I recently saw this story in the Waterbury Republican-American about the fate of a former slave’s bones.

Courtesy of Mattatuck Historical Society

If you’re not familiar with the story of Fortune, aka Larry, he was an African-American man who was a slave to an 18th-century Waterbury doctor. When he died, his bones were preserved by the doctor, and remained in the doctor’s family for five generations before being donated to the Mattatuck Museum in the early 20th century. Since then, Fortune has been in the museum’s collection, and was on display for a number of years. After it was decided that displaying the actual skeleton of a dead human being may not be quite proper, Fortune’s remains were removed from public view and safely stored while a search was mounted for his descendants, with the idea that the bones could be returned to them for proper burial. Un-fortune-ately, no living relatives were discovered, although a bit more about the man himself was unearthed, information that has been fashioned into a fairly interesting interactive exhibit at the museum.

Anyway, the issue raised now is what to do with Larry/Fortune’s remains — bury them or keep them above ground for future study, and if they are buried, where should they be buried and by whom.

It’s an interesting story all around, which also raises questions about basic human dignity — the same questions I find myself asking whenever I watch one of those Discovery Channel-type documentaries about digging up mummies, usually starring an overly enthusiastic and self-promoting Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s Secretary General of the country’s Supreme Council Antiquities — aka, the head grave robber.

Look, I understand why archaeologists need to dig up things and why we need to study history — and I really enjoy it, until it comes to the part with dead bodies. It seems that the dead and buried should, well, stay dead and buried, and not unearthed for the “profit” of others, be it in the name of science or self-promotion. Plus, there’s something inherently creepy about becoming “famous” long after you’ve shuffled off this mortal coil, like Fortune/Larry.

Unless of course, you’re an eternal attention whore and want to be part of a traveling art exhibit …

To each his own, I suppose.

They say the human body is a work of art, and I think it’s safe to say that concept is genuinely tested in one of the most fascinating, controversial, macabre and somewhat disturbing exhibits of recent times, Bodies Revealed, which is now at Foxwoods Resort Casino through Sept. 6.

For the uninitiated, the traveling exhibit features actual human bodies that have been skinned, dissected and then preserved through a process called plastination, which essentially involves replacing body fat and water with plastic. All the bodies on display have been voluntarily donated by those who specifically willed their remains be used in the exhibit, which is the brainchild of German anatomist Gunther von Hagens (his website is in German) who perfected the plastic preservation process about 15 years ago. The specimens range in age, size and shape, and are posed in various positions, creating an experience somewhere between art and science class, damned curiosity and morbid exploitation.

From the Bodies Revealed website:

As the visitor moves from gallery to gallery, the exhibition uses 14 full body human specimens and over 200 organs to tell the story of the miraculous systems at work within each of us every second of our existence. Rooted in the historical precedent set by such great anatomists as Vesalius and da Vinci, each full body specimen is dissected to best reveal the function of a complete anatomical system and to show that system’s relationship to the body as a whole. The full body specimens are complimented by presentation cases of related individual organs, both healthy and diseased, that provided an even more detailed look into the elements that comprise each system.

As you might expect, Dr. von Hagens and his traveling anatomical peepshow have more than raised eyebrows during multiple tours around the globe, drawing criticism as well as large crowds — over 26 million visitors have seen various incarnations of this show, making it among the most popular exhibits of all time. As it involves genuine corpses, it was banned in numerous places at first, but now that the original shock and outrage has worn off (and it has generated lots of cash), it has been welcome at more and more locations.

A real dead body in a coffin at a wake gives me the heebie jeebies, so I have to think an exhibition hall full of them in various poses with their innards exposed would be the stuff of nightmares for me. Yet, I find it quite compelling, and just may go visit later this summer. I’ll keep you informed …

As with most blog posts, it starts with a story — in this case, this one from the New London Day regarding unusually heavy contrail activity in the skies over southern Connecticut last Saturday.

For those of you who don’t know, contrails (short for “condensation trails”) are those white lines of water vapor that form behind high-altitude jets — look up on any given clear day at any time, and no doubt you can easily spot one, if not multiple one. Chances are that you’re so used to seeing them that you don’t even notice them in the sky any more.

