Chupacabra Omens Erred with Bears at Superbowl XLI

The notorious Chupacabras may be back in the Everglades again reopening the debate over whether they are real, imagined, from outer space, heaven-sent harbingers of a New Covenant or did they augur an auspicious but erroneous omen for the Bears in Super Bowl XLI? At least one local astrologer thought so. In Amazing Updates, a Hong Kong electronics heir ditches a run for the US Congress in order to pursue Britney Spears and On this Date in Amazing History Edna Everage misses her first chance to meet the Queen.

Allegedly first sighted in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1995, no rumored creature in recent memory has caused quite as much stir and media hyperventilation (in Latin markets at least) as the notorious Chupacabra or goat-sucking demon. Breathless reports about "beasts which drained the blood of goats", made by the San Juan tabloid El Vocero, were quickly followed by similar manifestations in Mexico, the Florida Everglades and even Brazil. The "creatures" were variously reported as walking on two-legs, having bat-like-wings and fearsome dentition or curved fangs. Further accounts mentioned reptilian skin, spines or quills on the back, muscular arms, hands with three fingers and a thumb tipped by thick sharp claws, large red eyes, many sharp teeth and a long tongue or extractor.

CHUPACABRA by Ricardo Pustanio

Low-budget Mexican and US filmmakers, always on the look-out for fast-buck monsters, lost no time in transferring the "terrifying" beasts to the cinema and video screen, churning out a total of eleven productions since 1995: Ataca el chupacabras (1996); El Chupacabras, (1996); Adventures Beyond: Chupacabra (1997); Guns of El Chupacabra (1997) aka "Chupacabra, El" - USA (working title); Legend of the Chupacabra (2000); Chupacabras (2000); El Chupacabra (2003); Bloodthirst: Legend of the Chupacabras (2003); Bloodthirst 2: Revenge of the Chupacabras (2005); Night of the Chupacabra (2005) Chupacabra Terror (2005) aka "Chupacabra: Dark Seas" - USA (TV title). In most depictions, excepting a 1997 "documentary," the chupas are clearly portrayed as a menace to humans, even slaughtering passengers on a ship. Yet in the "real-life" testimonies and evidence compiled to date, the chupa victims have all been livestock or household pets. Then again who would pay good money to watch a movie about a terrified goat or an imperiled parakeet?

In his latest foray into the case, psychic detective Herschel Gomez once again called in his distinguished relative, Dr. Domingo Dombrowski, widely noted for being the first scholar to receive an advanced degree in Chupacabrology from Puerto Rico's Instituto de Cryptozoologia de Caguas,1974 (formerly the Caguas College of Applied Phrenology). Dombrowski, who now resides near Orlando, FL is the same researcher who solved the celebrated 1960 "Bat Monsters of Bayamon" controversy (a hoax) and the sensational 1963 case of the "Cataño Fairy" (a runaway juvenile midget from the touring Nicaraguan side-show El Circo de Tacho). He claims the earliest "chupacabra" sightings actually date back to the 1600s when Taino Indians still lived on Puerto Rico. The name, he says, derives from a Spanish approximation of an Arawak dialect (aboriginal) appellation.


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Together Gomez and Dombrowski first visited a West Everglades site in 1996 where four eviscerated goats were discovered over the Easter Weekend. Dombrowski dismisses the notion that the chupacabras were either dogs (the opinion of local zoo officials) or creatures from outer space. Nor does he believe that they have recently migrated to Florida from Puerto Rico. "As stated in my 1974 work, The Chupacabra Chronicles of Las Casas, it is my firm opinion that these are hybrid creatures that have existed in the Caribbean basin since the earliest days of the Spanish conquest. The Chupacabra," affirms Dombrowski, " is probably a centuries-old cross between a now extinct species of South American lemur and a Malaysian flying fox (fruit bat) introduced to the region by Catalonian sailors previously stationed in the Philippines."

Elsewhere this past year, the first chupacabra sightings were reported in Central Russia where the creatures were said to be feeding on turkeys. In Turkey, where no chupas have turned up yet, turkeys are called hindi implying they come from India. Although there have been no chupas reported on the sub-continent, some researchers now think the 2001 case of the Monkey Man of New Delhi bears renewed examination.

Meanwhile, fresh reports of Everglades sightings have excited Reverend Emiliano Chong-McGillicuddie, a South American clergyman who eleven years ago first proclaimed sightings of the chupacabras to be " apparitions intimately connected with world changes and the spiritual reawakening foretold by so many visionaries including Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky." Chong-McGillicuddie, formerly Pastor of the Asemblea Espiritista Carismatica de Medellin, Colombia, had just announced that a new congregation--Iglesia Adventista Chupacabrista-- was formed in the port city of Barranquilla to propound a revised cosmology in which the "divine chupas" were the heavenly harbingers of a New Order "in which the Lion shall not only lie down with the Lamb but the Goat shall hang out with the Bat."

Chong-McGillicuddie spent three days in Virginia Beach in December 1995 pouring over the Cayce archives for possible references to the chupacabra apparitions. Based on his research--correlating certain Cayce readings with six key Nostradamus quatrains--the pastor had concluded that the chupacabra phenomenon signaled the New Advent of Planetary Salvation. Rev. Chong notes that the letters in "Chupacabrista" easily form "CabraChrista" (Christ-goat). He plans to lead a party of his followers to the Everglades later this Spring in hopes of a revelatory sighting.

