The Relic: A Warning for the Unwary

Introduction

Our ancestors kept traditions for a reason. Culture does not tend to endlessly self-replicate without any meaning for the people who live within it. This raises the important question of why religious ritual has survived the ravages of the evolutionary process for (at least) tens of thousands of years if it is merely the product of mistaken conceptions of the world. The modern world is actually becoming more religious, not less [1]. Why? 

Cognitive evolutionary theorists and medical anthropologists seem to have the beginnings of an answer. Ritual works, and appears to be a natural response to something. 

According to Winkelman [2], the psychological impact of ritual is capable of producing physical healing through the placebo effect. This same psychological component produces strong senses of in-group solidarity, contributing to the formation of communities. Individuals with genes that predisposed them to dissociation and extraordinary experiences could've thus been more likely to survive than those without, and rituals were gradually developed that encouraged such experiences [3]. 

Kalweit [4] speculates that religions have their roots in unusual experience, and in experiencers trying to replicate the conditions that gave rise to their encounters through ritual.

What sort of experiences would give rise to ritual/religious behaviour? Shushan [5] convincingly argues that the spontaneous near-death experience may have been among them. Cutchin [6] highlights that a large percentage of those who apparently return from death find that they have developed extrasensory capabilities that they did not previously possess. They may have increased IQ, the ability to sense the thoughts of others or even to perceive apparitions. According to Vallee [7], similar strange developments take place in the lives of those who come into close contact with unidentified flying objects. 

It seems that psychological and social benefits would not be the only results of regular, ritualised contact with the unknown. 

If some forms of ritual (like shamanic trance) exist in response to the advantages gained from supernatural experience, then what can we say about rituals that developed to repel evil? If paranormal phenomena are the roots of religion, then perhaps a similar experiential basis exists for various taboos and prohibitions. After two decades of misfortune, Jim Hunter would likely agree that such taboos might've existed to protect us from something... 

The Discovery

Jim Hunter contacted paranormal investigator and prolific author Brad Steiger in the mid-1980s to report his ongoing experiences with entities that the latter came to label 'Deiform Spirits'. By Steiger's definition, these are spirit entities that "have congealed in certain places" they deem sacred [8]. Meddling with these places or taking things from them can anger these beings, with unpredictable consequences. 

Hunter's involvement with the Deiform Spirits began when he was just seventeen years old. His father worked for a large South Pacific import company, and so the family moved around frequently - but in 1967, the Hunter family was living in New Zealand. It was March of that year, just shortly after Jim's seventeenth birthday. He had gone on holiday to the isolated coastal town of "Kawhai" [9], and was swimming off the shore when he came across a smooth metallic object lodged between two boulders.

Wrenching the strange object out of its hiding place, Hunter saw that it was shaped like a flat oval, encrusted with algae and seaweed, and seemingly inscribed with some kind of strange symbology. It weighed roughly one pound. Intrigued, he took the item home and showed it to his father. 

Mr. Hunter figured that it was probably of Maori origin, and so encouraged Jim to show it to the local Maori community. After about two weeks, they told him that they had no idea what the object was [10]. 

Shortly afterwards, an ambiguous figure arrived on the Hunters' doorstep. He introduced himself as a journalist with the New Zealand Herald, and claimed that he had heard about the object from a Maori contact of his. He asked to examine the object, and concluded that it was "made of some kind of bronze alloy". The alleged journalist asked to take the object back to Auckland to run tests on it [11]. 

The Hunters declined, having already inquired about having a metallurgical analysis of the object done at a university in Christchurch. As far as Jim knows, these tests were never performed, and the object instead languished in a drawer for the next year before the family relocated to New York in May of 1968. 

When Jim went to retrieve it while packing his suitcase, he discovered that it had gone missing. He suspected someone he knew had stolen it, but he had to accept the loss given his limited time left in the country.

Scare Tactics

Amidst the bustle of Auckland International Airport, Jim found himself on his own while his parents bade goodbye to some friends. Two strange men approached him - described as "Polynesian types" - and identified themselves as being affiliated with New Zealand Inland Revenue. 

They asked if he was taking anything illegal out of the country, and despite their professionalism, Jim soon found them very intimidating. They asked specifically about "any relics, art objects, or the like". 

Despite his repeated denials of having any such objects, the pair were persistent. They eventually insisted that he come with them to a hotel room for a private baggage check. Frightened, Jim called his father over, who demanded to see their ID cards and asked why they couldn't simply check his son's baggage where they were standing. He got a nonsensical reply in return, and responded by calling for a patrolling constable. Finally taking the hint, the bizarre figures wordlessly "shuffled" away [12]. 

There were no further incidents until the Fall of 1968. By that time, Jim had enrolled in Columbia University for the freshman year of his undergraduate course. Shortly after the start of the term, a middle-aged man who claimed to be an Italian art dealer approached him. Predictably, this man had somehow heard that Jim had lived in New Zealand and wanted to know if he had brought any interesting artifacts home. 

Presumably starting to suspect that something was amiss, Jim told the 'art dealer' that he didn't have any relics. This didn't stop the man from approaching him two further times to ask the same question [13].

It was around this time that Jim discovered that three of his closest friends in New Zealand had been harassed by figures who seemed to be the same people he had encountered at Auckland airport. 

The letters his friends sent to him used words like "weird", "creepy" and "spooky" to describe the men. Apparently situations had escalated enough that the police had gotten involved, and one girl's life had been threatened. 

"You Have Acted Unjustly"

Jim transferred to Stanford University in 1970, and immediately after he had gotten a telephone installed in his new apartment, he received a bizarre and ominous call. An anonymous voice warned him never to return to New Zealand. 

A second call (from a high-pitched female voice) told him that he was being surveilled by a group that he had wronged by acting "unjustly" and "not returning things to their proper owners" [14]. 

