Titanic Tragedy: Costa Concordia

The ship that sank 100 years ago, on April 15th, was named RMS Titanic. But it had several nicknames: The Unsinkable Ship, The Last Word in Luxury, The Millionaire’s Special, The Wonder Ship, and The Ship of Dreams. It is doubtful we will see any ships with those kinds of nicknames ever again.


In the next few months, I thought, various essays would begin to appear about the Titanic.


Therefore, it was a surprise to receive a "breaking news" email from a friend about the events of last Friday the 13th, hinting at a new Titanic mess.

Brad Steiger is a well-known author of Fortean and related books. I wrote a "Foreword" to his reprinted edition of Strange Guests (NY: Anomalist Books, 2006), and recently have assisted with a bit of data in his and his wife Sherry's forthcoming updated edition of Conspiracies and Secret Societies.

I had been too busy to watch most of the news last week. But then something in the background was alerting me to be aware. News was beginning to tell of a cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, having hit rocks Friday night just off Italy's western coast. As I was just beginning to hear about the wreck, my buddy Brad sent this along: "Our daughter Kari's husband, Daniele, is a ranking officer in the carabineri, the Italian military police. For the last several years he has commanded a patrol boat. In the note [below] from Kari, who teaches English in Italy, she points out that the patrol boat in this news photo of the capsized cruise happens to be Daniele's."

6:50pm Jan 14

Last night at about 11:15, Daniele was awakened for an emergency. A cruise ship was in distress near the the Island of Giglio, about 2 hours from here. He was sleeping as they were scheduled for a normal night shift starting at 3am. They had no information, so I was was online and getting info off news reports before they arrived on scene. As you can see, the ship is totally on its side. The little boat happens to be Daniele's. They were finally relieved late this afternoon, so they could eat and sleep. Almost everyone is accounted for, but a couple hours ago, two more people were found on board the ship, still alive.

I began looking at photos being sent from the site of the wreck, and quickly saw this one (below), also apparently showing Steiger's son-in-law's boat.

It was one of those "small world" moments that drew me into this story more deeply. After all, this was not your ordinary story, as passengers were beginning to describe a chaotic and surreal scene as they rushed to evacuate the Costa Concordia (= "Coast Concord"). And now I was getting word that the degrees of separation from this awful scene were hardly a world away.

I was immediately reminded of how shocked I also once was to discover that another Fortean friend, author (of over 100 books) and correspondent Daniel Cohen was tragically tied to the Lockerbie tragedy. His daughter Theodora was a passenger on Pan Am Flight 103, and Daniel and his wife Susan would become major spoke people on behalf of the families of the 270 victims of that Lockerbie terrorism attack.

Irony? Coincidence? Fortean? "A passenger has revealed that the Celine Dion song 'My Heart Will Go On,' made famous by the 1997 film Titanic, was playing in one of the ill-fated cruise ship's restaurants at the very moment the [Costa Concordia's] hull was ripped open," wrote the Huffington Post. (The ear witnesses were said to be two Swiss brothers, Yannic and Keven Sgaga.)

Andrew W. Griffin has covered much of the comparative ground between the Titanic and the Costa Concordia at his insightful blog posting, "A night to remember in a year we'll never forget."

His comparison photos are worthy of reproducing to entice you to go read what he has to say:

An image of the Costa Concordia starting to sink off the Italian island of Giglio. 

Red Dirt Report/Gawker.

A rendering of the Titanic [the movie version?] as it sinks bow-first into the 

North Atlantic on April 14-15, 1912. Red Dirt Report/Dimensions Guide.

As the weekend went by, other photographs from the wreck of the Costa Concordia appeared that were remarkable to view, especially, as the images naturally reminded many of us of the Titanic.

One of the rocks in the hull.

A longer view of the damaged area.

The location of the disaster.

The stories of panic and less-than-organized efforts from the crew to rescue the passengers have been reinforced with images from cellphones.

