“City officials say they have investigated every possible human cause. They checked water, sewer and gas lines, contacted the military about any exercises in the area, reviewed permits for mining explosives and inspected a dam next to City Hall. They even tested methane levels at the landfill in case the gas was spontaneously exploding,” reports the Associated Press.

Could this be part of the government’s secret underground bunker and tunnel projects? Are the elitists preparing to hunker down while the rest of us are left above ground to fend for ourselves in some sort of upcoming fight for survival? No one knows. Or, at least, they aren’t saying.

“It was about 1am (March 6th, 2012) and my daughter walked in the door totally freaked out saying she had just seen a UFO on the way home. We live right in the flight path of CVG so she is quite familiar with the looks and sounds of airplanes.

She said it was 40 to 60 feet off the ground and huge (as big as a house). as she was watching it a policeman came up behind her and turned on his lights, she asked him what the object was and he told her to go home. She then called 911 and they told her they had had 5 calls about the same thing in the last 5 minutes. She is quite shaken as she never even believed in UFOs prior to tonight.”

The oldest and largest UFO investigating organization in the world now calls Cincinnati home and in August will host as many as 1,000 UFO investigators and others interested in unexplained phenomenon.

David MacDonald, president of Lunken Airport-based Flamingo Air charter service, this week was named new international director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), an international organization with 3,000 members in 39 countries. A member of MUFON since 2008, MacDonald, who lives in Florence, has served as Kentucky state chapter director.

He succeeds retiring international director Clifford Clift who lived in Greeley, Colo.

MUFON has a network of 800 trained and certified investigators who scientifically research reports of unidentified flying objects. The reports are compiled in MUFON’s data base of more than 33,000 sightings. It also publishes the monthly MUFON Journal.

MUFON will hold its annual International Symposium featuring speakers and workshops on UFOs Aug-3-5 at the Marriott Riverfront in Covington.

Although founded in 1969 in Illinois as the Midwest UFO Network, the organization has been based for years in Colorado and other western states.

“This is a perfect location for MUFON because we’re centrally located,” said MacDonald. He estimated the organization has a few hundred members in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

MacDonald, 65, said he’s been hooked on the subject since he read his first book about flying saucers as an eight-year old.

“Ninety-two percent of the the UFO reports can be easily explained, but its that eight percent that you can’t explain that keeps you coming back,” said MacDonald. He said the organization logs an average of 600 UFO reports a month. A licensed pilot, MacDonald said he’s never seen a UFO.

MUFON’s office will be in Lunken Airport’s south terminal wing. MacDonald said he’ll have one paid staff person in the office.

They are still blaming all of these bird deaths on fireworks. Really? Fireworks? People all over the world shoot off fireworks and it doesn’t usually result in thousands of dead birds falling from the sky.

Fireworks were blamed for the deaths of thousands of blackbirds last year, but it’s unclear whether fireworks were the cause this time. Police imposed an impromptu ban on fireworks when the birds began falling this year.

Lt. Brian Duke of the Beebe Police Department told ABC this year wasn’t nearly as bad as last year, when the birds covered the streets of Beebe. This year, they were concentrated in a smaller area and the birds were cleaned up quickly.

Many years ago, a friend of a friend was visiting at my apartment in Colorado. The conversation was about everyday things. Nothing unusual or esoteric. I had a drawing table and various art supplies scattered around the apartment because I like to draw and paint.  As we were talking, she took up one of my tablets of paper and drew the drawing you see here.

She said, “This is an alien alphabet. If you ever meet someone who can read it, please let me know.”

And I never saw the girl again.

Is this actually an alien alphabet? And if so, how did she know it? Was she herself an alien or was she just trying to freak me out by telling me this? I have no idea but I have spent many years thinking about it. I’ve looked for the original drawing but I can’t find it. All I have now is this digital scan of the original.

It takes no special equipment. Anything which records sound can be used – digital voice recorders, tape recorders, VCR recorders, camcorders, and your laptop computer can all be used to capture EVP. However, like any kind of sound recording, the better your equipment, the better your chances of gathering some clear recordings. It is also helpful to listen to the recordings with good quality headphones.

