Integratron Orbs

In early 2008, I spent a weekend at Contactee George Van Tassel’s Integratron – where I was lecturing on the subject of how and why the FBI of the 1950s was so concerned by, and interested in, the cosmic-claims of Van Tassel and fellow Space-Brother champion, George Adamski.

While at the Integratron, I took a number of photographs in its upper-chamber, several of which displayed clear and graphic imagery of countless, small floating balls of light.

In research circles, such small illuminated spheres, captured on-film, have become known as Orbs.

Of course, the phenomenon has both its supporters and those who maintain that the entire issue can be explained away in wholly down-to-earth terms (see this link, which outlines both points of view).

My view? I dunno. But for what it's worth, the photos exist, and that's one of them above!

Storing The Roswell Debris

Why, you may ask, have I included in this post interior and exterior shots of an old building, in some desolate desert locale?

Well, I'll tell you why!

This is the very building into which none other than rancher Mac Brazel hauled - for safe-keeping - a bunch of anomalous debris found on the Foster Ranch, New Mexico in the summer of 1947.

Yep, that's right: Roswell.

I had the opportunity to spend some time at the crash-site itself in January of this year (nope, I didn't find anything weird unfortunately!), and was very pleased when I was invited to check-out this seldom-seen construction that played such an integral role in Roswell - regardless of what did or did not happen on that fateful day.

And,correct me if you think I'm wrong, but if aliens really did crash on the Foster Ranch, isn't it maybe time for permission to be sought to tear down the building and do a full search of its foundations and immediate surroundings?

You know: just in case...

Sasquatch Graffiti

I'm still not sure if the message on this old building is intended for Bigfoot, or if we're supposed to believe that Bigfoot actually wrote it!

Anyway, whatever the truth, I photographed it just before last Christmas - somewhere in the desert.

Give humanity a chance? Whoever knew Bigfoot was such a flower-waving hippie?

Could it get any worse? Probably - this is a good indication that Bigfoot listens to folk-music or some such similar puny acoustic nonsense. The hairy chap has definitely gone downhill, in my estimation.

The M5 Giant

A Goliath-sized British Bigfoot out for a stroll? A giant alien stretching its arms and legs after a long flight from a far-away star-system?

WRONG!

It's actually a statuesque, cool and slightly enigmatic creation that stands in a large field as you zoom along England's M5 Motorway!

Bodies in the Hangar

Unfortunately, this photograph isn't evidence that I managed to secretly penetrate the inner depths of Area 51 or the legendary Hangar 18.

It's actually part of a very elaborate scene for a UFO documentary I was filmed for in December 2005, but that was never broadcast.

And given that the location of the filming was inside a huge, sprawling hangar at the old Norton Air Force Base, California, I have to wonder if the sight of these crates and "bodies" being brought on-site for filming purposes, actually provoked more than a few tales and rumors of real crashed UFOs amongst the people living nearby!

Indeed, if you ever hear any stories about "alien bodies" taken to Norton in December 2005, it was almost certainly these!

The Beast of the Bridge

When is a bridge not just a bridge? When it's the home to a spectral, glowing-eyed, ape-man, that's when!

This photo shows the old Bridge 39 on England's equally-old Shropshire Union Canal, where, since at least 1879, sightings of a British Bigfoot-type entity have been reported.

I'll be the first to admit - given that I grew up only a very short drive from the lair of the beast - I have somewhat of an obsession with the Man-Monkey (as it's known locally), as well as with the sightings, theories, and folklore surrounding the whole affair - as I noted in my book on the matter, Man-Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot.

Whenever I'm back in the UK, I always take a drive out to the old bridge, and sometimes hang out their overnight, patiently waiting for something monstrous and diabolical to come screaming out of the thick trees that surround this particularly unsettling stretch of the canal...

Rendlesham at 20

December 2000 marked the 20th anniversary of the famous UFO landing at Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England. To celebrate the event, a bunch of us - including Larry Warren (co-author with Peter Robbins of Left at East Gate) - descended on the old base to highlight the anniversary, hang out, discuss the affair two decades later, and generally ensure the case remained in the public eye. That's Larry on the left. And, yes, it was as cold as it looks!

A Hollywood Monster

What's a person to do when hanging out in Hollywood for a few days? Take photos of some anorexic/bulimic movie-goddess? Nope. Drive around the posh areas trying to spot a "star"? Not that either. What then?

