Last fall, a series of strange circumstances had befallen a number of students in the Le Roy Central School District in New York. Tests were being performed on soil and other for various molds and quality of air, in addition to the potential for side effects resulting from a number of drugs and vaccines, with hope of confirming some cause for various kinds of strange behavior erupting among a handful of students.

In total, twelve children had begun displaying odd “symptoms,” described primarily as “tics and impulsive verbal outbursts” similar to the popular neurological disorder Tourette’s syndrome. And yet, despite concerns (and even widespread belief among parents) that there may have been environmental agents acting on these students, no evidence was ever found as to what, precisely, had been causing the disruptive behavior.

The situation hadn’t drawn as much attention since news first broke during the latter portion of last year, that is, until Monday morning when Reuters news service carried a story describing that three more individuals have been added to the list of students affected by the “mystery illness.” District Superintendent Kim Cox addressed the strange circumstances publicly over the weekend, according to the Reuters report; for the time being, amidst continued concern over what may be causing the strange behavior among students, a familiar old explanation has sifted its way to the surface: we’re obviously dealing with mass hysteria here.

Hysteria cannot be ruled out as a cause for these strange, repetitive instances of odd behavior among certain demographic groups, though it does seem to play the roll of a “catch-all” excuse that is tossed out when all other reasonable explanations fail. For instance, in 2007 an almost identical set of circumstances to that witnessed in New York during the last several months had been afflicting a small number of female students at a high school in Roanoke, Virginia. According to the Associated Press, the school district spent a total that may have exceeded $30,000 performing environmental tests, which found no evidence of any contaminants or other factors that could contribute to the behavior. A similar series of events took place in 2002 in North Carolina, where ten teenagers—all girls—reportedly began suffering from “epileptic seizures and fainting.” No environmental causes were found here, either.

The attribution of mass hysteria, or even psychosis, has seen prevalence elsewhere in recent weeks, with some now claiming that an entirely different kind of mystery virus—the so-called Morgellon’s disease—may be a form of psychosis. The strange condition, which some reports link with diseases carried by deer ticks such as Lyme disease, features it’s own host of bizarre symptoms; these include “crawling” sensations on or beneath the skin, in addition to strange “fibers” that appear to be growing from sores appearing on the skin. However, controversy has stemmed from reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who claim to have discovered “no environmental or physical cause for the cases.” Furthermore, conversion disorder, a form of neurosis that often includes the presence of symptoms like blindness and paralysis, has been cited as a possible underlying cause for some patient’s perception of having Morgellon’s-like symptoms.

Can all the reports of such “mystery” illnesses be attributed to mass hysteria and obscure neurological disorders? Also, can we truly rule out the possibility that a potentially dangerous condition might exist, simply because various studies in the past have sought to find “alternative” explanations for them? Indeed, there are a number of problems that can arise from limiting causes of an unknown or little-understood condition to those of the psychosomatic variety; chief among these are the way that doing so may run the risk of allowing a potentially real disorder or disease to continue or proliferate, while remaining largely untreated. Mass hysteria, in the absence of other substantial evidence, may be a convenient explanation, as well as being in keeping with general scientific approaches to diagnoses… but does that mean it’s an accurate one?

Any mention of “animal mutilations” invariably, and quite understandably too, provokes imagery of the notorious “cattle-mutilation” events that reached their peak in the southwest regions of the United States in the mid to late 1970s. On the issue of whether or not the killing and mutilation of animals on a large scale was, and perhaps still is, the work of extraterrestrials, occult groups, government personnel engaged in biological warfare experimentation, scavengers, shadowy figures with concerns about exotic viruses entering the U.S. food-chain, or a combination of all the above, the jury is very much still out. But, less well known, is that such events are not limited to the United States…

One particular case stands out for truly memorable and macabre reasons, as will now become apparent. It all began on 1 October 1997, as a good friend of mine, Nigel Wright, then of the Exeter Strange Phenomena Research Group, and the co-author with Jon Downes of the book The Rising of the Moon, reveals:

“Approximately three weeks ago two young men were swimming in Otter Cove [Lyme Bay, Exmouth, England]. As darkness drew in, they decided to make for the shore and change to go home. As they got changed, one of them looked out to sea. He saw what he described as a ‘greenish’ light under the surface. He called to the other young man and they both watched as this light ‘rose’ to the surface of the water. The next thing they knew there was a very bright light shining into their faces. They turned the scene and fled.”

Meanwhile, on the top of the cliffs, equally strange things were afoot. The two young men raced for the car of a relative and breathlessly explained what had happened. Incredibly, she, too, had seen something highly unusual in precisely the same time frame on the road leading to Otter Cove: a strange animal that she likened to “an enormous cat.” Whatever the origin of the beast, however, she was certain of one thing: it was, to quote her, “all lit up” – glowing almost.

On the following day, a dead whale was found washed upon the beach below the cliffs. This did not appear to have been merely a tragic accident, however. On receiving reports that a whale had been found in precisely the area that anomalous lights and a strange creature were seen, Nigel Wright launched an investigation.

“The first thing that struck me as I looked on at this scene,” recalls Wright, “was how perfect the carcass was. There was no decay or huge chunks torn from it. Then, as I wandered around it, I noticed that there was only one external wound: in the area of the genitals a round incision, the size of a large dinner plate, was cut right into the internal organs of the mammal. The sides of this incision were perfectly formed, as if some giant apple corer had been inserted and twisted around. From the wound hung some of the internal organs.”

Nigel continues: ”I quizzed the official from English Heritage, who was responsible for the disposal of the carcass. He informed me that no natural predator or boat strike would have caused this wound. As I looked at this sight, the first thing that came into my mind was how this looked just like the cattle mutilation cases of recent times.”

Wright was also able to determine that this was not the only time that unusual lights had been seen in the vicinity of Lyme Bay: “No precise date can be given for the evening when a fishing boat encountered a strange light over Lyme Bay,” he explains, ‘but, since this was told to me by the skipper of the vessel concerned, I can vouch for its authenticity. The vessel in question was five miles off Budleigh Salterton. The crew became aware of a bright, white-blue light which hovered some distance from the boat. At first they thought it was a helicopter but they heard no engine sounds, nor saw any navigation lights.”

Nigel was told by the captain of the vessel that the night had been “bright and clear” and that if the object had made any noise, it would certainly have been “audible for miles.

“The light remained stationary for about one and a half hours. Judging by the mast of their vessel, which is twenty-eight feet high, the crew estimated that the light was not much higher than that,” adds Wright. “It then very suddenly disappeared.”  The case was over.

The mutilators of England – whatever their point of origin – have not disappeared, however. Expect further revelations on this very matter in the near future!

They lurk in the shadows by cover of night, waiting for their victims to fall asleep. Then, entering bedrooms beneath the unforgiving shield that pale moonlight provides, the strike; biting the neck and sucking precious life’s blood from the innocent. These are the unearthly habits of the vampire, and their particular manner of devilish dealing has continuously managed to capture both the minds and hearts of the masses, as evidenced by the nearly constant appeal this subject has maintained through books, films, and television.

For most of us, the fascination with Vampires ends with the silver screen. However, there have been a few to have come and gone who asserted far more interest in the subject than that which exists merely within the bounds of horror fiction. For some, Vampire hunting Van Helsing-style has grown out of a mere fascination with the occult, leaving those involved pondering whether blood-suckers that exist by night might not have some factual basis in reality.

I was reminded of one such individual while visiting The Reynolds Mansion, a haunted nineteenth century mansion in Western North Carolina, at the request of a friend who worked their. There were numerous stories of ghosts in the building, and while being given a private tour, the host, Billy Sanders, showed me a particularly unique item among his collection of macabre art and film memorabilia: an actual vampire kit, used as a prop in the 1960s Hammer Films release The Brides of Dracula.

Digging through the kit, one would find a coffin key, actual silver bullets, wooden stakes of carved oak, holy water, and a host of other things expected for use in battling the undead. However, perhaps my favorite item contained within this unusual collection of belongings was an old 1928 hardbound edition of Mantague Summers’ The Vampire: his Kith and Kin.

Summers, born in 1880, had been described through his life as an eccentric occultist and clergyman, with a variety of unusual interests. One of his earliest published works dealt with poetry dedicated to the Bithynian youth Antinous, whose relationship with the Roman emperor Hadrian was believed to have involved pederasty. Summers himself would go on to be accused of maintaining such relationships with young boys, although he would be acquitted in a court of law of these accusations.

Despite the ill repute that Summers would become known for, these were hardly the most bizarre accusations made against the man, who would go on to also convert to Catholicism, even claiming to have been ordained a Catholic priest. Indeed, the eccentricity of Montague Summers extended well beyond a mere interest in the occult with titles such as the aforementioned thesis on Vampirism; he also worked as a devotee to the Gothic genre, translating such titles as The Castle of Otranto, The Malleus Maleficarum, and authoring works of his own devoted to the darker aspects of literature, such as his 1938 book The Gothic Quest: a History of the Gothic Novel.

The strangest thing, perhaps, about Summers’ interest in vampires had dealt with his treatment of the subject as though vampirism were a very real condition. The Vampire dealt with not only accounts of biting ghosts and bloodsucking agents of the evening, but also the prescribed methods of dealing with such devils, which of course, became popularized in film (often with the use of such tools as those included with the vampire kit I described earlier). Based on his writings, Montague Summers either boasted a kind of eccentricity with his stylistic offerigs that blurred the lines between his treatment of fact and fiction, or he we must assume that he very much believed that the vampire was a real agent of evil, and one that must be dealt with through drastic means.

Was the quirky cleric indeed merely pulling our leg with his professed concern with denizens of the undead realm? Or do Summers’ written works indeed point to the mind of a man who perhaps bought a bit too much of his own hype, resulting in a twisting of fact and fiction around what has become one of the chief staples of the horror genre in modern times?

Beverly French stepped outside her home November 25, 2008, dragging a box of Christmas lights she and her husband Bill would soon string across the eaves. Bill had taken his box of lights out back.

The French’s had lived in their home, along a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of a small, Northern California town, about 40 years, and owned a general store/gas station in this town of about 2,000 people.

