ANIMAL FORTEANA


In the beginning of things men were animals and animals men. ~ Algonquin saying

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons." ~ The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Monday, June 28, 2010

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Rain of Frogs: Scene From Magnolia

 Magnolia, with Tom Cruise, made in had Fortean and Biblical references, including this scene of frogs falling from the sky. Classic.

If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere. ~ Charles Fort

8:2  If you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your borders with frogs:

8:3  and the river shall swarm with frogs, which shall go up and come into your house, and into your bedchamber, and on your bed, and into the house of your servants, and on your people, and into your ovens, and into your kneading-troughs:

8:4  and the frogs shall come up both on you, and on your people, and on all your servants.'"

8:5  Yahweh said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, 'Stretch forth your hand with your rod over the rivers, over the streams, and over the pools, and cause frogs to come up on the land of Egypt.'"

8:6  Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.

8:7  The magicians did in like manner with their enchantments, and brought up frogs on the land of Egypt.

8:8  Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said, "Entreat Yahweh, that he take away the frogs from me, and from my people; and I will let the people go, that they may sacrifice to Yahweh." 
~ Bible, Exodus

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Bigfoot From Space, Volume 1

Progress! Getting there, on the first complilation, Volume 1 of Bigfoot From Space... soon to be.

North American Bigfoot

Visit the following for comments on the Sasquatch Symposium this weekend in Eugene, OR at Lane Community College. I'll be there!
North American Bigfoot

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Silent Invasion of Immortal Jellyfish

Scientists are studying a variety of jellyfish that appears to be immortal:
Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and revert to its polyp state (its first stage of life).
Jelllyfish might be taking over the world. . .
Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They're now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters.  "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion," says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute.

Friday, June 11, 2010

I found this really scary! The Goblin shark, rare, thought to be extinct. Here you go. Thanks to IQXS on Twitter for the link.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Fox Attacks Twin Babies in London

A sad and weird incident from London: a fox attacked two babies in their cribs while they were sleeping. The babies -- twins -- are reported in serious but stable condition. Very odd, as wildlife experts are quoted as saying the article, because it's the first case they're heard of a fox attacking people. However, foxes are plentiful in London; in gardens everywhere, even, as in the case of the two babies, walking right into houses. 

The Sarcastic Fringehead; Alien Fish From the Deep

At first, for one brief moment,  I thought "sarcastic fringehead" was the name for a maverick group of Fortean reseachers and this wasn't real, but it is!: (cross posted at Octopus Confessional.)

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Odd Insect in the Garden: "A moth, a bee and a crayfish"

Photo here of an unidentified insect. According to the person who sent in the photo, her yard was full of these odd flying insects, described as a combination of a "moth, a bee, and a crayfish."

The Sign of the Green Alien, or Beware the Reptilians!

I was going through my blog posts here and found that this was in draft mode, from some time ago. So here it is:

 
This is from October, 2008. I had posted it on Women of Esoterica and Author's Den; I think it's up at Mothman Flutterings as well.



After retiring for the night reading Gray Barker's The Silver Bridge, the classic UFO/paranormal book about Mothman, I had an astral experience with Reptilians. . .

I'm posting this here because the following dream (I know, snore) has a bit of something to do with my previous post here about my OOBE. My Utterly Completely Wondrous New Age OOBE)

That first dream/OOBE was wonderful, fantastic, amazing, and positive. This one, while almost silly sounding, was creepy and scary.

I'm reading Gray Barker's The Silver Bridge. It's been reissued by Andrew Colvin, author of Mothman's Photographer, so we all have him to thank for this. (I urge anyone interested in Mothman, or anyone just interested in Fortean stuff to read both Colvin's and Barker's books.) Copies of The Silver Bridge have been rare, and, if lucky enough to find a copy, you'd have to pay upwards of $400! Now you can get it for about $10.00. I'm enjoying the book very much. I have a fascination with Mothman that I can't explain; I've never been back east (except for one brief visit to North Carolina once) let alone West Virginia, so I don't know what's that all about. (My grandfather, part native American, was from Virginia, ... but that's a very thin connection, if any.)

Mothman sketch by Regan Lee
So I'm reading the book before going to sleep, and as I'm turning out the light, I had this weird thought pop into my head: that I better do some protection around me, because I don't want to encounter any negative entities or energies. Then I thought, "well, I wasn't planning to, and I'm tired." I turn off the light, and go to sleep. I don't know why I had that thought: I was enjoying The Silver Bridge, and not at all feeling creeped out or "scared," and certainly not thinking anything about Reptilians. As far as Mothman goes, I don't know what Mothman is/was, but I've never felt it to be Reptilian, not sure it's alien as in from outer space, or even convinced it's a negative energy. In fact, I think it's often perceived as "evil" even demonic, but I don't believe it is at all. It's an unfortunate misinterpretation. I have nothing to go on really; as I mentioned, I've had no direct experience concerning Mothman. My feelings on this are intuitive.

I have a dream. It's almost funny at first. I'm very happy, very excited about something good that's happened, and I'm running down the street in joy. I run pass a glass apartment building kind of thing, and I notice that there are little toy aliens everywhere, mostly green. Little rubber and plastic alien faces, and toys, and my first thought is: "That's so cute! How neat they have a sense of humor!" But then I quickly see that the building is empty, and the thought occurs to me that it isn't funny, not one damn bit. We don't know what's going on, who the aliens are --  if they're really even aliens, as in ET -- and yet we're running around making cute little cartoons out of them. We're playing with fire!

But I don't have much time to dwell on that, because I'm happy, and running down the street to a local coffee shop to share my news. I go inside, and there are a lot of people in there, and at first, I'm glad to be there. Then I realize: "Goddamn!!!!! These aren't people, they're aliens! They're not just aliens, they're Reptilians!" And I see their faces change from human to a subtle olive green color, and their features change a bit. Not too much however, if you weren't paying attention, you wouldn't notice. And then they quickly change back. I'm freaked! I'm scared! And then they notice that I notice . . . and they're very angry about that. I try to deny that I've noticed anything, but they're not buying it. Then I get angry my own damn self, and say really intelligent things like, "Who do you Reptilians think you are, anyway?!" which of course, just pisses them off even more. Suddenly I realize how really dangerous they are.

Here the dream changes. I wake up, scared to death, and don't want to go back to sleep. But I'm an adult and have to wake up at six in the morning, so tough for me. I try to go back to sleep. I immediately begin to experience that rushing, roaring sensation, and see whirls and swirls of green scales, just that, green and scales and the knowledge lizard intelligences are afoot. They won't stop, just swirling rushes of Reptilian green, and I know that that's what it is, and "they" are trying to get me to come out and play.

I say to myself that, as much as I would love to have another out of body experience like I had here, and trip the astral plane fantastic, not like this! I literally said to myself "I'm not going there!" and with great effort, woke myself up.

One more thing: I noticed earlier in the evening, while cooking dinner, there was a large green ink smudge on my hand, like something you'd get from a marker. It could have happened anywhere, and I do work in a school, but I hadn't noticed during the day,  and I have nothing like that at home that I can think of that would have caused that mark.  A perfectly natural explanation, but a very weird bit of synchronicity.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Sacrificial Lambs Unto the Demon: Batsquatch in Oregon


From my Trickster's Realm column on Tim Binnall's Binnall of America site. This was posted on BoA May 11, 2009.

I've received several e-mails the past couple of days from someone here in Lane County, Oregon about a supposed "batsquatch" sighting. The sighting occurred around 1:00 a.m. in a rural area; about ten miles from my home.

According to the person who contacted me, he told me he was e-mailing me on behalf of the 19 year old witness.

You can read more about the e-mail exchanges on my blogs Frame 352 and Mothman Flutterings. Basically, the man was startled by a noise, found he had locked himself out of the house, started to look around for a way to get back in, when he caught sight of the creature:

The "thing" was about 15 ft. from the witness at about 1:15 A.M. behind his house. He accidentally locked himself out of his house while working in his garage late last night. He went around to the back of his house to climb in through a window. He heard something and used the light from his cell phone, pointing it in the direction of the sound. The thing had a human form only quite large over seven feet with red reflecting eyes and very large wings. It jumped into the air flying off with the sound of massive air displacement with each wing stroke.

For some reason, the whole thing seemed fishy to me. I wondered at the fact someone was working in his garage at 1:15 a.m., and presumably during heavy rain (until a day or so ago the weather has been very stormy) and managed to lock himself out of his house on top of it. (Why did he lock his door in a rural area?) It sort of screamed crank freak to me. But that's my bias, and of course, who knows.

What deeply disturbed me was the plan to trap this thing by using a lamb as live bait:

Can it be baited with a lamb? I'm thinking of putting shark hooks with 3/32" braided steel leader in the lamb's fur along the back. I want to tether the lamb near the edge of a field near the woods. I am concerned about coyotes getting the lamb first.

I e-mailed this person, discouraging him from doing such a gratuitous thing. He responded by saying this creature was a "demon," and both he and the witness are Christians. The sad irony of the symbolism of the lamb offered as a sacrifice seems to have escaped him, even after I pointed it out to him. He e-mailed me:

Demons feed off of fear. When faced with them, don't be intimidated and yes, I am a believer in Jesus as the Christ, Son of God. Demons are actually cowardly when they are confronted with faith in God. I am concerned for the safety of the young man that told me the story. His faith may not be strong enough to sustain him.

