There have long been tales of mysterious monsters and entities prowling the wilds of our world, and these have become fixtures in the world of cryptozoology, or the search for hidden and undiscovered animals. Yet, there are often strange things just as unusual that lie within the realm of trees and plants, which are every bit as bizarre and inexplicable. At times these can include trees and plants that seem to be very dangerous indeed, and here we will take a detour off into the brush and deep forests of the remote areas of our world, in order to come face to face with deadly cryptid plants.

With many of the deadly mystery plants supposedly encountered by explorers throughout history, we have something with which it is difficult to separate fact from pure myth. This is surely the case with a type of legendary grass common in Irish lore that is known as féar gortach, or literally “Hungry Grass.” Often said to be cursed or under the influence of some sort of entity such as fairies, Hungry Grass was said to cause an insatiable hunger, possibly even starvation, and profound weakness in anyone who walked across it, with the only way to pass safely being to carry some food. In some versions of the tale this grass is somewhat snake-like, and will actively wrap itself around unwary passersby. The grass was also said to corrupt and eat other crops, and was so persistent in lore that it was blamed in part for the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. In some areas, such as a place called Hungry Hill, the grass was supposedly so plentiful that it was considered to be a death sentence to venture there, with those who entered never returning.

There are numerous other mythical supposed man-eating plants that are similarly within the shadows of legend, any reality they have uncertain. One of these is the so-called “Man-Eating Lotus of Nubia,” which was an enormous lotus tree renowned for its gorgeous flowers and also known to lure in prey with sweet, succulent fruit, only to lash out to kill and consume them. In an 1881 travelogue called Under the Punkah, explorer Phil Robinson told of how one of these man-eating plants had attacked his uncle. The uncle was reported as having emptied his firearm into the blood-thirsty tree, after which he had hacked away at it with a knife as it grabbed and stabbed at him with vines and branches. He was finally able to barely escape with his life, but one of his native guides had not been so lucky, and was devoured. Robinson described the Man-Eating Lotus:

This awful plant, that rears its splendid death-shade in the central solitude of a Nubian fern forest, sickens by its unwholesome humours all vegetation from its immediate vicinity, and feeds upon the wild beasts that, in the terror of the chase, or the heat of noon, seek the thick shelter of its boughs ; upon the birds that, flitting across the open space, come within the charmed circle of its power, or innocently refresh themselves from the cups of its great waxen flowers ; upon even man himself when, an infrequent prey, the savage seeks its asylum in the storm, or turns from the harsh foot-wounding sword-grass of the glade, to pluck the wondrous fruit that hang plumb down among the wondrous foliage. And such fruit! Glorious golden ovals, great honey drops, swelling by their own weight into pear-shaped translucencies. The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard, keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green.

As similarly deadly flowering tree was known as the “Kumanga Killer Tree,” of Madagascar, which was first heard about by outsiders by the Czech explorer Ivan Mackerle in 1998. Natives claimed that this particular tree was found on only one part of the island and was said to have colorful flowers that exuded an extremely poisonous gas. The natives claimed to know where such a tree was and guided Mackerle to its location. During the trek, the expedition members were so concerned about the poisonous nature of the plant that they actually wore gas masks. When they arrived at the alleged Kumanga Killer Tree, they found no gas spewing flowers, but did find several animal skeletons under the tree. The lack of flowers, the natives explained, was due to the tree not being in bloom. Mackerle also uncovered a story of a former British army officer who allegedly took photographs of a tree on the island that had various animal skeletons strewn about its base. Whether this particular tree was either one of the aforementioned carnivorous trees or something new is uncertain. It is also unknown what became of these photographs, or if indeed they ever existed at all.

Interestingly, Mackerle only chanced upon this supposed discovery because he was in the region looking for yet another legendary man-eating tree, originally known from an old account brought back from the deepest jungles by the German explorer Carl Liche in 1878. The account describes in horrific detail the sacrifice of a village woman of the Mkodo tribe to a giant flesh eating tree. In a letter published in The South Australian Register in 1881, Liche described the unsettling scene that unfolded before him and his cohort, a man only known as Hendrick. Liche writes:

The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.

