Charlie Noonan: Mysterious Disappearance

While looking around on the internet I stumbled upon the mysterious disappearance of Charlie Noonan.  This tale and the following image instantly grabbed my attention.  The tale goes as follows:-

Alleged photograph taken by Charlie Noonan.

"Charlie Noonan was an amateur folklorist who travelled throughout the South and Southwestern United States during the early years of the 20^th century, collecting tall tales and stories of the supernatural. According to his wife, Ellie, Charlie was told a story one day by an Oklahoma farmer about a strange woman who lived alone on an isolated property in the panhandle. The farmer claimed the woman was not a woman at all, but something else, something that hid its true nature beneath a headscarf and was never seen without a large dog by its side. Noonan was apparently intrigued enough to try searching for the woman during one of his research road trips. He was never seen again."

"Ellie Noonan was later contacted by a Tulsa pawnbroker who remembered reading about her husband’s disappearance in the papers, after finding his name engraved on a camera sold to him by an itinerant. The pawnbroker returned the camera, and Mrs Noonan had the film inside developed in the hopes of finding a clue as to his whereabouts. This was the only photo on the roll. Unfortunately, neither the location of the property, nor the name of the farmer who told him the story was recorded in Noonan’s notes."

Upon reading this I was incredibly intrigued and wanted to read more about this event.  However, upon doing further research all I could find was the above narrative repeated over and over.  There is no information about an amateur folklorist named Charlie Noonan or any other information regarding this strange event.  This leads to one of two possibilities, either this tale is true and Charlie Noonan really did disappear under strange circumstances and left very little evidence of his whereabouts
or somebody thought that the picture was quite sinister and fabricated a tall tale to go with it.

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Urban Legend - A Bad Back

While travelling, a young man in a foreign country began to suffer from a bad back.  After trying numerous medicines, the pain in his back became more severe.  Upon questioning the people that he met on his travels he was advised to try acupuncture.  He decided to try it as nothing else had worked so far.  He was advised of where he could find somebody to perform acupuncture.  It took him a while to find the shop but he eventually found it.  He was nervous when first entering, as it was a lot smaller than he had expected.  However his mind was soon put to ease when he saw other travellers as well as the local residents waiting in the reception area.  There was a certificate that had been framed and hung onto the wall.  He couldn’t read what it said but he assumed that it was some form of acupuncture qualification.

            After a short wait the traveller was guided into the room to see the specialist.  Communication between the two of them was awkward as neither of them could understand the others language.  The traveller lay on a table in the room and pointed to his back so the specialist prodded and pierced the traveller’s back for several hours.  It was painful and hurt much more than the traveller had expected.  When the specialist had finished he paid the specialist a larger sum of money than he had originally assumed it would cost and left the room.

            As he walked through the reception area a young man who could speak a little bit of English asked the traveller what he had done.  The traveller told him that he had his back done.  Not wanting to seem rude to the young man, the traveller asked what he was having done.  To the traveller’s surprise, the young man rolled up his sleeve revealing an unfinished tattoo on his arm.  The traveller quickly realised that the certificate on the wall was in fact a tattooist qualification. Hastily moving towards a mirror the traveller lifted up his top and was shocked to find that he had the tattoo of a dragon going up the centre of his back.

Not So Blind As A Bat

It is commonly known that bats use echolocation in order to fly around.  The misconception is that they use this echolocation instead of eyesight which has over time created the popular phrase of 'Blind as a bat.'.  Surprisingly there are no species of bat that are completely blind.

There are two known species of bat.  The microbat and the megabat.  Microbats use echolocation, however megabats do not.  They will use they're senses of sight and smell to hunt for food.  Despite the fact that microbats use echolocation they still depend on good night-vision sight in order to manoeuvre and avoid large obstacles such as buildings.

Some species of bat such as the vampire bat have incredibly good eyesight and can see up to 400 metres away from they're prey.