15 Things That Introverts Would Never Tell You / Higher Perspective

Introverts catch a lot of shit for being introverted. The whole world seems so enamored by extroverts – the people we know who just want to be around people all the time. While we introverts might not want that, it doesn't mean we're depressed or suicidal or anything wacky like that. There are some things you should know about us.

1. Small talk sucks.
We're just not very good at it. We're typically the big-thinking types. We like big ideas and theories. Small talk is uncomfortable. We don't care about the weather or how your cat has been doing.

2. Being alone is fine.
Seriously, we're doing okay, even if we hole up in our houses for a while. We don't need other people for stimulation. We find that ourselves.

3. We aren't rude or uptight.
We might seem like that at first, but get to know us. We're still a fun bunch of friends, we just don't always acclimate to unfamiliar settings and people so quickly.

4. Sometimes, we swing both ways.
We might be introverts, but sometimes we are just so the life of the party. We do this willingly when we're up to it, but we can't always keep that kind of energy going. If we throw a party, great! But give us some time to recover.

5. We have friends. And they like us! Probably.
People hear the word 'introvert' and think of the goth kid sitting alone at the food court. That's a whole different thing entirely. We love having friends, and our friends love having us! We put in a conscious effort for people we think are worth it.

6. When with the right people, we feel safe.
Having the right people in our lives is amazing. we really give our best selves to the best people. We shine in the right company. But sometimes it takes a while to find those people.

7. We like to write things out.
Writing is easier than talking for us sometimes. Email is the best because it helps us get the thoughts out of our heads without being interrupted. Thinking about giving us a call? Try a text or email instead.

8. We're super productive.
Sometimes at least. Usually in our alone time, we're able to really rock and roll on projects that we need to finish. The solitude helps us, as we tend to be a bit more distracted than most.

9. If we don't like you, you won't know it.
It's the truth of the matter. We hate conflict. So even if we don't like you, we'll still be nice. It's a lot easier than being real with you. Especially if your feelings are inconsequential enough that confronting you on your bullshit isn't even worth the time. Sorry. Well, not sorry.

10. Networking events suck.
Seriously. Is there a mailing list we need to opt out of? There are few things more uncomfortable than a networking party. Except maybe a dentist's networking party that we've just been accidentally invited to.

11. We don't like crowds.
Though I find that after a few beers, I can tolerate it. Introverts tend to get overstimulated easily, so big crowds aare tough to deal with.

12. Sorry, we probably weren't listening to your story.
We care deeply about our friends, but people outside of that circle will have a tough time maintaining our attention. It's not that we have ADD or anything like that, we just don't really care about you. On the plus side, we won't judge you, so feel free to tell us all the fucked up things you said to your ex.

13. Don't make a fuss out of our birthdays.
For the longest time, I had a great deal of difficulty understanding why I hated my birthday so much. Everyone I ever knew would come out and party with me! But then I realized: that's the problem! We don't need to make a fuss out of our birthdays, so please don't do it to us.

14. We don't want to make a fuss out of your birthday.
We can quietly honor the annual birthday, right?

15. If we've chosen to be friends with you, appreciate it.
We value our alone time. If we see you often, it means that we really love you. Just don't get too bummed out when we don't hang for a week at a time sometimes.

Higher Perspective

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The Sumerian King List still puzzles historians after more than a century of research

Out of the many incredible artifacts that have been recovered from sites in Iraq where flourishing Sumerian cities once stood, few have been more intriguing that the Sumerian King List, an ancient manuscript originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer (ancient southern Iraq) from Sumerian and neighboring dynasties, their supposed reign lengths, and the locations of "official" kingship. What makes this artifact so unique is the fact that the list blends apparently mythical pre-dynastic rulers with historical rulers who are known to have existed.
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The first fragment of this rare and unique text, a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet, was found in the early 1900s by German-American scholar Hermann Hilprecht at the site of ancient Nippur and published in 1906.  Since Hilprecht's discovery, at least 18 other exemplars of the king's list have been found, most of them dating from the second half of the Isin dynasty (c. 2017-1794 BCE.).  No two of these documents are identical. However, there is enough common material in all versions of the list to make it clear that they are derived from a single, "ideal" account of Sumerian history.
Among all the examples of the Sumerian King List, the Weld-Blundell prism in the Ashmolean Museum cuneiform collection in Oxford represents the most extensive version as well as the most complete copy of the King List. The 8-inch-high prism contains four sides with two columns on each side. It is believed that it originally had a wooden spindle going through its centre so that it could be rotated and read on all four sides. It lists rulers from the antediluvian ("before the flood") dynasties to the fourteenth ruler of the Isin dynasty (ca. 1763–1753 BC).
The list is of immense value because it reflects very old traditions while at the same time providing an important chronological framework relating to the different periods of kingship in Sumeria, and even demonstrates remarkable parallels to accounts in Genesis.

