Archaeologists Find Massive 3,000-Year-Old Statue in Cairo Slum

Archaeologists from Egypt and Germany have found a massive eight-meter statue submerged in ground water in a Cairo slum that they say probably depicts revered Pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.

The discovery, hailed by the Antiquities Ministry as one of the most important ever, was made near the ruins of Ramses II's temple in the ancient city of Heliopolis, located in the eastern part of modern-day Cairo.

"Last Tuesday they called me to announce the big discovery of a colossus of a king, most probably Ramses II, made out of quartzite," Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani told Reuters on Thursday at the site of the statue's unveiling.

The most powerful and celebrated ruler of ancient Egypt, the pharaoh also known as Ramses the Great was the third of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and ruled from 1279 to 1213 BCE.

He led several military expeditions and expanded the Egyptian Empire to stretch from Syria in the east to Nubia in the south. His successors called him the "Great Ancestor."

"We found the bust of the statue and the lower part of the head and now we removed the head and we found the crown and the right ear and a fragment of the right eye," Anani said.

On Thursday, archaeologists, officials, local residents, and members of the news media looked on as a massive forklift pulled the statue's head out of the water

The joint Egyptian-German expedition also found the upper part of a life-sized limestone statue of Pharaoh Seti II, Ramses II's grandson, that is 31 inches long.

The sun temple in Heliopolis was founded by Ramses II, lending weight to the likelihood the statue is of him, archaeologists say.

It was one of the largest temples in Egypt, almost double the size of Luxor's Karnak, but was destroyed in Greco-Roman times. Many of its obelisks were moved to Alexandria or to Europe and stones from the site were looted and used for building as Cairo developed.

Experts will now attempt to extract the remaining pieces of both statues before restoring them. If they are successful and the colossus is proven to depict Ramses II, it will be moved to the entrance of the Grand Egyptian Museum, set to open in 2018.

An ancient Egyptian obelisk unearthed in Matariya.

Creation site:

The discovery was made in the working class area of Matariya, among unfinished buildings and mud roads.

Dietrich Raue, head of the expedition's German team, told Reuters that ancient Egyptians believed Heliopolis was the place where the sun god lives, meaning it was off-limits for any royal residences.

"The sun god created the world in Heliopolis, in Matariya. That's what I always tell the people here when they say is there anything important. According to the pharaonic belief, the world was created in Matariya," Raue said.

"That means everything had to be built here. Statues, temples, obelisks, everything. But ... the king never lived in Matariya, because it was the sun god living here."

The find could be a boon for Egypt's tourism industry, which has suffered many setbacks since the uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011 but remains a vital source of foreign currency. The number of tourists visiting Egypt slumped to 9.8 million in 2011 from more than 14.7 million in 2010.

A bomb attack that brought down a Russian plane carrying 224 people from a Red Sea resort in October 2015 further hit arrivals, which dropped to 1.2 million in the first quarter of 2016 from 2.2 million a year earlier.

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Wasgo (Haidu Legend)

A sea cryptozoological creature from the beliefs of the Haida Native Americans (Northwest Coast of Americas). It is long reptilian serpent that has small legs and a small head. The legend tells of a young gambling man with a pesky mother-in-law, who goes dive-fishing at night dressed in the sking of sea monster. He caught many fish that day but was then overcome by two whales. The two whales after making the fake skin his own, allowed him to go back to land only for the purpose of bringing his wife to his new underwater home. Good fortune will come to anyone lucky enough to see him, his wife, or their offspring, the "Daughters of the Creeks." It is said to be very auspicious to see the Wasgo, his wife or his children. 

Also known as Sisiutl, Haietlik and Sea-Wolf.The creature has been a totem animal of several regional Indian tribes, a distinction shared only with the Thunderbird. Native representations of the beast depict a long, serpentine animal with small forelimbs and a doglike or crocodilian head. The beast is aquatic, extremely powerful — mightier than the killer whale, carnivorous, toothed, tailed, and finned. The animal may have had only forelegs.
           

