This is a special guest post by Andrew Nicholson - www.weirdaustralia.com

A recent article by an Australian astronomer on UFOs and extraterrestrials illustrates the continuing ignorance of many within the scientific community in relation to the UFO phenomenon and other aspects of the paranormal, and exposes the double standards employed when it comes to making extraordinary claims.

In Encounters of the third kind? Not even close published on The Sydney Morning Herald website on 19 January 2012, Perry Vlahos, an astronomy educator, author, broadcaster and past president of the Astronomical Society of Victoria discusses the subject of UFOs and extraterrestrials.

Vlahos begins by taking a refreshingly objective point of view in relation to the possibility of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe.

“From my experience, astronomers disagree on the possibility of sophisticated civilisations among the stars – some think ‘yes’ and others think ’no’,” he states.

But he is far less flexible in his thinking when it comes to the possibility that we may have been visited by any such ‘sophisticated civilisations’. “But most agree on one point,” he continues. “There is no credible evidence to suggest we have ever been visited by extraterrestrials.”

“If they exist, they’ve not been here yet,” he confidently concludes.

Oh, really!

This is a bold statement. In fact, it is an extraordinary claim. And as Carl Sagan famously said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. This should be as true for a scientist claiming we have never been visited by extraterrestrials, as it should for an ancient alien proponent claiming we’re the descendants of a slave race of alien-human hybrids.

Perhaps he should’ve said that, “If they exist, we have no conclusive evidence that they have ever been here”. A far more scientifically acceptable approach, one would think.

Vlahos then takes it upon himself to share the thoughts of the astronomy community.

“Most astronomers think reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are just that – objects in the sky that are yet to be identified. Certainly, all reports of such sightings cannot be hoaxes and so we must accept that some of them are genuine.”

I commend Viahos for at least acknowledging that some UFO reports are genuine.

He then adds that, “It does not necessarily follow, however, that they are craft piloted by extraterrestrial beings.”

This is true. We do not know that such sightings are craft piloted by extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, there is a widespread misconception that any poor misguided soul who takes the subject of UFOs seriously believes they must be piloted by aliens from elsewhere in the universe. The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) is just one theory on the origin of the UFO phenomenon. There are other equally valid theories, and not everyone open minded enough to take the phenomenon seriously automatically equates UFOs with extraterrestrials.

The fact is, we do not know who or what is responsible.

Vlahos then discusses the astronomy community’s involvement in investigating sightings. “Many astronomers, including the author, have been involved in identifying sightings that have puzzled the public.”

“In most of these cases, natural phenomena, astronomical objects or local intelligence in the form of aircraft, balloons, satellites and the like are the cause.”

I agree with Vlahos here. The vast majority of UFO sightings, once investigated, usually have a more prosaic explanation.

It’s time to redefine what a UFO is.

It is time to weed out such reports that, with a little investigation, can be easily explained. The current convention that any anomalous object seen in the sky remains a UFO until it can be identified otherwise only damages the credibility of the many genuine, inexplicable UFO sightings. We need to turn this on its head. Only after a sighting satisfies certain criteria, and all other possibilities ruled out, should an anomalous object be classified as a UFO.

Such criteria might include, for example, the number and/or credibility of witnesses, the size and shape of the craft, the ability of the object to defy known laws of physics, and the object demonstrating speed impossible for any known aircraft.

Tick two or more boxes, and you have a UFO sighting. No more sightings of satellites, Jupiter, Chines lanterns, balloons or swamp gas please.

Double standards … what happened to scientific rigour?

Next, Vlahos links the UFO phenomenon with crop circles through the religious fervour of some believers.

“In some instances, it becomes almost a religious experience to people and no amount of explanation seems to change their beliefs.

“A good example of this is the crop circles that started appearing in England in the late 1970s. Some members of the public thought these to be the work of artistic aliens.

“Some years later, however, two men, Dave Chorley and Doug Bower, decided the joke had gone on for long enough and declared to news reporters how, under cover of darkness, they had made the circles in the wheat fields with rope and boards. They even gave a demonstration for the cameras.”

Ok, this is fair enough. This pair of pranksters was obviously responsible for some crop circles. But all crop circles? And where their claims rigorously tested as the scientific process dictates?

No. Because they came forward and admitted to some reporters they were responsible and gave their demonstration with a couple of planks and some rope, that’s good enough for this scientist. Case closed!

Similarly, the famous Belgian Triangle UFO photo was declared a hoax when last year, a Belgian man identified only as Patrick, obviously wracked with years of guilt, announced to the world that as an 18 year old, he had hoaxed the photo by making a simple polystyrene model and photographing it.

Okay, maybe he did perpetrate a hoax. But where was the scientific testing to prove or disprove his claims? There was none. Because he said he did it, again that’s good enough. Why weren’t his claims treated with scepticism until he could successfully reproduce the photos using the same camera he supposedly used to take the original photos?

Here is a case of double standards, as the scientific establishment is often quick to dismiss the claims of the paranormal due to the inability of paranormal investigators and researchers to replicate results.

A mystery no longer, should all the facts be known.

Vlahos concludes in his article that, “The tiny percentage of UFO reports that remain unsolved would almost surely be a mystery no longer, were all the facts known.”

Tell this to the former Head of Operations at the Belgian Air Staff and to the Iranian and Peruvian fighter pilots who contributed to Leslie Kean’s acclaimed book UFOs Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On The Record.

It is time for all of us to take a more mature, open-minded approach to the UFO phenomenon. This includes scientists taking a more objective stance and treating the true phenomenon with the same scientific curiosity admirably demonstrated in so many other areas of our everyday world.

And it applies equally to the so-called ‘true believers’ who treat every coloured light in the sky as a sign that our space brothers are lovingly watching over us.

Only then can we hope to have an intelligent conversation and perhaps gain some understanding of the perplexing UFO mystery.

This is a special guest post by Andrew Nicholson – www.weirdaustralia.com

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.”

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.

The long sordid history of Forteana is rife with tales of chance encounters with unsettling weirdos and beasts whose very existence seems impossible, at very best. Due to the nature of these strange sorts of visits, it becomes difficult to discern how much of the mythos that surrounds such beings from the twilight world of the unexplained is based on pure fact, and how much could stem from the surreal archetypal realms of the human mind.

There are curious reports of creeping strangers the likes of the infamous “Grinning Man,” described by John Keel in his volumes pertaining to supernatural lore and oddities. There are reports of “Mad Gassers” that sneak noxious fumes into the homes of the middle class citizenry through pinhole-sized crevices along the edges of windows. There are also tales of demons, devils, and otherworldly goonies that lurch at the unsuspecting as they wander suburban roadsides during the still moments after the sun has gone down. While many of these denizens of the shadow realm might be attributed to various goings on of the physical realm (if not misidentification or outright hoaxes), one of their curious propensities relies on their odd tendency to court ill fortune and disasters… and for many readers of this blog, such creepy creatures of the night do have a particular name…

Indeed, here I’m speaking of what I call “Fortean Folk Devils,” the more high-strangeness entities within the areas of Forteana tha bear a number of consistencies throughout various reports, often bridging the gap between differences in cultures beliefs and societal norms. Recently, I spent a few minutes outlining the curious preponderance of strange visitations by uninvited guests throughout the centuries, encapsulating this “Folk Devil” concept, where I noted that these “entities,” whatever they may be, could be both physical, in some sense, as well as the result of some strange archetypal formation or manifestation from within the mind. But how, exactly, could this be? Does it suggest that people’s reports of strange encounters with mystery beings might actually be rooted in our own subconscious, and that the kinds of stories being elucidated by those claiming to have had encounters are really the result of “thought projections” or, to borrow the Tibetan term for this, Tulpas?

To answer these questions might really involve a foray into the realms of psychology and the subconscious mind, and certain extends beyond the scope of the present article. However, to begin with another question, I first might be inclined to ask, “can the resolution to the Folk Devil mystery not draw from each of these, perhaps being both physical as well as archetypal or mystical in nature? In a sense, it might not be too much of a stretch to consider whether the human mind, under the right circumstances, couldn’t interpret an uncomfortable or unsettling event in such a way that it literally interprets (or we might even say “projects) imagery that, while not wholly physical, is something that appears very real in the eye of the beholder. Even more curious, perhaps, would be the notion that certain phenomena that is discussed within the annals of paranormalia could bear striking resemblance to each other from one encounter to the next, based solely on the consistent elements involving human perception that stem from within the mind. To put it concisely, the sorts of “archetypes” that Carl Jung spoke of could be likened to being “programs” that come pre-installed within every human mind, and remain capable of interpreting various phenomenon, given certain conditions, with remarkable consistency.

I don’t think this removes the possibility that there could be strange beings in a very real sense that do appear and haunt us from the fringes of humanity at times. What it does lend itself to, however, is the resulting cultural interpretations that stem from such encounters, lending to a sort of legendary substructure that builds itself into our folklore, inspired by people’s chance encounters with outright weirdness. A recent article featured by Reuters news even discussed this notion to some degree, building on the cultural parallels that seem to exist within the interpretation of ideas such as “the unknown visitor,” a concept that has close cultural consistency spanning a number of traditions around the globe. Perhaps unraveling the mysteries of the Fortean realm lay not so much in interpreting whether they exist solely within a physical capacity, or merely within the realms of the mind; it could very well be that culture, perception, and belief work together to interweave what ultimately becomes our interpretation of reality, and in ways that continue to allude us.

The deep, shadow shrouded jungles of South America are rife with carnivorous predators rarely seen by the human eye, but as intimidating as the creatures lurking in the dense rain forests of this mysterious continent may be, the arid plains of northern Chile are said to harbor a colony of chillingly bizarre beasts, which are quite unlike anything supposed to be living on the Earth.

Situated in the northernmost portion of Chile, less than 12-miles away from the port city of Arica, is a sprawling swathe of red sand desert known as Pampa Acha. The only real nod to the existence of humanity in this desolate region is the Pan-American Highway, which twists through this barren wasteland like an asphalt serpent.

It was on this lonesome stretch of road that in July of 2004, an army sub-officer with the “Cazadores” regiment named Carlos Abett de la Torre, his wife Teresa, their three children and a nephew would have a harrowing encounter with a group of fantastic creatures, which seemed to jump straight out of the pages of an ancient bestiary.

THE TORRE FAMILY AND THE GARGOYLES:

At approximately 7:00 pm. on the day in question, the Torre family packed into Carlos’ pick-up truck and departed from their quarters in Fuerte Baquedano, which is located in the military community of Pozo Almonte, heading toward Arica to visit some relatives.

Knowing full well that he was in for long and monotonous drive with a car full of children, Carlos gamely threw the truck into gear and began motoring down the same highway he had been traveling for the better part of 25 years.

About two hours into their journey, Carlos was cruising at about 65-miles per hour through the Pampa Acha approximately 20-miles south of Arica. The road ahead was illuminated not only by the pick-up’s headlamps, but the bright moon that hovered above them in the cloudless sky. That was when Carlos’ eldest daughter, Carmen, noticed a pair of extraordinary entities through the back window of the vehicle. According to Carmen she was astounded to see two creatures leisurely “floating” in the skies above. In her own words:

“I was traveling in the backseat with my brothers, talking, and suddenly everything went dark. Then I told my brother what I was seeing and he told me to keep quiet, because Mom gets nervous. Later I looked through the window and saw some things that looked like birds, with dogs’ heads and back swept wings. My father said they were like gargoyles.”

