MYSTERIES of the UNEXPLAINED

I had serious nightmares about the Jersey devil for years and I was terrified, paging through my copy of Mysteries of the Unexplained that I'd accidentally run into his photo.

http://www.danielamos.com/stunt/batboy.gif

Hollow Earth - Most of these are just one monster, but hollow earth is a whole realm of weird beasts.

Orgonic accumulators

What's this? Sounds interesting...

where is ATLANTIS

Aw shit! No Mu or Lemuria either. ;_;

i love browsing in occult bookstores so much

emil.y: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

that movie 'mothman prophecies' scared the bejesus outta me ;_;

Here is the first sketch of the mothman:

http://taskboy.com/lectures/UFOlogy/04_Psychadelic_Sixties/mothman_drawing.jpg

HAHAHAHA scary shit!

My family was all flipped out by Mothman Prophecies movie but I didn't see it. The title reminds me of Arthur from "The Tick" so it is certainly not a title that makes me think 'o the scary.'

i just found it hugely unsettling. not helped by the fact i'm a total sissy, AND i watched late at night, on my own, in a big scary house.

Springheel Jack certainly made the best drum'n'bass.

Ans, to be serious, it's a pretty spooky story which kind of predates the mothman business but has certain similarities.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Jack6.jpg

LOCH NESS AND OTHER LAKE MONSTERS

dirty jerz

there was a book in our school library that i was allowed to check out when i was like SIX that was all about this stuff and ghosts and all kinds of scary shit. it scared me half to death but i had a morbid fascination with it and would check it out practically every week. no wonder i had nightmares almost every night throughout my childhood.

You split the bigfoot vote three ways, but Nessie and Ogopogo and Champ and the rest get one combined category? Those lake monsters aren't even the same species! Blerg!

There's like EIGHT MILLION lake monsters. Like I really wanted to include the one in Payette Lake, Idaho, for sentimental reasons, but no más. I'm sick anyway.

aren't the yeti and abominable snowman the same dude?

Yeti's from ASIA and abominable snowman ... oh shit, it looks like they are.

Still, no Mokèlé-mbèmbé, no credibilitmbembe.

http://www.hdbrp.com/mib.jpg

"your antipathy towards ufo mythology has been noted by my colleagues and i, mr abbot. we are displeased by this, and suggest that you rectify this oversight as soon as possible. the consequences should you refuse to do this will be regrettable. do not report this."

http://www.orgonite.info/images/orgonite_diagram.jpg

http://threeminds.organic.com/images/threeminds_legacy/uncategorized/hornymanatee.jpg

http://www.sideshowworld.com/TYfeej1d.jpg

L-R: Barnum's ad for the beautiful Fiji mermaid, mermaid actually exhibited.

you have no idea how desperately i want mokèlé-mbèmbé to be real

(leaving out UFOs bcz they suck and are their own thing)

there's actually a big crossover between UFO mythology and all this other stuff. a lot of the classic "close encounters" are pretty bizarre and trippy and bleed into other kinds of phenomenon. so called UFO experts just want to pigeonhole all the weirdness into evidence of ET but they can't hold back the crazy train!

read some John Keel (who wrote the Mothman Prophecies book).

I think Coast to Coast AM burned me out on 'grays' and so I don't want to get burned; would rather read books from the 1980s on how SAINTENISTS are ruining our world with the underground breeding and bestiality sacrifice lairs.

Yeah, like what was the deal w/all the weirdness about Michael Aquino from the Temple of Set and the SF Presidio child sexual abuse scandal? That never seemed to quite add up, one way or the other.

"The Finders" cult thing is really spooky/creepy, also.

want to linkage dell? I am too sick/dumb to search proper :(

I think Coast to Coast AM burned me out on 'grays' and so I don't want to get burned

see that's the thing, all that stuff about "grays" (which didn't become common until the late 70's/early 80's) has overshadowed the long history of weirdness that predates it.

but i'll grant UFO's have their own baggage and it's your thread and all. just saying, look all this up. it's pretty entertaining mythology/cultural history and ties into all this other crazy stuff (especially mothman and the like).

as far as "The Finders", I'm having trouble finding stuff that is not sourced from various stripes of conspiracy sites. There was an excellent article about the group in the Washington City Paper 11 years ago or so, but I can't find it online.

Here is a NYT thing, though

Will check it out, latebloomer. Thx dell.

Just as entertaining as these kinds of books are books by people desperate to debunk them.

Ah, here's the City Paper article. Great stuff, by Eddie Dean, who is reliably fantastic.

I too was obsessed by UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES when I was little. The best one was that treasure island that has been destroyed by random people digging massive boreholes for the last 100 years and finding randon coins and bits of wood at ridiculously depths.

