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Cemetery Strangeness

Without doubt, one of Britain's biggest hot-spots for very weird activity of a definitively Fortean variety is the Cannock Chase German War Cemetery, located in the county of Staffordshire.

The cemetery can be found in the sprawling mass of woodland and heath known as the Cannock Chase (hence its name).

If you're wondering, the cemetery takes its name from the fact that it's the final resting place for (a) many of the German prisoners-of-war who died on British soil during the Second World War; and (b) the remains of a number of crews of German military aircraft shot down over Britain during the same war, as well as a handful from the First World War.

You can find out more about the cemetery right here.

But what you won't find at the above-link are the many and varied stories of werewolves (and over-sized wolves), huge black cats, ghostly figures, small hairy humanoids, and much more of a very odd nature that has elected to call the cemetery "home" for years.

I grew up very close to the German Cemetery, and I can say for certain that it's an odd place indeed!

Head-Hunting

Something weird has been going on in our back-garden (or, back-yard, as it's called in the US!) for some time now.

And, it's probably a good idea to bring it to people's attention, as it's still on-going.

About three weeks ago, I found a decapitated mole in the grass, which I thought was kind of odd, and which Ken Gerhard saw when he came to visit shortly afterwards. Then, about two weeks ago, I found a large, skinned bone on the lawn - yep, picked entirely clean of meat.

But, there was far more - and much worse - to come, as the photo above shows.

Last Saturday morning, me and Dana were sitting outside when D suddenly gave out a huge scream and pointed to a paved area about eight-feet from where we were sitting.

As the photo graphically shows - and as became clear when I went over to take a close-up look at it - it was the head of a possum, which had clearly been pretty savagely torn or bitten off.

And, it was made all the more strange by the fact that this is the precise position the head was in when we found it. In other words, I didn't carefully position it for the photo. In fact, handling the ant-infested head was the very last thing I wanted to do!

The culprit? Well...I'm not sure...

But, what I can say for sure is that twice in the past year we have seen a Coyote in the street outside our house. The first time was in June of last year, when we came back from my mum's funeral in England and it raced across the road in front of us, around 8.30 at night.

The second time we saw it was during a very violent thunderstorm in May or June of this year, when - again - it was racing along the road outside our home.

Plus, although we live in a city (Arlington, Texas, just outside Dallas and Fort Worth) behind our house is a huge stretch of field that extends for hundreds of feet (both length and breadth-wise). The ideal place for a predator, perhaps.

I'm inclined to think the Coyote was the culprit (and that the mole and the bone issue were part of its actions too), but if you have any other ideas, let me know...

Worms and Stones

Take by me in the early summer of 2001, this photo shows one of the famous standing stones at Avebury, England. But, there's an interesting story attached to this particular stone.

In the early 1960s, a local resident claimed to have seen a strange, ethereal ball of floating light in front of this very stone that - allegedly, at least - suddenly "shape-shifted" in a flash of light into a coiling, worm-like beast of about 6-feet in length that shuffled across the ground in peculiar fashion.

The horrified witness - this much we know as fact - quickly contacted a local Royal Air Force base, who soon dispatched an investigator to secure a report. Aside from finding remnants of a slimy substance at the scene, nothing concrete was ever determined.

The result: the story and the documentation continues to languish within the vaults of officialdom. As for the worm? So far as can be determined, just like the ghost-light, it never returned...

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

As this photo shows, even as a 3- or 4-year-old, I was carefully scanning the skies for all-things weird and wonderful.

Was it, therefore, destiny or fate that led me to become a seeker of saucers years later? Or just random chance? Who knows? Who cares? Nice head of hair though!

Yep, I really did have hair! In fact, I still do! Granted, it's not as thick as it was when I was in my teens and twenties.

But, it still amuses me when - if I'm on the road for a week or so, and there's nowhere to partake in my daily head-shaving ritual - people express shock that after one day I have stubble, then on day two there's more, and on the third day, the hair starts to come back in noticeable fashion LOL.

Some ufological dunderhead once had the nerve to say words to the effect of: "I thought you had some weird disease that made it all fall out!"

Er...no, actually. My appearance comes from shaving my scalp every morning, and when I'm going out at night it gets a second shot of the razor.

