Abominable Chicken Man

My daily commute takes me straight through downtown Bishopville, SC. If that name sounds familiar to you don’t be surprised. The town was made famous, more or less, back in 1988 with the alleged sightings of the Lizard Man at the Scape Ore Swamp. I’ve written about the Lizard Man in the past here, if you need a refresher. Last week on my way to work, I had to stop my car as a chicken crossed the road. 

Recognizing a golden opportunity for a joke, I quickly went to twitter to announce this. I suppose that’s a commentary on our current social media obsessed society, but I digress. Because of my extremely witty joke, Theo Paijmans, linked me to an interesting newspaper report which I had not heard of before. It’s the strange tale of the “Abominable Chicken Man”. A primate of unknown origin which apparently had a craving for chickens and was roaming around the Oklahoma country side in the late 60’s early 70’s. 

Probably not what was seen

The story was reported in The Spokesman-Review by Dennis Montgomery on March 1st of 1971. This encounter had occurred the previous December. Montgomery relates how a local farmer located in El Reno, Oklahoma suffered some loss and damaged property at the hands of this “Chicken Man”. Montgomery writes:

An El Reno farmer walked out to his chicken coop one day in December and found its door on the ground, apparently thrown there after being ripped off the wall.

On the surface of the door, and inside the coop on the walls, were a number of strange hand prints - like none he’d ever seen before. They were about seven inches long and five inches wide.

The farmer initially contacted a local game warden/ranger who was also at a loss to explain the origins of the hand prints. So the local zoo was contacted to see if they could offer any insight on what may have attacked the farmer’s chickens. Montgomery tells us:

Zoo Director Lawrence Curtis says the prints appear to be like those of a primate. A primate is an animal like a gorilla or a man that can stand erect. The thumber of the print is unusual. Curtis says it crooks inside, as if it were deformed or had been injured.

‘It resembles a gorilla,’ he said, ‘but it’s more like a man.’

‘It appears that whatever made the prints was walking on all fours. There were some footprints on the ground outside,’ he said. Whatever it was was barefoot. Barefoot in December.

This farmer was not the only one person to have come across similar prints. Montgomery notes several other individuals across Oklahoma who were said to have discovered the same, or similar, hand prints as the original farmer did. As to what this creature could have been, Montgermery relates:

Oklahoma has only for native animals big enough to leave such prints: the black bear, the mountain lion, the wolf and man. Curtis has ruled out all but the last.

‘We’ve shown it to several mammalogists and several wildlife experts in Oklahoma and some passing through. All agree it is a primate,’ he said. ‘These prints were made by some sort of a man, perhaps looking for chickens,’

Check this link in order to read the full article. Montgomery goes on to draw parallels between this “Chicken Man” and other Bigfoot creatures seen throughout North America. The chicken farmer never claimed to have seen the creature, only the devastation it left in it’s wake. There are a number of sightings of bigfoot-like creatures reported in the area in and around El Reno, Oklahoma. Did this famer have an encounter with the Bigfoot? It’s possible. Those hand prints certainly do sound quite large and the fact that the creature got around on all fours could possibly rule out a human culprit. Unless they were up to trickery, a possibility which I can’t deny.

The ‘Abominable Chicken Man’ never seemed to show back up. Maybe he had enough chicken? Maybe he went on a diet? Who knows? Either way, it makes for yet another interesting wrinkle in the Bigfoot story.

Further reading:

El Reno’s Dermals - Cryptomundo

Oklahoma - a Bigfoot Hotspot - From the Shadows

Patterns in Ufology

A few months back I picked up a (legitimate) copy of John Keel’s classic Operation Trojan Horse, this was made possible by the fine folks over at Anomalist Books who had recently reprinted the book. Prior to this the only copies of the book one could find online had been going for around 80 USD, which is a bit more than I want to pay for a non-textbook book.  But thankfully the newly printed addition is much more reasonable in price and so I highly recommend you purchase and read it if you haven’t before. In the work, Keel begins to layout his “Ultraterrestrial” Inter-dimensional theory of the UFO phenomena that I’ve discussed many times in the past on this blog. 

Additionally, as I rediscovered, Keel talks about an interesting pattern that he began to notice that the UFO enigma displayed. He entitled this the “Wednesday phenomenon” because of the reports that he looked into, the overwhelming majority of the sightings and interactions with the UFOnauts took place on Wednesday nights. Looking at other countries data, Keel found that this same “Wednesday” thing held true. Naturally, he wasn’t stating that all UFO sightings occur on Wednesdays but rather

“This does not mean that flying saucers are out in force every Wednesday night. But when there is a large flap, it nearly always takes place on a Wednesday.” pg 12 Operation Trojan Horse

The years with which Keel looked for this pattern, were unfortunately limited. Naturally I wondered if perhaps anyone else had looked into the “Wednesday” phenomenon more recently, and if so, what had they discovered? Thankfully on Twitter I was pointed over to the UFO DNA blog where the author had taken a second look at Keel’s theory. What he found was pretty interesting.

