1959 UFO News from the 1947 Mountain

More CE2s from Jan Aldrich's stack. 

Although almost any CE2 UFO encounter is interesting,  a few of these seem [to me] more so. 

Freeport, TX: August of 1959.

Four persons, three young women and one young man [who was engaged to one of the girls] were driving to an outdoor swimming area at 9:30pm. A bright object neared their car and the engine stalled and the headlights went out. Two smaller lights which seemed not to be parts of the bigger object, flew ahead and circled over the road, going on to seemingly land in a wooded area. The bigger object followed them. The big object was extremely bright and constantly changing colors. The guy wanted to stay and watch, but the girls objected. The car was restarted and they went on to the swimming area [a beach spot called The Duchess, which closed at around 11pm]. 

Returning around midnight, the UFOs were still there in place. This time the guy voluntarily stopped the car and got out with the intention of investigating. As he began to walk, the big object brightened considerably and the two small lights appeared. The UFO began generating a penetrating low humming noise. The guy was thoroughly scared and ran back to the car, where the girls were hysterical. No conversation was needed and they drove off as fast as the car would take them. 

Although newspaper stories differ on what happened next, it seems that the witnesses reported their experience promptly to the police, and returned to the scene, whereupon the UFO was gone. The report says, however, that there were two other witnesses to such an object flying in that vicinity that evening. APRO ultimately interviewed in this case. 

The event is interesting not only for the "electromagnetic" vehicle interference effects, but because it seems to include a direct response to a behavior by one of the witnesses. ... and it is a multiply witnessed case reported to authority. 

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Cumberland, MD: October of 1959.

This encounter was reported by a New York newspaper columnist who was a good friend of the witnesses [three in number]. They were driving from NYC down to Maryland, had their vacation and were driving back early the following Sunday evening just after dark. The witnesses were an engaged couple and the older brother of the to-be groom. Upwards and just to the right ahead appeared a circular, metallic disk, hovering and emitting an energetic [like a "mercury arc"] bluish-green light around the edges of its ring. The driver slammed to a stop. 

At that moment, the disk dropped down to about fifty feet altitude. It then "side-stepped" to align itself directly in front on the highway. It hovered precisely in place --- no motion and making a slight humming sound. The brothers decided to get out to investigate. As they reached for their door handles, the car shut down --- no engine, no headlights, no radio. The young woman said: "I think that you should stay here with me ... please." The guys thought that this was wise and stayed put. 

When they settled back, the UFO seemed to turn 90degrees, tilt, and whisk away upwards. Just as it was entering the cloud layer, the car's lights and radio came back on. The driver was then able to re-start the car and drive the rest of the way back home. 

This seems to be another case of a "display" of the UFO for a limited set of witnesses --- note that for the duration of the event, no other car appeared on the road. The UFO also, as in the previous case, seemed to respond to the witnesses' intentions. The case has credibility due to the personal nature of the relationship of the witnesses and the reporter. 

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Alvin, TX: November of 1959:

A driver of a gasoline tanker truck was going from Corpus Christi to Houston, when he noticed that he was being paced by an unidentified object very high in the sky. Normally, this would mean some kind of misidentification by an excited observer. But this thing did something nearly unheralded in the UFO literature which puts it FAR outside the norm of close encounters. 

Several times this object descended towards the road ahead of the tanker. When it got low, it seemed to "spray out" billows of fog across that localized area of highway. When the driver would tentatively enter these fog patches, and if the UFO lowered over his truck, his truck would shut down. These delays ultimately made him six hours late for his arrival in Houston. Though not clearly stated in the text, apparently the UFO would regain height, the fog would dissipate, and he could get going again. 

The last vehicle stoppage occurred just outside of Alvin, TX, and this time the truck would not restart. The only thing to do was to stop a passing vehicle and ask the driver to inform the police in Alvin [The Chief thought it high humor that a gasoline truck was stranded, assuming it was out-of-gas... the part of the message naming a UFO as the culprit also evoked rolling eyes.] 

Ultimately the tanker was towed to town [a high-up "balloon-like object" being still seeable when the Chief and the tow-truck arrived.] A mechanic from Houston HQ arrived soon also, to pronounce the tanker now ready to go with no perceivable problems. 

The credibility of the case isn't as strong as the previous two, but the driver had reported his saga to more than one police department along the trip. The strangeness is high. It is a "stalker" case supreme, and the mist production is rare --- see the paralysis and involuntary arm movement case of Leominster, MA, and the Aveley, UK saga for other examples. 