Apparently however, this past weekend, there was an inordinate number of them in the Connecticut skies due to a backup of air traffic following a runway closure at Kennedy Airport in New York, so many so that people actually noticed! Enough so that it even made the news and the intrawebs.

Of course, contrails already have a bit of a history on the internet — they are a popular conspiracy theory! Essentially, there are people out there who believe that rather than simple water vapor, contrails — also known as chemtrails (“chemical trails”) — are evidence of the government (who else?) spraying special mixtures or biological agents from great heights on an unsuspecting public.

For what purpose, you ask? Apparently, everything from biological weaponry and population control to weather manipulation. I’m sure they are also somehow involved in global warming, the Kennedy Assassination, the faked moon landings and 9/11 being an inside job.

Speaking of 9/11, one of the things I’ll always remember were the two or three days afterward, how quiet the skies were. No planes, no helicopters, and definitely no con- or chemtrails. Here in Connecticut that week, the weather was clear, so it was very surreal to be looking to the skies (which we all were doing repeatedly) and not see . . . anything.

Not surprisingly, the contrail conspiracy has been busted in numerous places, including “Mythbusters” and USA Today.

Still, I’m sure now that you’ve read this, the next time you’re outside and look up, you’ll be thinking, “Hmm …”

My family and I recently went on a trip to Stowe, Vermont, and we made sure to check out a “damned” spot or two.

Our first stop, of course, was along the way to Stowe in Waterbury, home of the world-renowned ice cream factory Ben & Jerry’s, a place where waistlines are cursed to expand . . . forever!

All right, we stopped there because the ice cream is freakin’ awesome. Mmm … Chocolate fudge brownie … [*insert Homer Simpson-inspired drooling noise*]

Actually, we are big fans of letterboxing (which is a perfect activity if you have kids — and even if you don’t), and as such, we went after a pair of boxes just outside of Stowe, both near a reputedly haunted covered bridge!

From the letterboxing site (“Beware of Vermonsters”):

Legend tells of a young woman from Stowe, Vermont, who hanged herself on the Gold Brook covered bridge about 150 years ago. The most popular story of her death starts with her angry parents forbidding her from marrying the man of her dreams. Angered, she planned to run away with her lover and elope. The night that they were to meet, Emily arrived at the bridge early, but her fiancee never came. Emily gave up hope, and in her sadness, she took her own life. She hanged herself from a beam within the bridge, in the dead of night. Since that day, the bridge is rumored to be haunted.

Ghosts and “Vermonsters”? Try to keep us away!

We visited “Emily’s Bridge” as the Gold Brook bridge is also called, and found both letterboxes. We also took a few photos but didn’t see anything unusual — no ghosts, no mists, not even an orb! It seemed a lot like your everyday, normal 165-year-old Vermont covered bridge, which apparently, it is.

The second “damned” spot we visited was Burlington, a nice little town on the shores of Lake Champlain, home of a “real” “Vermonster” — Champ!

If you don’t know the story of “America’s Most Famous Lake Monster,” Champ has been spotted in the waters of Lake Champlain repeatedly over the past few centuries, starting with Native Americans who had legends about a large creature that dwelled in the lake. The first real account of something unusually big in the lake came in 1883 when a local sheriff reported seeing a “gigantic water serpent” just off-shore. Since then, there have been numerous eyewitness accounts of Champ, as well as blurry pictures (like above) and questionable video.

A very good friend of mine who is an expert sportsman, has won multiple state fishing championships and has spent countless hours on the water — and is not one to even remotely indulge in “damned” things like ghosts or lake monsters — thinks he may have seen it while fishing at Lake Champlain a few years ago. He didn’t get a good clean look at it, but he saw it and says it was something unusually large alongside the boat that was not a normal fish, was very dark in color, and was gone very quickly.

Of course, I had to snap a few pics of the lake –

Unfortunately, nothing but clear water, boats and fish. No “Vermonsters”!

Maybe next time.

I saw this story the other day at Space.com about the search for a long-lost planet, Theia, that astronomers think may have existed in our solar system.

