Mothman

Mothman is a legendary creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia from 15 November 1966 to 15 December 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register dated 16 November 1966, entitled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something".

Mothman was introduced to a wider audience by Gray Barker in 1970,later popularized by John Keel in his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, claiming that Mothman was related to a wide array of supernatural events in the area and the collapse of the Silver Bridge. The 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies, starring Richard Gere, was based on Keel's book.

On Nov. 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette told police they saw a large white creature whose eyes "glowed red" when the car headlights picked it up. They described it as a "flying man with ten foot wings" following their car while they were driving in an area of town known as 'the TNT area', the site of a former World War II munitions plant.

During the next few days, other people reported similar sightings. Two volunteer firemen who sighted it said it was a "large bird with red eyes". Mason County Sheriff George Johnson commented that he believed the sightings were due to an unusually large heron he termed a "shitepoke". Contractor Newell Partridge told Johnson that when he aimed a flashlight at a creature in a nearby field its eyes glowed "like bicycle reflectors", and blamed buzzing noises from his television set and the disappearance of his German Shepherd dog on the creature.

Wildlife biologist Dr. Robert L. Smith at West Virginia University told reporters that descriptions and sightings all fit the Sandhill Crane, a large American crane almost as high as a man with a seven foot wingspan featuring circles of reddish coloring around the eyes, and that the bird may have wandered out of its migration route.

There were no Mothman reports in the immediate aftermath of the December 15, 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge and the death of 46 people, giving rise to legends that the Mothman sightings and the bridge collapse were connected.

Claims of later sightings

UFOlogist Jerome Clark writes that many years after the initial events, members of the Ohio UFO Investigators League re-interviewed several people who claimed to have seen Mothman, all of whom insisted their stories were accurate. Linda Scarberry claimed that she and her husband had seen Mothman "hundreds of times, " sometimes at close range, commenting, "It seems like it doesn’t want to hurt you. It just wants to communicate with you. "

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman claims that sightings of Mothman continue, and told USA Today he re-interviewed witnesses described in Keel's book who said Mothman was "a huge creature about 7 feet tall with huge wings and red eyes" and that "they could see the creature flapping right behind them" as they fled from it.

Paranormal

Some UFologists, paranormal authors, and cryptozoologists believe that Mothman was an alien, a supernatural manifestation, or an unknown cryptid. In his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, author John Keel claimed that the Point Pleasant residents experienced precognitions including premonitions of the collapse of the Silver Bridge, unidentified flying object sightings, visits from mysterious or threatening men in black, and other bizarre phenomena. However, Keel has been criticized for distorting established data, and for gullibility.

Skeptical

Skeptic Joe Nickell says that a number of hoaxes followed the publicity generated by the original reports, such as a group of construction workers who tied red flashlights to helium balloons. Nickell attributes the Mothman reports to pranks, misidentified planes, and sightings of a barred owl, an albino owl, or perhaps a large snowy owl, suggesting that the Mothman's "glowing eyes" were actually red-eye effect caused from the reflection of light from flashlights or other bright light sources. The area lies outside the snowy owl's usual range and locals, unfamiliar with such a large owl, could have misidentified the bird. 

Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand notes that Mothman has been widely covered in the popular press, some claiming sightings connected with UFOs, and others claiming that a military storage site was Mothman's "home". Brunvand notes that recountings of the 1966-67 Mothman reports usually state that at least 100 people saw Mothman with many more "afraid to report their sightings", but observed that written sources for such stories consisted of children's books or sensationalized or undocumented accounts that fail to quote identifiable persons. Brunvand found elements in common among many Mothman reports and much older folk tales, suggesting that something real may have triggered the scares and became woven with existing folklore. He also records anecdotal tales of Mothman supposedly attacking the roofs of parked cars inhabited by teenagers in lovers lanes.

Festivals and statue

Point Pleasant held its first Annual Mothman Festival in 2002 and a 12-foot-tall metallic statue of the creature, created by artist and sculptor Bob Roach, was unveiled in 2003. The Mothman Museum and Research Center opened in 2005 and is run by Jeff Wamsley.[13][14][15] The Festival is a weekend-long event held on the 3rd weekend of every September. There are a variety of events that go on during the festival such as guest speakers, vendor exhibits, and hayride tours focusing on the notable areas of Point Pleasant.

