Fermented Hair

A woman surnamed Zhang from Jinhua in east China's Zhejiang province told the paper [The People's Daily] that she was stunned when her hairdresser said that all the hair cut off from customers is purchased to make protein-rich soy sauce. "Making soy sauce? I was scared!" Zhang said.

A barber surnamed Liu said, "We did hear the rumor but I have never seen anyone use hair to make soy sauce." He added however that the myth goes further. "I even heard that it can be used to make medicine," Liu said.

"Some people come to buy discarded hair from our shop. Some hair that is complete and long is used to make wigs. As for the smaller pieces, I have no idea what it could be used for." He said the price of hair differs depending on its quality, but most of the hair purchased from his shop costs about 10 yuan (US$1.65) a kilo.

A food safety expert surnamed Shi told the paper that is indeed true that hair can be fermented to make soy sauce. However, Shi said this is prohibited as hair can contain excessive amounts of heavy metals. "This existed years ago but is rare now. Some small factories still do it illegally," Shi added.

Source: Want China Times, 27 December 2013

A Romanian Couple Have a Shopping Trip Adventure in Bucharest

Signs of the crumbling economy were all around. [...] His eye caught sight of a straw man dressed in old jeans, a T-shirt and a checked jacket propped against the wall of the Church. The figure looked like a scarecrow, he said. Someone had sketched eyes, nose and a mouth on his cardboard face. And as a final touch, had drawn a tear in blue ink, trickling from one eye. On his lap was a sign, ‘No job. Wife and kids to feed.’ Apparently, there were a few coins in a collection bowl beside the straw figure on the pavement! [...]

After paying for the metro ticket, another item on the government’s list for price increases, they waited for the train. With the sound of wind rushing through the dark tunnel and headlights shining on the tiled wall, the train arrived. However, as they got on, they saw a straw figure seated in the carriage. It was dressed much like the first one and also had a face made of cardboard. The sign around its neck said: ‘Tax hikes! Give generously.’ There was a cap on the straw figure’s lap, empty.

“Do you think there are others?” Maria said.

“Might be.”

I can just imagine Mitică shrugging and looking around, curiously.

Sure enough, just as the escalator reached street level at Unirii, there was another straw man propped against the window of Unirii Shopping Center, he said. Hung around his neck was a notice,’Petrol price hike! I’m broke’ In fact, as they looked around, they saw more and more straw figures with signs like, ‘Can’t afford medicines,’ and ‘Loan sharks to repay. Deep in debt.’ Not only that, they noticed large flags on roof tops as far as the eye could see. The flags were red with a large, yellow star in the top left hand corner, and four smaller stars in a semi-circle around it.

“Whose flag is that?” asked Mitică, puzzled. “They’re everywhere. Look!”

“Didn’t you see ‘Enter the Dragon’ with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan?” said Maria, in a superior tone.
“What’s that got to do with the flags?” countered Mitică.

“It’s the Chinese flag, tâmpitule!” [...]

They went into the big store at Unirii Shopping Center and found a shop selling expensive bags. One bag, he said, was made of crocodile skin and cost a fortune. It was on display, high up on a glass shelf. Mitică said he was praying that Maria wouldn’t see it. But, of course, she headed straight towards it like a guided shopping missile, pointing.

The assistant stood on a chair and took the bag. It seemed strangely heavy, because she struggled to hold on to it as she got down from the chair. She handed it to Maria, who clearly loved it. Mitică said he was getting ready to fork out an obscene amount of cash when Maria opened the bag’s silver clasp to look inside. And that’s when something unbelievable happened.

As she opened the bag, the mummified fingers of a hand and then a fore-arm appeared. Maria shrieked and dropped the bag. The fore-arm rolled onto the shop floor. Mitică said that as God is his witness, it was a man’s fore-arm, still with pieces of ripped and bloodied shirt sticking to it. The assistant fainted. Then the manager appeared. Mitică said that the manager was desperate to prevent a scandal and urged them to take the bag for nothing. However, he made them solemnly promise they would never mention the incident to anyone.

They left the shop in a hurry, and as Mitică glanced back, he saw the manager dragging the unconscious assistant to a chair while calling for a glass of water. The fore-arm still lay on the floor. [...]

 Source: Romania-Insider, 10 December 2013

Teenager Kidnapped by Haunted House

JOHOR BARU: An abandoned mansion in  Jalan Skudai, here, in Danga Bay [Malaysia], has become  the centre of attention, following rumours that a 16-year-old youth  is being "hidden" there by "evil entities".

Shamans and bomoh have stationed themselves outside the Villa Nabila mansion, reciting prayers and offerings, hoping to persuade the "entities" to release the boy.

Some 300 people gathered outside the mansion yesterday, hoping that Mohamad Izzat Izzudin Hussin, who disappeared from his home in Kampung Majidee here on Saturday, would be found. Prior to his disappearance, he reportedly told friends that he was going to Villa Nabila.

