Ever looked into your great-grandma’s recipe box and been surprised? Although some contemporary chefs like to think that culinary creativity is new, food culture has always been diverse. Throughout the ages, people have eaten just about everything they could from the land, sea, and air.

10Fish Bladder Jelly

The Victorians gave the world many things: piano covers, huge advances in plumbing, and PBS dramas about people getting engaged and disinherited. But they were not known for their culinary advances. They used the bladder of the sturgeon fish to make a sweet jelly dessert.

The process involved isolating a substance called isinglass from the bladder. It was originally an ingredient in glue but gained popularity in England as a foodstuff in the late 18th century. It is still used to make some beers and wines, including Guinness beer.

Isinglass acts like gelatin or pectin to congeal liquid and make it thick. To make sugary jellies, Victorians boiled down filtered isinglass with water, sugar, lemon juice, and fruit. The time-consuming process took a lot of labor, but people have been known to do a lot more to satisfy a sweet tooth.

9Muktuk

For people living in the Arctic, the ocean is the source of most food. Traditionally, people fish year-round, with seasonal whale and seal hunts. Muktuk is a dish consisting of whale skin with the layer of blubber attached. The skin of the bowhead whale is considered the most delicious, next to the narwhal and the beluga. It can be eaten many different ways: salted, fresh, fried, or pickled. The flavor of the whale fat is described as nutty, with the skin a little rubbery.

The food played an important role in traditional diets, since muktuk contains a huge amount of vitamin C, which prevents illnesses like scurvy. Many Arctic cultures have their own traditions of eating muktuk, including aboriginal Greenlanders, Canadians, Siberians, and Alaskans. In recent years, the food has all but died out because of generational tastes changing and concerns about ocean toxins, which can be concentrated in marine life.

8Vinegar Pie

Everybody has heard that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. But did you know that when life gives you vinegar, you can make pie?

Nobody knows exactly who first made a vinegar-flavored pie, or where, but it dates back to at least the mid-1800s and probably originated in the Deep South. People think that thrifty cooks first started to use apple cider vinegar as a flavoring because it was cheaper than fruit or lemon juice. Vinegar pie is nicknamed “the poor man’s lemon pie.” It is closely related to chess pie, which uses cornmeal as an ingredient.

American cooking features a huge variety of both sweet and savory pie. During the Great Depression, people combined crackers and lemon juice in their pies to make a filling that tasted like apple. In recent years, vinegar pie has experienced a comeback, and some restaurants serve upscale versions with flavored balsamic vinegars.

7Jell-O Salad

The ’50s craze for packaged convenience foods led to the popular gelatin salad, often served in an attractive mold. Although people have been encasing foods in gelatin or aspic since at least the 1600s, in the 1950s and 1960s, a Jell-O craze took this to new heights. Magazines published recipes for “congealed salads” with ingredients like shrimp, rutabaga, meats, and vegetables.

Packaged, powdered, and canned foods were making important technological advances. For the first time, people had mixes for foods that they had always made from scratch. The Jell-O salad was seen as a new and exciting way for families to eat their vegetables. One serving suggestion depicts a healthy (and horrifying) topping of mayonnaise.

At one point, the Jell-O company released tomato- and cucumber-flavored mixes, which didn’t last long on the market.

6Stuffed Dormice

You might think of a dormouse as a sleepy little hamster or a character in Alice in Wonderland, but to some people, they were actually food. In ancient Rome, dormice were roasted as a special delicacy. The Romans raised them in a special terra cotta jar called a glirarium.

In the wild, dormice hibernate for the entire winter. In the glirarium, which was kept dark, the dormice hibernated all year, which is how they were fattened. The jars had little staircases for the dormice, places for them to deposit food, and air holes.

When they were really fat, the dormice would be stuffed with nuts and roasted with honey and spices. Usually, they were served as an appetizer. Consuming dormice was eventually banned, but Romans still went on mouse hunts for dinner.

Today, wild dormice are still hunted and eaten in some parts of Slovenia and Croatia and considered a delicacy.

5Roasted Heron

One of the first cookbooks published in English was written around 1390 and was called The Forme of Cury. “Cury” was an old English word for cooking. It has a lot of variety in its 196 recipes, some for familiar things like white cake and chicken, and also for seals, porpoises, whales, cranes and . . . herons.

Nobody knows for sure who wrote the cookbook, but given the wide variety of rare, rich ingredients, people think it was the royal retinue of cooks. A little like reality show contestants, they worked with whatever fish or fowl was brought to them, trying to make food as good as possible for the king’s table. The cookbook is notable for being the first English cookbook to incorporate techniques from other cultures, essentially inventing fusion cooking.

An adult heron only weighs about 2 kilograms (5 lb), so you would need quite a few to make a whole royal feast. The Forme of Cury cookbook advises you to pluck and roast the heron whole, wrapped in bacon and ginger.

4Black Iguana Eggs

It’s a safe bet that when you think of the source of an edible egg, you think of something with feathers. However, you wouldn’t be wrong if you named a reptile. The leathery, rough exterior of the black iguana’s egg makes it seem inedible to most people, but in the Mayan culture, iguanas were farmed for their rich, all-yolk eggs.

The first Europeans to make contact with the Maya described their eating habits as being like Lent, as they ate so little meat. The Maya domesticated plants, bees, and insects but had no large mammals for protein sources.

The black iguana spends less time in the water than the green iguana, and it is possible to keep one alive for a long time without food or water, which made them an ideal provision for the trip back home. Today, hunting and farming iguanas is illegal in many parts of Central and South America, so the taste of the black iguana egg will probably stay in the past.

3The Toast Sandwich

Although not one of the grossest items on this list, the toast sandwich deserves a mention for sheer weirdness.

As everyone knows, the Earl of Sandwich’s gambling problem and subsequent need for one-handed food created the original sandwich. In 1861, Miss Beeton’s Book of Household Management was published, featuring a recipe for the toast sandwich. Like the name suggests, it is made of a buttered slice of toast with salt and pepper placed between two slices of untoasted bread. Variations include adding eggs, beans, sardines, or carrots. The toast sandwich is associated with snacking or breakfast, although some people eat it for lunch or dinner.

The cookbook remains one of the most popular cookbooks ever sold and is still in print today, toast sandwich included. In 2011, Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry hosted a toast sandwich banquet and named the dish “Britain’s Cheapest Meal,” a title that it still holds.

2Ambergris

In ancient China, chunks of ambergris found washed up on shores were believed to be dragon saliva. Ambergris actually comes from whales—the other end of whales. This mixture of fat and bile forms when whales try to digest hard, difficult substances (such as squid beaks). It passes through the whale, a little like a gallstone might. As it floats on the ocean’s surface, the ambergris becomes hard and waxy.

The powerful, musky scent of ambergris makes it a key ingredient in many perfumes, including the famous Chanel No. 5. In the past, ambergris was eaten in many different traditions. In ancient Persia, it was served with lemon sherbet. The French put it in hot chocolate, and some people claim that Casanova used it as an aphrodisiac.

With the decline of sperm whale populations, ambergris is rare today and is even illegal in America. But if you can get your hands on some, devotees say that the flavor is unforgettable.

1So

This dish is a rarity from Japanese cuisine. It’s a dairy specialty. In fact, so is the only dairy dish known to Japanese history. So was produced between the eighth and the 14th centuries in Japan, mostly for people in the noble classes. It was made by boiling down milk until it became a semisolid paste-like substance. For the noble classes in Japan, it was a status symbol and not a staple for nourishment.

It was originally dreamed up as a way to preserve milk so it would last longer in the days before refrigerators and pasteurization. Records show how it was produced but not how it tasted. It probably tasted a little like yogurt but extremely concentrated, thin, and sour.

Historically in Japan, cattle were raised for plowing or pulling carts, never for meat and milk. With the dying out of the aristocracy, so died out, too.

Jules Reich writes about food at AwayWithFood.com.

People think of churches and other holy sites as peaceful places full of sunshine and fresh air, totally safe and perhaps a little bit dull. But saving souls is serious business to some, especially before the modern age. Furthermore, the business of building sacred sites upon the ruins of pagans can leave behind some unusual ghosts.

From a spring dedicated to a pagan virgin goddess to churches made almost entirely out of human bones, here are holy places that wanted to make sure you get their message and don’t mind creeping you out to do it.

10Crypt Of The Chiesa Immacolata Concezione
Rome, Italy

This 17th-century church was built by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, a Capuchin Franciscan and brother of Pope Urban VIII, and was designed by Franciscan friar Michele da Bergamo. It houses several high-profile tombs and famous paintings, but its greatest attraction is the chapels in the lower levels.

Five subterranean chapels contain the remains of 4,000 Capuchin friars and poor Roman citizens from the 17th century onward, laid out in an artistic fashion. It took 300 trips from 1627–1631 to cart the carriages filled with bones and mummified remains into place. The earth covering the pavement of the cemetery is said to be from the Holy Land, and a memento mori inscription near the exit reads, “You are what we have been. You will be what we are.”

The remains are arranged in elaborate mosaics and built up into columns, arches, or floral designs. The crypts are even arranged based on the type of bone. There is a Crypt of Skulls, a Crypt of Pelvises, a Crypt of Leg and Thigh Bones, as well as the Crypt of the Resurrection (with a centerpiece painting of Jesus summoning forth Lazarus), and a Crypt of the Three Skeletons (a highly symbolic diorama that reflects on death).

9Basilica Of Santa Croce In Gerusalemme
Rome, Italy

Also known as Heleniana or Sessoriana, The Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Holy Cross in Jerusalem) stands on what was part of a residential complex owned by Emperor Constantine in the third century. It was once part of the Sessorian Palace, owned by Constantine’s mother, Helena. It is said that the palace was built on soil Helena brought back from Jerusalem.

Constantine had the church’s basilica built to house a collection of relics brought back from the Holy Land by his mother, specifically relics relating to the True Cross itself. Highlights of this gruesome Christian artifact collection include three supposed pieces of the Cross—a nail, a segment of the elogium (or inscription; in this case the famous INRI “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum”) inscribed upon a board said to come from the Cross, and two thorns alleged to come from the Crown of Thorns. They are all currently housed in the Chapel of Relics, designed by Florestano di Fausto.

If you happen to be a woman, and wish to see these holy objects, you will have to be patient. Women are only allowed inside once a year.

8Capela Dos Ossos
Evora, Portugal

Next to the Church of St. Francis in the Portuguese town of Evora is a small chapel called Capela dos Ossos. Like several entries on our list, it’s decorated with bones. Uniquely, not only is the interior of the chapel entirely covered with skulls and bones, but if you enter this small building and look up, you will find the remains of two full corpses, a women and a young boy staring back down at you, hanging from chains. It is said that they were the victims of a curse, who took shelter in the chapel. A welcoming sign at the entrance reads, “Nos ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos” (“We bones that are here, for your bones we wait”).

This 16th-century chapel houses the remains of about 5,000 monks, mostly exhumed from nearby cemeteries that had become overcrowded. There are several reasons why churches of the period decorated their walls in such a grisly fashion. One was practical—cemeteries were commonly overcrowded, and there were so few places to store the dead. The second was religious and social. Bones could be put to good use as a warning to the living to prepare one’s soul for death.

