Some guy dressed in stereotypical leprechaun garb was in the parking lot of a King Soopers grocery store, hiding between cars and leaping out and pretending to shoot at people with finger guns. In a colossal statement of the obvious, police said the man “was acting bizarre.”

Apparently this was a lucky leprechaun indeed, because the police weren’t able to find him, and it should be pretty easy to find a full-sized man dressed as a leprechaun, even in Boulder.

Note to the citizens of Boulder: Though this leprechaun remains at large, it is probably not a great idea to try to catch him to get at his pot of gold. Unless you dress as a lizard, which I’m guessing would probably freak this guy out enough to make him cough up whatever goodies he has, or it could make him try to slice off your scary lizard head, or shoot it with a real gun if he can find one, as he obviously has some at least imaginary violent tendencies. So that’s probably not a good idea, either. Better just leave the leprechaun alone and get a lottery ticket instead.

- Julie

Sources:
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_15410580?source=most_viewed
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/833732-police-hunt-leprechaun
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/06/30/national/a185958D94.DTL&tsp=1

Fortunately, no one was killed. The driver of a semi-trailer had his head, legs, and arms pinned in his truck, and it took a long time to extract him. An officer on the scene said, “He couldn’t have done much worse but somehow he managed to stay in the void and stay alive.” Maybe this Jesus saved, too.

It is unknown in the naked man has been charged with any offense, and his name has not been released. Maybe it really is Jesus, just not THAT Jesus.

Do you suppose anyone involved in the crash yelled “Jesus!” just before impact?

- Julie

Sources:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/06/ap/strange/main6553674.shtml
http://www.thehour.com/story/487389

Photo: U.S. Marshals Service

Former used car dealer Ruben Hernandez from Downey, California, tried to practice magic similar to vodun and Palo Mayombe in order to try to make his enemies see him as a good guy.

Marshals arresting Hernandez on charges of home-buying fraud, defrauding banks of approximately $4 million, found an altar/shrine in his bedroom. On it there were crosses, animal skeletons, and effigy dolls with the names of investigators on them.

Officials were fairly freaked out by Hernandez’s altar, but it didn’t stop them from throwing the book at him. Hernandez has been convicted and will be going to jail. The prosecutors said they weren’t afraid of Hernandez’s spells, despite seeing case-related figures on the altar, though one of the prosecutors said his left foot swelled unexpectedly during a preliminary hearing.

Maybe not leading a life of identity theft and bank-bilking crime would have served Hernandez better than some after-the-fact spells to try to fix his image.

- Julie

Sources:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/man-tried-voodoo-black-magic-against-prosecutor-investigators-authorities-allege.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37478125/ns/us_news/

The man stole over 70 items, including Christ figurines, bottles of holy water, crucifixes, and commemorative plaques.

Maybe this guy is stocking up for an impending spiritual peril, like the apocalypse, or a battle with a demon he thinks might be in the house. Now he’ll have to start all over again when he gets out of jail.

- Julie

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/grave-robber-caught-stealing-holy-water/story-fn3dxity-1225874293904

Jarrod Wyatt, a 26-year-old cage fighter, drank some wild mushroom tea with friends in Crescent City, California, and brutally killed his trainer several hours later. Wyatt became agitated and said he was convinced his trainer was possessed by the devil and that the only way to stop it was to kill and mutilate him.

You know what, I’m not going to elaborate on the gory stuff. That’s not the kind of thing I want on this site. It’s weird all right, but too far down the gratuitously horrifying and disgusting road. There’s enough weird about this story without it. If you really want to know the details, follow the links below, but you’ve been warned and you will probably wish you hadn’t.

Wyatt was arrested and charged with first degree murder and torture. He is planning to claim that the mushrooms caused him to lose control of his thoughts and actions. Well, it’s either that or the guy really believed his trainer was possessed and that he had to kill him. Either way, he’s going away somewhere for a very long time.

Bad acid may have caused a man in Arcata, California, to mutilate himself a couple of weeks earlier because he thought parts of his body were monsters.

Rule Number One for dealing with possible possessions or monster body parts: don’t take questionable drugs in the first place. Rule Number Two: don’t try to handle that stuff yourself. Call the cops, a priest, or an ambulance. Whatever the cause, you need professional help.

-Julie

Sources:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1282647/US-cage-fighter-Jarrod-Wyatt-rips-training-partner-Taylor-Powells-heart.html#ixzz0q27DKNkS
http://sfist.com/2010/06/02/are_mushrooms_to_blame_for_the_viol.php
http://sfist.com/2010/05/26/stay_away_from_the_brown_acid_in_hu.php

Why is it that when regular Joes fight about religion it’s usually over pretty quickly with limited injury, but when leaders of churches and countries do it, it can result in something like the Hundred Years War and decimating body counts? Budgetary differences? The inefficiency of bureaucracy?

- Julie

Sources:
http://www.kmox.com/pages/7378166.php?imageGalleryXRefId=1880002#imgXR
http://www.13wmaz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=79976&catid=155
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-scene/offbeat/discussion-about-religion-ends.html
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/laworder/story/4650C5DDE99B21278625773700096F0B?OpenDocument

There are plenty of traditional ways to get ripped off at a funeral: overpaying for services, paying for services not received, funeral home workers making off with grandma’s jewelry, or home invasions during services thanks to overly detailed obituaries. Not stressful enough? Well, here are some less traditional funeral-related thefts to worry about.

