Happy Halloween!!!

Wishing everyone a safe, yet creepy Halloween!

 
 
 

The UFOs of 15'

1915, the early days of man made flight, and a time of turmoil as the planet shook from the effects of the Great War raging through Europe.

In the midst of this, there are a number of interesting UFO accounts to be found.  Since military activity was high, experimental aircraft could account for some of the reports of strange activity in the skies.  That seems to be the likely explanation behind a case out of Russia.

Ufologists Phillip Mantle and Paul Stonehill reported on an encounter from September 1915 out of the Kazan region.  Reportedly, locals observed an object described as a huge balloon traveling through the sky.  Witnesses also reported hearing the sound of a motor roaring and saw spotlights shining down from the object.  Additional reports from the same time describe a cigar shaped object with a large fin hovering over a village in the region.  Witnesses to the event also claim they observed humanoid shapes in a "boat' under the belly of the object.  In hindsight, this could well have been a dirigible of some type, especially considering the human shapes in the basket, or boat, under the object.

Not so easy to explain is a weird encounter from Scandinavia:

Sulitjelma, Norway, summer.  Six year old Bjarne Westvand witnessed a dark, bell shaped object descend from the western sky and land behind a hill.  Two humanoid figures came from behind the hill and approached a nearby road before they turned and headed towards the witness.  Once close, the humanoids stopped and one of them smiled at the young boy.  The figures were described as being the same height as the child (about 3 feet) and had long, wavy hair, gray skin and oversized heads.
The beings were dressed in brown or dark coveralls and after a moment, walked back behind the hill.  Shortly afterwards, the bell shaped craft rose up and quickly disappeared in the sky.

A puzzling, object observed the same year also leaves many questions in the air:

It's another report from Norway and involved a witness named Hansen.  One evening in the town of Bergen, around eleven o'clock, an object that appeared twice as large as the moon showed up in the northern sky.  The object was stationary for about 30 seconds, descended and stopped for about 15 seconds, then rose back to its former position.  The witness watched as the object repeated the same actions another two or three times, then it suddenly sped away and vanished over the western horizon.  The weather was clear and the object was described as being brown-red in color.

Perhaps the weirdest account I've run across so far from 1915 comes out of Puglia, Italy.  Purportedly, several locals captured what they described has a "little green man."
The report is listed in several UFO related sources, but unfortunately no one has been able to track down any further details.  There could be nothing at all to it, or it could be a fascinating case.  If there's any truth behind the story, there could be a fascinating account buried somewhere in Italian documents.

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Susan Slaughter's BEK Encounter

Susan Slaughter, former cast member of Ghost Hunters International, recently shared her encounter with a black eyed kid with Dave Schrader of Darkness Radio.

Check out the video below to hear the strange account:

Thanks to researcher Jamie L. Brian for bringing this one to my attention.

Nicaragua's Xipe

Recently, a friend in Central America told me he'd had a new report of a Xipe sighting.  The account was brief and involved a pair of villagers who insist that they spotted the strange creature will they were fishing.  Frightened by the sight of the odd creature, they quickly retreated.

"It's half-way between a gorilla and a white-faced monkey, measuring 75-100 cms (about 2 1/2 to 3 feet) in height.  Its main peculiarity is that its feet face backwards."

So said Professor Juan Mandiola of the Environmental Institute Direna back in 1990 when he was interviewed about a previous Xipe encounter.  Curiously, in that case too, witnesses were out fishing.  In the 1990 incident, the fishermen were at Palacio Lake, north of the town of Matagalpa.  They watched has the small, hairy humanoid emerged from the waters of the lake.

Many people put the sightings down to nothing more than folktales or the mistaken identification of known animals.
Folklore from the region says that the Xipe is a supernatural creature which looks after crops and single women.  It's known to play with ashes and reportedly will steal children's clothes if they are left outside. 

An older report from 1968 claims that a group of peasants trapped a Xipe in a cave and killed it by setting fire to scrub brush outside the entrance.  Purportedly, they later recovered the bones of the creature from the cave. 

Professor Mandiola believes that the creature is real and thinks that it lives in caves near the water.  While it's easy to dismiss many of the more superstitious aspects that come up in tales of the Xipe, it may in fact be an undiscovered primate that lives in the jungles of Nicaragua.  Similar creatures have been reported in Colombia and Panama. 

Renowned cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans listed the Xipe in his checklist of unknown animals.

