The Ghosts Of Christmas Past, Present and Future...
An Odyssey of The Strange Vol. 4 December 2015
The
KISSING
BUGS Of Triatominae and Terror By Andrew D. Gable
RICHARD THE VIKING SPEAKS CHARLES DICKENS PARANORMAL ENTHUSIAST By Kieran Begg NIKOLA TESLA’S GENIUS By Nigel Wright FEATURE FORTEAN:JIMHAROLD RICHARD FREEMAN Part 3 of CRYPTIDS THAT KILL U.F.O CHRISTMAS SIGHTING By Raymond Gray And More...
Who Was Charles Fort? “Charles Fort (1874-1932) fancied himself a true skeptic, one who opposes all forms of dogmatism, believes nothing, and does not take a position on anything. HeCharles Fort, ca. 1920 claimed to be an "intermediatist," one who believes nothing is real and nothing is unreal, that "all phenomena are approximations one way or the other between realness and unrealness." Actually, he was an anti-dogmatist who collected weird and bizarre stories.
Fort spent a good part of his adult life in the New York City public library examining newspapers, magazines, and scientific journals. He was looking for accounts of anything weird or mysterious which didn’t fit with current scientific theories. He collected accounts of frogs and other strange objects raining from the sky, UFOs, ghosts, spontaneous human combustion, the stigmata, psychic abilities, etc. He published four collections of weird tales and anomalies during his lifetime: Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). Fort was skeptical about scientific explanations because scientists sometimes argue “according to their own beliefs rather than the rules of evidence” and they suppress or ignore inconvenient data. He seems to have understood that scientific theories are models, not pictures, of reality, but he considered them to be little more than superstitions and myths. Fort had very few friends, but one of them, Tiffany Thayer, created the Fortean Society to promote and encourage Fort-like attacks on science and scientists.
The Curious Fortean 2
When Fort died in 1932, he left over 30 boxes of notes, which the Fortean Society began publishing in the Fortean Society Magazine (later Doubt magazine). In 1959 Thayer died and the Fortean Society came to an end. Others, however, took up the torch. The Fortean Times is advertised as exploring “the wild frontiers between the known and the unknown” and features articles on topics such as the government’s alleged suppression of evidence regarding crashed UFOs, synaesthesia, a mysterious undersea structure, and other things the editors think are strange or weird.”
@CuriousFortean
The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
From http://skepdic.com/fortean
An Odyssey of The Strange
www.thecuriousfortean.com
Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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Happy Holidays From T
An Odyssey of The Strange Vol. 4 December 2015
contents Paranormal
Foreword Christmas Cheer from tcf
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Chistmas Greetings from the staff at TCF! By Matt Cook
Richard The Viking’s
World Of The Paranormal
Our very own Richard The Viking makes his first appearance and weighs in on the Fortean world. By Richard The Viking
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More Fortean newspaper clippings that echo the voice of Christmas past to the present day. By Matt Cook
Ouija: To Play or Not to Play
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Just a little gift for Christmas, an infographic display on the Ouija Board, just for fun. By Melissa Martell
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The Unwelcomed Christmas Visitor
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How is one of England’s greatest writers connected to the paranormal? According to our paranormal writer the connection comes quite naturally. By Kieran Begg
Monthly
Fortean News Clippings
Charles Dickens: Paranormal Enthusiast
Our writer, Nigel Wright recounts a strange tale of a mysterious visitor that occurred one Christmas evening. By Nigel Wright
Holiday Ghostly Tales
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Andrew D. Gable relates tales from Henry W. Shoemaker that leave the reader much to wonder. By Andrew D. Gable
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The Staff At The Curious Fortean
cryptozoology Cover Feature:
The Kissing Bugs Of Triatominae & Terror
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This months cover article researches the bizarre case of what is known as “The Kissing Bug� that spread across America in 1899. By Andrew D. Gable
Death By Cryptid: Part 3 of 3
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U.F.O Christmas Sighting
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One of TCF FB members tells a story of a Christmas U.F.O encounter that his own father experienced. By Raymond Gray
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We finish off our three part report by cryptozoologist Richard Freemen, recounting the strange deaths bought on by mysterious creatures. By Richard Freeman
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u.f.oology
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Feature Fortean Jim Harold
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The Birth Of Pure Genuius
34
This month we feature American podcaster extraordinaire Jim Harold. By Melissa Martell
What circumstances come about to create a genius of the calibre of Nikola Tesla? By Nigel Wright
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In This Issue Produced by The Curious Fortean Matt Cook, Founder CREDITS: Matt Cook, Project Manager, Promotions, Social Media Marketing and Marketing. Melissa Martell, Art Director, Senior Graphic Designer, Director of Photography, Marketing and Production Editor. Russell Hall, Junior Graphic Designer and Assistant Production Editor. Luke Woodfield, Content Editor Special Thanks To These Contributors: Kieran Begg, Matt Cook, Richard Freeman, Richard The Viking, Melissa Martell, Jim Harold, Raymond Gray, Andrew D. Gable & Nigel Wright. Copyright Š 2015 The Curious Fortean. This magazine was created for electronic publishing only. Resale of this magazine is prohibited. Photo Credits: Torchlight Paranormal Invesigations, Adobestock, Shutterstock, Jim Harold, Melissa Martell, Nigel Wright, Andrew D. Gable and Freepix.
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
Foreword Merry Christmas my Fortean chums. We have been busy decorating our underground bunker in preparation for the celebration of the baby Jebus spilling from the virgin’s womb. Unfortunately the newest edition to our team, Richard The Viking, has put a dampener on the festivities and has already plundered all the gifts from under the tree and drank all of the Christmas gin. Hopefully you will find his first article in this issue, if we can sober him up in time. I’d like to thank our team of dedicated writers who, once more have done an amazing job and come up with some awesome offerings to feed your curiosity as we approach Christmas and a New Year. Speaking of the New Year, we have a few exciting new developments that we will be unavailing so please watch this space. Well thats enough from me, I hope you enjoy this issue and from all of us here at The Curious Fortean I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Peace & Love, The Curious Fortean xx
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MONTHLY: Richard The Viking’s World Of The Paranormal
RICHARD THE
Viking's World Of The Paranormal
WELCOME!
H
i all and welcome to this, the first of my monthly columns, in which I shall be delving into the ever murky, yet fascinating world of the Fortean/paranormal. I shall endeavour to find a subject matter to interest most, if not everyone that reads this magazine. A tall order I know, but one which I shall try my hardest to achieve. So my friends, with that said, on with the show…
DO THE YEARS MATTER? As a person who has spent many a year chasing the truth in this strange and paranormal world we all love, I have recently found myself with more time on my hands. With all this spare time my mind has turned to asking myself various questions about my lifestyle, amongst other things. One of these things is that despite all the years spent on misty hills and roaming dense forests, seeking a fleeting glimpse of a U.F.O or a blood-freezing look at a big cat, I am still amazed at stories I read. In all the various on-line and printed magazines, websites etc. , I find myself asking “Can all these years spent desperately hoping for a sight or two of a Fortean beast have been worthwhile, when I can still be confounded by a story on a computer screen?” “Does years of experience in the field count nowadays when all the knowledge one needs can be found is on-line, in a matter of days?” I think this is a very interesting mental poser to give oneself and worth a moment or two of thought, if you have a few minutes to spare. Thoughts anyone?
This page: Image from adobestock
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
EVOLUTION OF THOUGHT... My years of ufology began many moons ago, stood on a local hill, with my granddads ex-Nazi WW2 binoculars in hand, staring into the clear night sky. Here I stood for many hours, hoping for just a quick view of those weird, strange lights, that fascinate me still some 50 years later. In those now far long gone days, nearly all, if not every ufologist was firmly in the belief that all ufo’s were alien in origin. The possibility of any other explanation was never even thought of, yet alone discussed, well at least not in my small local ufology world it wasn’t. The shape of these Fortean visitor crafts were also universally saucer-shaped. True, there was the odd cigar-shaped mother ship seen, but overwhelmingly the craft were of the classic “Adamnski” round shape. Then, as the years progressed, the shapes of these aerial visitor crafts became far more varied. Axe-head shaped, cubes, boomerang- spinning top shaped, triangular and orbs. The variety of shape continues to this day as does the ideas of the origins of these craft. Now we consider the possibility of these visitors coming from other dimensions, top secret underground alien bases and secret world government bases etc... Yes, the subject of U.F.O’s has now got a life of its own and like any other life form it grows and matures as it ages. New ideas and theories as to their origins and propelling methods now abound. It’s been wonderful to see my beloved subject of U.F.O’s grow like this, but I do have one worry. Will all this diversity of thought lead to even more division within the subject? Indeed, such growth of ideas and theories is occurring within all types of Fortean and paranormal research, however will the same division occur within the ranks of their researchers too? I hope not.
