A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week.
Loch Ness monster believers may have a reason to cautiously celebrate with the revelation from Josh Gibbens that he found three letters sent to his grandfather, Lewis Taylor, who served in World War II on board the HMS Ocean Swell laying anti-submarine nets in Loch Ness; the letters, all sent in May 1967, were from David James of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau; the first read, ““Dear Sir, in May or June 1941, HMS Ocean Swell and HMS Norbreeze apparently had an exciting experience when some sort of unknown sea serpent got entangled in the anti-submarine nets and was partially hoisted out of the water before the gear gave way. If you have any recollection of this incident or could describe this incident or could describe the creature – size, shape, colour, texture, etc, I would be most grateful for it.” The second thanked Tyler for completing a questionnaire, and the third was a follow-up from James that his help “will prove most useful to me in my researches”. Tyler died in 1975 without sharing with his family any details of his experience with a ‘sea serpent’ or what he told the investigators. The letters about the monster must be authentic – the photos are blurry.
The US Space Force has been in existence since 1029, which is enough time for it to have conspiracy theories, scandals and a whistleblower who is revealing the sordid details; the whistleblower is Space Force veteran Jim Shell who wrote on social media that “There is a security control system within U.S. National Security Space fostering abuse and interfering with critical missions”; while he claims to have tried to resolve this problem from within, his lack of success has forced him to go public about this powerful, secretive “control structure” which acts above the chain of command, embezzled funds and concealed an alleged connection to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) programs; that there is a connection between these activities and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena; Shell revealed an “unclassified document” he wrote and submitted to the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office in 2022 which he says will protect him from retaliation because “It’s in their interest that nothing happens to me”; Shell hopes revealing these allegations will trigger a full-scale investigation within the Department of Defense of this illegal and secretive takeover. Meanwhile, the aliens watch and shake their large heads.
I thought I told you to stay in the filing cabinet.
Harvard professor and astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s investigation/obsession into the upcoming arrival of interstellar comet/spaceship 3I/ATLAS with his recent speculation linking it to the famous “Wow! Signal” detected on August 15, 1977, by The Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope and thought by many to have the potential to be a signal from extraterrestrial intelligence, while those looking for a scientific explanation think it came from an interstellar cloud created by a magnetar (a highly magnetized neutron star); Loeb notes in a new article that the “Wow! Signal” originated from the sky coordinates of Right Ascension (RA)=19h25m=291 degrees and Declination (Dec)=-27 degrees, which on August 12, 1977, just a few days before the 72-second WOW! signal was detected, 3I/ATLAS was in a part of the sky very close to where the signal came from; according to Loeb, it was “separated by approximately 4 degrees in RA and 8 degrees in Dec from the direction of 3I/ATLAS”; Loeb compares the power needed to send the Wow! to a nuclear power plant and speculates that “3I/ATLAS could be a spacecraft powered by nuclear energy”. Doesn’t he have any classes to teach this semester?
Intrepid armchair Loch Ness Monster hunter Eoin O’Faodhagain submitted another sighting which he describes as 17 feet long, five feet wide “large creature, brown-black in color, just breaking the surface, creating a strange circular movement”; O’Faodhagain was watching the webcam feed from the Clansman Hotel and its size caught his attention because “There are no known creatures in the loch that are that size” so obviously he thinks “it could be one of the Nessie family” he says the video shows something moving “in a swirling movement, for 2 minutes, and causes disturbance in a one area, surrounded by calm waters, in dry fine weather conditions”; O’Faodhagain compares it to a video from 1992 which he saw on a documentary called The Secrets of Loch Ness” that showed “an object in the water that was moving in a circular manner also”. Based on this, do hunters need to be looking for a somewhat dizzy creature?
A video making the rounds in Colombia shows what the uploader describes as what they saw while traveling in the middle of the night on the Balsillas-Neiva highway in Huila – a “strange creature with human features that walked in an odd manner”; an occupant of the vehicle recorded the being with a cell phone and the video quickly got attention from both local and social media; while many commenters considered it to be a CGI hoax, a small boy or a monkey, anomalies like this in Colombia always turn speculations to the nahual or nagual – a shapeshifting creature from indigenous folklore in both South and Central America; no one has a definitive answer and the witnesses continued on their way without stopping. It seems the videos of alleged shapeshifters are generally more shifty than shape-y.
If Bigfoot get old like humans, then there should be reports of them walking slowly and stoop-shouldered, possibly with a stick for a cane, or at least looking elderly – which is what a witness claimed to have recorded in a forest in Vancouver, British Columbia; the video uploaded to social media by @ncsquatchwatch is captioned: “White Elderly Bigfoot on Camera Making Tree Structure in Vancouver Wilderness!” and appears to show (in typically blurred fashion) what looks like a greying hairy face peering through the trees; it is difficult to tell if the Bigfoot, bear or costumed person is building anything from the short clip, so no many commenters had anything positive to say – one alluded to an interview with “the husband of the wife who took the video. They were hiking together on Vancouver Island (if I remember correctly). NOTHING was stated about the subject building anything”. While this video offers scant proof, it should generate thoughts on why we rarely (if ever) see photos or videos of elderly Sasquatch – unless they’ve perfected hairpieces and fur coloring.
