A man named Al Lupiano in New Jersey has recently been in the news.
Some doctors put his mysterious experience on social platforms, which was spread wildly in just 24 hours and viewed more than 5 million times...
From social platforms to mainstream headlines, everyone is talking about him and the "mysterious curse" around him.
Al developed a rare brain tumor 20 years ago, and on the same day last year, his wife and sister were also diagnosed with rare brain tumors...
The appearance of three rare cancerous brain tumor patients in a family is, in his own words, as unbelievable as "three people were struck by lightning at the same time."
Al and his wife Michelle
Obviously, there are no similar genetic factors or environmental factors in the three people's families, so why do such a small probability of diseases continue to occur in them?
Al begins to investigate, and soon he discovers a fact that frightens him even more, similar to how misfortunes of his family have happened to other people.
The only thing he had in common with these people was that they came from the same high school.
What kind of secrets is hidden in this high school, more than 100 people who have studied or worked here for many years have suffered from rare brain tumors like the Al family, and some of them have died as a result, is this high school cursed?
In February, Al's sister Angela died at the age of 44 after six months of battling aggressive cancer.
Al vowed to his dying sister that he would uncover the truth that had ruined their family.
"I will never give up until I get an answer."
Before discovering that everything may not be accidental, Al thought he was just a simple bad luck.
Al, who grew up in the Colonia area of New Jersey, was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a rare brain tumor, 20 years ago and spent the rest of his days fighting cancer.
Last August, his wife, Michelle, went to the doctor about years of hearing loss and headaches. An MRI revealed that she had a rare brain tumor, an acoustic neuroma.
Exactly the same tumor her husband had been diagnosed 20 years ago!
Her neurologist was shocked, and in 40 years of medical practice, he had never heard of a couple suffering from this disease, "the probability is equivalent to one in 1 billion." ”
What is even more difficult for the family to accept is that on the same day that Michelle was diagnosed, Al's sister Angela was also diagnosed with a brain tumor, and it was malignant glioblastoma, a rare invasive brain cancer, with a low survival rate, and less than half of the patients could survive more than a year after diagnosis.
Angela
The odds of this are hardly accidental, and soon Al learns from those around him that there was another family near their home that had had a similar encounter.
Fourteen years ago, two sisters in the family were diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, and their diagnosis was only 8 days apart.
And, like the Al family, their diagnosis was considered "very strange."
The sisters who were diagnosed with a brain tumor
This can't be accidental, can it? Al suddenly realized the terrible fact that the only thing the five of them had in common seemed to be that they had all graduated from the same high school, Colonia High School.
It is a public school built in 1967 and has a large number of students, with 1,300 students from the Colonia region now enrolled.
Al then began to dig deeper, and if there is really a correlation between high school and brain tumors, there are two problems in general:
1. What exactly causes everyone's brain tumor?
2) Does this thing continue to affect people in high school?
After his sister died of malignant cancer, al's determination to find the truth was strengthened.
After investigating this mysterious event in depth, he became more and more frightened every time he dug up a little information.
Last year, a graduate of Colonia High School in 1985 died of stage IV glioblastoma, exactly the same cause of death as Sister Al!
A 1991 graduate, like Mr. and Mrs. Al, suffered from an acoustic neuroma.
There was also a 1971 graduate and a 1974 graduate, both of whom died of brain cancer in their 50s.
A 1988 graduate had a meningioma.
Even in the initial investigations, Al had found that 15 graduates of Colonia High School had been diagnosed with brain tumors.
Before that, no one had linked their experiences to school, but after Al discovered this pattern, brain tumor patients near Colonia were gradually linked.
In March, Al posted his findings on social platforms, calling on people around Colonia to provide more information about brain tumor patients.
Jason Wesinski's wife and sister-in-law died in 2012 and 2015, both from brain cancer, at the age of 38.
Wife Janice
Deep down, Jason had always had a vague feeling that what had happened to their family was not accidental, that his wife and her sister must have been exposed to something that would cause brain tumors where they grew up.
So when he saw Alfa's post, he wasn't at all surprised.
There are not a few people who think like Jason, and even comments have been made under the post about this "miracle",
"What? My husband died of a brain tumor, and he went to that school. The National Institutes of Health used his brain tumor for research, so please keep the situation updated. ”
"My grandfather was a counselor at that school for many years and he died of grade 4 glioma in 2011."