The local police and coast guards were the heroes of the day. Meanwhile, the ship's captain allegedly left the ship before all were accounted for.

Some tales were truly scary.

Several passengers recounted how they had been watching a magic show when the ship ran aground, and the magician ran offstage leaving his assistant in a box. Finally, after some frantic moments, she was able to get someone to undo a latch releasing her. Rosalyn Rincon (shown above), from Blackpool, was trapped in the magic box as the Costa Concordia began to sink.

Crew, such as this young woman, were in other parts of the ship, when it went aground. Dancer Rose Metcalf, 22, was one of the last people to leave the Costa Concordia.

Captain Francesco Schettino is under arrest and may face charges that include manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning a ship when passengers were still on board, chief prosecutor Francesco Verusio said. Abandoning ship has a sentence of 12 years in prison for a full conviction in Italy.


Costa is a subsidiary of the American-Israeli company, Carnival Corporation & plc. Its Israeli-born chief executive, Micky Arison, said on Twitter that his thoughts and prayers were with the passengers and crew.

Reports are still giving confusing totals, in terms of the dead and the missing. As of Wednesday, January 18, 2012, the death toll is reported to be at 11, and the number of missing is said to be 22 or 24 or 28, in various accounts. The bodies of five adult passengers — four men and one woman, all wearing lifejackets — were discovered in the wreckage Tuesday, raising the death toll to 11. Italian authorities on Wednesday identified the 24 passengers and four crew still missing, a number that includes the six bodies found since Monday. None of the dead have been identified. The missing included 13 Germans, six Italians, four French, two Americans and one person each from Hungary, India and Peru.

Another Titanic "coincidence" was mentioned in the London Telegraph's article on January 18, 2012:

News about the Titanic theme tune followed the revelation on Tuesday that an Italian grand daughter of a Titanic survivor was on board the Costa Concordia when it capsized.
"It was like reliving history, it was horrible, I was really shocked," said Valentina Capuano, 30, who managed to escape when the giant vessel foundered.
"I am still shaken up and get very upset when I think about what I've been through, I have heart palpitations," said Miss Capuana, who escaped the sinking vessel along with her fiancé, her brother and his girlfriend.
Her grandmother also survived the Titanic disaster but lost her brother....
The Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912.

Valentina Capuano

Capuana's grandmother's brother Giovanni, who had been working as a waiter on the Titanic and hoped to begin a new life in America, was one of the 1,517 people who died in the disaster. In the official list of victims of the sinking of the Titanic, there is a Sig. Giovanni Basilico, 27, waiter, who died, but his body was never recovered. Valentina Capuano mentioned her grandmother's name was Maria. (No "Maria Capuano" or "Maria Basilico" or anyone with the first name "Maria" born in Italy is to be found in the list of survivors. She must have used a different name.)

The first victim of the wreck of the Costa Concordia has been identified as violinist Sándor Fehér, 38, who was among 11 people confirmed dead from the ship that carried 4,200 passengers.

Sándor Fehér

Fehér had helped a number of crying children to put on lifejackets, and he was wearing a lifejacket himself when he apparently went back to his cabin to pack his violin, pianist Jozsef Balog said, according to Laurie Niles at Violinist.com. Niles also noted that Fehér came from a musical family -- both his father and grandfather played the violin -- and started playing the violin when he was six years old. He graduated in 1998 from the Franz Lizst Academy in Budapest, where he studied with László Dénes.

In reality in 1912 and as shown in the James Cameron film Titanic, as the great ship sank 100 years ago, the musicians played "Autumn" and died. They were honored for their courage with large funerals (some numbering 40,000 attendees) and memorials.

The difference in death tolls between the two ships is great and this need not be overlooked.  The Titanic’s death toll was 1,517. The Costa Concordia’s death toll, at the time of this writing, is eleven. Relative percentage of Deaths: Titanic 68 percent vs. Costa Concordia .25%, one-quarter of 1 percent.


