A few damned-type events this week that it looks like we will be attending.

First off — and I’m very excited to see this — Bat Boy: The Musical will be at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, running from March 5 to 14.

If you’ve been (ironically) living in a cave, and aren’t familiar with Bat Boy –

Ripped from the headlines of The Weekly World News, BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL is a classic love story with a serious bite. This delicious twist on the modern day musical comedy tells the amazing story of a strange boy with pointy ears, his struggle to find a place in a world that shuns him, and the love that can create both miracles and madness.

Tickets are $10; $5 for SCSU students and seniors.

I know you all might find it really hard to believe, but in my youth, I was quite a fan of The Weekly World News and of course, Bat Boy. I mean, as someone who’s always been interested in the wild and weird, how could I not be drawn to a weekly paper that somehow managed to come up with weekly stories — and lots of photos! — concerning Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, Atlantis, Elvis, aliens and all sorts of freaks from around the globe? It was like crack!

Or is that crackpot? Ahh, the things I soaked my young impressionable mind in …

Anyway, the other event coming up in the next week or so is an event sponsored by Atlas Obscura, a group I had never heard about until my brother-in-law Greg told me about it. But I like their  slogan — “A Compendium of the World’s Wonders, Curiosities and Esoterica.” Right up our alley, right? Unfortunately, they only have one entry in their Connecticut section, and that’s about Holy Land USA.

The good news is that on March 20, they are celebrating an event they’re calling Obscura Day, which will feature organized events all around the globe to celebrate the wondrous and curious. In Connecticut, the event is a visit to the stone ruins of Gungywamp complex in Groton, and they’re trying to time the event on the vernal equinox so that the sun will illuminate one of the hidden chambers — sounds cool!

At the moment, the event is open and apparently, it’s free of charge. Maybe we’ll see you out there!

This one is for Kate, who is very fond of goats …

So earlier this week, you may have seen this story about the Suffield FFA chapter trying to set a world record by making a 40-foot-long bar of goat soap.

From the article, in case you missed it:

The bar of soap was made with 41 pounds of olive oil; 24 pounds of coconut oil; 14 pounds of palm oil; 12 pounds of lye; and 30 pounds of goat’s milk and ice, said Jennifer Pinto, the FFA chapter reporter. The 3-inch-by-3-inch-by-40-foot bar of soap will be cut up and sold at the Agriculture Expo in April to benefit the FFA chapter.

This story put a big smile on my face for two reasons:

1. Gotta love any group that comes together to create the world’s biggest __________ (insert any random object, the more off-the-wall, the better).

2. GOAT SOAP!?!

Okay, I’ll grant you that I didn’t grow up on a farm, nor have I spent any prolonged time studying agricultural business applications, but by the same token, as you can tell by most of what I’ve written here on this site, I have a pretty good sense of curiosity and am not shy about reading up on obscure or unusual subjects. All that disclaiming aside, until this past week, I had never ever heard of goat soap! Goat cheese and goat milk, yes, of course, but goat soap?

Apparently, I’m not the only one who has not heard of this unusual application for goat’s milk. Heck, there isn’t even a Wikipedia article about it. (Yet!) At least Mike Rowe and his “Dirty Jobs” crew know of it, as goat soap maker was featured on the “Reef Ball Maker” episode in 2007 , which I will now be on the lookout for (as I couldn’t find it on the Discovery site. Go(at) figure!

In the meantime, there’s this thing called the intranets, so courtesy of Canus Goat’s Milk Skin Care Products — The beauty of fresh goat’s milk, explained:

Ever since Cleopatra filled her bathtub with it and jumped in, fresh goat’s milk has been revered for its superior moisturizing properties. Little did La Belle Cleo know that the reason fresh goat’s milk left her skin feeling silky smooth and supple was because of its unique protein structure. Shorter protein strands allow for easy absorption. A whole host of natural minerals and vitamins in fresh goat’s milk are absorbed right along with all that protein, helping to nourish healthy skin and heal the rough patches.

Fresh goat’s milk also contains capric and caprilic acids that naturally balance the alkalinity of our products so that it more closely matches the ideal alkalinity level of the human epidermis. This keeps skin and hair from being “stripped” of their natural moisture – a common problem with regular commercial soaps and shampoos.

Of course, keeping with that all-natural and green vibe — think globally, act locally — your next question is obviously, “Where can I get goat soap from here in Connecticut! A quick search turns up three goat farms that make their own goat soap here in-state.

