Beebe: Fortean Synchronicity Name Game

(Thanks to Greg Nathan) I discovered yet another Fortean twist to the bird falls-Beebe name game. The town of Beebe, Arkansas, as I wrote in the earlier posts, was named after Roswell Beebe. Another twist: the inventor of the bathysphere as William Beebe, among other things, an ornithologist:

William Beebe, born Charles William Beebe (July 29, 1877 – June 4, 1962)^[2] was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological Society, his deep dives in the Bathysphere, and his prolific scientific writing for both academic and popular audiences. ~ (source: Wikipedia)

Dead Blackbirds Fall Again in Ark. Town - ABC News

Fortean coincidences: birds fall from trees on New Year's in the south, specifically, Beebe, Arkansas, which is where the bird falls happened last New Year's:Dead Blackbirds Fall Again in Ark. Town - ABC News From ABC News:

Thousands of dead blackbirds rained down on a town in central Arkansas last New Year's Eve after revelers set off fireworks that spooked them from their roost, and officials were reporting a similar occurrence Saturday as 2012 approached.

Police in Beebe said dozens of blackbirds had fallen dead, prompting officers to ban residents from shooting fireworks Saturday night. It wasn't immediately clear if fireworks were again to blame, but authorities weren't taking a chance.

Officer John Weeks said the first reports of "birds on the streets" came around 7 p.m. as residents celebrated the year's end with fireworks in their neighborhoods.

"We started shutting down fireworks," he said. "We're working on cleaning up the birds now."

The Huffington Post had a short AP item on the story.

And here's pretty much the same item from Beebe, Arkansas, but with video.

See the Bird Falls tab at top of blog for more bird stories.

Strange Frequency: Beeping, Bird Visitation, Radio Noise

I had a very strange experience last night. I spent much of the night sleeping little; listening mainly to Coast to Coast and the news coming in on the earthquake in Japan, and soon after, the tsunami warnings. Earliest reports were warnings for Hawaii and the Washington and Oregon coasts; later, California and Alaska.

I was compelled to listen through the night because of the sheer tragedy and immensity of another overwhelming earth disaster, and also, because we had planned to drive to the coast that day (approximately fifty miles from our home) and spend the weekend there. I was also concerned about my mother and friends on the Oregon coast, as well as family living up and down the Pacific coast.  I tried to sleep, managed to doze off for a while but kept waking up, turning the little transistor on again. Throughout Coast to Coast local tsunami warnings came through, announcing beach and school closures for the Oregon coast.

At one point, a deep beeping sound woke me up. This beeping was deep within me; not from an external source, not an acoustic anomaly. It was inside of me. It became louder, and with it, I saw a large dark bird come flying towards me. All I could see was the shape, no details. Slowly flapping its huge wings as it came towards me, as the beeping got louder and louder. A glowing whitish-blue light or "halo" surrounded this bird. This bird vision was indie my head, not external, but it was definitely connected to the beeping sound. At first I thought the bird was an owl; and it might had been, but it seemed to be something else as well. What, I'm not sure. I had conflicting responses to this bird; one, that all this was pretty damn interesting but as the owl, or bird-creature, came closer, along with the light, I became a little scared and tried to shut it out. It sort of exploded when I did that, and I had the feeling this bird-like creature was both frustrated with me and disappointed that I chose to ignore it.

Then, I heard, again from that same, deep-within place inside me, the sounds of voices talking on the radio. So I told myself it was the radio; I still had it on, the ear buds in my ears. But the radio and ear -buds were both on the night table, and the radio was off.

I cannot describe how this was not a dream. It was not a dream that I awoke from, it was not a hypnogognic dream, it was not a dream then I awake to find I'm really still dreaming, ... none of that. None of that. I was completely awake. The radio talk within continued; I tried very hard to listen to make sense out of it but the voices were indistinct.

Thunderbird Synchronicity
After I wrote this, I visited The Anomalist to find this link to a post from Loren Coleman at Cryptomundo: Tsunamis and Thunderbirds, which explores the stories of Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest and earthquakes:

It is amazing what Thunderbird folklore may tell us about past tsunamis, says Ruth Ludwin, a University of Washington scientist. Her research has found that Thunderbird and other cryptid stories and traditions “could relate to a large Seattle fault earthquake around A.D. 900 and specific eyewitness accounts linked to a mammoth 1700 earthquake and tsunami in the Cascadia subduction zone.”

“Along the way, I picked up a lot of stories about landslides,” she said. But she couldn’t find anything that seemed to match the 1700 event, until she took a closer look at the story of Thunderbird and Whale.
“It’s a story of the underworld versus the over-world,” Ludwin said.
The Whale was a monster, killing other whales and depriving the people of meat and oil. The Thunderbird, a benevolent supernatural being, saw from its home high in the mountains that the people were starving. The great bird soared out over the coastal waters, then plunged into the ocean and seized the Whale.
A struggle ensued first in the water, the tribal tale says. “The waters receded and rose again. Many canoes came down in trees and were destroyed and numerous lives were lost.”
The Thunderbird eventually succeeds in lifting the evil Whale out of the ocean, carrying it “high into the air (and then) dropping it to the land surface at Beaver prairie. Then at this place there was another great battle.”