Throughout his time at both Columbia and Stanford, he received over thirty mystery phone calls regarding New Zealand and the stolen artifact. 

In 1972, Jim was on holiday in San Francisco between graduate work and beginning a teaching career in the Sacramento suburbs. Just a few weeks before starting work as a teacher, he received another phone call to his hotel room. On the other end was a male voice, who said that he "had acted wisely by not returning to New Zealand".

Three days after he'd begun work at the school, a student he'd never seen before stopped off in his classrom. While this wasn't inherently unusual for obvious reasons, the child walked towards the blackboard and drew some strange symbols. Jim's heart dropped - these were the same markings that were on the object from Kawhai. The student asked Jim if he knew what they meant, to which he desperately insisted that he tell him where he'd seen them. 

Swiftly erasing the symbols and laughing, the student said that he had just been "fooling around" before making a rapid exit from the room. When Jim described the offending student to his colleagues, he was frightened to discover that nobody could identify him. He would never see the boy again [15]. 

After teaching at a high school level for four years, Jim was finally offered a teaching assistant position at a major university. He began his doctorate program in the Fall of 1976. Four days after starting at the university, someone rang his room and reprimanded him for theft. The voice from the other end of the line accused him of "acting unjustly" and demanded that he "should never take anything from where [he] found it". 

By the time Jim contacted Brad Steiger, the harassment was infrequent but still ongoing. 

Conclusion

Anthropologist Mary Douglas [16] describes taboos as being for "hedging divinity off" - protecting the supernatural from contact with the profane world, and protecting the profane world from chaotic contact with the supernatural. Supernatural disorder seems to act as a contagious agent according to Douglas, with those who break taboos spreading their misfortune to those they come into contact with. Ritual could almost be thought of as a form of quarantine. 

This reminds me of the descriptions given of visitors to 'window areas' such as Skinwalker Ranch being followed home by unwelcome supernatural guests [17]. This same terrifying effect was observed among Jim Hunter's close friends, who were harassed by the phantom strangers despite presumably not having had much contact with the mystery object. The hitchhiker effect - as this phenomenon has been called - will be the topic of an upcoming article. Watch this space. 

Bibliography

1. Sherwood, H. (2018) ‘Religion: Why Faith is Becoming More and More Popular’, The Guardian, 27 August.

2. Cited in Shushan, G. (2018) ‘Chapter Five: Interpretations, Implications, and Conclusions’, in Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 200–247.

3. Ibid. 

4. Kalweit, H. (2000) Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men. Boston: Shambala.

5. Shushan, G. (2018) ‘Chapter Five: Interpretations, Implications, and Conclusions’, in Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 200–247.

6. Cutchin, J. (2022) Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death & the Paranormal Vol One. Horse & Barrel Press.

7. Vallee, J. (2008) Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. San Antonio: Anomalist Books.

8. Steiger, B. (2007) ‘Chapter Nine: Sacred Places of the Deiform Spirits’, in Shadow World: True Encounters with Beings From the Darkside. San Antonio Tex.: Anomalist, pp. 192–216.

9. As far as I can see, there is no coastal town in New Zealand by this name. The location was likely the town of Kawhia on the country's North Island, probably misspelt by Steiger. 

10. Steiger, B. (2007) ‘Chapter Nine: Sacred Places of the Deiform Spirits’, in Shadow World: True Encounters with Beings From the Darkside. San Antonio Tex.: Anomalist, pp. 192–216.

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid. 

16. Cited in Hansen, G.P. (2001) The Trickster and the Paranormal. Philadelphia: Xlibris Corporation.

17. Lacatski, J.T., Kelleher, C.A. and Knapp, G. (2021) Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insider’s Account of the Secret Government UFO Program. 

 

The Flatwoods Seance

Looking up from the fog-shrouded fields of Braxton County, Tommy Hyer and Edward and Fred May saw a blinding light streak across the sky before apparently coming down on a nearby farm. It was September 12th of 1952, and the three terrified boys ran back to the May household to tell their incredible story. I imagine that most of this blog's readers will be familiar with what happened next. Accompanied by a local National Guardsman and two other children, the group ventured onto the farm - and were eventually met with one of the most bizarre beings ever recorded in the annals of UFO history: the now infamous Flatwoods Monster.

A Baffling Sequel

Twelve years later, it seemed that the Flatwoods Monster was not yet done with the human race. The strange story apparently transmitted to ufologist Gray Barker by its ill-prepared protagonists also seems to suggest that the entity involved with the 1952 events might not have been a material extraterrestrial, but rather some aberrant form from the spirit world.

Gray Barker's knowledge of the events was made public by Riley Hansard Crabb writing for the Borderline Sciences Research Foundation in 1967. Crabb had previously received a letter from the witnesses, but had not been in further contact with them until Barker investigated the case. Crabb's letter made it clear to him that the witnesses were college students who had picked up an interest in the flying saucer mystery, and had quickly concluded that the answer to said mystery lay in the metaphysical realm as opposed to outer space.

Norman Schreibstein and Ervin Vertleib lived somewhere in Pennsylvania, and they'd decided to establish a home-grown flying saucer observatory in Norman's home in early 1964. One of their first ventures into the ultraterrestrial world would yield far more dramatic results than many seekers could hope to receive after years of work. For reasons best known to themselves, they set their sights on establishing contact with the Flatwoods Monster. 

Contact!

Drawing used for the seance

To begin with, the boys elected to draw up a picture of the robot-like apparition on a large sheet of paper. They found a suitable model for this makeshift idol in the May family's witness sketches that had appeared in Gray Barker's Saucerian Bulletin. The drawing was stuck up on the wall of the observatory, the lights were turned out and the group all sat down the meditate. At this point, Schreibstein and Vertleib had been joined by individuals named Mark Kaplan and Patricia Morgan, as well as Norman's unnamed skeptical cousin. 

