Rob's mysterious world of the paranormal, cryptozoology, & odd news!

Can I Be a Cryptozoologist?

2012-02-29T11:01:00.001-06:00

Can I Be a Cryptozoologist? Well here is some excellent advice from professor and author
Loren Coleman on this subject people often ask him:

"There are several ways you can prepare to be a scientist with a cryptozoological interest. (Actually being a “cryptozoologist” is so rare as to be almost as infrequent as seeing a Yeti. There are no jobs, per se, in cryptozoology, really, other than writing and blogging. Only a handful of people in the world actually are free-standing cryptozoologists.) In high school, any of the following will assist with having a vocation related to or specifically one that enhances your interests in cryptozoology: biology, human anatomy, zoology, anthropology, psychology (for interviewing), criminal investigations, and so forth. You also need to be a good communicator, so take writing or English classes where papers are written. Then you can build on those courses and grades to assist you to get into college.

Before college, the best way to follow a passion, for example, in the Loch Ness Monster is to study hard, and stay on track to get into a college by taking high school classes on environmental studies, biology, or aquatic studies (if offered). In high school, if you want to learn more about Bigfoot, take courses in biology, zoology, anthropology, and psychology. You have to creatively link your favorite cryptid with the related areas of study, because, frankly, no one has courses on the Death Worm of Mongolia or Mothman or Thylacines in high school."

For more of Loren's advice please go to this link here at Cryptomundo: Can I Be a Cryptozoologist?

Well said Loren and thanks for the advice! -Rob

Scientists reconstruct 'tall, elegant' New Zealand penguin

2012-02-29T10:55:00.000-06:00

Scientists have reconstructed a 'tall and elegant' race of penguins which inhabited New Zealand 25 million years ago, and stood over a metre tall.

With a long beak and an elongate trunk, researchers say it had a body shape different to any other known penguin.

"Kairuku was an elegant bird by penguin standards, with a slender body and long flippers, but short, thick legs and feet," said Dr Dan Ksepka, a scientist from North Carolina State University. At the time Kairuku lived, most of New Zealand was underwater, leaving isolated, rocky land masses that kept the penguins safe from potential predators and provided them with a plentiful food supply.

The penguin was dubbed Kairuku, a Maori word which Ksepka says loosely translates to "diver who returns with food". "If we had done a reconstruction by extrapolating from the length of its flippers, it would have stood over 6 feet tall (1.8 metres). "A standing Kairuku penguin would have reached about 4 feet 2 inches (1.25 metres), more than a foot taller than an Emperor Penguin."

The penguin is now being formally entered into the scientific catalogue, with the research appearing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Chris Gaskin, from the Geology Museum, University of Otago, has drawn a recreation of two of the animals, coming ashore beside a stranded Waipatia dolphin.

"Artist Chris Gaskin created a meticulous reconstruction of the new species that really drives these features home. You can practically feel the wind whipping sand and ocean spray into the air as the two penguins come ashore," said Ksepka in a blog posting.

'A history of producing exceptional fossils'

Ksepka said New Zealand has a history of producing exceptional fossils that give important insights into the history of penguins and other marine creatures. A highly complete skeleton of the Kairuku was discovered in 1977 by Dr Ewan Fordyce, a paleontologist from the University of Otago. Other fossilised skeletons have also been discovered.

In 2009 and 2011 Ksepka and another American scientist, Dr Paul Brinkman, travelled to the University of Otago to aid in the reconstruction of the giant penguin fossil, working with Fordyce and former Otago students Dr Tatsuro Ando and Dr Craig Jones. Kairuku was one of at least five different species of penguin that lived in New Zealand during the same period.

Ksepka hopes that the reconstruction of Kairuku will give other paleontologists more information about some the other fossils found in that area as well as add to the knowledge about giant penguin species.
"This species gives us a more complete picture of these giant penguins generally, and may help us to determine how great their range was during the Oligocene period," he said. - TVNZ

Note: I wonder what other giant birds exist besides these? Plenty I would say
throughtout history even now (just google Thunderbirds which I will cover on my
blog here sometime. -Rob

Did Bigfoot Really Exist? How Gigantopithecus Became Extinct

2012-02-26T09:33:00.000-06:00

Did Bigfoot Really Exist? How Gigantopithecus Became Extinct

A reconstruction of Gigantopithecus. Image courtesy of Flickr user Sam_Wise

Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Yeti. The Abominable Snowman. Whatever you want to call it, such a giant, mythical ape is not real—at least, not anymore. But more than a million years ago, an ape as big as a polar bear lived in South Asia, until going extinct 300,000 years ago.

Scientists first learned of Gigantopithecus in 1935, when Ralph von Koenigswald, a German paleoanthropologist, walked into a pharmacy in Hong Kong and found an unusually large primate molar for sale. Since then, researchers have collected hundreds of Gigantopithecus teeth and several jaws in China, Vietnam and India. Based on these fossils, it appears Gigantopithecus was closely related to modern orangutans and Sivapithecus, an ape that lived in Asia about 12 to 8 million years ago. With only dentition to go on, it’s hard to piece together what this animal was like. But based on comparisons with gorillas and other modern apes, researchers estimate Gigantopithecus stood more than 10 feet tall and weighed 1,200 pounds (at most, gorillas only weigh 400 pounds). Given their size, they probably lived on the ground, walking on their fists like modern orangutans.

Fortunately, fossil teeth do have a lot to say about an animal’s diet. And the teeth of Gigantopithecus also provide clues to why the ape disappeared.

The features of the dentition—large, flat molars, thick dental enamel, a deep, massive jaw—indicate Gigantopithecus probably ate tough, fibrous plants (similar to Paranthropus). More evidence came in 1990, when Russell Ciochon, a biological anthropologist at the University of Iowa, and colleagues (PDF) placed samples of the ape’s teeth under a scanning electron microscope to look for opal phytoliths, microscopic silica structures that form in plant cells. Based on the types of phyoliths the researchers found stuck to the teeth, they concluded Gigantopithecus had a mixed diet of fruits and seeds from the fig family Moraceae and some kind of grasses, probably bamboo. The combination of tough and sugary foods helps explain why so many of the giant ape’s teeth were riddled with cavities. And numerous pits on Gigantopithecus‘s teeth—a sign of incomplete dental development caused by malnuntrition or food shortages—corroborate the bamboo diet. Ciochon’s team noted bamboo species today periodically experience mass die-offs, which affect the health of pandas. The same thing could have happened to Gigantopithecus.

A Gigantopithecus jaw. Image courtesy of Wikicommons

Further evidence of Gigantopithecus‘ food preferences and habitat was published last November. Zhao LingXia of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues analyzed carbon isotopes in a sample of Gigantopithecus teeth. Plants have different forms of carbon based on their type of photosynthesis; this carbon footprint is then recorded in the teeth of animals that eat plants. The team determined

Gigantopithecus—and the animals living alongside it, such as deer, horses and bears—ate only C3 plants, evidence the ape lived in a forested environment. This work also supports the proposed bamboo diet, as bamboo is a C3 plant.

So what happened to this Pleistocene Yeti? Zhang’s team suggested the rise of the Tibetan plateau 1.6 million to 800,000 years ago altered the climate of South Asia, ushering in a colder, drier period when forests shrank. Other factors could have exacerbated this crisis. Gigantopithecus‘s neighbor, Homo erectus, may have over-hunted and/or outcompeted their larger ape cousin. And at least one dental study indicates Gigantopithecus developed and matured very slowly—a sign they probably had low reproductive rates, which can elevate a species’ risk of going extinct.

Some Bigfoot hunters say Gigantopithecus is alive and well, hiding out in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Other Sasquatch enthusiasts, however, point out this is unlikely, as Bigfoot is reported to be a swift, agile, upright walker—not a lumbering, 1,200-pound quadruped.

Note: Great articles by The Smithsonian and Dr. John A. Bindernagal (see previous post on my blog here)
on Hominid/Bigfoot/Sasquatch Research.

Sasquatches in Our Woods

2012-02-26T09:27:00.000-06:00

From The Texas Bigfoot Research Organization:

Sasquatches in Our Woods

By John A. Bindernagel

Cockamamie myth? Pie-eyed bear sightings? Not so, says this B.C. wildlife biologist — these creatures of folklore really exist.
“I have seen an animal that defies conventional description.”

So began a letter to me from a resident of British Columbia’s West Kootenay region, describing what he saw on his rural acreage one morning in September 1998. He agreed to provide details if I would assure him complete confidentiality.

Initially, he thought it was his neighbour walking among the shrubs, but says he soon realized the animal was not human. As he caught increasingly good views, he mentally discarded bears, then cougar, as possible explanations.

“One minute this creature was able to squat and be no more than three of four feet in height. The next, it seemed to be able to draw itself up to six feet, or perhaps more in length.” Three others appeared, and one of the smaller ones climbed into the branches of a tree. “It was then that I first had the thought that I was looking at monkeys … The profile was like that of an orangutan. It seemed to have hair not fur.

“The one that… had first drawn my attention drew up behind slightly denser bush and walked off on its hind legs … This really floored me … The movement seemed so naturally bipedal.”
After about 35 minutes, all but one of the animals had disappeared into the forest. “It seemed that this would be the last chance to determine … whether I had really been watching bears, I was not disappointed. It, too, finally rose up. I was extremely struck with its barrel chest and seemingly long, skinny legs and arms. This, though, was only relative to its large chest and upper body. It walked off! Maybe two or three strides and it was gone."

“It most definitely walked erect with shoulders sloped forward. The gait was not like gorillas that I have seen either in the zoos or on TV. Nor was it that peculiar walk of the orangutan. This was a full easy stride."

“I suppose for me, I must accept that I probably saw sasquatches that day. I keep waiting for a news report that tells me that a private zoo has lost some apes or something similar.”

National political columnist Allan Fotheringham once characterized B.C. as the land of “Social Credit and the sasquatch.” B.C. journalist Stephen Franklin called the sasquatch, “the godsend of newspaper cartoonists in the silly season when politicians are on vacation.” The creature is, as Canadian folklorist Carole Carpenter once said, part of B.C.’s “cultural identity.” Long before our time, the Kwakwaka’wakw people depicted Tsonoqua, “Wild Woman of the Woods,” on West Coast totem poles and masks as a giantess with pursed lips, along with her male counterpart, Bukwuss. The words “sasquatch” itself comes from the Coast Salish term Sasqits, or “hairy man.”

It is my conviction that the sasquatch, or bigfoot, is real, and that its very existence has generated the myths, aboriginal legends, newspaper reports — and yes, the jokes and hoaxes. As a wildlife biologist, I have examined the issues for more than 25 years, and not only do I believe the sasquatch is a real animal but one about which we know a great deal. We have samples of its tracks and scat, and reports of its “eye-watering” odour. We know details of its physical appearance, its diet. and its behaviour in feeding, nesting, and defending its territory.
There have been more than 200 reported sasquatch sightings in B.C. alone. Eyewitnesses are remarkably consistent in their basic description of the animal encountered or observed, reporting a large, upright, human-shaped animal standing or walking on its hind legs. The shoulders are prominent, like those of a human, but the neck is short and thick. The animal is covered with hair, usually dark in colour. The arms are proportionately longer than those of a human. Witnesses are often impressed by the animal’s huge size.

In some cases more detail has been observed: a barrel chest (“its chest was as deep as it was wide”), a flat, broad nose (“like a gorilla”), an area of bare skin on the face around the eyes, and the apparent absence of ears, which, if present, were hidden by long hair. Some witnesses say they saw breasts on what appeared to be adult females.

Despite the compelling consistency of eyewitness reports, most wildlife biologists do not recognize the sasquatch as a valid wildlife species in B.C. or elsewhere. Skeptics remain the majority, and their arguments merit examination. How, they say, could such a large animal exist here without being seen more often? Why do we have no good photographs of a living sasquatch, no bones or teeth of a dead one? How is it no sasquatch has ever been roadkill, or fallen into the sights of a backwoods hunter?

The media’s treatment of sasquatch reports may provide part of the answer. A sasquatch sighting, when reported, normally takes the form of a light-hearted news item, often recounted with a knowing grin and the suggestion that the eyewitness was on the way home from a pub. While a healthy skepticism regarding the existence of an ape-like animal in B.C. is justified, such cynicism and ridicule tend to inhibit other witnesses, such as the West Kootenay man, from coming forward publicly.

John Green of Harrison Hot Springs published The Sasquatch File in 1973, summarizing 110 reported sightings in B.C. He concluded then that animals answering the description of sasquatch are seen far more often than we realize. To date, Green has collected almost 350 B.C. sightings of sasquatches or their tracks — but witnesses remain as reluctant, as fearful of ridicule, as they were 27 years ago.

Nevertheless, those who have seen a sasquatch — especially those employed in outdoor occupations who are familiar with bears — know when they have seen an unusual animal and wish to report it. Balanced media treatment of sasquatch evidence inevitably results in an outpouring of fresh reports.

As for the absence of sasquatch remains — bones, teeth, hair, a body — this is understandable in the case of an uncommon or rare mammal. Wildlife biologists and archaeologists recognize how quickly animal remains are scattered, eaten, and broken down in nature, especially in our acidic B.C. soils. The possibility remains that well-preserved sasquatch bones may yet be found in a limestone cave or similar site.

That sasquatches have escaped roadkill may attest simply to their intelligence in avoiding moving automobiles, and their preference for backwoods habitat. None have been shot, though a few hunters have had opportunity. While hunting deer in the Okanagan Valley north of Vernon on September 11, 1994, Randy Rudnyk says he watched a sasquatch in his rifle scope for almost 15 minutes — never thinking of killing it, though he was close enough to move the crosshairs from eye to eye. In October 1955, William Roe says he levelled a gun at a female sasquatch on B.C.’s Mica Mountain. “If I shot it, I would possibly have a specimen of great interest to scientists the world over,” said Roe. “I lowered the rifle. Although I had called the creature ‘it,’ I felt now that it was a human being and I knew I would never forgive myself if I killed it.”

While we have no body of a sasquatch, we are not without physical evidence of it’s existence. Scat has occasionally been reported where sasquatches have been sighted. William Roe backtracked the female sasquatch he observed on Mica Mountain and dissected several scats, finding only vegetable matter. John Christman of Bremerton, Washington, found a deposit on the Olympic Peninsula “the diameter of a pop can and enough to fill a large bucket.” Unfortunately, it may be that sasquatch scat is not sufficiently different from that of large bears to provide definitive evidence. But then there are the footprints.

Sasquatch tracks are characterized by their elongated human-like shape, the absence of claw marks, and the occurrence of “hind” feet only. Bear tracks, by comparison, show claw marks, the pointed heel of the bear’s hind foot, and the presence of alternating forefoot and hind foot impressions. Compared to human footprints, sasquatch tracks differ mainly in size: those recorded vary from seven to 22 inches (17 to 56 centimetres), with an average in John Green’s records of 16 inches (40 centimetres). Physical anthropologist Dr. Grover Krantz, author of Big Footprints: a Scientific Inquiry into the Reality of Sasquatch (1992), states that sasquatch footprints are normally one-third wider than human footprints of the same length.
Most mammals are nocturnal or crepuscular (active mainly at night, or at dawn and dusk), and so are observed infrequently. Wildlife biologists routinely accept mammal tracks as evidence than an elusive species is present, without need of a sighting. This is common practice for bears, wolves, and caribou — yet most scientists will not accord the sasquatch the same benefit of the doubt.

Nevertheless, laypersons have observed sasquatches engaged in feeding and nesting as other animals do. In some cases the creatures have left physical evidence of their activities. In spring 1997, bear hunter Mike MacDonald observed a sasquatch eating willow buds and young leaves in the Fraser Canyon. To reach buds above its head, it stood upright and pulled the branch tips down to its mouth with one extended arm and hand. In October 1967, in a remote part of Oregon’s Cascade Range, Glen Thomas observed a male sasquatch dig a pit, from which it obtained and ate ground squirrels. Edwin James, along with a group of friends and family members, surprised a sasquatch digging for clams on Gilford Island in the 1950s. A friend of Audrey Wilson of Alert Bay was driving south with her husband near Sayward, Vancouver Island, when she saw a sasquatch dragging a deer up a mountainside beside the highway. Ten minutes later she asked her husband, “Did you see that?” His answer: “Yes. Did you?”

Prospectors, hunters, and biologists from the B.C. coast and Interior have reported sasquatch nests, which differ from bear beds and dens in having a woven rim and sometimes a roof. Dr. Fred Bunnell, a University of British Columbia wildlife biologist described a “sasquatch bower” he discovered with unusual bent and broken branches overarching a nest against a rock face. “No bear makes a day bed like that,” Bunnell concluded.

Most biologists assume that eyewitnesses reporting sasquatches are misidentifying upright bears, since a bear on its hind legs is the closest acceptable approximation. Others argue that claimants were duped by tricksters wearing fur suits. Unfortunately, witnesses have had little with which to compare their own observations. The sasquatch is notably absent from our field guides, the authoritative reference books on which we depend to identify the animals of our natural world.

In my recent book, North America’s Great Ape: the Sasquatch, I have included field guide-style illustrations that compare the squarish, human-like shoulders of the sasquatch with the tapered shoulders of the bear. In profile, the sasquatch’s flat face contrasts with a bear’s prominent snout. As well, the distinctive sasquatch gait — a graceful, ground-eating stride with arms swinging — is very unlike the bear’s briefly maintained upright shuffle on its short hind legs. The fluid sasquatch gait also differs significantly from the stiff-legged human gait. The West Kootenay eyewitness quoted above recalled seeing the animals “moving in the trees in a way no human could have imitated without a lot of noise and superb acrobatic training. They would … move rapidly from one place to another with a gracefulness and ease.”

I have studied evidence of the sasquatch since I first found tracks on Vancouver Island in 1988, and my research suggests the sasquatch is, in fact, a great ape. Dr. Krantz proposed that the sasquatch may be the descendant of Gigantopithecus, a giant fossil ape of Asia — or, more likely in his view, actually may be Gigantopithecus, “still with us.” Unlike the great apes of Africa and Asia, however, the sasquatch has a more human-like stride and foot shape.
Occasionally, sasquatches in remote areas have revealed themselves, and their ape-likeness, in their attempt to repel humans. While most sightings involve a sasquatch walking or running away, or watching curiously from a distance, there have been reports of apparent intimidation. While walking up a beach in B.C.’s remote Deserters Group of islands in the early 1990s, some clam diggers sped an animal with an “ape face” watching them from behind a large stump. It then began to throw rocks and driftwood. “A large rock just missed my head!” recalls Samson Cecil, adding that his group then set a possible world speed record for dragging a skiff down a beach into the water.

Campers on beaches and riverbanks have been threatened by the sound of a large animal running back and forth just inside the adjacent forest, vocalizing, breaking large branches, and making a great deal of noise without showing itself fully. When this happened to Mary Strussi and her friend on Vancouver Island’s Cruickshank River in the summer of 1992, they abandoned their tent for the security of their truck. Some years earlier, two men in a truck camper on the west side of Harrison Lake noticed an ape-like face in their window, and immediately afterwards felt their vehicle being shaken “as if that thing wanted to turn us over.”

In general, the sasquatch seems quite benign, with little or no interest in harming people. Its uncommon intimidation displays — breaking branches, running back and forth, throwing stones — are remarkably similar to those of chimpanzees. The result is to drive intruders from the animal’s range, away from its young or a rich food source, without actual physical interaction.

Another interesting parallel to the ape world is the reported persistence of sasquatch odour, described by observers as a “strong stench of rotten eggs” or “rotten meat.” The smell “makes you gag or want to vomit,” said Jo Jo Christianson, a crew member on the seiner Skidegate who caught wind of two shoreside sasquatches near Alert Bay in September 1994. The overpowering odour is likely of glandular origin, as with mountain gorillas, which, according to noted researcher Dian Fossey, emit “a gagging fear odour” when threatened.

My interest in the sasquatch often raises eyebrows, but I am not alone in my convictions. I have been encouraged in my research by professional colleagues in the international wildlife research community — researchers not subject to our local and regional conditioning. Jane Goodall, widely known for her pioneering field studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania, admits to a long-time interest in ”’wild men,’ the yeti, bigfoot, and the sasquatch.” She called my book “exciting” and acknowledged my efforts to “carefully describe the behavioural characteristics that have been recorded for the sasquatch.” Dr. Vernon Reynolds, an Oxford University primatologist and author of The Apes, was impressed with “the many points of similarity between sasquatch anatomy and behaviour and that of the great apes.” Biologist Dr. George Schaller, author of Year of the Gorilla, thought I showed “a lot of insight” and made “sensible deductions” in developing my hypothesis that the sasquatch could be North America’s great ape.

I am now convinced that sasquatches are seen far more often than we know. Indeed, some of my professional colleagues in the provincial Wildlife Branch have admitted to being less than diligent in filing sasquatch reports. Yet some witnesses continue to come forward — challenging our collective skepticism, braving public ridicule. As recently as September 1999, a Vancouver youth said he observed a sasquatch near Bradley Lagoon on the B.C. coast.
I fully expect that wildlife biologists will recognize the sasquatch as a species in the not-too-distant future, and subsequent researchers will find B.C.’s shellfish-rich West Coast to be one of its prime habitats. But until other North American biologists are willing to look beyond their own continent for possible explanations — and until we finally have irrefutable evidence that sasquatch exists — doubt will continue to linger, and witness will remain reluctant to speak out.

As the West Kootenay eyewitness mused at the end of his letter: “I think if anybody asks me I might deny the whole thing and cover it up by saying I saw bears and it was a joke.”

John A. Bindernagel Ph.D., is a registered professional biologist in B.C. with more than 30 years of field expertise. He is the author of North America’s Great Ape: the Sasquatch (Courtenay: Beachcomber Books, 1998, Box 3286, Courtenay, B.C.), a field guide to the anatomy, ecology, food habits, and behaviour of the sasquatch.

From: Beautiful British Columbia Magazine, Summer 2000.

Rare whale caught on film for first time

2012-02-23T10:16:00.000-06:00

Australian researchers Thursday revealed they had filmed a pod of extremely rare Shepherd's beaked whales for the first time ever.

The Australian Antarctic Division team was tracking blue whales off the coast of Victoria state last month when they spotted the reclusive mammals, which are so rarely seen that no population estimates of the species exist.

Voyage leader Michael Double said the black and cream-coloured mammals with prominent dolphin-like beaks had been spotted in the wild only a handful of times through history.

According to the Australian environment department, there have only been two previous confirmed sightings -- a lone individual in New Zealand and a group of three in Western Australia

They have never been filmed live before.

"These animals are practically entirely known from stranded dead whales, and there haven't been many of them," Double told AFP, calling the footage "unique".

"They are an offshore animal, occupying deep water, and when they surface it is only for a very short period of time."

Double said what was remarkable about the sighting was that the whale was previously thought to be a solitary creature, yet was in a pod of 10 to 12.

"To find them in a pod is very exciting and will change the guide books. Our two whale experts will now carefully study the footage to work out the whale sizes and so on and prepare a scientific paper."

The Shepherd's beaked whale, also known as the Tasman beaked whale, was discovered in 1937 but little is known about them. -yahoo news

Man Survives Being Trapped in Car for Months; Ancient Flowers Discovered and Lincoln and JFK Coincidinces

2012-02-23T10:13:00.002-06:00

From Lon's site Phantoms and Monsters at:

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com

Swedish man survives for months in snowed-in car

A Swedish man was dug out alive after being snowed in to his car on a forest track for two months with no food, police and local media reported on Saturday.

The 45-year-old from southern Sweden was found on Friday, emaciated and too weak to utter more than a few words.

He was found not far from the city of Umea in the north of Sweden by snowmobilers who thought they had come across a car wreck until they dug their way to a window and saw movement inside.

The man, who was laying in the back seat in a sleeping bag, said he had been in the car since December 19.

"Just incredible that he's alive considering that he had no food, but also since it's been really cold for some time after Christmas," a rescue team member told regional daily Vasterbottens-Kuriren, which broke the news.

Ebbe Nyberg, duty officer at the Umea police, said police saw no reason to doubt that the man had been stuck in the car for a very long time.

"We would not make something like this up. The rescue services were on site too and saw the same as us," he told Vasterbottens-Kuriren.

Umea University Hospital, where the man is recovering after being rescued by police and a rescue team, said in a statement he was doing well considering the circumstances.

Doctors at the hospital said humans would normally be able to survive for about four weeks without food. Besides eating snow, the man probably survived by going into a dormant-like state, physician Stefan Branth told Vasterbottens-Kuriren.

"A bit like a bear that hibernates. Humans can do that," he said. "He probably had a body temperature of around 31 degrees (Celsius) which the body adjusted to. Due to the low temperature, not much energy was used up."

Why the man ended up under the snow in the forest remains unknown, police said. - yahoo

**********

Russian scientist revive plants from 30K year old frozen tissue

A team of Russian biophysicists has successfully grown ancient plants from tissue material that stayed frozen in the Siberian region for about 30,000 years.

This is the oldest plant material to have been brought to life so far.

The team from the Institute of Cell Biophysics, led by David Gilichinsky, studied squirrel hibernation burrows in the banks of the Kolyma river and found the remains of the Silene stenophylla family that remained almost intact over millennia.

