As someone who is an author, I am often asked to write reviews of other people’s books. The vast majority of all the books I review are focused upon the adventures and exploits of other people. Island of Paradise by Jonathan Downes, however, is very different, in the sense that it’s a book in which I play a central role. Nevertheless, I hope this has not influenced my opinion of the book! It’s a highly entertaining, warts and all study of what occurs during the course of an expedition of the Chupacabra kind…

It was in the summer of 2004 that Jon and I headed off to the rain-forests of Puerto Rico, courtesy of the SyFy Channel, who wanted to film us chasing the Chupacabra and UFOs for its now-defunct show Proof Positive – which was a pretty well executed combination of The X-Files meets CSI, albeit in a non-fiction format. For seven days we rampaged and roamed around the island in search of the vampire-like beast, and heard tale after tale of crashed UFOs, dead aliens, bizarre conspiracies linking the Chupacabra with extra-terrestrial experimentation, secret military operations, black Flying Triangles, and much more.

The best way I can describe Island of Paradise is as a Fortean version of Hunter S. Thompson’s fabulous The Rum Diary that told of the master’s own journalistic adventures on Puerto Rico back in the 1950s. Jon skilfully captures the essence of what makes Puerto Rico so magical, in terms of its history, its culture, its people – and its overwhelming weirdness, too. Truly, as Jon demonstrates, Puerto Rico is a locale that attracts the adventurer and the thrill-seeker like no other.

And given that it was a veritable hot-bed of activity of the ufological, vampiric and downright uncanny kind, what else could I, or indeed we, do but welcome the aforementioned weirdness with wide-open arms. If Jon and I were going to spend a week hunting vampires and/or aliens courtesy of the SyFy Channel, then, as he reveals, there was no better place to do it than deep within the heart of the island of paradise, and while regularly fuelled by the finest of local cuisine and a plentiful supply of ever-present chilled margaritas and imported beer. Onward!

I was pleased to see that Jon included in the pages of his book a description of our time spent at our base of operations: the Wind Chimes hotel in downtown San Juan. For those who weren’t there, it might seem superfluous; but for Jon and me it was a time to rekindle a friendship that had been separated by the Atlantic for a couple of years; and it was a time to make new friendships with the SyFy Channel’s Proof Positive crew.

There is something unique about the camaraderie that comes with hanging out alongside fellow thrill-seekers and adventurers – all from different corners of the globe, most not even knowing each other, yet all thrust into a strange and surreal quest to seek out the truth about a diabolical beast said to roam a real-life paradise. But, Jon demonstrates, it was without doubt the day we go our hands on a shining, silver jeep that things really took off…

Driving around in an open-top jeep in a place like Puerto Rico with one of your best friends, with the wind in your hair (for those who don’t shave it off every morning…), and in hot pursuit of the unknown, while ear-splitting punk rock reverberates out of the CD player is all good fun. But, barely one hour into our expedition, as Jon records, everything got a bit surreal.

No expedition of this type would be complete without an excursion into the darkened depths of a shadowy old cave. That a bat decided to piss on my head while we were in there only made things more memorable.

With much humor, Jon records how I decided not to bother with rabies injections of a type that Ozzy Osbourne was forced to undergo after his own legendary encounter with a bat; and instead I hoped that the little pisser wasn’t rabid, and that I wouldn’t wake up the next day like one of the frenzied souls from 28 Days Later or the spectacular 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. Needless to say, I didn’t.

Of course, I knew that all of this would serve as good fodder for Jon’s planned book on our trip around the island, and so I merely wiped my head with my bandana, swore at the offending beast and his or her brethren and continued roaming and filming. And a crew of a dozen, led by the good Mr. Downes himself, laughed heartily!

Of particular interest is what Jon has to say about an alleged UFO crash deep in the El Yunque rain-forest of Puerto Rico back in 1957. Jon tells the reader of our fascinating encounter with a woman named Norka who was able to fill in some of the gaps suggesting that at least something had genuinely crashed on Puerto Rico back in the 1950s, and who was also a veritable fountain of knowledge on all-things monstrous too.

As long as I live, I will never forget that moment when Norka told us of her own personal encounter with the Chupacabra late one night in 1975, and Jon and I turned to each other and realised that the beast Norka had seen was practically identical to the notorious Owlman of England – a creature that Jon had hunted, and been haunted by, for years. It was truly a pivotal moment in that memorable week.

As we sat on the balcony of Norka’s beautiful home high in the hills of El Yunque, sipping cold drinks, listening to her stories, and with the sun bathing down on us, I knew that we were experiencing something very special, and that beneath its beautiful exterior, something – or some things – dark, ominous, dangerous and bizarre dwelled on the island. And Jon’s chapter on this particular encounter most certainly does not disappoint.

