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. 

Ghost child in the hallway

Trying to get back into blogging regularly is hard after having slowed down so much. It drives me insane because I want to get back into it so badly, but I have a hard time trying to get going again. As I type this I have several blog posts just waiting to be finished and published sitting on my hard drive, but I digress.

My main reason for writing this post is not to complain about my over abundance of blogging procrastination, but to share a tale of otherworldly proportions that happened roughly two weeks ago.

Our two story apartment, which is more town home than apartment, has a fairly large landing/hallway section upstairs. It's roughly 6x8 feet or within a foot or two of that and has three bedrooms and a bathroom on that floor.

On that night about midnight I woke up to my youngest daughter crying, so I got up and went into her room which is directly across the hall from mine, calm her down, close her door, and head back to my room. As I started to lay down I clearly saw a child about my sons height (3 1/2 to 4 ft) run from where my sons room is to the bathroom. Sitting up in bed I expected to see the bathroom light turn on and to hear my son using the facilities, neither of which happen and so I sat there perplexed for a second then proceeded to get up to check on him.

As I walked into the hallway I noticed that both my son's and daughters' doors are closed. Turning the light on in the bathroom and checking behind the shower curtain revealed no on in there. Upon checking both the my son's and daughters' rooms I find all three sound asleep.

Fearing a possible break in I decide to check downstairs where I find everything secure, with no intruders. At that point my wife and I are a bit freaked, but not horribly so. We've had other weird experiences here in our apartment which was built around 1979. While we don't think it is truly haunted we on occasion have heard sounds and seen other things that have no explanation. Usually we pass them off as typical apartment noises, thin walls and what not, but when you hear someone running down the stairs and see them run into your kitchen only to find nobody there, something strange is going on, but what exactly remains a mystery.

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

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

U-28 meets SuperCroc?

You know the routine where the lazy fisherman throws a large fire cracker or other explosive in the water causing all the fish within the explosion range to float to the surface? Well apparently it works in the ocean too. As a matter of fact it happened to German U-boat 28 (U-28) during WWI, and boy did something strange come to the surface.

The incident occurred to U-28 just after it had sunk a British steamer. Shortly after the steamer sunk beneath the surface it exploded sending nearby sea life flying into the air, including a large aquatic reptilian like creature. It as described as resembling a 60ft crocodile with 4 webbed feet.

Unfortunately for us, the U-boat's crew was unable to obtain photos of the monster crocodile, but at least they thought well enough to record it in the ship's log. Amazingly, they reported the incident as if it was just an everyday event as opposed to being astonished and raving on and on about. That not only makes the Germans seem good at training their Captains in log taking, but also lends a bit of support to their encounter.

As for the strange crocodile like beast? Well the only thing in the world that even resembles such a creature is the Mosasaurs or Pliosaurs of the Mesozoic era. These large aquatic reptiles closely resembled modern crocodiles, but were not related other the whole reptile bit.

The closest in length to the U-28 creature out of those two groups are the Mosasaurs. The largest of which was Hainosaurus which estimated to be 49ft long. Seeing as paleontology has and ever growing array of creatures being found though, I think it's worth mentioning the largest crocodillian ever found, Sarcosuchus.

Dubbed “SuperCroc” this guy would have been the same length as a bus. Thats means right around 37-40ft long. Seeing as the U-28 beast was described as crocodile like with webbed feet as opposed to flippers, maybe SuperCroc or a relative lives on today, or perhaps the U-28 witnessed the last fragment of a bygone era leave our world.

Sources and Further Reading:
U-28 Abomination - American Monsters
U-28 Creature - Unknown Explorers
Mosasaur - Wikipedia
Pliosaur - Wikipedia
Sarcosuchus - Wikipedia
Hainosaurus - Wikipedia

The Megalodon!

Here is one for my prehistory loving fans.

Carcharodon Megalodon, was the largest shark ever to exist. In fact the Megalodon probably could have swallowed a great white shark, plus some, whole, that's how large it was. While the overall size of this bad boy is still highly debated, it's estimated that it was at least 43ft long, or possibly even 60ft. One person, who mistakenly placed the wrong teeth into some spots on a jaw reconstruction, estimated 80ft, however, as I said he made a mistake. Turns out the shark was 150ft, and he wasn't to happy about the 80ft estimate, so he promptly traveled forward in time to eat the guy who made the mistake...ok...now I'm just totally making stuff up. Like I said, the real estimate lies between about 43ft to 60ft, depending on who you go with.

