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What's the matter? Bad luck got you down? Did a black cat run across your path? Did you walk underneath a ladder? Did you step on a crack? Did a bird fly into your house? Did the clock stop? Did a mirror break? Did you spill some salt? Did you walk out a different door then the one you entered? Did you whistle at the dinner table?
Is it Friday the 13th?
Well don't let bad luck get you down...fight back with another weekly dosage of your favorite bad luck breaker...CONSPIRACY JOURNAL! Here once again to bring you all the news and info that THEY don't want you to know.
This week, Conspiracy Journal brings you such finger-crossing stories as:
- Are We Safe From the Sun? -
- Monsters and the Men-in-Black -
- "Object" in Baltic Sea May Be Secret Nazi Anti-Submarine Device -
- Pressie the Lake Superior Sea Serpent -
AND: Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky
~ And Now, On With The Show! ~
NEW! NEW! NEW!
The Authentic Book Of Ultra-Terrestrial Contacts
From The Secret Alien Files of UFO Researcher Timothy Green Beckley
THE ULTRA-TERRESTRIAL “INVASION” OF THE EARTH HAS BEGUN!
The Ultra-Terrestrials are here and they are walking amongst us! According to the world famous “Mr UFO” Timothy Green Beckley, throughout history we have been encircled by invisible beings who can upon occasion materialize and take up a variety of shapes and facades – even looking so human in appearance so that they can walk on the surface undetected. Some of these beings may come in peace. . . while others are here for their own nefarious purposes, perhaps going so far as to control our minds, possess our body and do bloodcurdling experiments upon us.
EXCLUSIVE: WORLDWIDE REPORT BY JORGE J. MARTIN CONFIRMS CASTRO RECENTLY CONFRONTED A CRASHED UFO AND ITS ALIEN CORPSE!
This work includes dozens and dozens of strange cases taken from over 40 years of dedicated research by the author who was editor for over twenty five years of UFO REVIEW – THE OFFICIAL FLYING SAUCER NEWSPAPER, and UFO UNIVERSE sold on newsstands worldwide. He has appeared on Coast to Coast AM, the History Channel’s UFO Hunters and most recently William Shatner’s Weird Or What? show where he revealed the true origins of a strange little creature who had been captured in a animal trap in Mexico and mistaken for an “alien baby,” which it definitely is not! Though its actual origin is even stranger and more abnormal.
Here are case studies that have never been published. For example... The trucker who says he took a space journey that covered Light Years. – The man from Tehran who claims “I was taken inside a flying saucer!” – The nine foot Martians and the Silvery Midgets. – Flower “People” and Alien Pods.– Space Monsters from afar . – The Emissaries of Peace, the Spacemen who seek love and not war!
Mr UFO says once we have separated the good and the negative Ultra-Terrestrials that it can benefit us to institute contact with these beings. He tells us how to contact the peace loving Guardians. How to set up a telepathic bond with The Watchers. Here are even the plans for The Nikola Tesla Scope, a communications device which may be used to “talk” with the “Outsiders.”
As a BONUS anyone ordering this book has an opportunity to receive at no additional cost a free 60 minute audio CD which discuses the various forms of alien contact and how to get the most positive benefits out of a UFO sighting or close encounter.
This incredible book is now available at the special price of only
$18 (plus $5.00 shipping).
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Be sure to tune in to Unraveling The Secrets Saturdays at 11:59PM EST
with your hosts, Wm. Michael Mott, Rick Osmon and Tim Swartz
on the PSN Radio Network.
This weeks guest: Paul Davids
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. UFO, TIMOTHY GREEN BECKLEY
Friday the 13th is my birthday. How appropriate in that in addition to being involved with UFOs and the paranormal most of my life, I am also Mr. Creepo horror host.
As a present to myself and to all those loyal customers and "fans" you will be able to own a copy of my classic work UFO SILENCERS: MYSTERY OF THE MEN IN BLACK starting Friday by going to the following link on Kindle and selecting the e-book version you would like. All Kindle books can be read on your personal PC. There is no charge to you of any kind.
Though I wrote this book several decades ago it has been updated several times and it is as relevant today as it was when first issued. Here is the link you must use to get the e-book/Kindle version of UFO SILENCERS.
Kindle Book: UFO Silencers
BIG NEWS COMING SOON ABOUT THE PREMIERE OF MY OWN RADIO SHOW -- 50 YEARS IN THE MAKING. . .LISTEN AT MIDNIGHT
- THE SUN GIVETH, THE SUN TAKETH AWAY DEPARTMENT -
Are We Safe From the Sun?
Solar flares keep on getting stronger - with latest hotspot the size of 15 Earths strung together.
The sun is a tempestuous mistress - and her outbursts are becoming more and more violent as the weeks go on.
The sun unleashed a huge flare Thursday (July 12), the second major solar storm to erupt from our star in less than a week.
The solar flare peaked at 12:52 p.m. EDT (1652 GMT) as an X-class sun storm, the most powerful type of flare the sun can have.
