Strange Brew: The Mothman Mystery

I like nothing better than to discuss and trade theories on crypto-zoology, UFOs, and all aspects of the unexplained with other curious minds. One of my new co-workers is a sharp, eccentric, funny guy who, like yours truly, is interested in the weird and the arcane. The other day at lunch, he and I were mulling over tales of a number of strange phenomena and our discussions harkened me back to some of the better books I have read on this type of subject. There exists for me, no tastier food for thought.

One of the weirdest, most unexplainable (in ordinary terms)cases of strange sightings, is the puzzle of West Virginia's Mothman. The late paranormal investigator, John A. Keel wrote the ultimate account of the happenings, a classic documentary of weirdness, from which a major motion picture was eventually developed: The Mothman Prophecies.

This book chronicles decades of sightings of a seven foot tall, brownish-gray being with leathery, bat-like wings and blazing, red eyes, reported by average folk in and around the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. As if being terrorized by a giant, demonic bat-man wasn't enough, at around the same time, these simple, church-going, working-class people also experienced multiple UFO sightings, as well as visits from the notorious "Men-In-Black", those odd-looking, humanoid types in rumpled, ill-fitting, three-piece suits, well known to those familiar with UFO lore, who ring the doorbell after you report that you've seen something strange. Various and sundry giant birds, Sasquatch creatures and other bizarre things also popped up along the dark roads of West Virginia in those days and still do from time to time.

To my mind, the best and most thought-provoking thing about Keel's master-work, with its exhaustive research and scrupulous regard for detail, is the theory he puts forth to "explain" this unexplainable wave of weirdness that has held a community in its' grip for decades.

Rather than being distinct, separate, strange phenomena, Mr. Keel seemed to think that all this weirdness is, in fact, the same thing...or at least, it emanates from the same source. He stopped short of postulating exactly what he thinks it is, or who (or what, exactly) is behind it all, but he hinted that it may be the fault of a lapse of the veil that separates the dimensions. He suggested that we are not being visited by the denizens of far-flung galaxies, in other words; they are here among us already, and always have been, along with big-foot, wolfmen, ghosts and yes, mothmen...we just don't perceive them except under special conditions. Those conditions were surely present in the hills of West Virginia in the late nineteen sixties, and in many other places throughout our world, before and since.

Having read extensively on spirituality, metaphysics, and a bit about quantum physics, I have come to understand that our visible, material world is far from the only "reality" that there is. I find these accounts fascinating and I never tire of hearing or reading about them; one person can hallucinate, one person might be crazy, drunk or lying, but dozens of otherwise reliable, sane and honest people seeing the same something that can't possibly be real? How is that possible?

John A. Keel passed from this reality on July 3rd of last year, but he leaves a legacy of intelligent, matter-of-fact investigations into the unknown, along with his paranormal classic, The Mothman Prophecies.

EMFs...What the Heck?

I’ve been thinking a lot about EMFs- Electro-magnetic fields. It seems that a lot of the shows I’ve been watching on television, and many articles I’ve read lately refer to them. I’m not scientifically inclined and don’t pretend to know anything about this phenomenon, but it seems to play a part in every strange and unexplainable happening. Paranormal researchers use EMF detectors as they investigate hauntings, and UFO documentaries almost always mention them. Whatever else they do, they seem to precipitate weird events.

I became aware of the existence of EMFs some twenty odd years ago. Around that time, a friend of mine experienced a string of very strange incidents. The things that she told me may, or may not have had something to do with EMFs. I have no idea, but it’s an interesting story and something to ponder.

Lana was given a lot of land adjacent to the high tension electrical wires that run through a nearby town. She had a nice little home built there, on the edge of the woods. The house was a pleasing design, and the yard was nice and green. It was lovely, except for the presence of the steel towers and the constantly humming wires they supported looming nearby. She said she didn’t mind the high tension wires, but was a little concerned because she had heard about vague health threats associated with them. Lana had a small daughter, and hoped her child’s safety and well-being would not be jeopardized in anyway.

After they had lived in their new home for a few years, Lana confided that she could not seem to keep fish. She had a gorgeous aquarium in the living room, but the fish were constantly dying for no apparent reason. She had taken water samples for analysis and tried all sorts of remedies, to no avail. She eventually gave up and stopped buying new fish.

Around this time Lana noticed that there seemed to be a sort of vibration in the walls inside her house, and she assumed it was caused by an electro-magnetic field produced by the wires. She was concerned, but neither she, nor her child seemed to be suffering any ill effects. Then one evening she and her daughter were coming home, driving up the long driveway, when they noticed a strange, bluish glow in the front yard. As they got closer, they were surprised to see that the light seemed to be in the shape of a cube. She said that an opaque, glowing, blue cube was sitting in front of their house. How weird is that? Even weirder is the fact that they remarked about it to each other as they got out of the car , “Hey look at that blue cube… that’s really strange…”, before turning and walking calmly into the house and promptly forgetting about it until the next morning. Lana was shaken the following day, thinking about it and wondering what the heck she saw and why she didn’t examine it more closely. Her daughter also remembered seeing it, and described it exactly the same way.

Then there was the lost weekend. On a Friday afternoon, after her daughter left to spend time with her father, Lana laid down to rest. She was awakened suddenly by pounding on her back door. She was confused when she opened the door and saw her ex and her daughter standing there and asked why they had come back. It was Sunday evening, their weekend visit was over and Jim had brought the girl back home. Lana had apparently slept through the entire weekend.

