I’m not sure if the person who made this intended for this piece to look ‘haunted’
but it does
Check it out.
Strange Tales
Bite This
Some stories are just to great, to amazing to be lost to the world.
Like this one: it’s about Bats…thousands, not hundreds but thousands of them that have nested under a Nuclear Reservation here in Washington State.
You read that right.
Thousands of bats living underground at a Nuclear Reservation.
Let that one run around the old brain for a few minutes.
All one can say at this point is:
Eat your heart out Sci-Fi Dudes.
Thousands of bats living underground at Hanford
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RICHLAND, Wash. — Researchers are studying a colony of bats that live in an underground concrete structure at the Hanford nuclear reservation in hopes of determining how to provide a new home for them once the structure is demolished.
The large clearwell near the Columbia River was once used to hold filtered water for Hanford’s F Reactor when it produced plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. Sometime after it stopped operating about 30 years ago, one of its six hatches was left open, providing a doorway for the bat colony.
Researchers have twice tried to count the bats by setting up a video cameras with an infrared light outside the hatch. Both times they’ve counted about 2,000 bats, which they consider a low estimate. The number still makes the colony among the largest identified in the state.
However, the clearwell is scheduled to be demolished in fiscal year 2009, which begins next October.
“That (gives) us some time to figure out how to deal with it,” said Ken Gano, a natural resource specialist for contractor Washington Closure Hanford. “We can look at the impact to demolishing it and what we can do to provide an alternate roost site.”
Although they are small animals, it’s a big issue for the Department of Energy, whose policy is to manage the Hanford cleanup with as little impact to plants and animals as possible. Under a presidential order, Hanford must protect animals and other natural resources to allow more of the site to possibly be added to the Hanford Reach National Monument.
The bat colony qualifies as a priority species designation for the state because it’s a maternity colony, with females spending the spring and summer roosting in the clearwell while each raises a single pup. It’s so large that there is a possibility it’s populating the entire region.
Researchers believe the bats are a type called Yuma myotis. They have furry brown bodies with black wings. Each Yuma myotis weighs about 6 to 8 grams – less than two nickels – and has a body smaller than a mouse. But they look bigger in flight because of a wing span that stretches 6 to 8 inches.
Hanford researchers went inside the clearwell a couple of weeks ago. They found about 30 bats still in the clearwell at the end of summer, but plenty of evidence that more had been there.
The bats migrate to hibernate when the weather gets too cool for them to find the insects they need.
The researchers found still more bats when they entered a 700-foot-long flume adjacent to the clearwell that was used to carry water in and out.
During the next year, researchers hope to learn more about the genetic relationships and diversity within the colony, providing information about the colony’s regional importance. The research also should answer what temperature and humidity the Yuma myotis requires for roosting with data from sensors placed inside the clearwell and flume.
“There’s not a lot of information about bats and what their habitat requirements are,” said Jon Lucas, an environmental specialist for Areva who is working on the research as part of his work to earn a master’s degree.
Acoustic sensors will provide information on when the bats show up next spring and also information about when they come and go daily.
In about a year, the Energy Department should be ready to make a decision on what to do with the colony.
—
Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com/
Did You See That?
Just doing my part to spread the Halloween joy…
Here are some treats to get you in the Halloween Spirit
! enjoy !
For some Devilish Delights ( and I DO MEAN Devilish Delights)
visit
at
He says it’s all about Pies, but for real Tony loves that spooky stuff so check him out at Tales at Twilight
I AM NOT WORTHY I AM NOT WORTHY visit my heroes Mark and Mark at Weird New Jersey –they so rule.
And to get that little chill- you know the one that runs up and
down your spine just as the lights go off…
read Max’s Ghost Story
Want to see something really strange? Then vist the West Midland Ghost Club in the U.K. ….
or you could stay local like me and hang ( ha ) with the crew from A.P.A.R.T
ONE MORE DAY!
NOW GO FORTH AND HALLOWEEN….
Do You Believe?
People debate it all of the time- with themselves, with each other and I think it’s a waste of time.
