Kidnapped by Bigfoot

Muchalat Harry

          This occurred in 1928 to a man named Muchalat Harry, a Native American of the Nootka tribe, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Harry was a trapper heading for the Conuma River to collect some beaver pelts when he was attacked.

          According to his report, one night he found himself being scooped up and bundled in his own blankets by a large hairy creature, roughly about 8 foot tall. He estimated that he had been carried two to three miles. When he was dropped out of his blanket, he found himself surrounded by close to twenty of the creatures, men, women and children. The area seemed to be a makeshift campsite (no fire) littered with large bones. He became terrified that the creatures were going to eat him.

          But that didn’t happen. Instead they seemed fascinated by this strange little man, so similar to themselves. A few came forward pulling gently at his clothing, what they must have assumed was his skin. To their amazement they found it loose. Several children also nervously crept up and sniffed at him. All this time Harry remained motionless and by late afternoon most of the tribe had grown bored with him and departed, presumably to hunt or gather food.

          Left by himself, Harry jumped up and bolted for the woods. He admitted later that the creatures did not follow him, but he was in a panic state and actually ran past his own camp, continuing on for a dozen more miles until he reached his hidden canoe. He then paddled the 45 miles downriver to Nootka. He arrived there torn, nearly frozen, and uttering wild cries.

          He was eventually nursed back to health, where he told his tale to some brothers in a nearby Benedictine mission and gave up his profession of trapping. Rarely even stepping out his own village.

        For more weirdness try Across the Wounded Galaxy by Rex Hurst

Blood from the Sky: Odd Things that Have Fallen from Above

On August 27^th, 1968 blood and flesh fell in 1/3 of a square mile area between the Brazilian towns of Cacpara and Sao Jose dos Compos. The downfall lasted between five to seven minutes. Later analysis determined that the material was of human origin and Type O variety. Odd things have been reported tumbling from the sky for centuries, but this was the first times items of this nature had been spotted.

Typical in these atypical events is that an inordinate amount of some type of animal- frogs, earthworms, fish- descends, leading people to believe that the cause is a tornado or water spout that hurled a school of the hapless creatures into the sky, only to crash some miles distant. But in this instance no such weather condition had occurred within 100 square miles of the area, leaving puzzled meteorologists and officials to shelve the incident in their unsolved mystery files.

There was however, two other odd occurrences reported five days prior to the event. On the night of August 22^nd several unidentified flying objects (as nebulous a term as that is) had been spotted over a dense forest area over 10 miles south of Sao Jose dos Compos. Watchers described it as a “war between at least 30 balls of red and blue light.” Others described it as more of a physical romp than a battle, as if the orbs were playing. The spectacle lasted nearly an hour with each color “whirling and chasing each other in a turbulent [and certainly un-aerodynamic] manner” until they all suddenly “blinked out”. Naturally no rational scientific explanation was forthcoming and apparently the indigenous people believed it to have some sort of religious meaning- though the specific nature of this belief has not been recorded.

The second incident occurred the next day on August 23^rd. A bus on the regular run from Sao Paulo was found abandoned on the side of the road. There was no sign of the driver or any passengers. Found inside the bus was a large number of bags and other parcels indicating a moderate amount of passengers, estimates ran to about 20 including the driver. There were no blood stains, bullet holes, broken windows, or signs that anyone was forcibly removed from the vehicle. However it is noted that the keys to the bus’s ignition were missing. There has been no sign to indicate what had happened to the bus’s occupants. Whether this incident is connected to the other two is up for speculation.

For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

Ancestral Visitors

            Several creatures of ill-fortune prowl around the bloodlines of the more noble families of old Tsarist Russia. Three of the noble lineages have had such creatures attach themselves to their households:

          The Zubov family of Strelna and Moscow has a reoccurring specter, which appears on the death of the current Count. The specter has only briefly been glimpsed by a scullery maid in 1636, and a half asleep footman in 1699. The specter has been described by both as a floating bald woman, wearing silken clothes, stained in some manner (whether it was by blood or mud is unclear). The specter howls out the name, ”Zubov! Zubov!” repeatedly. The Count is said to die within 48 hours of the specter’s appearance. It is unknown whether the visitation is the cause of the death, or simply reacts to the imminent demise of the current patriarch. Many believe that it is the cause, as evidenced in the memoirs of Sir David Luminsta, who was guest at the household of Stephan Zubov, then Count. The apparition was heard, but not seen, and within 12 hours the baron was dead.
As Sir Luminsta writes, “Count Stephan’s footman has just gone by in great haste, and he has told me that the Baron, after coming from the Castle, had gone to bed in perfect health, but that about half past two this morning, his own man hearing a noise in his master’s room went to him, and found him in the agonies of death, and before he could alarm the servants, his lordship was dead. The specter strikes again.”

