VICE PRESENTS THE PEOPLE'S LISTS - PART 315 Strange Stories
Excerpted from The New Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LAURA PARK
 FIERY PERSECUTION
The village of Canneto di Caronia on Sicily’s north coast has been plagued by mysterious fires. The trouble began on January 20, 2004, when a TV caught fire. Then things in neighboring houses began to burn, including washing machines, mobile phones, mattresses, chairs, and even the insulation on water pipes. The electricity company cut off all power, as did the railway company, but the fires continued. Experts of all kinds carried out tests, but no explanation was found. The village was evacuated in February, but when people began returning in March, the fires resumed. Police ruled out a pyromaniac after they saw wires bursting into flames. Father Gabriel Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, was quoted as blaming demons.
NOTECASE FROM THE SKY
In October 1975, Mrs. Lynn Connolly was hanging washing in her garden in Hull, England, when she felt a sharp tap on the top of her head. It was caused by a small silver notecase, 2 1/2 inches by 1 1/2 inches, hinged, containing a used notepad with 13 sheets left. It was marked with the initials “SE,” “C8,” “TB” (or “JB”), and “Klaipeda,” a Lithuanian seaport. No one claimed it at the police station, so it was returned to Mrs. Connolly. It seems likely it fell only a short distance, but from where? If it had dropped from a plane, it would have given her more than a tap.
WHIRLWIND CHILDREN
A nine-year-old Chinese girl was playing in Songjiang, near Shanghai, in July 1992, when she was carried off by a whirlwind and deposited unhurt in a treetop almost two miles away. According to a wire report from May 1986, a freak wind lifted 13 children in the oasis of Hami in western China and deposited them unharmed in sand dunes and scrub 12 miles away.
BOY TURNS INTO YAM
Three pupils of the Evangelist Primary School in the northern Nigerian town of Maiduguri rushed into the headmistress’s office in March 2000 and said that a fellow pupil had been transformed into a yam after accepting a sweet from a stranger. The headmistress found the root tuber and took it to the police station for safekeeping. Following local radio reports, hundreds of people flocked to see the yam, and police were hunting for the sweetgiver. What happened next failed to reach the wire services.
HELPFUL VOICES
While on holiday, a woman, referred to in the British Medical Journal (December 1997) as AB, heard two voices in her head identifying themselves as staff from the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London and telling her to return home immediately. Once she was back in London, the voices gave her an address that turned out to be a hospital’s brain-scan department. They told her to ask for a scan, as she had a brain tumor and her brain stem was inflamed. Though she had no symptoms, medical staff reluctantly agreed to a scan, and she did indeed have a tumor. After an operation in May 1984, AB heard the voices again. “We are pleased to have helped you,” they said. “Good-bye.” AB made a full recovery and never heard the voices again.
THE PEOPLE'S LISTS | 1 | 2 | 3 |
 Anonymous, on Oct 17, 2008 wrote:
myabe you should stop being such an ungreatful whine ass and start your own fucking magazine hmmm? get the fuck out if youre gonna get all moist you fuckin shitstain.
vice, i loved this shit. | | |
| |