Finally, Herschel Gomez's young nephew Hamish Gomez insists that the most recent chupa appearances were also an omen for the SuperBowl XLI being played in a stadium not far from the Everglades itself and where livestock-devouring creatures were first reported in 1996. "Look," says Hamish, an avid astrologer like his uncle, "the Bears secured their conference title earlier this month under Capricorn, the Sign of the Goat. Chicago is a city famous for its stockyards and it was once burned to the ground by a cow!" "Not only that", adds Hamish, " if you rearrange the letters of the Spanish word "Chupacabrismo" (meaning Chupacabra-ness more or less) you get "Chicapo B'ars". " Close enough, even for Nostradamus maybe. But not for Peyton Manning as it turned out much to young Hamish's considerable embarrassment. Uncle Herschel also pointed out that the Colts won their conference title under the Goat as well. The Chupacabras, for their part, have no comment. And those unfortunates who bet heavily on Chicago turned out to be the biggest suckers of all.

AMAZING UPDATES:

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Hong Kong Electronics scion Fu-Tze (Footsie) Feldman, a Fort Lauderdale tax attorney, has notified local Republican Party operatives that he will not contest freshman Democrat Ron Klein in a 2008 US Congressional race. "Call it the surge that broke the camel's back," he told friends recently. "The way this war is going, the GOP nomination won't be worth a pitcher of warm spit," he added, colorfully recalling the candor of a Depression Era vice-president.

For the present Feldman is in Hollywood (the West Coast one) hoping to wrangle a way to escort Britney Spears to the Academy Award Ceremonies later this month. "She'll forget all about K-Fed once she's exposed to the special aura of F-Foot," he said, though his friends admit that the family's $6-billion fortune might have some bearing on Ms. Spears outlook. If Feldman manages to take to the young pop-star to the Oscars then he'll also invite her to a Chinese New Year Gala at uncle Chuk Wam-Bang's sumptumous mansion in Malaysia the following weekend.


ON THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY:

Feb 3 1690
The first paper money in America is issued in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But the local Indians refuse to accept it. Nor, after hearing what happened in Manhattan, will they accept glass beads either.

Feb 3 1954
Millions greet Queen Elizabeth II in Sydney on her first royal
trip to Australia. Unable to attend, future honoree/housewife Edna Everage sends regrets from Moonee Ponds.

Feb 4 1889
Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, "the Sundance Kid." Upon seeing himself in the mirror for the first time after a long period of incarceration, the Kid is devastated to realize that he looks nothing like Robert Redford.

Young Edna
GREAT WIGS

Feb 4 1909
California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren, thereby extending to the Nipponese youngsters the same honor that Chinese pupils in the state have enjoyed for decades. Academic test scores for both groups soar while white kids in the Golden State go on to distinguish themselves in swimming, square dance and choir.

Feb 5 1900
The United States and Great Britain sign the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the US the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it. Nicaragua, a sovereign nation at the time, is not a signatory and the Americans later decide to stiff the British by building a canal in Panama instead.

Gandhi and the Non-Prophet Motive

Mahatma: dreamed of freedom for his people
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Just ahead of the 59th anniversary of his death at the hands of an assassin, we look back at a troubling set of prohesies attributed to Mahatma Gandhi and glimpse the curious legacy of a little known relation. Today in Amazing Story Updates, from Korea, Reverend Moon explains his astrological reservations to Dr. Hosokawa and the regular feature, This Date in Amazing History, recalls the day San Franciscans gave up good grass.

Ten years ago, a US supermarket tabloid exclaimed that, according to a series of previously secret Edgar Cayce-style predictions, before the end of 1997 the AIDS virus would become as prevalent as "the common cold". The startling prophesies, were said to have been issued by (of all people) Mohandas Karamchand (aka Mahatma) Gandhi and said to have turned up in a weathered notebook discovered at a former ashram in Sevagram, India. They were also purported to have foretold a terrorist mass assassination that would end the lives of seven top world leaders in March 1998 and that three months later the planet would see the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Needless to say, each of these prognostications fell as flat as a soggy pappadam.

At the time, news of these "Mahatma Prophesies" came as something of a surprise to most Indians who had never heard of the Father of the Nation, a confirmed Hindu, making psychic predictions of any sort, least of all regarding Jesus Christ. He did forecast the end of the British Raj and predicted continued strife with Pakistan but these were deduced by prevailing political developments and not oracular intuition.

However, after a nine year investigation, author-researcher Rajiv Perlmutter Patel of Walnut Creek, CA is convinced the ashram writings may be partially authentic: they were penned by Gandhi, he says, but not Mohandas the Mahatma. Actually they were the work of his irascible little brother Ganesh aka "Garrett" Gandhi of East Ipswich, England. The younger Gandhi, said Patel, was not above contriving outrageous pseudo-psychic scams throughout much of his adult life in the United Kingdom. Ganesh first followed his older brother to London in March 1931 for a conference on India's future and remained in the UK until after the end of World War Two.