And why am I mentioning all this? Dunno, beats me! The answer to that question - just like my hair - is lost on me!

Crashed UFO Tourism

Roswell, New Mexico is not alone in celebrating its status as a place with a Ufological past.

Much the same can be said about Aztec, New Mexico - Roswell's "little brother" in the crashed saucer stakes.

Just as Roswell has come to realize that the legendary event of July 1947 brings in the crowds, the people of Aztec have too!

Granted, the sheer, and astonishing, level of tourism that exists in Roswell is not in evidence at Aztec, but it does exist. And, take a drive out to the old, alleged crash site of March 1948 at Hart Canyon, and you'll find this sign commemorating the claimed crash.

I took this photo back in 2003, and unless some obsessive-compulsive collector of crashed saucer-connected memorabilia has stolen in, I'm presuming it's still there...

A Seance of the Roswell Kind

Something happened outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947.

And - in my view - it didn't involve a weather-balloon, a Mogul-balloon, or crash-test dummies.

Do I think there's a good chance that bodies (human, alien, or otherwise) were found within, or near to, the large field of wreckage stumbled upon by rancher Mack Brazel on that legendary day back in July 1947?

Yes, I do!

So what, you may ask, does any of this have to do with the accompanying photo that looks suspiciously like a seance is about to kick-off? Well, first, that's exactly what it shows!

And if you're wondering where it was taken, I'll tell you. The location was Hangar 84 at the old Roswell Army Air Field where, some have alleged, the bodies from the Roswell crash were briefly held after their discovery on a remote part of the (equally remote) Foster Ranch.

The reason for me being at the old hangar was as simple as it was bizarre: I was there with several psychics who planned on trying to contact the souls of the Roswell-deceased to determine who they were, where they were from, and what happened to them.

It was around the witching-hour on an appropriately dark, chilly and wind-filled night in December 2005 when the seance began, and which lasted for around 40-minutes, or thereabouts.

With their minds trained, the psychics said that they felt the presence of something (souls, in other words), that they had imagery of some sort of vehicle violently crashing to earth on the harsh desert floor, and of the bodies of the crew being strewn around the area, and well and truly pummelled in the process.

Okay, much of that we know already. But to hear it during a seance, at midnight, in a hangar - or, rather, in that hangar - at Roswell was memorable in the extreme.

Granted, not exactly the most conventional of all investigations into the Roswell bodies, but I'll bet there has not been a stranger one!

In The Beginning...

People often ask me how I got involved in the weird world of Forteana.

Well, there were a couple of particular reasons: (1) my dad worked on radar while in the British Royal Air Force in the early 1950s and was involved in a couple of UFO incidents which, eventually, he chose to tell me about; and (2) when I was a little kid, my parents took me to Loch Ness for a day, and, as a result, I became fascinated, excited and enthralled by the mystery of the monster.

But, there was another reason too. I grew up literally only about a five-minute drive from the scene of one of the most notorious events in early 20th Century British history - the strange affair of one George Edalji.

A resident of the town of Great Wyrley, Edalji was convicted of slashing and maiming horses in 1903 - events that provoked outrage and fear, and even attracted the attention of none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who firmly believed Edalji to be innocent of the attacks.

But, there were a lot of Fortean aspects to the Edalji affair too. Rumors flew around the area at the time that the attacks were the work of a "hypnotized ape;" "a malicious aviator" or huge bird; a pack of trained wild-boar (yeah, I know that's an oxymoron of the highest order!); or diabolical occultists.

The photo above (taken by me in June 2010) shows St. Mark's Church, Great Wyrley, at which George Edalji's father, the Reverend Shapurji Edalji, was the vicar.

Who would have guessed that such a pleasant-looking place would be so tied to such dark secrets and diabolical events?

Whatever the truth of the matter, the story of George Edalji became legendary - and still is to the people of Great Wyrley. And, growing up just down the road from where all the old carnage, killing, and high-strangeness occurred is yet another - little-known - reason why I gravitated to the world of all-things weird...

Hanging By A Thread...

When I was about 5-years-old, my dad made me a model Flying Saucer out of balsa wood, an old plastic breakfast-cereal bowl, silver paint, and plastic bottle lids (the latter for the "landing gear").

He then hung the Venusian scout-craft on our clothes-line and snapped the picture.

