You’d think it was Halloween week with this week’s tales of witches, clones, and haunted houses. Alas, it’s just another weird and wacky week.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

It took more than three centuries, but the last Salem “witch” who wasn’t officially pardoned finally has been. Massachusetts lawmakers formally exonerated Elizabeth Johnson Jr., clearing her name 329 years after she was convicted of witchcraft in 1693 and sentenced to death at the height of the Salem Witch Trials. Johnson was never executed, but neither was she officially pardoned like others wrongly accused of witchcraft.

Lawmakers agreed to reconsider her case last year after a curious eighth-grade civics class at North Andover Middle School took up her cause and researched the legislative steps needed to clear her name. Subsequent legislation introduced by state Sen. Diana DiZoglio was tacked onto a budget bill and approved. “We will never be able to change what happened to victims like Elizabeth but at the very least can set the record straight,” DiZoglio said.

POSEIDON ADVENTURE

Scientists have discovered the world’s largest plant off the Australia coast — a seagrass meadow that has grown by repeatedly cloning itself. Genetic analysis has revealed that the underwater fields of waving green seagrass are a single organism 180 sq. km. through making copies of itself over 4,500 years. The scientists call the meadow of Poseidon’s ribbon weed “the most widespread known clone on Earth,” covering an area larger than Washington. Though the seagrass meadow is immense, it’s vulnerable. A decade ago, the seagrass covered an additional seven square miles, but cyclones and rising ocean temperatures linked to climate change have recently killed almost a tenth of the ancient seagrass bed.

NO MERE TRIFLE

A 31-year-old copywriter’s seven-layer lemon Swiss roll and amaretti trifle beat 5,000 desserts in a U.K.-wide competition to become the official pudding — or dessert, if you’re not British — of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Contest organizers hope people throughout Britain would serve Jemma Melvin’s sunshine bright, sweet and sour concoction topped with whipped cream and crumbled cookies (photo) at neighborhood parties and backyard teas as part of the June 2-5 celebrations to mark Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years on the throne.

The contest was announced in January as Jubilee organizers sought to find a modern-day counterpart to coronation chicken, the combination of cold poultry, mayonnaise and curry powder created for festivities on the day in 1953 when the Queen was crowned. The winner was announced by the Duchess of Cornwall on TV and organizers later posted the recipe online so anyone who wanted to try making it could have the precise directions to hand.

THINGS THAT GO BUMP…

The Rhode Island farmhouse that inspired the 2013 horror movie “The Conjuring” has been sold to a Boston developer who plans to keep it open to the public. “This purchase is personal for me,” buyer Jacqueline Nuñez said. “It’s not a real estate development. It’s around my own beliefs.” Nuñez and the couple who sold the home, Cory and Jennifer Heinzen, jointly announced the sale on Facebook. Nuñez plans to continue the paranormal business the Heinzens started. Guests will be able to continue the nightly paranormal investigations, day tours will resume and there will be livestreamed events.

The movie wasn’t filmed at the home but was based on the experiences of a family that lived there in the 1970s. Nuñez said she is not afraid of the house. “I don’t believe the energy here is malevolent. Things will happen here that will startle me, but not harm me,” she said. “I look forward to experiencing things.”

WRAP YOUR NOODLE AROUND THIS

A couple hundred people grabbed their pool noodles and headed to a Nebraska park again last week to battle over the right to the name Josh. The event started as an online joke when Josh Swain from Tucson, Arizona, sent out a tweet challenging anyone who shared his name to fight over it. After it took on a life of its own, Swain turned into a real event last year at the random coordinates he included in his original note, which happened to be in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Several of the competitors this year donned costumes, including masks, animal suits and football helmets, before heading out to Bowling Lake Park. But that wasn’t enough to dethrone 5-year-old Josh Vinson Jr., who defended his title as the No. 1 Josh. The event raised nearly $21,000 for Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, and the owners of the Josh Cellars wine label pledged to match that amount with a donation of their own. The hospital said it plans to share some of the donations with the Joshua Collinsworth Memorial Foundation that promotes water safety with its Josh the Otter mascot who attended Saturday’s battle.

BUM’S RUSH

A man has been arrested and charged in Charlotte, North Carolina, after he was stopped in the city’s airport with more than more than 10 kg of cocaine concealed in the seat cushions of a motorized wheelchair. US Customs and Border Protection officers, who encountered the traveller as he was arriving at Charlotte Douglas International Airport from the Dominican Republic stated, “His answers didn’t match up. His physical purported handicap did not match up. That was a tell-tale sign that there was something suspicious. The four packages containing cocaine were discovered within the seat cushions and had an estimated street value of $378,000, according to the news release.