PAGAN BELIEFS IN MODERN TIMES... I have mixed feelings about the apparent boom in Pagan religion that is occurring in Britain today. Part of me supports this growth in alternative beliefs, but another, perhaps more skeptical part of me fears slightly for any newcomers to this way of spiritual life. Kindly allow me to explain if I may. If one looks at the range of various pagan worship available today in the country, then one finds a kaleidoscope of ancient and not quite so ancient beliefs. Most times these forms of worship are a mixture of ancient places and modern interpretations of how our ancestors may have used such places for their ceremonies. Indeed, the way in which these ceremonies are carried out is, for the most part, a modern interpretation itself. If one takes the Druid faith for example, a noble and most ancient faith system, native to these isles, its original followers maintained an oral tradition of passing down the faith to their children. No written records were ever kept. When they were eventually wiped out by the invading Roman armies, their religious and accurate ways of performing ceremonies died out with them. The wonderful ceremonies we see today, carried out at places like Stonehenge, are victorian-era reincarnations of the original, based in that great tradition of Victorian romanticism, which produced such wondrous tales as the Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table. It is, however, true to state that at least these knightly tales had an earlier reference work in 13th century stories. This interpretation and using of ancient religious beliefs and worship is, I suppose, harmless enough. Providing of course that newcomers to this way of life are told of the way in which these faiths are reassembled today. I would never like to see the end of such practices, they are a wonderful addition to our national colourful fabric. All that concerns me, as a researcher, is the accuracy of such practices, based on lack of any dated records.
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PARANORMAL: Charles Dickens:Paranormal Enthusiast By Kieran Begg
Charles Dickens: PARANORMAL ENTHUSIAST By Kieran Begg
O
liver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol are all novels written by famed novelist Charles Dickens, but there is more to this 19th Century writer than meets the eye. There was a reason one of his most famous novels was based on ghosts and that is because he had insatiable passion for the paranormal. He would later become one of the founding members of one of the world’s first paranormal research groups, The Ghost Club.
From Rags to Riches. Charles John Huffman Dickens was born on the Seventh of February 1812 in Landport, Portsmouth. One of nine children, Charles went to school, a luxury in the 19th century, however due to bad debts his father was imprisoned, Charles was pulled from education, and his family was forced to move to Marshalsea without him. John Dickens, Charles’ father, was a clerk at the Royal Navy Pay Office in Portsmouth. He was the father to eight children and found it increasingly difficult to provide for his large family, so much so that he accrued a vast amount of debt which he couldn’t pay and was subsequently imprisoned. He always struggled with money, having to beg, borrow and steal to just get by. Even when he became a journalist he would seek out loans from friends to have extra money. Charles was sent to work in a blackening factory where he was forced to work in atrocious conditions. He was in the factory dealing with cruel foremen and crippling loneliness for three years before he went back to school to finish off his education. The dark experiences he had in the factories would haunt him and would be the basis for one of his most famous novels, “David Copperfield.”
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“The dark experiences he had in the factories would haunt him and would be the basis for one of his most famous novels, “David Copperfield.”
This page: Art work by Aramingo AllPablo Images: Courtesy of Shutterstock And Google Images.
This page & Next Page: Photostock shadow figures courtesy of shutterstock
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PARANORMAL: Charles Dickens: Paranormal Enthusiast By Kieran Begg Following in his father’s footsteps, Dickens became a journalist working for various newspapers and became a parliamentary journalist for "The Morning Chronicle”. Of course it would be his dark novels that would thrust him into the limelight, ultimately awarding him a place in the history books. London during the 1800s was the most advanced city in the world thanks to the progress it was making during the Industrial Revolution. Factories and work houses were thriving, allowing products like clothes and packaging for goods such as tea, to be made at an extraordinary rate. Despite that, thousands of people still lived in squalor and disease was rife, for many it was a very dark time.
“Bah” said Scrooge, “Humbug” One of his most famous novels is his festive tale, “A Christmas Carol,” which introduces cruel money lender Ebenezer Scrooge, who is so against Christmas that he alienates everyone around him who wants to celebrate the festivities. It is on Christmas Eve as he begins to settle for the night when his old business partner, the late Jacob Marley, visits him, warns him of his cruel ways and demands that he is nicer to people, else he will be visited by three spirits who will help him see the error of his ways. ‘The Ghost of Christmas Past’ shows him what he was like before he became a bitter old man, a kind and generous young man. ‘The Ghost of Christmas Present’ shows Scrooge what people think him of at the time and how they talk about him behind his back. ‘The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come” shows him that he will not be missed when he dies and that the people around him will be happy that he is gone. This urges Scrooge to plead with the spirits to tell him how he can change and make sure that his bitterness does not lead to a life of hatred and disdain from other people. What follows is a touching tale of morality, where Scrooge sees who he really is and changes his ways.
The Paranormal Investigator Charles Dickens found the 1800s a very productive period, as he worked on his novels and produced incredible pieces of literature. At this time he also had an unusual fascination for the paranormal, trying to get to the truth of supposed hauntings across the country. He joined a club called “The Ghost Club” which was founded in 1862 and was one of its earliest members. Their first investigation was looking into the Davenport Brothers’ “Spirit Cabinet” and their claims to be able to contact the dead. Dickens and The Ghost Club were able to debunk the cabinet and found the brothers to be frauds. The club would undertake paranormal investigations into supposed hauntings in and around London and would also challenge spiritualists and attend séances with the sole purpose of catching out charlatans. The group would often meet and discuss everything to do with hauntings and the paranormal. Dickens was fascinated with pseudo-science and the paranormal and he felt that spiritualists were, more than often than not, frauds praying on the weak and vulnerable. He was known to attend meetings with spiritualists and challenge them on their abilities.
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
“The Ghost Club” dissolved following the death of Charles Dickens, but would reappear in the late 1880s and is still in operation today with the same sceptical ethos, it’s the oldest known organisation of its kind in the world.
Goodbye Charles Dickens 1863 was a year of tremendous tragedy for Charles as he had to deal with the death of his mother, followed shortly by the loss of his 22 year old son, Walter, who lost his life while stationed in India. He was also trying to deal with ailing health due to his obsession with overwork. As he began working on his last novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," in 1870, he suffered a massive stroke from which he never recovered and died on the 9th of June 1870 in his London home. He was buried in "Poet’s Corner" in Westminster Abbey. Several of his novels have been immortalised in the form of plays, films and television shows, all with overwhelming success. The most famous is the musical of “Oliver Twist” and the film “A Christmas Carol”. Charles himself has been portrayed in film and TV and even in a computer game. Dickens was known for his incredible pieces of work that are still being read to this day and even his paranormal investigation techniques are still being practised. For more information on The Ghost Club, please visit: www.ghostclub.org.uk
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MONTHLY: Fortean News Clips: A CuriousChristmas
Fortean N
A Curious
This page: Image from shutterstock
Homicide: Worcester, Englan
T
his month Fortean News Clips looks back at some ghostly Christmas hunts, homicides and tragically ended lives, all which took place long ago during Holidays gone by. The Curious Fortean staff would like to wish everyone well this Holiday Season. Enjoy
Ghosts: Dublin, Ireland
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
TCF
News Clips:
s Christmas
nd
Ghost Hunt: America
Tragic Death: Melbourne, Australia
Ghostly Tradition: England
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PARANORMAL: The Unwelcomed Christmas Visitor By Nigel Wright
The Unwelcomed Christmas
VISITOR A Christmas Eve Tale and Ghostly Encounter That Challenges Your Senses By Nigel Wright
A
s per usual for an English Christmas eve, the rain hammered down against the window pane of the their bedroom. Added to the constant sound of the heavy rain, the loud rumbles of nearby thunder and bright flashes of sheet lightning, the sound of the rain mearly added to the general misery of this sad Christmas Eve, sheer joy indeed! This cacophony of sound had awoken the wife from a restless slumber, her husband remained sound asleep beside her, his gentle snoring adding to the strange mix of sound in the room. For a moment or two her eyesight blurred as she blinked to adjust it to the dim light and flashes of the thunderstorm outside. Then, as she looked towards the window, which was to her left beside her husband, she was suddenly shocked to see the figure of a tall, thin man! He stood right over the still sleeping figure of her husband. The stranger’s clothes looked odd, even in the weird light of the room. She could see rows of bright metallic buttons going downwards on his jacket. His waist was adorned with a wide leather belt, as was his right shoulder. At his left side hung a beautiful bright hilt of a sword and his head was adorned with a tricorn hat. He was a soldier! And one from long ago at that. The sight of seeing this strange man standing over her husband did not immediately shock her, despite his weird appearance. As the soldier turned his head to look at her, she noted that he was quite good looking, aged around 20-30, with long fair hair that hung down over the raised stiff collar he wore. She was not even afraid when this ghost began to speak to her. “Be not afraid Madam” he said. His voice was gentle and had a french accent, but his pronunciation of English was good.
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“He suddenly, but quite quietly whispered...” Marie! I will... always... always love you” His face became very calm, his eyes slowly shut, and then he began to fade... He was gone, not a trace of this strange xmas visitor remained in the bedroom.”
