Advocates of Electronic Voice Projection (EVP) claim they can use radio equipment to communicate with the dead. But are they just hearing what they want to hear?

In 1969, a mysterious middle-aged Latvian doctor turned up in Gerrards Cross with a large collection of tape recordings.

He had, he said, been conducting experiments in communication with the dead, and had established contact with Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and many other deceased 20th Century statesmen. The recordings - 72,000 of them - contained their voices.

His name was Konstantin Raudive, and he called his technique Electronic Voice Projection, or EVP.

It wasn't real-time interactive communication. You asked your questions, and then left the tape running, recording silence.

But listening back, through the mush and static, you could sometimes just about make out people speaking.

Gerrards Cross was the home of a publisher, Colin Smythe, whom Raudive hoped would publish a book on his findings.

Smythe was keen, but he needed to persuade the chairman of the publishing company, Sir Robert Meyer, that this wasn't all a hoax. So Raudive laid on a series of electronic seances in Gerrards Cross, one of which Sir Robert attended.

As luck had it, the late pianist Artur Schnabel was on the line, and spoke - at least to the satisfaction of Lady Mayer, who was also present and had known Schnabel. The book, called Breakthrough, went ahead, and EVP was on the scene.

More technologically up-to-date than spirit slate-writing and less messy than ectoplasm, it dragged the world of spiritualism into the late 20th Century.

Nowadays, EVP is a standard tool of ghost hunters worldwide. There are hundreds of internet EVP forums and many serious and well-educated people who see it as proof positive that the dead are trying to talk to us.

Eden, New York - A mystery of sorts has unfolded in the backyard of one of our viewers in Eden. It happened Friday evening as Peggy Gervase was looking out from the deck of her home at a nearby pond.

She spotted what appeared to be a series of concentric circles that had opened in the snow covering the pond. It almost resembled the unusual phenomena known as crop circles. But again this occurred on the surface of a pond.

Chelyabinsk residents witnessed an unusual glow over the city at night, and toward the morning one eyewitness photographed a blazing orb hovering over Kopeyskoye highway in the Leninsky district, as was reported by the "Access" news agency correspondent.

On Wednesday night, March 20, Chelyabinsk resident photographed a UFO hovering over Kopeyskoye highway, near the shop Metro, about 5.10. He shared his observations on the social networks. The origin of the luminous ball and the duration of his stay in the sky is yet to be known.

Meanwhile, late in the evening on Tuesday, March 19, residents of the Central District and the north-west of the city saw a mist, with a radiating bright yellow light. Most eyewitness dismiss it as fog. Saying, that it was a street light reflected in the frozen crystals of water suspended in the air. According to the weather forecasters, at that that time there was ice fog and thick haze in the atmosphere.

Article translated by Forum Member

On the night of October 21, 1978 Frederick Valentich radioed into air traffic control in Melborne with some strange news. An unidentified metallic craft was toying with his Cessna as he flew over the Bass Strait en route to King's Island. No one ever saw him or his aircraft again.

It all happened during the largest wave of UFO sightings Australia had ever seen. Over fifty reports were uncovered from the area of Valentich's disappearance on that day alone. Some reported classic cigar-shaped craft while others saw a "starfish-shaped" object with lights that looked like "silver rain." Electronic interferance was noted in a number of these reports.

Some witnesses even said they saw a "green light" shadowing Valentich's aircraft on the night in question (take note of that for later).

Valentich left a looming legacy of his final moments with a this bizzare yet compelling radio transmission:

Several West Coasters have now claimed to have seen strange and unexplained lights in the night sky over the past week.

On Saturday night, Russell Adams was cutting his grass when he saw the lights in the general direction of the aerodrome. He grabbed his wife, and also his camera to capture them.

Since then another sighting has been reported to the Greymouth Star.

In each instance the aero club has said there were no aircraft flying at the time.

Mr Adams said he saw four lights over the course of about 10 minutes and early today, Shakespeare Street man Robert Caldana saw a light out his laundry window about 2.20am.

It too was over towards the sea in the direction of South Beach.

His wife Linda also witnessed the event saying it was different from satellites and shooting stars, changing colour, and seeming to be hovering.

Her husband saw it red, but when she looked it was green and blue.

