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. 

Two gnomes are better then one

My gnomes

Garden gnomes are one of my bad habits. I collect them, at least slowly. I currently have 5 that I have collected over the last couple years, but I have to say I like them a lot. Every time I go somewhere that just might have gnomes, I go on a search for them to see if I can get in one at a good deal. Usually they end up being on clearance or small sized ones, but that works fine for me since I don't have much room to decorate my desk with the larger ones.

One of the first things that comes to my mind when I look at my small, but growing collection is obviously the tales of Icelandic elves and hidden folk tales or the infamous "Argentina gnome" videos.

Having already discussed those rather tired subjects, I figured I'd share and interesting thing I heard from a former coworker. This also isn't one of those traveling gnome stories (from Travelocity got the concept for their Roaming Gnome) and it doesn't have anything to do with garden gnome liberationists. In fact it's more of a question about whether what my coworker said has any basis or not. As far as I can tell by what he said, it is technically an urban legend, either way it fits quite well here, so here we go.

Let's say you own only one garden gnome and well, you decide it's lonely and needs a friend, so you go out and purchase it one. You get home, introduce the two fluffy bearded friends, and go about your business. That night you hear weird noises in your garden or wherever you keep your gnomes. The next day you awake to find things out of place or even trashed. You figure your cat did and ignore it, but then happens again and again in the same area the gnomes reside. Deciding to catch the cat in action you place a camera the area so the culprit can be caught on film.

The next morning things are in disarray like always and you load up the video and watch it. What you see shocks you. Your two garden gnomes appear to come to life and mischievously fool around right before your eyes. Afraid due to the sheer strangeness of it all you dispose of your gnomes and life resumes it's normal course.

My coworker never actually had this happen and I've never found any reports of this happening before. He swore up and down though that if you place two garden gnome figures together that they would come to life at night and cause mischief. Whether he was pulling my leg or simply passing down an urban legend I don't know, but the idea is certainly interesting. Doesn't surprise me that he associated it with gnomes either; after all they are creatures of myth and not just lawn or desk ornaments.

What do you think, is it an urban legend? Or was he simply assuming I'm gullible enough to believe something he made up?

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

Freaky, Lovecraftian looking, super organism

Found this at The Pink Tentacle (go there to learn more on this critter)...creepy ain't it?

Atmospheric Beasts

I was checking out a post today at the blog Whales in Space (the name reminds me of the scene from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where a missile is turned into a sperm whale in the atmosphere of a planet, only to gain consciousness before it plummets to it's doom.) about a UFO that looked like a jellyfish that was seen in the UK, when suddenly I felt a massive shock inside my brain. Out of nowhere, a memory appeared, and I found myself thinking about giant jellyfish and other critters flying through the air, atmospheric beasts, or what I'll call atmo beasts for short.

Now the idea of atmo beasts has really been around quite awhile. Basically, their supposed to be large, somewhat normal looking animals, that just happen to be lighter then air. That of course means they can float, which they're able to achieve without any rum, and actually makes them seem quite odd, because well jellyfish are only supposed to be able to float in water. Bizarrely though, people in the past have reported such things.

An even freakier form of atmospheric beast appeared in Crawfordsville, Indiana in September of 1891. The creature was seen on two different days, and was seen by hundreds on the second one. Described as being 20 feet long and 8 feet wide, and propelling itself with sets of flippers, the image of an oriental style dragon, is almost conjured up.

So do such creatures exist in the upper atsmospehere of our planet? Who knows. You'd think with all the planes flying around, these things would be seen regulary. Of course seeing as you can't see into clouds, yet alone while in one (what do you think fog is?) perhaps they live in there. Or perhaps they're to blame for many UFOs that are seen as Ivan T. Sanderson, a famous researcher of the bizzare, theorized.

Sources and Further Reading:
The Cryptid Zoo: Atmospheric Beasts
Subversive Element: The Crawfordsville Monster
The Crawfordsville Monster - Wikipedia

A Thought on Reptoids

Using my mighty cognitive abilities I was able to deduce something today while watching some random bit of reptoid/dinosauroid (in case you forgot who they are here's a link to a previous post) info on youtube.