The tree itself was described as being around 8 feet in height, and having an appearance reminiscent of a pineapple, with eight long, pointed leaves that hung down from its top to the ground. The trunk of the tree was topped with a sort of receptacle that contained a thick liquid said to have soporific qualities that drugged potential prey and was believed to be highly addictive. Surrounding this receptacle were long, hairy tendrils with six white palpi resembling tentacles. The tree possessed white, transparent leaves that reminded Liche of the quivering mouthparts of an insect. This one account created great interest in the possibility that such a tree existed, prompting several expeditions to the region looking for it, of which Mackerle’s was one of them. Unfortunately, he was never able to find it, and the Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar is largely confined to folklore.

Courtesy of Karl Shuker and Enigmas Magazine

Yet another supposed killer tree was first described in 1870 by the missionary Reverend Henry Callaway in his book The Religious System of the Amazulu. In the remote wilds of South Africa was said to lurk a tree or bush that the natives called the Umdhlebe, which was said to constantly be surrounded by the skeletons of the animals it consumed. It supposedly killed its prey through an extremely potent toxin, which could kill small animals such as birds instantly, and which had profound effects on humans as well. It was said that anyone approaching the tree would develop bloodshot eyes, fevers, and delirium, and if one were to get too close they would be stricken by a condition in which they would be unable to sleep or even sit down, and would pace relentlessly until they wasted away and died. Interestingly, the only way to cure this mystery sickness was supposedly to use the fruit of the tree to concoct a antidote, a feat which only a few could pull off.

Besides deadly trees, there have also been accounts of other types of predatory legendary plants, and one of the most frightening of these must be a vampiric, blood-drinking vine said to dwell in the deepest swamps of Nicaragua. The vine is referred to by the natives as “The Devil’s Snare,” and is described as being rather like an octopus in appearance. The plant was described by one naturalist by the name of Mr. Dunstan, who came face to face with its horrifying nature while spending two years studying the plants and animals of the region. In the account, Dunstan claimed to have come across the plant while in a swamp region near Lake Nicaragua. Dunstan, who was collecting plant and insect specimens in the area, suddenly heard his dog let out a high pitched whine of terror, pain, or both. Dunstan allegedly hurried to the source of the cries and found his dog enveloped by a network of rope-like roots and fibers.  These fibers were of a dark, nearly black hue, and were covered with a thick gum that seemed to exude from some sort of pores. This gum was reportedly extremely adhesive and had a foul, animal odor. The ensnared dog struggled within this fibrous network and was wailing as if in a great deal of pain.

Once the startled Dunstan was able to recover from this gruesome sight, he tried desperately to cut the dog free with his knife, but found the vines to be surprisingly difficult to cut and to his horror found that the plant’s rope-like tendrils actively wrapped and curled themselves around his hands like sinuous fingers. Dunstan was able to extricate the animal only after an enormous amount of effort and he noticed that the grasping vines had left the skin of his hands red and blistered. He also noticed to his amazement that the dog was bloodstained and covered in spots that seemed puckered as if they had been sucked. The dog, though still alive, was extremely disoriented and had difficulty walking. The naturalist told the natives of his encounter and they explained that the vine was well known and feared in the area, warning him to stay well away from it. Undaunted, Dunstan tried to collect more information on the bizarre vine, but found it to be very difficult to approach or handle. However, through his observations he deduced where the plant’s remarkable suction abilities derived from and how it fed. He reported:

The plant’s power of suction is contained within a number of infinitesimal mouths or little suckers, which, ordinarily closed, open for the reception of food. If the substance is animal, the blood is drawn off and the carcass or refuse then dropped. A lump of raw meat being thrown to it, in the short space of five minutes the blood will be thoroughly drunk off and the mass thrown aside. Its voracity is almost beyond belief.

Dunstan also described how the plant was extremely hard to get off once it latched on, and could only be pulled away with a great deal of effort and possibly lost skin. He eventually gave up his studies on the vampire vine and very little else is known about it. Another supposed predatory vine was also reported in 1852 from the impenetrable, uncharted rain forests of interior Africa. According to Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog, one newspaper report of the era described the bizarre plant as follows:

According to some Italian journals, a new organised being has been discovered in the interior of Africa, which seems to form an immediate link between vegetable and animal life. This singular production of nature has the shape of a spotted serpent. It drags itself along on the ground; instead of a head, it has a flower, shaped like a bell, which contains a viscous liquid. Flies and other insects, attracted by the smell of the juice, enter into the flower, and are caught by the adhesive matter. The flower then closes, and, remains shut until the prisoners are bruised and transformed into chyle. The indigestible portions, such as the head and the wings, are thrown out by two aspiral openings. The vegetable serpent has a skin resembling leaves, a white and soft flesh, and, instead, of a bony skeleton, a cartilaginous frame filled with yellow marrow. The natives consider it a delicious food.

