EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Patterson Disappearance

EL PASO, TX - William, 52 and Margaret Patterson, 42 were last seen on the night of March 5/6, 1957 at their home in the 3000 block of Piedmont Avenue in Kern Place, El Paso, Texas. Nobody knows what happened to them, they simply vanished from one day to the next. Their car was left in the driveway and the family cat was left to fend for itself. William owned a photography shop in town (Patterson Photo Supply)and it must have been an eerie sight for those that knew the couple had disappeared to see the shop sitting empty and unopened day after day.

Early on, a “business associate” claimed that the couple had gone on a sudden extended vacation to Florida. When the Pattersons still hadn’t returned after five months Cecil Ward, a friend and neighbor filed a missing persons report with the police.

A neighbor, Jeri Cash told police that she had been by the Patterson place the night they disappeared. She didn’t know the couple very well, but she said that Margaret seemed upset to her and William made it clear that he was annoyed that Mrs. Cash was there. Jeri and her family noticed “unusual activity” at the house later that night, but when Mrs. Cash told the police about what she had seen, they didn’t seem to care very much about her story.

Later, a letter appeared, alleged to be from a W.D. Patterson arranged to have William’s properties divided between Doyle Kirkland, a friend and manager at Doyle’s Photo Supply, his business auditor Herb Roth and a 24-year old employee at Patterson Photo Supply named Art Moreno. The letter seems strange because William had at least two known relatives, including his father and a sister. The signature on the letter was challenged. It’s unknown whether the letter was authenticated and honored.

Kirkland was also seen at the house the night the couple disappeared. He was in the garage with William working on a boat. In 1984, a man named Reynaldo Nangaray came forward claiming he had washed blood out of the Patterson’s  garage soon after the couple disappeared and that he’d found pieces of scalp on the propeller of the boat’s motor. In 1957 he was an illegal immigrant, he hadn’t come forward sooner because he’d feared deportation.

It wasn’t enough to take to a Grand Jury, however and the case remains open to this day.

Sources:

El Paso Times

El Paso Times II

The Doe Network

The Charley Project

EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Devil's Footprints

“Since the recent snow storms, some animal has left marks on the snow that have driven a great many inhabitants from their propriety, and caused an uproar of commotion among the inhabitants in general.”

- The Western Luminary & Family Newspaper for Devon, Cornwall, Somerset & Dorset. 13 February 1855

DEVON, UK - It was 160 years ago on this day, February 8, 1855 that one of the most enduring mysteries of the world took place. The people of Devon county, England awoke to find a mysterious track of seemingly bipedal footprints in the snow. The prints were spaced roughly eight to 16 inches apart and described as four inches in length and two and half to three inches wide. The tracks were uniformly single file. They were made by cloven hooves which led over top of buildings, through walls, haystacks, gates and enclosures stretching over a course of 100 miles from Exmouth to Topsham. Some apparently lucky villagers reported the tracks leading up to their front doors before retreating back again. They even continued across the two mile expanse of the River Exe estuary.

Kangaroos, badgers, otters, experimental balloons and freezing rain have all been offered as alternate explanations for the prints, but did this event even happen? Very little contemporary reports remain to this day, only a few survive, that there are contemporary accounts at all is encouraging.

River Exe estuary.

First mention of the mysterious case appeared in the February 13, 1855 edition of the Western Luminary in which local people were already ascribing the mysterious hoofmarks to the devil. But they did not cower in fear at the idea. Within hours of the discovery of the bizarre trail, searches were conducted to discover their cause, tracing the prints for miles. No one however, tracked the full 100 mile length of the marking. Had anybody even attempted to do so there wouldn’t have been enough time as the snow was not deep and fluctuating temperatures played havoc with the impressions. Initially, it was reported that the tracks covered an area of around 40 miles, which was deduced from various reports coming from several different towns in the county. After a few weeks interest in the story eventually died down and the Devil’s Footprints became something of a local legend and nothing more.

Interest in the story was revived by the ubiquitous Charles Fort in his 1919 work ‘The Book of the Damned’. By 1950 contemporary papers by Rev. H.T. Ellacombe were sent to the Devonshire Association which included tracings of the footprints and the draft of a letter to The Illustrated London News marked ‘Not for publication’ concerning the event. Ellacombe had even collected samples of the oblong globes of whitish excrement that had been found next to some of the tracks. He sent the samples off to naturalist Richard Owen without receiving a reply. The Ellacombe papers are the oldest surviving documents concerning the case. Another pivotal discovery was The Devil’s Footprints booklet published by G.A. Household which reprints many contemporary newspaper articles.