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Between Roswell and Corona, NM {in air}: August of 1959.

This is a particularly intriguing thing since it involves effects on compasses. 

A pilot flying [unfortunately] alone between Hobbs and Albuquerque, NM noticed that his "Magnesyn" {electric} compass was revolving in full 360degree motions at about five second sweeps. The plane was staying on course, but he noted that his other compass, a standard magnetic compass, was crazily gyrating. 

Now he saw three elliptical objects approaching. These gray slightly-fuzzy-looking disks passed in front of him at a distance of about 150-200 yards, and proceeded to circle his plane. As they circled, the Magnesyn compass kept pace with them, always pointing towards the objects. The bogies made two and a quarter circuits then broke off and flew away to the rear. Both compasses then settled down.

Going into Albuquerque he reported the encounter. The tower told him not to land there but to proceed instead to Holloman AFB nearby. Upon landing at Holloman, Goldsberry was interviewed by the base UFOB officer, a major, for two hours. He was told to keep quiet about the experience [which he did for 6 years] and that if he got ill to report to hospital right away, inferring that radiation exposure could be involved. 

What I think that I know and maybe others have not connected with this, is that in 1958 two ladies had a close encounter with a UFO at Alcalde, NM and were extensively examined [at the Air Force's insistence] at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque for radiation effects. The investigating officers here may have been from Kirtland rather than Holloman, but both bases were heavily involved with UFO phenomena and investigations in that era. 

The big phenomenological thing here is the compass effect, and the difference between the compasses. It's another tribute to Air Force incompetence that this case wasn't pursued with a second-level [laboratory] investigation to deduce the type of force needed to create the different instrument responses. 

With an eye to perhaps publishing a little UFO research [which seems not to have happened to any extent], someone on the west coast collected the Compass Effect cases seen in the not-overly-helpful listing above [I tried to locate just which cases these were and succeeded in only a little over half of them --- if any of you folks have a list I'd like to see it.] A rather pretty graph was created, and it, as usual, shows the notorious drop-off of CE2 cases worldwide c.1980. 

Oh, those uncooperative UFOs!! 

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{Last one}, near Proberta, CA: December of 1959.

Although this case IS a CE2e effects case, I prefer to list it as a CE2physiological event. 

A single male was driving to work in his truck at 5:45am [his shift started at 6.] His radio began making a snapping noise. Then his lights began to dim. He stopped the truck and got out to look at the headlights. As he glanced about, he saw a large bright green crescent [concave side upwards] following behind him about 60 feet off the road. This scared the heck out of him and he simultaneously noticed that his clothes were close to soaking wet --- he seemed to think that this was a UFO effect, not "just" his system's shock from fright. This was because his outer clothes were moist too. 

The big deal physiologically was that he felt great pressure to his guts "as if he was being crushed inside". He also felt as if the object was "drawing him up" towards it. Who knows whether all this was produced by his terror or whether the UFO had "forces" associated with it which directly acted upon him? 

He went for his gun [a rifle] in the truck. As he did, he clumsily smashed into his rearview mirror and sent himself reeling. When he got back up the object had gone. Looking out the opposite window, he saw the object rapidly flying towards the Sierra foothills. It showed no trail exhaust as it went. 

Trying to concentrate on what he'd just experienced, he pictured the object hanging there over the road, gently rocking side to side. It was colored a deep vividly penetrating bluish green. There was no noise at all, and no cars on the road throughout the event --- something very odd for that road. The witness said that this had never been true before or since. When the object left, the headlights came back on. He resumed his trip but at no more than 200 yards smelt rubber burning. Stopping again, all his battery caps had blown and the battery was bulging out of shape. The generator was destroyed, the wires and armature melted together. Only a short distance from work, his truck was able to limp the rest of the way.

he reported his story to the night foreman, who noticed that the driver's clothes were damp. Later on his shift, a fellow worker came to him to say that his new radio had gone dead at 5:45am that morning and came back on 5 minutes later. He lived within a mile of the encounter. 

The sad thing about this story is that there are no other persons who were involved who remembered much nine years later when NICAP was made aware of the case and went out to interview. Only the wife remembered how scared her husband was as he retold his tale to her. 

