Honey Island Swamp Monster, Three-Word Alien Message, Aztec Death Whistles, Demon-Slaying King and More Mysterious News Briefly

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week. 

It has been 4 years since Jack Stuef found the treasure chest containing an estimated $1.3 million in gold and jewels hidden "in the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe" by millionaire Forrest Fenn 10 years before and leading to a massive and often deadly treasure hunt; now, bitcoin billionaire Jon Collins-Black has hidden five chests of valuables across the United States and published a book of clues to help hunters find all or parts of the $2 million treasures; Collins-Black assures treasure seekers that “You don’t have to be a genius to solve the clues. There’s no grand cypher. If you have curiosity, imagination, and the willingness to try something new, you can find the treasures that I’ve hidden”; the bounty includes a diamond and sapphire brooch owned by Jacqueline Onassis, a fourth-century BCE gold Greek laurel, a coin designed and minted by Pablo Picasso, a rare specimen of lunar rock and a single Bitcoin currently worth nearly $100,000. Five people died looking for Fenn’s treasure, so the odds are better if you cash in your retirement funds and buy lottery tickets.

We sadly report the passing of UFO researcher/author/musician/film producer Christopher O’Brien, who died in a car accident while driving to the hospital with a medical emergency. Chris was well known and respected as a thorough researcher of many UFO cases as well as over 1,000 cattle mutilation reports, which made him a popular writer and TV and podcast guest on those subjects. Chris was respected for his scientific approach to research and his ten years of investigations of cattle mutilation cases led to three books: 'The Mysterious Valley', 'Enter the Valley', and 'Secrets of the Mysterious Valley'. His research into shapeshifters, skinwalkers and similar anomalies resulted in the book, 'Stalking the Tricksters'. Our condolences to the O’Brien family. Chris will be missed.

Once again David Bowie is proven to be right as NASA reports that the Mars Curiosity rover has found mysterious 'spiderwebs' at the foothills of Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons) near the equator of Mars and stretching for 12 miles across the desert; geologists believe the spiderwebs are formed from a type of crystalized minerals known as a 'boxwork' which have been found on Earth but nowhere near the size of those on Mars; Kirsten Siebach, a Curiosity scientist at Rice University in Houston, says “These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer, with salty liquid water flowing through. Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment” which makes this a great place to look for signs of Martian life. We’re waiting for photos from Curiosity of a Martian with screwed up eyes, screwed down hairdo, well-hung and snow-white tan.

A new development on Earth that may help the search for extraterrestrial life on other planets is the reconstruction of the genome of the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), an organism that lived about 4.2 billion years ago, which reveals that the LUCA was unexpectedly complex for a life form which appeared just a few hundred million years after the formation of the Earth, showing that life on Earth happened quickly and evolved into complex forms rapidly; this discovery redefines Earth's evolutionary history and indicates that life could form in this manner on other planets and evolve quickly into intelligent beings. If life on Earth started out complex, how did it devolve into the simplistic form we’ve become?

The search for life on other planets and space rocks isn’t easy, as scientists who sent a probe to the asteroid Ryugu can attest – the capsule of dirt that was returned to Earth by the Hayabusa 2 mission was sent to Matthew Genge at Imperial College London after early tests indicated there may be a presence of bacteria or other microbial life; a new study co-authored by Genge in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science revealed that further analysis shows the microbes and organic chemicals that appeared to come from Ryugu almost certainly were the result of Earth contamination and the authors concluded that “The presence of terrestrial microorganism within a sample of Ryugu underlines that microorganisms are the world's greatest colonizers and adept at circumventing contamination controls. The presence of microorganisms within space-returned samples, even those subject to stringent contamination controls is, therefore, not necessarily evidence of an extraterrestrial origin”. This means Ryugu is probably contaminated too – aliens who see a human spaceship heading their way would be wise to stock up on hand cleanser.

Just days after another U.S. Congressional hearing on UAPs which detailed findings of 'Immaculate Constellation', an Unacknowledged Special Access Program (USAP) established to 'detect' and 'quarantine' the military's best UFO imagery, videos, eyewitness testimonies and electronic sensor evidence, the Strange Mysteries YouTube channel posted two videos which describe receiving an anonymous email with partially-redacted photos it claimed were infrared images from ‘Immaculate Constellation’ that the sender, who claimed to have part of secret programs for studying UAPs, claimed the images were of “orbs” and “motherships” flying over nuclear bases and other strategic military facilities; the images lacked details and context but the anonymous sender claimed these non-public photos were part of a larger collection. Once we finally have full disclosure, let’s hope all of this secrecy doesn’t seem silly and unnecessary.

