What do you think about this?
High in the mountains on the eastern edge of California sits Bodie, once a roaring gold mining town of as many as ten thousand people, with saloons, opium dens, and enough violence that it earned a fearsome reputation. When the gold ran out, people left, often in a hurry, and the town simply froze.
Today Bodie is preserved in what the state calls arrested decay. Walk in and you find tables still set, goods still on the store shelves, curtains still hanging in the windows, all slowly weathering under a huge open sky. And then there is the curse. For decades, visitors who pocket a nail, a bottle, a shard of glass as a souvenir have mailed the items back, sometimes years later, with letters begging forgiveness and describing the run of bad luck that followed them home. The park rangers keep a thick file of these letters. Here is the twist. Staff say a ranger invented the curse years ago to stop people pocketing pieces of the town, and it worked far better than he ever intended.
Could it be that a place abandoned in a hurry holds onto what was left, and pushes back when you try to carry a piece of it away?
A guilty conscience and coincidence, or a real Bodie curse? What do you think follows people home from that town?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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