Unexplained Stuff Turning Up Everywhere

By James Donahue

It is time for another smattering of stories from our anomalies department. There continues to be a fall of unexplained substances from the sky, oddities floating up out of the sea and then there is that annoying hum that nobody can track.

Brown Stuff From The Sky

A homeowner in Jasper Place, New Zealand, complained about a mysterious brown substance that peppered his two-story house during the dark of night. Karl Blumenthal told the local newspaper in 2008 that a hard rain and hail storm in the morning failed to wash it away. He said it smelled pretty bad.

A news reporter visited the site and said that indeed, the house was covered in brown spots of different sizes on the roof, front windows and a fence in the back yard. The general consensus was that a large flock of birds did the deed, but Blumenthal wasn’t that convinced.

Other thought was that it was something that dropped out of an aircraft passing overhead. But airline officials insist that planes are sealed and don’t just drop waste while in flight.

Whatever the stuff was, it was removed later that week with the help of a high pressure water hose.

Black Soot In Hamilton

People in northeast Hamilton, Ontario, brought a complaint of a heavy black soot that was blackening their homes and yards. The local Ministry of the Environment said it was unable to track the source of the strange material that seemed to fall down on the community about every other day for several weeks in a row. Local industry reported no emission events that would be causing such a substance to rain down on the neighborhood.

One news story said the soot blackened lawn furniture, awnings and swimming pools could be found in a large arc pattern.

Resident Rick Delaplante said the material seemed to come back after he finished cleaning up after the last “smear.” He said the material was very hard to clean because “when you wipe at it, it smears all over. It spreads like crazy.”

Giant Sea Creature Found In Chile

Scientists were studying samples from a large sea specimen recently found on Chile’s coast. Biologists from various parts of the world were testing tissue samples to determine if it was a giant octopus, an unknown new species of sea creature, or perhaps a slice of something already known, like a whale.

“We’d never before seen such a strange specimen,” said Elsa Cabrera, director of Chile’s Center for Cetacean Conservation. She said the blob did not smell like a whale or feel like whale skin.

The round substance looks like a mammoth jelly fish and is about the length of a school bus.

Sergio Letelier, a scientist for the Museum of Natural History, Santiago, said the tissue was extremely tough and thick but did not have the tentacles, organs or the smell of an octopus.

Annoying Hum Assaults New Zealanders

People in and around Brown’s Bay, New Zealand, say they are being annoyed by a strange hum that some people cannot hear and others say it is so troublesome it is making them sick. It appears to be the same kind of acoustic phenomena irritating people in a lot of other places around the globe. This is just the first time it has shown up in New Zealand.

Massey University researchers say they are being inundated by phone calls. A team of researchers have attempted to track the sound, but say they cannot hear it.

Dr. Tom Moir suggests that it may be a very low frequency sound that only certain people can hear, or it may be microwaves in the atmosphere that trigger hum-like sound receptors in the heads of certain people.