Short Scary Story- The farm visitor

I was 7, my brother 10, my mom in her early 40s, my grandmother (her mom) in her 60's. So we were all cogent. No one was too young or too senile to not recall this nonsense. Yet, still no bloody answer.
Grandma lived on an isolated country road in NC that was named after her family since they were the only crazy fuckers who lived on the land for about 1000 acres. And I *do* mean crazy. We have stories about relatives that start with, "You remember that time Uncle Bob was in the ditch with a shotgun?" "WHICH TIME?!"
Her house had been empty for several weeks while she'd been visiting us in Florida, but we were all back, spending the weekend with her before trekking back to the Sunshine state. The house is in the foreal country, literally over train-tracks, past a salvage yard and her nearest neighbor (a cousin — everyone is related to everyone who owns a house on the road) ain't within screamin' distance. Yes, that seems to be a real system of measurement — "screaming distance."
It's early in the AM, like just before daybreak. We're awake because these are farm freaks who wake at the crack of dawn from sheer ingrained habit. We're eating cereal when we hear someone pull up outside. Curious, we all run to the big picture window that looks onto the front yard. There is a strange truck there. No one seems to be behind the wheel, though the engine is idling. The truck is... well, old, for one thing. It's old-timey like from maybe the 1930's? You could picture the Joad Family heading to California in this thing. It's rusted but it was probably once painted blue.
We stare at the thing, bewildered. Mom asks grandma if she knows who that is. Nope, not a clue, says grandma. She runs to get the phone to call her cousin and ask him to come up — she thinks maybe it's a hired hand and he's just at the wrong farm. Just as she asks him to come on down, the phone goes dead. Well, that's unsettling.
All at once, there is a loud, insistent banging on the front door. We all scream. My grandma, who is terrifyingly resourceful, huddles us all into the living room, away from a window where anyone can see us. Then, while mom, me and my brother tremble there on the couch, she grabs a serrated bread knife from the kitchen and cautiously approaches the front door. She peeks out a side window, very stealthily. She turns back to us and looks confused. She shakes her head, like, "No one is there." We all kind of breathe easier.
Then EVERY goddamn door in the house is banging — relentlessly. I can still hear it. Rhythmic and terrifying, like all the doors are about to splinter and crack. There were two doors in the basement beneath us, so the sound is also a reverberation at our feet. The three ground-floor doors are shaking — we can see them trembling and jerking on their hinges from our vantage point on the couch. Finally, mom runs to the window — either from a psychotic break with reality or terror, I have no clue. She cries, "Oh thank Christ — Cousin is here!" We run to her and peek out the picture window — there is no one that we can see in the yard, but we can't see all the doors from our viewpoint.
Cousin walks by truck with a shotgun in his hand. Cousin, it should be noted, has pretty much every gun ever made. He looks puzzled, looking at the rear of the truck, then he glances in the cab window and he stops. He goes pale, runs a hand down his face. Then he RUNS towards to house, towards us.
My grandmother flings open the kitchen door as she sees him coming. He shouts, "Everyone get behind the couch! Get DOWN!" He runs past us as we bolt for the couch. The banging starts AGAIN, all the doors and now we can hear the windows rattle. It's like a tornado or the end of the world. We are too scared to even scream. Cousin flings open the front door and fires the huge shotgun, once, BANG, deafening. As he does, the truck roars into life and it sounds like a train. We scramble up; the banging stops, mercifully. Cousin is advancing onto the lawn, gun leveled at the truck. We run behind him, wanting to be out of that shaking, quivering house and near the dude with the gun. The truck peals out, backwards, cutting across the yard and racing into a breakneck speed. Tires sqeal, rubber is burned. Cousin fires again and we all cower behind him. He blows out the back window with the sound of a thousand plates smashing into linoleum but the truck never even hiccups, just roars down the road. No tags, not even a vanity plate on the back.
There was NO ONE behind the wheel of that thing.
We all had a clear view. Everyone agreed. Not a driver in the cab.
Well.
Not anything we could SEE, anyhow.
The police were called. The phone line had been cut. There was not a single boot print in the entire yard except Cousin's, from where he'd run into and out of the house. Cousin reported that there had been no plate but when he looked into the cab, it looked like "something from a horror movie." He said there were all kinds of weird restraints — handcuffs, c-clamps, nylon straps — and he said the floorboards looked covered in what "smelled like" blood to him (Cousin was famous for his keen sense of smell and the window was down, so it's possible).
Cousin said he thought he saw a blur of something out the picture window and ran to fire the first shot, but "missed" because, once he stood there, nothing or no one was on the lawn or in the truck. Then it shot backwards out of the yard and out of our lives, leaving no answers, just a deep sense of unease every time we'd visit.
Grandma and Cousin have passed. Deeply religious people, they stuck by their unchanging versions of the story until they died. My brother, mother and I have never been able to figure it out — neither did the cops, I think it should be noted. We don't know how all the windows and doors were banging, and we don't know why we never saw a SOUL anywhere or how they could get around the sides of the house without leaving a trace in the damp earth.

And just in case you want to get to sleep tonight, here's one with an explanation — though it's still pretty creepy.

Short Scary Story- The sibling

Nothing happened when I was younger, but in my early teens I started to notice weird occurrences (and since then I've read that it's "common" for things to start around teenage girls' adolescences. . .). The very first thing happened my freshman year of high school when I had a sleepover, and several girls brought cameras and took pictures. When they got their photos back, there were pictures in two separate rolls which seemed to have white vortex shapes swooping across me, obscuring my face and upper body.
Immediately after this, an odd tapping began coming from my bedroom walls. At first I thought nothing of it because it's obviously a very old house and they creak. But as I heard it more frequently I started realizing that it had some very strange characteristics. First of all, it only ever seemed to happen as I got into bed when I was in that receptive almost-asleep stage. (I had my desk in there, too, where I would spend many long hours doing homework, so I would have noticed if they had come at other times.) Also, they alternated walls; they would rapidly switch from one to another, and sometimes they'd go simultaneously on two opposite walls, then switch suddenly to the other two opposite walls.
Then something even more dramatic happened. In childhood and up until I was 17 I had bunk beds, which were actually great since I was always having friends spend the night (my house was where we all hung out due to size, location, and how well my parents got along with everyone). One night I was had just gotten into bed on the top bunk, when suddenly the sheets were jerked sharply towards the wall, pulling partially off me. It was almost as if someone were in the bottom bunk, playing a trick on me or trying to get my attention. So that was very strange, but felt almost playful, so I didn't feel too scared by it. But it was VERY odd, nonetheless.
When I was 17 I got a new bed so we started dismantling the bunk bed, and first gave away the top mattress to our neighbors who had a young son, so for a little while I used the top bunk as a sort of shelf (but it still had the solid railing so it was boxed in on all sides). One day I put a pile of textbooks and magazines on the top bunk in some boxes I had sitting there, and was on the computer on the other side of the room typing something up, my back turned. Suddenly there was a loud series of quick crashes and I whirled around just in time to see my last textbook sliding over the side of the top bunk and cascade to the floor on top of the others books. Since the railing is about ten inches high on all sides and the boxes were about the same AND the pile was not that tall, they would have had to have somehow ‘jumped' over the both the side of the box and then the side of the bed!
The creepiest experience was when a friend was spending the night, and we were getting ready for bed, and my cat (who is the most docile, sweet, and gentle cat I've ever known), was curled up on my lap purring loudly. My friend switched off the light and he continued to purr warmly, but not ten seconds later he drastically changed on the turn of a dime. His body suddenly stiffened, all his fur rose up completely on end, he dug his claws deep into my thigh (enough to draw blood!), and started to growl loudly. The growls quickly escalated into horrible piercing noises, like shrieks, at the top of his lungs that I have NEVER heard any cat make. The whole time his entire body was rigid and tense also. Even aside from that, there was a general off feeling in the room, and my friend quickly rushed up to turn the light back on. Almost immediately the claws pulled out from my skin, and he relaxed and settled down, but still seemed unsettled. That only happened once in his whole life, but it remains extremely disconcerting to me, to this day.[...]
Then last year, one of the strangest things yet happened to me. I was home from London on break, and though nothing of note had happened for years, that changed. I was alone because my parents were at work, but out of habit I locked the bathroom door anyway when I went to take a shower. Nothing was noticeably amiss in there; everything seemed in order. I laid my clothes down on the floor and stepped straight into the bathtub where I took a really long shower. After a long time I opened the curtain back up and I immediately and strongly felt like someone had been in there unnoticed while I was showering, but I checked the lock (which is an old-fashioned latch on the inside) and it was still fastened. I grabbed a towel, stepped out, then noticed something really strange.
The bottle of baby powder (which we never use, it's typically on the bottom shelf in a basket) was not only out but lying open right in the very middle of the bathroom floor, with its contents scattered everywhere in the entrance area. Footsteps led through it and onto the dark yellow bathmat, stopping short of the tub. At first I though, "That's strange, I REALLY don't remember it being there but I guess I must have walked through it to get here." I was almost positive that it hadn't been there since it was so clearly right in the middle of where I would have walked, and such an obvious mess, but it was the only thing I could think of as an explanation. But then I noticed that one of the footsteps was half on the mat, half on my jeans, and that there was another obvious footprint on my jeans after that. Then I thought (though even more skeptically), that I must have stepped ON my jeans somehow before getting in, even though I was convinced that I had stepped straight out of them and gotten directly in. Still, it was the only explanation I could think of. However, when I looked more closely at the prints, I couldn't convince myself of anything; they were significantly smaller than mine, almost like a child's.
After that day and in retrospect everything that has happened almost seems like something a child would do; they're all fairly playful or something your younger sibling would do.