          A further household with ghostly visitors is the Demidov family of Mayvin. There the spectral visitor is seen but does not speak. This creature is further different in that it appears to warn of the death of any member of the family, be they blood or married in. The visitor first appeared two days before the death of Nikita Demidov, second patriarch after the establishment of nobility. The specter is a small man, wrapped in a death shroud; hair is attached to the head in thin irregular wisps. Across the face and scalp and hands foul open sores are displayed, some apparently oozing pus. All who have looked upon this creature have described being overcome by a wave of nausea (vomiting is not unheard of here). A member of the family is said to die within a week when this specter visits.

          Additionally an identity has been placed to this visitor. Many who see it swear that it resembles a painting prominently displayed in the Family Manse, that of Demid Antufiev, establisher of the line. If it is indeed this old noble, the sores on the ghost give credence to the rumor that he had died of an aggressive and persistent case of syphilis, and not of a heart seizure as the family maintains. If it is indeed Demid Antufiev, then perhaps the addled ghost does not realize that his reign has long been over.

          The third family, the Panin, ennobled in 1767, the case seems to be that the visitor appears only after the head of the family has died. To them a strange entity, known as the Grey Piper, comes. He walks the hills by the family manner playing a sad melancholy song on bagpipes. The song is taken to be a song of lament for the Count’s passing, but its true purpose is unknown. The entity does not appear to be malevolent and does not approach anyone, but he is clearly heard and seen in the hills. This entity is said to have appeared for over 300 years.

The Yeren- The Chinese Bigfoot

     Nearly every culture has a variation on the Bigfoot legend, beginning with the character of Enkidu, the wild man of the woods, who is tamed by Gilgamesh and a holy prostitute.

      The Chinese variation on this legend is alternately called the 野人 –Yeren or Yeh Ren; 神农架野人-The Wildman; or人熊 The Monkey-Man. Most reports seemed to be focused around the mountains and forests in the province of Hubei in Central China. Descriptions of the creature place it as being smaller than its American or even Tibetan brethren.

Yeren Cave, Hubei Province, China

     Probably the best known tale of the Yeren occurred in 1957. During the morning of April 18^th, as the local men were away at their labors, Xu Fudi, a young mother, heard a scream from the family barn. She rushed out and spotted her 6 year old daughter struggling in the grips of a naked humanoid creature. It was roughly about five foot tall, around 88 pounds, with white skin covered in dark brown hair, with a broad chest and sunken in nose. Apart from that, it appeared to me nearly human.

     Xu Fudi grabbed an axe handle and frantically beat on the creature. The sudden attack surprised it, and the yeren sprang into a paddy field to escape. Unfortunately for it, the creature became stuck in the mud, allowing the mother to catch up and continue walloping on it. By this time several other women from the village had arrived and joined in on the beating. Sustaining numerous head wounds, the creature fell over.  Assuming that it was dead, the women  turned to console the little girl when the creature recovered consciousness and started to whimper, tears running from its eyes. The women returned to finish the job, making sure that it was dead by snapping its neck and tearing it to pieces.

     Reportedly a biology teacher from a neighboring village took away the yeren’s hands and feet, carefully preserving them in formaldehyde. It was said that for weeks afterwards mournful grunts and howls could be heard echoing from the nearby hills.

 For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

Infant Spontaneous Human Combustion

      We are all aware of the bizarre rumors of individuals randomly exploding into fire with no known scientific explanation- or no accepted scientific explanation. For the most part the victims of this occurrence have been alone and their ashes discovered later, along with a few leftover bits and pieces not consumed by the flames. The debate rages as to whether the cause has a biological explanation or if the people die due to some external interference. To add to the mystery there has been two cases, both in England, of spontaneous human combustion occurring in infants.