You can just see a bit of the clothes-line top right.

The picture remained in a cupboard at my dad's house for years, until he brought it over to me a couple of years ago on one of his visits to see us. I think it looks pretty good, and no sign of the wire (or whatever it was) holding it up!

Of Snails and Saucers

Yeah, I know this thing in the hand of the Center for Fortean Zoology's Jon Downes looks like a mini-Flying Saucer (possibly, you might think, complete with diminutive extraterrestrial crew).

But, of course, it's nothing of the sort - although it would be wonderful if it was! (Click on the photo for a closer look.)

Nope, it's actually a particularly UFO-looking type of snail that can be found on the island of Puerto Rico - which is where the photo was taken when, in 2004, me and Jon were trekking around the island's El Yunque rain-forest in search of the Chupacabra.

Of course, that probably won't satisfy some paranoid souls, who will no doubt claim that the snail story is actually a cover to "hide the truth" of the tiny aliens of El Yunque. Ho-hum, such is Ufology...

Karl's Cap

Taken by me at Aztec, New Mexico in 2003, this photo shows the late Karl Pflock, with who I once planned to write a book on the notorious Silas Newton of "Aztec UFO Crash" infamy.

We actually got quite a bit of research done, and even put a book-proposal together. Newton was such a larger-than-life - and very shady - character that Aztec's crashed saucer saga was actually only going to be just one of many sections of the book.

Indeed, if you want proof of Newton's outrageous actions of the conman variety, check out his FBI file.

As for the rest of the story me and Karl were researching? Well, maybe one day it will all come tumbling out - including (in full) the mysterious story of Karl, Newton's early-1970s journal and its crashed UFO-themed entries, and a clandestine and cloak-and-dagger informant who kicked-off this aspect of the puzzle.

But this was all obviously curtailed, and ultimately came to a halt, when Karl got sick and very tragically passed away back in 2006.

But, I like this photo, as it shows Karl in his CIA cap.

And, unlike some of those controversial characters within Ufology who have claimed CIA backgrounds that are ultimately unverifiable, Karl - as a former employee of "The Company" - really was entitled to wear such a cap!

An Interplanetary License Plate?

About ten-years ago, I spent some time in Taos, New Mexico and met with an interesting character named Dan Salter (see his book: Life With A Cosmos Clearance).

Dan claimed to know the inside story of Roswell, crashed UFOs, dead aliens, and high-level conspiracies of truly dizzying varieties. Dan also claimed to be a recently-retired employee of the ultra-secret National Reconnaissance Office.

When I met Dan at a diner in downtown Taos on my second morning in town, I felt sorry for the guy: he was elderly and frail, had then recently suffered several strokes, both his physical health and his speech had been impaired to a considerable degree as a direct result, and here I was about to intensely grill him on UFOs for three hours.

Nevertheless, and thank goodness, Dan fully retained his mental faculties, and was highly motivated and upbeat. And, over a wonderful Mexican meal and Margaritas, he regaled me with entertaining tale after entertaining tale about his alleged out-of-this-world exploits and decades-long career as a Fox Mulder-like 007.

Yes, UFOs were real, Dan told me. Yes, an alien spacecraft had crashed at Roswell, and both it and its extraterrestrial crew were recovered by the American military. Yes, sinister aliens were abducting American citizens and implanting them with tracking devices for diabolical purposes that could only be guessed at. Yes, people had been killed by the government to hide the horrible truth.

And, yes, there were a number of "underground bases" in New Mexico where the aliens were undertaking all manner of horrific experiments on people for purposes so terrible that the Government, powerless as it was to intervene, dared not reveal them to the oblivious masses.

And Dan, he assured me, as a direct result of his work with American intelligence, was privy to these, the most guarded of all UFO secrets.

However, it was not just the interview itself that fascinated me, but something else, too. After exiting the restaurant around 2.00 p.m., Dan and I climbed into his vehicle and headed to the home of one of his friends. I could not help but notice as I headed towards the vehicle that its license plate was very different from any other that I had ever seen.

Instead of being made up of a conventional combination of numbers and letters, it read: HQ INTERPLANETARY PHENOMENON SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL COUNTERINTELLIGENCE WA 25, D.C.

With Dan's permission, I took some photographs of this curious piece of evidence in the strange saga.