The Mothman legend centers around a horrific event that took place in Point Pleasant, West Virginia on December 15, 1967. On that cold December evening around 5pm, the U.S. Highway 35 Bridge, known as the Silver Bridge, collapsed. The Silver Bridge connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Kanauga, Ohio. Thirty-seven vehicles were on the Silver Bridge when it collapsed, sending 31 of those cars into the cold river water. Forty-six people perished and nine were seriously injured.

There are many who claim to have seen a mysterious creature that by then had come to be called the Mothman in the Point Pleasant area not far from the bridge. Many believe that this mysterious creature was involved either directly or indirectly with the bridge’s collapse. For almost thirteen months prior to the incident Point Pleasant residents claimed to have seen a man-sized bird creature. Shortly after the Silver Bridge collapsed there were a couple of sightings; then the Mothman seemed to have quietly disappeared.

The first Mothman sighting occurred in the early 1960s when a woman driving her car near the Chief Cornstalk Hunting Grounds stopped to avoid hitting what she thought was a man in the road. The figure turned to face her, its eyes glowing red from the headlights. It spread two large thin wings and took to the air.

Another sighting took place in 1965. A woman living on the banks of the Ohio River informed police her son had come in from playing and told her he had seen an angel in the yard.

A year later a doctor’s wife reported seeing what she described as a giant, thin butterfly. In November of the same year five men digging a grave reported seeing a brown human being with wings fly out of the trees.

Later that same month Mr and Mrs Scarberry and their friends the Mallettes were driving toward Point Pleasant when they saw a tall figure on the side of the road in an area known as TNT. They told officials that it stood at least seven feet tall. They also stated it had large wings folded behind its back. As they drove on the figure took to the air and flew above the car. They reported the incident to the Mason County Sheriff’s office. The Sheriff returned to the scene with the four witnesses, but although his radio acted up, nothing else was seen or heard.

The TNT area became known as the home of the Mothman. TNT is a large tract of land covered in many concrete igloos that were used to store ammunition during World War II. The TNT land tract sits adjacent to the 2,500 acre McClintic Wildlife Station. The whole area is covered in dense forest, steep hills and is riddled with tunnels, making it the perfect hideout.

Only three sightings were recorded in 1967. Then in 1968 the Mothman re-emerged with a vengeance. He was said to have been seen several times on Jericho Road. The Mothman made his last reported appearance on September 18, 1968 when several people witnessed the winged figure, again in the TNT area.

Long-time residents of Point Pleasant say that the Mothman sightings, UFO sightings and encounters with ‘men in black’ are all somehow related. Researchers, investigators and monster hunters descended on the small town.

Between 1966 and 1967, all told over 100 people stated they saw the winged Mothman. All reports had the creature standing close to seven feet tall with bat like wings that glided rather than flapped. They say the Mothman's eyes were near the top of its shoulders.

Reporter John Keel began collecting information on Mothman sightings in December of 1966. Keel compiled evidence that pointed to a problem with televisions and phones that began in the fall of 1966. Lights had been seen in the skies, particularly around the TNT plant, and cars that passed along the nearby road sometimes stalled without explanation. He and his fellow researchers also uncovered a number of short-lived poltergeist cases in the Ohio Valley area. Locked doors opened and closed by themselves, strange thumps were heard inside and outside of homes, and unexplained voices were heard in the night wind.

The James Lilley family, who lived just south of the TNT plant, were so bothered by the bizarre events that they finally sold their home and moved to another neighborhood. Keel was convinced that the incidents in the intense period of activity were all connected.

By 1969, most of the sightings had come to an end and the Mothman just faded away as quietly as he had appeared. However the Mothman’s legacy lives on in Point Pleasant. In the middle of the Gunn Park, which is in the center of Point Pleasant, stands an imposing stainless steel statue by local sculpture Robert Roach.