Brian Bethel's BEKs

My post last week, titled "The First Black Eyed Being" resulted in a lot of interesting emails and messages.  In that post I wrote about the strange Urfa man statue found at Gobekli Tepe and its eerie black, obsidian eyes.  Is it perhaps the first depiction of some otherworldly entity?  And does it have any connection to modern sightings of the black eyed children?

http://twocrowsparanormal.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-first-black-eyed-being.html

Readers had a lot to say about the possibilities and one of the most interesting responses came from Brian Bethel.

Anyone in the least bit familiar with modern accounts of the black eyed children will recognize the name.  Brian in fact is responsible, by default, for the modern term, BEK and he was the first to share his encounter with the creepy kids on the internet. 

Bethel attempted to post his comments here on the blog, but, as often happens when the BEKs are involved, something went awry and the post vanished before he could hit enter.  Brian later sent me a message and also posted on the FB thread concerning this topic.  I felt his statements were important enough to include directly on the blog has he originally intended.  (Thanks Brian for your valuable input).

"I just tried to post a reply on your blog, but I think it may have erased itself. This isn't uncommon when I try to talk about this topic.

I wanted to muse for a moment on the fact that when my "kids" spoke to me, they mentioned taking me to their "mother." I've often wondered if that was a ruse, or if it was indeed something that they intended to do. Depending on how you read it, "we want to take you to our mother's house" can be completely innocuous, or take on practically mythic proportions if you visualize the words capitalized, almost like a title. There seemed to be some strange formality about it.

I had a friend who claimed to have seen BEKs who attempted to tie their presence into the Sumerian goddess of the underworld, Ereshkigal. I don't know if this was simply his own intuitive leap or he had more to draw from to support this conclusion. We've since fallen out of touch. But it intrigues me simply because of the idea of an ancient goddess collecting ... something ... from people through strange, monstrous children. I've kicked around a possible tie to the Lilith legend, another "mother of monsters." I suppose I'll never know.

Your statue reminded me of this, and people have claimed to see black-eyed adults. I wish like hell I had written "beings" instead of "kids," even if that's how they appear to most. The BEK acronym, not something I consciously created, has hurt the cause in discussing them, I think. I believe we're dealing with a much wider phenomenon."

Brian's statements echo some of my own opinions about the topic.  Yes, the modern accounts are creepy and make for chilling reading, but if we only focus on those, then we miss the deeper ties that this phenomena has to other aspects of the paranormal. 

Tribal elders have told me on more than one occasion that black eyed beings are not modern, but something much, much older.  It's time to start putting the pieces together.



 

Encounters With Flying Humanoids Reviewed

Although this book came out some time back, it seems to have slipped under a lot people’s radar.  It’s come up in conversations I’ve had a couple of times this week, so after a quick re-read, I decided to post a review of it.

Ken Gerhard is well known as a cryptozoologist and has appeared on a variety of television shows including the recent series “Missing in Alaska.”  He’s familiar with a wide range of strange phenomena and this book clearly shows his comfort in dealing with a wider spectrum than just cryptids.

Ken took on a project that hasn’t been tackled anywhere else, the gathering of as many reports as possible of flying oddities.  His previous book on “Big Bird” sightings made him the perfect writer to take on such a project.  The results of his research are pretty impressive.

So called “flying humanoids” are quite fascinating in that they straddle various branches of weirdness.  While some fall under the classification of cryptids such as the owlman and sightings of pterodactyls, how exactly should we classify sightings of “batmen,” “witches,” or flying men? 

Of course, all the well-known flying creatures such as Mothman and the Jersey Devil are mentioned, but the real gold lies in the reports that Ken has dug up on more obscure flying oddities.  How many people are familiar with the Brentford Griffon, Britain’s Bat-winged Monkey Bird or Birdman encounters from around the world?

Having traveled through South America myself, I was particularly fascinated by reports of bird people that Ken gathered from that part of the world.  Clearly, there are still some amazing unsolved mysteries from the dense, unexplored regions south of the border.

Gerhard has a pleasant writing style so the book is an easy read.  Mostly a chronicle of reports through the ages, Ken also peppers in information from his own onsite investigations from locations such as Houston, Texas where a batman was encountered, to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, home of the infamous Mothman. Particularly valuable are the book’s numerous first person accounts from witnesses who have encountered the various strange, airborne creatures chronicled within.

