It's hard to imagine, now or at any time, that a person with relationships, a career, assets, and future plans could disappear one day, leaving no clues behind and never being heard from again. It's even harder to comprehend when that person holds a measure of celebrity. And still it happens, leaving us to wonder if the missing meet with unspeakable ends, or if the desire to escape fame's prying eyes is enough to make them head for the mountains. The Strange Vanishing of Dorothy Forstein is a much more disturbing case, wherein a very average homemaker is abducted from her home, with the only evidence being the testimony of a terrified child. A vast search is conducted, turning up nothing, and then the case is, to quote Brent Swancer, "swept under the rug." Even in a world of high strangeness, the behavior of authorities around this case makes little sense, as do the seemingly intentional barriers to further investigation. (CM)

At the 12th meeting of the United Field Researchers in Olavarria, Argentina, organizers took special pains to pay tribute to Dante Rivera, a groundbreaking ufologist, and attendees had the opportunity to hear lifelong researcher Luus Bergos speak on the topic of UFO sightings over the past decades. Olavarria being its own UFO hotspot, attendance was high. The conference was certainly not the only news from Argentina as a Resident of Salta Photographs Strange Phenomenon. Not only did architect Ignacio Pancetti think to pull out his cellphone and start filming the oscillating object in the sky, but he zoomed in sufficiently that the grainy appearance allowed him to capture more motion on film. Finally, we look back 50 years toThe Day a UFO Left Us Stunned . In the heart of Argentinian wine country, the city of Mendoza was beset with UFO sightings back in 1968, with some citizens later claiming contact with, even abduction by, alien beings. While the most extraordinary claims are hard to prove, the sheer number of reports make it impossible to deny that something of significance happened that day. (CM)

Sometimes nature and humans accidentally team up to produce the equivalent of a diamond ring baked into your bundt cake. Only instead of putting that chocolate embedded sparkler on your finger, you show it to your jeweler friend who examines it, locks it away, and says he doesn't know what you're talking about. No cake for him. Next--and much harder to deny--Laser Mapping Finds 60,000 Mayan Structures and a Pyramid in Guatemalan Jungle. This remarkable discovery shows the Mayans were a much more densely populated civilization than previously believed and waged wars earlier than thought. And the mapping process means archeologists will just keep learning without needing to be on location. (CM)

Being unemployed in Ohio needn't be dull, as Lisa Stout has demonstrated by, apparently, finding a sure-fire pic of Nessie online from an "underwater Earth contributor." The cynics among us might point out the glaring Photoshop characteristics of the image, but Glasgow Boy still wants to ask if it's A Nessie Photograph from 2015? He and his commenters have given it close scrutiny and, inevitably, reach no agreement on what it shows. Meanwhile, across the Pond, a Georgia Sea Monster Turns Out To Be Just Modern Art. "The artist, Zardulu" offers the good folk of the state "a taxidermied shark dressed up with papier mache to resemble a sea monster of legend." Mind you, this is an improvement of one of his earlier artistic works which required the near-drowning of an iguana in a toilet. Perhaps there's a symbolism in that which has eluded the artist. (LP)

Researcher Anthony Bragalia makes some serious charges against the proponents of the infamous Majestic 12 UFO crash documents. He claims that Stan Friedman and Robert and Ryan Wood have known for more than a decade that those "government" UFO crash papers, many of which were provided by Timothy Cooper, are fraudulent, based on the findings of a world-expert forensic linguist named Carole Chaski who they themselves engaged. Chaski says "they know they are forgeries.” Cooper himself has recanted his prior work, saying "The MJ-12 documents are a hoax and those who promote them as reality know this, or should know this.” Serious UFOlogists have, of course, long ago dismissed the MJ-12 documents as frauds. (PH)

Nick Redfern gives us a pre-bedtime report designed to ensure we never sleep well again. Ever. According to Redfern, it isn't just our blood that hungry entities are interested in. Our life force energy is apparently delicious and nutritious as well. We hope he posts a followup on how to recover from being a supernatural creature's untimely meal.  With this in mind, it is not at all surprising to learn of the military's interest inThe Paranormal As A Tool For Warfare. From psychics who know what an enemy is plotting, to Sufis with djinns that do their information gathering, to precognition...Historically, military powers have been open to the limitless powers of the mind as both a defense and a weapon of war. What's next...ghost armies? (CM)