Well, how about getting a photograph relative to the greatest monster in the world of cryptozoological fiction? Yes!

And here's the evidence - my way of paying homage, in 2005, to the mighty Tokyo-shattering Godzilla!

Flying High in Contactee Land

Probably my favorite photo of good mate (and Project Beta author) Greg Bishop, this one (left) was taken by me about 8 months ago and shows Greg getting ready to take to the skies in his flying contraption, while George Van Tassel's legendary Integratron looms in the background.

And here's Greg - doing his best Mothman impression - during that same trek around Contactee land:

The Beastly Bench

While I certainly go out looking for a lot of strange and monstrous beasts, I usually draw the line at trying to sit on them! But, occasionally, I'll make an exception.

While lecturing at a library near to where I used to live in England about 12 years ago, I was very pleased to find that rather than having normal benches for people to sit on outside, theirs were fashioned as long-necked creatures from the dinosaur era!

And here's one of them - a highly refreshing alternative to the dull, unimaginative, humorless state of mind that usually dominates the world of governmental bureaucracy.

In fact, I'm surprised that some grim-faced, jack-booted member of the "Nanny State" didn't demand its removal, just in case someone tripped over the tail and chipped a toe-nail.

Tongue-Tied With A Chupacabra

A warning to all future and upcoming monster hunters: if you go to Puerto Rico in search of blood-sucking vampires, and you drink far too much Tequila on a stomach earlier ravaged by Tuna-induced food-poisoning (ask Paul Kimball...) this can be the shocking result...

She wasn't a bad kisser though...

And, no: we don't keep in touch! This really was a case of love 'em and leave 'em!

MJ12 Goes Backwards

It was late one night in the early summer of 2005 when good mate and Canadian filmmaker Paul Kimball, of Red Star Films, with who I had worked on a number of earlier projects, phoned me with a proposition.

His company, Paul explained, had just been commissioned by Canada’s Space Channel to make a documentary titled Fields of Fear, the subject of which would be animal mutilations: in the United States, in Canada, and on Puerto Rico.

Paul knew that I had been to the island previously, that I had established good contacts and leads there, and that I had written about official, FBI files on animal mutilations in my 2003 book, Strange Secrets: Real Government Files on the Unknown.

As a result, Paul hired me as both a consultant to, and a participant in, the show. And so, I was soon airborne once again for the island of mystery.

Paul, in an earnest, and presumably successful, effort to save a fistful of dollars, had me on a bizarre flight-path. In 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel had me flying on a sensible, direct journey from Texas, to Florida, and finally on to Puerto Rico. But that was not good enough for Paul: he apparently spent hours tirelessly burning the midnight oil and surfing the Internet to find the very best deal possible!

The result was a money-saving flight that took me from Dallas to Puerto Rico via, of all places, Chicago! But it was a journey that would not be without its curiosities.

As we sat on the tarmac, waiting for the Puerto Rico-bound plane to take off from Chicago’s airport, I got chatting with the guy who was sat next to me. It transpired that he served with the U.S. Army, and had a fiancé who lived on the island, who he was going to visit.

They were due to marry in 2006. Bob was his name and, after I told him of my reasons for traveling to Puerto Rico, we got into a brief, but deep and entertaining, discussion about all things paranormal and mysterious.

Bob told me that he had heard all sorts of odd stories on the island about the Chupacabras, about aliens, and about underground bases. He then asked me about my opinions on Roswell.

I told him that, in my view, Roswell may have had more to do with diabolical human experimentation than it did with aliens, and he listened intently. The always slightly paranoid part of me wondered if he was, perhaps, listening too intently. And, perhaps, the reason why he, a military man, was conveniently sat next to me was to pump me for information. I made sure he never had the opportunity to surreptitiously drop anything of a deadly nature into my whisky.

We were still sat on the runway when Bob asked me: “Wasn’t there a secret group that supposedly hid the Roswell story? And didn’t some files supposedly surface from them a few years back?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “It was called MJ12, which was supposed to be this group of high-fliers in the Government and the military who were keeping it all under wraps. But I think that the files were disinformation to hide the human experiment angle.”

I added: “The MJ12 researchers have got it all back-to-front.”