"It erupted from Active Region 1520, which rotated into view on July 6," NASA officials said in an alert. Active Region 1520, or AR1520, is a giant sunspot currently facing Earth.
According to NASA and the Space Weather Prediction Center (SPWC), which is operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, today's sun storm registered as an X1.4-class solar flare. It is more powerful than the X1.1 flare that erupted on July 6 from another giant sunspot known as AR1515, making this latest tempest the strongest solar storm of the summer so far.
The sunspot region AR1520 could be up to 186,411 miles (300,000 kilometers) long at its peak, solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said. It is about 50 percent larger than last week's sunspot AR1515.
"It's quite extensive," Young said, adding that sunspots the size of AR1520 are normal as the sun nears its peak of its weather cycle in 2013.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spotted the summer's first 'X' solar flare on July 6 - a huge outburst from the sun right at the top of the scale.
This came on the back of 12 'M' flares in just six days, with a M6.1 flare knocking out radio signals across the planet on July 5 - hinting at the destruction the sun could reign on our technology if Earth takes a full blast across its blow.
The sunspot group behind the flares - named as AR1515 - stretches across 118,681 miles (191,000km) of the sun's surface. This makes it's width more than 15 Earths set end to end, said NASA solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young.
The biggest flares are known as 'X-class flares' based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength. The smallest ones are A-class, which are similar to normal background levels, followed by B, C, M and X.
Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output, meaning an X is ten times an M and 100 times a C.
The sun is now heading into the peak of its 11-year solar flare cycle, with 2013 expected to the tumultuous year. With the increased spread in communications in the last 11 years, a sever solar storm could cause huge issues for the planet.
Radio blackouts occur when the X-rays or extreme UV light from a flare disturb the layer of Earth's atmosphere known as the ionosphere, through which radio waves travel.
The constant changes in the ionosphere change the paths of the radio waves as they move, thus degrading the information they carry. This affects both high and low frequency radio waves alike.
The same region has also produced numerous coronal mass ejections or CMEs. They have been observed and modeled by NASA's Space Weather Center (SWC) and are thought to be moving relatively slowly, traveling between 300 and 600 miles per second.
Since the active region itself is so southerly in the sun, CMEs from this region are generally unlikely to impact Earth.
Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an M5.6-class solar flare erupting from the sun's surface starting on July 2, from a huge sunspot called AR1515 in the sun's southern hemisphere.
The blast of particles - a 'coronal mass ejection' - was not directed towards Earth, but the charged particles caused brief radio interference across Europe. From a different spot, but on that same day, the sun unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME) that began at 4:36 AM on Tuesday.
Models from the NASA's Space Weather Center at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md, described the CME at traveling at nearly 700 miles per second, but do not show it heading toward Earth.
Sunspots are darker than the surrounding area because they are slightly cooler, which makes them less luminous. They are caused by the sun’s magnetic field becoming twisted – and it’s this twisting dynamic that can produce coronal mass ejections. These contain billions of tons of gases bursting with X-rays and ultraviolet radiation.
They are mind-bogglingly hot – around 100,000,000C and the result of ionised solar particles becoming imprisoned by Earth’s magnetic field, exciting the gases in the atmosphere and emitting bursts of energy in the form of light.
However, these particles can also cause magnetic storms, which in extreme cases have been known to disrupt satellites and electricity grids. In 1989, a CME was held responsible for leaving six million people in Quebec, Canada, without power.
Solar activity runs in 11-year cycles, with the current one peaking in 2013, so more violent space weather is on the horizon.
Dr Matthew Penn, of the National Solar Observatory in Arizona, said recently: 'Because the sun is becoming more active, it will have an impact on millions of people. Sunspots can cause the biggest and most damaging space storms that occur.
'During the next two years, we are expecting the number of sunspots visible on the sun to reach a maximum. We know that sunspots are the source of a lot of space weather and solar storms, so we expect a larger number of solar storms here at the Earth.’
Source: The Daily Mail
- LAIR OF THE BEASTS DEPARTMENT -
Monsters and the Men-in-Black
By Nick Redfern
Pretty much everyone has heard of the Men in Black. But: what about Women in Black? And what is their connection to strange creatures? Read on...
For years, sensational and sinister stories have surfaced from the forests and lowlands of Puerto Rico that tell of a strange and lethal creature roaming the landscape by night and day, while striking overwhelming terror into the hearts of the populace.
This is not at all surprising since the animal has been described as having a pair of glowing red eyes, powerful, claw style hands, razor sharp teeth, a body not unlike that a monkey, a row of vicious spikes running down the length of its back, and occasionally, and of deep relevance to this particular chapter, a pair of large and leathery bat-like wings.
And if that is not enough: the beast is said to feed on the blood of the local animal - and predominantly goat – population, after puncturing their jugular veins with two sharp teeth. That’s correct: Puerto Rico has a monstrous vampire in its midst. Its name is the Chupacabras, a Latin term, very appropriately meaning Goat Sucker.