He assured me he plans to go ahead with the plan this weekend (May 10th, which is Mother's Day. Hmmm...) and will take pictures. His justification for using a live animal as bait is that predators in the area eat lamb:
here are coyotes, black bears, one lynx, and a couple of cougars in the area so the lamb may end up eaten one way or the other.
My last reply (at the time of this writing) follows:

So, very sad to say, it seems you intend to go ahead with this and sacrifice a lamb to gratify an ego-driven need to "prove" to the world such a "demonic" creature exists. The fact that bear, cougar, coyote, etc. kill livestock does not make this okay. One is the natural predation of creatures upon another; yours is an ego driven choice made out of a religious conviction, not a need to eat for survival.

By the way, if you really believe any of this, the fact (in your view) this thing is a "demon" -- well, does it even need food? Why not try a sort of exorcism, without the lamb? Prayer, light, intent, focus, etc. -- that might go a long way.

Also, if it's a demon, do you really think such a creature would hold still within the confines of being held prisoner in a lab somewhere, especially a government lab? For no doubt the authorities would get involved a fantastic find.

Do you really trust the Big Science Infrastructure (talk about demons) and government that much -- that they wouldn't kill this thing, cut it up, and hide it away after they've done what they've wanted? And how much credit or vindication do you think such authorities would grant you in regards to the proof of this creature? You're really back at square one.

I haven't heard back from this person after my last response, and I hope I don't -- I doubt that I will. I'm afraid however, that, if any of this is true and these two people believe there actually is a "demon" creature out there, they will indeed be gung ho and happily hook up a live lamb, lie in wait, and cause a big mess, without capturing anything anomalous.

Cryptozoology has its share of people like this; who think nothing of using live bait in attempts to capture, dead or alive, a "monster." These two men are not researchers in any way, but it's a sad example of the kinds of people that one encounters sometimes.


Maybe I don't have the stomach of it, well, I don't -- it's an interesting story, and I'm content to leave it at that. This little encounter has raised some questions for me though; do I go by intuition in dealing with people, do I ignore it, do I acknowledge yet continue on? I think being a woman has something to do with this; it'd be pretty damn stupid of me to go off alone to a stranger's rural property -- one who thinks nothing of tying up live animals to trap a "demon" -- and that's one of the reasons it's helpful to have support in field research in terms of teams and organizations. However, I'm not a field researcher and in this case, glad I'm not.

UPDATE as of June 3, 2010: never did hear back from this person, or come across any info on this kind of sighting in my area, or Oregon in general.

Notes:
Image: Zurbar, Agnus Dei (The Lamb of God), 1635-1640

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Exploring All Realms with Nick Redfern and Raven Meindel

An announcement from Nick Redfern, who is joining the podcast realm! He and co-host Raven Meindel will host "Exploring All Realms."  Good news!
Exploring All Realms with Redfern and Raven

EXPLORING ALL REALMS with Nick Redfern and Raven Meindel is an exciting, vibrant and mystery-packed talk-show devoted to just about everything paranormal, supernatural, cryptozoological and ufological. Each week, Nick and Raven will be speaking with leading investigators, researchers, eye-witnesses and authors in their respective genres as they seek out the truth about the mysteries of this world and beyond, including Bigfoot, ghosts, psychic phenomena, alien encounters, conspiracies and cover-ups. For all the information on times, schedules, guests and more, go here.

EPISODE 1: We are very pleased to announce that, for the first episode of Exploring All Realms with Redfern and Raven, the guest will be the acclaimed author Brad Steiger. An expert on numerous aspects of the world of the unknown, Brad has penned approximately 170 books, with no less than 17 million copies in print. His huge list of titles include Shadow World; The Werewolf Book; Real Vampires; Strangers From The Skies; and Worlds Before Our Own. And, on Exploring All Realms, Brad will be speaking with us about his brand new book, Real Zombies: The Living Dead, And Creatures Of The Apocalypse. For more data on Brad, check out his website that he runs with his wife Sherry: Brad & Sherry Steiger's Mysteries and Miracles which can be found at http://www.bradandsherry.com. Don't miss the chance to hear the words of a true legend in the realms of the paranormal, the supernatural, ufology, and strange creatures!

ABOUT NICK REDFERN:
Nick Redfern is the author of numerous books on the world of the paranormal, including There’s something in the Woods; Science Fiction Secrets; Contactees; Memoirs of a Monster Hunter; and A Covert Agenda. He has appeared on many TV shows, including the SyFy Channel’s Proof Positive; the History Channel’s Monster Quest; the BBC’s Out of this World; and the National Geographic Channel’s Paranatural. He can be contacted at his website.

ABOUT RAVEN MEINDEL:
Raven Meindel runs the blogs Raven’s Crypto Havenand and Raven’s Mysterious Haven. She has appeared on the History Channel’s Monster Quest, and is the Michigan representative of the British-based Center for Fortean Zoology - a full-time group dedicated to the investigation of unknown animals, such as the Abominable Snowman, the Chupacabras, and the Loch Ness Monster - and has written for the CFZ's in-house magazine, Animals & Men.