One of the many origin ideas toted around about the rumored race of reptilian overlords, is that they evolved from dinosaurs. A theory that was given more credence by the fact that a paleontologist actually thought that perhaps a certain species of dinosaur known as Troodon, would have evolved into a humanoid form if it had survived extinction.

Troodon you see was a member of the Maniraptora clade of dinosaurs, which were birdlike and even possesed feathers. Actually I believe birds are classfied as Maniraptora as well, however that may be wrong since I found that bit on wikipedia.

Anyways as I said, my cognitive powers gave me a bit of insight into the whole reptoid dinosaur origin idea; reptoids did not evolve from dinosaurs. Have you ever heard of a reptoid with feathers? I haven't. I've heard of them having wings, but dragon like ones as opposed to feathery bird like ones. Anyways lack of reptoid feathers means they're probably not dinosaurs.

Doing a Google search for reptoids with feathers I only come up with references to Quetzalcoatl who was some sort of Aztec God (As far as mythical Gods go, Odin is so much better. Sorry...a bit of Scandinavian/Germanic ancestry expressing itself...) serpent thing with feathers that apparently created man.

Now being the kind loving guy that I am, I figure I'll give the Earthly origins of reptoids another possibility. Maybe they are a type of evolved Maniraptora that somewhere along their evolutionary life lost their feathers, like humans got rid of their fur except that which is on our heads. Or perhaps they came from some even more primitive reptilian being from before the dinosaurs. After all many creatures before the dinosaurs were mammal like reptiles who were just as amazing as the dinosaurs and even modern day lifeforms.

Eh...who knows...although here's a video to make you all paranoid of the hidden reptilian presence...

Nightstalkers and Black Helicopters

The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) aka Night Stalkers or Task Force 160 and have been mentioned in a couple recent episodes of UFO Hunters on The History Channel. Besides some possible UFO connections these guys may also be responsible for many of the "black helicopter" reports out there.

Started back in 1980 after the hostage rescue failure in Iran, these guys specialize in night flying (explains the black paint jobs on their helicopters) at low altitudes. They are also trained to move in and get out quickly and were involved in some recent historical military missions, including the incident Blackhawk Down was about.

According to the Wikipedia page on these boys (the only women are staff) they fly three different helicopters and their variants, including the CH/MH-47 Chinook, MH-60 Blackhawk, and AH/MH-6 Little Bird. However besides looking good in black paint jobs, these guys may, as already mentioned, have connections to a couple UFO incidents that were covered on UFO Hunters.

The first incident is a famous and mysterious case involving 3 eye witnesses who saw a mysterious diamond shaped craft in the middle of a Texas highway. As they were watching the craft a group of large helicopters (possibly CH-47 Chinooks) surrounded the object and apparently escorted it from the area. All witnesses later began to experience what doctors could only diagnose as radiation sickness. The case is now known as the Cash-Landrum (Wikipedia and Tinwiki) incident (named after the witnesses) and is one of the most mysterious in UFO history. It's also worthy to note that this incident occured in 1980, when the Night Stalkers were first formed. Whether or not the helicopters seen where from the Night Stalkers is not known for sure.

The other incident involves a crash of a mysterious object in Needles California on March 14th, 2008. Initially it appeared it was a meteorite, but shortly after the crash not only were black military helicopters seen (retrieving the object none the less) in the area, but planes that fly people to Area 51 were present at a nearby airport in Laughlin. So not only do we have the Area 51 connection, but also black helicopters which are possibly part of Task Force 160 (as mentioned in UFO Hunters) which has a battalion based north of California in Fort Lewis Washington. Interesting if I do say so myself...wonder what they recovered...

Anyways, for those who haven't checked it out, I highly recommend catching UFO Hunters on The History Channel which is quite possibly the best UFO show out there. Also here is some reading material I dug up on the Needles Crash:
UFO Crash and Retrieval at Needles California - About.com
Did a UFO Crash in Needles California Earlier this Summer? - Alien Seeker News

Ancients in the Grand Canyon

One of the most memorable scenes out of the Indiana Jones series is the final one from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they Ark is packaged up and put into storage in a miles long underground facility beneath the Smithsonian. Now what if, just by chance, the Smithsonian had such a facility, or partook in other nefarious activities just to keep our standard views on history the standard. Believe it or not, they may have done just that.