The ancient civilisation of Sumer
Sumer (sometimes called Sumeria), is the site of the earliest known civilization, located in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, in the area that later became Babylonia and is now southern Iraq from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf.
By the 3rd millennium BC, Sumer was the site of at least twelve separate city states: Kish, Erech, Ur,Sippar, Akshak, Larak, Nippur, Adab, Umma, Lagash, Bad-tibira, and Larsa. Each of these states comprised a walled city and its surrounding villages and land, and each worshiped its own deity, whose temple was the central structure of the city. Political power originally belonged to the citizens, but, as rivalry between the various city-states increased, each adopted the institution of kingship. The Sumerian King List, records that eight kings reigned before a great flood. After the Flood, various city-states and their dynasties of kings temporarily gained power over the others.

Sumer's mythical past
The Sumerian King List begins with the very origin of kingship, which is seen as a divine institution: "the kingship had descended from heaven".  The rulers in the earliest dynasties are represented as reigning fantastically long periods:
After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years. Alaljar ruled for 36000 years. 2 kings; they ruled for 64800 years.
Some of the rulers mentioned in the early list, such as Etana, Lugal-banda and Gilgamesh, are mythical or legendary figures whose heroic feats are subjects of a series of Sumerian and Babylonian narrative compositions.
The early list names eight kings with a total of 241,200 years from the time when kingship "descended from heaven" to the time when "the Flood" swept over the land and once more "the kingship was lowered from heaven" after the Flood.

Interpretation of long reigns
The amazingly long tenure of the early kings has provoked many attempts at interpretation. At one extreme is the complete dismissal of the astronomically large figures as "completely artificial" and the view that they are unworthy of serious consideration.  At the other extreme, is the belief that the numbers have a basis in reality and that the early kings were indeed gods who were capable of living much longer than humans.
In between the two extremes is the hypothesis that the figures represent relative power, triumph or importance.  For example, in ancient Egypt, the phrase "he died aged 110" referred to someone who lived life to the full and who offered an important contribution to society.  In the same way, the extremely long periods of reign of the early kings may represent how incredibly important they were perceived as being in the eyes of the people. This doesn't explain, however, why the periods of tenure later switched to realistic time periods.
Related to this perspective is the belief that although the early kings are historically unattested, this does not preclude their possible correspondence with historical rulers who were later mythicised.
Finally, some scholars have sought to explain the figures through a mathematical investigation and interpretation (e.g. Harrison, 1993).

Relation to Genesis
Some scholars (e.g. Wood, 2003) have drawn attention to the fact that there are remarkable similarities between the Sumerian King List and accounts in Genesis.  For example, Genesis tells the story of 'the great flood' and Noah's efforts to save all the species of animals on Earth from destruction.  Likewise, in the Sumerian King List, there is discussion of a great deluge: "the flood swept over the earth."
The Sumerian King List provides a list of eight kings (some versions have 10) who reigned for long periods of time before the flood, ranging from 18,600 to 43,200 years.  This is similar to Genesis 5, where the generations from Creation to the Flood are recorded. Interestingly, between Adam and Noah there are eight generations, just as there are eight kings between the beginning of kingship and the flood in the Sumerian King List.
After the flood, the King List records kings who ruled for much shorter periods of time. Thus, the Sumerian King List not only documents a great flood early in man's history, but it also reflects the same pattern of decreasing longevity as found in the Bible - men had extremely long life spans before the flood and much shorter life spans following the flood (Wood, 2003).
The Sumerian King List truly is a perplexing mystery. Why would the Sumerians combine mythical rulers with actual historical rulers in one document? Why are there so many similarities with Genesis? Why were ancient kings described as ruling for thousands of years? These are just some of the questions that still remain unanswered after more than a century of research.