Every year in September the Mothman Festival is held, drawing thousands to the small community. One of the highlights of the Mothman Festival is the eerie TNT-area haunted hayride. The TNT area is literally unchanged since the Mothman sightings throughout the 1960s.

Who or what was the mysterious Mothman and what was behind the mysterious events that took place in Point Pleasant in that time period? Whatever the creature was, many historians believe that it was not a hoax. There were just far too many credible witnesses to dismiss it in this way. John Keel believed that Point Pleasant was a ‘window’, a place marked by long periods of strange incidents.

Whatever the Mothman was, he has marked his place in West Virginia’s rich and diverse history and traditions.

slit mouth

Children walking alone at night may encounter a woman wearing a surgical mask, this is not an unusual sight in Japan as people wear them to protect others from their colds or sickness. The woman will stop the child and ask, "Am I beautiful?" If the child answers no, the child is killed with a pair of scissors which the woman carries. If they answer yes, the woman pulls away the mask, revealing that her mouth is slit from ear to ear and asks "Am I beautiful now?". If the child answers no, he/she will be cut in half. If the child answers yes, then she will slit his/her mouth like hers. It is impossible to run away from her, as she will simply reappear in front of the victim. It is said she does this because of some marital issues.
When the legend reappeared in the 1970s rumors of ways to escape also emerged. When she asks you, you must say that she is pretty two times in a row, so that she will become confused and her victim can escape while she is lost in thought. Some sources say she can also be confused by answering her question with, rather than yes or no, "You are average." Unsure of what to do, she will give you enough time to escape. Another escape route is to tell her you have a previous engagement; she will pardon her manners and excuse herself from your presence. In some variations of the tale, she can be distracted by throwing fruit or sweets at her which she will pick up, thus giving the victim a chance to run. One other way is to ask her if you are pretty; she will get confused and leave.

In Japanese mythology, Kuchisake-onna ("Slit-Mouthed Woman") is a woman who is mutilated by a jealous husband and returns as a malicious spirit. When rumors of alleged sightings began spreading in 1979, it spread throughout Japan and caused panic in many towns. There are even reports of schools allowing children to go home only in groups escorted by teachers for safety, and of police increasing their patrols.

Wedding and a funeral

A happy occasion, the Grand daughter is about to get married, everyone is delighted and finalising all of the details when suddenly two days before the wedding the grandfather dies. The granddaughter is beside herself in grief and thinks about cancelling the wedding, but then she has a wonderful idea.

Move forward to the day of the wedding, the beautiful bride waltz down the aisle, and big smile on her face, behind her, the open casket of her dead grandfather is wheeled down with her. the groom wants to make the bride happy, but at what cost? he decides to allow this to happen and the morbid wedding continues.

******
This legend is actually true, in April of 2003, in the country of New Zeland this actually happened.

I guess once you RSVP to a wedding, you just can't take it back!

Poodles with noodles

An American couple go on vacation to china. they take their small poodle with them as they go. while there they ask around for a good restaurant to go to, they are given the name of a very reputable establishment with wonderful food.

they go there that night, but since they don't have anyone to take care of their dog, they decide to take the poodle along with them. when they get there they ask the waitress to take care of their dog while they eat, and if possible to give the dog something to eat too. they do this by a serious of gestures since they don't speak any English. after a couple of minutes the waitress seems to understand and take the poodle with her.

Their meal takes a long time to come out, but they are having wine, and enjoying themselves so they don't worry. finally their food comes out and it is the best meal they have ever had. they stuff themselves happily.

at the end the husband asks what kind of meat they had, since they want to have it again, the waitress smiles, and gives him the poodles empty leash as a response.....


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Don't worry, this Urban legend is false, although countries like Hong Kong and China do eat dogs and cats, they don't work on a bring your own meat to dinner basis. they also have a very clear distinction between animals raised for food, and animals raised for pets.

a mystery book

The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich manuscript just might be the most unreadable book in the world. The 500-year-old relic was disocvered in 1912 at a library in Rome and consists of 240 pages of illustrations and writing in a language not known to anyone. Deciphering the text has eluded even the best cryptographers, leading some to dismiss the book as an entertaining but lengthy hoax. But a statistical analysis of the writing shows that the manuscript does seem to follow the basic structure and laws of a working language.