The Costa Concordia was actually bigger than the Titanic. The Titanic was 882 feet and 8 inches long (268 meters) and had a tonnage of 46,000. The Costa Concordia was larger, with a tonnage of 114,500 and a length of 951 feet and 5 inches (290 m). The width of the Titanic was 92.5 feet (28 m), compared with 118 feet (36 m) for the Costa Concordia.

PW: Ritual America

Publishers Weekly has published this review:

Ritual America: 
Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society: 
A Visual Guide

Adam Parfrey and Craig Heimbichner, foreword by Loren Coleman. Feral House (Consortium, dist.), $29.95 paper over board (380p) ISBN 978-1-936239-14-6

There have been hundreds of clandestine clubs in America, but as Coleman notes in the foreword, we “[do] not know much about the hidden landscape in which we live everyday.” In unmasking this “widespread covert reality”—a motley group of secret societies from Elks and Masons to the Ku Klux Klan, the Bohemian Club, and the Rosicrucians—Heimbichner, a contributor to Paranoia magazine, and Parfrey (editor of Apocalypse Culture) survey secret passwords, garments, handshakes, songs, and initiations to show how these offbeat orders and brotherhoods have shaped America. The pages are packed with unusual images, many not previously printed, in paper ephemera, postcards, cartoons, sheet music, and art by numerous illustrators, along with kooky costumes and helmets. Controversial figures such as Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard and “Masonic Pope” Albert Pike are profiled. One bizarre section has ads for items (like axes) used in hazings and sadistic initiation pranks. The military is described as “a bastion of Masonic membership,” and a dubious connection is drawn between waterboarding and “fraternal traditions.” The total effect is that of a tattered, bulging scrapbook of outré oddities on high-quality slick paper with an attractive graphic design. (Mar.)

Top Ten Evil Clowns of 2011

Top Ten Evil Clowns of 2011
by Loren Coleman, Author of The Copycat Effect. (New York: Paraview Pocket-Simon and Schuster, 2004.)

Following in the tradition of my list from 2008, my notes on evil clowns (and Joker clones) that turned up in 2009, and my documenting of real killer clowns in 2010, here is a random "top ten" gathering of "evil clown" stories for 2011.


(1) Clown Caught on Tape Stealing Cash Register


An evil clown stole a cash register on December 8, 2011, from the K-Mart at Mohawk and Huron streets, Corpus Christi, Texas.







(2) Insane Clown Hits Hobo Pantry

According to a Dothan, Alabama police statement, a robbery took place around 12:45 a.m. on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, at the Hobo Pantry store. The police reported a man armed with knife stole some cash and ran from the store toward Westgate Parkway.The robber as a white male, about 6 feet tall, who weighed 175 to 180 pounds, had blue or green eyes, wore desert camouflage pants, a black hooded sweater with red and green animated pictures on it along with the black and white Insane Clown Posse mask over his head.

(3) Kent Clown Caught At Chatham




Mitchell Woods, 17, of Thrasher Close, Haggerston, East London, was sentenced at Maidstone Crown Court on Monday, May 9, 2011, after pleading guilty to possessing a prohibited firearm and possessing ammunition without a certificate, to three years in jail. On January 29, 2011, Woods was arrested by a Kent Police Armed Response unit at Higham rail station, after officers were called to the station by a concerned member of the public, who, while waiting for a train at Chatham, overheard Woods talking to some friends about carrying a gun. The Hackney teenager was caught carrying a loaded gun and a clown mask (seen above) on a train in Kent. The gun had been previously used in three gang-related shootings in London, one in which someone had been shot three times with the weapon, according to media accounts.




(4) Clown Uses Car To Hit & Drag Person

On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, Andrew Joseph Davis, 20, was arrested for running down a person with his car and dragging the individual 100 feet.  The Oklahoma incident resulted in the above mug shot of Davis, which was published by Smoking Gun.

