Loch Ness Monster Sighting, Summer Camp Exorcism, Time Traveler from 2236, Haunted Football Coach and More Mysterious News Briefly

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week.

An AI-generated painting won the first-place blue ribbon in the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition with a work called “Théâtre D'opéra Spatial” and looked like opera singers performing in outer space – human entrants were understandably upset but the judges let the win stand. Fortunately, no AI robots were able to create a decent deep fried elephant ear or corn dog.

NASA and MIT revealed a jointly developed device called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) installed on the Perseverance rover has been successfully making oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere on Mars since April 2021 at a rate that could, on a larger scale, generate enough oxygen for a human colony to breathe and to fuel a rocket for returning to Earth. MOXIE has moxie, but apparently not enough to come back to Earth and help out with our own carbon dioxide problem.

A study of Indian jumping ants (Harpegnathos saltator) found that when a queen dies, workers engage in a battle to replace her, with the winner become a pseudoqueen as her body creating insulin to allow her to consume huge amounts of food for egg-laying while generating a protein called Imp-L2 which counteracts some of the effects of insulin on the body and allows her to live for years rather than the normal months. “Will this work for kings?” asked Prince Charles.

Only the fifth 2022 sighting of the Loch Ness monster occurred this week when a local resident sitting on a hill above Lochend saw a wake moving in the direction of Drumnadrochit with no visible cause and recorded it for seven minutes. If the Loch Ness monster has suddenly gone invisible, there are a lot of souvenir shops in Inverness about to dump their inventory.

Using a skeleton nicknamed the "Penang woman" which was discovered during a 2017 dig at Guar Kepah, a Neolithic site located in Penang in northwest Malaysia, graphics experts recently scanned it with CT (computed tomography) and created a facial approximation of the woman who lived during the Neolithic or New Stone Age somewhere between 8,000 to 3,300 BCE. Little is known about her life then, but her photo today is getting a lot of date requests.

The Chinese mobile game company NetDragon Websoft has appointed an artificial intelligence-enabled virtual human named Tang Yu as CEO -- according to the company statement, Tang Yu will make decisions during the day-to-day operations of the company and provide a more effective risk management system. There’s a battery charger in the office refrigerator marked “Do not touch – Tang Yu’s lunch.”

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen using 3D scans of adult Lagria beetles emerging from their pupa shells found that females have pockets on their backs which hold symbiotic bacteria that secrete chemicals toxic to fungus deadly to the beetles. If there’s fungus in YOUR back pocket, it’s time to wash those jeans.

A 28-year-old woman in the U.S., who describes herself as being "allergic to gravity" because she spends 23 hours in bed and can't stand for more than three minutes without passing out, has finally been diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (PoTS) - a condition that creates reduced blood volume and an abnormal increase in heart rate when a person stands or sits up … unfortunately, there is no cure for it. If life were science fiction, there would be a planet with low gravity that she could live on.

A dog owner in Colorado whose pit bull Rosie was missing for eleven days says she contacted an animal energy intuitive (a psychic) who claimed to be able to telepathically connect with Rosie and located the dog within an hour stuck on a ledge in the White River National Forest. Can an animal energy intuitive help find your keys if you let your dog lick them?

A low-resolution satellite photo sent to The War Zone shows what looks like a large flying-wing-like aircraft at Area 51 near the large and remote '2014 hangar' on the base's southern end, but some viewers think it’s just a shadow cast on the ground by a low-hanging cloud. Could it be a low-hanging ALIEN cloud?

Parents of children staying at a Saskatchewan Bible camp are upset because a counselor who thought the camp had been invaded by demons held a midnight exorcism to cast them out without the consent of the parents – the RCMP said no charges would be filed because no violations of the Criminal Code occurred. We’re in big trouble if demons know the law better than we do.

The Allen Telescope Array near San Francisco, a recently refurbished radio observatory dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, detected a signal from the Voyager 1 probe launched 45 year ago that is currently at the outer edges of the solar system far beyond Pluto.  This is like your pet psychic telling you they picked up a signal from A dog but not YOUR dog. (See above).

According to a new study by the international Dark Energy Survey (DES) Collaboration, the nature of gravity has remained the same throughout the entire history of the Universe – supporting the validity of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. What about the five-second rule?

In drought-related archeology, a submerged bridge and a military camp at the one-time Roman village of Aceredo near Lobios, Spain, reappeared due to the low water level of the Lindoso reservoir as the result of recent droughts. In the next sequel, will Indiana Jones be replaced by a weather reporter?

Astronomers are anxiously awaiting what appears to be the upcoming collision of two supermassive black holes at the center of the galaxy SDSS J1430+2303 a billion light years away that could happen within the next three years. Is it too early to start popping some black popcorn?

Armchair Loch Ness monster hunters rejoice -- Visit Inverness Loch Ness (VILN) has installed five new webcams at hotels and viewing spots along Loch Ness which can be monitored 24/7 365 days a year from the Visit Inverness Loch Ness website. Since we so rarely see the Loch Ness monster, how many cameras does IT have for watching for humans?

A TikTok 'time traveller’ who claims to be from the year 2236 warns that scientists will find DNA this year from an extinct megalodon and will use it to bring back the 60-foot-long prehistoric  shark in 2023 to terrorize the oceans once more. Does he have any predictions on who will star in the “Jaws: Return of Megalodon” movie?

Researchers looking for signs that plants are conscious beings think they’ve found one – an experiment showed that when beans climb, they search for a good spot by making scanning motions as they "decide" where to settle, exhibit a spike in internal electrical signals when they latch onto a new rail, and maybe even 'know' that a pole is there. We’re in big trouble if intelligent, thinking beans start talking to pigs about withholding por.

A video posted on Twitter shows what appears to be a ‘bee funeral’ where ants are arranging flower petals around several dead bees – some researchers say the decaying plant material may be masking the smell to protect their feast from scavengers, while others think it’s merely a ‘pile’ for the purpose of storing food. Did anyone think to listen for a tiny organ playing?

University of Connecticut football coach Jim Mora believes the house that he lives in, which is a short walk from the school’s campus, is haunted because he hears doors opening every night, along with other “unexplained noises” and sees shadows around the house … but he thinks they’re “good ghosts.” If he can convince the good ghosts to haunt the visitors’ locker room, the Huskies could have a good season this year.