One of the things that stood out for me upon reading Island of Paradise was how the initial quest quickly became something very different – and particularly so when new, and unforeseen, factors came into play. We had flown to Puerto Rico with the intention of trying to determine, for the benefit of the SyFy Channel, if we could find, examine and identify any evidence for the existence of the Chupacabra – such as undeniable DNA. Yet, by the end of the week we were deeply immersed in stories of crashed UFOs, genetic mutation, bizarre changes in the island’s ecology and much more.

I will never forget that week in the summer of 2004 when Jon and I roamed Puerto Rico’s rain-forest, its lowlands and its little villages in search of monsters, UFOs and aliens. It was an experience that will stay with me for all my life, and one that (as the book records) was as much about friendship, adventures and good times as it was about hunting for the Chupacara and for the remains of wrecked alien spacecraft. And at the end of the day, that was good enough for me. As for Jon: well, Island of Paradise tells it all, just as it was – the good, the bad and the plain strange.

If you’re looking for an excellent study of the Chupacabra phenomenon, its potential links with the UFO controversy in general (and crashed UFOs in particular), and what goes on behind the scenes of an on-site, week-long investigation in an exotic and mysterious world, then Island of Paradise is most definitely the one for you.

Most of us are familiar with stories of Nessie, the long-necked lady of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. For centuries, it has been believed that a strange, dinosaur-like animal has existed within the lake’s murky waters, though granted, the waters of the famous lake are so filled with peat that it would make peering through a glass of Guinness far easier; in other words, visibility is very limited beneath the Loch. Thus, numerous attempts to prove the identity of the lake’s mystery monster have come up empty-handed.

There have been, on occasion, a variety of different “hits” with regard to the use of sonar, which seem to indicate at times that there may have been large animals within the Loch. Limited photographic evidence exists also, though the image long held to be the most famous to depict the monster, known as the “Surgeon’s Photograph”, was later proven to be a hoax. Despite much of the evidence constituting belief in a monster that resides at Loch Ness being revealed as fabricated, there are still many researchers who take the mystery very seriously, and while grasping for evidence and a better understanding of the enigma of the Loch, have offered a variety of strange theories pertaining to what Nessie might actually be.

What reminded me of some of these more colorful “alternative theories” had been an article linked at the Gizmodo website, which dealt with car-sized turtles called Carbonemys cofrinii that existed in prehistoric times. These creatures, as the image included via the link above will show, certainly resembled a partially-submerged saurian animal, the likes of which are often reported at locations like Loch Ness. Interestingly, there is a similar creature that has been claimed to appear in the Canadian Lake Champlain, thus rendering the moniker of “Champ” that was given to the watery beast said to reside there. In at least a few reports that describe Champ’s physical appearance, witnesses have described a creature that resembles a large turtle, or at very least, an animal resembling some variety of turtle or other large, stocky reptile. Could we be dealing with a leftover relative of the Carbonemys cofrinii?

Giant turtles are hardly the strangest explanation offered as explanations for sea serpents and lake monsters the likes of Nessie and Champ. Biologist Roy P. Mackal, among others, had suggested that the creature seen in Loch Ness might actually be “a variety of long necked seal,” which had adapted to having a long, snakelike neck to aid in hunting and feeding in a lake such as Loch Ness; the benefit of having a long neck such as this, as well as the reasons a mammal such as a seal might acquire one, remain unclear.

An even stranger theory regarding the Loch Ness Monster’s possible identity is that of the giant Tully Monster. This creature is known to have existed about 300 million years ago, and did somewhat resemble known descriptions of the Loch Ness monster, though the creature was an invertebrate with a body resembling a cuttlefish, fitted with a long neck and snakelike mouth at the end. The problem with the Tully Monster theory, however, is that these creatures aren’t known to have exceeded more than about 12-14 centimeters in length; Tullys also resided in shallow tropical waters, rather than the cold and dark depths Loch Ness offers. In this case, perhaps the long-necked seal theory is actually more plausible.

When considering the number potentials involved, especially those pertaining to climate, temperature, and food supply, virtually all the existing theories regarding the Loch Ness Monster’s presumed identity fall a little short of explaining the enigma. In the event we were dealing with remnant dinosaurs or similar creatures, the propensity of reports stemming from lakes like Loch Ness, as well as other water bodies in Northern climates, presents a number of issues. Then again, reports of similar creatures in areas like the African Congo often relate to bodies of water remain so remote as to hinder virtually any progress in terms of careful and continuous study of the phenomenon. It seems that, no matter what the circumstances may be, we are continually met with hurtles in the study of these odd creatures; and thus, it is obvious that a host of rather wild, speculative theories have emerged, hoping to offer new clues to the mystery, but inevitably falling short of the available evidence.