Things got even stranger when her boyfriend Carl moved in. She related tales of her nightstand shaking violently in the middle of the night, the water sloshing out of a glass she had left on top of it. She told me of her abject terror when strange lights appeared outside her windows, and seemed to flow like liquid down under the window shades to pool on the floor beneath. During these incidents, Carl could not be woken up, no matter how hard she shook him.

She had no explanation for any of this, and I could sense her fear and reluctance to even talk about it. I believe she experienced something, but I have no clue what it was. The stories Lana related reminded me of things I have read concerning UFOs and paranormal phenomena. She felt it all was somehow connected to those high tension wires.

Lana sold her home and moved away when she remarried a few years ago. I often wonder if the new owners have experienced anything odd since moving in. I guess I will probably never know.

Werewolves In Wisconsin?

I've just finished reading a really interesting book. Linda S. Godfrey's, "The Beast Of Bray Road" investigates reports from Wisconsin of hairy, upright walking creatures that appear to have canine features. These "dogmen" or "werewolves" have apparently haunted the cornfields and backroads of southeastern Wisconsin for the past eighty years.
The sighting that inspired Godfrey to write her book took place in the fall of 1989, along Bray Road, in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

Lori Endrizzi was the manager of a cocktail lounge called The Jury Room in Elkhorn. At 1:30 in the morning, while driving home from work along a desolate stretch of Bray Road, she came upon a strange sight. On the side of the road, apparently eating roadkill, was an animal, about the size of a man, covered in long, brownish gray hair. She described the creature as manlike, but with a head resembling that of a wolf. Rather than standing on all fours, it was kneeling, and using its arms and hands as a person would. Ms. Endrizzi noted that it had long claws and that its eyes glowed in her car's headlights. She later visited her local library to do some research and came across a drawing of a werewolf. With its human-like body and wolfish head, this was the closest thing to what she had seen that night.

A few years later, a similar sighting occurred. In October, 1991, Doris Gipson hit something with her car, while driving at night on Bray Road. When she got out of her car to look for what she hit, she was surprised to see a large, wolf-like creature running toward her. She barely made it back into her vehicle and pulled the door shut before it caught up with her. Gipson described the animal as larger and more muscular than any dog she had ever seen. When she arrived home and inspected her car, she found claw marks on her back bumper.

I find all these accounts fascinating, but for me, the most interesting and scariest incident related in the book was one dating back to 1936. Mark Schackelman was the night watchman at St. Coletta's convent just outside of Jefferson, Wisconsin. While patroling the convent grounds late one night, he came upon a strange sight. Atop a Native American burial mound on the property, knelt a hairy, upright being, clawing at the dirt of the mound. The creature fled as Schackelman approached.

The following night, Mr. Schackelman returned to the mound at midnight and again saw the creature atop the mound. This time, however, the being did not flee, but stood up on two legs and stared him down. The watchman estimated it to be roughly six feet tall and noted that it gave off a strong odor of rotten meat. Mr. Schackelman felt in fear of his life and began to pray. The beast glared at him, and uttered three syllables, which sounded like: "ga-da-ra", in what the witness described as a "neo-human voice", before growling and slowly walking away. When asked whether he thought the being was an animal or something better defined as "supernatural", Schackelman reportedly said: "That thing came straight out of hell."
Interestingly, Gadara was the name of the place referred to in the Bible, where Jesus cast a demon out of a possessed man who had been living among the tombs there.

The book is packed with recounted tales, legends, sketches and eye witness accounts of wolfish encounters in Walworth County over the years. It's a great read if you are intrigued, as I am, by the unexplained. I recommend reading it with the lights on!

What Happened In Aurora?

I’m fascinated by anything that can’t be explained by conventional knowledge. It’s sort of terrifying, but yet thrilling to think that there is so much that even our best minds don’t understand about our universe. Our human race has made so much progress in such a relatively brief span of time since the advent of mankind on earth. Yet, there are still so many aspects of our existence that are completely out of our control. We have figured out how to split atoms and build satellites, but we are still impacted by odd events that defy our puny logic.
Take for example, an incident that took place on April 17th, 1897 in the town of Aurora, Texas. The History Channel recently ran an episode of their excellent, documentary style show, UFO Hunters which focused on the incident. This account tells of one of the earliest UFO cases ever recorded in the USA.
At approximately 6:00 am that day, something plummeted out of the dawn sky over a ranch and smashed into a windmill, shattering it and casting metal debris over a wide area. It was reported that a strange, cigar-shaped “airship” had crashed that morning. What’s more, residents drawn to the site by the collision claimed to have found a small body in the wreckage. It was said that the townsfolk brought the strange little corpse to the Aurora Cemetary and buried it there, beneath a huge live oak, said to be over two hundred years old. The investigators found that the enormous tree reacts strongly to a metal detector moved vertically up its trunk. For nearly eighty years, a small, rough-cut stone served as a marker for the spot where the little alien was allegedly buried. The only thing engraved in the rock was thin oval shape, dotted along its horizontal length with circles, resembling a cigar-shaped craft with porthole style windows. Although there are photographs of the makeshift headstone, it disappeared in the early 1970s, presumably stolen.
The debris from the destroyed craft was rumored to have been dumped in a nearby well belonging to the Oates family. Although an attempted search of the well didn’t turn up any significant pieces of metal, the water was found to have an abnormally high aluminum content which could not be explained, and the family had suffered for generations, from health problems that had been attributed to tainted water from that same well.
I always try to maintain a skeptical, yet open mind about this type of thing. Those who refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that our planet may have been visited by extra-terrestrials will, no doubt, try to find rational, mundane answers to explain away this story and thereby protect their mental comfort zones. The fact that this incident took place 6 years before the airplane was invented may make that a little more difficult.