August 3rd UFO in Forest Grove, OR

August is Perseids Meteor Shower month and being fans of this, my wife and I while camping out in our backyard with our kids, niece, and nephew, kept an eye on the night sky. Being August 3rd it wasn't the peak of the event, but pretty close so we occasionally would catch a glimpse of one of the Perseids. Hiding amongst the shooting stars and the non-shooting one were also the occasional satellite and plane. Satellites and planes are always easy to tell apart because satellites have no blinking lights and planes do and may also be accompanied by noise.

We had seen several satellites and planes by the time the event occurred. My wife had asked me if something was a satellite then immediately said "Looks like a beam just came out of it." Promptly I turned around to see what she was talking about. What I saw resembled a high level plane or satellite, and I figured it was the later because there wasn't a normal blinking light of a plane. I followed it visually to the northwest and was about to dismiss the beam my wife saw as nothing but some fluke when suddenly it flared up a brilliant white/blue in color. It was so bright that I almost thought it had turned towards us, but it faded back to the same faintness as before as it continued on the same trajectory it had been on. Once more it repeated the flare up, but not quite as bright (probably because it was slightly farther away) and I began to walk toward the front of my house which faces roughly north, trying to keep a visual on it. As it neared the limit of my view from the front yard it did the flare up once again and then disappeared from my sight. 

There was no noise accompanying the object, it never wavered from it's course, and there was no regular time between the flare ups. Any lingering thought of it being a satellite I've wiped from my mind, and I have no doubt that it was not a plane. Closest thing that I'm able to compare it with is the way I've seen some meteors flare up in video footage, but this was moving way to slow to be one, and had no trail coming off of it. 

Immediately after the sighting I reported it to the Mutual UFO Network or MUFON for short, in the hope that someone else might find our sighting in their database that may have seen what we saw. 

Triangular UFO seen in Portland

Well the first reported Oregon UFO sighting of October has been posted over at MUFON . Again this one reportedly contained multiple eyewitnesses (hopefully more come forward) and was of an apparent triangular object. Full account of sighting can be read here: Triangle UFO, three gray lights underneath moving west to east

Was there a giant cephalopod in Devil's Lake?

I've always wondered why Devil's Lake in Lincoln City, Oregon was called Devil's Lake and now thanks to the book Spooky Oregon by Se Schlosser I now know. It would seem that in the lake there may have been, at least according to Native American legend, a tentacled monstrosity. To verify this legend, I did a search and sure enough it's a real one, and seems to share similarities with tale about a Devil's Lake in Wisconsin.

The short story as for as the Oregon one goes is that the Siletz Indian tribe centuries ago used to really like of the area of Devil's Lake. Then one night when a group of warriors was dispatched across the lake, massive tentacles burst forth from the waters destroying the canoes. The warriors where then flung around, beaten against the water and debris, and died from drowning or injury. From then on the lake was called Devil's Lake.

The lake itself was formed around 14,000 BC, but remains connected to the ocean via a 120ft river. At it's deepest goes down about 22ft. The lake's salinity I'd assume is freshwater since it has fresh water fish living there. However given that there is such a short river (shortest in the world apparently) connecting the ocean to the lake, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's somewhere between fresh and brackish...who knows. Anyways cephalopods (squids, octopi, and nautiluses) are not supposed to be able to survive in freshwater (excepting a species of squid that is able to survive in brackish water) and yet those are the only things with tentacles that I think would match the description of the offending monster. Reports have circulated around the world however of chance encounters with cephalopods that appear to be living in freshwater, some apparently have even attacked people.

Assuming that by some chance the legend indeed tells of an encounter with some unidentified cephalopod what type could it be? I think the giant and colossal squids are dead in the water in this case (no pun intended) due to the lake's depth being to shallow for creatures of their size. Perhaps it was some other semi-largish squid, yet I don't feel a squid could attack the way the one in the story given their body shape in general. That leaves us with the octopus (because nautiluses are totally out of the question since they don't get really large at all) which I think could attack in such a manner much easier then a squid.

