How does one lose a tectonic plate – those massive sheets of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle that form a broken shell for us to stand on when they’re not rubbing together and causing earthquakes and volcanoes? Like the toilet paper aisle at the grocery store, there’s been a lot of pushing and shoving amongst Earth’s plates, with many disappearing and others taking their place. Finding some of these lost plates usually leads to others, but there’s been an ongoing disagreement about a plate that may or may not have existed off the Pacific coast of North America. Given the appropriate name “Resurrection,” this lost plate may have finally been resurrected by geologists who get excited about this sort of thing.

“We believe we have direct evidence that the Resurrection plate existed. We are also trying to solve a debate and advocate for which side our data supports.”

How did geologists at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics resurrect Resurrection and why has there been a debate about its existence? There are currently seven major tectonic plates, 15 minor ones and dozens of microplates. The study of plate tectonics is just over 100 years old, but it really accelerated with the development of seismic tomography, which uses seismic data to locate ancient plates under the current one which have been subducted or shoved under other moving plates.

The benefit to finding these ancient plates is that they tell the history and location of ancient volcanoes, which caused ancient periods of climate change, which caused major changes in life on Earth. Geologists have long agreed that there are two ancient plates in the northern Pacific called Farallon and Kula, but some models show that they don’t match up to evidence of an ancient volcanic belt in Washington State and Alaska, leading some geologists to believe there’s a third ‘lost’ plate they’ve called Resurrection between them. Others refuse to accept this theory – hence, the debate.

“When ‘raised’ back to the earth’s surface and reconstructed, the boundaries of this ancient Resurrection tectonic plate match well with the ancient volcanic belts in Washington State and Alaska, providing a much sought after link between the ancient Pacific Ocean and the North American geologic record.”

In a paper published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology at UH and Spencer Fuston, a third-year geology doctoral student, show how they used a new tomographic technique called slab unfolding to reconstruct what tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean looked like during the early Cenozoic Era, 40 and 60 million years ago. That model revealed Resurrection hiding under western Canada and Alaska. (Pictures and video here in the press release.)

(l-r) Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the UH Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Spencer Fuston, a third-year geology doctoral student, applied a technique developed by the UH Center for Tectonics and Tomography called slab unfolding to reconstruct what tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean looked like during the early Cenozoic Era.

A 3D block diagram across North America showing a mantle tomography image reveals the Slab Unfolding method used to flatten the Farallon tectonic plate. By doing this, Fuston and Wu were able to locate the lost Resurrection plate.

This image shows plate tectonic reconstruction of western North America 60 million years ago showing subduction of three key tectonic plates, Kula, Farallon and Resurrection.

Wu and Fuston are too professional to say it to Resurrection disbelievers, so we will for them.

“We’re not saying it’s Resurrection … but it’s Resurrection.”

Of all of the strange things the UFO phenomenon has brought to us, one of the weirdest are the groups of people that are drawn to somehow revere and worship them. These groups pop up from time to time, warping UFOs into twisted religious cults, some of which turn out to be quite dangerous. Yet, others are merely odd, and one of the weirder of these was a UFO cult that sprouted up in California in the 1950s, which took its members on a wild mind trip and has quite the strange and creepy history.

The whole thing starts in 1954 in Los Angeles, California, when an Ernest L. Norman and his wife Ruth E. Norman came forward to start a very unique new group. Ernest himself was purportedly a child prodigy and self-proclaimed psychic with supposed telekinetic abilities, that is the power to move objects with his mind, as well as later according to him a scientist and an aeronautical engineer. He apparently met Ruth as he travelled the country as a medium putting war widows in touch with their husbands who had died during World War II. Ruth herself was a bit of a character, claiming to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, so it was love at first sight, and the two got along splendidly. Both of them had been devout New Agers at the time they met, and after marrying within weeks of meeting, they set out to publish numerous New age books, some of which were channeled through Ernest via alien intelligences, including ‘transmissions’ from Mars and Venus, and before long they were forming their very own cult.

