| Strange Tales 3: Which Story is False? | |
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We've had a lot of fun with this series the first two times out, and readers have been pretty good at discerning the false story. Let's see how you do this time. If you're not familiar with this game, here's how it works: On this and the following page are four tales of the unexplained or paranormal. Only three of them, however, are true. One of them has been invented by me. Your task is to read all four stories, then, on page 3, vote for the story you think is the false one. Good luck - and no cheating!
Story 1: Ball Lightning Encounter
Ball lightning remains one of the most mysterious of all natural phenomena. Most intriguing to those who have been privileged to observe this rare enigma directly is its ability to pass through solid objects - like walls and, in one case, even the skin of an aircraft - and the deliberate way in which it moves, as if guided by an intelligence.
One fascinating encounter with ball lightning was experienced by Anatol Weingard, one of the key scientists who worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer in the early 1940s at Los Alamos on the top secret Manhattan Project - the U.S.'s initiative to build an atomic bomb.
On a balmy summer night in 1952, Weingard, then a researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission, was awakened in his home by a violent thunder storm. Unable to return to sleep, he decided to head for the kitchen for the purposes of a late night snack. Weingard fixed a light sandwich while the wind, lightning and thunder raged dramatically outside.
As he sat eating his sandwich with a glass of cold milk, Weingard later told a newspaper, suddenly a globe of light came down out of the ceiling, seemingly right out of the kitchen's ceiling light fixture. It was about the size of a grapefruit, yellowish-green in color, and "fuzzy with electricity" around the edges.
Weingard sat back and watched in amazement as the ball of light slowly and noiselessly descended to the kitchen table, bounced off a few inches, then made its way over to the kitchen counter. "It looked as though it were exploring my kitchen," Weingard said.
The glowing ball rolled along the counter. An electric can opener switched on as the ball passed, then shut off. The ball fell into the kitchen sink, rolled around its perimeter once and rolled out the other side, continuing its journey. As it passed the loaf of bread Weingard had left there, it partially singed and melted the loaf's wax paper wrapping. It then bounced into the air and rolled along the wall. As it floated by the kitchen light switch, the ceiling light flickered a few times.
The weird ball headed for the kitchen window, as if looking for a way out. As it passed through the closed window, the ball lighting burned a clean hole in the curtains, without setting them afire, and floated harmlessly through the glass into the night.
Weingard got up from the table to watch it leave. When it was just a few feet from his house, he said, the ball exploded with a loud bang.
Story 2: Phantom Bomb
Anyone familiar with strange phenomena has heard of the well-documented accounts of unusual things raining from the sky. There have been countless instances of rains of fish and frogs. Occasionally, large blocks of ice crash down from clear skies.
One of the most peculiar cases of an object inexplicably falling from the sky took place on January 1, 1984 in Lakewood, California - and cannot be attributed to freak weather, tornadoes or other whirlwinds, or any other natural cause.
At approximately 4 p.m. on that Sunday New Year's day, 79-year-old Fred Simons heard a disturbingly loud crash in his backyard. Venturing outside, Simons was shocked to discover a four-foot-deep crater in his patio. Cautiously stepping over to the hole, he found a rusty, World War II vintage nine-inch artillery shell lying there. It had apparently fallen from the sky. But how?
Fortunately, the 22-pound shell was a dud, containing no explosives. The neighbors were queried, and no one had seen or heard an airplane flying over that could have inadvertently dropped the bomb. (Even if it were, why would an airplane of any kind be carrying a rusting, 40-year old artillery shell?)
So how can this be explained? Was the shell caught in some kind of time or dimensional vortex 40 years ago and dropped into the present in 1984? If so, why was it rusted from age? There are no easy explanations.
Next page > Stories 3 and 4 > Page 1, 2, 3
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