New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
There are palm trees in Ireland. Did you know that? Palm trees. We expect palms in tropical locations, like Mexico, Bali, and films like The Pirates of the Caribbean. In Ireland, I supposed we should expect species like yew, wych elm, and those talking trees from The Lord of the Rings. In the 1800s, sailors brought palm trees to Ireland from New Zealand and the plants took root, enjoying the warm ocean currents lapping at the southwestern shores. One of the palms is the cabbage palm. The edible part of the cabbage palm is a bud, which looks like a cabbage, and when cooked, tastes surprisingly like cabbage. Is this palm related to cabbages? No. Of course not. Don't be silly. Palm ...
Anyone who has treated themselves to the pleasure of reading Bram Stoker's 1897 masterpiece Dracula will notice something rather curious. For most of the novel, although his menacing presence is felt, the Count himself is nowhere to be seen. The book, the greatest gothic horror novel of all time, is supposed to chronicle the dark deeds of the vampire. However, after the first section in Transylvania, the Count only makes a few "guest appearances." Dracula dominates the early chapters, when Jonathan Harker visits him to conduct a real estate transaction. In this sequence, his evil and menace is overwhelming from the first description: "Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a ...
Richard Palmisano's Paranormal Toolkit. Photo courtesy of Richard Palmisano. I often see, on social media, paranormal investigators and various groups proudly displaying their equipment: piles of cameras, digital recorders, REM pods, various EMF meters, and a wide assortment of other communication-related gadgets. Thousands of dollars' worth of equipment is quite the commitment to searching out answers from the great beyond, and I tip my hat to them, because while on an investigation one never knows exactly what piece of equipment you are going to need. What I rarely see in these grand displays is the equipment that could prove that the reputed haunting has nothing to do with ...
I began investigating Mothman sightings in the spring of 2017, when reports started coming out of Chicagoland. Folks were reportedly seeing weird, winged creatures in populated areas; creatures apparently able to appear and disappear without a trace, sticking around just long enough to scare the hell out of people. Reports flooded out of northern Illinois and soon were coming from every part of the state, followed closely by southern Wisconsin and western Indiana. By now, almost a decade later, I've received reports not only from all over North America but the world. Whatever this phenomenon represents, it is pervasive across human culture. When the initial deluge of sightings came in ...
