This event occurred to me at least twelve years ago, and I still don’t know what happened.

Driving home from a Friday night shift at the newspaper, my car’s cruise control set on 55 mph, I drove by a road sign I’ve driven by hundreds of times. It reads, “Orrick: 5 Miles.” Just as I went by, the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter” came on the radio.

Perfect. I lived in Orrick, Missouri, at the time, and “Gimme Shelter” was not only my favorite Rolling Stones tune, it was also four minutes, thirty-seven seconds long, which would last me all the way home.

Then my drive fell out of reality.

A pull on the car engine snapped me out of the road hypnosis that had overtaken me. It took me a few seconds to realize that pull was the cruise control trying to keep the speed steady up a hill. The trouble was there were no hills between that road sign and my turnoff. Looking out the window didn’t help; a thick fog had enveloped the car and I could barely see the dotted line on the road. I slowed the car and drove up two more hills before I saw a light piercing through the fog.

Turning onto a gravel road toward the light, I found myself in the parking lot of a Jehovah’s Witness church and knew where I was – five miles on the other side of my turnoff. As I sat in the parking lot, my car in park, trying to figure out how I missed the exit, I heard something I couldn’t believe. “Gimme Shelter” still played on the radio. It continued to play for another minute and a half.

After I calmed a bit, I put the car in gear, pulled back onto the highway and went home. The fog quickly dissipated. I’d driven ten miles in three minutes at 55 mph. That wasn’t possible. What happened to me?

Cases of missing time and distance are as common as they are confusing. The Internet is littered with tales of travelers entering a fog only to discover they’re suddenly 300 miles away from home, or they’ve gone nowhere, but it’s inexplicably hours later. Explanations range from time slips, to dimensional slips, to alien abduction. Whatever the case, Brandon White of Maryville, Missouri, has experienced missing time and distance; more than once. “The first time I was about ten and I was walking out in the front yard,” White said. It was just after lunch.

As White went toward a thick ring of pine trees that surrounded his family’s farmhouse, he saw something floating on the other side of the tree line. “It was pale, sort of translucent,” he said. “It was passing between our house and the neighbor’s house. I thought it was a blimp.”

His afternoon suddenly disappeared. “The next thing I remember was coming in for dinner; 5 or 5:30,” he said. “I didn’t think about it at the time. As a kid, time was nothing.”

But five hours of his life were just gone.

In his teens, his life got stranger. “At 13 or 14 I stopped sleeping. I was deathly afraid of sleep,” he said. “I would fall to sleep, get into an REM sleep, and start screaming. I would wake up in strange places. In the yard, on the porch, upside down hanging from my bunk bed.” White said he doesn’t remember when he’s been able to catch more than four hours of sleep a night. “I had very vivid nightmares,” he said. Those nightmares often included a bird. “A big black crow. It would flap over my face, trying to take my breath.”

Later in his teens when White worked at Long John Silver’s in a town 38 miles away, he experienced more missing time. “I was riding my motorcycle. I remember that night very specifically. I worked a double shift,” he said. “Before I left town, I filled up my (gas) tank.” As he pulled onto a gravel road toward his parent’s house, he saw an orange ball hanging low in the sky. “I stopped and thought, ‘the moon’s a weird color,’” he said. “Then I saw it was not the moon. The moon doesn’t block the landscape.” As he got closer, he saw this orange ball was thirty to forty feet in diameter, and hovered five or six feet off the ground.

He got off the motorcycle three hours simply disappeared. “It’s the last thing I remember,” he said. “It was 7:35 p.m. At 10:30 p.m. I pulled into Dad’s driveway and something zoomed over me and disappeared into a valley.”

He stopped the bike and got off, leaving it running as he dashed to a fence to look for the light. It had gone. When he returned to his motorcycle, it started to sputter and the engine died. It was out of gasoline. “I filled it up, drove 38 miles, and it died,” White said.

White lost three hours of time and a tank of gasoline in what should have been a 40-minute motorcycle ride. Was the light responsible?

Years later, when White worked in nearby St. Joseph, Missouri, he stopped at a gas station around 1 a.m. to buy coffee and a candy bar to help keep him awake for the 45-minute drive home. He didn’t know something strange awaited him. “I got on the highway, next thing I knew there was a thick fog,” he said. “I didn’t know where I was. I was on this nameless dirt road.” And he was moving fast.

The narrow road, sloped on each side and covered by a canopy of trees, seemed like a tunnel. He slowed and tried to figure out where he was. “I found a field where I could turn around,” White said. “The fog was so thick I had to open my door to see the side of the road. I had no idea where I was. I was really, really fuzzy and disorientated. I know I was upset about something, but I don’t know why.”

Lights eventually bit through the fog and White pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store near the highway, but things were less than convenient. The store sat at the end of an exit that consisted of two difficult turns. White said he shouldn’t have made those turns. “I would have had to, at 70 mph, gone through those 90-degree turns while I was unconscious,” he said.

When he woke, “I was pretty fuzzy headed. It was like I’d been drugged.”

Although White concedes for the skeptic it’s within the realm of possibility he could have fallen asleep at the wheel and gotten lost in the fogbank, he was miles from where he should have been, and would have had to be amazingly lucky. “I don’t know how I could have made those turns,” he said. “I lost distance and time. I don’t have the foggiest idea how I got there.”

It seemed to be an otherwise quiet and unassuming evening of esoterica at my fortified and famously secretive residence way back in the heart of the Appalachians. My colleague, one historian and journalist by the name of Mr. Vance Pollock, had dropped by to share some weird correspondences he had received regarding a few early twentieth century spiritualist seances, and while little was heard from where we were, just over the next ridge, locals were reporting the sounds of chaos erupting into the night air.

There was never any official explanation given, but the local newspapers would describe it as being a strange “explosion” sound over East Asheville, North Carolina, seemingly emanating from the sky. While this instance alone might be passed off as a mere fluke, throughout the majority of 2012 there were reports from all around the world that described similar “skyquakes” that were occurring, some of which were allegedly recorded on video, and later “explained” as being viral videos that were intended to promote upcoming films. In retrospect, if this were indeed the case, it would be fair to say that the promotional aspect didn’t work well, as we don’t have a clear idea as to what film, exactly such videos may have been promoting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And in truth, the Skyquake phenomenon does go back much further than 2012 (forever known as “the year Quetzacoatl stood us up”). Indeed, there is a curious history of strange sounds that emanate from nowhere, though seemingly from the skies above, that have garnered the attention of the Fortean crowd.