He raised one finger to his lips as if to indicate that she should stay quiet, “I shall dispose of this vile intruder for you in a moment” he whispered. Just then he pulled a nasty looking, very long sword from the scabbard, which hung at this waist. The sword’s glinting,sharp blade was swung upwards over the head of the sleeping husband. “One slash of my blade and his head will leave that vile body of his Madam!” he said. The wife tried to scream, but she just could not make her voice even squeak. Sheer fear overcame her and tears started to form in her eyes. Somehow she managed to throw her arms over the sleeping body of her husband. “No!” she cried out. The soldier stopped, he looked at her puzzled. “But he is an intruder in our bed Madam!” he said. The wife found her voice at last. “He’s my husband!” she said. The soldier still just stared at her, the puzzled look remaining in his eyes. “That cannot be!” he remonstrated, “For I am your husband!” For a long while, all the players in this strange Christmas farce just stared at each other and remained very still. The wife laid down over her still asleep spouse, then the soldier replaced his weapon in its scabbard and stood looking down at them both. As she looked into the face of the soldier it began to alter, dirt appeared on his cheeks and a streak of blood ran down from his temple. He suddenly, but quite quietly whispered “Marie, I will always...always love you.” His face became very calm, his eyes slowly shut and then he began to fade. He was gone, not a trace of this strange visitor remained in the bedroom. The wife sat back up in the bed and began to dry her eyes. The husband suddenly awoke, he was very upset to see the tears rolling down his wife’s face. He was even more upset and very mystified when he heard her recounting of the nights going-ons. The mystery of this Christmas visitor would not leave the husbands mind and he was determined to find out the truth of the matter. For weeks that followed he trawled through local records, checking out the history of his house. He felt sure that there just had to be a connection to that sad soldier that had visited them in their room.
This Page Image: Courtesy of Shutterstock
He searched through local papers of the past and old maps etc.. and still the facts eluded him. Desperation set in, he became convinced he would never find out why that tall, old time soldier had visited them, on that stormy Christmas Eve.
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PARANORMAL: The Unlwelcomed Christmas Visitor By Nigel Wright Then, during one last, final fling of the dice, on a trip to their local museum, he uncovered a small, yet vital fact. The ground on which his house stood had been, at the times of the Napolionic wars, during the last years of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, a tented field hospital for prisoners of war, French prisoners. What’s more, the very garden outside their bedroom window had been the site of the trauma ward! The one tent where prisoners who were close to death, would have been. Things became a bit clearer in his mind. This poor soul who was perhaps dying, had been thinking of his wife and during his last moments, had mistaken the husbands wife for his own. The husband did not feel anger towards this poor soul, just great sadness at the way in which this man of war had spent his final moments on this Earth. Alone in a strange country, in great pain no doubt, longing to be with his loved ones. One could only imagine how the poor man felt. He only hoped that this soul was now at rest, having finally defended his absent wife’s honour. Ladies and gentlemen... For those of you who, having just read this sad tale, think it too far fetched, kindly allow me to add some information to this tale for you, if I may... The story above is based, albeit very loosely and with some writers licence, on a true event that happened to my wife and I, one Christmas eve, at our old family home in Devon, in Southwest England. Truth is so often much more strange than fiction. Thank You and a very happy Christmas to you all!
Picture Left: The three accussed Picture Right: Shinsky
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
Panzer Kaserne Military Barracks By Raymond Gray
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Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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COVER FEATURE: The Kissing Bugs Of Triatominae and Terror By Andrew D. Gable
KISSING
The
T
he true fin de siècle, 1899, was a troubled time. The Treaty of Paris was signed in April, formally signalling an end to the Spanish-American War, although the Phillippine-American War was looming on the horizon. Rumblings were beginning to be felt of the Second Boer War, which would eventually culminate in the addition of South Africa to the British Empire. In France, scapegoated “traitor” Alfred Dreyfus enjoyed a brief period of freedom before he was again imprisoned; anti-Semitism and a contentious relationship between France and Germany seethed and bubbled beneath the surface, setting the stage for the battles to come in the next century. These tensions, worries and fears may each have played their part in the development of a unique – and problematic – hysteria that gripped the United States (I've managed to find no reports of the panic from foreign lands, and in fact nary a mention in the foreign press) in the summer of 1899, the so-called “kissing bug.” The panic, so named because the titular insect was reputed to oftentimes bite its victims on the lips (although the hand or eyelid was also a common spot for the bite), is by definition one of the most “Fortean” phenomena, as it was one of those discussed by Charles Fort in his quadrilogy of chronicles of the unexplained and bizarre (more specifically, in 1932's Wild Talents). Fort cited only a handful of cases, from the populated centers of the East Coast; the ensuing hysteria was revisited only rarely in the literature of the bizarre since that time, most significantly in Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew’s 2009 book Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior (which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone interested in the effects of mass hysteria). Evans and Bartholomew cited mainly the same cases discussed in Fort, however; something that has been lacking in the literature is a sense of just how “mass” the hysteria really was, spanning the entire United States, from coast to coast. But at the same time it was
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GBUGS Of Triatominae and Terror By Andrew D. Gable
a hysteria, the stories of the kissing bug were based on very real insects. Countless tales of bugs captured came in that summer; many are consistent with each other. And, of course, the effects of being bitten were markedly consistent with each other, as well. The tale formally starts over a period of a few days in June; a Washington, DC, crime reporter, James F. McElhone, had been monitoring reports from city hospitals of anomalous admissions. A number of individuals found themselves in the morning to have lips and eyes swollen, as if from the nocturnal bite of some insect 1. In a weeks’ time, the stories of the kissing bug had travelled to New York2; by the next day, Boston3; by July 1, to Norfolk, Virginia.4 Stories of the bug’s depredations were spreading like wildfire. As early as July 5, the kissing bug phenomenon was already beginning to take root as a full-fledged hysteria. On that date, the New York Times recounted a humorous situation in which some girls were sent into paroxysms of terror after a large insect collided with one of them. They scattered, and drew a crowd with their antics; once clearly seen, the offending insect proved to be only a large moth.5 Fueled by nearly daily news reports, the panic had spread even further afield to Pennsylvania and Delaware, but the bug was still a geographically-limited phenomena, outside of a few reports in Redding, California (where Henry Clineschmidt and Mrs. E.T. Durfor reported being bitten,6 although West Coast reports of the bug should perhaps be dealt with seperately, for reasons that shall soon become clear). Stories of encoun rters with the bug caught on like wildfire, though
after the July 8 death of Helen Lersch, one of the cases discussed by Fort. Lersch was a 2-year-old girl, the daughter of Frank Lersch of Trenton, NJ. She suffered an injury presumed to have been the bite of a kissing bug a few days before death. “The swelling resulting from the bite extended to all parts of her body, and even to the head. Her arms, head, and face were swollen to almost twice the natural size. On Friday the child began to vomit and this continued until death.”7 Helen’s mother noticed a red spot on her leg, presumably the spot where she had been bitten, and her swollen arms had turned black.8 Records, however, seem to indicate that despite what was widely-reported in the press, the girl’s name may have actually been Helen Skowronski, not Lersch. If this was not her, the fact that two seperate two-year-old girls, both named Helen, died in Trenton on July 8 is a coincidence that nearly boggles the mind.9 The death of the Lersch/Skowronski girl was only the first fatality associated with bites from the bug. Most (but not all, there being an exception to every rule, of course) were young children. Newspapers in Janesville, Wisconsin, reported the death of an unnamed young man in a Madison hospital on July 13. It was “given out at the time [the death was] from blood poisoning,” although it “was really due to the bite of one of these insects on the chin.” A Dr. Jackson commented that he believed “the kissing bug [was] largely a humbug and that the disease is really what is long known among physicians as malignant pustule, caused by the bites of flies or other insects
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COVER FEATURE: The Kissing Bugs Of Triatominae and Terror By Andrew D. Gable which have been feedng on decomposed matter.”10 Malignant pustule, implicated in a handful of other kissing bug cases (almost all from Wisconsin), is actually what is now known as anthrax. On July 19, 6-year-old William Martin of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania died after some sort of bite which caused “a purple spot the size of a pinhead just over the lip, surrounded by inflammation...face much swollen.”11 Mary Vaughan of Cedar Rapids, Iowa died in late July, suffering the effects of a bite she had received around July 9. Her face was considerably swollen, “near unrecognizable,” and the swelling had spread to her arms and chest before she died.12 Another death attributed by some to the kissing bug was that of a young boy named Walter Nickerson, of Matteawan, New York, who sustained a bite of some sort on his family’s farm on August 5. He died about a week later, of what to all appearances was rabies. Physicians were baffled as to the source of his affliction, however, and there was “no positive knowledge that the boy was bitten.” The boy’s father, George, searched the barnyard on August 5 after Walter began to cry, saying that he had been bitten, but found nothing.13 “Spontaneous hydrophobia,” as it was known, is a phenomenon in whch patients develop rabies-like symptoms with no apparent bite. One case was reported before the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by a Dr. Condie, who reported that a longshoreman named Willetts, working at the docks in Southwark, London, awoke on the morning of August 27, 1850 with a numbness and stiffness in his left arm and neck. This was followed by development of hydrophobic symptoms and eventual death.14 Another case was reported by Dr. Dujardin Beaumetz of Paris who reported the death of a 29-year-old man with the symptoms of rabies at the Hôtel Dieu. The blood of the deceased man tranmitted its infection to a number of rabbits when they were injected with it.15 The day after Walter Nickerson died, another death attributed to the bug came. Mary Steger, an adult woman from Chicago whose immune system was already somewhat compromised due to a bout of tonsilitis, died from the effects of what was at least claimed to have been a bite she had suffered (“a small abrasion on the upper lip”). Her face had swelled considerably, but though a physician had signed a death certificate for Mrs. Steger declaring that the cause of death was the kissing bug’s bite in combination with tonsilitis, she had been embalmed before a coroner was called and so no detailed examination of the body was made and no definitive blame could be laid on the bite as cause of death.16 A few weeks after Steger’s death, on August 27, there was one final “kissing bug” death, that of a young girl named Ida Harnischfezer, a resident of Paterson, New Jersey. Few details about the Harnischfezer death are known, however.17 But beyond the deaths and other encounters (given in a list at the end of this article with little elaboration, since the details of the cases are all basically extremely similar), there were the social effects of the phenomenon, beyond the humorous encounter with a large moth described earlier. They ranged from other humorous items (it seemed many newspapermen of the day didn’t take the kissing bug very seriously), like a very brief editorial note in another New York paper - “A kissing bug attended an emancipated women’s conventin in Kansas and committed suicide. Draw your own inferences.”18 A newspaper in Philadelphia reported an incident in which a rather cruel young man, jabbing fellow passengers on board a streetcar with a hatpin, caused the commuters to panic that a kissing bug was flying about in the car.