[Image source]

It was an anonymous letter writer (signed ‘South Devon’) to The Illustrated Times of London who first put forth the idea that the tracks were uniform in size and shape, traveled in single file over the course of 100 miles, surmounted a 14 foot high wall, climbed roofs and crossed the river estuary. The letter writer claimed to be an experienced woodsman, skilled in animal tracking and identification and appeared befuddled as to an explanation for the tracks. According to Rev. Ellacombe’s now recovered papers, ‘South Devon’ was actually a ‘young D’Urban’, a 19-year old resident of Newport House, Countess Wear. Young D’Urban would grow up to be a respectable, reputable man, but youthful ‘enthusiasm’ seems to have gotten the better of him here. It is D’Urban’s falsified account of the events which colors them to this day.

So, was the devil really in Devon on this day 160 years ago? Some believe the entire story was a satirical fabrication, formulated to criticize the local church which had recently changed their standard prayer book. One thing is sure, the event now known as the Devil’s Footprints certainly happened, though not as mysteriously as it is remembered. It’s entirely possible that the prints really were made by unidentified animals, possibly migrating fowl. It seems that it was the unidentifiable nature of the prints that had captured the public’s collective imagination, not the tracks anomalous behavior.

In 2009 the mystery was revisited when a woman awoke to find a track of cloven footprints in her back garden. It would have been the perfect time to come up with a valid explanation for the 1855 case, an investigator looked into hares as the possible culprit. No follow up reports were found.

Sources:

Anybody interested in this mystery event owes a huge debt of gratitude to Mike Dash whose exhaustive 1994 survey of research materials has been an invaluable resource into the study of The Devil’s Footprints.

The Devil’s Hoofmarks (white paper by Mike Dash)

The Complete Books of Charles Fort, pp.305-10.

The Daily Mail

The London Telegraph

BBC

NSFW! - EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Dyatlov Pass Incident

WARNING! THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES

[The bodies] displayed devastating internal injuries ... The impact which had caused them was said to be equivalent to a car accident, the result of an “unknown compelling force”.

KHOLAT SYAKHL, USSR - On January 27, 1959 a group of 10 well-trained hikers left the town of Vizhai, and the last vestiges of civilization they would ever see before trekking into the bush. Their goal was to reach Otorten, a mountain over a dozen kilometers away. Igor Dyatlov, the leader of the expedition was to send a telegram back to the team's sports club upon their return to Vizhai. It was expected no later than February 12. When the telegram didn't arrive, people began to get worried, not the least of whom was Yuri Yudin who had been part of the expedition but was sent back due to illness before the mysterious "incident" took place (we’ll cover his take on the incident later). By February 20 a search team was organized, later joined by Soviet army and militsya forces. On the 26th the bodies of the nine member team were found.

This is the part that sticks with people. First, their tent was found ripped apart and covered in snow. It was originally thought that the tent had been ripped from the outside but it was later found to have been ripped from the inside, by the occupants. Most people who hear this story for the first time presume that the team ripped open their tent to ensure a swift, sudden and panicky get away. All of their belongings were left behind in the tent, including their outer clothing and shoes.

Investigators then followed a trail of eight or nine bare footprints in the snow to a patch of woods about a kilometer and a half away. Two bodies were found there, those of Yuri Krivonischenko and Yuri Doroshenko, who were both in their underwear next to the remains of a camp fire. The temperature that night was estimated to be around -24° Celsius. It appeared that one of them had climbed the cedar tree as branches were broken five meters up.

Next, three bodies (those of Igor Dyatlov, Zinaida Kolmogorova and Rustem Slobodin) were found lying on the snow roughly 150 meters apart from each other and all three seemed to be heading back in the direction of the tent when they collapsed, one after the other.

On May 4, the snow had melted enough to reveal the remaining four bodies that had been buried four meters below the snow in a ravine another 75 meters deeper into the woods than the tree. These four were found with more clothing on than the others. It may be surmised that the cedar tree group had died first and that these four (Lyudmila Dubinina, Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolles, Semyon Zolotariov and Alexander Kolevatov) had taken their clothes to wear.

The condition in which the bodies were found sends chills up the spines of all who encounter this story.

The body of Lyudmila Dubinina was found with her eyes and tongue missing. Thibeaux-Brignolles suffered a major skull fracture and Dubinina and Zolotariev displayed devastating internal injuries, with ribs broken along straight lines. Zolotariev’s ribcage was crushed on both sides while Dubinina’s was injured on one side. The impact which had caused them was said to be equivalent to a car accident, the result of an “unknown compelling force”. What little clothing that was found on the bodies was peppered with radioactive particles.

What “unknown compelling force” could have caused such devastating internal injuries? Who or what removed poor Lyudmila’s tongue? And what could possibly have contaminated the clothing on the bodies with radioactive material?

The answers to these questions have led some people down some very dark paths leading to UFO’s, Ural Mountain Yetis or even Soviet weapon experiments. One can hardly blame them as based on the evidence, either one of these explanations appears logical, albeit extraordinary.

