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.

The correct answer is

b) The Owlman, whose first victim was a family holiday that ended three-days early after two young female vacationers spotted the dreaded creature circling Mawnan Church in Cornwell, Great Britain. Two years later, another pair of girls encountered the Owlman while camping in the woods near the church. According to one of the girls, the red-eyed monster, which she discovered skulking around outside her tent, hissed loudly and took to the sky. Subsequent Owlman sightings, paired with increased UFO activity in the area, have kept cyptoozoologists wondering: “Is the Owlman a sinister alien visitor with a dark past, or simply a human pedophile who molested a radioactive owl?”

Statement a) described ManBearPig, the homicidal half man, half bear and half pig abomination that Al Gore sought to destroy in the aptly named “South Park” episode “ManBearPig.” In recent ManBearPig news, an Afghanistan war update printed in the New York Times on February 1st, 2010, included a reference to Observation Post ManBearPig – a Marine-occupied watch station in Treekha Nawa. The US government has since stated that if this tactical South Park reference proves successful in the War on Terror, pentagon authorities will initiate the detonation phase of a massive Middle Eastern Snuke campaign.

Statement c) described CatDog, a gross cat and dog hybrid that starred in its own eponymous Nickelodeon cartoon from 1998 until 2004. CatDog is disgusting. I don’t know how it defecates. Probably out of the cat’s mouth and then the dog eats it and that goes on over and over again in an endless loop, like some kind of copraphelic M.C. Escher drawing. It’s probably the only children’s cartoon that no serial killer has ever masturbated to. Revolting.

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 JUMPThe correct answer is b.

First reported in the ‘70s by a frightened couple who claimed the creature had rudely interrupted their lovemaking by jumping on the hood of their car and threatening them with an axe, the Maryland Goatman has gone on to become an enduring local legend. This puckish, forest-dwelling miscreant is most commonly accused of causing coitus interruptus via medieval weaponry, and killing local pets.

Statement a. described the mutant roaches from Guillermo Del Toro’s failed American debut “Mimic,” which Dimension pictures subjected to so much on-set meddling and devastating script edits that Del Toro vowed to never make another film in the U.S. Fortunately, homeboy couldn’t resist a vampire movie, and, after finishing his brilliant and heart-wrenching independent feature “The Devil’s Backbone,” returned to Hollywood to make “Blade 2.”

Statement c. described the titular atrocity from “White Shark,” Peter Benchley’s critically panned follow-up to his giant shark tome, “Jaws,” and his giant octopus tome, “Beast.” Rent the TV miniseries, entitled “Creature,” if you want to see Craig T. Nelson forced to battle the terrifying mutation after falling for its clever “candygram” ruse.

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…

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.

5- The Original Footage

Just so we’re all on the same page, here are some of the pictures and video footage that captivated a nation’s attention and imagination.

4- Conspiracy Cliff’s Notes

In case you’d like to reacquaint yourself with the claims of the moon hoax supporters here is a snippet from a UK documentary claiming to show definitive evidence that many of the iconic photos were staged. It also deals a blistering setback to many UK denizens who’d made progress against the Sneering, Pompous British Jerk stereotype that has plagued the nation.

3- Joe Rogan vs. Phil Plait

Many of the moon hoax arguments have been repeated ad hominem by all manner of people, so it’s refreshing to hear two well-spoken (dare I say, hilarious) figureheads debate their points in these Penn Radio clips featuring Bad Astronomer Phil Plait and comedian Joe Rogan. The back and forth was spread over two days and takes about an hour to listen through all of it. Enjoy!

2- Buzz Aldrin Sees A UFO! Or Not.

The British strike again! This time with a documentary that edited a Buzz Aldrin interview to make it sound like he had to see a UFO during the Apollo 11 flight. As the man himself explains in this Larry King Live clip, that was simply not the case.

This is a notable conspiracy in that it concedes the Apollo 11 mission was in fact en route to the moon, so they might as well have peeped an alien on the way.

1- The Eagle Has Landed

Our crown jewel of Apollo 11 conspiracy videos. Filmmaker Bart Sibrel has made two films building a case for the moon landing conspiracy, in September of 2002 he staged an interview with Aldrin under the false pretense that he and his crew were with a Japanese program. After the Q&A dissolved, Sibel confronted Aldrin with his claims and Aldrin responded by landing a vicious right cross square on the cheek of the larger man.