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
This page: Photo courtesy of Melissa Martell
“Composed chiefly of young & old girls, who do not believe the published stories about the bug and are willing that it shall kiss them.”
Newspapers in Trenton, New Jersey reported on a case of kissing bug-induced paranoia when a fireman named Nathan Cowell, who had reportedly been bitten by one of the insects, was seen patrolling his firehouse with his face and neck swathed in a white cloth and brandishing a rifle with which he swore to “slaughter any kissing bug that would presume to attack him or anyone else.” Whenever the kissing bug was brought up to Fireman Cowell in conversation, “he almost took the roof of the house off with the yell of agony the emotion evoked...his gaze was up in the vacant air, no doubt to watch for any winged assailant of that kind.”19 One of the more bizarre effects of the hysteria was the formation of so-called “kissing bug clubs.” One existed in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, where on July 6 Isaac Baver captured one of the bugs and gave it to a man named J. Frank Smith. Smith was the “recognized head of a movement looking toward the organization of a society, composed chiefly of young and old girls, who do not believe the published stories about the bug and are willing that it shall kiss them.” It was said that members of the society were to draw lots to determine who had the dubious honor of being bitten.20 Another group was that formed in La Salle, Illinois. The club was “formed exclusively of young women, and the object to acquire one specimen for each member. In nearly every store window is a glass jar with a prisoner, supposed to be a Melanolestes picipes, and the young women may every afternoon be seen in front of the business places studying the different species. The woods and meadows are scoured by other members or the coveted insects...”21 (Melanolestes picipes was
the scientific name given to the kissing bug by many, and although newspapers regularly mentioned that the name was unknown, it is in fact a real insect – and a moderately common one, at that. More on that later, however.) Several regions were not to be outdone by the kissing bug and created new tales to rival it. During the 1899 panic, Maine farmers told tales of “Sunkhazer Flies.” A Sunkhazer was a “ferocious big fly that infests the flats and meadows about Sunkhaze deadwater, a place in the Penobscot river...They are four times the size of the famed mosquitoes of Jersey, and any Maine man will back one of them against a dozen kissing bugs in a fair stand-up fight.”22 In the following years, more variations were to follow. In August, 1901, residents of Berwick, Pennsylvania reported a new menace: the ankle bug. As its name suggests, it bit people’s ankles, and “a number of persons have been crippled as the result of its bite.”23 A few years later, Indiana newspapers reported on the emerence of a new flying pest: “This pest, however, has taken the eye for the point of attack... [the new bug] is about the size of a mosquito, has wings very much like one, but the form of its body is more like an ant...he comes while you are asleep...[it] quietly places a little poisonous acid in the corner of the eye...On awakening the victim opens his eyelids and allows the poison to run down into his eyes...The eye quickly becomes irritated and swells to an alarming extent.” It was called Pulex irritans, which is the common flea.24
Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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COVER FEATURE: The Kissing Bugs Of Triatominae and Terror By Andrew D. Gable In 1915, Philadelphia was home to something called a Dooleybug. Vampiric, with a predilection for sucking the blood of infants. “Because of this,” the article continued, “the child's health was affected, and [witness Harry Dooley] was compelled to send the baby away in order to escape the ravages of the insect.” Another man, one Richard Ostertag, captured a bug a week later that he claimed was a “new species” of Dooleybug. “The bug is six inches long, and, with the exception of a narrow band of green at the base of its wings, is reddish-brown in color. The head resembles that of the oft-described but never seen 'Jersey Devil'...The bug has six legs, each one twice as long as the body.” While the size – if accurate, the insect would have been two feet across – is truly ludicrous, a description of its feeding habits – “It will grasp a defenseless grasshopper between its two front legs, and proceed to chew its head off; then the body follows” – suggests some sort of mantid, if indeed a real animal at all.25
“Professor Choate of the Field museum has said that there has never been an instance of the real 'kissing bug,' or picipes, which lives in the South, biting a man. What, then, is this mysterious insect but the visitation of one of the last of those torments which the Bible has declared shall come, and which precedes the final destruction... “I regard the appearance of this bug as a final waring to the people of this earth to prepare for the hereafter...”26
So what, then, was the kissing bug – real, hysteria, or a combination of both? As already mentioned, the predominant scientific name given to the bug in the press was Melanolestes picipes. Many experts were consulted who declared this was an invalid name, and that there was no such animal. Nothing could be further from the truth. M. picipes is the fairly common black corsair, a variety of assassin bug. Assassin bugs (family Reduviidae) are members of the Hemiptera or true Through a bit of a timewarp now, back to 1899, a Chicago bugs. They're easily recognizable by a large, curved rostrum, professor by the name of A.M. Leonard, the “apostle of the a sort of beak or proboscis. Far from the murderous monsters Mission of the Messenger of Truth,” delivered a sermon in the kissing bug was made out to be, most assassin bugs are fairly which he passed apocalyptic judgment on the kissing bug. benign, feeding as they do on bedbugs. Assassin bug nymphs Leonard's sermon rattled off various calamities in the Book of are often found under beds and anywhere else their preferred Revelation, which he identified with recent events. An excerpt prey would be hiding. However, Professor Choate's statement, from Leonard's sermon is worth repeating. quoted in Leonard's sermon, is simply untrue. Although not aggressive and actively seeking out humans to bite, most all “You have all read of this latest mysterious visitation which has assassin bugs (tellingly, they're often referred to as kissing bugs) come to the earth, the so-called kissing bug, which stings men will bite when they feel threatened – for example, if someone on the lips and leaves them in terrible agony. Here is what brushes one while sleeping, or swats at one. I take to be the Biblical prophecy of their coming from the ninth chapter of the book of Revelation: Dr. W.J. Holland of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh felt that the kissing bug was a bombardier beetle, any one of “And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and several species of ground-dwelling beetle which can expel a unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have gout of a chemical irritant from its abdomen. Holland said power. it was unlikely to kill anyone, but that ”The circumstances under which such a thing might happen are when the poison is “And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the thrown upon a scratch or some abrasion of the skin and so gain grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, access to the system causing blood poisoning.”27 Aside from but only those men which have not the seal of God upon their one instance, in which a stray cat in San Jose, California died foreheads. after picking a supposed kissing bug up in its mouth (the sketch of the bug makes it resemble one of these beetles far more than “And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but an assassin bug)28, the bombardier beetle identity doesn’t hold that they should be tormented five months; and their torment up well. was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man.' Throughout the panic of 1899, people killed or captured a variety of species of creepy-crawlies and labelled them kissing :This is what is said of the coming of the so-called 'kissing bugs. V.G. Truscott of Kent, Kansas captured a centipede29; bug' in the Bible. This insect which has stung men all over the a man in Brooklyn captured a “pinch bug” (presumably an country, and which is unknown to the scientists. earwig).30 Thomas Fee of Lowell, Massachusetts killed some sort of insect “as long as his forefinger, and streaked with yellow” (likely some variety of beetle) which he
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VICTIMS OF THE KISSING BUG, 1899 June 27 June 28 June 29 June 30
NewYork City,NY Boston,MA NewYork City,NY Boston,MA NewYork City,NY NewYork City,NY Boston,MA
August Langwasser (NewYorkTimes,June29) Nellie Fife (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 10) Oscar Meltzner (NewYorkTimes,July 2) JimmyFife (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 10) Robert Leibowitz (NewYorkTimes,June30) WilliamWallace (NewYorkTimes,July 2) JohnnyFife (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 10)