Hollow Earth is probably the most barmy hence wins.

from wiki: In one chapter of his book On the Wild Side (1992), Martin Gardner discusses the hollow Earth model articulated by Abdelkader. According to Gardner, this theory posits that light rays travel in circular paths, and slow as they approach the center of the spherical star-filled cavern. No energy can reach the center of the cavern, which corresponds to no point a finite distance away from Earth in the widely accepted scientific cosmology. A drill, Gardner says, would lengthen as it traveled away from the cavern and eventually pass through the "point at infinity" corresponding to the center of the Earth in the widely accepted scientific cosmology. Supposedly no experiment can distinguish between the two cosmologies. Martin Gardner notes that "most mathematicians believe that an inside-out universe, with properly adjusted physical laws, is empirically irrefutable".

The MAD GASSER

<a href="http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:pdd8PLNIrCUJ:www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/83/in_search_of_the_mad_gasser.html+mad+gasser+of+mattoon+fortean+times&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a";>this</a> is really fascinating.

OMG that guy kicks ass!

In the summer of 2004, I found myself standing in the pouring rain outside a small, square, two-storey house boasting a neat little pocket-handkerchief garden, and the ubiquitous corrugated white ‘sidings’ seemingly found on every house in the Midwest. Clutching my camera, I took photographs of the house and the street. As I did so, I remembered a song about the Mad Gasser case that I’d written a decade before; when performing it onstage I’d often quipped that it was one of my life’s ambitions to perform the song in the very place where it was set.

What could I do? I sang my Mad Gasser song with gusto to an audience consisting of two stray cats and a dead opossum. Truly, life does not get much better than this!

And his bio line:

Jon Downes is director the Centre for Fortean Zoology and frequent contributor to FT. He lives in Exeter with an ever-shifting population of reptiles.

awesome!

It's amazing how many people were convinced by those fairy photos, and for how long. I mean, look at them.

Enjoy these spook pictures everyone! http://www.knbc.com/slideshow/entertainment/14378935/detail.html?source=rss_offbeat

I was under the impression Doyle pretty much had his cred shot after writing so lovingly of those Cottingsley (sp?) fairy photos.

He had, pretty much, but he still got a lot of support from "spiritual-minded" people at the time. I've been reading a paranormal book from the mid-80s which shows that the photos were still being seriously debated by then.

there was a great show at the met last year of all that early hoax photography! i bought two copies of the catalogue!

Classic Reader's Digest (or Life Mgazine?) MYSTERIES OF THE UNEXPLAINED hardcover my uncle had ruined me *for life*. I was obsessed with Spring Heel jack and the Devil's Footprints in Devon, England. Awesome.

Those ghost photos freak me out (even if some of them are obviously fake). UFOs = I WANT TO BELIEVE, Ghosts = I DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE, NO SIRREE, NO SCARY SPOOKS FOR ME THX.

I had that Reader's DIgest book! There was a picture of the Devil in one chapter about demonic possession that used to really scare me.

Are peeps from Oregon called Oregonites? They should be, if not.

i must be kind of daft but i have no recollection of what the bermuda triangle actually is

http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Therese_Neumann_von_Konnersreuth3.jpg
whoa!

I had a book on Unsolved Crimes in the same series as the one Johnny mentions upthread (it's where I first read about DB Cooper back in the 1980s). There was one about a guy shot in the head in the spare room of his house, with the door locked from the inside with the key in the door, the windows were locked on the inside and the gun doing the shooting too far from the body to be suicide. I keep trying to find it, both the book and the story on the interweb, to no avail.

They used to teach us about the Jersey Devil in elementary school as fact.

!@!!!! Holy shit!!

Anyway, this thread to thread: Charles Fort (and the Strange Things That Fell From The Sky)

Damnit, this one: Charles Fort (and the Strange Things That Fell From The Sky)

ball lightning because it could happen to YOU

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/18/LES7BOULESDECRISTAL.JPG

I had serious nightmares about the Jersey devil for years and I was terrified, paging through my copy of Mysteries of the Unexplained that I'd accidentally run into his photo.

this reminds me of how when I was very small there were some pictures in books I had that were so scary that I had to paperclip the pages closed so that I would never stumble onto them.

spontanaeous human combustion - so scary.

this reminds me of how when I was very small there were some pictures in books I had that were so scary that I had to paperclip the pages closed so that I would never stumble onto them.

I had some UK published book about ghosts that had an illustration of giant Roman smoke ghost that I had to do this to.

Spring Heeled Jack (also Springheel Jack, Spring-heel Jack, etc), is a character from English folklore said to have existed during the Victorian era and able to jump extraordinarily high.

OOOO SCARY

He was the Matter-Eater Lad of his day.

Ok, the scariest detail from the Wikipedia page on Ogopogo (palindrome!) is this:

Ken alleges the animal he saw was 15 feet long, far larger than a typical beaver (beavers are approximately 4 feet long).