A few websites, such as this one, began to appear online that dealt with the incoming reports of “skyquakes” last year, and while little can be found online about the phenomenon (despite there being a series of the popular Hasbro Transformers characters bearing this name), there are reports that date back to earlier times. Such things were discussed in the anomalous cataloguing of Charles Fort, as well as some of the scientific writing of the late William R. Corliss, who delved into an array of different anomalous sounds that emanate from natural sources in his “Science Frontiers” volumes. Some of the odd noises he catalogued were even categorized as musical, or even more specifically, as sounding like “organ music” that seemed to emanate from underground; though instead of evidence of orchestration from the underworld, Corliss noted that it was more likely that these sounds were of geological origin, though one regional variety, centered around the coast of Greenland, had been given a name by “the late A. Wegener”, according to Corliss, which was Ton der Dove-bai.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But regarding specifically the presence of the alleged “Skyquakes,” retired Lt. Col. Wendelle Stevens also discussed this phenomenon in relation to UFO sightings in an obscure book he self-published in 1981, called UFO Contact from Reticulum. In the book, Stevens, along with co-author William J. Herrman, feature an appendix titled “Skyquakes Related to UFOs”, in which Herrman claimed to have experienced a UFO sighting in conjunction with an alleged skyquake:

“The link between these mystery explosions and UFOs is the most exciting new development in this field,” declared noted UFO researcher Robert Cregan, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany. And Dr. James Harder, professor of engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, commented, “I think it’s entirely possible that UFOs are connected (to these blasts.”

The high-altitude explosions, which were heard or felt in parts of Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina, have baffled defense officials all over the country. During at least the following five airquakes UFOs were seen directly over or near the blast sites and there may be more.

The authors go on to mention a series of other sightings that occurred in late 1977, which purported to feature these strange aerial sounds in conjunction with visible UFO craft. Is there ultimately one cause underlying these strange sounds, or could it be, much like the study of ufology itself, that there are actually more than one explanation for different instances of anomalous “explosions” or similar sounds emanating from the sky?

Read Part 1 of Encounters with Gnomes

Pointed hats, long white beards, two-foot stature; gnome-like entities were once part of daily life in Scandinavian countries. John Carlson of New Jersey, author of the blog “The Paranomalist,” remembers his Grandma Alice’s stories of these entities well. Grandma Alice, born in 1891, and raised in Sweden, knew of the mischievous nature of these gnomes, the tomtar (also spelled tomte). “When I was a boy she told me stories of the tomtar,” Carlson said. “Small beings that took the appearance of old, bearded men.” Grandma Alice told him the tomtar were generally benign until a human upset them, then they would curdle milk, or break items around the house. Carlson said his grandmother told stories of seeing tiny tomtar footprints in the mud and snow.

Dr. Scott A. Mellor, professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, teaches Scandinavian Mythology and said these creatures were once important in some parts of Scandinavia, but that was a long time ago. “I am rather sure people may have believed in them over a hundred years ago, comparable to current belief in ghost,” he said. Today the tomtar has been relegated to the stuff of legend, although some Scandinavians still observe ancient customs when it comes to keeping these gnomes happy. “Because of tradition you might find people who still leave oatmeal, gröt, out during Christmas, but it is rather equivalent to leaving cookies for Santa Claus.”

But sometimes, stories of these gnome-like creatures can be much too real.

When Tammy moved herself and her three children to the country house by the Tule River near Porterville, California, she didn’t know something wicked waited for them. “We always got the feeling of being watched,” Tammy said.

One spot on the farm especially put her on edge, the barn. The family animals, dogs, a cat, turkeys, chickens, and ducks avoided that rickety, dark building. “We had had a lot more chickens and ducks but they had started disappearing,” Tammy said. “I also noticed that none of the neighbor’s animals, or stray animals for that matter, would go anywhere near that barn. It was without a doubt just creepy.”

She soon discovered why. “One evening my son, who was seven years old at the time, and I had just come back from grocery shopping,” Tammy said. “We parked and got out of the car and as I was opening up the back to get the groceries out I noticed a movement out of the corner of my right eye.”

As she lifted a grocery sack from the car, she saw the movement again. “This time I heard a very freaky, very evil-sounding chuckle,” she said. “I looked in the direction of the sound and there standing about 50 yards from my son and I was what I can only describe as a gnome.”

The creature, about two to three feet tall, wore baggy black pants, and a gold-colored shirt. A salt and pepper beard ran from beneath a red, pointed hat. “That thing grinned at us and the creepy grin spread from ear to ear and its teeth were a gross brown and pointed or jagged,” she said. “It had a bulbous nose and large, deep-set eyes.”

She dropped the groceries, and grabbed her son, the wicked little man cackling after her as she ran to the house. Tammy burst inside through the kitchen and slammed the door. As she tried to tell her daughters about her panic, something moved outside the kitchen window. She looked, and saw the top of the thing’s red, pointed hat. It had to be about ten feet off the ground.

The thing eventually disappeared from the window and Tammy retrieved the groceries from the car. She never saw it again, but until the day she moved, she heard the gnome’s creepy chuckle coming from the old barn.

Although Tammy’s family had gone, the gnome wasn’t finished terrorizing whoever lived in that house.

Charlie, her husband, their two-year-old twin girls and two golden Labrador retrievers moved into the two-story house by the river in March 2010. “The house was perfect for us,” she said. “Exactly what we were looking for, and we couldn’t wait to move in. There are three bedrooms, a huge kitchen, dining room and living room and lots of windows all around it.”

The deck that opened off the back door overlooked the woods and the nearby Tule River. A deck in the front overlooked a pond. Charlie placed fairy, gnome, and toadstool yard ornaments around the pond, and stocked it with Japanese koi fish to make it feel more like their home.

That feeling wouldn’t last.

One day, while walking back from the river to the house with her daughters and their dogs, the dogs became riled. As they approached a rickety outbuilding Charlie called “the shack,” the dogs began to snarl and bark, the hair in their backs standing up. “Something told me to run so I grabbed a twin under each arm and ran for home,” she said. “Something about that shack gave me the creeps, especially at night, but I don’t know why.”

She began to notice none of the animals, not even wildlife or stray cats, would go near the shack, until the day she heard the fight coming from inside. “It sounded like a cat was in a fight with something way bigger than it was,” she said.

Her husband grabbed a flashlight and ran to the shed. “Just as he got to the door the noise stopped,” she said. “He went in and looked around with the flashlight. There was a cat. It was totally skinned on one side and its neck looked as though some thing had taken a huge chunk out of it.”

He stepped outside the shack to catch his breath, and when he looked back in the cat was gone. “There was no way that cat moved by itself,” she said. “We were standing right there. Where did the cat go?”

They discovered the cat was the least of their worries.

One night around 3 a.m., a raspy, gurgling singing woke Charlie and her husband from sleep. “It was without a doubt the most hideous sound I have ever heard,” she said. “It freaked us out.”

Charlie and her husband looked out their bedroom window and saw something that challenged their sanity. “Standing by my pond holding one of my garden gnomes was what I can only describe as something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale,” she said. “The thing that was standing in our yard was hideous and grotesque.”

A human-like creature stood under the bright light of the motion detector. It was two to three feet tall, with a long gray beard, maroon pants, baggy yellow shirt, brown vest, a dark waistcoat, and a reddish brown pointed hat. “The thing that made this creature really hideous was its eyes and teeth,” she said. “It looked like it was grinning and its teeth were jagged and pointed. The eyes were little beady and dark and mean.”

