Very Strange Maracaibo Incident

a reply to: pigsy2400

Thanks for the bump

Some of these old reports inspire a lot of speculation and seem to resonate with more modern examples. At the least, this one points to a very rare phenomenon. Although completely different, I'm also reminded of this case of a woman apparently receiving telepathic warnings of a brain tumour.

Neither case invites conclusions, but they both support, perhaps, the possibility of an aspect to reality we very rarely encounter.

a reply to: Kandinsky

I find it fascinating and as you quite rightly said, there are many similarities with more modern cases, Rendlesham and the cash landrum cases.

Wanting to be factual, it would be interesting to go back through the records and eliminate other possibilities for thier injuries for example. Like was there an outbreak of certain diseases around that time that were documented in that area etc.

Not in an effort to debunk it, but more of an effort to rule out other aspects.

I love these old cases....really gets the juices flowing...and they don't get the attention they deserve. Especially, being the time that it was, there certainly things we can deduct immediately purely down to the year that it was.

a reply to: pigsy2400

I wouldn't hold out much hope of records from the 1880s being accessible. It was Venezuela too rather than a major city with medical archives kept as standard protocol.

Back when I posted the thread I remember double-checking the authenticity of the letter because of all the hoaxes around. It's worth doing a double-check on my double-check to see if it still holds water.

I wonder what other avenues are available. There could be planning records from the period to show Maracaibo in the 1880s. Perhaps there's a way to get a rough idea of where it happened? I remember checking that Cowgill was a real person. Did he leave records?

Pretty strange occurrence and it's unfortunate that it wasn't really a big hit.

I'd be interested to know if there was any geological activity in that general vicinity around that time...give or take a week or so...

Any ideas how I would go about finding some information like that?

A2D

originally posted by: Kandinsky
I wouldn't hold out much hope of records from the 1880s being accessible. It was Venezuela too rather than a major city with medical archives kept as standard protocol.

From what I have been able to find the US public records office holds records of the consular in Venezuela from it's establishment in 1824 (might be 34), either way they have them, and given that Cowgill was writing from there I would assume that they should have a record for him. Otherwise, I can't find anything about him, other than the letter, on line. I would also expect the consular records to have a diary of events that could support Cowgill's account.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
Back when I posted the thread I remember double-checking the authenticity of the letter because of all the hoaxes around. It's worth doing a double-check on my double-check to see if it still holds water.

The letter does indeed appear genuine. The full edition of Scientific American in which appears can be found here...

ia800606.us.archive.org...

The whole thing is worth reading, it demonstrates just how obsessed the scientific community was about electricity and it's numerous potential applications back then. It was very new technology and yet they were already discoveriing that it was an essential part of the fabric of reality. I really enjoyed the step-back in time, it is this period, particularly 1870 to 1890 that is my current historical obsession, so it wasn't difficult to get my appetite whetted.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
I wonder what other avenues are available. There could be planning records from the period to show Maracaibo in the 1880s. Perhaps there's a way to get a rough idea of where it happened? I remember checking that Cowgill was a real person. Did he leave records?

I don't think anyone has delved any deeper into it, the same article is repeated ad infinitum it would seem, I couldn't penetrate much further. If you can physically get to the archives, which I certainly can't, I think that there is potentially some rich ground to cover, but if not, until they digitalise them...



The area physically is HUGELY complicated, plate tectonics, vulcanism, convection currents...all sorts of things that could create electrical phenomenon, and heaven's knows what else, and of course it is slap bang in the middle of massive hydrocarbon fields. The indigenous people had been using the bitumen that bubbled up to the surface since before the arrival of the Spanish. The Spanish sent a few barrels of it back home, for it's medicinal properties but it wasn't until 1880 that oil was drilled for commercially for the first time using a drill that was imported from Pennsylvania.

Thanks Kandinsky, this is a really interesting case, as is the area generally...though it is a crying shame the state that it is in now.

Lake Maracaibo is a poster child for the economic and environmental collapse that consistently has followed in the wake of the global wave of extractive industry boom, bust and abandonment which has impacted rural communities and ecosystems in the industrial age — whether it be in the played out goldmines or fracked out communities of the American West; the shuttered copper, zinc, and lead smelting plants of the Peruvian Andes; the toxic mine waste tailings ponds along the Rio Doces of Brazil; or the oil soaked and degraded rainforests of Ecuador...

...As early as 1932, the civil authorities of the municipalities of Cabimas and Lagunilla, on Lake Maracaibo’s east shore, contended that the estuary’s water had become “useless due to the large amounts of oil it contains”, while fishermen claimed that they had lost 60 percent of their capacity due to the rapid deterioration of their nets due to oil.

news.mongabay.com...

Cheers

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Excellent post.

They have a lot of the Sci-Ams on Archive.org Scientific American collection. Check the side-bar for formats; I used the full text for ease of search and looked at the next issue to see if there were any follow-ups in the letters. As you know, it's standard in journals for readers to post rebuttals and additions in follow up editions.

The Cowgill letter is indexed without extra information.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Excellent post.

They have a lot of the Sci-Ams on Archive.org Scientific American collection. Check the side-bar for formats; I used the full text for ease of search and looked at the next issue to see if there were any follow-ups in the letters. As you know, it's standard in journals for readers to post rebuttals and additions in follow up editions.

The Cowgill letter is indexed without extra information.

That's quite the resource. I had a brief search but couldn't find anything specifically useful to the case and the jumbling up of the volume numbers is frustrating.

Elsewhere though, there is this really nice map of the area from 1918 is on there too.

archive.org...

And even nicer is this write up of an expedition carried out by the Spanish to the region in 1532, complete with a funny-looking map of the lake and area.

archive.org...

I particularly like this report on the economy from 1918...

archive.org...

What I can't find are any similar reports to the incident in the OP, there is a lot that is in Spanish though. I can't read any of that, so there might be something in there.

Enjoyable little foray, but sadly not very productive. Thanks for the link I shall be using it to explore all sorts of things from now on.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

What I can't find are any similar reports to the incident in the OP, there is a lot that is in Spanish though. I can't read any of that, so there might be something in there.

Charles Fort curated loads of extraordinary reports from academic and scientific journals and was plundering them during the time when this was published. It's surprising how he didn't publish this although it might be tucked away in the stuff he thought was filler. You know this and not every reader will. Since Fort, quite a few 'Forteans' and suchlike have amassed similar collections covering greater time spans. In all that I haven't read anything that parallels the account by Cowgill apart from the Cash-Landrum case I used as a comparison.

That's quite the resource. I had a brief search but couldn't find anything specifically useful to the case and the jumbling up of the volume numbers is frustrating.

I used to skim through old news archives for interesting pieces and it's labour intensive as well as occasionally being fascinating fun. 100s of pages per nugget. I read about two decades worth of a mid to late 19th Century Australian newspaper without discovering many 'Fortean' elements.