All these theories about the world ending through some cataclysmic natural event are wrong.
Instead, it will be absorbed by an encroaching "nothing" when people lose their hopes and dreams.
(dxg, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 22:30, 4 replies)

PEOPLE!
Can't you see what's really happening here? The b3ta overlords are just testing the waters to see what us QOTWers really believe in their quest for WORLD DOMINATION!!

LOOK at the FACTS! This Question - finding out how many of us will believe crazy crackpot theories and will be susceptible to their own ideas, and finding out who cannot be programmed and so who'll get their accounts deleted! If that's not all, the last two questions are OBVIOUSLY designed to find out the constructive, creative types here who will help build their MIND RAYS and GOATSE STATUES!

OPEN YOUR MINDS, people! Looking back recently we've had questions - seemingly innocent, but with a malicious ulterior motive - about high ranking, capitalist theories like gyms, banks, bosses and the most impressive, powerful organisation of all - TRAMPS. The question about the dark was to gauge how many of us still suffer from this primal fear and will thank the b3ta denizens when they "recover" the country from the secretly imposed darkening! THEY'RE PLANNING TO BLOCK OUT THE SUN, PEOPLE!

The only reason Off Topic was created was to DISTRACT us, to take our MINDS off it so that we don't realise the PLOT until it's far too late! Run for the hills! Save yourselves, it's not too late!
(jamesthegill opens new tabs with his scroll wheel, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 21:20, 5 replies)

conspiracy theorist nutters? Meet 'em every day.
As a psychiatric nurse on an intensive care unit I meet all sorts of conspiracy theory nutters on a daily basis. Some of them are more entertaining than others, some of them are actually quite convincing, and others are just plain scary.

Just today I was told by one particularly charming chap that my place of work was "not a hospital, it's a prison to cover up torture rape and murder" just before asking for a light. This fellow also has a delusional conspiracy theory that is so unbelievably wide ranging and all encompassing that if he was able to write it all down he could probably sell it to hollywood. It includes Nazis, Russians, Identity theft. The lot. And it's surprisingly consistent.

His main story starts from the age of 12, when he was in hospital with a broken leg. He believes that he was tossed off by a nurse, and his high protein porridge was then used to create an army of super soldier clones. He was also apparently subject to much derision following a channel 4 documentary with a transvestite who looked just like him, with the film makers even going to the lengths of giving him a mole on his face so that he would look more like the man on the documentary. He delivers all this in the flattest possible monotone, and he just talks and talks at you until you switch off. He even stays monotone when he's calling you a paedo and accusing you of raping babies or telling you that you have just committed treason by giving an injection to a distant relative of the royal family.

All in all, he's not a very nice man, and as unprofessional as it may sound I have great difficulty in sympathising with him as he is always admitted due to non-compliance with his medication and illicit drug use (although he blames 'claustrophobia' and 'sleep deprivation' for his paranoia).
(mister kevin wants to be more like Matt Berry, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 21:17, Reply)

Two words that will strike a chord with newsgroup users of old
Maurice Kellett

In a nutshell, a crazy, cross-posting nutjob ex-town councillor who made it into the news when he doused himself in petrol and barricaded himself into his house, armed with a samurai sword. Took the cops 35 hours to get him out. News article is here.

Still lurking on the David Icke funny-farm forum.
( eXOBeX, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 20:46, 1 reply)

Radio announcer, true believer
"Elliot in the morning" is a radio dj who greets your morning commute if you happen to work in the Washington, DC area.

He believes, adamantly and has argued strongly - against callers, his workmates and many others that:

It's safe to walk on power lines (even in bare feet touching multiple ones, or anything else) as long as you're on top of them

because, according to him - electricity is like water and won't flow Up into your body. Hanging from an electrical power line would be instant death though cause it'd all just flow down into you.

It's just possible he misunderstood the whole "path of least resistance" portion, whatever.

I keep waiting for the day he's willing to stand up for his beliefs and take a walk across a few.
( Allisade would love to hear from you, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 20:44, 2 replies)

There aren't enough strait-jackets in the world.
I for one welcome our new Illuminati Freemason Shapeshifting Lizard masters.

