Rain of Frogs

[segovius]

My last attempt at keeping away from religion and politics failed so I am going with my last remaining obsession: Fortean phenomena.

Reports are coming in of a shower of frogs in Serbia.

Belgrade - Thousands of tiny frogs rained on a town in northwestern Serbia, Belgrade daily Blic reported on Tuesday.

Strong winds brought storm clouds over Odzaci, 120km north-west of Belgrade, on Sunday afternoon, but instead of rain, down came the tiny amphibians, witnesses said.

"I saw countless frogs fall from the sky," said Odzaci resident Aleksandar Ciric.

The frogs, different from those usually seen in the area, survived the fall and hopped around in search of water.

Belgrade climatologist Slavisa Ignjatovic described the phenomenon as "not very unusual".

"A wind resembling a tornado can suck in anything light enough from the surface or shallow water. Usually it is just dust, but sometimes also larger objects," Ignjatovic told Blic. - Sapa-dpa

This is perhaps the archetypal Fortean motif and it hs been a while since it has manifested. Good to see it back - clearly Fortean events such as this are 'Biblical' in nature and real occurrences of these phenomena may even have provided the impetus for the ancient myths.

Good also to see the archetypal 'scientist' explaining it all away with wave of his scientific (not magic) wand. ,The antidote to this type of non-thinking is simply to read Chrales Fort's own writings on the subject.

Of all the incredibilities that we have to choose from, I give first place to a notion of a whirlwind pouncing upon a region and scrupulously selecting a turtle and a piece of alabaster. This time, the other mechanical thing `there in the first place' can not rise in response to its stimulus: it is resisted in that these objects were [86/87] coated with ice--month of May in a southern state. If a whirlwind at all, there must have been very limited selection: there is no record of the fall of other objects. But there is no attempt in the Review to specify a whirlwind.

Even arguing that a whirlwind may stand still axially, it discharges tangentially. Wherever the fishes came from it does not seem thinkable that some could have fallen and that others could have whirled even a tenth of a minute, then falling directly after the first to fall. Because of these evil circumstances the best adaptation was to laugh the whole thing off and say that some one had soused some one else with a pailful of water, in which a few "very young minnows" had been caught up.

I remember when I was young a fall of walnuts which was localised in a neighbour's garden and twice we awoke to find the exterior of the house, lawn and balconies covered with red dust from the Sahara (or so they say - those were whirlwinds too allegedly).

Fort has other accounts which would seem to preclude this whirlwind theory - which is shaky at best - antique Chinese seals (Ming) falling over Ireland, all in pristine condition.

Something's going on up there.

[addabox]

Apolitical? Nice try.

You clearly intend for us to consider the "Reign of Frogs", being the ascendancy of a cabal of cold-blooded would-be princes who won't be happy until we all "croak".

Why do you hate freedom?

[Powerdoc]

Bring an army of frenchmen, and the frogs will be erased. At least the french army is good at something

[sunilraman]

Originally posted by addabox
Apolitical? Nice try.

You clearly intend for us to consider the "Reign of Frogs", being the ascendancy of a cabal of cold-blooded would-be princes who won't be happy until we all "croak".

Why do you hate freedom?

ROFLMAO.

btw, what is the..... what is the word... damn... too... much... drugs... sex... rock and roll...

epistimeology?

meaning, what are the origins of the word Fortean? see, good excuse for you (segovius) to make another attempt at apolitical-ness

[shetline]

Originally posted by addabox
Apolitical? Nice try.

You clearly intend for us to consider the "Reign of Frogs", being the ascendancy of a cabal of cold-blooded would-be princes who won't be happy until we all "croak".

Why do you hate freedom?

I for one welcome our new amphibian overlords.

(Somebody had to say it. )

[segovius]

Originally posted by sunilraman
ROFLMAO.

btw, what is the..... what is the word... damn... too... much... drugs... sex... rock and roll...

epistimeology?

meaning, what are the origins of the word Fortean? see, good excuse for you (segovius) to make another attempt at apolitical-ness

American writer Charles Fort.

As in Fortean Times.

[Splinemodel]

Originally posted by Powerdoc
Bring an army of frenchmen, and the frogs will be erased. At least the french army is good at something

Best post of the month.

[AquaMac]

Why do people wast brain power on this stuff? What a waste.

[segovius]

Originally posted by AquaMac
Why do people wast brain power on this stuff? What a waste.

