Category: 04: Unsolved Mysteries
By Eduardo
Earlier this week, the wife and I were briefly up in Redding for the 4th of July. My folks had invited some friends of theirs from church over to join us for dinner, and we sat and talked over large slabs of meat.
Tobey and Jane live on High Street in Old Shasta, a few doors down from the oldest house in the county (I forget – is it the Foster House or the Bystle House?). They’re really interesting people, full of knowledge of the area after having lived there for about 30 years.
We got to talking about local history, and I was pretty amazed at how much they knew. Although they’re in their 60′s, they go kayaking a lot – and had some interesting stories about places on Whiskeytown lake where you can actually put your feet down in the water and stand on some of the old submerged roads.
Anyway, i decided to ask them if they might know anything about all the bizarre stuff we found on that piece of property near the lake a few years back (which I can’t believe we haven’t posted about here).
The story thus far, for any of you who don’t know about this, can be generally summed up as follows:
A few years ago, Jaime told me about this “scary place” that some backpacker friends of his had found on some land up near Whiskeytown. It was apparently really close to 299, and pretty accessible. I guess they’d found all kinds of weird makeshift “buildings” and random stuff out there, and the general weirdness level had freaked them out a little.
We decided to find this place, and after some snooping around we did just that.
The place was actually far weirder and more creepy than any of us expected, and we made careful note of the many NO TRESPASSING signs posted all over the area.
Words can’t accurately describe how funky and weird this place was, so I’ll have to put up the photos we took at some point. It actually reminded me of the movie Seven, if that gives you any clue.
After a couple of trips there and many photos taken to document the sheer bizarreness of it all, we decided to stay away. Whoever was responsible for building this place was clearly off their rocker in a big way, so who knows what would happen if they caught us outsiders invading their mystical world?
That was several years ago. The place is still there, and every time I look down at it from the road it appears that there’s still some active construction going on.
The question that has plagued us since we found out about the place is who is behind this?
What kind of terminally insane LSD freakazoid would build such a place?
Anyway, I told everyone the story of how we found the place, and asked them if they knew who might be behind it. To my surprise, Tobey mentioned that a long time ago, he knew the people who owned the land. “Well, I think that’d have to be Doug,” he said. “He used to truck all kinds of stuff up there, and he’s crazy as a loon.”
“What’s Doug’s last name?” I asked, hoping to get a positive ID on the aforementioned freak.
“Uhh… Hmmm… Been a long time. I can’t quite remember. He was an enormous fellow, though. ”
“Really?”
“Yeah… Boy, he was a real nutcase. You’d see him walking around town, wearing these really weird clothes. He’s a huge guy… used to wear these long black clothes, and carried a big long knife with him.”
“Great… I’m glad we didn’t run into him when we were up there.”
“Yeah, well – even though he looks scary, I think he was pretty harmless. He might have been crazy, but he never tried to beat me up or anything.”
“What happened to him? Have you seen him around lately?”
“No – haven’t seen him in a long time. I don’t know what happened to him… but I’m pretty sure that’s the guy.”
So, there you have it. Not exactly a complete revelation on the origin and purpose of Nuudess Camp, but still some interesting information nonetheless.
The description Tobey gave of this ‘Doug’ guy doesn’t make me want to rush back there any time soon. I’d rather not have my gutted corpse found rotting on an exercise bike inside a small house made of Jim Beam bottles.
By Eduardo
I’m posting this under the “Unsolved Mysteries” topic, although this is one I hope to solve as soon as possible.
Here’s the story:
Last year, Mrs. Eduardo and I planted some nice rose bushes in the front yard of the house we’re renting. We needed to put something there after having ripped out a bunch of gross old plants and weeds and stuff that were there before, and roses were an obvious solution. They worked out pretty nicely, and eventually grew to fill out the area with some nice color.