Now the Giant Pacific Octopus is the largest known octopus and actually lives here in the Pacific Northwest. It can survive in a variety of depths, but does not the reach a size in which it can trash canoes, excepting of course it wound up in one. So maybe it was an unknown octopus of large size capable of surviving in semi-fresh water despite the fact cephalopods generally can't. Or perhaps the more likely scenario is that it was an fluke accident that the octopus grew to such large size to begin with, with conditions in Devil's Lake being just right for it to thrive in spite of what we know about cephalopods. Either way, it's all fun conjecture until all this talk about tentacled beasties gets someone eaten by a Cthulhu spawn.

Modified from a picture originally taken by someone from NOAA.

Sources and Further Reading:
History & Legend
Welcome to Lincoln City, Oregon

Also be sure to check the links throughout the post, especially the book I mention in the beginning!

What happened in Caronia, Italy in 2004?

Oregon is now well on it's way into summer with the daily temperatures now reaching into the mid 80s. Now, ordinarily that doesn't bug me one bit, but here in my section of Oregon it gets humid and uncomfortable during the summer months, only getting worse as they drag on. Bizarrely this time of year in Oregon, everyone loves. They spend all winter complaining about the rain, or in the case of this last one, the snow, but love it when they are able to go outdoors without coats or umbrellas during the summer. However, this is accompanied by "Oh it's such a nice day, but to hot." which in my opinion completely defeats the concept of "Nice day." All that pales in comparison though to what happened in the early months of 2004 in Caronia, Italy, where for no apparent everyday items would catch fire.

At first they were electrical items and many began to search for reasons, such as power surges. However the phenomenon, as reported by some witnesses, even affected items that were not plugged into walls, including unplugged items, battery operated items, and possibly even standard non-electrical furniture.

Throwing another twist into it all cars and cell phones began having issues as well. In particular, car alarms would go off for no reason, or as reported in one case, the engine turned on when all the doors were locked and no one was in it. And all incidents ranging from the fires to the unusual car and phone behavior only seemed to occur when people were present to witness it.

So what was happening there in Caronia? No one really knows. Many blamed it on supernatural causes, such as demons or aliens. Others thought some bizarre natural phenomenon such as electric charges released from the Earth. And some thought someone was playing a game with Tesla style inventions. Till this day however no satisfactory answer has been found.

Sources and Further Reading:
Investigating Mysterious Fires in Italy - Unknown Country
Spontaneous Fires Break Out in Italy UPDATE: It Happened Before - Unknown Country
Caronia - Wikipedia
The mysterious fires of Canneto Di Caronia - Everything2

Mysterious Feline in Lincoln City

This wasn't originally what I was going to post today, but I figured I'd share it before the memory fades to the back of my mind again. It's also one of those experiences that unfortunately did not happen to me, so I can't substantiate much more then assuming that my family was telling me the truth.

About ten years ago we were staying at my grandparent's condo in Neskowin, OR, when my mom and my brother decided to take a trip into Lincoln City, just south of Neskowin on Interstate 101. Upon reaching the city, they took a short cut along NE E Devils Lake Rd, which goes along Devil's Lake obviously. Being a coastal community, this section of Lincoln City is only contains scattered houses and wilderness, the main part of the city being located almost mainly along Interstate 101.

Somewhere along their way to the factory outlet stores that lie on the other end of NE E Devils Lake Rd, my mom and brother saw what they took to be a mountain lion. There was one odd thing about it however. They described as being very dark, which may have been partly due to the amount of shade from the trees that hang over the road, but they insisted it was very dark and not just the shade.

From their description the only things I could figure was that it was either a large black dog that they thought was a large feline, or perhaps it was a mountain lion in in the shade. However, there are two other possibilities, which although unlikely may perhaps have been the case.

The first is that it was a melanistic (black) mountain lion. Interestingly, melanistic mountain lions, from what I understand, have yet to be confirmed as being real. That doesn't mean they don't exist, just that they have yet to find one to confirm they do. Unlike the mountain lion however, both jaguars and leopards have confirmed melanistic variants. That of course opens up the possibility that someone in the area happened to have a black leopard or jaguar for a pet (Last I checked, those guys aren't native to Oregon.) that managed to get loose.

Like I said however, I did not witness it, and for all I know, it may have nothing more then a average mountain lion or perhaps someone's black lab that got away. If it was indeed a lab or other type of dog, well my family needs to learn their animals.