Perhaps there are indeed biological creatures underlying such reports. But altogether, it seems that if there are indeed water monsters out there, our present methods of studying them may indeed be flawed, or simply limited altogether. Will scientific advancement in the coming decades improve the sorts of problems associated with their study, or could there be methods already available to us that might improve our understanding of such mysteries as the Loch Ness Monster and her distant cousins?

Someone asked me just recently: what will happen if, one day, we find conclusive evidence that Bigfoot really does exist? Well, the first – and quite natural – assumption that springs to my mind is that those of us who spend so much of our time looking for such monstrous things will finally get vindication that we weren’t wasting our precious time, after all! But, there are bigger issues at stake than that. Actually, they are much bigger, and far more serious than the average cryptozoologist getting congratulated on a job well done…

Many eye-witnesses claim Bigfoot – when seen up close and personal – appears to have definitively human characteristics, and particularly so in its facial appearance. On this very same track, what if Bigfoot is not an unknown ape, but actually some sort of proto-human, an early offshoot of the Human Race that, against all the odds and countless millennia, has survived extinction and avoided capture?

If such is the case, does that mean they should be given rights and recognized status as citizens of the United States? That may sound laughable, crazy and extreme to some of you reading this, but – given the theoretical possibilities cited above – can we actually rule out such a remote possibility ever becoming a reality?

And what if some over-eager hunter decided one day to shoot one of the creatures? Having the head of a deer on your living room wall is one thing. But it’s quite another to have to the head of a primitive man mounted right next to it.

In such a situation, I don’t rule out the possibility that if someone did shoot and kill a Bigfoot, and it was shown to be genetically linked to us in some capacity, then murder charges might be looming just around the corner for our unfortunate hunter.

Then there’s the matter of where the creatures live. If Bigfoot, one day, is proved to exist and is given some degree of legal protection and status as a result, what of the locations that it inhabits? Might they too become protected? Could they even become out of bounds to just about each and every one of us?

Such a situation might mean no more picnics, no more strolls in the woods, no more camping, and no more hunting – just in case someone mistakenly shot and killed a Bigfoot while out hunting for something else.

And: what about the logging industry? Whole swathes of the country – particularly so in the Pacific Northwest – are deeply reliant on logging for revenue. How would they collectively react to the news, and possibly even outright government legislation, that the forests of the United States are now out of bounds, that trees can no longer be cut down, and that whole areas are to become legally inaccessible, for fear of threatening the existence of a sub-species of us, the Human Race?

We could even go down a distinctly conspiratorial path and suggest that some of the stories about certain elements of the U.S. Government knowing that Bigfoot is real – but hiding the facts from the public – are absolutely, and incredibly, true.

After all, such secrecy and silence doesn’t necessarily mean that the government has discovered some dark and deep secret about Bigfoot. Rather, the closed mouth approach might very well stem from a fear of the hypothetical situations I described above actually developing in the real world.

I sincerely hope that one day we will finally, and unequivocally, know the truth behind the Bigfoot phenomenon, and we will have an answer with regard to what these creatures are or are not. But, I strongly suspect that if that day does arrive, the controversy won’t be over. In fact, I suspect it will have barely begun.

Sometimes, I’m asked – and particularly so at conferences – what’s it like going on an expedition in search of all-things of a supernatural, paranormal, ufological, cryptozoological or Fortean nature? Well, sometimes it goes very much like the following, which gives a good indication of what life is like in the field when pursuing the odd, the eerie and the downright uncanny. It was February 2008, I was on the road with Lance Oliver, of the Texas-based Denton Area Paranormal Society, and we were headed for Lake Ray Roberts, Texas – where something strange and monstrous had reportedly been seen… 

The lake and its surrounding areas are notable: in times past they were the haunt of various Native American Indian tribes, including the Comanche, the Kiowa and the Tonkawa. Before we arrived, Lance told me there had been a number of interesting UFO encounters in the vicinity, and in May 1990 strange roaring and screaming noises of a distinctly animalistic nature were heard in the woods. Not only that, but in the very same time frame nothing less than an approximately eight-foot-tall hairy man-beast was seen late at night by several young guys who were camped on the north side of the lake. Well, of course, with all that going on, we just had to check the place out!

I followed Lance in my car as he drove to a small parking area – that was just about as close as a person could get by vehicle to where all the specific Bigfoot action had taken place. We were then faced with approximately a mile-long trek through the thick woods, up and down several steep climbs, and across a couple of rocky sandbars, against which the lake’s cool waters gently lapped.