By April Holloway

References
The Sumerian King List – University of Oxford
Great Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology: The Sumerian King List – by Bryant G. Wood
The Sumerian king list: translation - The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
The Sumerian King List - by L.C. Geerts
Reinvestigating the Antediluvian Sumerian King List – by R. K. Harrison
The Sumerian King List – by Thorkild Jacobsen (The Oriental Institute of the University of California)

The Most Successful Industry of the Past Century

What do you think the most successful industry in America has been in the past 100 years? A hint: it's home to the most successful company of the past 50 years.
If you guessed "automobiles" or "energy" or "food" or even "telecom," then man, I feel sorry for you, because you are some kind of moron. Okay? I'm sorry. Smarten up. According to a new Credit Suisse report that examines cumulative returns in 15 separate industries that have survived from 1900 up to the present day, one industry stands out as a clear winner, having posted close to 15% annual returns over the past 100+ years. (To give you some idea of how much things have changed—in 1900, railroads were more valuable than every other industry in America combined.)
America's top industry of the past century: tobacco. Morgan Housel notes that "One dollar invested in tobacco stocks in 1900 was worth $6.3 million by 2010. That's 165 times greater than the average industry." Furthermore, according to research from Jeremy Siegel, the single most profitable US company since 1968 is Altria, the tobacco conglomerate.
I hear you saying, "Because tobacco is addictive!" But you're wrong—idiot. (I also know you didn't guess tobacco as the answer to the question in the first paragraph so you have no leg to stand on, here.) Housel says that the tobacco industry's success lies not in the fact that its product is addictive, but in the fact that tobacco companies have no real pressure to innovate (they're basically selling the same thing they were in 1900), and in the fact that lots of people refuse to invest in them, which makes them a sweeter investment for the people who are willing to invest in them.
Morality is little more than an arbitrage opportunity in the USA.
[Image via Credit Suisse]

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Bizarre Martian Plumes Discovered by Amateur Astronomers

An international network of amateur astronomers has spotted what looks like two plumes, or slender, cloudy projections, extending from the surface of Mars, and their professional counterparts have no clear idea of what they might be.
"Any explanation we can think of challenges our understanding of the upper atmosphere of Mars," says Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, a professional astronomer at the University of the Basque Country, in Bilbao, Spain, and lead author of a report on the phenomenon in the journal Nature.
"The fact that it was seen by multiple observers suggests pretty strongly that it's real," says Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, principal investigator for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), which is currently orbiting the red planet. "But I find the observation puzzling." Jakosky was not involved in the research.
The plumes were first picked up in March and April 2012 by Wayne Jaeschke, a patent attorney based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, who moonlights, so to speak, as a member of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (APOL). "I sent a couple of frames to some guys I know in Australia," he says, "and asked, 'Am I seeing things?'" The fuzzy patch of faint light, he reasoned, might have been some sort of flaw in his camera's sensor.
But Jaeschke's Australian counterparts saw the blurry spot too. "It looked like some strange kind of cloud," he says, and when they alerted still more amateurs in France, they were able to spot it as well. A message went out on the group's email list, which Sánchez-Lavega monitors.
Like many full-time astronomers, he knows that skilled amateurs often pick up celestial phenomena the pros might miss. Amateurs have been the first to see some supernovae and comets, for example, and in 2009, an Australian amateur named Anthony Wesley watched as a comet smacked into Jupiter.
Amateurs have even spotted a cloud rising from the edge of Mars once before, says Sánchez-Lavega. Spacecraft and large ground-based telescopes have seen it happen many times. The big difference here is altitude: All of those other clouds, which have been made of dust or ice particles, have never risen more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface.
The mystery clouds, however, reached more than twice as high, and persisted for ten days. "It's hard to see how particles would get up that high," says Jakosky. And even if they did, he says, "there are winds at these altitudes, and I would expect that they would redistribute or dissipate a cloud relatively quickly."
Sánchez-Lavega and his co-authors (who include Jaeschke and three other amateurs, along with several professionals) agree, admitting in Nature that the dust hypothesis is "difficult to support." Another explanation the authors suggest is that the amateur astronomers had photographed an aurora, something like the northern lights on Earth. But they acknowledge that such a thing would have to be improbably bright to be seen from Earth. The plumes, of course, are long gone, so there's no way to study them in search of an explanation.
The astronomers' only hope is that the phenomenon will happen again. "We just have to keep watching [the planet's edge] with telescopes on Earth and with spacecraft," says Sánchez-Lavega. "And because they're so numerous, so widely spread around Earth, and so dedicated," he says, "amateurs will continue to play a fundamental role."
So will the MAVEN satellite, which arrived at the red planet last September to study the Martian atmosphere up close. "We would see something like this if we were looking in the right direction at the time that it happened," says Jakosky.
In fact, there's a slim chance that it already could have happened: MAVEN has been taking readings for five months, and all the information hasn't been analyzed yet. If a cloud erupted during that time in a location where the amateurs couldn't see it, and the satellite happened to get lucky, says Jarosky, "I can't rule out that we'll find something like this in our data."
Follow Michael D. Lemonick on Twitter.

