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The Secret Tip to Getting Pregnant?
From ABC NEWS - Travel
When all else fails, some turn to superstitions. So this Mother's Day, the folks at Ripley's Believe It or Not! are touting one of the strangest customs some women have tried to become pregnant -- and it has nothing to do with the birds and the bees.
When all else fails, some turn to superstitions. So this Mother's Day, the folks at Ripley's Believe It or Not! are touting one of the strangest customs some women have tried to become pregnant -- and it has nothing to do with the birds and the bees.
On the eve of Mother's Day weekend -- with a big helping of skepticism on the side -- we bring you the fertility statues.
These five-foot tall wooden figures, housed in the Ripley's "odditorium" in New York's Times Square, are said to help bring about pregnancy to anybody who rubs their stomachs.
Who says so? Well, OK, so it's not a doctor or fancy fertility clinic.
Ripley's has a collection of these figures at its various odditoriums museum. In the late 1990s, the statues went on a three-year tour. (The fertility statues are back on tour again this year.) After the tour, the company said it received more than 2,000 letters from women who became pregnant shortly after touching the statues -- even though many had been told by doctors they would never conceive.
Hard to believe? Maybe. But with infertility affecting about 7.3 million women and their partners in the U.S. -- about 12 percent of the reproductive-age population -- many people are willing to try anything.
"The most important desire in most people's life is to have a child, a link between their past and the future, in a sense," said Dr. Sherman J. Silber, director or the Infertility Center of St. Louis at St. Luke's Hospital. "So since the beginning of mankind there have been fertility icons, idol worship if you will, grasping at any straw that might help in this devastating dilemma."
Today people buy all types of worthless and non-FDA approved "nutritional supplements," Silber said. Or they try operations and "male enhancement formulas." Silber said all of these are "no more effective than these fertility statues."
"The joke is sometimes they seem to work and some will swear by them," Silber said. "That is because even infertility patients will sometimes get pregnant without any treatment at all, not even by rubbing a fertility statue. In fact that is why even 4,000 years ago idol worship also seemed to work."
Fertility Statues
In the spirit of Mothers' Day we headed over to the Times Square odditorium to check out the two "Gods of Fertility" statues from the Baga people, who come from the northern coast of Guinea and the southern coast of Guinea-Bissau in Africa.
Legend has it, that contact with the Nimba statue "dramatically increases the odds of pregnancy." At least they acknowledge that it's legend.
In the spirit of Mothers' Day we headed over to the Times Square odditorium to check out the two "Gods of Fertility" statues from the Baga people, who come from the northern coast of Guinea and the southern coast of Guinea-Bissau in Africa.
Legend has it, that contact with the Nimba statue "dramatically increases the odds of pregnancy." At least they acknowledge that it's legend.
Ripley's then warns visitors to "Touch at your own risk!"
"From our present understanding of the biology of reproduction, there are would be little to suggest that there is a basis for these objects having an effect on fertility," said Dr. William E. Gibbons, president of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. "But, even today there are beliefs or opinions about behaviors concerning fertility that are deeply held that are culturally, not medically based and exist on the internet or incorporate medical 'opinion'."
General Manager Michael Hirsch personally knows all about the power of the statues.
He and his wife got married in December 2006 and started trying to have a baby almost immediately. They tried for three years with no luck.
You see where this is going ?
"My wife's a psychologist," Hirsch said, "but I finally convinced her to come in and touch the statues, and three months later we were pregnant."
Now they have a four-and-a-half-month old daughter, Alexandra.
"I'm not going to tell people that they come here and they will become pregnant," Hirsch said.
But he theorized that maybe touching the statues helps remove some of the stress and pressure of trying to get pregnant.
"For whatever it's worth, we're very happy parents now," he said. "I take the position of: it can't hurt."
Typically, visitors have two reactions to the figures. There are those who seriously rub it and those who want nothing to do with it.
"A lot of people joke around and don't want to touch it," Hirsch said.
And then there are those who first touch the statues and then read the sign explaining them and squeal.
Ripley's Times Square has a few other fertility items, although you can't touch the others and they don't hold quite the same appeal.
First is the Mendes girl's initiation mask.