“The Wednesday Mystery ... Updated

John Keel noted that a disproportionate number of UFO sightings occurred on Wednesday evening. This was true when he was studying them in the 1960's, but was not true over the long term. Remarkably, the peak day for UFO sightings has migrated over the decades, an average of one day per week per decade until the 1990's. Thereafter it moved to Sunday in the 1990's, then firmly to Saturday in the 2000's and the 2010's”

I don’t wish to steal the bloggers thunder, he did a lot of work and there are some really cool graphics at the site so I definitely recommend that you check it out. Discussing the “Wednesday” phenomenon on Facebook, led to a friend pointing out the fact that Jacques F Vallee also did quite a bit of analysis on the UFO phenomenon, specifically looking for patterns. Vallee, who is a computer scientist by training, has been discussed a number of times by me here at Forteania.  

Vallee and a Dr. Claude Poher, eventually published  a paper entitled “Basic Patterns in UFO Observations”, which you can access as a PDF from Vallee’s website. Not to belabor that point too much, they came to a 4 point conclusion that I will list here about the phenomena:

(1) a significant proportion of the thousands of UFO reports analyzed by the authors come from witnesses who have really observed an object in the sky or at ground level; (2) the objects these witnesses have seen have characteristics very different from all identifiable objects and phenomena; (3) the phenomenon is of high scientific interest; and (4) a systematic research approach can be defined.

Jacques Vallee

The conclusions reached by Vallee and Poher seem to have not made much of a difference in regards to Ufology as a whole, or for the general public for that matter who largely don’t give a damn about this stuff one way or another. This idea isn’t unique to me of course; recently Tim Binnall of Binnall of America interviewed Historian/Author Aaron Gulyas about his most recent book, The Chaos Conundrum, when the idea of doing a statistical analysis of the UFO was brought up. 

Binnall and Gulyas both agreed that somewhere within all of those stats may lie some kind of clue as to what the UFO phenomena may be. I would tend to agree for the most part, although I wonder if perhaps we should be looking at the phenomena from a slightly different perspective. Knowing that Keel did his own kind of “stats” research and Vallee later did an arguably much more scientific analysis of the available UFO data, looking at the same side of the data might not prove very useful.

Instead, as Greg Bishop has said a number of times on his podcast Radio Misterioso, we should be looking at the people who have these experiences themselves. I’m not interested in what color the UFO was or what size it was. Rather, I wish to know if the person had recently had some kind of trauma in their life? Had they been experiencing any kind of depression or new stress? Maybe the key lies with the experiencer rather than with what it was they experienced?

Who knows? It’s unlikely that we may ever really discover the answer to any of this stuff, but at the very least we shouldn’t necessarily retread old ground. I say we keep trying new and different things. But what do I know? I’m just a guy with a blog.

That’s all for now dear readers. Until next, stay classy internet!

Podcast interview!

Film-maker, and self proclaimed "outlaw for love", Paul Kimball recently interviewed your's truly on his revived podcast, The Other Side of Truth. You can listen to the podcast here. Here's the description of the episode:

In this episode, I spend an hour chatting with Fortean researcher / blogger Tony Morrill, one of the bright youngsters out there who are interested in the world of the weird and the wacky. In an eclectic conversation where we throw in everything but the kitchen sink, we start off with some background information on Tony, and how he became interested in the paranormal at a young age, and then follow up with a back-and-forth on everything from UFOs to ghosts to Bigfoot. We also find time to pontificate / ruminate about posthumanism, tip our caps to the work of the late Mac Tonnies, Greg Bishop, and Nick Redfern, and "imagine the imagination factory" - all while keeping our tongues planted firmly in our cheeks. We even managed to reference a couple of cartoon characters we like, and I slipped in a musical interlude that is tangential to the point of being apropos of nothing, but somehow it still fits. This was a fun episode to record, and reminded me more than a bit of some of my past conversations with my pals in the "Cabal". Tony has his feet planted firmly on the ground, even as he has his eyes set to the sky. It's a good place to be!

I also suggest checking out his other latest interviews with Aaron John Gulyas and Walter Bosley. 

Additionally, you can also head over to Binnall of America in order to find my most recent Fortean Ramblings column entitled "We didn't start the fire". That's about all I have for now. Come back soon for shenanigans!

Little Green Meme?