One would be hard-pressed to find a city more committed to a wide variety of cryptids than Weston, West Virginia, especially after it unveiled the town’s fourth huge cryptid statue in its downtown – the giant Bigfoot statue was made by local artist Spring Hull who led the design and construction of the Sasquatch using mostly recycled materials; the statue is standing in Holt Square and will be maintained by Weston’s Parks and Recreation department; the Bigfoot joins statues of Mothman and the Flatwoods monster; Hull explains the cryptid obsession in a local media interview: “Cryptids are a lot of fun. They are not copyrighted, so we can do fun things with cryptids. Bigfoot, Mothman, and Flatwoods monster are friendly cryptids; they’re not really scary, so in this community we are trying to bring more everyday art”. Not scary? That sounds like a clip ready-made for the Weston bureau of tourism.
We deserve our own museum.
Mexico rivals Great Britain in haunted buildings and Mexico City is a hotbed of them, adding yet another recently when Ildelisa Langrave (@ildelisalangrave) posted a video on TikTok of the mysterious sounds of mournful wailing in the Cathedral of Azcapotzalco in Mexico City, which was empty at the time except for the witness; built in 1565, the atrium of the church was the site of the final battle of the Mexican War of Independence and is still in use for services; another ghostly legend in the cathedral has to do with a red ant as its atrium was the site of the final battle in the conflict, which could have provided the spirits which may still be haunting the church. Has anyone checked for a stained glass window with a small pane missing and wind blowing through?
Shane Plane and his son Bradley were driving on September 10 near Point Moore in Geraldton, Western Australia, about 420 km (260 miles) north of Perth when they saw and recorded three or four lights in the sky that moved in various formations but most often in a triangle; they sent the recording to Matt Woods at the Perth Observatory who told local media he had already received multiple reports of lights at about the same time stretching from the coast to inland locations like the northern Goldfields in the outback; Woods did his due diligence – he checked for aircraft activity and found none; the Department of Defense said there were no military training activities in the area that night; the Mid West Ports Authority harbor master Heathcliff Pimento said the lights were caused by atmospheric refraction, which can make ship or fishing boat lights appear to hover, move and vanish – Woods points out that some reports were deep inland and too far from boats or water bodies to cause the refraction; he calls it a mystery but one he believes will be solved and looks forward to finding out the cause. Even if it’s aliens on a walkabout or flyabout?
After searching for two decades for the lost tomb of Cleopatra, Dominican archaeologist Kathleen Martínez announced her search led her away from Alexendria, where most Egyptologists believe the queen was buried, and instead to Taposiris Magna, an ancient harbor and temple complex about 30 miles west of Alexandria; Taposiris Magnais now 40 feet underwater but in its heyday it was also a religious center with a temple dedicated to Osiris, the god of death and resurrection; Cleopatra and Mark Antony died in 30 BCE following their defeat at the Battle of Actium and Martínez believes the queen had made arrangements to a secret burial beyond the reaches of Roman emperor Octavian; she must have thought the location was safe from natural disasters, but earthqkes eventually pulled it underwater; Martinez’s expeditions found coins bearing Cleopatra’s portrait, pottery, and mummies formerly covered in gold leaf she believes support her claim; however, she hasn’t found the body … yet. It’s too bad Elizabeth Taylor isn’t here to see which one was more beautiful.
From the ‘This could change everything’ file comes a study from China that a million-year-old human skull discovered in crushed pieces in Hubei province in 1990 and believed to be a member of the primitive human species Homo erectus is actually from a Homo longi or ‘Dragon Man’, which is an extinct species found in China that could be our closest relative and possibly closely related to the Denisovans; however, the recent reclassification of the skull known as Yunxian 2 may mean that the big split between our own ancestors, Neanderthals and Homo longi happened 400,000 years earlier than scientists thought and raises the possibility that our common ancestor and the first Homo sapiens arose in western Asia rather than Africa; Professor Chris Stringer, an anthropologist and research leader in human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London, says this: “We feel that this study is a landmark step towards resolving the ‘muddle in the middle’ (the confusing mishmash of human fossils from between 1 million and 300,000 years ago) that has preoccupied paleoanthropologists for decades”. While we’re still fighting among ourselves, this adds to the evidence that Asian erectus, homo heidelbergensis, homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Homo longi and the Denisovans all seemed to get along both communally and sexually.