"Initiation masks like this are placed on teenage girls during the ceremonial circumcision every girl must endure to mark her passage into womanhood," the descriptive sign reads. "Worn like a helmet, it completely covers the face and head -- probably because it's best not to watch!"
Ripley's calls it the "Not So Sweet 16."
Nearby -- and this you also can't touch -- is a Ciwara fertility statue. In the Mali culture of West Africa, according to Ripley's, the Ciwara is a mythical antelope sent to Earth by a supreme god to teach man how to till the soil and sustain life. Adorned with tufts of antelope fur to enhance its power and beauty, this 7-foot-tall icon is skillfully carved from a single piece of wood.
Ripley's Times Square is offering free admission on Mothers' Day to any mom who brings children to Ripley's. And for the rest of the month, moms get 15 percent off in Times Square on Sundays.
As for moms-to-be, well, they'll have to pay full price for now.
Snakes on a Plane? Well, No, but Almost Anything Else Goes
From NEW YORK TIMES - Business Day
I’M a pretty mild-mannered guy, and I love talking to people. So business travel is a good fit for me. I’m not hassled by much of anything since I often create my own havoc as I try to board a plane.
I’ve been traveling for Ripley’s for about two years now, mostly for trade shows. Obviously, you’re competing for people’s attention at these events, so part of my job is to make sure that Ripley’s brand is presented well, especially with the “believe it or not” factor.
I’ve been traveling for Ripley’s for about two years now, mostly for trade shows. Obviously, you’re competing for people’s attention at these events, so part of my job is to make sure that Ripley’s brand is presented well, especially with the “believe it or not” factor.
That’s why I travel with scorpion lollipops, shrunken heads and other oddities. My experiences with security are almost funny to me at this point. I’ve gotten to know some agents at La Guardia, including a supervisor. So getting through the line is usually easier for me if the ones I know are working.
If I have a problem, it usually plays out the same way. For example, I put the scorpion lollipops in a carry-on. There are usually about 60 of them, in assorted flavors. It’s real candy, with a real scorpion encased in it. I put my bag on the conveyer belt, and then it gets mixed in with other bags.
Then the security guard tasked with looking at the bags starts to scrutinize my bag. Passengers around me usually get slightly annoyed because the line is being held up.
One time I just yelled out, “It’s my bag.” That probably was a mistake since the guard became very concerned and yelled back, “How do you know it’s your bag? Why would this be your bag?” I just calmly replied, “It has to be mine, I work at Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
Fortunately, the other passengers behind me started laughing. The security guard didn’t think it was funny. I had to step aside and watch as he opened the bag. The next thing I know, a bunch of security guards — it seemed like every one in the terminal — came over to look at the scorpion lollipops.
But I was allowed on the plane, no problem. So were the lollipops.
A similar situation happened with a shrunken head I was carrying. This time, a couple in line with me, a man and his wife, wound up sitting by me on the plane. The poor woman couldn’t stop staring at the overhead compartment where I had put the bag with the head in it. I told her we were perfectly safe and nothing was going to jump out.
To read the full story, got to New York Times.
Parents Credit Ripley's Fertility Statue for Baby
Of all the wondrous people linked to Ripley's Believe It Or Not! over the past 90 years, one of the most amazing may be Liam Faulkner, a perfectly normal 8-month-old baby.
That's because Ripley's famed fertility statues may have helped make his birth possible.
When Liam's parents, Stephen, 34, and Tricia, 30, of Long Island, N.Y., heard the statues were making a stop at the Times Square Odditorium back in August 2008, they decided to pay a visit. Married since 2005, they'd been trying just about every other means of getting pregnant for nearly a year and a half.
"We did five months of fertility treatments and we had one more month of trying before we were going to move on to in vitro," Tricia said.
These statues, acquired in 1993, are the most popular exhibit in Ripley's history. After seeing the event posted online, they took it as a joke. Stephen, a marketing data specialist, and Tricia, a speech language pathologist, are hardly the superstitious types. Yet, they figured a little extra help couldn't hurt.
"We conceived two weeks later," Stephen said. "We were both floored, but it's just a funny coincidence," Tricia added.
It probably was.