Upon sitting in the dark for roughly fifteen minutes, a light appeared above their heads in the room. The floating orb lazily circled the room. Another light briefly appeared and disappeared. Perhaps predictably, Schreibstein's cousin promptly fled the room. 

Showing boundless dedication, Vertleib reached out into the darkness. He felt a disembodied hand clasp his own and firmly shake it, as if in acknowledgement that contact had been successfully established. At this point, the group needed a way to properly communicate with the entity that was manifesting in their room - and they decided on a simple code for the floating light to follow - one circle for yes, two for no. 

Crabb doesn't say who was first to break the silence, but the first question they asked was whether the entity in question was the Flatwoods Monster. They received a single circle in response, signalling 'yes'. They next asked if the entity minded if they told others about their encounter, which was answered 'no'. The entity responded in the affirmative to a question on whether it was friendly, and then offered no firm answer when asked if it was limited to appearing at Norman's house. 

"If you are solid, give us some sign."

This final question was a mistake. This became clear to the group as the whole house started to violently shake, and deafening crashes were heard in the observatory room. In terror, someone flipped the room's light switch, causing the spiralling light to immediately vanish. Norman was appalled to see that his PA system and microphone had been smashed, and that the camera the group had been hoping to use to photograph the phenomenon had been thrown across the room and had had its lenses unscrewed. A model airplane had been broken as it hurtled to the floor, and it lay among chaotic heaps of books and other detritus.

Somehow undeterred by the threatening display, the boys swiftly turned the lights out again and sat around in their seance circle. The light appeared once more, floating just above Vertleib's head. He impulsively reached up and grabbed it - and was stunned to grasp a "sharp, metallic structure". This object remained in his hands for roughly ten seconds before it jerked itself away and continued its flight around the room. 

The activity in the room escalated one final time, as Mark and Norman felt humanlike fingers touch their foreheads and Patricia felt one touch her throat. The floating light started to lurch around, divebombing the seance participants and being met with screams of alarm. As if satisfied by the terror it had inflicted, the light dove into the Flatwoods Monster drawing and disappeared. Norman claimed that the drawing was hot to the touch shortly afterwards. Patricia soon developed a sore throat, and Mark and Norman had terrible headaches. 

Follow-Up

Three strange men showed up to Norman Schreibstein's house in September of that year. Perhaps they were curious about the letter he had sent to Crabb, or perhaps they were late to the punch in dealing with the seance. Although both Norman and Ervin were familiar with the concept of the Men in Black, Norman didn't recognise the figures at first. Instead, he assumed that the men had a genuine interest in flying saucers, and so happily allowed them access to the observatory. 

Bizarrely, the men seemed largely disinterested in the books and UFO memorabilia on display throughout the seance room, but rather focused their attention on the electrical equipment in the space. They carefully examined the PA system, and inquired about the specific make of his tape recorder. Crabb pointed out that Albert Bender experienced problems with his radio in the attic that played host to many of his encounters with the Men in Black. It was as they prowled around his observatory investigating various wires and dials that Norman started to feel a cold chill scuttle down his back - he suddenly knew that these 'men' were not human beings. 

Almost as if they'd sensed the shift in their host's awareness, the men turned to leave. Before they did so, however, they sternly told Norman to "get the hell out of flying saucer research if you know what's good for you" - as well as threatening him with "serious consequences" if he told anyone about their visit. It seems he later did this anyway and was entirely unharmed.

In the next few months, Schreibstein experienced four more visits from a phantasmal stranger. Crabb likened this character to a stereotypical CIA agent, and Norman described him as being "about 33" in age and being roughly 6ft in height. The man had dark skin and wore distinctive horn-rimmed glasses, as well as a strange ring on one of the fingers of his left hand. Perhaps predictably, the CIA man also warned Norman to leave flying saucer research. 

The boys were apparently not frightened by these tricks, and Gray Barker claimed that they actually had "other psychic experiences", which they were unfortunately not happy to be made public at the time of Crabb's writing. 

Source 

Who Flys the Saucers? by Riley Hansard Crabb, 1967

Whispering Clowns in the Woods: The Genesis of a Panic

Hysteria consumed the globe in 2016 - starting in Summer and concluding after Halloween. There were men patrolling neighbourhoods across the world dressed as clowns, and these sinister figures were menacing children, chasing pedestrians and even sometimes attacking people with various weapons. Several arrests were made, proving that the majority of these clowns were flesh-and-blood criminals exploiting a growing atmosphere of panic, but there are certainly some reports which seem to be slightly more mysterious. The first of these anomalous reports took the form of the first report of the entire panic. Today I am taking you to Fleetwood Manor in Greenville, South California - be warned, there are clowns in the woods.

This photo fits the description of the first two clowns

Outbreak! 

The young son of a woman named Donna Arnold would become patient zero in a coulrophobic hysteria that would soon reach pandemic proportions across the globe in the Summer of 2016. It was 8:30pm on the 21st of August - and the boy could see two men dressed in bright clothing in the nearby forest behind the local basketball court. As he looked closer, he soon realised that he was looking at two clowns - one of whom was wearing a red fright wig and the other had a black star painted on his face. The clowns apparently whispered something to him, but what exactly this was remained unclear throughout the reporting. Donna was originally skeptical of her son's claims, but felt it necessary to report the incident to the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office just in case. She told her son to calm down and assured NBC News that she wasn't eager to let rumours of clowns spread across the community. She said that her son had 'seen clowns in the woods whispering and making strange noises'.

