Stephen Amis is more than an independent sci-fi, action, and fantasy filmmaker. He now comes forth to talk to Michael Ryan about a series of truly "alien" encounters he and family members have had at least since he was around five years old. Amis' coming to terms with these experiences led him to believe there's more than mere "nuts-and-bolts" going on. As with many ufological researchers, Amis suspects "consciousness" may play some role in the abduction conundrum. Before Stephen's appearance, Christine Scott does a glowing review of the late Ann Druffel and D. Scott Rogo's The Tujunga Canyon Contacts. Scott praises Druffel and this work about an early set of abductions for its scientific research, clarity of exposition, and coauthor collaboration. Rich Reynolds wonders are UFO "Abductions" - A Reality or Transferent Reality? Rich doesn't consign all abduction claims to hoaxes, but he does think they've been influenced by human cultural factors. Rich posts two additional items originating with the same author providing other "takes" on this subject: Our Pal Preston Dennett Placed This on FB [11/20] -- What Are We to Make of Such Accounts? and People Be Crazy? (WM)

We're taking a look at one of the oldest professions (No, not that one!), the practice of the Fairy Woman. She was an actress, a herbalist, and a highly persuasive snake oil salesman, making it a lucrative career choice for those with the cajones to do it. In fact no real otherworldly skill was required, provided the practitioner had a goodly supply of family members willing to partake in the shenanigans. Resurrecting the dead (whose souls were residing in an In Between fairy realm) was all in a day's work, at least until clients grew weary of paying or their coffers ran dry. Then it was jail time for the Fairy Woman, who oddly enough could not convince any fae or past clients to bail her out. For the full fascinating story, see The Fairy Witch of Carrick-on-Suir and check out the podcast, which also touches on fairy food and "hungry ghosts." (CM)

Independent researcher Tom Talbot and University of Michigan's Dr. Henry Wright and Anthropology PhD. student Brendan Nash discuss discoveries indicating 11,000 BCE Clovis technology in the Great Lakes basin. But what about the claim that A 'Stonehenge-Like' Structure Exists in Lake Michigan, and Is 9,000 Years Old? John O'Shea, another U of M prof, here suggests, in an embedded video, a similar stone arrangement in Lake Huron was a "drive lane" for herding animals for mass caribou killings. But the "Stonehenge" comparison and "Mastodon drawing" in the K102.5 Kalamazoo Michigan article remain up for interpretation. Graham Hancock's new Netflix series is garnering lots of viewers and scads of criticism, notes Jason Colavito in The Strange and Dangerous Right-Wing Freakout Over Ancient Apocalypse. Attackers think the series is wrong and derivative, racist in tone, anti-science, and conspiracy-mongering. Speaking of controversies, is philologist Dr. Andrew Breeze's claim of a Greek Discovery of Iceland Supported by Linguistic Evidence a sound argument? Whether Norse scholars will agree with English profs is debatable, but Paula Tsoni's included "Iceland" video offers what some might call "cold, hard evidence" for the claim. (WM)

Against the still unreleased ODNI/DoD UAP report publication anticipated on Halloween, the Fiscal Year 2023 NDAA seems to be churning forward on time. Douglas Dean Johnson does a "first-pass" at the UFO/UAP-related text in the bill as reconciled by delegates from House and Senate. First up, the Pentagon's new creation already-running under the title "All-domain Anomalies Resolution Office" would keep that branding. This beats out the Congressionally-proposed "Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena Joint Program Office." It will be observed that whatever the Congressional acronym would have been, "AARO" flows off the tongue far better. Perhaps the most far-reaching protection to "whistleblowers," a "private cause of action" against the government, has been removed. Some will wince at the dropping of "a proposed definitional change to exclude from the scope of the phenomena being investigated 'temporary nonattributed objects of those that are positive identified as man-made.'" They may also become uneasy at the transfer of the mandated historical study from Congress' Government Accountability Office (GAO) to the AARO. Look to Douglas for further analysis. (WM)