Fremont - Sandusky County Administrator Warren Brown considers himself a skeptic.

Last year, the Sandusky County Convention and Visitors Bureau began hosting a series of monthly tours designed to take guests underground into a basement jail known as "the dungeon."

Visitors began to question whether the dungeon - which was constructed in 1840 - was haunted, and it was up to Brown to find out. So Brown and SCCVB Travel Event Specialist Katherine Rice asked two paranormal investigation groups to perform independent investigations of the dungeon, and the results, at least for Brown, were chilling.

A Dearham pub is vying for the title of the area's most haunted venue after paranormal investigators spent the night there.

Lakeland Paranormal Investigations spent five hours at the village's Old Mill on Saturday night.

Investigator Amanda Oakes said she had never been anywhere before where the psychic energy was so off the scale.

She said: "I believe I was contacted by a Presbyterian woman who told of a secret tunnel from the Old Mill, which was a mill, to the nearby church and how she used to lead people to safety from the marauding Scots.

"We also contacted a young boy who said his head had hurt and then he drowned."

Ms Oakes said she learned of a precious lost necklace and said the investigation team planned to return to the pub to see if its location would be revealed to them.

Landlord Tom Armstrong said he was used to peculiar light variations and temperature drops at the pub.

The trial of Urbain Grandier for witchcraft was either a witch hunt in truth, or in the sarcastic way that we use the term today. Either Grandier used black magic to infest the nuns of Loudun with a number of powerful demons, or he was a victim of religious persecution because his beliefs were a threat to the Catholic Church in 17^th-century France.

Aldous Huxley wrote a well-researched account of the incident to draw attention to McCarthyism in his era, positing that Grandier was in fact innocent - a victim of Catholic authoritarianism, of righteousness turned into bloodlust, bigotry, and greed.

Whether scapegoat or sorcerer, he paid the ultimate price for his entanglement with this historic case of mass possession. Since the account of the possessions is far more captivating than a hoax, we'll borrow from Des Niau's account The Devils of Loudun, written in 1634, as our primary text. All quotes henceforth, unless noted, come from his work. Huxley's conjectures will form a backdrop to Des Niau's retelling.

Now - ahem - on with the story!

Unidentified flying objects over South Whidbey last weekend have left a Bush Point couple baffled and scared.

A series of mysterious orange lights appeared in the sky over Dick and Carol Johnson's home Saturday evening. While they are used to seeing all kinds of marine and air traffic from their picture windows overlooking Admiralty Inlet, the couple admits this has left them scratching their heads.

"We've seen a lot of stuff, but this was the weirdest thing we've ever seen," said Dick Johnson, a retired civil engineer.

The Johnsons have lived in the community for 17 years and were watching television Saturday at about 8:30 p.m. when they noticed what appeared to be a steady, orange light hovering over Marrowstone Island.

The lone light was quickly joined by several more, which then began to make their way across Puget Sound. Dick Johnson walked out on his porch and, to his astonishment, saw more over Whidbey Island, somewhere between their home and Lagoon Point.

The incident ended when two of the strange lights flew over their neighborhood; one went right over the top of their house, Dick Johnson said. In all, they reported a total of seven objects.

"The first thing I thought was Area 51 moved to Whidbey Island," he said.

42 sheep were found dead from apparent animal bites on a farm in Honduras that was guarded by dogs and a few humans, too. What could be responsible for such weird carnage? Could it be . . . chupacabras?

According to Inexplicata:

Rumors about the Chupacabras have gained strength as a result of the death of a large number of sheep on a property belonging to a political representative of that province. Yesterday, at 5:00 a.m., when workers arrived at the property, they found dozens of dead sheep with injuries to their necks. Others had bled to death. Nearly 42 animals were lifeless and another 10 injured. The possibility that the death toll would increase over time was not dismissed.

Congressman Valentin Suárez, the owner of the farm, reported that the flock's size was 200. The premises where the sheep pens are located near the Palmerola Air Base. The congressman noted that while he has dogs and watchmen, there was no noise at night that alerted anyone to the presence of strange animals within the property.

"This is the first time such a situation has taken place in the area, and not finding a cause worries us, since there are no predators in Comayagua valley," said Suárez.