Theories abound with respect to the nature of the beast, with some researchers and witnesses suggesting that the monster is some form of giant-bat; others prefer the theory that it has extraterrestrial origins; while the most bizarre idea postulated is that the Chupacabras is the creation of a top secret, genetic research laboratory hidden deep within Puerto Rico’s El Yunque rainforest, which is located in the Sierra de Luquillo, approximately forty kilometers southeast of the city of San Juan.
On several occasions, I have traveled to the island of Puerto Rico to try and seek out the vampire-like Chupacabras for myself, and, perhaps one day, even to determine its true nature. On one particular occasion, while roaming around Puerto Rico in 2005 with Canadian film-maker Paul Kimball (we were there to make a documentary titled Fields of Fear), I had the very good fortune to meet and interview a man named Antonio, a pig-farmer who had an unusual experience in 2000 that led to a decidedly strange visit from a Woman in Black/Man in Black duo.
As Antonio told me, one of his animals had been killed, after darkness had fallen, by the now familiar puncture marks to the neck. In this case, however, the animal exhibited three such marks, rather than the usual two. In addition, a number of rabbits kept on the property had been slaughtered in identical fashion.
At the time that all of the carnage was taking place, a considerable commotion was, quite naturally, being made by the rest of Antonio’s animals. As a result, upon hearing this, he rushed wildly out of his house with a machete in his hand, and flung it hard in the direction of the marauding predator. Very strangely, he told me, the makeshift weapon seemed to bounce off something that seemed distinctly metallic in nature.
In fact, Antonio suggested that what the machete had made contact with seemed armor-plated in nature. Due to the overwhelming darkness, however, he had no idea what the creature may have been. But something deadly was most certainly prowling around the property. The machete was later given to Antonio’s cousin for safekeeping. The most confounding aspect of the affair was still to come, however. That’s right: Antonio was about to get a visit of the type we have encountered time and again in these pages.
Shortly after the killing of the pig and the rabbits, a man and woman – dressed in typical, official-looking black regalia, on a stifling hot day, no less, and who announced they worked for NASA – arrived at the farm and quickly proceeded to ask Antonio a wealth of questions about what had occurred, what he had seen, and the way in which his animals had met their grisly fates.
When the conversation was over, the pair thanked the bemused farmer, in a fashion befitting both the Women in Black and the Men in Black – wholly unemotionally, in other words - and left without uttering another, single word. How the dark duo even knew that the attacks had taken place, and why on earth NASA would be dispatching personnel to his farm to investigate them, Antonio had no idea at all.
One thing that Antonio told me he had held back from informing his two mysterious visitors was that on the morning after the attack he had found strange footprints on his property that were spread quite a distance from each other; and he formed the opinion that whatever had made them, had the ability to leap considerable distances, in a fashion similar to that of a Kangaroo – or, perhaps even, he mused, it had the ability to fly.
Leaping or flying monsters, Men and Women in Black and mutilated animals collectively suggested that something highly strange was, and perhaps still is, afoot on Puerto Rico.
"Object" in Baltic Sea May Be Secret Nazi Anti-Submarine Device
Divers exploring a 'UFO-shaped' object in the Baltic sea say that the strange, curved object might be a Nazi device lost beneath the waves since the end of the Second World War.
Sonar scans have shown that the device, raised 10ft above the seabed and measuring 200ft by 25ft, could be the base of an anti-submarine weapon.
The weapon was built with wire mesh which could have baffled submarine radar, leading enemy craft to crash - much in the same way as turning out a lighthouse could be used as a weapon against shipping.
But now former Swedish naval officer and WWII expert Anders Autellus has revealed that the structure - measuring 200ft by 25ft - could be the base of a device designed to block British and Russian submarine movements in the area.
The huge steel-and-concrete structure could be one of the most important historical finds in years.
Autellus claims it would have been built of double-skinned concrete and reinforced with wire mesh to baffle radar - which could explain why the dive team's equipment repeatedly failed near the mystery object.
‘The area was vital to the German war machine because most of the ball bearings for its tanks and trucks came from here. Without them the German army would have ground to a halt,’ explained one expert.
‘This device dwarfs anything ever found before and is an important weapons discovery,’ they added.
Explorer Stefan Hogeborn - who is studying the images for the Ocean X diving team - agreed: ‘It is a good candidate for the answer to this mystery. The object lies directly underneath a shipping route.’
‘It would be of enormous weight in steel and concrete. Other Nazi anti-sub anchoring devices were nowhere near as large,’ he added.
While the Ocean Explorer team is understandably excited about their potentially earth-shattering find, others are slightly more sceptical and are questioning the accuracy of the sonar technology.
The Swedish team exploring the structure have been plagued with problems.
The divers exploring a 'UFO-shaped' object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea said that team their equipment stops working when they approach within 200m.
Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team's cameras and the team's satellite phone would refuse to work when directly above the object, and would only work once they had sailed away.
The divers exploring a 'UFO-shaped' object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea say their equipment stops working when they approach within 200m.
Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team's cameras and the team's satellite phone would refuse to work when directly above the object, and would only work once they had sailed away.
