Meanwhile, Back at the Wedding...

The Wolf of Allendale/Hexham Skull Mystery Gets Weirder (And Maybe a Bit More Ancient?)

Drop that cup!

Like spooky skulls, the number 72 pops up in all world myths, myths being ancient mnemonic devices for teaching and remembering all sorts of astronomical thingies (e.g., it takes 72 years for the earth to turn through 1 degree of arc; 12 houses of the zodiac, each a 30 degree chunk of sky associated with a specific constellation, the gestalt used to describe The Precession of the Equinoxes, etc.). This all makes sense.

Anyway, since it's 72 days till Halloween, Da-da thought it high time for some long-winded spooky somnium that doesn't make any sense at all. This is what Da-da's all about.

Da-da recently (re)discovered the story of  The Wolf of Allendale/The Hexham Heads on Lon Strickler's blog, Phantoms and Monsters, which gets plain weird when you get to what happened in 1972 (72 again!):

Bizarre Hexhamshire: The Wolf of Allendale / The Hexham Heads

In February, 1972 the Robson boys were weeding their parent's garden not 10 minutes walk from where the 'Wolf of Allendale' stalked the woods. The pair soon unearthed two carved stone heads both about the size of tennis balls. A few nights after the discovery, neighbour Ellen Dodd was sitting up late with her daughter when both of them saw what they described as a 'half-man/half-beast' enter the bedroom. Although both mother and daughter screamed in terror, the creature seemed disinterested and walked off down the stairs. It was heard to be 'padding down the stairs as if on its hind legs', and the front door was later found open.



Dr. Anne Ross took an interest in the apparently Celtic carved stone heads and took possession of the Hexham pair. She had several others that were similar and wanted to compare them, believing these were at least 2000 years old. Dr. Ross lived and worked in Southampton at the time, and had heard nothing of the strange goings-on and apparent return of the 'Wolf of Allendale' associated with the carved heads. A few nights later at around 2.00am, she woke from sleep feeling cold and frightened. Looking up she saw a strange figure in the doorway of her bedroom. She later stated:

It was about six feet high, slightly stooping, and it was black, against the white door, and it was half animal and half man. The upper part, I would have said, was a wolf, and the lower part was human and, I would have again said, that it was covered with a kind of black, very dark fur. It went out and I just saw it clearly, and then it disappeared, and something made me run after it, a thing I wouldn't normally have done, but I felt compelled to run after it. I got out of bed and I ran, and I could hear it going down the stairs, then it disappeared towards the back of the house.

Dr. Ross simply dismiss the event as a nightmare, but when she later returned home with her husband, archaeologist Richard Feacham, they found their teenage daughter, Berenice, distraught and in tears. After some coaxing she managed to explain the reason for her state, and Anne suddenly realized that she had not been dreaming the night before. As Berenice later told, she had returned to the empty house at 4.00pm. As it opened the front door she saw a large shape rushing down the stairs toward her. Halfway down, the thing suddenly stopped and vaulted the banisters, landing with a soft thud like a heavy animal with thickly padded feet.

Dr.Ross decided that the stone heads were the source of the problem, and promptly disposed of her whole collection. The Hexham finds were soon passed into the hands of other collectors, including the British Museum, where they were displayed to the public for a short time until reports of eerie occurrences forced them into storage.

Reportedly, the stone heads were examined at Southampton and Newcastle Universities for proof of their age. Chemist Dr. Don Robins noticed that the stone heads contained a large amount of quartz, therefore hypothesizing that they were somehow storing energy. The heads were later buried in an undisclosed location however, this resulted in unusual goings on in the area of the burial. Now the heads seem to have disappeared without a trace. These artifacts have disappeared from public knowledge and their current whereabouts are unknown.

Spooky. Anyway, Da-da had read about this latter account from 1972 -- 72 again, spooky! -- but had never seen any of the skulls involved, until now. He recognized them as being perhaps part of the ancient game of Noughts & Crosses, otherwise known as Tic Tac Toe, played as far back as the Ancient Egyptians (and who knows where they got it -- it's OLD):

Noughts & Crosses, aka Tic-Tac-Toe.

Look familiar? Those heads the two boys found in Hexham could be part of an Egyptian Noughts & Crosses game. It's been Da-da's pet theory for years that the Ancient Egyptians had some involvement with the ancient, prehistoric British Isles (besides similar symbolism, some even boast Egyptian place names, like the Pharaoh's/Faros Islands, the SET-LAND/Shetland Islands, etc.).

But so what, big deal. What has all this to do with little crystaline skulls and multiple freaking werewolf manifestations (not to mention the mechanism of how one conjures the other)? Well... could THIS be what the above witnesses were seeing...

Boo!

...Anubis, Egyptian god of the dead, Egypt's oldest god? (Not The Grateful Dead, that's a whole other dog-headed god entirely.) He's admittedly a bit too civilized here, so let's picture him a little coarser and hairier and more powerful, like this from artist, Ramy Magdy:

"RRARG, I'm runnin' down your stairs, fools! Boo!"

