A Last Dish of Fish and a [short?] Pause.

It's been a week, so I've tried to grind out one more sea serpent post before retiring for a while. [My back's been killing me and Wheeling WV is currently an unhelpful sauna --- things conspire to impede "progress" in the pursuit of our "fun" it seems]. This post doesn't have much to do directly with Ivan, but I thought I'd put him up there on top so he could read it, too.

I was going through my own relatively flimsy Sea Monster files, which I brought with me from Michigan when I hauled Ivan's notebooks here, and found something worth mentioning at least. Some time ago, Gary Mangiacopra asked me if I could search my files seeking unpublished reports of various kinds, and by chance there seemed to be one [which I sent him]. The report is in a letter which I'm attaching here to the left of the commentary. I believe that it's a pretty good case.

The letter is from the files of my favorite lunatic, George Hunt Williamson. It is fortunate for us that it is not he who is claiming to see the monster, or we'd have to adjust our crap detectors to full power. Instead, this letter is from someone who doesn't even know GHW, and is just responding to a request.

George was sailing on the Queen Mary between the US and England on one of his lecture trips. Being a ladies man, he wasn't being shy with the girls, and got into a conversation with an Aussie lady about, what else?, weird things. She told him that her father had once seen a sea monster.

George of course was immediately GaGa at anything out-of-normal [he believed that all those things from UFOs to Nessie to ABSMs were somehow part of one BIG deal involving spiritual enlightenment, trance mediumship, "elder masters" walking among us and ... well, we haven't the time]. He got the girl to give him her father's address and upon reaching England [I think that he was going by his "Yugoslavian Royalty" name at the time --- Michel d'Obrenovic --- and researching the Holy Grail ... yes ... we really haven't the time], he sent a letter to Australia asking for the story. The letter on the left is Mr. Zakharoff's kind reply.

I find the letter a very good one when it comes to credible witness testimony. It is fairly clear and precise and doesn't claim too much. It is humble and signals other support theoretically available/checkable. The "context" of the sighting is "natural". In short, I believe that we can assume that Mr. Zakharoff is reporting what he believes he saw.

As you can read, he believes that he saw "a gargantuan water snake". It held its head out of the water and blew water spray from its nostrils. Its head was "long", and its body as well, having "several big black mounds at intervals along the water". He felt it was "monstrous", and labeled it a "sea serpent".

GHW never did anything with this case to my awareness, and the letter slept in his files. Gary liked it, however, and published the case in an outlet which I had not seen until today, called North American BioFortean Review, which is on the internet. The discussion there leans towards the giant squid as an explanation. .... ummmm .... I have to admit that Gary and his co-author are far smarter than I am on this stuff, but I can't quite get the squid. Zakharoff says that the thing was a monstrous serpent, and blew water spray out of holes near, well, he's GOT to mean its head. He refers to them as "nostrils".

I'm not going for the Squid on this one [in fact I'm eating squid tonight in honor of that decision]. But I can easily be wrong.

The second tidbit has to do with the Santa Clara "Run-into-a-sea-serpent" case. We have many people out there, apparently, who see this case as an oarfish.

It turns out that Gary and his co-author Dwight Smith also wrote about this [in The Anomalist #7]. Using Ivan Sanderson's 1964 article on his interviewing [which we discussed a few posts ago] and doing personal interviews as well, Gary writes that he does not buy the oarfish idea [which now, on this one, I am in complete agreement].

Mangiacopra and Smith begin their article by giving a powerful "credibility argument" for the witnesses in the case just as we did. The Santa Clara incident is a great relief in that it's bona fides are so good as to the witnesses that that side of the anomalistic conundrum can be set aside as non-problematical.

As to the oarfish: our authors state that the longest oarfish measured was 21'x" long. According to the witnesses, the visible part of the body was 35'. Well, maybe this was the "Mother-of-all-Oarfishes" but it at least casts some real doubt on the hypothesis.

AND...I don't see a real good resemblance between an oarfish in the water and what the witnesses described. "Oarfish" is one hypothesis for this thing, but "animal X" is, to me, a better one. {picture to the left is of an oarfish in the water}.

So, we, for the moment sail off into the sunset, guns having blazed away at sea monsters on both starboard and lee, hopefully not making them too angry.

My posting will probably cease for a bit --this @#%&#@ back must relax and stop barking, the heat could cooperate a bit more, but mainly I'll be going back to Michigan soon and that is always a disruptive change. So, God bless and Peace, and happy sailing.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects part three

Hello, again, folks: installment three [cases 31-45] of this mini-study. 1957-1964 era. Several powerhouse incidents here which help define the CE2p phenomenon/phenomena [?].
These five cases above contain three "6's"---the heaviest concentration of such superstars in the 150, I believe. Another "4" is probably really up there with them too.


