Notable News!

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

Ghost photographed in model’s home
Argentinian model and actress, Emilia Attias has been pretty vocal about growing up in a supposed haunted house. She has described in interviews the types of phenomenon experienced in the house while growing up. Disembodied footsteps, voices and strange knocks were experienced in that house. Of course, one always disregards these types of stories as them being a child’s imagination. This would seem to be the case for Emilia Attias except for one thing; there appears to be evidence to support her claims…

Interview with John Zaffis of “Haunted Collector”
“Haunted Collector” is a new weekly series about the real-life hunt to find objects that may hold supernatural powers or be portals to the spirit world. John Zaffis and his crew of paranormal investigators seek out the strange and unusual, and often find it. During a question and answer session for members of the press with Zaffis, I was able to gather information about this new series…

Paranormal team reveal signs of possible haunting
The thump of heavy footsteps and the banging of a judge’s gavel in the old courtroom: All are signs of what local paranormal investigators are calling a possible residual haunting of the Museum of Ashe County History. The team, known as 3P Paranormal, spent a night in the old county courthouse in May to further their research of the unknown as well as to debunk, or clarify, rumors of a haunting in what was once the county’s social and judicial Mecca…

Not your everyday ectoplasm: Spirit mediums and nonhuman weirdness
The subject of spirit mediums, séances and spirit manifestations are among what are considered some of the more dubious claims out there these days pertaining to the unexplained, especially in the realms of serious psychic research. All too often we’ve been made privy to tricks and treachery used to fool the gullible and unsuspecting into believing they had witnessed manifestations of strange beings from beyond the grave, or sometimes even from other worlds…

CREATURES:

Mystery river creatures surface on both sides of the Atlantic
Was it an unknown marine monster that raised its head above the surface of the River Mersey in England on May 25? And what was the mysterious 7-foot-long creature that washed ashore near New York’s famous Brooklyn Bridge on May 21?..

Monsters and proof
People often ask me: When will we finally have proof for the existence of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Chupacabra and the absolute menagerie of additional strange beasts alleged to lurk in the darker and wilder parts of our world? But when people ask that question, what many of them they really want to know is this: When will we have proof that Bigfoot is a giant ape, and the creatures of Loch Ness represent a surviving, relic population of plesiosaurs?..

Poll finds many Washington residents believe in Sasquatch and UFOs
Another 13 percent have seen Sasquatch or know someone who has. PEMCO Insurance Northwest, a local insurance company in Washington state, polled residents about Sasquatch and UFOs.

CREATURES:

Stalking Altie: Does Georgia have its own Loch Ness Monster?
An alligator spies on my family as we stand on a midden heap on a muddy bank of the South Altamaha River. Our flip-flops crunch on the jagged oyster shells and pottery shards cast off by Native Americans a couple of centuries ago. Our guide points out their importance to the history of coastal Georgia, but I can’t pay proper attention. I’ve brought my family to Darien in search of a monster…

Bigfoot video in May is a hoax, overlayed video on another

HUMAN MYSTERIES:

A curious case of foreign accent syndrome
Karen Butler could get her American accent back with intensive speech therapy, but she likes her new one. When Karen Butler went in for dental surgery, she left with more than numb gums: She also picked up a pronounced foreign accent. It wasn’t a fluke, or a joke – she’d developed a rare condition called foreign accent syndrome that’s usually caused by an injury to the part of the brain that controls speech…

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA:

Spirit whisperer
Whether you are a believer or not, the fact remains people who claim to have psychic abilities are among us and continue to be a point of intrigue. Charmaine Wilson, 46, of Brisbane is one such individual and is not shy in saying “there are a lot of questionable psychics out there”…

MEDIA: BOOKS, MOVIES, TV, GAMES:

“Investigating the Impossible”
Ulrich Magin. Investigating the Impossible: Sea Serpents in the Air, Volcanoes that Aren’t and Other Out of Place Mysteries. Anomalist Books, 2011. Ulrich Magin is a Fortean writer very much in the Magonia mould as his introduction to this collection of essays shows, where he contrasts the various approaches to reports of anomalous experiences. The skeptical one simply says that the witnesses are lying, or drunk, or crazy or just mistaken, or there is a ‘rational’ explanation and that is that, end of the matter…