As the creature stared at Charlie and her husband, it reached into the pond and grabbed a koi, dropped the fish into its mouth and swallowed. Charlie’s husband pushed the window open a few inches and screamed at the creature, telling it to leave their yard or he’d call the police. The gnome grinned, laughed, and gave them the finger.

They told the police they’d had an intruder, but the officers looking around their yard at 4 a.m. found only shoeprints the size of a small child.

The gnome came back night after night, holding a yard ornament and eating their fish. They eventually moved the ornaments and put the fish into a tank in the house. They instantly realized they’d made a mistake. “One night after we had removed the fairies and gnomes and fish from the yard the creature showed up at the usual time, 3 a.m.,” she said. “When it found that the yard ornaments were gone and the fish were gone it went crazy. It was yelling and screaming something that we couldn’t understand, but we did understand that this thing was pissed and wanted us to know it.”

The gnome ran around the house, screaming and gurgling. Then Charlie realized the dog door was unlocked. “It was big enough for our dogs to go through and it would be big enough for that creature to go through as well,” she said. “I took off running down to the kitchen and as I got there the dogs had started barking like crazy at the doggy door.”

She shut and secured the dog door, then ran upstairs to shut the windows. “A fear hit me like nothing I had ever felt and I ran back up to the twins’ bedroom where they were both sound asleep in their cribs,” she said.

Neither parent slept that night; they decided to leave the farm at Porterville. “The last we heard of that creature was a very loud screeching, cackling sound,” she said. “It was under one of the living room windows and when my husband went to check it out he saw the top of that creature’s hat under the window. Right then we decided that we were out of there. We couldn’t stay there with that creature.”

Did Tammy and Charlie live in the same house? I wanted to know, so I told Charlie about Tammy’s experience. “The description of that barn and everything else sounds just like it, and the Tule River runs behind the house,” Charlie said.

Her experience was too terrifying for her not to find out. “It’s too creepy to think that there are more of those creatures,” she said. “I would like to speak to those other people and find out if we were in the same house or close to it.”

I put Charlie in contact with Tammy. “Charlie sent me an email and she described the house that she lived in,” Tammy said. “She started naming some of the side streets and then I knew it was the same house or really close to it.”

The women eventually met and drove to the property. “It definitely was the same place,” Tammy said.

As Tammy stood, looking at the house where a three-foot tall man with pointed teeth, and evil cackle had laughed at her, she saw someone had torn down the barn. “Even with that shack gone the whole place still had an eerie feel to it and I don’t know if that is because of what we dealt with while living there or just the place itself,” Charlie said. “I don’t think I’ll be going back there again.”

Before they left, the women approached their old house and knocked on the door. The current resident did not want them there. “She was just hateful and when we tried to ask her about the barn she pretty much told us to get lost and not in those nice words,” Tammy said.

Charlie was equally taken aback. “We tried to ask about the shack and if she had ever experienced anything while it was there but she didn’t want to talk to us,” Charlie said. “In fact, she told us to leave the property. She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was happy to get away from there.”

Feature image by Rex Boggs via Flickr

Since time immemorial, humans have related odd experiences about interactions they’ve had with strange, nonhuman entities, which seem to exist within a quasi-physical state. The late Terrence McKenna, ethnobotanist and author of books like Food of the Gods, related often his own experiences with strange beings he called “fractal elves,” which appeared to inhabit the hyperspace he called the “DMT realm,” a visionary state which is reached under the influence of the hallucinogen dimethyltryptamine.

Others, such as the magician Aleister Crowley, claimed to use black magic to summon entities the likes of which his predecessor John Dee called “Enochian Angels,” as well as more alien-looking beings such as the famous “Lam,” that Crowley claimed to summon while living in New York in the 1920s.

While altered states of consciousness do seem to reveal “inhabited” realms to people who seek to explore beyond the fringes of consciousness, do these sorts of experiences really betray the existence of strange nonhuman beings that exist apart from the physical world, or are such entities merely the stuff of imagination?

When we take into consideration the levels of archetypal reality that may exist within the human subconsciousness, especially as expressed in the writing of Carl Jung, we begin to see that there are levels of symbolic reality that interact with humans on a subconscious (or unconscious) level. Jung, rather famously, called these beings “archetypes,” and felt that while they were aspects of the unconscious mind that could potentially “connect” all humans, in a sense, and which traced back to our ancestral heritage as a slowly-evolving species throughout time, they nonetheless weren’t likely to be real, sentient beings unto themselves.

One can’t help but wonder, however, if the same sorts of archetypal expressions are revealing themselves, in a sense, during psychedelic visions just as well, the likes of which McKenna and others have described; much the same, perhaps the sorts of altered states elicited by magical practitioners like Aleister Crowley effectively render access with elements from within the subconscious that may influence us daily, and yet which remain seldom seen without the aid of ritual practices that “expose” such manifestations. In essence, taking this approach would suppose that while archetypes exist within the mind, and are capable of influencing us (or even appearing, at times, as familiar forms such as beings or entities), it may take a temporary alteration of our normal perception of the world around us to “access” such thoughtforms… and when properly accessed, they are perhaps vivid enough to warrant interpretation as actual encounters with actual physical (or at least quasi-physical) beings.

A recent discussion I had with Rosemary Ellen Guiley about her new book, The Djinn Connection, had initially caused me to wonder about this. Discussing it with a colleague, he shared his own belief that, “behind much of the paranormal realm there’s some sort of inter-dimensional component, and so maybe entities living in other dimensions have the ability to enter our reality.” As Guiley discusses in her book, what we historically and on folkloric terms have called the djinn are actually spirit entities that have existed in our world since before humans claimed dominion over the Earth, and that these beings, much like faeries, are sentient intelligences that exist apart from our reality, but nonetheless in our midst, on a separate dimensional plane. It is due to the limitations of conventional human perception, Guiley says, that we are normal incapable of perceiving such entities, which can be harmful to humans that seek to interact with them.

The entire notion of whether nonhuman entities might exist in our very midst, whether they be the djinn of ancient lore, or archetypal manifestations from within our own minds, is a perplexing and enduring mystery of the modern age. In the past, humans took for granted that such beings existed, and interpretation of their apparent presence in our existence was seldom questioned; they were accepted as being simply a part of our grand reality, and evidence of the forces at work “behind the scenes” in our natural world. Now, “they” are viewed with skepticism for the most part, and if there is any truth to their presence–physical or otherwise–it has mostly to do with whether they are something that emanates from within human consciousness itself.

It seems that, despite whichever interpretation holds true, there must be something to it all, and even a phenomenon which some might presume to be rooted within the mind is worthy of further study and contemplation. While pouring over all of this myself, I can’t help but just consider, for a moment, whether there is indeed something else at play here, and whether there are forces other than those of the human variety which might occasionally seek to touch base with us from across the cosmic barriers of space-time and human perception.

I’ve often wondered why certain people, including myself, feel driven to investigate the paranormal, whereas the majority of the population is quite content to have nothing to do with the matter. Why, for example, does one man choose to read Big Jugs Monthly and another Dean Radin’s The Conscious Universe?