"Garrett" Gandhi: Soho hypnotist

Ganesh, who always sported a jaunty VanDyke beard and powder-blue turban, parlayed his brother's famous name into a notable nightclub and music hall act as a stage hypnotist known variously as the "Fakir of Finchley," the "Ipswich Swami" and during the most celebrated point in his cabaret career just prior to the Blitz, the "Picadilly Pandit." "It was an entertaining blend of sideshow fortune-telling, "telepathy" stunts and Eastern mystical mumbo-jumbo," says Patel "and war-jittery Brits ate it up. He even used a snake in a basket until the RSPCA stepped in."

Garrett married four times, dated Merle Oberon briefly after the war and eventually settled in East Anglia where he operated a Felixstowe vegetarian restaurant for many years and raised five of his eight children. He died there in 1976 at the age of 89. Garrett was said to have been profoundly shaken by his brother's murder and afterward steadfastly avoided the public spotlight.

Patel himself is no stranger to the psychic realm. He is the nephew of noted sensitive Rhoda Gold Perlmutter of Passaic NJ whose father knew Ganesh Gandhi and wrote an unpublished book about him. Rajiv thinks the so-called "predictions" were part of Garrett's fortune-telling act and may have been accidentally left behind during a 1946 visit to his elder brother's ashram. We may come to know much more about the last and more clandestine phase of Garrett's career, says Patel, when Mordechai Perlmutter's book is released sometime in the coming year. Gandhi reportedly granted the interviews that form the major source of the biography on the condition that nothing could be disclosed until 30 years after his passing. Moredechai himself died in 1994 but Rhoda Perlmutter has vowed to see the work published as her father intended.


AMAZING STORY UPDATES

From his office in Sapporo, Dr. Kenji Hosokawa informs us that Rev. Moon has written from Korea to dispel the notion that his church's weekly financial bulletin the Seoul Sellers Guide and Satanic Star Chart had deliberately misconstrued Hosokawa's Fire Pig Forecast. The clergyman is not, by the way, to be confused with the leader of the Unification Church, but presides over the the United Korean Reformed Four-Square Pentecostal Church based in Pusan. Rev. Moon Joon Song (Moon is quite a common name in Korea) says his organization takes no issue with Hosokawa at all since the church has its own unique system of stock market predictions based upon snake handling and interpretation of arcane Biblical prophesies to which only Rev. Moon and a few trusted associates are privy. Any other attempts to forecast market trends are, by his definition, "Satanic" and no better than the worthless conjectures of professional analysts on Wall Street where, he says, "the Devil reigns supreme." His followers, Rev. Moon added, "do not pay any attention whatsoever to the animals of the Oriental Zodiac unless it happens to be the Year of the Serpent."

The Chupacabra
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The intrepid Herschel Gomez is back from a fresh foray into the West Everglades, south of Lake Okeechobee to investigate newly reported sightings of the notorious Chupacabra, a sort of bipedal vampire-bat more given to attacks on livestock than people. For the moment, Gomez says he's not certain whether the beast being described by Puerto Rican farmworkers is actually a chupacabra or the traditional "Skunk Ape" of the Everglades, thought to be a Southern cousin of Big Foot or the Susquatch. The "ape" is held in high regard by the local Skunkasookie Indian Tribe who revere the creature as an important Guardian Spirit that is NOT to be molested or disturbed in any manner. Herschel is asking his Orlando-based marital in-law Domingo Dombrowski, a noted authority on "chupas" to help him investigater further.

THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY

Capt. Morgan: Yo ho ho and a bottle of him

27 JANUARY 1671 Welsh Pirate Henry Morgan (after whom a famous brand of Jamaican rum is named) lands at Panama City and after winning a furious battle with Spanish defenders promptly burns the place to the ground. The scene will be immortalized centuries later by subsequent hit movies and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction at various Disney Theme Parks but with scant mention of Morgan himself. According to Dutch medium Hiero Thrypplewaart, the vainglorious captain still harangues Uncle Walt about it whenever the two cross paths on the Other Side.

29 JANUARY 1613 Galileo observes Neptune but fails to recognize what he sees. In frustration, he checks the Pisa Yellow Pages for an optometrist only to find there are none, nor any telephones either. Considerably annoyed, the astronomer chucks the volume over the balcony of the Leaning Tower despite its list of outstanding spaghetti and Pisa parlors easily reached by ox-cart.

30 JANUARY 1847 The sleepy bayside Californian village of Yerba Buena is formally renamed San Francisco leaving behind a charming original Spanish appellation of "Good Herb or Grass," a commodity that the new city won't again become associated with for another 120 years, mostly in the Haight-Ashbury section.

Our Lot in Lap of Lett Lab Lizard?

Scipionyx: Cousins from outer space?
Image Source: Luis V. Rey's Art Gallery Dinosaurs and Paleontology © Luis Rey

An amazing Manhattan parrot has excited UK scientists prompting a review of the astounding story of a remarkable reptile in the Baltic that first appeared nearly a decade ago. Also, parched conditions in Australia confer one unexpected blessing and our look at Amazing History recalls the Day that New York women became outlaws for smoking in public.

We don't need to be reminded that these do indeed seem to be strange times and some religious fundamentalists may be forgiven for seeing omens of an approaching "End of Days" in the various proliferations of odd phenomena surrounding us. This sort of Doomsday thinking has typically been prevalent among Christians at the close of one millennium and the start of another. However, everybody is not on the same millennial page. The festival of the Fire Pig beginning next month is Year 4704 by Chinese calculations. According to the Jewish calendar it's year 5767, Muslims have just rung in Year 1428 of the Islamic calendar and this is the 5107th Hindu calendar year.