The day, two days before Thanksgiving, was peaceful. That peace did not last.

“I was sitting on the porch with a box of lights at my feet when I heard someone call out to me,” Beverly said.

“Do you need any help?” the voice asked.

Beverly looked up from untangling strings of lights to find two children on the sidewalk in front of her house. She hadn’t noticed them approach, which was unlikely on this quiet dirt road, engine noise and a cloud of dust advertising visitors. What struck her as even more odd, she didn’t know them.

“Our neighbors, all six of them, were good friends of ours and we all looked out for one another,” she said. “Point being, not a single car, person, bike or bird came through that neighborhood that we all didn’t know about.”

One child, a tall girl of about sixteen, was dressed unlike a teenager. She wore slacks, an argyle sweater, overcoat and pearls, with her nearly white hair pulled back from her face. The boy, about ten, had thick, dark hair. He held the girl’s hand.

“She was the one who spoke to me and as I stared, not responding, she spoke again,” Beverly said.

“It looks like you have a lot of work to do,” the girl said, staring unblinking into Beverly’s eyes. “We would like to help you.”

The girl’s voice was confident, polished, “like a radio show host.” This wasn’t the voice of a teenager. A shock of fear ran through Beverly.

“I just felt afraid,” Beverly said. “I had no idea why but these kids unnerved me unlike anything else. I’ve been robbed at gunpoint and even that didn’t make me as quaky as these kids.”

It was the eyes.

“It was something about the way she looked at me,” Beverly said. “It took me a few months after the incident to place where I’d seen that look before but I remembered while watching TV one day. It was the way I see sharks look at their prey. No emotion in their eyes, no motivation beyond hunger, just this cold deadness.”

Beverly knew she had to make these children leave.

“No thanks, you all should run along, I’m fine here,” she said. Then the girl smiled and Beverly thought she might die.

“Beverly, we want to help you. It looks like you have a lot of work to do and you need some help with it,” the girl said.

Owning one of the ten businesses in this small town, Beverly was used to hearing her name come out of all sorts of mouths, but not like this.

“It was creepy as all get out hearing her address me like that,” she said.

“Do I know your parents?” Beverly asked her.

The girl ignored the question. “You should let us help you,” she insisted.

Beverly nearly screamed for her husband who worked on the other side of the house, but something inside her didn’t want these children to know she was terrified.

“I’m fine,” Beverly told her. “Your parents wouldn’t like you being all the way out here. It’s getting dark. You go on home.”

Then the expression on the boy, the quiet, quiet boy, changed. He looked directly at Beverly and smiled.

“It was kind of dazzling, like he was really happy,” Beverly said. “He didn’t say anything to me, he just kept smiling while they both stared through me.”

As she looked at the boy, his smile suddenly grew dark, sinister.

“I felt my hands start to shake,” Beverly said. “He was aggressively chewing on his lower lip.”

After what may have been a few minutes or a few seconds, the girl shrugged and led the boy away. When they disappeared down the street, Beverly dropped to the porch, tears welling in her eyes. The garage door opened, and Bill walked up to her; he was upset as well.

“What’s the matter?” Beverly asked.

“I was working out back and this real tall, black-haired girl comes around the gate and asks me if I need any help,” Bill said.

At first, he thought she may be selling magazines, but she looked too old for that.

“I told her that I was fine and asked what she needed. She told me she needed to help me,” Bill said. “Beverly, I tell you, something about her gave me the creeps. She kept staring at me like she wanted me to do something. I told her to leave and she went out the back gate into the alley.”

Beverly told Bill her story, and they realized these frightening children had no transportation – they had to still be in the neighborhood.

“I hadn’t heard a car or bike,” Beverly said. “How did they get down the road? Walking? No one would come out to our property by foot. It’s just too far off the highway and nothing else is in walking distance.”

They locked their house and got into their car to try and find the threatening strangers, but the children were gone.

“Bill and I drove the road between our cul-de-sac and the main highway four times,” Beverly said. “We even drove up and down the highway for a couple of miles in each direction. We saw no trace of them. At the time, I honestly thought that maybe they were casing houses.”

When the French’s returned home, they reported their encounters to the police, and told their neighbors. Beverly thought this was the last she would see of these strange children, but three days later they came back.

Beverly had just come home from the grocery store and while pulling bags from her car, someone said her name.

“I turned around to see the same two kids as before plus another girl, who I assumed was the one who had spoken with Bill,” she said.

The blonde girl and dark-haired boy wore the same clothes. The new girl, taller than the first, looked to be in her early 20s, her short black hair framing a strikingly pretty face. The young, dark-haired woman stood at the end of Beverly’s drive; the others remained further back.

“Can I help you carry those?” the young woman asked.

This new girl unnerved Beverly more than the younger children.

“This girl had a confidence that I could not believe. It absolutely oozed from her,” Beverly said. “It was like she was laughing at me or superior to me.”

“No thanks,” Beverly said. “Are you all Mormons? If so, I already have a stack of pamphlets in my recycle bin. No use for any more.”

The young woman smiled.

“No, Beverly, we just want to help you,” she said, then held out her hand like she wanted Beverly to shake it. Beverly didn’t move.

“I could see that she was visibly annoyed with that,” Beverly said.

Beverly put her grocery bags on the hood of the car, reached in and triggered the garage door opener, never taking her eyes off these terrifying children.

“I don’t need any help,” she said to them. “I told your two friends that I’m just fine. If you’re looking for a job, try the help wanted pages. You all should run along home.”

Beverly shut her car door, picked up the groceries and began backing into the garage when she noticed something that froze her soul.

“I glanced over at the boy, who was staring at me intently,” she said. “This is when I began to realize there was something else going on. I tell you, this kid’s eyes were solid black. They were the color of asphalt and had no shine to them at all. I felt angry at myself for being afraid and angry at my inability to understand what was going on. I stared at that little boy’s black eyes and wondered how much was going on in the universe that I didn’t know about.”

Beverly knew she was in danger. Maybe the young woman felt the fear inside Beverly; she took a few bold steps forward. As this eerie woman stepped closer, the urge to sit rushed through Beverly, “like suddenly I had no energy.”

Drawing as much strength as she could find, Beverly remained on her feet. The young woman didn’t move closer, but when Beverly looked back at the blonde girl, the child’s eyes, like the boy’s, had darkened into dull black voids.

“Although I was quite unnerved, I will admit that I wondered if they had put in contact lenses or were playing some kind of a trick on me,” Beverly said. “I hadn’t yet given in to thinking this was a paranormal experience. I did think that I was potentially the victim of a clever robbery, although they made no motions to take anything from me.”

“I want you to leave,” Beverly said to the young woman and the two monstrous children. “I want you to leave and I never want you to come back. I want you to get off my property or I’m going to call the police again.”

The young woman smiled again, sending more chills through Beverly. This person’s eyes weren’t black like the children, they were an icy blue.

“She nodded like she thought what I said was cute, the way you nod at a child telling a story,” Beverly said. “I am not a violent woman but I felt this rush of hatred toward her and, I’ll admit, I toyed with the idea of attacking her.”

As this ran through Beverly’s mind, the young woman slowly shook her head, like she could hear Beverly’s thoughts.

“You don’t want to do that, Beverly. You should really think first,” the ominous young woman said. “Some people don’t realize that other people are just trying to help them. It makes me really sad that these people who refuse help have no idea what they’re missing. You’re going to regret this.”

The woman stared deeply into Beverly’s eyes for an uncomfortably long time. Then she turned and walked down the gravel road toward the highway, the two children close behind her. When the three were out of sight, Beverly bolted inside the house, locked the doors, and called the police.

“I didn’t really know what to say, except that I thought a group of kids was casing houses,” she said. “I had no proof of this and although the officer I spoke with was very polite, I could tell that nothing more would come of it. I didn’t mention the black eyes.”

Beverly never saw those children again, but they weren’t through with her.

“Later that afternoon I began to feel ill,” she said. “I had a horrible migraine and spent the day in bed.”

Her sleep was wracked by dreams of those children with their dead, black eyes.

“I wrote this all off as stress but I was still sick the next day – and the next,” she said. “I figured I just had the flu or a cold, but my dreams were getting really intense. I even started to imagine I was seeing the two kids wherever I went.”

Nausea, fever, and rashes plagued Beverly for two weeks. Fear gripped her tightly, and she refused to leave the house without Bill or a neighbor accompanying her.

“I hated the idea of pulling up to my driveway and seeing those kids again,” she said. “I did eventually get well but I never forgot my meeting with these people. I continued to have vivid, frightening dreams for close to six months.”

Bill and Beverly eventually sold their house and moved to a larger town, but the memories of the wicked children followed them.

“I was relieved to not have to look at my home and remember my experience with those kids,” she said. “I have no idea to this day what they were or what they wanted.”

“I believe nothing,” wrote Charles Fort, the late and much revered chronicler of anomalies, in his 1931 book Lo! “I have shut myself away from the rocks and wisdoms of ages, and from the so-called great teachers of all time, and perhaps because of that isolation I am given to bizarre hospitalities. I shut the front door upon Christ and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and periwinkles. I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written. I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject-matter for beliefs.”

While the statement above continued in the original text, going on to reference a manna-like edible substance that fell from the sky over parts of Asia, this excerpt defines the essence of Charles Fort’s unique philosophy. While he was best known for being a collector and compiler of strange facts related to anomalous happenings, throughout his life and many written works, he boasted not only a curiosity for the unexplained with interest in documenting such happenings, but also exemplified a unique brand of rational thought that many of us could still benefit from studying today. And perhaps among the most important of all the lessons we could hope to gather from Fort, studying his writings makes it easy to see that the man never seemed to take himself too seriously.

This, of course, is quite an issue for those entrenched within the opposing worlds of science and religion. The debate between these two warring factions has raged for centuries already; ever since man first began to question the rationale behind his own superstitious leanings. Fort, of course, was no stranger to any of this, and seemed content to discount them both in equal measure, and with a bit of humor, of course:

“We hear much of the conflict between science and religion, but our conflict is with both of these. Science and religion always have agreed in opposing and suppressing the various witchcrafts. Now that religion is inglorious, one of the most fantastic of transferences of worships is that of glorifying science, as a beneficent being. It is the attributing of all that is of development, or of possible betterment to science. But no scientist has ever upheld a new idea, without bringing upon himself abuse from other scientists. Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done.”

