Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs The Worlds Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved

by Albert Jack

  The story ran that on the evening of Tuesday, November 8, 1966, Paul McCartney and John Lennon were working late into the night on the Beatles’ upcoming album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, when a row developed over recording techniques and McCartney stormed out of the studio. Furious, he sped off in his Aston Martin and smashed into a van, dying instantly. The resulting fire prevented the coroner from positively identifying the body, but the remaining band members were left in no doubt at all that McCartney had not survived. Another caller to Russ Gibb's show claimed that McCartney had picked up a hitchhiker that night. When the girl realized who he was, she had suddenly screamed and lunged at her hero, causing him to crash into the van. Neither the hitchhiker nor the other driver was ever seen or heard from again.

  The public mourned as shock set in, but there was one unavoidable question: If McCartney had died in 1966, who was the man who looked like Paul and who had been hanging out with the Beatles ever since? The explanation ran that Beatles manager Brian Epstein was so horrified at the thought of the world's most successful band breaking up that he held secret auditions and persuaded John, George, and Ringo to have all their photographs taken with a standin to keep the public unaware of the accident. When Epstein died only nine months later, after a battle with depression and drug abuse, his untimely demise was cited as another piece of evidence. It was said that he just couldn't come to terms with the loss of McCartney. The Paul-is-dead mystery was also conveniently used to explain McCartney's sudden split from his long-term fiancee, Jane Asher (because McCartney standin William Shears Campbell didn't like her) and that his new relationship with Linda Eastman (later McCartney) was Campbell's real love interest.

  Another piece of supposedly compelling evidence is that for several years the other three Beatles had wanted to stop playing live shows because the audiences were screaming so loudly they couldn't hear anything, but McCartney had resisted. With Paul gone, the remaining three could do as they pleased—indeed, the Beatles had last performed live on August 29, 1966, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and played no more live concerts after that. Con spiracy theorists nodded and agreed that it all made perfect sense, while others, including the Beatles, laughed it off as a ridiculous urban legend.

  And still the story continued. One American radio announcer had photographs of the singer before and after November 1966 scientifically compared and found there were obvious differences, one being that the nose was of a different length. A doctor from the University of Miami analyzed voice recordings and concluded publicly that the recordings prior to August 1966 were different from those recorded afterward. Paul McCartney, he claimed, did not sing on Beatles records after August 1966.

  By now fans all over the world were beginning to look for their own clues in Beatles music and album covers, and the clues turned up in spades. Here then are some of them, and the evidence seemingly pointing to the fact that Paul McCartney was dead.

  Sgt. Pepper's was the first album the Beatles released after the supposed accident, after recording began on December 6, 1966. When it reached the shops in June 1967, nobody noticed anything unusual about the artwork in connection with the Paul McCartney mystery, but in 1969 conspiracy theorists were able to detect a range of coded references to Paul's demise. For a start, the band appear to be standing at a graveside complete with flowers and wreaths. They are surrounded by famous personalities, who could be mourners, and one of them is holding an open hand above McCartney's head, an open hand said to be a traditional Eastern symbol for death. The theorists looked closer and concluded that the yellow flowers at the foot of the picture are arranged in the shape of a left-handed bass guitar, Paul's instrument, and one of the four strings is missing, signifying his absence. Under the doll's arm on the right-hand side there appears to be a bloodstained driving glove; the doll itself has a head wound similar to the one Paul was supposed to have died from; and the figure of Paul is wearing a badge on his sleeve on the inside cover bearing the letters OPD, standing for “officially pronounced dead.”

  The open-palm gesture actually also appears on the front cover of Revolver, twice in the Magical Mystery Tour booklet, twice in the Magical Mystery Tour film, and twice on the cover of the original Yellow Submarine sleeve, but, in reality, none of it means anything at all. There is no such gesture in Indian culture symbolizing death. The badge Paul is wearing on the inside sleeve does not read “OPD;” it has the initials OPP on it. The badge was in fact given to McCartney when he visited the Ontario Provincial Police in Canada during the Beatles’ world tour in 1965.

