Canada's Werewolf Hunter

On the night of April 14 and the morning of April 15, 2014 there was a full, blood moon, as well as a lunar eclipse. This created a very creepy atmosphere, which, naturally, lead to students at the University of Calgary to throw parties and generally be collage kids.

Unfortunately, the creepy atmosphere also lead another student to a different activity. Matthew de Grood murdered five students because he claimed they were werewolves.

The Canadian courts are currently ruling on the case now. You can find more details about the case here.

New Book by Cryptozoologist and Folklorist Ronald Murphy Jr.!

Ronald Murphy Jr. is a world class expert on fairies, writer, actor, and cryptozoologist extraordinaire.
He has written numerous books, both non-fiction and fictional, including On Dogman, On Mermaids, and The Unexplained World of the Chestnut Ridge.
Ron is a seasoned researcher with cryptozoological and folkloric subject. He has done extensive research for all of his books and all are extremely well written and detailed.
I am glad to call Ron my friend and associate, he has done much for the subject.

He has come out with a new book!
On Wildman: Tracking Bigfoot Through History
On Wildman is his third book in his 'On' series where he examines the cultural and mythological origins of well known figures in cryptozoology. His other two were about Mermaids and Dogman.

I ordered his new book last night and cannot wait until it comes. After I read through, I will do a review as well.

I highly recommend anything Ron has written. You can find his website here and his new book here.

The North America Dogman Project

Joedy Cook, well known and respected Bigfoot research from Ohio, has recently begun a new group focusing on research of the Dogman phenomenon.

The new group is called the North American Dogman Project and is looking for new members.
I recently joined the group and am looking forward to working with Joedy in the future.

You can find the NADP's website here.

UFOs and the EgyptAir disappearance

The disappearance of planes and Unidentified Flying Objects have a long history together. Many boats and planes which went missing in the Bermuda Triangle are supposedly related to UFOs. This is a small following among theories which state the some well known plane disasters are related to UFOs in some way.
This seems true with the recent EgyptAir plane disappearance. Two Turkish pilots reported "an unidentified object with green lights passed 2 to 3,000 feet above..." when they were 17,000 feet up.
The encounter occurred just an hour before the EgyptAir event.

You can read more details on the crash and the UFOs here.

Spiritualism

Spiritualism is the name for the rise in occult studies and attempt to contact the spirit world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The beliefs were spread by various groups, both serious and fraudulent, that were very abundant during these times. The movement has been associated with the modern obsession with the occult and psychics. Many connected to the spiritualist movement turned out to be frauds but there were some genuinely believing groups. The movement is also considered to be the rise of psychics and fortune-tellers.

The roots of the movement can be traced to Kate and Margaret Fox, sisters who claimed that spirits were communicating with them through a series of knocks and taps but were later shown to be frauds. After the Fox sisters went public with their claim, many followed. Spiritualism was extremely popular among minorities, mainly because of their belief in equality for all. Spiritualism also claimed to be the middle grounds between religion and science, and because of this, spiritualism was demonized by most religious orthodoxies. During World War I, spiritualism gain many supporters in Europe, mainly because spiritualism supported the belief of spirits of the dead lingering. Over time, spiritualism gained a more political standing and was further frowned upon.

Spiritualism’s most popular idea was that through the right equipment and ritual, you could contact the dead. Contact was done through things such as seances, specific boxes used for communication, discussions through mediums, channeling, and automatic writing. The two best known people who were active in the spiritualist movement, either against or for, were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.

Spiritualism is still popular today. Psychics, frauds, and ghost hunters are quite common. As many as 41% of people in the United States believe in a form of psychic abilities and as many as 35% of people in the U.S. believe in ghosts and spirits. There are many television shows that focus on the ‘adventures’ of those who appear to search for the unknown.

Sources

The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Foundations of Parapsychology by Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L. Morris, John Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush

Interview With Stan Gordon

Stan Gordon is a seasoned ufologist and cryptozoologist who has worked in the field since 1965. He has three books, The Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO-Bigfoot Casebook, Really Mysterious Pennsylvania, and Astonishing Encounters: Pennsylvania’s Unknown Creatures. He is widely considered to be the foremost authority on paranormal phenomena in Pennsylvania as well as the Kecksburg UFO crash. I met Stan over Labor Day weekend where he agreed to this interview, and again at the recent Mothman Festival, which I will be posting a summary and review of as my next post.