British barrister Isaac Koi has an early Christmas present for UFO researchers. And there's more than one item under the tree! Our headline gives the news; Koi describes how this all happened and provides quotes from major researchers on both sides of the abduction issue to reinforce the significance of this permission. Also Now Online -- About 3,000 pages of President Clinton White House UFO Documents (Rockefeller Initiative etc), from Grant Cameron's Archives. A huge bequest by the noted Canadian researcher plus some amazing reconstruction work by Koi are behind this addition. Hold on to your proverbial hats; Over 62,000 Pages of the Best of UFO Twitter - Archiving UFO Twitter as Searchable PDFs is the next item to "unwrap"! Allowing for the well-known weaknesses of Twitter, Koi successfully argues for his particular procedure, notes the critical help of "QEDJoe" in achieving the result, and provides instructions for those fluent in "Computer" to use the code for their own searches. And for those fluent in reading Russian, there's a Second pile of Soviet Material on UFOs and "Non-Recurrent Ultrafast Phenomena" Now Online (1980s-1990s). Approaching the end of yet another "Annus Horribilis," it's worth giving thanks for this too-often-unthanked-if-not-thankless task Koi and allied researchers are doing. (WM)

Our first story takes place on an evening in Paris, with a lonely protagonist and what appears to be a bilocated best friend in London who temporarily sweeps her off her feet. Backing up the claim is the recall of a hotel proprietor and some written evidence by the best friend in the lady's diary. In this next report, a Ghostly Face Appears in Window of Haunted British Castle, and it's a creepy, perfectly placed one. This makes us immediately suspicious that some tomfoolery is being committed, so take it with an enormous grain of salt. (CM)

Brian Dunning attacks a local Missouri legend that, as he notes upfront, produced a "cottage industry" for a perhaps-unfortunately-named small town. Brian also has explanations for a variety of such local wonders worldwide. Dunning maintains that Native American lore seemingly predating such "spooklights'" did not see print "until well into the 1900s." This is not an especially strong point. Indigenous peoples' wisdom and memory were long undervalued by white colonials and have only recently become recognized and valued by traditional science. With that in mind we read Bibhu Dev Misra's Native American Legends about the Star People and Their Flying Shields. "Flying Shields" are not just the property of ancient Mediterranean civilizations, Dev Misra shows, and finds connections between New World kachinas and Australian aboriginal Wandjina art. Dev Misra argues for "a possibility that our understanding of the UFO phenomenon can be enriched through an understanding of the indigenous beliefs and traditions." The Native American Star People tradition has been explored in depth by Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke in several books, including More Encounters with Star People: Urban American Indians Tell their Stories and Space Age Indians: Their Encounters with the Blue Men, Reptilians, and Other Star People, published by Anomalist Books. (WM)

This story out of Ontario, Canada, features an intriguing video taken by a pair of fishermen who were recording images of the shoreline. The video shows a reddish brown bipedal creature crossing from the forest, through an open area, and back into the forest. Tim Binnall calls the video "jaw dropping," but he notes that "the specific time and location of the sighting as well as the identity of the witnesses are all unknown at this time." Then we hear that Western New York Residents Claiming Sasquatch Lives Among Them. In spite of poor photographs and a basic lack of any real evidence, hope springs eternal among Chautauqua County residents. That makes them one of us. (CM)

Billy Cox compares old and new government machinations against UFO transparency. He describes formation of the National UFO Historical Records Center and the mass of both US-governmental and other reports worldwide needing to be archived and made publicly available for developing meaningful data patterns. Billy also links to Jan Aldrich's Research Trip and Archives Report 2021, concerning Jan's, David Marler's, and others' work to unearth old reports that resonate with those of today. Example: A May 1952 F-94 encounter with a UFO south of Chorwon, South Korea. Remarkably, several factors in that intercept attempt match those of an event the same year, presented in an Eyes on Cinema video as Canberra PR9 Wing Commander Cyril Withers Talks about Witnessing a UFO at 55.000 ft., 1952. And Recent Pilot UAP Sightings Point To Aviation Safety Challenges, Experts Say. The Debrief's Micah Hanks and Chrissy Newton show how even later-identified phenomena can cause aerial hazards requiring study and mitigation. Attempts in the military to remove the stigma against reporting must also extend to commercial aviation. For instance, Watch a Huge UFO Hover with No Sound over Republic, Missouri and imagine you were a pilot flying at about the same location! (WM)