Ernest L. Norman and Ruth E. Norman

Ernest’s books were very popular among the New Age scene at the time, and as such they attracted many followers, and this evolved into the Unarius Academy of Science, with Unarius being an acronym for “Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science”. The main goal of the group was to promote a new “interdimensional science of life” based upon “fourth-dimensional” physics principles, and they were heavily into this interdimensional aspect of existence. The main idea was that the soul is immortal, and that we are constantly reincarnated over many lifetimes, all of this controlled by interplanetary alien overlords, who would frequently give various channeled messages to followers but mostly through Ernest. Unarius touted itself as a scientific belief system, based on real laws of proven “fourth dimensional science,” and it all involved an elaborate world of a hodgepodge of half baked ideas on atoms, karma, reincarnation, past-life memories, channeling, vibrational energies, cosmic forces, and “spiritual planets.” If one could master these far-out concepts, they were said to be in full control of their life and able to heal themselves of any woe life could throw at them.

There were a lot of fringe and often insane ideas thrown around at the time, such as that Asian races were the progeny of ancient interstellar migrants who began colonizing Mars a million years ago, and it was all pretty wild to say the least. These alien masters, or “space brothers” were from an advanced galactic coalition of planets, and were said to be on track to inevitably arrive on Earth from the stars in 33 spaceships to improve humanity. These spaceships were predicted to land in 2001, after which the entire world would experience a spiritual and technological renaissance and evolution. It all sounds pretty neat, actually, neat enough to attract loads of the disillusioned and outcast. During these years. Earnest would publish several series of books supposedly channeled to him through these alien interdimensional beings, such as the Voice Series of books, which chronicled his astral travels to other planets, and in which he explained that planets such as Mars and Venus had “healing wards” where troubled souls could go to be cleansed. He also wrote his magnum opus The Infinite Concept of Cosmic Creation, which would go on to serve as his main teachings for his followers. He made much of the planet Venus, describing the planet’s inhabitants as beings of pure energy, and more technologically and spiritually advanced, with much to teach us. It was all written with heavy usage of official sounding technical jargon and pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo, so to the uninitiated it would seem to be very authorative and believable, which only served to gain it more respectability among the gullible.

Ernest would die in 1971, after which his wife, who took on the name of “Uriel” as the alien emissary on Earth, would take over operations and move the headquarters to the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, which was meant to not only be a meeting place for members, but also the final destination of the aliens they expected to arrive. Under Ruth’s guidance, the organization gained a larger public profile, and she became a bit of a minor celebrity, appearing on shows such as Late Night with David Letterman and The David Susskind Show, all while building her own studio for their purposes, which produced over 100 video programs that began airing on public access stations in the 80s. She claimed to be in constant communications with beings in the higher “nonatomic dimensions” or spiritual planes that they collectively called the Unariun Brotherhood, and this all fed into the beliefs of the group, with the idea being that these teachings could answer all questions about the universe and one’s existence.

Ruth Norman would pass away in 1993, but the movement would live on. Unfortunately, the planned alien coming did not come to pass in 2001 as promised, which caused a stir within the organization, but not its downfall. As these cults are wont to do, it was all explained away as humankind not being ready or some such nonsense, anything to avoid being wrong, and their activities continued, with chapters in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom right up into the present. In the end the Unarius Academy of Science has gone down as one of the stranger cults to pop up around the UFO phenomenon and aliens, but it will no doubt certainly not be the last

When you’re a big pop star, you can say whatever you want these days and it will make the news. Demi Lovato just said she’s seen UFOs and communicated with aliens and the former Barney & Friends cast member is getting more attention than she ever received singing along with the annoying, over-stuffed purple dinosaur. But … is her close encounter overstuffed as well due to our celebrity-worshiping media and culture?

ddlovato
The past few days I’ve spent in Joshua Tree with a small group of loved ones and @dr.steven.greer and his CE5 team. Over the past couple months I have dug deep into the science of consciousness and experienced not only peace and serenity like I’ve never known but I also have witnessed the most incredibly profound sightings both in the sky as well as feet away from me.

If you want to see UFOs, Joshua Tree National Park is a well-known place to spot them, with sightings dating back to the 1950s. Keith Richards went there in the 1970s with fellow musician Gram Parsons and some LSD to look for UFOs. (They didn’t see any that he remembers, but who knows – it’s Keith Richards!) Lovato didn’t go to Joshua Tree with LSD – she took a more reliable aid … Dr. Steven Greer, the well-known ufologist, disclosure-seeker, meditator and ET communicator. Lovato obviously paid for the privilege to be accompanied by Greer and she shows the fruits of her investment – photos and videos on Instagram.