According to a report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists extracted the so-called "placental tissue" from immature seeds and put it in a special nutrient solution, which imitated a growing plant.

After a while, the tissue in petri dishes germinated into mature seeds, which have been planted in soil and grew into fully-blossoming plants.

The scientists found only subtle differences in the shape of petals and the sex of flowers between the "resurrected" plants and the modern-day Silene stenophylla, which still grows in the Siberian tundra.

The research team suggested that tissue cells were a perfect material for their experiments because they contain high amounts of sugar, which helped the plants to survive in a hibernated state for so long.

The success of the scientists may open a door to a whole new area of experiments in reviving extinct plants buried under layers of soil, especially in the Arctic zone, for thousands of years. - phenomenica

**********

Commonalities

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost a son while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both were shot behind the head.

Here is an interesting one…
Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners.

Both successors were named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are made of fifteen letters.

Mr. Booth shot Lincoln in a Theatre called “Ford”.
Lee Harvey Oswald, shot Kennedy in a car called “Ford” Lincoln.

Booth ran from a theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And last but not least,
A month before Lincoln was shot he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A month before Kennedy was shot he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Labels: alternative news, bizarre, breaking news, fortean, oddball, UFO

snopes.com: Presidents Day

2012-02-20T13:08:00.001-06:00

snopes.com: Presidents Day

Mountain man scares owners of remote Utah cabins - yahoo news

2012-02-18T11:12:00.000-06:00

Mountain man scares owners of remote Utah cabins

By BRIAN SKOLOFF and PAUL FOY | Associated Press – 16 hrs ago

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — He's eluded authorities for more than five years, a mountain man who roams the wilderness of southern Utah, breaking into remote cabins in winter, living in luxury off hot food, alcohol and coffee before stealing provisions and vanishing into the woods.

Investigators have clawed for clues, scouring cabins for fingerprints that match no one and chasing reports of brief encounters only to come up short, always a step behind the mysterious recluse.

They've found abandoned camps, dozens of guns, high-end outdoor gear stolen from the homes and trash strewn around the forest floor.

But the man authorities say is armed and dangerous and responsible for more than two dozen burglaries has continued to outrun the law across a swath of mountains not far from Zion National Park. He's roamed across 1,000 square miles of rugged wilderness where snow can pile 10 feet deep in winter.

And while there have been no violent confrontations, detectives say he's a time bomb. Lately he has been leaving the cabins in disarray and riddled with bullets after defacing religious icons, and a recent note left behind in one cabin warned, "Get off my mountain."

"You wouldn't want to come across that guy," said Iron County Det. Jody Edwards, who has been working the case since 2007.

Theories about his identity have ranged from two separate men on the FBI's Most Wanted List — one sought for the 2004 killing of an armored-truck guard in Phoenix, another for killing his wife and two children in Arizona. Some have also speculated the man may be a castaway from the nearby compounds of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect run by jailed leader Warren Jeffs.

The FBI recently discounted the theory that the man was the fugitive sought in the armored-truck guard killing after authorities got the first pictures of him from a motion-triggered surveillance camera outside a cabin. The photos showing a sandy-haired man in camouflage on snowshoes, a rifle slung over his shoulder, were taken sometime in December.

"We believe that is not Jason Derek Brown," FBI special agent Manuel Johnson told The Associated Press.

Edwards wasn't so quick to rule out the possibility, given the close resemblance to the 42-year-old Brown, who was raised Mormon and is a highly educated, well-traveled avid outdoorsman.

Johnson said the FBI has considered the possibility that the cabin burglar may be Robert William Fisher, described as a survivalist, hunter and angler who authorities say killed his family then blew up their house in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 2001. However, at 50 years old, Johnson is doubtful it's the man in the surveillance photos, who appears much younger.

So while detectives believe they are getting close, buoyed by the recent photos, the shadowy survivalist remains an enigma. No missing person report appears to fit, and fingerprints lifted from cabins have yielded no match.

Meanwhile, cabin owners are growing more frightened by the day and are left wondering who might be sleeping in their beds this winter.

"He's scaring the daylights out of cabin owners. Now everyone's packing guns," said Jud Hendrickson, a 62-year-old mortgage advisor from nearby St. George who keeps a trailer in the area.

In November 2010, Bruce Stucki, another cabin owner, said a burglar broke into his cabin through a narrow window, pried open a gun case with a crowbar and laid out the weapons but took none. At a nearby cabin, the man reportedly took only the grips from gun handles.

"He could stand in the trees and pop you off and no one would know who killed you," Stucki said.
Some cabins he has left tidy and clean, while others he has practically destroyed, even defecating in one in a pan on the floor.

"He should know he's being followed, but I don't think this guy is normal in any way," said Stucki, who, like many cabin owners, has a lot of his own theories.

"He's anti-religious, waiting for the mothership to come in," Stucki speculated.

Investigators say they have found several of the man's unattended summer camps, what they initially thought were left behind by "doomsday" believers preparing for some sort of apocalypse because of the remote locations and supplies like weapons, radios, batteries, dehydrated food and camping gear.

Edwards said two camps found a few years ago were stocked with 19 guns. One of the camps also had a copy of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild," a book about a young man who died after wandering into the

Alaskan wilderness to live alone off the land.

The cabin burglar has managed to avoid being seen all but twice over the years, each time retreating into the forest. In recent weeks, it took detectives an entire day to reach a remote cabin after getting a report that lights had been seen on inside overnight. It turned out they were solar-powered lights on the porch, and the cabin was empty — another dead-end.

The coffee and alcohol the survivalist favors plays into some cabin owners' assessment that he could be a castaway from the nearby twin towns of Hildale or Colorado City on the Utah-Arizona border. The so-called lost boys are said to be regularly booted from the polygamous sect there by elders looking to increase their marriage opportunities with young women.

Unlike members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which discourages consumption of alcohol and coffee, many of the Mormon fundamentalists imbibe.

Detectives aren't sharing their latest assessments but "we've got a lot of leads" from the surveillance photos, Edwards said. "I would say we're very close to making a positive ID on him. We just got to catch this guy."

To cabin owners in southern Utah, he remains a spooky and menacing figure.

"We feel like we're being subject to terrorism by this guy," Hendrickson said. "My wife says flat-out she's not going back to our trailer until they catch him."

Note: Hope they catch this creep! Scary indeed.

BFRO Report # 30442 (Class B)

2012-02-18T11:09:00.000-06:00

From BFRO Report 30442

Report # 30442 (Class B)

Submitted by witness on Saturday, August 20, 2011.

Family has recurring encounters at home near Forsyth

YEAR: 2011

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: August

DATE: 11

STATE: Missouri

COUNTY: Taney County

NEAREST TOWN: Forsyth

NEAREST ROAD: hwy H & hwy 160

OBSERVED: My husband and I were woke around 12:30 am with some strange sounds coning through the baby moniter. The bed room the kids are in is right next to ours but we didnt hear anything from our room, it was only through the moniter that the sounds could be heard, at first. There was a squeaking that sounded like someone was messing with the window in the kids room. My husband went to the other room to turn the outside lights on, we have lights on every side of the house(installed after an attempted brake in) while I stayed in the kids room to see if I could see what was making the noise. I was standing beside the window peaking through the edge of the blinds when the lights came on. There was another noise, something hitting/ bumping the side of the house, the same side of the window I was standing on. Then there was a big shadow moving away from the house twoard the woods. The woods are only about 10 feet from that side of the house and this shadow moved very fast.

My husband returned and he looked out the window, saw nothing. We waited looking out the window for several minuets but were able to see nothing. My husband left to turn the lights out, when he returned we stayed in the kids room for a few more minuets then as we were getting ready to go back to bed we heard a very loud "whoop whoop" then again "whoop whoop" I said its an owl, even thouth I'd never heard an owl sound like that before my husband, who is former militatry and has been in combat, said if it was an owl then it had to be at least 8ft tall, then he told me he didn't know what it was but it there was no way it was an owl.
ALSO NOTICED: In July of 2010, our dog went missing for two days, this was very odd as our dog was fixed and never roamed, he always stayed home. Well on the 2ed afternoon I heard him yelping in the woods behind the house. So I went looking for my kids dog. I found him layed up in the bed of the spring unable to walk. He was trying to drag himself home using his front legs. Getting him home and then to the vet, we had to put him down. The dog was said to have had been beaten, the vet said his back was broken, both back legs were broken. The vet said the trama was equal to that as getting hit by a car. Yet, there are no roads or trails in the vally where the dog was found.

OTHER WITNESSES: Just my husband and myself, we were wakened in the middle of the night

TIME AND CONDITIONS: 12:30am to 1:00am
it was very dark, overcast but not raining.

ENVIRONMENT: We are setting on a 10 acre wooded lot, the area between the house and the road is cleared, the rest is thick overgrown woods.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator G.E. Stade:

I interviewed the Witness and her husband. Both impressed me as credible. The following information can be added to her report:

- During the summer of 2010 the Witness’ three year old son was playing in his bedroom. It was dark outside and the lights were on in the house. Her son “freaked out” screaming and crying, insisting that the blinds be drawn closed on every window. It was soon after that incident that the family dog was severely beaten and had to be put down. Both her sons still insist on keeping all window blinds drawn, especially at night.

- The Witness has a baby monitor in her sons’ bedroom to monitor them. The baby monitor is very sensitive to the proximity of people and tends to produce screeching sounds when anyone walks near it. She had the monitor hanging from a curtain rod in the boys’ bedroom so that it wouldn’t produce the screeching feedback type noises. On the night of the incident the baby monitor awakened the Witness and her husband by making its notorious screeching noises typically associated with the presence of a human body. That concerned the Witness and she became very vigilant to all sounds produced by the monitor. The Witness then heard squeaking noises through the monitor. The Witness described the sound as similar to when a person slides their face against a glass window. After hearing the noise three or four times the Witness and her husband realized that someone was outside the window in their children’s bedroom and responded.

- The Witness was in her children’s bedroom when her husband turned on the outside lights. She immediately heard a loud “thump” on the outside wall of the house by her children’s bedroom and observed the shadow of something large and tall running away from the house toward the nearby woods.

- The Witness and her husband have heard trees being snapped while outside at night. Upon investigation they found a 4 to 6 inch diameter healthy tree freshly snapped over at approximately 5 feet from the ground.

- On September 3, 2011, at dusk the Witness observed a bigfoot watching her as she smoked a cigarette on her porch. The Witness commented, “I was skeptical till now. Now I know! It was no deer.” The Witness initially felt like she was being watched and consequently focused her attention in the direction from which she felt observed. She saw a dark human form that would step out from behind a large tree into a slight clearing then slowly retreat back behind the tree. BFRO Investigator Ron Boles and I visited the Witness at her home and recreated the incident. The bigfoot’s location was identified to be within the mentioned clearing in dense woods approximately 90 feet downhill from the Witness' location at the time of the sighting. The bigfoot’s height was determined to be approximately 8.0 feet. The creature’s location proved to be the only line of sight from which to observe the Witness that evening from approximately 70 feet deep within very dense woods (the porch was another 20 feet from the wood line). The location was also immediately adjacent to a large diameter hardwood tree behind which the creature periodically retreated for cover. On the night of our investigation and in the general area of the Witness' house, Ron and I were successful in soliciting wood knocks in response to our mimicries of bigfoot vocalizations and our own wood knocking.

- On November 15, 2011, the Witness informed me that something large and very tall was heard attempting to manipulate a large heavy doghouse located on the Witness’ deck. The Witness was not utilizing the doghouse for a dog, but as a shelter for feeding her cats. Whatever had attempted to manipulate the doghouse did so from the ground, reaching over the deck railing which is 6 feet above the ground. The visitor possessed enough strength to move the heavy homemade doghouse and loudly impact the main house. No claw marks were found on the doghouse.

- Though this report involves visual observations of a probable bigfoot, it has been designated a Class B due to the diminished lighting during such observations.

- At the time of her report submission, the Witness wasn't aware of other bigfoot sightings in her area. However, BFRO Report #22600 occurred only a few hundred yards east of the Witness’ location and remains a location of continuing bigfoot activity. Report #22600 There is also a rich history of bigfoot activity in the area north of this report which is predominantly National Forest.

- This report location borders thousands of acres of National Forest to the north which is an ideal habitat for a large omnivore. This fact is bore out by the region's significance as having the highest density of black bear populations in Missouri. The nearby Swan Creek Watershed is one of many water systems running through this area that offers not only pristine water but abundant aquatic organisms as a food source. Deer and their sign are plentiful. There are deer trails running through this Witness' property including where she observed the bigfoot.

About BFRO Investigator G.E. Stade:

An experienced outdoorsman and naturalist. Mr. Stade attended the following BFRO Expeditions: 2008 & 2009 OK; 2008, 2009 & 2010 MO.

Note: Interesting report. -Rob

Sightings: Monsters

2012-02-11T12:10:00.001-06:00

Roswell UFO claims and Glenn Dennis

2012-02-11T12:04:00.001-06:00

From Lon's site Phantoms and Monsters:

The Roswell Undertaker

The Roswell Incident kick-started more than a half century of conspiracy theories surrounding unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Something did crash at Roswell, New Mexico, sometime before July 7, 1947 and, at first, the US authorities stated explicitly that this was a flying saucer or disk as shown by the splash story on that day’s Roswell Daily Record. Numerous witnesses reported seeing metallic debris scattered over a wide area and at least one reported seeing a blazing craft crossing the sky shortly before it crashed. In recent years, witnesses have added significant new details, including claims of a large military operation dedicated to recovering alien craft and aliens themselves, at as many as 11 crash sites, and alleged witness intimidation. In 1989, former mortician Glenn Dennis claimed that he was involved in alien autopsies which were carried out at the Roswell air force base.

The conspiracy theory has been fanned by the US military repeatedly changing its story. Within hours of the army telling reporters that it had recovered a crashed saucer, senior officers insisted that the only thing that had fallen from the sky had been a weather balloon. A report by the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force released in 1995, concluded that the reported recovered material in 1947 was likely debris from a secret government program called Project Mogul, which involved high altitude balloons meant to detect sound waves generated by Soviet atom bomb tests and ballistic missiles.

A second report, released in 1997, concluded that reports of alien bodies were likely a combination of innocently transformed memories of military accidents involving injured or killed personnel, and the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in military programs like Project High Dive conducted in the 1950s.

Since the late 1990s the debate about Roswell has polarized with several former pro-UFO researchers concluding that the craft was, indeed, part of a US military project and that it was, most likely, some sort of weather balloon. But further evidence has emerged, notably a signed affidavit by Walter Haut, the Roswell Army Air Field public affairs officer who had drafted the initial press release on July 8, 1947. Haut says in the affidavit, signed in 2002, that he saw alien corpses and a craft and that he had been involved in a military cover up. Haut died in 2005.

For years embalmer Glenn Dennis has told an intriguing Roswell crash tale. If true, it leaves no doubt that what fell to Earth in July of 1947 in New Mexico sands was from another world. However Glenn's story has been disputed by researchers as having serious difficulties. Today, some have all but dismissed his purported involvement in the crash events.

But new interviews and information show that the undertaker's amazing story may well have basis in fact. And a fresh look may have uncovered the possible identity of the "missing nurse" at the Roswell base who decades ago revealed to Glenn the alien reality of the crash.

GLENN'S STORY

Glenn Dennis could only happen in a place like New Mexico. His top shirt button always clasped, he often wore a bolero. His frame was lanky but always upright- standing at least two feet taller than desert brush. A marvel of shortened hyperbole, tongue-in-cheek cusses and flirtations - this is how family remembers Glenn.

In July of 1947, he was an energetic young man busily employed as a Mortuary Assistant for the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, NM. Ballard's had a long-standing contract with the Roswell military base to provide ambulance and mortuary services….

Dennis signed an affidavit two decades ago that outlined some very unusual events that he had experienced that Summer of 1947. He maintained that he had received a strange call while at Ballard's from an officer at the Roswell base a short time after the Roswell crash. The officer was inquiring about the availability of hermetically-sealed baby caskets. Glenn was also questioned about body preservation methods. Dennis replied that he could provide the caskets- and that the best way to preserve the corpses would be to have them frozen. The officer also wanted to know about tissue and blood changes that might occur if bodies were out in the open, exposed to the elements. Curious about the odd call, Dennis asked the officer if something had happened at the base. He was told that the information was simply for "future reference."

Soon after, Dennis was summoned to the base to pick up an injured airman. He says that on his return, he viewed what appeared to be some very strange debris from some sort of wreckage. He saw the debris in the backs of base vehicles as he slowly and deliberately passed through a ramp exit. One of the debris pieces was "canoe shaped" and about three feet long. It appeared to have odd colored hues like burnt steel, but it was not steel. It had inscribed on it 3"-4" high "hieroglyphics" that ran in a pattern along the contour of the wreckage piece.

Glenn was spotted observing the material by an officer, who then stopped Glenn and loudly rebuked him. He demanded to know of Glenn who he was, why he was there and what else he may have seen. He told Dennis to say nothing of what he may have witnessed. Glenn told the officer to "Go to Hell." He was a civilian who would not be talked to in that manner. The officer then threatened "Don't kid yourself, they'll be picking your bones out of the sand!"

Glenn explains that Roswell's Sheriff George Wilcox made a visit to Glenn's father's house a couple of days later. Wilcox (a friend of Glenn's father) warned the elder Dennis to let Glenn know that he had better keep quiet about anything he may have known or seen at the base that day.

GLENN'S CONTROVERSY

The part of Glenn's story that is the most controversial-

Dennis states that while Sheriff Wilcox was at his father's, Glenn was actually returning to the base to see a nurse friend. He wanted to know if she had heard anything about all of this. They discussed what she knew over Cokes at a base dining area.

She told Glenn that she had earlier witnessed a horrific site. A doctor had pulled her into a room for assistance where there she had viewed three strange "foreign bodies'" that were being examined. She nauseated from the wretching stench. She described to Glenn a classic alien humanoid form, which she had drawn on a napkin for Glenn.

The creature had an enlarged head, slit-like mouth with vestigial nose and ears, unusual eyes and enlongated arms. Hysterical in the re-telling, the nurse then admonished Dennis to leave the base immediately. That is the last Dennis ever saw of her.

In the 1990s holes began to emerge in Glenn's story. Glenn had given researchers the name of the Roswell base nurse as "Naomi Self" - which later proved to be a phony name. He also told conflicting stories about what had become of the nurse. He said that she had died in a plane crash, that she went to England and even that she joined a convent. There are other problems with Glenn's story. He mentioned a doctor who he said was involved, but who was later proven could not have been. It is rumored that Glenn may have asked for compensation for later interviews. And Glenn helped to establish the Roswell UFO museum, which became a source of (modest) personal income for a brief period of time.

SUPPORT FOR GLENN

Despite all of this, there are several reasons why Glenn's tale should not be dismissed-

1) Supporting Glenns' story is the fact that he never sought to tell it. He was found. Researcher Stan Friedman first interviewed Glenn on August 5, 1989. Friedman found Glenn because Friedman had reasoned that the Roswell undertaker may have heard something about the incident. Only later did Dennis become public on the matter.

2) The former Chief of Police for Roswell, L. M. Hall, signed an affidavit in which he recalls that -just a few days after the July 1947 crash- Dennis had recounted to him the odd call from the base about the availability of child caskets.

3) A Roswell base medical technician in 1947, David Wagnon, signed an affidavit that he remembers the nurse as described by Dennis

4) Glenn's grandson, Kelly Abbott, states on a family history website that Glenn told his Roswell story to his close family in the 1980s. This was after the first Roswell book was published in 1980, but before "all of the books and movies" had come out in the 1990s about the incident. He says "Papa told the story with the sense that it was about time someone knew what happened. This is before he had spoken publicly."

5) Glenn's high school classmate was Rogene Cordes. I recently found and contacted Rogene. She is the widow of an Air Force General and believes Glenn implicitly. She was also a neighbor of Roswell Sheriff George Wilcox. Mrs. Cordes says that she knows that Glenn is telling the truth. She is cautious in relating her knowledge, but she indicates that there are things about Glenn's story that she knows happened at the time, including the involvement of Sheriff Wilcox and the call to Glenn about ice for bodies. Rogene mentions that she could not find any ice or dry ice anywhere that crash weekend. Not at Clardy's dairy nor at the train depot, which stored and sold dry ice. Glenn had told the base officer that the best way to preserve corpses was to freeze them. The military had found their ice.

6) A Roswell Army Air Field serviceman in 1947, Sgt. Milton Sprouse (who spent ten years in the military) remembers distinctly Glenn speaking of the event decades ago. Sprouse says that a few years after the crash he had seen Glenn at a mutual friend's funeral. Glenn brought up in conversation the base's strange call inquiring about the child caskets.

7) Glenn's close friend was Mollie Abramitis. Mollie recently related to me an extraordinary story. She was visiting New Mexico from her home in California in April of 1989. Glenn was managing the Wortley Hotel at the time. Glenn invited her and others for dinner. He then told a small group of close friends gathered at the hotel's dining room that he had an important story to tell them. It had been troubling him for a very long time. He felt compelled and ready to share it with them. He said that he was worried that the story had "gotten out" and he was concerned about approaches for interviews about the subject. He told Mollie and the others assembled at the Wortley the precise ET story that he told publicly much later. Mollie said that Glenn appeared genuinely concerned, even frightened. An ex-police officer at the table beseeched Glenn that he must speak out publicly and tell all that he knows, that it would be the best form of "personal protection." Glenn rarely drank. But this time, Mollie says, after he had told his astonishing story, Glenn partook of some liquid courage.

8) Glenn's fraternal twin Bob Dennis (now deceased) was alway reluctant to discuss his brother's story. John Price was Bob Dennis' close friend. Bob explained to John that he was overseas in the military when the Roswell crash had happened. But his father told him about it when he returned from the service. Bob said that his father was very good friends with Sheriff Wilcox. He said that Wilcox and his Deputy (Tommy Thompson) did in fact come to the house and warned their father to make sure that Glenn says nothing of the event. It is likely that Glenn's father was told much more about the crash event by his Sheriff friend. This is because Bob Dennis said that his father made him promise to never reveal any details about the event. Bob kept that promise to his death, always saying the it was Glenn's story to tell.

9) The 1947 Roswell Fire Chief's son was identified and contacted by me recently. Rue was living in the Roswell area at the time of the crash and knew Dennis, as did his father. He stated sparingly, and not wishing to elaborate, that "everything that Glenn says happened."

GLENN'S MISSING NURSE - FOUND?

Glenn's "nurse friend" has never been conclusively identified. Glenn did not provide researchers with her real name, if she existed. But then again...she just may have. Reexamination of old documents -and the confessions of a Roswell family- reveal that there are two very likely candidates:

Eileen (Adeline) Fanton was a 1st Lieutenant that was very briefly attached to the Roswell Army Airfield Station Hospital as a General Nurse- from December 26, 1946 until September 4, 1947:

· According to military records Lt. Eileen Fanton (single) was 5'l" and 100 pounds, with dark hair and eyes and of Italian descent. Dennis described the nurse that he had known as "small like Audrey Hepburn, with short black hair, dark eyes and olive skin."

· Fanton was a graduate of a Catholic academy and Catholic nursing school. Glenn said that his nurse was "raised as a strict Catholic."

· Fanton is confirmed to have later served a tour duty in England. Dennis had mentioned England as (one of) the places he thought that the nurse may have relocated.

· Fanton was educated by nuns. Dennis has offered an alternate story that he had heard that the nurse had later become a nun. Fanton left the Roswell base weeks after her meeting with Glenn. She was admitted to a hospital for a reputed "D&C" abortion procedure. She retired from military service in 1955 and was never located to be questioned. She is believed deceased.

Ms. Miriam Bush:

In July of 1947 Miriam Bush was a single 27 year old woman who (according to records and family) was employed by the Roswell base. Though not a "nurse"- she was a medical secretary in base hospital services.

· Like the "nurse" that Glenn described, Miriam was smallish and attractive, with black, short-cut hair and dark eyes.

· Glenn had offered the faked name of "Naomi Self" as the identity of his missing nurse. "Miriam" may well be an anagram of sorts for "Naomi." Both "Miriam" and "Naomi" have the same length of letters, as do the last names "Bush" and "Self."

· Amazingly (according to her brother George, her sister Jean and her sister-in-law Patricia) Miriam would arrive at her parents home one day after work in the Summer of 1947. She was tearful and in shock. She had described to her family a horrible event that had occured earlier that day. She was pulled into a base hospital room by a doctor who wanted her to be aware of something. She sickened as her eyes cast upon "little bodies" on gurneys in the middle of the room. These bodies were childlike but they were not children. They were strange- with massive heads and eyes that were not at all right. She told her family that she begged God to let her forget the sight.

· Traumatized, Miriam would flee New Mexico shortly thereafter and go to California where she remained for years without communicating with those back home. Alcoholic, Miriam would commit suicide at very end of 1989. 1989 is the very year that Glenn "went public" with his Roswell story.

GLENN'S TRUTH

Glenn has mixed misdirection with truth. He used storytelling devices to hide or obfuscate identities. His concern for protecting privacy was in conflict with his desire to get out the story. He saw others making money on the story and -ever the businessman- thought he'd profit some as well. He may have injected some imagination into history to awaken interest. Perhaps he did it to supplement a story where the real facts could not be obtained.

