What is the origin of the Jack-'O'-Lantern

The term jack- o’-lantern was first applied not to pumpkins, but people. As far back as 1663, the term meant a man with a lantern, or a night watchman. Just a decade or so later, it began to be used to refer to the mysterious lights sometimes seen at night over bogs, swamps, and marshes.

These ghost lights—variously called  jack-o’-lanterns, hinkypunks, hobby lanterns, corpse candles, fairy lights, will-o’-the-wisps, and fool’s fire—are created when gases from decomposing plant matter ignite when they come in contact with electricity or heat or as they oxidize. For centuries before there was this scientific explanation, people told stories to explain the mysterious lights. In Ireland, dating as far back as the 1500s, those stories often revolved around a guy named Jack.

Legend Has It

As the story goes, Stingy Jack, often described as a blacksmith, invited the Devil to join him for a drink. Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for the drinks from his own pocket, and convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that could be used to settle the tab. The Devil did so, but Jack skipped out on the bill and kept the Devil-coin in his pocket with a silver cross so the Devil couldn’t shift back to his original form. Jack eventually let the Devil loose, but made him promise that he wouldn’t seek revenge on Jack, and wouldn’t claim his soul when he died.

Couple photograph spooky green figure in Scotland

A STUNNED couple yesterday told how they captured a spooky green man on camera at their home.

Gary and Amanda Linney said the strange figure was spotted running away from their cottage as they experimented with a new camera.

The bizarre snaps emerged just days after another family claimed to have filmed a UFO floating above their house about 25 miles away.

Former policeman Gary, 52, said there was no explanation for the figure.

He said: “It looks like a little green man running. It just disperses into the surface of the road.

“If you look closely, you can see a head. It’s very surreal. I was a policeman and a pilot for 20 years and have never seen anything like this before.”

Hotel owners Gary and Amanda, 46, from Collieston, Aberdeenshire, tried to recreate the picture but have never seen the strange light since.

First Televised Exorcism (video)

First Televised Exorcism! Recorded in Chicago, IL on NBC in 1971. Just in time to creep you out at Halloween, Here is the original video that inspired last night's episode of Paranormal Witness on the Syfy channel

"The Tenants" reexamines Chicago newlyweds Edwin and Marsha Becker become homeowners for the first time after buying a "two-flat" in 1970. .Soon after moving in, paranormal activity--flickering lights, plates flying out of kitchen cabinets--kicks in and Marsha realizes that there are ghostly tenants living in the house with them. 

 While rooting around in the basement, Ed discovers sinister secrets about the house's former occupants. When the paranormal activity reaches an all-time high, the Beckers organize an exorcism, which becomes the first nationally televised exorcism in the U.S. when it is broadcast by NBC in April 1971.

Some of the other paranormal phenomenon experienced by the Beckers, included the independent opening and closing of doors. The Beckers also said the string holding their bathtub plug would wrap itself around the faucet, house keys would be moved, the telephone would come off the hook and the mixer flew off the wall. They also heard a crying woman.

The video below shows NBC News correspondent Carole Simpson's report of the haunting and exorcism conducted by nationally known psychic Joseph DeLouise and Rev. William Derl-Davis.

Pennsylvania mans RV attacked by Bigfoot (video)

A Pennsylvania man has his eye on a large, furry and elusive suspect who he accused of vandalizing his 1973 Dodge Winnebago.

John Reed, a self-described Bigfoot tracker since the age of 10, said he was camping with his girlfriend when he saw the creature walk past his motor home window. 

Reed said the Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, reportedly threw rocks at his mobile home’s outside light to escape discovery.

Reed, who is the founder of the Lykens Valley Sasquatch Hunters, and his girlfriend, jumped into their truck and gave chase, making special ‘Bigfoot calls’ to locate the creature.

“As soon as I did it, something stood up on her side of the truck,” he said.  ”She seen the eyes glaring in the light of the truck, stood up and walked this way into the woods.”

This alleged sighting is the third time Reed said he has come into contact with the creature.

Ghosts of Galveston Texas (video)

HOUSTON — Tourists come to Galveston to enjoy the sun and sand, but the island also has a dark side. In fact, many say it’s a playground for the paranormal with supernatural sightings all year round.

Dash Beardsley, the Ghost man of Galveston, says the small stretch of land has seen more than its fair share of death, destruction and horror -- especially during the Great Storm of 1900.

Beardsley says it’s no surprise a ghost of the Great Storm haunts Luigi’s Italian Restaurant on 24th and The Strand.

“A school marm stepped right out of that front window, stood out on the ledge, reached out and grabbed people as they were floating by,” Beardsley said.

