Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Cloud Creature Of The Orkney's

This interesting report comes from over at Mysterious Universe.

"Another breed of atmospheric monster is said to hail from the tiny islands off Scotland’s Shetland archipelago. The Shetland Islands are a remote and mist shrouded locale about 50-miles northeast of Orkney and it should come as no surprise to any student of the unknown that they are known to harbor a monster, but unlike the famed lake beasties of the Scottish highlands, the thing that the islanders know only as “it” is quite unlike any other creature on Earth.

The locals matter-of-factly believe this vaporous varmint is merely a “cloud animal” that dwells in the skies above and for reason unknown occasionally makes the long journey to Terra Firma. Those who have come into contact with this organism have met with no harm and report the physical sensation is akin to being licked by an “enormously soft tongue.” While that effect may not be fatal, it certainly is distasteful.

One incident reported by a policeman details a run-in with this (or a similar) entity that occurred while the officer was bicycling on his patrol route. The lawman claimed that “it” enveloped him creating the sensation of being wrapped in a “soft blanket” that smelled of “mildew.” The being, which the officer was convinced was alive, swiftly soared away, but the shaken officer claimed that it had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his entire life."

What I find fascinating is the description of how the locals perceive the entity. If folkloric, they haven't ascribed any of the typical attributes of a "monster": the thing is nebulous and not hideous; it isn't bent on terrorizing the populace; they've not labeled it "evil"...  In the author's words, it seems as if this Orkney phenomenon is no more peculiar than a rare species of bird. I find that lack of sensationalism quite intriguing.

A Bit Of Trivia

A bit of trivia for today: The term "robot" was coined in Czeck playwright Karel Čapek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) to describe artificial humans built to serve mankind. The writer used these creations to tackle issues of exploitation and subjugation. The word is derived from the Czech term for drudgery or hard work and shows up in Eastern Europe (particularly in Austro-Hungarian regions) as a surname.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Which Candidate Will Kick The Most Alien Butt?

Ostensibly to plug its new Chasing UFOs show, National Geographic has run a little informal poll to find out which presidential candidate would better fight off an alien invasion. Most Americans (by 65%) agree Obama would be better suited to quelling an attack from beyond that Romney.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Remembering The UFO Threat

Something trivial I never took note of before, but I have in my possession a book on UFOs from the 1950s that was once in the resource library at Ft. Sill Army Base. I wonder if it was for entertainment or it was truly a tactical resource at one time. We sometimes forget that UFOs were once considered a real concern for our nation's military.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Criticism Of Strange State

"So I have three basic issues with this book. The first being the author didn't do his homework with regard to the whole "voodoo" nonsense. The second being that the author did not flesh out the stories. The final criticism I have is that the author pursued a skeptical or debunking approach to several legends."

I don't usually pay attention to reviews (esp. negative ones) but this at least rose above the rest: It was well-reasoned (even if I don't agree) and well-written. However, what this writer sees as a failing of the book in general, I see as a failing of the book to meet his/her specific desires.

Read the entire review here.

Updates From Reader Comments

A couple of recent comments I had received by e-mail from readers. Perhaps these thoughts will give us new ideas to mull over in examining their respective mysteries...

Hi! I was reading through your website today (GREAT website, by the way!) and I chanced on the story of The Valentich Vanishing that you posted around 8/11/2011. What is interesting is that I read a book a year or so ago entitled Ghosts of the Air by Martin Caiden and I believe your story of The Valentich Vanishing is the second part of a story he wrote about in his book.

First of all, if you are familiar with the book, I apologize for telling you about a book you already know about. But if you haven't read it yet, it is an excellent book. Martin Caiden seems to have been a seen everything, done everything type of pilot and pilots are not known to be the most fanciful people on earth. So Mr. Caiden took a group of hard headed sensible men and asked them for ghost stories, verified them, and printed the best. One of those stories concerns a pilot who ran into what he thought was a UFO in the Australian desert. I don't have the book with me at this time, but I will quote myself as how I described this part in the book to my friends on a forum:

  "And then there's the pilot in Australia flying a bunch of Japanese businessmen. He ran into a bright light that stayed with him most of the flight. When he was ready to land, he told someone on the ground to check his wing as he came in because he was having some trouble with it (didn't want to admit to a UFO). The light landed with him, took off, landed on a nearby hill and took off again. The ground person was practically hysterical and ended up sending it in as a report to a UFO group. The pilot refused to say another word about it until after what happened later."