Fort’s brand of humor and irony often gave him the appearance of the coy curmudgeon, commenting from the sidelines–but never waving his arms in doing so–with an almost libertarian approach to the notion that any and all knowledge or data should be contemplated fairly and evenly, and in the absence of gross cultural stagnation. He equally went after the various scientific establishments of his day, whether they be Einsteinian Relativity, or Darwinist Evolution, and chose to question all, giving the entirety of his intellect to none.

However, Fort’s treatment of what he called magic is where the man’s own acceptance (perhaps not quite yet having evolved into full blown belief) of strange phenomenon became most apparent. “I knew a magician,” he wrote in Wild Talents (1932). “I was a witness of a performance that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic.” Indeed, Fort’s longing for reconciliation between the known tangibility of reality, and the disparate qualities of the unexplained, caused him to evoke the notion of “magic” on many occasions, as though struggling for a way to convey the impossible, and yet to do so with terminology that would clearly and effectively disseminate his own feelings.

“My general expression is that all human beings who can do anything; and dogs that track unseen quarry, and homing pigeons, and bird-charming snakes, and caterpillars who transform into butterflies, are magicians. … Considering modern data, it is likely that many of the fakirs of the past, who are now known as saints, did, or to some degree did, perform the miracles that have been attributed to them. Miracles, or stunts, that were in accord with the dominant power of the period were fostered, and miracles that conflicted with, or that did not contribute to, the glory of the Church, were discouraged, or were savagely suppressed. There could be no development of mechanical, chemical, or electric miracles — And that, in the succeeding age of Materialism — or call it the Industrial Era — there is the same state of subservience to a dominant, so that young men are trained to the glory of the job, and dream and invent in fields that are likely to interest stockholders, and are schooled into thinking that all magics, except their own industrial magics, are fakes, superstitions, or newspaper yarns.” – From Wild Talents, 1932. 

Indeed, the essence of Fort’s understanding of the world around him, and thus all he might have hoped to achieve through his pursuit of the strange and unusual, seemed to culminate in the curiosity surrounding concealed and misunderstood powers that shock and amaze the masses. What else could one call a telepathic feat, for instance, other than “magic?” While some may dispute this, the very definition of “magic” can be summed up as follows: the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces. Indeed, mental feats such as telepathy and other psychic prowess would certainly seem to fall within this justification, if only by definition alone; Fort seemed to employ this definition to his benefit quite often, in attempting to disseminate and discover the mysteries of our time.

But always careful not to give himself entirely to any single thought or expression, Fort also was wise enough to sever his ties to the direct human elements involved in so much of his own research; in likelihood, he would have included his own earthy perspectives a part of this greater body of “humanity” through which perceiving the unusual can tend to get cloudy. “My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things,” he wrote in 1932. “I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences” While this statement seems to clarify parallels with the Jungian notion of synchronicity, it also illuminates somewhat Fort’s own thought processes regarding the greater body of the scientifically anomalous, and their relation to our perception of reality as people. “Things,” as he said, did not interest him so much, though the relations of those things bore the very essence of reality.

Stopping to ponder this for a moment, indeed we often allow ourselves to get caught up and even preoccupied with the “things” themselves when it comes to studying the unexplained; far less often are we willing to try to interpret the data such “things” represent, and hope to gather and learn from the implications thereof. If we are to gather anything from Fort’s writing and philosophy, perhaps it is this: focus less on those great and gaudy “things.” Though they comprise the essence of what we, as researchers of the unexplained, might hope to document and understand, preoccupation with them only serves to distract us to the subtleties that tie them to our own existence.

Indeed, Mr. Fort was far wiser than the conventions of his day would seem to allow; and thus today, we may yet stand to gain from giving a few of his stark and ponderous old ideas more than a mere passing glance.

One of the most bizarre, not to mention flat out terrifying, mysteries of the modern age concerns the enigmatic deaths of nine Russian mountaineers whose cross-country skiing trip ended in a tragedy so ghastly and perplexing that it has mystified experts for over half a century.

Excursions into nature can be serene for some and exhilarating for others, but for an unfortunate few these sojourns into the untouched wilds of our world can be tragic. Still other such journeys into the unknown end in such unfathomably frightening circumstances that they become the stuff of legend. Such is the destiny that befell nine ill-fated skiing enthusiasts in the late 1950s.

Unlike so many of the most intriguing mysteries of the 20^th Century — including the fate of the crew of the Ourang Medan or the whereabouts of the missing Anjikuni Villagers of Canada — What makes the so-called “Dyatlov Pass Incident” so fascinating is the fact that there is absolutely no doubt that these events actually occurred… and dreadfully little doubt that one of the last sensations experienced by these poor souls was one of abject terror.

The proof of this tragedy exists not only in the plethora of photographs that have been preserved, but also in the extensive records (many of which are still allegedly classified) of the Soviet military who investigated the odd case and were manifestly unable to reach any definitive conclusions despite an overwhelming amount of physical evidence. In fact, the investigators tasked with solving this case were eventually forced to attribute the whole peculiar affair to: “a compelling unknown force.”

But, before we go any further; like any good mystery we must begin at the beginning…

TEN LITTLE SKIERS

On January 25, 1959, one ski instructor, three engineers and seven students from the former Soviet Union’s Ural Polytechnic Institute, located in the city then known as Sverdlovsk, boarded a train and embarked on a journey to the nearby Otorten Mountain range, which is nestled in the northern Urals, for a strenuous cross-country skiing expedition.

The leader of the excursion was an enthusiastic 23 year-old by the name of Igor Dyatlov — for whom the notorious Pass would eventually be named — who had assembled a crack team of male and female skiers with the intention that this arduous trip would serve as a training exercise for a future expedition to the more difficult and treacherous Arctic regions.

As the group of seasoned skiers left the train station and hopped a truck headed toward their very own “Alpine in the Urals,” one of the team members, Yury Yudin, fell ill and was forced to remain behind at the settlement of Vizhai, which was the last outpost before the Otorten range.

Yudin hugged his comrades goodbye and with envy watched them leave… scarcely could he imagine at the time that he would the lucky one.

Later in life Yudin would claim that the one thing that had haunted him the most over the years was not being able to discover what kind of diabolical force stole the lives of his friends; a fate he would have shared were it not for his unexpected illness. According to Yudin:

 “If I had a chance to ask God just one question, it would be, ‘What really happened to my friends that night?’”

Two day after embarking on their adventure, the nine remaining athletes — including engineers Rustem Slobodin, Georgyi Krivonischenko and Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel, as well as students Yuri Doroshenko, Zinaida Kolmogorova, Lyudmila Dubinina and ski instructor and guide, Alexander Zolotarev — all followed Dyatlov toward the first stop on their long and grueling journey, the Gora Otorten mountain.

The date was January 28, 1959. The team would never make it to their destination… and none of them would ever be seen alive again.

THE SEARCH BEGINS

On February 11, 1959, The Dyatlov Ski Team was supposed to arrive in Vizhai. Among their first orders of business, following a hot meal and a stiff drink, were to send their loved ones telegrams announcing the success of their mission.

When no telegrams were received, most of the team’s family members were not concerned, realizing that journeys like this rarely end on schedule, but when over a week went by with no word from the skiers, their relatives began to demand that the Ural Polytechnic Institute organize a search and rescue operation, which they did posthaste.

Within days it became clear that the institute’s ground based initiative would not be able to produce any results on their own and that was when both military and civilian authorities got involved in the search.  Military planes and helicopters were swiftly dispatched to the area and it was on February 25, that a pilot first spotted something curious on a mountainside below.

A MYSTERY IS BORN:

The next day the search party — including fellow Polytechnic student Mikhail Sharavin — made their way up to an abandoned encampment on the eastern slope of a mountain listed as “1079.”

The foreboding peak is better known to the indigenous Mansi tribesmen as “Kholat Syakhl,” which (prophetically perhaps) translates from their native tongue as the “Mountain of the Dead.”

The would-be rescuers discovered a badly damaged tent and a plethora of footprints made by what appeared to be at least eight different people radiating out from the devastated tent. Sharavin then described the state of the large tent that the skiers all shared:

“We discovered that the tent was half torn down and covered with snow. It was empty, and all the group’s belongings and shoes had been left behind.”

The search party members quickly realized that the tracks consisted of either bare or sock clad feet and, in one case, a single shoe. Two sets of prints led down a slope toward a densely forested area, but the tracks were covered by snow roughly 1,500 feet away from the tent.

Sharavin followed the trail and found the remains of a fire beneath a looming, ancient pine… and with it something much worse.

Near the long dead fire were the frozen remains of team members Doroshenko and Krivonischenko. The searchers noted with utter bewilderment that even though the men were well within range of the now ravaged tent both men were naked and shoeless, save for their underwear. The investigators also saw that the branches of the old pine had been snapped off up to a height of almost 15-feet.

Forensic tests later confirmed that traces of skin were found embedded in the bark, indicating that the pair had frantically attempted to climb the tree, snapping off branches until their hands were mass of pulpy flesh.

At this point the searchers no doubt began to wonder what manner of “beast” could scare these men so much that they abandoned their clothes, despite the freezing cold, and tore the skin from their palms in a desperate attempt to get to safety. The fact that there were no evident animal tracks and that they had the time to try and start a fire, combined with the fact that the bodies of the men remained untouched only heighted the searchers puzzlement.

Not long after the party found the bodies of Doroshenko and Krivonischenko, they stumbled across the corpse of team leader Dyatlov nearly 900-feet away from the other cadavers, but somewhat closer to the tent. Dyatlov was on his back; one hand was clinging to an undersized birch tree branch while his other hand, locked in ice and rigor mortis, appeared to be protecting his head from some unknown assailant.

