Brooklyn is alive with weird and wild people, places and stories. It’s also been home to some of the leading practitioners of the very unusual profession of magic. Contemporary magicians from Brooklyn include David Blaine and Ricky Jay. Mr. Blaine grew up in Kings County, New York before launching into an odd career that consists mainly of card tricks and public displays of endurance. He’s been frozen, buried, submerged and otherwise self-abused for the annoyment of millions. Mr. Jay who is recognized as the premier scholar on all things weird (author of “Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women”, “Cards as Weapons,” and “Jay’s Journal of Anomalies”) is also an accomplished oddball. He held the Guinness World Record for throwing a playing card 190 ft at 90 miles per hour.

But Blaine and Jay appear dull when compared to Brooklyn’s infamous magicians of the early 1900s. Sigmund Neuberger and William Ellsworth Robinson may be two of Brooklyn’s most unusual citizens. Neuberger, who emigrated from Munich as a young boy, was said to have taken his stage name, “The Great Lafayette,” from the Brooklyn avenue started his career in magic by imitating a famous Chinese magician, Ching Ling Foo.

At the turn of the 20th century Americans were fascinated by the mysteries of the Far East. When Chinese illusionist Ching Ling Foo appeared briefly in the States he created a swarm of Caucasian conjurors dressing up in silk robes and donning pony tails. The Great Lafayette began his shows with a stereotype recreation of what Americans believed to be Chinese theater. But it was never more than a scene in his evening show. William Robinson took it further. The New York City magician decided to disguise himself as actually being Chinese. Robinson created an alter ego called Chung Ling Soo and lived the part in public at every opportunity. Soo could be seen at the beach
in full body make-up and even grew a ponytail. He was accompanied by a translator whenever he spoke the press. It made little difference that Soo did not speak Chinese, as his translator didn’t either. The translator was in fact, Japanese.

At a 1902 matinee at The Orpheum Theater in Brooklyn, Lafayette was seriously injured on stage by a heavy cage that held a lion. The lion effect was a sensational money maker for Lafayette, well worth being mauled on another occasion.
Chung Ling Soo knew that danger sold tickets. He regularly performed a bullet catching trick where he’d stand before a soldier with a loaded muzzle that was fired at his head. Soo’s head would lurch backwards seemingly from the bullets impact. Soo would waddle to the footlights and display the bullet between his teeth.

Final Performance

Chung Ling Soo met his maker on stage when the bullet catching trick went seriously wrong. Soo caught a bullet for real, just once. The subsequent coroner’s inquest revealed that Chung Ling Soo himself was an illusion.

Houdini, who started out doing shows in Coney Island, wrote this about Soo: Of Foo’s thousand imitators the only positively successful one was William E. Robinson, whose tragic death while in the performance of the bullet-catching trick is the latest addition to the long list of casualties chargeable to that ill-omened juggle. He carried the imitation even as far as the name, calling himself Chung Ling Soo. Robinson was very successful in the classic trick of apparently eating large quantities of cotton and blowing smoke and sparks from the mouth. His teeth were finally quite destroyed by the continued
performance of this trick

Lafayette, well loved on stage (and being the highest paid magician of his time) was anti-social and difficult to work with. He insisted that his cast members salute him, and was known for how much he hated people and loved animals. His most
loved companion was a dog that Houdini gave him as a present. When the dog died suddenly in Edinburgh, Lafayette went into a deep depression. He insisted that the dog be given a proper burial at a cemetery. The Edinburgh City Council resisted but eventually permitted the dog’s grave, on the condition that Lafayette would be buried there too.

This wasn’t the end of Lafayette’s bad luck. A few days later in the middle of his show the theater burst into flames. While the cast, crew and audience fled the theater, Lafayette bravely attempted to rescue the many animals he used in the show. Workers searched the burnt out building for the magician’s remains and believed they had removed the body of Lafayette. Two days later, the magician’s body magically reappeared in the basement.
Lafayette, eager to keep the secrets to his illusions secret, had kept the fact that he used a body double for many of his tricks. Lafayette’s ashes were laid to rest with Beauty, his beloved dog. As for the remains of the body-double? That detail is lost to history.

Submitted by Hijinx The Long Island Magician, who is originally from Brooklyn.

A book by Budd Hopkins, Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions, details a UFO abduction encounter from November 30, 1989. I’m not sure if the Brooklyn Bridge counts as Brooklyn or not, and the witnessed abduction is actually in the lower east side, but I figured I would put it up anyway.

The case is unique for many reasons: several witnesses from vantage points on or near the Brooklyn Bridge saw the UFO and the abductee (Linda Cortile) floating 12 stories up in a blazing blue-white light; three of these witnesses (a highly placed United Nations diplomat and his security guards) later came to understand that they had been abducted at the same time. One of the security guards eventually realized that he had met Cortile years ago during a shared sequence of abductions in which each recalled the other as an “imaginary playmate.”

According to a recent Gothamist article, Williamsburg’s Barcade bar is built on haunted burial ground. Barcade is a bar and arcade, featuring a number of classic arcade games, like the original Super Mario that I was convinced I could beat when I was there. I couldn’t.

Interestingly, Barcade runs on 100% wind power.