But the new parents are hardly alone in their success. Ripley's fertility statues, acquired from the Baule people of West Africa's Ivory Coast, have been linked to more than 2,000 pregnancies since their first tour in the 1990s.
"I think we can safely say we are having an impact," said Michael Hirsch, general manager of Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Times Square. "Whether it's the mental fact where people really believe and that allows them on a physical level to have success – or maybe there is something behind them. Who's to say?"
Even Hirsch can attest to the apparent power of the statues. When they arrived in New York, he and his wife quickly took advantage. They had been trying to get pregnant for two and a half years. "When they got here, my wife was the first one to touch them, while they were still in the crates on the loading dock," he said. "We got pregnant six months later."
Ripley's acquired the pair of 5-foot-tall ebony wood figures in 1993. "They weren't bought for mystical powers, we bought them for their beauty," said Tim O'Brien, the company's vice president of communications.
They were originally confined to Ripley's headquarters in Orlando, Fla. Within 13 months there were 13 pregnancies. "Including the UPS lady," O'Brien said. "And that's what started the whole thing."
The African carvings have since proved to be the most popular exhibit in Ripley's history and have toured the United States several times.
"They don't have any known powers and we can't endorse them," O'Brien said. "But something's working."
In fact, it's even working for couples unable to visit in person. Many have faxed Ripley's their handprints as a substitute. "We'll rub them up against the statues and send them back," O'Brien said. "What people do with them I have no idea. But we've had at least six or seven women in the past year say that worked for them."
That's because Ripley's famed fertility statues may have helped make his birth possible.
When Liam's parents, Stephen, 34, and Tricia, 30, of Long Island, N.Y., heard the statues were making a stop at the Times Square Odditorium back in August 2008, they decided to pay a visit. Married since 2005, they'd been trying just about every other means of getting pregnant for nearly a year and a half.
"We did five months of fertility treatments and we had one more month of trying before we were going to move on to in vitro," Tricia said.
These statues, acquired in 1993, are the most popular exhibit in Ripley's history. After seeing the event posted online, they took it as a joke. Stephen, a marketing data specialist, and Tricia, a speech language pathologist, are hardly the superstitious types. Yet, they figured a little extra help couldn't hurt.
"We conceived two weeks later," Stephen said. "We were both floored, but it's just a funny coincidence," Tricia added.
It probably was.
But the new parents are hardly alone in their success. Ripley's fertility statues, acquired from the Baule people of West Africa's Ivory Coast, have been linked to more than 2,000 pregnancies since their first tour in the 1990s.
"I think we can safely say we are having an impact," said Michael Hirsch, general manager of Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Times Square. "Whether it's the mental fact where people really believe and that allows them on a physical level to have success – or maybe there is something behind them. Who's to say?"
Even Hirsch can attest to the apparent power of the statues. When they arrived in New York, he and his wife quickly took advantage. They had been trying to get pregnant for two and a half years. "When they got here, my wife was the first one to touch them, while they were still in the crates on the loading dock," he said. "We got pregnant six months later."
Ripley's acquired the pair of 5-foot-tall ebony wood figures in 1993. "They weren't bought for mystical powers, we bought them for their beauty," said Tim O'Brien, the company's vice president of communications.
They were originally confined to Ripley's headquarters in Orlando, Fla. Within 13 months there were 13 pregnancies. "Including the UPS lady," O'Brien said. "And that's what started the whole thing."
The African carvings have since proved to be the most popular exhibit in Ripley's history and have toured the United States several times.
"They don't have any known powers and we can't endorse them," O'Brien said. "But something's working."
In fact, it's even working for couples unable to visit in person. Many have faxed Ripley's their handprints as a substitute. "We'll rub them up against the statues and send them back," O'Brien said. "What people do with them I have no idea. But we've had at least six or seven women in the past year say that worked for them."
Would You Eat Bugs For Love?
From NBC New York - Around Town
Fear Factor” X “The Bachelor” = Ripley’s Race to the Altar, Valentine’s Weekend.
How iron-clad is your love? Would you, say, eat a bug so your sweetie wouldn’t have to?