     In 1973 Parvindur Kaur, a 7 month old boy, and the carriage the baby was lying in burst into flames in the family’s living room, within full view of her mother, father, and two sisters. Initial attempts to extract the baby from the carriage were unsuccessful. The father received severe burns on his hands when he tried to pick up the child and ended up accidently dropping him back into the flames. While the younger daughter called for an ambulance, the other family members hurriedly brought in pots of water to douse the flames. They were able to pick up the baby after this and he was taken to the Burns Unit at Birmingham hospital. Despite the doctor’s best efforts, the child died the next day. An investigation found no cause for the fire, the focal point of it seemed centered around the child itself. The family blamed the carriage manufacturers and initiated a civil suit against them which was ultimately unsuccessful.

       The following year 6 month old, Samantha Bellows, also caught fire in her crib. Her parents woke one night, reacting to a wave of intense heat and found her crib ablaze. The crib was placed in the parent’s bedroom, it being a small flat. Later police found no evidence of forced entry in either the doors or windows, so it was doubtful that a stranger entered and started the fire. As the mother called for help, the father managed to rescue Samantha from the crib. As in the case above, he received severe burns, but managed to hold onto the child and rushed to the kitchen sink to cover her in water. The fire was extinguished but the baby died shortly thereafter. Both distraught parents were held for questioning, but ultimately were released due to lack of evidence of foul play.

 For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

Bigfoot Sightings Near Blood Mobiles

     In the otherwise peaceful area of Bath, New York a bizarre break-in occurred on the night of July 17^th, 1973. The Red Cross had been collecting blood that day from volunteers at Haverly High, the local high school, but their vehicle experienced a mechanical failure, forcing the group to spend the night in town. The local market offered the workers the use of their freezers to store the collected blood in for the evening, while technicians and nurses stayed at a nearby Howard Johnson's.

   The next morning the store manager arrived at the market to find that the back door had been broken into. Police were called in and discovered that the only articles to have been molested was the containers of blood. Several dozen packets were missing, while the rest of the consignment were thrown about the freezer. The market’s back door had not been picked open, but was savagely beaten in, the handle smashed off with a blunt object. Police suspected this to be the work of teenagers.

    The area had been experiencing severe electrical storms for several weeks, quite out of season for the region, and one such storm had struck on that particular night. Several large tracks were found embedded in a field adjacent to the store. The police ignored them as unrelated to the case, but a towns person later made a plaster mold of one of them. The bare footprint was measured at an incredible 22 inches long and 7 inches wide.

An old chestnut

    This discovery is compounded with a phone call the police received the night of the break in. A local man, Albert Biggs, reported being threatened by a monster when he returned home from a bar. He described it as being at least 8 foot tall, hairy, and naked. The creature, according to Biggs, walked upright and wielded a large club. The monster yelled at Biggs (not in English) and waved its weapon in a threatening manner. Biggs ran into his house and the creature departed. Police dismissed the call as a wild tale from one of the town’s many alcoholics.

    No person was ever arrested in connection with the break-in and eventually the case was shelved. The Red Cross workers collected the remaining donations and left Bath the next day. They have since come back nearly every year, with no re-occurrence of trouble.
 For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

The Vanishing Prisoner

            There was a bizarre incident at the Prussian prison of Weischselmunde (near Danzig) circa 1815, involving the disappearance of a man named Diderici. He had worked as a valet for an important man in the city. After his employer died suddenly of a stroke, Diderici had dressed up in his master’s clothes and a white wig and attempted to withdraw a large sum of cash from the family’s bank while impersonating the dead man. He was caught almost immediately and sentenced to 10 year imprisonment.

            One afternoon he was walking in chains in the walled prison’s exercise yard, with other prisoners walking directly ahead and behind him when, as described by the other prisoners, he “began to fade.” According to testimony taken of both guards and convicts within seconds Diderici became intangible, then invisible. His iron chains clanking to the ground.

Prison at Weischselmunde

 Officials suspected that the guards had been bribed in some way to let Diderici escape, but when the inquiry into the disappearance only yielded 28 identical stories, the authorities had no choice but to label the incident as a bizarre “act of God” and closed the case. Diderici, who had somehow made reality every prisoner’s dream, was never heard from again.