So, although the strangeness of the case is high, the credibility factor is mediocre. There's no reason in the investigation to suggest that the witness was a bad guy or incompetent, just that there is little corroborating information. Still, the "pulling up" sensation, the soundless car-less OZ factor, alongside the CE2p and CE2e effects make the case worth keeping. 

So, here are some of today's culprits. Once again there is no sense that extraterrestrials want to buy identical looking models to buzz lesser technology planets in.

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Till next time folks. Who knows whether it will be back to the Cryptodumps or more wrestling with the Close Encounters.... 

..... or something REALLY unbelievable.

Peace and Happy Joyful Beltane.

Research Note to Kevin Duggan

These are some suggestions to a recent inquiry about how to go about researching and writing about UFOs and the Colorado area. I'll be easy on myself and list points of possible interest in as simple a form as possible [because the question was just a bit like "could you tell me everything that you know?"]

a). Colorado isn't the richest state when it comes to UFO case reporting. There is no "Roswell" level case there, but there is no Roswell level case anywhere else in terms of complexity and drama. There are however several cases of interest if one works for them.

b). I have 19 cases in my files. Seven of them are Close Encounters of the second kind [physical effects] and one is a case where the UFO seemed partly present and partly not. There is one CE3. I've not re-read these files, but I must be impressed with them a little bit to have bothered to file them.

c). Mark Rodeghier collected UFO Reports involving vehicle interference up to 1979. He found four Colorado cases. The 1960 Left Hand Canyon case is interesting, and the Redvale 1967 case was looked at by the Colorado Project. I like the 1967 Texas Creek case.

d). Ted Phillips produced a similar catalog of Landing Trace cases up through 1977. He found ten Colorado cases. Four of these [Montrose 1967, "Colorado" 1967, Alamosa 1967, and Gleeson 1968] were within the Project period and all were ignored or botched.

e). George Eberhart's Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies lists >>>100 Colorado cases with their [usually newspaper citation] references. As you are, I believe, a newspaper man, you should be able to hunt down such citations. In fact a service to the UFO community would be the surveying of many Colorado newspapers for hitherto unknown cases.

f). one can go to the National UFO Reporting Center {NUFORC} and click on Colorado and get a long list of area sightings. Most are useless, but occasionally there is detail.

g). one can go to the UFO-DNA site and find near the bottom of their choices a click which sends you to a small crowded map. Some small messing around there will get you a regional listing of cases on the site {ex. Colorado cases mixed in with Wyomings Dakotas etc}. Some of these cases will be good ones though you will still have to find the reports.

h). If I were writing about Colorado and UFOs, I'd spend some time talking of the government element involved. Obviously the University Project was a big public deal, but also NORAD is there. There are things which NORAD calls "uncorrelated targets" [from all over the world] which they collect and then presumably analyze secretly, and as far as we're concerned, bury. There's at least a story there.

i). Lastly, there is something that you might be able to do for my special interest and the field's. The pretty dark-haired lady in the terrible picture above is Mary Lou Armstrong, the main data-collector and secretary of the Colorado Project. She played a big role in it, but no one followed her afterwards and sat down for a long tell-all interview. The UFO Community would VERY MUCH like to interview her for the Oral History Project --- if she still lives {she'd probably be in her seventies} AND IF WE KNEW WHERE SHE WAS. How about it? Give it a try to find her? Be a heck of a centerpiece for a book.

Peace.

1958 UFO News from the 1947 Mountain

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS of the SECOND KIND.

Another day in the life of a too-old UFOlogist ... a package came in the mail the other day. It was a large stack of pages, all pertaining to UFO Close Encounters. I was happy to get them, but forgot what I was supposed to do with them. My best guess is: look at them and see if any useful thought pops into your head about them. I can't promise "useful", but maybe something will happen

Most of the following is the fault of these two guys: Loren Gross on the left, and Jan Aldrich to his right. Jan had been collecting stacks of paper on Close Encounters of the Second Kind [for usages unknown] and had extracted most of Loren's history series of monographs for the bulk of the cases. Knowing a sucker when he sees one, Jan asked me if I'd like him to ship me the pile. Not having the sense of a wombat, I said "Sure. Send them over." So now what? 

The stack is about a half a foot high and, due to Jan's diligence, is in date order. The first year is 1958, the year following the great flap of 57, which featured a flurry of electromagnetic vehicle interference cases. Maybe we'll see if such UFOlogical weirdness persisted, despite conventional UFO history saying that there was a severe drop-off. 