Short Scary Story- Great-grandma

My great-grandmother was very close to my mom and was apparently an incredible woman. She died before I was born, but my mom tells us a lot of stories about her. From the time my little sister was born, she's had a very strong resemblance to old pictures of my great-grandma and her whole side of the family. Once, when my sister was a baby just beginning to learn to speak, my mom was holding my sister on her lap, talking and playing with her. My sister reached up and took my mother's face in her hands (like my great-grandmother used to do to my mom when she was alive), looked her in the eye, and very clearly said, "You always were such a beautiful baby." My mother was shocked, but my sister, who was not yet speaking in full sentences, had gone back to making her typical baby sounds.
My mom told this story at dinner when my sister was about six or seven. This was the first time my sister ever heard the story, and she was a little freaked out. As soon as my mom finished telling the story though, my sister's eye twitched, as if she were winking.

Short Scary Story- The mysterious photo

When I was a kid, my best friend and I were looking at old photos in his house. There was one of a family wedding, a group shot outside our local church. One of the men in the photo had no legs. Not like, was in a wheelchair or anything, but literally in the photo, his legs just stopped at the knee and you could see the huge old slabs of the church — they even matched perfectly with the slabs that were on either side. It was exactly the same as if you were looking at a photo and looked at the wall above his head, rather than below his knees.
Now, I can't blame digital trickery as this photo was WAY too old for that (70s, maybe?). Maybe someone with a working knowledge of photography could explain it.
The weird thing is that the guy in the photo (my friend's uncle) ended up with diabetes and had both legs amputated at the knee years later.

Short Scary Story- The sibling

Nothing happened when I was younger, but in my early teens I started to notice weird occurrences (and since then I've read that it's "common" for things to start around teenage girls' adolescences. . .). The very first thing happened my freshman year of high school when I had a sleepover, and several girls brought cameras and took pictures. When they got their photos back, there were pictures in two separate rolls which seemed to have white vortex shapes swooping across me, obscuring my face and upper body.
Immediately after this, an odd tapping began coming from my bedroom walls. At first I thought nothing of it because it's obviously a very old house and they creak. But as I heard it more frequently I started realizing that it had some very strange characteristics. First of all, it only ever seemed to happen as I got into bed when I was in that receptive almost-asleep stage. (I had my desk in there, too, where I would spend many long hours doing homework, so I would have noticed if they had come at other times.) Also, they alternated walls; they would rapidly switch from one to another, and sometimes they'd go simultaneously on two opposite walls, then switch suddenly to the other two opposite walls.
Then something even more dramatic happened. In childhood and up until I was 17 I had bunk beds, which were actually great since I was always having friends spend the night (my house was where we all hung out due to size, location, and how well my parents got along with everyone). One night I was had just gotten into bed on the top bunk, when suddenly the sheets were jerked sharply towards the wall, pulling partially off me. It was almost as if someone were in the bottom bunk, playing a trick on me or trying to get my attention. So that was very strange, but felt almost playful, so I didn't feel too scared by it. But it was VERY odd, nonetheless.
When I was 17 I got a new bed so we started dismantling the bunk bed, and first gave away the top mattress to our neighbors who had a young son, so for a little while I used the top bunk as a sort of shelf (but it still had the solid railing so it was boxed in on all sides). One day I put a pile of textbooks and magazines on the top bunk in some boxes I had sitting there, and was on the computer on the other side of the room typing something up, my back turned. Suddenly there was a loud series of quick crashes and I whirled around just in time to see my last textbook sliding over the side of the top bunk and cascade to the floor on top of the others books. Since the railing is about ten inches high on all sides and the boxes were about the same AND the pile was not that tall, they would have had to have somehow ‘jumped' over the both the side of the box and then the side of the bed!
The creepiest experience was when a friend was spending the night, and we were getting ready for bed, and my cat (who is the most docile, sweet, and gentle cat I've ever known), was curled up on my lap purring loudly. My friend switched off the light and he continued to purr warmly, but not ten seconds later he drastically changed on the turn of a dime. His body suddenly stiffened, all his fur rose up completely on end, he dug his claws deep into my thigh (enough to draw blood!), and started to growl loudly. The growls quickly escalated into horrible piercing noises, like shrieks, at the top of his lungs that I have NEVER heard any cat make. The whole time his entire body was rigid and tense also. Even aside from that, there was a general off feeling in the room, and my friend quickly rushed up to turn the light back on. Almost immediately the claws pulled out from my skin, and he relaxed and settled down, but still seemed unsettled. That only happened once in his whole life, but it remains extremely disconcerting to me, to this day.[...]
Then last year, one of the strangest things yet happened to me. I was home from London on break, and though nothing of note had happened for years, that changed. I was alone because my parents were at work, but out of habit I locked the bathroom door anyway when I went to take a shower. Nothing was noticeably amiss in there; everything seemed in order. I laid my clothes down on the floor and stepped straight into the bathtub where I took a really long shower. After a long time I opened the curtain back up and I immediately and strongly felt like someone had been in there unnoticed while I was showering, but I checked the lock (which is an old-fashioned latch on the inside) and it was still fastened. I grabbed a towel, stepped out, then noticed something really strange.
The bottle of baby powder (which we never use, it's typically on the bottom shelf in a basket) was not only out but lying open right in the very middle of the bathroom floor, with its contents scattered everywhere in the entrance area. Footsteps led through it and onto the dark yellow bathmat, stopping short of the tub. At first I though, "That's strange, I REALLY don't remember it being there but I guess I must have walked through it to get here." I was almost positive that it hadn't been there since it was so clearly right in the middle of where I would have walked, and such an obvious mess, but it was the only thing I could think of as an explanation. But then I noticed that one of the footsteps was half on the mat, half on my jeans, and that there was another obvious footprint on my jeans after that. Then I thought (though even more skeptically), that I must have stepped ON my jeans somehow before getting in, even though I was convinced that I had stepped straight out of them and gotten directly in. Still, it was the only explanation I could think of. However, when I looked more closely at the prints, I couldn't convince myself of anything; they were significantly smaller than mine, almost like a child's.
After that day and in retrospect everything that has happened almost seems like something a child would do; they're all fairly playful or something your younger sibling would do.