According to legend, the woman who tried to save others died on the third floor of the building. Many believe her soul is still around.

Just across the street at the Mediterranean Chef Restaurant, the falafel is fresh and the ghost sightings are frequent.

“I would never spend the night in here, I would tell you that much,” said owner Maxen Zeidan.

UFO buzzes Scotland home for five hours (video)

An Aberdeenshire family were left terrified after a UFO invaded the skies above their home for nearly five hours.

Grandmother Morag Ritchie, 50, awoke suddenly at 2am on Saturday to see strange lights circling in the distance a few hundred yards from her rural property near Fraserburgh.

In the video, taken by her daughter's fiancee, Scott Bower, a row of flickering lights can be seen hovering in the sky, before one of the lights moves off to the right and disappears.

Ritchie, who woke up her family to witness the event, said: "I saw lights in the sky and thought it was a strange looking star. When I looked closer, I realised they were moving in a spinning motion and then occasionally something shot off to the side. I kept going back to my bed but I was so unsettled that I continued waking up.

"When Scott looked at it, he was shocked; he didn’t think it was real. Even my husband, who is very sceptical, was convinced there was something strange going on."

The group ventured outside to film the paranormal object that was seen occupying the same spot for almost five hours.

Michievous ghost haunts British bistro

Although the other two members are a bit more sceptical, café bar owner Kim Hart is sure paranormal activity is afoot.

And now she is appealing for others with similar experiences or history surrounding the former Ancient House, in the Thoroughfare, Halesworth, to come forward.

Mrs Hart was told of the building’s haunted past when she took it on as The Bay Tree Bistro, Cafe and Bar in February 2010, and in more than two and half years she has seen a number of strange goings on herself.

“It made me a little bit nervous, but I’ve lived in other haunted places, so it’s not big issue,” she said.

“I did not expect it to be quite so playful. Only two times it has been scary, the rest of the time it is just mischievous.”

Mrs Hart, of Holton, said that her family have seen electrical items mysteriously turn themselves off, voices in the bar area and she saw two ghosts. Customers have also experienced strange events.

“Things in the window were swaying the other day and when we went to stop them they almost fought back,” she said.

“I’ve seen two ghosts in the kitchen. One was clearly a man, the other was when I thought my daughter was over my shoulder but when I looked around she wasn’t there, and we were the only two in the building.”

Mysterious eyeball washes ashore in Florida (video)

Taking his usual morning stroll along the surf in Pompano Beach, Gino Covacci noticed a strange ball-like object at the high tide line. He kicked it over and found himself staring at the biggest eyeball he had ever seen.

The blue, softball-sized orb he found Wednesday was a departure from the shells, cigarette butts and seaweed he usually sees. He put it in a plastic bag and put that in the refrigerator.

"It was very, very fresh," he said Thursday. "It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag."

He notified a police officer, who gave him the phone number for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. No one could say immediately what species the giant eye came from.

Wildlife officers placed the eyeball on ice. It will be preserved in formalin, a mixture of formaldehyde and water, before being sent for analysis to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, said Carli Segelson, spokeswoman for the wildlife commission.

So what creature is now swimming around with an eye patch?

Top neurosurgeon "spent 6 days in the afterlife" (video)

Dr. Eben Alexander has taught at Harvard Medical School and has earned a strong reputation as a neurosurgeon. And while Alexander says he's long called himself a Christian, he never held deeply religious beliefs or a pronounced faith in the afterlife.

But after a week in a coma during the fall of 2008, during which his neocortex ceased to function, Alexander claims he experienced a life-changing visit to the afterlife, specifically heaven.

"According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent," Alexander writes in the cover story of this week's edition of Newsweek.

So what exactly does heaven look like?

Alexander says he first found himself floating above clouds before witnessing, "transparent,
shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamer like lines behind them."

He claims to have been escorted by an unknown female companion and says he communicated with these beings through a method of correspondence that transcended language. Alexander says the messages he received from those beings loosely translated as:

"You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever."

"You have nothing to fear."

"There is nothing you can do wrong."

Mysterious boom rattles NJ neighborhood (news video)

An unexplained boom in Ocean County, NJ rattles homes and nerves. NBC10's Ted Greenberg says this isn't the first time it's happened.

Police in Manchester Township, NJ are investigating a mysterious boom that shook block after block in the Ocean County community Thursday night. Residents say it felt and sounded like an explosion.

“It was so loud that my windows were rattling" said Jayne Yereance. "I really thought the house next door blew up. That’s how bad it was.”

Residents say there have been similar incidents since the summer. Police are trying to determine if they're connected, but investigators don't yet know where the sounds are coming from or who is responsible.

