Subterranean Centaur Scare

It is early March of 1913 (probably the 7th, to be exact) - and hundreds of sweaty men are bustling about in the Chicksaw Mine under Kittanning, Pennsylvania. They are presumably quite desperate to see the sunlight outside, but the circumstances in which they would be forced out into the light in just a moment would haunt them for the rest of their days. Violent hoofbeats and a ghostly light seep their way through the subterranean gloom, signalling the fateful arrival of a bizarre spectre unlike any other...

The Kittanning Incident

The hoofbeats (which I have presumed must've been present) got louder and louder as the surreal form moved from room to room in the mine, ordering all the workmen to abandon their tools and leave the mine in a 'sepulchral voice'. Terrified and likely utterly dumbfounded at the sight, the workers promptly did as they were told by the incomprehensible creature - pouring from the entrance of the mine in droves, perhaps setting a new record for the speed at which a mine could be evacuated. 

The illustration that appeared in Fortean Times accompanying this story.

As my description of hooves might imply, this entity was not your average humanoid ghost. No, instead it was described as having a torso like that of 'an emaciated man' and the lower body of a horse. It was a centaur, to put it simply. In one hand, it carried an odd object which was compared to a dinner pail - from which issued 'lurid gleams' of phantasmal light. 

One John Martel was working as the driver of the mine motor, and was allegedly at his place atop the machine when the spectre came for him. It apparently manifested out of nowhere, before pointing its bony fingers at him and uttering a single word - GO. Martel found himself unable to move for a moment, being literally paralysed with sheer terror. As soon as he was once again capable of movement, he screamed in horror and dashed away from the creature. He sprinted along the tracks towards the light streaming in from the mine's entrance - only momentarily glancing back the way he came to see the motor in hot pursuit, now apparently being somehow driven by the centaur. By the time Martel finally emerged into the safety of daylight, he turned back once more to see that the motor (now driverless) was close behind him. He had only just made it. 

The miners refused to go to work the next day, and as of the time that the story was originally published (in the March 9th, 1913 edition of The Philadelphia Enquirer), it had yet to be decided how business should proceed in the Chickasaw Mine. The centaur was apparently seen as some kind of ill omen. One of my sources speculated that perhaps this was an incredibly bizarre excuse for the miners to escape work - but surely there would be less fantastical and more believable stories to be made up for this purpose? And presumably to be employed more effectively? 

Sources

I originally found this story in an issue of Fortean Times, which sadly only included a very much abbreviated version of the tale and didn't offer me any realistic way to track down the original source or even any more information. Eventually, fellow researcher Albert Rosales was able to find the full story in various newspaper clippings. I was also able to find another source online that repeated what the newspaper clippings said. Here is that source.

The most extensive (and sadly least clearly scanned) clipping on the topic. 

The Vanishing of Alfred Beilhartz

The child in question

It was July 2, 1938 - and the Beilhartz family had decided to go camping deep within the Rocky Mountain National Park as a summer vacation. On the day in question, they were going to Estes Park to do some fishing - and were hiking along a trail close to a creek by the name of Roaring River at approximately 8am. Their son, Alfred Edwin Beilhartz, was roughly 4 years old at the time, and was walking along at the back of the line formed by his family. His parents would eventually realise that he had seemingly fallen severely behind and was now no longer anywhere they could see him. This would begin a desperate 10-day-long search operation throughout the region - but Alfred Beilhartz would never return...

Bloodhounds and the Damned Dam

His parents briefly performed a preliminary search to try and find their missing son (he was just one son of apparently ten children in the Beilhartz family), and when they had no luck they decided to call in the park service for assistance. The rangers were operating under the assumption that Alfred may have fallen into the nearby creek and drowned, and so they proceeded to dam the river. This dam consisted of a fence line adorned with barbed wire - there was no way that his body could be carried downstream and not be instantly found by the team of rangers searching for the unfortunate child. When this returned no results, they dragged the bottom of the river for good measure, but also found nothing to indicate where Alfred had gone. After five days, they gave up searching the river.