What I'm going to do [to save time, sanity, and the possibility of even getting through the stack] is to begin at least going year by year and we can see what we may see. So: 1958.

This is what we have in this pile for 1958: 23 cases, all but one of which I read as a CE2, and all but two of which have a CE2 E&M component. The one CE2 which does not have a CE2 E&M aspect to it is Snag, Yukon --- and it provides the opening picture for the blog entry today. It is a case where one of the two witnesses decided to fire away at the UFO but his gun jammed. One can imagine an electromagnetic "freezing" of the gun parts so that it wouldn't fire, but that's wild guesswork by me. [and I don't believe it either]. [Why? Such an E&M effect would probably have magnetized the gunmetal, and we should have heard about that in the report.] 

Of the twenty one incidents having E&M effects, only eight of the cases appear in Mark Rodeghier's catalog of UFO vehicle interference events. Mark did a good job with that catalog, but if he only got about a third of what Loren/Jan were collecting, imagine how many CE2 E&M cases are really out there. [the Rodeghier catalog cases are marked with a small red circle near the number.] [only seventeen of the above cases are of interference with a VEHICLE in some way, though, so Mark got about half of them.] 

What intrigues me the most about case clusters such as this, though, is something we've seen on this blog before.

That is: there is no uniformity of type of UFO "craft" which parallels CE2 E&M events. Once again, this data seems to indicate that you cannot use what you see to predict anything about what the UFO is actually doing in physical effects cases. The visual appearance is like the ghostly head of the Mighty Wizard of OZ, but you're not Toto-enough to rip away the curtain to see what the show is really about. 

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AN ADDENDUM FROM THE OTHER DAY: 

We were having difficulty coming up with any documentation about a 1954 Germany CE3, until the ever-vigilant Tooth Fairy dropped a reference to Jimmy Guieu's book into my lap. Now the even-more-vigilant Rob Swiatek has discovered that NICAP and Richard Hall in very early days knew about the case. We know that the Boss, Don Keyhoe didn't like the idea of little men from saucers, but one wonders if the young Dick Hall was wavering on this conservative NICAP stance even before Ted Bloecher and Isabel Davis joined NICAPs staff. We know that Dick at least had the fun of drawing his rendition of the aliens on his record card. 

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So, what would these two guys think about all this? 

MDS: Yo, Carl! What do you think? 

Carl: Don't know, Mike. Are we on camera?

MDS: Think so. Better smile.

Carl: Yeh. That's all they'll get for today. 

Guess we'll never know what brilliant thoughts they had. [hint: it was lunchtime]. 

Peace.

A Brief UFO Diversion

I've run out of steam on the cryptodump for the moment, so I'll try something else. Our mentor, Dr. Hynek, would probably approve since it's about UFO cases, but is having second thoughts since I'm the one writing it. Well, relax Allen. I'm just giving a few facts on five cases this time.

These five offerings have crossed my path spontaneously [translation: nothing I do anymore is planned]; one via buddies on the NICAP site, and four because I'm trying to clean up my files.

MID-GULF of MEXICO, 1967: 

This is the recently dug up document courtesy of the never-ending successes by my friend Barry Greenwood. This is a radar-visual multiple witness case. It has significance because it was one of the example cases listed by Dr. Hynek for his The UFO Experience. Strangely, it's the only RV example case that he doesn't discuss in the text. AND it's nearly impossible to find the documentation for it. But Barry did [of course] and so you and I can read the initial report. I note the odd circumstance of chaotic blinking on and off by the 6 red lights, contrasted to the regular 4 1/2 second pulsations. Note also Hynek's personal scrawl on the document and his rating of the case as a "5" for strangeness, but a "7" for credibility {which is high up that scale for him. } 

CHARLESTON, WV {and a lot of other places}, 1960: 

I blundered into this newspaper clipping from my old hometown area. It featured something that was happening in several locations back then which no one has yet explained {I talked about some of this stuff in some entries on Dr. Hynek and the Project Moondust satellite watch anomalies in some earlier blogging}. 

The clipping led me to discover that I had some correspondence from this lady [to NICAP], which follows:

Mrs. Bennett nicely included her pictures.

The clipping had more text too.

... and that's interesting because it [as is rare with photo cases] establishes that this thing was seen by multiple and independent observers. The "skeptical scientists" and the USAF tried to pass this off with it was just a meteor. To that I say:

US Route 601, SC, 1959: 

We got lucky and had an artist get a look at a dome disk while driving through South Carolina back to God's Country in the green hills of WVA. 