The weekend before last, I was doing some yard work and noticed that the rose bushes were full of buds and were just about to start blooming again. I was pretty pleased, because they look great once they’ve bloomed. I finished weeding and went inside.
A few days later, I looked to see if any of the rose buds had begun to bloom, and was startled to see that they were all gone. All the buds had been cut off, as if someone had pruned the rose bushes!
I went inside and asked my wife if she’d done so. She had no idea what I was talking about, and went out into the front yard with me to investigate further. We closely examined the bushes, and sure enough all the buds had been clipped off. Our rose bushes would not be blooming after all, at least not any time soon.
We haven’t been able to determine who or what would have done this, but it’s pretty apparent that it was a person. in a (possibly) related incident, I remembered seeing a weird lady walk into our front yard and start checking out our camilias a few weeks ago. She didn’t see me, and I just stared at her in amusement until she walked away. Now, I’m thinking that she could be our rose thief. I told my wife that I’m planning to tackle her if I see her in our yard again, so we’ll see if that happens. I’m not even sure that she’s the one who did this, but she’s getting a mouthful of pavement if I see her in our yard.
As of right now, I’m trying to figure out how to best protect our roses from this unseen menace. My wife suggested that we buy one of those motion-sensitive water sprinklers that people use to keep dogs away, but I’m afraid that it’d nail anybody who went past on the sidewalk. I’m considering setting up a webcam with motion detection, but it’d be a pain in the rear… and who knows when -or if – this person will ever come back?
Non-lethal land mines are too expensive, and I can’t sit for days on the porch with a rifle. I’m going to figure something else out.
Any suggestions?
I hope to have an update on this soon.
By Eduardo
My wife, to this day, swears that sometime in ’87 or ’88, butt-metal legends Krokus played a show at her middle school in Reno. Their appearance coincided with a special “pep rally” assembly, and she remembers that the drummer busted out with a particularly long solo.
“Nobody was really into it” she says, probably because Krokus’s popularity in the USA had completely faded out a couple of years prior to that.
Even though 1983′s Headhunter went platinum, they never really enjoyed sustained popularity here in the states. They have, however enjoyed continued success in their homeland of Switzerland and other European countries to his very day. Surprisingly enough, a visit to their web site reveals that they’re still actively touring. Whether they’re playing at kids’ birthday parties in the Ukraine or high school graduations in Belgium, I don’t know – but apparently there’s still enough Krokus to go around.
Swiss cheese: Krokus, circa 1983
My wife doesn’t remember much else about her own personal Krokus experience, possibly because it was generally regarded as “lame” by the kids at her school.
“Everyone was like, ‘why are they here?’. It was kind of like when Warrant came to your school.”
Not too surprisingly, I haven’t been able to find any evidence to support her story. I was hoping that maybe she had kept a flyer from the event or something, but no luck. I believe her, but someday I would like to have some cold, hard proof that my wife did in fact see Krokus in the seventh grade.
As a side note, I think that the reason Krokus never saw long-term success in the USA is because of the way they spelled their name. Had they simply added an umlaut and called themselves Krökus (or maybe Kröküs), their records sales would have been twice what they were.
By Jaimenacho
I was in my principal’s office this morning, just chatting when I looked down and noticed a large tuft of hair on my sleeve. We’re talking about 30 individual hairs. It looked like women’s hair, but I could be wrong. I do know it was weird. I stopped at the gas station this morning, but I don’t remember getting anyone in a headlock.
There were about 20 more on my shirt. It’s not my wife’s hair, too short. It’s not MY hair…too long. It could be Aiden’s hair, although it doesn’t seem like it either. It was just very odd.
Hair today, gone tomorrow.
By Eduardo
While still technically unsolved, this incident has become a lot more interesting in retrospect due to the fact that many people have apparently seen exactly what I did that night. I was recently poking around on the National UFO Reporting Center site (which is pretty interesting), and came across dozens of eyewitness accounts of basically the same thing – a huge, silent, black triangle. See for yourself:
www.nuforc.org/CBIndex.html
PDF of the URL above (as of 10/13/05)
Eyewitness report 1
Eyewitness report 2 [Pictures]
Eyewitness report 3
Awesome.
Also, as a semi-related note, this is pretty fresh.
By Eduardo
Earlier this evening, the wife and I went to one of our favorite places for dinner. After we’d sat down and ordered, I told her about an interesting but sad story I read on a news site today about a young girl in Maryland named Brooke Greenberg. Apparently, she has an unknown syndrome of some kind that has prevented both her mind and body from developing beyond the toddler stage. The news story said that she is now 12 years old – but incredibly, weighs only 13 pounds and is 27 inches long. She still looks just like a baby, and scientists and doctors are completely baffled as to what her condition is.
(I would have linked directly to it here, but for some reason it’s no longer available.)
Anyway, we talked about this for a few minutes and both wondered aloud what kind of disorder might cause such an unfortunate situation.
“That’s really weird. You know, a former coworker of mine has a daughter who’s kind of like that. She has a similar condition that made her stop developing around age 8. She’s much older than 8 now, and is very dependent…obviously.” said my wife.
“Yeah… Maybe it’s a thyroid disorder or something,” I hypothesized. “Or, maybe she was born without one. I think the thyroid pretty much creates and regulates all your growth hormones and stuff.”
“I guess that could be it…”
“Nah, I dunno. A thyroid disorder would be easy to diagnose.”
“Yes, it probably would.”
Our food arrived, thus ending our three minute conversation. We proceeded to chow down, all but forgetting the story I’d brought up.
Our table was next to the main window, and I had a good view of outside from my seat. While I ate, I watched as a middle-aged couple strode in from the street together. They were seated at a table only a few feet from us, although my mind barely regsitered all this. I was hungry, and dinner was my primary focus.
A few minutes later, they had ordered their food and began to chat much like we had. Since they were seated so close to us, I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation.
“Yes… it’s difficult for me, because of my throat,” the woman said to the man.
“What’s wrong with your throat?” the man asked. I got the impression that they were on a date, and not married.
“Well, I have this thyroid condition, which has caused me a lot of trouble and pain.”
My wife stopped in mid-bite and stared at me, eyes widening.
“Really? What kind of condition?” asked the man.
“Well, it’s hard to explain. It’s basically as if my thyroid’s not there, and sometimes it causes me pain.” the lady continued, tilting her head back and pointing to to where her thyroid was (or should have been).
We both sat there, staring at each other.
The lady went on for a while, relating the rather unappetizing woes of her thyroid problem. When she finished I still didn’t really understand exactly what her problem was, but it sounded rather serious.
“Well,” said my wife. “THAT was weird.”
“Yes. Very.”
We went on to discuss our theories on how and why stuff like this happens. Inevitably, this led to various other personal accounts of unexplained phenomena as well. What’s really strange is that this reminded me that I’ve had many experiences like this (seemingly impossible coincidences) throughout my life, and that there’s absolutely no logical explanation for them.
Anybody want to take a crack at explaining this?
By Jaimenacho
This morning I woke up to go to work, and noticed that the driver’s door was partly opened.
I thought it was weird, considering I had gone in the car, but only in the passenger side, and back the night before looking for CDs. I noticed in my driver’s seat there were some pennies, and some scraps of paper. I looked around and saw my ash tray had been removed from my consol, and left on the seat as well.
“I got broke into!” I thought, and quickly began to scan the car looking to see if anything had been removed.
Stereo-still there
Speakers-still there
CDs-still there
Softball bag-still there
Everything was still there, and the only thing that had been messed with was the ashtray. I put it back in the consol, and drove to work. It was so rainy and windy last night. I couldn’t see a criminal being out trying to get into someone’s car. I tried to think if maybe the wind blew the door open, and somehow also blew the ashtray out the consol. I can’t see that happening, so it will remain–Unexplained