No word of a lie: at the exact moment that I uttered those words, an aircraft passed us slowly on an adjoining runway; and, out of the window, I could see that its tail-numbers ended: 12MJ. I stared, utterly startled.

12MJ: MJ12 back-to-front.

The gods of synchronicity were certainly playing strange mind-games with me that day...

Meeting An Alien

Yes, it's official! I have now met an alien! Yep, a close-encounter, finally!

Or...maybe not.

Yep, this is just an on-screen alien, specifically a Dalek from the BBC TV show Dr. Who.

I ran into this metal chap in England in the summer of 2010, but he hardly seemed excited by the experience. In fact, he just stood there, cold and unsmiling. Then again, that's what Dalek's are like, so I should have expected nothing less.

I haven't watched Dr. Who since I was a kid, but it's good to see these human-sized pepper-pots are still roaming around. And, no doubt, they still have the same, grating, headache-inducing voices.

Car-Henge

No, it's not exactly Fortean, but it is kind of weird. It's Amarillo, Texas' very own equivalent of Stonehenge: Car-Henge!

Taken about 4 or 5 years ago while I was in the area actually pursuing a weird story of a blazing-eyed, ghostly black-dog.

So, in that respect, there is a Fortean tie-in...kind of...

The Norton Spaceship

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to wander around a desolate part of what was once Norton Air Force Base, California.

Imagine my surprise when I came across this: a huge painting of a futuristic spacecraft hovering over one of the moons of Jupiter.

Given the fact that Norton has long been associated with UFOs (see this link), should we consider this somehow relevant? Or, maybe, it was just created to add a bit of color and interest to the working day. Either way, it's a cool thing to see!

Nick Vs Alien

What's the difference between me and this alien? The answer is simple: there isn't any difference!

UFOs At Roswell?

I took this photo back in the summer of 2001 - at the old base at Roswell, New Mexico where, it has long been maintained, alien bodies and the remains of their craft were taken after crashing in the desert outside of town. Well, of course, that much we all know!

But, how many people know that strange-looking craft were still housed at Roswell as late as 2001?

Here they are!

Well...okay...I can't lie. They aren't real UFOs. Nor are they even sophisticated remotely-piloted vehicles (RPVs) of the military.

It's a shame to burst the conspiratorial bubble, but the far more down-to-earth truth is that they are just mock-up-style tributes to the Roswell saga created by some of the staff that leased one of the old hangars a decade ago.

My favorite? Without doubt, the Space-Brother-style, 1950s Flying Saucer on the left.

The Real Lone Gunmen

The Lone Gunmen were a trio of conspiratorial characters who made guest appearances on television’s most paranoid and paranormal sci-fi show of the 1990s, The X-Files. They were: Melvin Frohike, John Fitzgerald Byers, and Richard Langley.

So popular were The Lone Gunmen with the fans of The X-Files that, in 2001, they received the ultimate accolade after years of playing second fiddle to Mulder and Scully: namely, a short-lived, spin-off series of their very own on the Fox network starting on March 4, 2001.

I like to think that the world of Forteana has its very own Lone Gunmen, and that's them in the photo above. From left to right: Rob Sterling (of The Knoformist), Kenn Thomas (of Steamshovel Press and Maury Island UFO, among others) and Greg Bishop (author of Project Beta and host of Radio Misterioso).

I took this photo of the conspiratorial trio at Laughlin, Nevada in 1998, and even to this day they still remind me of The Lone Gunmen!

Posing With A Vampire

If you're thinking of heading to Puerto Rico to seek out the deadly, vampire-like Chupacabra, it's always best to go fully prepared - as Jon Downes and I certainly did in the summer of 2004.

As this photo shows, I decided to firmly tone-up my six-pack, while Jon indulged in a few new items of clothing. And, as you'll see, so delighted was the Chupacabra by our new appearances, it even posed for a photo with us!

Sadly, things were inevitably not destined to last - my six-pack very soon gave way to a far better form of six-pack (one consisting solely of cold beer, of course!), while Jon traded in his bikini for a cool "Our Man in Havana" look.

The Chupacabra, not happy at all by the change, headed off to the El Yunque rain-forest and drowned its sorrows in a pint of goat's blood.

Night of the Living Bed

Me and Dana don't have kids, and don't have any pets - but we do have a house-trained zombie. Here it is, struggling to get out of the duvet in one of our bedrooms!