His parents told the rangers that they were certain that he must have been abducted. They knew that their son wouldn't just leave his family - and they were (unsurprisingly) unconvinced that he had fallen into the river. At this point, the rangers called in some bloodhounds from the nearby Colorado State Penitentiary. According to David Paulides (one of the usual suspects when it comes to discussing cases such as this) claimed that the bloodhounds were able to follow the boy's scent '500ft uphill' from where his parents had been when he vanished. This is obviously exceptionally bizarre, seeing as he disappeared when he was behind them as opposed to in front of them as the scent trail suggested. More bloodhounds were apparently called in, and followed the same paradoxical trail, only to lay down in defeat when they reached a fork in the road. The search was eventually called off after a total of 10 days spent looking for the missing child.

The Devil's Nest and the Mystery Man

Meanwhile - on July 3rd - William J. Eells and his (unnamed in the newspaper report) wife were also hiking in the Rocky Mountains National Park. They had made it quite far up the Old Fall River road when they got tired and decided to stop for a rest. While resting, they decided to look up at the beautiful slopes of Mount Chapin - only to see a young boy sat on a rock in a section of the mountainside known as the Devil's Nest. This spot was six miles west of where Alfred Beilhartz had intially vanished from, and Mr. Eells expressed his disbelief that any child could have gotten up to that spot without assistance.

The child - presumed to be Alfred at this point - apparently made a 'shrill noise', walked out to look over the ledge and then left the scene. Paulides says that it was as if he was jerked back out of view, but Wikipedia instead asserts that he simply walked out of sight. The Eells decided to retreat to the carpark, where they heard the news about the missing boy. Upon returning home, they checked the newspaper and confirmed that the photograph of Alfred Beilhartz within it matched the child they had seen in the Devil's Nest. They promptly drove back to the park and talked to the rangers, but the rangers stated that it would've been 'totally impossible' for Alfred to have made his way up to the slope in question - and that the rangers themselves couldn't even manage it themselves in under two days and without carabiners and ropes. They did eventually send a group of over 150 men to search Devil's Nest, but they came back empty handed.

The next development in this increasingly-bizarre case came on July 8th, when the FBI announced that it was performing forensic tests on a piece of 'soiled' bandage that had been found in an abandoned cabin in the park. The disclosure of this finding was prompted by the insistence of the boy's parents that their son must've been kidnapped. Apparently Alfred had a blister on his foot at the time he had vanished, and his mother had bandaged it using similar material. It is unclear what came of this test, but I can be fairly sure that nothing did - otherwise there would be information available about it.

The Beilhartz family

On this same day, a woman by the name of Mrs. CA Linch who lived in Big Spring, Nebraska, allegedly saw Alfred and a mysterious man walking along a highway together as she and her husband were driving from Big Spring to Ogallala. She told her brother-in-law WB Linch (of Lincoln, Nebraska) about her sighting, and he then went to speak to a Denver detective sergeant by the name of Fred Renovati two days later on behalf of his sister-in-law. He said that she 'was positive the boy was the one whose picture she saw'. Seemingly nothing came of this odd lead either.

Held for Ransom?

Alfred Beilhartz had been missing for five months when his father was given a ransom note in November. It contained instructions for leaving $500 (equivalent to $8,900 as of 2018) in a tin can one block away from the Beilhartz family home in return for the safe return of their missing son in 24 hours, and also ominously said that 'the boy doesn't take to us'. However, by the 29th of that month the police were fairly certain that this was a hoax. This belief was all but confirmed by another police announcement announcement a day later saying that they had investigated two possible suspects - who were accused of attempting to extort money from the family. The suspects were not named and were apparently not being held, but here is where the trail of information about the Beilhartz disappearance stops - and so it is difficult to know what happened next. I imagine that it would've been announced if the suspects were confirmed to be guilty, but the ransom note was also never confirmed to not have been a hoax. 

Sources

Disappearance of Alfred Beilhartz on Wikipedia and all of the newspaper clippings provided as sources for that page. Some of the stranger details of this case were, of course, pointed out by David Paulides in an interview he did for MUFON on the 19th of February 2013 - which can be enjoyed here.

The Revelation of Cosette Willoughby

Cosette Willoughby had some very strange neighbours. She had been co-existing with the so-called Serpent People for three years by the time she wrote into Richard Toronto's Shavertron Magazine in 1981. Her story would be published in the Winter 1981 edition of the magazine, the tenth issue ever to be published. It would then be promptly forgotten by the esoteric community at large. I'm here to change that.