PODCASTS WORTH LISTENING TO:

Are ghosts real? Guy Lyon Playfair’s thirty-year investigation yields insights
Skeptiko: Noted parapsychology investigator and author Guy Lyon Playfair discusses poltergeists, after-death communication and the telepathy of twins. Join Skeptiko guest host Steve Volk for an interview with Guy Lyon Playfair. During the interview Mr. Playfair summarizes what he’s learned about the poltergeist phenomena…

Eyes of the Mothman: Matthew Pellowski & Anastasia Konstantinou
Binnall of America: BoA:Audio kicks off their summer session by welcoming filmmakers Matthew J. Pellowski and Anastasia Konstantinou for a conversation on their film “Eyes of the Mothman.” Includes a number of bizarre stories from the making of the film, finer details surrounding the Mothman mythos, and a firsthand account of what Point Pleasant, West Virginia is like today.

Mothman sightings

New Mothman sightings! Readers accounts of Mothman sightings. Read on…

New Mothman Sightings in Mertztown, PA and New Miami, OH

New sightings:

My son and I saw this monster thing last summer in Mertztown, PA. We were parked on the side of the road in a heavily wooded area when this thing casually glided up the road. It looked big enough to carry a full grown man away with no effort. When the wing flew over the hood of my car, we instantly ducked down. This thing had a round human sized head with no beak (hence the term man-bird), and huge bat-like wings. Now I would never tell this story if it wasn’t for my 16-yr-old son sitting in the backseat who also witnessed it on that summer day. I’m a pretty capable guy, not too many things can shake me, but this thing scared the hell out of me. Here is what I saw:

The body was 5-6 ft in length easy, wing span was 25-30 ft easy, no feathers, bat like skin, jet black, and a 4-5 ft skinny (rat or dragon) like tail that stuck straight out. This thing didn’t fly like a bird, it glided about 10 ft off the ground at a VERY slow speed. After 50-75 ft of gliding, it took one huge flap of the wings, never changing elevation, and glided up the road till it disappeared into the woods. I’m convinced this thing lives underground, probably near some sort of hot spring cause it has no feathers.

Well that’s my story. Feel free to reply with any questions, that 45 second event will forever be etched into memory. I say we find it and catch it, I would love to see it again up close.

More sightings:

On Monday May 9th, 2011 around 5:45am, I was on my way to work headed north bound in to the village of New Miami on Seven Mile Avenue. I left the traffic light at the southern most edge of town in to a dark stretch of road when a large flying creature swooped in over my car and snatched up a small animal in the road ahead of me at the edge of my head lights. As a construction worker, I feel I can judge the size of objects fairly well. This creature had a wing span of at least 12 feet and was jet black. It completely blocked the view out of my windshield and then some and moved at a very high rate of speed. I was traveling between 35-40MPH. It had to have been traveling at around 70-80MPH. Like I stated before is swooped down grabbed the animal and was gone over the trees very quickly. I’ve researched large predator birds and raptors indigenous to Ohio and there are none that fit the description of what I saw. If you have any other questions about my experience please feel free to email me back. Tex

   

What do you believe it is?

   What are your ideas on just what this Mothman creature really is? A harbinger of bad things to come, or some inter-dimensional creature that travels back and forth via some type of wormhole? Share your insights on just what you believe this creature is!

-Admin

Harbinger of death and destruction or misunderstood mythical boyscout?

This whole Mothman debate of whether or not this creature is some kind of harbinger of chaos has simply gone on too long. I believe this creature is a lesser type of guardian type of spiritual creature that might actually be acting like a ferryman to escort the soon to be deceased souls at the times of whatever accident/disaster about to take place where it has been seen.

I really doubt this creature is anything more than just that…no aliens involved, no dimensional tripping explorer. Just maybe a very bizarre “angel of death” so to speak. That just happens to look like a moth.

-The webmaster

It is often said in Fortean circles that the mysterious appearance of the Mothman, a winged cryptid monstrosity that appeared in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the late 1960s, was prophetic in nature. Traditionally, researchers have felt that the creature’s presence represented some sort of omen, warning of terrible things to come; specifically, the collapse of the Silver Bridge on December 15, 1967. Though the Mothman certainly isn’t the only winged creature alleged to exist in the realm of the unexplained, it is by far the most famous. Nonetheless, its cousins, reportedly seen at various times and places elsewhere around the globe, are also sometimes seen to be harbingers of ill fortune.