John Baez

January 30, 2005

The Voynich manuscript is the most mysterious of all texts. It is seven by ten inches in size, and about 200 pages long. It is made of soft, light-brown vellum. It is written in a flowing cursive script in alphabet that has never been seen elsewhere. Nobody knows what it means. During World War II some of the top military code-breakers in America tried to decipher it, but failed. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania seems to have gone insane trying to figure it out. Though the manuscript was found in Italy, statistical analyses show the text is completely different in character from any European language. Here's a sample page:

It contains pictures of various things, including plants, stars...

... and most strangely of all, nude maidens bathing in what looks like some very elaborate plumbing:

An interesting puzzle, no? Let me tell you a bit more about it.

Its recent history

It seems that in 1912, the book collector Wilfrid M. Voynich found this manuscript in a chest in the Jesuit College at the Villa Mondragone, in Frascati. He bought it from the Jesuits, and gave photographic copies to a number of experts to have it deciphered. None of them succeeded. In 1961, he sold it to a rare book expert in New York named H. P. Kraus for the price of $24,500. Kraus later tried to sell it for $160,000, but could not find a buyer. In 1969, he donated it to Yale University. It is now in the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale, with catalogue number MS 408. They say it's "very likely" that the book was given to Emperor Rudolph II of the Holy Roman Emperor by British astrologer John Dee... and indeed, that's one theory, but it's far from certain. The story of the Voynich is long and complicated.

Its earlier history

When Voynich found the manuscript, there was a letter in it!

The letter was written by Johannes Marcus Marci of Cronland, and addressed to Athanasius Kircher. It is dated 1666. It says that the manuscript was bought by Emperor Rudolph II for the princely sum of 600 ducats. In flattering language, Marci asks Kircher to attempt to decipher the manuscript. He mentions Roger Bacon as a possible author, although there is no clear evidence for this.

If you don't know these figures, you probably don't realize how interesting this is. Who are these guys, anyway?

Emperor Rudolph II

Rudolph II (1552-1612) was an emperor of the Holy Roman Empire - which by that time was neither holy, Roman, nor even much of an empire. He moved the imperial court from Vienna to a castle in Prague, in what was then Bohemia. He buried himself in esoteric studies: alchemy, astrology... magico-scientific disciplines of all sorts. Prague became a center for everyone interested in such matters: the infamous British magician John Dee and his henchman Edward Kelley, the monk Giordano Bruno (later burned at the stake for heresy), and even a pair of astrologers by the names of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Rudolph II kept a room of curiosities, the Kunstkammer, full of alchemical manuscripts, rhinoceros horns, exotic minerals, scientific instruments, and the like.

In short: the perfect person to buy something like the Voynich Manuscript!

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher (~1601 - 1680) was one of the most learned men of his day. He developed an instrument for measuring the magnetic force of the earth, a device for measuring wind speeds, and he designed and built sundials. He studied earthquakes and volcanos. He was an expert on oriental languages, and translated the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, an Arabic alchemical work, into Latin. He also wrote some very popular books on Egyptian antiquities and hieroglyphs. He was the first to correctly conjecture that Coptic was derived from ancient Egyptian. He even received a large gift from the Pope for translating the hieroglyphs on an Egyptian obelisk! When the Rosetta stone was found, quite a bit later, this translation was found to be completely inaccurate. However, during his lifetime he had a reputation for being able to read any text.

In short: the perfect person to decode the Voynich Manuscript!

Roger Bacon

Roger Bacon (1214-1294) was a Franciscan friar and an early advocate of the experimental method. He worked on optics, and at the request of Pope Clement IV he wrote a series of books which amounted to an encyclopedia of science. He also worked on alchemy. He kept much of his work secret from his fellow Franciscans, but nonetheless, in 1278 they imprisoned him on the charge of "suspected novelties" in his teaching. In his Letter on the Secret Works of Art and the Nullity of Magic, he wrote "The man is insane who writes a secret in any other way than one which will conceal it from the vulgar and make it intelligible only with difficulty even to scientific men and earnest students.... Certain persons have achieved concealment by means of letters not then used by their own race or others but arbitrarily invented by themselves."