It could even be that Glenn was himself not the "involved" one, but was covering for another. Or it may be that his father had confided to Glenn the story that he had learned from friend Sheriff George Wilcox. It must also be remembered that flirtatious Glenn was a newlywed with an expectant and homebound wife at the time of the Roswell crash. His "relationship" with the nurse may have been more than casual- another possible reason for his evasiveness.

Whatever the case, there can be no doubt that there is a true -but hidden- "core story" somewhere to be found within Glenn's fascinating tale.

Perhaps Kelly Abbott, Glenn's grandson, sums the Roswell undertaker's tale best: "While it's true that his heart may have always been in the right place, his brain often got him in trouble. To many who've lived their lives and will die in Roswell, Glenn was their undertaker. Trust in him is a given. To those of us who know him better, the truth of the matter is far more complicated."

Roswell base hospital

-----

AFFIDAVIT OF GLENN DENNIS

(1) My name is Glenn Dennis

(2) My address is: XXXXXXXXXX

(3) I am ( ) employed as: __________________________________ ( ) retired,

(4) In July 1947, I was a mortician, working for the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, which had a contract to provide mortuary services for the Roswell Army Air Field. One afternoon, around 1:15 or 1:30, I received a call from the base mortuary officer who asked what was the smallest size hermetically sealed casket that we had in stock. He said, "We need to know this in case something comes up in the future." He asked how long it would take to get one, and I assured him I could get one for him the following day. He said he would call back if they needed one.

(5) About 45 minutes to an hour later, he called back and asked me to describe the preparation for bodies that had been lying out on the desert for a period of time. Before I could answer, he said he specifically wanted to know what effect the preparation procedures would have on the body's chemical compounds, blood and tissues. I explained that our chemicals were mainly strong solutions of formaldehyde and water, and that the procedure would probably alter the body's chemical composition. I offered to come out to the base to assist with any problem he might have, but he reiterated that the information was for future use. I suggested that if he had such a situation that I would try to freeze the body in dry ice for storage and transportation.

(6) Approximately a hour or an hour and 15 minutes later, I got a call to transport a serviceman who had a laceration on his head and perhaps a fractured nose. I gave him first aid and drove him out to the base. I got there around 5:00 PM.

(7) Although I was a civilian, I usually had free access on the base because they knew me. I drove the ambulance around to the back of the base infirmary and parked it next to another ambulance. The door was open and inside I saw some wreckage. There were several pieces which looked like the bottom of a canoe, about three feet in length. It resembled stainless steel with a purple hue, as if it had been exposed to high temperature. There was some strange-looking writing on the material resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics. Also there were two MPs present.

(8) I checked the airman in and went to the staff lounge to have a Coke. I intended to look for a nurse, a 2nd Lieutenant, who had been commissioned about three months earlier right out of college. She was 23 years of age at the time (I was 22). I saw her coming out of one of the examining rooms with a cloth over her mouth. She said, "My gosh, get out of here or you're going to be in a lot of trouble." She went into another door where a Captain stood. He asked me who I was and what I was doing here. I told him, and he instructed me to stay there. I said, "It looks like you've got a crash; would you like me to get ready?" He told me to stay right there. Then two MPs came up and began to escort me out of the infirmary. They said they had orders to follow me out to the funeral home.

(9) We got about 10 or 15 feet when I heard a voice say, "We're not through with that SOB. Bring him back." There was another Captain, a redhead with the meanest-looking eyes I had ever seen, who said, "You did not see anything, there was no crash here, and if you say anything you could get into a lot of trouble." I said, "Hey look mister, I'm a civilian and you can't do a damn thing to me." He said, "Yes we can; somebody will be picking your bones out of the sand." There was a black Sergeant with a pad in his hand who said, "He would make good dog food for our dogs." The Captain said, "Get the SOB out." The MPs followed me back to the funeral home.

(10) The next day, I tried to call the nurse to see what was going on. About 11:00 AM, she called the funeral home and said, "I need to talk to you." We agreed to meet at the officers club. She was very upset. She said, "Before I talk to you, you have to give me a sacred oath that you will never mention my name, because I could get into a lot of trouble." I agreed.

(11) She said she had gone to get supplies in a room where two doctors were performing a preliminary autopsy. The doctors said they needed her to take notes during the procedure. She said she had never smelled anything so horrible in her life, and the sight was the most gruesome she had ever seen. She said, "This was something no one has ever seen." As she spoke, I was concerned that she might go into shock.

(12) She drew me a diagram of the bodies, including an arm with a hand that had only four fingers; the doctors noted that on the end of the fingers were little pads resembling suction cups. She said the head was disproportionately large for the body; the eyes were deeply set; the skulls were flexible; the nose was concave with only two orifices; the mouth was a fine slit, and the doctors said there was heavy cartilage instead of teeth. The ears were only small orifices with flaps. They had no hair, and the skin was black--perhaps due to exposure in the sun. She gave me the drawings.

(13) There were three bodies; two were very mangled and dismembered, as if destroyed by predators; one was fairly intact. They were three-and-a-half to four feet tall. She told me the doctors said: "This isn't anything we've ever see before; there's nothing in the medical textbooks like this." She said she and the doctors became ill. They had to turn off the air conditioning and were afraid the smell would go through the hospital. They had to move the operation to an airplane hangar.

(14) I drove her back to the officers' barracks. The next day I called the hospital to see how she was, and they said she wasn't available. I tried to get her for several days, and finally got one of the nurses who said the Lieutenant had been transferred out with some other personnel. About 10 days to two weeks later, I got a letter from her with an APO number. She indicated we could discuss the incident by letter in the future. I wrote back to her and about two weeks later the letter came back marked "Return to Sender--DECEASED." Later, one of the nurses at the base said the rumor was that she and five other nurses had been on a training mission and had been killed in a plane crash.

(15) Sheriff George Wilcox and my father were very close friends. The Sheriff went to my folks' house the morning after the events at the base and said to my father, "I don't know what kind of trouble Glenn's in, but you tell your son that he doesn't know anything and hasn't seen anything at the base." He added, "They want you and your wife's name, and they want your and your children's addresses." My father immediately drove to the funeral home and asked me what kind of trouble I was in. He related the conversation with Sheriff Wilcox, and so I told him about the events of the previous day. He is the only person to whom I have told this story until recently.

(16) I had filed away the sketches the nurse gave me that day. Recently, at the request of a researcher, I tried to locate my personal files at the funeral home, but they had all been destroyed.

(17) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, which is the truth to the best of my recollection.

Signed: Glenn Dennis
Date: 8-7-91

Signature witnessed by:
Walter G. Haut

Roswell : Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe

Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the Government's Biggest Cover-up (Revised and Expanded Edition)

The Roswell Legacy: The Untold Story of the First Military Officer at the 1947 Crash Site

Note: Excellent work Lon!

'Woolly Mammoth' spotted in Siberia?

2012-02-10T09:57:00.001-06:00

Woolly Mammoth, Bear or Hoax?

2012-02-09T14:02:00.001-06:00

From Cryptomundo:

Mammoth Madness? New Developments

Posted on February 9th by Loren Coleman:

The so-called “Woolly Mammoth” footage has created a great deal of interest, comments and reactions on Cryptomundo, Facebook, and across the Internet.

(See the video on the Cryptomundo link above btw)

Generally, three theories have issued forth as to the origins of the video: (1) it is of a cryptid, a possible surviving Woolly Mammoth, (2) it is of a brown bear with a salmon in its mouth, and/or (3) it is a generated hoax or fake.

The enhancing of some frames of the footage have given firmer foundation to the “bear” hypothesis. See the following screen captures, as posted in The Daily Mail, shared by cryptocajun:

But is it more than just a bear? Is it a bear that has been used in a created hoax?

A new development has occurred due to some background checks on the alleged individual who is credited as the source of the video published in The Sun: Michael Cohen.

According to past detective work done by Lee Speigel at Huffington Post, any material evidence produced by Michael Cohen is suspect.

As Speigel related in his 2011 investigative piece on Cohen (see here), last October, the discussion was of a video supposedly showing an “extraterrestrial…seen in a Brazilian rainforest [that] arches its back conveniently right in front of a group of children being filmed.”

Speigel wrote: “Well, we’ve seen stranger things, but this is just the latest in a series of videos all coincidentally presented on the Internet by Mike Cohen of All News Web, which bills itself as ‘the world’s only inter-galactic daily news service.’”

Only trouble is, the ET in the jungle apparently was just an object placed in that surrounding. As to the flying cube/pyramid UFO that Cohen also presented in the past, well, that turned out to look to be computer-generated, much too clear compared to the rest of the video.

What was the avenue by which Cohen got these to the general public? The publication was The Sun, exactly the same one used for the “Woolly Mammoth” video.

Hoax? Fake? Spot on, it seems that this is certainly a Mammoth one, at that.

+++

Breaking Update :
Since we posted the above, Lee Speigel has published the following, “Woolly Mammoth Video From Siberia Faces Credibility Issues.”

Note: Looks like either a Woolly Mammoth or bear with a fish in it's mouth to me. -Rob

Hull House closes doors after more than 120 years

2012-01-31T09:49:00.000-06:00

"CHICAGO (AP) — Hull House, the Chicago social services organization founded more than 120 years ago by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams, closed Friday after running out of money.

The agency said the poor economy resulted in more demand for its services but also made it harder to raise money to cover its costs. Hull House has been providing child care, job training, housing assistance and other services for 60,000 people a year in the Chicago area.

The agency had announced plans to close in the spring, but Friday's shutdown was unexpected, striking some 300 employees with a devastating and unexpected blow. They received layoff notices and final paychecks and then spent the day packing their belongings and saying tearful good-byes. Many said they were startled to learn their insurance ended almost two weeks ago.

"It's been my life," said Dianne Turner, who spent 25 years teaching families in Chicago housing projects how to break the cycle of poverty. "It wasn't about the pay. It was about seeing a family go from feeling hopeless to being hopeful and feeling like they can do things."

Turner said she knows what it's like to live in the projects and dream of something better. She got her first job as a teenager through Hull House and said the organization helped teach her the value of education, how to save money and how to be a leader.

Founded in 1889, Hull House was the best known of the 400 settlement houses in the United States in the early 1900s. The settlements were designed to provide services to immigrants and the poor while uplifting them through culture, education and recreation. At its peak, Hull House served more than 9,000 people a week, offering medical help, an art gallery, citizenship classes, a gardening club and a gym with sports programs.

Victoria Brown, a history professor at Grinnell College and author of "The Education of Jane Addams," said the closure was "an absolute puzzle" and wondered why officials had not publicized the financial problems earlier in an effort to save the agency.

"I wish we would have known. Why weren't they screaming this from the rooftops?" said Brown. Addams "was known as gentle, not confrontational, but one of her favorite words was 'stupid.' She would say, 'This is just stupid. How could this have happened?'"
Hull House Association board Chairman Stephen Saunders did not immediately return phone calls for comment on Friday.

Agency officials have said it is millions of dollars in debt and the decision to close came after managers and trustees worked for two years to reduce operating costs and improve services.

Other service agencies have been stepping in to help provide services to Hull House clients.

Lizzie Harrington, 32, received help from Hull House when she was a teenager in foster care and wanted to live independently. She went on to become a project director for a Hull House program that helps low-income people find jobs. The closure, she said, has employees devastated and angry.

"It's unfortunate, and it's been emotional," Harrington said. "I have a special connection to this place. This was part of my childhood."

The Hull House agency isn't affiliated with the University of Illinois at Chicago's Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, which will remain open. But museum officials were at the social service agency Friday, carting away boxes of files they said would be archived and preserved at the museum. The Hull House site on Chicago's

West Side is a National Historic Landmark.

Regina Boyd, who has been a housing case manager at Hull House since 2003, said the closure was bittersweet.

"I believe when one door closes another one opens," she said. "But I love the legacy of Jane Addams, and I'm hoping that someone or something comes along," to continue that legacy.

"I feel her spirit. Her legacy is not over in my heart and spirit. It's not."

___

Online:

Jane Addams Hull House Association: http://www.hullhouse.org

Sources: Yahoo News and The AP: http://news.yahoo.com/hull-house-closes-doors-more-120-years-183258990.html

Note: Sad day in Chicago that Hull House is closing it's doors. Hull House has a rich history

to it and is said to be haunted as well. The place hs many legends and myths as well as urban legends

about it as well. -Rob

Divers find large, unexplained (and mysterious) object at bottom of Baltic Sea

2012-01-26T21:36:00.001-06:00

Video: Divers find large, unexplained object at bottom of Baltic Sea - yahoo news

"A team of salvage divers has discovered an unexplained object resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden.

"This thing turned up. My first reaction was to tell the guys that we have a UFO here on the bottom," said Peter Lindberg, the leader of the amateur treasure hunters.

Sonar readings show that the mysterious object is about 60 meters across, or, about the size of a jumbo jet. And it's not alone. Nearby on the sea floor is another, smaller object with a similar shape. Even more fascinating, both objects have "drag marks" behind them on the sea floor, stretching back more than 400 feet.

"Could this be the Star Wars Millenium Falcon, a plug to an inner world or a marine version of Stonehenge?" asks CNN's Brooke Bowman:

Well, it could just be another shipwreck. Or, mud.

But Lindberg says the ship theory doesn't really hold up because of the unusually large size of the objects. "Of course it would be something from another ship but it's quite big," he told CNN. Lindberg notes that some observers have speculated that the objects may be Russian warships built around the end of the 1800's. However, Lindberg points out that not only were those ships much smaller, they were not patrolling the Baltic during that era.

The Baltic Sea is a literal treasure trove for salvage teams and a "shipwreck laboratory" for researchers. The sea's low salinity levels help preserve objects that sink to the bottom. "Right now, we know about 20,000 objects, mostly shipwrecks, in the Baltic Sea. But I think there may be more than 100,000," said sonar expert Ardreas Olsson, "I'm not sure what you will see when you go down. But I'm excited. It's going to be interesting to see what it is."

The Ocean Explorer team first made their find back in August and had no plans to return to the scene. For now, Lindberg is waiting for calmer waters in the Baltic, possibly in May, before taking his salvage team to the bottom for a closer look at the mysterious objects. They originally had no plans to return to the spot, but the spike in interest from the public has led them to begin planning a return trip." -yahoo news

For the video that goes along with this story click on this link:

divers-large-unexplained-object-bottom-baltic-sea

This looks like an interesting find, whatever it is. The comments
on the yahoo article are abuzz with speculation. -Rob

Monkey long believed extinct found in Indonesia

2012-01-21T23:16:00.001-06:00

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — "Scientists working in the dense jungles of Indonesia have "rediscovered" a large, gray monkey so rare it was believed by many to be extinct.

They were all the more baffled to find the Miller's Grizzled Langur — its black face framed by a fluffy, Dracula-esque white collar — in an area well outside its previously recorded home range.

The team set up camera traps in the Wehea Forest on the eastern tip of Borneo island in June, hoping to captures images of clouded leopards, orangutans and other wildlife known to congregate at several mineral salt licks.

The pictures that came back caught them all by surprise: groups of monkeys none had ever seen.

With virtually no photographs of the grizzled langurs in existence, it at first was a challenge to confirm their suspicions, said Brent Loken, a Ph.D. student at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and one of the lead researchers.

The only images out there were museum sketches.

"We were all pretty ecstatic, the fact that, wow, this monkey still lives, and also that it's in Wehea," said Loken.

The monkey, which has hooded eyes and a pinkish nose and lips, once roamed the northeastern part of Borneo, as well as the islands of Sumatra and Java and the Thai-Malay peninsula. But concerns were voiced several years ago that they may be extinct.

Forests where the monkeys once lived had been destroyed by fires, human encroachment and conversion of land for agriculture and mining and an extensive field survey in 2005 turned up empty.

"For me the discovery of this monkey is representative of so many species in Indonesia," Loken told The Associated Press by telephone.

"There are so many animals we know so little about and their home ranges are disappearing so quickly," he said. "It feels like a lot of these animals are going to quickly enter extinction."

The next step will be returning to the 90,000 acre (38,000 hectare) forest to try to find out how many grizzly langurs there are, according to the team of local and international scientists, who published their findings in the American Journal of Primatology on Friday.

They appear in more than 4,000 images captured over a two-month period, said Loken, but it's possible one or two families kept returning.

"We are trying to find out all we can," he said. "But it really feels like a race against time."
Experts not involved in the study were hugely encouraged.

"It's indeed a highly enigmatic species," said Erik Meijaard, a conservation scientist who spent more than eight years doing field research in the area.

In the past they were hunted to near extinction for their meat and bezoar "stones," he said, which can, on occasion, be found in their guts.

Bezoars, as Harry Potter fans know from lectures given by Prof. Snape to first year students, are believed by some to neutralize poison.

Meijaard said the animal has long been considered a subspecies of the Hose's Leaf Monkey, which also occurs on the Malaysian side of Borneo, but it now looks like that may not be the case.

"We think it might actually be a distinct species," he said, "which would make the Wehea discovery even more important."

From: http://news.yahoo.com/monkey-long-believed-extinct-found-indonesia-052957776.html

Awesome find! This is good news for Zoologists and Cryptozoologists everywhere. -Rob

TOP 100 NES games in 10 minutes

2012-01-21T15:13:00.001-06:00

BFRO Report #30051

2012-01-18T11:36:00.002-06:00

Here is a very interesting report from the BFRO on multiple Bigfoot encounters
over the course of 20 years from a couple. Of course every time the husband
goes away the wife sees the creature. They are smart. -Rob

BFRO Report #30051

Report # 30051 (Class A)
Submitted by witness on Tuesday, July 19, 2011.

Vocalizations and tense sighting reported by couple hiking and camping near Trout Lake

YEAR: 2004

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: August

STATE: Washington

COUNTY: Klickitat County

LOCATION DETAILS: Deleted by investigator at witnesses request

NEAREST TOWN: Trout Lake, WA

NEAREST ROAD: The main forest road that goes out of town to the west of TL- can't remember route #- Peterson Prairie Campground is on it

OBSERVED: This is a compilation of experiences over a period of years in the same area (1988- 2009) - feeling of being watched, wildlife silenced, tree breaks, strong smell once, numerous late night vocalizations, rock knocking, things being thrown near our tent and an actual daytime sighting. Some of the things I mention here I didn't know were typical when I was experiencing them, but now do, since I've read other sightings on BFRO's and other sites.

My husband and I have been camping and caving in the Trout Lake, WA area for about 20 years and are both very experienced in the outdoors, particularly in the Northwest. We've gone primarily to this area for caving for many years.

The first encounter with something unusual was in 1988-89 on a caving trip in this area as we penetrated the forest, heading toward Mt. Adams through some old clearcut to visit a familiar cave. Birdsong of various types is always present, but as we made our way toward the tree line, the birdsong and even insect noise seemed to cease. I looked up, no indication of foul weather or damp wind, indicating rain. Our group ( I think 7 or 8 of us) was familiar with the deep woods and a couple people noted that this was strange. For some reason, we all stopped in our tracks, even though no one had heard anything; everyone was looking around at each other and listening. Something seemed wrong. Then, I had a very strong sense of being watched from further in, not too far away, but did not tell anyone else. I have a feeling the others sensed this as well, and we all pushed quickly on to get to the cave, sticking close to one another. This happened on several caving trips over the years, but not in the same location; the proxmity, however, was fairly close- all within about a 5 mile radius.

Another time, around 2002, my partner and I were dispersed camping alone, right next to a very seldom-used forest road in the same area, east of the main forest road. We got out of our vehicle to begin setting up camp as we had done several other times in this area and noticed an almost vomit-inducing stench. It was not the smell of something dead, it was like a combination of sun-baked garbage and feces. We decided that perhaps some local had driven back here and dumped their garbage, but then about 5 minutes later, the smell just went away?? I had no idea about the smells encountered by others at this time, so I blew it off. We walked, sniffing around the area a little and there was nothing, so we decided to camp there anyway, thinking that something must've just been carried on the wind, but it was still strange as to how strong it was.

We've also heard some late night sounds when camped at Peterson Prairie many times. Some dismissed them as coyotes. These sounds were like whoops, with several animals at once. I remember silently filing through the animal sounds that I'd heard in the wild: (elk, coyote, deer, cougar, wolf, owls, marmots, bear, human) in my mind and came up blank. Nothing matched. Still we tried to dismiss them as coyotes and went to bed. But it was like something was making the initial sound and the coyotes were answering.

But then later in 2003, another type of sound in this area made my blood turn to ice water. It was August, about 11:30 at night at Peterson, as we wanted the "luxury" of camping at a site, instead of dispersed, where there was running water and outhouses. We were dousing the fire and about to head into the tent when from the north, about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile, it seemed, there began a howl. Not a wolf or coyote howl, but it almost reminded me of those emergency sirens you hear in rural towns. The pitch was quite low and then it raised to a higher tone and was held there for about 6-10 seconds, but was still low in tone. I thought about Pavarotti and some very skilled baritones that I'd heard in concert. I came to a sickeningly horrifying conclusion that in all the years of voice I'd studied and heard, not one human had ever uttered something at this tone, nor could they do it at this volume. The lungs of whatever was doing this had to be absolutely huge, and as in the forest, it echoed a lot, but it was *not* echoes that made it sound strange.

I looked at my husband, who was also startled and looking at me, and then we looked at some of the other campers across the scrub from us. They had stood up and were motionless, looking back at us, then looking in the direction it was coming from. I asked, "What IS that?" to my husband, who said he didn't know. We remained standing and it continued for about 2 minutes, then ceased. In all the years we have camped and caved in that area, (or anywhere, for that matter) we had never heard anything like that. No human lungs were capable of that power.

I have pretty much always been a die-hard tenter/backpacker, but that night I couldn't sleep in the tent. I was too frightened with the realization that what I had just heard was impossible- impossible! No creature existed that could make that sound-- unless-- no way-- NO WAY! Then I remembered that this area had quite a few sightings of Bigfoot over the years. I just could not accept it, but I also could not sleep in the tent, so we got our bags and pads and slept in our truck that night. I barely slept, and was very glad to be leaving in the morning! I was shaken for quite a while. We went to the Mt. Adams ranger station in town that morning on the way out and asked if there were any reports of "unusual animal activity" the night before. The ranger looked at me like I was under the influence. I never said the words, but I knew she was thinking it. She said she had not heard of any, and by the way, just what was it that I thought I heard? I never answered.

Well, terror and curiosity sometimes go hand in hand-- we decided to go back to the area in 2004. We camped at Peterson, as there was no freaking way I was going to camp dispersed, just the two of us, in that area now. So we're there, visiting our favorite caves in the area and early the last afternoon, my husband and I decide to go cave hunting. (What was I thinking? But it was broad daylight, so...) We trekked down a side forest road that was so overgrown with vine maple and had large tree fall at the beginning so that you couldn't drive it anymore. We bush-whacked through the grown-up vine maple in the remnants of a clearcut and split up and had planned on coming around to meet each other, as we knew this particular forest road curved around a bit.

I'd had enough bush-whacking after a while and decided to just meander down the forest road on some more even terrain. So I headed toward the mountain on this road with my husband off in the deep bush to my left. I noticed how warm it was and it was quite still- it was an uncomfortably hot day. Nothing but the sound of my boots crunching on the packed gravel. Then I heard the gravel move behind me, probably about 20 yards. I took my time turning around, thinking that it was a probably a cow, because this was an open range area, and as weird as it seems seeing cows in the forest and clearcut, this was not uncommon at all. It had sounded heavy.

Then I felt faint, like I was going blind & seeing colors and shot up with some halucinogen all at once- I watched as a HUGE, hair-covered, dark cinnamon-colored human-like thing cleared the ditch in one stride, glided into the tree line in one more lightning step and then stood absolutely still.

There I was, by myself, in the middle of this isolated forest road with a hairy (it seemed almost like semi-glossy fur?) cinnamon-colored shoulder and arm unhidden by the tree it was behind. The shoulder was absolutely massive, as was the arm, which was so long, it was almost as tall as I am. If I look, for example, at the door jamb in my office here, I'd put the shoulder's height at just under the bottom of the jamb. I could see the contour of muscles under the hair/fur. It was obviously very strong. The hair/fur appeared to be about 2-3 inches long. I couldn't see the full hand as it was blocked by some undergrowth. And there it was, standing stock still, watching me- did it think it was fully hidden?

I've heard about people being paralyzed with fear and could never imagine that, but that's exactly what was going on. I thought I was going to die very soon. I just really had no idea what was going to happen. I was completely defenseless. I wanted to move, but couldn't, I was frozen. I thought it might chase me if I ran. I could not turn my back on it. Survival mode must've kicked in somehow, because I remembered my training about bears. I began to back away very slowly and spoke very quietly and was even tempted to leave my pack for it. It still didn't move, and just stayed there, still as stone. I must've backed down that gravel about 100 yards and since there was no movement still, I decided to risk it and yell for my partner- there was no other way out of there.

I yelled for help at the top of my lungs and he answered, "Where are you??!!" I somewhat meekly called, "Here..", afraid then that my additional shouting might have the opposite effect of what I wanted and agitate the creature. A few minutes later my husband came crashing through the underbrush, a look of panic on his face. He asked what was wrong and I told him a bear- he looked disgusted and was angry. He asked where and I pointed and it was gone. He asked if it had exhibited agressive behavior. I said no, but he looked worried and started to look around and we headed away from the area. We cut through the vine maple in the opposite direction of my encounter and hightailed it back to the car. As I thought about it afterward, I noted that there was no smell during this encounter to warn me, but there was also no wind that afternoon and it was very warm.