I work for a railway infrastructure company, and at our training school near Stirling, you often meet nutters of various calibres. Many years of near-death experiences with trains and exposure to high voltages can make you philosophical I guess.

I was there about a year ago for 3 weeks on a course, and seemed to end up with some straitjacket-job from Edinburgh latched on to me as no-one from my own team was there. He spent every lunchtime for 3 weeks trying to convince me that the twin towers were blown up by the CIA to cover up the fact they had been carrying out experiments on JFK's brain in there or something. The pentagon was blown up merely to test it's bomb-proofness and that plane was brought down in Pennsylvania because it made a good story for Joe Public USA.

Did you know that the moon landings were also filmed in a studio in Florida? Princess Di was carrying a potentially Muslim baby and had to be assassinated? Elvis, Lord Lucan and Shergar all live in a mansion in Shropshire?

He brought in DVD's to give out to the class, that apparently told us the truth. After those 3 weeks of torture, he failed the course, and I slept easy in the knowledge that he would probably be fired and we would never go through it again.
(badbob82 actually has mates called Rex and Wendy, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 19:51, Reply)

The Matrix ... whoops
True Story

I really liked the movie The Matrix, saw it in theaters a couple times on opening weekend.

The second time through I wasn't as thrilled as the first time, point of fact - the first half of the movie is actually pretty slow as they set everything up - it takes quite a while to get up to "cool" stuff where neo gets interesting and impressive - rather than just being a mumbling question monster who's a little slow.

So I'm sitting in the back of the theater and I'm a little bored waiting for the goodness - but I'm with thousand other people who're here for the first time and they're -loving- it, totally getting caught up in the story and the emotional charge in the room is really humming, you can feel everyone's minds and belief focused on this one representation of reality and it's a pretty powerful thing.

And I'm sitting there and instead of focusing on the movie, I'm focusing on everyone else and feeling this wave of emotional energy and riding kinda high on it and this is amazing and at the same time I can't help but thinking (since the movie is saying it in front of me after all) what if this is all a false reality and we're just waiting for "the one" or our own transcendence or something to push up through this false front to the *Real* Reality, to wake up from the Matrix we're all caught in?

What if we really can push past the lackluster reality that, lets face it - has never really felt right or satisfying as a rule and see that fantastic reality just waiting for us on the other side of the screen?

So the movie is coming up on the part where Neo "is beginning to believe" and everyone's as charged as they get and right as he's wrapping his arm around the cable coming out of the helicopter and everyone's tension is maxed out wanting to see the fucking awesomeness that's coming next and I just reach out a little on this tide of energy and take all the energy and belief and power floating around all charged up and I think "I want to Burn away this False Reality AND SEE THE TRUTH!" and I aim it all up at the moviescreen in front of me thinking I'll just explode into the REAL world...

And, no lie - the movie freezes on the image of neo posing and then the picture starts melting away and the whole thing goes to white.

Blew. My. Mind.

The projector had jammed and that single frame of the film had gotten stuck in front of the bulb and melted away, quite rapidly, leaving us with nothing but a white wall of light in front of us all.

Everyone in the theater was pissed and confused, except me - I was feeling fantastic, freaked out, and stunned to my shoes =)

Course it was just a coincidence... right?
( Allisade would love to hear from you, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 19:48, 3 replies)

The Matrix
So, odds are we are living in a simulated world, the theory going that if you accept that someone (somewhere, somewhen) can build a computer that can simulate a world (universe, city, whatever) - then it's going to be done, and if it can be done then it's probably going to be done quite often.

Probably hundreds or millions of times to experiment and see what happens with different rules, or to predict the outcome of an event or just to see or whatever, but hey - lets just say there's 2 simulated realities and just the one "real" one.

That gives you 2 to 1 odds you're not in the real one and are just a simulated person, and if there are hundreds or millions of simulated realities...

well, what are the chances you're a real person really?
( Allisade would love to hear from you, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 19:26, 22 replies)

The Truth Is In There
Hitler didn't actually die during World War 2, but escaped to a South American country (probably Argentina), then moved to a secret underground base in Antartica called Neuberlin (New Berlin).