July 1 July 2 July 3 July 4 July 5 July 6 July 9 July 10 July 11 July 12
Boston,MA Norfolk,VA Atlantic City,NJ Atlantic City,NJ Boston,MA Boston,MA Boston,MA Chelmsford,MA NewBrunswick,NJ Lebanon,PA Philadelphia,PA Philadelphia,PA Philadelphia,PA Philadelphia,PA Philadelphia,PA Philadelphia,PA York,PA Dover,DE Dover,DE NewBrunswick,NJ NewRochelle,NY Redding,CA Trenton,NJ Ambler,PA Redding,CA Evansville,IN Lowell,MA NewCastle,PA NewYork City,NY NewYork City,NY NewYork City,NY NewYork City,NY Providence,RI Lowell,MA Redding,CA Logansport,IA Lowell,MA
KittyFife (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 10) Unnamed girl (Richmond [VA]Times,July 2) John McCaffrey(NewYorkTimes,July 4) HelenVeasey(NewYorkTimes,July 4) Nellie Driscoll (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 10) Lizzie O'Keefe (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 10) Thomas Riley(Lowell [MA] Sun,July 10) Mrs.James Dawson (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 10) Freda Sharkey(New BrunswickTimes,July 11) Mrs.Will Klopp (Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) John Little (Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) A.A.Fralinger (Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) Martin Murray(Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) Daniel Shingle (Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) Joseph McLane (Washington[DC] EveningTimes,July 6) John Schmidt (Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) Alcesta Reilly(Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) Miss Holston (Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) Mrs.W.O.Evans (Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 6) Ethel Bergen (New BrunswickTimes,July 7) Ollie Burke (NewYorkTimes,July 8) July 13 HenryClineschmidt (San Francisco Call,July 12) Helen Lersch dies (NewYorkTimes,July 10) July 14 Mrs.S.J.Gilbert (Ambler Gazette,July 13) Mrs.E.T.Durfor (San Francisco Call,July 12) Mrs.Edward McGee (HopkinsvilleKentuckian,July 13) A.H.Carson (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 13) July 15 HarryMoore (NewCastle News,July 11) James Hickey(NewYorkTimes,July 11) July 16 Charles Bonsignore (NewYorkTimes,July 11) Edward Quick (NewYorkTimes,July 11) July 17 MarySmith (NewYorkTimes,July 11) Rose Grosvenor (NewYorkTimes,July 20) July 18 John Lynch (Lowell [MA] Sun,July 13) Maud Perry(San Francisco Call,July 12) Unnamed woman (LogansportPharos,July 13) Mitchell girl (Lowell Sun,July13) July 19 July 20 July 21
First Page Image: istock photos This Page: Adobe Stock Photos. Next Page Image: Images courtesy of Andrew D. Gable.
August 10 August 27
Ambler,PA Oconto,WI Lawrence,MA Lawrence,MA Lowell,MA Lowell,MA Andover,MA Philadelphia,PA Chicago,IL St.Paul,MO Newport,RI Omaha,NB Beaver Dam,KY CoalCity,IL Omaha,NB Omaha,NB Cedar Rapids,IA Omaha,NB Reno,NV Reno,NV Ambler,PA Eldorado,IA LaCrosse,WI Madison,WI Waterloo,IA Arcola,IL Arcola,IL
RobertGourley (Ambler Gazette,July 13) Daughter of R.Ames(Janesville [WI] Daily Gazette,July 13) RobertHennessey (BostonGlobe,July 16) Hennessey'ssister (BostonGlobe,July 16) AnnieDancks(Lowell[MA] Sun,July 15) Patrick Shanahan(Lowell[MA] Sun,July 15) Alexander Dundas(BostonGlobe,July 16) WilliamMartindies(Dubuque [IA] Herald,July 19) Mary Steger dies(Washington [DC] EveningTimes,July 19) FredGoeswisch (St.PaulGlobe,July 25) Mrs.I.Burden(NewYorkTimes,July 22) Percy Lockyear (OmahaDaily Bee,July 20) VirgilineHocker (Hopkinsville Kentuckian,July 18) VictoriaTrotter (Freeport[IL] DailyJournal,July 21) HermanNagle(OmahaDaily Bee,July 20) SingLee(OmahaDaily Bee,July 20) MaryVaughan(Renwick [IA]Times,July 21) HelenJackson(OmahaDaily Bee,July 20) CharlesLake(Reno NevadaStateJournal,July 20) AlfredUpdike(Reno Nevada StateJournal,July 20) J.H.Shapperkoffer (Ambler Gazette,July 27) Mrs.CharlesStarr (HawkesBay [New Zealand] Herald, MattSpaah (Freeport[IL] DailyJournal.July 21) Unnamedmandies(Janesville [WI] Daily Gazette,July 13) Daughter of WilliamChristopherson (Renwick [IA]Times,July JohnShearer (HawkesBay [New Zealand] Herald,September 9) Rev.Joseph Smith (HawkesBay [New Zealand] Herald,September 9)
Matteawan,NY Paterson,NJ
Walter Nickersondied(NewYorkTimes,August 11) IdaHarnischfezer died(NewYorkTimes,August 27)
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COVER FEATURE: The Kissing Bugs Of Triatominae and Terror By Andrew D. Gable identified as a kissing bug31 and something called a “walnut bug” was captured in Pennsylvania.32 Most unbelievably, a hummingbird was caught in New York and declared to be the bug!33 Other sources seem to indicate that the summer of 1899 was a bad one for mosquitos – “a delegation of mosquitos, millions in number” visited Chicago. A high concentration of biting insects would certainly heighten the panic already being felt.34 Another possibility, one which to me is the most likely, is that the origins of the panic lay in Chagas disease. Several species of assassin bug can play host to the parasitic organism that produces the disease. Although most of them exist in the border states and further south throughout Mexico and South America, it is possible that a warmer summer allowed assassin bugs infected with Trypanosoma cruzi to range further north than usual; I’m tempted to wonder whether soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War and diturbances in the Phillippines could have brought some infected bugs home with them, stationed as they would have been in regions where Chagas was common. Chagas disease causes inflammation, headaches and fever, and painful swelling at the bite’s location; it can lurk in a person’s system for decades, slowly causing damage to the heart and eventually death, or the affliced individual can never develop any more symptoms beyond the initial discomfort. An old miner named Drabek, from Arizona, told of the kissing bug, which was known locally as a Walapai Tiger; “there were a good many of Walapai Tigers. They have a habit of crawling into blankets. You won’t feel them at work, but the next morning you will find bumps the size of walnuts where they have stung you. “First time I heard about the Walapai Tiger was at the Golden Gem mine in the Cerbat Mountains, then operated by the late A.W. Clapp. June, July and August are the months when these insects are most obnoxious in Arizona, said Clapp. Another old time, Jerry Laudermilk, had a run-in with a Walapai Tiger in Arizona. At Kirkland, while on a long hiking trip, he was bitten on the upper lip. A large, hard swelling abot the size of a half-dollar developed and Jerry took to a hotel bed for to days, suffering from fever, weakness and nausea.”35 All these symptoms are consistent with early symptoms of Chagas.
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That, then, is my contention: that the kissing bug phenomenon was a hysteria, at the heart of it all. But one very much based on a real bug that was actually biting people – just wasn't, maybe, quite so widespread as the media would have had you believe. The instances of deaths recorded are interesting in that they are all very small children, or the previously ill; people that would have had weakened or immature immune systems, ones in which a relative nuisance could have developed into a deadly condition relatively quickly.
1: Washington Post, June 20, 1899. 2: New York Times, June 29, 1899. 3: Lowell (MA) Sun, July 10, 1899. 4: Richmond (VA) Times, July 2, 1899. 5: New York Times, July 5, 1899. 6: San Francisco Call, July 12, 1899. 7: New York Times, July 10, 1899. 8: Rockland County (NY) Journal, July 15, 1899. 9: “New Jersey Deaths and Burials, 1720-1988,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FZ2KY3J : accessed 23 September 2015), Helen Skowronski, 08 Jul 1899; citing Trenton, Mercer, New Jersey, reference v 58 p 369; FHL microfilm 589,072. 10: Janesville (WI) Daily Gazette, July 13, 1899. 11: Dubuque (IA) Herald, July 19, 1899. 12: Renwick (IA) Times, July 21, 1899. 13: New York Times, August 11, 1899. 14: Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 41, No. 23 (January 9, 1850), 456-458. 15: New York Times, December 26, 1885. 16: Akron (IA) Tribune, July 20, 1899. 17: New York Times, August 27, 1899. 18: Rockland County (NY) Journal, August 5, 1899. 19: Trenton (NJ) Times, July 22, 1899. 20: Lebanon (PA) Daily News, July 7, 1899. 21: Logansport (IN) Pharos, August 17, 1899. 22: Monticello (IA) Express, August 24, 1899. 23: Frederick (MD) News, August 24, 1901. 24: Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, September 8, 1915. 25: Logansport (IN) Pharos, August 9, 1904. 26: Buffalo Center (IA) Globe, August 17, 1899. 27: New Castle (PA) Times, July 19, 1899. 28: San Francisco Call, July 8, 1899. 29: Hutchinson (KS) Daily News, August 7, 1899. 30: New York Times, July 1, 1899. 31: Lowell (MA) Sun, July 13, 1899. 32: Ambler (PA) Gazette, July 27, 1899. 33: Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, July 14, 1899. 34: New York Times, July 20, 1899 35: Kingman (AZ) Daily Miner, November 20, 1978.