Almost a year ago I emailed an editor of one leading UFO magazine about potentially writing an article for them for publication. I sent some of my work that I had written up to that point and he seemed interested in me potentially expanding one of my original articles for Binnall of America. So with that in mind I worked somewhat diligently at the task for a few months. At the same time I commissioned my girlfriend Ashley to do artwork that would appear in the magazine. Eventually for reasons that I'm still not too sure of the article never appeared in the magazine (I think the editor quit and then the magazine folded or something) and because of this I've sat on the article for quite some time. But I've finally decided to share it with you guys, including Ashley's original artwork, to help me get back into the swing of regular updates as I'm out of school for the summer. Presented below is the article in it's entirety (be warned it's a bit lengthy, after all it was going to appear in a magazine). Hope you enjoy!

Little Green Meme?

When the modern UFO era began after Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting of objects near Mount Rainier, Washington sightings of flying saucers began to be reported from all over the world. Not long after these sightings people also began to report seeing the occupants of the disks. People from all different walks of life were apparently sighting a myriad of strange creatures. In South America little hairy dwarves were sighted, while in other parts of the world the sightings of 9 foot tall monstrosities were reported. But whenever anyone refers to the occupants of these crafts, especially in the 'mainstream' media they only speak of “little green men”. The reason for this is the events of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Case, the aftermath of which is that the term “little green men” would enter the vocabulary of the population and became an infective meme that would be with Ufology for years to come.

On an August night in 1955, Billy Ray Taylor and his wife were visiting the family of Lucky Sutton. The Suttons; Vera Sutton, JC Sutton, Alene Sutton, and three Sutton children, lived in the rural town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Glennie Lankford, June Taylor and O.P. Barker were also visiting the Lucky Sutton house. Early in the evening Taylor went outside of the Sutton house in order to get some water from the outside pump. Just a few minutes later Taylor rushed back into the house exclaiming that he had just seen a flying saucer fly over the house, hover around the woods, and descend into a gully located nearby the home. No one in the family took Taylor's claim seriously as no one went outside to investigate.

An hour later the Sutton’s dog began to bark, so Lucky and Taylor grabbed their guns and went outside to see if they could find what was upsetting the dog. The frightened dog ran under the house and would not return until the following morning. While outside of the house, Lucky and Taylor were amazed to see a 3½ ft tall being approaching them with its arms raised up. They later described the being to researchers as having a large round head, long thin arms that extended nearly to the ground, and legs that did not appear to move. The hands of the being were out of proportion to the rest of its body, and looked more like the talons of a bird than human hands. While the being's eyes appeared to be glowing with a fire that was the shade of yellow.

Being the good country folk that they were, Lucky and Taylor decided to shoot first and ask questions later. When the bullets from their rifle and shotgun struck the creature it back flipped, landed on its feet, and ran back into the darkness. At this point the men went back into the house to check on the family and tell them what had happened. When they rejoined the group in the living room they were astonished to see the same, or similar to it, being at the window. Again, Lucky and Taylor took a shot at the creature. This caused the being to flip backwards and retreat into the shadows. At this time the men were certain that they had either killed or at least wounded the creature(s), so they went outside to see if they could locate the bodies.

Taylor walked outside, but paused on the porch for just a moment. Suddenly, from the roof, a talon reached down and grabbed his hair. Alene pulled Taylor back into the house. Lucky fired upon the creature which caused it to release Taylor and fall from its perch. At this point, it’s not clear who, but someone noticed that one of the beings was in the tree. So both Taylor and Lucky fired at the creature knocking it from the limb, however, instead of falling straight down, the being appeared to float in a falling leaf motion to the ground.

This attack lasted for a little while longer before the group could no longer stand it. Everyone ran to their cars and took off towards the police station in Hopkinsville. When they arrived and began telling their story, it was obvious to the officers on duty that something had happened to these people as they were clearly shaken. A few sheriffs’ deputies and the chief of police, Russell Greenwell, accompanied the Suttons and Taylors back to the house. Once the police arrived they searched for a long time, but could find no apparent trace of anything out of the ordinary. They did, however, see plenty of buckshot meaning that shots had been fired on the grounds of the home that night. The police couldn’t directly tie the buckshots to the sightings of the numerous beings, however in a few places that Taylor and Lucky had fired on the creatures there appeared to be a strange green luminescence on the ground, the source of which the police were never able to determine. A photograph was taken of the luminous patch of grass but a sample was not collected, upon returning the following day the patch had mysteriously disappeared. Police also interviewed neighbors that live close to the Sutton house, most reported not only seeing strange lights flying around in the sky that same night but also heard the gunshots that came from Lucky and Billy’s guns.