Finally, we have the strange story of an apparent giant, man-eating flower supposedly native to the forgotten South Pacific islet of El Banoor, a place said to be home to a man-eating flower known only as “The Death Flower.” The flower’s existence is mostly known of through the 1581 account of the explorer Captain Arkwright, who wrote of it in his journals of his travels. He described the plant as basically a huge, brightly colored flower with very large petals. The flower reportedly could release a soporific, sleep inducing aroma, whereupon the victim would lie down upon one of the petals. Once this happened, the flower would close and digest its sleeping prey alive. It seems like a fascinating account, but since it is only one report and the location of El Banoor is not specifically explained, it seems unlikely we will ever know for sure just how much veracity the account holds. Indeed, is there any truth to any of these, or are they tall tales told by travelers and explorers? We may never know for sure, and such accounts will perhaps always instill bafflement and a sense of wonder at what lies out there in the wild places of our world.

When most people think of sweat baths (the non-porn kind), they usually think of the ancient Romans or sometimes certain neighborhoods in New York City. However, archeologists trace the first (and possibly the best) steam rooms back to the Maya civilization which created the hot, steamy rooms in Mesoamerica somewhere around 900 BCE. Hot, steamy rooms in hot, steamy tropical lands? These rooms obviously had more ritual purposes than just cleaning out the pre-Columbian pores. A recent discovery in Guatemala reveals one unusual purpose of these steam rooms, the goddess associated with them and their connection to reptilian births. Wait … what?

“No other structure in Mesoamerica–sweat bath or otherwise–looks like this building. It would seem that when someone enters the front of the structure, they are entering the amphibian goddess who personified the sweat bath.”

You get the idea.

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) archaeologist Ashley Sharpe co-authored a study, published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, which described the discovery of this unusual Maya steam bath and the search for its unique purpose. Maya steam baths themselves are not unusual – they generally have vented roofs and a firebox and were often built outside the homes of the elite. However, some have been found inside other buildings and had attached rooms for changing or recovering. Most were built for cleansing the body and the mind, helping heal the sick, talking to the gods or members of the underworld, or for other rituals. This particular one was different.

“Linking notions of birth to reptilian figures, however, is not uncommon among the Classic Maya as they express the verb ‘to birth’ as an upended reptilian mouth glyph. What we see at Xultun is an example where this reptilian goddess, as well as the ideas and myths she embodied, are expressed as a physical place.”

Boston University archaeologist Mary Clarke, main author of the study, reveals in a press release that this bath, discovered at the Xultun archeological site in modern Guatemala and named ‘Los Sapos’, was used for birthing – a tool that midwives believed aided in the process and produced healthier babies. To aid in the process, the steam bath was dedicated to a Classic Maya goddess (name not known but possibly ‘ix.tzutz.sak’) who is depicted “squatting in a toad-like position with legs ornamented with iguanas and cane toads.” The steam bath appears to have been built around 250 CE and used for 300 years before being buried. It appears to have been discovered about 300 years later and put back into use – not for steaming but for making offerings to the reptilian goddess that further solidified the purpose of the original bath.

She sounds hot!

“Because of the iconography on the outside of Los Sapos and because we know it was a sweat bath, we have a rare case where we can associate the offerings–an infant, figurines of women, and frogs and iguanas–with the role the structure played in the community.”

The offerings were found in an area that had been set on fire, so it’s difficult to determine if the infant had been a live sacrifice to the reptilian goddess, but human sacrifices were common to the Maya culture. Based on Clarke’s description of the reptilian goddess, that may have been the case.

“This supernatural figure is a ferocious embodiment of the Earth. When displeased, she may take revenge or withhold the things people need to survive. The offering at Los Sapos was both an attempt to appease this goddess and an act of resilience.”

The fire took place around 900 CE, at the end of the Maya civilization, so the people could have been negotiating with the gods to slow their demise. While the Maya are gone, their steam baths remain in the temazcal – round sweat lodges often run by shamans and popular in Mexico and Central America with tourists (when we could still be tourists … sigh).

Just be careful not to squat in one or you may get a surprise from the reptilian birthing goddess.