It took me 4 years to even tell my husband what I saw. Fortunately, he's a pretty reasonable person and believes (with astonishment) what I've told him. Recently we've listened to recordings on the web of what people think are Bigfoot, and some of them sound just like what we've both heard in the area. The combination of smells, feelings & those sounds never fully registered as being connected until we found some Bigfoot sites on the web. We realized that we've experienced alot of different things in the area that were likely a Sasquatch nearby over the years.

In 2009, we camped in Peterson Prairie again, in August. I had alot of reservations about camping in a tent there due to my previous encounter in the area, but I thought with all the other campers around (6-7 sites occupied), (and right next to the obnoxious camp host RV) there wouldn't be a chance. It was raining, which was unusual for that time of year. We pulled into the campground in the evening and set up the tent in the site just north of the camp hosts. We made dinner and called it a night, with it still raining.

Something woke me at about 2:30am. It was what sounded like two rocks being knocked together, south of us, down the mostly dry creekbed. I was listening for sounds of clothing, car or camper doors, or soft voices, thinking someone was up really late. After listening intently for about 5 minutes through the sounds of light rain on the tent walls, there were no sounds of "human" movement nearby.

Then the rock knocking again. Just a couple times. I wanted to wake my husband to have him hear, but the sleeping bags make so much noise and I couldn't be sure he'd be silent when waking, (I also didn't want to risk becoming an item of interest to the rock knocker.) I was then shocked and terririfed by what I heard next. Something "whooshed" nearby and then I heard a thud on the ground. I was astonished. What can possibly be moving so fast through the air that it would make a loud whooshing sound? I listened for any sound of leaf noise in case a tree limb had fallen, but no undergrowth impact noise nor leaf noise, as I've heard before, when a limb falls.

What could possibly be whooshing so strongly through the air that I hear it and then I hear an impact nearby? Something was being thrown or beaten on the ground. Based on our experience in the area, I was pretty sure it was rocks or pieces of wood. But how freaking big (and close) did it have to be so I could hear the "whoosh"? That was terrifying. I was literally afraid for our lives, if one of whatever it was hit the tent. I listened for footfalls or scrub noise to see if I could tell if something was coming closer. No foot falls, but another whoosh/thud. I was out of my mind with fear, thinking we'd be hurt or killed by an impact through the tent. How is it that I didn't hear something close by, either breathing or moving? It must have been from quite a distance.

I didn't sleep the entire night. My husband woke up around dawn and I was still wide-eyed in my bag. He asked me how long I'd been awake and I told him the entire night. I then told him what I'd heard and he'd wished I'd woken him up, as he believes me about my encounter and actually wants to see/hear one. I told him that I didn't want to risk becoming even more of a target by making noise during the night, so I remained still.

We now have a micro camper that we're going to start using to camp/boondock with, as we're both getting older, so a trip down to Skamania/Klickitat County is soon on the books. I'll feel a little safer in it, but you never know how interesting it might look to a night time visitor- I hope not too much so. A parabolic mike and some night vision binoculars might come with us, too. Fear and curiosity-yikes.
ALSO NOTICED: I was just astonished that it was so quick and quiet for being huge! I never would have known it was behind me unless the rock had moved on the road. Turns my blood to ice water, just thinking about it.
OTHER WITNESSES: My husband was many yards away to the west, in the vine maple.
OTHER STORIES: Well, yes. I read about other cavers who also camped at Peterson Prairie and heard some sounds. We had also talked with other cavers from Grottoes in Portland who over the years had also heard howls at night in this area.
TIME AND CONDITIONS: Actual sighting was at midday. Sun was directly overhead, it was hot and no wind.
ENVIRONMENT: The sighting was on an abandoned forest road in the middle of the day. Not sure how much the trees have grown up, as the area to the left of the road was clearcut some years ago, but you used to be able to see Mt. Adam once you came out of the old growth on the road, slightly to the left.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Scott Taylor:
I interviewed this witness and her husband both over the phone, and then in person. She explained all the things that have happened to them over the years that they did not realize were probably sasquatch related. Her report speaks for itself, and there is not really too much more to add except for a more detailed description of the sasquatch that she observed.

The sasquatch was very tall, 8 feet or more. It was skinny-gangly for its height. The color was cinnamon. The hair was 2-3 inches long and shiny. She could observe the muscle definition in the arms. The head was conical shaped and sloped down to the shoulders and there was no neck. The shoulders were huge. It was obviously male. She saw it in profile, so was not able to describe its face.

This area begs to be explored more when the weather improves in the spring. Right now at the time of this publication, it is being covered in snow. There are many other reports from the area: Report #25194, Report #24654, Report #26572, Report #26693.

From: http://www.bfro.net

Bigfoot, Thunderbirds, and Time Travelers? Oh My!

2012-01-18T11:28:00.002-06:00

These following stories are from Lon's excellent Paranormal and Cryptozoology
website and blog Phantoms and Monsters at http://www.naturalplane.blogspot.com:

From: Jefferson Parish Bigfoot Loves That

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Jefferson Parish Bigfoot "Loves That Chicken From Popeye's"

I received this interesting anecdote a few days ago. I don't doubt the witness' account...but the situation is somewhat whimsical:

Hey - I wanted to tell you a story that happened to me this pass week. I walk my dog everyday on a nature trail. I'm located south of New Orleans. I'd like to be anonymous but here goes.

I was walking her a few nights ago probably around 7 at night and when we made the turn she started growling which for my dog is unusual. So I turned on my flash light and there digging in a trash can was this big dark brown colored thing. Now these trash cans are hooked above ground - about 4 and a half feet above ground - and they are wide enough that I can fit my whole body in. I'm 6'1" 260 pounds and this thing was about my height maybe slightly taller but was wide. His head and part of his shoulder was in but what freaked me out came next when my dog barked he looked at us and it had the face of what I can say was gorilla like. His eye shine was red in my mag lite and the smell was like a stinkbug and rotten eggs. He was probably no less than 20 - 30 feet from me and when he ran off his speed was incredible. No way anyone in a suit playing games can move like this. It was like once he wanted to leave he was gone, I mean I cant even try to estimate his speed even if I wanted. I had my pistol and I fired 2 rounds into the ground just to make noise because I was freaked at this point.

I have never heard of anyone claiming to see something like this before. I'm from a small town so I guess if they did they probably wont say anything so not to be made fun of or labeled as crazy. The next day I went back and seen the trash bag messed up and seen they had Popeye's biscuits and some other fast food in the can so I am going to go get some more fast food put it in the garbage cans and stake out with a bud of mine and see if I can get any evidence. I gotta see this again. It was life changing for me. I can't get the face and broadness of the shoulders of this thing out of my head since it happened but I have to say I seen a Bigfoot. But on TV I seen people say these things are 8 to 9 feet tall but the one I seen was probably and a half tops but wide broad line backer like.

If you ever heard of anyone from southern Louisiana report anything like this please write me back. I heard stories of the Honey Island Swamp Monster but that is in the Slidell area. Thanks.

The Legend Of The Honey Island Swamp Monster

Tale Of The Honey Island Swamp Monster

"Southern Fried Bigfoot"

Labels: bigfoot, cryptozoology, hominid, Honey Island Swamp Monster. Louisiana

From: Confirmed JC Johnsons New Mexico

Monday, January 16, 2012

Confirmed: JC Johnson's New Mexico Bigfoot Sample Part of Ketchum DNA Study

PLEASE NOTE: this information has been known by me for over a year but since it was recently leaked as 'purported' I decided to confirm it. This is the original collection of the evidence post from 8/31/2010...Lon:

Click for video

J.C. Johnson of Crypto Four Corners posts: "A look into the attack on an animal, where mostly the "Skunk Sack" and organs were removed."

The investigation took place in Fruitland, New Mexico area...probably in or very near the Navajo Reservation. This area is very active with a hominid species that appears to be thriving. Please watch the entire video and listen to JC's theory as to why the 'Furry One' killed the skunk. Fascinating video. Here is a link to the previous post - New Mexico 'Furry Ones', 'Skin-Walkers' and 'Shadow Man'...Lon

Labels: bigfoot, DNA, Dr. Melba Ketchum, JC Johnson, sasquatch

Reader Submission Bigfoot Burial Ritual

Monday, January 16, 2012

Reader Submission: Bigfoot Burial Ritual?

I want to thank the readers and those who stumbled upon 'Phantoms and Monsters' for your emails and inquiries. I received a lot of responses to anecdotes that have been recently published...but the following email was quite strange and needs further investigation.

The email was written as a draft including an outline that was added with other notations. It was an odd format...but the information was verified. I was asked by the submitter (DD) to write the commentary since they felt that they were not able to compose a story that would be understood by the readers.

I forwarded a copy of my final composition to DD which was approved. I inquired about the witness' (the cousin) willingness to be interviewed but that notation was rebuffed since the information sent to me was done so without the knowledge of the witness. All specific personal and location disclosure was agreed to be kept in confidence. Here is the transcript:

During the recent holidays I was able to talk to a cousin who lives in the Pharaoh Lake area in New York. He is a conservationist and an advocate for nature. He recently made a discovery that is fascinating but pains him since the information would most likely lead to Bigfoot hunters decimating wildlife and pristine forests.

While hiking and camping in a fairly remote forest in Essex County, NY (the most specific location he will give) he came across what he describes as a "Bigfoot ritual burial".

One evening while he was making his way back to camp he heard "muffled grunting" coming from his right. His attention was directed toward a thick stand of sugar maple trees. He crouched down behind a large fallen tree and witnessed 3 large hairy bipedal figures...Bigfoot standing around a large tree stump. It looked like a large female who towered above her companions. He estimated that she was 8 foot+ and that the others were about 5-6 feet tall. Each one of the figures was "swaying' and "grunting". This activity continued for almost 10 minutes when they suddenly stopped and started to run in the opposite direction. He was fearful that they had noticed his presence somehow. Since it was now getting dark he decided to continue to his camp and return the next day.

The next morning he anxiously made his way back to the site where he had seen the Bigfoot. When he reached the site he noticed a 4 foot high hollow sugar maple stump with 4 gray squirrel tails attached to the top edge and suspended outside the stump. It looked like a "sort of decoration". He also noticed a terrible stench that reminded him of very strong fox urine. He looked into the stump - it was empty, but there was some dark fur, a few blood stains and a large piece of old deer hide.

He surmises that the Bigfoot "buried" a small child or infant in the stump and that they either came back to move it after noticing him or that a scavenger took it during night.

Do you or others believe that this could have been a Bigfoot 'funeral' or ritual burial? DD

NOTE: the cousin supposedly has a great deal of biological experience according to DD and is currently looking for other 'burial' spots in the area. I'd really like the reader's thoughts on this. I plan to forward this to several researchers for their opinions...Lon

Bigfoot Observer's Field Manual: A practical and easy-to-follow step-by-step guide to your very own face-to-face encounter with a legend

From Reader Submission Thunderbird

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Reader Submission: Thunderbird Encounters - Illinois / Wisconsin

I recently received the following email that references 2 separate flying cryptid encounters in two different locations, within a two month period this past Summer and by the same witness! Has anyone else seen something similar recently?

This summer (June 19, 2011) I had two encounters with giant black birds; when I say giant I mean I saw (at two separate times) birds that were all black in color with wing spans as big as a small plane 14 feet or bigger.

My first encounter was early one summer morning when I was returning from the Quad Cities. I was traveling on my motorcycle on Route 30 just past I-88 when I noticed a big black object in the distance sitting in the middle of the road. I slowed my motorcycle down as I got closer to the object. At first I thought it was a black bear sitting in the road but as I drove closer to the object I soon learned it wasn’t a bear at all. The black object was a giant BLACK BIRD which stood at least 4 to 5 feet tall. I was in awe and a little bit scared at the sight of the GIANT BIRD. I stopped my motorcycle immediately hoping that the beast would not attack me. I then looked behind me in hopes of seeing anyone else who might be witnessing this amazing sight, but of course just like in the movies there was no one else on the road. Realizing it was just me and the GIANT BIRD, my heart began to race with thoughts of being attacked; I slowly pulled in the clutch and put the motorcycle in gear just in case I had to make a quick getaway. The GIANT BIRD heard the noise of the gear shifting. It then looked directly at me for a brief moment, swung open its massive wings (which were at least 14 feet long), stood up right, then leaped off the ground and took off in flight. The bird looked like a small black plane and when it flew by the trees the branches were swaying back and forth. I sat on my motorcycle watching the bird fly out of sight.

I still do not know what kind of creature it was that I encountered. I have been looking on line at several different kind of birds but have yet to find the bird that I saw. The only bird that comes even close to what I saw was a condor but the bird I saw did not have a head like a condor nor did it look like that of a turkey buzzard or vulture plus this creature was much larger than a condor. I almost wonder if this was just a freak of nature; or possibly a prehistoric bird. Could it be possible that there are still some type of prehistoric birds still in existence? Trust me I am not crazy. I have recently seen pictures of the legendary Thunder Birds and that is exactly what this bird looked like.

My second encounter with a giant black bird was in August of 2011. My friends and I were traveling on our motorcycles near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on some back road when all of a sudden a giant black bird appeared out of nowhere. The bird was obliviously mad at the noise of all of our motorcycles or something because it took a dive at the couple who were traveling in front of my wife and I. The giant bird actually dove at them causing them to swerve on their motorcycle. The bird then circled around them and tried to poop on them; yes I said poop on them! I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Luckily the poop missed them. I am not exaggerating when I say the stuff that came out of the creature was much larger than that of a humans. It was disgusting! On a positive note there was ten of us who witnessed this giant bird. Once again none of us knew exactly what kind of bird it was that we encountered. Just like I had described before the giant bird was all black with a massive wing span and its head was not like that of a condor.

I couldn’t believe that I was so fortunate to witness this massive bird again and I was so happy that my friends were with me to see it as well. I had told my friends about the bird that I had seen in June but I don’t think that any of them really believed me. Now they know that I am not crazy and are obviously convinced that the Giant Black Bird does exist.

What is really kind of scary is that I do not believe that I saw the same bird twice; I truly believe that I saw two different birds that are of the same species. How I came to this conclusion is simple the first bird was bigger than the second bird.

I only hope that anyone who reads this takes this as a real encounter and just not as another fish story. I have ten witnesses to confirm one of my sightings. I only wish I had a picture too but obviously I can’t take pictures while I am driving a motorcycle.

Oh well, believe it or not that is my story and I am sticking to it.

Please let me know if anyone else has encountered one of these Giant Black Birds.

Thank you, LF

NOTE: any information that can be offered would be appreciated...Lon

Time Traveler? and Paranormal Database:

Time traveller, who came back after 74 years, died at the age of 31 years old

Translated: Did a space-time vortex snatch a man from the 1800s and plop him down in the middle of traffic on a busy New York City street? Many witnesses—including the New York Police Department—say YES…

Time travel stories have emerged over the centuries . One of the best time travel stories convinced many people—including some of the NYPD—that time travel’s not a theory, but real.

The Spanish website sinmisterios.com recounts the tale of the best documented occurrence of time travel in recorded history. The incident is allegedly corroborated by witnesses 74 years apart.

All details are said to be documented by official law enforcement records.

time traveller rudolf henz 150x150 Time traveller, who came back after 74 years, died at the age of 31 years oldPhoto claimed to be Rudolf Fenz, Senior.

Rudolf Fenz, Senior disappeared in 1876. Despite an intense search by police, Fenz was never found. Yet his family always held out hope that the kindly immigrant from Europe would return. They waited years, eventually dying one-by-one still with the hope that their beloved Rudolf might come back.

The return of Rudolf Fenz

Long after all his living relatives had died, Rudolf Fenz returned. And he returned in the most incredible fashion possible. For Rudolf Fenz suddenly materialized on June 1950 in the middle of a busy Fifth Avenue in downtown Manhattan—74 years after vanishing without a trace.

Seconds after appearing in the midst of heavy traffic he was struck down and killed by a car.

Time had played a cruel trick on Fenz, it propelled him three-quarters of a century into the future only to toss him in front of a speeding automobile.

New York’s Finest get involved

From the beginning of their investigation into the odd death of a strangely attired man, the New York police knew the case was anything but typical.

The motorist who struck and killed the odd pedestrian testified the man seemed bewildered and confused…in a daze. The driver swore the man literally appeared with no warning right in front of him.

The corpse itself was an enigma.

Although the deceased dressed immaculately and his clothes looked new, the police investigation confirmed the mystery man laying dead on the street wore clothing almost a century out of date.

According to police records—written by the investigating officers at the scene of the accident—the dead man wore a black coat, a wide-brimmed hat, trousers and odd shoes that fastened with archaic, 19th Century style oversized buckles. He appeared to be in his early thirties.

Police found coins long out of general circulation—some still retaining mint luster—in the man’s pockets. In his leather billfold were U.S. banknotes with dates preceding the 1870s and crisp calling cards engraved with the name “Rudolf Fenz, Senior.”

The officers also discovered a receipt for the boarding of horses and storage of a carriage among the man’s effects.

Amazing facts uncovered

Unable to determine where Rudolf Fenz, Senior lived—or locate any next of kin—the police handed the case over to one of their crack missing person’s investigators, Hubert Rihn. With the resources of the Missing Persons Bureau of the State of New York, Rihn contacted his counterparts in European countries, including Austria and Germany, in an attempt to find any existing relatives of the victim.

Allegedly, Rihn’s investigation ran into blind alleys.

Finally, almost in an act of desperation, Rihn requisitioned a copy of an old New York City telephone directory from 1939. There, the dogged investigator found an important clue: the directory listed a man named Rudolf Fenz, Junior.

That discovery, followed by a lot of painstaking police work, led Rihn to an elderly woman, the widow of Rudolf Fenz, Junior.

Here the case takes its most unusual and bizarre turn. The facts that emerged left the officers of the NY police force stunned.

During a lengthy interview with Mrs. Rudolf Fenz, Jr., she told investigators that her father-in-law, Rudolf Fenz, Senior, disappeared during his daily walk. At the time, his son—later her husband—was only four years old. Reports were made by the family and an investigation was undertaken by authorities, but no trace of her missing father-in-law ever surfaced.

The year was 1876. Rudolf Fenz, Senior was then 31 years old.

So Rihn dug into the 19th Century archives of unsolved missing persons cases recorded by the Missing Persons Bureau of the State of New York. There, to his astonishment, was the record of one Rudolf Fenz, Senior, reported by his family as missing. The record stated he’d never returned from his daily walk.

An old photograph of Rudolf Fenz, Senior accompanied the missing person report. The photo was the exact likeness of the man killed on the busy New York street.

Could the hapless Fenz, out for his daily walk, have been swept
up by a time vortex and thrust into the alien world of the future there only to meet a swift and merciless death?

If so, then Rudolf Fenz, Senior, who lived only 31 years, died 105 years after his birth. - disclose.tv

Meet The Man(n) Behind The Paranormal Database

There are certain websites you find yourself stumbling across again and again, and for me one of these is the Paranormal Database.

By James Clark - If I’m due to take a trip somewhere, and think I might have time to visit a supposedly haunted site while I’m there, I’ll have a quick search online for local ghost stories and before long I find myself in the Paranormal Database. Likewise, if I’m looking for information about a ghost story I want to research, this is often one of the first sites I come across. Given the size of the database, this is hardly surprising.

The Paranormal Database currently contains over 10,000 entries summarising paranormal and cryptozoological reports from around the UK and Ireland. And the site is continually being updated.

Its creator, and the author of a recent book of paranormal tales from Cork in Ireland, is Darren Mann.

Read the interview at Meet The Man(n) Behind The Paranormal Database

Haunted Cork

Thanks goes to Lon's site Phantoms and Monsters for these excellent stories! -Rob

Linkin Park - Wisdom, Justice and Love + Iridescent (lyrics)

2012-01-16T08:57:00.001-06:00

Foo Fighters - Next Year

2011-12-31T17:47:00.001-06:00

Have a Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T14:31:00.001-06:00

Have a Happy New Year everyione and thanks for supporting my site
and visiting it! I hope everyone had a good Christmas, Hannukah,
Kwanza, Ramadan, etc.

I know I have not been on much this month nor posted much
beuase I waas sick for two weeks with some sort of a virus
and doing other thing in my life as well. I hope to be on more
and post on a weekly basis starting next year.

Thanks again for your support and don't forget to
bookmrk my site and share it with others! -Rob

Bigfoot Reported to MUFON?

2011-12-31T14:28:00.000-06:00

The following is from Lon's site Phantoms and Monsters:

Bigfoot Reported to MUFON?

Case Number: 34374
Log Number: US-12292011-0010
Submitted Date: 2011-12-29 16:51 GMT
Event Date: 2011-12-28 18:15 GMT
Status: Assigned
City: Burlington
Region: Kentucky
Country: US
Longitude: -84.7241133
Latitude: 39.02756
Shape: Other
Duration: 00:00:02
Distance: 100 feet or less

I was driving down a residential street in the dark when suddenly, my headlights landed on a ~7 ft. tall man like creature. It almost looked like a very tall standing monkey, but it also resembled a man. It looked as if it had fur all over it's body that was a medium red color. What really looked odd to me was that it seemed to have a translucent aura around it. I had to focus very hard to see these details because it seemed like the creature was moving at a pace of nearly 50 mph. I was afraid, of course, but I didn't feel as if it were here to harm me or anyone else. It seemed scared more than anything else. I feel it was trying to hide or find a way home because it was running right toward a large wooded area. I lost sight of the object within 2-4 seconds of first seeing it because it was moving so fast. - MUFON CMS

NOTE: Not the first Bigfoot-like creature with a discernible 'aura' to be reported. These sightings seem to be more frequent in residential environments and in the eastern USA. One of the 'Sykesville Monster' reports I collected stated that the creature 'glowed at times'...Lon

Bigfoot in Kentucky

The Wild Man of Kentucky, the Mystery of Panther Rock

Pope Benedict XVI Urges Faithful to Look Beyond Christmas 'Superficial G...

2011-12-25T15:01:00.001-06:00

Fr. Barron comments on Christmas

2011-12-24T23:31:00.002-06:00

National Lampoon Christmas Vacation Dinner Scene

2011-12-24T21:44:00.001-06:00

The Thanksgiving Song by Adam Sandler (subscribe if you like this video)

2011-11-24T23:30:00.002-06:00

Banned from the BFRO Blue Forums

2011-11-19T14:24:00.001-06:00

Dear reader

I am a longtime fan of the BFRO and have always
defended Matt and the BFRO itself against people
who have attacked it such as critics and skeptics
but now something has come up that has left me
in a state of utter confusion.

I posted yesterday a typical post on the BFRO's
blue forums regarding the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers admitting that Bigfoot existed in
the 1970's followed by two links and some
text with a few quotes from the articles
I posted.

It had nothing to do with conspiracy theories
or the paranormal just Bigfoot from what
I can remember.

There were 5 responses including one from Bossburg
one of the Admin's of the forum in a good natured manner.

However when I went to use the forum again
it said my account was disabled and my post
was missing i.e. gone from the forum.

I don't know what I did wrong but must have
upset someone.

I did tell Bossburg that any articles I posted that
I thought were controversial I would submit to him
first but thought this was not controversial.

I hope that the BFRO adapts a new policy, an appeals
process for people who are banned and also a new 3 strikes
warning system (3 warnings instead of 1 before being banned)

I have always defended the BFRO and Matt against accusations
and critics. I am disappointed with their decision to ban me
instead of simply taking the post down.

I emailed the BFRO yesterday and have yet to hear from them.

Regards

Rob

p.s. The BFRO's website can be found here: Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization

Discovery of a Bigfoot species is close?

2011-11-18T15:44:00.000-06:00

The following is also from Lon's site Phantoms and Monsters:

http://www.naturalplane.blogspot.com/

There are nearly 10,000 different new species discovered on the planet Earth annually, while over half of the land is uninhabitable for humans.

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “…one half of the human population lives on less than 10 percent of the Earth's land, and three quarters on only 20 percent.”

In other words, that’s a rather large area for undiscovered species to remain that way, including one of the most sought after “cryptid” which goes by many names — Yeti, Sasquatch, B’gwas or the Skunk Ape.

But almost everyone knows it by its most common name — Bigfoot.

That’s where cryptozoologists like Ken Gerhard enter the picture, as they hunt for creatures or monsters like Bigfoot.

Gerhard has appeared on television shows such as “MonsterQuest” and the History Channel’s special “The Real Wolfman” and recently was one of the featured presenters at the Shooting Star’s Paranormal Convention.

The pursuance of discovering animals which have never been seen by humans has brought Gerhard to over 26 countries in the world and it’s a passion which actually started with his childhood in Minnesota, where he lived until the age of 12.

“I’ve been fascinated all my life with the animals such as Bigfoot,” Gerhard said. “I’ve always read up on them and watched every television show about them. It’s just been a life-long passion.”

When Gerhard goes out for an investigation for one of his cryptids — which is the term used for the undiscovered animals of cryptozoology — it can last for days or weeks on end.