Ultimately unable to truly prove anything, the police left the family to resume their duties. A little later that night once the police had finally gone and the family tried to go to sleep, Glennie Lankford spotted another one of the creatures back at the same window and told her son Lucky. Of course Lucky wanted to shoot it, but Glennie told him not to as the creatures, although certainly bizarre, had actually done nothing to harm them that night. Lucky fired at the creature anyway and once again the bullet had no effect and the creature retreated back in to the darkness. The being’s presence at the home lasted until dawn.

The following day the story was repeated in the Kentucky New Era Newspaper and the Sutton Farmhouse became a huge tourist attraction. The family was interviewed about the events of that night and no matter how many times the story was recounted it was always the same. A man named Andrew Ledwith, who worked with WHOP a radio station in a nearby town, interviewed each of the seven adults involved in the incident separately and each told the same story and described the creatures almost identically. Except that the female witnesses thought that the creatures had a more husky build than what the male witnesses described. Ledwith, who was also an artist, was one of the first people to illustrate what the witnesses saw. As later newspapers picked up the story over the weeks and months that followed, they began to refer to the beings as “little green men” although the original descriptions had been that they were in silver suits or were silver themselves.

After the initial media attention, people began to swarm the Sutton house. If the Suttons believed that the worst of their ordeal was over they were sadly mistaken. They were inundated with people seeking proof, stories, or in some cases even autographs. Sadly this was not all that the Sutton family had to deal with. Local public opinion almost immediately labeled the incident as a hoax. Eventually the family could no longer take all of the negative publicity and they started to charge the thrill seekers that came to see them. This only fueled the charges that the family was hoaxing the entire event simply to exhort money from people.

The Sheriff’s department, to its credit, took the family at their word. Chief of Police, Russell Greenwell had a few things to say about what had happened that night. When he described his initial meeting with the Sutton Family the night of the events he said that they appeared to have been frightened “beyond reason, not ordinary”. He would also remark to Ufologist Isabel Davis that when he and the other officers arrived at the Sutton household that, “In and around the whole area, the house, the fields, that night, there was a weird feeling. It was partly uneasiness, but not entirely. Everyone had it. There were men there that I’d call brave men … they felt it too.”

The local police were not the only group to get involved in the investigations or to take what happened seriously. The US Air Force, upon hearing about the incidents, sent officers from the nearby Fort Campbell to do some investigations. Although the Air Force investigation also turned up empty handed for any kind of concrete evidence, this incident remains as an open case to this day. Project Blue Book, the official Air Force UFO investigation from the time period, never did an official investigation but kept a file on the incident none the less. They labeled the case as an 'unknown' which is something they were not very fond of doing at the time.

Eventually the family got completely fed up with all of the attention they were getting, so they sold the property to extended family and moved away. To this day, the surviving witnesses to the event are hesitant to ever talk to anyone about the case. Although on the rare occasion that they have told anyone their stories, they are exactly as they were on that late night oh so many years ago.

Persons that were skeptical of the case almost immediately came forward with alternative theories as to what the Suttons may have actually seen that night. One of the most obvious alternative explanations was that the family simply hoaxed the entire event. As it stands, although others may have also seen unidentified lights in the sky that night, only the families involved in the incidents ever claimed to have actually seen the beings. The local community seemed to accept this theory pretty readily at the time, as a matter of fact they wrote the entire saga off as a drunken hoax that had simply gotten out of hand. It's unlikely that this was the case as Glennie Lankford was known for not allowing the consumption of alcohol at her house, especially when young children were present.

In any event it wasn't too long before a member of the Air Force was ready to offer a very down-to-earth explanation for the strange firefight that had occurred on that August night just two years prior. Speaking in 1957 U.S. Air Force Major John E. Albert came to the conclusion that what Lucky and Taylor had been shooting at was none other than an escaped monkey from a circus that was dressed in silver. There are a few problems with this explanation however. While it is true that a circus was in town during the week of the sightings, the circus never reported losing a monkey. Additionally if Lucky and Taylor shot nearly as many times at the creatures as they have said, there would have been a body of some kind that was discovered by the Police or other investigators that night.

The most recent terrestrial explanation for what had occurred that night was first proposed by French Ufologist Renaud Leclet. He suggested that perhaps the beings the family had sighted that night, were in fact Great Horned Owls. The owls would match the descriptions of the beings 'glowing' eyes and would explain some of the apparent otherworldly abilities displayed by the entities. As the owls fly silently it is unlikely that either Lucky or Taylor would have heard the owls flying around from say a limb to the top of the porch. Another part of this explanation that would seem to solve this case, is that the Great Horned Owl aggressively defends its nest. Perhaps, the theory goes, when Lucky and Taylor first started firing on the beings they must have accidentally hit the owls nest causing them to attack for most of the night. The problem with this explanation is not unlike the circus monkey theory. Where are the bodies? At many times Lucky and Taylor apparently hit the beings dead on, so if they were simply misidentifying owls, bodies would or should have been found somewhere at the house. Not only that none of these theories can explain the luminescence patch of ground that was seen, nor the very eerie feeling that was reported by all present at the house the night of the siege.

