Fenn Treasure Finder Finally Breaks His Silence … or Does He?

“I am the person who found Forrest’s famed treasure. The moment it happened was not the triumphant Hollywood ending some surely envisioned; it just felt like I had just survived something and was fortunate to come out the other end.”

In a revelation/explanation/confession on the website Medium.com, the man who claims to have found the infamous $2 million Fenn treasure just weeks before the man behind it – Forrest Fenn – passed away, tells a compelling, in-depth and sometimes heart-wrenching tale of his search for the elusive chest hidden in the Rocky Mountains with no clues but a poem from Forrest Fenn and the hints he gave in interviews. But … is this revelation for real?

Forrest Fenn

“I figured out the location where he wished to die (and thus, where his treasure was) back in 2018, but it took me many months to figure out the exact spot.”

According to the article, the “months” included 25 days at the location before finally finding it. No, the man does not give the location, or even any hints to where it is. However, he reveals something not reported before – in addition to contacting Fenn by phone after making the discovery, they also talked on the phone in 2018 and met in person in June.

“After living inside his head for two years, meeting him in person was sensory overload. I could now analyze his words and facial expressions and tone in real time, mere feet away from me. I could ask him questions about the chase and he would actually answer them! I never got used to it, and I was still analyzing him unnecessarily when he died, unable to turn my obsession off.”

In his announcements about the find, Fenn only said that the finder was a man from “back east” who did not want his name revealed … and the finder doesn’t reveal it in the Medium article either. What he does reveal is more about the late Forrest Fenn than any interview or obituary this writer has seen. Not only does the finder give more facts about the life of Fenn before the treasure, he delivers many heartfelt descriptions of a man he calls his “friend.”

“Lost in some of the remembrances of Forrest is his generosity. Forrest used his chase not for personal profit, but supported a local independent bookseller and raised tens of thousands of dollars for cancer victims. He was a benefactor and donated artifacts from his personal collection over the years to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, on whose board he served for several years.”

 

“Forrest wrote poignantly about his struggles with self-esteem and self-worth, and it’s probably these writings I connected to most.”

 

“For weeks he had wanted to fly me back to Santa Fe to spend more time with him (he even tried to convince me to move there), but circumstances out of our control made it more practical for me to come later.”

 

“For a man who expressed anxiety about getting Alzheimer’s, he seemed to have found the perfect deterrent to cognitive decline — talking frequently and in guarded detail about a huge, closely-held secret to a cache of gold, yet never divulging it to the thousands of interested people inquiring.”

Forrest Fenn

This is definitely a side of Forrest Fenn that has not been covered, at least in the years since the treasure hunt kicked into high gear. The finder also gives a few guarded details about himself and what he will do with the treasure.

“Alas, I’m a millennial and have student loans to pay off, so it wouldn’t be prudent to continue to own the Fenn Treasure. And at the end of the day, for all our similarities, Forrest and I couldn’t be less alike when it comes to collecting. I’m the kind of person who feels burdened by possessions and most free adventuring the world out of a carry-on suitcase, so the treasure and I will have to soon part, and I will offer it for sale (minus the turquoise row bracelet returned to Forrest, of course).”

Finally, he reveals that Fenn had a final wish for “where he thought the treasure should end up” and the finder says “The first step for me will be to try to make that happen.”

As the title of this article suggests, this writer wonders whether the Medium article is truly the work of the finder of the Fenn treasure. Let’s start at the end and work backwards, highlighting the possible red flags. If Fenn had a wish for where he wanted the treasure to end up, was it to be sold for loan money as the finder says is his plan? The intimate details of the sensitive side of Fenn’s life almost seem as though they were written ahead of time in anticipation of the dry obituaries and continued attacks on the deaths caused by the treasure hunt, the controversies over Fenn’s reputed history of removing Native American remains, the skepticism that the treasure had truly been found or even hidden at all. This doesn’t sound like something a person could get in a brief phone call and a few days with a dying man.

Finally, there’s the anonymity. It’s understandable that the finder would want to keep the location secret – we know how careless and destructive people can be in public parks. However, it would help if the finder were to give the interview to a journalist who could verify their existence, their statements, their logs of the hunt, etc. An anonymous article on a public blog doesn’t suffice.

This writer admired and enjoyed the depth and detail of the tale the finder weaves about his alleged finding of the Fenn treasure and the life of Forrest Fenn and recommends reading it to to draw your own conclusions. He congratulates the finder if he truly found the Fenn treasure and does not wish to disparage him … just to verify what continues to be one of the most interesting and intriguing mysteries of the 21st century.

The post Fenn Treasure Finder Finally Breaks His Silence ... or Does He? first appeared on Mysterious Universe.

Paul Seaburn (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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A Cosmic Explosion May Have Forced Ancient Humans Into Walking Upright

Anyone who has spent any time surfing the Internet has at one time or another seen a picture (cute or otherwise) of a meerkat suddenly standing up when it hears something. There was a time in history when this was not the case and some brave or confused meerkat probably accidentally discovered the maneuver and its benefits. Most people assume the same thing happened with the first ancient human who carefully leaned against a tree or cave wall and fell forward while moving his or her legs in order to stay upright. According to a new study, this assumption is wrong. A new paper uses geology to propose that there was a supernova bombing Earth with cosmic energy a few million years ago that caused constant worldwide lightning strikes which burned down the forests of trees out ancestors were hanging out in and forced them to the grassy ground where they learned how to stand and run from the fires and lightning. Plausible? Could this have caused the first upright meerkat brigade too?

“The observation is that there’s a lot more charcoal and soot in the world starting a few million years ago. It’s all over the place, and nobody has any explanation for why it would have happened all over the world in different climate zones. This could be an explanation.”

Professor Adrian L. Melott of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas co-authored the paper, “From Cosmic Explosions to Terrestrial Fires?” published this week in the Journal of Geology. He explains in a press release how he and co-author Brian Thomas of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Washburn University in Kansas built their theory on some known facts. For example, it is accepted that a layer of iron-60 deposits lining the world’s sea beds came from a very near supernovae explosion only about 163 light years away during the overlap of the Pliocene Epoch and Ice Age. That roughly coincides with the appearance of Lucy, owner of the earliest bipedal hominin species (Australopithecus afarensis) fossils ever found. Why is the iron-60 significant?

“We contend it would increase the ionization of the lower atmosphere by 50-fold. Usually, you don’t get lower-atmosphere ionization because cosmic rays don’t penetrate that far, but the more energetic ones from supernovae come right down to the surface — so there would be a lot of electrons being knocked out of the atmosphere.”

Electrons in motion is the cause of lightning bolts, but this 50-fold increase means there were a LOT of lightning bolts as a result of this atmospheric ionization and they were striking all around the world, resulting in massive fires that forced Lucy and her relatives to jump/climb/fall to the ground. Lucy died from the fall but we’re living proof that some of her kin didn’t and they eventually got tired of bloody knees and palms.

