Facts and Legends of the Village of Palm Springs: Witch of Tahquitz

By Eric G. Meeks

This is a legend the city fathers of Palm Springs would rather you not know. But thanks to an extensive amount of research and a personal family heritage involved in this horrific account, I am now resigned to share the details of one of the darkest chapters in Palm Springs history.

In 1919, my great-grandfather, Riley Glenn Meeks, was the Constable of Palm Springs. The town was still a sleepy little hamlet before the age of celebrity came to its doorstep. The citizens were hard working earthy people who'd learned to live in a rugged climate amidst a tribe of mostly docile Indians. But there was a shadow lurking over the town and children would disappear under its cloud. Mainly the shadow stayed over Tahquitz canyon, hanging there as a warning not to enter. Legend says that when the shadow is in the canyon, all is safe, because the witch hides in its embrace. But on cloudy days or at night time when the shadow is everywhere, you must beware-for the witch is out!

In my great-grandfathers tale, he is asked to lead a posse into the canyon after the disappearance of a little Indian girl who is the daughter of a maid of one of the city's elite; an early auto mechanic named Zaddie bunker.

Zaddie brings together a dozen or so city leaders to Lykken's General Store, now a historical site, where each person shares a story on their personal feelings or confrontations with the Witch. Newspaper man Randall Henderson tells the most gripping tale of how nearly 30 years earlier a little boy had been kidnapped and forced to eat his friend before he could escape. It appears a generation earlier a posse had formed to capture the Witch, which they thought they had, and ship her off to notorious Yuma Federal Prison in the middle of the desert wasteland. Unfortunately the stage coach she was on never made it and all of her cavalry dragoon escort mysteriously.

So Riley's posse takes off to catch the witch with half a dozen white settlers, an ancient Indian Medicine man (Pedro Chino) and a young Indian boy named Jesus. Along the way, Pedro tells the boy of even earlier events of the tribe and their interaction with the Witch. Her name is Mena and she was not always bad. Hundreds of years ago she had been brought forth by Spanish explorers in their quest for gold. She had called upon the gods for a chance to escape and a husband who would protect. The Mountain god answered, destroying the Spanish longboats searching as far north as a primordial Salton Sea in a hail of lightning. She swam ashore and slowly walked towards the tall mountain peak she could see ion the distance and when she saw the canyon and the Medicine Man Tahquitz who lived there, she knew she had found home.

For a long time she and her man helped the Cahuilla. But over time, there medicine turned bitter and their most famous spell of sucking the bad out of people began to draw the entire soul of their patients and in doing so prolonged their lives. Eventually, Mena tricked and killed Tahquitz, who continues to lie as an eternal spirit of the Cahuilla.

The posse finally reaches her camp site and kills her, though not without damage to their own group. One member, Big John, is left behind to watch the embers of the Witch burn, for this is the only true way to know she is dead. But before she is turned to ash he is chased away by coyotes and other animals.

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_G._Meeks

Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Myths and Facts

Myth: The secrets behind the Bermuda Triangle mystery are now known
Facts: This mystery remains as unsolved today as it did one hundred years ago. Many planes, ships, and people pass through this area every day and do not experience anything unusual, but there have been reported disappearances even in recent times. This phenomenom has still not been explained scientifically.

Myth: There is no truth to the Bermuda Triangle stories
Facts: The Bermuda Triangle has been the scene of many disappearances, and these vessels have never been seen again. There is no wreckage found, and no explanations for what happened. In the past the navigational equipment available was a possible cause, but modern equipment should prevent planes and ships from becoming lost on the sea.

Myth: Scientific research has shown the Bermuda Triangle Area is unusual
Facts: The Bermuda Triangle mystery has never been scientifically researched in an adequate way. Because of the location and the depth of the ocean there has never been a scientific effort to set up facilities and study these phenomenon on the site.

Myth: The Bermuda Triangle mystery has been explained by eyewitnesses
Facts: With all of the disappearances that have occurred within the Bermuda Triangle area, there has never been a single eyewitness to what has occurred. The closest was the crew of the Ellen Austin, which was an American schooner. This ship came across a vessel that was sailing at top speed, but there was not a single individual on board the vessel.

Myth: Methane gas is responsible for the Bermuda Triangle mystery
Facts: One of the most plausible theories involving this mystery speculate that giant pockets of methane gas under the ocean floor are responsible. This gas could cause ships to sink and planes overhead to catch fire and incinerate completely. That would explain the number of people who take a Bermuda vacation are not normally affected, because the gas is released periodically.

Myth: The Bermuda Triangle mystery only affects single ships or planes
Facts: The disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle include a squadron of American military bombers in the 1940s. A sixth vessel that was much larger was sent to search for the planes, and it did not return either.

http://www.travelinformation123.com/bermuda-triangle-mystery-myths-and-facts/

Oklo: Natural Nuclear Reactors

Creating a nuclear reaction is not simple. In power plants, it involves splitting uranium atoms, and that process releases energy as heat and neutrons that go on to cause other atoms to split. This splitting process is called nuclear fission. In a power plant, sustaining the process of splitting atoms requires the involvement of many scientists and technicians.