The Nazis have been based there since and have been creating a fleet of flying saucers, to convince the world that the Earth is under attack from a race of hostile Aliens (reptillians).

The USA is currently ruled by these Nazis and their main form of mind manipulation is through Hollywood.
(AmazingBryan, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 19:19, 2 replies)

Kraken
I was in the sea in a inflatable dinghy (12.50 from the discount store in hayle) and Cthulhu came out the waves, and said to me in his best Sid James accent that I am the heir of R'lyeh. Yak yak yak and all that. So i accepted the wisdom and rule the sea, and also eat one eyed lizards. David Icke is a cnut. That is all.
( Tesco Quality 60.825659, -0.788337, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 19:11, Reply)

Parents say the craziest things.
My dad used to be a massive conspiracy nut. He still is, to some extent, and is a regular visitor to the David Icke website. A couple of years ago we were all going on holiday, and my Dad brought along several copies of the Scientific Inquirer to read on the plane.

Halfway into the flight, he starts describing some of the stories in the magazines to me and my step-brother. Mostly standard conspiracy fare, except for one he mentioned, which was all about sugar companies exporting 'refined sugar' instead of the regular kind. Apparently refined sugar is poisonous, and according to my dad "the Sugar Barons are making millions" selling us this refined stuff.

Curious, my step-brother and myself questioned him on a few points, like what these 'Sugar Barons' would stand to gain from poisoning their customers, and how they could be 'making millions' when refining the sugar would surely be more costly than leaving it as it is. Eventually my dad snapped under our questions and had a strop. He then locked the magazine in question in his case, and refused to let us read the article because "you just want to use it to take the piss out of me." Madness.

And the craziness doesn't stop on the other side of my family either. Only last night I was discussing ghosts with my mum. I was good-naturedly poking fun at her ideas about them when she turned to me and said "You don't have to have seen things to believe in them. You've never seen Neptune or Jupiter, but you still believe they exist, don't you?"

"Well no, but then I've seen pictures of them taken with powerful telescopes." I replied.

"Yeah, but you've still never seen them yourself."

"What are you saying?" I asked, "That Neptune is a myth and all the world's astronomers are part of a giant scam to convince us that it's really there? Sounds like you've invented a new conspiracy theory to me."

So there we have it. My parents are nutters. Either that, or they both just talk without thinking, which is quite believable in my opinion.
(Uncle Comrade, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 18:44, 5 replies)

The "Grey" aliens.
One from the annals of Occult history here.
In 1918 Alistair Crowley prefomred a magical ritual and opned a doorway into another dimesion. He was in commumication with a entity called Lam, who was described as Large head, small almond eyes and a small mouth and chin, the picture was published in Helena Blastkavys magazine and forgotten about.
Till the mid 1940's when Jack Parsons (and for more Occult Conspiracy look up the manner of his death) performed the Lam ritual, only Parsons wasn't as adept at closing the ritual as Crowley was.
18 months later along comes a little event known as Roswell.
So there we have the origin of the Grey Phenonoma.
(Gru being trolled since 1998, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 18:39, Reply)

Apeloverage
Without checking the previous 7 pages - I reckon Apeloverage must be a very frustrated 68 year old spinster, living in a home close to Birmingham, who gets her rocks off by being as lewd as possible.

She even showed us her pussy last week! (And bugger me, she's re-sprayed/aged it on page two)

Nuff said.

Still...........
(Suck it and Sea, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 17:58, Reply)

Well...
Is anyone scared to submit a story because you're afraid they might be right?
(Sco smokes crack often., Mon 31 Aug 2009, 15:04, 3 replies)

Spiritual Paradigm Shift.
This Yahoo! Answers denizen is a conspiracy theorist par excellence. His favourite playground is the doom and gloom proposed for December 2012. He operates multiple accounts which he uses to have dissenting opinions deleted and if possible, the accounts of those who post them. He complains that others are operating multiple accounts, particularly a retired school teacher from the Chesapeake region of Virginia USA who has devoted much time to disputing his nonsense. He impersonates other people on related sites and complains that he is being persecuted. His standard rant contains a bind muggering mish-mash of rapture retardism and the lunatic end-of the world theories loosely based on the special misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican long count of days. Here is a version of it.