7Church Of Santo Stefano Rotondo
Rome, Italy

On the outskirts of Rome, away from the main thoroughfare of tourists, sits a church called The Basilica di Santo Stefano Rotondo al Monte Celio (Basilica of St. Stephen in the Round on the Celian Hill), or simply, the Santo Stefano Rotondo. It was consecrated by Pope Simplicius between 468 and 483 and is dedicated to Saint Stephen. Built on top of an old Roman site of Mithras-worship (known as a mithraeum), it’s a simply constructed church compared to others on this list, really only notable for being the first Roman church to be built with a circular plan, but it houses a unique collection of paintings.

Circling the inner walls are 34 paintings, each describing the death of a Christian martyr. Every one of them is hellishly violent, depicting in near-pornographic detail the tortures inflicted upon the martyrs, all in a perfectly naturalistic and life-like style. The paintings were commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII at the end of the 16th century.

No less a writer than Charles Dickens had this to say about the gruesome collection:

” . . . Such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire: these are among the mildest subjects.”

6Aghia Moni Convent
Nafplio, Greece

The Monastery of Aghia Moni is a beautiful, if little-known, complex just outside of Areia near Nafplio in Greece. It currently serves as a Greek Orthodox women’s retreat under the auspices of the Bishopric of Argolis.

Aghia Moni is famous for the spring that is located on its grounds, one with seriously pagan connotations. Sources are cagey about it, but most will admit that the monastery was dedicated to Zoodochos Pigi (the spring or source of life). The spring itself is associated with Kanathos, a legendary spring from Greek mythology.

The Greek traveler Pausanias, in his “Description of Greece,” wrote that “In Nauplia [in Argolis] . . . is a spring called Kanathos. Here . . . Hera bathes every year and recovers her maidenhood. This is one of the sayings told as a holy secret at the Mysteries which they celebrate in honor of Hera.”

Hera was the Greek queen of the Olympian Gods, associated with the sky and heavens, women, and marriage. Pausanias is implying that the Hera cultists performed rituals (called “Mysteries”) at the spring that were associated with this legend, and it isn’t hard to guess the aim of these rituals. That isn’t really the kind of thing Christian Orthodoxy likes to promote, so the spring has fallen into relative obscurity.

5The Barberini Coats Of Arms, St. Peter’s Cathedral
Vatican City

At St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vatican City is the Baldachin Altar along with its sculpted bronze canopy known as the Baldachin, both of which were sculpted by Gianlorenzo Bernini between 1624 and 1633 under the direction of Pius VIII. One notable feature about the alter is four plinths (columns), decorated with the Barberini family’s coat of arms—three bees arranged in a triangle on a blue field resting on an sculptured shield, with a woman’s head above it.

A close look reveals that each coat-of-arms, arranged two-to-a-column to make up a series of eight, is slightly different from the one preceding it. Some people believe that the series represents childbirth (the position of the woman’s head and the overall shapes and elements certainly look suggestive). Furthermore, take a look at the woman’s expression throughout the series; she goes from happy to obviously distressed and back. Furthermore, the shield bulges throughout the series until near the end; the woman’s face is replaced with that of a cherub or angel. What is this doing in the middle of a church?

One popular story has it that the sculpture depicts a promise that Urban VIII made to his niece, Giulia Barberini, to build an altar in her honor if her labor was successful. Others contend that it symbolically depicts the earthly struggles of the church in the past until it was “delivered” by the pope, who took great pains to place symbols of his power and family throughout the Vatican.

4The Sheela-Na-Gig Of Kilpeck
Herefordshire, England

Kilpeck Church (The Church of St. Mary and St. David) is located in Herefordshire, England near the Welsh border. It’s a simple, Norman-style, two-cell church built atop an older structure with dozens of elaborate and often-grotesque carvings, many of which are heavily influenced by Celtic styles. It’s famous for its sexually charged corbel (a weight support for buildings that were commonly sculpted), known as the Sheela-na-gig.

Sheela-na-gigs have been found on structures all over England, Ireland, and France. They depict a squatting woman, possibly associated with “old women” or hags, displaying their grossly exaggerated genitalia for all to see. They are usually depicted in a grotesque or comical manner, and the one at Kilpeck could be said to display both. It’s a very old sculpture, dating to at least the 12th century, and possibly belonged to an earlier chapel that once stood on the site.

Popular theories have it that Sheela-na-gigs are a pagan remnant, perhaps associated with various goddess traditions, but when placed in proper context with other carvings found around them, the theory holds little water. They fit in nicely with other Christian motifs common to the region of the time and probably served as Romanesque-era warnings about the dangers of sexual sins. The earliest known figures date to the 11th or 12th century and are usually found on Roman churches. They probably had a Continental origin. Another theory holds that they were created as wards against evil, and there is some evidence for this belief. Corbels have been found above doors or gates out of immediate eyesight, where they could have stood guard as talismans.

As the symbolic significance of Sheela-na-gigs began to wane, they moved from churches to buildings such as castles and gateways. Toward the end of their use, they even showed up as carvings on flintlock pistols of the baroque era.

There are male variations of Sheela-na-gigs, some of which may have been present at Kilpeck Church. Several corbels have been removed there, supposedly by an unnamed Victorian lady who was offended by what they depicted. Whatever the case may be, corbels depicting the male member are relatively common, and they too serve as a warning about the insidious consequences of lust.

3Otranto Cathedral, Tree of Life Mosaic
Otranto, Italy

Consecrated in 1088, Italy’s Otranto Cathedral is on this list twice. The first reason is its floor, which is entirely covered by an amazing work of art called the Tree of Life Mosaic. It was commissioned in 1163 by archbishop Gionata d’Otranto and overseen by a monk named Pantaleone with labor provided by local and Norman craftsman and artisans from Tuscany. It was restored in 1993.

Every square foot of the church’s floor is covered by a mysterious mosaic that depicts a tree in a style similar to a genealogy illustration. Seen from above, the tree grows into every room of the cathedral, and the effect of the explosion of mythological and religious concepts all depicted together is mind-blowing.

What makes this mysterious work of art so intriguing is the variety of imagery and inscriptions that have no place in a Christian church. Images of the Greek goddesses Diana, Deucalion, and Pyrrha (the main figures in the Greek legend of a great flood) collide with images from Frazer’s Golden Bough, a depiction of King Arthur, and zodiac figures, to name only a few. All this is mixed alongside images of Adam and Eve, apocalyptic imagery and creatures, Cain and Abel, and other Christian concepts, but the whole thing is surprisingly free of any specific Christian symbolism. It even mixes in Islamic lore, such as bits of text in Arabic.

The Tree of Life Mosaic demonstrates that its creators were far more educated than the norm for cultures of its time. However they obtained their knowledge, the creators seem to have wanted to record all they knew of the world in one place.

2Otranto Cathedral, The Skull Cathedral
Otranto, Italy

The second reason that Otranto Cathedral makes the list is the skulls. Just off of the main altar is a chapel, and the walls therein house the remains of 800 Christian martyrs. Some of the remains were also moved to the Church of Santa Caterina in Formello at Naples. The walls are neatly lined with the skulls of these martyrs behind glass.

Turkish Sultan Mehmet II had already conquered Constantinople, and 27 years later, he began a plan to take Rome itself by establishing a beachhead on the Italian coast at the port town of Brindisi. Along the way, he changed his mind and decided to strike at Otranto instead . . . a decision that changed everything.

When the invasion hit and the siege began, 350 members of Otranto’s garrison fled, leaving only 50 soldiers to hold back the invaders. The remaining townspeople helped against the siege as best they could.

On August 14, 1480, after a two-week siege, the Ottomans broke through and began raping and pillaging and gathered the women and children to be sold into slavery. They then marched around 800 male inhabitants of the town to a place called the Hill of the Minerva (afterward called the Hill of the Martyrs) and gave them a choice: convert to Islam or be beheaded. The men chose death.

Antonio Primaldi (or Pezzulla) was chosen to be the spokesman for the town, and he was the first man to be beheaded. According to Saverio de Marco in his Compendiosa istoria degli ottocento martiri otrantini (The Brief History of the 800 Martyrs of Otranto), when the sword fell, his lifeless, headless body stood up and refused to be moved. An executioner was so awestruck, he converted to Christianity right on the spot and was immediately executed. Yet, despite this miracle the beheadings continued.

The sacrifice of the townspeople of Otranto gave Ferdinand I, king of Naples, the time he needed to eventually repel the Ottoman advance. If not for them, all of Italy and Rome itself could have fallen to Islam. This is why their skulls are displayed and memorialized today, and why, in May 2013, Antonio Primaldi was canonized by Pope Francis as a saint along with all the rest of the Otranto martyrs. The occasion was the largest canonization of saints of all time.

1Sedlec Ossuary
Kutna Hora, Czech Republic

Compared to the Sedlec Ossuary, other churches that house human remains are nothing more than a Disney park. The remains of no fewer than 40,000 skeletons are preserved here.

The Seclec Ossuary is a small chapel located in the suburbs of Kutna Hora, just outside Prague. In 1870, woodcarver Frantisek Rint was appointed to do something about all the bones interred there. The church and its cemetery had become overcrowded over the centuries, thanks both to the church’s good reputation (and the alleged presence of soil from Golgotha, marking it as a holy site) and plague. Rint’s approach resulted in one of the most unique churches in history.

Bones are everywhere within the church. One of the most impressive displays is the Coat of Arms of the Schwarzenberg family, and the famous chandelier of bones contains at least one of every human bone within it.

Interspaced within the vast display of skulls, ribcages, leg and arm bones, and every other kind of bone are intricate carvings of angels and cherubs. There are candleholders made of bones, and entire walls are lined in skulls. Rint even signed his name in a display of bones.

Words don’t really do it justice. This gallery of photos helps give a proper sense of the church.

Lance LeClaire is a freelance artist and writer. He writes on subjects ranging from science and skepticism, atheism, and religious history and issues, to unexplained mysteries and historical oddities. You can look him up on Facebook.

Sewers and drains are more vital to civilization than many people in the modern world imagine. Before the widespread introduction of sanitation systems, human waste and other filth was often just tossed out of windows and onto the street—or the heads of passersby—below.

Now we simply press a button or pull a lever and we need never think of where our unwanted leavings go. However useful they are at collecting waste, sewers often pick up other unexpected items, too. Here are 10 of the weirdest things discovered in sewers.

10 A Rave

What could be more fun than meeting up for a late-night dance in a secret location and going wild?

Doing it in a sewer!

In 2017, over 200 people in Newcastle, England, clambered through filthy water to reach a dry spot in the drains that emptied into the river Ouseburn. The event had been organized on Facebook with revelers meeting up in a pub before rushing into the storm drains.

Once inside, the ravers found a light-and-sound system all set up and the partying began. Around 4:00 AM, however, one of the ravers began to find the dank setting a little too cramped. Worried for the participants’ safety, the person phoned the police.

Officers arrived and broke up the party, letting those in the tunnels out with just a stern warning about the dangers of mixing alcohol with confined and easily flooded underground tunnels.^[1]

9 Fatberg

Once we flush away nasty things, we hope they will never come back and haunt us. For sewer workers who have to deal with such things, however, our actions can create monsters.

The London fatberg of 2017 was a congealed and rotting mass over 250 meters (820 ft) long. In the sewers under the city, hard-to-flush items like diapers, wet wipes, and condoms had all become enmeshed in solidifying fats that threatened to block the sewer and send sewage spilling into the streets above.

Weighing as much as 19 African elephants, the fatberg was broken up by sewer workers with spades and jets of water. But for some, the fatberg was more than just an artifact of human wastefulness—it was a valuable historical relic.