"Something similar to the AI revolution may have happened at other points in the universe", according to Susan Schneider while dishing out her maverick theories to The Daily Galaxy. We're just curious if there's an extraterrestrial edition of The Anomalist floating around there. It's a big universe after all. But is Susan's reference to "AI revolution" code for Roko's Basilisk? Hopefully that's not an explanation for THe Great Silence. If it is, Abraham Loeb spills a few beans on the workable methodologies on SETI Scientists Deciding To Search For Radio Signals in hopes of answering the question, "Is 'Oumuamua An Alien Probe?" And they're not talking about one of these. Even if this interstellar "asteroid" lacks an alien origin, or motive, puny Earthlings still survey the stars in hopes of eavesdropping on Roy Neary's abductors. Some astronomers reckon We Haven't Found Aliens Because We Can't See Past Our Cosmic Hot Tub. Eric Mack's encouragement for Jill Tarter to expound upon her "Spooning the ocean for whales" hypothesis bears strange, and provocative fruit. (CS)

Ouija boards get a bad rap, and Tim Binnall's not helping things by spreading tales of panicky kids drinking paranormal Kool Aid. What's worse, there was another similar event which flew under everyone's radar. For all things truly spooky, there's a corner of The Aloha State with a unique population of spooks, ghosts, and fatal accidents designed to increase the otherworldly census count. Who else but Brent Swancer has the (Missing) 411 on Hawaii's Mysterious Haunted State Park on the Big Island. Not everyone can afford airfare to Hawai'i, but Kayla Schroeder-Kessler has plans for a fun roadtrip to The Joshua Ward House in Salem, Massachusetts. replete with executed witches and eerie photos notorious for stumping the staunchest skeptics. (CS)

Keen readers will remember last week's recounting of Argentinian cattle mutilations followed by the mysterious draining of a nearby 32,000 gallon water tank. Thankfully Scott Corrales is sticking to the case like gum to his shoe, uncovering more strange correspondences and happenings than you can shake a stick at. While ending sentences with a preposition is a crime, Tim Binnall found another thread in the tapestry where a Farmer Points To Chupacabras As Culprit Behind Cattle Attacks. Must be a thirsty little bastard to guzzle all that blood and chasing it with ungodly volumes of water. In other fortean news, break out your wallets or re-mortgage the house 'cause the Cottingley Fairies Hoax Pictures Expected To Fetch £2,000 At Auction on October 4th. Should they be real, despite the late repudiations by the Wright Sisters, no one would be surprised if the snaps turned into flower petals come the next morning. (CS)

It's always a joy to encounter one of Ten Thousand, as Randall Munroe put it, when a fellow human discovers something that's old hat to another human. In this case, Joseph Frankel's not arguing for the paranormal, while not completely dismissing the possibility. More provocatively, Joseph makes a strong case for the enduraning cultural, and psychological, impact of Julian Jaynes's theory of the bicameral mind without citing Jaynes once. Journeying deeper into the center of our minds, Jak Hutchcraft is our Virgil as you dare enter The Weird and Mystical World of Sleepwalking, made of equal parts creepy and science. Even in the 21st century, there isn't much need for science when it comes to studying the mind and consciousness since the phenomenon is deeply personal. Take Michael Grosso's meditation upon the The Mystery In The Mirror, and the mystery within ourselves with the capacity for unexpected transformation. (CS)

Ptypically, pterodactyls prefer warmer ptemperatures, or prehistoric ptimes, but Wisconsin? Just when Lon Strickler thought flying reptiles were lactose intolerant, he shares this tall tale of a close encounter of the scaly kind you betcha. Cheesheads aren't the only ones sharing their brushes with the paranormal, dontchaknow, as Bigfoot Evidence's channel shares footage from when Yeti Was Spotted By Swimmers Near A Waterfall in the homeland of the President's best friend forever. Sometime after the two-minute mark, Robot Lady Voice breaks down the video, the circumstances, and the arguments for the footage's veracity. We sure as heck wish Lon had video of this Insectoid Nocturnal Visit. But we'll settle for an eerie sketch. (CS)

Long before Bruce Campbell uttered, "Groovy" somebody's ancestor, or a time-traveller, left something amazing behind. Fortunately Brett Tingley has more than a few clues to share with archaeologists. While the Hand of Prêles is unambiguously a hand, J.P. Robinson's imagination's been piqued by The Axum Stelae and if they are depictions of multi-storey buildings from antiquity. Was there a "Manhattan" in the Ethiopian desert? We trust you'll keep an open mind without your brains spilling all over mom's best carpet. Even curiouser is Tobias Wayland's inquiry into The Piasa Bird, replete with early European explorers trespassing upon the North American continent, gargantuan crytpids, and the legends surrounding a singularly curious mural. (CS)