He is quoted as saying: 'Anything electric out there - and the satellite phone as well - stopped working when we were above the object.
'And then we got away about 200 meters and it turned on again, and when we got back over the object it didn’t work.'
The object was first found in May last year, but because of a lack of funding and bad timing, they have were not able to pull a team together to see for themselves - just the strange, metallic outline, and a similar disk-shaped object about 200 metres away.
During their visit, the team saw a 985-foot trail that they described 'as a runway or a downhill path that is flattened at the seabed with the object at the end of it'.
As it was before the recent dive, the story behind the object is anyone's guess, from a 'plug to the inner world' to the Millennium Falcon ship from Star Wars.
In the past, such technology has confused foreign objects with unusual- but natural - rock formations.
Part of the trouble they face, however, is that they have no way of telling what is inside the supposed cylinder- whether it is filled with gold and riches or simply aged sediment particles.
They're hoping for the former, and history seems to be in their favour.
The Baltic Sea is a treasure trove for shipwreck hunters, as an estimated 100,000 objects are thought to line the cold sea's floor.
The company have created a submarine that they hope will appeal to tourists and wannabe shipwreck hunters who will pay to take a trip down to the bottom of the Baltic Sea to see for themselves.
A further dive will take place in the coming weeks.
Source: The Daily Mail
- WHERE IS THE "GOOD STUFF" DEPARTMENT -
Latest Release of British UFO Files Shows MoD Serious About Aliens
Most intelligence officers were deeply sceptical about UFOs but saw the need to cover all bases.
Britain's defence intelligence agency considered the possibility of alien craft visiting Earth and asked "UFO desk officers" to monitor any potential threat from outer space, hitherto top secret documents released on July 12 show.
This latest release is the ninth batch of UFO files to be released by the archives since 2008. Former Ministry of Defence (MoD) official UFO investigator Nick Pope told the Telegraph that this latest batch of released files is “absolutely fascinating” and it “contains a huge mixture of material that will be of great interest to anyone fascinated with UFOs.”
Thousands of pages of highly classified files document how officials in the Ministry of Defence were worried they would be accused by the public of not taking UFOs seriously enough, and how some thought there really could be someone out there. "It was important to appreciate that what is scientific 'fact' today may not be true tomorrow," a defence intelligence officer warned in August 1993.
He pointed out: "It was only a few hundred years ago that 'scientists' believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe." He added: "It was generally agreed until early this century that the atom could not be split."
Sightings of alleged UFOs could be explained by very strange-shaped clouds, ball lightning, or US "black" (secret project) aircraft, the unidentified official suggested.
"If the sightings are of devices not of the Earth, then their purpose needs to be established as a matter of priority. There had been no apparently hostile intent and other possibilities are one, military reconnaissance; two, scientific; three, tourism."
The clearly frustrated intelligence official observed that the MoD might have taken the prospect more seriously if UFOs had "a red star painted on them", a reference to the Soviet Union.
The selection of documents released to the National Archives is the ninth tranche of the UK's "X-files" to be made public since the government decided in 2008 that keeping them secret was no longer justified.
Some intelligence officials were excited about the prospect of harnessing rare atmospheric plasmas initially claimed to be UFOs, such as ball lightning, for novel weapons technology. One even suggested that if craft from outer space really did exist, the MoD could adopt their stealth technology.
Most officials in the MoD were deeply sceptical. Papers released today show that back in 1979, a UFO intelligence officer wondered why aliens would want to visit "an insignificant planet [the Earth] of an uninteresting star [the sun]".
But officials had to cover their backs because of persistent claims of UFO sightings and questions from the public. MPs also regularly returned to the subject, requiring answers from the prime minister. In 2009, before he was elected, David Cameron promised to publish Whitehall's remaining secret files on UFOs.
"I don't think any of us have any clue whether there's intelligent life out there, and it is certainly not something that any government should seek to hide from anyone," he said.
John Major told MPs in 1996: "The government has no plans to allocate resources to researching extraterrestrial phenomena."
The MoD did, however, decide to devote more resources on a study as officials warned Tony Blair he could expect even more questions following the passing of the Freedom of Information Act. A MoD official reported in 2000 that the study concluded: "Many of sightings can be explained as mis-reporting of man-made vehicles, [and] natural but unusual phenomena."
In a valedictory note in December 2008, the last unidentified "UFO desk officer" – described yesterday by David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University, author of The UFO Files, as "one of the strangest jobs in Whitehall" – wrote to the RAF's operations headquarters in High Wycombe. "The MoD's position on UFOs, aliens and extra terrestrials is quite clear. We know of no evidence to confirm the existence of aliens, spaceships, extra terrestrials etc, or if they have visited the Earth."
Suggestions that there were secret teams of scientists "scurrying around the country in a real-life version of the X-files" was "total fiction".
But in a perhaps reassuring conclusion, the officer continued: "However, since the universe is a very large place and mankind has only explored a very small corner of it, we cannot rule out the existence of intelligent life on other planets. We therefore remain open minded on the topic. In the absence of proof either way, this position seems a perfectly sensible one. However, as you can probably guess, the above position does not make very interesting headlines nor, I suspect, would sell many books".