The Latest Documentary Project From TCF The 2015 Conference On
THE WARMINSTER THING Featuring Lecturer Peter Paget and more
You can find our films on YouTube and at www.thecuriousfortean.com Filmed, Directed and Edited by
Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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UFOLOGY: U.F.O Christmas Sighting By Raymond Gray
ufo
Christmas Sighting By Raymond Gray
“His shots did not seem to have any effect on the UFO other than to make it grow brighter and start coming down.”
M
y Father, when he was young, was an avid fisherman and hunter/trapper. On December 23 in 1947 he and a good friend of his, who was about 7 or 8 years his elder, went hunting somewhere in Vermont for wild turkeys to bring back for their family Christmas day dinners. However, they got separated in the deep brush while looking for turkeys. After bagging a pair of tom turkeys my father set up a camp with a tent underneath a tree, heavy with snow. He laid down and fell asleep. Several hours later he woke up with a bright light in his face and he thought it was his friend. However, when he looked up and saw instead a hovering disc that he estimated to be approximately 100 feet across from which the light was coming forth. My father had a previous encounter with a U.F.O that was rather disturbing, so he crawled back into the tent, grabbed his bolt action rifle and loaded it, before coming back out and firing several shots. His shots did not seem to have any effect on the U.F.O, other than to make it grow brighter and start coming down. A pair of gunshots rang out from not far away and my father joined in again shooting at the U.F.O.
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Again there did not seem to be any effect on the craft, but it stopped coming down and flew away rapidly before rising silently upwards into the night sky. A few minutes later my father’s friend showed up with his rifle and 3 turkeys of his own and he joined my father in his tent. The next morning when they woke up and came out of the tent they noticed that a large patch of the snow in the area had melted from the heat. However, the cold of the night had turned it back into ice over night, though most of the snow was still gone. My father may have been the first one in the Gray family to see a U.F.O but my mothers mother had a much scarier encounter with one back in the early 1920’s. That is a different story for a different time. *This personal account is courtesy of one our loyal FB followers
Top Image: This Page Image: Courtesy of Shutterstock
FEATURE FORTEAN: Jim Harold of The Paranormal Podcast
JIMHAROLD This months feature Fortean is non other than podcaster Jim Harold. Jim has been reporting on a variety of topics in the Fortean world on his podcast show “The Paranormal Podcast” since 2005. Since his initial creation of “The Paranormal Podcast”, Jim has gone on to create a plithora of other popular podcasts such as, “Jim Harold’s Campfire”, where listeners get to call in their own tales of spookiness. He offers both TPP and JHC free to all you paranormal buffs out there, but if you‘re into more in-depth content of amazing quality, Jim has a variety of other podcasts on his Plus Club at jimharold.net. There you can hear Jim interview writers and researchers on topics such as Conspiracy, Unsolved Crimes, Ancient Mysteries, Ghostly Insights and more. We at The Curious Fortean give a big thank-you to Jim Harold for all his great support and amazing contribution to modern Forteana. For more information visit Jim Harold at the links below.
www.jimharold.com jimharold OR virtualcampfire This Page Image: Courtesy of Jim Harold
www.jimharold.net
@THEJimHarold Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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CRYPTOZOOLOGY: Death By Cryptid By Richard Freeman
Death By
Cryptid Part IIi of III
World renowned cryptozoologist Richard Freeman details the history of ferocious killing cryptids in the the third and final part.
A
creature much like Ogopogo (discussed in the previous issue) is said to lurk in Lake Superior. On Memorial Day 1977 Randy L Baun was camping at Presque Isle, north of Iron Wood, Michigan. Looking out across the lake he saw a long, undulating form approaching him. Baun described it as “like an anaconda the width of a Volkswagen.” Grabbing his 35mm Yashica camera he took a shot as the beast’s horse like head rose up. Baun’s photo shows a dark head with a large eye reflecting light. He says it had large eyes and twitching, catfish-like whiskers. We should note here that oriental dragons, always associated with water rather than fire, are invariably shown with these appendages. It remained in view for 30 seconds while Baun was frozen with fear, later having nightmares about the monster eating him. Apparently there had been a number of disappearances in the area that had never been explained and Baun was sure the creature was responsible for devouring the missing people. He may or my not be right but in 1997 a fisherman claimed to have seen a full grown male deer get bitten clean in two by something in the water. Howick Falls in South Africa is said to be the lair of a water dragon called Inkanyamba, claimed to be linked with rainfall like dragons elsewhere. In 1998 storms affected the Greytown, Ingwavuma and Pongola areas. 52 miles per hour winds and tennis ball sized hailstones made 2000 people homeless. Inkanyamba was blamed. Cave paintings and bushman rock art depict the god as a serpentine horse headed animal with horns and a crest running along its back. It is shown spewing water, as a result archaeologists have dubbed it “the rain animal.” Inkanyamba’s pedigree is a long one. Conservation Services Manager Mr Buthelezi was walking with a companion along the Umgein River near the Midmar Dam in 1962 when he claims to have seen the beast. The horse headed monster was on a sandbank and slithered back into the water as the men approached. Johannes Hlongwane, caretaker of a caravan park near the falls says he has seen the dragon twice, once This page: Nessie Image from shutterstock
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
in 1974 and again in 1981. He said it has a long, snake-like body thicker than his own and had a crest running down its back. It raised its head 30 feet out of the water. The local Zulus and their Sangomas (witch doctors) say that the god devours human victims and they have to appease it with chickens. Around 35 years ago Inkanyamba was said to have dragged a Zulu girl under water and eaten her. To this day people vanish around Howick Falls. It could be the work of crocodiles or then again an even bigger reptile might be at work! In West Africa a similar aquatic beast known as Ninki-Nanka is blamed for human deaths. Back in 2006 I hunted for this beast in the swamps of Gambia. The level of fear the creature engendered was almost unbelievable, our native guide refused point blank to enter the swamps were it was thought to lurk, leaving us to trek on alone to an abandoned village. The inhabitants had left the village decades before, after one of them had reported seeing a Ninki-Nanka.
Top Image: The Inkanyamba Middle Image: The Ninkinamka Bottom Image:The Hawksbury River Monster
One man told us his grandfather had seen it in some lakes near Banjul in the 1940s. It was a massive serpent with shining scales and a crest of fin on the head. The man ‘Papa Jinda’ died soon after. There is a strong belief that to look on the dragon means death. A guide at Abuko National Park said that the Ninki-Nanka was like a python but large enough to swallow a whole cow, with small bat like wings and four small legs. Another witness, Momounadou claimed to have seen a Ninki-Nanka in Kiang West swamp a few years before. He described a horse-like head with a crest and a vast serpentine body covered with scales that shone like mirrors. Afterwards he fell ill and his body was covered in lesions. He went to see a local iman or holy man who said instantly “you have seen a dragon, haven’t you?” The Iman gave him a potion that cured him. These cases may simply be psychosomatic but the creature has supposedly killed people with physical attacks as well. One story tells of a recently erected bridge that was built near a hole where a Ninki-Nanka was believed to live. The angry monster was said to have emerged and smashed the bridge to matchwood, tossing two people fatally into the waters. Another possible man-eater lurks in the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney, Australia, an area much too far south for crocodiles, which are found only in Australia’s tropical north. The Aborigines called the water monster Mirreeulla and art from the Dharuk tribe dating back 3000-5000 years depicts the beast. In 1949 a young couple boating on the river saw a full grown bull dragged into the water by a monster with a 20 foot long neck and a 3 foot head. The girl screamed hysterically and the boy rowed away as fast as possible. The farmer who owned the bull later found blood stains and drag marks on the sandbank. In May 1967 a farmer near the town of Spencer was overlooking his cattle as they drank from the river when a huge reptilian head and neck exploded from the water and seized a cow, effortlessly dragging the helpless bovine away. In 1979 the monster was supposedly trapped for a while in the nearby Nepan River at Yarramundi near the junction with the Hawkesbury. Bushwalkers said they saw it take a cow here. The point is, if the Hawkesbury monster can drag off a bull so easily then what could it do to a human? The monster has in fact been blamed for a number of human deaths.
