- A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week.
Paige Daley of the TikTok Official Loch Ness channel organized a recent search at Loch Ness and found that the loch has a subterranean cave system with multiple entrances and flooded underground passages located adjacent to the loch shore, well hidden by undergrowth and linked to the loch by just 100 meters of river – researchers are suggesting this could be a pace for the Loch Ness monster to hide and possibly venture onto land, as many early sightings claimed. Whether it’s true or not, someone is no doubt already thinking about building an underwater hotel and 24/7 Nessie aqua-cam.
Rocker and UFO researcher Tom DeLonge speculates on X (formerly Twitter) that the government may have kept UFO information secret not from us but from extraterrestrials or “Others” so that they wouldn’t know that we were aware of them; he also says that people in government working on UFO problems are “patriots, morally sound, and doing the best they can. Some made errors, worked in an ambiguous lack of oversight. But- What would we each do if we were burdened with this…”. Can you say he’s right even if you don’t like Blink-182?
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation surveyed where Australians stand on resurrecting the extinct thylacine or Tasmanian tiger by editing the genome of a related species (the dunnart) and gestating it in a related surrogate and found that 68 percent support bringing it back while 24 percent didn’t like the idea and 8 percent were undecided. It says something when you can get more people to agree on resurrecting a dead species than on which live person they would vote for.
In the never-ending quest to solve the mystery of the 2014 disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, a study in the American Geophysical Union journal Advances revealed new tools for analyzing the chemistry of barnacle shell layers may be used to determine the origin of stalked or goose barnacles attached to airplane wreckage that washed up on the island of Réunion and is encrusted with the barnacles – the tools could analyze the shell layers and identify via ocean temperature indicators what parts of the ocean the plane debris floated through and potentially lead back to the crash. Keep that in mind when you don’t want anyone to know where you sail your boat.
The Crooked House pub in the small village of Himley in the West Midlands was famous for its age (it dates back to 1765), for being haunted, and for its tilting structure which caused sober people to walk as if drunk, but it made national news in early August due to a mysterious fire, which led to it being demolished without planning permission – the Black Country Paranormal volunteered to guard the site, protect the brinks from vandals and look for the ghost of a pub barmaid named Polly and any other ghosts until the issue is resolved. Locals who want the Crooked House pub rebuilt should be prepared for some ‘lean’ times.
If you live in the UK or fancy a vacation there and you’re a UFO buff, the car rental company Stressfreecarrental.com has put together a 1,000 mile road trip around the UK that takes you to many of the most famous UFO sites there, starting with Devon, home of a recent sighting at Maidencombe Beach, to Wales’s Pembrokeshire, location of the Broad Haven Primary School sighting by a group of students – the trip also includes the big ones, like Perthshire where the Calvine UFO photograph was taken, and Suffolk, home of the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident. “There’s UFOs in Inverness too,” said the suddenly lonely Loch Ness monster.
Astronomers are concerned that hackers have been targeting space telescopes in Hawaii and Chile since the beginning of August, forcing them to be temporarily shut down while technicians work to build more firewalls against cyberattacks – some astronomers suspect the hackers don’t even realized they are attacking space telescopes. They probably figure it out when no one wants to buy their pictures of Betelgeuse or the Dog Star.
While one group explores Loch Ness caves and another plans a massive hunt with sonar, drones and hundreds of volunteers, an ‘official’ sighting was reported by tourist Steve Valentine from Urmston in Manchester, who saw a “black shape in the water” while on a Deepscan boat tour which was returning to the dock near to Urquhart Castle – he managed to take a photo, which is magnified on the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register. While the shape is hard to identify, it’s interesting that the site is called a ‘register’ and not a ‘log’.

Even Nesie is looking.
The mysterious disappearance of wealthy New Yorker Michael Rockefeller on a trip to Papua New Guinea in 1961 may have finally been solved and it’s not as gruesome as the speculation that he was killed by locals – a recently resurfaced film taken near where Rockefeller disappeared in the jungles about 40 year after he was presumed dead shows a naked bearded white man rowing a canoe with Asmat tribal warriors, implying that Rockefeller may have ‘gone native’ and chose to disappear. Did he leave any instructions on how to do it? (Asking for a rich friend.)
Mexican UFO researcher Jaime Maussan announced that the first of its kind hearing on UFOs to be held in the Mexican Congress will occur on September 12 and will feature Ryan Graves, the former Navy pilot who recently testified before the US Congress about his aerial encounters with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), along with people from other countries who will reveal details about their encounters and answer questions from the Congress and the media. After this one, let’s replace the hearings with some ‘seeings’.
From the “Octopuses are Really Smart” file comes more evidence supporting the case – octopus biologists from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago found thousands of octopus huddled together at the bottom of the ocean off the central California coast and discovered that they were sitting on their eggs in natural hot tubs to help them hatch faster … the hot tubs were heated by hot gases seeping from the base of an extinct underwater volcano. Female octopuses are so smart, they don’t tell the males where the hot tubs are.
A new study, "An Exploration of Mars Colonization with Agent-Based Modeling,” determined via simulations that the minimum number of people required to colonize Mars is just 22, and that of the four most common personality types – Agreeables (not competitive nor aggressive), Socials (extroverted and require social interaction), Reactives (have a “competitive interpersonal orientation”) and Neurotics (very competitive and aggressive) – the Neurotics had the highest chance of dying and were most likely to suffer while living on the colony, to the point that colony would improve as the Neurotics died off. This will make the reality shows from Mars much less fun to watch.
A new study from North Carolina State University attempted to determine whether sabretooth tigers roared like modern big cats or purred like modern small cats and found that sabretooths had some small bones indicating they could have done both or had a completely unique vocalization. If they did both, the choice probably depended on whether they just ate a mammoth or a human.
Patrick Perry of Shell Knob in rural Missouri claims he has been hearing wood knocks in the woods near his home with suggested to him there was a Bigfoot nearby, so he left a jar of peanut butter outside one night; the next morning, he found the lid of the jar removed and something with "big fingers" took a big scoop of peanut butter out of it – some viewing the photo think it was a person, others suggest it was a racoon that used its little hands to open the jar. One thing we know for certain – choosy Bigfoots choose Jif.

