Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Monsters in the sewers



Used to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lived in the sewers. The belief was so strong among the kids in my neighborhood that some of us talked about going down there and looking. A few weeks later, a few kids--- not in my neighborhood--- did just that.

They didn't find any mutated, talking Turtles but there little misadventure did nothing to dissuade my generation from believing that the sewers were a habitat and that some things did live there. Stephen King told us Pennywise, an ancient evil that preyed on children lived there.

Old, corny horror films told us Alligators lived there.

So if you grew up in the city and rode the public transportation, you closed your eyes in the tunnels because you believed everything and anything lived there. Then you grew up and forgot about it. Well, guess what... some things never change.

CCTV in Northern Ireland ran a piece about a sighting in the sewers. The experts say it could be a trick of light but others have compared it to the comic book sometime villain The Silver Surfer. Davy Sloan, the Northern Ireland Water field Manager says:

"NI Water constantly finds inappropriate items dumped down the sewer. Items vary from nappies, wipes, sanitary products and cotton buds which wash into pumping stations and block the pumps [...] They also block sewers which often causes internal and external flooding. This time however, the CCTV picked up a spooky face at the end of the tunnel [...] We think the image is a result of a combination of the bend in the sewer line and variations in light."

Whatever dude. Just don't go down there in the dark.

(Newsletter)