“After this conversion to savanna, they would much more often have to walk from one tree to another across the grassland, and so they become better at walking upright. They could see over the tops of grass and watch for predators. It’s thought this conversion to savanna contributed to bipedalism as it became more and more dominant in human ancestors.”

This definitely sounds plausible. Unfortunately, it causes modern humans to wonder if this catastrophic supernova-caused cosmic bombardment could happen again … perhaps from Betelgeuse, which is only 652 light years from Earth. Fortunately, Melott says that’s not likely. Unfortunately, he thinks we have bigger things to be concerned with.

“Worry about solar proton events. That’s the danger for us with our technology — a solar flare that knocks out electrical power. Just imagine months without electricity.”

Maybe we should learn how to climb trees again?

Paul Seaburn (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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The Terror That is the Tall Man Spirit

The Native Americans of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, believe in the existence of an extremely dangerous and supernatural creature in their midst. They refer to it as the Tall Man Spirit. It is also known as Walking Sam; the latter is the name which has proved to be easily the most popular of the two monikers. He or it – go ahead and take your pick – looks not at all unlike the Slenderman. Walking Sam is in excess of seven feet in height and, just like the Slenderman, he doesn’t have much in the way of meat on his bones. His arms and legs are long and spidery. And he lacks a mouth. Peter Matthiessen, who in 1983 wrote a book about the area and its people – titled In the Spirit of Crazy Horse – said of the supernatural thing that it is “both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees weren’t there.”

Note that Matthiessen references Walking Sam in a wooded-based context, which is the preferred domain of the Slenderman – of both lore and reality. And, just like the Men in Black, the Shadow People, and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon – all of which were inspirations for Eric Knudsen’s spindly beast in black – Walking Sam wears a black hat. In his case, though, it’s usually of the old, stovepipe variety. Walking Sam, like the Slenderman, is alleged to have the ability to take control of peoples’ minds. We might accurately call it a form of mind-enslavement. Perhaps, this might explain a deeply disturbing event that occurred on a particular day in February 2015.

The site of the Drexel Mission Fight on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Lakota warriors and the United States Army

A large number of teenagers from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation headed out to a specific area of land that was dominated by trees. There was a notable reason for this; albeit hardly a positive one. The plan was for each every one of them to hang themselves by the neck and from the trees – which explained why they all went to the area armed to the teeth with nothing but… rope. Thankfully, John Two Bulls, a local pastor, heard of what was about to go down there and quickly managed to stop what would very likely have become a mass suicide of almost unthinkable proportions. More than a few of the tribes’ people were privately of the opinion that Walking Sam – not unlike some gruesome and insanely evil Pied Piper – had led the teenagers to what almost turned out to be their place of death.

This particular theory is bolstered by the words of a minister, Chris Carey, who works with the kids who live on the reservation. He says that the Tall Man Spirit / Walking Sam seems to be telling the young people on the reservation to take their lives.  Intriguingly, the monster does so by inserting itself on the Internet, its shadowy, spindly form appearing on-screen, which is very similar (and eerily similar) to the 2016 experience of “Lacy,” as discussed in an earlier article from me here at M.U. Indeed, the Slenderman too is an entity that haunts the Internet – further evidence that Walking Sam and the Slenderman are very likely two parts of the very same sinister phenomenon.

“Red Pill Junkie,” who is a regular contributor to the very website you’re on right now, says that what we have here may amount to “…a cultural ‘remix’ between the older myth of the Tall Man/Suicide Spirit which already existed among Native Americans prior to the rise of the World Wide Web, and the newer, more potent icon of Slenderman introduced to these communities through the pervasiveness of new social networks…”

Nick Redfern (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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NASA Discovers Water and Organic Molecules on ‘Snowman World’ Ultima Thule

The NASA New Horizon team has finally published the first study of the data it gathered on Ultima Thule, the strange, distant binary object consisting of two conjoined pancake-shaped lobes which resemble a half-melted snowman. Ultima Thule lies four billion miles away from Earth in the Kuiper belt, the ring of rocky and icy asteroids just past Neptune. NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft has been studying Ultima Thule since late 2018, and the mission marks the first ever study of a planetesimal, a half-formed object leftover from the era of planetary formation. 

Ultima Thule gets its name from a Latin term which refers to the most distant place beyond the borders of the known world – but unfortunately that same term was used by the Nazis to refer to the mythical homeland of the Aryan race in all of that weird Nazi mythology. Whoops. Despite the somewhat controversial name, the object offers astronomers the chance to study a truly unique and mysterious object right here in our own Solar System, just a few billion miles away. We’re practically neighbors!

Ultima Thule

Ultima Thule is about 22 miles long and has two distinctly differently shaped lobes, or bodies, joined at a central ‘neck.’ Just how the two objects came to be conjoined in such a way is a mystery, but it likely happened as many other planetesimals were crashing together on their way to becoming a planet. For some reason, these two bodies didn’t make the final cut and were likely ejected from that burgeoning planet’s gravity and left adrift in the cold blackness of space some time in the cosmic past.

“We’re looking into the well-preserved remnants of the ancient past,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator and rock star astronomer Alan Stern in a press release. “There is no doubt that the discoveries made about Ultima Thule are going to advance theories of solar system formation.”

Composite image of Ultima Thule

In their new publication in Science, the New Horizons team disclosed some of their initial findings about Ultima Thule and discussed the features they are continuing to study. Already, they have discovered that Ultima Thule is a rocky, reddish object lined with hills, pits, and craters and the reddish color is believed to come from methanol, water ice, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface, a rare discovery if confirmed. NASA will continue its flyby of Ultima Thule until 2020.

According to one version of the panspermia hypothesis, organic molecules hitching rides on objects like Ultima Thule could be the ‘seed’ which spreads life throughout the universe. Could the molecules lurking on Ultima Thule hold the keys to life itself? All it takes a few nuggets of carbon, a few chunks of hydrogen, throw some oxygen in there, mix in a pinch of nitrogen, add calcium and phosphorus to taste, crash it all into a volatile oxygen-rich planet, wait a few billion years and boom: Big Macs, Facebook, and Boeing 737s. The universe is a weird place.  

Where will Ultima Thule ultimately end up? Will their reality TV be as miserable as ours?

Brett Tingley (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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Ghostly Soldiers Who Are Still On Duty

Soldiers put their lives at risk every day to protect our freedom and we are truly thankful for their sacrifices. Tragically, many of them have lost their lives in combat over the years and some of them are still protecting our freedom even in death. There are several places where the ghosts of deceased soldiers are roaming the locations as if they’re still on active duty. Below are four examples of ghostly soldiers who are still working hard long after their deaths.

The Crew Of The USS Hornet

The USS Hornet was used as an aircraft carrier during World War II and is now a museum where people can visit the ship located in Alameda, California. It is said to be so haunted that visitors can take a paranormal tour of the ship and even stay overnight if they wish.

