The Lulu mermaid

Sadly, Abu Dhabi's greatest contribution yet to cryptozoology and marine biology is just an email hoax according to Gulf News. An cyber-missive is circulating showing pictures of an apparent mermaid found on Lulu Island:

The Environmental Agency-Abu Dhabi, in a statement issued to Gulf News said: "Mermaids do not exist and never have done according to scientific record.

"They are mythological so it would be impossible to have a real mermaid. The photograph is clearly a hoax."

Given her looks the Lulu mermaid is going to need an exceptionally beautiful voice to lure any dhow-sailors onto the rocks. She'd have far a better career chance as an extra in Doctor Who than as a seductive sea siren.

Next week: Dubai Scientists Discover World's First and Largest Yeti in Hatta. Stay tuned.

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Rolling stones

Dubai's most thrilling legal saga rocks on, with the billion dirham bulletproof onyx now on trial in the Court of Appeal. The stone's owner is willing to take a bullet to prove his magic pebble is effective:

"I am willing to prove to the world that it's a bulletproof onyx stone... I am ready to face a death sentence if that's what will take me to prove that the stone is doubtlessly bulletproof... I didn't con anybody's money, but the police tricked me and filed a malicious case against me," the 52-year-old Yemeni dealer, Q.M., told the Dubai Appeals Court on Monday.

Meanwhile his defence lawyer hopes that modern science can prove the rock's miraculous nature:

"Defence lawyer Saeed Al Ghailani, of Saeed Al Ghailani Advocates and Legal Consultants, asked the Appeal's Court judge to assign a physics expert or Dubai police's criminal laboratory to test the stone and decide whether it contains any electromagnetic powers which deviates the bullet before it hits the stone wearer."

Any test-tube waggling white-bearded boffins out there willing to take up this challenging experiment? Sadly Wikipedia, the usual source of all necessary human knowledge, isn't much help in this instance.

The Beast of Badiya

Something is munching sheep on the East coast. Is it:

(a) a mountain lion
(b) an (extinct) Arabian cheetah
(c) a wolf
(d) a lost mountain tribe of sorcerors
(e) a blood-sucking vampire-like creature

The smart money's on the latter. In other news, a judge has denied Dubai the chance of holding a trial more momentous than OJ Simpson or Lady Chatterley. The magic bullet-proof onyx man has got six months in Al Slammer:

In a lively court case, the guilty man’s lawyer asked the judge to allow a test to be carried out, where the defendant would have worn the onyx and been shot at to test its powers. The judge refused.

Magic stones

As a leading international hub for trade, tricksters and the trustful, there is no better place to buy "magic stones" than Dubai. The latest peddlar of paranormal pebbles is this bewildered Yemeni entrepreneur charged with trying to sell a bullet-proof onyx for half a billion dirhams:

The suspect said: "I am not a cheat. I had a stall at Global Village where I displayed precious stones, including the onyx. I asked the police to try the stone before confiscating it and arresting me. They refused. I brought it with me from Yemen."

His lawyer Saeed Al Ghailani said his client claimed that he tried the stone once on a sheep and it worked. "We will bring witnesses to corroborate his claims before the court when it reconvene next week," said the lawyer.

The solution is amazingly simple: have the man test the stone out himself. If the bullets bounce off him, he's obviously innocent and the stone is a miracle and cheap at ten times the price.

If it's a hoax: problem solved.

Twisted firestarter

Fantastic! A pyromaniac genie is up to wicked tricks in Fujairah:

"There is no other reasonable explanation but the genies are doing this,” Sulaiman, a colonel in the Civil Defence, said, adding that he did not believe that genies (Spirits with supernatural powers, known as ‘jinn’ in Arabic) were responsible until he witnessed the stange events unfolding in the house for himself.

"I saw with my own eyes my colleagues' hoses becoming tangled up with each other to prevent the water coming out to extinguish the flames. It was so strange." This week, terrified by the series of strange events, the family had an exorcism performed inside the property. "Furniture and clothes began flying as the ceremony was taking place. The genies were not happy,” Sulaiman explained.

Wasn't there another genie some time ago causing electrical fires in a villa somewhere?

A Sharjah ghost story

For Hallowe'en, Inge reveals a chilling tale that happened to some Scandinavian friends living in a flat in Sharjah. The couple owned two cats, one of which started acting very strangely as soon as they moved in. It became constantly nervous, and refused ever to come out from under one of the beds.

Then one of the couple's parents came to visit. The father was known for being sensitive to certain phenomenon, and he instantly detected something wrong with the flat. He said it was in the long corridor that ran past the bedrooms, but he couldn't tell what it was, just a presence. Not a malevolent one, just a strange sadness.

Some time after, friends of the couple got some photos developed of a party at the flat. They were surprised to see the figure of an Indian lady standing in the corridor. The party had been all Scandinavians, and the couple had no other visitors or maid at the time.

When the friends showed the photos to the couple, they were astonished. For some time they had been noticing what appeared to be a reflection on their balcony, as they sat inside. They had assumed it was someone from a neighbouring flat, mirrored onto their window by some trick of the light. When they saw the photo of the strange Indian lady in the corridor, they recognised it as the mysterious figure on the balcony.

A few investigations took place, and other tenants revealed the sad tale of a housemaid who had jumped to her death from the very same balcony. Finally they took the photo to the building watchman, who recognised it as the same woman.

When they finally moved, the scaredy-cat became normal again the second it entered the new house, all nervousness gone.

Sorcerers of the sandlands

Could it be time for Dubai Magic City? Sorcery is apparently "big business" in the region, with a roaring trade in stone tablets, animal pelts, claws and pre-Islamic artifacts.