As with most cases of UFO occupant accounts, the skeptics are still skeptical and the believers still believe in the basic validity of the story. No official explanation has ever been offered by either the police that investigated nor by the Air Force. The surviving members of the incident still maintain that the testimony that was given on that fateful night in 1955 is what actually occurred to them. The legacy of the case, besides offering yet another anecdotal story of human / non-human interaction, is the term 'Little Green Men'. The term has become a meme that has been picked up by people ever since. To this day you will still hear people mockingly refer to the occupants of UFOs as little green men. The next time you hear this, you can smile knowing where this term originated.

Primary Sources? Who needs them!

 Hello dear Internet readers it has been quite some time since last we spoke. I had originally planned to come to you today in order to tell you of an interesting alien encounter that I learned about on ATS. However as I researched the topic a bit more I discovered something else that was at once more fascinating and at the same time a bit more disturbing, and also slightly disconcerting if the process is widespread. Now to be fair, it may be that I haven't spent enough time tracking down more info. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what it is that I'm seeing. Or, as I fear, I may be on to something. I don't think I really know the full implications for what it is that I'm going to be discussing. I just know that it doesn't seem right to me. Maybe I'm wrong or I have the wrong impression. If so please feel free to let me know in the comments section! After all I'm only human! (At least I think........)

Our tale begins a few days ago when I was busy at work. And by busy at work I mean to say, busy trying to stay awake at work while to my mind-numbingly boring data entry job. As is my usual custom while on the job, I was busy searching for new UFO/Alien stories. One of the sites I go to far more often than I should is Above Top Secret. I was looking at what they had to say about Bruce Rux. Rux had just recently been on Tim Binnall's Binnall of America podcast. Rux is the author of two UFO books; Hollywood vs. Aliens (which I own and have read) and Architects of the Underworld (which I should be receiving from my wonderful girlfriend Ashley [and no this isn't just a test to see if she reads my blog :)]). So, Rux had been on my mind and I often like to get what I call the “ATS-view” of a topic. When I put Rux's name into ATS's search bar, a number of posts came up. However there was only one that really caught my attention. It was entitled “TheTinfoil Alien”. This had me written all over it. Of course I was envisioning some kind of Shroud of Turin, except instead of Jesus it would be a classic Grey, and instead of being on some kind of cloth it would be tinfoil.

In reality it was an alien encounter account with which I had some familiarity with as I had read about it in Faces of the Visitors, of which I have spoken about in the past. The case in question is called a number of things, but it's typically denoted by the date and location of the sighting. According to Faces of the Visitors, it was called 'The Police Chief Photo'. The sighting took place on October 17, 1973 in Falkville, Alabama, which for those keeping track at home is only 6 days after the Hickson-Parker Abduction took place. The story, which you can read in some detail here, is that Police Chief Jeffrey Greenhaw aged 26 was apparently phoned around 10 pm that a UFO had landed nearby. The following is from the account found on the UFO Casebook site:

This strange account began when Falkville, Alabama police chief Jeff Greenhaw (that is correct, there is no s after the n) received a phone call from an excited lady who said that she had witnessed a "spaceship" land in an open field not far the town proper.

Greenhaw took off like a shot, taking along his trusty Polaroid camera. Dark had fallen several hours earlier, and the police chief was armed for anything. It would be about 10:00 P.M. when he made it to the location of the alleged landing.

After a cursory look around, he found no trace of a spaceship. As Greenhaw continued his search of the area, he was taken aback by the sight of an alien-like creature standing just off the side of the road. The being appeared to be wrapped in aluminum foil as it began to walk toward Greenhaw.

"It looked like his head and neck were kind of made together... he was real bright, something like rubbing mercury on nickel, but just as smooth as glass-different angles give different lighting. I don't believe it was aluminum foil."

The tinfoil alien's movements were very "mechanical" like. An antenna was attached to his head. Though in shock, he managed to snap off four pictures of the odd looking alien. When he flicked on his headlights the alien was obviously frightened, as it began to make its escape.