What happened later in that same area, a young pilot was heard radioing in hysterically that he had a bright light outside his plane that was matching his speed and movements. Then the transmission broke off and that particular plane has never been found to this day.

I believe The Valentich Vanishing is the story of that second pilot.

I will double check the book again, because it is possible this pilot was named and I have just forgotten the name. I do remember in the book that the area was thoroughly searched with no sign of the plane or pilot.

If there is no name, I will try to verify what if I can, but I thought you would be interested in the coincidence. Meantime, if you can find Ghosts of the Air, you might be interested in giving it a read. Along with the haunted planes (and Mr. Caiden doesn't even touch on the subject of Flight 401), there are some truly other spine tingling things that he has run across that have nothing to do with ghosts.

Anyway, thank you for reading what has turned out to be a longer email than I planned. Again, you have a great site and I have bookmarked it and look forward to reading many more fascinating posts.--- Kelly Scott

AND

Hello, I came across the page about the Bridgend Suicides in South Wales, and I wanted to write to comment. I think there is probably a link between these suicides of teenagers (over 40) and the use of Neuro-Linguistic Programming in schools. Teachers are being trained to use this hypnotic technique at school, and children are also subjected to NLP during 'training courses'. Hardly anyone seems to know about this. I would recommend that everyone research it. There are several of these 'suicide clusters' around the UK and the States, and no-one ever seems to connect it with the mind-programming of children at school. This needs to be exposed! I hope you can make an addition to your page along these lines.---Regards, P.M.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Connecting Bigfoot and UFOs

These things crop up from time to time: sightings of UFOs in association with the presence of sasquatch-like creatures.  Are these little more than expressions of the desire in some to connect to disparate passions? Could there be a reason a percentage of UFO sightings involve hairy hominids? A recent submission to the MUFON sightings database is yet another puzzling example of what might seem, at first glance, as silliness--but what if those little green men are Bigfoot fans too?

"I was standing next to my friend who was standing in a 10 ft clearing in woods when she was personally buzzed by this unseen object.


Then the Sat night before Easter, we decided to sit in my truck and watch at night. We 1st saw orbs in the woods and then a white light flew in and stopped at the front corner of the woods no higher than the trees and hovered there silently for over 45 mins.


The object was across the cornfield from us which is no more than a short block. The object would get brighter sometimes, it would change from a PacMan shape (or bell shape) to round, sometimes fade out to a cigarette shape and disappear and then come back on bright as ever. We forgot our binoculars but we could see that sometimes there was a red light at the bottom and sometimes the object was a white circle with a red ring around it. It made no noise whatsoever and hovered there until it traveled back over a duck pond area and then over a marsh area when we lost sight of it. Altogether we saw it that Sat for an hour probably.


The weirder thing though, is that we go back every Sat nite and between 8 & 10pm, the object shows up but it has been farther away over the duck pond and marsh areas. On these other occasions, we have seen in our binoculars that the object has red lights sometimes, sometimes it is circled in red, sometimes we see green lights, or blue lights, sometimes a 2 part object connected, one time hazy search lights or something that shines to the area below it and then in front of it and then above it. But it always hovers in an area and then moves and hovers over another area for a long time. Last night it seemed farther away and we got bored watching it for over a half hour so we thought maybe we could find it and get closer. Everytime we do that though, we either cant find it at all or like last night we lost sight of it on the winding country roads or it moved off. We watched that object last night for over 2 hours.


The reason we are contacting you is we would like someone else to take a look at this object who has knowledge of UFOs and tell us what you think and also because maybe you can give us some clues on how to track it better to get a closer look. The first time we saw it, we were too scared to even move! Now, we want to get a better look."