The case is a nice simple UFO encounter, which seems to have been a park-in-front-so-you-can-look-at-me affair, The object seemed to choose to fly off only when the observer began to back away. 

.... and now a peek at the Aliens.... 

This newsclipping came undated and started an odyssey of thrashing away trying to discover what it was. The Hoge case seemed interesting. The mindbogglingly useful UFO-DNA almost missed it entirely --- referencing only the whacky Trevor James {Constable} They Live in the Sky, as a source. Turning nearly every page in James {as he conversed freely with Ashtar of Venus to receive universal truths} I finally found that he'd read it in Keyhoe's Flying Saucer Conspiracy. OK, a step up. Keyhoe smirked away the story in typical Keyhoe anti-entity fashion, and added little. So, I was about to give up --- even the magnificent Albert Rosales [a follower of this blog and a good friendly colleague in the quest,] only had Vallee's minimalist reference to go on. Then, falling magically into my lap was....

.... well, how about that! Aime Michel's contemporary [and very slightly earlier colleague] Jimmy Guieu had gotten information on the incident for his book Black-Out Sur Les Soucoupes Volantes, and somebody at CSI-NY had nicely translated it for me --- I think that we have Lex Mebane to thank for that. Guieu's reference is collaborative and slightly better detailed. The case is a good old fashioned CE3 with mostly"modern" looking aliens. Nice case for that era when few were followed up in any way.

LAST ONE --- near Anadarko, OK 1906 --- yep, 1906. Please forgive the jump-around look of this clipping --- I didn't want to just cut it up to "organize" it.

Well, I can't help it. I like this one. Multiple close-passing something-or-others which then just vanish suddenly. .... high strangeness in 1906. 

But, you demand, WHAT were they? 

Till next time, folks.

Peace.

DOWN IN THE CRYPTO-DUMPS, part three: Hairy Humanoids.

OLDEN TIMES:

Another one of our mysteries which is set in stone in the ancient mind --- either those old folks had no clue whatever, or we don't.

Ivan had several classic illustrations of hairy wild men which formed part of his ideas on the "Wudewasa" of Europe's past, and I'll just post a few here. The above is, I believe, a fragment of a painting study by Hans Durer {I've never heard of Hans Durer; Albrecht Durer yes.} .

All of these are interesting, but the very bottom drawings intrigue. I notice that the picturing of the Ourang-outan is quite like the drawing of the wildman by Bontius, and that slides right into the drawing by Gesner of Breydenbach's apeman. This in turn reflects upon the next picture.

These are illustrations for Breydenbach's Travels in the Holy Land. Our wildman is at the bottom right, and it, if just an orangutan is pictured with a tool and leading a camel. Well, that is at least odd. Other than the "orangutan/wildman", the camel, giraffe, crocodile and long-eared sheep seem uncontroversial. But what about the giant salamander and the unicorn? The unicorn has as "Narwhal-looking" a horn on it as any I've seen. Is Breydenbach just a wholesale liar?? He states unmistakenly: " These animals are truly depicted just as we saw them in the Holy Land." What's going on? The only way that I can think to rescue his reputation would be to say that he visited some notorious stuffed animal museum which contained real and whizzed up animals.

........ or he could have really seen a unicorn and a giant salamander.

But we don't want to think about that, I guess. Too Out Proctor with too little data.

Alright. Pushing onward into the Bush: GIANTS.

Ummm.... ugly. Can The True and The Ugly be one? Though Plato didn't think so, {he of "the good, the true, the beautiful" idealism}, he must have not taken himself literally in the popular definition sense of beauty, since, despite what the guy in The Princess Bride said, he was not a moron. Our Native Americans believed in a true race of giants and one of their artists is telling us that we are now looking at one. ... Sasquatch with a shave and a haircut??

Ivan published at least three articles in PURSUIT on the subject of Giants. The first claimed that Lundy Island [a small piece of land in the general gap between Wales and Cornwall] had two ancient coffins containing two eight-foot skeletons plus "sacrificed slaves". Upon trying to track this claim down, SITU got nowhere except to hear that the original writer of the newsclipping got his "data" from an "older clipping" and "reference books", all unnamed and unfound.

