EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Brookfield Demon Murder

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Brookfield, CT - On February 16, 1981 the 193-year old town of Brookfield, CT experienced its first murder when 19-year old Arne Johnson stabbed his landlord Alan Bono five times in the chest with a pocket knife. But that wasn’t the only precedent the act would set. In late October, facing a charge of manslaughter Johnson’s defense entered the plea of Not Guilty - by reason of demonic possession.

Roughly a year earlier, Ed and Lorraine Warren came to visit. You might remember them as the subjects of the recent film The Conjuring or nearly any made-for-TV program about ghosts or the paranormal in the late 1980’s / early 1990’s. Johnson’s girlfriend (Debbie Glatzel)’s 11-year old brother David Glatzel was being looked at for demonic possession. The Warrens swore it was a genuine case, though it seems they never met a paranormal case they didn’t love. But, it seemed the exorcism didn’t take. After Catholic priests presided over the boy, the infernal infection apparently remained. Arne, never particularly close to David, took the initiative to call upon the demons to leave the boy’s body and enter his own. Martin Minnella, Johnson’s lawyer argued that they did just that.

That decision turned the case into a national sideshow.

Minnella had “tapes” (audio or video is unrevealed) of the exorcism. Minnella still claims 34 years later that young David Glatzel spoke “the names of 42 demons in Latin, and that the Brookfield Police Chief was going to testify that he saw the child levitate”.

Minnella claimed that ‘demonic possession’ wasn’t synonymous with ‘insanity’, he was out to prove that demons exist. The Warrens also never seem to have met a camera they didn’t love and embraced their potential role as star witnesses. Minnella was prepared to have the Warrens testify to the existence of demons, and to produce the recordings of the exorcism including Johnson’s “challenge” to the demons but the plea was rejected by the court and the more conventional plea of self-defence was entered in its place.

The entire stabbing incident was found to be due to Bono’s having made an obscene remark about Debbie Glatzel’s dress, which Johnson took exception to. The two argued, things escalated, Bono wound up dead. Johnson was found guilty and served five years in prison.

The event gained colossal levels of media attention at the time and became known as “the devil made me do it case”. It even spawned a 1983 made-for-TV movie starring Kevin Bacon called The Demon Murder Case. It isn’t great. It’s no ‘The Exorcist’ that’s for sure, but tune in tomorrow for the real-life story that inspired the novel that the film was based on …

Sources:

Hartford Courant

People Magazine

Take a look at this My Life of Crime article for reams and reams of links

Post-Script: This story has a happy ending, Johnson married Glatzel while still in prison and the two remain together, today they are grandparents to two boys.

And here's The Demon Murder Case movie for your viewing pleasure. It also stars Andy Griffith and was directed by William Hale.

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Meth Vampire for Valentine's Day

“You Robert McDaniel swear no wrong will come to me Tiffany Lachelle Sutton due to tonight’s events … You also pass to me all your earthly powers wealth included.”

TEMPE, ARIZONA - 46-year old Robert McDaniel called his friend from a phone booth, confused and about to pass out from blood loss and exhaustion. Earlier, he had been restrained, sliced, punctured, stabbed and bled. After slipping his bonds he escaped the shack behind the abandoned house and ran across a field, drained and weak, his date chasing him with a pickaxe. When his friend arrived to pick him up, he still didn’t want to call the cops or go to hospital because of all the meth that had been involved. He was covered in blood and 23-year old Tiffany Sutton stood watching the scene, covered only in a blanket. Some people just have more fun on Valentine’s Day.

McDaniel barely knew Sutton, but on February 14, 2007 the two of them were drinking booze and smoking meth in a shack behind an abandoned house when McDaniel agreed to be tied up for what he must have thought was going to be a wild bout of kinky sex. Allegedly Sutton made him sign a waiver form beforehand in case the sex got “crazy”. The waiver form also included a stipulation that Mr. McDaniel’s worldly belongings become her property. Once he was tightly secured, Sutton pulled out the knives and pickaxe she just happened to have handy. McDaniel wasn’t sure what she was doing but began to wonder if he might die. Sutton claimed that she liked to drink blood and that she was going to drink his.

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She sliced him across the leg and put her mouth on the wound. He told her he didn’t like what was going on, but she proceeded to stab him, then stab and slice him again, and again.

In all, McDaniel suffered seven stab wounds and was sliced multiple times. Sutton was arrested for aggravated assault. During the trial it was revealed that Sutton suffered from borderline personality disorder. Her mother insisted that Tiffany was “totally different” while on medication. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in a Maricopa county prison.