Ghosts are for real…and if they aren’t they should be because when it comes right down to it, we all need a good story now and then.
And good stories make for good times.
So read this article and remember…it’s FIVE MORE DAYS!
and that cool breath of air on your neck.
it’s just me…
That’s the spirit: Belief in ghosts high
By ALAN FRAM and TREVOR TOMPSON, Associated Press
Those things that go bump in the night? About one-third of people believe they could be ghosts.
And nearly one out of four, 23 percent, say they’ve actually seen a ghost or felt its presence, finds a pre-Halloween poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos.
One is Misty Conrad, who says she fled her rented home in Syracuse, Ind., after her daughter began talking to an unseen girl named Nicole and neighbors said children had been murdered in the house. That was after the TV and lights began flicking on at night.
“It kind of creeped you out,” Conrad, 40, of Hampton, Va., recalled this week. “I needed to get us out.”
About one out of five people, 19 percent, say they accept the existence of spells or witchcraft. Nearly half, 48 percent, believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP.
The most likely candidates for ghostly visits include single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services. By 31 percent to 18 percent, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter.
Those who dismissed the existence of ghosts include Morris Swadener, 66, a Navy retiree from Kingston, Wash.
He says he shot one with his rifle when he was a child.
“I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a white ghost in my closet,” he said. “I discovered I’d put a hole in my brand new white shirt. My mother and father were not amused.”
Three in 10 have awakened sensing a strange presence in the room. For whatever it says about matrimony, singles are more likely than married people to say so.
Fourteen percent — mostly men and lower-income people — say they have seen a UFO. Among them is Danny Eskanos, 44, an attorney in Palm Harbor, Fla., who says as a Colorado teenager he watched a bright light dart across the sky, making abrupt stops and turns.
“I knew a little about airplanes and helicopters, and it was not that,” he said. “It’s one of those things that sticks in your mind.”
Spells and witchcraft are more readily believed by urban dwellers, minorities and lower-earning people. Those who find credibility in ESP are more likely to be better educated and white — 51 percent of college graduates compared to 37 percent with a high school diploma or less, about the same proportion by which white believers outnumber minorities.
Overall, the 48 percent who accept ESP is less than the 66 percent who gave that answer to a similar 1996 Newsweek question.
One in five say they are at least somewhat superstitious, with young men, minorities, and the less educated more likely to go out of their way to seek luck. Twenty-six percent of urban residents — twice the rate of those from rural areas — said they are superstitious, while single men were more superstitious than unmarried women, 31 percent to 17 percent.
The most admitted-to superstition, by 17 percent, was finding a four-leaf clover. Thirteen percent dread walking under a ladder or the groom seeing his bride before their wedding, while slightly smaller numbers named black cats, breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas indoors, Friday the 13th or the number 13.
Generally, women were more superstitious than men about four-leaf clovers, breaking mirrors or grooms prematurely seeing brides. Democrats were more superstitious than Republicans over opening umbrellas indoors, while liberals were more superstitious than conservatives over four-leaf clovers, grooms seeing brides and umbrellas.
Then there’s Jack Van Geldern, a computer programmer from Riverside, Conn. Now 51, Van Geldern is among the 5 percent who say they have seen a monster in the closet — or in his case, a monster’s face he spotted on the wall of his room as a child.
“It was so terrifying I couldn’t move,” he said. “Needless to say I survived the event and never saw it again.”
The poll, conducted Oct. 16-18, involved telephone interviews with 1,013 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
___
AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.
Jeremy Bentham’s Head Fell Off
Jeremy Bentham was an interesting guy who advocated for things like equal rights for women and the abolition of slavery.
Jeremy Bentham also had written into his Will that his body be preserved, stored in a cabinet and brought out for special board meetings.
Then one day his head, which was not preserved well…fell off. So they made a wax one and stuck his real head between his feet ( see picture above) .
Jeremy Bentham’s Head
I’m sorry to say I couldn’t have made this stuff up.
God, I wish I had.
Consider The Twilight Zone
It was much more then it appeared to be.
( below is a link to a great NPR interview with Marc Zicree, author )
Irregular Bones 