Stuart Miller RIP

This is the sort of blog-post no-one ever, ever wants to write. I learned today that English UFO researcher Stuart Miller has died.

If you didn't know, Stuart (pictured on the left of this photo taken in 2006 by Paul Kimball of Canada's Red Star Films, with me on the right) was the brainchild behind both the online magazine, UFO Review and the sadly-short-lived newsstand mag, Alien Worlds.

This is terrible, terrible news - chiefly, of course, for Stuart's family and close friends, with who our thoughts and condolences should very much be right now.

But, for those of us within Ufology who came to know Stuart as not just a colleague but also as a friend, it's truly shocking, too.

I first crossed paths with Stuart in mid-2005 when he interviewed me in a lengthy transatlantic phone-call about my book Body Snatchers in the Desert. Then, a few months on, in late-2005, I finally got to meet Stuart in person while I was briefly back in England, where we hung out for an afternoon and yet another interview of the UFO variety.

But, the highlight - for me - was in the summer of 2006, when me and Dana moved back to England for a few months. Our trip coincided with a UFO conference that Stuart planned on holding in his home-town of Altrincham, a market-town in Greater Manchester.

When Stuart asked me if I was willing to speak at his Saturday conference, my answer was a resounding: "Yes!"

At the time of the gig, Dana and I didn't have access to a rental-car, so early on a Friday afternoon Stuart - exhibiting incredible generosity - drove down from Manchester to the West Midlands area of England (where we were staying at the time), picked us up, and drove back to Manchester so that I was able to do the gig.

Attendance-wise the conference wasn't a success; but, in terms of forging and reinforcing friendships it was a resounding success. Particularly memorable were the Friday and Saturday nights - before and right after the event - when me, Dana, Paul Kimball, and Stuart and his wife, Denise, were all able to hang out into the early hours over a delicious dinner cooked by Denise, and much flowing, cold beer.

Then, if that wasn't enough, on the Sunday morning, Stuart drove me and Dana back down to the Midlands, hung out for a while, then headed up to Manchester again and home.

I never saw Stuart again, but I stayed in touch with him regularly for the next few years, particularly so when I began to write for his final, and most ambitious, of all UFO projects: Alien Worlds, which proved to be a fascinating breath-of-fresh-air on the UFO scene.

But, now that's all over. And Stuart - who was a witty, friendly, well-read character with a fine ufological bullshit-detector - is gone. But, he most assuredly won't be - and certainly should not be - forgotten. Rest in peace, mate.

In Search of Parsons' Ghost

Well, in the immediate wake of yesterday's rock 'n' roll post, here's another - and this one does have a Fortean angle to it.

Late last year, I spent a day or two in the town of Joshua Tree, California, and got to spend a night in the motel-room where none other than Gram Parsons died.

His music does absolutely nothing for me, but it was very cool to see the room, and all the various items, memorabilia etc that can be found within its cramped confines. Not only that: the room is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Parsons himself!

So, I settled down for the night with a huge sandwich and a 6-pack of Heineken and waited...and waited...and waited.

Sadly, no ghost! But, it was a cool and memorable experience nevertheless!

Nicky, Johnny, Greggy, 1234!

Hanging out, with good mate Greg Bishop, in early 2009 at the memorial of Punk Rock Guitar-King, Johnny Ramone - which can be found in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Ramones' bassist Dee Dee Ramone is buried just a short walk away from the final resting place of his bowl-haired band-mate and partner in magnificent punk-rock mayhem.

Left to right above: Nicky Ramone, Johnny Ramone and Greggy Ramone. 1234!

Nope, nothing Fortean about these two photos! So why are they here? Because they are, that's why!

Holy Helicopters!

Am I the only one who gets constant overflights by military helicopters?

Such is their regularity, I have now given up photographing them, but this photo shows two such craft that flew low over our house a year or more ago.

The most recent one: about a week ago. I couldn't be bothered to get off my arse and take a picture though.

Are they just military helicopters going from Point A to B and back again? Or are they...black helicopters...?

Contactee Coincidence or Synchronicity?

On a cold and windswept Sunday morning in early December 2009, I was sitting on the couch, reading the newly-surfaced account of a person who - in the 1970s - had a Contactee-style experience that in many ways paralleled the 1952 claimed encounters of Truman Bethurum, whose claims I related in my Contactees book.