The Grand Canyon is one of the worlds greatest tourist destinations. Over 277 miles long and at points as wide as 18 miles, the Grand Canyon is a sight to behold and is full of areas the public gets to see, as well as areas it doesn't. Heck even employees of the National Park service don't always get to see some parts of it. It makes some sense at least. You of course have dangerous rapids mixed up amongst the rock formations, sheer cliff faces, and probably areas of unstable rock. No wonder people don't visit some parts of it and why they are off limits to the public. Of course there couldn't be something in those off limit areas that they don't anyone to know about could there?

In April of 1909, the Arizona Gazette ran a story with the title “Explorations in the Grand Canyon” in which it is mentioned that one G.E. Kinkaid had discovered a series of ruins within some of the many caves dotting the Grand Canyon. This series of ruins not only showed connections with the Ancient Egyptians, but they also happen to lie in one of todays many off limit areas.

As the article continued, it is mentioned that a group of archaeologists from the Smithsonian led by an S.A. Jordon had just begun excavating the ruins. Now this is where the funny stuff starts. Not only were the rumored ruins found within a current off limit area, but those who have contacted the Smithsonian about the excavation, even in our day and age, have all been told that no such ruins were ever found. Making things even more confusing, the Smithsonian claims that an S.A. Jordan never worked for them, and it seems that the original discoverer of the ruins, G.E. Kinkaid never existed.

Now this of course would pretty much narrow it down to two options, either the article was fabricated, as some papers often did back in the day, or the Smithsonian has been hiding something for nearly a century. Clearly it was a hoax right? Well let's look at it from the point of view that any Egyptian artifacts being found as far away as North America, would be a major find. Not only would we have proof that they could travel farther then once thought, but it'd also rewrite the history books, which means that Columbus is no longer the first to find North America!

Big no no right? Well seeing at it took modern historians forever to accept that the Vikings beat Columbus to North America by 500 years, I would say so. Heck admitting that the Egyptians had reached the Americas back in their glory days now would mean that Columbus was not only 3rd to find North America, but the Egyptians did it first thousands of years before both Columbus and the Vikings. Big change for those who have accepted our current historical standard.

Conspiracy or not though, you have to admit, the whole setup is rather odd, and the Smithsonian does have a lot of power and some rather curious goings on, even now at days. I seem to recall reading last night that they don't even let anyone (even the press) know about what goes on during the meetings between it's heads and what not, almost as if they are trying to hide something...something that may just change the way we look at the world.

Sources and Further Reading:
I highly suggest that those interested should read more into this, there a lot that I didn't cover that is really interesting and much more revealing...

Egyptian Artifacts in the Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon Egyptian Connection
Lost City at the Grand Canyon
The article in from the Arizona Gazette

A Monkey and man named Jack

Mass hysteria has been blamed for countless weird events over the centuries. Recently it was blamed for sightings of a “Monkey Man” in India, who apparently randomly attacked people over a period of a few days in May 2001. There were even confirmed animal bites by the 4ft to 5 1/2ft tall Monkey Man.

After a few days of panic caused by this Monkey Man, who was described as either a naked man sized monkey or a man sized monkey wearing a helmet and jumpsuit with glowing red eyes, no more reports came in. That is of course if you don't believe that he boarded a plane to Moscow. I doubt any sane Monkey Man would do that when he could have just as easily hopped over to neighboring Tibet to chill with the Dalia Lama. It's what I would've done, either way though, the authorities wrote it off as mass hysteria, case closed, except for two brief appearances in 2002 to keep his fans happy.

All monkey business aside however, a even more interesting case of possible mass hysteria spread through Victorian era England. Instead of a jumpsuit wearing helmeted monkey however this was a man, devil, or perhaps some dashingly brilliant scientist guy from the future trying to act out his steampunk fantasy. I am of course talking about the awesomely named Spring Heeled Jack.

Jack made his first appearance sometime in 1837 hopping over a cemetery wall, afterward landing in front a passer by who described him as appearing muscular and devil like.