Ministers and the MoD have been inundated with claims of many hundreds of sightings of aliens. They include: two tall silver-suited "faceless humanoids" in Wales, three tall "men in black" in Spalding, Lincolnshire, and "golden orbs" across Britain – the result of a craze for releasing sky lanterns.
A mounted police officer reported a sighting of a "square/diamond shaped object moving across the sky and changing shape" while on duty at Chelsea football ground in 1999.
Files released on Thursday show the MoD recorded "UFO sightings" throughout the UK, from the Orkney Islands to Cornwall, and in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Thailand, New Zealand and the US.
Jason McClellan from Open Minds (http://www.openminds.tv/top-5-revelations-from-the-newly-released-mod-ufo-files-797/) notes that twenty-five files make up these 6,785 pages, and the National Archives explains, “Topics include UFO policy, Parliamentary Questions, media issues, public correspondence, and UFO sighting reports.” The files include many interesting UFO sightings submitted to the MoD–some by pilots, police, and military officials.
McClellan also presents five highlights from the latest release in case you don’t have the time or desire to read through 6,785 pages of documents:
MoD’s UFO Desk.
This latest release of files includes information about the Ministry of Defence’s “UFO desk.” Although many media outlets are reacting like this is the first mention of this post within the MoD, the UFO desk has been public knowledge for quite some time. Nick Pope, who is quoted in nearly every article related to UFOs in the UK, ran the MoD’s UFO desk from 1991 to 1994. However, the recently released information related to the UFO desk is mildly interesting. Documents detail the duties of the UFO desk officer, and the actual internal job posting for the position is in the files as well.
The need for a full UFO study.
A document contains a 1995 briefing by a UFO desk officer who cited the need for a “full study of UFO data as national security implications have never been properly assessed.” The officer states in the briefing, “The national security implications are considerable. We have many reports of strange objects in the skies and we have never investigated them.”
MoD officer suggests capturing a UFO to gain its technology.
In the briefing document mentioned above, this same UFO desk officer suggests capturing UFO technology for UK use. The officer states, “If reports are taken at face value then devices exist that do not use conventional reaction propulsion systems, they have a very wide range of speeds and are stealthy. I suggest that we could use this technology, if it exists.”
Keeping tabs on ufologists.
The files contain a copy of a 1996 Parliamentary Question from Martin Redmond MP asking if MI6 and GCHQ monitors UFO investigations, or keeps tabs on ufologists. The National Archives summarizes the response contained in the files, explaining that a background briefing says “neither agency in fact undertakes such activity, though GCHQ cannot rule out the possibility” they had monitored “in other contexts individuals who have made a study of UFOs.”
Tony Blair’s UFO briefing.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair was briefed on UFO documents. As the Metro explains, the MoD documents show “the former Labour leader was apparently concerned about information on the unidentified objects being released to the public, as a result of the impending Freedom of Information Act, so decided to find out what facts existed.” This came after author and researcher Nick Redfern urged him to “consider making available for public scrutiny all of the many and varied UFO reports compiled by the government.”
Source: The Guardian
- WHY SHOULD LAKE CHAMPLAIN HAVE ALL THE FUN DEPARTMENT -
Pressie the Lake Superior Sea Serpent
Lake Superior or Gitchigumi (meaning Great Water or Great Lake) is a fresh water lake. It is 1,333 feet deep in places , with an average water temperature of 34 degrees F and is 350 miles long and up to 160 miles wide in parts. The lake is almost an inland sea. It is said to house a lake serpent, Pressie, named after the Presque Isle River where one of the best sightings occurred .
The native indigenous people called the serpent Mishipishu and it is seen in pictographs at various shoreline sites, either as a spiky cat-like creature or as a serpent. Modern sightings cite a serpent type creature up to 75 feet long with a horse-like head on a longish neck and a bilobate (whale-type) tail, and described as dark green to black in colour. The reported sightings go back centuries, here is a selection of the most well known:
In September 1894, about halfway between Whitefish Point and Copper Harbor, Michigan, the crews of two steamers observed a strange creature undulating along in the twilight, its back protruding 6 to 8 feet out of the water.
In July 1895, three members of a steamer crew observed a “hideous creature” off Whitefish Point which seemed at times to be deliberately pacing their ship. They claimed it had a 15 foot neck and a jaw a foot wide.
In 1897 near Duluth (MN), a Detroit man fell overboard when his yacht struck a rock. He was then attacked by a huge serpent which he said tried to constrict him in the manner of a large snake. His three shipmates also saw the beast.
In the 1930’s, a serpent, swimming along at about 9 miles per hour, was observed by two fisherman at Pictured Rocks, Munising, Michigan. The animal created a strong wake as it passed the shore.
In the 1960’s, a family watched a huge animal, alternately showing humps and stretching out straight, swim upriver past the North coast of Sugar Island Neither head nor tail was visible and they said it resembled a log when stretched out straight.
