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Betty Hill drew this as a representation of what she and her husband saw. | | ALIEN ABDUCTIONS
| OVERVIEW: Extraterrestrial life (not of Earth) abducting humans and experimenting on them.
| | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: | DISCOVERED BY:
| | LOCATION: | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: Not many cases reported outside of the U.S.
| POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): X-Files, Mars Attacks
|  | | MOST FAMOUS CASE: The first famous case was brought to light by Betty and Barney Hill in 1961. They were heading home to Portsmouth NH, when they saw a bright light and several figures up the road. Hysterically, they turned off the road onto a smaller road and were stopped by a "cluster of beings." They had no memory of what happened for the next two hours until they both underwent hypnosis years later. Betty was examined by the beings and Barney befriended the aliens. Their story is the first of many alien abduction stories and landed them international fame. | | | | | | BERMUDA TRIANGLE | | OVERVIEW: A REGION OF THE NORTHWESTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN IN WHICH A NUMBER OF AIRCRAFT AND SURFACE VESSELES HAVE DISAPPEARED. | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE:THE FIRST PERSON TO DOCUMENT SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRIANGLE WAS THE FOUNDER OF AMERICA HIMSELF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS IN 1492.
HE CLAIMED TO SEE "STRANGE DANCING LIGHT ON THE HORIZON WITHIN THE TRIANGLE | DISCOVERED BY:
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS | | LOCATION:NORTHWESTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN. | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM:
THE COASTGUARD IS SKEPTICAL OF THE TRIANGLE,CLAIMING THEY FOUND THE BODIES FROM THE 1972 EXPLOSION OF THE TANKER V.A. FOGG. THE BODIES WERE NOTED TO HAVE DISAPPEARED. | | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S):DOCUMENTARY: THE DEVIL'S TRIANGLE. FILM: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. | | FLIGHT 19 WAS A CASE OF PILOT DISORIENTATION THAT ENDED TRAGICALLY. ON DECEMBER 5, 1945 FIVE AVENGER TORPEDO PLANES LEFT THE NAVAL AIR STATION IN FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA TO PRACTICE MONOEUVRES OVER A WRECK NEAR THE BAHAMAS. FLIGHT 19 HAD EVERYTHING WORKING AGAINST THEM. THEIR COMPAS FAILED AND THEY CONFUSED THE BAHAMIAN ISLAND CHAIN WITH THE FLORIDA KEYS. THEY KEPT HEADING NORTH. IN THE ATTEMPT TO HIT LAND IT WAS TO LATE. ALL FIVE PLANE WERE NOT FOUND AND NEITHER WERE THE 14 MEN WHO LOST THEIR LIFE THAT DAY.OR DID THEY.................? |
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Athanasius Kircher's map of Atlantis, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. From Mundus Subterraneus 1669, published in Amsterdam. | | ATLANTIS
Advanced Prehistoric Lost Civilization | OVERVIEW: In Plato's account Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".
Atlantis is linked to secret societies, Ancient Egyptians, and other such unexplained phenomena. | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE:Platos wrote about Atlantis as early as 360 BC. | DISCOVERED BY:
| LOCATION: Unknown - Possibly off the coast of Cyprus.
| REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM:
| | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): The legend of Atlantis is featured in many books, films, television series, games, songs and other creative works. Recent examples of Atlantis on-screen include the television series Stargate Atlantis and the Disney animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The first Tomb Raider video game features Atlantis as the basis of its plot and the location for its climactic ending. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem about Atlantis entitled The City in the Sea. It is also featured prominently and somewhat philosophically inRobert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's The Illuminatus! Triology. | | | MOST FAMOUS CASE:Robert Sarmast, who is searching for the lost kingdom of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus, claims to have found it using sonar technology. The Cyprus/Atlantis Project has been featured on the Discovery Channel, The National Geographic, The History Channel, The New York Times, CNN, BBC World Service, Reuters, FOX News, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC, NPR, Coast to Coast AM, Radio Europe, Der Speigel, Al Jazeera, The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. | | | 
Bigfoot or Sasquatch, a cryptid | | CRYPTOZOÖLOGY
| | OVERVIEW: (from Greek κρυπτός, kryptos, "hidden" + zoology; literally, "study of hidden animals") is a pseudoscience or "fringe" science focused on the search for animals which are considered to be legendary or otherwise nonexistent by conventional science. This includes attempts to capture living examples of animals which are considered to be extinct, such as dinosaurs and fish (e.g. Latimeria chalumnae, the West Indian Ocean coelacanth, discovered to be extant 1938, and Latimeria menadoensis, the Indonesian coelacanth, discovered to be extant 1997); animals whose existence lacks physical support but which appear in myths, legends, or are reported, such as Sasquatch/Bigfoot and el Chupacabra; and known animal species dramatically outside of their normal geographic ranges, such as phantom cats (large predatory felines such as puma in Australia or Great Britain), Desmodus rotundus (the common vampire bat in locations other than Central and South America), and Hemaris thysbe (hummingbird clear-wing moth in North America). | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: | DISCOVERED BY:
| | LOCATION: | | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: Cryptozoology has been criticised because of its excessive reliance on and credulity towards anecdotal information rather than accepted scientific methodology, and because some cryptozoologists do not typically follow the scientific method and devote a substantial portion of their efforts to investigations of animals that most scientists believe are unlikely to exist. Few scientists doubt there are thousands of unknown animals, particularly invertebrates, awaiting discovery; however, cryptozoologists are largely uninterested in researching and cataloging newly-discovered species of ants or beetles, instead focusing their efforts towards "more elusive" creatures that have often defied decades of work aimed at confirming their existence. The majority of mainstream criticism of cryptozoology is thus directed towards the search for megafauna cryptids such as Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster which appear often in popular culture, but for which there is little or no scientific support. | | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): MonsterQuest (A History Channel tv-series), Sasquatch/Bigfoot/Ohio Grassman (Harry and the Hendersons, Universal Studios, 1987; "Legends", Invisible Man tv-series, Season 2, Episode 1, 2001, given as a possible source of the "quicksilver" gland which gives invisibility to the central character of the series), Abominable snowman/Yeti (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Raindeer, Rankin/Bass, 1964), Loch Ness Monster (The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, Revolution Studios/Walden Media, 2007), Mokele-mbembe (Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, Buena Vista Picrures, 1985), modern dinosaurs (The Land That Time Forgot, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1917, Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, 1990, The Lost World, Crichton, 1995), dragons (too numerous to list), unicorns/ki-rin (too numerous to list) | | | | |
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Photo from topanything.blogspot.com | | DEJA VU
| | OVERVIEW: It comes from the French phrase "already seen." When people experience Deja Vu, they feel as if a new situation they are experiencing has already happened. | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: | DISCOVERED BY:
| | LOCATION: | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM:
- A possible explanation is the short term memory and long term memory being imprinted at the same time, making the experience seem to have happened at an earlier moment in time with no reference of having the experience.
- A glitch in the Matrix
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| | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): | | | | | 
Photo from http://blogs.nature.com/nm/spoonful
| | GHOST
| | OVERVIEW: A ghost is said to be the apparition of deceased person, frequently similar in appearance to that person, and usually encountered in places she or he frequented, or in association with the person's former belongings. | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: | DISCOVERED BY:
| | LOCATION: | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM:
- No scientific evidence, people's fears may cause them to think to have seen or heard apparitions in dust or when door slams shut, amongst others.
| POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): Hamlet (theater play), Ghostbusters (Films), Supernatural (TV Series)
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 photo taken of the scene of the crash in the Florida Everglades |
| | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: it is only the word of the employees on the L-1011 flight. there is no real evidence to suggest anything supernatural | | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): The Ghost of flight 401 is a movie based on flight 401. the movie Crash aslo dramatizes the crash, rescue mission, and the investigation.. was referenced in the TV series Supernatural. | | The Ghost of
Flight 401
| | OVERVIEW: flight 401 was the first wide-bodied aircraft that had crashed. parts of the jet were later used in other large aircrafts resaulting in apparent supernatural activity. employees claimed to see the dead crew members on board. the parts were later removed by Eastern Airlines. | | CASE DATE: 1972 | | DISCOVERED BY: L-1011 crew and employees | | LOCATION: L-1011 flights |
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on a L-1011 flight, employees reported seeing apparitions in and around salvaged parts from flight 401, which crashed in the Florida everglades killing 101 passenger/crew. soon after the reports the salvaged parts were removed from the aircraft. | | | | | [UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA]
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| Buried treasure has been hunted here for over 200 years., The island has changed ownership a few times with the prospectus of excavating a site known as "the money pit" where maps and clues have pointed to. The hunt has claimed lives and chas a great timeline supporting the notion that there is something to be found. Within this pit have been further buried clues. Despite modern excavation tools and scientific dating, treasure has not been recovered. The people who buried this treasure must have thought about thier weatlh carefully due to the countless traps and measures taken to prevent discovery. | Oak Island
| | OVERVIEW: World's longest running hunt for lost treasure | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: Discovered 1795 yet may date to 1641 when a Spanish galleon Mestra Señora de la pura y Limpia Concepción strikes a coral reef off the Bahamas, breaking up, dumping its huge load of treasure. | DISCOVERED BY:
Daniel McInnis discovers on Oak Island a clearing in the forest, with many old oak stumps surrounding a huge single oak tree with sawed-off limb and tackle block hung from it, about 16 feet off the ground. Below limb is noticeable bowl-shaped depression 13 feet in diameter indicating something buried and settled. (This account is based on newspaper letters and articles from 1861-64.)