Sadly the illegality of magic in the sandlands means it's not being given the historic and ethnographic attention it deserves, according to historian Peter Hellyer:

But he said there was a strong underground belief in ancient, animist practices among some people in the Gulf states.

"There is a tradition of belief in magic in much of southern Arabia but very little research has been undertaken into it," he said.

It is fascinating how these ancient practices and superstitions have survived for so many thousands of years, even after the arrival of Islam. They should be studied, to better understand the early history and pre-history of the UAE.

Bringing these practices out into the open might also debunk a bit of their mystique, saving future morons from shelling out Dh750,000 on magical lumps of rock.

Black magic

What is it with witch doctors in the sandlands? Barely a day goes by without reports of some trickster - usually African - duping gullible morons out of their cash. Today's victims are fifty-five sorry spinsters:

Around 55 women, of various Arab nationalities, each paid him Dh1,500 convinced that the man would help them meet and marry ‘Mr. Right’. But then it all went horribly wrong for all of them.

The accused also decieved many people by persuading them he had supernatural powers which enabled him to treat all kinds of illness, as well as help victims of voodoo blackmagic.

Another popular scam is money-doubling:

Dubai Court heard that Kinte conducted an experiment in front of Hussein by asking him to hand over a $100 note. Kinte spread a white powder on the note and then washed it in water. He then handed Hussein two $100 notes, claiming the chemical had somehow "cloned" them. Hussein agreed bring Kinte $20,000. When he did, Kinte put the banknotes in a bag and then covered them with the white powder. The bag was sealed after which Kinte injected it with a second chemical substance. Kinte told Hussein to keep the bag with him without opening it, but Hussein, at last suspecting he was the victim of a con, opened the bag and found his money gone.

The police have been warning about this for years but there are still plenty of desperate fools around. The problem is that many people here - particularly those from remote villages (here or in Asia) - are highly superstitious and not very well educated. They don't read newspapers, and they don't surf the internet. If they do get online, they quickly become the victims of Nigerian money scams.

Demons of the desert

Lock your windows and leave a light on, the ghosts of the sandlands are moving in...

At least according to this spooky discussion. One allegedly haunted place is the now-demolished Al Khan area of Sharjah, where it was "normal to see things climbing the trees":

"[My brother-in-law] told me that his mother was sleeping and she heard a heavy knock on the door and she thought it was his father, he usually would come in late but when she opened the door, he saw a dark tall thing with no teeth, red eyes looking down, she fell sick for 3 months."

Another creepy tale takes place on Ajman beach:

"They were chilling near the beachside and that is when they noticed someone walking towards them in black from far. When this figure walked towards them and came closer they realised it was a ‘lady’. She was covered from head to toe, only showing off her eyes. My friends felt weird for she didn’t look like a nasty one and they got curious why she was all alone at ‘Ajman beach’ that late.

"Suddenly they felt her pace had increased and that she was walking faster and 3 of them noticed at the same time that her hands were extraordinarily longer! Until when they saw her hands were growing and they were as long till her knees is when they realised that they should simply ‘RUN’!"

There's plenty of eeriness in Dubai too:

"There has always been this small enclosure of trees in Nad al Sheba with a fence around it, like a thick group of them, no more than I'd say 10 square metres. And every blue moon or whatever there is like a candle sitting on the floor."

The radiant, bearded man

Heist by hypnosis - the cunning modus operandi of a Dubai conman. The first victim, an Indian man, was leaving the office when a mysterious elderly gent walked in:

"The very first thing I noticed was that his bearded face had a sort of radiance,” said Yousef.

After successfully divining that Yousef's wife was pregnant, the crafty old wizard got him to pick up a stone and close it in his palm:

When Yousef opened his hand he said he was stunned to see the stone had turned into a red gem. “For sometime I could not speak to him. I just listened. That was when he asked me for some money."

Farewell to Dh100 from Yousuf's wallet. Farewell to his mobile phone. The wicked warlock next approached the unwary Santosh, and repeated his "red stone" trick:

“I had almost entered into a state of trance. My surroundings had disappeared. I was ready to do anything he wanted me to,” said Santosh who gave away his wallet, gold bracelet and the mobile phone.

This terrific old trickster would be superb for spicing up Christmas parties. If anyone has his number, pass it this way - he'd be wasted in Al Wathba.

Sexagenarian sorcerer

Somehow, the Khaleej Times' bizarre, ill-written English adds to the exquisite absurdity of this story:

FUJAIRAH — A sexagenarian Iranian sorcerer, who was also hooked to hash, is now cooling his heels in prison following a five-year jail term slapped on him by the Fujairah Criminal Court.

[...]

Police received a tip-off that the Iranian was conducting his ‘business’ claiming that he had supernatural powers. The indictment sheet states that Samjan practised sorcery and black magic to convince his preys.

Dubai Dementors

Horror struck the cinema audience at Mercato Mall as Harry Potter III suddenly tranformed into 3D, with a wailing Dementor flying out of the screen and up the aisle. It turned out to be a flapping black abaya rushing out with her shreiking sheikhlet.

Real-life wizards are still popular in remote villages, where a bizarre blend of Islamic ritual and tribal voodoo brings endless disappointment to superstitious mountain folk:

"...there are some magicians who pass along talismans to women who want to get pregnant after doctors have failed to help them. The women are told to burn the talismans or dip them in water and drink the liquid after reciting verses from the Holy Quran.

"Other talismans are used to make a husband never think of another woman."

The most interesting practice is the summoning of Djinn - or genies - apparently a "regular occurrence". An Emirati Old Wives' Tale warns that immodest nightwear will encourage Djinns to ravish a young maiden while she sleeps. Burqas must be the preferred pajamas these days.