The book is not an in-depth study of any one particular flying humanoid, but let’s face it, a lot of these entities would take volumes to fully explore.  Clearly, Ken set out to create a work showing the vast scope of flying creature encounters and he was successful in that.  With reports from around the globe and throughout the ages, the result is an index of strange flying beings that needs to be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Fortean studies. 

Robert The Doll Reviewed

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting Key West, Florida, you’ll know it’s what many consider a tropical paradise and vacation hotspot.  You may also have noticed that it’s a very strange place.  Filled with ghost stories and bizarre tales, one of the most famous residents of the Keys isn’t a person, but a haunted doll.

Robert the Doll is one of the world’s most well-known haunted objects.  Currently housed in the Fort Martello Museum in Key West, Florida, Robert has a long and fascinating history.

For years, there have been numerous stories about Robert’s origins and tales of the doll’s creation by a voodoo priestess.  Does the doll indeed have some kind of occult origins or is the truth much more mundane?

The creepy stories that compromise the mythology of Robert include his destructive tendencies, his control over the young boy who owned him and his ability to run about on his own.  Imagine walking by a house and seeing this doll staring at you from a second story window.

Fortunately, author David Sloan, who has written about other legends of Key West, has turned his attention to a definitive study of Robert and the tales that surround him.

Robert the Doll, covers all aspects of this strange creation, including details about both the doll itself, and its possible true origin.  Sloan weaves the history of the doll together with that of the Otto family, Robert’s original owners.  The author has even gone so far as to research the sailor outfit that Robert has long worn.

The book is peppered throughout with letters sent to Robert at the museum.  You see, one of the quirky things about Robert is that you must ask his permission to take his photo.  The letters are petitions for forgiveness from people who suffered misfortune after taking Robert’s picture without permission or other perceived transgressions.  The fear of being cursed by Robert runs deep.

Sloan doesn’t dispel the fascinating side of the doll either.  In fact, the things that he has dug up make it all the more intriguing and maybe even creepier than it already was.

Rare photographs and newspaper clippings round the book out quite nicely and this is certainly one of the few books to focus so intently on a specific paranormal object. 

If you’re interested in the weird history of the Keys, the paranormal in general or haunted objects in particular, this is a must read.

Robert also has an official website and his own Facebook page, check them out at the link below.

Oh, and Robert, I hope you like the review! 

http://www.robertthedoll.org/

John Titor's 5100 Computer Label

John Titor's Military Insignia

Between 2000 and 2001, several Internet bulletin boards dedicated to strange phenomena were filled with postings about a supposed time traveler name John Titor.

Titor, whoever he was, was the source of many of the postings himself.  After being discussed by Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM, a large number of people became interested in the man's story and his predictions of future events.

John Titor claimed to be a soldier from the year 2036.  Based in Tampa, Florida, he was assigned to a government time-travel project that utilized a time travel device installed in a 1987 four-wheel drive truck.  Titor claimed that he had been sent back to the year 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer.  Purportedly this model was needed in order to "debug" several legacy computer programs in his year, 2036.  Bear in mind, this tale was shortly after the Y2K panic of 2000 so computer programming issues were still on the minds of many.

There were several things that caught people's attention about the Titor story.  His predictions indicated a disastrous future that involved nuclear strikes, civil war in the United States, and World War III. 

Those with knowledge of computers became intrigued by the fact that Titor claimed that the IBM 5100 he was sent to retrieve could translate several types of computer code, a fact not well known outside of the computer industry at the time.

Now, fourteen years later, part of the label of the computer Titor supposedly took back to his future has surfaced, where else, but eBay.

Portion of the 5100 computer label owned by John Titor

With an opening bid listed at 10,000.00 dollars, for some reason, it hasn't had any bites yet.  You can purchase it outright for a mere 50,000.00 if you're so inclined. 
The listing can be viewed here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291589520108

The item does, at least, have some connection to the Titor story.  Paranoia publisher, Olav Phillips has verified that the item is being offered by someone who was involved with Titor and according to the eBay listing itself, Titor:

"...mailed Pamela Moore the label from the back of the IBM 5100 as proof.  They had become more personally close.  After Titor's departure, Phil Fiord flew to an agreed location and met with Pamela Moore.  She gifted him with this cut from the actual label.  As it was a gift and is a treasured item by him, he is loathe to sell it, but he has decided it is something that many have expressed interest in having for research purposes.  He hopes this may go to someone who may be able to further explore and maybe advance the truth behind Titor."