But finally we got to the location where all of the hair-raising – and hairy – action had occurred: a steep and wide hill that was packed from floor to ceiling with dense trees and rotting vegetation. In addition, there was a seeming distinct lack of animal life and noise. Indeed, deathly quiet would be a veritable understatement. Even though the Bigfoot encounters had taken place years before, experience on the road has shown me time and again that one should never turn up the chance to conduct a deep investigation of such a mysterious locale – just in the event that something of profound interest might turn up. And it did.

Taking into consideration the fact that the hill was a large one, Lance and I decided that the wisest approach would be to split up and cover as much of the area as was humanly possible. It was a good idea, to say the least. As I have come to learn, in areas where Bigfoot has been seen on regular occasions, it is not uncommon to find what appear to be curious formations of tree branches that appear to be have fashioned into particular designs by something with a high degree of intelligence.

These odd structures are essentially made up of thick branches that, in many cases, look like they have literally been wrenched off of trees and placed into distinct pyramid-style formations. Some researchers have suggested they are made by the creatures as territorial markers; while others have suggested they might very well be connected to Bigfoot mating rituals.

A definitive answer to their construction still eludes us; however, I do not exaggerate when I say that the peak of the wooded hill was infested with such formations. To the left of us, to the right of us, in front of us and behind us: they were everywhere. Of course, out came the cameras to preserve the astounding scene. But there was more. Curious stone structures were prevalent, including what looked like a miniature version of Stonehenge; and strange, almost cave-like, dwellings could be found in the undergrowth on the slopes of the hill.

But perhaps most interesting of all was a discovery that Lance made as our search was nearing its end: a large stone that had a perfect, circular hole running through its length. Interestingly, a Shaman contact of Lance’s had told him such stone-holes were said to be doorways that allowed enlightened souls to peer into other realms and dimensions.

Is Lake Ray Roberts home to a dimensional gateway through which enigmatic Bigfoot-type beasts gain access to our world? Given some of the stranger stories of Bigfoot blinking out in a flash of light, or tracks suddenly coming to a halt as if the beast had vanished in an instant, I wouldn’t bet against it!

And, in expedition terms, it was yet another weird day on the road – just like so many others.

While I am personally convinced that the vast majority of people who report encounters of the Bigfoot variety are entirely honest when it comes to talking about their experiences, there’s always some joker who wants to pull the wool over our eyes, muddy the waters, or engage in an outrageous hoax. And although many researchers of the Fortean variety are more than content to ignore such cases, I don’t…

Rather, my view is that it’s important we not only highlight such cases, but that we learn from them as well. And, certainly, one of the strangest of all Bigfoot hoaxes occurred in England, back in March 2006, when monster-based hysteria was at its height deep in the heart of the nation’s Cannock Chase woods.

Utterly relishing the opportunity to relate to its readers a tale of proportions that easily surpassed the surreal, the local Chase Post newspaper began its reporting on the affair in fine fashion: “Police chiefs have hit out at the dangers posed by the spoof ‘Bigfoot’ craze after a teenager almost lost her baby when a joker clad in a gorilla suit jumped in front of her car. And the concerns have been echoed by a leading councilor and conservationist, who fears the ‘irresponsible idiots’ are causing harm to wildlife as well as people.”

No, it was not April Fools’ Day; although many might have been forgiven for thinking it was exactly that! It was barely sixty minutes before the witching-hour struck when a 19-year-old pregnant girl and her parents were driving through the picturesque village of Brocton, having had a Saturday night out in a restaurant in nearby Milford.

When questioned later by police, the girl said: “We noticed a BMW parked in the road. Suddenly it flashed its lights. Just then, out of nowhere, this person dressed in a gorilla suit jumped out in front of our car, flailing their arms like mad. Then they started running at the car like mad. It was terrifying.”

She continued: “Looking back it was obviously a fake suit, but late at night, in an isolated area like that, it was a very scary experience. In broad daylight, I suppose it could be quite funny, but this was 11 o’clock at night with no-one around. It’s very lonely there. If that had been someone with a heart condition, they could’ve had a heart attack. I screamed so loud. It was a real scare. It left me with fears that the trauma of it could have fatally harmed my baby.”

The girl’s irate dad was up in arms and told the Chase Post: “If I’d have caught the idiots, I’d have pasted them.”

The local police weren’t exactly laughing either. When contacted by the newspaper for comment on the matter, a spokesperson for Staffordshire Police HQ replied in stern tones: “We take it very seriously because it may result in a Public Order Offence. The person [in the gorilla suit] may very well be in high spirits, but this would be viewed as a criminal offence.”

