Weird Things Live: Hunting the Night Creeper from Andrew Mayne on Vimeo.

Last Monday night in front of a live internet audience we set out to solve the mystery of the Night Creeper. Ghost? Frogman? Or something else? Although we’re pretty sure we figured it out, we haven’t definitively proved our theory. The mystery continues…

Running time 55 minutes.

Check out our photos of the scene on Flickr.

Below are descriptions of three grotesque monsters. Two of them are merely the fictional creations of popular artists; one is a creature that has actually been reported. Can you Find the Fiend?

a) This fearsome humanoid bear-like creature, which is said to have the face of a man and the feet of a swine, supposedly resides deep inside a cave near Colorado’s Manitou Cliff Dwellings.

b) Part owl, part bear and part man, this 7-foot-tall flying monstrosity stalks the skies surrounding an ancient church.

c) This grotesque mystery of nature exhibits both feline and canine features. Research into the animal’s parentage has turned up few leads and even fewer revelations.

Answer after the cut.

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This Halloween Weird Things and the James Randi Educational Foundation will try to make contact with the ghost of Houdini! Details to follow…

iTricks.com Magic News, Magic Videos and Podcasts » Blog Archive » This Halloween: Mayne, Brushwood, Randi & Young Will Attempt To Find Houdini… Will You?

Remember that time you went to take a photo and when you looked at it your iMac screen mysteriously shown through your body as if you were an ephemeral spirit because deep down your souls are intertwined? I do.

Got a weird photo? Send it to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail with “Weird photo” in the subject line or upload it to Flickr and tag it #weirdthingscom.

I took this photo outside Disneyland. It’s of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. No retouching took place. This is exactly how the photo appeared!

Few people on Earth have watched as many vampire films over the past few weeks as the hard-working staff of the 2009 Vampire Film Festival. While they prepare to descend onto New Orleans October 23rd for a four day celebration of vampire-centric film, music and celebration they were nice enough to send Weird Things their 10 biggest pet peeves with the vamp genre.

The search for a long-dead lover. It always ends in finding some poor girl who is the dead amours dead ringer, literally. That plot device had been overused to the point of being clichéd.

One bite transforms you into a vampire. Sorry, this would mean we’d be up to our eyebrows in the pesky things world-wide in about six months.

Vampires must kill regularly to feed. Anne Rice does this, but consider — three vampires in New Orleans killing at least once a night for sixty years. That is over sixty thousand corpses! In a city with a population of less than a quarter of a million! The Civil War was less devastating to the city!

Killer sun exposure. This device is not in vampire lore or Dracula but from the film Nosferatu. Vampires are depicted as an all-powerful, eternal beings but their Achilles’ heel is the sun. How can you be all-powerful if you can be bumped off by a suntan?

Sloppy eaters. I love cioppino, for example. Love it. But when I eat it, only a few drops might end up on my lips and shirt. Why would vampires be any different? Or if you use the analogy of addiction — do addicts spill cocaine? Not deliberately they don’t! In fact they’ll go to great lengths not to!

Flight. No offense but I’m a bit bored by vampires who can fly a la Superman. Or are associated with bats for some reason. Neither has any basis in folklore (well, some Asian vampires can fly…)

Secret vampire societies. Another overworked device that is a bit lame but takes care of one issue with vampires…how the hell do they make a living?

Vampire males who mope about being vampires. Okay we get it, you don’t like biting people for your next meal but please don’t push undead angst to the limit

Ancient juvenile delinquents. You have centuries to grow, to learn, to experience things. And in all that time all you end up becoming is a bully? Frankly, that is hard to believe. Some might atrophy, might go subtly mad as they coped less and less well with change, or become focused on individual obsessions, but wouldn’t others–given the time and the opportunities huge amounts of time provides–evolve into more interesting persons?

Bug-eating servants. Renfield was innovative in his day. Devouring live insects is no longer edgy, but cliche.

Other pet peeves include:

Weird Vampire Sounds. What’s Up with the hissing sounds the vampires make in films.