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4,000-year-old tomb is unearthed in Egypt

More discoveries are revealed week after week in Egypt reaching the Spanish Archaeological Mission discovery of an intact burial chamber in Qubbet el-Hawa, West Aswan.

According to team leader Alejandro Jimenez-Serrano, the burial belongs to Sarenput II, the brother of one of the most important governors of the 12th Dynasty (middle Kingdom).

“The discovery is important because not only for the richness of the burial but it sheds light on those individuals who were shadowed by others in power. In fact, there is no much information about them,” said Mahmoud Afifi, head of the ancient Egyptian antiquities department of the antiquities ministry

Director of Aswan Antiquities Nasr Salama said that the present finding is unique because it has been located with all the funerary goods, which consist of pottery, two cedar coffins (outer and inner) and a set of wooden models, which represents funerary boats and scenes of the daily life.

Another discovery has been disclosed through the efforts of Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano, director of the Spanish mission of the University of Jaen. A mummy covered with a polychrome cartonnage, a beautiful mask and collars in good condition of preservation, was discovered, yet remains under study.

The inscriptions of the coffins bear the name of the defunct, Shemai, followed respectively by his mother and father, Satethotep and Khema. The latter was governor of Elephantine under the reign of Amenemhat II.

Serrano explained that Sarenput II, the eldest brother of Shemai, was one of the most powerful governors of Egypt under the reigns of Senwosret II and Senwosret III. Apart from his duties as governor of Elephantine, he was general of the Egyptian troops and was responsible for the cult of different gods.

Overall the find has revealed much about the ruling family of Elephantine as well as what life might have been like for the upper classes in the region more than 3,800 years ago.

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Duwende

Duwende have been defined as different but similar things: goblins, hobgoblins, elves, dwarves, gnomes, little spirits, and more. The name comes from duende, the Spanish word for goblin/elf, and dueño, the Spanish word for the "real owner of the house." They live in houses, trees, underground, and other rural areas. They also live in mounds, which makes them mistaken for "nuno sa punso," which means "old man of the mound."In some stories Duwende are a separate race and in others Nuno and Laman Lupa are simply another Duwende.

Appearance:

Duwende is Spanish word for “dwarf” and these creatures resemble small dwarves or gnomes who dwell underground, in trees, or sometimes take residence with humans who leave them offerings. They stand about 3-6 inches tall and usually have white, grey, or black skin. In some descriptions they only have one eye and one nostril.

Legend:

The Duwende could easily be substituted with the elves from the fairy tale about the elves and the cobbler. When treated well and left offerings (particularly sweets, fruits and chocolate), they will help the land and those kind to them become prosperous with their enchantments. Usually somewhat benevolent, they have been known to be quite helpful “house spirits.”

However, if you cross a Duwende or are rude, they can be quite spiteful. They are also said to love minerals and gold much like classic fantasy dwarves or leprechauns.

It’s very important to note that politeness, offerings, and following the form of the old ways is very important to Duwende and their ilk. So if one minds their manners when encountering a Duwende, they will likely receive aid and information. If one is rude, bad luck and curses of all sorts will befall them. In some stories, this is associated with their color (white for good luck, black for bad). Those cursed by Duwende have been known to hallucinate and fall into near comatose states. 

Duwende usually come out at noon for an hour and at night. Phillipinos who believe in the existence of Duwende leave food on the floor so that the Duwende can be peaceful and protective of their homes. However, they can still be little tricksters who love to steal things and laugh while you search for it, only returning it when they feel like it or if you tell them to (please) return it. (Check out this tale of someone's encounter with a Duwende!) If really provoked, Duwende can cause sickness or even death upon its victim.

Some Phillipinos use the story of the Duwende as a cautionary tale to children (and adults too) to not snack after bedtime. One story goes that if you creep into the kitchen at night to get a snack, the Duwende can take your soul and trap you inside any kitchen equipment nearby (you wouldn't want to be trapped inside your rice cooker, would you?). To get children to finish their food, parents threaten the Duwende would come after them.

Phillipinosbelieve that saying, "Tabi-tabi po" or "Bari-bari apo ma ka ilabas kami apo" can help keep the Duwende from playing tricks on you. The phrases excuse the person for bothering the Duwende.

When the Duwende aren't hiding people's belongings or trapping people in rice cookers, they sing, make noise, throw sand and pebbles, knock over kitchen utensils, and sometimes even play with children.

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Giant Chicken

A footage of Giant Chicken was captured in Kosovo,Russia.This bird is stupendous.Have a look!

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Haunted door brazil

A truly disturbing new video from Brazil is currently going viral with the people of Reddit. (They love being scared.) It was posted Tuesday morning with the title "Creepy cam footage of forcefully slamming door at Brazilian morgue."

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Ozark Howler

The Ozark howler also known as Ozark Black Howler is a legendary creature that is purported to live in remote areas in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas.The Ozark Howler got his name by the residents and hunters.It is said to roam the remote parts of Ozark mountains. The reports originate from a vast area that includes parts of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

Appearance:

The witnesses describe Ozark Howler as a bear-sized creature, with a thick body, stocky legs, black shaggy hair, a goat-like beard, glowing red eyes and having prominent horns protruding out of its head.The creature also has a tail, but one of the many things witnesses can't agree on is whether it has a short tail or a long tail.

Howl:

The most distinctive feature of the Ozark Howler is its unusual cry. Far more people have claimed to have heard the Ozark Howler than to have seen it. It's agreed upon by all witnesses that the creature has a terrifying howl, but what this howl sounds like varies wildly, perhaps even more so than its physical description.Its cry is often described as being a combination of a wolf's howl and an elk's bugle, witnesses have also described it as being similar to a hyena's laugh.

Origins:

The mysteries of the Ozarks are part of their charm. Folk tales of ghosts, monsters and strange creatures in the region date back hundreds of years. Unlike the well-known Arkansas Wild Man of the 19th century and the Boggy Creek and White River monsters of the 20th, the Ozark Howler mystery is complicated because eyewitnesses vary widely in their descriptions of what they have seen.

The origins of the Ozark Howler legend aren't very clear. Some sources claim that there have been sightings as far back as the early 1800s. In the 1950s, there was a supposed sighting where a black, goat-like creature was described as being the Ozark Howler, despite not matching the current common descriptions at all.

The idea that the Ozark Howler is a cat-like creature supposedly originates from a sighting in the early 1980s when a truck driver who had pulled off the road for the night described seeing a black, cat-like creature that had a long tail, shaggy fur, a stocky build, a beard, and red eyes.

There has been speculation that the Ozark Howler might merely be a misidentified big cat. The Arkansas Fish and Game Department does not recognize its existence as a previously unknown animal because no one has ever caught one or recovered a body. Instead, the agency says that these sightings are actually of pet panthers that have somehow escaped captivity.

There are similar elements to folklore about the ozark howler of America. First of all, there's the general size and shape of the animal: large, stocky, black fur and glowing eyes. Ozark "locals" describe the ozark howler as a "cat-like creature" three or four feet at the shoulder (much larger than any lynx, but also point out that the beast is supposed to have a rather stocky build. The difference between a stocky cat of such a size and a large dog is not so great as one might think, especially if they are seen at night. The ozark howler is reported to be a nocturnal beast.

Another theory on the identity of the Ozark Howler links it to the extinct saber-toothed cats (Smilodon), the idea here being that it may be a modern descendant of these animals. 

The most recent sightings of the ozark howler do not include the immediate death of the observer, but older reports and the resulting legends recorded by visiting university students and newspaper reporters include references to the belief that the ozark howler could cause the death of any human so unlucky as to catch its attention, merely by staring at the person.

It is important to remember that most of the oldest families of the Ozarks are of Irish, Scottish and English descent.In the cryptozoological community, it has been suggested that the Ozark Howler is related to the Black Dog of Death from British folklore, creatures often said to be associated with hellhounds or the devil. Some sources have claimed that the first sightings of the creature originated with settlers from Ireland, Scotland, and England, who would have brought the legend of the Black Dog of Death with them, and over time the legend evolved into its modern iteration.

Chad Arment asserts in his book Cryptozoology that the Ozark Howler myth is a hoax. According to Arment, he and many other cryptozoologists received email messages that made wild claims about Ozark Howler evidence. These messages were tracked down to a university student who had made a bet that he could fool the cryptozoological research community.However, many witnesses to seeing it in person in the region, prior to this hoax, show that Chad Arment's assertion was only correct in the one case, but not in the many cases of those who either haven't a computer, have seen the Howler prior to the hoax or have seen it without hearing of the legend.

Chronology:

Between 2005 and 2010, the Howler (also called the Black Howler or the Devil Cat) was spotted several times. A family living north of Van Buren in the Boston mountains of Crawford County set out trail cams after spotting what they believed was a cougar. The images they supplied to a Fort Smith television station appeared to show a big cat similar to a cougar (mountain lion).

At roughly the same time as the Crawford County sightings, similar reports originated from across the border in eastern Oklahoma. Those sightings revolved around large dark cats seen moving through the mountains.

Other reports from near Dardanelle in the Arkansas River Valley described strange 
sounds in the night similar to the laugh or bark of a hyena. From higher elevations, 
witnesses reported seeing what they described as a large "stocky" cat.

A sighting was reported in Newton County, Arkansas in 2011.Most recently a sighting of the Ozark Howler was reported after dark on Pump Station Road near Lake Springdale (at the line of Washington County, AR) in Benton County, Arkansas in 2016.

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Kumakatok

The Kumakatok ("door knockers") are a group of three robed figures which are said to knock on doors in the middle of the night and bring bad omens. They allegedly look like humans, but wear hoods that obscure their faces to some extent. One resembles a pretty, young woman, while the other two look like elderly men.These figures are usually omens of death, the eldest member of the family dying after they show their presence.

A visit from the Kumakatok is usually an omen of death, as either the eldest member of the house, or one who is ill, will be visited and subsequently die. The visits are supposedly more frequent after a disease outbreak. Residents of  Luzon and Visayas at one time painted white crosses on their doors to ward off the Kumakatok. This trend was said to cause the trio to switch from residences to government buildings, hospitals, and even churches.

There are no stories of how the group was formed or where they originated but tales about them have popped up all over the Philippines.Reported sightings of the Kumakatok have declined significantly since World War II. One explanation is that many buildings were destroyed at that time, leaving the Kumakatok few doors upon which to knock.There were no accounts of anyone answering the three.

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The Enfield Horror

The vast reaches of forest and open fields of southern Illinois, combined with the sparse population in some areas, seem to invite weirdness that might not occur in cities and more crowded locales. In the most southern portions of the region, the Shawnee National Forest covers miles and miles of territory. The acres of forest seem almost untouched by man and some believe that strange things occasionally pass through here, unseen by human eyes.

This southern portion of the state is sometimes referred to as the “Devil’s Kitchen”, a designation left behind by the Native Americans and the early settlers to explain strange sights and sounds like unexplained balls of light, apparitions, screams in the night and various other unsettling types of phenomena. The Native Americans often considered such sites as “sacred” but the settlers usually believed them to be “cursed”, or at least well avoided. The idea that such locations were linked to the "Devil" was the first thought that crossed the minds of the bible-reading, god-fearing folks and they promptly set about to do two things. They learned to avoid these strange and haunted places and secondly, they gave names to the spots to alert other visitors and settlers of the dangers of the area. In the case of the Devil’s Kitchen, just about anything is possible, from ghosts reports to mystery animals and weird monster sightings.

Appearance:

The Enfield Horror was described as a 5 ft tall, gray-skinned creature having three legs with three clawed feet, two stumpy arms coming out of the chest region and having big pink eyes the size of flashlights.