Police were called after eyewitnesses saw a driver wearing the distinctive face paint swerve across the road near Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and hit a pedestrian before accelerating. Nearby residents reported that the two men in the black-colored sedan shouted "Woop! Woop!" as they zoomed away from the scene.

(5) Northern Irish Clowns Attack

At about 8 PM local time (2000 GMT) on Tuesday, March 22, 2011, two men with baseball bats called to a flat in Barnagh Grove and assaulted the 42-year-old who lives there. The man's arm was broken and he suffered other injuries. He was taken to a hospital for treatment, according to the BBC.

Police said the attackers were wearing "clown-type masks" and black clothing. This assault by two men wearing clown masks took place in Donaghadee, a small town (population about 6,500) in County Down, Northern Ireland. The town lies about 18 miles (29 km) east of Belfast. Donaghadee is known as a significant site from the Irish Rebellion of 1798. On the morning of Pike Sunday, June 10, 1798, a force of United Irishmen (a guerilla force, not unlike the revolutionaries contemporary in America and France), mainly from Bangor, Donaghadee, Greyabbey and Ballywalter, Ireland, attempted to occupy the town of Newtownards. They met with musket fire from the market house and were defeated.

(6) Clowns Want To Be Plez'ed

Law enforcement officials in Anderson, South Carolina, said a robber wearing a clown mask held up a convenience store at gunpoint on Wednesday night, December 28, 2011. Employees at the Plez U on Concord Road were playing cards when a 5' 7" person with a male voice walked in around 9 p.m. wearing a green and white mask with red hair, a brown hoodie, and gloves.

The person showed a silver revolver and demanded money from the cash register. The person then left after telling everyone inside that they had five seconds to get on the floor.

The robbery is one of three during December 2011, in Anderson County, involving someone wearing a mask and holding up a store at gunpoint. On Old Williamston Road, a High Volume convenience store was robbed Dec. 14 by a man also wearing a clown mask. Investigators say the mask is similar to the one worn by the person at the Plez U. Surveillance video also shows that on Dec. 8, a Stop-A-Minit in Belton was robbed by a man wearing an alien mask and carrying a gun.

(7) Serial Killer Clown's Paintings Go On Sale

In May 2011, it was announced that the paintings of John Wayne Gacy were trying to be sold. Gacy is the Evil Clown come to Earth; he raped and murdered 33 young men and boys in the 1970s. Yes, he also did some art in prison. During 2011, according to the Big Picture, "an art gallery in Las Vergas [sic] is trying to selling [sic] the paintings to raise money for the National Center for Victims of Crime."


The organization, however, petitioned to have its name removed from any connection to this auction, to the Las Vegas gallery, and to the artwork.

(8) Californian Kier Charged With Attempted Montana Murder

Dante Kier called himself "Refry Demon" online.

A California man faces three felony charges, including attempted murder, after police say he stabbed a Kalispell, Montana, homeowner during a December 12, 2011, home invasion because “it felt good.”

Prosecutors with the Flathead County Attorney’s Office have charged Dante Kirpal Kier, 19, of Santa Barbara, Calif., with attempted deliberate homicide, aggravated burglary and assault with a weapon. All three charges are felonies.

Homeowner Brian Bay was fixing the dishwasher in his southeast Kalispell house when he went out to the garage to get a tool. His wife and children were home as well.  When he returned inside, Bay said he saw Kier in the hallway. Bay confronted the intruder, who had a weapon in his hand. During the confrontation, Kier allegedly stabbed Bay in the upper arm and inside his mouth. Kier then tried to stab Bay in the ribs numerous times with what turned out to be a wood-handled steak knife. Investigators said the blade was “bent severely” after the stabbing. Bay wrestled Kier to the ground and held him while his wife called the police at about 9:35 p.m. Officers arrived and arrested Kier. Police say Bay’s wife and children were unharmed during the incident.

When police officers canvassed the neighborhood, several of the Bays’ neighbors said they found notes on their windows that said, “Your house is being watched tonight by … the creeps.”