The pre-war double-storey mansion with a sprawling compound had, over the years, gained ill repute, with rumours of murders and massacres having taken place on its grounds.

The rumours ranged from that of a young maiden named Nabila, who was murdered and sealed in the mansion's walls by her stepmother, to the murder of a family of five by their gardener, a black magic practitioner. As a result, the mansion attracts occult hunters and thrill seekers.

Source:  New Straits Times, 19 November 2013

Among the superstitions surrounding the place are that visitors should enter the house in even numbers. Should they visit in odd numbers, there will be an "extra" person in the group when they leave.

Source: AsiaOne, 19 November 2013, which also has a slideshow of photographs of the haunted house in question, including this tantallising shot:

Man Turns into Woman-Eating Snake, Local Police Implicated

The news of a man who transformed into a python and swallowed a girl in his hotel room in Molyko, Buea, spread like wildfire Saturday morning leaving curious citizens with no option than to rush to the said hotel (name withheld) to see for themselves the monster and its victim. The crowd that streamed in disrupted traffic between Mile 17 Motor Park and Molyko as they wanted to forcefully get into the hotel and get the python killed. 

The situation degenerated transforming the Mile 17-UB Junction stretch of the main boulevard in Molyko, Buea on Saturday November 9, into a Hollywood film scene or better still, a reminiscence of strike scenario in the University of Buea as an angry mob of students and other curious denizens were being prevented by security operatives from forcing themselves into the hotel premises to see the python that is alleged to have mysteriously swallowed a girl. The situation resulted into an open confrontation between security forces and the crowd that threw stones on the forces leading to untold destruction of the hotel’s panes and cars parked in the hotel premises.

The security forces of the Buea Mobile Intervention Unit, 2^nd District Police post in Molyko and the Gendarmerie squadron fired tear gas to disperse the crowd and restore calm and traffic flow on the stretch. The chaos left some persons with injuries including a Police officer of the GMI Buea who sustained a head injury from a stone. By press time, some four demonstrators were arrested by security forces. The Divisional Officer of Buea, Paul Wakam Kouam, the deputy State Counsel of Buea, Magistrate John Njonjo, the first Deputy Mayor of Buea, Emmanuel Motomby Mbome, all came to the scene to restore order.

The DO advised the crowd to retire to their homes assuring them that nothing strange has been discovered in the hotel following an inspection of the rooms. Earlier, the Manager of the Hotel simply described the incident as rumour circulated by his competitors. One of the hotel staff said the presence of a senior Police official at the hotel who was accompanied by regional police officials for breakfast that Saturday morning must have triggered the widespread rumours.

Source: Cameroon Tribune, 10 November 2013

A separate report the following day on RTV Nouvelles adds the detail that the man transformed himself into a snake after having sex with the woman.

US Money Repels Flies

Flies can be repelled by hanging up a plastic bag that is full of water and contains a US one-cent coin.

The efficacy of this has been reported in both the US and the Middle East (where it is used by US Marines).

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 29 October 2013

Child-Eating Mouse

News spread on social networks in Saudi Arabia this week that a giant mouse nearly one metre long had killed two babies in the Gulf kingdom. [...]

Newspapers said the news were carried on Facebook and other social networks in the Gulf kingdom that the giant mouse has four large teeth with a length of around 2.5 cm each. “The news said the mouse killed two babies,” Almadina daily said.

Source: Emirates 24/7, 1 November 2013

The Death Ring

A singular story of a poisoned ring appeared in the French newspapers a few years ago, to the effect that a gentleman who had purchased some objects of art at a shop in the Rue St. Honoré, was examining an ancient ring, when he gave himself a slight scratch in the hand with a sharp part of it. He continued talking to the dealer a short time, when he suddenly felt an indescribable sensation over his whole body, which appeared to paralyse his faculties, and he became so seriously ill that it was found necessary to send for a medical man. The doctor immediately discovered every symptom of poisoning by some mineral substance. He applied strong antidotes, and in a short time the gentleman was in a measure recovered. The ring in question having been examined by the medical man, who had long resided in Venice, was found to be what was formerly called a ‘death’ ring, in use by Italians when acts of poisoning were frequent about the middle of the seventeenth century. Attached to it inside were two claws of a lion made of the sharpest steel, and having clefts in them filled with a violent poison. In a crowded assembly, or in a ball, the wearer of this fatal ring, wishing to exercise revenge on any person, would take their hand, and when pressing in the sharp claw, would be sure to inflict a slight scratch on the skin. This was enough, for on the following morning the victim would be sure to be found dead. Notwithstanding the many years since which the poison in this ring had been placed there, it retained its strength sufficiently to cause great inconvenience to the gentleman as stated.