The current Atlantis excitement is much more than a harmless Don Quixotean quest for a non-existent ancient civilization, supported by money-making glitzy TV shows and other media. Katy Evans shows how Plato's creation mutated since the 1870s into something possessing much darker, evil aspects that would surprise many. It's also part of an anti-science element presently rife in this country. Evans' main archaeologist source Stephanie Halmhofer bemoans ideas that Atlantis or ETs must have helped native Americans achieve the feats European colonials found upon arrival in the New World. But while archaeologist Flint Dibble here says "There's this misconception that archaeology is about solving mysteries," Ruth Schuster headlines Archaeologists Solve Century-old Mystery of Prehistoric 'Desert Kites'. Three new papers conclude that vast stone arrangements first discovered from the air were simply animal traps and not religious sites or other types of human gathering spots. Schuster reports how archaeologists explain how the walls erected worldwide, which apparently never rose higher than 80 centimeters, served this herding function. They also differ in suspected purpose from similar-appearing Saudi Arabian monumental constructions, the "mustatils." BBC America features The US' 2,000-year-old Mystery Mounds. Brandon Withrow's story of the Hopewell Culture ceremonial earthworks includes how surprised Europeans were to see such advanced geometry and mathematical sophistication, plus astronomical alignments. And Jason Colavito quotes Scott Wolter: Space Aliens Helped Templars Found America. (WM)

Our first story involves identical twins whose reputations were shredded when an uninformed prof could not conceive of them scoring very similarly on exams. So they became lawyers and took their case to court. Nancy Segal, a psychologist who founded the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton, told the jury about the "very close intertwining" of twins, that they are likely to have similar tastes, talents, social preferences, and academic achievements. Nothing spooky here. Next, when the newest remake of Disney's Haunted Mansion movie was being filmed, Actors Were Given Crystal Balls to Prepare for Paranormal Roles - Did They Help? Well, as it turns out, these orbs have a long history of setting an anticipatory mood in specific situations. It may have been a stroke of genius for the director to unsettle his actors in an attempt to bring an air of authenticity to their scenes. (CM)

The focus of "weeks of almost Super-Bowl-esque building," a long-awaited aircraft was revealed—sort of—publicly on December 2nd. Brett Tingley delineates why this new stealth bomber is so ground-breaking. Three The War Zone writers expand upon the unveiling and background in This Is The B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber (Updated). All explain that only a basic 2-D frontal view was afforded of the craft, and declarations from relevant officials were carefully vague. Though the "aircraft number 001" example rolled-out from its hanger probably won't fly until next year, we wonder whether predecessor developmental craft having the same "futuristic, flying-saucer-like design" caused UFO reports. Another still-mysterious DoD effort has John Greenewald asking What is the Pentagon's Newest UFO Office AARO Up To? John says an FOIA case "has shed some light on what's going on—and it contradicts some recent rumors out there." Most importantly, the correspondence John has does indicate an "active AARO activity." And this might help us understand the lateness of the ODNI/DoD report to Congress. After 25 minutes John moves from this story to general Q&A, including that the "official" government release of the three "initial" UFO videos may have happened because of, though not in direct response to, a John Greenewald FOIA request. (WM)

We tend to think of obscure Bigfoot-like creatures as being safely tucked away in China, Malaysia, Tibet—anywhere that isn't our usual stomping grounds. But according to Nick Redfern, North America is home to an additional number of unidentified, strange hominids, both large and small. (The possible multitude of Bigfoot-like creatures was noted years ago in The Field Guide To Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates by Loren Coleman and published by Anomalist Books.) And then there's The Chupacabra: Could There be FOUR Different Types? Well, according to Nick, yes there could be. Although he does concede some Chupacabra descriptions sound more like thylacine encounters. But that's for another day and another report. (CM)

We arrive at the conclusion of John Keel's unfinished glossary. Of the five definitions Keel Sitemaster Doug Skinner first gives us, two are fairly obvious acronyms; "Unidentified Swimming Object" was a "USO" we'd not heard; "UWO" was completely new but maybe (?) sensible, and the "Varn-Lian Limit" as Keel explained it didn't make sense. Had he continued working on this vocabulary, Keel certainly would have sharpened this and other of his definitions. We see corrections in John's last eight entries, wrapped up in Doug's UFO Dictionary (33): Vibrations -- the Protocols of Zion. Doug and commenters note entries here on the "Wednesday Phenomenon" and "The Protocols of Zion," while Doug speculates upon what use John intended to make of a finished dictionary. But as Doug concludes, this compendium lends insight into Keel's terminology and thinking. (WM)