Of course, my first thought is: Theia?! What kind of lost mystery planet name is that? It needs a cool mystery moniker like PLANET X, OBJECT ZERO, ROGUE or NOMAD. But Theia? Too girly for a planet — heck, I dated a Theia back in the day, and I suppose you can say she had “a heavenly body” (she actually did some modeling), but it’s hardly a name befitting an enormous spinning rock hurtling through space around a burning ball of nuclear reactions.

Okay, I know it’s the name of a Greek goddess, one of the Titans, but still!

My issues aside, I still love a good mystery and the theory on this one basically goes that a sibling of Earth, Theia was a satellite about the size of Mars, and it collided with Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. After the impact, some of the debris may have clumped together to form our Moon, while the rest just drifted off into space.

Currently, NASA is using a pair of STEREO probes (launched in 2006) to search for traces of Theia, which is near impossible to do using land-based telescopes. The STEREO probes are entering spots in space called Lagrangian points, which are equilibrium points between the Sun and Earth’s gravitional fields and where space flotsam tends to gather (a space gravitational storm drain of sorts). It is hoped that while in these areas, the probes will be able to find some left-over chunks of Theia in the form of asteroids.

Despite the amount of time and energy that has been devoted over the decades to the study of the stars and space, it’s mindboggling the amount of stuff we don’t know. Dark matter, black holes, quasars, Hanny’s Voorwerp . . . who knows what else existed out there, or even in here? As I mentioned recently when discussing Predator X (see, now that’s a cool name for an unknown mystery creature!), we only know about the things that we can find remnants of — who knows how much stuff there was, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, that either no traces remain or we haven’t discovered yet?

So many mysteries out there!

Over the next week or so, there are a few “damned”-type events to check out.

First up is the monthly meeting of Drinking Skeptically with our pal Margey –

Date: Thursday, April 16th
Speaker: Dr. Timothy Goldsmith
Topic: The Biological Roots of Human Nature, Forging Links between Evolution and Behavior
Location: The Field, 3001 Fairfield Ave., Bridgeport

At Yale University, biology professor Timothy Goldsmith teaches a biology course for non-majors that is one of the most popular science courses on campus. Entitled “The Biological Roots of Human Behavior,” the course examines evolution, genetics, neurobiology, and behavior, concluding with a discussion of what makes humans unique.

Bio: Goldsmith has been a member of the Yale faculty since 1961. His principal interests are in neurobiology (with an emphasis on comparative aspects of vision) and behavioral evolution. His early work showed that although insect eyes are anatomically and developmentally totally different structures from vertebrate eyes, retinol — a derivative of Vitamin A — is the chromophore in insect visual pigments, as it is in all animals. He has explored the regeneration of visual pigment after use in insects and crustaceans and the participation of ultraviolet light in the color vision of birds.

Goldsmith is the author or co-author of over 100 papers and two books, “The Biological Roots of Human Nature: Forging Links Between Evolution and Behavior” and the textbook “Biology, Evolution, and Human Nature” (with William F. Zimmerman). For the last decade he has taught a course on this subject for non-science majors in Yale College. He served as the committee chair and principal author of the National Academy of Sciences’ report “Fulfilling the Promise: Biology Education in the Nation’s Schools.” At Yale, Goldsmith held the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship.

Register at the website, as usual.

Next up is the Connecticut Paranormal Research Society –

CPRS will be presenting another evening of Haunted Happenings Friday, April 17th, 2009 at the Deep River Public Library, 150 Main Street in Deep River from 7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. Listen to real ghost stories and explore our paranormal findings. Suggested donation is $10.00.

We may try to get to that one.

And two more from The Astrological Society of Connecticut –

Mayan Astrology and 2012 as a Nexus for Change
Astrological Society of Conn. Lecture
Thursday, April 23, 2009, 7:00 PM
(free for members, $15 for non-members)
(Pre-lecture class at 6:00 PM, additional $5 for non-members)
Keeney Memorial Center
200 Main Street, Wethersfield, CT
Gevera Piedmont, a specialist in Mayan and Aztec calendar systems, answers the questions: What is the Mayan calendar and is it really ending? What is the significance of 2012?