I recently made a trip to a furniture store to inquire about purchasing a bookcase. The store assistant, a friendly woman in her 40s, asked me what kind of books I enjoy reading. Usually when asked this question by a stranger, so as to avoid creating an awkward situation, I simply say “science-fiction.” On this occasion, however, I decided to be completely open, explaining that most of the books I read concern UFOs and parapsychology.

Just as I expected, the woman looked slightly confused and didn’t quite know what to say. A moment later, her mind popped back into action. She then said something that made me want to shake my head and walk away: She loved the Fifty Shades trilogy, and had read each one three times. Clearly, the woman was no paranormal enthusiast; and – though it would be wrong of me to judge her too harshly – not what I would consider a deep thinker.

For me – and I’m assume this is true of most paranormal enthusiasts – my interest in the paranormal stems from a profound dissatisfaction with the established view of reality. Were I, on the other hand, completely at ease with the established view of reality, I wouldn’t feel the need to read books like The Conscious Universe (which looks at the scientific evidence for psi phenomena). Indeed, life would be a good deal simpler, and my personal library would probably consist of such gems as Fifty Shades of Grey; or, as in my brother’s case, the books of Richard Dawkins.

UFOs, poltergeists, crop circles, telepathy, telekinesis, alien abduction, and so on – these phenomena call into question everything we think we know about reality. That’s why, in my opinion, the paranormal deserves our utmost attention.

There is a scene in the movie The Matrix where the protagonist Neo sees the same black cat walk down a hallway twice, believing the experience to be a déjà vu. The others explain to Neo that what he witnessed was actually a “glitch in the matrix” – a sign that something in the program has been altered. But here’s the interesting thing: For those still trapped in the matrix, a déjà vu is simply an illusion and not worth thinking about; for those who’ve managed to break free of the matrix, a déjà vu represents evidence of the illusory nature of reality.

Although I don’t claim to be free of the “matrix,” I at least choose to be aware of its many “glitches.” Conversely, those who deny the paranormal, or who take no interest in the paranormal, are too busy marveling at the pretty pixels to notice the cat in the hallway.

The bizarre, the weird, the paranormal, the extraordinary and the mysterious; There’s just about nothing on this planet that we as a species won’t celebrate. From the unearthly and divine, to the legendary and freakish, here are 4 of the most unbelievable festivals on the planet. Any excuse for a party, right?

Festa da Coca

Undertaken each year as part of the Corpus Christi celebrations in Moncao, Portugal, Festa da Coca (simply meaning “party coca”) is that time of the day when the people of the city pay homage to the battle between St George and the medieval dragon, Coca. Each year, “Coca” is pitted against “St George” in a battle which will apparently determine the fruition of the years crops. If the dragon wins – translated, “if the horse gets scared” – the crops won’t be fertile. Funny thing is: most people cheer for the dragon!

The Mothman Festival

If you’ve ever sat endlessly along the dark highways of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, I bet you’ve been biding your time in hopes of bagging a snap of the legendary Mothman. Well – if one is patient – when that special time of the year rolls round (September, that is), Downtown Point Pleasant will be positively swarming with moth-men, moth-women and moth-children. Held yearly in celebration of the shadowy figure, The Mothman festival will now be entering its 12th year, and it always attracts the most colorful of patrons.

Just remember: Take it easy at the drinks stand!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Note: This is NOT a festival event!

La Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme

In the English, “The Festival of the Near Death Experience” is held annually in Galicia, Spain on the 29th of July, and, as the name suggests, celebrates the near-death experiences of some of the locals. Praying to the statue of St Martha (ol’ Mary Magdalene’s sister) located in the city’s church also occurs, as do some coffin rides, music from the brass band and some chanting. Long story short: swearing and fireworks are always a big hit! (If all religion was like this, I might start going to church).

The Roswell UFO Festival

Die hard truth-seekers out there might shrug their shoulders at this one, but the Roswell UFO Festival isn’t for them: it’s for the everyman. I bet all you out there know the whole Roswell story (almost definitely better than I do), so I won’t bore you with the history or conception of this one, just know that there’s a costume contest and a parade. But, be careful: Not all those Neptunian Space Girls are what they seem (It’s the Adam’s apples which give it away).

Click here to view the embedded video.

A living fossil is an animal that has managed to survive millions of years without changing their body structure.  They also have few living relatives.  In other words, these animals are prehistoric leftovers that somehow survived major extinction events. As a result living fossils are strange in appearance and a rarity to be seen.

Echidna

If you think the platypus is a strange mammal wait till you see its fellow member of the monotreme order, the Echidna, who looks like Sonic the Hedgehog with a duck bill.

Like the platypus the Echidna lays eggs.  They are the only two living mammals to do so.   The platypus, though, gets all of the publicity in the strange animal department, perhaps because it has a better PR person.

The echidna’s weirdness does not end at looking strange and laying eggs, however.   Male echidna’s have four headed genitalia, which puts it head and shoulders above the platypus in the weird department.

Purple Frog

Don’t snicker or cringe too much at this purple blob.  This guy has been around a lot longer than we have.  He walked, well more likely waddled, around with the dinosaurs.

The purple frog was discovered just 10 short years ago in 2003 in the remote mountains of India.  It was a rare find.  While new species of animals are discovered all the time (about 75 a year on average), they usually are related to other known species.  This frog is in a class all its own with no known close relatives hopping around..

Chinese Giant Salamander

The world’s largest salamander has been around for 30 million years.  It can grow up to 6 feet long.  Due to habitat restraints it rarely grows that large today, but it still gets horrifyingly huge.  No worries, though, the Giant Salamander is harmless to humans.  However, that hasn’t stopped us in helping wipe them out by eating them as a delicacy.  That combined with its shrinking habitat makes the giant salamander a critically endangered species.

Goblin Shark

Click here to view the embedded video.

The goblin shark hangs out in the the deep ocean which is a good thing considering it is one of scariest looking fish I have ever seen. It is 8-10 feet long and hunts for prey in the dark ocean deep by using its elongated snout, which contains organs that are “electro-sensitive.”   I am not entirely sure what “electro-sensitive” means, but I assume it is science talk for “demon sorcery.”

It is harmless to humans.  You can read that as much as you want to, but it will not stop you from being horrified by this bizarre creature.  It is animals that look like this that make people fear going in the water.

Do you know any weird living fossils? Tell us in the comments below!

A couple of days ago I was interviewed for a UK-based radio show that included a question and answer session in which members of the audience submitted questions via the chat-room. One of those questions was along the lines of: “As a writer and researcher on paranormal topics, how weird does your life get?” Well, now and again, it gets very weird. Maybe it even gets beyond weird. Here’s just one of many examples…

Charles Fort

It’s fair to say that I have had some strange days and nights in my time, but Sunday, August 5, 2012, was spectacularly odd, even by my standards! Very early that morning, I flew out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to Los Angeles, California for a day of business. I was due to be interviewed for a TV show on the then-looming “2012/End of the World” controversy when distinct strangeness reared its odd and uncanny head.