Subterranean Symbiosis 

It seems from her description that she never really saw these Serpent People up close. No, instead she would occasionally catch glimpses of her mysterious fellows. She described some of them as 'monkey-like', but gave them their serpentine name due to their strange, sinuous style of movement. Some of them are said to leave large tracks like the iconic Bigfoot prints, while others leave three-toed footprints instead. Seemingly her best glance at one of the creatures revealed a diminutive, naked humanoid with all its hair somehow 'piled on top of his head like a big glob'. The entities are apparently masters of camouflage, with their primary purpose in life being to never be seen. 

Their language sounds echoey, and they are adepts at the art of voice mimicry. Apparently one of them can easily sound like an entire yard full of playing children. When Cosette ventured up onto one of the cliffs in which the entities make their subsurface dens, she was able to hear heavy footsteps coming from underground. Despite the seemingly primitive nature of the creatures' society, Mrs. Willoughby claims that they are capable of crafting some extraordinary stone amulets, which they apparently leave all over the desert, for reasons Cosette speculates may have something to do with warding off rattlesnakes - seeing as she rarely spotted the reptilian pests while out looking for the amulets left by the strange critters. If or when she did run into snakes, she seems to imply in her account that the entities would somehow warn her.

Cosette had been trying to make friends with them for quite a while, and only just before she set about writing the article for Toronto's magazine had the creatures started to respond positively. She had been giving them candy, which they seemed to like very much, as well as some clothing and a mirror. A few months after she gave them the latter item, she claims that she saw one of the entities flash it at her. Although she knew where the entrances to their subterranean dwellings, she never once tried to enter or disturb them. Eventually the creatures would start leaving gifts for her in places they knew only she would go. These gifts included plastic toys (on two separate occasions), money (a quarter, a nickle and two pennies), a 'fabulously carved piece of golden glass' and what she described as her 'famous crystal machine'. She also found some strange-looking script on a rock as well, which is reproduced here for your viewing pleasure.

Through the Looking Crystal

She found her so-called crystal machine while out on the low hills hunting for the amulets left behind by her cryptic neighbours. When she first found it, she quickly noticed that it was no ordinary stone, seeing as it had something resembling a carved window on the side of it. She examined this window with a magnifying glass, and was able to see 'an endless series of pictures' through it. These pictures were small but apparently gave her the immersive feeling of seeing them on a much larger scope, as if she were actually there, among the beautiful fantasy scenes she apparently saw through the rock. 

There were stunning palaces filled with gold and jewels among tall, marble buildings which made up great cities. The people inhabiting these cities were apparently so real-looking that she would sometimes almost catch herself speaking to them. The clothes worn by these mysterious people were richly decorated with jewels and gold, and the women of their kind wore crowns of rubies, pearls and 'every stone you can think of'.

Utterly enraptured by the curious rock, she started to ask it specific questions. She requested to see the 'wizzards of olde' and was shown six of their number, all wearing intricate gowns with pointed turbans. The sages looked directly at her and greeted her as if they could actually see her - but surely that was impossible, right? She asked to see the tree of life, and was rewarded with a vision of a mist-filled alcove. As the fog cleared, she was astounded to see a bizarre tree with tentacular branches and a gold and turquoise light shining out from behind it. She would later describe the branches as looking more like roots than branches, and as lacking leaves. Upon looking up the tree of life in HP Blavastky's The Secret Doctrine, she found that it was described as much the same thing she had seen through the amazing crystal machine. Apparently this is a tree that grows upside-down, with roots for limbs. 

When she asked to see the King of the World as referred to in worldwide esoteric literature, she was greeted by a view from below a mighty face which seemed to be looking down at her and studying her. She bade Rigden Djapo her greetings, and he seemingly responded by telling her 'volumes without words'. She felt intense love towards him, and she somehow knew that he felt the same for her. The last thing of note that she describes having seen in the crystal is something that she called the Second Adam. She had apparently never heard of this esoteric concept before, but the wisdom imparted to her by the weird crystal and the writings of HP Blavatsky provided her with the tools to reconstruct the genesis of the universe as she would come to believe it truly was. 