Memorial Day weekend in 1977, North of Ironwood , hiker Randy Braun snapped a photo of something which he suspects was a giant serpent swimming in the waters of the lake near the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. Braun said it undulated in the water like a serpent. The snapshot he took of the beast shows a blurry object in the water. The photo indicates a serpent like creature with a horse-like head on a long neck and an undefined tail.
In the summer of 1981 in Munising, four children and teenagers, all siblings, observed a serpent showing 3-5 humps rising 1-2 feet out of the water (the slower it went the higher the humps). As it came within about 20 yards of the private beach, one of the children ran away crying and the animal headed away showing lower humps.
In the middle 1990’s, during the summer, fishermen watched in horror as a large aquatic animal pulled a wading buck deer under (leaving only it’s severed head) near Point Iroquois, Michigan.
All the photographic evidence is as usual grainy or blurry , but that is par for the course and lets face it, anyone’s hand would shake if they thought they saw a monster. So could it be a giant eel? It seems the most likely or a giant water snake. A sturgeon, the usual explanation seems less likely given the descriptions. What we need is a video or a carcass to turn up. Certainly in a lake that big there are plenty of places to hide!
Here is Randy Braun’s written account of the incident with other information:
Lake Superior Monster
“On Memorial Day Weekend in 1977 I was camping at Presque Isle campground north of Ironwood, Michigan, with a friend. I don’t remember if it was Saturday or Sunday but it was a beautiful morning and Lake Superior was like glass. Visibility was remarkable when looking out across the Lake, and distant land was visible. There’s a trail that leads east from the campground which crosses the Presque Isle River that I was navigating, however, the bugs were unbearable, and I headed north towards the lake hoping that walking along the beach would be more comfortable.
When I reached the tree line there was the beach but about one hundred feet below me. The slope leading to the beach was close to a 45 degree angle with short dead trees protruding from the moss covered rock, and come to find out also very slippery. It still amazes me to this day how I was able to control my slide and with a full backpack. I sheared off some of the scrub trees on the way down. Then again I was young and experienced having had extensive background in forestry and working in Idaho and Montana. I was twenty-six years old then and now I am fourty-eight. The beach was maybe thirty feet from the waters edge to the the slippery slope and as I continued to walk east sometimes no beach at all. Instead there was water with tangled lake debris amid dead standing trees. The water was knee deep to waist deep but difficult to get through, and as I think about it I’m glad “it” wasn’t lurking in there. After crossing through a couple of these beach barriers it was clear beach as far east as I could see, and I stopped by a 3’x3’ boulder, sat, and began to east lunch.
When I looked straight out to open water I saw two very distinct dark bumps which seemed to be separated by just a few feet. First, one bump would go underwater then the next bump would do the same, but only after the first one surfaced. I had a 20x spotting scope with me and couldn’t quite make out what they were. Then they began to move east and to my left, one bump going under and then the other, but one bump always stayed on top of the water while the other submerged.
It became frightfully apparent to me that this object was close to one thousand feet out and as it gained speed I realized there was a third smaller bump, and that the object was undulating. It moved very rapidly “VERY RAPIDLY” to the east and quartered towards and nearly up to the shore. The now obviously living thing stopped maybe several hundred feet from me and began moving and weaving around large boulders that were in the water, and directly towards me. IT WAS BIG and resembled an anaconda with the girth of a Volkswagen. Don’t laugh it wasn’t funny.
There was no where to go for me because of the slippery slope and the water barriers so I jumped behind the boulder and grabbed by 35mm Yashica. As it moved towards me it slowed down considerably but was making a noticeable wake. It was strangely quiet while it snaked towards me and stopped dead in the water, right in front of me. IT WAS BIG! I steadied my camera on top of the rock and fired one picture but was afraid to move after that. The thing sat there for about thirty seconds with its huge horse shaped head and large dark left eye staring at me. On the nose was a visible catfish type whisker, maybe two feet in length and wiggling.
I don’t talk to many people about it and have the original negative which I used to make an 8x10. The picture is high quality and every-thing plus more makes it quite a conversational piece. Incidentally a Doctor Reines from the State University of New York in Plattsburgh, New York has an 8x10 I’ve sent some twenty years ago. The picture is copyrighted so he didn’t pursue purchasing the photo, at least that’s what I think. At the time of the incident I lived in northern Illinois but now ironically I live in Michigan and only several miles from Lake Superior.
Two summers ago and not far from where I live, now, recreational fisherman observed a large something bite a buck deer in half while it was wading in the water near Sault Ste. Marie. An Indian friend of mine has the newspaper article.
May I also add that seeing these creatures is in Indian legend. Legend has it that Indians observed the creature do the same thing I did, and legend further adds that when it stops in the water sometime gulls mistake it for a log and land on its nose. You can guess what happened to the gull.
Furthermore and finally, people disappear near Presque Isle River occasionally and are never found. It’s attributed to the undertow (???). I don’t swim in any deep water lake anymore and occasionally have nightmares of being consumed by the thing I saw.”