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Massive Forest Fires Could Be Cooling the Earth

Wait, what? A forest fire may not sound like a great way to cool off, but Earth's climate is a complicated beast. It turns out that some of the world's fiercest blazes are actually lowering our planet's temperatures.
Top image: Wikimedia
The remote boreal forests that blanket massive swaths of Canada and Alaska aren't just lush and gorgeous. They are also part of the vast carbon cycling system that regulates temperature all over the globe. These forests absorb vast quantities of carbon—by some estimates, nearly forty percent of Earth's terrestrial inventory—in their vegetation and soils. And that's a very good thing, because all that carbon might otherwise end up in our atmosphere, adding to our global warming woes.

Image: Dima Viunnyk / Flickr
But there's another reason these kinds of forests matter to Earth's climate: They are optimized for burning. Strangely enough, this has to do with the frigid climate. In a Narnia-like land where temperatures can be well below freezing for up to seven months of the year, it takes longer for vegetation to decompose. Thick piles of organic matter accumulate on forest floors. These heaps of kindle can, at the drop of a match or a lightning strike, cause an entire forest to ignite in just hours. Indeed, some forests are prone to vicious fires that rage for weeks on end, leaving thousands of hectares of destruction in their wake.

The Ice in the Fire

In a paper which appears in Nature Geoscience this month, a group of ecologists demonstrated that these fires scorching Earth's northernmost forests can, paradoxically, have a chilling effect on our climate. A smoldering blaze kicks up plumes of heat-trapping soot, which eventually settle back to the ground, hastening snowmelt. Combustion also releases carbon dioxide, our planet's most important heat-trapping greenhouse gas. These effects, like the heat from the blaze itself, tend to warm the planet up.
But as wildfires eat through forests, they also expose the ground, and in the far north, that means uncovering snow and ice. The dark, leafy landscape becomes a bright, reflective one. In climate science lingo, reflectivity is called albedo, and it's a critically important factor for determining how much of the sun's energy our planet absorbs. By increasing a landscape's albedo, fires can reflect more of the sun's radiation back to space and cool the climate.
Trees, in other words, affect our climate almost as much as humans do.
"Given the scale of boreal forests, this study may document the single largest influence of individual species on global carbon and energy flow, except for humans," lead study author Brendan Rogers of the Woods Hole Research Center told me. "This is critical for Earth system modeling and projecting future climate feedbacks in high latitude environments."

White surfaces, with their high albedo, help to cool our planet off. Image: Wikimedia
So, fires can cause temperatures to teeter up and down. And when it comes to boreal lands, it's not at all clear which direction we should expect the thermometer swing. If scientists knew that, they'd be better poised to predict how human interventions—things like fire suppression and deforestation—impact Earth's climate.
To figure out how boreal blazes affect our planet's thermostat, the researchers decided to go big. They used satellite images to pinpoint massive conflagrations across boreal North America and Eurasia and track the fires' effects over time.

When North America Burns

Across the globe, a striking pattern soon emerged: Fires burned differently on the two continents. Searing hot, destructive blazes swept across North America, consuming trees and leaving battered toothpick vistas in their wake. Following these vicious burns, springtime albedo increased dramatically, creating a local cooling effect. In the Old World, fires were more subdued, spreading across forest floors but rarely reaching canopies or killing trees. As a result, the albedo of these forests didn't change dramatically, and the fires tended to be climate-neutral.

