Mexican Gremlin Video, Enormous Megalodon, Most Paranormal Stadium, Noah's Ark and More Mysterious News Briefly

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

Troy Olivadoti told the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO) he was camping alone Oregon's Rogue National Forest recently when he thought he heard something running about 100 yards from his tent at 11.50 pm, followed by “three distinct percussive sounds that sounded like wood on wood:” about two minutes later; whatever it was, it appeared to be moving quickly because he reported that “Roughly a minute later, I heard three more identical knocks, but they were farther away. Another minute passed and further off in the distance, I heard another three knocks in the same pattern as the first and second set. And finally, about another minute later, I heard one more set of identical knocks on the edge of my hearing”; while Rogue National Forest has had many Bigfoot encounters, BFRO rated this one a 'Class B' case - credible but lacking corroborating evidence. Disappointed Bigfoot believers say, “Don’t knock the knocks.”

The Houston-based private space company Intuitive Machines managed to get its Athena lunar lander to the lunar surface, but tipped over into a crater and is no longer functioning; however, before Athena died, it managed to deploy a payload consisting of an eight-terabyte data center containing a recording of ‘Children Of The Sky’ by the alt-rock band Imagine Dragons as a gift for aliens who have ears or other ways to listen to music. If the aliens encountered one of the Voyager space probes on their way to the Moon and listened to their engraved golden discs, maybe they tipped over the lander themselves out of frustration that the payload didn’t contain more Chuck Berry songs.

Most football clubs – including the American variety – leave their stadiums because there aren’t enough seats, the amenities are outdated, the weather is bad or some other sports-related reason, but Manchester United may be leaving their Old Trafford stadium, which is the largest club football stadium in the UK, because it is also the most haunted and alien-visited; according to  Spin Genie, the Premier League club has had 62 ghost sightings and 26 UFO encounters at Trafford, well ahead of Manchester City, Everton and Liverpool; the least haunted clubs are West Ham, Brentford, and Fulham; the ghosts and UFOs haven’t affected the team’s performance, but it is still building a new, 100,000-seat stadium adjacent to Old Trafford. Even in the afterlife or in other galaxies, nothing beats seeing football in person.

Ghost hunting is never completely safe, but it became terrifying for Ghost Adventures star Aaron Goodwin after finding out from Nevada police that his wife, Victoria Goodwin, was arrested for solicitation and conspiracy to commit murder – his murder; the arrest report said she planned to hire a hitman through a Florida inmate to do the deed, giving him the shooting locations and schedule of the Ghost Adventures paranormal TV show; she had set aside $11,515 to pay for the murder, which was supposed to occur in 2024, but the inmate's contraband cell phone was discovered and text messages on it alerted the authorities to the planned hit paid for by Victoria Goodwin, who was arrested and remains in police custody with a $100,000 bail but denies the charges and claims it was all a fantasy. Remember: crime doesn’t pay, and humans are way more dangerous than ghosts.

If you’re wondering whether one can get rich looking for UFOs or if there are other threats to doing that job besides the Men in Black, Dr. Steven Greer, the controversial founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the Disclosure Project, revealed recently in a podcast interview that he was once offered $2 billion (yes, that’s billion with a B) to stop talking about aliens and UFOs to the public; Greer says the offer came in the early 90s from General Albert Stubblebine, who at that time was the head of special forces and Army intelligence who allegedly offered Greer “$2 billion if I would join his team and not do what I've been doing”; Greer was in his 30s at that time and a young medical doctor, so he definitely considered it, as did his wife who he says was also approached by Stubblebine; when questioned about this unbelievable claim, Greer said, “ “Put me under lie detector, ask my wife or whoever we're having our 46th anniversary this year, that's what happened”; General Stubblebine died in 2017 so the claim can’t be verified. If anybody is making those kinds of offers today, the line will wrap around Washington DC … twice.

One theory on werewolves is that their legend began with a primitive misunderstanding and fear of a condition known as hypertrichosis or werewolf syndrome, which causes excessive hair growth all over the sufferer’s body, and no one has more of that kind of growth than Lalit Patidar, an 18-year-old male from India who has 201.72 hairs per square centimeter covering 95% of his face, which was counted by the folks at Guinness who awarded him the world record for “the hairiest face on a person (male)”; Lalit says “I like how I am and I don’t want to change my look” so he doesn’t keep his face shaved, opting instead for the popular afforded by chronicling his life as a ‘werewolf’ on social media. He should at least get his videos sponsored by a razor company.

