I Have Seen Death...And It's Pretty Friggin' Creepy

I was never told the story of Hanzel and Gretel or Sleeping Beauty (because of the "witchcraft"), but as a child, I learned, in detail, the prophecies of the bible book of Revelation.  They were my childhood versions of scary nursery rhymes.  For a kid, some of the verses had some pretty scary shit.  There were lions that breathed fire and had snakes for tails.  What really scared me though, were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The Horsemen are spoken of in the sixth chapter of the book of Revelation.  They each ride on a different colored horse, white, black, red and pale or green (depending on which bible version you're reading).  Each Horseman/horse is symbolic.  I could go on for an hour about their symbolism, but to make a long story short, we're going to focus on the pale horse and it's rider.

Revelation 6:7-8 reads:

"When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."

The rider of the pale horse was the harbinger of death.  As a kid, the pale rider scared the living shit out of me.  I had nightmares about him. What does this have to do with Super Bowl Sunday 2011?  A video was shot and distributed by Euronews of the protests in Egypt.  It has made it's way around the blogs online, and onto CNN and MSNBC.  It shows a green, ghost like figure, resembling a man riding a horse riding through a crowd of protesters and then over their heads, before disappearing into the air.  The "figure" appears at the center of the frame and moves from left to right at about the 1:18 mark of the video:



As an atheist, not only do I no longer believe in the prophecies in Revelation, but I believe there is a logical and scientific explanation for the image in the video.  I must admit however, when seeing it for the first time, a cold chill ran up my spine.  The memories of the stories came back.  They were memories that I would rather have left forgotten.