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.1) Faceless Elvis

This is a stripped-down version of Elvis Alive, in itself a creepy moving bust of the King of Rock and Roll that talks and sings. However, remove the skin and hair and the creepiness shoots through the stratosphere.

2) Creepy Crawly

Possibly the only cheater in the group since it was specifically designed to be creepy. This Australian art project executed by a Japanese performance artist finds a Japanese businessman crawling through a busy walkway.

3) Walk The Dog

Eerie in how fluid the movement is, this military prototype walks like a graceful animal. If the way it recovers while slipping on the ice doesn’t send a chill up your spine, you’re dead.

4) Smilin’ Al

Watch a bust of Albert Einstein learn how to express various emotions. All of them conjure the word, “creeper,” in your head.

5) Rinse And Spit

A Japanese robot theoretically used to help dental students practice their trade. In reality, the rapidly darting eyes and perma-slack jaw create a perfect storm of creepy that is only capped off when the droid “coughs” at the 0:20 mark.

6) Dance Fever

These little fellas aren’t all that weird. In fact, they’re pretty delightful. We just couldn’t resist ending this with dancing robots. Your move, Mr. Moore.

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.”

The 1950s marked a strange era in America’s history. General social conservatism and a newly vigilant focus on family values existed alongside new and revolutionary cultural institutions, such as Playboy magazine, the Kinsey reports and the Beat Generation. At the same time, with tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets growing, pop culture was occupied in constructing sensationalist cold war narratives and allegories. And what better way to fictionalize one of America’s largest cultural concerns than by combining it with another? 1951 saw the theatrical release of The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing From Another World, which both delivered 90 minutes of cold war paranoia in the form of vintage 1947 Roswell hysteria. Additionally, as Hollywood released film after film in which Mars, the red planet, stood in for the Soviet red menace, Entertaining Comics (previously Educational Comics) was busy taking advantage of the fact that the comic industry, unlike Hollywood, had yet to come under any industry content regulations, allowing EC to produce a plethora of kid-targeted grotesque, gratuitously violent and overtly sexual horror and sci-fi comic books (including Tales From The Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, Two-Fisted Tales and Shock SuspenStories) without official recourse.

Six of the seven witnesses to the Flatwoods Monster were under the age of 18, and, as a result, were inundated not only with news stories about very real Earthly terrors, but also with sensationalist movies and extreme comics that placed monsters and aliens alongside Soviet nukes and communist infiltration of the government in the cultural rogues gallery. Meanwhile, Ms. May, the one adult witness, was at once aware of the broader socio-political fears that were sweeping the nation, in an understandably heightened state of anxiety, and in the position of sole responsibility for not just her two children, but also four others. These elements alone show how easily a meteor could become a plummeting saucer and how an aircraft hazard beacon might appear as an extra-terrestrial road flare, but a barn owl as an unearthly creature?

The 50s were also a transformative time for West Virginia. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, miners and their families had been flocking to the region’s prosperous coal mines, pushing the state’s annual population growth well above the national average. Unfortunately, with the standardization of mechanical mining equipment, fewer human workers were needed (remember, John Henry was supposedly a West Virginia native) and, after peaking at just over 2 million residents in 1950, West Virginia’s population began to steadily decline.

The same boom that had vastly increased West Virginia’s general population over the prior half-century had concordantly introduced a growing population of the mentally ill, many of whom were housed in the Trans-Allegheny Asylum for the Insane (later re-named Weston State Hospital). Opened in 1864 with the capacity to house 250 patients, the asylum underwent massive growth over an 80 year period and, by the 1950s, housed more than 2,400 epileptics, drug addicts and myriad other so-called “uneducable mental defectives.” The asylum is also just over 30 miles from Flatwoods. After a revealing piece in the Charleston Gazette in 1949, which portrayed the hospital as a nightmarish, unsanitary, over-crowded hell, already rampant rumors about the asylum’s conditions, treatments and patients were embraced as facts. These confirmations added to the discomfort of families in the area who already couldn’t help but construct dread speculations about deranged escapees. Living in Flatwoods in the early ‘50s, it would be difficult to venture out into the darkened forests and hills without some underlying sense of dread at the knowledge that just a bit farther out into the woods, in an isolated, ever-expanding compound packed to overflowing with mistreated mental patients, experimental surgeries, some using ice picks and electricity, were being performed in dirty operating rooms.