I smell peanut butter!
Some experts say the Silent Ventus drone, made by Florida-based start-up Undefined Technologies, uses ion propulsion where electrodes ionize the air to generate thrust, allowing it to fly incredibly quietly, hover against winds – leading them to speculate that the Tic Tac UFOs reported and recorded by pilots and personnel on a mission with the USS Nimitz off the Southern California coast in 2004 could have been similar drones rather than non-human-made aircraft. The only people happy with this new debate are the makers of Tic Tacs.
To commemorate the 1965 UFO sighting which inspired John G. Fuller to write the book, “Incident at Exeter” and prompted an investigation by the United States Air Force, the Exeter Police Department in New Hampshire has created a special patch that will be sold at the upcoming Exeter UFO Festival on Labor Day weekend – the patch features an alien wearing a police hat and the proceeds will benefit Proceeds will benefit the department's program for providing support dogs to veterans and first responders. Aliens should be warned that wearing the patch will not get them out of a ticket for speeding.
In an exclusive interview, psychic spoon bender Uri Geller predicted that there will be an extraterrestrial landing “in the coming 10 to 20 years” that will not be an invasion but a revelation that there are “maybe two or three species out there” that could have destroyed us if they wanted to – it will be a “Steven Spielberg type landing” and the “the biggest revelation in history - religiously, archaeologically, everything. It will be like finding the Arc of the Covenant." Uri also predicted that England would win the FIFA Women’s World Cup (Spain did), so don’t place any bets just yet.
If those aliens really do show up, evolution expert Richard Dawkins said in an interview that they hailed from a similar planet to Earth they would probably look like humans, but they could just as easily come from a planet with different gravity and look more like spiders the size of elephants or a mouse built like a rhinoceros. Let’s hope the gravity makes them look like tribbles.
In a new study published in PLOS ONE, biological anthropologists and archaeologists from Kyushu University used 2D images and 3D scans to analyze the shape of 19 indigenous Hirota skulls found on the Japanese island of Tanegashima which had flattened heads and determined that the condition did not occur naturally but was the result of artificial cranial deformation (ACD), probably by head binding or pressing when they were infants – adding the Hirota of the third to seventh centuries CE to the growing list of cultures performing cranial modification. All of sudden, having hat hair doesn’t seem like such a big problem.
The Chinese tech firm Xiaomi unveiled a new version of its CyberDog robotic canine called CyberDog 2 which is more intelligent and lifelike and has the abilities to perform ballet steps, moonwalk, perform backflips, wiggle its rear and ride a skateboard – with a 90 minute battery life, no shedding, the look of a Doberman, and a price of only $1800, the company is predicting CyberDog 2 will be the pet of the future and replace live dogs. Call us when it licks up anything you drop on the floor.

Is this the pet store of the future?
Authorities in Argentina are investigating photos allegedly taken near the small town of El Escorial in Chubut of what looks like an arrow-shaped UFO rotating in the air from vertical to horizontal while hovering above the Patagonian plains - local journalist Calaverita Mateos shared them on social media, called them “the best photos of a UFO in Chubut” and said the local resident who sent them to him wishes to remain anonymous - most people are skeptical without more evidence. We saw Spinning Arrow open for the Beau Brummels.
Dr Michelle Thaller, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a public interview that she is certain that alien life exists on Venus as space scientists have identified “something in the atmosphere that looks very much like it could be produced by bacteria" or other microbial lifeforms that can survive using the sulfur, methane and iron in the atmosphere of Venus, and that photosynthesis is possible on the surface because some solar energy is able to penetrate this thick atmosphere. Let’s hope it’s not plants – we’ve seen what humans can do to the ones in their offices.
It’s so hot in Texas that some Texans think a dog-sized yellow-brown creature spotted in a backyard in Hill Country Village by Tina Kahlig is a Chupacabra of the Texas variety which resembles a mangy coyote rather than the blood-sucking, spine-backed, upright, lizardish creatures from Puerto Rico – cooler heads, namely veterinarians at the nearby San Antonio zoo, looked at the photos and suspect it is a dog or coyote with skin issues. The state’s true believers say don’t mess with Texas Chupacabras.
We note the passing of David Perkins, an early 1970s investigator in the field of cattle mutations, noted speaker on the subject, author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles on mutilation cases, and co-author of the book “Altered Steaks.” Perkins passed away on August 20, 2023, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of 69.