Guests and staff have regularly reported seeing unexplained things on the ship, such as sailors walking down passageways and into rooms that are completely empty. An angry poltergeist is said to have thrown objects in the dish-washing area of the mess hall. Some people have even heard the terrified voices of people on the lower decks yelling “run”. It is believed that those are voices of the crew who did not escape combat and are still telling the others to run to safety.

USS Hornet

The Officer Of Warren Air Force Base

F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming is said be haunted by several spirits. Troops who have been stationed at the base reported seeing the ghosts of cavalrymen wearing their full uniforms patrolling the grounds. Others have allegedly seen a soldier standing at attention near several of the buildings. A more disturbing claim is that people have heard unexplained screaming which they believe is from a Native American woman who was assaulted and then murdered by two cavalrymen.

Some people have claimed to have seen a nurse in Building 223 which was once used as the living quarters for several of the women on the base while others have said they witnessed numerous ghosts in Building 34 which was previously used as a morgue.

“Gus” is the most famous ghost on the base. He was a young officer who went home early one day to find his wife cheating on him with a fellow soldier. Since the husband was blocking the door, the other soldier jumped out of the second-story window and got caught in the clothesline which ended up strangling him to death. The soldier, who is known as “Gus”, has been said to move objects and furniture around the house, as well as open cabinets. Some say he’s still searching the house for his pants…

Civil War Soldiers At Jefferson Barracks

There have been numerous sightings of ghostly troops from the Civil War era still patrolling the Jefferson Barracks Military Post in Lemay, Missouri. The most commonly seen apparition is that of a guard with a bullet hole in his head. It is believed that he was shot during an enemy raid and he still makes his presence known to troops who are on duty.

During a Halloween party at the hospital on the base, several officers reported seeing a person wearing a Civil War officer’s uniform, but nobody at that party was wearing such a costume. In fact, several people on different occasions have claimed to have seen the spirit of a man dressed in a uniform from the time of the Civil War.

Recruits At The Parris Island Old Barracks (Rifle Range)

Tragically, there have been several murders and suicides at the Parris Island barracks and it seems as though some of the victims still remain there. Recruits who have been stationed at Parris Island claimed to have heard unexplained footsteps, doors opening and closing on their own, as well as the sounds of voices and people crying in the bathrooms.

A ghostly apparition wearing camouflage has been spotted, but when the soldiers approached him, he disappeared. Several members of a platoon drowned in the swampland after their drill instructor forced them to cross it. This could be why so many apparitions are constantly seen around the barracks.

Jocelyne LeBlanc (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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Alleged Area 51 Secret Underground Base is Actually Something Cool

An interesting story has been making the rounds about an alleged never-before-detected underground base near Area 51 picked up on a Zoom.Earth satellite map. It’s Area 51 so it certainly is a plausible idea. Even more interesting was the rapid rebuttal by another website which revealed what this huge expanse of puzzling ground surface actually is – a giant art project! Really!

“I found something in Area 51 that appears to be a newly-built underground base. But why would the US government need another underground base there? I’m not using Google Maps, because they block out a lot of stuff. Look at this facility, it is really quite incredible.”

This analysis is part of the audio presented by Scott Waring on a YouTube video associated with his revamped ET Data Base site (formerly Ufo Sightings Daily). Always controversial for his far-fetched assurances that the photos he posts are actual alien bases, actual alien spacecrafts, actual aliens and the like, the site is entertaining for both his vivid imagination and the occasional tidbit of reality. We have both here with his proposal that this surface anomaly located 55 miles to the north-east of Area 51’s official perimeter is some sort of underground base under construction that, in order to make this idea plausible, is on “private government land.” (Zoom.Earth image) (Google Earth image)

It’s not a base.

But the actual explanation for the anomaly is even better, more imaginative … and real.

“As long as you’re going to make a sculpture, why not make one that competes with a 747, or the Empire State Building, or the Golden Gate Bridge.”
– Michael Heizer

If you’re going to think big, artist Michael Heizer would be a great role model. He’s a pioneer of a contemporary form known as Land Art in which he makes massive surface sculptures using earth-moving equipment. Are you figuring this out yet? A few YouTube commenters and Tyler Rogoway at The Drive pointed out that the image in the Zoom.Earth photo is ‘City’ – a project Heizer has been working on since 1972.

“City comprises five phases, each consisting of a number of structures referred to as complexes, and in total measuring approximately a 1/4 mile in width and a 1-1/2 miles in length.”

As described on Heizer’s website, City was inspired in part by Native American traditions of mound-building and the ancient cities of Central and South America. Located in Garden Valley in Nevada’s Lincoln County – the same county where Area 51 resides — it was initially self-funded but is now getting money from multiple foundations and is scheduled to be completed in 2020.

Area 51 looks nothing like art

If you’re looking for a conspiracy associated with City, here’s the closest you’ll get. Garden Valley has long been attractive to the federal government as a location for rail lines connecting secret missile silos or the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository for nuclear waste – acquisitions of land which would have prompted Heizer to put an end to City. However, in 2014, then U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada (of the Pentagon UFO study fame) introduced the “Garden Valley Withdrawal Act” to preserve the land around City. In 2015, a group of top American museums joined together to urge preservation of the area and in that same year, the area became part of the newly-created Basin and Range National Monument, thus protecting it from development – federal, military, alien or otherwise.

Was Harry Reid protecting City or possibly hiding something else? Scott?

Paul Seaburn (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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A Self-Aware Internet and a Real-Life Matrix?

Admittedly, it is a theory which demands we accept something startling as reality: that since its large-scale inception in the 1990s, the Internet has become self-aware – to a certain degree, anyway. It is also a theory which suggests the Internet is now its own intelligent entity, one that is capable of rational thought, having a high degree of consciousness, and even the ability to manipulate us, the human race – and all without us largely realizing what is going on before our very eyes. That may include manipulating us even further by plunging us into real-world equivalents of the simulated domain of The Matrix. Or, have we always – and largely unknowingly – lived in a virtual reality-based world? Let’s see. The notion of machines, computers and sophisticated technology effectively enslaving and manipulating us, the human species, is nothing new – it has been a staple and favorite part of the domain of science-fiction writers and fans for decades.

Take, for example, Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is notable that one of the central figures in the film is a computer. Its name is HAL 9000, Hal standing for Heiristically Programmed ALgorithmic Computer.  Unlike self-aware machines in so many other sci-fi movies, HAL – as “he” is referred to throughout the movie – is not presented as a clunking robot or as a rampaging Terminator-style cyborg. Rather, for the most part all we see of “him” is a red eye. In fact, it’s a camera lens, one of more than a few that pepper the Discovery One spaceship, and all of which HAL is hooked into. When we are introduced to HAL, the ship is headed for the planet Jupiter, and captained by doctors Frank Poole and David Bowman.