Half buried in the snow not far from the tent was the body of Rustem Slobodin, which rescuers found lying face down in the snow. Slobodin’s skull bore a deep fracture nearly 7-inches long; nevertheless medical experts later determined that the most likely cause death was hypothermia, which only compounded the befuddlement of the volunteer and military search party participants.

The carcass of Zinaida Kolmogorov was turned up the furthest away from the group. Traces of blood were found near her corpse, yet it was not revealed if she was its source, although that conclusion would seem likely. The rescuers could not understand why there was no evidence of a struggle.

The party continued their efforts to locate the rest of the team, but a lengthy search for the remaining members turned up nothing. The men on the site could not comprehend why a group of experienced skiers would dash half-naked into the bitter cold of the forest in the black of night. Nor could they fathom the kind of terror that must have inspired these young people to act so recklessly.

Even more perplexing was the fact that the searchers, after inspecting the severely damaged tent, came to the conclusion that the material had been torn from the inside, as if its occupants had been frantic to escape from something that was already sealed in the tent with them or were in such a rush that unclasping the tent from the inside was not an option!

Amidst the broken wood, shredded canvas and debris of the ravaged tent, investigators discovered rolls of undeveloped film and the journals of a few of the expedition members, but rather than helping to illuminate the truth, these finds would only add more layers to this already dense mystery.

MAY 4, 1959:

After two months of fruitless searching, the spring thaw finally set in and the weather let up enough to reveal the corpses of the missing team members in a ravine situated some 225-feet from the pine that served as an arboreal memorial to Doroshenko and Krivonischenko.

The four lost skiers — instructor Alexander Zolotaryov, engineer Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel and students Alexander Kolevatov and Ludmila Dubinina — were discovered buried beneath 12-feet of snow and ice. All had apparently succumbed to brutal internal injuries. Unlike their friends who had perished above, these victims were all fully dressed.

As in the case of Slobodin, Thibeaux -Brignollel’s skull showed evidence of having been struck by a heavy object. Zolotarev and Dubunina’s chests had been crushed inward, shattering several ribs and causing massive internal damage. Strangely there were no indications of what may have caused this severe trauma and, even more bizarrely, the corpses showed no signs of bruising or soft tissue damage.

Doctor Boris Vozrozhdenny, who inspected the bodies, stated that the force with which these corpses were hit exceeded that capable by man and went on to claim that the damage: “…was equal to the effect of a car crash.”

The searchers were startled to observe that Dubinina’s head was tilted back; her stretched mouth wide as if emitting a silent scream. Upon closer inspection the rescuers realized that her tongue had been ripped out by the root.

They also noted that at some point these poor individuals had either exchanged or stolen the clothing off their comrades as Dubinina’s foot was swaddled in a tattered piece of Krivonishenko’s wool pants and Zolotaryov was found wearing Dubinina’s faux fur hat and coat. The searchers were unsure if this was the result of dressing too swiftly in a dark tent or a case of scavenging articles of clothing from deceased teammates.

At the funerals that soon followed the discovery of the bodies, many family members claimed that the skin of the deceased bore an unnatural orange color and, even more disturbingly, most reports insisted that their hair had lost its pigmentation and was a dull shade of grey. Skeptics claim that the orange skin was caused by exposure and that the hair had not lost its color, but it’s interesting that so many of the bereaved relatives took the time to notice these strange features.

As if all of this were not odd enough, some of the articles of clothing found on the bodies were measured as emitting higher than normal levels of radiation.

THE INVESTIGATION:

The compounding enigmas surrounding this fantastic case, combined with the youth and popularity of the victims, sent Soviet investigators into overdrive.

The first thing they did was to try and reconstruct the series of events that led to the Dyatlov Ski Teams shocking demise with the help of the journals and film rolls discovered at the scene.

The primary mystery that faced them was why Dyatlov and his team would have chosen to make camp on an exposed mountain face when a detour of less than a mile would have afforded them some shelter from the harsh Russian elements.

It would be Yudin — the only team member to survive thanks to a timely illness — who would shed light on this question:

“Dyatlov probably did not want to lose the distance they had covered, or he decided to practice camping on the mountain slope.”

The photos developed from the rolls of film found in the tent revealed that the expedition members had set up camp on February 2, at approximately 5:00 pm. on the slope of Kholat-Syakhl, in order to get out of the inclement weather. The group had cleared the tree line and was a mere 10-miles from the first destination on their long trek, Gora Otorten. In the photos they all looked healthy and jovial.

Investigators came to the conclusion that sometime around 7:00 pm. the team ate a meal and not long thereafter members began to settle down for the night. The temperature on the slope was less than five degrees Fahrenheit, which has always made investigators wonder why it was that so many of the skiers were in a state of undress. Whatever their reasons may have been, most researchers agree that at this point everything was relatively normal.

Forensic pathologists later estimated that the events which ultimately led to the untimely deaths of the skiers must have occurred somewhere between 9.30 and 11.30pm. They based this speculation on the undigested food found in the stomachs of the victims. At this point military investigators began piecing this puzzle together to the best of their ability. What follows is, in their best estimation, what occurred:

THE TIMELINE OF A TRAGEDY:

The investigators speculated that sometime before midnight on February 2, the skiers were frightened by an “unknown event.” Members of the team managed to cut or rip through the fabric of the tent in a frantic attempt to escape whatever might have been attacking or approaching them and in their haste they burst out into the icy night mostly unclothed and in a state of sheer panic.

Being experienced skiers and mountaineers, the group must have been fully aware of the fact that they would not be able to survive long in the frigid wastes without protection. This indicated to the investigators that the team must have been convinced that they were facing mortal peril and had opted to flee for their lives.

The generally bare tracks found in the deep snow implied that the team had initially scrambled outward in all directions, but that they managed to rejoin one another down the incline about 900-feet away from the now shredded tent. Investigators then surmised that the group then huddled for safety beneath the large pine that Doroshenko and Krivonischenko tried so desperately to climb.

At this point the investigators speculated that an attempt was made by teammates to share clothes, but the states of undress that so many of the victims were found in would seem to indicate otherwise. Still the evidence suggests that the group, obviously terrified by the prospect of returning to their tent, manage to gather enough kindling to start a fire.

The agents on the case then begin to wonder of if Doroshenko and Krivonischenko’s efforts to climb the tree were a futile attempt at escape or if they might have been trying to gain a better vantage point to see if their tent, which was much higher up on the slope, was still under siege by whatever unknown menace had compelled them to take flight.

At some point during the night investigators proposed that Doroshenko and Krivonischenko likely had succumbed to exposure. It was then that three members of the team — Kolmogorova, Slobodin and Dyatlov — determined that braving whatever it was that had apparently infested the tent was preferable to dying of hypothermia. Resolute (and almost certainly terrified) the exhausted trio attempted to make their way back up the slope — none of them would make it.

With their young leader out of sight one can only assume that the remaining team members Zolotaryov, Thibeaux-Brignollel, Kolevatov and Dubinina hoped for the best, but expected the worst. Likely terrified beyond belief the four remain survivors strip whatever they can from the corpses of their comrades… and almost certainly pray for daylight.

Fearing that their friends are all dead, investigators hypothesized that Zolotaryov, Thibeaux-Brignollel, Kolevatov and Dubinina decided to move nearer to the forest in hopes of finding some kind of shelter. Somewhere along this journey and eventual descent into a nearby ravine the remaining teammates would sustain their fatal internal injuries, but investigators could not find an obvious cause.

The first to perish, according to forensics reports, was Thibeaux-Brignollel. Within hours he was followed by Kolevatov and Dubinina. Zolotarev would be the last to expire from a combination of internal trauma and hypothermia. It was not clear if the removal of Dubinina’s tongue occurred postmortem or if it contributed to her demise.

When all was said and done, the final survivor died less than eight hours after the initial event. As with everything else in this case, the discovery of the missing team members offered more questions than answers, and the most important one was…

WHAT HAPPENED?

While investigators were able to piece together much of what happened that terrible evening from the physical evidence left at the scene, the primary questions remained unanswered; firstly what could have possibly have frightened these athlete caliber skiers so badly that they were willing to freeze to death rather than confront it… and secondly, what (if anything) lethally injured the remaining survivors?

Despite the popularity of the region, for 3-years following this harrowing event the pass was closed to outdoorsmen, hikers and skiers. This was, presumably, to avert the same terrifying fate from befalling anyone else.

This proves how seriously authorities took this case, but after months of dead ends and disappointments the case was closed and the files were sent to what many allege was a clandestine Soviet archive, but even though the final official word on the event was that the skiers fell to: “a compelling unknown force,” that does not mean that there weren’t plenty of theories floating around. The first supposition that the investigators proposed was that they were murdered by…

MANSI WARRIORS… AND GHOSTS:

The first theory offered up as grist for the rumor mill regarding the fates of the nine skiers was that they had unintentionally run afoul of some Mansi tribesman by trespassing into their territory and that these legendarily harsh Siberian natives had dispatched them accordingly. The theory goes something like this…

Mansi natives enraged by the intrusion of the team tear their way into the communal tent and force the mostly disrobed skiers down the slope, where they build a fire.  After Doroshenko and Krivonischenko perish, Dyatlov, Slobodin and Kolmogorova desperately try and make their way toward what’s left of their tent. Slobodin’s skull is crushed by the butt of a rifle or some other heavy object, knocking him cold. He and his friends then succumb to the elements.

Following the deaths of their compatriots, Zolotaryov, Thibeaux-Brignollel, Kolevatov and Dubinina are compelled to balance on the steep precipice of the ravine wherein their bodies were found the following spring. Thibeaux-Brignollel is wounded with perhaps the same blunt instrument that claimed Slobodin’s  life and Dubinina’s screams prove to be so annoying that one of the Mansi throws her to the ground, breaks her ribs with his knee and forcibly removes her tongue to prevent her from shrieking.

They are both thrown into the ravine, followed by Zolotarev and Alexander Kolevatov. At this point the Mansi leave the interlopers for dead… or so this admittedly dubious theory goes anyway.

Military investigators were swift to dispel this rumor, stating that the damage done to the corpses were inconsistent with an attack by a human being. Some modern day researchers have suggested that the Soviets may have concealed evidence of a Mansi attack in order to avoid a distracting and potentially costly confrontation with the Mansi on their own oil rich soil, which they hoped to exploit.