Sutton had been staying with McDaniel in the shack for a time before the incident though they barely knew each other. When the police had been by the evict the couple, Sutton drew blood when she dug her finger nails into the hand of one of the officers, for which she received a one year sentence which she served concurrently with her 10 year sentence. Though she’s appealed several times the conviction was never overturned.

Several Sutton fan websites popped up around the time of her arrest set up by the same person and she has become something of a kinky folk hero with one apparently lonely and desperate man (“Angelic Scars”) wishing to willingly have their blood drank by her every night. It goes to show that if there’s a variation on the theme of sex, no matter how dangerous or irresponsible, some kind of subculture will spring up around it.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s to be sure you know who you’re smoking meth with this Valentine’s Day.

Sources:

East Valley Tribune

AZ Central

Crime Library

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Alligators in Sewers, NYC

“Salvatore yelled: "Hey, you guys, wait a minute," and got down on his knees to see what was the trouble. What he saw, in the thickening dusk, almost caused him to topple into the icy cavern. For the jagged surface of the ice blockade below was moving; and something black was breaking through ... "Honest, it's an alligator!" he exploded.”

NEW YORK, NY - An article appeared in the February 10, 1935 edition of the New York Times titled ‘Alligator found in Uptown Sewer’. It tells a surreal story about a group of youths shoveling snow into the sewer when one of them (Salvatore Condolucci) sees something moving weakly at the bottom. After identifying the moving thing as an alligator the group ties a lasso around its neck and hauls it ten feet up to the street. The reptile snaps feebly at the gang and they proceed to beat it to death with their shovels. It’s written in that white hot prose style common at the New York Times which blurs the line between fiction and journalism.

New York City’s former superintendent of sewers Teddy May talked about undergoing subterranean expeditions to root out the alligator problem. The first-hand accounts of Mr. May’s sewer safaris discovering “serenely paddling” colonies of ‘gators, then systematically hunting and destroying them were recounted in Robert Daley’s 1959 book, The World Beneath the City. From humble origins a legend too good to be true was born.

The consensus view of scientists is that alligators could not survive in the sewers beneath New York due to a confluence of hostile conditions: cold weather, lack of sun, food scarcity and pollution. But science is not conducted by consensus and appealing to a majority is a logical fallacy. Could the original Times article be true?

The author repeatedly describes the alligator as half-dead when it is found and states that its origin is a mystery and the subject of some debate and consideration. After it was bludgeoned to death the gator was taken to the Lehigh Stove and Repair Shop across the street where it was measured and weighed, then picked up by city workers and incinerated on Staten Island.

In 2009 Times publisher's son A.G. Sulzberger III ran a condescending blog piece about the alligators-in-the-sewer phenomenon. In it, Salvatore Condolucci, then 92-years old doesn’t retract the 1935 story. The fact that Sulzberger was able even to produce Condolucci speaks to the veracity of the original story. That the still living eye witness confirmed it is also worth considering, even though Sulzberg was careful to describe Condolucci’s memory as fading.

The “scientific consensus” would have you believe that there is no truth to the rumor that thriving colonies of alligators live or ever have lived in the sewers of New York, but could at least one have gotten down there by one way or another? Absolutely. Before the 1935 article appeared there was another incident three years earlier. On June 28, 1932 it was reported that "swarms" of alligators were spotted in the Bronx River and one was found dead on its banks. The conditions of a big city sewer are probably not as adverse to alligators as the scientists would have you believe, no matter how popular their opinions are among their peers.

These scientists have spread the rumor that ‘gators could not survive under these conditions, without scientifically verifying the idea. They seem to forget that alligators survived whatever it was that killed off the dinosaurs. Alligators are dinosaurs. They’ve been through climate changes, ice ages, lack of sunlight, all those conditions and survived as a species for 180 million years.

Lack of sunlight isn’t a problem, not if you want your gator to grow faster. It’s not the healthy choice for the sun-loving animal but commercial alligator farmers keep their livestock in the dark because it speeds the growing process.

Alligators have been found in sewers on numerous occasions in the southern states, even the wikipedia article on the subject lists multiple sources with links to news articles. You can even watch a video below taken in Florida of an alligator in a sewer.

There are food sources down there, nobody denies there are thriving rat colonies in the sewers of New York, and where one species thrives so must predator and prey. Though the sewer collects cold rain water, temperatures would be warmer in the sewers than on the streets due to heat energy released by decaying matter. But is it enough to support a colony of alligators? I’m not ready to say it’s impossible.