The Museum of London managed to obtain a chunk of the fatberg for future generations. To preserve the greasy mess, curators were forced to X-ray it for used hypodermic needles and to wear biohazard gear. Eventually, a piece was stabilized (to stop it from rotting or hatching flies) and became a star of the museum’s fatberg display.^[2]

8 An Alligator

One of the great urban legends of New York is that their sewer system is riddled with alligators. According to legend, people would buy baby alligators before realizing that hissing reptiles with mouths full of sharp teeth make for poor pets. So these people would flush the gators down the toilet.

In the sewers, the alligators now prowl and thrive. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of a colony of alligators in the city’s drains, and most experts agree that it is far too cold down there for the animals to survive long term. Intriguingly, in 1935 in East Harlem, a 2.4-meter-long (8 ft) alligator was found down a manhole, but how it got there is unexplained.^[3]

In places that are more natural habitats for gators, it is not so unusual for them to turn up in sewers and drains. If you look into a drain and see a shining pair of pitiless eyes peering back, it might not be Pennywise looking to eat you.

In Florida, alligators end up having to be hooked out of sewers after either getting washed in with rains or chasing prey into them. In Louisiana, a 3-meter (10 ft) alligator was seen waddling out of a storm drain before taking a nap on a suburban porch.

7 A Cow

Not all creatures that are found in drains are quite as threatening. When a cow was found in a sewer in Britain, it was pretty docile—being already dead—but there have been cases of live cows found underground.

In Fujian Province in China, one farmer spent four days searching for a missing cow. Unable to find it, the farmer was ready to give up the hunt when a strange mooing noise was heard from beneath the village.^[4]

A manhole cover was lifted off, and the missing cow poked its head up. A makeshift winch was used to haul the cow back up into the open air where it seemed no worse for wear for its subterranean adventure. But just how it ended up in the sewer remained a mystery.

In India, where cows are held in reverence by Hindus, a calf was seen to slip into an open sewer and was carried underground by the flow. Witnessing this, one man clambered into the sewage and dived in to save the animal. Both cow and man survived whole and healthy, if not particularly sweet smelling.

6 A Sewer Monster

In 2009, a video of an unexplained and supposedly alien monster in a North Carolina sewer went viral. In the footage, a pulsating and squirming pink mass can be seen clinging to the wall of the sewer. Were the aliens done with probing human orifices and now coming for our drainage systems?

Not quite.

Experts soon identified the creature as a colony of Tubifex worms. These perfectly common segmented worms are often found living in wet soils.

The apparent pulsing behavior of the “monster” is likely to be due to the camera’s light, which may have been hot. While the worms themselves are not rare, it is unusual for them to stray into a sewer. This is why even those used to working down there were unable to identify this mesmerizing, if disgusting, meet-up of worms.^[5]

5 A Baby

When a woman in China heard the cries of a baby coming from a drain underneath a toilet, she raised the alarm and rescue services soon turned up. After a two-hour rescue, the baby was extracted—still alive—from the pipe in which it had become stuck.

The police searched for the baby’s mother. Soon, they realized that the woman who first called for help was the person for whom they were looking. Overcome with labor in the toilet, the woman had delivered her baby herself and watched it slip down the drain.^[6]

Her story was a sad one. The father of the child had refused to support the baby, and she had no idea how to raise a child on her own. This led her to panic when the baby started to arrive.

In a case from South Africa, a baby between one and three days old was discovered in a storm drain when passersby heard her screaming. Over four hours, drills and chisels were used to break into the drain to pull the child out. The baby was in relatively good health and was named Sibanisethu (“Our Ray of Light”) by locals.

4 A Community

Las Vegas is a place given to extremes and not just of gambling. When it is dry and hot, it is really dry and hot, and when it rains, torrents can fall. To battle the city’s tendency to flood, 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi) of storm drains were constructed to channel rainwater away from the streets.

Soon, other things flowed into the tunnels. Homeless people, with no place in the glitz and glamour of the strip above, moved into the drains, and the tunnel people of Las Vegas were born.

The cramped tunnels of Las Vegas are filled with scorpions, graffiti, and people down on their luck. When it rains, the tunnel people risk losing everything they possess, including their lives, to the floodwaters. No one knows for sure how many people live underneath Las Vegas, though they are thought to number in the hundreds.

Some tunnel people manage to hold down low-paying jobs and only return to the tunnels to sleep. But others spend most of their time in the gloomy passages beneath the neon city.^[7]

3 Gold

Aside from the odd accident where something valuable gets flushed away, there is probably nothing in a sewer that you might want to recover. However, there may be millions of dollars of precious metals just being washed away each year.

Scientists have calculated that nearly $2 million dollars of gold, and the same amount of silver, pass through Switzerland’s sewers each year. Much of this may be in the form of flakes of metal lost in the jewelry and watchmaking businesses. In places with many goldworkers, it may be worth sorting through a lot of poop to find something that glistens.

In the appropriately named Suwa, Japan, gold has already been extracted from sewers. By burning the waste sludge left after treating sewage, they found that they were left with an ash that contained 2 kilograms (4.4 lb) of gold in every ton—a richer source than found in many gold mines.^[8]

2 Drugs

Anything that passes through the human body is likely to end up in the sewer system, and drugs are no exception. In fact, they may cause major problems. Contraceptive pills use hormones to control women’s reproductive cycles. But once they pass into rivers and waterways, the hormones may cause unpleasant changes in freshwater fish. As the fish undergo changes in their reproductive ability, populations may plummet.

One way of tracking the use of recreational drugs is by studying the contents of sewers. By looking at the waste collected at sewage treatment plants, researchers have suggested that drug use is far more pervasive than is often thought. One team was able to tell that the use of marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine all went up markedly during times of celebration.^[9]

Sometimes, it is not just drug waste that turns up in the sewers, though. In Palermo, police found 77 marijuana plants growing in the sewers underneath the city.

1 Snakes

Humans are at our most vulnerable when we are on the toilet. No sooner do you sit down than the telephone rings, the door buzzer goes off, or a snake bites you on the bottom.

Yes, there are places where it is common to find a snake in your toilet. In Australia, one woman spooked a carpet python in her toilet and got several puncture marks on her buttocks.^[10]

That snake may have slithered into the toilet to avoid a heat wave, but there are many cases of snakes emerging from sewers via people’s toilets. Often, they are following rats that have also used the loo as an escape route into people’s homes. When the snake gets into the toilet, it may find it a congenial place to rest—until someone takes a seat.

Don’t think it is just the dangerous proverbial Land Down Under where you might get bitten on your down-under. Reports of snakes in toilets have been made everywhere from Texas to Seattle and South Africa to Southend in the UK. Maybe check under the seat the next time you feel the call of nature.

When most people think of psychotherapy, they picture patients relaxing on a sofa and spilling all of their emotions. “Tell me about your childhood,” the therapist says, taking a drag of his cigar. In reality, therapy takes place in all kinds of settings.

10 Sexual Surrogacy Therapy

Your therapist looks deeply into your eyes, holds your hand, and kisses you passionately on the lips. This isn’t a violation of the American Psychological Association’s code of ethics. Kissing, and sometimes even more, is just part of the job as a sexual surrogate. Sexual surrogates are trained professionals that work with sex therapists to help people work through intimacy issues. Surrogacy goes beyond regular talk therapy; it includes activities to model appropriate romantic and sexual relationships.

People may choose sexual surrogacy for many reasons, including anxiety about relationships or general sexual dysfunction. A newly widowed person struggling with dating or a war veteran returning as an amputee might practice flirting or body confidence with a surrogate. Sessions can include everything from social skills training to actual genital-to-genital contact. Surrogacy might sound like prostitution, but its therapeutic benefit seems to give it a free legal pass. The focus is not on pleasure, but on learning what appropriate sexual or relationship behavior feels like. Surrogates aim to get patients to the point where they can end therapy and forge connections on their own.

9 Equine Therapy

Horseback riding is no longer a luxury for the rich. The impressive size and emotionally intelligent nature of the horse makes it an excellent therapy partner for troubled youth, drug addicts, and people with disabilities. Learning to care for and ride these gentle giants can be a way to develop important coping skills like self-confidence and patience. Therapy with a horse feels more like fun than work, so patients may feel more open to growth as they learn to take care of both themselves and of their animal friend.

Because horses can weigh up to 900 kilograms (2,000 lb) and are easily frightened, patients get a hands-on education in overcoming fears. Anger and anxiety have no place in the saddle, so troubled youth and others struggling with those emotions may find that working with a horse helps to form new patterns of positive behavior. Caring for the horse and its equipment, or even learning to conquer the fear of riding, can be a powerful metaphor for other challenges in life.

Horses aren’t the only animals helping people figure out their feelings; elephants, dolphins, monkeys, and many other animals have been used in therapeutic or service settings.

8 Nude Psychotherapy

While now a forgotten art, baring bodies and souls in nude therapy sessions was all the rage in the late 1960s. At the forefront of this movement was Paul Bindrim, an offbeat psychologist who believed nakedness allowed people to shake off the social expectations created by clothing and to deal directly with their most private emotions. During group therapy events, Bindrim preached that by shedding shirts and ties, people could explore repressed thoughts, heal marriage troubles, and achieve “peak experiences,” a euphoric state of being attained only through self-actualization.

Nude truth-seekers would delight in spending several days revealing their deepest secrets in facilitated exercises designed by Bindrim to promote trust and openness. Activities included everything from deeply gazing into a partner’s eyes to scrutinizing each others’ genitals in an exercise called “crotch eyeballing.” Bindrim taught that true freedom from negative thoughts could only be achieved once a person could expose her most private motivations and parts. Staring directly into what he believed was the root of all repression was a means to do this. Groups of participants swam, meditated, hugged, and expressed rage, all in their birthday suits.

As the socially liberal climate of the 1960s dwindled, so did the popularity of nude therapy. Bindrim felt the sting of conservative critics, but his naked marathon programs seemed to fall out of favor due to changing times as opposed to any wrongdoing. Those seeking nude therapy today aren’t out of luck. The Human Awareness Institute in California offers participants courses in intimacy and sexuality, some with the option of ditching clothes in search of personal purpose.

7 Chess Therapy

Sometimes healing is best done in the company of kings and queens. Patients get clear about their feelings in chess therapy, a technique used to reach patients who have trouble communicating verbally. The idea of using board games to help patients learn problem-solving skills was first used by Persian scholar Rhazes (AD 852–932) during his tenure as chief physician at a Baghdad hospital. Since then, the game of chess has been used to represent real-life problems, allowing patients to explore skills like conflict resolution and decision making.

One case study reports that chess was an excellent outlet for a 16-year-old boy with schizoid personality disorder who felt emotionally isolated from other people. While he struggled to form relationships, playing chess helped him see his therapist as a partner and confidant. As therapy went on, he felt safe sharing his feelings, all during the banter of discussing his next move.

Rooks and pawns allow patients to act out fantasies and explore impulses. Simply questioning why the patient has decided to move a piece in a certain way might give way to conversation about a bigger issue.

6 Wilderness Therapy

When the campsite is set up and the fire is lit, the doctor is in. Wilderness therapy is a successful, and sometimes controversial, way to help troubled youth by teaching life and social skills on the hiking trail. Intensive group therapy and one-on-one sessions are coupled with outdoor activities like mountain climbing and fly-fishing to teach self-reliance and responsibility. Programs promise to reform even the most wayward of offenders, including juvenile delinquents and teens with depression, anger management issues, or eating disorders.

