Send Us Your Incredible Story!

If you've ever had a brush with the paranormal or the unexplained, we want to hear about it. Now you can send us your stories of amazing occurrences and unusual events via our website.

We will eagerly read every mystery you send to us. Some of the good ones we will post here on this blog, crediting your name to the story. The very best ones we will save for future book projects.

Every astounding story in Almanac of The Infamous, The Incredible, and The Ignored happened to real people living ordinary lives. Mysteries, enigmas, and the unexplained are all around us. Tell us what's happened to you, and we will help to tell it to the world.

Like unsolved mysteries and unexplained phenomena? Then you'll love Almanac of The Infamous, The Incredible, And The Ignored, 365 days of amazing real-life occurrences and paranormal activities written by Juanita Rose Violini and published by Weiser Books. It's a must-read for every mystery lover. Check it out at www.incrediblealmanac.com today. A magical daily read!

Dalby Spook Haunting Revisited - Gef Returns

Gef the talking mongoose. It sounds like a child's TV show, but in fact it was a not-very-nice poltergeist that haunted the Irving family on the Isle of Man in the 1930's. Gef is a fixture in English paranormal lore, and is now experiencing a resurgence in popularity thanks to the efforts of Christopher Josiffe, a cataloguer at London University's Senate Library, who is reopening the investigation.

Gef was mostly seen by the family's daughter, Voirrey, who discovered that this strange, yellowish creature could talk and sing. She taught him more English, introduced him to the family, and Gef was a frequent visitor to the house.

As news of the poltergeist spread, Gef was investigated by Harry Price, one of England's most celebrated and dedicated magical investigators. Gef never appeared for Price, however. He took pawprint casts and bite-mark impressions and had them analyzed by experts, but they were never associated with any known animal.

Did Voirrey and the rest of the Irvings do this for fame and fortune? There is no evidence that they ever charged for admission to their house, called Doarlish Cashen, and the constant stream of gawkers and tourists was a tremendous bother to them. No, it seems like their report of the haunting was simply factual.

Gef disappeared when the Irvings left in 1935. His legend lives on, however, backed by the testimony of Price and the assertions of Voirrey Irving, to her dying day, that Gef was real.

Now Christopher Josiffe is re-examining Price's documentation and asking for information from Isle of Man residents in an effort to further probe the mystery of Gef. What will he find, more than 70 years after the fact? Mongooses are notoriously slippery creatures, but he may yet grasp more tantalising details to add to the Dalby Spook mystery.

Like unsolved mysteries and unexplained phenomena? Then you'll love Almanac of The Infamous, The Incredible, And The Ignored, 365 days of amazing real-life occurrences and paranormal activities written by Juanita Rose Violini and published by Weiser Books. It's a must-read for every mystery lover. Check it out at www.incrediblealmanac.com today. A magical daily read!

The Drive To Explain

Today the CBC website carried a photo essay of famous publicity stunts. They covered both times Oprah got hoodwinked by writers, the lady who lied about a winning lottery ticket, and the Boston Marathon runner who took a shortcut.

They also decided to mention crop circles and the granddaddy alien story of them all, the Roswell autopsies. In these stories, of course, the CBC writers sailed into famously dangerous and murky waters.

The crop circle phenomenon is an enduring mystery, and rightly so. On the surface, it seems eminently explainable, and Doug Bower and Dave Chorley decided to do just that, telling the world that they had created some of the world's most amazing crop circles with little more than a length of wood and some string. What they didn't explain, and what the world media seems never to have asked, is how two bar buddies could have created mathematical marvels that would stretch the capabilities of a team of engineers and surveyors, in only a few minutes, often under the eyes of people who saw nothing special happening.

The televised Roswell alien autopsy, supposedly put together from footage of the actual event in 1947, is also mentioned as a publicity stunt. It may have been; the Roswell incident has spawned more imitators and takeoffs than Elvis. The real event, however, remains far too inexplicable for reason to rest easy. And I couldn't help noticing that this was the one story they didn't actually come out and call a hoax.

Mysteries are, by their nature, uncomfortable for our reasoning brains. Therein lies their allure; that is why we will reach for any explanation, sometimes in blatant blindness of the outstanding evidence.

There are many of us, however, who are content to let mystery be. This world would be a greyer place if we could explain all of it. Having some unsolveable mysteries reassures me that we will never quite be as big as the world in which we live.

Like unsolved mysteries and unexplained phenomena? Then you'll love Almanac of The Infamous, The Incredible, And The Ignored, 365 days of amazing real-life occurrences and paranormal activities written by Juanita Rose Violini and published by Weiser Books. It's a must-read for every mystery lover. Check it out at www.incrediblealmanac.com today. A magical daily read!

Google Crop Circles

Sept 15, 2009: Google strikes again, with a theme of the mysterious and the bizarre celebrated on their home page for the second time this month. www.google.ca. This time it's crop circles.

Speculation is rampant on the Net about why Google is doing this - first a UFO abducts the letter O, then crop circles seem to forget about the letter L. Is it some weird marketing campaign? Is it something more sinister? Google doesn't seem to be telling.

Well, we love it. Everybody needs a little reminder of the mystery in life. that's what the Almanac is all about. Way to go, Google - keep it up.

Google Has It Right

Sept 4, 2009: Google has chosen today to honour the incredible number of searches it gets for 'unexplained phenomenon'. http://www.google.ca/

More and more, people are experiencing the sensation that there is something more to this world than what we simply see - call it a feeling, an intuition, but it's too pervasive to be dismissed. Thus, people begin their search. You can read more about it on Greg Bishop's UFO Mystic blog, here.

What better time to get a book with 365 of the world's most amazing occurrences and unexplainable events? What better time to pick one up for your friend? A shameless plug, I know, but hey, it's our blog, and it happens to be true.

Mystery really is all around us. The unexplained is out there. Maybe, with a daily dose of the unusual and the incredible, we can sharpen our senses to see more deeply into the mysterious world we live in.

Welcome

Welcome to Almanac Of The Infamous, The Incredible, And The Ignored.

This blog will enlighten, entertain, and remind you of the magic we have all around us, and the many ways it is constantly trying to make its presence felt in the crush of our 'ordinary' world.

Impossible occurrences, mystifying phenomena, incredible events - not everything that happens can be explained by our philosophies, not by a long shot.

Share with us this journey, this exploration, this trip into what we already know but have forgotten. Let's dabble in the mysteries, and see what we can find.