Carmen later estimated that the strange airborne critters that flew over her father’s pick-up truck were at least 6-feet in length and she admitted that at first she wasn’t sure if the creatures had wings or legs, but that the appendages were angled toward the rear of the creatures.

Carmen and her brother watched as the outlandish animals paced the truck, afraid to speak, lest they panic their anxiety prone mother. But their efforts were wasted as Teresa, who sat next to Carlos in the front seat, would catch sight of the peculiar avian duo through the windshield just moments later.

From her vantage point Teresa was afforded the best view of these anomalous animals, which the press would quote her as saying resembled “dog-faced kangaroos.” She claimed that the “gargoyles” seemed to match the speed of the truck, occasionally slipping ahead, then falling back, never traveling more than 60-feet from the vehicle.

By this point Carlos and the rest of his frightened brood were all stealing skyward glances and catching glimpses of these soaring evolutionary nightmares. He accelerated the truck, praying under his breath, terrified of the fate that might befall him and his family if these creatures decided to swoop down and attack their vehicle. The Torre family was in such a state of shock that none of them spoke. Carmen described the scene:

“We were speechless for some ten minutes [then] my Mom told us to react, and then we started discussing what we’d seen.”

Just when the Torre family was growing accustomed to the flying fiends above, another pair of the same species leapt in front of the truck on strong hind legs, which were shorter than their upper legs.  Carlos managed to avert a collision with these land bound “gargoyles” and increased the pick-up’s speed, eventually leaving all four of the beasts behind.

When Torre family safely arrived in Arica they told their relatives about their bizarre sightings, but swore them to secrecy, concerned that the public ridicule which might follow the unveiling of their tale would somehow damage the military career of the family’s patriarch.

Although their sojourn with their extended family was enjoyable, it goes without saying that the entire Torre clan was anxious about the trip home.

Teresa even conceded: “We were terrified to go back,” but, much like every other journey Carlos had taken through Pampa Acha, the expedition proved to be mercifully uneventful.

Once back on base in Pozo Almonte, the Torre family honored their oath of silence, but when another sub-officer, Diego Riquelme, claimed to have encountered a dinosaur-like creature on the same stretch of road a few weeks later they decided to come clean.

Needless to say it wasn’t long before the press got wind of these bizarre stories and began churning out articles about the monsters seen on the Pan-American Highway. Soon after the story broke Scott Corrales of the Institute of Hispanic Ufology translated the story for the English speaking world.

The usually open minded Chilean press was quick to claim that the eyewitnesses were likely seeing nothing more than ostriches, which must have escaped from a local breeder. The fact ostriches are flightless and that none of the birds were reported missing in the area was ignored by the media.

It also seems unlikely that seven individual eyewitnesses would confuse ostriches for either on the wing gargoyles or prehistoric reptiles, regardless of how unbelievable the alternative may be. So if these observers were not bearing witness to bird refuge escapees, then the question remains…

WHAT ARE THESE THINGS?

It’s a fair question considering that the list of dog headed, bat winged, kangaroo legged and potentially reptilian creatures that stand over 6-feet tall is not a large one… In fact, nothing like that should exist, nevertheless let’s keep an open mind and look at few of our options here. I have to admit that when I first stumbled across this report my initial thought was that the eyewitness descriptions were akin to reports of the infamous…

CHUPACABRA

For reasons difficult to discern the description of the notorious blood sucking chupacabra — it’s name is Spanish for “goat sucker,” which was initially said to be its favorite prey — has varied wildly since the first reports of these beasts emerged from Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s.

Nowadays many people believe that the mangy coy dogs so often videotaped near the Texas/Mexico border represent chupacabra, but these sickly canine creatures are nothing like the classic depictions of these ferocious fiends.

Initially chupacabra were described as being semi- reptilian beasts with Kangaroo legs, upon which it could leap astounding distances. These creatures were also said to have canine (and occasionally feline) features, large fangs and, very often, bat-like wings. A forked tongue and porcupine-like spines were also commonly seen attributes. All versions of this creature were said to live on the blood of animals.

The above description sounds a lot like the “dog faced gargoyles” described by the Torres and Riquelme. In support of this hypothesis is the fact that since 2004 there have been sporadic reports hailing from South America regarding similar varmints, some of which have been allegedly spotted near scores of bird carcasses that were discovered to be devoid of blood.

While many people are of the mind that the late blooming, so to speak, of the chupacabra phenomenon is the result of it being either of alien extraction or the product of an American genetic experiment gone terribly awry, the thought that these gargoyles might be the origin for tales of the enigmatic chupacabra is an intriguing one. It’s also worth considering the fact that these critters seem to look a helluva’ lot like the…

NEW  JERSEY DEVIL

Although it is said to have hooves rather than coiled marsupial legs, the bat winged dog-like description of these gargoyles also seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to eyewitness accounts of the New Jersey Devil.

Nevertheless, the fact that the Jersey Devil is an ostensibly supernatural rather than traditionally cryptozoological entity, combined with the lack of any significant eyewitness accounts from outside the Pine Barrens, leads me to believe that this is just a farfetched shot in the dark.

Okay, so removing both the cryptozoological, paranormal and potentially ufological elements and look at some of South America’s indigenous fauna to see if we can come up with a culprit. There are a handful of options, but the character that seems to most fit the bill is…

VAMPYRUM SPECTRUM

Vampyrum Spectrum — also known as the Spectral or false vampire bat — is native to both South and Central America. This nocturnal predator ranges from Mexico to central Brazil and Peru. It is not only the largest bat found in the “New World,” but it is also the biggest carnivorous bat on the planet.

With its elongated nose and 3-foot wingspan it’s not entirely unreasonable to deduce that the Torre family spied a small group of these animals and assumed the worst. Granted the arid deserts of northern Chili are nothing like the prototypical habitat of deciduous forests and swampy areas where bunches of five Vampyrum Spectrum nest in hollow trees near bodies of water, but it is not that unusual for small colonies of creatures to occasionally stray from their usual environment for a variety of reasons.

One could also argue that a pair of gargantuan non-indigenous bats that are seen at night by young and inexperienced eyewitnesses may well appear to be larger than they are. Still, as convenient as a rogue population of bats might be in explaining away these events, they cannot account for the leaping, winged, kangaroo-like creatures that temporarily blocked the Torre’s path in full view of their truck’s headlights.

CONCLUSION:

So what is it that we are dealing with here? It seems fairly evident that if we are not contending with a mistaken identification or outright hoax, then these gargoyles must be either a variety of unknown flying mammal or perhaps a colossal species of heretofore undiscovered bat.

Strangely enough, according to both Carlos and the Carabineros — the uniformed Chilean national police force — there were no reports of strange creatures on the well traveled highway until 2004. Does this suggest a migratory pattern for these beasts or might we surmise that jungle deforestation or some other manner of likely human encroachment has forced these critters out of hiding and into the public eye?

Until one of the Chilean gargoyles is shot, captured or convincingly caught on film this mystery will no doubt endure… and if you ever find yourself traipsing around northern Chili at night, look to the skies… you never know what you’re going to see.

At his birth in Los Angeles on October 2, 1914, one Jack Parsons was given the memorable and unusual name of Marvel Whiteside Parsons, and lived a truly extraordinary, but short, life. An undoubted genius, he indirectly led NASA to send the Apollo astronauts to the Moon in 1969. Moreover, the Aerojet Corporation – which Parsons personally founded – today produces solid-fuel rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle that are based on Parsons’ very own, decades-old innovations.

For his accomplishments, a large crater on the far side of the Moon was named in his honor, and each and every year, on Halloween no less, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory holds an open-house memorial, replete with mannequins of Jack Parsons and his early JPL cohorts known as “Nativity Day.” And, within the aerospace community, there is a longstanding joke that JPL actually stands for “Jack Parsons Laboratory” or “Jack Parsons Lives.

Parsons, who was so revered and honored by very senior figures within the U.S. space-program, was an admitted occultist, a follower of the “Great Beast” himself, Aleister Crowley, and someone who topped even Crowley himself by engaging in bestiality with the family dog and sexual relations with his own mother, perhaps at the same time, no less. Moreover, before each rocket test, Parsons would undertake a ritual to try and invoke the Greek god, Pan.

It was perhaps inevitable that his path would eventually cross with that of Aleister Crowley. In 1942, after the two had become acquainted as a result of their like-minds and pursuits, Crowley chose Parsons to lead the Agape Lodge of the Thelemic Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) in California, after Crowley expelled one Wilfred Smith from the position. The devoted Parsons eagerly practiced Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic Rituals, the goal of which was the creation of a new breed of human being that, if the ritual proved successful, would lead to the destruction of Christianity.

Meanwhile, during the same time frame, and within the confines of his Pasadena mansion – dubbed “The Parsonage” – the darkly handsome Parsons held parties for those friends and colleagues in the field of science fiction. Indeed, writers Robert Heinlein, Jack Williamson, Anthony Boucher, and Ray Bradbury were all regular visitors to Parsons’ home. Parsons, then, was a highly interesting character, who moved in intriguing circles filled with powerful and influential players.

Much of Parsons’ – and the JPL’s – initial rocket research in this period was undertaken at the appropriately-named Devil’s Gate Dam in Pasadena, California. Interestingly, the JPL was itself established at this very locale in 1930 by the California Institute of Technology. The dam had been constructed a decade earlier by engineers from the Los Angeles County Flood Control District and took its title from Devil’s Gate Gorge, a rocky out-cropping that eerily resembles a demonic face and which is located in a narrow canyon of the Arroyo Seco, which is a riverbed that extends from the San Gabriel Mountains into the Los Angeles basin.

Some say that the face is merely a classic case of Pareidolia – the process by which the human brain can interpret random imagery as having some meaning or significance behind it. A classic example being the way in which, at one time or another, most of us have seen faces in clouds. But is that really all that is behind the satanic face of the old dam? Maybe not…

In late 2010, probably the most controversial book I have ever written was published: Final Events. The book told the unsettling story of a think-tank-style group deeply buried within the heart of the U.S. Government that addressed the UFO phenomenon at a deep and secret level for more than half a century. The members came to accept a disturbing conclusion about that same phenomenon: namely, that rather than having extraterrestrial origins, it was satanic in nature. And I do mean that literally: fire, brimstone, the Devil, and a malignant deception in which cold-hearted demons, masquerading as aliens, were working to an agenda of their devilish master to provoke Armageddon.

As very often happens when I have a new book out, people who have read it, and who feel they have something to say about its contents, contact me. And, certainly, Final Events was no different. One of those who did precisely that was a Californian man named Bob Jessup who had an amazing story to relate concerning Devil’s Gate Dam, a brief history of which I included in Final Events while telling the story and history of Jack Parsons.

Jessup (who, I should perhaps stress, was no relation to famed 1950s-era UFO researcher/author Morris K. Jessup) claimed to have seen a truly terrifying beast at the foot of Devil’s Gate Gorge only a few nights after reading Final Events! This almost sounded too good to be true, even by my standards! But, I listened carefully to what Jessup had to say.

With its surrounding and nearby hills, dense woodland, and winding pathways, the entire area is the ideal place for hikers and horse-riders to hang out and get some exercise. And Jessup fell into the former category: each weekday afternoon, after work, he would walk his dog, Miles, for an hour or so around the wooded paths, while taking in the pleasant and welcoming scenery. But what Jessup wanted to tell me was not pleasant. And it most certainly wasn’t welcoming either.