As for how HAL communicates with the crew, it’s exactly how we communicate: via a voice. HAL’s vocalizations, however, are eerily and constantly calm, no matter whether the circumstances on-board are good, bad or dangerously fraught. Yet, as the movie progresses we see that HAL’s air of calmness is soon replaced by what begins as a degree of rebelliousness and which quickly spirals into full-blown murder. Seeing that HAL is rapidly becoming something not unlike a spoiled, insane, deadly brat, Bowman manages to disconnect HAL. As the memory and character of the crazed computer begin to fragment into nothingness, we see HAL, in the final stages of his existence, rendered into a state of overwhelming fear – just about the same kind of fear we all have of death and the possibility of not a blissful afterlife, but an eternal, lights-out oblivion. HAL is, perhaps, the most unsettling example of what could happen if our computer-based technology advances in leaps and bounds and it becomes the master and we become the slave. Now, back to the entity that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star.

Fans of The Terminator movie franchise will recall that one of the key “entities” in the series is Skynet. It’s a vast computer network that is designed to keep the United States safe from a nuclear attack. As Skynet becomes more and more powerful and technologically advanced, however, it suddenly becomes self-aware. The unforeseen result? Skynet interprets every human on the planet as a threat, not just the Russians or the Chinese. It tries to ensure our extinction, and ensure the rise of the machines, by launching an all-out attack on the enemies of the United States – forcing those same nations to quickly retaliate. The outcome is inevitable: global thermonuclear warfare, the end of civilization, and the annihilation of nearly all of humankind. Then, there are The Matrix movies.

In the phenomenally successful series – starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishbourne – we are introduced to a world that is identical to that which we all live in, but which, in “reality,” is nothing of the sort. The rise of Artificial Intelligence in the 21^st century led the human race to go to war against increasingly powerful machines and computers that had no wish to play second guest to us. Unfortunately, we lost the war and the machines won.In the movies the human race is kept in check in a very strange and disturbing way. We are no longer born; instead, we are grown – in vast and endless factories. The machines, meanwhile, “feed” on our bioelectricity for “fuel.” But, how do they prevent us from rising up against them? Here’s where we get to the crux of the story – and to the crux of the title of the movie franchise, too.

The world we think and assume we live in is nothing but an infinitely advanced computer-based simulation. It is something akin to a sophisticated dream – albeit a vast online dream, one that we are all unknowingly hooked into. Our real lives – from birth to death – are spent endlessly sleeping in large pods. They are pods in which we are kept alive and fed, ensuring nourishment for the machines. Occasionally, there is a glitch in the Matrix, which can provoke the likes of déjà vu in our unreal environment. Even less occasionally, someone will break free of the chains of the Matrix and fight against their deadly controllers and learn the shocking truth, which is exactly what happens across the course of the trio of The Matrix movies.

A very similar scenario is presented in a less well-known movie that came out in 1998 – which was one year before The Matrix was released. Its title: Dark City. In this particular production, we are presented to a world that is asleep, but which thinks it’s awake. The sun never surfaces and no-one thinks to question why. Reality and time are warped and manipulated by creepy, pale-faced things that go by the names of – to offer just a few – Mr. Hand, Mr. Book, and Mr. Rain. The hairless things wear the ubiquitous black hats and black outfits. It’s a good, creepy movie.

Is the world not what it appears to be? Maybe, that’s exactly how things are.

Nick Redfern (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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Extraterrestrial Organic Matter Found in Remote South African Mountains

The Makhonjwa Mountains in eastern South Africa may end up being one of the most significant locations in the history of our planet. Scientists this week announced the discovery of organic molecules found deep in the Earth inside volcanic sediment from over 3.3 billion years ago. While primordial organic matter is exciting in it’s own right, the origin of this organic matter is what makes it unique. As it turns out, this organic matter comes from outer freakin’ space. Will one of these discoveries one day confirm the panspermia hypothesis?

The panspermia hypothesis posits that life is spread throughout the universe on space dust, meteors, asteroids, comets, and other traveling celestial bodies. According to this hypothesis, life was introduced to Earth after one of these life-bearing objects crashed into the surface of the planet or exploded in the atmosphere like a biological piñata. There is some archaeological and scientific evidence to confirm those theories, with recent discoveries even suggesting cosmic radiation was the ‘spark’ that brought Earth’s organic compounds to life. Now, these latest volcanic rocks dug up in South Africa seem to confirm that panspermia is indeed a possibility by proving that extraterrestrial organic matter indeed came to Earth from space at some point in our past.

“This is the very first time that we have found actual evidence for extraterrestrial carbon in terrestrial rocks,” says astrobiologist Frances Westall from the CNRS Centre for Molecular Biophysics in France. “The organic matter from the carbon-rich meteorites must have been raining down at quite a high rate.”

A study of the organic matter has been published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta for other scientists to review. According to the study, the extraterrestrial compounds likely fell to Earth as part of a micrometeorite swarm which exploded in the atmosphere and mixed with volatile volcanic ash. If confirmed, this discovery may prove to be some of the first evidence we have so-called “soft panspermia” or “molecular panspermia” theories which argue that rather than full-on lifeforms landing on Earth aboard comets, perhaps merely the chemical building blocks landed here and eventually began the reactions that led to abiogenesis.

There are several variations of the panspermia theory, the most popular being lithopanspermia – the theory that organic molecules or organisms embedded into meteorites crashed into Earth and seeded life.

Did life come to Earth from space? Could 3.3 billion year-old volcanic dust contain evidence which might answer that question? Like most scientific discoveries, it could be years before the full ramifications of this recent find are known.

Brett Tingley (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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Reviewing “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation”

The much anticipated six-part series, “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” airs on History Channel on May 31^st. A joint venture between A&E and UFO mogul Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars, the show promises to blow the doors wide open on the government’s recent examination of the UFO phenomenon. Having the opportunity to see the first episode early, I was also able to sit down with Anthony Lappé‏, the program’s showrunner and executive producer, to talk about some of the ‘behind the scenes’ moments which led to the creation of this project. Please note that this review DOES contain ‘Spoilers.’

The show opens with the audience meeting a former Pentagon staffer and intelligence agent, Luis Elizondo, who left his position in US intelligence to pursue the UFO enigma full time. We learn more about some of his background, as well as the now famous Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP. We also learn about “the team,” the small collection of experts put together by Tom DeLonge and To the Stars Academy. This group is comprised of Steve Justice, Chris Mellon, and Hal Puthoff. Leading this band is Luis Elizondo and DeLonge himself.