Philosophically, we might find trouble in the possibility that one instance could influence an entire community of beliefs; much the same as we would question whether chickens or eggs came first in the lineage of farmyard fowl, it is equally worthy of consideration whether the perception of misfortune associated with winged monsters is truly a cultural constant, or if it is merely one that has been infiltrated by the widely reported Mothman flap in between 1966-67. After all, since the creature’s strange appearance more than four decades ago, similar circumstances have been attributed to various other winged-devils in locales elsewhere around the world.

One of the lesser known, but potentially more revealing instances of this sort involves the alleged appearance of a large, winged creature around the Chernobyl reactor in the days and weeks before the disaster that occurred there in 1986. Various internet websites detail how strange phone calls, nightmares, and a host of other strange circumstances began to transpire among the nuclear plant’s employees prior to the accident. Additionally, reports of a gigantic black bird, its wingspan somewhere around twenty feet in length, had been seen also. This “bird” bore one curiously distinctive feature, however: it was described, much like the Mothman, as having either no head at all, or having glowing red eyes and a diminutive head with no neck that rested around what would be the upper torso area of a man.

As reactor vessel number four ruptured at the Chernobyl plant on April 26, 1986, a series of explosions occurred as excessive power levels surged within. Many workers, unaware of the deadly radiation in the smoke being emitted, would later die from complications surrounding their exposure. It was during this time that the individuals struggling to put out the fire in the damaged reactor allegedly witnessed the gigantic, headless bird one final time, as it escaped into the smoke-filled air above.

Much like the appearance of the Mothman in the weeks and months leading up to the collapse of the Silver Bridge, these supposed elements of the Chernobyl story seem to detail the presence of a nearly identical creature, as well as similar supernatural circumstances that occurred just prior to the tragedy in Ukraine in the 1980s. However, there is very little evidence to substantiate these claims other than that which, interestingly, became public knowledge around the time of the release of the film, The Mothman Prophecies, based on John Keel’s famous book. Did sightings of a giant, winged “monster” actually occur at Chernobyl, or did the Mothman story of Point Pleasant and, more importantly, film and media portrayals of those events, spark a series of urban legends involving similar disasters around the world?

This would not be the first instance where the Mothman story has been examined for it’s possible association with myths and urban legends. Author and folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand wrote in his book The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends that many elements of the original encounter in the late 1960s incorporated elements of traditional folk tales and urban legends, namely “My Boyfriend’s Dead,” in which a young woman whose boyfriend disappears to fetch gasoline for a stranded vehicle is found dangling from a noose above the car. “Unfortunately, the only written sources (on Mothman) are books for children,” Brunvand wrote, “or sensationalized and undocumented accounts of ‘mysteries of the mountains’ that fail to quote identifiable persons.” Brunvand’s theory at this point was that, although the stories may have been rooted in some actual occurrence, “the stories–whatever their sources–also incorporated existing folklore.”

Seeking further clarification, Brunvand also notes a response shared with him by a California school teacher, received from the Point Pleasant Chamber of Commerce, after she and her students sent a request for more information on the Mothman. There were several article clippings included in the package they received, as well as titles of books related to the mystery. Brunvan wrote, “The letter also mentioned books that I’ve been unable to locate titled The Mothman Prophecies, and They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.” Obviously, before he condemned the more credible Mothman reports as urban legends, Brunvand failed to read any further than the “children’s books” he cited instead (which often contain exaggerations or convoluted regurgitation of well-documented accounts), skipping right over the most authoritative sources on the subject.

However scant or unlikely reports of a similar paranormal circumstance around Chernobyl may be, evidence pertaining to the alleged Mothman flap of the 1960s in West Virgina presents a unique scenario where, after four decades, many of the key witnesses are still alive, or have appeared previously on camera to record their testimony. The body of evidence suggesting that something did indeed occur in the small town of Point Pleasant between 1966-67 is nothing short of staggering; but could it have had a further-reaching effect that did spawn fodder for urban legends, thus associating reports of winged beasts the world over with foreboding disasters? Or, as strange and remote as the possibility may be, could more of these “Mothmen” actually exist in some enigmatic form, for the purpose of warning us of future disasters?