While wilderness therapy can be effective, certain methods have come under fire for using unethical, and sometimes downright abusive, techniques to help struggling youth. Wilderness programs are loosely regulated, so not all programs are staffed by qualified professionals. Upon closer examination, some “therapy” groups seemed to be just military-style boot camps with little mental health benefit.

Most famous for his controversial wilderness therapy programs is Steve Cartisano, founder of the Challenger Foundation and several other programs throughout the US and South America. Cartisano faced negligent homicide charges when two teens died during excursions that he was supervising. Although he has been acquitted of that charge, a string of abuse allegations have followed him wherever he sets up shop. He maintains his innocence and his dedication to helping youth, but his whereabouts are currently unknown.

Even legitimate wilderness therapy groups have been criticized for partnering with teen escort companies to forcibly remove unwilling participants from their homes to attend the program. While controversy and risk exist, wilderness therapy might be a creative way to teach life skills when other methods have failed.

5 Hypnotherapy

Hypnotism might seem like a magic trick, but it actually has the power to help people break into their subconscious to get to the cause of their problems, like smoking or overeating. Hypnotherapy helps patients change unwanted behaviors with suggestions of new behavior patterns during guided meditation sessions.

The feeling of “zoning out,” such as while driving long distance or lying on the beach, is what a hypnotic state feels like. While hypnotized, the patient is not asleep, but rather extremely relaxed and sensitive to suggestion. Psychotherapists who use this method believe that while hypnotized, a patient can uncover subconscious negativity and replace it with new ways of thinking or feeling.

Skilled hypnotherapists begin the process with a relaxation exercise to clear the mind and to release tension. (Think of the classic line, “You’re getting very sleepy.”) From there, the hypnotist expertly guides the patient through suggestions to solve the problem, like choosing healthier snacks or eating smaller portions to lose weight. The brain, much like a sponge in this moment, will supposedly start to incorporate those recommendations into new patterns of thought.

Hypnotherapy is meant to be used alongside regular talk therapy and not just on its own. Patients can even learn to hypnotize themselves to find stress relief on their own.

4 Sandplay Therapy

Building sand castles is fun in the summertime and may have therapeutic value, too. Much like chess therapy, sandplay therapy offers those with trouble communicating the chance to share their feelings by designing scenarios with figurines in sand trays. Children, and sometimes adults, relay their feelings through expressive creations without ever having to speak a word.

Inspired by the teachings of Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist Dora Kalff developed the sandplay technique to communicate with patients who might have difficulty sharing their feelings as a result of trauma or abuse. Patients are provided with trays of sand and a variety of figurines. They are instructed to create stories about the toys and the patterns of play that emerge can often mirror real problems in the patient’s life.

Therapists are trained to pick up on those symbols. When a child makes adult figures act aggressively while child figures behave anxiously, the therapist might ask the child to explain why older people are mean to little kids. A conversation about the toys might give way to sharing details of an abusive parent. While discussing trauma or abuse can be difficult, the playfulness of the sand sets the stage for healing conversation to take place.

3 Flooding Therapy

Phobias, extreme and irrational fears, can cause much anxiety and pain. But never fear; anxiety caused by spiders, dogs, and even elevators can all be alleviated through flooding, an intense form of exposure therapy that requires patients to face their fears.

Irrational fears are cured by exposing the patient to the fear-inducing object over a long period of time. For example, a person looking to get rid of his fear of dogs may start by just looking at photos of dogs under the supervision of a trained professional. Therapy continues with an “exposure” to dogs in person and eventually working up the courage to pet actual puppies. The slow pace of learning to manage fear has proven to have high success rates in gently treating anxiety, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Flooding therapy works just like exposure therapy, except there is nothing slow about it. Patients will be asked to face full-on fear in the first visit. There is no gradual introduction to the feared object, and flooding can be quite intense. Dog-phobic individuals will be asked to play with puppies right away and elevator-hating people will spend their first flooding session riding the lift without breaks. Flooding therapy evokes a strong anxiety response that in theory, will exhaust the patient into letting go of the irrational fear.

However, critics say that intense exposures may not be therapeutic but instead traumatic to people already struggling with extreme fear. In some cases, flooding actually makes the phobia worse. There is no way to know if a patient will respond well to flooding therapy, so the general consensus is that slow and steady wins the race.

2 Puppet Therapy

Dragons, pigs, and puppies can help you learn to deal with an overbearing boss, an annoying neighbor, or a troublesome child. Puppets play an important role in therapy by helping patients express emotions and practice difficult conversations in the safe company of a stuffed animal. As they practice being assertive with a toothy tiger puppet, patients might feel freer to stand up for themselves outside of therapy. Puppets make it easier for patients, especially children, to practice expressing difficult emotions, discuss abuse, or practice social skills in a playful way.

Puppets create a safe distance between the therapist and patient, so it feels more comfortable speaking through the puppet. Trained therapists can creatively mirror the child’s problems, which makes introducing difficult topics easier. For example, a girl struggling with moving to a new town is told that the puppet has just moved, too.

The therapist interviews the puppet, rather than the patient, which gives the patient license to say whatever they feel. Puppets, and other forms of play therapy, have proven to be excellent ways to teach autistic children social skills or to practice imaginative thought.

1 Horticulture Therapy

Imagine the patience and knowledge it takes to grow a tiny seed into a strong tree. In horticulture therapy, therapists combine their love for nature with their expertise in mental health to teach those skills. Much like equine therapy uses the horse to teach skills, horticulture therapists use plants to convey different lessons and skills. Working in prisons, hospitals, and nursing homes, therapists initiate conversation while gardening or crafting pinecone bird feeders.

As groups work together to plant flowers or grow gardens, therapists lead conversations on confidence and teamwork. Horticulture therapy is especially useful for people with disabilities. Activities can be designed for people in wheelchairs or with other special needs. Anyone can delight in the happiness of watching a flower grow. It can be a great source of pride to watch a planted seed grow and be instrumental in its care. By connecting with nature, patients find calmness to bring into their own lives.

Samantha Popp uses her extensive background in education and behavioral modification to teach professionals how to play nicely with each other. You can learn more about her work at www.laforceschool.com and you can follow her on Twitter.

When many of us think of New Year’s traditions, noisemakers, champagne, a ball drop, counting down the minutes, and maybe a kiss comes to mind. Some people may do these things wearing adult diapers knowing rest rooms will be scant in Times Square, some people in North Carolina may be watching a live opossum drop instead of a ball, but the general jidst remains. All diapers and opossums aside, here we take a look at some of the stranger New Year’s traditions from around the world.

See Also: 10 Craziest Alternatives To New Year’s Fireworks

10 Colored Skivvies

The color of one’s drawers is a matter of great importance in a few countries on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. In Italy, it is tradition to wear red underwear during this period in order to bring good luck. This tradition is said to span back to medieval times; men would drape their groins with a red cloth to protect their twigs and berries – those “family jewels” – from witches who were roaming the village streets by midnight seeking to cast spells and cause a ruckus.

Some South American countries, such as Brazil, Mexico and Bolivia hold the belief that the coming year’s fortune is determined by the color of your underwear. For example, red brings love, white brings peace, and yellow brings wealth and luck. I wonder what this means for those who prefer to go commando.

9 Broken Plates

In Denmark, people hurl crockery at the doors of their loved ones. Old dishes are saved year round, and once the clock hits midnight, people run around their neighborhoods throwing them against the doors of their friends and families. The more broken pieces laying outside your door, the more friends you have and the better your luck will be for the year. Afterall, one man’s vandalism is another man’s fortune. Lately, it[s been acceptable for the less enthused or violent to set pre-broken pieces outside of people’s doors.

8 Stuffing Your Face With 12 Grapes

In Spain, the tradition of stuffing one’s face with grapes carries both luck and superstition. A Spaniard will rarely risk spoiling their fate in the coming year by skipping out on stuffing grapes in their mouth, one for each of the twelve strokes of midnight. Dating back to at least 1895, but being popularized and established by some vine growers to better sell huge batches from an excellent harvest, this tradition leads to twelve months of good luck and prosperity as long as you get them in there by the twelfth stroke. Just don’t choke. Oh, and something about red underwear—convention has it they wear those while stuffing the grapes in their mouths, too. But in Spain, this red underwear should have been given to you by someone else.

7 Animal whispering

A tradition dating back to old agrarian superstition, it is believed in Romania that animals get the gift of communication only on New Year’s Day. So if you happen to be there on New Year’s day, you just may spot a farmer chatting with his animals and whispering well-wishes in their ears. It is hoped, however, that the people will not understand what their animals are saying. Successful communication and deciphering what they say means bad luck. If unsuccessful, the year ahead will be a good one. Of all of these to try, one can bet I’ll try this one with my dogs New Year’s morning. Bad luck or not, I can only hope to know things like if they think their kibble is alright or if they lay on their back because they love me or they solely want their belly rubbed. I’ll toss some red underwear in.

6Sleepovers With the Dead

New Year’s Eve tradition takes the residents of Talca, Chile, to their local cemeteries for a sleepover. It is believed that their dead loved ones come back to the graveyard to celebrate the year’s end, so the town’s people join the party by making fires, bringing meals, decorating the graves and setting up their beds among the dead when they decide to call it a night. Way to add some extra spirit to the New Year. Grandma and grandpa, I love you but… no. You are always welcome to come here if you want.

5 Dropping Ice Cream

While dropping ice cream on the ground has sent countless children into a cry fest (and maybe adults), it is a New Year’s tradition in Switzerland to purposely drop their ice cream on the ground or floor as it symbolizes, and is thought to bring, overflowing abundance in the coming year. If that’s all it takes, I am heading to the store for some Ben and Jerry’s stat.

4 Lugging Suitcases

Who doesn’t want a year full of travel and adventure? Apparently Colombians want it bad enough that they have an entire midnight tradition on New Year’s surrounding this desire. As the clock strikes 12, they grab their suitcases and run around the block as fast as they can. If they do this in the right spirit, they are guaranteed to travel during the coming year. Sign me up for this obvious cosmo science—this wanderluster has waited a lifetime for this.

3 Talc Smearing

The new year in Thailand comes in April and is celebrated by going around pouring water and smearing talcum powder on random people. The water is a way of showing people respect and to symbolize a cleansing. In some areas, the water is mixed with flowers and traditional perfumes before spraying people. The talc is considered a blessing for the year ahead. This celebration is referred to as Songkran, which comes from the Sanskrit word “samkranti,” which means “astrological passage,” transformation and change. I’m down for getting messy, but can I trade in that talc blessing for some mulah?

2 Scarecrow Burning

When midnight strikes in Ecuador, people light scarecrows decked with the faces of pop culture figures, politicians and various other icons on fire. Symbolic of cleansing the bad from the previous year, this tradition of effigy burning is said to date back to an 1895 yellow fever epidemic, when people packed coffins with the clothing of the dead and set them on fire as a symbol of purification. A pyro’s dream arsony party. For extra luck, try jumping over the burning effigy twelve times without becoming a part of it.

1 Fist Fighting

How about wiping the slate clean for the new year with a brawl? In Peru, this festival to settle old grievances, Takanakuy, translates to “when the blood is boiling.” These celebrations include brightly colored costumes, eating, drinking, music, dancing, and, you know, the usual – gathering around arenas to watch members of the community fight each other. A tradition that includes all ages and genders, the festival is held in hopes of creating stronger bonds within the communities, solving conflict, and hopefully arriving at a greater peace, wiping the slate clean for the coming year. I personally will be hugging it out.