Not sure why this be the case, but Da-da's just here to point out patterns. As Da-da has said many times, being A Man Called Da-da -- and living in a haunted house -- has prepared him for accepting all sorts of bizarro events (weird diaper changes, projectile vomiting, small child levitation, bigfoot in the shower, etc.), so he takes all this stuff at face value. Of course, it really doesn't matter, but if you're digging in your garden in the British Isles and you uncover some little skulls, or an ancient noughts & crosses/tic-tac-toe board, you might wanna just box them up and send them to the Queen. She LOVES werewolves, being one herself; here she is, getting ready to transform:

We are SO not amused. And we are SO going to rip your throat out with our fangs and claws.

We Are Not Amused

Anyone know why Queeny was wearing her Happy Face for the Olympic opening ceremonies? Does she know something we don't?

Doppelganger Monday (KIR ROYALE EDITION)

Queen Elizabeth clearly LOVES kir royales. Can you spot the clue?

Ok, two things. First off, Da-da's ma-ma -- aka Grandma Scotty -- is a living dead-ringer for Queen Elizabeth II. More importantly, there's the issue of exactly why Her Highness is holding a swanky (empty) liter bottle-orb of...

...Chambord?... at Her coronation. (One guess as to Queen Elizabeth's and Grandma Scotty's favorite... er, favourite beverage.) She even totes around that same golden sceptre to whack errant moose -- which surprisingly is the exact same reason Queen Elizabeth weilds her own fancy whackstick. What a strange and wondrous, teeny tiny world we live in... now in 3-D! Kir royales for everyone. Yes, at 10:00 in the morning, Ms. Demeanor. The kids are off from school today, and have been for four days now. Krikey.

Boxing Day Shocker: U.S. Given Back to Britain

Flabbergasted at the giftage, Her Majesty then started giggling like a little girl.

This from today's shocking AcmeVaporware/Illuminati release:

U.S. to Give Itself Back to Britain

AcmeVaporware Advanced Diplomatic Conservation Section and Bavarian Illuminati Reveal 50-year Plan to Place the U.S. Back Under British Rule; Queen Thrilled Beyond Words; U.S. Boxed Up and Re-branded, “The Colonies”

LONDON, UK, December 26, 2010 - In a deal reportedly worth well over
$200 trillion over the next fifty years, The Bavarian Illuminati and AcmeVaporware (AVW) today unveiled a detailed 50-year plan to box up the United States and give it back to Britain before a good-natured Boxing Day crowd of bemused Londoners. Citing all kinds of political power vacuumage, illegal bankster thingies and treasonous utterings of some of its more questionable subjects, AVW/Illuminati diplomatic officials began the process of putting Queen Elizabeth II and the British Government back in the driver's seat of, "The Colonies."

The plan calls for a complete and utter takeover of all levels of the U.S. Government, and promises to bring, "an almost Canadian," level of politeness, common sense and thrift back to Civil Servants, as well as all levels of Corporate America. In return for their unflinching generosity and guile, all AVW/Illuminati executives were secretly knighted, given titles and granted HUGE tracts o' land.

“Actually, because the majority of the land in the U.S. is British-owned anyway -- and Queen Elizabeth II the largest single landowner in the world -- we at AVW/Illuminati Ltd. thought this the next logical step,” said Dr. John Smallberries, former Chairman of AVW and newly minted Earl of Essex, doing donuts in a '52 Black Bentley across the verdant copses of St. Scooby-on-the-Heather. “This is all about infusing some good old fashioned manners -- and plain ol' Imperialistic verve -- back into our existing lifeless political PR showcase. 'Congress: the play we all pay not to see.' Well, not any more!” Dr. Smallberries later distributed knighthoods to fleeing children and clergy at well over 90 miles per hour.

“This is unconstitutional and ridiculous,” said former Vice President Dick Cheney, caught uncomfortably selling nuclear weapons to men in dark suits and glasses. “This is unbelievable and unprecedented. Inania like this is truly reflective of the expectations being placed on our shadow government representatives and how the Internet infrastructure is currently being used to erode our superior way of life by a nameless Netterati terrorist rabble.”

When asked for his reaction to the day's events, President Obama said, "Good," breathed a sigh of relief and went to play hoops. 

“We are not precisely sure what Dr. Smallberries intended with this grand gesture, but we are immensely gratified with any gift of this size,” said Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, in a smart tea-colored suit created for the occasion. “We welcome back our estanged colonies with open arms.

Her Majesty's First Royal Colonial Action was to issue an arrest warrant for the entire Bush Administration, along with Sarah Palin, John McCain, Rupert Murdoch and all of Fox News, as well as Roger Goodell, NFL Commissioner (whom the Queen went after, herself, helmet-to-helmet). Her Second Royal Colonial Action forced all members of the Senate to work at a drive-in located in Devonshire (that will only show Peter Fonda movies, the Queen's favorite). Her Third Royal Colonial Action gifted Boston back to Ireland. And Her Fourth Royal Colonial Action renamed Washington, DC, "HOUNDSDITCH."

While most Americans got behind this, Sarah Palin started taking potshots at the Queen for all of thirty seconds before she was clapped in irons and put in the Tower of London, where she'll be responsible for mouth-feeding ravens and working the gift shop for the rest of her life.  

When not killing wolves for fun, Sarah Palin often prepares to welcome visitors
to the new U.S.-themed Tower of London Gift Shop.