Even more to the point, in the same way that stories and rumors spread about the asylum, Appalachian folktales and legends dispersed and persisted throughout the state. West Virginia, like all of Appalachia, has always occupied a certain cultural niche because, while it’s geographically poised to adopt social and cultural trends along with the rest of the country, its population remains somewhat insular. In part, this insularity is a result of the mountainous terrain, which makes travel outside of major thoroughfares difficult, but, mostly, it’s a result of the state’s lack of industrial diversity. With coal as the area’s only major viable resource, the pre-‘90s population primarily consisted of semi-migrant blue-collar communities whose search for local identity led them to retain, and revel in, the rich cultural history of the mountaineers who first traversed West Virginia’s rocky terrain and discovered the valuable coal reserves beneath it. While much of the extant Appalachian lore is based around stories of these pioneer characters, herbal remedies and general folk wisdom, a proliferation of Cherokee Indian mythology, including thunderbird legends, is vital to the tradition’s underlying framework.

To the Cherokee (and many other tribal nations), the thunderbird has rich, nuanced religious and cultural implications. To the colonists, and in prevailing Appalachian lore, they’re really just regarded as giant flesh-eating birds of varying species, including owls (often dubbed “Bighoot”). They are, in fact, such a prevalent part of Appalachian lore, that beginning in the 1800s, a rash of Thunderbird sightings were reported around the United States, including a series of incidents in 1895 involving a giant avian creature consuming both livestock and humans over a weeklong period in Addison, West Virginia, less than 30 miles from Flatwoods. Flatwoods residents, then, would not only be pre-disposed to hearing legends about fearsome, man-eating birds simply through the extensive oral tradition of the Appalachian region, but would also be doubly aware, and perhaps subconsciously wary, of the creatures, given the existence of an exceedingly horrific local account dating back less than 60 years before the encounter with the alleged Flatwoods Monster.

Given all of this dissonant input, from Hollywood’s equation of the red scare with an alien menace to local fears of escaped mental patients and giant birds, it makes sense that a child of Appalachia who sees what he interprets as a spaceship could then read a nearby barn owl (the shape of the Flatwoods Monster’s head, the sound the creature made and its erratic towards-then-away movement are all consistent with this species), which already bears a sinister connotation, and it’s elongated shadow as the creature from the ship.
A final note: I understand that it might read as contradictory that this piece suggests that these children are both at the forefront of American pop culture, enabling them to see a meteor as a space ship, but also shut-in, out-of-touch hillbillies who rely on folk legends to interpret the world around them, so an owl becomes a monster. Really, it’s the co-existence of these two factors, which is the result of the gradual culture and population shift that began mid-century in West Virginia, that allows the Flatwoods Monster to exist.

These children, due to equal parts chronology and geography, belonged to one of the only generations given the opportunity to subconsciously fuse, in a manner both thematic and terrifyingly physical, rarified traditional American folklore with the all-consuming technocentric xenophobia of the atom age.

Matt Finley is a regular contributor to Weird Things and is currently based in Cleveland. His works can be found at Finfizzler.wordpress.com.

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.

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.

At this point, before we lose all but Weird Thing’s distinguished geometry geek readership (you know who you are, you magnificent bastards), it’s worth pointing out that hexagons naturally occur all over the place: basalt columns; beehive honeycombs; snowflakes; and even molecules offer some examples. Unfortunately the processes responsible for these formations by no means explain the feature on Saturn.  In fact, the planet’s thick atmosphere is one of the last places experts were prepared to find such a geometric oddity – even its South Pole has a reassuringly circular, terrifyingly enormous hurricane churning up the clouds.

A Comparison of Saturn’s Poles (Cassini-Huygens, 2008)

So why is it there? Besides dropping Jodie Foster – or, ideally, Matthew McConaughey – into the middle of the 60-mile-deep hexagon and seeing where she goes, a slightly less exciting experiment conducted by the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark provided some intriguing results. And by slightly less exciting, we mean they stirred a bucket of water. What they found was that at certain speeds the water flow would interact with the edges of the cylindrical container to create rotating polygons with up to 6 corners.

As you may have already guessed, the experiment has a long way to go before it explains Saturn’s hexagon. For one thing, a colossal bucket isn’t sitting at the North Pole to provide distinct boundaries for the planet’s many complex layers of clouds to interact. Scientists have yet to figure out precisely how Saturn is creating a similar result with its multifaceted toolkit of jet streams and waves. Perhaps a more relevant explanation may be found in satellite observations of Hurricane Isabel (PDF) from 2003, wherein the storm’s eyewall alternated between pentagonal and hexagonal formations through unique combinations of smaller rotational features called mesovortices; showing us that even home grown storms can test and inevitably improve our equations of motion.