Kier also allegedly told police that he is a member of the Insane Clown Posse gang, and referred to himself as a Juggalo. (There's a long documented history and debate about ICP-inspired crime, see here and here, but this specific list is about the clown aspect, please note.)

(9) Clown Arrested On Rape Charges


A cold case of a clown raping a young girl was solved in Fullerton, California, in October 2011. 


See the video report here.




(10) Killer Santa Strikes Again





My 2008 list ended with the ultimate evil twisted clown-like finale to the year of 2008, when a costumed man, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, 45, plotting revenge against his ex-wife, dressed up in a Santa Claus suit, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered nine people. He then burned their house down before killing himself hours later. The Killer Santa killings took place on East Knollcrest Drive, Covina, California.

It happened again, in 2011.

Grapevine, a Dallas suburb, is dubbed the "Christmas Capital of Texas." It was there where a Christmas Day rampage occurred. A gunman who killed six people and himself at a family Christmas celebration was dressed in a Santa Claus suit when he opened fire, local police said. The dead were four women and three men, ages 15 to 59. The victims appeared to have just opened Christmas presents when the shooting started in the Lincoln Vineyards, a middle-income complex near Colleyville Heritage High School, one of the area's most highly regarded schools.

Authorities later identified the shooter as a 56-year-old Persian man, Aziz Yazdanpanah, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His wife, with whom he was having marital and financial problems, like Aziz, was born in Iran; their children were American-born.

(+ 2012) Santa Again

The Daily Star is reporting that on Christmas Eve, Friday, January 6, 2012, (the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem is one of the Orthodox churches that celebrate Christmas on January 7th, following the Julian calendar), there has been another Santa suit murder.

Six Israeli Arabs have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Christmas Eve killing of a prominent Christian leader in Jaffa by a man reportedly wearing a Santa suit, police say. Lawyer and accountant Gabriel Cadis was stabbed fatally on Friday after a parade in the historic Mediterranean port district marking the day before Christmas, according to the calendar followed by the Greek Orthodox Church in the Holy Land.

Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri noted, "The killer could have been disguised as Father Christmas but we're not sure."



"Initial inquiries suggest that there was not a nationalist motive to the murder, that is to say that it was not connected to the Arab-Jewish conflict. We are following all leads, including rumours of a dispute within the Greek Orthodox community in Jaffa over the victim's recent re-election as leader of the Jaffa Orthodox Church Association," she said.

Top Ten Evil Clown Stories of 2011

© Loren Coleman, 2012

.

P.S. Hopkinsville

P.S. Hopkinsville


After finishing my earlier posting (see here), about Hopkinsville and Budd Hopkins having temporal links for August 21st, a postscript presented itself about other people links and "coincidences," regarding that situation.

"Hopkinsville hobgoblin" attacks a member of the Sutton family, 1955.

Budd Hopkins during his early lectures, as in this one from 1967, began to develop the concept of "missing time" and "alien abductions" due to the "intruders."

"Hopkinsville," as the tagging label grew to be known, is all about the Kelly-Hopkinsville "hobgoblins," reported in 1955.

Two of the most mentioned investigators linked to that incident are (1) J. Allen Hynek (May 1, 1910 - April 27, 1986), ufologist who developed the close encounter scale and consulted on the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (released on November 16, 1977), and (2) Isabel Davis, ufologist who authored Close Encounters of Kelly and Others of 1955 (1978).

Davis was from New York City, and investigated the Kelly-Hopkinsville event a year after it happened. Hynek, living in the Chicago area, examined the details of the case by talking to Davis and one other investigator.  Who was that person and how did Hynek and Davis learn the most about the Kelly incident? They received their most credible firsthand data from an individual they would call a friend years later: Andrew "Bud" Ledwith, an announcer-engineer at a Hopkinsville radio station.

Yes, another Bud.