On a cold, dark, late afternoon in January 2011, Jessup was nearing Devil’s Gate Gorge when he heard an ear-splitting screech that he said was like a combination of the shrill cry of a fox and someone dragging their fingernails across a chalkboard. In other words: not at all inviting. But, it was extremely loud, very weird, and seemed to be coming from somewhere above him. He looked around – first to the trees, then to the sloping pathway that one takes from the dam down to the base of the Gorge. No luck.

It was when he looked closer at the Gorge itself, however, and that rocky, devil-like face that Jessup saw something that chilled him to the bone: a milk-white-colored, skinny, humanoid creature sporting a large pair of equally-white bat-type wings, scaling the Gorge, just like, in Jessup’s very own words, “Spiderman climbing a building.”Jessup could only stand and stare in awe and fear as the creature stared directly at him, issued another ear-splitting scream, and “kind of hopped and jumped and leapt away over the top [of the Gorge].” Jessup did not wait around to see if it elected to return.

I spent about forty-five minutes on the phone interviewing Jessup, who came across clear, lucid, but downright puzzled, and not to mention significantly worried by the encounter – which, at the time of writing these words, has not been repeated, much to Jessup’s personal relief.

The occult rituals of Jack Parsons and Bob Jessup’s account aside, certainly the most disturbing thing about Devil’s Gate Dam and Devils’ Gate Gorge were the tragic deaths and disappearances of a number of children in the area back in the 1950s. In August of 1956, Donald Lee Baker (thirteen) and Brenda Jo Howell (eleven) vanished while riding their bikes on land directly behind the dam. Both bikes and Brenda’s jacket were subsequently found nearby. The children, unfortunately, were not.

Then, in March 1957, an eight-year-old boy – Tommy Bowman – seemingly vanished into the middle of nowhere while hiking around the gorge with his family. One minute, little Tommy was there, the next he was utterly and forever gone. Three years later, in 1960, a young boy named Bruce Kremen vanished under mysterious circumstances in the same area.

As for Donald and Brenda, their disappearances were finally solved when a deranged serial-killer named Mack Ray Edwards confessed to having killed them – and who later committed suicide while doing time in San Quentin. The other two cases remain unresolved. And additional tragedy and death dominates the bleak area, too. Pasadena is also home to the Colorado Street Bridge, which just happens to cross over the Arroyo Seco bed. Locally, the large construction has a very different name: Suicide Bridge. Its name is very apt: the number of people who have now thrown themselves off the bridge – to their deaths – since its construction in 1912 is now into three-figures.

Some might disagree, but it seems to me – after researching the history of the area – that an atmosphere of distinct negativity and evilness has enveloped Devil’s Gate Dam. It’s a dark atmosphere out of which strode a serial-killer, a winged demon, a famous occultist without whose work NASA would likely never have been founded, and overwhelming, unsettling tragedy.

Since many of the suicides predated Jack Parsons’ presence at the area, we cannot lay the blame on his ritualistic ceremonies and his ties to Aleister Crowley. But, one cannot deny the possibility that his actions may have amplified the air of menace and negativity that enveloped the devilish dam in later years.

A damned dam, to be sure…

Ominous tales of ghost ships like the Flying Dutchman and the Mary Celeste have been passed down from one generation of seafarer to the next for centuries, but as eerie as these haunted vessels are alleged to be there is another even more disturbing maritime phenomena that deals not with ships that have been abandoned, but those whose crew have mysteriously perished. Arguably the most disturbing of all these legends is the shocking case of the SS Ourang Medan.

According to widely circulated reports, in June of 1947 — or, according to alternate accounts, February of 1948 — multiple ships traversing the trade routes of the straits of Malacca, which is located between the sun drenched shores of Sumatra and Malaysia, claimed to have picked up a series of SOS distress signals. The unknown ship’s message was as simple as it was disturbing:

“All officers including captain are dead, lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.”  This communication was followed by a burst of indecipherable Morse code, then a final, grim message: “I die.” This cryptic proclamation was followed by tomb-like silence.

THE SILVER STAR COMES TO THE RESCUE:

The chilling distress call was picked up by two American ships as well as British and Dutch listening posts. The men manning these posts managed to triangulate the source of these broadcasts and deduced that they were likely emanating from a Dutch freighter known as the SS Ourang Medan, which was navigating the straits of Malacca.

A conscripted American merchant ship called the Silver Star was closest to the presumed location of the Ourang Medan. Originally christened “Santa Cecilia” by the Grace Line (W. R. Grace & Co.), the vessel had been renamed the Silver Star when the United States Maritime Commission “drafted” it in 1946.

Noting the terrified urgency in the message that came over the airwaves, the Captain and crew of the Silver Star wasted no time in changing their course in an effort to assist the apparently incapacitated ship. Within hours, the Silver Star caught sight of the Ourang Medan rising and falling in the choppy waters of the Malacca Strait.

As the merchant craft neared the ill-omened vessel, the crew noticed that there was no sign of life on the deck. The Americans attempted to hail the Dutch crew to no avail. That’s when the Captain of the Silver Star decided to assemble a boarding party. As they left the safe haven of the Silver Star, these unfortunate souls had no idea that they were about to walk into a living nightmare.

As soon as they boarded the Ourang Medan, the men swiftly realized that the distress calls were not an exaggeration. The decks of the vessel were littered with the corpses of the Dutch crew; their eyes wide, their arms grasping at unseen assailants, their faces twisted into revolting visages of agony and horror. Even the ship’s dog was dead; it’s once intimidating snarl frozen into a ghastly grimace.

The boarding party found the Captain’s remains on the bridge, while his officers’ cadavers were strewn about the wheelhouse and chartroom. The communications officer was still at his post, as dead as the rest, his fingertips resting on the telegraph. All of the corpses, according to reports, bore the same terrified, wide-eyed expressions as the crew on deck.

Below deck, search party members found cadres of corpses in the boiler room, but almost as disturbing as this grim find was the fact that the American crew members claimed to have felt an extreme chill in the nadir of the hold, even though the temperature outside was a scorching 110°F. While the search team could see clear evidence that the crew of the Ourang Medan suffered profoundly at the moment of their deaths, they could find no overt evidence of injury or foul play on the swiftly decaying corpses. Nor could they spy any damage to the ship itself.

The Captain of the Silver Star decided that they would tether themselves to the Ourang Medan and tow it back to port, but as soon as the crew attached the tow line to the Dutch ship they noticed ominous billows of smoke pouring up from the lower decks, in specific the Number 4 hold.

The boarding party scarcely had a chance to cut the towline and make it back to the Silver Star before the Ourang Medan exploded with such tremendous force that it “lifted herself from the water and swiftly sank.”

The crew watched the Dutch vessel disappear beneath the briny depths, no doubt breathing deep sighs of relief that the towline had not dragged them into the sea as well.

The watery grave that claimed the Ourang Medan effectively removed the freighter from the face of the Earth and forced it directly into the realm of myths and legends. This, of course, has made it one of the most enduring and intriguing maritime mysterious of the modern age, leaving us to ask the most basic question…

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OURANG MEDAN?

While rumors about the Silver Star’s grisly discovery circulated wildly along the trade routes of the East Indies, the first official account of the event would not be printed until May of 1952, in the form of the “Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council,” which was published by the United States Coast Guard. The testimony therein described the alarming state of the Dutch crewmen, even going so far as to state:

“Their frozen faces were upturned to the sun… staring, as if in fear… the mouths were gaping open and the eyes staring.”

THE SHIP THAT NEVER WAS

The first problem with trying to ascertain what happened to this now infamous Dutch freighter is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any official records that it ever existed in the first place. We know that the Silver Star was real — although, by 1947, it had been reacquired by the Grace Line shipping company who dubbed the vessel “Santa Juana” — but there’s no paper trail leading to the Ourang Medan.

Some researchers have speculated that if the Ourang Medan was a genuine ship that it likely hailed from Sumatra, which at the time was a colony of the Netherlands in what was referred to as a the Dutch East Indies. “Ourang” is Indonesian for “man” and “Medan” is the biggest city on the island of Sumatra, which would designate this enigmatic freighter the “Man from Medan.” But, while the etymology of the name might give some clue as to its origin, there are no bureaucratic records of the Ourang Medan.

Author and historian Roy Bainton, who’s done some of the most exhaustive and revealing investigation on the subject of the SS Ourang Medan, met dead end after dead end in his pursuit of the true story of the “death ship.” First he went to the usual sources, but was unable to find any mention of the ship in Lloyd’s Shipping registers or the Dictionary of Disasters at Sea, 1824-1962.

Then he contacted the United Kingdom Admiralty, the Registrar of Shipping and Seamen and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich all of whom told him that the only place to check Dutch Shipping records was in Amsterdam. Bainton searched the Dutch records as well as the Maritime Authority in Singapore to no avail.

Just as he was about to give up his investigation and write the whole thing off as just an old sailors’ yarn, Bainton was contacted by Professor Theodor Siersdorfer of Essen, Germany who had been pursuing the case for the better part of 50 years and was the first to reveal the names of the two American ships that had heard the Ourang Medan’s SOS calls.

Siersdorfer also led Bainton to a 32 page German booklet written in 1954 by Otto Mielke, entitled“Das Totenschiffin der Südsee” or “Death Ship in the South Sea.” Mielke seemed to know a lot about the Ourang Medan’s route, cargo, tonnage and engine power and even, allegedly, the Captain’s name. One is forced to wonder whether or not Mielke had contact with one of the Silver Stars’ notoriously difficult to find crewmen.

Mielke’s pamphlet was also the source of the June, 1947 date and added yet another compelling piece to the puzzle, which helped to reignited Bainton’s interest in the project. This intriguing new bit of possible evidence was that the Number 4 hold of the Ourang Medan may have been filled with a pair of exceedingly lethal and highly illegal substances. According to Bainton:

“…there is a tantalizing, possible explanation as to her crew’s demise and her disappearance from the records. Mielke mentions a mixed, lethal cargo on the Dutchman ‘Zyankali’ (potassium cyanide) and nitroglycerine.”

Needless to say this would be a dangerous enough concoction in a laboratory with the highest safety protocols, but in a cargo hold on the rough seas it was a potential nightmare; one which might explain not only the inexplicable demise of the Dutch crew, but the subsequent explosion that claimed the freighter herself.

Even more terrifyingly, according to Bainton, is the conjecture that the Ourang Medan may have been smuggling nerve gas or even more insidious biological weapons manufactured by a sinister assembly of Japanese scientists whose experiments were so heinous that many of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi’s in the name of science pale by comparison. This diabolical faction was unassumingly referred to as…

UNIT 731:

Known to nearby inhabitants as a “den of cannibals,” Unit 731 was founded in 1932 by a brilliant, yet misguided, Japanese bacteriologist named Shirō Ishii.

The unit was designed to be a clandestine research and development department whose sole agenda was to create the most deadly forms of to chemical and biological weapons known to man and thus insure the victory of the Japan over any potential enemy.

Ishii established Unit 731 (code named “Tongo Unit”) during the Second Sino-Japanese War, but didn’t really make his terrible mark until he oversaw the construction of new research facilities in the Imperial Japanese Army occupied Pingfang district of Harbin, China. It was there that the scientists of his division conducted some of the most deplorable biological experiments known to mankind  during World War II.

Even more inexcusable was the fact that this grotesque cabal used human beings — including women and infants — in their appalling experiments, which included everything from exposure to sub-zero temperatures to the vivisection of human guinea pigs to study the effects of toxic materials on living organs.