Source: William Jones, Finger-Ring Lore,Chatto and Windus 1877

The Plasma Gang

A gang known as the Plasma Gang was reported to be in circulation in Alexandra, South Africa, in August 2013. They were breaking into people's houses to steal their plasma TVs; if the victims awoke or came in during the robbery and saw what was happening, the gang would murder them. They wanted the plasma TVs not for the sake of the TV itself, but so that they could remove a powder from inside it to use in the drug cocktail nyaope.

Source: Post, 29 August 2013

(This story was reported on the TV, radio and in local newspapers throughout August and September, with claims, counter-claims and debunkings.)

The Alchemical Properties of the Black Prince Cicada

''Trevor Dallen's comments about fly cages and tormented cicadas have brought back a few childhood memories,'' recalls Gerry Fletcher, of Tamworth. ''As a boy, every summer I would search for a Black Prince cicada, as the rumour at the time was that if you found one you could sell it to the local chemist for two shillings - a fortune in those days when Cobbers were four for a penny. Apparently, the chemist used the cicada in the making of some form of medicine."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 8 August 2013

"When I first started my pharmacy apprenticeship in the early '50,'' recalls Alice Sternhell, of Naremburn (big bucks from bugs, Column 8, last week), ''we were regularly pestered by children offering to sell us cicadas. My boss always told them that we had enough for now, but that Mr Spora, the chemist down the road, still needed some. So the myth lived on.'' 

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 2103 

Bele Sheephead

Bele Sheephead haunts Broughton Moor road near Flimby in Cumbria. Bele was a young girl
who discovered her pet lamb killed by a fox. She felt a strange and irresistible urge to drink its blood, and from then on her thirst for fresh sheep's blood was insatiable. Eventually she become a half-sheep, half-human creature, and continues to haunt the road and terrify motorists. According to one local legend, one couple were stranded on the road when their car ran out of petrol. The man went off to get help while his wife dozed off in the car. She was later awoken by the arrival of the police and an ambulance. A policeman told her to get out of the car and not look back – but of course, she did look back, to see her husband's decapitated body lying in the road and his head stuck on a nearby fence. The locals believed Bele Sheephead had been at it again.

Source: Alan Murdie, Ghostwatch, Fortean Times no. 299, May 2013.

Ghost strips clothes from sleepers

A Bulawayo family report that their sleep is disturbed by something removing their clothes.

Noel Kazembe, the father, explained that the family 'go to bed without hassles but at around 1am we hear weird sounds but when we try to rise we find ourselves failing to move, as if we have been tied to the bed. I don't know what happens afterwards but we wake up naked in the morning.'

This has happened to all members of the family, and on one occasion they all slept in the same room out of fear.

Kazembe, who belongs to an apostolic sect, said he had tried prayers, but without success. 'I took up the issue with my church elders and they tried to help but to no avail. Even a senior prophet came to my house and prayed but we woke up naked the following morning,' he said.

He has said that he will turn to traditional help if prayers continue to fail. 'I have a grandfather who is a sangoma so I guess I will be forced to seek his help.'


A local source told press that the incidents had started after Kazembe's brother reportedly killed a friend in Tsholotsho. 'It must be the dead man's spirit that's now revenging,' he said.

Kazembe rejects this. 'Why would that person's spirit come here? It's nonsensical to think like that,' fumed the man who mysteriously wakes up naked

Source: Bulawayo 24 News, 24 January 2013

Children at Uruti School took part in a best-dressed possum competition as part of a fundraising drive. The events centred on animals that are pests across New Zealand: while the adults went out hunting pigs, the children dressed dead possums.

The results are stunningly beautiful. Possums were dressed as sunbathers, hospital patients, babies, brides, an artist ... Congratulations to the prizewinners Hannah Harrison (up to 6 years), Lydia Hansen (6-9 years) and Levi Oxenham (10-14 years).

The school has only 14 pupils.

Source: Daily Mail, 2 August 2012

Imported goblin makes 'extreme demands'

Clever Kamuyedza, a Chitungwiza businessman, acquired a money-spinning goblin from a neighbouring country to help his transport business. However, the goblin started 'to make extreme demands', so Kamuyedza called in Speakmore Mandere, known as Sekuru Shumba, and a team of traditional healers to rid him of the creature.

After three days of consultation about whether the healers could conduct the appropriate ritual, Kamuyedza brought the goblin to Sekuru Shumba's lodgings. Sekuru Shumba beheaded the goblin, and Mr Kamuyedza told his wife to fetch the agreed fee of $15,000 from the car.

At that point Sekuru shouted that the goblin was fighting back. Clara Banda, one of the healers, said there was 'a loud sound coming from the bedroom. The walls of the house were crumbling'. A blast destroyed the house, killing five people including Sekuru and Kamuyedza.