Later on in October, Spring Heeled Jack made his second appearance. Feeling a bit amorous Jack decided to accost a young woman. Immobilizing her, he began to kiss her neck and face while ripping her blouse and feeling her flesh with his claws that felt “cold and clammy as those of a corpse.”

He apparently enjoyed scaring the ladies, and continued with this activity. Also one for showing off, he would commonly leap in front of oncoming carriages when going after a victim. This of course caused even more chaos when he appeared, spooking the carriage drivers who would often wreck, while Jack jumped over or onto (the behavior that earned him his name) walls that were 9ft or higher, cackling like a true madman.

Another difference between India's monkey menace and Spring Heeled Jack was that Jack never fully disappeared. Sightings and encounters with Jack continued on into 1938 and even later, becoming even more bizarre as his presence remained. In two cases he even had flames coming out of his mouth, while wearing something that in this day and age would be considered “kinky”. He was also apparently bullet proof and to make things even crazier, the key suspect, the Marquis of Waterford, married and moved to Ireland, all while the sightings continued in England.

Eventually with all the media coverage, Jack became something of a folkloric character, as well as a villain and a hero in the Penny Dreadfuls, which were Victorian Era pulp fiction magazines. He was even used in place of the Devil in some plays at the time and was cited as a possible cause for the “Devil's Footprints” which appeared in Devon England. Eventually, just like the Monkey Man, he was written off as nothing more then mass hysteria, thanks in part to the media. However, on occasion, similar characters have made their appearance across the world, including Texas, Czechoslovakia, and of course in jolly old England.


Sources and Further Reading:
Monkey-man of New Delhi - Wikipedia
Monkey Man on CNN article 1 & article 2
Spring Heeled Jack - Wikipedia
Spring Heeled Jack - The Shadowlands
The Legend of Spring Heeled Jack - The Cobra's Nose

A slightly twisted look at alien abduction...

I was trying to do this nice serious sounding post on alien abduction, but I was failing rather miserably, so I’m just going to wing it, simply because it’s more fun that way. Not to mention I’m goofier when I wing it. I don’t know why exactly, but it probably has something to do with the utter madness holding my brain together like dark matter does for the universe.

First off, I love the subject of alien abduction. There is just something oh so scary, yet utterly weird that draws me to it. Also that weird alien dream I had years ago doesn’t help. Of course if I really wanted to get farther into it, I could trace it back to when I was 6 or 7 years old. You see when you’re a wee little impressionable young lad and your father happens to let you watch a show on alien abduction…well it just sort of scars you for life, except in my case where the cogs in my wee little kid brain turned and said “Groovy.”

Now let’s see where do I begin on this…well I’ll just assume that most of you all know the standard alien abduction scenario, so I’ll skip right over the whole being involuntarily taken aboard a flying saucer bit, where they strap you down, do weird intrusive medical procedures, hyper stimulate your emotions, then try to block you from ever remembering the event. Wait…I just described it didn’t I? Oh well…move along nothing to see here…

Ok so as it goes, the average person pretty much thinks those of us who believe in such phenomena are nuts. In my case you’re probably right (hey I did make a snow angel with no shirt on), but most others, especially the victims of the phenomenon, I must defend and say they are far from kooky, nuts, or any other mean spirited, overall jerk type of thing them skeptic people like to say. After all, how on earth can so many people share the same delusion as the skeptics would have us believe? It just makes no sense the way they try and pass it off as being one big hoax or illusion, which isn’t very groovy.

One of the most interesting parts of the whole abduction thing is that the aliens don’t hate lawyers. Why? Who knows, but the point is they’ll abduct just about anyone and everyone no matter what race, religion, disease, career, or credit rating you may be or have. It’s nice to know that at least someone out there is truly equal opportunity, even if they aren’t from our world. Not to mention that with the whole anti-discrimination stance of these aliens, they manage to abduct a lot of credible people who are far from being nuts or kooks. Most of these people have way too much riding on their professional careers and probably wouldn’t want their bosses to consider them weird unless it was at a company Halloween party, or if they knew for sure something weird did happen to them.