Letting it All Hang Out. The stupid face they make when they bare their fangs, is that really necessary?

Over stating the Myth. Garlic, stakes, crosses sunlight-one of these usually doesn’t work on vampires. Which ones varies. Usually it is accompanied by ” X doesn’t work!”

All Vampires Are Evil. How would that work, precisely? Even on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where a person’s soul is replaced by a demon’s when turned undead, vampires ended up with a wide variety of behaviors, including Spike (starting before the chip) and Harmony. I’m less displeased if some kind of justification is given, but usually there isn’t even a hint.

Oversexed vampire tarts. They are always played by played by big-breasted, no-talented actresses and the whole thing is tired…at least to the women in the audience.

If you are in the New Orleans area or just really love the idea of those dapper undead scamps please take the time to check out the Vampire Film Festival website. The fest begins October 23rd and runs for four days. We thank them for helping us out and would like to editorially note that we are quite fond of the oversexed vampire tart concept.

Today’s playlist pays musical tribute to Weird Things’ third-favorite human/animal comprise (ranking just behind the Mothman and college-age female centaurs), the werewolf. Combining the vicious cunning of the wolf with the clumsy impulsiveness of the human, these insane, reckless monsters remind a preoccupied modern world what true human weakness looks like – your neighbor screaming in terror as he gets eaten by a werewolf.

Warren Zevon – “Werewolves of London”

It would be a crime against werewolf-themed pop hits to omit the late Warren Zevon’s anthem to the Chow Mein-fueled rampage of coifed Limey werewolves. Supposedly written in a fevered quarter-hour, but recorded over 70 exhausting takes, the song bears all the hallmarks of Zevon’s off-kilter and brilliantly deranged songwriting – a painfully catchy melody, manic energy and winking, gleeful references to acts of brutality.

Sonata Arctica – “Fullmoon”

You know when you go to the zoo and there’s a light-up digital board with a perpetually changing 9-digit number that represents real-time rainforest destruction in acres? Change the title plaque to read “Werewolf-related songs written by heavy metal and hardcore bands” and you’ve got an accurate sense of the genre’s predilections. Also, a suspicious statistical link. This song by European prog-metal band Sonata Arctica represents my personal favorite of the bunch. Seriously. This song is undeniable.

The Cramps – “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”

Gothed-out rockabilly band The Cramps boast an impressive oeuvre of sleazy horror-themed barn-burners that consistently treat murder and sex as delightfully interchangeable pleasures to be approached with roughly the same techniques, accessories and enthusiasm. This particular tale of a pubescent monster run amok swaggers and howls with all the awkward, horny angst of a sober Gary Busey.

Tracey Jordon – “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah”

This Monster Mash-spoofing tribute to “La Chaim” shouting lycanthropes was presented on NBC’s “30 Rock” as character Tracey Jordon’s gold record-scoring novelty hit. The song speaks for itself.

Five Man Electrical Band – “Werewolf”

An almost-was contender for late ‘60s pop stardom, these L.A.-based Canadian immigrants flirted briefly with popularity before getting lost amid the sea of posturing hacks and talented wannabes that composed a veritable invasion of the Beatle snatchers. Full of goofy energy and joyous, sing-along werewolf extermination, this song was the band’s last charting single, definitively placing them on the Neil Young-recommended “burn out” side of career endings.

Thanks to everyone for showing up to our Weirdest Thing In The World livestream including Brian Brushwood and Brett “Amtrekker” Rounsaville. Find out how Doll’s Eyes became our champion.

Below are descriptions of three grotesque monsters. Two of them are merely the fictional creations of popular artists; one is a creature that has actually been reported. Can you Find the Fiend?

a.) These giant, people-eating insects have evolved the ability to take the shape of humans in order to camouflage themselves for maximal covert stalking.

b.) Boasting the legs of a goat and the head and torso of a man, this seven-foot tall abomination is known for wielding a double-edged axe and ambushing amorously engaged couples.

c.) This vicious human/shark hybrid that hunts humans and animals along the Atlantic coast is supposedly the end result of a gene-splicing experiment conducted by the Nazis.