To even the armchair investigator — a clan of which I am a proud member — it would seem that the total absence of bullet wounds in the victims, combined with the utter lack of footprints, essentially rules out the Mansi as potential suspects in this heinous crime.Add to this the fact that the groups’ provisions were left untouched and we can all but totally dismiss the circumstantial case again these aboriginal hunters

As if that weren’t enough evidence to exonerate these native Siberians, there is conclusive proof that the Mansi assisted in the hunt for the missing skiers. Regardless of how sound the Soviet’s motivation may have been for covering up a Mansi attack, the evidence simply does not bear out this hypothesis.

Intriguingly, Mansi legend has it that Kholat-Syakhl received it’s ominous name after nine Mansi warriors had mysteriously perished on the same peak years before. This has led some investigators to surmise that the region might be cursed or infested by ancient and malicious spirits, but for the most part the mountain was not considered to be a particularly sacred region by the Mansi.

So if we rule out the indigenous human culprits as well as undead ones, then perhaps we should (like so many before us) look to the skies and wonder whether or not the Dyatlov Team might have fallen prey to an…

ALIEN ATTACK:

Like all classic 20^th Century mysteries involving groups of missing persons or enigmatic deaths, someone, somewhere is bound to blame strange flying saucers and their insidious occupants for the crime and this case proved to be no different.

According to archived reports, Lev Ivanov, the lead Soviet investigator on the case, collected a report from a group of hikers suggesting that something extraterrestrial might have resulted in the Dyatlov Team’s tragic demise.

The hikers were camping in an area about 32-miles south of Kholat-Syakhl on the night in question when they spied a series of “strange orange spheres” in the northern sky.  It’s worth noting that during the next month and a half other residents of the area report similar anomalous aerial phenomenon.

Ivanov himself believed that these spheres might have been involved with the unusual deaths. In a 1990 interview, Ivanov claimed that he had been ordered to close the case and classify the findings as secret.

He stated that officials were worried that reports of U.F.O.s in the area by multiple eyewitnesses — including members of both the military and weather service — could result in some unnecessary speculation. In an interview with a small Soviet newspaper, Ivanov was alleged to have stated:

“I suspected at the time, and am almost sure now, that these bright flying spheres had a direct connection to the group’s death.”

Ivanov speculated that one of the skiers might have spotted the U.F.O.s and that his or her cries might have panicked the other team members into rushing out just as one of the vehicles exploded above, sending them all fleeing in terror. He even speculated that the concussive blast may be what had cracked Slobodin’s skull. I feel compelled to add that the removal of the tongue is one of the most common features in cattle mutilations, but that seems to be a sketchy link at best.

Other “evidence” that researchers claim is evidence of alien interaction is the allegedly orange flesh and grey hair found on the victims — a point which is hotly debated — and the fact that some of the team members were wearing clothes contaminated with a low level of radiation.

While it’s certainly impressive that the head of the Dyatlov investigation supported this theory, and the anomalous radiation readings are intriguing, it seems as if we might be yet again casting unwarranted aspersions upon our intergalactic brethren. While there can be little doubt that there was some kind of bizarre object soaring in the skies above the Urals that night, perhaps it was not from out of this world, but an all too terrestrial…

MILITARY EXPERIMENT GONE AWRY:

This conjecture supposes that the Soviet government was conducting a highly classified test of an unknown weapon on the secluded slopes of Kholat-Syakhl and that — either by intention or accident — the ski team fell prey to this monstrously powerful weapon.

One of the biggest proponents of this theory was the only surviving member of the team, Yudin. Yudin believed that his friends inadvertently entered a covert military testing ground and had paid for it with their lives. He speculated that this was why the military had been so secretive about the investigation and that it also explained his comrades’ irradiated clothing.

After all of the evidence had been collected, the searchers asked for Yudin’s help in identifying who the objects found at the site belonged to. He said that he saw in the mix of his friend’s possessions a torn swathe of fabric that resembled a piece of a soldier’s coat as well as a pair of glasses and skis that had not belonged to any of the team members.

This proof — combined with the fact that Yudin testified to seeing documents that indicated the actual investigation had begun two weeks before the camp’s “official” discovery — compelled him to claim that the military had discovered the camp before the volunteer search party arrived. Yudin also claimed that he knew for a fact that: “there were special boxes with their organs sent for examination,” but this was not reflected in any of the papers that were released.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that the search party found no indication on any explosion on or near the campsite at Kholat-Syakhl. There is also no record of any missile launches in the region, but even in the 21^st Century records of clandestine Soviet military operations are still few and far between.

But if we’re dealing with a hazardous unidentified weapon there’s no reason to assume it was explosive. Perhaps there was a bacteriological or chemical spray released that resulted in their panic and eventual demise. A few have even suggested, due to the haphazard method they used in building the fire, that they were blinded by a bright flash, but most researchers do not agree with this assumption

There are also some who believe that it might have been some kind of experimental sonic weapon that employed Infrasound, which has been known to cause feelings from dread to outright panic in humans. Since this sound is inaudible in a classic sense, many people who have been subjected to Infrasound experiments claim to feel that some manner of paranormal force is at work.

This would frankly explain a lot, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s absolutely no proof to support this assumption. Bringing this back down to Earth… literally… there are those who feel that the team may well have surrendered to…

AVALANCHE PARANOIA:

The eastern face of Kholat-Syakhl is a potentially disastrous avalanche zone and while these intrepid mountaineers chose to brave the slope rather than retreat to the safety of the forest, it seems indubitable that they were keeping one ear open for any tell tale signs of an avalanche.

While there is no evidence supporting the theory that the skiers were caught in even a small avalanche, there are a few who suspect that they might have heard a strange rumbling sound during the night, which led them to believe an avalanche was imminent and in their haste to escape they cut their tent and ran half-naked into the 3-foot deep snow drifts.

While this is a distinct possibility, one would envision that the manifest lack of falling rocks and snow would be enough to compel the team to return to their torn tent to patch it up and bundle up in the clothing they left behind. Investigators have reported that the base of the pine tree where the group gathered was just out of sight of the tent, but I find it difficult to imagine that these seasoned skiers would run that far and never look behind them.

Beyond that, “avalanche panic” doesn’t account for the extensive injuries suffered by so many team members. Still, the one element of this mystery that is universally agreed upon is that the frenetic condition in which the  team members ripped, then abandoned their tent indicates that they were genuinely afraid. The biggest question has always been “what caused this fear?” and some have suggested that the Dyatlov crew might of had a nasty run-in with a…

VICIOUS SIBERIAN YETI:

Although the evidence for this supposition is scant to say the least, there are some who have proposed that the skiers fell victim to the notoriously territorial wild man of Siberia, known to locals as the Almas. They speculate that the terrifying roar of the beast might have sent the team into a panic, resulting in their poorly prepared escape into the snow.

The two primary reasons for the existence of this theory are the seemingly inexplicable impact wounds found on the skulls and torsos of nearly half of the corpses and an as yet unverified piece of paper that was allegedly discovered near the campsite which read:

“From now on we know there are snowmen.”

While the crypto-dork in me salivates at the idea of lumbering, ape-like beasts dwelling in the dark and forested nether regions of our ever shrinking world, the evidence in this case simply does not support the involvement of hairy hominids. The first and most obvious point is that amidst all the manmade tracks that the searchers found, there is no way a pair of gargantuan, bare prints would have gone undetected.

Secondly, while a punch from a Bigfoot-like beast could most assuredly shatter ones ribcage, why would these commonly gentle giants choose to attack some in the group, while allowing others to succumb to the elements? It might be suggested that they were hurling large rocks from a distance, as these creatures are sometimes known to do, but if that were the case then where was the debris when the searchers arrived? Finally the existence of the note itself is highly debatable and most researchers dismiss the entire theory. I’m inclined to agree.

A LEGEND IS BORN

In 1967, journalist Yuri Yarovoi wrote a novel about this enduring mystery titled: “Of the highest rank of complexity.” Yarovoi had served as the official photographer for the Dyatlov Ski Team search party, so he was privy to inside information. Nevertheless, many modern investigators think that due to the fact that the book was published in an era when Cold War tensions were running high and secrecy was the rule rather than the exception, the likelihood that this book told the full story was not very good.

Regardless of how revealing Yarovoi’s book may actually have been — and he conceded that it was a “dramatization” of the actual events, with a much more happy ending — it did manage to lay the groundwork for the legend that would eventually creep its way past the Iron Curtain and into the outside world.

Yarovoi’s colleagues would later reveal that he had written alternative (and ostensibly more authentic) versions of the novel, but his first two attempts were scratched by Soviet censorship. Sadly, following Yarovoi’s death in 1980, his photos, diaries and manuscripts were, conveniently perhaps, lost.

In 1990, author Anatoly Guschin had been granted “special permission” to study the original files of the Dyatlov inquest for a book he wanted to write about the incident. He later reported that scores of pages had been removed from the files, including an “envelope” mentioned in the evidence list. What this envelope was supposed to contain (or if it ever really existed) remains just one of the many mysteries surrounding these events.

In his book: “The price of state secrets is nine lives,” Guschin speculated that the team had fallen victim to a “Soviet secret weapon experiment.” While his theory was just as controversial as the rest, Guschin’s reintroduced this mystery to a brand new generation of curiosity seekers and the floodgates were thrown open with literally hundreds of articles and documentaries following in its wake, including a 2011 segment on the History Channel’s hit program “Ancient Aliens.”

CONCLUSION

So what really happened to these nine poor souls? For over half a century forensics experts, scientists, military officials and amateur investigators have scratched their collective heads over this eerie enigma… and it doesn’t seem as if any answers are forthcoming.

On February 2, 2008, an investigative conference was organized by Ural State Technical University and the Dyatlov Foundation. The six surviving members of the original search party as well as 31 technical experts assembled in Yekaterinburg, Russia, to look at the evidence and determine the actual fate of the Dyatlov Ski Team. After much deliberation the panel concluded that their deaths were likely the unintended result of a secret military test. Needless to say there are many who disagree with this conclusion.