As I was being checked-in at the hotel I was staying in, which was only a short journey from LAX Airport, I quite literally did a double-take when I noticed that the name-badge of the chap on the front-desk was – wait for it – Charles Fort! I was like: “WTF??!!” It didn’t end there.

My room number was 1163. Only a day before my flight, I had been working on an article on the JFK assassination and its alleged UFO links. When was JFK shot? November 1963. Or: 11/63. My room: 1163. Not only that: on August 5, 1962, exactly fifty years earlier to the day that I was, right then, deeply immersed in LA-based weirdness, Marilyn Monroe bowed out of existence under highly dubious circumstances. And where did Marilyn die? Brentwood, which just happens to be found in western Los Angeles!

Marilyn Monroe

Part of the theme of the article I was working on only 24-hours before my flight was the claim that JFK, shortly before Marilyn’s death, had told her – as his part-time bed-buddy – the truth about what happened at Roswell, New Mexico on that fateful day back in July 1947. On top of that, no less than the following day, August 6, was Charles Fort’s birthday.

Radio Misterioso

After completing the shoot for the show – on what turned out to be the non-event of the year  - and then crashing out for a while and pondering on the high-strangeness that was afoot, good mate Greg Bishop came over to the hotel. We drove back to his place, chatted, caught up, and then went and got an early dinner, as we were going to do Greg’s radio show – Radio Misterioso – later that night.

Before the show, Greg shared with me a veritable treasure-trove of UFO-themed material he had acquired some years ago, from the UFO researcher and author, Bill Moore. Contained in the vast collection of material was a copy of the FBI’s declassified file on infamous Contactee, George Hunt Williamson. I said to Greg I wished he had the file when I wrote my book, On the Trail of the Saucer Spies (which told a great deal of how the U.S. Government spied on the UFO community throughout the Cold War), but he didn’t, and so be it.

Aura Rhanes

At this point, I should explain that although the file was titled “George Hunt Williamson” a significant portion of its pages were devoted to yet another Contactee – an equally controversial one – Truman Bethurum. I wrote extensively about Bethurum in my Contactees book. He was the lucky old geezer who claimed flirty encounters in the Nevada desert in 1952/53 with a hot alien space-babe known as Captain Aura Rhanes, a denizen of the planet Clarion.

Yes, the usual wacky and absurd Space-Brother stuff that no-one should take literally. I am, however, firmly of the opinion that something happened to Bethurum, and most likely something of a hypnagogic nature. Old Truman was quite taken by Aura, who he described as being “tops in shapeliness and beauty” and whose space-outfit, he memorably told the readers of his book, Aboard a Flying Saucer, “did fit so snuggly.” There’s really not much I can add to that, except to note the amusing fact that it seems the FBI was quite taken by Her Royal Hotness from the stars, too.

In the papers on Bethurum, an FBI agent (whose name is blacked out on the available files) relates the story of how Bethurum met curvy Aura, who is described as – and I quote the Bureau’s agent directly – “…a ravishing woman commandant.” I had to wonder what was going through the mind of the agent writing that!

Then, after digging into the file, it was time for Greg’s show, in which we covered everything from the aforementioned oddness at the hotel, the Aura Rhanes saga, the state of paranormal-themed “reality” TV (a clue: it’s all rubbish), and much more of a controversial and Fortean nature. Finally, there was the trip back to the hotel, before an early Monday morning return to Dallas.

So, that was my weird weekend, one which involved an encounter with Charles Fort (or, rather, an encounter with a Charles Fort), the JFK assassination, a bizarre catalog of date-connected synchronicities involving the dead prez and his blond Hollywood honey, a sexy space-captain from a far-away world, and an FBI special-agent so captivated by that same space-captain he could only refer to her as a “ravishing woman commandant.”

I wondered on the flight back to Dallas: is our “reality” just a big, chaotic joke on the part of some deranged computer-programmer in a strange and unearthly dimension of Matrix-style proportions? It could be. If so, maybe I took far too many red pills the night before…

The animal kingdom is full of bizarre and strange looking animals most of which many of us have never seen before.  Some of these animals are not only fascinating because they look odd, but they also offer up surprises more important than their strange appearance.

Coconut Crab

You know those nifty little hermit crabs you can buy at the pet store with the novelty shells that have the Batman logo or something on it?  Well meet its relative:

The  coconut crab is the largest land-living arthropod in the entire world .  It is also believed to be the maximum size a creature with an exoskeleton can grow on land.  It can weigh up to nine pounds and grow to be as large as two meters long.  It is found on islands in both the Pacific and Indian Ocean.  It is often hunted to extinction in areas with large human populations as the crab is used as fuel for nightmares.

Cyphonia Clavata

Animals can be pretty crafty characters.  They will often use tricks and camouflage to disguise themselves in order to avoid being eaten by a predator.  One species of insect, however, goes above and beyond in disguising itself from predators.

The photo above is not of an ant fighting another insect.  It is a species of treehopper called Cyphonia Clavata that literally has an ant growing out of its head.  Well not literally, the ant-like thing on its head is an appendage that hides the treehopper’s actual body from predators.

Lamprey

Recently this picture of a strange creature has gone viral and even got some main stream media attention:

The photo looks pretty fake as the thing looks like something out of a 1950s Godzilla movie.  However, the creature in the photograph is totally real.  It is not as large as the photo presents it as, but it is still big enough to be absolutely horrifying.

The above is a species of lamprey that attaches itself to fish and sucks their blood.  Lampreys have been swimming around for nearly 300 millions years and their body structure has remained relatively unchanged which means that scientist love them.  The rest of us are just creeped out by them.

Naked Mole Rat

Not only did you not know the African naked mole rat existed but, consequently, you did not know that you are going to be jealous of this little guy.

Admittedly, it is not much to look at.  This creature, though, has a lot of characteristics that make it very important to human beings.  For one it is resistant to cancer.  This handsome guy also lives up to 28 years, which is unheard of in mammals of its size.  It seemingly does not age much in those 28 years either.  It remains “young, healthy and fully fertile for almost all its days, which for an elderly animal is equivalent to an 80-year-old woman having the biological make-up of someone 50 years younger.”

The naked mole rat is used in both cancer research and the study of aging.  Not only making it a bizarre creature, but an incredibly important creature as well.

There are some places that stay with you and lodge into the back of your mind.  Even if there is no terrifying ghost story or legend connected to a location there is something about the place that makes you feel uneasy.  Then one night you wake up in a cold sweat just having had a nightmare about a location that exists in real life.  The world is filled with these nightmare inducing locations.

Cincinnati Subway System

In 1918 the city of Cincinnati was rapidly expanding.  It was decided that they needed a mass transit system in order for their citizens to get around.  The city dug seven miles of subway and then they simply ran out of money.

The city knew it did not have enough money to complete the project when it started but decided to go forward with construction anyway, because at the time Cincinnati handled their finances with the grace of a little girl in the Barbie aisle at Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, the stock market crashed and any plans to finish the subway were put on hold.  There were a few attempts to breath life into the project over the years but none ever came into fruition.

