Real Time UFO Map

Courtesy of MUFON, the UFO Stalker updates with events, with descriptions and links to full reports.

http://www.ufostalker.com/?mufon=true

Cthulhu Expeditionary Equipment Kit and Other NeoVictorian Curiosities

Artist Alex CF produces intricately detailed impossibilities, including specimens from dragons, gray aliens recovered from Roswell, and scientific equipment for all sorts of Lovecraftian exploits.

http://alexcf.com/blog/?page_id=6

These should look familiar. Because they have as an inspiration the vampire hunting kits that were produced starting in the nineteenth century after vampires, and particularly Dracula, became widely popularized. Now of course, many have come to believe such kits were made in seriousness, and not as a luxurious equivalent of geeky replicas and toys today, and some have sold for exorbitant sums in auctions.

I am fascinated by the transition from "real" folklore to fictional folklore going on here. Does the transition help to mark all of it as fiction, or will it increase the credibility of things that started as stated fiction, but have been embraced by later generations?

EDIT (7/31/10): It's amazing how many vampire kits there are out there, and how much people have paid for some of them. Ripley's Entertainment, the company which owns the Ripley's Believe it or not attractions in various tourist spots, brags in this post that they have the world's largest collection.

Alien Fresh Jerky

Someone is ready to ride the 90's nostalgia wave we should be seeing in about 3-7 years, depending on how the whole 2012 thing works out.

Alien Fresh Jerky. Great pictures from a visit to their headquarters in the California desert.

http://www.notcot.com/archives/2009/01/alien_fresh_jer.php#more

Tentacle UFO - Air Kraken or Lovecraftian Horror?

It really doesn't get better than this: The destruction of a massive windmill that some of the locals blame on ... a phosphorescent cyclopean tentacled anomaly emerging from the sky

'massive ball of light' with 'tentacles going right down to the ground' over Conisholme wind farm.

"It was huge" he said "At first I thought it must have been a hole where the moon was shining through but then I saw the tentacles – it looked just like an octopus.

When I blogged last year about Air Krakens and other flying monsters, I didn't think they'd show up this soon.

EDIT: Fireworks may have been involved. But I don't know of Yog-Sothoth is going to like such slurs on its character.

Chemtrails Just Got a Huge PR Boost - Metallica Video 'All Nightmare Long'

As I've stated before, I may not think much of chemtrails, but I love this music video. Very nicely done, and it will certainly give the chemtrail meme a boost. I could be wrong, but I think this is the first serious mass media usage of the concept in purposeful fiction

Note: This video is not really safe for work due to somewhat disturbing and gory content. Plus, it's Metallica, so you'll wanna listen to it too.

Video at Metallica site

http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=601688

Dan Ackroyd and the Kingdom of the Booze Bottles

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Never mind the "In Search of ..." opening and the prompt segue to hawking vodka in skull shaped bottles, which is good enough.

Wait until you hear about the manufacturing process for the vodka. I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Courtesy Martini Boys, Cabinet of Wonders, and Professor Hex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZs29am4msg



Update: Yup, it's quite real, with reviews of the liquor being mixed. No, that's not a joke.

The Bigfoot Body Brouhaha

Several of you have asked me about this in the last few days since

1.) The press release came out

2.) Loren Coleman on his influential Cryptomundo site gave it his A-M-A-Z-I-N-G support, before also posting the conclusion reached in the link at the bottom of this post.

This story has been brewing for weeks, which if you've been following it at all, makes it clear why I didn't bother to blog about it. Nothing has changed about that. It's not even interesting from an anthropological/sociological perspective, except maybe from a media studies perspective, and there isn't much new there to boot. I don't want to go into this any further. The following link, which has been ferretted out by a number of people in the crypto community, pretty much tells you the politest version of what I think about this

http://www.thehorrordome.com/HDSHOPPINGPROPS/SasquatchLARGE.htm

EDIT: If you want a fairly calm discussion of this whole mess, including the history of the people involved etc., you can go to the BFRO discussion forum thread on the topic, which lays it all out and has been on top of the costume explanation.

http://s2.excoboard.com/exco/thread.php?forumid=124725&threadid=1900226

The Dowser and the Legendary Gypsies

From my soon to be local paper, a story that suggests psychic or dowsing techniques can be used to do the work of bioarchaeology.

The Mayor of Sesser, Illinois has asked a local dowser to investigate folklore concerning a Gypsy mass grave. Not only does the dowser suggests she can use some mix of energy (related to her Christian beliefs concerning souls) and DNA to detect graves, but also to determine age and sex.