For centuries there have been legends and lore about mysterious spiritual entities commonly referred to as Fairies. Also known as Faeries, the Fae, and numerous other names, they permeate countless stories and legends since time unremembered, with appearances and origins as varied as the different cultures and people who believe in them. Most commonly depicted in popular culture as shimmering little flying forest spirit nymphs with wings, they are also mostly seen by the mainstream as benevolent and playful creatures. Yet, looking into the lore of fairies they are not always so, and stories abound of the darker side of these creatures, including mischief, murder, and kidnappings. One frequent theme in fairy lore is that they have a well-known reputation for abducting human beings, and far from mere legend and lore, this has reportedly happened for real many times over the centuries.

In most cases the person is just sort of whisked away, and this often happens to the very young. Another case concerns a young woman by the name of Annie McIntire, also from Ireland.

According to an account in a 1909 edition of the Preston Herald:

Annie McIntire, a venerable county Derry woman, has a sublime faith in the fairies. When being examined at a meeting of the Limavady Pension Committee as to her age, she fixed the time of her birth as Hallowe’en in 1839 giving for her recollection of the fact the startling reason that she had been ‘stolen by the fairies’. In reply to the chairman the woman said she was as certain of her abduction by the fairies as the she was alive. After carrying off the infant, she continued, the ‘wee people’ indulged in revels and dancing, in the wood at Carrowkeel, which were fortunately overheard by her brother when returning from Carndomagh. The brother had a book [a Bible? difficult to see the fairies being frightened off by a penny dreadful], which he threw into the wood, and scattered the fairies when he lifted his baby sister in his arms and carried her back in triumph. Further questioned the witness said her mother relatives were overjoyed at her safe return and gave themselves up to feasting and merriment. This was the only incident by which witness was able to determine her age, of which no record appeared in the census of 1841 or that of 1851.

Indeed babies are traditionally prime targets for fairies, and in order to protect their infants people would often sprinkle them with holy water or hang bars or rods of iron over their cribs, as iron was said to ward fairies off, with even adults often carrying around iron when venturing into a fairy’s territory. This was among many precautions mothers would take to protect both themselves and their babies from fairies. 20^th century fairy researcher W.Y. Evans-Wentz said of this:

The fairies were wont to take away infants and their mothers, and many precautions were taken to safeguard them till purification and baptism took place, when the fairy power became ineffective. Placing iron about the bed, burning leather in the room, giving mother and child the milk of a cow which had eaten of the mothan, pearl-wort (Pinguicula vulgaris), a plant of virtue, and similar means were taken to ensure their safety. If the watching-women neglected these precautions, the mother or child or both were spirited away to the fairy bower.

This does not seem to always work, though, and in another account we have a case from the site Irish Central from a witness called “Grace.” She writes:

Don’t believe in Fairy abductions? My Granny would have a sit down with you and soon set you straight. From the very day of her birth, Granny’s parents carefully lay their iron fire-poker across the basket she slept in. They were believer’s you see, in the Good People. Well, wasn’t everyone back then? But times have changed and now there are fewer who believe. Who knows, maybe the Good People like it that way. My Granny thinks so and she says she should know.

“I’ve lived one foot in our world and the other foot in theirs” so she says. You see, when Granny was but a few months old, the Good People tried to steal her away. Without a drop of whiskey on her breath, she’ll tell you that she was asleep in her wee basket when there was a commotion out back of her parent’s cottage. They lived in County Limerick at that time, it was a farm, with mainly sheep she says, and anyway, all hell had broken loose tween sheep and dogs and Granny’s Mam and Pop upped and ran outside to see the damage. As it happened, there was nothing to see, nothing at all. It had been nothing but bluster, for the sheep and dogs were only calm and dozey. Which was strange in itself.

Granny’s Mam was pretty canny, and she hightailed it back to the cottage to find Granny, still wrapped tight in her blanket, laying at the threshold at the front door. Fast asleep. Across the room from her basket. When she was older, Granny was told by her parents that the Good People had distracted them so they could steal her away for she was ‘touched’, having one blue eye and one green you see. Only they couldn’t get her out from the cottage on account she’d been baptized. Granny will tell you the iron bar did nothing to keep the Good People from reaching in her basket and what’s more, it wasn’t true, her being baptized. It’s what her parents told anyone who asked, but in truth, she was yet to be baptized and only a day or two after the ‘visit’ as Granny calls it, her parents took her on the quiet to the Priest for to get the job done. 

So we can only guess that the Good People dropped Granny to the ground when they heard her Mam approaching. I think Granny enjoys telling the story and wears it as a kind of badge actually. It is remarked by many who have known Granny that she has lived a charmed life on account of her touch by the Good People. There could be something to that, she is nearing 100 years old after all and as bright and feisty as ever before.