Short Scary Story- Church trip nightmare

The only time where I am pretty certain that I saw a ghost/something supernatural was on a church youth group trip I took in early high school. It was an all-girls trip where we stayed at a beach house in Wilmington, NC for the weekend. In the middle of the second night we were there, I woke up to one of the other girls staying in the room screaming in her sleep. I sat up, looked over, and saw a girl standing over her bed and right by where she was sleeping. At first, I thought it was just a girl who stayed in another room at first, but once I looked more closely, it wasn't. I was definitely wide awake and laid back down as I watched her walk around the bed. I noticed that there was what looked like a red and whited striped towel on the wall (which was not there when we went to sleep), and the thing that really freaked me out was that the mirror facing the two beds was pitch black. Even in darkness, you can still see somewhat of a reflection in a mirror, but not this one, it was completely black. No reflection. The girl noticed that I was looking at her — she turned around and made the nastiest, snarliest face at me. I still remember the slits of her eyes giving me that evil glare. My entire body ran cold and I began to shake, as I start screaming that there's a ghost. This doesn't wake up the girl who was shouting in her sleep, but it does wake up the other 2 girls in the room, who say go back to sleep. The ghost-girl doesn't disappear. She stands there placidly at the end of the other bed and watches us as one girl tells me to calm down. I start crying and hide under the covers until I manage to fall asleep. In the morning, I was so relieved to wake up and see the mirror back to normal and no towel hanging on the wall. Of course, I am all "ghost! ghost! there was a ghost!" in the morning, to which I receive rolled eyes and chidings of "Christians don't believe in ghosts, and you shouldn't either" (eff that, you need a better reason than that). One of the girls who I woke up starts laughing, saying she thought it was so silly of me. I run through my story - creepy girl, black mirror, red and white towel on the wall. At the mention of the towel, she stops and gives me a funny look, a look that clearly said to me that she did see something when I woke her up. I didn't say anything, but after that, if [my ghost] was brought up, she quickly changed the conversation.

Short Scary Story- The lady in the bathroom

About ten years ago my 3 year old son and I moved into a new house. Well, it was new to us, but it was actually a very old house. The inside of the house always seemed to be just a little darker and a little colder than it should be. I had noticed that the first time I went to view the house but as it was summer I figured it would save on cooling costs.
Soon after we moved in a friend of mine came by. We were sitting and talking for a few minutes but she seemed uncomfortable the whole time. Then I saw in her face that something in the other room caught her attention. Her eyes got big. She said "I have to go." I asked her what was wrong but she said she didn't want to tell me. I kept after her because her reaction was kind of freaking me out. On her way out the door she finally said "This house is haunted" but she wouldn't tell me what made her think so. Still to this day ten years later she refuses to tell me what she saw.
About a week after that night my 3 year old son casually asked me who the old lady in the bathroom was.
One day I was leaving for work but once I got to the car I realized I needed to run back in the house to get something. I walked in to the house and as soon as I got inside this framed photo on the wall shot off the wall. Now, I don't mean it fell because of some issue with the nail or anything like that. It shot horizontally away from the wall, not vertically down. And it landed on a mosaic table with enough force to break some of the tiles off of it. I felt like whatever was in the house was pissed that I came back in after it thought I had left for the day!
After living in the house for about six months, I noticed a weird square cut into the boards on the deck. There was no handle but I was able to pry it up. The hole was just big enough to fit through, and there was a ladder going down. For some reason I went down and found myself in what looked like a homemade basement. It was basically just a room dug out of the earth, no constructed walls or stone supports or anything like you would expect if it was a basement that was built with the house. It was very dark but I could see over in the corner a suspicious-looking large stone. It looked like one of those light-colored 100+ year old headstones that you see in old cemeteries. Just then some camel crickets started jumping at me so I got my ass out of that "basement" as fast as I could and never went back.
Now, this is the part that affected me most and the reason we left the house. One night I was in bed but not yet asleep, laying on my stomach. I heard someone walk into the room. I heard footsteps come from the doorway over to my bed. I didn't realize until later that the fact that I heard the footsteps was weird because the room was carpeted. When the footsteps reached my bed, I felt someone put their hands on my back. Two hands, just gently laid flat on my back and kept there. I assumed it was my son. I said "What are you doing?" but no one answered. I looked up and no one was there. I got up and checked my son's bedroom but he was in bed asleep.
We moved out soon after that.

Short Scary Story- Charlotte

When I was 8, my family moved into an old Colonial that was built in 1810. My father still lives there. Until I was 17, every before I feel asleep, I would feel pressure next to me as if someone sat down on the bed next to me. This would always be accompanied with a feeling of increased pressure in the air. Although I knew this probably didn't happen to everyone, I didn't think about it much.
Until I got a cat. He was a present for my twelfth birthday. Each night, he would sack out on the bed near my feet. Each night, he would bolt from a dead sleep and glare at something in the doorway before hightailing it out of there. A few moments later, the pressure would return.
Again, while this was a weird thing to happen, I didn't really question it. Maybe the cat was just neurotic. I didn't talk about this nightly occurrence to anyone. However, I did refer this feeling/presence/what have you as "Charlotte." I don't know why.
So one day in the summer when I was thirteen, an elderly man and his middle-aged daughter pull up to our house and explain that the father lived in the house with his aunt while he was a boy and that he raised his family there for a few years. They had been visiting family in the neighborhood, and they wondered if they could take a tour for old times' sake. My mom said sure. She, my sister and I led them around the house, and they recalled different memories.
Afterward, my mom asked them if they remembered strange occurrences or stories about the house. "Like ghosts?" the old man asked and chuckled. His daughter became very quiet and said firmly, "It's not funny, Dad." The man explained that everyone who slept in one bedroom felt a little unsettled, and his daughter interrupted to say that she always felt as if someone sat on the edge of the bed and she tried to go to sleep. Her father said they used to joke that it was just his aunt looking out for them—his Aunt Charlotte.
This confirmed what I had never admitted to myself. I had a freaking ghost that basically tucked me in at night for the previous five years.
Still, going to bed was never freaky or scary. I just tried to ignore the feeling when it came.
Until one night when I was 16. My parents had been going through a weird patch in their marriage, I was feeling depressed, and in general, it was a weird year. I went to bed; after about 20 minutes the cat took his typical bolting exit from the bed, and I felt the familiar pressure on my side.
Then I felt a hand brush through my hair.
Then I ran straight downstairs to the living room where my mom was dozing. She woke up when I burst in the room, saw my face, and asked what was wrong. I told her I had a nightmare and left it at that.
I spent a week sleeping in the guest room. When I got the nerve to go back to my room, I was nearly asleep when I realized I didn't feel the pressure next to me. I did feel pressure in the air. I rolled on my back and saw the figure of a woman in her 60s, wearing a housedress, her hair pulled back in a bun, with her arms folded. She was looking right at me, very concerned. When I found my voice, she disappeared. I said out loud, "I don't care if you stay, but I can NEVER, EVER, EVER see you again." I never did.
However a few years later, after my parents divorced and my dad moved in his girlfriend and her 4 year old son, I wasn't really surprised when she told me her little boy said a lady named Charlotte told him stories at night.