He and his group will spend days hiking the area, searching for clues or evidence of a cryptid, such as hair or blood samples.

“Many times, we investigate during the night, since we believe most of these cryptids are nocturnal,” Gerhard added.

The investigators do call-blasting, which is a vocalization call to attract the species in and capture evidence of their existence.

But the number one cryptid and the Holy Grail of cryptozoology is the discovery of a real Bigfoot.

Gerhard, who wears his trademark leather cowboy hat, has hunted for Big-foot across the United States.

His best evidence to date has been his recording of a vocalization during one of his camp-outs.

“I am familiar with all the sounds of animals in the U.S. and this particle one sounded like a primate, similar to the ones I heard down in South America,” Gerhard explained. “It was very deep, loud and aggressive sounding.”

He went on to add the best evidence of the existence of Bigfoot includes track castings and the Patterson film, which was taken in 1967 depicting what looks like an ape — or Bigfoot — running through a clearing in the forest.

So why, through the many years of searching for Bigfoot, has not one been discovered?

Gerhard said even though there is potentially thousands of such creatures in the U.S. region, that still makes them very rare and enough to put them on the endangered species list.

“Secondly, they choose to live in remote areas and they sense humans are their biggest threat,” Gerhard said. “Much like a bear, they have very keen senses and can pick up people early and flee to a more remote area.”

Another reason why sightings are so rare is they are nocturnal and nomadic.

Even the question of why no carcass of a Bigfoot has ever been found can be explained, Gerhard said.

“You very rarely find animal carcasses in the wild, because Mother Nature disposes of them very quickly by fast decay and scavengers spreading their bones about,” he added. “I’ve talked to hunters who have hunted for many years and they say they don’t come about many carcasses.

“There also is the theory they bury their own dead like the Neanderthals did. That also decreases the odds of stumbling across one of (Big-foot’s) body.”

With 10,000 species discovered yearly — with most being insects or mollusks — Gerhard does believe the discovery of a Bigfoot species is close.

That alone could advance the thought of human evolution.

But there is plenty of area to cover and for Big-foot to hide, making the ultimate goal of proving the existence of one of the most sought after cryptids in the world a most difficult one.

If that time ever does come, it will be a mile-stone for the ages.

“It would be one of the greatest discoveries of the century,” Gerhard concluded. - dl-online

Monsters of Texas - An amazing collection of cryptid anecdotes...Lon

BIG BIRD! - MODERN SIGHTINGS OF FLYING MONSTERS

Labels: alternative news, bizarre, breaking news, celebrities, fortean, oddball

The Bigfoot Paradox 2: What Do They Already Know?

2011-11-18T15:36:00.000-06:00

The following is from Lon's site Phantoms and Monsters.

All credit goes to Lon.

http://www.naturalplane.blogspot.com/

Ufologist and Cryptozoologist Nick Redfern recently published an extraordinary anecdote that described a friend's encounter with a supposed Bigfoot creature near Tao, New Mexico. The encounter with the Bigfoot was unusual in itself but the abrupt appearance of a military-style helicopter without lights heightened the strangeness. The helicopter then concentrated a spotlight on the beast. The creature "suddenly took off 'at a real speed,' with the helicopter in hot pursuit. Both disappeared from sight as the helicopter’s light grew fainter and utter darkness returned."

Redfern's friend commented "what was the helicopter doing flying with its lights off in the skies of Northern New Mexico in the dead of night? What was the nature of the strange beast that had apparently set its sights upon him? And what on earth was the connection between the two?"

Was this actually a military helicopter attempting to captured a live Bigfoot or, as Redfern suggests, action initiated by another private group? I have previously posted narratives describing the government's apparent attempt to conceal the existence of this creature.

In Cowlitz County, Washington at one of Ray Crowe's Western Bigfoot Meetings, someone brought up the topic of corpses of Sasquatch after the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State. The witness heard of two Sasquatch the Army Corps of Engineers had taken out of the volcanic devistation...two months after the initial blast.

Terry Reams heard of a dredging operation of the Cowlitz River and two bodies were found in the sand (probably same case?). A chopper flew them off.

Joe Beelart offered that the crane doing the dredging was from the Manatowaka Company and that the bodies were found two weeks after the Mt. St. Helen's blast of May 18, 1980. He suggested that somebody might want to track down the company and find out who was working the shift that the bodies had been found on.

During a tour of the devastation by helicopter in 1985, the Vietnam veteran helo pilot mentioned a similar tale to Bobbie Short saying there were military helos that choppered out nets full of burned and semi burned elk, deer, bear and something with hairy charred arms hanging out of the drop nets. They were taken to a common pit where the bodies were burned to avoid disease and contamination of the rivers.

Fred Bradshaw also reported dead Bigfoot bodies near Mt. St. Helens to the International Bigfoot Society.

"My father worked for Weyerhauser Co. at Green Mountain ,WA, east of Vancouver. The site has security on their roads to check on the equipment and check closed areas to keep people out. He was working the day Mt. St. Helens blew up. He was at a meeting in Kelso, WA, and as he was a supervisor, when Mt. St. Helens blew it's side out, all heck cut lose.

My father was sent back to Green Mountain right away but like most he wasn't allowed to go very far because of the mud slide coming down the river. He did get to the town of Toutle, WA, on highway 504 off I-5. He and his crew were placed at different spots to watch mud flow and of course help people get out of the blast zone after the major blow up. He was sent to the area of Spirit Lake to keep people out.

When the second major blow up of the mountain came, my father and the other guy with him reported in, and they got out of there. He was then placed in charge of the helicopter landing zone. It was his job to help keep people out of the landing zone and let aid crews in so they could care for injured.

Later on, when all the people were out, the National Guard was brought in to clean up. They hauled dead animals out that they placed in piles; deer in one, elk in another and so on. They were covered up with tarps and later burned.

But my father was placed in charge of one pile of dead that were covered and no one was allowed to go near. Armed U.S. National Guard personal were around this pile, and one day when they were going to move this group of bodies, and my father was very close to it and was told to keep his mouth closed. And when the tarps were removed he saw the creatures, some badly burned and some not. They placed them in a net and lifted them into a truck and covered it over. My father asked a guardsmen what will they do with them and he said study them or what ever...he didn't want to know. He said it's like other things you don't ask, and off they went . AND NO ONE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM. My father and the rest were debriefed and sent home.

Below are several links to interesting accounts of government interest and encounters with Sasquatch:

The Nightstalker of Edwards AFB

Sasquatch and the Edwards Air Force Base Surveillance

Bigfoot Recovered - Injured in Forest Fire

Not long after I had posted Oh-Mah - The 'Boss of the Woods' in November 2008, I received an email from a man in southern Washington who stated that he had heard stories from Yakima native people in reference Oh-Mah or Sasquatch after the Mt. St. Helen's eruption. The most prominent account was that of a large male Oh-Mah that was badly burned, but still alive, that took refuge in an area east of the devastation near traditional tribal lands. He was told that government agents in military gear captured the Oh-Mah and airlifted it to an undisclosed location. I have no way of knowing if this is a true account but it does seem to suggest that there was an effort made to take advantage of the eruption in order to capture specimans either dead or alive.

On the flip side, legendary Bigfoot researcher John Green has responded to the contention that the government is hiding a carcass of a Sasquatch that was retrieved from the ruins of the eruption of Mt.St.Helens:

"I’m a pretty seasoned researcher, half a century of it, and I have never encountered the slightest evidence suggesting that any level of government knows anything about Sasquatch, let alone having whisked corpses away by helicopter. Nonsense." - John Green

The notion that the U.S. Government would attempt to procure a Sasquatch, living or dead, and not tell anyone doesn't seem too far-fetched to me. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature but I am fairly certain that there is a helluva lot of extraordinary and anomalous information that is withheld from the citizenry.

There is proof that the U.S. Government recognizes that these creatures do exist somewhere at in some capacity.

Newly unearthed State Department documents confirm for the first time U.S. Government's belief that the Yeti roamed the mountains of Nepal in the 1950s, a finding that shocked federal officials including the archivist who discovered the papers.

Long written off as a myth, the documents provided by the National Archives show that officials in the State Department, Foreign Service, and U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, not only believed in "Yeti," but endorsed rules for American expeditions to follow when hunting the creature.

Archivist Mark Murphy said he couldn't believe his eyes when he discovered the long-ignored papers written at the end of the Eisenhower administration. "I thought I was seeing things," he said. "These documents show that finding the Yeti was a big deal in the 1950s. It goes to show the government was taking this seriously."

How seriously?

One foreign service dispatch from the Embassy of New Delhi dated April 16, 1959 describes the many American expeditions involved in mountaineering and monster hunting in Nepal.

"American resources in the last two years have been concentrated on efforts to capture the abominable snowman," the record reads.

In the July 1975, The Washington Star-News "the Army Corps of Engineers has officially recognized Sasquatch, the elusive and supposed legendary creature of the Pacific Northwest mountains. Also known as Big Foot, Sasquatch is described in the just-published Washington Environmental Atlas as being a very large animal of 8 to 10 feet tall, weighing up to 1000 pounds with feet measuring up to 24 inches long. The width of the footprint is up to 10 inches wide, covered with long hair except for face and hands, and having a distinctive human-like form."

In a Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service news release dated December 21, 1977 the following is stated:

What if they really did find the Loch Ness monster or the legendary Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest?

Most scientists doubt that these creatures exist, but thoughts of the discovery of a new species that might be the closest living relative to man, or the possibility of finding a leftover dinosaur, excite the imagination of scientist and nonscientist alike. It also poses another question: Would such a creature be subjected to the same kind of exploitation as the giant movie ape, King Kong?

Scientists generally believe there are still many species of birds and mammals that have not been discovered because they live in remote areas and their populations are limited. After all, the gorilla and giant panda were only legends until the late 19th century when their actual existence was first confirmed by scientists. The komodo dragon, a 10-foot-long lizard, wasn’t known to science until 1912. The coelacanth, a deep-water prehistoric fish, was known only from 65 million-year-old fossils until 1938 when a specimen was caught alive off the Madagascar coast.

Just last year a Navy torpedo recovery vessel dropped a sea anchor into 500 feet of water off Hawaii. But instead of a torpedo, it hauled up a 15-foot representative of a new species of shark. The dead shark, named megamouth after its bathtub-shaped lower jaw, had an enormous, short-snouted head and 484 vestigial teeth.

To be sure, no remains of today’s legendary “monsters” have ever been found. There are no living specimens in zoos or dead ones in museums. Most certainly, many “sightings” of these creatures are exaggerated or misinterpreted reports, and some are downright hoaxes.

But finding a Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot is still a possibility, and the discovery would be one of the most important in modern history. As items of scientific and public interest they would surely command more attention than the moon rocks. Millions of curiosity seekers and thousands of zoologists and anthropologists throughout the world would be eager to “get at” the creatures to examine, protect, capture, or just look at them.

What would the United States Government do?

Keith Schreiner is Associate Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The service is the Government agency with responsibility for protecting endangered and threatened species. Schreiner says “At least, we have the laws and regulations on the books to deal with newly discovered species.”

Schreiner acknowledged, however, that a good deal of international cooperation would be needed if extremely rare species were found abroad. And finding one on U.S. soil would pose serious problems too, Service officials agree.

Undisputed proof of a Bigfoot might cause an immediate, short-term problem no law could handle. Word of its discovery would be flashed around the world within hours, Hysteria, fear, or panic might accompany the news in the area where the creature was located. The throngs of curiosity seekers, would-be captors, and others wishing to find Bigfoot would not only create a serious threat to the animal itself, but to public safety as well. Some officials doubt whether any State or Federal action short of calling out the National Guard could keep order in the area within the first few hours or days of the creature’s discovery. This could be essential until a team of scientists could do the necessary things to ensure the creature’s survival.

The key law in preservation of a species is the Endangered Species Act, which pledges the United States to conserve species of plants and animals facing extinction. This broad, complex law protects endangered species from killing, harassment, and other forms of exploitation. The Act prohibits the import and export of, and interstate commerce in, endangered species. American citizens cannot engage in commercial traffic in endangered species between nations, even when the United States is not involved. Scientists wishing to study endangered species are required to have a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But before a creature can receive protection under the Endangered Species Act, a number of actions normally must occur which involve recommendations from the public, scientists, and State and foreign governments where the species exists.

The first of these would he the species’ formal description and naming in a recognized scientific publication. In addition, if it were a U.S. species, the Governor of the State where it was found would be contacted, as would the officials of foreign governments if it were found outside the United States. Only after much information was collected could the Service make a formal determination as to whether the species should be afforded endangered or threatened status…

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is purported to be an 8-foot, 900-pound humanoid that roams the forest and wilderness areas of the Pacific Northwest. One “eyewitness” described an obviously female Sasquatch as a “tall, long-legged, gorilla-like animal covered with dark hair and endowed with a pendulous pair of breasts.” It, too, has been described in publications and given a scientific name. In fact, so many people were stalking Bigfoot with high-powered rifles and cameras that Skamania County, Washington, is prepared to impose a fine of $10,000 and a 5-year jail term on anyone who kills a Bigfoot. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers even lists Bigfoot as one of the native species in its Environmental Atlas for Washington. This year the Florida and Oregon legislatures also considered bills protecting “Bigfoot” type creatures. A Bureau of Indian Affairs policeman has 18-inch plaster cast footprints of the “McLaughlin monster,” a Bigfoot-type creature he saw last month in South Dakota.

Under U.S. Law, the Secretary of the Interior is empowered to list as threatened or endangered a species for 120 days on an emergency basis. For endangered species in the United States, the Secretary can also designate habitat that is critical to their survival. No Federal agency could then authorize, fund, or carry out any activities which would adversely modify that habitat.

So long-term Federal protection of Nessie or Bigfoot would basically be a matter of following the same regulatory mechanisms already used in protecting whooping cranes and tigers.

“Under normal situations,” Schreiner said, “we must know a great deal about a species before we list it. How big is the population? Does it occur anywhere else? Is the population in danger of decline? Is its habitat secure? Is the species being exploited? What is its reproductive rate? Obviously, if a Bigfoot really were found we could use emergency provisions of the Act to protect it immediately...”

The news release details what the U.S. Government would do in the event Bigfoot was proven to exist. The fact that the Loch Ness Monster was added to the statement is somewhat curious but it may have been done in order to give the Bigfoot a 'status' equal to the legendary lake monster at the time. The statement does seem to suggest that provisions to protect Bigfoot, regardless of the hominid's actuality, were already in force.

Nick Redfern's account does add another piece to an already complicated Bigfoot puzzle. Will there ever be proof of its existence that most people can agree on? How did it evolve...are these creatures terrestrial, extraterrestrial or interdimensional? The answers to the questions remain a quandary.

NOTE: you may want to read a narrative I wrote for the The 'C' Influence - The Bigfoot Paradox...Lon

There's Something in the Woods

Strange Secrets: Real Government Files on the Unknown

Bigfoot! : The True Story of Apes in America

Round Trip To Hell In A Flying Saucer: UFO Parasites - Alien Soul Suckers - Invaders From Demonic Realms - I highly recommend this book...Lon

Labels: bigfoot, cryptid, cryptozoology, government, hominid, paranormal

Do Einstein's Laws Prove Ghosts Exist?

2011-11-12T11:15:00.000-06:00

From yahoo news

Every night, amateur ghost-hunting groups across the country head out into abandoned warehouses, old buildings and cemeteries to look for ghosts. They often bring along electronic equipment that they believe helps them locate ghostly energy.

Despite years of efforts by ghost hunters on TV and in real life, we still do not have good proof that ghosts are real. Many ghost hunters believe that strong support for the existence of ghosts can be found in modern physics. Specifically, that Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, offered a scientific basis for the reality of ghosts.

A recent Google search turned up nearly 8 million results suggesting a link between ghosts and Einstein's work covering the conservation of energy. This assertion is repeated by many top experts in the field. For example, ghost researcher John Kachuba, in his book "Ghosthunters" (2007, New Page Books), writes, "Einstein proved that all the energy of the universe is constant and that it can neither be created nor destroyed. ... So what happens to that energy when we die? If it cannot be destroyed, it must then, according to Dr. Einstein, be transformed into another form of energy. What is that new energy? ... Could we call that new creation a ghost?"

This idea shows up — and is presented as evidence for ghosts — on virtually all ghost-themed websites as well. For example, a group called Tri County Paranormal states, "Albert Einstein said that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change from one form to another. When we are alive, we have electrical energy in our bodies. ... What happens to the electricity that was in our body, causing our heart to beat and making our breathing possible? There is no easy answer to that." [6 Paranormal Videos Debunked]

In fact, the answer is very simple, and not at all mysterious. After a person dies, the energy in his or her body goes where all organisms' energy goes after death: into the environment. When a human dies, the energy stored in his or her body is released in the form of heat, and transferred into the animals that eat us (i.e., wild animals if we are left unburied, or worms and bacteria if we are interred), and the plants that absorb us. If we are cremated, the energy in our bodies is released in the form of heat and light.

When we eat dead plants and animals, we are consuming their energy and converting it for our own use. Food is metabolized when digested, and chemical reactions release the energy the animal needs to live, move, reproduce, etc. That energy does not exist in the form of a glowing, ghostly ball of electromagnetic energy, but rather in the form of heat and chemical energy.

Many ghost hunters say they can detect the electric fields created by ghosts. And while it's true that the metabolic processes of humans and other organisms actually do generate very low-level electrical currents, these are no longer generated once the organism dies. Because the source of the energy stops, the electrical current stops — just as a light bulb turns off when you switch off the electricity running to it.

Most of the "energy" that any dead person leaves behind takes years to re-enter the environment in the form of food; the rest dissipates shortly after death, and is not in a form that can be detected years later with popular ghost-hunting devices like electromagnetic field (EMF) detectors. Ghost hunters who repeat the claim that Einstein's theories provide a sound basis for ghosts reveal less about ghosts than they do about their poor understanding of basic science. Ghosts may indeed exist, but neither Einstein nor his laws of physics suggests that ghosts are real.

This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries." His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T12:02:00.003-05:00

Happy Halloween everybody! -Rob

Halloween - Wikipedia

Links to paranormal, parapsychological, cryptozoology and UFO related sites

2011-10-15T10:22:00.002-05:00

Thanks goes to Jaco on Kimberley Ghosthunters page on facebook for posting these links.

Here are some links to many paranormal, parapsychology and cryptozoology sites.

Some are related to UFO's/Aliens and other strange phenomena.

http://sites.google.com/site/americanparapsychology
http://www.victorianphantomhunters.com/
http://theshadowlands.net/
www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com
http://www.angelsghosts.com/
http://www.ghostresearch.org/
http://www.ghostweb.com/
http://www.mysteryghostbus.co.za/
http://www.trueghosttales.com/
http://www.yourghoststories.com/
http://www.ghosttheory.com/
http://www.americanfolklore.net/
http://paranormal.about.com/
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/
http://www.paranormalinvestigations.co.za/
http://topparanormalsites.com/
http://www.paranormalaustralia.com/
http://www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk/
http://ghoststudy.com/
http://eparanormal.net/
http://paranormalresearchsociety.org/
http://www.paratexas.com/
http://www.allnewsweb.com/
http://www.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/
http://www.ghostsource.com/
http://www.area51.org/
http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/
http://www.profilingtheunexplained.com/
http://www.doomsdayguide.org/
http://www.virtuescience.com/
http://www.unsolved-mysteries.com/
http://unexplainedmysteriesoftheworld.com/
http://www.facebook.com/unexplainedmysteries
http://videos.theunexplainedmysteries.com/
http://www.unexplained.info/
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/
http://www.aliensthetruth.com/
http://ufos.about.com/
http://aliens.monstrous.com/
http://www.stopabductions.com/
http://www.alien-ufos.com/
http://www.cryptozoology.com/
http://www.newanimal.org/
http://www.parapsych.org/
http://www.psychicscience.org/
http://sleepdisorders.about.com/
http://dreamsnightmares.com/
http://www.end-your-sleep-deprivation.com/
http://stopsleepparalysis.org/
http://www.ghostweb.com/

Signs you might be having a Bigfoot/Sasquatch encounter!

2011-10-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

Signs you might be having a Bigfoot/Sasquatch encounter!

There are many signs to be aware of when a person
is out in the wilderness, either alone by themselves,
with a pet or with some company when all of a sudden
things get quiet and strange things start happening in
the woods or surroundings around them.

Often times, while other explanations are available,
sometimes all evidence points to a Bigfoot/Sasquatch
encounter taking place.

These encounters tend to happen at night and while
camping, walking, hiking, or even driving in some cases
as well as near people's houses who live near wooded areas
and habitats that are secluded or at least somewhat secluded.

Here are some signs to be aware of for when you go
out and venture into the woods esp. in a place that has
had sightings and reports of Bigfoot/Sasquatch:

1. You hear growls, yowls, whispering, chattering,
strange talking, and screams that are powerful and
fear inducing. You may be familiar with animal calls
and cannot identify these types of calls.

Bigfoot/Sasquatch use these types of
calls to communicate with one another,
scare off humans, territorial reasons,
mating, etc.

Typically some animals may be responsible
for these types of calls and vocalizations such as cougars,
mountain lions, coyotes, wolves, bears, etc. but more often
then not a Bigfoot/Sasquatch is responsible esp in areas that
have a high number of sightings and reports of Bigfoot/Sasquatch.

2. If you are camping you hear you camp being circled by
something walking on two feet or even more then one creature
circling your camp.

Some reports indicate that Bigfoot/Sasquatch do in fact circle
people's campsite's when they are camping alone or even with
friend and/or family.

The reason a Bigfoot/Sasquatch my do this is because they are
curious as well as territorial creatures who may investigate a
human presence in their territory along with the strange noises,
smells, food, etc. that humans bring along with them.

They may also be attracted to any fire in the camp's vicinity
or even small children or pets even women.

3. You hear twigs snap and trees being broken without
the use of any machines nearby or wind blowing.

Typically Bigfoot/Sasquatch like to break trees,
bend them and even uproot them as well as
snap branches and twist them. Twigs and
fallen tree branches may also be walked
upon by Bigfoot/Sasquatch and broken
not by their hands but feet.

The reason why they do this is unclear but it could be
another method of communicating to each other or
simply defending their territory.

4. You hear heavy footsteps from a bipedal source
and/or heavy breathing. This is typical of what people
hear coming from a Bigfoot/Sasquatch.

This happens to some people who have encountered
these creatures while camping in a wooded area or
sleeping in a home near one that can support a
Bigfoot/Sasquatch.

Some witnesses report heavy footsteps, breathing and
even snorting coming from these creatures though not
all the time and certainly not in all cases.

5. You are walking alone at night or with a pet maybe
a friend or riding a bicycle. You feel as if someone is
watching you or that you are being followed maybe both.

This happens to people who have encountered these
creatures in some reports of Bigfoot/Sasquatch encounters.

While not all of these reports may be of a Bigfoot or Sasquatch
at least half are in my own opinion.

People report being watched or followed. Typically a Bigfoot or
Sasquatch will imitate a person and will walk when they walk
and stop walking when they stop walking. They may also run
if a person runs then stop when they stop running. The reason
for this is unclear to me but may be stalking or playful behavior.

Some people report an uneasy feeling and also a feeling of
being watched as well during these encounters.

Also on a side note, many people report the smell of wet dog hair, rotten eggs,
sulfur, garbage, urine, feces, etc. when a Bigfoot/Sasquatch is nearby.

If you feel you are ever having a Bigfoot/Sasquatch encounter
or are being stalked by one here some guidelines I've come
up with:

1. Do not panic no matter what!

.2. Walk in a calm manner to the nearest
place where you can seek shelter or take
refuge such as a car, house, campsite, or
even boat. If you cannot seek shelter head
to the edge of a lake or source of water or
nearest town or neighbor if possible. Climb
up a tall tree as a last resort if you feel
threatened or are being stalked.

3. Use a flashlight, pocket lighter or
start a fire to keep away any Bigfoot
or Sasquatch that you feel may intend
to do you harm. This works well to keep
them away esp. if you shine any bright
light n them.

4. Do not be afraid to call 911 if you
have a cell phone.

5. Do not try to intimidate, scare
or hurt any Bigfoot or Sasquatch as
this may only anger or confuse them.

Anyone who wants to add anything to this go ahead!

Thanks.

-Rob

"The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or gullibility, but it’s really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not." — Chris VanAllsburg

Lair Of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered and Chicago Mothman?

2011-10-11T13:44:00.001-05:00

From Lon's site Phantom's and Monster's as well as yahoo news,
ufoclearinghouse and underwatertimes:

Lair Of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered

Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a very different kind of air-breathing leviathan. Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so it seemed before Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin took a look at some of their remains in Nevada. Now he thinks there was an even larger and more cunning sea monster that preyed on ichthyosaurs: a kraken of such mythological proportions it would have sent Captain Nemo running for dry land. McMenamin will be presenting the results of his work on Monday, 10 October at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

The evidence is at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada, where McMenamin and his daughter spent a few days this summer. It's a site where the remains of nine 45-foot (14-meter) ichthyosaurs, of the species Shonisaurus popularis can be found. These were the Triassic's counterpart to today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales. But the fossils at the Nevada site have a long history of perplexing researchers, including the world's expert on the site: the late Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley.