  A statue of Kali, a Hindu goddess, is also featured on the front cover of the Sgt. Pepper's album, which the theorists maintain represents rebirth and regeneration, hinting that one of the Beatles has been reborn, or replaced. But Kali, from which the name of Calcutta is believed to derive, has traditionally been a figure of annihilation, representing the destructive power of time (kala being the Sanskrit word for “time”).

  Also, the O-shaped arrangement of flowers at the end of the band's name has caused some theorists to speculate that the whole thing reads “BE AT LESO” instead of “BEATLES.” This was taken as a sign that Paul was buried at Leso, the Greek island the band had supposedly bought. But none of the Beatles had bought a Greek island, and there is no such place as Leso.

  There are many more pieces of “convincing” evidence. I've just picked out some of my favorites.

  The Beatles all grew mustaches at the time to

  help mask a scar on the lip of McCartney

  standin William Shears Campbell.

  In fact McCartney did grow a mustache for Sgt. Pepper's, as he was unable to shave at the time. Paul had fallen off his scooter on his way to visit his aunt and split his lip on the pavement, making it too painful to shave. He also lost a front tooth in the accident, which explains why he appears in the “Rain” and “Paperback Writer” promo videos missing one of his teeth. The accident also explains the scars seen during the White Album photograph sessions.

  The license plate on the VW Beetle shown

  on the Abbey Road cover reads LMW 281F, taken to

  mean Paul would have been 28 “IF” he had survived.

  But Paul would have been only twenty-seven, and the VW Beetle had nothing to do with anyone at Abbey Road. The director of the photo sessions tried to have it towed away, but the police took too long to arrive, so they went ahead with the picture anyway, leaving it in the shot.

  McCartney is wearing no shoes in the

  Abbey Road photograph.

  His explanation was: “It was a hot day and I wanted to take my shoes off, to look slightly different from the others. That's all that was about. Now people can tell me apart from the others.” But the conspiracy theorists swore that the picture had been set up to look like a funeral march, with him as the corpse.

  On the records Rubber Soul, Yesterday and Today, Help! and Revolver there were said to be many more clues. The song “I'm Looking Through You” on Rubber Soul was thought to be about discovering that McCartney had been replaced. Some fans took these blatant “clues” as hard evidence, while others quickly realized all of those records were made prior to November 9, 1966, and could not possibly have anything to do with the supposed accident.

  With hysteria mounting, however, even the thinnest clue came to look like definite evidence. In the lyrics to “I Am the Walrus,” the line “stupid bloody Tuesday” is taken by some to be John Lennon's reference to the day of the accident that claimed his bandmate. But when it was pointed out that the alleged accident was supposed to have happened on a Wednesday morning, conspiracy theorists then claimed it was the Tuesday night that the two of them had fallen out before McCartney had stormed off to his death. Some believed it, while others dismissed it as an already thin lead being stretched even thinner. But then came the line “waiting for the van to come,” a supposed reference to the ambulance, and “goo goo ga joob”—apparently Humpty Dumpty's last words before he fell off that wall and bashed
his head in.

  The Beatles themselves very quickly became very irritated by all the speculation. And it was not long before the band, aware that every lyric and photo shoot was now being studied, began to play up to the hysteria. After writing one complicated and seemingly meaningless song called “Glass Onion,” Lennon remarked, “Let the f[?][?]kers work that one out.” But he included the lines “Well here's another clue for you all / The walrus was Paul.” In no time at all, people were announcing that the walrus was a symbol of death in some cultures, and Lennon despaired. It wasn't much fun being a Beatle anymore, and the band broke up soon afterward.