Authorities weren’t able to concoct a comprehensive conclusion about what exactly took place, but they came close. The fact that official Soviet records regarding the case had been sealed for over 40 years behind the iron curtain only led to outrageous speculation by commentators in the West. Was it all just propaganda?

Well, one person who was not only familiar with the case, but intimately involved with the nine victims of this tragedy was Yuri Yudin, the lone survivor of the expedition, who as you may recall was sent back a day into the hike due to illness. He died in 2013 at the age of 75 and spent countless hours turning over the evidence in his mind. The difference between Yudin and official Soviet investigators is that he knew each of the individuals on the team, quite well, and knew how they would react to a given situation both individually and as a group.

To Yuri Yudin, the “unknown compelling force” that killed friends on February 2, 1959 was most likely an avalanche. He wasn’t the first and he certainly wasn’t the only one to put this forth as a theory, but his was the most reasonable version of what might have happened that night.

Yudin's theory was that the team was asleep when an avalanche hit the tent. Remember that the tent was found partially covered in snow. The force of the avalanche slammed against them. He surmised that Dubinina and Zolotariev were lying atop their skis and that Thibeaux-Brignolles was resting his head against a hard object when it hit. He believed that Dyatlov, ever the leader of the group, did not panic but was forced to cut the tent open from the one side that remained unblocked by snow. There were eight sets of footprints for nine people and he believed that Thibeaux-Brignolles was carried by other team members to a more stable area. The rest is somewhat easy to imagine.

Dyatlov volunteered to risk being buried by further avalanches to try to retrieve what supplies he could, but he didn’t make it. Then, perhaps after climbing the cedar tree to mark their leader’s progress and perhaps having seen him collapse, Kolmogorova and Slobodin went after him and collapsed along the way. The remaining survivors sat by the fire in minimal clothing. When Krivonischenko and Doroshenko succumbed, the remaining four took their clothing and went deeper into the woods.

The clothing was found to have much higher than normal levels of radiation on them, but it is believed that this was the result of contamination from Dubinina’s lab coat, although this is questionable. As for Dubinina's tongue? I often come across wild animals as a culprit, online, but these theorist tend to forget that she was buried under four meters of snow. The most reasonable explanation? Natural erosion caused by bacteria.

Sources:

There is an amazingly detailed documentary on youtube called the Mystery of Dyatlov's Pass. It was produced for the Television Agency of Ural and is in two parts. It’s in Russian, but has English subtitles. The first part really humanizes the victims, with many passages from the diaries of the team members. It discusses what the individuals of the expedition were like. It talks about how they would stay up late in their tents and talk philosophically about love and what it is to live a meaningful life. These were passionate youngsters (and one slightly older professor) living in an oppressive regime, yet what they cared most about was experiencing life and living to the fullest. If you can’t get past the low production values and subtitles then you are going to miss out because it’s unforgettable.

The second part gets more into the nitty gritty details of the investigation and though each part is only roughly an hour long, it feels thoroughly detailed. The narrator even explicitly acknowledges theories about UFO’s and doesn’t dismiss them outright, but states plainly that the documentary is only interested in investigating serious ideas. The second part is also where you’ll find Yudin’s excellent and comprehensive theory in full.

Basically, this video wipes away most other research materials I’ve ever come across regarding Dyatlov Pass, but I make mention of one other. You can watch both parts right here:

Aquiziam

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Elisa Lam, Part II

BEFORE YOU START, BE SURE TO READ PART I

CONCLUSIONS
There are few, if any solid conclusions in this case, mostly pie-in-the-sky speculation. But let's put on our thinking caps and try for a slice of that pie anyway.

This case haunts me. Elisa Lam is like the little sister of a close friend. She's from my town and she's from a culture that I recognize and am closely familiar with. My parents used to eat at her parent's restaurant. And as I mentioned, she's buried in the same cemetery as my young uncle, the same uncle who, with his brother, introduced me to Metallica and AC/DC and Slayer at a time when I was too young to realize that music got any worse than that. I never knew her and would never have in life, but this death hits close to home. I want to know what happened. I want to solve it. And if anybody is responsible I want them found, exposed and punished.

But that's the thing, we don't know if anybody else was involved.

The elevator video haunts many who watch it. There are so many "freaky" behaviors in it that it becomes unforgettable. I believe that she is playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game with an unidentified person, most likely a man that she is attracted to. I also believe that she is wearing his shorts in the video. I originally thought she was wearing a skirt, but she is in fact wearing a man's black shorts, they are large enough on her to fall past her knees at the bottom. She was also not wearing a bra, or anyway, a bra was not found in the water tank along with her body and her other clothes. She was wearing a shirt, a zip-up hoodie, black lace underwear and a man's shorts. This sounds like post-coital attire to me, but that is pure speculation. It does seem odd to me though, that someone as interested in fashion as Elisa would go around in a man's shorts and seemingly hastily thrown on wardrobe without there being some kind of a reason for it. Remember in part one when the autopsy stated there was subcutaneous pooling of blood in her anus, but no trauma. It's possible that this was due to consensual sex. Not saying it was, just saying it's possible.