ANSWER AFTER THE JUMP (more…)

An eerie weather vane depicting a dog riding a bolt of lightning still stands atop the Suffolk church where, in 1577, an electrical storm propelled the specter of a black canine down into the holy sanctum. The apparition killed two praying supplicants and badly burned another before sublimating back into the amethyst sky and the roar of thunder.

From Hades’ babysitter Cerberus to the hound of the Baskervilles, dark canines have loyally heeled alongside European folklore and literature for centuries; the British Isles are uniquely overstocked with tales of sinister black dogs. Direct instruments of death, omens of misfortune and sentinels of the netherworld are among the most common vocations foist upon these ubiquitous ebon heck puppies (also called Hell Hounds or Grims), which are most often encountered during electrical storms or at places of transition – a dark silhouette at a crossroads, a black, starlit ghost in a cemetery or a pacing shadow, immune to moonlight, circling a hanging tree.

Dogs are natural scavengers with a heightened olfactory sense. Even in the wake of domestication, they are drawn to the blood and the meat of dead or dying animals, and pursue odors far too subtle for the human nose to detect. That this natural predilection toward, and ability to sense, the smell of the wounded and deceased – the very scent of death – could neither be trained nor bred out of them partially explains why they’ve historically been linked to supposed crossover spaces where the world of the living and the world of the dead bleed into each other like the soft-edged tendrils of colliding fog banks.

The idea of domestication itself, when paired with the already fevered imaginings of pre-enlightenment, Satan-phobic Western society, could have easily catalyzed tales devil dogs. When a blindly obedient animal can be taught to hone, focus and direct its strength, cunning and ferocity, it becomes an extension of its owner’s will. As man has always charged the devil and his minions with using man’s own free will, intellect and cunning against him, it’s no surprise that creatures like Cerberus and black dogs were imagined. After all, what’s more malevolent than co-opting the loyalty of man’s best friend and siccing the beast upon him?

The Britons’ nightmare of a loveable-mutt-turned-Beelzebub’s-PA proved indelible enough to survive the tumbling trek across the mighty Atlantic…

Wednesday: Black dogs and the American South

Brett “Amtrekker” Rounsaville is an adventurous man who recently completed a journey whereby he had to tackle 50 life goals before returning home. Read more at Amtrekker.com. He is a special reporter for Weird Things.

After nearly two years wandering America as a homeless vagrant I’m no stranger to the weird. Like a supercolony of Argentine ants poised to take over the world it stretches from one coast to another lurking just beneath the surface. Sometimes you have to dig down a few inches but make no mistake, weird is everywhere, it’s all part of the same colony and sometimes… it comes up for air.

Willow Creek, CA

Willow Creek is only one small town in the vast area of Northwestern California known by locals and those looking to cash in on poor innocent cryptids as “Bigfoot Country.” Despite the fact that the only memorable thing to come out of Bigfoot Country in the last several millennia is 953 frames of grainy, questionable Cine-Kodak footage there is no shortage of speculation about Bigfoot in the area.

I would even venture to say a trip into Bigfoot Country is more likely to end in a sad death at the hands of a Bigfoot memorabilia avalanche than in an actual Bigfoot sighting, yet speculation runs wild and no one is afraid to show you their own representation of Mr. Henderson’s dear friend. So what is it that makes Willow Creek so interesting? Is it the Bigfoot Motel, Bigfoot Bookstore, Bigfoot Rafting Co., Bigfoot Contractor Supply, Bigfoot Dollar Store or (no joke) Bigfoot Podiatry?

Well, yeah, actually, it kinda is…

BUT, in an effort to stay on topic, I want to talk about the Early Bird restaurant. In a world where everyone is out to make a buck off of cryptozoology’s finest creation only the Early Bird is willing to step up and tell it like it is. Sure, they sell a two-patty, foot shaped hamburger…but look at these wall paintings!

