“ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN,” the first picture reads, but the second is quick to disagree: “ONLY HUMANS GO TO HEAVEN READ THE BIBLE”.

So begins what appears to be a rather quirky theological debate about the souls of dogs (and eventually of rocks!), carried out entirely on church signs.

But, we ask ourselves, is it real? Did the religious communities represented by Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church and Beulah Cumberland Presbyterian Church really go to war with each other over whether or not pets can go to paradise?

As it happens, the answer is no, they didn’t…

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Okay, another book to go onto my ever-increasing reading list.

Greg over at Book Obsessions writes:

Devil’s Footsteps by E.E. Richardson offers up a dark and entertaining tale reminiscent of Stephen King’s It, the Candyman movies and of course the Bloody Mary urban legend. Speaking of the latter…After reading this book, I felt compelled to do some research on the Bloody Mary legend. The version of the legend that I have always heard requires the person who is summoning Bloody Mary to say her name 13 times while holding a candle in front of a mirror in a dark room. After the 13th utterance of the name, Bloody Mary will appear in the mirror and basically stare you down. However, I learned through my research that other variations of the legend include Bloody Mary scratching off the face of the person who summoned her, driving the person mad, or even dragging the person through the mirror to live with Mary for all eternity…Yikes!

If you’re a fan of the Bloody Mary tale, then Devil’s Footsteps sounds very much like a fun, scary read!

If you have already read it and you’d like to let us know whether you enjoyed it or not, please share your comments below.

Barry Williams, Supreme Universal Skeptic Of The 12th Magisterial Order [1], has sent in another interesting variant of the infamous Nigerian Scam.

As Barry mentions in his email:

Murray

I despair for the continuing deterioration of literacy among barristers admitted to the bar in the UK.

Barry

I can understand Barry’s emotional distress, since the email asks you to believe that it has been sent by a barrister located in the UK, while simultaneously being pockmarked with a truly impressive variety of misspellings and grammatical errors.

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Footnotes:

1.	And owner-operator of the Barry Williams Blog.
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If you’re a fan of scary stories about the Bloody Mary ritual, you might enjoy resonanttantei’s fun retelling of a group of friends calling on Bloody Mary, and the terrifying results.

You can read the full story at: “Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary….oh crap” (note: language may be a little unsuitable to some in some places).

After a while, we summoned up our courage and went back to school, went into the bathrooms and of course, since I’m the “Legend Tripper” I had to say what we do.

I liked resonanttantei’s idea of being a “Legend Tripper”, and while I don’t know exactly what he intended to convey with the term, I thought it was perhaps meant to be a way of describing someone who’s something of an expert in various legends, but who also may be just a little bit unpredictable with it as well.

Jake being the bravest, looked up and his eyes went BIG. I looked up as well, I gasped and I almost screamed. Cori took her hand and covered mine. “Don’t scream, don’t..” She said to me.

Photograph courtesy of peskymac

I was leaning against the counter in my kitchen the other day, chomping away at an apple [1], and I got to thinking about apples in folklore and belief.

It may not look like it on the surface, but at its core [2] this is a very big topic. If you think about it, apples have featured in one way or another in a vast body of religion, mythology, superstition, fables and folk wisdom.

I won’t try to tackle all of this in one post, that would be madness. However, over the next little while I hope to put a few articles up on ulblog exploring the interesting world of the apple.

But for now, let’s start with one of the stories that takes place at the beginning of everything.

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Footnotes:

1.	It was a Pink Lady, in case you’re interested. Pink Ladies have a very tart flavour and are one of my favourite apple varieties.
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2.	Aha ahahahah, bad apple pun intended! …Sorry.
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