Nevertheless, General Douglas MacArthur, presumably in the interest of national defense, covertly granted immunity to Ishii and his staff in exchange for providing the U.S. with their biological warfare research, regardless of the unspeakable acts they had committed — the magnitude of which was reported by Bainton:

“Unit 731′s brief was to find a chemical, gas or biological weapon to win the war. Hideous, inhumane experiments were carried out on helpless Australian, American, Russian, Chinese and British prisoners — some of the worst war crimes ever committed.”

As to why these hazardous materials were packed onto the Ourang Medan when they could have just flown it directly to a secretive laboratory, Bainton speculated that perhaps the U.S. government — or another world power — decided to use as slow and inconspicuous vessel as the Dutch freighter to transport such treacherous cargo for reasons of both safety and concealment:

“So how was this deadly cargo moved around the South China Sea and through the Straits of Malacca during this troubled period? Not by air; the prospect of a cargo plane crashing with several tons of deadly gas on board was too horrendous to consider. No, you hired an insignificant old tramp steamer, preferably with a low paid foreign crew, stowed the cargo in disguised oil drums and, like all serious smugglers, hoped for the best, and a blind eye from authority.”

Bainton surmised that sea water could have entered the ship’s hold, reacting with the perilous cargo to release poisonous gases, which then caused the crew to suffocate. At this point the onrushing salt water might have reacted with the nitroglycerin, creating the explosive effect that was said to cause the ship’s ultimate demise. Bainton even went on to speculate as to why the United States would go to such extreme lengths to expunge from all records the very existence of the freighter:

“If we accept, due to the nature of her crew’s deaths, that she was carrying deadly gas or chemicals and if indeed she was a Dutch vessel had this news broken it would have been a major embarrassment for any government involved, especially in the light of the Geneva Convention. Hence the dead ends faced by any researcher. The story exists because, like the gases, it escaped.”

So are we to believe that this was the ultimate fate of the Ourang Medan and her crew? Was this merely a tragic accident that was the result of a combining dangerous chemicals with nitroglycerine on rough seas? If this is a genuine account of what transpired, then it seems like it’s as valid a possibility as any, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only option that researchers have come up with. Perhaps the strangest I’ve encountered is that the unfortunate crew was the victim of…

THE PARANORMAL:

In 1953, Frank Edwards and Robert V. Hulse retold the basics of the legend for Fate Magazine and in his 1955 book “The case For the UFO,” astronomer, author and noted “Philadelphia Experiment” researcher, Morris K. Jessup, hypothesized that the crew of the Ourang Medan may have been attacked by extraterrestrials for reasons unknown.

Other Fortean enthusiasts have theorized that the unlucky Dutch crew may have had a Scooby Doo-like run-in with vengeful wraiths of the sea or a ghost ship full of surly, undead pirates. The dubious proof, which supporters of the paranormal option use to confirm their theory, is the evident lack of a natural cause for the deaths as well as the purportedly petrified expressions etched onto the faces of the doomed sailors. Add to this the unnatural chill in the cargo hold and the assertion that some of the deceased sailors were reaching up towards what was assumed to be an unknown adversary and you have all the ingredients for a hoary seafarers’ tale.

This is scant evidence indeed for a supposed interaction with either evil aliens or malevolent phantoms, but one can hardly blame yarn spinning mariners for trying to add a little spice to a story told around campfires on stony shorelines to wide-eyed children… or even novice deckhands. So, if we pressume for the moment that the paranormal is out then we must be dealing with…

NATURAL CAUSES:

Okay, assuming that the deaths aboard the Ourang Medan were caused by neither supernatural forces or atrocious weapons of war then could it be a chilling natural phenomenon or even a simple accident that claimed the lives of these Dutch sailors’? Mayhap an incident involving…

METHAN BUBBLES

Perhaps the most fear-provoking theory proffered by those who believe that the demise of the Dutch freighter was explicable by natural means is that the crew of the Ourang Medan was asphyxiated by clouds of noxious methane that gurgled up from a fissure on the sea floor and poisoned the sailors before eventually engulfing the ship.

As terrifying as the thought of random bursts of methane destroying vessels after killing the crew may be, this explanation seems farfetched as it does not account for the thunderous blast described by the crew of the Silver Star. So if it wasn’t methane bubbles that were responsible for the tragedy, then perhaps it was a…

BOILER FIRE

Author Vincent Gaddis, in his 1965 book “Invisible Horizons,” put forward the premise that an unobserved fire or failure in the ship’s boiler system might have been responsible for the demise of the vessel.

He claimed that carbon monoxide could have leaked up causing the deaths of all aboard while the fire slowly grew; eventually igniting the fuel and causing the craft to explode.

While this is a sound theory, perhaps the truth is even simpler than a fire or maintenance error and all of this is nothing more than a…

A HOAX

Despite Bainton’s proposition that the records may have been eradicated by a savvy group of governmental conspirators, the fact that there are no registration records for the Ourang Medan remains a troublesome detail.

Combine this with the reality that no survivors of the Silver Star have ever felt compelled to come forward and tell their harrowing tale and you’ve got all the earmarks of a good, old fashioned ghost story concocted by sailors to while away the long hours at sea.

That having been stated, the fact that the United States Coast Guard seems to have confirmed the tale, and that other noted nautical authors have invested so much time and so many resources in availing themselves of the truth, lends and aura of credibility to the whole proceeding.

CONCLUSION:

When all is said and done, if anyone really knows what happened to the Ourang Medan and her crew then they’re not talking, but whatever the truth is behind this unfathomable tragedy, it remains one of the most perplexing and downright scary maritime enigmas of the 20^th Century… and while it might not be as famous as the plethora of other ghost ships said to sail the high seas, it is every bit a terrifying.

They run wild through the streets at night, bearing their blood slathered fangs, tails fluttering behind them as they howl at the moon. No we’re not talking about your typical rogue wolf pack here; these are a gang of high school students who claim to be werewolves. So move over Michael Landon and back off Michael J. Fox, because there’s a new pack of teenage werewolves in town… and they’re proving to be a much more bloodthirsty bunch than their cinematic alter egos.

In a era when “Twilight” books are flying off shelves and teenyboppers across the globe are arguing the relative merits of dating a vampire over a werewolf, it should come as no surprise that a strange sort of paranormal vogue has swept through youth culture like a cyclone, leaving in its wake a plethora of world-weary teens attempting to live vicariously through these supernatural fantasy characters.

As a general rule fads like these come and go with a great deal of fanfare, little cultural significance and a surplus of paranoid adult backlash — anybody remember the Dungeons & Dragons psychosis scare of the 80’s? But in suburban San Antonio, Texas, there is a group of high school kids who are taking this craze to an altogether darker and more dangerous place.

THE CRIMSON BLOOD WOLF PACK:

These teenagers claim that they are bona fide werewolves who are members of the C.B.W.P. (Crimson Blood Wolf Pack.) While these juvenile lycanthropes are apparently immune to the moon’s persuasive transformative influence, they’ve nevertheless taken to wearing forged fangs, yellow, slit-iris contacts, leashes, animal tails attached to their jackets and chains which link the collars of two “pack mates.”

Northside High school officials officially banned both the chains and tails, due to the fact that they felt them to be a disruptive violation of the school dress code, but the young wildlings were not to be deterred. In fact, school officials confirm that these “wolf packs” are thriving in at least six additional schools, with up to twenty werewolves in each. A Pack member who calls herself “Katze Lupus Burn” claimed that their pack, although tightly knit and wary of outsiders, should not be mistaken for a gang:

“We’re not a gang at all. Gangs are like posers. They just want attention, that’s why they go along tagging stuff. The pack? We’re a family. We go to each other for our problems.”

While members of the pack claim that they serve as a support group for one another, many San Antonio parents and school officials feel the appearance of these teenage werewolves represents an alarming trend. These parental and administrative anxieties are fueled, in part, by distressing claims made by these “rebels without a pelt” that they like to loiter about the forest and consume raw deer flesh.

Beyond their evident enjoyment of venison tartare, these post-adolescent “wolfies” –  as they’re known by some in their community — seem to be slipping down a perilous slope that includes typical teenage travails like substance abuse and minor crimes and adds to them even more insidious elements such as alleged animal cruelty, carcass mutilation, sado-masochism and, tragically, teen suicides.

WOLFIE BLACKHEART

With her post-punk attire, androgynous, angular frame and wild shock of hair — not unlike her rock ‘n roll namesake — the “alpha dog” of this primarily female pack is a compelling enigmatic teenager and amateur taxidermist named Sara Rodriguez, who is better known to her fellow lycanthropes as “Wolfie Blackheart.”

Not unlike the renowned Don Corleone of the Godfather, Blackheart is in charge of her own pack and also oversees at least two sub-packs — including the Okina Kiba Pack and the Blue Moon Wolf Pack — who have their own minor alpha dogs, or “caporegimes,” who are submissive to her. According to Blackheart, this unique social arrangement includes overt elements of bondage such as the aforementioned collars:

“I’m a wolf, and I have a group of other friends who are canines… The collar means I belong to someone. It’s not a fashion statement.”

Blackheart is a 9th Grade dropout from John Marshal High School with a criminal history that includes bringing a skinning knife onto school property — which according to the affidavit was a “large curved blade” that “looks like it’s used to cut someone’s head off” — as well as burglary and, even more disturbingly, animal mutilation charges.

Blackheart also suffers from a rare form of Tourette’s syndrome, which causes her to yip in a dog-like fashion. According to her mother, Lisa Rodriguez, the strange syndrome was the result of head injury suffered in a car crash at the turn of the millennia.

Perhaps it was the head trauma or maybe it was an unnatural affinity for wolves, but when she was just 11 years-old, Blackheart claimed that she joined the C.B.W.P., after the fledgling group — which, at the time, consisted of a mere half dozen members — had been founded her cousin.

Blackheart, who was often accompanied by a half-wolf husky, also explained the code by which she and her pack have pledged to live: “[We] follow the ways of the wolf. [We] work as a unit [with] loyalty, honor and respect.”

But as noble as the C.B.W.P. claim their intentions are, there are many who suggest that Blackheart and her crew have a much more nefarious agenda and considering the controversy surrounding the young leader of the C.B.W.P. this should come as no surprise.

THE DEATH OF RIGSBY:

Referred to by detractors as a “dog killer and satanic priestess,” Blackheart skyrocketed to the public eye on January 20, 2010, when a series of grisly photos surfaced on the web showing her with the head of a dead dog named “Rigsby,” which had gone missing on January 5, 2010.

When images of the decapitated dog — which was allegedly owned by Blackheart’s next door neighbor Kathy Silva — surfaced on the web, Animal Care Services and amateur hackers began to investigate and the trail led them directly to Blackheart.

The most damning of these images included Blackheart holding aloft the disembodied head of the dog, which reports claim she beheaded in her kitchen with a pocket knife. [This distressing photo can be easily found online, but I decided not to include it in this article -- RM.]

This photograph quickly went viral, leading San Antonio Police to a website where someone had posted the alarming image along with the statement that: “it would be fun to desecrate the corpse.” Following their online discovery, local authorities and news agencies publicly accused Blackheart of killing and beheading the animal. Blackheart, for her part, denied having killed the chow mix dog, claiming that an unnamed friend of hers told her that the dog was hers and had been hit by a car. This friend then gave her permission to harvest the dog’s head.

While she asserted that the animal had already been dead when she found it, Blackheart did admit that she had chopped the missing canine’s head off and boiled it, but only for preservation purposes. The teen taxidermist and autopsy aficionado explained her motives to local newspapers: “He was gone. His tongue was dried. The cause of death, I’m almost a hundred percent sure, was blunt trauma… I like to learn and a lot of times I like to figure out the cause of death. I’ve always been interested in autopsies.”

