Post by auntym on Jan 4, 2015 12:54:07 GMT -6
ufodigest.com/article/strange-supernatural-0103
AMERICA’S STRANGE AND SUPERNATURAL HISTORY – PROOF POSITIVE THAT WE ARE A WEIRD NATION
By Sean Casteel
January 4, 2015
Words like “strange” and “supernatural” are admittedly relative terms whose true meaning exists in the mind of the beholder. What one person calls strange and supernatural, another might call commonplace or, conversely, too unreal to even contemplate taking seriously.
But when reading “America’s Strange and Supernatural History,” a recent offering from Tim Beckley’s always-cutting-edge publishing house, Inner Light/Global Communications, it is not so easy to make convenient distinctions between what is real and what is laughably dismissible. The book consists primarily of historically documented facts as reported at the time, facts which, although not deliberately concealed, have nonetheless been omitted from the average history classes one takes while growing up in this country.
For example, do any of you recall being taught that there were instances of cannibalism in Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas?
Historians have long acknowledged the truth of what is eerily called the “Starving Time,” the harsh winter of 1609, and the horrors the colonists were subject to in their struggle to survive. In May 2013, a team of archeologists announced that they had excavated a trash pit at the Jamestown colony site in Virginia and discovered physical evidence that erased any lingering doubt: the skull and skeleton of a 14-year-old girl were unearthed that bore cut marks indicating that her flesh and brain had been removed, clearly to feed the starving people, according to a forensic anthropologist employed by the Smithsonian Institution.
The colonists found themselves in such dire straits due to extreme drought in the region coupled with the fact that their relations with the neighboring Native-Americans had deteriorated to the point that the local natives were unwilling to help them. A supply ship the colonists had been counting on was lost at sea and most of the settlers did not have even rudimentary farming skills.
George Percy, the president of Jamestown during the “Starving Time,” wrote a letter in 1625 in which he described how, after they had eaten horses, dogs, rats and other vermin, they were forced to dig up the corpses of their own dead and use them for food. The colonists were rescued in May of 1610 when settlers who had been marooned in Bermuda arrived to find 60 skeletally thin survivors.
“America’s Strange and Supernatural History” also includes the tale of prospector Alferd Packer, who confessed to eating some of his fellow gold-seekers after the group became snowbound in the Rocky Mountains in 1874. Packer had been born “Alfred,” the familiar spelling, but after receiving a tattoo that misspelled his name as “Alferd,” he decided it was easier to change his name than the tattoo. He was initially sentenced to death for his crimes, but his sentence was commuted to 40 years and he was later freed. He died in 1907 at age 65 of “senility, trouble and worry.”
The bulk of the first section of “America’s Strange and Supernatural History” is written by Tim R. Swartz, a veteran journalist in the field of UFO and paranormal research. He covers a great deal of territory, such as the discovery by archeologists of the skeletal remains of apparent giants throughout the United States.
CONTINUE READING: ufodigest.com/article/strange-supernatural-0103
AMERICA’S STRANGE AND SUPERNATURAL HISTORY – PROOF POSITIVE THAT WE ARE A WEIRD NATION
By Sean Casteel
January 4, 2015
Words like “strange” and “supernatural” are admittedly relative terms whose true meaning exists in the mind of the beholder. What one person calls strange and supernatural, another might call commonplace or, conversely, too unreal to even contemplate taking seriously.
But when reading “America’s Strange and Supernatural History,” a recent offering from Tim Beckley’s always-cutting-edge publishing house, Inner Light/Global Communications, it is not so easy to make convenient distinctions between what is real and what is laughably dismissible. The book consists primarily of historically documented facts as reported at the time, facts which, although not deliberately concealed, have nonetheless been omitted from the average history classes one takes while growing up in this country.
For example, do any of you recall being taught that there were instances of cannibalism in Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas?
Historians have long acknowledged the truth of what is eerily called the “Starving Time,” the harsh winter of 1609, and the horrors the colonists were subject to in their struggle to survive. In May 2013, a team of archeologists announced that they had excavated a trash pit at the Jamestown colony site in Virginia and discovered physical evidence that erased any lingering doubt: the skull and skeleton of a 14-year-old girl were unearthed that bore cut marks indicating that her flesh and brain had been removed, clearly to feed the starving people, according to a forensic anthropologist employed by the Smithsonian Institution.
The colonists found themselves in such dire straits due to extreme drought in the region coupled with the fact that their relations with the neighboring Native-Americans had deteriorated to the point that the local natives were unwilling to help them. A supply ship the colonists had been counting on was lost at sea and most of the settlers did not have even rudimentary farming skills.
George Percy, the president of Jamestown during the “Starving Time,” wrote a letter in 1625 in which he described how, after they had eaten horses, dogs, rats and other vermin, they were forced to dig up the corpses of their own dead and use them for food. The colonists were rescued in May of 1610 when settlers who had been marooned in Bermuda arrived to find 60 skeletally thin survivors.
“America’s Strange and Supernatural History” also includes the tale of prospector Alferd Packer, who confessed to eating some of his fellow gold-seekers after the group became snowbound in the Rocky Mountains in 1874. Packer had been born “Alfred,” the familiar spelling, but after receiving a tattoo that misspelled his name as “Alferd,” he decided it was easier to change his name than the tattoo. He was initially sentenced to death for his crimes, but his sentence was commuted to 40 years and he was later freed. He died in 1907 at age 65 of “senility, trouble and worry.”
The bulk of the first section of “America’s Strange and Supernatural History” is written by Tim R. Swartz, a veteran journalist in the field of UFO and paranormal research. He covers a great deal of territory, such as the discovery by archeologists of the skeletal remains of apparent giants throughout the United States.
CONTINUE READING: ufodigest.com/article/strange-supernatural-0103