I often bemoan how the internet is increasingly cluttered with junk data, and here's a prime example. Check out this Topix post made last weekend, advising us of some alleged paranormal phenomena described in only the vaguest possible terms:
Lots of strange things have been happening around the area of kingston. Strange lights in the sky and weird shadow-like things seen moving on the streets and through peoples yards. It seems like it came out of nowhere. I first noticed it a couple of weeks ago. No one around here is talking about it though.
"Lots of strange things?" Okay, so what are they? "Strange lights in the sky and weird shadow-like things"? Well, there's two. Two isn't "lots". Why were the lights "strange"? They didn't say. Who, exactly, saw these "shadow-like things", and can they give us a better description? They didn't say. Did the poster see these events firsthand? They didn't say. And if not, how did they hear about it if "no one around here is talking about it"?
(Am I some sort of jerk for wanting people to actually communicate if they're going to communicate?)
Fortunately, one of the few - very few - useful things about the interactivity of the internet is that sometimes a post of useless rumors can lead to others chiming in with more detailed reports:
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed. I live in the Kingston area (Bobtown) and it's been going on for quite a while now, actually.
There's been a few curious incidents (I've seen quite a few shooting stars or what appeared to be shooting stars over the course of the course of the past year and a half) but on Friday October 23rd, 2009 around 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. sometime far before the sun had started to set and dusk started to settle in, I observed a strange white light in the Eastern sky that seemed to be located somewhere in between Smith Lane and the end of Blue Lick Road. It looked just like a bright, white star in the daylight, moving quite slowly. I observed this peculiar anomaly for about a minute and a half before it finally vanished behind a distant tree line. I haven't seen it since.
Well, okay, this is better. Now we have a time, a date, and an actual location. Even if the story turns out to be nothing, at least the post seems made in good faith, and is real data, not junk data.
Unfortunately, the poster doesn't tell us what is such a "peculiar anomaly" about a point of light moving slowly thru the sky at dusk. The poster doesn't say why he doesn't believe it was a plane, which is what it sounds like.
Another poster adds:
I for one know that there are strange things happening in the Kingston Area, i live beside Kingston Elementary School, i see a lot of bright lights in the sky in the kings trace sub. There have also been people saying that their car alarms are going off at the same time almost every night. I dont know whats going on, but it's creepy. And if i'm not mistaken that area was a battlefield.
Need more info. Lots more info. It's the 21st century and the sky is, at any given time, filled with planes, biplanes, jets, military craft, drones, helicopters, autogyros, satellites, meteor showers, hot air balloons, weather balloons, and the Heene family.
I see what are essentially less-than-100%-identified lights in the sky every day. For it to be something really strange or weird or spooky or creepy, it had better contain a bat-frog-man or have a pulsing light and throbbing hum. It better look like 2001's monolith, or freak out an entire airport, or contain aliens who tell you to "Drop the Tunug!"
