David Porter » Entries tagged with "legends"
First Official Irish Spontaneous Human Combustion Case
A Galway coroner has ruled that a man died from no adequate explanation, except that he just caught fire and burned to death. 76 year old Michael Flaherty from Ballybane, Galway was found dead in December 2010, his body burned, but nothing around him damaged. Neither police nor fire officers found obvious cause of ignition. The West Galway coroner, Dr Kieran McLoughlin, said he was left with no option but to declare it (September 2011) the first case of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) in Irish history. Explanations? Fortean Times, magazine of paranormal occurrences, thought it the first time a coroner anywhere had officially declared a SHC event, as they usually liked to call it something else to avoid conceding that the phenomena exists. BBC News explained that such deaths occur when a living human … Read entire article »
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
Black Shuck: Devil Dog Inspires the Arts
A Local Folk Tale Gives Rise to All Sorts of Fiction Black Shuck shows how a myth appears in different art forms today. It all began in the wilder parts of the UK’s Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex, probably in Viking times. Sightings of a ghostly, huge black dog were frequently reported over the centuries as it roamed freely, terrorising the minds of people eking out lives that were often brutal, short and vulnerable to powers beyond their control. Black Shuck was also known as Devil or Black Dog. Dog Bogeyman Story Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was prone to moods of depression that he called his ‘black dog’. But the phantom dog that featured in many creative pieces was a bogeyman story to keep children in order. It spread evil with its flaming … Read entire article »
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101