A police deputy was dispatched to investigate the matter, and he uncovered several other sightings of kooky characters dressed as clowns. An anonymous individual said that she had seen a 'large-figured' clown with a blinking nose stood under a post light near a garbage dumpster area. The strange man waved at her and she nervously waved back, but the enigmatic entertainer did not approach her or harm her in any way. He seemingly just stood there. The neighbourhood had suddenly been taken over by clowns. Another woman claimed that her son had told her that he had heard clanging chains accompanied by a banging noise at the front door.

Things would only spiral out of control from there - and although Donna had disbelieved her son, she would soon be forced to reevaluate this conclusion when thirty children approached her the day after her son had allegedly seen the phantom figure and asked her if she had seen the clowns in the woods. Although the reporting somewhat differs among my myriad of sources, it would seem to be the case that her son then took her to where he had seen the clowns - and she would become the second confirmed adult witness of the phenomenon. She saw two clowns in the forest 'flashing green laser lights' before they ran off into the woods. It had taken one day for the clown hysteria to reach epidemic proportions among the child population of the area.

The Greenville County Sheriff's Office released a report based on the findings of their investigations in the week of the first sighting, and most of the details from the former two paragraphs are sourced from there. The Greenville police also said that children had told them that the clowns had showed them 'large amounts of money' in order to persuade them to follow them into the forest according to the police report obtained by ABC News. The children also believed that the clowns lived in 'a house located near a pond at the end of a man-made trail in the woods'. This might've sounded like a fantastical detail pulled from a fairytale, but deputies working for Master Deputy Ryan Flood searched the forest and found a house matching this exact description after following a trail - but it was completely empty and didn't contain any 'clown paraphenalia'. Every time they investigated this house, they continually failed to find 'clothing or anything else' that might've indicated that anyone lived there. Flood stated that he didn't think there were any circuses in town, and that there was apparently no history of unusual clown sightings in the area. Interestingly, he also stated that there were no CCTV cameras installed anywhere that the clowns had allegedly been spotted, and so the reports were all impossible to substantiate.

Nothing Spreads Faster Than Fear 

It took three days for the clown hysteria to spread beyond Fleetwood Manor. On the 23rd of August, Greenville City Dispatch responded to a late-night call from Shemwood Crossing on Shemwood Lane about a menacing clown which had made its getaway in a dark car after being confronted. The residents told a crew from WSPA News that they had been alerted to the presence of more clowns when their children had told them that the costumed freaks were lurking by the local playground. They chased after the clowns, whereupon the odd characters high-tailed it out of there in a mysterious vehicle. This took place at roughly 9:00pm. The police were planning to increase patrols in this region.

The letter sent to Fleetwood Manor tenants

Just because it had spread didn't mean that it wasn't still holding Fleetwood Manor in its clown-gloved hand. On the 24th, the manager of the apartment complex sent a letter to all their tenants warning them about the alleged presence of the clowns and encouraging them to call the police if they saw anything strange. Greenville County law enforcement was apparently conducting routine patrols around the apartments in light of the reports. A community activist by the name of Bruce Wilson noted that there were between 200 and 300 children in the area, and told WDTV News that he was now getting involved in making sure that the police are 'doing the right thing'.

It was 8:20pm on Monday, August 29th when the Greenville Sheriff's Office received a panicked phone call from a 12-year-old girl on White Horse Road. She was calling from Emerald Commons apartment complex, and she told deputies that she had seen a man riding on a blue bike taking photographs of children from around her backyard area. Shortly after she noticed this, a man wearing a black jacket and a clown mask emerged from the woods 'before going away'. This newly-infected apartment building was 20 minutes away from Fleetwood Manor.

The Lakehouse

In October of that year, Matthew Teague and a team of reporters for the UK newspaper The Guardian ventured to South California to report on the clown situation from the scene of the crime, as it were - and they found that things had changed quite considerably. The clown panic had already gone global, stretching across the United States and then spreading to the United Kingdom. Within the next few days it would move to Spain, Chile, Singapore, Brazil, Sweden, Mexico and Denmark.

When the news crew got there, Donna Arnold was still eager to tell them about the clowns she had seen with her son, and she pointed them towards the woods and explained about the abandoned house from which the clowns had allegedly originated. Intrigued, the reporters followed the odd little path down towards the house in the forest - and found it just as derelict as it had been initially described - but something odd had happened in the two months since it had been reported on. Although the balcony was sagging down and someone had boarded up the windows, a modern security system had been installed outside it, apparently quite recently. New bags of potting soil had been left near to the basement door. It still looked as if nobody had lived in it for years, but it seemed that someone was now planning something.

Perplexed, the confusion felt by the reporters would only grow in strength when a gleaming white Mercedes of a new model pulled up to the house shortly after sunset. The driver stepped out of the mysterious vehicle - which 'looked as out of place as any clown car' - and she was immediately ambushed by the waiting pack of reporters. They asked her about the house and she said that she had bought it recently as an investment due to it sitting on a free space of five acres in an area that was otherwise quite densely populated. Interestingly, she refused to give her name - and was wearing an in-ear headset which meant that it was often quite difficult for the reporters to tell if she was talking to them or to someone on her phone. When they asked her about the clown sightings, she scoffed at them and asked why none of the children had taken photographs on their phones - which they could obviously work far better than she could and so it made no sense to her that there was still no evidence.

Thinking that this information would comfort Donna, Teague naively went back to her house and told her this. She laughed at him and then invited him to come round to the back of the home. The house backed onto the dense woods in which the clowns had first appeared - and Teague couldn't help but notice the ugly dent in the back door where the paint appeared to have been chipped away. With complete conviction, she told him that the clowns had hit the door with a chain. She had seen them hit the door with a chain and then run off into the forest as soon as she approached them with the intention of making them answer for their crimes. She was now certain that there were men dressed as clowns in the forest out to torment the good people of Greenville.