Satellite Observations of Hurricane Isabel in 2003 (PDF)

We’ll probably have plenty of time to figure out Saturn’s hexagon though. One of the most profound mysteries surrounding the formation (second only to its existence in the first place) is that it has stuck around as a stable feature in the 29 years or so since Voyager first observed it. As Saturn is currently in the unhurried process of tilting its North Pole towards the sun, scientists can soon point the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft’s superior optical instruments at the newly illuminated region to assist the relentless effort to discover answers (or more questions). Until then, we hope you’ll join us in simply appreciating this hexagon as one of the many weird things that makes our universe even more fascinating.

Preparing for the inevitable Terminator: Salvation robot apocalypse a five part series

We here at Weird Things aren’t just committed to telling you about all the weird things going on in your world, we’re here to do something about it! As every day brings us closer to the robot apocalypse envisioned in the Terminator saga, we’ve been preparing ourselves for a fighting chance. Our editors (actually just this one; the others looked at me funny when I suggested this) decided to design the ultimate weapon to use in the front lines of the man versus machine war.

The first round of offence is the armor piercing bullets stacked wide and deep in the magazine. These rounds are designed to penetrate plate steel, carbon fiber and even titanium.

The scope on the weapon is both a night vision viewer and an EMF direction finder. It’ll help you find your enemy from the unshielded radio waves they give off (what FCC?).

The laser site is designed to make it easy to target the head. It also serves a dual purpose in allowing you to temporarily blind the metallic bringers of death. Drop a bunch of laser key chains in your defensive perimeter to make it more difficult to target your laser sight and vaporize you before you even touch the trigger.

The tip of the rifle barrel is also a 100,000 volt “bayonet” designed to scramble the electronic circuitry of your would be metal assassin or any granola eating Ubuntu freak collaborators willing to defend them if the evil robots claim their code is based on open source.

The magnetic grenades are designed to stick to the metal skin of our robot oppressors and deliver a powerful explosion shooting hot metal and spite into their exoskeletons.

The buzz saw is for close quarter combat when you need to rip open their craniums and scoop out their microprocessors. Also useful for ripping open the skulls of their aforementioned open source collaborators who’d sell us all out to the machine overlords for a signed Summer Glau photo and a chance to have their name in the source code on the distro of their evil Linux fork.

When facing the “unstoppable” variety of unstoppable killing machine, the spay paint attachment can be used to disable their optic sensors and tag really irritating graffiti on their metal carapaces.

The last resort is USB 3.0 stick loaded with malware, lol katz and torrents of Short Circuit, Heart Beeps and Batteries Not Included.

We’re currently accepting quotes from artillery manufacturers wishing to place bids on building this weapon.

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

Probably the most fascinating idea that Star Trek popularized was the idea of a warp drive. This was a concept from golden age sci-fi that went mainstream via Trek as space-age audiences became sophisticated enough to realize that NASA’s fastest rockets wouldn’t take you very far in a human lifetime. Even going the speed of light wouldn’t work for a show that tried to visit more than one star system in it’s 3 season run (due to time dilation your characters could visit those places, but their friends back on earth would be long dead). What was needed was a (plot) device that allowed you to visit distant planets in the time it takes to drive to the next state.

Since Star Trek, warp drive has become a part of public consciousness. It’s a theoretical form of technology that some feel is as inevitable as AI and teleportation.

There’s one big catch; while AI (or something that acts like it) seems to be a problem solved at some point on a graph projecting the development of intelligent systems and teleportation seems to be more of an energy problem, there’s not a viable theory for how a warp drive could work (exotic matter, worm holes, Alcubierre drives etc.) that doesn’t violate the laws of physics (as we know them) or result in some equation balancing phenomenon like a “quantum scream” (an obscure term used in an equally obscure paper on the subject).

But despair not. There could be a much simpler solution to getting to faraway planets quickly in a short amount of time. It might have to do with the fact that when we look at distant galaxies or study the acceleration of space probes beyond our solar system we see some strange stuff that falls outside our theoretical framework. Galaxies are moving faster than they should. Our space probes seem to be accelerating faster than they should (although this one might be just a measuring problem). There’s a variety of theories to explain this. None of them dominate.