Blackheart also described her method for preparing the canine’s head in ghastly detail, stating that she placed the animal on her kitchen counter and severed the windpipe, tendons and spine. She added:

“I severed the head, boiled the head. People make the mistake of hacking the spine, which will fracture the skull…You also have to put [the head] outside for the brains to leak out.”

Notwithstanding her rather morbid fascination for canine forensics, Blackheart — who decapitated and preserved the head off her Chihuahua Pixie after it was killed by a car — insisted that the photo was taken without her knowledge and that she would never hurt a living animal:

“I would never kill a canine. I am a canine… I’m not a killer. I’m really not… I gave [Animal Care Services] all the information and I gave them the head so they could tell it was not animal cruelty and what I did was legal… I would be more likely to hurt a human than a dog anyday.”

Despite her protestations, the San Antonio police got a warrant to search the home of Blackheart and her mother, Lisa Rodriguez.

The officers discovered that Blackheart’s bedroom walls were slathered with a reddish substance, which they believe to be blood. But her mother claimed that this was merely the result of a ketchup fight: “When they saw her room, they had to call every single cop to her room. The spots on the wall, they thought it was blood. It’s ketchup. The kids had a fight. They’re teenagers.”

In her room the police noted that the walls were adorned with posters of wolves and anime characters. They also discovered a refrigerator full of blood. Blackheart’s mother explained: “Wolfie does have a bloody refrigerator, but they’re all dead animals.”

San Antonio officers also found Blackheart’s collection of animal heads, including the skulls of a coyote, boar and ram. She also had an assortment of swords, including a Japanese katana, and a array of large knives. The forensics team swabbed the walls and confiscated the heads — including that of Rigsby, although the dog’s body was never found.

Eventually authorities were able to deduce that the dog had died before the mutilation, thus eliminating any animal cruelty charges. While she was ultimately exonerated of killing the dog, the alleged wolf girl nevertheless became the subject of numerous threats, prank calls, hate mail and even rooftop stalkers, which instilled a sense of fear in her family.

While this is clearly illegal harassment, the vitriolic response is understandable considering that at the time the image of the dog’s severed head — on a rainbow backdrop no less — served as Blackheart’s MySpace profile picture. This only further antagonized blackheart’s mysterious online critics whose reactions were venomous to say the least:

“I have friends who’ve met this crazy bitch so don’t take her side… if they were human skulls she’d be in jail she’s psycho and needs to go to a mental facility for good her mom too. That’s not normal and she has made a bad rep for San Antonio she’s a crazy gothic Satan worshipper disgusting pig.”

According to the San Antonio Express-News, the news that Rigsby had died was heartbreaking for Silva and her children, who had adopted the stray dog the year before: “My heart pretty much sank, because when I saw that picture, I said, ‘that’s Rigsby… He was the sweetest dog ever.”

Rodriguez, however, reiterated that despite her daughter’s wolfish nature, her affection for animals would preclude her from harming them, stating that she instead preferred to scavenge carcasses:

“Wolfie would never harm an animal. She likes road kill… I say, ‘Don’t sever heads in front of me.’ She usually does it in the woods.”

Needless to say, the video of the Kens-5 news report of this event eventually ended up on YouTube and, as of November 2011, has garnered 2,671,918 hits. This sudden burst of online fame thrust Blackheart and the C.B.W.P. into the limelight… and under the scrutiny of an L.A. born fine art and fashion photographer who made her name photographing teens.

DANIELLE LEVITT AND THE WEREWOLVES:

Danielle Levitt began her photography career documenting street fashion for the New York Post and has since shot for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar and Rolling Stone. Her most notable work is her first monograph “We Are Experienced,“ which was published in 2008 and focused on teens and their experiences growing up in America.

Levitt’s successes have often evolved around youth angst meets youth fashion and so when word came out that there was a pack of teenage werewolves loitering around the San Antonio mall, she wasted no time in contacting the British magazine “Dazed & Confused” hoping to go out and snap some photos. The fashion publication agreed to send Levitt out to get the scoop on the C.B.W.P. and their enigmatic leader.

The photographer spent three days with the pack in early 2011. She described her impetus to undertake this strange assignment:

“I went to San Antonio, Texas, to photograph Wolfie Blackheart of the Crimson Blood Wolf Pack, after seeing a video posted… on Kens-5, a local San Antonio TV station. Wolfie had been accused of beheading a dog. I was initially struck by this story, not out of interest in her innocence or guilt, but the massive outpouring from teens all over the Texas area offering support through YouTube videos. Wolfie, who claims to be part wolf, is very compelling.”

Beyond compelling, Levitt also claimed that Blackheart seemed to be a natural leader: “Once in Texas, it was clear why she formed her pack and why she was the alpha female of it. The Crimson Wolf Pack functions as a family, they look to her for guidance, and she tirelessly supports, mothers and leads. The kids in the pack need her, as she needs them, for they are sorts of outsiders and don’t necessarily feel like they fit in normative worlds.”

Levitt got members of various werewolf packs together and gave them what most teenagers are secretly longing for… the spotlight. With her team of lighting, hair and makeup artists, Levitt began shooting her trademark pictures of the kids, hoping that she could capture the zeitgeist of the whole phenomenon.

Following a long day of scouting locations to shoot, Levitt followed the pack back to Blackheart’s home (and the C.B.W.P.’s unofficial meeting place.) The group was disturbed to find that the abode was surrounded by fire trucks and was burning to the ground. In Levitt’s own words:

“I spent a day with Wolfie and the pack. They live in a quiet suburb in San Antonio, a small home in the perpetual process of a remodel. The kids from the pack are always staying there, it’s their refuge. A place to free themselves of parental observation, a place of fun and of love. So I was really upset and surprised when, after a day of location scouting, we returned to her home to find six fire engines putting out a fire that destroyed her house. All of the gang had gathered outside… The trauma brought out all of the pack and the packs friends.”

Following the fire that claimed her home and the release of the Dazed & Confused photos in the spring of 2011, Blackheart acquired a cult following of ardent fans.

This time, however, reactions toward the lupine leader of the C.B.W.P. were much more positive. Blackheart claimed that folks were now looking for hugs or autographs.

Despite the death (be it accidental or not) and mutilation of Rigsby, Blackheart and her clan would soon garner a cultish celebrity status that would start a rush of YouTube videos from werewolf supporters worldwide. But as tragic of the fate of Rigsby might have been, it would sadly not be the most sorrowful element of this story.

FEAR & LOATHING IN SAN ANTONIO:

As abovementioned, Blackheart’s acolytes considered her to be the alpha-dog of all the local wolf packs, but there were packs springing up across San Antonio and they each required lieutenants to maintain order under the patronage of Blackheart. One of these sub-alphas was 16 year-old Adrian Baine Manley, also known as “Deikitsen Wolfram Lupus.”

Lupus, who was in charge of the Brandeis High School chapter, had asked for Blackheart’s permission to begin his own wolf pack and was given her blessing. In Blackheart’s own words: “He’s one of my submissives, but he leads a group of others.”

Lupus — a budding artist whose work betrayed a lot of his teenage disillusionment with the world as well as his passion for wolves — extolled the virtues of the pack and expressed how he felt that all people have a beast inside rearing to get out:

“You get friends. You get a place where you belong. You’re pretty much accepted to where you are, who you are, what you are… I don’t believe anyone is just human. Everyone’s got something else mixed in with them. They just have to look inside themselves and find out what it is.”

Lupus, or “Dei,” as he was known to his family, had the full support of his mother, Pamela Manley, who felt that her son’s werewolf phase was just a way for him to express his individuality:

“As soon as he walks in the door, he is supposed to take out the fangs, lose the lenses and put his hair back. They’re good kids. And it takes some courage to stand up and be who you want to be and be able to express yourself in this way. If this is the worst that he does in high school, I’m blessed.”

Tragically, his choice of dress would be far from the worst thing that Lupus ever did. On September 28,^, 2010, Lupus took his own life by hanging himself in his home with his leash. This horrific incident came on the heels of another wolf pack members’ suicide, 14 year-old Amanda Resendiz, who also hung herself with her leash behind the John Igo Branch Library just a week before, on September 22, 2010.

According to reports, Lupus and Resendiz were close friends, members of the same pack and classmates, although Lupus had been expelled from Brandeis High for bringing a knife to campus and was forced to attend the Bexar County’s Juvenile Justice Academy, where his mother claimed that her son was the victim of frequent bullying.

That having been stated, San Antonio Child Protective Services also confirmed that they had previously investigated claims of “turbulent home lives” for both youths, indicating that their predicaments may have gone deeper than teasing.

While all evidence suggests that Lupus and Resendiz were just a pair of troubled teens, who regrettably did not receive the help they needed in time to save their all too short lives, this did nothing to prevent rumors from swiftly spreading throughout San Antonio that their untimely deaths were the result of a werewolf suicide/murder pact.

Preying on fears that are all too prevalent in a cynical post-Columbine world, the local rumor mill went into overdrive with wild (and ultimately unfounded) speculation that before he passed on, Lupus had issued an edict to his pack telling them to not only take their own lives, but also those of their classmates.

These wildly exaggerated (although, in some ways, understandable) suspicions were expressed in an online forum by a female poster known only as “Pascall.” Here is an excerpt: “Now there are rumors going around that before he killed himself, he [Lupus] instructed his 30+ followers who go to different schools… and start a three-school wide shooting [spree]. Four kids that were a part of this wolf pack have already been arrested for attempting to bring guns into Brandeis a few days ago. This shooting is supposed to happen on October 12th.”

After expressing her concern for the local law enforcement agencies apparent lack of concern over the unconfirmed report, she went on to say:

“So there it is. This “Wolf Pack” as they call themselves are basically planning on killing themselves and taking several with them. Now, I generally wouldn’t be too concerned with something like this, but I know kids who go to these schools and I’m pretty worried… These kids are seriously [expletive deleted] in the head and I really hope that they don’t go through with this. They all wear tails too. All the time. Every day. Everywhere. What the [expletive deleted] happened to today’s kids?”

Pascall’s overwhelming negative opinion of these self-styled wolves and her paranoia surrounding their seemingly hidden agenda seems to pretty well sum up the lack of empathy and anxiety that many San Antonio citizens felt toward the packs after the news broke of their existence. Needless to say this potentially devastating mass murder never took place, but the stories circulating in the community were sufficiently scandalous to make members of the Northside Independent School District (NISD) Police Department go to the homes of ten known pack members to interrogate them.

While many in the community were reticent to express their compassion for Resendiz and Lupus, many of the teenagers’ peers took a much more sympathetic view as was evidenced by the plethora of online testimonials posted on a memorial page dedicated to Lupus. One such tribute came from a member of the Okina Kiba Pack named “Silverwind Kiba“:

“I really admired you for being different, Dei. I wish I could have known you or contacted you before it was too late. The Okina Kiba Pack is crying for you, let you be happy with the other wolves in the sky. We will hold vigil for you.”

“Kitsena Lupus” of the Blue Moon Wolf Pack, while acknowledging that they came from different lupine families, also expressed her wish that Lupus had taken another path:

“Even though we belonged to different packs, we always stayed friends. I miss you Dei. Why did you have to leave us? I love you, I miss you, and I hope you rest with the wolves in the sky.”

WEREWOLVES VS. VAMPIRES – THE TWILIGHT EFFECT:

It goes without saying that the appeal of the vampire is obvious; eternal youth, ethereal seductiveness, sweet fangs, the ability to fly and (unless you transform into a bat) no overtly painful physical transformations.