“This is just some of the evidence from under the stars in the desert sky that can no longer be ignored and must be shared immediately.”

OK, we did the sharing part. Lovato also says we should download Greer’s CE5 app which she claims “will teach you the protocols to connect to life form beyond our planet!!” (her exclamations). Will you see (for a fee) the same orbs and lights she did out in the desert? Well, it seems that’s up to you.

“Ps, if it doesn’t happen on the first try – keep trying – it took me several sessions to tap into a deep enough level of meditation to make contact!”

Yes, just like Keith and Gram, Demi needed an altered form of consciousness to communicate with the ETs allegedly controlling her sighting. Lovato plugs meditation (as does Greer) and uses this as an opportunity to rally her followers to pressure government leaders to disclose their UFO and ET files and to “change our destructive habits destroying our planet”  — both noble causes that the people (at least in the U.S.) are having frustratingly difficult times accomplishing. Her advice on meditation and ET communications applies here – keep trying on both counts.

Is Demi Lovato trying to get over her breakup with Max Ehrich, promote her latest recordings and acting gigs, advertise for Steven Greer, encourage meditation, reveal her UFO sightings and alien contacts, or all of the above? With the amount of criticism Tom DeLonge gets for the money-making side of his UFO and disclosure projects, it’s a fair question to ask Lovato and any other celebrities in similar situations. In Lovato’s defense, she has a lifetime of commitments to many good causes and meditation – both personal and mass – is deemed beneficial to many by many.

As for the other side of the experience she had with Steven Greer in Joshua Tree National Park, this is not Lovato’s first UFO revelation – in 2016, she told Elle magazine she had seen a “worm UFO” and in 2014 she admitted on a late night show that she believes aliens are real. Those are all interesting, but do they and the images and experiences she shared on Instagram convince you that she finally had a CE5 with real ETs?

Let’s hope Demi Lovato has more of these encounters, collects better evidence and uses her celebrity status to reveal it and push for disclosure.

A couple of days ago I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe on the sensational and over the top story of the “alien underground base” at Dulce, New Mexico. You might think a story like that couldn’t be topped in the unlikely stakes. You would be very wrong. Check out the following. It was in the late 1980s when Ufologist Leonard Stringfield – still highly active in Ufology at the time – received the astonishing and terrible “facts” concerning an incident which supposedly occurred in early 1972, in Tong Li Sap, Cambodia, which is situated in south-east Asia, and when the Vietnam War was still raging. The story is told in Stringfield’s UFO Crash / Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, which was self-published in July 1991. A group of expert marksmen were secretly and silently parachuted in late one night to an area that bordered closely on North Vietnam. The operation was a vitally important one: to take out a North Vietnamese facility that, U.S. Intelligence had been able to deduce, was clandestinely listening in on top secret conversations between high-ranking American personnel in South Vietnam. The team camped down for the night, fully prepared to make a full assault on the North Vietnamese team as dawn broke. It never happened. Rather, it didn’t happen the way that it was envisaged. The group made a skillful and stealthy approach on the area, using the dense foliage for cover. Only to find to their terror that something unearthly had changed the situation – and drastically so, too.

As the team got closer to the area in which the North Vietnamese unit was hunkered down, they suddenly found themselves confronted by a large, ball-like craft that sat atop three, sturdy, metallic legs. The craft suddenly began to hum – something which caused instant sickness, dizziness and disorientation on the part of the U.S. troops. Fighting the need to throw up and get out of the area quickly, they were suddenly rooted to the spot by a group of strange-looking, humanoid creatures that, today, we would call “the Greys” of UFO lore. Barely believing what they were seeing, the group was even more horrified by what the creatures were doing: handling various human body parts and placing them into large containers: arms, legs, torsos, heads; the grisly list went on and on. Some were the remains of white people, others were black. Several looked like Vietnamese. Managing to keep the sickness and dizziness under some degree of control, the team crawled forward on their stomachs. The commanding officer silently gave the order to fire: salvos of bullets slammed into bodies of the creatures – who barely seemed fazed by the assault. That is, aside from one, which was said to have been killed by a shot to the head. Several of the U.S. troops lost their lives, and others were left severely burned by the effects of an unknown weapon. The aliens then quickly retreated, loaded the containers into the craft, and vanished into the skies above.