Not all such abductions are of babies, but the victims are typically young, and some of the strangest reports of fairy abductions come from who have managed to come back to tell the tale. A very weird earlier report also has to do with what is called a “Fairy Circle,” a sort of portal between the land of the Fae and our reality, which in this account supposedly existed near the farm of Llwyn y Ffynon, near the Vale of Neath in South Wales. In 1755, two servants on the farm, a Rhys ap Morgan, and Llewellyn Walter, were walking towards the farm one evening when Rhys stopped and told his companion he could hear music playing, although Llewellyn could hear nothing. Rhys told the Llewellyn to continue back home while he went to go search for who was playing the music and talk to them. It was all very odd, since only Rhys could hear the alleged music, and Llewellyn suspected that he was just trying to get out of work, finally just leaving his friend to head home.

When morning came, Rhys was nowhere to be seen, and so Llewellyn told his boss what had happened the previous night. The area was searched, and they even searched the nearby alehouse, but there was no sign of Rhys, and suspicion began to fall on Llewellyn that he had done something to him. This would continue for a full year, before the story found its way to a local farmer who thought it might have to do with fairies. He asked Llewellyn to take him and some friends to the exact spot where Rhys had disappeared, and the farmer claimed that it was a fairy circle and that Rhys had been snatched away within it. At that moment Llewellyn could allegedly hear harp music that no one else could, and the farmer noticed that the servant’s foot was partly within the circle. When all present placed their feet within the circle, they found that they too could hear the music, and they could also see little child-sized figures dancing about along with the missing Rhys.

Llewellyn then grabbed his friend and pulled him out of the circle, after which Rhys said he wanted to dance a little more, as he had just gotten there. When asked what he meant, Rhys claimed to have been there for scarcely 5 minutes, despite the fact that a whole year had passed. Indeed, he had no inkling at all that he had been gone so long, and he also found himself unable to clearly remember his time with the little people in that circle. The next morning the circle was checked to find that it was trodden down and filled with tiny footprints the size of a person’s thumb. Oddly, after leaving the circle Rhys’ health would rapidly deteriorate, and he would die not long after. What happened here? Some of these cases can be quite harrowing, such as an account written of in the 1910 book The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz. The case revolves around a witness who says that when he was a boy he was out with his brother and cousin when they were almost abducted by a group of fairies. He says of the bizarre experience:

One day, just before sunset in midsummer, and I a boy then, my brother and cousin and myself were gathering bilberries (whortleberries) up by the rocks at the back of here, when all at once we heard music. We hurried round the rocks, and there we were within a few hundred feet of six or eight of the gentle folk, and they dancing. When they saw us, a little woman dressed all in red came running out from them towards us, and she struck my cousin across the face with what seemed to be a green rush. We ran for home as hard as we could, and when my cousin reached the house she fell dead. Father saddled a horse and went for Father Ryan. When Father Ryan arrived, he put a stole about his neck and began praying over my cousin and reading psalms and striking her with the stole; and in that way brought her back. He said if she had not caught hold of my brother, she would have been taken forever.

From the same book is the story of a man who tells of his frightening encounter with what he calls the “gentry,” another word for fairy. One day as he was out near a place called Ben Bulbin he had a curious encounter with a fairy that seemed about to abduct him. He says of the rather odd series of events:

When I was a young man I often used to go out in the mountains over there to fish for trout, or to hunt; and it was in January on a cold, dry day while carrying my gun that I and a friend with me, as we were walking around Ben Bulbin, saw one of the gentry for the first time. I knew who it was, for I had heard the gentry described ever since I could remember; and this one was dressed in blue with a head-dress adorned with what seemed to be frills. When he came up to us, he said to me in a sweet and silvery voice, “The seldomer you come to this mountain the better. A young lady here wants to take you away.” Then he told us not to fire off our guns, because the gentry dislike being disturbed by the noise. And he seemed to be like a soldier of the gentry on guard. As we were leaving the mountains, he told us not to look back, and we didn’t. Another time I was alone trout-fishing in nearly the same region when I heard a voice say, “It is —— bare-footed and fishing.” Then there came a whistle like music and a noise like the beating of a drum, and soon one of the gentry came and talked with me for half an hour. He said, “Your mother will die in eleven months, and do not let her die unanointed.” And she did die within eleven months. As he was going away he warned me, “You must be in the house before sunset. Do not delay! Do not delay! They can do nothing to you until I get back in the castle.” As I found out afterwards, he was going to take me, but hesitated because he did not want to leave my mother alone. After these warnings I was always afraid to go to the mountains, but lately I have been told I could go, if I took a friend with me.