Short Scary Story- Colonel Walker

My mother worked in a daycare that had taken over the wing of an old school and the building is notoriously haunted with the ghost of the school's name-sake and founder, Colonel Walker. The attic of the building was used as storage for the daycare and many people reported small, fairly unobtrusive events while being up there, things like boxes shifting around behind you, drawers opening on the other side of the room where you were, curtains suddenly moving, the feeling of someone else being in the attic with you. But the kids were the most in tune it seems. I know that lots of the kids talked about "the old man" at the daycare (which was staffed entirely by women), and I have definitely seen the kids react by all at once looking to the door as if someone entered the room when no one had. Personally, I always felt as if someone was walking directly behind me whenever I had to go from one end of the hallway to another and sometimes I would hang out in the kitchen waiting for my mom to finish up work for the day while I finished my homework or something, I often felt like someone was there with me (I spent a lot of time there, especially in the summer when school was out, helping around the daycare). The most famous piece of evidence of Colonel Walker's ghost was a picture taken at Halloween of all the kids in their costumes. Right in the back, standing behind the children and looking straight at the camera, is the watery and somewhat blurred face and upper body of an older man. Like, you don't even have to squint or tilt your head to make out that it is there. Now I know that it could have been some bleed from some other photos or something, but I think, given all the other evidence it seems they got the Colonel on camera.

Short Scary Story-The Scary Room

My dad was dating a woman (let's call her Anne) in Rochester, NY. She lived in an old farm house. I don't even know where to begin with this place. Let's bulletpoint it out:
1) The basement looked like the basement in Stir of Echoes. Most of it was cement, except for "the scary room" which was a mound of dirt and sand. Weird and scary things would result if anything happened in that room, like having to run wires through it. Anne placed a chest-high piece of wood in the door frame to keep her animals from getting in there. It's worth noting that while her cat would go into the basement, her extremely loyal dog could not be made to go down the steps. That's when you know something's wrong. Anyway, Anne kept her cat's food dish on the top step to the basement. One day, she noticed a few pieces of the cat's food laying a couple steps down from the dish. Thinking nothing of it, she let it be. The next day, the food had moved down a step in the exact same pattern. Next day, same thing. Again and again until the food disappeared. Anne tried not to go into the basement as a matter of course, but had to soon thereafter to do laundry. She saw the cat food in the same pattern in the scary room. Blaaaagh.

2) Before my dad lived with her, she had a nightly routine. She would get in bed and read and then would turn on the t.v. (which was directly across from the bed) and fall asleep. Her dog would lie on the floor by her side. One night, she was reading and her dog jumped up and started barking at the t.v. Since her dog was generally hyper, she thought nothing of it—didn't even look up. But when the barking persisted, she looked at the t.v. The t.v. was off, but there were black and white images on the screen. They kept changing every minute or so—a church, a skull, etc. While she had experienced many scary things in her house, this freaked her out badly. She called my dad, panicking, and asked what to do. He said, "Take pictures!" She did. I've seen them. That t.v. was most definitely off and there were most definitely images on it. You can bet that when I stayed in their guest room for a Thanksgiving visit, I made sure the t.v. across from my bed was unplugged (not that it would've made a difference, but it made me feel better!), the lights stayed on, and the blanket was over my head all night.

3) Anne had a ghost travel with her to visit my dad one time. While it wasn't a mean-spirited ghost or anything, I still find that unbelievably creepy....so Paranormal Activity-ish.
4) I asked my dad what the scariest thing was that happened to him while living in that house and he said that one day, he was making a sandwich in the kitchen (which adjoined to the basement stairs, btw) and felt something hit his back and then heard it drop to the floor. It was a penny. "Weird," he thought. He started walking to the living room and something hit has back again. Same. Penny. Not cool, ghost. Not cool.

North Korean Officials Claim to Have Uncovered Secret Unicorn Lair – Seriously

Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668).
This is really really for real serious in the eyes of the North Korean media. The Korean Central News Agency is the official news service of the DPRK. It is NOT like a Korean version of The Onion. Two, keep in mind that the North Koreans historically have gone to great and fantastic lengths to prove their superiority and the people of North Korea are expected to take everything that is released as gospel. Like the time when they claimed that Kim Jong Il went to the United States and won the U.S. Open by getting a hole in one on every shot.

It is also a “fact” that his birth was prophesied by a swallow and heralded with a double rainbow and a new star in the heavens.So, back to the unicorn. The reason North Korean officials have a vested interest in proving not that unicorns exist is because it would help to verify their legend about King Tongmyong riding a unicorn which somehow proves that Pyongyang is the rightful capital city of Korea. I don’t pretend to understand it all. From the article: The discovery of the unicorn lair, associated with legend about King Tongmyong, proves that Pyongyang was a capital city of Ancient Korea as well as Koguryo Kingdom.Director of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences, Jo Hui Sung, explained to the KCNA that Korean history books point to the precise location of the lair and it was only a matter of time before it was found.

 

One such old book, ‘Sinjungdonggukyojisungnam’ (Revised Handbook of Korean Geography) complied in the 16th century wrote that there is a lair west of Pubyok Pavilion in Mt. Kumsu. The Sogyong (Pyongyang) chapter of the old book ‘Koryo History’ (geographical book), said: Ulmil Pavilion is on the top of Mt. Kumsu, with Yongmyong Temple, one of Pyongyang’s eight scenic spots, beneath it. The temple served as a relief palace for King Tongmyong, in which there is the lair of his unicorn. By the by, the Korean version of the unicorn (called a Qtlin) is slightly different than what is presented in Western legend. But, I can be forgiven for referring to them as unicorns because that is the exact translation that the KCNA uses themselves as you can see here. With that said, Korean unicorns actually look more like dragon-ish type creatures, or sometimes Bambi.Below is the picture of it.

Armless Pianist Wins 'China's Got Talent'

A singer with no tongue might not get too far on “American Idol”.  But an armless pianist has emerged as the winner of “China’s Got Talent”.Liu Wei was born October 7, 1987 in Beijing. He is a Chinese disabled pianist from Beijing who won the first series of China’s Got Talent at the age of 23 by playing the piano with his toes.Liu Wei sealed his victory Sunday night in Shanghai by performing his version of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” – using just his toes!

Wei lost his limbs when he was electrocuted at the age of 10.  Eight years later, he decided to pursue his love of music.  He uses his feet to get dressed, eat and brush his teeth.The show’s three judges applauded the Beijing native for his determination and encouraged him to continue following his dreams.His upbeat attitude towards life, despite losing both arms in an accident created millions of fans and followers. His worldwide popularity became evident when he was cheered by a SRO audience in Vienna, Austria, in January 2011, when he performed “The Butterfly Lovers “in the Wiener Musikverein during the first stop of the China’s Got Talent tour.