According to a recent two-part article published in Cowboy State Daily, D.B. Cooper researcher Dan Gryder revealed that he obtained a parachute belonging to Richard McCoy II, a man Gryder believes was the real 1971 skyjacker D.B. Cooper, and that he and McCoy’s son met with the FBI and eventually led the FBI to the location in the McCoy barn where the parachute was found in a crate; DNA samples were taken from the younger McCoy and the FBI indicated it may come back to exhume the body of Richard McCoy II; Gryder believes that alterations made to the parachute are similar to those said to have been made to D.B> Cooper’s parachutes by the man w; McCoy was caught but later escaped and was killed in a shootout, so he never admitted being Cooper; while Gryder thinks this will prove McCoy was Cooper, there are skeptics who point to the fact that fight attendants on the Cooper plane looked at photos of both and said they were different men. Would we know more if D.B. Cooper had hijacked a UFO?

Residents of Painswick, popularly known as 'The Queen of the Cotswolds', are looking nervous these days after a roe deer was found dead with wounds looking sinisterly like those made by a large cat killing its next meal; only the head and rear legs remained, along with skin showing clear signs a cat had ripped through it and bit the throat, then moved down to eat all of the organs to the point where the ribcage was completely empty; the carcass was found by a man working near a large estate, but neither he nor anyone else saw the big cat or has evidence of its existence, other than the dead deer. Alien big cats leave more evidence than Bigfoot, but more people believe in Sasquatch – ABCs need a better publicist.

Former United States Army weapons controller and drone pilot Robert Salas was stationed at the Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana in 1967 when its 10 Minutemen 1 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in underground silos suddenly shut down for no reason – at least not until an officer admitted seeing an oval-shaped UFO with orange-red lights hovering over the base and then making fast and seemingly impossible maneuvers; Salas recently testified at the latest congressional UFO hearings that aliens are sending humans a three-word message about nukes and that message is "WTF, nuclear weapons"; he based this comment on his research which shows “that all the major nuclear missile bases, from the ones operational in the 60s and the 70s, and the ones that are currently operational, have been visited repeatedly year after year according to the sources that I have interviewed”. Maybe the aliens should try emojis instead of text abbreviations.

Celebrity ghost hunter Brocarde, who claims she’s married and divorced a spirit who seduced her, now says she was in bed after a day of filming in the haunted Bagdale Hall hotel in Whitby, North Yorkshire, when a severed head with 'bulbous eyes' tried to get under the sheets with her; she claimed “The ghost’s head had bulbous eyes, which were bloodshot and almost popping out of their sockets. It looked slightly purple and was just hovering without a body attached to it. It was swaying for a while, almost dancing, before it darted toward the bedsheets, lifting them up and disappearing”; Brocarde claims she jumped out of bed, although she says she was “fairly calm”, and found out the head belonged to Browne Bushell, a former owner of the hotel who was executed with an axe in 1651 after being found guilty of treason and piracy. Marrying the head of a ghost might be better – at least she won’t be kept up at night by the sound of footsteps.

Clement Vidal, a philosopher at the Vrije University Brussels, claims in a new paper that most stars belong to binary systems and an intelligent civilization living on a planet orbiting one of them could turn the pair into "hypervelocity" stars and use them to travel their galaxy; Vidal modeled a binary system consisting of a neutron star with a low-mass star tightly orbiting it and speculated how an alien civilization could manipulate magnetic fields to cause one star to eject more material in one direction than another, which would create thrust and push the binary system in the opposite direction; they could then install machinery on or near the neutron star and use gravity to power steering the binary system; Vidal says "hypervelocity" stars like the "black widow" pulsar PSR J0610-2100 and the "redback" pulsar PSR J2043+1711 should be studied to see if they are being manipulated by aliens for travel purposes. A good sign would be if more of these stars are moving around during alien holiday seasons.