There's a new kid in the podcast universe, and who better to introduce him than Alex Tsakiris! The topics? The unusual suspects like near-death experiences, parapsychology, UFOs, and more than a few others. While Al Borealis may not be his powerword, it doesn't detract from his real topics. Rather than declaring, "We've only just scratched the surface", the pair continue their provocative, and wide-ranging conversation in Part Two tackling the thorny topics of technology, consciousness and everything inbetween. (CS)

In May of 1951 a bunch of GIs fired at a pulsing, "attacking" light, their bullets making a metallic ding as they hit the craft. Suddenly the men were “swept by some form of a ray that was emitted in pulses." Three days later, the entire company was evacuated by ambulance, suffering from dysentery and an extremely high white-blood-cell count. The story that emerged is but one of many interviews conducted by John P. Timmerman of the Center for UFO Studies; the reports that resulted from his interviews were collected in a book entitled Grassroots UFOs by Michael Swords, published by Anomalist Books. Robert Taylor of the UK was also personally Assaulted by UFOs: The Livingston Incident. J.P. Robinson recounts this classic episode, in which Taylor lost consciousness as small spheres with weird spikes attached themselves to his trouser legs. Whoa! (PH)

Chris Woodyard, inspired by Dr. Beachcombing, treats readers to a delightful bit of 19th century fiction wherein optography is used to reveal the identity of a murderer. However it was not so successful at healing a broken heart. Then in a more fact based--but no less fortean--tale, we hear of the deep connection between US President Garfield and his enormous Newfoundland dog, Veto. At his master's passing, Veto Goes Mad, and we will never know if it was canine heat stroke or some otherworldly connection that changed the dog's behavior forever that day. Finally, in what might be called an ultimate celebration of life (or desecration of a dead body, depends on your perspective), Posing the Corpse reflects on a tradition of making the dead part of their own funeral celebration. No doubt at a time when more people died from illness than lived through it, a fear of death was muted by a desire to live each moment to its fullest. Probably best not to become nostalgic over that practice though--neighbors would probably complain, although they did back then, too. (CM)

Jason Offutt reports on the monster lore of Prince Edward Island, Canada, showing strong parallels to the province's Celtic background. The tiny yet incredibly beautiful province has been linked to sea serpents, fairies, a murderous flock of birds called the Sluagh which is purportedly comprised of the souls of sinners, and Bigfoot (because even the Hairy Guy needs some really great fries now and then). Evidently when he's not being a junk food junkie, he's invading the privacy of others. Elsewhere, was Bigfoot Caught Spying on Swimmers in Russia? The footage included in this piece is very inconclusive though, so we probably don't have to worry about the Hairy Guy joining the ranks of the growing list of high profile creeps. (CM)

In this update from Anomalist Books, we present an in-depth interview with Eric Wargo and a detailed review of the new book by Joshua Cutchin. About the interview, host Erik Davis writes: "In part one of our conversation, author, blogger, and dreamer Eric Wargo talks about uncertainty, determinism, Zen, the evidence for 'feeling the future,' and his brilliant and head-spinning book Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious."  Then in Faeries and Aliens, Neil Rushton gives a detailed review of Cutchin's Thieves in the Night , which he says "represents the most detailed attempt to date to collate both folklore and contemporary testimony in order to understand the phenomenon of supernatural child abduction...Cutchin’s wide-ranging evaluation is a real gift for future researchers into this complex subject." (PH)

A case from 1988 raises the question: what are we to make of all those reports over the years that describe large, slow-moving triangular aircraft? Secret projects, or ....? A decidedly non-triangular object appears in An "Invisible UFO" Over Tucumán in Argentina. By "invisible UFO" they mean an anomalous object that was not apparent to the photographer at the time the photo was taken. Based on the "Decimal Hypothesis" (whatever that is), Luis Burgos predicts that there will likely be an increase in UFO sightings in Argentina and neighboring countries during 2018. See Argentina's 2018 UFO Flap - So Far. Seems like Argentina has always been a bit of a UFO hotspot, often involving humanoids, such as this case from 1979: Telepathic Humanoid in Mendoza? (PH)