• Goatboy Soaps in New Milford
• Misty Highland Farm in East Killingly
• Meadowstone Farm in Brooklyn

Apparently, there are other places around the state that sell it as well. So the next time I need my skin to be its silky softest — whenever the heck that might be — I now know the all-natural regimen to try.

I kid you not.

Recently, in the comments discussion in our post about Little People’s Village in Middlebury, reader Heather commented:

Whether the legends of Little People Village are true or not I have pictures of what many people have called fairies. I’ve been to Little People village probably 3 times and on one occasion one of my friend was messing around telling the fairies to come to her and sit on her hand, when she was doing this I took a picture and against a solid concrete wall there is a bright figure with tiny arms, legs, and wings. Another picture one of my friends took is of one of the little houses. This was on a clear day but in his picture there is a mist surrounding the little house and if you look at it you can see a little girl with wings and she looks like she is praying.

If the legends of Little People Village are not true, then maybe all the visitors who believe in the legends have attracted something to that spot. All I can say, is after seeing these pictures its hard to deny that something is not there.

Heather then graciously offered to send us the pics to post here on Damned Connecticut, and of course, we said “Yes!”

Within a day or two, Heather sent us the images, which you can see below.

In the accompanying e-mail, Heather says,

The first picture is the original, the second is the same picture with the areas where the fairies are circled. Picture 3 and 4 are close ups of the larger fairy. Picture 5 is of the 2nd fairy. The close ups are the best i can do with my computer and knowledge of paint and its magnifying glass (which is none). That is why i included the original. The last 2 pictures are of a fog in which you can see a little girl praying, one i outlined for you.

In my opinion the 1st “fairy” looks like what i would image one would. The second could be a bug.

The last pictures were not taken by me, however i was there when it was taken and this was on a perfectly clear dry day in front of one of the little houses.

The girl in the pictures is Heather’s best friend Angelee.

Obviously, there will be those people who look at these images, roll their eyes and say, “Fairies? Those are bugs or dust! Fairies just don’t exist.” Then there will be those who say, “Wow, amazing pictures — I totally believe they exist!”

Fairies have long been part of human culture. Some believe that they are mythological beings or spirits, or possibly angels and demons. In Ireland and other Celtic nations, stories of the wee folk and leprechauns have circulated for centuries. Others believe that they are inter-dimensional beings with whom we share this planet. And of course, there are those who believe they only exist as magical characters in our imagination. To each their own, I suppose.

Again, I’d like to thank Heather (and Angelee) for taking the time to share their story and images with us.

As always, if you have some unusual photos or a story you want to share with Damned Connecticut, please feel free to e-mail us!

Undoubtedly the most celebrated maritime disaster continues to draw crowds and attention as Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition has steamed into Foxwoods Resort & Casino.

As you may already know, the wreck of the Titanic was discovered by Dr. Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who is the head of the Mystic Aquarium’s Institute for Exploration. If you’ve been to the aquarium, you’ve probably already visited the exhibitions dedicated to the institute, which recounts the story of Ballard and his team finding the Titanic, as well as their efforts in locating other famous shipwrecks. Personally, I like visiting this section without my kids, as they’re more interested in frolicking penguins and beluga whales than learning about history. But hey, we were all like that at one point, right?

Interestingly, after Ballard discovered the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1985, he refused to remove any artifacts from the site as he felt it was a graveyard, and wanted to be respectful of the dead. (Obviously, he wouldn’t have done well as an Egyptologist, the main job requirement of which seems to be “an overt willingness to pillage and rob graves.”) He did, however, encourage other scavenger crews — such as RMS Titanic, who created this traveling exhibition — to respectfully remove some artifacts so they could be studied. According to their website, they have recovered over 5,500 items, a small portion of which are on display.

Obviously, something about this disaster continues to inspire and compel folks. Maybe it’s the epic scale of catastrophe, or the unique nature of such events that draws us in over and over again.  I wonder if a century from now whether there will be a 9/11 exhibit? Or a museum? Or one dedicated to the Asian tsunami or Haitian earthquake. No doubt there will be movies and other entertainment (remember Titanic the musical?) — Hollywood seems unafraid to mine any disaster for potential box office riches.

Full disclosure: I may be the last person in the Free World who has never seen the James Cameron-directed Titanic (and I haven’t seen Avatar, either, although I did see The Wolfman on Friday and it was howlingly bad). On the plus side, I have a friend who collects vintage board games, so I have had a chance to play The Sinking of the Titanic Game.