About The Author: Jackie Haze currently is an MFA candidate living in New Orleans with her two chihuahuas, Bacchus and Lola. She has a smattering of publications, including memoirmixtapes, Via Nola Vie, Curve, and Happy Cow.

It is said by those who have had first-hand experience there, that Skinwalker Ranch – a 500-plus acre strip of land in Utah – is one of the, if not the strangest place on the planet. Indeed, it is widely accepted to be a hub of strange goings-on and has been for decades. Here are ten reasons why Skinwalker Ranch really could be the most bizarre stretch of land on Earth.

10 Places As Mysterious As The Bermuda Triangle

10 The Skinwalker

Perhaps the best place to start here is to look at the creature from which the ranch gets its name the Skinwalker. This beastly creature is often described with glowing red eyes, tall, and with large, sharp teeth. Essentially, it evokes an image of a werewolf. However, according to folklore and legends of the native tribes of the region, a Skinwalker, is not only an evil energy, but it can take any form it wants.

What is perhaps interesting about these legends is that many other creation stories and myths feature similar tales. Maybe the tales of ancient Greece and the god Zeus who could, and often did, take any form he chose is a good example.

There have been several apparent photographs from people who claim to have spotted such a creature. However, most are dismissed as hoaxes or something much more rational and native to the area. According to the legends, though, these creatures are very real. And what’s more, they roam the 500 acres of the ranch still to this day.^[1]

9 The Land Is Cursed

Here is a good place to mention the land the ranch sits on. More specifically the claims that the land is cursed. And rather than a myth or legend, the origins of this curse – whether it is real or not – are well documented.

Following a dispute over the land rights which would see the Ute tribe for all intents and purposes side with the American government. The Navajo tribe would curse the land as they left the area. It is from this curse, according to some, when the truly strange activity began to unfold.

To this day, the native tribes, for the most part, refuse to set foot on the land. Whether this curse was the start of the strange activity or whether such activity has taken place for thousands of years is unknown. But as the 20th century would unfold, more and more bizarre accounts would surface.^[2]

8 Many Sightings Of UFOs

There are many strange occurrences at the ranch, some of which we will examine shortly. Just one of those, though, is the multiple sightings of UFOs which date back to the 1950s.

One of the most intriguing UFO incidents with a connection to the ranch, however, took place in 1978. On the night in question, a huge object in the shape of a saucer was would make its way over the area. And what’s more, it was witnessed by multiple residents of the area in several different locations on its journey.

One witness would describe the object as silver and “surrounded by intense green light”. Furthermore, it had a distinct domed shape section on the upper side.

Despite its mammoth size, however, none of the residents could recall any type of sound coming from the craft. This is, of course, a detail that surfaces in many UFO sightings, and perhaps lends a little credibility to the incident.^[3]

7 Do Portals Exist On Skinwalker Ranch?

Given the high rate of paranormal incidents at Skinwalker Ranch some researchers have suggested that the area is some kind of hub of supernatural energy. Some have gone further, suggesting this hub is, in fact, a portal of some kind that allows all manner of strange objects and creatures access to our world.

While such a claim is almost impossible to prove – at least with the technology and collective understanding at our disposal today – it is one that might not be as crazy as it first sounds. For example, as we will examine later, many of the witnesses to strange goings-on at the ranch speak of objects and even people appearing out of nowhere or disappearing right in front of their eyes. Might this be an example or an active portal at work.

Of course, such claims are nothing but speculation. However, when we examine some of the strange happenings that one of the ranche’s owners experienced, we might perhaps give the portal idea a little more consideration.^[4]

6 The Many Strange Sightings Of The Sherman Family

Although the ranch has had several owners perhaps the most well-known are the Sherman family. Almost immediately after they purchased the ranch, they would experience some of the bizarre activity first hand.

They would describe how they would hear people speaking to them, even though there was clearly nobody there. Even stranger they would witness areas of wheat in their fields “flatten” as if an invisible person was sat there. They would also witness a “huge spaceship” which was at least the size of “two football fields” fly overhead. As it did so multiple flashing lights were also visible.

Terry Sherman would later recall to a Las Vegas newspaper that he at first believed what he was witnessing was some kind of top-secret government technology. However, the longer the strange events continued, the more he realized the events were without rational explanation.

They would eventually sell the ranch to Robert T Bigelow in 1996 who would then conduct some of the most intensive and exhaustive research on the property. And it is there where we will turn our attention next.^[5]

Top 10 Places You Can’t Go

5 Robert T. Bigelow

Robert T. Bigelow is an interesting man, of that there is no doubt. However, perhaps his decision to purchase the ranch from the Sherman family is one of his most intriguing moves. He had long had a passionate interest in the paranormal. Following the purchase, however, the billionaire businessman would then install some of the most (at the time) high-tech equipment in an effort to research the multiple strange incidents of paranormal activity.

However, by 2004 the research was suddenly shut down. It would appear that a lack of funds was the reason for this. However, there are many who believe that there was more to the decision than simply running out of money. He would form Bigelow Aerospace following the shutting down of research. And when he received several contracts from NASA shortly after it raised an eyebrow or two in some circles.

Bigelow would eventually sell the ranch in 2016, a purchase we will examine later in our list. For now, though, we will examine exactly what Bigelow discovered.^[6]

4 The NIDS Findings (Or Lack Thereof)

The results of Bigelow’s findings were to be published through his company the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS).

However, as opposed to the findings enjoying widespread coverage they were instead locked away. Even today in 2020, half a decade after research officially stopped under Bigelow, the data and findings remain, for the most part, a closely guarded secret. This despite interviews from Bigelow claiming he had an “enormous amount of data” that suggested that the UFOs seen over the ranch were “authentic” and very real.

This, as we might imagine, causes suspicion among many in UFO and paranormal circles. Is there something of significance there that Bigelow is simply keeping to himself? Or might it be that there is simply nothing to tell? Even a sceptic would have to admit if the latter was the case, 20 years is a long time to come to such conclusions.

Again, many in conspiracy circles point to the work that Bigelow did with NASA immediately following the shutting down of research at the ranch. Should we be concerned that such contracts were actually “encouragement” to suppress the data from his research?^[7]

3 Voices From Nowhere And Other Supernatural Phenomena

The strange activity would continue, though. And in the years since the ranch has changed owners (which we will move on to in a moment) many of these incidents have been well documented.

Such things as voices suddenly appearing out of nowhere, or strange whispers in a person’s ear. In most cases, at least according to those who claim to have heard these strange voices, it is as if there is a person stood right next to them.

Other bizarre incidents range from feeling a push or a shove as if from an invisible hand, seeing the ghostly images of people, strange orbs appearing out of nowhere and disappearing again, and even a case of a family pet just vanishing in front of their owners eyes.

In short, as we have expressed throughout our list, all manner of strange incidents normally associated with the paranormal take place here. However, the next point we will examine is surely one of the strangest and most bizarre of all.^[8]

2 It Is “Forbidden” To Dig On The Ranch

Without a doubt one of the strangest legends of Skinwalker Ranch is that no one should dig on the land. And while it sounds truly strange, those who have defiantly done so have experienced some of the strangest activity of all.

Some have simply begun feeling strangely ill, while others have noticed their tools and machinery have disappeared after only taking their eyes off it for a second. One rancher working on the land whose tools did indeed disappear was shocked several weeks later to find them neatly positioned high up in a tree.

Perhaps the most chilling incident connected to digging on the ranch is that of a member of the current staff. He would attempt to dig several holes in the ground in order to lay a fence. However, he would soon become ill to the point of collapsing. When doctors examined him, they would discover a sudden and bizarre swelling in his skull. And, at least according to the new TV series on History, they were at a loss as to why this was.^[9]

1 New Owner Promises Huge Scientific Research

In 2016 businessman and real estate owner, Brandon Fugal would purchase the ranch with a view to undertaking serious scientific research on the land in order to get to the bottom of the most bizarre goings-on.

He would immediately go about installing state-of-the-art sensors and recording equipment. He would also employ the services of several experts in their field in order to conduct the most extensive research to date. And what’s more, it would appear that Fugal will make his findings available to the wider public.

And while monitoring the ranch for strange activity such as UFOs or indeed strange creatures, Fugal looks set to undertake research in such diverse fields as gravitational physics and the use of energies and frequencies. The following decade, if all goes according to plan, could prove to be very intriguing indeed. He would state in a recent interview that it is “science and discovery” that drives him, and that he has no idea just what they might find as they study and research this most bizarre location.^[10]

10 Of The World’s Last Unexplored Places

Everyone loves a trip to the beach. The warmth of the Sun on your skin, the fresh air blowing off the sea, the soft sand between your toes, the glowing waves, the chunks of ice, and the hot springs are what make a holiday special.

You probably weren’t expecting to read some of the items in that last sentence, but not all beaches are the same. Some have very unique qualities. Here are ten of the most unusual beaches on Earth to plan your next holiday around.

10 Hidden Beach

Algar de Benagil in Portugal is one of the highlights of the Algarve coast. Someone walking by on the cliffs above might notice the hiss and rush of waves but not know where the sound is coming from. Getting closer, they will see a fence which surrounds a gaping hole. Only if they peer down into the hole will they see the hidden beach beneath.

Algar de Benagil is a natural grotto worn into the rock of the cliffs by the action of the tides.^[1] In the arched space left behind, a beach has formed. The hole in the roof of the cave acts as an oculus which lets daylight in to the secluded, sandy beach. Since the only access to the grotto is from the sea, you’ll have to brave the waves to enter between the rocks which guard the entrance if you want to visit.

9 Black Sand And Chunks Of Ice

Iceland is a volcanic island in the North Atlantic. Because it is made of volcanic rock, it has many beaches which reflect the color of the rock they are worn from. Black sand can be found in many places. Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon is different; here, the black sands are dotted with chunks of diamond-clear glacial ice.

Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon is attached to the sea by Iceland’s shortest river, a mere 1,500 meters (4,900 ft) long. The beach may look ancient and otherworldly, but it only formed in the mid-1930s as the glacier Breioamerkurjokull retreated.^[2] It is from the glacier that the brilliant lumps of ice on the beach come. The lagoon is still growing, and growing faster each year, as the glacier melts. The black sand of the beach is what remains of the volcanic rocks, pulverized under the immense weight of the glacier.

8 Hot Water Beach

Why do you take a bucket and spade to the beach? Most people would say to build sandcastles. In one area of New Zealand, you might get a very different answer. On the Coromandel Peninsula, people will say that they need them to dig their own hot water spa.

Hot Water Beach has one of the most literal geographic names in the world. When the tide goes out, water can be seen bubbling up from the sand. This water is hot. An underground river is warmed by geothermal heat that comes close to the surface here. ^[3]

As soon as the tide is out, visitors flock to the sand, some with spades which can be rented from a local cafe, and begin digging pools. The cold seawater retreats, and the pools fill with the hot water that gives the beach its name. Here, beachgoers can wallow in the natural spas. Then the tide comes in and washes all the pools away, leaving the beach flat for the next batch of visitors with their spades.

7 Bioluminescent Beaches

Bioluminescent beaches can crop up almost anywhere. Some plankton and algae can glow with their own light—called bioluminescence. Because it takes energy for them to glow, they only produce light in certain conditions. When these conditions are met, they can light up an entire beach.