  So—to sum up—if the real Paul McCartney had died in his Aston Martin in 1966, and a replacement had been found in time for the photo shoots for the next album, then imagine the string of coincidences that needed to have taken place. For a start he had to look and sound just like Paul. Then he had to convince Linda or, if she was in on the plot, she had to like him enough to stay married to him for the next thirty years. And he would have had to learn how to play guitar left-handed, which is even less likely, I can assure you. John Lennon would have to have been fooled too, as it is unlikely he would have wanted to share songwriting credits and royalties with a stranger for the last three years of Beatles recordings, especially as Epstein wasn't there to tell him to. And most of all, for the look-alike to have written and recorded songs of a McCartney standard for over thirty years would be hard to imagine.

  Hang on a minute, I have just remembered “The Frog Chorus” and “Mull of Kintyre,” and so my argument is beginning to wear thin. Perhaps Zarski was right in the first place—there must be an impostor …

  The strange story of Germany's most

  dangerous stretch of road

  There are hundreds of unexplained mysteries from every corner of the planet involving cars, drivers, hitchhikers, car theft, and abduction. One of the most unusual occurred soon after a new section of the autobahn in Germany was opened to traffic between Bremen and Bremer haven in 1929. During the first year alone no fewer than a hundred cars crashed or came off the autobahn, but the accidents were all happening in exactly the same place, very close to kilometer marker number 239. On one par ticular day, September 7, 1930, nine separate accidents took place adjacent to the marker post, in each of which all vehicles were destroyed.

  There appeared to be no explanation for the accidents, as the stretch of road in question was flat and straight and no hazards had been reported. And that day in September had been particularly fine and sunny. However, survivors told police that when they approached the marker they had felt a sensation in their stomachs as if they had crossed a humpback bridge at speed, and a “strange force then took over the steering and threw [their] car off the road.”

  German police were flummoxed until a local water diviner, Carl Wehrs, suggested that a powerful magnetic force caused by an underground stream might have been the reason for the mysterious accidents. Accompanied by witnesses, he walked with a steel divining rod toward the marker. He was about ten feet away when, all of a sudden, the rod was ripped from his grasp, the sheer force of it spinning his body around 360 degrees, like an Olympic hammer thrower.

  Wehrs's solution to the problem was to bury a box of copper next to the marker stone, and the accidents immediately stopped. To further test his theory, he later dug the box back up, and the first three cars to pass by all crashed. Once the box was reburied the marker post was removed, the area was sprinkled with holy water, and the accidents ceased and have never recurred.

  The Mary Celeste was a ghost ship found off the coast

  of Portugal in 1872. Why she had been abandoned has

  been the subject of endless speculation ever since.

  One calm, quiet afternoon in December 1872, seaman John Johnson peered through his telescope from the deck of the Dei Gratia (“by the grace of God” in English). Alarmed by what he had seen, he shouted down for the second mate, John Wright, to join him, and the two men stared at the ship sailing erratically on the horizon. They then summoned the captain, David Reed Morehouse, and the first mate, Oliver Deveau. More house at once recognized the Mary Celeste, which had put to sea from New York only seven days before the Dei Gratia. Despite the absence of distress signals, Morehouse knew something had to be wrong—no one appeared to be guiding the vessel—so he steered his ship closer. After two hours, Morehouse concluded the Mary Celestewas drifting, so he dispatched Deveau and some deckhands in a small boat to investigate, and one of the most puzzling sea mysteries of all time began to unfold, for the brigantine was completely deserted.