In the beginning, the Elohim had created what Cosette calls the First Adam. This Adam was etherical, perhaps lacking a physical body at all. Then came a colossal serpent-like being that emerged from the void of deep space and covered our planet Earth in its entirety. This serpent was what was known as the Cosmic Mother. This motherly being eventually 'blended into' a powerful life-giving force, potentially mating with the incorporeal First Adam. From this bizarre unison, she grew pods all over her body from which emerged the Second Adam. At first, this new Adam was spherical in shape - a hermaphroditic amphibious creature capable of reproducing asexually. 

As time passed on this primordial Earth, the Second Adam appeared in different places all around the world, and as he did so he started to grow a tail-like structure behind him. In his need to survive, this tail began to grow a body for some strange reason which isn't adequately explained. Arms appeared, and then legs. After this, the Second Adam became male and female, and was eventually able to live independently from the Cosmic Mother. The Cosmic Mother, now seemingly wont for a purpose, was absorbed into the Earth and became some sort of terrestrial life-force. Humankind was now far more independent of her, but Cosette warns that it seems as if we still need some contact with our Cosmic Mother, seeing as astronauts apparently become weaker the longer they're in space. 

A Mundane Revelation?

This is possibly the strangest article I've ever written on any of my many blogs. Anyways, Shavertron Magazine was unable to verify Cosette's claims - and the closest they came at first was in the form of an anecdote from one Joan O'Connell of the New Atlantean Journal who was apparently sent one of what Cosette called her 'drinking rocks'. She placed this rock in some water, and nothing happened. She then put it in some beer, and 'it didn't even hiccup'. 

Somehow, Shavertron managed to get their hands on some of Cosette's fabled stones - whether this was through O'Connell or otherwise I cannot possibly say - and they quickly handed them to their rock-book expert, one Bill Bliss. Bliss scrutinised the stones and found what he referred to as 'some low grade images'. The clearest one was apparently of a bald fat man's head. He made some carbon tracings of the pictoral stories in the stones, and said that images can be seen in these tracings if they're viewed from a distance of 10ft away. To be honest, I don't see anything in the tracings. 

And so that brings us onto the monumental question of just what the hell is going on with this case. This reminds me of Joseph Smith's use of a seeing stone to transcribe the Book of Mormon from the golden tablets, and also of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic creation myth in terms of the multiphasic creation story involving numerous divine beings splitting and merging. The script allegedly found on one of the stones by Cosette seems to resemble John Dee's Enochian writing. This story is comprised of a rich soup of all sorts of weirdness from all sorts of sources. I don't quite know what to make of it.

When Snow-Men Attack

The Civil War was raging across America, pitting brother against brother in the bloodiest conflict in American history. The year was approximately 1864, and an unnamed man was looking out of his window in disdain at the heavy snow falling upon the densely-wooded mountains that surrounded the broad valley which played host to the small town of Benton in Pennsylvania's Columbia County. The weather may have been the world warning him not to do what he had been planning to, but he would not be dissuaded. You see, he had been having an affair with the wife of a man who had been enlisted to fight in the war. His love lived in a secluded mountaintop cabin, and he would brave blizzard and bloodshed to reach her. However, what he would encounter as he trekked up that infernal peak would leave anyone questioning their reality - and would ultimately cost him his life...

Ice Cold 

The young man hitched his wagon and commenced the long journey up the winding mountain paths into his lover's sweet embrace. As he moved through the swirling white, he saw that he was slowly approaching an old lumber camp. Just to the side of the road was what he initially took to be a massive shard of ice rising up out of the ground. Riding up to it, he soon realised that this was no ordinary ice shard. Rather, it was a man - or at least something shaped like one. It was 'alabaster white' and appeared to be 'formed from snow' with a beard of icy spikes adorning its face, shining in the cold moonless night. 

The witness continued to draw closer to the strange apparition, perhaps thinking that his eyes were deceiving him - but he didn't have the time to do any more thinking after that before the creature suddenly started moving, leaping from its frozen position and into the back of the man's wagon. It wrapped its freezing arms around his neck and started slashing at his neck with its icicle claws. After no small fight, the man managed to repel his preternatural attacker, but the damage had already been done.