I would even suggest that the tagline for the 1987 pop horror classic “The Lost Boys” probably proffers the most succinct theory as to why vampires are so enticing to young people:

“Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.”

Nowadays — with an entire generation of children having been raised on the dubious romantic triangle of Edward Cullen, Bella Swan and Jacob Black — it seems like more than ever the supernatural is being portrayed in a romantic rather than repugnant light.

Blackheart, of course, denies the influence of Twilight on the C.B.W.P., claiming that her lifestyle choice has little to do with the Twilight series: “I’ve never read the book. Ever. I saw the first movie it reminded me of a drama… it’s not my thing. I’m not into it.” Lupus, before his untimely passing, agreed with his alpha wolf’s opinion:

“Human wolves have been around a lot longer than characters in Twilight. It gives us a sense of belonging. You gain friends and you belong and indulge your wild side.”

While it’s clear why vampires have had an enduring place in print and film ever since Bram Stoker offered up the first truly iconic version of the seductive blood sucker in 1897, the appeal of the werewolf is less apparent.

Surely part of allure is the raw, predatory power of wolves as well as their inherently wild and menacing presence. It should come as no surprise that teens who feel weak or bullied by the world around them would so fervently identify themselves with a creature of such untamed, bestial authority and natural beauty. Combine this with the fact that every other teenybopper across the globe was wearing a “Team Edward” shirt and it’s no wonder why these illegitimate children of the Goth movement wholeheartedly rejected vampiric identification.

Also worth noting is the tremendous upsurge of werewolves in pop culture. MTV’s re-imagining of “Teen Wolf,” the “Underworld” series and Benicio Del Toro’s remake of “The Wolfman” all have proven to be fan favorites.

One need only look at television shows like “Being Human” or the cult hit “Ginger Snaps,” which featured a pair of misanthropic, suicidal, teenage sisters one of whom is inadvertently transformed into werewolf, to see a clear cut underground movement that’s heading away from cultivated and dapper vampires toward the wild and wooly werewolves.

It seems evident that the “Twilight” phenomenon is designed less for these teen wolves and more for the cheerleaders who detest them. In fact, one only need look at the appellations that many of these teens have bestowed upon themselves — Silverwind Kiba, Kitsena Lupus, matsu wolfess — to see that one of their primary influences seems to be Japanese anime and manga and not Stephanie Meyers’ melodrama ridden literary dreck.

POP CULTURE MEETS THE PARANORMAL:

Growing up in the 1980s I got a fast lesson in teen cliques not only from every John Hughes film to come down the pike, but simple school experience.

Back in the day we had jocks, preps, metal heads, nerds, punks, divas and a handful of pale, spider headed, eyeliner wearing Robert Smith acolytes who would form the earliest foundations for the “goth” movement.

As a youth, I sported a peroxide bleached Mohawk, skull earrings, shredded jeans and an array of chains that would have strained Mr. T’s neck. I remember distinctly the epiphany that came to me sometime in 8th Grade that I would never fit in with the “popular” kids, so I did everything I could to separate myself from the pack — so to speak.

In retrospect I realize that I wasn’t being anti-social or even particularly rebellious, I just understood that I would rather be ostracized for who I wanted to be rather than be rejected for trying to endear myself to people I really didn’t like that much to begin with… and if I couldn’t look debonair, then at least I would look weird. In short, it was better to be feared than ridiculed.

I think this is why  – animal mutilations aside — I have a soft spot for this brood. When all is said and done the members of the C.B.W.P. are just kids. Lonely, confused kids who are trying to carve a niche for themselves in the all too cruel world of suburban high school.

Clinical psychologist, Dr. Anne Esquivel, confirmed the assessment that the adolescents are likely are drawn to the packs in search of recognition and approval, but she warned that there could also be a dark side to joining the pack:

“They need to feel included in something. These are going to be kids that are going to be socially isolated. Maybe they don’t have a tight family unit… Whenever you go to such lengths to be eccentric, you are going to be ostracized. You want acceptance, but you’re setting yourself up to not be accepted.”

Had they been born a few decades before they might have been punk or goth or headbangers, but their generation just happened to come of age in an era when pop culture and the paranormal are forming a unique nexus that allows youngsters looking for a sense of identity to become werewolves — at least in the confines of their own minds.

So while the claws, tails, contacts, collars, pointed ears and post-90s prepackaged androgynous anarchy may come off as hokey to some, it’s really just the same stylistic rebellion that’s been fought time and time again between each new generation with the one that came before it.

Understanding, to a degree anyway, the psychological context of a phenomenon like this is one thing, but there are still some pack members who claim that they have genuine wolf’s blood raging through their veins. So the question we have to ask now is; are we dealing with a case of authentic, lunar influenced lycanthropy or the dawn of a…

WEREWOLF CULT

Despite the claims of some C.B.W.P. members, there is no evidence whatsoever that this these teens are physically transforming into wolves, but one must wonder if we are bearing witness to the birth of an emerging youth movement or, at the very least, the grassroots of a cult.

One which could eventually prove to be dangerous if left unchecked in leadership of an eccentric young woman with scores of overwrought, rebellious, teen angst infused followers. If that is the case, however, then Blackheart doesn’t seem inclined to do much with the power that she allegedly wields.

In fact, if her public persona is any reflection of reality, then she is nothing more than a prototypical post-pubescent woman who likes to hang out with her friends, party on the weekends and slather social networking sites with self shot vanity images of her and her girlfriends.

These activities do not have the earmarks of a “Jim Jones” or “Charles Manson,” but those of a teenager out looking for a little bit of fun… even if that fun occasionally includes the dismemberment of roadkill. This alpha dog even seems surprised by the pack’s exponential growth over the years:

“It’s gotten really big. When I was 11, there were six of us. And my cousin used to lead it. From then, look at it now, spread all over the Internet and everything… I was surprised. It was interesting. I wasn’t expecting it to get that big at all.”

CONCLUSION:

In the end, I don’t think that the residents of San Antonio have much to fear from the C.B.W.P. Like the rest of us most of these kids will likely grow away from this movement as the pressures and pleasures of life, love, work and family come their way, but until that day they’re going to continue to be kids who are just looking to have a safe haven surrounded by friends. As a pack member known only as “Guerrero “explained:

“We’re not trying to be intimidating, we’re not trying to be menacing. We’re just trying to live our daily lives and hang out. You know? We’re teenagers and we just want to have fun.”

I wish them well… it’s just a shame that two young lives had to be lost along the path. Here’s hoping that they found the peace that eluded them in life and that the remaining members of the C.B.W.P. will find some joy in their little corner of the world.

On Monday, March 13, 1978, Steven Spielberg’s seminal cinematic tour de force, “Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind” was unleashed on unsuspecting theatergoers across Great Britain, sparking a nationwide interest in the UFO phenomenon and making discussions of aliens and their hidden agendas a topic of conversation in nearly every kitchen, coffee shop, pub and schoolyard for the next six months.

While the massive influx of interest inspired by the aforementioned motion picture was surely a boon for both movie producers and publishers of pulp paperbacks, there was a man by the name of Ken Edwards, who — following a terrifying, and ultimately tragic, encounter with the unknown — would live to curse the extraordinary popularity of “Close Encounters” and the real-life extraterrestrials upon which it was based.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF RISLEY AND THE ATOM:

Bordered by the M62 motorway and nestled in the northeastern corner of Warrington, England, is the unassuming district of Risley. Following WWII, the region became the site of the headquarters for the Great Britain’s fledgling nuclear weapons and power program, known as of the Department of Atomic Energy (DATEN.)

This would later evolve into the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA,) which was tasked with the production of nuclear reactors and process plants, as well as bolstering England’s nuclear defense program. The area was also the home of the University Research Reactor.

The concrete shielded Argonaut class reactor, which went online in 1962, was co-owned by Liverpool and Manchester universities. The educational institutions primarily utilized the highly enriched uranium metal fueled reactor for experiments involving neutron activation.

Okay, history lesson over. Suffice it to say this seemingly insignificant locality has served as the site for a range of noteworthy nuclear facilities… not to mention one of the outright weirdest, and potentially deadly, humanoid encounters on the books.

THE SILVER MAN AND THE SERVICE ENGINEER:

At approximately t 11:30 pm. on the evening of March 17^th, 1978, a 39 year-old service engineer by the name of Ken Edwards was making the 15-mile journey home to Warrington New Town development following a union meeting in Greater Manchester. By all accounts, Edwards was a straight-laced, hard working man who was not prone to wild flights of fancy or belief in the paranormal.

Nevertheless, as the exhausted Edwards drove down an isolated stretch of road through the mostly derelict industrial district where the Risley atomic energy complex was located, something utterly unbelievable snared his attention… something that would challenge his understanding of reality.

Edwards claimed that he first spied what he thought was a “man climbing,” but he quickly realized that he was looking at a gargantuan, humanoid figure lumbering down the steep embankment adjacent to the nuclear facility. The startled engineer immediately hit the brakes and his van slowed to a halt near the curb of the road some 50-feet away from the hulking humanoid, which was now illuminated by his headlights.

Edwards stared in astonishment at this bipedal beast — which he would later dub the “Silver Man” — as it lurched down the hill with its arms outstretched, utilizing strange, stiff-legged movements, like someone who was born without knee joints.

In fact, Edwards’ description and the sketch he made of this being makes it hard not to conjure images of some kind of enormous, intergalactic Frankenstein’s Monster.

Edwards also noticed that this creature assumed an odd “stooped” posture as it scrambled down the hill, which seemed impossible for a human to emulate without toppling over. This would be confirmed by investigators who inspected the scene and were unable to imitate the thing’s gait, forcing some to wonder if perhaps this Silver Man — like Apollo astronauts leaping about on the moon — was not susceptible to the same laws of gravity as the rest of us.

At this point the eccentric entity paused at the edge of the road and Edwards got his first good look at it under the glare of his high beams. The anxious engineer estimated that the figure was at least 7-feet in height and was either clad in some sort of reflective silver fabric akin to a radiation suit or had a dull metallic epidermis not unlike Alabama’s Metal Man of Falkville.

He also claimed that the figure’s roundish face was black — or that it was covered with some sort of mask — with no discernible features except for a pair of glowing eyes. Furthermore, it had two, thin arms that were not attached at its shoulders, but stuck straight out of its chest like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Edwards tensed as the bizarre being trudged into the road directly in front of his car and turned to face him; staring into his eyes with its own self illuminated orbs. The moment must have felt excruciatingly long as these two foreign species fixed their eyes on one another, separated only by about 30-feet of asphalt and a windshield… and that was when things went from weird to horrifying.

Without warning, two pencil-thin “energy beams” of white light shot from the humanoid’s eyes directly into Edwards’ van. The engineer claimed that as soon as he was struck by these intense ocular beams he was overcome by a “dizzy” sensation and lost all sense of time. Edwards also claimed that there was some kind of invisible force that had apparently paralyzed him, which he compared to:

“…someone with two enormous hands pressing me down from the top. The pressure was tremendous… it seemed to paralyze me. I could only move my eyes. The rest of me was rigid.”

Stranger still he claimed that he was overcome with unconventional thoughts rushing through his head all at once, but he only remembered one that kept looping over and over in his brain:

“Is this something from outer space and what does it want with me?”