And councillor John Burnett commented on the matter, too: “This is the behaviour of an irresponsible idiot. At this time of year, there are all manner of ground-nesting birds in that area; the partridge, the pheasant, woodlarks, skylarks – many rare birds whose habitat and nesting could be destroyed by this kind of activity.”

While the Cannock Chase of 2006 event was never resolved, and the culprits never identified, this case does serve to demonstrate that when it comes to Bigfoot, yes, hoaxing does occur. But, when it does, the onus is upon us – the Fortean community – to reveal those cases for what they are. But, there’s something else we need to stress: Yes, hoaxes do occur, but, that should never detract from the fact that this does not negate the large body of credible data that is about as far away from hoaxing as it’s possible to imagine.

Located just outside of central London, England is a large and impressive building known as the National Archives. It serves as a repository for declassified and still-classified files from the British Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, Army and the British equivalents of the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense and National Security Agency.

As might be expected, the bulk of the records that the British Government has released into the public domain via the passing of its Freedom of Information Act – and that are now available for scrutiny by the public – focus upon such matters as Cold War activities, espionage, the Second World War, and the routine, day-to-day work of governmental bodies.

But, as well as the strictly down-to-earth material, intriguing files have surfaced demonstrating that, during the 19th Century, elements of British officialdom took a deep and keen interest in sightings on the high-seas of nothing less than fully-fledged sea serpents!

One of the most notable reports of an encounter with such a beast can be found within the archives of the Admiralty. The documentation at issue details the remarkable encounter with a sea-serpent that was seen on May 9, 1830 by the crew of the Rob Roy: a British Royal Navy ship that was homeward bound after a lengthy sea-journey across the Atlantic Ocean. As the ship sailed by the island of St. Helena, something remarkable occurred, as the Rob Roy’s captain, James Stockdale, recorded in his official log the following:

“About five p.m. all at once while I was walking on the poop my attention was drawn to the water on the port bow by a scuffling noise. Likewise all the watch on deck were drawn to it. Judge my amazement when what should stare us all in the face as if not knowing whether to come over the deck or to go around the stern – but the great big sea snake! Now I have heard of the fellow before – and I have killed snakes twenty-four feet long in the straits of Malacca, but they would go in his mouth.

“I think he must have been asleep for we were going along very softly two knots an hour, and he seemed as much alarmed as we were – and all taken aback for about fifteen seconds. But he soon was underway and, when fairly off, his head was square with our topsail and his tail was square with the foremast.”

Captain Stockdale continued: “My ship is 171 feet long overall – and the foremast is 42 feet from the stern which would make the monster about 129 feet long. If I had not seen it I could not have believed it but there was no mistake or doubt of its length – for the brute was so close I could even smell his nasty fishy smell.

“When underway he carried his head about six feet out of water – with a fin between the shoulders about two feet long. I think he was swimming about five miles an hour – for I watched him from the topsail yard till I lost sight of him in about fifty minutes. I hope never to see him more. It is enough to frighten the strong at heart.”

A second report of a sea-monster sighting has been declassified at an official level by the British Government and describes an extraordinary December 13, 1857 encounter that also occurred in the vicinity of the island of St. Helena. A statement prepared by Commander George Henry Harrington revealed the facts:

“While myself and officers were standing on the lee side of the poop – looking toward the island – we were startled by the sight of a huge marine animal which reared its head out of the water within twenty yards of the ship – when it suddenly disappeared for about half a minute and then made a reappearance in the same manner again – showing us its neck and head about ten or twenty feet out of the water.

“Its head was shaped like a long buoy – and I should suppose the diameter to have been seven or eight feet in the largest part with a kind of scroll or ruff encircling it about two feet from the top. The water was discolored for several hundred feet from the head, so much so that on its first appearance my impression was that the ship was in broken waters, produced, as I supposed, by some volcanic agency, since I passed the island before.”

And Captain Harrington had far more to impart:

“But the second appearance completely dispelled those fears and assured us that it was a monster of extraordinary length and appeared to be moving slowly towards the land. The ship was going too fast to enable us to reach the masthead in time to form a correct estimate of this extreme length – but from what we saw from the deck we conclude that he must have been over two hundred feet long. The Boatswain and several of the crew, who observed it from the forecastle, state that it was more than double the length of the ship, in which case it must have been five hundred feet.”

The captain concluded in his official report: “I am convinced that it belonged to the serpent tribe.”

Of that, there seems little doubt!