Today, the subway is abandoned, though you can take tours, which I imagine consists of a tour guide saying “Here is a terrifyingly dark tunnel and over there is a horrifyingly scary tunnel.”

Sedlec Ossuary

In the Czech Republic you can find a small Catholic church called The Sedlec Ossuary.  Nothing seems too special about it until you open the doors, and the inside of it looks like they hired a serial killer to be their interior decorator.

It turns out they did not somehow channel the spirit of Jack The Ripper for home decor tips.  All the bones being used as parts of furniture are the bones of those who  wanted to be laid to rest there. It is quite a popular place for Catholics in Europe to go after they stop being alive. Using the bones of humans as knickknacks is simply a way of saving space.

Madidi National Park

Unlike the previous entries, Madidi National Park located in the Amazon river basin in Bolivia is not lifted from your nightmares because there may be a ghost around the corner.   It is lifted out of your nightmares because of the animals that live there.

Joel Sartore kept a diary of what it was like to spend a month in Madidi while he was there trying to get photos of wild pigs for National Geographic, because that is the crazy kind of stuff you have to do when you work for National Geographic.  Needless to say, it was not pleasant.

Along with dealing with the incredible heat of the Amazon, he had to cope with trying to get botfly maggots out from under his skin, getting peed on by bats and actively looking for pigs that tear people apart.  At one point Sartore touches a moth, and it caused him to breakout in a painful rash.  This is a place where literally everything tries to kill you.

Actun Tunichil Muknal

Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) is a Mayan archeological site inside of a cave in Belize discovered in 1989.  It is considered a very important site due to well preserved stone tools, ceramic pottery and jewelry.  Did I mention there is also well preserved skeletons scattered throughout one area of the cave?

The popular theory is that this area of the cave was likely used for human sacrifices.  Most of the skeletons in the cave are children.  If you are not good at putting two and two together that means the area was used to ritualistically kill children.  The skeletons are fused with the cave floor which is why they have not been moved.  They will remain there to strike fear in the hearts of people forever.

A line of clouds began to roll into Lawton, Oklahoma, when Kyle Heying stepped outside his work at Dillard’s one summer evening in 2010. When he lifted his camera up to his eye, he didn’t suspect what the clouds would bring. “I took a picture of the sunset,” he said. “There was nothing special in the sky except for a summer thunderstorm that was brewing to the south.”

A dark metallic object rides this stormfront approaching Lawton, Oklahoma, in 2011. (Photograph by Kyle Heying)

When he prepared the photograph to post on a social media site, he discovered he’d captured something more than clouds. “I did not notice the object until later while reducing the image size and preparing it for posting on my Facebook page,” he said. “I still have yet to identify what it is.”

A sharp, dark mark just under the approaching storm stood out. When Heying enlarged the photo, he found the object appeared to be metallic, and the shape unlike anything that should be flying over Oklahoma. “The object from that evening thunderstorm still does not make sense,” he said. “Everyone who sees it gets confused.”

A closer view of a dark, metallic object photographed in at the edge of a 2011 storm front approaching Lawton, Oklahoma. (Photograph by Kyle Heying)

Confusion from the object is nothing like what Heying saw in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge just west of Lawton. Heying, who now lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, has often visited the 59,000-acre preserve to take photographs of the night sky. One night, he saw something he wished he hadn’t. ”I’m an amateur astrophotographer and astronomer,” he said. “A friend of mine and I go to the Wichita Mountains to do a lot of our own … astrophotography if the weather is permitting.”

Heying and his friend arrived in the mountains near dark in early Spring 2012 intending to stay until 1 a.m., but around 10 p.m., something strange happened. “Shortly before 10, the wildlife began to make a lot of movements,” he said. “Normally while out there, we were at the entrance to Boulder Creek which is a popular astrophotography site at the mountains, you will have some longhorn, elk, buffalo, and coyotes in the distance or nearby even for that matter.”

The coyotes yipped and howled as normal, but as the night crept near 10 p.m., the coyote sounds grew fewer, and more distant. A herd of Rocky Mountain elk, reintroduced to the Wichita Mountains, hurried by, followed by a small herd of normally aggressive America Bison that skirted the asphalt parking lot where Heying had parked, “by five feet and did not bother us.”

Then the feral hogs came. “We always go armed with either a handgun or one of our rifles for safety,” Heying said. “They are loud and extremely dangerous. They ran right past us.”

All the animals ran south, then the air changed. “It became deathly silent, and the air became ominous, and we felt an odd pressure; we started packing everything into my trunk quickly,” Heying said. As the two men put their cameras and telescopes into Heying’s car, something rustled in the tall grass just north of them. And it was coming closer. The men jumped into Heying’s car, rifles at the ready.

“We moved to another observation site to the northeast at the base of Mount Scott, the highest point out there,” Heying said. “We did a U-turn in the parking area and as I made the turn my headlights lighted up a human figure with a head I can not easily describe.”

The creature didn’t look human. “It was as though it had the head of a buffalo or an elk, while standing upright with two legs and two arms that were human,” he said. But the eyes were what terrified him. “The eyes were a dark red.”

Terror consumed Heying, and he didn’t know if he were looking at a beast, or a man in a mask. As the car’s headlights moved over the creature, it jerked as if hit. Heying punched the accelerator and tore away from this red-eyed monster. He didn’t slow until he reached Medicine Park, Oklahoma, two-and-a-half miles away. “We were scared shitless,” Heying said. Sitting in the car at the creek that splits the town of less than 400 at the entrance to the wildlife refuge, the silence outside grew ominous.

“Things got even quieter when we stayed there,” Heying said. “While there we heard one ear-piercing screech or scream, almost a hunting screech of some sort that made my hair stand on end and gave me goose bumps even worse.” The scream echoed through the night; Heying is sure it came from Mount Scott, where they’d just been. Where they saw the beast.

“With that we left the mountains completely, we felt as though we were not wanted there that night,” he said. “The way the wildlife acted, the figure that we came across (that) the animals had to have ran from, and then the scream of which I can only find references to happens to be the Banshee.”

It’s been a year, but Heying knows the image of the beast he saw in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge will haunt him forever. “I cannot forget that figure we saw, as well as the scream,” he said. “It was not human but it was not of any wildlife I am familiar with from out there.”

Just a few days ago, I was going through a bunch of old files, and came across a wealth of accounts that I have not given much thought to for many a year. One stands out of particular interest. On August 31, 2000 – a year before I moved to the United States – a man named Rob Lea telephoned me, and, in somewhat excited, but also distinctly worried, tones, informed me that for a number of years he had been near-obsessively pursuing an elite and powerful body of people engaged in the mutilation and sacrifice of animals in the UK, via ancient rite and ritual no less, for purposes relative to personal wealth, incredible power and, even, cold-blooded, heartless murder.