Religious perspectives aside we are witnessing an onslaught of bizarre, often unsettling events and freak behaviors. And that's just in Washington, DC. Late last month, British researchers were reported to be studying an African Grey parrot kept in New York that not only mimics human speech but has a vocabulary of 950 words, demonstrates a sense of humor, invents words and phrases, and even shows signs of telepathy, astounding scientists. The bird, named N'kisi, is believed to be one of the most advanced human language users in the animal world.

Gabby Grey: "Gentlemen, I said I wanted a CRACKER not these blasted blocks!"


Professor Donald Broom, of the University of Cambridge School of Veterinary Medicine, told BBC News Online: "The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more advanced they appear, and the biggest leap of all has been with parrots." Actually that's not quite true. The biggest leap came nearly 10 years ago with lizards or rather with one particular reptile. It's time to revisit the curious case of the "Talking Lithuanian Lizard" first reported in The Amazing Realms of Prof. Kurt S. Jacobi back in April 1998:

First the bad news, astronomers have discovered a giant asteroid hurtling toward Earth that may very well strike the planet in the year 2028 and send humankind the way of the dinosaurs.

The good news is that on-going research by Latvian paleontologists may suggest that not ALL dinosaurs perished in a previously theorized primordial cosmic collision but survived due to the timely intervention of reptilian extra-terrestrials who ferried their terran cousins to a home planet. Latvian research team leader, Dr. Valerian Livani says uncovered evidence has led to speculation that these intelligent visitors might be persuaded to return in time to help Earth avoid a second smash-up.

The source of these sensational claims is an extraordinary zoological oddity known for years locally as "Larry the Talking Lithuanian Lizard," a Vilnius sideshow attraction that drew serious scientific attention only last September (1997). A Lett researcher, Ivan Pavilosta, visiting relatives in Varena chanced upon the remarkable reptile when he took his nephew to the circus.

What first appeared to be an over-sized Baltic Spotted Gecko that could bark a series of guttural sounds on command, turned out to be the herpetological find of the century, if not the millennium. Bargaining with the lizard's owner, an acrobat from Minsk, Pavilosta paid the equivalent of four thousand dollars for the animal with which he quickly returned to the university at Riga. Upon closer examination of the 17-inch-long creature, experts were stunned.

Loudmouth Lizard: Knows more than he lets on to Letts

Dino-Mite

For one thing, Larry is not any type of lizard known to modern science. He does, however, bear strong structural similarities to the fossil of a small dinosaur, Scipionyx samniticus, recently discovered in Italy and thought to be an ancestor of modern birds. Larry not only can mimic human speech far better than any parrot but can also read in six languages including English and Russian. It was only after noticing the lizard apparently engrossed in a copy of War and Peace, that Pavilosta decided to purchase the animal from the circus performers.

Actual inter-species communication with Larry did not begin until Dr. Livani and the other scientists accidentally left his open cage near a computer and the reptile began skittering across the keyboard, producing what initially seemed to be gibberish but later turned out to be a passage from the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes in Hungarian. Four days later, he tapped out the first four paragraphs of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution in flawless French.

According to Larry super-intelligent reptiles such as himself occur in nature only once in every 500,000 hatchings and then only among four species of European lizard-like creatures small enough to escape undue attention from most humans. Endowed with telepathic powers and able to communicate with mammals and birds, Larry says normal reptiles are too dense for a decent conversation. He suggests that he deliberately allowed himself to be "captured and tamed" in order to study Homo sapiens at close range.

Jurassic Bark Worse than Bite

The lizard claims congenital knowledge of the Age of Dinosaurs and says a breed of omnivorous four-foot tall reptiles actually ruled the Earth for about 100 million years and escaped the planet aboard alien spacecraft just before the last asteroid collision. These reptiles implanted a genetic code in four surviving species programmed to manifest itself every century or so. As a rule, Larry says these super-lizards generally avoid people and do not try to influence human events. "Pointless," he confides. The approaching asteroid is a source of concern to Larry and others of his kind. They, about 700 in all, expect to be rescued by their interplanetary relatives well before the Big Rock gets too close.

Dr. Livani and his team are baffled by these reptile revelations and have trouble accepting much of the material. "Just because a lizard can speak, read and write (and bark)," he says, "doesn't necessarily mean that the creature is always truthful or not given to delusion. We retain a healthy scientific skepticism." Livani concludes, "All we know for certain right now is that he can beat any of us at chess and that he prefers beef stroganoff (a dish he was fed at the circus) to insects."

Since reporting those details nine years ago, a shroud of official secrecy and academic controversy has descended over the lizard case. For the record, Dr. Livani (from Latvijas Universitate) says he can comment nothing further about the animal or its present whearabouts. European herpetologists concede that geckos are the best vocalists in the reptilian world but note that they are usually confined to warmer climates and none have ever been detected north of the Riviera. Many Latvians, meanwhile, object to calling the animal "Lithuanian" in the first place. They suggest it had probably been stolen from a pet shop in Skrunda near a gigantic Soviet-era radar installation whose powerful emanations, they suspect, invested the imported reptile with remarkable powers. "He really ought to be nicknamed The Skrunda Skink," quipped one Lett.