Liu first moved audiences during his audition for the show, explaining: “For people like me, there were only two options. One was to abandon all dreams, which would lead to a quick, hopeless death. The other was to struggle without arms to live an outstanding life.”
But accepting his “CGT” prize in front of a capacity crowd at Shanghai Stadium, the newly-minted star revealed his lighter side, telling the judges “At least I have a pair of perfect legs!”

10,000 STEPS A DAY FOR A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE'S

How many steps do you walk each day?

Maybe you have heard the recent guidelines about walking 10,000 steps per day. How far is 10,000 steps anyway? The average person's stride length is approximately 2.5 feet long. That means it takes just over 2,000 steps to walk one mile, and 10,000 steps is close to 5 miles.

A sedentary person may only average 1,000 to 3,000 steps a day. For these people adding steps has many health benefits. I have outlined the basic 10,000 steps program, but also added a commentary below.

A reasonable goal for most people is to increase average daily steps each week by 500 per day until you can easily average 10,000 per day. Example: If you currently average 3000 steps each day, your goal for week one is 3500 each day. Your week 2 goal is 4000 each day. Continue to increase each week and you should be averaging 10,000 steps by the end of 14 weeks.

Wearing a pedometer is an easy way to track your steps each day. Start by wearing the pedometer every day for one week. Put it on when you get up in the morning and wear it until bed time. Record your daily steps in a log or notebook. By the end of the week you will know your average daily steps. You might be surprised how many (or how few) steps you get in each day.

 There are many ways to increase your daily steps. Use your imagination and come up with your own list:

Take a walk with your spouse, child, or friend

Walk the dog

Use the stairs instead of the elevator

Park farther from the store

Better yet, walk to the store

Get up to change the channel

Window shop

Plan a walking meeting

Walk over to visit a neighbor

Get outside to walk around the garden or do a little weeding

Continue to track your daily steps and/or mileage; and keep notes on how you feel, how your body is improving, or other changes you are making to improve your health.

If you are in very poor physical condition or at any point you feel that you are progressing too rapidly slow down a bit and try smaller increases. If you have any health concerns seek your physician's advice prior to starting or changing your exercise routine.

How to solve a Rubik's cube

The riddle of how to solve the Rubik's cube stumps most avid game players, but there are seven steps that might help the conundrum a little easier to crack. 

 

 1. Get to know your cube. For example, you should know that centre piece colours are always opposite each other. White is opposite yellow, orange is opposite red and green is opposite blue.

2. Solve the white cross.  The Rubik's website recommends you aim to create a white cross on the top face of the cube first of all. This will make the next phase easier.
3. Solve the white corners. With the white cross on the top face, you must then solve the white corner pieces. Corner pieces will have one white side plus two other colours.

4. Solve the middle layer, so the bottom two layers of your cube match in colour.
5. Solve the top layer. The first stage of this step is to try and get a yellow cross on the top face of your cube. Next, you should try and get all the yellow on the top face.
6. Position the yellow corners correctly. Twist the top face, which should be yellow, until at least two of the corners are in the right location.
7. Finally, correctly place the centre pieces.

 
An international team of scientists and Google engineers discovered that there are more than 100,000 starting positions for the Rubik's cube and they believe each can be solved in 20 moves or less.
Invented in 1974 by Professor Erno Rubik, the Rubik's cube was an instant success when it was first exported from Hungary in 1980, becoming the world's fastest-selling toy.
The 64-year-old reclusive Hungarian professor has since seen his cube achieve 350 million sales in the three decades since.
Still obtaining a cult following, almost 40,000 entries on YouTube feature tutorials and video clips of quick solutions.

Why your cat claws and bites when you rub its tummy

Animal behaviour experts have worked with Cats Protection to produce a guide to help pet owners know what their cats want.

It helps explain often contradictory behaviour by these precious animals – like why they often scratch and bite when they appear to want their stomachs rubbed.

The guide also includes advice about how to respond to these signals and common misinterpretations made by cat owners.

Among the signals they say to look out for are:

• The greeting – when the cat walks towards you with its tail up, it means it is saying hello
• The sign of trust – when the cat rolls on its back exposing its stomach it is showing it trusts you rather than wanting its belly rubbed.
• The leg rub – when the cats rubs its head and body against your legs it is saying you smell strange and is trying to mark you with its scent
• Flattened ears – when the cat flattens its ears it is frightened and needs somewhere to hide
• Licking of lips – while after eating this can just be it is cleaning itself, at other times it can be a sign of nausea or stress
• The slow blink – the cat will slowly close and open its eyes, turning its head to one side, meaning it is relaxed and is not feeling threatened

 Nicky Trevorrow, Cat Protection’s behaviour manager, said: “They are quite complicated and subtle in their behaviour, much more so than social species like ourselves and dogs.

“When a cat throws itself on its side and shows its belly, most people misinterpret this behaviour and think that it wants its belly rubbed but will get grabbed by their hand and the cat will bite them.
“What the cat is actually doing is showing a greeting behaviour and showing trust. It is actually an abuse of that trust to stroke its belly. What the cat would rather you do is to give it a slight head rub.
“When a cat comes towards you with their tail upwards, it is a sign of their greeting. The best thing to do is to acknowledge their greeting and give their head a rub."
The charity produced the short three minute video guide after conducting a survey of 1,100 cat owners to see what they thought their pets were trying to communicate.

Three quarters of those asked did not know that the cat’s upright tail meant it was pleased to see them, while a third thought a cat wanted its tummy tickled when it lies on its back.
A third of owners also failed to recognise a slow-blinking cat as meaning they were content and 65 per cent thought a purring cat means it is always happy, but it can also be a sign of pain.
Half of owners were unaware that cats show stress by licking their lips and a quarter thought cats shed hair intentionally to mark their territory.
Mrs Trevorrow added: “If a cat is stressed it is really important to give them a place to hide and to get up high."

A recent study showed that dogs make subtle facial expressions that help to convey how they are feeling.
Mrs Trevorrow added: "Unlike dogs and humans, cats have not evolved the complex facial muscles that allow them to make obvious expressions.
"They are more subtle and can be difficult to read, so owners also need to look for non-facial signals that can indicate how their cat is feeling.”

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park

The amazing Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is where James Cameron drew his inspiration from when he was working on Avatar. Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area is located in The Wulingyuan District of the City of Dayong, Hunan Province of China and is known for its stone pillars that reach over 1km in height and resemble the ones seen on Pandora (In the movie Avatar).
The area has approximately 3,000 tall quartzite sandstone pillars.

 Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, was set up in 1982, is the first authorized national forest park in China. The area covers 480 thousand square meters (185 square miles). This park, together with Suoxiyu Natural Resource Reserve, Tianzishan Natural Resource Reserve and Yaozizhai makes up the Wulingyuan Scenic Area, also known as Zhangjiajie Scenic Spot. It is located 32 kilometers (19 miles) from urban Zhangjiajie and 28 kilometers (17 miles) from Wulingyuan Scenic Area.

 Zhangjiajie National Forest Park has been described differently, such as, majestic, eccentric, tranquil, delicate and wild. The park features grotesque peaks, lucid brooks, abundant fauna and floras and hospitable climate. There are six main attraction spots and over 90 smaller ones in the park to date.