Oh wait, that's probably counting the tail, though

I voted for "black dog", I always found this one to be vv weird & entertaining. I think a lot of Black Dog stories are from the SE of England. Maybe I should have voted for "ball lightning" BECAUSE I HAVE ACTUALLY SEEN IT. Or something answering its description, anyway.

John A Keel's books, as per Latebloomer, are headfucking and entertaining, strongly recommended, "operation trojan horse" esp.

I don't believe in ghosts (or any supernatural phenomena really) but some ghost pics still creep me out, especially scary masked/hooded figure by the altar, bastard thing.

Oak Island, is that the "money pit" thing?

Springheel jack's steez supposedly was to knock at some unsuspecting victorian's door, blow soot in their face, then spring off out of sight, like an oversized flea. I can imagine that being pretty scary! It does sound a bit unlikely though, doesn't it.

Sounds like drunk Victorian teenagers. Searching for mention of "flaming satchel of dung" in any of these reports

I voted for black dogs, they're damn creepy. Oak Island should definitely have been on the list though

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Oak Island, is that the "money pit" thing?

Yes.

As illustrated by this helpful diagram:

http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/OakIsland/images/oak_island.gif

I have a t-shirt with this image:

http://www.citypaper.net/articles/102397/gif.pics/cov.devil.illust.pg1.GIF

It reminds me of Michael Keaton

Yah nabisco I think Springheel Jack is HILARIOUS. He's a-like a-Luigi. BUT this was the Jersey Devil's main power, too. Let us recall that the jersey Devil is a nightmare patchwork of all scary beasts (and proportionately impossible), and Springheel jack is a hu-man.

spring heel jack was a mysterious 90's electronica act, and it is unexplained why we own about 4 of their CDs

http://z.about.com/d/paranormal/1/0/t/Q/1/jersey-devil.jpg

This is the one that flipped me out. Still feel a little squicky when looking at it. Part of me says, "THAT was IT?" and the other says "Holy shit did not sleep for months." Same as when I picked up a copy of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark at the used bookstore a month ago (lots of sleep lost over those illustrations).

He's STARING RIGHT AT YOU. This should not be.

he looks cute!

Did anyone else hear scary stories about the Weedigo/Windigo spirits that killed and dragged campers through the woods, leaving bloody trails?

Might have been a NC thing as that's where I went to summer camp

OMG yes Wendigo scared me.

I read about all the American folklore monsters & critters from a book by the same guy who wrote the Scary Stories series, actually. My favorite was some goat whose right legs were half the length of its left legs, so it could comfortable walk in circles around steep mountains. (Does anyone know its name?)

There are some great scary stories buried in the bigfoot field researchers organization online database. Look up the home county of your favorite redneck relatives, find a reason to visit.

Abbott: I haven't heard of this goat, but it reminded me of the Devil's Tramping Ground, and NC favorite.

NC also has the Brown Mountain Lights.

For at least the last hundred years, nothing has grown within the 40 foot ring and the phenomenon is thus far unexplained. A United States Geological Survey team could uncover no scientific explanation for the lack of growth within the ring.[citation needed]

HAHAHAHA awesome.

But theres grass in the photo! WTF!?

I mean if it was a solid 40 ft circle of completely bare dirt, sure...

I wouldn't trust that photo...

I was desperately unimpressed by Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo". "Oh my fiery feet, my burning feet of fire!" = not very scary, sorry.

One image from that book that sticks out in my mind is of a man standing on top of a huge, floating sphere - anyone remember what that was about?

I looked this up. It was to illustrate a 200-pound wrecking ball that went missing after being left hanging from a crane overnight.

Tsk, students.

I voted for black dogs, they're damn creepy.

http://www.denizeslabradors.co.uk/images/black-lab-puppies.jpg

I remember reading this famous sasquatch account when I was a little kid:

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=1091

The idea of being picked up in yr sleeping bag and carried off in the wild/night by ape-men = the stuff of the scariest, most thrilling adventure stories.

They're creepier if they're FLAMING-EYED BLACK DOGS!

the beast of dartmoor :(

or Bodmin Beast

no, that's your mum

Dogons and their amazing knowledges
Mary Celeste - not really unexplained anymore, but still a great story

Thanks Wayward Johnny B.

Those stories about amazing coincidences can be entertaining too. A man meets someone with the same name whose wife has the same name and whose kids have the same names and was born on the same day etc.

Again from that book, I remember a crossword puzzle maker during WWII getting into trouble because he kept putting allied codenames into his crosswords, and it turned out it was a massive coincidence.

*googles* Here it is:

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Guys - this thread made me buy a 21 DVD-R set - cheap - of the complete "In Search Of... (1970s) " series from some dude off the interwebs. Why? Because that series is the TV crystallization of all the goodness mentioned on this thread. Plus -- it's still creepy as sh*t.

For fans of the hollow earth, this is amazing (it's an extract from a forthcoming book):

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/03/20/a-threat-to-mental-health-how-to-read-rocks/