Needless to say, I wanted, and needed, to hear more – much more, in fact. Two days later, I drove to an old pub in the picturesque English village of Milford – our arranged point of contact – where I was to meet with my concerned informant. Rob had seen my photograph in a then-recent edition of the local Chase Post newspaper, in which I had referenced the animal-mutilation controversy and which had specifically prompted him to contact me, and offered a friendly wave from his chair as I stood at the bar and ordered a refreshing, cold pint of beer.

I nodded in Rob’s direction in return, proceeded to buy him a refill of what I could clearly see was a half-full pint of Guinness, and made my way over to the old oak table at which he was sitting – practically to attention. Rob, it was very clear to see, was a firm devotee of all-things-Gothic. He was dressed in black jeans, big black boots, and a knee-length, shiny black-leather coat, through which could be seen an old t-shirt emblazoned with a photograph of Siouxsie from the band, Siouxsie and the Banshees. And a badge that displayed Charles Manson’s face was fastened tightly to the collar of his jacket.

The near-emaciated and pale Rob viewed himself as something akin to a modern-day Sherlock Holmes; and after taking in his dark and disturbing story, I could only concur. Either that or he was an insane fantasist of truly infinite proportions. However, the fact that his story dovetailed so eerily, and closely too, with those of so many other people that came my way led to me believe that he was speaking both truthfully and earnestly.

As I sat and listened intently, Rob advised me that as a direct result of a horrific incident that had taken place in 1989 on a Newport, England-based farm that was owned by his family at the time, he began to develop a deep and personal interest in incidents of the animal mutilation kind.

Notably, Rob was not an over-the-top, paranoid X-Files junkie seeking to validate stories that alien entities from some far-off world were stealthily extracting bovine body-parts and clandestinely transferring them to a James Bond-style, secret underground installation deep in the heart of New Mexico for distinctly out-of-this-world reasons. No: Rob’s quest had taken him down a very different road – and it was one that was as dangerous and terrifying as it was winding and shadowy.

Matters all began, said Rob, in late August 1989, when his father rose early one morning to the unforgettable sight of five of his sheep, all dead, and laying in a rough circle in a field that sat directly behind the family’s home. All of the animals had been slaughtered: their throats had been carefully cut by what bore all the hallmarks of being a sharp instrument, and several of their major, internal organs had been piled high, in a bloody mountainous mess, in the middle of the circle.

Not without significant justification, thoughts of devil-worship, satanic sacrifice, and occult activities overwhelmed the frantic mind of Rob’s father. Unsurprisingly, the family quickly telephoned the local police, who were on the scene with very surprising speed. An official report was filed, amid urgings from the two officers who attended that the Lea family should refrain from giving the incident any publicity – and under any circumstances.

Unfortunately, absolutely no clues or answers were ever forthcoming from the police, and the unsettling incident was never repeated. But, that didn’t stop it from leaving a deep and undeniable impression on the then-teenage Rob. Indeed, there was much more to come.

Rob smiled, carefully reached below the table, and produced a black briefcase which he duly placed on the top of the table. As he flipped its brass-colored locks, I moved the glasses and the ashtray aside to allow for more room, and sat back, admittedly intrigued to see what would develop. I was both surprised and amazed, to say the least.

From within the confines of a large, padded envelope, Rob proceeded to pull out seven, 6 x 4, 35mm, color-photographs that clearly and graphically showed the scene of complete carnage at his family’s farm eleven years earlier. In other words, and if nothing else, that part of the story could at least be firmly validated. But this was merely the beginning of things – as I had suspected it almost certainly would be after Rob had begun to divulge the facts.

He continued, with a slightly detectable degree of nerves in his voice, and admitted to me that when he first began digging into the animal mutilation mystery he was, for a short while at least, a firm adherent of the theory that deadly extraterrestrials just might possibly have been behind the predatory attacks. As time progressed, however, and as Rob delved ever-deeper into the heart of the puzzle, he found that, in many ways, something much more disturbing than alien visitations was firmly afoot.

By the late 1990s, said Rob, he had quietly and carefully traveled the length and breadth of the British Isles in hot and diligent pursuit of the answers to the conundrum, and had inadvertently stumbled upon a sinister, and possibly deadly, group of people based near Bristol – that Rob had grandly dubbed The Cult of the Moon Beast – that, he asserted to me, were using slaughtered farm animals, and even household pets, in ancient rites and archaic rituals of a sacrificial nature.

The purpose of the rites and rituals, said Rob, continuing, was to use the sacrificed unfortunates as a means of conjuring up monstrous entities from some vile netherworld that would then be dispatched to commit who-knew-what atrocities on behalf of their masters in the Cult of the Moon Beast.

It transpired that Rob had been stealthily watching the activities of the Cult of the Moon Beast – which, he stressed several times to me, was merely a term that he, himself, had applied to this closely-knit group of individuals that numbered around fifteen – for approximately seven years by the time we met. He admitted he had no firm idea of the group’s real name; or even if it actually had a designated moniker.

Although the cult was firmly based in Bristol, said Rob, its members were spread both far and wide, with at least four hailing from the east-coast town of Ipswich; two from the Staffordshire town of Cannock; two from the city of Exeter; one from Tavistock, Devonshire; and five from Bromley, in the county of Kent.

Rob related to me how he had clandestinely and doggedly tracked the movements of the group and had personally – albeit stealthily – viewed no less than three of their dark practices: one of which, he said, had occurred in early 2000 near the Ingrestre Park Golf Club, deep in the heart of the Cannock Chase woods in Staffordshire, which had been the site of numerous encounters with a veritable menagerie of mysterious beasts, including werewolves, Bigfoot-type entities, ghostly black dogs, and huge marauding cats.

“And what exactly is this group doing?” I asked.

According to Rob, the Cult of the Moon Beast was engaged in occult-drive rites designed to summon up unholy beasts that originated within a realm or dimension that co-existed with ours. He added that certain locales around the country – and, indeed, across the globe – allowed for a doorway or portal to be opened to order, if one followed the correct, ancient rites, rituals and “rules of animal sacrifice,” of which the Cult of the Moon Beast seemingly had a deep and profound knowledge and awareness. Numerous such portals existed in Devon, Cornwall, and Staffordshire, Rob assured me in an earnest fashion.

“Yes, but again why are they doing this? What’s the purpose?” I pressed.

Rob looked me square in the face, and, after a moment or two of deafening silence, uttered one word: “Murder.”

“Murder,” I repeated, in a tone that was a statement rather than a question.

Rob nodded eagerly and related to me that the beasts in question were not physical, flesh-and-blood-style beings – at least, not in the way that we, mere mortals, understand things. Rather, they were a form of non-physical intelligence that could take on the appearance of whatever was in the mind’s eye of the beholder – and, more often than not, that of a large black cat.

“Okay,” I said. “What you’re saying does make some sense to me at least; as I’ve heard things similar to this several times before. But if these things aren’t actually physically real animals, then how are they killing people?”

Rob leaned back in the seat and replied matter-of-factly: “Mind-power: fright, suggestion. They’ll stop your heart in a beat with fear. You want someone dead, you kill them through fear; fear of the unknown, fear of anything. That’s much better than risking taking someone out with a gun or a knife; there’s less of a chance of getting caught.”