 It belongs to the sub-tropical climate of Central Asia. Splendid mountains and luxuriant trees help form a favorable climate: warm in winter and cool in summer. The average temperature is 13Celcius (55Farenheit), the highest 17Celcius (62Farenheit ) while the lowest is 10Celcius (50Farenheit) on average in winter. The charm of the park varies with the alternation of seasons; therefore, it attracts visitors all year round. Besides its pleasant climate, the environment and air quality also provide visitors a chance to breathe healthy air which is believed to be rich in negative oxygen. It is also believed that hypertension patient may have their blood pressure lowered if they stay in the park for a period of time. This is due to the fact that dust particles in the park are 88% lower and the air 10% mistier than outside.

About 98% of the area is covered with vegetation. There are 720 species of the 102 families, including all the five most important floras, namely, the rose family, pulse family, grass family, composite family and orchid family. Some of these trees are rare and regarded as national treasure. For example, the Dove tree, known as living fossil, can be traced back as early as the Fourth Ice Age. The great variety of plants in the park takes up 82% of all the flora families in Hunan Province.

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park also boasts a variety of animals. Exuberant forests offer them ideal habitats to live in and procreate their own species. There are more than 149 kinds of chordate animals inhabitants in this park. Among them, 28 kinds are under national protection, amongst which, are the Golden Pheasant, Rhesus Monkey, Giant Salamander and Musk Deer. Visitors will be able to hear birds singing and see monkeys playing in the tree.

The park is endowed with many attraction spots, such as the Yellow Stone Stronghold (Huangshizhai), Yaozizhai, Yuanjiajie and the Golden Whip Stream.
Yellow Stone Stronghold (Huangshizhai)
Yellow Stone Stronghold (Huangshizhai), Yaozizhai is located west of the park. It is named after a story whereby Huang Shi saved Zhang Liang from misfortune when the latter isolated himself from society in this forest.
Occupying an area of 41 acres and 1,200 meters (0.8 miles) above sea level, this stronghold is the largest observing spot of the forest park. One cannot claim to have visited Zhangjiajie without visiting Yellow Stone Stronghold. The main attraction spots include Tranquil Trail in Fir Woods, Imperial Edict and the Precious Box, Needle Peak, the Southern Gate to Heaven, Five-Finger Peak and so on.


Sceneries along the Golden Whip Stream are most enchanting in the park. Named after the Golden Whip Rock that it flows by, this stream, 5.7 kilometers long (3.5 miles), joins the Lute stream in the west and Suoxi Stream in the east. A 300-meter (984 feet) walk from the gate of the park will lead you to the entrance of the Golden Whip Stream. Flanked by ridges and peaks, the crystal clear water makes it possible to observe every action of the fish in the water. Wild flowers are in abundance here.

Cable Car

On the way, girls from Tujia will present visitors traditional folk songs when requested. The main attraction spots here include: the Welcoming Guests Rock, Golden Whip Rock, Reunion Rock and the Purple Grass Pond.
The northern part of the park is the essential tourist route. Yuanjiajie is a natural platform that faces giant rocks rising from deep valleys and surrounded by higher mountains. Unique in their shapes and covered with pine trees, these rocks resemble a vivid Chinese painting.
Main attraction spots include: Back Garden, breath taking Mihun Stage and the First Bridge under the Sun.

Ancient Snake Was As Long As a Bus

A colossal snake about the length of a school bus slithered about South America's rainforests some 60 million years ago, according to an analysis of the skeletal remains of what is now considered the largest snake ever identified.
"It's the biggest snake the world has ever known," said Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga and part of an international team who discovered and identified the snake bones. He added, "The snake's body was so wide that if it were moving down the hall and decided to come into my office to eat me, it would literally have to squeeze through the door."
Fossils of the extinct snake species, now called Titanoboa cerrejonensis, were discovered in the Cerrejon Coal Mine in northern Colombia. From the fossilized vertebrae, the researchers conservatively estimate the snake weighed about 2,500 pounds (1,140 kg) and measured nearly 43 feet (13 meters) from nose to tail tip.

The giant reptile was a boine snake, a type of non-venomous constrictor that includes anacondas and boas. In the same fossil rainforest, the researchers also found giant sea turtles and crocodile relatives.
In fact, while alive, the snake likely gorged on its crocodilian neighbors. "We think it was a completely aquatic snake, that it didn't really go out on land except to bask every once in a while," Head told LiveScience. "And aquatic snakes generally eat aquatic vertebrates, and the only other aquatic vertebrates around are these primitive crocodiles and these giant turtles. And you can imagine it's probably pretty difficult to eat a turtle when you can't chew."
The snake's enormous dimensions are a sign that temperatures along the equator where the remains were found were once much balmier.
"The bigger you get, the more energy you need overall," Head said. "And since they get their energy from external environments, the bigger they are, the more energy they're going to require from the external environment." (Snakes are cold-blooded animals, so they don't generate their own body heat.)
The researchers calculated that in order to support the slithering giant, its tropical habitat would have needed a temperature of about 86 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit (30 to 34 degrees Celsius).
"Tropical ecosystems of South America were surprisingly different 60 million years ago," said Jonathan Bloch, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History, who worked with Head on the snake study. "It was a rainforest, like today, but it was even hotter and the cold-blooded reptiles were all substantially larger. The result was, among other things, the largest snakes the world has ever seen ... and hopefully ever will."

Meet Carissa Yip: She's nine years old and on track to become the youngest chess master in history

CHELMSFORD, Mass. — Only three years or so since first picking up the game of chess, 9-year-old Carissa Yip can already look down at 93 per cent of the more than 51,000 players registered with the U.S. Chess Federation.
She has risen so far up the rankings that she has reached the expert level at a younger age than anyone since the chess federation began electronic record-keeping in 1991, a new level she reached in recent weeks.

Carissa Yip, 9.

Her father, Percy, who taught her until she began beating him within a year, said she could reach master level in as soon as a year.
“Some never reach master level,” he said. “From expert to master, it’s a huge jump.”
But Carissa, who will be a fifth-grader at McCarthy Middle School this fall, has improved by leaps and bounds.
She first played competitively at the MetroWest Chess Club and Wachusett Chess Club, at the latter of which she’s the top-ranked player. Last fall, she competed in an international competition in Slovenia, and in December, she’ll play the World Youth Championships in the United Arab Emirates.
Carissa is hesitant when asked about her accomplishments, saying she doesn’t spend much time thinking about them.
But she also set a goal for herself this year to reach 2,100; an expert is anyone over 2,000. Anyone at 2,200 is a master. She also wants to one day become the first female to win the overall championship — not just in the female category, her father said.
“It’s not like the rating matters,” Carissa said.
She later demonstrated her ability by playing with her back to the board, reading her moves to her father and keeping track of the whole board in her head. She has been called an intimidating player in an ironic way, because she’s far short of even 5 feet tall.

Her U.S. Chess Federation ranking places her in the top 7 per cent of all players registered with the group and the top 2 per cent of female players.
Closer to home, Carissa has impressed others who have been playing chess for far longer than she has been alive.
“This was not a record she won by a few days,” said Nathan Smolensky, the president of the Massachusetts Chess Association. “It was a significant margin. So it’s very impressive.”
Among other younger stars at the Boylston Chess Club in Somerville, where Yip has played, most are in their teens and are boys, Smolensky said.
“Even they say they were nowhere near this strength when they were that young,” he said.
Carissa also has three years to reach the next level, that of master, in time to set the record for youngest to reach that step as well, Smolensky said. Five-time U.S. women’s winner Irina Krush has the record for becoming a master at age 12.

George Mirijanian, program director for the Wachusett club and past president of the Massachusetts Chess Association, said Carissa and Percy Yip, both Wachusett members, both got a standing ovation when they arrived at the club last week after Carissa reached expert level.
“In my more than 50 years with the club, I had never witnessed such an exuberant outburst from club members,” Mirijanian said. “They are really proud of Carissa and what she has accomplished.”