Some beaches have fairly regular bioluminescence at predictable times if you want to see this natural wonder.^[4] By day, the depressingly named Mosquito Bay in Puerto Rico looks a slightly sludgy brown. At night, swimmers and kayakers can see dinoflagellates scintillating with blue light, their motion provoking the organisms to light up. In the Maldives during the autumn months, when the Moon is low, minuscule crustaceans produce a blue glow to help attract mates. Because they are larger than most algae and plankton, they sprinkle the sands with tiny dots of light.

Some algae and plankton produce their light when put under pressure. Walking on a beach covered in them can leave a trail of glowing footprints behind.

6 An Inland Beach

The very least you can say about most beaches is that they are beside the sea. Gulpiyuri beach in Spain bucks that trend by being inland. It’s only 100 meters (330 ft) from the sea, but it’s still cut off from it by high rocks and cliffs. Yet as the tide comes in on the sea beyond, the sand of this hidden beach is covered by water, too. How can such a tiny body of water be tidal?

The solution is a series of caves and channels that have formed in the rocks that connect Gulpiyuri to the sea beyond. The tiny beach was formed in the last Ice Age, and its name means “Circle of Water.”^[5] Gulpiyuri is sometimes called the world’s smallest beach, which may well be true. It is certainly surprising to find a beach in the middle of green field. At high tide, it is just about possible to swim at Gulpiyuri, but if you want to enjoy the sand, you should go at low tide and just wade in the knee-high sea.

5 The Disappearing Sea

When the tide goes out, beaches become great places to walk, run, or play sports on the sand. It’s still nice to hear the sea nearby, though, to remind you where you are. In Chandipur in India, twice a day with the low tide, the sea entirely disappears.

Due to the unusually flat seabed which comes up to the shore, the low tide makes the sea recede by up to 5 kilometers (3.1 mi).^[6] The huge expanse of sand is used by locals and tourists for walks, bike rides, and even car journeys all the way out to the now-distant ocean. The exposed seabed is also rich in red crabs and other sea creatures, which twice a day find themselves gawped at by humans as they are cut off from the sea by kilometers of sand. The sight of the disappearing ocean is being used to attract tourists to the area. Just be sure you know the tide times, or you might find yourself suddenly 5 kilometers out at sea.

4 Shell Beach

Searching out seashells on the beach can be a good way to get children to pass the time. On Shell Beach in Australia, however, you should probably set them to the task of finding something other than seashells. A 70-kilometer (43 mi) stretch of the coast is covered in a layer of cockle shells up to 10 meters (33 ft) deep.^[7]

Trillions of cockle shells have built up in the area over the ages. The tide will eventually break them down into fine, sandy particles, but for the moment, the shells remain intact. In the past, locals mined the shells to turn them into building materials, though the beach is now a World Heritage Site and used for tourism as opposed to construction. The area also has hypersaline water. The extra salt makes it easy for visitors to float.

3 Glass Beach

Usually the last thing you want to see on a beach is broken glass. Some places, however, owe their uniqueness to the thoughtlessness of humans. Fort Bragg, California, has a beach covered in sparkling pebbles of sea-polished glass. For decades, the local communities dumped their unwanted goods, even cars, beside the sea. While organic things decayed, and metal either rusted or was taken away, broken glass built up and was tumbled by the waves into smooth lumps. The beach now is protected by law, and the iconic glass cannot be removed by visitors.^[8]

Other places around the world also have high concentrations of sea glass thanks to dumping by people. Ussuri Bay in Siberia is home to glassmaking factories which dumped their mistakes into the sea. Now, the beach is a colorful mix of stones and sea glass.

2 Parrotfish Poop

What could be more romantic than walking hand-in-hand with your loved one over a gleaming, white, sandy beach? Maybe you lie in the sand and let it run through your fingers and muse on where so much beauty came from. Few people would imagine that all the dazzling sand around them is the product of fish poop.

Parrotfish live in reefs and feed by gnawing on the coral. The fish are after the algae that live on the reef and cannot digest the calcium carbonate their hard beaks break off to get at them. Teeth in the fishes’ throats crush the tough calcium carbonate, and when it passes out of the digestive tract, it is fine like sand.^[9] A single parrotfish can produce up to 360 kilograms (800 lb) of sand each year. Multiply that by thousands of fish and thousands of years, and you get those highly sought-after white beaches.

1 Dragon Egg Beach

New Zealand’s amazing natural landscape has made it a favorite location for filming fantasy movies, as it has sights found nowhere else on Earth. Dragon Egg Beach may sound like something out of Game of Thrones, but it is a real place and a popular tourist destination.

There is a stretch of Koekohe Beach that is dotted with large, spherical boulders. These Moeraki boulders formed 60 million years ago from concretions of mud, clay, and calcite. The boulders formed underground and thus were not smoothed by the motion of the waves. They have only recently been washed out of the cliffs above, from which they roll down to the beach.^[10] The boulders are full of erratic cracks, which, once exposed, can break open to give the boulders the look of hatching eggs.

Local Maori legend has the boulders being formed when they first sailed to their new home. One of their canoes was wrecked, and as it sank, baskets and gourds were thrown overboard. The hull of the canoe became the reef that surrounds the beach, while the jettisoned goods became the Moeraki boulders.

Ben Gazur is a freelance writer. You can follow him on Twitter as he dreams of visiting the places he writes about.

Renowned for its beautiful architecture, scarily advanced technology, and strong tradition, Japan remains one of the most fascinating countries to culturally dissect. However, it is the nation’s eccentric game shows, colorful anime, and unusual gadgets that seem to generate considerable attention. The same fervent interest lies in Japanese food.

Japan’s gastronomical delights have evolved through centuries of social, political, and economic shifts. The region’s chefs are notorious for their fusion cuisine, combing dishes from around the world with their own culinary flair. Such emphasis on innovation and originality has led to a mishmash of novel, interesting, and downright strange creations. As you will see from this list, the Japanese certainly adhere to the “try everything once” school of thought in terms of food.

10 Fish Sperm (Shirako)

The Japanese love a bit of piscine semen. For that matter, the dish has spread throughout the civilized world. Americans call it “milt.” The Japanese call it shirako. The Russians relish a little moloka (herring milt).

Reminiscent of the human brain’s slimy labyrinth of gyri and fissures, shirako is actually the fluid-filled sperm sac of a fish. Although the sac is most often extracted from cod, it is sometimes taken from salmon, puffer fish, and anglerfish.

Shirako is served in a variety of formats. Chefs have been known to deep-fry the reproductive apparatus in batter, saute it, or put it in a hot pot. For hard-core diners, shirako is frequently served raw with spring onions, leeks, and a citrus dressing. In terms of taste, the semen-packed snack is creamy, mildly sweet, and has a hint of tofu about it.^[1]

It may have all the aesthetic appeal of a Tim Burton film prop, but at least it offers some nutritional value. The fishy dish is packed with vitamin B, calcium, potassium, and protein.

Caviar might not seem like such an unpalatable dish after all.

9 Kare Donatsu

The Japanese have taken a traditional Indian dish and put a unique spin on it. Simply put, kare donatsu is a deep-fried doughnut filled with curry. The inexpensive snack, costing a mere couple of bucks, is sold at bakeries and stores across Japan. Tokyo’s Toyofuku bakery proudly claims that it has produced kare donatsu using Japanese beef for more than a century.

Inspired by the kare donatsu recipe, Japanese confectionary company Tirol decided to release another bizarre curry creation—curry chocolates. These bite-size snacks, called Kare Pan Tirol, have a chocolate, curry, and crunchy bread interior. The emergence of curry doughnuts even spawned “Kare Pan Man” (Curry Bread Man), an anime superhero made of curry bread.

Curry was first used in Japan during the mid-1800s. It is believed that English merchants of the Japanese port city Kobe first introduced the country to curry powders. Curry dishes quickly spread through cookbooks and became a staple diet of the Japanese navy.

In the 1930s, a Japanese merchant sampled curry rice aboard a steamship bound for Europe. Upon his return, he began selling an affordable version of the dish in his Osaka department store. It was an instant hit and led to curry houses appearing all over Japan.^[2]

8 Dancing Squid

The dancing squid (katsu ika odori-don) is both a Japanese delicacy and viral sensation. As the name suggests, the squid serves as an acrobatic jester to restaurant goers. Dousing the cephalopod in soy sauce leads to an electrical response in the creature’s limbs. More specifically, it is the salt in the soy sauce that causes the tentacles to thrash, making it seem as if the squid were still alive.

As the squid is freshly killed, much of the tissue is still functional. The sodium chloride within the sauce triggers action potentials in the sensory neurons of the tentacles. A series of electrical signals are then sent to the muscles, causing them to contract and relax. Since the squid’s muscle cells still possess energy reserves in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), movement is still possible.

The dancing squid has courted controversy online, with some viewers complaining about animal cruelty. However, the squid’s brain is removed during cooking. As a result, the squid is dead and cannot feel pain.^[3]

The same phenomenon is at play when salt is sprinkled over severed frog legs. For those of a morbid disposition, it is worth mentioning that a similar experiment was performed on a dead convict during the early 1800s.

The dancing squid is sold at Ikkatei Tabiji, a restaurant in Hakodate. It is typically served alongside rice, salmon roe, and shiso leaves.

7 Shiro-uo (Ice Gobies)

Here is another piece of “dancing” cuisine. Unlike the dancing squid, however, these sea creatures are sometimes alive when consumed. Shiro-uo are tiny, translucent fish. When placed in the mouth, they are said to do the odorigui dance.

More generally, the Japanese word odorigui refers to eating seafood that is still moving. This can occur when the creature is alive (e.g., shiro-uo) or dead (e.g., katsu ika odori-don). More commonly, though, shiro-uo are consumed when they are motionless and dead. For example, they are frequently used as a rice topping.

Caught throughout the Kyushu and Honshu islands of Japan, living gobies are sold at premium prices. Different regions use different types of small fish in their dishes. Fukuoka (Kyushu) chefs use ice gobies, whereas those from Iwakuni (western Honshu) use whitebait.

Many intrepid adventurers flock to Fukuoka’s Koharu restaurant to eat shiro-uo. This temporary structure overlooks the Muromi River, where local fishermen spend their days capturing unsuspecting shiro-uo.

Once inside the famed establishment, patrons mix the cold-blooded dancers with a vinegar and egg mix. With chopsticks at the ready, consumers are left to embrace the splendors of the odorigui dance. At the discretion of the customer, the fish are then either chewed or swallowed whole.^[4]

6 Wasps, Hornets, Bees, And Their Larvae

To most, these insects are picnic-plundering pests. To the Japanese, they represent a delicious snack. In fact, Emperor Hirohito was known to engage in a spot of entomophagy, munching away on a diet of wasps and rice.

Somewhere in Japan is a man chasing down a flag-waving wasp. These “wasp hunters” place small lumps of meat around the forested slopes of central Japan, waiting for the carnivorous critters to take a piece back to their nest. Affixed to the meat is a little white flag that allows the hunters to trace the wasp through the air.

Once the nest is located, the group incapacitates the wasps using smoke. Parts of the larvae-rich nest are then taken away and used in Japanese cuisine. It is even possible to purchase cans of wasp larvae from stores and packets of bee larvae from vending machines.