Do you see anyone else willing to admit that it was the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) who INVENTED fire roasted bagels and goose-stepping. (Which, by the way, has some very interesting “missing link” implications for Germany.) And check out that coffee percolator. You think Harry over there just walked into Wal-Mart and picked that bad boy up? Don’t be ridiculous. These are obviously VERY advanced creatures we’re talking about here.

Once my eyes were opened wide by the hallowed halls of the Early Bird I began to see all of the other establishments for what they truly were! Bastions of hate who would stop at nothing to keep the Bigfeet down; spurning what they don’t understand and spreading their message of species-ial inferiority! All the while, the Early Bird stands tall, convention be damned, ever fighting to bring Bigfooted civil liberties to the forefront of society. Starting a conversation, starting a movement!

Or…

Those are some effing weird murals in an already effing weird town.

I bought a milkshake and headed toward Oregon.

I’m done.

Click AFTER THE JUMP for a look at some of the Willow Creek’s finest Bigfoot collectables from shot glasses to children’s puzzles…

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The Devil has earned many place names. Devils Island, Kill Devil Hills, Devils Den, and Devils Lake come easily to mind. But there is one place name that has some history with an actual devil, and that is Devils Hole in the Armargosa (bitter) Desert of Nevada, just East of the appropriately named Death Valley.  Unlike other legends, there actually is something really weird here.

The devil in this case was Charles Manson. It is said that he would wander the desert for days looking for a hole to the underworld where he would take his “family” when the inevitable global race war started. When he found Devils Hole, he thought he was on to something.

The hole itself is in a rock outcropping. It doesn’t look like much, but it is filled with salt water heated by a geothermal spring (miners have used it for bathing). The water isn’t quite as hot as hell, but the hole’s depth and temperature in this bleak environment certain call up images of purgatory. And it’s not rainwater – it very rarely rains in the desert. This water is “fossil” ground water, thousands of years old.

Manson found the presence of water perplexing. He believed it was a barrier, like a gate, and he was determined to find a way to drain it. He supposedly sat by the hole meditating for three days trying to figure out hole’s mysteries.

And it is quite mysterious. It is, for all intents and purposes, bottomless. Two divers died there in 1967, their bodies never recovered. The hole is filled with caves that apparently connect to other sources of water in the valley, and it may be possible to travel from one to the other, though it would be a foolish journey. So foolish, the hole is now fenced off completely.

Manson might get his wish. Since the 90’s, the water level in the hole has been dropping. Pumping in the desert to supply Las Vegas’s endless thirst may be to blame, but no one is sure. However, there are other Devils in Devils Hole, Cyprinodon diabolis, or the Devils Hole pupfish that are at extreme risk.

Devils Hole is the only place this particular species of small blue minnows is found. They’re fascinating to watch – with blue flashes shining the desert sun – but their entire food supply is found on an algae covered shelf of rock. If the water drops too much, no food , and no pupfish. They are among the most endangered animals in the United States today, and it’s estimated that they’ve been in the hole for over 10,000 years.

Another strange fact about the pupfish… they may depend on owls. Roosting barn owls in the cave over Devils Hole vomit pellets into the water that may add nutrients needed by the algae.

At the age of 74, Manson may yet outlive the pupfish, but it’s very unlikely that the parole board will ever let him be a direct threat to the pupfish. And if he chose to return to his desert hideout known as Barker Ranch, he’d find only burned ruins thanks to the work of arsonists in May, 2009.

The Apollo 11 moon landing happened 40 years ago toady, or as 6% of the country believe according to a new survey, one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated hoodwinked the world at large.

Here are five videos that help document the intervening four decades dotted with controversy, analysis, British people and Buzz Aldrin’s devastating right cross.

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Robots will one day, systematically, dismantle humanity. Our cries for mercy falling on the literal tin ears of our vengeful creations. But until that time, they’ll settle for creeping us the hell out.

Join us and we take a walk through a rogue’s gallery of the creepiest robots on The Internet via this handy YouTube playlist. To toggle through the videos, please utilize the arrows on either side of the picture.

