A Paranormal Road

It may look like any stretch of road in the English countryside. But...I assure you it isn't.

This particular road links the Staffordshire, England towns of Hednesford and Rugeley, and cuts right through the heart of the Cannock Chase - a locale I have written about on many occasions and which is an absolute hotbed of high-strangeness.

But, there's something about this specific part of the road that is particularly intriguing.

You'll see the bus-stop on the right of the picture.

It's right around here - where there is a downhill turning to the left which leads to the tiny old hamlet of Slitting Mill - that there has been a deep concentration of weirdness for years.

In 1972, a man named Nigel Lea saw a definitive ghostly black dog right here.

Three years later, a family encountered on the road what they described as a number of "hairy trolls."

And, in 1995, a woman named Jackie Houghton witnessed a large, shambling Bigfoot-type beast make its way across the road at the very place where I took the accompanying photo.

Although the Cannock Chase is undeniably weird - period - there are several "hot-spots" on the Chase, such as this one, which stand out and practically scream "Window Area" or "Portal"...

Taking the Heat

Well, after a week and a half of pneumonia, feeling like hell, dropping 7 pounds, and looking as pale as a ghost, I'm up and running again - which means, of course, more photos from my collection, which varies from the intriguing to the absurd!

I'm not sure where, exactly, this picture fits in. But, what the hell.


This is what happens when you live near Dallas, Texas at the height of the summer: The squirrels will either collapse on your front lawn, or hide under your car to escape the heat. Or, in the case of this photo taken at our house, both!!

Puerto Rico's Supernatural Hound

This particular photo was taken by me back in 2005, when I was racing around the island of Puerto Rico with Paul Kimball, and his Red Star Films crew, in search of the blood-sucking nightmare known as the Chupacabra.

It shows the scene from my hotel-room window, and as you'll note, where the waves are hitting the rocks, you can see a large, jagged piece of rock standing up like Nessie's neck.

Well, no it's not the neck of some ancient serpent of the water!

But, it does have a notable legend attached to it that is widely known on the island.

So the tale goes, centuries ago a fisherman headed out to sea at that very point and never returned.


The man’s faithful hound, however, waited patiently at the shore for his master to come home, but it was never to be.

Such was the dog’s devotion, his long and lonely years-long vigil resulted in the animal being turned into a solid block of stone, forever thereafter resigned to a lonely vigil in the waters...

Folklore? Of course! But, engaging folklore, nevertheless...

Crop Circles: Large and Small

Back in the 1990s, I spent a lot of time running around England in search of Crop Circles - chiefly in the circle-saturated county of Wiltshire, but sometimes elsewhere too.

One of the things that interests me is the perception that many people have of Crop Circles - namely, that they are huge, sprawling designs of intricate design. Well, yes, some of them are.

But, not all of them.

While the photo above shows a huge formation - taken by me at ground-level in the summer of 1997 - with Wiltshire's famous Silbury Hill in the background, the one below shows a very small Crop Circle, which I captured for posterity in a field in Staffordshire, England in the summer of 1999.


In this latter case, the "formation" (if you can call it that!) was brought to my attention by a local newspaper, after the farmer who owned the land stumbled across the intriguing little circle - which was no more than a few feet across.

A natural event? A Crop Circle of "Mini Me" proportions?

Whatever the answer, it raises a thought-provoking question: How many similar circles of the small kind are overlooked each year, simply due to the fact that - for the most part - they are almost impossible to see, unless you happen to have reason to be in the relevant field where it sits?

Perhaps, in a classic "not seeing the woods for the trees" scenario, the number of Crop Circles that manifest, appear or are made in England each and every year is far greater than we suspect.

But, while focusing on the huge formations that certainly make for spectacular photographs and that reel in the media and the tourists, we are missing the equally intriguing, but far smaller, ones...

The Caddo Creatures

If you are going to look for Bigfoot, well, at least make the location an atmospheric one!

And, maybe, there's few better such places than Caddo Lake (which borders Texas and Louisiana), on which I took a boat-trip (and a Sasquatch-seeking trek) back in 2005.

Caddo Lake happens to be the largest natural freshwater lake in the south, covering approximately 26,800 acres.

Originally home to the Caddo Indians, the lake’s murky depths and incredibly dense black cypress trees today help to create a truly spooky atmosphere within which Bigfoot is said to firmly thrive.

Every now and again, I get reports of people encountering huge, ape-like animals in the area, including - very interestingly - several I have on-file of people seeing the beasts actually swimming in the lake!

Well, I guess even Bigfoot needs to cool off when the southern weather reaches 100 degrees-plus!

Pier 39 And A Texan Zebra!

Nope: there's nothing even remotely paranormal, supernatural or Fortean about these two pictures.

But, I figured: Why not post them?

They are, after all, and in their own way, kind of odd.

The first shows a zebra.

So, you may well ask, what's so odd about that?

Well, I happened to see this stripey chap standing in a field in - of all places! - West Texas about 12 years ago when I was driving to Roswell, New Mexico.

I guess if Britain can have big cats on the loose, and there are alligators in the sewers of New York (perhaps...), then why shouldn't the wilds of the Lone Star State be home to a zebra or several?

As for this second picture, taken by me in the summer of 2001, it shows the resident sea-lion population at San Francisco's now-famous Pier 39.

Indeed, it's quite a sight - and a very weird one too! - to see so many large and lumbering animals sprawled mere feet from you!