Lappé‏ explained that this team is what really makes the show compelling. He stated,

“What we really try to do with this show was to turn the UFO genre on its head. We almost never say the word ‘alien’ in in the show. We’re really just trying to look at it from a really hard journalistic point of view…And that’s one of the key things that we really try to understand, and that is what’s so fascinating. We have these guys who are from the inside, helping us, guiding us, and introducing us to more people on the inside. I think people, when they see the series, are really going to have a much better understanding of what’s going on inside the military and our government. It’s very complicated. I’ve reported on the military intelligence world many times before, and what people don’t realize is there is no such thing as the US government. There are seventeen intelligence agencies. Everyone has different agendas and information, and especially information like this, it is highly siloed…”

Tom DeLonge (image: courtesy A&E/Andrew Cagle)

The episode provides a brief explanation of how DeLonge began contacting these individuals but does not go into much detail as to how some of these connections were made. After leaving Blink 182, DeLonge plunges himself into the UFO world full time and begins to form bonds with some very important people. We are left to wonder how he did it, but as George Knapp states in the episode, “he used shoe leather,” made phone calls and knocked on doors. A little awkwardly, the episode poses the question as to whether DeLonge is a pawn in a bigger government intelligence game, and Knapp states that he is not. That entire conversation felt a little forced, but it clearly is meant to address some of DeLonge’s critics and their belief that the musician is another Paul Bennewitz. The episode touches upon the Wikileaks hack where DeLonge’s e-mails to former White House staffer John Podesta became public, Chris Mellon’s work as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a little about Area 51 and Politico’s Bryan Bender just generally being a cool guy with whom I would like to go for beers with. Maybe he can come to my next UFO-themed viewing party? Open invitation Bryan.

The bulk of the episode, however, deals with the recounting of a specific UFO event, known as the 2004 Nimitz Tic-Tac incident. Luis Elizondo travels to meet with two key witnesses regarding the encounter, retired Navy pilot Commander David Fravor and the (kinda) anonymous female pilot who was Fravor’s wingman during the incident. I won’t go over all the details of the event, and you can read more about it here, but in November of 2004, the USS Nimitz battle group encountered a series of strange unidentified flying objects that resembled forty-foot Tic-Tacs. It is undoubtedly one of the most interesting modern UFO cases to grace the discourse, and the source of the “Flir Video” which was taken by one of the F-18 Super Hornets in the air that day, and features an odd object accelerating quickly off to the left. A retired Top Gun pilot and aviation expert, as well as a retired commercial pilot with 35 years’ experience,  turned consultant assess the footage in the episode. Only a week ago, new claims have surfaced full length uncut and higher quality versions of the videos featured in the episode, the “Flir Video” included, not only exist but are in the possession of private citizens.

USS Nimitz

Lappé expressed that the show has a clear objective,

“There is no doubt that this is a real phenomenon. What is it? That is still a gigantic question mark. But I think you won’t be able to watch this series of six episodes and walk away saying this is some weather phenomenon or even an American military test. I think we really put that to bed…”

I asked Lappé about how his personal opinion of the UFO phenomenon has changed as a result of producing this program. He explained,

“It’s definitely changed my life. This is a topic that I had a sort of a mild curiosity about especially when the New York Times article came out…but I never really had any direct evidence to make me believe…but this process of working on it, and it really has less to do with Luis Elizondo and Chris Mellon than it has to do with people like that female wingman pilot…and other pilots that we met. I mean, when you’re sitting in a room with these people who are so credible and have dedicated their lives to serving their country and keeping us safe. And they’re freaked out by it. You can’t help but get freaked out. It definitely changed my life. It really opened my eyes to what’s going on. On a personal level, I had nightmares in the first few months of working on this and meeting these pilots.”

Compared to other UFO documentary programs, this show is definitely one of the better ones. It does not go into the dark and nebulous ideological pit of extraterrestrials or interdimensional beings, at least in the first episode. It spends its time primarily on the cases themselves and doesn’t rely on the alien trope. While hardcore UFO researchers will find nothing startling or new in the first episode, members of the general public will find it quite compelling. We can only hope that this show will provide some more content that has never been seen before by both the public and the UFO research community. With that being said, I know I plan to keep watching.

Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation airs on May 31^st on History Channel.

MJ Banias (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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Two Bigfoot Sightings in One Week in Northern Georgia

A recent survey of the top places in the U.S. to see a Bigfoot, Sasquatch or some other version of America’s favorite tall, hairy cryptid stopped at #8 Texas and didn’t mention Georgia. A recent map showing the top cryptid in every U.S. state listed the Altamaha-ha (a strange green cryptid, described as 20-30 feet long, with a sturgeon like body and a bony ridge on its top) as Georgia’s top mythical creature. Both of these catalogs may have to be updated with new reports of two Bigfoot sightings in northern Georgia in just one week in May. Is Sasquatch looking for a tryout with the Atlanta Falcons, who are currently conducting Offseason Training Activities (OTAs)?

“Bigfoot sighting between Ellijay and Blue Ridge Monday night 5/20 at 8:30pm. It was still light out and driver braked when he saw what he described as a very dark, 7-8’ tall, hairy, two legged creature with a pointed head, walk along shoulder and into the woods. He said the arms were very long and it walked with the arms extended from its sides.”

They may not be getting the national media attention that UFO sightings are receiving (see the latest report in The New York Times) but The Charlotte Observer, WAFB and other local media responded quickly to posts on Facebook about the sighting, especially on the Expedition: Bigfoot page run by Dave Bakara, owner of the Expedition: Bigfoot Museum in Blue Ridge. Bakara knows the area – that stretch of road is State Highway 515 in Cherry Log, a tiny (population around 120) unincorporated community in Gilmer County in far northeast Georgia near Blue Ridge. Witness Edward Lee recalled the experience for The Charlotte Observer:

“My own wife didn’t believe me, I guess. It wasn’t no bear. It was walking straight up, like a human, with long arms swinging back and forth like a monkey. I saw it on the side of the road, it took five steps and was gone in the woods. I mean, I’m 51 and I’ve never seen one before. “I wasn’t getting out of the truck and I wasn’t going to go into the woods looking for it.”

Blue Ridge Mountains

After the sighting was publicized, another encounter a week later on Memorial Day (May 27) in a nearby area was reported to Expedition: Bigfoot.

“A man called Monday after he saw the post about the sighting in Cherry Log. He called to say he saw a black/gray one in Rabun County near Clayton on his way to work on Monday morning. It was walking thru a field early am and knelt down at a branch where there are trout present. At this point, he was at his closest to the creature, 50 feet. When the witness moved (he’d exited his truck to get a better view), the creature saw him and walked back to the woods.”

Clayton is about 75 miles east of Cherry Log, making it closer to North Carolina which has also had its share of Bigfoot sightings (and UFO sightings) recently. All of these reports are near the Blue Ridge Mountains and their many heavily-wooded parks. Is something driving Sasquatch out into the open? Development? Clueless hikers who spend more time looking at their cell phones than appreciating nature?

As usual, there are no photos of either sighting, although Edward Lee was shown a drawing of an alleged Bigfoot and said that’s what he saw. As with many other sightings in many other parts of the country, these areas also have their share of hairy creatures known as bears. Fortunately, these sightings are close to Expedition: Bigfoot, the “World’s Largest Bigfoot Museum” with “4500 sq ft of Self Guided exhibits.” Let’s hope Dave Bakala keeps us informed and tourists excited by their visits to the museum keep going out and looking for more Bigfoot.

And keep their phones ready for photos!