I’m paraphrasing from memory, but on the inside of the box it said something to the effect of: “From one of the worst tragedies of the 20th century comes this fun new family game!” Basically, the board has a facsimile of the doomed ship that slowly “sinks” during the course of the game, and you have to get off and into a lifeboat before it finally goes down. Once in the lifeboat, you then have to navigate the dangerous open seas until you can be rescued.

Yay, family fun!

The exhibition runs through June 13, 2010. Tickets are $20; under 14 $15.

A couple of quick odds and ends about odd animals in Connecticut …

Saw this story in the Courant, talking about fishers and their growing numbers here in Connecticut. You may remember a few months ago, Steve was talking about them, and the horrible screams they make at night — apparently they sound a bit like someone being murdered.

From the Courant article:

For those who have heard the cry, scream, shriek of a fisher, you are never the same again. And it is something you will never forget. It is that terrifying. It has been described as a child or woman screaming or even a baby dying by those who have heard it. It is especially disturbing if it wakes you from a deep sleep and you have no idea what is making the sound.

Nice. I’ve never heard one, but for some reason, I imagine it sounds like Fran Drescher being disemboweled alive. Here’s a site that has some possible fisher screams.

Speaking of tearing things apart with sharp claws, people still report seeing mountain lions all over Connecticut, despite the continual assurances from the state’s department of environmental protection that they do not exist here. Recently, a feline cryptid was allegedly spotted in Westport — and it was more of the same: the locals sure that it was a mountain lion, the DEP stating that there’s absolutely no evidence to prove that it was.

The people at Northeast Cougar might disagree with the DEP, as well as the dozens who have commented on Connecticut Magazine‘s website. As should be the case, until there’s actual physical evidence — scat, definitive footprints, or better yet, a specimen (dead or alive) — it’s all still damned conjecture.

Speaking of conjecture and conspiracy-type stories, I recently heard via Fortean Times about an urban legend regarding pumas being secretly introduced in Pennsylvania by authorities to help cut down the deer population. Again, there was not a shred of evidence to prove it, but it is a fun conspiracy for the tin-foil hat crowd.

One animal that is undeniably in Connecticut is the beaver, which is a remarkable story since the species was essentially eradicated from the state in the late 19th century. They were hunted, trapped and almost near extinction at one point. They were reintroduced in the early 20th century, and now through various efforts, have thrived.

Unfortunately, like in other areas of life, too much of a good thing may not be the ideal situation. Beavers have become a downright nuisance in many areas of the state, most recently in Beacon Falls where they have been credited with clogging drainage pipes and flooding roads, which can create dangerously icy conditions.

The DEP’s website has a lot of info about beavers, but the fact that they actually have a section entitled “Problems with Beavers” gives you an idea how pesky those furry flat-tailed engineers have become.

Maybe our forefathers had the right idea, running those buck-toothed varmints out of the state in the first place.

Tuesday is Groundhog Day, celebrated famously in Punxsutawny, Pennsylvania, and maybe not-as-famously — not yet any less enthusiastically — here in Connecticut.

On Sunday, I spent the afternoon in beautiful Essex. The river air may have been chilly, but the mood was warm with fun and excitement as the town celebrated its annual Groundhog Day Parade, and the return of Essex Ed. If you’ve never seen Essex Ed, he’s a 10-foot-tall groundhog — this year, dressed as Elvis in honor of The King’s 75th birthday. He was escorted along Main Street by fire engines, antique cars, a fife ‘n drum corps and hundreds of well wishers who banged pots, blew whistles and made all sorts of racket in order to “wake up” the over-sized rodent. It was quite a spectacle, and a great family event. I encourage everyone to go at least once.

But don’t worry, if you missed the Essex festivities, you can check out the Lutz Children’s Museum in Manchester. On Tuesday, at 7:03 a.m., Chuckles the Groundhog will make her annual appearance. A year-and-a-half-old female, apparently she was correct in her first-ever prognostication last year, so she’s already started out on the right paw. Even though it hasn’t been a particularly nasty winter, I’m still hoping for less winter and more spring. Yay global warming!

Anyway, if you were wondering why we celebrate this at all — and truthfully, I was — our now familiar Groundhog Day is derived from the holiday of Candlemas. The event, as we know it with the groundhog’s ability to see his shadow serving as a prognosticator of impending weather, dates back to the mid-1800s, and appears to have been a German custom originating in Pennsylvania.

From Wikipedia –

An early American reference to Groundhog Day can be found in a diary entry, dated February 5, 1841, of Berks County, Pennsylvania storekeeper James Morris:

“Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.”

