The Stardust Ranch in Rainbow Valley, Ariz., has a lot to offer potential buyers. Just an hour west of Phoenix, the property boasts a 3,500-square-foot home with a pool, 10 acres, barns and a gated entry. The owner said it also has two portals to another dimension: one at the back of the property, and one in the fireplace. Owner John Edmonds and his wife bought the property, now listed at $5 million, 20 years ago to run a horse rescue. But he says he’s killed more than a dozen extraterrestrials on the property with a samurai sword, and has suffered many injuries in his encounters with them. Edmonds told KPNX TV in October that aliens also tried to abduct his wife. “They actually levitated her out of the bed in the master chamber and carried her into the parking lot and tried to draw her up into the craft.” Listing agent Kimberly Gero notes: “This isn’t the type of property that you can just place in the MLS and wait for a buyer to come along.”
People Different From Us
— In Lissone, Italy, 40-year-old fitness instructor Laura Mesi made news when she married herself in late September. “I told my relatives and friends that if I had not found my soul mate, I would marry myself by my 40th birthday,” Mesi said. She spent more than 10,000 euros for the occasion, which included a white wedding dress, a three-tiered cake, bridesmaids and 70 guests. Mesi is part of a self-marrying movement dubbed “sologamy” that has followers all over the world. Her marriage holds no legal significance. “If tomorrow I find a man to build a future with, I will be happy, but my happiness will not depend on him,” Mesi declared.
— An anonymous collector from Palm Beach, Fla., was the winning bidder in an Oct. 11 online auction for a half-smoked cigar that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill enjoyed during a 1947 trip to Paris. The AP reports the 4-inch cigar remnant brought just over $12,000 in the auction. The company says Churchill smoked the cigar on May 11, 1947, at Le Bourget Airport. A British airman, Cpl. William Alan Turner, kept the cigar after he and his crew flew Churchill and his wife between Paris and London. The label on the Cuban stogie includes Churchill’s name.
How To Offend An Opossum
A opossum “ran away” after three Pennsylvania men posted photos on social media of themselves giving it beer and kissing it. The Pennsylvania State Game Commission was not amused by the antics of Michael Robert Tice, 18; David Mason Snook, 19; and Morgan Scot Ehrenzeller, 20. It charged them on Nov. 2 with unlawful possession of wildlife and disturbing wildlife. According to TribLive, Tice kissed and held the animal while Snook poured beer on its head and into its mouth. The men couldn’t be reached for comment.
Getting Up To Speed On Martians
Boriska Kipriyanovich, 21, of Volgograd, Russia, claims that he lived on Mars until a long-ago war wiped out all life on that planet and he was reborn on Earth. He says that as a Martian, he visited Earth, where his people had close ties to ancient Egyptians. That’s how he knows there is a mechanism behind the ear of the Great Sphinx of Giza that can unlock it and which can “significantly change” life on Earth. His mother told Metro News in November that Kipriyanovich could read by the age of 1, and has talked about ancient civilizations since he was a small boy, despite not having been taught about them. Among his revelations about Martians: they stop aging at 35; are immortal; grow to 7 feet; and breathe carbon dioxide. They still live on Mars, but underground.
Trailer Park Diplomacy
Tempers flared in Minot, N.D., when 33-year-old Cornelius Marcel Young attacked his fiancée’s brother at a trailer park on Nov. 3. The Minot Daily News reported that Young yelled at the brother, punched him in the face and knocked him into a wall because the brother had turned up the thermostat in the trailer, according to a Minot Municipal Court affidavit. When the brother threatened to call police, Young brandished a knife. Then his fiancée jumped on his back and bit his ear “to distract him.” Two children were in the trailer during the fight, but were uninjured.