A moment later he regained control of his muscles and realized that his fingers were throbbing and covered with what looked like sun burnt flesh. Even more disturbingly he noticed that the circuitry of his pricey radio transceiver had completely burned out during the ordeal. It’s worth noting that there are some exaggerated reports that erroneously claim that the device itself (or even his vehicle) actually exploded — this was not the case.

When Edwards looked up he saw that the entity had apparently lost interest in him and was heading straight for the 10-foot high, barbwire topped security fence that surrounded the fire station opposite the nuclear facility. Once it arrived at the fence the Silver Man raised its fingerless hands upwards, paused, lowered its arms and then walked directly through the barrier like a cosmic phantasm.

As soon as it “melted” through the fence, the creepy, luminous-eyed creature clambered up the hill next to the fire station and disappeared into the woods beyond. Needless to say, Edwards was stunned by this entire episode and took a moment to compose himself and wonder what the hell just happened.

Edwards later claimed that he remained motionless on the roadside for just a few minutes before he threw his vehicle into gear and sped home, but when he arrived at his house nearly an hour later, at about 12:30 am. — following a drive which should have taken no more than 5-minutes — the engineer knew that something was not quite right. Even so, he simply chalked it up to the trauma of this harrowing event making him lose track of time:

“…[It] seems like a long time I know, but I was petrified and I do not want to go through that again.”

While that may be the case, the fact that Edwards had no direct memory of the time he lingered in his van forces one to wonder whether or not this might have been an example of the “missing time” phenomenon that is so often associated with alleged alien abduction cases.

Perhaps Edwards didn’t spend that entire span of missing time sitting behind the wheel , semi-comatose with shock. Maybe he was inside some kind of hyper-technological space craft undergoing a scandalously evasive alien examination.

If that were the case either Edwards had no recollection of the event — as most do not until the “lost” memories are unlocked through hypnosis — or he simply refused to speak about it; although some researchers claimed that he was haunted by thoughts of abduction.

Regardless of whether or not Edwards had any additional “alien” contact that evening, when he finally arrived home his wife, Barbara, immediately knew that something was terribly wrong. Just before she could read him the “riot act” for being so late, Barbara watched as her pale husband walked past her directly to the liquor cabinet to pour himself a shot of bourbon. The trembling Edwards threw back the whiskey, hoping that the liquid fire would calm his jittery nerves, then turned to his apprehensive wife and said: “I’ve seen a silver man.”

Edwards fixed himself another drink and told his wife about his run-in with the bizarre, shimmering-eyed fiend. She claimed that she wasn’t sure how to react to the story, but that she supported her husband:

“He had been very badly shaken and I don’t know what to make of it. I would have to see it myself to really believe it, but he saw something very strange, I know.”

Later that night, Edwards was getting ready for bed, when he abruptly stopped and began putting his clothes back on. He knew that he would have to set his fear of ridicule aside and report this abnormal event, especially considering that it happened in such close proximity to an atomic reactor. Anxious and feeling the effects of the whiskey, Edwards said to his wife:

“I think I’d better go to the police. Will you take me?”

Barbara, of course, complied and drove her husband to the Police Station at Padgate, which was located less than 2-miles from their home. The police constables on duty — including officers Roy Kirkpatrick and Rob Thompson — were understandably skeptical, but rapidly realized that Edwards was still clearly scared. It was then that they began to take his admittedly unbelievable account very seriously.

After some convincing, the uneasy Edwards agreed to accompany the officers back to the scene of the encounter where they met up with a team of twenty, baton armed, UKAEA security guards.

It bears mentioning that one of the men on the scene later stated that when the UKAEA security team was told of Edwards strange sighting none of the men so much as offered a smirk. Is this because they wee stone-cold professionals or could it be that they were familiar with this peculiar night visitor?

Unfortunately, the search party found no sign of the creature, nor any indication that the fence had been tampered with, but the UKAEA men all refused to enter the forest where Edwards had seen the physics defying figure vanish. It wouldn’t be until well after four in the morning that the traumatized engineer would arrive home and attempt get a few restless hours of sleep. His insomnia would last for days.

 THE NEXT MORNING

A few hours later, Edwards rolled out of bed and noticed that his manual watch had stopped at 11:45 pm., which is presumably when he and his van were immersed in the entity’s eye beams. He later claimed that all attempts that were made to repair the watch were for naught.

Edwards then realized that the “sunburned” fingers on his right hand were scarring with three dark marks that ran the entire length of the fingers. These strange marks faded within 3-weeks. Edwards felt this was particularly mysterious as he was not prone to getting sunburned or any other type of skin ailment.

Almost as bizarre as his enigmatic night time sunburn was the effects these allegedly alien energy beams had on Edwards’ transceiver. The expensive device was the property of his employer and was necessary for his work as a service engineer, so when Edwards discovered that it wasn’t working he immediately took it in for repairs.

According to UFO investigators Jenny Randles and Paul Wetnall, who researched the event, it took the better part of 3-weeks before the engineer discovered that the damage was too prolific to be repaired. He also found out what the probable cause of the damage was. According to Randles:

“Apparently there had been a massive power surge through the set which had burnt out the whole of the transmitting diode circuit, and most of the capacitors.”

The service repairmen who had preformed the diagnostic on the device surmised that the damage was likely the result of a massive surge being picked up by the aerial and blowing its circuitry apart, which would seem to coincide with Edwards’ account of events.

In the days following this event both police officers and independent investigators combed the location looking for any sort of clue that might indicate what this Silver Man was and where it had come from, but only two things of note were discovered at the scene. The first was an oval shaped patch of flattened grass atop the embankment that the being had descended, which some feel may be an indication of a landing site.

The second unusual thing found by the investigators was the dead body of a rabbit that had no evident injuries. While this poor bunny may be completely unrelated to the Risley event, there are some who have speculated that it might have been a (perhaps unintentional) victim of the Silver Man’s energy beam or conceivably it succumbed to some sort of extraterrestrial radiation poisoning.

Others surmised that the pitiable critter had simply been “scared to death.” The carcass, however, was left to rot, making all of this wild conjecture at best.

The police pursued the investigation for days and even tried “surprising” Edwards by showing him a man in a silver, fire retardant suit, but Edwards was nonplussed and insisted that it looked “nothing like it.” It wouldn’t be long before the police would discard the inquiry altogether and dismiss the whole thing as:

“…just one of those odd incidents that happen from time to time.”

 THE SECOND ENCOUNTER

At about midnight, on Thursday March 23, 1978, a mere 6-days after his frightening run-in with the unknown, Edwards once again found himself at the site of the event, this time with a man who is only identified as a “freelance UFO investigator from Leeds.” Edwards claimed that for a second time he felt himself being overcome by the disturbing mental and physical sensations that had flooded him during his “staring match” with the Silver Man.

Fighting his urge to immediately leave the scene, Edwards forced himself to get out of the vehicle and began walking up the embankment with the man from Leeds. Once they reached the top, he and the investigator went their separate ways and that’s when Edwards noticed the Silver Man standing in the distance. As quoted from Randles’ and Wetnall’s article:

“…it was then, in the distance, that he saw the figure again, atop the wasteland and walking away from him. “

It was at this point that the grotesque apparition abruptly vanished never to be seen again. The courage that had inspired Edwards to accompany the investigator to the top of the hill all but evaporated and rushed down the slope and sped home, evidently leaving the Leeds fellow behind.

THE FINAL ENCOUNCTERS

The next strange incident occurred on April 2, 1978, but did not involve an actual sighting. According to Edwards, he and his wife were driving home along the usual route that took them past the nuclear power plant at about 2:00 am. following a daytrip to Yorkshire, when he was overcome by that same disquieting “feeling” that had gripped him twice before.

For reasons he was unable to explain, Edwards felt compelled to bring his van to a halt at the location of his first sighting. Edwards then climbed out of the vehicle and stood in the center of the road, where he claimed the sensation only increased in intensity. It was then that he blacked out. When Edwards came to moments later, he speedily scrambled back into the van and he and his wife drove home at breakneck speeds.

It was then that the engineer pledged to never travel by that road again no matter how far out of the way he had to go.

The final weird incident in the Risley ordeal happened in the wee hours of April 12, 1978. Edwards claimed that he had been awoken in the middle of the night by a deep electrical hum that seemed to fill his house. Edwards climbed out of bed, careful not to disturb his wife, and began searching for the source of the strange hum.

The engineer searched his home assuming that something mechanical had been left on, but when he found nothing running he decided to check outside. According to Edwards the sound increased in volume as soon as he opened the window, but he could still see nothing.

Eventually the noise faded and he returned to bed. A few days later it was discovered that two residents of Risley had also heard the hum and when they looked skyward they realized that it was emanating from an oval, red UFO. While there’s no direct correlation between the UFO and the Silver Man, it’s difficult not to make at least circumstantial connections.

While on the subject of UFOs, researchers discovered that on the same night as Edwards’ first encounter, four unidentified youths were said to have spotted a cigar shaped craft floating over the University Research Reactor area.  This flap included eight other allegedly confirmed sightings in the weeks preceding the Risley event.

Constables Thompson and Kirkpatrick took a particular interest in these strange goings on and decided to look into nearby universities to see if all of this might have been a hoax, but they could find no indication that it was.  In response to the suggestion that he might have been the victim of some overeager college pranksters, Edwards responded indignantly:

“I wish they could tell me how they did it. How they blew up my radio and walked through a fence, some stunt.”

An interesting postscript to these events came when Randles and UFO investigator Peter Hough exposed the fact that, what they termed as, “unusual experiments” were being carried out in a Atomic Energy Authority building adjacent to where the Silver Man was seen. However the nature of these experiments has not been revealed, leaving this tidbit to languish in the purgatory of the “unsubstantiated.”

SPEILBERG’S MOVIE MAKES A SPLASH:

Although it had yet to play in the Cheshire area (films were released regionally back in the 1970s) the buzz following the “Close Encounters of the 3^rd Kind” premiere had swiftly spread across the county, creating a huge upsurge in pseudo-scientific interest for anything involving funny lights in the sky or, better yet, extraterrestrial contact.

Being as this was the state of the nation — and most of the rest of the free world — it should come as no surprise that as soon as the police released the information regarding Edwards’ eerie encounter to the local Warrington Guardian, the press descend on him and his wife like sharks in chum infested waters.

Of course, Edwards had no way of knowing when he reported his eyewitness account to the authorities that he would end up paying such a heavy toll for his honesty, but, as luck would have it, he was the first individual to report a close encounter with an ostensibly alien being following the massive publicity surrounding the U.K. premiere of “CE3K.”

In no time at all headlines in newspapers across Great Britain were ablaze with headlines that ranged from Sunday People’s almost tame “Close Encounter as Ken meets a Monster” to the Sunday Post’s playfully derisive “Silver Giant Beams Light Fantastic” to the News of the World’s outright ridiculous “Ken and a Flasher from Outer Space.”

Within days the Edwards’ modest home became a media mecca. Their lawn swarmed with reporters, amateur ufologists, curiosity seekers and, most disturbingly, disciples of the Aetherius society.

Members of this cult claimed to channel messages from extraterrestrials and believed that Edwards had been “chosen by God” to see the alien. But even worse than the believers were the throngs of skeptics who flocked to the Edwards’ property and publicly decried him as a charlatan who was either clinically insane or a liar.

The Edwards’ neighbors confirmed that the brouhaha had grown so intense that the Edwards were forced to cancel their vacation plans and go into hiding… all because he had happened to drive down the wrong road on the wrong night and had the audacity to report the event lest whatever it was pose a threat to the highly sensitive research being conducted at the atomic facilities in the region.