Hunters search for nests of the Asian giant hornet (aka the yak killer) using a similar technique. The powerful adult hornets are lured into a large container of shochu alcohol and left to ferment. The end result is an intoxicating hornet juice packed with vitamin C and protein. Meanwhile, the larvae is harvested from the nest and used in a variety of dishes, including appetizers, broths, and tempura.^[5]

Japan’s insect-eating ways have put the country on the map. Thrill-seeking tourists travel from all over the world to try the island nation’s rice grasshoppers, silk pupae, and giant water bugs. Mouthwatering.

5 Square Watermelons

Who knew that molding fruit into a variety of unconventional shapes could become such a prolific market? But that is the legacy of one Japanese farmer who created the square watermelon.

The square fruit was originally devised as an elegant solution to stacking and refrigeration issues. Apparently, the Japanese thought that traditional watermelons were difficult to stack and took up too much space in refrigerators.

Farmers grew the watermelons in square, glass cages, thereby molding them into a more practical shape. The dimensions of the glass containers corresponded closely to those of the refrigeration units.

Alas, square watermelons never enjoyed mass appeal. The square fruit was far more expensive than traditional watermelons and, once picked, took longer to ripen. Overall, the molding process diminished the product’s quality. As a result, square watermelons are now sold as decorative items, fetching hundreds of dollars each.

This obsession with fruit molding has spread to other countries, including Brazil, the United States, Canada, China, and Panama. Chinese company Fruit Mould is renowned for selling skull pumpkins, watermelon hearts, Buddha pears, and other so-called “fashion fruits.”

In Japan, high-end fruit is often given to loved ones during the gift-giving seasons, Chugen and Seibo. In 2016, a pair of melons went for over $27,000 at a market auction in Hokkaido. Bunches of behemoth-sized strawberries and grapes can go for hundreds of dollars. Top fruit stores sell oversized, blemish-free apples, mangoes, and pears at similarly exorbitant prices.^[6]

4 Novelty Ice Cream

Japan is famed for its novelty ice creams. Many of the unorthodox ingredients locked within these pungent scoops will make your taste buds do somersaults. From raw horse flesh to tulips, it would seem there is a flavor to suit any palate.

One of the most popular attractions in Tokyo is Namco’s Namja Town, home of the now-defunct Ice Cream City. Smaller ice cream and dessert stalls were set up following the museum’s closure. However, in its heyday, Ice Cream City was known for its squid ink, soy sauce, oyster, shark fin, beer, and whiskey-flavored ice cream offerings.

Every year, Japan celebrates “Ice Cream Day.” On May 9, in the Saitama prefecture, ice cream aficionados celebrate the day by sampling 100 different flavors. Some of the more unusual recipes have included crab, eel, and octopus.

Octopus and jellyfish ice creams are also available from the Kumamoto (Kyushu) and Yamagata (Honshu) prefectures, respectively. From the town of Bizen, it is possible to buy ice cream that has chunks of deep-fried oysters jutting from the sides.

And if you ever fancied a bit of pit viper ice cream, Japan is your ticket. The ice cream’s distinctive flavor leaves much to be desired. Some say it tastes like vomit. More charitably, others claim it has an air of garlic and almond. Many Japanese citizens believe the venomous reptile, called mamushi, has powerful aphrodisiac qualities and improves the nervous and circulatory systems.^[7]

3 Green Caviar (aka Sea Grapes)

The deceptively named “green caviar” (umi budou) is actually a type of seaweed. Grown in the shallow waters around Okinawa Island, situated in the south of Japan, the algae form bunches of green spheres. As the seaweed is transported in darkness, it temporarily loses its distinctive green coloring. The color returns when the “sea grapes” are exposed to low-intensity light.

The food is typically consumed raw in salads along with the citrus-based dipping sauce ponzu. The spheres have a slimy texture, and they burst in the mouth to release a slightly salty flavor. Japanese chefs also use the seaweed as a garnish for various types of seafood, including smoked salmon blini and tuna sashimi.^[8]

Sea grapes have high nutritional value, boasting carbohydrates, protein, fiber, omega-3, antioxidants, and minerals. However, some studies have suggested that the seaweed (Caulerpa lentillifera) may contain “appreciable amounts of cadmium,” leading to fears over potential toxicity.

The seaweed is popular in other Asian countries, too, regularly appearing on menus throughout the Philippines and Malaysia.

2 Horumon

The Japanese take a “waste not, want not” approach to the island’s resources. They even have a special word, mottainai, that expresses their disdain for wasteful behavior.

The concept behind this ancient Buddhist philosophy explains why many Japanese residents save wrapping paper, reuse discarded sink water in toilets, and turn old kimonos into purses, fans, and chopstick holders.

Japanese cuisine is no different, with the dish horumon perfectly encapsulating the country’s mottainai spirit. Horumon (“things to discard”) is a post–World War II viand that involves cooking offal and tripe. It is considered an inexpensive, working-class meal and is found throughout eateries in the Kansai region of Honshu.

The dish uses beef or pork and can include the diaphragm, esophagus, intestine, kidney, liver, rectum, and stomach. While these parts are often skewered and grilled (horumonyaki), many prefer to deep-fry the meat in batter (horumon tempura), stir-fry it with noodles, or cook it in a hot pot (horumon nabe).^[9]

This curious assortment of organs is also added to stews (motsunabe). The pork or beef offal is boiled in a soup along with cabbage, garlic, soy, and noodles.

1 Turtle

Suppon (Pelodiscus sinensis) is an expensive Asian cuisine. The dish’s popularity perhaps stems from unsubstantiated claims that the soft-shelled turtle affords increased energy, strength, and virility. Suppon oil extract is even sold as an unproven treatment for erectile dysfunction.

The creature inhabits the lakes, rivers, canals, ponds, and rice fields of Honshu and Kyushu, feasting on a diet of fish, mollusks, insects, and local flora. It is also specially bred on turtle farms for human consumption.

While suppon is seen as an alluring treat in urban hubs like Kyoto and Tokyo, it is also sold in rural restaurants at a fraction of the price. Suppon meals typically go for a minimum of 10,000 yen (over $88) in many city restaurants.

During preparation, the turtle’s neck is cut while the animal is still alive. This allows the chef to collect the blood. The blood is then consumed with or without sake according to the patron’s preference. The body of the reptile is chopped into pieces and cooked in a nabe pot to produce a vegetable-and-suppon broth. Alternative dishes incorporate the collagen-rich meat into seafood broths, stir-fries, and ramens.^[10]

Farming was one of the great steps in the development of human civilisation. The ability to grow the necessities of life freed humans from the need to scavenge and live a nomadic lifestyle. Now for our convenience almost everything is produced by intensive agriculture. Some types of farming are done on a smaller scale however, if the things they produce are more unusual.

Here are ten of the strangest farms in the world, or above it.

10 Horrifying Facts About Baby Farms

10 Snake Farm

The Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute in Bangkok is both a popular tourist site and important farm. The animals they produce are less cuddly than cows but they can still be milked. They farm venomous snakes and extract their venom to produce cures for snake bites and perform research.

The anti-venoms made here are vital to curing people who get bitten by snakes. Using their thousands of venomous snakes and a steady hand the researchers at the snake farm force their reptiles to bite onto jars. As the venom drips from their fangs it is collected and used to make the anti-venom. Those who want to see how this works can pay a small fee to watch a deadly snake being milked.

Other snake farms exist around the world and it turns out snakes are unexpectedly good domestic animals. As long as they are fed and kept warm they are quite happy hanging out in drawers until they are milked.^[1]

9 Spider Goats

A goat may not seem like the most exciting of animals but Freckles, along with her sisters, is not just any goat. She is part spider and part of the synthetic biology revolution. Scientists at Utah State University were interested in the properties of the drag silk spiders use to break their fall. It is stronger than Kevlar and might have uses in surgery.

The problem is that spiders can be tricky to farm. If you put cows close together they feel comfortable. If you put spiders too close together they tend to turn cannibalistic. You don’t want your farm animals to eat each other. So researchers introduced the genes that make spider silk to goats. All they have to do now to gather the silk proteins they are interest in is milk their goats.

Once purified and turned into fibres, known as BioSteel, the silk proteins are up to ten times stronger than steel of the same thickness and can be stretched up to 20 times its length without breaking.^[2]

8 Moose Farm

Moose milk is pretty extraordinary stuff. It has more essential amino acids than cow’s milk. It also has double the amount of fat and is slightly pine scented. The problem is that moose are big, heave, and pretty wild. At the Ivan Susanin Sanatorium in Russia the milk from moose is regularly used to treat a range of illnesses.

The moose that produce the milk are not kept on the farm but range around the local forests until they return to the farm to give birth. It is then that the farmers perform the slightly risky job of milking the moose. To ensure that their moose do not wander off completely they are fitted with radio trackers.

The farm doesn’t actually make much money from its milk, despite its reputed health benefits. Because of the limited amounts of milk that are produced only once per year the farm makes most of its money from the tourists who come to see the moose.^[3]

7 The Pope’s Farm

Castel Gandolfo was bought in the 16th century as a summer residence for the Pope. As well as a holiday home for the head of the Catholic church Castel Gandolfo also features 62 acres of farmland that produced crops exclusively for the use of the Vatican.

Or it did until Pope Francis took over. He has not stayed overnight there and has opened it up to visitors in a way that it never has been before. Tourists can even get there on a train from Vatican City on a train that once only the Pope got to use. The produce of the Pope’s farm can now be bought by anyone who wants some sanctified agricultural products.

The chickens on the farm are particularly holy. They eat the leftover dough from communion wafers that are made by nuns on the site.^[4]

6 Body Farm

When you plant something at a farm you usually do so in hopes that something will spring up for you to harvest. On a body farm however you probably want your crops to stay in the ground. Body farms exist to allow researchers to follow the process of bodies decomposing.

At a body farm human bodies are left outside in various conditions. Researchers then monitor the state of the bodies. By creating a timeline of decomposition it helps police to figure out how long a body has been outside. One of the methods they use is to see which insects and other animals begin to eat the bodies and when.

“If a bone has squirrel gnawing, it’s been there at least a year. So squirrels are a time since death indicator, and squirrels tend to gnaw on the bones in the spring, apparently for the calcium for their new litter, and you can even see annual cycles of squirrel gnawing.”

Most bodies planted on the farms come from those who have donated their cadavers to science. Some people specifically leave their bodies to body farms to help with the research.^[5]

Top 10 Horrific Farming Nightmares

5 Cannabis Farms

Drugs are big business. Because of the medicinal properties of many illicit drugs even governments can be in the drug growing business. Their farms tend to be out in the open, if heavily guarded. But where cannabis is illegal growers have been forced to get creative in where they put their farms.

Sometimes given away when it snows because the roof is so hot it melts off. In Britain one cannabis grower converted a former nuclear bunker into a farm with over 800 plants in it. Using expensive lighting and watering systems he was able to grow his plants underground.

Other cannabis farmers convert their attics into growing rooms. This has the advantage of hiding the light that the farms require to be on all day long. It comes with its own downside in cold climates however. The heat of the farms hidden under the roof is sufficient to melt any snow that may fall on it. All police have to do is look for the one house without a snowy roof and the farm is busted.^[6]

4 Leech Farms

Leeches have been used in medicine for hundreds of years. To feed the need for leeches they had to be gathered from waterways where they lived naturally. Leech collecting used to be one of the worst jobs going because the best way to attract a leech was to simply wade into a pond or river and let them bite you. Once a leech had latched on the collector had to wait until they were fat with blood before picking them off.

