Nick Redfern - The World’s Weirdest Places

by
Nick Redfern

Copyright 2012 by Nick Redfern

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

THE WORLDS WEIRDEST PLACES

EDITED AND TYPESET BY NICOLE DEFELICE

Cover design by Wes Youssi/M80 Branding

Printed in the U.S.A.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Redfern, Nicholas, 1964

The worlds weirdest places / by Nick Redfern.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 978-1-60163-237-1 ISBN 978-1-60163-562-4 (ebook)

1. Parapsychology and geography. 2. Geography--Miscellanea. 3. Haunted places--Miscellanea. 4. Curiosities and wonders--Miscellanea. I. Title.

BF1045.G46R44 2012
001.94--dc23

2012019954

I would like to offer my very sincere thanks and deep appreciation to everyone at New Page Books and Career Press, particularly, Michael Pye, Laurie Kelly-Pye, Kirsten Dalley, Nicole DeFelice, Gina Talucci, Jeff Piasky, and Adam Schwartz; and to all the staff at Warwick Associates for their fine promotion and publicity campaigns. I would also like to say a very big thank you to my literary agent, Lisa Hagan, for all her hard work and help.

I have a trio of questions for you, the discerning connoisseur of distinct high strangeness. If someone gets a fleeting glance of a UFO soaring across the skies of New York, does that make the Big Apple weird? If a Bigfoot briefly and enigmatically appears in the thick forests outside of Seattle, does that make the city weird? And if a chain-rattling specter materializes for a second or two on the grounds of Buckingham Palace in London, does that make the residence of Queen Elizabeth II weird? The answer to all three is no, it does not. What we have in each of these instances is a singular, strange event that has occurred in one particular locale. But, by definition, the place itself is not weird. Only the thing that decided to put in a one-time, brief appearance was weird. That is not always the case, however. In many instances, it is the place itself that is weird, not just the mysterious phenomena that manifest in its midst.

If that same Bigfoot, UFO, or chain-rattling ghost all appeared in one particular, concise location, time and again (possibly even for centuries), along with a fantastic range of other bizarre things, such as lake-monsters, poltergeists, strange energies and vortexes, werewolves, occult activity, aliens, and enigmatic entities (including fairies, elves, and goblins), then this is all highly suggestive that the place is truly weird in the extreme! But the definition of that very emotive wordweirdis most certainly wide open to interpretation. For some, it may simply mean odd or eccentric. For others, it might imply terror, fear, panic, and sheer, unrelenting horror. A significant number of people might be inclined to suggest the word equates to unspeakable foulness and revulsion of the highest order; the type of awful thing that lurks in the shadows of the woods on the proverbial dark and stormy night. Or, that its a most apt term to use when describing matters of a supernatural or occult nature, such as life after death, alien encounters, and fantastic monsters. And thats what you get in The Worlds Weirdest Places: a study of unrelenting weirdness, in all its many and varied forms, guises, and definitions, throughout recorded history, and at numerous locations worldwide.

In the pages of this book, you will learn the startling truths of the many amazing, paranormal, and uncanny hot-spots that pepper our planet, as well as the terrible things that call such places their permanent homes. They are hot-spots that extend from the United States to Russia, from Scotland to Canada, from the Philippines to England, from Iceland to Australia, from Guyana to the Solomon Islands, and from just about anywhere and everywhere else in between, too.

In a book like this, one cannot please everyone when it comes to the locations selected and singled out for study. Some readers may wonder why, for example, I have not included such mystery-filled, famous places as Stonehenge, England; the Giza Necropolis at Cairo, Egypt; and Point Pleasant, West Virginiahome to the glowing-eyed, winged nightmare made infamous in John Keels book, and subsequent movie of the same name, The Mothman Prophecies. The answer is very simple: these haunts, and many others, have been covered in countless other titles and, arguably, to the point of near saturation. So, instead, what you get in the pages of this book are my personal favorite supernatural sites, some well-knownbut with a new spin placed upon themand many far less so, but all of them undeniably and unsettlingly weird.

Extending from Bermuda in the north to southern Florida, and then east to a point through the Bahamas past Puerto Rico and then back again to Bermuda, is a truly ominous realm of wild, churning, and turbulent waters known infamously as the Bermuda Triangle, a permanent fixture in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, and one that has become renowned for the hundreds of aircraft, ships, boats, and unfortunate souls who have disappeared in the area without trace. Down-to-earth explanations for such vanishings most certainly proliferate. Compass malfunctions, disorientation, sudden and violent bouts of severe weather, mechanical and electrical failure, and pilot error are just some of the conventional theories that have been offered as answers relative to why there have been so many disappearances in such a clearly delineated area. But not everyone is quite so sure that those particular theories provide all the clues to solving the maritime mystery.

In December 1945, five U.S. Navy Avenger aircraft disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. (copyright United States Navy)

On numerous occasions, UFOs have been seen in the area. There is talk of high-level government conspiracies to hide the truth of alien kidnappings in the Triangle. Some researchers of the conundrum suspect the still-working remains of fantastic technologies that the people of the fabled land of Atlantis managed to successfully harness, before their violent destruction, are squarely to blame. The predations of Godzilla-sized sea-serpents and the effects of strange electromagnetic disturbances are also all among the many and varied controversial candidates for the disappearances. And with the theories outlined, lets take a look at some of the more intriguing and hard-to-reconcile cases.