Source: Cryptid Chronicles
- OBLIGATORY FRIDAY THE 13TH ARTICLE DEPARTMENT -
Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky
By David Emery
I HAVE before me the abstract of a 1993 study published in the British Medical Journal provocatively titled "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?"
With the aim of mapping "the relation between health, behaviour, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in the United Kingdom," its authors compared the ratio of traffic volume to the number of automobile accidents on two different days, Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th, over a period of years.
Incredibly, they found that in the region sampled, while consistently fewer people chose to drive their cars on Friday the 13th, the number of hospital admissions due to vehicular accidents was significantly higher than on "normal" Fridays. Their conclusion:
"Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended."
Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th — will be pricking up their ears about now, buoyed by seeming evidence that the source of their unholy terror might not be so irrational after all. It's unwise to take solace in a single scientific study, however, especially one so peculiar. I suspect these statistics have more to teach us about human psychology than the ill-fatedness of any particular date on the calendar.
Friday the 13th, 'the most widespread superstition'
The sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding reputations said to date from ancient times. It seems their inevitable conjunction from one to three times a year (there will be three such occurrences in 2012, exactly 13 weeks apart) portends more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear. According to some sources it's the most widespread superstition in the United States today. Some people refuse to go to work on Friday the 13th; some won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on the date.
How many Americans at the beginning of the 21st century suffer from this condition? According to Dr. Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of phobias (and coiner of the term paraskevidekatriaphobia, also spelled paraskavedekatriaphobia), the figure may be as high as 21 million. If he's right, no fewer than eight percent of Americans remain in the grips of a very old superstition.
Exactly how old is difficult to say, because determining the origins of superstitions is an inexact science, at best. In fact, it's mostly guesswork.
Legend has it: If 13 people sit down to dinner together, one will die within the year. The Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was practically expunged from their vocabulary (Brewer, 1894). Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue. Many buildings don't have a 13th floor. If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck (Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names). There are 13 witches in a coven.
The Devil's Dozen
Although no one can say for sure when and why human beings first associated the number 13 with misfortune, the superstition is assumed to be quite old, and there exist any number of theories — most of which deserve to be treated with a healthy skepticism, please note — purporting to trace its origins to antiquity and beyond.
It has been proposed, for example, that fears surrounding the number 13 are as ancient as the act of counting. Primitive man had only his 10 fingers and two feet to represent units, this explanation goes, so he could count no higher than 12. What lay beyond that — 13 — was an impenetrable mystery to our prehistoric forebears, hence an object of superstition.
Which has an edifying ring to it, but one is left wondering: did primitive man not have toes?
Life and death
Despite whatever terrors the numerical unknown held for their hunter-gatherer ancestors, ancient civilizations weren't unanimous in their dread of 13. The Chinese regarded the number as lucky, some commentators note, as did the Egyptians in the time of the pharaohs.
To the ancient Egyptians, we're told, life was a quest for spiritual ascension which unfolded in stages — twelve in this life and a thirteenth beyond, thought to be the eternal afterlife. The number 13 therefore symbolized death, not in terms of dust and decay but as a glorious and desirable transformation. Though Egyptian civilization perished, the symbolism conferred on the number 13 by its priesthood survived, we may speculate, only to be corrupted by subsequent cultures who came to associate 13 with a fear of death instead of a reverence for the afterlife.
Still other sources speculate that the number 13 may have been purposely vilified by the founders of patriarchal religions in the early days of western civilization because it represented femininity. Thirteen had been revered in prehistoric goddess-worshiping cultures, we are told, because it corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year (13 x 28 = 364 days). The "Earth Mother of Laussel," for example — a 27,000-year-old carving found near the Lascaux caves in France often cited as an icon of matriarchal spirituality — depicts a female figure holding a crescent-shaped horn bearing 13 notches. As the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar with the rise of male-dominated civilization, it is surmised, so did the "perfect" number 12 over the "imperfect" number 13, thereafter considered anathema.
On the other hand, one of the earliest concrete taboos associated with the number 13 — a taboo still observed by some superstitious folks today, apparently — is said to have originated in the East with the Hindus, who believed, for reasons I haven't been able to ascertain, that it is always unlucky for 13 people to gather in one place — say, at dinner. Interestingly enough, precisely the same superstition has been attributed to the ancient Vikings (though I have also been told, for what it's worth, that this and the accompanying mythographical explanation of it are apocryphal). That story has been laid down as follows:
And Loki makes thirteen
Twelve gods were invited to a banquet at Valhalla. Loki, the Evil One, god of mischief, had been left off the guest list but crashed the party, bringing the total number of attendees to 13. True to character, Loki raised hell by inciting Hod, the blind god of winter, to attack Balder the Good, who was a favorite of the gods. Hod took a spear of mistletoe offered by Loki and obediently hurled it at Balder, killing him instantly. All Valhalla grieved. And although one might take the moral of this story to be "Beware of uninvited guests bearing mistletoe," the Norse themselves apparently concluded that 13 people at a dinner party is just plain bad luck.
As if to prove the point, the Bible tells us there were exactly 13 present at the Last Supper. One of the dinner guests — er, disciples — betrayed Jesus Christ, setting the stage for the Crucifixion.