Regardless of the fact that the victims’ grey hair may be an exaggeration or that the radiation readings might be dismissed due to mild exposure to Radium or Radon in one of the Polytechnic Institute’s many laboratories, the fact is that nine experienced hikers were thrust into such a terrified state that they literally doomed themselves in an effort to escape a fate that they believed would be even more horrendous that freezing to death on an icy mountain slope… what could do that?

In the end we must never forget that this is first and foremost a tragedy in which nine young lives were tragically cut short, with little more than a memorial stone and a rusted plaque to commemorate the terrible loss. Almost as sad is the fact that none of their families were offered the dubious consolation of knowing why it was there loved ones had perished in such a frightening fashion.

There are many who would attribute this mystery to little more than a mundane series of unfortunate mishaps that resulted in nine sorrowful deaths, but these were experienced skiers and it seems unlikely that they would all follow such a foolhardy path. Now, despite generations of effort to debunk and demystify this extraordinary event, the “Dyatlov Pass Incident” remains one of the great mysteries of the 20^th Century…  and one of the most frightening true life campfire stories I’ve ever encountered.

It sounds like something right out of a horror film: strange growths of possible biological origin are discovered  around a nuclear waste site, but experts have no idea what they may be, let alone how anything could potentially grow so close to harmful radioactivity.

While it may sound like science fiction, this is the exact scenario that was outlined in a recent report filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, in response to the discovery of several submerged barrels containing radioactive substances at the Savannah River Site that were covered in a strange, cobweb-like “growth.”

According to the report, “The growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterized, but may be biological in nature.” An article recently featured in the Augusta Chronicle related that the odd material “was found among thousands of spent fuel assemblies submerged in deep pools within the site’s L Area.”

While this certainly sounds like the stuff of a well-spun H.P. Lovecraft story, the notion that certain life can exist within areas of the of Earth’s harshest extremities constitutes a rather fascinating branch of the natural sciences unto itself. Back in October of this year, I made reference to a remarkably similar sort of “extremophilia” among life forms, first discovered at none other than the famous site of the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine:

In 2007, researchers first discovered several varieties of black mold growing around the infamous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine; some of which were literally growing within the destroyed reactor. Samples were collected by robots, since the area still has potentially deadly levels of radioactivity, and researchers with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine began studying how the curious little fungi could survive in such a hostile environment. Incredibly, the molds were found to grow and absorb acetate faster in an environment when exposed to radiation 500 times higher than what are generally considered safe levels. Containing high levels of the pigment melanin, the molds were apparently capable of converting gamma radiation.

Quite obviously, we cannot discount the possibility that the Savannah “cobwebs” aren’t a similar sort of organism that is somehow immune to the otherwise deadly effects of exposure to radiation (and that, of course, is in the event that the the supposed organisms were in fact exposed to radiation, which has still yet to be confirmed at present). This also would show us that, while the existence of such an organism might be strange, it also has potential for being more common than we might initially have guessed.

Robert T. Gonzales, writing for i09.com, similarly noted that, “Organisms with a natural resistance to radiation are said to be “radioresistant,” and certainly do exist; Deinococcus radiodurans, for example, is not only one of the most naturally radioresistant organisms on Earth, we’ve actually genetically engineered Deinococcus that can be used in the treatment of radioactive waste.” It is a remarkable prospect, indeed, to consider how genetic manipulation of particular varieties of extremophiles could be used to deal with harmful substances, or to perform a variety of other beneficial duties that otherwise could be harmful to humans.

This kind of talk, of course, may end up having little or nothing to do with the proposed “Savannah River Spider Webs,” however; at least until results have shown conclusively that the alleged growths observed at the site are indeed biological in nature. With time, we’ll have our answers… but until then, this latest instance of the alleged discovery of an extreme organism will have to remain within the confines of our “what if” folder.

Author’s Note: This is the last in a three-part series about Dan Mitchell of Wisconsin, U.S.A., and his struggle to identify the entity that’s haunted him throughout his life – the Harlequin. (Read Part Two Here)

The description of the Harlequin – the shape of the face, eyes, mouth and thin, androgynous body – are similar to reports of the traditional “grey” alien. Councilman Adrian Hicks of Winchester, Hampshire, England, saw the Harlequin in February 2004 and is convinced the entity is extraterrestrial. Hicks walked down High Street at 1:30 p.m. on a Saturday when he saw a blonde-haired girl in a white ballet dress, but what set the girl off from the crowd was her walk. Hicks described the woman as a “humanoid” that walked “with a penguin-like gait,” and was taking keen interest in everyday objects, like a bank clock. “Most definitely an alien,” Hicks said. “I watched her for a very good eight minutes plus.”

Although the street was busy that winter day and Hicks reported someone taking pictures of her, no one else has come forth to say they saw the girl in the ballet costume, Andrew Napier, chief reporter of the Hampshire Chronicle, said. Napier was the first person to interview Hicks about his encounter. “Despite lots of publicity in the local papers and websites, no one has come forward to corroborate what Mr. Hicks said he saw,” Napier said.

However, the drawing made of the entity Hicks saw made an impression on Mitchell. “The likeness in his drawing was the spitting image of what we have here, the collar was identical,” Mitchell said. “I recall he said that someone got pictures of this thing. I’d pay to see those, I really would. Hopefully someone might know something or have a similar story in all of this. Time will tell. I’ve been taking my camera with me everywhere I go.”

Hilary Porter of BEAMS, the British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society, said she’s convinced Hicks saw an extraterrestrial. “I feel this is a real encounter and that he is an honest and sincere person,” Porter said. “It must have taken some courage to go public with this, even though others saw her, too.” Porter lives about 30 miles from the site of Hicks’ encounter, and the area is rife with paranormal occurrences. “It is an ancient place with prehistoric burial mounds,” she said. “There have been UFO cases and alien activity for Winchester down the years.”

Karen Totten, who grew up near St. Louis, Missouri, also saw a Harlequin-like entity in the 1970s and, like Hicks, she’s sure it was not of this earth. “I was 17. I was working in a small convenience store when a woman came in to buy cigarettes,” she said. “At first I didn’t pay any attention to her until I saw her hand when she handed me the money.” The woman was small, about five-feet-tall, and thin. But her hand was spindly, white and not like a human hand. Startled, Totten looked up and saw a pale human-like entity wearing a black raincoat with the collar turned up to cover her neck. The entity’s heavy, long wig covered her ears and most of her face, and it wore large black “Jackie O” sunglasses. “This did not entirely hide her strange face,” Totten said. “(She had) a very pointed chin, scant lip and nose. She did not speak.”

The entity took the cigarettes she’d paid for and left. “I was kinda stunned,” Totten said. “Her head was not overly large in comparison to her body, but other details, like her hand, her facial features, were not human looking.”

The Harlequin next door

When Dan Mitchell and his wife moved from their southern Wisconsin three-bedroom townhouse, they kept in touch with their neighbors. In 2010, when Mitchell’s wife called to announce they were moving back into the townhouse in early March, she found someone had been looking for them. “The woman who lives there with her husband she says that her and her husband were up watching a movie (February 5),” Mitchell said. “She had a pizza in the oven and when the timer went off she goes into the kitchen to take it out.” Someone was waiting for her. “Once she gets to the kitchen she is horrified to see a strange woman standing in her kitchen,” Mitchell said. “She says that she knew she heard something, but thought it was the cats. It didn’t sound like the door even opened.” Mitchell’s neighbor said the woman in the kitchen looked like she was wearing a disguise. Blonde hair, big sunglasses, “and overall she was just weird looking.” She also held a key. “She says something like, ‘I have this key for the house next door (Mitchell’s townhouse). I tried it but it didn’t work. I have the wrong key because it opens (Mitchell’s neighbor’s) door,’” Mitchell said.

The couple demanded the woman leave, and she did. “They lock the door behind her and start to run around to the windows to see if she is getting into a car,” Mitchell said. “They wanted a license plate so they can tell the police.” But there was no car and the woman seemed to have disappeared. “They called the landlord and he came out to change the locks the next day,” Mitchell said. “The landlord says he never gave anybody the keys to the houses and has no idea how it could have happened.” The encounter has rattled Mitchell’s neighbor. “She tells me that she can’t sleep at night and wants to buy a big dog to have in the house after what happened,” Mitchell said. Mitchell is convinced this woman trying to get into his townhouse is the sexless, moon-eyed entity that’s plagued his life. “I am starting to suspect that perhaps I am being tracked down,” he said. “I can’t say that there is anything malevolent going on around here, but there is something odd and disturbing.”

It is generational

The Harlequin isn’t finished with Dan Mitchell; it’s getting at Mitchell through is children. “While we were eating breakfast my daughter who just turned four said, ‘A guy came in my room last night and he got in my head,’” Mitchell said. “My heart sank a bit and I can’t know for certain that this means anything. My son has also made mention of someone coming out of the walls and playing with his pillow.” Although it’s sometimes difficult to interpret the words of a child, something about his children’s descriptions sound all too familiar. “In regard to my daughter, the way she said it reminded me of when I was a little kid telling my mom these things,” he said. “The whole ‘in my head’ thing really was reminiscent of the intuitive communication I had with this thing.”

Twenty-eight years after his encounters began, Mitchell is still trying to figure out what this entity is. “My thought is that whatever this thing is, it attempts to fit in, but can’t quite seem to figure things out,” Mitchell said. “In other words, it’s not intentionally trying to scare the dickens out of me, but it can’t fit into our culture for whatever reason. Of course I can’t be sure on any of this, these are just the impressions that I get.” Mitchell has been frightened by this entity, but has never felt threatened. However, now that the Harlequin may be visiting his children, that feeling may change.

The decision

Frustrated, afraid, panicked, desperate, Mitchell wanted answers more than anything. The only place to get them definitively was from the Harlequin itself. “My only curiosity is how exactly does one talk to it?” Mitchell said. “I am of the opinion that if I were to go out for a walk alone one night that I would be able to call it and see it, but to be very honest, the thought is incredibly terrifying.” Rabbi Albin said for Mitchell to rid himself of the Harlequin, that’s what he needs to do – talk with the entity. “This being is attached to this young man and has been for a long time,” Albin said. “His best action would be to try to contact the being and find out what the being wants. It would put his mind at ease and might end up with a friend he never expected.” So Mitchell did.

