Creepy World News...

It's that time again. Time to wade through the news and seek out those oddities of life, death, and whatever might come after.

Going Gayly to the Grave...

Do you think those drab coffins aren't good enough for you? Want to be buried with some style? If you're in Cologne, Germany you might be in luck! One gay undertaker couple is stepping up to help. Thomas Brandl and Michael Koenigsfeld have tailored a line of urns and coffins specifically for the gay community, featuring rainbow colors, nude figures, or whatever your homo heart desires. Being so unique, the coffins have sparked a lot of interest and quite a bit of positive response. "People are cutting back in the recession but the one group of consumers who still have high spending power are gay couples," Michael told Orange News, "and very few people are designing for them in this market." We've always been told 'you can't take it with you' yet this no longer applies to sexual identity.

Feast or Famine...

Hunger is a strong force, as residents of the Russian village of Verkhnyaya Chova are learning. An unseasonably hot summer and its resulting fires destroyed scores of forest berries and mushroooms: an important food source for brown bears. Last month a bear did the unthinkable. A corpse from the town's cemetery was dug up and eaten. The Emergencies Ministry has started 24-hour patrols of Komi Republic to protect residents and livestock. If you are what you eat, does this make them dead meat?

Shaking Up the Dead...

New Zealand ghost hunters may have found something that brings out the ghosts. Following the September 4th 7.0 earthquake—the largest in recorded Kiwi history—centered outside of Christchurch reports of paranormal activity doubled. Anton Heyrick of Christchurch Paranormal Investigators told The Press, "People are calling us, saying that they had always felt like there was something in the house, but since the earthquake it had become more intense." He speculates that the powerful force behind the seismic event (or the subsequent renovations to damaged buildings) could be behind the spike in occurrences. Unsettled dead or mass hysteria? It certainly warrants more observation.

Recruiting Religious Reinforcements...

The Catholic Church might have taken a beating in recent years, but now the popularity of exorcisms has the clergy scrambling to keep up with demand. A special two-day workshop was held earlier this month with 56 bishops and 66 priests in attendance to learn the arcane rite. Vatican law requires that only properly trained priests can perform the Rite of Exorcism, of whom only 5 or 6 existed in the US before the workshop. Undoubtedly the combination of "demonic spirits" on paranormal television and economic stress may have more people believing they're possessed or have a spawn of Satan living under their roof (aside from the odd relative). It's a shame Fangoria doesn't still sell those DIY Exorcism Kits. They could've saved themselves a lot of time and money.

True News is Stranger than Fiction...

It's been a while since I've reported on a few of the weird goings-on around the globe. Luckily it's been a great year for the bizarreness of humanity. Here are just a few stories that fell through the cracks (including a few from Oceania) found inside the Sydney Morning Herald.

Just Looking for a Ghouled Time...

In Durack, Northern Territory a woman named Jennifer Mills-Young has been the victim of what many Australians have labeled a "randy poltergeist." The ghost, given the name Kevin, attacked Jennifer, a mother of two, in her bed while alone in the house, grabbing her wrist and trying to drag her out of bed. "I yelled at Kevin that he was not welcome in my bedroom and that he couldn't come into bed with me. I told him to f--- off and to close the door behind him," Jennifer told a reporter for The Northern Territory News. "A moment later I saw how the bedroom door was closed."  Jason King, a Sydney-based paranormal investigator, has offered his services to help the woman, who was and still remains very skeptical of the paranormal.

Feasting on Misfortune...

There's something rotten in Wellington, New Zealand. Is isn't the corpses. And thanks to an unidentified man it isn't the funeral banquets either. A well-dressed man in his 40s made several stops at Harbour City Funeral Home and similar businesses in the eastern suburbs between March and April to dine on the banquets and take some extra to go. According to the Dominion Post he was stopped after a week by funeral director Danny Langstraat and his staff who felt he had crossed the line. Mentally ill or just looking for a free lunch? We may never know.

A Very Unlucky Number...

People may chalk up the superstitions surrounding the number 13 to coincidence, but one teenager in Suffolk, England may disagree. Friday August 13th proved to be a shocking day for the 13-year-old boy who was attending an air show when a thunderstorm rolled in. A lightning strike hit the boy and two other crowd members at 13:13. "Lightning strikes can cause cardiac arrest," said a St Johns Ambulance volunteer at the event, "but when our volunteers arrived, the boy was conscious and breathing." He was taken to a nearby hospital and treated for burns on his shoulder.

Rook to Alpha Centauri...

Could aliens pose concerns of national security leaks? Possibly in Russia. State Duma deputy Andrei Lebedev wrote to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in May asking for a full investigation into the alleged alien abduction of multi-millionaire businessman Kirsan Ilyumzhinov on September 18, 1997. On that date, Kirsan reported that a cylindrical craft piloted by "human-like creatures in yellow spacesuits" landed on his balcony and whisked him away to "some kind of star" in an effort to prove the existence of UFOs. Lebedev was concerned that the aliens may have urged him to divulge state secrets to them and asked for proper protocol to be followed when a high-profile figure is abducted. But they might be overreacting a little. Kirsan happens to be the head of the World Chess Federation. Perhaps they just wanted a few pointers in exchange for a tour of the universe?

Save a Horse, Ride a Centaur...

More than a few of us have dated a jackass, but usually it's not something meant literally. Though to some, that idea just might be appealing. But in these instances, we hardly even consider the possibility that it could lead to a half-human newborn. It's simply impossible, right? Well, as bizarre as it may sound, some experts say that not only is it plausible, but it may be a real part of history for thousands of years.

In 2005, a study of approximately 5,000 rock paintings in South Africa and Australia dating as early as 30,000 BC by University of Cambridge anthropologist Christopher Chippendale and Dr. Paul Takon of the Australian Museum led the duo to a fascinating conclusion: primitive man lacked the imagination to paint what he could not see, therefore such creatures must have existed. In their new visualization of early man, our ancestors walked the earth alongside these half human beings, known collectively as therianthropes. They surmised that while the frequency and chance occurrence of such births would have been rare, the "beasts" from mythology most likely did exist.

The most famous examples come from Greek mythology. The centaur (from Ancient Greek Κένταυροι or Kéntauroi, meaning "piercing bull-stickers") was half-human, half-horse and is seen even today as an iconic image of mythical creatures, as well as the symbol of Sagittarius in astrology. Soldiers during ancient times would bring sheep and goats with them as both a source of food and sexual relief, since it was deemed less sinful than sleeping with a prostitute (my goodness, how times have changed). The Roman poet Juvenal even made mention that "Roman women often exposed their naked buttocks to tempt donkeys into sex contacts."

Well-respected scholars of the past, including the Italian lecturer and philosopher Fortunio Liceti, recorded several births of therianthropes (both born from humans and animals). Even in more recent history, mentions of half-human births were found in medical books of the 19th and 20th centuries. Although genetically-speaking, animals and humans vary only slightly, modern science held out for some time on the belief that interbreeding was even feasible, yet experiments are said to have resulted in successfully creating organisms with both human and animal cells.

So, could your next boyfriend be a centaur or girlfriend be the REAL cat-woman? Not very likely. Russian biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov attempted such experiments during the 1920s and all his attempts were thwarted before his eventual exile to Almaty due to public outcry. Beastiality, even in the name of science, is seriously frowned upon by the general population. Yet who knows? Perhaps in some remote land, far from societal pressures and taboos, any one of us could very well find a four-legged, two armed man of our dreams who is quite literally hung like a horse.