Source: Newsdze Zimbabwe, 27 January 2013

Poison Tips

Food that one cannot eat together include prawns and vitamin C, which will cause arsenic poisoning; cold remedy and Coke, which will cause poisoning; eggs and saccharin; tofu and honey, which will cause deafness; kelp and coagulated pig blood, which will cause constipation; potatoes and banana, which will cause freckles; beef and brown sugar, which will lead to abdominal distention; dog meat and eels, which will lead to death; mutton and mud snails, which will lead to retention of food; celery and rabbit meat, which will lead to alopecia; tomatoes and green beans, which will undermine vigor; and goose meat and pear, which will injure one's kidney.

Source: Global Times, 17 December 2012

Aswang

Ethiopian spider

An American mercenary, an old African hand, once told me that in Ethiopia there is a spider that eats only living flesh. It's called the camel spider and is equipped with a prong on its back that emits a local anaesthetic. He told me that at night the camel spider descends while you sleep, gives you a shot, and eats your lips. I slept with my hand over my mouth.

Source: Donald R Katz, "Ethiopia After the Revolution: Vultures Return to the Land of Sheba",  Rolling Stone, 21 September 1978

Prophesying newborns

On Friday, word spread that shortly after a woman delivered twins at the Tirupur Government Hospital, one of the babies died and the surviving baby mysteriously spoke, warning that  an evil spell has been cast due to which several infants would die. After delivering the "message of death", the baby too died. Within no time some people performed special pooja and started breaking coconuts smeared with turmeric outside their homes to ward off evil.
[...] By evening many junctions in the town were filled with broken coconut shells. Incidentally most of these coconuts were broken at junctions where three roads meet, which parents believed was the "entry gate" for Satan.

Source: IBN Live, 27 August 2012

Melting money

Canada's new polymer $50 and $100 dollar notes melt in intense heat. There have been reports of wads of notes melting together when left inside hot cars, or in metal tins.

 

 

Source: The Star, 12 July 2012

The enemy beneath the streets

HWASEONG, South Korea — “Some people think I’m crazy,” says Kim Jin-cheul, a Christian preacher who is convinced that North Korean soldiers are digging tunnels that extend under the capital, Seoul, 30 miles from the border, and have reached this town, 10 miles farther south, where he ministers to a congregation of nine families.

“Imagine hordes of crack North Korean troops streaming out and taking the whole city hostage!”

[…] The narrator in a video shown to visitors intones: “Listen carefully. You might hear a faint noise from a motor running in the dark underground.” He continues, “As long as underground provocations continue, there can be no true peace above the ground.”

Few take this exhortation more to heart than the Rev. Lee Jong-chang, 78, a Roman Catholic priest and veteran tunnel hunter. “I am doing this work so that we won’t have another war and nobody will be hurt,” he said.

Father Lee said he was helping villagers find ground water with dowsing skills he had learned from a French missionary when the government asked him and other civilian experts to join the military’s search for tunnels in 1974. He was awarded a presidential medal for helping find the second tunnel, in 1975.

He has since made hundreds of field trips with his dowsing rod, pursuing what he calls a mission from God. Some church authorities disapproved of the extracurricular activity and sent him to Ecuador as a missionary from 1987 to 1989. That failed to weaken his resolve.
[…] “With my rod, I can see underground as vividly as a good doctor reads a patient with his stethoscope,” Father Lee said. “But some people and the military call me superstitious.”

Source: The New York Times, 2 July 2012

Galoshins

Doctor Brown: Here comes I old Doctor Brown
                         The best old doctor in the town.
Anon:               Well doctor what can you cure?
Doctor Brown: I can cure the plague, within, without,
                         Also the palsy and the gout,
                         Bring me an old woman, three score and ten
                         The knuckle joint of a big toe broke,
                         I'll take it off and put it on again.
Anon:               Well done doctor. What is your medicine?
Doctor Brown: A wee bottle in my waistcoat pocket called:
                         Hens pens, peezy weezy,
                         Bumbie's bacon, donkey's treacle,
                         Sap of the poker, juice of the tongs,
                         Three turkey's eggs, nine miles long.
                         Put that in a mouse's blather,
                         Stir it up with a wild pig's feather.
                         Put three drops in Jack's ear
                         And he'll get up and sing a song!
Jack:                 Once I was dead but now I'm alive,
                         God bless the old doctor who made me survive.

Or, in another version:
MC:                  And what can you cure, Doctor?
Doctor Broon:  I can cure all sorts.
MC:                  And what kind o all sorts.
Doctor Broon:  Liquorice allsorts. I've got a little bottle
                         here of inksy pinksy parleyvous, all covered
                         over wi cats' feathers and midges' ribs.
                         I shall put a little on his nose.
                         I shall put a little on his toes.
                         Rise up Jack and sing a song ...

from Galoshins Remembered, ed. Emily Lyle (Edinburgh: NMS, 2011)