  It was later recorded—although not by Deveau himself, who kept his information for the later inquest he knew he would have to attend—that the boarding party came upon mugs of tea and a half-eaten meal left out on the table, and a fat ship's cat fast asleep on a locker. Mysterious cuts had been made in part of the railing, some strange slits had been cut into the deck, and a bloodstained sword was discovered under the captain's bed. Two small hatches to the cargo hold were open, although the main one was secure, and nine of the 1,701 barrels of American alcohol were empty. A spool of thread was balanced on a sewing machine and, given the slightest movement, would clearly have rolled off if the sea hadn't been so calm. A clock was turning backward and the compass had been broken, but there were no signs of a violent struggle and, even more mysteriously, no sign of Captain Briggs, his wife, daughter, the single passenger, or any of the seven-man crew. Curiously, the vessel's sextant, navigation book, chronometer, ship's register, and other papers were all missing, while the captain's log lay open and ready for use upon his desk. It appeared that the people on board the Mary Celeste had simply vanished in the middle of eating their breakfast, never to be seen again. This is the story that became the accepted version of events, but as we delve into the truth of the tale we will try to find out what really happened and how the legend has grown to become one of the greatest sea mysteries of all time.

  Following the discovery of the ghost ship, people's imaginations were working overtime. The Boston Post reported on February 24, 1873, that “it is now believed that the brigantine Mary Celeste was seized by pirates in the latter part of November, and that the captain and his wife have been murdered.” Two days later, The New York Times concluded that “the brig's officers are believed to have been murdered at sea.” Ever since then, speculation about the crew's sudden disappearance has been the subject of many a seafaring yarn, with stories of mutiny, giant whales, sea monsters, alien abduction, and much more, while the truth of what happened to the people on board the doomed ship, discovered halfway between the Azores and the Portuguese coast on that calm December afternoon, has remained a mystery.

  Frederick Solly Flood was the attorney general for Gibraltar, where the Mary Celeste had been taken by Morehouse and his crew, and the advocate general for the British Admiralty Court. An arrogant, excitable character, infamous for his snap decisions, he had lost his son's entire inheritance on a horse called the Colonel in the 1848 Epsom Derby. At the inquest into the Mary Celeste, Flood decided that the crew must have broken into the cargo hold and drunk the nine barrels of liquor before murdering the captain and his wife and abandoning ship. He had to rethink his ideas after it was pointed out that the Mary Celeste's cargo was of denatured alcohol, a mixture of ethanol and methanol similar to methylated spirits, and more likely to kill than to intoxicate.

  Unabashed, Flood revised his conclusion to suggest a conspiracy between the two captains, who knew each other, to defraud the Mary Celeste‘s owners. According to this theory, Briggs had killed his crew just before Morehouse was due to intercept the Mary Celeste and then stowed away with his family on the Dei Gratia while Morehouse claimed the salvage rights to the Mary Celeste and the two scurrilous captains split the money. It was then pointed out to the hapless attorney general that Briggs part-owned the ship himself and that the entire salvage money would have been less than his original investment. Solly Flood went back to the drawing b
oard and decided that if Briggs hadn't been involved, then Morehouse must have killed the entire crew to gain salvage rights to the ship himself. Eventually, after many months of slander, the Admiralty stepped in and exonerated Morehouse of all responsibility, compensating him and his crew. Oliver Deveau must have read in despair what had been attributed to him by the newspapers, to which a spiteful Flood had been quick to leak details of the case.

  Other theories were also dismissed, since giant sea monsters, despite a penchant for sailors, were not known for taking a ship's papers and navigational instruments, nor were the aliens who had apparently abducted every living being on board except the cat. Neither were they picked off the deck one by one by a giant sea squid, nor blown into the sea by a passing whale that sneezed, and most clear-thinking people have ruled out any connection with the Bermuda Triangle (see “Try to See It from My Angle: The Bermuda Triangle,” page 12), as the Mary Celeste‘s path didn't cross it. Piracy was also ruled out, as nothing of value had been stolen, and mutiny was considered unlikely, as the small crew of professional and disciplined sailors were on the short voyage voluntarily and Captain Briggs himself was known to be well liked by his men. In March 1873, the court finally had to admit they were unable to determine the reason why Captain Briggs had abandoned the Mary Celeste, a conclusion that caused a sensation as it was the first time in history a nautical inquest had failed to find a satisfactory explanation.