Bleeding profusely, and obviously on his way to death, the terrified traveller managed to stumble his way to the door of his lover's cabin. She let him in, and he collapsed to the floor shortly after he entered the building. For the next three days, he was entirely bedridden - often going into fits in which he would desperately try to fight off attackers only he could see. When those terrible days had elapsed, he finally died - his features left contorted 'in paroxysms of fear'. An undertaker was called up from the town at the bottom of the mountain to carry his body down for burial - and as this undertaker progressed down through the snowy wilderness, he passed by a certain lumber camp. He didn't see the creature, but he did apparently catch sight of some extraordinarily large footprints...

That's Snow Ghost!

Or is it? This story is nearly unique among the annals of Fortean literature, which is why I just felt utterly compelled to cover it. However, I'm not sure just how true it is. It was first reported in the December 2015 issue of The Curious Fortean magazine, in which it was attributed to Henry Wharton Shoemaker, an American folklorist from around the time. This actually puts us in a much better position to assume the potential veracity of such a tale. Shoemaker was actually the co-founder of the Pennsylvania Folklore Society, but has also apparently been accused of fabricating some of his tales. So it seems as if this story resides squarely in the grey area between fact and fiction, as with all good ghost stories...

The Mexican Minotaur Mystery

This baffling tale of highest strangeness first appeared in the Winter 1962 issue of Ray Palmer's The Hidden World magazine - a short-lived publication that had spawned from the controversy surrounding the infamous testimony of Richard Shaver. Unfortunately only one issue of the magazine is available online, and that is not the issue from which I am drawing this story. Instead, I have found this story mentioned on several other websites, and after enough digging (pun intended) I uncovered a full transcription of this amazing account of subterranean terror! 

An Inexplicable Interior

One Frank J. Mezta of Calexico City, California wrote to the aforementioned magazine to tell of a bizarre experience he had, which he had come to believe may well have been the work of the nefarious deros (he actually says 'teros' in his account, but this would make very little sense in the context of the Shaver Mystery) after accidentally stumbling onto some previous issues of the magazine. He had apparently always lusted after answers to the mysteries of ancient history and the origins of civilisation, and he felt he had found just that through the writings of Mr. Shaver. After offering Shaver these generous compliments, he went on to tell his chilling story.

Mezta and a group of friends had decided one day in 1960 to go treasure hunting in the 'interior of Mexico'. This expedition would unfortunately yield them no joy, and would instead leave them questioning their previously-held views of reality. The group arrived at the designated entrance to the cave system, but before they could enter Mezta felt a chilling sensation of fear come over him, seemingly without cause. This was apparently a feeling quite unlike anything Frank had experienced before. He felt as if something was going to happen to him should he enter those caves. It was clearly not only him suffering under the strange sensation, seeing as neither he nor anyone else in the party felt comfortable going underground that day. Perhaps reluctantly, or perhaps with relief, the group agreed to retreat from the cave entrance and return the next day. 

When they returned, the zone of terror had seemingly dissipated - and the group descended, led by Frank. The cave was 'tremendous in size', with passages and paths leading away from it in every direction. Some of these tunnels and chambers were 30ft high and 100ft long. They eventually decided that the system was too vast to feasibly explore, and so they once again decided to leave the caves. However, when they turned around they discovered that there were now two entry tunnels instead of just the one they had come in through. Baffled, the group elected to investigate. They moved down the strange tunnel, and it seemed to go on for ever, winding away into the infinite darkness. Perhaps getting somewhat spooked at this point, the group turned back once more and fled the caves. 

Labyrinth of the Lost

When Frank's group returned to the village, they happened to strike up a conversation with two indigenous Mexicans - who warned them not to enter the 'enchanted caves'. The group was intrigued, and asked the two men just what and where these caves were. They were shocked when the pair directed them to the cave entrance they had visited just a few days earlier. In response to questioning about what exactly happened in the so-called 'enchanted caves', the men answered that people would sometimes go into them and never come back out - and that if one stayed in them for a while and then tried to leave, they would find that the entrances and tunnels had somehow changed. A chill presumably ran down Frank's back at this point - the exact same thing had happened to his group. 