A patch of burnt forest in Glacier National Park. Image: Candace Fladager / Flickr
The extreme variation in fire patterns across two continents can be explained by looking at the trees themselves. Boreal forests of North America are dominated by so-called "fire embracers"—species like black spruce and pine, whose seeds are fire-activated. As one generation of embracers is consumed by flames, a new one sprouts from the ashes. In Eurasia, more common are the "fire resisters," species that quell the spread of fire by dropping their lower branches as they grow and armoring themselves with thick coats of bark.
"This is a prime example of how individual species can impact large scale phenomena," Rogers told me. Indeed, there are very few instances in nature of a single species influencing climate patterns on a continental scale. The best parallel we've got is ourselves.
It remains a mystery how a handful of cold-hardy tree species came to drive fire and climate patterns across the world. "It's an extremely interesting question, why the trees in North America evolved to help promote and be consumed by fire, while those in Eurasia have evolved in the opposite direction," Rogers said. Researchers are currently investigating possible causes, including the higher incidences of lightning across Eurasia, which may select for species that are better at withstanding and suppressing fire.
Insights from this work will also help scientists refine Earth system models needed to predict future climate change, and to make smarter forest management decisions today.
"Because current global models do not account for these species-level traits, they misrepresent the effects of fires on ecosystems and the atmosphere," Rogers told me. "We also need to start using this type of information if we hope to manage fire-prone boreal forests for their climate mitigation potential."
Maybe it's time to stop trying to suppress nature's fiercest blazes, and just let them burn. These days, we need all the help we can get managing our climate. Trees figured it out millions of years ago.
Read the full scientific paper at Nature.
For daily science geekery, follow Maddie Stone on Twitter .

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When These People Go Into Hiding, It Is Time To Pay Attention

February 17, 2015 - Something big is about to happen. How do I know? I know because people I have known for years have pointed to the last quarter of 2014 as the beginning of the end for many of our institutions and perhaps our very way of life.  Some of my very best contacts have told me that it is time to stop warning the people, because it is now time to start hiding from the wrong people. My initial reaction is to not believe them, but there are too many well-placed sources to not take seriously.

Along these lines, I recently received an email contact from Lindsay Williams regarding a survival tip for the difficult times ahead. Williams has been a guest on my show several times. I sent him back an email asking when he would like to come back on my show. He responded that he has stopped doing interviews. This is becoming an all-too familiar theme as this past weekend, one of my best insider sources told me he was going to stop disseminating information because what he had to say would have no impact on the coming events. As he stated "The train has its final destination and there is no stopping it. America had its chance to mobilize and try and stop the coming tyranny, but they could not get off the couch and stop watching the damn NFL. Well, the new NFL term stands for "Not For Long" and that is how much time this country has left. Americans have been wallowing in their own apathy and ignorance for decades. Soon, they will be wallowing in their own blood". This is from a General who fought in two wars.


In a December 9, 2012 interview on The Common Sense Show, Jim Marrs discussed how approximately 400-500 top level bankers have left their positions and have gone into seclusion. Marrs reminded my listening audience of how the elite have developed seed vaults which only they have access to. Marrs was clearly alluding to the fact that some very bad events are coming and the global elite are aware of it and are moving to meet the threat. My insider sources inform me that the same thing is happening in various federal organizations by  those who have recently retired from the CIA, DHS, NSA and FEMA. This fact is indisputable. I have firsthand knowledge of four ex-fed officials and their families who have relocated to safety enclaves when doing so was very disruptive to their respective family's lives. Increasingly, it is looking like some major event(s) is/are coming and persons with insider information are attempting to remove themselves from harm's way.

When government officials, from the various alphabet soup agencies, retire en masse, it is not necessarily a noteworthy event. However, when the same officials retire en masse and then relocate to form their own survivalist enclaves, then this is something that we should all sit up and take notice of, especially when we are seeing the same behavior on the part of Wall Street executives.

In my dealings with purported alphabet soup agency informants, I have been receiving some very dire warnings in terms of what lies ahead for America. At the time I began to receive information, two years ago, about the dangerous times that we are living in, Doug Hagmann also went public with conversations he had with DHS' "Rosebud" telling us much the same thing.

I have had conversations with two insiders and a relative of another insider who tell similar stories of a coming series of apocalyptic events. Much of the Hagmann information, to a large extent, corresponds to the information I have received.