Sources 

Reports of Clowns Trying to Lure Kids Into Woods in South Carolina Prompt Investigation for ABCNews

Clown Sightings: The Day the Craze Began for The Guardian

Creepy Clown Sightings in South Carolina Cause a Frenzy for The New York Times

Creepy Details Released in South Carolina Clown Sightings for CBS News

Children Claim Clown Tried to Lure Them Into South Carolina Woods for CBS News

Reports of Creepy Clowns Spooking Residents of Greenville, SC for NBC News

Apartment Complex Warns Residents About Clown Trying to Lure Kids into Woods for CNN

Another Child Reports Clowns in South Carolina Woods for CBS News

More Clown Sightings in Greenville, Deputies Say for WSPA News

Residents Anxious After Clown Sightings, Letters Received at South Carolina Apartments for WDTV News

A Visit to the Puppy People

 Like most good things, the book first appeared in October. Skinwalkers at the Pentagon was independently published on the 10th of October, 2021. It tells the story of a program known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) that ran out of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2008 to 2010. It investigated UFOs and other paranormal happenings. A special focus of the program was on the 'Skinwalker Ranch' property in Utah's Uintah Basin - and an alarming discovery was made through study of this site. It seems to be possible for paranormal experiences to move among populations as if they were infectious agents. A contagion of the impossible. 

One documented case of this apparent infectious capability of the Skinwalker Ranch phenomena was told in the first chapter of the book. Jonathan Axelrod (likely a pseudonym) was a senior aerospace engineer in Naval intelligence, and had been involved with the AAWSAP program since the beginning. He had been sent to Skinwalker Ranch in July of 2009, and there - along with two of his team members - he had an encounter with a bizarre unidentified flying object. After he went home from this mission, however, it would soon become apparent that what he had seen on the ranch was not content to stay on the ranch. 

Among other escalating anomalies on the Axelrod property, one of the details I was shocked to see in the DOD-cleared book was a description of a strange animal - or animal-like entity - that menaced the aerospace engineer's family. This beast was said to resemble an enormous wolf. It stood on its hind legs, and ran bipedally with no qualms. It seemed highly hostile towards the family. Both Axelrod's wife and two children saw the hairy horror prowling their property. If the Defense Intelligence Agency - and by extension the Pentagon itself - takes reports of werewolf-like monsters seriously, then perhaps it's time we should too. If we take this plunge, what kind of nightmarish wonderland might we find ourselves in? 

Well, there's a story that I heard coming over crackling airwaves one night which might shed some light on that question...

Dial D for Dogman

Every time young James went to his aunt and uncle's house, he would ask to go to the room with the phone booth. It was an eclectic little space, filled with all sorts of retro paraphernalia. The phone booth was in one corner - it was a wood-framed glass box with bi-fold doors and a nice bench. There was no phone in it, but rather simply an empty box where the phone would've been. It still worked well enough to have a light and a fan that came on when he closed the doors, though, and so it was good enough for him - he was only five or six years old, after all.

James' mother and his aunt were really close, and so he has many fond memories of going over to that house in the evening with his grandmother, so that the three adults could catch up and play dice together. His cousins were all significantly older than him, and so he often found himself simply marooned all by his lonesome. It was him and the phone booth. 

One evening in the late 1980s (either '87 or '88), James and the cousin who was closest in age to him were playing in the yard of the aforementioned house. They were tossing a softball and their grandmother had stashed in the yard back and forth between them in the dusky light. His cousin threw it a little too high for him to catch, and so it flew over his head and over the rusty chain-link fence that surrounded the yard. Presumably grumbling to himself, he approached the fence and moved towards the overgrown alleyway just behind it - and as he did so, he could hear something moving. Getting closer, he could now see movement. 

The thing behind the fence had brownish fur, and at first he assumed it was a dog. Then he realised it was too big to be a dog, and that its body looked wrong. It looked like a man, lying down on its belly. There were distinct hands, holding onto the chain-link fence. It had a pointed snout and long ears, and it appeared to be attempting to drag itself down the alley. James froze, staring at the creature. The only word his young brain could conjure was 'monster'. 

Finally snapping out of his dazed state, James ran back into the main section of the yard to fetch his cousin. "Hey, there's something crazy in the alley back here!" He explained that he'd seen something weird, and then of course his cousin wanted to see whatever it was too. They headed back towards the alleyway together, but by the time they arrived there the creature had vanished. James pushed it from his mind, and thought nothing of the crawling terror until his sophomore years in high school, when it would force its way back inside his head. 

During his teenage sophomore years, he would always get home from school, have a quick bite to eat and then go to his bedroom and lie down before even thinking about doing homework or going out anywhere. He was always tired. One night, he was lying in bed when the distinct feeling of not being alone anymore came over him. It was dark in his room and it was dark outside, but his bedroom door was open a crack. Light came in from the rest of the house, meaning that the room wasn't totally pitch black. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he noticed a number of figures stood around him. At first he thought it was his parents, but then he noticed that they didn't quite look human. They were too tall. His heart sank as he thought back to the alleyway. There were at least three or four of the monsters in his bedroom. He lay there for a moment - paralysed with fear. He closed his eyes for a split second, and then when he opened them again the beasts were gone. 

In the years since, he tried to rationalise this experience away as a dream. A hormone-fuelled nightmare. But it didn't feel like a dream - it felt physically real, it felt like they were there in his room. He said that he felt like he was being observed by the creatures. 

The next time he would see one of the monsters would be 2005, when he was working at a Borders Group bookstore. He had a large group of friends, and they would often go to eat out at a restaurant in the same shopping centre as the bookshop. On the nights that he wasn't working, they might all drive to one of their houses and share in merrymaking and a few drinks. One of these nights, however, it was just James and Gary going to a friends' house. Gary was James' boyfriend at the time - later his husband. They drove up to the house, stayed for some appetisers and perhaps a beer before they felt the need to go home and unwind. As they were driving down a rural road, just a few blocks away from their house, James noticed that there was something in the road. 