Bud Ledwith was there first. On August 22, 1955, it was Andrew "Bud" Ledwith of WHOP radio who interviewed the seven adult witnesses in two different groups. He judged their accounts as consistent, especially in their descriptions of the strange glowing beings. It is Bud Ledwith's drawings that are most often reworked and used when talking about the Kelly creatures.

Bud Ledwith's sketches were made under the instructions of the eyewitnesses.

Now here is the strange part. Years later, in 1977, I met Bud Ledwith, face-to-face. He was working as the host of a small Boston-area radio station talk show. He invited me to come into his studio so he could interview me about the April 21-22, 1977, sightings of the Dover Demon. Only after I was there, after we began to talk, did I discover that he was the same Bud Ledwith who was in Hopkinsville in 1955.

What a strange coincidence, I thought. The Dover Demon was so very bizarre in description, I had already researched seemingly similar isolated historical cases of small creatures. Naturally, I had compared the Dover Demon with the Kelly hobgoblins. And then I find I stumble into the primary investigator in that case? It all seemed rather unbelievable.

Walt Webb, then the Assistant Director of the Hayden Planetarium at Boston's Science Museum, would write, in his special report, about this overlap that all of us were discussing back then: "Loren was the first to note some resemblance between the Dover entity and the famous Kelly, Kentucky, 'little men' incident of 1955," (see page 55, in Mysterious America).

So, there I found myself, sitting with Bud Ledwith, 22 years after he interviewed the Kentucky creature witnesses.  I was talking about the bright orange Dover Demon, and then we discussed the silvery Kelly creatures. It all seemed a little weird at the time, and still does today.

To think now of the links between Budd Hopkins/Hopkinsville, and Bud Ledwith/Hopkinsville, in the context of Bud, me, the Dover Demon, and Budd, is beyond strange.

I met Bud Ledwith in April 1977, because of the Dover Demon, and met Budd Hopkins for the first time at the Mass UFO Show/Mass Monster Mash in 2008. I had spoken at the previous Mass Monster Mash, presenting a 30th Year Anniversary Dover Demon PowerPoint presentation in 2007.


Digging a bit, the links from Isabel Davis, through Bud Ledwith and Hopkinsville, to Budd Hopkins are rather direct, historically. It all has ties to the old CSI.

The Civilian Saucer Intelligence (CSI) was an independent unidentified flying object research group founded in New York City in 1954. It was initially called Civilian Saucer Intelligence New York, but the "New York" was quickly dropped from their name.

Jerome Clark writes, "Though its membership was small, what the organization lacked in quantity it made up in quality of its personnel," (Clark, Jerome, The UFO Encyclopedia: 2nd Edition; Volume 1, A-K; Omnigraphics, Inc, 1998, page 188). CSI's core personnel were Ted Bloecher, Isabel Davis, and Alexander Mebane.

Though the group never formally disbanded, CSI was defunct by 1959. However, Davis and Bloecher were active in UFO research into the 1980s, Davis as a NICAP associate. Notably, Bloecher investigated an early 1970s UFO sighting made by young New York City painter, Budd Hopkins; in later years, Hopkins would become a key figure in the alien abduction scene.

I truly am not sure what any of it means, but it is worth a little Fortean pondering.

Kelly-Hopkinsville hobgoblin (1955)

Dover Demon (April 1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (November 1977)

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Gremlins (1984); Gremlins 2 (1990)

Hopkinsville + Budd Hopkins / August 21st

Peter Park sends along the following:

One curious twilight-language coincidence I myself have long noticed but which I've never to my recollection seen in accounts of the 1955 Sutton farmhouse alien siege is the fact that Hopkinsville, KY, was the birthplace and home town of famous psychic and "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce. I've long been a little surprised that Christian fundamentalists who see anything "occult," "New Age," or "psychic" as "of the Devil" haven't picked up on the Sutton case, with its decidedly demonic-looking "goblins," as just some of Edgar Cayce's buddies paying a rerturn visit to his home town!