Police departments are generally not equipped to deal with paranormal trouble calls, so the Northern York County Regional Police Department in England wasn’t sure what to expect when officers responded to a call from a resident being frightened by what they described as a” “Box Demon”; that’s how the “demon” described itself to the homeowner’s doorbell camera which recorded the intruder wearing a mask made from a paper plate and decorated like a flower while carrying an empty box which they laid on the porch as ”a gift”; fortunately, the police were eventually able to identify and track down the “Box Demon”, talked to him and told the homeowner and their neighbors that "There are no public safety concerns". Stephen King – call your agent.

From the Fortean files comes reports of a “blood sea” on Iran’s Hormuz Island in the Persian Gulf as beachgoers on this lightly populated island watched the waters turn blood red during and after a heavy rainfall, with the soil turning the same color and rivers and waterfalls leading to the gulf taking on the same hue; just a few years ago this would be an unexplained Fortean phenomenon that would have many referring to biblical plagues – in fact, Indian media even today compared it to the Hindu concept of Kali Yuga or Kalyug, which is an age of cataclysms caused by corruption; the cooler heads of science eventually analyzed the island’s volcanic soil and determined that its high iron oxide content turned blood red when mixed with heavy rains; it is now a regular event promoted by The Iran Tourism and Touring Organization, those looking to frighten the uninformed still call it biblical. Even Charles Fort would say, “Cool it with the plague already!”

Haunted saloons and hotels are often found in the formerly Wild West areas of the U.S. and two popped into the news recently, starting with the allegedly haunted Belvoir Winery and Inn in Liberty, Missouri, near Kansas City – it was an orphanage (often an impetus for hauntings) from its construction in 1895 through the 1950s, when it was converted into a nursing home, a hospital and finally the hotel – where the manager says a recent guest reported that at “About 2 a.m., he had a hand reach up and grab his leg underneath the sheets", which was followed an hour later by a power outage; meanwhile , the owners of the Belle Starr Saloon in Purcell, Oklahoma, say security camera videos support their claims of recent paranormal activity, including a beer pitcher moving like it was thrown; western history buffs will note that the real Belle Starr was associated with the infamous James–Younger Gang run by Jesse and Frank James and whose murder is still unsolved, while paranormal investigators think it may be Belle’s ghost causing the some of the hauntings. Will our grandchildren entertain themselves with tales of haunted Airbnbs?

Stonehenge is getting ready for its annual media attention and festivities during the Spring Equinox, but a new archeological research paper by the University of Exeter and Historic England has shed new light to suggest the prehistoric Flagstones stone circle near Dorchester, Dorset, is actually dated to about 3200 BCE, which is two centuries earlier than previously thought and means it predates Stonehenge and may have been a prototype for the more famous monument; the researchers also found charcoal and human and animal remains which put human activity in the area back to around 3650 BCE.; the report in the journal Antiquity speculates that the Flagstones could be connected to other stone circle sites, including Llandygái 'Henge' A in Gwynedd, Wales, and some locations in Ireland. Should T-shirt vendors be ordering new logos?

A famous Jude-Christian biblical story that has been found in the sacred tomes of other cultures is that of a great flood, and many of those stories point to the resting place of an ark in roughly the same place around Mount Ararat in Turkey, but with no physical evidence of its existence; new scientific research on one of the proposed final resting places of the ark, a geological  mound known as the Durupinar have  found signs in its dirt of Formation which is roughly shaped like a boat hull, has found signs in its dirt and rock samples of traces of clay-like materials, marine deposits, and remnants of mollusks dating back between 3,500 and 5,000 years, putting them roughly at the estimated time of these ancient flood stories; lead researcher Professor Faruk Kaya says the evidence puts humans at the location at the at right time along the signs that the location was covered with water for a time, but it’s not yet proof that the mound covers a boat or ‘the’ boat, so more research of the digging kind is needed. All that is needed is a ‘splinter’ of evidence’.