| | LOCATION: Oak Island lies directly against the western shore of Mahone Bay, off Nova Scotia, Canada, about 35 miles west of Halifax. The island itself is less than 1 mile long, and 1/2 mile wide. | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM:
No treasure found | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S):
Pirates, James Beard, Peter Pan, etc. | http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/oakisle/ http://www.oakislandsociety.ca/ http://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk http://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk | Please add as you yourself explore. This treasure has claimed lives as people try to unearth it! | | | | MEN IN BLACK
| | OVERVIEW: The term Men In Black (MIB) refers to persons often appearing after unexplained phenomena (e.g. UFO sightings) often dressed in plain, black suits driving automobiles with darkened windows. MIB often present credentials identifying them as agents of unfamiliar government agencies and either defraud or intimidate eye-witnesses to surrender evidence or to remain silent for "matters of national security". The term MIB should not be understood that they always appear in solely in black suits, this is only a popular term used by Ufologists for such agents who work to cover up unexplained phenomena. The government agency which MIB claim to represent varies; many ufologists in the USA believe that MIB are related to Department of Defence "black ops" (highly secret, covert operations), with the 160th Special Forces Aviation Regiment (Fort Campbell, Kentucky, USA; AKA Task Force 160, Nightstalkers) forming a special military recovery team. Other ufologists believe the MIB are extraterrestrials. | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: June 1947 | DISCOVERED BY: Harold A. Dahl
| | LOCATION: Maury Island, Washington, USA | | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: Anecdotal information only, no physical evidence | | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): Jumper by Steven Gould (Tor Books, 1992), The Agency in SciFi Channel's The Invisible Man tv series, Men In Black (Columbia Pictures, 1997), Men In Black II (Columbia Pictures, 2002), Transformers (Dreamworks, 2007), Jumper (Twentieth Century Fox, 2008), the Observer character in Fringe bears many striking similarities to MIB, Push (Summit Entertainment, 2009), numerous others | | | MOST FAMOUS CASE: Following a purported UFO crash at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, USA, December 1965 | | |
| | MOTHMAN
Chief Cornstalk's Curse
| | OVERVIEW: Mothman is a flying humanoid creature allegedly seen in the Kanawha and Ohio River Valleys of West Virginia and Ohio, with most sightings in the vicinity of Charleston and Point Pleasant, WV, USA. Most observers describe Mothman as a winged man-sized creature with large reflective red eyes and large moth-like wings. The creature has sometimes been reported as having no head, with its eyes set into its chest. Mothman is associated with UFO activity, high energy radiation burns, Men in Black encounters, poltergeist activity, Bigfoot and black panther sightings, animal and human mutilations, precognitions by witnesses, and the December 15, 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge spanning the Ohio River. Local oral tradition relates that the appearance of Mothman heralds disasters, or that Mothman causes disasters. The word "Mothman" was an invention by an Ohio newspaper copy-editor, after the first news stories of the sightings appeared. Many locals hold that Mothman is related to the legendary curse of Chief Cornstalk (Hokoleskwa or Keigh-tugh-gua) of the Shawnee in 1777. Mothman is problematic in terms of classification; it is potentially a cryptid, an extraterrestrial, and/or a paranormal phenomenon like a vengeful ghost. | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: November 15, 1966 | DISCOVERED BY: David and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette
| | LOCATION: seven miles north from Point Pleasant, WV, USA | | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: No scientific evidence | | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel (Panther Books, 1975), The Mothman Prophecies (Sony Pictures, 2002), remarkable similarities to the fictional Mi-Go race in the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and others. | | | | | | | [UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA]
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The infamous Roswell Incident
| | ROSWELL INCIDENT
| OVERVIEW: Report issued about recovering a crashed unidentified flying object (UFO) from a ranch near the city of Roswell.
| FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: 1947
| DISCOVERED BY: The Roswell Army Airfield
| LOCATION: New Mexico
| REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: Possible debris from nuclear testing
| POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): Roswell (the TV show)
| | | | |  Prophecy
| | | PRECOGNITION | OVERVIEW: Denotes a form of extrasensory perceptionwhere in a person is said to perceive information about places or events through paranormalmeans before they happen.A related term,presentiment, refers to information about future events which is said to be perceived as emotions. These terms are considered by some to be special cases of the more general term clairvoyance.
| | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE:1503 | DISCOVERED BY: Michel de Nostradame, possibly Cassandra of Troy (Ancient Greece)
| | LOCATION: | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM:Prophecies
| | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S):The prophecies retold and expanded by Nostradamus have figured largely in popular culturein the 20th and 21st centuries. As well as being the subject of hundreds of books (both fiction and nonfiction), Nostradamus's life has been depicted in several films and videos, and his life and writings continue to be a subject of media interest. | | | MOST FAMOUS CASE:The September 11, 2001 attacks on New York CityWorld Trade Center led to immediate speculation as to whether Nostradamus had predicted the event. Almost as soon as the event had happened, the relevant Internet sites were deluged with inquiries. In response, Nostradamus enthusiasts started searching for a Nostradamus quatrain that could be said to have done so, coming up with interpretations of Quatrains I.87, VI.97 and X.72. However, the various ways in which the enthusiasts chose to interpret the text were almost universally panned by experts on the subject | | |
 USS Eldridge, ca. 1944 | | Philadelphia
Experiment
| | OVERVIEW: Alledged Naval experiment at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Involved US destroyer, USS Eldridge, in which the ship was to be rendered invisible by using an application of Albert Einstein's Unified Field Theory. Upon, application of a supposed electro-magnetic field, the USS Eldridge became entirely invisible, and by some reports appeared simultanously in Norfolk, Virginia, having traveled a distance of 215 miles, at which time disappeared in Norfolk and reappeared back in Philadelphia. There were reports of serious side affects to the crew, including fused to balkheads, stuck in walls, or completely missing. | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: July to October 1943 | | DISCOVERED BY: Made known to Morris Jessup in a letter from Carlos Miguel Allende on January 13, 1955. | | LOCATION: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: Unified Field Theory not proven by mathematical means, several inconsistancies. Allende only witness to come forward about the experiment. | | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): Films: The Bermuda Triangle (1979); The Philadelphia Experiment (1984); Philadelphia Experiment II (1993); 100 Million BC (2008) | | | | | | | [UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA]
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| | UFO
| | OVERVIEW: An unidentified flying object, or UFO, is the popular term for any aerial apparition that cannot immediately be identified. | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: Ancient Times
| DISCOVERED BY:
| | LOCATION: | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: No hard evidence, hoaxes, aurora borealis
| POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): UFO (video game), Mars Attacks (film), War of the Worlds (book/film), UFO Hunters (a History Channel tv-series); the works of Charles Fort: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932)
| | | MOST FAMOUS CASE: Roswell, New Mexico, USA, on July 7, 1947 | | | | | The Titanic Murders
| OVERVIEW: Many think that two first class passengers, Mr. Crafton and Mr. Rude, were murdered by Alice Cleaver, nanny to first class victim's Hudson and Bessie Allison's young children, Lorraine and Trevor. Alice Cleaver is known to have been found guilty of killing her child in an act of desperation, and that the Allison's quickly hired her in England before leaving. It is unknown whether or not Cleaver did in fact kill her baby. She is supposed to have killed the men because they were blackmailers, and also tried to take advantage of her.
| FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: April 10th- 15th, 1912
| DISCOVERED BY: Capt. E.J. Smith, White Star Line Managing Director Bruce J. Ismay, first class passengers and authors Jacques Futrelle and his wife, Mae, along with an unnamed stewardess who found the first body.
| LOCATION: First Class Stateroom (1st murder) and A Deck (2nd murder), R.M.S. Titanic, Northern Atlantic Ocean
| REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: Mr. Crafton and Mr. Rude were assumed to have died in the sinking, along with about 1,500 other passengers, which is likely. Also, Captain Smith, Jacques Futrelle, Hudson Allison, Bessie Allison and 2-year old Lorraine Allison (the only non-third class child to die) perished in the sinking. Alice Cleaver (who saved Trevor Allison in the disaster), wanting a new life in America, vanished into obscurity. J. Bruce Ismay, whose career was ruined because he did not go down with the ship, had nothing to gain from further controversy. The only living person to know of the murders was Mae Futrelle, whom grieved her husband and sympathized with Alice. The information only came to light when Virginia Futrelle Raymond related the story in an interview before her death. There is no evidence that the murders occurred.
| POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): "The Titanic Murders" by Max Allen Collins, a fictional account of the murders from the perspective Jacques Futrelle.
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| | TUNGUSKA EXPLOSION
Terrestrial Cosmological Event
| OVERVIEW: A powerful explosion that occurred near a tributary of the Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 7:14 a.m. on 30 June 1908 (17 June 1908 by the calendar then in use in Imperial Russia). Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 megatons to as high as 30 megatons of TNT, with 10–15 megatons the most likely - roughly 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees across 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles). It is estimated that the seismic shock from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the local magnitude or Richter scale (the Richter scale was proposed in 1935 by Charles Richter, 5.0 on the Richter scale is roughly equivalent to 5.0 on the more recent moment magnitude scale). An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area (e.g., Washington, DC, USA, Tokyo, Japan, Berlin, Germany). 100 years later the evidence of the blast is still easily found, although no physical remains of the theorised object has yet been officially disclosed. Two similar, albeit much smaller events in 1965 and 1967 over remote areas of Canada, in the decades since the Canadian events, searches have yeilded less than 2 g (0.07 oz) material from causing objects, so it is possible that any debris from the object causing the Tunguska explosion may be microscopic and lost beneath the recoverying flora and/or the mud of the marshes and lakes of the Krasnoyarsk Krai region.
Speculative hypotheses: Atmospheric burst of cosmic origin, naturally occuring fusion reaction due to abnormal concentration of deuterium in a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, the annihilation of a chunk of antimatter falling from space, a microscopic black hole passing through the Earth, Nikola Tesla, UFO Crash, the sudden release and subsequent explosion of 10 million tons of natural gas from within the Earth's crust, a verneshot (named after French author Jules Verne, a hypothetical volcanic eruption event caused by the buildup of gas deep underneath a craton. Such an event may be forceful enough to launch an extreme amount of material from the crust and mantle into a sub-orbital trajectory.), time-space rift, several other theories involving variations of the Hollow Earth theory.
Although the cause is the subject of some debate, the explosion is now widely accepted to have most likely been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 miles) above Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates for the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across. | | FIRST SIGHTING/CASE DATE: 30 June 1908 (17 June 1908 by the Julian calendar then in use in Imperial Russia) | DISCOVERED BY:
| | LOCATION: Tunguska River, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia | REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM: Although none doubt the actuality of the Tunguska explosion, it produced measurable fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected in Great Britain, scientists have long argued the precise cause. Scientific inquiry into the event was delayed for nearly 30 years due to internal problems and remoteness of the region, leading to several conspiracy theories and wild speculation by the non-scientific community which have coloured perception of the event ever since.
| | POP CULTURE REFERENCE(S): In "Hellboy" (Revolution Studios, 2004) the Tuguska explosion is the result of the appearance of a monolith related to the Ogdru Jahad (the Seven Gods of Chaos); the Tunguska event (and the Jackson-Ryan hypothesis that it was caused by a primordial black hole) forms part of the back story for the 1975 Larry Niven novelette The Borderland of Sol; Isaac Asimov had a character in his story "The Mad Scientist" attempt to explain the Tunguska event as the production of energy via anti-matter colliding with matter. | | | | | | | [UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA]
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FRINGE / GLOSSARY OF UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA
