Stranger than Fiction

...now browsing by category

Church-Goers Exposed To Hepatitis During Christmas Communion

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

Hundreds of people might have been exposed to hepatitis A while receiving communion on Christmas Day, Long Island officials said Monday.

The Nassau County Department of Health is offering vaccines to those who attended two services at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park in Long Island, New York, according to Nassau County Department of Health spokeswoman Mary Ellen Laurain.

Individuals might be at risk if they received communion during the 10:30 am and noon Masses, according to a statement from the county health department.

“We know that there’s a potential that (exposure) could have happened,” she said. “We think the risk is relatively low.”

At least one member of the clergy involved in the communion process was infected with the disease, Laurain said.

There have been no additional reports of illness.

Some 1,300 people were in attendance between the two church services, she added.

Symptoms of the disease include the onset of fever, fatigue, poor appetite, nausea, stomach pain, dark-colored urine and jaundice, according the statement. The disease is rarely fatal and most people recover within a few weeks without complications, it said.

Individuals exposed to the disease should receive vaccination within two weeks of exposure, the statement said.

Source: CNN

Posted in Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »

Discovery Channel And Vatican Team Up For Exorcism Show

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Discovery Channel is teaming with the Vatican for an unprecedented new series hunting the deadliest catch of all: Demons.

The Exorcist Files will recreate stories of real-life hauntings and demonic possession, based on cases investigated by the Catholic Church. The project includes access into the Vatican’s case files, as well as interviews with the organization’s top exorcists — religious experts who are rarely seen on television.

“The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we’re not going to try to tell people what to think,” says Discovery president and GM Clark Bunting.

Bunting says the investigators believe a demon can inhabit an inanimate object (like a home) or a person. The network executive says he was initially skeptical when first meeting the team but was won over after more than three hours of talks.

“The work these folks do, and their conviction in their beliefs, make for fascinating stories,” Bunting says.

If the show’s first season is successful, the network hopes its partnership with the Church will pave the way for producers GoGo Luckey to take the series to the next level — joining Catholic investigators on live demon-purging ride-alongs. (Move over, Syfy’s Ghost Hunters.)

Exorcist Files marks one of two new series coming to the network and first reported by EW. The other is the intriguing Disappeared (working title), produced by Pilgrim Films, which will test whether its possible to really “go off the grid,” as contestants ditch their identities and attempt to hide anywhere in the world from a team of trackers.

The Exorcist Files will debut this spring on Discovery Channel; an exact date has not yet been set.

Source: Inside TV

Posted in Catholic Church, Stranger than Fiction | 1 Response »

Romania Declares Witchcraft A Legal Profession

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

BUCHAREST, Romania — Romania has changed its labor laws to officially recognize witchcraft as a profession, prompting one self-described witch to threaten retaliation.

The move, which went into effect Saturday, is part of the government’s drive to crack down on widespread tax evasion in a country that is in recession.

In addition to witches, astrologists, embalmers, valets and driving instructors are now considered by labor law to be working real jobs, making it harder for them to avoid income tax.

For months the measure had been debated, protested by witches and mocked by the media.

On Saturday, a witch called Bratara told Realitate.net, the website of a top TV station, that she plans to cast a spell using black pepper and yeast to create discord in the government.

Source: MSNBC

Posted in Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »

The ‘Jesus Trail’: Bringing Commercialism To The Holy Land For Christmas

Sunday, December 26th, 2010

NAZARETH, Israel – Strains of “Silent Night” stream from the tour bus speakers on what has become known as the Jesus circuit in Nazareth, northern Israel.

Locals here joke that the carols constitute a whole new category of music in the largely Palestinian city, but the bigger joke, they claim, is making money selling Americans their own Christmas music.

“There have always been Christians who come to the Holy Land. But in recent years they come in huge groups, in tour bus caravans, in the thousands!” said Ibrihim Mansouf, a local shop owner in Nazareth. “They want to buy anything, anything that was made in the Holy Land.”

Of the 3.5 million tourists that visit Israel each year, 2.4 million travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories for “Christian Tourism” according to the Israeli Tourism Ministry.

It’s a billion-dollar industry – one that both Israeli and Palestinian businesses have just begun to capitalize on.

“The Holy Land is becoming the heart of life for people of faith across the entire world. Christmas is a tradition of this land, and all the inhabitants can enjoy the atmosphere and message of peace that the season brings,” said Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the custodian of the Holy Land, who oversees Israel and neighboring countries on behalf of the Franciscan Order.

In recent years, there has been a boom in sites and services that mix modern-day tourism with biblical stories. In the north, tourists can visit the “Nazareth Village” a re-creation of life in the time of Christ, complete with wandering shepherds and carpenters who interact with guests.

The “Jesus trail” begins just outside the city, and allows the hardy to walk – quite literally – in the footsteps of Jesus. It’s 40 miles long and takes three to five days to cover. Across the north of Israel, Maronite Christian villages offer one-week Aramaic courses based on readings from the New Testament, as well as walks along the hills where Jesus is said to have given the sermon on the Mount.

All of this before tourists even get to Jerusalem or Bethlehem.

“Tourism is a bridge to peace and dialogue among cultures,” Israeli Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov told reporters recently. In recent years, his office has worked to establish access to tour sites in Israel, as well as in the Palestinian territories, he said.

“If I can bring in three more tourists, and two of them visit the Palestinian areas, they will create employment there. This is a win-win situation for Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” said the Russian-born Misezhnikov.

Not everyone feels that Israel’s new push to cater to Christian tourists benefits both sides equally.

Victor Batarseh, mayor of Bethlehem, recently lashed out as Israeli Tourism officials for trying to “cash in” on tourists visiting the region.

“Israel takes 95 percent of the benefits (of tourism to Bethlehem),” he said. “Israel uses the name of Bethlehem, since religious tourists go to two places, Bethlehem and Jerusalem.”

He argued that years of Israel’s military occupation and the separation barrier that winds its way around the city have made it difficult for businessmen in Bethlehem to make ends meet – let along build the type of infrastructure the tens of thousands of tourists would need.

This year, every single hotel room in Bethlehem has been booked – with tens of thousands of tourists spilling out in neighboring Jerusalem for accommodation.

“We don’t have enough hotel rooms to deal with these numbers. That’s why most of these pilgrims sleep over in Israel. That’s why they get most of the profits,” Batarseh said. There are five new hotels currently under development in Bethlehem, but Batarseh said that 10,000 to 15,000 additional rooms would need to be built to house the tourists the city sees in one Christmas season.

Misezhnikov said Batarseh is unjustly heaping guilt onto Israel. He pointed out that Israel has endorsed several international conferences in Bethlehem to plan and fundraise for future business projects in the city.

“I would support any plan that would build world-class and innovative tourism accommodations. I have been pushing for this whether it happens in the Palestinian areas or Jewish ones,” Misezhnikov said.

Sarah Anderson, a 46-year-old teacher from Chicago, visited Bethlehem and Jerusalem for the first time this week.

“There is a big wall between them, and I was expecting two different worlds,” she said. “But I felt the holiness of each place was equal and special and had nothing to do with politics.”

Source: Miami Herald

Posted in Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »

The Westboro Baptist: Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

The Westboro Baptist Church choir has a special Christmas message for you this season. It seems we have had it wrong all this time.

Posted in Baptist Church, Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »

The Pope Gets An Early X-Mas Gift

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Like most men confronted with Catholic Church leaders, these fellas walk into the room clothed and then proceed to strip and dance.

A group of acrobats stopped by the Vatican to help Pope Benedict XVI celebrate Christmas, or something. (Actually the Fratelli Pellegrini, or “Pellegrini Brothers,” were invited as part of a Vatican-organized circus convention. Yes really.) And not only did they draw applause from the leader of the Holy Sea, but the nuns were about ready to throw their bras on stage.

Posted in Catholic Church, Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »

Actor Says He Was Doing ‘God’s Work’ When He Hacked Up His Mom

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

An unhinged actor Thursday calmly described hacking his beloved mother to death with a sword because he believed a demon had taken hold of her soul.

“I didn’t kill her. I killed the demon inside her,” Michael Brea said in a chilling hourlong interview with the Daily News in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital.

When told his mother, Yannick Brea, 55, had died in the grisly assault early Tuesday, Michael was unrepentant.

“So be it. It was the work of God,” he said.

Speaking with white-hot intensity and unflinching confidence, Brea described a shadowy descent into a world filled with Masonic symbolism and black magic beginning late Sunday when he snapped awake.

“I was sleeping in my bedroom. God came above my bed and reached his arm to me,” said Brea, wearing a light-blue prison jumpsuit and slippers. He told his tale while sitting unhandcuffed on a blue chair behind a wood table.

“I said, ‘God, is my time on earth over?’ I heard a voice say, ‘Yes Michael, today is your last day.’ I asked if I could say goodbye to my family.”

The 31-year-old Brea said he told no one about the dream, but the following afternoon, he said he received another sign while at the Prince Hall Masonic Temple in Harlem, which he’d joined a week earlier.

There, he said, a man approached and tried to put a curse on him.

“[He] kept trying to put something in my hand but wouldn’t show it to me. I kept opening my hand. It was a Freemason pin. I wouldn’t touch it,” Brea said.

Felt like Neo from ‘The Matrix’

He began feeling ill and left, and while riding the train back to Brooklyn, he said, strangers began speaking to him about his mother.

“I felt like Neo from ‘The Matrix.’ I began hearing voices and feeling powerful,” Brea said. “They were asking about the difference between mom and mother. It was a sign.”

When he returned to the family’s Prospect Heights apartment, the bit-part actor who once appeared on “Ugly Betty,” hugged his mother, a God-fearing Haitian immigrant with whom relatives say he had long been very close.

“I knew I would never see my mother again,” he said. “I gave her lots of love.”

He went to his room and lit candles, placed a dagger and a 3-foot ceremonial Freemason sword by his side.

Investigators said he had stolen the sword from the Masonic lodge, but Brea insisted his father had given it to him when he was a child.

“It’s a powerful sword,” he said.

Brea also arranged three saint cards around him – including one of Saint Jude holding a sword.

His mother then knocked on the door and asked him to go to the kitchen and pour water from a pot in which she was cooking three chickens.

“I looked at these chickens lying dead in the pot and a voice told me it was a sacrifice. It was black magic,” he said.

Brea left the chickens alone and went back to his room. When his mother asked why he did not do what she had asked, he said she spoke with a different voice.

“She had the voice of the demon. I opened the door with the dagger at my side and the sword,” he said.

“I asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’ She said, ‘No, Michael no,’ and began screaming. I began slashing her like this,” he said, bringing his right hand down in a violent hacking motion.

Sickening trail of blood

Brea chased his mother from room-to-room, repeatedly swinging the sword, leaving a sickening trail of blood in his wake.

“I didn’t want to kill her right away. I wanted to give her time to get right with God,” he said.

By this point police had arrived outside the apartment, but Brea said he had no doubt he would be able to finish the job.

“I was slashing my mom and I heard the police knocking on the door yelling, ‘Michael, open up, Michael, open up,’ but I knew they wouldn’t open the door and stop me because the spirits were protecting me,” he said.

“I just kept cutting her. No one could stop me. I was doing the work of God,” he said.

“I’m named after a saint myself – Saint Michael. He was protecting the house from the police. They weren’t allowed to enter the apartment.”

Neighbors complained that the officers who initially responded failed to do enough to get inside and stop the sword-wielding maniac before his mother died.

Police officials said the officers handled the situation properly and were waiting for better equipped and trained Emergency Service Unit cops to arrive.

When they finally broke the door down, cops found a trail of bloody footprints and handprints on the walls and floors, and Yannick Brea crumpled on her knees in the bathroom.

Her son stood amid the carnage with the sword in one hand and a Masonic Bible in the other.

“I heard voices telling me how powerful I was, saying ‘Oh he’s good,’” Brea said.

While recounting the gruesome murder, Brea showed no remorse, and his eyes stayed locked on a reporter.

His intensity only broke for a moment when he said he was thirsty and his mouth was dry. Guards gave him a wet towelette to dab at his lips.

Brea said he is convinced he did the right thing.

“Grand Architect of the Universe means God,” he said, referring to an expression neighbors said he shouted as he was being removed from the bloody scene. “I was praising God. To you it might sound silly, but in my culture demons are very real.”

Source: New York Daily News

Posted in Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »

Faith-Healing Parents, Facing Criminal Charges, Fight To Get Baby Back.

Friday, July 30th, 2010

A Beavercreek couple who left their infant daughter’s fate to God rather than seek medical treatment for a mass that grew over her left eye will face charges of first-degree criminal mistreatment.

Prosecutors revealed Thursday during a custody hearing that a grand jury has indicted Timothy and Rebecca Wyland, members of Oregon City’s Followers of Christ church.

The Wylands’ 7-month-old daughter, Alayna, was placed in state custody earlier this month after child-welfare workers received a tip about the untreated and ballooning growth. Doctors said that the condition could cause permanent damage or loss of vision.

The Wylands were indicted within the past few days and probably will be arraigned next week, said Colleen Gilmartin, the deputy district attorney handling the custody case in juvenile court.

Under Oregon law, it is a crime for parents to intentionally and knowingly withhold necessary and adequate medical attention from their children. First-degree criminal mistreatment is a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

The Wylands and their church reject medical care in favor of faith-healing — anointing with oil, laying on of hands, prayer and fasting. The parents testified at a juvenile court hearing last week that they never considered getting medical attention for Alayna.

According to court documents, Rebecca Wyland anointed Alayna with oil each time she changed the girl’s diaper and wiped away the yellow discharge that seeped daily from the baby’s left eye.

Thursday’s hearing was procedural and reached no resolution.

The Wylands’ attorneys, John Neidig and Thurl Stalnaker Jr., offered a plan they said would guarantee the child would receive medical care recommended by doctors, with options such as regular visits from state workers, having a trusted individual occupy the Wyland home and monitoring the family with Skype, an Internet program used for video conferencing.

Attorney Michael Clancy, who represents Alayna, also urged that the girl be sent home.

Clancy, however, was skeptical that prosecutors or child-protection authorities would accept any plan to quickly reunite the family.

“There is no plan, even if we came up with 100 pages of stuff … that is going to be satisfactory,” he said.

Clackamas County Circuit Judge Douglas Van Dyk noted that doctors treating Alayna haven’t reviewed the Wylands’ plan and said he wouldn’t approve the proposal without hearing from the physicians.

But Van Dyk also said Alayna should be returned home once a plan is in place “that makes the community feel secure about the care.”

He told all the attorneys to submit their proposals to him next week and said he would work out a suitable agreement at a July 30 hearing.

“That’s where this case is going as far as this judge is concerned,” Van Dyk said.

There could be a complication.

Prosecutors said that a child usually is not returned to parents accused of criminal mistreatment. It is not clear whether the district attorney’s office will seek a no-contact order or if one would be granted.

Gilmartin, doctors and DHS workers want assurances that Alayna will get treatment that will minimize damage to her eye and address any complications that arise.

Alayna had a small mark over her left eye at birth.

The area started swelling, and the fast-growing mass of blood vessels, known as a hemangioma, eventually caused her eye to swell shut and pushed the eyeball down and outward and started eroding the eye socket bone around the eye.

It’s rare to see a child with an advanced hemangioma because the condition typically is treated as soon as it’s detected, said a doctor who testified at a hearing before Van Dyk last week.

“They never get this large,” said Dr. Thomas Valvano, a pediatrician at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. “This was medical neglect.”

Investigators who interviewed the Wylands noted the grotesque swelling that led DHS to act.

“Alayna’s left eyeball was completely obstructed, and you could not see any of it. The growth was multiple shades of red and maroon and appeared to me to be between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball,” said Clackamas County Detective Christie Fryett in a search warrant affidavit that included pictures of the growth on Alayna’s face.

Alayna is the Wylands’ only child.

Timothy Wyland was a widower when he married Rebecca Wyland two years ago.

Wyland’s first wife, Monique, died of breast cancer in 2006. She had not sought or received medical treatment for the condition, said Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner who signed the death certificate.

Source: The Oregonian

Posted in Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »

Mission accomplished: Vatican blesses Blues Brothers

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

They really were “on a mission from God.”

In a stunning move by the Vatican, the classic Dan Aykroyd-John Belushi comedy film “The Blues Brothers” was declared a “Catholic classic” alongside more pious films such as “The Ten Commandments” and “The Passion of the Christ.”

The announcement was made in the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, corresponding with 30th anniversary of the release of the film.

“As a former altar boy from age 6 . . . but a somewhat lapsed Catholic, I was delighted with the endorsement,” Aykroyd said in a message to The Post yesterday.

AYKROYD & BELUSHI On a mission from God.

“My local monsignor will immediately be receiving a check for parish needs.”

L’Osservatore editor Gian Maria Vian praised the flick for its plot, in which Jake Blues (Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Aykroyd) battle cops, neo-Nazis and crazed country fans in a bid to save the Catholic orphanage where they were raised.

“For them, this Catholic institution is their only family,” Vian wrote. “And they decide to save it at any cost.”

L’Osservatore’s editorial lavishes praise on the 1980 comic romp, in which Aykroyd and Belushi say that they’re “on a mission from God.” The writers call it “incredibly shrewd” noting that in one scene a picture of Pope John Paul II could clearly be seen.

Source: New York Post

Posted in Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »

‘Touchdown Jesus’ Destroyed By Lightning

Friday, June 18th, 2010

A six-story statue of Jesus Christ was struck by lightning and burned to the ground, leaving only a blackened steel skeleton and pieces of foam that were scooped up by curious onlookers Tuesday.

The “King of Kings” statue, one of southwest Ohio’s most familiar landmarks, had stood since 2004 at the evangelical Solid Rock Church along the Interstate 75 freeway in Monroe, just north of Cincinnati.

The lightning strike set the statue ablaze around 11:15 p.m. Monday, Monroe police dispatchers said.

The sculpture, about 62 feet (19 meters) tall and 40 feet (12 meters) wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way the arms were raised, similar to a referee signaling a football touchdown. It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained Tuesday.

The nickname is the same used for a famous mural of the resurrected Jesus that overlooks the Notre Dame football stadium.

The fire spread from the statue to an adjacent amphitheater but was confined to the attic area, and no one was injured, police Chief Mark Neu said.

Estimated damage from the fire was set at $700,000 — $300,000 for the statue and $400,000 for the amphitheater, Fire Capt. Richard Mascarella said Tuesday.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol was at the scene Tuesday to prevent traffic jams and potential accidents from motorists stopping along the highway to take photographs.

Some people were scooping up pieces of the statue’s foam from the nearby pond to take home with them, said church co-pastor Darlene Bishop.

“This meant a lot to a lot of people,” she said.

Travelers on I-75 often were startled to come upon the huge statue by the roadside, but many said America needs more symbols like it. So many people stopped at the church campus that church officials had to build a walkway to accommodate them.

Bishop said the statue will be rebuilt.

“It will be back, but this time we are going to try for something fireproof,” she said.

The 4,000-member, nondenominational church was founded by Bishop and her husband, former horse trader Lawrence Bishop. Lawrence Bishop said in 2004 he was trying to help people, not impress them, with the statue. He said his wife proposed the Jesus figure as a beacon of hope and salvation.

Posted in Stranger than Fiction | No Responses »