It came as a great surprise to most, therefore, when, in 1972, French physicist Francis Perrin declared that nature had beaten humans to the punch by creating the world’s first nuclear reactors. Indeed, he argued, nature had a two-billion-year head start. Fifteen natural fission reactors have been found in three different ore deposits at the Oklo mine in Gabon, West Africa. These are collectively known as the Oklo Fossil Reactors.

And when these deep underground natural nuclear chain reactions were over, nature showed that it could effectively contain the radioactive wastes created by the reactions.

No nuclear chain reactions will ever happen in a repository for high-level nuclear wastes. But if a repository were to be built at Yucca Mountain, scientists would count on the geology of the area to contain radionuclides generated by these wastes with similar effectiveness.


Nature’s reactors

In the early 1970s, French scientists noticed something odd about samples of uranium recovered from the Oklo mine in Gabon, West Africa. All atoms of a specific chemical element have the same chemical properties, but may differ in weight; these different weights of an element are known as isotopes. Some uranium samples from Gabon had an abnormally low amount of the isotope U-235, which can sustain a chain reaction. This isotope is rare in nature, but in some places, the uranium found at Oklo contained only half the amount of the isotope that should have been there.

Scientists from other countries were skeptical when first hearing of these natural nuclear reactors. Some argued that the missing amounts of U-235 had been displaced over time, not split in nuclear fission reactions. "How," they asked, "could fission reactions happen in nature, when such a high degree of engineering, physics, and acute, detailed attention went into building a nuclear reactor?"

Perrin and the other French scientists concluded that the only other uranium samples with similar levels of the isotopes found at Oklo could be found in the used nuclear fuel produced by modern reactors. They found that the percentages of many isotopes at Oklo strongly resembled those in the spent fuel generated by nuclear power plants, and, therefore, reasoned that a similar natural process had occurred.

Uranium isotopes decay at different levels

The uranium in the Earth contains dominantly two uranium isotopes, U-238 and U-235, but also a very small percentage of U-234, and perhaps small, undetectable amounts of others. All of these isotopes undergo radioactive decay, but they do so at different rates. In particular, U-235 decays about six-and-a-third times faster than U-238. Thus, over time the proportion of U-235 to U-238 decreases. But this change is slow because of the small rates of decay.

Generally, uranium isotope ratios are the same in all uranium ores contained in nature, whether found in meteorites or in moon rocks. Therefore, scientists believe that the original proportions of these isotopes were the same throughout the solar system. At present, U-238 comprises about 99.3 percent of the total, and U-235 comprises about 0.7 percent. 5 Any change in this ratio indicates some process other than simple radioactive decay.

Calculating back to 1.7 billion years ago—the age of the deposits in Gabon—scientists realized that the U-235 there comprised about three percent of the total uranium. This is high enough to permit nuclear fissions to occur, providing other conditions are right.


So how did nuclear reactions occur in nature?

Deep under African soil, about 1.7 billion years ago, natural conditions prompted underground nuclear reactions. Scientists from around the world, including American scientists have studied the rocks at Oklo. These scientists believe that water filtering down through crevices in the rock played a key role. Without water, it would have been nearly impossible for natural reactors to sustain chain reactions.

The water slowed the subatomic particles or neutrons that were cast out from the uranium so that they could hit-and split-other atoms. Without the water, the neutrons would move so fast that they would just bounce off, like skipping a rock across the water, and not produce nuclear chain reactions. When the heat from the reactions became too great, the water turned to steam and stopped slowing the neutrons. The reactions then slowed until the water cooled. Then the process could begin again.

Scientists think these natural reactors could have functioned intermittently for a million years or more. Natural chain reactions stopped when the uranium isotopes became too sparse to keep the reactions going.


What happened to the nuclear waste left at Oklo?

Once the natural reactors burned themselves out, the highly radioactive waste they generated was held in place deep under Oklo by the granite, sandstone, and clays surrounding the reactors’ areas. Plutonium has moved less than 10 feet from where it was formed almost two billion years ago.

Today, manmade reactors also create radioactive elements and by-products. Scientists involved in the disposal of nuclear waste are very interested in Oklo because long-lived wastes created there remain close to their place of origin.

The Oklo phenomenon gives scientists an opportunity to examine the results of a nearly natural two billion-year experiment, one that cannot be duplicated in the lab. By analyzing the remnants of these ancient nuclear reactors and understanding how underground rock formations contained the waste, scientists studying Oklo can apply their findings to containing nuclear waste today. The rock types and other aspects of the geology at Oklo differ from those at Yucca Mountain. But this information is useful in the design of a repository at Yucca Mountain. Were the Oklo reactors a unique event in natural history? Probably not. Scientists have found uranium ore deposits in other geological formations of approximately the same age, not only in Africa but also in other parts of the world, particularly in Canada and northern Australia. But to date, no other natural nuclear reactors have been identified.

