Creepy cistern

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Welcome to ABC Wednesday C-Day.

I always wondered what was in the big (260 dunams) empty nature place locals call Gazelle Valley.
It, and what was originally a herd of 17 Gazella gazella gazella, is surrounded by Jerusalem urban development.
On one side is a fire station, seen in the first photo.
But when I was roaming there exactly a year ago, much of the land was charred black from a recent brush fire.

Within sight of the Fire Department, I was surprised to discover one still-standing long-abandoned stone house almost overgrown by trees and weeds.

Caution to the wind, I came closer to snap a photo of the interior.
From outside, that is; I wasn't cuckoo enough to find a way in. No.

Through the basement window I cringed to see a ghostlike drape hanging on the wall.

Courageous or crazy?
Had I gotten too close to this hole in the ground, something might have crumbled or collapsed.
And then only the jackals would have found me--for dinner.

The thick plaster lining of the hole made me think this was once a cistern, now a creepy cistern.
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Urbex/UE/urban exploration could be fun, but not when one is alone and without a cellphone.
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Not your typical balloon man

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What strange balloons heading toward King George Street . . .
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Kursi's ENERGY bench!

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Oi, where to begin . . . ?
Have you heard of Bovis units?
How about geobiology?
Demons in pigs?
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Have you read Luke 8:26-39 or Matthew 8:23-34 lately?
It tells the "miracle of the swine" and the photo above shows where it likely took place.
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As you enter Kursi National Park, up north in the Galilee, you find a welcome bench in the shade.
Sit and listen:
The Gospels call this place Gergessa. Jesus exorcised devils from the body of a man.
The demons possessed a herd of swine grazing nearby.
The pigs then raced into the Sea of Galilee and drowned.
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Modern archaeologists identify the site as Kursi, mentioned in the Talmud as a center of idol worship.
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When road construction began in 1970, antiquities were accidentally exposed.
Archaeologists went to work and uncovered the largest known Byzantine (5th to 6th centuries CE) monastery in the Holy Land.
Monastery, church, mosaics, a chapel on a nearby hill.
PLUS a bathhouse!
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In the chapel, the skeletons of thirty men, probably local priests, were discovered.
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Reconstruction was done and the site was opened to the public in 1982.
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My two visiting American friends and I were the only ones there in the hot sun.
We had only little Kursi National Park brochure to guide us.
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I read the sign and could hardly believe my eyes!
An ENERGY BENCH?? Safsal ha-energiot?!
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I had read a book in German while living in Switzerland about measuring energy in the earth and giving values in Boviseinheiten, Bovis units.
But here?? Would the Israeli government's Israel Nature and Parks Authority really write "energy bench" on the official signage??
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The arrow pointed to here.
Which bench to choose?
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I sat down here for an all-too-brief minute.

But alas, the friends were calling me away; it was closing time and the gates were about to be locked. Oi . . .
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Here's the strange history of the place. Click and read if you'd like.

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But what you really will enjoy is this page by geobiologist Richard Benishai which I found when we got back to Jerusalem after our two days in Galilee.

Here is part of his explanation:

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"I first visited this location in February 2005 with my brother. A few months later, there was interest from the National Parks Authority to publicize this site, based on an article I wrote. Thereafter, the media made a short movie on this site for TV showing.

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Looking at Figure 3, there is a tree, with two wooden benches located under it. We were told that this area was special. We had no idea how special, until I measured it.

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Now to give you an idea about energy levels: when working in the Cathedral of Strasbourg or Notre Dame of Paris, the highest levels I measured there, were around 2.3 to 2.5 million Bovis units. A healthy and energetic house may have something around 30-40 thousands Bovis units, typically.

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As we stood in front of the benches, I tried to measure the level there. I had to increase the scale, up and up until I reached a scale in the millions. That location gave me an 8 million Bovis reading !!!!

Standing there, I had a feeling that I was going up, floating. "

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Dear blog readers, read the rest of his webpage. It gets even more bizarre!
You might decide that my Kursi world for today's That's My World Tuesday is otherworldly.
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UPDATE Dec. 16, 2015:  UPDATE Dec. 16, 2015: A marble stone with a long Hebrew inscription was just found at Kursi, so Kursi may have been a Jewish town with a synagogue -- a surprise!
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