In no time at all, another team was on the scene – “CIA types,” as one of the survivors told Stringfield. All of the surviving men were given certain, mind-altering drugs to try and make them forget the incredible affair – which, apparently, worked (so we’re told…). At least, for a while it worked. In the late 1980s, however, two members of the team started to experience dramatic and nightmarish flashbacks to those events of April 1972, which prompted one of the team to contact as many of the others who could be found. Two were dead, three could not be located, but the rest were able to meet up in August 1988 and decided that the story needing telling. After being approached with the story, Stringfield did exactly that: he published it for anyone and everyone that wanted to see it. Yep, that’s quite a story – and that’s the underestimation of the month. Possibly of the year. And I don’t care how credible the source might have been, let’s see some evidence. If it can’t be found, I suggest that we lay the whole thing to rest.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

If you heard that the British government was holding photographs of a UFO taken in 1990 in Scotland that were scheduled to be released to the public in 2021, would you be interested? If you then heard that the British government decided for some undisclosed reason to ignore the rules and lock the photos up for another 50 years, would you be suspicious? Both of those happened a few weeks ago and ufologist Straiph Wilson was curious, then suspicious. Now he’s decided to take action.

A colourised image of the alleged UFO sighting in 1990

“That speaks volumes when the government does that. They’re trying to hide something. It’s one of the most important sightings in Britain, if not in the world. The pictures must be quite significant if we could get the two hillwalkers to come forward.”

Wilson, a former technician at Glasgow University and now an artist, told The Courier he’s been interested in the so-called Calvine incident ever since August 4, 1990, when two men claim to have seen a diamond-shaped UFO and watched it hover for 10 minutes before flying away at a high speed … with a number of military aircraft passing underneath it. One of the witnesses got the holy grail of UFO evidence – six color photographs of the craft in broad daylight – then did his duty as a good British citizen and turned them over to the Ministry of Defense. That was the last anyone ever saw of them … publicly.

“The analysis was nothing short of sensational. The photos hadn’t been faked. They showed a structured craft of unknown origin, unlike any conventional aircraft. There was no fuselage, no wings, no tail, no engines and no markings of any sort.”

Nick Pope saw them while he worked for the MoD and claimed he had a Fox Mulder-style poster of one on his wall … before a superior removed it. Pope is out of the MoD and has long been a proponent of disclosure, but sticks to his code of silence on classified information – even after the government announced last week that the six photos – scheduled to be made public in 2021 – would instead be kept super-classified until 2072. While Pope may be afraid to go against the government, Wilson isn’t … and he hopes the witnesses aren’t either.

“Back then people might have been scared of the government but I don’t think they’re scared now.”

In his interview with The Courier, he reached out to the still unnamed witnesses to come forward once again – assuming they’re still alive. If they are, they may not want to come forward for the same reason the government may not want to release the photos. It could be something personal or embarrassing to them or their families, or it could be something more sinister and dangerous. A threat from the enemy government that owned the UFO? A threat from the ETs that owned it? A fear of mass chaos?

Straiph Wilson took action. He’s hoping the witnesses do the same. Tom Delonge took action. He’s hoping his fans do the same. The only way to gain disclosure is through action. Demand answers from government officials by contacting them directly … again and again. Vote for candidates who support disclosure. Go out and look for UFOs yourself … and be prepared with a charged phone (or a good camera) and a steady grip on a wall (for support) and your nerves (for the courage).

You can’t find the holy grail by watching UFO shows on cable.

If you are one of the Calvine withnesses or know them, Straiph Wilson asks to contact him at info@straiph.co.uk.

There have long been tales of mysterious monsters and entities prowling the wilds of our world, and these have become fixtures in the world of cryptozoology, or the search for hidden and undiscovered animals. Yet, there are often strange things just as unusual that lie within the realm of trees and plants, which are every bit as bizarre and inexplicable. At times these can include trees and plants that seem to be very dangerous indeed, and here we will take a detour off into the brush and deep forests of the remote areas of our world, in order to come face to face with deadly cryptid plants.