When we listen to these recordings, it is imperative to listen objectively. There is a real danger of hearing what we want to hear or even creating words out of something which is not human speech at all.

In the 1960s, Dr. John C. Lilly was doing extensive research on human/dolphin communication and trying to understand the workings of the human brain. One of his experiments with humans was called the “Repeating Word Experiment.” With this experiment, Dr. Lilly tried to see how people would interpret a single word repeated over and over. Here is his description of the experiment:

“If one listens to a tape loop of a repeated word for fifteen minutes, one may hear as many as thirty different words other than the one which is on the tape loop. We did an extensive study of the word “cogitate” We exposed something of the order of three hundred subjects to this word for periods of fifteen minutes to six hours. We asked each subject to write down the words that he heard or to report them with a microphone  on another channel of the same tape recorder.

From these three hundred subjects we got on the order of 2,300 different words. Three hundred of these were in the dictionary; the rest were words that we do not ordinarily use, i.e. nondictionary words as we began to call them.”

If you apply Dr. John C. Lilly’s experiment to EVP recording sessions, you can see how listening to EVP recordings can be extremely subjective. If listening to a single word can cause people to hear as many as 2,300 different words, imagine how many different words can be “heard” on the average whispery EVP recording which usually consists of a short phrase or even an unintelligible sound. Futhermore, the expectations generated from doing these EVP sessions in dark, spooky locations will often cause the listener to hear what they expect to hear – common phrases like “get out” are often heard as well as the investigator’s name.

Because of this “repeating word effect” and other factors which may influence what a person would hear when listening to EVP recordings, I think it is a very good idea to have your evidence reviewed by objective people, preferably people who were not present during the investigation. Tell the listener nothing about the investigation and, if possible, do not let the listener know the names or personal details about the location or about anyone involved in the investigation.

Maybe your research team could have a separate “EVP Analysis team” which would have only one duty – listening to and analyzing EVP evidence. Ideally, I think these analysis experts should be young people, no older than 30 years old. The reason for this is, a young healthy person can hear sound in the frequency range of between 20 and 20,000 Hertz. As we get older, we lose the ability to hear sound in the higher frequency ranges. The highest frequency that a normal middle-aged adult can hear is only 12,000 – 14,000 hertz. To put it simply, young people can hear a lot better!

Equipment for Normal EVP Experiments:

Probably most important of all, record your EVP recordings with the best equipment you can afford. If your recording device has a cheap built-in microphone, consider buying a fairly nice external microphone. Check the specs. Make sure the microphone is capable of recording a full range of human hearing, 20 to 20,000 Hertz. And of course make sure the recording device itself is capable of recording the proper frequencies.

Another important factor is the quality of the headphones you are using to listen to your EVP recordings. Don’t use cheap headphones made for Internet teleconferencing or games. Instead, try to obtain some quality studio headphones. Check the specs on the headphones to make sure the headphones will reproduce frequencies in the range of 20 to 20,000 Hertz. Even some cheaper headphones will do this but if your headphone speakers can’t reproduce these frequencies, it won’t matter how well you can hear.

Recording Other Frequencies:

There is a common theory among many paranormal investigators that EVP are somehow being produced at a frequency above or below the range of human hearing. If this is true, you aren’t going to be able to record these sounds with common recording devices and you certainly won’t be able to hear them when you play them back on common voice recorders or tape recorders. Sounds in these frequencies MUST be recorded and analyzed with special equipment.

For example, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has done research with infrasound because they believe that elephants may use low-frequency calls to communicate. To record infrasound, the lab uses a specialized unit called an ARU (Autonomous Recording Unit) developed by engineers in the Cornell University Bioacoustics Research Program. It consists of a small microphone mounted on a signal conditioning board that connects to a more generalized filter amplification board. The output from the filter amplification board then feeds into a circuit that converts the analog signal into a digital one and then stores the data to a laptop hard drive. The unit runs off of a car or truck battery (or a few lantern batteries). These units allow researchers to set the sampling rate as they wish (typical CD-quality sound is recorded at a sampling rate of 44.1kHz). ARUs are not commercially available at this time.

If you are attempting to record and analyze sound below the range of human hearing (infrasound) or above the range of human hearing (ultrasound), you must either shift the frequencies into the range of human hearing or else record them some other way such as a graph. Remember that YOU CAN’T HEAR these frequencies, so they must either be frequency-shifted or recorded as visual data for analysis.