There's something about the Titor story that intrigues people even today.  Doubters point to failed predictions and similarities with other, futuristic stories.  Supporters point out that Titor talked about the many worlds theory and the effects of CERN as well as social issues that he said would start to unfold. 
A quick search on the Internet brings up pages and pages that talk about John Titor.  The original thread from the old Art Bell forum is also still available to read and can be found below, it is, at the least, an interesting read.  Personally, I think that I'll pass on a piece of a computer label for ten grand.

http://www.anomalies.net/original-john-titor-posts-post2post-art-bell-forum-part-1/

The Bizarre Case of Claudette Souchon

Southern France, 1978.  It was late in February when a young woman named Claudette Souchon left home riding her favorite horse.  She was leading a second, spare horse and her faithful dog was along for the journey.  Her intent was to spend two days touring her family's farmlands in Camargue.

Three days later, Claudette had not returned so her concerned mother called on neighbors, who immediately formed a search party.  The group, some thirty members strong, located Claudette's horse the next day.  According to reports, the animal had been "savagely ripped open."  There was no sign of the young woman. 
While continuing their search the following day, the search team discovered Claudette's spare horse.  It was alive, but clearly traumatized, and barely able to walk.

Camargue is a marshy region between the Mediterranean Sea and the two arms of the Rhone River Delta.  It's western Europe's largest river delta and a third of it is composed of lakes and marshlands.  Over the years, portions of it have been drained by the region's farmers to create rice paddies and salt pans.

After finding the second horse in its frightened state, the team contact the authorities who took over the search.

A week after she had left her home, police found some of Claudette's clothing, scattered on the ground, in a burned out glade.  The location of the glade was a hundred miles from the woman's departure point.  The mystery had deepened.

Two days later, a woman phoned the police station to report that she had seen a "strange girl" outside near the town of Rodez.  Upon investigation, authorities discovered that it was the missing Claudette Souchon.  She was sitting on the ground, covered in mud.  Her dog was by her side, but the animal was so exhausted that it could barely move.  Claudette herself was unable to utter a word and appeared "numb with shock."  Although there were no signs of assault, police stated that the woman was immobile and that she "...had been turned into something approaching a zombie."

The police believed that Claudette had been abducted, assaulted, and raped, and she was immediately taken to the hospital.  However, after a through examination, Doctors could find no signs of attack or sexual assault.  They were in fact unable to explain Claudette's condition and she was placed in a private ward.  Since she remained mute, authorities could glean no further information from her.

 

Rodez, the town where Claudette was found, is in the south of France northeast of Toulouse.  Of note is that Rodez is 438 km (about 272 miles) from Claudette's departure point in Camargue.

London's Sunday Express reported on the case in March of 1978 and included a statement from Commissioner Jean Dinard, police chief for the region.  His remarks clearly show how baffled authorities were by the incident:

"We have no idea what happened to her or her horse...but something mysterious went on out there.  The wounds on the dead horse were horrific.  But it was not attacked by an animal...there are no claw or bite marks.  And we do not have an explanation for the burned-out glade where we found some of her clothing."

What exactly happened to Claudette Souchon in the desolate region of Camargue and how did she travel 272 miles in the condition she was in?  What attacked the horse, and terrified the dog and second horse?  And what is the mystery of the burned-out glade?

There's no record of Claudette Souchon ever speaking out about the bizarre incident.  In fact, she seems to have simply slipped away from any media attention, perhaps because of whatever trauma she experienced.

To this day, the mystery remains unsolved.

The First Black Eyed Being

It should come has no surprised that, one of the entities I'm constantly asked about, are the black eyed children.  These creepy beings continue to fascinate and scare people and of course, everyone has a theory to explain what they are.  From alien hybrids to demons and everything in between.

Skeptics of course love to jump at the idea that the black eyed children are merely an urban legend, or an Internet meme run wild.  Obviously, there are problems with much of what is posted online but isn't that true about everything on the Internet?

Those who have read my book on the subject will know that a lot of my focus went into looking at cases that predate the more modern wave of encounters with these beings.  The trick of course, is that it's the terms "BEKs" or black eyed children/kids that's modern.  If you're looking for accounts of BEKs that predate modern media, then you have to ditch these modern monikers and look for the unique elements that show up in the encounters.

A growing number of investigators have been researching these entities and I continue to be intrigued by the older cases that surface which clearly fit the paradigm of modern BEK encounters.