Fall of America as an economic power and other ways. The buying up and consolidation of powerful banks and corporations by the government in a pretend "bail out" power grab to kill the U.S. dollar and bring in a one world currency.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfHWzmvYM...
Crash of other American banks and the nation's financial underpinning: Operation Sitting Duck
The Big One: Revelation 18. America goes down on the list of fabled societies nobody believes in any more like Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, Hyperborea, etc..
Martial law. (Google some of Bush's executive orders concerning it- Nightmarish!)

*The fallen 'alien' agenda: Implementation of PROJECT BLUEBEAM (be ready to hear more and more 'alien talk' & watch your local skies for the show!)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkpT-gSSS...
Just in time for 2012! After decades of conditioning, billions will fall for it, but you won't because we are talking about it here and now before it even happens.
(2 Thessalonians 2:9-12)
WHY DID WE EVEN DIG THEM UP?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=esisqYEIv...

Revelation 13:16-18 Trying to make people first accept the REAL ID card (to get you in the system) and then right after forcibly implanting people with these RFID microchips- the coming 'answer' to the world economic crisis.
The start of the North American Union and true globalization.
North Korea’s weaponization for WW3 with ICBM technology from China which in turn was given it by the Clinton Administration.
Push to attack Iran which will start WW3-the atomic war to end all wars. (If you think China, Russia, and the Muslim world would just sit back, you are a mistaken fool!). Escalation of the Georgian/Russian; Israeli/Palestinian; & Indian/Pakistani conflicts.
Final push to one world government: The New World Order- The 4th Reich! (The brutal final empire foreseen by the prophet Daniel and John the Revelator)
Rise of a miraculous and awe inspiring world leader later to turn world dictator.
Push to one world religion where there are "many ways to God".
Toleration of everything but Jews and Christians.
Temporary and unheard of "peace in the middle east".
Revelation13:10
www.youtube.com/results?search_qu...
www.youtube.com/results?search_qu...
More world wide food shortages and famines.
**Plagues and pandemics both natural and man made.**
More earth quakes. More fires. Strange and severe weather.
Major spiritual awakenings.
Rise of Islamic fanaticism.
Rise in wickedness and corruption.
*Take a few minutes to listen to what this young child uncovered:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF-gcHe7C...

***THEY ARE ALREADY PRACTICING ***
youtube.com/watch?v=932Zu4e4iVM
youtube.com/watch?v=plELx_wmNgU

Christians look forward to this as it means they will soon join their Saviour & Redeemer in the Millennial Kingdom of the next Age and their Heavenly Father later as "Children of Light". If you try to equate 2012 with Y2K or some other date that cried wolf, then you will be making the worst mistake of your lifetime. Research all these things FOR YOURSELF!
Source(s):
Everything that your pastor and your grandmother and her mother and her mother before her told you was right. You should have known this. Accept Christ before its too late. Get saved and repent while you still can then you have nothing to fear! Read the books of Daniel and Revelation:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNZvfiKrJ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnq5cQMiA...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNPn2JLz7...
I have given much proof and can provide even more, but I very much doubt the naysayers will do likewise... except perhaps some unscrupulous blog lol

(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 14:11, 1 reply)

Prison Break...
My dad was a bit naughty when he was a lot younger, and as a result he eventually ended up doing a bit of bird for 'relieving a shop of it's weekly takings'

Anyway, whilst inside, his cellmate was, by all accounts 'a bit of a nutter' - not in a violent way, but more in a prophetic sense if you know what I mean.

My old man told me that this guy used to come out with some right corkers, stuff like 'there's aliens on the other side of the moon and they use it as an observation centre to keep an eye on us' - y'know, stuff like that.

Anyway, one particular stir crazy day, he came up with this gem..

Apparently there's enough sugar in Kendal Mint Cake to keep mountain climbers full of energy if they get stuck on their rocky travels, and by all accounts, apart from the inevitable dental pain from such a huge amount of sugar, one gets some kind of energy rush as well, similar to that you'd get in say, a full case of Red Bull.

Well his idea was to get one of his relatives 'on the outside' to send him a large Pork Pie, only instead of our swine flu donating animal friends innards contained within, he'd ask for the filling to be one great big lump of Kendal Mint Cake.