New York state isn’t saying it’s impossible either. Legislators have not taken any chances with the legend or tempted fate: it is now illegal to keep an alligator or its near-relatives as pets within state limits.

Sources:

The original NY Times article

The full Times article reproduced

Sulzberg Jr. blog piece

FAQ about Alligators and their kin

Snopes article with a listing of multiple incidents

1999 - Unexplained (2nd edition) by Jerome Clark, pp 389-90

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Cacti's Revenge

No matter how ignorant we may be to the secret life of cacti, we rarely think of the plant as capable of revenge.

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LAKE PLEASANT, AZ - “Cactus plugging” is the act of using cacti for target practice. It seems harmless enough, the cactus doesn’t truly seem to be alive. Their branches resemble arms making the plant appear like the bizarrely gorganized remains of dried out desert travelers who didn’t quite make it out. It is a symbol of the desert, an area to beware, an area of death. In many ways the cactus, like the vulture, are symbols of death. But no matter how ignorant we may be to the secret life of cacti, we rarely think of the plant as capable of revenge.

On February 5, 1982 David Grundman, 24-27 (reports vary) was cactus plugging with friend Jim Suchochi, a couple miles into the desert from the highway, west of Lake Pleasant. Grundman started off slowly that winter day, felling a couple lightweight cacti with a few shotgun blasts. Before long however, a more impressive specimen caught his attention.

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Saguaro cacti are endemic to the Sonoma desert spread between the Arizona and Mexico border. They can grow up to 60 feet high and live to about 200 years, though some specimens have been known to be 300 years old. The arm-like branches of the cacti don’t grow until 75 years into the life of the plants. When Grundman locked his targets onto a 27-foot tall, 100 year old saguaro, he was targeting a plant that had lived to roughly half of its potential, but it was more than enough time for it to sprout massive 1000 pound limbs.

It seems Grundman’s fatal mistake was getting too close to the living thing as he blasted it to smithereens. After plugging it twice, Grundman turned and called out to his friend Jim, before a massive branch fell on him, crushing him to death. Early reports stated he had uttered the partial word “tim-” as in “timber” before the fatal moment.

It’s a story that seems too good to be true, and debunkers flock to it hoping for an easy target, but like Grundman himself, those debunkers find that the target is not so easy after all, and much more prickly than first imagined. It’s a cautionary tale, one that tells all who hear it to respect life, all forms of life, no matter how immobile. The general tone of many of the articles you will find on this incident is mocking and carry the sentiment that Grundman deserved what he got. He was immortalized in the 1984 Austin Lounge Lizards mock hero-ballad “Saguaro” where he is referred to as a “noxious little twerp”.

For the record, saguaro plugging is illegal.

Sources:

Sources are abundant on the web. I wasn’t able to track down the two original articles that mentioned the story. The first appeared in the now defunct Phoenix Gazette newspaper, the second appeared in the Arizona Republic before being picked up by the Associated Press. But I did find an AZ Republic article that made mention of the story and seemed to confirm the truth of it.

Arizona Republic

The Desert News - December 1, 1987

Phoenix New Times

Snopes

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Abducted by Machines

Lee kept shouting, “no, no, not the black one!”

PROSPECT, KY - At approximately 1:05 a.m. on the night of January 27, 1977, Lee Parish, 19 was driving west on Highway 329 at right about this location when he saw something hovering over the treeline. The object was rectangular and had a fiery quality, like a sunset only brighter. Parish was enthralled by the object, unable to take his eyes away from it. Looking back he didn’t know how his Jeep had managed to stay on the road. When the vehicle got directly underneath the object, the UFO took off to the northwest soundlessly, at incredible speed. The cigarette he had been smoking had also disappeared from his hand.

By the time he returned home it was 1:45 a.m. The 7-minute journey had taken an incredible 40 minutes. When he got home his mother asked “what’s wrong with your eyes?” They were completely bloodshot.

Lee later underwent hypnotic regression, during which further details of the night emerged. While driving under the blazing object his eyes began to burn. It changed color to black, then white and then he couldn’t see anything, but felt something in his eyes. When his sight returned he was no longer in his Jeep, but in a white room.

Three beings or objects stood before him. “The Black One”, stood to his left. It was described as being like a military target cut out, jug-shaped and twenty feet tall, it was flat on the bottom and had a single appendage. When the appendage touched Lee, it hurt him, it was both hot and cold at the same time and it gave him the sense of vibrating. Throughout the regression therapy session Lee kept shouting, “no, no, not the black one!”