In short: the perfect person to have written the Voynich Manuscript!

But the story is not so simple....

(To be continued.)

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References

The best books to read on the Voynich manuscript are these:

• Mary E. D'Imperio, The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma, National Security Agency, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, 1978. Reprinted by Aegean Park Press, Laguna Hills, California, c. 1980.
• Robert S. Brumbaugh, The World's Most Mysterious Manuscript, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1977. Also Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1978. (This seems to be out of print.)
• Gary Kennedy and Rob Churchill, The Voynich Manuscript, Orion Press, 2004.

There are also some excellent websites. However, there's a lot of turnover in these Voynich sites, because nobody can afford to pursue Voynichology as a full-time occupation. If you see a good new site, or find that some of the ones listed here have moved or dissappeared, let me know. You can also see lots of images on Google.

• Jorge Stolfi's Voynich page. Right now this is the master site that takes you to all other Voynich websites!
• Rene Zandbergen's Voynich page. Full of interesting information.
• The Voynich Manuscript Mailing List Headquarters. Run by Jim Gillogly, this has archives of the mailing list where experts discuss the Voynich manuscript - and information on how to subscribe!
• Jim Reeds' Voynich page. This contains a lot of information - in particular, a detailed Voynich bibliography. Both of these are essential reading for the would-be Voynichologist.
• Jim Gillogly's Voynich ftp site. This contains a transcription by Mary Imperio of a large part of the manuscript, Voynich fonts for the PC, and much much more. (Jim Gillogly's ftp site is now defunct, so these links actually take you to Jorge Stolfi's mirror site.)
• World Mysteries: Voynich manuscript webpage. A nice summary of the mystery, with pictures.
• The actual Voynich manuscript. To see the actual thing, you have to go to the Beinecke rare book and manuscript library at Yale; this website gives information on how to do it. You can also purchase a black-and-white photocopy of the manuscript from them! I have one. Yale doesn't make it terribly easy. At present, I think it's much better to buy a color edition...
• The next best thing. You can buy a beautiful French coffee-table edition of the Voynich mansucript from Amazon.fr. It's called Le Code Voynich.

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Within that awful volume lies the mystery of mysteries! - Sir Walter Scott

© 2005 John Baez
baez@math.removethis.ucr.andthis.edu

******************************************

The Viynich Manuscript decoded?

http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_decoded/index.php

give examples to show that the code used in the Voynich Manuscript is probably a series of Italian word anagrams written in a fancy embellished script. This code, that has been confusing scholars for nearly a century, is therefore not as complicated as it first appears.

All attempts over the past century to decode this mysterious manuscript have met with failure. This is probably due to the initial error made by Voynich and his followers attributing the authorship of the manuscript to Roger Bacon, the 13th century British scientist, monk and scholar. As I showed in a previous paper on my Website, The Voynich Manuscript, was the author left handed?, Roger Bacon could not have written this manuscript and I suggested that a young (around 8 to 10 years old) Leonardo da Vinci was a likely author. Using this premise I proceeded to consider what would be required to decode this manuscript and reached the following conclusions:

1. Determine the language used in writing the manuscript
2. Correlate the Voynich alphabet with the modern English alphabet
3. Decipher the code

If Leonardo da Vinci was the author of the VM, he would have used the language of Dante, i.e. medieval Italian, so I have assumed the VM language to be Italian. I initially used Rene Zandbergen’s basic EVA characters(i) as a starting point to correlate the VM letters with the English alphabet, while taking into account that the Italian alphabet only uses 21 letters. Later in my studies I had to modify some of the EVA correlations. As the best code breakers, using powerful computers, were unable to decipher the code, it did not appear likely that I could break the code. I am however addicted of solving Jumbles and playing Text Twist and this made me consider a different approach. When I examined the VM script, I noticed that there were very few corrections, and the writing, though slow, had the appearance of easy fluidity. A complicated code would require making a preliminary copy using for example a slate for a scratch pad. Paper was expensive in the 15th century. To produce a 200 page manuscript under these conditions would be a very tedious task. The encoding must have been simple, easy and direct. Gordon Rugg(ii) has suggested that the VM is nothing but a meaningless jumble of letters! I wondered whether he was not correct, with one modification, only the individual words were jumbled, i.e. anagrams. I was further encouraged when looking at the last page, Folio 116v of the VM to find that the top line on this page is:

The Italian alphabet does not use the letter X. Leonardo used this letter as shorthand for ver.(iii) This line may be interpreted as follows:

Povere leter rimon mist(e) ispero

Which translates into English as follows:

Plain letter reassemble mixed inspire

This brief sentence indicated that the use of anagrams should be investigated. This was further supported by reading Wikipedia’s report that anagrams were popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and that some 17th century astronomers, while engaged in verification of their discoveries, used anagrams to hide their ideas. Thus Galileo announced his discovery that Venus had phases like the Moon in the form of an anagram. Similarly Robert Hooke in 1660 first published Hooke’s Law in the form of an anagram.

Word anagrams do not always offer a unique solution and an exact collelation between the EVA characters and the English alphabet has not been established, therefore, to test this ‘anagram hypothesis’ as precisely as possible, I used the single words found on many of the herbal pages. Most of these drawings are so poor that the author of the manuscript obviously considered it necessary to identify the roots/plants with names. I therefore used these single words to help modify the EVA alphabet (shown below) based on the plant/root name obtained from the subsequent translated Italian anagram. This resulted for the most part in a usable correspondence between the VM and English alphabets which when once established was used for deciphering all subsequent anagrams. I quibble a little here for at this time I have not been able to identify all the 21 letters of the VM Italian alphabet (j,k,w,x, and y excluded). The letters H, Q, Z and a single T have not been identified and there may also be some letter combinations like that used for tl that need to be identified. The ll combination may represent either one or two l’s. Letters like o and a, when they occur at the end of a word, have a tail and can easily be confused with a g, which has a curved tail. Other letters like m,n,r and u, when they occur at the end of a word have a curlicue. It is difficult to interpret words that have a number of c’s and e’s. These anagrams are best solved by trial and error. The letters I used from the VM and their English equivalent are shown in the table below:

Using this basic alphabet I have identified a number of plants, herbs and vegetables from the herbal pages. I was not able to decipher all the words, due no doubt to the fact that many of the plants around 500-plus years ago probably had common names that have since fallen into disuse. In addition modification in the spelling of some words may have occurred making it difficult for someone like myself, who does not read or speak Italian, to decipher these words.

Iused an Internet site, ‘Italian Anagram Dictionary,’ to help me unscramble the words and translate the anagrams into English. The book ‘The Botanical Gardens of Padua 1545-1995’(iv) helped identify some of the common names used for plants in Italy in the 16th century. You can judge from the examples given below, whether this Anagram Code has been successful deciphering this limited selection from the Voynich Manuscript. I hope some of you who read medieval Italian will help decipher more of the manuscript so we can finally learn the mysteries, if any, that this manuscript is hiding.

When I gave this manuscript a final reading, I suddenly remembered that Dan Brown in his book ‘The Da Vinci Code’ made use of anagrams. It will be ironic if Leonardo da Vinci is established as the author of the Voynich Manuscript and it is accepted that he used anagrams for his code. I doubt however that the Voynich Manuscript will have much to say about Mary Magdelene or the Priory of Sion, but that remains to be seen.

The pages that follow contain sections of the Voynich Manuscript with words that have been decoded using the anagram method. The first line of typed text above the Voynich handwritten text is the modern English interpretation of the letters. The second line is an Italian anagram of these letters. The third line is the anagram translated into English.

An alien planet may have life

A newly discovered alien planet may be one of the top contenders to support life beyond Earth, researchers say.

The newfound world, a "super Earth" called Gliese 163c, lies at the edge of its star'shabitable zone — that just-right range of distances where liquid water could exist.

"There are a wide range of structures and compositions that allow Gliese 163c to be ahabitable planet," Xavier Bonfils, of France's Joseph Fourier University-Grenoble, told SPACE.com by email.