He explained to me that the license plate was a reference to a secret, military organization called the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, and was a retirement present from his friends and colleagues at the National Reconnaissance Office.

As Dan said to me: "I know you saw my license plate on the car. I saw you looking at it. That was on the vehicle I had on base at the NRO, and it was given to me when I retired. I asked if I could show it to people and they said, 'Well, if we didn’t want you to show it to people, you wouldn’t have it.' So, I guess, that means I can show it to people. But those vehicles with the plates were never allowed off base."

As we concluded the interview, Dan had these parting words for me: "Nick, we've got to know each other over these last few days and I feel comfortable talking because I know you just want answers. There are other things I can tell you. I have to speak with a few people and you might get some other old-timers speaking to you in the next few weeks."

Evidently, the "Okay" never came. And I never heard from Dan Salter again. But I do still have that curious photo!

The Return of the Dinosaurs

I got an email yesterday that read: "Do you have any more pictures of those desert dinosaurs you took?"

Well, yes I do! And that's one of them! For those who are interested, the location is right around Joshua Tree, California.

Tracking Bigfoot

Before you start jumping up and down with excitement (or, if such things aren't your cup of tea, barely raising an eyebrow!) it's not a real track of Bigfoot, of the Yeti, of Orang-Pendek, or even of the Big Gray Man of Ben Macdhui!

Rather, it's one of many carefully-carved "feet" that adorn the back-garden of Jon Downes' home (and which is also the HQ, of course, of the Center for Fortean Zoology) in Woolsery, England.

Most people tend to decorate their gardens and yards with far more down-to-earth items.

But, fortunately, Jon is not "most people"!

And, that's a very good thing, too! More power to Jon for ensuring that his garden stands out from the crowd!

The Shugborough Inscription

Taken by me about 10 or 11 years ago, this photo shows the mysterious "Shugborough Inscription," at the old and historic Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, England - situated about a 20-minute drive from where I used to live.

So, what is the Shugborough Inscription? Well, you can find all about it right here. But, basically, it's perceived by many as being some sort of deep and dark secret code that, at various times, has been linked to Canada's Money-Pit, the Holy Grail, buried treasure, and has attracted the attention of wartime code-breakers, authors, the media, and many more!

Not only that - Shugborough Hall is a definitively odd and distinctly Fortean locale, too. There have been at least three sightings of spectral, hairy-man beasts roaming around the nearby woods, as well as (in the 1980s) a series of unsettling animal mutilations in the area.

In addition, "Shug" is an old English term for demon. Shugborough: The borough of the demon.

Man-Beasts, secret-codes, the Money-Pit, Mutes and more - someone needs to write a book or do a full-blown documentary on Shugborough! In terms of high-strangeness stakes, this place has just about everything!

The Canal Creatures

It's just a stretch of canal, photographed on a warm, sunny day, right?

Well, yes it is!

It's actually a part of the winding waters that make their way through the English city of Birmingham.

But there's more...

Along this very section (and several other parts, too) of the old canal reports have surfaced, since at least the mid-1980s, of very large and sometimes-violent eels on the loose.

I'm writing about this little-known saga in my forthcoming book, Monster Diary, and a weird and ominous saga it is, too...

The Metal Monster

I photographed this metallic, brightly-colored "thing" somewhere in New Mexico a couple of years ago.

A robotic-cryptid?

A Chupacabra/Octopus/Giant Spider-cyborg?

No, but it's still kind of interesting!

Mothman on the Mountain

Everyone has heard of the infamous Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, right?

But what of the Mothman of Trempealeau Mountain, Perrot State Park (so named after Nicolas Perrot, a French explorer), Wisconsin?

Not quite so well known, perhaps! But, it does - allegedly at least - exist.

It was to this monstrous mount that I traveled in late-2009 with the History Channel's Monster Quest team, in search of the legendary beast. And although the winged fiend eluded us (of course!), abundant eyewitness testimony most assuredly did not.

Indeed, as I found out when I roamed around the nearby town of Winona (which we used as our base of operations), the area was an absolute hotbed of tales of the flying monster.

If anyone reading this is looking to write a book on a 21st Century equivalent of Mothman, I'd say this: get yourself to Wisconsin! There's a definite story here that's well worth telling!