To his right stood “The Red One”, it was roughly Lee’s size and reminded him of a Coke machine. It also had a single appendage but Lee sensed that the being was reluctant to touch him, as though the machine were repulsed by him. When “the red one’s” appendage finally did touch him, it felt to Lee like being jabbed with a needle, though the sensation wasn’t as unpleasant as the touch of “the black one”.

Lee somehow sensed that the faceless, two-armed “White One”, which stood away in the center of the room, was the leader of the three beings. Though all three of his captors appeared to him to be machine-like, he could sense that they were sentient beings.

When “the red one” had finished with him, it went over to “the white one” and “merged” with it, disappearing entirely inside of its apparent “ruler”, its task complete. When the merger took place a strange brushing sound resulted like somebody brushing their teeth or sandpapering. Then the white one moved over toward “the black one” and merged with it, before the black one slowly backed away leaving Lee alone in the room.

The next thing Lee said under hypnosis was, “there’s the pond”, and he described being back behind the wheel of the Jeep with no mention of how he got back there. He did say that the UFO reeled his Jeep in when it got over top of him and had suspended the Jeep in mid-air while he was inside the craft.

Lee also said that he had seen UFOs numerous times before, but always while with another person. He felt as though the UFO occupants had targeted him for some time and had waited for their chance to take him while he was alone.

Source:

UFO Evidence

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Nigerian Police Arrest Goat

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS

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Ilorin, Nigeria - On January 23, 2009 international news agency Reuters reported that a black and white goat was subdued in the state of Kwara by a local vigilante group while trying to steal a Mazda 323 and taken to police in Nigeria. The men who apprehended the goat claimed that they had witnessed two men attempting to steal the car, one of them escaped, but the other had transformed himself into a goat using black magic. The police held the goat in their custody

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody," Tunde Mohammed, a representative of the Kwara state police said. "We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

The goat was held on suspicion of armed robbery for a time, but was never formally charged.

CONCLUSIONS
Though this is a hilarious and bizarre story, the tradition of the mage changing into a goat is an old one. The black goat of the woods is a classic trope of occult folklore, so when a story like this appears, it brings a smile to the face for a couple reasons. Parts of Nigeria are virtual hotbeds for witchcraft and belief in black magic is rampant in those areas. The goat became something of a local celebrity with many people visiting him while in prison and he even made the front page of the national Vanguard newspaper.

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A second spokesperson, Emmanuel Ojukwu later contradicted the earlier statement, claiming that the goat was being held by police in case its owner came to claim it. And that's what we call "damage control" ladies and gentlemen. But the "damage" goes beyond a challenging image.

The Nigerian police in the area of Ilorin have a reputation of being ill-educated and in many cases openly criminal. It has been reported that the local police would resort to lynching criminal suspects to avoid lengthy investigations. From that perspective, it isn't difficult to see how the police might go along with a story presented to them by a vigilante group, a group that was patrolling the streets in the first place because police in the area refused to do their jobs.

This isn't the only time a goat has ended up in prison, but it appears to be the only time a goat was claimed to be an imprisoned man in disguise.

SOURCES:
Reuters
BBC

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Possessed by a Snake

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THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS
On January 18, 2013 Takuya Nagaya, 23 years-old was killed by his father, who thought his son was possessed by a snake. Takuya was visiting his parents home in Okazaki City in the early hours of the morning when he told his mother that he was a snake and started writhing around on the floor. His behavior, which she said was violent and erratic, began to worry her so she called on the young man's father, Katsumi, 53, for help.

From then until evening Katsumi proceeded to beat and bite his son, in an effort to "drive out the snake that had possessed him". After collapsing, Takuya was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead from injuries received during the severe beating.

CONCLUSIONS
This is a unique story, and though it only happened two years ago, it's the kind of story that people will read about 200 years from now and marvel at how backward and superstitious a time we live(d) in. It seems obvious that Takuya was suffering from some kind of psychotic episode, it's hard to say what brought it on, further details of the case are scarce if they exist. I never found them. But why the father was convinced of his son's possession to the point of beating him to death over the course of a entire day is just as important a question. Was it religiosity, a belief in spiritual possession? Or was it that Katsumi shared a kind of psychosis with his son?

Naga- is a common prefix for Japanese names, but makes for an eerie association in this case. Naga is the ancient sanskrit word for snake god. That's just a coincidence, but it adds another layer of strangeness to this already bizarre story.

SOURCES
Rocket News Japan

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Rain of Snakes

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If you read through the Rain of Rice edition of Everyday Strange then you may remember the lengthy (and incomplete) list of organic and inorganic objects that have been observed or reported to have fallen from the skies over the past 300 or so years, one of them being snakes. You may also remember my solution for the Rain of Rice mystery having to do with waterspouts and atmospheric convection. Well, how would that explain a rain of snakes?