It's like Fats Waller said about jazz - if I have to explain it it means you'll never understand it.

Move long - it's not for you.....

[Xool]

The subject of the thread just made me think of Magnolia.

[Gene Clean]

Originally posted by segovius
It's like Fats Waller said about jazz - if I have to explain it it means you'll never understand it.

That's fucking brilliant.

[MACchine]

Somebody should document where these happen frequently and check the prevailing winds and other winds ...



... to see if they can identify a common place of origin.


Aphids and Lady Bugs come down from the mountains they even decide when to stop floating on the winds.

Maybe tree frogs do the same thing but because of their size come down early in a rain.

These guys have videos of all kinds of flying animals like snakes and ants !!!
http://www.livescience.com/



When steak burgers and BIG filet mignon steaks fall out of the sky, that is when I get pretty excited !!!



http://paranormal.about.com/cs/earth...a/aa042604.htm

• Harrisonville, Ohio, 1901 - The stone attack on this small village began on the Sunday afternoon of October 13 when, as the Buffalo Express reported, "a small boulder came crashing through the window of Zach Dye's house." No culprit could be found around the isolated house... and this was just the beginning. The next day, dozens of stones rained down in the heart of the village, breaking windows and striking citizens. Were mischievous kids to blame? The next day, all of the male children of the village were gathered together (how could girls do such a thing?), and stones fell for a third day. None of the villagers could detect where the stones were coming from.

• Marcinelle, Belgium, 1913 - For four days in January one house was besieged by an invisible stone thrower with remarkable accuracy. Police officers began to watch the house in an attempt to catch the vandal, but one wrote in his report: "I have seen a stone arriving in the middle of a large window-pane and then came others in spiral round the first point of impact.... I even saw, in another window, a projectile caught in the fragments of the glass of the first hole it made, and subsequently ejected by another passing through the same point." No stone-thrower was ever seen, although an estimated 300 stones struck the house.

Ardeche, France, 1921 - Most of these events are short-lived, lasting only a few days at most. But beginning in September, a farmhouse in France was victimized for four months. The stones dropped at all hours of the day, sometimes striking the family's children and a clergyman who was called in to investigate. In this case, apples were also thrown and, again, with inhuman accuracy: apples came speeding in through small holes in the shudders made by previous apples.

Sumatra, 1928 - One of the most astonishing cases was experienced and reported by the renowned paranormal investigator Ivan T. Sanderson. While sitting on the veranda of an estate house as a guest one evening, a shiny black pebble dropped onto the veranda out of nowhere. Dozens more followed. Sanderson, who was familiar with the phenomenon, tried an experiment. He ordered the stones gathered up and marked with chalk, paint or whatever else could be used. They then threw the stones back out randomly into the garden and shrubbery. "We must have thrown over a dozen such marked stones," Sanderson wrote. "Within a minute they were all back! Nobody, with a powerful flashlight or super-eyesight, could have found those little stones in that tangled mess... and thrown them back on to the veranda. Yet, they came back, all duly marked by us!"

Brooklyn, Wellington, New Zealand, 1963 - Stones and apples are one thing, but what about money? Why would a vandal throw money? On March 24, a guest house was inexplicably battered by a hail of stones and a few coins. Police were called and unsuccessfully searched for the perpetrator of the assault, which lasted for seven hours. Windows were smashed and people were struck, but none injured. The coins included New Zealand pennies and a large copper coin. The mysterious attack occurred again for two more nights, then stopped.

Arizona, 1983 - The attack on the Berkbigler family began in September, just as they moved into their new home. Large rocks crashed down on the house every night, usually between the hours of 5:30 and 7:00 p.m. The local sheriff's department could determine no assailant, even with helicopter surveillance. The authorities became reluctant to visit the Berkbigler home when they too were struck by the falling rocks. This went on for weeks, culminating on December 4 while two newspaper reporters were interviewing the family. Rocks slammed into the side door of the house for two hours. What's most mysterious here is that to strike this door, the rocks had to pass through the garage where a van was parked, through a narrow two-foot space.


http://www.global-conspiracies.com/weird_weird_rain.htm

A powerful whirlwind might explain a rain of small fish, but it cannot account for the ones that fell on a village in India. As many as 10 people reported picking up fish that weighed as much as eight pounds that had come crashing down on them.