1. What originally inspired you to research the paranormal? How long have you been doing this?

>I was a curious youngster who had an interest in science and electronics at an early age.  By coincidence my birthday is around Halloween. In 1959, on my 10th birthday, my parents gave me an AM radio as a gift. That evening as I tuned across the radio dial, some radio shows were discussing strange events such as ghosts and flying saucers. I listened to the discussions, and while intrigued I was also skeptical of some of what I was hearing. I wanted to learn more and began many trips to the Greensburg library to read what books they had on these topics. I continued my interest and research making scrap books from news stories that appeared on these subjects.  I was 16 years old in December of 1965, when a major UFO incident occurred in a rural community called Kecksburg, about 12 miles away from where I lived.

That night as the news was breaking from around the Pittsburgh area of the UFO incident, I began to take down notes. The next day as the story appeared in local newspapers, I began to call people in the area where the incident occurred to try to obtain more details. This year will mark 50 years of my investigation into the case.

That UFO incident still remains unsolved. I have been out in the field conducting first hand investigations in the UFO phenomena and many other areas of what would be described as paranormal. In the nearly 56 years that I have been conducting this research, I have still never seen a UFO or crossed paths with Bigfoot. The thousands of witnesses I have interviewed and the physical evidence that I have seen has convinced me, however, that there remain many mysteries in this world for which we have no answers.

2. Of all the cases you have investigated, what is, in your opinion, the most significant and why?

>This is a tough question to answer as there are multitudes of UFO and Cryptid cases that I have investigated that are significant.  The case that stands out was an incident that occurred during the major UFO-Bigfoot wave of 1973. It is very involved and well documented, so I am just giving you a brief summary.  On the evening of October 25, 1973, I received a call from a state trooper from the Uniontown barracks in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He had returned from investigating a strange incident on a farm and felt that I should send a research team to that area immediately.

About 9 PM that evening, a number of local residents observed a barn sized red sphere hovering about 100 feet in sky and dropping towards the ground. Three people went up to the pasture to investigate. They were shocked to see about 250 feet away that the object was on the ground or hovering just above it. The object now looked to be a bright white dome shape about 100 feet or more in diameter. It illuminated the area and made a loud whining sound. About 75 feet away from the observers was a barbed wire fence. Along that fence were two huge hair covered creatures with very long arms walking in their direction.

As one man fired ammunition at the beasts with a 30.06 rifle, the object suddenly just vanished, and the creatures being hit with ammo just kept walking back towards the direction from which they came with no apparent effect. The state trooper who arrived within the hour to investigate, said the area where the object had been was glowing and the farm animals would not go near it. When my team arrived during the early morning hours to investigate, some strange events took place in that area. I explain the entire case in detail in my “Silent Invasion” book. It was the case that clearly indicated that the Bigfoot and UFO phenomena is much more complex than any of us were aware of.

3. Are your files and research  concentrated simply to Pennsylvania, or have they branched out further?

>While I am interested in similar cases from surrounding states and what takes place elsewhere, my focus has been to document what has been taking place in Pennsylvania. The Keystone state has a long history of mysterious happenings, and these strange encounters continue to take place each year. This year has been very active with UFO, cryptid and other anomalistic incidents.

4. Your second book, The Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO-Bigfoot Casebook, focuses on a wave of sightings during the seventies where Bigfoot and UFO sightings seemed to be connected, do you have any theories as to what the connection might be based on the various encounters? Do you feel that all Bigfoot sightings are connected to UFOs?

>The “Silent Invasion” book details the many mysterious events that took place from 1973 into 1974 across Pennsylvania. I began investigating Bigfoot encounters in the late 1960s. I had always felt that the initial information we had indicated that these creatures seemed to be some type of unknown animal. During the wave of the early 1970s, residents were calling the police and my research team reporting many very strange events. Some patterns of the phenomena began to emerge from widespread locations.