Watch the video again, her face shows no signs of distress, nothing to indicate she feared imminent harm. Watch the part of the video when she steps outside the elevator. For starters, if she was hiding and truly feared being found, she wouldn't have stepped out of the elevator in the first place. She's acting like someone who is hiding that wants to be found or at the very least, doesn't fear being found. She peeks her head out the door and looks both ways in a noticeable fashion. She hides again, then takes cute, shuffling little steps toward the exit and watches the hallway, then hops out hoping to surprise someone. Then she playfully crab-walks in and back out of the elevator again.

We know that there are two elevators, side-by-side at the old Cecil Hotel (now re-branded as the Stay-on-Main), on the opposite wall between the two elevators is a mirror. When she steps outside the elevator it appears she is facing the mirror and fixing her hair.

The next moment on the video is the one that is truly bizarre. She goes back into the elevator and pushes all the buttons again, I suppose hoping to jam it up. Some speculate that she does this to prevent someone chasing her from using the elevator to catch up to her by sending it on a random journey. But again, she shows no signs of serious distress at being found.

The next part of the video is the one that disturbs most who see it. She makes hand gestures with her fingers spread out. Some people compare the gestures to the way they imagine a grey alien might move, fluidly but in an unrecognizable pattern. Watching the video at 135% speed, removes some of the freakiness of the hand gestures. After watching the video countless times it seems to me that she is calling out to somebody that she can't see. If you look at the selfie picture she took which I posted at the top of Part I, it seems that it was not entirely uncommon for her to make these kind of fingers spread apart hand gestures. It's impossible to know what she was saying when calling out, but it seems like she was getting bored of the hide and seek game and hoping to end it, warning that however was playing with her that the game was about to end.

Immediately after she makes the seemingly bizarre hand gestures, she counts to three. This is the most obvious part of the video but it took quite a few plays before I caught it. She is calling out and counting to three on the fingers of her left hand. She even bends her knees when she touches her fingers, the way one would when playfully doing so.

But after she counts to three and no one appears, she looks both ways down the hall, then plays with her again before walking off, never to be seen alive again.

Is it possible that the elevator footage showed part of a game of hide-and-seek? What if, since Elisa was never found by whoever she was playing with in the elevator, she took the game one step further and attempted to hide in the water tank? Is that a smart, rational decision to make? No, but there is some evidence that she wasn't taking as much of her medication as she might have, potentially throwing her cognitive skills off-balance, as touched on in Part I.

The question then becomes, if she was playing hide-and-seek in the video with an unseen party, why did that person not come forward before or after her body was found? Is it possible that she wasn't actually playing hide-and-seek with anybody, that her play friend was a hallucination? That's a stretch but it's possible.

I wonder about why 54 seconds were edited out of the elevator footage. I've got a couple ideas of why that might be. Either it shows nothing interesting, just an empty hallway and so was chopped out as unimportant, or it shows somebody else, somebody unconnected to the disappearance who just happened to be walking by. If the latter is the case, then that could help explain why Elisa walked away form the elevator at the end of the video as seemingly disappointed or dare I say somewhat embarrassed as she appeared to be. She was calling out, counting to three, her friend didn't re-appear, but somebody else did. In the final analysis though, these ideas are all just speculation. Still, the case haunts me.

I saw a recent news report that police were looking into two hotel employees as possible suspects in Lam's murder, but the source is dubious and I haven't seen a follow-up.

Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega

One of the strangest elements of all in this case, is the recent discovery of the body of Mexican actress Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega in a water tank. There are a couple of coincidences between Carmen and Elisa's cases that may lead you to think they are connected. Both women disappeared in February, Elisa in 2013, Carmen in 2014, both were found in water tanks after locals complained of funny or foul tasting water and California and Mexico are relatively close in proximity. It's not without precedent for a killer to move from state to state or even country to country to avoid detection or it may be possible that Carmen's murderer was inspired by the seamier details of Elisa's case. I'll provide a bunch of links to Carmen's story at the end of the "sources" section.

I've barely scratched the surface here. I haven't talked about the Cecil Hotel's checkered history, which includes multiple suicides and stays by serial killers including Richard Ramirez. There are many low income long-term residents of the hotel at least one of which is a well-known sex offender who was a resident at the hotel at the time of Elisa's disappearance. He was on many videos about the case including one on CNN, and the news either failed to mention or didn't realize just who they were talking to. Apparently he was one of the most vocal residents to complain about the water. At the time, the hotel was facing possible re-zoning and he had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. There is speculation that he and another long-term resident acting as his accomplice staged the murder, but I don't buy it.