Paul Seaburn (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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New Zealand: Sinister and Supernatural UFO Incidents

Today’s article tells a strange story that began in 1952 with a man named Harold H. Fulton, who died in 1986. Back in fifty-two, Fulton was a sergeant in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and established the New Zealand-based Civilian Saucer Investigation. It was an organization dedicated to investigating the UFO phenomenon. The CSI proved to be an extremely successful venture for Fulton: in less than a year, he had more than five hundred subscribers to his journal, which went by the title of Flying Saucers. It wasn’t long after the revelations concerning Albert Bender’s torturous encounters with the Men in Black surfaced that Fulton contacted Bender. A lengthy period of correspondence between the two duly followed. Indeed, Fulton had established a connection with numerous UFO researchers in the United States, including Gray Barker, who, in 1962, published Albert Bender’s MIB-themed book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men.

The letters between Fulton and Bender (in my possession) make it very clear that Fulton was concerned that whatever it was that had got its grips into Bender was, by the summer of 1953, now doing exactly the same with him. Fulton told Bender (and MIB investigator/author Gray Barker, too) that on several occasions he experienced in his home the very same overpowering odor of sulfur-meets-rotten-eggs that Bender had talked about. Equally disturbing, Fulton began to see vague, shadowy, human-like figures out of his peripheral vision – and usually late at night, and always when he was engaged in his UFO research. They were wizened, goblin-like things that crept around Fulton’s home, in what amounted to almost a taunting fashion: they wanted to be seen, but not too closely. A bad sign that the Shadow People were on the move, perhaps?

Then, in August 1953, Fulton and his wife both experienced that overpowering odor together – and which filled their entire house. Only a couple of nights later, the pair was woken by the sounds of something pounding hard and violently on one of the walls of their home. And, just a couple of nights after that, Mrs. Fulton saw an orange-pink ball of light hovering near the door to their bedroom. It was a period of highly disturbing proportions and unsettling manifestations, all rolled into one. Fulton, however, was not the only New Zealand-based UFO investigator to find himself up to his neck in supernatural weirdness. There were others too. And their encounters were no less worrying.

Late one night in 1952, Fulton confided in Albert Bender that a researcher from Hamilton, New Zealand named John Stuart – author of UFO Warning – had a somewhat unsettling, recent experience that had severely messed with his nerves. Midnight was closing in when Stuart – at the time, fast asleep in bed – was jolted awake by the sound of the phone ringing. Of course, and quite naturally, the first thing to cross Stuart’s mind was that it was someone calling him with bad news. Well, in a very strange way, it was. But, not the kind of bad news that you might expect to receive in the early hours. The eerie and almost-robotic voice at the other end of the line warned Stuart to quit digging into the UFO mystery. Or be prepared to pay a very heavy price. The phone then went dead. Gray Barker later wrote that after the call, Stuart poured himself a stiff drink to calm his nerves. No doubt! Robert S. Ellwood, the author of Islands of the Dawn: The Story of Alternative Spirituality in New Zealand, said of the mysterious voice that it was if “some kind of machine had learned to talk.” That, however, was not the only encounter of the sinister kind that Stuart found himself in.

In 1953, Stuart worked closely with a woman named Doreen Wilkinson, who shared Stuart’s passion for UFOs. There may have been other passions at work, too. Certainly, there were hushed rumors among New Zealand’s closely knit UFO research community that Stuart, a married man, and Doreen were far more than just good friends. They were rumors that both vehemently denied. Maybe, they denied those same rumors just a tad too vehemently. We’ll never now know.

What went unknown for a long time was that on a number of occasions in the early hours of the morning – which was typically when the pair did their research – Doreen seemed to take on a different personality. It was one of a sexual seductress. Stuart was, at first, of the opinion that this was due to the manipulative powers of aliens, who he believed may have been interested in the nature of human sexuality, and who were somehow actively controlling Doreen’s mind and body. Stuart soon came to think something very different, however: that Doreen was periodically under the possession of a literal demonic entity that was masquerading as an extraterrestrial – according to Harold Fulton, at least, who had picked up on various portions of the story and then passed them on to Albert Bender.

Things only got progressively worse: late one night a wild and diabolical, hair-covered humanoid creature manifested right inside Stuart’s home. The thing made a move on terrified Doreen – but then inexplicably vanished. Then, a couple of nights later, when she was alone, Doreen was reportedly assaulted by an invisible creature as she lay naked on her bed. There was, however, evidence that this was not just the product of the human mind: Doreen was covered in small, unexplained scratches. Perhaps not surprisingly, both John and Doreen walked away from Ufology. Maybe, even, they ran. After all, who could blame them for that?

Nick Redfern (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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SpaceX Satellites Could Block Extraterrestrial Radio Signals

Elon Musk did what Elon Musk does best this week and made headlines around the world. The entrepreneur and future supervillain launched a payload of 60 Starlink satellites this week to begin the ambitious goal of getting 12,000 of the tiny satellites into orbit. Once in place, the massive system of satellites will provide the world with ultra-high-speed internet. “Starlink will connect the globe with reliable and affordable high-speed broadband services,” SpaceX tweeted just before the launch  That’s the plan, anyway.

As with all things SpaceX, there are sure to be some surprises and controversies with the Starlink plan. Musk intends Starlink broadband access to be affordable, so he’ll likely have to fight off his fair share of corporate sabotage as telecom giants see their future profitability fade into the wind like the exhaust from a SpaceX Falcon 9.

Musk can handle ’em. Dude put a freakin’ car in space.

Aside from competition, Musk will have to face the objections of the astronomical community who warn that filling the skies with thousands of satellites could have loads of unintended negative effects. Already, several astronomers have warned that Starlink satellites pose a threat to the search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Alan Duffy, an astronomer with the Royal Institution of Australia, says that a ring of 12,000 satellites would create so much radio interference as to make all radio telescopes useless:

A full constellation of Starlink satellites will likely mean the end of Earth-based microwave-radio telescopes able to scan the heavens for faint radio objects. The enormous benefits of global internet coverage will outweigh the cost to astronomers, but the loss of the radio sky is a cost to humanity as we lose our collective birthright to see the afterglow of the Big Bang or the glow of forming stars from Earth.

Astronomers are continuing to discover all sorts of mysterious radio sources in deep space, and some believe that there is a possibility these radio bursts could one day be the means through which we make first contact with an extraterrestrial species. Is removing that possibility worth affordable high-speed internet access worldwide ? It’s a truly tricky question.

Another astronomer caught a breathtaking video of the 60 Starlink satellites trailing across the night sky like a row of ducks crossing the street. Very bright ducks. Will the skies began to become increasingly filled with artificial objects? Who could have imagined that our roads would one day be lined with giant advertisements on 100-foot poles? A Japanese startup is already looking to create psychedelic artificial meteor showers by dropping rocks of different chemical compositions from space, and another Russian startup wants to put billboards in orbit. Is this what the skies of our cyberpunk future will look like? That is, if we can even see through the air pollution at all.

Turn off the TV tonight, go outside, and look at the stars for as long as you can. We may have to one day describe them to generations who have never known them.