I covered one case from France in a previous post, that account can be found here:

http://twocrowsparanormal.blogspot.com/2015/04/french-encounter-1974.html

It contains key elements such has the child like beings, large, solid black eyes, and the experience of fear created by the beings.

The subject becomes even more fascinating when we start to consider exactly how long strange, black eyed entities have been showing up.  Take for instance, the earliest depiction of a black eyed being.  It dates back 13,500 years.

In the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, there's an amazing archeological site named Gobekli Tepe.  The site has been a treasure trove for archeologists and work is still being done at the location, but current estimates date Gobekli Tepe to the 10th millennium BCE.

Among the spectacular findings at the site are hundreds of carvings, yet of those, one stands out as truly unique.  It is called "Urfa Man."

The statue is a humanoid carved from stone that stands about six feet tall.  The bald figure has carved features, but the nose has been broken off at some point from the ravages of time.  What stands out the most however are the eyes.  Carved from solid, black obsidian crystal, they are so large that they protrude from the facets.

So far, no one has determined exactly what the statue is supposed to represent, although there are certainly many theories.  When I spoke to Boston geologist, Dr. Robert Schoch, his first comment to me about the statue was that standing in front of it was an "eerie experience."

Indeed, this feeling seems to be the common theme for everyone who has seen the statue in person.  In an interview on Coast to Coast AM, journalist Linda Moulton Howe said the Urfa Man was "Very eerie, very haunting..."

Most people feel that the figure represents some kind of supernatural being, but exactly what the ancients were trying to convey remains a mystery.  Perhaps both the Urfa Man and modern encounters with black eyed beings are representative of something much deeper in our psyche.  As Dr. Schoch stated:

"The statue with its black eyes has an eerie feeling about it, as if it represents no one and everyone, all at the same time, almost like it represents consciousness. The fact that the statue has no mouth, he says, leads him to believe the artist is talking about a universal, or higher, consciousness."

It's said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but what happens when you peer into nothing but a black void?
From Urfa Man, to grey aliens, to black eyed children, encounters with strange, black eyed entities have a profound effect on people and the mystery of these beings continues to grow.

The GMO Battle Continues

Mega powerful GMO producers have long attempted to bury the truth about the negative effects of genetically modified food.  As more and more people have spoken out for labeling laws and the right to know what's really in our food, big business has shifted its tactics by buying off politicians and trying to slip laws in the back door of congress to deny that right.

Read about the latest of these maneuvers, a bill that activists are calling the DARK Act (Deny Americans the Right to Know), in my latest article in L.A. Marzulli's news magazine, PP&S, available at:

https://lamarzulli.wordpress.com/monthly-digital-news-magazine/

The Art of Mister Sam

If you've read, or even seen my book, Strange Intruders, you'll know that it has an absolutely fantastic cover depicting some of the weird entities covered inside.

In fact, the cover turned out so stunning that after numerous request, I had prints made of it.  They're always a hit at conferences and the larger size really highlights the work.

The art was created by English born Sam Shearon, aka "Mister Sam."  Sam contacted me when I was deep into finishing Strange Intruders.  He's a pretty humble guy and didn't bother to mention that he had already created some amazing art for notable rock stars like Rob Zombie and Iron Maiden.  But, following my intuition, and the synchronicity of his email, I decided to see what he would come up with for the book's cover.  Needless to say, I was floored by the results.  I gave Sam some very basic ideas, asking for the particular entities that ended up on the cover, and telling him that the idea was that they were attempting to "pierce through" into our world.  He took the concept and ran.

I'm happy to say that I became friends with Sam during the course of the book.  He's a talented guy and he's long been interested in the strange world of cryptids, UFOs and assorted fields.  Sam has a very defined artistic sense that enables him to create images from witness descriptions that bring life to these entities in a visual, creepy way.

He's created a wide range of art from album covers, to comic books, and somehow, his work continues to improve.

Recently, he's turned his attention to creating prints of some of his work, and anyone interested in cryptozoology, and Bigfoot in particular, will be pleased to see his first creation, a stunning depiction of the creature witnessed at Bluff Creek.

We're lucky that a fellow with this kind of talent has the time to make items like this available, so grab one while you can!

Check it out and get your copy at:

http://mistersamshearon.bigcartel.com/

And while you're at it, see more of Sam's work via his FB page:

https://www.facebook.com/MisterSamShearon?pnref=story