I didn't talk about the other bizarre coincidences surrounding the circumstances of this case, like how it resembles the story of Japanese horror film Dark Water, right down to the actress playing the mother in the film wearing a similar looking wardrobe to Elisa in the elevator video. I didn't talk about the Tuberculosis detection kit, called LAM-ELISA that was being used during the time of her disappearance in the area to help stifle a possible outbreak among the homeless. I didn't talk about the last known witness to see her alive being a store clerk at a bookstore called ... The Last Bookstore. And there are more little things, little echoes that jab away at you until you are unsettled enough to believe that Elisa Lam was killed by fate itself.

Elisa was a real person, a beautiful girl with self-image problems who battled depression and felt isolated in her own active mind. Many if not all young people feel depressed or self-conscious, I wish I could have been there to tell her that it's perfectly normal to feel that way, at any age. But I can't.

Sources:
It's impossible to list all the sources, but here were some of the major ones.
Elisa Lam's tumblr blog
Elisa Lam's blogspot
The autopsy report
Yelp listing for Cecil Hotel
Current Yelp listing for renamed Stay on Main hotel
Crisis Forums (a terrific active chat about the Lam case)
Websleuths translation of Chinese forum about Lam

The case of Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega:

The Mirror UK
New York Daily News
Fox News Latino

The Daily Mail
Milenio

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Elisa Lam, Part I

"I’m going out tonight

I really hope no creeper comes near me

Seriously though

those Italian and Mexican guys go after you STRONG

Show the slightest inclination and they hound you"

-Elisa Lam, January 26, 2013

Elisa Lam selfie [Image source]

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS:

[Image source]

Elisa Lam, a 21 year old student from Vancouver, BC was traveling north up the west coast from San Diego. She arrived in Los Angeles on January 26, 2013, and was staying at the notorious Cecil Hotel in the city's infamous skid row. She was last seen on the evening of January 31, 2013. A missing persons report was filed but police had no leads. On February 19 her naked body was found floating face up in one of the four 1000 gallon water tanks (northeastern tank) located on the roof of the Cecil Hotel, along with her clothing which had apparently been thrown into the tank with her. She was only found after residents complained of poor water pressure. After the fact, residents realized that the tap water in the building had recently been discolored and tasted oddly sweet. After cutting a hole in the side of the tank to retrieve the body, it was widely reported that police quickly determined that foul play was not a factor in Lam's death, but they went on record to deny this.

An autopsy revealed no external trauma to the body and that her remains seemed in all ways unremarkable but it did state that her anus showed subcutaneous pooling of blood. The autopsy also failed to detect significant drugs or alcohol in her system at the time of death and found no evidence of pill capsule remains in her stomach but found fluid in the lungs. The Medical Examiner's conclusion was death by drowning. The LAPD released a video reported to be from February 1 (see below), apparently showing Elisa Lam exhibiting some bizarre behavior in the hotel elevator leading to wild speculation about what might have happened in the moments leading up to her entering the water tank (more on that in Part II). The police didn't believe that the video showed Elisa being chased or in distress. After being identified by her family, her body was flown back to Vancouver and she was buried in Burnaby's Forest Lawn Cemetery, just down the street from Metrotown (incidentally, the same cemetery where my uncle is buried, who was 20 years old at the time of his death). Watch the elevator footage below:



THE INVESTIGATION:

Very few details of the police investigation into this strange death were revealed to the media. In June the LAPD ruled the death accidental and that's been pretty much it. But the security camera footage raised more questions than answers and captured the darkest parts of the imagination of the world.

It's hard not to hear the story about how she was found and then watch this video and not be creeped out in some way.

The popular story going around at the time was that there was no entrance into the water tank, that either the entrance was sealed or welded shut or that there was no entrance point large enough for a person to squeeze through to begin with. This is not true.

The misconception most likely came from the fact that the police and fire departments decided to cut a hole into the side of the tank to retrieve the body. Some people perhaps jumped to the conclusion that they had to do this because there was no other way to enter the tank. The truth is there was no better way to retrieve it. A good friend of mine and his father became volunteer Coast Guards who would patrol the waters of the south arm of the Fraser River between Dyke Road in Richmond and River Road in Ladner. One night, his father had to retrieve a 'floater' from the river. As they were hauling the body out of the water, the floater's face slipped off. Poor Elisa Lam had been in that water tank for close to three weeks, the autopsy also reports that her body was already undergoing what is known as skin slippage. The entrance hatch which is located on the top of the tank, is roughly 15 by 15 inches wide and would have created a logistical nightmare for removing the body without potentially damaging either it or any other associated evidence. The only real mystery regarding Lam's entrance point is how she closed the hatch lid behind her, or if it was someone else who closed it.

It was also widely reported that the only way onto the roof was through an alarmed door, and that the alarm was never triggered. Again, this is entirely false.

As a pair of intrepid amateur sleuths documented with their video camera just about anyone can get onto the roof of the Cecil Hotel at any time via one of two fire escapes located on the outside of the building, accessible through the hallway window of any floor, or through one of at least two roof access hatches, available through the fifteenth floor.