Luckily(?) Greenhaw had the forethought to snap a photo of the 'entity'. Which can be viewed below. As I was reading this story, I was thinking to myself that this would make a great post on either Forteania or as an article for my Fortean Ramblings column. But before I typed anything up I wanted to do a bit more research in order to see what different versions of the story had to say, or if perhaps there was more to the story. The thread over at ATS originally linked to the version quoted above from UFO Case Book site. At the UFO Casebook site it had the original source as NICAP's website, as the case was originally investigated by NICAP. As many in the field are aware, NICAP was disbanded in 1980 which is about the same time that CUFOS bought all of their old case files. And apparently through some kind of agreement NICAP (the website) is able to post some of the old NICAP (the organization) case files online. One of which is the case in question. So when I looked up the case file on the NICAP website imagine my surprise when I saw the source for the information on the NICAP website. It was the UFO Casebook site.

Definitely, probably not just a guy in a firefighter's suit

So we have the UFO Casebook site referencing the NICAP website as the source of the account, while the NICAP website referenced the UFO Casebook site. This strikes as very strange for some reason. It has caused me to wonder, surprisingly for the first time, how many other accounts are like this. Where the sources are all referencing each other. Which wouldn't be too big a deal, I suppose, if one could easily have access to the original sources. The implications in this are much wider than just Ufology of course. Perhaps other places are simply siting one another as references without anyone actually having the original information. At the end of the day however, I did only do a cursory amount of research. And did it on the Internet no less. I admit it's entirely likely that other, better, sources exist for this account. But as far as what was available online, all I could locate was the self-referential loop of uhh loopiness.

I would like to think that people would do a better job of looking for sources of material before writing about it. But I must admit that I myself have been guilty of this in the past. There has been more than one post on this blog that I haven't done a whole lot of researching on before posting, but for the most part I attempt to find as many sources as I could. Oh and before I forget, apparently the original investigators on the case after doing some investigations pretty much ruled this case a hoax. As it turns out, if one takes a fireman's silvery suit and photographs someone in the dark with a flash on their camera the resulting image strikingly resembles the original alien photo. With that I leave you for now, if I'm wrong for thinking this is weird or unusual be sure to leave me a comment and let me know! Also if you happen to know some better places to find old NICAP files online (because after a fairly thorough Google search I didn't turn anything up) please let me know.

Mac Tonnies

Two years ago tomorrow (or today depending upon when you read this) on October 18, 2009 Mac Tonnies passed away leaving behind many, many unfinished mysteries yet to be solved. Unfortunately I never had the chance to engage him in conversation, so I can only speak personally about what affect he has had on my views of the paranormal and assorted Fortean topics right before and since his untimely death.

It was about three years ago or so that I first started listening to Tim Binnall's Binnall of America podcast. At the time, as I have recounted on this blog and elsewhere in the past, I was a pretty hardcore ETH kind of guy. So people like Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern really got under my skin. After all they were espousing such, as far as I was concerned, almost heretical ideas that maybe just maybe the occupants of UFOs weren't the little Grey guys that I knew them to be. But perhaps worst of all was this Mac Tonnies fellow that I heard originally on Binnall of America. The episode in question was from about two years prior to when I heard it, back when Tim would occasionally spread the interviews over the course of multiple episodes.

The first part of Mac's interview was acceptable for me, I didn't really take any great umbrage with it. The interview focused on his book After the Martian Apocalypse which discusses the idea that perhaps there are more to some of the anomalous features on our sister planet Mars than meets the eye. Or that have been given their fair share of serious attention by NASA scientists. But as I was going to learn, Mac deftly maneuvered the sometimes fine line between Hoagland-esgue “every rock must be artificial” kind of rationale and the fundamentalist skepticism that seems to seep out of NASA in regards to the likelihood of there being ancient alien artifacts anywhere in our solar system. In “classic” Mac Tonnies fashion, he simply said that there just may be something worth investigating on this planet it may not be what we think it is, whether we are skeptic or believer, so why not go and find out?

Again, I was OK with this. Hell I wasn't even sure who this Hoagland character was that he was referring to anyway. And besides, I had long been fascinated by the apparent “pyramids” that were on Mars. So as far as I was concerned this Mac guy was pretty OK. That is until he did the unthinkable. In part two of this interview, Mac dared to offer a challenge to the “hallowed” ETH. His alternative theory? Some entity that he called a “Cryptoterrestrial” that, if you can believe it, made it's home right here on Earth with us! The occupants of UFOs were supposed to be an indigenous species? No way! I was absolutely not amenable to this idea at all. And yet at the same time I couldn't stop listening to this blasphemer. He was so eloquent and spoke with such knowledge. You could tell that he knew a lot about the topic. That he wasn't just completely coming out of left field with this “working hypothesis” as he referred to it as.