If space itself is dimpled like a golf ball, traveling in a straight line is usually not the best option to get from one point to another. The fastest path is the one that avoids going into the valleys created by the dimples – but not too far out of the way.

Every particle in the universe makes a dimple in space. This dimple effects matter and light. Light from our second closest star is slowed down ever so slightly by the dimples caused by the various particles between it and us. Even a total vacuum suffers quantum fluctuations that cause these dimples.

Depending upon how significant the effect this dimpling has and how much it occurs on a galactic scale, we might have to rethink how we measure distance between stars. A star five light years away might be reachable in less time going less than the speed of light if there was a way to take a route that avoided most of the dimpling. This might be a route only a subatomic particle could take and it might only shave .0000000000000001 milliseconds off the total trip time, but it’s a start. And if it turns out that those dimples have dimples, then there might be an even bigger time savings.

While that’s not a whole lot to hope for right now and nowhere near as sexy to think about as a magical warp engine, it’s a helpful frame of reference for understanding how faster than light travel may not mean going faster than the speed of light.

Finding a way to get to distant star systems might not come from waiting for our existing theories to be overturned to satisfy our wishes. It might just come from studying the phenomenon at hand and better understanding how it all works together.

Check out the rest of the series on making the science of Star Trek possible

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

In an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation called the “The Chase” a long running problem in Star Trek was finally solved – Why do all the aliens in Star Trek look humanoid. The answer was not “budget”. It was that a race that lived 4.5 billion years ago seeded the galaxy with its DNA. Humans, Vulcans, klingons etc., all got their imprint from them. We kind of look like each other because we all look like some alien race from 4.5 billion years ago. Problem solved. But is Intelligent Design really a satisfying answer?

If we find aliens that look like us, what other explanations could account for them?

Kidnapping
Having to deal with a slightly more sophisticated audience that grew up watching Star Trek, the producers of Stargate and the producers of the television series had to come up with a simple explanation for there being humans all over the galaxy in present day time. Their solution was a popular one in sci-fi literature: We were kidnapped. Over the last 100,000 years humans have been relocated to the distant corners of our universe. Once there, they go about their business. Building monuments to their gods (Star Trek and Stargate) or becoming thriving interstellar civilizations more advanced than us on earth (Iain Banks’s The Culture).

Plastic surgery
Let’s face it, we’re one sexy species. Of course we’re biologically programmed to think this, otherwise evolution would come to a stand still if we spent all our time trying to reproduce with some other species just as sexy in its own way (like sexy, sexy moss). But lets assume that we’re universally considered sexy. Then it makes sense that sophisticated civilizations would want to look like us – or at least some of them would. History is replete with examples of one culture adopting the style of another (sometimes less sophisticated one); Romans copying Egyptian fashion. Revolutionary France emulating the American Frontiersmen and Native Americans. British punks emulating Caribbean culture and Native American, etc.

Shape-shifting
Any civilization that can travel interstellar distances should also possess the ability to shift shape. We can do this in some small form through surgery and prosthetics. Eventually, nanotechnology should give us the ability to radically change our shapes, colors and features. It’s not impossible to think that if we ever meet some other species we might adopt their shape to fit in just like we do the wardrobe of other countries. Because nothing screams tourist on Epsilon XII like only one pair of arms and concealed genitals.

Coincidence
This is a hard one to accept initially. Our planet is filled with billions of different life forms. The only ones that ever came close to looking like us are distant relatives. But given a universe filled with over 70 sextillion stars (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars), if intelligent life happens a lot and knowing that nature favors certain solutions (eyes, wings, flippers, feet) it’s not too hard to accept that somewhere out there are a lot of roughly humanoid looking species. But for every one of those would be a billion squidlings that think we’re very unsexy.

Synchronicity
This is a concept used in sci-fi to explain why patterns often repeat themselves. It’s not a matter of coincidence, it’s that there’s some property of the universe that makes systems move to the same metronome. A kind of galactic zeitgeist. In pop culture there have been a number of crank theories like Morphic-Resonance and The Hundredth Monkey that try to prove this. They fail because their own examples are easily debunked. They try to explain phenomena that don’t require a sophisticated explanation and supply a mechanism without really saying what it is.

Ignoring the crackpot examples, there are other examples of synchronicity fully understood and some that aren’t. Quantum entanglement is one form of it. It’s spooky action at a distance shows how previously connected particles are still mysteriously connected. Since the universe started out as a tiny point, we’re all connected in some way. In more mundane physics you can do fun experiments with tuning forks and other objects and observe how similar shapes can make each other resonate at a distance.