Another thing that is widely misunderstood is that long-term residents of the hotel use the roof as a "smoke pit", they go out onto the roof so that they don't have to go 15 floors down to street level just to have a cigarette. Another interesting thing that those same amateur sleuths found was a collection of empty beer bottles stuffed into nooks and crannies around the water tank. They seem to think that these bottles were somehow overlooked by the LAPD. Most likely, investigators either collected any trace samples they needed on scene or didn't find them relevant.

One of the more disturbing aspects of amateurs investigation into the strange death of Elisa Lam is the online witch-hunt of extreme metal vocalist Morbid. Speculation turned against him when it was discovered that not only had he stayed at the Cecil Hotel, but had posted a video of himself onto youtube pretending to shoot pedestrians on the street below through his hotel room window (he has since removed the video and deleted his youtube account). He writes dark poetry and even writes from the perspective of a murderer. But when Lam disappeared, he hadn't been at the hotel for over a year and was reportedly not even in the country at that time, let alone the state, city or same hotel. One of the worst marks against him is that he is Mexican and in one alarming post on her tumblr blog, Elisa made statements about being hounded by latin men:

I’m going out tonight
I really hope no creeper comes near me
Seriously though
those Italian and Mexican guys go after you STRONG
Show the slightest inclination and they hound you

Regardless of what one may think of Morbid or his music, he doesn't deserve to be accused of a crime he never committed. No one does. The deeper you look into Morbid the more he becomes an apparent dead-end.

On her Ether Fields blog, Elisa discussed an ongoing battle with depression and that she had been prescribed numerous medications for "bipolar disorder". She had her medications with her (they are listed in the autopsy) but didn't seem to be taking them regularly or at least as often as she might have. Based on the available evidence, this may be the best clue there is as to what might have happened to her. Then again, it might not.

One of the strangest elements of the case was that elevator video released by the LAPD. The timestamp has been redacted and nobody seems to have any idea why. But the timestamp is only partially redacted, you can still make out the numbers ticking away, you just can't see what they are. Online sleuths studying the video have discovered that about 54 seconds of footage was cut from the footage between the time that Elisa exits the elevator and when the doors close. It was later found that the video has been slowed down, again for unknown reasons. When watching the video at 135% "normal" speed her actions and behavior get a little less spooky, she seems less frightened and more playful. There is a side-by-side comparison of the video at two different speeds that you can watch right here:



A well-known body language expert reviewed the footage and came to the conclusion that Elisa was acting playfully and shows a low level of anxiety, the kind one might show when thinking about or interacting with somebody they are sexually attracted to. It's an interesting analysis and well worth a read. If this is true, the person does not appear in the video nor have they come forward publicly.

CONTINUE TO PART II

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Jacqueline Fitzsimons

When she reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs, Jacqueline called out, “my back’s hot. Am I on fire?”

[Image source]

WIDNES, CHESHIRE - On January 28, 1984, 17 year old Halton Technical College cookery student Jacqueline Fitzsimons was bored stiff. She and her two friends, Wendy and Paula had finished their in class cookery test and asked the lecturer if they could leave the class for early break. The girls were denied, another fifteen minutes passed inside the classroom with the girls leaning against worktops and cookers, which should have been off for an hour by that point, but were left on because the room had no heating aside from the ovens. The class was dismissed at 10:55 a.m. The three girls linked arms and strolled down the hallway in high spirits toward the staircase. When she reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs, Jacqueline called out, “my back’s hot. Am I on fire?” Within moments, her back was covered in flames. Two witnesses claimed they saw a strange glow appear over Jacqueline’s right shoulder and drop onto her back. None of the girls were smoking at the time.

The girls as well as staff and other students beat the fire down from her back. She was taken to hospital where it was discovered that her apron had partially melted into the skin of her back and she had burns over 13-18% of her body (reports vary). She remained conscious and upbeat, if a little worse for wear after her ordeal. She claimed that she wasn’t in pain except for one of her fingers, but she died 15 days later due to an infection in her lungs caused by smoke and fire inhalation.

At an inquest, cookery lecturer Robert Carson claimed that the burners on the classroom stoves had been turned off an hour before class was dismissed and that Jacqueline had not leaned against them anyway. Even if a burner had caused Jacqueline’s apron to catch fire, multiple witnesses saw the girls standing by the door waiting to be let out a full 5 minutes before the end of the session.

When interviewed by police in hospital Jacqueline said, “It must have been the cooker. I must have stood too near the cooker”. It was during this interview that she admitted the burners had been left on for heat.