The meeting in the park

Dreams bombarded Mitchell’s sleep one night in late April 2010; powerful, vivid dreams – and they were telling him something. “The dreams were so profound that I felt as though I had been told to be at a certain location at a certain time, which was this morning (April 29, 2010) before sunrise,” Mitchell said. “Against my own better judgment, I decided to go there while having the impression that nothing at all would happen, and the whole affair would be little more than a wild goose chase at best. I was profoundly wrong.” Mitchell walked out of his house before the sun crawled over the horizon, drove to a park with a playground near his house, and sat on the bench his dreams instructed him to sit on. He took nothing special with him; no cell phone, no camera, no audio recorder, and no weapons. However, as a precaution he taped his driver’s license to his leg in case his wife had to identify his remains. “That is how concerned I became before I left my house,” Mitchell said. “I was so anxious about this meeting that my hands were shaking.”

After sitting on the bench for about 10 minutes, Mitchell realized he wasn’t alone. “I felt that I had made a grave mistake by even showing up,” he said. “It was clear that my mind was not sufficiently prepared for the event.” A tingling grew in the back of his head as if something almost physical was pushing itself into his mind, something that began to swim there. “At that point I distinctly heard a voice say, ‘Do you remember when we used to dance and sing together, Danny?’” Mitchell said. “My heart dropped utterly because it was clear there was a presence right behind the bench I was sitting in. I have never heard a voice so incredibly rich, while possessing no accent or blemish of any kind. As nice as that may sound, this didn’t make this experience seem any less terrifying.” The thing behind him was the Harlequin. “There is no doubt in my mind of this,” Mitchell said. “I was solidly frozen in absolute terror. How I managed to not piss myself is a mystery.”

Mitchell turned his head only slightly and made out the Harlequin’s thin form standing less than ten feet behind him. “It was just as I always remembered it, it was not a ‘grey’ or any other such being,” he said. “It was an old androgynous human-like being that still possessed the features of a child with that typical shocked look upon its face.” But unlike the thing he had always remembered, it didn’t call itself the Tooth Fairy. It gave Mitchell a hint at what it is. “It became clear almost immediately that I entered into the mind of something that exists so far beyond humanity that not even in my most profound moments of despair or spiritual elation, have I ever experienced anything like it,” Mitchell said. “It has a certain animal nature to it even though it is far above the animal kingdom in respect to its self-awareness. I am convinced that it has the potential to destroy the world if it wished.” Mitchell sensed no human morals, no human sympathy in this ancient entity. “This type of being operates by an entirely different set of rules, rules that transcend morality in ways we don’t understand,” he said. “At the same time, as nonsensical as it may sound, there was a genuine care that it had for me this morning. Even though I was completely terrified, and was possibly screaming, ‘Please don’t kill me,’ as I was running to my car, it became obvious to me that it felt a horrible sorrow at my response to what it was. It was as if I had rejected it completely.”

Mitchell’s meeting with the Harlequin lasted only about 20 minutes, but during that meeting he garnered the creature had once been human, but transcended its humanity out of sheer will. “It communicated things I did not want to know or even believe in. It revealed to me how my own view on life, and my reliance upon traditionalism as a worldview, was laughable at best,” Mitchell said. “This bothers me partially because it is almost like saying, there is no God, that idea is a delusion. Quite honestly it’s blown my fucking mind in ways I can barely express.”

Mitchell also got the impression there are more Harlequins out there, watching humanity from the shadows, lurking in the corners of our lives. “They are disguising themselves as homeless people, I am sure of it,” he said. “They are hiding out and carrying out some kind of mission. I say this because on several occasions in my childhood, and in adulthood, she has presented herself to me in such a manner. I want to say that this shocked appearance on its face seems related to the trials it has been through.”

But something about this entity that has flitted about the periphery of Mitchell’s life, something devious, something dishonest, leads Mitchell to believe he’s been a pawn in a grand lie – a job he no longer wants. “There is still a large part of me that considers all of this a deception,” Mitchell said. “Sometimes it seems like the more we think and dwell on things, the more life and expression we give to ideas. That’s really a scary thought, I think. At this point it feels that I have the option to say, ‘No,’ and all of this strangeness will simply end.”

At least, that is Mitchell’s hope.

In the areas of cryptozoological interest to readers of this website, most accept that creatures like Bigfoot–supposing such an animal exists–is a biological, half human, half ape monstrosity said to exist in the remote wilds of the United States. In truth, reports of such creatures occur all over the world, with regional varieties existing in the folklore among cultures and traditions on nearly every continent, with the exception of Antarctica.

But one who examines closely the similarities between various cultural interpretations of the wild man myth will begin to notice a number of interesting trends, especially those stemming from more ancient interpretations of the alleged beasts. To be specific, one aspect that is often associated with reports of strange and enigmatic Fortean entities is the fact that their presence traditionally is concurrent with bad luck and misfortune, with such entities themselves acting as harbingers of unpleasant things to come.

I came across another instance of this sort of interpretation just last night, while I met with a journalist who, years ago, described having joined the Bigfoot Field Researcher’s Organization (BFRO) in the field on one of their investigations. During this outing, he described having a number of experiences where he was accosted by some unseen entity: large stones were being hurled at him from the forest nearby, which occurred in the middle of the night, along with an uncanny fear that overtook him. (My associate noted that, despite being an experienced outdoorsman who has escaped bear that stalked him while fly fishing and other perils of the wilderness, this was the most intense fear to which he had ever nearly succumbed). The experience ended up being transformational; while he doesn’t commit himself entirely to belief following the experiences (he never actually saw the alleged beast), he nonetheless feels that study of the creature–and perhaps more importantly, those who study it–now present an area of inescapable intrigue.

Following the events that lured him into the serious study of cryptozoology, my associate was able to pursue a number of stories shared by Cherokee natives on a reservation in Western North Carolina, who largely believed that while the creature was not a supernatural being (preferring instead the idea that these beasts are a sort of “lost tribe”), their presence does also seem to be associated with bad luck and misfortune. This reminds me of similar stories associated with certain Midwestern Native American tribes, who discuss a being called “Walking Sam” whose appearance seems to spark a higher incidence of teenage suicide.

A while back, I received the following email from Federal worker who first learned about “Walking Sam” from concerned locals at a tribal council meeting in South Dakota:

I work for the Federal Government and was at a tribal council meeting in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, a couple of years ago at which an elderly woman complained about Walking Sam, bad “spirit” that was causing teenagers to commit suicide. She wanted the Federal Government to do something about him! The physical description of what she described sounded like a Bigfoot-type of entity. I discussed it by email with Loren Coleman, who posted it on his blog. I’ve also described what I heard that day here. In any case, it is fascinating to speculate about what Walking Sam might be.  I’m just curious what you might know.

Indeed, I found this to be very interesting, and while the “Walking Sam” character is considered widely by many to be a cultural interpretation of a Bigfoot-type creature, there are a number of curious aspects to this character that should also be taken into consideration. For one, in addition to being very tall, Walking Sam is often said to appear wearing a “stovepipe hat” (honestly, this sort of description might fit Abraham Lincoln as easily as any Sasquatch). The fiend often makes his presence known by peering in people’s windows at them by cover of night, though the apparent reason for an increase in teenage suicide following his appearances is not clear. But one thing that is very apparent: the cultural motif that represents these entities as “bad luck beings” remains clear. Also, what is the significance of the top hat? Fellow Mysterious Universe author Jason Offut even devoted a portion of his book Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us to reports of such shadowy entities seen sporting similar headgear. Is this a similar cultural archetype that has become associated with popular conventions of nefarious villainry (i.e. Snidely Whiplash)?

Such parallels fall under the loose categorization of a concept I call “Fortean Folk Devils,” which I’ve described many times in the past in various mediums. For more on this, try looking at these articles detailing Beowulf’s Folk Devil, a thirteenth century wildman, a nineteenth century Folk Devil encounter, the infamous Grease Devils of Maylay culture, and even some of the more obvious links between creatures like Mothman and misfortune. Indeed, it seems that an entire host of cryptozoological and supernatural being appear to often represent doom and misfortune… it could even be argued that many reports of such creatures in the nearby vicinities of various disasters might provide a convenient sort of scapegoat for those affected. But this begs an entirely new question: do the beasts themselves cause disasters by virtue of their appearances alone, or are cultural perceptions of their presence built up steadily along with people’s internal need to find a “culprit” to point fingers at when they are struck with misfortune?

Author’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series about Dan Mitchell of Wisconsin, U.S.A., and his struggle to identify the entity that’s haunted him throughout his life – the Harlequin. (Read Part One Here)

Mitchell knows his father saw the Harlequin at least once – they were together when it happened. As Mitchell grew, the entity’s visits to his room stopped, but he knew the Harlequin hadn’t left him. In 1991, Mitchell, then 15, and his father were driving from the family’s cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin into the nearby town of Eagle River when they encountered someone on the road. “There (was) this steep hill we would drive down on our way into town,” Mitchell said. “Sometimes as we were driving, my dad would turn out the headlights on his truck as we flew down this hill. We were on our way into town one night when he did this.”

One night Mitchell’s father thought better of it and turned on the headlights and they saw someone walking up the hill. “When we got to the top of the hill in the truck, this guy was walking on the gravel road pushing a stroller,” Mitchell said. “Now, it was probably 9:30 at night, pitch black, and who would push a stroller in the pitch black?” As Mitchell’s father drove by the figure, Mitchell knew something was wrong. “I could tell this guy was hiding his face,” he said. “There was just something not right about it.” When the figure disappeared in the distance and darkness, Mitchell could feel they’d just driven by the Harlequin. “My Dad looked a little bothered by it as well,” Mitchell said. “But he didn’t say anything probably to keep me calm. I was really not wanting to go back to the cottage because it was headed that way.”

An elder god?