In some cases people have been reported as being gone for a length of time, only to somehow find their way back, usually dazed, confused, and with no clear memory of what has happened to them. One report from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries speaks of this, and explains how something about what it calls “Fairyland” as being a place in which time runs differently, and which has a way of preventing the abductee from being able to speak of it. It explains:

Persons in a short trance-state of two or three days duration are said to be away with the fairies enjoying a festival. The festival may be very material in its nature, or it may be purely spiritual. Sometimes one may thus go to Faerie for an hour or two; or one may remain there for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years. The mind of a person coming out of Fairyland is usually a blank as to what has been seen and done there. Another idea is that the person knows well enough all about Fairyland, but is prevented from communicating the knowledge. A certain woman of whom I knew said she had forgotten all about her experiences in Faerie, but a friend who heard her objected, and said she did remember, and wouldn’t tell. A man may remain awake at night to watch one who has been to Fairyland to see if that one holds communication with the fairies. Others say in such a case that the fairies know you are on the alert, and will not be discovered.

Similarly we have a case from Ancient Origins, which relates the bizarre ordeal of a woman who disappeared near what is called a “Fairy Fort,” usually a mound, cairn of rocks or boulder that draws in fairies and has great significance for them. The report reads:

Finally, as an example of this darker aspect to fairy encounters this account from the Irish folklore archives demonstrates the upset and the confusion which many feel before they can even speak about what they believe happened to them. In this case a family happen to live close to an ancient fairy fort and one morning as a woman is using a spinning wheel she noticed a tiny person standing by the door of the house. When the woman stood up and walked to the door to investigate she was taken away by a group of small people. When the family arrived home and noticed their aunt had vanished they searched everywhere in the vicinity but found no sign of her. They searched the drains, the ditches and even the fairy fort itself. It was on the third day of her disappearance that one of the family was walking by the fort when they saw the aunt kneeling next to it. She had vanished while holding a carving knife and this was stuck in the ground next to her. The aunt could not speak for days after her return and it was only then that the family learned of her fairy abduction.

There are countless other reports along these lines, and it all goes to show that the Fae are not always the harmless little forest spirits they are so often depicted as in popular culture. Indeed, in the traditional tales and lore they are generally described as quite powerful beings to be respected, and they are certainly not always friendly by our definition. Such tales as we have looked at here serve to show us a different angle of the fairy phenomenon, and they certainly fire up the imagination whether real or not.

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Today’s article is the third in a trilogy on how aliens might be trying to find ways to manipulate, infiltrate and ultimately control us. The first part was a look at how the Men in Black, Black Eyed Children and Women in Black are tied to this. The second part was on how the Contactees of the 1950s were clearly manipulated – and mind-controlled – by the so-called Space Brothers, who claimed to have been beneficial, friendly ETs. Now, we come to the matter of how the alien abduction angle is connected to all of this.  It’s a phenomenon that was pretty much unknown until September 19, 1961. Yes, there were a few, earlier cases, but, for the most part, they were not publicized until after September 19. What, exactly, is so significant about that particular date? The answer is that it was the date of a now-historic UFO event which occurred to a married couple from New Hampshire. They were Betty and Barney Hill. At the time in question, the Hills were driving home from a vacation in Canada, when the journey suddenly took on strange and unearthly proportions.  It was on a dark stretch of road that the Hills caught sight of a curious light in the sky; it even seemed to be monitoring or shadowing them. They watched it for a while, and then something really strange happened: the Hills became confused, experienced a sense of missing time – of several hours, no less – and after getting home suffered from weird and traumatic dreams. They were dreams which suggested Betty and Barney may have been taken on-board the craft and even experimented on by weird-looking, humanoid figures. In no time at all, the dreams became definitive nightmares. Something had to be done. And, it was.