In September 2011, the evacuation of the elite to this safe hideaway was rehearsed in the DHS exercise known as Operation Mountain Guardian in which the Denver airport was shut down to commercial air travel except for specific, undersigned planes which were allowed to land in preparation for some staged catastrophe. This aforementioned event is not newsworthy because it has been reported in the mainstream. However, where this event becomes noteworthy to the public is because it is not coincidental that the CIA has relocated its major data collection facilities to underground structures in the Denver International Airport. The implications for residents living in or near the Washington DC Metropolitan area should be clear. The planned obsolescence for the nation's capital is becoming increasingly apparent. The previous information is what is publicly available. The following information has not been disseminated but is highly relevant to what lies ahead.

Recently, retired officials from the NSA have relocated to an area in the Ozarks where they have access to underground safety zone which have/are being transformed into mini-villages of self-sustainable protection. Their properties consist typically of 5 to 10 acres for each family, contains a portable water supply, residents are armed to the teeth, have alternative communications that are not reliant on the grid and have years of stored food. My source is an individual who retired from the NSA almost three years ago. His decision to participate in the relocation was triggered by the re-election of President Obama which he said will hasten the onslaught of what is to come because Obama's administration fully embraces the current course of action. Those were the words of  20 year veteran of the NSA, not my words.

Recently retired officials from FEMA are relocating to the rolling hill areas, in North Carolina. Their enclave contains the same resources involving air, water, food and guns. These enclaves also include underground structures which are sensibly self-contained and can serve to isolate the inhabitants from the outside. I have two sources on this information which includes a family member and a retired FEMA official who has chosen not to participate in this relocation. The nonparticipant ex-official from FEMA did not seek sanctuary with these groups because he feels that several of these enclaves will be targeted for destruction by the powers that be because of the knowledge contained by the inhabitants in this case of "dead men tell no tales." This makes sense because it would allow the elite, following the coming cataclysms, to rewrite history in their own version without any contradiction from knowledgeable individuals that know what has really gone on. This insider knowledge is a threat which would serve as an obstacle to the new truth. Personally, I think this view has a great deal of merit.

When I began to receive information on these relocation, two years ago, all informants were clear on one point, when Americans begin to see the massive shifting of military assets accompanied by an increase in the sightings of foreign military on American soil, serious trouble is upon us. To that, I would ask what have we been witnessing in recent months?

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Were Jesus And Buddha Aliens? BBC Program Debates The Idea

February 17, 2015 - A program aired on the British Broadcasting Corporation recently held a discussion as to whether or not major religious figures like Jesus Christ and the Buddha were from other planets.

In a religion-focused series titled "The Big Questions", host Nicky Campbell oversaw a discussion asking the query, "Have beings from other planets guided our religions?"

"Last month NASA's Kepler space telescope identified another planet that might have the right conditions for life," said Campbell.


"It will be no surprise to the followers of those religions who've long believed that life - possibly not as we know it - exists elsewhere in the galaxy. Life which has possibly exerted its influence here on planet Earth. Have beings from other planets guided our religions?"

The segment featured two groups, the Aetherius Society and the British Union Of Spiritist Societies, which advocated for the theory that various religious figures, including Jesus, were aliens.

"We believe that various religious leaders from history have an inter-planetary origin," said Mark Bennett of the Aetherius Society.

"We believe that Jesus and Buddha came from Venus, that Sri Krishna came from Saturn, that Saint Peter came from Mars, and so on."

The program also include two people representing Christianity, a scientist who belongs to the Christ Church Southampton and a bishop, who opposed the theory.

"It's very clear if you look at the gospels that there are only three answers as to who Jesus is," said the scientist Liz Weston.

"Either he's mad... or he's bad, he's trying to deceive us [and] his power comes from the Devil, or he is actually who he claimed to be and he is the son of God... none of those say that he was from Venus."

Claims that Jesus might have been an alien are not exclusively made by groups like the Aetherius Society. Presbyterian Minister Barry Downing has often credited phenomenon in the Bible, including the coming of Jesus, to extraterrestrial origins.

In a rebuttal posted on the website Ancient Aliens Debunked, Frank Johnson wrote that the theory of Jesus being an alien "creates a few problems."

"No matter how you look at it, there is no way possible that God as revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures could be an extraterrestrial as most understand the term," wrote Johnson.