Scientists believe that similar spontaneous nuclear reactions could not happen today because too high a proportion of the U-235 has decayed. But nearly two billion years ago, nature not only appears to have created her first nuclear reactors, she also found a way to successfully contain the waste they produced deep underground.

The radioactive remains of natural nuclear fission chain reactions that happened 1.7 billion years ago in Gabon, West Africa, never moved far beyond their place of origin. They remain contained in the sedimentary rocks that kept them from being dissolved or spread by groundwater. Scientists have studied Yucca Mountain to see if the geology there might play a similar role in containing high-level nuclear waste.







http://teknologi2050.blogspot.com/2010/05/natural-nuclear-reactors.html

Who and What Was Elizabeth Bathory?

Blood Countess Infamous as Witch, Serial Killer and Vampyre

Elizabeth Bathory

Bathory, best known for killing and torturing virgins and being a "vampyre," is a study of pathology, but she was arrested for and charged with practicing witchcraft.

The Blood Countess, Elizabeth Bathory, was born in the Austro/Hungarian Empire, now, Slovakia, in 1560 into a pathological royal family. She married Ferencz Nadasdy, dubbed the Black Hero of Hungary, for political and religious reasons.

Her husband, fighting the Turks, was absent from the Castle Csejthe in the Carpathian Mountains most of the time. When he was home, he joined her in sadistically abusing and killing young women and taught her new methods of torture. While Nadasdy was away, Bathory visited other members of royalty in their castles after she made sure there were facilities for her perverted “entertainment.”

Was Elizabeth Bathory a Serial Killer?

The Blood Countess exhibited psychopathic, sadistic and narcissistic behavior. According to legend, a servant girl committed a minor infraction and Elizabeth slapped her, making her nose bleed. The vain countess noticed the blood removed her wrinkles and made bathing in blood of virgins her personal fountain of youth.

Her accomplices were Thorko who taught her black magick, former nurse Ilona Joo, witches Dorottya Szentes and Darvulia, Erzi Majorova, a forest witch, and dwarf majordomo Johannes Ujvary, chief tormenter. Servant girls were subjected to horrendous torture in her ladyship’s special chamber before they were left to die.

The blood baths didn’t stop the aging process, so Majorova advised Bathory that the virgins had to be members of royalty. The countess, allegedly, documented at least 610 murders in her diary. The vanishing virgins attracted officials’ attention.

“Vampyre” Bathory

Peasants began to whisper about the bloody events in the Castle Csejthe. This was a time when vampyres were believed to be real. The living dead stalked the land, looking for victims so they could feed on their blood.

Some peasants observed Bathory with a tall, pale stranger, dressed in black. They were convinced he was a vampyre and concluded the Countess was also one.

Bathory – Practitioner of Witchcraft

Thorko taught the Countess practices of black magic, some of which she shared with Nadasdy in letters when he was away. He had called her a barren witch because she was infertile during the first years of their marriage.

Elizabeth went into the forest to cast a spell and soon gave birth to the first of her three children. Bathory had a mirror that she peered into daily while chanting spells. She wrote an incantation in which she implored a little cloud, the Supreme Lord of Cats to help. She asked it to send ninety-nine cats to bite out the hearts of King Matthias II of Hungary, the Lord Palatine, Count Gyorgy Thurzo, her cousin and others whom she felt were dangerous to her.

Several weeks later, Pastor Ponikenusz, who repeatedly denounced her, wrote an account about cats who attacked him.

Bathory’s Sentence for Witchcraft

On December 29, 1610, Thurzo raided Castle Csejthe and placed Bathory under house arrest. The official charge was witchcraft. Her alleged accomplices were subjected to extreme torture, they confessed to crimes they were accused of and executed. Bathory didn’t attend any trial.

When Matthias learned about her putting a curse on him, he ordered Bathory to be walled up in a windowless castle chamber, with only a small slot for air and food. She lived there until her death in August 1614, three years later.

A contemporary, István Krapinai, upon learning of her death said that Bathory, Nadasdy’s widow who was infamous for her crimes, suddenly died in the Castle Csejthe without a crucifix. How odd it is that Krapinai used the word, “crucifix.” She was Protestant.

Articles Related to Bathory and Witchcraft

People who found this article interesting might want to read:

• Cats Persecuted as Familiars discusses how and why the hierarchy of the Catholic Church killed and outlawed felines centuries ago.
• North Berwick Witches Persecution is about King James I of England, executing approximately 3,500 alleged witches when he was Scottish King James VI.
• Witch of Scrapfaggot Green recounts the case of American Army soldiers unleashing paranormal phenomena when they removed the Witch’s Stone.

http://www.suite101.com/content/who-and-what-was-elizabeth-bathory-a160755