However, the changing geography of the anomalous cave system wasn't the strangest thing about them divulged by the indigenous people. No, that title would have to go to the personal story of the two men. About ten or fifteen years previously, they alleged that they (as well as about twenty or thirty other Native Mexican men) had been hired by an American man to investigate the strange caves. Four or five of their number came equipped with revolvers, and the rest carried lights and tools. They had been labouring away in the cave for a while, when something bizarre and terrifying suddenly made itself known to them. All of a sudden, two figures appeared at the far end of the cave. There was a humanoid with the head of a bull - 'like a bull upright' - and a diminutive entity resembling either a little boy or a 'naked midget'. Horrified, the five armed men pulled out their revolvers only to find that they wouldn't fire, and the lights carried by the rest of the group all went out. 

In the confusion and panic that ensued after this, several of the men were killed in the mad scramble to escape the caves. Since then, nobody had been brave enough to venture into the dark labyrinth below...

The Daedalus Legacy

According to ancient Greek mythology, King Minos of Crete had ordered the architect Daedalus to construct a labyrinth so intricate that not even the builder himself could find his way out without use of a plan. This enormous structure was to be used to house the bastard child of a divine bull and Minos's own wife. Pasiphaë. This child was a monstrous blend of human and bull features, and was known as the Minotaur. Seven youths and seven maidens would be sent into the labyrinth as sacrifices to the Minotaur each year, until the hero Theseus was finally able to slay the beast.

The links between this strange tale and the famous Greek mythological story should be obvious from even a cursory glance. A bull-headed humanoid monstrosity, accompanied by a child, roaming a potentially inescapable network of tunnels and subterranean chambers. History repeats itself, does myth do the same? 

Source

'MEXICO'S HAUNTED UNDERGROUND HALLS'

Nancy Evans Bush Escaped the Matrix

We’ve all heard stories of Near Death Experiences (NDEs). The ‘normal’ format for such a story involves the separation of the soul from the body and then the subject perceiving an tunnel of white light down which they proceed, eventually being met by departed family members or angels or suchlike. These experiences are normally peaceful and inspiring, and they have been known to lead neuroscientists to take abrupt heel turns towards Christianity. However, not all stories of NDEs are easy reading. Admittedly the pleasant ones are the more common of the bunch, and so if you ever happen to temporarily die you can hold out a reasonable degree of hope that you’ll see a happy and peaceful Other Side - but of course for every rule there has to be an exception. Some people see the Abrahamic Hell, burning with sulphurous flames and crammed with monstrous demons. Some just end up in what is called the Void - an endless empty space where only loneliness exists. Nancy Evans Bush, the subject of this article, was one such unfortunate experiencer.

Meeting the Simulators

Sometime during the mid-to-late 20th century (approximately 1962), Nancy Evans Bush was lying prone on a hospital bed - screaming in agony as she gave birth to her second child. Suddenly, something bizarre happened. Perhaps it was relaxing at first - if a little disquieting. She felt her soul separate from her body. Any curiosity about this experience she might’ve had quickly evaporated, however, and was replaced with utter horror as her consciousness was pulled up into an infinite blackness at tremendous speed...

Nancy’s soul flew ever higher - up and out of the roof until she could see over the hospital. She eventually ascended so high that she could see nothing around her, just a meaningless black void. Presumably still in a state of complete shock and horror, she soon became aware of a group of circular entities floating around her. They were constantly changing colour - 'clicking' from white to black and back again. Although they struck her as heartless and malicious, she was careful not to say that they were evil. They seemed 'authoritative'. It was clear to her that they were in control in the bizarre environment around her, and that they knew far more than she did. Despite her Christian faith as part of the Congregational United Church of Christ, it never occurred to her that what she was seeing could've been Hell - she just assumed automatically that this was what waited for her after death without assigning any religious meaning to it. The entities started to speak, and what they had to say was truly horrifying.

They told her that she had never existed. Her 17-month-old daughter had never existed. Her mother had never existed. The Earth wasn't real - it had all been a 'joke'. She was overcome with a sense that what the circular entities were telling her was incontrovertibly true, and that there would be no point in arguing. Utterly crushed, she listened in silence as the entities told her that 'none of that had ever been real; this is all there was'. Eventually the beings vanished and left her alone in the endless blackness around her. I cannot imagine how that must have felt.