With many of the deadly mystery plants supposedly encountered by explorers throughout history, we have something with which it is difficult to separate fact from pure myth. This is surely the case with a type of legendary grass common in Irish lore that is known as féar gortach, or literally “Hungry Grass.” Often said to be cursed or under the influence of some sort of entity such as fairies, Hungry Grass was said to cause an insatiable hunger, possibly even starvation, and profound weakness in anyone who walked across it, with the only way to pass safely being to carry some food. In some versions of the tale this grass is somewhat snake-like, and will actively wrap itself around unwary passersby. The grass was also said to corrupt and eat other crops, and was so persistent in lore that it was blamed in part for the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. In some areas, such as a place called Hungry Hill, the grass was supposedly so plentiful that it was considered to be a death sentence to venture there, with those who entered never returning.

There are numerous other mythical supposed man-eating plants that are similarly within the shadows of legend, any reality they have uncertain. One of these is the so-called “Man-Eating Lotus of Nubia,” which was an enormous lotus tree renowned for its gorgeous flowers and also known to lure in prey with sweet, succulent fruit, only to lash out to kill and consume them. In an 1881 travelogue called Under the Punkah, explorer Phil Robinson told of how one of these man-eating plants had attacked his uncle. The uncle was reported as having emptied his firearm into the blood-thirsty tree, after which he had hacked away at it with a knife as it grabbed and stabbed at him with vines and branches. He was finally able to barely escape with his life, but one of his native guides had not been so lucky, and was devoured. Robinson described the Man-Eating Lotus:

This awful plant, that rears its splendid death-shade in the central solitude of a Nubian fern forest, sickens by its unwholesome humours all vegetation from its immediate vicinity, and feeds upon the wild beasts that, in the terror of the chase, or the heat of noon, seek the thick shelter of its boughs ; upon the birds that, flitting across the open space, come within the charmed circle of its power, or innocently refresh themselves from the cups of its great waxen flowers ; upon even man himself when, an infrequent prey, the savage seeks its asylum in the storm, or turns from the harsh foot-wounding sword-grass of the glade, to pluck the wondrous fruit that hang plumb down among the wondrous foliage. And such fruit! Glorious golden ovals, great honey drops, swelling by their own weight into pear-shaped translucencies. The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard, keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green.

As similarly deadly flowering tree was known as the “Kumanga Killer Tree,” of Madagascar, which was first heard about by outsiders by the Czech explorer Ivan Mackerle in 1998. Natives claimed that this particular tree was found on only one part of the island and was said to have colorful flowers that exuded an extremely poisonous gas. The natives claimed to know where such a tree was and guided Mackerle to its location. During the trek, the expedition members were so concerned about the poisonous nature of the plant that they actually wore gas masks. When they arrived at the alleged Kumanga Killer Tree, they found no gas spewing flowers, but did find several animal skeletons under the tree. The lack of flowers, the natives explained, was due to the tree not being in bloom. Mackerle also uncovered a story of a former British army officer who allegedly took photographs of a tree on the island that had various animal skeletons strewn about its base. Whether this particular tree was either one of the aforementioned carnivorous trees or something new is uncertain. It is also unknown what became of these photographs, or if indeed they ever existed at all.

Interestingly, Mackerle only chanced upon this supposed discovery because he was in the region looking for yet another legendary man-eating tree, originally known from an old account brought back from the deepest jungles by the German explorer Carl Liche in 1878. The account describes in horrific detail the sacrifice of a village woman of the Mkodo tribe to a giant flesh eating tree. In a letter published in The South Australian Register in 1881, Liche described the unsettling scene that unfolded before him and his cohort, a man only known as Hendrick. Liche writes:

The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.

The tree itself was described as being around 8 feet in height, and having an appearance reminiscent of a pineapple, with eight long, pointed leaves that hung down from its top to the ground. The trunk of the tree was topped with a sort of receptacle that contained a thick liquid said to have soporific qualities that drugged potential prey and was believed to be highly addictive. Surrounding this receptacle were long, hairy tendrils with six white palpi resembling tentacles. The tree possessed white, transparent leaves that reminded Liche of the quivering mouthparts of an insect. This one account created great interest in the possibility that such a tree existed, prompting several expeditions to the region looking for it, of which Mackerle’s was one of them. Unfortunately, he was never able to find it, and the Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar is largely confined to folklore.