AMAZING STORY UPDATES… The severe drought that has gripped most of Australia in recent months is having one beneficial side effect. The advance of a variety of over-sized mutant mosquitos ("mozzies" in the local parlance) seems to have been checked. The South Australian Royal Entomological Research Station says none have turned up in any of the nation's coastal cities, much to the relief local health agencies. The monster mozzies, eight times the size of a normal mosquito, were not reported to feed on human blood but to drain transmission fluid from expensive imported automobiles. And this has had a few Aussies suspect the creatures were the product of some Japanese or German experiment (possibly conducted in Malaysia) that went awry. Whatever their origin, says Dr. Barry Corrigan from Brisbane, "it seems this larger breed cannot find enough stagnant water in which to reproduce normally. And for that we should be grateful."...Our intrepid Irish-Iraqi psychic-urologist Mohammed Mohoney has confirmed that while in Sydney next April to attend an oncosexology symposium, he will also be a featured speaker at a Darlinghurst Psychic Fair organized by his uncle Syed al-Rashid who emigrated to New South Wales three years ago...Closer to home here in Florida, there seems to have been a fresh round of chupacabra sightings in the Western Everglades. Herschel Gomez is on the case and we'll have more on that as developments warrant.


ON THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY…

22 JANUARY 1901

After 63 years, Royal Mail stops sale of the Queen Victoria postage stamps series and begins the King Edward VII series. Among the many RM firsts under Her Royal Highness were: First adhesive stamp (the Penny Black 1840); First post boxes erected in mainland Britain (1853); Ten London postal districts established (1858); Post Office begins telegraph service (1870); First use of bicycles to deliver mail (1880) Postal order introduced (1881); Parcel post begins (1883); First picture postcards (1894). No such major Post Office innovations occur under the nine-year reign of Edward but with grandson George V national telephone service begins (1912).


22 JANUARY 1908


Responding to a national crusade waged by Lucy Page Gaston and her Anti-Cigarette League of America, New York City passes the Sullivan Ordinance, a regulation prohibiting women from smoking in public; other municipalities follow New York's example. Anti-smoking laws are also adopted in the states of Arkansas, Utah, Idaho, Kansas, Iowa and Tennessee. All fail to curb the national tobacco habit and are all repealed by 1927. Lucy herself is struck by a streetcar and dies in 1924 by which time US smoking increases dramatically (from 4.4 billion to 73 billion cigarettes yearly) since the 1899 onset of her anti-smoking campaign.

Above: Lucy Page Gaston: Out, out damned butt!

Cayce-Dixon Clash mars 2007 Psychic Predictions Fete

Paranormal Squabbles

Kyle Cassidy Images, Gallery Nine, Contact the artist.

Celebrated seers gather in Miami Beach for 2007 Psychic Prediction extravaganza but a trans-trance squabble between Jean Dixon and Edgar Cayce nearly scuttles the paranormal party. Herschel Gomez' aunt Hortensia hosted the affair at her Art Deco Ocean Drive villa. Meanwhile, on the otherside of the planet, tribal leaders in Western Australia ponder their pending return to power in ancestral lands.

Jean Dixon: Real gift or lucky hit?

Miami psychic Herschel Gomez reports that a terrible row developed this past week during the so-called Florida “Superbowl of Psychic Predictions for 2007” namely the annual South Beach Celebrity Seance SmackDown hosted by his aunt, Hortensia de Gomez Gutman, the onetime personal chiromancer to Fulgencio Batista. The event, which draws together area Latin and Anglo psychics for a lively session of competitive readings and extended chats with deceased notables, was staged on January 3rd, the 62nd anniversary of the "crossing" of the guest of honor, Edgar Cayce, who was almost a no-show. The evening got off to a tense start with Mme Shanti Dombrowski, the Madras-born spouse of Herschel's third cousin Domingo, expressing bitter resentment at being compared unfavorably to Jean Dixon as a prophet. "Let’s be honest, she really got lucky just once," said Shanti, "and traded off that for decades afterward." For her part, Dixon-- channeling through Hortensia a bit later--dismissed Shanti as a “presumptuous Tamil Nada from Orlando” which prompted a round Latino titters.

Edgar Cayce: Overslept?

But the real fireworks erupted when Dixon and the late-arriving Cayce renewed their long-running feud over who had the most embarrassing failed predictions. "The Vietnam War ending in 1966," remarked Cayce, who spoke through Irish-Iraqi trance medium Mohammed Mahoney, "what a tragic clunker that was!" "I'll take the heat for that anytime,” responded Dixon, “over predicting that California would slide into the Pacific Ocean in 1998. You were really asleep on that one, Ed." The two ended their discarnate dialogue on a more positive note by agreeing that rightwing evangelical Pat Robertson is undoubtedly the dimmest “seer” on the contemporary prophesy scene.


Deadly dialogue
Earlier Cayce apologized to the group for nearly missing the session but explained he had to attend a low-key reception at the Dead Despots Society for new arrivals Augusto Pinochet and Saddam Hussein. The DDS, notable for its impressive board of respected late humanitarians and philanthropists, helps rehabilitate departed dictators and war criminals preparing them for an eternity of endless begging--for their victims’ forgiveness in the afterlife.

