Some of the earliest-known writings on Nessie's less well-known cousin shed new light on the community which lived in its shadow more than 100 years ago, according to the researcher who uncovered them.

Morag, a mysterious creature supposed to inhabit the depths of Loch Morar, in the Highlands, is the subject of three separate writings from Alexander Carmichael, a prolific gatherer of folklore in his day.

The scripts, believed to date from 1902, have been uncovered by the Carmichael Watson project at the University of Edinburgh library.

Dr Donald Stewart, a senior researcher on the project, discovered the texts while leafing through a "mad mixture" of folklore collected by Carmichael over 50 years.

"We were so pleased when we found them, it was just totally unexpected," he said.

The writings paint a conflicting view of Morag. On the one hand she is presented as a mermaid-like character with flowing hair, while another description paints her as a grim reaper whose sighting was viewed as a death omen.

In the first text, Carmichael states: "Morag is always seen before a death and before a drowning."

Spooky CCTV footage showing a ghostly figure leaving a community centre in north-west London is creating a stir online.

The video shows a slim man suddenly appear outside the entrance of South Ruislip Community Association and Community Centre on February 1.

It captures the transparent figure walking calmly towards a metal railing before seemingly disappearing into thin air.

When ships and planes mysteriously vanish -- sometimes without a trace -- speculation runs wild.

Many worry about the conventional -- pilot error, kidnapping and terrorism come to mind. And there are those who worry about the supernatural.

Acclaimed fashion designer Vittorio Missoni and five others boarded a twin-engine BN-2 Islander aircraft in the Los Roques island chain -- pictured below -- near Venezuela on Jan. 4. They were headed for Caracas and had only flown about 11 miles when they vanished into thin air.

The Sheriff in an eastern Oklahoma county said his office is investigating what could be a case of spontaneous combustion.

Sequoyah County Sheriff Ron Lockhart told News On 6 that deputies were called to a house on Bawcom Road, between Sallisaw and Muldrow, around 10:50 a.m. Monday. A neighbor had reported seeing smoke coming out of a home.

Lockhart said they found the nearly completely charred remains of a man in the kitchen, but that there was no other damage done to the home.

The man has been identified as 65-year-old Danny Vanzandt, according to CBS affiliate in Fort Smith, KFSM.

Sheriff Lockhart spent about 20 years as an arson investigator for the Fort Smith, Arkansas Police Department, before retiring to run for Sheriff in Sequoyah County. Lockhart said he'd never seen anything like it. He said it didn't seem that any accelerant was used and only the floor below Vanzandt's body was damaged.

An Aboriginal arts centre in the Northern Territory is at the centre of a cosmic mystery.

Every morning at 11:30 a series of stars lights up the floor at the arts centre at Yirrkala in north east Arnhem Land.

No one has been able to explain why the stars appear and the locals believe they may be a message or a blessing from an Aboriginal artist who passed away last year.

Will Stubbs is manager at Buku-Larrngay Mulka and says it's hard to explain.

"We've only just noticed it in the last few weeks," he says. "The floor gets illuminated with star shapes that are very, very similar to the star shapes painted by a very important artist who passed away last year.

Nearly 1,000 people were injured in Russia today when a meteor exploded somewhere over the Ural Mountains. But crazy cosmic phenomena are nothing new in the Ural range: 54 years ago this month, the northern part of the Urals played host to one of the most fascinating unsolved mysteries in the modern age.

On the surface, what's become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident seems fairly explicable: Of a party of ten skiiers, nine perished in the middle of a high-difficulty trek in conditions that reached -30 degrees Celsius. But the details, which are mostly based on diaries of those involved as well as records from Soviet investigators, are chilling: On the night of February 2, 1959, members of the party apparently ripped their tent open from the inside, and wandered into the tundra wearing nothing but what they wore to bed.

Three weeks later, five bodies were found, some hundreds of meters down a slope from the original camp. It took two more months for investigators to find the other four bodies, which, curiously, were partially clothed in articles belonging to the earlier-discovered dead. Tests of those clothes found high levels of radiation. Despite that, and heavy internal trauma, including fractured skulls and broken ribs, suffered by some members of the party, Russian investigators reported they could not find evidence of foul play, and quickly shut the case.

"It's really strange, I just don't know what it is."

Clare Stewart was on a quiet family walk in Crathes recently, with seven-year-old Melissa in tow her sister stopped to take a picture to remember the day forever.

Little did she know that the picture would show more than just her daughter.

Clare's photo seems to show a sort of "face" in the puddle next to where Melissa stands.

The question stands- is it a cloud reflected on the water or something more?

Clare told The Piper: "I was out for a walk in Crathes with my sister Hannah, a friend an our children. It was just a walk to the playpark and the kids all started to take photos. My sister took one of Melissa.

"Hannah sent me a message with the picture that night and I thought she had photoshopped it to begin with. Couldn't believe it when she said she hadn't."

She "freaked out" when she saw the spooky spectre in the picture.

"I totally freaked out, when I showed my Mum she said it had a very evil face. I think it looks like it has blood marks on it doesn't look friendly anyway."

Is it an extra-terrestrial ship, a spy drone of Pakistan, a space vehicle, or one of those Chinese hot air balloons launched by locals? Rumours are swirling after reports came of an unidentified flying object (UFO) hovering over the world's largest oil refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat, owned by Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). The authorities are groping in the dark over the spottings.

Jamnagar is one of the refineries facing terror threat from Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to reports by the Intelligence Bureau came out last year.

According to the local police, an object in the shape of a red bowl was found circling the RIL unit at around 8pm on January 24. Though it was neglected as a one-of-its-kind incident, the object resurfaced after three days in the morning. Though some officials confirmed the development, RIL did not comment on the incident.

"Immediately after a complaint was lodged by the refinery at Meghpar police station, army and air force officials visited the spot along with us. There are various theories going the rounds, but we are on high alert. There were even reports of finding some unidentified particles and batteries near a cement factory, 150-km away from here," said a senior police official.

If aliens were to land in Glasgow they would receive a "warm and peaceful" welcome from the local council.

However, Glasgow City Council believe it is unlikely any extraterrestrial lifeform would chose the city as their first point of contact on earth.

The local authority laid out its plans in response to a Freedom of Information request from a member of the public.

They had been asked: "As mankind continues to advance and head out into the stars we are undoubtedly going to attract the attention of whatever lifeforms are out there. I'm curious to know what provisions have been put in place for our inevitable encounter."

The response, from Dr Kenneth Meechan, admitted the council had not laid out concrete plans for alien contact.

He said: "The legal framework regarding making contact with extraterrestrial lifeforms is not entirely clear."

A man in Ontario believes he has captured the not only the usual footprints of Bigfoot, but handprints as well. As if that isn't enough, he's posted videos of the find that include a bonus: a Sasquatch speaking it's own language.

YouTube user "Sasquatch Ontario" made the find on February 2nd. The evidence consists of a string of footprints through the snow, the size and shape of which seem fit the standard for most Bigfoot sightings. More interesting though, is the discovery of what look to be Bigfoot handprints, something we don't see too much of. The handprints measure almost 7 inches in length, with an incredibly ape-like "thumb" that sits a good deal lower than a humans.

The video containing the tracks was uploaded to YouTube just yesterday, and includes audio of what the user believes to be actual Sasquatch language captured in the Ontario, Canada forest. The enhanced audio features a grumbling and howling reminiscent of the infamous "Sierra Samurai" recordings captured in California in the 70s.

Read the rest of the story at WhoForted?