Did I mention the Crucifixion took place on a Friday?
Legend has it: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams. If you cut your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Don't start a trip on Friday or you will encounter misfortune. Ships that set sail on a Friday will have bad luck, as in the tale of H.M.S. Friday. One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell the longstanding superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky. A special ship was commissioned and given the name "H.M.S. Friday." They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday, and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday — and was never seen or heard from again.
Some say Friday's bad reputation goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit. Adam bit, as we all learned in Sunday School, and they were both ejected from Paradise. Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified. It is therefore a day of penance for Christians.
In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day (later Hangman's Day in Britain), but in other pre-Christian cultures it was the sabbath, a day of worship, so those who indulged in secular or self-interested activities on that day could not expect to receive blessings from the gods — which may explain the lingering taboo on embarking on journeys or starting important projects on Fridays.
To complicate matters, these pagan associations were not lost on the early Church, which went to great lengths to suppress them. If Friday was a holy day for heathens, the Church fathers felt, it must not be so for Christians — thus it became known in the Middle Ages as the "Witches' Sabbath," and thereby hangs another tale.
The name "Friday" was derived from a Norse deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility), or both, the two figures having become intertwined in the handing down of myths over time (the etymology of "Friday" has been given both ways). Frigg/Freya corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans, who named the sixth day of the week in her honor "dies Veneris."
Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian Teutonic peoples, we are told — especially as a day to get married — because of its traditional association with love and fertility. All that changed when Christianity came along. The goddess of the sixth day — most likely Freya in this context, given that the cat was her sacred animal — was recast in post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated with evil doings.
Various legends developed in that vein, but one is of particular interest: As the story goes, the witches of the north used to observe their sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the dark of the moon. On one such occasion the Friday goddess, Freya herself, came down from her sanctuary in the mountaintops and appeared before the group, who numbered only 12 at the time, and gave them one of her cats, after which the witches' coven — and, by "tradition," every properly-formed coven since — comprised exactly 13.
The unanswered question
The astute reader will have observed that while we have thus far insinuated any number of intriguing connections between events, practices and beliefs attributed to ancient cultures and the superstitious fear of Fridays and the number 13, we have yet to happen upon an explanation of how, why, or when these separate strands of folklore converged — if that is indeed what happened — to mark Friday the 13th as the unluckiest day of all.
There's a very simple reason for that: nobody really knows, and few concrete explanations have been proposed.
'A day so infamous'
One theory, recently offered up as historical fact in the novel The Da Vinci Code, holds that the stigma came about not as the result of a convergence, but because of a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago. That event was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books, 1995):
On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force "confessions," and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.
There are problems with the "day so infamous" thesis, not the least of which is that it attributes enormous cultural significance to a relatively obscure historical event. Even more problematic for this or any other theory positing premodern origins for a superstitious dread of Friday the 13th is the fact that no one has been able to document the existence of such a superstition prior to the late 19th century. If folks in earlier times perceived Friday the 13th as a day of special misfortune, no evidence has been found to prove it. Some scholars are now convinced the stigma is a thoroughly modern phenomenon exacerbated by 20th-century media hype.
An accrual of bad omens?
Going back more than a hundred years, Friday the 13th doesn't even merit a mention in the 1898 edition of E. Cobham Brewer's voluminous Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, though one does find entries for "Friday, an Unlucky Day" and "Thirteen Unlucky." When the date of ill fate finally does make an appearance in later editions of the text, it is without extravagant claims as to the superstition's historicity or longevity. The very brevity of the entry is instructive: "Friday the Thirteenth: A particularly unlucky Friday. See Thirteen" — implying that the extra dollop of misfortune might be accounted for in terms of a simple accrual, as it were, of bad omens:
UNLUCKY FRIDAY + UNLUCKY 13 = UNLUCKIER FRIDAY
If that's the case, we are guilty of perpetuating a misnomer by labeling Friday the 13th "the unluckiest day of all," a designation perhaps better reserved for, say, a Friday the 13th on which one breaks a mirror, walks under a ladder, spills the salt, and spies a black cat crossing one's path — a day, if there ever was one, best spent in the safety of one's own home with doors locked, shutters closed, and fingers crossed.
Postscript: A novel theory
In 13: The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition (Avalon, 2004), author Nathaniel Lachenmeyer argues that the commingling of "unlucky Friday" and "unlucky 13" took place in the pages of a specific literary work, a novel published in 1907 titled — what else? — Friday, the Thirteenth. The book, all but forgotten now, concerned dirty dealings in the stock market and sold quite well in its day. Both the titular phrase and the phobic premise behind it — namely that superstitious people regard Friday the 13th as a supremely unlucky day — were instantly adopted and popularized by the press.
It seems unlikely that the novelist, Thomas W. Lawson, literally invented that premise himself — he treats it within the story, in fact, as a notion that already existed in the public consciousness — but he most certainly lent it gravitas and set it on a path to becoming the most widespread superstition in modern times.
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