"Charles Camp puzzled over these fossils in the 1950s," said McMenamin. "In his papers he keeps referring to how peculiar this site is. We agree, it is peculiar."

Camp's interpretation was that the fossils probably represented death by an accidental stranding or from a toxic plankton bloom. But no one had ever been able to prove that the beasts died in shallow water. In fact more recent work on the rocks around the fossils suggest it was a deep water environment, which makes neatly arranged carcasses even more mysterious.

This question -- shallow or deep ocean death -- is what attracted McMenamin to the site.

"I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when they arrived at the remote state park and started looking at the fossils, McMenamin was struck by their strangeness.

"It became very clear that something very odd was going on there," said McMenamin. "It was a very odd configuration of bones."

First of all, the different degrees of etching on the bones suggested that the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged. That it got him thinking about a particular modern predator that is known for just this sort of intelligent manipulation of bones.

"Modern octopus will do this," McMenamin said. What if there was an ancient, very large sort of octopus, like the kraken of mythology. "I think that these things were captured by the kraken and taken to the midden and the cephalopod would take them apart."

In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin explained.The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle.

Even more creepy: The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc "pavement" seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait.

But could an octopus really have taken out such huge swimming predatory reptiles? No one would have believed such a tale until the staff of the Seattle Aquarium set up a video camera at night a few years ago to find out what was killing the sharks in one of their large tanks. What they were shocked to discover was that a large octopus they had in the same tank was the culprit. The video of one of these attacks is available on the web to anyone who uses the search terms "shark vs octopus."

"We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," said McMenamin. Among the evidences of the kraken attacks are many more ribs broken in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental and the twisted necks of the ichthyosaurs. "It was either drowning them or breaking their necks."

Of course, it's the perfect Triassic crime because octopuses are mostly soft-bodied and don't fossilize well. Only their beaks, or mouth parts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low. That means the evidence for the murderous Kraken is circumstantial, which may leave some scientists rather skeptical. But McMenamin is not worried.

"We're ready for this," he said. "We have a very good case." - underwatertimes

Chicago Mothman?

*We received this sighting on Wednesday, our investigators have already spoke with several of the witnesses and a full investigation is currently underway and more information will be posted as it becomes available.*

These are the events as they happened on Friday, September 30, 2011 in the area around Miller Park in the University Park neighborhood in Chicago , Illinois . Approximately 1 block from the main campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Things began like any normal Friday night, I and a couple of friends were going to go out to have a few drinks at a local bar. As I got to my apartment, I jumped into the shower to start getting ready while my roommate went to her room to get ready. I finished and walked out of the bathroom to my room and started to get ready to head out for the night.

As I started to get dressed I heard my roommate scream loudly, I dropped what I was doing and ran to her room to see if she was alright. I walked in to see her cowering in the corner of her room, white as a ghost and shaking. She was babbling hysterically, saying that something was looking in at her from the window. I looked toward the window and didn’t see anything but the light coming from the other apartments across the court yard. I asked what she had seen and tried to tell her that she might have been mistaken, we live on the third floor of a five story apartment building and there is nothing outside the window but a 30 foot drop straight down to the courtyard below.

My roommate was hysterical and scared out of her wits; I took her to the living room and sat her on the couch. I then went to my room to put on a robe or a nightshirt on since I was only in my underwear. My roommate didn’t want to be left alone and actually followed me to my room and waited there as I put on a robe and joined her in the living room. After about 20 minutes of calming her down, she finally told me what she had seen in her window.

She stated that she was getting dressed and when she turned to face the mirror on her dresser, she saw a pair of orange eyes staring at her from the window. She turned around to see two brightly lit orange eyes staring out at her; these eyes were attached to a creature that was staring back at her through the window. My friend lost it and started screaming hysterically and backed herself into the corner. She said she was filled with this overwhelming feeling of complete and total terror, she felt like the creature was looking at her as though she was prey. She said she felt like a rabbit that was about to be pounced upon by an eagle.

I tried to rationalize with her what she had seen, telling her it could have been an optical illusion, or maybe it was the jitters from a week of hard studying. She dismissed everything, saying that she had seen what she had seen. As I sat there comforting her, my cell phone rang from my room. I got up and ran to my room and snatched it from my dresser top and answered it. It was my boyfriend and one of his buddies and they were talking a mile a minute, it sounded like they were out of breath, as I tried to get him to slow down, I walked past my roommates open door and to my absolute horror, I saw…a pair of glowing red eyes, looking through the window right at me!!

They stared at me for about 3-4 seconds before what ever it was abruptly left. Like my friend, I totally lost it and screamed at the top of my lungs and sprinted to the living room. My boyfriend was now screaming into the phone “What’s wrong, what’s wrong!”

Within 2 minutes, he and his best friend were pounding on the door to our apartment, followed shortly thereafter by one of our neighbors who had heard us screaming.Once we assured the neighbors that we were fine and that they did not have to call the CPD for us, we shut the door and I immediately lost it when my boyfriend held me.

We told him what my roommate had seen in the window and that what ever it was had come back again, that’s when I had seen it. He then began to tell us that he and his buddy were on their way to our apartment to pick us up when they had seen what they describe as a large bat with large glowing eyes. It was perched on top of a basketball hoop in the neighborhood park. They stated that it saw them and had alighted into the air with an audible whoosh.

He states that there were about 6 people in the park and all of them had seen it when it had taken off. He states that there was no way anyone could have missed it, it was about 6-7 feet tall, dark grey to black and those eyes glowed with the intensity of two glowing embers.

He says that they saw it easily when it took off and headed away from the park due to both the lights of the city as well as the nearly full moon that night. They lost sight of the creature after about 5 seconds, that’s when he picked up the phone and called me. He says that when they heard me start screaming, they sprinted the block and a half to the apartment.

Needless to say, none of us went out that night and my boyfriend and his buddy stayed with us through the weekend. My roommate refused to go back to her room till it was well after daylight, she closed and locked the window and drew the blinds shut. She says that it’s the only way that she felt secure to be in there after dark.

I’m still weary about coming home or going out after dark; even though I know I have to do it for both school and work. I hope that what ever it was, was sufficiently scared off by two insanely screaming college students and that I hope that I NEVER see it again. I don’t think that neither I nor my roommate will ever be the same again after this.

There is one interesting fact; my boyfriend told me when I saw him on Tuesday that a few students around the campus (UIC) had been talking about a large bat that some people had seen on Friday night. A lot of the people who spoke about it were spooked by it. I never figured that anything like this would or could be seen in a city as large as Chicago , or a campus as busy and bustling as UIC.

It totally makes me wonder what it truly was and if it meant us an harm. - ufoclearinghouse

Bigfoot/Sasquatch FAQ

2011-10-08T18:08:00.009-05:00

Bigfoot/Sasquatch FAQ v1.1 by Robert Kiehn, Cryptozoologist and Bigfoot/Sasquatch
Researcher, P.I.R.C.

This rough draft as of now was compiled with the help of the BFRO
and the Texas Bigfoot Research Organization websites and databases.

Thanks also goes to the various books on Bigfoot, Sasquatch and Yeti books
that I have read over the years as well as Dr. Jeff Meldrum's book Sasquatch
Legend Meets Science and videos on youtube.

Introduction

Bigfoot's and Sasquatch's have been sighted and reported
ever since the dawn of man almost.

These creatures are similar to humans except they are much larger,
more powerful, elusive, shy, silent, and keep away from civalised areas
mostly.

They like similar in some ways to humans and apes such as gorillas
but are much taller and muscular then any human or known ape
save the extinct Gigantopithius blacki.

Species and Evolution

The BFRO states this regarding evolution and origins of Sasquatch and Bigfoot primates:

"The species is deviant from Homo sapiens by anatomy.

The paleontological affiliation or identity with Gigantopithecus, as championed by the late Grover Krantz, has many aspects to recommend it."

I agree with the BFRO's statement on this after careful study and research.

Bigfoot and Sasquatch primates are most likely primates of the non-human variety.

Anatomy, Physiology and Description

The Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, appears to be a large, hair covered
bipedal hominid that is a primate but one of the non-human type
and variety. They are somewhat reminiscent of a large bipedal (upright)
walking ape.

The face of of typical Bigfoot or Sasquatch has a conical shaped
or sagittal crest as seen in adult males as well as females of Bigfoot
and Sasquatch. The face itself is rather small in nature and appears
mostly to have no neck. There is a brow ridge and the eyes appear
to be deep set and small. Eye color varies but is mostly brown
with red sometimes being seen at night. Blue eye color has
also been reported. There is no snout on the face and the features
are rather human like in appearance.

The nose of a Bigfoot or Sasquatch is often dog or pug like
in appearance and the mouth is small to medium with
yellowish teeth and thin lips.

The body of a Bigfoot or Sasquatch is muscular in nature
and muscles are easily seen when walking or moving and
prominent in certain areas such as the shoulders, buttocks,
thighs, legs and chest area esp. in adult males.

The average height can range anywhere from 7 feet
all the way to 10 feet tall and in some cases even
taller.

Younger Bigfoot's and Sasquatch's appear to be smaller and
average around 4 feet to 6 feet in height.

Since these creatures are built like football players they
tend to weigh a lot with the average weight between 500
and 850 pounds to 1,000 pounds or more.

The average footprint is anywhere from 12 inches long
to 16 or more inches long and width varies but is generally
between 5-8 inches or more.

These creatures are nocturnal and have good night vision.

Average lifespan according to various sources of these creatures
is about 35 years of age. However older individuals with grey
or silver hairs are observed and can be much older then 35
years of age such as around 40-50 years of age maybe
even more.

Bigfoot and Sasquatches give off sometimes a bad smell
reported as being similar to the smell of garbage, a wet dog's
fur, urine, feces, or rotten eggs.

Facial expressions are most often reported as a look of surprise,
fear, or indifferent when an encounter takes place with a human.

Bigfoot and Sasquatch's are like any other animal and may
suffer from various diseases, ailments, broken bones,
injury's, infections, parasites, and eventual death.

Females have breasts that tend to sag and males have
muscular chests. Females are most likely built slimmer
and not as muscular as males though certain exceptions
may apply.

The typical Sasquatch/Bigfoot gait is human like almost
in appearance except that besides being bipedal (two legged
walk or gait) it sometimes is reported to be quadrupedal (four
legged walk or gait) as well in some cases and reports.

The walk or gait of these creatures has been reported as
graceful and silent as well. They can cover much ground
and many miles or distance in a short amount of time
and may travel hundreds of miles or more in any given
year.

Bigfoot's and Sasquatch's can also assume crouching,
sitting and sleeping positions besides upright posture.

These creatures are reported to be good swimmers
and eye witness accounts describe their swim as
being powerful, fast, agile and using frog kicks
as well as strokes when swimming. They can
also swim underwater for brief periods of time.

Skin

Skin colors vary and include various types of colors
and even mixes. Colors can include black, grey,
silver, white, brown, reddish, reddish brown and
of course mixed colors as well.

Albino's have been sighted with pink skin.

Also it is indeed hair that covers a Bigfoot or Sasquatch and
not fur.

Habitats

Forests, rural areas, etc.

Geographic range & Ecology

Bigfoot's and Sasquatch's are distributed across
North America (which includes the U.S. and Canada)
and throughout other parts of the world where their
is forest and a good source of food, water, shelter,
etc.

Sightings

Hundreds of sightings are reported each year and many go unreported
as well. The most sightings take place in the United States followed
by Canada in North America. The Pacific Northwest has the most
sightings followed by the Midwest and the East Coast and Atlantic
States of the U.S.

Sightings occur in every state in the U.S.
except Hawaii.

History

From the BFRO:

"Pre-Columbian and Early American Legends of Bigfoot-like Beings

Gulf
Algonkian
Keres
Penutian
Yukian
Chimakuan
Hokan-Coahiltecan
Tonkawa
Karankawa Kuteni
Iroquoian
Wakashan
Timucua
Tanoan
Aztec-Ianoan
Caddoan
Siouan-Yuchi
Salish

Introduction
(From : Traditional Attitudes Toward Bigfoot in Many North American Cultures, By Gayle Highpine)

Originally printed in the Western Bigfoot Society Newsletter "The Track Record". Excerpted from "Legends Beyond Psychology", by Henry James Franzoni III. Reprinted with permission from all parties.

"Here in the Northwest, and west of the Rockies generally, Indian people regard Bigfoot with great respect. He is seen as a special kind of being, because of his obvious

close relationship with humans. Some elders regard him as standing on the "border" between animal-style consciousness and human-style consciousness, which gives him a special kind of power. (It is not that Bigfoot's relationship to make him "superior" to other animals; in Indian culture, unlike western culture, animals are not regarded as "inferior" to humans but rather as "elder brothers" and "teachers" of humans. But tribal cultures everywhere are based on relationship and kinship; the closer the kinship, the stronger the bond. Man Indian elders in the Northwest refuse to eat bear meat because of the bear's similarity to humans, and Bigfoot is obviously much more similar to humans than is the bear. As beings who blend the "natural knowledge" of animals with something of the distinctive type of consciousness called "intelligence" that humans have, Bigfoot is regarded as a special type of being."

"But, special being as he is, I have never heard anyone from a Northwestern tribe suggest that Bigfoot is anything other than a physical being, living in the same physical dimensions as humans and other animals. He eats, he sleeps, he poops, he cares for his family members. However, among many Indians elsewhere in North America... as widely separated at the Hopi, the Sioux, the Iroquois, and the Northern Athabascan -- Bigfoot is seen more as a sort of supernatural or spirit being, whose appearance to humans is always meant to convey some kind of message."

"The Lakota, or western Sioux, call Bigfoot Chiye-tanka (Chiha-tanka in Dakota or eastern Sioux); "chiye" means "elder brother" and "tanka" means "great" or "big". In English, though, the Sioux usually call him "the big man". In his book "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," (Viking, 1980), a non-fiction account of the events dramatized by the excellent recent movie "Thunderheart", author Peter Mathiessen recorded some comments about Bigfoot made by traditional Sioux people and some members of other Indian nations. Joe Flying By, a Hunkpapa Lakota, told Mathiessen, "I think the Big Man is a kind of husband of Unk-ksa, the earth, who is wise in the way of anything with its own natural wisdom. Sometimes we say that this One is a kind of reptile from the ancient times who can take a big hairy form; I also think he can change into a coyote.

Some of the people who saw him did not respect what they were seeing, and they are already gone."

"There is your Big man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new day," Oglala Lakota Medicine Man Pete Catches km told Mathiessen. "He is both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees weren't there... I know him as my brother... I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me. Ray Owen, son of a Dakota spiritual leader from Prairie Island Reservation in Minnesota, told a reporter from (the) Red Wing (Minnesota) Republican Eagle, "They exist in another dimension from us, but can appear in this dimension whenever they have a reason to. See, it's like there are many levels, many dimensions. When our time in this one is finished, we move on to the next, but the Big Man can go between. The Big Man comes from God. He's our big brother, kind of looks out for us. Two years ago, we were going downhill, really self-destructive. We needed a sign to put us back on track, and that's why the Big Man appeared".

Ralph Gray Wolf, a visiting Athapaskan Indian from Alaska, told the reporter, "In our way of beliefs, they make appearances at troubled times", to help troubled Indian communities "get more in tune with Mother Earth". Bigfoot brings "signs or messages that there is a need to change, a need to cleanse," (Minn. news article, "Giant Footprint Signals a Time to Seek Change," July 23,1988).

A commenter provided additional information on this term: "Rugaru" comes from the Michif language spoken by the Metis people. Michif is actually a French-Cree/Algonquian hybrid language. The word "Rugaru" is indeed a cree pronounciation of "Loup Garou."

Mathiessen reported similar views among the Turtle Mountain Ojibway in North Dakota, that Bigfoot --- whom they call Rugaru -- "appears in symptoms of danger or psychic disruption to the community." When I read this, I wondered if it contradicted my hypothesis that the Ojibways had identified Bigfoot with Windago, the sinister cannibal-giant of their legends (see Track Record #14); I had surmised that because I had never heard of any other names for, or references to Bigfoot in Ojibway culture, even though there must have been sightings in woodlands around the Great lakes, and indeed sightings in that region have been reported by non-Indians. But the Turtle Mountain band is one of the few Ojibway bands to have moved much farther west than most of their nation; and Rugaru is not a native Ojibway word. Nor does it come from the languages of neighboring Indian peoples. However, it has a striking sound similarity to the French word for werewolf, loup-garou, and there is quite a bit of French influence among the Turtle Mountain Ojibway. (French-Canadian trappers and missionaries were the first whites that they dealt with extensively, and many tribal members today bear French surnames), so it doesn't seem far-fetched that the Turtle Mountain Ojibway picked up the French name for hairy human-like being, while at the same time taking on their neighbors positive, reverent, attitude toward Bigfoot. After all, the Plains Cree -- even though they retain a memory of their eastern cousins tradition of the Wetiko (as the Windigo is called in Cree) -- have seemed similarly to take on the western tribes view of Bigfoot as they moved west.

The Hopi elders say that the increasing appearances of Bigfoot are not only a message or warning to the individuals or communities to whom he appears, but to humankind at large. As Mathiessen puts it, they see Bigfoot as "a messenger who appears in evil times as a warning from the Creator that man's disrespect for His sacred instructions has upset the harmony and balance of existence." To the Hopi, the "big hairy man" is just one form that the messenger can take.

The Iroquois (Six Nations Confederacy) of the Northeast -- although they live in close proximity to the eastern Algonkian tribes with their Windigo legends -- view Bigfoot much in the same way the Hopi do, as a messenger from the Creator trying to warn humans to change their ways or face disaster. However, mentioned among Iroquois much more often than Bigfoot are the "little people" who are said to inhabit the Adirondacks mountains. I never heard any first-hand stories among the Iroqouis about encounters with these "little people" -- for that matter, I never heard and first-hand stories in that region about Bigfoot, either -- but the Iroquois pass down stories about hunters who occasionally saw small human-like beings in the Adirondacks (which are not all that far from the Catskills, where Rip Van Winkle was alleged to have met some

little bowlers) (and slept for 100 years -HF). Some present-day Iroquois assert that the "little people" are still there, just not seen as often because the Iroquois don't spend as much time hunting up in the mountains as they used to. many Iroquois seem to regard both Bigfoot and the "little people" as spiritual or interdimensional beings who can enter or leave our physical dimension as they please, and choose to whom they present themselves, always for a reason.

Stories about small, humanoids who inhabit wild places are found in many areas of the world, especially Europe. (The Kiowa tell a story about several young men who decide to go exploring south from their Texas home for many days, seeing many new things, until they came to a strange forest [obviously the jungles of southern Mexico] whose trees were home to small, furred humanoids with tails! This they found to be too weird, so they immediately headed back for home). I never thought to connect the stories about the "little people" with the Sasquatch until Ray Crowe brought up the possible connection. After all, if there may be large relatives of humans living in remote areas, would it be so impossible for there to be small ones? Details that stretch credibility, such as pots of gold, pointed and belled caps, games of ninepins, etc., could conceivably be embellishments added over generations to some genuine accounts of sightings.

Throughout Native North America, Bigfoot is seen as a kind of "brother" to humans. Even among those eastern Algonkian tribes to whom Bigfoot represents the incarnation of the Windigo -- the human who is transformed into a cannibalistic monster by tasting human flesh in time of starvation -- his fearsomeness comes from his very closeness to humans. The Windigo is the embodiment of the hidden, terrifying temptation within them to turn to eating other humans when no other food is to be had. he was still their "elder brother", but a brother who represented a human potential they feared. As such, the Windigo's appearance was sort of a constant warning to them, a reminder that a community whose members turn to eating each other is doomed much more surely than a community that simply has no food. So the figure of the Windigo is not so far removed from the figure of the "messenger" coming to warn humankind of impending disaster if it doesn't cease its destruction of nature.

The existence of Bigfoot is taken for granted throughout Native North America, and so are his powerful psychic abilities. I can't count the number of times that I have heard elder Indian people say that Bigfoot knows when humans are searching for him and that he chooses when and to whom to make an appearance, and that his psychic powers account for his ability to elude the white man's efforts to capture him or hunt him down. In Indian culture, the entire natural world -- the animals, the plants, the rivers, the stars -- is seen as a family. And Bigfoot is seen as one of our close relatives, the "great elder brother"

There is of course more history then just this but it is a good start and very educational as well.

North American history and Indian/Native American history plays a big part
in this field of research.

I agree with the BFRO's report on Native American Bigfoot sightings
but disagree that these creatures are psychic though it could be possible.

Vocalization, Calls & Communication

Bigfoot and Sasquatch are mostly quiet or silent when moving
about in the forest.

The sounds these creatures can produce is complex and a mix of
whistles, hoots, howls, moans, screams, grunts, deep growls,
roars and sometimes even chatter similar to human language.

Giggling, laughing and crying sounds have been heard
as well and these creatures may be able to mimic
other animals and maybe even humans.

Behavior

Bigfoot and Sasquatches are most often seen walking though
a few have been seen running as well as crawling on four's on
the ground. Quadrupedal gait i.e. walking, running, crawling
is sometimes seen in some individuals though these individuals
almost always go back to a bipedal position. Their speed when
running is probably anywhere from 35-40 mph.

They have been known on occasion to charge and run after cars
as well as people when they feel threatened, intimidated or for
other reasons.

Swimming has also been observed as well as fighting and
playing in these creatures.

They tend to sleep in caves, natural shelters and
patches of grass and other types of vegetation.

Some Bigfoot and Sasquatches may be loners
but most likely they have a family that they
belong to and a social order of some kind
must exist within these primates.

Bigfoot's and Sasquatch's are often curious and when
around human dwellings such as houses and even vehicles
they may take the opportunity to look into someone's window,
attempt to open a door or wander into a barn.

They are scared of loud noises and lights and tend
to shy away from these things.

Bigfoot's and Sasquatch's have been known to follow humans.

When they do this they often will follow a human and imitate
their behavior even stopping when they stop.

This may be to escort humans out of their territory or
out of curiosity.

Bigfoot and Sasquatch's tend to shy away from adult men
and most often will not hesitate to follow or stalk or watch
a female, child or small animals which they may either
retain as pets or toys or for food.

Tools may be used and tree knocking may be yet another
form of communication that these creatures are capable
of and exhibit.

Diet

The Bigfoot and Sasquatch is an Omnivore and consumes
many things such as, but not limited to: fruit, vegtables,
nuts, berries, leaves, aquatic plants, roots, herbs, vegtable
matter, fish, clams, crayfish, lobster, other mammals such
as squirrels, rabbits, poultry, deer, bear and elk and also can
include livestock and pets such as cats and dogs.

Blueberries, Strawberries, Peanut Butter and various types
and pieces of meat are also reported favorites of the
Bigfoot/Sasquatch.

They also tend to rummage through garbage.

They appear to kill their prey by means of using their
fist, stick or rocks or twisting their neck.

Adults need an average intake of 5,000 to 6,000 calories per day
to survive it is estimated while younger ones may need either
more or less (4,000 to 8,000 calories per day) in my own opinion.

Drinking is done by using cupped hands or
dipping faces into water or water source and
possibly lifting face in the air when raining
and opening mouth to catch water..

It is not known if Bigfoot/Sasquatch suffer from any known
food allergies.

Evidence

Many types of evidence exist for these creatures and include:

1. Footprints (casts of footprints as well)

2. Hair samples

3. DNA (such as suspected blood and saliva, etc.)

4. Feces (stool samples)

5. Eyewitness accounts, sightings and reports by respected people
and others such as police officers, firefighters, psychologists,
outdoorsman, biology experts, teachers, nurses, scientists,
doctors, hunters, campers, truckers, hikers, EMT's,
wildlife biologists and experts, fisherman, etc.

6. Film and camera pictures such as the 1967 film
Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin took in Northern
California of a Bigfoot. This video appears to be
genuine btw.

7. Recorded vocalizations of purported Sasqutach howls
and screams.

8. Native American history that goes back
hundreds of years with detailed accounts
and sightings of Sasquatch/Bigfoot creatures
and encounters with them as well.

References

BFRO FAQ and Reports from http://www.bfro.com

Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy -
Bigfoot Description, Reports, FAQ,
Articles and Evidence from http://www.texasbigfoot.com

Dr. Jeff Meldrum, Sasquatch Legend Meets Science
book and DVD

Professor Loren Coleman, various books

Bigfoot Wikipedia

Sasquatch Wikipedia

Authored by Robert Kiehn

Written October 2011

http://sites.google.com/site/americanparapsychology

Ghost Facts

2011-10-04T21:41:00.001-05:00

GHOST FACTS by Jaco Pieterse via facebook

In traditional belief, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or wispy shapes, to realistic, life-like visions. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance.
The belief in manifestations of the spirits of the dead is widespread, dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures.

Certain religious practices—funeral rites, exorcisms, and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic—are specifically designed to appease the spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as solitary essences that haunt particular locations, objects, or people they were associated with in life, though stories of the phantom armies, ghost train.

SURVIVING A POLTERGEIST

2011-10-04T21:39:00.002-05:00

SURVIVING A POLTERGEIST by Jaco Pieterse via facebook

If poltergeist phenomena are stress-induced, there are better courses of action.