Strangeness from Virginia

Another one of those stories that will need a little more looking into, especially the Men In Black part (of which I’m going to be posting about soon):

Point Pleasant, West Virginia

Mothman and all the bizarre activity and high-strangeness that accompanied it back in the late 1960s put Point Pleasant on the paranormal map. Although things seem to have calmed down in Point Pleasant in recent decades, the Mothman event, chronicled by John Keel in his book The Mothman Prophecies (which later became a film), stands as one of the most peculiar and multi-layered episodes in the annals of paranormal phenomena. So many odd things were taking place that a list of them looks like an entire season of “The X-Files”:

• Sightings of the Mothman creature itself by more than than 100 witnesses – a tall, headless beast with glowing red eyes and huge bat-like wings.
• UFO sightings.
• Men-in-black appearances. Arriving black cars, these weird men mumble codes and bits of strange languages. They try to drink jelly and have difficulty using knives and forks.
• Phantom phone calls.
• Electrical disturbances to such devices as TVs, telephones and a police radio.
• Eerie predictions and spontaneous prophecies, some of which were oddly out of sync.
• Missing time.
• Animal mutilations.
• Mental telepathy.
• Strange coincidences and repeating numbers.
• A missing, possibly dead dog.

Creatures that have little or no explination

Another subject that fascinates me is cryptids…creatures or animals that are not categorized in any conventional manner. Amongst many, many of the cryptids that have been showing up all over the web and in regular news print less than recently is the subject of the Mothman. As fantastical as the Mothman may sound, one of my personal theorys is that just maybe this creature is a true alien type beaing that had either found its way here via some type of transportation (a UFO) or perhaps it had been brought here accidently by some type of rip in the fabric of the space/time continuum. Yes, I know how borderline crazy that sounds, but just maybe there is some truth to it.

All of those bizarre stories that were told about over the last 120 some odd years about people just vanishing in thin air, some right in front of other peoples faces, others where the footprints were found and those footprints just stop in the middle of nothing. Now given the fact that our universe is larger than one can perceive, and knowing that the proven fact is that we’re one amongst millions and millions of other galaxies…how could it be that we are the only inhabited planet in this vast universe? Not a chance I say! I say that on pure faith alone. So yes, the Mothman could be some kind of alien semi-sentient beaing that found its way here by accident or by purpose. A brief explanation of the Mothman is as follows…

In “1966 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, after a large number of UFO sightings, this mysterious creature was sighted.  The creature is described as 5 to 7 ft tall, gray in color, winged and headless, glowing red eyes on it’s torso.  The creature was seen flying across the sky at speeds estimated at 100 mph.  As it flies by it emits a high pitch shrieking sound.  The deaths of small animals and pets have been attributed to this creature.”

Being winged, it perhaps suggests it had came from an environment that might be anything from jungle type to maybe traditional forest setting where the winged attribute is needed for various functions as well as being an evolutionary attribute. The headless comment suggests that due to this perhaps evolutionary aspect, this more compact body type was/is needed to almost streamline its efficiency in hunting. No extra mass means better response times, or just that its particular species developed that way. The glowing red eyes almost certainly suggests an low light type of setting or nocturnal in nature. As for the high rates of speed…as with birds, the hollow bones for having efficient flight capabilities sounds fitting here. The more interesting part of this as people have witnessed this creature as having done, was to emit a high pitched shrieking sound. A form of radar, as bats do to locate their prey etc.?

The last confirmed sighting was back in 1966, and since not much of any credible reports were made about any other sightings after that year, it appears that the Mothman had just disappeared from the face of the planet. Hm, maybe the mothership picked the Mothman up from a picnic trip here to Earth? lol. No one knows.  Seriously though, perhaps this creature had died due to not having an environment to live in that was compatible? Maybe it was captured by some private collector and kept a secret? There’s no one good answer so far. But the whole idea of some exotic , other-wordly creature is fascinating. If this creature was really some semi-sentiant creature from another planet/dimension so on and so forth, than the first witnesses had truly been the first to have contact with a real alien life form and prove that what others like Micheo Kaku, physicist, who claim that life is indeed teeming throughout our universe, were right all along.