Late one evening in September 1986, Mick Dodds and his wife were driving his mother-in-law back to her place of abode, which was a small but picturesque cottage in the Staffordshire, England village of Stowe-by-Chartley. All was completely and utterly normal until Dodds passed by the ancient and ruined Chartley Castle that overlooks the A518 road when something terrible and terrifying put in an unearthly appearance…

Constructed on land that came into the possession of the Earls of Chester as far back as the 11th Century, Chartley Castle is a stone motte-and-bailey fortress founded in the thirteenth century by Ranulph Blundeville, the then Earl of Chester.

Supported by the motte are, today, the still-standing remains of a rare cylindrical keep, with the inner bailey curtain wall still strongly flanked by two huge half-round towers, a gate-house, and an angle-tower. A strong counter-scarp bank and cross-ditch divides the inner and outer baileys, with another ditch and bank encasing the whole castle.

Notably, Chartley Castle is to where – on Christmas Eve, 1585 – Mary, Queen of Scots, was taken before being moved to Fotheringay for execution on February 8 of 1586. And, according to Mick Dodds, Chartley Castle just might be home to a literal British Bigfoot…

Dodds says that after dropping his mother-in-law off at her home, he and his wife began the journey back to their own abode, and what they assumed would be a stress-free, night-time drive through Staffordshire’s engaging countryside. How completely and devastatingly wrong the pair was.

According to Dodds, as they drove along the road, and with Chartley Castle rapidly closing in, he was forced to violently and suddenly slam on the brakes as a huge stag ambled slowly – yet majestically, too – across the road directly in front of them.

The sight of the massive beast was enough to both amaze and gob-smack Dodds and his wife in equal amounts. But that was nothing at all compared to what supposedly happened immediately thereafter.

Dodds, realizing how bizarre the next aspect of his story was surely going to sound to me, apologized profusely before he even began relating the complex details. In return, I told him that no apology was necessary. Instead, I explained to him, I would much prefer to merely hear the facts and then try and firmly evaluate them for myself. And so, with that out of the way, Mick Dodds duly began.

As the huge stag made its slow yet deliberate way across the road, his wife suddenly screamed at the sight of what looked like a large chimpanzee that bounded after the stag from the darkness of the field that sat to the right of their car. Half way across the road, the chimpanzee stopped suddenly, looked directly at the terrified husband and wife and, to their utter horror and consternation, charged their vehicle – but, at the very last moment, backed away from actually causing any structural damage to the car, or physical harm to the fear-stricken pair.

Dodds said that in his overwhelming panic to quickly put the vehicle into reverse gear, he stalled its engine, and then, even worse still, ended up completely flooding it as he raced to try and re-start the car. As an inevitable result, the Dodds were briefly stranded in the road with a hairy monstrosity looming wildly in front of them.

For about twenty seconds the beast stared at both husband and wife, and on two other occasions again headed for their vehicle at full speed, “like it was going to attack,” before finally bounding off to the left, and, so it appeared at least, in a direction that specifically followed that of the huge stag – which, by now, was seemingly long gone.

More than a quarter of a century after their curious encounter, the Dodds’ still stand by their story. And, having spoken to them extensively and having become convinced of their credibility, who am I to argue? Something monstrous, I am sure, lurks around old Chartley Castle…

Back in the 1960s, a photograph, said to date from the late 1800s, appeared in the pages of a popular newsstand magazine of the day – possibly True, Saga, or Argosy – and displayed the deceased remains of a gigantic, monstrous bird, pinned to a pair of barn-doors somewhere in rural North America – the exact location is, just like the picture itself, a matter of some debate.

Numerous researchers, investigators and authors of a whole range of anomalies claim, with absolute unswerving certainty, that they personally saw the priceless picture when it was published. The big problem, today, however, is that despite the fact that the pages of all the above-magazines, and many others too, have been carefully and dutifully scoured – even to the point of near-obsession – the picture cannot be found, anywhere at all. It’s almost as if it never even existed in the first place.

What was the alleged winged nightmare? Possibly nothing less than a legendary Thunderbird. And, if you’re not acquainted with the phenomenon, I refer you to the words of my good friend – and fellow creature seeker and co-author with me on our Monsters of Texas book – Ken Gerhard, who says the following of the mighty, flying beasts:

“These creatures are likened to enormous eagles and are prominent in numerous, Native American folklores and totems. The name Thunderbird is derived from the sound that is apparently produced as a result of the thunderous beating of the mighty wings of the creature. Surprisingly, these mythological beasts are occasionally still reported flying around in our modern skies, and, incredibly, are described as having wingspans comparable to that of a small airplane.”

Well, in the same way that there is a distinct enigma surrounding the missing 1960s-era Thunderbird photograph, so there is  a similar aura of weirdness surrounding the photo of a Thunderbird that appears in my and Ken’s Monsters of Texas.

