Piece Of Art

A gunman, Randall Hofland, 55, who had been on the lam for a week held 11 fifth-graders hostage at a Stockton Springs, Maine, elementary school on Friday, Halloween, October 31, 2008. He was tackled outside a classroom without any harm to the children, police said. Hofland had released all the students and had turned over a loaded gun to one of the young hostages before he was arrested at the Stockton Springs Elementary School, authorities said. The school in the small coastal town of Stockton Springs has about 80 students. He was taken to jail and all of the school's pupils were taken by bus to an elementary school in neighboring Searsport. "These children are very brave. They did a tremendous job," Gov. John Baldacci said. The gunman walked into a fifth-grade classroom in the small coastal town (in Waldo County) around the start of the day. State police were called at 8:42 a.m. and Hofland was arrested about 20 minutes later after he was tackled by a state trooper. Hof...

A 61-year-old man poured gasoline over himself and set himself on fire on Thursday afternoon, October 30, 2008, in Red Square, a crowded University of Washington plaza, in an attempt at suicide, local Seattle police told the Associated Press. The man was taken to a hospital with second- and third-degree burns, said Ralph H. Robinson, assistant campus police chief. The unidentified individual died late on Thursday. The fire was reported in the early afternoon in Red Square, a brick plaza at the center of campus, said Robinson and city Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick. Robinson said witnesses told him, "All of a sudden there was this big flame and a ball of fire." UW student Jayoung Kim said she initially thought the flames were a joke. People threw clothing and tried to squirt the man with water bottles, she said; one man even took off his jeans and tried to use them to douse the flames. "Nobody could do anything. We couldn't help," she said. The squ...

I was driving around Portland the other day, minding my own business. Then, while stopped at a red light, the driver in the car (not a van) next to me pulled up alongside, rolled down his window, and yelled out: "Are you Loren Coleman , who is on Coast to Coast?" Thank goodness, he wasn't in a clown suit! I'm not sure how he recognized me from my radio appearances, but what could I say? One hardly expects such things to happen on a busy roadway, but, of course, shocked or not, I merely said, "Yep, that's me." As it turns out, I'll be on George Noory's Coast to Coast AM again soon ~ on this Friday's Halloween 2008 program , briefly, during the first hour's news segment. Although cryptozoology may be mentioned, I will be mostly there to update listeners about the recent wave of "Phantom Clown" sightings. The strange potential child abductors have now shown up in Bloomington, Illinois, which is quite a few miles from the origin...

In Neo-Nazi jargon, "88" equals "Heil Hitler," the twilight language that underlies today's overturned plot. Federal agents have broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree, the ATF said Monday. In court records unsealed Monday, federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads. Agents said the skinheads did not identify the school by name. Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville field office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the two men planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community. The men also sought to go on a national killing spree, with Obama as its final target, Cavanaugh told The Associated Press. "They said that would be their...

George Bush, Dick Cheney, the Westroads Mall shooting, and the mysterious death of reporter Anne Pressly? A coincidence in time, space, and fiction only? Anne Pressly, 26, the Little Rock anchor for KATV-TV, played a conservative news commentator in Oliver Stone's new movie, W. . She died on Saturday, after an unsolved savage attack, without forced entry, in her home on October 20, 2008. It turns out an event in her past has a strange temporal overlap with Vice President Dick Cheney and President George Bush. And a mall shooting. On December 5, 2007, Pressly had the brush with history that brought her to the attention of Oliver Stone, leading him to pick her for his movie. That was the date of Pressly's famous interview with Vice President Dick Cheney. Pressly was returning from a story, and traveling through Stuttgart, Arkansas, when she found the highway blocked in front of a hunting supply store, Mack's Prairie Wings. It turned out that inside was Dick Cheney. Press...

An Arkansas television anchor who filmed a bit role for the movie W. has died, after being found in her home early Monday, October 20, 2008, suffering from life-threatening injuries caused by a brutal beating. Anne Pressly, 26, the morning anchor for KATV-TV in Little Rock, was found by her mother at about 4:30 a.m. lying in her bed and bleeding from "severe injuries," police said. "We do believe she was beaten," Sgt. Cassandra Davis of the Little Rock Police Department told FOXNews.com. She said the injuries were to the upper body and included stab wounds. Earlier in the week, Pressly was listed in critical condition at a local hospital, Davis said. She reportedly was improving by mid-week, before she died on Saturday. Pressly may have been attacked during a robbery, as her purse is missing. But Davis said that police haven't found any forced entry to her home on Club Road in Little Rock. (Emphasis added - LC.) "It's not a neighborhood known for any...

Officials at Western Kentucky University at Bowling Green, Kentucky, reported four black-clad armed men on campus. WLKY-TV in Louisville reported that the university issued the following text alert at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, October 22, 2008: "An armed man has been reported on WKU South Campus. Please stay clear of this area." WBKO in Bowling Green reported that police are searching for four people dressed in black with guns. Officials sent out the following text: "Shots fired near Pearce Ford tower. Seek shelter immediately." James Williams said that he got the following text message from his daughter at 1:37 p.m.: "Stay away from south campus because armed men are running around campus. All students have been moved to the main campus." University spokesman Bob Skipper said the incident was occurring inside the school's South Campus. Skipper said the building has been evacuated and police are searching the area. Someone reported seeing people with ...

They have returned. In Mysterious America , I detailed the national wave of shadowy 1981 sightings of clowns in vans, trying to kidnap children, from Boston to Kansas City. The encounters began in May of 1981, in Boston, Brookline, and other Massachusetts communities. By the end of the month, the local newspapers in Kansas City were publishing warnings about "Killer Clowns" said to be after children at bus stops there. During an era before emails and the Internet, I was able to discover, via my network of correspondents, that a rash of local news articles were appearing across the USA, describing similar abduction scenarios. Although the national newspapers and wire services were totally unaware of the widespread nature of such accounts, the stories were remarkably alike. I called them the "Phantom Clowns." Repeats of almost identical Phantom Clown encounters have been recorded since 1981. The latest one is now developing in Illinois. The reports coming from Chi...

Are bankers going to start jumping out of windows? What is the actual relationship between suicides and economic downturns? When researching my book, I looked into this topic, and did write in The Copycat Effect (Simon and Schuster, 2003) one short passage in summary. Historical studies conducted by sociologist Steven Stack and others have discovered a noticeable dip in suicides and related violent events when there is society-wide anguish, for example, in times of massive immediate grieving in periods of wars and economic depressions. As opposed to the common thought that during the holidays the suicide rate is high, it is usually down in western cultures from late November through early January. Likewise, it appears to be more urban myth than historical fact that the suicide rate is higher during financial recessions and economic depressions. Some of the best research studies on this subject have been conducted by sociologist Steven Stack, Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne S...

The younger brother of a youth who was involved in a violent attack at the same location in 2003, has gone on a killing spree in a well-known Australian zoo. An “expressionless” seven-year-old boy broke into the zoo, bludgeoned to death giant lizards and fed them – and other live animals - to a crocodile named Terry in Outback Australia this week. Zookeepers were horrified when they arrived at work on October 1, 2008, Wednesday morning to see Terry, an 11-foot long saltwater crocodile, feasting on his fellow showcase reptilians at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre in the Northern Territory. At first they thought the animals, including the zoo’s favourite, metre-long, 20-year-old goanna, had escaped from their outdoor pens and accidentally become breakfast for Terry - the local zoo’s prize attraction. But further investigation uncovered CCTV footage of the local boy’s horrific 35-minute killing spree which began when he scaled the fence of the zoo, located in the centre of Alice Springs,...