If at some level matter can influence other matter at a far off distance like two tuning forks, then maybe that influence can scale up to systems and cause co-evolution over similar paths. This could result in humanoids in the most far off places. For a great exploration of this idea, check out Anathem by Neil Stephenson.

Check out the rest of the series on making the science of Star Trek possible

A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

Time Travel stories generally suck. There are some noteworthy exceptions – specifically stories that deal with the problems of time travel and not just time travel as a plot device (Primer, Back to the Future, to name a few).

Star Trek has done some great and some very bad time travel stories. Story merits aside, there’s one big problem with most time travel stories; Transmitting people back in time (information) has no theoretical basis: It’s impossible. For every worm hole propped open with exotic matter or giant Tippler tube, someone always finds an equation to show how the universe corrects itself with quantum screams, bubbles or other annoyances that get in the way of us correcting that horrible thing that happened in 6th grade or saving the whales.

Assuming for a moment that the killjoys at MIT and Princeton who relish in pointing out that time travel as we understand it is impossible, then what? How can we tell scientifically literate time travel stories?

Fake universe
If the universe is really just a computer program and we’re just AI running around in as described in countless sci-fi stories, the Matrix and a few Star Trek episodes; then anything is possible. Traveling back in time is like finding a cheat code on a video game that lets you hop around levels in a game. Real time travel is still impossible but time travel for people in the simulation is totally possible. What are the odds that we’re in a quantum computer simulation? Frightenly good according to the Harter equation (see footnote).

Sideways time travel
If we’re not all in a computer simulation, then maybe the way to go back in time is to go sideways into a parallel universe that’s a mirror of our own but just a few milliseconds behind us and keep going universe to universe until you get to the time you want. Assuming that the multi-worlds theory of Quantum Mechanics is correct and that our universe branches off every time there’s a quantum event, then there could be an infinite number of universes like our own progressing back to the big bang because some of them got a little later start then us. Of course this isn’t time travel into our own timeline. But it’s traveling into a past similar to our own. You can kill all you distant relatives without repercussions (besides trifling moral ones).

Change the present to the past
The beautiful premise in Alex Proyas’s film Dark City was that the clock could be rolled back and timelines altered by simply putting people to sleep and then moving things where you wanted and implanting memories. No time machine required. Just rewrite the calendar and get everyone to subscribe to a collective delusion and create physical evidence.

Sound crazy? Our whole calendar is based upon a bunch of guys in funny robes changing our timeline to agree to a religious point of view. We’re a couple weeks out of sync with natural history because of this! Totalitarian regimes in Soviet Russia, China and North Korea constantly changed their timelines to whatever was politically convenient.

Take this a step further and imagine some kind of technology that doesn’t so much allow you to travel back in time, as much as roll-back the odometer on everything else around you. This would require knowing where things go and repositioning atoms into a prior arrangement to precisely fit the period you wanted to go. It’d be a tremendous undertaking, but it’s an engineering problem and not one of fundamental physics. This may or may not have been the device that saved the day in Galaxy Quest.

Going even further out on the fringe, if every particle has a memory, maybe there’s a way to knock everything into a past state. This might be something that can just be done locally or on a planetary scale. Figuring out how to account for all the particles that fell out of the region could be complicated. Your atoms were doing other things before they became you…

Simulate just the parts you want
We already do this to an extent. Video games, movies and Renaissance fairs are all attempts to recreate a part of the past. They’re all getting more and more sophisticated. At some point you’ll be able to walk the streets of ancient Rome in some way or another and it will be just as real to your senses as having been there. While this won’t let you wreak havoc on the present, it can allow you to fulfill your suppressed power fantasies by allowing you to use your 21st century knowledge to try to take over the ancient world, acquire a harem and build monuments in your own honor. And isn’t that what this is all really about?

Check out the rest of the series on making the science of Star Trek possible

Footnote:
The Harter Equation: *If* it’s possible to make a quantum computer that can describe a reality equal to or greater than our own universe in detail, and *if* it’s possible to create an infinite number of simulated universes with this level of detail, the chance that our universe is actually a quantum simulation would be nearly infinite*. There would be infinitely more artificial universes (that think they’re real) than real ones. Now if an artificial universes (like our own?) can create other artificial universes, the chances that we’re an original universe becomes even more implausible.