Drones continue to plague planes, air traffic control and officials at airports around the world (Denmark’s Copenhagen Airport, Aalborg Airport and airports in the Danish towns of Esbjerg, Sonderborg and Skrydstrup are the most recent) and most of them believe the drones are controlled by either ignorant pranksters and hobbyists, domestic terrorists or foreign militaries; however, psychic spoon bender Uri Geller agrees with another group as he revealed in an interview – Geller thinks the drones are not from Russia but alien-controlled UFOs and governments know this but are covering it up from the public and even airports and pilots; Geller predicts more sightings in the coming months at “airports, cities and military bases worldwide” and warns that we should “watch the skies but don’t believe the lies’”. How about bending some drones, Uri?
Haunted houses usually mean something bad happened there once and now spirits stay there to torment the living, but they also mean big bucks to some owners, as the sellers of the Gardner Mansion in Massachusetts, better known as the S.K. Pierce Haunted Victorian Mansion, sold for a cool $1 million to a group that plans to continue to keep the house open as a paranormal investigation site and tourist attraction; the 10-bedrrom mansion was built 150 years ago by local businessman Sylvester Knowlton Pierce, who spent a fortune on hand-carved moldings and cornices and other elegant amenities; owners of the home have opened it to guests like President Calvin Coolidge, Minnesota Fats, Bette Davis, P.T. Barnum and Norman Rockwell, but the most famous guests are the ghosts; the spirits may be of a prostitute who was strangled in the home, a boarder who allegedly spontaneously combusted there, a young boy who drowned in the basement and other “dark entities” who torment modern inhaitants and guests with strange voices, apparitions, moving furniture, slamming doors, footsteps in the halls, temperature changes, foul odors, shadow people, and even a lion’s roar; that appealed Robert and Allison Conti who bought the house in 2015 for $325,000, renovated it and turned it into a tourist attraction that the new buyers will continue. As always, we should warn the owners to give the ghosts a cut of the revenue if they want to make a profit.
Location, location, location – and ghosts, ghosts, ghosts.
Tesla Monson and Andrew Weitz, professors of anthropology at Western Washington University, have published a paper in which they detail how the real human hobbits, Homo floresiensis, evolved their small stature and flourished on the Indonesian island of Flores from about 700,000 to 60,000 years ago; using wisdom teeth, which consistently have gotten proportionally smaller as brain size has gotten larger throughout human evolution for most species, they found this didn’t happen for the hobbits, whose brains stayed small as their wisdom teeth shrank; the team found that the hobbits “likely shrank from a larger-bodied Homo ancestor” as a result of “slowing down growth during childhood”; oddly, the hobbits showed bigger brains like humans while in the uterus; however, after birth, their growth slowed due to limited food availability on the island; the three-foot tall skeleton structure was then passed down by evolution and actually helped future generations survive; the team noted this is also why Flores was home to a species of dwarf elephants (Stegodon sondaarii) which the hobbits hunted; the study concluded that the hobbits and humans had a common ancestor were intelligent despite their small brain size. Small wisdom teeth also meant less work for hobbit dentists.
We mark the passing of Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, UN Messenger of Peace and world-renowned ethologist, conservationist, and humanitarian; the 91-year-old Goodall had a stunning 65-year career studying wild chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, while also fighting for human rights, animal welfare, species and environmental protection, and many other notable issues; she was known to the world of cryptozoology for her comments in a GQ interview where she described visiting a remote village in Ecuador and asked the people if they’d ever seen a monkey without a tail; she was surprised when “Three of the hunters came back and said, ‘Oh yes. We’ve seen monkeys without tails. They walk upright and they’re about six foot tall”; Goodall noted that “Every single country has its version. Yeti, Yowie in Australia, Wild Man in China. So I don’t know if it’s perhaps a myth that stems from maybe the last of the Neanderthals. But then, is the last of the Neanderthals still living in these remote forests? I don’t know. But I’m not going to say it doesn’t exist and I’m not going to say people who believe in it are stupid”. Thank you for your service, Dr. Jane Goodall.
NASA has long been the premier space agency when it comes to protecting the safety of astronauts, as seen in the movie, ‘Apollo 13’; the errors that caused the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters were found and reforms were put in place to prevent similar accidents in the future – and there have not been any such disasters since; unfortunately, that could change with the severe budget cuts of the current administration according to a report released by U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, of Washington and staff members for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation; the report, “The Destruction of NASA’s Mission”, the report states that “NASA whistleblowers have “already seen safety impacts” from the implementation of the President’s budget request; one whistleblower warns they’re “very concerned that we’re going to see an astronaut death within a few years” and “OMB’s Vought plans to use impoundment to gut NASA under a CR without guardrails, whistleblower docs show”; key points in the report include: “NASA Has Been Implementing the President’s Proposed Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Cuts Since Early Summer—In Clear Violation of the Constitution”, “Culture of Fear at NASA Jeopardizes Safety and Security”, “The Administration is Hiding OMB’s Budget Directives”, and “President’s Budget Cuts Will Kneecap the U.S. Innovation Economy”. Tom Hanks can’t save us from this one.