Whether their genesis is "god", karma, mathematical randomness, or something stranger, one thing is for certain — Coincidences happen. Since many of these events are anecdotal, with no empirical evidence to connect them, they are dismissed. But once you're in the sights of a coincidence, like Bernard Beitman, these's a je ne sais quois driving people to understand and discover more since they happen every day. Follow Deborah Netburn as she ducks down a particularly provocative rabbit hole of miracles and apprehend these wonders. Another angle to appreciate is you may not be consciously making decisions, but everything still works out for the best. Such is the case with Ran Anbar's professional experience with Unusual Guidance From The Subconscious where two patients let the better angels of their subconscious guide them and provide meaningful guidance. (CS)

While unlimited associative learning is redolent of mechanistic materialism, suggesting consciousness is the product of experiential conditioning, David Robson and Florence Craig certainly know how to evoke beauty and wonder from this argument for the emergence of consciousness from Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg. Set aside five minutes to apprehend this hypothesis and apprehend the wonders therein. Still the question remains — What Is Consciousness? Welp Werner Herzog asks about consciousness in his new film posing tough questions to scientists about where our thoughts and feelings come from. On the surface his inquiry appears to be about science and tech, controlling robots with brain sensors and such, there's much else of interest to be unpacked from his Theatre of Thought writes Richard James Havis. Despite all these electrodes, wires, and gadgetry Science Isn't Even Possible Apart From Non-Material Consciousness. You met Sabine Hossenfelder yesterday when she was interviewed by The Guardian's Killian Fox, now Denyse O'Leary sets up all these notions of science only to yank the rug from under them. (CS)

Poltergeist activity is often linked to pubescent teens, their hormones and energies raising all sorts of Cain, but sometimes a teen will just be a teen and troll their elders. Tim "Law And Order" Binnall gets down to brass tacks on a particular haunting devoid of supernaturalness with a reserved admiration for the youth's cleverness. Not all the kids today are hooligans taking advantage of their elders, as a Four-Year Old Identified As Rinpoche's Reincarnation at the foot of the Himalayas. On the other paw, cats are also known for being mischievous and Undine's newspaper clipping of the day concerns Topsy The Ghost Cat Has Risen To Bid For Fame nearly a century ago. After cashing in on one of her nine lives, Topsy demonstrated how tough cats can be in the face of adversity. (CS)

While Morgan Rehnberg, or his editor, spoiled everything in the lede there's still much to unpack since the new measurement doesn't necessarily eliminate the possibility of airborne life in Venus's clouds. Not to mention similar techniques could be used for exoplanets and such. In other disappointing news, a Double Telescope Study Of Zone Where Wow! Signal Originated Comes Up Empty. While the poetically named 2MASS 19281982-2640123 may not host communicating extraterrestrial life, this doesn't take away from the reality of such a remarkable signal. Perhaps Bob Yirka and other scientists should change their approach? On the brighter side, we may have already met the martians and they are us! Once upon the red planet was once blue, or maybe purple, and during the late heavy bombardment a little thing called panspermia helped spread important organics through the solar system supporting Søren Thiesen's thesis All Life In Our Solar System May Have Begun On Mars. Skeptical? Dig the science behind this maverick proposal in the article. (CS)

Science is a tool and oftentimes it tends to be quite dull, so people spice it up with multiverses, string theory, hypothetical particles, and SETI. But often belief in those topics detract from the primary pursuit of facts and have us seeking knowledge. If you thought Richard Dawkins and his ilk were hardcore, Ms. Hossenfelder is diamonds and she has more than a few pearls of wisdom to support Joe Friday's maxim of "Just the facts." On the other hand(bag), The Anomalist is here to have fun and we're positively tickled by Paul Lavers's video concerning the Ancient Handbag Symbol and how its importance is much bigger than we can imagine. Not to mention this object's pervasiveness in ancient art across the globe. (CS)

While the necropsies of calves outside of Meeker, Colorado strongly suggest these cows fell victim to canines, a lack of tracks and no sightings of wolves since 1945 has ranchers and authorities scrathching their heads. No word of black helicopters nor if the corpses were thoroughly exsanguinated in Isabel Keane's piece. More high strangeness, this time from America's Vacationland of Maine, as Pete Warner investigates a wild curiosity. Here's What We Think Is On The Deer's Head In This Mysterious Trail Camera Photo leaving some to believe one is a unicorn, there are some stranger guesses as to what's going on with this deer. Also having a bit of fun is Karl Shuker who considers Woolly Beras And Hairy Huberts. Well they're one in the same and Karl shares a local superstition about the critters that has nothing to do with their capacity to predict how cold a winter will be. (CS)