She had no context whatsoever with which to understand this new revelation. Her father and her grandfather had been intellectual, liberal-minded Christians, and she had been taught that Jesus loved everyone and that if you did the right thing you would go to Heaven. This experience was eating away at that faith. In later research into Near-Death Experiences, she would come to the conclusion that bad things often happened to who she thought of as bad people - faithless, guilt-ridden, hostile people. She had been born again, and although she acknowledged that she was 'far from perfect' - there was nothing in her background that suggested to her that she might've deserved such a hellish fate. When she was revived, her soul returned to her body and the first thought she had was that Calvin had been right - predeterminism was real and she had been born to suffer. The truth about the virtual nature of the world weighed on her as a heavy burden. She felt it was too terrible to ever tell anyone about it.

Six months after the experience, she was on the road to recovery when she was having tea with a friend. Her friend handed her a book which they had just purchased that day - Jung's Man and his Symbols - and told her to have a look through it. This she did, but she soon dropped it and stumbled away from the table in abject horror. There, on the left side of one of the pages, was a large illustration of one of the discoid entities from her dream. Only later did she realise that she was looking at the well-known symbol of the yin-yang from ancient Chinese philosophy. She had previously had no exposure to this concept, seeing as she had grown up as a New England Congregationalist. It would be this bizarre realisation that would start her down the course to joining the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and becoming an advocate for those who have suffered through unpleasant NDEs in the face of the overwhelmingly positive New Age view of the phenomenon. She has even written a book on it, which is listed in the sources below.

Sources

'Dancing Past the Dark' by Nancy Evans Bush

2009 Interview with Nancy Evans Bush for Vital Signs (IANDS Newsletter)

'Distressing Near-Death Experiences' by Nancy Evans Bush and Bruce Greyson

Los Vampiros de Humahuaca

As they went to sleep that night, they had no idea that they would never wake again. It was nighttime in Mexico, sometime during the mid 20th Century. I can only presume that they left their windows open that night - because something awful soon entered their household. This thing had a rotund body covered in hair, and leathery wings tipped with small claws instead of arms. Large ears adorned its pig-snouted head, and it approached the sleeping couple slowly. Biting down on the woman's neck, it started to lap up her warm blood. The same fate would soon befall her male companion. Their corpses would soon be found, the telltale mark of the vampire bat upon their necks. However, these toothmarks were massive. The coroners presumably thought they must've been mistaken when they realised that the bat responsible for the two deaths would've been approximately the size of a dog! 

A Chiropteran Colossus? 

Unfortunately, hardly anything is known about the Mexican case. It is simply documented as having involved the deaths of a man and a woman at the hands (or indeed fangs) of a grotesquely oversized vampire bat - all of the rest of the details you just read unfortunately had to be extrapolated by yours truly. However, what requires less authorial extrapolation is the description of the events that occurred in the small city of Humahuaca in the Jujuy Province of Argentina in January of 1969. One Meliton Juarez, a local muledriver, told an unnamed Mexico City newspaper about his encounter with a creature of a 'horrible' aspect. He was riding his mule when an enormous winged entity passed over his head several times, terrifying his mount before apparently attacking him - forcing him to repel it by beating it several times with his whip. He would later tell the paper that he thought the creature intended to land on his mule and drain it of blood. The paper stated that the monster was thought to weigh between five and six kilograms, but unfortunately gave no other details as to the dimensions of the thing - leading me to speculate that the monster was approximately the size of a small dog. This is, obviously, far too large for an ordinary vampire bat. 

Juarez's neighbours in the Quebrada de Humahuaca valley correlated his bizarre and terrifying encounter with several unexplained livestock deaths that had taken place at local ranches in recent memory - numerous domestic fowls having had their blood drained. According to Jacques Bergier in his 1975 book Extraterrestrial Intervention: The Evidence, scientists in the area believed that the existence of such a monstrous bat was indeed possible based on the story of the couple killed by such an animal I discussed in the beginning of this article. 

Driving Me Batty 

Apologies for the shortness of this article. I found this story in the aforementioned book and figured that I should give it a bit more attention than it seems to have gotten from the cryptozoological community around the time it was published. It is disappointing that Bergier simply lists his source as 'an unnamed Mexico City newspaper', which was apparently published on January 7th of 1969. If any of my readers can find this article, I would be honoured to accept your help!