Top Image: Creature. Middle Image: Yeti type creature drawing. Bottom Image: Ape man imagined.
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CRYPTOZOOLOGY: Death By Cryptid By Richard In the mid 1970s a woman and a boy who had been rowing on the river vanished, leaving behind the shattered remains of their boat. Further inland, two young couples vanished at Coal and Candle Creek. The smashed remains of their 20 foot, 200 horse power boat were found overturned. Another man, from Sydney, went swimming in a lagoon near Ebenezer and the only part of him that was ever seen again was his hand, washed up on a sandbank. Top Image: Russian Labynkyr Middle Image: Mythological Dragon Bottom Image: Green Anaconda.
In 1960 a policeman was among the guests in a yachting party at Broken Bay. He vanished without a trace whilst standing near the stern rail. One of the other guests said “One moment he was there. We all looked away when someone was talking, and when one of us looked back he was gone. There was a disturbance in the river as if something had come up out of the water and snatched him.” Another incident occurred in 1977. A fishing party were enjoying the view from their boat one afternoon, just east of Brooklyn. They noticed that one of their party who had been standing at the stern had vanished, once again there was a big disturbance in the water. Some of these incidents may have been accidents with nothing to do with the creature, but it is worth noting that the Hawkesbury River monster is said to have rammed houseboats on the river several times. Most recently, a lake in southern Siberia has been the setting for a series of events that run like the plot of a horror movie. One of Russia’s largest lakes seems to be the home of a large, powerful and dangerous creature that locals say has killed 19 fishermen. Lake Chany is virtually unknown in the west but it is a vast expanse of water covering 770 square miles, 57 miles long by 55 miles wide but fairly shallow at 23 feet deep with an average depth of only 6 feet. Lake Chany is in the southern part of the province of Novosibirsk Oblast close to the borders of Kazakhstan. The creature involved in the attacks is described as serpentine and huge. The beast claimed its latest victim, a 59 year old fisherman, last week leaving behind 60 year old Vladimir Golishev who was in the boat when the creature overturned it and dragged his friend away. He told the Daily Mail “I was with my friend some 300 yards from the shore. He hooked something huge on his bait and stood up to reel it in. But it pulled with such force it overturned the boat. I was in shock, I had never seen anything like it in my life. I pulled off my clothes and swam for the shore, not daring to hope I would make it. He didn’t make it and they have found no remains. It’s time to find out the truth.”
“The creature involved in the attacks is described as serpentine and huge. The beast claimed its latest victim, a 59 year old fisherman...” 32
In 2007 a 23 year old special services soldier, Mikhail Doronin, was lost when something capsized his boat on the lake. His 80 year old grandmother Nina was watching from the shore and said that the lake was calm, while her husband 81 year old Vladimir said “Something on an awesome scale lives in the lake, but I have never seen it.” Official figures say that 19 people have vanished in the lake in the past three years but locals claim the figure is actually much higher and that remains have washed ashore with bite marks showing large teeth. Fishermen have demanded an official probe but the authorities passed off the deaths as “drownings.” A blurry photograph purporting to show part of the monster was released at the same time as the main story. Like most cryptid pictures it is far from clear, but it may show a fin protruding above the water.
The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
The creature could be a gigantic eel, omething unknown to science or it may be a giant semi-aquatic reptile, possibly one that hibernates in winter. The case brings to mind medieval stories of lake and mire dwelling dragons. The long and short of it is that as it stands there is too little information on which to make a decent guess at the nature of the beast . Other, more remote, lakes in Siberia are also said to have man eating monsters in residence. Lake Labynkyr lies on Sorongnakh Plateau in Eastern Siberia. It is a fairly large lake nine miles long and 800 feet deep. Despite being in one of the coldest regions on earth, the lake never freezes, maintaining a temperature of 2 degrees Celsius. Labynykr also has an evil reputation with locals convinced that The Devil inhabits the lake. Gun dogs that have leapt into the water to retrieve shot ducks have been eaten by the monster. One man told of how the brute pursued his raft. He described a dark grey beast with an enormous mouth. Some reindeer hunters observed the monster coil up out of the water to snatch a passing bird. Author Gennady Borodulin also recounts a tale from Labynkyr in the 1920s in his book In a Trip to the Cold Pole.
Two expedition members saw a row of three humps 100 metres from shore. They ran after the humps trying (unsuccessfully) to photograph them. The humps dived and rose together, but it was not clear if they were separate animals or parts of one creature. In 1964 two journalists from the Italian magazine Epoca visited Lake Labynky whilst travelling to Oymyakon. They were told that some time before a party of men saw a reindeer swim into the lake, before vanishing and not resurfacing. Then a dog swam in and vanished as well. Suddenly a vast black monster shrouded in mist rose snorting from the lake. One of the observers, apparently a scholar, was convinced the beast was a dinosaur. The locals flatly refused to take the journalists out onto the lake. The green anaconda of South America is the largest known snake reaching around thirty feet in length and living almost exclusively in water. There are persistent stories of snakes far larger in the rivers and swamps of tropical South America.
A few years ago an anaconda said to be forty-five feet long An Evenk family of nomads followed their reindeer and attacked three year old Danial Menezes. His father, a hunter reached the shore of Lake Labynkyr. They decided to stay and fisherman called Joao had turned his back on the boy for a overnight on the shore. A five year old child went to the bank moment as he stored some fish in a wooden shack. The snake of a stream which led into the lake. The adults heard the boy clamped its jaws on the boy, and his father could not prize screaming, so the father and grandfather rushed to the bank, them apart. He ran to get help but by the time he returned the stopping on the edge of water. They saw the child being carried monster snake had swallowed the child. away to the centre of the lake by a dark creature, with a mouth that looked like a bird's beak. It held the child and moved away A dramatic story from the 1950s involved the CIA. The with quick rushes, then dived leaving huge waves and dragging political climate, the proliferation of communism in Latin the child under the water. America, was such that the US government placed CIA agents in sensitive areas. One agent called ‘Lee’ was told of a giant The granddad swore revenge on the “devil.” He took a sack cattle-eating serpent in Bolivia. A farmer told him the 33 foot made of animal skin, stuffed it with reindeer fur, rags, dry snake had eaten ten natives and countless cows over the years. It grass and pine trees needles, then put a smouldering piece of would emerge from a cave seeking its prey from time to time. wood inside. He attached the sack to a huge stone on shore Lee came up with an audacious plot to capture the monster and with a rope and threw it far into the waters of the lake. That sell it to a zoo. He planned to force the beast out with tear gas night there was noise and splashes and the terrible screams of whilst covering the mouth of the cave with a long canvas tube the “devil”. In the morning the waves washed up a huge dead that he had specially made with zippers at both ends. Together animal, about seven meters long with a jaw almost one third with two friends Lee smoked the beast out and into the size of the body, and relatively small legs and fins. sack that was then zipped up. They had not reckoned on the strength of a creature that is in essence a tube of muscle with The old man cut the animal’s stomach, took out the body of teeth at one end and the anaconda was able to tear free from his grandson, and buried him on the bank of the stream. Since its canvas prison. then this stream is called “The Stream of a Child.” Despite all of these strange and disturbing cases I have In 1963 a small expedition visited both of these lakes. Four never once felt afraid of the monsters I was hunting members observed an object 800 metres out on Lake on any of my cryptozoological expeditions. I find it Labynkyr. It emerged and submerged several times, but they more daunting getting through airports and finding could not take photographs as the sun was setting. connections! You are far more likely to to be killed in your The following year three teams, each replacing the other in home town in an accident than by some monster in a far shifts, visited the lakes. The third and final group saw the flung part of the world. Labynkyr monster in the latter half of August.
Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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PGURE ENIUS
FEATURE FORTEAN: The Birth Of Pure Genius By Nigel Wright
The Birth Of
An account of the amazing genius known as Nikola Tesla By Nigel Wright
“this child is to become one of the most pivotal scientists of all time.”
O
n the odd occasion, there happens a birth of someone who is an exceptional genius. It is often the way that this birth occurs in a small, insignificant place, to parents who themselves may, or may not, display such gifts. Thus is the way of things on our planet.
