Journal of the Bizarre

The Vatican has launched an investigation into a Brazilian gang of rogue exorcists who call themselves the Heralds of the Gospel, according to a report from the UK'sDaily Mail.

The group believes that their former leader who died in 1995, Dr. Plinio Correa de Oliveira, has struck up a friendship with Satan in the afterlife, and now possesses the ability to cause climate change.

After a video was posted online in which members of the exorcism cult claim to have conversed with Satan and are planning to replace Pope Francis with one of their own, the Vatican's investigation team jumped into action.

In the video, one of the group's members reads from a transcript that supposedly details a conversation with Satan. The devil claims that an asteroid will crash into the Atlantic Ocean, wiping out all of North America.

The devil also allegedly stated (through a possessed individual) that the pope will die in a fall and, after his death, will be replaced by Monsignor João Scognamiglio…

When Americans think of ghost towns, we invariably think of abandoned mining camps and Wild West tourist traps, complete with restored brothels and saloons. Unlike American ghost towns, the ghost towns (or ghost metropolises, to be more precise) of China often have less to do with the past than they do the future. These pre-fab cities boast towering skyscrapers where no one works, sprawling apartment complexes where no one lives, vast shopping malls where no one shops and miles of highways that are completely devoid of traffic.

At first glance, these eerily abandoned cities conjure thoughts of apocalypse or some Biblical rapture that whisked away millions of inhabitants without a trace. Or they bring to mind places like Theresienstadt, the Nazi concentration camp where the horrors of Jewish internment were disguised behind fake shops and cafés built to fool foreign Red Cross inspectors.

In reality, the numerous ghost cities of China have nothing to do with government propaganda or a ni…

On October 12, 1904, a bone-chilling story was reported by the crew of the schooner Gotoma after its arrival in San Francisco from the Kuril Islands. According to the ship's captain, Captain Macomber, the schooner was about forty miles southwest of Cape Curat on August 4 when the crew sighted a mass of floating wreckage.

Captain Macomber sailed his ship closer to the wreckage and recognized it as a Japanese troopship-- the ill-fated Kinshiu Maru, which was reported sunk by the Russians the previous April. The crew boarded the floating wreck and discovered, to their horror, a number of headless Japanese soldiers ensnared in the wreckage. How those unfortunate soldiers became decapitated was a naval mystery that captivated the world for several weeks.

Strangely, it was an unknown preacher from Novia Scotia who managed to solve the mystery.

Reverend William Rufus Foote was a Canadian living in Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, which was fought between 1904 and 1905. Rev. Foote learn…

While going through my email today I found an email sent by a woman who pointed out that, out of all the topics we've covered on this site over the years, we have never written anything about the "flat earth" theory.

This caught my attention because I was pretty sure that we've discussed flat earth theory at some point in the past but, alas, we never have.

Here's the problem with the theory, which I have never heard addressed by flat earthers. Since mankind first began exploring the seas, why hasn't anyone like Magellan, Hudson, Vasco da Gama, Drake, DeSoto or Columbus ever reached the edge?

You'd think at some point in the history of exploration, somebody would've reached the end of the earth, and said, "Whoah! Turn this mofo around, we're about to go over the edge!"

Just a thought.

Although we delve into conspiracy theories from time to time here at JOTB, we have refrained from weighing in on the case of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich because, quite frankly, we were waiting for enough credible evidence to surface before we could arrive at any conclusions. With hundreds of Seth Rich stories hitting the internet every day, it would be a full-time job just to browse through all of them.

As is always the case, we begin an investigation with an open mind. For instance, our investigation into the Sandy Hook shooting led us to debunk the claims of several leading conspiracy theorists. We examined every possible detail, interviewed several sources and worked with nearly a dozen unbiased independent investigators, journalists (and a handful of leakers) before we reached our conclusion(s). We did the same during our investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing, which many claimed was a false flag operation (it was not).

Therefore, it cannot be said that we are card-carry…

The following newspaper article, which appeared in the Maysville, Kentucky Evening Bulletin on March 4, 1889, involves a man who got shot while pretending to be a ghost, in an attempt to pull off a land-grab scheme that sounds like something from a Scooby Doo episode.


Casey, Iowa, March 4.-- There is a little pond known as Silver Lake, four miles west of here, and near it a schol house in which the young folks of the neighborhood are wont to hold a lyceum. Recently a ghostlike apparition has caused nightly terror in the neighborhood. Several nights ago the apparition frightened a farmer's team, which ran away, tipped over the buggy and nearly killed the farmer's wife.

The husband procured a shotgun, loaded it with buckshot and then lay in wait for the ghost four nights. Thursday night he filled the ghost with buckshot. It cried: "My God, don't shoot anymore," and fell prostrate. The ghost was carried home by the shooter and cared for. No one but the attending phys…