Betty and Barney Hill

When things got really bad for the Hills, and the nightmares and stress began to overwhelm them (Barney, for example, developed stomach ulcers), they sought help; it was a very good idea, as that same help led to answers for what happened on that mystery-filled drive back to New Hampshire. They were put in touch with a neurologist and psychiatrist who operated out of Boston, Massachusetts, named Benjamin Simon. Clearly aware that the Hills were in deep states of anxiety, he elected to subject them to regressive hypnosis – with the permission of Betty and Barney, of course. What followed next can only be described as incredible. Both husband and wife told near-identical stories of being taken from their vehicle, onto what can only be described as an unidentified flying object, and subjected to a series of medical procedures – most of which were very intrusive and stressful. Frightening, even. The encounter went on for roughly two hours. So detailed were the memories of Betty and Barney that the time Benjamin Simon worked with the Hills went on for months. Such was the phenomenal reaction to the story of Betty and Barney Hill, it prompted author John Fuller to write a book on the subject, titled The Interrupted Journey – an appropriate title, indeed – and which was published in 1966. Since then, the alien abduction phenomenon has grown and grown and spread like wildfire.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong at all about giving up meat and / or candy. And being concerned for the Earth is vital. After all, we have nowhere else to go if we irreversibly fuck up our world. But, just like the rapid diet-changing, I’ve seen the environmental angle placed into the person’s mind in a very quick time. too. Hours, even. At the latest, overnight. The undeniable zeal that goes along with this is not a bad thing. But, I do wonder if this sudden change in lifestyle is down to the primary themes of these three, interconnected articles: infiltration and control. There’s something else, too, that comes into play. I know of people who have been kidnapped by E.T.s , subjected to downright trauma, and shown images of a ravaged Earth in the near future. But, they still have a positive, emotional connection to their abductors. In many cases, abductees are the victims of Stockholm Syndrome – which I’ll get to now.

The BBC says of Stockholm Syndrome: “The term is most associated with Patty Hearst, the Californian newspaper heiress who was kidnapped by revolutionary militants in 1974. She appeared to develop sympathy with her captors and joined them in a robbery. She was eventually caught and received a prison sentence. But Hearst’s defence lawyer Bailey claimed that the 19-year-old had been brainwashed [my italics] and was suffering from ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ – a term that had been recently coined to explain the apparently irrational feelings of some captives for their captors [italics mine].” You can clearly see where I’m going with all of this. I know many people whose lives have been enriched by their abductions and their abductors. The fact is, though, this still all smacks of control and manipulation of the targeted person.

By far the most spectacular and intriguing of UFO reports are those cases in which one of these mysterious crafts has fallen from the heavens to come crashing down to earth. Of course the most well-known incident of this kind is the supposed UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, which is so famous that even people who have no knowledge of the UFO field have heard of it. Yet, it is by far not the only such case, and indeed UFO lore is littered with more obscure cases of alien spacecraft crashing in remote locations, the government coming in to whisk it all away, often alien bodies thrown into the mix as well, and of course government cover-ups. One such case that is perhaps even more obscure than most is the time fighter jets allegedly shot down a UFO over South Africa, after which it crashed into the Kalahari desert and was confiscated to disappear into the mists of history.

On May 7, 1989, at around 2 PM in the afternoon, a South African naval frigate off the coast of Cape Town allegedly radioed in a rather odd report to the Cape Town Naval headquarters. They claimed that they had picked up an unidentified object on their radar that was moving very rapidly towards the mainland at an approximate speed of 5746 nautical miles per hour, and other radar installations, including NORAD installations and D.F. Malan international airport at Cape Town were allegedly picking up the same thing. There were apparently efforts made to establish communications with the incoming object, but there was no response, and it then suddenly and abruptly changed course to shoot out over a remote area. In the meantime, visual confirmation was made, and it was described as looking like a silver disc.

Considering the course change, it was now assumed to be some sort of aircraft, but orders made over radio to cease its approach continued to go unanswered, and in response the South African military purportedly began making preparations to engage. Two Mirage fighter jets were scrambled, armed with what was referred to as “experimental aircraft mounted THOR 2 laser canons” supposedly designed to disrupt electrical systems, and as they approached the speeding object, warnings were ignored and so they were given permission to engage. Both fighters then fired upon it, and according to a report given by an “insider” to the UFO research group Quest International, which would later become UFO Truth Magazine, they made direct hits. The report reads of the incident:

At 13.59 GMT, the pilot of the fighter reported that they had radar and visual confirmation of the object. The order was given to arm and fire the experimental aircraft-mounted Thor 2 laser cannon. This was done. Squadron leader reported that several blinding flashes emitted from the object which had started wavering whilst heading in a northerly direction. At 14.02 is was reported that the object was decreasing altitude at a rate of 3000 feet per minute. Then at speed it dived at an angle of 25 degrees and impacted in desert terrain 80 miles north of the South African border with Botswana, identified as the central Kalahari desert. Squadron leader was instructed to circle the area until a retrieval team arrived.

