Bizarre-bizarre 39
Phantom Car Crash
On December 11, 2002, two motorists called the police to report seeing a car veering off the A3 trunk road with headlights blazing at Burnham in Surrey. A thorough search uncovered a car concealed in dense undergrowth and the long-dead driver nearby. It turned out that the crash had actually happened five months earlier when the driver, Christopher Chandler, had been reported missing by his brother.
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Balloon buddies
Laura Buxton released a helium filled balloon during celebrations for her grandparents’ gold wedding anniversary in Blurton, Staffordshire, in June 2001. Attached to the balloon were her name and address and a note asking the finder to write back.
Ten days later she received a reply. The balloon had been found by another Laura Buxton in the garden hedge of her home in Pawley, Wiltshire, and 300 kilometers away. Both Laura’s were ages ten and both had three year old black Labradors, a guinea pig, and a rabbit.
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Riverside Mystery
Gloria Ramirez, 31, died of kidney failure at Riverside General Hospital, California, in February 1994, after being rushed there with chest pains. Emergency room staff were felled by ‘fumes’ when a blood sample was taken.
Strange oily sheen on the woman’s skin and unexplained white crystals in her blood were reported. A doctor suffered liver and lung damage, and bone necrosis. At least 23 other people were affected. One hypothesis was that Ramirez, who had had cervical cancer, had taken a cocktail of medicines that combined to make an insecticide (organophosphate) but tests yielded no clue.
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Whirlwind Children
A nine-year old Chinese girl was playing in Songhai near Shanghai, in July 1992, when she was carried off by a whirlwind and deposited unhurt on a treetop almost four kilometers away. According to a wire report from May 1986, a freak wind lifted up 13 children in the oasis of Hemi in Western China and deposited them unharmed in sand dunes and scrub over 20 kilometers away.
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Hum Misty for Me
A noise a bit like amplifier feedback had been heard for three years coming from the right ear of a Welsh pony called Misty, according to the Veterinary Record (April 1995). It varied in intensity but stayed at a constant pitch of seven kilohertz. Hearing a buzzing in one’s ears is called Subjective Tinnitus, much rarer is when others can also hear the noise. This is called Objective Tinnitus and the cause is still a matter of debate
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