Post by Graveyardbride on Sept 7, 2014 11:40:51 GMT -5
Beware the Fog
Fog has played a starring role in countless horror and science fiction films. It provides a creepy atmosphere or a thick vaporous curtain out of which can appear a stalking vampire, a stumble of zombies, a clawing monster or a troupe of aliens. The fog masks the unknown. It also can kill.
Untold numbers of shipwrecks and motor vehicle accidents have been attributed to reduced visibility created by fog. Ships rely on lighthouses and other beacons to help them through. And in San Francisco, drivers have The Emergency Fog Alert System, an array of webcams that keep vigil for the arrival of fog from the bay. From the early 1970s to the 1990s, a slew of car accidents and numerous deaths were blamed on fog near Calhoun, Tennessee. In this case, the fog was intensified by the polluting output of a local paper mill.
There have also been numerous cases in which fog has killed people directly. In virtually every case, these killer fogs have been the carriers of industrial atmospheric pollution:
• Sixty Belgians were killed in 1930 when fog conditions concentrated pollutants in the Meuse Valley for six days.
• Nearly half the population of Donora and Webster, Pennsylvania, were sickened in late October 1948 by a fog that held industrial pollution in the small towns. So dense was the fog that one could not see clearly across a city street. The total death toll was 20.
• Thousands of Londoners were killed in December 1952 when a toxic fog descended on the English capital. The fog, carrying a deadly mixture of dense coal smoke, literally poisoned the populace and is still considered one of the deadliest environmental incidents on record. The black fog was so thick that some reported they could not even see their feet as they walked the London streets. The lethal fog lasted from December 5-9, and as many as 12,000 died from its effects.
• On May 3, 1989, the residents of Culham in Oxfordshire, England, were plagued by nosebleeds and sore throats caused by a thick fog that clouded the village.
• In mid-October 2005, the city of Lagos, Nigeria, was enveloped in a mysterious fog that caused serious illness. After people began complaining of severe stomach pains and eye irritation, the governor of the region closed all the city schools as a precaution. People were driven out of their places of work because of the foul odor, and visibility in some places was reduced to 325 feet. Laboratory tests of the fog vapor revealed that it contained high levels of sulphuric acid. A broken petroleum pipe might have been the cause.
Occasionally, fog kills even without pollutants. In June 2004, a fog bank killed more than 5,000 songbirds over the Bay of Fundy, between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Canada. The birds apparently died of hypothermia when they flew into the cold fog. Lobstermen said the birds were just dropping from the sky, some landing dead on their boats.
This is normal fog and pollution. But there are other kinds of fog that form in the realm of the paranormal – and the effects can be even stranger. There is fog that forms when condensed water droplets swirl in the air close to the ground. And then there is fog that materializes from dimensions unknown.
Time Storms. A glowing fog bank that transports those who enter it across time and dimensions sounds like the premise of a science fiction thriller. In her book, Time Storms: Amazing Evidence for Time Warps, Space Rifts, and Time Travel, however, author Jenny Randles makes a compelling argument that these strange fogs really do exist. She documents many incidents in which unsuspecting people, while either driving, walking or otherwise going about their business, encountered a glowing white mist. In some cases, these people disappeared only to reappear sometime later in a state of bewilderment. One driver was transported more than 600 miles from where he entered the glowing fog.
One of our readers, calling herself Cher, tells of her own possible encounter with this peculiar fog: “I was leaving my driveway to drive one mile to town. I had just pulled out and there was a thick fog rolling in. I had only gone a half-block at most, very slowly, when I saw a very bright light through the fog. As I drove closer, I saw a Phillips 66 gas station. It wasn’t there the day before. I pulled into it in shock and a man came out. I asked him how a gas station could have been built so fast and he looked at me strangely. He said it had been there for eight years. I asked him where I was and when he told me I began to shake uncontrollably. I was 300 miles from home! I looked at the clock and I had left my driveway only two minutes before. It took all night to drive home and I shook most of the way.”
Disappearing Battalion. Three soldiers witnessed the bizarre disappearance of an entire battalion in 1915 when a fog bank seemed to swallow them up. It occurred during the infamous Gallipoli campaign of World War I. Three members of a New Zealand field company watched as a battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment marched up a hillside in Suvla Bay, Turkey, into the fog. They never came out. After the last of the battalion had entered the cloud, they said, it slowly lifted off the hillside to join other clouds in the sky. The battalion has never been accounted for.
Ghosts from the Fog. Ariele D. tells the story of an apparition that came out of a light blue fog:
“... I was 16 at the time. I lived by Vail, Colorado, where my family owned 15 acres of land and we owned a couple of horses. It was mid-June, around 5 p.m., and I was riding my stallion back from my neighbor’s house (which is about two miles away) when I thought I heard something in the brush beside me. When I stopped to look, I didn’t see anything. So I kept going. When I got about one mile from my neighbor’s home, I thought I saw something a little farther ahead. It looked like a small amount of light blue fog. I slowly got off my horse and walked with him toward the foggy substance.
“When I got within about eight yards or so of it, I was stuck in my tracks with fear. I was terrified because I had never had an experience quite like this one before (with a ghost), but yet, he didn’t look like he meant to harm me or was angry. From where I stood I could make out some facial features. He looked like a man maybe about 6'4'' or a few inches less. It was hard to tell. I could tell he had little or no hair. He looked around 25 or maybe a little older. His skin was spotted like he had been burned. He was wearing old clothes; his pants looked sort of like chaps, but it was hard to tell because I was to busy looking at his face. I had just enough time to get a good look and he disappeared, sort of vanishing slowly like the fog he was in was swept away in a gust of wind. I got back on my horse and went home.
“When I got home, I put my horse back in its stable and looked back toward the spot I had seen the ghost and felt a chill. I started to walk toward the house when I broke into a run. I decided to get my video camera. I remembered that you can catch ghosts as orbs on tape. I went back to the spot and looked through my camera I didn’t see anything, so I went home disappointed. When I replayed the tape I did see an orb. Just one lone orb. I sent a copy to GIS (Ghost Investigators Society) and they sent me a letter back stating that I had indeed seen a ghost!”
The Fog and The Bermuda Triangle. Is an “electronic fog” responsible for many of the unexplained incidents and disappearances in the infamous Bermuda Triangle? This is the assertion made by Rob MacGregor and Bruce Gernon in their book The Fog. Gernon himself is a first-hand witness and survivor of this strange phenomenon. On December 4, 1970, he and his father were flying their Bonanza A36 over the Bahamas. En route to Bimini, they encountered strange cloud phenomena, particularly a tunnel-shaped vortex, the sides of which the plane’s wings scraped as they flew. For about 10 seconds, Gernon felt as if he were experiencing zero gravity. All the plane’s electronic and magnetic navigational instruments malfunctioned. The magnetic compass spun inexplicably. As they neared the end of the tunnel, they expected to see clear blue sky. Instead, they saw only a dull greyish white for miles – no ocean, sky or horizon. After flying for 34 minutes, a time corroborated by every clock on board, they found themselves over Miami Beach – a flight that normally would have taken 75 minutes. MacGregor and Gernon believe this electronic fog that Gernon experienced may have also been responsible for the infamous disappearance of Flight 19 and other vanishing aircraft and ships.
Beware the fog!
Source: Stephen Wagner, ParanormalPhenomena.