Observers would report a UFO sighting in a certain area and within a short time, a Bigfoot encounter would take place there as well. Sometimes it would be the reverse, with a Bigfoot sighting taking place, then a UFO encounter would occur. Then there were cases where a UFO and Bigfoot were seen together at the same time and location.

Most UFO sightings historically reported have no association with a Bigfoot encounter. And most Bigfoot incidents aren’t associated with UFO activity. Such cases of Bigfoot with UFOs  have been reported not just from Pennsylvania, but from throughout the country and other parts of the world. As I have mentioned many times in my writings, I don’t have the answers if there is a direct connection between the two phenomena. The more you look into the UFO and cryptid fields, the more it is apparent that we are dealing with a very strange, and complex phenomena.

I am not suggesting that Bigfoot is an Alien life form and that it is an occupant of a spacecraft from another world. We don’t know for sure what UFOs really are. While many sightings are explainable, some remain unexplained. There are many theories for these objects including extraterrestrial spacecraft, time and interdimensional travelers, even unknown natural phenomena. I don’t have the answers, but I keep an open mind to all possibilities.

5. You seem to, in your books, focus on cryptozoology and ufology, what are your thoughts, if you have any, on some other paranormal subjects, such as ghosts, poltergeists, psychic abilities, fairies, or werewolves?

>During many years of research I had an interest in all types of anomalistic events including most of the topics you have mentioned.  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I was involved with cases of alleged haunted houses and ghosts. I interviewed many people who claimed to have ESP experiences. I have looked into many types of strange creature and mysterious being encounters including claims of fairies and werewolves, and discussed in my new book, “Astonishing Encounters: Pennsylvania’s Unknown Creatures.”

6. Do you have any advice for anyone who may be starting within the subject of the unusual and unexplained?

>Don’t believe everything that you read and see on the internet. Keep an open mind when researching such cases, but be objective and look for sources that might explain what took place. Associate with trained research professionals such as scientists and engineers, and utilize their expertise when evaluating mysterious claims.

All three of Stan’s books are highly recommended. He can be found here. 

Werewolves

Werewolves, the man-wolf creatures of the night, said to terrorize townspeople and consume children and sheep. Werewolves are considered to be a strictly European notion, but most cultures around the world have some concept of people transforming into animals, in the Southern United States it’s the skinwalkers, in Japan, the kitsune, and in Mesoamerica, the nagual. Stories of these shapeshifting creatures are abundant, and many continue today.

The official term for shapeshifting into a wolf is lycanthropy. Many attribute legend of werewolves to people who had the mental disorder known as Clinical Lycanthropy, a form of psychosis in which one believes themselves to be a wolf or half-wolf.

Probably the best known tale of a werewolf are the stories of the Beast of Gevaudan. Gevaudan was the name for a mountainous region in the southern part of 18th century France. The Beast showed up in June of 1764 and terrorized the small town for three years. It killed women, children, livestock--anything it could. Eventually, nearly all of France had heard of the beast, and the king sent soldiers down to kill the creature. The soldiers succeeded in killing the beast and tried to bring it back to the king but because of decay and stench they buried it in an unknown location. Many speculate that the creature was just a hyena or an oversized wolf, but there are some who still call it a werewolf.
There is an abundance of modern werewolf sightings, not just in Europe, but in America as well. Researcher Linda S. Godfrey is the recognized expert on modern werewolf sightings and has a nearly complete list of modern American encounters. She has noticed, like many cryptids, there seems to be a correlation between sighting locations and the locations of both sacred sites and military bases. Godfrey speculated that this could be because the man-wolves are protection spirits from Native American mythology. Godfrey prefers to call these creatures Dogmen or Upright-Candids, because some encounters seem to attribute a more dog-like appearance to the creatures than wolf-like. Many researchers also feel that the dogmen are most supernatural than natural, due to the nature of many encounters. Nearly everyone agrees, though, that werewolves aren’t truly men transforming into wolves.

Sources

Real Wolfmen by Linda S. Godfrey

Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology by Michael Newton

Encyclopedia of Occultism by Lewis Spence

American Monsters by Linda S. Godfrey