Much of the investigation had to do with studying how long an apron could smoulder before fully igniting or revealing itself through smell. The answer came to 30 seconds. The inquest judge recommended jurors to ignore media reports of spontaneous human combustion and after 10 minutes deliberation found the cause of the fire to be the classroom burners. Nearly everybody who reviews this case and takes the time to comment on it discounts the SHC theory as the fire seemed to originate on the girl’s clothing and not on her body, but the cause of the fire remains mysterious and the government inquest indicated there was a rush to reach a convenient verdict.

Sources:

Glasgow Herald February 25, 1985

NHRF paper

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Teresa Butler

"The lady said she answered the phone and said 'Hello' a couple times," Stevens explained. "There was nothing on the other end that she could ever hear, so she hung up."

-from the Daily Dunklin Democrat (July 23, 2006)

Teresa Butler [Image Source]

[Image Source]

RISCO, MO - 35-year old wife and mother of two, Teresa Butler disappeared from her home on the night of January 25, 2006. She was discovered missing when her husband Gary returned home from work at 10 a.m. to find their sons, two and four years old, respectively, alone in the house and apparently undisturbed. A video camera, playstation (with games), large Mag-lite flashlight, Nintendo Game Cube and digital camera were missing as well as Teresa’s purse and cell phone, but her jacket and wedding ring were left behind and her Jeep was left sitting in the driveway with its stereo missing. There were no signs of a struggle but part of a key was broken off in a lock in a door. She was last heard from the night before the disappearance when her sister-in-law came to visit. She hasn’t been seen since, but she may have been heard from.

Two calls were made from her cell phone the night she disappeared. The first was at 3:16 a.m. to a man in Gideon, MO. who did not answer. When police investigated they discovered that the man had no connection to Teresa or anyone in her family.

The second call was made after her disappearance to a home in Clarkton, MO where two elderly women lived together. When they answered the phone, they couldn’t hear anything, not even breathing. Like the first call, this second one seemed to be random as the two women had no connection to Teresa, either.

The Butler family residence [Image Source].

Police did discover that Gary’s ex-wife had made threatening phone calls to Teresa while at work. No connection has ever been established to Gary’s ex-wife but then Sheriff Terry Stevens said he was “positive foul play was involved”. Teresa’s mom also supported the theory, saying "I felt fear gripping the home down there. I knew someone was watching the house, I could feel it."

Teresa Butler was one of several missing persons honored in a ceremony at the Missouri state capitol in 2011. By that time, 5 years had passed since her disappearance but tips were still flooding in to the New Madrid County Sheriff's office on a better than weekly basis. They come from all across the country. The tips range from the location of where her body may be buried, to where she may be living. The Sheriff's office takes every one of those calls seriously and investigates every lead but so far to no avail. About half of the tipsters believe Teresa to still be alive. No trace of her has ever turned up, not the missing items, not even a piece of clothing. Teresa's fate remains a mystery.

SOURCES:

The Charley Project
Find Teresa Butler
The Daily Dunklin Democrat

KFVS News

KFVS News story 2

EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Butler Street Poltergeist

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS

[Image source]

Between January 6 and 13, 1959 on Butler Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, 80 year old Mrs. Papineau (no first name is given) and her 13 year old grandson Wayne witness unexplained window breakages in the elderly lady's home. Before the windows shatter, the two hear thumping or rapping noises in the house. A total of 39 windows are busted in the span of a week including one which exploded in front of Mrs. Papineau with no apparent cause. Police are called to investigate but they find no evidence of criminality. The glazier who came to replace the broken windows found that the glass had invariably fallen into the house, meaning whatever was shattering the windows came from the outside. He also said that the windows seemed to have "been pushed in from the center with considerable force". It should also be noted that some of the replacement glass was thicker than the original panes and broke only to have to be replaced a second time.

THE INVESTIGATION
After the police investigation petered out, an architect and part-time paranormal investigator or "self-styled authority on poltergeists" as the Milwaukee Journal would have it, named John C. Parker took over. He said that he was "pretty sure poltergeists are to blame." He set up a recording thermometer near the bathroom window where three panes had been broken to prove that sudden drops in temperature showed evidence of ghosts. Not exactly the most balanced method of investigation to say the least.

The police did return to interview the 13 year old grandson and discovered "that he had been experimenting with a Christmas chemistry set". When told Parker added, "The only way that anyone could break a window with that set would be to throw the whole thing through the window." Touché!

CONCLUSIONS
After all the hoopla of the week of 39 broken panes and the story spreading nationally, Mrs. Papineau did not experience anymore disturbances, or at the very least, she never reported them. As for a cause of the phenomenon, one could pull any number of explanations from their proverbial butt: chemistry sets, trucks going by, small localized earthquakes, some acoustic phenomenon of local origin, some kind of localized atmospheric pressure inversion (okay that one doesn't make sense). At this point a poltergeist explanation is as good as any other.

The case remains a mystery.