Italy coach plunge kills 38

AVELLINO, Italy: A speeding bus that crashed off an Italian flyover, killing 38 of its 48 passengers, may have lost parts of its engine shortly before it careered out of control, according to a report of early findings by accident investigators.
There were also claims from surviving passengers that a burst tire was to blame for what has been described as one of Italy’s worst road accidents, as residents of a small southern Italian town were travelling home late on Sunday from a weekend outing.


The coach collided with a series of cars as the driver, who was among those killed, wrestled with the vehicle but was unable to prevent it crashing through a concrete barrier and falling almost 100 feet into the ravine below.
Firemen worked through the night to recover bodies from the wreckage at the remote, rural spot near Monteforte Irpino in Campania, and also freed 12 survivors from the twisted metal and torn seats of the
coach, which was ripped in half by the impact and had its roof torn off.

“All the survivors were conscious although two later died, including a women in her thirties who spoke to the police one moment then suddenly collapsed and died, perhaps of a haemorrhage,” said one fireman.
A further nine who were travelling in cars hit by the bus were also injured.
The passengers on the bus — many of them children — were all from the town of Pozzuoli near Naples and had left their homes on Friday to visit a thermal bath and the home town near Benevento of Padre Pio, the Italian saint.
“These were families from council homes on a privately organized trip,” said Fr Paolo Auricchio, a priest from the area.
Italian police and motorway officials opened an urgent investigation into what had gone wrong. A statement from the motorway operator Autostrade per l’Italia said the coach appeared to have been travelling fast near slower-moving traffic, even though a lower speed limit had been clearly indicated.

 A motorway worker said he had seen the bus heading for the flyover at excessive speed with its front door open or broken, according to the Italian news agency ANSA, which also reported that a component from the bus’s engine had been found by investigators on the road about a mile before the crash site.
But one survivor of the crash told relations that the bus suffered a burst tire just seconds before it plunged off the flyover, which passes between wooded hills and over hazelnut groves above Naples.
Vincenzo Rusciano said: “My niece, Annalisa, told me a left-side tire of the bus burst. The driver tried to keep control in any way possible but could not manage and the bus swerved, ending up in the ravine.”

 There were also questions over the concrete barriers through which the coach crashed.
“You would think that the barriers on the viaducts and bridges should prevent this type of accident,” said Alessio Barbarulo, the head of the fire brigade division that co-ordinated the rescue effort. “But it seems the impact was so strong that even the barrier gave way.”
By dawn, yesterday rescue workers had lifted the lines of bodies off the road below, hosed away the blood and allowed the wreckage to be taken away on the back of a flatbed truck.

By mid-morning, all that remained at the scene were cast-off rubber gloves that had been used by rescue workers and a woman’s shoe by the side of the lane.
The bodies were taken to the school gym in the small town of Monteforte Irpino, where streams of relations of the dead arrived to walk down lines of open coffins spread out beneath the basketball nets, identifying their lost family members. After filing out of the gym, they sat in silent groups next to the school’s climbing frame, under an awning erected to ward off the heat. Red Cross workers circulated with plates of pasta and offers of counselling for the shocked families.
“I have lost my sister and her son — my wife just called me at work to tell me to come here,” said Amadeo Musto, 56, whose body shook with silent sobs as he spoke.

Giuseppe Di Lorenzo, who had arrived to pay his respects to a childhood friend who died in the crash with the friend’s wife and sister in law, said: “People here still can’t believe what is happening. My wife should have been on the trip, but couldn’t make it, and I thank God for that.”
The name of one victim kept recurring: Luciano Caiazzo, 40, who worked in a salami shop, had organized the trip, as he had many others over the past 15 years.
“He was a great organizer — setting up trips to religious sanctuaries and fun trips was his passion,” said Salvatore Defelice, 42, a friend who had come to offer support to relations of the victims. Mr. Caiazzo had booked trips over the years for hundreds of residents of three tight-knit neighbourhoods in Pozzuoli — Toiano, Monterusciello and Licola.

Getty ImagesFriends and relatives of the victims of coach crash on the A16 motorway between Monteforte Irpino and Baiano, react near an elementary school facility turned into a morgue on July 29, 2013 , in Monteforte Irpino, Italy.

“Everyone there will know someone who died,” said Mr. Defelice.
Enrico Letta, Italy’s prime minister, who was on an official trip to Greece, described the crash as “as huge tragedy.”
As the afternoon wore on, a priest led a prayer which the crowd stood to join, a prelude to the funeral mass planned today at a sports arena in Pozzuoli where the coffins will be sent. When the coffins were finally loaded into hearses, one by one, each was solemnly applauded by the onlookers.
There was one piece of good news among the tragedy: one family of four had all survived the 100-foot plunge.
“They were not sitting together,” said Alessio Barbarulo, the chief of the fire crew at the scene. “It is just by chance they survived.”
But the mood was best summed up by Father Auricchio. “It seems calm, but there is a lot of anger here,” he said.

AP Photo/Salvatore LaportaPeople comfort each other outside a gym facility of an elementary school turned into a morgue, in Monteforte Irpino southern Italy, Monday, July 29, 2013.

AP Photo/Gregorio BorgiaThe wreckage of a bus is lifted by a crane after the bus crashed off a highway, seen at top, near Avellino, southern Italy, Monday, July 29, 2013.

AGENZIA CONTROLUCESTRINGER/AFP/Getty ImagesRescuers prepare the coffins of victims of a bus crash on July 28, 2013 on the road between Monteforte Irpino and Baiano, southern Italy.

A coach carrying pilgrims plunged off a motorway flyover near Naples in southern Italy, killing at least 39 people in one of the worst such accidents in Europe in recent years.
Local prosecutors on Monday launched an investigation into possible manslaughter over Sunday evening’s accident close to the town of Avellino, according to Italian media reports.
Rescuers were still battling to extract people from the manged wreckage of the coach.
The vehicle, carrying 48 people, had been travelling at high speed when it crashed on a busy dual carriageway between Naples and Bari in an area Italian media described as an accident black spot.
It rammed several cars before plunging through a crash barrier and down a steep slope before coming to a stop on its side off the road about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Naples.
“As of now, the death toll has risen to 39,” said Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi.
The driver was among the dead and about a dozen people were injured, including children. There were reports that some people in the dozen or so cars caught up in the chaos had also been hurt.
Prime Minister Enrico Letta, on a visit to Athens, said it was a “very sad time” for Italy and observed a minute’s silence in honour of the victims before addressing a conference in the Greek capital.
Italian news agency ANSA said the manslaughter probe would look into the possible role of the driver, as well as the state of the coach and the crash barrier on the highway.
Ansa said the driver’s body would be examined for the possible presence of alcohol or drugs while traffic police have seized the vehicle documents from the coach operator Mondotravel.
An AFP photographer at the scene described rescue workers searching the crash site early Monday under arc-lights set up around the wreckage of the coach.
“The situation is critical. Our men are working to save as many lives as possible,” fire chief Pellegrino Iandolo told Sky TG24.
Rescue workers said they had pulled 33 bodies from the wreckage and found three more of people thrown from the vehicle as it plunged 30 metres (100 feet) down a ravine.
Another two died in hospital of their injuries.
“We are still trying to extract people from the vehicle,” a police spokesman said. “Our priority now is to free the wounded.”
Photographers at the scene described how fire crews raced to find any remaining survivors, as the victims were laid out under white sheets along the roadside.
They said about a dozen wrecked cars littered the highway.
“Looking down from the overpass, the scene of the tragedy: some 30 bodies covered by white sheets, lined up along the roadside,” said Cesare Abbate of Italy’s ANSA news agency.
From time to time, rescue workers called for “a moment of silence” to listen for signs of life from the wreckage, he said.
One survivor, quoted by his uncle who met him in hospital, reported hearing a tyre exploding and that the driver had been unable to control the vehicle.
The passengers had been returning to Naples following a pilgrimage to Pietrelcina, the birthplace of Saint Pio, an Italian priest canonised in 2002 who is highly venerated in southern Italy.
The Naples-Bari highway has been closed to traffic, the police said.
The last major coach accident in Europe was in March 2012 in Switzerland, when a coach carrying Belgian schoolchildren home from a skiing holiday crashed, killing 28 people, including 22 children.
The accident also comes just days after a train crash in Spain last Wednesday which killed 79 people, the deadliest rail disaster in the country in decades.
The driver appeared in court on Sunday on 79 counts of reckless homicide over the crash near the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela, northwest Spain
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/07/italy-coach-plunge-kills-39/#sthash.69pBvIGK.dpuf