Courtesy of Karl Shuker and Enigmas Magazine

Yet another supposed killer tree was first described in 1870 by the missionary Reverend Henry Callaway in his book The Religious System of the Amazulu. In the remote wilds of South Africa was said to lurk a tree or bush that the natives called the Umdhlebe, which was said to constantly be surrounded by the skeletons of the animals it consumed. It supposedly killed its prey through an extremely potent toxin, which could kill small animals such as birds instantly, and which had profound effects on humans as well. It was said that anyone approaching the tree would develop bloodshot eyes, fevers, and delirium, and if one were to get too close they would be stricken by a condition in which they would be unable to sleep or even sit down, and would pace relentlessly until they wasted away and died. Interestingly, the only way to cure this mystery sickness was supposedly to use the fruit of the tree to concoct a antidote, a feat which only a few could pull off.

Besides deadly trees, there have also been accounts of other types of predatory legendary plants, and one of the most frightening of these must be a vampiric, blood-drinking vine said to dwell in the deepest swamps of Nicaragua. The vine is referred to by the natives as “The Devil’s Snare,” and is described as being rather like an octopus in appearance. The plant was described by one naturalist by the name of Mr. Dunstan, who came face to face with its horrifying nature while spending two years studying the plants and animals of the region. In the account, Dunstan claimed to have come across the plant while in a swamp region near Lake Nicaragua. Dunstan, who was collecting plant and insect specimens in the area, suddenly heard his dog let out a high pitched whine of terror, pain, or both. Dunstan allegedly hurried to the source of the cries and found his dog enveloped by a network of rope-like roots and fibers.  These fibers were of a dark, nearly black hue, and were covered with a thick gum that seemed to exude from some sort of pores. This gum was reportedly extremely adhesive and had a foul, animal odor. The ensnared dog struggled within this fibrous network and was wailing as if in a great deal of pain.

Once the startled Dunstan was able to recover from this gruesome sight, he tried desperately to cut the dog free with his knife, but found the vines to be surprisingly difficult to cut and to his horror found that the plant’s rope-like tendrils actively wrapped and curled themselves around his hands like sinuous fingers. Dunstan was able to extricate the animal only after an enormous amount of effort and he noticed that the grasping vines had left the skin of his hands red and blistered. He also noticed to his amazement that the dog was bloodstained and covered in spots that seemed puckered as if they had been sucked. The dog, though still alive, was extremely disoriented and had difficulty walking. The naturalist told the natives of his encounter and they explained that the vine was well known and feared in the area, warning him to stay well away from it. Undaunted, Dunstan tried to collect more information on the bizarre vine, but found it to be very difficult to approach or handle. However, through his observations he deduced where the plant’s remarkable suction abilities derived from and how it fed. He reported:

The plant’s power of suction is contained within a number of infinitesimal mouths or little suckers, which, ordinarily closed, open for the reception of food. If the substance is animal, the blood is drawn off and the carcass or refuse then dropped. A lump of raw meat being thrown to it, in the short space of five minutes the blood will be thoroughly drunk off and the mass thrown aside. Its voracity is almost beyond belief.

Dunstan also described how the plant was extremely hard to get off once it latched on, and could only be pulled away with a great deal of effort and possibly lost skin. He eventually gave up his studies on the vampire vine and very little else is known about it. Another supposed predatory vine was also reported in 1852 from the impenetrable, uncharted rain forests of interior Africa. According to Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog, one newspaper report of the era described the bizarre plant as follows:

According to some Italian journals, a new organised being has been discovered in the interior of Africa, which seems to form an immediate link between vegetable and animal life. This singular production of nature has the shape of a spotted serpent. It drags itself along on the ground; instead of a head, it has a flower, shaped like a bell, which contains a viscous liquid. Flies and other insects, attracted by the smell of the juice, enter into the flower, and are caught by the adhesive matter. The flower then closes, and, remains shut until the prisoners are bruised and transformed into chyle. The indigestible portions, such as the head and the wings, are thrown out by two aspiral openings. The vegetable serpent has a skin resembling leaves, a white and soft flesh, and, instead, of a bony skeleton, a cartilaginous frame filled with yellow marrow. The natives consider it a delicious food.