According to Bethurum, on a number of occasions at a place called Mormon Mesa, Nevada, he met with a group of aliens - led by their Captain, the hot and shapely Aura Rhanes - from a planet supposedly called Clarion.

Of course, like most of the stories of the Contactees, Bethurum’s was highly controversial and it attracted just about as many believers as it did disbelievers. But, as I noted in my book, I was firmly of the opinion that Bethurum had an interaction with something. The precise nature of that something is, of course, a matter of deep debate and personal interpretation.

Anyway, after I put away the file on this newly-surfaced story that very much reminded me of Bethurum’s experiences with the Clarionites, Dana asked if I could help her try and find her digital-camera which she had misplaced. We looked high and low, but failed to find it. But, while checking behind the TV set - to see if the camera had perhaps fallen there - I came across Dana’s high-school yearbook for 1982.

What on earth - or off it - does all this have to do with the Contactees, you may justifiably ask? Okay, I’m coming to that.

Although Dana is a U.S. citizen, she actually grew up in the Cayman Islands and graduated from school there.

I picked up the yearbook, with the intention of moving it to one side while I looked around for the camera, and was startled by something that I had never noticed before (admittedly it had been at least 7 or 8 years since I last looked at the yearbook). The cover of the book read: 82 Clarion.

Of course, skeptically-minded souls might say this was all some bizarre coincidence. I did, however, find it decidedly odd that after spending about two-hours reading a report very similar to that of Truman Bethurum and his friends from Clarion, that I should then - immediately afterwards, no less - stumble across a book with that very word - Clarion - adorned across its front-cover.

Thoughts, anyone? Coincidence? Synchronicity? Have I flipped my English lid?

From Sea, To Air, To Bookshelf

While in Florida recently, I was pleased to find this cool-looking dude (or what was left of him or her) washed-up on the beach after a few days of storms.

Dana groaned loudly, shook her head, and waved her arms when I told her I was adopting it and bringing it home. But, it was all to no avail. My mind was made up!

Most amazing of all (given its undeniably vicious spike), the good folk at the airport let me bring it on the plane! Not that I had any intention of doing anything with it, of course, aside from putting it on one of my book-shelves - which is where it still sits as I write these very words.

But, when you can take that thing above on a plane, but your granny or little child has to be intrusively patted-down by some grim-faced security official, you know the world has really lost the plot...

Feeling Lucky, Punk?

When I'm not chasing Bigfoot, lake-monsters, werewolves or UFOs and aliens of the bug-eyed or Space-Brother variety, how do I relax? Well, usually with my wife Dana, friends, a few beers, a good supply of violent horror films, and loud intense music.

But, when I'm not doing that, as an honorary Texan, there's only one other thing to do: I BLAST SOME SHIT!

Now, before anyone gets all up in arms and decides to send me hate-mail, I don't shoot animals (furry, winged, scaled or of any other variety), but target-shooting is cool! This photo was taken while visiting friends Naomi and Richie West about 2 months ago.

The Creature of the Caves

No, don't get too excited, this is not evidence of one of Mac Tonnies' elusive Cryptoterrestrials! Nor does it validate the wild, underground tales of Richard Shaver and the diabolical Deros!

It's a photo which was sent to me around 1997 or 1998, and, in reality is just a life-sized model that can be found in a certain, famous series of caves in England, and which is meant to offer a bit of "sword-and-sorcery"-style entertainment to those who visit the caves in question.

But what was interesting was the intricately woven tale that accompanied the picture when it was mailed to me. I forget the precise details now, but it all revolved around the claim that intelligent, sword-wielding, dwarfish man-beasts were roaming the many and varied caves that exist deep below the British Isles.

The letter ran to 2 or 3 pages and was an entertaining piece of hokum written in a definitively atmospheric, Lovecraftian style.

But, if you too are ever on the receiving end of this particular photo and its accompanying letter, just enjoy it for what it is: a piece of man-made entertainment, coupled with the written ravings of someone with - apparently - a good imagination, but way too much times on their hands, and nothing else!

A Monstrous Profile

Nope, not a real cryptid or a still-living dinosaur, but a cool metal contraption I saw on one of my forays into the California desert last year - while on a search for an alleged pocket of camels said to have been roaming the area for a century or so. A true story! Well, the allegations of the camel colony are certainly true, but whether they exist in reality is a very different matter!