Now this is the part that I think straight up eliminates half of the options that the skeptics throw out there for abduction causes. Seizures, sleep paralysis, hallucinations, dreams, etc…they do not, no matter how dedicated they are, hold up to the fact that you can be abducted just about anywhere. People have been abducted from their cars, their beds, while camping, and even when rowing a boat. Oh, and I forgot to mention that in some cases, more then one person was abducted. So if you can explain to me why more then one person would suddenly have random sleep paralysis episodes while driving down the road, be my guest. I’ll lock you up and call you crazy for even trying to explain it. Don’t even get me started on what the chances are on a group of 3 or 4 people suddenly all having…oh never mind, I’ll just confuse everybody…

Anyways, the point of this post is that I really believe that there is something to the alien abduction phenomenon. There is just too much in common with all the different accounts for them all to be fake. Plus if aliens are willing to abduct you from more then just your home, you can’t just blame it all on bad dreams like them nutty skeptics. That to me is proof in itself…

Green skinned women and other strangeness of the Hollow Earth

So you know that story, by that guy, where they go into that hole in the ground and like go to the Earth’s core or something? You know, Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth? Well if you don’t, I pretty much gave away the gist of the story there, although I didn’t mention that they find dinosaurs and an entire human civilization there. Long story short, the Earth is hollow in Verne’s classic story and believe it or not, some believe till this day that it really is hollow. That’s right some people really believe the Earth is hollow. In general there are about two different Hollow Earth theories. One of them states that the Earth is riddled with massive inter connected caverns, but for this post I’m going to focus on the more entertaining version; one where the Earth is fully hollow and contains an inner sun that helps sustain civilizations on the inner side of the crust.

What is that? It’s crazy? Well maybe, but that’s all a matter of opinion. Crazy or not however, the Hollow Earth theory makes for some fun reading. There are some aspects of it that are just as imagined as any fantasy world (Note: subterranean civilizations can be common in fantasy and sci-fi) created by authors over the last century or so. Also, what’s not entertaining about a theory that the Earth is hollow and filled with either, green skinned women, Nazis, reptoids, aliens, ape men, prehistoric throwbacks, lost civilizations or variations there of? It’s just simply fun. It’s like reading the pulp fiction stories of old, but with the very slim chances that some of it might be real.

Seeing as there is a wealth of concepts and theories surrounding the Hollow Earth theories, I'm really only going to stick with a couple of the most common beliefs and theories surrounding it.

First off we have the connection to the famous explorer Admiral Byrd. Supposedly he wrote a diary during his expeditions to the Antarctic in which it is claimed that he went to the so called Hollow Earth. This theory is only really toted by author and publicist Raymond W. Bernard, although some people still follow it today. Raymond apparently took so fully to the Hollow Earth theory however, that it killed him (At least he died doing something he enjoyed, always a plus!) while searching for entrances to it in South America. He was also one of the first people to claim that UFOs come from the world below.

Next we have the Nazi connection, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; those pesky Nazis seem to have been into everything. Anyways, as theory goes, the Germans had discovered an entrance to the Hollow Earth in Antarctic waters, which they promptly escaped to at the end of WWII, with or with out Hitler. According to some groups they live on there till this day plotting to take over the world. Although I believe they probably went there for the green women. After all, Nazis have to have fun too and of course after a loss like theirs, they were probably in need of something to lighten the mood.

For the last bit, I bring in the reptoids. Yep, them scaly buggers from one of my earlier posts, who are also purported to live in the Earth’s hollows, whether it’s the fully hollow version, or the large cavern pocketed one. The main theory here is that they are either dinosaur descendants that survived in subterranean dwellings or they came from space. In the end they pretty control everything on Earth through various means, but dwell mainly below ground. Whatever though, it’s just more strangeness to add to the Hollow Earth theories floating around and is no more probable then the Nazis frolicking with Admiral Byrd and them delightful green skinned women. Oh, and don’t bother asking me anything about the green skinned women, I can’t remember how in the world they’re involved in this Hollow Earth shindig. There’s not much info on that bit, but hey, they make great comedic material don’t they?


Sources & Further Reading:
Hollow Earth - Wikipedia
Hollow Earth, Subterranean Civilizations, Agartha - Crystalinks.com
Our Earth is Hollow!
The Hollow Earth - Fact or Fiction?
Hollow Earth - Tinwiki