Paying Respects

In September 2009, me and Greg Bishop (left) visited the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based National Cemetery, where a man named Paul Bennewitz is buried.

Bennewitz’s life, career and UFO investigations – that so worried the U.S. Air Force and the National Security Agency in the late-1970s and early-to-mid-1980s, to the extent that they drove him nearly insane and to the point of nervous-breakdown and beyond, as they sought to bring his flying saucer studies to a halt – were the subject of Greg’s 2005 book, Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth, which is essential reading for anyone with an interest in how and why the world of officialdom has coldly and callously manipulated the UFO research scene, and those in it.

On locating the cemetery, we drove in carefully, and finally located Bennewitz’s grave.

I set up my digital-recorder, while a visibly-moved Greg could not help but ponder upon how Bennewitz’s passing was very likely hastened by the stress and anxiety generated by the Air Force and shadowy elements of the NSA.

Greg said, somberly: "I wish I could have told him 'thanks,' for having the story there to be written, and that I’m sorry he had to go through what he went through."

Amen to that.

Evil-Eyed Crop Circles

Built on land that had come into the possession of the Earls of Chester as far back as the end of the 11th Century, Chartley Castle – which can be found in the county of Staffordshire, England, where I grew up - is a stone fortress founded in the thirteenth century by Ranulph Blundeville, the then Earl of Chester.

And, in the summer of 2006, a striking Crop Circle was found in a field directly next to the old castle.

When word got out about the creation, my wife, Dana, and I were in England for three months, and drove out to the site. The Crop Circle was both huge and intricately designed.
Not only that, as we clambered down a steep, grassy embankment towards the formation, and made our careful way through thick brambles, lush bushes and a barbwire fence, we could not fail to see something highly strange strewn around the fringes of the Crop Circle: namely, a not inconsiderable pile of large and spectacularly colorful peacock feathers that were laid out in the form of a five-pointed star.
And what was the deal with all those peacock feathers? One person I spoke with asserted she knew all too well. Before I get to her story, however, it is vital I first point out that the peacock has a highly intriguing place in both history and mythology.

The 1898 edition of the book The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable recorded that: "The peacock’s tail is the emblem of an Evil Eye, or an ever-vigilant traitor. The tale is this: Argus was the chief Minister of Osiris, King of Egypt. When the king started on his Indian expedition, he left his queen, Isis, regent, and Argus was to be her chief adviser. Argus, with one hundred spies (called eyes), soon made himself so powerful and formidable that he shut up the queen-regent in a strong castle, and proclaimed himself king. Mercury marched against him, took him prisoner, and cut off his head; whereupon Juno metamorphosed Argus into a peacock, and set his eyes in its tale."

With that information in hand, allow me to now introduce to you the one person who claimed to know the real story behind the out-of-place peacock feathers at the site of the Chartley Castle Crop Circle. Jane Adams, who passed away in 2008, was a student of Wicca who I met back in 1997 – in a Wiltshire-based Crop Circle, as it transpires.

An old, wizened and disturbingly odd character with staring eyes and long black hair, Adams had a decidedly unsettling air about her that was detectable to practically anyone and everyone upon first meeting her. When I telephoned Adams from within the Chartley Castle Crop Circle to tell her where we were and what we had found, she surprised me by immediately offering an intriguing scenario to explain the peacock feathers.

According to Adams, the presence of the feathery star-formation at the site was evidence that those people she believed were guilty of making Crop Circles had been using the peacock’s "Evil Eye" in "black ceremonies." She added that such ceremonies had been held, under cover of darkness, on a number of occasions within British-based Crop Circles, and ancient stone circles too, and that the people responsible were endeavouring to “create negativity” and conjure up bizarre, life-threatening creatures from darkened realms that co-exist with ours.

The reason: to harness the beasts and utilize them in, as she termed it, “psychic assassinations” of people who were either opposed to the activities of the group, or who were trying to expose their actions.

I know not if the story has any truth to it, but of one thing I am sure: the whole thing was very, very weird!

Underground Monsters

One of the more interesting - and seldom-discussed - issues relative to Puerto Rico's Chupacabra phenomenon suggests that the beasts negotiate the island via extensive, deep, underground tunnels and caves. And, so the stories go, maybe they even dwell there too.

