Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

Among the fringe beliefs, the idea of having actual photographs of Jesus and other Biblical figures and scenes are amongst the most adorable.

We have, for instance, the tale of father Ernetti and his Chronovisor. It’s just lovely, a priest creating a time machine, photographing Jesus and retrieving historical documents, but everything gets suppressed by the evil Vatican. Lovely. Check more about it, including the photo, here.

Such a lovely story is spoiled by the fact that the alleged Jesus photo was identified as being that of a statue on a Sanctuary in Italy, but anyway.

Time Machines are not the only way you can have genuine Biblical photos. The extraterrestrials, of course, watched over everything, and they had their cameras ready (a thing they taught the Japanese afterwards). That’s how it’s claimed we have this little precious thing:

The Apostle John and Peter on the road to the tomb. This photo was supposedly remitted by the space traveller, Absu Ysmaily Swandy to the messenger of the extraterrestrials, Eugenio Siragusa.

Upon our post in Portuguese about this subject, reader Ronaldo Malta kindly warned us that Siragusa’s photo was actually a painting that he had seen printed on a Bible. After contacting some friends, our pal Jorge Petretski quickly identified it.

It’s “Les disciples Pierre et Jean courant au sépulcre le matin de la Résurrection“, by Eugène Burnand, 1898, presented today on Musee D’Orsay. Yes, 1898. A painting. In the Orsay Museum in France.

Siragusa is certainly not the only contactee to copy images from common sources and present them as extraordinary photographs of, from or by extraterrestrials. Swiss contactee Billy Meier also sells photos from books and even TV shows as alien images.

They have more to fear from DRM than from the MIB.

It’s hard not to look at those blocks above and doubt that they are… completely natural in origin. Click to see other images of the Russian geological formation.

These wonderful feats of nature are more well-known on their version in Ireland, the so-called “Giant’s Causeway“, made up by more than 40.000 basalt columns.

The explanation for their formation involves the rapid cooling of volcanic lava, and it’s no coincidence most of these were created in areas around the sea, and many of them are still on coasts.

The rapid cooling creates a geometrical fracture pattern, kind of what can be seen with dried mud on droughts:

In fact, the first geologists actually thought that these basalt columns were dried rock! There were many debates and curiously, German poet Goethe — who was also a naturalist – had his part on the discovery that basalt had indeed a volcanic origin.

But there are more things in heaven and earth, Hoagland, Than are dreamt of in your “philosophy”. And one of them is in Brazil.

Reader Herbert Rocha pointed us to another amazing formation, on Cabaceiras city, Paraiba, known as “Lajedo do Pai Mateus“.

Rocha told us: “I had the chance to visit the place and I have to admit that personally it’s an even more impressive experience. One may highlight the Lajedo itself, formed by a huge rock formation, hundreds of meters long and dozens of meters in height, decorated by round rocks and other organic shapes, weighing dozens of tons each. On some of them we can see rock art of pre-historic people, more than 10,000 years old.”

“But even though the area was inhabited in the past, all rock formations are natural in origin … And of those in the park, the most impressive is the ‘Saca de La‘ ["Wool sacks"]. A pyramidal structure formed by rocks piled up like bricks, around 40 meters high.”

You read it right: the formation in the image above, made of enormous blocks, dozens of meters high, is entirely natural! According to geologists, it was formed through the erosion of regular cracks in the rock, not unlike the basalt columns.

Now, those are things in Earth’s heaven and earth. One can dream about what may expect us when we finally explore the other planets personally. And those are just the surprises we may expect from nature, nothing else.

A bizarre story is circulating in the Internet among Brazilians:

“In a public hospital of Itaguai, Rio de Janeiro, on this weekend a baby girl was born with the hands glued together, as if she was praying. The doctors told the parent that they would operate the hands of the girl on a very simple surgery. It was simple indeed, because as it seems the hands were only joined by some skin.

But when they opened the hands of that baby… you won’t believe what was written on them… “JESUS IS COMING!”

The doctors started to cry and soon everyone in the hospital too. The city of Itaguai is abuzz with it. People who distanced themselves from church are coming back and others are accepting Jesus as their savior. God brought that child to the world only to send that message, as some hours later she died.

Forward this message to most people you can”

The local hospital already denied the rumor (in Portuguese), which is clearly just religious propaganda with a classical chain letter sign. It’s not even that new. For a few years already, a popular Brazilian folk music group “Calypso” is also being cursed by a rumor that circulates on almost every city they plan to perform on.

The story tells that a baby with three eyes was born on a local hospital. When the doctor says how ugly he is, the recently born baby then quickly and clearly replies: “Ugly will be what will happen on the Calypso show“.

Some shows had to be canceled, mainly on small cities where those rumors devastates the chances of anyone attending the event.

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Excerpt with footage and attempted explanations to the feats of Mirin Dajo, who actually pierced his torso with swords, and whom we already blogged about earlier.

The excerpt above doesn’t mention that his unique skill may have resulted in his demise on May 26, 1948, shortly after he started his extraordinary stunt. An autopsy revealed that Dajo died of an aortic rupture.

People love freak shows, and our entry about the poor deformed puppy who looked “human” is one of the most  popular. Well, this one may be as popular.

This time, it’s a cow. Continue reading for the actual series of pictures of the creature.

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