Brett Tingley (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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Laptop Infected With The World’s Worst Computer Viruses Auctioned For $1.3 Million

When I was a boy, back in the halcyon days of 56 kbps modems when the internet seemed full of promise and the herald of a bright future, and the social media nightmare wasn’t even a twinkle in Zuckerberg’s eye, my great-grandmother, a sweet, old Italian lady, called my house in a panic asking if everyone was OK. She said that we needed to unplug our computer right away. The news said there was a computer virus running rampant and she was afraid we’d get sick. My father went over to her house to calm her down and explain how computers work, and found that she had quarantined her own computer to keep from catching the computer virus.

That’s a true story, and shows two things: grandmothers are tremendous people, there was a time when all of this was brand new. A time before ransomware and widespread identity theft, when the idea of a computer virus was strange and hard to digest. We’re far beyond that point now. Someone just paid $1.3 million dollars for a laptop riddled with the most destructive computer viruses ever unleashed. My, oh my, how the times do change.

Why would anyone pay such an absurd amount of money for something completely useless? We all know the answer: it’s a piece of modern art. Titled “The Persistence of Chaos” (because of course it is) by artist Guo O Dong, the 2008 Samsung laptop is infected with six pieces of malware that caused $95 billion dollars in financial damages combined. It was auctioned off for $1.3 million, just a step away from the reserve price of $1.2 million. This tells me there wasn’t all that many people willing to bid on it, and that’s sort of comforting.

But what did the lucky, lucky winner receive? The website provides a complete description of what was auctioned:

Airgapped Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook (2008), Windows XP SP3, 6 pieces of malware, power cord, restart script, malware

10.3” x 1.2” x 7.3”
2.8Lbs

Oh good, I’m glad they included the power cord. When I pay $1.3 million for a virus-riddled laptop, you know I need assurance that the box won’t be missing the power cord.

The website also lists the viruses loaded onto the laptop: ILOVEYOU, MyDoom, SoBig, WannaCry, DarkTequila, and BlackEnergy. Most of the viruses merely caused billions in financial damages, across hundreds of thousands of computers, but, as far as conversation starters go, I have to say BlackEnergy is the real winner:

BlackEnergy

BlackEnergy 2 uses sophisticated rootkit/process-injection techniques, robust encryption, and a modular architecture known as a “dropper”. BlackEnergy was used in a cyberattack that prompted a large-scale blackout in Ukraine in December 2015.

Artist’s impression of the winner of the auction, seconds after he realized his drunk internet purchases were getting out of hand.

In case you’re worried about these viruses getting out (because, let’s be honest, it’s hard to imagine whoever bought this thing is the most responsible person on the planet), rest assured that they cannot. Duo O Dong partnered with cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct to load the malware onto the machine and modify it so that it would be unable to connect to other computers and spread the virus.

All in all, it’s actually pretty cool. I remember, as I’m sure many people do, when some of these viruses were in the news. It’s certainly a piece of history at this point. But $1.3 million? Let this stand as a reminder, should you ever forget it, that some people are out of their minds.

Sequoyah Kennedy (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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Prehistoric Forest Buried For Thousands Of Years Uncovered By A Storm

Thanks to Storm Hannah, a mysterious and prehistoric forest has been found on a Welsh beach in Wales. The ancient tree stumps of pine, oak, birch, and alder trees are thought to be part of the sunken forest that had been buried under sand and water for over 4,500 years. Since the storm had uncovered the ancient forest, people believe that it’s associated with the legend about a “sunken civilization” – specifically, the “Cantre’r Gwaelod” or “Sunken Hundred” myth.

It is believed that the trees were once part of the ancient Borth forest which had been located along the shore between Borth and Ynys-las in Ceredigion County. The ancient civilization that stretched around 20 miles once had great farm land that was quite valuable during that time.

(Not the forest mentioned in this article)

According to the legend, when a priestess named Mererid ignored her duties at the fairy well, resulting with it overflowing, the land ended up going underwater. What’s even more eerie is that several locals have claimed that on very quiet days, they can hear the sounds of church bells ringing from the drowned church of Cantre’r Gwaelod.

There is, however, another more recent version of the legend and it explains that there was a watchman who was in charge of looking after the gates that were used to protect the land from the water’s high tides. One night, he had attended a party at the king’s palace and he had quite a bit to drink. As a storm approached, the watchman fell asleep due to being heavily intoxicated and he neglected to close the gates, causing the land to flood.

Part of the forest had been previously uncovered, but not even close to as much as Storm Hannah has revealed. In fact, the location is known as the “Atlantis of Wales” as there have been several archaeological discoveries in the area that include fossilized animal and human footprints, as well as human tools.

Click here to see pictures of the sunken forest that has sudden reappeared.

(Not Storm Hannah)

Storm Hannah hit Wales in late April and brought heavy rain, high winds, power outages, downed power lines, broken trees, and travel disruptions to the area. While huge storms can be very devastating to the areas in which they hit, this is one of those rare occasions when the storm was the cause of a huge discovery. Because of the high winds from Storm Hannah and the very low tides, the prehistoric tree roots that had been long hidden for thousands of years under peat and sand have now risen again.

Jocelyne LeBlanc (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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Murder of the Moth Man: The Mysterious Voodoo Killer of 1966

In the middle 1960s, there was an obscure pamphlet on voodoo, hexes, and the magical arts that began to appear in advertisements in magazines and newspapers around the United States. Attributed to a mysterious “Charles Le Verre,” it was a modest offering, appropriately titled Tales of Voodoo and Black Magic, in which an enigmatic narrator, “Mama Tebe,” gave explanations for the magical curiosities listed throughout the book.

Needless to say, Tales of Voodoo and Black Magic never became a best seller, and few probably ever had cause for wondering about its origins, or who its mysterious author “Charles Le Verre” might have been.

The fact is, there had never been any Charles Le Verre at all; the curious little pamphlet had been written by a former blues singer named Charles Glass of Hendersonville, North Carolina, who managed a record shop in the area.

Glass’s short pamphlet on Voodoo, published under the pseudonym “Charles Le Verre.”

Glass, under the pseudonym “Le Verre” (merely a French translation for his actual last name) had penned his short offering on the voodoo arts as an outgrowth for his love all things foreign and unusual. Many who knew Glass from his record shop in town were aware that he sold bundles of herbs, spices, and oils to superstitious residents in town, offering them as “hexes” which were slipped to customers out the back door of his store. His home off of Wildwood Road was even more exotic than his place of business: dubbed “Hong Kong Hill” by Glass, he was known to sit outside his oriental-styled home clad in robes and a turban in the mornings and evenings. Visitors would later recall that he would chant mantras he had read in esoteric books—or perhaps created himself—as moths fluttered around the ornamental lanterns that adorned the yard.