A second article listed several dispersed claims. a]. 100 miles south of Tug Hill, PA remains of a people of giant size; b]. Sayopa, Sonora Mexico old cemetery of burials of men averaging eight feet; c]. El Boquin, Chontates District, Nicaragua gigantic man with head missing. {Ivan noted that Chontates is an indian word meaning "wildman"}; d]. Island off southern Florida eight foot tall human skeletons embedded in the sand; e]. Tioga Point, Bradford county PA 68 men buried in a mound, averaging seven feet tall; this last group was said to have evidence of horns on their heads. ... I think that I'll pass on these ... for more than one reason.

The third article was an examination of a claim repeated by Ivan himself in his classic Abominable Snowman: a Legend Come to Life. In that he spoke of a giant skull found during WWII on the very western tip of the Aleutian Island chain. The catalyst for this PURSUIT article was the appearance of an old Sanderson acquaintance who was on site when the thing was uncovered. This man had scolded Ivan for not asking him about the claim before publishing it in his book. Ivan retorted: "I didn't know you were there!!" The man [kept anonymous by Sanderson] went on to describe uncovering the damaged and degenerating skull of what he called an Icthyosaur [Ivan disagreed with that identification while buying that this thing was not human], which had lost part of its beak, and was in the process of losing the rest. The seamen were referring to it as The Giant, while not knowing what they were talking about. Ivan then rejected the spectacular claim, and with the new data decided that something like a bottle-nosed dolphin was a better guess.

There were also two articles from something called Forgotten Ages. These things were entitled "The Sons of Goliath, parts one and two".These articles were loaded with giant claims and far too dense for me to detail here. I'll give a too-brief thumbnail. Part one was more worldwide while part two was almost entirely US focussed. Part one listed claims of the following sort: a]. 1928 Ecuadoran Central Railroad blasting crew--- eight foot and nine foot giants. b]. about same year, Gargayan, Philippines --- seventeen foot tall skeleton; c]. also same period, Ceylon --- thirteen foot skeletons; d]. 1960 Tura, Assam, India --- eleven foot skeleton --- "authorities" dismiss it as "only" the bones of an ape ... uhhh, just an eleven foot ape? Sure, no news there; e]. 1969 Terracina Italy --- fifty tiled coffins each containing a skeleton between 6 1/2 and 8 feet tall; f]. 1891 Crittendon, Arizona --- sarcophagus with skeleton 12 feet tall; g]. 1911 and 1931 and 1939 Lovelock, Nevada --- several skeletons and mummies between 6 1/2 and 9 feet tall, between 8 and 10 feet tall, and one seven feet seven inches; h]. 1879 Brewersville, Indiana --- number of skeletons one of which was 9 feet 8 inches tall; i]. 1925 Walkerton Indiana --- eight skeletons 8 to 9 feet tall; and eight more instances, most of which were from Minnesota. In one of those "mound stories" it was insisted that among the remains were the bones of HORSES despite them not being native to the continent.

Part two of this hard-working review piece, concentrated on the idea that not only was the North American continent littered with the remains of giants, but that the Native Americans knew this all along. These giants went by the names of the "Sitecah" or the "Allegewi" or the "Telligewi" [among doubtless others]. They were considered to be the legendary opponents of the current tribes, of great size, fair skin, outstanding understanding of technology, and the builders of the mound culture. The academic archaeologists and anthropologists cringe horribly at even the thought of this, as it is academic cant that the Native American peoples built all of that themselves --- I by the way am happy with the thought that the direct ancestors of the current peoples were the Mound Builders, but in the spirit of Charles Fort severely disapprove of having such conclusions as basic "untouchables" built right into the psyches of a whole tribe of academics by training [programming]. It should at least give a little pause when native elders and shamans tell you a different story.

The part two goes on to fire even more shots across the academic bows, bringing up the much argued "Chinese exploration of the Americas" as claimed documented in the Shan Nai King. Herein it is claimed that America was well explored in the 2000BC era, and two areas of Giant inhabitation were found [The East Coast and the Western Deserts, if you're interested]. The Chinese called the latter "The Great Men's Country". There was also a somewhat lengthy description of something that has totally eluded me over my 75 years --- the lost work of a student of Plato, Theopompus of Chios, who allegedly wrote something called the Meropidae. {I've got to look this up and see if it's even real}. This thing, a dialogue between King Midas and the Satyr Silenos [THAT would have been one great conversation to sit in on --- hah!], purported to describe the inhabitants of the land across the ocean. Guess what? They were giants. ... and two types of giants. Supposedly, they came across the ocean once, landing in Hyperborea [Great Britain], whereupon they were confronted by a happy and strong people [The Druids no doubt].