Mayan Calendar Madness
Astrological Society of Conn. Workshop
Saturday, April 25, 2009 10 AM – 5 PM
($40 for members, $50 for non-members)
Wesleyan University, Fisk Hall, 262 High St., Room 302, Middletown, CT
Bruce Scofield, an expert on pre-Columbian astrological-divinatory systems used by the Maya and Aztec peoples, explains the facts concerning the Mayan Calendar and builds outlines its meaning and value.

ASC InfoLine: (860) 568-8617

A damned busy month!

Tuesday, April 8, marks the start of a rare Jewish celebration, Birkat Hachama (or HaHammah), which is known as “the blessing of the Sun.”

I guess I find it odd because venerating the sun seems to be more of a pagan thing to do. Then again, many of the major religions have their roots in basic pagan-type festivals and practices, and have adopted some rituals along the way.

The whole process and all the calculations are quite elaborate — involving the vernal equinox, passages from the Talmud and the average air velocity of a unleavened matzo, I think — any of my Jewish friends, feel free to correct this poor gentile mensch in the comments.

Anyway, the general gist of it as I understand it (courtesy of Wikipedia and other more scholarly sources) is that the Sun has a 28-year cycle, and figuring that each year is 365.25 days long, it means that on Tuesday the Earth and Sun will be in the same exact position as when the world was originally created by God — not that anyone else was there to see it.

The official blessing, as translated from Hebrew, basically says, “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the Universe who makes the works of Creation,” and from what I read, is also the blessing used to celebrate other impressive natural events such as lightning, comets and Natalie Portman.

Anyway, I also think it’s interesting that the start/end of a 28-year cycle comes on the heels of a science-based 11-year solar cycle that is ending. It’s  been an odd cycle because although this is a period when solar activity is usually less, for the past few years, there has been almost no sunspot activity. As a matter of fact, it’s been the least amount of sunspots recorded in over 60 years — although it’s not quite to level of the Maunder Minimum, a period of minimal sunspot activity that occurred from 1645 to 1710.

The Maunder Minimum time frame was also known as the “Little Ice Age,” and was marked by generally cooler temperatures around the globe, plus longer winters, more snow and cooler summers. Ugh!

Less sunspots = colder weather? But what about global warming? Or is all this perhaps nothing more than an inconvenient truth?

Well, if it works out so we can have better weather year-round, the Sun has my blessing!

As part of our ongoing salute to the International Year of Astronomy, I’ve been trying to present stories about odd astronomical things as they come up in the news.

Okay, “space oddities” are not technically “Connecticut,” but since space is directly above the state no matter where you go, it gives me a (weak) excuse to get my astro-geek on. Lucky for you!

Anywho, I saw the recent story about how the Great Red Spot of Jupiter is shrinking!

Maybe it just got out of a cold meteor shower or something …

For those who didn’t know already, the Great Red Spot of Jupiter is actually an ginormous (three Earths wide!) storm raging across the face of the giant planet, a swirling vortex with winds that exceed 400 mph, which has been observed by astronomers for over 140 years. No one knows what makes it red, and as Jupiter is a gas giant shrouded in toxic clouds, what is known of the planet’s surface is limited to start with. The planet’s appearance is also constantly changing, literally with the wind.

From 1996 to 2006, the spot has shrunk by 15 percent, or the equivalent of about a half mile per day. By my calculations, if it continues to dissipate at that pace, the spot will be gone in 108 years, or by 2117. Then again, I’m not known for my mad math skillz — so don’t circle that year on the calendar quite yet.

Still, 2117 may turn out to be an interesting celestial year for another reason, too. It’s a year expected to see a rare pass of Venus between the Earth and Sun. The last time it happened was in 2004, the next time is in 2012, but after that, is 2117.

Of course, the only problem might be hanging around long enough to see all this — although I have a plan for that. But that’s a blog post for another day.

My son — an aspiring filmmaker and ghosthunter — was playing around with his video camera when he captured this amazing footage … wanting to get in to the Damned Connecticut act, he asked that I post it here.

Check it out –

Happy April Fools Day!

Speaking of, I was doing a little research and it seems that finding the origin of April Fools Day is a fool’s errand in and of itself.