Celebrity Seance: Trancing with the stars

On a more congenial note, the assembled seers exchanged a variety of premonitions, dreams and forecasts and found broad agreement that global weather changes would begin to wreak havoc on a generally good international economy in the latter part of the year. All agreed that ephemeral personalities like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Brad Pitt take up entirely too much space in the psychic media and something ought to be done about it but no-one present could foresee how. Mahoney did boldly predict that cinema’s swaggering Kiwi Russell Crowe will be eating crow by year’s end. “And I don’t mean Sheryl,” he added.

All in all, the Séance SmackDown ended quite amicably. Despite the few occasional harsh words and sharp outbursts--and a couple of angrily tossed ouija boards--only one psychic was asked to leave early after she was found to be using a marked Tarot deck and having two “wands” up her sleeve.

Map of tribal lands: Heritage reclaimed

Another Legal Gain For Ozzie Natives

Hard on the heels of a Federal Court decision recognizing the Native Title Claim of the Noongar People of Western Australia to a 193,956km² tract of land that encompasses the entire State capital city of Perth (population 1.7 million) comes word that in New South Wales (where Sydney is located) it’s been decided to share with the local Githabul tribe the administration of a 6,000 -square-kilometre area that encompasses 19 parks and forests, including several UN World Heritage sites. Reports indicate that the so-called native title pact will create jobs for the Githabul people and give them much greater involvement in the management of the land.

Unlike the reaction in Western Australia, where state and federal government spokespeople immediately announced a challenge to the native tile ruling, officials on all sides are welcoming the Githabul agreement as a positive step toward Reconciliation between Australian whites and other later arrivals and the traditional owners of Australian territories.



Recalling the past with generous reciprocity


Back in Perth, Noongar elders are said to be reviewing strategies and plans in the event their title claim is upheld in the courts. “Naturally, we want to move forward in a spirit of compassion and absolute reciprocity,” says Emerson Amangu, member of a committee looking at implementation schemes for re-establishing tribal authority over the capital and its environs. “Above all, we want to show the Wadjalla (whites) the same kind of goodwill and fair treatment that we ourselves were shown in their place.”


Consequently, an assortment of proposals are being put forward that the in-coming Noongar Administration might wish to adopt. These include classifying whites as fauna on tribal lands, making sure that all Wadjalla children are educated in the Noongar language and culture (with school menus that feature traditional dishes like roast monitor with witchetty grub and honey ant sauce) and restoring place-names to their aboriginal designations including Perth itself which soon might be called Greater Wajuk, West Nyaki-Nyaki or New Noongar.

Above: School monitor: Soon to be served
Happy Meal style with grubs and ants

A Canadian Core of Belief

Mary on toast: Hollywood icon for sure?

About two years ago a woman who lives down the road from me, sold on E-bay what was purported to be an image of the Virgin Mary still visible on a decade-old toasted cheese sandwich. The Hollywood, Florida-made morsel fetched a tidy $28,000 when the bidding ended despite the fact that the iconic face resembled Toronto-born film star Mary Pickford more than any Holy Virgin of note.


Still, in age where cynicism and gloom are rampant, it is uplifting to note another faith-related event that took place last month in the Alberta township of Cowpie Corral, about 50 km southeast of Calgary. During the bus ride to Meadow Muffin Middle School, eighth-grader Barton Gilhooley opened his lunch box and discovered, staring back at him from the obverse side of his Granny Smith apple the discernible image of a youthful Pope Benedict XVI (!) as identified by bus driver Blanche Slocum.

The 12-year-old, not knowing whose image it was, promptly took the possibly miraculous fruit to the school office where stunned counselors and an assistant principal summoned a priest, a rabbi and an orthodontist to examine the object more closely. Upon closer inspection, the somewhat indistinct image was determined not to be the pope at all but, in fact, the controversial British patriot Benedict Arnold! At that point, the priest, New York-born Father Elvis Flanagan declared the apple to be possessed and telephoned the Archdiocese in nearby Moose Poop Flats to arrange an exorcism while Rabbi Sharon Shipperton and orthodontist Javier Kawasaki got into an argument over the proper pronunciation of the town name. Newcomers prefer the vaguely French-sounding “Ko-PAY Corral” to the earthier original. Old-timers say such trifling with tradition would only confuse the town with Tombstone, Arizona and a celebrated gunfight there.

Benedict or Arnold? We'll never learn the apple "apparition"

But before any of this could be satisfactorily resolved, a ravenous sixth-grader, Wendy McDonald, sent to the office for tardiness, grabbed the apple from the assistant principal’s desk and gnawed it to the core, utterly obliterating the image. And despite the frantic efforts of orthodontist Kawasaki to extract evidentiary fragments from the child’s braces, the apple apparition was irretrievably lost.

The most remarkable thing about the entire episode was that young Wendy later that day passed her first history quiz since third grade. It has to make you believe.

Are we there, Yeti?

Still in the Canadian hinterlands, we are greatly relieved that our sources report that those repeated sightings of a “Big Foot” or Susquatch in the Yukon Territory on two November weekends has turned out to be nothing more frightening than US Vice President Dick Cheney returning from previously undisclosed hunting forays in over-sized Wal-Mart sportswear. Though, the notion of “Robo-heart Richard” with any sort of weapon in hand is a bit scary.