While excavations won't be based on the "findings" of the psychic investigation, a historical plaque may be placed there based on further historical research prompted by the dowsing.

In my reading on pseudo and alt-archaeology, a big deal has always been made of psychic archaeology. Something I had never really heard of in new reports or personal experience (in contrast with other pseudo topics like ancient astronauts or Phoenicians in Utah). But I guess now I have, and I am amazed at it, and the relatively straightforward media coverage of it.

Vampire Archaeology

A recent news report from the Czech Republic immediately grabs the attention: archaeologists have uncovered the 4000-year old grave of a vampire in Bohemia. Or rather, the grave of someone who was treated as a vampire. According to the report, sometime in the Early Bronze Age, a man died, and was buried with heavy stones placed in the grave over his head and chest. This is interpreted as treatment to ensure the man didn't return from the grave to plague the living as a vampire.

I'm no expert, but there is a problem with this. The development of the legend of the vampire in the Balkans dates back about a thousand years, with some elements being older. The term upir first appears in a Russian text in 1047 CE. Bruce McClelland discusses the history and development of the Balkan vampire (specifically focusing on Bulgaria) in his dissertation (openly available online) Sacrifice, Scapegoat, Vampire: The Social and Religious Origins of the Bulgarian Folkloric Vampire and in his book Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead. In those works, he ties the development of the vampire to a mix of pre-Christian ideas about death and the afterlife and religious strife between groups during the early centuries of Christianity in the region.

And the folkloric vampire of the 17th century or so has many differences from that of Bram Stoker's Dracula or subsequent tales. I'm pretty sure Anne Rice never had one of her pretty-boy protagonists roll around the landscape as a literal bag of blood, easily killed by a puncture wound from a hawthorne, for the first few years of their undead existence. The classic Balkan vampires were most commonly "dead sorcerers, witches, werewolves, excommunicates, and those who died unnatural deaths (such as suicides and drunkards)" Some were destined at birth to become vampires, including those with a caul on their head, with teeth showing at birth, or with contiguous eyebrows. Also, if a human or unclean animal steps over the body before burial after it is buried, the dead might rise as a vampire (Oinas 1982). This last is very common (Mclelland 2006: 53). Also, in general, bad people, unavenged people, etc. will return from the dead. The Romanian version (non-slavic) suggests that unmarried dead people, or those unforgiven by their parents, have a greater chance of rising as a strigoi (Perkowski 1982). In Serbia and in Greece, at least, this happens 40 days after death, when a "devilish spirit" enters the body to create a vukodlak (Serbia) or a vrykolakas (du Boulay 1982; Fine 1987). In some greek legends (of the vrykolakas) children born on Christmas will be vampires).

But even if there was something vaguely reminiscent of the vampire in Central European cultures 3000 years before the first appearance of the term, tying those pre-literate beliefs to skeletal and archaeological evidence becomes very difficult.

There is, however, more secure archaeology involving vampires. Archaeology and bioarchaeology on several cases in New England has noted the relationship between tuberculosis outbreaks and vampire panics in the nineteenth century. This report describes some of the details (Sledzik and Bellantoni 1994) and this press release discusses the filming of some work for a documentary.

And a major update. Anastasia Tsaliki, a PhD candidate at Durham University in the UK, is conducting dissertation research on "disposals of the dead" involving "necrophobia." That indeed fits the bill. She has already written a paper on "Vampires Beyond Legend: A Bioarchaeological Approach" which she has made available on her blog. She is indeed pointing at the use of rocks as a sign of necrophobia, and tying that into vampire folklore. As I mention above, I am skeptical of this. Broadening the interpretation to a general fear of the dead rising is of course more acceptable, and I could see myself doing something similar if I were working on remains with such treatment, but it remains speculation. I look forward to Ms. Tsaliki's dissertation.

EDIT: New update. Lots of new information on the Italian "Vampire" announced last year.

UPDATE 5-31-12: Critics suggest the Italian "vampire" may be the product of a misinterpreted brickfall, and not a purposely placed act.

du Boulay, Juliette
1982 The Greek Vampire; A Study of Cyclic Symbolism in Marriage and Death. Man 17: 219 - 238.

Fine, John V. A., Jr.
1987 In Defense of Vampires. East European Quarterly 21: 15 - 23.

Mclelland, Bruce A.
2006 Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Oinas, Felix
1982 East European Vampires. Journal of Popular Culture 16: 108 - 114.

