WELCOME TO ISSUE 14 of isle of wéired news – bringing you the weirdest news from around the world.

In this issue: a Northern Ireland cat correctly predicts World Cup winners; a letter from the original investigator of the Eileen Mòr mystery to go on display; two American film makers accidentally capture footage of the Lake Champlain lake monster; while an American tourist captures footage of Nessie; Bigfoot samples Canadian hospitality; and a Texas couple face imprisonment for their “psychic” scam.

Enjoy!

Billy Knows the Score

Billy Heartnose, a Northern Ireland cat, has correctly predicted all of the winners in the World Cup so far (24 June).

Billy lives with his humans, Linka Lin and Mark Kelly, in Newry, County Down. Linka adopted Billy when he was three months old, naming him Billy Heartnose because of the heart-shaped mark on his nose.

“We know Billy is very very smart and we were thinking ‘how can we capture his personality and smartness?’

“We started with Billy doing the ‘this and that’ quiz – asking if he prefers Pepsi or Coke, or rice or noodles. And then also I came home from an event with lots of little flags with me and I was trying to play with him and the different flags. It just so happened the World Cup had started so we thought ‘why not’. We didn’t expect some of the videos to get picked up by people online.”

For each match, Linka presents Billy with two flags, one for each of the countries playing. Billy makes his prediction by touching one of the flags with his paw.

Linka says that some predictions take longer than others.

“There was one incident where the whole thing was interrupted as there was a fly in the house and he couldn’t concentrate,” she said.

Billy’s talents have made him a social media star, but Linka says it hasn’t changed him.

“As a cat he doesn’t seem to be bothered that he’s an online influencer,” she says. “To us he’s still our cat, still Billy.”

See Billy’s predictions on Instagram.

Source(s): Newsletter, 24 June 2026

A Letter from Eilean Mòr

On 26 December 1900, relief lighthouse keeper Joseph Moore arrived on Eilean Mòr, an island in Scotland’s remote Flannan Isles, to investigate why the lighthouse there had not been operating.

There was no one to meet him.

He found the door of the lighthouse unlocked. Inside, there was half-eaten food in the kitchen. One of the chairs had been knocked over, as if someone had left in a hurry. And two of the three oilskin coats were missing.

More importantly, all three lighthouse keepers – Thomas Marshall, James Ducat and Donald McArthur – were nowhere to be found.

In a letter detailing his findings, Moore wrote: “I only too well knew that something serious had occurred.”

The disappearance of the Eilean Mòr lighthouse keepers is one of Scotland’s most enduring unsolved mysteries. The official conclusion at the time was that the men had been swept out to sea while they were trying to secure equipment during a severe storm.

Over the years, however, all manner of alternative and exotic theories have been suggested.

Moore’s letter will be on display in August as part of an exhibition celebrating Scotland’s lighthouses.

Source(s): Scottish Daily Mail, 4 June 2026

Champ Footage Found

Two American film makers believe they have captured evidence of Champ – the lake monster who inhabits Lake Champlain in North America.

Richard Rossi and Kelly Tabor were making a film called Lucy and the Lake Monster, and had shot scenes from a boat on Lake Champlain.

Nothing was seen at the time. But when Tabor reviewed the footage, nearly two years after it had been shot, she discovered that a large creature had been moving through the water behind the boat.

“When I saw it, I saw it was like a skinny neck, and that the body got larger,” said Tabor. “It looked like the skinny neck was oscillating back and forth, as if it was grazing underwater. My eyes were popping out.”

Tabor called Rossi to tell him what she had discovered. Rossi was sceptical at first – but when he saw the footage, he says he was stunned.

For Kelly Tabor, capturing this footage is a childhood dream come true.

“My family spent summers there. We had a boat that we would go out in, and so I was always scanning the lake, trying to get my chance to see Champ,” she said.

“As many times as I looked as a child, I never saw it.”

Source(s): Daily Mail, 6 June 2026

Loch Ness Drive By Shooting

On 18 May, American tourist Nikolas Wiegand inadvertently took photos and captured footage  of Nessie whilst speeding past Loch Ness on a sightseeing bus.

“I was only looking through the viewfinder of my camera rather than the lake itself,” he explained. “We were driving at a pretty fast rate down the roadway directly next to Loch Ness. Because our tour was limited on time, I did not have time to watch my recorded footage until the tour was over.

“After careful review of the footage, I discovered something mysterious and unknown deep in the water quite far from the shore. In the footage and in the still photographs, you can clearly see a dark image of something breaking the water surface as we drove by.

“The object is relatively large, gauging the distance from where we were on the bus to the distance of the water, using road signs on shore to gauge what was the size of whatever was in the water.”

Source(s): Mirror, 6 June 2026

Bigfoot in Canada

In April, Chatham-Kent, a rural area in Ontario, Canada, was “flooded” with Bigfoot sightings.

“The birds stopped, the wind seemed to die down, and it got oddly quiet,” said one witness. “That’s when I noticed movement ahead of me. A massive figure slowly stepped out from behind the trees, and my heart instantly started racing.”

After a few moments, the “massive figure” disappeared back into the forest.

Another witness claims to have seen two Bigfoots “scavenging through garbage.” The witness knocked on some wood to scare them off. However, the Bigfoots just knocked back – scaring the witness.

One witness says that when she had her Bigfoot experience, a “strong, earthy smell hung in the air.”

According to Scott Tompkins, creator of The Bigfoot Mapping Project: “This type of activity has not been reported since the mid 70s in this type of concentration and frequency.”

However, Professor Josh Redstone of Carleton University is less impressed by the reported sightings.

“I’m sorry to disappoint your viewers, but there probably is not a sasquatch out there for anyone to go and find …” he said in an interview with CTV News.

“We’re really good, for evolutionary reasons, at seeing things out there in the environment, which might be alive. We’re so good at doing this that we even see things when they are not there.”

Source(s): Daily Mail, 12 June 2026; Female First, 12 June 2026

“Psychic” Couple Con “Emotionally Vulnerable”

Posing as psychics, a Texas couple – Bridgette Doreen Evans and Vinnie John Unanawich – conned “emotionally vulnerable” clients out of $2.5 million.

Using the name Jolene Travis, Evans would advertise her psychic services on social media. Targeting those struggling with romantic or personal problems, Evans would claim to be able to perform rituals that could determine the source of their problems.

Invariably, Evans would determine that the source of the client’s problems was related to their finances. The solution, she claimed, was for the client to liquidate their assets and send them to her – in the form of gold coins or cash – to be “cleansed.” Once “cleansed”, the cash and gold would be returned to the client. 

However, only small amounts were ever returned – just to earn the victim’s trust.

One victim sold her home so that she could buy $2 million in gold coins to send to Evans.

Unanawich is accused of helping Evans run the scheme by managing the bank accounts, selling gold coins, transferring and spending the money generated by the scheme, and posing as Jolene Travis during a period when Evans was in prison for another offence.

The FBI is still investigating the scam.

Source(s): Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 11 June 2026; NBCDFW, 15 June 2026