There's been no damage and no one's been hurt, but many people are on edge.

Sasquatch sighting by berry picker in Canada

Two women in Nunavik had an unusual encounter while berry picking on Saturday.

Maggie Cruikshank Qingalik, who is from Akulivik, Que., said her friend saw some kind of creature out in the wilderness.

Qingalik said at first, they thought it was another person picking berries. Then they noticed it was covered in long, dark hair.

She said it was walking upright along the side of a hill, and was taking long strides. They said it would also sometimes crawl.

“We weren't sure what it was first. It is not a human being, it was really tall, and kept coming towards our direction and we could tell it was not a human,” she said.

Qingalik said the creature was 10 to 15 feet tall. Pictures posted on Facebook show the alleged footprints are 40 centimetres long.

The women said the creature didn’t appear vicious, nor did it appear interested in them.

Understandably for such a sighting, the women got scared, hopped on their ATV, and headed back to the community to warn people about what they saw.

Loren Coleman, the director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, has been studying sasquatch and Bigfoot sightings in North America for more than 50 years.

Pennsylvania witness describes 'massive, circular' UFO

A Pennsylvania witness at Phoenixville reports watching a "massive, circular craft" that seemed to change shape as it moved overhead just after midnight on October 1, 2012, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

(side-note) The 1958 science-fiction horror movie “The Blob” with Steve McQueen was filmed in Phoenixville PA.

The witness was standing in his backyard at the time when he first noticed the object.

"As it made its way into my full view, I noticed it seemed to look like a very large over-sized jet with white lights - at least three on each side - of what at first appeared to be wings, as well as red lights on the under belly of the craft," the witness stated. "As this object started to pass above me I remember thinking this plane is huge."

But then the object's shape appeared to change.

"This object appeared to change shape or the clouds moved around and away from it. The craft may have rotated or changed direction at this point, it was all so breathtaking I was just in shock of what I was seeing. I could have possibly been seeing some sort of cloaking technology."

Jane Goodall is fascinated with BIGFOOT (video)

The most famous primatologist in the world is ape about Bigfoot.

Jane Goodall made her name studying chimpanzees in Africa and by discovering that they, like humans, use tools.

Since then, she has been working to preserve their decreasing numbers via the Jane Goodall Insititute. She also admitted to an interest in the mysterious creature known as Bigfoot, Sasquatch or the Yeti.

"I'm not going to flat-out deny its existence," Goodall said during an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post before a benefit dinner in La Jolla, Calif. "I'm fascinated and would actually love them to exist.

"Of course, it's strange that there has never been a single authentic hide or hair of the Bigfoot, but I've read all the accounts."

"I've talked to so many native Americans who all describe the same sounds, two who have seen them.

 I've probably got about, oh, 30 books that have come from different parts of the world, from China from, from all over the place, and there was a little tiny snippet in the newspaper just last week which says that British scientists have found what they believed to be a yeti hair and that the scientists in the Natural History Museum in London couldn't identify it as any known animal," she told interviewer Ira Flatow.

Seattle Attorney claims to have Time Traveled

VANCOUVER, Wash. - The new Bruce Willis movie "Looper" opens this weekend, in which Willis' character is sent back in time to kill himself.

And while most scientists say time travel isn't possible, a Washington attorney claims he's done it dozens of times as part of a secret Cold War project.

"I have physically traveled in time," says Andrew Basiago, an attorney in Vancouver, Wash. "We have - we did over 40 years ago."

Now Basiago is on a mission - to reveal what he calls a 40-year government cover-up - of Project Pegasus - where he says he was teleported back and sideways in time, dozens of times.

"I have the whole story, I have hundreds of facts," he says. "I can tell you what personnel were at what locations where and which travel device was being used."

And his time travel wasn't recent - it's when he was a kid.

"I entered the program officially in the fall of 1969 as a third grader, age 7," says Basiago.

Floating Ghost photographed on the Queen Mary

A MYSTERIOUS woman floats at the end of a corridor - in a photo (below) said to depict the ghostly inhabitant of a famous cruise ship.

Spook hunter Valentina Lomborg is convinced her snapshot features the Lady in White, who has 'haunted' the Queen Mary for more than half a century

The ship was once a luxury liner, ferrying the rich and famous between London, Southampton and New York.

Retired in 1967 it's now a hotel, moored in Long Beach, Californa.

Floating hotel ... the Queen Mary was once a luxury liner

As well as a regular influx of paying guests, the hotel is rumoured to be home to a string of phantoms - including a Lady in White, who can sometimes be seen dancing in what was once the first class lounge.