More interestingly, it’s haunted.

The cemetery was known as the Old Methodist Burying Ground which serviced the Attorney Street Methodist Church and the First Methodist Protestant Church of Williamsburg. When the church closed in 1856, the bodies were allegedly moved to Cyprus Hills Cemetery, but the Scout wonders if a few bodies may remain.

I wonder if any one else saw anything, or if there is a way to explain the sighting away?

Every week we go grocery shopping at Fairway, and every week I see this weird little building opposite the Fairway. I don’t know if it has a name or what it is, but it freaks me out. All sorts of things adorn the walls on the front of the building, including a fish head and a model of the twin towers. Maybe it’s just somebodies house, I have no idea.

The cemetery is the final resting place for some 600,000 people. Among them are some very important historical figures, such as Samuel F. B. Morse (inventor of the single-wire telegraph and co-developed Morse code) and Wizard of Oz actor Frank Morgan.

There are also some eerie stories associated with the cemetery. Take Mabel Douglass, for example. She was the first dean of the New Jersey College for Women. In 1933 she disappeared on Lake Placid. 30 years later her body was found at the bottom of the lake, petrified and supposedly perfectly intact. I’m still unclear if she supposedly haunts the graveyard, or if it’s just an interesting story.

Ghost tours are given yearly, and, although photography is not allowed, eerie images have appeared in photographs… I’m really upset I missed this. I would love to have taken a tour of the cemetery, there most be a ton of interesting history there.

I saw this article about a surveillance camera and it made me think “Is there a whole surveillance system setup around Brooklyn?” This particular camera can be found on Fulton Street, between the north end of Henry Street and the Brooklyn Bridge. They were alerted to it’s attention when the bulb on the top flashed to take a picture.

The post indicated that maybe it was part of a Brooklyn “Ring of Steel”, a system of cameras used to watch out for “terrorists activity.” Others think it’s just a red light camera. Who knows for sure. Just remember Brooklyn, Big Brother is watching you.

The male toadfish’s mating call is now the chief suspect (but is it a toad or a fish). To attract mates, it produces a sound similiar to a foghorn. I can’t imagine a fish making a foghorn sound…that seems strange. The toadfish’s spawning season is from April to October.

The toadfish

Andrew Bass, a Cornell University professor of neurobiology and behavior, tested the toadfish theory himself and disagrees that they are the source of the noise.

“I placed an underwater microphone into the water at several locations off of Pier 69 and heard no signs of toadfish sounds,” Bass told me, sticking to his story. “It is highly unlikely that any of the noise that residents are complaining about have their origins from fish.”

So what’s causing all the noise, then? This mystery may never be solved…

The story of the old, rusting submarine near Coney Island is a long and interesting tale. It begins in 1951 with the Italian Line cruise ship Andrea Doria. The Andrea Doria weighed in at 29,100 tons and had a capacity of about 1,200 passengers and 500 crew. At the time it was considered to be one of the safest ships in the world. If I ever build a ship, I will never claim it to be the “safest ship” in the world, that’s just asking for it.

The Andrea Doria ran into trouble (literally) in 1956. In extremely foggy weather on the North Atlantic off Nantucket the ship collided with a Swedish liner bound for Gotheborg (the other ship’s name was the SS Stockholm). Some of the passengers and crew members were killed, but most survived. Unlike in the Titanic tragedy, other ships were in the vicinity to assist, as well as he SS Stockholm, which did not sink.

The Andrea Doria sunk with a large number of valuables onboard.

The Andrea Doria was known to be bountifully loaded with such diverse items as a $250,000 solid silver statue of a mermaid; thousands of cases of liquor; tons of provolone cheese; 200,000 pieces of mail that the federal government would pay 26 cents a piece for; the ship’s bronze propellers, worth $30,000 each, paintings locked in air-tight vaults; industrial diamonds; the ship’s $6 million metal scrap value; passengers’ personal property left in several vaults and more.

A few years later, in 1963, a Brooklyn Navy Yard ship fitter named Jerry Bianco decided he was going to raise the Andrea Doria. Why let all that good treasure just sit at the bottom of the ocean, right? So, with no prior submarine building experience, he decided to build an “economy” sub. Named the Quester 1, the submarine measured fourty-five feet in length and was painted with yellow zinc chromate paint, the cheapest possible. His plan was to fill the ship with inflatable dunnage bags which would hopefully raise the ship to the surface.

The sub was ready to launch in 1971. Crowds and local media were gathered for the launch at Coney Island Creek. Bianco’s daughter even broke a bottle of champagne across the bow before a giant crane lowered the craft into the creek. The crane operator, lowering the sub into the water before allowing water ballast into the craft, caused the sub to turn over and sink. Embarrassing! Biano later refilled the ballast and tethered the sub, but he was never able to return to the project and had lost his financial backing. The ship remained docked there until 1975, when a storm washed the boat ashore. It’s still there, to this day.

The rusty submarine is still there, to this day. If you want to see it for yourself, it’s just west of the Home Depot on Cropsey Avenue.

I wonder why someone would take the time to make a fake UFO video. I mean, what are you going to get out of it, especially when it looks this bad.