"I lived two towns away from there and already knew about three people with grade 4 gliomas, and my dad was one of them. Hopefully they will find out why. ”
Many people contacted Al after seeing the post, and the number of confirmed cases among his high school alumni soared,
"At midnight on Sunday, April 10, I recorded the 100th case of a primary brain tumor, and even in my worst nightmare, I never expected it to reach such a large scale."
So far, the number of cases has exceeded 100.
They have all taught, worked or attended High School in Colonia, and the vast majority of them are students who graduated between 1975 and 2000, and the timeline is most recently those who graduated in 2014.
These people's diagnoses include several primary brain tumors, including malignant tumors such as malignant glioblastoma and non-malignant but debilitating tumors such as acoustic neuromas, angioblastomas, and meningiomas.
No matter what kind of brain tumor it is, every diagnosis is a devastating blow to a family.
More than 100 cases mean that the lives of more than 100 people have been changed forever, and more than 100 families have to endure such pain.
Many of them, like Al's sister, died at a young age, leaving behind the infinite pain and regret of their beloved.
And all this may not be providence, but for another reason?
Al remembered the words of the neuroscientist who saw his wife when she was diagnosed last year.
The neuroscientist is recognized by the World Federation of Neurological Societies as a global neurosurgery leader and has treated and worked on tens of thousands of brain tumors during his career.
He also said that Al and his wife suffered from the same brain tumor, which was about the same size, and even grew on the same side of the head... The probability of such a possibility is negligible.
And when the doctor learned that Al, his wife, and his sister had all been diagnosed with brain tumors and had all grown up in the same community, he showed deep concern.
Why?
"One well-known cause of brain tumors is radiation."
Colonia High School playground
The increasing number of cases has brought the possibility of coincidences to near zero, and according to experts, exposure to high levels of radiation and a weakened immune system are key risk factors for brain cancer.
Al, who is himself an environmental scientist, told the media,
"What I find worrying is that there is really only one environmental factor associated with primary brain tumors, and that is ionizing radiation.
Not polluted water, not air, not something in the soil.
This (brain tumor) is not caused by some of our bad habits. ”
When more and more statements point to "radiation", the whole colonia region exploded, especially those who are still at Colonia High School.
The doctor on Tiktok who recounts the mysterious incident
More than 100 cases of brain tumors are real, and it is logical that brain tumors may indeed be caused by some kind of radiation exposure at the location of the school.
This feeling of invisible and untouchable, but which may be eroded by radiation at any time, who is not afraid?
Al reported his findings to the high school, and now he's working with local officials to find out what caused it all.
One of Al's own conjectures is that there is a factory less than 12 miles from Colonia High School that was used decades ago to crush, dry, store, pack and transport uranium ore under the guidance of the Manhattan Project.
What is this uranium ore used for? Atomic bomb development.
Some of the contaminated soil was removed when the factory closed in 1967, and in the same year, Colonia High School was established.
Al wondered if some of the soil had ended up on the school playground that had led to all this.
Of course, this is just a direction that Al and some people envisioned, but the problem is that the school is built on a wooded area surrounded by residential areas, and local mayor John McCormick says they really don't have a record dating back 55 years to see what the land was used for before.
So to trace back to the source, it may be difficult to find the "uranium ore" that Al envisioned.
But this is not the most terrible, the most frightening is the foggy status quo, even if there are more than 100 cases of brain tumor diagnosis, it is still impossible to determine what it is, which really leads to the extremely high incidence of brain tumors in the population in this area.
It could be uranium ore, or something else.
The mayor has pledged to investigate possible links between the disease and the school, and the city council has passed a resolution to sign a contract with a radiology and environmental remediation company to begin various radiological assessments within colonia high schools.
Basically is the entire school inside, outside the radiation measurement, because it is now the spring break period, students are not in school, just take advantage of this time to test the school, as for the spring break, how to arrange students to go to school, has not yet been explained.
Radiological assessments begin on 9 April, and the results of the analysis of some samples, including air, ground and water, will be published at the end of April.
At the same time, Al continues to receive more cases of brain tumors from high school alumni, and for each case he receives, he immediately records his name, diagnosis results, and often the date of their death.
None of these people were strangers, but his neighbors, friends, classmates, and familiar faces he would meet in the store or post office.
Over the years, so many people here have suffered from it, but no one knows the reason, and what is more careful is a high-praise comment from netizens.
"How can no one know the reason, there must be someone who knows why all this is."
In any case, before the truth is revealed, these are just speculations, and it is only hoped that the "brain tumor curse" of Colonia High School can be solved as soon as possible, so that more people will not be harmed inexplicably.