, the Ouija board was no longer needed, as Pearl claimed to receive communications
directly from the spirit, occasionally as pictorial visions of Patience’s life as
she travelled from England to America.
She would describe her relationship with Patience as one of the most beautiful that can be the
privilege of a human being to experience.
Together, they would publish several novels that included Telka, The Sorry Tale, The Pot
upon the Wheel and Hope Trueblood, among others.
They would also produce several short stories and many poems, five of which were listed
by the Braithwaite anthology as among America’s finest published in 1917.
Pearl would communicate with Patience almost every night and on some occasions, she would
work on a novel, a play and a poem at the same time and between 1913 and 1937, she would
produce nearly 4 million words.
Though many skeptics and psychologists attempted to prove that the writings were just a strange
story, no one was ever able to, as Pearl continued to produce writings in front of an audience
with effortless fluidity.
Their last communication happened on the 25th of November, 1937 and Pearl passed away from
pneumonia on the 3rd of December that same year.
4.
The Piri Reis Map
The Piri Reis Map was discovered by German theologian, Gustav Deissman when the historic
Tokapi Palace in Istanbul was being prepared for conversion into a museum in 1929.
He was cataloguing antique items when he found a parchment of gazelle skin among a stack
of items that were deemed to be worthless.
Upon closer inspection, he realized that a map was drawn on the parchment, showing the
outline of South America.
He studied the map further and found that it had been drawn and signed by a Turkish
cartographer named Hagii Ahmed Muhiddin Piri, also known as Piri Reis.
Piri served in the Turkish navy where held the rank of Admiral and he claimed to have
drawn the map with the use of 20 different maps and charts.
Some were Ptolemaic maps which showed the known world according to 2nd century Greek
knowledge, while the others were Portuguese and Arabic and one drawn by Christopher Columbus.
The map immediately caused a great deal of controversy in the world of cartography, as
it appears to show Antarctica which was only discovered 300 years after the map was drawn.
Added to this strange story is the fact that the continent is drawn as a land mass as it
would have appeared more than 6,000 years ago before being covered by its ice cap.
Professor Charles Hapgood studied the map further and found that the map was drawn using
the Mercator Projection which is a methodology that was not used by European cartographers
until the late 16th century and even this method wasn’t completely accurate before
the invention of the chronometer in 1760.
Hapgood further found that the map was based on information older than 4,000 BCE when sophisticated
civilizations and properly defined languages did not yet exist, meaning that an ancient
civilization with the skills to navigate earth’s oceans while documenting the lands they visited
had existed at some point.
He went on to theorize that the map was so accurate, that it would have been nearly impossible
to draw without the use of aerial capabilities.
3.
Andrew Carlssin
In March of 2003, a 44-year-old man named Andrew Carlssin was arrested by the FBI after
he had suspiciously turned an $800 investment into $350 million on the stock exchange in
just two weeks.
When he was interviewed, the FBI expected the usual runaround and denials of being an
inside trader, but instead they were told a strange story that even they couldn’t
explain.
For the following four hours, Carlssin confessed to making 126 high-risk trades and explained
that he had cashed in on every single one, since he knew without a doubt that they would
pay off, since he was from 250 years in the future.
At first they brushed his claims of as a lie, with a Securities and Exchange Commission
spokesman stating that Carlssin was either a lunatic or a pathological liar.
He added that he could only have pulled of this feat with the use of inside information
and that he would sit in a jail cell on Rikers Island until he told them the truth and gave
up his accomplices.
But this never happened, though he did admit that he had made an error in judgment, as
he should have stopped trading earlier, but was taken by the thrill of making so much
money.
He suggested a plea bargain in which he would disclose the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden
and a cure for aids.
In an attempt to prove that he was lying, the FBI searched for any information on the
man, but they could find no record of his existence prior to 2002, three months before
he was arrested.