A newfound super Earth

Bonfils and an international team of astronomers studied nearly 400 red dwarf stars with the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a spectograph on the 3.6-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Gliese 163c was one of two alien planets found orbiting the star Gliese 163, which lies about 50 light-years from Earth in the Dorado constellation The team found indications of a third planet as well but cannot confirm it at this time.

Weighing in at about seven times the mass of Earth, Gliese 163c could be a rocky planet, or it could be a dwarfed gas giant, researchers said.

"We do not know for sure that it is a terrestrial planet," Bonfils said. "Planets of that mass regime can be terrestrial, ocean, or Neptune-like planets."

Orbiting at the inner edge of the habitable zone, Gliese 163c takes 26 days to zip around its parent star, which is considerably dimmer than our sun. The second planet, Gliese 163b, has an orbital period of only nine days, while the third unconfirmed planet circles from a distance.

Bonfils pointed out that there is about a 2 percent chance that Gliese 163c might pass between its star and the sun from Earth's perspective. If so, scientists may be able to glean more information about the distant planet by watching it cross the face of its host star.

The research has been submitted for review and publication.

A good candidate for life

The Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo keeps a catalog of the alien worlds it considers good candidates to host life. The newly discovered Gliese 163c ranks fifth on the list.

"We are finding more potentially habitable planets now than before," PHL's Abel Mendez, who was not part of the Gliese 163c discovery team, told SPACE.com by email..

Out of the six planets on PHL's list, four have been found in the last year alone — Kepler-22b, Gliese 667Cc, HD 85512b, and, of course, Gliese 163c.

"Most of these are relatively close, so we can expect to find better and closer ones as our technological sensitivity to Earth-size planets improves," Mendez said.

To rank habitable planets, Mendez and his colleagues at PHL compare them with the only planet known to host life. They rank the worlds according to how similarly their masses, diameters and temperatures match up with those of Earth.
Temperatures of alien planets are tough for researchers to estimate. Temperature is heavily influenced by atmospheric characteristics, and scientists don't know much about most exoplanets' atmospheres.
Mendez suggested that one scenario for Gliese 163c might include a balmy ocean with an atmosphere 10 times as dense as Earth's. The global ocean might slosh beneath a pink, cloud-covered sky. At around 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius), the temperature would be too hot for prolonged human exposure or complex plants or animals, but some microbes could tolerate it.
But it's also possible that Gliese 163c is too hot for even those hardy lifeforms to exist.
In the meantime, Bonfils and his team intend to use HARPS to continue their search for planets that could be ripe for life, hoping to find one that may allow astronomers to study it today rather than tomorrow.
"Although it is nice to build the sample of possibly habitable planets that will be observed with the next generation of telescopes, it would be even better if we could find a planet one could characterize with today's observatories," Bonfils said.
This story was provided by SPACE.com, a sister site to LiveScience. 

asian Urban legends

Aka manto (red cape)

A woman enters a public bathroom, after clarifying that she is alone she enters the third stall. suddenly a man asks her if she wants the red paper or the blue paper. she smiles to her self thinking its some kind of joke and says "I'll have the red paper" a loud scream shatters the other wise empty bathroom.

The police are called in, when they arrive they find the woman has been sliced into long thin slices giving the appearance of red paper.

Legend:

Aka Manto was a a very handsome man, due to it he found himself not being able to live in peace and has somehow transformed into an evil ghost who prays on women. he wears a red cape and a mask to hide his beautiful face.

Why he kills is not clear, what is clear is that the legend goes that if you try to trick him, things will only get worse. for example if you say yellow paper you might be drowned on the toilet you just finished using, if you answer blue, you will be strangled until your face turns blue. some legends say that he drain your blood until you turn blue.

the only way to survive is to say "no paper" at which point he will leave you alone. you just better hope there is actually is toilet paper in the stall you are in to avoid other problems.

Teke-Teke

is actually a Japanese Urban legend

A young boy is walking home one night when he spots a young girl looking at him across a railway. she smiles at him asks him to come over. mesmerised by her face he does not realise her lower torso is missing until he is only a few a feet away from her. at which point she screams and with a hidden scythe cuts him in half.