Most Incompetent Criminal
Greensburg, Penn., police made a traffic stop on Oct. 19 and found drug paraphernalia in plain sight on the car’s front seat. When police asked where the occupants had obtained the heroin in the center console, they said they’d bought it from someone named Cody in the maternity ward at the Excela Health Westmoreland hospital in Greensburg. Officers arrested Cody R. Hulse, 25, at the hospital after he admitted to possessing and selling heroin just feet away from his newborn daughter. Police found 34 stamp bags of heroin, four empty bags and multiple hypodermic needles in Hulse’s possession. “I have an issue myself with drugs … heroin,” Hulse told them. “I really didn’t want to bring it in.”
It’s Good to Have Goals
Alysha Orrok of Portsmouth, N.H., will head to Las Vegas in February to compete for the $10,000 prize in the National Grocers Association 2018 Best Bagger contest, reports The New York Times. Orrok, who recently won the New Hampshire competition, is a teacher who moonlights at a Hannaford supermarket. Competitors are judged on multiple skills, including speed, weight distribution, appearance and technique.
Animal Troublemakers
— At Wiley Post-Will Rogers Memorial Airport in Utqiagvik, Alaska, on Oct. 23, there was an obstruction on the runway: a 450-pound bearded seal. Meadow Bailey of the Alaska Department of Transportation told KTVA-TV that the city, also known as Barrow, was hit by heavy storms that day, and airport staff discovered the seal while clearing the runway. Staff aren’t authorized to handle marine animals. So North Slope Animal Control stepped in, using a sled to remove the seal. Bailey said animals such as musk ox, caribou and polar bears are common on the runway, but the seal was a first.
— Two dozen car owners in the Nob Hill neighborhood of Snellville, Ga., were perturbed by what they thought was vandalism: their cars’ side mirrors were being shattered, even in broad daylight. Finally, according to WSB-TV, one resident caught the perpetrator: a pileated woodpecker who apparently believes his reflection in the mirrors is a rival. Because pileated woodpeckers are a protected species, neighbors had to get creative with their solution. They now place plastic bags over their side mirrors while the cars are parked.
Ironies
— Workers at a Carl’s Jr. in Santa Rosa, Calif., were busy filling an order for 165 Super Star burgers for first responders to the Fountaingrove area wildfires. Suddenly, a grease fire broke out in the restaurant. The fire started in the char broiler and then jumped to the exhaust system. Franchise co-owner Greg Funkhouser told The Press-Democrat the building was “completely torn up. … We made it through the big one, only to get taken out by this.”
— In Henrietta, N.Y., a garbage truck rolled between two gas pumps and across a road to crash into the 200-year-old building where a gift shop had opened in June. Jeri Flack, owner of A Beautiful Mess, told WHAM-TV that her building is “wrecked in the front so bad that I can’t open back up.” Witnesses say the truck driver pulled into a spot at a Sunoco station across the street and got out to use the restroom. That’s when the truck rolled away and barreled into the business. Sunoco employee T.J. Rauber said, “I see a lot of crazy stuff up here, but I ain’t never seen nothing like that.”
Least Competent Criminal
Burglary suspect and career criminal Shane Paul Owen, 46, of South Salt Lake, Utah, was on the run from police when he dashed into a vacant church. A Salt Lake City SWAT team held him in a standoff at the church for more than six hours. Finally, Owen called 911 to say he was locked in the church’s boiler room and couldn’t get out. “Can you hurry?” he asked the dispatcher. “I need to talk to them first so they don’t … shoot me,” Owen pleaded. He was booked on outstanding warrants for retaliation against a witness, drug distribution and identity fraud.
New Vistas In Stress
Two doctors from the University of Florence in Italy have documented the case of a woman who has been sweating blood from her face and the palms of her hands for three years. Roberto Maglie and Marzia Caproni wrote in the Canadian Medical Assoc. Journal that the Italian woman couldn’t identify a trigger for the bleeding, but said times of stress would intensify the bleeding for periods of from one to five minutes. After ruling out the possibility that she was faking it, the doctors diagnosed her with hematohidrosis, a rare disease that causes blood to be excreted through the pores. They were able to treat her, but couldn’t completely stop the bleeding. The cause remains a mystery.
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