"Jesus cannot possibly be an extraterrestrial, hybrid or otherwise, simply because He is one with God the Father. The Bible demonstrates, and Jesus states that He and the Father (God) are ONE."

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5 Creepy Stories to Read in the Dark, Alone at Night

by Jancy Richardson ⋅ ⋅ Last edit on February 11th, 2015

To avoid fainting, keep repeating 'It's only a movie...It's only a movie...'

I know a lot of you horror fans are hungry for more freaky real life stories - so here are some more terrifying tales from the freaky folks at Jezebel to lose sleep over. I guess I just like giving people nightmares...

Roy

I come down to the kitchen for breakfast on a Saturday morning. My mom and my sister are already up, and they look exhausted. My mom asks, "Did you sleep alright?"

"Yeah," says I.

"Even after you woke up?"

"...I woke up?"

Sometime in the middle of night, I had started screaming. My mom rushed into my room and found me sitting up in bed, screaming, "ROY! ROY! ROY! ROY!" She did her best to calm me down while shooing away my pissed-off sister who had stormed in to find out what the fuck was going on with me.

She asked me who Roy was, but I would only say that he was "a bad man." I didn't say anything but "Roy is a bad man."

I'm shocked as they're telling me all of this. And they're surprised that I don't remember — but then again, I'm the sound sleeper of the house who can doze through lightning storms. We write it off as some weird nightmare that I don't remember.

 Years later, I'm off at my first year of college. My mom sends me a videotape in the mail; she didn't mention it before I had left, as in "Hey, keep your eye on the mailbox" or anything. I press play, and it's my mom taking a video camera through our house. She was moving, and sent the tape as one last walk through of the now-empty house before she left. It was sweet and a little tear-jerking, until she said, "So, here's something you might find interesting," when she approached a closet in her bedroom.

This closet, aside from being the hiding place for all the Xmas gifts, was also always packed full of old luggage and other odds and ends. You could only go three feet in before you would have to start climbing on things to go farther. She goes in with the camera and I see that there are purple crayon drawings on the wall, down at the height where a small child would draw. There are random scribbles, some stick figures, something that may have been a dog. I was already puzzled, because I had no memory of ever playing in this closet and I don't know how I would have drawn on the walls when they were, in my mind, always covered.

Then the camera comes to a word on the wall.

ROY

And my mom must not have remembered that night. She said on the tape, "Roy...I wonder who Roy is."

- arewemenoramidevo

Backwards And Forwards And In One Place

A few years ago, I asked my SO if he had ever seen a ghost. He got really uncomfortable and squirrelly, lots of hemming and hawing. Annoyed, I said "Just say yes or no! I won't judge if you think you have seen a ghost." (I'm a skeptic and figured he didn't want to sound like a rube or something).

Turns out he was hesitant because he believes he saw one but it was while he was deployed on a mission in the Middle East, and he was trying to think of how he could describe it without giving up any classified info. The story is this:
He was in the spooky, vague "Middle East" when there was a commotion from the soldiers watching the perimeter. Apparently, they could see a man about 100 yards away from the camp. He had appeared out of nowhere, no one saw him walking up. The man was just standing there, not doing anything threatening. But since it was a strange man in a war zone, they broke out all the high tech gear to see what was going on.

They could see his face, his clothes, his height, but he looked bizarrely distorted and was not giving off a heat signature (they have infrared jimjams and whatnot, it's the freaking military not a piddling ghosthunting troupe here). He was not the temperature of a human being, he was the temperature of the air around him. They had no idea what was going on and people were freaking out.

 At this point I said some obvious stuff- "Maybe it was a scarecrow or dummy. Or a shadow. Or the soldiers were really tired and delirious and their eyes were playing tricks on them. Or it was a hologram weapon shaped like a human".

His response: They called different people up to come look at the man, it wasn't just a few soldiers who saw this- dozens of people came to look and everyone confirmed that it was definitely a person. Eventually they decided to send out a team to check this guy out. When they got about 50 yards away, the man started walking- only it didn't look like he was walking toward or away from them, only walking in place. They froze, expecting an attack. But the man never got any closer.

Me- "So he was, uh, moonwalking? OooooOOoohh a terrorist with dance moves, scary!"