People get stressed out over all kinds of things; sometimes serious, sometimes trivial things. If the activity seems mild and harmless, it might be best to wait it out. Research has shown that most recurring poltergeist activity lasts only a few weeks. In rare cases it can last a year to 18 months or so. And in the vast majority of instances the phenomena are harmless: lights going on and off, toilets flushing, things being moved around the house, etc.

If the activity is severe, annoying or you just want it to stop, the first thing to do is try to determine who the agent might be. Who in the household is exhibiting signs of stress? There are many causes of stress, of course, and there's no reason to assume that anything as serious as the Betsy and John Bell case is taking place. But stress from any source is a serious matter, as it can lead to loss of sleep and health problems, among other negative effects; recurring poltergeist activity is a relatively rare and extreme effect.

Professional counseling or therapy for the stressed individual could be the answer. The person might be experiencing something that is causing extreme emotional stress, or they might not know how to cope with the common stresses we all face with school, jobs and relationships. A trained therapist can help talk through any issues with which the agent is struggling.

Again, recurring poltergeist phenomena are relatively rare, and we don't really know how our deep emotions can work through the unconscious to produce psychokinetic effects. And we don't know why it happens to some people and not others when all are under identical forms of stress. However, this is one from of unexplained phenomena that is more prudently examined and treated by a conventional therapist rather than a psychic or exorcist.

Do you have a Poltergeist?

2011-10-04T21:38:00.000-05:00

DO YOU HAVE A POLTERGEIST? by Jaco Pieterse via facebook

How about you? Are you experiencing poltergeist activity in your home? If so, what can you do about it?

First, you must be as certain as you can be that the poltergeist activity is genuine. Don't look for paranormal drama where there is none. Perhaps there was a logical reason the picture fell off the wall when Billy stormed into his room: he slammed the door pretty hard. Try as best you can to find reasonable explanations for the activity. If reason and logic fail, and especially if the activity is consistent and persistent, you may have a case.

In the past and even today, people react to poltergeist activity by calling the clergy, an exorcist, a psychic or a paranormal investigator. Can you blame them? After all, some unseen force is pounding on their walls and throwing their hardcover copy of The Secret around the living room. They do so because the movies and spooky novels have told them that ghosts or demons must be responsible.

If we realize that the activity arises out of a family member's unconscious, however, and could very well have a stress-induced psychological genesis, then the priests or ministers, exorcists and ghost hunters probably are not the right folks to call.

It may well be true that clergy, exorcists and ghost hunters have been helpful to poltergeist victims. After their visits and subsequent rituals, the unexplained activity might have lessened or disappeared. But why? Because the ghosts were banished or the demons exorcised? More likely, it's because the comfort brought by these people alleviated the stress the agent was feeling. In other words, it worked because the agent believed it would work.

In other cases, however, bringing in these types of people can backfire. A well-meaning clergyperson who blames the devil for everything or a bumbling "exorcist" could only add to the stress of the agent, especially if the agent is an impressionable child who is ill-equipped to handle the idea that there is a malevolent spirit in the house or that a demon is lurking about - or that they themselves are possessed! Such irresponsible suggestions could elevate the stress and therefore the poltergeist activity.

The Signs of a Haunting

2011-10-02T07:59:00.000-05:00

THE SIGNS OF A HAUNTING by Jaco Pieterse

"The first step is to determine, as best you can, whether or not you truly have a legitimate case of a haunting. Not all hauntings are alike, and they may exhibit a variety of phenomena. Some hauntings feature a single phenomenon - such as a particular door slamming shut that occurs repeatedly - while others consist of many different phenomena, ranging from odd noises to full-blown apparitions.

Here's a partial list of phenomena that might indicate that your house is haunted:

1. Unexplained noises - footsteps; knocks, banging, rapping; scratching sounds; sounds of something being dropped. Sometimes these noises can be subtle and other times they can be quite loud.

2. Doors, cabinets and cupboards opening and closing - most often, these phenomena are not seen directly. The experiencer either hears the distinct sounds of the doors opening and closing (homeowners get to know quite well the distinctive sounds their houses make) or the experiencer will return to a room to find a door open or closed when they are certain that it was left in the opposite position. Sometimes furniture, like kitchen chairs, are perceived to have been moved. Very rarely will the experiencer actually witness the phenomenon taking place.

3. Lights turning off and on - likewise, these events are seldom seen actually occurring, but the lights are switched on or off when the experiencer knows they were not left that way. This can also happen with TVs, radios and other electrically powered items.

4. Items disappearing and reappearing - this phenomenon, which we have dubbed "the DOPler Effect" (DOP = Disappearing Object Phenomenon), has been examined in the article "The DOPler Effect." Others have called this "the borrowers" phenomenon, and it's the familiar experience of not being able to find a regularly used item - say, your set of car keys - which you believe you placed in a spot you routinely place them. But they're gone and you look high and low for them with no success. Some time later, the keys are found - in exactly the place you normally put them. It's as if the object was borrowed by someone or something for a short time, then returned. Sometimes they are not returned for days or even weeks, but when they are, it's in an obvious place that could not have been missed by even a casual search.

5. Unexplained shadows - the sighting of fleeting shapes and shadows, usually seen out of the corner of the eye. This phenomenon has also been discussed in some detail in "Shadow People." Many times, the shadows have vaguely human forms, while other times they are less distinguishable or smaller.

6. Strange animal behavior - a dog, cat or other pet behaves strangely. Dogs may bark at something unseen, cower without apparent reason or refuse to enter a room they normally do. Cats may seem to be "watching" something cross a room. Animals have sharper senses than humans, and many researchers think their psychic abilities might be more finely tuned also.

7. Feelings of being watched - this is not an uncommon feeling and can be attributed to many things, but it could have a paranormal source if the feeling consistently occurs in a particular part of the house at a particular time.

These are some of the most common experiences of those who think their houses are haunted. Yet even stranger things can happen...

STRONGER EVIDENCE

The following phenomena are more rare, but could be stronger evidence of a haunting:

1. Mild psychokinetic phenomena - hearing a door open or close is one thing. Actually seeing it happen is quite another. Similarly, actually seeing a light go on or off by itself is greater proof that something unexplained is happening. Do you see the TV or radio turn on? Or perhaps you're present when a child's powered toy begins to operate on its own. Doors and windows are locked or unlocked. Some people report that when they are in bed they can feel and/or hear something sitting on the bed.

2. Feelings of being touched - the feeling of being watched is one thing, and actually feeling like you are being touched is quite another. Some people feel something brush past them, something touching their hair or "a hand" on the shoulder. Some feel a gentle poke, push or nudge.

3. Cries and whispers - on occasion, muffled voices, whispering and crying can be heard. Sometimes it's music from some unknown source. People hear their names being said. This phenomenon, as is true for the one above, gains more credibility if more than one person hears or sees the same thing at the same time.

4. Cold or hot spots - cold spots are classic haunting symptoms, but any instance of a noticeable variance in temperature without a discernable cause could be evidence.

5. Unexplained smells - the distinct fragrance of a perfume or cologne that you do not have in your house. This phenomenon comes and goes without any apparent cause and may accompany other phenomena, such as shadows, voices or psychokinetic phenomena. Foul odors can happen in the same way.

Rarer still are more extreme phenomena, some of which have been called poltergeist phenomena, and can be quite strong evidence of a true haunting:

Moving or levitating objects (severe psychokinetic phenomena) - dinner plates sliding across the table; pictures flying off walls; doors slamming shut with great force; furniture sliding across the floor.

Physical assault - scratches, slaps and hard shoves. This kind of personal assault is extremely rare, but obviously highly disturbing.

Other physical evidence - unexplained writing on paper or walls; handprints and footprints.

Apparitions - physical manifestation of a spirit or entity. These phenomena are also very rare and can take many forms: human-shaped mists or forming mists of some indistinguishable shape; transparent human forms that disappear quickly; and most rarely, human forms that look as real and solid as any living person, but that disappear into a room or even while being viewed.

Considering all of the above, if you suspect your house is indeed haunted, here's what to do about it.

If you suspect that your house is haunted, here's what you can do to find out, then take some action

IF THERE ARE weird, unexplained things going on in your house -- unexplained sounds, sights, movements, or other signs of a haunting -- here are the steps you should take."

Jaco is a member of Kimberley Ghosthunters as well as the PIRC.

Kimberley Ghosthunters

PIRC

Thanks Jaco for the wealth of info on Hauntings!

-Rob

Update: Our New Group Paranormal Investigation & Research Consultants, Ltd

2011-10-01T18:50:00.000-05:00

Our group the AAPPR on my previous post is now known
as the P.I.R.C. or Paranormal Investigation & Research Consultants, Ltd.

Our new webpage is located here:

http://sites.google.com/site/americanparapsychology/

We are also on facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/254238197944641/

Here is part of our mission statement from our main page:

"At PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION AND RESEARCH CONSULTANTS we offer the piece of mind to allow you, the founder, the chief researcher or lead investigator, the parapsychologist the ability to pursue your professional and amateur endeavors, while maintaining a professional link with the paranormal community, nationally, or, if you wish, internationally. Even if you want to just stay local, we can offer you that too."

I am the head Cryptozoologist on the site btw.

Any encounters, reports, sightings, story's, eyewitness accounts or for anybody
who is interested in joining our group please visit our website or facebook page
and contact us.

Thanks.

-Rob

Atlantic Academy of Parapsychology and Paranormal Research

2011-09-23T08:40:00.001-05:00

Atlantic Academy of Parapsychology and Paranormal Research is a new organization that
was started earlier this month by former U.S. Army Chaplain and friend of mine Joe Freas.

Joe is a very smart person and intellectual that always gives great advice on a number
of things such as life, religion and is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge.

Joe knows a lot about the paranormal, the supernatural, hauntings, RSPK, ESP,
psychic phenomena, spirits, animal spirits, ghosts, parapsychology, and also
UFO's/Aliens and even Cryptozoology.

Joe is the founder of the group. His statement of what the AAPPR stands
for and is about is this taken from our facebook page:

"The Atlantic Academy of Parapsychology and Paranormal Research encompasses more than just the intensive research and investigation delving into apparitions, telekinesis, and ghosts, but into the deep path and history of (spirit photography, haunting, poltergeists and RSPK, ghosts of the living and of the dead, psychical science, paranormal investigation, cryptozoology, UFO research, historical research, occult and religious research, and on a more detailed technological avenue, we also will be incorporating a Technical Management Department). Potential members will be able to choose what department they would like to serve in that best meets their needs. Suggestions & comments are always welcomed. Those who become members will be granted permission to research articles, case studies, and post as a columnist depending on your level of expertise & research." -Founder of AAPPR Joe Freas.

I am the Co-Founder of the AAPPR and one of the head's of Cryptozoology.

I will do my best to fulfill my mission of doing research and contributing to the
site in any way I can.

We are looking for people into the paranormal, parapsychology, ghosts, UFOs,
Aliens and Cryptozoology to join the AAPPR and help contribute to it.

Anybody that is interested please contact Joe at: AAPPR@yahoo.com
or me at: robertkiehn@ymail.com

Our facebook group is at: http://www.facebook.com/groups/aappr.director/

Thanks.

-Rob

Tribute to our wonderful dog Buttercup/Shania 1999-2011

2011-09-23T08:11:00.001-05:00

R.I.P. Our Angel Dog Shania/Buttercup January 3rd 1999 - September 15th 2011

2011-09-15T23:23:00.003-05:00

Today was a tough day. Had to put our dog Buttercup/Shania to sleep b/c of multiple health problems. She went peacefully with my Mom and me at her side. I would like to thank Dr. Becker and all the wonderful doctors and staff at the Bremen Animal Hospital in Tinley Park, IL. for their help and support. R.I.P. Buttercup/Shania January 3rd 1999 - September 15th 2011. We love you. God bless you our little
angel dog who brought great joy to our lives.

My Mom wrote this:"Today I lost my best friend , a sweetheart in every sense of the word, who protected me and gave me unconditional love--my beautiful dog, Shania, sometimes lovingly called Buttercup. Tears are streaming down my face as I write this. she w...as a blessing to my son and I.

I miss her so much already. God bless the wonderful staff of the Bremen Animal Hospital, especially Dr. Hagenberg, Dr. Becker, and Linda who showed great compassion. I love you Shania." -Donna

Thanks Mom for writing that.It is great and beautiful as well. -Rob

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” ― Will Rogers
via goodreads.com quotes.

9/11 Tribute (10 Year Anniversary)

2011-09-11T23:55:00.001-05:00

Tribute for the 10th Anniversery of the 9/11 attacks "My Sacrifice"

2011-09-11T16:56:00.002-05:00

Giant crocodile captured alive in Philippines and my 200th post!

2011-09-05T21:37:00.000-05:00

From yahoo news and the AP:

..MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Villagers and veteran hunters have captured a one-ton saltwater crocodile which they plan to make the star of a planned ecotourism park in a southern Philippine town, an official said Monday.

Mayor Edwin Cox Elorde said dozens of villagers and experts ensnared the 21-foot (6.4-meter) male crocodile along a creek in Bunawan township in Agusan del Sur province after a three-week hunt. It could be one of the largest crocodiles to be captured alive in recent years, he said, quoting local crocodile experts.

Elorde said the crocodile killed a water buffalo in an attack witnessed by villagers last month and was also suspected of having attacked a fisherman who went missing in July.

He said he sought the help of experts at a crocodile farm in western Palawan province.

"We were nervous but it's our duty to deal with a threat to the villagers," Elorde told The Associated Press by telephone. "When I finally stood before it, I couldn't believe my eyes."

After initial sightings at a creek, the hunters set four traps, which the crocodile destroyed. They then used sturdier traps using steel cables, one of which finally caught the enormous reptile late Saturday, he said.

About 100 people had to pull the crocodile, which weighs about 2,370 pounds (1,075 kilograms), from the creek to a clearing where a crane lifted it into a truck, he said.

The crocodile was placed in a fenced cage in an area where the town plans to build an ecotourism park for species found in a vast marshland in Agusan, an impoverished region about 515 miles (830 kilometers) southeast of Manila, Elorde said.

"It will be the biggest star of the park," Elorde said, adding that villagers were happy that they would be able to turn the dangerous crocodile "from a threat into an asset."

Despite the catch, villagers remain wary because several crocodiles still roam the outskirts of the farming town of about 37,000 people.

They have been told to avoid venturing into marshy areas alone at night, Elorde said.

Note: Wow! That is one giant crocodile. Makes you wonder if there
are any bigger then that like the ones in all those crocodile horror
b movies. -Rob

My 200th post!

Yes this post is my 200th here on my blog!

Thanks to all of my fans and visitors for
supporting my blog for the year it has been
on -Rob

;)

We the People

2011-09-01T00:51:00.001-05:00

Odd News - Gold Coins: The Mystery of the Double Eagle

2011-08-30T09:04:00.000-05:00

From yahoo news fnance

How did a Philadelphia family get hold of $40 million in gold coins, and why has the Secret Service been chasing them for 70 years? Provided by Bloomberg Buisnessweek

U.S. Mint/AP Photo

This coin is worth $7.6 million

The most valuable coin in the world sits in the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. It's Exhibit 18E, secured in a bulletproof glass case with an alarm system and an armed guard nearby. The 1933 Double Eagle, considered one of the rarest and most beautiful coins in America, has a face value of $20—and a market value of $7.6 million. It was among the last batch of gold coins ever minted by the U.S. government. The coins were never issued; most of the nearly 500,000 cast were melted down to bullion in 1937.

Most, but not all. Some of the coins slipped out of the Philadelphia Mint before then. No one knows for sure exactly how they got out or even how many got out. The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the nation's currency, has been pursuing them for nearly 70 years, through 13 Administrations and 12 different directors. The investigation has spanned three continents and involved some of the most famous coin collectors in the world, a confidential informant, a playboy king, and a sting operation at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. It has inspired two novels, two nonfiction books, and a television documentary. And much of it has centered around a coin dealer, dead since 1990, whose shop is still open in South Philadelphia, run by his 82-year-old daughter.

"The 1933 Double Eagle is one of the most intriguing coins of all time," says Jay Brahin, an investment adviser who has been collecting coins since he was a kid in Philadelphia. "It's a freak. The coins shouldn't have been minted, but they were. They weren't meant to circulate, but some did. And why has the government pursued them so arduously? That's one of the mysteries."

The story begins just after the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt on Mar. 4, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. Thousands of banks had already gone under as people panicked and withdrew their gold and other deposits. As the gold supply—much of it kept at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—dwindled, the country faced possible insolvency. On Apr. 5, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, which prohibited the hoarding of gold and required citizens to exchange their gold coins for paper currency.

It was Roosevelt's distant cousin, Theodore, who had commissioned the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to design a high-relief $20 gold coin in the early 1900s. Teddy Roosevelt wanted an American coin that matched the beauty of the ancient Greek ones, and Saint-Gaudens completed the work just before his death from cancer in 1907. On one side is an image of Liberty, a figure reminiscent of a Greek goddess, hair flowing, olive branch in her left hand, torch in her right. On the other is an eagle in midflight, the sun rising behind it.

The Mint had produced the Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles almost every year since 1907, and 1933 was no different. By May, as the gold recall was under way, the Mint finished pressing 445,500 of the coins. None were issued. Instead the coins, weighing nearly 15 tons, were put into 1,780 canvas bags and sealed behind three steel doors in Philadelphia Mint Vault F-Cage 1. Only two were thought to have been saved, and they were sent to the Smithsonian.

In January 1934, Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act, which allowed the President to nationalize, in effect, the gold held by the Federal Reserve and increase the price of an ounce. This in turn devalued the dollar, which was supposed to stimulate the troubled economy. The director of the Mint then ordered all the nation's gold coins to be melted into bars. The bars would be kept in the newly constructed Fort Knox. The task was enormous: It wasn't until early 1937 that the Philadelphia Mint sent its $50 million worth of coins, including the 1933 Double Eagles, to the furnace.

Around this time, a 41-year-old Philadelphia jeweler named Israel Switt offered several 1933 Double Eagles to some of the most prominent coin dealers and collectors of the day, according to Secret Service documents since made public. Switt sold one, now Exhibit 18E, to a Texas dealer who then sold it to King Farouk of Egypt for $1,575. A royal representative in the U.S. requested an export license for the coin and, unbeknownst to the Secret Service, the Secretary of the Treasury issued one on Feb. 29, 1944.

That same month, Stack's, the rare coin dealer in New York, announced an auction for another Double Eagle. It wasn't until early March, though, that the Secret Service heard about the sale and realized that some of the coins had been taken out of the Mint. King Farouk's Double Eagle had already been delivered to him in Cairo by diplomatic pouch. Agents confiscated the second coin before Stack's could sell it and launched the investigation that continues today. "The government has been fanatical about seizing and destroying these coins," says Robert W. Hoge, curator of North American coins and currency at the American Numismatic Society. "They're famous because the government has been seizing them since the 1940s."

The first phase of the Secret Service investigation would trace 10 1933 Double Eagles to Switt, a reclusive jeweler and coin dealer who, like so many in this story, believed the coins possessed talismanic powers. His only child, Joan Langbord, who worked with him until his death in 1990 at age 95, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that her father "could be obnoxious or irascible. If he didn't like you, he'd throw you out." His business philosophy, she said, was that "the customer was never right; he was always right."

"You must understand the Philadelphia thing," says Brahin. "I'm from there, so I can say this: The dealers were crafty, they would do anything to get an edge. If you don't know that, you don't have the right amount of cynicism to analyze the story."

In Switt's statement to the agents, his only official pronouncement about the coins, he said that he didn't have any records of where, when, or how he had obtained the Double Eagles. But he claimed that he did not buy them from any employees of the Mint.

Nonetheless, after a 10-month investigation, the Secret Service concluded that it was more likely than not that Switt was the fence for a corrupt Mint cashier. In 1945, the Justice Dept. wanted to press charges, but by then the statute of limitations had run out.

Seven years later, in 1952, King Farouk was deposed and sent into exile in Monaco. The generals leading the new Republic of Egypt decided to auction off his belongings, including his renowned gold coin collection. It contained 8,500 pieces; one was the 1933 Double Eagle. Sotheby's won the right to hold the auction in Cairo in February 1954. As soon as U.S. Treasury officials saw the catalog for the Palace Collection of Egypt, as it was called, they asked the Egyptians to pull the coin from the auction and return it to Washington. At the last minute, the Double Eagle in Lot 185 was withdrawn. Then it disappeared.

For more on this story, please see page 2 at this link: Double Eagle Gold Coins Mystery Businessweek

Thanks. -Rob

UFO over New York as hurricane Irene arrives

2011-08-29T07:47:00.002-05:00

Bubble cloud over Beijing

2011-08-26T15:23:00.002-05:00

Odd News August 23, 2011: Daytona Beach Patrol Runs Over Sunbathers Head, Baseball player's Earmoth and 5.9 Earthquake Strikes Washington D.C!

2011-08-23T13:33:00.008-05:00

Daytona Beach patrol truck runs over sunbather's head

Daytona Beach officials will consider removing big patrol trucks from the city's famous sands after a lifeguard ran over and injured a Kansas sunbather Sunday morning, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.Erin Joynt, 33, of Wichita was listed in stable condition today after the right front wheel of a beach patrol pickup truck struck her in the "head area" while making a U-turn, the Florida Highway Patrol said. Her husband was with her but not injured.

The 21-year-old lifeguard, Thomas Moderie, told police he didn't see her. He has been a seasonal, part-time employee for five years and has a "spotless record," Volusia County officials said. The accident is under investigation.

It was the third accident in about a year involving a beach patrol vehicle and a sunbather, and the sixth since 2003, the News-Journal said.

County spokesman Dave Byron said officials will again discuss removing big vehicles from patrolling the beaches because of drivers' visibility problems

Note: I predict a lawsit coming soon... -Rob

From: USA Today

Baseball Player's Earmoth?

Of all the various afflictions that have sidelined big league ballplayers this season, there isn't
one that will leave you more squeamish than what happened to Matt Holliday(notes) on
Monday night.

Watch Holliday's exit

The St. Louis Cardinals outfielder was just minding his own business in Busch Stadium's left field when a moth flew into his right ear and refused to come back out. The inner-ear invasion left Holliday in pain and he immediately left the field under the care of a trainer.

Say, where's Fredbird when you really need him?

From the AP:

Holliday was taken into a dark room and a light was put to his ear, trying to lure the moth out, Cardinals spokesman Brian Bartow said. When that didn't work, an instrument was used to pry the live moth out of Holliday's ear.

Holliday was not available for comment but appeared to be OK, Bartow said.

"He had a moth fly into his ear, deep into his ear. I don't even know what happened to it," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said.

So what was more embarrassing for Holliday? That he had to leave the game on account of a moth? Or that the rest of us can make jokes about there being enough room between his ears for that little sucker to make himself at home for a spell?

No matter the answer, the fact that Holliday elected to save the moth for posterity is more than amusing. Anyone know if Cooperstown keeps an entomologist on staff?

UPDATE: We've just obtained a proposal of the Cardinals' plans to prevent anything like this from happening in the future. Not bad, though we wish old Busch Stadium was still around so it could be converted into a giant citronella candle.

Note: Lol Rob ;)

From Yahoo Sports

5.9 quake hits East Coast; Pentagon, Capitol buildings evacuated

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck the East Coast from Virginia to at least Boston on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The earthquake was centered in Mineral, Virginia, which is 92 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake was initially reported at 5.8 magnitude.

The quake had a very shallow depth of 0.6 miles.

The Pentagon and Capitol Building in Washington were evacuated, as were courthouses in New York City. The earthquake sent Washington office workers scurrying into the streets.

A Reuters witness said the quake was felt as far away as Toronto, Canada.

Note: I hope that everyone is ok esp. all my freinds in those areas and New York
as well. Maybe the Rapture is not to far away... Rob

From Yahoo News

Stray cat 'army' battles west China plague of rodents

2011-08-20T12:26:00.001-05:00

BEIJING (AP) — Stray cats rounded up in a remote west China city are being used to catch rodents that have infested surrounding pasture lands.

Some 150 strays — dubbed by Chinese media as the "cat army" — were turned loose on the range lands outside Bole city in May to fight what the government calls a plague of rats. The state-run Xinhua News Agency says that the cats were brought in, along with tons of poisonous rat pellets.

The Bole government said in late June that rat holes had decreased by more than half. The Xinhua report on Friday quoted a Bole official as saying the cats were proving valuable.

Rodents and other pests have grown more troublesome on the vast grasslands as a result of overgrazing and killing off traditional predators like foxes.

-From Yahoo News and The AP

BFRO Report # 28525 (Class B) - Possible Bigfoot Vocalizations in Bachelors Grove Cemetery

2011-08-11T18:19:00.000-05:00

Report # 28525 (Class B)

Submitted by witness on Thursday, November 18, 2010.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Possible vocalizations and stick structures found in Bachelors Grove Cemetery

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

YEAR: 2010

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: November

DATE: 2

STATE: Illinois

COUNTY: Cook County

LOCATION DETAILS: Bachelors Grove Cemetery which is near the intersection of 143rd Street and Ridgeland Avenue.

NEAREST TOWN: Midlothian

NEAREST ROAD: 143rd Street

OBSERVED: The following on-site interview was conducted by Stan Courtney on the 2nd of Nov 2010. The first name of the witness has been changed.

Stan - How long have you been coming out here?