Several twilight insights can be said about this.

First off, in January 2008, Mac Tonnies (pictured above) looked at the Hopkinsville + hobgoblin 1955 invasion + Edgar Cayce "name game" link, here. 

(Mac Tonnies was found dead on October 22, 2009, the same day that American comedian and television personality Soupy Sales died. October 22, 362 is remembered for a mysterious fire that destroyed the Temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch.)

One of the 1955 creatures attacks. Illustration from Mysterious America.

The time period of the Kentucky sightings occurred between 8:00 p.m. and 4:45 a.m Central Time. This "attack" occurred on, please note this date, August 21, 1955, through the morning of August 22nd. Tonnies also mentioned Budd Hopkins in conjunction with the Hopkinsville event.  The name game is a natural with Hopkinsville and Budd's last name.

Tonnies wrote at his blog: "Skeptics will point out that 'Hopkins' is hardly an unusual name. But there are enough cases of synchronicity within UFO research alone to justify a closer, more rigorous analysis. Perhaps Fortean events unfold in a barely glimpsed 'Matrix,' their manifestations only partially perceptible to baseline human consciousness."

In my book Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures, I dealt with the 1955 events, the name game (like Lafayette = “the little fairy” or “the little enchantment”), the devil meaning behind "hob" and "hobgoblins," and my further interest in links to dates. 

William Mott, rephrasing and extending my notes, shared the following at Mac's blog, 

"Hob" is an ancient appellation for a demon, goblin, or devil. The stretch to "Hobkin" or "Hopkin," i.e., "goblinkind" or "devilkind," is another connection in all this. Hobyahs, hobgoblins, etc. bear this out.

We have here a Fortean case of names and dates colliding across time and space.

Budd Hopkins died on, get this, August 21, 2011, at 1:35 p.m. ET.

What gives with August 21st? Hopkinsville hobgoblins in 1955 and Budd Hopkins' death in 2011.

Dipping into the events of August 21st, I find these quick examples:  In 1945, on August 21st, physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, near the 33 degree north latitude. In 1968, Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia. In 1971, Black Panther George Jackson was killed (some say "assassinated") in a shootout with police at the Marin County Courthouse, the last commissioned building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1983, Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila International Airport. 

For more on Tonnies's ideas, see his book, The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and Aliens Among Us (NY: Anomalist Books, 2010), which was published soon after his death.

I have to point out that the "Hopkinsville invasion" actually took place in Kelly, Kentucky, located 8 miles north of Hopkinsville, and Cayce was born 10 miles away, in Beverly, south of Hopkinsville, straight down Lafayette Road.  

Nevertheless, Cayce is most often said to have been born in "Hopkinsville," and the "little silver hobgoblins" were remembered as having attacked in "Hopkinsville," because of the 1955 newspaper and Air Force accounts associating that town with those events.

Meanwhile, Happy Winter Solstice everyone. In Hopkinsville, Kentucky, this year, that's December 21st. In 2011, the December solstice takes place on Wednesday, December 21 at 11:30 p.m. CST (Thursday, December 22 at 5:30 UTC).

Korea's 9/11 Twin Towers: What Were They Thinking?

Will these two buildings appear in Seoul, South Korea in 2016? What were the people that put together these plans thinking? A mere coincidence? The twilight language working overtime in a Dutch firm? What's going on here?


South Korean developers may be backing down from plans to erect two luxury apartment buildings that some say resemble the World Trade Center buildings exploding as they were hit by planes on 9/11.


The building design had been pitched by Dutch architecture firm MVRDV for erection in Seoul, South Korea.


But according to new reports, the design is on hold now.


After the uproar online and beyond, telling of the controversy about the design of the buildings, MVRDV issued apologies on its website and Facebook page. The Facebook entry reads as follows:

A real media storm has started and we receive threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse.

MVRDV regrets deeply any connotations The Cloud projects evokes regarding 9/11, it was not our intention.