The most popular origin story revolves around the idea that in 1564 in France, the start of the year was moved from the end of March to January, and those who were slow to change over were mocked and had jokes played on them and gained the name Poisson d’Avril, or “April Fish,” which is what April fools are still called. Unfortunately, when the timeline of the calendar change is examined more closely, many holes sprout in the theory, including the inconvenient fact that the French new year wasn’t celebrated on April 1. There is also documented historical evidence of the tradition being celebrated as early as 1539, which also busts the myth.

It’s possible that the celebration evolved from ancient “renewal” type festivals, which often occurred in different cultures around the vernal equinox (aka the first day of spring). These events encouraged behaviors like playing pranks and general jocularity; however, there’s no hard evidence to support this theory, either.

Most likely, April Fools Day is a mutt of a holiday, vaguely descended from a number of cultures and bastardized over the centuries to the day with which we are now familiar.

If you’re interested in reading a very well-researched article on the origins of the day, we recommend reading this article at the Museum of Hoaxes.

Okay, sorry — that video just makes me smile every time I see it. I don’t doubt that it’s an April Fools joke itself.

Here’s the real link to the article. Really.

Lionsgate Films

Because we’re just that damned dedicated to this website, we went out and saw The Haunting in Connecticut on Friday night. As such, we are now able to answer to important questions:

- How close is it to the “actual” story?

- Was the movie actually any good?

Let’s take the second question first — all three of us really enjoyed the movie. Rated PG-13 means that it doesn’t have a lot blood, gore or violence, yet it still manages to supply a full complement of scares and starts. It is high on the creepy factor, creating a tension-filled atmosphere to keep you on edge waiting for the next “GOTCHA!” (as opposed to being “torture porn,” which seems to be increasingly popular). The look of the movie, as well as the acting and directing, were all solid, especially the principles: Virgina Madsen as Sara Campbell, Kyle Gallner at Matt Campbell and Elias Koteas as Rev. Popescu. If you care about critics’ reviews (and with horror films, most people don’t), they have been mixed.

My take based from the people sitting around us and the general buzz from the theater is that most seemed to enjoy it for what it is — a decent horror flick. I got extra amusement from the young couple next to me — the girl pretty much spent the entire movie in her boyfriend’s lap, whimpering and covering her eyes; at one tense point in the film, his cell phone (which must’ve been set to vibrate) went off, causing her to jump out of his lap and shriek. All good scary fun, and worth the price of admission.

Now on to the big question: How “true” was the film, and did it follow the original documentary or the published events of the case?

Well, the original event happened in Connecticut and the movie has the word “Connecticut” in the title — that’s about as close as it gets.

Okay, that’s not entirely right — the movie starts out with the same basic premise: the family of a boy who is being treated for cancer moves to Connecticut to be closer to his medical treatments, choosing to rent a house that was formerly used as a funeral home, and possibly because of the drugs, the boy starts seeing and experiencing unusual things . . .

SPOILER ALERT: If you plan on seeing the movie, skip the next paragraph as I am going to mention some key plot points and scenes from the movie and how they differed from the “true” story.

After the main set up, the story then goes in a completely different direction than what is alleged to have happened. In the movie, there is no mention of the Warrens (or similar characters) and there is no exorcism. In real life, there is absolutely no evil back history about an protoplasmic-spewing medium or a necromantic funeral directory who was ritualistically desecrating bodies by stealing their eyelids and then boarding up the corpses in the walls of the house. (No one would notice the monstrous stench of decaying bodies?!) In real life, no one awoke to find themselves with cryptic symbols carved into their flesh. Also, in reality the house was never wrecked or burned to the ground to release the trapped spirits of the dead — a Hollywood-fabricated ending if there ever was one.

Regardless of the myriad ways it was not “true,” the movie has done well out of the gate at the box office, finishing second in its opening weekend to Monster vs. Aliens (which I also saw this weekend with my kids and really enjoyed as it was better than your standard kiddie fare, with lots of nods to classic sci-fi and horror films, from The Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman to E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

Overall, as I said earlier, we enjoyed The Haunting in Connecticut from the point of being a simple horror film. If you go, just remember the movie is  “based on” the true story, which means it’s not “an actual re-telling of events,” and thus  gives the movie’s creators freedom to take it in any direction they deem scariest (which they liberally do). If you’re looking to be entertained, you’ll be good with it; if you’re looking for the truth, well, like they say, it’s still out there.