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Trunk possibly belonged to a nurse, or a relative of the author of “Peter Pan.”

This Jean M. Barrie, seen in the 1918 edition of Lyceum

Who was Jean M. Barrie, the woman whose steamer trunk stored for decades in the basement of a Los Angeles apartment building contained the mummified remains of two babies?

That’s the question investigators were mulling Thursday, two days after the babies — wrapped in newspapers from the 1930s — were discovered when the basement was being cleared out. As the county coroner began an autopsy on the bodies Thursday, Los Angeles Police Department detectives were left to sift through a crime scene that also is a time capsule.

Inside the trunk, police found a fur wrap, a flapper dress, a beaded purse and a bundle of blank medical test forms.
The medical forms, detectives said, point them in the direction of a woman named Jean M. Barrie, who lived in the area and may have worked as a nurse. She was born in San Francisco in 1916. Detectives said they found postcards in the trunk addressed to a Jean M. Barrie from a brother, Thomas, in San Francisco.

LAPD sources said one of the biggest challenges will be to determine whether a crime was committed. Detectives from the LAPD juvenile division’s abused child section are hoping medical tests can determine whether the babies were stillborn, aborted or subjected to trauma.

Detectives also are considering other leads, including the possibility that the trunk may have belonged to a different woman — also named Jean M. Barrie — who was a well-known storyteller and performer at the time.

This Jean Barrie apparently lived in the Midwest and on the East Coast and was a relative of James M. Barrie, the author of the children’s book “Peter Pan.”

Several clues point in this woman’s direction. A copy of “Peter Pan” was found inside the trunk Tuesday along with a membership certificate for the Peter Pan Woodland Club, a Big Bear resort.

But it’s unclear whether Barrie ever lived in Los Angeles. An ad in the 1918 edition of Lyceum Magazine shows a stern-faced Barrie in a decorative lace and velvet dress. The ad hails her as a “Reader of Plays and Miscellaneous Programs.”

Gloria Gomez, manager of the Glen-Donald apartment building near MacArthur Park, said the trunk had been sitting in storage, unclaimed, for decades. On Tuesday night, Gomez and building resident Yeming Xing broke the lock with a screwdriver to see what was inside.

They found books, postcards, a beautiful crystal bowl and two leather doctor’s satchels. Inside each satchel was the body of a baby. Each was swaddled in a blanket and wrapped in a faded, 1930s-era Los Angeles Times newspaper.

Xing, who discovered the first body, said Wednesday that it appeared to be a fetus.

“It looked like a baby, but it didn’t have any shape to it,” she said. A USC geneticist, Xing said she believes the baby had been miscarried or possibly had been aborted.

John Medford, a resident at the building, also thinks the bodies may be linked to illegal abortions.

“It was kept secret for 74 years and my theory is that this rolls back the cover on a cruel, tragic and unjust time in America for women,” Medford said. “Ending pregnancies this way would have been commonplace. This was business as usual in all social strata.”

A team of coroner’s investigators, including a pathologist and an anthropologist, will use DNA, toxicology and other tests to determine how the babies died, while detectives try to piece together the life of the woman who kept their bodies tucked carefully among her possessions.

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

Roger Marsh
examiner.com
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:46 CDT

Not every Ozzy Osbourne fan was watching the stage while the entertainer sang “Suicide Solution” in Devore, CA, August 14, 2010, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

One fan looked toward the Little Dipper and watched a triangle UFO flying “higher than any conventional aircraft.”

“The shape was triangular with rounded tips,” the witness stated. “The color of the craft was a pale gray. The middle looking on edgewise was slightly rounded and thicker in the middle, which held 3 round lights in a line strobe-like. Colors were green, yellow and pinkish purple. The lights were like a strobe that blinked and flashed 3-5 times before it disappeared behind a tree that it fit behind.”

“The color of the craft was a pale gray. The middle looking on edgewise was slightly rounded and thicker in the middle, which held 3 round lights in a line strobe-like. Colors were green, yellow and pinkish purple. The lights were like a strobe that blinked and flashed 3-5 times before it disappeared behind a tree that it fit behind.”

Witnessing a UFO while watching an event is reported occasionally. We wrote about a February 18, 2010, sighting: Image: UFO hovers over Arlington’s Cowboys Stadium.

The following is the unedited and as yet uninvestigated report filed with MUFON. Please keep in mind that most UFO reports can be explained as something natural or manmade. If California MUFON investigates and reports back on this case, I will release an update. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

CA, August 14, 2010 – Ozz Fest UFO seen over Devore. MUFON Case # 25107.
This is a report I received from my daughter whom I shall refer to as Bink. She wishes to remain anonymous.

During the concert Ozzy was playing the song Suicide Solution and the audience was looking at Ozzy. Bink glanced towards the Little Dipper at the time.

A UFO appears away from the stage while everyone (she assumes) was watching towards the stage away from the UFO.

This is the report directly. I collected the report as it was fresh in her mind.

The shape was triangular with rounded tips. The color of the craft was a pale gray. The middle looking on edgewise was slightly rounded and thicker in the middle, which held 3 round lights in a line strobe-like. Colors were green, yellow and pinkish purple. The lights were like a strobe that blinked and flashed 3-5 times before it disappeared behind a tree that it fit behind. Bink said the distance was up higher than any conventional aircraft. The craft made no noise but it flew horizontally then flew up then hovered then shook as it left. Bink recognized that it was unlike anything she had ever seen before and she seen it as it was (a weird UFO). She has never seen anything like this before and it was the first thing she said to me when she got home that night with her Dad who didn’t see a thing. She said “Guess who just saw a freaking UFO” were her words exactly.

14-time Emmy winning investigative journalist George Knapp and Above Top Secret blow the lid of the Ruby Pipeline in Nevada, where the Bureau of Land Management is systematically rounding up and killing PROTECTED wild horses, all for the benefit of our friends at British Petroleum. Please share this story.

BP Killing Our Wild Horses–With Our Government’’s Help!

Recently, I noted that Iron Maiden’s current touring show features a spacey, sci-fi back drop, as though the stage was on a moon base. Not only that, but the tour shirt features the band’s mascot planting an Iron Maiden Union Jack on what appears to be the surface of the moon, as the fiendish character is surrounded by little green EBEs. The new album, The Final Frontier, drops next week. In the meantime, check out this astounding video–sort of a cross between Indiana Jones and Alien. And just because the planet blows up at the end, doesn’t mean it’s neccessarily ours!

I will add to this post as I cull new sightings…

This is a site I recently uncovered with a number of UFO sightings clips… I suggest you check out the one called “2010 UFO OVNI– LA California.

http://wn.com/california_ufo

Here’s a report of a fireball from July 31st, culled from http://unitedstatesufo.blogspot.com/2010/07/ball-of-fire-ufo-over-simi-valley.html

Please rsvp asap if you plan on joining us on Saturday, August 7th for the Mummies of the World exhibit at the California Science Center. We need to reserve timed tickets and I need an accurate head count by the middle of next week. Also, parking is $8 per vehicle so let’s all get to know some swell new people and carpool. I’m thinking 2pm reservations… and perhaps meeting at a central location for brunch before hand.

Considering we have special guests joining us from out of town–LOWFI bloggers Adam Gorightly and Andy Colvin–we will follow the mummies up the next day with a group trip to the ever-intriguing Museum of Jurassic Technology (http://www.mjt.org) in the early afternoon, with a side visit to the very important Center for Land Interpretation, which catalogues and studies federal lands. Depending on whether or not we catch him, director Matt Coolidge just might give a little talk for us. http://www.clui.org/

I AM HAVING MAJOR TROUBLE POSTING MY ADDITIONAL LIST OF UPCOMING EVENTS–PLEASE EMAIL ME FOR IT.

Email me directly for details on the above events:  Skylaire@gmail.com

Thanks to LOWFI friend Loren Coleman for this post from a few years ago… check out his great site! http://www.cryptomundo.com

Tom Phillips – 19th July, 2010  Share| 

Man hit by six meteorites is being ‘targeted by aliens’

A Bosnian man who claims he is being targeted by extraterrestrials after a series of meteorite strikes on his house has now been hit by a sixth space rock in the space of a few years.

Radivoje Lajic and one of the many space rocks of doom to have rained down upon his house

A classic, the Wetzel tale to follow. It brought back memories. I recall a night-time trip many years ago from Los Angeles to Laughlin, Nevada, to attend the International UFO Congress with my then-boyfriend Adam. We were nearing the city when we came upon a large hill which drivers have to navigate around to reach Laughlin’s main drag. From the top, we could see the hotels and garish lights of the city. As we descended around the bend, I, the passenger, noticed a pair of flailing arms down a ways on the right side of the road. Perhaps a driver had rolled his car off the mountain? As we approached, we noticed something odd.

The figure flailed madly, and didn’t seem intent on flagging down any motorists. Instead, it stood in place, like one of those stupid car wash parachute men–which are, I’ve come to learn, called air dancers. As we came closer, I noticed not a face but the shape of its head. It was like an outsized pumpkin, and its arms were very spindly and far too long. It was around midnight, and we were driving too fast for me to make out facial features, but as we came withing about 15 feet the figure suddenly lunged at my car door, scratching at it as if it wanted to open it and eat me or something.

It happened too fast to notice much, although there was no sign of a vehicle, overturned or otherwise. It didn’t speak, or make noise of any kind.

Shaken, we took comfort in the city fast approaching. I was looking forward to this, my first UFO Congress. Perhaps, I said, we were hallucinating from sleep deprivation as we made our way out of the brand new rental car and around to the trunk to retrieve our suitcases.

Perhaps we had been hallucinating, but for one detail.

The rearview mirror looked as though it had been knocked nearly off, and there were a number of large, vicious scratches on the outside of my car door.

–Skylaire Alfvegren

As the weather heats up, strange creatures go on the prowl.

More than 20 years ago, South Carolina’s Lee County became famous because of the Lizard Man. On a June night in 1988, 16-year-old Christopher Davis of Bishopville, S.C. first spotted the two-legged reptilian creature when it bounded out of the swamp and attacked his car, leaving scratch marks on the roof. He was the first to report seeing this creature and it led to that part of South Carolina becoming known as the home of the Lizard Man.

And it seems that other places may be home to similar unknown beasts. One night in 1958, a southern California man ran into something like the Lizard Man.

It was Saturday, Nov. 8, 1958 and Charles Wetzel was driving his green two-door 1952 Buick in Riverside, Calif. The man was simply trying to get home that night and he was listening to a radio station out of Los Angeles. All of a sudden, Wetzel’s car radio was full of static. He changed the stations but it did not help.

At around the same time, Wetzel’s Buick reached the point where North Main Street crosses the Santa Ana River in Riverside. He saw that the river was overflowing a low point in the road and he slowed down. Then something weird leapt out of the nearby bushes and landed right in front of his car, according to a Web site.

“It had a round, scarecrowish head, like something out of Halloween,” Wetzel said later. “It wasn’t human. It had longer arms than anything I’d ever seen. When it saw me in the car, it reached all the way back to the windshield and began clawing me. It didn’t have any ears. The face was all round. The eyes were shining like something fluorescent, and it had a protruberant mouth.”

Wetzel would later describe the creature’s legs as sticking out sideways from the body, not from the bottom. He stated that its skin looked “scaly, like leaves.” He also said it “screeched like a (something not acceptable in a family newspaper).”

The terrified man reached for the .22-caliber pistol that he kept under the seat of his car. But Wetzel quickly changed his mind about shooting at it. He knew that if he fired the gun it would shatter the windshield that stood between him and the reptilian monster. Wetzel hit the gas instead. The creature fell off the hood and hit the ground.

To make sure he would not get attacked again, Wetzel ran over the creature in the road. He could feel a scraping sound underneath his car. He could also hear a screaming and gurgling sound. Wetzel drove as fast as he could to the nearest police station, according to the Web site.

Later, police found scratches on the car’s hood and windshield. They went back to the scene of the encounter with bloodhounds but found nothing. The very next night, another driver reported a similar experience.

Many years later in 1982, researcher and cryptozoologist Loren Coleman took a closer look at this sighting. He interviewed Wetzel and got a complete account of what happened on that night in 1958.

In his book “Mysterious America,” Coleman writes that he discovered yet another Charles Wetzel who had seen a weird creature. This Charles Wetzel, who lived in Nebraska, had reported seeing something looking like a 6-foot-tall kangaroo hopping around his farm in July of the same year. The sighting left a profound impact on this Charles Wetzel. He named a beer for it at the brewery he operated in Nebraska. He called it Wetzel Kangaroo Beer.

Contact Mike Conley by e-mail: nconley@mcdowellnews.com.