The Fortean/paranormal/conspiracy thread

[Richie Freebird]

Going back to the Max Headroom transmission interruption that was mentioned earlier, some great stuff to read here:-

That was quite an interesting read. If he is making it up, then he seems to have gone to awful lengths to create the characters, locations and situations for very little notoriety in return. I like the way he feels he has to end the piece by debunking to accusations that he was somehow beyond the Superbowl / porno signal intrusion of 2009.

 

That's why the guys who hijacked the emergency broadcast system were so smart. What a great backdoor to exploit!

It's not the first time the EBS has proved fallible, either. I've read about phony

Edited September 13, 2013 by Richie Freebird

[HarmonicGenerator]

Cracked's 19 Real Sinister Conspiracies That Actually Happened

[Up Chuck]

Some great stuff in there. The Spongebob one is genius! I'd love to read more about these planned fake terrorist attacks to justify a war against Cuba, too.

[Richie Freebird]

I didn

[Loki]

Really interesting. After 200 years of people digging though, that site must be absolutely fucked. There's not even any sign of most of the stuff reported by the original diggers. If it was an archaeological site of any significance (like an early settlement) it's been obliterated now.

 

I doubt there's any treasure though - someone would have found it ages ago.

 

I do love a good subterranean story though - I'm becoming a bit obsessed with subterranean London. There's just so much shit down there!

[David]

Fucking Hell...

 

More than 70 years after Orson Welles' infamous War of the Worlds broadcast, a series of radio ads about a bogus alien invasion have spread panic among residents of a rural Alabama community.

 

Star 94.9 is changing formats in Tuscumbia, so it used a gimmicky marketing ploy in which extra-terrestrials take over the station to figure out what type of music appeals to humans.

 

But the promotion apparently backfired, putting some local residents on edge and fearing for their children

[Up Chuck]

According to Rickman, the tongue-in-cheek ads featuring weird robotic voices, static noises and jokes about Miley Cyrus, were inspired by Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of the H.G. Wells classic The War of the Worlds

 

Orson Welles was known for his love of mocking Miley Cyrus.

 

 

I do love a good subterranean story though - I'm becoming a bit obsessed with subterranean London. There's just so much shit down there!

 

I once started writing a novel set in subterranean London. It fell apart before I got the chance to do any worthwhile research, but it is fascinating. It's not surprising that a place with so much going on above would have so much going on underneath, but from what little I know, it does seem like there's some weird stuff down there. I've got a book on it, I forget what it's called, but I'll have a look for it when I'm home.

Edited September 16, 2013 by Up Chuck

[Richie Freebird]

Really interesting. After 200 years of people digging though, that site must be absolutely fucked.

Agreed. I actually can

[Loki]

Oh man, where to start?

 

People have been digging beneath London since the middle ages but when the Victorians started putting in the big sewer systems and the first underground systems, things really took off. There's just layer after layer of building down there, some of it secret, some forgotten about, all sorts.

 

Favourite areas include:

 

- abandoned underground stations, of which there are dozens

- deep level shelters built during WW2

- secondary underground systems, like the Royal Mail underground system or the (reported) government underground rail system, which links to the

- government military underground installations (some official, some secret like Q-Whitehall)

- the water and sewage systems which are insane, including a number of rivers (such as the Fleet) that got completely taken underground over the centuries but are still down there

 

Some of my favourite stories are things like the Hydraulic Power system, which was an alternative to electricity and gas that delivered power to factories from about the 1880s right up to the 70s. Its network of pipes were eventually re purposed to create the first cable network, Mercury.

 

Or the Kingsway Telephone exchange, which is a vast, vast underground facility that's been used by the Post Office and the government, and various secret elements like GCHQ, to hide away stuff that needed protecting. In its heyday in the 80s, there were hundreds of people down there, with bars and restaurants, all secure from nuclear attack.

 

 

Here's a good place to start:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterranean_London

 

 

The cool thing is that all this stuff basically interconnects, so you'll hear stories of Thames Water guys who come across locked doors in their tunnels that clearly go somewhere, but they're not on the official maps. And recently with all the rebuilding in the City they keep coming across underground structures in the way that they then have to work around.

 

There are also guys who go down there, break in and take photos, like this guy:

 

http://www.silentuk.com/

 

and this site

 

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/

 

It's a whole lifetime of fascinating stuff. The real secret stuff out there is much more interesting than the fake bullshit conspiracy/fortean stuff.

[Richie Freebird]

Cool, thanks for that. Should be some good reading / viewing there. Turns out it was Moscow that I was thinking about with the

[Pinc]

There is an excellent documentary called Dark Days which chronicles several weeks in the life of a group of homeless people living in an abandoned section of the New York underground. The Wikipedia page attests that it was released in 2000, though I thought it was more recent.

 

It can be easily torrented for those who'd like to see it for themselves. I can't imagine Hurricane Sandy was very kind to anybody still living down there in 2012.

[Sergio Mendacious]

"Dark Days" is splendid - went through a spate of documentary watching on Netflix, and that was one of them.

[David]

I posted this in another thread and thought it would be worth adding it here. If anyone is interested in a conspiracy/paranormal podcast show that isn't Alex Jones-esque, check out the Red Ice Creations website & podcast.

 

The show is hosted by filmmaker and researcher Henrik Palmgren, who resides in Sweden.

[Loki]

Continuing my reading on underground London, it kind of blew my mind to find there were at least 22 tunnels under the Thames.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_under...he_River_Thames

 

Including quite a few that are disused or sealed up.

[Egg Shen]

the underground blows my mind