Perkowski, Jan Louis
1982 The Romanian Folkloric Vampire. East European Quarterly 16: 311 - 322.

Sledzik, Paul S. and Nicholas Bellantoni
1994 Bioarchaeological and Biocultural Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology 94.

Into the Lair of the Mothman - My Visit to Point Pleasant, WV

I've previously written a review of both the book and film The Mothman Prophecies, so I won't rehash the background here.

On a trip to Illinois to set up my new home, I took a side trip to Point Pleasant, WV, made infamous by the Mothman legend. The town has adopted some aspect of paranormal tourism, though not as full-blown as Roswell. The following are some images from that trip.

The Curse of Cornstalk has long been suggested as having something to do with Mothman and the Silver Bridge collapse. The Mothman has also been linked to "Indian burial grounds," that time honored source of American paranormal mayhem. Specifically, the TNT area (see below) is supposed to be such a site, and is one of the reasons why ghost hunters now visit it.




Part of a town historical exhibit of the Indian wars in the area, focusing on Cornstalk (on the left)






The town's shiny Mothman statue was inspired less by the descriptions than by some Frazetta cover art for one edition of Keel's book









I bought a homemade and expensive Mothman statue here. However, in doing so, I got the inside scoop on where to find some open bunkers at the TNT area, and was shown some pictures of "orbs" taken there by the proprietor. Speaking of which, several people asked me if my visit was in response to a recent episode of Paranormal State, which visited Point Pleasant. I've never seen the show.



While photographing the Mothman statue, I noticed the local Odd Fellows lodge, and no. 33 to boot (a number of interest to those interested in Masonic symbolism). Odd Fellows have always interested me, as their lodges regularly turn up a literal skeleton in the closet (apparently used in rituals symbolizing mortality) when demolished or abandoned.

The front of the Mothman Museum. I actually greatly enjoyed the museum, and it beats some other paranormal museums I've visited. In particular, I liked that it had many original artifacts, including clippings, eyewitness manuscripts, and items related to John Keel. It has been open for about five years.

About a third of the museum holds props and costumes from the movie The Mothman Prophecies. I didn't care about that (though I did notice the Chapstick). I was more interested in the rest of the museum. Note the MIB (Man in Black), an integral part of Mothman lore after Keel's book.

Point Pleasant hosts a Mothman Festival in September.

Cryptozoology is big in Japan, a country that loves its monsters. Below are Japanese toys of the Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster, an apparition associated with a UFO flap in West Virginia in 1952.

Here we have the stuff that interested me most. Original documents associated with the Mothman legend, and John Keel. Below is an early draft of what became Keel's book.

This letter by Keel captures much of the feel of the book. The letter is specifically about the Men in Black. They too were running around Point Pleasant and harassing Keel and friends. It appears at least some of the harassment was actually Gray Barker, making strange phone calls, unbeknownst to Keel. Note the inscription at the bottom. Keel was talking to numerous UFO contactees, and began to believe some disaster would take place tied to the sightings and prophecies.

Original early eyewitness report (possibly the first) of Mothman.

Original newspaper clippings give some idea of the scope of the sightings, and their association with UFO sightings. While Mothman is the most remembered part, it was part of a Point Pleasant UFO flap, which was in turn part of a national UFO wave.

The Mothman legend has become inextricably linked with the collapse of the Silver Bridge. After 13 months of Mothman sightings, the Silver Bridge in town collapsed, a major national tragedy. The Mothman has become famous, being interpreted as something akin to a banshee.

New bridge

Many of the Mothman sightings took place in an army ordinance storage area, the "TNT Area." After getting my hand drawn map and directions, I headed out there. After having minimal luck finding a crash site outside of Roswell, I was determined to get into a good part of the TNT area.

A rise in trash was a clue to finding some of the open bunkers. Guess that archaeology PhD comes in handy. This, and a lead I got in town allowed me to find some of the bunkers. A shopkeeper in town, who sells mothman statues, regularly goes in there and photographs "orbs" (a crossover from ghost hunting, which makes sense as local lore holds that the TNT is an "Indian Burial Ground"). I didn't buy a print of the orb photos, but I did buy one of the statues. In return he hand drew me a map to get me to this specific part of the depot site.

Once I got on the path, I ran into three teenagers. They warned me not to venture in alone, as something might "get me." I thanked them for the advice, and pressed on.

The nearby pond looked like the perfect home for some sort of swamp monster. Photo and video

One of the bunkers. I took some video too. Narration could be better and more courageous-sounding

Did my hunt meet with success? Well ...