Meanwhile, those who sought to connect the repeated “creature” sightings with a recent spate of cattle mutilations in Northwest Canada will have to look elsewhere for a culprit. Equally remarkable, none of the veep’s hunting companions were injured on this trip but an angry grizzly bear (whom the NRA life member missed by a mile) nearly advanced incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to within an unassisted heartbeat of the presidency until Secret Service agents and an off-duty Mountie rescued the surprisingly agile 65-year-old from the branches of a Whitebark Pine near the Alaska border.

Cheney: missed the bear by a mile but thankfully shot no humans

Perhaps the Moonwalker was really there

It may sound incredible but our intrepid psychic investigator Herschel Gomez of Miami confides that those Michael Jackson child molestation accusations of the 1980s and 90s have turned out to be absolute fabrications perpetrated by malicious extraterrestrials.

Gomez says he has been allowed to see compelling evidence that one of the purported 13-year-old “accusers” is actually an octogenarian alien named Merzunngthhh from the Crab Nebula and that poor Michael himself is the product of clumsy extraterrestrial experiments performed at a secret lunar base on an otherwise normal but talented black child briefly abducted from a concert tour with his brothers in 1977.

The ghastly pallor, disfigured nose and limp stringy hair were all produced by exposure to intergalactic isotopes that likewise rendered Jackson incapable of relating to beings his own age unless they are chimpanzees.

Rising Number One Son

Determined to rebound from 2006 Congressional losses, Florida Republican party stalwarts have just about persuaded dashing Fort Lauderdale tax attorney Fu-Tze Fong Feldman to make a race for the U.S. House in 2008 and win back the in the state’s 22nd district from freshman Democrat Ron Klein.

Should he secure the nomination it will be “Footsie” Feldman’s task to convince thousands of Northeastern retirees that they would not be losing a Jewish voice in Congress but gaining a Chinese mensch on Capitol Hill.

One thing is certain, a Feldman campaign wouldn’t be likely to run short of cash thanks to doting Hawaiian-Chinese grandparents controlling the multi-billion dollar Fong-Wam-Bang Electronics empire based in Hong Kong. Back in 1968, these folks spent $750,000 on Footsie’s bilingual (Hebrew-Cantonese) bar-mitzvah at the Honolulu Hilton which featured Jan Peerce, Don Ho and maternal uncle Senator Hiram Fong on the electric horse-headed fiddle.

Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of South Central Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. psychotropic engineering from the Comenius University of Bratislava, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi was a visiting scholar on the faculty of CCNY where he first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Apollo moon landings, the Camp David Peace Accords and the introduction of Pizza Hut outlets to Antofagasta, Chile.

SPACEY 2007 PREDICTIONS

Vice President Dick Cheney in his US humvee

In this edition of Professor Jacobi's Amazing Realms, Mohammed Mahoney comments on photographs that not only promise to answer questions which have long baffled archaeologists but which also validate important scientific findings.

Also included, the annual New Year Psychic Predictions for 2007 as issued by Miami seer Herschel Gomez.

Peruvian UFO’s may validate Inca Theory

Further examination of a snapshot taken in the Andes last year by an Australian tourist could be the clearest evidence yet validating one of the central tenets of the Extrapolated ITIC findings published a decade ago by my good friend and noted Irish-Iraqi sensitive Mohammed Mahoney. What appears to be a fast-moving metallic object moving between the Andean peaks near the fabled Macchu-Pichu “Lost City” of the Incas could be, says Mahoney, photographic proof that present-day Incas, like their Pre-Columbian forebears, had extraterrestrial help in constructing their cities.



UFO at Macchu-Pichu, Peru


Archaeologists have long speculated how Meso-and South American societies, which did not use the wheel, could have transported immense blocks of solid stone from distant quarries. Mahoney also hastens to point out another photograph taken in broad daylight earlier this year at the Mayan pyramid of Chichen-Itza by a Puerto Rican visitor. The Yucatan object is either some sort of bifurcated UFO, a humungous butterfly or possibly a slice of apple hurled about 50 metres from the camera.

UFO (or butterfly) at Yucatan pyramid

Mahoney, a freelance researcher who investigates the paranormal during off hours from his urology practice in Hollywood, CA, suggests that he may mount his own Macchu-Pichu expedition in early 2007 to seek additional UFO-related evidence on the matter.


Michael, Liz & related Psychic Prognoses

Our good friend and noted Miami seer Herschel Gomez has issued his annual New Year Psychic Predictions for 2007. For the record, his tally of hits and misses over the past twenty-five years is slightly better than the late Jean Dixon’s and 30 times more accurate than Mme. Shanti Dombrowski of Orlando, who in 1985 confidently predicted that a disoriented Loch Ness monster would finally be netted in the Thames Estuary of all places and, astonishingly, disgorge a perfectly preserved (albeit deceased) Amelia Earheart, two HMS Titanic life-preservers and Eva Braun’s gold souvenir cigarette lighter from the 1936 maiden flight of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Hindenburg. Dombrowski claimed a partial hit with the discovery of the entire Titanic wreck later that year.


Herewith highlights from the Gomez 2007 crystal ball:

• By late next summer ex-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s prospects for the 2008 Presidential nomination will be further reduced when it is revealed that, in addition to being a divorced Roman Catholic, previously sealed court documents identify him as the unnamed “other primate” who figured in the infamous 1992 break-up of singer Michael Jackson and one-time housemate Bubbles the Chimpanzee.