It wasn't long after this podcast that this Mac Tonnies character seemed to be popping up everywhere I turned around. He was on paranormal show, after paranormal show. And without fail, his Cryptoterrestrial Theory would inevitably come up. Each time he offered the same, deceptively tempting caveat to his theory; it was testable. Not unlike how he treated the Martian Anomalies arena, the reason the Cryptoterrestrial Theory grabbed Mac's imagination was that, you could actually go out and look for them. It would be a relatively easy theory to disprove. After all, the ETH hadn't gotten us any closer to “solving” the UFO enigma. So wasn't it time to try something new?

I couldn't believe that people were still having this kooky character own, it wasn't bad enough that he was daring to suggest that somehow the ETH had failed us, but to go on and offer an alternative I just couldn't handle it. It was far too much. But then Mac came onto Greg Bishop's Radio Misterioso radio program in July 2009 in order to talk more in depth about his Cryptoterrestrial Theory. The program, which you can still find to listen here and I encourage you to do so, allowed for Mac to make the case for his Cryptoterrestrial Theory. Slowly as the hour and forty minutes started slipping by, I found myself intrigued and I really began to question the long-standing assumptions that I had about what could be behind the UFO mystery. At around the half hour mark, Greg asks Mac if he could read a sample of his Cryptoterrestrial Book (which at the time Mac had been working on for the last couple of years). The following represents all of what was great about Mac Tonnies. And with the excerpt the final nail in the ETH-only coffin was hammered, at least as far as I was concerned:

Every few nights I get out my laser pointer and indulge my cats in a frenetic game of "chase." Cats are natural hunters, and they're effectively incapable of not looking at the quickly moving red dot that I project onto the carpet, walls, or any piece of furniture that happens to be in its path.

To my cats, the red dot possesses its own vitality. It exists as a distinct entity. While they may see me holding the pointer, they can't (or won't) be distracted by such things once the button is pressed and the living room is suddenly alive with luminous vermin. So they chase it. And chase it. And, if they get close enough, even take swipes at it -- in which case I make the dot "flee" or disappear in what seems like a concession of defeat (which, of course, only further arouses the cats' predatory curiosity).

All the while I'm controlling the red dot, I'm taking pains to make it behave like something intelligible. Just waving the pointer around the room wouldn't be any fun. So I make it "climb," "jump" and scuttle when cornered -- even though the laser's impervious to obstructions.

This sense of physicality seems to be the element that makes chasing the laser so engaging -- both for the cats and for me.

I can't help but be reminded of our continuing search for assumed extraterrestrial vehicles. UFO sightings demonstrate many of the same aspects of a typical feline laser hunt: mysterious disappearances, "impossible" maneuvers and a predilection for trickery -- the apparent desire to be seen despite (or because of) a technology presumed to be far in advance of our own. More than one UFO researcher has noted that UFOs behave more like projections or holograms than nuts-and-bolts craft . . . an observation that begs the nature of the intelligence doing the projecting.

According to astrophysicist Jacques Vallee, UFOs are part of a psychosocial conditioning system by which perceived "rewards" are doled out to reconcile for the dearth of irrefutable physical evidence. The phenomenon -- whatever its ultimate nature – obstinately denies itself, thus enabling the very game it's intent on playing with us.

We see that sudden spark of red light; we pounce. This time we'll catch it for sure.

I think it was this passage, perhaps more than anything else, that struck the exact right chord for me. Only it wasn't an immediate change. The “ETH-only” part of me held on for a few more months. It seemed that Mac was only getting bigger and more (well deserved) attention from the more “mainstream” paranormal community. On September 28, 2009 Mac made his appearance on Coast 2 Coast AM. As far as paranormal shows go you can't get any better than this. For the entire four hours, Mac waxed poetic on his Cryptoterrestrial Theory and his Martian Anomalies work as well. It was without a doubt one of the better C2C's in recent memory.

Sadly less than one month after this, Mac Tonnies passed away in his sleep. Still left unfinished, among so many other things, was the manuscript for what would be his last work The Cryptoterrestrials. Luckily for the world at large, his writing was able to be saved by his mother and we now have the privilege to read the work of this Fortean legend. The book was published in March of 2010 and it was only a few months later when I was able to finally pick it up. With the help of this book, along with a short list of other books by authors like Jacques Vallee and John Keel, I came to change all of my preconceived notions about UFOs and the paranormal in general.

I may never have had the pleasure of talking with Mac, or meeting him, but more so than most people that I have known/met in my life, he has inspired so much of my thinking. Mac may have been taken far sooner than seems fair, but at least he has left behind a legacy of great, original thinking. 