There was a bit of excitement in the UK recently. Sightings of a WWII bomber had people in a flurry, particularly since it was low flying as if it was about to crash. Social media erupted with claims that made us wonder if anyone thinks for themselves at all anymore. It was just part of a military exercise, folks. Question everything--got it? Micah Hanks does just that with this next piece: These Flight Incident Reports Tell of Odd Occurrences Over the Famous Bermuda Triangle. Unexplained equipment failures seem to be the hallmark of this strange area, and these real incidents certainly back up claims of high strangeness. Or they could just be equipment failure with no connection to anything bizarre whatsoever. You be the judge. (CM)

Kevin Randle provides more information on the barrel explanation for the Socorro sighting, which we mentioned in a post on the 25rd. And although he finds this theory interesting and slightly disturbing, "It just doesn’t fit in with what we really know based on the interviews conducted on the night of the sighting. It doesn’t fit with the physical evidence collected. It doesn’t fit with the other sightings that were reported to the police prior to Zamora arriving on the scene." Over at UFO Conjectures, Jose Antonio Caravaca poses a lot of questions in UFOs: An overlapping "reality" within another. For example: "Is the absence of evidence and the intangibility of the phenomenon a consequence of the fact that most of this 'projection' of which the witness is the protagonist occurs in that other reality that does not persist in our dimension once the experience has concluded?" According to his Distortion Theory, an external agent connects us to an expanded reality where we encounter UFOs. We still wonder what that external agent is, though. (PH)

Malcolm Smith treats us to an explanation of the legend of the Amazons. As it turns out, they weren't a legend at all, but a real tribe deep within the Amazonian jungle. While there were no lasso's of truth or invisible planes, this tribe was fascinating in its social structure, its architecture, and its habit of abducting males each year with whom to mate. Moving on to another legendary people, Brent Swancer discusses the folklore of The Mysterious Little People of Japan’s Far North. Purportedly ranging in size from mere inches to 2 or 3 feet in height, this dimunutive people were known for building their huts over pits dug into the ground, the remains of which have been found on occasion by archeologists. As science discovers more of the Earth's hominid history, perhaps we will one day discover that these tiny people of Japan were not merely folklore. (CM)

Lon Strickler seems beset lately by emails from the Mount Vernon area describing encounters with tall, thin, hairless humanoids with black eyes. And while some of the witnesses describe no sense of threat whatsoever, others feel a deep sense of malice or dread. For example, a Tall Smelly Humanoid Encountered in Scotland left the witness, who was in an unlit park late at night, with the memory of a rancid stink and the sound of an unnatural childlike laugh. Since the witness was on edge to begin with, the threat level was difficult to determine.  Saving the most terrifying for last, we have a description of a Ghoulish Humanoid Running Between the Headstones. This report from Illinois describes an encounter with another hairless humanoid, one than ran impossibly fast in a crouched, 4-legged fashion. The creature circled the witness repeatedly during a walk through a cemetery at night (Do we need to talk about poor life choices people?) yet somehow the encounter ended without incident. Anyone want speculate on an interdimensional zombie apocalypse? (CM)

Timothy Green Beckley recounts his life in porn and UFOs, and where the two intersected, so to speak. So we get the alien abduction experience of Marilyn Chambers, who says the aliens offered her a drink before having "their way with her." We are also told that the wife of contactee Truman Bethrum identified an alien named Aura Raines as the cause of the Bethrum breakup in divorce papers that his wife filed in California. Much more of the same is available in this except from Beckley's new book, Screwed By The Aliens: True Sexual Encounters With ETs. And speaking of contactees, check out The Life and Crimes of Reinhold O. Schmidt. Schmidt was a salesman who used his claims of a UFO contact in November of 1957 to steal money from his elderly female fans--a scheme that eventually landed him in jail. On Earth. (PH)

Jerome, Arizona, may be the most haunted town in North America. Founded in 1878 when a rich copper vein was discovered, the community grew in wealth, shamelessness, and lawlessness until the Great Depression, after which it proceeded to shrink, dry up, and blow away. By 1950, there was nothing left of the town save for the spirits of countless murdered prostitutes, prospectors, and any hapless individual unfortunate enough to wind up on the receiving end of a weapon. But it's not always ghost towns that are the most paranormally active: The Horror of a Haunted Hawaiian Restroom and Tales of Other Boo Loos. Everyone has experienced a public restroom or porta-potty that was truly terrifying, but what if the terror was based on ghosts instead of...ahem..."other things"? At least then the screaming you would hear wouldn't be your own. Good luck finding a ghost hunter, even if you doubled the going rate. (CM)