The Aztec death whistles are skull-shaped clay whistles whose sound is eerily like a horrible human scream while the skull is thought to represent Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec Lord of the Underworld; now, a new study by the University of Zurich shows how researchers played both originals and reproductions for 70 volunteers hooked up to brain monitors; when hearing the whistles, the volunteers showed activity in the brain regions associated with emotional responses and with identifying symbolic meaning, leading the researchers to speculate that the whistles were used to scare people about to be killed in sacrificial rituals in order to prepare them for entering the underworld. The Aztecs were never known for their musical abilities.

The Honey Island Swamp Monster is a legendary Louisiana cryptid said to be a descendent of chimpanzees that escaped from a circus train wreck in the early 20th century; also called the Cajun Sasquatch and La Bête Noire in Cajun French. It has been reportedly seen by air traffic controllers, wildlife photographers, Honey Island swamp tour guides in St. Tammany Parish and private citizens; a video of the Honey Island Swamp Monster has now resurfaced via the History Channel's "The Proof Is Out There" series – narrated by the granddaughter of Harlan Ford, one of the air traffic controllers, the 8mm film is grainy enough to defy identification as the real Cajun Sasquatch or a hoaxer in an ape suit. Too bad the photographer didn’t play some Zydeco music and see if the creature danced.

A Bigfoot video shot in Georgia doesn’t need much analysis as it shows a Sasquatch explaining to a woman in Whitfield County about the new local recycling program by Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Authority called "Recycling You Can Believe In" which hand-sorts trash and recycles it into paper, glass, cardboard boxes and aluminum cans, contrary to rumors that all Whitfield recycling ends up in the trash landfills anyway or is sent overseas where it ends up in trash there too; the Bigfoot just wants his woods clean of trash and that’s a concern more real than the costumed cryptid. Times have changed – next, we’ll be seeing the Loch Ness monster pitching new water treatment centers.

You know you have too many local legendary monsters when people can’t decide which one is killing their chickens and that is the case in the Tai village of Pak Chong after farmers found chickens dead from puncture wounds and drained of all their blood; other countries might blame these killings on the Chupacabra but Pak Chong residents can’t decide between the Krasue, the floating head of a young woman whose her internal organs are still attached and hanging from her neck, or the Phi Pob (also known as Phi Pop or Phii Pob), which is a shapeshifting evil spirit that takes control of people and makes them do terrible things like killing chickens before Phi Bob eats the person’s entrails; the local police think the culprit is a mongoose, but aren’t having much luck convincing the farmers. The chickens aren’t convinced either.

A lesser-known trait of a well-known biblical king is the alleged demon-slaying ability of King Solomon, the son of the giant-slaying David and better known for being wise and rich; a 1600-year-old bronze amulet, discovered recently by archeologists in the ancient city of Adrianopolis, Turkey, that is more than 1,600 years old depicts Solomon defeating the devil along with the ancient Greek explanation, "The Lord defeated the devil"; the amulet shows Solomon’s importance in three major religions as he is recognized as a leader in Judaism and Christianity and a prophet in Islam; the flip side of the amulet has the names of four angels (Azrael, Gabriel, Michael and Israfil) and Azrael is the angel of death in Islam. Choose the right demon and everyone suddenly forgets their differences and joins forces to fight it.

If you are so fed up with your city/state/country and don’t see another one suitable to move to, you may want to consider moving to another universe because a new study, led by Durham University astrophysicist Daniele Sorini, took the Drake equation, which is used to estimate the number of active alien civilizations in our galaxy, and applied it to other universes – they discovered that some universes can have a larger density of dark energy than ours, making them better at generating stars and considerably more suited for forming intelligent life forms; this makes them a better place for us to live and could explain why we haven’t found intelligent life in our own universe. Good luck finding a moving company that travels to parallel universes.

Psychic and self-proclaimed ‘Living Nostradamus’ Athos Salomé has been crossing the line from future predictions to present-day conspiracy theories with statements about the latest Pentagon report on 757 UFO sightings the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) investigated identifying almost all of them as misidentified balloons, birds and satellites, a few as being unable to be identified, but non indicating any extraterrestrial origin -  Salomé says the report raises "more questions than answers" and suspects, without evidence that the AARO is not focusing on visible and invisible "cryptoterrestrials" living around us “using technologies beyond our comprehension to remain hidden”; Salomé believes "There is a coordinated effort to divert public attention from the possibility of hidden technologies, whether of terrestrial or interdimensional origin. The advance of drones and unconventional satellites may be being used as a front to cover up interaction with underground or interdimensional civilizations". In other words, we have met the enemy and it is us covering up the real enemy which is also us.