Bored with conspiracy groups—I’ll bet you are too, by now—I surfed off in a different direction, in search of ghosts. I could probably surf the net for months on this particular topic. If you Google “ghosts” you get 17,900,000 hits—a good few less than the 24,400,000 hits for aliens, but still a substantial number. There is an impressive number of ghost devoted sites. Here are a few of them:

AllAboutGhosts.com (Beyond the eye; Of an alternate mind—or so it claims).

Ghosts.Org, which advertises itself as Obiwan’s UFO-Free Paranormal page—serving you spirits since 1994 (so spirits surf the web too… currently the home page introduces itself with Curious Fact #16: In 1990 coins twice fell from nowhere into the graveyard of a church in England).

Ghoststudy.com (the biggest free ghost photo site on the web—a mighty pathetic marketing claim if you ask me).

GhostsandLegends.com (a remarkable site devoted to specific ghosts and legends relating to the Queen Mary—the Ocean Liner that is—which is supposedly haunted).

As you move to the lesser pages, you hit less popular ghost-devoted web sites, for example:

Marylandghosts.com (where you can learn about the “ghost road in Baltimore County”—a long dirt road which leads into a small neighborhood. Electrical problems plague cars travelling this road: stalled engines, flickering headlights. There is clearly an energy disturbance).

Horrorfind.com A site dedicated to understanding Ohio’s ghosts and haunted places. (Actually many sites claim to want to understand… but sadly don’t try to explain anything).

John Zaffis Paranormal Museum (which contains hundreds of supposed haunted items, many of which had to be removed from homes following many unexplained and often-negative phenomenon—it’s a weird collection of clown dolls, marionettes, swords, skulls and other paraphernalia. Stephen King probably surfs this site when he’s looking for new spooky ideas).

Ghosts of Tokyo (which isn’t a ghost site at all, but I had to include it because it is charming. It’s a collection of photos to accompany the following Haikua:

We know you Tokyo
As the ghosts leave the city
Blossom without us.

And, of course, the ever popular fountain of blood, which is far too scary for me to dare provide the URL: (The ghostly Fountain of Blood has been witnessed many times at Battle Abbey, Sussex. It is the place were William the Conqueror triumphed over King Harold in 1066. The fountain is thought to represent the blood that was spilled during the battle.)

As is sometimes my wont with safari topics that provide many hits, I tried to find the last hit that Google was willing to offer—just to see what it was. I was rewarded with Future Hi, which celebrates “the rebirth of psychedelic futurism”.

I remember the day that psychedelic futurism died, don’t you? Sad day that was. We all sat round drinking tequila and wondering if life could ever be the same. Well, reborn it is, at Future Hi—a site which seems to have nothing to do with ghosts and threatens by belief in Google technology. But Future Hi is not uninteresting. For example it carries the headline:

Nanosilver Bullet Kills HIV, Other Viruses.

The story claims that silver nanoparticles kill HIV-1 and will most likely kill virtually any other virus. It’s based on a study, that was conducted by “the University of Texas and Mexico University—the first medical study to ever explore the benefits of silver nanoparticles”. (I do so love split infinitives, so much that I resolve to one-day become a pedantic grammarian of the English Language). The news story continues…

“…researchers used three different methods of limiting the size of the silver nanoparticles by using capping agents. The capping agents were foamy carbon, poly (PVP), and bovine serum albumin (BSA). The particles ranged in size from 1 to 10 nanometers depending on the method of capping. After incubating the HIV-1 virus at 37 C, the silver particles killed 100% of the virus within 3 hours for all three methods. The scientists believe that the silver particles bonded through glycoprotein knobs on the virus with spacing of about 22 nanometers in length.”

Not in the least bit spooky.