An unidentified man has been attending funerals in New Zealand for the food. He caught the eye of funeral directors because he was becoming a frequent flyer at the services, attending sometimes as many as four funerals in a week. Directors say it was obvious he did not know any of the deceased.

The man, whom the funeral directors dubbed “the Grim Eater,” would eat at the funerals, then take containers out of a backpack and fill them with food to take home.

Other than treating the buffet line like a drive-thru, the man seemed very normal, acting and dressing appropriately for a mourning service. A director confronted the Grim Eater and told him to stop making off with the food, and the man hasn’t been seen at a funeral since.

Is this guy a little nuts, or is he down on his luck and has figured out a clever way to get some food? Maybe attending the funeral of someone you don’t know is a lot less depressing than going to a public aid office.

Stealing from funerals is perhaps becoming a survival trend of sorts this year.  A guy named Park, 59, from South Korea stole 1200 pairs of shoes from funeral services. It’s tradition in Korea to remove outdoor footwear when indoors, and this guy removed his own shoes and put someone else’s nicer shoes on when he left. He took the shoes to resell through his used shoe business and had amassed an inventory worth almost US$2000.

A teen in North Carolina also used funerals for his own gain this year when he stole purses from unlocked mourners’ cars during graveside services.

- Julie

Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7799544/Grim-eater-banned-from-funerals.html
http://mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/FullArticle/CODD/noddlyEnoughNews_uUSTRE6524GJ20100603?src=RSS-ODD
http://www.couriermail.com.au/entertainment/weird/fake-mourner-steals-1200-pairs-of-shoes/story-e6frep26-1225831822569
http://charlotte.news14.com/content/top_stories/621146/teen-charged-with-stealing-from-cars-during-funeral

No doubt shenanigans like this will cause the citizens of neighboring dry counties to feel smug, because (1) clearly this kind of godless behavior is the result of the demon in the bottle, and (2) everyone knows no teens engage in reckless and stupid behavior without alcohol.

Does any of that make sense? Well, there’s a lot in East Tennessee that doesn’t make any sense. In a place where the bankruptcy courts struggle to find ways to handle people still living on the barter system up in the hills, peculiar behavior and attitudes are just a fine hair away from what passes as normal in the suburbs. Finer than a frog hair split four ways and sharpened on both ends, as my old boss in Knoxville used to say.

- Julie

Source: http://www.thedailytimes.com/article/20100531/NEWS/305319993

Miles away in Uganda, Steven Sebageya,  was arrested after police searched his shrine and found a human skull. Sebageya’s fellow villagers had complained that he was bewitching them.

Good luck ever coming up with a reason for making off with human bones from a graveyard that will satisfy the law. Points for the Spider-Man backpack, though.

- Julie

Sources:
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/weird/Grave-Robbers-Caught-Stealing-Old-Bones-94278824.html
http://wdbo.com/localnews/2010/05/suspected-grave-robber-busted.html
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/tampa-police-charge-man-with-bones-in-backpack-with-desecrating-grave/1095988
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/13/720305

It’s 2010, right? I ask because people have been getting killed over witchcraft lately, and I just wanted to check to see if we are really in the 21st century or if we had warped way back somehow.

Earlier this month in the Bangiwada village in Naswadi, India, seven people were arrested for killing a woman and her son, who had been called a witch and a sorcerer. The accused said the victims caused the death of one of the accused’s relatves, who had died of tuberculosis. The accused, who beat the victims to death with sticks, said the victims summoned evil spirits and plotted the man’s death. Police noted that several of the accused were related to the victims. Three of the accused were stepsons of the woman they killed. Police also stated that the real motive behind the crime was a land dispute going back many years.  So, if the real motive HAD been the death allegedly caused by witchcraft would that have made the killings ok?

In Gold Bar, Washington, Eric Christensen is on trial for killing his girlfriend, Sherry Harlan. Christensen told police he had made Harlan take a Wiccan blood oath to cut off contact with an ex-boyfriend, but that he found evidence of further contact. In his eyes, Christensen said, that made Harlan a warlock or evil traitor. Christensen added, “In ancient times, people who broke blood oaths were sometimes killed.” Despite all that, and some additional evidence, Christensen denied involvement in Harlan’s death until his lawyer smartly changed strategy and instead took the angle that it may have been murder but not premeditated.  Good idea, because the last time I checked my criminal law textbooks I didn’t see violation of witchcraft code, or infidelity, for that matter, as a valid defense for committing murder.

This past week, the residents of Rajapara, India, held a public meeting to determine the cause of multiple illnesses in a village. A shaman accused Bishnu Rabha, 65, and his wife, 60, of practicing witchcraft. After the meeting, villagers apprehended the couple, took them to the woods, beat them, and burned them alive. Police are investigating the matter. Well, that all sounds fair: some people get sick, so kill the people believed to have caused the illnesses? That’s a little more like a leg for a toenail than an eye for an eye, folks.

I’m not going to discuss the children accused of witchcraft in Nigeria. It’s too awful and makes me too upset.

- Julie

Sources:
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/02/eric_christensen_accused_of_ki.php
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/420628_witchcraft25.html
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100526/NEWS01/705269862&news01ad=1
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/7-arrested-for-killing-woman–son/619709
http://momento24.com/en/2009/09/19/india-two-elderly-burned-alive-accused-of-witchcraft/comment-page-1/