Ripley's Believe It or Not! Times Square Odditorium stages the ultimate – and totally creepy – test of devotion in the form of the Remarkable Race to the Altar. The Odditorium will convert its 20-plus themed galleries (each representing something vile, weird or horrifying encountered by Robert Ripley in his travels) into an obstacle course of interactive challenges described by the Ripley’s folks as “peculiar photo ops,” “acts of courage” and “challenges of digestive fortitude like consuming a stomach-churning, yet edible, curiosity.”
The couple to complete all of their tasks and make it to the finish line first will be married on the spot, because naturally, Ripley’s has an ordained minister on staff. Plus: Prizes! Bragging rights!
You’re thinking, okay, but how nasty is this thing really going to get? That’s what we wondered, so we called up Ripley’s director of marketing Steve Ekstrom. He can’t divulge too much about what couples will be asked to do to move through the race, but says eating a live cockroach “may or may not be” one of the challenges.
To read the full story, go to NBC New York - Around Town
Fear Factor” X “The Bachelor” = Ripley’s Race to the Altar, Valentine’s Weekend.
How iron-clad is your love? Would you, say, eat a bug so your sweetie wouldn’t have to?
Ripley's Believe It or Not! Times Square Odditorium stages the ultimate – and totally creepy – test of devotion in the form of the Remarkable Race to the Altar. The Odditorium will convert its 20-plus themed galleries (each representing something vile, weird or horrifying encountered by Robert Ripley in his travels) into an obstacle course of interactive challenges described by the Ripley’s folks as “peculiar photo ops,” “acts of courage” and “challenges of digestive fortitude like consuming a stomach-churning, yet edible, curiosity.”
The couple to complete all of their tasks and make it to the finish line first will be married on the spot, because naturally, Ripley’s has an ordained minister on staff. Plus: Prizes! Bragging rights!
You’re thinking, okay, but how nasty is this thing really going to get? That’s what we wondered, so we called up Ripley’s director of marketing Steve Ekstrom. He can’t divulge too much about what couples will be asked to do to move through the race, but says eating a live cockroach “may or may not be” one of the challenges.
To read the full story, go to NBC New York - Around Town
How to Kill a Vampire
Ripley's then warns visitors to "Touch at your own risk!"
"From our present understanding of the biology of reproduction, there are would be little to suggest that there is a basis for these objects having an effect on fertility," said Dr. William E. Gibbons, president of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. "But, even today there are beliefs or opinions about behaviors concerning fertility that are deeply held that are culturally, not medically based and exist on the internet or incorporate medical 'opinion'."
General Manager Michael Hirsch personally knows all about the power of the statues.
He and his wife got married in December 2006 and started trying to have a baby almost immediately. They tried for three years with no luck.
You see where this is going ?
"My wife's a psychologist," Hirsch said, "but I finally convinced her to come in and touch the statues, and three months later we were pregnant."
Now they have a four-and-a-half-month old daughter, Alexandra.
"I'm not going to tell people that they come here and they will become pregnant," Hirsch said.
But he theorized that maybe touching the statues helps remove some of the stress and pressure of trying to get pregnant.
"For whatever it's worth, we're very happy parents now," he said. "I take the position of: it can't hurt."
Typically, visitors have two reactions to the figures. There are those who seriously rub it and those who want nothing to do with it.
"A lot of people joke around and don't want to touch it," Hirsch said.
And then there are those who first touch the statues and then read the sign explaining them and squeal.
Ripley's Times Square has a few other fertility items, although you can't touch the others and they don't hold quite the same appeal.
First is the Mendes girl's initiation mask.
"Initiation masks like this are placed on teenage girls during the ceremonial circumcision every girl must endure to mark her passage into womanhood," the descriptive sign reads. "Worn like a helmet, it completely covers the face and head -- probably because it's best not to watch!"
Ripley's calls it the "Not So Sweet 16."
Nearby -- and this you also can't touch -- is a Ciwara fertility statue. In the Mali culture of West Africa, according to Ripley's, the Ciwara is a mythical antelope sent to Earth by a supreme god to teach man how to till the soil and sustain life. Adorned with tufts of antelope fur to enhance its power and beauty, this 7-foot-tall icon is skillfully carved from a single piece of wood.