He slowly stopped talking and started to focus solely on the strange thing in the centre of the road. Gary followed suit, and soon the two lovers were sat in silence in the car. The weather was misty, but not too foggy to impede visibility. The object blocking their path was an animal. It had a long snout and pointed ears, like a dog. It was on all fours at first, but then it stood up on its hind legs - showing that it had a torso and arms like a man. Its legs were digitigrade - bent backwards like those of a dog, not plantigrade like a human's. The horrifying apparition looked towards them, and then faded out of visibility. "It was just sort of not there anymore". 

All the other encounters, James could at least try to rationalise. Maybe the creature in the alley was just an injured animal that had managed to drag itself out of view before his cousin saw it? Perhaps the entities in his bedroom were the product of a hormonal teenager's nightmares? But this experience was something beyond that. There were multiple witnesses, as Gary would later confirm to James. He wondered if perhaps the werewolf-like creatures really were from his mind, and that he had somehow 'projected' it into the street. But they felt physical every time. 

As he thought more about it, James realised that he was the common denominator in all of these experiences. The wolfmen had followed him from his grandmother's house, to his parents' house and now to his own house. They were stalking him. Seemingly unprompted, he started to think back to his times playing in the phone booth. It felt like it was connected somehow. He called his mother and asked if she remembered it - to which she replied by confirming that she did. He asked her what he had told her he was doing in there, and she was unsure. She said that he would just sit on the bench, giggling and talking to himself. A little while later, however, she called him back. She'd remembered something about what he had said about his time in the phone booth. James had said that he would go to visit the 'Puppy People'.

Source

Radio Rental: Episode 13

François Bertrand: The Monster of Montparnasse

Content Warning: This article discusses topics related to sexual crimes. Reader discretion advised.

A 1936 illustration of the case

Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the beautiful city of Paris, and despite the peaceful veneer it now possesses, it was the site of the first encounter with a ghoulish spectre that would come to briefly govern a reign of pure terror throughout Paris for several months in 1847. This foul creature was known to visit cemeteries in and around Paris, scaling tall walls and inexplicably resisting attacks by guard dogs in order to violate and even devour recently-buried corpses. Eventually, however, the perpetrator of these gruesome attacks would be apprehended - but far from solving the mystery, this turn of events would present investigators with what nowadays looks very much like a real-life mirror of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde...

A Nocturnal Violation

It would glide behind the rows of tombstones, and the guards of Père Lachaise Cemetery were seemingly powerless to stop whatever nefarious business it was carrying out. It was described as being 'partly human and partly animal' and would vanish like an illusion when the guards attempted to capture it. The guards' dogs refused to attack the beast - barking and howling with 'abject terror' when deployed to catch the thing.

The next morning a truly foul scene awaited the terrified guards of the cemetery. Graves had been dug up and coffins had been burst open. The contents of these destroyed caskets had been scattered all over the ground, and had - horrifyingly - been partially eaten by the same ghastly thing that had visited the graveyard the night before. This horrifying cycle would continue 'at length' - with the phantom always evading capture and violating yet more resting places in search of its sickening meals. When consulted, medical professionals announced that the damage to the cadavers had been done with human teeth, which I can imagine was somehow both comforting and the exact opposite at the same time. The quantity of guards watching over the cemetery was doubled, but no sign of the true culprit of the raids was ever found. A young soldier attempting to meet with a friend at the cemetery was arrested under vampiric suspicion, but he was found not guilty and released.

It must've seemed like the terror in Père Lachaise would be unending - and yet eventually it suddenly drew to an abrupt halt. However, the monster was not quite finished with its rampage, and instead of vanishing entirely it had merely relocated its horrific crusade against those who rest in peace. A young girl - 'greatly beloved by her relatives and friends' - was to form the monster's next meal. Her funeral was attended by a large group of saddened onlookers, and so of course the outrage was truly enormous when her coffin was discovered to have been exhumed overnight so that some mysterious pervert could feed on her body. The girl's father was briefly listed as a suspect, and was actually arrested for the crime, but his innocence was quickly established and he was released. Some members of the public were now beginning to suspect that perhaps the perpetrator of these horrific crimes was not of flesh and blood - seeing as the cemetery in which the girl had been devoured was protected by 'very high' walls and massive iron gates kept shut all night. It seemed as if no mortal man would be able to scale these obstacles.

However, these walls, which had once seemed to throw a hefty spanner into the proceedings of the investigation in the matter, would soon become what would ultimately lead to the capture of the culprit. An old army officer crucially noticed that there was a certain point on one of the walls that showed signs of having been frequently scaled. Although it was nearly 10ft tall at this specific point, precautions to catch a human perpetrator were taken just in case. The aforementioned officer constructed a booby trap - consisting of a tripwire attached to an explosive - on the wall in question, meaning that nobody would be able to climb it without causing an explosion. Sure enough, an explosion was heard from the vicinity at around midnight that night.

The detectives that had been tasked with keeping watch over the beseiged graveyard rushed to the scene of the detonation. There, they caught sight of a humanoid figure stood at the base of the wall. Immediately opening fire upon the apparition, they were seemingly able to wound the creature but unable to capture it - seeing as it supposedly dashed up the wall with prodigious speed, moving 'with the agility of a monkey'. Despite its escape, it was the beginning of the end for the Parisian prowler. A trail of blood had been left behind when it scaled the wall, and there were scraps of torn uniform scattered about the scene. It was thus concluded by the onlookers that the perpetrator was wounded, and was a soldier.