Many ancient cultures, such as the Hopi and Norse, tell of entities that resemble Mitchell’s Harlequin in appearance and behavior. Jack Lankhorst of Restoration, an organization designed to assist the Hopi people, has seen this entity. “Having worked with traditional Native Americans, I’ve encountered some interesting things,” he said. “The Hopi believe in a deity named Maasaw who welcomed them to this land at what is now Old Oraibi.” The Hopi consider Maasaw an all-powerful earth god responsible for the earth’s surface and of death, and Maasaw’s description is similar to Mitchell’s Harlequin. “His face has two large round eyes and a large round mouth with teeth,” Lankhorst said. ”After explaining to Hopi friends what I encountered on two different occasions they emphatically stated that it was Maasaw. However, I’m not saying that that is who (Mitchell) encountered.”

The Harlequin also resembles the prankster Loki from Norse mythology. Exorcist Rabbi Barry Albin, of Kansas City, Missouri, has encountered entities like Loki in his work and, although he does not believe the Harlequin to be Loki, he believes it is something similar. “In the last few years, I have spoken to several entities who are for lack of a better name ‘gods,’” Albin said. “They are the gods of old, the ones that the Hebrew and Christian bibles call demons. In reality, I am becoming more and more convinced that these entities are elementals.” These elementals are nearly immortal and much more powerful than humans. “They can do things that seem magical to humans,” Albin said. “In my experience with the three entities that I have dealt with, I am aware that they are proud, boastful, distressed over a lack of respect from humans, amoral, and capable of being dealt with.” But, Albin said, these “gods” also have copycats. “There is not just one Jupiter, Jove, Odin, etc., but many, one for each so-called pantheon,” he said. “The Trickster god of some American peoples is not unlike Loki of the Norse or the similar gods of African indigenous tribes.” Albin said Mitchell has probably attracted the attention of one of the copycats of Loki. “Loki often dressed as a harlequin or a court jester,” Albin said. “Court jesters are dressed in multi-colored clothes and appear as a clown. It fits more of what Loki probably does.”

Like Swope, Albin said the encounters might be attached to Mitchell’s family, and like Mitchell, Albin thinks Mitchell’s father has encountered the Harlequin. “It is not surprising things families cover up, things they don’t want to talk about,” he said. “There are many things that are hidden in families.”

The encounter in the car

Mitchell didn’t see the Harlequin again until 1994. “I ran into this same being years later,” he said. “I was driving with a few friends late at night on our way home from a party.” The young men saw a teenage girl walking in the street in front of the car, her movements strange and jerky. “We thought that maybe she was drunk,” Mitchell said. “Someone in the car thought it was a friend of theirs so we were going to pick her up and give her a ride home.” As they slowed to pull closer, the girl began to walk toward the car. As she closed to near 30 feet, Mitchell realized the person was wearing a bad wig. “My first impression was that it was a man dressed like a woman,” he said. “She looked incredibly angry and was making even jerkier movements that were almost threatening.”

One of Mitchell’s buddies whispered in fear. “Oh, my God,” the boy said. “Look at her eyes.” Mitchell knew those overly large, round eyes – they were the eyes of the Harlequin. “The guy riding shotgun with me wet his pants during the encounter,” Mitchell said. “My original thought was that he did it because he was horribly drunk, but I do remember he had sobered up pretty well by the time we even got into the car that night. It always seemed to me like an over reaction to this odd looking person outside the car.” Somebody in the car said, “floor it,” and Mitchell did, but the car didn’t move. “The car died and we were basically pulled out,” he said. “The next thing everybody remembers is being a mile down the street (back in the car) wondering how we made it there that quickly.” Everyone was terrified. “There was panic in that car,” he said. “I can tell you that every guy I dropped off that night made a mad dash to their front doors. I, unfortunately, had to drive back that way, but luckily didn’t see her again.”

He’s convinced the thing he and his friends saw that night was the Harlequin. “I got a pretty good look at her and I can tell you that it was obvious that she was trying to disguise herself,” he said. “It was the same face of perpetual shock, but this time it terrified me completely. I had the feeling that she was yelling at me for some reason. My honest impression that night was that this person was dead or simply not human.”

The Trickster

The Trickster character appears in cultures across the world. Although the Trickster is often depicted as an animal – the pig in Japan, fox in England and the coyote to the American Indian – the Trickster can also appear as a clown. The Trickster figure is usually selfish, gluttonous, lustful, and amoral. The Trickster also breaks the rules of nature or of the gods, and even changes genders at will. The late John Keel, author and paranormal researcher, applied the Trickster label to the entities common in UFO encounters.

Author and paranormal researcher Patricia Ress may have encountered one of these Tricksters appearing as the Harlequin while she was in graduate school. “I was at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and it was a lovely spring day,” she said. “My daughter and I were walking down the hill and as we passed a certain area, everything seemed a bit deserted.” But they soon found they were not alone. “A smallish figure, which I somehow knew was female, came up to us and mimed,” she said. The miming figure enthralled Ress’s three-year-old daughter and gave her something that tasted like fudge. “I assumed the Harlequin was one of my friends in the dramatic arts department probably catching up on her miming practice,” Ress said. “But as we continued on, when I looked back ‘she’ was gone.”

Laurie Smithmeyer of Topeka, Kansas, experienced something similar. Smithmeyer and a friend visited nearby Lawrence (home of the University of Kansas) for lunch and shopping in early 2000. “We both enjoy art and all types of cultural events so it was common for us to go hang out there, eat lunch and shop,” she said. They ate at the Free State Brewery, although they didn’t partake in Free State’s microbrews, and walked south down Massachusetts Street enjoying a late spring day.

Then they saw the woman. “We were approximately in front of an old bank that had been remade into a restaurant named Teller’s when we saw her,” Smithmeyer said. The person “seemed to be a female figure,” she said. The individual wore a short ruffled skirt, similar to a ballet tutu, and a vest that looked like a red, purple and black velvet bustier. The figure wore long gloves and tights; her hair a dark, unkempt, wild tangle. “Her clothing was oddly theatrical and reminded me of a carnival or circus in a way,” Smithmeyer said. “I recall dark eyes which may have been makeup or something. I did not get a very good look at her face at all, just a glimpse from the side.”

The figure went toward a park bench that sat across the sidewalk from the entrance to Teller’s Restaurant. “As we passed her on the sidewalk, I got the impression she was going to sit on the bench and we kept on walking,” Smithmeyer said. “As we got to the curb to cross the street, we both looked at each other and said, ‘Wow did you see that girl?’” The women both turned around to look at her and she was gone. “Gone from the bench, gone from the sidewalk, gone from the street,” Smithmeyer said. “She just disappeared. In the space of us taking three or four steps, on a bright sunny clear day, she had vanished. Not just from the bench but from the entire area.” Only a few people wandered the streets, so Smithmeyer is certain the figure couldn’t have gotten lost in a crowd. “The street is level with no changes in elevation or terrain that would make it hard to see her,” Smithmeyer said. “She was not on either side of the street. As far as we could see, she had disappeared.”

The women looked at each other and said, “Fae,” which means elf. “That was the impression we were left with,” Smithmeyer said. “We have both studied myth and folklore and are familiar with stories of the Sidhe (the elves of Ireland) and that was basically our feeling about that figure; unworldly and very strange.” Smithmeyer, who read the stories of Dan Mitchell’s Harlequin encounters at From the Shadows, thinks she and her friend saw the Harlequin. “Could this have been a Harlequin-type apparition?” she asked. “I remember the impression I had of the figure was not entirely human. She … it was just so bizarre and scary, ethereal at the same time. It is really hard to describe. The closest that comes is a fairy.”

Smithmeyer said she’s familiar with alternative cultures and this entity was not one of those. “This was way beyond anything a mere costume could be,” she said. “I have seen Goth people, street performance artists, and all kinds of role players and I am very familiar with that subculture, as is the friend that was with me. There was a quality of unearthliness about her that is hard to describe.”

Harlequin at the door

Mitchell and his family lived with his mother-in-law in a Milwaukee suburb briefly in 2009, just a few blocks from the house where he grew up – the house where he first experienced the Harlequin. When they moved in he found it was waiting for him. “I was helping my mother-in-law clean out her basement and organize a few things,” he said. “I woke up fairly early to get a head start on it before everybody started to wake up.”

Mitchell started working in the basement about 6:30 a.m. when he heard a noise from the top of the stairs. “Within the first 10 minutes of going downstairs to organize, I keep hearing a tapping noise coming from upstairs by the back door,” Mitchell said. “It sounds like someone was gently tapping the window of the back door.” At first he thought wind caused the sound, until it grew louder. “Almost instantly it goes from a tapping to some quick thuds on the door that just stop abruptly,” Mitchell said. “It sounded like someone was knocking rather desperately. I was actually pretty startled by it.”

Mitchell grabbed a piece of pipe for protection and slowly ascended the steps. “I get to the top of the stairs and notice that whoever was knocking on the door was walking away toward the alley,” he said. “I can only see this person from the back and my heart utterly sank. I knew immediately what I was looking at.” It was the Harlequin.

The entity walked from the door like a bad theater actor. It wore a blonde wig, black winter cap and reddish-pink pants, legs pulled to the knees revealing unnaturally pale skin. It also wore penny-loafers with no socks and a winter coat with ruffles sewn onto it. “For a brief second I thought maybe it was a homeless person, but there is just no way,” he said. “These things communicate they aren’t human just by their presence. I can’t describe this; you just can’t mistake it once you see it.”

The thin, sexless thing walked to the end of the sidewalk that cut through the back yard and disappeared behind the garage. “I felt like I went instantly pale,” Mitchell said. “As it turned the corner to go behind our garage I caught a very quick glimpse of the eyes, the orbits were gigantic and the face was expressionless, almost mask-like. The thin mouth almost too small for the face.”

The thumps on the door woke Mitchell’s wife and she rushed downstairs worried her husband had tripped on the stairs. She found her husband staring out the window of the back door. Mitchell’s voice quivered as he told her what he’d seen.

Coming in Part Three: Mitchell meets the Harlequin. 

(Read Part Three Here)