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS

Memphis, TN - At 10:35 in the morning of January 15, 1877 a sudden 15-minute torrential downpour of rain abruptly stopped. After the deluge, people reported seeing masses of snakes lining the streets, in yards and even on the sidewalk. It wasn't just a couple of them that were spotted, or even a few hundred of them, it was thousands of dark brown, almost black snakes splayed about in a two block radius surrounding Vance Street, between Lauderdale and Goslee (Vance and Goslee appear to have been renamed or redeveloped in the ensuing 138 years).

One important feature of the event is that there were no eyewitnesses to the snakes actually falling with the rain. They were there alright, at ground level, but none were found on rooftops, in cisterns or any other elevated areas. And in the Monthly Weather Report it is stated that "Vance Street is comparatively new, has no pavements, gutters merely trenches"

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The snakes were between 12 and 18 inches long. Some of them were all tangled together, while others, according to witness Sgt. McElroy of the U.S. Signal Corps, exhibited bizarre behavior, stating that they didn't move like snakes. They would thrust their heads forward, then draw their rear up in a horseshoe shape, rather than slither and they would raise their bodies up as though seeking support. One witness put a couple of the snakes in a jar and brought them to the Memphis Weekly Public Ledger newspaper and they ran the story about the incident.

THE INVESTIGATION
After the Ledger published their account, the story hit the newswire where it was picked up by the New York Times (see picture above) and the Scientific American Supplement. Scientific American considered a hurricane as a possible explanation for the snakes, but remained puzzled as to where such a large collection of snakes could have been taken from.

Charles Fort rightly points out that a hurricane of such magnitude as capable of scooping up thousands of snakes would likely have deposited other debris such as twigs and leaves. Also, snakes are dormant in January, like other reptiles, their cold-blooded nature leaves them with no source of warmth during the winter months so they usually gather in a burrow or hibernacula until the weather turns again. A typical hibernaculum will have as many as a hundred snakes in it, but to find one with thousands in it is extremely rare.

It should also be noted that Memphis has never experienced a hurricane because it is too far away from sea. A severe derecho with hurricane force winds blasted through Memphis in 2003 and was known by locals as "Hurricane Elvis". Hurricane Elvis left hundreds of thousands of homes without power and killed seven people, dwarfing the 15-minute downpour preposterously. In other words: it wasn't a hurricane.

Well what was it then? Charles Fort believed that the snakes had traveled to earth on warm air currents from outer space. But we can assume that the snakes didn't actually fall from the sky because there were no witnesses to that and the snakes were mostly, if not all alive and uninjured on the ground. So if they didn't come from the sky, can we assume they came up from under the ground?

It's an elegant solution to the problem but snakes don't behave that way. They stay in their hibernaculum until it's time for their snake orgies and summer barbecues. So, what kind of creature does come up from the ground after a hard and heavy rain? (Even a bird would know the answer to this one ...)

CONCLUSIONS

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In the 1980's a local psychologist named Gregory Little took the story to Memphis State University biologists who concluded that it was most likely misidentified horsehair worms behind the mystery, not snakes at all.

It seems that the larvae of horsehair worms are parasitic. They live off of arthropods such as large insects and shellfish. They are free moving in their mature form. When exposed to water mature worms will exit the host and apparently, in this instance, had nowhere else to go but up.

And that's that!

Right?

Not quite. As is often the case when confronted with the mysterious, the university scientist(s) seem to have rushed to an easy conclusion. How can two whole city blocks worth of people misidentify horsehair thin parasitic worms for snakes? It's possible, but you'd figure someone would be able to spot the difference. What's more, horsehair worms don't behave in the ways described by witnesses, if they're to be believed.

So if it wasn't snakes and it wasn't worms, then what was it? Little believed it was leeches taken by a waterspout from a lake of the Mississippi River. It's the same opinion that was taken by the editor of the original Public Ledger article way back in 1877.

SOURCES
Monthly weather report to House of Representatives for 2nd session of the 45th congress, 1877-78
or this alternate link
Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America
On This Day in Memphis History
The Complete Books of Charles Fort pgs. 93-4

*Note: Even though two different versions are available online I couldn't find the original Scientific American article from February 10, 1877 in the table of contents or perusing the actual content which led me to believe that either the event was simply mentioned in an article about some other thing or that the version I read through is incomplete. Here it is.