In Scotland the tradition may also derive from an English poem:

As the light grows longer
The cold grows stronger
If Candlemas be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight
If Candlemas be cloud and snow
Winter will be gone and not come again
A farmer should on Candlemas day
Have half his corn and half his hay
On Candlemas day if thorns hang a drop
You can be sure of a good pea crop

Right now, the forecast is for a mostly cloudy day, so we’ll see how if there’s a shadow to be seen or not.

And of course, you can’t have any post about Groundhog Day without –

Say hi to Ned and enjoy the day!

One of the great things about the internet is how a search for one thing can be like pulling a string on a sweater — what seems like a simple thread can turn out to be surprisingly more complicated.

In this case, I went searching for some stuff about werewolves and ended up possibly chasing down an old college classmate.

So here’s where I started — with the upcoming film The Wolfman. Due out on Feb. 12 and starring Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving, it looks to be a CGI-heavy remake of the classic story of lycanthropy gone wrong (as if it ever goes right). Most of you kids probably don’t remember the original film starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the titular character, but it’s an iconic Universal horror flick that also features fright masters Bela Lugosi and Claude Rains.

I’m sure the new version will be heavy on the blood, guts and violence, with plenty of quick cuts and a smooth super special effects that often look more cartoony than real (to me, anyway). And I’m sure I’ll go see it anyway because I love this kind of stuff — although my wife couldn’t drag me to see New Moon. Sorry. Sparkly emo “monsters” are just not my thing. (Quick Twilight-Connecticut trivia: Author Stephenie Meyer was born in Hartford, but moved away when she was fairly young.)

But because of this blog, I started thinking about werewolves and Connecticut, and pretty quickly realized we don’t have much here in the way of strong lycanthropic history here. The first thing that came to mind is the famous case of a “real life” werewolf investigated by The Warrens back in the 1970s. In a nutshell: Ed and Lorraine were called to England to investigate the claims of Bill Ramsey, a man who believed he was possessed by demons who turned him into a werewolf. It was one of their most famous investigations, and was fully documented in Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession.

When Steve and I went to see Lorraine last October, they brought out the old footage of Ramsey’s exorcism, which is sort of compelling in the sense that I think he may have been more a victim of mental illness than demonic doings. But then again, what do I know? I was never bit by the guy. Still, he was in old England, not New England. Not exactly the Connecticut connection I was hoping for.

So I decided to do what any intrepid blogger would do — I Googled “Connecticut” and “werewolves,” and came up with two fun things.

The first is a band from Kensington called Werewolf Police. Not exactly my kind of music, and I don’t think there is any sort of lycanthropic connection other than the name sounds cool. But then again, I’ve never seen the band play during a full moon, so I don’t know for sure.

The second is a movie filmed here in Connecticut about two years ago called Werewolf: The Devil’s Hound, distributed by our old pals at LionsGate. Here’s the trailer –

It’s available on DVD, if you’re interested. As I was going through the information about the film, however, I realized that it was executive produced and written by Bonnie Farley-Lucas, who according to IMDB.com is also involved with a few other local damned-type films: Banshee, Sasquatch Assault and the upcoming Werewolf: Curse of the Jersey Devil.

I wouldn’t expect any of you to know — or Bonnie to remember — but we were classmates at Southern Connecticut State University back in the 1980s, and both communications majors. We were both bitten by the communications monster, so to speak, but ended up with dramatically different transformations — now Dr. Farley-Lucas, she has gone on to what looks to be a distinguished career in academia, while I … well, I’m here, aren’t I?

Everyone loves unraveling a good mystery, right?

I saw this story last week about how the mummy from the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport — the body of a woman which goes by the name Pa-Ib — was examined to see if there was a bird mummy inside its stomach.

From the article:

Researchers who examined an Egyptian mummy with the latest imaging technology found no evidence that a packet inside her was an offering to the gods of the ancient world.

Previous tests led to speculation that the packet was a bird mummy — something researchers said would be an unusual and exciting find — but high-resolution tests Thursday at Quinnipiac University showed no remnants of a bird. Instead, researchers said the packet and a few others in the mummy likely contained organs, which were sometimes preserved and placed back in mummies for use in the afterlife.

Oh well. I do like that they transported the mummy in coffin and hearse — it is an actual body, after all! Bad enough the poor woman was dug up from her final resting place and shipped halfway around the world, where she’s been displayed in a museum like a piece of pottery and ogled by thousands. It’s always bothered me that for a long time grave-robbing was condoned in the name of archaeology, and by calling it “a mummy” rather than what it is — a corpse – it sort of makes it less than human, and therefore, less worthy of being treated as we would treat a loved one (which she was to someone).