Like all authors, Ken and I wanted to ensure we had a good and varied selection of photos to accompany the text of the book. And that included, if possible, Thunderbird-themed imagery. But, we didn’t want to simply go down the easy and lazy path of just pulling pictures from Wikipedia or somewhere similar, or using images that were well-known and/or well-used. So, the hunt was on for something relevant and new. But, it was no easy task. Or, rather, for a while it wasn’t.

One afternoon, just a month or so before the book had to be submitted to the publisher, I was speaking on the phone with my dad, and he asked what I was up to. I told him that the writing of Monsters of Texas was coming to a close, but that we were having a hard time finding a Thunderbird photo. Given that my dad’s interest in Cryptozoology is  not exactly huge, he almost flummoxed me when he said, words to the effect of: “I can send you a picture; I have an old painting of a Thunderbird in my garage.”

This sounded almost too good to be true. Amazingly, it wasn’t. Like all young men his age in the early 1950s, my dad had to serve three years of what was then called National Service (or, in the U.S., the Draft). But, his stint in the British Royal Air Force aside, my dad spent his working career as a carpenter. In the late 1970s, the company he was then working for secured a contract to rebuild and renovate the lobbies of a well-known hotel chain in and around the London area.

When the work was completed, my dad and his colleagues were presented with gifts, as a sign of appreciation for the work. In my dad’s case, his gift was a circular piece of stone, on which had been painted a brightly colored Thunderbird catching a fish. I vaguely remembered seeing this as a young teenager, but didn’t realize the significance of it back then, and promptly forgot about it – chiefly because it was never on display in my parents’ home, and apparently remained buried amongst a mass of stuff in the garage for decades.

So, my dad dug out the circle of stone, dusted it off, and took a picture of it for me – the very one that accompanies this article. But, there’s something else, too. I find it very curious that while I was diligently searching – but ultimately failing – to find what I considered to be a good, previously unseen Thunderbird image for the book, I should finally get one from, of all people, my very own dad, all as a result of a chance conversation. Or, was it all down to chance?

I am a big believer in the phenomenon of Synchronicities – so-called “meaningful coincidences” that appear to be the result of something stranger than mere random actions. And, I’m very inclined to place this affair into that same category.

And, of course, I can’t ignore the fact that this represents two Thunderbird-connected photographs that seem to have distinctly Fortean overtones attached to them – one of which seemingly disappeared from the pages of one or more magazines years ago, and another that appears in Monsters of Texas! Maybe I should keep careful watch, just in case the latter picture starts to mysteriously disappear, too, from each and every copy of the book…

In his definitive book on the subject Explore Phantom Black Dogs, author and researcher Bob Trubshaw wrote thus: “The folklore of phantom black dogs is known throughout the British Isles. From the Black Shuck of East Anglia to the Mauthe Dhoog of the Isle of Man there are tales of huge spectral hounds ‘darker than the night sky’ with eyes ‘glowing red as burning coals.’ The phantom black dog of British and Irish folklore, which often forewarns of death, is part of a world-wide belief that dogs are sensitive to spirits and the approach of death, and keep watch over the dead and dying.”

And, during the summer of 2007, one of these most ancient and sinister beasts of folklore and the paranormal reared its ugly head in, of all places, the Lone Star State: Texas. On May 31, 2007, I received a mid-morning telephone call from a late-middle-aged woman named Ronda who lived in the city of Amarillo, deep in the heart of the Texas Panhandle.

“Are you the guy who writes about strange animals?” she asked, in somewhat wary tones. I told her that, yes, I was. And having done so, I sat back and listened to what she had to tell me. According to Ronda, only two days earlier, and with her daughter and son-in-law, she had traveled to a spectacularly beautiful, and huge, canyon a short journey from Amarillo called Palo Duro Canyon.

The trio trekked a mile or so into the canyon and found a pleasant place to sit that overlooked its vast, expansive depths. All seemed normal and Ronda and her daughter unpacked their picnic basket and duly set about preparing lunch. As they did so, Ronda told me, she developed a sudden and eerie feeling of being watched. For reasons that she was not really able to understand, Ronda quickly turned around and could see at a distance of a couple of hundred feet a large dark colored dog staring intently in her direction.

Ronda told me that at first the dog did not act in an exceptional manner: it merely stood its ground with its gaze fixed firmly in her direction. For almost a minute, Ronda estimated, the two exchanged looks, after which she felt uneasy and started to slowly turn her back on the beast. At that point, the dog’s demeanor changed drastically: it charged to within about fifty feet of Ronda, her terrified daughter and son-in-law, and viciously growled, barked and snapped its immense jaws in a fashion that was clearly confrontational in the extreme.