True? Who knows? But, what I do know is that it's a theory I've heard on several occasions while visiting the island and interviewing eyewitnesses to the Chupacabra.

And this picture shows one such cave on Puerto Rico, in which me and Jon Downes were filmed in 2004 for a show on the SyFy Channel called Proof Positive, and where, it was rumored, one of the goat-sucking beasts had been seen prowling around.

People have spent years searching the El Yunque rain-forest for the legendary (some would certainly say mythical) beasts, but if they truly exist, then maybe we've been looking in the wrong place.

Perhaps we should be looking below for the answers...

Lair of a Beast?

It's debatable whether or not the legendary, ghostly, blazing-eyed black dogs of history and folklore should fall into the realm of the paranormal or that of cryptozoology. Hell, I don't know! But what I do know is that the phenomenon is certainly a real one.

This photo - taken by me in 2007 - shows a large cave at Palo Duro Canyon, near Amarillo, Texas, outside of which just such a spectral, fiery-eyed hound was seen on a number of occasions in that same year, and also in 2009.

What was it? I have no idea, but whatever it was, it briefly caught the attention of the people in the area, before moving on to pastures new to torment its next victim...

Blowing Smoke

This photograph was taken by my dad, Frank, back in the late-1960s, and it shows nothing stranger than a smoke-ring at an air-show in England.

On three occasions in the last decade or so, however, people have sent me near-identical images to this one, claiming they have something to do with UFOs. They don't! At all!

You can see such rings all the time at air-shows - as evidence, click on this link.

And if anyone tells you the rings are linked with UFOs, tell them, no they are not. Then tell them to go away.

Great Balls of Fire!

It's just an old English church, right? Well, yes it is. But this one is a bit different.

Like so many other villages in the ancient county of Devon, England, Widecombe-in-the-Moor has a curious history attached to it.

On October 21, 1638, the village church, St. Pancras, was badly damaged by a lightning strike that killed four people and injured sixty-two.

It transpires that there is far more than initially meets the eye with respect to this particular lightning strike.

At the time of its occurrence, the clergyman was one George Lyde, who was born at Berry Pomeroy in 1601, and who was standing in the pulpit when the lightning struck. Fortunately, he narrowly avoided serious injury – if not death, even.

Interestingly, although at the time the event was seen as the work of the Devil, there's a school of thought that suggests the event was caused by that rare aerial phenomenon known as ball-lightning.

Indeed, the phenomenon that led to both death and severe injury in the church was said to have been provoked by nothing less than a "great ball of fire." Goodness gracious...

Strangely enough, this event had eerie parallels with a very similar incident at St. Mary's Church, Bungay, Suffolk, England, on Sunday 4 August 1577, when an immense, spectral, fiery-eyed black hound materialized within the church during a powerful thunderstorm and mercilessly tore into the terrified congregation with its huge fangs and claws.

So powerful was the storm that it reportedly killed two men in the belfry as the church tower received an immense lightning bolt that tore through it and shook the building to its very foundations.

According to an old, local verse: "All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew. And, passing onward to the quire, he many people slew."

Then as suddenly as it had appeared, the beast bounded out of St. Mary’s and was reported shortly thereafter at Blythburgh Church, about twelve miles away, where it killed and mauled even more people with its immense and bone-crushing jaws – and where, it is said, the scorch marks of the beast’s claws can still be seen imprinted on the ancient door of the church.

Ball-lightning, churches, storms, ghostly black-dogs, deaths, injuries - what was going on?

I have no idea, but I do have one final thing to add.

When I took the photo above (in the early summer of 2001), I was actually in the village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor for an entirely different (but equally odd) reason, namely to arrange an interview with an elderly doctor who claimed knowledge of a so-called "hairy wildman" seen roaming around the county back in the 1940s!

Devonshire is, truly, a strange place, indeed...!

Pinning The Goat-Man

The story of the notorious white-furred Goat-Man of Lake Worth, Texas (only a short drive from where me and Dana live) is as notorious as it is controversial and downright bizarre.

But, there can be no doubt that - at a local level - both the beast and its alleged antics are celebrated and revered.

Hell, if you're so inclined to indulge in such dark and disturbing activities, you can even go into town and play pin the tail on the Goat-Man...

I think I'll pass on that one.