Just another reason to be cremated, right?

Anyway, even if Connecticut isn’t exactly known for its mummies, maybe it should be – Pa-Ib has been residing here for over a century as she came into P.T. Barnum’s collection in the 1890s. New Haven’s Yale Peabody Museum is also home to another human mummy — an individual who may have been murdered centuries ago — as well as animal mummies, including a cat mummy. Me-yow!

Also, a fact that may or may not have been kept under wraps (ha!) is that the two Quinnipiac University professors who recently examined Pa-Ib — as well as the mummy at the Peabody — were the main investigators of National Geographic’s (ironically) short-lived “Mummy Roadshow,” a program dedicated to non-invasively examining mummies around the world. And even though that show is no longer making new episodes, it hasn’t stopped professors Ronald Beckett and Gerald Conlogue from creating the Biantrhopical Research Institute at Quinnipiac, where they still continue the work of respectfully examining the past.

If you’ve never watched “Mummy Roadshow,” Beckett and Conlogue are as entertaining as they are interesting. They chronicled their investigative adventures in a book a few years ago — Mummy Dearest: How Two Men in a Potato Chip Truck Changed the Way the Living See the Dead. And yes, they used a converted potato chip truck to cart the equipment they used to examine hundreds of mummies over the year.

I was recently reading the Fortean Times when I noticed the obituary for Robert Rines, who passed away last November at the age of 87.

Chances are most of you either say, “Wasn’t that the dad from ‘The Brady Bunch‘?’ or more simply, “Robert Who?” And to be honest, I didn’t recognize the name at first, despite Rines being a fairly well-known inventor, lawyer, researcher and composer.

But then I saw THE PICTURE!

When I was a kid growing up in Milford, Conn., my parents bought a set of New World Encyclopedias to help me and my sisters with our schoolwork, you know, since Al Gore hadn’t gotten around to inventing the intrawebs yet. As part of that purchase, each year in January, we received an annual for the year previous, an almanac/yearbook of sorts where all the major headlines, events and sports stories from the year prior were included.

Well, I always pored over these tomes, hoping to find something cool about the New York Mets or a picture of a TV show I loved. But I’ll never forget that day sitting in my bedroom on Linwood Street — probably in 1973, when I was 8 or so — while casually turning through the crisp new pages of the latest volume, I came upon THE PICTURE!

Yes, the photo you see above. Accompanying it was headline declaring that a scientist — Dr. Robert Rines — had taken a picture of a creature called “The Loch Ness Monster,” a prehistoric creature, possibly a plesiosaur, he believed dwelled in a Scottish lake.

“WHAT?!” I remember saying to my impressionable 8-year-old self, a switch somewhere in my brain being flipped on for the first time. “There’s a real dinosaur swimming around a lake, and someone took a picture of it? That’s the Coolest. Thing. EVER!”

Yes, back before the days of Photoshop and CGI, seeing was believing. Of course, we’ve subsequently learned that Rines’ famous photo had been re-touched to look more like a fin — apparently the original image was much more indistinct, composed mostly of bubbles, murk and sediment.

But it was too late — something had been ignited in me, a sudden interest in all that was odd, unusual or unexplained. I remember going to the J.F. Kennedy School library to find out as much as I could about Nessie, and then the Milford Public Library. Of course, that was just the first pull of the sweater — a year or two later, I got a copy of Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey’s The Bermuda Triangle, which I repeatedly read cover to cover. (A 1975 edition of it still sits in my “Bookcase of the Damned” — okay, it’s more like a few shelves as opposed to an entire bookcase, but you get the idea.) Other similar books followed.

Luckily, the 1970s was a great time for damned-type entertainment. For me, it was the great “Kolchak the Nightstalker“ TV series, followed by Leonard Nimoy’s classic TV series “In Search Of …” Then it was Close Encounters of the Third Kind igniting an interest in UFOs. The Warrens brought ghosts and demons into the mix, then discovering the Fortean Times and well … you can figure out where it’s gone since then.

Anyway, it all started with a single picture. THE PICTURE.

Just thought I’d share.

Congrats to Steve and Kate, who on Tuesday, January 11, welcomed their first child, James Allen, (although I will be calling him Jimmy Ray, you know, in honor of ME).

The healthy little guy weighed in at 8.15 pounds, 21 1/4 inches long. Mother and son are doing well. Dad is probably eating some corn in celebration.

Congratulations again to the Frank family!