The American Journal of Science confirmed a shower of blood, fat and muscle tissue that fell on a tobacco farm near Lebanon, Tennessee in August, 1841. Field workers, who actually experienced this weird shower, said they heard a rattling noise and saw "drops of blood, as they supposed...fell from a red cloud which was flying over."

In 1881, a thunderstorm in Worcester, England, brought down tons of periwinkles and hermit crabs.

In November, 1996, a town in southern Tasmania was slimed! Several residents woke up on a Sunday morning after a night of violent thunderstorms to find a strange, white-clear jelly-like substance on their property. Apparently, it had rained either fish eggs or baby jellyfish.

A Korean fisherman, trolling off the coast of the Falkland Islands, was knocked unconscious by a single frozen squid that fell from the sky and konked him on the head.

From about 1982 to 1986, kernels of corn have rained down on several houses in Evans, Colorado - tons of it, according to Gary Bryan, one of the residents. Oddly, there were no cornfields in the area that might account for the phenomenon.

In August, 2001, the Wichita, Kansas area experienced an unexplained rain of corn husks. The news report stated that "thousands of dried corn leaves fell over east Wichita - from about Central Avenue to 37th Street North, along Woodlawn Boulevard and on east - each about 20 to 30 inches long."

In 1877, several one-foot-long alligators fell on J. L. Smith's farm in South Carolina. They landed, unharmed, and started crawling around, reported The New York Times.

Sometime around 1990, a Japanese fishing boat was sunk in the Sea of Okhotsk off the eastern coast of Siberia by a falling cow. When the crew of the wrecked ship were fished from the water, they told authorities that they had seen several cows falling from the sky, and that one of them crashed straight through the deck and hull. At first, the story goes, the fishermen were arrested for trying to perpetrate an insurance fraud, but were released when their story was verified. It seems that a Russian transport plane carrying stolen cattle was flying overhead. When the movement of the herd within the plane threw it off balance, the plane's crew, to avoid crashing, opened the loading bay at the tail of the aircraft and drove them out to fall into the water below. True story or hoax? One investigation traced the story back to a Russian television comedy series.


Bodies that don't decay ...
http://paranormal.about.com/gi/dynam...ette_intro.htm


http://paranormal.about.com/cs/earth...aa092203_2.htm
"Canadian weather historian David Phillips tells of a tornado that picked up a baby girl from the buggy of an Uren, Saskatchewan, family in 1923. After a 10-hour search, the girl was found asleep in a shack two miles from the point where the buggy had been upset."
If you thought the flying cow in the movie Twister was just over-the-top Hollywood special effects imagination, read this amazing story: During an 1899 F4 tornado in Missouri, "three people, Miss Moorehouse, Mrs. Webster, and her son were caught up in the storm and carried nearly one-quarter mile. They were let down so gently that none of the three was seriously injured. Moorehouse described her incredible flight: 'I was conscious all the time I was flying through the air, and it seemed a long time. I seemed to be lifted up and whirled round and round, going up to a great height, at one time far above the church steeples, and seemed to be carried a long distance... As I was going through the air being whirled about at the sport of the storm, I saw a horse soaring and rotating about with me. It was a white horse and had a harness on. By the way it kicked and struggled as it was hurled about I knew it was alive. I prayed God that the horse might not come in contact with me, and it did not. I was mercifully landed upon the Earth unharmed, saved by a miracle."


http://paranormal.about.com/cs/timet...aa052603_2.htm
Putre, Chile, 1977 - At 3:50 a.m. on April 24, during army training exercises, a guard saw two fuzzy violet lights descending from the mountain and heading their way. At 4:15 a.m., Corporal Armando Valdez set out into the dark to investigate them. He returned 15 minutes later, but from the opposite direction in which he set out. He seemed to be in a kind of trance, muttering, "You do not know who we are or where we come from." Inexplicably, the corporal had several days growth of beard, and his watch had stopped at 4:15 - but showed a date of April 30!


Somerset, England, 1974 - On July 28, Peter Williamson was having a barbecue in his backyard garden, which was interrupted by a heavy electrical storm. His dog, spooked by the threatening atmosphere, cowered under a tree. Peter went to rescue the animal. There was a bright flash - and Peter vanished into thin air! Police were called and a thorough investigation and search were conducted, without success. At 8 a.m., three days later, Peter was found in some nearby bushes with one foot in a pond - as if he had just appeared there out of nowhere.