Mysterious Universe

There can be few very people within the realms of Ufology and Cryptozoology that have never heard of the so-called Flatwoods Monster, or Braxton County Monster, of 1952 – a bizarre, giant beast that some researchers view as being definitively extraterrestrial in nature, and others perceive as having origins of a paranormal nature. But there’s a third possibility, too, to explain the diabolical entity that terrorized the good folk of Braxton County all those years ago…

Formerly-classified data now in the public domain may well have some direct and significant bearing upon what was seen at Flatwoods. That data is contained in an April 14, 1950 RAND publication titled The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare, written by one Jean M. Hungerford, for the top secret attention of the U.S. Air Force.

The 37-page document is a truly fascinating one, and delves into some very strange areas. But, what really caught my eye was a section of the document that quoted from a book titled Magic: Top Secret. It was written, in 1949, by an eccentric character with the curious name of Jasper Maskelyne, who, during the Second World War, was up his absolute neck in new, novel and bizarre ways to fool the hordes of Adolf Hitler.

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Well, it’s not often I do a post that is so close in nature to one I’ve just written, but on this occasion I’ll make an exception! A few days ago I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe addressing the theory that some of the Contactees might have been in the employ of the U.S. Government. Their purpose to make the UFO subject look ridiculous by spreading bizarre tales of trips to the Moon, Venus and so on. But there’s a variation on this theory – the notion that some of the Contactees were attempting to promote Communism under a UFO banner.

This is an issue that was addressed in the Comments section to the above-post by Glorfindel, who said: “Most of the contactee’s talked about space brothers who warned of humans not having the ‘spiritual development’ to wield Nuclear Weapons and that Nuclear Weapons should be disbanded – is it beyond the realms of possibility that the Soviets/Chinese/French and others have been funding this types of Psy-Ops to make the American public loathe Nuclear Weapons and call for their disbanding?”

Well, in answer to Glorfindel, no it is not at all beyond the realms of possibility! In fact, when we go looking, we do find evidence linking the Space-Brother movement with Communism…

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Continuing our celebration of the month of “Crocktober,” there are a multitude of new creepy films and other entertainment out there, designed to chill the bones and raise the hairs of the faint-hearted (in a fun way). For many, the terrors that can achieve this sort of thing remain in the realm of sewn-together man-things like Frankenstein; or maybe your favorite ghouls are the blood-sucking boogers, most of which are far-less cordial and romantic than Edward and his Twilight ilk.

While I enjoy all of these creepy critters too, my personal favorite remedy for the Crocktober Creeps involves the subject of creatures from the depths of the underground realm. Books and films like The Descent take the notion of mankind’s greatest fears into the recesses of a hypothetical underworld which, in truth, provides a unique allegory for the eternal struggle between mankind and the influences of darkness… perhaps no place gets any darker than the Hollow Earth.

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Justin Falzone sat the desk in his bedroom in Tonawanda, N.Y., near Buffalo, doing homework when Death arrived.

“The year I’m not exactly sure of,” he said. “It occurred when I was around 10 or 11, so about 17 or 18 years ago.”

A dark figure in his periphery dragged Falzone’s attention from the homework. He wished it hadn’t.

“I saw Death, the Grim Reaper,” he said. “This entity stood in my bedroom doorway. It was huge, taking up the whole doorway with its body mass half in and half out as if it was passing through.”

A brown, tattered cloak covered the translucent entity from hood to floor.

“It is as if it was from a different plain, dimension, reality, or however you want to explain it,” Falzone said. “It was semi-transparent, but solid and massive filling the whole door frame about eight feet tall.”

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We ask the hard hitting questions on this exclusive weekend edition of Mysterious Universe Plus+

We look at the possible end of the world by Diatoms, hear some strange Australian Yowie encounters and Ben asks which side of an extraterrestrial mannequin Aaron would prefer.

Links and music after the jump.

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Late October is an ideal time for stargazing, since the annual Orionid meteor shower occurs, where Earth’s skies are pummeled with bits of cosmic debris that burn brilliantly as they coast through the atmosphere.

This morning at about 5:45 Eastern Time, I ran outside with a hot cup of freshly brewed, French pressed coffee, and within about half an hour had seen between 9 and 15 shooting stars. While some were mere flickers of light skimming the atmosphere, others left bright pink tails that lingered for several seconds in the sky after the meteor itself had burnt up.

While I enjoy spotting shooting stars for fun, meteors have probably been on my mind over the last few days more specifically because I have been reviewing a reprint of Edward Ruppelt’s The Report of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1956 Edition. For those unfamiliar with the manuscript, this is a remarkably revealing dissertation, dealing with a variety of early Project Blue Book investigations into various UFO related phenomenon, and the book’s fourth chapter deals with a particularly interesting variety of early UFO: Anomalous Green Fireballs.

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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.

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