It seems like archaeologists are finding new human ancestors every day to change what we know about who came before us and how they might have interacted or even inbred with them, as evidenced by a recent paper published in the journal Nature of the between 1.1 million to 1.4 million years old remains of facial fragments found in Spain belonging to what is now called Homo affinis erectus, which proves that the first archaic humans in Western Europe were not Homo antecessor, as previously thought; the researchers note that Homo aff. erectus has more primitive facial features, especially in the cheeks, than Homo antecessor, whose face was vertical and flat, they can’t yet link it to Homo erectus and speculate it may be an entirely different species; they will keep on digging for more fossils. To paraphrase The Who: “Who are we? Who who … who who?”

A video posted by Mexican media shows what appears to be a goblin or a legendary ”chaneque”, a goblin or sprite associated with danger and protector of nature, allegedly recorded near Veracruz; the witness claimed they stumbled upon it hiding in a hole in a cave and heard it shrieking; the witness and many on social media believed it to be a Mexican goblin or chaneque, but non-believers suggest it is a fake of an AI-generated video. Curse you, AI!

The three-day Loch Ness monster hunt called The Quest announced plans to return to the loch Thursday to Sunday, May 22 to 25, with new equipment, including upgraded Remotely Operated Vehicles called the Chasing M2 ROV, which can maneuver into tight spaces and withstand pressures at depths of 100 meters (329 feet) or almost halfway to the loch’s bottom; the crews will also use drop-down camera traps to penetrate the murky waters of the loch in hopes of capturing images of the mythical monster which had its first official 2025 sighting recently; headquarters for The Quest is the Loch Ness Centre, which is also hiring a boat captain. They need to hurry before A invades the hunt for Nessie too.

The psychic who calls himself the New Nostradamus (to distinguish himself from the Modern Nostradamus and the real Nostradamus), Craig Hamilton Parker, is reminding us that in addition to correctly predicting the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit, the Donald Trump assassination attempt, and the death of Queen Elizabeth II, he recently forecast that a ship or oil tanker would crash - seven days before a cargo ship collided with an oil tanker in the North Sea; Parker is also called the “Prophet of Doom” for his scary and apocalyptic predictions At least he’s not making a profit off doom.

In celebrity UFO news, Golden Globe-winning filmmaker Peter Farrelly revealed in a new interview about an encounter he had on Halloween in 1975 while driving home from the University of Rhode Island at 3 am on a deserted part of Route 295; he said that “All of a sudden, as it's coming up on us, suddenly, it's a massive thing. And it is a rectangular shape craft. I will say, okay, it's rectangular like, it's hard to say how big it is because you can't tell how high it is, but it seems to be a few hundred yards up; he compared the "football-field sized" UFO to a ship “right out of Star Wars”; the next day, Farrelly says he heard on the radio a request for any info on a UFO the previous night and called the number, only to be told they were "taking a poll"; when he called the same number two weeks later, he found it had been disconnected. Farrelly and his brother Bobby are known for comedies but there’s something about this UFO story that isn’t dumb and dumber.

The Megalodon is a monster of the real, albeit prehistoric (although some still hold out hope for its existence) kind for its description as a giant version of the modern great white shark, but a new study has found evidence that megalodons were 15 feet longer than previous estimates, had enormous babies, and most likely didn’t look like enormous great white sharks at all; study co-author Phillip Sternes, an educator at SeaWorld San Diego, says researchers compared megalodon fossils with more than 150 living and extinct shark species and found it had larger vertebrate, increasing its size, that the shark samples, and smaller heads, making it look less shark-like and more streamlined; they also showed megalodons may have given birth to live young measuring 12 to 13 feet (3.6 to 3.9 meters) long; of course, until more fossils (or a live one) are found, these are only educated scientific guesses. The producers of the Sharknado and Megalodon movies are waiting.

If predictions of millions of humans moving to Mars have you feeling claustrophobic and looking for someplace smaller more remote to evacuate Earth to, astronomers using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) to monitor the sky around Saturn between 2019 and 2021 combine multiple images to discover 128 new moons orbiting the ringed planet, putting its total of 274 moons and nearly twice as many as the total of all of the moons of the other planets combined’; for those looking for future homes, these are so-called “irregular moons ” that average a few kilometers in size and are most likely fragments of larger moons captured by Saturn and broken apart by violent collisions with comets or Saturn’s other moons; the team doesn’t expect to find any more Saturnian moons using current technology. Let’s hope new rocket technology includes moving vans.