Today leeches still have their uses in medicine even if the once popular practice of blood-letting has thankfully died out as a cure-all. Because they feast on blood leeches produce a powerful anticoagulant to keep the blood flowing. Attaching leeches after surgery helps blood reach the site of injuries. Luckily we have figured out ways to farm them.

To breed leeches farmers now use sausage casings filled with sheep blood. The leeches bite this, instead of the farmer, once every six months. Once grown to full size they are packaged and sent out to hospitals for a snack/ new career in medicine.^[7]

3 Pig Toilets

Pigs are not picky eaters. In past centuries it was common to see pigs wandering around in towns and villages snacking on anything that humans had thrown away. In other places however pigs were, and still are, kept in toilets to eat human waste.

In ancient China pigsties were built with a latrine above it. When people went to the toilet they were doing two jobs, not just a number two. In rural China the same symbol was used for both toilet and pigsty because this method of feeding pigs was so common. Once human waste had passed through a pig the manure was much less likely to spread disease. It was an easy and effective way of dealing with sewage.

Unfortunately feeding pigs sewage is a bad idea, especially if you then eat the pig. Parasites that live in both pigs and humans can spread quickly when they each feed off each other. In most places the use of pig toilets in farming has been banned but some societies still use them and prize the meat that is produced.

2 Space Farm

If humans ever want to colonise space then they will have to come up with ways to grow food without the benefit of Earth under them. While plants have been grown on space stations and satellites before the crops were always sent back home – not for lunch but for study by scientists.

It was only in 2015 that astronauts first ate food produced in space. Using a system known as Veggie the astronauts on the International Space Station grew their first crop of Red Romaine Lettuce. By using LEDs as a source of light for the plants the system doesn’t waste energy on producing heat. They can also be tuned to specific wavelengths that can best be used by different crops for maximum efficiency.

Since then cabbages, mustard, kale, and pak choi have all been grown on the ISS. On Earth the Veggie system has been tested on over a hundred different plants so the menu of the first restaurant in space is likely to be fairly expansive.^[8]

1 Bird Nests

Soups are pretty easy meals to make and benefit from the fact you can throw almost any ingredient you happen to have to hand in them. That hasn’t stopped people looking for extra rare foods to add to their soups. Bird nest soup is a delicacy made almost entirely from the spit that swiftlet birds use to create their nests. When the nests are dissolved in a soup they produce a gloopy texture that is particularly sought after.

The problem is that the birds create their nests in hard to reach places. Traditionally those who collected the nests clambered up bamboo poles to cut the nests down. The difficulty and danger of this has made the dried bird nests among the most expensive animal food products in the world.

Collecting swiftlet nests has caused populations of the birds to fall. One way of reducing this impact is to build swiftlet farms. In Indonesia these are often large concrete structures resembling houses with plenty of space inside for the nests to be built on. Instead of destroying the nests before chicks have hatched the farmers wait until the breeding season is over which helps to keep the swiftlet population up.

Still, despite now being a farmable commodity bird nest soup is still expensive. Or expensive for a dish of bird saliva.^[9]

10 Bizarre Ways Growers Guard Pot Farms

Roadside attractions have been a staple of American culture since the first mile of Route 66 was laid down. Fodder for postcards, novelty-seekers, and Instagram shots, these various noteworthy stopping points are often quite unique and bizarre.

While classics such as the World’s Largest Ball of Twine seem weird enough, an in-depth look reveals much stranger sights. Here are ten of the strangest US roadside attractions. (For those curious, the ball of twine is in Cawker City, Kansas.)

10 Unclaimed Baggage Center
Alabama

Born from the mind of a man named Doyle Owens in 1970, Unclaimed Baggage Center (UCB) is a secondhand store with a unique supply chain: US airline companies.^[1] As of today, it is the only store in the country which sells lost luggage. The size of a city block, UCB has forged alliances with most major airlines, not only selling lost luggage but also random carry-on items which get left behind.

Originally sold on card tables in a rented house in Washington, DC, the nearly 7,000 new daily items were moved to their current home of Scottsboro, Alabama, by Bryan Owens in 1995. Thanks to the exclusive contracts signed with the major airlines of the US, UCB boasts more than a million visitors per year. In addition to their storefront, they also have a museum of oddities and curios, items which are not for sale. (An African djembe is one of the more unique exhibits.)

9 Lucy The Margate Elephant
New Jersey

Located just a short distance south of Atlantic City, a 20-meter (65 ft) building rises from the Margate sands. This isn’t your ordinary building, though; it’s in the shape of a large elephant, and its name is Lucy.^[2] Since its construction in 1881, news of a giant elephant appearing to sailors began to trickle into various parts of the East Coast. Determined to uncover the truth, visitors began to flock to Absecon Island, shocked when they realized it was no mirage.

The brainchild of a man named James V. Lafferty, Jr., Lucy was eventually patented in 1882, with Lafferty receiving one for the invention of a “building in the form of an animal.” Later owners of the building eventually began guided tours, with such visiting luminaries as President Woodrow Wilson. At various times through its history, Lucy has been a summer home for an English doctor and his family, a tavern (which nearly resulted in it burning to the ground), and a tourist attraction, which it remains to this day.

8 Wall Drug
South Dakota

Perhaps the most famous tourist trap in the entire country, Wall Drug got its start in 1931 on the edge of the South Dakota Badlands.^[3] Using his last $3,000, Ted Hustead brought his wife and child to the small town of Wall and purchased a small pharmacy. Business was tough, and they struggled to make ends meet for years while the Great Depression rolled on.

However, to this day, their biggest draw might still be one of their first: free water. Hustead’s wife, Dorothy, had the idea come to her while she tried to sleep one hot July afternoon. Due to her idea, and a number of ingeniously placed billboards, people flocked to the store, filling up on ice water as well as the occasional ice cream cone. Today, more than two million people visit each year, bringing more than $10 million with them.

7 Nicolas Cage’s Tomb
Louisiana

In a move which seems to solidify his eccentric reputation, Nicolas Cage purchased a tomb in an infamous New Orleans graveyard in 2010. Thanks to its below-sea-level elevation and numerous outbreaks of disease throughout its history, the city has strict rules about where cemeteries can be located, unless they’re aboveground. Those rules are what led Cage to purchase a 2.7-meter-tall (9 ft) stone pyramid in the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.

However, the exact reasoning behind the tomb’s purchase has been kept secret, though some locals are angry he was able to even get into the cemetery in the first place, going so far as to accuse the actor of knocking down much older burials in order to make room for the pyramid tomb.^[4] The first New Orleans graveyard with aboveground burials, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is also the final resting place of Marie Laveau, the infamous voodoo queen of New Orleans.

6 Airstream Ranch
Florida

An homage to Cadillac Ranch, an art installation using junked Cadillac automobiles, Airstream Ranch was located not far from Tampa, Florida, and used old RVs as its medium.^[5] It was the pet project of Frank Bates, a man who, coincidentally, happens to run an RV dealership nearby. Controversial for much of its existence (such is the life of modern art), state courts reversed local orders to tear it down after Bates fought for nearly two years.

Created in 2007 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Airstream company, the ranch was originally intended to be built using brand-new RVs, but Bates ended up deciding to get one from every decade of the company’s existence (though he only managed five decades’ worth). Bates had hoped to add to the ranch, envisioning a future where his installation would have become a park, as well as a home for weddings. In the end, however, Airstream Ranch was torn down to make room for a new Airstream dealership in 2017.

Another roadside attraction reminiscent of Airstream Ranch is Carhenge, located in Alliance, Nebraska. It’s exactly what it sounds like: Stonehenge, made of cars.

5 Cross Island Chapel
New York

Otherwise known as The World’s Smallest Church, the Cross Island Chapel was built in 1989 in the small town of Oneida, New York. In addition to having been certified by Guinness World Records, it also sits on a small dock in the middle of a pond. Only big enough for three standing people (or two seated), the church has nevertheless served as the location for a number of weddings. On one such occasion, wedding guests had to anchor their boats nearby.

Though it lost its title of World’s Smallest Church only a few months after its certification (a Swiss church holds the record), the Cross Island Chapel still attracts its fair share of visitors, most of whom come to pray or just take a look.^[6] Built to honor God, the building no longer sits on “Cross Island,” as the water level has risen, forcing a dock to be built to house the 2.7-square-meter (28.7 ft²) chapel.

4 The Hobo Museum
Iowa

Located in Britt, Iowa, the home of the National Hobo Convention, an annual event which began in 1900, is the Hobo Museum, a building dedicated to the memory of hobos and their history. Housed in an old theater, the museum began its life with nothing more than a single box of random items. Today, the building is full, and exhibits extolling the origins and virtues of the hobo lifestyle are abundant. (To be clear, a hobo is a traveling migrant worker, whereas a tramp is a traveler who avoids work. A bum neither works nor travels.)

In 2008, students of various classes at nearby Iowa State University began work on getting the building onto the National Registry of Historic Places, as well as plans to remodel/restore the former glory of the theater.^[7] Other sites throughout the city honor hobos, such as the Hobo Jungle and the Hobo Cemetery, a section of a larger graveyard reserved specifically for hobos.

3 Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard
Vermont

Have you ever wondered what happens to discontinued ice creams, such as Festivus or Dublin Mudslide? Fear not, for they have gone to a better place: the Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard. A tongue-in-cheek place for a tongue-in-cheek company, the graveyard is not only a page on their website but a physical place, located at their factory in Waterbury, Vermont.^[8]

Originally opened in 1997, the graveyard only consisted of four flavors, with many more added over the years (35 at last count). Most of the graves are empty, with the exception being What A Cluster, for which they held an actual funeral. (Whether or not the pint of ice cream actually made it underground is anybody’s guess.) While it isn’t the most popular attraction on this list, Sean Greenwood, Ben & Jerry’s head of publicity, says people do come to pay their respects to their favorite discontinued flavors, going so far as to leave flowers near the elaborate granite headstones erected there.

2 The Octopus Tree
Oregon

Bearing no relation to the mythical Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, the Octopus Tree of Oregon is an enormous spruce tree, notable for its branches, which resemble the tentacles of an octopus. Believed to be the largest Sitka spruce in the state, debate continues on the story of its origins, with Native American activity being the most likely.^[9] Coastal tribes, such as the Tillamook tribe, were said to shape the trees as part of their ceremonial rites.

The idea behind the Native American theory is that the tree was used to hold cedar canoes, as well as other objects of ritual importance. As far as the Octopus Tree goes, it has been estimated to be hundreds of years old and has often gone by the name “The Council Tree,” as it was said that elders also congregated at it in order to make decisions.

1 World’s Largest Collection Of World’s Smallest Versions Of World’s Largest Things
Kansas

This one is going to take a little explaining. Intrigued by the great American pastime of creating the largest versions of things, artist Erika Nelson decided to riff on that idea. What sprung from her thought was a traveling attraction containing miniature replicas of said things. Extensive research on each and every exhibit is performed before construction, with precise measurements done on the originals.^[10]

Appropriate materials are used whenever possible; for example, the World’s Smallest Version of the World’s Largest Ball of Rubber Bands was made using miniature rubber bands. In addition, a photo is taken of each exhibit sat in front of its original. While it is normally on the road, and best seen there, when the attraction is not traveling, it calls Lucas, Kansas, its home.