Legend

Teke Teke is a legend about a girl who was playing on a railway track, an oncoming train cuts her in half. now a vengeful spirit she lurks the railways to try and find the bottom torso that belongs to her, if she can't find she will take yours.

another side of the story claims that the only way to avoid getting cut in half is to tell her that her legs are in Meishin railway if she asks how you know this, tell her Keshima Reiko told you.

Nopperabou (no face)

a lazy fisherman has decided to go fishing in a forbidden pond. his wife tells him not to do it, for the pond is by a cemetery. as he does not want to row for too long he decides to go anyway. on his way there he is met by a fisherman who warns him not to got here, the lazy fisherman laughs at him and keeps on going, when he gets there he encounters a beautiful girl who begs him not to fish there, he waves his hand, takes his fishing rig and begins to fish the young girl calls to him, and when he turns around she wipes her face off.

Horrified he runs home where his wife comes to him trying to comfort him, before wiping her own face off as well.

Legend.

Nopperabou are ghost that will always resemble people first before becoming a no face ghost, they are not harmful, they only mean to make you scared and teach you a lesson.

Ghost children

It was late at night when a woman was driving down an old unfamiliar road. on the side of the road she saw a small child walking on her own, concerned for her safety she stopped and offer to drive the child home, the child only nodded and pointed the direction towards her home.

The woman tried to make conversation but the child only whispered her name and stayed silent the entire ride. "well, Peggy sue, you should put on your sit belt" said the kind woman, the child obeyed without uttering another word.

When the woman finally reached the house, she decided to enter it alone, thinking that perhaps a disgruntle parent was the cause of the solitary child walking in the night. she rang the bell and tried to explain to the woman who answered the door that she had her child in the car. the woman began to shout uncontrollably, that "Peggy sue must be left to rest in peace" and closed the door.

The woman was baffled and scared as she walked back to the car, only to find the car empty, the seat belt still locked as the child had left it.

It was a scary story, but it was even scarrier when the woman found out that Peggy sue had been one of ten kids who had died in a bus crash when the bus stalled in a rail way and was subsequently hit by an oncoming train moments later.

The Ghost of Virginia Rappe

Not many people know who Virginia Rappe is, or rather who she was. Her story has been lost among the thousands of sad puppy eye women who flock to Hollywood every year. which is why I am telling her story, so that others may know, and respect the lost. 

Virginia Rappe was born to Mabel Rappe, a woman who died when Virginia was only eleven years old. after only three years of being in the care of her grandmother, Virginia ran away for the stardom and glitz of Hollywood. She was a model for some time, in which time she met Robert moscobitz and became engaged to him. sadly the affair did not last long since he died in a car crash some time later. 

In early 1917 she was hired by director Fred Balshofer and given a prominent role in his Paradise Garden opposite popular screen star Harold Lockwood.In 1919, she began a relationship with director/producer Henry Lehrman; the two eventually became engaged. She appeared in at least four films for Lehrman: His Musical Sneeze, A Twilight Baby, Punch of the Irish and Game Lady.

She had found love, and had become a star, all of her dreams where coming true. until labor day 1921 when she attended a party at the St. Francis Hotel. Many whitness have claimed to have seen Virginia and actor  Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle enter room 1219 that night. sadly only one of them came back out alife. 

According to the trial records, virginia died of an erupted bladder. a fact that was greatly emphasised during the trial since they claimed that it had been Virginia's lust and sexual appetite that killed her, and not Harold Lockwood (who was accused of violently raping her until her bladder bursts.) 

Harold was acquitted after three trials, in each of them Virginia was accused of prostitution, abortions, and wild sexual allegations. so on the third one it is to no surprise that Harold was acquitted by a jury of his peers. 

To this day visitors at Hollywood forever cemetery claim to see the ghost of Virginia Rappe crying on her grave site. perhaps she cries for the injustice, perhaps she cries for the son she had once given up into adoption, or for her mutilated reputation that Hollywood lawyers slaughtered as if her murder had not been enough. Whatever the case, Karma took its own revenge on the screens Star Roscoe "fatty" Arbuckle, since he went from being the first actor to be paid a million dollars, to being an untouchable in Hollywood. serves him right.