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Rain of Rice in Burma

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THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS
In the January 10, 1952 edition of the London Daily Telegraph it was reported that a rain of rice fell on Mandalay, Burma. People reportedly gathered handfuls in the streets. Tracking down information on this event has led to a brick wall, and what you see above is all I have regarding this event. The Daily Telegraph website does not have that particular edition of their newspaper archived on the web, and that's where the trail goes cold for an armchair detective.

THE INVESTIGATION
Anomalous precipitation is nothing new. Indeed when taken in total, the sheer number of reports of strange rains and bizarre or unexpected objects falling from the sky, both organic and inorganic, shows that the phenomenon may be strange, but is not all that unusual. Stones, balls, seeds, nuts, wheat, fish, frogs, insects, red rain, curiously large ice blocks, even a red hot chain have all been reported to fall from the sky, sometimes on numerous occasions. Charles Fort reported the phenomenon seemingly endlessly and reports go back at least three hundred years and continue in a pretty much unbroken chain up to the present day. There isn't a whole blog post worth of information and occurrences, there is a whole blog's worth, updated regularly.

Some of the strange falls are well-documented and have been at least hypothetically explained. The explanations begin with waterspouts. In the not-entirely-accurate-but-simplest-possible definition a waterspout is like a mini-water tornado, though much weaker. A waterspout is a columnar vortex which more or less connects a body of water to the cloud above it.

Waterspout [image source]

Knowing this, it's easy to understand that a waterspout might have generated over a rice paddy and sucked up some rice, then rained it back down over the city. Again, the above information doesn't give much of a clue as to whereabouts the rice actually fell, it just gives the name of the city, Mandalay. Mandalay is no small place, in 1952 it wasn't the bustling metropolis it is today, but the population exceeded 150,000 and it covers an area of 63 square miles (163 km sq), putting Vancouver (44 sq mi.) to shame. For the sake of argument, let's put the rice fall square into the middle of the city.

According to the FAO, Mandalay is the second largest city and eighth largest producer of rice in Myanmar (formerly Burma). No special thing perhaps, but we see that rice is produced in the area, therefore it doesn't take a huge leap to see that a columnar vortex or water could have sucked rice out of a paddy onto any part of the metropolitan area surrounding it.

But, if we're willing to accept a waterspout as a point of origin, what happened to the rice in mid-air? Did it simply arc like some kind of vacuum rainbow, rise an fall without any resistance whatsoever? Every time I read about a strange fall I've got to ask myself: how can something heavier than air, that doesn't collect naturally in clouds, fall from the sky? How does the heavier than air object hang in the air without falling immediately?

CONLUSIONS

Large hailstones [image source]

The answer is almost certainly convection layers. Basically, the heavier than air object rides the wind. Again, if we accept waterspouts as our means of conveyance for the rice, then it's easy to figure out what happened next. The rice began acting like hail. Indeed, each grain of rice would have been lighter than a hailstone, the phenomenon of "golfball-sized" hailstones is widely known and discussed. When hail forms it wants to fail as it grows heavier, when it doesn't, particles of super-cooled air collect on the hail until the become the size of golfballs or larger when the 110mph winds of the storm can no longer keep them aloft. The reason the winds don't blow the whole accumulation away is where the layering comes into effect as whatever object, be it hail or rice grain is 'squished' back down by warmer winds from above.

As the cloud lumbers on its journey through the sky, the process continues until it can no longer be sustained and a thing like a rain of rice becomes possible.

But, there is no way of knowing if this is even a likely explanation because the details are nonexistent.

What's frustrated about having so little information is that the truth, like the devil, is often in the details. Two simple questions are left unanswered: were the grains of rice still in their husks? and were they coated in ice? These may be the most essential missing details as to figuring out what exactly happened. If they were still in their husks, then it becomes easier to accept a waterspout explanation and if they were coated in ice, then they were mostly likely trapped in a convection layer until they fell.

If the grains were already de-husked, then it's possible that somebody's open store of rice somehow ended up in the sky and that's a whole other bizarre mystery to think on.

Ultimately, a waterspout explanation may not satisfy, even though it's a good, and frankly easy one, because waterspouts usually occur over larger bodies of deep water, not rice paddies. The explanation  can be said to be nearly as extraordinary as the event itself, although waterspouts have been witnessed over ponds and other small bodies of water.

Strange falls happen all the time. You may be witness to one some strange day, but your chances aren't likely. You'd be lucky to witness such an event, and even luckier to be able to explain it satisfactorily.