Sadly this is a fate that has befallen far too many who have been willing to step forward to share their stories about encounters with the as yet unimaginable creatures that co-inhabit our universe. But as disturbing as all of the public ridicule and media uproar was, the worst was far from over for poor Ken Edwards.

A TRAGIC ENDING:

Within a year of his now infamous sighting, just as things were starting to return to normal, Edwards became unexpectedly ill. He experienced a loss of energy and suffered from severe stomach pains.

Edwards decided that he needed to go to the hospital, where, after a battery of tests, he was diagnosed with cancer of the kidneys.  Edwards underwent major surgery to remove the cancer, but within a few months the insidious cells had reappeared in his throat. Within five years of his encounter with the Silver Man, Ken Edwards had tragically succumbed to that horrible disease.

While I think it is a shot in the dark at best to associate Edwards’ sorrowful demise with his encounter there are some investigators who have publically wondered whether or not the Silver Man’s optical discharge might have mutated Edwards’ once healthy cells. Randles, one of the most prolific investigators of this event, expressed her opinion on Edwards’ demise:

“The after effects of this event were dramatic, perhaps even tragic. As for Ken, he over the next five years began to develop multiple cancers whilst still in his late 30′s. He died from what may, or may not, be related injuries. How could you have ever proven that?”

Okay, assuming that this freaky, phantasmagorical fiend was real and not the figment of Edwards’ imagination, then the question we are forced to ask is…

WHAT THE HELL WAS THE SILVER MAN?:

Much like Ichabod Crane and the notorious Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hallow, it would seem that yet another unsuspecting young man, while traveling down a dark and lonely expanse of road, came across a dastardly (and potentially supernatural) creature, which may have been responsible for prematurely shortening his life… But what was it? The general consensus in the Fortean community at the time was that the Silver Man must have been an…

EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE FORM

This makes sense considering the flap of UFO sightings that swept through the Risley area at the time, including the “cigar shaped craft” that the four unidentified youths allegedly saw over the reactor on the night of the encounter.

These sightings along with the hubbub surrounding the release of “CE3K” made the extraterrestrial hypothesis all but irresistible to reporters and UFO buffs alike, but — with the exception of a flattened oval of grass — there is absolutely no indication that anything landed in Risley or that the Silver Man was a ufonaut.

While it’s difficult to argue that silver suits and laser beam eyes are not the domain of science fiction and classic alien lore, the fact that this thing “dematerialized” through solid matter has made some researchers wonder if it might be a…

SPACE GHOST

Sorry, I couldn’t resist… Nevertheless, there is the admittedly razor thin possibility that this clearly inhuman entity may be the spectral incarnation of a deceased alien.

There is no evidence to support this conjecture, of course, nor any reports of a flying saucer crash (or similar accident) that may have claimed the life of an unknown alien entity, thus forcing its incorporeal “soul” to linger in the hills of Risley, but it’s definitely something that’s amusing to consider.

While most of us will agree that the “space ghost” theory holds very little water, there is also the chance that it was an…

INTER-DIMENSIONAL VISITOR

Physicists and mathematicians have made great strides in confirming (hypothetically, at least) the existence of alternate dimensions all around us.

These dimensions are ostensibly filled with life forms that range from duplicates of us to bizarre beings that would stretch the limits of our limited terrestrial imaginations.

Is there a possibility that the “unusual experiments,” which Randles and Hough claimed were being conducted at the UKAEA nuclear facility, were akin to the fictional military experiment to create an inter-dimensional bridge that went so horribly awry in Stephen King’s 1980 novella “The Mist?”

In that story, military scientists spearheaded the “Arrowhead Project,” which opened a portal to another dimension and inadvertently unleashed a torrent of horrific Lovecraftian monstrosities, which laid waste to a small Maine community and held a group of survivors under siege in a supermarket.

This supposition is thin, granted, but if a modern-day version of the “Philadelphia Experiment” had been conducted by Liverpool or Manchester Universities, or some other clandestine agency that is under the auspices of the British government, then who knows what the results might have been? Perhaps this shambling, silver clad entity is really a refugee from a parallel dimension.

If that is the case, and it was unable to return home, then there’s every reason to suspect that it may still be lurking somewhere in the Risley forest, phasing in and out of trees and occasionally lambasting unwary rabbits (and, perhaps, the occasional hunter) with its’ reprehensible energy beams.

CONCLUSION:

It’s difficult to know what to make of Ken Edwards and his fantastic tale. By all accounts he was a reasonable man who was not inclined toward exaggeration or outright fabrication, and who certainly would have been hard pressed to concoct a fable as patently ludicrous as the one he presented as the simple truth. A story that Edwards’ conveyed with such sincerity that even the initially skeptical police were swayed by it.

Still, in many ways it’s a hard pill to swallow, especially considering his second sighting, which all too “conveniently” occurred while he was separated from the Leeds researcher. Nevertheless there are certain elements that lead me to believe that this unfortunate fellow just may have been telling the truth.

The first factor that lends veracity to Edwards’ story is the fact that he reported it to the police and not the media. This, to me, would seem to signify that he was less concerned with receiving attention and more worried about the safety of his community. I mean, what reasonable individual would want any sort of shady character lurking around an atomic reactor that’s less than a 5-minute drive from their home — whether or not they’re from Pluto or Poughkeepsie?

Secondly, the engineer never attempted to capitalize on this phenomenon. As far as I’ve been able to discern he made no effort to strike any television or book deals. Nor did he try and sell his story to Hollywood or endeavor to start a cult-like following like known ufological charlatans such as George Adamski.

All the evidence indicates that he loathed the attention that was heaped upon him, regardless if it was in the form of ridicule or accolades. In fact, it seems that the only thing he gained from this life altering experience was the unenviable reputation of a man who was either a crackpot, a fraud or immensely gullible. If Edwards were in this for the fame or fortune, then he did a god-awful job of exploiting it.

Thirdly, is the tragic death of Edwards himself. While I’m still reluctant to support the conjecture that his cancer was related to the Silver Man and his “laser-eyed” assault, the fact is that when one is staring death in the eye, one tends to assess his or her life in a more honest and critical light. This is why so many with secrets feel compelled to give a death bed confession.

Bearing that in mind, I can’t help but to presuppose that if the outwardly outlandish occurrence that this working class guy stumbled across that winter’s eve was nothing more than a silly hoax perpetrated out of boredom or some other unknown motivation, that he would’ve felt compelled to reveal this fact and not let his legacy rest on a lie — especially considering that, at least in the public eye, this event that would come to define his life.

Whatever the true answer to this enduring enigma may be, there can be little doubt that the case of Ken Edwards and the Silver Man will remain one of the most intriguing mysteries to emanate from the British Isles… and we can only hope that wherever Mr. Edwards may be… he finally got the answers that had eluded him in life.

On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor in an effort to destroy America’s Pacific Fleet before they could officially enter the war and interfere with their intent to dominate the Pacific. During that catastrophic assault scores of ships and planes were destroyed and even more tragically nearly 2,500 unsuspecting soldiers horrifically lost their lives.

It has often been suggested that the spirits of those who die under sudden or violent circumstances tend to linger at the scene of the tragedy rather than pass on. Now a family from Australia has come forward with what they believe might be photographic evidence that suggests that the souls of those lost on the USS Arizona that sorrowful day might be suffering just that fate.

In 1962, one of the darkest days in the history of the United States was commemorated when the USS Arizona Memorial was erected above the hull of the wreckage of the Pennsylvania-class battleship, which remains below the waves of Pearl Harbor. Since then the memorial has drawn thousands who wish to pay their respects to the heroes who fell on that fateful day.

On September 26^th, 2011, an Australian woman by the name of Susan De Vanny and her family visited the memorial and, of course, snapped a plethora of pictures with their digital camera. De Vanny admitted to being a bit of a shutterbug and when she got the chance she decided to weed out some of the less desirable photographs. In her own words:

“I was flicking through the photos and seeing how many do I really need, and take some of the bad ones out and then I came across this particular photo.”

As she scrolled through the pictures removing images that were out of focus and the like, she made a discovery of a particularly haunting snapshot that stopped her dead in her tracks.

The image that she remembered snapping was of the sun reflecting off the oil ridden saltwater above the shipwreck, but what she saw on her camera was something beyond her comprehension.

Shimmering in the oil-slicked water was the ghost-like face of what she felt to be a young man who was evidently crying out in anguish.  De Vanny wasted no time in showing the photo to her husband, but she made it a point to not give him any indication of what she thought she saw there. De Vanny described the moment:

“I said just have a look at the photo, and he said, ‘oh my gosh, it’s a face,’ and then the kids saw it, and they go, ‘oh wow’.”

1,177 sailors died aboard the USS Arizona during the Pearl Harbor attack and most of the bodies were never recovered. De Vanny believes that the liquid phantasm image may possibly be the soul of one of the young soldiers who were killed at the site over 60-years ago:

“It just looked really sad, really sad and young. The face, to me looked young, which I don’t know if it represents the men at that time who perished.”

SO WHAT CAN IT BE?

It’s easy to leap to the conclusion that the site of such a terrible tragedy would carry with it its fair share of residual hauntings and that the poor souls of those who were trapped in the USS Arizona and her sister ships might be doomed to linger beneath the churning waters of the Pacific, but there are a couple of additional options to take a look at. The first is that we are dealing with a very real phenomenon known as…

PAREIDOLIA

Pareidolia is the term for a psychological experience, which makes otherwise indistinct and arbitrary stimulus seem to be noteworthy. Far and away the most common example of pareidolia is the human penchant for finding distinct shapes in ever changing clouds. Another prime example for all of us UFO buffs is the now notorious face on Mars, which, clearer photos would seem to indicate, was nothing more than an illusion of light and shadow.

Human beings are genetically inclined to recognize faces. According to some cognitive neuroscientists the phenomenon known as “face perception” is hugely significant in human interactions without most of us being aware of it. It helps up to ascertain health, origin, social status and compatibility with other individuals and is easily applied to inanimate objects resulting in visual pareidolia.

Is pareidolia what the De Vanny family — and millions of others who have since viewed the image — succumbed to? Does this controversial image represent nothing more than the proverbial “man on the moon,” except in this case it would be the “man beneath the sea?”

It’s a distinct possibility to be sure… and the logical mind yearns for it. Hell, that was my first instinct, but the fact remains is that there another option. Maybe what we’re dealing with is…

EMBEDDED MEMORIES

There are some paranormal experts who define a typical ghost as the residual memory of a person who has died. This entity — unlike, say, a poltergeist — does not interact with those in the environment, but replays a certain action over and over again like an old videotape caught in a loop.

They suggest that lingering memories of the departed become somehow embedded into the structure of the house or hotel or roadside or wherever they passed away like a home movie replays for eternity.

If one supposes that the above hypothesis is true, then one could make a compelling argument for this same effect occurring at the USS Arizona and other sites of great tragedies across the globe. I’ll be the first to admit that I prefer the idea that ghost, spirits and their ilk are energy memories rather than trapped souls, but one never knows.

CONCLUSION:

It goes without saying that there can be no solid conclusions in this case. Those who are predisposed to believe in a lingering life after death will be inclined to find humanity in those oil stained waves, and those who are more prone to skepticism will likely see nothing more than the tumult of the ocean fueled by a vivid human imagination.

Whether this is an optical illusion or a genuine supernatural incident will probably remain forever shrouded in mystery, but we can only hope that if whatever it was that the De Vannys’ captured on their camera that day has the capacity to feel, that it’s somehow…somewhere… it’s at peace.