Finally, we have the strange story of an apparent giant, man-eating flower supposedly native to the forgotten South Pacific islet of El Banoor, a place said to be home to a man-eating flower known only as “The Death Flower.” The flower’s existence is mostly known of through the 1581 account of the explorer Captain Arkwright, who wrote of it in his journals of his travels. He described the plant as basically a huge, brightly colored flower with very large petals. The flower reportedly could release a soporific, sleep inducing aroma, whereupon the victim would lie down upon one of the petals. Once this happened, the flower would close and digest its sleeping prey alive. It seems like a fascinating account, but since it is only one report and the location of El Banoor is not specifically explained, it seems unlikely we will ever know for sure just how much veracity the account holds. Indeed, is there any truth to any of these, or are they tall tales told by travelers and explorers? We may never know for sure, and such accounts will perhaps always instill bafflement and a sense of wonder at what lies out there in the wild places of our world.

When most people think of sweat baths (the non-porn kind), they usually think of the ancient Romans or sometimes certain neighborhoods in New York City. However, archeologists trace the first (and possibly the best) steam rooms back to the Maya civilization which created the hot, steamy rooms in Mesoamerica somewhere around 900 BCE. Hot, steamy rooms in hot, steamy tropical lands? These rooms obviously had more ritual purposes than just cleaning out the pre-Columbian pores. A recent discovery in Guatemala reveals one unusual purpose of these steam rooms, the goddess associated with them and their connection to reptilian births. Wait … what?

“No other structure in Mesoamerica–sweat bath or otherwise–looks like this building. It would seem that when someone enters the front of the structure, they are entering the amphibian goddess who personified the sweat bath.”

You get the idea.

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) archaeologist Ashley Sharpe co-authored a study, published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, which described the discovery of this unusual Maya steam bath and the search for its unique purpose. Maya steam baths themselves are not unusual – they generally have vented roofs and a firebox and were often built outside the homes of the elite. However, some have been found inside other buildings and had attached rooms for changing or recovering. Most were built for cleansing the body and the mind, helping heal the sick, talking to the gods or members of the underworld, or for other rituals. This particular one was different.

“Linking notions of birth to reptilian figures, however, is not uncommon among the Classic Maya as they express the verb ‘to birth’ as an upended reptilian mouth glyph. What we see at Xultun is an example where this reptilian goddess, as well as the ideas and myths she embodied, are expressed as a physical place.”

Boston University archaeologist Mary Clarke, main author of the study, reveals in a press release that this bath, discovered at the Xultun archeological site in modern Guatemala and named ‘Los Sapos’, was used for birthing – a tool that midwives believed aided in the process and produced healthier babies. To aid in the process, the steam bath was dedicated to a Classic Maya goddess (name not known but possibly ‘ix.tzutz.sak’) who is depicted “squatting in a toad-like position with legs ornamented with iguanas and cane toads.” The steam bath appears to have been built around 250 CE and used for 300 years before being buried. It appears to have been discovered about 300 years later and put back into use – not for steaming but for making offerings to the reptilian goddess that further solidified the purpose of the original bath.

She sounds hot!

“Because of the iconography on the outside of Los Sapos and because we know it was a sweat bath, we have a rare case where we can associate the offerings–an infant, figurines of women, and frogs and iguanas–with the role the structure played in the community.”

The offerings were found in an area that had been set on fire, so it’s difficult to determine if the infant had been a live sacrifice to the reptilian goddess, but human sacrifices were common to the Maya culture. Based on Clarke’s description of the reptilian goddess, that may have been the case.

“This supernatural figure is a ferocious embodiment of the Earth. When displeased, she may take revenge or withhold the things people need to survive. The offering at Los Sapos was both an attempt to appease this goddess and an act of resilience.”

The fire took place around 900 CE, at the end of the Maya civilization, so the people could have been negotiating with the gods to slow their demise. While the Maya are gone, their steam baths remain in the temazcal – round sweat lodges often run by shamans and popular in Mexico and Central America with tourists (when we could still be tourists … sigh).

Just be careful not to squat in one or you may get a surprise from the reptilian birthing goddess.