So, to sum this all up:

1. Use good quality microphones and recording devices to record your EVP recordings. Avoid cheap microphones or voice recorders with poor recording capabilities.

2. Have a young person listen to the recordings later at a neutral location free of distractions. Preferably the listener should be someone who knows nothing about the investigation and little to nothing about the people involved. Do not attempt to listen to the EVP recordings on site.

3. When listening to the EVP recordings, use good quality headphones (and of course listen in a quiet location away from distractions.)

4. If you are attempting to record EVP in the infrasound or ultrasound range of frequencies, special equipment must be used. This can’t be done with ordinary recording devices.

At last, drivers on I-75 near Florence, Kentucky know why traffic is so bad. A massive horde of zombies have taken over the city and are spilling out onto the highway. Well, not really. It was just a prank. “The sign was apparently hacked,” said Nancy Wood, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet spokeswoman.  Gee, really? You think so? This sign was changed to read “NIGHTLY LANE CLOSURES, ZOMBIES AHEAD.”

But what, no zombies?

I bet the sign caused a few people to pay closer attention to the road, just in case.

Here’s the program in a nutshell – John Zaffis and his family spirit-hunting crew find someone who needs their help because there are some strange things going on. Zaffis shows up, the crew scout out the house, looking for antiques or family heirlooms. They wave their EMF meters over a choice article, convince the homeowner or business owner that this object is the cause of their problems, and then offer to take the item away.

There are several things wrong with this approach. First of all, waving an EMF meter over an object and getting a spike does not prove anything. It doesn’t prove the place is haunted and it certainly doesn’t prove that this single object is the cause of the haunting (if there is indeed a haunting).

Also, there is some psychological trickery going on here. The nervous client is convinced by the crew that a single object, usually a cherished family heirloom or antique, is causing all of their problems. Then John Zaffis looks at the client with a serious gleam in his eye and says, “Now. What do you want me to DO with this?”

What do you think is going to happen?

Of course the client has been convinced into thinking they have a haunted diamond ring or grandfather clock or Waterford crystal. “Yes, John. PLEASE take this off my hands! Then everything will be all better! Thanks, buddy.”

Then John Zaffis carts off the item and stashes it in his basement… I mean The John Zaffis Museum of the Paranormal, for safe keeping.

But wait a minute? Isn’t the “haunted” item still going to give you problems? Isn’t John Zaffis just bringing all kinds of cranky spiritual pests back home with him? Oh no, on his web site he assures people that clergy have performed special “binding rituals” and other hoodoo on these objects to neutralize any bad energy.

But… couldn’t he have done that at the client’s home and let the client keep their cherished family heirloom or interesting antique? Couldn’t the John Zaffis crew do a house blessing or something? Sprinkle some Holy Water around or, like the Paranormal State crew, give the client a souvenir St. Michael medal? No no, the cursed haunted item MUST be secured carefully in The John Zaffis Museum of the Paranormal for safe keeping. DVD available for sale online, of course.

And there’s no real follow-up. We don’t know if removing the “haunted object” did anything to quell the alleged paranormal activity at the client’s place. There may be a quick mention that activity has decreased, but I suspect this is more a psychological effect than anything. The client is hoping like hell that things will be better and so they relax and quit blaming every creak of the floorboards on demons and spooks.

I know John Zaffis is a respected member of the paranormal community but this approach to paranormal investigation just seems all wrong to me. And not very scientific or helpful.

Sorry, folks. Just my opinion.

And if any of you have a haunted boat or maybe a new car, I’d be happy to take it away and store it in the Dave Scott Museum of the Paranormal. Free of charge.

Witches, fortune tellers, psychics, astrologers, and hoodoo practitioners beware. The tax man is coming for you. In Romania,  groups of angry witches are using spells to try to repeal a tax imposed on them. The 16% income tax is a move by the government to crack down on tax evasion. During a time of recession, the government has decided to tax witches and fortune tellers just as the government taxes other small businesses.

While some witches are angry enough to curse their politicians, others are happy about the new tax, saying it finally legitimizes their profession.