Weird Express

Remember Cousin Itt from the Addams Family?  Somebody must have turned him into a parakeet! Yipeeyipeeyipeeyee!

With its long, furry appendages, the newly-discovered Yeti Crab resembles the legendary abominable snow man. It was discovered in 2005 on the floor of the Pacific Ocean during a deep-sea diving expedition. The creature is so unusual that a new taxonomic family and genus had to be created for it. Its scientific name is Kiwa hirsuta.  It was named for Kiwa, the goddess of the shellfish in the Polynesian mythology.  "Hirsuta" means "hairy" in Latin. The Yeti Crab is blind. It has fur that supports colonies of bacteria which detoxifies the toxins found in emitted by hydrothermal vents where the creature lives.

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Staring at an optical illusion can be a pretty intense phenomenon. The image that you "see" is really something different from what it is.  Blame it on the different cells and receptors in your eyes that distinguish images and colors at dissimilar speeds. Our eyes can only receive a limited amount of visual stimuli.  However, the brain gives you the illusion of continuous sight as it constantly processes the visual information. 

Here are some of interesting illusions:

This joke was sent to me via email by Ken Leather man of 1ArticleADay.com .  It made my day! (Thank you, Ken!)  Here it goes...

A  new supermarket opened in  Denver .  It has an automatic water mister to keep the produce fresh. Just before it goes on, you hear the sound of distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain.

When you pass the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and you experience the scent of fresh sown hay.

In the meat  department there is the aroma of charcoal grilled steaks with onions.

When you approach the egg case, you hear hens cluck and cackle, and the air is filled with the pleasing aroma of bacon and  eggs frying.

The bread department features the tantalizing smell of fresh baked bread & cookies.

I don't buy toilet paper there any more.

All I can say is "Ouch!"

I studied in an exclusive school for girls. I was what old people in my country would call an "interna," because I stayed in the dormitory since home for me was four hours away by bus. That dormitory was already 80-something years old at the time this incident happened.

I was in a room which I shared with eight other girls.  My roommates were laughing and playing volleyball inside the room (Of course, they were careful not to miss lest they break something inside the room, and yes, that room was big enough).  I remember feeling out of sorts that day.  I was just staring out the window, looking at nothing.    Suddenly, something caught my eye.  It was a ball of light.  I had not seen anything like it.  It was so beautiful that I was enraptured by the sight.  The ball of light had a white center and pink rays. It looked like a little sun, but it was not bright enough to hurt my eyes. My roommates must have noticed that I was behaving strangely (according to them, my mouth was agape and my eyes widened) because they asked me what the matter was.  I pointed to the window and said, "It's so beautiful! It's so beautiful!"  They, too, looked out the window and saw the apparition.  However, the sight scared them.  They screamed and the ball of light disappeared in just moments.

I still don't know what the ball of light was.  Was it an earth-bound soul or an angel?  I don't know.  There were rumors that the dormitory was once the site of killings during World War II.  We thought that perhaps it was one of the poor unfortunate souls who weren't just ready to leave the earthly plane. Our dorm mistress insisted that there were no ghosts in the dormitory, or at least, she had not seen one in the more 30 years that she had stayed in the same dormitory.  One of my roommates can still very well remember that apparition more than 15 years after we saw it.  We still talk about it from time to time.

This is truly one of the weirdest and most unforgettable experiences I've ever had.

Halloween is fast approaching.  I just thought I should share my own experiences with supernatural beings.  There are plenty of urban legends about ghosts that haunt the tall buildings where the call centers are. Most ghosts seem to like elevators.  For instance, the most reported ghost sightings are of begging children who ask for money from unsuspecting call center agents and then vanish into thin air. I'm beginning to wonder if some of those so-called urban legends are real.  Believe it or not, I've seen ghosts twice. I'm a skeptic, but since I've seen these otherworldly creatures with my own eyes, I believe that ghosts exist.

I was a call center agent.  Most call centers in my country service clients and their customers who are half a world away.  Needless to say, call center agents need to work at night because it's daytime on the other side of the world where the customers are.  Because we work at night, some people like to scare us, telling us that we are bound to see ghosts because they seem to prefer to come out at night.

Two weeks before I started working as a call center agent, I underwent training with my co-workers.  I prefer not to disclose the exact location of the training because I don't want to scare people.  Suffice it to say that it happened in Makati.  I was on my way to our training room with two of my co-workers just after our lunch break.  The three of us were talking about ghosts.  What I remember saying just before we entered the elevator was, "I wouldn't mind seeing a ghost as long as I don't see any blood."

When the elevator finally opened, I saw this man who I thought was so pale.  He was short, had a medium build and grayish skin.  He looked at me and smiled.  I didn't think there was anything strange or freaky with what I saw except that the man was exceptionally pale.  When my co-workers and I finally went out of the elevator, I asked the two of them, "Didn't you notice how pale that man was?"

My question was met with puzzled looks.  "What man?" one of them asked.

"The one who was with us in the elevator.  Didn't you see him?" I persistently said to them.

"But there were only three of us in there!"

To this day, I haven't forgotten the face of that man and the look on my co-workers face when I asked them if they noticed him.  I probably never will.

My other ghost sighting?  Wait for my next post.