This might not have been enough to catch the one responsible if it weren't for mumblings between members of the 74th Regiment which were overheard by some local grave-diggers. These soldiers were talking about how a sergeant of their regiment had been taken to Val-de-Grâce Hospital after being badly wounded the night before. This seemed like a promising lead, and so the identity of this sergeant was at once found out and he was questioned. Sergeant François Bertrand was interrogated and freely confessed his guilt.

The First Necrophile

Sergeant Bertrand seemed to present himself as being as much of a victim as his deceased prey. He claimed that he had been being controlled by some external force, and that this nebulous force would never leave him. He appeared to be a victim of possession - being unable to describe his sensations while he was under the thing's influence but knowing that he was 'not himself' while thus controlled, and was instead some vicious and ravenous animal. He told of how he didn't require any instruments to dig up the bodies - instead just tearing through the soil and the coffins with his bare hands under the moonlight, like some starved beast. He confessed to having once exhumed and bitten fifteen bodies in one night.

A 1936 illustration of the Sergeant

Apparently he would always fall into a very deep sleep after his nocturnal activities - during which he was aware of his body undergoing some inexplicable type of metamorphosis. He told the court that he had first fell into one of these literally transformative slumbers after an excursion to one of the secluded locales he often liked to visit when he was younger. He was apparently something of an introverted youth, preferring the company of animals to that of his fellow man - and often choosing to spend his time in isolated regions such as moors and deserts. The evening after he first fell into his supernatural sleep, he was passing a cemetery in which some grave-diggers were busy covering a recently interred corpse - and was seized by a sudden urge to enter the site and watch them at work. He was unable to resist this, and when a sudden bout of rain prompted the grave-diggers to briefly abandon their work (leaving a cadaver unattended) - he found himself afflicted by 'horrible desires'. His head throbbed with pain and his heart felt like it would break out of his chest.

He was only prevented from feeding on the corpse before him by the arrival of some of his friends on the scene. He was thus able to resist the temptation, but for many a night in the future he would not be so lucky. He claimed that the same grotesque urges would invade his mind every night from then on, and he would often find himself figuratively (and perhaps literally) transformed into a man-eating monster. He would eviscerate the corpses of his victims before masturbating - experiencing pleasure that was 'nothing in comparison' with what he could experience with living partners.

Once the trial, held in front of a military counsel on the 10th of July, 1847 and presided over by one Colonel Manselon, ultimately concluded that Bertrand was guilty of everything he had confessed to - and sentenced him to one year in prison. His case would become the inspiration for Joseph Guislain, a Belgian physician, to coin the term 'necrophilia' to refer to the condition under which people gain sexual pleasure from dead bodies.

Werewolf or Pervert?

Interestingly enough, I don't think that the reports of Bertrand being 'partly human and partly animal' have ever been properly addressed or explained. Although some more sensationalistic sources have called him a vampire, I would instead be driven to conclude that his case more closely fits the folkloric definition of an Arabic ghoul. These gruesome spirits would feed on the flesh of the dead, prowling cemeteries at night and hunting in packs. They were also said to be capable of shapeshifting to deceive humans and blend into their society. While deliberate shapeshifting seems not to have been an element in Bertrand's case, the description of a morphing monster feeding on corpses sounds very much like a classic ghoul. Obviously, another folkloric connection could be made to the legend of the werewolf. The description of Bertrand scaling a 10ft fence at extreme speeds also seems not to fit with the notion of this being a purely mundane crime spree, and of course his testimony of not being in control of himself during his ghastly excursions becomes a lot more interesting when viewed through a lycanthropic lens. This same lack of control has been reported in other cases involving cannibalism and other such abhorrent crimes, in the case of Austin Harrouff for example. 

Sources

'Werwolves' by Elliott O'Donnell

'François Bertrand' on Wikipedia

'The Infamous Sergeant Bertrand' on Vampires.com

In Cold Blood: The Qui Mansion Haunting

I can imagine the looks on their faces as they opened the warehouse door for the first time - a sea of coloured dyes danced before their eyes like a room full of harlequins. It was 1915, and the Great War was raging across the world - bringing Europe to its knees. China would have an important role to play in the conflict of World War One behind the scenes, but it would never send troops into battle - and so the Qiu brothers were safe from being hunted down for any sort of military service. Instead, they had just made it big. They were migrants, living as peasants under a German employer - but of course he fled the city due to the conflict, and the worth of dye had just skyrocketed thanks to the closure of the ports. The two worker siblings would become millionaires in the city of opportunity that was Shanghai - but their fortunes wouldn't last forever, and would come to a bizarre end. Despite their stories ending suddenly, their playthings weren't going to let go of this mortal plane so easily...

A House Haunted by Dragons

Qiu Xingshan and Qiu Weiqing built their mansion in the 1920s, and they lived like kings - their epic decadence surpassing that of the nouveau riche and legendary gangsters. The mansion complex consisted of two identical palace-like buildings (the East Block and the West Block) in which each of the brothers could live with his family and friends. The estate was surrounded with a beautiful garden, and all sorts of exotic animals were released into this Eden-like display of opulence. Tigers prowled through the magnolia trees, and crocodiles basked on the shores of a man-made lake. There are even stories of two thousand pigeons being released from the aviary every day at noon, darkening the sky over Wujiang Lu (then called Love Lane).

They were legendary - like kings of their own little neighbourhood - and so it was all the more baffling when they both suddenly vanished. No trace of either of them has ever been found, and their mansions started to fall into disrepair thanks to their lack of an heir. The garden grew over and became a tangled jungle, and the unfortunate animals were all either sold off or eaten by the people of Shanghai - who were now in the grip of a famine. Eventually, one of the Qiu mansions was razed to the ground, while the other was announced soon to be dug up, foundations and all, and moved to another location to make room for more high-rise buildings. Although various sources claim that it was this event which kicked off a violent haunting on the premises, the earliest reference I can find to traceable stories about paranormal activity there dates back to 2009.