Apparently, It wouldnt show on the prisons X-Ray machine, and cause' it's food, no-one would think any wiser of it.

Then he'd wait until their visiting hour, eat the whole thing on one go - and using the resulting overload of sugary energy, he'd simply run as fast as he could round all the guards, leaving the prison, on foot at break neck speed..

My dad laughed at the guy, after all - who'd have thought that a cons pie racy theory to escape out of the door in that fashion would be that simple?

BONUS POST:
By the way, unlike my work of fiction above, this is actually true: My Grandfather (God bless him, if there is one..) used to think that the council was always listening in on him, one day he was decorating his room, and he pasted a layer of tin foil under his wallpaper in order to combat any 'bugs'

Length? - about 4 metres and very, very shiny...
(danniekavanagh did nothing constructive on, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 13:40, 1 reply)

why Noam Chomsky isn't a conspiracy theorist.
Conspiracy theories seem to be come from the political stream that believes that

a) 'the system' (in the US, the Constitution) is perfect, but
b) everything's fucked up.

How can a perfect system produce terrible results? Well, someone must be stuffing it up. Presumably they must be powerful to be able to subvert the Constitution (or the equivalent). And presumably they wouldn't want anyone to know they were doing such a terrible thing. And once you conclude that, you're three-quarters of the way towards being a conspiracy theorist.

Noam Chomsky, on the other hand, argues that a) is wrong ie that 'the system' is flawed, removing the need for any conspiracy.

Which doesn't stop conspiratards quoting him, much as they quote George Orwell.

In fact mainstream politics is much more 'conspiratorial', in the sense of ascribing everything to individual flaws or deliberate wickedness, than Chomsky and Co.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 5:17, 1 reply)

I heard a pretty genuine one
..about the end of the world in 2012 due to an orbiting object with a strong gravitational field that throws itself around the sun every few thousand years and will come close enough to earth to disrupt the tides and we shall all drown to death. The Mayans predicted it apparently, and in their scriptures use this as an explanation of the sinking of Atlantis AND why North America was underwater some eons ago. The date that we will be closest to this object will be 21/12/2012 so yeah. I was told by a reliable source (my mates brother) that scientists also support this theory. The conspiracy is meant to be the apparent cover up by the world's governments of our impending doom.



Would like point out that I was told this about 2 hours ago and I am well drunk
(i should have joined myspace, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 1:10, 9 replies)

Women
I have a theory that says that all women are, in fact, "bat-crap" crazy.

I can prove it too, but I won't....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Mon 31 Aug 2009, 0:22, 4 replies)

just out of interest...
Does anyone know of any significant conspiracy theories from recent history that turned out to be true?

For example if Watergate had been successfully suppressed, but enough had been leaked to start rumours - surely they would have been dismissed as the words of the tin foil hat brigade

But they would have been right
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 23:56, 5 replies)

Is it too much to hope
That no-one here has mentioned The Goat yet?
( the_other_jeff_lebowski Croutons on my tits, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 23:47, 7 replies)

Alien Ducks
My only experience with what could be considered a 'conspiracy theory nutter' happened one sunny day when I was about 17 in a park with a mate.

We were merrily busying ourselves with feeding ducks unwanted chips from our local chippy when a rather disheveled gentleman wandered over and sat down on a bench near us. Watching us rather intently for a few minutes the gentleman then stood up, sauntered over, put his hands on his hips and coughed for our attention. We turned around and asked the man if he was okay. He simply shook his head, pointed at the ducks and questioned 'You feed the ducks?' Me and my friend exchanged a look and nodded in unison at the man. He tutted and exclaimed 'You shouldn't do that, they're dodgy fuckers and not to be trusted, especially that one' and he proceeded to point at one of the ducks.

Slightly confused I stupidly questioned the man about his statement and his answer was simple 'They're not from around here' and pointed up in the air then wandered off. I am still not sure to this day if he was commenting that the ducks had flown here from further afield or if he was insinuating that they were in fact aliens... I like to think its the latter.
(Flim-Flam the Magnificent "You is talking loco and I like it!", Sun 30 Aug 2009, 21:51, 1 reply)

Rob..
..at uni in Bristol, sharing a house in the middle of nowhere with Rob.