November 6th, Merom, Indiana [The Rene Gilham case]. I am almost certain that i've told the story on the blog before, but it's buried in time so here goes. Gilham was a factory worker who lived on a farm. Very rural. There were no "bathroom" facilities, and they had an outhouse. Late one night, Gilham had the Call of Nature, and he went outside. There was no one else out and so he just sat inside the john with an open door. The land around lit up as a brilliant red object flew overhead. The light engulfed everything. It was this light which was seen by others which makes this a multi-witness case. Gilham was "enlightened" on his exposed skin areas. He went inside and began to complain of burning. The next day things were worse and he ultimately had to go to the hospital to have his burns treated. The military visited and left without statement. The press asked what was going on, and the hospital personnel refused to discuss details, leading people to believe it was a government cover-up. Gilham went along with that when he was quizzed by reporters. Later, James McDonald interviewed him, and came away with an intuition that Gilham was hiding something. Because of McDonald's reputation, a small doubt was cast on the story. Well, Gilham WAS hiding something, and when it came out actually anchors the truth of his tale even more. Chet Fitch went down to Gilham's farm and established a friendly relationship with the family. Gilham relaxed and "came clean". He had lied about the military telling him not to talk about the case. Why? Well...it seems that the ol' UFO had shown its light on...well...his exposed body parts, when he was sitting there and he REALLY didn't want to go into those particular details with the reporters. The story which they already had been circulating about a government hush-up was very convenient. Jim McDonald's intuition that he was hiding something was accurate. But. pretty understandable.

The November 10th Madison Ohio case [Leita Kuhn] is the "4" which probably is a 5or6. A letter from her to Keyhoe is included in the illustrations [which by the way are acting up on this site and didn't use to].

February 17th, 1958, Alcalde, New Mexico. [newsclip above...maybe, we'll see]. Here two women were irradiated [at least by bright light] by a flat-bottomed disk which flashed light. The film in their camera was fogged. This led to testing at the Lovelace Clinic [one of the women worked in a civil defense job and her physician worked at the Clinic]. This was the famous Clinic that served places like Holloman, and has been rumored to have been involved with Roswell. The witnesses suffered temporary blindness, "sunburn", headache, nausea, vomiting, all-body rash. The issue of radiation of an ionizing kind is controversial: their personal information said yes, but the report to the press by the military said no. The testing by the military on their car revealed no radiation remnants, but if the testing on themselves DID, how did they get it? Retelling their encounter, they seemed to be off in their estimated time of travel by about two hours ... uh oh. This was WAY before "missing time" was a concept in UFOlogy. What on Earth [or beyond] are we dealing with here? James McDonald re-visited this case and found it to be solid.

Topeka, Kansas, November 11th, 1958. The primary witness here was a Lt.Colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, and well known to personnel at both McConnell AFB Wichita and Topeka Airport. She was awakened by a bright light engulfing her bedroom. Her dogs were acting frightened. She saw a 25-foot diameter disk outside. [four other witnesses saw something take-off from further distances away, including the airport tower operators, who were afraid that something was happening at her home]. The UFO left straight up and was tracked by the airport on radar. She had sequelae to the exposure including recurring red blotches on her eyes and long-term light sensitivity. Both dogs developed cataracts. Even more spectacular than the CE2p aspect were the CE2em effects. Lights, radios, refrigerators were not only shut down, but had permanent damages. Wiring was actually burnt out. [this is a family of highly educated and technical people and not a run-down shack]. When she ultimately told the whole story to the UFO investigations officer at McConnell, he went quietly ballistic. He would have loved to have gotten those refrigerator motors. They'd already been tossed away.

yep...thing's leaving a gap...scroll down

yep, keep going...

almost there.....

patience wins the race.....

is there a light on the horizon???

hmmmm...I'd swear I saw something ahead.

can't be much further now...I hope

It just HAS to be a conspiracy.

The ghost of Robertson has struck in 2011

Yep, it's down there..can see it in my telescope

Trust me, would I lie to you??

This is a test; this is only a test.

There is no danger of radiation leakage.

What we have here is failure to communicate

We've always yearned for the wide-open spaces but .....

Just to occupy the time, have you heard the one about.....

Hell is being trapped in a hotel room with Phil Klass and Stanton Friedman and not being able to do anything but listen for eternity

Whoops...we've arrived.

From priceless to bargain basement with this next set. Nothing here to rave about. The Polish case is probably a good one if I had a good file. It seems to have had a simple physical "no air"

effect on the witness. The Proberta case might not qualify as CE2p at all, but rather be "just" anti-gravity pulling at him. My intuition is that the "rural Michigan" case would be a knock-out, but it is one of those things which has surfaced only by an internet tale [well told, however] and thereby without investigation, and lost to us forever as being of worth. Such is the NEGATIVE impact of the internet on UFOlogy...and, yes, there are positive effects too.

This last set of five contains some good cases: two "4's" and a "5". Both fours could be higher. The five is an extremely well investigated Australian case from Willow Grove [sometimes called "Moe"] in Victoria,
The case involved a 25-foot diameter see-through domed disk making swishing noises and leaving with "instant acceleration". Australian military and scientific personnel were interested in the investigation, along with the public investigators who have done such solid work on many cases there [my own file on this was mailed to me directly by Keith Basterfield, for instance]. The CE2p elements of the case are violently reacting panicked animals and a day-long headache for the witness. James McDonald, on his foray to Australia, interviewed the witness and was impressed by both him and the case investigation. The cartoon to the left [again, maybe that's where it will end up] is my own attempt to crudely portray the incident. [the day was rainy if you were wondering what those streaks were meant to convey---this detail is usually not mentioned in descriptions of the case and comes from the RAAF report].

Well, with that, and since my typing hand is breaking, I'll sign this version off, and hope that the blogmachine doesn't screw the arrangement of the post too badly---if it does, just consider it a part of the Great Conspiracy.