Ripley's Times Square is offering free admission on Mothers' Day to any mom who brings children to Ripley's. And for the rest of the month, moms get 15 percent off in Times Square on Sundays.
As for moms-to-be, well, they'll have to pay full price for now.
Legend has it, that contact with the Nimba statue "dramatically increases the odds of pregnancy." At least they acknowledge that it's legend.
"In the African Baga culture, Queen Nimba represents the ideal fertile woman, so at harvest time and wedding ceremonies, the Nimba statues are called upon to inspire fertility in both the crops and the newlyweds," reads a sign next to the two New York statues.
From SPHERE - Weird News
They're on TV, at the theater, topping the best-seller list and, if you haven't joined them already, the toothy guy nibbling at your neck is offering you a free lifetime membership.
Killing a lone vampire is at least doable – especially if you're a bubbly blonde from the fictional town of Sunnydale, Calif., and you've got a wooden stake.
What we're facing now, however, is an endless, multimedia vampire deluge. It isn't just that Stephenie Meyer's coffin-and-fang romance novels have exploded at the box office, or that HBO – once the home of gangsters in therapy and oversexed New York women –- has turned to "True Blood" to feed on new viewers.
These days, Perez Hilton can't decide who's sexier, Robert Pattinson, as "Twilight's" glittering-by-day Edward Cullen, or the chiseled Paul Wesley of "The Vampire Diaries."
And if you think this is all just a teen fad, tell it to the fan club that calls itself Twilight MOMS.
Now comes yet another blow to the jugular. Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Michael Dorman and Sam Neill star in "Daybreakers," opening this weekend. The vampire science fiction extravaganza is set in the not-too-distant future, when the undead overrun the earth. Having killed off so many humans, they're suddenly faced with a dwindling blood supply.
At this rate, how do the unbitten keep from going batty?
Coexistence is one option, and if pop culture has proven anything, it's that these platelet-guzzling night owls can be our friends, if only we can take reasonable precautions against being turned into one – or simply sucked dry.
"Definitely be aware," says Meredith Woerner, author of "Vampire Taxonomy," a guide to identifying and interacting with unholy immortals.
"Don't go into dark alleys. Don't accept a date from some brooding boy who has been in high school for tons and tons of years. Just be smart."
Of course, if your adversary insists on snacking on your arteries, you'll need a wooden stake – "Mr. Pointy," as Buffy might say – or a surefire method of separating your adversary's torso from his fangs. Crosses and holy water may not do the trick.
"I think religious paraphernalia has been proven not to work with modern vampires, but it's always good. It can never hurt," Woerner says. "And I think garlic is also one of those things that has fallen to the wayside.
"Push that stake straight in. That vampire is going to turn into dust and die right in front of you, or turn into a gooey mess, depending on what kind of vampire you're dealing with."
An even faster method: "Cut off the head," she says. "It never fails."
Vampires have come a long way from Bram Stoker's "Dracula," the 1897 novel that turned Eastern European folklore into what's become a modern-day sensation.
Stoker was inspired, of course, by the 15th-century nobleman "Vlad the Impaler," who earned his nickname by driving a spike into the belly of countless victims. It was a form of execution he allegedly enjoyed so much he'd hold lavish outdoor banquets in the killing fields, to admire the bloody corpses as he drank wine and feasted.
It's interesting to note that fear of vampire attacks was so strong, even before Stoker, that companies in the United States began selling wooden stakes and other vampire-slaying paraphernalia.
Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museums own the largest collection of pre-Stoker vampire-killing kits – complete with Bible, cross, silver bullets, garlic and, of course, a thick, pointy stake.
"What the vampire-killing kits tell us is that Stoker didn't invent the fear of vampires," says Michael Hirsch, manager of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Odditorium in New York's Times Square.
"It's much more likely that Stoker was inspired by the fear that travelers had more than a century ago, when they were heading to Eastern Europe."
Ripley's has 26 vampire-killing kits – some of which date back to the mid-1800s – at museums in eight countries.
The anti-vamp kit in New York is tastefully displayed alongside an iron maiden, other vintage torturing devices, a decommissioned electric chair and half a human brain.
"It's my favorite room in the museum," Hirsch says. "I don't know what it says about me."
To review original story, please click here.