We begin our story in such a place, on such an occasion. The date is the 10th of January 1856, the place? The small village of Smiljan, Croatia The local orthodox priest, Milutin Tesla and his wife Duka, have a baby son born to them. The fourth of five children, this baby son is named Nikola. Unbeknownst to any at that moment in time, this child is to become one of the most pivotal scientists of all time. Nikola received no formal primary education, eventually going to a larger school, where he received education in German, mathematics, and religion. A series of schools and colleges followed, but he never finished his university degree, partly because of his bad gambling habit. He ended up in Maribor, working as a draftsman for 60 florins a month. After a series of back and forth moves, and a very dangerous brush with cholera, he ended up working for the continental Edison company in France, in 1882. He moved to the USA to work for Thomas Edison himself, at his New York machine works. Although Tesla had shown great promise working in Europe, it was in the move to the USA that his genius came to the fore. Following a row with Edison he resigned, and in 1886 he formed, along with two partners, Robert Lane and Benjamin Vale, the “Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing” company. Sadly the investors did not think that Tesla’s inventions were worth investing in! They decided to build an electric distribution company instead. Tesla was forced out of the company, and even lost the control of all his patents, having substituted them for stock. He was left penniless, and for that winter, 1886/87, worked as an electrical repair man, and even as a ditch digger, for $2 a day! In early 1887 he formed, along with another two partners, the “Tesla Electric Company”. This forming of the company signaled the start of the most productive part of his life. To list all of the 300 or so known patents he held, and all the amazing scientific advancements he achieved, would take far, far more space than this article allows me! For this reason, I have included a list of all his known patents and a detailed history of all his known scientific achievements with this article. This page and opposite: Images From Google
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
Tesla’s life was indeed long and full of both achievements and failures in equal measure. However, where he differed to most of us is that his achievements were so groundbreaking, so fundamental to our way of life today. X-rays, radio control, florescent light tubes, radar, mobile phones, radio, these are but a few of the hundreds of patents he achieved during his productive life. It is very true to say that, had all his ideas and inventions been taken up and developed, then our world today would have been radically different, and far more technically advanced than it is. It is often stated that Tesla was at least 100-150 years ahead of is time. I feel that this is indeed no exaggeration. So, why did he not achieve such fame and wealth, that all of us would not only know his name, but would not be able to walk down any street without seeing a statue to him? I think this can be put down to human greed, he was defrauded of millions of dollars of profit on his inventions. Also, human failure to grasp at new ideas and theories, which often means that peoples fantastic ideas are never taken up. Whatever the reasons, in losing such ideas, the human race also lost a golden opportunity to advance by hundreds of years. To merely list and record Tesla’s life and talents was not my first intention in writing this article. I wanted to try and find out just what it is in our family, education (or lack of it!), genetics, or whatever, that makes a genius. Are we truly born to be one, or does life conspire to make us so? What can we say truthfully, by looking at Tesla’s life? Well, for a start Tesla certainly had a genetic marker that probably did relate to his potential. His mother, Duka, had a talent for making home-made craft tools, and mechanical appliances. She was also the holder of a photographic memory! So if genetics do indeed play a part in one becoming a genius, then Tesla had a built in advantage with his mother’s abilities. Now as for for education. There is no doubt that the length and quality
of education one receives does help, however, Tesla had a checkered pathway in the educational field, eventually leading to his failure to complete his degree course, due to habitual gambling. The one thing that does stand out in his educational record is an early talent for maths, so much so that he was suspected of cheating! As for family background, well wealth does not seem to matter, since his family were not particularly well off. The presence of siblings did not seem to adversely affect his chances either, he was one of five children. Also, the family suffered the early death of one of the children, so this also did not affect Tesla’s talent. Overall we cannot say for sure just why or how Tesla came to be so talented. What we can say for sure is that he possessed a very clever and talented mother, and an ability to always climb back up from terrible downfalls in life. He overcame a deadly illness, suffered great hardship, and yet still produced some truly amazing work. He ended his life penniless, and living alone in a hotel room in New York, his work became almost forgotten over the subsequent years. He was, I believe, cheated out of the recognition and wealth he truly deserved, for all the gadgets that he brought to this world. The gadgets that we take so very much for granted today. He most certainly had his odd habits, (don’t we all?) he became almost a complete vegetarian, wore no jewelery at all, wriggled his toes a hundred times a day exactly, walked 5-7 miles a day for exercise, and once spent $4000 on a machine to hold a pigeon’s damaged wing in place. He lived the later part of his life entirely in hotel rooms in New York. At the time of his death, the US government agents went into his room and took away all his papers. Geniuses often end their days in such obscurity. It seems to me that it takes so much of their life energy to create their inventions, ideas, etc., that it leaves so very little else for them to invest in the way in which they live and pass away. Perhaps, it’s because they see what so many of us mere mortals don’t, that the amount of possessions you own, or money you have, the way in which you live and the final way in which you die, really, in the end, does not matter a dot! It’s the contributions we make to the human race and the way it learns and lives that matter. If this is indeed the case, then the human race lost its best chance to date of making a really big mark on history, the day when Tesla died in relative obscurity.
Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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MONTHLY: Ouija: To Play Or Not To Play By Melissa Martell
>
Oui
Hello:
Have you played Ouija before?
To Play, Or N
Yes
NO
Oh really,were you possessed?
But you have a dying curiousity and want to try it out?
NO
Yes Yes
NO, good-Bye
Does it bother you that you could get possessed?
Yes,good-Bye This page: Images from shutterstock
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
NO
ija
Not To Play?
Good-bye
Liar, your soul is ours!
NO, Darn we didn’t
Yes
get you this time!
But, now you’re being stalked by a demon?
Good-Bye
NO
Yes
Did it work?
Yes What about demons, do they bother you?
Thinking you should probably burn the board now right?
NO
NO Yes, Good-Bye
Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to play with a ouija board?
Good-Bye
Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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PARANORMAL: Holiday Ghostly Tales By Andrew D. Gable
Holiday GhostlyTales By Andrew D. Gable & Excerpts From Henry W. Shoemaker
S
ome years ago, around the time of the American Civil War, a young man lived in the town of Benton, in Columbia County, Pennsylvania. The town was secluded at the time, and is located in a broad valley bounded on three sides by heavily wooded mountains. As the story goes, the young man was having an affair with the bride of an enlisted man and regularly made his way into the mountains to stop at the cabin of his lover. On one occasion, a blizzard struck. Not to be denied his night of pleasure, though, and heedless of the danger, the man hitched up his wagon and made his way along the precarious mountain roads towards the woman's home. As he approached an old lumber camp, he saw what appeared to be a huge shard of ice rising from the ground at the side of the road. As he approached the icy shard closer, he found that it was a man - or at least what was shaped like a man. Imagine a human shape, alabaster white, formed from snow and with a spiky, icy beard that shone even in the moonless night. The snow-ghost leapt into his wagon as he drew near, wrapping its snowy arms around the man's neck, clawing at his throat with its icy claws... The young man fought off his attacker and made his way to his lover's cabin. Shortly after arrival, he collapsed and was bed-ridden for three days. He was afflicted with fits, fighting off some attacker only he could see. After three days, he died, his features contorted and twisted in paroxysms of fear. An undertaker was called from Benton to bear away the man's body. On his way back to town, he passed the lumber camp where the young man was attacked, and saw in the snow great footprints, like a man's, only much larger...
Background Image: Adobe Stock
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The Curious Fortean ~ Dec 2015
N
ear Muncy, in L Kriegsbaum. K animals, the ch any number of creatures but Kriegsbaum felt that one day he went out to s golden eagles, which he door. Soon after, the far were planted late; as a res thereafter, there was a hu crashed through his fron shattering it. As the dum shadow of a bird with ou remains of the glass case vanished, the two golden
M
any years ago, convoys of wagons ferried timber along the Dogback Trail, which wound through the mountains of southern Clinton County, Pennsylvania from the Brush Valley to Lock Haven. Along the trail, there lived a hermit, eking out a meager living catching fish in nearby streams and selling them to the passing lumbermen. One day he was making his way through the dense woodlands when one of the teamsters, startled by the noise and thinking it some sort of game animal, a deer or a bear perhaps, raised his gun and fired. The hermit, struck by the bullet, ran towards the shack that was his home. But along the way, he tripped, and fell into the cold waters of one of the streams and, eventually, he froze to death. Thereafter, it was said, the ghost of the hermit haunted that section of the Dogback, rising from the icy waters where he met his doom and sitting on the passing sledges of the lumbermen. The sledge would then be immobile until the ghost moved on. Eventually, the logger who shot the hermit went into the woods and was found later, stone dead. The ghost, it was said, never appeared again.
Lycoming County, Pennsylvania there was a man named Adam Kriegsbaum had a farm, and his farm was troubled. The smaller hickens and lambs, would disappear once in a while. There are s in the Pennsylvania hills that could have been responsible, t the eagles which roosted nearby were the guilty parties and see that they never bothered his farm again. He shot two fine had stuffed and mounted and kept in a glass case near his front rmer fell ill for several weeks. As a result of his illness, the crops sult of this, he lost an entire season's worth of crops. One night uge thunderstorm. A tree was knocked over in the storm and nt window, knocking the case with its eagles to the ground and mbfounded Kriegsbaum stood on the stairs in mute horror, a utstretched wings was cast in his front room and cloaked the e in darkness. When the light shifted and the bird-shadow n eagles were gone... never to be seen again.
January’s Issue The Return Of
RICHARD THE
Viking's World Of The Paranormal
B I GFOOT Sightings
January Is Cryptozoology Month The Curious Fortean
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Dec 2015 ~ The Curious Fortean
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