SOURCES:
The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena [2nd Edition], pg. 60
FAO Corporate Document Repository (see table Producing Zones and Cropping Seasons)

And if you'd like to learn more about waterspouts and atmospheric convection, wikipedia is a good place to start for general knowledge. They usually have loads of relevant links to dig further.
Waterspouts
Atmospheric Convection

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Stanford Kentucky Abductions

l-r: Louise Smith, Elaine Thomas, Mona Stafford [Source]

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS:
January 6, 1976, Stanford, Kentucky, 11:15 PM - Louise Smith, Elaine Thomas and Mona Stafford are in high spirits getting into Smith's 1967 Chevy Nova in the parking lot of the Redwood restaurant off Route 27. The women had been celebrating the 36th birthday of Stafford, but it should be noted here that none of the women consumed any alcohol. As Smith drove south on Highway 78 through the town of Hustonville towards Liberty, where the women all lived, the women saw what looked to Mona like an airplane on fire and crashing. She thought that if they sped up, they might be able to arrive at the crash scene in time to help out. The bright, red object then descended towards them at treetop level. At this point, Smith lost control of the vehicle, which felt to the women like it was going 85 mph. Smith later recalled that, "my foot wasn't even on the gas pedal." The steering wheel also seemed to be locked as Smith couldn't move it even with the help of Stafford, though the vehicle conformed to the contours of the road.

The object tailed the car for a little while, past a drive-in theater, then came in close on the driver's side. The women could now see that the object wasn't "bright, red" at all, but a metallic disc ringed by red lights with a dome top and blinking yellow light on the bottom. The metallic craft then zoomed ahead of the car before shining a white light into the car's interior. It's at this point that the interior of the car seemed to fill with a hazy fog which caused a burning sensation in the women's eyes. The car then seemed to back itself into the entrance of a large field, between two stone railings.

Next thing they knew, they were back on the road to Liberty with a red tint to their skin, as though they had been sunbathing. They were confused and suffering from visible burns on their skin, when Mona went to see her doctor he said that it looked like she had been exposed to radiation. The paint on the hood of Mrs. Smith's car had bubbled and the lights wouldn't work. By the time they got home it was 1:20 AM. The entire distance they traveled was 35 miles, a 45 minute trip.

THE INVESTIGATION:

Mona Stafford drawing [Image Source]

That night, unsure of how to proceed, the women called the local police department and told them their story. The police offered no help. The next day, the local Navy recruitment office was called, who were equally reticent to respond or aid in any way. The Navy recruitment office did, however, contact the local news media, who made front page headlines of the women's experience.

It was through this publicity that MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) member Jerry Black caught wind of the Stanford Kentucky Abductions and he contacted the women. They were reluctant to speak with him, unwilling to relive the experience, but eventually they agreed to meet with Peggy Schnell, who represented the organization.

All three women were undergoing symptoms which might today have been recognized as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Elaine Thomas reported that Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Stafford were close to their psychological breaking points and all three had begun chain-smoking. Mrs. Stafford in particular experienced periods of vigilance and psychological difficulty leaving the house.

It's because our accounts of the women's experience come from this UFO-friendly source, and not from local or federal authorities that doubt is cast upon all or part of the story.

But, according to Mrs. Schnell of MUFON, the women appeared genuine. Something strange seemed to have happened to them that night. Aside from the women's obviously distressed behavior, there was physical evidence. Mrs. Smith had a half-dollar sized pinkish-grey blotch on the nape of her neck. All three women reported general ill health, but apparently, the "details" were held back by MUFON, in fear of losing the women's trust. (It should be noted here that Elaine Thomas died around about a year after the experience in 1977, though I was not able to find a cause of death.)

But that was only the beginning of a bizarre turn of events for Mrs. Smith. Her alarm clock broke when she touched it, the minute hand of her wrist watch spun around the dial fast as the second hand and her car suddenly developed electrical problems. Also, Mrs. Smith's pet parakeet began to withdraw and exhibit frightened behavior in her presence. Other people did not elicit such a reaction from the bird and when Mrs. Smith was brought into the presence of other birds, they reacted the same way. Mrs. Smith's parakeet died in March 1976.

Dr. Leo Sprinkle [Source]

Soon, J. Allen Hynek got involved in the case, as did a Dr. Leo Sprinkle who conducted regression therapy with each of the three women in order to account for the 80 minutes of missing time they experienced in the car that night. Apparently, the women became more and more reticent about the entire investigation, reportedly (by MUFON) fearing that the story might break nationally. The women's fears were allayed with the promise that the details accrued from the therapy session would not be released until the women felt comfortable about it. The initial therapy session for Mona Stafford took place on March 7, 1976.