A Pack of Rats

A Fortean Rat-Pack?? From left to right, a good bunch of mates: Crop Circle-maker and base-invader Matthew Williams, conspiracy-king Kenn Thomas, Project Beta author, Greg Bishop, the monster-hunting Jon Downes, and me - hanging out at Nevada's atmospheric Valley of Fire in late 2003.

The landscape makes me think an Adamski-type saucer should be hovering above us, while shapely and hot "Space-Sister" Aura Rhanes of planet Clarion gives us a flirty wave and a flash from the cockpit. No such luck!

The Cardiff Giant

The sensational tale of the legendary Cardiff Giant is just about as weird, as surreal, and as convoluted as any tale could possibly get. And, without doubt, it remains one of the most infamous and audacious hoaxes in American history.

Essentially, the giant was said to be nothing less than a 10-foot-tall purported “petrified man,” uncovered on October 16, 1869 by workmen engaged in digging a well behind the barn of one William C. “Stub” Newell in Cardiff, New York.

In reality, however, the giant was nothing of the sort at all. It was actually the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull, an atheist, who decided to create the mighty-form after a heated argument with a fundamentalist minister – a certain Mr. Turk - about the passage in Genesis 6:4 to the effect that giants once roamed the Earth.

And while Hull is long-gone, the Cardiff Giant most certainly is not!

I was very pleased to see the legendary Goliath in person a couple of years ago in its present resting place: the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Yep, that's my picture of the behemoth above, who, unsurprisingly, didn't have much to say at all. Indeed, he just lay there, totally stone-faced...Well, what do you expect?!

Frog-Henge

In late 2009, I was interviewed on the Jeff Rense Program about my Contactees book and noted that the book contains a chapter on sightings of so-called "Space Brothers" in the vicinity of Stonehenge and Crop-Circles, and their relationship to the whole "Trickster" controversy.

Well, it so happens that I actually built my very own (albeit highly condensed in size, of course!) recreation of Stonehenge in our back-garden some time ago (yes, I know it's weird and I am too!), part of which is shown in the accompanying photo.

So, imagine my surprise when I was out there only a few days after the Jeff Rense interview - cleaning fallen leaves off the fish-pond - when I saw sat atop one of the henge-stones a frog. And a dead and quite shrivelled one at that, too. How it got atop there, and why it did so to only sit and die, I have no idea at all.

But if this isn't some bizarre Trickster-like game of currently-unfathomable proportions, I'll eat my hat! And, as this link shows, the frog is a mysterious creature, indeed.

Mac's Last Missive

I mention in the side-bar of this blog that I was inspired to put it together by Mac Tonnies' own decision to create a picture-driven blog: Things That Look Like Flying Saucers.

Well, not long before his tragic passing in October 2009, I interviewed Mac for my Contactees book - on his theories that the so-called "Space Brothers" of Contactee lore might actually be ancient humanoids from our very own planet: the Cryptoterrestrials of Mac's book of the same name.

As is the case with all my books, whenever I do an interview with someone, they have to provide a release-form, confirming they are okay about the interview being used in the relevant book. So, after the interview was completed, I mailed a form to Mac, and also sent him a stamped-envelope so that he could mail the form back to me - which he quickly did.

When the envelope and form arrived in the mail, however, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mac had drawn a typical alien "Gray" head on the back of the envelope. I smiled, and thought: "I'll keep that!"

Then, not long after, came the shocking news that Mac had passed away at the age of only 34. And so, not only did I keep the envelope/drawing, but - as it represents the last contact I had with Mac - it now sits on one of my bookshelves, in its very own photo-frame - a fine reminder of an even finer, and much-missed, friend. And, if you haven't guessed already, that's Mac's drawing above.

Owlman at Giant Rock?

On Sunday December 5 of last year - along with Greg Bishop, Adam Gorightly, Andy Colvin and several other friends and Forteans - I headed out to Giant Rock, California (which, as some of you may know, is a legendary locale in UFO Contactee lore), where I photographed this spray-painted image (below) that was tucked away on a rock-face opposite Giant Rock.

To me, it looks eerily like Cornwall, England's infamous and monstrous Owlman. And that Andy Colvin is the author of a number of books on its U.S. cousin, Mothman, made the whole thing even stranger!