Michael and Bubbles in happier times


• Recently disgraced Evangelist Ted Haggard will return to the news when a “Rehabilitation Retreat” with several young pastoral colleagues at a remote Colorado Springs park is disrupted by someone or something resembling Big Foot who drags the hysterical Haggard into the forest. Following months of fruitless searches for the missing preacher, a bearded and remarkably unscathed Haggard will emerge from the woods to found a new doctrine based on claimed visions during the ordeal, The Gospel of St. Susquatch.

• On the eve of her 75th birthday, Elizabeth Taylor, will finally admit that the aforementioned Michael Jackson is indeed her own love child by onetime heavyweight champ Sonny Liston (and subsequently adopted by the Jackson family to spare Liz further grief with then-hubby Eddie Fisher.) Following this disclosure, Michael will fly to the Pepe Cortada Clinic in Chichihuenango, Guatemala before Easter for one last surgical procedure in a tortured son’s lifelong attempt to more closely resemble his natural mother.

• Britney Spears will meet and fall wildly in love with Fort Lauderdale tax attorney Fu-Tze (Footsie) Feldman, the Chinese-Jewish heir to the Fong-Wam-Bang Electronics empire based in Hong Kong. In the fall the couple will be making plans for a honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur at the home of uncle Chuk Wam-Bang. And by Christmas, the company’s Mandarin-singing Beijing Britney doll will be a toy world mega-hit in the Far East.

• A devastating spring earthquake will level much of Euro-Disney World but the ruins will prove much more popular (especially the Hall of Headless Presidents) among French visitors and the park will actually turn a third-quarter profit.

• In May, look for the FBI to investigate a series of ghastly but surgically precise cattle mutilations in and around Crawford, Texas. The president blames al-Qa'ida terrorists but the culprits are never found.

Bush and the possibly doomed Pooch

• Finally, Barney the White House Scottish Terrier will meet an untimely end when his kennel is inadvertently misrouted at Andrews Air Force Base aboard an Iraq-bound military transport. Before the mistake is discovered, the First Pooch will fall into the hands of jihadists who threaten an on-camera canine execution if US troops are not withdrawn. After worldwide outcry and appeals from the pope and Islamic leaders, the terrier is released unharmed but is accidentally run over by a US humvee driven by Vice President Dick Cheney who was dispatched to Baghdad to bring the heroic hostage home.


Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of Southeastern Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. in psychotropic engineering from Comenius University, Bratislava, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi was a visiting scholar on the faculty of CCNY where he first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Apollo moon landings, the Camp David Peace Accords and the release of all Tennessee Ernie Ford’s love songs on mp3 compatible compact disc.

FACTS BEYOND CONJECTURE

Ailing Reptiles seen as Omen

Is it pure coincidence that the US is finally engaging in a great national debate over the severity of Global Warming at the exact time that an epidemic of reptilian HIV has hit alligators in West Florida drainage canals? Unlike the human variety, victims of gator-AIDS do not wither and die but rather detach their limbs, spend six or seven months in brackish waters as gargantuan tadpoles and then totally metamorphose into bellowing Tampa realtors and patent attorneys.

Jeb Bush

This phenomenon is quite possibly related to the enigma a decade back when medical waste of undetermined origin washed up on South Florida beaches and manifested in the trunk of Tamarac restaurateur Herschel Gomez' red '88 Impala. These bizarre events do suggest a synchroneity that could also lend credence to the claim that the noted portly owner of the only glatt kosher Taco Bell on the US Eastern Seaboard (there are three in Burbank, CA and plans for one in Melbourne) was once abducted from the New Jersey shore by a UFO. The alleged abduction occurred 35 years ago following a Passaic concert by Little Anthony and the Imperials. Little Anthony himself was never implicated but the three Imperials were questioned by police after causing a post-performance ruckus in a Hackensack strip-bar called the Bada Bing. Owner Johnny Soprano did not press charges.

Hillary Clinton

Mystic Polling?

Tampa Realtor Ali G

Meanwhile, it has been reported that Senator Hillary Clinton, no stranger to the realm of seance, has sought out the discarnate Grigory Yefimovich Novych (Rasputin), in order to gauge her chances to become America’s first female president. Eight years as White House czarina has only served to whet Mrs. Clinton’s appetite for the spotlight. The contact purportedly came last month near Orlando as the former First Lady and Governor Jeb Bush inadvertently met in the reading room of Mme Shanti Dombrowski, the celebrated Winter Park psychic. The Grigory Yefimovich link was also confirmed by the Mad Monk's only surviving descendant in America, Miami CPA Manuel Mankiewicz. Manny's Hialeah bowling league teammates are convinced that the Cuban-Russian accountant also knows the precise location of long-hidden Romanov Dynasty treasures that could financially lift an eventual Hillary for a Presidential campaign. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, seeks psychic opinion on whether he must re-launch his political career somewhere in South America now that his older brother has trashed the Bush reputation for government competence throughout the United States.

Having served myself occasionally as consulting astrologer to the Reagan White House, I would advise the “Jebster”: Stick with Paraguay. No beachfront land speculators, hurricanes or crocodiles.

Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of Northwestern Wallachia, holds a Ph.D in psychotropic engineering from the Comenius University of Bratislava, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi was a visiting scholar on the faculty of CCNY where he first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Apollo moon landings, the Camp David Peace Accords and microwave popcorn.