 For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

UFO Cultists and Cattle Mutilations

A series of possibly interconnected incidents occurred in rural Colorado in the summer of 1975. While occasional lone UFO sightings had been recorded in the area of Gunnison County, that July saw an explosion of activity. Various balls of green, blue, yellow, and red were recorded looping in odd patterns, chasing each other, and possibly fighting over the skies for four days. This was the mildest incident of the summer.

            At that time there were also several dozen cattle mutilations reported by ranchers. The majority of the blood had been drained from the cows and various pieces removed- ears, sex organs, kidneys, udders etc.- but never the same pieces from any two heifers. Most of the written accounts of this time use the phrase “surgical precision” when describing the wounds, but this may have been creative license on behalf of the reporters. It may simply be a person who is skilled at cutting meat. Several of the bovine appear to have been dropped from a height of twenty or thirty feet. Unusual, as they were found in their pens nowhere near any device capable of lifting such a heavy animal.

            While some may leap to a supernatural or extraterrestrial explanation for these dead cows, there may possibly (or probably to be exact) a very human cause. A blue plastic bag was found lying by a trash can in the Thornton City Greyhound bus terminal. Inside was a cow’s ear, a severed cow tongue, and a scalpel, but no blood. Whether it was left there by design or accidentally it indicates a very human origin to the mutilations.

      John Lahti, an investigator of paranormal claims, has come across an old organization which existed in the town of Pictin, Colorado, called the Silver Society or, alternatively, The Silver Raiment Society. It was originally formed (and even briefly incorporated) in the 1910’s and flourished in the 1920s. Very little documentation remains on this organization, but what does exist indicates that this group married the idea of astral projection with the possibility of contacting intelligent extraterrestrial life. Astral projection and other forms of meditation had become a fad in America during this time, along with many ideas imported from Eastern religions.  The organization was shut down in 1927, due to a federal court case involving back taxes.

            Or did it? A bizarre incident during the night of August 21^st, 1975 on the outskirts of Pictin may suggest otherwise. A motorist driving down Route 76 at about 3:30 a.m. encountered some 15 masked people in silver colored robes forming a roadblock with linked arms. As he stopped they attempted to encircle the vehicle, but he managed to turn around, nearly hitting several of them, and escape. The police paperwork on this incident has been lost in the subsequent decades or been misfiled. The incident has only been preserved because the motorist related the story to several reporters at the time.

            There has been some speculation, with no actual evidence, that the mutilations formed as part of a ritual for this group to communicate (or realistically, attempt to communicate) with an otherworldly entity. Whether this is a rite passed down through the generations or something new is up for grabs.

Marker 23

            In the late summer of 1718 the new road between Antwerp and Ghent was completed. Within a year a number of strange fatalities occurred. Over one hundred people died as a result of falling off of their horses or wagons and falling under the wheels. People on foot were unaffected. All of these occurred within the area of road marker 23.

          Troops were ordered to guard that particular part of the road, but no evidence of unlawful activity could be found. In fact, several troops died in full view of their comrades. The men simply fell off their horses and hit the ground with tremendous force. Autopsies revealed that the men died of fractured skulls, broken necks and the like.

          While local authorities were confused, John Weives, a water dowser, approached them. He maintained that the mysterious murdering force was a powerful magnetic current generated by an underground stream. As to why this affected only people riding on raised areas, such as a horse or wagon, he had no clear reason. He instead listed off, what the officer in charge wrote was “a barrage of nonsensical babble that only a savant or a lunatic could follow or find of interest.” Nevertheless they allowed Weives to apply his “solution”, which was to bury a copper box full of star shaped pieces of copper at the base of the stone marker. Since that point, there have been no strange fatalities in the area. 

          Although Weives made his living as a water dowser, and presumable knew something about underground streams, the local farmers believed that a devil was responsible for the deaths. They claim that they had it exorcized from the area, whereupon it entered the body of a black dog that barked backwards. The devil was finally purged from the land, when the dog was burnt to death on a traveling shrine containing the purported severed arm of St. Alena: a popular saint murdered by her parents for her faith in the later 7^th century and invoked by the Belgium peasants for protection against toothaches.