The Swimming-Pool Saucer

Back in the summer of 2008, Dana and I moved from Dallas to Arlington, Texas - a journey of 30-miles, or thereabouts. On arriving at our new abode, one of the things we had to do was decide which items we wanted to keep or throw out that the previous owners had left behind.

Imagine my amazement and delight when I found hooked on the fence a small, Adamski-style Flying Saucer cunningly disguising itself as a piece of pool-cleaning equipment! Frankly, up until that moment, I never really realized how crafty the aliens are...

Take careful heed: E.T. could be everywhere.

Walt's Skull

Following a lecture that I gave to the San Antonio chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), in November of 2008, legendary UFO figure Walt Andrus came up to me and produced a skull that he had been told was that of a Texas Chupacabra. Walt added it had been given to him by an associate, who had shot the completely hairless animal some months earlier.

Several weeks after chatting with Walt, a colleague of his – John Schwab, who runs the San Antonio MUFON chapter - mailed the very same skull to me, which, in October 2009, was filmed at my house by a team from the National Geographic Channel’s Paranatural series, who were in the process of making a documentary on the Chupacabra – of both Texas and Puerto Rico.

Mercifully, the mail-man had no idea what he was delivering!

By the way, I'm on the left and that's the skull on the right...

The Monster Behind the Fence

I wish I could say that this photo shows a genetically-created monster imprisoned behind an electric-fence at Area 51. However, I can't!

What I can tell you is that it is a cool, atmospheric-looking, metal creation that I saw lurking at an old store selling all sorts of oddities in a small town out in the deserts of California in December 2010.

That I was on my way to George Van Tassel's legendary Integratron at the time only added to the weirdness...

Meeting the Goat-Man

Have I ever actually found one of the legendary beasts that I have pursued and written about in my books, such as There's Something in the Woods, Monsters of Texas and Memoirs of a Monster Hunter? Well, of course I have! Here's the proof: hanging out in October 2010 with the legendary Goat-Man of Lake Worth, Texas. The very idea that it could just be a man in a suit is, of course, utterly absurd...

Alien? Er...No, Actually

Now and again (like most Fortean writers, I'm sure), I get sent some distinctly odd stuff in the mail - including this photo of an alleged alien, which I received some time around 1994 (I think). Frankly, to me, it looks like a badly-created cross between a Dr. Who extraterrestrial (circa early-1970s) and Donald Duck.

Log Ness

A decade or so ago I had the good fortune (or the misfortune, depending on your perspective) to meet a distinctly odd chap named Colin Perks - an OCD-blighted, paranoid-but-brilliant individual - who told a highly strange story about being persecuted (by both the British Government and a glowing-eyed gargoyle, no less...) for seeking out the final resting place of the legendary King Arthur.

Perks, who shuffled off this mortal-coil in 2009, popped up again in 2002, claiming yet another monster-governmental connection. In this case, he asserted he had photographed nothing less than a sea-serpent swimming along London's River Thames, adjacent to none other than the ultra-secret headquarters of Britain's overseas-intelligence-gathering agency, MI6!

To his dying day, Perks believed it to be a monster of the deep. Me? I think it's a log. But, for what it's worth (or not), that's it above. And, like all lake-monsters and sea-serpents (whether Nessie, Ogopogo, Morgawr, or Champ) this one should have a name.

Let's call it Loggy.

Redfern, Rat, and an Invisible Pint

Without doubt, one of the highlights of each year is traveling back to the UK to hang out at the annual Weird Weekend gig organized by the good folk of the Center for Fortean Zoology.

And highlights of the 2009 weekend for me were (finally!) getting to meet Neil Arnold in person, and seeing my old mates Jon Downes, Richard Freeman, Graham Inglis, Mark North, and Andy Roberts again.

However, the absolute highlight was getting to hang-out with Punk-Rock God, Rat Scabies, drummer from the legendary band The Damned, who entertained the audience with a lecture about his research into (and his book on) the mystery of Rennes Le Chateau.

In the picture above, I seem to be holding an invisible pint of beer, while Rat (in white t-shirt and black-coat) and everyone else looks on, slightly mystified and/or utterly bored. Well, I was jet-lagged, it had been a long day, and far more than a few pints of Tennents Super had been consumed...