Chronology:

During the early 1970s, something horrible stalked the small town of Enfield, Illinois. Although Illinois is already home to phenomena such as strange lights, phantom black panthers, and Thunderbirds, something even stranger briefly haunted the people of this town. On April 25th, 1973, Henry McDaniel was among the first to encounter this terrible aberration, the Enfield Horror.


At 9:30 on the night of April 25, 1973, McDaniel and his wife had returned home, and were greeted by their two children, Lil and Henry. The kids proceeded to tell him a tale about how some “thing” had tried to get into the house by scratching on the door. Shortly thereafter, Henry was alerted to a peculiar scratching sound at his front door. He expected to see a dog or a cat, but what he met instead was far stranger.

Assuming that it was some sort of stray animal, a skeptical Henry McDaniel cavalierly approached the door and yanked it open. What he saw before him would have shook even the most courageous man to the core.

What Henry found, to his terror, was a creature that “had three legs on it, a short body, two little short arms, and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four-and-a-half-feet tall and was grayish-colored. It was trying to get into the house!” .Needless to say, McDaniel was not letting it in, he slammed the door, and rushed to grab his .22 pistol and a flashlight. Henry proceeded to fire on the creature four times, and according to him, “When I fired that first shot, I know I hit.” The beast hissed at him (most sources say that it sounded like a wildcat) and proceeded to bound away in long leaps across the yard, eventually becoming lost to McDaniel’s sight as it made its way towards the railroad embankment and the cover of the trees. He asserted that he had seen the thing cover fifty feet in three leaps.

McDaniel quickly called the police and Illinois state troopers who responded to the call found tracks "like those of a dog, except they had six toe pads." The tracks were measured and two of them were four inches across and the third track was slightly smaller.Investigators soon learned that a young boy, Greg Garrett, who lived just behind McDaniel, had been playing in his yard about a half-hour before. Suddenly, the creature had appeared and attacked him. Apparently, though, it just stepped on his feet, but this was enough to tear the boy's tennis shoes to shreds. Greg had run into the house, crying hysterically.However, the police couldn’t find any trace of the entity, so things cooled down for the moment.

On May 6, Henry McDaniel was awakened in the middle of the night by howling neighborhood dogs. He looked out his front door and saw the monster again. It was standing out near the railroad tracks. "I didn't shoot at it or anything," McDaniel reported. "It started on down the railroad track. It wasn't in a hurry or anything."
McDaniel's bizarre reports soon brought publicity to Enfield and prompted the threats from the county sheriff, but it was too late. Soon, hordes of curiosity-seekers, reporters, and researchers descended on the town. Among the "monster hunters" were five young men who were arrested by Deputy Sheriff Jim Clark as "threats to public safety" and for hunting violations. This was after they had opened fire on a gray, hairy thing that they had seen in some underbrush on May 8. Two of the men thought they had hit it, but it sped off, moving faster than a man could.

Other witnesses came forward. Among them were Rick Rainbow, the local news director of WWKI radio. Rainbow claims that he and three others sighted the creature running near an abandoned home not far from the McDaniel's property. Rainbow allegedly was able to record a vocalization of the creature and shared it with noted cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman. Upon investigating Loren told the press, "I traveled to Enfield, interviewed the witnesses, looked at the siding of the house the Enfield Monster had damaged, heard some strange screeching banshee-like sounds, and walked away bewildered."

Between the years of 1941 and 1942, there was a string of similar sightings in the small village of Mt. Vernon (which is, ironically, less than forty miles away from Enfield). These encounters involved a mysterious leaping beast that terrorized the local people, and is supposedly responsible for numerous animal deaths and mutilations in the region.

The locals called the creature "the Mt. Vernon Monster," and described it as being vaguely baboonlike in appearance and able to leap anywhere from twenty to forty feet in a single bound. However, this creature is likened more to the Devil Monkey than the Enfield Monster. But it is a possibility that this was, in fact, the same creature.

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