It was the Summer of 2009, and something very weird was going on at the nearly-demolished Qiu Mansion. Construction workers were turning up at the local Yueyang Hospital with what night nurse Li Fei described as 'bite wounds'. However, no wild animals were found in a thorough search of the building, and the victims were left too frightened to return to their jobs. On the Meadin.com forum website, employees at the Four Seasons Hotel could be seen complaining about the terrifying ghostly animals that manifested to them on their night shifts. In August of 2009, local blogs started printing the story of a mason working at the site who had seemingly suddenly snapped and attempted to attack his manager with a hammer. When he was later questioned about his motive for the violent attack, he simply said that the 'lizards' made him do it. Some other versions of this same story describe them as having been 'lizard-like creatures'. One Mrs. Ye, who lived near the construction site in the alley off Wujiang Lu, even claimed to have seen a monstrous dragon crawling along the arm of a construction crane.

One final creepy twist comes to us courtesy of JHMoncrieff.com. The bloggers behind this award-winning website visited the Qiu Mansion in late 2016 or early 2017, and although it had been successfully moved and deposited down on some new foundations elsewhere in mid 2010 - thus obviously warranting the end of construction work there. So it would be a very good question to ask who the workmen who were 'clearly' seen by the bloggers moving around on the second floor were...

Sources

'Cha House' on Wikipedia

'The Qiu Mansion, Shanghai' on Paranormal Asylum

'Haunted Travel: The Ghosts of Shanghai' on JHMoncrieff.com

'Haunted Shanghai: The Phantoms of the Qiu Mansion' on travel.cnn.com

Honey, Aliens Shrunk the Kids

With a title like that, I really can't blame you for clicking on this article, and I really hope that you won't be disappointed. Today I have another case from the UFOs Northwest archives which involves the apparent abduction of an 18-year-old and his brother by otherworldly beings, which seemingly resulted in the two young victims becoming spontaneously shorter overnight...

The New Gloucester Abduction

It was 1973, the dreaded Year of the Humanoids, when an anonymous witness, his brother and two other friends - who were driving close to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine - suddenly became aware of a bright UFO following them, visible in the window of the driver's side of the car. They were on the road towards Middle Range Pond when they first saw it, and they promptly decided to make a 'sharp left' towards Oxford, Maine in what was presumably an attempt to evade the odd object. After they got to the Oxford Plains Speedway, they turned around and headed back the way they had come.

They had just reached the apple orchard by the intersection between Route #26, Outlet Road and Quarry Road (the latter of which was known as Shaker Village Road at the time) when they noticed that they had seemingly slipped into the Twilight Zone. There were no other cars on the busy and usually well-travelled road, and the Sun had gone down 'awfully fast'. The stars were apparently abnormally large in the night sky, with the witness saying that it felt as if he could 'reach out to them'. The world around them appeared to have gone completely silent - with the usual chirping of the crickets being totally absent. In this odd state, the witness could feel and hear his heart pounding in his ears, and he said that it was like they 'were inside a vacuumed bottle'.

The UFO suddenly made itself visible once again - hovering above what is still the only tree that is placed slightly ahead of its fellows in the orchard. It was a large, round object which 'lit up orange' and was totally silent. The four dumbstruck witnesses just sat and stared at the aerial enigma for what they thought at the time to be roughly one hour. However, when they finally decided to return home, the person who would later report the incident to UFOs Northwest noticed that 'it became daylight way too soon', and requested that his brother - who was driving the 1967 Tan Chevy Nova in which the group was travelling - redirect them to the Auburn, Maine police department so that they could report the bizarre happening. However, they were apparently about to witness further strange events.

This is sadly where the narrative gets a little cloudy. The witness said that he would write back to the organisation detailing his further experiences, but failed to do so if I am interpreting the records stored on the organisation's website correctly. However, he did describe (confusingly in an earlier letter) the bizarre physiological effects that this event had on him and his brother. Trying to report their abduction - it was an abduction, the witness clarifies, saying that they 'were taken onboard' and released one day later - was apparently a mistake. Instead, he elected to go to a local hospital for a checkup, seeing as his nose was bleeding, the whites of his eyes had gone a 'deep orange', and his lungs ached when he breathed. He was understandably 'very concerned' about this, but his shock would only get greater when the nurse read his height as 5ft 9 inches, seeing as he was supposed to be over 5ft 10 inches tall. Telling her that she was incorrect, he had the nurse re-check the measurements only to find that he had seemingly lost an inch of height overnight.

Map of the terrain around the abduction

When he and his brother returned home, their mother was apparently very vocal in her alarm at the state of her children. She demanded to know what had happened and remarked that they were both shorter and that she wanted to know what had happened to their eyes. Presumably panicking at this point, the witness ran to his bathroom mirror and was horrified to note that, indeed, he 'didn't look right'. In an effort to prove to the local authorities that this had happened, he implored them to check his high-school medical records and the photographs taken on his eighteenth birthday, roughly two weeks before the apparent abduction event. He asked them to compare how he looked now and how he was recorded as being back then. 'How many 18-year-olds lose an inch overnight?'

Analysis

I'm not sure what to make of this case. I know that at least one case in which the height of a UFO witness spontaneously changed after the event, and so this report is not unique. The language used by the witness in the letters transcribed on the UFOs Northwest website make me think that he is either possibly executing a rather-immature hoax, or is genuinely emotional and panicked to an extreme degree by the memories he now possesses. I think that I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, especially since he said that 'the emotional experience of my abduction never stops'.

Source

UFOs Northwest - Man Recalls Abduction Experience, He Sustained Injury from Experience