After the session, but while still in a post-hypnotic state, Mrs. Stafford was shown several pictures of aliens by the MUFON team. It should be noted that this was the first time that extraterrestrial beings had entered the conversation. Stafford settled on one of the pictures saying that she could see the image in her mind, but it didn't "seem solid. It comes and goes ... I mean, fades and reappears like in a fog. It's eyes are far apart and at the bottom ... the chin ... is like that drawing." (my emphasis)

Once the session had ended, the MUFON team had no more funds left to continue researching the case. But on July 1 they enlisted the aid of that most-infamous of sensational American tabloids, The National Enquirer, who agreed to fund further research into the case and pay the three women for exclusive rights to the story. Part of the Enquirer deal was that the women were to undergo a lie detector test. The three women each underwent a polygraph under the direction of Detective James Young of the Lexington police department. All three passed.

As regression therapy sessions continued, the events of January 6 were filled in and elaborated on. All three were seated or placed in different venues within the unidentified craft, or strapped to different devices, but they all reported being scanned and probed, though not sexually. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Stafford also recalled the application of a warm liquid to the face and body. But the story only gets weirder.

The women began to describe the alien beings they encountered with varying accounts of their appearance, but they were usually described in ethereal terms about shadowy figures who floated by them and floating eyeballs which watched them from above, including one eye that was purple and shot lightning. The alien beings themselves were described as four feet tall without mouths and communicated telepathically.

CONCLUSIONS:

The Stanford Kentucky Abductions is touted as one of those "best evidence" cases by UFO enthusiasts, but it is anything but as it doesn't hold up to even the most cursory glance of scrutiny.

This case is considered one of the best ever for evidence of actual UFO abductions but it rests on very little actual evidence, if any. All the evidence in this case is anecdotal and what's worse, the overall investigation has been tainted by the dubious practice of regression therapy. Regression therapy is the psychiatric equivalent of faith healing. Because the anecdotal evidence, lacking corroborative elements, it's easy to accuse the women of making the entire story up and even inflicting themselves with burns to back up their claims, if the injuries were actually present at all and not just another made-up element of the story. We don't really know that Mrs. Stafford went to see the doctor and that the doctor claimed she looked like she had been exposed to radiation, we have to go on her word, and that can be a precarious ledge to balance on indeed.

I find it dubious that the UFO people claim repeatedly that the women haven't profited from the misadventure, nor have they sought publicity. Quite, the opposite, supposedly. By most favorable accounts, the women shunned publicity at all turns. But we know that this isn't true because it is stated openly within MUFON's own documents that the women did in fact profit from this story by offering exclusive rights to it to the National Enquirer of all places and their involvement with news media has continued until quite recently (see video below).

In the end, the women themselves, and their conviction about their story is the best evidence there is for this case. The women's conviction is vetted by a lie detector test, which are arguably somewhat useful as an auxiliary to a police investigation, but are absolutely useless in a legal case i.e. establishing proof.

It should be noted that Louise described many different forms for her alien abductors, it wasn't until months later that her descriptions began to conform to those of her friends accounts. And let it be said once more for emphasis that at no point did any of the women mention aliens until Mona Stafford was asked specifically to identify aliens by the MUFON investigators.

Another thing to consider is that most UFO abduction stories involving cars traveling down lonely roads seem to take place in a single cluster of time from the late 1960's through the 1980's, with most stories featuring very little in common in the way of details, for the more famous cases anyway. It seems entirely plausible that the three women were trying to capitalize on the bizarre phenomenon, but one must always wonder about paranormal hoaxers: of all things to do, of all ways to try to make money, why that?

It would be nice if there had been a corroborating witness during the event, a feature that other abduction / close encounter stories have had. There are alleged witnesses who also saw a UFO over the town of Stanford of similar design to that described by the women at about or around 11:30 PM on that night, including two teenagers out for a joyride, but the names of many of the alleged witnesses have never been identified as they are said to not want to come forward. It's the kind of corroborating detail that could be drawn out from thin air by anyone at any time.

I'm wary of calling the three women complete liars however, but based on the reports of MUFON the investigation into this case was bungled from the very start. I'm open to the possibility that the women did see or experience something strange that night, but what that might be is unknown. Stranger things have happened that didn't include four foot tall telepathic beings. The only confirmed truth in this story is that strange things happen to people who can't explain what happened to them and it could happen to you on any given day, the everyday strange.



SOURCES:
MUFON Journal January 1977
UFO Casebook
APRO Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 4 (October 1976)
Central Kentucky News, 09/24/2010
Kentucky.com about 'High Strangeness' play