Thousands of lives have been lost in Florida due to the coronavirus pandemic and now the disease has claimed an entire city. Thankfully, the mermaids are okay. The community in question is Weeki Wachee, a popular tourist destination about 50 miles north of Tampa, known for its mermaid shows since the 1940s and, at one time, the biggest tourist attraction […]
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Less than 24 hours after a failed coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol, the FBI and other police agencies have launched a massive manhunt for the rioters who disrupted the Electoral College vote certification at the urging of President Donald Trump. A handful of insurrectionists were arrested on the spot. Others have been identified through social media posts. Yep, that’s […]
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By Alexander Strange They say politics makes strange bedfellows. And it’s hard to imagine, with less than ninety days until the election, that it could get weirder than this. But there’s another cliché to consider: In politics, a week is an eternity and three months is even longer. This week’s political news of the weird features space alien DNA, accusations […]
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All these stories about weirdness don’t come out of my imagination but from the pages of newspapers, wire services, police reports, and tipsters. One group of contributors has taken to calling itself the Army of the Strange. Some of the soldiers give themselves fantastical names ripped from the pages of vampire novels. Monikers such as Althan, Amdis, Ambrosia, and Alaric. […]
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“Help…Please…Get me out of here.” That’s the lettering on a yellow sheet of paper a maintenance worker saw in an apartment window in Naples, Florida. Was someone being held hostage? he wondered. Only one thing to do: Call 911! When Collier County Sheriff’s deputies arrived, they, too, were alarmed as they cautiously headed to the apartment door. One of the […]
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We now take a moment to offer congratulations to Vanity Fair magazine, the uncontested winner of the first annual Weird Florida Writing Award in the Breaking News category. Writer Yohana Desta scored the honor with this sentence in an online post earlier today: “The mysterious magnetic field that ensconces Florida in a never-ending loop of strangeness worked its magic again […]
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We start off today’s report with news certain to bring a smile to your bandanna-covered face. In a town outside of Flint, Michigan, a woman named Kris Gibson spotted a black dog hanging around outside her fence. Her first instinct was to find the dog’s owner, so she took the puppy to a nearby animal clinic where an embedded microchip […]
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Alexander Strange is marooned in Key West waiting out the pandemic. Here’s his latest report. We start out this edition of The Strange Files with an uplifting little story, not the least bit weird other than the setting is the Florida Keys, the epicenter of strange in America. Tip of the hat to the amazing staff at the Miami Herald, […]
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With toilet paper stripped from grocery store shelves by hoarders, people are left to use alternatives that don’t always flush very well. Florida wastewater treatment plants are reporting that toilet paper alternatives are clogging the system, entangling pumps needed to move sewage—and sometimes breaking them. They caution: Baby wipes, tissues, napkins and paper towels should never be used. So what’s […]
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