By now, with the benefit of seeing the animal at closer quarters, the three of them could see this was no normal dog. Ronda estimated that it was “half as large again” as a “big German Shepherd,” and its eyes shimmered and “seemed to glow silver: not like normal eyes.” But that was not all: on three occasions the dog, Ronda explained to me, seemed to “bounce” into the air “like it was on springs.”

I asked Ronda to clarify this point for me further and she explained that “it was like it jumped into the air about three feet, but with no effort from its legs. It just seemed to go up and drop down.” More bizarre: Ronda told me that at one point the animal seemed to briefly change shape into that of a “humongous black panther.”

Needless to say, the family scooped up its belongings and made its way along the trail that led back to their car. They continued to watch as the dog practically stalked them the entire way – that is, until they reached a certain point, whereupon the dog vanished – literally before their startled and terror-stricken eyes. There was no puff of smoke; no blinding flash: one second it was there, still glaring at them, and the next second “it just wasn’t there anymore.”

The phantom-like, fiend hound of times long gone, it seems, is not quite so long gone, after all…

For years, sensational and sinister stories have surfaced from the forests and lowlands of Puerto Rico that tell of a strange and lethal creature roaming the landscape by night and day, while striking overwhelming terror into the hearts of the populace – which is not at all surprising since the animal has been described as having a pair of glowing red eyes, powerful, claw style hands, razor sharp teeth, a body not unlike that a monkey, a row of vicious spikes running down the length of its back, and occasionally large and leathery bat like wings.

And if that is not enough: the beast is said to feed on the blood of the local animal, and predominantly goat, population. Puerto Rico has a monstrous vampire in its midst. Its name is the Chupacabras, a term that very appropriately means Goat Sucker.

Theories abound with respect to the nature of the beast, with some researchers and witnesses suggesting that the monster is some form of giant-bat; others prefer the theory that it has extraterrestrial origins; while the most bizarre idea postulated is that the Chupacabras is the creation of a top secret, genetic research laboratory hidden deep within Puerto Rico’s El Yunque rainforest, which is located in the Sierra de Luquillo, approximately 40 kilometers southeast of the city of San Juan.

Whatever the true nature of the beast, the fact that the Chupacabra was not known of – by that name, at least – until the mid-1990s, has led many to assume that unexplained, vampire-style attacks on the animal population of Puerto Rico are relatively recent phenomena. It may come as a surprise to many, however, to learn that they are not at all.

In September 1959, a groundbreaking paper – Searching for Interstellar Communications, written by Cornell University physicists, Phillip Morrison and Giuseppe Conconi – was published in the pages of Nature. The paper was focused upon the idea of searching for extraterrestrial life via the medium of microwaves. Approximately eight months later, one Frank Drake decided to test the theories and ideas of Morrison and Conconi for himself.

He did so at the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory, located in West Virginia. Despite lasting for 150 hours, the search of the heavens for evidence of messages from alien intelligences was not successful. Drake, however, was not to be dissuaded or defeated quite so easily as that.

In October 1961, the very first conference on what became known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was convened at Green Bank. It was here that Drake unleashed his now famous and much championed Drake Equation upon the world, and which is an admittedly controversial method for attempting to ascertain the scale of intelligent civilizations that may exist in the known universe. Since then, SETI has been at the forefront of research into the search for alien life.

When Frank Drake elected to make it his life’s work to search for alien intelligences, he went down a road that eventually led him to the Arecibo Radio Telescope, which is located on the island of Puerto Rico, and where he, Drake, eventually rose to the position of Director. As Drake noted in his 1994 book, Is Anyone Out There?, it was at some point early in his tenure as Director – in the mid 1960s – that a guard at the observatory claimed to have seen a sinister-looking man dressed in a black cloak “walking the narrow trail around the perimeter of the bowl.”

The guard was of the opinion that the dark figure was nothing less than a blood draining – and blood drinking – vampire. Despite his skepticism, Drake politely accepted the guard’s report and agreed to at least take a look at it. Forty eight hours later, said Drake, “I really was forced to look into it…because a cow was found dead on a nearby farm, with all the blood drained from its body. The vampire rumor spread had already spread through the observatory staff, and now the cow incident whipped the fears of many people into a frenzy.”

Puerto Rico, then, appears to have had vampires in its midst for a very long time. And the Chupacabra may either be the latest addition to a long line of blood-sucking entities, or, perhaps, it’s a beast whose predatory actions have been going on for decades (and maybe even longer), but that only came to people’s attentions on a large scale in the 1990s…