Mark - I've been coming out here longer than I want to say, it's like early 1970's.

Stan - And then how long have you been coming out here as a researcher?

[ Bachelors Grove Cemetery in Cook County Forest Preserve ]

Mark - I've been here, on and off, for ages. But the last three or four years I've been out here a lot. I'll spend an entire day just walking through the woods. That is when I started noticing things and I never realized what it may have been.

Stan - The area we are standing next to right now, I don't know whether you would call it a structure but it is a group of about ten or fifteen trees that have all been pushed as a big teepee-like structure.

Mark - They have been bent, they aren't all dead either.

Stan - Has this structure always been here?

Mark - I can't remember. Back in the 1980's I never really came back here that much, but it has been here the last ten years or so. And at one point there was much more of a structure. Somebody or something has taken some of it apart.

Stan - Other than this particular structure have you found other things that you found interesting?

Mark - Yes, there are unusual bent trees through-out the woods. I've never understood what goes around pulling full-grown trees over. If a tree breaks in a storm they usually snap or they de-root, these are just broken like at a four, five or six foot level like they have been yanked, fibers are still all connected, it just appears to be pulled over, there are dozens of them throughout the woods. In the area we are standing in now, there are all these broken logs all over the place.

Stan - Have you been out here at night?

Mark - Yeah, but not for ages, when I was a kid we did. But there are weird noises here. I have heard numerous stories of weird howls and growling.

Stan - What have you heard yourself?

Mark - I have heard deep growling before, just a couple times and I don't know what it is. It wasn't wind, there was definitely some real deep gruffy kind of moaning, growling sounds.

Stan - What about footsteps? Have you ever heard footsteps?

Mark - Oh yeah, you hear those out here a lot, but there are deer out here and everything, but sometimes when you walk down the path, that path is quite aways through the middle of the woods to get out here, and you're being followed sometimes. I come out here myself when there is no one else around and I'll swear I'm being followed sometimes.

Stan - Earlier today there were sirens going off and we did hear what I thought was a howl. It was about 200 yards distant. So we heard something this morning that I don't think was a siren.

Mark - I actually did at first but after I started listening it was a different noise than the siren.

Stan - What about smells?

Mark - Others report weird smells, real like freaky dead smells, that will come all of a sudden all over you.

Stan - And you've smelled that?

Mark - Yeah, I don't know how to describe it, we just call it death, kind of a weird freaky smell.

Stan - This is an interesting area and of particular interest to me is that it is in Cook County. We're not talking about a so-called wilderness. Tell me about this woods and does this connect to other woods.

Mark - This is actually the biggest section of woods in all of Cook County, it's massive, it runs from one side of the county to the other. If you look on a map it's huge, you might have to cross a street but once you cross you're in another massive forest preserve. Something could hide here anywhere it wanted. The woods go into Will County, it is a gigantic forest preserve.

Stan - Does it connect up to any rivers or major streams?

Mark - Yes, you can get to that side too, this actually goes all the way to IL 45. On the west side of IL 45 this runs all the way up to 55, the Interstate, this is just a massive area. All you have to do is just cross the street.

Stan - In other words, nothing would have to be permanent in here.

Mark - No, something in here could be cross town in the next day with no problem, and basically we are on the fringes where there are still rural areas. The woods are so interconnected that technically something could walk from here to the Joliet area if it wanted to, going at night it could just cross the fields.

Stan - Do you ever get that watched feeling in the daytime?

Mark - I actually got it today, I was going to ask you. There are days when I come out here I know I am being watched, just don't know from where. Sometime you come out here it's like being in the park, it's a nice beautiful forest reserve, and other times you come out it is just so creepy, you just feel like there are eyes everywhere.

Stan - And did you say that you had stuff thrown at you before?

Mark - Numerous things we've had things thrown at us, not acorns but those bigger nuts. They've actually smacked us before. I was out here with a friend where we had a log, six inch thick by six foot long physically fly out of the trees and land within about three feet of us. Then we actually left, looked up and said "We can take a hint" and then we walked out of here. Its just logs don't fall out of the sky very often.

Stan - Have you ever experienced a bluff charge?

Mark - No. There are deer out here too, but you will also hear something crunching because this is thick woods and then all of a sudden you hear nothing.

Stan - Have you ever heard woodknocks?

Mark - You know, to be honest, I probably haven't paid attention, I might have, I never looked at it from this point of view. We have a huge deer population, we have water right there. These are such thick woods, we're talking fall now, you should see this place in the summer, you can't see in here at all.

Stan - It's a beautiful forest preserve.

Mark - Yes, it is a neat forest and it is exciting to find out that what we have been seeing and hearing is indicative of possible sasquatch activity.

ALSO NOTICED: There are also several trees that have been twisted at about the five foot level.

OTHER WITNESSES: Yes, two

OTHER STORIES: Numerous stories of footsteps, howls, growls, objects being thrown at hikers.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Cool and clear.

ENVIRONMENT: Heavily wooded.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Stan Courtney:

While accompanying Mark and his friend to the cemetery and through the adjoining woods we started hearing sirens.

After several minutes we noticed one of the sounds was different. With all the human activity in the area, including a four-lane highway, obtaining a decent recording is very difficult. We heard the howl a total of three times, it was approximately 300 yards north of our location.

Upon reviewing the audio recording the following segment was isolated.

About BFRO Investigator Stan Courtney:

Stan Courtney has a special interest in wildlife audio recording. He has attended numerous BFRO Expeditions and travels throughout Illinois giving presentations on "Bigfoot In Illinois". See Stan's blog StanCourtney.com for recordings he has collected over the years.

Stan Courtney can be reached at illinois@bfro.net

Note: I've been to Bachelors Grove Cemetery
back in the summer of 2000 and after having
read many reports about it on the internet
and paranormal books. I do believe that
it may be one of the most haunted
cemetery's and burial grounds in
the world and that, in addition
to the paranormal aspect of it
there may be a cryptozoological
one involving Bigfoot's after
reading this report from
the BFRO.

Thanks goes to Stan Courtney
fo reporting and for cmknight
for posting this link on the
BFRO's Blue Forum.

For more pics and sounds
from this report please go here:

BFRO Report #28525

Bachelors Grove Cemetery

is located in Midlotian, IL
in Cook County in the U.S.
Rob

Colo. fugitive sister: 'I deserved to get shot' - Bonnie and Clydes Caught

2011-08-11T18:02:00.001-05:00

PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) — A woman caught with her two brothers after a nationwide manhunt told Colorado authorities she "deserved to get shot" after pointing a gun at a police chief at the end of the siblings' run from the law, according to a court document.

Lee Grace Dougherty, 29, Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, and Ryan Edward Dougherty, 21, are being held in Pueblo County, Colo., on bonds of $1.25 million each. The three made their first court appearance Thursday by video from jail, and none made any statement during the brief hearing.

They face charges of attempted murder of a peace officer and assault on a peace officer. The charges stem from allegations that they shot rounds from an AK-47 at four patrol cars during a chase Wednesday on Interstate 25 in Colorado. The chase ended when troopers deployed spike strips to puncture the tires of the trio's Subaru, and the vehicle rolled and crashed into a guardrail.

According to an arrest affidavit, Lee Dougherty ran from the crash and was shot in the leg by Walsenburg Police Chief James Chamblerlain after she pointed a "machine pistol" at him. The document says she later told police, "I deserved to get shot."

Investigators said that when they asked her about gunfire during the chase, Lee Dougherty said she thought authorities were firing at them. Authorities said they didn't fire at the fugitives' car and believe she might have mistaken the sound of the spike strips for gunshots.

"We weren't trying to hurt anyone; we just wanted them to get back. They were way back and we could barely see them," she said, according to the affidavit. Separate affidavits for the three don't include statements from the brothers.

The trio's mother, Barbara Bell of East Palatka, Fla., spoke briefly Thursday to The Associated Press but declined to discuss their ordeal, saying she didn't think it would help them in the long run.

"Thank God they're not tried by the media," she said. "They're tried in a court of law and their story will come out at that time."

Bell hung up the phone shortly after a reporter called, saying she needed to keep the line open for concerned family members to reach her.

"I'm devastated and I'm trying to be strong for other family members," Bell said. "Throughout all of this, I think everybody just wanted it to stop. And now it's over."

The public defender appointed to represent the siblings, William Martinez, didn't immediately return a phone message.

The siblings also have no-bond warrants in Georgia and Florida on charges they robbed a bank in Georgia and shot at a police officer in Florida on Aug. 2.

"These three have a big legal mess in front of them, and at some point they'll face charges in all those jurisdictions," FBI Special Agent Phil Niedringhaus said.

Dylan Stanley and Ryan Dougherty are from Lacoochee, Fla. Lee Dougherty had been living with a boyfriend in Orlando, Fla., according to the Pasco County Sheriff's office.

Although another court hearing has been scheduled for the siblings in Pueblo on Monday, it's not clear whether they will ultimately be tried in court in Colorado, another state or federal court.

"State and federal agents and prosecutors continue to coordinate to determine what the appropriate next step is," said Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for Colorado's U.S. attorney, John Walsh.

Pueblo County District Attorney Bill Thiebaut won't file charges until he can review reports from five state and local agencies involved in the Colorado chase. He said he hasn't been in contact with prosecutors from other states.

"My inclination is that if we can ethically charge these people with a serious crime here out of our office in Pueblo, it's likely we will be doing that," he said. "If we have probable cause, we will do that."

Attempted murder, the more serious of the preliminary Colorado charges, carries a sentence of up to 12 years in prison, but that could be increased to 48 years if it's found to be a crime of violence under Colorado law, he said.

The hunt for the siblings moved to Colorado on Tuesday after a sighting in Colorado Springs, where they reportedly bought camping gear. After images of the trio were broadcast on television, someone tipped Colorado state troopers and the Pueblo County sheriff Wednesday that the suspects might be at a campground in the remote San Isabel National Forest in southern Colorado.

A Pueblo County sheriff's detective spotted the car near an interstate highway that day and followed it discreetly until state troopers joined him. Then the chase was on.

Jenny Neal, a clerk who was working when the siblings went to the Sinclair gas station in Colorado City, said she had not been paying attention to the news so she didn't know who they were. After a detective came to the store to review video footage, Neal learned it was Dylan Stanley who went into the store by himself and bought vitamin water, sunflower seeds and gas.

"He was perfectly polite and friendly and, you know, completely calm and courteous, and I really didn't think anything about it," said Neal, 38.
"It's probably better that I didn't know anything, you know. I mean, it could've been different had I recognized them and been nervous or anything. It's a scary thought," she said.

Thanks goes to yahoo news and the AP for this report.

On a side note I'm glad these fugitives were finally caught
without anyone getting killed or seriously injured, but these
rednecks could have been caught sooner if America's Most
Wanted with host John Walsh was on FOX like it used
to be. Just a thought. -Rob

Thanks goes to yahoo news and the AP for reporting this story. -Rob

yahoo news

Experts Say Belief in Paranormal Common in US

2011-08-11T17:55:00.000-05:00

Experts Say Belief in Paranormal Common in US

Surveys show that more than two thirds of Americans accept the existence of ghosts, visitors from outer space, astrology and other paranormal phenomena. While the more sophisticated might think of these people as crazy, social scientists take a different view.

A horse-drawn carriage takes tourists through the streets of historic Jefferson, Texas as the sun begins to set. Many tourists come here to take part in ghosts walks in which guides tell the stories about various buildings and houses thought to be haunted.

A visitor from the nearby city of Shreveport, Louisiana named Jamie says ghosts could provide evidence of an afterlife she believes in. “I have always believed that there is something after, I do not know if we are stuck here on earth or if there is something more, but I do know there is something," she said.

Some people might regard belief in ghosts as loony. But it is not, according to psychologist Brian Cronk at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Missouri. “This is not abnormal in any way, shape or form," he said.

Cronk, who has guided students doing research on people who profess belief in the paranormal, says humans are driven to seek answers to profound questions. “One of the things the human brain does that, as far as we know, other animals do not do, is we are always trying to predict the future and explain why the past has happened and that leads us to always trying to come up with reasons for things," he said.

Another researcher taking a scientific look at paranormal belief is Sociology Professor Carson Mencken, at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He and his colleagues have found that those who believe in these phenomena are usually ordinary, solid citizens. “They hold normal jobs, they have families, they pay bills. They are otherwise upstanding people who have what we consider to be a deviant or odd hobby," he said.

Mencken and two colleagues at Baylor published a book last year called “Paranormal America” that examines data about people with various paranormal beliefs.

They found, for example, that men tend to believe in space aliens more than women do, but that women are more inclined to believe in fortune telling and spiritual encounters.

They found that those who dropped out of high school are more likely to believe in ghosts and psychics, but they also found that people with higher education levels were involved in other paranormal pursuits.

Mencken says those drawn to the paranormal are sometimes seeking discovery, such as evidence that UFOs or ghosts exist, but he says many others simply seek enlightenment. “They are looking for some revelation, a deeper understanding about how the universe works, about what happens to you after you die," he said.

Religion provides the answer to those questions for many people. Among churchgoers, Mencken says liberal, mainstream religions are more likely to tolerate members with paranormal beliefs than are Protestant evangelicals and others with a stricter interpretation of the Bible.

“They are likely to see the paranormal as one of two things, one is yes, it exists, but it is part of an evil plot by Satan or, you know, it is heresy," said Mencken.

Mencken says today, belief in the paranormal is fed by the many movies and television programs about ghosts and UFOs. “Look at how many paranormal shows there are. There are paranormal reality shows. There are television networks devoted only to the paranormal now, so it has become an interesting part of our culture," he said.

Mencken says the United States has drawn on other nations and cultures for much of its paranormal beliefs and that immigrants from Latin America, Asia and elsewhere are contributing their ghosts and spirits to the mix. - VOA

Thanks to http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/ for reporting this story as well.

David Letterman - Obama Birthday Top Ten

2011-08-06T11:56:00.001-05:00

Van Halen - Jump (HQ music video)

2011-08-06T11:53:00.001-05:00

I'm Back!!!

2011-08-05T20:01:00.000-05:00

Yes ladies and gentleman I'm back online!

I was off for more then a month for the 3rd time in a year
or less dueto my desktop pc's hd crashing again and having
to have it replaced,

Luckily my friend Darren lent me a laptop pc
so I will be using this (it's a compaq btw!)
until I get a new hd for my desktop pc.

Anyway I will update the blog
a few times a week at least and
focus moreon the paranormal,
unexplained, cryptozoology,
ufo's and odd news as well as
urban legends and more.

Great to be back online and
I just turned 27 years old on
the 26th of July btw! ;)

Stay tuned... the best is yet to come!

-Rob

Owl City - In Christ Alone - Full Song 2010 w/ lyrics by Adam Young

2011-06-13T23:26:00.001-05:00

Linkin Park - Burning In The Skies (International Video)

2011-06-13T11:53:00.001-05:00

Linkin Park - Iridescent [HD] - from Transformers: Dark of the Moon

2011-06-13T11:47:00.001-05:00

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T23:19:00.002-05:00

Elimination of James Durbin - American Idol 2011 Top 4 Results Show - 05...

2011-05-16T23:37:00.001-05:00

2011

Smallville series finale was great tonight!

2011-05-13T22:57:00.000-05:00

Tonight's Smallville series finale was great. Clark, Lois, Lex, Oliver, Zoey, etc. all fit in the story nicely. A few complaints though. Namely that Tess was murdered and Clark only got a few into the Superman suit twice for some brief shots. Other then that, this series is an instant classic joining othertv series such as MASH, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, That 70's Show, and others. -Rob

It's Friday the 13th already!

2011-05-13T22:50:00.000-05:00

See this link

Friday the 13th wiki

And snopes.com

Very interesting stuff.

And scary movie series to.

-Rob

Hope everyone had a happy Mothers day!

2011-05-13T22:40:00.000-05:00

I Hope everyone had a happy Mothers day!

I know sorry I'm a week late lol.

Peace.

-Rob

"But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin."

— Mitch Albom (For One More Day)

From goodreads.com quotes.

NAVY SEALS TRIBUTE

2011-05-02T11:43:00.001-05:00

Osama Bin Laden Is dead announces President Obama

2011-05-01T23:45:00.000-05:00

Breaking News!

President Obama announces that terrorist and coward Osama Bin Laden,
Criminal Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City on September 11th 2001 is dead.

Obama just announced it in a news conference minutes ago.

I am thankful to all of our U.S. troops and soldiers who fought
and were injured and died in the last decade and this decade as
well because some cowardly criminals from Al Qaeda didn't like
America and it's culture and ideals and what is stands for.

I also think that both the Bush and Obama Administrations deserve
thanks especially the Obama Administration ;)

But asQTheProphet said on twitter: :The war is far from over."

Agreed.

God bless America and the world.

Amen.

For more of the story go here:

Osama Bin Laden is dead

and here:

Osama Bin Laden, the face of terror, killed in Pakistan

Here's some tweets about Osama Bin Laden's death from various sources on twitter:

michellemalkin Michelle Malkin

NYC Firefighter minces no words: "I hope bin Laden rots in hell."

Bill Clinton: Osama death 'a profoundly important moment.. for people all over the world' http://huff.to/jFwGx8

dannowicki Dan Nowicki by azcentral
Sen. John McCain on news of Osama bin Laden's death: “I am overjoyed that we finally got the world's top terrorist."

From yahoo news:

Al Qaida Head Bin Laden Dead

By JULIE PACE and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Julie Pace And Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press – 7 mins ago

WASHINGTON – "Osama bin Laden, the glowering mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed thousands of Americans, was killed in an operation led by the United States, President Barack Obama said Sunday.

A small team of Americans killed bin Laden in a firefight at a compound in Pakistan, the president said in a dramatic late-night statement at the White House.

A jubilant crowd gathered outside the White House as word spread of bin Laden's death after a global manhunt that lasted nearly a decade.

"Justice has been done," the president said.

Former President George W. Bush, who was in office on the day of the attacks, issued a written statement hailing bin Laden's death as a momentous achievement. "The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done," he said.

Few details were immediately available of the operation that resulted in bin Laden's death, although the president said none of the Americans involved was harmed.

The development comes just months before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, orchestrated by bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, that killed more than 3,000 people.

The attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and America's entire intelligence apparatus was overhauled to counter the threat of more terror attacks at home.

AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Al-Qaida was also blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled."

Let's salute our troops and government leaders for bringing this rat and coward to justice.

God bless all of them.

I also say feed his (Bin Laden's) dead body to the pigs.

-Rob

"God loves us. He's watching us, he wants us to succeed, and we'll know someday that he has not left one thing undone for the eternal welfare of each of us. If we only knew it, there are heavenly hosts pulling for us -- friends in heaven that we can't remember now, who yearn for our victory." — Ezra Taft Benson

"The American story has never been about things coming easy. It has been about rising to the moment when the moment is hard. About rejecting panicked division for purposeful unity. About seeing a mountaintop from the deepest valley. That is why we remember that some of the most famous words ever spoken by an American came from a president who took office in a time of turmoil: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." — Barack Obama

-From goodreads.com quotes.

Jesus Christ Is Risen Today-easter hymn

2011-04-24T19:19:00.001-05:00

Good Friday Reflection: From the Cross. . .

2011-04-22T20:02:00.001-05:00

Professor Notices Abe Lincoln's Signature on a Picture Hanging in His Office

2011-04-20T23:34:00.001-05:00

From sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2011) — When Western Illinois University's University Television (UTV) Associate Director Roger Kent looked a bit closer at a picture that had been hanging in his office for a few years, he noticed what looked like a signature belonging to the nation's 16th president. Curiosity got the better of him, so he contacted a Lincoln authority: the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.

For more on this story click here: sciencedaily Professor Notices Abe Lincoln's Signature on a Picture Hanging in His Office

Note: Cool historical discovry! ;)

-Rob

Largest Fossil Spider Found in Volcanic Ash

2011-04-20T23:29:00.000-05:00

From yahoo news and livescience.com

The largest fossil spider uncovered to date once ensnared prey back in the age of dinosaurs, scientists find.

The spider, named Nephila jurassica, was discovered buried in ancient volcanic ash in Inner Mongolia, China. Tufts of hairlike fibers seen on its legs showed this 165-million-year-old arachnid to be the oldest known species of the largest web-weaving spiders alive today — the golden orb-weavers, or Nephila, which are big enough to catch birds and bats, and use silk that shines like gold in the sunlight.

For more on this story go here: yahoo news

Note: Scary! -Rob

Orang Pendek Declared New Primate Species

2011-04-20T23:24:00.001-05:00

From Cryptomundo

The article published by the Society for Scientific Exploration is entitled “A New Primate Species in Sumatra.” And that just about says it all.

For more info go here:

Crypomundo >> Orang Pendek Declared New Primate Species

Note: Wow! A huge win for Cryptozoology and Cryptozoologists everywhere ;)

-Rob

Banned From Cryptozoology.com!

2011-04-18T23:27:00.001-05:00

Rob's mysterious world of the paranormal, cryptozoology, & odd news!

Can I Be a Cryptozoologist?

Scientists reconstruct 'tall, elegant' New Zealand penguin

Did Bigfoot Really Exist? How Gigantopithecus Became Extinct

Did Bigfoot Really Exist? How Gigantopithecus Became Extinct

Sasquatches in Our Woods

From The Texas Bigfoot Research Organization:Sasquatches in Our Woods

By John A. Bindernagel

Rare whale caught on film for first time

Man Survives Being Trapped in Car for Months; Ancient Flowers Discovered and Lincoln and JFK Coincidinces

snopes.com: Presidents Day

Mountain man scares owners of remote Utah cabins - yahoo news

Mountain man scares owners of remote Utah cabins

BFRO Report # 30442 (Class B)

Sightings: Monsters

Roswell UFO claims and Glenn Dennis

'Woolly Mammoth' spotted in Siberia?

Woolly Mammoth, Bear or Hoax?

Hull House closes doors after more than 120 years

Divers find large, unexplained (and mysterious) object at bottom of Baltic Sea

Video: Divers find large, unexplained object at bottom of Baltic Sea - yahoo news

Monkey long believed extinct found in Indonesia

TOP 100 NES games in 10 minutes

BFRO Report #30051

Bigfoot, Thunderbirds, and Time Travelers? Oh My!

Monday, January 16, 2012

Monday, January 16, 2012

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Linkin Park - Wisdom, Justice and Love + Iridescent (lyrics)

Foo Fighters - Next Year

Have a Happy New Year!

Bigfoot Reported to MUFON?

Pope Benedict XVI Urges Faithful to Look Beyond Christmas 'Superficial G...

Fr. Barron comments on Christmas

National Lampoon Christmas Vacation Dinner Scene

The Thanksgiving Song by Adam Sandler (subscribe if you like this video)

Banned from the BFRO Blue Forums

Discovery of a Bigfoot species is close?

The Bigfoot Paradox 2: What Do They Already Know?

Do Einstein's Laws Prove Ghosts Exist?

Happy Halloween!

Links to paranormal, parapsychological, cryptozoology and UFO related sites

Thanks goes to Jaco on Kimberley Ghosthunters page on facebook for posting these links.

Here are some links to many paranormal, parapsychology and cryptozoology sites.

Some are related to UFO's/Aliens and other strange phenomena.

Signs you might be having a Bigfoot/Sasquatch encounter!

Lair Of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered and Chicago Mothman?

Bigfoot/Sasquatch FAQ

Ghost Facts

SURVIVING A POLTERGEIST

Do you have a Poltergeist?

The Signs of a Haunting

THE SIGNS OF A HAUNTING by Jaco Pieterse

Jaco is a member of Kimberley Ghosthunters as well as the PIRC.

Thanks Jaco for the wealth of info on Hauntings!

-Rob

Update: Our New Group Paranormal Investigation & Research Consultants, Ltd

Atlantic Academy of Parapsychology and Paranormal Research

Tribute to our wonderful dog Buttercup/Shania 1999-2011

R.I.P. Our Angel Dog Shania/Buttercup January 3rd 1999 - September 15th 2011

9/11 Tribute (10 Year Anniversary)

Tribute for the 10th Anniversery of the 9/11 attacks "My Sacrifice"

Giant crocodile captured alive in Philippines and my 200th post!

We the People

Odd News - Gold Coins: The Mystery of the Double Eagle

UFO over New York as hurricane Irene arrives

Bubble cloud over Beijing

Odd News August 23, 2011: Daytona Beach Patrol Runs Over Sunbathers Head, Baseball player's Earmoth and 5.9 Earthquake Strikes Washington D.C!

Stray cat 'army' battles west China plague of rodents

BFRO Report # 28525 (Class B) - Possible Bigfoot Vocalizations in Bachelors Grove Cemetery

Colo. fugitive sister: 'I deserved to get shot' - Bonnie and Clydes Caught

Experts Say Belief in Paranormal Common in US

David Letterman - Obama Birthday Top Ten

Van Halen - Jump (HQ music video)

I'm Back!!!

Owl City - In Christ Alone - Full Song 2010 w/ lyrics by Adam Young

Linkin Park - Burning In The Skies (International Video)

Linkin Park - Iridescent [HD] - from Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Memorial Day

Elimination of James Durbin - American Idol 2011 Top 4 Results Show - 05...

From The Texas Bigfoot Research Organization:

Sasquatches in Our Woods