A coach carrying pilgrims plunged off a motorway flyover near Naples in southern Italy, killing at least 39 people in one of the worst such accidents in Europe in recent years.
Local prosecutors on Monday launched an investigation into possible manslaughter over Sunday evening’s accident close to the town of Avellino, according to Italian media reports.
Rescuers were still battling to extract people from the manged wreckage of the coach.
The vehicle, carrying 48 people, had been travelling at high speed when it crashed on a busy dual carriageway between Naples and Bari in an area Italian media described as an accident black spot.
It rammed several cars before plunging through a crash barrier and down a steep slope before coming to a stop on its side off the road about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Naples.
“As of now, the death toll has risen to 39,” said Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi.
The driver was among the dead and about a dozen people were injured, including children. There were reports that some people in the dozen or so cars caught up in the chaos had also been hurt.
Prime Minister Enrico Letta, on a visit to Athens, said it was a “very sad time” for Italy and observed a minute’s silence in honour of the victims before addressing a conference in the Greek capital.
Italian news agency ANSA said the manslaughter probe would look into the possible role of the driver, as well as the state of the coach and the crash barrier on the highway.
Ansa said the driver’s body would be examined for the possible presence of alcohol or drugs while traffic police have seized the vehicle documents from the coach operator Mondotravel.
An AFP photographer at the scene described rescue workers searching the crash site early Monday under arc-lights set up around the wreckage of the coach.
“The situation is critical. Our men are working to save as many lives as possible,” fire chief Pellegrino Iandolo told Sky TG24.
Rescue workers said they had pulled 33 bodies from the wreckage and found three more of people thrown from the vehicle as it plunged 30 metres (100 feet) down a ravine.
Another two died in hospital of their injuries.
“We are still trying to extract people from the vehicle,” a police spokesman said. “Our priority now is to free the wounded.”
Photographers at the scene described how fire crews raced to find any remaining survivors, as the victims were laid out under white sheets along the roadside.
They said about a dozen wrecked cars littered the highway.
“Looking down from the overpass, the scene of the tragedy: some 30 bodies covered by white sheets, lined up along the roadside,” said Cesare Abbate of Italy’s ANSA news agency.
From time to time, rescue workers called for “a moment of silence” to listen for signs of life from the wreckage, he said.
One survivor, quoted by his uncle who met him in hospital, reported hearing a tyre exploding and that the driver had been unable to control the vehicle.
The passengers had been returning to Naples following a pilgrimage to Pietrelcina, the birthplace of Saint Pio, an Italian priest canonised in 2002 who is highly venerated in southern Italy.
The Naples-Bari highway has been closed to traffic, the police said.
The last major coach accident in Europe was in March 2012 in Switzerland, when a coach carrying Belgian schoolchildren home from a skiing holiday crashed, killing 28 people, including 22 children.
The accident also comes just days after a train crash in Spain last Wednesday which killed 79 people, the deadliest rail disaster in the country in decades.
The driver appeared in court on Sunday on 79 counts of reckless homicide over the crash near the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela, northwest Spain
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/07/italy-coach-plunge-kills-39/#sthash.69pBvIGK.dpuf

A coach carrying pilgrims plunged off a motorway flyover near Naples in southern Italy, killing at least 39 people in one of the worst such accidents in Europe in recent years.
Local prosecutors on Monday launched an investigation into possible manslaughter over Sunday evening’s accident close to the town of Avellino, according to Italian media reports.
Rescuers were still battling to extract people from the manged wreckage of the coach.
The vehicle, carrying 48 people, had been travelling at high speed when it crashed on a busy dual carriageway between Naples and Bari in an area Italian media described as an accident black spot.
It rammed several cars before plunging through a crash barrier and down a steep slope before coming to a stop on its side off the road about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Naples.
“As of now, the death toll has risen to 39,” said Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi.
The driver was among the dead and about a dozen people were injured, including children. There were reports that some people in the dozen or so cars caught up in the chaos had also been hurt.
Prime Minister Enrico Letta, on a visit to Athens, said it was a “very sad time” for Italy and observed a minute’s silence in honour of the victims before addressing a conference in the Greek capital.
Italian news agency ANSA said the manslaughter probe would look into the possible role of the driver, as well as the state of the coach and the crash barrier on the highway.
Ansa said the driver’s body would be examined for the possible presence of alcohol or drugs while traffic police have seized the vehicle documents from the coach operator Mondotravel.
An AFP photographer at the scene described rescue workers searching the crash site early Monday under arc-lights set up around the wreckage of the coach.
“The situation is critical. Our men are working to save as many lives as possible,” fire chief Pellegrino Iandolo told Sky TG24.
Rescue workers said they had pulled 33 bodies from the wreckage and found three more of people thrown from the vehicle as it plunged 30 metres (100 feet) down a ravine.
Another two died in hospital of their injuries.
“We are still trying to extract people from the vehicle,” a police spokesman said. “Our priority now is to free the wounded.”
Photographers at the scene described how fire crews raced to find any remaining survivors, as the victims were laid out under white sheets along the roadside.
They said about a dozen wrecked cars littered the highway.
“Looking down from the overpass, the scene of the tragedy: some 30 bodies covered by white sheets, lined up along the roadside,” said Cesare Abbate of Italy’s ANSA news agency.
From time to time, rescue workers called for “a moment of silence” to listen for signs of life from the wreckage, he said.
One survivor, quoted by his uncle who met him in hospital, reported hearing a tyre exploding and that the driver had been unable to control the vehicle.
The passengers had been returning to Naples following a pilgrimage to Pietrelcina, the birthplace of Saint Pio, an Italian priest canonised in 2002 who is highly venerated in southern Italy.
The Naples-Bari highway has been closed to traffic, the police said.
The last major coach accident in Europe was in March 2012 in Switzerland, when a coach carrying Belgian schoolchildren home from a skiing holiday crashed, killing 28 people, including 22 children.
The accident also comes just days after a train crash in Spain last Wednesday which killed 79 people, the deadliest rail disaster in the country in decades.
The driver appeared in court on Sunday on 79 counts of reckless homicide over the crash near the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela, northwest Spain
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/07/italy-coach-plunge-kills-39/#sthash.69pBvIGK.dpuf