SOURCES:
Milwaukee Journal - January 15, 1959
Daytona Beach Morning Journal - January 15, 1959
Binghamton Press - January 16, 1959

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Rain of Rice in Burma

[Image Source]

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS
In the January 10, 1952 edition of the London Daily Telegraph it was reported that a rain of rice fell on Mandalay, Burma. People reportedly gathered handfuls in the streets. Tracking down information on this event has led to a brick wall, and what you see above is all I have regarding this event. The Daily Telegraph website does not have that particular edition of their newspaper archived on the web, and that's where the trail goes cold for an armchair detective.

THE INVESTIGATION
Anomalous precipitation is nothing new. Indeed when taken in total, the sheer number of reports of strange rains and bizarre or unexpected objects falling from the sky, both organic and inorganic, shows that the phenomenon may be strange, but is not all that unusual. Stones, balls, seeds, nuts, wheat, fish, frogs, insects, red rain, curiously large ice blocks, even a red hot chain have all been reported to fall from the sky, sometimes on numerous occasions. Charles Fort reported the phenomenon seemingly endlessly and reports go back at least three hundred years and continue in a pretty much unbroken chain up to the present day. There isn't a whole blog post worth of information and occurrences, there is a whole blog's worth, updated regularly.

Some of the strange falls are well-documented and have been at least hypothetically explained. The explanations begin with waterspouts. In the not-entirely-accurate-but-simplest-possible definition a waterspout is like a mini-water tornado, though much weaker. A waterspout is a columnar vortex which more or less connects a body of water to the cloud above it.

Waterspout [image source]

Knowing this, it's easy to understand that a waterspout might have generated over a rice paddy and sucked up some rice, then rained it back down over the city. Again, the above information doesn't give much of a clue as to whereabouts the rice actually fell, it just gives the name of the city, Mandalay. Mandalay is no small place, in 1952 it wasn't the bustling metropolis it is today, but the population exceeded 150,000 and it covers an area of 63 square miles (163 km sq), putting Vancouver (44 sq mi.) to shame. For the sake of argument, let's put the rice fall square into the middle of the city.

According to the FAO, Mandalay is the second largest city and eighth largest producer of rice in Myanmar (formerly Burma). No special thing perhaps, but we see that rice is produced in the area, therefore it doesn't take a huge leap to see that a columnar vortex or water could have sucked rice out of a paddy onto any part of the metropolitan area surrounding it.

But, if we're willing to accept a waterspout as a point of origin, what happened to the rice in mid-air? Did it simply arc like some kind of vacuum rainbow, rise an fall without any resistance whatsoever? Every time I read about a strange fall I've got to ask myself: how can something heavier than air, that doesn't collect naturally in clouds, fall from the sky? How does the heavier than air object hang in the air without falling immediately?

CONLUSIONS

Large hailstones [image source]

The answer is almost certainly convection layers. Basically, the heavier than air object rides the wind. Again, if we accept waterspouts as our means of conveyance for the rice, then it's easy to figure out what happened next. The rice began acting like hail. Indeed, each grain of rice would have been lighter than a hailstone, the phenomenon of "golfball-sized" hailstones is widely known and discussed. When hail forms it wants to fail as it grows heavier, when it doesn't, particles of super-cooled air collect on the hail until the become the size of golfballs or larger when the 110mph winds of the storm can no longer keep them aloft. The reason the winds don't blow the whole accumulation away is where the layering comes into effect as whatever object, be it hail or rice grain is 'squished' back down by warmer winds from above.

As the cloud lumbers on its journey through the sky, the process continues until it can no longer be sustained and a thing like a rain of rice becomes possible.

But, there is no way of knowing if this is even a likely explanation because the details are nonexistent.

What's frustrated about having so little information is that the truth, like the devil, is often in the details. Two simple questions are left unanswered: were the grains of rice still in their husks? and were they coated in ice? These may be the most essential missing details as to figuring out what exactly happened. If they were still in their husks, then it becomes easier to accept a waterspout explanation and if they were coated in ice, then they were mostly likely trapped in a convection layer until they fell.

If the grains were already de-husked, then it's possible that somebody's open store of rice somehow ended up in the sky and that's a whole other bizarre mystery to think on.

Ultimately, a waterspout explanation may not satisfy, even though it's a good, and frankly easy one, because waterspouts usually occur over larger bodies of deep water, not rice paddies. The explanation  can be said to be nearly as extraordinary as the event itself, although waterspouts have been witnessed over ponds and other small bodies of water.

Strange falls happen all the time. You may be witness to one some strange day, but your chances aren't likely. You'd be lucky to witness such an event, and even luckier to be able to explain it satisfactorily.

SOURCES:
The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena [2nd Edition], pg. 60
FAO Corporate Document Repository (see table Producing Zones and Cropping Seasons)

And if you'd like to learn more about waterspouts and atmospheric convection, wikipedia is a good place to start for general knowledge. They usually have loads of relevant links to dig further.
Waterspouts
Atmospheric Convection