“Right; I understand that. But what is so special about this group that it needs so many people dead?”

Rob continued further that the Cult of the Moon Beast was linked with some very influential people and that, when needed, the cult was “hired for its services” – and paid very handsomely, indeed – by the highest echelons of private industry, and even by the Intelligence services of the British Government.

As he explained it to me: “You want someone dead, then you give them a heart-attack by having a monster appearing in their bedroom at night. Or you drive them to suicide by making them think they are going mad if they are seeing werewolves.”

An ancient cult, working and killing in stealth? Death by conjured-up, monstrous entities? A conspiracy that reached the heart of the British Government? Yes, so Rob Lea claimed. Even today, nearly 13 years after the tale was told to me by Rob, it still provokes a sense of menace and all-things macabre and mysterious…

While relatively warmer temperatures persist in the Southern United States, weather presently striking the Northeast has reminded us that, despite the lull in seasonal weather being experienced elsewhere, it is very much still winter in America.

According to a My Way News report, teams of rescue workers have been scrambling to clear roadways as up to three feet of snow has continued to mount in some parts of the Northeastern US. The State of Connecticut, with as much as 40 inches in some parts, has been declared a state of emergency by President Barack Obama, while further south toward the Big Apple, a whopping 2.5 feet was dumped on Long Island.

While the recent “Snowmageddon” weather in the Northeast is certainly causing trouble for many, it is nothing particularly strange, although record exists of far more unusual weather that has occurred in various parts of the United States. For instance, what would most people think if they walked outside one summer morning in June… only to find the lakes and rivers nearby were completely frozen? Strange as it sounds, this, and even stranger instances of “anomalous weather” have indeed riddled American history, which in a few isolated incidents (as we’ll soon discuss) may have lead to rather disturbing conclusions.

During the summer of 1816, a record set of low summertime temperatures caused crops to fail well into the spring and summer months, leading to widespread food shortages for the period known historically as the “Year Without a Summer.”

The unusual weather began with a strange reddish fog that began to blanket much of the northeastern United States, blocking sunlight and reducing overall temperatures so much that by May of that year, frost had killed most available U.S. crops in the region. Later in June, snow had begun to fall in Maine, New York, and parts of neighboring Canada. Within the next two months, lakes and rivers would remain frozen, as observed in parts of Pennsylvania, during the otherwise humid month of August, despite freakish temperature spikes exceeding 90 °F in other parts of the country. The cause for the strange, anomalous freezing summer was believed to have been due to solar activity reaching historic lows, paired with volcanic ash present in the atmosphere following the eruption of Mount Tambora, a volcano in Indonesia, one year earlier.

Perhaps even stranger than idea of anomalous unseasonal weather is the notion of freak snowstorms that could occur “on demand.” That is to say, in the study of the unexplained, there are occasionally references made to strange, inexplicable storms that occur immediately following such things as strange disappearances.

Researcher David Paulides wrote in his two-volume Missing 411 book series about a striking number of unexplained disappearances (and occasional reappearances) that go widely underreported in American National Parks. While no official stance or explanation for the disappearances is given by the author, some readers feel that Paulides’ previous research(he has also authored books on Bigfoot and cryptozoology, and operates the North American Bigfoot Search webpage) implies indirectly that Bigfoot-related kidnappings could be involved.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the anomalous disappearances he discusses, however, has to do with strange weather that often follows shortly after an individual goes missing. In many, if not a majority of instances, sudden ice storms, snowfall, or heavy rain will tend to cripple any effective search effort. As was expressed recently to me by a colleague:

“Is the implication that the culprit is sensing the weather will change, and that it would be a good time to kidnap the person… or is the culprit CAUSING the rain or snow to fall?”

While it is difficult to presume there is a definite connection that could be made here, it might be interesting nonetheless to see if any missing person reports have been filed recently in parts of the Northeastern United States as of late… and if a correlation were to arise, as suspected by Paulides, what kind of phenomenon could allow for this to happen, other than the careful (and somewhat disturbing) variety of premeditated “planning” that some have proposed of these incidents? And if planned, perhaps more important is the question of who may have been doing the planning? 

“On the other side of the world from the Bermuda Triangle,” stated Charles Berlitz, probably the one person who, more than just about any other brought the infamous area’s attention to the mainstream media and the general public en masse, “there exists a section of the ocean startlingly similar in its history of vanishing ships and planes.” For the people of Japan, this treacherous and terror-soaked realm is one filled with ever present notoriety. It is known as the Ma-no Umi. Or, in English terminology: the Devil’s Sea.

Just like its far more famous cousin off the coast of Florida, this devilish body of water, which is near Miyake Island, and approximately one hundred kilometers south of Japan’s capital city of Tokyo, can also claim to be responsible for hundreds of deaths and disappearances under very curious and disturbing circumstances.

Also as with the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Sea is filled to the brim with sensational stories and tales of gateways to other worlds and dimensions, tales of dramatic alien encounters in the skies above the waters, and legends, folklore and myths of great sea dragons that swallow ships whole and drag them to a dark underworld.

The experience and story of Takeo Tada is undeniably one of the most significant on record when it comes to demonstrating that the Devil’s Sea is a place of definitive paranormal proportions – and perhaps even of other-worldly proportions, too.

On a pleasant but cloudy summer’s afternoon in 1971, Tada was flying adjacent to Miyake Island when he caught sight of something incredible that loomed out of the clouds only a half a mile or so from him.

It was nothing less than a definitive flying saucer – an orange-colored, gleaming, circular-shaped craft of around seventy-feet in diameter and ten feet in height that traveled in a strange, wobbling fashion as it moved slowly through the sky. Tada said that seeing the unusual aircraft momentarily, and hardly surprisingly, flummoxed him in the extreme, and he merely sat looking at it, astonished to his very core.

After a half or minute or so, however, he regained his senses and chose to do something that some might view as brave and gung-ho and others as undeniably stupid and reckless: he gave chase. This was not a hard thing to do, even for Tada’s small, propeller-driven aircraft. After all, he said, the UFO was traveling at barely one hundred miles an hour, and the main challenge was not to keep up with it, but to avoid slamming into it!

Fortunately, however, the plodding progress of the flying saucer ensured that Tada was able to get up close and personal, at which point he could see that it seemingly lacked windows, engines, wings or a tail, and was sailing through the skies near Miyake Island in what looked like near-magical, but decidedly laidback fashion.

Tada continued to watch with both amazement and wonder until, after about nine or ten minutes, the unearthly object slowly began to rise and travel in the direction of a large and dense cloud, into which it finally vanished, never to resurface.

Dumbstruck by the experience and fearful of what his colleagues and bosses might say or do if he dared tell them, Tada chose – perhaps wisely – to remain silent on his unearthly encounter for more than thirty-three years.

And, finally, just how many other people, daring to venture through the wild skies and churning waters of the Devil’s Sea, may have encountered something equally as weird and unearthly as Takeo Tada – and who then also elected to say nothing, at least not for decades - is a matter worth keeping firmly in mind…