Rob had a full on zummerzet-vahrmer accent, which made everything he said sound funny to me. Esp. as he used to make fun of my, very mild, Devon accent, saying oi zounded loike a vaaahrmer.

Anyway, Rob wanted a video camera.

'Not 'spensive wun though.'

'Why's that Rob?'

'Wells, I wants it to vilm the ufos out Portishead way. Lots out there, but theys break cameras.'

'right rob..'

Oh, and he's happily spend evenings staring at Venus in the early dusk, wondering what it was. ''E weren'ts there yest'day.'

'It was raining yesterday rob..'

'Arr'
(inflateable, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 14:06, 1 reply)

It's worth remembering though...
...that governments love conspiracy theories. Can't get enough of 'em. The wackier the better.

Because if, for example, anyone who asks about petrochemical conglomerates, arms manufacturers and private defence contractors hiring teams of extremely expensive corporate lobbyists to push congress into supporting the Iraq invasion, thus allowing them to create a war for monetary gain, can be lumped in with those who claim that 9/11 was carried out by Jewish lizard people who use weather balloons to control their thoughts, it effectively discredits anyone who questions anything, allowing those in charge to neatly sidestep any line of inquiry that might lead the ordinary person to conclude that their elected leaders are, in fact, responsible for financially motivated genocide.

That is all.
(Monkey Tennis isn't Spartacus, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 11:52, 5 replies)

I've met a bunch of these people...
...and the one thing they've never been able to fully explain is this:

If the world really has for centuries been run by a shadowy cabal of financiers/illuminati/zionists/lizards, why the tapdancing fuck aren't they better at it? Considering the abject chaos that almost all of the world exists in, almost all of the time, if someone really is lurking in the background and pulling the strings, they're making a spectacularly cock-awful job of it. My advice to them would be to stay secret, otherwise a few billion people might have one or two questions for them.
(Monkey Tennis isn't Spartacus, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 11:32, 2 replies)

I strongly believe
That the only laws that matter, are the laws of physics, closely followed by the laws of "natural selection".
In essence, if you attempt to do something that physics will not let you do, then you will probably be in a world of hurt, and should learn from your mistakes, or next time it may be all over.

Obviously I must be wrong because those who run our country seem to think they can out-legislate stupidity, and that stupid people deserve compensation and more legislation ....it's a vicious circle.

It is almost as if they are trying to breed more stupid people by nurturing them, and breeding out intelligence by not allowing us to think for ourselves.
(M61A1 CUPID- STUNTS, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 8:55, Reply)

The Great Coal Disappearance of 1954
Barely on-topic, but this story deserves to be told...

My father was born in a small village in Northamptonshire just before the end of the second world war. The eldest child of the family, he fondly remembers the following tale, the events of which were recounted to him, and then to me by my grandfather and great-uncle, a pair of cynical, hard-working Scots who had moved to the region to work in the then-burgeoning steel industry.

After the war ended, fuel rationing stayed in effect for many years. This often led to shortages, especially during the colder months. The winter of 1954 was particularly harsh and many families in my father's village had used their coal rations before the year was out, leaving the coldest months of January and February still to come. This meant finding and gathering huge amounts of dry firewood became necessary, which was extremely hard work in the cold, wet weather.

Around this time, a new link road was being built between the closest towns of Kettering and Corby. It would run right past my father's village and had been scheduled for completion by the autumn but had run into several delays. The inclement weather hampered things further, but not for the reasons you might expect. The road-rolling machines all ran on steam at the time, which was fuelled by coal. Plenty of it, too. The coal bunkers for the rollers were located about 2 miles from my dad's village, roughly in the middle of the two nearby towns, but otherwise isolated.

As the winter months drew in, reports began to appear in the local news of break-ins at the road building site. It was unclear at first as to what had been taken, so the local police initially put it down to errant youths. However, the nature of the break-ins soon revealed itself. The bounty was coal, and it was being stolen to the extent that work on the road had to be postponed until fresh deliveries could be made. This enraged the local councilors, who demanded a full and proper police investigation.