Well, much fun. I haven't a clue as to whether any thing of this is real, except one thing: Native American legends are rife with images of physically real large humanoid somethings-or-other having intelligence. How does that relate to Sasquatch? That's your job now.

CHINESE WILDWOMEN: Some time ago on the blog I presented several entries on the materials in some rare Russian monographs held by Ivan in his collection. Among the many fascinating things in those books were tales of violent aggressive female Yeti/Almas/whatevers. As you see below, they seem to have shown up again.

This should be expected I guess, as even Bhutan has memorialized the wild female side of this exotic mystery in its postage stamps.

SHIPTON: 

Interesting to me to read of an interview with Eric Shipton, being as his famous Yeti print is such a big deal in this ABSM data bank. 

The rest of this small article continues below --- I couldn't get the scale correctly matched, but it's the same article....

I, as always, am puzzled by things that more veteran researchers would not be. My puzzlement here is why Shipton showed a "human" proportioned footprint rather than his famous "ape" proportioned one. This lecture would have taken place in about 1975, as the article appeared in Bigfoot News of January 1976.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about {rest easy, most people don't know what I'm talking about}, the above is the famous photograph of the track. As you see, it's not very much like a humanlike foot, but much more resembles that of an ape with a possible prehensile big toe. Why would the aging Shipton not show his classic picture?, or if he did, why would veteran Bigfoot researchers speak of it as a human foot, albeit kingsized? Sometimes I think that the world is playing pranks on me ... Whoa! Can't go that route! Not only Out Proctor, but LOST Out Proctor! 

A SAD DEBUNK: 

..... a sharp-eyed researcher spots a hoax.

This letter also relates in a way to a small packet of letters exchanged between John Green and Sabina Sanderson [just post Ivan's death], concerning their shared belief that Peter Byrne was untrustworthy as an ABSM researcher, in the particular instance of the famous old "Jacko" Bigfoot case. {I'm not going to wash that dirty laundry here, just letting you know that the Sandersons and John Green didn't hold Byrne in high regard. The letter above by the way is by neither Green nor the Sandersons}. 

HAPPIER WILD STUFF: Percy Fawcett's Amazonian Giants. 

If you can't trust this guy, well at least don't tell him that at the local saloon. 

A map sent to PURSUIT purported to focus on this mystery --- frankly not too closely, but it's fun anyway.

This is the internet version of the location of the Guapore River bordering Brazil and Bolivia, from which Fawcett turned northwards towards the Machado. The correspondent sent this map below to illustrate the encounter area where Fawcett and his team were abandoned by the locals to face the violent hairy primitives alone. 

All readers should pack their bags and get their tickets and go exploring. Hey! What kinds of Forteans are you anyway!? 

The scenery is beautiful and there's a good elevated butte on which you'll find Challenger's Lost World. So get going! 

YOWIE. 

No, that's not a comment on my previous enthusiasms. But the Australian version of Yeti might feel that way. There were two Yowie things in this cryptodump. The article claimed to be able to characterize the Yowie by comparing many witness accounts. And the answer is:

That sort of approach is something that seems fairly rational and sort of "proto-science", if the credibility quotients of the case reports are good. The following newsclipping however pushes things beyond comfort zone to say the least:

Ummmm.... dropping down to see what's happening eh?? 

The Yowie subject did mention an oldtimer character who seemed to have something to do with this cryptomystery though: H. James McCooey.

Though appearing a bit disreputable in the picture above [and in fact having all manner of rough up-against-the-law claims against him], McCooey seems to have been a legitimate accomplished animal recorder and collector and species finder. In short, he was a heck of a good old-style in-the-woods naturalist. McCooey said that he had collected many stories of a large Australian ape and had seen what he thought was the animal himself. A lot of this activity was in the mountains of NSW. 

Another good spot for you guys to go exploring: the Blue Mountains. 

Whether we find the Yowie or not, I liked the following case just slipped in quietly at the end of the article: 

.... High Strangeness .... pure oxygen for the soul. 

And with that I'll give us both a break. 

Not sure what's next in the crypto-dump pile. Some "thing" will doubtless pop up.

Peace.