A team of Air Force Intelligence Officers and technical specialists were supposedly soon on the scene in what was called “Operation Silver Diamond,” and the whole story gets even more bizarre from there. A crater was found to have been pounded into the earth, measuring approximately 150 meters in diameter and around 12 meters deep, within which sat a silver, saucer shaped object half buried at a 45-degree angle. All around it was scorched earth and rocks and sand fused together from an intense heat, and when the team approached, they reported that electronics failed in the vicinity of the object, to the point that one approaching helicopter flying over had severe technical malfunctions that caused it to make an emergency landing, and yet another went down to kill all aboard. The surface of the anomalous object was found to be completely smooth and undamaged, and was devoid of any markings or discernible seams, windows, or hatches, although they apparently did find one strange insignia etched into it ringed by odd hieroglyphics. On the bottom of the craft was found what appeared to be some sort of hydraulic landing gear, that had been fully extended, leading to speculation that a landing malfunction possibly caused by the fighter jet attack had caused it to go down. Yet, this was not the end of the weirdness.

As the team warily circled the apparently alien craft, there was reportedly a loud noise that issued forth from the craft, and a hatch of some sort cracked open on the side of it. A team was sent in to pry it all the way open, and from within allegedly climbed two humanoid entities, around 4 feet in height, with three fingered clawed hands, grayish-blue hairless and scaly skin, and dressed in tight-fitting grey suits. The creatures had oversized heads with large oval eyes and prominent cheekbones, and with slit-like mouths and no noticeable ears. Besides these two, one of the creatures would be found dead inside. The two entities who had emerged were dazed but alive, and they were reportedly quickly apprehended, although they were apparently very vicious and not easily subdued, with one of them supposedly inflicting deep gashes on one of the team with its formidable claws.

The craft was then supposedly whisked off to an Air Force base and the aliens detained in a cooled unit, which reportedly made them lethargic and more complacent, after which plans were purportedly made to have them moved to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in the United States for further tests and analyses. And that is pretty much where the story ends, with no further information on what became of the alleged spacecraft or its outlandish alien crew. The intelligence officer who blew the lid off of it, a Captain James Van Greunen, allegedly provided reams of top-secret documentation on the incident, as well as alleged recorded telephone conversations on the matter between top officials, before moving to Germany and going into hiding. It is all completely spectacular and like something out of a movie, an amazing case that has been referred to as “The African Roswell,” but of course there has been much skepticism aimed at it, even from within the UFO field.

One of the problems is that, although the case has been covered in various magazines and articles over the years, almost all of the information comes from the research done by Quest International, who were the first to be approached by the alleged informant. This does not necessarily mean that is all false, just that it is hard to independently verify their information. Also rather suspicious is that many of the supposed documents provided by Captain Van Greunen, while looking very official, on closer inspection were found to be riddled with spelling errors, inconsistencies, and discrepancies. The African UFO researcher and author Cynthia Hind examined some of the supposed documents and came to the conclusion that it was all just too sloppy for something so top-secret and official. Although it was all very elaborate and in depth, she came to the conclusion that it was all a complicated and well-thought out hoax, and she would write an article on it in UFO Times called Anatomy of a hoax. The UFO crash on the South African/Botswana border. Gruenen would deny these accusations. Perhaps even more damning than all of this is that there is just no evidence at all that such a crash off any kind happened in the area, let alone an alien spacecraft, and there are only reports from alleged military officials that cannot be confirmed or proven. This could all be due to a cover-up and suppression of the truth, but the UFO crash in the Kalahari is just not very extensively documented or supported by tangible evidence. However, Quest International director Graham W. Birdsall has remained convinced that something very strange happened out there in that desert, so we are left to wonder.

In the end there is no way to know just what happened on that day out in the middle of nowhere, if anything. There are few additional details, and anything beyond what I have mentioned here has not been forthcoming. If this was a cover-up, then they did a pretty good job of making sure it was pushed into the closet of obscure, forgotten cases, and we will frustratingly probably never know what truth it holds. Was this a hoax, scam, or disinformation, or did something really truly odd happen on that day? We can only speculate, and wonder if that ship isn’t sitting in some military warehouse somewhere.