Now like all big groovy critters that once existed on this planet, the Megalodon went extinct, or at least it supposedly did some 1.5 million years ago. Now that's a long time, but considering that the Coelocanth supposedly died out some 65 million years ago, only to be discovered lounging along the coast of South Africa in 1938 while he was on vacation. Needless to say, a species that was supposed to be dead around 65 million years ago surviving into today is quite remarkable. Now look at the 1.5 million year estimate for the Megalodon and compare that to 65 million. That's about 63.5 million years difference, so I say the odds of Megalodon still existing today are actually quite good, or at least compared to say a dinosaur living today.

Let's see now, where would we find a Megalodon...oh perhaps Australia. Great waves, groovy accents, and the most venomous creatures in the world; yeah I'd be chilling there if I was a prehistoric shark. While there I'd also make sure to be spotted by the odd fisherman or two just to strike some fear into them. Oh heck, how about a bunch of fisherman like that incident in 1918 at Broughton Island. There a bunch of fishermen refused to go to sea for several days all because they saw a gigantic white colored shark. Now some of them were rather prone to exaggeration, so initial estimates of the length were 300ft, however some people not as prone to exaggeration gave the more reasonable length of 115ft or so. Maybe the 80ft estimate guy was correct...or it's a completely different monster shark. Either way, fishermen are used to seeing large sea creatures, so odds are whatever they saw was something big they've not seen before.

Now the story of a bunch of scared stiff fishermen probably isn't the best evidence out there, but well...um...it's some of the best evidence supporting the Megalodon's possible survival. If you wanted to look at it in more scientific terms you could go with the fact that the larger a predator is, the less of them there are. Also we know that large creatures like the Giant Squid, Colossal Squid, and Cthulhu, ok maybe not Cthulhu, exist in the ocean's depths and are so rarely seen that we thought they were just legend for a long time. So I guess what I'm saying is...there's a chance...a slim one, but a good one and that is what counts in the end.


Sources and Further Reading:
Megalodon - Wikipedia
Does Megalodon Still Live? - Elasmo-research
Does Carcharodon Megalodon Still Exist?
Could Megalodon Still Exist?

Note: The shark in the picture is a Great White and not a Megalodon...as far as I know, no real Megalodon photos exist, unless someone is hiding one out there...

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…

Kelly-Hopkinsville Kentucky 1955…NO WAIT DON’T SHOOT!

August 21, 1955 in Kelly-Hopkinsville Kentucky, one of the strangest events in UFO history occurred.

That evening around 7pm at the Sutton family’s farm, Taylor Sutton headed out to get some water from their well. When he came back inside he rambled on to his family and their visiting friend about how he saw a flying saucer land outside. No one believed him at first, but that all changed around 8 o’clock when the family dog started barking.

When Elmer “Lucky” Sutton and his friend Billy Ray Taylor went out to see what the commotion was they were greeted by a strange site. A creature standing about three and a half feet tall, in a silver metallic suit, with big pointed ears, glowing eyes, and clawed hands came out of the trees with it’s hands raised.


Now instead of assuming that this was a sign of peaceful intentions Lucky and Billy Ray did what any “good old country boys” would do and pulled their guns on the strange critter and shot it. This caused the creature to flip over and run back into the woods.
As they went to go follow it and see what it was, another creature reached down from the roof grabbing at them. They shot at this one as well and knocked him off the roof.

Retreating back into the house, they soon saw another creature peering in through a window. Again they shot, and things went on like this until about 11pm when they finally made a dash for their cars and went to the police.

In the end both the local police, the Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigated it. No evidence, other then bullet holes in their house was found. No dead creatures or signs of blood loss.

Both the Suttons and Billy Ray Taylor were deemed credible witnesses because no sign of alcohol or drug use was found. Although some people still insisted that they had moonshine that night.

The only possible reasons given for what the Suttons and their friend saw that night are rather lousy as well. Both of them are cases of mistaken animal identity, but don’t really fit the behavior of the aliens.

The first theory is that of an escaped circus chimp in a silver suit and the other is that perhaps they saw some great horned owls. Unfortunately, both these theories are shot down by the simple fact that, both these animals bleed and would leave bodies if shot dead.

Interestingly no one else has reported aliens matching the description of those that the Suttons saw. I wonder if perhaps they were scouts attempting to make peaceful contact, but unfortunately landed in a “shoot first, ask questions later" part of the world and deemed us to be a hostile species or perhaps to primitive. Let’s just hope that if it was a first contact event, they might possibly try again one day.

Also I wonder if this event helped inspire M. Night Shyamalan when he came up with his idea for Signs.

Sources & Further Reading:
Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter - Wikipedia
Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter - UFOcasebook
Kelly Green Men - TinWiki