CLICK AFTER THE JUMP for the full tour. (more…)

Tear Up The Town is a weekly column investigating the social, political and cultural climates of a populace at the time it was affected by a legendary paranormal, extraterrestrial or cryptid phenomenon. It appears on Tuesdays…

On September 12th, 1952, brothers Edward and Fred May, along with their friend Tommy Hyer, watched a flaming spacecraft streak across the West Virginia sky and crash into the nearby hills.

After running home to tell their mother what they had seen, the boys, along with Ms. May and three other local children, rushed out into the darkness to find the wreckage. After arriving at the top of a hill, the group saw a pulsating red light and, nearby, illuminated by a flashlight they’d brought, a 10-foot tall creature with two bright glowing eyes and a head (or, possibly, cowl) shaped like the ace of spades. The creature made a hissing sound, hovered toward them, and then turned and fled. The group ran screaming from the site and back down the hill into their small town of Flatwoods.

The Flatwoods Monster has gone on to be featured in books, television shows and video games. The creature has been identified as everything from an extra-terrestrial visitor to a cousin of fellow WV-based cyptid, The Mothman, to a startled barn owl. The story has been thoroughly debunked by skeptics, who, along with the barn owl explanation, cite that residents across three states (West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland) reported meteor sightings that night, and say that the red light was almost certainly one of the many aircraft hazard beacons that dot the West Virginia countryside.

What the debunkers fail to address is why a group of seven people would mistake three separate common objects and occurrences for a spaceship crash and an enormous hissing monster. Could Hollywood’s commie-as-martian mania, a 19th century Thunderbird encounter, and the Trans-Allegheny Asylum for the Insane have something to do with it? Tear Up the Town says, “yeah, you know…it’s possible.”

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Bart Cutino works with the Bigfoot Field Researcher Organization as well as the Alliance of Independent Bigfoot Researchers. He made headlines with his claim that he came face to face with the creature during one hunt.

He offers you, the amateur hunter, a few hints on how to make your Bigfoot observation expeditions more fruitful.

• Know The Land Bart suggests learning the topography of the area you want to stake out in the light, before darkness falls. This not is not only a safety precaution but also allows you to mark the most likely traffic areas so you can focus your attention better.

• Don’t Chase Sightings Find the spots where a predator of Bigfoot’s size would feed instead of place where it may have been spotted.

• Tummy Rumbling It’s probably a good idea to eat a big meal before you leave so hunger doesn’t distract you. Just in case, Bart likes to bring along protein bars from Trader Joe’s and Muscle Milk.

• Call Of The Wild No matter what anyone tells you, Bart reinforces, there is no recorded sound file of a Bigfoot call. However, there are clips of unidentified animals that many researches use to provoke a response. Among them, the 1994 “Ohio Howl,” and the “Tahoe Scream.” Even regular deer and doe grunts have gotten responses for Bart.

• The Scent Of Fear Masking your scent is crucial. Elevating yourself helps, so do sprays or if you want to give yourself a natural musk simply forgo showering for a few days before heading out.

• Don’t Stop The Party Bigfoot are curious creatures, so part of your expetition wants to set up camp and light a fire, let them. Seperate yourself from the group and “be in the range of where the most likely curious entry would be.”

• Find The Highway Most apex predators hunt on the ridge lines and walk the same paths over and over again. If you can find these trails, you are getting closer.

Listen now

Saturn’s North Pole (Cassini-Huygens, 2007 and 2008)

In November 1980, planetary scientists eagerly examined transmissions received from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it sped past Saturn. And with good reason! Amid those transmissions was the first image of Saturn’s North Pole – a region that’s virtually impossible to see from Earth, and, depending on the degree by which Saturn is tilted, can be cloaked in darkness for up to 15 years at a time (and you thought your last winter was never going to end).

What those scientists saw, and later missions confirmed, was a decidedly bizarre feature in the gas giant’s atmosphere directly above the North Pole: a 15,000-mile-wide hexagon.

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