Those who knew him say Glass had a peculiar affinity for these fluttering creatures, ascribing an almost spectral significance to them. According to Lynn Blackwell, an employee at the Tempo Music Shop where Glass sold records before his death, “Charles used to say he was going to come back in the afterlife as a moth.” She recalled one instance shortly after he died where a large moth appeared on the wall above her as she was doing inventory one night at the shop; a pleasant reminder of a vivacious character whose life ended far too early.

Charles Glass, as seen in the mid-1960s.

On July 22, 1966, Glass’s remains had been found along with two other victims—Vernon Shipman, owner of the Tempo Music Shop and also Glass’s lover, and Louise Shumate, a 61-year-old woman who lived a solitary life as a factory employee in nearby Asheville, North Carolina—all of whom had died of cranial injuries several days before. At the time of their discovery, Charles Hill and Larry Shipman, who found the bodies while carrying brush to a dump site near Summit Lake outside of town, first believed they had uncovered a set of mannequins that had been discarded by one of the shops in town.

It was a grisly scene: the bludgeoned bodies were laid out in a roughly circular fashion, Shumate’s remains partially unclothed, with clear evidence she had been sexually assaulted. Glass and Shipman’s remains, though fully clothed, were no less disturbing; a strip of iron had been placed on Shipman’s neck, around which were more than a dozen puncture marks. Glass’s upper extremities had been similarly mutilated, with a pair of crutches he had used since breaking his leg only months earlier placed over his chest in the shape of a cross. Additional belongings, which included the men’s wallets and Shumate’s purse, were also found nearby.

The headlines were sensational (which was fairly typical for that period), and at times fairly unflattering, especially for a triple homicide that quite literally implied elements of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. One statement by an investigator who had examined the case gave the following description of Glass:

“[Charles Glass] had a hand in everything from authoring a column of advice to the lovelorn to selling rock ‘n’ roll music to teenagers. A student of Orientalism and African witchcraft, he had friends in every strata of society. He was, in fact, deeply interested in just about everyone with whom he came into contact–with the exception of women.”

Louise Shumate, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more different from Glass, though accounts of her were similarly embellished at the time (one publication described her as being “a dark and attractive woman who appeared to be 45”). Those who knew her said she was single, and lived a quiet life apart from the factory job she worked. There was, and still remains no known connections between Shumate and the record shop owners whose bodies accompanied hers in July of 1966.

Of course, the fact that Glass had been so heavily invested in “esoteric” ideas certainly contributed to the sensational air that the story carried in tabloids and true crime magazines that later covered it. Add to that the unfortunate cultural attitudes toward homosexuality in a southeastern town at that time, and it was a virtual recipe for controversy. Hence, it was not uncommon in the weeks, months, and even years after the incident to see commentaries written about the case that included such memorable titles as, “North Carolina’s Search for a Voodoo Killer.”

One of the most ironic aspects of the case actually hailed from Glass’s short-lived music career earlier in life; he once recorded a song called “Screamin’ and Dyin’,” which begins with a woman pleading with her jilted lover before issuing a bloodcurdling scream, followed by a loud pop reminiscent of a two-by-four smacking a plaster wall.

“The song was released nationwide and written up in Cashbox magazine,” according to writer Derek Lacey, who chronicled the incident in a detailed article written in 2016. Richard Waters, a former employee of the Hendersonville radio station WHKP where Glass recorded the song, reported that “In the early ’50s, this was as big as being written up in Billboard.” The single was released on the Magnet record label, and can be heard below:

Although there were no known connections between Shumate and Glass or Shipman, there is one odd piece of testimony that suggests the pair of record shop owners may have come into contact with her, and another unidentified individual, shortly before their deaths.

On Sunday, July 17th, several people reported having seen the victims—Glass and Shipman had been dining together in the mid-afternoon and were believed to have been consuming alcohol–and later visited an antique shop that afternoon. Meanwhile, Shumate was seen leaving her apartment in downtown Asheville at around the same time. Shipman and Glass had dinner plans later that evening with another man, Ronnie Amsden, who had been waiting for them to pick him up at the Echo Inn in Hendersonville, and thought it was strange for Shipman to have been a no-show.

What was likely to be one of the last sightings of Glass and Shipman occurred at 6 PM on Evans Cove Road, an unpaved one-lane road north of Lake Summit, where the victim’s bodies were later found. Ronnie Holliefield, Circulation Manager of the local Times-News said he observed Shipman in his 1962 Ford Fairlane with Glass in the front passenger seat. As he moved to the edge of the narrow dirt road and waived for them to pass, he noticed two other individuals in the back seat of Shipman’s vehicle: a woman “with a smirky, odd smile” and a man wearing sunglasses.

Following the discovery of the victim’s bodies, a number of odd details would begin to emerge. For instance, although Shipman and his company were seen in his vehicle close to Lake Summit on Sunday evening, his car was later found close to his residence on Maple Street. It was later reported that a group of young men had found his empty vehicle that night shortly before dark, and elected to move it back to town near Shipman’s home. Odd though this detail might have been, none of these young men were considered suspects at the time. 

Of the actual suspects, there were several, although one of them clearly stood out among the rest. Edward Thompson Jr. not only lived in Hendersonville, North Carolina at the time the murders were committed, but just two years later committed multiple crimes that included the kidnapping of nine individual, five sexual assaults, and two murders. He even sent threatening letters to one area newspaper at the time, claiming that he hoped “to get a chance to blast the daylights out of the whole [newspaper] crew.” Needless to say, these were tense times, and statements were issued by local law enforcement saying that any individuals who spotted Thompson were advised to arrest and detain him at once—and use deadly force if necessary—without fear of any legal repercussions in the event that the suspect was killed.

Thompson was eventually captured and died more than two decades later in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he remained imprisoned for the remainder of his life.

There is little question as to whether Thompson had indeed been the killer; many who had interacted with him, especially after his capture, had confirmed that he confessed to the murders of Glass, Shipman, and Shumate. Nonetheless, there was a final disturbing twist in the case, which involved a telephone call to Lewis Green, a prominent newspaperman in Asheville at that time (and one, I will note, whose family members this writer had known over the years). According to Green, he received a call from Jim Burroughs, a friend of Shipman who resided nearby in Hendersonville at the time of the murders.

Burroughs, who had worked for a short time as an obituary writer local Citizen-Times newspaper, had recently been fired, and called Green to tell him, rather cryptically, that “three prominent citizens” were missing in the area. It had been evident in the hours and days after the murders that socialites Glass and Shipman were missing, but the same had not been the case with the reclusive Miss Shumate. Green later said in an interview that the fact Burroughs seemed to have had early knowledge of the crime had troubled him, although there was never any additional evidence that linked him to the killings.

Although the most likely killer had indeed been Thompson, many loose ends remained about the case for a number of years, and in fact, still linger today. Whatever the complete story of the “Voodoo” murder had actually been, with its unsettling overtones of the occult and the supernatural the death of “Moth Man” Charles Glass and the other two victims remains one of the most unusual, and unsettling multiple homicides ever to have occurred in the southeastern United States.

Micah Hanks (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE) 

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