His shaky response: It looked like it was trying to walk but instead of moving like a regular person, its bones were breaking and splintering backwards and forwards at the joints. I can't think of a better way to describe it. Its head was jerking around like a puppet. When the convoy got a few yards closer, it disappeared entirely.

The team hauled ass back to camp and as soon as they returned, the man-thing reappeared in its spot. Everyone took turns watching it for an hour or so until it disappeared for good. Didn't walk away, didn't fly or melt or explode, just stood there for a looooong time then vanished.

- Gnomi Malone

Hammer Time

My mother's family lived on the second floor of a large duplex on Côte-Sainte-Catherine. The front doors to the second-floor apartments were located on the side of the buildings and faced each other from one duplex to the other. They rarely locked the front door and everyone knew their neighbours quite well. One morning, one of my uncles, who must have been about 13 at the time, says he woke up very early.

This was summertime and although it was kind of light out, the sun hadn't risen yet so it was practically in the middle of the night still. He was half awake in his bed, a bit groggy and he realized that what had woken him was the sound of someone creeping along in the corridor. For some reason, it didn't feel right to him, it didn't sound like someone from the family was going to the bathroom during the night. It was slower, much weirder.

He called out 'Hey, who's there?'. He then heard whoever was in the corridor walk back to the top of the stairs, down the stairs, out the front door. Creepy enough imho, but it gets much worse.

Within six months of this happening, a teenage girl was found dead in the duplex next door to my family's home. She had been killed during the night with a hammer by a 15-year-old boy that lived nearby. He was known by all the other kids of the neighbourhood and my mother remembers him as being very quiet and always kind of looking down or away whenever you would look at him. He was kind of an outcast, certainly because of his personality but also a bit perhaps because he went to a posh school thanks to his father being the janitor there and he got a bit snobbed out by the other kids.

In the duplex where my family lived, on the first floor there was a family with three teenage girls, in my family there were two teenage girls. I guess he knew where to look and I guess he must have been lurking around for a good while before deciding that it was time to take the hammer out. He killed himself in hospital or jail while he was still very young.

- Mimilady

Chirp

When my friend was about 11 or 12, she went to an all-inclusive resort with her family. This was one of those big places, with several pools, restaurants, kids areas etc. Her dad buys walkie talkies – one for her and her brother, and one for the adults (this was before cellphones were a big thing), so that they can stay in touch if the kids want to do their own thing.

One night, her parents and her brother go down to the restaurant for supper. My friend isn't feeling well, so she asks to stay in the hotel room and watch a movie. They agree, giving her the walkie talkie for emergencies. She's up there for an hour or so, checking in periodically with her dad (just to say hi, ask what they're eating etc).

She starts to feel really sick, and says to her dad "hey, when will you be back to the room?". Her dad answers back "We're coming up right now – sweetie, I forget the room number, could you tell me what it is?".

As soon as she's about to answer, her dads voice cuts in "Hey Chirp, we're coming up right now, we brought you some cake, see you in five".

She knows the second one is her dad, because he always calls her Chirp. She locks the door. When her parents get back, they say they haven't talked to her all night.

- 3bee

BFM

We bought a 50's bungalow a few years ago; the original owner had passed and we were the first people to live there since. My daughter's bedroom was on the far side of the house from mine, and was always colder than the rest of the house. We chalked it up to poor insulation in that room.

Every night I would hear her talking to someone; just thought it was baby-sleep babbling. She was about 2 at the time. Then she started talking to someone in the daytime too. I asked her about it, she told me it was the "Blue faced mommy".

The "mommy" wanted to play peek-a-boo with her all the time, and wouldn't leave her alone. She said she would wake her up in the night to play peek-a-boo. It freaked the shit out of me. I talked about it with one of the older ladies in the neighbourhood, who knew the original family.

Apparently their oldest daughter had suffocated herself in the house after giving birth to a still-born child. (Not sure how she "suffocated herself", the neighbour didn't have a lot of details, it happened in the early 70's.) I am certain that she was the "blue faced Mommy" my daughter was talking about.

A friend told me she had read the best way to deal with lingering spirits was to politely ask them to leave. So one night, when my girl was woken up I went to her room and politely said "Please ma'am, your family has moved away, we need you to go now." And after that, nothing. I still get chills thinking about it.

- Thanks

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A Fog In The Field

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