On the Coast
After phone calls back and forth and following news reports we decided to drive to the coast, which turned out to be a beautiful drive. The tsunami warnings for this area have been lifted. As I'm typing this I'm looking out at the shore, listening to the ocean.

Owls Flying In From the Blogosphere

A couple of my recent posts have been about England's Owl mascot used in an advertising campaign. Nick Redfern sent me this image of an owl painted on Giant Rock. Nick took the photo about three weeks, when he was visiting Giant Rock (along with Andy Colvin, author of the Mothman's Photographer series, Greg Bishop, and Adam Gorightly. Sounds like a fantastic trip!)

Owl painted, Giant Rock Ca by Nick Redfern 2010

At hidden experience, Mike Clelland, who writes frequently about owl encounters and has his own eerie history of owliness, wrote about an owl episode December 20th: Owl an a cold winter's night.  Make sure you read the comments that go with his post.

And from Dan Mitchell's Luminosity: Owls, Aliens, and The Hale-Bopp Comet a beautiful article, as usual, about a spooky encounter. After relating strange encounters involving owls, Dan writes of yet another:

In 2004 this owl issue arose once again. At that time I was living in a second story apartment building with my wife and our newborn son. At night I would hear an owl right outside my sons bedroom window. When he would cry at night, I'd go into his room only to see this enormous owl standing either on the power lines directly outside the building (at eye level) or on the auto garage roof a few yards away from our building. This had become an almost nightly occurrence, which on a very profound level was disturbing to me because around this time I was becoming aware of many abduction stories and was having some communication with people involved in the phenomenon. The simple fact that it would stare directly at me was very disheartening. There was this sense of powerlessness involved in that I was dealing with something supernatural that didn't just go away because I wanted it to.

Dan ends his post with conclusions of his own about the appearance of owls in his experiences -- conclusions I tend to agree with. Something is intentionally using the owl; as image, as go-between from the mundane to the liminal. . .

As Mike Clelland wrote in his post: "I'm not sure what any of this means, but I feel obligated to pay attention." Same here!

Yeti/Wild Thing Synchronicity

I had a very disturbing dream last night. I think it was because I was coming down with something and my body/subconscious was reacting to that, because after I was awake for about an hour, I suddenly felt clammy, chilled, sore throat -- fall crud. The dream sounds almost funny in some ways but it was very scary, just your basic all around nightmare. Something about the Yeti, with giant claws, ripping people apart. And smaller sized Yetis -- in the dream, they were called "Yet-its" -- who looked more like stuffed toys than real creatures. They were watching the big monster Yeti dismembering people, their bodies (or, pieces of their bodies) slowly slip down the outside of the glass on the windows of the second floor room where I was watching all this, and damn glad of course I wasn't one of the victims. Blood, guts, human body parts, all sliding down the glass. The "Yet -its" were shocked, and sad, at this, because the big monster Yeti wasn't supposed to be a murderous monster, but something went wrong.

I was telling someone at work about this dream and described the "Yet-its" as looking like the characters from Where the Wild Things Are. And a minute later, someone walks into the room with a T-shirt with a large monster character from the book, with the title, in large letters: Where the Wild Things Are.

So, owls and Yetis and Wild Things; a message, synchronicity? Maybe the "message" is simply the appearance of the synchronicities themselves, appearing in animal form, since that's where I like to be -- in the animal realm.

As to the nature of the yucky dream; had another violent dream the night before that, though not involving animals. Sadly, a person I know. Some personal issues in my life right now. Not surprising, given that and my run down state, that my dream mind conjures up attacking Yetis!

Owls Today

In the movie Encounters of the Fourth Kind, the owl figures prominently, which isn't surprising, since the movie is about alien abductions.  I saw the movie for the first time Saturday night, which inspired me to write the post below on owls, posted Sunday.

Today, I see in the morning paper that the owl appears in the cartoon jumble. At work, someone wearing an over sized T-shirt with a giant owl on it walks by me. I go to my desk to find owl stickers. Later, class divides into teams and decide on team names: one group chooses "the owls."

Love that owl synchronicity!

Two Foot Long Rats Found

Two 'giant rats' found in East Midlands factory' I assume that's counting the tail within the two foot measurement. Funnily enough, I was thinking about giant mutant rats for some reason today. That's how my mind works: random, geeky and esoteric.

Moth Synchronicity!

I had just posted the "Puppet wolf" article below, which includes mention of Mothman, posted that on my Twitter (sigh, yes, I tweet, I fear) and right below my post/link to the puppet wolf article, was this link from Coast to Coast about a "giant moth." With pic. This morning, I noticed my cat staring up towards the kitchen ceiling; following her gaze, and afraid I was going to find a spider or wasp (they often come in through the garden window over the sink) I saw a large (though not as large, not by any means, as the C2C pic) moth in the corner.