Listed below are just some of the shows Mac appeared on. Also be sure to check out his site and blog. Finally if you haven't read his books, The Cryptoterrestrials and After the Martian Apocalypse (which you all but have to get the ebook version of), I can't recommend them highly enough.

Radio Misterioso

The Paracast

Binnall of America part 1, part 2

Mac on Coast 2 Coast

Weekend Recommendations

Good evening dear readers. If you are anything at all like me, then you enjoy watching documentaries about Fortean topics. With this in mind I wanted to recommend two very fascinating and entertaining films for you to check out this weekend(or when you can get a chance to).

First up is Bob Wilkinson's Shades of Gray, below is the trailer.

The film tells the story of Gray Barker, an early Ufologist that is perhaps most famous for his involvement in the Albert K Bender saga and for his work on the Mothman sightings in West Virginia. The film is a fascinating look at his life both inside and outside of the Ufological field. Featured in the film are those that knew Barker; Jim Moseley, Jerome Clark, and Stan Friedman (among others).  They story is sad and also enlightening, especially if like me you enjoy learning more about the early days of Ufology. The movie is available for rent through Netflix or Blockbuster. Follow this link to head to the documentaries website.  Really I can't recommend this film highly enough. Also to hear an interview with the film maker, check out this episode of the Paracast.

Speaking of the Mothman events in West Virginia the next film I would recommend you checking out, is Eyes of the Mothman. The trailer is below.

 

This film takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through the events leading up to and surrounding the Mothman sightings that occurred in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the late 1960's. The film makers actually spend a lot of time in the town talking to townsfolk who were alive during the events about what they remember hearing and seeing. If you know nothing about the Mothman legend, or if you think you know everything, you will still likely learn a thing or two by watching this documentary. I did (I had never heard of the Curse of Chief Cornstalk before as an example). This film is available on Netflix instantly if you have the streaming option. Be sure to check out the website for the film. Also the film makers were interviewed on Tim Binnall's Binnall of America podcast, you can find the episode here.

Well that's all for tonight, until next time remember to keep your eyes to the skies

Magazine article updates!

I've mentioned a number of times on this blog in the past that I had been working on an article for a UFO magazine. If published, it would be my first article in such a medium. Needless to say I was pretty excited to get it finished. In addition to writing the article I was requested to get some illustrations made, so I roped Ashley into doing those for me. Well last night (finally!) I was able to send off the article and illustrations, and at this point I am only waiting to hear back from the editor if it will indeed be published. If it does I will certainly let you guys know which one it is, also if this works out (and even if it doesn't) I have to say that the process has certainly been a learning experience.

Much like this blog and of course my article over at Binnall of America, I have been trying to both improve my writing skills (which I hope have gotten better) and perhaps learn a thing or two. Hopefully we will hear back, sooner rather than later about the article. If not, I will simply try again. Also I have recently taken the plunge back into the dreaded 'facebook'. You are more than welcome to friend me if you wish. I suppose that's about all I have for tonight.

Oh before I forget one last little thing, I'm just about half-way through reading Steve Volk's Fringe-ology (which I can't recommend highly enough) so expect a review here in the next couple of days. Until next time this is your friendly neighborhood Fortean Philosopher saying, stay classy Internet!

Random Mac Tonnies stuff

Thanks to the Daily Grail for tweeting this video earlier. It coincides with this New York Times article on the Digitial Afterlife. Discussed in the video and article is the late Mac Tonnies. The video is from the excellent (yet sad in a way) blog the Post-Mac Blues. Be sure to follow the link for the video its well worth the watch if you haven't seen it. In other Mac Tonnies related 'news', earlier today Ashley was image searching for some other pictures of him when she stumbled upon this:

Click for larger image

For whatever reason a picture of yours truly popped up during the image search. In all fairness, a picture of Paul Kimball, Greg Bishop, and Nick Redfern came up as well. I certainly don't think of myself in the same leagues as Tonnies. Although he is definitely a role model of mine, at least intellectually. And he has in many ways helped to inspire my outlook on the UFO phenomena specifically, but also most things Fortean in general. The saddest part for me is that I never got to correspond with him. I had heard of him through Binnall of America, Radio Misterioso, and the Paracast; but for whatever reason I never tried to reach out and talk to him.

This was partly to do with my being a Closet Anomalist and because I was under the mistaken impression that he and his compatriots were in many ways 'untouchable'. Sadly I found out too late that they aren't. Both Greg Bishop and Paul Kimball have been great supporters of my blog in it's relative infancy, through comments and suggestions and other things like this. It will probably be one of my greater regrets that I never got to know the guy who has influenced me in so many ways. I think that in a lot of ways, it was also Mac Tonnies that was the real inspiration for this blog.

So take some time today to remember Mac Tonnies.

-Tony