Peeking at Ivan's SITU files: meaningless reports of sea monsters.

Continued slim pickings going through the first two unsorted file boxes from the Warth era. So, not much to report. In desperation just to put up something on the blog, I've decided to trudge down through a file folder of Ivan's which contained newsclippings of sea monster reports, or claims. There are few thrills here as nothing rises to the status of a substantive investigated incident. But for your amusement here are a beginning twelve such news reports.

The first twelve reports in the notebook are roughly mapped below. As you can see, they are mainly US coastal cases. What you have are: 1). a "water elephant" from the Rio de la Plata in Uruguay [greater than five meters in length {good} and having pinkish spots {not so good}];

2). a "sea monster" from Deception Bay, near Brisbane, Australia [with a 3' wide head and prominent eyes held above the water; no neck, possibly meaning serpentine];

3). a "monster" from Tampico Bay, Mexico [4' long plus half-moon tail, and six feet thick; sharp teeth and flippers ---a manatee??];

4). a "sea serpent" from Venice beach, CA [16' long with a serpent's head and a fin tail, estimated weight about 800 lbs];

5). a "x?z?q?k?" from Miami Beach, CA [5 & 1/2' cylindrical body standing 3' high on eight hairy legs and eyes on stalks --- yep, that's the one I want to go after];

6). a "blob" from Delake Beach, OR [a 22' length whatever with a 4' body like a cow's and 9 "tails". A hairy chest". Scientists said: a piece of a whale; a whale shark; a squid.];

7). a "sea serpent" from Cadboro Bay, BC [ 35-40' long with snake-like head; body 1' diameter; can raise 4-5' out of water; dark color; coiled at about 6-7' --- well, at least we meet one old friend in these reports --- hello, Caddy];

8). a "seal serpent" [spelling on purpose] from Racoon Straights San Francisco Bay [10' long with seal's head and bluish-gray coloration];

9). a complete mystery thing from Sandy Hook, NJ [ a 40-50' long transparent cylindrical thing, 1/2' in diameter, undulating along beneath the surface like "fluid glass"];

10). a "sea serpent" from Ifafa Lagoon, Natal [ a serpentine body fronted by a pig-like face with bulging eyes staring at the witness at the waterline];

11). a "sea monster" from Marshfield, MA [ an elongated body about keg-thickness and two fins about twelve feet from the tail; an alligator-like head and gobbling fish --- one of my favorite kinds of sea serpents and maybe the only one I think could be a real animal];

12). a "serpent?" from Sutherland, CA [ an elongated thing swimming with its head raised 4' above the water].

There's our first "dirty dozen". The note book looks to contain quite a few more, though I haven't thumbed through yet --- you guys can discover what's in there just after I do. Maybe it will be fun; what the heck?? I have to admit: I like #11 & Caddy, and a few others might be "kin". #9 sounds like a neat mystery; and #5 is preposterous but right out of John Keel's universe.

Glad I don't live there.

Peeking at Ivan's Files: survey notes.

Hello, folks. Since I'm in Kalamazoo at the moment, and have had a little chance to work at "pushing boxes" from the SITU files, I thought that it would be worth a brief report. John Reed, Will Matthews and I have now at least peered into every box. Some of these things are rapidly "understandable", and some of them are going to take page-by-page turning to rationalize their contents, make files, and even save roughed up old paper from the recycle bin. The main thing about the "collection" is the massive library involved. By library I mean books and journals. This is probably a factor of ten larger than I would have expected. That's a good thing of course, but it means that the "files" are a bit less than expected, at least as far as I can tell at this moment. Saying that, however, needs some amendation, as Ivan's own three-ring notebook files seem to be here pretty much en masse. The "deficit", I think, may turn out to be from the Bob Warth era, which was almost the last guess that I would have made.

Regarding Ivan's files, which are certainly the core and gem of the collection: it is not easy to precisely count [ex. there are a few instances where it looks like we have a hole-punched pile of things which have "lost" their notebook], but my count is 302 "books".

The bulk of these have science supertitles ["Biology", "Geology", "Cultural Anthropology"] and contain whatever Ivan was interested in saving that he thought might apply to odd events/sightings. These number 63, 28, and 30 notebooks respectively. Within them are often materials which you or I would see as directly related to certain anomalous claims [ex. the stuff related to possible existence of dinosaurs currently is in a science notebook not a "monster" one.]

"Monsters" however DO show prominently. There are about twenty notebooks on miscellaneous "monsters", mostly water-dwellers. But the "ABSMs" dominate both the numbers and Ivan's interest, as books labelled so number 33. UFOs get 31 notebooks. Things associated with other sciences get 18. Miscellaneous anomalies [ex. Falls; Psi], get 31. There are 8 bibliographic notebooks, and 41 where Ivan collected certain journals, largely UFO newsletters. This numbers slightly over 300 notebooks or seventy-five-and-a-half-feet of linear shelf space. The anomalies research community can breathe a happy sigh of relief about that.

Now since you've been so nice to read all this "pragmatic" informational report, I'll toss in an example of a "neat thing" that one occasionally finds in the files. This is the picture of the "giant Congo snake" allegedly taken from the air by a bush pilot around 1960-2. Somehow a good "original" got into Charles Hapgood's and then Ivan's hands, and they were sending it to someone to try to make a competent estimate on how big the thing really was. The pilot had said "200 feet". Hapgood's letter to "Captain Burroughs" is included below for your interest. I'll get back on other SITUations as I can.

Something just for fun --- The SITU mess.

This gives you a little different "peek" at Ivan's files. These are pictures taken by one of my buddies after we had unloaded the monster and actually worked pretty hard on getting books on shelves and the other boxes at least stashed inside my [carpeted and dry] garage. The gallery which follows will show the "Happy Mess" in its near original state. Rummaging about in two of the pictures is a weird entity who also happens to write a blog.

What anomalistic treasures may be uncovered there? My buddy has just written me that an original copy of Oudemans Great Sea Serpent has been found and placed in an appropriately "sacred" location.