The strange story became even more bizarre however, when his bail of $1 million was posted
by an unknown individual on the 3rd of April when he was due to appear in court.
On his way to the hearing, however, he disappeared and no one has seen or heard from him since.
2.
Victor Goddard
Victor Goddard was an Air Marshall and Senior Commander in the Royal Air Force during World
War II, having also served as a midshipman during the first year of World War I.
In 1935, while flying his Hawker Hart Biplane, he experienced an event that could only be
described as a truly strange story.
While on a flight from Andover, England to Edinburgh, Scotland where he had been sent
to inspect a disused airfield in a town called Drem, he experienced something that he couldn’t
explain.
As he approached, he could see that the airfield was in a terrible state, with grass pushing
up through the tarmac on the landing strip.
He also noted that there was cattle on the airstrip, grazing on the grass that had started
to grow.
He made his notes and flew on, but heavy rains set in and he started to have trouble with
his plane.
He lost his bearings and decided to turn back to the airfield to calculate his exact location.
But as he approached the airfield once more, the torrential rain suddenly gave way to bright
sunshine and clear skies.
He looked down to the airfield and to his astonishment, it was in perfect condition
and in use.
He saw mechanics wearing blue overalls walking around and four yellow planes were parked
on the runway, one of which was a model that he didn’t recognize.
This surprised him as the RAF’s planes were all painted silver and the unrecognizable
plane was a monoplane, which was not in use by the RAF yet at that time.
Added to this was the fact that RAF mechanics only wore brown overalls, rather than the
blue ones that he was witnessing.
At this point, the rain returned and he made his way back to his base at Andover.
When he reported his strange story to his superiors, it was shrugged off as a plea for
attention, but in 1939, Drem Airfield was resurfaced and once again put to use by the
RAF.
By this time, RAF mechanics started wearing blue overalls as standard, their planes were
painted yellow and they started using the first monoplanes, exactly as Goddard had seen
it on the day of his strange flight.
1.
Jean Hilliard
On the 20th December, 1980, 19-year-old Jean Hilliard from Lengby, Minnesota had driven
into town to meet with some friends for a night out.
She headed home at about midnight, but decided to take a shortcut on an icy gravel road just
north of Lengby.
She was driving her father’s car, a Ford LTD which only had rear-wheel drive and no
anti-lock brakes.
At some point, the car started to slide on the ice and she ended up crashing into a ditch
by the side of the road.
She had a friend that lived close by, so she decided to get out of the car and walk to
his house to get help in temperatures that dipped below -20 degrees.
She stated that she climbed over a hill, thinking that the house would be just beyond, but found
that it wasn’t and she started to get frustrated and worried that she had gotten lost.
She walked for a further 2 miles before finally spotting her friend’s house through the
trees, but she had been out in the cold for a long time and before she could make it to
the house, she blacked out.
She would later learn that she had made it as far as her friend’s garden and had crawled
to the front step of his porch.
Her friend, Wally Nelson, would later reveal that he spotted something on his front lawn
and when he went out to take a closer look, he was surprised to find that it was Jean
lying on the ground.
He grabbed her by her collar, but found that she was completely frozen and he describes
“skidding” her onto the porch.
He and a girlfriend attempted to put Jean into his truck, but because she was frozen
stiff, she wouldn’t fit and they resorted to taking the other woman’s car.
When they arrived at the hospital, doctors were certain that she had already passed away
and if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t live much longer.
Her body was frozen to the point where, when they tried to inject her using a hypodermic
needle, it simply snapped off.
They resorted to placing heating pads on her body to thaw her out and a pastor was called
to start a prayer chain.
By midmorning, Jean suddenly woke up in spasms and by noon, she was awake and talking in
coherent sentences.
Due to the severe cold that her body had endured, doctors feared that she may contract infections
from frostbite and they considered amputating both her legs.
But she was ultimately sent home with no more than a few blisters on her toes that stayed
numb for a while and she eventually went on to make a full recovery.