Inevitably, the local village policeman, a portly, ruddy-faced chap who knew everyone well, came round asking if anyone had heard anything about the coal thefts. My grandfather said he'd heard of a gang who were stealing to order in Kettering. My great-uncle, on the other hand, thought it was actually a bunch of gypsies who were staying near Corby, as they had the horse and cart needed to move it. This seemed to intrigue the local bobby, who made detailed notes in his little notebook. It corroborated stories from a couple of the other villagers, so with that he pushed his squeaky bicycle back to the road and cycled back to the station.

The next day, the newspaper stated that the search had widened for the thieves and lo', the suspects were spread across Kettering and Corby. Stunning police work, I think you will agree. The following days saw a reward posted, plus job adverts for a night watchmen on the site and so my grandfather signed up to make a bit of extra money. Upon starting work that evening, he suggested to the foreman that the coal should be moved to the steamrollers themselves and hidden under their protective tarpaulins. That way, if any was stolen from the bunker site, the rollers could still work in the morning, giving time to refill the bunkers. The foreman agreed that this was a good plan, and most of the coal was quickly shoveled onto a truck and moved to the steamrollers, to be hidden as suggested, while my grandfather patrolled the bunker site itself.

Early the next morning, on his way home from his uneventful shift, my grandfather passed the labourers who had arrived to fire up their boilers so work could resume. When the site foreman arrived, he found the drivers standing around chatting and waiting for the coal delivery, as they hadn't been told it had been secretly moved. Presumably chuckling to himself, the foreman peeled back the tarpaulin on the first roller to reveal... an empty coal basket. Confused, he did the same on the rest of the machines. All of them were empty. I'm told that his face turned a rare shade of red and steam could be seen hissing from his ears at this development.

My grandfather was woken up a few hours later by a familiar knock at the door. The policeman stood there, a puzzled look on his face. "Did you hear anything last night?" he asked my tired grandfather. He replied that, being at the bunker site which was nowhere near the steamrollers, he hadn't heard anything all night. The policeman returned to question the day workers later that evening. The weather had turned bad, with snow falling in great chunks through the bitterly cold night air. The policeman was invited into the house to warm up and dry off and offered a cup of tea and some leftover stew, then he cheerfully asked the same questions to my great-uncle. He'd unfortunately slept soundly all night and heard nothing.

The bobby eventually put his helmet back on, thanked my father's family for their hospitality and trundled back down the garden path with his trusty, rusty bicycle. The deepening snow meant he'd need to walk back to the station. As he turned to wave goodbye, his head tilted skyward and he scanned left and right along the rooftops, standing in the blizzard for a couple of minutes and collecting a layer of snow on his thick winter cloak. He seemed transfixed by something in the sky above the houses. He scratched his chin, looked back at my ten year-old father at the window, who waved again, and scowled before stomping away with his bicycle at his side.

My father remembers running into the street to see what had captured the policeman's attention for so long. As he shivered, my dad looked up but all he could see was the normal sight of the village rooftops.... each one bearing a chimney... and from each of those chimneys, thick plumes of hot, white smoke poured out into the freezing night. Hmmm...

Upon arriving for his patrol job that evening, my grandfather was turned away as the foreman had decided to use a different coal storage site far away in Leicestershire in a final attempt to deter the wily coal-poachers, even though it meant adding even more delays. At this point though, it hardly mattered. Between my grandfather, my great-uncle and a couple of fellow villagers, they had shifted enough coal in a few evenings to last the entire village for at least the rest of this winter, perhaps the next one too. Every house in the village had a shed full to bursting with high-grade government-sponsored coal. The stroke of genius was convincing the foreman to move it all to the steamrollers, which had meant that it was close enough for the conspiring villagers to intercept the entire load in the dead of night. As my father recalls, it was the warmest Christmas ever that year, at least inside the house anyway. The village policeman never pursued his obvious suspicions, I like to think he was secretly impressed.

So, no nutters, one fairly solid police theory but the great coal conspiracy remains officially unsolved.
( chart cat has an itch, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 8:02, 10 replies)

Catnippp

/board troll
( prodigy69 broke b3ta and made everyone leave, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 2:07, 2 replies)